Fool Me Once

by rekimeki

Summary:

Childe and Kaeya engage in the longest, most pointless con in Teyvat that ever was. They can blame Dainsleif for that.

Chapter 1: denial is a river 6600 kilometers long

It doesn't start with sex. 

Well. 

Actually, it does.

A lot of sex. And a lot of drinks. And a lot of banging on the wall. From the room beside them, not their own.

"Hey! Shut the hell up in there!"

Teasing, taunts and smirks, it's a bit of a blur with too much heat and copious amounts of tongue, and Childe's hands are strong, much stronger than his own. Too easily, Kaeya grows undone. Childe hikes him on the wall, digs his nails into his thighs, and grinds.

Their erections press, it burns, Kaeya writhes and pants for more. Childe hoists him further up.

He fucks him with clothes on.

Kaeya's mouth falls open, Childe swallows his groans. Kaeya writhes. It's not enough. It's too much. No wait, this friction is not enough-

The clothes comes off.

Now they're banging on the wall. 

Thirty minutes later, positions switched as he's being fucked facefirst into the floor, it burns in the searing depths of his hazy mind that this cannot be real. This man cannot be real.

Childe feels too good. Is too good. Is too deep. He's too fast.

Kaeya's hands struggle on the floorboards for purchase, for something, anything, to keep him tethered to this world.

The noises are obscene. They're his, all his own, and they won't stop coming out.

He reaches for himself, shaking, but he doesn't have the strength.

Childe grabs his cock for him, thumbs his slit, and pumps.

Kaeya presses his forehead harder into the floor, gasping, desperate, begging to release, begging for the pleasure to stay. Childe leans over, drops a kiss on his sweaty shoulder, then bites it until it bleeds. He fists him hard until Kaeya forgets how to speak. Harder until he forgets how to breathe. The pressure is unbearable, it hurts, it's far too sweet.

The signals in his brain are mixed.

He can't do it.

He comes.

He comes and does so explosively, with muscles so tight, only nonsense spills off his tongue.

Childe grabs him by the hair and pulls him up, thrusting erratically, aggressively, and his dick feels bigger than before. The hand that had been on Kaeya, the fingers covered in cum, he shoves them into Kaeya's mouth and fucks them in.

Kaeya swallows them. It's a bitter, salty taste. He drools.

He's defiled, how unbecoming, this is animalistic at best, no matter how soft he's become, he what he wants to keep taking Childe in.

Keep going. He moans. Keep going.

He spreads his thighs, takes everything of the man he can get, and it's heat in his mind, in his limbs, in his gut. Childe sinks farther in- and he comes- and it shakes them both, and it's filling Kaeya up, leaking out, as Childe tugs his head back and continues to pound him inside.

The bruising hold. The bruising thrusts.

Kaeya drowns in the pleasure and pain.

Funny.

He thinks he's passing out.

Childe swears- a soft, quiet "Fuck", and chases his orgasm to the end. 

 

---

 

When Kaeya wakes he's on his back on the comfortable white sheets of a mattress.

Morning light spills through the window. Beyond it, Mondstadt stirs.

The room- it's an utter mess. The furniture is wrecked. Their boots and effects are tossed. Their clothes are strewn. There are bottles of wine and half-eaten food. For all the maddened, fevered happenings of the night before, Kaeya is in a state of remarkable bliss.

Maybe it's the fog of sleep. Maybe it's the helplessness of it all. Or maybe it's the warmth stirring in his chest, in his stomach, on his cheeks as he drags his gaze from the ceiling to the bed. Childe sits between his parted legs, holding one of them raised as he calmly kisses down along Kaeya's thigh.

He pauses, seeing Kaeya's lone, baffled eye on him.

"You're awake?" he murmurs, softly. "Good." He kisses his thigh once more. "How do you feel?"

Incredibly naked- for one. But also extraordinarily confused.

"You're...still here."

His voice is cracked raw.

This isn't the first time they've slept together, but it is the first time Childe's stayed.

The Harbinger hums, lowers Kaeya's leg, contemplation on his face. He strokes Kaeya's neck, massaging his throat lightly.

Kaeya's eye flutters closed.

"Does it bother you that I am?" Childe asks.

"No."

The answer leaves Kaeya unapproved and embarrassingly honest before he can stop it. He re-opens his eye, alarmed.

But Childe's eyes are crinkled. He smiles. "Is that so?"

Kaeya's brows furrow. His heart somersaults and flips. What's going on? Nothing's... changed? Even after the intensity of last night when whatever power that had taken over him should've finally broken, gone away-

He aches.

He wants again like he hadn't lost half his life being fucked halfway to heaven in this never-ending hell of desire.

It doesn't make any sense.

These feelings. Why are they still...

Childe lowers himself. He presses them together. It's instinct. Kaeya wraps a leg around his waist, bringing him closer in. But Childe does nothing except search his face, smile growing, eyes falling softer. "Come now. What are you doing with an expression like that?"

What a pointless question. Kaeya can't see his own face.

He looks away, embarrassed.

He is embarrassed. His thoughts, his heart, his mind- they're traitors. 

Childe noses at his neck, presses lips to his jaw. "Today," he begins quietly, in between, "work is slow, and I'm not needed. You have duties, I'm sure. But for now..." and Childe brings a hand and holds Kaeya's face and holds it like there is nothing greater in the world.

He kisses him deep. He kisses him again.

Kaeya reciprocates, plagued by an endless thirst. Childe moves against him slowly.

"Tell me," Childe mumbles, a sincere, heartfelt request. "For a little longer, would you like me to stay?"

Kaeya struggles not to cry.

Not out of grief or any sort of negativity, but because he can't believe he's actually lying here with a hard-on for the hundredth time.

Childe waits for answer patiently. Kaeya waits for his erection to fade.

It doesn't.

Dammit. 

He drags their mouths together, in a silent, desperate answer of, 'yes'. 

Childe takes him like there is all the time in the world.

Gentle and quiet and slow.

There is nothing inside Kaeya that does not burn. 

 

---

 

It doesn't start with sex.

Not really.

Significantly out of context, and more realistically, it starts with an old man in the middle of the woods and the Cavalry Captain on his knees as he chokes on a great, big, mutated mushroom thanks to Dainsleif and Jean.

Yes.

It starts with a lapse in judgment.

It starts with a curse.

It starts with Diluc and a conversation about peanuts in the tavern six months before.

Notes:

ayyyyyee, literally i love these two, goodbye.

Chapter 2: actions have consequences

---

Six Months Prior

---

 

 

"You know... This has always bothered me." 

Diluc rolls his eyes, in the middle of mixing a drink he really shouldn't be making for the fool on the other side of the counter. "I don't want to hear it." 

"But you have to. Because I want you to." 

He'd heard more idiotic reasoning before.

With the kind of patience born only from years of victimhood to the antics of Mondstadt's Cavalry Captain, Diluc sets the drink on the counter and flatly looks at his brother. "What." 

Kaeya takes the drink and frowns. "Why don't you have snacks?"

"I've told you before." 

"Well I didn't like your first reason. Tell me a different one." 

"No." 

"Poor customer service. Don't you know a good tavern has a thoughtful selection of salty and sweet foods to accompany a drink?" 

"Does this look like a restaurant to you?" 

"It could be." 

"But it's not." 

Kaeya frowns. "Is it that hard to find some peanuts?" 

Diluc has half a mind to take the alcohol he's just given the man away. "You assume they grow out of bushes and trees?"

"No. But you can make them, can't you?" Kaeya argues. 

Diluc stares. Straightens and faces his brother in full. "Where do you think peanuts come from?" 

"Diluc." Kaeya's face is incredibly serious. "For the sake of our business, I'm telling you to invest in snacks." 

Diluc narrows his eyes. It's not 'their' business and Kaeya knows it. 

He was over the conversation from the moment it began, and Kaeya is four drinks in, which is the captain's designated phase of nonsensical chatter. While Diluc has learned to ignore most things that came from it, it didn't make the experience of living through it any less annoying.

"Go sit down before I kick you out." 

Kaeya matches the look he's being given with a great deal more sulk to it. "Fine. I'll go. But if my friends are unhappy, know it's your fault." 

"Your friends?" Diluc echoes. He scoffs and folds his arms. "You mean the Fatui?" 

Kaeya looks over his shoulder to a round table in the corner of the tavern swept in the lazy afternoon's golden warmth. Mikhail, Lyudmila and Luke sit around it, several empty pints pushed to center as they play with cards around it.

It had become something of a habit to join them in their downtime, which happened to fall during everyone else's lunch and working hours.

There wasn't a reason in particular for them to gather, merely their shared belief that drinking in a tavern was leagues more enjoyable when not alone. The Fatui were also often bored, and Kaeya would never pass the opportunity to hear more about their motherland and the daily lives of those who resided in the wintry land of snow.

Unimportant information now could be essential down the road.

It's probably one of more important reasons why Diluc allowed Kaeya and them to gather and stay long hours in the tavern even as hours dwindled to a close.

He returns his focus to his brother at the thought, sharing what they already knew to be true. "They're the harmless ones." 

Diluc waves him off, dismissive. Kaeya, knowing when limits have been pushed, heads back to his seat, unoffended.

"Sorry friends," he says as they look up from their game. "It was a bust. There'll be no snacks."

His companions slump in mild disappointment with half-heart complaints but make no more fuss than that.

Kaeya is dealt into the next round, they bet on the tab, and the hour drifts on.

The atmosphere in the tavern is a languid, peaceful one.

At some point, Lyudmila fetches a bottle of 'Death After Noon'. Their game of cards switches to one of dice and guessing.

They're all inebriated by then, and because they're all terrible drunks, their game of guessing devolves into the tomfoolery of repeatedly lifting the same flipped down cup and accusing one another when no dice is found beneath.

As Lyudmila starts to strangle Luke, Mikhail turns glazed but eager eyes onto Kaeya and says, "Last chance or you pay the bill."

Kaeya, slouched completely down with a floating mind but face of pure concentration, rests his chin on the table to get a better look at the infernal set of three black cups turned upside-down. He doesn't have the Mora to pay for anything.

Mona had wiped him clean out two nights before and what little change remained had gone to Klee for the 'weekly allowance' he had been pretending was a thing she was supposed to receive for being a Knight.

In truth, Jean held onto the paycheck meant for their Spark Knight. Putting away for when she was old enough to not 'stuff them into bombs as confetti' if Kaeya remembered correctly.

If only he could remember where the dice went. That would be grand.

Mikhail had put the dice under the left cup then shuffled all three cups thrice.

His hand had come off the left one in favor of focusing on the right.

During that time of rotation, Luke had asked Kaeya if he could show him a magic trick with his cards and Kaeya- suitably distracted because Luke had been working on the trick for weeks now and it'd be nice to see him succeed- effectively missed the latter half of Mikhail's shuffling.

Kaeya thinks about it carefully.

In hindsight, it was likely a joint effort by the Fatui to get him to pay for their drinks. He'd figure out a way to get back at them later.

For now...

He goes for the middle cup- and sneaks a glance upwards. Mikhail's excitement is poorly hidden. Kaeya switches his hand to the left cup and settles it over top and watches as the life and joy in Mikhail's eyes fades.

Well that was easy.

He starts to lift the cup. A gloved hand falls lightly ontop his own and keeps it in place.  

"I wouldn't. If I were you." 

The voice is familiar, yet unfamiliar, moderately joking but sincere.

Kaeya lifts his head as Mikhail and Lyudmila exclaim, "Master Childe!"

Luke is passed out on the table. Kaeya can't be sure Lyudmila didn't accidentally kill him, but if she has, he's sure their new arrival can handle the business of clean-up fine. 

Childe. Tartaglia. A week and a half ago, the Eleventh Fatui Harbinger had been dispatched on official business on behalf of the Tsarista to Mondstadt's Goth Grand Hotel.

Jean had informed her closest Knights that it was a financial matter they were best off not getting involved in, then had later told Kaeya in private she believed there was a person-of-interest Childe had been sent to hunt down.

Kaeya was waiting to hear who that 'person-of-interest' was to put them into protective custody, but until then, his hands were metaphorically tied.

Childe surveys the scene of drunken subordinates. "I wondered why no one was at their post this time of day again. This must be a daily habit, huh?" 

Mikhail and Lyudmila cough. They scramble to their feet. 

"Sir! It was a momentary distraction," Lyudmila announces, loud. "It won't happen again!"

"That's right! It was Lyudmila who convinced us to come-" Mikhail begins. Lyudmila whacks him in the arm. He keels over, holding his ribs like they've been broken instead.

Childe snorts, amused. "I don't care about that. But if you're going to play with stakes, play fair," and he lifts his hand off Kaeya's to pick up the middle cup flipped down.

There's no dice beneath it.

Childe picks up the right cup next. Again, the spot is bare.

"Now." His eyes fall on Kaeya. "If you would be so kind, Sir Knight." 

Kaeya acquiesces and curiously lifts the last cup. 

Nothing. The dice is completely gone. 

Kaeya stares at the empty table with a muddled mind. Mikhail's earlier reaction was a ruse.

He'd been tricked.

A thick pouch of Mora is tossed into Lyudmila's hands. "Pay the tab and get back to work," Childe says, affably. 

Mikhail peels Luke's face off the table and hauls him up.

It's a bit of a mystery how they plan to get Luke back to working condition.

"Sir Kaeya," Mikhail says as Luke flops limply in his arms, "don't take it personal. See you this weekend?" 

He doesn't wait for a response.

He hurries off and Lyudmila goes with him, dropping the Mora at the bar for Diluc who had been looking in all of their direction with narrowed eyes. 

Childe takes the seat across from Kaeya that was once Luke's. He tracks his gaze over Kaeya with a judgmental interest rather hard to discern as either good or bad. "Are all the Knights so easily swindled with a bit of alcohol or is that just you?" 

Skipping the formalities and pleasantries and going for the barbs Kaeya sees.

He sits proper, missing the table only once as he props up his elbow and rests his chin inside it. More than a bit of alcohol- he'd chosen a horrible time to leave the bounds of tipsiness for the vast unknown depths of the wasted wastelands.

At least he wasn't slurring. He could always count on his mouth to function when it needed to.

"Watching us from some shadowed corner? I'd call it distasteful and rude if it wasn't a thousand times more disturbing." 

"I was actually on the second floor," Childe breezes over the insult. "Since this morning. Reading." 

"I didn't take you for a fan of literature." 

"I'm not." Childe gathers the cards left behind on the table. "They were papers for work."

"How studious." 

"When I want to be." The Harbinger shuffles the cards with a certain degree of laziness, regarding Kaeya and his infinite sarcasm with unbothered calm. "My subordinates seem comfortable with you. I would've never thought it possible given their position as Fatui and your status as a Knight. The hospitality of Mondstadt is as benevolent as they say."

Kaeya smiles thin. "Your diplomats are hardly a threat."

"True. They concern me, actually," the Fatui executive says. "I guess it's a good thing they were stationed here and not elsewhere." 

Kaeya doesn't know what to say to that. Mostly because he doesn't know what the other man wants.

This is their first meeting.

They have never been introduced otherwise aside from word-of-mouth. But if Kaeya's suspicions are right, as they generally are, the Harbinger is not joining him out of camaraderie. There's information he wants, and he hopes to gleam it from Kaeya in his alcohol-blessed state. 

Amusing. 

Tartaglia is very much mistaken if he believes Kaeya's lips and loyalty to Mondstadt are so loose. Better to attack and see how he defends. 

"Want me to tell you where they are?" 

To his credit, Childe doesn't lose a hold of his cards.

But new tension comes to his shoulders and his hands and the blase expression previously occupying his face slips cold.

His mouth halfway tugs in a smirk.

"Well-informed as they say. I doubt you'd tell me so easily." 

He was right. 

And it looked like Jean was right too.

Too bad Kaeya didn't have a ounce of a clue who the Harbinger was looking for. "I might be willing," he lies because he can. "Buy us a round and let's see, shall we?"

The Fatui lifts a brow. "How do you drink so much?" 

"I'm told it's the trauma," Kaeya replies quite blithely. "Do hurry along." 

Childe looks at him for a long while. Then gets up and goes to the bar. 

Contrary to any preconception Mondstadt's Cavalry Captain has, Childe knows plenty more than it appears he does.

No different than Zhongli in Liyue, no different than with the adepti, the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the Millelith, Childe had done his research. He would've been a fool to walk into another nation uninformed. He knew exactly who Kaeya was; knew exactly where he was from, though he didn't care for the particulars of what had dragged the younger spy from Khaenri'ah.

Of all the Knights close to the Acting Grandmaster, Kaeya Alberich was the most genial, the most whimsical, simultaneously the most cautious but least concerned on who his company and where he ended up.

A juxtapost individual born with the nature of a friend and the makings of a foe. The people of Mondstadt had no idea the capabilities of the Knight they spoke so fondly of and admired.

But who was Childe to judge?

He knew what it was to separate personal life from business.

If this was how the Cavalry Captain chose to do it, as a stowaway in an entirely different country, then so be it. It had little to do with Childe or his duties to his motherland, one of which indeed called for him to find a particular person and object of interest they could not reach from their own borders. 

Knowing Kaeya to frequent bars, studying how carelessly in his behavior he would become, Childe had perched himself on the Angel's Share's second floor and waited for his subordinates to show.

Their patterns were as predictable as Kaeya's own.

They stood in the same place day after day, discussing the same problems and tossing stones into the fountain with Luke out of lack of anything else to do in a city as easy-going as Mondstadt. At lunch, the Fatui diplomats would go to Angel's Share to drink and chat. Every other day, Mikhail would later find Kaeya on the streets in the evening, leading to the tavern- and they would spend the darkening hours talking about random crafts, alchemy, swordplay and food. 

Later, Childe would teach his fellow comrades how to switch up their habits, but for now it served his purpose, which was getting Kaeya in a state he'd be more willing to talk in. 

Kaeya was close to the Acting Grandmaster. She would trust him with any vital information concerning dangers to the city. 

That had been the assumption Childe had been going on.

He's glad to see he's right. 

At the bar, Diluc wipes the inside of a mug. He doesn't bother giving Childe any attention, but the air between them is warmer than the rest of the tavern.

It's not like Childe has any fear the wine tycoon is going to set him on fire and risk a diplomatic incident on an international level right there on the spot, but unlike some other poor fellows who didn't know who they were dealing with, he knows the dangers of going bald. 

So he speaks with false manners. 

"Master Diluc. I must thank you again for allowing me early entry into your tavern to carry out my work. I was able to read quite comfortably."

"If you came to get another drink for Sir Kaeya, you can tell him the answer is no. I'm cutting him off." 

Alright so that didn't work in his favor. 

Childe chuckles. "He'll be thoroughly put out. I can't convince you otherwise?" He sets a second pouch of Mora on the counter not at all discreet. "Surely one more bottle is fine." 

Diluc pockets the Mora. "The answer is still no." 

Childe stares. 

Diluc reaches beneath the counter with a gaze so flat it might as well be dead, bringing a bottle of something purple and iced onto the bar-top. "You can give him this. Free of charge." 

Well it wasn't free of charge because the Ragnvindr had just pocketed half a million's worth of coin, but whatever. 

He pops the lid and sniffs. It's a sickeningly sweet smell. "Juice?" he disbelievingly asks. 

"Take it or leave it." 

Childe takes it, annoyed.

He returns to the table and is further annoyed to find Kaeya passed out. He stands by the table, staring down at the lightly snoring captain, torn between waking him and facing the ire of Diluc whose eyes are fixed on the back on his head, or giving up and trying on another day.

Except he doesn't have the time.

With an immeasurable care, he places the bottle right beside Kaeya's head, letting it hit the table hard enough to stir the younger man from wherever he dozed off.

The captain cracks open his eye, groggy as he glares, and Childe feels, off-handed, like he's looking at some sort of wrathful cat.

"Your beverage, Sir Knight," he casually informs.

He sits down across from the captain once more.

Settles in.

"Now how about our chat?" 

Oh the Cavalry Captain chats alright.

About everything. About nothing. About a plot of revenge against Diluc for thinking he could hand him grape juice and get away with it.

All the while he slouches back in his chair further and further down, until he's nearly lying down, cradling the bottle of 'abhorrent' juice on his chest, whilst kicking his boots off and sticking his feet in Childe's lap. 

Childe is one hundred percent certain Alberich is doing it on purpose. The conversation has since diverged onto the subject of chalk.

He zones out. 

It's only when Kaeya's voice finally stops, and Childe decides for certain not to break the feet feeling him up, that he tunes back into his surroundings.

The captain isn't asleep. But he is morose.

He gazes at the bottle he holds as if it holds all the secrets of the world, no longer pretense in his eye, appearing genuinely bothered.

"I haven't the faintest idea why people assume I sleep my way towards information." 

Childe wonders if he's heard correctly.

Had they even been talking about that?

Kaeya carries on, speaking almost beneath his breath. 

"What kind of knight do people think I am? Can't a person be honest in their work, even when they're not honest themselves?" 

Childe eyes him dubiously.

It's pretty hard to take anything Alberich's saying seriously with the captain's socked foot digging so intently into his balls.

"Uh-huh." 

Kaeya chuckles, asinine, eye sharp. "What? You don't believe me?" 

"I have reasons." 

Kaeya scoffs.

He glances off sideways, no target or location in mind, voice growing nearly blank as he says, "The Dadaupa Gorge. The one you're looking for is there." 

Finally. 

Childe grabs Kaeya's feet and removes them, getting up. "How kind of you, Sir Knight."

He roams his gaze over the captain who simply raises an eyebrow unimpressed at the modicum of attention.

"If you have what you need then please do leave," Kaeya tells him, and somehow it manages to come across as chastising and polite. "There is no further use in entertaining you."

Childe snorts at the words.

Who'd been entertaining who?

He replies with equal sarcasm in kind.

"Thank you for your generosity, famed Cavalry Captain of the Knights. It was a pleasure. I ask that you take care not to stumble into any hole on your way home." 

"Oh I'll be careful," Kaeya drawls. "Just watch for arrows."

"What?"

"I said farewell."

The knight obviously hadn't but alright.

Childe departs, with an eyeroll, completely missing the way Kaeya's expression of seriousness and boredom melts into an extraordinarily smug grin. 

"Master Diluc," he calls over to the bar after the Harbinger has safely left the premise. "Give me a real drink for that, will you?"

And Diluc actually does.  

 

---

 

The Gorge is a lie. 

Childe gets an assful of arrows from three different hilichurl tribes for his investigations. 

He curses Alberich to the highest heavens.

 

---

 

"Kaeya. I need you to do me a favor." 

"Yes, of course," he answers. 

Jean sighs. "Kaeya. I'm over here." 

Kaeya turns from where he'd been staring quite avidly at a blank space on the wall he had assumed, up until now, was a window offering a grand view of the great outdoors.

"Acting Grandmaster," he greets. "You're looking brighter than usual." 

"That's a lamp. How hungover are you?" 

"On a scale of one-to-ten? I feel like death."

Somehow he finds his way to the table and sits in one of the chairs at the meeting table no one but Jean and Lisa and himself used.  On occasion, Albedo and Eula, when they weren't off, consumed by their own investigations.

It's barely past seven in the morning. He's surprised he'd gotten dressed properly, if at all, having woken thrown halfway into his bathtub with a bill for alcohol slapped on his forehead.

Diluc's sloppy work no doubt. 

Jean places a stack of documents in front of him, merciless as per usual when it came to the duties of Mond. "There are accounts that need looking over..." 

"...Please take them back." 

"Kaeya." 

He slumps forward in marginal defeat. "Alright. Fine." 

Nevertheless, it's a comforting hand that rises to massage the nape of his neck as his friend and superior tells him-

"This isn't all. There's something you need to find." 

A mushroom, apparently.

Possibly an entire crate.

Off the black market; its origins linked to the Abyss.

Hungover as he was, that catches Kaeya's attention, because he hadn't ever heard of proper flora or vegetation growing in its depths that wasn't mutated or corrupted by malignant miasma to some degree.

An ordinary human wouldn't have been able to carry it.

Furthermore, if it was mushroom of the sort Kaeya was thinking of, no one should have been able to carry from the Abyss or Khaenri'ah at all. 

What was Dainsleif doing? 

Clearly not his job. 

So Kaeya agrees.

With painstaking nausea, he completes the accounts.

Jean works on missives of her own.

She orders food in and by the time they finish their respective paperwork, the hour has crept slight past noon.

"Thank you Kaeya." 

"You're welcome. I only feel like I want to die."

Still, it's said with a smirk of a smile and no ire.

He bids her farewell and sets out on the road as she reminds him to be careful.

 

---

 

In the hills beyond Springvale lied a camp of bandits rumored to have knowledge of the 'mushrooms' in question. A strange air had been noted by a pair of knights on patrol who had reported back to Jean accordingly.

Thus with the information given, Kaeya worked his way through the grasslands and the trees.

The chances of actually coming across the particular 'vegetation' from the Abyss was a paltry one, but Kaeya had a near perfect mission-completion rate.

He wasn't going to lose that streak of his now.

It's hardly a difficult journey.

For the better part of an hour, he follows the trail of footsteps, mud, strewn twigs and berries, horrendously amused by the utter lack of attempt of the bandits to cover their tracks, and even more, more amused by the straggle of hilichurls that fumbles onto the path ahead of him, chatting the same things Kaeya's thinking among themselves with an assortment of baffled and exclaimed cries.

Kaeya had 'disposed' of them, of course, as duty called, but had done so swift with mercy.

In other words, he had taken their clubs and shields and sent them to the hills with a sigh and kind request.

He reaches the bandits soon after.

Their camp is among the trees on a patch of wide dirt, pitched with tents and bedrolls beside a tool shed Kaeya vaguely recalls Draff having built for hunters who passed through and needed to restock weapons or seek shelter from the rain. 

Six bandits gather in a circle, arguing over sunsettias and apples. 

"You can't bake a pie with sunsettias. It's not the same," one snaps.

"You never cook anything. What would you know?" another scolds.

"I have tastebuds. Meant for tasting. That's what I know." 

"Why not use both?" a third says.

The first two round on him. 

"Are you insane?" 

"It was only a suggestion. You've been fighting for an hour. I just wanna eat."

"Really? Mister I-Eat-Wheat-Strands-Raw? If you're so hungry, go to the fields and grab yourself a meal why don't you?"

"That was one time and you never let me forget it!" 

A new argument devolves on lethal potentiality of eating raw and uncooked foods. The fourth and fifth bandit look on, bored. The sixth one- 

Where did the sixth one go?

Kaeya, having drawn interest in the bandits' conversation, now ruminates on the one that's missing.

A shadow falls on him from behind.

He blinks.

A beefy hand clamps down on his shoulder. 

So that's where he went.

For someone so large, the bandit had been astoundingly stealthy.

"Tryin' to get the jump on us, eh?" the massive man sneers. 

It must've been a joke.

Kaeya hadn't even been trying to hide. He'd been standing in plain sight the entire time.

But whatever brought the man comfort, he supposed.

He grabs the hand on his shoulder, congenially, frost spreading, sharp.

"Not at all."

The bandit shrieks.

It draws the attention of the others who spin around in alarm. They leap into attack positions with little thought.

Kaeya chuckles. 

"Fine gentlemen," he greets, Cryo spinning, a soft snowstorm at his feet. "What say you to a talk?"

Diluc had always told him he was too overconfident when he thought he had the upperhand.

He doesn't know Big-Man-Bandit has a twin. 

He discovers it belatedly as he takes out the last man and suddenly finds himself bowled over with the weight of something akin to windmill pinning him to the earth.

Cheek to the dirt, Kaeya huffs out a breathless laugh.

"If my organs deflate, you're paying my medical bills." 

"Quiet you!" 

The bandit cuffs him upside the head.

The rest of the degenerates Kaeya had taken care to only stun and not kill or knock out, pick themselves up and gather around, irate, clothes iced, skin purple and cold. 

"Here we all were having a good time and you decided to ruin it! Can't you Knights ever leave us alone?"

"I was having a good time too," Kaeya answers. "You ruined it yourselves."

"I said quiet!" 

He's struck in the head again. Harder.

He accidentally bites his tongue.

A small price to pay. It's fine.

As he tastes his blood with interest, the bandits worry around him. 

"What should we do with 'im boss? This one's a Knight too, isn't he? Should we kill him you think?"

"And have the Knights after our asses for eternity? I'm not dealing with that Grandmaster." 

"The Acting one?"

"Both." 

"...How about his Vision? We can sell that at least, right?" 

"Hmph. Guess that's true." 

There's a general murmur of agreement. 

"How much do you think they're worth? More than a ransom?" 

"We can't do a ransom. Not here, c'mon. Use your head." 

"Why?"

"Because of the Knights." 

"Ugh. Why is he even here? You think we're on the radar already for... y'know...?"

"Can't be... The delivery didn't..." 

Kaeya keeps his face to the cool ground, listening to the conversation, unconcerned.

He'll get the bandit off him eventually and subdue the rest, but there is information he needs and they seem about to ramble it off willingly themselves.

What a nice day it's turning out to be.

A long-drawn whistle. 

Uninvited.

"And what's going on here?" 

The day is not nice. Kaeya takes it back.

That voice is decidedly not the voice of any bandit. It's also significantly at a distance, somewhere he can't see, behind him. 

Kaeya hadn't really expected the Eleventh Fatui Harbinger to go off and die in the Gorge, but he also hadn't been counting on running into him again so soon. Or with the worst timing.

Funny. The events of the previous day might have been fuzzy, but he does, for some reason, remember his conversation with Tartaglia the most.

Probably because of how idiotic it'd been.

Although...given the false chase Kaeya had sent him on, it made more sense for the Harbinger to leave him to the mercy of the 'big-bad' bandits, didn't it? 

Kaeya could only pray Tartaglia would. 

In direct opposition to his wishes, the lieutenant of the Fatui stays.

"I asked a question. Is anyone going to answer?" the man asks, like some sort of commander. 

Could he not?

He was going to ruin things-

"Who do you think you are? Back off!" a bandit snaps. 

"Where even were you?" another demands. "The bushes?"

"I wasn't in the bushes." 

"What were you doing in our bushes?" 

"I said I wasn't in the bushes." 

Tartaglia sounds annoyed. 

"I know you were in them!"

"I wasn't-"

"Now hold on," Kaeya begins, speaking to the ground, trying to regain control of the situation. "Just wait a minute, let's not kill each other-"

He's kicked by a bandit with no sense of self-preservation. 

"How many times do we have to tell you to be quiet- "

Tartaglia takes them out. 

 

---

 

"My hero," says Kaeya with enough dry sarcasm to sink a fleet of boats.

He stands and regards the bandits who've been rounded up and hog-tied by the Harbinger in the center of the camp.

Unconscious but not dead.

He's surprised by Tartaglia's restraint, given how quickly he'd moved from point A to point B and irritated he had seemed to be over some bushes.

He adjusts his clothes and brushes the dirt from his riding pants, eyeballing the Fatui who's staring at the bandits with a frown. "They're not going to suddenly spring back to life you know," he tells him.

The Harbinger drags his eyes from the men to Kaeya, bothered by something. "I'm truly questioning the abilities of the Knights. Is it normal to let yourself get beat up here?"

Kaeya chuckles, dangerously; narrows his eye. "Is that what you thought was happening? I was in the middle of gathering information when you so rudely inserted yourself and cut them off. Now I'll have to wait for them to wake."

He feels the other man's gaze boring into him.

How annoying. 

"...You lied to me," Tartaglia says. 

"About the Gorge? Yes, and you believed me." Kaeya chuckles again, this time with a moderate sense of care in his irritation.

He's all about having good a laugh but he's not entirely reckless to believe the Fatui wouldn't be upset about being laughed at and tricked and draw his blade in retaliation if pushed too far. And at the moment, Kaeya isn't interested in having any fight. He had been there five minutes ago, after all, as the Harbinger man-handled seven bandits with ease. 

Tartaglia stares him down. "So what? You did it for fun?" 

"Who knows why I did it." Kaeya's being truthful there. He was sure he thought it was a good idea at the time. "I don't remember."

Half a lie, half a truth.

Whatever he'd done and whatever he would always do was for Mondstadt. 

Tartaglia's gaze is scrutinizing.

Kaeya doesn't care for it or the man it's attached to. His expression says as much.

How nice.

Childe doesn't care for him either.

He'd returned from the Gorge annoyed, stared at the ceiling that night annoyed, woke annoyed, and ventured into the woods annoyed at having been duped by Alberich who had been duped by Childe's own subordinates less than an hour before.

His pride is wounded.

The Cavalry Captain lets him stew in aggravation for a minute longer. Then the captain asks-

"What were you doing out here? Don't tell me: following in a plot for revenge?"

As if.

"I wouldn't waste my time," Childe responds. "I was gathering herbs before I heard the ruckus going on." 

"Gathering herbs?" 

"And other ingredients. I like to cook." 

The knight arcs an eyebrow. "Fa-scinating," he drawls, obviously not believing a word.

"Be a little more sarcastic," Childe tells him. 

"Oh I definitely could," Kaeya quips. "But then you'd might get mad." 

He isn't wrong.

Childe already wants to clam the captain's mouth shut. "What do you know about the target?" he demands.

Kaeya's brow rises further up. "Target? The random person you're after? You must know, I never knew who you were talking about."

"But you said you did."

"I said a lot of things, I'm sure. Did I look to be in a proper state of mind at the hour?"

"I lost five-hundred thousand Mora." 

"And how is that my fault?"

Childe inhales very slowly. Breathes out. His heart beats loudly in his ears with the surge of racing blood.

Right.

Yes.

No, of course.

All of it was nonsense that'd left the captain yesterday.

But at the same time, Alberich did know there was someone Childe was looking for, which meant eyes in the city had reported to the Acting Grandmaster and the Acting Grandmaster had divulged rumors to the Cavalry Captain as previously figured.  

So all-in-all, he had just been played. 

"Oh my. Are you that frustrated by the little run-around?"

The way Kaeya says it rips Childe from his thoughts.

On the brink of laughter.

Taunting.

Full of scorn.

Childe stops looking at the ground and finds the captain staring, not at his face, but at a very particular place below his waist.

He follows Kaeya's gaze.

His brows knit.

An erection.

It wasn't exactly uncommon for him to get worked up in the middle of a good fight and have a bodily reaction. The thrill of excitement was indescribable. His senses rose on high-alert. As the battles dwindled, the stakes were met or reached their end, the bloodlust and rush of eagerness would go away, and his peace of mind would be regained. 

But this wasn't a battlefield. 

There wasn't a scuffle. 

There wasn't anything here to be turned on by, just someone he disliked and wanted to fight.

Childe pauses. 

He looks across the camp towards Kaeya.

The captain's gaze flickers up curiously to meet his own.

 

---

 

This, they both think, is a terrible idea.

Yet they do it anyway. 

"Consider it an apology," says Kaeya already on his knees in the middle of the cluttered tool shed beside the bandit's camp.

Perhaps his hangover never truly went away.

He has some level of reasoning for this- Tartaglia is handsome, lean and muscled, there's information in him probably, yes- but the reasoning is not enough to allow for any dignity.

Light poorly shafts in from a lopsided, grimy window with broken blinds.

Childe looks down at him, not so easily misguided. "Didn't you say you don't sleep your way towards information?"

"I'm not sleeping with anyone anywhere," Kaeya responds calmly, unclipping his cape and folding it on the floor. "If you so happen to tell me afterwards your true reasons for being in Mond, that's an added boon. This, on the other hand, is for yesterday. I can't imagine it was very fun wandering about the Gorge without warning. The hilichurls surely must have apprehended you in some fashion. The least I can do is help you out for the trouble." 

He smiles.

"You can mark this as...'Mondstadt's benevolent hospitality' if you'd like." 

"You're speaking awfully polite now," Childe comments.

Kaeya shifts towards him, amused. "Am I? I'm sorry. I hope it doesn't bother you."

Early noon casts a pale light across his collarbones and neck. The curve of his cheeks are accentuated in the sweep of shadow and white sun.

There's an unusual enticement in the way he waits, with patience, confidence and knowing, a different person entirely,  and Childe opens his mouth- closes it- mutters beneath his breath:

"This is witchcraft." 

The statement spurs Kaeya's humor on. Funny choice of words.

He tucks his hair behind his ear.

He unbuckles Childe's belt.

"You're not the first to say so."

Childe is, ridiculously, still annoyed.

This time at himself.

There's heat in his gut; arousal between his legs at the simple feel of the knight's hands so close to him. Was he so depraved that this- this - was what got him worked up?

An argument with a spy-turned-captain who pissed him off?

He needed to go touch some grass.

No.

He needed to touch himself, more often, and give himself less stress so it didn't ball into a knot and he ended up in a situation like this again. 

"What is bothering you?"

Kaeya's inched even closer.

He smirks, small.

"Trouble back home? With work? Interested in sharing?" he softly asks.

Childe squints. He hooks a finger in the small buckle of Kaeya's collar, tugging.

"No."

His dick traitorously jumps. 

"Well alright. Suit yourself."

Kaeya rests a hand flat on Childe's hip, tilts his head- and mouths him, unhurried, through his pants.

It's quiet.

Childe shifts.

Uncannily peaceful.

Kaeya takes his time.

His ministrations grow- but never faster- only deeper, more concentrated, slow. He drags teeth and presses tongue. He thoughtfully hums.

Admiration? Or musing?

Childe shifts again, cock swelling, getting stiffer.

His eyebrows furrow, low.

Heat coils and blossoms and coils. It comes and goes in waves.

Kaeya buries his face further in, and works a hand underneath, squeezing.

Childe inhales, and it's sharp, a ghost of a hiss, but Kaeya hears it nonetheless and against him grins. He pulls back; continues to palm and stroke him over clothes.

"There are people on the other side of that door," he murmurs, taunting. "Don't get too loud now."

He grips Childe firmly over his pants, jerking short and hard.

Without pattern. Without rest.

The waves of pleasure are staggered. Frustrating. Stilted, rising, breaking, swelling again and again.

Childe grinds his teeth.

Kaeya looks infinitely pleased with himself, as if getting aroused by his own games. And he probably is.

His eye slips shut.

He drops his mouth and quietly groans, murmuring obscenities with each tug on Childe's impossibly hard length for the sole purpose of egging Childe on.

And it works.

His hands which he'd been keeping stubbornly at his sides, rise and tangle in the captain's hair with fervor.

Kaeya stops his touch. It's unneeded. Childe jerks his hips and humps against his mouth. Frantic.

"Fuck, I hate you," he whines, feeling his own wet- hungry- relishing in the damp, friction's burn. He pauses long enough to slip himself out his pants, with a cock heavy and thick and veined in full erection.

He gives Kaeya one second look at it before pushing it roughly between his lips.

The startled look in Kaeya's eye, the muffled surprise, the fucking wet and warmth is almost enough to undo him then and there.

Childe pulls out.

He shoves back in.

Kaeya chokes. His hands clutch at Childe's thighs but they don't push him away; they splay to hold himself steady. This time his groan is real.

Childe's hands hold his head in place. The cock on his tongue hotly twitches and throbs.

He's huge.

His mouth is stuffed.

"Who knew," Childe says above him, marveling, "that this was the way to shut you up."

He presses himself in, deeper towards Kaeya's throat.

Kaeya gags. He groans again. Longer, lower; he squirms as arousal tightens his pants.

Childe barks out a half-breathless laugh in disbelief. "You like it?" 

Unbelievable. 

Kaeya's cheeks are red. He pants; breathes from his nose on Childe's length. The glaze in his eye says he's gone.

Childe looks at him.

Really looks at him.

And stops.

He pulls his dick out of Kaeya's mouth and waits. Patiently- for the knight to regain some sense.

Saliva drips from the captain's lips.

Childe wipes it with a thumb carefully; presses the gloved appendage into Kaeya's mouth, on his tongue, back towards his throat.

Kaeya lets him, bearings returning in a small degree, though soft noises of desperate desire escaped him still.

After a long, long moment of observing, Childe speaks to him, low.

"Tell me you want us to stop," he says, "and we will." 

 

---

 

Kaeya does it proper this time.

Kaeya does it slow.

Without teasing, there's a focus, a knitted-brow-concentration that wasn't there before.

Childe leans against the door of the shed, watching in mystification as more and more of his length vanishes each time Kaeya's head moves in. He pushes his hips lightly, fascinated by the change in the person in front of him as mild attraction tightly twists in his gut and a flush spreads in him from chest to neck, flourishing behind his ears.

Is this really the same boastful, taunting captain of Mondstadt from before?

Can't be. 

Kaeya swallows him, breathes him deeply in, then removes himself with a groan and a sigh. He tongues Childe's head and slit with tiny pleased noises. Takes him back in with earnest.

Childe bites back a pleased sigh of his own.

He eases Kaeya off, dragging the tip of his cock along the other's mouth before slipping it back in. He does it again, breath shortening. And again.

Then he sinks himself deep in.

Kaeya moans and squirms and moans some more, and even with a dick in his mouth, he's somehow louder than Childe could ever be himself.

With all the willpower in the world, Childe withdraws. He's on a cusping edge. He holds himself over Kaeya's mouth, on Alberich's offered tongue, mesmerized by the soft pants and the sheen to Kaeya's skin as the captain submits and allows Childe to slowly slap his dick against his tongue. And as he does, his mind grows blank.

How many times?

How many times has Kaeya does this before?

Who else had he gotten on his knees for?

The heat in him skyrockets at the thought.

'Didn't sleep around for information' his ass.

Childe brings a hand to Kaeya's throat, on the verge of peaking, thumbing it. "I'm getting bored," he lies. "Why don't you show me what you did for all of them?" 

Childe doesn't last a minute.

He swears but Kaeya stays on him, even as he fumbles backwards and collapses like a klutz to the floor.

Tools topple from the shelves, but they ignore it and Kaeya settles like it's home between his legs, taking his words as the initiative to suck him raw.

The overstimulation is scorching.

Childe struggles to get his hands in Kaeya's hair and force him further down. He hisses, drops his head back and lets himself go, cursing, grunting, growling. The mouth on him feels good. The heat in him pushes him to get everything he's worth and more.

And Childe's worth a lot.

"Do this for everyone huh?" he grunts, fucking every other word into Kaeya's mouth. 

Kaeya buckles. His elbows collapse. His muffled groans break to choking garbles and whines as he lets Childe have him roughly without protest.

 

---

 

Understandably, Childe comes again.

When they stop, because eventually they have to or else Childe's dick will fall off, the shed reeks of sweat and musk. He lies on his back breathing hard. Already his legs feel loose. His dick feels numb.

Well. It wasn't a lie after all that Mondstadt's Cavalry Captain has a mouth on him.

"Harbinger."

Childe glances over.

Kaeya lies beside him, eye closed, neck and jaw blossomed in red bruise. His chest rises and falls heavily. His voice is ragged from a throat well-fucked.

He asks with pure sincerity.

"Why are you in Mond?" 

Childe's eyes wander down his body. He rolls over, and very lightly, presses his mouth against Alberich's swollen one in a chaste kiss. "Sorry."

He kisses him again, tasting himself,  as Kaeya's eye flies open, startled.

"I really can't tell you."

He pushes himself up. He gets to his feet. He tucks himself in, fastens pants, finds his discarded belt and buckles it all together. 

He stretches. 

He cracks his back and yawns. 

His head feels light; body relaxed. 

He heads for the shed door. 

"Welp. I appreciate the help. I think I really needed that. I'm feeling great." 

Kaeya rises to sitting, twisting around. "Wait a second."

His voice is a small, poor, miserable thing, barely audible, but Childe stops and looks over his shoulder anyway. 

"Did you need something else?"

Kaeya stares at him, realization striking in a wide-eyed, mortified, flustered kind of way that paints a pretty look on his rapidly murderous-growing face.

"You- You have to exchange something," he strains to say. "You can't just walk away." 

"We never agreed on that, did we?" Childe tilts his head and regards him. "You offered 'help' and I took it. Our transaction ends here." 

"Transaction?" 

"Don't sound so surprised. What did you think we were doing?"

"I... You..." Kaeya struggles to answer.

The expression on his face is almost- almost- enough to bring some measure of second-thought to Childe's mind.

But he casts it aside.

In the end, he would not be the one to give himself away. 

Childe opens the shed's door. Steps into the light.

Sees the bandits wide-awake and gaping at him with blatant horror.

He offers them a two-fingered salute.

Behind him, to Kaeya, he says-

"Your friends are up. Be a little more careful on your information-gathering this time around, yeah?" 

 

---

 

Diluc is staring.

Kaeya continues to help stock his shelves with the winery's new shipment of bottled brew. "Do you mind?"

He sounds exactly like what happened. 

Like his throat had been fucked to hell. 

"Who did that?"

"Did what?"

Apparently Diluc's not in the mood for their usual cat-and-mouse games. He grabs Kaeya by the arm and spins him around, letting go like fire when Kaeya hisses and flinches in response.

He stares even harder, in turn, at the dark bruises on Kaeya's skin.

"Who did that to you?"

The air between them is absolutely cold, tempered by Kaeya himself to stop the overwhelmingly searing heat emanating off Diluc's person. 

"No one." Kaeya backs away; snatches a full bottle of wine and threateningly holds it between himself and the other man. "Don't think I won't drop this."

He had chosen to further skip duties at the Knight's Headquarters for the next two days specifically to avoid any line of questioning. Diluc was supposed to be his alibi.

Because Jean would go on a crusade. 

Diluc opens his mouth to argue further- but stops. He asks instead:

"Are you hurt?" 

It's a question with multiple layers. Diluc knows more about Kaeya's habits and methods than he'd like. 

"No," he answers, truthful. "I'm annoyed."

He sets the bottle on its proper shelf and goes to retrieve another. For a short moment, he and his brother work together in silence. 

Kaeya sighs. 

"Diluc," he says after another moment. "I'm alright." 

"...I didn't ask."

"Yes you did?"

"No, I didn't-"

 

---

 

Kaeya doesn't see the Eleventh Fatui Harbinger for the rest of the week as he runs daily duties through the city and carries out his normal errands.

And that's okay.

Because if he sees the other man he's going to freeze his dick off.

It was humiliating enough allowing himself to be so thoroughly overwhelmed by someone else's musk and size and girth like some wanton primal animal, but it was even more humiliating being left to jack himself off in the tool shed because only Tartaglia reached climax multiple times while Kaeya just sat in his own leak-filled pants being turned on.

Worse, Allan- Allan- had come hurrying into the shed right as Kaeya was angrily reaching his edge.

Apparently Allan had heard a ruckus while on a hunt, and as a dutiful hunter and to prove himself to Draff, he just had to see what was going on.

Long story short:

Kaeya never finished, Allan had to be reassured that the bandits tied outdoors had nothing to do with Kaeya's half-naked predicament, and Kaeya had to put up with the well-traumatized bandits interrupting his interrogation session with requests for the strongest chemicals Mondstadt had to offer so that they could purge minds and ears of the back-to-back blowjobs they'd been subjected to hearing. 

The bruises don't fade completely and he is cornered by both Jean and Amber in the Knights' Office, while he chases after Lisa to stop her from joyously electrocuting half the taverns in the city.

Diluc vouches for him with the worst excuse that Kaeya had eaten something he was horribly allergic to. 

Which- Kaeya could actually accept- given who he had idiotically offered himself to.

 

---

 

He finds out, during a game of cards with Mikhail on the weekend, that Tartaglia had been briefly dispatched to Liyue to handle some matter with the Northland Bank.

Hence his notable absence.

"I'm surprised anyone still lets him in there after the whole Osial affair," Kaeya comments, drawing from the deck between them.

"They trust us all less but Mora is Mora and business still has to be done," Mikhail replies, glancing over his hand before he sighs and draws a card himself. "Master Childe should be back by the end of next week." 

"You don't refer to him as Tartaglia?"

"That's more of a Harbinger thing. Us lower grunts aren't privy to it."

"Interesting."

Mikhail sighs again. "I hope he at least brings some decent food when he returns."

Kaeya arches a brow, amused. "What? Mondstadt's delicacies aren't to your liking?"

"The food here is fine. Master Childe just has a habit of cooking really good meals with the ingredients he brings."

So it hadn't been so much of a lie after all that the man had been scavenging in the bushes for herbs.

Kaeya shows his hand.

Mikhail folds his own.

Then eyes him with blatant accusation.

"Did you switch our cards again?"

Kaeya leans back in his chair. "You were with me the whole while. When would I have found the time?"

He had found the time, actually, before even coming to the tavern, to swap the custom deck the Fatui carried on him with one Kaeya had Timaeus craft a day ago that increased his chance of luck.

It was mild retribution for the antics with the dice earlier on in the week.

"You know the rules. Drinks on you. Don't make me recite that Snezhnayan promise of yours back to you."

Mikhail grumbles but gets up nonetheless.

Kaeya laughs to himself in pleasurable victory, stops as his throat burns in lingering ache, before sitting back up with a soft scowl to gather and reshuffle their cards.

Dainsleif is sitting across from him.

Kaeya yelps, throwing the cards and nearly fumbling out his chair in terror.  

Dainsleif is unfazed even as a card smacks him in the eye.

"I see you've been doing well."

Struggling to sit his tipsy self in his seat proper again, Kaeya casts a glimpse around.

No one's spared a single glance their direction.

"We're in a temporary space," Dainsleif says, noticing his action. "We won't be seen."

Ah. Right. That thing.

"When are you going to teach me that trick?" Kaeya asks. "It'd be useful."

"I would teach you if I didn't already know you'd use it to terrorize the people."

A fair point. It was exactly what he'd been planning on doing, including raiding Diluc's wine cellar underground and scaring Amber into believing there was a ghost in her house.

"Very well. What did you come here for? You usually try and keep away during busier hours."

"True." There's a look Dainsleif has. Kaeya doesn't like it. "Your Grandmaster..."

"Acting Grandmaster."

"She had you investigate an unusual mushroom running in the markets."

"Why do you know that?"

Dainsleif ignores the question. "Did you learn anything?"

"They were supposed to pick up a batch of it in a delivery on Monday. Aside from that, nothing else."

"They didn't say who to get it from?"

"No. Just an underground market."

"Then I need you to do something for me." 

He sounds like Jean.

Kaeya rolls his eyes. "It's not any kind of transaction is it?" he snarks, more for himself than anything else.

But the look Dainsleif gives him is indubitably judgmental and blank and laced with a degree of trauma noticeable enough that it makes Kaeya stare.

"Dainsleif," he says, as the gravity of the situation and his livelihood suddenly descends. "How often do you watch me? ...What have you seen?"

Dainsleif doesn't answer that. "This mushroom taken from the Abyss possesses a lethal spore. Toxic to humans. It shouldn't be allowed to spread above ground."

"I thought it looked familiar. It's from home, isn't it?" Kaeya accuses. "I can't imagine you would've let someone walk out of there with something so dangerous. Why was that?"

"There was a purpose for it, concerning the late magistrate. I could go into detail if you wouldn't mind sitting for an hour on the reason why."

"I'll pass. Carry on."

"The particulars don't concern you, regardless," Dainsleif assures him. "However, there is someone I would have you track down."

"This won't put me in any danger will it?"

Dainsleif rises. "I'll send you details later."

"Answer the question."

"Enjoy your game of cards. I've switched it with a fair deck."

"Why-"

Dainsleif is gone.

Mikhail returns from the bar, carrying five mugs precariously.

Kaeya eyes them, slouching, cursing the Boughs Keeper in his head.

But quietly. Very quietly.

He wouldn't be surprised if his pseudo-mentor could read minds too.

Dainsleif was a royal guard, and Khaenri'ah was a place of magic. The selection process for such a role wasn't exactly easy. Obsessed with godhood as their people had been, they took great care to choose only the best. And Dainsleif was indeed one of the absolute best.

It backfired on the magistrate of the old dynasty almost hilariously when Dainsleif stood against the assault on Celestia, and while Kaeya had heard that his great-great grandfather times two hadn't been terribly surprised and had even spared a chuckle as destruction rained ash from the sky, his father was far less pleased to discover the one man who could bend time, travel between dimensions and hear every whisper of the Ley Lines and earth-

One: couldn't die.

And two: wasn't on the royal family's side.

It was probably why Dainsleif had appointed himself Kaeya's make-believe guardian in the first place.

Minus the dying- because Kaeya could most certainly do that on any given day- the two had a lot in common. And by that he meant their joint dislike of his father and the cultists still persisting in the resurrection of Khaenri'ah.

His family and the cults could have fun with that.

Kaeya was just going to continue living free and drunk and merry for as long as he could until someone from his homeland tried to drag him back under the earth to make him sit on a throne and kickstart a new dynasty.

"This cost an arm and a leg," Mikhail complains setting all their drinks and reshuffling their cards.

"Only that? It should've cost more," Kaeya retorts, grabbing the nearest pint.

"It was supposed to but Master Diluc said he would give it to a Fatui like me on discount so long as it pissed you off."

Kaeya swings his head towards the bar.

Diluc wipes a glass impassively behind the counter, but there's a smirk on his lips.

Kaeya narrows his eye. 

Bastard. 

It was probably revenge for 'avoiding' the question of who 'dared choked him out'.

Well too bad.

Kaeya wasn't going to tell him no matter how expensive his drinks got. It was terrible enough having to accept his own life decision for what it was with no reward but a nearly busted jaw.

He chugs his pint.

Too fast. Half goes up his nose.

He sputters and suffocates on something far more potent than wine should be as Mikhail ignores his dying and deals their cards.

"Go ahead first," Mikhail offers.

Kaeya slaps a hand on the table and drags his cards over to see what's gotten.

Poor luck.

What a rotten sight. He curses Dainsleif once more. There's no way he'd win anything with the new deck the Keeper had given. 

 

---

 

If only he knew that hand of cards and game would be an allegory for the next few months of his life. 

 

 

Notes:

*based on the canon fact that kaeya's a bit more emotional and honest when he's drunk with very little memory to recall from it.

*also based on his canon powers of deflection everyone can see through, penchant for mischief and the habit of lurking in corners alone when he's embarrassed and doesn't want to be noticed.

** it's super hard typing names with my dyslexic ass send help

Chapter 3: the circus invites all

Kaeya slips from his home on the cool, crisp morning of a pale dawn.

Mondstadt sleeps.

The knights are lackadaisical, slow on patrol, cracking yawns as they wander the quiet streets and rest on nearby benches and stone stairs.

At the fountain by the Goth Grand Hotel, Luke stands, pants rolled, in the water, helping Anthony fish for coins. Lyudmila watches with folded arms. Mikhail leans against the wall next to her. Their conversation is about the latitude of the earth and how long it would take to walk its entirety on foot.

Kaeya passes unnoticed on the street below, smiling at the simple nature of their talk.

They weren't like this when they'd first arrived in Mond.

He swings by the Outrider's modest housing that was once her grandfather's, and knocks on the window of the first floor in a corner alley where she sleeps. She drools, half-sprawled, squeezing a stuffed doll of herself so tight its cotton bursts from the seams.

He sighs, resigned, and pushes both sides of the casement window in.

"Amber."

She snores.

He coats her bed in ice.

She shrieks and tumbles out, and rolls across her floorboard in a bundle of fuzzy pajamas and puffing flame.

Kaeya watches on, amused.

Amber pushes up her sleeping mask, catches sight of him, and all but leaps to her feet, stomping over. "Kaeya!" Her hands come out the window. She snatches him by the collar and starts to drag him in. "Why do you always do that?"

"It's about this evening," Kaeya replies, unfazed. He reaches into his cloak and hands her a list he had taken care to write the night before. "Something's come up and I might not be back in time to help. Can you gather this before noon? Lisa should be at my place by then; she can let you inside."

Amber blinks, taking the paper, eyes brightening. "Oh!"

Her vexation is long forgotten at the reminder of what promises to be a fun day.

"Sure, leave it to me!" Then she takes another look at Kaeya and seems to belatedly process his words and his appearance, dressed-down, dark and demure without pomp or flair. "Where are you going? Do you need help?"

Kaeya chuckles. "I'll be quite alright. It's a small, personal matter. Not to worry, I won't be alone."

His eye sharpens at his own reminder.

He should get a move-on.

Amber eyes him with suspicion. "Hmm. Well... if you say so. Be careful."

"Yes, yes." He leaves her with a wave and reminder to tip generously on the order he needs her to place, making his way back onto the main streets of the city and departing from the front gate.

Swan wishes him safe travel, nose buried in an extended edition of the Knights' Code of Conduct.

For a time he travels the dew-slicked paths of the hills alone, accompanied only by the morningtide's chill and the lizards that skitter from rock to rock and tree. He cuts through the woods beside him, descends downhill, passes between two pines and reemerges on a different road, less-traveled, joined by a shadow and vibrant flash of red.

A covered wagon waits, led by two horses.

Diluc slides onto the wooden bench in front.

Kaeya hops into the back, pushing aside lightweight barrels and crates to settle comfortably at the opening in the material between himself, his brother, and the road beyond. "This is the perfect atmosphere for a tale, wouldn't you say? Tell me your best story."

"No."

"You're no fun," complains Kaeya lightly. "Fine." He rests his chin in his arms. His smile is a smirk. "I'll tell one myself. Once upon a time-"

"Stop."

Kaeya snorts.

He waits until Diluc's grip on the reigns loosens before giving a reminder.

"We need to be back by noon."

"I know that. You're the one who overslept."

"I didn't oversleep. I woke with the sun because I'm not a bat like you. Is this where you went last night? To the woods to sleep?"

"While you were burning everything in the kitchen, I went to prepare," Diluc retorts. "Your decorations were subpar."

Kaeya narrows his eye. "My decorations were far superior to whatever monstrosity you were attempting to tack onto my walls. Arts and crafts were never your strong suit."

"And cooking was never yours. You should be grateful I'm the one funding your ridiculous fancies."

"Those 'ridiculous fancies' are for Jean. And I'm telling her you said that."

A molotov comes sailing into the back of the wagon and sets half of it on fire.

The horses rear. The wagon wildly veers. Diluc yanks on the reigns as a grubby hand reaches through the smoke and blaze and drags Kaeya out by the ankle.

He goes willingly. His back hits the dirt of the road.

The bandit above him leers.

Kaeya smirks, snapping a finger and blasting the man straight in the face with Cryo, up and away.

He rolls to his feet and cracks his back, taking a look at the eight other bandits running up. Diluc sounds like he's plenty occupied himself with the rest of the lowlifes laying siege from the front of the now overturned and heavily burning wagon- which the bandits before Kaeya scowl at, greatly confused.

Kaeya grins. 

"Oh no. We were only transporting bundles of wheat. Don't tell me you were expecting something else."

The bandits lunge. Kaeya meets them, Cryo in hand, and takes all but one out with ease. That one he lets escape back into the woods they attacked from, watching the unmarked path they disappear on before looking over his shoulder to where flames spin and dance.

"Diluc!" he calls. "I'm going ahead!"

There's a very faint, near inaudible grunt that rises over the cacophony of yelps and shrieks from the beatdown his brother is no doubt giving the swarm of men around.

Kaeya shrugs to himself. He smirks. To the bandit in the trees, he eagerly gives chase.

It doesn't take long to catch up.

Kaeya has always been more fleet-footed and agile than most, and certainly more nimble than Diluc who would've thundered through the undergrowth, an unstoppable force.

The bandit trips over a rock, glances over his shoulder as he fumbles, and yells in terror at the sight of Kaeya's flitting shadow breaking through the branches and leaves.

Kaeya points. Cryo shrieks.

The bandit slips on a muddy patch, careens over a gnarled root- and is slingshot into the nearest tree with a burst of glacial force potent enough to sweep the surrounding earth in crystallized frost. He struggles, pinned through his clothes in several places millimeters off from quivering skin.

Kaeya takes his time walking over.

The bandit hollers.

Kaeya rolls his eye and flicks some hail at his head. "Hush. I haven't even touched you."

"Y-You're not a merchant!" the bandit yelps, squirming.

"I guess I'm not. Did you really believe no one would notice three caravans getting ransacked on a trade-route as discreetly known as this? Coming from our Winery? That's information privy to only a few."

The bandit scowls; attempts to draw himself up, and tugs on one of the glacial pikes pinning into the cloth of his shoulder, letting go with a yelp as its frigid ice burns.

"Stop it," Kaeya tells him. "Or I'll put another through your skull."

He won't. The threat works anyway.

The bandit quails and sinks back against the tree. "What do you want? I'm not- I'm not in charge of anything! I just follow orders, okay! All of us- we were told we'd get a good reward so long as we brought enough crates back!"

"A ha ha..."

"Why are you laughing?" panics the bandit, suddenly fearing for his life. "Knock it off!"

Kaeya chuckles some more and thoughtfully rubs his chin as he scrutinizes the terrified man before him. "...Where's your hideout?"

 

---

 

He opens a square and flat, iron-case cellar door near the coast three hours and a half later, as the ocean tumbles and salt sprays from the sea.

It creaks, rusted and shrill.

"I certainly hope they don't know we're here," he jokes aloud.

He can feel the eye roll from his brother.

"Just get inside."

Kaeya snickers and drops into the dark below. His boots hit and sink on rot and wooden planks. Sand pours in from above.

Musk and mold taint the air. 

Diluc joins him a moment later, flame in hand. His fire casts a poignant glow over what Kaeya would've been blind to on his own; the expectant faces of a crew of smugglers, some with arms crossed, others with weapons drawn.

The heat around his brother flares.

His impatience wasn't unfounded.

It had taken them longer than expected to get here and soon it would be noon.

Also, they were on something of a schedule and had other things to do.

"You made a poor choice coming here," one of the smugglers says. "Don't blame us for what happens next."

Kaeya sets a hand on his hip, hoarfrost gathering in the other. "Oh, ha ha... I'm sure we won't."

Together, he and his brother make quick, if not slightly violent, work.

Kaeya sits on the back of a smuggler playing dead, rummaging through a crate of stolen wine.

Flames lick the ground.

Frosty, vaporized steam sifts like a fog through the tunnels of the underground bunker.

"You have a good eye," he compliments the man he relaxes on. "These are well-aged."

"...What do you want from us?" the smuggler, regretting life, mumbles into the ground. Half his clothes have been burnt, the other frozen stiff.

"Just a few names," Kaeya replies blithely, struggling with the bottle in his hand. "A little information on who's so fascinated by the Winery and its wares."

He twists off the cork and silently cheers.

He doesn't get the chance to taste it.

Diluc snatches it.

"You drink it, you buy it."

Kaeya's face bunches in annoyance. 

 

---

 

They return, not to the Winery, but to the Angel's Share in Mond two hours past noon, cloaks discarded and disposed of, evidence of their side-adventure gone.

Charles tends the bar.

In the backroom, Diluc pulls his jacket on. Kaeya clasps the buttons of his vest and clips on his cape.

The city is awake and bustling, colored flags waves, chatter and laughter rises and the tunes of the bards carry in the wind.

They part ways.

Diluc heads to The Good Hunter. Kaeya makes way for the bakery close by the cathedral.

He meets with Barbara, apologizing for the severe delay, but the young deaconess assures him it's no trouble, as she had only just arrived herself, waylaid by Bennett who had injured himself falling down a hole and Razor who had jumped down after him without properly calculating the distance to the ground.

They grab two cakes and a box of pastries and make way as discreet as possible back to his humble, and for some reason lopsided, one-storied house squeezed between the homes of bookworm and seamstress.

Amber is in the foyer, hanging much better decorations from corner to corner. Balloons reach towards the ceiling. Glitter scatters across the floorboards, sparkling in the afternoon light.

The Outrider greets them, eagerly, and hops off the chair she's on to help take the desserts off their hand. 

They follow her to the kitchen where Lisa stirs something suspicious on the stove in a piece of kitchenware that looks significantly more like a cauldron and not a pot. It bubbles without smell.

Kaeya's shoulders drop with his face. "Please tell me you aren't cooking. We've already put in an order for edible food."

Lisa chortles, a tinkling, bemused sound that in no way brings Kaeya reassurance. "Relax. This is for the adults later. I'm sure you'll find great interest in its taste. But do me a favor and lend me that pretty bottle of Gold you've got stowed within your bedroom wall."

"How do you know that's in there?"

"Little gets past me, sweetie. Proof one-eighty liquor, is it?"

Kaeya's eye gleams with new interest in what Lisa is now concocting. He goes to get it and watches the librarian pour the entire contents into the cauldron of black liquid.

She laughs softly. Kaeya joins her.

Amber sighs.

Barbara wonders if she'll be needing to perform emergency services within the day yet again.

By the time Diluc arrives, several workers of the Hunter carting a full spread of a feast through his doors, early evening has fallen.

Kaeya sits cross-legged in the living room on a carpet before the blazing fireplace with Amber as they fiddle with an old sound machine. It starts after a try or two, plays a horribly distorted tune, and dies right back out.

Their brows knit.

They get to their knees and together struggle to turn the heavy machine onto its side.

It falls apart.

They look at one another, get to their feet, and leave it where it is.

"I'll make sure we have everything before getting Albedo and Klee," says Amber.

Kaeya checks the time.

"And there's someone I need to meet," he says. "I'll be back."

Questions form on her face. He sets out before she can ask.

The streets are swept in gold. The sky burns orange and purple and blue.

It's a picturesque, warm-weathered walk, and Kaeya's pace is an unhurried one as he climbs the stairs back to the cathedral, listening to the tales of poets and the footsteps of kids chasing, playing tag.

Storefronts are swept, business owners chat; Mondstadt further unwinds.

He's in the middle of playing idle fetch with a dog on the cathedral terrace by the statue of their Archon, when Venti shows.

The bard floats down lightly from the statue's hands onto the ground.

"You know we're not alone, yes?" Kaeya questions.

Venti takes a look at the few sisters of the church and citizens who are much too at ease with themselves to have even spared a glance their way. He returns his gaze to Kaeya, smiling mischievous. "I think I'll be okay. They're a little slow on the uptake. Compared to a choice few others."

Well. Kaeya can agree with that.

A book appears in the bard's hand, and it's crimson, elegant and ornate, buckled in gold.

"For the birthday girl," he says, passing it off. "Don't tell her you got it from me. Obviously."

"Yes. Though the Acting Grandmaster might not get the chance to even touch it before it's whisked away by a certain librarian should she lay eyes upon it first."

Venti plants his hands on his hips. "You better use your best defense then, because I'm not going back to Old Mond this late to dig through the earth for another copy. If there's even one that exists."

"There isn't."

And Kaeya is quite abruptly surrounded by an infinite void of stars in a blackened sea, cut off from all of Mondstadt's sights and sounds.

Dainsleif takes the book from his hands and peruses through it briefly, contemplatively, until Kaeya regains his bearings and snatches it back.

"So now you show up? It's been days. Whatever happened to giving details?"

"Something came up I needed to investigate."

"Did it happen to be about a certain, poisonous mushroom that 'can't be allowed to spread'?"

"It was another matter."

"I do hope it was important."

Dainsleif looks at him, hears the bite in the words, and questions with curiosity, "Did something happen while I was gone?"

"No."

And that was the problem.

There was little Kaeya detested more than sitting around when there was something of necessity to be done.

He'd been expecting to see the Boughs Keeper again later that night or at the very least in the early morning to track down the man Dainsleif wanted him to, but Dainsleif had never appeared, the lead on the mushroom's distributor and source from the bandits had gone cold, and he'd been forced to give Jean the vaguest of answers when she asked if the matter had been solved.

The only progress made was that Diluc's contacts in the underground were able to seize every mushroom by Kaeya's description where they were currently, somewhat precariously, stored in an unused, abandoned cellar beneath the Winery until Dainsleif could tell him the proper way of disposing them without plaguing the home he grew up on into blackened atrophy.

Restless as he'd been, and with no leads pertaining to a certain Harbinger's mystery target who at this point- given how long Childe had been absent from Mond- had probably already suffered some perilous fate, Kaeya had little else to do but throw himself into party-planning affairs with meticulous zest and detail.

The least he could do for Jean, seeing how useless he was being on the front of the mushroom affair, was ensure she had a well-deserved congratulations for her endless work in Varka's absence.

And while he wished that was the worst of it, it wasn't, because his dreams had been dissonant, unsettled things of Khaenri'ah, spurred by his multitude of thoughts on Dainsleif's recent, secretive endeavors. That childhood he could've sworn he had pushed to the farthest, inaccessible reaches of his mind, slithered and crept and curled with frigidness and warmth, and far from unpleasant- it was pleasant- and it frightened him more than any nightmare ever would.

For all that was rotten, there was good in his home.

Just not enough.

Dark labyrinths and endless stars, those towers that reached towards the skies, one step short of heaven.

The studies he skipped, the same-aged friends, the eve he had given cooking a whirl and stirred a different, but equally poisonous, mushroom from the gardens into his father's soup which the man had obviously survived- no doubt thanks to his undying bitterness towards the gods and impressive yet annoying willpower to never die until he could see them fall.

Kaeya had been all too happy to throw himself into the regular mundane affairs of stopping threats to his brother's industry would it be enough to make such memories stop.

But Dainsleif is here now, and somehow he doesn't think they soon will. Unless he drinks enough.

He sighs, already aching for a good brew. 

"...Alright. Tell me where I need to go."

Dainsleif sets a hand on Kaeya's shoulder. "It's better if I show you."

Kaeya jolts. Oh, not this- "Just wait a second-"

They're gone.

Away from the city, whisked into the forest of a valley somewhere with too many shadows and a river.

Dainsleif looks towards a glowing cabin through the trees in the darkening night.

It's an illusion.

No different than standing in the center of an all-seeing crystal ball, but the sudden displacement still sends Kaeya hurling into the bushes of the constructed world around them.

"There's a youth here by the name of Finny. Freckled. Blond hair," the Boughs Keeper shares, not acknowledging Kaeya's suffering from temporal space travel in the slightest. "You could... call him an apprentice of mine. I believe he can lead you to the source of the problem."

Apprentice?

For what?

And someone unrelated to Khaenri'ah at that.

Kaeya wipes the back of his mouth, glaring at the Boughs Keeper before turning that glare onto the figure in the distance of a young man donning a plain cloak painting the walls of his cabin in the extraordinarily dim glow of a lantern in the grass. "If you know where he is, why not interrogate him yourself?"

"The questioning isn't for him but for who he knows," Dainsleif responds. "I... have a feeling the trail that needs following will be long. Too long. I can't stay in Teyvat to see it through."

There's a second meaning in the words.

Kaeya's glare becomes a stare as his eyebrows furrow and he faces his guardian and says, "...Is something happening back home?"

Dainsleif is silent for a moment too long before he answers. "It's a minor spectacle. It'll be resolved soon enough... given proper plans fall into place." He gazes at Kaeya as if thinking, before reaching out and resting a hand on his shoulder again. "Matters of Khaenri'ah... Your role in them. When you're ready, and willing enough, I'll tell you. For now, all I ask is this."

He casts a sidelong glance once more at the cabin and his 'apprentice' at work.

"He'll be here for a time. You can find him tomorrow. It's late."

Kaeya furrows his eyebrows further.

Serious.

"Dain, hold on."

The Boughs Keeper leaves him back in Mondstadt, stars and darkness stripped, evening gold and sinking, blazing warm and red.

Venti waves a hand in front his face. "-eya. Hello, anyone in there?"

Kaeya jolts every so slightly.

What had felt like eternity was a mere minute.

He looks at the bard in front him and blinks. Then blinks again as guided details on the route to Dainsleif's apprentice sifts into his head.

Shortly after- the presence of the Boughs Keeper leaves him in entirety.

"Sorry," he says a bit distantly. "What were you saying?"

Venti's brows raise. "You look like you're going to throw up. Did you get into the wine already?"

Kaeya shakes off the encounter with Dainsleif as the present returns to him in full. His shoulders sag and he huffs out a breath. "...Unfortunately not. I'm going to need a glass or two now however," he utters.

"Ri-ighht. Well if you crack open too many bottles, you know where to find me. I'll be happy to take them off your hand."

"Of course. Just make sure you have sufficient payment on hand."

"You'd really make your Archon pay?"

"Because I don't want a certain wine owner breathing down my neck, yes."

"Ugh. Fine. Would it kill him to give a discount once in a while?"

"...You know," and Kaeya contemplates it sincerely. "It just might." 

 

---

 

It's later than he wants, but his errands are not yet done.

Kaeya, book tucked beneath an arm, is mildly distracted as he wanders towards the city-front. An hour or so more before Jean needs to be tricked into coming out from the Knights Headquarters. Today isn't the date of her birthday, but three days before, specifically done so that there was a better chance of catching her unaware.

If Huffman had kept her as busy as Kaeya requested with inane mishaps throughout the city, that chance was made all the greater.

He catches Flora before she closes her stand. Her eyes light with cheer.

As she puts together an elaborate bouquet of windwheels, lilies and dandelion wisps, Kaeya waits in front and takes a better look at the book Venti has given.

The language is old. The passages staggered and fragmented and italicized.

Is it poetry? The verses of lost song?

He's seen this before somewhere.

Considering Dainsleif interest in it, maybe the Keeper had too.

"Brushing up on romance?"

A voice comes casually from behind.

"Amusing. And here I thought you knew it all."

Kaeya pauses. And lifts his head with a slanted eye.

Ah.

Someone he loathed to recognize.

Tartaglia. Childe. Whatever it was he was actually called.

The Harbinger is reading over his shoulder.

Kaeya closes the book shut perhaps with a little more force than necessary. "And here I thought you had wandered into another gorge. How unfortunate."

Childe snorts and moves back.

Kaeya turns around.

Childe looks no worse for wear. In fact, he looks incredibly well-rested and content, tousled by the wind, skin kissed by a tan visible even in the falling dark that could've only been gotten from long hours spent beneath the sun.

For some reason or another, Kaeya is struck with the vague sense of summer, warmth and grassy fields despite the fact it's spring. Tartaglia's pale eyes are lighter than usual; an easy smile sits on his lips.

It's a far-cry from their first encounter.

Something good had happened for him. 

Kaeya's not so sure it's a good thing, however, for him.

He begins to think of the best way to break it to Jean, which would most certainly be tomorrow and not today on a day she was supposed to cast problems aside, mouth running in question. "...With the amount of time you were gone from the city, I suppose you managed to find who you were looking for after all."

"No. Not at all." Childe says it, unbothered. He folds his arms and chuckles. "Liyue was a dead-end."

As expected. 

The part about handling matters with the Northland Bank was a cover. Mikhail knew it. Lyudmila knew it. Luke- well perhaps Luke didn't. Regardless, it was a fact Kaeya and his Fatui associates had all silently agreed to pretend not to know.

So whatever the Harbinger had been after originally in Mondstadt had made its way to Liyue Harbor?

And none of Mondstadt's knights or scouts had noticed?

He frowns to himself. 

Oblivious to Kaeya's train of thought, Childe goes on to say, "Well- it wasn't a complete dead-end. I'll be going back. I just needed to check on something here one more time."

"Check on what?"

"Hm." A smile tugs at Childe's mouth. "Not telling."

"Do you know how suspicious that makes you sound?"

"Does it matter? What will anyone do about it? Your Order wouldn't cause trouble to a Harbinger minding his own business on diplomatic duty based on speculation, would they? It wouldn't be very professional."

Kaeya laughs, a soft and venomous and pretty sound as he agrees. "Not very professional at all, that's right. But it wouldn't be an Order causing you trouble."

"I guess not," says Childe. He unfolds his arms. "Just one Knight."

He contemplates something briefly.

"Though your services would be better used elsewhere."

Kaeya narrows his eye. "And how do you suppose I should take that?"

"As a compliment. Mondstadt has a surprising number of good fishing spots."

What.

"What?"

"By that huge tree. And the pond to the north. And the river outside the city." Childe looks towards the city gate as if reminiscing on the find; as if the conversation hadn't whiplashed in another direction. "If I had known, I'd have packed a rod."

Kaeya stares.

Flora cheerfully calls his name. She passes him the lush arrangement of flowers with well-wishes for Jean.

"I hope she likes them! Stop by again sometime!"

The young girl begins to properly close her stall, not bothered at all by the Fatui Harbinger looking between Kaeya and her vast assortment of potted plants.

After a moment, Childe's gaze settles and stays on Kaeya; on the book and bouquet held within his arms.

He considers the sight.

"...I was joking before. But it really does look like you're on your way to someone. Am I keeping you from a date?"

Kaeya's eyebrows lower and deeply knit. "Don't be ridiculous."

"No?" Childe, unprompted, brushes Kaeya's hair aside. His glove comes away with glitter and there is definitive amused interest in the look he wears. "I'd ask where in the world this came from and why, but I don't think you'd answer."

Kaeya smiles without smile as his lips curl into a smirk and his eye thins. "How astute."

And Childe laughs.

A real laugh.

"Hey now. You're not holding any grudge over what happened are you? I thought we agreed it was nothing."

At what point had they agreed on anything?

