Chapter Text
They wake - miraculously - at the same time. It is not instantaneous, but instead a series of movements. Diluc’s arm twitches from where it’s sandwiched between the mattress and the pillow - pinned in place by the weight of his head. Kazuha is somewhere beside him, simultaneously intertwined and too far. If only they were two-dimensional beings - perhaps then they could lay entirely flush with each other. But no - there are aching knees on waking legs, veiny eyelids that flutter open to reveal bleary red, a soft mouth brushing against Diluc’s in some esoteric ritual of love. The sheets, too, are imperfect. Wrinkled and mussed, wrapped around ankles and barely holding in their accumulated warmth.
Really, the true cause of their waking is the muted tapping at the door, but the sound of blood and breath in their linked bodies is far louder than any external stimuli in those first moments.
It is only when the voice of the fist on the other side of the door makes its presence known that Diluc and Kazuha properly wake.
“Sir Diluc, it is the afternoon. There is a visitor here for you.” A considerate pause from the hotel staff. “I hope I did not wake you.”
Diluc’s pocket watch is somewhere in the mess of discarded clothes on the floor, but he does not need it to know that they have slept halfway into the day. The sunlight pierces in through the window. How can the same color from the early morning be so violently bright now? Not hours ago it was mellow and creeping, if a bit intruding, but now it shines with little regard for Diluc’s unadjusted vision. He can nearly feel his pupils narrow into little pinholes in rejection of all that light.
“My apologies, it’s far too late for this be considered sleeping in, anyway,” he says at a volume he hopes is loud enough to pass through the wood between him and the attendant.
“What shall I tell them?” Comes the voice again.
Diluc looks to Kazuha, who is awake but silent beside him and peering up through his grown-out, snowy fringe. He stifles a yawn and Diluc sees the air catch in the back of his mouth, swell in his throat.
“I will be down in a few minutes, please extend my apologies for the wait.”
There is the sound of shuffling - not of feet leaving the hallway, but of them dragging nervously back and forth across the parquet.
“They have also asked that your guest joins.”
“Ah,” Diluc starts, and Kazuha’s lips lift into a diminutive smile at the meat of his thigh. “Yes, he will also come down.” A teasing kiss is planted high on his leg. “Thank you.”
“Very well.”
Then the feet of the voiced fist pad away gently, leaving Diluc’s ears to pick up only on the way Kazuha has begun to hum absentmindedly from his place on the bed - flattened against the mattress, his body still entrapped by the twisted sheets.
“It appears we have a caller,” Diluc says.
Kazuha languishes in the golden sun that pours in, and when he shifts his head on the pillow, his hair catches the light - holds it - and the strands glow beacon white.
“No doubt one of the crew,” he says, "sent to fetch me.”
Diluc lifts his chin and looks out the window to see the harbor moving in regular motions, free of ice. His heart lurches in his chest, but Kazuha’s hand is upon him in an instant, pushing him down toward the bed. Diluc succumbs to love and gravity and - without much urging - settles back into bed to let Kazuha lavish him in slow, sleepy kisses.
When they get up to dress, he does not miss how Kazuha goes first to the window to draw the curtains closed.
Diluc’s last button slips into place in its eyelet, and for all the finality of the action, it is quiet and missable and representative of nothing.
-
Juza is waiting for them on the first floor, sheepish fists in his deep pockets. His face flushes with fumbling embarrassment when he takes in Diluc and Kazuha’s interlocked fingers. No experience with romance, Diluc thinks. He squeezes tighter in the way a knot constricts when tugged at one end.
Juza cheerily leads them to the house where the Crux fleet is staying. Diluc is not used to being accompanied in this way – Juza a few steps ahead of them, chin going between his chest and his shoulder as he throws friendly words at them. Spine twisted up as he looks back.
They talk about the upcoming festival and the local crimson finches and the way hawks swoop out of the clouds to kill them and the lolling harbor. Kazuha makes a quiet, off-handed comment.
“How long does ice have to be melted before it’s allowed to be called water?”
“Maybe a day?” Juza supplies – prophetic.
-
Before they go into the main room to meet with Beidou, Kazuha gives him a small, leather-bound journal from his bag, which lay forgotten by the front door. Diluc recognizes it. He’d seen it on the neatly made bed in his guest room when Kazuha stayed there.
“This is yours?” Diluc asks. The little journal is heavy with many words.
“And now it belongs to you,” Kazuha says, and Diluc recognizes that his plain delivery is a symptom of self-consciousness. “A return gift for my new teacup.”
“I will take care of it,” Diluc says, tucking it away into his coat’s inner pocket. It is infinitely precious to him. “But I will not read it in front of you.”
They exchange silence, and Kazuha punctuates their wordless conversation with a brisk kiss to Diluc’s shoulder.
When they go into the common area, Beidou spares no words.
“We’ll leave tomorrow,” Beidou says with a bored affect, and though Diluc didn’t expect anything otherwise, it still hurts. It’s a simple word for a complex feeling, but it works in the absence of full articulation.
“What should I do in preparation?” is Kazuha’s measured response.
Diluc doesn’t often see him like this: determined, restrained. Maybe there’s not a word for this either, or perhaps Diluc just has yet to learn it. This pragmatic, straightforward Kazuha – without the mischievous glimmer in his eye, without the wind tousling his fringe, without his hand in his robe. It is the look of somebody who must work for a living. As somebody who has had fortune in his lap before he could pronounce it, it is foreign to Diluc.
Diluc works because he wants to. He is acquainted with drive and glory – less so with poverty and the unique desperation that comes with it. Even for Kazuha’s noble, well-bred origins, his adult life has been spent seeking out odd jobs as a means to continue pursuing his own desires – which are markedly less concerned with justice than Diluc’s.
He wonders how it would work if the two of them switched places. It’s an impossible sort of question – artificially designed to distract Diluc from the immediacy of Kazuha’s departure.
