Work Text:
Kaeya has a new hobby.
He goes to Flora’s to pick up a new potted plant or some flowers at random. Sometimes he picks up a flower every other week,or weekly, or monthly. It seems that Kaeya has a new appreciation for lively, growing things. He’s been buying seeds to plant on his own. Flora graciously gave her new ‘plant buddy’ a bag of fertiliser and a little notebook she wrote herself. He still visits Angels Share. He sits in the chair he always sits in, perched near the bar. He’s so close, Diluc can smell the fresh spring breeze on his hair, the crushed petals on his wrists and the flowers in his palms. Kaeya doesn’t talk to him much, only sparing a few words to order a drink, and a lighthearted teasing when Diluc inevitably kicks him out. He keeps staring, somewhere behind Diluc, somewhere beyond Angels Share’s wooden walls. To a place very far away, where even Diluc cannot go.
Kaeya is by his side, and yet he could not be any further away.
Kaeya disappears sometimes, completely unexplained by anybody including the man himself. He just smiles, raises his hands with dirt under his fingertips, and he tells them he’s gone to search for more flowers. The tiny yellow bumble bees poke at his silky hair, prodding at the flowers they smell there, only to find none at all.
This strange behaviour is entirely unlike him. Kaeya is suspicious and cannot be trusted. When all his flowers wilt away, all that will remain are the thorns. That’s why Diluc is in front of his apartment, a lonely place tucked away with flowers on the windowsill and on the doorway. For Mondstadt’s sake, he has to know whatever Kaeya is planning, because he has to be. Kaeya’s always planning something, no matter how innocent it may seem.
Diluc opens the door. It’s unlocked.
It’s cold outside. Diluc wrapped his coat around Kaeya. Kaeya’s hands are carefully wrapped around another potted plant, one that Diluc had bought along with some water and chocolate when they passed by a merchant. He’s staring at that faraway place again, dragging his feet along the stone path and kicking the little pebbles that get caught on his heel. Diluc’s arms are bare and he shivers against the cold, but it’s a good distraction. For a moment, he can ignore what lies behind Kaeya’s door. What he had found behind Kaeya’s door. Something lifeless stared numbly at him, something that once was blue and pure and bright. He doesn’t think about the blood, the blood that soaked into the wooden floor, spreading everywhere like some kind of rot. Onto the bed sheets, the patterned quilted rug, and creeping into Kaeya’s hair and his clothes, until there were no blues or whites. They would have to clean all of the blood out.
Blood. Kaeya’s blood. His Kaeya’s blood.
Something gets caught in Diluc’s throat, and he chokes.
Kaeya finds a cosy spot for the plant he got. He tells Diluc that it's a cactus, and that he’s named him Sunny. Sunny is placed on the table directly in front of the window, ready to soak up all of the warm sunlight to its heart’s content. Kaeya tells Diluc about his other plants. His Golden pothos plant named Lionfang, his Jade plant named Mora and his little garden of succulents he’s named Benny, Wolf and Dodoking. All of the blood’s been cleaned away, like it was never there. Diluc can’t bring himself to say something, so he leaves. He doesn’t see Kaeya’s face crumple at the sound of the door slamming.
Aster is a lovely girl, Diluc’s taken care of her since she was a young little birdling. She’s a smart one too, almost eerily human with her understanding of words. When she squawks loudly, rushing into his office and frantically flies around him, he follows her quickly. He pales when he realises where she’s taking them and he bolts, clambering up the steps and pushing through the door. There’s the bitter red again, rotting and festering in a place so full of life.
Kaeya’s eyes are blurry, weakly bunching the fabric of Diluc’s coat. “I didn’t mean to, Luc,” he sobbed, “I don’t wanna go, I don’t wanna go yet.”
Diluc carries him, and he goes quiet. The words follow him as he runs desperately towards the Cathedral. Kaeya is quiet and still, and all Diluc can do is run.
I don’t wanna go yet.
Diluc is by his side when Kaeya wakes, frantic and panicked as his chest rises up and down. Diluc holds him, and Kaeya turns to sob into his chest. Diluc holds him, because what else can he do? It rips him apart as Kaeya apologises, breathlessly and forced through punishing cries. “I can’t help it, I just, I wasn’t thinkingー” becomes a jumbled mess of slurred words. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I went too far, I didn’t ー I don’t want to go yet!”
He doesn’t cry. He can’t, even if he wants to. He has to stay strong for them, Kaeya is upset enough as it is. He doesn’t need Diluc to cry for him, when Diluc hasn’t been able to do anything else. He tangles their fingers, and he holds him tight until Kaeya’s wailing gives way to soft and stuttering sniffles.
“What do you need?” Diluc asks, and Kaeya lifts his head.
“Can you buy another plant for me?”
Diluc softly chuckled, “Kaeya, didn’t you buy one yesterday?”
Kaeya hesitates. “Diluc, I buy a plant every time I…”
Diluc couldn’t stop himself this time, crying out like a small child as he wrapped his arms around Kaeya’s waist, nosing deeply into his loose clothes. He shook his head, screaming “No!” as if it would make it all disappear. Kaeya’s hand hesitates, lingers, and then he combs his fingers through Diluc’s hair gently, taming stubborn curls and tangled bunches of Ragnvindr red.
“Talk to me.” Diluc begged, “Anytime you feel like this, Kaeya, you have to talk to me!”
“I can’t always bother you for this.”
“Bother me. Nothing is worth losing you, please, promise me this. I can’t lose you, please.”
He raised his pinky finger, and even he knew how juvenile it all seemed. Like he was asking Kaeya to promise something silly, like saving him a piece of cake. Yet, Kaeya does; he curls his pinky around Diluc’s and smiles at him, and maybe, just maybe, things might be alright in the end.
Kaeya survives. He goes to Diluc to talk, he sends him letters, he joins him for dinners in the Dawn Winery and he cries as Adelinde tearfully embraces him, just as she always had.
Kaeya survives. He moves his flowers to Dawn Winery. He helps the maids arrange them, placing them, bringing life and colour to match the vase he’d gotten Diluc all those years ago.
Kaeya survives. Diluc holds him through the cold nights, they both learn how to love again, and for the first time in years, they celebrate Diluc’s birthday. In the dark secrecy of the Ragnvindr garden, Diluc kisses him, and they giddily run to their room like little kids avoiding the head maid’s keen eyes.
Kaeya lives.