It had been more akin to standing on a slope and choosing to slide down it a little too carelessly, and a little too fast before hitting an abrupt end.

Kaeya's features twist, slowly, bellicose, as he thinks about the thumbs pressed against his neck and the fingers down his throat.

How barbaric.

Childe hadn't even taken off his gloves until after- when it'd then been calloused hands, sharp breaths and curses. The consideration, the carelessness, together in one act. Abominable.

But not as horrid as the lack of answers and the dismissiveness in the aftermath, and Kaeya could laugh at the thought of it.

A fool he'd been.

Had there ever been a time before when his antics hadn't worked?

Yes.

Once, long ago, and it had been the only instance Diluc had skipped the questioning and descended straight into fury.

In the whirlwind of events that had been, there hadn't been any moment for embarrassment, just a semblance of gratitude and relief and mild confusion over why and how his brother knew where he had been and mild pity for the fate of the business man who'd been trying to forcibly take Kaeya's clothes off.

But against Tartaglia?

A grudge?

How funny.

He wouldn't waste his breath holding one. Not for any longer than he'd already had. What annoyance, what grievance, lingered, was in the failure to achieve the results he wants, and having it still standing in front his face.

He echoes his sentiments aloud.

"A grudge? I'm not holding one," he says. "There is little point in that."

Childe doesn't look like he believes him.

It's not Kaeya's concern.

He shifts the gifts in his arms for Jean. Forget the Harbinger. He'll think about the man and his mysterious motives- that had yet to be achieved- later on.

After his duties as the Acting Grandmaster's friend. After his duties as the Boughs Keeper's helping hand.

"Well, I think we've chatted long enough," Kaeya tells Childe with politeness nice enough to fall one inch short of sincere. "Welcome back to Mond. I do hope you have a- wonderful rest of the evening."

He turns to leave.

Childe calls him back. "Hold a moment."

Kaeya, well-mannered as he is, does. His stare is a little contentious though. As is his tone. "What." 

The Harbinger studies him with some thought, then glances towards the city gate once more. "As you are a Knight of the city, I'd like to ask for your help with something."

Kaeya's face falls flat. "Is that right?"

Childe chuckles, mirth in his eyes. "I promise it won't take long. You'll be back for your small engagement in time."

"I told you, it's nothing of the kind."

There is time before someone needs to drag Jean from the office in the Knights Headquarters.

And it'd be a lie to say he wasn't the smallest bit intrigued by what someone like Childe needed.

The Fatui's capabilities were greater than Kaeya's own in a lot of ways Kaeya wasn't so daft as to not recognize and concede to, so what would a Harbinger want with him?

"Make no mistake in thinking I trust you," he tells Childe.

"Sure," says the other easily. "C'mon."

They leave the city together, side-by-side.

There's something admittedly amusing about letting the Harbinger handle the few slimes and monsters they encounter on their journey off Mondstadt's roads and into the fields of Windrise, and Kaeya doesn't lift a finger even as he watches a hilichurl leap off a grassy ridge and try to tackle the other man from behind.

Childe squints at him for that.

Kaeya shrugs, making a point to emphasize his arms that are full.

"You have a mouth that works," Childe says.

"Yes, but only when it wants to," Kaeya says back.

They eventually delve into the woods, and rather than climb any cliffs, take a more lengthy route on the soft dirt trails leading upwards to the valley's surrounding mountains and caves.

It's at a pond between a cavern and swarm of trees, full of lily pads, and accompanied by frogs, that the Harbinger stops.

It's the most insignificant, unsuspecting pool of water Kaeya has ever seen in the most nondescript part of the valley he's been in.

Fully-dressed, the Harbinger slides inside.

It reaches just below his chest and he turns towards Kaeya and says, "You're going to need to come in."

Kaeya stares at the man. "Why-ever would I do that?"

"Because the mechanism is underwater and you can't see it from there."

Mechanism?

One that led to an undiscovered treasure of sorts?

Or one that woke some mechanical machine they couldn't yet see from slumber?

Childe, mistaking his pause for hesitance, sighs, exasperated, and shifts backwards towards the center of the pond before he says, "I'm not going to try and drown you. It just won't activate without Cryo."

Was that was all it was?

Well, were there a treasure or something of value nearby or beneath, he wasn't going to allow a Harbinger employed by a shady Archon walk off with it.

He sets down his flowers and his book very carefully in the grass against a boulder.

There were others in Mondstadt with Cryo, but he didn't know if Childe had ever had the chance to meet Diona- or if he could even convince her to help- and Rosaria was still off in Dragonspine sleuthing around. The sister would certainly not give Childe any kind of hand, unless in that hand, there was a pointy weapon in it.

"I hope you have some remuneration for my services here," Kaeya informs him, removing his cape and vest and tying up his hair.

Childe watches with eyebrows raised. "Why would I need to pay you? Isn't this sort of thing also included in your 'Mondstadtian hospitality'?" he mocks. 

Kaeya makes sure water hits him in the eye as he joins him in the pond.

"Ow!"

Kaeya goes beside him, looking down past the surface towards the murky ground beneath. What a horrible time to do this. The sun is a vanished line of gold on the purpled horizon, the water cold, lapping uncomfortably against his skin as his clothes cling tightly.

Nevertheless, he frowns and asks, "Where is it?"

"One second."

Childe dips under.

The pond ripples.

Kaeya's boot is tugged on seconds later, and resigning himself to whatever they'll find, Kaeya sinks under. It's too dark to properly see anything on the ground, but Childe's blurred shadow is enough to guess where the point of interest lies.

His hands are grabbed.

He's guided one foot over before Childe presses his hands against the device built into the pebbled earth.

Kaeya almost lets out a genuine noise of fascination- before remembering the filthy water that would no doubt fly into his mouth.

So there was something here? And he hadn't known about it.

He spreads Cryo beneath his palms quickly. 

The mechanism whirs. The ground shifts.

An orange glow lights the pond, and Kaeya smiles, looking through the water towards Childe in triumph. But Childe is looking at the successfully triggered device and the ice that coats it with a triumphant smile of his own- and Kaeya is caught off guard by the whole-hearted happiness in the Harbinger's eyes.

It's a child's excitement.

...Had he really only wanted to see what kind of trinket they'd find? 

Childe lets go of his hands and rises back to the surface.

Kaeya stays at the bottom for moment, then follows, wiping the wet from his face as he breaks through.

He immediately wishes he hadn't.

A Ruin Hunter chants promises of destruction up above.

His face drops, deadpan.

"...Lovely."

The book he saves.

The flowers suffer an explosive and fiery death.

Kaeya laments over them as he sits on the edge of the pond five minutes later, legs and scorched boots in the water, their flames only just doused.

Childe pokes at the frozen and shattered war-machine a small distance behind, among fallen trees and bombarded, blackened grass.

Kaeya always had found a certain annoyance with the creations of Khaenri'ah that had somehow spread to every corner of Teyvat. But traps like that were even more irritating, as it couldn't have been anything else but the malicious work of someone who took immense fun in hiding death machines for poor adventurers to discover.

Childe takes a seat beside him. "Sorry about your flowers," he uncaringly says.

"At least sound like you mean it," Kaeya replies. He tosses the burnt stems aside and gazes at the water, put-out. "What were you even doing this far out from the city that you'd find a place or mechanism in the ground like that?"

"Fishing. I said it earlier, didn't I? Except this pond didn't have any like the others, so I went in to see why."

"You're joking."

"Why would I joke about that?"

"Why were you fishing?" 

Childe looks at him as if Kaeya's being ridiculous. "Am I not allowed to? Does Mondstadt have some sort of strict rule on that I'm not aware of? That's not very knightly of you to not tell me beforehand."

Kaeya looks right back at him with the same sort of expression. "There is no rule. I assumed you were gone from Mondstadt to do whatever sordid Harbinger deeds your Tsarista so asks of you. And when would I have had time to tell you about a rule that doesn't exist in the two encounters we've had, one of which was with your dick in my mouth?"

Childe scowls. "Hey. You started that yourself." He scowls some more, accusing as he exclaims, "And I knew you were holding a grudge!"

"It's not a grudge," Kaeya retorts, vexed. "It's about manners, which you obviously don't have. Next time, finish your partner off."

"Finish my-" Childe does a double-take. "You can't be serious. You really expected something back after trying to suck your way to information? I don't know about your other 'adventures' but I'm not as simple to fall for such a crass tactic and reward you for it after."

"Oh, I'd say you're plenty simple," Kaeya snipes back. "You fell quite hard if I remember, looking for more. When's the last time you got laid?"

The Harbinger stops. He narrows his eyes.

"You're so annoying."

Kaeya narrows his own eye in kind. "No, you are. And you owe me flowers. Those didn't come cheap."

He swings his legs out the pond and stands, snatching the book beside him in the process, before starting off back towards to Mond. His boots squelch, his leggings and blouse stick to him, persistent, the back of his neck is cold.

He glowers at the ground.

With their pointless escapade, he's certain to have missed the right timing to get Jean. He hopes one of the others did instead- and also hopes nothing's been broken in his house.

On the last occasion he and Lisa had deigned to have a few drinks, the librarian had put a hole in his roof.

He hears when Childe follows him. He sees when the Harbinger walks beside him. He glares when the man tosses his cape and vest at his head.

"You really piss me off," Childe says.

Kaeya works his clothes back on. "Good. I hope I always do."

Irritated as they are, they return to Mond, and cross the bridge into its towering walls the same way they left, side-by-side, though considerably more unkempt than before.

They separate halfway on the walk to the upper city with kindly offered last words, ignoring the curious looks from passerbys and those dining outside.

"You ruined my night."

"You ruined it yourself, Harbinger. May your pillow be as blistering as the sun as you slip into slumber."

Kaeya stalks towards his home.

 

---

 

His bad mood doesn't persist for long.

Mostly because he won't allow it to.

As he knocks on his own door, brushing his clothes down best as he can, he feels the sound of voices, life and music from inside, and remembers the reason behind their gathering and celebration. That's right. It's not about him.

His door swings open. Welcoming light bathes the street.

Barbara greets him, bright- then worried. "Oh, Sir Kaeya, what happened?"

He steps inside, into warmth. "A small distraction. Thinking nothing of it," he reassures.

Klee barrels from the living room and into his leg. He picks the Spark Knight up, carrying her in an arm towards the kitchen as she giggles and says, "Your clothes are all wet and cold. Did you go swimming?"

"You're indeed quite sharp," he compliments. "How did you know?"

"Miss Lisa says Klee is a genius as smart as her."

"Mm. I believe we can all agree she's right."

In the kitchen, Jean and Diluc are talking while Lisa sips wine from a glass, listening to their small argument in humor.

They look over as he enters.

Jean rounds on him. "Kaeya- there you are! We were just about to go looking for you."

Kaeya allows a small laugh. "No need for that, I'm here and well."

"You look like you've fallen in a lake."

"The weather was pleasant. I couldn't resist." He hands her Venti's book. "A gift from a certain someone, unable to attend. I'm sorry for the delay."

She accepts the book, surprise on her face, and Kaeya hides his smile, taking the second glass of wine Lisa offers.

"That other drink," he murmurs, "when are we bringing it out?"

Lisa smiles. "Eager for a little trip on one of Miss Lisa's adventures into the unknown, are we?" She sips her glass. "All in due time."

Klee glances between them, excited. "Is Miss Lisa going to take Klee and Big Brother Kaeya somewhere fun?"

Lisa pats her on the head. "Only 'Big Brother Kaeya' for today. But not to worry. There are plenty of adventures to be had once you're older."

Someone would need to keep an eye on that for when the day came, Kaeya notes. 

Amber sticks her head into the kitchen from the living room, honing onto Kaeya in an instant. "Hey! You're finally back!" There's minor accusation in her voice. Kaeya would hold his hands up in surrender were he not holding a child in one and alcohol in the other. "We set up everything out here. Hurry up, I've been dying to eat."

Kaeya sets Klee down who dashes off into the hall at the mention of food. "You didn't have to wait," he says, "I would've joined you soon enough."

Amber rolls her eyes as if he's said something unreasonable, but vanishes from the doorway nevertheless to rejoin where Barbara and Albedo no doubt are.

Lisa, laughing softly beneath her breath, follows, twirling the back of Jean's hair with a finger as she passes the Acting Grandmaster and says, "Come along, dear. You can read your new book later. Given I don't take it from you first."

"Don't let her have it," Kaeya tells Jean as she's all but heralded out the kitchen by force.

She doesn't get the chance to reassure him she won't.

Kaeya sets his wine on the table next to him and sighs, bringing a hand to his head. Well. It wasn't as if he and Venti didn't anticipate this happening. Hopefully there was nothing important about the fancy book aside from where it came from.

"Where were you?"

Kaeya drops his hand.

Diluc's gaze is in no mood for jokes. Poor- considering the joyous event they're supposed to be having.

"Nowhere of any consequence."

"I find that hard to believe."

"You find a great deal many things hard to believe. I'm starting to get concerned." 

Diluc scoffs, eyes wandering over him.

For the first time Kaeya notices the cup in his hand. What is that?

Don't tell him it's juice.

"My, my, Master Diluc. Are you concerned for my well-being? I promise I was well-behaved."

Detestable meeting with a particular Harbinger notwithstanding.

Diluc's answering stare is flatter than it's been in years. "The only thing I'm concerned about is how loosely your head sits on top your shoulders."

"Very loose. But I'm sure you've known for ages now." He picks up his wine glass again and heads for where the rest of their companions gather. "I hope the food hasn't gotten cold. We can't trust you to heat it up."

Diluc steps on the back of his boot.

Kaeya trips into the wall.

Later, as Barbara and Amber share tales, picking new songs to put into the machine, as Klee happily creates several bombs they can only hope doesn't ignite, as Albedo dissociates from the very present danger of said bombs beside him and sketches Kaeya's living room to the finest detail, as Kaeya and Lisa drink a little too much of her 'special concoction' and start trying to fling plates from one point down his hall to the other for points based on distance and Diluc watches as if re-evaluating his decision step into Kaeya's life again-

Jean takes the time to pull him aside.

Outside, on the street.

The cool air is useless against his flush and burning cheeks as she thanks him, solemn, sincere and touched for what he'd done.

"It wasn't me," he says.

Or he thinks he does.

His mind isn't on the earth right now but floating somewhere above. He also thinks he might throw up. Or pass out. Maybe both.

Jean holds his face in the warmth of her hands. "Of course not," she agrees.

He gazes at her, blinking.

Her gesture drags him slowly, comfortingly, back to ground.

"Jean," he says, faintly, after a moment. "I'm going to die." 

She holds his hair back moments later as Lisa's drink works like magic and proceeds to reverse-exit from his mouth.

Jean sighs, but even in its exasperation and consternation, her murmur is an earnest one.

"What would we do without you?" 

 

---

 

Kaeya wakes feeling as if he's lived six years of harrowing adventure in a day.

He drags himself from the bed, pulls himself across the floor, and spends the next hour with his face over the toilet, purging a life's worth of sins. Then he gets up, showers with the zest of a dead fish, and dresses as down as possible.

Poet's shirt, riding pants and boots.

He swings on a navy cloak and departs, taking care to throw a blanket over Lisa sprawled over his couch as he goes.

The air is brisk, the morning pale, the sun a thousand times brighter than it needs to be, and Kaeya curses not once- but four times- as he goes tripping down the city stairs.

Dainsleif's apprentice should pray to whatever god he believed in that Kaeya sobers by the time he reaches him.

 

---

 

It's a nightmare.

Kaeya walks through the forests of Mond, over its hills, into its caves, alongside its rivers for two hours before realizing he's gone the wrong way, and further spends another two hours next to a stream facedown and so still the passing bandits, who question whether to rob him or not, assume he's dead and carry on.

It's the afternoon when Kaeya finally manages to wrangle Dainsleif's instructions from the night before out of the thick fogs of his mind, and by the time he comes across the familiar woods and familiar small cabin tucked in the furthest, most obscure corner of Brightcrown Kaeya never knew existed, his temperament is short and he has sworn to himself to never touch the librarian's self-made beverages for at least another year.

He opens the apprentice's cabin door without knocking and lets it bang against the wall.

"Finny."

The blond in question, trying to glue a broken vase back together on the floor, looks up and screams. 

 

---

 

Finny is older than Kaeya thought.

One year younger, but his features are boyish with freckles and gray eyes, speckled blue- and now with worry- as he slides a cup of tea across the table pushed against the wall by a fireplace. "Master Dainsleif?"

He returns to the vase on the floor, sitting cross-legged as he looks at it, discouraged, then looks back towards Kaeya.

"Did he uh- say he'd be visiting too?"

"It's just me," Kaeya tells him, warily taking hold of the tea but refraining from drinking.

He looks at the honey-brown liquid for a long, long time.

Finny is not from Khaenri'ah. He's not cursed by the Abyss.

He's ordinary.

A regular Mondstadtian.

There's a vegetable garden full of tomatoes behind the cabin, and several loaves of freshly baked bread in the cramped and cluttered space working as a kitchen in the corner just behind his head.

He has too many questions. He picks one.

"Do you have any idea what Dainsleif is?"

"Aside from a time-warping, teleporting magician?"

That was one way to describe him.

Finny scratches the side of his cheek and looks off to the side. "There was a bit of a situation a few years ago. I fell someplace I wasn't supposed to. On top of someone. ...They might've passed on to another world from it. Permanently. Apparently there was some sort of important ceremony going on. It was a little weird. There were sacrifices and too many people in robes, but Dainsleif was there and helped me out."

That sounded a little reminiscent of Kaeya's fifth birthday.

He studies Finny as he realizes.

"You fell into the Abyss."

"I guess." Finny coughs. "It wasn't on purpose. I was just walking along. But I guess that Abyss and those in it don't take it so lightly when some random person like me drops in on them and accidentally kills their leader. Master Dainsleif has had me here ever since."

"What about your family?"

"I haven't got one."

Kaeya feels a headache coming on.

He drinks the tea and lets it burn his throat and thinks about the future implications of Dainsleif having introduced him to his so-called apprentice who was essentially someone stowed in a safe-house after having murdered a Khaenrian priest.

That was a different problem for a different day.

There's another matter to address.

"If I mention a mushroom will you know what I'm speaking of?"

Finny looks at the pieces of the vase on the floor- and answers very slowly. "That depends."

"On what?"

"On what you'll do after."

"Aside from finding and getting rid of it- nothing."

"...Do you promise?"

"Promise what?"

"Do you promise that's all you'll do? You won't tell Dainsleif?"

And Finny's eyes are hard, tinged with a bit of desperation and resolve.

The headache is present and avidly knocking. Kaeya sets down the tea and brings a hand to his eye and brow, rubbing it in dreaded wait for the story to come. "I'll tell him what he needs to know and that's it. Anything else isn't my priority."

"...Well. Alright. I'm trusting you, okay?"

Finny sits in the chair across from him. He drums his fingers on the table for a minute before nervously speaking out.

"Not too long ago, Master Dainsleif came here and dropped off a mushroom. It was big, and weirdly-colored, and had an odd smell. He told me a bit of what it could do in warning, and asked me to hold on to it while he took care of some business down below."

"What business?"

"I... can tell you in detail if you'd like," Finny offers. "It should only take an hour if you wouldn't mind having a listen."

This is the second time Kaeya's hearing that.

Just what kind of situation was it? What had Dainsleif been getting up to down there?

"Spare me," he answers. "He gave you the mushroom. How did it end up, multiplied, in our markets?"

And Finny deflates.

His shoulders droop. Regret sits on his face, accompanied by acceptance and heartfelt sincerity.

"Love?"

Kaeya stares the younger man down, unimpressed.

"Wait! Hear me out," Finny hurries. "A-And maybe you'll understand. I... I have a friend, alright?"

"Alright."

"A good one. She's a bit involved with banditry, but- but nothing serious! Just vandalism. And thievery. And some minor harassment of travelers on the road. I mean, she tried to kidnap some big-wig from the Ministry of Civil Affairs once, but it failed so I don't think it counts."

Kaeya keeps on staring. "Right. Of course. Why would it?"

"I'm glad you understand," Finny rushes out, relieved, "because she's a good person. Just a little obsessed with coin."

Kaeya leans back and crosses his arms.

Finny holds his head in a hand.

"Okay, yeah, Master Dainsleif entrusted me with the mushroom so he could get it at a later date. I didn't really hide it, seeing how it's usually just me in here, and no one is supposed to visit. Technically. But me and my friend... we've known each other forever. She kinda looked out for me when my parents got sucked into that hole."

What?

"She visited not too long ago, and noticed the mushroom on the table. I tried telling her to be careful because of how dangerous it was, but the second she heard what it could do, she swiped it and ran. I chased after her, but she's pretty tough, and she beat me up and tossed me into the river. In the time we were separated, she'd found an alchemist to create copies for her to sell on the market. Of course the versions she promoted as 'instant-killers' are more of a knock-off sort and won't do much but make anyone who eats or touches them nauseous. Except the original- when I was able to track her down a few days later and tried to get her to give it back to me- she told she'd already cooked it into a soup."

"...Come again."

"There's this guy in Liyue she's been out to get.... But it won't make sense unless I start from the beginning I guess." Finny's gaze wanders. "About a month ago, we were traveling on the road to the Harbor. We ran into some rich guy in desperate throes. He had just been caught cheating on his promised fiance of twenty years and was fleeing from the hit-men her family hired to take him out. Something about preserving her honor. Or maybe they just wanted to kill him. I dunno. He claimed he didn't know how it happened. One moment, he'd been celebrating the engagement with his buddies at the Xinyue Kiosk, playing with tiles and getting drunk, and in the next he was at some Inn across the street in bed with three different women and trying to rope his fiance into it. Said he couldn't remember what he'd been thinking, only that he'd been overcome with a sudden, strong desire to sleep with as many women as he could, and that he'd made a bet with some old guy over cards prior to that and had lost."

What plot of whose horrible book was this?

"Long story short, my friend offered to give him shelter in exchange for some goods, and while she was turning out his pockets and stealing all his money before he could answer, he suddenly started asking her if she wanted to get married. Would you believe it? She left me right there!"

Kaeya can believe it all right.

"I didn't expect that," Finny's mouth turns down. "Obviously it was so she could work her way into his wealth, but they didn't even leave me a horse to travel back home with. I had to walk and it took weeks." 

That's what he was bothered by?

"They found a priest and made their vows. Letters came for a few days, and it sounded like they were having a good time. She wrote that he spoiled her with lavish clothes and gourmet foods- but one week after their marriage- his head suddenly cleared and he up and left her right before paying for an elaborate seafood meal. Claimed he needed to return home and make amends, and while he was actually super happy they'd slept together and should meet up in the future to 'go at it again', he needed to re-propose to his ex-fiance and get their marriage rolling again so he could take her family's inheritance after her father died."

So the guy's just a sleezebag!

A horny one at that.

Finny slumps forward on the table. "My friend didn't take it too well. Apparently she'd actually fallen in love with him."

Was he joking? The only thing she'd fallen in love with was the excessive amount of money that'd been at her disposal for seven days.

"She'd been trying to get revenge on him ever since and get some part of that lost wealth back. Which is why she took that mushroom. And now it's gone."

Kaeya had a lot of questions about the slew of idiocy he'd just been subjected to hearing, but not enough capability to put his sheer incredulity into words enough to express them.

Someone who very clearly only loved Mora had made one of Khaenri'ah's most lethal vegetables into someone else's last meal.

"She gave it to him. He's dead," Kaeya states.

Finny shakes his head. "She couldn't go through with it. She said her heart wouldn't let her risk it. There was always a chance they could get back together."

That wasn't her heart, that was her desire to bathe in gold.

"So where's the mushroom?" Kaeya demands to know.

Finny-

Finny studiously avoids his gaze.

"...She gave it to the guy. Told him he was the only one able to get into close quarters with his fiance to poison her with it."

A distant, distant part of Kaeya calls down onto deaf ears in a bottomless chasm.

Pardon me, I'm quite sorry, but your best friend's a murderer! Has she never held Mora in her life? She's clearly trying to murder that man's wife so she can take her place then later backstab her 'husband' for the inheritance herself!

On the outside, however, Kaeya gets to his feet, calm.

"So the mushroom, assuming no one's been killed by it yet, is in Liyue Harbor. With that man."

"I think so."

Forget the man's fiance, a careless misstep, a foolish mushroom crushed or ground, the Harbor would turn a quarter of the way into the next Abyss.

Kaeya heads for the cabin door. Finny scrambles from the table and hurries after him.

"Hold up! Listen, I didn't ask before because you seemed a little grouchy, but is Dainsleif really mad about this? Is there going to be a third person, pretending not to know anything, interrogating me about this before he comes himself?"

Kaeya stops.

Everything in him stops.

He turns around.

Slow.

"What did you say?"

Finny hesitates, gray eyes flickering about, unsure. "...Y'know. More psychological games until I seek Master Dainsleif out myself and confess-"

"What did you mean by 'a third person'? Am I not the first person you talked to?"

"Er- no. There was this guy. He came out of nowhere while I was baking and threatened to waterboard me until I told him exactly what I told you. Then he used my kitchen to cook us something before thanking me and heading off. Said I had done 'Her Majesty' a great favor and that there wouldn't be need for me to worry about the problem of the mushroom anymore."

"Finny."

Kaeya's tone is quiet and soft and frosty as the ice that creeps along the floor.

"What did he look like?"

"Kinda tall. Dressed like a blob of gray."

"When was this?"

"He first came by a week ago. Then he stopped by yesterday and asked me for more details on the man and helped me bake some muffins."

Kaeya stares at Finny- resisting the urge to strangle the younger man- and turns on his heel.

Oh was that so? 

 

---

 

He makes it back to Mondstadt in half the time it took him to leave.

Evening hasn't yet hit.

Of course. 

Of course. 

He should've surmised earlier what was going on.

Somehow that Cryo Archon of Snezhnaya had caught wind of the Khaenrian mushroom's existence.

She was notorious for poking her nose and agents where they didn't belong. Their fascination with the Abyss; with understanding Khaenri'ah's old dynasty, would lead them nowhere but down along the same road of doom and he would feel no pity.

And he could gander a guess at her current intentions just fine.

Snezhnaya had long been in the works of imitating the great powers of his homeland that once was. Whereas Khaenri'ah was blessed with the flow of magic, Snezhnaya was not. They could only create echoes of its abilities in their technologies and with their gadgets.

A mushroom alone was hardly worth their time. Its properties however, were that Tsarista so inclined-

She could very well study and emulate the effects of the Abyss-grown fungi into a proper weapon of use.

Poisons couldn't kill a god, much less the ones of Celestia, but it could certainly dispose of any casual human who stood on Celestia's side when the time came for her to launch her war against the gods.

A formidable strategist, meticulous, with the gift of foresight.

So Tartaglia had been sent to Mondstadt on her behalf.

That implied her people had information on Finny which- did Dainsleif know about?

And that was why the Boughs Keeper had him go to Finny himself? To enlist in the Knights? 

Kaeya grabs Huffman walking about the lower streets with strict orders to relay Finny's whereabouts and stricter orders to not have the knights bring him into the safety of Mondstadt until the day after tomorrow when they could be sure the Fatui Harbinger was gone- then he sweeps up the many stairs, through the alleyways and cobbled roads until he reaches the Goth Grand Hotel.

 

---

 

Luke's greeting is cut off as Kaeya politely storms over.

"Sir Kaeya, good to-"

"Tartaglia's inside."

"Oh." Luke blinks, unfazed by the interruption. "Yeah. Master Childe technically came back yesterday, and Lyud said she saw you guys together yesterday with some nice-looking flowers, but he's preparing to leave soon by tomorrow-"

Kaeya moves past him and goes inside.

The Fatui in the lobby and loitering in the lounge on fancy sofas and fine tables, blink and look over.

The receptionist at the desk doesn't seem to recognize who he is without his usual fanfare Knight attire until she catches him halfway up the stairs and he turns to demand for the Harbinger's room.

The suite is on the fifth floor, tucked into a far corner.

One of their better ones but not their grandest, simple in comparison to those that took up an entire wing.

He doesn't knock, because he doesn't, and flicks in the door with Cryo.

A bed. A wide window. A dresser, a closet, a book-stand, ornate rich blue carpet, and equally blue, gold-stitched curtains. A chaise sofa, draped in blanket.

The room is empty.

Kaeya closes the door behind him with a great deal more care than how he opened it.

He glances around.

He opens a few drawers.

He goes over to the sofa as he notices a multitude of weapons laid out on the gray cushion.

Daggers, staff, spear and sword, bow and throwing knives.

They were well-maintained.

Tartaglia could fight with any of these, and it didn't include his hand-to-hand prowess or Vision. It was a wonder he hadn't done anything else to Finny except talk and bake.

The man in Liyue, however, wouldn't be so lucky if he was found and too stubborn to talk.

Kaeya picks up a black, crudely-made sickle and stares at it.

Was Childe planning on taking off someone's head?

"Put that down will you? I feel like you'll take off your own hand."

Kaeya jerks around.

Childe leans against the bathroom doorframe with folded arms. His expression is flat. He's half-dressed, pants tugged on and dripping wet. His hair curls and clings to his neck.

Steam rolls through the door.

What had he been doing? Having a bath, thinking of all the ways to get his hands on either Liyuen man or Khaenrian mushroom?

Kaeya smirks. The nerve. "Oh. I didn't expect to see you here," he says to be annoying.

Childe's face has, predictably, gone flatter. "In my room?"

"Yes." Kaeya sets the sickle on the sofa. "You'll excuse the interruption. There was a matter of great importance. I simply had to see you."

"Huh."

And Childe says it, not as a question, not confused, but as a statement, as an 'is that so?', with eyes that search and contemplate.

"Well I didn't think you were this petty that you'd actually come here and try to wrangle some sort of compensation for that time in the shed and last night, but you're pretty strange so-"

"What?" Kaeya's smirk falls off. 

Childe pushes from the doorframe. "You're a real nuisance, but if it gets you off my back. The last thing I need is you pestering me about this all the way back to Snezhnaya by bird or agent or worse yourself. Seriously, don't go following me home."

Kaeya's expression has never been so blank.

He doesn't move, even as Childe draws near, carrying the scent of nature and breeze.

"That's not why I'm here."

"That's not why you busted in my door, unannounced, needing to see me?"

"You don't need to make it sound like that."

"Like what?"

"Like I was looking for you."

"But you said you were."

"I was."

Kaeya pauses as his own words are turned around on him. He scowls, steps around the Harbinger and moves closer to the dresser and bed, putting space in between.

Childe snorts under his breath in amusement, casting a short glimpse over his weapons before taking the time to gather and stow them away on pre-hung hooks in the large closet space.

The Fatui had thrown enough Mora at Goth to rent the Hotel indefinitely.

Kaeya would be more surprised if the rooms and common spaces hadn't been modified to suit the needs of the diplomats and their traveling officers.

"I do wonder if you plan on leaving those in there when you depart for Liyue tomorrow," he comments.

"I don't remember telling you I was leaving tomorrow."

"Luke is a friendly one."

"Luke has gotten too lax."

"Don't punish him too bad," Kaeya snarks.

"Concerned?"

"He is something of a comrade." 

"How kind of you. He would be overjoyed to hear you say that." Childe closes the closet and faces him.

Kaeya's eye falls to his very well-defined chest. Scars litter the skin from battles hard-won and hard-fought, but that's not what he's looking at.

A peculiar mark curves along his heart, purple, angry, jagged and deep.

There's something about it.

An echo of lost power. 

"...Now how did that happen...?" he murmurs to himself in thought.

He's heard regardless.

"My eyes are up here," Childe tells him.

Still, he doesn't seem bothered by the scrutiny.

He casually walks over.

Kaeya blinks.

Childe grabs the front of his cloak- and holds it- sliding a thumb beneath its clasp. "Your 'matter of great importance'. What is it?"

Kaeya's moderately bewildered, though he hides it. He... could've sworn he was the one leading the questioning. Wasn't he the one who came here? Answering the Harbinger seems like he's giving in to something.

It's supposed to be the other way around.

"I'm...not telling you," he replies, and feels bamboozled after.

"Then how am I supposed to know what you're looking for?"

"Because."

"Because what?" Childe lifts an eyebrow as Kaeya stops talking, looking mildly perturbed. "Use your words."

The knight's eye flickers to the hand on his cloak, then flickers back up.

His confusion has increased.

Childe flicks open the cloak's clasp and runs his eyes down the lithe body in front of him.

The clothes underneath aren't ones worn during knightly affairs.

They're simple.

Alberich took pride in his appearance as a captain of Mondstadt. If he's dressed like this, it speaks to private affairs. And considering how he'd barged in...

Childe brushes a thumb across Kaeya's bottom lip, before pressing and pulling his mouth open. He pushes his thumb inside and holds the side of the other man's face lightly. "Someone's been doing a little investigative work. Good job."

He sinks his thumb farther in, noting as Kaeya's tongue instinctively pushes back against it and as Kaeya's face crumples and twists.

How interesting.

He had to admit he didn't think someone as careful as the captain would be weak against anything going into his mouth, but the world was full of wonders and infinite kinks, and there was something that had been on Childe's mind since the night before.

What fortunate timing.

He tugs Kaeya close to him, removes his thumb and replaces it with his tongue.

Gentle; slow.

Kaeya gives back without a second thought. Then has a thought- and jerks his head away, slight.

"What are you doing?"

Childe smiles. "Remuneration. Isn't it what you wanted?"

"I- that's not-" Kaeya argues.

He falters.

"Why now?"

Childe sits on the edge of his bed. "Because I'm leaving tomorrow, right?"

Carefully he pulls Kaeya onto his lap and sweeps his cloak aside. It dusts the floor. Kaeya looks after it. Childe turns the knight's head back around with a hand, laughing.

"That's not so important."

He runs his hands along Kaeya's thighs, squeezes, and guides him into a second kiss.

There's something uncertain, seeking, in the way Kaeya's mouth explores his own, and it's infinitely more cautious than before, as if expecting Childe to suddenly push him away.

Ah ha.

Well that won't do.

He squeezes Kaeya's thighs once more, then gradually trails them to hips, to waist, around to lower back. He kneads and presses; bringing Kaeya closer. Some of Kaeya's tension abates.

Good.

He curls his tongue against the knight's. He grinds up, not minding his growing hardness; more interested in Kaeya's own.

The temperature rises.

Childe leisurely lies back, bringing the other man with him, then rolls them over and untangles his tongue from Kaeya's, drawing back very, very slightly to murmur against his lips.

"After this, don't follow me. Got it?"

 

---

 

Kaeya is soft.

For some reason, everything about him is.

His skin, his thighs, his torso and arms.

It's almost strange considering the brittle nature of his Vision and prickly demeanor, but Childe guesses it's not that off from him himself; a blessing of water, a flowing, tangible, bending force, and here he was with a body honed, finely tuned into an unbowing, unbreaking weapon.

Kaeya covers his face with an arm.

Childe, sitting beside him, one leg dangling off the bed, removes the arm before going back to working the cock in his left hand.

The knight is attractive; it isn't any secret. His dick is adorable. He looks, quite literally, like he's going to die of embarrassment.

"You know," Childe comments, squeezing on every other upstroke and watching as Kaeya melts into the sheets, simultaneously pressing up, subconsciously asking for more, "you're acting like you've never gotten a handjob before. And I know that's not true."

Kaeya twitches.

His hands reach to grab the pillow from under his neck- so he can what- try and cover his face again?

"Most people don't stare," Kaeya answers sharply as Childe takes the pillow off and tosses it aside. "Stop looking at me."

"Don't stare? So what, you work your magic and if anyone tries to reciprocate you have them stare at a wall while they do it?" He strokes slower. "That's ridiculous."

Kaeya doesn't care if any of the targets he's ever had a tryst with have seen his body. He's annoyed that it's Tartaglia looking at him.

And the Harbinger's eyes are steady and clear.

He looks away, muttering- and jerks half a second later, inhaling sharply, as a mouth sinks on his dick. He momentarily loses his train of thought.

Childe squeezes the base of his cock and tastes him with a warmth and wetness, tongue-heavy and hot it makes Kaeya's toes curl and back arc.

The heat is brief.

Childe chuckles as he pulls off and get a look at Kaeya's face. It's not even a challenge. Kaeya is putty; weak to touch. He can't even begin to imagine how the knight managed to manipulate any of the others he'd seduced.

Unless there was another element coming into play that put the knight in control.

...Hm.

Another thought for another day.

More of a touch. More of a pace.

Kaeya's face pinches. His brows knit and his lips part, as his breath hastens and chest rises and drops heavier than before. A noise builds in the back of his throat. His fingers clutch the sheets and-

Childe stops.

He calmly settles his finger over the tip of Kaeya's throbbing head, idly pushing at the pre-cum leaking out.

Kaeya's eye flutters, confused.

Childe rubs for a second longer before returning to slightly harder ministrations. He works the other man up until the tiny groans involuntarily come again.

And stops once more.

Kaeya's eye flits about, struggling, caught in a fog of irritation and pleasure. "...What are you doing?"

His breath is slightly strained.

"Nothing."

Childe starts for a third time. And like a third time, as Kaeya squirms impatient and begins to get worked up-

He halts.

"What do you want?" he asks.

Kaeya pants, chest rising and falling, sweat on his brow. Not quite focused. "What?"

"I'm listening," Childe says, "so go ahead and tell me what you want."

Kaeya looks at him, uncomprehending.

"Nothing to say? That's alright. I'll go first."

Childe goes back to jerking him, easy and slow, with a thumb giving certain attention to a particular spot under the tip of Kaeya's head he's noticed leaves him more out of breath when pressed against.

"I know why you came here. And it's not for this."

He gives Kaeya's dick a hard tug; watches as the knight throws his head back at the sharp spike of pleasure, and begins to give a proper, well-paced handjob to the man he'd been bringing steadily to an edge.

"You've been so insistent on figuring out my plans. Hasn't it occurred to someone as smart as you, I'd do the same?"

Kaeya's hands clutch at the sheets.

Childe looks at him carefully. "You know what I'm doing here. You learned between last night and today. I can't imagine any of the Fatui sharing information like that with you, since the only one who knew were my lieutenants posted higher up, beyond the city, and me, myself."

Kaeya's mouth opens. The look in his eye in incensed but it's stuttered breaths that spill from his lips.

Childe regards the rapidly climaxing man with disinterest. "Who's your source?"

Kaeya can't get an answer out.

Childe doesn't expect him to. He lets Kaeya come- then thumbs his slit and presses down as Kaeya gasps and scrambles and struggles to get away from the overstimulation. Childe holds him in place, and continues to work his thumb around the leaking, twitching head, stroking loose skin, and squeezing again.

Kaeya seizes his wrist with both hands, pulling himself halfway up with an eye blown wide, quaking thighs, and shaking breaths that hiss as he heaves in.

"Who's your source?" Childe repeats. "Are they a threat?"

Kaeya doesn't reply. His mind is racing, Childe can see it, trying to put something together.

Childe thinks for a moment; then tells the knight evenly, "Let go and I will too."

Kaeya lets go like fire. Childe does not.

He lowers himself between Kaeya's thighs instead, squeezing the soft skin briefly before swallowing him down.

Kaeya's hands clutch at his hair and tug, but there's no strength. His hips buck. He writhes.

Childe buries his nose straight into Kaeya's curls and waits.

"...don't know-" Kaeya starts to gasps. Childe listens with interest. "You don't know him, he's not dangerous, enough, that's too much-"

Childe pulls off, licking and sucking along the way before offering the raw and red head an appreciative kiss.

"What do you want with what I'm after?" he asks as Kaeya lies somewhat comatose on the bed. He massages the knight's thighs; rubs his stomach and tweaks a nipple idly through his shirt. "Hm?"

He leans down and pushes Kaeya's bangs from his forehead, dropping a sweet kiss there too.

"I, of course, act on behalf of Her Majesty. But for you... is it the Acting Grandmaster so interested it compels you to act so carelessly? Or is it Khaenri'ah?"

Kaeya startles. His eye widens and he starts to form some semblance of a response. But Childe doesn't have to hear it to know which one it is.

He tangles his tongue with Kaeya's own, running his fingers through the knight's hair and tugging his head back, lazily thrusting the wet muscle further in as he deepens their kiss.

There's nothing else he needs. Everything else he can deduct on his own.

Kaeya trembles. Childe shifts and tugs his head back farther, separating the kiss to press butterfly ones gently along his neck. He pauses where Kaeya's pulse flits, appreciating the unsteadiness in the other's slipping noises as he sucks lightly; then harder; then grins.

"Oh yeah. That's right. Something I wanted to tell you," he says.

Kaeya's hands on him tighten.

"Ask your questions during. Your chances of getting what you want are much, much higher."

"I know that, be quiet, shut your mouth-" 

Childe bites down on his neck.

Kaeya's breaks on a shaking groan, and this time when Childe reaches and grabs his weeping cock, there are no games as he moves him towards a second completion. He chuckles as Kaeya pants and bucks up hurriedly, desperately in his palm. He nibbles on his ear; kisses beneath, drags his teeth against the lobe before sucking.

Kaeya whines from deep in the depths of his throat- and looks horrified for it.

Childe keeps his attention there until the mortification on the knight's face breaks apart and crumbles into glazed pleasure.

His skin is flushed. The heat beneath it burns. At this rate, he might just burst into flame, and what is Childe supposed to do then?

He drops his mouth from Kaeya's ear and smiles against the other man's lips.

"Too much again? I suppose I can stop, but don't come complaining to me again about not finishing anyone off-"

"If you stop I will freeze you," Kaeya threatens, rushed, breathless and serious beyond belief. 

A tingle crawls up Childe's spine.

"So foul."

He threads fingers into Kaeya's hair and yanks.

Kaeya jerks and stiffens, thighs closing as he comes, and it's sweet noises Childe takes in and drinks down as Kaeya melts, soft, groaning helplessly in pleasured pain as Childe continues to tug on him even after. "Stop it..." his voice breaks as Childe kisses between his keening breathes.

Kaeya needs him to stop.

No. Kaeya needs him to keep going. 

No, wait, what had the Harbinger said about Khaenri'ah?

Childe licks into his mouth.

They shift against each other.

Childe nudges his thighs back open with a knee.

The door opens.

"Master Childe-"

Luke halts in the doorway.

Their kiss tears apart.

There is silence- and the sound of disheveled breaths.

Luke glances between them with an open mouth. Then he closes it. Steps backwards. And shuts the door.

Kaeya and Childe look at the closed door with wide eyes and heaving chests.

Luke's footsteps walk three paces before taking off at a run. 

 

 

 

Notes:

I remember sitting down last week and telling myself this would be 0.5 words long 🗿

Chapter 4: ninety percent of an iceberg lies beneath the water's surface

As it turns out, the walls of the Goth Grand Hotel are incredibly thin.

And Kaeya is a lot stronger than he looks.

Childe discovers this after getting cratered into the back wall of his suite with enough Cryo to kill any other ordinary human-being.

But this wasn't after Luke had walked in on them.

It wasn't after the traumatized man had closed the door and taken off.

No.

It was only after Kaeya had looked at him afterwards. Only after Childe had looked back.

Only after Childe had pulled him down flat onto the bed, tugged Kaeya's legs around his waist and dry-humped the bejeezus out of him until Kaeya suffered a dry orgasm so blisteringly painful he stopped functioning long enough for Childe to actually think he was dead. 

To be fair, Childe could admit he deserved getting launched into the wall afterwards, as in the long ten minutes that stretched between them both in shared self-reflection, Childe had gotten a little too daring, a little too curious, poking at Kaeya's limp dick and saying-

"Wow. How sensitive are you?" 

The knight's Cryo was cold as the peaks of the alps of his home. That is to say- absolutely freezing. 

He picks himself out the dent in the plaster, paint and wood breaking to the floor. Kaeya had gone out the window.

They were five stories up. Childe's not too sure if he's still alive.

He peeks out the window.

There's a figure navigating a bit clumsily over the rooftops, shoving the heads of people poking out from their attics back into their homes as he goes. 

Childe huffs, despite himself, bemused. 

He heads for his door, noticing for the first time that there was ice on the outer side. From when Alberich had come busting his way in? 

Childe walks into the hall.

He walks to the railing.

He looks down the long distance towards the lobby. 

And sees every Fatui subordinate inside it staring up at him. 

Childe half-laughs.

He waves.

He steps back into his bedroom and locks himself in.

Locks the door. 

That's... probably what he should've done before getting a hand down Kaeya's pants. 

Well too late for that.

 

---

 

News of the affair spreads in the span of three hours. Not because of Luke.

But because of Pallad. 

But yes, alright, first and foremost because of Luke. 

 

---

 

As the bell of the cathedral signaled the coming of evening as the clocktower struck six, an unusual bunch took up crowded space on the upstairs second floor of the Angel's Share tavern.

Today so happened to be the day where the wine tycoon, Ragnvindr, was absent from the bar, and the man, Charles, had presumed control. They would consider themselves lucky to not have to deal with the redheaded businessman's passive-aggressive service and relentless dead-eyed stares, but they didn't feel very lucky at all.

At least- one of them didn't. 

Luke was slumped over the table. 

Fifteen of the Fatui gathered around him, sitting solemn as if attending a wake, some with hands steepled, others with folded arms, masks off, staring down at the large, round table they squished together at.

The upstairs was just as busy as the downstairs.

They were hardly discreet, but there were few else places they could retreat to where their conversation could be easily drowned out in. 

"...How much alcohol do you think we can all drink?" one finally asks.  

"As much as we can afford," another answers. "Do we still have that Mora from the bet last week? Viktor?"

"No." And a third Fatui says it, greatly annoyed, before the diplomat in question can answer. "He gave it to the deaconess."

"She asked for an offering," Viktor defends.

"To an Archon that's not even our own! You've been spending too much time listening to hymns in there. It's changed you. You're a church boy now- a church boy."

"There's nothing wrong with that!"

Luke sits up, covering his eyes with his hands and speaking before a full-blown argument can begin. "Can you guys focus on the real problem? Like the fact that I'm going to die because of all of you?" 

"Us?" a comrade scoffs in disbelief. "It's not our fault you don't know how to knock. You lost the game and got sent up to investigate the noise. Anyone with common sense would've never walked in on a Harbinger without announcing themselves and their intentions first. If you die, you die."

"Shut up. You're the worst."

"Personally, I just can't believe it..." Luke's fellow guard beside him comments. "Master Childe has always been...unorthodox. But sleeping with a Knight? I wonder what the reason for that was."

"We never did figure out what Master Childe's reason for being here was. Did the higher-ups let anything slip down?" a second guard wonders. 

"They didn't let anything slip, but I did overhear from Sacha that Master Childe was supposedly looking for someone."

"Someone like a knight?"

"Can't be. How would they have even gotten involved? Master Childe's never been to Mondstadt before."

"That we know of."

Luke frowns. "Lyudmila said she saw them together. The day before." 

"Mm, that's right," a Fatui agrees, untucking a hand from her folded arm to gesture. "I saw them too, heading off with flowers. They went straight out of the city." 

"So you caught sight of that too huh," the Fatui beside her contemplates, holding his chin in thought. "I saw when they returned. Clothes out of place on the knight." 

"Yeah, but they got into a fight didn't they? Or something of the sort. I was with Albert having sticky-roast. Isn't that what we saw?" comes the inquiry from her friend across the table.

"I suppose," Albert reluctantly agrees. "They didn't part on good terms."

Luke straightens, stiff as a board. "Are you saying what I witnessed two hours ago was make-up sex? A make-up sex thing in the sheets that I interrupted? No. I'm dead. I'm definitely dead. No- wait. How forgiving is Master Childe? Have any of you worked with him before? He's not like Lady Signora or Lord Scaramouche, right? I can always say it was a mistake. A wrong room entered!"

"Didn't you say his name when you walked in?" the Fatui behind him questions flatly. 

Luke thought back to the moment, re-envisioned more than he wanted, and proceeds to slump back onto the table, putting his face down on it. "Ugh. Don't remind me."

"A Harbinger and a Knight? Which Knight?"

Luke scowls into the wood grain of the table at the ridiculous question and lifts his head. "Where have you been this whole conversation? With Sir Kaeya, obviously-" he stops. 

He stares. 

Sitting at the table in the middle stool, pitcher of ale in hand, is a Mondstadtian adventurer they hadn't even noticed slipped into their fold during the back-and-forth of their debate. 

"...Who's this fool?" Viktor asks. 

The fool is Pallad. 

They don't know that. 

Pallad lowers his drink, oblivious to the fact that the open seat he had grabbed in his wandering was in the council of Fatui diplomats and guards. "Oh. Sir Kaeya. Yes, I know him," he notes, looking into his ale. "He and Master Diluc are brothers. So he was sleeping with a Harbinger. How nice. I'm glad he found someone after all."

Luke, not caring at all what nonsense was coming from the man's mouth, does a triple-take with the rest of the Fatui and balks. "What the-! Who even are you? This is a private affair- get out!"

Pallad excuses himself. 

And relays the news to Nimrod. 

Nimrod babbles drunkenly to Jose. 

Jose chuckles with mirth and strums a tune, lost inspiration now found anew. He sings of forbidden and unexpected love to every patron in the bar. 

Charles stares, in the middle of mixing a drink. 

In the back corner of the tavern, two off-duty knights, Otto and Raymond, listen to the song spilling from the bard's mouth very explicitly stating names and acts of sexual deeds of a certain captain they know. Their half-tilted drinks miss their mouths and pour onto their laps. 

The talks spill into the streets of the lower city after the performance. 

Not just because of what it'd been about, but because of how horrendously out of tune and off-rhythm it'd been.

"And nothing rhymed," Otto says as he and Raymond walk slowly along the street. Dusk sweeps the roads and casts shadows from the city walls. Lantern light glows bright above their heads. "Bed is one of the easiest words to rhyme with. Why'd he say 'deflowered'?" 

"Is that honestly what you took away from that?" Raymond asks. 

"I'm trying not to think about the implications of what he said. Or how 'sucking head' would've fit much better. Please. I'm trying to have some respect for Captain Kaeya. The least we can do is try and be decent-minded about it." 

"There's nothing decent about what we heard at all. But I can't imagine it's true. The captain isn't the sort to sleep around. I don't think he's even allowed to." 

"Allowed to? What do you even mean by that?"

"I'm talking about Master Diluc. I heard a while back from some of the knights who tagged along with Captain Kaeya once that Master Diluc has eyes monitoring him at all times." 

"That's a little far-fetched. Master Diluc wouldn't bother with that." 

"After the incident with Oswald? You remember that, don't you?" 

"I mean, he was rendered bald in the blink of an eye. Who wouldn't remember that." 

"Yeah. Because Master Diluc somehow managed to hear from all the way back at the Winery that the guy was 'putting out' moves." 

"I thought he was summoning a demon." 

"That too."

"Hm. Yeah. Oswald made me uncomfortable," Otto admits. 

"He made everyone uncomfortable," Raymond agrees. 

"What are you guys talking about so serious-like?" Miles questions, coming down the road across from them on his own patrol. 

"Oswald." 

Miles' face creases. "Oh. Eeurch. Did he find his way back?" 

Raymond sighs. "No. We were talking about him in relation to the captain." 

"Captain Kaeya?" Miles joins them on their walk, curious. "You know, I heard about thirty minutes ago two girls giggling behind their hands and making jokes about how disappointed their grandmothers would be now that the captain 'is taken'. Any idea what that might be about?"

Otto and Raymond share a glance. Otto hesitates. 

"...Well there's a rumor..." 

It reaches the ears of Lawrence and Swan posted at the front gate an hour later who argue over its credibility. 

"We shouldn't be talking about it, we should be trying to quell the gossip for the captain's sake," frowns Swan. "It's no doubt a lie spread by the Fatui in one of their nefarious plans to bring us down."

"But we've been getting along with the Fatui here, haven't we? Sort of," Lawrence points out. "Why would they make up something so specific? They wouldn't have- unless one of them saw it with their own eyes. Besides, parts of the song make sense. I saw Captain Kaeya and the Harbinger leave the city together. They went somewhere out of sight. And Godwin patrols the valley-"

"Sir Lawrence?"

"Yes, greetings Outrider. Yesterday on his way back into the city while you were on break, Godwin told he saw Captain Kaeya and the Harbinger from afar. The captain had flowers; it seemed like a date. And you know Godwin's seeing Glory. If anyone knows something about two people in a romance wouldn't it be him?"

Swan frowns even deeper. "...Alright. Even if it's true or not, talk like this is bound to bring trouble. We should..." 

At this point, Kaeya, who had retreated to the safety of his home, dressing himself frantically in his regular knightly clothes- as he had suddenly remembered a secondary obligation he needed to attend to in the middle of attempting to stress-cook a meal on the stove- was wholly unaware of the events beyond his door and spreading chatter going on. 

He's soon made aware as Amber bursts through his door, unannounced, incredulous, running to his room, exclaiming-

"That's who you were going off to meet?" 

Kaeya assures her she's quite wrong.

He plays the clueless role, the offended one, the bewildered; the thoughtful-levelheaded one, and treats her to the dinner he had burnt, absent of any and all flavor. After convincing her of how wrong she must've been, as he had been in his home working on perfecting this particular recipe to no avail, he sends her off on her way with light advice to not take such gossip as truth. 

She's still arguing even as he shuts his front door in her face. 

Even as he lies on the floor of foyer thereafter, face-down, waiting for an Archon- any Archon- to remove him from the earth. 

When one doesn't- he gets up and escapes out his back door. 

 

---

Because the fates of the Teyvat have long since stopped aligning in Kaeya's favor, he finds himself seated at the dining table in Diluc's manor around ten at night, approximately six and a half hours after the rumors have sent a fire-flood of gossip through Mondstadt's lower tiers of the city.

Diluc, none-the-wiser, as he had been handling affairs at the Winery on this day, sits across from him, eating idly at the vegetables and meat on his plate.

The maids watch from a distance. The butlers stand at-the-ready, close by.

They have always been Diluc's eyes and ears, informants and agents for what happens in Mond and around their property, and there is not a single doubt in Kaeya's mind that they know. Six hours was too long a time for them. Six hours was too short a time for him.

Too short for him to remember where he needed to be, who he needed to be with, and to process what had occurred.

These dinners were a mid-monthly affair, and had been since the exorcism fest that had led to their reconciliation on their late father's behalf. Kaeya couldn't cancel. Not without drawing Diluc's suspicion. Neither had missed a dinner yet- and it'd been well over a year.

Why in the world had they made that promise to Crepus?

Why had they both chosen that time to acknowledge their feelings? To become sentimental? To become brothers?

He should've joined Crepus in the grave, is what he should've done back then.

But as it is, Kaeya is still alive and well and burdened with regret. And the unending feeling of calloused palms on his thighs, creeping up his neck, to his face.

Tartaglia between his legs had been... a thing.

With a mouth.

And a tongue.

His hair was soft.

And he mentioned Khaenri'ah.

Because of personal research? Or was this something that incessant Archon of Snezhnaya knew too? If so- who else and how many among the higher-level agents of the Fatui were aware?

His thoughts stray back to the Harbinger.

His eye narrows imperceptibly small.

He'd been made a fool of again and they'd been seen, and if that wasn't a lifetime's worth of nightmare wet-dream fuel he didn't know what was.

... He had a problem.

And too many kinks.

And Tartaglia was after his mushroom.

He needed to focus on that.

Not on the way Childe had grown rock-hard after Luke vanished. Not on the way they'd both been a little too-turned on by the fact, him already having been more into it than he should've been. Not on Childe's weight. Not on his grip. Not on his shoulders.

Kaeya leans forward and very seriously steeples his fingers together and stares down at his plate.

That was the drawback to routing out greedy lowlifes, businessmen and plotting snakes from Mond and the wine industry alike. The moment a questionable human-being appeared, with an 'okay' face and 'decent' eyes, closer in age, he was all too eager to enjoy the respite it brought.

Ah- but that'd been too careless.

He gotten too carried away in the terrible, albeit excruciating, relief it was.

A lie, and he'd believed it, and even after finding out what it was he hadn't...

"What are you doing?"

Kaeya whips his head up. Diluc eyes him, dryly, cutting into his steak slow.

Kaeya doesn't tell him to mind his own business because he's supposed to be pretending nothing of significant grief to himself had happened to him by the same person for a second time. He laughs instead, reaching for his wine glass and picking it up with a hand that rattles so much it sends half the wine spilling from his cup and onto his lap.

"Nothing," he answers as the liquid seeps through his clothes and onto skin. "I'm doing nothing. Merely reminiscing on all the memories of this home."

Because he'll soon be one of them.

After Diluc finds out.

"...Alright," his brother says very obviously not believing a word. The tip of his fork and knife now rest on top of his steak.

A butler comes to Kaeya's side and offers a cloth, and that's a smirk on the man's face if Kaeya's ever seen one.

"Please do be careful, Master Kaeya," the butler lightly says. "Some messes cannot be so easily wiped away."

"Your concern is oh so appreciated," Kaeya smiles. Get the hell out of here.

The butler's smirk grows. He nods, conceding, and politely returns to his post.

Diluc's expression is deadpan. "What was that?"

"What was what?"

"That."

Kaeya holds up the cloth. "It's a giant napkin. Come, you've seen one before-"

Diluc flings half a carrot at his head. Kaeya throws a radish back. They're about to escalate when Elzer arrives, unbothered, setting a dark folder at Kaeya's side before walking around and respectfully standing at Diluc's other side.

"The information you've requested, Master Diluc. Preparations have been made."

"Hn." Diluc goes back to his meal. "Good work. You have my thanks." He nudges his chin at Kaeya. "Open it."

Kaeya slides the folder off the table and does- and is immediately bewildered.

"What is this?"

"You spoke about a man when you got here, didn't you?" Diluc responds. "There's your information."

"I only mentioned it three hours ago. And I never said what for or that I needed anything from you."

"You didn't need to. Considering you said I could burn the mushrooms in the cellar without need for worry, followed by: 'the source of the problem is a prominent man in Liyue obsessed with women, set to be married', it wasn't hard to put the pieces together. I'm more interested in the fact that Jean is having you go to Liyue to resolve this when any one of my own people could suffice."

And Diluc lowers his utensils to grab his ridiculous goblet of water, looking at Kaeya squarely as he says-

"I can only assume you personally have something that needs to be done."

...Kaeya should've known his brother would pick up on its relation to Khaenri'ah that quickly.

For all Kaeya strove to keep Diluc out of matters concerning his home, and had sternly put his foot down on telling him about anything- Dainsleif included- his brother was not so daft that he couldn't recognize when Kaeya was preoccupied with work outside of the Knights and work outside the Winery.

Kaeya doesn't exactly frown, and he doesn't answer, but he does look back to the folder and the profile offered within- and stares.

It's a picture of what looks like it belongs on a 'Wanted Poster' of a smug-looking, auburn-haired, late twenty-something year old, dark-eyed, shoulders adorned in rich crimson red and gold. Handsome. Pale skin. He's posing off to the side, a finger-gun in the air.

He looked like an utterly shameless tool.

But Kaeya is baffled by something else.

"I didn't describe what he looked like. Who is this?"

"His name is Wei Yin." Diluc sits back and relaxes, folding his arms. "He's the only son of Wei Liang. We have dealings with their clan. Your description of him was plenty to trigger the unwanted memory. He's notorious for his 'merry-making'. Next in line to inherit rights to his father's investments in our industry and in their own business of hard liquors and spirits. I've met with him thrice alone when his father was too busy, and several times before that when our father was still alive. He's barely tolerable. And I say that with an extraordinarily tiny grain of salt."

"He sure looks as if he has a personality," Kaeya agrees. 

"...Under no circumstance, regardless of what it is you're looking for, will you meet with him in private."

For a second Kaeya thinks he's listening to someone's parent. He stops reading through the strange profile of likes and dislikes and the long list of names of people out to murder the heir who are also listed as fellow relatives of the same clan, and blinks at his brother's non sequitur reprimand.

"You think he's that dangerous?"

Diluc's gaze is impassive.

"He's harmless. But you won't be with him alone. As in- none of your usual business. He likes women exclusively as far as anyone knows. Still, I don't want him feeling encouraged."

Kaeya squints at him, crossly. He closes the folder. "You know that's not the only thing I do. Did you forget I have other skills?"

"I didn't forget. I thought you might've."

And Diluc's looking right at his neck.

Kaeya touches where he's looking; flinches, flushes, relives a mild crisis the memory of Childe bearing down on him as his fingers cross the bruise. "This isn't from..."

He loses his words for a second.

Diluc waits.

Kaeya chuckles; squeezes the bruise to banish the vivid imagery from thought, and drops his hand. "This isn't from that. I've sworn off from that behavior for the time being."

A maid guffaws. Another coughs to cover it up. Two butlers turn their heads to look at the ceiling and the walls.

Kaeya hates them.

Diluc's tone is impossibly flat. "I see. Then you were bitten by a bug."

Kaeya slumps in his chair ever so slightly. "A really annoying one, yes. It's not going to happen again." He's not going to try and fight his brother. He rarely wins anyway. "Could we please refocus on this apparent womanizer? I'm missing the details, such as when and where and how to meet."

Diluc gestures with a hand.

Elzer steps forward to explain whilst retrieving an elegant, green and red envelope from the folds of his blazer, thin and flat, more suited to carrying a slip of fortune. "This is a first-class, priority ticket onboard the Fengche Cruise," he says as Kaeya takes it.

"Wei Liang, Wei Yin's father, will have bought out the entire first floor below deck for his son. Your room is on the second, along with other notable, esteemed guests. The boat is currently in the waters of the Yaoguang Shoal, halfway through its journey back towards the Harbor. Being as close to Mondstadt as it is, we've requested an audience with a Wei Clan representative to discuss 'urgent affairs of business'. As Wei Yin is the only one in near enough proximity to meet with us as quickly as we asked, the family has had no choice but to leave matters of the discussion in their young heir's hands."

Thoughts of Childe pushes aside and gone, the thrill of holding pawns where and when they want them, Kaeya smiles at Elzer, approving. "How cunning. I'm impressed by the swift communication and how fast it was put together."

"Our network is vast. We have many runners," Elzer smiles back.

"As for how much time you have," Diluc speaks up, "leave tonight. Reach the boat by tomorrow. The meeting is at one. Dress down but proper, they shouldn't see you as a Knight. The cruise ends when the weekend does. As far as I know, that's your only window to information. Security is far tighter on the ground. Their family isn't one you want to get involved with outside of their son. Don't do anything," he stresses it, entirely serious, "that would put you in the eyes of the rest of his clan. They're involved in a strange business outside of their alcohol. Hold it in mind I'm sending you as a spokesperson on behalf of the Ragnvindr House. Also be aware in the meetings we had years ago with Wei Liang and his wife, Wei Jing, Father and I made sure to never speak of you. They won't know we have relations, much less that you exist or have ever existed as a member of our family."

"How touching."

"For your protection." Diluc is unamused. "You're too much of what they like. They would've tried every method in the book to get you, as you were, and mold you into their weapon. Our father read them perfectly for the serpents that they are, and made the smart decision to introduce me as the only son."

"What? When was this?"

"When we were twelve."

Kaeya furrows his brows. "But back then no one knew I-" was a spy from Khaenri'ah. Lying out of my ass with smiles and laughs.

He doesn't need to say it aloud.

Diluc acknowledges it, if not with residual bitterness at himself. "I didn't know. That's correct. As for what father understood..." he scoffs, quietly, beneath his breath. "Well that's a different story, isn't it?"

Tied back to the exorcism, yes.

The air has gotten heavy.

Kaeya stands, carefully. He tucks the folder beneath an arm. He stares at his unfinished meal.

He smiles, small.

"I appreciate your assistance, Diluc. I apologize if it's brought you any trouble."

He thinks for a second.

And sighs.

"I'm going to need a horse though."

"...You'll have one." Diluc gets to his feet, looking at the floor. "...We should meet outside the city when you're ready-"

"Not the city!" Kaeya interrupts, perhaps a tad too fast and loud.

The heaviness is gone as fast as it had come.

He and Diluc look at one another.

Kaeya clears his throat. "Because... here is closer. I can just- you have old clothes here. We're the same size. Let me borrow something. I'll reach the Shoal faster."

Diluc lifts an eyebrow. "You're not going to inform your Acting Grandmaster of your departure?"

Kaeya plasters on the fakest of smirks, already beelining for the upstairs of the manor. "I'll leave that to you, dear brother. I really can't afford to waste time."

Also he didn't want to face Jean. For obvious reasons.

Diluc scoffs.

Kaeya reaches the top of the stairs.

The doors of the manor burst open.

Charles barrels in, out of breath, wide-eyed, apology on his lips- "Master Diluc, my greatest and most sincere apologies, I had to close the tavern early to tell you, it was getting out of hand-"

Kaeya spins around and thunders down the stairs.

Charles freezes, in equal mortification and trauma, before he too spins around and bolts straight back into the darkened night outdoors.

Kaeya all but throws himself against the doors, twisting all four locks, pulling the two deadbolts and the extra latch at the bottom in, heart racing, chest heaving, chuckling far too loudly and high-pitched for it to be remotely considered as 'okay'.

He turns and faces his brother.

Diluc stares.

The maids and butlers snicker.

Kaeya struggles to regain his calm.

"He- He probably won't be back for a while. Best to forget about that." 

 

---

Kaeya departs on a honey-brown mare, set with a carrybag, off at a swift pace through wood and shadow, attire changed, hair pulled high on top his head, donning the darkest of cloaks.

Best he forget about Tartaglia too.

The Fatui might know the story Finny had told, but he didn't have access to Diluc's people or Diluc's knowledge, much less any history with the clans. The Harbinger's pursuit ended here. What was fun, what was horrible, what was embarrassing, what was brief- their time is done, and so soon will be Tartaglia's journey and purpose.

Kaeya smiles to himself.

Good riddance.

They won't meet again. 

 

---

 

"His name is Wei Yin."

"What's with this picture? He looks like a buffoon," Childe questions, poking at a plate of bacon and eggs as he looks at the photograph before him.

"He is," says Yelena.

An agent of the Fatui under the Tsarista's personal command,  she sits in the booth across from him in the white, soft glory of the new day's dawn. Her hair is pale and bobbed, her violet eyes hold little emotion. The rising sun shines warm through the window at their side across the large and mostly empty dining room, and the booth is a comfortable, sinking-type of leather and cushion.

Childe stops looking at the odd picture and focuses on his food with a half-cracked yawn. "There's no shortage of these guys lately, huh."

"Late night?"

"It was a perfect night."

"So I've been told."

Childe snorts on a piece of bacon. "Not...because of that."

He meant his sleep- because all things considering, he'd slept remarkably well. Even dreamed of the time he tried to build a sledding ground for his siblings out the kindness of his heart only to get run over by those same siblings at an inhuman speed as they launched themselves from the hills.

If he ignored the giant dent in his wall, the stuff going on with his bedsheets and every subordinate trying their best not to stare at him wherever he went inside the building, it was as if nothing incriminating had happened in his room at all.

Although if he was being honest, it was a bit annoying.

He hadn't planned on doing anything beyond a little payback and small 'Q&A', but maybe Kaeya's previous comment made that night at the pond hadn't been too far off the mark.

It'd been months- more than months- half a year, since he'd been with another person.

If he was being really accurate, half a year since that person apologized in the afterglow and told him she was in love with the florist down the street who slipped on the same patch of ice of his storefront every winter.

After that, Childe had resigned himself to living a life alone and an eternity of Tonia pestering him as to why 'the friendly waitress stopped coming around'.

Then Her Majesty had dispatched him to Liyue and-

Maybe he'd gotten a little too into that.

Except he'd gotten duped there too by Zhongli, Aether and Signora- and wasn't she supposed to be on his side?

It'd been just another nail to tack onto his board of ever-growing losses.

Love, he could say with certainty, was a pointless, useless thing and he had no need of it. There were more important things.

Family. Protecting them. Bettering himself. Figuring a way out back to the Abyss to find Skirk and maybe not get his ass handed to him by her again.

These were the important things, he knew.

But sadly his dick did not.

It wouldn't have been so bad to try and finish things with Alberich, 'get laid' as the knight had so said, and put that aspect of him to rest for another half year or two to focus on work and duty. And Kaeya was just irritating, just nosy enough, that Childe didn't feel bad about what he'd wanted to do.

Of course Luke had walked in, since the concept of knocking had apparently flown over his head, and Childe had somewhat forgotten his original intentions after the fact.

Because the look on Kaeya's face hadn't been embarrassment.

It'd been ridiculously turned-on.

And what was Childe supposed to do about that?

A terrible, terrible, dark and depraved part of him had been entirely tempted to tell Luke to stick around just so Childe could see what exactly was going on with the utter oddball that Alberich was turning out to be, but the Fatui guard had already sprinted off- and leapt from the stairs- if Childe's ears had heard correctly, and Kaeya's hands had been awfully grabby, so...

Childe prods at his sunny-side up egg in thought.

Yelena doesn't care for his contemplations. "Don't start daydreaming here," she orders.

"I'm not," he retorts. "There's nothing to daydream about anyway."

He sits up a little straighter and pokes his yolk-dripping fork at the profile Yelena has set on the table between him.

"Wei Yin, you said? What's his deal?"

"Hn. He's a womanizer, nicknamed 'trash' by his peers, but the recyclable kind they can't get rid of.  No one can seem to figure out what to do with him, so they keep tossing him in different positions and hoping he'll show potential somewhere beyond the bedsheets. So far they haven't had luck. His father must've given in to some degree to the fact that his son contributes nothing important to the family, as he recently delegated Wei Yin to oversee a minor round-trip from the Harbor."

"Oversee a cruise? Like what? An honorary-captain? Shiphand?"

"No. He'll just be onboard as a guest."

That's just his father trying to get rid of him without getting rid of him!

"Regardless, it works in our favor," Yelena says, sliding a colorful pamphlet over. "The entire first floor of the cruise has been rented specifically for his son. Aside from the handful of guards assigned to 'watch over him', he'll be alone. Use that opportunity to extract the whereabouts of the mushroom however you see fit."

"Wow. He must be the worst kind of person if they're isolating him to that extent," Childe comments, ditching his fork to flip through the offered pamphlet.

"I'd call him more...excitable."

"Hmm."

This was a luxury cruise. And for more than a pretty penny.

Second floor for valued guests, third floor for the less-gold-blessed, fourth for lounges and activity halls, fifth for shops, sixth for fine-dining.

He flips through the obnoxious array of restaurants, music lounges, pool and suite assortments in mild interest; stares at a horribly edited photograph of men and women from what are obviously sixteen different walks-of-life, including fishermen and miners with their pick-axes and rods raised, surrounding a dancing captain in the midst of a ballroom. They're clearly not people who would've been allowed on the cruise.

What exactly were they trying to promote here? The captain? Shouldn't he be doing his job? Who was steering the boat?

He turns to the next page. 

It's a giant blurry photo of half the captain's face. 

Childe closes the pamphlet. Right. No need for that. 

He had asked for several agents to investigate into the man the kid from the cabin in the woods had told him about, and they'd gotten back efficiently in less than two days. But as fast as they had been, Alberich had been faster.

Or at least his sources had been.

In the span of hours.

Childe would've called it unfeasible if he didn't know the sort of arsenal at Kaeya's disposal. His brother and his brother's network, status and funds. Childe was only surprised Ragnvindr had helped Kaeya to the degree that he had.

He'd been under the impression the two were the distanced sort, who tolerated one another at best.

Unless there was something more about this whole situation Childe was missing out on.

"What's the connection between Alberich and Wei Yin?"

"Personally, there isn't one," Yelena answers. "Business-wise, the Ragnvindrs appear to have a long-running business relationship with the clan that predates Crepus' time as head of the house. It's an advantage we don't have. Taking note of this; also take note that Wei Yin will only be on this cruise until the end of the weekend. Today is Friday. The boat departs from the Yaoguang Shoal tonight to begin its return to the Harbor. You have until Sunday to get what we need."

"Is that what Her Majesty wants? For this to be resolved by then?"

"Incorrect. The Wei and Yuan Clans plan to tie a knot of marriage between their heirs come Monday. Their estate is in the high mountains, a sweeping pavilion, privy to their families alone and guarded by their own. We've been unsuccessful thus far trying to get our people in as staff for the event, and neither clan has any interest in what 'protective measures' we offer to bring to their grounds for the ceremony. 'Fatui' and 'Harbinger' mean nothing to them. They are serpents and owls of a different kind who hide behind masks of pleasantries and spirits and strike with treachery in the folds of night. We should take it as a miracle that their heirs are nothing more than a money-hungry, sex-driven fool and love-stricken maiden."

Yelena folds her arms.

"We may yet worm our way into their clans, ten or fifteen years down the road, should the two presume control of clan affairs, but by then our Tsarista's goals will have been realized- and there'll be no further need for unnecessary drivel. As such, it's not important to build relations between our crown and their people. Find Wei Yin, not as a lieutenant of our Tsarista, but as a stranger acting in your own interest."

That, Childe could do.

Truthfully, he didn't care all too much for the end goal of Her Majesty- though he respected and would serve her without question.

He would end up where he ended up wherever that would be, as long as his family wound up there too, safe and sound.

For now, he was simply an excellent field officer, young and in his prime, who did his work and did it- well not always well- but did it and got things done. Run-arounds like this had never been a strong suit. He was better off with a weapon in hand, with instinct in the forefront and thought in the back.

And so far Childe hadn't been able to fight against anything- except low-grade monsters and his own boners.

"Fine. Sounds like a plan," he agrees.

Yelena withdraws a fancy green and red envelope from her coat. She holds it towards him, indifferent. "Your ticket. Dress for warm weather."

"You make it sound like I'm going on vacation," Childe jokes, accepting the envelope.

"Don't make the mistake of believing you are."

And Yelena pauses.

Long enough that Childe stops looking over the ticket's curious design and glances up at her.

"What?"

She continues to look at him. "There's one more thing. About the knight."

Childe sighs, exasperated. "It was a one-time thing-" technically two, details aren't important, "-no one needs to worry about it happening again."

"No." Yelena keeps looking. "Let it happen again."

Come again?

"I've told you, the Fatui have no holds on these clans, more importantly, the Wei Clan. In the event what we're looking for is not on the boat but still within the son's possession, you'll need to find a way onto the property we can't set foot on. Consider this a fail-safe. Alberich is your best connection."

Childe processes her words, and sits back in disbelief. "Are you seriously asking me to try and romance someone over the weekend? That's not even two days."

"We don't need romance. We need access and information. Utilize the rumors of your affair. Don't chase him away- rather- drag him in. It's not important how you do it, just don't let it carry on. Find our mushroom, grab it and move along. Deceit, in the long run, is not your strong suit, so don't think too hard on the process but on the end result. Which is what Her Majesty seeks, safely in our hands."

Childe scratches the back of his head. "Listen. I see what you're aiming for here, but there should really be another way."

"You know another way in which the knight will willingly stay in your presence and confide in you all that he knows?"

"Well- no- but-"

"Keep in mind, this isn't just about the mushroom. On a greater level, this is about Khaenri'ah. The more we know about the fallen nation, the better."

Childe tousles his own hair in minor frustration and greater acceptance. "I know that. We've had people watching there for a while now. What's happening down there that Her Majesty is suddenly pushing for us to act?"

Yelena's eyes flicker for the first time with a bout of emotion- something weary, if not mildly disturbed. "I would tell you, but it would take an hour, and you don't have that kind of time. Alberich has long since left for the Shoal. He may even be speaking with Wei Yin as we sit here and discuss our end of things."

She frowns, disapproving.

"...Finish your breakfast and get a move on."

Childe thinks she sounds a bit like the older sister he's always wanted but never had.

Her tone peeves him just the right amount.

"Alright. I got it." He pushes his fork around his now cold food. "Give me something harder to do after this mission is done, will you?"

Yelena rises from her side of the booth. "I'm sure we'll think of something. Accomplish your task here first. We might have need of you in Sumeru later."

"Sumeru?" Childe's echo is one of protest. "I don't think so. I'm not going there to solve puzzles again."

Yelena walks away.

"Safe travels, Tartaglia. Don't let Her Majesty down."

Childe leans out of his booth, staring after her quite importantly.

"I'm not solving any puzzles, Yelena!" 

 

---

Kaeya reaches the sandy beaches of the Shoal right past noon.

He sends the horse back on the path it traveled from, along with his cloak, and fixes the laces on his boots from the shade of bowing, broad tree overlooking the shores.

He'd gotten somewhat waylaid on the way over.

Numerous hilichurl camps had been along the forest road moving towards the city. He had listened in on their talks, a few debates over berries and mushrooms, their excitement on having built new, nice-looking targets for practice, complaints about the 'strange-floaty-furballs-with-wands' that always told them what to do- then he had chased them out, far towards the cliffs.

Afterwards, he'd double-backed and eradicated the more dangerous ones who refused to leave and tried to set him on Dendro-fueled fire.