“Oh,” Beidou says, and she casts her lone eye off to some corner as if evaluating dust. “I was thinking the two of you could—“ She stops suddenly like somebody has interrupted her, but Diluc and Kazuha are standing at quiet attention. No retorts. She continues with a haughty throw of her chin. “Listen, why don’t you just let us handle it.”
“Captain—“
“And don’t give me that look,” she says – specifically to Diluc. Even under her loose, black bangs and eyepatch, he can detect a furrowed brow.
Diluc genuinely has no clue what she’s referring to, and he tries to project his vision outside of himself to take stock of his own countenance. Solemn, maybe? Mournful? Concerned? He’s not sure how he feels – let alone how he appears.
But Kazuha is laughing, and though Diluc’s doesn’t know if it’s because of the awkward air of the room or Diluc’s apparent terse facial posture or Beidou’s impatient shooing, but it’s enough to start a dancing warmth in his chest. Fuel for his fire.
“We’ll meet up for dinner or something,” Beidou says when they leave, throwing a curt wave in their general direction but looking at Diluc with her tempering gaze.
Kazuha slips his hand into Diluc’s when they walk back out onto the promenade. He has never walked hand in hand with another in public, and it brings him inordinate pleasure to know it is a part of Diluc that Kazuha will always carry.
As the afternoon light envelops everything, Diluc swears the sun positions itself directly above them.
-
In Mondstadt, the winters blanket the city in white and deaden all color. There are no wreaths strong enough to withstand the chill, and even the fields of grape vines at the winery hibernate in dull sepias.
But Liyue, Diluc notes, does not require its maples and sandbearers to be in full foliage in order to retain the city's vibrancy. Even now - after the snow has escaped as rainy runoff - the stately buildings shine with brilliant cardinal lacquer and refined eggshell ivory. The roofs, too, are the same half-blue half-green that emanates from Kazuha’s Anemo vision.
Here, Diluc is a wanderer as much as Kazuha, and he basks in the affordances of the role - looking around at the towering buildings with awe, ordering charred seafood skewers at food stalls, leading Kazuha down dead ends so he can kiss him in private.
It is a vacation of sorts.
There are people all around them, some wearing familiar Mond clothing and others who move with the assuredness of locals.
“Well, when spring comes—“
“—another one of those grilled fruit skewers—“
“—thinking about what we—“
“—by no means is this the end—“
“—not really a point in going back—“
“—this the sort of thing you enjoy—"
“—the ice is—"
“—really need some alone time—"
“—together?”
Diluc is so desensitized to the clamor of conversing crowds that at first it does not register that Kazuha is the one filling in the silence.
“Sorry,” he says. He pulls Kazuha in closer to his person and observes the way the apology passes through his wanderer with a pronounced shiver. Like a familiar ghost.
Kazuha laughs. Maybe because of how unexpectedly the involuntary movement possessed him. It is certainly still cold, but relatively speaking, the weather is warmer than the previous weeks, and by all means it should not be eliciting such intense bodily reactions.
Maybe Diluc just runs hot.
“Ah,” Kazuha starts. “I was only asking if you ever envisioned us in Liyue together?”
Diluc lets the question sit in his mind - allows it to percolate amongst memories and recollections of feelings that can not be parsed into words, let alone a casual reply.
“When you were staying with me, I often imagined us together, but the daydream lacked—“ He stops himself. It occurs to him just how surreal the fantasies had been. “I suppose I always saw us at the winery, but now that I think about it, I could never imagine us in any one place.”
“I was just thinking that whenever I tried to conjure images of our future, the scenes always had a blank background.”
He had not realized Kazuha meant the question quite so literally. Diluc tries to illustrate the fantasy of the two of them together in his mind, but his way of thinking lacks artistry. He can sense the vague shapes of his internal world, but there’s no discrete lines - no clear visuals. He has an easier time imagining touch. Sensations. Feelings burning away in his chest. For him, memories cannot be extricated from the emotions they brought out in him, and so projecting himself into the future - with Kazuha - seems limited by past experiences. He is built for rumination, he thinks.
"But your imagination is so vivid,” Diluc adds after an elongated pause.
“I think that was part of why the prospect of being together scared me - because the idea of us felt removed from reality.”
“Maybe it was not that you imagined us without context, but that we could end up anywhere together?”
Kazuha hums in response. “Love can be transposed?”
The answer remains to be seen, Diluc thinks, but some silent part of his body – an organ more central than the heart – thrums with ‘yes’.
-
Kazuha leads him just past the boundary of the city, toward the gates Diluc had entered through, and for a moment he allows himself the fantasy that they are leaving for Mondstadt together.
There is a statue of the Geo archon at the base of the rocky hill, and all manner of objects lay around it in a ritualistic circle. Gifts, offerings, tokens of respect. There is fresh food – smooth, shiny buns hardening in the open air and motley fruit in warm colors. Tall pillared candles held in place by steel chrysanthemum shapes. Round beads. A small dish in which a cone of incense has perished. Ash – departing in little curls of air. Embossed gold and pulpy, ivory paper. Letters written in ancient Liyue script – a writing system Diluc never learned.
Kazuha surveys the offerings with such consternation that it initially appears he’s reading, but then his gaze moves - not with the narrative path of the text but across the calligraphy like he’s taking in a painting.
There are alphabets, syllabaries, systems of speech - and yet none of them can entirely articulate the way Diluc feels. It is an impasse of mouth and mind, and though it is not traversable, he does take some comfort in the myriad of ways one can supplement expression. Just as the followers of the Geo archon lay out bao in addition to their letters.
Dried banana leaves fan out like a prayer mat. Diluc’s hand reaches out to Kazuha’s drifting form.
“How has your faith fared since—” Diluc starts just as Kazuha kneels down to pray. Bad timing. Kazuha returns to standing and takes Diluc’s hand. “When I responded to your concerns about the Anemo archon - was I too callous?”
Kazuha’s fingers pass over Diluc’s knuckles in oceanic motions. Lost in the ebb and flow of thought.
