A headcanon thread on Kaeya's ability to flirt, among other things.
#Luckae not established, pre-reconciliation.
TW / CW: Sexual coercment, abuse, dubious consent, sexual abuse, and other heavy topics. Angst. Hurt/comfort. Mute as accordingly.
Thread starts below.

It's a dangerous flirtationship that he carries with this Fatui.

But he's the regional captain of group stationed in Mondstadt, and... that makes him useful, to Kaeya. He'd already gotten three ambush plans out of him that the guy didn't even remember fessing up to.

They've slept together just as many times.

The Fatui is getting a little too brave, though, he thinks lately.

This is enforced when the man tells him he has something to show him on the second floor of the Angel's Share, then pins him to the table.

It's more annoying than anything else. Despite all of the man's jokes about Snezhnayan stamina, he's...

Not that good in bed.

But Diluc is working the bar tonight, and Kaeya does not want to get into That Problem at all.

"Not here," Kaeya mutters, trying to be sweet.

The man has had too much to drink, though, and he's a little too amorous. "Didn't you say you liked it when people take risks?" He slurs instead into his jaw, working his hands down to Kaeya's pants.

He's not smart enough to know how to take them off, but Archons, is he trying.

Kaeya pats his arm, but the man is a little more bulky than he is, and his weight is heavy against him. He's angry at himself that he actually let the bastard pin him.

There is... some urgency to the gesture, given how empty the bar was. Diluc would have noticed them going up.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Ah. There he is.

Mr. Worst Case Scenario himself.

"Diluc!" Kaeya makes himself sound somehow scandalized and delighted all at the same time, a mixture that sits like bad liquor in his stomach.

The Fatui jumps up.

At least the bastard had enough decency to look embarrassed.

Kaeya didn't.

There is something disgusted, furious, and almost... wounded in Diluc's gaze as he stares them both down. Kaeya is disheveled enough for it to be obvious what the Fatui had had planned.

Kaeya has to lift his hands quickly, at the scent of burning wood.

"Nikolai," he hums aloud, doing his best to keep this from devolving into a Diplomatic Incident, "Go ahead and go back to your inn room. I'll handle this."

Diluc looks ready to murder them both. Nikolai, who Kaeya is positive can't even /spell/ 'Diplomatic Incident,' nods.

He's not a bright lad, and he clearly mistakes 'taking care' of it as Kaeya using his influence to smooth it over with a local, instead of saving his life by getting him out of whatever... confrontation these two have had building again for so long.

Diluc hand watches the arm pat, a dismissive 'affection,' like a hawk watching a mouse.

Nikolai at least has the common sense to take the long way around the bannister out of the Angel's Share, to the stairs, rather than risk brushing against the man.

Kaeya's still watching to make sure he makes it out safely, and misses it when a hand that's too warm jerks forward, curling around his wrist and pulling him forcibly close.

"Fucking Fatui, now, are we? Anything else you won't sink too low to do? You on their side, too?"

The accusation doesn't hurt as much as it should, he thinks. Then again, it's because Kaeya knows the truth, and it's not the first time Diluc has accused him of something so heinous before.

He's too tired for this, though. Diluc had come close to blowing his cover and ruining a tap on info they wouldn't have had otherwise.

"Let me go, Diluc." It's a command that, of course, goes unheeded. Diluc is angry, and when Diluc's angry, he tends to be... petulant.

It is something Kaeya has known for a long time.

Though Diluc sneers, the curl to his lips is mirthless. His hold tightens.

"Does Jean know? This violates your oath of indifference. Sleeping with an enemy to the public. Just how far have you fallen that you're so despera-"

The slap is loud enough that they're both sure it probably echoes down to the bottom floor.

Kaeya's hand aches, but Diluc's cheek probably aches more. Kaeya regrets it almost immediately, but he doesn't regret the words he grounds out through grit teeth.

"You do not have a right to criticize me for how far I've 'fallen.'"

It's the first time his mask has slipped in a long time, and his breath was shaking. Diluc's fury melts into shock, at first, before he tries to steel his aggression.