It'd taken a good two hours to clear the structures, burn the wood and gather the knick-knacks of human and monster-made pots and supplies, and another one to displace them as far apart through the same range of woods as possible.

The hilichurls, would of course, be back.

But by the time they would've managed to gather and find everything that'd been hidden, and start to rebuild their camp in the exact same location, the knights scheduled on patrol along the route would find them, break it apart, and scatter everything in the hills again.

It was something of a song and dance, a repetitive one at that, started out of interest as to whether or not the hilichurls would catch on to what exactly was being done and form new strategies from it.

But aside from strengthening their towers with harder bone and splashing their barricades and huts more with valberry juice and paint, they hadn't.

And it'd been a few years.

At some point, because of Kaeya and the hilichurls back-and-forth antics, the knights under his supervision had stopped fearing the monsters and went along with it.

They, of course, never mentioned this to the other knights under different captains, much less ever reported back what they were actually doing to the Acting Grandmaster; to this day, she still didn't know.

Kaeya wasn't so concerned about it.

One day, hilichurls and the like would be gone from Teyvat, returned safely to the home they came from.

But that day was long away, and the Abyss Order had only just begun. For now, there was little to do but watch and see how things went on.

Even so, his clothes had gotten dirty. And burnt.

So much for appearing presentable.

Oh well.

Kaeya guesses it doesn't matter really, considering what's going on with the people from the cruise below.

It's a sight, seeing a bunch of what he assumed were the wealthy, high-flyers of Liyuen society, kicking around in the sand, bathing in the sun, and poking half-naked at the broken machines of Khaenri'ah they should be grateful weren't active. They looked about as young as Wei Yin was presumed to be.

Maybe this cruise was actually a boat full of privileged kids their parents were trying to keep busy and out of their hair.

Kaeya thinks for a moment.

He's going to stand out regardless, but perhaps he didn't need to be so overdressed.

He removes his shirt- a pointlessly blue and white ribboned thing he had bought for Diluc two years ago before their reconciliation and mailed to him on his birthday with a letter- 'Hope it doesn't clash with anything unfortunate like your hair. You said blue was your favorite color, yes?'

Amazingly enough, Diluc hadn't burnt it.

Good for Kaeya now, he supposes.

He takes a moment to look at the adults lounging below once more, then ties the shirt around his shoulders.

After another moment of consideration- he unlaces his boots and rolls his pants to calf.

There.

Now he looked....

Well he looked.

He picks his way, barefoot, over dirt and grass, then prickly stone and onto sand, maneuvering in the cover of several towering rock formations before going to an empty spot of shore far enough from the others to not be noticed, but close enough for any searching eye to see.

It's a matter of waiting then.

Kaeya peers into the water, looking at the shells.

He wades a bit in.

He glances over his shoulder as laughter and chatter drifts from afar.

Then he wades further in.

It's while he's bent over fifteen minutes later, boots tossed to the sand behind him as he rummages through the wet sediment beneath his fingers for the large conch that'd caught his eye, that a warm hand slaps itself around his waist in greeting.

"Well hellooo pretty ladyy ahhhhh-!!!"

The greeting is broken off as Kaeya grabs the hand and twists it, calmly turning around with his retrieved seashell in the other hand.

"A man!" the person, who really can't be anyone else but Wei Yin, exclaims as he sees Kaeya's face and front.

"Yes," agrees Kaeya, letting go of him. "How sharp of you to notice."

Wei Yin blinks, open-mouthed, for a time. He's in a pair of red and gold swim trunks, hair side-swept, tied in a tiny tail over his shoulder, chest exposed.

Kaeya idly flicks the sand from his conch shell. "Was there something you needed?" he asks.

"Uhhh, no. I... guess not."

Wei Yin stand for a second, at an apparent loss. His gaze falls to the shell Kaeya holds. Then to the water lapping at their legs.

"What were you doing?"

"Passing the time. What hour is it?"

"Ten minutes to one, I think. I'm not too sure."

"Alright."

Kaeya hands him the conch and goes back to digging around in the sand at their feet.

By the time, one hits, Wei Yin's arms are full of an assortment of shells and sand.

Kaeya knows it's this hour because there comes the sudden shout of "Young Master!" followed by a small gaggle of what he presumes are the man's guards. He picks up a crab by the pincer as Wei Yin looks off in the direction of his protection, distracted, and sets it on top the many shells in the young man's arms.

Wei Yin shrieks, his guards surge forth, and Kaeya goes back to shore, smirking.

Wei Yin apprehends him a moment later, chest puffed- and pinched- dripping in the wet of the sea, face clung to by sand from the brief tumble he had taken backwards in his attempts to escape the crab. "Hey."

His guards are on his heels.

"Who do you think you are? I came over out of the kindness of my heart because I thought you were some poor girl lost out at sea but you turned out to be a guy and you threw an ugly monster at me!"

Lost out at sea? He was barely five feet from land.

Kaeya, doubting this man has ever seen an actual monster, raises his hands, placating and smiling, disarmingly so. "You have my apologies. I was told to find a way to draw your attention." He wasn't. "I wasn't sure how."

"Draw my attention?" Wei Yin repeats. He squints at Kaeya suspiciously. "What? Am I supposed to know you?"

"No. I don't believe so. But we are supposed to be having a meeting right now."

And Wei Yin blinks.

And Wei Yin looks over his shoulders at his guards.

The guards who then blink and look at each other, then look at Kaeya.

"Ragnvindr's messenger?" one questions.

"Yes. On behalf of Master Diluc-"

Kaeya's wrist is grabbed.

Wei Yin beams, attitude turned around, and starts dragging him across the sand towards the massive green and red and pink and gold boat docked on the other side of the isle.

"What? Why didn't you say so right away? I've had a big feast prepared and everything waiting for when you showed! Do you like chilies? And duck? I don't have any wine, you guys seem obsessed with that, but there's a bottle of liquor I stole from the bar on the lower floor. I'll have them bring it out. We can enjoy the meal by the ocean-side. Would you like that?"

Kaeya doesn't get a say.

Kaeya doesn't get anything, to be honest, as he's hauled- not onto the boat- but to a separate isolated isle that'd been hidden behind the ship's massive berth, set up with a long bamboo table, red umbrella, shade-covering and several straw mats for sitting beneath.

He can see the coast, the boulders, the rocks, the cliffs and the boat.

He can see Wei Yin speaking with his guards at the edge of the isle, ordering them to stay 'put' and 'stay away'.

He can see the overly excited manner in which Wei Yin all but skips his way back over and slides into the ground seat across from him, leaning forward with sparkling eyes and avid interest.

"Finally. I've been sending letters to your estate forever to that Crepus of yours asking for assistance but it seemed like nothing was getting through."

He laughs.

"I almost thought my father was blocking them. Until now that is! I see that Crepus has chosen to act when I'm close enough to your nation. How crafty of him! It's exactly what I need given the current situation."

Kaeya stares. "Crepus is dead," he says.

"What?" Wei Yin draws back, appalled. "When did that happen? How would I not know?"

"An excellent question," Kaeya states, still staring.

He suddenly feels the breeze across his skin and the chills that spread under the cold protection of the umbrella above their heads.

What in the world was meant by 'letters'? Was Diluc aware of this? Was Elzer?

"I don't understand. Why do you think I'm here?" he asks.

Wei Yin frowns.

He glances around.

He shuffles forward again slightly, as if afraid of being overheard, and his eyes searches Kaeya's own.

"Well. Y'know. You're supposed to be here to murder me." 

 

---

"Let me explain," Wei Yin begins, spooning into a giant, steaming pot of seafood and vegetables. "It's complicated, but I'll do my best to sum it up."

He passes Kaeya the first bowl, then goes to spoon out his own.

Kaeya's glad Wei Yin had finally decided to talk after the utter bout of silence that had fallen for twenty minutes between them. He holds the blazing hot bowl and lets it burn his hands.

The food had been delivered by elegantly dressed servers in the interim, who'd looked at Kaeya in some moderate amount of confusion until Wei Yin shooed them off.

"He's with me. Scram!"

Now Wei Yin sighs.

"A long, long time ago, when I was kid-"

Oh was the story beginning?

Kaeya drags his eye from his dark red soup.

"-my mother promised me to the oldest daughter of the Yuan Clan, Chyou. We were eight-years old. It was a promise made beneath the blossoming white flowers of her family's fringetree, with the eyes of her entire family upon me."

I don't care.

"How could I say anything against it? I think her mother was hiding a knife behind her fan. But Chyou wasn't too bad-looking, if I think about it now. I just never really saw her as anything else but that girl I was forced to have dinner and walk around with all the time."

I don't care.

"But Chyou had a younger sister, a twin, Chao Xing. She was super weird and always followed me around. She was muttering something like a curse under her breath the entire time I was being promised to her sister, except it couldn't have been a curse because my father kept telling me even though the Yuan's dabbled in ancient and forgotten arts, no one would dare try and hit me with a curse in the presence of our own family. Our own family are practitioners of spirit sorcery and were pretty important before Liyue became the modern society that it is today. Or maybe it was after my great-great-great-great grandpa got obliterated by that Yaksha that we really became known. I dunno. The Yuans were a long-time rival but we've been trying to mend relationships for centuries."

Wei Yin slurps his soup, contemplatively so.

"Anyhow, one day Chyou and Chao Xing went on a trip into the woods. They were sixteen. Only Chyou returned. Chao Xing fell down a well and couldn't be saved, or so Chyou said, but I'm pretty sure we all knew that Chyou was Chao Xing and she'd murdered her sister to get with me. Everyone just pretended it wasn't a thing."

Kaeya looks at Wei Yin, gripping the side of his bowl so hard it begins to ice. Who cares! I don't care! Stop telling me this story!

Wei Yin doesn't hear his thoughts. He nibbles on a lotus bud, lost in thought. "Now, you have to understand, the older I got, the more I realized how flat Chao Xing was. It's not a terrible thing, I know plenty of people who go for that kind of thing. But me? I like a little 'oomph'! Some heavy weight! If not weight, then they've gotta have curves. Like you. You've got some nice legs, and that is an ass, but you're not a lady so sadly my jingyu isn't interested."

"...What in the world is a 'jingyu'?"

"A whale. My whale. It sits between my legs."

Kaeya stops asking questions.

"It's just my preference," Wei Yin gazes at a shrimp forlorn, "but Chao Xing was never able to understand it. She's so relentless. Of course once I got old enough I was gonna go seek some other ladies. The sea is vast and I'm a natural-born fisherman. I can't be tied down. Doesn't anyone know my heart? I don't want to sit behind a desk and sign papers all day and pretend I'm interested in liquor while having a bunch of people who want to assassinate me always lurking in the ceilings of our estate. It's not like my death would bring any kind of change to the clan anyway. I don't do anything in it and I don't want to. I just want to fondle women all day and sleep in a bathtub of gold without ever doing any work. Is that so bad? Does that make me so awful?"

The answer was yes.

"But no. I had to sit through so many boring meetings growing up, wearing stuffy clothes and pretending to pay attention. But then! Then- one day- my father took me to a meeting with Crepus. It was my first time ever being allowed to sit in on the 'Ragnvindr business' he called it. Ah! That Crepus. Really impressionable fellow."

Kaeya reluctantly tunes back in.

He absolutely did not care for whatever the other man was saying, but Crepus was, and always would be, a point of interest and learning for Kaeya to hear about.

He's feeling colder under the shade.

Maybe it's the remnants of Crepus' ghost still lingering. Or maybe it's the sudden dread that comes with knowing whatever Wei Yin is about to say will either A: make no sense, or B: makes things worse.

Maybe it'll be both.

Kaeya finally tries the soup in hand.

And chokes on the ridiculous amount of chilies inside.

"I was probably sixteen at our first meeting. Crepus brought his son or something with him, but he looked boring and had no interest in girls. I guess it's because he was technically still a twerp and all but he didn't have to go stabbing me with his fork."

"Get to the point," Kaeya wheezes, desperately feeling around for a glass of water.

Wei Yin hands him one, apology in his tone. "Right. So I had already been thinking about running away from home at the time. His son seemed to be able to do whatever he wanted, and Crepus seemed nice. Like he wasn't plotting on the side to kill his kid. When I got older, I got braver. During the recess of one of our later future meetings, I pulled Crepus aside and asked him first- what the women in Mondstadt were like, second- did he have a daughter he was hiding away, third- could he marry me to that daughter and free me from my death-engagement to Chao Xing, and four- could I count on him to help."

Wei Yin smiles.

"Well, Crepus gripped me by the shoulder very seriously, looked me in the eye, and told me to never ever come to him for anything. I understood he was speaking in code, since there were so many of my father's guards and my father himself around. He wanted me to ask for help later, more discreetly."

That wasn't code. He was being serious!

"I started writing to him in earnest, asking if there were any jobs or openings he had," Wei Yin goes on. "I was willing to be a horse-person and do some stuff with hay, toss some seeds, if necessary, so long as I could escape from my home."

Was he talking about a stable-hand? What did he mean by 'do some stuff with hay'? Had he ever taken care of a horse before? Where was he tossing seeds? At the horses?

"Crepus kept answering back 'no' forever. And then the letters stopped coming. I still kept writing though. See- the situation with the clans only got worse and worse the older I grew, or maybe it was just that I was noticing how awful everything was. I could only keep pretending I wasn't ready for marriage for so many years. The Yuan Clan, mostly Chao Xing, refused to let me push back the date anymore. There didn't seem to be a way out. I'd be trapped for eternity, until I died. But then- that thought came to me. A year ago. What if I just died? Not really. But pretended to die. And ran off instead? I asked Crepus if he could send some agent, or someone discreet to fake-kill me and drag me to Mondstadt, except he never answered- which I guess is because he passed like you said. With Mondstadt out of the option, I refocused my efforts in Liyue, but everyone I turned to who I thought were trusted friends, ratted me out for favors from the Clan, so I gave up and started drinking and sleeping around even more. Only I was never able to find some daughter to another rich guy who could help me out. Up until the night of the engagement, I accepted my fate."

And Finny's story is coming back to Kaeya now.

He frowns and risks pulling from a plate of extremely-red stir-fry off to the side.

"You were found with three women, the engagement was broken off, and you were chased from the Harbor. But I don't get it. If you were already sleeping around before, why did it matter if you were caught then and there doing it again?"

"How'd you know about that? Wait- nevermind- everyone always seems to know what I've done," Wei Yin complains. "Stupid father. See, right before that, a week prior, I was messing around with a hostess from the Yangshang Teahouse. It turned out, a couple from the Yuan Clan had been there, sitting in the corner, and they ran their mouths off to the head of the clan. Obviously Chao Xing caught wind of it- and her terrifying mother did too.

Marriage is important to some people I guess; something to be honored and revered, especially in the week leading up to the events. Though I just see it as a chance to either have some really good sex before being tied down for eternity.

Chao Xing and her mother told me if I was found with someone one more time before our vows were finalized, they would punish me and there was nothing my own clan could do about it. Her mother then later told me further that it didn't matter what kind of inheritance would be passed down to me when I took over the Wei Clan, she would curse me, and it would be the most painful kind, if I dared to break her daughter's heart."

What about her other daughter? The one that was murdered by the second? What exactly was going on there?

Kaeya isn't able to ask these questions because he's choking on chilies again.

Why was everything stuffed with so many peppers?

"So it wasn't that I was chased from the Harbor or that the engagement was broken, I was just on the run from the Yuan sorcerers until I could think of a proper excuse, because I really can't remember why on that occasion I ended up in bed with those women, and you have to understand the Yuan Clan is filthy, filthy rich and that kind of money is hard to come by so unless I found some other rich family to marry into I don't- are you okay?"

Kaeya's face is on the table.

The bamboo is a cool relief beneath his skin.

He wants to go back home.

No, he can't go home. It's a new day. Diluc will have heard the rumors of the city.

And Kaeya can't even go to his 'proper' home in Khaenri'ah, because his father would think he was rejoining the efforts of the resistance.

...Was it possible? Could he do it?

If he begged Dainsleif, would the Boughs Keeper find a place for him somewhere, if only for a moment, away from the insanity that was this goose-chase?

No, he couldn't.

Because Dainsleif would listen to his request- and then disappear.

"...I'm fine," he answers into the table at long last. "Please. Wei Yin. Is your story done?"

"I think so. Are you sure you're okay- and not like, dying yourself, because I really wouldn't know what to do. Do I need to give you mouth-to-mouth? Would that help? It helps with the ladies but I don't know if I could do it with a guy. I could squint? Pretend? I mean, looking at you like this your face looks a lot more feminine."

Kaeya lifts his head to find Wei Yin staring at him with eyes half-closed and an expression of sincere concentration.

Was this man being serious?

If Kaeya was choking on something, by the time Wei Yin got around to doing anything, he'd already be dead.

"I'm not here to kill you," Kaeya tells him. He swears, he's almost forgotten what he's supposed to be doing himself.

Wei Yin frowns. "You're not? But my father said this was 'urgent' business. And that usually means a murder is involved."

Something was wrong with his family.

"It is," says Kaeya, "but not for that. I'm looking for a mushroom."

"We have those at the market-"

"Not that kind of mushroom," Kaeya tries not to snap it out. "You were given. A mushroom. By a bandit."

"What? Now how do you know that-?"

"Where is it?"

"Back at the Yuan Pavilion," Wei Yin tilts his head. "I was going to try and kill Chao Xing with it but she caught onto it and had it stored in the middle of her bedroom as a reminder of my failure whenever she drags me in there. She said I should behold it as a trophy of her undying love."

More like undying delusion. These people were one channel off from a soap-opera.

The worst.

They deserved each other.

"We need the mushroom. You're aware of what it does, yes?"

"Yeah. But why do you need it?"

"Because," and Kaeya thinks. "We... we need it to make a wine. An experimental one. It...has the taste we're looking for."

"Doesn't it kill people?"

"We'll find a way around it."

"But why would you call this kind of meeting urgent? I've had the mushroom for a while now. And no one's in any danger from it."

Wei Yin had no idea of its danger. And he sure chose a great time to actually raise his guard and stop spilling his guts out, didn't he?

Kaeya shifts.

Wei Yin's blinking at him, scrutinizing him minutely with an intensity that wasn't there before. "Choosing to call a meeting on this day and in this place... asking about the mushroom...wanting to make a wine..."

Did it sound too suspicious? Not realistic enough?

Kaeya glances past Wei Yin.

The heir's guards- their backs are turned- but are they somehow still listening in?

"I got it," says Wei Yin, profoundly. "I see."

Kaeya quickly looks back to him. This guy didn't seem to be the brightest bunch of anything but-

Wei Yin's eyes light up.

He drops a fist into an open palm.

"You're not here to kill me- because you can't. I understand! Not with the relationship my father has with your House. He's invested a lot; years into your industry. But you can kill Chao Xing. And kill her for real. Freeing me and getting myself and my clan the full rights to her father's wealth. And do it cunningly by making a wine she'll drink at the ceremony! Amazing. So this is why my clan has been keeping ties with your people. You're our allies after all! Your House and my Clan- we're all a bunch of snakes!"

"You've never been so completely off the mark."

Wei Yin gets to his feet, excited. He smacks a hand onto the table. The guards look over. "Sunday is my last day on board this ship. My father basically forced me on lockdown so I couldn't try and run off out of sight before the wedding. I was feeling so rotten; so doomed. Only now I feel amazing!"

Wei Yin rushes towards Kaeya, grabbing a hold of his hands and squeezing them together, beaming wide.

"'Bound for eternity, love rekindled, a burning flame. May only the throes of passion or death do us part'. That's what the officiator will never get to say! Because I'm pretty sure it's a type of curse and not actually a vow."

He squeezes tighter, pulls Kaeya slightly from his mat on the sand and halfway onto his feet.

"I promise you," Wei Yin says, full of vigor and truth, "when I am roaming the land free, having taken her clan's wealth and breaking away from my own, I will find you. You and that bandit both for making this a reality. I will give her the best sex of her life. And for you- for you. I will." He swallows. "Learn how to do the sex."

I don't want it! Why was that the only repayment he could think of? Wouldn't he be filthy rich? Mora would suffice!

Kaeya tugs his hands away.

"You've misunderstood the situation entirely-"

Wei Yin scoops him up and spins him until he's too dizzy to get another word out, all the while speaking plans with eagerness and a lightness that hadn't been present in his voice before. "The wedding is a private affair, but it'll be very grand! Traditionally, only members of the clans are allowed. But I can get you access to the venue. Access to the pavilion. As an honored guest of the Ragnvindr House. A visitor coming to give your well-wishes for the future of the Wei Clan. I'll convince my father it'll strengthen his foothold in the House's wealth and Yuan inheritance. I can even get you entrance to Chao Xing's room so you can take the mushroom!"

Wei Yin sets him down.

Kaeya fumbles off, light-headed.

Wei Yin grabs his arm cheerfully and brings him around, attempting to make eye contact despite the fact that Kaeya isn't able to make heads-or-tails of which direction is up or which is down. "I'll dress you nice. Something to show off your waistline, and your legs. And your collarbones. You've got some pretty ones. My mother and the clan have always been interested in pretty things. Maybe that's why they hate me."

He looks off.

"Guards!" he calls. "I'm going back onto the boat! You let this guy onto my floor whenever he wants, you hear?"

To Kaeya, he pats him on the head and says, "I'm going to write to my stupid father, and tell him of this plan. Surely he'll be impressed and he'll approve. You and I will meet later; go over all the extra details. Your private quarters or mine. I'll have the receptionist give me your room and information. For now- enjoy the sun!"

He pulls away, laughing bright beneath the light of the afternoon- and maybe he'd be attractive if he wasn't such a fool.

"See you around!"

And he runs.

Literally runs off, laughing into the sea breeze as his guards hurry after him.

Kaeya stands for a moment, motionless; blank.

He goes back to the table, toes brushing in the sand, salt from the sea across his skin.

He finds the biggest chili.

He eats it.

This had better kill him.

 

---

It doesn't.

He stands on the edge of the shore again, waves lapping his legs.

The afternoon sun is threatening to sink in a fiery blaze of glory. Mostly everyone has boarded back onto the cruise. But it won't depart until the night.

Kaeya knows he should get on it; find his room, prepare to step into the trenches of something dangerous and unfamiliar.

But he can't.

Is this mushroom really worth it?

Given what he learned, wouldn't it be better to society if he let those clans hold onto it, recklessly mess with it, and wipe themselves out?

"How important is this to you?" he asks aloud, a question meant for Dainsleif, were he listening somewhere far off.

Subterfuge was nothing new.

Disregarding the fact that he'd actively chosen to toss aside his longest undercover mission out of guilt and, what he hadn't known back then, was love for the family and brother he'd found, he was quite excellent at it. But he wasn't an assassin. At least- he wasn't one anymore. And this wasn't a stab-and-go. It was something mixed with business of a foreign nation and with business his brother had big stake in.

He worries his bottom lip, bothered.

Nothing else for it.

Regardless of whether or not Diluc had heard any rumors, regardless if his brother might be irrationally irate by it, he would need to pen a letter and see if there was any advice or a plan Diluc could give before the cruise landed in Liyue Harbor. Figures. The one time he wished Diluc was involved on this ridiculous mission with him...

Kaeya continues to worry. "What should I do about this...?"

He holds a hand to his head.

Another hand that's not his own slips light and casual around his waist.

Kaeya doesn't even look.

"I thought you said your 'whale' isn't interested, Wei Yin."

"Oh, I'd say it's plenty interested."

And that is not Wei Yin's voice.

The hand on him squeezes a bit tighter; a thumb strokes down his side.

Kaeya turns. Tartaglia smiles, dressed in beachwear, wearing god-awful leather sandals.

"You didn't miss me too much, did you?"

Kaeya's face flattens.

He punches him in the gut.

"Hrkgurk!"

 

---

They lean against the backside of a tall boulder, in mild shade, hidden from sight of the great cruise and its deck and its windows.

Childe is remarkably relaxed, arms tucked behind his head as he looks towards the now golden sky. Kaeya stands, three feet in between, arms crossed, a horrendous look of unholy disdain painting his features sour.

"I don't want to know."

"Then don't ask."

"What are you doing here?"

"I thought I'd take a vacation. Enjoy a cruise."

The way he says it is so incredibly blase.

Kaeya chuckles. With the intent of murder. "You look like a fool. Who invested in your swimwear?"

"I'd say I look about as much of a fool as you do. Why have you got your shirt wrapped around your shoulders like that? You look like a rich-spoiled son who spends weekends on the boats pretending to know what things are but having no real idea what they are."

"That was stupidly specific. Be quiet."

Kaeya still takes the shirt off his shoulders and properly pulls it on, ignoring the amused smirk Childe's giving him out of the corner of his eyes.

"How did you find out about this?"

"The same way you did. With the help of good people."

"Why won't you leave this alone? You don't know what you're dealing with and it's none of your concern."

"Because it's what my Tsarista asks of me. If your Acting Grandmaster asked you to pursue something, wouldn't you do that same?"

Kaeya bites his tongue.

In a way, that's exactly what he's doing. On behalf of her and Dainsleif. On behalf of Khaenri'ah and Mond.

"You realize I can't let you have it," he says all the same.

"I wouldn't expect you to make it easy," shrugs Childe. "I'd even expect some competition. If that was why I'm here. But it's not."

He pushes off the rock and faces Kaeya. He looks sincere. Yet Kaeya doesn't trust it.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You could say my mission changed. I'm not supposed to take anything; just observe. And see what happens to the thing."

"Why would your Archon change her mind after going through all the trouble of having you chase it in the first place?"

"It's really not the mushroom she's interested in. It's Khaenri'ah. You've got a bright mind. I'm sure you must've figured that out at some point yourself what Her Majesty finds fascinating."

"You investigated me. Or she knows." 

"I investigated you. Some agents know."

Kaeya still doesn't like that.

"And now the Archon wants to 'observe'? What good will that do?"

"If Her Majesty can't have it, she'd rather see what you'd do with it. Or rather- what Khaenri'ah wants to do with it."

"We don't want to do anything with it, we-" Kaeya begins to say, before realizing who exactly he's talking to and about what.

He shuts his mouth.

He accusingly glares.

Childe lifts his hands defensively. "You started talking on your own, don't look at me."

Kaeya continues to glare. "I don't believe you when you say that's all you're here to do."

Childe's gaze wanders off to the side. "...You'd be right about that." He lowers his hands, appearing to think. He glances towards Kaeya again. "If I'm being honest. You forgot something. When you ran off. So I'm here to give it back."

Kaeya scowls. "Is it my sense of self-respect? Because yes, I would enjoy having that back."

"Nice guess, but no."

Childe steps a little closer.

Backs him to the rock.

Smiles.

And brings their lips together very softly.

Kaeya raises his hands between them- and does nothing with them. 

Childe chuckles and leans away. "There."

Kaeya doesn't speak.

It's that bewilderment in his eye again.

Childe swipes his tongue against his own bottom lip in interest. "What is that? Did you eat something spicy?"

He shakes his head, fixes the collar of Kaeya's shirt and brushes the wrinkles from the other man's sleeves in amusement.

"Anyway, you ran off so fast after punting me into the wall, I didn't get a chance to say anything else. Sorry if I was insensitive. Take that as an apology. You were quite the sight. I could've admired you some more."

Maybe it's the sun. Kaeya's face has taken on some color.

Or maybe he's thinking of a way to stab Childe.

The expression he has on seems horribly at war with itself.

Childe steps back, letting the sun shine some more between, grinning lopsidedly in the heat of the late afternoon.

"You have my word, I'm not here to bother Wei Yin. I won't take the mushroom from him. We take our promises very seriously back at home. You can even ask Aether."

"Aether isn't here."

The first words Kaeya has spoken in a while.

"No..." Childe thinks about that. Laughs. "He's off in Inazuma now, isn't he? Shame. I missed our sparring. He really likes beating people up."

He ruffles the front of Kaeya's hair.

"New hair-do. Not bad." He stretches his arms behind his head once more and begins to leave the vicinity of their shade and rock. "Welp. I'm going on the boat to check-in. Don't stay out too late or the ship will leave you behind. I'm sure we'll see each other around. Feel free to join me later for dinner if you do."

And Kaeya stares after him.

And stares.

And thinks about stabbing him.

And stares. 

 

 

Notes:

*I hope all of you who play the game achieved your dreams and rolled for Childe and got him and not seventeen versions of Yanfei like me. I would also like to say Elzer here is based on the webtoon version who was raised alongside Diluc and Kaeya, closer in age. I'm... not sure what Mihoyo was doing with him in the game LMAO, but it is what it is.

*If anyone's curious, the whole shenanigans of Kaeya and Diluc's reconciliation is something I'd be interested in posting afterwards, starring the brothers as themselves, along with Crepus, Dainsleif and Oswald.

*Much appreciation for your kudos' and thoughts. Thank you! I see them and am grateful <3 Sorry if updates come slow!

Chapter 5: one to dance, two to tango, three to build, four to brawl

Childe tosses his belongings onto his bed and takes stock of the cabin Yelena booked on his behalf.

It’s all white and green and gold.

A pretty carpet. Liyuen hanging lamps.

Mountains and leaves, the finely painted landscape across the walls had taken time to so elaborately create. A large bed on the backside, a bathroom across, a balcony offering a view of the sea straight ahead from the entrance door. There’s a table out there, glass, with a vase of native flowers and two basket-wicker chairs.

He’s almost surprised by the simplicity on a ship this grand, but it’s not unpleasant.

Too many of the cabins the Harbingers were given on overseas ventures were pointlessly overdecorated and pointlessly large with too many crimsons and blacks and draping curtains that blocked out the light of the sun.

Perhaps it was practical when hunkering in the frigid sea of his homeland, all the fancy carpets and couches and Pyro-contained firepits built into the walls with mirrors and lamps, dining tables and bars, but it was almost too much. And certainly not any place to have a kid, like a sibling, onboard.  

There were weapons and experimental devices of the Fatui everywhere.

Childe had touched something purple and glowing by a cabinet on a trip to Fontaine once and nearly sunk the ship.

Signora’s room had caught on fire. Scaramouche had fallen through three floors. Pantalone had vanished. Sucked out a hole.

To this day they had no idea where exactly he had gone.

But given that his position as a Harbinger hadn’t been replaced, the Tsarista made no comment, and monetary relations had begun picking up between the black markets of Fontaine and Snezhnaya, they assumed he was still alive and working in the so-coined ‘city of justice’.

All-in-all a bonding trip Childe never needed to experience again.

It was why he was more partial to Liyue to begin with.

The weather was warm, the people were pleasant, they were open and honest and vibrant, entrenched with an abundant, undying history of mysticism, adepti and the most mouth-watering spread of food.

Hard-workers and treasure.

Less deceit. Less secrets. Less time around poor company.

The only Harbinger he didn’t find so dislikable was Pulcinella, but they were never around one another often enough after his conscription to build any proper comradeship- if such a thing were even possible around such scheming, manipulative people all the executive officers of the Tsarista seemed to be.

Besides, he was certain Pulcinella had only brought him into the ranks to use him for their own purposes.

But he wasn’t complaining.

Where else would he be properly allowed to make use of his battle skill in a world that seemed largely keen on moving towards one of conflict-free peace? There were only so many monsters in the world, challenging enough, out there for him to find.

Unless of course he went to the Abyss. Now there was where the true monstrosities of Teyvat slumbered and prowled.

Corrupted and cursed.

In the depths between where Khaenri’ah had fallen, plunged, submerged into an upside-down, flipped realm of darkness, parallel to the heavens. Where Skirk had bestowed her gift. 

He said 'bestowed' but it was more of an ass-kicking he got and the shard in the aftermath.

"There's something you need to do," she had told him. 

Childe stretches; as he does so, the scar on his chest does too. He touches it, thoughtful, thinking of a certain knight whose eye had lingered on it. The same knight who had walloped him in the gut not too long ago without remorse.

His ‘beachware’ was just a tube and trunks and sandals- nothing to get excited about. Yelena had one of the people under her command toss the items at his head on his way out of Mondstadt with a sunhat he had given to a highly-confused pair of guards at the front gate.

What were their names? Barn and Lawn?

Lawn had hesitantly said something about Alberich, clearly too afraid to ask if the rumors of the affair were true and if his captain’s ass was alright.

Childe, not really wanting to know just how far-spun the gossip had grown, had shrugged; said "yes and no", accepted the strained congratulations from Barn and well wishes for the future- before catching a glimpse of red over the knight’s shoulder.

Ragnvindr.

Searching the streets.

And Childe- thinking of his stolen Mora, the way Kaeya had played him in the tavern, the way Kaeya had insulted his lack of sex-life, the way Kaeya was Kaeya, stupidly aggravating and appealing in a way that shouldn’t be humanly possible- had smiled.

Because after he was done with this mission, and after he put in a request with Her Majesty to never set foot in this city that was so ridiculously bizarre yet peacefully boring like this ever again, he would never have to see these people again.

But Kaeya would.

So Childe had grasped a hold of Lawn’s shoulder, chuckling, and told both him and Barn-

“Give Ragnvindr my regards. Your captain was a treat. Really something when he’s so defenseless with my buddy in mouth and hand. It might’ve just been my easiest lay.”

And Barn had looked offended on the captain’s behalf and Lawn had sputtered, more put off by the imagery no doubt floating in his head than the actual words, and Childe had departed with pep in his step not unlike the kind that had followed his and Kaeya’s first ‘affair’ in that shed.

Childe can’t help but think again about how easily Kaeya had hit him.

Maybe it was due to the nature of how their first few meetings had gone, but it wasn’t exactly ‘normal’ for someone to beat up on a Harbinger uncaring like that, was it?

Aether, of course, was the exception, but the Traveler was exceptional in many ways and Childe had been the first one to attack- so that was on him. The consequence, getting pummeled into the floor of the Golden House three times in a row by a teenage kid, was mild compared to the aftermath of the situation.

Which was Aether consistently and persistently trying to find him and beat him up on a regular basis whenever free-time fell into his hands. The amount of letters Anton had set aside for Childe from the Traveler was almost concerning.

Still, ridiculously strong as Aether was, he posed less of a threat to Snezhnaya than the Abyss ever would- as such he was a friend and not a foe.

Alberich was a foe. And- frankly- something of an idiot.

Either Childe was far less intimidating than he should be to outsiders beyond Snezhnaya, or Kaeya had a terrible sense of self-preservation- because Childe didn’t think he had heard of anyone who had actively lied to, mislead, antagonized and tried to manipulate a Harbinger for the sake of doing so because they could and because they wanted to.

Much less someone who sucked him off, got choked and let himself get manhandled back into a bed- over a mushroom.

Anyone else at that point would’ve just called it quits and let Childe have the thing.

Or- well- not gotten sexually-involved to begin with.

Because that second time… it hadn’t really seemed like Kaeya’s attention was on the mushroom at all.

Yelena was right about that.

Kaeya wouldn’t let his guard down any other way would he?

Clearly if Childe wanted to get his hands on what their Tsarista so desired, the way to it was with the power of his dick.

He never thought that would happen in his time of employment.

It wasn’t even big. It was normal. A normal-sized dick. Or perhaps Snezhnayans were just huge in comparison to the rest of Teyvat. He didn’t know. Now when he merged with his Legacy, that was a different story, because the power had a tendency to morph him into something else.

But it wasn’t like he was planning on.

Doing anything.

With Kaeya.

With that.

Childe stares at the floor.

...No.

He wasn’t going to do that.

No reason to.

Wonder what his face would be like.

Alberich, awfully sensitive as he was, seemed able to take a lot. He certainly didn’t mind any roughness.

It… would be interesting….maybe. With that. To see just how much-

Childe stares at the floor some more. And imagines something he shouldn’t.

He scolds himself quickly after.

Hey. Focus on the job. Stop being horny. You get a taste of another person with some squishy thighs and a nice face after six months of a depressing drought and this is what happens.

“Knock it off. You’re better than this.”

But maybe not.

Either way, he dampens his odd thoughts of pressing Kaeya to the floor, face down and spreading him open for the sake of experimentation- by simply bringing Dotorre to mind.

It’s a sudden clarity that comes, coupled by distaste for the tinkering man.

That’s right. Enough.

He needed to move and set his plans in motion. The sooner the better. He has two days- that’s it.

Childe runs his hands through his hair, shaking it out, then stakes out the rest of his room with concentrated focus, contemplating on other things. There are only ten cabins on this floor, evenly spaced. They must share similar layouts, if not similar decor.

In the closet against the wall in the corner, there’s spare clothing inside. Liyuen. Comfortable stuff.

An extra pair of trunks. Black.

He grabs them.

He leaves his room and goes out into the peaceful, carpeted hall.

Three doors down, to the closed room on the opposite side. Childe finesses the lock and enters.

Alberich’s.

He had easily gotten the information sweet-talking the receptionist at the desk.

It’s empty, decorated similarly except with a color scheme of pastel blue and greens. The ambiance is far more calm.

On the opposite side of the ship, it’s shadowed with less light than Childe’s own.

Kaeya must still be suffering some sort of crisis out on the shore.

Childe goes to the balcony to check, slides open the glass and steps out onto the pale wood, taking a look at the Shoal down below.

He searches for only a short moment.

Sure enough the Favonian Knight is still out there, a speck in the near distance with all those strange ribbons on his scorched blouse, doing…something in the sand.

Childe raises his brows.

Kaeya's hissing into a hole.

Childe squints.

A hole filled with ocean water.

Childe stares.

...Yeah. Alberich’s an odd one, alright.

Is he aware anyone on this side of the boat can see him?

Childe snorts. Probably not.

As astute as Kaeya was, he was also incredibly obtuse.

He leaves the ex-spy from Khaenri’ah to do whatever in the nine hells he’s doing and takes the time to disrupt the pipes of the bathroom sink, break the shower head’s faucet and heat, and jostle a few panels of the ceiling and floorboards loose.

Ragnvindr was the one paying anyway, wasn’t he?

Damages should amount to maybe five hundred thousand Mora on a ship like this, right?

It was only fair.

Childe goes to the closet and removes all the spare clothes, leaving the extra set of trunks from his own cabin on the bottom shelf. He adds his sandals. He smiles to himself, smugly, anticipating the irritation Kaeya will experience at the offensive sight. But the smile twists slightly down as he remembers there’s a sex-addicted moron on the boat with them.

One, who in his sleuthing, Kaeya will definitely attempt to linger around.

Childe leaves a lone shirt behind.

Plain. White.

He then strips Kaeya’s mattress of its silken, thick quilt and sheets- and recalling the own layout of his room- rummages around in the drawer at the bedside for the notebook and pen he knew would be found.

He leaves a note on the bare bed with his cabin number.

‘Come see me if you want them back’.

There.

That should be enough to draw Alberich to him.

He should be able to wrangle Kaeya willingly into bed soon after. Create some sort of… sex-dependent bond. Latch himself to the knight’s side long enough to snatch the mushroom from him unawares- once it’s in Alberich’s hands.

Right. There was nothing wrong with that.

Access and information.

A job was a job.

Yelena had said it first, though he would’ve done it anyway on his own like before.

And if he managed to satiate both their curiously horny needs in the process- even better.

Farewell my dick drought.

Sweeping the excessive amount of bedsheets up into his arms- and stealing a pillow for good measure- Childe departs, briefly greeting the person who’s stepped out of the room across from Kaeya’s own.

He can’t really see who they are, only that they’re a fancily-dressed, petite, young woman with extraordinarily pale skin and long black hair. She doesn’t say anything back.

He thinks, however, he hears the scrutinizing swish of a closing fan.

 

---

Meanwhile, out on the golden beaches of the Yaoguang Shoal, Kaeya continues his attempts to contact his so-called guardian. To no avail. If speaking into the air wasn’t enough, a direct, focused breach through the aboveground to the one below should have worked.

Wasn't that what the Boughs Keeper had taught him?

He stares into the murky, sand-spun sea-water, gray and blue and full of pebbled stones.

Or Dainsleif is purposefully ignoring him. Blocking him out.

Kaeya narrows his eye.

His legs are sandy. His knees are numb. His fingers have clenched into the grains of wet and ocean-darkened sediment of the earth so hard they ache.

“Dainsleif,” he grits out for what has to be the fiftieth time. “I need your help, stop ignoring me, or I’ll...” he trails off, lacking any proper threat. “I’ll do something.”

Kaeya is not a time-traveling, teleporting magician.

He hasn’t an ounce of the powers the Boughs Keeper possesses and Dainsleif hadn’t ever taught him the ability to hide himself in plain sight- but Kaeya’s grandfather had once told him that sometimes feelings were often enough to manifest the desired into reality. Of course his grandfather had been talking about the dinner Kaeya had yet to prepare, but the concept was the same.

He didn’t want to be seen- so he was invisible.

Simple as that.

As it happened, his grandfather had soon come to regret ever asking seven-year old Kaeya to set foot in the kitchen and ‘manifest’ anything, but that was a story for another time, another day- and another fond memory of home he didn't need to recall.

Kaeya almost feels upset, and it’s a ridiculous thing to get frustrated about in a time and place like this, but there are one too many things out of place; new elements on a field he can’t control, and for the first time in a long time, he curses his own shortcomings.

He’s an Alberich.

And that’s technically supposed to mean something- something like him being blessed with the gifts of the ancients who came before.

Except it doesn’t- because he was the most ordinary ‘Alberich’ Khaenri’ah  had ever seen- with a strange gaggle of abilities they were certain he had to have lying dormant within him, but no one could figure out.

His blatant habit of lying and streak of mischief had convinced his father for the longest time that his son- destined to be the greatest mage who lived, powerful enough to bring the gods to their knees and bring their homeland back to glory- had actually been stolen at birth and replaced by some sort of demon, trickster goblin.

But no. Kaeya had just been that kind of kid.

A goblin.

A quiet, thoughtful one at times, but a goblin nonetheless.

Dainsleif, summoned by his father- and in good standing with the courts at the time- had been the only one unfazed enough to put up with Kaeya’s eccentricities and make sure he didn’t go wandering off any cliffs. And perhaps Kaeya’s father had believed having such a powerful and magic-blessed guard at the side of his son would somehow trigger his nonexistent abilities into the ones the fates foretold.

It very obviously hadn’t.

Even the new direction his training had taken afterwards, catered towards support from the shadows, long hours of running, climbing, sneaking about, hiding in the dark- hadn’t done much to give aid to his father’s cause.

Which- honestly- had the man really been expecting anything proper to come from arming a child with a knife and telling him to go stab things at his behest?

It was a miracle Kaeya’s head was on crookedly straight as it was and that he hadn’t lost his mirth at the world just yet.

What was it his father had told him all those years ago before ditching him in Mond?

“This is your chance. You-" How he struggled on that word- "-are our last hope.”

He’d somehow said it with both zero expectations and a sliver of hope that Kaeya would turn out to be of use.

That mission to Mondstadt had been a test. And he’d failed it to the point his father simply hadn’t bothered to come back unless something about his fate-destined son changed enough.

Well Kaeya had changed alright.

Now he was an alcoholic, skilled in the arts of self-deprecation and deception, gifted with both blade and tongue, so earnest in his desires to be of use to the important people who so cared for and looked after him, he was willing to give even his body for the cause.

And where had that gotten him so far?

Many places, in many pits, surrounded by debauchery and dicks.

If only his father could see him now. It wasn’t like the man had any hopes for an heir to begin with, but wow, if it wouldn’t have really struck that hammer on the nail of that coffin of ‘Khaenrian resurrection’.

“Dainsleif.”

He’s getting sick and tired of this.

“Dainsleif. I found the mushroom."

Nothing.

"Dain. I’m dying.”

Absolutely nothing. The water in the tiny pool of sand he’s gathered doesn’t so much as tremor.

Kaeya frowns.

Did something happen to the Keeper?

What was that thing going on in Khaenri’ah right now he refused to talk about- but let Finny in on?

“Dainsleif?” he asks it, a little uncertain.

It occurs to him then, as he catches sight of himself in the small gathering of water, what he hasn’t done.

What he shouldn’t do.

...Well.

Desperate times.

He sticks a thumb beneath his eyepatch briefly, flinches as it’s exposed and the breeze touches skin.

His mind blanks.

The Abyss surges towards him from everywhere at once. 

He falls forward.

Straight into dirt.

“I thought I told you not to do that.”

It’s incredibly dark and cold.

Kaeya takes the time to reorient himself, confused for a moment on whether he had gone to Dainsleif or Dainsleif had gone to him.

The soil is obsidian-colored. The air smells like lingering ash. The Keeper sits cross-legged in the pitch blackness of the dark dead woods of the Abyss, and Kaeya is sprawled on the ground across from him.

Kaeya feels beneath him carefully. He listens.

There the feeling of sand and the tumbling call of the sea remains, bits of warmth and breeze cutting through the expansive domain.

So he’s still on the Shoal.

Dainsleif had gone to him.

And brought his surroundings with him.

Kaeya pushes himself up; takes another glance around. It’s dead quiet. The sky through the boughs of the scorched forest is cluttered in stars and galaxies in a swampy indigo sea.

“...Why weren’t you answering?” Kaeya says at long last.

Dainsleif continues to gaze at the ground between them. His expression is almost absent. “I’m in the middle of something.”

A threat? A battle?

Is this actually Dainsleif- or a figment of him while the real one travels elsewhere?

“What’s going on?”

Dainsleif doesn’t answer that. He gives Kaeya a question. “Did you find the mushroom?”

“I- no, not yet-”

“Did a problem come up?”

“I would say so, yes,” Kaeya’s face twists. “I said I was dying. You would’ve really let that happen?”

“I would know if you were dying. The same if you were sick. You aren’t either. What’s the problem you’ve encountered?”

“I can’t get the mushroom.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to anymore.”

Dainsleif drags his eyes from the earth to look at him. His eyes are vividly bright in the eternal night. “I need you to.”

And Kaeya can’t understand this. "What for?"

“I can’t tell you.”

“Then I’m not getting it.”

He and Dainsleif gaze at one another, at a stalemate.

“...Kaeya.”

“No. I said I don’t want to. I’m giving it up.”

The look Dainsleif gives him says a whole lot of everything and nothing at once.

“Giving up. Even if it wiped out the hands of those who held it?”

“I don’t think it’d be much of a loss,” Kaeya scorns with a slanted eye, “considering whose hands it’s in. They’re sorcerers. Or they’re involved with something of the like I’m not familiar with. There are curses. I’m the last person who should be doing this.”

“No. You’re the one person who should be doing it.” Dainsleif stares, importantly, unmoved. “Curses are not unfamiliar to us. Neither are the practitioners of artes that are presumed forgotten. Khaenri’ah is not what it once was. But for us who remain, who know the truth, it befalls on us still to monitor those who might so recklessly abuse the gifts of our home.”

“That gift is a mushroom and we’ve got plenty more in the gardens you took it from in the first place. You told me someone else had stolen it. Finny said it was you.”

“I never said it wasn’t me who removed it and brought it aboveground. I only said it couldn’t be allowed to spread above ground.”

Kaeya gets to his feet, irritated for a reason he’s unable to place. Ridiculous. It was the Keeper's own fault. “Then it’s your responsibility. You should be the one dealing with this. Not me.”

Dainsleif’s eyes return to the ground.

Unbothered.

“It seems like you’ve forgotten in the life you’ve begun in Mond. The responsibilities you’ve decided to forgo, are the ones I’m handling now. Had you stayed in Khaenri’ah, had you assumed your rightful place and taken on your duties, I would have less of a need to act in your stead.”

Kaeya draws back, as if stung. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“You had a choice. It was too hard for you to make it.”

"My father-"

"He's not you. And you're not him."

The Boughs Keeper rises to a knee, and then to his feet.

“So this is where you are. And this is where I am. Circumstance. Decisions. These are the roles we now play.”

When he looks at Kaeya this time, there is something unwavering, something decidedly unyielding in the depths of his immortal gaze.

“You don’t like to recall that there was ever a place that once reached towards the heavens, where you were raised and taught and born in and of and within. You were young when you left. You feel no need to remember. But I do not share the same luxury. As I act on your behalf, you can take the moment from your carefree days to once-in-a-while lend me a hand to resolve the matters of your home.”

Kaeya… hasn’t been scolded in ages.

Much less on a level so personal- and serious.

Not even Klee’s mother, Alice, had lectured him so- and Kaeya had sent half her home plunging into the Abyss in a very explosive, fiery affair. Accidentally of course. And technically she’d been the one to open the portal and drop it through. Kaeya had told her cooking lessons weren’t needed. She had insisted he was wrong.

So he had poured some bubbling ingredients into a pot and ignited the stove.

Klee hadn’t been at home.

A small blessing.

But in all his years in Mondstadt, he didn’t think Crepus had ever once reprimanded him. Jean had, here and there, but she was a dear friend, and he valued her too much to truly do anything careless enough to draw her ire.

Diluc didn’t count. Most of the words that came from his brother’s mouth about his choices or behavior Kaeya either ignored or pretended to ignore, because why would he take pointers from someone who was practically the same as him; his other half?

Though Diluc was, admittedly, the more logical portion of that half.

Kaeya looks at his boots. He’s not sure he wants to see the expression on Dainsleif’s face again.

The one so weary.

It brings back memories.

Hadn’t it been the royal guard, who in Kaeya’s strange and wild years of youth, had scolded him so genuinely back then too?

Kaeya would laugh if he didn’t feel so horrible.

As it is, he merely smiles, deprecatingly so, and touches a hand to his covered eye again.

“...Alright. You’re right. I’m... sorry. I’ll get this for you then, but once I have it will you-”

Dainsleif is several yards away, digging with his hands through the ground.

Kaeya stops talking.

The Keeper pulls out something beneath the earth, wrapped tightly in foil, steaming. He peels back the foil to check.

It’s a potato.

Kaeya stares.

Dainsleif glances his way.

Kaeya keeps staring. It dawns on him terribly.

He draws himself up.

Incredulous.

Irate.

“Is this what you were in the middle of doing when I was asking for your help? Baking a potato?”

Dainsleif straightens up, unconcerned, as if he hadn’t been about to delve into every hidden aspect of Kaeya’s soul moments before. “The ship you’re on,” he notes. “Be wary. There’s something malevolent on it. Perhaps investigate before you sleep.”

And Dainsleif returns him.

Not to the beach.

To the sea.

Kaeya sputters and sinks and half drowns, cursing the Keeper to the very pits of the Abyss.

He’d done that on purpose. 

 

---

By the time he drags himself from the watery depths near the boat, climbs back to the cliffs and into the trees to retrieve the bag he’d left off the sands, and boards the cruise, Kaeya is in no mood for anything but a shower, change of clothes and quite possibly a taste of eternal sleep.

He pays no mind to the whispers and offended stares he receives from the staff and other passengers as he walks sand and mud and water onto the spotless floorboards, furniture and white carpet.

He gets his cabin. He gets his key.

He rids himself of the colorful ticket and makes his way from the curved and elegant reception desk and lobby on the third floor, walks up the staircase again to the second floor in an even worse mood and goes inside his room.

The quietness of it, the privacy, brings a near instant calm.

The bed’s a bit plain-looking from the door, but it must just be the simplicity of the peaceful decor.

Kaeya sighs, drops his bag on the floor and makes for the bathroom, relieved at the sight of its sand-colored tiles, glass and marble.

He could probably sit in here for an hour or two. Think over Tartaglia. Think over Wei Yin. Think over the letter to his brother.

‘Diluc, I realize you might’ve heard some things, but how do you feel about my possible involvement in a clan war? Not to worry. I’m sure everything will turn out fine’.

That seemed reasonable enough.

Short and to the point.

And if Diluc picked up on it- the subtle askance for help without directly asking for help.

They hadn’t quite gotten to that point yet of being so open about it.

He starts the tub, strips his clothes, and sits.

What had Dainsleif meant by ‘something malevolent?’ Was he talking about Tartaglia? Because Kaeya could agree with that.

He continues to sit and wait.

For thirty minutes.

For the water to warm.

It doesn’t.

Kaeya pokes at it. Turns it off. Turns it back on. Runs his hand beneath the ice cold water for another five minutes- then draws away.

That was... odd.

He wouldn’t put it past his brother to give him a defective cabin out of some strange bout of spite, but the room had been booked before any sort of rumors would’ve reached his ears. Unless Diluc had somehow gotten some of his people onto this cruise as well- which was a possibility Kaeya absolutely did not want to consider.

Or…

More logically, perhaps it’s just a problem with the pipes.

Kaeya goes to the sink and twists it.

And gets blasted in the face. 

 

---

The closet doesn’t have any clothes.

Not proper ones.

But there is an offensive piece of footwear if he’s ever seen one, and it’s so ridiculously familiar that it’s burning hot anger that sweeps through Kaeya with the thoughts- he’s been in my room, how did he get in my room, what did he do- as he tugs on the black trunks and white shirt before storming to the balcony and launching the leather sandals into the sea with not-quite-human strength.

He whirls around and stomps back in, eye sweeping over the cabin. What else had he touched-

His foot catches on a squeaking floorboard, flipping halfway up.

His other foot breaks through another one completely as he struggles to regain his balance from the first.

He hits the bed with his head, and as he strikes the mattress- then the floor- with his forehead, realizes that the mattress is a mattress. There aren’t any sheets.

He crawls up from the floor, onto his knees, hands on the bare bed, and glowers like never before.

A note.

Kaeya snatches it. He reads it.

He seethes.

He rises, goes out into the empty hall, barefoot, and walks.

Three doors down was it?

Kaeya doesn’t speak a word. He sets both hands on the door before him- and ices it shut. He knocks against the solid-sheet of glacial freeze, hears the sound of a conceited chuckle and footsteps drawing near, then turns and leaves.

The doorknob is jostled. Jostled again.

The chuckling stops.

Kaeya looks over his shoulder and smirks.

The door shakes. Rattles. Is tugged.

It’s bliss that overcomes him, warm, victorious and sweet.

Well that should keep the Harbinger occupied for two days. Unless Kaeya wants it to- that ice won’t melt.

And if the other passengers had questions about any new additions to the corridor decor, it was hardly Kaeya’s concern.

He looks back around.

And jumps.

Standing in front the door, across from his own, is a young woman with ghostly white skin, dark eyes and long, black hair. Half is twisted into a pair of braided buns, clipped by golden, ornate pins and tinkling tassels. It’s white garbs she wears, finely threaded with golds and green, and simple sandals, though their gold-white leather looks to be adorned in pearls and jade.

An open fan covers her mouth, pastel purple, blue and black, stitched silver flowers.

She lowers it, however, to address him.

“So you’re the one who was sitting with Young Master Wei Yin on the beach. How interesting. A foreigner. And a man. How desperate he’s become.” Her eyes rake over his body.

They linger on his legs.

They glare at his face.

Kaeya isn’t given the proper time to do anything or be anything aside from baffled, as the young woman smiles falsely, turns lightly on her heels, and vanishes back into her room, leaving him all alone.

“Hey.”

A fist pounds against the door some distance behind him.

“Alberich, you bozo. I know you’re out there-”

Well. Mostly alone.

Kaeya ignores Tartaglia’s call- he brought it on himself- and goes to find Wei Yin.

 

---

 

He wishes he hadn’t.

It’s clear the first floor was meant to be a lounge for dining and talk, a sweeping three-sixty view of the sea, tables, couches and lamps and translucent honey-gold curtains. There are several rooms breaking away from the lounge but their doors are closed, and as Kaeya is granted entrance by way of two very tired-looking guards, he soon discovers why.

There’s music coming from a door far towards the back of the lounge. Classical.

More suited for a ball.

Kaeya leans an ear towards the door, bewildered, suspicious- and raps his knuckles briefly.

“Didn’t I say to leave me alone?” complains Wei Yin’s voice from within, but he doesn’t sound particularly bothered.

“It’s me,” says Kaeya.

“Hm? Oh. Ragnvindr! Vindr!” Wei Yin’s voice brightens. “Come on in! Just close the door behind you.”

Kaeya enters.

And is assaulted with the worst home-decor he has seen in all the years of his trauma-filled life. Couches, throws, a dresser, a desk, darkened curtains- this is not what Kaeya looks at.

Why was everything red and satin and gold and black? Why were there tusks and suggestive paraphernalia everywhere? Who did this for him? Who personalized this? Who stuck a chocolate fountain and all these roses in here? No one was allowed on this floor so who was this decorated for? Wei Yin himself?

Kaeya gazes at the bust of a man’s pelvis on a raised platform against the wall beside him.

What was this supposed to be?

And Wei Yin’s on the bed; round, the biggest piece of furniture inside.

His dick is in his hand.

He smiles in greeting. “Hey. I was just thinking about you.” He sits up, in casual clothes. “Well- not like that. I was thinking of how I should repay you then started remembering Carp and got distracted for a bit.”

“...Who’s Carp?”

“My lovely bandit. I don’t think it’s her real name, seeing how she was looking at a picture of a fish when she said it, but it’s all I’ve got.” Wei Yin’s expression is oddly fond as he looks towards the bust at Kaeya’s side. “I had that created to show off how big I was as soon as I hit my third puberty."

What was a third puberty?

"Impressive, right? And it’s all natural. She really liked it. Did a few things with it.” The heir sighs in remembrance. “It’s easier on tough days to remember her when I carry it around. What a short time it was. Shame I had to leave her.”

Kaeya steps away from it, disturbed.  

Wei Yin doesn’t appear to take note, yanking up his pants and patting the mattress. “Are you here to talk business? Have a seat.”

“You’ll forgive me if I pass.”

Wei Yin laughs and gets up, not bothering to button his robed shirt. “Mm. I guess that’s a good idea. I’ve been jacking off for ages. It’s probably not safe.”

Infinite judgment. Kaeya beholds him with it.

What did he mean not safe? What in the world kind of jacking off had he been doing that it would constitute as a hazard?

Wei Yin dances off beat to the string quartet playing off the machine shelved by the desk, makes his way to Kaeya, and with the very same hand that had been on his dick, claps him on the shoulder.

Kaeya stares at it.

Wei Yin beams.

“Come join me on the deck, before the sun sets. I’ll show you that letter and you can tell me what you think. Besides, we should talk about how you’re gonna poison Chao Xing, right?” 

 

---

They don’t talk about that.

Kaeya sits on a reclining chair in the warm air of the evening, staring at the letter in his hands as Wei Yin takes the other chair beside him, fiddling with a fishing rod and bait and rambling on about his affair with the bandit, distracted by the thought of fish first- which inevitably led to 'Carp', and to a far too detailed recounting of the sex they had on the roof of the Wangshu Inn much to the horror of the patrons, chef and adeptus that apparently resided inside.

'Father, I'm bringing a friend to the wedding! They're going to kill Chao Xing. Fingers crossed it works!'

What kind of letter was this? There weren't any details.

It just says you're bringing a murderer to your wedding, Wei Yin!

He interrupts Wei Yin's inane chattering.

"Why is it so short?"

The heir glances over, smirking. "Heh. My father is a man of few words. Also, he doesn't ever bother to read anything I write to him if it's over three sentences. Something about it being a waste of time."

How badly does he hate you? 

Kaeya could weep.

That there actually existed a man beyond his own father who held his son in such little regard. Here he had thought he'd seen it all.

"It's alright," Wei Yin carries on, mistaking the expression of incredulity on Kaeya's face for worry. "He'll get the message. Besides, the less said the better. The Yuans might get their hands on the letter. They're always intercepting our mail. A bunch of owls, they are."

Wei Yin chuckles.

Why was he laughing? Wasn't that the biggest need for worry?

He'd written with no room for interpretation that he was out to kill Chao Xing.

How is that not an issue if it's seen!

The heir, oblivious to the real source of Kaeya's concern, finishes sticking his false bait on the hook of his cherry-red rod.

He flicks his wrist a bit; testing how it feels, watching how very slight it bends. He hums in satisfaction and gets to his feet, gazing out across the wide expanse of the sun-stricken sea. "Did I ever tell you what fishing means to me?"

"I didn't ask."

"Well I'll tell you."

The filters on Wei Yin's ears are indeed strong. He smiles into the sunset.

"A fool will tell you a catch is all about having patience, sitting around and waiting for things to come. But that's because they're a fool. A real fisherman doesn't bother with such a pointless game. If there's something you want, the first opportunity you get, you should stop peering into the water and take it with both hands at the first glimpse of gold. What you find, doesn't matter. It's certain to be worthwhile in some way, in some place. It depends on the market. You have to pay close attention to that."

That was gold panning and it obviously used a pan and not a fishing rod.

"Who told you that was how you fish?"

"Carp did."

The bandit?

She was just looking for gold as usual.

Wei Yin looks over his shoulder then, blinking at Kaeya- before breaking into a laugh.

Breathtakingly handsome.

And for what?

"You're missing the point, Vindr," the young heir smiles. "Obviously that's not how you fish. That's just how Carp chooses to live. She sees something she wants and she takes it. If she doesn't like it, she moves on. And she'll beat up anyone who gets in her way."

A reflectiveness settles in his dark eyes.

"Mm. How should I say it? That day Chao Xing found me in bed, that day I played a game of cards and found myself overtaken by... that something. That carnal urge. It was so strange. I got found by her, but instead of feeling bad- because I never really ever did- I just felt relieved. Relieved like never before. Because when I was with those women, I just kept thinking to myself, 'Wow. I'm really not attracted to Chao Xing at all. I could stay in bed with strangers forever and it'd be better than anything we've ever had'. Then I was on the run. And I met Carp. And that thing that accompanied her."

Did he mean Finny? Was that thing Finny?

"She was robbing me and I should've been upset by it but I wasn't. Being able to be with anyone, being able to be anywhere. Doing as she pleased. Maybe it was the thought of marriage and commitment to a place and person and people I didn't want to be around. I asked her to marry me, on a whim. She was regular. Not rich. Not any manners. Just a really nice chest and some thick legs. I wasn't expecting a real marriage. I just thought about what it would be like."

Wei Yin smiles again, but this time it's subdued; sincere, his eyes crinkle, a dimple appears.

"We robbed travelers. We stole Mora. We jumped wagons and frightened adventurers wandering in the woods. She showed me those parts of her. I showed her mine. She loved food a lot. And clothes. It didn't matter what they looked like so long as they felt 'rich' to her. I think I really enjoyed being with her. We had a lot of sex. And I mean- a lot. But we talked, and we could talk for ages. And no one at home bothers to listen to me all that much. So... it was different.

But running away. I couldn't do it for very long. Because I would always, always be running until the end of time. Away from my duties. Away from Chao Xing. I can't have exactly what I want. With her money, I can have half. That would have to be good enough. That's... kind of what I was thinking back then. And the longer I stayed with Carp, the more danger she would've been in. The Yuans don't care about collateral damage. They curse who they curse and whatever happens... well. That's not on them. So I left her. I did tell her I hoped we could meet up again and bang. But more than that- meet up again- and hold a conversation once more. Just like this."

Kaeya blinks very, very slow.

In the shadows of the lowering sun that sweep half the deck, the curve to Wei Yin's face is made more mature; the lean, muscled curve to his shoulders more prominent. The half smile on his lips, the curve to his brows, at ease in fondness and remorse.

The young heir glances sidelong Kaeya's way.

"... I'm not a leader. I can't manage a clan. Responsibilities like looking after my people... I can't do it. It's about power and putting on charades; hiding beneath masks, decorum and grace. Some of them have been trying to kill me for ages. Long before I started sleeping around with any of their girlfriends and wives. That's the way this life of mine is. A mother disappointed she never got a daughter. A father disappointed he couldn't have a better son."

Evening casts a crimson and gold glow across his face, igniting the dark of his eyes with vibrant light.

Wei Yin grins.

"It must sound pretty foolish wanting to escape and live a different life. But doing something only because that's what others want me to do. That's no good, right? Shouldn't I be out here, doing things for myself in the way I want? 'Stop peering into the water'. That's what our 'fishing' means."

He laughs, bright, with all the zeal of youth.

"Ahh! I really miss her. May we meet again!"

Kaeya has no words.

None at all.

And his heart beats extraordinarily slow.

It's not foolish, he wants to say. There's nothing wrong with that. Because that would make him a fool too.

But he can't quite get it out.

His chest feels tight.

He thinks he hears the clipped swish of something closing from the deck below, but he discounts it as the new breeze that's passed.

Wei Yi turns back around to view the ocean. He mumbles to himself, something about angles and force, the height of the sun, and the approximate number that is the circumference of the sea- which is one hundred percent incorrect-

And then he casts his rod.

Literally.

Casts it.

Throwing it like a harpoon into the great, shimmering sunburst reflection of the ocean's waves.

Kaeya's eyes fixate on where it disappears into the gleaming horizon.

"Alright!" Wei Yin celebrates. "Look at the distance on it! Now that's how you do it like a fisherman!"

No it's not!

Why had he been struggling so hard to put a bait on if that's what he was going to do with the thing anyway? What did he think he was accomplishing hurling his rod into the stratosphere like that?

Wei Yin, what's wrong with you? Kaeya thinks.

"Wei Yin, what's wrong with you?" Kaeya says. 

Wei Yin stretches.

Cracks his back. Cracks a yawn.

"Wow! What a long day. I haven't talked like that in a while, Vinny. Ha ha! You're kind of special too, aren't you? All this reminiscing has me feeling a bit of a way. A pent-up, kind of way."

He gazes at Kaeya, curiously.

"Want to help me out?" 

 

---

This is how Kaeya finds himself on the second floor at reception in the darkening hours of night, a large pouch of Mora in hand, asking for lube. The receptionist is looking at him a certain way.

"It's not for me," he says.

She doesn't look like she believes him. Neither do the rest of the staff behind the long desk.

That's fine. Kaeya doesn't even believe himself.

She hands him a capped bottle, blankly. He accepts it, just as blankly.

And pays for it.

And further asks for some ointment.

See, prior to being here, after the events on the deck, Wei Yin had invited him indoors to the common lounge of the first floor, not to do anything remotely sexual in nature, but to simply 'hang out'.

"You're on the ship because of me in the first place, right? Who else are you gonna do stuff with?"

He'd made a terrible point.

Because who else was there? Tartaglia? Don't make him laugh.  

"Also I'm lonely. There's no one here but the guards, you know. And none of them are women."

"I'm not a woman either."

"No, you're not. But you can be my friend. A friend with really sexy thighs."

"Stop touching them."

"Okay."

So Kaeya had watched Wei Yin dance, and had watched the guards watch Wei Yin dance in shared judgment, for half an hour to classical music off-beat, just like before, by himself.

Was this why Diluc hadn't wanted him to spend time with the man alone? Because Kaeya could definitely see why.

When Wei Yin had worn himself out, he'd brought Kaeya into a game of tiles in the middle of the carpeted floor, followed by several more games, a round of cards, then woodblock-carving. Everything Wei Yin carved was phallic. Everything Kaeya carved was simply a smaller block of wood. He hadn't the talent.

Wei Yin had lied on the floor afterwards, bringing Kaeya to his side, and having a guard retrieve a notebook.

The notebook showed off personal sketches of traditional and modern wear. They were all designed by himself, catering towards accentuating the 'glorious-ness of the female body'. After all, any guest to a clan wedding would need to dress in appropriate fashion.

"Which one do you want to wear? I'll re-fashion it for you."

Kaeya had chosen the one least likely to have him walking about half-naked, Wei Yin had gotten sidetracked showing him the design he had drawn for Carp to wear three days into their 'marriage', and had promptly fallen into a bout of praise over the bandit's body, leading to a hard-on Kaeya was forced to witness make a rise from its slumbering depths.

The guards had sighed and stepped back.

Kaeya had rolled away.

Wei Yin had rolled him back, sat him up and said-

"It looks like it's going to be another long night for me and my hand. I've been so horny for no reason. I think it's because of the wedding coming up. Like I've got an urge to put my dick in a bunch of holes before it gets permanently chained down. So can you do me a favor? I need some stuff to ease the friction burn I'll get."

Kaeya had attempted to pull his once-more grabbed hands away. "What? You can't get it yourself?"

"I'm not allowed to leave any time after eight."

"...You have a bedtime."

"In case I somehow end up with some random lady. Like a cute receptionist. Or lonely, lost passenger. Or frisky waitress. The guards are so anal about that. Doing their jobs."

Wei Yin had looked over his shoulder at the guards adorned in crimson and gold, who looked back at the heir with the most deadpan expressions that ever were.

"Anyhow, please?" Wei Yin had clasped his hands together, pleading. "I'll even give you some extra funds for yourself."

"I don't need them."

Wei Yin had given it to him anyway, with instructions to leave extra Mora for the captain of the ship to collect at reception later. "He's the one who stocks up on the stuff. Unlike my father, he understands the meaning passion!"

No, he's just a hornbag like you! Why is he sleeping around on here?

And Wei Yin had sent him off, waving cheerfully from the lounge entrance.

"Don't take too long! Big jingyu's got some pleasure to give its rider, if you know what I mean!"

Kaeya didn't.

"Me- I'm the rider. And I'm going to ride the waves of the ocean all night. Also get some lube? I have this custom-made doll-"

"Alright, I've got it. Stop talking."

Thus the situation.

Kaeya takes the ointment the receptionist passes over- and looks at it. Truly looks at it. And wonders what he's doing.

How had he gone from being a Knight of Favonius, carrying out his duties and walking along cobblestone streets- to this?

This.

An errand-boy for lube.

On a ship to Liyue Harbor. To kill somebody's bride.

Feeling yet another part of himself wither away, Kaeya turns around.

And jumps for the second time that day, coming face-to-face with the young woman he had seen before in the room across from his own, whose eyes are narrowed; whose fan she holds before her mouth as she takes note of what's in Kaeya's hands.

"...And coming from Young Master Wei Yin's floor, are you? I'm so curious," she says. Her voice is a quiet, quiet thing, laced in pleasant wrath. "Who do you think you are?"

That was Kaeya's question.

How had she known where he had been? Had she followed him? When?

Her fan closes. And taps against his chest.

Once.

Twice.

Slow.

"...Foolish outsider. I don't know who you're working for or where you came from. But he's mine to take."

Kaeya startles at the words. He's not fast enough to hide his bewilderment, and the young woman smiles, leaning in, bringing her fan beneath his chin and tilting it up.

"Don't. Get. Involved. Or I'll make swift work of you."

She steps back. She opens her fan.

She doesn't leave.

The bustle of the lobby carries on. The receptionist and staff behind the desk pay no mind. As if they hadn't seen her; as if they hadn't heard her threat. Kaeya stands still in place, with a widened eye.

Not petrified.

Not afraid.

But every part of him suddenly directing him to act. To kill.

One could always recognize another. Though he had recognized it too late. Assassin.

From where? On whose side?

Wei Yin.

He had... mentioned those from his own clan and the Yuan clan out to get him, but Kaeya didn't really think...

Was someone actually going to try and kill him? 'Take him' before the wedding? Why? Wasn't this what both sides wanted? A union?

She watches him. Her eyes moon. She's smiling behind her fan. Pleased.

Falsely so.

"Go on. Return to him. Sleep with him. Give him a new experience. It'll be the last for the both of you."

I'm not here to do that.

He can't say it aloud.

Maybe it's because of the lube in his hands. He doesn't know. It's quite damning.

She takes his silence as confirmation. Her smile grows.

It's sinister.

Something malevolent.

Dainsleif couldn't have just told him there was some kind of killer on board?

"Don't be shy," she encourages. She puts some more distance between them. She closes her fan and gestures. "I'll accompany you. Perhaps we can say hello to Young Master Wei Yin together."

As if.

"No, that's quite alright," he says, rejecting the offer, smiling, even as his father's voice annoyingly rings in his ear for him to neutralize the threat. He doesn't do that anymore.

He doesn't.

"I insist," she insists.

"No, I insist," he insists.

He shuffles around her. He walks away.

He heads towards the staircase and chances a glance over his shoulder. She's following him.

He doesn't take the staircase to the first floor.

He goes down to the third floor, walking.

She walks behind him.

He goes to the fourth, walking a bit faster.

She walks a bit faster in turn.

He touches the fifth floor and speeds up. Her sandals clack louder as she speeds up too.

The sixth floor.

He runs.

She sprints after him.

They break into a chase through the long empty corridor of the seventh floor, home to a grandiose ballroom and bust through the gigantic red and gold and green ornate doors, a significant elemental change surging in the air as Kaeya's body instinctively reacts to protect himself- because that's why his Vision had been given-

He wheels around, fully prepared to wield lube and ice in hand, when a second-guessing doubt as to whether or not he should reveal he has a Vision to her leaves him openly defenseless to her attack.

She launches herself across the floor- and with two feet- dropkicks him a quarter of the way across the room.

And it's a massive room.

He hits a table, three chairs, and gets tangled in a pastel green tablecloth before coming to stop.

There isn't a part of him that doesn't feel broken.

That hadn't been a normal kick.

He doesn't get the chance to get up because his attacker is on him, digging her knee into his gut, clawing at his face, strangling him with the tablecloth.

Kaeya struggles to fight back. Panicking slightly. Panicking a lot.  

This isn't human power. This is-

Black dots his vision.

He winces and gasps.

His grip on the lube and ointment loosen. Drops.

And suddenly she stops.

His neck is freed.

Kaeya swallows desperately to reclaim lost air, all while she smacks him in the face with her opened fan and snatches the ointment from beside his limp hand.

She gets to her feet.

Out of breath, pinkness coloring her pale, pale face, her hair and hair ornaments out of place, she glares down at him- and glares down at him, furious. "Keep the lube for yourself, succubus. He can suffer the aftermath of taking it up the ass. I hope it burns."

She stalks away.

Her sandals echo with her words into his ears as Kaeya lies, chest heaving, in moderate degree of pain, breathless and baffled, with a spinning head and scratched face.

What was that?

 

---

He's still reeling forty minutes later when he finally picks himself up and fixes the mess left behind.  

Wei Yin.

Kaeya stops limping along the halls of the fourth floor to look at the lube in his hand. It had survived without damage, scratch or dent. He needed to get back to the heir and warn him. Or find out who that was.

And why had she left him alone with this of all things?

She had completely misinterpreted the situation.

He starts limping again.

The lounges of the common rooms on this deck sound lively, unaware as to the debacle that had occurred only a few floors below.

Good for them- enjoying their billiards and their cards and their drinks and the camaraderie among partners and friends.

And were they chanting the 'captain'? Wasn't the man supposed to be directing the cruise?

There wasn't a single sane thing about this ship, was there?

Who in the world on here was 'high-class'?

He would gladly face Diluc's wrath, Jean's stern questioning, Amber's endless, babbling exclamations, if it meant returning to the familiarity that was Mondstadt and home.

But Dainsleif.

No.

He couldn't let the man down.

He had to do this- he couldn't do this- he had to be here.

Kaeya grits his teeth. Good grief. He wouldn't last a day in the courts of Khaenri'ah. He sets a hand on the wall, using it to keep upright; to continue dragging himself forward. The moment I start dying for real over this mushroom, he better-

He tumbles sideways through a laundry chute in the wall. 

 

---

 

Not for nothing, Childe thinks it's a dead body dropping from the ceiling.

It hits the ground facedown with an echoing bang and thud and doesn't move.

He stops walking, a good amount of feet away.

On the unknown eighth floor of the cruise, where everything is strangely stainless steel and metal, the shadows are wicked, reaching things, and its corridors bend in a way that shouldn't be feasible on an oval-ship, with zero decor and endless doors that open into other doors and circling halls.

His bare-footed steps had resounded off the walls every time he forged ahead; the hair on his body stood on edge.

This was the feeling of submergence, of stumbling into a depth where something harrowing lied.

Why would Yelena not mention it?

Unless he was imagining things.

But Childe was a veteran on the field. He had traversed the Abyss.

Something was off.

How he had gotten here exactly, stuck wandering the halls with no way out, started when he got locked into his room hours before.

He had been lounging on his bed, smug, waiting for Alberich to come to him, but it hadn't occurred to him Kaeya would put that Cryo of his to use and freeze him in. The ice had been frozen to a degree he couldn't break through- he needed to stop underestimating the knight- even as he struck it with his Delusion.

Pride, and an already shortened lifespan, wouldn't allow him to bust out his Legacy- this was not a dire situation, there was no need for desperation- so he had exited through his balcony and climbed to the upper deck, much to the terrified shrieks of the passengers relaxing and drinking on their wooden recliners.

Childe had then stuffed his face- because he'd departed from Mondstadt at a pace only a heavily-capable and trained officer could achieve to reach the Shoal when he had and he was starving- played several rounds of billiards on the fourth floor, swindled two men in cards and ate a chocolate parfait, all whilst thinking of Kaeya and calming himself down.

He couldn't, after all, let himself be anything other than level-headed.

He was supposed to be 'attracting' the ex-spy to him. He didn't need to push him away.

...But he did need to find wherever Alberich had gone off to.

So Childe had stopped dawdling and made his way to the first floor- got turned back by guards- and gone to the overhead deck as the sun began to drop.