“I think it was useful to me in the long term that you spoke firmly. You were right – you still are. My relationship with the divine is not yours to protect.”
“I see.” Diluc feels both guilty and validated – the sort of double bind present also when his vision pulses warmly at his thigh. It’s a knot that refuses to be untied. “I have often wondered what led you to go on pilgrimage.”
“What else but a desire to wander?” Diluc should have expected such an answer. Kazuha’s frankness can have an impenetrable superficiality to it, but he knows by now that it’s another way he sets boundaries – like when the winery staff quizzed him on Inazuma and he avoided it with his grass whistle.
Diluc steps back and lets Kazuha pray. He does not offer anything beyond his bowed head. He has no connection to the Geo archon – perhaps only peripherally through Venti – so he has no impulse to pay respects in the deep, appreciate manner Kazuha does. He stands at Kazuha’s side. With his eyes closed and neck bent, he feels very much in the shape of a small lamp grass. Kazuha is like moss as he kneels close to the stone – flush against Rex Lapis’ earthly counterpart.
“Do you believe in the archons?” Kazuha asks once they’ve settled on a nearby bench, and his voice is raspy. Diluc wonders if he had gotten verklempt while praying.
It’s a strange question.
“That they exist?” Diluc asks back.
“No, that they look over you and protect their people.”
“My vision has always been proof of that, but the existence of them – or rather the archons’ decision to pick and choose who receives blessings of power – troubles me. It always has.”
Kazuha does not know about his father’s delusion. He does not know the way in which talk of visions sometimes stirs up old hurt in Diluc.
Diluc knows well the difference between handling the divine gift and its poorer, human imitation. How wrong it was when maroon surged in jagged chains through his body. So different than the impassioned lapping of flame.
“It is because of my vision that I am not under the sole dominion of the Electro archon.”
Yes, Diluc knows this. Kazuha’s relationship with Electro is complicated. But he seems to be better at apprehending multiplicities than Diluc since Beidou’s powers don’t disturb him.
Kazuha has a way of seeing each person as entirely unique – it shows in the way he interacts with each new acquaintance and the depth of his friendship with his captain. Perhaps it is something learned by years of diligent wandering. Of meeting and leaving. Diluc is tethered to the past, and so nostalgia always looms over the present. The future, too, is threatened by its gloom. Diluc's sojourn left him with little in the way of social skills - even if he did emerge from it a calmer man.
So does Kazuha’s compassion extend to the flawed divine?
“Do you consider Barbatos her replacement?” Diluc finally asks.
“The Electro archon rules over my homeland; the Anemo archon over my fate,” Kazuha says, and it’s the perfect illustration of the point.
“How do you reconcile your frustrations with the Raiden shogun with your fealty to the god of Mondstadt?” Diluc wants Kazuha to model it for him – to instruct him on forgiveness.
“The two relationships co-exist within me. I cannot imagine a relationship with the divine that isn’t fraught.”
Ah, so it is not forgiveness, but acceptance. After all, what is the power in forgiving a god? Is it not the celestial’s task to pardon imperfect people, anyway?
But it is also the charge of the archons to preside over mortals in more… preventative ways. So what did concerns might Kazuha and Diluc have with the celestial order of all things? What sort of meddling is the work of fate? The path of their love is so twisted, so winding, so circuitous – it is the mark of a god.
“The Tianquan said something when I met with her,” Diluc starts, and the nervousness he’s attempting to quell with steady breathing still colors his tone; he’s sure of it. “That fate was certainly guiding these events. I have been wondering if in any of your exchanges with Venti, did he make reference to that?”
“The mortal form of Barbatos? He did, but he was very careful with his words.” Kazuha, too, seems cautious in the way he responds, and Diluc can only accept that just as there are things private between the two of them, there are also thoughts that must remain between a god and his follower.
“It seems— I think it’s cruel, to say the least."
“The look on your face tells me you wish to investigate the origin of our fate.”
“There must be— I don’t know. Some kind of karmic debt. Are we really doomed to part ways? There’s no future in which our desires can truly co-exist?”
“Not without one of us sacrificing a core part of ourselves,” Kazuha makes no effort to withhold his weary sigh, and he casts his eyes obviously to the statue of Rex Lapis. “Diluc, you are not going to trace the cord of fate to its source, are you? It would be—“
“Sacrilegious,” Diluc is quick to say.
“Yes, but firstly impossible,” and Kazuha is even faster in his response.
Diluc doesn’t want the conversation to pass like this – in swift quips and interrupted sentences. He lets his eyes pass over Kazuha’s furrowed features, and once he’s sure it won’t seem like an effort to artificially sweeten the conversation, he brings his hand to Kazuha’s jaw. When he places it there, he takes the time to notice how every part of his wanderer is shaped for holding. Even the bits of him that are carved by loss and war and exile – the muscle, the healed bones.
“I want more time with you,” is all he says – with the sort of softness he usually reserves for private moments.
Kazuha mollifies when he hears the words – first at the corners of his mouth, then in his brow and eyes, and finally in one swift, descending movement through the rest of his body. He sinks into Diluc’s touch as the melting snow had.
“And as you fret, you lose the present moment,” he says between kisses at Diluc’s fingers. “Make a promise to me, Diluc.”
“Yes.”
“Wait to investigate this until I return. And while I am in Inazuma, attend to your other affairs. I get the sense there are many loose ends in Mondstadt awaiting your return.”
He wants to protest at that, but…
“You are not incorrect.”
“And until I leave, please give yourself over entirely to me. Think of nothing else.”
It is the one contract Diluc takes no hesitation in signing.
-
They do not meet with Madame Ping at her house as Diluc thought they might, but instead at Yujing Terrace beside the dormant lilypads and sluggish carps and tightly closed glaze lilies – flowering even in the cold. It is the architecture of a higher echelon of society. Highly ornamented, upright, austere.