"So what. The Knights send their men after Fatui, now?" He snaps back, and though Kaeya has tugged at it more than once, his iron-grasp not loosening around Kaeya's wrist. "Are you fucking for fun or for information? Aren't you at least ashamed that you're-"

"Not all of us had a noble family name to keep us from getting our hands dirty, Diluc! Some of us didn't get that luxury when we stayed in the Knights!"

There's a raw pain in his snap that takes Diluc back entirely.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Diluc asks before he can stop himself, but the anger in his voice has bled into a frustrated confusion. "I didn't use my name to get anything."

Kaeya flinches, and laughs bitterly.

His other hand dips forward and pries Diluc's fingers away from his wrist. Diluc instead reaches up, grabbing him by the forearms instead.

"/What do you mean, 'get your hands dirty.'/"

"Don't worry about it. Let me go. I have a hot date to catch up with."

He can't hide the bitter exhaustion in his tone. Diluc does not budge. His tone drops, shaking with anger no longer directed at Kaeya.

"Is someone making you do this?"

There it is, there's the flinch, the drop to Kaeya's gaze. The cracks in his confidence, the faults in his façade.

"No, Diluc." There's no sarcasm in his tone now, just a quiet, faded acceptance. "Not anymore."

Perhaps that's too much to give, because Diluc's hands travel.

They come to settle on Kaeya's shoulders now, keeping him in place.

Kaeya won't meet his gaze.

"Who?"

"Why do you care? It's not like it'll make a difference, now."

Diluc can't help the way his voice rasps. "/Who/, Kaeya?"

Kaeya's fingers curled into fists.

"I didn't start in the Cavalry Branch, Diluc."

No, he hadn't. There had been concerns about favoritism, if Kaeya would have worked directly under Diluc as it right hand, when he'd lead the Cavalry corpse.

Kaeya had been...

Kaeya had been a fledgling Knight under their Inspection branch. Diluc's throat went dry.

"Eroch."

Kaeya grimaces at the name alone.

He hasn't thought about it in a while. He hasn't thought about those heavy hands laying on his shoulders, heavier than Diluc's were now. He hadn't thought about the little hums of fake sympathy the night Kaeya had been cast out from his home.

'What a shame,' Eroch had said. 'Diluc was a promising knight. To think he cast you out from the estate entirely... I'm sure Crepus would have wanted you to inherit something...'

But he hadn't.

Crepus had never anticipated Diluc disowning him to need to put him in the will.

It puts Kaeya at the mercy of the Knights paying his stipend.

It puts Kaeya at the mercy of Eroch, who promises him promotion and glory and a rank within a year, if he just listens and behaves.

Kaeya does not care about promotion and glory and rank.

Kaeya, who had just lost everything, cared only about the shreds of stability he could scrape from the world, without family again, and with his future uncertain.

He had been a pretty, sharp, useful tool to Eroch, and he had wielded him without mercy or care for the blade itself.
"What did he do?" Diluc asks, uncertain of if he even wants the answer.
Kaeya reaches up, knocking one of Diluc's arms off. "Nothing that I don't do to myself."

Diluc catches the hand that pushed his off, and there's such hesitation to it, such startled, sudden tenderness, that it makes Kaeya feel as if he'd burned him with his Vision instead.

"This isn't normal, Kaeya."

"Nothing has ever been 'normal' for me, Diluc."

No his childhood. Not his abandonment. Not living a double life until he couldn't live it any longer.

Certainly not his body being used at Eroch's disposal for information.

Or his leisure.

They're things he hasn't thought about in a long time.

Not since the weapon had turned against its master, and Kaeya had fed so much proof on Eroch's wrongdoings to Varka directly that it had gotten the man all but banished from Mondstadt entirely, and secured Kaeya the promotion that Eroch had never made good on his promise for.

But for all of his impatient, foolish, /stupid/ flares in temper, Diluc is not stupid.

It does not take much for him to realize just what kind of man he had left Kaeya to the whims of.

He should have killed Eroch the night he covered up Crepus's death.

He should have wrung his throat.

"So yes, Diluc," Kaeya snaps, because the pressure of silence weighs down too heavily on them both. "The Knights /do/ sleep with Fatui for information."

Not the Knights. Just him. But it's more comforting to include himself in their ranks.