It'd been miraculous timing.

Right as he'd been thinking of a way to lower himself without being seen through any windows, Kaeya and Wei Yin themselves had gone out below. And Childe had listened in to one of the most bizarre stories of falling-in-love and comparisons to fishing he'd ever heard before tuning out.

Then, as silence fell, he had peered over the railing to see Wei Yin looking at the sea and Kaeya looking at Wei Yin with... some sort of expression on his face.

Childe had frowned- had he missed something important that was said- and consequently heard Wei Yin proposition to Kaeya afterwards.

They'd vanished inside.

Childe had then proceeded to fall off the boat about seventy feet into the ocean below in an attempt to climb down onto the second floor deck before slipping.

He should've kept those sandals-

And after scaling his way back to the nearest window and crawling into a bar lounge with passengers- who'd been playing cards and gossiping- shrieking again in terror, Childe had gone out into the hall, leaned against the wall to rest, and toppled into a laundry chute that for some reason was big enough to consume a six foot plus soldier with extra wiggle room and space.

He, of course, had dried over the course of his eternal wandering.

But a change of clothes would be more than welcome.

Definitely a shirt. Trunks weren't cutting it down in this unholy, frigid place.

That was actually what he'd been thinking about seconds before. A change of clothes. And whether this place needed an exorcism.

Then the body had come.

He goes over, ready to kick it.

It rises and swings at him.

He ducks and turns and grabs it by the arm, twisting as he slams it against the wall and pins it in place. And then he blinks, realizing what- or rather who- it is. It's hard not to recognize him, with that glaring eye of his.

"What are you doing here?" Childe asks.

"Me?" Kaeya scoffs. "What are you? Where is this?"

Childe lets go of him and gives space. "It's the ship. The bottom part of it, anyway."

He watches as Kaeya glances about, clutching a bottle of something in hand, dressed in the swimwear and shirt Childe had left behind for him.

"Not a fan of the sandals I see," he comments, taking note of the knight's bare feet.

The look he receives is downright mordacious.

But as Kaeya continues to take note of their surroundings, Childe continues to take note of him.

Specifically the way in which his hair has come undone, the small scratches on his face, the nail marks on his neck, the red mark of something like a band as if it'd been wrapped around his neck and twisted and tugged.

He huffs out a dry laugh.

Alberich looks back towards him with an accusatory eye. "What?"

Childe crosses his arms and cocks half a smirk. "I thought Wei Yin wasn't interested in men. You must truly have a way with words."

And Kaeya, to his mild surprise, doesn't scowl- but frowns.

"Wei Yin? I haven't done anything to him."

Childe raises his eyebrows. "Then you met with someone else."

Kaeya frowns further. "I did." 

How does he know that? Kaeya wonders.

No, no- nevermind that, he needed to find a way back to Wei Yin.

That woman- that assassin-

He starts walking past Tartaglia, not caring to waste time on him.

Why does this corridor look like it doesn't end? It's so dark-

An arm hooks through his own and brings him back around. The bottle of lube is snatched from his fingers and Childe holds it up above their heads out of reach as Kaeya tries to take it back. The Harbinger cranes his neck to read it in poor lighting, and read it he does, because the scrutinizing expression on his face shifts and he stares, reading it again.

He drops his eyes back onto Kaeya.

Kaeya can already see the wheels turning in the wrong direction. At this point- he doesn't know if he cares to correct it. There wasn't a single thing anyone around him didn't misunderstand.

Aside from Dainsleif.

And the Keeper had dropped him into the ocean out of annoyance earlier. So his 'magical' guardian wasn't exactly on his side either right now.

Kaeya sighs. "You wouldn't mind giving that back, would you?"

Childe doesn't give the lube back. He makes an idiotic comment instead.

"You'll spread your legs for anyone, won't you?"

Kaeya turns around and leaves him.

He should point Wei Yin's assassin in the direction of the Harbinger. Absolve himself of any blame.

Childe follows him.

"Leave me alone," Kaeya tells him, wholly preoccupied with the thought that Wei Yin might actually be getting murdered right now.

But that woman had given Kaeya some sort of strange blessing hadn't she? So she wasn't trying to kill the clan heir, was she? 

What did she mean by 'take out'? 

Maybe Wei Yin was doing just fine. Jacking off in pain in his horrendously adorned cabin. 

Is he overthinking this?

"I said something wrong," says Tartaglia. "My... bad." 

Was the agent still next to him? He didn't have to sound like he was choking on the apology. 

"You say a lot of things," Kaeya answers. "I can't be sure I was listening."

They walk the corridor together and turn.

And continue walking.

"You won't find a way out of here," the Harbinger says after a while. "I've been here for hours."

"I didn't realize you had such a terrible lack of direction," Kaeya responds. "You'll find we aren't the same." There's a door to his left. He enters it- and steps into another long, narrow corridor. He walks.

And walks.

And turns a corner.

And walks again.

Childe stays with him, growing more and more amused as the time goes on.

It's after nine more doors are entered, sixteen oddly empty rooms are explored and forty-seven more corridors are traversed through- that Kaeya halts with his shoulders stiffly raised.

Tartaglia has stopped behind him.

Kaeya squints into the black abyss of the same hallway ahead, peeved. "Don't say it."

Childe says it.

"I told you so."

Kaeya faces him. "Are you sure we fell to the bottom of the ship and not somewhere else?"

What a strange question to ask.

Childe regards the knight, analytical. "Where else would we have fallen?"

Kaeya pauses. He looks away. "...Nowhere. Nevermind." He starts walking along the corridor once more.

Slower.

Childe tracks him, prying. "Where else would we have fallen?" he repeats.

"I said 'nowhere'. Mind your own business."

"You brought it up."

"And now the conversation is done."

"I think you're really strange, Alberich."

"I think you're really irritating, Harbinger."

"Un-ice my door."

"No."

"Then where am I supposed to sleep?"

"Try the ocean. Perhaps you'll drown and find some mystical lost treasure. Or another Ruin Hunter."

Childe's mouth curls in distaste.

How is he supposed to 'sweet-talk' a person like this? Not that he had been exactly trying- but still. What a lost cause. There was no point in it.

And what in the world had he been thinking about way earlier on when he first boarded?

Sleeping with Alberich?

All he wants to do now is toss him off the boat.

Childe speaks from the heart- as always in Kaeya's presence- beginning to unwillingly get worked up. "I honestly can't stand you."

Kaeya is unbothered, gaze focused ahead. "Is that why you've been following me? There is somewhere else you can walk, you know. In the opposite direction," he blithely retorts. "Besides. Who was it who broke into someone else's room without permission first?" 

"That was you," Childe points out. "Back in Mondstadt."

"I'm talking about here. What was the point in taking my bedsheets?"

"So you'd have to come get them back. Obviously. I wrote it out. Can't you read?"

"And you thought that would actually work? Why would I ever go to your cabin?" Kaeya says, starting to sound just as irked.

"To have sex. That was the whole point."

"You truly are desperate to get an 'in' with this mushroom and Wei Yin, aren't you?" Kaeya criticizes, accurately on point. "You fooled me once. It won't happen again."

"You fooled yourself. Give yourself a pat on the back," Childe retorts. "And what. It's so hard to believe after a couple times of seeing you I could've actually been interested?"

"In what exactly? Me as a person? Or is it sex?"

"Why not both?"

"Don't take it too personally," Kaeya says, sarcastic, as they round a corner for the millionth time, "but it might be because you're a liar."

"Who says I'm lying? I want to sleep with you."

"For the fun of it? No one wants to sleep around just to sleep around. There's always something someone wants to come out of it."

"What are you talking about? Didn't you spend half your day with a sex-obsessed bumpkin? All he lives for is sex."

"I'm almost certain his obsession with finding love is rooted in a deep psychological problem-"

"-with himself-"

"-with a family that never properly loved him. Leave him be. There's more to him than you think."

Childe scoffs. "Wow. You're sure attached to someone you met approximately nine hours ago."

The corridor is longer and darker than before. Was this the same one they went through ten minutes ago or a different one? "His company is preferable to someone else's, I'll say that," Kaeya comments, trying to discern which direction they're facing.

"Oh it is?" Childe scorns.

"Yes."

It was. But it also wasn't.

Kaeya didn't fancy having to watch Wei Yin dance about again.

"So you'll stick with that then," Childe says.

"Stick with what?" Kaeya replies.

"That there's nothing else you want. Nothing unresolved."

"Between us."

"Between us."

"Yes, I'd say you're right for once. There's nothing to resolve. I don't like you."

"I don't like you either."

"So what are you asking me, Tartaglia?"

Childe glances at him sideways. "My dick in you. You interested?"

Kaeya glances right back at him. "No."

And as they loop the winding labyrinth of the hidden floor beneath the ship and the creaking shadows of the hall, it's exactly how they find themselves in an empty room with empty steel shelves and a bare steel table that was either once a storehouse for supplies or an experimental laboratory of something bizarre wiped clean of every last drop of evidence.

Considering the ship and its passengers and its highly dubious captain, neither of them would ever think it unbelievable.

It's not like they're the most sensible pair either, given the fact that Kaeya has no logical reason to be running his tongue along the thick vein of Childe's cock, yet there he is and there they are.

He can't say they haven't been here before.

Childe's hand tangles in his hair, lightly, keeping him steady, even as he absently takes another look around the room.

"It's so creepy in here. So dead. I wonder if it's haunted."

"Can you not say stuff like that when I'm sucking you off?" Kaeya questions, pausing. "You're spoiling the mood."

Childe lifts a brow. "What mood? There isn't one. It's freezing cold."

"Would you like me to make it colder? I have my hands on your dick right here. If you're asking me to freeze it off, I will."

"Did it sound like that was what I was asking? How would that even help?" Childe grabs himself with his other hand, making a point. "Look at this. I'm drooping. It's drooping. My dick is sad. And I think it's turning blue. Stop gripping it so hard."

Kaeya snorts, knocking the man's hand aside. "Maybe you would've preferred the company of my brother. He's far warmer than I. I'll be sure to tell him you're interested for the next time you return."

Childe snorts back. "Yeah, no thanks. Like I'd go back to your city. Just..." His brows crease, vexed. "Stop talking."

"You started talking first."

Childe stares down at him. Stares.

"Geezus. You're so-"

"Annoying, yes I know. Expand your vocabulary."

And because Kaeya isn't any sort of uncaring animal like the Harbinger, he eases up his grip and takes him in his mouth.

There.

There was his warmth.

Irritating moron.

What he can't take in, he works with a hand.

It gets quiet.

Kaeya steadies his ire- brushes it aside- breathes in the other man's scent in and focuses. He flattens his tongue. Curls it. Flattens it again, and bobs his head slow. And as he does- the longer he does- the more his brows start to furrow.

There's... a taste to Tartaglia.

Like the time in the shed.

An unusual one. A familiar one. But he doesn't know what it is.

His brows furrow deeper.

He slides his mouth off, staring at Childe's dick. It twitches, slick with spit. He adds more. Spreads it with his mouth.

Pauses again. And looks at it.

Odd.

He shifts the foreskin further down, thumbing beneath, circling gently, running his tongue periodically along the slit of his head. His features get a little slack the more he tastes, as he tries to figure it out. 

His eye falls half-closed.

He tilts his head. Licks all the way down and back up, then down again, before sucking at Tartaglia's leaking tip with an accompaniment of curious, curious noises. What is that?

It's addictive.

Childe breathes in just a little quieter than before.

Kaeya glances up at him, with a bit of a muddled mind.

Childe's gaze is unreadable. He guides Kaeya's head back down.

Kaeya obliges. His mouth relaxes.

Childe's hips begin to rock. Slow. He's enjoying it. He takes his time.

Feels good. Tastes good. Kaeya itches to touch himself. Why does Tartaglia's dick taste like that?  He slides his hands beneath the waistband of his trunks; grabs his half-hard sensitive self, and stifles down a groan.

The fingers in his hair tighten.

Childe's swollen dick leaves his mouth.

Kaeya follows it, regardless, tucking his head beneath to drag a ball back into it, playing with it, tucking his head even further as he pulls the other in and sucks on them both with earnest.

Childe's breath catches, sharp.

Kaeya, burning up, registers it only slightly- he likes that?- too busy fucking into his own hands.

And Childe is too busy processing what he's witnessing between the heat in his front and cold steel pressing into his back, can't do anything but file it away as future-material-to-jerk-to in the snowy alps of his home.

It's a struggle to move the knight away, but somehow he does, and Kaeya, face warm beneath his hands, pants and breathes in askance for more, like he's about to come.

They haven't done anything yet. 

Childe's cock is hard as hell.

He drags Kaeya up by the face, sliding their tongues together, exhaling harshly.

Saliva drips from the corner of Kaeya's mouth. Childe tongues it back in and kisses him deep and wet. He runs his hands from the knight's face, down his shoulders, to his waist; keeps one on it, slips the other inside Kaeya's trunks, and takes over jerking him off for himself.

Kaeya's leg lifts. They roll their hips together. They inhale into each other's mouths. They roll their hips again.

Childe grinds up harder. Kaeya presses down.

The friction is delicious. Scorching. The room's on fire.

Kaeya tears their kiss apart first, struggling for air, struggling for the words to say.

They're not coming out.

That's alright.

Childe's erection is painful and thick enough to transcend the need for words.

He slides a hand under Kaeya's half-raised leg and brings it around him; takes his other hand and settles it on the back of Kaeya's head, folding it into the crook of his neck.

Kaeya huffs and groans into his skin, hot and flustered, the small privacy given allowing him to cast aside his reservations and let go. His breath is too short. Rapidly getting shorter.

His mouth opens. He drools against Childe's neck.

Childe is thrusting like he's fucking him, but he's not.

It's driving him mad.

Kaeya says something.

It's nonsense.

A hand nestles in his hair once again and tugs his head back. Childe looks him in the eye.

Searching.

Then Kaeya's being turned around, bent over, trunks pulled down with a cock sliding between his legs.

Childe pins his wrists together behind his back, and presses his weight down, leaning on him, preventing any chance of moving away. A soft growl. He fucks between his thighs.

The table should be cold but it isn't.

Kaeya's face and chest burns against it.

His stomach clenches. Heat's not a pool in it. It's a blistering, blazing furnace.

He's trying to remember.

What was the point of this?

Because he was interested? No- it was because- Tartaglia- was-

Childe is moving incredibly slow.

And hard.

Each thrust rocks him. Forcing him up the table. But the hold on him keeps him down.

Kaeya breathlessly breathes into cool steel, hazily, in desperate need for something faster. Something deeper. Preferably in him.

What is Childe even doing? The other man's dick is right there, rubbing beneath his own, taunting- mocking.

"Mmphfmfsns," he eloquently says.

The weight off him is momentarily lifted.

There's the sound of a cap being flicked open. He still had that thing?

Lube squirts out of a bottle and is spread- not anywhere near Kaeya's ass, but on Childe's own dick. Making it slicker. So he can continue thrusting between his legs.

"Sorry," the Harbinger finally speaks, leaning back over him, casual, "didn't quite catch that. Did you say something?"

"Stop that," he gets out.

"...You want me stop?"

"No."

"Well alright then."

"No. You-"

Kaeya turns his face into the table.

Childe's hands move to his waist.

They squeeze. They go to his thighs and squeeze harder. They return to his waist. Fingers press into his skin. Kaeya's nails press a thousand times deeper into his own wrists, kept by themselves still folded behind his back.

It's agonizing.

The ache in him.

He shakes.

He shakes his head.

"Hey," Childe croons softly in his ear. "I told you before. Use your words."

Kaeya grinds his teeth.

"Is there something you want? I'll give it to you if you ask."

Kaeya burns in humiliation. He grinds his teeth, angrier.

Childe chuckles, sliding himself the tiniest bit faster between his thighs. The tiniest bit harder.

Kaeya groans into the table. It's too embarrassing to say it; to ask. He's not going to. This is Tartaglia pulling a power-play and he's not going to-

"Alberich."

Childe's bites down on his ear; tugs on it, aggressively.

"Tell me what you want."

Kaeya hopes to every last god on the planet Dainsleif is nowhere near around listening in as he breaks down on the loudest, neediest whine there is. "Quit messing around," he gasps more than desperate. "I'm begging you-"

Childe yanks out of his thighs and pulls away.

He rolls him onto his back and Kaeya sees for the first time Childe's heaving chest, Childe's flushed face, Childe's lube-slicked length, swollen and red, hanging heavy from between his legs, leaking pre cum, jumping in place.

He'd been holding off his own release this whole time-?

Kaeya's not sure what happened.

Maybe his eye rolled into the back of his head or he briefly spaced out- because suddenly his trunks are gone, his dick in springing completely free in the air, and Tartaglia has a hold on one of his legs, circling a lube-coated finger around his rim, teasing and rubbing, as if he'd been at it for a while.

Childe glances up at him. He sinks the finger in.

Kaeya stares, transfixed, then belatedly flinches.

Childe watches. He delves his finger in deeper and slower. After a minute, he murmurs, "Close your eye. Ease up."

Kaeya rests his head back.

And listens.

Childe's finger leaves him.

More lube is added.

The finger sinks back into him, colder, more slick. Wet. Another hand cups and massages him, an easy distraction, as a second finger joins the first, fitting in snug, working to stretch him with care.

Eventually, Kaeya sighs; relaxing into it.

Childe hums a note of approval.

Then scissors him- and after a moment longer- curls his fingers up. Kaeya's breathing cuts short. A small moan slips out. And then another. Childe's thrusts remain deep; exploring. He squirms, shifting, trying to get more as Childe starts to thrust faster, twisting and curling further.

He hisses, but it shutters off as the bundle of nerves settled snug inside is poked at.

His eye flies open. His back arcs. 

Childe smiles into his leg.

He rubs at it once more. And abandons it. He pushes in a third finger instead.

Kaeya's hands reach for him, dazed. Childe bends and offers his shoulders, stretching his three fingers wide.

Kaeya's nails dig in, breaking skin. "Go back," he pants, breathing heavily as the fingers in him fuck with earnest. "Go back and ah-" His prostrate is touched.

And touched again.

The fingers are relentless.

"wai... t...ssto...p- nn-nmh-"

He descends into garbled noise.

Childe leans in, hovering, commenting, "Well-spoken," before capturing his lips. He kisses lightly; then refocuses on opening Kaeya completely- because any further waiting and he's either going to blue-ball himself or witness his own dick explode.

Neither are the options he wants.

It's interesting. Considering how closed Kaeya was, it looked as if he really hadn't slept with someone else after all.

But someone still touched him- didn't they?

Childe adds his fourth finger. Maybe not as gentle as the others.

And drives them in with rough precision.

Kaeya's mind stops working.

It's the worst kind of pleasure with every hit and it's blinding, washing, pulling every sound from his throat, pouring off his tongue in a mix of pain and bliss. He loses himself.

He's about to orgasm at the hands of a foreign agent again.

And maybe he doesn't care.

His head lolls to the side, gaze falling to the corner shadows of the room.

Tartaglia can do whatever he wants. For as long he wants. That's fine. This doesn't mean anything anyway. He can enjoy this for what it is. Pointless sex. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with him. There's someone watching them. There's-

Kaeya's mind abruptly reverses.

Childe lays him flat on his back, removing his fingers, leaving him empty, dragging a whine and a moan out of him and there's someone watching them.

In a haze of blue.

What is that?

A person?

The tip of Tartaglia's throbbing cock touches him.

Kaeya continues to stare into the shadows. And panics. "Stop."

Tartaglia, startled, immediately does so at the sudden coherentness and loudness of the word. His eyes blink down at Kaeya in bewilderment, breathing heavily himself, face red- and knit in mild concern. "Wha-"

Kaeya grabs him by the head. And turns it to the side. "What is that?"

There is dead silence as Childe stares.

For a long time.

"...What is that?" he finally says.

"That's what I'm asking you," Kaeya says back.

"It's looking at us."

"I know."

"What is that?"

It's a staff member of the Fengche Cruise, holding a blue lamp.

The receptionist.

Her face is absolutely blank.

She stands in the glowing lantern-cut shadows of a second doorway they had both assumed to be a closet.

A second and third lamp join, accompanied by two more staff in uniform.

"Hey, did you find what all that weird noise was?"

"Yeah, are the rumors of the fucking ghosts on this thing actually true-?"

They stop.

They look at Childe and Kaeya. Childe and Kaeya look back.

The staff continue to stand and stare.

Childe draws slightly away- and in his attempt to tuck his still massively big, standing erection back into his trunks- touches too hard, and explosively comes.

Across Kaeya's face. 

 

---

There is not a single word exchanged as they walk from the eighth floor to the second, accompanied by the receptionist.

She walks six feet ahead of them.

Childe stares at the wall beside him. Kaeya stares straight ahead, cum on his face and in his hair.

She leaves them in the hall.

Kaeya and Childe continue to walk together towards the Harbinger's room.

Kaeya de-freezes his Cryo. Childe retrieves his sheets. He sets them, still not looking at Kaeya, into the knight's arms.

Kaeya goes to his room.

He disappears inside.

There's a resounding click in the hall.

Childe gazes at the closed door for a long, long time.

Then he steps back into his cabin.

Locks the door.

Walks over to the balcony and steps out into the cold night air.

He takes in a deep breath. It shakes.

He exhales. It shakes even worse.

He grabs a hold of the railing before him, bending over it, biting his lip.

And bursts into laughter until he cries. 

 

---

Kaeya just cries.

Thinking about murdering the man.

Because his sink and shower are broken and he can't wipe anything off. 

 

---

It's Saturday, and that's notoriously the greatest day of the week in all of Teyvat.

A day of sunshine, laughter, duty-free days and- in the greatest of weathers- endless blue skies.

As it turned out, the eighth floor of the ship was actually the quarters of the staff. The design was meant to protect them from any wandering, rumored demons of the sea, created in the aftermath of Osial's first and second watery demise- and also from any of the curious passengers who tended to go down in search of said demons to tell their families stories about back at home.

The choice of steel was the captain's choice.

"Because of the acoustics," Wei Yin shares in the bright, fresh morning on the upper deck above the outdoor pool.

He finishes wiping Kaeya's face off with a cold rag before exchanging it for another the guard behind him offers and going back to cleaning Kaeya's face and hair.

"I once had hair as long as you," he muses. "A braid." 

"What happened to it?" 

"There was this daughter of a farmer I was visiting. They had chickens." 

He stops explaining- as if that had explained anything at all. 

"I was bothered at first when you didn't come back. I almost had the guards go look for you- because what if you'd found a room full of ladies for yourself and were using my goods for pleasure? I wouldn't have minded, but it would've nice to be invited," Wei Yin says. "I'm sorry for that. It was horrible of me to think like that."

Of all the things the heir had thought about, that was what he chose to apologize being horrible over?

Wei Yin braids and ties off Kaeya's hair over his shoulder, still apologizing. "The receptionist warned me not to dare set foot anywhere near the place of the rooms below or I'd lose my jingyu, so I stayed away. Have to protect my butt, y'know. I should've shared the warning with you. It must've been awful getting pounded by whatever was at the bottom of the ship."

"Yes," says Kaeya, with an a thousand-yard stare dead ahead. "That's exactly what happened."

"Did it have tentacles?"

"Wei Yin, no."

The young heir sighs and steps back. "Shame."

"What?"

Wei Yin doesn't expand on that thought- and gives the dirty rag once more to one of his guards who looks like they're suffering in an eternal hell.

Kaeya would apologize for the trouble, but he's going through some things himself.

A lot of things, actually.

With zero dignity, he had found himself in the early hours of dawn, going to the staff desk and requesting a spare change of clothes.

The receptionist who had given him the lube and had then discovered him with it in action, was off-shift. A small blessing.

Still, it was looks of sympathy he received from whatever round of gossip had slipped through the staff with the casual city-clothes of Liyue- and a very large tube of ointment which he promptly chucked overboard upon returning to his cabin.

Kaeya had gone down and sat in the corner of one of only the dining hall's open following the act, by a sweeping window with a close view of the sea with white and seashell-based decor- and had eaten a breakfast with a remarkably uncomfortable feeling in his pants, because while he had been properly stretched out, nothing had properly gone in.

And it'd been a while since anyone had gotten that many fingers in him.

Years, actually.

Eventually, tearing his gaze from the water, thinking back on one of his very first partners, Kaeya had discovered Tartaglia sitting at a table all the way across from him in the opposite corner.

The Harbinger had been staring out the window himself, a smile on his lips, chin resting on the back of his fork-holding hand. Reminiscing on something. Or perhaps he'd been thinking about taking a swim.

Kaeya wouldn't exactly protest if the man wanted to go jumping off the ship. He was more than welcome to it.

There was nothing Kaeya needed more than to stay away from him.

Letting Tartaglia touch him. Letting him inside. Enough was enough. Reality had fallen on him soon enough after they'd been caught.

The Harbinger's 'interest' in him was clearly a ploy and he'd been about to let himself fall into it again.

Kaeya had squinted at his hashbrowns. 

He should've never made the first move back then.

He should've stuck with drinks in the tavern, that way all he'd have to worry about in the future was the Harbinger trying to manipulate him through alcohol and not his dick.

Ruminating, Kaeya had finished off his food and risen.

Tartaglia had glanced over.

And something strange had crossed his face.

Maybe it was because Kaeya still hadn't taken a shower and was covered in gunk. He didn't know. But by the time Tartaglia had started to stand, Kaeya had already walked briskly off to find Wei Yin.

While Kaeya might've forgotten in the middle of whatever it was he and Tartaglia had been doing last night, he hadn't forgotten in the hours that came after what had brought him to the depths of the eighth floor in the first place.

And he was glad enough to see the heir in one piece, unharmed.

But even so-

"Wei Yin, there's a woman looking for you on this boat. I believe she's highly dangerous."

Wei Yin turns around and leans against the deck railing, admiring the pool and the few female passengers below with their friends. "Is there? That's weird. I don't remember ordering one. Father and mother made sure I wouldn't be allowed to."

"What do you mean by ord- no. Forget it." Kaeya frowns. "Last night I was apprehended by a woman-"

Wei Yin waggles his eyebrows. "Were you now?"

Kaeya folds his arms, sternly. "Not like that. Listen to me."

Great. He feels like his brother.

This trip might just transform him into Diluc yet.

"She seemed to know who you were and had a great deal of anger towards you. Would your own clan or the Yuan clan send someone after you? For any reason? Despite your impending marriage?"

"I don't think so. I'm in the clear with them both. Technically. Since I'm being so compliant."

Kaeya frowns some more. "What about a third-party?"

"Nope! But hey. Out of curiosity, what would you say she looked like?"

"Extremely pale. Well-dressed. Long dark hair. Jade and pearls. Green and gold. A flowered fan."

"Oh."

Wei Yin says it after an extremely long pause.

He continues to gaze down at the pool.

"That's strange. That kind of sounds like Chao Xing."

Kaeya stares at him.

Wei Yin keeps his eyes on the pool deck. "Why do you think she'd be on here?"

"Why are you asking me?"

"No. I mean look." Wei Yin nods his head. "There she is."

Kaeya follows his gaze down.

An extremely familiar young woman looks up at them, two-piece swimsuit covered slightly by an open pastel green robe.

Her fan is open. She glares up at Kaeya from behind it with fury-filled eyes.

"Hey Chao Xing!" Wei Yin calls down. "What are you doing here?"  

 

 

Notes:

*Alberich, based on its meaning 'ruler of supernatural beings'.

*In germanic lore (as per the wonders of Google) those supernatural beings are elves- which are of course- creatures of magic🌈 and incredibly long lives. Alberich is also the name of a legendary sorcery king. Is Kaeya an elf? No. Maybe with those long legs he could be- but I don't trust that man with a bow. Legonot he is. But is he possible nobility meant to lead Khaenri'ah with some sorCery involved?

Mayhaps a hap.

Or I'm delusional. It's probably the latter ✍( 🔥 ᴗ 🔥 )

This all just friendly musing. Feel free to clown me in the comments LMAO.  

*PS. I'm so sorry for how long these chapters are. It's like they're getting longer. hELP.
But grab a blanket and hunker down I guess XD

 

 

.....Also it KILLS me that in Kaeya's story, his father genuinely, canonly pulled an, "I'm going to get some milk from the mart on the corner. See you later, son." What is that-

Chapter 6: love is a big hoax, so wise up to it

Kaeya's mother was a wise, wise woman.

Once, she had gathered the stars from the skyward heavens of the calm and cold night and held them in her hands.

On the slate and grassy cliffs, off the scraggly, enduring, cobbled road towards their soaring city, he sat on a large rock, watching mystified as she re-arranged the constellations and cast them back to every which place they didn't belong. There were many apprentices and priests on the road; a pilgrimage had departed just a day before, divested of magical tools and machinations for the purpose of 'purity'.

If the stars were out of place like this, they were going to get lost.

And there were murderous bats in the forests of the hills the constellations now pointed towards.

His mother, at the edge of the cliff, smiled in self-satisfaction and beckoned to him over her shoulder. He had slipped off the rock and joined her.

He was six, turning seven; she was eternal.

Yet the veil of death had never stopped her visits before in the translucent realms of Khaenri'ah, and she had been there even as she passed one year after his birth- in that same instant- protecting him from those who sought to bring him along with her to the grave.

Tall and beautiful. Her hair was long and dark. Her eyes vividly lilac blue. He barely came to her waist.

In the adorned, starry robes of Keeper and Priestess, she looked down towards the road and smiled.

Kaeya had followed her gaze and saw, where he hadn't before, his father walking briskly enroute to home. But his father was supposed to be on the journey with the other high-rankings of the court.

What was he doing?

"Do you think he forgot something?" Kaeya had asked.

"Oh, I'd say he certainly has. But it seems as if he's remembered," his mother had mused. "How fortunate."

"Is it Skirk's weapon?"

His mother had laughed, features creasing in exasperated warmth. "My! Skirk? Is that what she's calling herself now? Some things truly never change." She set a hand on top his head. "No, no, that's not what I speak of. Do you think you're so unloved? Think carefully. What day is it today, my trustworthy, little bright one?"

"Wednesday."

"Beyond that."

"...My birthday?"

"That's right! And a marvelous day for celebration."

"But the day's almost over."

"And still he tries to make it." His mother had shaken her head. "A foolish, foolish man. It would have been better had he not gone at all."

And she folded her arms across her chest, musing, regarding the man she had loved.

"Your father is the ambitious sort. A formidable warrior. A brilliant mind. He wants, as he has always wanted from the time were were kids running about playing in the fields of Ankaro, to protect our home. How he burdens himself so and grows lost within his own big, fat head. A man like that, who only thinks about moving forward, ever-ahead to reclaim what's been left behind, sometimes forgets what precious things still exist before him. I once told him, long, long ago, that not every path we walk will lead straight towards our goals. We must be prepared for the unexpected, the trouble life brings, its detours and its griefs. But most importantly- its surprises and its joys. How easily he forgets my words these days," she chuckled. "I would pay him a visit would it not further spur on his obsession to seize the past."

And Kaeya had looked across the distance towards the man who was his father, whose expression carried determination and consternation in equal weight- who checked the time on a tool he was supposed to have left at home as the rest of his company had done.

"Just look at him." His mother grinned. "So serious. On a handsome face like that. A reminder to have fun once in a while wouldn't be so bad, now would it?"

And without skipping a beat, mischief in her eyes, she flicked her wrist and opened a hole in the ground.

Right on the footpath his father was walking.

In absolute silence- he dropped through.

His mother closed the hole.

She had proudly clapped her hands afterwards, dusting them off, and turned around, gliding gracefully away.

Kaeya stared at the spot his father vanished. "...Is he going to be okay?"

A bunch of monsters were rumored to have been prowling the deep fissures between the aboveground and Khaenri'ah.

"He'll survive," his mother had laughed, dismissive and bright. "He might even run into Skirk and get his hands on the weapon he's been so keen on taking off her hands. Though I haven't paid a visit in many years. I wonder if she's finished with it."

Kaeya, still looking over the cliff edge, had silently made a hope then that Dainsleif might swoop in and lend a hand to his father if needed, because while Kaeya had mixed enough feelings on the person who was supposed to have raised him with care and love, but had not, in the bitter wake of his mother's death- he didn't want to be left alone.

His father, for all his intentions, was the one person standing between Kaeya and the hands of the magistrate eager to fill the King's Chair.

"Kaeya," his mother had called out gently then.

She was waiting near the rock he had rested on before.

He tore his eye from the road. He'd gone to her. She had easily taken his hand, as if she had never departed to another world.

And though it was cold, he clung to it, as together they descended the hill.

"You need not worry," his mother had told him, gazing ahead, knowing and kind. "He'll be just fine. After all, he has a very important, precious person he needs to return to before midnight comes. Have faith. He will meet you at the door to home. That is the beauty and strength of a beating heart. One day, you'll be surrounded by those who do not hesitate to show the affections of their own. Although it might be difficult, and though you might grow lost, I hope you welcome their care and use it to walk a brighter road ahead- side-by-side with others. This world is not meant to be traversed alone. Remember that for yourself and for those lonely ones you meet." 

She chuckles, musing.

"And should love come and settle in your heart, I hope it will be one that makes your everyday a grand new adventure to unfold. Blazing as the fates of the stars foretold, steady as the mountains, tumbling as the sea, whimsical as the winds, quiet as the snows, that grows in every season; that brings to you new life, and holds comforts of the past. As a tree does blossom in the springs above, so too will this destiny. But destiny is a choice. As are the choices of your heart."

She glanced down at him with a smile full of life.

"My dear, precocious son. When such love finds you, do not run from it. Embrace it. With everything you have." 

 

---

 

Kaeya doesn't want to do that.

Call him an ungrateful son with the worst time to be overcome with forgotten memory in the wake of romance, but he's seen firsthand what it means to embrace a love that 'finds you'. And it's floating face-down in the pool beside him.

Wei Yin's body.

He stares at it.

Then he moves that stare across the pool, on the other side of the low-hung net, where the heir's wife-to-be winds up for another serve. 

This was what my mother meant. 

"It's. It's my turn," he dares to tell Chao Xing in an attempt to take what has now become a weapon from her hands and possibly save himself.

She spins the pink and orange ball in her dainty hands. "How terribly rude of me. Here."

And she delivers to him the ball with a pass that whizzes past his ear, skipping the water entirely and blasting into the ship wall behind his head. It repels somewhere far off, somewhere else on the ship. There's the sound of a distant crash, breaking glass and shrieks from a different side of the deck.

Kaeya smirks with a downward gaze.

"My sincere thanks. I'll just go get that-" he says, already halfway out the pool, ready to escape.

Wei Yin flails back to life, seizes him by the ankle, and drags him back in.

"No!"

After mild drowning and violent splashing between the both of them, they resurface together; Kaeya trying to haul himself to the pool edge again, Wei Yin clinging to him, trying to get him to stay.

"You can't abandon me! Don't do it! She'll take it! She'll take my jingyu off!"

Kaeya doesn't quite hiss, but it's a near thing close to it as he attempts to shove the human octopus off of him. "This is your own doing, let go of me, get off-"

"She'll sell it for gold! Do you know how much it's worth? You've seen it with your own eyes! You know how it looks!"

"Stop saying that, you'll get me killed- you deserve to have it taken, I told you this was a bad idea-"

And Kaeya had.

Two minutes ago.

But he should have known his words would fall on deaf ears.

He had, after all, half an hour prior to their jointly-made, terrible decision, watched Wei Yin converse with Chao Xing from the upper deck of the ship in the blistering, morning light. And witnessed the digging of their graves.

"Oh. Young Master. How the stars must've aligned in our favor," Chao Xing had said. "I didn't expect to see you here." 

Liar! 

"You liar!" Wei Yin had shouted, sharing Kaeya's inner thought aloud. He leaned forward on the railing of the deck, pointing accusingly. "You totally followed me!"

"I'm sorry- Am I not allowed to enjoy a boat?"

"Not when I'm on it! Get off!"

She had snapped her fan shut, ticked off. "I don't think so! I paid just like everyone else!"

"Ha! You paid? Father handled all my expenses for free! Has the Yuan clan suddenly lost funds? Don't think I'll marry you if you have!" Wei Yin turned his nose up, cackling like a buffoon as Chao Xing seethed behind her fan.

"You don't have a choice! You marry me or you die- it's as easy as that!"

"I won't go down without a fight!"

"You-!"

Kaeya had snatched Wei Yin's arm then, immediately, with severe thoughts of Cryo-sealing his mouth eternally shut. Knock it off! Quit antagonizing her! Because he could remember his encounter with the woman and her inhuman strength and wrath quite well, and why was Wei Yin laughing again?

"Whatever! I've still got two days before we tie the knot, you! Don't think your being here changes anything! I refuse to be chained until that doomsday comes! I'll stick my dick in anything, don't underestimate me!"

And he had looked at Kaeya, smiling.

"Right?" 

Don't drag me into this! This is the last thing I want to get dragged into! Quit looking at me!

But it was far too late, as Chao Xing moved her glower from her betrothed towards Kaeya where it settled, simmered and burned with the extraordinarily clear promise of murder. 

"So I can see."

She hadn't seen anything. What she'd seen was completely wrong.

Yet as the words left her, so did too her ire, and Chao Xing had re-opened her fan, covering her mouth, and glanced over her shoulder towards the pool it looked like she'd been intending on slipping into anyway. Something thoughtful had crossed her face as she gazed upon the handful of merry couples drifting in the water and relaxing inside.

A pair in particular appeared to be having great fun passing a ball back and forth over a net.

Kaeya had noticed this, in the same way he noticed determination fall into Chao Xing's dark eyes as she looked back to where they stood.

She had spoken, tone changed.

"Young Master. The weather is grand today. Regardless of my intentions for being here, might we not... put aside our differences and enjoy the sun and water?"

Wei Yin had scratched his nose. "I dunno. You mean together? Doesn't that mean I have to be with you?"

"It would imply so, yes."

"Yuck. But fine, I guess. Don't make a fuss about it or anything. It's gorgeous out, that's the only reason why."

Kaeya stared, and had kept staring as Wei Yin wriggled himself free from the vice-grip Kaeya had on his arm; as the young heir chuckled and said-

"What a weird turn of events, Vinny. I told you she was everywhere. Still, how funny! I was thinking about how nice the weather was and how I wanted to go for a swim before you came to me. The guards wouldn't let me down there with my father's stupid rules, and I was getting so sick of pretending to swim in my tub this past week. Not enough room for backstrokes. But if you're here, and Chao Xing is too, then they have no reason to stop me. It's not like they want to end up getting cursed, ha ha!"

Yes. It was so funny. It was so funny Kaeya wasn't laughing at all.

"Wei Yin, wait."

Wei Yin didn't seem to hear, already heading off towards the stairs leading to the pool deck below and stripping off his shirt, wearing solely the crimson and gold trunks he'd been wearing when they first met. "C'mon Vindr! Grab some spares and come join me!" 

Kaeya had looked at the guards then who made absolutely zero moves to stop the heir.

"Aren't you supposed to be protecting him?" he had asked.

The guards looked into the distance straight ahead, unanswering. Two of them still held the dirty rags Wei Yin had given them in their hands.

...Right.

Nevermind.

Kaeya couldn't say what it was that possessed him to retrieve a second pair of trunks from reception, get changed and join Wei Yin out there. He hardly knew the heir- and yet there was the unexplainable urge to defend him from the incredible powers of his own idiocy.

By the time he had returned outside, now donning white below the waist, the pool had been 'miraculously' cleared of the happy couples and Chao Xing had de-robed, fan set on top it by the poolside. She was on the farther side of the net, holding the abandoned pool ball in her hands, Wei Yin was on the side nearest to him.

They were in some sort of conversation as Kaeya re-emerged into sunlight and drew near.  

"-didn't really think I'd let you on a boat by yourself, did you? Surrounded by temptations and perils with too many chances to be unfaithful."

"You're so overbearing. I've always been unfaithful. But if it makes you feel better, you can know the only thing I've been with this whole time is my hand, so thanks a lot. I've gotten so many cramps."

"Lying to save face? I know you've been with him. The evidence is there."

"What evidence?"

"The lube."

"Lube? I never used it. Actually I never got it. Why do you know about that anyway?"

"So you took it dry. How idiotic. Did it hurt? No- dismiss that, I don't want to know; you look able to walk just fine. What's even appealing about him? He's as flat as me."

"Hey! Don't start spouting nonsense! He's got way better legs. And his ass is much rounder. You have to analyze it from behind. Pretend like you're holding it in both hands and you'll see."

Kaeya had stopped at the ladder of the pool, looking at them. They looked back at him. For different reasons. Chao Xing trying to imagine what Wei Yin described, and Wei Yin trying to see if what he had assessed was indeed correct.

Then they separated at the net.

Chao Xing tossed the ball over. Wei Yin caught it. He waved at Kaeya, brightly, to join on his side.

Kaeya, against all instinct, had waded in, seriously concerned. For his own life.

"This isn't is a good idea," he had said. "She's out to get us. I just told you she attacked me last night."

"You sure did." Wei Yin tossed the ball up and down in his hands, considering. "But don't worry about that. She won't hurt you or me now that we're together. She doesn't know how to mind her own business and she's a little obsessed with me, plus she's dangerous, but she's got no chest so we'll be fine."

Those have no correlation!

And Wei Yin had passed the ball over lightly with a cheery, "My serve first!".

And Chao Xing, very obviously hearing his not-even-whispered words, power-slammed it back in return. Wei Yin had ceased to draw breath, the ball had ricocheted out of bounds then back into Chao Xing's hands, and Kaeya had dropped his eyes to the seemingly dead heir.

Leading them here.

"Cease your tomfoolery and make your pass," Chao Xing calls over to them, above the splashing and the noise of their small back-and-forth arguing. "I'm getting impatient."

They never even agreed on playing this game. Why had Wei Yin taken the ball and served it?

He should've frozen the man's legs in place.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Kaeya says to her, chuckling, dead-inside, half blinded by water, trying pull himself and Wei Yin clinging to him towards the pool's ladder. "The ball appears to have gone missing. It was a good game. Brief. But that's alright. Have a wonderful rest of the-"

A shadow falls overhead.

Unbearably familiar.

"Well doesn't this look fun? I thought I heard something going on. I should've guessed it was you."

Kaeya whips his head up, neck cracking at the force, rooted in place. Because there's a foot on top his hand, keeping him stuck. He attempts to tug his hand free, but it's difficult with a full-grown man around his back and another full-grown man stepping on him.

"Tartaglia," he hisses.

The Harbinger gazes down at him, smiling, without a shirt, covered in some kind of orange juice. Their missing ball is in his hand. "This wouldn't happen to be yours, would it?" he asks.

Kaeya stares.

There's a very large red mark on Tartaglia's forehead- as if he'd been struck with something incredibly hard at a neck-breaking speed that would've taken out anyone else. But it couldn't have been their ball. The odds of it being their ball was ridiculously thin. How could it be that their ball had somehow sought out and pegged the one man in the head Kaeya didn't want to see?

Was it a moron?

Was the ball an actual moron?

Was it a moron ball attracted to assholes? Did moron balls naturally gravitate towards assholes?

Was that why Kaeya had gravitated towards Tartaglia in the first place?

Because he was a moron who liked balls and had thus been drawn to an asshole?

Wei Yin flops off him, clutching the pool-edge beside Childe's foot with two desperate hands as he gasps up at the man who's a stranger to him and says, "That's not ours, keep the ball, keep it for yourself-"

"Hm?" Childe's attention shifts on over. His smile grows further unamused. "You said you want it back? Sure."

"No, that's not what I-"

And Childe tosses his gaze, and the ball, to the other side of the net where Chao Xing had been waiting all the while with delicately folded arms and scrutinizing eyes.

She reaches up and catches it, never once letting up her glare.

"Little missy," the Harbinger calls out to her casually, "that's quite an arm you've got. But two against one doesn't seem very fair." He gets off Kaeya's hand. "How about you let me join?"

Chao Xing squints. "You look familiar."

"As do you. Call us hall-buddies."

Childe gets into the pool. On Kaeya and Wei Yin's side. Mostly Kaeya's.

His entering splash had sent Wei Yin careening to the other corner of the pool with a drowning warble.

Kaeya moves away.

Several steps away- with a dry mouth.

Sunlight hits the pool at an angle.

Childe straightens, rivulets of water sliding down every muscle of his shoulders and back and arms as he half-asses a stretch and tousles out the knots of his own hair- and Kaeya wonders for a moment, if he's fallen into some sort of hallucinatory hell brought on by a severe lack of sleep and-or stress, as he's besieged with a terrible, terrible memory and echoing feeling of things inside and between his legs and those exact same arms pinning him to a table, teasing breath spilling across his neck.

His stomach tightens and lurches.

Was this what bottom-of-the-barrel meant? Reliving experiences that should've been bolted and kicked down a garbage chute in the depths of his tainted, corrupted mind the moment their heinous acts were done?

To clarify- Kaeya is not looking at Tartaglia's arms. Nor is he looking at Tartaglia's broad chest. Or the deep-dipping curve to Tartaglia's abs. Or Tartaglia's waist, and the dusting of hair from down the middle of a sharply cut muscled 'V' leading to what Kaeya knows is something of a something below.

No. He's actually not doing that.

He's looking at the now juice-stained pool water surrounding the Harbinger, who had jumped in without giving it a second thought.

Childe faces him- and lifts a brow. "What?"

"Get out of the pool," is what he says.

Childe's brows hike up higher. "After getting hit with a ball like that? I don't think so. I'm returning the favor."

What was that supposed to mean?

"What's that supposed to mean?" Wei Yin questions in echo, wiping his eyes, joining them. "Who even are you?"

"That's none of your concern," Childe tells him.

Wei Yin frowns. "It's totally my concern. I don't know if you know, but I'm pretty important."

"Would you look at that. Me too."

"Oh. You're rich?"

"Very."

"Huh. Well nice to meet you I guess-"

Why was that the qualification for getting acquainted?

"-still, three against one isn't very fair."

"Of course it is. You're basically useless and this guy won't stop staring at my abs," and Childe jerks a thumb in Kaeya's direction who looks at him, appalled.

"Hey, I'm not useless!" Wei Yin exclaims at the same time Kaeya snaps-

"There's nothing remotely appealing about you that I would stare at-"

"Young lady," Childe ignores them both, eyes on Chao Xing. "Pass it over, will you?"

"You're making a mistake," Wei Yin protests, "you'll be a fool, just like me, before Vindr held my hand and warned me-"

"I didn't hold your hand-"

"-before he touched me-"

"I didn't touch you-"

"-well someone touched me somewhere. I feel like that monstrous ball to my face shook all my memories out of place. Is this what is what like for you last night with that thing beneath the ship? No wonder you were so out of it this morning-" 

Childe barks out a laugh. Kaeya burns in abasement.

"Wei Yin, be quiet-"

Chao Xing, fed up at all the talk of intimacy, serves the ball with a wicked curve- right towards Wei Yin's head. Childe lets it hit him, and as it bounces off into the air, easily jumps and swings a counter.

There comes an echo that resounds explosively around the boat.

Chao Xing gets half a second to scowl- only half.

Before she's one-shotted out of sight.

A thunderous wave of water crashes out the pool.

Kaeya shields his face as it backlashes. Wei Yin blubbers, swallowing pool water in.

Temporary rain descends from above. There isn't a single person on the deck who hasn't tumbled off their recliners or fled.

Childe sighs in pleasure. "Well."

He sets his hands on his hips.

"I'd call us even now."

Complete and utter silence descends.

But not for long.

Wei Yin, on his hands and knees on the pool floor, sputters and gasps up at him, bewildered. "That- that was Chao Xing. Do you have any idea what you've just done?"

"Delivered a perfect serve.'"

And he turns his gaze onto Kaeya who's soaking wet, ready to smirk and toss a joke about something else he had delivered near perfect last night- and sees white trunks that cling to legs, curving hips, hanging low across a lean waist and stomach of toned muscle.

He pauses.

But Kaeya isn't paying attention in the slightest.

He's looking down at his feet.

There isn't any pool water left.

Where had Chao Xing gone?

Did she just get obliterated? Had she just been erased from existence?

...What did this mean for the mushroom? For Wei Yin? What had Tartaglia just done?

He raises his eye. Childe is looking at him. Oddly.

Had he suddenly realized the gravity of what he had done? Was he reflecting on the idiotic act of what he had just done? There was no saving him. Whatever the consequences were, Kaeya couldn't help him.

"...Hey," the Harbinger says after a short moment, sounding a bit distant. "Alberich, you-"

Kaeya watches as Childe disappears from his line of sight.

Bowled down- like a pin- as a familiar ball catches the him in the face, still spinning from the force of its speed.

Kaeya turns his head and looks, to the far side of the ship opposite the pool. Wei Yin does too.

Crawling over the railing, with dark plastered hair and somehow even paler skin like a demon resurrected from the dead, is Chao Xing, spitting something beneath her breath. The aura around her has become somewhat blue and black. Vehemently so. Shadowed sparks are at her fingertips.

It's the feeling of swelling magical energy in the air. 

"Uh-oh," Wei Yin says.

He snatches Kaeya by the wrist and- with sudden strength- drags him straight out of the pool and sprints them both away.

Childe, not yet noticing, mutters from the ground, "The hell?", picks himself up with the infernal orange and pink ball in hand- and sees he's been abandoned. Then sees the reason why he's been ditched. "Huh. Well I figured you wouldn't die from that, but you're more resilient than I thought."

He watches as she stalks back towards the pool, momentarily distracted from thoughts of Kaeya in interest at the power tempering beneath the surface of the petite young woman's frame.

"What's that energy?" he questions, curious. "Some kind of magic?"

She hisses from the opposite side of the empty pool, looking grievously uncomposed and drowned.

"Wouldn't you like to know? Should I show you?"

Childe gets excited. "Yeah. Actually. Throw it at me will you? And I'll give you the ball back."

"I don't want the ball back-"

"Got you that badly, did I?"

"Silence!"

And as a very strange scene erupts on the pool deck of what looks like an entirely unfazed man getting hit by blackened-blue bursts of lethal compact spells much to the confusion of the furious woman firing them out, a nondescript staff member of the Fengche Cruise watches from the captain's empty cabin above- because the captain was never actually in it- and instead partied on the bottom floors of the ship.

The Harbinger.

That was Childe, right? The Eleventh? The Fatui?

He had no idea who the woman was. If Kaeya wasn't sleeping with her, then it wasn't important.

And so, to the cacophony of chaos below as a few passerby passengers on the deck get dragged into the bizarre imitation of a fiery black firework show below, setting half the deck and its umbrellas ablaze, the dedicated staff member takes- for the second time- a quill and ink to envelope and paper.  

 

---

 

The birds of Mondstadt sing.

Saturday- and the sun shines bright. Children race with peals of laughter. Poets weave verses. Bards perch on the rooftops and rest on the stairs, plucking the finely tuned strings of their instruments, singing songs of idle wandering and joy. Shops bustle; the hammer of the forge clangs strong.

The citizens travel. The citizens converse. Voices barter, adventurers gather, errands of idyllic youths and preoccupied adults are run in an ever-weaving, crisscrossing array of steps. The morning sun hits the Knight of Favonius Headquarters at an angle, and shunts light only partially through.

The Grand Master's office within- is shadowed in dark.

The window is open. Jean stands at it.

The door of the office is ajar. Lisa leans in it, back to the doorframe, arms folded lightly, head turned towards the hall.

Idle chatter from the street below drifts into the room.

“What do you think it’s like?”

“Being with a Harbinger?”

“No. Having a dick in you.”

“What kind of answer are you expecting me to have that question?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’m just concerned.”

“About your captain?”

“Yeah.”

“Mmph. I can see why. There's a rumor back on the battlefields of our motherland from fellow comrades that Master Childe is freakishly hung, so if your captain’s taking it, he’s taking it, y’know. Right up the ass-”

The knight recruit and Fatui diplomat walking together round the corner and disappear.

Jean watches them go.

A few minutes later from the opposite corner comes two sisters of the church, helping Blanche carry goods for her store.

“-suppose it can’t be helped. I caught a glimpse of the man myself,” one of the sisters sighs. “He’s got a nice face. Even nicer arms.”

“He does look like the capable sort, doesn’t he? Strong enough to carry you. And hold you up. For prolonged periods of time,” the other sister says- a particular…. something on her face.

Her fellow churchmate reads it immediately and smiles sly. “Sister Sofia, we’ve only just read the gracious Word.”

“I’m simply stating the observable fact.”

Blanche laughs merrily from in between them. “I’d gladly give a handsome man like that a whirl. He can hike me up a wall any day. Sir Kaeya is quite lucky! Being Fatui doesn't matter, fortune to them both!”

"It doesn't matter he's Fatui?"

"It doesn't seem to matter to Sir Kaeya. I take it as a sign of strengthening relations between us and them. That's a good thing for our nations, isn't it?"

"Don't let Sister Rosaria hear you say that."

"I haven't seen her in a while. I wonder if she's-"

They continue for the mid-city stairs, greeting a pair of adventurers from the Guild as they pass.

“-the Captain’s first.”

“Wasn’t Ellian the first?”

“I thought he was the third. Eh- maybe he was the first and the third. Either way, poor schmuck. I sent him a letter as soon as I heard last night. It'll kill him to hear what he’s lost out on.”

“I know. What incredible legs. I didn’t pay attention to what kind I had myself until I started noticing the Captain's. Those pants leave nothing to the imagination.”

“And look what they're attached to. I heard something from the cobbler about a set of bongos-”

They journey past the window mercifully faster than the others.

Jean continues to stand at it. She sees, with dread, a procession heading in the direction of Mondstadt’s dungeons, two streets down.

A gaggle of bandits, escorted by a handful of far-too invested knights. The bandits are laughing, boisterous and merry, impossible to ignore. Their voices carry ridiculously loud. The knights listen with rapt attention.

“- should’ve believed them when they said they got held up in the woods! It must’ve been torture being stuck outside that shed ahh hah ha!”

"When we escape, give them that day off they requested, boss, huh? It's long overdue!"

“Sure, sure, geez, and they said they were at it for ages. Mondstadt sure is free!”

They go.

Jean does not.

The office is silent. Marvelously so.

“...It’s a miracle,” says Lisa after a long, long time, still looking out the door. “The city of Mond has never gotten along so well. How nice to see everyone in such great spirits."

Jean spins around, distraught. That wasn't the point- 

“What’s going on? Where did all this come from?”

“I assume from the bedroom of our dear captain or wayward Harbinger. Where else?”

Lisa finally moves her gaze from the lobby beyond the office and steps inside, sighing as she shakes her head and smiles.

“Young love. How sweet of him to find it. I had the most enjoyable cup of tea this morning on my balcony, listening to the tales of Kaeya’s trysts. Apparently he's fallen hard. May flowers decorate the beautiful road for them ahead."

Jean walks from the window and around the desk, shaking her head. "No, that's not it. Something's gone wrong."

"Gone wrong?"

"I asked Kaeya to keep an eye on the Harbinger. I didn't trust the given intentions he stated for being here. He said it was a financial affair. I received a tip he was looking for a person of interest."

"The boy you brought into the city before dawn?"

"Finny. Yes- that's what I believed according to what Huffman relayed, we're holding him in protective care. But Kaeya never checked in with me so I'm unable to discern why it is the Fatui had interest in him to begin with. And Finny won't say. He just keeps writing these strange letters to someone we've identified as a bandit. I've asked Barbara to speak with him in the hopes she can get him to open up, but we can't rely on that. And it doesn't change the fact that Kaeya's been missing for two days. And that the Harbinger is gone as well. This isn't good."

"Surely you're worrying yourself more than needed," Lisa says, reassuringly. "Wasn't there another case he was working on as well? He could be wandering about solving that for all we know."

"It was a minor case, and though it remains unresolved, I was under the impression all leads had come to a close." Jean crosses her arms and brings a hand to her mouth, thinking critically. "This timing unnerves me. And I haven't seen Diluc around."

"Oh? So what conclusions are you reaching?"

"The case with Finny is greater than we think. Kaeya sought further investigation. He enlisted Diluc's help. The Harbinger is involved. Kaeya grew too close to an answer, and to throw him off, this Harbinger- Childe- sought to stain his name and reputation, believing it might have an adverse effect. To begin with: Kaeya doesn't sleep around-"

Lisa gazes upon her. Highly amused.

"Darling."

Jean frowns, brows furrowing. "What? Am I... wrong about that?"

Lisa laughs airily, a bell of a sound. "I'll let you have that discussion with Kaeya himself. The captain is a popular, well-admired, healthy, young man. He has his reasons for everything, of course, with no ill-intentions. As I'm sure you're aware."

Jeans lips twist further down, disliking the implications; disliking her apparent ignorance on the matter for some reason the greater adult-half of Mondstadt seemed to know. Or at least have some partial awareness to. Did Kaeya know that they knew?

It didn't appear to change any sort of affection or the high regard the people held him in, but did he know? 

What possible reasons could he have even had in deciding to go down such a route?

He looked after Mondstadt well enough. He gave more than enough. He was an excellent fighter and a brilliant mind who the younger knights equally feared and admired, who the citizens chuckled in exasperation over and who the elderly adored. Sleeping for information was...

Well, it didn't make sense.

He hadn't been like that as a squire.

In fact he'd been embarrassingly awkward and closed-off when the first of their fellow knights-in-training started peeking an interest. She'd been under the impression Kaeya was still that reluctant to accept genuine affection, and thus why he remained single for so long.

So what had changed? Diluc surely wouldn't have-

Jean pauses on the thought. Stays on it- ruminating- bothered.

Diluc and Kaeya had been profoundly close in their youth. Confidants, brothers, best friends. They fought for Mondstadt; they fought for their city and for one another- an inseparable pair. Where one strayed, the other would appear and wheedle them back onto the straight and narrow road ahead. And could they not wrangle each other towards sense, their father, Crepus, would calmly guide the way.

But Crepus had passed- and the nature of Kaeya and Diluc's relationship had deeply changed.

Diluc had left the city. Kaeya had been cast from the house that'd been his home and family. In the four years of separation, it was true they had both grown withdrawn, and on their own, had come to develop their own means of handling problems in the best ways they now saw fit as they acted alone.

But was Jean supposed to conclude Kaeya's self-destructive habit had somehow emerged and blossomed during this period of break- and she hadn't noticed? 

That was unacceptable. As both sister and friend.

She would address that later with him of course, once she discovered his whereabouts, even if she needed to pinch him by the ear and drag him to sit in a chair. And she would need to find Diluc- though he might try and bury himself behind his responsibilities to avoid it.

Regardless, focusing on the matter here:

"Even if there is truth in it, rumors spreading like this in the way that they are is sudden and unusual. I don't want to believe that Childe is involved, but I need to consider the possibility that he used Kaeya in bed to suit his own purposes."

Lisa tilts her head at Jean, curious. "You don't think there's a chance they could actually be a happy young couple fallen in love?"

"In the two weeks that have passed? No. The mission I gave to Kaeya. Childe's own task," Jean frowns. "I can't help but think they go hand-in-hand."

"Yes, well they are rumored to have eloped, so that hand-holding business is a fair assessment."

"Lisa."

"What? You can hardly blame me for getting swept into the tizzy. From the sounds of things, Kaeya's absolutely smitten with the man."

"It's a lie."

"So you say."

"Of course I say. Kaeya is wise- and dedicated to the city. He wouldn't involve himself with a Harbinger. Especially not so carelessly. He told me himself before I even put him on this assignment, that moving forward, he wouldn't be so reckless in his duties-"

"-the same person who sent new recruits into a cave full of monsters for fun three weeks ago, yes-?"

"-and I trust him," Jean asserts, with no room for doubt. "I trust him a great deal. If I can figure out what it is that's really behind this..."

Amber walks through the door.

Lisa turns. Jean straightens with no small amount of relief at the sight of her most reliable scout who-

Appears somewhat worse for wear.

She's covered in twigs and mud. She looks exhausted.

"Amber! Are you alright?"

A blatant-

"No."

Jean goes to her, concerned, brushing the dirt from her clothes; pulling the leaves stuck in her hair. "What do you mean? You've been gone since yesterday morning. Was there news on the road? Did you encounter Kaeya or the Harbinger?"

And Amber looks at her with the expression of someone who had fallen twice into a hole, climbed out, then tripped into another one and was forced to haul herself out using the power of sheer determination- and a bit of hallucinatory madness.

“Kaeya’s seeing him. They're sleeping together. They're dating. They're in love.”

Lisa- who’d honestly only been joking- and Jean who hadn’t been joking ever- both stare at her.

“...What?” says Jean.

Amber shakes and shakes her head, and shakes it some more, shoulders rising.

"I know you asked me to only follow the tracks on the roads towards Liyue- and I did- but I couldn't help it. That Harbinger was so shady looking, I had to make sure he wasn't up to anything evil- so I crossed the border and glided, following him all the way to the Shoal and he was dressed for the beach and wearing these terrible sandals but he still managed to travel faster than me like he was in a hurry to get somewhere and-"

"Amber, slow down-"

She doesn't.

"-you know what I saw? A cruise ship. A big one. And he was sitting up in a tree, watching the beaches for a while but I couldn't see for what because I tripped down a hole, and when I managed to get out I saw Kaeya, him and Kaeya- also dressed for vacation- by the water and the Harbinger was holding him and they were gazing at the sea like they were married and it caught me off guard so much I fell back into the hole, so I climbed back out realizing that the Harbinger must've been in a hurry to get to Kaeya, but the next time I saw them they were behind a rock and they were talking and I couldn't hear what they were saying and I tried to move closer and get a better look and I saw them kiss and then I fell down another hole and it was awful and there were slimes everywhere and I didn't make it out until hours later-"

Lisa looks at Jean impressed as Amber continues to rant without pausing for breath. Jean looks back at her, mortified at what she's hearing.

Amber holds her forehead, gazing at the carpeted floor, distressed. “The day of your party when he disappeared. He was with that Harbinger too. On a date. That’s why he came back late. And the night of the rumors two days ago, I went to see Kaeya right away. He was changing clothes so fast. I've never seen him look like that. Ever. He was so embarrassed. And when I asked him about it, he tried to feed me something that was supposed to be chicken but-

"Don't you know what they're saying out there?"

"You should never place faith in any rumors, Amber. You know better than that."

"What's that on your neck?"

"It's my neck."

"Your neck is on your neck?"

"No one likes a wise-mouth."

"You went out with him. He gave you flowers."

"That's not what happened."

"That's a Harbinger and you went out with him."

"You're mistaken about the situation-"

"Half the city saw you."

"It wasn't-"

"You just came from seeing him. You were in his room. You had sex-"

And Kaeya had fumbled with his fork then and Amber had leapt to her feet, pointing, horrified and triumphant-

"Ha! So it's true."

"It's not, sit down, eat your food."

"It's not food."

"Well that's rude. How ungrateful."

"Kaeya, it's not edible."  

"And then he kicked me out," she finishes.

Thunderous quiet.

It squats.

It lingers.

It makes itself comfortable in the empty spaces of the room.

The clock above the bookshelf ticks abhorrently loud.

"....Well," Lisa begins, once more, after a long, long, time. "I guess the rumors of them eloping weren't so wrong after all. Perhaps we should ask Finny if that was the secret he's been trying so hard to keep under wraps."

  

---

 

Meanwhile, in the calm breeze and sun of the brisk morning, in the middle of his vineyards, Diluc studies a wagon's worth of harvested grapes that have oddly gone rotten. An outside worker finds him. He stops poking about the bucket of grapes- and is handed a letter.

The first of many he was supposed to receive, not from Kaeya, but from a staff member on board the Fengche Cruise he had paid handsomely to observe his brother the same night the ticket was retrieved.

In the shade of the curling, flourishing vines overhead, Diluc reads the scratchy, strangely frantic, slanted scrawl. 

Master Diluc.

I bring news with great haste at the risk of my own sanity.

Your suspicions were correct.

They're involved.

Incredibly, intimately so.

Too many fingers and table. There were dicks.

The Harbinger has a handsome one. Your brother has nice legs. I'm not sure at what point we interrupted. I don't think either of them will answer if I ask. Still, I'll do my best to record in more detail the events going on. There seems to be a cold war between them. I'm not sure if they'll interact again.

But also.

Master Diluc.

Send reinforcements or get me off this boat.

There's something wrong with the people on it.

I woke this morning to see the captain scooping this pudding out a cup-

 

---

 

As the hour hits noon, Kaeya is overcome with a very sudden, prominent, feeling of imminent danger.

The strange sensation of heat and flames.

It could be because of the position he's currently in, but he can't be sure- the sun is awfully hot.

He lies on his back on a recliner out on the private deck of the first floor. Wei Yin leans over him, doodling on his stomach, ink and brush in hand. The ink is cold, uniquely midnight blue.

"Do you think they're still going at it?" the young heir curiously asks.

Kaeya gazes up at the passing clouds. There are strange sounds coming from the pool deck still, more suited to be found on a battlefield than in any game of water-ball, and he doesn't care to expend too much energy thinking on it. "Most likely."

"Did you know that man? He said he was important and rich."

"I don't know a single thing about him."

"You sure? You were looking at each other like you did."

"We weren't."

"But he wasn't lying. You really were staring. The same way I look at a woman I want to bang."

So he was self-aware after all.

And why was that what Wei Yin picked up on out of everything else and not the blatant danger of getting into the pool with his fiance in the first place?

"I don't want to 'bang' him, Wei Yin."

Wei Yin thoughtfully hums, setting down his ink and brush for a moment to grab a wet cloth and correct a mistake along Kaeya's side. "Then maybe he wants to bang you."

"He doesn't."

Well he did. But not for any actual reasons of attraction.

"He was looking at you kind of funky, Vindr. Before Chao Xing rose from the dead."

"That's just how someone shady like him looks when they're up to no good."

Wei Yin takes up his brush again, adding new ink in curves and dots and swirls. "I think he's impressive. To be able to go toe-to-toe with Chao Xing is no small feat. Do you think I should try and get him in on this murdering business too? He doesn't seem like he'd have a problem with killing. Maybe I could get him to take care of my grandfather too. He's always sending me huge, historical books for my birthday and never coin. What am I supposed to do with those?"

"Read them. And you don't need to get that idiot in on anything. He's not someone you want to get involved with."

"I thought you said you didn't know him."

Kaeya shuts his mouth.

Wei Yin peeks at him and smiles. But he says nothing more, patting him on the stomach and returning to work.

Quiet falls.

Kaeya thinks to himself for a good long while.

Deeply.

Very deeply.

Why was Chao Xing on this boat?

Clearly for Wei Yin. But wasn't she an heir as well? Why had she been allowed to book her own ticket and sail without guards? And Wei Yin's 'guards' were hardly guards. They stood around more than anything. Did their clans just not care? Were they so inept to their own families that their relatives had simply stopped trying to contain them within their grounds?

It'd be so easy to pass it off as a severe dysfunction between two clans with hundreds of years of bad blood between them and commonplace treachery within their own folds.

Except it didn't. Make. Sense.

He recalls the list of names of people from Diluc's given profile of those who had tried to kill Wei Yin. And hadn't Wei Yin said his relatives had been trying to dispose of him long before his obsession with women emerged? Not to mention Chao Xing's sister. Killed- and no one had batted an eye?

Kaeya sighs to himself.

He can already feel it. His mind beginning to derail.

And he lets it.

Yes, he needs to get that mushroom. And he will. He has a clear in; and while the method might not be so straightforward, it was all but in his hands. Tartaglia could get on the boat, but he wouldn't be able to get onto clan grounds. Of that Kaeya was certain- and that moved the Harbinger down to the very bottom of his concerns.

But this.

What he was walking into right here, it's climbing to the top of his problems at an impossibly swift speed, because the more he thinks on it...

This time he sighs aloud.

There is absolutely no reason to get involved. No obligations binds him. He shouldn't be doing anything beyond playing along with whatever events on his path to the mushroom unfold from this point ahead- ignoring the fact that he doesn't have much choice in what these events are or possess the capability to stop them to begin with.

He had already decided against doing anything to Chao Xing aside from protecting himself from her. And obviously he had no intentions of doing anything to Wei Yin either. As Diluc had said, he was harmless. 

So.

Kaeya continues to look at the clouds. Puffy. Round. They seem to be unmoving. Caught in time. Like falling into Khaenri'ah.

...Does he want to do this?

His need for answers; to see things resolved. This instinct.

Trust it.

It's rarely wrong.

"Wei Yin," he says at last. "Can I ask you something?"

The young heir's brush tickles with practiced ease beneath his chest. "Of course. You can ask me anything."

"Chyou. What was she like?"

"Chyou?" Wei Yin hums. "She was pretty quiet. Smart. Way smarter than me. And she liked all that walking-about-the-gardens-admiring-flowers stuff. Like I said, there was a lot of stuff I didn't realize about her until I got older and was stuck hanging around Chao Xing. Like the fact that she never bothered to practice Yuan sorcery. She used to write in these journals all the time. I ignored when she tried to show me as kids because we were six and who wants to sit around reading fancily-written words? But whenever I got bored I would end up flipping through them anyway. After she died-"

Wei Yin stops for a moment.

Kaeya lowers his gaze from the sky to look at him.

Wei Yin smiles, absently. He shakes his head and scratches his cheek with the back end of the brush, accidentally streaking his face with ink as he flips it fancily around in an attempt to hide his momentary lapse of deep thought behind a facade of flair and dismissiveness.

"After she died, I got bored much more easily since there was no one to hang out with and I didn't want to be around Chao Xing or the other clan members. So I would hide a lot with Chyou's journals and read to pass the time. The only books I ever bothered with. She always wrote complicated sentences with a lot of words I didn't know. One thing she talked about constantly was the clan. You could say she was kind. She cared about the future. About the relations of our clans. So weird for a sixteen-year old. Being all responsible."

"...And Chao Xing? I'm assuming she was much more eager to take on the practices of your clan."

"Yeah. How'd you know?"

"Just a guess."

"The Yuans are stranger than us when it comes to stuff like ascension and inheritance. You just have to survive up until a certain age among the Wei's before they reluctantly accept you won't die and stop trying so hard to kill you," Wei Yin says, like that's 'normal' to begin with. "But with the Yuans, you have to 'prove yourself', whatever that means. The rights of the clan go to the most qualified following the line of ascension. Clan heads first. Heirs next. Then the most powerful and capable fit to lead."

The Yuans sounded uncannily like a certain magistrate from a fallen nation on the other side of the Abyss.

Wei Yin leans back, finished with his ink, but as he moves away Kaeya sits up and grabs a hold of his wrist, stilling him. Wei Yin blinks. Kaeya stares at him, searching his eyes.

"Say it again. Who does the inheritance of the clan go to if the heads step down and there aren't any heirs? The wealth? The control? The businesses?"

"The second power beneath the clan head."

"Who is that?"

"For which family?"

"Both of you."

"Well." Wei Yin blinks again. "It'd go to the women. My mother. And Chao Xing's. But I guess with the whole 'power' thing going on, it'd be her aunt. Her mother's not as strong as her."

Kaeya lets go of him.

He sinks back.

He slumps down on the recliner- and closes his eye.

He hears Wei Yin ask him, concerned, if he's okay. He doesn't answer. Instead, he mumbles-

"Please tell me you didn't have any siblings."

"Not officially."

...What was that supposed to mean?

Kaeya's exhausted.

Soft and cold fingers brush beneath his hair and settle on his forehead; a palm checking temperature. "I'm not ill," he says, re-opening his eye.

Wei Yin sits near to him on the recliner, worried. "You look like you are."

"I'm not." He feels like he is. "You had siblings."

"A couple of older brothers. They all vanished when I was a kid though."

They didn't vanish, they were murdered!

Wei Yin looks off into the distance, growing contemplative. "I guess they weren't up to standard or something. They never even reached their fifteenth birthdays. Which I also thought was odd because they were also much smarter than me and had big plans for the future. But since they got axed, their names got scratched off the family roster, like what happens to everyone else who dies."

So he knew they'd been murdered?

And Kaeya really, really wished Wei Yin stopped explaining things like this like it was an ordinary part of daily life. But he knew far too well just how 'ordinary' these situations were when it came to bloodlines.

Delicately, he removes Wei Yin's hand from his head, holding it in resignation.

He can't believe he's going to do this.

"Wei Yin."

"Yes?"

"I'm going to help you."

The young heir laughs. "Yeah, I know that!"

No. He doesn't.

Kaeya doesn't get an opportunity to speak what he means however as Wei Yin rises off the recliner and pulls him to his feet with gusto.

The heir holds Kaeya's hands between them, an action quickly becoming normal. He is fond and appreciative as he says, "As you help me, I'll help you. And that's a promise! Chao Xing won't be able to hurt you-"

He had said that before the pool debacle, hadn't he-

"-trust in me. I'll protect you until the wedding reaches its end. See this? Feels interesting, right?"

He releases Kaeya, running his hands down Kaeya's torso and waist, satisfied with what he had painted along his skin. His palms are uncalloused. Soothing.

They've never known battle.

Kaeya considers it.

So many women had willingly slept with the young heir. For all of Wei Yin's irresponsibilities... his touch is safe.

He feels himself relax. He forgets what he was going to tell Wei Yin. Something about the clan?

The hands on him don't burn. They're cold- and it's comforting in the overwhelming heat of the sun. Wei Yin must use a decent amount of lotion to protect his hands if they feel like this-

Kaeya pauses.

Hold on.

Hadn't Wei Yin used these very hands to masturbate all night?

"Wei Yin-" he begins, frightened.

The other man's hands thankfully come off him before he needs to ask. "You were probably wondering what I was doing with that ink, right?"

Kaeya had assumed the man was bored and choosing to use him as a canvas for an inspired design, but now that he mentions it-

"Yes."

Wei Yin winks. "Charm magic. You didn't think I would ignore the threat of Chao Xing being here, did you?"

Yes. Yes, Kaeya had. All signs had pointed towards the fact that Wei Yin would do exactly that.

"I told you my family belonged to a line of spirit sorcerers. We're very good at wards and protection. Very good. We're the perfect counters to the Yuans because of it, which is why our feuds never stopped. They love their ancient, dark, vengeful arts- and shacking up with evil spirits. I know there's a demon baby somewhere in that family and it's not Chao Xing."

"Please arrive at the point."

"Ah! Right."

Wei Yin looks at him quite proudly.

"What we have here is the signature ward of the Wei Clan from my father's side. It's the only kind of ward I ever bothered to learn, and that was because father had me drill it for hours everywhere. On papers I carried, on study materials, on doors, into my clothes. I thought it was so annoying, but it turned out to come in handy against Chao Xing and even my own relatives over the years. My mother could never figure out why I'm so good at this particular one. Whenever I make it, it's supposedly so powerful nothing can break through it. Which is good news for you! Say you do get hit with something. It'll bounce off and strike the next nearest target. Convenient, right?"

"That sounds incredibly dangerous."

"But not for you, so it's alright."

Was it?

"Maybe it'll even hit Chao Xing back and we won't have to worry about the whole wine and mushroom," Wei Yin laughs.

"I'm telling you I have no plans for the wine to kill anyone."

"R-ight." Wei Yin smiles at him. "Of course not."

It's useless to say again that he doesn't, so Kaeya looks at the fascinatingly detailed creation of a chain-bound, winged serpent along the left side of his torso, beneath his ribcage, over his heart, towards his waist. It's astonishingly intricate.

Only- he doesn't feel any different.

"Is...this how it works?" he finds himself questioning. "Just like this? After you paint it?"

"Oh, not at all."

Kaeya looks up.

Wei Yin goes through rapid motions with his hands, forming seals. "Please keep in mind I've never used this ward on a living human being besides myself and other inanimate objects. But you should be fine. Probably."

"What-"

Was he holding himself equivalent to a bunch of inanimate objects? Was he comparing himself to a piece of paper? Was he saying he had never actually considered himself to be a real-life human being? Because it would explain a whole lot.

"You'll be fine. Don't worry. You'll be perfectly fine. Don't think about this going horribly wrong somehow and making you not fine, because you will be. You will be fine-"

Stop saying 'fine' so much! Kaeya inwardly panics. There's nothing reassuring about it!

"Wei Yin, still your hands. Do you know what you're doing? Do you know how this will affect me?"

"No but that's okay."

No it's not!

Kaeya tries to backpedal. Wei Yin finishes his last seal. Golden characters flash before his hands and dissipate in shimmering, glittering light.

The man surges forth. "Here we go!"

"I said wait-!"

"Clench your buttcheeks!"  

 

---

 

There's a ripple of something in the air.

A flash of an impact and accompanying sound of a powerful smack.

Childe takes note of it, wondering what exactly it is, as he walks along the pool deck to where Chao Xing's body has been lying lifelessly without movement for the last ten minutes.

Finally tuckered herself out, did she?

Good. They'd been at it for ages.

He was getting hungry. It was about that time for lunch.