He is too distracted by the elaborate roofs to witness the sight of the gaiwan pouring, and the sound of porcelain settling into itself is lost in the crisp wintry air.
“This,” Kazuha brings the two celadon cups in close to him and Diluc. “This is one of the teas I wrote to you about.”
Diluc expects something vaguely sweet. Like the chalky pollen of a plum blossom. Or milky lychee. When he brings the cup up to his mouth, he instinctively smells it before he can even take a sip. Leather, tobacco. Damp bark releasing from an old tree. How a fluid can have a rough edge to it is beyond Diluc’s comprehension. In less aesthetic terms - astringent, but full-bodied. Not smoky, but earthy. Like fall mulch. There’s something else - something that eludes him.
He drinks.
The flavor is far more densely layered than the smell. The mouthfeel is equally complex: beautifully velvet at the front of the tongue, but drying in the back. As if evaporating, but that is not the case. Diluc swallows, and as the tea travels from cup to mouth to throat to stomach, he notices how quickly his body saps away its temperature - aided by a slight initial slurp.
“It's better than Mond tea,” he says. It feels silly to try and put the thoughts into words, even if he’d just laid them out in his inner dialogue.
Madame Ping gives the two of them a soft smile - perhaps waiting for them to speak before she elucidates them on the tea’s origins, which would dispel the playful mystery around interpreting the flavor.
“It has an interesting mineral component to it,” Diluc finally supplies. Kazuha nor Madame Ping react, and for a moment he wants to take the words back - to render himself invulnerable to wrongness - but then they’re both nodding in agreement.
“Yes. Not mineral in the sense of, say, a mountain, but in the way the stonework of dilapidated house sinks back into the earth,” Kazuha says, and even if Diluc is baffled that such images can form spontaneously in Kazuha’s mind, it does make sense to him.
Madame Ping hums quietly in response and finishes her cup in several drawn-out sips, her eyes flitting between the two of them at the pace one might read a book.
“But it also has— I’m not sure what word to use. A vegetal quality?” Diluc says.
“Good tongue on this one,” Madame Ping says with a sort of musical lilt to her aged voice.
Diluc is flattered and though he doesn’t show it, Kazuha’s blush speaks enough for the both of them.
“Mushroom-y,” is all Kazuha chooses to say. He takes another sip and no other word follows. Diluc watches him get lost in the ritual of drinking the tea. Kazuha’s Adam’s apple bobs even when his head is not thrown back, and Diluc has to subdue the impulse to kiss at it.
He finishes his cup, and when he sets it back on the table, the last droplet of amber liquid is translucent enough he can see little grains of tea leaf dust at the bottom.
“This tea is brewed from an older cake. I believe it is around fifteen years old.”
“Ah, so not much different than wine.”
“Yes, puer also benefits from aging. You can likely imagine the differences in the process, though.”
The tea produces a pleasant, fluttering lightness in his body. Like a fire with no source - tethered not to some finite bundle of foliage but suspended midair. It is strange how a tea that tastes so strongly of the earth and decomposition and stone and ancient tree can create this sensation in Diluc.
“If you have time, please stay and enjoy the next few infusions. This particular tea doesn’t have much longevity, but it would be a shame to drink it alone.”
Diluc exhales slowly and settles into his chair. He watches as Madame Ping prepares for the second infusion. On her refined bamboo tea tray rests a small, auburn clay dragon.
“That is what sets puer apart from wine. Once the bottle is opened, it cannot return to its original state. It spoils far faster, as well."
“But is the tea not impacted by aging? Would you not consider that to be a loss of its original state?” Diluc hopes his low voice comes out curious, not combative.
"Oh, certainly. The bamboo and cotton wrappers do little to prevent the natural effects of time, but the narrative of flavor that each cake has— Well, it is not something that can be replicated in wine. Each infusion is a new iteration on the tea, and though a steeping from the cake’s early years will be far different from one later on, the very fact that one can partake in it on either ends of its lifespan without impacting the true essence of the tea—“ Madame Ping stops, sweeps her head back and forth to divert the train of thought, and gives them a practiced smile. “Ah, I’ve gotten ahead of myself, haven’t I?”
“Please, don’t stop on either of our accounts,” Diluc is quick to say, his manners rising to his lips.
“We are lucky to learn these things from you,” is Kazuha’s addition.
“In the presence of such handsome, young men, I let myself be whisked away to a fond memory of another tea I shared long ago. A much more intimate steeping, certainly not suitable to share anymore." She releases a wistful sigh. "Oh, but that tea cake is from decades past, and there is nothing left of it but the wrapping. A flimsy keepsake now, but no more flimsy than the memory itself, I suppose.”
“Let us make new memories together, then,” Kazuha says after a beat of bated silence.
“Yes,” Madame Ping lights up at that. “It’s not as if we have the choice to exist at any other time besides now, do we?"
-
It’s later, when they’re walking back toward Wanmin restaurant, where the Crux crew is having an impromptu dinner, that Kazuha brings up tea again.
“If you were a cake of puer,” Kazuha starts, his eyes going to Diluc’s with an impish glimmer. "I imagine you’d have a pleasant spice to you. Ah, notes of young, pink ginger. Maybe some dried jujube." His pause is filled in by the syncopated music of boots and wooden sandals on the stone pathway. “I’d have to restrain myself from drinking you everyday lest I run out.”
It seems even their analogized selves are not safe from the entropy of time.
“But I am not tea,” Diluc says, half-flat, but then Kazuha is looking at him with large, black pupils, and - archons - how could one describe that gaze as doing anything but drinking him in?
-
The crew does not drink alcohol - not heavily - that night, and it isn’t until halfway through the dinner that Diluc understands why. In the morning, they will be leaving. Departing from the harbor requires a series of laborious tasks - legs pushing at the boardwalk, arms coiled up in rope - and there’s no good reason to be hungover during it all.
Diluc briefly wonders if he could sabotage them by ordering the largest bottle of rice wine - the one on display on the highest shelf, with a glass body so swollen Diluc fears it will spontaneously shatter - for the table.