"No," Diluc mutters, frustrated and apologetic and overwhelmed all at once. "You do. It's your choice if you want to, or not, but." He pulled slowly until he'd drawn Kaeya to his chest, into warmth, rather than blazing heat. "You don't have to. Not anymore."

Eroch had been a face and name that had choked the worst parts of their lives and made it worse for so long.

It was only now that Diluc realized that while Eroch had strongholded his nightmares after Crepus's death, he had been a living, breathing torment for Kaeya.

If he knew where the man had been exiled to, he would find him and kill him.

Or let Kaeya do it, if it so pleased him.

Kaeya shakes in his arms, trying to hold back feelings he had swallowed down like bitter little pills for over three years.

When they came up, they were no longer bile, but wetness at his lashes and on his cheeks. Diluc's hold doesn't falter, but Kaeya is no longer trying to escape it, his fingers wrapping into the sleeve of the dress shirt Diluc wore when tending the bar.

Diluc has no way of gauging the suffering in silence that Kaeya has persisted through, coping with it by using the same methods that Eroch twisted him into using in the first place.

Effective, but cruel. Useful, but a poison to Kaeya's own heart.

The minutes and hours and days of misery in Diluc's absence can't be counted.

He can, however, count how many times Kaeya's shoulders shake against his own. He can count how many tears stain his shirt. He /can/ count the days he should have been there, with him.

"We'll find him," Diluc murmurs, steadfast and without warning. He would pay in blood for the price he had levied from them both.

Kaeya shakes his head, and finally pulls Diluc close in return.

"I don't care anymore. Let him rot. Let him die alone."

So Kaeya wouldn't take part in it; that's fine with Diluc, too. If he doesn't want to see his face again, he won't make him.

But no one was allowed to lay a hand on Kaeya and get away with it.

He nods though, playing along, as if he won't seek revenge for them both, later. For now, his hug tightens in the dim lighting coming from the floor below.

"You are more than whatever he told you that you had to be before," he promises. It makes Kaeya's tears fall faster.

Diluc struggles with kind lies. He is one to twist words politely, but he is not one to lie easily, and the slow conviction in his words make it hard for Kaeya to believe he's just trying to comfort him. He finds it hard to respond, but Diluc doesn't expect him to.

Brave enough to press a chaste kiss to his temple, not daring to overstep boundaries further than that, Diluc lets him stay in his embrace for as long as he needs to.

When he can make eye contact again, there's a steadfast determination to Diluc's gaze.

"It won't happen again. I won't let anyone lay their hands on you again."

It's the same sort of foolhardy, brave declaration he would make when they were younger. Kaeya can't help the seed of bitterness aching in his chest, even as he wiped at his gaze.

"I can protect myself, now, Diluc."

"I know you can." He knew first hand, now, what Kaeya had had to do to accomplish that, after all. "But I don't want you to /have/ to, anymore. Let me protect you."

Kaeya swallows, closing his gaze to collect himself.

"Not yet," he decides, despite the way it makes Diluc's gaze drop. "...We're not the best for each other right now, either."

But a 'yet' was hope, at least.

Diluc nods, as reluctant as it is, but he doesn't let Kaeya go that easily.

"Come to the Winery tomorrow," he asks, on a whim and on a limb both. Extended too far, easily knocked down by just the wind, much less a well aimed harsh word. "Let me start making it up to you."

It's an offer more genuine that Kaeya expects.

Comfort. It's a notion he's long forgotten for the sake of power. For the sake of safety.

He could strike Diluc down here, and avenge himself for more than three years of loneliness and suffering from the other's pride alone.

But he is so, so tired of loneliness.

He is tired of wielding the blade behind a naked back, he's tired of razors under his tongue to cut throats with when they kiss him.

He is tired of the shadow of Eroch's hand laying over the back of his throat. The front of it, too.

Kaeya nods, slowly, as he untangles his wrist from Diluc's grasp for the last time.

"Tomorrow," he agrees, before he leaves Diluc in the shadows of the Angel's Share, uncertain if Kaeya will follow the Fatui man, or not.

Kaeya's actions were no longer as black and white, as irreconcilable as he had once believed.

But Diluc will gather the pieces of him, scattered from shattering his life three years ago, and help him put them together again.

//// end!