His body tingles. It's the dwindling sensation of being tickled and playfully scratched. He brushes the soot from his shoulders and chest, not harmed in the slightest, and drops the woman's discarded- and amazingly undamaged or wet- robe over her.

May she rest in peace.

He goes to leave. A hand clutches his ankle.

Nails dig into his skin.

"Wait. Right. There," she grounds out.

Childe glances down as she peels her face off the deck floor, a defeated yet angry scowl twisting the otherwise fine features of her face.

"Do you actually want to have a fight?" he asks her. "I was messing around before, you know. I can't promise you'll still be on this boat if I get serious."

Her eyes rapidly flick about his face.

She gnaws on the inside of her cheek.

She declaws herself from him.

He folds his arms as she gets to her knees, then her feet, pulling her robe around herself and tying it closed with a shade of color to her cheeks, matching her furious humiliation.

"Are we done?" he questions.

She glowers at her feet. "...We're...done."

"Great." He turns and starts off. "Walk with me."

For a moment, she doesn't.

For several moments, she doesn't.

And then she does.

With wary steps and wary words.

"What do you want?"

"Nothing in particular."

Out of the deep pocket of his pants, he pulls out the fan she had dropped and holds it sideways for her to take.

Her steps stutter. She snatches it. She looks between him and it and it and him and quickly opens it, covering her mouth in an attempt to hide how she startled at the gesture.

They enter the ship, allowing the staff who'd been watching from the safety of indoors, to scurry out and try to put the pool deck back together. The other passengers give them wide berth. Childe makes for the stairs.

He stops by his room, not particularly caring if the woman comes inside, and searches for a change of clothes. She peeks her head into his door, suspicious, then affronted, spinning around and staying in the hall as he undresses, then dresses, then comes back out to join her.

He hands her an extra shirt.

She throws it back at his face and stalks to her own room.

He snorts. He waits.

She emerges from her cabin, looking highly disgusted, in much more comfortable but no-less-rich wear, fan tightly closed, gripped even tighter in a hand. "What are you?" she demands of him.

"Starving," Childe says. "So let's eat."

They end up walking through the shops of the fifth floor on their way down at a turtle's pace instead. It's surprisingly busy.

"Chao Xing. That's what that idiot called you?"

"His name is Wei Yin, and you'll address the Young Master and my betrothed with such respect. And don't call me by my name. It's Lady Yuan to you."

"Wei Yin. Doesn't seem like you're the married sort."

"We aren't. Not yet. But we will be. Be silent."

Hm. So this was the other heir Yelena had mentioned. How had she described her...?

'Love-stricken maiden'?

Practitioner of strange and dark magic seemed more appropriate.

The kind she had used was unfamiliar to him, not any kind of adepti art. But it wasn't strong. Nothing his body, so used to far more heretical influences of the Abyss, couldn't shrug off.

A well-lit store showcasing expensive trinkets and charms off to the left of the floor they travel along catches his eye.

He goes inside.

Plenty of things to pick up for his siblings the next time he was down here with Mora.

Chao Xing follows, uncomprehending, maintaining her distrust. "I asked you once. I won't ask you again. What do you want?"

"I answered, didn't I? Nothing in particular." He picks up a ridiculously-priced wooden box of jade tiles. "It looks like you, on the other hand, want something pretty bad."

"That's none of your business."

"Indulge me. You should be wanting to keep your betrothed safe, not shooting balls at his face, or am I wrong? That can't be a custom of your clan."

"Don't lecture me. I am trying to keep him safe. He's the one running around trying to sleep with any and every woman that walks." Chao Xing glares, standing on the other side of the souvenir-piled, glass table between them. "Though it seems he's been so deprived of any decent woman that he's gone to the other side."

"You're talking about the guy glued to him every other second of the day?"

"Is there another annoyingly attractive man doing the same that I should know about?"

"I hope not. Although it'd be hilarious if so."

"No it wouldn't."

"He's not anyone you need to worry about," Childe dismisses as if he hadn't heard.

"You know him, do you?"

"Sure I do. There's something he wants, but I promise you it's not your betrothed."

"Wants?" Chao Xing's fan makes it's way to it's familiar place, over her mouth. Her thin eyebrows knit in consternation. "Are you implying he's a danger? A worm? A thread of a bigger spool trying to slip its way into a needle's hole without proper lubrication?"

"Er- no." Childe puts the box of tiles back down. "That's not what I meant. What I'm saying is, do me a favor and don't go pointing any magical fingers at the guy you're so convinced is sleeping with your man. I need him uninjured and alive, so no matter what you think he's doing, just take my word for it and leave him alone."

Chao Xing stares at him for a good long while- before scoffing in utter incredulity. "You have no idea who I am, do you? My blood is golden. Who do you think you are trying to tell me what to do? I'll point my 'magical finger' at whomever I like. You're a stranger. A nobody. I'm far more important and rich and powerful than you'll ever be."

Childe looks at her, bored. "Uh-huh."

She draws herself up. "I am."

"Are you? You look more like a spoiled little princess throwing a tantrum to me. Your spells were like powder. Dandelion dust."

She sputters, stricken, embarrassed and angry at once. She glances around, as if anyone would be interested in them or their conversation, then leans forward, hissing vehement- "I might be untrained compared to the other women of my clan- perhaps uncouth- but so what? That does not make me any less. It doesn't and you'll take that back."

Childe regards her. "I never said it made you anything. I just said you're weak. Because it's true. If you weren't so fixated on what your 'Young Master' was doing, you could have focused on your abilities and become stronger."

"Having power isn't important. Love is," she tells him, furious.

"Love isn't important," he tells her back. "Having power is. And you're sorely missing out."

"No, you are."

"You are."

He doesn't know why he's arguing.

She crosses her arms and turns her nose up, huffing. "I wouldn't expect a barbarian like you to understand. You appear to be the sort- all muscle and no brain."

"I have a brain," he retorts. "If it doesn't work as it should somewhere down along the road, that's because of you."

Because Childe had in the early morning while walking along the pool deck in search of Kaeya, sticking a straw into his half-alcoholic, half-juice drink as he contemplated ways to get back into the knight's graces without coming off as too insincere- been attacked by her demonically whizzing ball.

"Hmph." She spins on her heel, scowling over her shoulder. "I'm done with this 'talk'. It was pointless. Unnecessary. I'm letting you walk free because you're of no importance to me, you understand?"

Childe's expression says it all. "Yeah. Alright."

She stomps away.

"Lady Yuan."

She stomps to a halt.

Childe looks at her without a trace of mirth. "Don't touch him."

She furrows her eyebrows, low. "Who-"

She stops herself.

He holds her gaze. Eyes dulled. "I'm serious."

She opens her mouth as if going to say something further back, but stops herself once more and frowns.

Slowly, hesitantly, she leaves the store and vanishes into the throng of chattering passengers beyond.

Childe continues to look in the direction she disappeared off in for a while longer.

Then returns to window-shopping.

Where was Alberich now anyway, he wondered? No doubt stuck to that buffoon of an heir like a burr.

Childe hadn't been joking the night before in his wanderings beneath the ship with the runaway, ex-spy, disaster-of-a-knight. Kaeya had gotten close to Wei Yin ludicrously fast. Was Yelena certain there hadn't been any sort of connection between them before?

Or did Alberich just fall for every decent-looking guy he ran into, even if they were the biggest idiot on the planet?

...Or.

Was this too a plot of Kaeya's in the works?

Getting buddy-buddy with the one man who could and probably would- at this rate- drop the mushroom from Khaenri'ah into Kaeya's hands and send him off with a pat on the back, a smile and wave.

Childe thinks back. To Kaeya and Wei Yin on the deck beneath him. To the look on Kaeya's face. To the same look that had crossed the knight's face as he defended Wei Yin from Childe's insult to his character in the shadows of the eighth floor labyrinth.

No.

Childe stops walking and lets his gaze fall onto a porcelain blue vase.

Alberich.

Was being honest about how he felt. 

...Was Childe actually going to fail this mission?

Was he really going to lose this mushroom to two idiots?

Was he going to have to return the Tsarista and tell her, kneeling before her throne, in the presence of her lieutenants and agents and Pierro, that he'd been outmaneuvered by the power of friendship? A friendship that had formed and forged and been bound by steel in the time span of forty-eight hours?

Was Kaeya going to be the first guy Wei Yin ever stuck his dick in? 

No way, Childe thinks.

He says it aloud, again.

"No way."

An hour later, his gut growls at him, pissed off at being forgotten.

He stops staring at the vase his gaze had been stuck on.

His tight expression falters. He sighs, shoulders dropping- and with the soft exhale- allows the tension that had overcome him slip away.

He eases up and pats his stomach lightly.

His body. Is a bottomless, terrifying pit of hunger. For power. For knowledge. For everything in this world he wants. And...

Alberich. The nuisance.

Childe leaves the store, annoyed. He can silently curse the knight out and think of how to get invited to this clan marriage over a decent meal. He really needs to eat.

And he shouldn't have annoyed Chao Xing.

She could've been his way in.

 

---

 

They make it all the way to evening before either of them stop pretending something isn't wrong.

Because something very obviously is.

Wei Yin, who'd been pacing outside on the deck, returns indoor to the common lounge where his guards stand gathered before one of the couches, in a contemplative circle, around a body on the floor covered from head-to-toe in one of his bedsheets. The bedsheet is soaking wet.

Wei Yin pushes his way in between them, gnawing his lip, and kneels, cautiously peeling the ice-cold sheet away from Kaeya's head. "Are you still alive?"

Kaeya looks at him. Murderously so.

"Surprisingly yes. Despite your best efforts to suffocate me for the last two hours."

"You passed out!" Wei Yin exclaims. "And you didn't wake up forever! I didn't know what to do!"

"So you threw a water-logged blanket over my body and called it a day?" Kaeya snaps.

Wei Yin's face crumples at the rebuke. He draws back- accidentally dropping the sheet back over Kaeya's face. "Ah- sorry!" He lifts it. "I'm really sorry. I'm just worried. You look awful."

Kaeya pushes the sheet away and attempts to sit up.

He doesn't make it three inches off the ground before he collapses into Wei Yin's waiting arms.

His skin burns. It's flushed completely red, blistering to the touch, and he pants, pouring sweat, trying to heave air into his lungs while simultaneously forcing back vomit. He sees everything in twos and threes and fours, then back to twos and up to fifths before the fifth copy of everyone in the room starts spinning and doing backflips before his eye.

He bends forward. Wei Yin struggles to keep him from pitching forward into his own lap.

I'm dying, he thinks. I'm dying and Dainsleif isn't here.

The man really had abandoned him.

He's not sure why, in this moment, it makes him want to cry. He feels like he's drowning in sickness.

Wei Yin starts panicking again. He gets to his feet- in the process dropping Kaeya's head onto the floor- and looks around the lounge, frantic.

"Uhhhh, don't do that," he says. "Don't faint again! Don't make me give you mouth-to-mouth again. It didn't work the first time and if I have to do the lip-touching a second time I might get confused about a thing or two because you have weirdly nice ones so just lay there and stay awake and-" He bolts off and away. "Hold on, I've got it!"

Something crashes and falls. Possibly Wei Yin. The guards make no move to help him.

Kaeya stares at the carpet his cheek is pressed against, more than a little delirious, overheating and spent. His Cryo won't come to him. It fights beneath his skin, within his veins and blood, a weakened flicker of elemental force struggling to break free of the unseen, smoldering flames of fever trapping it within.

The carpet. It's growing like grass. Blowing in a breeze.

No. It is grass.

And the guards and lounge are gone.

The sky is blue. The clouds hang low. The cold wind caresses his skin. There is a presence at his back. Familiar hands on his shoulder and against his forehead.

They are battle-worn and cold. They are steady.

They are healing.

This is a memory.

A vivid, lucid one he had chosen to stow away and forget for the man it involved.

"What did I tell you about playing with sorcery unchecked?"

His father speaks to a five-year old, curled and shaking in the fields of his mother's grave.

"You cannot. You are too susceptible. Where has your eyepatch gone?"

"It's right here," Kaeya mumbles, touching it.

The feeling of specialized material is a grounding weight beneath his hand and he returns, bewildered, on the carpet, on the floor, in the lounge.

He breaks into laughter, only slightly tinged in maddened disbelief.

Now what had that been?

On the throes of death, he imagines not his mother, not the Boughs Keeper, not Crepus, not Diluc or the rolling lands of freedom, of Mondstadt and those within it- but his father?  

Wei Yin returns. "Oh no, you've lost it."

Yes, he truly has.

"I'm dying," he mutters between nausea-filled chuckles.

"Not on my watch, you're not," Wei Yin determinedly says. 

And that is the only warning Kaeya gets before Wei Yin grabs him by the jaw and attempts to deep-throat a popsicle down his esophagus.

"I've got a bunch more," Wei Yin worries over the sound of Kaeya choking, "we should be able to cool you down naturally-"

What part of this was natural?

The commotion they cause is loud.

With no guards at the entrance of the first floor, Chao Xing walks quite easily through and steps into the lounge.

She stops.

She looks at the sight before her.

And is looked back at by everyone but Kaeya, sprawled somewhat limp in Wei Yin's grasp.

Wei Yin straightens up, offended.

"Chao Xing! Ugh. So rude! Don't you know how to knock?" 

 

---

 

"It's an adverse reaction."

Chao Xing pulls back from Kaeya, lying flat on his back on her bed. She turns and smacks Wei Yin across the chest with her closed fan.

"What's wrong with you?"

"What's wrong with me? You just hit me!"

"You fool. You cannot brand someone with a ward personally crafted for your own safety. Did you never pay attention in your lessons?"

"What lessons? I never took them. Sounded like a drag. The teacher was a man. They were too early in the morning. All my pencils broke."

That's way too many excuses. Just say you didn't want to, Wei Yin! Kaeya listens to the words exchanged.

"For every time you've crafted that ward, it bolstered it's own strength and stacked the magic upon it. How many times must you have inked it out for it to nearly kill another human being?"

"How am I supposed to know? Father made me do it every day, every other hour on all the stuff around me for years. I don't know the exact amount."

"Well he should be dead," Chao Xing says, frowning as she returns her eyes to Kaeya. "I don't know what it's done to you," she says. "I know little about the workings of Wei Clan sorcery. For the Young Master, it's protective. For someone who's not of Wei blood, specifically the Young Master's... You could be suffering a well-deserved, hopefully painfully slow death right now."

Kaeya, staring blankly at the ceiling, responds, "How wonderful."

And did she say 'well-deserved'? She had just said that, hadn't she? And tacked on 'hopefully painfully' to it too.

Still, despite her poor wishes for his health and future, upon discovering them in the lounge she had shooed all the guards aside, kicked Wei Yin off of him, and knelt to investigate the scene- intrigued by the 'familiar-and-unusually-powerfully-magic-of-her-eternal-lover' she told Wei Yin that she could sense as soon as she had set foot on the stairwell to the second floor.

Then, while scolding the guards for never letting her through but allowing a 'harpy' like Kaeya in, she had commanded the guards to 'stay', for Wei Yin to pick him up and for them to travel to 'her quarters' much to the stares of every passenger they passed, wherein there it was discovered she had brought a suitcase full of numerous tonics and tiny unidentifiable, unlabeled amber bottles with equally unidentifiable scents.

"What are these? Poisons for you to slip into my meals so you could try and seduce me?" Wei Yin had questioned, sniffing one obnoxiously after laying Kaeya down on her sheets.

Chao Xing had grabbed it from him, swiftly. "Be quiet! They're perfumes and-" 

She had suspiciously paused.

Wei Yin-  and Kaeya, ill to the stomach as he was- had looked at her.

"Look away," she had hissed.

With those amber bottles had been several she had forced him to drink and four more she had given Wei Yin to spread along his body, and Kaeya was subjected to one of the most relaxing, yet distinctly uncomfortable and awkward rub-downs he had ever received in his life as Wei Yin sought to carefully work its contents onto his skin as Chao Xing stood at the foot of the bed, judging with a critical eye and muttering words beneath her breath.

"Is she cursing me?" Kaeya had asked, reasonably worried as Wei Yin cautiously thumbed and massaged his throat with gentle hands.

"Honestly, I have no idea so play dead or something and when I give you the cue jump over the balcony with me. You can swim, can't you?"

"I can't do anything like this."

"Then I'm so sorry. I'm going to have to abandon you. You understand it, right?"

"Wei Yin, do not leave me here."

"It's not a curse!" Chao Xing had finally snapped as she finished her mutterings.

It hadn't been.

It'd been something that had immediately seized the fever from Kaeya's body with a flick of her fan afterwards and lifted the heat as if it were a tangible thing she could see and hold.

The odd liquid she had Wei Yin coat him with had burned briefly- then submerged him in cold as a winter's grasp, invigorating his spirit, pushing life into his weakened elemental energy, and blasting aside the humid fogs that swamped and swarmed the delirium of his mind.

Wei Yin had sat on his bedside following the miraculous stripping of whatever foul energy had besieged Kaeya, peeking into the empty amber bottles he had been ordered to use with dawning recognition and confusion.

"What are you doing with remedial spell repellents? Were you expecting me to attack you or something? Even if you're the most undesirable person to me on this earth, I wouldn't do that." 

"But you'd murder me with a mushroom."

"Yeah. But that's different." 

Kaeya had shifted his head on the pillow at that point and looked at the man, disbelieving.

And then, as Chao Xing had rolled her eyes, seemingly unbothered by the fact that her fiance had blatantly told her once more he would see her dead, Wei Yin had questioned what exactly happened.

Leading to this point of odd gratefulness, wariness and worry Kaeya felt. Because while his body felt restored, good as new, he couldn't move very well and Chao Xing was ushering Wei Yin from the room and out the door.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Wei Yin protests.

"I'll finish treating him without you here. Return to your chambers."

"I'm not abandoning him in your witch-like clutches-"

Hadn't he been about to do that five minutes ago? Hadn't he said he throw himself over the balcony and do that exact thing?

She shoulders him halfway into the hall. He clings to the doorframe as she tries to push him the rest of the way out.

"Chao Xing if you hurt him, if you kill him, I'll be really, really mad. Don't think I'll talk to you again, you hear- not even when we're married having sad sex in the bedroom, you understand-?"

"Just get out!"

She slams the door of her cabin shut, shoulders raised, breathing hard, handle of her fan nearly cracking in the grasp of her clenched fist.

She whirls around. Vicious.

"You." 

 

---

 

She does not attack him.

She does not harm him.

She takes the previous position Wei Yin held, and studies the ward inked onto his skin with contemplative thought and displeasure.

She soon leans away.

Her fan opens. She shields her lower face- and turns her shoulder to him, looking towards the ground.

"...You should be fine. I've taken the outer layer of his ward from where it tangled with your spirit so. The rest clutches onto you firmly. Irritating and unwanted as it is, it will go away with time- whenever that time is that Wei Yin intended. Though I doubt he printed that ward on you with any particular vanishing date in mind. Until that day comes, for all intents and purposes, you are protected from malevolence and its curses. My abilities may be limited in comparison to those of my clan, but this at the very least, I am adept in and can be sure of."

She scoffs beneath her breath, quietly.

"I shouldn't even be helping you with the way you were devouring that offending stick he was shoving down your throat. 

Kaeya cautiously pushes himself up to sitting, more and more movement returning to him the longer he remains in her close proximity. Was she still channeling something in the air? "Did any of what was going on back there look voluntary to you?" he asks. "In the days ahead of your future, should you two be wedded, please find a tutor to teach him first-aid."

"Should we be wedded? There is no 'should'. It is a certainty. A fact."

Yet as Chao Xing says it, she keeps her frustrated gaze on the floor.

Kaeya looks at the defeated curve to her back- and against everything- frowns. "Why did you help me? To appeal to Wei Yin?"

"You don't call him 'Young Master', and he allows you," Chao Xing bitterly responds, refusing to look at him still. "The perks of being a stranger. For twenty-six years I have known him, since the time we were two. I have done everything to be with him. Studied to be as great as my older sister was. Burnt candles to wicks in the coldest, darkest chambers alone to have an ounce of the ability my sister had so that I might rightfully take her place as heir to the clan and the Young Master's betrothed. When it became apparent I did not possess the skill to surpass her, I asked her to a picnic. I told her in the midst of the woods to raise her hand and fight me fairly for the Young Master's love. But she would not fight. I was her beloved sister, she would not. And as my aunt had done to our mother, I cast my spell. But unlike our mother, my sister did not raise a defense. And so I killed her."

Kaeya frowns deeper than before. She admitted to murdering her sister. Is that what just happened? Was he supposed to ignore that?

Was it appropriate timing to tell her he had never asked for this sort of backstory to begin with?

Chao Xing lifts her eyes from the floor at long last, smiling small at her fan as she opens it and studies the design. "These colors are the colors of the Wei Clan. Purple, blue, silver and black. The Young Master has always disliked them. He complained there wasn't enough vigor, not enough passion to the colors he was supposed to be bearing as representative to his name."

...Alright, but that wasn't really the question he had asked-

"This fan is a gift from his own hands. I cherish it like nothing else. It has given me strength. As he looks towards other women, I can hide my frowns with this. As he looks towards me, genuinely towards me, on those few and rare occasions, I can hide my smile. You might not believe it, but our paths are destined to walk the same road. It was written in the stars of our fortune the teller on the side street of the festival once read."

That was someone who said whatever it was people wanted to hear, wasn't it? That was someone who mysteriously spoke generic and vague things using their observational skills and people-reading skills, wasn't it? The kind of person who got paid for that and stuck a sign on the side of the road announcing they were giving a discount for multiple readings in a row but it turned out to be a rip-off.

"But regardless of the stars, regardless of our marriage, it's not me he loves. It's not me he protects. It is random women, random strangers, random men he has met on a ship mere days from our binding," she casts upon him an expression of great ire. "You know nothing. This marriage is more than a union between someone I love. It is a union between our clans, and with it comes a sworn promise to do away with the old feuds our families have suffered for years. It must be seen through. The Young Master risks assassination until he officially accepts his role."

From the Yuans and his family.

Kaeya tilts his head. He looks at Chao Xing with an eye that slants in thought.

She knows.

Remedial spell repellents. They weren't for Wei Yin.

"You're aware your own clan is out to kill you."

"I would be a fool if I didn't," she replies curtly. "My aunt is a tenacious woman. The question is, why do you? The Young Master wouldn't have told you. He's hardly aware of such dangers, too focused on measurements and gold."

"It was an educated guess."

Chao Xing scoffs. She tears her gaze from him and glares at the wall. "I have no need to worry for death. If I prove myself, if we are married, there is no need for concern. The clans, corrupt as they are, honor the sanctity and protection of two lovers bound. It is why I have a mother and father who have lived, grandfather and grandmother, great grandfather and great grandmother. It is the same for the Young Master. We can be safe and we can live together in harmony and peace once our vows are made. These are the goals I seek; the dreams I bear. They are not much to ask for, yet they are increasingly hard to achieve as time progresses. I will not be delayed. No matter what."

And that sure is a great deal to sit through and unpack.

There are too many points to begin at.

Kaeya starts with what he feels is the most important, prominent one. "Chao Xing-"

"Lady Yuan."

"Chao Xing," he repeats. "My intentions for being on this ship have nothing to do with Wei Yin."

"You lie."

"I'm promise you, I'm not."

He searches for the right words to select.

Honesty? Or a fabrication?

He settles for fabricated truth.

"I'm... a member of a prominent household his clan has vital business relations with. I was sent on behalf of this relationship, to offer congratulations on your wedding and present a gift. Wei Yin hasn't had company for days. He... grew eager, you could say, to have another person he could speak with onboard. As such, I have entertained his presence. I hold no feelings for him- you must understand this. Likewise, he holds nothing for me, except an... extremely enthusiastic companionship."

Chao Xing squints at him. "Is that so?"

She doesn't sound like she believes him. She was far more analytical than Wei Yin.

He would need to be precise. He would need to drive this specific point home to get her off his back so he could focus on his plans to protect Wei Yin from the dangers of the clans.

"Yes. It's so. I'm..."

Kaeya's eye wanders off to the side as he thinks.

As he decides.

He returns his gaze to her where she sits and glowers at him in mistrust. She was partial to romances, wasn't she? She fell for those easily, didn't she?

"I'm taken. Already. Already taken."

"By who?"

"A person."

"What's their name?"

"They have one."

"What is it?"

The first person and name that comes to him he can use as a viable excuse.

"Harbing-" Kaeya cuts himself off. He clears his throat. Continues to speak with a modest degree of difficulty, as if he's not on the verge of sudden illness again. "Harbin. His name is Harbin."

Chao Xing's face twists. "That's a terrible name."

"Yes, well he's a terrible person so it fits."

"And I'm supposed to believe you didn't make him up? To throw me off?"

Much more astute than Wei Yin.

"He's a real person. You met him earlier. He struck you with that ball."

Chao Xing pauses. A great mixture of emotion crosses her face. Hatred, irritation, confusion, recognition, suspicion- by the time it's done traveling a complicated map along her features, she's begun to fan herself slowly. "Him?"

Kaeya struggles to get it out. "...Him."

Chao Xing is silent.

Chao Xing is speaking.

"And why are you not with him, if you are so taken? Why only with the Young Master."

"I-"

Kaeya falters under the new scrutiny.

He steels himself.

He chuckles.

He answers with a bold-faced lie, holding his chin, rueful, as if in sad acceptance.

"Ha ha..." He closes his eye. "Well that's because I'm in love with him. But he doesn't love me back. I had offered him a spare ticket hoping to improve our own relationship, but so far it's fallen flat. All he's done is antagonize me. And steal my bedsheets. Nonetheless, I have faith that somehow, somewhere in the days ahead, he'll either leave me alone or leave me alone."

"...You said that twice."

"Did I? Sorry, slip of the tongue. I meant leave me alone or return affections. So far he hasn't. I can only assume he doesn't care." He cracks his eye open. "Truly. That's the case. Wei Yin doesn't fall into the equation. That's not something you need to worry about. Please think of me as nothing but a guest."

Chao Xing continues to fan herself. There's something strangely hard to read on her face. As if there's a near-distant memory she's recalled.

She doesn't say a word for a good long while.

Then she rises.

Her back stays to him.

"...A guest of Wei Yin's. A guest to the wedding."

He wonders what's going through her mind.

"...Yes. That's right," he answers.

"...I see."

She goes to the door.

"A heart like yours. That yearns like mine. For what it cannot have. ...I understand."

What was she understanding?

Kaeya is beginning to get unnerved.

What exactly was she understanding? What was she pretending to suddenly understand?

She opens the door.

She looks into the corridor for a period of time before she looks back at him. Her fan is lowered. Her dark eyes are clear.

"I find your company intrusive. And you will live. So leave. Return to the Young Master if you so please."

Kaeya inches off her bed.

He inches to the door.

He inches out of it, past her, and into the carpeted hall. Wei Yin, surprisingly, waits along the other wall.

He brightens, catching sight of Kaeya, and snags his elbow. "Still in one piece?"

"I'm fine," Kaeya tells him.

Chao Xing is remarkably calm glancing between them. Kaeya doesn't like that. He doesn't like that he can see cogs twisting and turning in her mind.

But she simply covers her mouth with her fan, gaze falling on Kaeya shortly.

"Don't stick your dick in my man."

"I already said that's not-"

She closes her door. She leaves them in the hall.

Kaeya stares at it. Then stares at Wei Yin.

Wei Yin looks over him, careful. "You seem alright." He shrugs off his shirt and pulls it over Kaeya's head, straightening it out. "C'mon. Let's go back. I'll take a better look at you and see if there was something she did with sorcery you wouldn't be able to pick up on."

She hadn't done anything to him, this Kaeya knows. But he allows Wei Yin to turn him around regardless knowing it was a lost cause to fight for, and lets himself get ushered down the hall. They get two steps in- and then they stop.

Having rounded the corner and having come to a stop, they see someone they both know. One considerably more enthusiastic about it than the other.

"Oh, it's you!" Wei Yin greets, smiling. "You really did survive Chao Xing. Amazing."

"Yeah," says Childe. "Amazing."

He's carrying several neatly-wrapped gifts.

Chao Xing's door behind them cracks back open.

Kaeya doesn't know why. He doesn't bother to give her or it a glance, squinting at the Harbinger who is gazing at Wei Yin in a funny way.

"That's a good shop you went to," the young heir compliments, "I recognize the paper. I guess you weren't lying about being rich after all. Those things they sell don't come cheap."

"No, they don't."

And Childe drags his gaze from Wei Yin and settles it on Kaeya.

Kaeya scowls. "Something you need?" he questions. 

Childe scowls right back. "I'm onto you," he says.

Onto what? What was he being delusional about now?

But the Harbinger has already stepped around them, making his way to his own cabin.

Kaeya and Wei Yin look after him.

Wei Yin sets his hands on his hips, chuckling. "Not much of a talker, is he? The 'all action' kind of guy, huh?"

Kaeya snorts and turns around. "I don't care about him."

He walks off.

Wei Yin joins him. He starts talking about dinner and games.

Chao Xing ducks her head back into her room, as the man, 'Harbin', draws near.

He doesn't spare her a glance.

She peeks out the crack of her doorway after he passes- and watches as the man pauses; casting a narrowed-eyed glance over his shoulder in the direction her beloved and the other had gone.

Harbin is frowning.

Bothered and annoyed.

Chao Xing closes her door. 

 

---

 

For the remainder of the cruise, Chao Xing doesn't appear.

Wei Yin questions it near midnight over a game of billiards he had the guards haul up from one of the fourth floor lounges. "What did you say to her?" he asks, leaning on his pool stick. "We haven't heard a peep from her since. It's not like her."

Kaeya frowns, preoccupied with other growing worries. He sinks the black ball into the hole prematurely and immediately loses the round. "I'm not sure."

Sunday comes around. 

 

---

 

Childe finds the one person who's been on his mind since the night before, hiding away behind the captain's cabin at the very top of the ship.

For a moment he watches at a distance as Alberich- for some strange reason- flexes and retracts Cryo from beneath his dark boots, as if testing out its strength. What- he'd given up on using doors? And he's mumbling to himself, something unintelligible, patting at his chest.

Childe pulls a face.

What is that? Some sort of evil chant to go with his new attire?

He runs his eyes up and down the entirety of the other man.

Those boots he's wearing are different than the usual, softer looking, laced and knotted- accompany straight-legged, dark pants and deep, dark blue long-sleeved, wrapped hanfu top, short, modern, fitted at the waist and tied by a silver, bowed belt. A hissing serpent coils along side and sleeve in finely-stitched thread. He's attractive and it suits him well, but that isn't any more unusual than how Alberich usually comes across so Childe has nothing further to think on about the change.

Borrowed from a certain heir, was it?

Childe supposes swim trunks aren't all too appropriate for meeting with a clan.

A meeting he has no access to.

He had thought about it forever, sitting in bed, writing letters to accompany the presents he had bought for his family.

The power of friendship between Wei Yin and Alberich had been unexpectedly strong. Two days had passed. Childe had accomplished nothing. His dick hadn't even made it inside of Kaeya. What a half-baked plan that had been. He'd done exactly what Yelena had told him not to do and had a mini, solo vacation of no consequence.

And now they were an hour from docking.

Nothing else for it.

He wasn't desperate, he wasn't letting Kaeya think he was, he was just going to be blunt and get it over with. 

He stops lurking behind the backside of the captain's cabin and walks around, making his footsteps loud.

Kaeya startles and turns, half a blade of Cryo forging in his palm that doesn't get a chance to finish its creation as Childe points and shoots him point-blank in the face with a blast of Hydro.

"Oops. Sorry. You had something on you," he says in way of greeting as Kaeya sputters and stumbles back.

The knight wipes his face, bewildered, before seeing who exactly he's dealing with and adopting a horrendous glower. If that isn't a comfortingly, familiar look. Childe sets his hands on his waist and matches the look with an unconcerned one of his own.

"This clan affair. Let me come with you," he says.

Confusion drifts on Kaeya's features for a moment and a moment alone.

Then he straightens.

And smirks on the smuggest of smirks.

Childe narrows his eyes at the sight of it.

"I'm sorry. Did I hear that correctly?" the knight begins, hackles already raised. "Are you asking me to give you some sort of entrance to the Yuan and Wei Clan wedding? After everything you pulled? You really have some nerve. Your rich and important self couldn't find a way in on your own? Quite the shame. How embarrassing. How do you feel? Is it- perhaps sad?"

"You sure have a lot to say, don't you? Holding that in for a while, weren't you? This is because of what happened with us a night ago, isn't it?"

"I can't help the feelings that come out when I catch sight of your offending face. I meant no offense. And pardon me for asking, but was I supposed to welcome you with applause?" Kaeya offers a few claps. "Satisfied?" 

Someone's strung higher than usual.

"Who'd be satisfied with that?" Childe scolds even as he takes a closer look at him. "You think you're so cute."  

"What an accusation. I don't think I'm anything. Except right." Kaeya huffs out a curt laugh and goes to the railing, leaning backwards against, folding his arms and smiling at Childe wide. "It seems all my problems are solving themselves one-by-one. What a beautiful day."

Chao Xing oddly placated. Tartaglia unable to progress.

It had been a mild concern of his throughout the night and early morning, but a concern unneeded anymore it seemed.

Now he could focus on the situation of preserving the marriage between heirs while keeping Wei Yin alive and somehow convincing the man that being tied to Chao Xing would be a mercy and not a hell in the long-time run of his livelihood. Then he could return to Mondstadt, mushroom in hand, Wei Clan business saved with the Winery and Diluc without needing to carrying any odd burden on his shoulders from leaving Liyue with the blood of any corpses on his hand. And Khaenri'ah's 'gift' could be tossed back at Dainsleif's ginormous, cryptic head. A load of help he'd been.

He'd go back to Mondstadt. He'd go back to hilichurls, fountains and wine, tri-colored flags and song.

One day. The wedding was in one day. Then Wei Yin and Chao Xing were bound. Simple.

Yes.

This was all very simple and not troublesome or stressful in the slightest.

The pieces weren't too many to observe and work with.

All was well.

Kaeya breaks from his running train of thoughts, smirk falsely still plastered on, and finds Childe looking at him.

"...Did you even sleep?" The Harbinger asks.

Why ask?

"I slept."

He hadn't.

The couch of the first floor lounge had been hard. He wasn't getting into the bed with Wei Yin. In the middle of a bath, prior, thinking with thoughts that wouldn't cease to run, Kaeya had dozed off and partially drowned, then went back to thinking while sitting in a draining tub.

"You're a terrible liar."

"I'm a far better liar than you. Now go away. Your time would be better suited to packing up your infernal beachware and finding new sandals for the long trek home. I hope they hold up over mountains and snow."

Childe does not go away.

He approaches- and leans sideways on the railing to face him, matching his stance of crossed arms and a mild stare.

"Take me with you. I'll help you out."

"Help me out?"

"Whatever's bothering you. I'll give you a hand. And then you give me what I want."

"You're joking. No."

"It's a fair trade."

"There's nothing I want from you."

"Except my dick, apparently, with the way you were sucking it off the day before."

Kaeya does a double-take. Swats at him.

Misses as Childe leans out the way, grabs a hold of his arm and smirks.

"I'm wrong?"

"We weren't talking about that," Kaeya hisses. "You think it's so great. How big is your ego?"

"I'd say about as big as I am. Subjective- depending on who's looking at it." Childe's mouth twitches. He drops his eyes onto Kaeya. "So you tell me. You've seen it enough. How big is my 'ego'?"

It's a lose-lose question.

Kaeya works his jaw, annoyed. Now Childe's the one with the smuggest of smirks.

"Well?"

Kaeya grinds his teeth. He snatches his arm from the Harbinger. "Very. Very. Small."

Childe laughs. "Yeah. I am a humble guy. Glad you can see it too."

Kaeya shoulders him roughly- and departs, words scathing. "Hold onto that laughter. Let it accompany you and your extraordinarily tiny ego and barely-adequate dick on that return journey to Snezhnaya as you let it sink in who's in Liyue and who's not. Cry over your failures and frozen fish and remember who's won."

The sea-breeze is grand.

The spraying salt of the waves tastes victorious on his tongue.

Tartaglia's arrogance is gone, replaced with a glorious look of murder.

And Kaeya looks back around, chuckling- running straight into Chao Xing.

Chao Xing who scrutinizes his appearance.

Chao Xing who dresses one-scale higher up than before in a traditional green and white hanfu accompanied by sashes and gold embroidery. There is a large, white flower pin in her neatly-done hair.

"Hmph. Decent."

She pushes by him.

He wheels around, bewildered- and watches as she goes straight to Tartaglia. "I had the misfortune of eavesdropping on your conversation just now," she however says to Kaeya. "I suppose you weren't lying. I can see the signs for myself."

What signs?

And why had she been eavesdropping in the first place? How long had she been watching them? Or had she been watching Kaeya, alone, before?

...Had she seen their Visions at work?

None of these questions are answered. Because she opens her ridiculous mouth and says-

"As you told me. You're in love with him."

Childe straightens. 

And blinks very slow.

Kaeya, on the other hand, feels his soul lift and evaporate from the physical and empyrean realms of Khaenri'ah and Teyvat.

Chao Xing doesn't care to notice, carrying on. "As such, I present a deal. I believe you'll find it falls in both our favors." Now she addresses Tartaglia, impertinent. "Though you insulted me, and you are little more than a primitive ape in the ways of grace, you will accompany me. Join me in my chambers so that we might make something decent of you before arrival."

"What?" says Childe.

"What?" says Kaeya.

"Did I say something you were incapable of understanding?" Chao Xing questions of them both.

"Yes," they answer together.

Chao Xing faces towards Kaeya. "The Young Master has you as his guest. Harbin will be mine. That's the deal."

Childe raises a brow. "Uh- who's Harbin-?"

"That's not a deal," Kaeya tells her.

She tosses her hair back. "Well I'll hardly go returning to home by myself while the Young Master brings you in tow. Besides, you should be thanking me for lending a helping hand in your dismal love affair. Mend your disaster of a relationship and I will take your place at the Young Master's side, as it should be."

As if he'd thank her. Had she lost her mind?

This was the absolute furthest thing from a deal.

It's just her not wanting to show up to her clan ground by herself! What sort of pettiness is this?

Why was she making his life more difficult? Who in Teyvat was looking over him? A demon god?

"Rescind your invitation," he says.

Chao Xing preens. "No."

She flares her fan open and covers her mouth, briskly walking away the same way she'd come.

She rounds the corner of the captain's cabin, a smile like sweet poison on her lips.

She disappears.

Kaeya stares at Childe, open-mouthed.

Childe stares right back at him.

And allows the biggest grin to tear across his face.

He walks forward.

Kaeya walks back.

"Wipe that look off your face-" 

"You're in love with me-"

"It's a mistake-" 

"When did you find the time to tell a lie like that-"

"Go away, jump off this boat, go home-"

"Go?" Childe grabs a hold of his belt and drags him in. "Oh ho, no, I should be thanking you."

His hands fall to Kaeya's waist. Kaeya's hands drop on top of them, gripping them, frantic, but the Harbinger's grasp is stronger.

The touch is burning.

Childe waltzes them backwards, beneath the shade of the captain's cabin, chuckling. "You're in trouble now." Kaeya hits the wall. Childe's grin grows. He looms over him and dips his head and laughs against his lips with a gaze full of unbridled mirth. "What were you bragging about earlier?"

Kaeya glances down in between them.

Speechless.

What has he done?

Childe nudges up his head with his own, eyes crinkled. "Eyes up here, right? Tell me what's on your mind. I'll gladly listen. Or should we save the chat for the wedding we'll be attending together?"

Kaeya looks at him. 

"You're the worst." 

"I know."

Childe tugs on the side of Kaeya's hair, teasing. What an expression on the other's face. Destroyed and uncomprehending at a victory snatched away.

He smirks, considering.

"What," says Kaeya, miserable. 

Childe bumps their noses together. "Cheer up. You know, we never did get to finish down there-"  

Wei Yin rounds the corner.

"Hey, Vinny, I finally saw Chao Xing, she said-"

The man trips over his own feet and hits the deck with a strangled bark- and as he does- Childe very lovingly bestows upon Kaeya a tugging, heated kiss of tongue and laughter before pulling off and away and vanishing.

Kaeya stares at the ground, hand over mouth, furious, and furiously red, as Wei Yin gets to his knees and gawks up at him with a possibly broken nose and echoing-

"Bwfwah?"  

 

 

Notes:

I'm not sure when I'll be able to update again. Please take this super long chapter in return ^^ For here in the US of A, Happy Halloween! Have some fun today and stay safe! <3

Chapter 7: don't place too much stock in fortunes and gods. but also, for the sake of things- maybe do.

Wei Yin's nose isn't broken.

He does, however, spend a good fifteen minutes in the sunny lounge of the first floor, sniffling with a bowed head.

The blue skies stretch and joyful ocean tumbles beyond the panoramic windows. He holds a firm grasp on Kaeya's shoulder.

His stylized, modern hanfu is crimson, lined with black, patterned with a serpent and sash of gold. The front of his hair is pulled in a top knot, the rest sits free to his shoulders. It's an extraordinary, handsome, fitted look. Except there's snot and tears running down his face, twisting it into something both pitiable, confusing and disconcerting that Kaeya is forced to look at.

"Why are you crying?" he asks flatly.

Because by all rights he should be the one crying, reevaluating life in the midst of a hideous meltdown.

But he doesn't get to do that because nothing and no one on this earth is willing to give him a break. 

As it were, he had merely attended to the baffled, blubbering heir on the ship's deck and allowed himself to be brought down to the one place that had become both their shelters. Where they'd been standing like this since.

"You..." Wei Yin heaves, wheezing, before coughing and choking for dear life.

Kaeya pulls a face, sincerely concerned but also vastly put-off.

What was happening here?

"You lied to me. You told me you didn't know him but there you were, clothes ripped open, about to get dicked down."

"I was fully dressed."

"I knew you two had something! My instincts never lie! I can pinpoint two lovers in heat a mile away!"

That was a godawful talent to have.

And disturbing.

And also he was wrong.

No one was a lover. No one was in heat. Why was he describing it like that?

"There isn't a single horny person that has ever escaped my eye or my wise advice!" Wei Yin announces proudly. "I give great tips. There's a little notebook back at home I keep with some diagrams. My knowledge on women and their bodies is extensive. I might not know much about getting frisky with a fellow man, but everyone has a butt, and I learned how to cherish them on all my lady friends. I'm sure there's something I can tell you. How much do you know? Want me to tell you about some of my adventures?" 

"No." 

"Are you sure? I've had a lot of experiences. Though some of them were scary."

Wei Yin sighs.

Deeply. Reflecting.

"The anus. Can be an infinite void. Things just disappear in there." 

What was he talking about? 

Who was he talking about?

Were they okay? 

"Of course I'm talking about my own ass," Wei Yin says. "I thought I should experiment on myself and see what it felt like before getting careless with a fine lady. They are precious treasures after all! What's a little self-sacrifice?"

Kaeya stares.

"The things I've lost," Wei Yin laments. He shakes his head. "Well. They always came back out eventually but. Y'know."

No Kaeya did not know.

"One time, I couldn't sit down for a week, but I was too scared to reach back up there out of fear I'd lose my hand."

"Are you alright?"

"Oh yeah I'm fine. No damage was done."

Kaeya meant that in a different sense. But he doesn't care to pursue this subject any further than it's gone.

The last conversation he wanted to have with Wei Yin was one about-

"I could never eat my own ass though. I'm not even close to flexible enough for that, and I've always thought it was an acquired taste. But I'm proud to say I've mastered the art of butt work! It's all about pressure and precision, and- some sucking I guess- but you have dick experience so you should know how to do that already right? Still, don't be shy, if you ever need me to teach you how to pleasure your man via anal passage say the word and I'll be there-!"

"I'm going to have to ask you to stop talking."

Forever.

Never open your mouth again. 

Yet because Kaeya thinks it and because Wei Yin is Wei Yin, the young heir does go on to open his mouth again to speak on something far less sexual but no less cumbersome.

"When I ran into Chao Xing while looking for you, she asked for a few things and told me about Harbin- but I didn't believe her- because I wanted to keep believing in you. But then. I saw it with my own eyes."

It's like a punch to the gut.

For no reason.

Wei Yin smiles small.

He pats Kaeya on the shoulder, forgiving, before stepping away, going to the window and gazing out beyond.

"It hasn't been long since we met. Not long at all. But I'd like you to trust me when I say there's nothing else I want than your sincere happiness. I like you. I think you're a good person. So." He chuckles, benevolent. "You have my blessing."

I don't need it! Cut it out! 

"Ah!" The young heir brightens. He turns slightly from the window and points outside it, eagerly. "We're about to dock! There's a fortune teller of love down there I visit all the time when I escape from clan grounds. They're super accurate. We should go down there and get your fortune read. Chao Xing mentioned you were going through something of a rough patch with Harbin which is why she offered to bring him along so I'd like it if you heard a good thing or two. Bizarrely nice of her, if you ask me, but if she's doing this, it must mean she likes you."

On what planet.

"I guess whatever you said to her when I got kicked out of the room must've had an impact."

It sure had.

Of catastrophic consequences he couldn't undo.

Kaeya brings a hand to his forehead. "How much further until we dock?" he asks, tired.

"Twenty minutes maybe? Fifteen?"

Kaeya goes to one of the lounge couches. "I'm going to sleep," he says. "Please don't wake me." 

"Sure! I'll wake you when we pull in," Wei Yin says, clearly not hearing the second part of Kaeya's words to never see the light of day again. His attention goes back to the window. "Sweet dreams," he wishes.

Kaeya doesn't have sweet dreams.

He spends the next fifteen minutes trapped in an inescapable void of a nightmare where all he feels and holds and suffers beneath is Tartaglia who pulls a metaphorical chain around his neck and fucks him, spectacularly, over his own self-made grave.

 

---

 

Childe smiles, elbows resting on the balcony, gazing out at sea.

Liyue is in the distance, familiar and colorful, clustered and packed.

What a turn of events. And what a gorgeous day.

Kaeya hadn't been lying about that. And where was the knight now? Sitting in a corner somewhere, suffering a terrible breakdown?

Was he reevaluating life?

He dearly hoped so. 

How endearing.

And what an embarrassed face.

He smile cuts into a sharp smirk. 

He guessed it wasn't often Kaeya's plans went off the rail.

A strategist unable to think about their own defeat was a disaster waiting to happen. If they were comrades, the confidence and belief Kaeya had in himself that his own scheming would never not work would be concerning- and he would've offered some advice.

But they weren't comrades.

So all Childe really wanted to do was give the knight a few claps himself.

For every one of Kaeya's overthought miscalculations and lack of proper calculations, there was a new advantage for him to seize.

A gift that never quit giving. 

He didn't think he'd ever found someone so entertaining to mess with. 

If they were anywhere else with no mission for either of them, he could probably take a few spare minutes of his day doing nothing but offering the guy half-hearted kisses just to watch the fascinatingly swift disappearance of Kaeya's cognitive prowess and chuckling at the horrified expression Alberich was bound to wear afterwards as sense returned to him. 

Or maybe the better torture would be getting him on his back again and subjecting him to a thing or two-

But never letting him get what he actually needed. 

Childe snickers.

It'd be a much nicer parallel for what was going on with them and this mushroom right now. 

"You are deplorable," comes a voice from behind him. "Lounging about half-naked before a woman to be wed. Lecherous. And with a lover of your own."

Childe faces Chao Xing. Her eyes very stubbornly rest on a point above his head.

"Didn't you tell me to come out here?" he asks.

"I told you to step aside and give me a moment, not smile out on my balcony for twenty minutes thinking depraved thoughts."

"How would you know what I'm thinking?"

"Please," she grants him an haughty, disapproving look. "You've been grinning like a buffoon since knocking on my door with the privilege of your new invitation. What else would you be excited about?" She turns into her cabin. "Get over here."

Childe snorts.

What a personality on this one.

He follows her in.

She allows the tip of her fan in hand to drop towards the spread of clothes on her bed.

"I encountered the Young Master earlier and expressed my intentions. He was highly reluctant and suspicious in my asking for access to the closet he over-filled with his personal belongings, so understand the great argument I put up with in acquiring you these."

"How adorable," he comments after a moment with absolutely zero sincerity.

They are the exact same as Kaeya's. If not slightly more decorated around the chest and shoulders.

"Why does your fiance walk around with clothes like this?"

"In case he finds a woman he wants to impress. Shame he never had the chance while here," Chao Xing responds.

"You sound real torn about that."

"I'm a woman of simple joys. Now put them on. I need to make sure they fit."

So he dresses and she attempts to straighten out the creases without making physical contact before getting frustrated at how tight everything is across his chest and giving up and giving in to ferociously tug at his collar and his belts and his sleeves and his shoulders to bring some modicum of looseness to the exquisite attire that must’ve sat more casually on Wei Yin.

"Why are you built like this?" she grits between her teeth, horrendously vexed at the muscles of his back as she tries to fix something from behind. The fan she refuses to let go of digs into his spine. "You’re as hard as rock. What lady would enjoy trying to sleep on this?"

"Sorry I’m not as soft and squishy as your fake husband. I don't need a body for others, it's for me. And whose back have you tried sleeping on like that?"

"He’s not my fake husband. He’s my husband. Soon to be. And his softness is his charming point. You’ll not speak ill of it. He works very hard to keep a decent skin routine."

She ties his belt off for the fifth time with enough strength to break ribs, then moves from him, circles around and glares.

"It’ll do."

"Great."

Childe doesn’t care what he looks like.

He starts for the door.

"Let’s get this ball rolling."

"Wait right there."

He doesn't want to. But he does. He can’t fall too far into her bad side and have her change her mind on his invite.

Her gaze is piercing. Cold and hard. "Hold no misconceptions I’m doing this for your benefit," she says. "It’s for mine alone. But I have seen men like you before and you’d do well to cease such games. Love is not a matter to be trifled with. Be honest in your feelings or cease having them at all. He will grow weary of you soon enough and move on."

...What?

Childe could laugh.

He does.

"A warning? You don’t know anything about us."

"I've seen more than enough." 

"Believe me, you haven't. And if he wasn't so pointlessly persistent, things wouldn't have turned out like this."

Chao Xing's disapproval heightens. "That man holds feelings for you."

"I’m sure he does."

Murderous, conflicted ones.

"But is it really my concern? I’m happy to leave him alone the second I get what I want."

"I heard you say that earlier." Chao Xing notes with disdain. "Is sleeping around your only purpose?"

Was that what was making her pester him?

Good grief.

"Sure. For the sake of sparing you details you don’t need to know, let’s go with that," Childe chuckles. "I’m heading out. It's been two days but I feel like I'm getting cabin fever. Thanks for the new wear. Those trunks were getting stuck in uncomfortable places."

 

---

Wei Yin drags him about the foot of the pier, holding onto his wrist, searching.

They’ve docked on the western port of the Harbor, near the roads to Mt.Tianheng. There are crates and loose anchors and seafood markets all about. Everything is blue and noisy and smells like sea brine and fish and the guards have been ordered to fetch the carriage supposedly waiting beyond the towering magnificent entrance harbor gates uphill the docks.

"I'm not allowed to see Madam Qiming on the east side any more so it’s good we weighed anchor here," Wei Yin is saying as he glimpses around. "There’s a guy I have an open running tab with for all the times I’ve seen him. Let me see where he… Ah! There! He’s set up shop here today!"

Kaeya is cheerfully dragged to where a decent-sized line of people of different stations and ages wait.

There’s an excitable, dark haired youth alongside the ocean at a brown stall with no awning, dressed in a simple blue tang suit.

He’s exclaiming something brightly to the young woman at the front of the line, tossing sticks into the air that spin and burst into color to the modest applause of the rest of the line goers behind her.

Was this a magician?

Was Wei Yin actually taking him to a street clown to get his fortune read?

The heir pushes through the hustling sailors and traders in their path and takes them to the back of the line. "Just take a listen to what he's saying, Vinny," Wei Yin encourages as if notices his skepticism.

Well it wasn't as if Kaeya had been trying to hide it.

And it's pretty hard not to hear what whatever the ‘fortune telling’ magician is saying.

He’s shouting every other sentence.

"I see it! I see it clear! Ohhhhh-wha-ow! The powers of fates destined stars! They fill your heart with love!"

Kaeya looks at Wei Yin who looks absolutely enthralled by the display of fancy colors sparkling above the tellers head.

He sighs.

Every reading of the fortune teller is some variation of the same pronouncement of love.

Some, who are very obviously expecting, get predictions of children.

Others, who are young adults, get told they’ll soon grow up and experience the tragedies and joys of romance.

There’s a man, with his wife, who is straightforwardly told to cheat on her with the woman behind him- to which the three come to an agreement and head off, leaving Kaeya to stare after them because what exactly had they come to agree to and why were they just accepting what they heard? 

Wei Yin bounces on the toes of his feet, next in line, and shakes Kaeya by the shoulder. "Maybe he’ll say I’ll find romance elsewhere like he always does. That’d be a great fortune before the wedding! A confirmation for sure that somehow this thing won't happen after all."

The teller brightens upon seeing Wei Yin. "My wonderful, marvelously rich, friend who never fails to come! It's good to see you!" 

Kaeya has no doubts that it is. Wei Yin's unending trips must've been stacking up to make this scam of a teller an extremely wealthy man. 

"Lay it on me!" Wei Yin says brightly. 

"You got it!"

And the youth shakes a gray steel canister of sticks before casting them onto his wooden table and randomly picking one to throw into the air.

Now Kaeya can see what was dropping from the bursts of colors in the sky before.

Cards.

With glowing words.

The young teller allows the card from his tossed stick to fall into his hand and reads right off it. "Mm! Nothing's changed." He smiles, glancing up at Wei Yin. "Gold- it’s very clearly in your future! You’ll be a bit torn a few times, but believe in yourself and those around you and you, my friend, will be just fine! Alright?"

"Alright!" Wei Yin cheers. "And nothing about a wedding right?"

"Not for you," the teller confirms, laughing lightly. "You’ll never get married."

Wasn't he just insulting him?

"Great!" Wei Yin snags Kaeya by the arm and flings him to the forefront. "This is a good friend of mine, put it on my tab if you want. It’s his first time so take care of him. He’s having problems with his love life." He leans in, raising a hand to his mouth, whispering- "Butt stuff, you know-"

Kaeya drags him back by the collar.

The teller looks at him.

He looks back. 

"I'm not." 

"Uhh-huh." The teller shakes his head and chuckles. "Well we’ll see about that."

"I’ll give you some privacy," Wei Yin let’s Kaeya know. "The first time is always special. I’ll be waiting by the fruit stall!"

And Wei Yin points to where that is somewhere by a set of grand stone steps leading out of the pier before leaving- abandoning him to the phony parlor-trick-youth- who grabs a hold of Kaeya's entire face with a hand without warning or consent.

"Mmmmmm…. Siphoning the energies…!"

After suffocating Kaeya for thirty seconds, he leaps back, excited, hand raised towards the sky.

"Alright! I’ve extracted it!"

Kaeya fixes onto him a dangerous look.

"First time is a bit of a different process," the youth says apologetically as he sees it. "Sorry if it smelled like something strange. I was digging through some stuff earlier." He gathers his color-tipped, wooden sticks from his table. He shakes them in his canister. He offers it towards Kaeya. "Go on. Take one!" 

Kaeya doesn't. 

The teller shakes the sticks around, encouraging. "You can do it!" 

Kaeya gives up. He pulls one out. 

The teller takes it cheerfully.

He flips the stick.

He tosses it in the air.

As it spins above, he claps together his hands and proclaims an excited, "Open!" 

The air bursts. A cool breeze cuts across Kaeya's cheek. The stick explodes.

Warmth- and a card spins down.

The youth snatches it. His eyes shine. "Oh wow!" he exclaims. He turns the card over in his hands, reading the glowing pale, blue scrawl. "I haven't seen one like this in ages. It's got so much to it, but one thing's for sure. Forget a love life, you're totally going to die. So." 

Not so! What is mine so different for! 

Where did a death card come so randomly from out of a magician's act pretending to promote love and longevity? 

"Let me try and get a deeper look on this..." the youth says, looking interested himself as rereads what he's pulled. "Hmm. Yeah. It's a death card, no doubt. And a pretty brutal one too. Whatever it is, it's gonna hurt. And there's going to be a lot of fire and flame. At least you don't seem like the type to cry. I sense you've had a pretty traumatic life ha ha!"

He grabs his cup of sticks again, shaking them around with a laugh.

Why was he laughing about that? How did he know about that?

Was Kaeya's life a joke?

The young teller casts the shaken sticks onto the table and shuffles through the few that stand out in his eye, paying no mind to the extra-special, vacant expression Kaeya wears. "Alright! Alright, uh-huh! Mmhm. Mmm. Yeah. Looks like it'll happen pretty soon. Like tomorrow soon. During something important. A couple of weird things flying about... a whole lot of evil people... some curses... a clan... There's some kind of vegetable. What is that? Looks like a massive mushroom..." 

He was being horribly specific. 

What exactly was he reading off those sticks that it was telling him a bunch of things he shouldn't know?

"... Speaking of massive, there's a tower. Yeah... I. I see a tower. Whoa! A really big one! Impressive- attached to some kind of hunk of a man. Weird. You've got a death card but it looks like this tower is gonna help you out somehow, so just let yourself get plowed by it-"

Seriously, what are you reading off those sticks! 

"Annndd- ah?" The teller picks up a forest green-tipped stick and turns it over in his hand. "Take a look at this. This: is 'nature'. Like a field or woodland or hill or mountain or cliff or valley or geographical piece of land with shrubbery-"

He didn't know, did he?

That was the one thing he somehow didn't know so he was pretending, wasn't he?

"-and this-" here he picks up a gray-tipped stick in the other, "generally represents an elderly influence in your life. These sticks fell on top of each other, crossed, so we can assume they're connected. And this gold one-" he gestures to a stick that had rolled just a bit farther away than the rest, "-indicates that there's a treasure you want just within arm's reach. I'd say, putting it all together, you had a special treasure to find. But you probably won't be able to ever get it. Since you're dying tomorrow and all." 

Could he not say that?

Was he being messed with? By this fake magician? By that same demon god from before? 

"Anywho," the youth says, "with the pieces and sticks and your card as they are, I can really only tell you this."

He looks at Kaeya and solemnly hands him both green and gray stick.

"You shouldn't have sucked so many dicks."

Kaeya holds the sticks.

In silence.

Standing still.

Then his thoughts erupts.

...Why was that your conclusion! 

What was that supposed to mean? Where did that come from?

Nothing you said before that was even remotely related! 

He had four plus years of dick history. Had he built some karma from it? A malevolent force of karma determined to take him out the same way he began to gather it?

How much had he swallowed?

Was this a roundabout, backhand, slap of retribution for how much he'd swallowed?

No. 

Don't get swept into this nonsense. 

This fortune teller was a fake anyway.

Yet Kaeya continues to hold the sticks, thinking back, as if struck by thunder. Thinking back on it all. 

Diluc's fault. That's what this was. 

If his brother hadn't left Mondstadt to begin with back then after kicking him out, leaving him to his own devices and depression and consequential, karma-building, horrible-decision making-

"Yeah, now that you mention it, there does appear to be a hefty decision coming up," the youth says. "It doesn't matter what you choose though. All routes lead to death. You've got the worst fortune I've read in weeks."

"Get out of my mind."

The young teller isn't fazed. He sets his hands on his hips, beaming, satisfied. "Well there you have it, Wei Yin's friend! Try and enjoy the last moments of happiness you'll have."

Thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you for the utterly useless piece of advice-

"I don't usually charge a fee for first timers, but that was a lot for me to process; and now it feels like I've got a bunch of dicks floating in my brain because you like them so much, so if you wanna tell Wei Yin to drop, I dunno, like two-hundred thousand Mora for my services-"

Kaeya tosses the sticks at his head and walks away. 

"Be careful where you step!" the youth shouts after him.

Wei Yin is still by the fruit stand as promised. But now he's holding an apple and arguing with Chao Xing over it and when did she step off the boat and how did she even find them-?

He trips over a jutting loose plank of the pier.

The arms of a well-dressed stranger catch and steady him from the side with ease.

"Really not your day today is it?"

Kaeya stares.

And stares. 

No. Not a stranger.

Tartaglia.

In handsome, black attire, threaded with silver, accentuated in dark blues. His features have never stood out more. The neck of his collar is lazily tugged open and aside.

Kaeya's eye is stuck on the spot.

Are these Wei Yin's clothes?

Why do they sit on him like that? Why do they look like that? Why did he even have them?

"Guess I don’t look too shabby after all," the Harbinger says, letting go of him. 

Kaeya needs to make sure Childe knows.

"Don’t fool yourself. I’ve never seen anyone look as shabby as you do right now."

"I’m sure." Childe looks over the heads of the people passing by to note the youth by the oceanside Kaeya had just come from. "Don't tell me you were so upset by your blunder earlier that you went to cheer yourself up with a magic show. What were you doing back there? Why did he grab your face like he was sucking out your spirit?" 

Kaeya's eye narrows. What? "Why were you watching? And from where? Do you have nothing better to do than be a constant thorn in my side?" 

Childe regards him thoughtful. "You walk into a thorn bush..."

The crowd pushes them together. They get a couple of curious looks as they detangle. 

"Anyway I'm not sure what else you expect me to be doing at this point," Childe tells him as they straighten back out. "We're going to the same place, with the same people, for the same reason. And what we're looking for can't be gotten without them taking us there and letting us in. So you're stuck with me. Deal with it." 

Kaeya hopes the disgust on his face comes across as strong as he feels it. He's saved from having to respond- and possibly put his foot in his mouth again- as Wei Yin pushes through the people separating them, Chao Xing on his heels.

"Hey, how'd the fortune reading go? Was it good?"

"No."

Wei Yin frowns, looking heartbroken and taken aback. "Oh- It. It didn't go well?"

Kaeya hates how terrible he feels. "It... was more than good. It was wonderful," he lies. 

Wei Yin brightens back up. "Oh, great! Keep it to yourself, okay? I won't ask what it was about. Also, can you tell Chao Xing she's wrong? You can definitely fit a squash inside if you try. She doesn't believe me-"

It’s some sort of benevolent god that finally takes pity on Kaeya as that line of conversation is immediately ended and buried by one of the heir’s guards who comes running up.

The carriage for the mountain has a problem.

The one previously prepared was only meant to hold two people at best. They would send for a second one but the to-and-from journey could take several hours. The unexpected arrival of Chao Xing and her guest... Harbin.... hadn't been accounted for. So they'd have to wait.

And after delivering the message, the guard goes off and leaves them.

"I don't understand why they're not staying around you," Kaeya frowns as he watches the man jog off.

"I do," Wei Yins says, beginning to pat himself down. "Her name is Chao Xing."

Chao Xing harrumphs, pleased behind her fan. "They are frightened in the wake of a lady. It's understandable."

"A lady!" Wei Yin stops what he's doing momentarily to glance around in excitement. "Where?"

Chao Xing glowers.

Wei Yin realizes who she's talking about and looks sad for it. "Way to get my hopes up. Anyway, this carriage issue is perfect," he goes on to tell them all. "There was something I needed to do. Hold on. Let me find the paper...." He pats himself down for a second time.

It takes a while.

Childe leans against the wall besides the climbing steps. Kaeya sits on a crate between him and the fruit stand.

They watch as Chao Xing goes to the fortune teller's line and patiently waits her turn with a raised head and expectant rise to her shoulders. They watch as she scoffs and frowns at the apparent love success of those in front her, yet unable to hide her own anticipation.

"Why don’t you give it a go?" Kaeya says after as the silence between them carries on among the chatter of the docks.

Perhaps Tartaglia's scumbag self would be blessed with a death card too. 

"For what?" 

"You're not interested in finding out your luck?" 

They watch as the youth plants a hand over Chao Xing's face- and gets beat up by her fan for it. 

"No. And things like fortunes don't interest me," Childe says, as the teller uses his table to crawl back onto his feet, looking terribly confused as Chao Xing picks out her own sticks for him to read. They're all the ones that the happiest people who'd been in line before her received. "Especially ones about love."

"How surprising," comments Kaeya dryly. 

"It’s a pointless exchange of feelings. What do you get from it except another weakness to carry?"

"Such a romantic outlook. I’m sure any partner you’ve somehow managed to take was happy to hear you say that in the afterglow."

"Somehow managed?" Childe glances over. "I don’t have as much trouble as you think finding people to be with. And plenty of old flames. I've got a lot going for me." 

Except a decent personality. 

"And yet you are fascinatingly still alone. I wonder why that is," Kaeya says, asinine.

"It’s probably as fascinating as the reason why you're still alone," Childe casually responds. "All the times you’ve gotten on your knees and no ones stuck around. Maybe it's an age thing. Most of your time is spent with that kind, right? Want to get into it? I can try and offer some words of wisdom. Generational gaps can be pretty hard to overcome."

The look he receives is a look. 

Like he's about to be flayed alive.

Childe's mouth curls up as he sees it. 

Any sort of rebuttal Kaeya might've been formulating is interrupted as Wei Yin appears, a small folded piece of paper in hand. 

"That took forever," he sighs, taking a seat on the crate beside Kaeya and settling next to him comfortably, oblivious to the atmosphere. He hands the paper to Kaeya, adjusting his clothes as he says, "It ended up being half up in that uncomfortable place I told you about earlier." 

Kaeya hands the paper right back. 

Wei Yin thanks him, not noticing the newborn terror on Kaeya's face. 

Childe sure does however, and he connects dots far faster than he should because he snorts as Kaeya looks down at his hand, unmoving.

"There’s an important errand I need to take care of before we head out," Wei Yin shares. "Do you guys want to come with me? I can show you some of my favorite places to visit along the way, and there's a pharmacy with great herbs if you need a little extra stimulation; spice things up in the bedroom-" 

A variation of the heir's name is barked out. 

Aggressively. 

"Wei idiot!" 

From the left comes a handful of rough, tough-looking men armed with weapons.

The people on the docks nearby don’t pay all too much attention.

Were they... not a threat?

It doesn’t matter if they are or not.

Kaeya rises.

Wei Yin follows- then hides behind him, obnoxiously shouting out in response-

"Hey be a little nicer! I’m in the company of a friend and his lover! Can’t you see how they match?"

Now there are people paying attention.

"He’s not-"

Kaeyas half-spoken protest is useless as the men push through the small smattering of curious onlookers between them and draw themselves up.

"We’ve been waiting for you to dock," a burly broad man with bulging biceps in the middle growls. "I hope you didn’t think you’d set foot in the harbor again without paying what's due."

For as dangerous as they look, there’s a universal emblem printed on the left breast of all their outerwear that pronounces affiliation to a properly recognized organization.

Mercenaries perhaps? Kaeya wonders mildly.

Wei Yin scratches his nose. "I didn’t pay you guys?"

"Don’t play coy!" the man snaps. "That’s twenty million Mora you were supposed to pay after making us decorate that horrendous cabin of yours on that boat!"

So he’d actually commissioned people for that monstrosity of a room after all?

Wasn’t the cruise only a week long?

Why had Wei Yin invested twenty million Mora on property that didn’t belong to him for a time period so short?

The only reassurance that logic still existed here among them was that Wei Yin's father hadn't been the one to pay for the pornographic decorations in the young heir's quarters.

Wei Yin plants his hands on his hips. "It’s not my fault the anchor lifted and cruise sailed as soon as you guys stepped off. It was just poor timing. I had the money."

"And where is it now?" the mercenary demands.

"Gone. The captain's supplies were really expensive."

The captain's supplies? What kind of sordid supplies were they that they cost that much money? 

Was it the lube?

Had Wei Yin gone through twenty million Mora's worth of lube in four and a half days before encountering Kaeya?

"How is that possible?" Kaeya asks.

"Anything’s possible," Wei Yin tells him. "You just have to believe."

In what!

The inhuman ability keep going at a plastic blow up doll for hours on end? What kind of inhuman stamina did he possess? Why was his speedy refractory period turning out to be his only definable strength?

"You owe us that money," the mercenary growls, "for what we suffered."

Tartaglia- is laughing into his hand. "Sorry, sorry," he says between muffled bursts of mirth as the small party of mercenaries glower over at him. "Please, don’t mind me, carry on."

"We don’t want to carry on," another one of them responds.  "We want to get paid and then never see him again."

"Yeah," says a third. "One of you fork over the Mora or we’ll drag you to our boss. He’ll give you a beat down you won’t soon forget."

"Will he?" The Harbinger asks. "Why don’t we go and see him? We were on that boat for a while. I could use the exercise."

"What exercise?" The mercenary scowls. "He’s gonna pummel you."

"I hope he at least tries to, otherwise it'd be boring."

Before the mercenaries can ask what Tartaglia means by that, Chao Xing stomps her way over, taking out a few onlookers with her fan. It was probably an accurate assumption to make that her love fortune hadn’t gone well. She looks in the mood for no one.

Least of all the mercenaries.

"Can I borrow twenty million Mora?" Wei Yin asks as soon as she arrives.

"I don’t have that sitting around." She tells him first before narrowing her eyes at the men. "You interrupt the day before of a man and woman certain to marry without complication. Speak what you want or begone."

"He owes us coin."

"But I don’t have any," Wei Yin complains.

"Then find some. Go to the bank!" the head mercenary yells. 

"They don’t let me in there anymore! Too many overdrafts!"

"Then call up your rich daddy!"

"That’d take hours and I need to do other stuff here-"

The mercenary clamps a hand down on the crown of Wei Yin's head. "Handle your dues. Or I’m taking this back to the boss."

"Nooo!" Wei Yin wails. "Alright, alright! Fine! I'll take care of it. Don’t drag me off! Just- just let me talk to my friend here first." 

The mercenary lets go of him. "Don’t make any plans to run off. Or else," he threatens. He reaches for Chao Xing. "The little lady here gets it-" 

She drives her elbow into his face. She pulls him into a grapple. 

"Good luck with that," Wei Yin says to the man trapped in Chao Xing's arms. "I can't say she won't kill you first."

He ushers Kaeya a small distance away. Childe opts to stay behind, looking about as curious as the other mercenaries do as to how their leader plans on escaping from the standing hold Chao Xing's locked him in. Kaeya's somewhat interested himself but he doesn't get a chance to see the first few bits of what's happening as Wei Yin physically turns his head around with his hands to make important eye-contact with him. 

"This errand I have- can you take care of it for me? I hate to make you do it without me, but I'd also hate to lose my head. I need it. For cunnilingus. It won't take very long." 

Kaeya looks back at the mercenaries, fully thinking about giving Wei Yin to them after all, but the situation between Chao Xing and the men has oddly changed. They're having a civil conversation, seemingly on the finer points of grapples and holds, with Chao Xing going through the motions on their leader. After she shows them several times, she lets go of the man and lets the mercenary's lackeys try it on him afterwards.

They're having some trouble getting a handle on it. 

Tartaglia watches them for a second or two, before shaking his head and stepping in, showing them what she had done- and then showing them a few tricks of his own. 

What were they doing? 

Why were they all suddenly getting along and ganging up on the mercenary leader? 

Kaeya had never seen such a look in anyone's eyes. The look of a man who had been waiting for this kind of torture to happen so he could die. What had he been going through before this that made him give up so easily? Was he okay?

Was this mercenary okay?

Was that Mora actually a part of a vital paycheck he needed to look after his family or they'd all suffer horrible deaths?

Tartaglia twists the man's arms behind him, pointing something else out to the mercenaries who nod and Chao Xing who squints behind her fan, taking note.

Stop torturing him, Kaeya thinks towards them all, that's enough, leave him alone, he's already lost the will to live.

They don't.

Kaeya turns back to Wei Yin, and for the man's sake, agrees. "What's the errand?"

Wei Yin doesn't embrace him but it's a close near thing.

"I knew I could count on you! There's this instrument, a zither- a really important one. I gave it to an adepti before the guards caught up to me in the Harbor and made me get on the boat. It was too valuable to leave alone without protection, and the god I needed to give it to was off in the mountains looking for flowers. I asked him to do me a favor in exchange for the zither. I think he should be back now and done with what I asked. So all you have to do is get the instrument from the house here," and he hands Kaeya the infernal, cursed piece of paper again, "and then ask the adepti where the other god is and bring it to him. He'll give you something in return. It was part of our contract." 

Kaeya looks at the paper and notices for the first time a drawing on it.

Two straight lines far apart. A downwards curve high above them.

This wasn't a house.

"What's this supposed to be?" he asks.

"Where they live," the heir explains. "You can't miss it."

Yes he could.

What exactly did Wei Yin think anyone would take away from this three-line drawing? 

"I've never been here," he says to the heir. "I don't know my way around enough to understand this."

And even if he had visited before, he still wouldn't be able to understand this. 

"I know where this is."

And it's Tartaglia, apparently done and bored with the man he'd been harassing, leaning over his shoulder to take the paper from his hand.

"I've seen this before."

Wei Yin perks up. "Have you? That's great! If you could help Vinny out, I'd owe you one."

Childe smiles. "Yes. Yes you would. Don't worry, I'm sure I can think of some payment you could give me."

Kaeya snatches the paper right back. "I'll handle it alone." He looks at Wei Yin with great emphasis following his next words. "You don't need to give him anything, alright? For any reason. Give him nothing. Not even your thanks. He'll use you."

Wei Yin doesn't take the warning to heart. "Whatever you want to do, I'll leave it up to you," he answers. "I trust in you! Please take care of this and tell me you'll see it through? It's very, very important to me. You'd know I come with otherwise."

Kaeya feels himself deflate.

If Wei Yin said it like that so earnestly how was he ever supposed to change his mind and say 'no'?

"...Very well. I'll take care of it."

"Yes!"

Wei Yin grabs his hands and spins them both around wildly before letting go. Kaeya goes flying towards Chao Xing and the mercenaries who approach them. They all step aside. He breaks through several empty crates of the fish stall behind them and hits the ground.

Wei Yin winces. "Oops."

The mercenaries look at him expectantly. Their leader now stands at the back, void of all expression.

Wei Yin flinches. "And whoops! Gotta go! Don't want this to turn too ugly."

He grabs Chao Xing by the sleeve and uses her as something of a shield between himself and the men.

"Come with me and help me out of this?" he asks her fearfully. "You can strike a deal with them or something right? With your woman brain? Haggle down the price. You're somehow friends with them now anyway."

She rolls her eyes. "So incompetent."

Yet it's poorly hidden happiness on her face, even as she opens her fan in an attempt to hide her smile.

"Very well. If I must take the leading role. Do take us to where we need to go, gentlemen," she says to the company of mercenaries.

"Oh, sure thing, milady-!"  

Kaeya lies among broken planks and stares at the crisp, blue sky. 

 

---

 

There's a fishy smell that buries itself in the recesses of his brain as Tartaglia takes them through the docks and across a sweeping stone pier. Somehow, the Harbinger does seem to have an inkling of an idea where to go based off of Wei Yin's 'drawing', as he meanders through the few throngs of scattered people by the ocean with casual confidence and a purposeful sense of direction.

He avoids moving up into the streets of the city.

A dog barks in greeting from a grassy road between two crookedly-placed, wooden fences.

Tartaglia rubs it between the ears playfully rough in passing before setting out onto the dirt path.

They only travel for a short time before the path ends and a pass between two towering trees leads them downwards into the cool shade of a tiny cave, then out to a sprawl of orange and green leafed trees among the rising ridges of the mountains that soar towards the sky above.

The clouds hang lazy and low.

Lizards scurry.

Insects buzz.

Tartaglia smacks a hand against his neck, then wipes the bug he'd murdered onto the bark of a tree they go by. "How nostalgic," he recalls, a genuine note of bemusement in his voice. "This is the roundabout way I took towards the Golden House back then. It's so overrun with monsters and Hoarders it's barely traveled."

As he says it, a blazing, fiery Whopperflower comes bursting out of the ground a few yards away by a small, lily-filled pond, twists around towards them as if sensing fresh human meat, and burrows fiercely back into the earth, rippling beneath the grass their way.

Kaeya, who had been maintaining silence in the duration of their walk, looks on as Tartaglia waits for the Whopperflower to re-emerge before grabbing it with his bare hands and wrangling it to the ground. The Harbinger tosses it into the pond afterwards and washes traces of sweet sap off his palms.

And Kaeya finally speaks.

"Why are you helping me?"

Tartaglia looks back at him. "I'm not helping you. I'm bored. And amusing as the clownfest is that's the future of two poor clans, I'd rather be out on the road. They're exhausting. And they don't need me. Chao Xing should be more than enough to keep that moron alive."

Kaeya notices as he walks over the fresh scorch marks blazed across Childe's fingers and hands.

Did he not feel it? Or did he relish in the burn?

"I don't need you either."

"No?"