But he can see it in their eyes - they all wish to go back out on the water, and Kazuha is included. The worst of it is that he can sense in Kazuha the simultaneous desire to both stay and go.
Diluc recognizes the impulse. He holds it close to his chest – tight enough to flatten it. As if he’s an iron fresh off the flame.
But the feeling stays in its original, twisted shape - not because his flame is poorly, but because he’s simply not a tool, nor an object. He’s no more an iron or a tea cake than he is, say, his vision. And when he brings his hand back into his lap, the sound of dinner all around him, he settles into the realization that human hands have little utility beyond touching.
-
“Do you mind?” Kazuha says into Diluc’s ear, his voice hushed and gentle. “If we don’t right now?”
Diluc pulls back - the sheets of his bed rustling beneath their intertwined forms - not out of shock or rejection but so he can take stock of Kazuha’s expression. What he finds is a bitten lip and flushed cheeks. Eyes returning the survey. And so they stay there for a moment, taking in the sights of one another and reciprocating intimacy.
“Of course not,” is all Diluc can think to say, and they collapse back into each other – flimsy, floating, yielding like love letters.
Sea breeze and leather intermingle in the hotel room.
They don’t have enough time to rush, Diluc thinks, and though it’s contradictory, he can’t bring himself to feel any other way. When he moves too fast, everything blurs. His sight is fixed on Kazuha.
They’re naked under the sheets still. Diluc knows that sex is only one way of pinning Kazuha in place. He loves him all the same.
-
It’s later that night – when they’re watching the moon dither in navy that Kazuha speaks. Orates, rather.
“The one looking—
he also lends some color
to the moonlight.”
Red, Diluc thinks.
“I was wondering when I’d get to hear another poem.”
Kazuha smiles in the crescent shape of the moon, his face light like the moon, imperfect in its texture like the moon. Does he cast him in red too?
“When you sent that letter,” Diluc asks. “Was it designed to bring me here?”
“Ah,” Kazuha starts, letting himself fall back onto the bed, the robe he'd carelessly thrown on flapping in his descent. “In all honesty, I wondered if you might ask such a thing. I have no direct answer. I wrote it quite spontaneously. We had just docked and—” He stops as Diluc sits down beside him. The thought redirects itself back onto course in his pink mouth in good time. “Well, the thought of you was more easily abated when I was out on the water, but when I set foot on solid ground, I thought of you. I think it brought me back to our first meeting.”
“At Starfell lake?”
“Yes, because I distinctly remember the combined sensation of touching dry ground and fully taking in your features.”
“So when you are in the water, I am too far away to be recognized.” Although Diluc doesn’t mean it as derision, he worries it comes out that way. It’s too often that his voice is raspy, angular, rough, caustic. He believes is no different that the heavily armored bamboo shoots, which had petrified into a fossil that morning. Kazuha was the one to throw them out, laughing in soft, floating sounds.
“I suppose that is one way to express it, but I think it has more to do with how water demands one’s attention. It should be observed in case of a storm or a wave.”
“A tidal wave in Starfell lake. How unexpected,” Diluc says simply, though his crinkled eyes say joke.
“I—“ Kazuha turns away in an act of embarrassment. “It’s as if you wish to see me turn red.”
“I do and I don’t,” Diluc says, his attempt at a plain face doing little to suppress the smug smile that rises up in him. “Please – continue.”
Kazuha likes being teased, he notes. Diluc wonders if it’s written down in that little journal. Like a confession.
“I think, perhaps – subconsciously - I wrote it with the expectation it would bring you here, but on a human level, I wrote it because I just wanted to speak to you.”
“Look where it’s led us,” Diluc puts on a show of sighing, throwing his head back and letting his loose hair hang. “Stranded in Liyue.”
Kazuha pulls Diluc by his wrist, and despite his stubborn facade, he requires little influence before he’s melting into the space between them.
-
They both turn about in the bed like logs caught in a fire – sleepless - and neither acknowledges it. Daybreak looms over them like a curse.
At some point, Kazuha goes to shower. He leaves the door open and steam blankets the hotel room. How long until after ascending is water allowed to be called vapor?
Diluc’s back is turned to the bathroom and so he does not see Kazuha when he crawls back into bed – only feels him. First, the mattress yields to knees and flat palms. Second, a wet nose presses along his shoulder blade and up into the crook of his neck. Warm breath.
Diluc turns over onto his back to face him. Red and white. Shifting gaze.
“I can’t sleep.”
“Me either,” Diluc says. “But you’ve likely guessed as much.”
Then Kazuha is up, hands fumbling in the dark for his robe.
“Walk with me,” he says, and what is Diluc supposed to do but rise from the bed and join his wanderer?
-
The pass through Feiyun slope – eerily quiet – and start toward Yujing Terrace. Diluc wonders if they will have a procession of teacups before his departure, but then their path deviates and they continue ascending. Past the stairs to the grand pharmacy, past the sleepy Millelith guards, a lone glaze lily, lovingly pruned pine trees, and up. The path vacillates both in its width and texture. Thin and narrow. Stone and grass. There are slapdash bamboo fences along the cliffside – preventative only in their visual presence – and Kazuha continues upward, Diluc following by only a few steps.
The sun is peachy in the sky.
Kazuha leads him inland. They cross a bamboo bridge – verdant with awakening moss. The unsleeping waterfall on their left roars, and the noise of it fills Diluc’s entire body. It wakes him up just enough that he manages not to trip over his own trudging feet.
More stairs, and these steps are less sure. Diluc has to dig his feet into the dirt to prevent sliding back down the hill. He notices how Kazuha calves flex with practice – the sign of a habitual walker – as they continue.
During the day, the cold is tolerable, but before the sun has properly risen – when they’re still climbing in the shadows of steep staircases and jutting stone – it’s cold. Even for Diluc. He imagines Kazuha is worse off; he doesn’t even have a proper coat. Just a quilted thing that hangs too loose to hold in any heat.
Carved, stone lanterns light the rocky corners the daylight has yet to reach.
They ascend the steepest series of steps yet, as does the sun in its path along the firmament. Stone and grass and icy dew and abandoned bundles of river grass. Pebbles underfoot, Diluc notes. The ground rolls beneath him in little shapes; the earth spins.
“Ah—“ Kazuha exhales from a few paces ahead of him. “We’re here.”
Diluc crests the hill and stops at its apex. Before him is flat ground. Grass. White and blue wildflowers. Ruins. The stone is inlaid with familiar patterns, like the dilapidated temples he galloped past in Guili plains.
Diluc steps up to a collapsed arch and evaluates the geometric spirals, some carved into the rock and some painted on in ancient amber. He looks in through the broken frame of lost architecture. The ruins give way to a grotto, and at the center of the plush moss and eroded loam is a hot spring. The steam of the shower is nothing compared to the thick ribbons of white that rise off the water’s surface, and even though there is a natural gap in the stone above – from which sun enters and heat escapes – the grotto itself is comfortably warm.
“Come,” Kazuha says, and Diluc follows him to the edge of the ruined walkway – the threshold.
Kazuha hops down to the grass. It’s not much of a drop. His quilted coat slides down the slopes of his shoulders with relative ease. Undressing comes quite naturally to his poet, Diluc thinks.
“What could be the cause of it—
that I should feel such love again?”
Kazuha’s voice rings out in the gentle acoustics of the ruins, waking Diluc from his ruminations.
“Why have you brought me here?”
Kazuha smiles in a mischievous shape and sinks his hand into the open collar of his robe – not to let his arm rest but to slide a sleeve off.
“Can anybody see us?” Diluc asks, feeling shy at the prospect of being caught. He is not as bold – or unconcerned – as Kazuha, who shirks his robes in quick succession until they’re indistinguishable from a pile of autumn leaves on the stone.
Then his wanderer is naked before him once again, stepping into hot water, while Diluc watches from his stage of stone. A familiar scene.
“As far as I’m concerned, if somebody is willing to climb Mt. Tianheng for a chance to catch us in the nude, they deserve to see it.”
Diluc hides the blush that erupts across his neck and chest by pulling his coat’s thick, black collar up around his jaw. Building potential energy.
He disrobes with hesitation, but not without speed. The air is cold – colder still on his skin – and each second spent dawdling on the icy stone is a second not in the hot embrace of the water. Diluc leaves his clothes in a neatly folded stack beside Kazuha’s.
Kazuha lets out a twittering laugh when Diluc inadvertently hisses upon his first contact with the water. It’s not painful – just unexpected; it’s rare that Diluc encounters things warmer than him.
He sinks in and wades over to his wanderer, leaving trails of liquid ellipses in his wake.
“Are we here because I did not join you in Starfell?” He murmurs into warming skin.
“It seemed like the natural order of things for the two of us to end our time here.”
When Kazuha’s mouth releases that word – “end” – it echoes briefly in the grotto. The term resists its own meaning.
-
The steam wafting off the shimmering water is indistinguishable from the invisible heat produced where their bodies touch. It does not matter what the source of the warm air is. The only thing that registers to Diluc is the way Kazuha shifts against him.
Kazuha nests his face in the sweeping hollow of Diluc’s neck, and there he breathes for a moment. Unmoving save the gentle, steady rhythm of air.
It will be the last time in a long time. They both know this. Diluc intends to be gentle, but as his lips plant themselves on Kazuha’s cheekbone, it becomes apparent to the both of them that they will excavate a spring of desperate touch in a matter of moments.
It begins with small caresses along Diluc’s throat, Kazuha tracing the path of blood. Then – one, languid, open-mouthed kiss at the curve of his jaw. It brings out a low growl in Diluc. Kazuha’s hand goes to his loose hair, tangling in red.
Their lips meet and it’s far more than the low, humming static they had produced while rolling about lazily in bed. This is how air lunges into a wanton flame to feed it. Diluc’s hands travel across Kazuha’s body, returning to his favorite areas and grasping – noticing how his flesh and muscle feel different underwater.
Kazuha gasps at his mouth after a particularly long kiss, but he situates his lips back in place before the inhale can crest in his lung, and Diluc takes joy in the way neither of them can make a proper choice between breathing and love. Diluc decides to slot his mouth against Kazuha’s long, pale neck – lest they grow dizzy from the humidity and inadvertent asphyxiation. He sucks a few marks where Kazuha’s scarf often covers. Rosy mementos.
Even if the water is a respite from the season, it envelops Diluc in a way that robs him of the sensation of Kazuha, and for that reason he resents it. The gradual stone steps beside them are no less comfortable than the pillar of a pine tree or a wooden cart. The two of them are trained in making do with what is available. Diluc hoists himself up onto dry land, avoiding the ticklish patches of moss in exchange for the stable pressure of gray rock, and Kazuha eagerly climbs into his lap.
The air is cold all around them – though still tempered by the hot spring’s steam – and it only makes them scrabble at each other’s skin more urgently. Little claw marks emerge on Diluc’s shoulders and back – like pink, feathered wings – as Kazuha seeks some purchase in his flesh.
Kazuha leans back a bit and Diluc’s free hand – the one that’s not propped up behind him for stability – goes to his chest to tease, to play. His nipples are already hardening from the cool air, and Diluc thrums with misplaced jealousy over it. He exorcises the feeling with a pinch – maybe a little too hard. He flinches back a little bit, but Kazuha snatches his wrist and brings his fingers back.
“Wait,” he says, breath hot and visible. “It feels nice.”
So Diluc pinches again, and once he’s pulled a cry of pleasure out of Kazuha, rolling the nub around. He moves his hand across the expanse of Kazuha’s rising chest to play with the other one, relishing at their bodies’ intensified, synced reactions. Must be the interplay of hot and cold. Maybe the imminent leaving.