And Childe raises his eyebrows, giving Kaeya a pat on the shoulder as he reverses, returning the way they walked.

"See you when you get back then. Don't get too lost."

"I wouldn't get lost."

Yet as he says it and as he lowers his eye to the paper in his hand, it's an itch of frustration that scratches beneath his skin the longer he looks at it and the more he accepts he would get lost. What had Wei Yin been expecting anyone with zero knowledge on the Harbor and its surroundings to be able to interpret from  two sticks and a curve?

He’d be picking through the mountains for hours.

Kaeya holds the paper in two hands hard enough that it crinkles.

"Something wrong?"

He works his jaw.

It takes a short glance behind him to see that Tartaglia hasn’t left him and is waiting and watching, smiling, like Kaeya's useless denial is the funniest thing.

"Fine," he says, facing back round and stiffly walking. "Just don’t talk to me."

"I think I can manage that," the Harbinger says passing up behind him before taking the lead. "Try not to fall behind."

Kaeya glares.

True to Tartaglia's word, he doesn’t talk as he moves on a faster pace.

Not even to give warning about the hilichurl lining up an arrow towards his head thirty minutes later as they pass between two small cliffs and a swath of trees- which Kaeya recognizes as petty revenge for his lack of warning to Childe in the valleys of Mondstadt.

The ass. 

He avoids the arrow well enough.

Sliding down the cliff in chattering claims of excitement, brandishing their clubs, are three other hilichurls whose exclaims tumble, jumbled into Kaeya's head- they'd been bored and throwing berries at each other's heads all day- He dodges and weaves and strikes fast, and as he snatches the club from one of their hands as he flips them over his back, he spins around to lock his eye onto where Childe has gone.

Thirty feet ahead.

Kaeya calculates quickly and throws it with precise aim. 

At the corner of the overgrowth where two Pyro slime barrels lie. 

Tartaglia, breezily, unconcernedly, walking forward without bothering to look back- disappears in the ensuing explosion.

 

---

 

Childe talks to him.

While wrestling him to the ground.

A furious yet highly entertained look sits in his eyes.

"That sure was bold of you. If I was any slower with my Vision, I would've been taken out. How funny." 

"Yes, I thought so too," Kaeya smirks, terribly amused despite the current position he holds as a person about to get choked out.

"Yeah?"

"If you don't believe me, I could always find another barrel or two and do it again-"

Childe successfully breaks through his defenses and drags his arms forward, seizing him in a tight and unbreakable hold.

Following the fascinatingly large explosion of elemental fire and force, a misted fog had emerged of vaporized smoke, and Tartaglia had been there, standing, drenched in water from a rapidly thrown-up shield of protection. He'd been still for an incredibly, incredibly long time.

Then he had faced towards Kaeya, smiling- and counting down from ten. 

Kaeya had smiled back- and quite wisely- started climbing up the cliff-face beside him to escape. 

A chase ensued, pinecones were weaponized, hands were thrown, and though Kaeya had managed to parry off and swing around several incredibly fast blades of Hydro with spinning, glacial Cryo, he still got his legs swept out from under him and a mouthful of dirt and grass before he'd been able to roll over and confront the other man directly. 

They've lost their status. 

They aren't a Knight of Favonius and Fatui Harbinger. 

Somehow, they've managed to stray so far from the direct path to the mushroom, from Snezhnaya, from Mondstadt, from the problem of Khaenri'ah, that they're now here, roughhousing in Liyue's thickets on a side mission with a bit too much pent up between them.

Like hatred.

Copious amounts of hatred, annoyance and the undying need to constantly one-up the other no matter the circumstance.

Which is exactly why they're no longer fighting with insults or combat, but with their teeth and tongues and hands. Because obviously it was the only way they could properly communicate this increasingly growing, complex hatred. 

The only way. 

Obviously. 

Childe sits him up and doesn't let go of his arms, getting one shoulder of Kaeya's clothes tugged down, before he pauses, breathing hard, to look at the new ink on his skin. "What's this?" he gets out on a rough exhale.

"Nothing," Kaeya pants, struggling to regain his breath. "Wei Yin-"  

Childe grabs his nipple and twists it, tugging him close as he sharply cries out. "That idiot again?" he growls against his mouth.

He lets go, rubs his hand briefly over Kaeya's chest, then catches it between his fingers and pulls on it again. 

"That hurts," Kaeya tells him, seriously, gasping.

So Childe does it for a third time before dropping his head and tongue to it instead.

There's a bird nearby and it watches them from its perch on a branch on a tree behind Tartaglia's shoulder as hands get into pants and tug out half-hard cocks, but Kaeya can't remember if it was him who did it or Childe since it's now the both of them holding their dicks together and working them off.

The air is humid.

Sweat decorates Childe's brow. Kaeya holds himself up with a free hand grabbing onto the other man's shoulder. They're both looking down in between them, watching themselves swell and harden.

Pre-cum beads. 

"You ever get fucked on the ground?" 

"We don't have anything." 

"We'll make it work-" 

They let themselves leak over one another's now furiously fisting hands.

Heat blossoms and spreads. The rubbing skin burns.

Their guts tighten.  

And as Kaeya bites down his lip and Tartaglia leans forward and bites down his shoulder, it's amazing the many things he suddenly thinks about.

Like how nice the weather is.

And how refreshing the shadows and the breeze are.

And how comfortable it feels to be sitting on the ground in monster-filled, wilderness with someone he genuinely wanted to flay alive less than an hour ago and douse in salt. Never mind the fact that he had nearly succeeded in sending him to the realm of the dead with a well-aimed hilichurl club. 

He also thinks about that ridiculous teller and his fortune of death. The heels of his boots dig and push into the ground. And when he groans it's not just because he really wants to come. It's because he's been reminded of the events on the pier, of the situation and what they're supposed to be doing on behalf of a certain Wei Clan heir. 

And it's not this.

"Wei Yin," he starts to lament, opening his eye, "we need to-" 

Childe shoves fingers into his mouth and gags him roughly. As Kaeya chokes around the abrupt intrusion, beginning to salivate, heaving for air with natural tears that reflexively springs to his eye, Childe looks at him extraordinarily serious and says-

"Shut up about him."  

Then he yanks out his fingers, leaves the tears in Kaeya's eye, and jerks the life out of Kaeya's pulsing erection until he tightly comes, tasting sweetness and blood on his tongue. For all its intensity, it's a rolling orgasm that comes, squeezing slow bliss out with a trickling sensitivity that's seeps with his energy.

Warm.

He sinks forward and slumps and rests his forehead on Tartaglia's shoulder, listening as the other man reaches his own climax with soft, little grunts and a drawn out exhale on a stifled groan. 

They breath for a while, loudly, then quietly in one another's space.

The irritation between them has momentarily gone.

Childe gazes at the breeze-blowing foliage on the other side of Kaeya's lean shoulder before tilting his head slightly against the knight's soft hair and skin and telling him-

"I think I came on your clothes." 

 

---

 

He hadn't.

Kaeya still attempts to rip his nipples off for it.

It's while they're back to fighting off one another's arms, standing up- with their clothes still out of place and dicks out- that a voice and party of footsteps draw near. 

"-could've sworn the explosion came from over there, Lady Keqing, but the monsters were all fleeing from here-"

Keqing? 

That name sounds familiar to him.

Childe looks down at Kaeya.

The knight looks up at him. 

 

---

 

It's right as Kaeya's hurriedly trying to shove Childe's dick back inside his pants and as Childe tugs the shoulder of Kaeya's hanfu back up, that a young, armed woman rounds the corner of the ridge leading into the tree-filled clearing- followed closely by an entourage of Millelith with spears.

The procession stops. 

Kaeya freezes.

He glances between his hands, Childe's dick, Childe's face, and the company that has just appeared. 

"It's not-" he begins, "It's not what it looks like."

 

---

 

Despite Childe's clear recognition of the Qixing girl who'd been involved in Osial's rising, she doesn't seem to recognize him.

Not entirely.

There's a definitive trace of suspicion shadowed on her face along with the shadows of the swaying leaves from the nearby trees. He's not sure if he should be somewhat grateful or offended he hadn't left anything of an impression in her memory enough to be remembered.

He can't look that different just from a change of clothes.

Or maybe it's because the clothes he's wearing matches so identically to Alberich's that they look like a pair of foreign, errand boys from the same clan.

Who happened to be caught redressing.

One of them holding the other's dick. 

Kaeya stands next to him, staring at the ground. He appears to be going through a mild crisis. 

The Qixing speaks first. 

"This area is full of monsters. And parts of it remain under construction. This road isn't a known path, even to most residents of the city. I understand if you were looking for privacy, but this...isn't the place for acts of affection. The Harbor has several, well-stocked establishments that would be more comfortable."

Kaeya keeps looking at the ground. Childe wonders what he's thinking about. It is because he got caught with heavy-hanging, genitalia in his hand? Or because it's just now catching up to him that he let Childe touch him again? 

Keqing must take pity on whatever small, inner conflict the knight-in-disguise is suffering through, because her hard suspicion dwindles and the reprimand in her voice fades.

She sighs.

She proposes an offer. 

"My inspection of the grounds here was nearly done. I can walk you two back to the city. I would be glad to help point you in the right direction." 

So they could spend all this time walking back once she dropped them off?

Childe doesn't think so.

"That's alright," he says. "We were actually on our way someplace and got distracted. I think we'll be fine on our own."  

She glances at him.

"Headed somewhere? On this road?"

"Personal business," he replies amicably. 

"Where to?" 

"...Here."

Kaeya speaks incredibly low.

An extremely crinkled piece of familiar paper is in hands, covered in grass stains, dirt, and-

Keqing stares at it. 

Kaeya continues to talk as if his spirit has been replaced with an effigy of stone. "A friend said to pay a visit here. It's our first time around. We got turned around. Do you know where it is? I'd like to get there as soon as possible." 

Keqing keeps looking at the paper. And as she does, her eyes get wide and a realization dawns. 

"Oh."

There's something in her tone. A significant shift.

Kaeya doesn't like that. 

She's looking at the paper a little too hard.

A little too surprised. 

Or had she just noticed all the-

"You're going here. I see. I'm sorry, I should have asked first."

Childe cocks a brow. Kaeya blinks. 

Her eyes lift to them. 

...Why was she looking at them like that?

Also what had she recognized from Wei Yin's detail-less drawing that would ever indicate where they were supposed to be going was a real place? 

She lowers her head in acknowledgement. She steps back. She hides a cough. 

"Please. Continue on your way." She gestures to the other side of the cliffy, tree-filled clearing, opposite to where she and her men came through. 

"If you walk through the density and travel a short distance east where the bushes and trees bend closer and darker together, you should be able to find what you're looking for. It's... a destination I've only heard the most dedicated go to. If you've made it this far without running into trouble with any monsters or bandits, and had time to do... what you were doing, then perhaps you'll be fine. It's not my place to join you. I... wish you the best."

And she looks to the Millelith. 

"Let's go."

She takes them, swiftly leaving the same way they'd come.

Kaeya watches her go, bewildered. What had the sudden change in her been about? 

He finds himself glancing towards Tartaglia for answer. 

The Harbinger, however, just raises his brows at him and the paper in his hands and says, "Get rid of that. It's covered in cum." 

 

---

 

A small pass in the woods. A stone walkway. A tall set of stone stairs.

An archway of stone rises above the middle of the steps.

In it's center- a hanging, ornate white and blue bell.

Kaeya looks at the archway in silent disbelief. This was what Wei Yin had 'drawn'?

Why hadn’t he connected the lines? 

Why hadn't he just drawn a bell and a set of stairs? 

He follows behind Tartaglia who takes to the stone walkway beyond the thick bushes first, wary, for a handful of reasons. In the time spent finding this location, trying to discern what the reaction of the armed woman they ran into was about, and stowing away the acceptance of whose rough palm had been wrapped around his dick for the third time, he and Childe hadn't spoken a word. But now he feels the need to.

"Am I allowed to mention Wei Yin or are you going to trying jamming your fingers down my throat again?"

The Harbinger doesn't bother to glance over his shoulder. "I don't care about that guy."

Oh Kaeya was sure.

"He barely drew anything but you knew this was here. Why is that?"

"I told you I took this route before. Except I never had the chance to investigate it like I wanted to. There were more pressing matters to take care of back then."

They get to the end of the path and to the bottom of the stone steps. They are cracked and worn and eroded from decades, if not centuries, of endurance in blistering winds and rain and what sun could shine through the boughs of the towering, dark trees above.

They start to climb. 

After a minute, Childe says-

"That's not normal ink on you. There's something beneath it." 

Kaeya looks at the back of his head. So he could pick up on that? Then, for the sake of pushing buttons, he responds, "Didn't you say you didn't care about him? What does it matter?" 

"I'm not interested in whatever bizarre comradeship you two have going on. I just didn't think he had any sort of power." 

"He does." 

"What is it?" 

"I don't feel like telling you." 

Tartaglia stops a few steps below the archway and its bell, and  turns his head to look down at him. The shadows in his eyes from the trees darken them. He looks cross and then he doesn't, and he turns back around. "Suit yourself." He cranes his neck and pushes the bell as he passes under, muttering, "Bet this old thing is still broken." 

It swings without sound. 

A breeze comes and goes. 

Kaeya passes through the archway himself, and as he does so, tilts his head back to look up underneath the bell.

There's a round, silver and steel clapper inside.

It should've made a noise.

He reaches up and pushes what he can reach of the bell's soundbow. 

A sound, clear as a bright, joyous song, rings into the air. 

He blinks. 

Childe stops, halfway twisted around several steps above.

Kaeya drags his eye from the bell. He looks at the Harbinger, and says dryly, "Or you didn't push it hard enough." 

Childe comes back down. He gives the bell a second go and makes a face as it rings. 

"Weird." 

"Yes. So bizarre," Kaeya mocks. 

"So bizarre," Childe mocks right back.

They continue up the stairs.

"Be quiet."

"Be quiet."

"Stop copying me."

"Stop copying me."

Kaeya steps on the back of the other man's boot.

As Tartaglia flies forward up the last cracked step, Kaeya passes him and continues down the long stone pathway, guided by trees and bushes and studying the modest wooden home at the end of it with a blue-shingled roof and porch.

Numerous stone statues of dragons and phoenixes sit between the trees, across from one another, as if paired. The porch dangles with wind chimes and bells and hanging paper wards. Peaceful quiet sits as the wind blows crisp and fresh between the branches of the sifting leaves.

The front door of the house is slightly ajar.

He slows.

He stops walking.

There comes the strong sensation of being watched. And the eyes that do so are not friendly. 

What was it the Harbinger had mentioned earlier? This was a pass full of monsters and-

Treasure Hoarders emerge from the shadows of the enclosure around them, wielding shovels, crossbow and pitchforks. The air around them shimmers, as if they were hidden by a spell and recently de-cloaked. The feeling is recognizable. 

There's a mage somewhere. 

Childe comes up behind him and halts easy at his side, not looking surprised in the slightest. "Nothing's ever simple." 

Kaeya glances at him. Childe glances back. 

Then an arrow shoots between them, and they separate, swiftly, surging forward. 

It's the farthest thing from a clean fight.

The first wave of thieves are beat back, bare-handed. A second wave springs forth with rallying cries as their fellow Hoarders fall, wielding canisters packed and bursting with flames and crackling lightning. They are pummeled mercilessly into the ground and then into the bushes they try and crawl off and play dead inside. Their elemental grenades are tossed back at them. They shriek and duck for cover. Several trees catch on fire. Three statues are blasted apart. 

On the porch of the house, in a line, cloaked by the protective spell of the rogue Cicin Mage standing invisible at the foot of the porch steps, the third wave of Treasure Hoarders exchange glances among themselves- and hesitate. Confused. 

The unsuspecting couple they were supposed to be robbing for precious personal belongings were fighting awfully well alongside one another for two people who'd been bickering not too long ago.

They weren't using weapons. 

Just... disarms, dodges, holds and parries. 

"Yao," says a crouched Hoarder to the one beside him, as he stares at the bodies of their friends across the stone walkway and in the bushes who are hopefully pretending to play dead and weren't actually dead. "I'm scared." 

His fellow Hoarder and friend, answers. "Do you think they knew we were here? Did we fall for some kinda trap?"

"It can't be. We would've heard something about it."

"Would we?" another Hoarder questions. "After making fun of Lingshu's shoes, you don't think he would've tried to get back at us by letting information slip?"

"They were ugly shoes. Were we supposed to keep our mouths shut?"

A fourth Hoarder speaks down towards the mage. "Oi, Ilsana, if we leave, do we get paid half-time for this?"

She casts a glance over her shoulder, lips blue, hair pale, skin touched with frost. Her eyes are hidden by her hood but nonetheless it's something disturbed on her features as she answers to them, "...I don't know. But if you're going to run off, make sure I get sent the proper cut from your boss-" 

A body sails into her.

And takes her out.

The cloak hiding the Hoarders falls. They all startle.

"Ah-!"

Kaeya, sitting on a fallen Hoarder to fix his boot, glances over. Childe, who had thrown the Hoarder trying to sneak up on the knight, puts his hands on his waist and turns to looks at them.

The Hoarders look back.

The Hoarders stand. 

"...Please don't kill us," one says. 

 

---

 

They don't. 

They leave them on the ground outside tossed in a pile and go into the house.

It's almost entirely wooden inside.

A stone fireplace is built into the wall. Green plants flourish and thrive inside. There's a pond in the floor, full of fish and a thick, broad tree hanging with chimes and charms growing from the wooden floorboards in the center. Paired birds sit on the ceiling beams, cooing as they enter. The roof is high and far above. By the pond, and partially beneath the tree, is a tall, standing statue of a swan. 

It is vastly larger on the inside than it should be for- and Kaeya recalls that this is supposedly the home of an adepti.

But where is it?

Childe pokes at a few glass-blown ornaments, filled with traces of color and sprawled across a deep, red-wood desk.

Kaeya glances around.

There didn't appear to be any other living being here. Had they fled in the attack from the Hoarders? But an adepti wouldn't need to, surely. Although... there were certainly a lot of them. And that's unusual, Kaeya notes to himself. Why were they here? Foot traffic and visitors were uncommon according to what they'd been told not too long ago. 

He thinks carefully. 

"Tartaglia," he says, after a moment. "Do you see a zither here?" 

"It was taken." 

It's not Childe who says it but a deep, sorrowful voice from the direction of the pond and tree.

The swan statue. 

Neither Kaeya or Childe startle, but rather, walk over to it in interest. 

"In my state, I was defenseless to stop their thievery. I thank you for fending them off. Although... I wish such desecration to our grounds was not made. My beloved lurks with wrath. I can only hope the nature of your visit will appease her." 

Her? 

No. Kaeya doesn't try and pursue that thread of conversation. They had a purpose in being here. Delayed... though they might've been along the way. "You said the zither was taken. The one who gave it to you..."

"The child of the Wei Clan. Yes." The statue sighs. It sounds suffering. "He gave it to me for the purpose of protection. I have known his father, and his grandfather and the grandfather before that. That child... is something else. I advised him in my state I would not be able to properly defend such an important instrument should trouble come to me for it. This was my punishment for my betrayal to my beloved. A miscalculation." 

Betrayal?

"It is a long story. Would you like to hear it?" 

"No," says Childe. 

The statue accepts the curt refusal. "The zither... it sings with power. It is an instrument, and once a weapon, to a fellow god. It cannot be sold. It must not be allowed to. I already tried once- and faced divine retribution from my beloved."

That was the third time he mentioned his 'beloved'.

Who was she? What was she?  

"Friends of Wei Yin. I would ask of you a favor."

Did they have a choice? 

"Retrieve the zither that was taken. Do not let it leave the Harbor. I overheard the thieves speak that their friends would be heading to the docks. Perhaps that's where it's been taken. If you could find and deliver it on my behalf..."

That's right.

Wei Yin had told him it was supposed to go to someone else. 

"Where?" 

"There is a restaurant that rises tall in the Harbor, where kites soar, the people gamble for precious ore and stories are told. I have lost much Mora to the man with the cloth and jade. How he deceives me so. But still I hold out for the chance of great reward..."  The statue trails off. "The wrath of my beloved has awakened. I must feign death." 

"Wait," Kaeya frowns, "who are we supposed to take it to?" 

The statue is silent and still. 

Kaeya looks at it flatly. 

 

---

 

Childe and Kaeya come to a consensus.

They share it after interrogating the Hoarders outside the adepti's house and as they make their way back towards Liyue Harbor and its docks. 

 

"If this zither has gotten itself onto a boat, I'm ditching this errand."

"I think I actually agree." 

 

---

 

A second conversation arises. 

 

---

 

"Back there on the grass. Were you considering it?" 

"Considering what?" 

"Doing more." 

"Don't flatter yourself. It was a lapse in judgement." 

"Like all the other times, huh. How many lapses have you had so far?" 

"I see some more slime barrels ahead. Why don't you walk near them?" 

 

---

 

A third.

 

---

 

"So what does the ink on you do?"

"I already said I'm not telling you." 

"Tft. Annoying."

"You're annoying." 

"You're annoying."

 

---

 

They make it to the docks. 

It’s not hard to find the second half of the Hoarders. They're not even hiding.

They’re gathered in the fourth investigated warehouse and the door to it is unlocked and wide open. Twelve of them in a large circle, around a thirteenth one- their designated leader- who kneels on the smooth floor wrapping the missing zither up in the torn remains of burlap sack.

"I don’t get it boss," one of them is saying, "Why wouldn’t you just put it in the whole sack? Why'd you cut it up like that?"

"Because it wouldn’t fit."

"But it doesn’t fit like this either."

"And you’d have a better idea?"

"Uh. Yes-?"

"Knock knock," Childe announces as he walks in with Kaeya rolling his eye at his side. "We’re here to pick up a special delivery."

The Hoarders spin around.

The boss stands, taken aback, zither in hand. "Special delivery?"

"That’s right."

And as Kaeya halts a reasonable distance away to think of how to best take them out without risking possible damage to the peeks of the gorgeous crafted instrument he can see from inside the odd wrap of burlap material, Childe goes right up to the men, parting a few Hoarders with friendly pats on their shoulders- and takes the zither straight out their leader's hands.

"Thanks. We needed this," he says.

And then he turns around, god-blessed instrument acquired, making for the warehouse door.

Kaeya and the group of thieves stare. 

"Er- hold on," one of the Hoarders says. "Wait. Who are you? Get back here."

"No, I’m okay," Childe answers.

He steps outside into daylight. The Hoarders spring into action, fumbling over their feet in exclamations as they start to charge over, wielding whatever makeshift weapons they can find around them in the short period of time. 

Kaeya swiftly turns on his heel and beelines for the door to join Tartaglia on the docks.

Except the Harbinger has stopped in the doorway. Except the Harbinger's face is blank. Except the Harbinger is closing the warehouse door on him with parting words-

"Don’t have too hard of a time." 

And the Harbinger locks him in.

Kaeya looks at the door, incredulous, a hand on the knob, which refuses to open.

He hears Tartaglia chuckle and then the sound of that chuckle fading away with his footsteps.  

As Kaeya stands rooted to the spot, a plank of wood is thrown at the back of his head. With enough force that his face hits the door with a loud, hollow echo and bang.

"Ah-"

The Hoarders skid to a halt, a distance away.

"Oh- uh- sorry about that," Kaeya hears one of them say. "We weren't really trying to hit you like that- kinda a mistake-"

Kaeya bends and picks up the offending piece of wood that has clattered to the floor beside his feet.

It sits comfortably in his palms.

He turns.

The Hoarders take a collective step back.

"Which one of you threw that?" he asks, congenially.

Fingers point.

Kaeya chuckles and smiles. "Come here, you."

 

---

 

Tartaglia is sitting on a stack of crates outside when Kaeya finally busts the brittle, Cryo-frozen door down.

The sea calls.

Salt is in the air, and the growing warmth of an approaching noon.

Kaeya hurls the plank in his hands at the Harbinger.

Childe casually leans out the way.

It vanishes beyond another stack of crates behind him.

"A hundred and twenty-three seconds," the Fatui comments, eyes on the ornate, arm-length zither in his cross-legged lap. It's pale, cream-colored and gold, backed by a deep, dark wood and patterned green leaves that crawl along its side. He plucks at its seven strings. They're all out of tune. "That's so slow. What were you doing? Asking them their favorite color?"

Kaeya had taken them out in twelve seconds.

The remaining one-hundred and eleven seconds had been spent icing all thirteen onto the ceiling in the wake of their repentance and trying to break open that cursed, locked door.  

"What was your reason for doing that?" Kaeya demands, stalking over. 

"It could have to do with a slime barrel. But I can't be sure," Childe replies, willfully ignorant. "Does this sound off to you?" 

Kaeya takes a look at the instrument in the Harbinger's lap. He frowns. It doesn't appear damaged but it did sound strange.

He tests out all seven of the strings for himself, grimacing at the flatness of four and sharpness of three.

Certainly off-tune.

Had something been done to the strings by the Hoarders? When they were trying to wrestle it into that burlap?

"Will this be a problem?" he wonders aloud. 

"It's not ours if it is," Childe says.

He slides off the crate and tucks the instrument beneath his arm.

"Weird-sounding or not, we got what we need and it works. Sort of. Let's deliver it and find wherever those two clown heirs went before we get sent somewhere else." 

Despite the vague directions to where their so-called god of interest for this zither delivery was, Tartaglia seems able to figure out the location after a small amount of thought. As noon draws closer and closer, the business of the Harbor picks up, and Kaeya finds himself stepping close behind and beside the Harbinger in an attempt not to get drawn into the ebbing, sometimes twisting, pull of the chattering crowds. 

Uphill from the piers is something of a Harbor center, and a multi-storied restaurant alongside several other eateries, markets, antique shops and a kite seller.

It’s packed.

They ask for entrance and are told reservations have to be made. Tartaglia tells the staff they're looking for a god inside and not to cause them any delay, and the particular staff he says that partially threateningly to glares at him in response and says there aren't any gods inside. 

"Then ask the people inside which one of them is looking for this," Tartaglia says, unamused. "Or I'm going to play this really loud outside your doors. And trust me. It isn't a sound you want to hear."

There's a back-and-forth for quite some time which Kaeya watches from the side, deadpan, until the staff member stomps inside, giving in. 

She returns fifteen minutes later, with narrowed eyes, puffed cheeks, and defensively raised shoulders. 

"There's a man who says it's his. But you still have to wait. He's not done with his tea." 

"He already sounds like a pain," Tartaglia snorts. 

So they wait. 

A handful of Milleleth patrol. Kids run around with toys.

Dogs bark and cheerfully settle on the ground.

Somewhere the clang of a blacksmith at work within a forgery is heard.

There’s a decent number of people that had glanced at them while they stood together, though whether it’s because they’re two foreigners dressed in the- now scuffed-up, slightly scorched, lightning and flame-singed- clothes of a Liyuen Clan or because of the instrument Tartaglia kept a hold of is anyone’s guess.

He is now seated at one of the outdoor tables across from where a storyteller is spinning a tale of martial sword art and legend. Perhaps they think he’s about to break into song and join in.

Though that seemed like more of a Mondstadtian thing. It was poetry and spoken recital for Liyue wasn’t it?

Kaeya brings his eye back to the view of the ocean and ships docked below.

He sits on a bench by a kite maker, in the shade of a tree, but he doesn't sit alone.

There’s a girl beside him, all spikes and flare, a small drum across her back, stringed instrument resting against the bench upright in between them. She fiddles with a painted plastic toy in her hands, muttering.

It’s a doll of some kind that spins it’s head when a tiny handle is turned and makes an unbearably high pitched ‘yahoo!’ as it does from a mouth that clacks up and down, open and shut.

The girl seems frustrated.

But it's not as frustrated as Kaeya is beginning to feel having been stuck listening to the noise for so long.

And still she doesn’t give up.

"Can’t seem to figure out what this is supposed to do-"

Yahoo! Yahoo! Yahoo!

"What was it Beidou said...? A special surprise sure to catch even someone like 'The Tianquan of the Liyue Qixing' off guard...?"

Yahoo! Yahoo! Yahoo!

"I don’t get it-" she spins the handle faster, "-where’s the surprise-"

The noises increase in pitch and speed, rapid and shrill.

YahOO YahOO YAhoO YahoO yA-!

Kaeya puts a hand over the doll's head without looking.

The girl holding it jumps.

After a moment; ears ringing in echo of the cursed sound- Kaeya turns his head to look at her.

She apologizes sheepishly. "Oops! Sorry, didn’t mean to disturb ya!"

"It’s fine," he lies.

He glances down at the toy.

She follows his gaze. "Ahhh this old thing? Well- guess it’s technically new. I got it from a good friend. It’s supposed to have a powerful surprise in it-"

So he’d heard.

"But I don’t know how to get it. An untold power of mystery that'll bring even the most powerful down."

Untold power?

It was the most harmless, unassuming looking doll of a smiling sailor in stripes he’d ever seen.

The girl mistakes his skeptical scrutiny for interest.

She presses it into his hands.

"Tell ya what. For bothering ya, how about ya take it. That friend of mine told me if I couldn’t figure it out it wouldn’t do any harm to pass it on. It would make its way to Lady Ningguang eventually. Not too sure why Beidou's so set on having it do that but- well- it’s yours. Consider it my apology."

The girl hops to her feet and stretches.

"Whew!" She snatches up her instrument and plays a small riff. "Alright! I’ve been sitting long enough. Need to go grab some food and write some tunes. Take care, ya hear?" she says to Kaeya warmly before heading off.

He holds the toy, looking at its smiling face in something very close to hatred.

He doesn’t want this.

He doesn’t want to have to listen to it.

He wonders if he can get away with leaving it on the bench and pretending it was never ‘gifted’. But then considers if the girl will pass back along the way eventually and see it’s been left behind.

He sighs.

...Well he won’t do that.

Maybe he could bring it back to Klee- if it even survived the long journey he was turning out to be on- or he could give it to Wei Yin and see if it preoccupied the man long enough to keep him out of trouble for whatever future days lied ahead.

But that sound it made was awfully annoying.

He didn’t think he could stand it. It was worse than Childe-

His thoughts stop.

He looks over his shoulder to where the Fatui Harbinger continues to sit, listening to whatever the storyteller is saying along with a small crowd.

Kaeya smiles to himself. 

He makes the small journey over, kindly parting through the people with benign apologies. 

Tartaglia, when Kaeya gets to him, spares both him and what he holds a glance. "If I knew you liked toys, I would've bought you one myself," he says, very clearly making fun of him despite how normal the cadence to his voice is. 

"Oh it’s not for me," says Kaeya nicely. He sets the toy on the table in front the man and the zither. "I thought you might enjoy it for yourself. I’m told it has untold power."

Childe gives the toy another look. A closer one. "Something like this? Untold power?" He chuckles beneath his breath, lips curling. "You can’t think I’d fall for that. Are you that bored?"

Yet the Harbinger grabs the strange plastic doll anyway- turning it over in his hands and poking and pulling at it.

And for some reason- unlike any other ordinary person might and perhaps just out of natural habit- when he gets to the handle, he rotates it counterclockwise instead of the other way first.

WAHOO!

The dolls face splits open.

An explosive burst of water shoots out. 

Straight into Childe's eyes.

The story teller stops. The crowd looks over.

Kaeya stares. A hand over his mouth.

There is complete and utter silence among them all for a very, very long time. 

Kaeya's hand holds his mouth tighter.

Tartaglia's face. The water dripping down it. His expression. 

Startled.

Spooked.

Like he’d been attacked by something that had violently sucked out his soul before kicking it back in.

Kaeya had only been trying to get him to hear that annoying 'yahoo' noise. He hadn’t known…

The first laugh is muffled.

The second one makes him shake.

The third one has his hand falling away and clutching his stomach and he bends slightly over as he breaks into very light, and airy, but extremely hard laughter. His other hand holds the table for balance.

"Oh- I’m- my- I didn’t-"

They’re being looked at by a lot of people now.

A few who had seen the the firing shot chortle and giggle behind their hands.

Childe, hearing them, returns to reality.

He looks at them.

Then looks at Kaeya.

Kaeya struggles to straighten up, takes two steps back- and for the second time that day- wisely chooses to depart.

He doesn’t get far.

There's four steps off the restaurant seating area and a few feet onto the stone of the square before a terrifying presence swoops in from behind with incredible speed and force, scooping him up and hauling him off the ground. 

Arms carry him, tightly, to the open pond ahead. 

He struggles.

"No, no, no, don't-" 

He gets tossed inside. 

 

---

 

They're finally called into the restaurant.

Kaeya drips water onto its floor. The staff member in the lobby entrance stares at him, affronted.

Childe's face says nothing. But his thoughts are loud.

Kaeya looks at a fine set of noctilucous jade chopsticks on display at the counter and considers driving them into the Harbinger's eyeballs.

It would be entirely accidental of course.

"Don't worry," Childe tells him despite Kaeya never asking him to open his humongous, infuriating mouth in the first place. "You've never been more attractive. The wet, drowned look suits you." There isn't an ounce of sincerity in his voice.

Kaeya reaches for the chopsticks.

A second staff member appears before he can actually get a hold of them.

She weaves a path around the busy tables filled with wealthy patrons and takes them up a set of wooden stairs, to a second floor, to a closed door room at the end of the vase and painting-adorned corridor. The staff knocks.

"Yes," comes a voice from within. "Please. Come in."

It's instantaneous. Childe's entire countenance changes. His smirk loses its amusement and sinks, sedated, into a simple, dry smile. Cross. Anticipating. "Oh, this guy." 

Kaeya is still vastly irritated, by the clothes that cling to him, suffocating, heavy and wet, but also feels the compelling need to ask- "You're familiar with them?" Because anyone Tartaglia is acquainted with is likely just as much of a pest. 

"You could say that. But I'd much rather enjoy a fight with him."

Meaning what?

And weren't they looking for a god, not some random man the Harbinger apparently had history with?

Who was this man who had chosen to claim the zither as their own?

Someone false pretending? 

Tartaglia couldn't know them for reasons concerning the zither. Its existence was just made known to them.

The staff opens the door.

Childe casually walks inside, instrument tucked secure beneath an arm. The door is closed the second Kaeya enters behind him.

A modestly decorated, private room. Walls scrolls, plants, a large round table of deep red wood. A large window sits on the east wall, offering a view of the busy streets, ocean and pier. At it stands a man with his arms behind his back, lingering in the clouds of reflective thought.

"You've returned," he says aloud.

His hair is long. His profile is handsome. There is a quiet, dignified, relaxed demeanor, and the feel of settled power is lost on none of them. He turns his head slightly, glancing at Kaeya before greeting Childe with contemplative, amber eyes.

"Not here to cause any trouble, are you?"

"That depends on what kind of trouble you mean," Childe tells him. He holds up the zither. "This yours?"

"It belongs to an old friend. I was told someone was looking to give it to a god. Tell me. How did you come into possession of it? And for what reason?"

"The reasons aren't special. It's owed to you, isn't it?"

"Owed isn't the word for it. Although I would happy to receive it."

"You know. I always wondered how you spent your days after Osial. But nothing's changed. You really do just stare out windows."

"There is little wrong with recalling the past."

"The past huh." Childe chuckles. 

The man considers him. "Have you thought about what you did? Did you spend time reflecting?" 

"For what?" 

The man exhales, soft. "Still so much to learn." 

"I'm not sure I need a lecture," Childe says. "For someone so strangely virtuous, you had no issues stringing me along, did you?"

Kaeya glances in between them, still at the door, and still very wet.

It's uncomfortable.

An extraordinarily calm and vague conversation begins between the two about who misled who, and as it does, Kaeya tries not to think about how much of an embarrassing sight he must look like and falls into contemplation instead, studying the new behavior of Tartaglia and this... definitely non-human man.

They didn't appear to be comrades.

The manner they stood in maintained distance, yet possessed comfortable familiarity from what was sure to have been a brief time spent together.

Kaeya looks at the unfamiliar man with a bit more scrutiny. He's certainly tall. 

Taller than Kaeya. That was for sure.

And taller than Tartaglia. 

And they were both already tall people. 

And he probably had a great deal of Mora sitting in a vault somewhere.

This person seemed... wealthy.

Technically, Kaeya had a plethora of unending wealth at his disposal too. So long as everyone continued to accept that any money of his brother was also his own. Diluc hadn't warmed up to the idea yet but it was a constant work in progress no different than their relationship and Kaeya had great faith it would all work out.

Because it needed to.

Or else he would be left with a severe drop in funds and several debts to certain people in the underground he had perhaps gotten too intrigued in buying rare, foreign liquors from on an old mission to uncover a gambling ring- and how fascinating that Tartaglia and this man were still conversing as if there hadn't been a different reason for them coming in the first place.

A reason that certainly didn't need such a lengthy exchange of words for a simple drop-off, pick-up and go.

He couldn't be too sure what was happening with Wei Yin or Chao Xing.

This.... unresolved history.... between both other men could wait.

But now that he thinks about it.

Childe wasn't even fazed at the prospect of getting handsy with another man. He certainly wasn't shy.

So he'd probably, somewhere, with someone or maybe several someones, had done a thing or two. Snezhnaya was a cold, cold place. Sharing body heat perhaps wasn't so uncommon. Even normal. Maybe Tartaglia had gotten trapped in a lot of mountains with a comrade with no other source of warmth. It wasn't easy starting any fires in an ice-swept cave. On occasion it could be impossible.

It was normal to want to survive. 

Kaeya would know about the difficulties of cold, snowswept places.

He had many solo adventures from the age of fourteen to seventeen on Dragonspine, picking through relics and trying to crack open frozen tomes and sealed ruins to learn more of Vindagnyr's curse, and they were almost all joyous occasions that led to hypothermia, suffering regret and a more-than-exasperated, and much more expressive, brother who had grown sick and tired of being the one to have to fetch him all the time with Jean between duties as the youngest, most promising, newly- appointed Captain of the Knights.

He steps forward.

"I don't mean to interrupt-" he begins, entirely meaning to interrupt. 

"-Traveler said you'd kick my ass-" Tartaglia is saying. 

Kaeya pauses. Had he just said, 'Traveler'?

"-no reason for punishment unless your behavior deems it necessary." 

"You sound like some kind of uncle or disciplinary teacher, Zhongli. I've always wanted to tell you that. Haven't you learned to loosen up in your time as a 'mortal'?"

"By 'loosen up', you mean cast aside moralities. Becoming mortal does not need to involve losing one's virtues."

"Like talking to a wall," Childe mutters. He glances over at Kaeya, who for some reason, hadn't moved one step from the entrance of the room since entering. The knight's expression holds an odd mix of annoyance, embarrassment, and strangely something like relief.

Childe almost wants to roll his eyes. They hadn't been talking for that long. Kaeya could've interrupted any time he wanted to if he didn't want to wait. Or was he just regretting life, thinking odd things of turmoil, after being dumped in that pond?

Good.

He had it coming.

And he'd started it with that doll. 

"You wouldn't have met Zhongli before, would you have?" Childe asks him, anyway. "Though I used to address him a little nicer with 'Mr.'. He's an old pal."

Kaeya has never met Zhongli before. But he knows the name- and what's behind it.

Several of Venti's drunken tirades had involved stories about a ridiculously unyielding god in the wake of contracts. This man was an Archon. Living among his own like Venti it seemed. And here Kaeya had thought the god was one of Tartaglia's old flame. Not that it would have mattered, because it isn't his concern. 

And yet, Kaeya feels the distinct need to toss himself off a cliff for ever assuming so in the first place.

...Right. Moving on.

It looked like Tartaglia knew Zhongli was an Archon too. But Kaeya would not make his own knowledge of it known to the Harbinger. Some cards were not meant to be shown. He could just pretend the man was an adepti of a different kind. That wasn't uncommon in Liyue. And that would mean the god they were looking for probably was him after all. 

But what in the world had Wei Yin struck a contract with him for?

How did Wei Yin know who Zhongli was?

He would have to ask Wei Yin later.

"Mr. Zhongli. A pleasure," he says, using proper manners. "I'm sorry for barging in on... what you were doing."

Whatever that was.

There's interest on the old god's face. He strokes his chin. He seems, strangely, to be taking all of Kaeya in. There are eons upon eons of time resting within his eyes and thousands of years of memory.

Dainsleif is a newborn in comparison.

And it's unnerving.

He also really, really hopes Zhongli has no idea that not too long ago Kaeya was pressing dicks together with the Harbinger standing in between them.

"Your name," the Archon wonders. "Might I ask what it is?"

Kaeya's lips press into a sudden straight, terse line at the inquiry. Right.

Zhongli.

Had been involved in the war back then, hadn't he?

With Khaenri'ah.

Or had Venti fudged some details in his slurred ramblings?

Whatever the case, Kaeya keeps his mouth firmly shut.

Zhongli oddly allows it.

"Perhaps it's not important," he says distantly. "For now."

Kaeya brows knit. For now?

Zhongli moves from the window, taking the zither from Childe and setting it on the table.

Before Childe can ask what the highly suspicious exchange had been all about, the Geo Archon touches the wood of the instrument and speaks.

"This is an important piece of history. As I asked before, how did it come into your shared possession?"

Kaeya explains, brief, wisely leaving out the less vital details, such as the desecration of an adepti's home, minor destruction of pier property and handjobs in nature.

"The Wei child," Zhongli recalls afterwards, stroking his chin. "Yes. I see now. We did sign a contract." His eyes fall to the zither. "The Wei Clan held possession of this for centuries. It was a gift from a spring god of old, impressed by their dedication and efforts- and the particular creation of an enduring tree through the use of non-elemental magic. I'm pleased to see its maintained good condition. Were the Wei Clan ever to meet their end, I was to take this instrument and bring it to my fellow god's grave. But the child told me his family was willingly giving it up, in exchange for a small favor."

He runs his fingers over the strings. He notices something.

He studies the instrument closely.

Then he studies Childe and Kaeya in equal turn.

"You played it."

"Barely," says the Harbinger, uncaring.

Kaeya answers more warily. "Played is a strong word."

Were they not supposed to?

Zhongli doesn't appear to hear. Peculiarly, he starts a recital aloud.

"...The first notes of spring do fall upon the earth, as the roots of longevity grow beneath the gurgling bends. Blossoms in the wind. Footsteps in the sands. The seasons do tumble. The seasons do change. But here among the tides will such oaths remain, as the joys of spring vow, everlasting, to never wilt; to never wane. And so it is done, does sing the spring and does sing the god."

A calm hush descends.

Zhongli looks upon the instrument for a while longer. It's not disapproval on his face, but neither is it approval.

He brings his eyes to Kaeya.

"You said this was an errand to fulfill the contract between myself and that deeply-concerning child. Answer me this. In bringing this zither to me, do you act on his behalf or do you act for reasons of your own?"

...What was the purpose behind the question?

"Both," he answers. "It was necessary you received this."

"Hm." Zhongli's eyes go to Childe next, significantly more provident. "And why did you accompany him?"

Childe cocks an eyebrow. "Because I wanted to?"

"...I see." Zhongli sighs.

Consenting.

He holds towards Kaeya a hand, closing it, re-opening it, revealing a deep, verdant green cloth wrapped in thick gold string. "This is what the child of the Wei Clan asked of me."

Kaeya takes it. It's light, slightly bulbous and holds a feeling of fragility and comfort of stability.

"Deliver it to him safely," Zhongli says, "and the contract between he and I will come to a proper end."

Kaeya thanks him- cautiously, curiously- both for the man's odd behavior and for what it was Wei Yin had requested of him.

Having nothing else left to do, and nothing else left to say, he glances at Tartaglia and finds the Harbinger already looking his way.

It's a unanimous, silent agreement to leave.

They start to go.

Zhongli speaks out as they reach the door.

"Childe."

Tartaglia opens the door for Kaeya before glancing over his shoulder.

The Archon is gazing upon the zither again.

"Stay a moment," he says.

"Do I have to?" 

"I would appreciate it," Zhongli replies, "if you could."

...He's acting weird.

Childe knew there was something sitting bothered in that old god's mind. He'd recognized the man's mannerisms as soon as that strange verse had left him. It was the same as they were when he was debating over which items from the vendors stalls he wanted to give a try, but couldn't decide on for lack of Mora.

The question here was- what was he looking for now?

Alberich stands a few steps away in the hall, holding the palm-sized, green bundle for Wei Yin, an interested, if not suspicious tilt to his head.

Childe thinks for a second or two- and makes a shooing gesture. "Go back without me."

Someone should make sure Wei Yin hadn't wound up dead.

It'd put a severe halt to his plans if something had happened to him before Childe was able to get onto his clan grounds.

But the knight, whose hair is taking an awfully long time to dry and clings attractively to the curve of his face, says, "I can wait."

"I don't need you to," Childe retorts. "Unless you want to hear something terrible for an hour." Because he's almost positive Zhongli's sole reason for asking him to stay is for a lecture. About what and why, he has no clue, but he's not looking forward to it.

The moment the Archon started with the words, 'You would not know, but centuries ago-', Childe was leaving.

Or maybe it was about the business with Gnosis'. Which was especially confidential information Kaeya shouldn't hear.

Anddd...

Kaeya is still there.

Making a strange face.

Childe makes one right back. "There's something to handle. Go away."

He closes the door.

He counts to sixty.

He re-opens the door and checks outside, satisfied when he sees the knight has gone. 

 

---

 

It takes Kaeya time to find his way back to either of the heirs.

It's a process and he spends a good ten minutes outside the large restaurant trying to figure out the terrible things Tartaglia mentioned that could be simultaneously spoken about and handled between a Harbinger and Archon that didn't involve a fight. Then he chooses not to dwell on it and make his way to the docks where they had separated from Wei Yin and Chao Xing to begin with.

They aren't there.

Truthfully, he hadn't been expecting them to be. It was a starting point.

He continues to search the docking bay and lower streets.

Where might mercenaries meet with two rich adults?

Or drop them off? 

Preferably alive.

The Harbor is a flowing, crowded throng of merchants, sailors, appraisers, stalls, migrants and adventurers.

And now that Tartaglia isn't at his side, he feels the sights and sounds pressing, swelling, intimately closing in. 

A hub of diversity, a collection of every walk of life, modern, traditional, where the wealthy mingle far more casually among the poor, where the spiritual energy twists and spins and drifts weaving paths no different than a scent in the footsteps, on the shoulders, in the wake of adepti and their descendants, wanderers and ghosts, practitioners of rites, the faithful with their swords.

It's unending. Condensed. Overwhelming.

There are thousands of years of contracts carried in the sea breeze, engraved along the walls, latticed beneath the ground, in agreements, promises and vows.

And still, it's interesting. And still, he wishes to further delve into its depths and explore.

One day, perhaps, in a time when everything has changed- when Mondstadt is no longer home- the chance will come.

He takes the chance and asks the soldiers of the Millelith if they had come across anyone matching Chao Xing or Wei Yin's directions. He gets an assortment of answers, all from soldiers who look tired at the mere mention of the names, and eventually follows the trail they describe to a grand terrace with wooden and stone walkways at the base of a well-known pharmacy and soaring staircase to where the Qixing and other affluent forces of Liyue's Harbor reside.

He sees Chao Xing almost immediately, for she's sitting on a stone bench quietly, fan closed and held lightly in her lap.

Her gazes rests on the waters and the few round bridges covered in greenery before her.

She garners looks from any who pass her. Several pairs break into quiet mumbles, murmurs and gossip as they draw near Kaeya and walk by him, traveling down the stairs and back into the belts of the louder, chatter-filled streets of the city.

"-that woman."

"Dressed for ceremony again. I wonder if we'll see her casting prayers again."

"So pointless. If she's been ditched this many times, she should hurry up and move on. At this point it's just sad."

"There's probably a reason for it. Some people are just undesirable, you know."

"I feel worse for the family. It's a failure with this one-"

Kaeya listens to them go with feet that don't move as the conversation carries on, vanishes, fades into the wind.

Chao Xing's expression says little.

How long has she been there?

Kaeya walks the short distance from the terrace entrance, over the walkway, and meets her where she sits.

"You come to me alone," she greets. "And ruined clothes. How careless. Where has your lover gone?"

Kaeya ignores the question. "Do they always talk like that?"

"Ignorant? Thinking they've made some kind of point?" Chao Xing smiles. "But of course. They are humans, after all. Does it not fall in line with our nature as arrogant baboons? I have, you understand, evolved past the baboonery into the grace and glory of an elite being, so I cannot help but pity them and allow them to speak."

The smile she wears is a false one, and Kaeya has borne plenty enough of his own to see through the lies they hold.

He looks at her for a moment- then glances around.

"You look for the Young Master," Chao Xing comments without moving her eyes from the bridges. "He's unharmed and within sight above us. I'm not so careless to let him wander off and get involved in further trouble before our departure."

Kaeya tracks her line of sight and then raises his eye to a gathering of pale, gray stones and cliffs rising over the waters and the bridges. A boulder before a waterfall. Wei Yin relaxes in the grass and leans against it, a giant lily-pad over his face, seemingly asleep. "The mercenaries?"

"Handled."

Kaeya takes a seat on the bench beside her. "You didn't want to join him?"

"He requested space, so I am giving it."

Kaeya feels his mouth twist down.

Chao Xing glances at him at long last. "Is it that hard to believe I'd be decent and do as he asks?"

That's not it.

A bothersome feeling digs beneath his skin, crawling beneath.

Thoughts of Childe, of Archons, of strange, cryptic experiences and words, momentarily step back.

"All these things you do for him. They're thankless efforts."

"So I should not entertain his every whim- is that what you mean to say? Make no mistake, I do not. If he finds himself in a difficult situation, however, I would not stand by idly. That is my duty."

"As his bride-to-be."

"No. As myself."

Chao Xing brings her gaze to where Wei Yin sleeps. She doesn't talk for a minute.

"You remember I told you that the fan I carry is a gift."

Kaeya remembers.

"Ask me how I got it."

There's something she wants to say.

Kaeya indulges her. "How did you get it?"

"How rude to ask a lady something so personal!" Chao Xing scorns right after. "But if you must know, I'll tell you. Fine."

"You just said-"

"I was not the most sociable of kids-"

Kaeya resigns himself to another story.

"You could say I was... shy. Humiliatingly so. I hid behind my sister many times while all the boys from other visiting clans and the Young Master's cousins bumbled over their feet and fumbled over their words, trying to impress her with silly tricks and fanciful poetry. Not that I ever wanted them to do that for me. I already had a reputation for being her shadow. It's obvious I would appear invisible to them, despite our mother dressing me just as grand."

"...But of course."

Chao Xing turns her head stubbornly away.

"I didn't want them. My sister could have them. Yet, she had eyes only for the Young Master. For reasons beyond me. I didn't care for him. I cared that Chyou's attentions had gone from me. A shadow of her in comparison I might've seemed to be, but she never once ignored me. But that buffoon, out of everyone, had her caught in daydreams and smiles. She'd never been happier than the day they were officially promised to be. She wrote in journals she hid from me. She would try her very best to be at the Young Master's side and speak to him, listening to the nonsense spilling out of his mouth with every other word he spoke as if it was the most endearing thing she'd heard."

Chao Xing's brow knits small. Her eyes go back to the waters across from where they sit as she recalls.

"She told me, 'He's not like the others. You don't see it, but that's alright'. I didn't understand it. I could see very clearly he was a cretin at the bottom of the food ladder that had somehow made it's way through evolution. I spied on them for many hours for many days. Chyou constantly dragged him to the gazebos overlooking the inner ponds of our gardens, or forced him to walk about smelling flowers.

It was quite hard hiding behind rocks and squatting in the bushes, but I tarried on in the hopes I could see what it was my sister saw in the Young Master. But no matter how long I watched them for, my conclusions were the same. He was useless. He offered nothing to the clan. Less than myself to my own. He didn't study. He didn't read. He followed behind his brothers the same as I followed behind my sister, and when they were gone, he followed behind no one for there was no one left."

She falls silent. She speaks again.

"...I want to say he changed. But truly it was hard to tell. He still didn't study. He still didn't read. He grew louder, more brazen, he survived every attempt on his life to the confusion of everyone around, so ignorantly obnoxious about it too. Chyou sought him out in the passing of his last brother. In the times she could not convince him to join her on her walks or attend the clan dinners we were all obligated to pretend was arranged in goodwill, he would be by the ponds alone, tossing coins at the fish.

Ignored as I was, I was able to disguise myself among the trees and stones and listen to his wishes. Wishes of wealth. Wishes of freedom. Wishes to set our best libraries on fire so that he may never have to see another book again. All that gold thrown to the waters. 'So I can runaway'. That was what he said. And when his given allowance ran dry, he would toss bread at the fish instead. I haven't the faintest idea why."

At some point, Kaeya expected that Chao Xing and the clan members, much like himself, had stopped questioning the many things Wei Yin did. Yet at some point, Kaeya felt that someone should have questioned why Wei Yin did the things he did.

Had there been no one?

No one at all to help him?

To speak with him aside from Chyou?

Or had everyone just been waiting for him to die?

There's something in Kaeya's chest. Sharp and swift. It pricks and bleeds discontent.

Chao Xing sees his expression.

She opens her fan and sighs.

"The fish all lived. You need not worry about what the bread did to them." She fans herself, reluctant. "I was the one who mistakenly led to their deaths. On one such day where the Young Master was casting his wishes, a raccoon sneaked into grounds from the outside world and onto the property, right through the bush I happened to so be hiding within. It startled me greatly and I burst from the foliage, tripping on my slippers and plunging into the carp and lily-filled waters."

"He helped you."

"Not at all. The Young Master looked at me, called me a 'weirdo', then rose and left. I dragged myself from the pond and took his previous spot upon the stone bench, sobbing my heart's worth out in embarrassment, drenched in misery, wet and with several extremely dead fish in my lap. Two hours later, as the infernal raccoon sat on me, shoveling the fish into its mouth with its grubby little hands, the Young Master returned. He handed me this very fan.

'You're so loud. It's annoying. And you're doing that thing my mother tells me not to do; the ugly crying over pointless things like dinner being poisoned for the hundredth time and brothers always making promises to play games and then dying. Except I think your face looks much uglier than mine when you cry. So here. And quit hiding in the bushes like a creep. I always see you but Chyou never lets me call you out because it'll hurt your feelings or whatever'.

He said those words, took the raccoon from my lap, and went off, speaking ridiculous ideas about making the animal his new friend. The raccoon mysteriously perished after his mother caught sight of it and he was greatly devastated for a time."

Kaeya feels as if he's missed something. "So he gave you the fan like that and you... fell in love with him?"

Chao Xing snorts, loud, and covers her face with her fan quickly at the undignified reaction, and schools her face and clears her throat. When she looks at Kaeya next, however, there is a semblance of a new smile on her lips, different than the ones that had come before.

"Who would fall in love with that? And so paired with insult? I see now why you struggle with Harbin so. The obvious of one's intentions flies over your empty head."

That was a very big pot calling the kettle black.

"You know he's trying to kill you, don't you? In all seriousness."

"He doesn't truly mean it, though he's never stopped trying. He's quite similar to a dog with no bite."

"I'm not so sure about that."

"Because you don't know him as I do. These attempts of his are simply his way of denying a reality he can't escape."

Was that supposed to make it better? Why was she accepting that?

"That's terrible for the both of you," Kaeya tells her.

"I didn't know you were a love-guru come to offer me advice, caught in a terrible affair yourself," Chao Xing condemns. "And you're sorely missing the point of the exchange that occurred. The point, back then, was not that he had offered me the fan, but that he had seen me, spoken to me, returned and granted a gift to hide my own weakness, making it clear that it wasn't the first time he had noticed my presence. The Young Master was the very first person to acknowledge my existence beyond my sister and mother. The first boy- and I did not love him then for I did not know what love was- but there I was suddenly seeking his attention out all the same. Chyou and I were twins.

Surely if he could spend hours in her company babbling, he could spend hours in mine perhaps doing the same. We would not have to be so lonely. And yet the older we grew, the more I attempted to appeal to him, the less he glanced my way. 'Go away, Chao Xing,' he'd say. 'I don't plan on sticking around here'. These claims grew more prominent after my sister's death. He changed the way he looked at me."

Chao Xing's smile settles, but newfound bitterness swells within her eyes.

"I thought it was because he believed Chyou was far greater, that she should have been the one to return from the woods, as she was naturally-gifted and had more potential than I. We were sixteen. I always presumed the Young Master to be the most immature out of us, but as I reflect, I believe the one who had acted brashly on emotion was me. I threw the fan at him. I blamed him. I grieved my sister's death, even as my aunt congratulated me, as my father approved, as my mother looked away and the attention of the clan fell upon me, wondering at the miracle of my victory.

Weeks later, emotion overcame me in memory as I cried by the ponds. The Young Master came. He handed me the fan I'd thrown. He said my crying had somehow gotten a thousand times uglier in the near ten years that had passed since the first time I wept. He told me to hide my face. He told me that what was done, was done, so I should stop sitting around, and if I was so upset, I should shout in the storms of the valley until I got attacked by soaring birds like he did. It was incredibly insensitive," Chao Xing notes.

She smiles smaller.

The bitterness leaves her.  

"...I was grateful. Whether it was infatuation, whether it was a mistake what I had done, the feelings that come from them are real. Wei Yin," she speaks his name clearly and Kaeya looks at her, seeing her as if seeing her for the very first time, "is an absolute idiot. But he is a good one. Bold. Unapologetic. He does as he pleases, he says what he wants, he cares little for what others think of him. And because he is that kind of fool, there is no one who can lead him away from the paths he has chosen to walk. I have learned lessons I could not find in any manual watching him as I did. I learned not to fear and not to waver. To someone who has changed me so, there is little I would not give. I do not need his thanks, for I am the one repaying my debt to the Young Master. And to my sister."

Kaeya stares at the waters she once gazed upon with an expression that can't be read.

"Chao Xing."

She gives him a look of interest at the strange vacant note to his voice.

"Lady Yuan," she corrects. "And what is it?"

"...You've never once thought about doing the same as Wei Yin? Running away?"

"I've thought about it. On numerous occasions. But it's not something I can ever allow myself to do. These are the duties and responsibilities I stole from another. If I run away and cast it all aside, then what was the reason for my efforts? My obsession? For what reason did I strike my sister dead?"

She lowers her fan and gazes one last time towards Wei Yin.

"I will stay. Within the clan. At the Young Master's side. And follow him to the very ends of where he so goes." 

 

---

 

Wei Yin stirs awake as Kaeya leans over him, removing the lily-pad off his face.

He squints in the onslaught of afternoon sun and half shadow, taking a moment to figure out who's above him, before recognition dawns and he perks up.

"You're back!"

He leaps to his feet and stretches, grinning sleepily. Something in his spine horrendously cracks.

He keels forward, clutching onto Kaeya.

"Ack! The pain!"

Then he promptly gets over it and takes a good look around.

"Hm? Where'd your husband go?" he asks, leaning past him, hand still resting on Kaeya's shoulder.

And Kaeya gazes at him for a moment, thinking of Chao Xing, thinking of Chyou; thinking he wanted to say a great deal of things to Wei Yin. But it's strange. For all that fills his mind, builds in his chest and gathers in his mouth, he can't put it into words.

So he holds onto the feelings.

He brings his hand over top of Wei Yin's own, and sighs, telling him instead, "He's not my husband." He removes the young heir's palm from his shoulder and moves the small parcel Zhongli had given him into Wei Yin's possession. "This is what you were looking for?"

"Ah! You were able to get it. Good. Those mercenaries were so annoying but Chao Xing really got on with them so it worked out." Wei Yin smiles, accepting the parcel, untying the golden strings and unfolding the cloth without hesitation.

A piece of pressed, golden glass hanging from a short silver chain is brought out and held up into the air.

It glints in the backdrop of sun and sky.

A charm. A keychain.

Of a golden fish.

Kaeya finds his eye locked onto it. "Is that-"

"A carp it is indeed," Wei Yin confirms. He lowers it slightly.

The orange-painted, translucent glass trinket, small yet big enough to sit comfortable in the palm of anyone's hand, shines with a spectrum of rainbow within. Traces of pure gold flicker and dance, as if alive, among the colors.

"When I returned to the Harbor the first time after my escapade in the woods with Carp, I thought about having this made. Were we to meet again, I'd give it to her. It wasn't easy finding someone who could make this as I wanted for what I wanted. Thankfully that adepti in the woods has connections with my family so I could hunt him down easy, and thankfully he kept that glass-shaping hobby of his my grandfather used to go on about."

Kaeya hesitates. "...And Zhongli? You're aware of who he is?" 

"Of course! The Wei Clan is so old. He knew lots of my ancestors. And they all know him too well to have believed he died. He's a god with powerful protective energy. And can do stuff much stronger than anything anyone in my clan can do. Even my father. I stole that zither from our clan holdings in payment for him blessing this charm. Since I ran onto the cruise after taking it and dropping it off, I'm not sure how they'll react, but I'm sure they'll get over it. First night on the boat, I wrote a note saying I tripped over a waterfall with it and lost it." 

Wasn't the zither a highly-valuable, spirit-blessed, instrument and apparent weapon that had once belonged to an old, ancient god? 

Hadn't the zither been a precious gift?

Kaeya says to him, entirely serious, "They're going to kill you." 

"Then can try," Wei Yin says back. "I'm unkillable ha ha!" 

Kaeya brings a hand to his forehead. 

Wei Yin continues to chuckle. "Thanks to Zhong and that adepti, this glass charm is now touched by two important gods, protective and neat to look at. See the colors in it? No matter the weather, no matter the rain, the darkened clouds- the sordid winds of fate- it'll always, always gleam with gold!" he pronounces, excitedly, loud. 

He passes it back to Kaeya then. And as it leaves his hand and finds it way into Kaeya's own, Wei Yin folds his fingers over top of his, enclosing the charm into the safety of their closed hands. 

"Something like that. Carp would like it, I think. So. I'm trusting you to hold onto it. Should you ever meet her in your journeys on the road." 

Kaeya looks down at their hands. "What? Why give this to me? The odds of my meeting her-"

"-are far greater than mine, aren't they?" Wei Yin finishes. "After the wedding, I don't think I'll be able to leave clan grounds so easily. I'd like her to get at least this. It... probably hasn't been so nice for her to accept that I'm permanently going to get tied to someone else, and that our chances of banditry and messing around on rooftops in the future is permanently gone."

He was really attached to her. 

Why?

Kaeya doesn't understand it. 

The bandit and her obsession for gold. The fact that her and Wei Yin had met and been together for only seven days. 

That wasn't love. 

How could it be?

Here Wei Yin was, a besotted, all-in fool, and there Carp was, practically a stranger in the wake of Chao Xing. He knew Wei Yin felt changed from his encounters and shenanigans with the bandit during their time on their road. But what about the bandit herself? If she was only using him...

Kaeya frowns, and frowns deeply- and even further deeply. 

"Wei Yin, you."

He stops. Hesitating.

The young heir's eyes study Kaeya's face with surprising aptitude. He smiles.

It's as if they're back on the boat. On the deck. 

"Hmm. Vinny. You're misunderstanding again. You're thinking too much. It doesn't matter if she really loves me or not. I'm fine having these feelings for myself; I'm used to it! I just want to repay her for all the good things she taught me. I got to have a lot of fun. And... even though it's coming to a close now, it's okay. I have a good memory when it comes to women. So even if I'll miss her a lot, I can. Just remember."

Quiet falls for but a moment.

Kaeya opens his mouth.

Kaeya tells him.

"No. I'm not going to do this for you."

Wei Yin's smile falls off. 

Kaeya picks it up and wears it himself, small. He's not sure of the exact expression he's wearing, but he's certainly sure about something else. He settles his second hand over Wei Yin's. He guides the charm they hold towards the other man's chest and holds it there.

"I'm not so reliable. You can do this yourself." 

"....Ragnvindr?" 

Kaeya gazes at a spot of no consequence on Wei Yin's shoulder. "Don't be so quick to give up about exploring the outside world. Or about seeing her again. Even if you get married, you can definitely still..." his words dwindle. 

Quiet comes again.

There's a bird chirping somewhere in the cliffs overhead.

"The gardens at home," Wei Yin speaks at last. "Sure are grand." 

His voice has changed. Kaeya's hand is wet. He jerks his eye from Wei Yin's shoulder and finds the heir smiling with tears that streak his cheeks damp and run down off his chin.

"The gardens at home are sure grand," he repeats. "I think you'd like them. It's a good place to sit with a friend and enjoy a drink of huangjui. The rice wine father presses has a unique taste. A sweet citrus and berry flower. It's like budding spring. It makes you think anything's possible."

"Wei Yin?"

Wei Yin laughs.

He removes Kaeya's hands.

He steps back, wiping his eyes with his arms and back of his wrists, glass charm shining with the sun beneath the grasped fingers that hold it. "Oh! Sorry! I remembered uh- something from before. You said something a little familiar. A ceremony like a wedding is grounds for a celebratory drink, you know. If not with friends, it's usually drunk with a brother. I don't think father had the chance to drink with his either. That's kind of a shame. Sometimes if I start thinking too much, if I start thinking it through what our clans are after- for something so weird like maintaining power no one else in the world cares about, I really-"

He cuts off his words. He blinks, as if surprised by himself.

Then he shakes his head, clapping his hands to his cheeks to banish the wandering thoughts, cheer returning.

"Wow! Digging into some unwanted stuff there, huh? As my mother says, stow that away, we don't need that here! Geez. This wedding's totally giving me the worst kind of cold feet I've ever experienced. I only cried once the last eight times our wedding date was set. It's usually not this bad. I guess it's because it's actually, finally happening for real and I can't get out of it."

He contemplates over the charm he holds. He slips it into his clothes.

"I'll keep it for now since you believe there's a chance," he says to Kaeya who stands, expressionless and unmoving. "And I value your opinion greatly."

Kaeya's speaks, empty. "We just met."

"And yet here you are, my cherished friend," Wei Yin answers, laughing. He smiles at him fondly. "Ragnvindr. I'm really not as brave as Chao Xing believes. I barely ever know what I'm doing. So. Um. Until tomorrow ends, I'd like to ask that you please don't leave. Or I think I'll just get scared." 

 

---

 

They descend together.

They rejoin with Chao Xing who'd remained sitting calmly as she was when Kaeya left her.

There's a moment the heirs take, looking at one another- before falling into step, side-by-side, beginning to fuss over where to go next.

"I'm hungry and your clan cooks super bland food. Can't we go to the Teahouse or Kiosk?"

"We cook for health and for maintaining cleanliness of the body's spirit. And no. You haven't Mora and neither do I." 

"We can just stick it on a tab." 

"To bring about more debt for yourself and another run-in with mercenaries in our future days ahead? I don't think so."

"But I'm starving!"

"Then starve."  

Kaeya walks behind them silent.

A dog with no bite being ushered towards a cage, and a stubborn, peckish bird that refused to leave it.

Despite their disagreement, Chao Xing decides to allow a meal be spent in her name, and they settle on eating at the Liuli Pavilion, forcing their way in against the general rule that a three-month reservation is required regardless of status or wealth. 

"There's no one in here anyway!" Wei Yin exclaims, barging in and poking his head around the divider past the lobby.

A staff member chases after him.

"Hey-!"

They're seated and served nonetheless by bedraggled employees.

A mountain of mouth-watering food is delivered in waves. Vibrant colors. Tantalizing scents. Wei Yin grabs what he can in both hands, sighing, reminiscing on trysts of fondling. Chao Xing sips a very, very pale, tasteless bowl of lotus bud soup, rolling her eyes.

Kaeya sits in between them.

He thinks, of all things, about the words of the fortune teller by the ocean.

And as he does- realization dawns. 

He stares at the plate of food Wei Yin has put together for him, and stares, like never before.

 

---

 

Another cup of tea is poured.

Childe stares at it. Stares at the staff member who poured it. Then stares at the man across him, seated in a chair by the window, seven-string zither in lap, cast in light and its sifting particles born from the slanting pale sun sweeping through the window pane. The staff member politely leaves.

"Why have we been sitting here in silence for an hour?" he finally says.

Zhongli stirs at the words, as if he'd been slumbering with his eyes open, which- he hadn't been doing right?

He hadn't been sleeping, right? All this time? 

Or else Childe might be inclined to take this newly poured cup of tea and-

"Meditation," Zhongli speaks, interrupting the train of thought. "An act of it. It is custom in such situations and I thought it would do you some good. As well as give you time to clear your head and think things through."

Childe dubiously eyes him and speaks very slow. "Why?"

His head's been clear. It's been so clear with the sheer lack of anything for the past sixty minutes it's near empty with clearness.

Zhongli responds to him, just as slowly, bearing onto him a stare of vital importance. "Your intentions in being here. I admit it's unexpected. This instrument... and the young man you walked in with. Do you understand what it is you're doing?"

"What?"

"Are you positive you're responsible and committed enough to see it through? To withhold your oath? It is a binding thing- and what results from it cannot be undone."

What... is the god saying?

That he somehow knew what Childe was doing here and what he was after? How was that possible?

And this was a talk not about Osial, not about Gnosis', but Alberich? 

"I don't know how you know, but I'm doing what I have to do," he tells the Archon. "I've tried my hand at a few other things and it didn't work. So this is what's left."

Zhongli regards him carefully.

Childe narrows his eyes. "What? Don't tell me you'll try to stop me?"

"...No. You could say I didn't expect something like this from you."

Childe crosses his arms and leans back in his chair. "Didn't expect it? My dedication to seeing things through didn't come across in our last meeting? Even if you bamboozled me, I saw my work done all the way to the end."

And Zhongli chuckles.

Chuckles.

As if Childe had cracked the funniest joke he'd heard in weeks. 

"Yes. I suppose you did. Interesting..." His gaze wanders beyond the window once more. "Mondstadt. That's where he resides. The winds and wine about him are familiar, similar to a young, drunken acquaintance of mine. It's a familiar scent from a beautiful land. Freedom, rebellion and song. They indulge in life's pleasures and push forward with their convictions like none else."

The old god considers Childe.

"I see what would draw an untamed soul like yourself. A simple-minded, troublesome, brazen rascal you are, but it seems like your heart is the same as any other. I was not mistaken in believing in the goodness you possessed when we first met. I tolerated you for a reason. And you possessed an intriguing amount of Mora."

Gee.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

"I was being sarcastic."

Zhongli plucks several notes of the zither, light and resonate, bringing into the room a feeling greatly profound.

Thoughtfulness. Acceptance.

Zhongli hums before rising, holding the instrument with care. "Bygones are bygones. Let's move ahead. There are a few things you and I should do before the hour has gone and I've held you for long enough. Return to your partner. I believe he's at the Pavilion. Do you remember where it is?"

Do before the hour has gone?

Also-

"How would I forget? We ate there all the time and you never paid for anything."

"A memory as astounding as my own," Zhongli commends him.

Childe sighs. "C'mon, at least try and sound apologetic about it."

The Archon tilts his head at the vexation in Childe's voice. "For what?"

"...Forget it." Childe gets to his feet himself. "The next time we meet, I really want to have a go at you. Prepare yourself for a fight."

"We will run into each other again soon, that is true," Zhongli agrees, "though I will not fight you."

"What if I attack first? Cause a new ruckus in the Harbor?"

"Then I will remove you from this earth instantly, regardless of what you came here to do. It would take but a blink."

Childe laughs. "You don't need to exaggerate like that. I'm plenty capable enough to give you a decent challenge."

Zhongli tilts his head even more.

Childe's laughter trails off.

"...Wait. Are you being serious? You've still got that much power left?"

"Liyue ushers in a new era. I would see little disturb its peace."

Good to know. So if he did attack the Archon it would be better to do it outside city grounds.

"I'll keep that in mind," he says, a little bit of eagerness creeping into his blood at the thought. "See you around."

"Yes. And one last thing," Zhongli stops him before he can walk too far away. "If you are so dedicated as you've told me, do not forget the tree. Your time grows short. Be earnest."

Childe has no idea what the man's randomly saying so ominously and nonsensically in their parting.

He doesn't think he wants to sit around and get caught in some age-old story if he asks.

So he goes.

Waving flippantly.

"Yeah, sure, thanks." 

 

---

 

Childe finds the two heirs and Knight of Favonius inside the Luili Pavilion, just as Zhongli had directed.

Peculiar how the god had known exactly where they were.

He didn't think it was true that the Archons had eyes and ears everywhere, otherwise his own would have no need for the extensive army of Fatui and agents under her command. Skirk had once mentioned years and years ago how Archons were born and connected to Teyvat. As the gods of Dendro heard the whispers of nature, and Hydro the will of human nature, so did Anemo on the winds, and Pyro in the surge of blazing, burning hearts.

It wouldn't be too far-fetched for any god of Geo to remember any walked footsteps of those who tread across their earth.

These natural gifts born from their existences- it might've been better that his Archon had one similar.

Cryo.

Was a silent, silent thing.

It shielded the vulnerable. It sought out the burdened and protected them behind spinning frost and freeze.

An element of dedication and resolve.

The Tsarista was a kind, kind god with too much love to give and too many scars. Her secrets were her own- but her trauma was not.

And there were days when even the most observant of the Harbingers couldn't read her thoughts. When her face would lose expression. When her posture would grow still. When her words, when spoken, were short and curt, masking her heart.

She looked entirely like Kaeya did now, seated at a table of half-eaten food from every plate aside from his own, with a gaze on a fried shrimp dish Childe has a feeling has been there for a long, long time.

Wei Yin is at reception, frowning, sifting through a small, glass jar of candies and mints. Chao Xing is beside him, fanning herself unhurriedly as she watches. "No one ever has the green ones," he's saying.

"I keep telling you those 'green ones' were from a spoiled and stale batch someone on your family's side was trying to sicken you with."

"But they tasted so good," Wei Yin laments.

He sighs and settles for the only color of mints available- white- which baffles Childe mildly because what had he been doing searching for green mints in a jar that couldn't have been more clearly absent of all color?

They glance at him as he stops next to them.

Relief spreads on Wei Yin's face at the same time scrutiny does on Chao Xing's.

"It's good you're here," greets Wei Yin. "We were getting worried about Vinny. He's been so quiet since you were gone. I think he missed you."

"I did not worry," Chao Xing is certain to make clear. Even so, she narrows her eyes at Childe. "But you're a terrible lover. Far worse than me. I see now, more than ever, what he meant when we spoke. You're incompetent. Handle it."

"There's nothing to really handle," Childe responds, glancing over at Alberich again. "Maybe you two just wore him out with your annoying-ness."

She thwacks him with her fan.

"Ouch! Everything you touch is a weapon," Childe rebukes, rubbing his arm where it hit.

"We will give you a moment of privacy-" Chao Xing begins.

"Can I come with you guys and listen in?" Wei Yin interrupts.

Chao Xing looks at him- then reiterates to Childe- "We will give you a moment of privacy. One of the guards ran to us while we dined and expressed that our ride would soon be here. You would be wise not to bring any sourness of your relationship onto clan grounds. They would tear you apart, and it would be an embarrassment to both our names."

"It's pretty hard to top what you two have going on already. But sure. I'll 'handle' things. Just don't go wandering off."

"Don't tell me what to do."

He rolls his eyes. 

It's not exactly a long walk to the only table past the divider and not exactly out of earshot. Kaeya is already getting to his feet as he approaches.

"Your new friends are awfully concerned about you," Childe tells him. "What gives? Food not to your taste?"

The knight walks past him with no other acknowledgement but a simple, "I'd like to talk to you."

And he doesn't look back.

Childe raises his brow after him.

And follows.

They leave the Pavilion under the blatant stares of the Yuan and Wei clan heirs, and for nearly twenty minutes Kaeya leads a walk close-by to the establishment beneath sunny skies and chattering crowds, apparently not noticing they've passed the same set of stores for the seventh time.

"What are you looking for?" Childe finally asks.

"Privacy."

"You're not going to find it here."

And it's Childe who takes the lead then, sticking them close to the Pavilion and choosing to pass through the terrace, bridges and water of where the Bubu Pharmacy sits above.

They go up a scraggly, stone pathway, past small bamboo fences, a spilling waterfall, flowers and grass, and stop at the peak of a hill overlooking the city grounds. A great, big tree with pink and white flowers offers comfortable shade from the humid warmth of the day, granting isolation and eyes still on the many people who roam and leisurely relax below.

The sea is a visible, sparkling sight beyond.

Childe turns around. "Does this work for you?"

Kaeya continues not to look at him, taking stock of their surroundings as he ruminates over something sitting in his head.

And no. It's not so dissimilar to the Tsarista at all.

Childe has an infinite amount of patience. He couldn't have studied the martial arts that he had without it. So he remains where he is, waiting, interested in the change of the knight before him.

Kaeya's certain about whatever it is he wants. He just doesn't know how to say it.

Or maybe he does.

And he's having a hard time getting it out.

If that was the case then it must be really-

"The mushroom," says Kaeya. "It's yours."