Regardless, Kazuha is kissing him again – this time with more force. He had felt Kazuha’s cock bobbing at his leg underwater, but now he can see it in the corner of his vision, and its gentle curve mesmerizes Diluc.
They shift in time best they can, but Diluc’s motions have grown jerky and uncoordinated as impatience and other things have coiled up in him. Kazuha’s long, steady fingers wrap around Diluc’s cock to give him only a few perfunctory tugs before he’s placing him against a familiar curve of skin.
The head of his cock unexpectedly catches in the rim of Kazuha’s ass and the sensation is so deliciously snug that Diluc has to retreat back against the stone. But Kazuha’s hips chase him, and as Diluc tries to sink into the ground – unforgiving material – Kazuha holds him there with the force of his body weight.
“Already?” Diluc’s heart stammers in his chest at the sight of Kazuha this needy. “You haven’t even—“
“Please,” Kazuha says – as if he’s not the one pinning Diluc down onto cold stone right now.
Diluc can’t conjure a verbal response. He just bucks up a bit as a reminder of his equal eagerness and lets his flushed face fall to the side, cheek to cool rock. Then Kazuha’s knees are at his hipbones as he steadies himself.
The first few inches are torturously tight, and Diluc can’t tell if it’s the hot haze hanging lazily about the air or his vision failing.
“Fuck, it feels—“ and the sentence is cut off when Kazuha rakes his fingernails across Diluc’s forearm. It’s not a punishment- just an involuntary action. He needs something to hold onto as he continues to sink down, so Diluc puts his hand out, and Kazuha’s fingers quickly interlace with his.
He can see the muscles in Kazuha’s thighs trembling as he moves slowly, slowly, defying gravity’s suggestion that he take it all in a quick motion. Both of their bodies glisten with the hot spring’s mineral water and sweat and residual steam, and the sight is nearly too beautiful for Diluc to bear.
Then his vision fails again, and he knows only of the lovely, velvet tightness taking in more of his cock. Nearing complete immersion, but not quite.
Diluc must grip harder onto Kazuha’s hand because he gives him a reassuring squeeze.
Kazuha stills and begins to lift before he’s taken it all, which elicits a frustrated growl from Diluc, but when they make eye contact – red, red, red – he understands that he is at the mercy of his wanderer. He gives himself over readily. Kazuha raises with a slight flourish, stalls, and moves down. He begins these little circles, hips rotating in purposeful motions.
Diluc props himself up on his elbow again so he’s more upright and Kazuha takes it as a chance to lean down – not faltering in his rhythm – and bite tenderly at Diluc’s bottom lip before kissing him. Only then does he take all of Diluc – to the hilt – and it expels every last bit of air from his body.
Kazuha seems delighted in how easily he comes undone; before Diluc can properly resuscitate himself, he’s already lifted himself up and sunk back down several times over – each complete motion drawing waves of pleasure out from Diluc.
When Diluc looks between Kazuha’s taut thighs – strong, but quivering from effort – he is greeted by Kazuha’s erection bobbing in time with his movements, and just beyond that is the sight of his own cock being swallowed in entirety over and over. Diluc knows his eyelashes are wet with tears from the bleary hedonism of it all.
The sounds of their bodies colliding echoes in the grotto, and for a moment Diluc is embarrassed, but then Kazuha’s puffy, fucked-out hole is fluttering around him and his free hand is suddenly scrambling for something – anything – to hold onto to stave off the building pleasure. Kazuha’s expert motions work incoherent sounds of pleasure out from Diluc.
Kazuha’s cock is rubbing up against Diluc’s stomach now, and as he takes him by the small of his waist to aid in the quickening movements, it messily smears precum across his torso. The sensation of that sticky wetness is disorienting but erotic, and Diluc’s hips stutter for a moment as he tries to process it. He’s desperately, needily close, and he fucks up into Kazuha with more force now. He can feel everything about Kazuha clench at the renewed energy – his ass, his thighs, his fingers. Even his toes curl.
Diluc does not measure his pace now – not by choice. There is only that primal urge to ruin Kazuha, to lift up and press his hips flush against trembling muscle.
“It’s so—“ Kazuha starts, and it’s unlike him to rely on such a simple word, but he’s repeating it - lost in the ritual. “So, so—“
It’s not long after the words start spilling out that Kazuha’s body tells Diluc in other ways of his impending orgasm – a flush starting low on his chest and spreading to his throat, fingers trembling as the desire to hold waxes and wanes in time with their movements, eyelashes waving shut. Overcome.
Diluc wants to see it. Now. He moves his hand to Kazuha’s cock and takes hold of it without any hesitation.
“Diluc,” Kazuha says, and the break in his voice is the sort of sound a man can only pray to hear in a mortal lifetime. Pretty and wrecked and – archons – he lets it out again. Diluc hears him hot in his ears, accompanied by blood pulsing in his head and thighs coming down upon thighs and choked breath. It takes so little before he’s spilling out over Diluc’s fist, and still crying out his name in broken syllables. And it is not even the experience of his hearing his name so much as it’s the knowledge that comes with it – that Kazuha sees only him in this moment. Feels only him, knows only him.
By the time the thought arrives in Diluc’s skull, his hips are already flying upward to nest against Kazuha as deep as he can manage, his cock spilling out wet and pearlescent inside. He curls forward and the hand that had been holding up grabs at Kazuha’s hips as the sum total of Diluc’s sensations rack through his entire body in spontaneous, rapturous waves. He does his best to tug out those last few droplets from Kazuha even as stars burst in his eyes.
The last bit of Kazuha’s orgasm lands prettily into the puddle he’s made on Diluc’s stomach – still reflexively tensing from the aftermath of his orgasm. He slumps forward regardless, and his snowy hair feathers across the lower half of Diluc’s face, casting sea breeze and white musk in an invisible arc.
When Kazuha comes back into himself and lifts upward, Diluc’s softening, tender cock slips out of him and most of it comes out – rather unceremoniously – onto his lap.
Oh,” Kazuha lets out. Diluc covers his face with the back of his hand – both to cool himself off and to save himself from the sight of their mess. He doesn’t need his vision to know that Kazuha’s looking it over, relishing in the lewd sight.
“I should have expected that,” is Diluc’s weak response.
“Should we get back in the water?” Kazuha proposes, unable to curb the laugh that follows.
-
The walk back is easier, but still fraught; descending is not so simple. The ground seeks to slip out from underneath them, and the sun shines insistently - illuminating their path in an obvious yellow. It is a color that suits neither of them, but there is laughter and mussed hair and undone buttons, and these things are enough to sate Diluc for the time being.
“—Kazuha, in your hometown do—“
“—what would they think of the Darknight Hero—“
“—all that blue will get boring—“
“—do not think me so simple—“
“—certainly not in a hot spring before—“
“—will you cook with Xiangling—“
“—if Beidou gets seasick—“
“—together soon enough, Diluc.”
It is all he can do to avoid the thought of the inevitable departure that awaits them in the red city below.
-
They exchange words on the dock, and though Diluc speaks, he does not quite know what comes out. He is as still as the wooden poles sunken into the harbor – designed to prevent movement – and as the Alcor crew begins loading their last shares of supplies onto the boat, Kazuha shifts back and forth on the balls of his feet with suppressed anxiety. His eyes go to the crate of jarred food that Furong hauls with ease, then to the stony Beidou who passes with nothing more than a humorous salute.
Diluc blinks and then Kazuha is speaking to him once more.
“Will you give my regards to the Knights? Do be kind to your brother.”
It’s not only gods that meddle, apparently. But he just gives a meager nod, because what’s the use in a playful argument now of all times?
“I will be unable to communicate with you while out on the sea, much less across it in Inazuma,” Kazuha says, red eyes shimmering in the plain midday light.
“I understand.” He doesn’t – not really. He thinks he could if he had more time, but then again, that’s why he came to Liyue in the first place. In the pursuit of knowledge.
Kazuha inhales deeply, and his eyes survey the scenery of Liyue Harbor for a moment – moving in sentimental shapes – before settling on Diluc’s face.
“In the case that I do not surv—“
“You will come to Mondstadt,” Diluc says quickly. He does not wish for Kazuha to finish that sentence. To speak death into existence. “I need no letter beforehand. When the boat arrives in Windrise bay, I will go there in an instant.”
He speaks in commanding sentences, but they both know he is asking, requesting.
When Kazuha leans into his open arms, he feels the cord of fate dangling between them - caught in the embrace. Whatever material is woven from, it has proved to be able to withstand fire and snow and whipping winds, so it must also be able to stretch across the great vastness of the sea.
“Do you still love me?” Kazuha asks, his voice quavering. Muffled by Diluc’s coat.
“After all this time, you’re unsure?” Diluc would laugh if they were anywhere else on any other day. If they were other people.
“Not unsure, just in need of reassurance.”
“I do love you,” Diluc says. He brings his hand up to the base of Kazuha’s scalp and rubs at the skin there – careful to not disrupt his already lopsided ponytail.
“I love you,” Kazuha says. Something about the omission of the “too” sends a jolt of affection through the daze of Diluc’s person – as if Kazuha’s adoration for him exists regardless of whether or not is reciprocated.
Then their bodies separate and the only part of Kazuha that lingers is his scent. Nearly indistinguishable from the salty froth of the harbor.
Kazuha begins to board, and though Diluc logically knows that he will not touch him again for a long time – months, if not a year – the possibility is still there. They could flout fate - could run off back to the hot spring, to Mondstadt, to anywhere but the expanse of blue before them.
The ocean extinguishes Diluc.
Kazuha waves from where he’s sat down on the boat – one knee up to support the resting arm, the other dangling loosely over the ship’s edge. How casual, Diluc thinks. He waves, but remains standing needle straight as if it can keep his spirit upright.
Juza walks along the deck and gives Diluc a friendly wave as well. Beidou does little except stare, and Diluc wonders briefly if she is thinking of Ningguang, who is likely tucked away in Yujing Terrace. Too noble, too confident to watch the Crux fleet’s departure with Diluc on the docks.
But mostly he wonders about Kazuha – how he might yet still tug him back onto dry land.
As the Alcor ekes its way out of the harbor, Diluc’s head grows dizzy with lack of sleep and thoughts of dead gods, violetgrass encased in ice, the process of crimping a dumpling, his horse full of golden hay, red, blades of grass, kissing, buttoning a shirt, failed breakfasts, how moods rise up in him like tempests, titian leaves, alleys, burnt fish, water and air and fire, unbuttoning a shirt, warming tonic, rain’s inconsiderate arrival, the space between cobbled stone, chess pieces clustered in a corner, fingers upon his skin, strange autumn humidity, clever strangers passing by, contracts, hallways, Kazuha inside of him, how easily clay breaks once it’s dried, prophecies, snowy hair, beds that look like snow, the shine of a seasoned cast iron wok, freckles, vistas, guest rooms, the edge of an unseen blade, Kazuha, poems, poems, poems, and with no words to express any of it, all he can do is stand motionless at the edge of the dock.
There is a cloudburst inside him, and then Kazuha is reduced to a dot on the edge of the world - careening toward the great spiral where all lost things reside.
His hand goes to his chest to clutch, to restrain. But there is an inorganic rectangle between his fingers and the contour of his body. Something in the inner pocket: bound leather and paper.
Ah. The journal. Kazuha is gone, so he is free to read its contents. And yet – Diluc feels as if doing so will confirm everything that has just happened. As of right now he is still running on fumes, and the morning’s events have yet to be transported into long-term memory by sleep.
He will wait, he decides. When he returns to the winery, he will attempt to steep puer. He will confront the stubborn almond and cecilia scent with an amber potion of damp bark and stone. And he will read.