Childe's thoughts halt.

Quiet strikes abruptly and wedges between them in the wake of the words.

He looks at Kaeya. Kaeya lifts his eye from the ground and calmly holds his gaze. 

"...What?"

Clouds roll overhead and sweep soft and darkened shadow.

The ocean. The green of the hills. The Harbor is colorful and bright and thriving, sounds of swelling voices and bustling life reaching high even upon the mountains.

Childe looks for traces of a lie. Kaeya gives him none.

He doesn't understand. Out of the blue?

"Why are you-"

"Earlier you offered to help in exchange for what you want. I'll give it to you. Or rather- lead you to it." 

That can't be right. 

"What are you asking me to do?" 

Kaeya speaks.

And speaks. 

Childe's arms unfold. His eyes widen marginally. Then narrow. 

Kaeya considers something, head tilting, before he speaks even further.  

The boughs of the white blossoms bend and bow in the dancing breeze, solemn above their heads.

"What do you think?" Kaeya asks when he's finished. "It's not unreasonable, is it?"

Childe's gaze is very careful. Very, very careful. There's a period of time he takes to consider Kaeya's straightforward words and the situation and the request. "No," he answers finally, agreeing. "For what it is, it's not. The question is. Why?"

"I told you why."

"I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about you. What changed your mind?"

"I don't think that's important."

"To me, it is. Because if you go back on your word-"

"I won't."

Kaeya stays truthful because there is no reason for false machinations and he has no reason to be anything else. He would see this done and surely it would work. He has thought through his options. He doesn't have to like who and what it involves. But this is the one with the best predicted results. And he is wise enough to know when something cannot be done alone. So-

"I'll keep to my word. You said you take your promises seriously, so I'll give you a promise. I'm being honest. You don't need to have faith in me, but have faith in that fact." 

Childe looks at him for what seems like forever. Then-

"Alright." 

"Alright?" Kaeya repeats.

"Alright," Childe confirms. "I'll do it." 

"Make a promise." 

Childe snorts. "I promise you." 

Kaeya gazes at him for a while longer before shifting his attention to the scenery swept beside and below them. A satisfied, small smile graces his lips. "Wonderful. I'll hold you to it." 

He trusted Tartaglia just about as far as he could throw him. Which wasn't far at all. The man and his muscles made for a largely, heavy weight. And the Harbinger would likely find a way to reverse their positions and throw Kaeya somewhere vague and far off the earth instead. 

But he didn't need trust. He needed action. 

And Tartaglia was far more prone to success at it than him. 

A hand rises to his head. Fingers card through his hair.

Kaeya moves his gaze back to Tartaglia as the Harbinger pulls back, a wind-blown blossom in his hand. 

He studies it. He studies Kaeya. "I hope it's worth it," he says. "We break the bones of liars you know. Even if it doesn't work out, you'll have to keep that promise."

Kaeya looks at the tiny flower Childe holds. Then lowers his head in half-concession. "Realize it has to work out in order for me to keep my promise and for you to keep yours. Meaning: my promise is only valid as long as yours is."

Childe starts to acknowledge that before taking actual stock of the words and stopping. "Now wait just one moment."

What kind of logic was that?

"That's not how a promise works."

"It's how this one does."

"Then it doesn't count."

"It counts. Because you already promised," Kaeya annoyingly tells him. "So you have to do it."

"No I don't."

"Yes you do. And if you go back on it, that gives me rights to break an arm or two of yours, doesn't it?"

"No," Childe replies. "You have to follow through your promise for mine to have a purpose or else it's useless and I have to break your arm."

"No-"

They argue about it as they leave from the hill, leaving shadows behind and stepping into light. By the time they reach the bottom of the stone steps, the only agreement they've come to is to break one another's bones.

"Ah. There you are."

It's a contemplative voice.

Childe and Kaeya stop bickering over bone-breaking rights and look ahead.

Zhongli.

The Geo Archon stands at the start of the walkway, accompanied by a young woman dressed in red with vibrant pink hair. Her green eyes rake over them quickly. She nods to herself, brightly as something of an extremely pleased smile touched with smugness crosses on her face.

They give her a strange look for it.

Zhongli grants an introduction and an explanation. "This is Liyue Harbor's premier legal advisor. I've asked her to look into the validity of the rite you've chosen to partake in."

Rite?

"What rite?" Childe questions, coming over as Kaeya follows at his side.

"The one involving the zither you brought to me."

Kaeya and Childe share a confused and slow glance.

"Are you referring to the adepti in the woods?" Kaeya questions.

Zhongli offers him a small smile with eyes that both study, appraise and consider him in a manner differently than their first encounter. "Debti is a friend of mine, and prone to many debts and bouts of infidelity, but not the one I speak of."

Debti? Did he just say Debti?

Was that a joke?

A pun?

Was Zhongli making fun of his adepti friend?

It's impossible to tell, Childe and Kaeya think together.

"I had speculations when the both of you arrived," Zhongli goes on, oblivious to their looks of judgement. "The bell of dawn rung. The zither touched. The waters of serenity. The vows of promise beneath the most blossomed tree. These are obscure. That you've gone through the steps so accurately speaks volumes of your commitment. It is a unique union; one I haven't borne witness to in many long years. Such an old rite was perceived as folktale. But indeed, the adepti who presides over such ceremony must be yet alive and lurking about Debti still, for there is certain harmony in the air."

What in the world was he talking about?

Perhaps it's the timbre to his voice.

Perhaps it's the concerning smile he wears.

Perhaps it's the way he strangely lists off every small event they'd found themselves involved in over the course of the incredibly long morning and early afternoon.

They're jointly overcome in minor terror.

"Zhongli."

Childe's the one who says it.

"Specify."

The Archon gazes upon him, curiously. "Were you not aware of the details after all? I thought I questioned you quite thoroughly."

The young-looking, legal advisor beside him takes over as understanding continues to elude both Fatui and Knight. "I can see some confusion, and while that concerns me, we can get that sorted here," she says. "You can just call me Yanfei. Relationships aren't my strong suit and I prefer to keep a distance from household affairs, but this is a special case I'm happy to look at and confirm as true," she says merrily. "All I need are a few answers. Try and stick with me."

A hefty codex appears from thin air and falls into her hands, opening itself and flipping to a section near the back. She peruses over its contents for a moment, muttering, then raises her attention back to where Childe and Kaeya stand.

"The god of unions is very particular and their conditions must be met accurately. To confirm: The bell on the house on the grounds of the adepti of devotion. This was rung. Who struck it first?"

Childe raises his hand.

"I see," says Yanfei. "Then you proposed."

Childe lowers his hand.

What.

Yanfei looks towards Kaeya. "You must've struck it second, bringing forth sound in glorious acceptance."

What.

She looks back to Childe. "If it was struck a third time, then your intentions were solidified in repeating sound that followed. Thus, dedication was confirmed. Under the eyes of the god of unions. The zither of seasons Zhongli described to me was touched by your hands, and from it was played 'a tune of earth'-"

A tune of earth? It'd been an out-of-tune damage check-

"-this song was repeated by your partner, thus bountiful harmony was confirmed. Under the eyes of the god of unions. Both parties took the waters upon their bodies, unashamed, boldly in the company of others as noon befell. Confirmed. Under the eyes of the god of unions. A hike overlooking the hills of the Harbor before the sun set, and following the climb, a steadfast oath made beneath the blossoming blooms of the biggest tree rooted among, city and mountain, overlooking the sea. Thus, resolve, peace and unwavering commitment was sworn. Confirmed. Under the eyes of the god of unions."

The god of unions was starting to sound like a spectral stalker from beyond. Where had the 'god of unions' been the entire time? Why had the god of unions been following them? Where was it now? Still here? Next to them?

Kaeya couldn't see it.

Was it a ghost?

A ghost of a god unable to pass, bored from centuries of being forgotten? Had the god of unions been sitting around by the bell on the stairs of that house waiting for any random pair of people to pass under and ring it?

Was the god of unions the same wrathful god the god of debts and somehow devotion had been talking about? 

Wasn't that god just getting revenge for the desecration Childe and Kaeya had enacted on their grounds? For the bodies they'd tossed around, statues destroyed and well-trimmed bushes they'd brutally mangled?

Wasn't the god just stalking them because of some severely damaged bushes?

What was that god confirming? Wasn't she just waiting for a chance to strike them down? 

Someone pass them to the spirit world! Someone find them some bushes there and do it right now! 

Kaeya's mind furiously works.

An adepti of devotion.

Wei Yin's charm.

Wei Yin had gone to that adepti for Carp.

To craft her a piece.

Out of his love for her.

"Tartaglia," he says.

Childe's face is blank.

Kaeya tugs on the sleeve of the other man's clothes. "Now isn't the time for dissociation," he hisses.

"So!" Yanfei smiles. "Do any of these actions performed by the both of you sound false? Is any of it untrue?"

They say nothing. Because they can't say no.

"I need a verbal confirmation," Yanfei tells them after a moment. "It's very important I hear you say it yourselves. Is this not what happened? Can you confirm this is what happened?"

Why did she word it like that? How were they supposed to answer that without accidentally confirming it as true?

"Yes," they say together.

"Understood! So it's exactly what happened."

You made it too confusing!

What was even going on with this? Childe and Kaeya had done everything, exactly as she had described.

It was like completing a bunch of random side tasks as a part of a commission they accepted and earning a hidden achievement neither of them asked for or wanted.

Take it back!

"Thank you for that." Yanfei smiles genuine, first at them, then at Zhongli. "And thank you for bringing this to my attention. It's fascinating. I thought the god of unions had chosen to depart, but I see they haven't left. There are several troubled couples I know who would love to hear about this. It's a relief to be able to bring some good news to problems I struggle to resolve on my own. Now I can give them a sure-fire resolution to their worries about unapproved marriages by their families."

"It was no trouble at all," Zhongli says as if he's done a big, huge favor no one in any world, on any planet had asked for.

Yanfei turns to Childe and Kaeya, proudly. "By the powers vested in me, I deem this arrangement honest and the validity of the rite true. Congratulations! If there are ever any troubles or new developments in the future, don't hesitate to find me. I'll look into it swiftly and solve any domestic concerns best I can. I'll be heading back," she says to them all, book closing and vanishing.

To Zhongli-

"We can discuss the payment at a time that best suits you."

"Hm?" Zhongli blinks down at her. "Payment?"

"Of course. You technically hired me when you popped into my office and whisked me away."

"I ... don't have any Mora."

"Please find the funds," Yanfei says, resolute. "God or not, the law is law, and I'd hate to have to give you the dishonor of an IOU."

She departs, perkiness in each step.

Zhongli gazes after her, appreciative of her steadfastness whilst also ruminating on how to procure Mora with the Traveler so absent from the Harbor. Finding no clear answer, he returns his eyes to the two young men standing impossibly still in front of him.

Most certainly taken aback by the intricacies of the rite and its successful completion.

Perhaps they had been under the impression the god of unions had departed and it would not work.

Well.

Zhongli feels himself smile. There was no need to hold concern any longer. It had been approved by the god of unions. Her presence lurked above. And as the final step, as was tradition when Zhongli once roamed Liyue on foot as the known god of the people-

He approaches the pair and sets a hand on both their shoulders.

He begins to speak with binding, heartfelt power.

"My sincere blessings and well wishes. Live with many years of happiness."

"Zhongli," says Childe, faintly. "What are you doing? Stop."

Is he feeling touched that Zhongli would offer such a gift despite the tumultuous nature of their past?

He had been quite sincere in his admission to the younger man that bygones were bygones. Although he hoped, at the very least, his commitment to the even younger man of Khaenri'ah would curb any too terrible future behaviors.

Zhongli speaks to the violent child of the Fatui, bemused.

"On a momentous occasion like this, I will save the lengthy lectures. Your dedication to this was made clear to me. Walk the straight and forward road."

And to them both, he says-

"Thus, I too have seen it done. A contract like no other, in a rite of old. It cannot be broken. I engrave it within the accolades of the earth. Congratulations on the eternity of partnership."

He smiles further.

"And your engagement." 

 

---

 

They sit on two separate stone benches on the terrace, in absolute silence.

A boy sits across from them, staring. Dressed well, brown eyes, blue hair. There's an open book in his hand.

Childe and Kaeya look at him, as they have been, for the past thirty minutes.

"Please don't mind me," the boy says. "I'm only taking a few notes."

He continues to stare as Kaeya and Childe do too.

Take notes? On what? With what?

Someone runs from the pathway behind them, out of breath.

Another boy.

Blue and gold and pale. He keels over, hands on his knees as he pants, before straightening up and frowning.

"There you are," he says to the first boy. "What are you doing? Why did you go off like that? Was it to get out of paying for the meal? I thought the cook would flay me alive."

"Perish the thought, good friend. I'm merely gathering materials."

"...Gathering materials? I don't see any."

"Look there."

Knight and Fatui are nodded towards.

"Remember my musings during the failed exorcism last week?"

"Where you told me I should start a business selling ice-cream instead?"

"Yes. I also told you I wanted to start a new novel. A book of romance. But I lacked inspiration."

"Oh. Yes, I remember. But why-?"

"I've found it. Right there."

Both boys look over.

The second boy's face is confused- then even more confused.

"I don't understand. Do you know them?"

"No," says the first. "I need not know who they are to understand their feelings. We witness a burning, passionate, undying love."

Silence.

Then.

"Where?"

"It's there."

"...I don't think they even know each other-"

"A writer can see it, make no mistake. The potential. The perils. The tales."

"No seriously Xingqiu, they look like strangers-"

"Deeply involved. Yes. You'll understand the intricate nature of relationship and romance in the future one day, once we balance out that energy of yours."

The second boy sighs, giving up. "If you say so. Could you lend me a hand? Xiangling keeps trying to get me to taste-test this new dish of hers with frozen chilies and-"

Childe and Kaeya listen to the conversation of strange recipes that unfolds, expressionless.

They maintain their utter lack of emotions as Wei Yin obnoxiously shouts out to them from across the bridges and walkways, letting them know everything is now in order for them to leave.

"Hey, lovebirds! The ride is here! Hurry up and let's get this wedding stuff over with!"

The people of the terrace turn their heads. 

 

---

 

Two carriages outside the east bridge on the upward road to Mt. Tianheng.

For all their arguing earlier on, Wei Yin and Chao Xing climb into the first, leaving Childe and Kaeya to climb into the second.

They are subjected to the bumpiest, rockiest, uphill ride between a crevice of two jutting, soaring mountains that tosses them to and fro as they sit across from one another, blankly, getting bounced and thrown and flung about.

The ride lasts five minutes.

Then the carriages stop.

They look at each other until footsteps come and their door is opened.

"Okay!" Wei Yin announces brightly. "We can walk from here!"

Childe and Kaeya look at him.

And stare.

 

---

 

Seated at a round, wooden table beside a storyteller weaving a newfound tale of folklore, departed gods, unions and revitalization, a particular staff member of the long-disembarked Fengche Cruise sits with a cup of tea.

His tiny boat hat rests on the table, a bit flopped and crinkled from the arduous journey it had suffered. 

A pen and a paper. 

He contemplatively looks at the blank sheet before turning his head and watching as a small procession passes through the square. The Tianquan of the Liyue Qixing. She must've been drawn by the poetic words that had traveled from one storyteller to the next. 

Her eyes catch sight of something on the ground. 

A small toy. 

She picks it up, searching for a child it may belong to, before curiosity piques her own interest and she- for some reason, unlike any ordinary person might- turns its handle counterclockwise.

WAHOO! 

She sputters.

The Millelith panic.

The staff member picks up his pen.

 

---

 

Master Diluc.

Congratulations are in order, I guess-

 

---

 

 

Notes:

....I promise you all the following chapters... will never be this long

😂

*Dragons and phoenixes. The yin and yang, emperor and empress, of very good, happy relationship between husband and wife in chinese culture.

*If I knew how to draw I'd actually try and show you what these characters and clothes and places look like, but alas, everything I draw is 1D. Sorry XD!!!! Please believe in the power of words

Chapter 8: the fitnessgram pacer test is a multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues-

 

Diluc drums his fingers on the desk of his study.

Impossibly slow.

The miniature grandfather clock on the corner wags its pendulum back and forth in metered quiet sound. There is a decorated, steel cup of dark grape juice to the left of him, where his arm rests.

He is in full jacket and wear. His boots are tightened. His Favonius Greatsword rests against a chair by a small table on a blue and gray carpet, surrounded by bookshelves.

An unfinished chess game and its pieces sit on top.

There are two bags by the foot of the chair.

Packed with care.

Fastened by calms hands.

Elzer's work.

Diluc had simply sharpened his sword.

There are letters on the desk before him.

They are scattered and many, scrawled cautiously, penned hastily, inked pensively from varying sources and affiliations.

Seven from Wei Liang. Three from Snezhnaya. An astounding forty-three from a cross network of merchants, runners and agents. Sixteen from the Adventurer's Guild between Liyue and Mondstadt. Two from the boy named 'Finny'.

And a short, very simple one, from the esteemed Yuan Clan of the Minlin Mountains, stating: 

It was probably us.

It's been twenty-seven days.

The wedding of the Wei and Yuan Clans has been culled.

The young heir of the Wei Clan, Wei Yin, has been reported dead.

Those who accompanied him, an unusual duo of idiotic propensities and the ghostly, cantankerous heir of the Yuan Clan- indefinitely missing.

In the wake of this, someone from the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor, 'Zhongli', had sent a bouquet of flowers and a note.

Congratulations .

Diluc had yet to decide if he'd meant 'condolences' or if he was being mocked.

Disclosed by Wei Liang, the rights to future business in the event of his passing has been officially documented in the name of his wife, Lady Wei Jing. Of the Yuans, the prolific sorceress and Lady Yuying.

In stranger news among the clans, it'd been recorded that an odd malignant being had broken into the Pavilion. A display case in the center of the Yuan heir's room had been smashed; the mysterious contents of what had been inside it- gone.

The Yuans seemed to know something but were keeping tight-lipped.

Diluc picks up the last letter from 'Finny'.

The boy who had vanished from protective holding in Mondstadt with the Fatui, Lyudmila, Mikhail and Luke.

-again, I just want to say I've always admired the color red. Red is my favorite color. My favorite food? Grapes. Can't get enough of them. I'm the best grape-eater you'll find around. Or grape-stomper. Give me a bucket and let my feet get dancing! Tappity-tap-tap! Also, to reiterate, in case it wasn't clear, the man you're looking for is 'Dainsleif'. D a i n s l e i f. He's blond and tall. He wears a cape. You'll find him in Snezhnaya, I think. Er- if you do see him, please don't tell him I told you, he'll smite me, and I'm actually trying to get enlisted-

Footsteps in the hall.

Brisk.

Stern.

The familiar heel of boot to wood.

Diluc shifts his gaze sidelong. He drops the letter back onto his desk.

Jean enters without announcement or knock. She is dressed as Knight, but there is fur to her collared cape; there are padded layers to her arms. Her features are set. Her eyes are grim.

Her blade is at her waist.

"Let's go."

 

---

 

Once upon a time Kaeya had gotten married to a potted plant he had mistaken for Albedo.

It'd been one of those nights where three bottles of wine had miraculously made their way into his hands and into his mouth, erasing all semblance of reason from body, mind and soul, and he had embarked on a very determined journey to see this deed of great importance through.

He was joined by one sober sister of the Church and an equally drunken bard.

Together they had left Mondstadt (they hadn't), gone to Dragonspine and fetched Albedo from his lab (they hadn't), and returned to a secluded enclosure in the darkened woods of the valley (they hadn't), to begin the private and sanctimonious ceremony of union (delusion).

What they had actually done, as told by Rosaria several days later, was take a left out of the Angel's Share, spend an hour frowning over the assortment of plants Flora had to offer in search of Albedo, then barricaded themselves in the cathedral, kicking everyone out and stacking pews and chairs against its grand doors to prevent anyone from interrupting the procession.

Three hundred candles had been meticulously lit by Kaeya's fumbling hands as Venti searched for a 'book of vows' under the same pew for thirty minutes. (Three hanging banners of Mond, two carpets and half a pew had been set on fire before Rosaria eventually decided to put the flames out).

As crystalline frost swept the floor and walls, a bowtie had been fastened carefully to 'Albedo'; Kaeya had placed a matching one onto himself, and he had taken the time to push his eyepatch up and off his face, into his hair so that he could properly see and experience what was going on.

Then he had waited, standing properly with 'Albedo' in his hands and with Rosaria at his side, as Venti flipped through the pages of his vow book looking for words (because what he had picked up was a children's coloring book left from last week's service).

It had taken an awfully long time.

"Hurry it up, Barsibatos," Rosaria had said, folding her arms and resting her weight on one foot. "We have places to be and things to do."

"Like where and what?" Venti had retorted. "There's nothing within a fifty-mile radius."

There was, actually, like the entirety of Mond beyond the cathedral, but that was neither here nor there, and Kaeya wasn't particularly here nor there either, and only fueled by a small sense of urgency.

"Yes, Bartobas," he had said. "We can't afford to waste any more of the hour. Albedo might leave. He's already upset. He hasn't said a word. And you're severely under-dressed. Is my wedding a joke to you?"

"These are the clothes I always wear," Venti had protested. "Same as you! Rosaria's the one with no pants."

"Those are fashionable leggings," Kaeya had told him extraordinarily serious. "You would be honored to wear them."

Rosaria had fixed upon Venti an impassive stare. "If you're that interested I'll bring you some."

"I don't want them," Venti had scowled. "I hope you both rot." 

Nevertheless, the Archon had gone on and read off the 'vows' (a description box writing about coloring within the lines of the triangle below), Kaeya had promised eternal devotion to a Calla Lily, and Pallad, wholly uninvited and unclear to them all as to when he had come or how, had clapped earnestly from the front row of the pew.

So the wedding had come and gone and ended.

Quite anticlimactically. 

Kaeya had stood thinking. Venti and Rosaria had looked at him expectantly.

"Well. You wanted to know," Rosaria had said after a time of watching him hold his plant and frown at it. "How do you feel? Any different now that you've made your vows to the gods and to your choice of partner?"

Kaeya had frowned deeper.

He had set 'Albedo' on the floor and gone on to pat himself down all over.

He had run his hands up his torso and eventually settled them over his heart which he could neither hear nor feel through the mighty, numbing powers of inebriation.

"I don't feel anything," he said eventually, disappointed.

No happiness.

No excitement.

No sense of peacefulness or warmth.

Simply the urge to keel over and throw up.

His eyes had gone back to 'Albedo'. "You've been quiet, Albedo. Do you think we're a poor match?"

'Albedo' hadn't answered. Rosaria had.

"Guess he's not in the mood."

"Am I poor company?" Kaeya had wondered. He had touched his exposed eye. "Is it because of this?"

"I can think of a few other reasons why aside from those," Rosaria had informed him, not getting into specifics.

Venti, on the other hand, had snapped his book shut, tossed it over his shoulder and come on over to slap him on the back. "You know, I wasn't going to tell you, but he once told me he could only spend about three strokes worth of a pencil in your presence. Take it as you will."

Kaeya hadn't exactly cried- but his features had crumpled something terribly, horribly devastated, and he had looked down at 'Albedo' with a great deal of hurt.

Jean had shouldered down the barricaded doors of the cathedral shortly after, Rosaria had slid Kaeya's eyepatch back into place, and Pallad had stood up to greet her with astounding vapidness.

"Oh hello, Acting Grandmaster. Have you come to partake in the ceremonies? We were just finishing up but I think we need some rice-"

Jean had gone straight for Venti, having already decided in her mind that the cause of the trouble must've been him.

The god had made a run for it.

"Oh, uh, I'm just a humble bard- eow!" came the yelp as he was snagged by the ear.

He had flailed.

Kaeya and Rosaria had sat on the pew beside Pallad to watch.

"You can't treat me like this, I'm your Archon, your god-!"

They had been banned from the cathedral for a long, long time.

Kaeya had woken the next morning feeling as if he had sunken into the cold, clutches of death.

He was in his tub.

Fully dressed.

Ice had been dumped in alongside with him.

Diluc stood outside of it.

A simple dress shirt with a vest, sleeves rolled to the elbows, slacks and boots. His hair was tied up, a cascading spill from crown to shoulder.

Kaeya hadn't seen him like that in a while. He must've come from somewhere important.

"Hello," Kaeya had greeted, feeling like the one spoken word alone had taken every last ounce of soul left within his body, because he promptly slipped unconscious and vanished under the water.

The next time he had woken the tub had been drained.

Diluc still stood outside it.

This time, however, there was an open folder in his hand.

He had picked up a document from within and held it so Kaeya could see.

A certificate with the seal of priest. His marriage to 'Sir Albedo the Plant': approved.

Kaeya had stared at it. Then stared at the packet of stapled documents and pen Diluc had handed him after.

A divorce decree.

"Fill it out."

So Kaeya spent two hours in that tub, sopping wet and confused, with a mind that wasn't yet all there, hungover with a headache that ached and ached and ached and grew stronger with every passing minute between his long bouts of spacing out- as he tried to discern which lines he was supposed to sign on and what kind of information he was supposed to give or understand- before Diluc, having taken the seat on the edge of the tub to supervise with folded arms- finally stopped him from writing out half his origins on Khaenri'ah, and took over.

Silence had fallen.

Kaeya had slumped and dozed off, listening to the sound of Diluc's pen scratching out his mistakes and fixing them.

He'd been seated at the table in the kitchen another hour later with food on a plate in front of him and a fork Diluc had stuck into his hand.

His brother, in the chair across from him, spoke.

"What were you doing?"

Kaeya had looked at his crackers, miserable, wondering why Diluc had even bothered to give him a fork, and answered.

"I don't know."

Perhaps it was the uncomfortable churning in his stomach looking upon those crackers that had pushed him to open honesty before the person who had once been his closest family and most important friend.

"I had just been thinking. Maybe I can't get married or live a normal life with who and what I am. There are very few people who care to know of Khaenri'ah. Do you think I'll ever have a family?"

He had felt Diluc's eyes upon him for a good long while.

It was unnerving- and Kaeya had proceeded to try and pick up a cracker with the fork so benevolently bestowed to him before it broke and crumbled and the churning in his stomach reached its pinnacle and he unleashed the nonexistent contents within onto the floor.

 

---

 

The events that had occurred all those months ago lingered fresh in Kaeya's mind to this day.

With every new 'source of information' he sauntered off with, with every over-exaggerated cry he had given in the wake of poor, bland sex; in the aftermath, staring at the ceiling while those men tucked themselves in, pat him on the leg and returned to their children and wives back at home- or in the walks on his way home, already thinking on what to fill in and what to omit on his reports to Grandmaster Varka or Jean.

Four years was more than long enough to form a habit, more than long enough to shift perspective, because once he had fled from touch, and now he sought it out. But such things were not permanent; they were transactions with results, and he had come to accept that in doing so he had given up on any chance of holding 'normal' feelings in this world.

He had gone too far off the rails for that, and despite having returned onto the 'proper tracks' in the wake of Diluc's arrival back in Mond, Kaeya's train was still being led by a highly dubious conductor (himself) down some very questionable hills and dark tunnels.

He didn't particularly enjoy it.

It wasn't what he wanted.

But, he supposed it was nice after all these months of having his first try at a marriage, the assessment he'd made about himself had been right.

He would never live a normal life.

Even if he'd ever found a person he liked, there'd be no change in himself or the world around him because such affections would never be returned.

He had accepted that.

He had been mildly content in conceding to it.

What good truly came from getting involved in something as bothersome as other people?

He shouldn't have lost his sense of discipline over the years.

He shouldn't have let that Hydro-wielding, Delusion-bearing, Abyss-demon-gnat into his head.

Because now, not only were they mystically, magically 'bound and trapped together' for eternity under the actions of a senile god, they were actually mystically, magically bound and trapped together in a land of snow.

Kaeya limps, boots and legs trudging as he hobbles unsteady through the wintry drifts.

Childe keeps by his side.

There is nothing but flat hatred on both their faces, as they had decided neither one of each other was deserving of anything more.

Wei Yin crouches yards ahead, packing snow into his hands, his clothing adjusted, a dark scarf around his neck.

It's perceivably morning. Periwinkle, pale and crisp. Mountainous ridges loom in the far away distance. Jagged cliffs rise to left and right. The clouds are white, still and lifeless above.

There is nothing else for miles and miles around.

It's utterly disconcerting.

They had been in Liyue, on Mt. Tianheng- only half an hour ago.

They had been on their way to the Wei and Yuan Clan wedding- only half an hour ago.

Childe and Kaeya had been in the middle of somewhat questionably violent sex- only half an hour ago.

And now they were here.

Because of Wei Yin.

Because of Chao Xing.

Because the four of them combined were clearly the biggest walking target life could find to harass.

"Hey Harbin," Wei Yin calls back. He straightens up, snowball in hand. "Dodge this!"

It misses Childe by a wide margin, whizzing over his shoulder into the nothingness beyond.

Childe bends and packs an impossibly hard ball of ice.

Kaeya stares at it.

Wei Yin's eyes light up. "Oh, yeah! C'mon! Throw one back. We don't get to have snowball fights at home!"

So Childe throws one.

Wei Yin doesn't get back up.

Kaeya eyes Tartaglia with ire. "Could you kindly refrain from killing the person you said you would protect?"

The Harbinger looks at him the way he has looked at him ever since he had grabbed and dragged him to the floor thirty minutes ago.

Like he wants him to shut up.

"I changed my mind."

"You don't get to do that."

"Yes I do. Because we wouldn't be here if not for you."

"We wouldn't be here if not for you," Kaeya says with venom. "You and your Abyss dick-"

"Like I wasn't mauled by that Wei idiot's ward-"

"He's not an idiot-"

Wei Yin climbs to his feet and shakes the snow off him in the midst of their argument.

"Take it easy. What good will fighting do?" he asks of them. 

He brushes the glacial ice from his ruddy cheeks and frost-bitten nose, chuckling at the both of them with absolutely zero sense of self-preservation.

"You know, I had no idea you guys were so passionate, with so much unresolved. I get a little argument here and there, but when I tell you me and Chao Xing and everyone inside had been staring up at the ceiling listening to you guys go at it," he shakes his head. "Phew. Vinny, you sounded like a total hottie! All the memories of me and my sexcapades came to me right away! Even my jingyu felt stirred to action. Wow! Would I have dared to join in-?"

Kaeya and Childe bend in unison to pack snow into their hands.

They step over his body after and walk towards the cliffs.

 

---

 

Here, in this snowy barren place is not where their problems had begun.

It is not where Kaeya's well-thought-out, and somewhat dramatically-shared plan in regards to Chao Xing and Wei Yin had gone horribly wrong.

It was on the hill of Mt.Tianheng.

With the carriage-ride, Wei Yin's father, and the Yuan sorcerer dedicated to Chao Xing.

 

---

 

"Wei Yin, why did we wait hours for a carriage for a ride uphill we could've spent fifteen minutes walking up?" Kaeya had asked very slow, give or take thirty minutes ago.

Insects whizzed between their heads.

It was a slow procession with Chao Xing at the forefront, Tartaglia at the rear and Wei Yin and Kaeya in the middle as the guards took up post on either side. They ascended the broken, lopsided stone steps built into the grasses and the dirt, leading uphill between the jagged passage cut deep in the mountain's soaring cliffs.

Wei Yin tucked his arms behind his head, smiling bright. "Well Chao Xing's got no stamina and would've died halfway up the hill, and I really didn't want to bother. My legs aren't so good for climbing. It worked out though since I got to get the debt handled, zither returned to Zhong and the charm! No harm, no foul! Thank you for that, Vinny. And thanks for letting me open up to you. You're truly special. One of a kind next to the dear bandit who stole my heart. I mean it with every fiber of my being."

And Kaeya meant it with every fiber of his own being when he thought to the heir- I'll kill you. 

Childe just said it aloud from over their shoulders. "I'll kill you."

Wei Yin didn't hear.

He tracked a passing gold butterfly with his eyes.

"Anyway, we would've had to wait for my stupid father to escort us. He insisted, just to make sure I'd actually show up. Our clans live in a shared valley in the mountains of Minlin, hidden, out of sight. We have entrances to it everywhere, but you need gateways to access them. There's one here on Mt. Tianheng since it's so close to the Harbor. Good for business I guess. But it's a much better escape route whenever I want to ditch clan grounds and have fun in the city ha ha!"

Chao Xing glanced back over her shoulder at the words. "Young Master, that is highly irresponsible."

"You totally weren't invited to this conversation- stop eavesdropping!"

"It's not eavesdropping when I am three feet away."

They started to bicker over conversation privileges.

Kaeya had allowed the noise to enter one ear and go out the other, short violent thought and the emotions that came with it easily dwindling. No, there was no need to get upset. Despite what had happened not too long ago- involving a particular ancient, eroding god's hand upon his shoulder- there was nothing to be upset over.

Not truly. 

Nothing had happened after all. 

And Wei Yin's words were of interest. 

Escape route. He noted it. That's good to know.

Had Childe heard?

He sent a short glance behind him towards the Harbinger.

Childe didn't look at him.

In fact, he ignored him.

Kaeya frowned. "Tartaglia."

"Shut up, I'm thinking," Childe said back.

Kaeya narrowed his eye. He taunted, vexed at the attitude. "Well that's an awfully rude thing to say to your fiance."

"You're not my fiance," Childe said, curtly.

He was being surly.

And for what?

Something that was largely his own fault?

Kaeya rolled his eye. He turned his attention back ahead.

No matter. 

His only concern was that their new fake status of 'engaged' had somehow changed the Harbinger's mind on helping him.

It'd be a sad, sad thing were if true.

For a reason like that Tartaglia would go back on his word?

It would be something of a joke.

It had been a 'rite' without consequences; they hadn't been drastically shaped into something else and no pieces of them or their 'souls' had been lost with Zhongli's spoken words. For all intents and purposes, terror at the time of the event prevalent, they were perfectly fine.

Maybe marriage and engagement were taboo subjects to the Fatui.

Kaeya wouldn't know. He had his own thoughts on the subject.

Plant-related thoughts.

They weren't too important.

Still, he hoped Childe would at least regain his sense of 'camaraderie'- if such a thing even existed to the man- by the time they arrived at Wei Estate. They were in it together after all.

Tartaglia for the mushroom; Kaeya for Wei Yin and Chao Xing's sake.

"If the families think them dead, they won't need to worry about any sorcerer or assassin coming after them. Clan affairs can be passed down without contention in the future to whomever it concerns. It's a few extra passengers on your return boat to Snezhnaya for a piece of Khaenri'ah. It's a fair enough trade, wouldn't you agree?" was one of the many things Kaeya had said beneath the tree. "Dainsleif will just have to deal with it." 

Childe had lifted his brow. "Who?"

"No one. Don't interrupt me-" 

So long as nothing terribly changed between now and tomorrow, everything should work out.

Although Kaeya was going to have to eventually go back to Diluc and explain that Wei Liang's son was not dead- it was a ruse and it was of little consequence to the business relationship his brother and Crepus had so avidly maintained throughout the years.

Diluc would be fine with that. 

Probably.

They rounded the bend of the narrow uphill road.

They stopped.

There was someone halfway up the last hill leading to their destination.

A youth, cloaked in black, dark hair and charcoal eyes, pacing in a circle, muttering to himself.

He caught sight of them.

He jumped nearly three feet into the air.

He quickly fell to the ground.

He laid. Umoving. Limbs sprawled.

They all continued to stand still and stare at him.

After a time, wherein no one moved, the boy lifted his head, peeking at them through a cracked eye.

He frowned.

He dropped his head back down.

He waited.

A very long minute passed.

The boy picked up his head a second time and frowned even harder. He brought a hand to his stomach and clutched it. "Oh, ow! I have been stricken!" he proclaimed, extremely stilted and loud. "I am hurt. If only there was someone to help."

They walked.

They passed him.

They ignored him.

The boy leapt to his feet as they did so, spinning around, kicking up dirt and bits of pebbles off the ascending trail in disbelief.

"Hey! That's so freaking rude! What's wrong with you people? Get back here!"

They all stopped again.

They faced him.

Kaeya studied the young-looking boy as Wei Yin rubbed under his nose and commented-

"Oh. Didn't see you there. Need something, little squirt?" 

"As if you didn't see me, you chestnut head! You walked right past me!" the boy snapped. "Stupid Wei idiot! You don't deserve Lady Chao Xing!"

Now the boy was being paid attention to.

Chao Xing stepped towards him, fan opening, half rising- before she hesitated, lowered it, and said sharply, "Hold your tongue. You'll not address the Young Master so poorly. Who are you?"

It was an excellent question. This boy knew Wei Yin and Chao Xing. He had also appeared to know they would be coming from the Harbor at this exact time.

How unusual. And suspicious, Kaeya thought.

He had wondered if anyone would come after Chao Xing in the wake of her revelation on her aunt's bold ambitions.

But using a child?

How typical of people in the world. 

"Ha ha..." he chuckled to himself aloud with the thought, the absolute furthest thing from amused.

The boy glared at him for it anyway.

"What's so funny Wei scum? I don't know when you joined that rotten clan or when they even accepted you, but you better pay respect to-"

"Chao Xing, Wei Yin, neither of you recognize him?" Kaeya asked, dismissing the boy.

"Wha- you jerk, don't ignore me-!"

"The Wei's don't have any kids," Wei Yin answered over the upset shouts echoing up the hill. He made a gesture across his neck. "You know."

Kaeya sighed.

"We have plenty of children on our clan grounds," Chao Xing responded, dark eyes trained on the boy cursing them out down the hill. "Of course, those not of the main family branch are used as weapons or envoys of malignant matters, so it is quite unusual to see one out and about."

There was something incredibly disturbing about what she had just said.

And it wasn't any better than whatever the Wei Clan had going on.

One day, Kaeya was going to study the history of the clans to see what went wrong and with who and why.

For now, however, he stepped quickly around Chao Xing and stood in front of her as the odd-cloaked boy started sprinting uphill towards them.

"Uuaoooo, I'll protect you Lady Chao Xing-!"

Tartaglia picked up a rock off the ground, tossed it up and down in his palm thrice- then pegged it at the boy's head with precision and speed.

"Hghghbrughg-"

The boy flipped backwards and onto the ground.

He lied lifeless.

He looked quite dead.

...Was he dead?

Chao Xing stepped around Kaeya to investigate.

He followed her the short distance down.

After a moment, everyone else did too- though the guards maintained suitable distance and Childe was doing his best to stand as far away from Kaeya as possible. And what was with that? He stared behind him until Childe was forced to make eye-contact.

The Harbinger's expression flattened in distaste.

Kaeya matched the expression, bothered and vexed. He hadn't done anything to the man.

He turned his gaze round front.

Chao Xing delicately lifted one side of her long skirts, holding them in a hand to nudge the seemingly unconscious boy with her foot.

The boy lurched to life, Chao Xing quickly stepped back, and the guards proceeded to do exactly what they had been doing the entirety of the trip in the wake of threat.

Nothing.

But alarm was apparently unneeded- for Chao Xing regained her bearings, blinked in the wake of the close proximity between her and the boy, and said-

"Yuan Xu?"

Now Kaeya was the one blinking.

Yuan?

The boy on the ground scrambled up onto an elbow, enthused. "Lady Chao Xing! You remember me? You know me? I-"

Chao Xing turned around and carried on walking ahead once more.

"I hope your father hasn't gotten lost," she commented back to Wei Yin.

Wei Yin jogged after her.

"Father wouldn't get lost. He uses this route all the time. Maybe he decided this wedding was as pointless as me and my existence and he changed his mind- so he won't meet us after all!"

"He didn't change his mind," Chao Xing said, stubbornly.

"Well how do you know?"

"I know because our wedding is set and it will not change and it does not matter what that idiotic, fake-magician of a fortune teller said about my lover being an old man with a mushroom-"

Kaeya watched them go.

The boy on the ground watched them go.

A guard next to Tartaglia poked the boy in the toe with his boot and said, "Go home, kid. We don't want any trouble with any Yuan looking for a lost kid. You kid."

"Hey you're being really antagonistic to a so-called kid!" the boy cried. 

It was a good point. This was the most personality Kaeya had seen from any one of Wei Yin's guards in days.

The guard shrugged and walked on ahead. The rest of Wei Yin's 'protective detail' followed, and Tartaglia and Kaeya were left alone with the odd Yuan adolescent who gaped and gawked after those who left him behind.

"Why were you feigning injury?" Kaeya asked eventually.

The boy's attention was drawn.

He scowled.

"I wasn't! I'm not! Shut your face! She should've stopped and cared for me! That Wei idiot!"

He jumped to his feet and dashed off, attempting to vanish into the bushes and small gathering of rocks in the crevice of the cliff wall on their left.

Kaeya and the poorly-hidden Yuan in the bushes held eye contact for an incredibly long and disturbing time.

Then Kaeya tore his gaze away to regard the Harbinger keeping next to him.

Now what was this?

For all his standoffish behavior, he sure was standing close.

He assumed Childe would have taken the chance to walk ahead and sulk over nothing on his own like he'd been doing the whole time since Zhongli's pronouncement.

Well.

If he was going to be standing there like a statue-

"Do you think we should be concerned?" Kaeya questioned.

Childe gazed at him. "Are you being serious?"

"He's a Yuan," Kaeya commented. "I can't imagine, harmless as he might appear, that there wouldn't be an underlying reason for his sudden appearance and the disappearance of Wei Yin's father. I did tell you Chao Xing might have a person or two after her this close to the wedding."

"Why is that what you're thinking of?" Childe scorned, caustic.

Kaeya's mouth turned down at the tone. He turned towards Childe fully at the tone.

What was wrong with him?

"Should it not be? That is the prevalent issue we're trying to avoid, isn't it?"

Childe shook his head.

He started to walk up the hill, leaving him.

He stopped abruptly ten feet away.

He muttered a curse and returned.

He stared Kaeya down.

"Walk." 

Kaeya stared up at him. "What's your issue?"

A snarl to Tartaglia's mouth, pale eyes glinting; sharp, flat steel. "Is this a game to you? Do you think it's funny?"

Genuine anger on the Fatui's face and Kaeya had no idea for the reason behind it.

Had something happened?

They were together the entire time.

Aside from the Yuan boy, nothing so grievous had taken place.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he answered, bewildered.

"I'm talking about what Zhongli did," Childe stated. "You won't address it?"

"Address what? They were only words."

Childe stared- and stared for what seemed to be forever.

Then he stared some more.

And as he did, the shadows left his features; the frustration seeped to realization. Guardedness replaced the heat that was once there.

"You don't know," he said. "You can't see it?"

Kaeya frowned. "See what?"

"What are you guys doing?" Wei Yin called from the road ahead, Chao Xing beside him.

The guards, unsurprisingly, had ditched them.

"C'mon! If you want a quickie, do it indoors! Or wait until we get to the Estate! I've got all the drawers of fun lube and toys, what size do you want-"  

Kaeya gave Childe one last questioning look.

But Childe shook his head, tiny perplexity in the gesture.

"Just walk," he said.

So Kaeya did.

Annoyed.

They joined with the heirs.

At the cusp of the hilly road sprawled a downhill path to an open field of grass and dirt and stone, enclosed by the mountains walls, showing way to the Wangshu Inn in the far-off expanse of Liyuen wilds, waters and ruins.

A smattering of wooden homes. A teahouse.

An elderly woman and a man tending to personal trinkets and wares in set-up wooden stalls, thatched with straw.

It was peaceful, quiet and empty.

There sat beside the teahouse a two-story, wooden house, though it looked as if it had been remodeled into a resthouse given the few bamboo tables set outside it and the handful of travelers who occupied their square, short seats.

Wei Yin's guards were lounging around outside of it. Three of them already had food in hand.

Now that Kaeya thought about it, the guards never had the chance to sit down and eat, had they? Handling Wei Yin's 'carriage affairs'.

Wei Yin smiled as Kaeya walked up next to him, then looked around and ran around- presumably in search of his father- shouting.

"Stupid father! We're here and you can't greet us? I brought a guest- that's so unprofessional of you!"

Chao Xing, on the other hand, spared one final glance over her shoulder down the road they'd left the boy on before walking into the resthouse.

She was gone for a time.

Kaeya waited outside, watching Wei Yin, and Childe waited next to Kaeya, watching him watch Wei Yin.

"...If you wouldn't mind standing so close," Kaeya said, shortly a minute after.

First Tartaglia was trying to get away from him. Now he was sticking close like an unwanted sea urchin.

Could he decide which kind of ass he wanted to be?

Childe scoffed at his words.

He put approximately ten feet of distance between them.

And stayed.

Though his eyes were no longer on Kaeya- but on the Statue of Seven sitting regally in the bushes and boulders on the other side of the enclosure.

Seriously, what is he doing?

Chao Xing stepped outside the resthouse.

Her eyes swept over them sharply; her lips pursed. "Young Master, cease your calling. Your father is inside."

 

---

 

The resthouse felt like a tavern.

Inside had been remodeled. Modest, round wooden tables; wood-backed chairs. A staircase leading to a second floor of presumably small bedrooms; a corner bar, large, self-potted, sapling trees.

Travelers slouched and lounged at the tables, accompanied by companions, bags, tea and liquor.

A wayward swordsman in the corner.

An oddly square table by the bar with a short stool, a salad, plate of vegetables and glass of juice sitting at it untouched.

But Kaeya's attention was not on the peculiarities of that table or the comforting familiarity of setting foot into an low-profile establishment meant for relaxation and drinks, but on the stately-looking man sitting at a table by the window along the left wall.

His posture was impeccably straight.

Goatee and guan, a coiling snake pin through knot and hair; hanfu long and sweeping, noble, peacock blue and silvery. His sleeves draped black. His belts silver-clasped. There was a serpent on his wear.

It was undeniable who he must've been.

He stuck out sorely as a thumb.

Wei Yin bounded over. "Oh, father, so you were here! Stupid father," he amicably greeted.

He received several raised eyebrows, as did Kaeya, Childe and Chao Xing near the door.

Wei Yin's father, Wei Liang, merely sighed at the sight of his son, grieved. 

Meanwhile Chao Xing ushered Kaeya and Childe over, digging her fan into Kaeya's lower back.

"You two, clean up your act," she hissed. "Do not think I haven't noticed your behavior. We gave you time to put your woes aside, yet you seem to have somehow more."

Then before Childe could say anything back in annoyance at being manhandled, Chao Xing pulled forward, ahead of them, fan gracefully sweeping open and up, covering her mouth.

They reached the table.

"Clan Master Wei Liang, it is a true honor to be in your gracious presence again," she greeted far more properly than Wei Yin, offering a bow.

Wei Liang regarded her- and appeared to grow more tired. "Chao Xing, I saw you just a minute ago. You greeted me then."

Chao Xing coughed and sputtered small behind her fan. She straightened up. She studiously averted her gaze, turning pink. "I only thought it proper to do it again as we are accompanied by guests," she said defensively.

"Ha!"

That was all Wei Yin said, having taken the seat beside his father. Much to his father's chagrin.

Chao Xing scowled deeply at the taunt.

Wei Liang's eyes opted to ignore the two children of his clan and rival clan, turning them first onto Childe, then onto Kaeya.

Then he took a much, much longer look and said-

"I understand you wish to 'assassinate' Chao Xing before the wedding as friends of Wei Yin. I believe we both realize that it is an unnecessary action. However, should you wish to attend, we will do our best to find extra chairs and provide for you a room on Wei Estate grounds."

Just like that? Wasn't it supposed to be difficult getting into the wedding?

Childe uncrossed his arms and stared at the clan head.

Hadn't that been the whole reason he'd been running around in the first place? Because the Fatui couldn't get access?

Because the Wei and Yuan Clans were reportedly secretive, private and high-profile?

Yet this out-of-place bumpkin of a clan head in the middle of a rundown resthouse in the mountains was offering free passes? 

"You are confused by my generosity," Wei Liang stated, as if reading Childe's mind. "Make no mistake, such offers are not habit. But I see the power of a familiar god about you; I see what binds you so. Body and spirit in commitment. In marriage, soul and mind."

He smiled thinly.

"Rex Lapis has not acted in ages. It takes a special kind to garner his good blessings in an age where he yearns a peaceful fade. He has been a friend of good judgment for centuries. I would see no disrespect done to his charges."

Charges?

Childe felt Kaeya's questioning gaze on him. He ignored it once more, as he ignored the small scoff beneath the knight's breath that followed.

Whatever.

He wasn't turning down a free pass.

Except the wedding and clan was the last thing on his mind right now.

It didn't matter what mushroom he grabbed; who he 'took onto his boat', because there was a bigger problem. A hindrance that quite seriously affected his ability to do much on his own.

And Alberich couldn't see it.

"Father, you're saying things no one wants to listen to," Wei Yin said. "And you're missing the most important person before your face. That's a Ragnvindr. Vinny, say hello."

"Ragnvindr?"

"Yes, father, quit acting so surprised," Wei Yin chided.

Kaeya, being gestured to excitedly, and now pinned under the stare of Wei Liang, took several seconds to figure out how he wanted to address the man and who to present himself as, before settling for the same vagueness he had given everyone else. "A pleasure. I was sent to deliver a message on behalf of Master Diluc. I have since been invited."

Wei Liang studied him.

Intently.

"Diluc, yes. Capable man. I was under the impression there was a business matter of great urgency. It appears my son hasn't resolved it, if you are standing before me here. For what reason did you seek discussion onboard the ship?"

"There was a small interest in wine. I was far more enticed by the thought of a wedding, and thought I'd stop by."

"Is that so?"

Wei Liang studied him further.

"...I had been meaning to ask it of Diluc; I had not been able to get an answer, he avoids the topic studiously. Perhaps you, a messenger of the household, trusted enough to hold council with a representative of the Wei Clan alone, can answer. What is the name of the young man who handles the secret affairs of the Winery? I've been told he is handsome with a silver tongue, whose appearance in strange places signals underlying motive and intention."

Kaeya looked at him.

Wei Liang rose, calm. "The Wei Clan welcomes any member of the Ragnvindr House. Crepus was a wise man. He did little without good reason. I understand his sons are the same."

He departed from the table, saying behind him-

"The gateway to the mountains; I will open it first Wei Yin and Chao Xing, and ascertain if there lies any threat nearby or within. Yuying has been actively anticipating your return. I will be back to gather you."

"Tell Aunt Yu I said 'hi'," Wei Yin called after him.

His father ignored him.

Chao Xing frowned.

She took the seat across from Wei Yin.

Slowly, very slowly, dragging his eye from where Wei Liang stepped out of the resthouse to the field of the mountain enclosure beyond, Kaeya had taken the chair beside her.

It had remained silent.

Childe had remained standing- rigid.

Wei Yin had grabbed some napkins and started folding them into animal shapes, unbothered.

Eventually, ten minutes later, Kaeya had turned his head to look at Childe and ask-

"Why are you standing? Is there a threat nearby?"

Childe looked down at him. Small frustration returned to his eyes. He opened his mouth to answer but what he had been preparing to say was interrupted by the extremely familiar appearance of a certain Yuan clan child they had ditched on the road of the mountain.

Because he was at their table- chest puffed up- onyx eyes flitting from Kaeya to Childe to Wei Yin with vehemence.

He barely came to Childe's chest.

Kaeya stared. "Can we help you?"

"Quiet Wei scum!" the boy snapped. "I'm not here for you!" His gaze went to Chao Xing, earnest and determined. "Lady Chao Xing, these men are demons. I can sense the dark evil within them. Please come with me!"

Dark evil? Demon?

It was an accurate description of a particular Harbinger standing, ill-humored, at Kaeya's side, but what did he mean by sense?

And Kaeya then had taken a closer look at him, not with his open eye, but with the closed one hidden beneath its patch.

He withdrew right away, drawing back, ceasing immediately.

What in the world-

The boy was surrounded by curses, sentient and crawling, clinging to his shoulders, perched on top his head.

"Yuan Xu," Chao Xing spoke sternly, "you speak out of turn and stand before a lady of the clan without permission. Leave us."

"But Lady Chao Xing-!" he started to protest.

"Go," Chao Xing commanded. "I will not say it again."

The boy swung his gaze around at them all, frustrated, upset, glaring daggers at Wei Yin.

Wei Yin finished crafting a very detailed butterfly out of the napkin in his hand and offered to him. "Here you go, little squirt. Go play outside with it."

The boy's shoulders raised, incensed.

He threw the napkin on the ground.

"I don't want it! The hell?" 

He stomped off and away.

Right to the table of vegetables, salad and juice.

He sat on his stool, past the mildly confused travelers resting at the tables in between them, and watched them, muttering darkly. 

"Chao Xing, who is he?" Kaeya asked right away. "You said Yuan."

Chao Xing scrutinized the boy, fanning herself, wary. "That boy is Yuan Xu. A direct disciple under my aunt. I suppose you may call him a sorcerer."

A sorcerer?

That young?

With that many curses?

And so obsessed with Chao Xing?

"Forgive me," he said, "but I thought you were largely undermined within your clan." And vastly ignored. "Why is he so focused on you? He's not out to harm you."

"No, I don't believe he is," Chao Xing responded. "You misinterpret the nature of my standing within the clan. As a child, I was insignificant and garnered no attention, but I am grown now, and the rights of the clan are now tentatively held within my hands. Attentions do come. Though most are of the foul sort as you so surmised. Xu- is not one I know of personally, yet I have heard of him through familial talks and have known in passing. He is more than ten years my junior and largely skilled. Why he seems to know more of me than I of him, I don't know. I have only spoken to him on occasion to tell him to remove himself from my balcony."

"Is he going to be a problem?"

"I don't believe so."

"I'll say he will be. Look at that! He ruined my napkin," Wei Yin complained, leaning over out of his chair in an attempt to pick up the crushed and ruined butterfly creation from the floor. He couldn't reach it.

His eyes went to Childe, apologetically.

"Harbin, I know you've been pretty quiet having some self-introspection and writing sex poetry in your head on Vinny, but can you grab this for me? I can help you write some out later. I have a lot of things to say about his legs."

Kaeya and Chao Xing looked at him.

Childe stepped on the napkin.

He ignored Wei Yin's wilting, "My butterfly, no-"

His gaze dropped onto Kaeya.

Displeasure spread on his features.

"I'm going to the bathroom," he said.

Kaeya thinly lifted a brow, both at the statement and the man's persistent, uncharacteristic behavior.  Why was he telling him?

"And? Do you need one of us to hold your hand?"

Childe squinted impossibly small. "I'm going to the bathroom," he stated again.

With purpose.

"How about you come with me?"

Kaeya lowered his brows. 

 

---

 

They hadn't gone to any bathroom.

Childe took them up the stairs, down the hall, into what appeared to be the nearest open, empty room.

He closed the door.

He walked to the middle of the room, waited until Kaeya was before him, then wasted no time in lifting his right hand.

"Do you know what this is?"

Kaeya looked at it.

He looked at the man's face flatly after.

"Are you seriously asking me what the appendage attached to your arm is?"

Childe narrowed his eyes.

His mouthed curled in derision.

He scoffed.

"So you really can't see it."

He closed his hand.

He jerked it back.

A tug.

Violent.

Kaeya flew forward- into Childe's chest.

What was that? 

"What was that?" he said, knocked breathless, pushing himself away.

He didn't get far.

Childe walked backwards, and as he did, brought Kaeya tripping along with him.

"This," he emphasized greatly, "is what showed up after Zhongli's 'blessing'."

Kaeya couldn't see what he was talking about, but he could suddenly feel it.

A pressure; a thin band of force.

And it was wound exceedingly tight around his left hand.

"I can't walk more than ten feet from you," Childe ground out. "It holds like this."

He walked further backwards, until he was on the other side of the room, by the wall and by the bed.

Kaeya, with his heels dug into the floorboards, marveled as an unseen pressure bent his fingers and his wrist.

Childe watched him, waiting for him to get the actual point of what was being said and to stop being amazed- and as Kaeya took several steps in his direction to observe the dwindling tension of the 'band'- Childe took three of his own, then stood still, dropping his hand.

"You can't see it," he repeated. "You can't even feel it unless I pull."

"Why?" Kaeya asked, flabbergasted. He touched at his wrist. He pulled at his left hand uselessly with his right. He couldn't grab a hold of anything. He couldn't feel it anymore. "How come I can't do anything with it?"

Childe began staring at his arm. "Maybe it has to do with that." 

Kaeya followed his line of his sight. His left arm, where the 'invisible string' held him hostage to the Fatui demon on the other end of it, was now banded by a profoundly familiar dark ink.

The tail of a serpent.

Wei Yin's ward.

It had spread.

Silent, without sound.

"I asked you what that ink on you was," Childe told him. "I asked what his power was."

He sounded like he was barely keeping his irritation in check.

"It's supposed to be a ward of protection. Against curses," Kaeya answered, too caught off guard to put up any further ruse on the matter.

But he remembered now that neither Wei Yin nor Chao Xing had the slightest idea what Wei Yin's 'ward' had actually done or what it could do. They had simply accepted that it was on him and that it would remain and mutually agreed to themselves that he was alive and healthy and well so it was of no concern.

Kaeya's Cryo hadn't been affected either, so he had written his reaction off to it for what it was.

A severe misjudgment. 

"Well that's obviously not what it is," Childe said in the wake of the small silence that dropped between them.

"Get rid of it," Kaeya told him. "Get rid of the string."

"Don't you think that's what I've been trying to do? It wouldn't come off no matter how hard I pulled back in that carriage."

Was that what had been throwing Kaeya around like a goddamn ragdoll?

Not the bumps on the road but Tartaglia? 

Yet it was Childe directing the blame to him.

"This is your doing." The Harbinger folded his arms, chin raising. "So you know what? You can get rid of. I'm not going back to Snezhnaya with you attached to me like a ball and chain. I'm not lugging you around on my missions or on any battlefield like the ball and chain you are. Get rid of the ball and chain, you ball and chain nuisance."

Kaeya offered a triple-take, then a glare. "My doing? You must be disillusioned. And quit calling me the ball and chain. You're the unwanted weight." He drew himself up. "Does memory elude you? I wasn't the one who- touched the bell of dawn, played the zither of seasons, dumped me in that pool and took us up to that tree."

"You were the one looking for privacy. You were the one who gave me the doll."

"And did I tell you to play with it?" Kaeya scorned. "You were the one enticed by the prospect of 'power' from a children's toy anyone with an ounce of sense would've realized was fake. Point your finger at me for your own idiocy and see three more pointing back."

Childe laughed, sharp. "Tfha! You really thought you pulled one over on me back then. Well you didn't. I wasn't tricked."

Kaeya crossed his arms, mimicking the man's conceited stance.

He smirked without humor.

He smirked smug.

"Oh, yes you were. You were most certainly tricked," he mocked. "Before the eyes of the god of unions and a good portion of the civil folk of the Harbor. And you looked like an utter fool. My only disappointment with the whole affair was that it didn't shoot water into your eyeballs for longer."

"Is that right?"

"That's right. Because we wouldn't be here as we are now, and we wouldn't have been where we were if you had never come onto the boat, if you had never come into Mond, if you had never left your fishing hole in your motherland for something that doesn't belong to you or your grubby little Tsarista."

Childe stepped forward. "Address her with respect, Alberich, and maybe remember who you are and who I am. Everything that happened? That's on you. I didn't tell you to fall for anyone's life-sob-stories. Don't forget whose hands you're trying to pass those two idiots off into. You want me to give them safe passage from here? I'll drop them into the ocean."

"They aren't idiots, you idiot. You drop them anywhere else but onto solid land and you can forget about the mushroom."

"You mean the mushroom I'll already have in my hands while you stand on shore because you promised you'd give it to me first for what I'd do next?"

Kaeya's argument stopped.

Childe smiled, brittle, taunting. He took a step close. "Didn't think about that did you? So maybe," he suggested, with the condescending tone of the biggest asshat around, "you should learn to shut your mouth, speak only when spoken to, and do what I say. You clearly can't be trusted to do anything on your own. And I'm not getting involved in any more stupidity on your behalf. You don't think things through. You make everything worse. How about you take a step back and become what you're better off being. A subordinate. My lackey. What do you think about that?"

There was silence.

There was further silence.

There was a long, long, silence where all Kaeya did was stand and look at Childe- and look at him- thinking not about Wei Yin's apparently sentient ward, not about Zhongli's malediction of 'eternal partnership', not about Tartaglia's threat of going back on his word or what he had suggested Kaeya do, but thinking the one prevalent, undying thought he had since ever laying eyes on the Eleventh Fatui Harbinger of Snezhnaya in Mondstadt's Angel's Share tavern.

"I think you're an absolute tool."

Childe stared at him.

Kaeya stared back.

He went on.

"You're the biggest idiot. The biggest eyesore. The most falsely competent person I've ever met. Fooled by someone drunk to high Celestia who told you to go to a camp full of hilichurls, and you listened. Fooled by someone who gave you a toy doll. Because you're stupid. A lieutenant. An executive officer. And you're this stupid. You couldn't get into the wedding on your own. You can't get the mushroom on your own. You need me more than I need you, because guess what. You've given me the information on your boats in the Harbor. I can take Chao Xing and Wei Yin. I can request access to clan grounds later on. I can get the mushroom when I want; when I please. But you can't."

Kaeya smiled.

Freezing.

"So what I think you should do- big, strong, Fatui bootlicker- is keep your own mouth shut and do as I say. You're not the one in control here, Tartaglia. It's me."

It was approximately two-point-three seconds later Kaeya came to regret those words.

Childe- incredibly blank-faced- took one step back- and yanked his arm.

Kaeya skidded two feet before planting his boots on the floor firm.

Useless.

Childe yanked his arm again, much, much harder than before- and it became clear that whatever force he had been using all the times previous was a fraction of what strength he truly possessed- because Kaeya was standing one second, then on the floor the next, facedown.

He stared at the floorboards, bewildered.

He was dragged up by not one wrist- but two.

Childe stood before him, expression unreadable, looking like he was holding onto nothing.

"You know what's really useful about having something you can't see?" the Fatui said. "Being able to do this-"

He tugged on air. Kaeya was forced to his knees.

"And being able to do this."

Childe's hands moved.

Quite abruptly, Kaeya's wrists were held in Childe's steel grasp.

And he couldn't breathe.

Childe crouched.

He studied Kaeya's gasping face.

He took note of the twitching fingers fighting to claw at and rip away what couldn't be seen.

"What are you doing?" he asked. "Can't you get out of this? Aren't you the one in control?"

Kaeya's mouth parted. His breath stuttered. His eye frantically darted.

Childe watched. 

It didn't take long.

The redness in Kaeya's cheeks from lack of air spread, flushing beneath his ears, flushing along his neck. His punctured gasps turned to quiet groans. His tongue slid out. Childe pinched it. Looked beyond it to the knight- and leaned in. 

"You really are an idiot." 

He slid his tongue overtop of Kaeya's own and brought their mouths together. 

 

---

 

Once upon a time Childe had beaten the stuffing out of an entire division of fellow conscripts with a loaf of bread.

The reasons for it were irrelevant- they didn't like his attitude, he didn't like that they were interrupting his attempts to measure the precise amount of yeast into his second batch of nareznoy baton- and it was the consequences that followed which mattered. For this had been the third time Childe had been found whacking his comrades around, and it had been the general consensus of their superiors that something needed to be done.

But they were at a loss.

Discipline by standard means had little effect on the fearsome boy who relished in the physical punishments, forced runs and endless martial drillings that left other recruits vomiting and weeping in the snow.

Really, the bouts of behavioral correction sessions they sought to hold were always far worse of a torture for the officers overseeing his 'remedial reflection', as they would be in the midst of parting onto the young warrior wise, scolding words-

"-your temper brings trouble; you must think before you act. A warrior cannot only be a warrior focused on sole conquest and perfection, but an asset and comrade to others on the field- uachg! Stop beating me up-!"

So Pulcinella, on the receiving end of many secretly submitted complaints from pride-injured, mildly terrified, exhausted file-and-rank superiors for the menace-of-a-child they had installed into their fold, had given thought to the situation, and suggested a different means of punishment the next time the child acted out-of-turn.

And it was exactly how Childe found himself three and a half weeks later, dressed in his best suit his father had carefully ironed and pressed and sent over, seated in the front pew of a church in another snowy, wooden town not too far off from Morepesok; forced to watch a heavily besotted woman and man promise an eternity of commitment to one another before making-out and taking the officiating priest down with them onto the steps.

Mothers covered their children's eyes, the priest attempted to crawl from the debauchery he'd found himself caught in, and Childe had watched what was happening three feet away from his face with a flat and blank look.

"You've been chosen for an important task. Pack your bags," a Fatui officer who passed down the assignment had told him several days ago, standing about thirty feet away on the other side of the training field behind the safety of two practice dummies-

As Childe at the time had been running through drills with an extraordinarily pointy polearm.

Childe had packed his bags right away and eagerly gone to the town, buzzing with excitement at the prospect of being sent on a specially-picked, solo mission- that must've been pretty secretive if it included dressing in disguise to this extent that even his father had gotten involved- only to spend an entire morning and afternoon gathering flowers, hanging decor, running errands for the groom and trying to fake-comfort the bride who was crying over a torn veil or something.

He was fifteen, what was he supposed to do about it?

And he had waited, excitement dwindling, confusion building with annoyance all throughout the procession that followed, for some great, big monster or hidden criminal to show- or at the very least for a disgruntled, protesting relative to leap from the pews in protest and start a fight.

But there had been no brawl and no imminent threat.

Instead he'd found himself surrounded by teary-eyed, clapping, merry townsfolk he had no relation to or interest in, with colorful streamers and rice being thrown over his head and into his face.

A monstrosity of a bear had eventually broken in during the cake-cutting ceremony, and Childe had taken off its head in the chaos to the mortified shrieks of all children and adults present, but it had done little to satiate the dissatisfaction he felt over this 'special mission' of his.

Not even as a number of broad, ruddy-faced hunters busted into the humble pinewood venue afterwards, thanking and paying him handsomely right there on the spot for handling the bounty they'd let slip from their grasp.

The hunters had then invited themselves to cake, to the stares of everyone else around, and Childe had taken his leave.

Stepping off the snow-swept stairs and onto the street, he had found- of all people- his father in a small discussion with a Fatui from Pulcinella's ranks.

"-considered the possibility of it being a third puberty-?"

"-is that possible?" his father had been questioning, genuinely concerned.

The conversation had halted as Childe came to a stop in front of them with the most judgmental of expressions sitting on his face and hands stained in blood.

They had looked at him.

Looked at his hands.

And still his father had hoped-

"How was it? Did you enjoy the festivities?"

Had he meant the torture?

"Did you learn something?" the Fatui had gone on to ask in Childe's silence.

To which Childe had broken the silence and said-

"Like what?" all too tempted to take the Fatui and throw him to the ground- even if his father was mysteriously present and would be disappointed by the act.

Because all he'd done was waste time here.

What had been the purpose of such a pointless 'mission' that anyone else besides him could've done?

"I was sent here for a bear?"

The Fatui and his father had sighed.

Much, much later, years later, as he visited home- a warrior honed more fierce than ever into a catalyst of destruction, he had questioned his father what that situation had been about, as it had remained stuck in his mind to the day as the most useless experience he had lived through yet.

Gathering wood behind their home to bring indoors while his siblings ran around and rolled snow into unidentifiable mounds, his father had answered simple.

"We hoped you might see something past the battlefield."

It had been a bizarre thing for his father to say, as it was his stories in the first place that had instilled within Childe a passionate thirst for knowledge and adventure. That he had tumbled into the Abyss had only solidified what he believed he was destined to become.

Becoming a warrior was a great honor.

The accolades and feats of conquest written and spread bearing his name were no different than his father's high-fantasy tales.

It should be a good thing what he'd become.

"There's nothing wrong with fighting," he had told his father.

His father, as he had done before the steps of the church all those years in the past, had sighed once more and clasped him on the shoulder. Then he had pat it comfortingly before carrying his wood inside.

Childe wouldn't understand what his father had meant until further down the long road between battles and injury, as he stood before a windowshop in the glacial capital of the motherland, studying a ring.

Of course that relationship had never worked out in the end.

That waitress was fully committed to the flower-seller, who took great care to vanish whenever Childe so much as glanced in the direction of his storefront, and so Childe had gone on to affirm for himself with ease that he'd been right after all.

There would never be a tame life of sitting around with a family and kids telling stories.

He would be the stories others told.

There was really no need for anything else.

"You dive too reckless into things. You mess around. I'm worried it'll bring you trouble. What will you do if someday you get into something you can't get out of?"

That was what she had said one snowy evening after their serious 'fling' had come to an end.

In the warmth of the bar, circling amber liquor over ice, having just returned from a dispatch in the blizzard-wrought mountains with blood still on his wear; Childe had laughed a little and tossed back the drink, approving of the burn torching his chest with heat.

"That'll never happen to me. There's nothing I can't get out of."

Yet as he set the glass down, another thought had come and he had mulled over it aloud.

"Ha ha ha... Romance. It's really not for me, is it?"

She had taken his glass and replaced it with a hearty, piping hot meal.

"No. But maybe there's someone still out there willing to give you a round." 

 

---

 

It was amazing how right they had both been. 

 

---

 

Zhongli's mystical, magical, thread-of-eternity was a nuisance.

Childe ignored it; ignored what it could do.

What he wanted wasn't that, but his hands, his own hands, on Kaeya and Kaeya's hands on him; an even match.

 

---

 

But Alberich in control?

What a joke.

 

---

 

Kaeya didn't know what was wrong with him.

He didn't know what was wrong with either of them. 

Because if either of them had taken time to think about it, they would've discovered the timeline of events between them to be significantly concerning.

Just that morning, hours before they were pronounced 'engaged' with a string of infernal commitment around their hands only one of them could see, it had been a handjob in the woods.

Two nights before the Harbor, the rendezvous in the ship.

The day before that- which seemed like eons ago- was the walk-in with Luke.

And a week or so prior: the horrendous act that had led to any of this the moment Kaeya had decided to fold his cape onto the floor of that shed and stick his face on Childe's big dick through his pants.

Small. Small dick, Kaeya reminded himself, quite stubborn, throat tugged raw.

A small ego for a small dick- if that dick so happened to be a part of some grizzly beast or huge monster not native to normal lands.

Though truthfully, nothing was as concerning as Kaeya's reaction to anything that involved aggressive strangulation at Tartaglia's hands.

Because that was very concerning.

Very, very concerning. 

"What's with that look on your face?" Childe asked about seventy-five seconds later after he dragged his tongue from Kaeya's swollen mouth and pushed him to sit up. "Something else stupid you want to say?"

His hands grasped Kaeya's waist as the knight rode his thigh, rolling him down harder with each forward press and drag.

"That's your problem, you know. You never shut up," he growled.

Kaeya scoffed and groaned and rolled his eye in irritation and pleasure. The heel of his palms were on Childe's muscled stomach. "Yet you're the one talking."

Tartaglia hadn't used force with the 'strings' Kaeya couldn't see the since he had dropped them and they had wrangled each other to the floor.

Gratefulness or disappointment.

He told his mind afterwards to be quiet.

Clearly he was grateful to be in control of his own actions.

Clearly.

Their clothes were tugged open, their belts discarded, bunched and tossed haphazard beside them.

They hadn't managed to get their pants off yet, but that wasn't the problem Kaeya was having right now, because there was a highly attractive asshole gleaming with sweat under his hands, with curled, tousled hair and hatred on his face and that was the real problem because Kaeya had never felt so horny.

"And anyway, you can't expect me to keep my mouth shut when you're saying stupid things to me first," he felt the need to inform the idiot man, trying to get more friction on the straining bulge in his pants. "There's a running list of senseless nonsense you've said in my presence, so count this as a measure of retribution for what I've had to put up with-"

"Shut up," Childe looked at him with the look of a man on the verge of losing his mind. "I'm serious. Be quiet." His hands went from Kaeya's waist to his ass, knee lifting, grinding him down harder. "Stop talking so much. Shut the hell up."

Kaeya's hands lost balance.

He toppled onto Childe's scarred chest with a pained noise, startled, before that noise turned to a groan and they dry fucked on the floor.

There was a thought, a brief one, that they were supposed to be doing something else and be elsewhere but Kaeya couldn't remember the details. Childe's grunts and the hard rock in his pants were driving him up the wall.

They swore in each other's ears between mild small talk. 

"Fucking hate you, Alberich-"

"Nn, ahn, I can't stand you-"

Fingers dug into his ass. Their heavy, stilted breaths and furious mutters fueled fire to the growing flame.

Was the door locked?

They didn't know.

They didn't care.

This was a long time coming.

They were getting this done.

Not rubbing, it was pure chaffing, the not-enough slide of two hard lengths through pants too thick- and Kaeya was finished with the tease and the tongue toying with his ear.

He slid back on Childe's knee, thighs squeezing, hands traveling from stomach, to waistband to pants as he wrestled the other man's angry and red cock into the open air.

Stupid thing.

Mesmeric thing.

Kaeya held it in a hand, huffing over it, thumb rubbing before painfully pressing in.

Childe leaked and Kaeya lifted his thumb, running tongue over finger and head to get a taste of it. He did it again, satisfied, then dragged his tongue alongside from top to bottom to bury his face in Childe's balls.

"Mpfh-" 

A reaction and it was different, and Kaeya took every stiff breath and groan dragged out afterwards as a victory; burning, glorious, fueling his resentment.

The taste of it. Triumph.

It was as addicting as the taste of Tartaglia himself, beneath the stinging, salty sweat and pungency of pure musk he hadn't ever been so drawn to, and he couldn't get enough of sliding tongue and mouth from the base of dick to scrotum, because this was what he liked; a solid dick in his mouth and solid dick in his hand.

He pulled away from Tartaglia to wriggle the man's pants halfway down.

Better.

Much better.

He got off Childe's knee and settled in between his legs, using his elbows to spread them apart and get full access to the sizable dick, erected half-mast and dripping. They didn't have anything. Not that Kaeya knew of. If it was going in, it was going to hurt.

Enticing.

Kaeya salivated over Childe's cock, gazing at it for a prolonged moment before he dropped his head to coat it messily in spit and the man's own pre cum. Teeth scraped down skin. He sucked him off hard, groaning around it, hoping it hurt. A hand went back to Childe's stomach with digging fingers and nails, and Childe-

Childe was going through some things. 

We're supposed to be doing something else. 

Those sort of things.

Zhongli's binding vow. We need to figure a way out of it. 

Those kinds of things.

We should be keeping an eye out for bozo Wei idiot and Chao Xing.

Yet those many things were losing their importance.

Both hands in Kaeya's hair, resisting the urge to pull and tie and tug on the infuriating translucent white strings only he can see, he grabbed the knight roughly- and shoved himself into the back of his throat without warning.

Kaeya gagged and choked and struggled, hand scrabbling on Childe's stomach as he tried to find quick breath through his mouth and nose. 

I don't think so. Childe thrust up into his mouth, fast and hard and punishing until there was nothing but 'senseless nonsense' coming out from Alberich instead. Little fucker. Tears spilled out.

The fingers on his stomach pinched, asking, panicked, for air.

Childe pulled him off, chuckling, fingers keeping tangled in hair as Kaeya shook, and gasped and drooled spit with a heaving chest over the head of his dick. The look in his wide eye: furious. His face: humiliatingly flushed.

Childe quirked a brow- and shoved him back down.

His cock was swallowed in vicious warmth.

Childe held him, lips parting on a grin, eyes going to the ceiling in unadulterated bliss.

He waited until the mouth on him loosened.

Then he fucked into it lighter, choosing his own pace, because he could, because there wasn't a single muffled groan dredged from the back of Alberich's throat that wasn't music to his ears.

It took an astounding forty-five seconds for Kaeya to start struggling for air again, and as soon as the signs started to show, Childe stopped his shallow fucking to stuff his dick to the very back of Kaeya's mouth and hold him still once again.

Gargled and swallowed around.

The sheer desperation behind Kaeya's need to breathe tugged on his cock like nothing else. Childe appreciated the ceiling. Was there anything better? Probably not. He let Kaeya pinch him. And pinch him again. And his eyes stayed on the ceiling. And the pinching turned to clawing; then an angry fist, and as it struck with an impact of Cryo behind it, Childe snickered, breathless and released him.

Ice on his skin. He let it melt, relaxing his arms and leaving Kaeya to pick his own face off the dick he was so obsessed with.

Alberich was stuck for a moment, without strength, before managing to yank himself up and off and away, rolling from Childe, retching on air.

Childe gave him two seconds- then dragged him back against his chest and caged him in; left arm around his waist, right one hooking under his leg- and spreading it open.

Kaeya's mind rattled. Childe's dick jumped and twitched swollen in front of his own clothed erection.

He grabbed a hold of it, twisting his fist over the tip and rocking his hips back into Tartaglia's lap, livid.

"That could've killed me," he snarled, voice wrecked.

Childe huffed into his ear; a smug laugh. He mouthed at Kaeya's jaw. "I guess it could've. Sorry."

Kaeya tilted his head and spread his legs open wider beneath in response to the insincerity.

Childe shoved the knight's pants down and past his ass to his knees. He wrapped a hand around him. He stroked hard.

Kaeya pressed back into his chest, squirming on a groan.

Childe spit into his palm, dropped his hand back and upstroked slower, thinking a little more carefully as more and more pre dribbled out from Kaeya down his fingers.

There wasn't enough. He should've kept Wei idiot's tube of lube from the ship.

His grip on Kaeya's cock twisted, shafting down foreskin, tugging, thumb tucked beneath his leaking tip.

Kaeya's head dropped back onto his shoulder, noise escaping, mouth breaking open. Childe slid a side-glance over at the blissed-out look the knight wore before he said into his neck-

"This is going to hurt."

Kaeya's brows pinched. "I don't care. Just hurry up."

Childe didn't 'hurry up'.

He jerked Kaeya off, unhurried instead, pressing fingers into slit, teasing, before squeezing and traveling down and back up in easy rhythm. Kaeya's hand kept it's hold over Childe's own member, fisting over the head of his cock until the floor in splattered in strings of cum from them both.

The clouds of orgasm Kaeya rode down from came with short and writhing cries. Childe swiped the cum off the floor, grinding his teeth, trying to concentrate as he rubbed it onto his fingers. But it was hard- and he was getting harder seconds after softening as Kaeya's hand stayed on him- dragging down his cock, with fingers asking and trembling.

If he was asking...

Two fingers.

Childe pressed them inside without warning. 

Kaeya broke from the sea of clouds he was in to clutch at him tightly, breathing sharply.

Childe sought his prostrate immediately. He confirmed where it was, then stretched his fingers open with a purpose. Kaeya clutched at him tighter.

Agonizing.

Too dry.

It was the ring of his muscles being torn, and Kaeya mumbled, throat seizing, saliva dripping out at the prospect of further pain.

And the fingers in him took the time to curl into his prostrate until was groaning, breathing loud, until his mind had settled back into its earlier euphoric daze; then those fingers stopped and returned to opening him up wider; fingers that did so slow, as if there were nowhere else they needed to be and as if there was no one else around.

He didn't need to be so careful.

Kaeya rolled his hips back, aggravated.

He keened and whined, angrily, loudly.

Childe's free hand crawled up his neck and snuffed the noise. "Quiet."

He took his time even slower, curving, dragging fingers along the clenching walls of muscles trying madly to grab a hold of them, before scissoring swift. He loosened his grasp on Kaeya's neck, fingering deeper and faster in concentration.

It was a free chance at speech, and Kaeya used it to speak, fed-up, reaching for Childe's half-bent dick as he fought back frustration between groans and pants and hisses. "If you're not going to do it yourself-"

Childe's hand flew from neck to mouth swiftly- and clamped over it- hard. "Leave it," he ordered, attacking Kaeya's prostrate until the knight's hand dropped and body went limp.

Kaeya's mind stopped thinking. The rising, swelling pleasure; the unbearable, tight, coiling pressure- building in him again. Tartaglia; the name sat on his tongue. He couldn't get it out.

He settled for slobbering against Childe's palm, trying to poke his tongue through the fingers.

It was a less than subtle response that came.

The fingers in him thrust faster. A third entered and twisted and fucked brief, before getting joined by a fourth, and Kaeya lurched at the pain and the screaming burn. Adrenaline. It hit, soundly, like being whammied, and Kaeya's shoulders heaved, breath short and fast.

Childe's arm held him steadily in place.

But it mattered little. There was too much gasping and no air to take in with the hand on his mouth. His mind ran and searched, lightheaded.

It returned at a loss.

His heart was out of control.

Tartaglia was going to kill him.

A mouth against his neck; it sucked at his pulse, willing it to slow.

Childe's fingers slid out. He used them, spreading Kaeya open on the outside as he lined up.

And there was a pause.

A very loud one.

"Alberich," Childe said.

Then he bit down on his pulse.

The head of his cock- and three inches broke in.

Kaeya's heart was a furiously thundering drum in his ears- and he was utterly still.

Oh. 

He thought it distantly.

Childe continued to hold him open with his fingers, nuzzling into his neck. Something of a distraction but it wasn't working.

Kaeya felt it. Himself clenching and unclenching, and it wasn't what he meant to do, but something was torn. He was bleeding.

He couldn't move.

The fingers over his mouth parted at long last, letting merciful air in- and as the air rushed wildly back into his lungs, so did all five senses Childe's suffocation staved off.

Oh. He thought it again, not breathing so much as he started gasping through his nose. His ears rang. Should've used... proper... 

His eye rolled.

His arm snuck back.

He grabbed a hold of Childe's hip and steadied himself.

His mouth curled in a lopsided grin.

He forced himself down further, on a rush of an exhilarated exhale, body on fire.

Childe sucked in a sharp breath, taken aback. "Wait. Give yourself-"

Kaeya didn't wait.

His eye made the rest of the swift journey into the back of his head. Bleeding and an odd sensation he felt within his chest from it, but he ignored it, moving painstakingly slow, cautious; hissing. Childe echoed the sound.

Kaeya wasn't just freakishly tight. He was swallowing him.

What the hell?

In the softest furnace of heat.

His teeth bared. He sunk them into the junction between shoulder and neck.

Kaeya melted.

They rocked together. They grinded.

Childe's hands went beneath the knight's thighs, getting a degree of leverage off the ground.

The nape of Kaeya's sweat-drenched neck continued to rest on his shoulder. He mumbled incoherent as they moved.

Several long moments. They adjusted- to each other's weights, heat and positions.

They rolled into each other lightly.

Then the decision was made.

Childe murmured. Kaeya murmured back. His other arm stretched backwards and hooked around Childe's neck.

And then he had started to ride him.

Ah fuck me. Childe opened Kaeya's legs wider and fucked up into the consuming pit of heat. He angled his dick in deeper.

A steady pace.

The room filled with the sound of heavy breathing, swift clapping, and groans.

Kaeya rolled his head off Tartaglia's shoulder and looked down. His back was blistering warm, dripping wet. The grip on his thighs was bruising. Past his own cock, Childe's slid in and out of him, pale and thick and wide. It was painful. It was good. 

"Good," he mumbled aloud.

Childe kissed into the crook of his neck and licked a line of sweat away before repeating, "Good?"

"Faster?" he mumbled again. Deeper? 

Childe listened. Kaeya drowned in the feeling that followed, gut curdling, letting Childe take the reigns. Tartaglia had been missing his prostrate on purpose; now he fucked into it with impatient hunger. They got louder. They got faster.

And Childe groaned and growled and swore as he pounded up into him as if he hadn't had a fuck in years.

Kaeya's arm around the other man's neck had tightened.

A terrible feeling overcame him.

They were too loud. And it was too fast.

He wanted to tell him to slow back down, to stop, to let him breathe- but when he opened his mouth, nothing came out except the lewdest stream of-

"Feels good, fuck, I- ah, fffuu-" 

Childe bent him over.

 

---

 

Down below them, one floor below, Wei Yin stopped folding his napkin into quite a spectacular swan.

Chao Xing struggled over something that was supposed to be a flower but looked like a frog.

"What's that?" he asked.

Chao Xing scowled, flushing pink. "I'm not finished yet, just wait-"

"No, not your ugly bog monster," Wei Yin said. "What's that noise?"

"What noise?" she snapped, crushing her napkin in hand.

He shook his head and took the crumpled napkin from her clutches, unballing it, smoothing it, beginning to press it into the flowered shape it was supposed to be. But he did so slowly, with a tilting head.

"You can't hear it?"

Chao Xing frowned.

She attempted to listen to whatever had caught her betrothed's attention.

Her eyes searched over the others seated around them in the resthouse. There were several glasses of water and ale on their tables.

The beverages in them shook.

The eyes of those who the drinks belonged to, were not on the ground in the tremor of a quake, but on the ceiling.

Chao Xing's gaze followed.

As if unanimously decided, the first floor of the resthouse dropped into silence. 

 

---

 

Kaeya's elbows hit the floor.

He picked himself up two inches before Childe's weight was over and on him, aggressively fucked from behind.

He couldn't get any purchase.

He scrambled for balance on sweating palms.

A palm ran up his chest; toyed with his nipples; pinched and twisted. He cried out. Pain blossomed then ebbed.

His eyebrows furrowed. His breath lodged stuck in his throat. 

There was a weird sensation again- somewhere inside of him. It was getting stronger by the second.

He opened his mouth to say something, perplexed- but Childe's hands took the invitation and grabbed him by the throat, yanking back. He was fucked shallow and fast.

Kaeya spread himself, skin flushing, mind hazy; and let the man take him. Confused.

Was Childe getting bigger?

 

---

 

"I think someone's getting fucked."

Surprisingly, it wasn't Wei Yin who said it, but a traveler at the table next to them.

Although, Wei Yin could agree with that assessment.

"What room is that in?" the traveler across from the first questioned. "It's not ours, is it?"

"I don't think so."

A pause.

"I hope to every Archon in Teyvat it's not."

At the foot of the staircase on the other side of the room, leading upstairs, stood the little squirt sorcerer from the Yuan Clan.

Yuan Xu, right?

There was a look of intense concentration on his face. A glass of half-finished juice in his hand.

Wei Yin watched the little squirt for a moment, wondering if the kiddo had forgotten to put on socks and if that was why he was standing so bothered, before bringing his eyes to Chao Xing who had yet to tear her eyes from the thumping boards above.

"You know," he said, "Vinny and Harbin have been gone for a really long time. And so has father. But I can't imagine he's found anyone with that goatee of his shaped the way it is. Do you think it's our friends?"

"They're not friends," Chao Xing answered with glued eyes.

"Well they're not strangers. And Vinny is my best friend," Wei Yin retorted. "Listen. Isn't that his voice? I can pick it out a mile away."

Chao Xing's eyes dropped from the ceiling and onto him, displeased. "Why are you able to do that?"

"Because he has a nice voice. A bed voice. Oh- yeah- there it is. Look-"

"-anh-!"

There came an audible slap- followed by a thud, a strangled groan, and stream of begging gasps among what must've been fists now pounding on the ground. A stream of curses and praises came after.

"-fuck, you feel so good, what the fuck- look at you-"

"And there's Harbin," Wei Yin noted. "A little bit rough around the edges, but I guess that's his charm. If I was sleeping with Vinny, I'd be much nicer."

He looked at Chao Xing, imploringly.

"You ever get the urge to give your really good guy friend good things and hug and kiss them and invite them to join in on a threesome with the cutest bandit in existence?"

Chao Xing stared at her fiance.

And stared.

"-w-wait, aa-ahh- you're gonna break m-me open, sst-sto-"

"-fucking good-"

Another audible smack.

The sound of a fist on the floor.

Then another.

"NO!"

Yuan Xu.

"The debauchery!"

He cast his glass of juice aside.

He screeched.

He bolted up the stairs at lightning speed.

Tripped halfway.

Crawled the rest of the up.

"Ahhhhh the demoooonsss!"

There were stares of concern.

 

---

 

The ink on Kaeya. 

He realized it dumbly. 

That was what was hurting like it was burning him alive. 

Oh good. He had figured it out.

But it was useless. Because he was more than occupied with something else. Like the hand that kneaded and caressed his ass before hitting for the fourth time, the hardest of them all- and the animalistic growl that left Childe before a pace more brutal than anything that had ever been in Kaeya had begun. He buckled forward.

His face smacked the floor.

Fingers pressed into the flesh of his waist, possessive, a different heat than the bizarre one on his chest.

Spit dribbled onto the floor. Fucked back and forth across of it; the wood rough and sticky on his skin.

He loved it. 

Tartaglia was good.

The heat in his stomach grew stronger.

Angrier.

His brain was having a hard time. 

There was something good happening inside him.

There was also something bad.

He couldn't figure out what it was-

Childe pulled out.

The emptiness left him writhing. Not for long.

Childe rolled him over, onto his back, and slid into him from in front.

Kaeya stopped trying to figure out what was wrong.

He wrapped his arms around Childe's neck and buried his hands into the other man's hair, squirming, gasping, begging for more.

And Childe laughed in his ear, breathless- sharply and disbelieving.

"Look at you," he tugged himself away small, the only distance he was allowed with Kaeya's vice grip on him.

The joy in Childe's voice was barely contained. It seeped from his tongue with each word with lust and greed and desire, and he spent a moment rolling his tongue into Kaeya's mouth, curling wet muscle over wet muscle, swallowing the punctured breaths and quiet whining for himself.

He licked his way out.

He tucked his head beneath Kaeya's jaw and started sucking against his neck, biting in a mark. Then two. Then three. Four and five.

Amazing. The noises spilling from Kaeya's mouth with each fuck in up against the other's tightly bundled nerves, sang in his pointed ears, sweet melodies of a dark rhapsody.

"Can't even talk, can you?" he crooned, and his voice was significantly different, "I should just-"

It was a great time for everything to coalesce into chaos. 

Childe mighty-morphed.

Kaeya panicked.

The dick in him expanded. 

And Kaeya's covered eye shrieked silent, loud inside his head.

The Abyss and frigid cold.

His vision blanketed in dark.

His vision blanketed back with light.

He found Tartaglia, with a sharper face, vivid eyes and curved ears staring down at him.

He looked exactly like the Initiated of the Abyss; the warriors of Khaenri'ah.

Kaeya registered this, along with the monster dick stopped and halted in its attempts to rip his ass apart- and there was exactly one second between the time Tartaglia reached for Kaeya's face, baffled, and between the time Wei Yin's ward sprung to life and tried to strangle Tartaglia to death.

A terrified scream from the door.

"Uuaaahh! What are you doing in my room!" 

The Abyssal power left in a blink.

Wei Yin's ward sunk back into Kaeya's skin.

Childe dropped on top of Kaeya, heavy, himself, in near indescribable pain.

Kaeya wheezed in agony.

The bush-loving brat from the road, the Yuan, petrified in the doorway, one hand on its frame, fully affronted.

"This is my room! I paid for this! Why are you fucking around in it! Why were you transforming? What was that? What are you?" 

He began weaving seals. Black chains stirred and gathered at his feet. A ball of black, malignant flame spun before him.

"Aaaahhh! I knew Lady Chao Xing was traveling with trouble! You're demons in disguise! Don't think I'll let you get hands on her! I'll expel you!"

Childe shoved off of Kaeya. Kaeya scrambled back. They didn't get far; injured for two very different reasons.

Conversation down the hall.

"We shouldn't be up here."

"But I'm telling you I smell sex gone wrong-"

The boy shouted.

"Begone!"

The spell fired.

The flaming black ball of a spinning spell, bringing the frigid lick of a dead flame and wrath, struck Childe and Kaeya both with bombarding force.

Then rebounded.

Straight up off of them as they went skidding across the floor and back towards the boy in the door.

He shrieked and ducked.

Chao Xing stepped in its path, lips pursed in half- argument with Wei Yin.

Yuan Xu leapt to his feet and surged forward. "Lady Chao Xing! Wait- no-"

Wei Yin walked in front of her, oblivious- and turned.

The black ball of death pegged him in the face- then slingshot backwards- right into Yuan Xu's chest.

Wei Yin blinked.

Yuan Xu staggered back, clutching at his body, baffled. "What the-" 

Kaeya picked himself off the ground- moderately concussed, every hair on his body bristling with the danger, screaming of unchecked magic. 

"Oops," said Wei Yin, "sorry little buddy, are you-"

An explosion.

They were swept in a wave of black. 

 

---

 

They tumbled onto snow beneath a starry night. 

None of them had woken for a long time. 

 

---

 

And then Childe had.

The frigidity; the sheer cold was like waking in the motherland after a dispatch mission gone horribly wrong, alone and surrounded by the worst of the tempest weather, the hail and the ice, or regaining consciousness in the black waters after falling through the broken freeze of a lake.

Only there was no lake.

There was a knee-deep snow for miles and miles and there was cave.

A cave he was inside of.

The frozen black stone of it beneath his back, pebbled and solid with glacial cavern walls flickered and swept in the orange glow of a fire.

His clothes were fixed. His dick was safely stowed away.

He gave himself a moment to take stock of his well-being and the situation, as one was prone to do when suddenly in an unfamiliar place.

He struggled for a moment. 

An incredible ache pounded at his head.

As if he'd been dropped a thousand times over, dragged, and drowned and rolled for miles. 

Liyue.

He had been in Liyue. Now he was not.

Wei Yin and Chao Xing. Alberich.

They had been about to head to Wei Estate grounds in the mountains of Minlin via a gateway. They had not.

Childe had gone to hold a dubiously civil conversation with a certain Favonius Knight. He had not.

His dick twitched at the memory.

He told it to calm down.

His body was in abysmal pain.

A familiar one. The one that came from impromptu, unplanned merging with an abyssal force.

He recalled, with clarity, the sudden swell of possessiveness that had come- not from him- but from the calling depths of the Abyss settled in his blood; all too wildly eager to swallow Alberich whole.

And Childe, in that strange instant between human and other, before that bozo's ward had grown sentient and attacked, had seen exactly why.

Kaeya wasn't normal.

In the slightest.

And Childe had seen him before.

Years before. 

Childe raised his hands and took a look at them.

Zhongli's ridiculous, binding, white, 'engagement' strings. They're still there. They were still a 'thing'. And hanging from his fingers and wrist, loose.

Which meant-

"You're awake."

Kaeya.

Childe rolled his head away from the cave entrance to find the knight seated beside him, knees drawn, resting his elbows lightly on top.

He looked like he was freezing.

Unsurprising.

Their clothes were meant for Liyue's warm weather and humidity. Not whatever this was. Alberich's hair was pulled back and tied in a short tail. Dark bruises marked his neck; were bitten under his jaw.

Childe sat himself up, precariously, something like pride in his chest. 

Right, that was all him.

I should put some more on.

Pain zinged through his body, head-to-toe. He grimaced shortly after.

Or maybe not any time soon.

He grunted.

"The hell."

"Eloquent."

Kaeya's attention seemed to be fixated on the cavern wall across from them. He didn't turn his head.

He spoke again.

"You're extraordinarily heavy. I want you to know."

Childe eyed him.

There were different thoughts sifting in his mind now- due largely to what he had witnessed. To address it or not? Was Kaeya even aware? Or was what Childe had seen like Zhongli's threads- something Alberich didn't even know of?

He chose 'not', for now.

And he would think about the Abyss and Kaeya spread under him later.

There were more important things. He could recognize that.

"Where did they go?"

It was obvious who he meant.

Kaeya appeared to be on the same page as him in terms of what to discuss and what not to discuss. He answered, short to the point.

"Outside."

"By themselves?"

"I can't get very far unless I'm with you."

"The cave. How did we get in it."

"Chao Xing carried us halfway. She also dropped us. Wei Yin stepped on your head. Then he dragged you by the feet and rolled you inside. He tried his very best. We came across a lake shortly before this cave; it was unfrozen. We crossed it. Wei Yin pulled you for a long time underwater, stopping frequently to surface for breath. Upon reaching shore, he thus believed you drowned and attempted mouth-to-mouth before giving up, unable to get near to your face, insisting it would be most unfaithful on my behalf."

Childe thanked every Archon- aside from Zhongli- that Wei idiot's mouth hadn't been put on him.

He questioned, sardonic-

"What- you weren't pulled underwater by your best friend either?"

"Chao Xing is adept at various arts and sorcery beyond what her clan taught. When I questioned it, she explained that it was a result of her trying to outdo her sister and exceed the expectations of the Yuan name in her young youth. There was an extremely curious spell she used that carried us over the water while you two sank. Though- despite having a broad range of knowledge on strange, fickle acts of sorcery, the spell was a weak one. We only hovered two feet above the water and snow. I believe it's because of her stamina. Both she and Wei Yin shared that she had never had much of it."

As if Childe cared about that. It was obviously why he had decimated her in their one-on-one volley a few days back.

Forget that.

How far had he been dragged by Wei Yin?

How far had he been rolled?

How many times had he been dropped?

What had Kaeya been doing the whole time? Watching as Chao Xing finished magically carpeting them through the snow to this random cave?

The curse of the Foul Legacy was that he either suffered pain for days, immobile, or fell into a comatose state.

What happened this time must've been the latter.

But maybe that was a mercy.

Because if he had been conscious while Wei Yin was 'handling' him, he would've grabbed the heir's head between his hands and crushed it like a grape.

"And where are we outside of here?" he demanded to know. 

"That's what they're taking a look at," Kaeya replied. "They seemed to have an idea."

"I'm guessing you do too."

"A speculation. I'll tell you we're not in Snezhnaya."

"I didn't think we were."

There were mountains to the far, far northlands that were similar and Childe had ventured those once with a division of able field soldiers.

But this wasn't Snezhnaya or the northlands.

For all the cold, piercing as it was, realistic as it was, there was a clear absence of wind; a clear absence of sound. The fire crackling past Kaeya in the depths of the darkness, did so without smoke or smell.

Childe rose to his feet.

He brushed himself down and stretched.

He worked out the pain in his arms and cracked his neck.

"I'm up now. Let's meet them, get to the bottom of this and get out."

"Tartaglia."

"What?"

"You need to help me up."

Childe faced him.

He looked down at the knight who still stared at the wall.

"Why?"

Kaeya said nothing.

Childe continued to look at him. "Why?" he asked again.

Kaeya's jaw tightened. He turned his head and fixed his eye upon Childe then, and there was a profound flatness in it, somehow flatter than the expression on his face.

"I can't walk." 

 

---

 

Childe had heard the words.

Childe had gone and picked Kaeya up in his arms.

Childe had stood for a long, long, moment in the cave with furrowed brows and an open mouth and a slightly tighter than usual grip on the man cradled to his chest.

Laughter in his throat.

He was a terrible, terrible human being. 

This... had never happened before. To anyone he had fucked.

Of course he also didn't usually go around half-morphing into an Initiated Being of the Abyss, but still.

And the fact that it was Kaeya.

Kaeya- who had told him with the most condescending, self-certain look on his face prior to any of it that 'he was the one in control'; Kaeya who had started it, telling Childe there was nothing he could do without him?

"Oh man," he had said aloud. "This is too good. You idiot."

Kaeya had chuckled lightly.

Kaeya had taken two fingers and stabbed him in the eyes.

"Ow! You little-!"

 

---

 

Childe had attempted to leave the cave without him.

He couldn't.

They were bound by the ten foot thread.

Childe had tugged on it with all his Foul-Legacy-diminished-might.

Kaeya had laid flat on the ground and dug his nails into the cave's iced, gritty earth- vindictive.

"What's the matter?" he had asked, out of breath from the struggle of staying down against Childe's violent efforts, innocence and wickedness dripping from his tone. "Having a little trouble walking?" 

Where had this resilience been back at the resthouse in that bedroom?

Was Kaeya only capable of ridiculous feats of strength and ability when it came to being an actual menace?

"Why don't you try using your mysterious powers? Surely anything from the Abyss can overpower my strength," Kaeya had gone on to say, and there was a look in his gaze, hard and piercing, and he wanted to have this conversation now? Like this? "Or can you only get it up every once in a sad while?"

Childe had smirked, unamused, irritation in his chest at the sheer mocking in the ex-spy's tone.

"Hardy har ha. It's a weapon of the Abyss, Alberich- shouldn't you know all about that? I'm glad you've admitted how weak you are against it though. It's good to self-reflect once in a while; see how you measure up in the world as the dirt beneath my boot."

"Where did you get it from? Who did you get it from?"

"None of your business. Get off the ground-"

In the end, neither of them had walked out the cave.

Childe had stormed back over to Kaeya and they had engaged in a very lackluster scuffle of minimal strength and flexibility- except Childe was still somehow vastly stronger and wound up plopping onto Kaeya's back anyway, muttering about pulled muscles.

It had been Wei Yin returning to the cave, brightly with cheeks reddened by the cold, donning a scarf that he hadn't been before, who had stopped their embarrassing 'match'.

His hair was tied up high in a sprucey tail with all the spirit of youth.

"You guys are still alive! Good! Knew you were reliable, Vinny- thanks for keeping watch while I was out!" he praised as if Kaeya wasn't sprawled with his face on the ground and Childe sitting on him. "Chao Xing thinks she found something. Something about the little squirt who got obliterated in the blowback of the spell. Turns out he might not have been after all." 

 

---

 

Thus, so it was thus, and hence and why and where they were now.

 

---

 

"We're inside of him," Chao Xing says- without context- as they enter the enormous den that had been hidden in the cliffs further along the barren snow plains from their cave. There are white earmuffs on her and a pale overcoat onto her elegant, green and white pre-wedding hanfu wear.

The den itself is home to another campfire, smokeless and scentless as the first in the cave, an odd pile of clothes in the corner by several open chests, travel bags and supplies.

Well that was suspicious.

What were these belongings doing here?

"You look cozy," Childe says to Chao Xing flatly.

Her tone is just as flat as she turns from the glowing symbol of a giant mushroom on the wall she'd been looking at.

"It was not my doing. The Young Master grew bored while you slumbered, comatose, and dressed me. Pointless as it is."

"Hey! I worked hard!" Wei Yin protests, sticking by Kaeya's other side- who had settled for leaning against the heir, resigned.

There is a look Childe is giving them.

Kaeya doesn't care. He wants to jab him in the eyes again.

He's also greatly confused as to why there is a giant, generic symbol of a glowing mushroom imprinted on the cave wall.

Was he still concussed?

He doesn't have a chance to question it as Chao Xing's gaze goes from looking upon Wei Yin with resignation- to glaring at Kaeya in judgment. "Movement still eludes you, though you rested and though I spelled you across land and water. I'll scold you again-"

"I'd rather you didn't-"

"-it was highly irresponsible to partake in such activity with such an important date upon us. There is a wedding, and you and your lover are guests, yet you cannot stand proper or walk without aid of my spell. That you would show yourself in the esteemed presence of my family, my aunt, who would cast judgment upon me for the decision to extend my invitation-"

She goes on for a time, facing the wall with the mushroom in derision as she speaks.

Childe tunes out.

They all tune out.

Wei Yin takes Kaeya on a small nine foot walk to the suspicious pile of clothes in the corner away from Chao Xing and goes through the stack with gusto. Kaeya gains three coats, loses three coats, has gloves put on and then tugged off before Wei Yin thinks deeply- and removes his scarf.

He tucks it around Kaeya's neck, snug, smiling, saying something Childe can't hear over Chao Xing's lecture.

Kaeya removes the scarf, sighing, and wraps it back around Wei Yin, settling it secure as he responds- and clearly he's saying something of importance because Wei Yin's expression is startled, then inexplicably fond.

His hand goes to the bruises on Kaeya's neck, patting and-

Childe goes on over.

They were obviously talking about a matter he should be involved in. Those marks were his.

"-more careful next time," Wei Yin is saying, "you should take care of yourself."

"Yes, Wei Yin, I understand," Kaeya is saying back to appease him but he sounds preoccupied by something else and his eye goes to Childe as Childe stops beside them with crossed arms. "I actually wanted to know about the ward you put on me."

Ah yes. That needed explaining.

Good on Alberich for putting some distance in the non-important bond of undying friendship he and the Wei bozo were partaking in.

"The ward? It worked right? And a good thing too!" Wei Yin sets his hands on hips and laughs proudly. "Until we get that promised drink of ours in the gardens of my home, I'm not letting a single thing happen to you- because of course, I said I would protect you."

"That's..."

Kaeya's shoulders slump, small.

He is grateful to a degree, that just... hadn't been what he was trying to talk about.

Since he had woken in the snow, with Wei Yin and Chao Xing both leaning over him, peering into his face, Wei Yin had been especially determined to cheer him up. He wasn't sure if it was out of pity for the fact that he'd been there with his dick out and clothes flung open, or because he'd been beheld by miserableness at being unable to walk on his own, or because- 

"-we didn't mean to interrupt you guys. I know you were going at it hard. When we get out of here I'll find you the biggest room so you can get a good fuck with your man. That's a Wei Yin guarantee!"

"I don't want that guarantee, Wei Yin."

"Always the jokester! Ha ha ha-"

"I'm not joking-" 

"There was an issue with your ward back there," Kaeya starts. "It..."

Then he pauses, wondering how to explain without mentioning the exact state he'd been in when the ink had launched itself at Tartaglia's face.

Wei Yin grabs his hands, encouraging. "You can tell me. What is it?"

"I was fucking him and it came to life," Childe states bluntly, looking not at Wei Yin's face but at his hands on Kaeya. "I was fucking the life out of him."

Kaeya turns horribly red and sputters, angered and embarrassed.

Wei Yin's eyebrows fly high onto his brow. He doesn't look bothered at all by what Tartaglia said or the death-glare being directed his way.

He does release his grasp on Kaeya's hands, however, to rub his chin in thought and fold his arms.

"Came to life, huh? Y'know, I noticed there was something different about it when we found Vinny in the snow, but I can't say why that is. He's the first person I've ever inked besides myself. And nothing's ever come out and attacked me. Weird. Maybe it just doesn't like you, Harbin."

There's something in the way he says it that makes Childe look at him.

Wei Yin smiles.

And looks right back at him.

Kaeya doesn't know what odd silent conversation the two are in; he's not sure he wants to know.

Another problem exists.

"Wei Yin, would your ward prevent me from seeing other sorts of..." he frowns. "Spells, perhaps?"

"I don't think so." Wei Yin moves his eyes from Childe to study Kaeya instead. "Is something wrong?"

Kaeya hesitates. He glances towards Childe- who gives him nothing. The Harbinger is simply looking at Wei Yin like he'll murder him.

Kaeya rolls his eye.

Typical. And of no help. What had he come over for? To be useless?

"There's something on him and I," Kaeya shares, lifting his left hand where Wei Yin's ink lies coiled in wait along his arm. "You could call it a spell between us. But I can't see it. Would your ward have anything to do with that?"

"What kind of spell is it?"

"It's... unimportant."

"Hmm," Wei Yin's gaze is uncannily serious- before the seriousness sweeps away and he chuckles, sheepish. "I wish I knew, but you know I'm pretty useless at this stuff. Stupid father said it protects anything, and it's never spread on me or on anything I've inked it on like it's done to you. It must still be trying to protect you, I guess. If he was here, he could probably tell you what's going on with it. But who knows what happened to him. Maybe he fell off a cliff. Chao Xing, do you know anything?"

"No, I do not." 

And the Yuan Clan heir is standing behind Childe and Kaeya, fan tightly closed and gripped in hand with the most mordacious of looks.

"I was in the middle of speaking."

"Yeah but it was really boring?" Wei Yin answers. "Also this place is cold. Can we go? How do we get out?"

"If you fools hadn't walked off, you would've heard my sequitur from the topic of my aunt and clan to the matter of Yuan Xu we're facing now," Chao Xing rebukes. "Are you all children with the attention span of a spoon?"

The matter of the ward would have to wait. Here was the real issue. 

Kaeya had known leaving the sorcerer alone would lead to trouble.

If only a certain someone had listened instead of getting upset over a string that same someone had gone on to abuse.

He faces Chao Xing.

"What was meant when you said we were 'inside of him'?"

She fixes upon him a testy, testy look, but answers regardless. "You recall I mentioned Xu is a disciple of my aunt. He would've undergone extensive training as a child in the art of exorcism, charms and prayers, as demons and contracts are her particular line of foci. It's why a great deal of Yuans know malevolence so intimately."

She opens her fan slightly. Black flames flare and vanish.

"What you see as fire is not fire, but the essence of one's spirit, called to the forefront, touched by the contracts of what is known as 'evil'. I won't go into specifics as you might find yourselves digging through clothes again, but the strength of a Yuan sorcerer is highly dependent on the number of contracts they hold with any such vengeful spirits or 'others' of the veil encountered. Xu has many. He is young, however the natural ability he has to maintain the contracts he has exceeds many of our grown."

There's a brief silence.

It's Childe who asks the question Kaeya wants to.

"And how many contracts do you have?"

Chao Xing turns up her nose. "I have enough."

"I thought you didn't have any," Wei Yin says, "because Chyou didn't have any and you wanted to be better than her without any sort of outside help-"

"I have a contract," Chao Xing cuts him off, swiftly.

Uh-huh. That explained a thing or two about why her 'curses' thrown at Childe hadn't done anything.

He was more impressed by the image she must've crafted for herself for people to still be terrified of being left alone in her presence without the actual help of evil spirits.

"To get to the point," Chao Xing says, firm, "that spell he crafted was meant to expel demons. And it came straight from his spirit. However-"

She looks at Kaeya pointedly. 

"-it struck off the Young Master's ward, then further repelled off the Young Master himself who is a walking ward, and struck Xu back. What we're in, is the 'result'. Inversion. He's not dead; he merely 'expelled' himself. Such a blast to one's soul has a diameter effect. Self-purge is a violent act, and were it anyone with any less number of contracts, he would've suffered evisceration. Instead, he was brought into here."

Childe folds his arms. "And where is 'here'?"

"A soulscape," Kaeya answers, looking towards the ground, caught in thought.

He'd had his suspicions.

Keepers of Khaenri'ah often spent days and weeks and months in the vastness of their own souls, seeking a state of enlightenment. Their abilities were further honed by it and other such exercises of meditation and voyaging within the veil.

But the problem lied little in where they were, but in the nature of what it was.

There is no way to tell the time.

Measurements of man-made creation were distractions and pulled away from the true essence of knowing the human soul.

It was why on pilgrimages, priests and followers were allowed no tools and why the journeys of cultists into the veil lasted for years upon years with no fuss over the time that had passed.

Time was a fickle thing in Abyss; moreso in Khaenri'ah.

But time in a soulscape, no matter what nation or what individual, was always the same.

Infinite.

Dainsleif, no matter how powerful he was, could not enter another's soul without permission. It would kill the person otherwise.

And Dainsleif had sworn off from killing long ago.

"We need to get out of here," he says, the eyes of all present on him. His gaze goes to Tartaglia.

Tartaglia with a weapon of the Abyss. Somehow a warrior of the Abyss. Did he understand the danger of this?

He must've.

A weapon of the Abyss couldn't have been gotten without going down into the fissures of the underground.

Forget any wedding or any clan or any mushroom or mission.

It could be five years passed outside this soul in a blink and they would never know.

Childe's eyes rest on him.

They acknowledge the fact.

They go to Wei Yin- dismiss him- then settle on Chao Xing.

"This is your clansman's work. You have a way out?"

Chao Xing directs her attention back to the large symbol of the mushroom on the den wall in the dim darkness. "What's on the wall there is a gateway; protecting the depths of Xu's soul within. He was hit directly with the same spell that affected us. He is somewhere inside this soulscape. We only need find him and have him cast us out for freedom to be gained."

"Then let's not waste time," says Kaeya. 

More than they already had. 

 

---

 

They stand in a close cluster before the sealed gateway of the wall.

Chao Xing mutters and flares her fan.

There is a shimmer.

There is an uncannily gentle warmth.

A breeze. Like Jean's healing.

And they float.

Two feet in the air.

Childe stares at the ground.

Childe stares at the back of Chao Xing's head.

"This is useless. What the hell?"

She scowls over her shoulder. "Be grateful or you shall walk."

"Walking would be faster. How fast does this thing go?"

"Actually it goes pretty fast," Wei Yin comments, turning half around. "When I was drowning with you underwater, they zoomed ahead at near sonic speed without looking back, or maybe it was just the whole life-flashing-before-the-eyes thing that made it seem like-"

Childe grabs Wei Yin by the face with a single hand. "Stop talking to me."

Kaeya stares at them.

He's having severe doubts about the success of their 'escape'.

"What are the odds of this working out?" he asks to no one in particular.

"I'd say pretty high," Wei Yin says, voice muffled through Childe's fingers. "So long as we stick together and believe in one another like my fortune said, we'll be okay! We all trust each other, right?"

No one answers.

Chao Xing puts her attention onto the wall and its symbol. "I'm going to activate the gateway. Be prepared," she warns. "I know not the depravity we'll witness inside Yuan Xu's soul."

"So long as we find a way out," Kaeya answers, frowning. "It wouldn't be good to stay here for long. There's no telling how much time will have passed outside."

Childe finally lets go of Wei Yin's face. "We finally agree."

"We've agreed before plenty of times, you've just forgotten because you're the devil-incarnate."

"And guess what, you're attached to it."

Chao Xing speaks a verse over their bickering.

Gold ignites.

The mushroom glows brighter. The symbol thrums. The den trembles and roars.

Light bathes the cave.

Chao Xing's spell launches them-

At neckbreaking speed.

They zoom forward.

Kaeya flies off.

Childe barks out a laugh- stops as realization hits- and gets abruptly tugged off.

Whizzing speck in the light above, Wei Yin and Chao Xing rocket out of sight.

Kaeya and Childe plummet together into nothingness. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They plummet into something very strange.

 

 

---

 

 

 

Notes:

everything shall be explained in due time💀 have faith

in other news, life really kicked my butt these last few weeks. i'm sorry this chapter took so long to reach you lovely people. i wished it could have gotten out sooner! <3

have a great week guys ^^

*Edit
Kaeya got official birthday art and man looks like he's about to head off to a wedding or he just got married ha ha ha....

I'm dead inside.

 

Now if there was just a certain harbinger on the other end of that photo-

Also, I wanted to add that meme... the one "what would you do if there was a child in front of you" but ao3 doesn't let us have gifs does it? 😂

Chapter 9: if you make a promise, keep it; if you get a letter, maybe respond

The tavern is dark.

The tavern is silent.

Frost sweeps the floorboards.

Icicles glisten in darkened corners, along the cusp of the abandoned tabletops, the backs of chairs, the counter of the bar. Wind shakes the frozen deadbolts of the wooden door.

The cold is piercing. The shadows long.

Fractures on the fogged glass of the window panes.

The backroom of the tavern is plunged in eclipse, glistening snow swept to the walls, shelves stacked and filled in bottles of every color, kind and shape, labeled in neat print and fine scrawl. The sheltered home to Diluc's finest, most aged alcohol and Kaeya stands in the dimness, eye on the line of wines before him, distracted, feeling as though there is something important missing from his side.

A sense of isolation.

Hollowness.

He's been unable to shake the sensation for quite some time.

But he supposes lingering like this will do himself no good.

His breath coalesces, puffing, curling, a small cloud, and he reaches for the long-necked bottle in front of him, pulling it off and down from where its been fitted. He thumbs the fogged label.

Abandonment.

A strange name for a sweet, white wine, but wine was wine, and wine was alcohol that thus led to inebriation and the dismissal of odd empty feelings, and so he lowers it to floor before crouching to filter through the harder liquors stored below.

Gin: Facades and Lies.

Vodka: Loneliness and Depression.

He collects them and puts them beside the wine.

He gazes at the long, deep gap in the row of alcohol left behind, frowning- then sits back- and rises, bringing his bottles with him. They give freeze-burn as he holds them.

He doesn't have his knightly uniform.

A draft in his sleeves, a deep-set chill along the cut material of his shoulders and thin cloth of his black, borrowed wear. Useless as they are in the low temperatures, the clothes sit on him content.

Though he didn't remember getting a tattoo.

He leaves the backroom, sidling his way out, and grimaces as he does, a strain pulling in his lower back, a low ache in his legs. The door stays ajar, lodged in the ice on the floor as he nudges the rest of the way through.

He must've been in a fight earlier.

White light from a pale sun and pale clouds. A round table by the window.

The only table illuminated in the wintry glow of the quiet day. It's occupied by an unmasked Fatui reading a book and Kaeya joins him, apologizing.

"Sorry it took so long."

The book looks familiar. Crimson. Ornate and gold.

Hadn't he gifted that to Jean?

She must've been in the mood for sharing.

Mikhail sets the book aside as Kaeya sets down the wine and liquor and pulls out the chair across from him. "It's fine, no worries. Long day?"

Kaeya sits and the chair creaks as he does, worn from countless days and weeks and months of familiar use in the presence of the diplomat. "I think so."

Blue eyes and silver hair. Mikhail nudges over two glasses.

Kaeya fills them, mixing gin and wine, and as he does, Mikhail shuffles a deck of cards and deals.

They study their cards.

They exchange hands.

They study them once more, reshuffle them back into the deck Kaeya cuts, and draw again.

They play a round of Spades.

Outside howls a wind, forlorn, but the blizzard is a distant one and inside the shelter of these four sturdy, built walls of the two-story establishment, it's safe and peaceful and calm.

Drinks are knocked back.

Glasses bump and clink and slide across wood, exchanged.

Drinks refilled.

He grows lost in the familiarity.

Mikhail is no friend.

Or maybe he is.

The line blurred between them is one drawn and smudged countless in the duties and affiliation of Fatui and Knight. But he doesn't believe he dislikes it.

His grievances can't be shared with fellow knights. His conversations won't yet dive too deep with his brother. Idle talk without needing to present himself as anything more than what he is. He thinks it's perhaps something he and Mikhail have both come to realize in their regular meetings.

Recognition without recognition. Trust without trust.

"The Art of Khemia," Mikhail says after a while. He studies his cards. He scrutinizes the way Kaeya holds his own. "It's interesting."

They've had this talk before.

Kaeya lets the diplomat pick a card, discreetly pushing the one the Fatui goes for aside with his thumb and replacing it with the one beside it. "Is it?"

Mikhail looks at what he's pulled, eyebrows lowering, before setting it face-down on his side of the table. "Creating things. Giving it life. Superficial, fake things real as... anything real," he answers. "All the technology, the magic. The genius and innovation. Everything a place like that can do. It's a shame what happened to it. Khaenria'ah seemed amazing."

Kaeya draws. Flips a card; reveals an ace of spades. "Maybe it was. It's not much of anything anymore."

They swap hands.

"You've been there?" Mikhail questions.

"I'm a Knight of Favonius," Kaeya answers as they pick the highest cards out and lay them hidden by their elbows. "When would I have had the time?"

"Knights of your Order have had expeditions there before, haven't they?"

"Perhaps. Long ago. It's a forgotten place now."

They give one another their original hands back.

Mikhail takes stock of what he's lost, brows twisting. "There's nothing good left," he says.

"That is the point," Kaeya chuckles, but his heart isn't in it.

Mikhail folds.

He leans back in his seat and sighs.

Kaeya collects the scattered pieces of the deck, bringing them back together. But he does so with a careful slowness. "Why the interest? In any of it? Surely the Fatui have better things to do than pore over the remnants of an old kingdom and its dynasty."

"It's not our interest particularly," Mikhail responds.

His eyes wander towards the window.

To the endless white beyond.

"Not the lower ladders of the Fatui. Enlistment comes with benefits. A full package of pay. No shortage of food or shelter or travel. Your family is taken care of. You get a nice few pins and a shiny badge and a purpose; the pride of being called a number beneath our Tsarista. But Her Majesty's interests, what she's looking for is different than any common person like myself. Different than any Archon. She can't be compared to the rest of the Seven. Neither can her best lieutenants. They're all just... in another league. What we're fighting towards seems like a goal shared between us all, but the higher up you go, the less shared those goals become; the less simple. Everyone wants something for themselves. It's easy to understand. But complicated the further in you go. Our bonds are everything to us in Snezhnaya. For the harsh terrain that it is, banding together is a necessity, not a luxury. So we make promises to stick together and promises to return home, and we write letters when we're far from those we love, though those letters might be our last and those promises might not hold. Threats. Tactics of force. Endless search and drive."

Mikhail returns his eyes to Kaeya who has long-since stopped shuffling their shared deck of cards.

They are deep and considering and thoughtful.

They're full of certainty.

"We're easily misunderstood. Our Tsarista most of all. At the root of everything it's... a fear."

Fear?

From a god so cold and calculating? So determined?

"For what reason?"

"Well. Dreams are frightening, aren't they?" Mikhail says. "In a world like ours, can you really dream of great things without suffering the risk of some curse?"

The words make Kaeya look at him. Their game is forgotten.

"Her Majesty has dreams of a new world people who don't fear and people who don't struggle wouldn't understand. It's not so different than the kinds of dreams from the survivors of Khaenri-"

Mikhail stops.

He catches himself, almost startled.

His eyes on Kaeya seem to realize who and what they both are, Knight and Fatui, Mondstadtian and Snezhnayan, and he sits up straighter, scooting himself into the table, clearing his throat. "You know. You're too easy to talk to."

Kaeya's eye has fallen to his drink. The liquid is clear. He sees straight through it to what's beneath. "Am I? Odd. I haven't done anything. It must be my charming status as Cavalry Captain and Knight."

"I'm sure that has a thing or two to do with it with others," he hears Mikhail say. "Or maybe you're just a good person others feel comfortable around."

"No, that's not it."

"Why not? Are you telling me I'm wrong?"

There's a note of joking in Mikhail's voice. Light. One of a friend.

Kaeya stops staring into his mixed drink of a lifetime of poured baggage and raises his eye.

The Fatui shakes his head. "Never mind. Forget I said anything then. A Fatui siding with a Knight? What's gotten into me?"

"That's a good question." A third chair is suddenly dragged over across the floor to join them from an adjacent table. "You've gotten too comfortable."

Lyudmila. A dusting of snow on her coat.

She plops down and crosses her legs, setting on the table a potted Calla Lily.

It's a peculiar thing.

Touched by hoarfrost. With a lopsided bowtie.

"Here," she says to Kaeya. "You forgot this."

"Thank you," he tells her politely.

Then he pauses, furrowing his brows at both it and her.

"What is this?"

"What you forgot. I found it outside."

Kaeya's brows furrow deeper. "I don't... think it's mine."

"It's yours," she says without hesitation. Her eyes roam over the drinks and cards, taking note of the abandoned game. "Deal me in," she says. "We can play while we wait for Luke."

Luke?

Was he joining them today too?

Normally it was just Mikhail on private afternoons and evenings like this. That Lyudmila had joined was an anomaly in itself.

What was the occasion?

"What is he doing?" Kaeya wonders.

"He's getting the cake."

A cake for what?

The door of the tavern swings open as he thinks it with a violent gust of snowflakes and wind.

Frostbitten and chuckling, tugging off a scarf, an at-ease familiar lieutenant steps through. His uniform sits loose but oddly snug. He shakes the snow from his hair. His eyes roam over the abandoned tavern until they catch sight of his two subordinates and Kaeya, and he smiles, heading over.

"Phew! The storm was awful."

Lyudmila and Mikhail move their chairs and create room.

A fourth chair and Childe is sitting close at Kaeya's side, winding his removed scarf around Kaeya's neck and properly folding and tucking it under and in. He tugs on the ends of the scarf and brings Kaeya's face in, pressing easy lips to cheek and mouth.

He hums appreciative.

He kisses him warmly again, and though chapped by winter, and though their skin is freezing cold, he nuzzles their noses together in greeting before drawing back, pleased. His eyes are flecked, near grey, in fondness and apology. "Sorry I kept you waiting. I hurried as fast I could. Slipped on a patch of ice or two but uh-" he chuckles, "-let's keep that a secret from any one else outside of here."

Kaeya might as well be an iceberg.

Embarrassment burns in his chest; flushes beneath his skin.

He holds the tail end of the black scarf Childe has settled on his neck and thinks it's familiar, but from where he can't recall.

A weathered, gloved hand on his thigh that follows and Kaeya tears his attention from the scarf to the lieutenant it's attached to, watching as Childe takes a glance at the table and what's on it. The sigh the other unleashes is loud.

"This guy. He never leaves us alone. You'd think he was jealous."

He's looking at the Calla Lily with the bowtie.

"Even on our day, he follows you around."

The potted plant is picked up and set down on the icy floor beside Childe's foot and he gives it a very stern look.

"I don't want to see you in our bedroom tonight. I mean it. Not even on our windowsill. I'll leave you without water for a week."

"That's a plant," Kaeya says as Childe leans back and as Childe's hand returns to his thigh. But the Snezhnayan doesn't appear to have heard, taking note of the alcohol Kaeya had grabbed and brought out.

He reaches for the bottle of vodka with his free hand, tutting over the dismal label printed on as he reads it. "Why do you still have this?" he questions aloud. "I thought we agreed it wasn't necessary in good company."

Had they?

"I..."

"Maybe he just doesn't see us as good company," Mikhail notes.

"I'm insulted," Lyudmila comments.

Neither are being serious, yet Childe sets the bottle on the floor with the plant all the same, dismissing it. He squeezes Kaeya's thigh. "We'll get you something better later."

"I don't need-"

"Hush," Childe tells him. He pushes shoulder-to-shoulder with Kaeya and relaxes back in his chair, keeping him near and close.

Mikhail and Lyudmila leave the cards alone, setting dice and black cups on the table they most certainly hadn't had before, apparently unbothered by the casual intimacy on display. And Childe's thumb starts rubbing on his thigh in absent thought.

"I've been thinking about Liyue."

Kaeya stares at Childe's hand on him, again, entranced. Liyue. The name jostles something in his mind.

Something important.

He can't grasp what it is.

"You wanted to keep exploring it," the lieutenant beside him recalls. Had Kaeya ever told him that? "Why don't we go back sometime? When all of this is done. I'm sure our comrades will be happy to see us. Wei Yin's gotten too overexcited with the letters and presents. You'd think Chao Xing would stop him."

Something in his mind jostles again.

A box on a shelf of vital, urgent things, but there's a weight keeping them in place, gentle but strong- and it's Childe's hold on his leg keeping him from getting up and seeking it out.

Confusion and alarm. A vague sense of it.

It grows in Kaeya the longer he sits and watches Mikhail and Lyudmila wager minor bets over Mora and patrol duty; the longer Childe's thumb rubs calmly on his thigh; the more he hears water patter from the tables and chairs surrounding them as the ice melts around them slow. Because the tavern absent of sound and life, is now swelling with laughter, chatter and noise.

It rises around them. Crowded in celebration.

Fatui and Knights, swords and masks discarded. Tables are brought together. Champagne is popped.

Warmth and unprecedented joy in the throes of a snowstorm and callous winter.

He questions it.

Because he has to; because he needs to, because this is no longer an isolated place of solitude and retreat away from the world and its realities.

Because something is wrong.

Because behind the bar is his brother years younger and their father years before death working together on a new wine with dandelion and sunsettias. Because he can hear Jean and Klee and Lisa and Amber somewhere close by even though he can't see them. Because there are members of the Adventurer's Guild spilling through the door, as if it was perfectly normal to have come from the barren, snowswept wasteland outside the tavern's walls- and Bennett is among them, excitable with Cyrus and Pallad, without a trace of scar-

And it's as if the whole of Mond is trying to now cram its way indoors, too quickly, without reason.

In the wake of their trampling footsteps and enthused antics, the frost of the tavern has gone.

Margaret and Diona.

Diluc and Crepus welcome them, smiling.

Venti tugs on a pair of Rosaria's leggings by the door.

"...What's going on?"

"Mm?" Childe turns his head from his subordinates, blinking in small surprise, then small worry as he takes in the severely bewildered and bothered expression Kaeya can feel sitting on his face.

But that worry soon melts to realization and reassurance, and Childe grabs a hold of Kaeya's hands and squeezes them, comforting.

"I wanted to invite your family. It's... bigger than I thought. I'm sorry. I should've asked beforehand. We can go somewhere else more private. Quieter, if you'd like; Luke can bring the cake to us. I didn't think my Division would join in. My own family couldn't be here so I..."

"Oh."

Kaeya doesn't know why. The thought of family distracts him.

No.

Not family.

The pinched, upset look Childe wears does.

"I'm sorry they couldn't come."

A quirk to the corner of his lips. Childe hides his smile behind Kaeya's hands as he raises them to brush his mouth against them. "That's alright. We can just get married there too."

What?

Kaeya stares. "What?"

"Our marriage," Childe explains without explaining. "We can do it again. There's a couple of children in the orphanage near home who could use a pair of good influences like us anyway so-"

"What?"

Childe peers at him over their hands. "Something wrong?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Our marriage-"

"Stop saying that."

"Our... marriage?" Childe says again, this time greatly confused.

"Stop saying that," Kaeya hisses.

He stands and Childe stands with him and the bustle of the tavern carries on as if unawares, and the tavern door is blown open for what must be the hundredth time as Luke appears, wheeling in an impossibly large and white, frosted, flower-decorated, three-tiered cake, with the assistance of Noelle.

There's a massive knife in Noelle's hand she holds pleasantly upright, as if it wouldn't kill the first person it touched if she accidentally lost her footing on the snow-trekked, mushy-iced floor.

Kaeya feels faint.

Ill.

On the verge of a minor meltdown.

And as the cake grows closer and the inhabitants of the tavern part like a loving, merry sea of supporters, Childe tugs on him so that they're facing, and there's a silver band meant for a finger in his possession and earnest sincerity in the kindness of his face, as he asks-

"Isn't this what you wanted?"

"Wait," Kaeya says. The ring starts to slide onto his hand. "Wait-"

A bang on the window behind them.

He jerks back violently from Childe and twists half around, alarmed. His mouth parts.

And he stares.

And is stared back at by the flattest stare in the entirety of existence.

Tartaglia.

His- Tartaglia.

There is a decapitated bear head tucked beneath an arm.

Silence sweeps through the tavern.

Absolute dead silence.

Tartaglia continues to stand and stare flatly at him from the other side of the frosted glass.

His face couldn't be carved from a more lifeless stone.

"Are you done?" 

 

---

 

There were no words to describe the mortification, no words to describe the horror, as Kaeya stepped outside the now abandoned, desolate tavern- void of life and sound- and realized what occurred.

In the winds of the blizzard and gritty hail, fallen bodies and slain creatures, crimson stains in the snow, marked by broken spears and blades, shattered flag masts of torn apart banners. Under tumultuous, clouded white skies, discarded machinery, buried, iced, in the drifts. Deactivated ruin guards. The horns of beasts protruding from beneath the frozen, black earth and glacial sheets of ice.

It's a battlefield.

Many battlefields.

Crushed and toppled and folded into one plane of existence.

Far ahead is a darkened line of a fir-treed forest, capped peaks and garish ridges.

It's reminiscent of where they first started out in Yuan Xu's soulscape, yet vastly, vastly, dissimilar. Because among the carnage, the familiar peaks of abyssal cloth from mages and lectors, galaxy stars on blood-wrought, fallen armor. No home of a sorcerer, but of a warrior. And though his eye lingers on the shells of who and what were once his own people, he is a thousand times more preoccupied with something else he's noticed.

The sheer score of dead bears.

They outnumber every other grisly monster and scattered weapon by an incredible, near impossible amount. For kilometers.

And snowmen. 

But mostly bears. 

"How many bears have you killed?" he asks, staring around them. "Why have you only killed bears like this? Did they do something to you? Are you obsessed with bears?"

"I'm not obsessed with bears," Tartaglia says, tossing the bear head under his arm aside. It rolls away and vanishes into the howling storm. "They were here when I opened my eyes."

The wind blusters and rages.

Kaeya's blown. He staggers back into Tartaglia, glistening, cut, pieces of shiny paper passing in the tempest, slicing at his cheek, and does a double-take when he sees what it is.

Confetti.

Celebratory confetti. Rainbow streamers in the mix.

Rice.

Frost-bitten decorations, cheerful and merry- and unspoken 'congratulations!' and it's so disjointed from the murderscape they're standing together in that Kaeya is given whiplash sharper than anything he'd experienced back inside the crowded, invaded confines of the piece of his soul that had spilled into Yuan Xu's during their fall.

Because that was what had happened.

Pieces of them had tumbled out; spilled and mixed together, not just with one another, but with the sorcerer in question. There wasn't a single doubt in his mind, clear, alert, and working overtime, that it didn't have to do with Zhongli's curse. 

Mostly due to the fact that he could now see it.

The moment he had rejoined with Tartaglia, it had nearly ripped him off his feet and thrown him at the demon from hell, who hadn't caught him- bear head at that point still in hand- and let him eat snow.

As soon as he had picked himself up, with the intention to strangle the man, he had stopped and Tartaglia had stopped and they had looked at the infinitely longer, soft and stretchy band, translucent, now calcite green, between them. And Kaeya had further then taken in their surroundings.

The snowstorm cyclones, a perilous, wrathful, vicious anger, and Tartaglia drags them backwards, back to the shut door of the tavern, reaching for the knob.

Kaeya shoulders him aside and twists himself from the Harbinger's arms, plastering his back against the wooden entrance, vehement.

"No. We're not going back in there."

Tartaglia's glare is piercing as he tries to reach around Kaeya's body to get access to the door again. "We need to take a second and figure out what's going on."

"We can do that out here," Kaeya grounds out, attempting to push him away.

"Are you stupid?" 

"I'm not stupid, you're stupid."

They fuss with one another's arms. Zhongli's curse around them tangles, looping and knotting. Hail strikes at their heads.

While it's good too see for the both of them they've somehow regained full movement capabilities with only mild discomfort from their romp-and-tousle on the floor earlier thanks to the essence of their merged and jumbled soulscapes, they are now stuck in a struggle to find a way out of the entanglement they've wound themselves into.

"Great. Alberich. Just great," Tartaglia says with Kaeya's elbow in his face and Kaeya's knee in his gut.

"You're implying this is my fault?" Kaeya bites, Tartaglia's hand shoving his forehead as far back as they can get from each other.

An approximate five inches.

"I wasn't the one blocking the door. It's not like I didn't already see whatever the hell was going on in there. With the other me. What was that? Why was that a part of whatever you are?"

"That wasn't me. That wasn't you."

"That was you. That was me."

"No, that was something inhuman-"

The door swings open and in behind Kaeya. They tumble backwards inside.

Kaeya hits the floorboards hard. Childe lands on him harder.

It's no longer a tavern. A cabin. Cobbled stone and a fireplace in the wall. A modest home.

Eager footsteps.

Kaeya tilts his head back. Childe looks up.

A dark-haired child, shawl and pants, hood tossed off, eyes charcoal and wide, shining bright. Something perches upon his shoulder. A black imp, bat-winged, with a lone, large eyeball. He looks not at Childe or Kaeya feet away from him, but out towards the blizzard they had toppled away from.

"Big brother, welcome back!"

Childe raises his brows. "Big bro-"

A boot steps on his head and plants his face into the floor past Kaeya's shoulder.

"Xu, were you waiting? You shouldn't have stayed up late, but I'm glad to see you well."

Kaeya ignores Childe's muttered curses into the warm, wooden floorboards and in his ear, craning his neck back further to see the sight of a tall youth with long dark hair ribboned in black from high on the crown of his head.

A simple travel-worn cloak, scuffs on his long, soft boots, the wraps around his arms, banding along his wrists, strapped over palm, are indicative of a student of martial art and sword.

He turns to set a hand on top of the child's head- he had called him Xu hadn't he- and a pale scar cuts down an equally pale face through the left eye. Though the eye seems fine.

Gray and calm.

He couldn't have been any older than sixteen.

"Did you eat your vegetables?"

"No, but only cuz I was waiting for you! I made this huuuge pot of stew. Do you wanna try it?"

The older boy laughs softly. "Of course. There is no one who cooks greater than my little brother."

"That's right!" Xu exclaims, proud.

Kaeya blinks very slow, watching the scene play out. The ache in his body at the uncomfortable position he's in and with the weight of Tartaglia on him returns, but it's a dull, dull thing as he puts together what's happening.

A piece of Yuan Xu. A precious memory stowed and kept within the depths of his spirit and soul.

Because it was a matter of importance. 

A vital part of who he was.

Kaeya wasn't sure what that meant that a certain, particular Fatui had been so present in his own and he wasn't going to think on that because it meant nothing and mattered little what strange things the essence of him sought to have, but what he could ascertain from the sight of 'Xu' and his 'brother' was that this was a memory from years ago.

Xu couldn't have been any older than seven or eight.

Yet that was a living curse on his shoulder, and they were nowhere near any Minlin Mountain.

It didn't even seem like they were in Liyue, let alone part of a clan.

So what was going on?

"Oh!" Xu startles and wriggles from under his brother's hand. "Brother, you left the door open! Don't you always tell me to keep it shut in storms?"

And he runs over, laughing.

Kaeya doesn't bother to move. Because he can't.

Childe, on the other hand, pushes himself up a mere few inches from where he's thoroughly caught in the threads of Zhongli's damnation, gets out- "No wait you little pipsqueak-" before he's promptly trampled underfoot. 

 

---

 
There is a steaming pot of vegetables in the middle of the lopsided, self-made table Xu and his brother sit on either side of.

"Shoddy work," Childe comments, petty.

Kaeya punches him in the arm. Childe punches him back. They face each other, on the verge of wringing each other's necks, before taking a step back, restraining themselves, and continuing to slowly unwind the knots of the eternal thread that had been keeping them too close together.

"Stop touching me." 

"You stop touching me." 

They stand in the corner of the small 'dining' space of the cabin, which was set up beside the fireplace that appeared to act as stove and heater for the dark-haired siblings within.

As Xu's brother served Xu and then himself, Kaeya had taken the time to glance about the rest of the cabin. A place well-lived in. Bare of all else but the necessities. A bedroll on the floor next to a straw-stuffed mattress. Traveling bags and clothes. Coats and gloves and scarves.

They seem... oddly familiar.

Hadn't they seen these in that den with Chao Xing? And that large mushroom of a seal on the wall?

Bags of wheat and rice. A crate of picked through vegetables. Wooden shelves measured and nailed into the log walls with careful precision and thought. On the shelves, bottles medicines, jars of herbs, powders and stones.

It... seemed no place for a child to live in comfortably, yet comfortable was exactly what Xu looked like in the flickering glow of the blazing fire, scarfing down his food.

Kaeya frowns, pausing in the middle of unwinding what's around his elbow, thinking of a home in Khaenri'ah that perhaps wasn't so unlike this own. Tartaglia mutters something indiscernible at his side and grabs a hold of his arm, taking over.

It's unclear to either of them why they can tangibly feel things in this memory- namely two pairs of boots belonging to two brothers- but it must be for a reason similar to the one that had allowed Kaeya to experience the familiarities, and unfamiliarities, of Mondstadt's tavern and had allowed Tartaglia to walk around with that bear head.

It could've been an aspect of being in a soulscape.

Kaeya...wouldn't particularly know.

He was aware of what his mother and Dainsleif did and could do. Yet he could never tap into it himself.

There had been an attempt once and it had wiped out the circle of priests that had been warily surrounding him and had launched his father through a window.

Obviously it had never been attempted again.

And now that he knew the possibilities of what lurked inside it, he was glad he never had.

His eye raises and lingers on Childe's face.

The disgruntlement he wears, the concentration as he works on pulling apart the ridiculously tight knot caught in the belts of their waists, his features are half-shadowed in the cabin's poor lightning, but they are no less sharp or handsome. The curve to his jaw; Kaeya's gaze falls to it.

He thinks about the thick warmth that had been fucking inside him, and not about how good it'd felt- because that was a given considering who he was dealing with- but about what had spawned as a result of it.

He can ruminate about it now.

In the safety of this cabin, likened to one in the Khaenri'ah that had fallen, away from the chaos, the howling storm, what laid beyond; in the quiet pocket of privacy and warmth offered by fire and close proximity- he believes he's allowed to.

A warrior of the Abyss.

A creeping, gleeful force eager to sink inside and bury itself, deep as it could, relentless as it could, and consume him.

He knew why.

From it, he could surmise why Wei Yin's 'protective ward' had reacted. Although the matter of it being sentient was something else entirely- more related to the abilities of the Wei Clan -than anything to do with Kaeya himself.

Except- it had only surged to life in the presence of the malignant powers from a warrior of the fallen Khaenri'ah. It had been still around the Eleventh Fatui Harbinger Tartaglia. So what did that mean?

That outside of dark forces of the underground, it didn't take the Harbinger, himself, as a threat?

To be fair, Kaeya didn't particular take the man as a threat to anything either- aside from his self-dignity. Beyond any martial prowess, there wasn't much frightening about Childe. Only idiotic.

Still.

For all he could speculate on what had taken place on that floor, it wouldn't do much good. He'd have to see Tartaglia like that again to study and understand it- and he didn't know when that opportunity would present itself.

Was it... only something that would emerge if... Tartaglia was inside him?

That was a concerning thought.

He didn't fancy having anything that huge trying to break him open dry. There was masochism. And then there was logic. Of which Kaeya had been missing, lately, the Harbinger had been right about that in their argument, yes, but that was besides the point. 

Even so, I wonder. 

Had Tartaglia reached conclusions of his own on the incident he was keeping to himself? Any realizations?

He said he had done his research.

But how much?

It was one thing to know he had come from Khaenri'ah.

It was another to know the relation between Khaenri'ah and the Abyss, for as separate as they had distanced themselves from one another, they were undeniably the same. The bloodline of a dynasty ran through both in cold blood and steel.

Collapsed as it was. Rampant with sinners as it was. The Abyss would always find a way to seek him out.

If he so let it... what would happen then?

No wonder Tartaglia tasted the way he did.

Steel and strength and weight. 

His ears had been pointed.

Marks on his cheekbones and the scar on his chest vivid as the light in his eyes had been. That was someone who had let themselves be swallowed by the jaws of the Abyss and welcomed it in their heart.

And for what? Power? Something so...

Useless.

Why was he so hellbent on seeking it out?

Because he was so arrogant? So conceited?

The conversation he had with Mikhail so long ago, that had resurfaced, that had remained a prominent echo of importance in himself.

He dredges it forth.

What did Tartaglia fear?

It seemed like nothing. But everyone had something.

Didn't they?

"Hey."

Kaeya tunes back into his surroundings, unaware of when he let himself slip away so deeply, and finds himself completely disentangled from Tartaglia, the long, long rope-like thread of Zhongli's curse now pooling beside their boots. But the Harbinger is standing close to him still, despite having the freedom to move away, and Kaeya raises his gaze to see Childe face a hairsbreadth away, consternation in his brows.

For a second he loses his words. And in that second, Tartaglia's hand lifts to the side of his face-

And pinches, twisting at his cheek incredibly hard.

Kaeya yelps and shoves him.

Childes moves half a step backwards from the mild force and snorts. "So you didn't pass out standing up after all. Here I thought I'd have to slap you next."

"You slap me, I'm slapping you back."

"I'd really like to see you try."

"Alright. Come here-"

As if the spell of silence and contentment and focus that had befallen all the memory was shifted back into conversation at once, Xu's brother at the table speaks up.

"Xu. My journey today wasn't without reward. I have good news."

Xu stops gnawing on a leek. Kaeya and Childe stop stepping on each other's feet.

Xu's excitement is near palpable. The curse on his shoulder, flaps its tiny wings. "You do? What is it?"

"I came across traders from the mountains of Minlin in Liyue. They were happy to share the information."

Kaeya's eye narrows. Happy to share the information? Not without a price.

"A family of exorcists. A big family. They seem prestigious. And they're very wealthy. I think they can help you."

"Really?" Xu nearly clambers from his chair. The leek in his hand waves about, dangerous. But the swell of excitement is quickly dampened by a thought, and his hand comes to pat the floating imp of a curse by his shoulder. "Won't I lose her then?"

His brother smiles but he's not looking at the curse, rather somewhere off beside it, and Kaeya ponders if it has to do with distaste for what lingers on his little sibling or if it's because he simply can't see it. "We can find a way around it, I'm sure, if I ask."

Xu sits down abruptly. Xu frowns. "No. I don't want you to do that."

His brother's smile falters. "No?"

"I don't want you to," Xu repeats, looking into his bowl of stewed vegetables. "You'll just. Give away your savings again."

"That's not what I do-"

"Yes it is. I see you counting coin when you think I'm sleeping. I keep bringing you clothes from the village box so you can make them fancy and sell them like the old village ladies, but you never do."

"Xu... those clothes are better off where others who need them can take them. You'll draw their anger."

"But we need them too, don't we? How else are we gonna have coin to bring back dad?"

Xu's brother looks at him for a time. A long, long time.

The silence, the conflict, the grief in his eyes says it all to the adults present in the room, but Xu doesn't see as Xu is still frowning down at his bowl.

By the time his little brother looks back up, the trouble in the older's eyes are gone and his smile is back in place.

"You're right. I'm sorry. How about we go to Liyue first and meet with the exorcists? When we return, I'll take another look at the clothes."

Xu squints. "Do you promise?"

"Yes." His brother's smile stays. "I promise."

Kaeya feels his mouth tug down. He's not sure why there's tiny displeasure twisting inside him. He glances over beside him, half expecting another smart comment to make its way out of Tartaglia's mouth, but there is nothing readable on the other man's face as he watches the brother's return to their meal and as quiet befalls them again.

There's not any particular fight in Kaeya at the moment.

But there is a need to break the tension.

His quip is lackluster.

"What? Nothing you want to say about promises?"

Tartaglia's eyes stay on the siblings.

Then they drop down to Kaeya.

There's a moment where he studies him.

A moment where he contemplates.

Then he snorts.

He pokes Kaeya in the forehead, hard, enough to off-balance him.

"Not to you, Alberich."

Kaeya steadies himself and brings his hands to his head, scowling, and as he does, Childe considers something and says-

"Why don't you tell me why you wanted to marry me? Maybe I'll feel a little generous and open up myself."

He's messing with him. Kaeya's shoulders raise, defensive. "I told you that wasn't me."

Childe relaxes, arms crossing. "It wasn't you sitting there stupidly happy with a scarf around your neck someone who looked identical to me put around you? A scarf you still have on?"

Kaeya's hand flies to his neck. He hadn't even realized-

He rips it off, perplexed and flustered- why hadn't he noticed- but also vastly incensed with incredulity because-

"How long were you standing at that window for? Why are you always watching me from where I can't see you? Is it a habit? A creepy, unnecessary habit you can't help but do whenever you see me? In the tavern? At the Harbor? Inside someone else's discombobulated soul?"

Childe bends and picks up the scarf from the floor as the brothers in the memory finish their meal and begin to clean up together. "It's not my fault you never lift your head or turn around. It's not like I'm ever hiding. I'm in plain sight. Maybe you should start questioning yourself."

He runs his eyes over the discarded black material in his hands, an eyebrow hiking up as he notices.

"Isn't this what that clown tried putting around you?"

"What?" Kaeya's eye goes to it quickly.

"Wei idiot," Tartaglia reiterates. "When he was 'looking out for you'."

"I can hear your air quotes. You don't have to look so disgusted. And stop calling him that. He's not an idiot."

"I know you're joking about that last part."

"I'm not." Kaeya snatches the scarf in an attempt to reclaim possession of it, but Tartaglia holds onto it, with a steel grasp. "Let go."

"You let go."

"It's not yours."

"It's not yours either, Alberich."

"It belongs to Wei Yin."

"It belongs to some poor orphan kid this kleptomaniac runt of a sorcerer stole from their village-"

"I knew you had something to say about him just because he stepped on your big, ego-inflated head-"

"And the scarf-" Tartaglia tugs particularly vicious, bringing Kaeya towards him, "-is now technically mine because it was me putting it on you in the tavern-"

Kaeya, with all his strength, plants his feet and tugs back. "That wasn't you-"

Tartaglia lets go.

Kaeya goes flying.

He knocks into Xu's brother who's carrying the pot of their leftovers.

"Ah-" It's all Xu's brother gets out before the pot goes clattering to the floor, exploding with stew and he goes soaring into the nearest wall.

The wall is hit.

Then so is the ground.

"Big brother?" Xu cries out, alarmed. "Big brother nooo!" 

He slides to his knees next to his older brother.

Who actually looks dead.

Kaeya stares- scarf in hand.

And Tartaglia's staring too.

They watch Xu kneel beside the lifeless body, trying to shake it back to life as the eyeball-imp curse zooms around the cabin like a bat in panic.

Then they look at one another.

"...Should we have been able to do that?" Childe asks.

The answer is a big, fat no, but Kaeya doesn't get the chance to say so because there's a shift in their surroundings- lurching- sudden.

They fall through the breaking floorboards as the memory drops.

Into impenetrable dark. 

 

---

 
They crash into a thicket of brambles.

Wet leaves and branches.

It's raining.

A light drizzle in graying skies. The weather is temperate; humid. The grass pale green, the vegetation familiar, colorful and diverse.

They dig elbows into one another's chest.

"Get off me," Tartaglia complains, pushing as Kaeya drags his face out of the Harbinger's collarbones with bearings not yet bared.

Kaeya topples out of the bush and onto his ass. He glowers at Tartaglia. Tartaglia glowers back at him and fumbles his way up and out of the thicket much to Kaeya's pleasure.

"Shut up," Tartaglia tells him.

"How embarrassing," Kaeya answers.

The scarf is gone.

Liyue in a monsoon season. There are cliffs and the sounds of the waterfalls.

Wet dampens their hair and clothes, sticky and tepid, with more heat than any relieving cold a proper thunderstorm could bring.

Where they are in Liyue, he doesn't have the faintest idea. But it must be in the mountains. The enclosure they're in is one of sparse, spread apart trees of amber and dark leaves, and through the trees he can see a sweeping valley and river below; hills and endless dirt paths marked by wooden signposts- narrow, crumbling trails as makeshift roads.

"Lisha," Childe says, after a minute, looking in the same direction as Kaeya. The knight glances back at him. "The plains of Lisha," he elaborates.

"...I see."

Alberich surveys their surroundings before turning away from the valley and the hills and the roads, and heading towards the other side of the enclosure where the woods condense and grow thick in misted vapor caused by the rain and heat. Childe trails in his steps, as he always has, in their one consistent pattern that never seems to fail- and as he does, he notices what's caught the younger's attention.

Discarded clothing. Oddly huge. There are two robes clumsily stitched together.

The patchwork is terrible.

Childe nudges it with his boot, half expecting a corpse to come bursting out from beneath it. Nothing but a zipping lizard.

Ahead of him in the woods, Kaeya crouches, poking sifting through effeminate, neutral and masculine clothing left messily in a pile by the trunk of a tree.

Sunsettias littered the grass around. But oddly. Meticulously. In a circle that was almost too perfect to have been accidentally. And the tree didn't look like the sort to grow fruit at all.

Was this really a memory in a 'soulscape'? Or had they ended up somewhere else?

That brat and his brother were nowhere to be seen.

Childe crosses his arms and watches Kaeya.

He looks away. Studies around them.

Brings his eyes back to Kaeya.

These woods weren't often traveled. Why were there so many clothes?

His fingers drum against the inside of his elbows as he waits for Kaeya to stop sorting the pants and tang suits and slippers and hanfus and skirts like he's doing his evening laundry, but Kaeya doesn't stop what he's doing and Kaeya doesn't pay an ounce of attention to his surroundings, absorbed in thought.

He trudges over, boots snapping twigs, breaking leaves, reaching down and tugging the knight's short ponytail at his neck once.

"Pretend to have survival skills. If you were trying to convince anyone you were capable of anything, you're doing an awful job."

Kaeya doesn't jump, but he does scowl and look over his shoulders with a slightly wider than usual eye and reddening face. "I don't need to convince anyone of anything, least of all you."

He pauses.

"And don't touch my hair."

Oh yeah.

Sensitive to that, wasn't he?

Childe stows that little note of a reminder in the files of information in his head as Kaeya gets up, holding a shirt in his hand that looks more like it belonged to a foreign traveler than any Liyuen-born native.

It's stained in blood.

Childe takes it from him. He studies it for himself. The blood is dried and discolored and flecked, weeks old.

"Why would this be in this twerp's soul?" he asks.

Kaeya frowns deeply. "I can't say."

He hesitates.

Childe eyes him. "Say it."

"It could be nothing. ...It could be a ritual. But I don't see why he would do something like this. The child we saw back with his brother didn't seem like the sort. It's most likely... a memory he has of something else that stuck with him. Although I'm not sure why-"

The trees rustle beside them.

Childe steps closer to Kaeya on instinct.

As if the line of thought Alberich had been walking across had opened a closed door, through the woods they can now hear the sound of a gurgling river, small chatter and bright laughter.

Xu's laughter.

Childe narrows his eyes. He and Kaeya share a glance.

He ditches the shirt and Kaeya takes lead and they traverse through the trees, in the pattering rain, and damp heat into the depths of the woods.

"-promise to stop doing such bad things. And I'll make you more clothes. My big brother was sighing when he saw I brought all these with me, but if they're going to someone in need, he can't be bothered about it again," they can hear Xu speaking animatedly.

The river grows louder.

The trees fold and bow, branches drooping low, slick with rain. Too thick to see through.

Purple cloth hangs as a canopy from the branches, a thin blanket or a rich robe discarded and tossed, and they duck under it. And they stop, hands lifting the makeshift tarp against the rain on their heads.

And they stare.

A gurgling river. A rocky riverbank.

A carefully, lopsidedly, gathering of wet sticks and dry logs boasting a crackling fire despite the faint, rumbling storm. The eyeball-imp curse is by the fire, floating idly, perhaps keeping it alight.

But that's not what's caught their attention.

It's Xu. Standing by the riverside.

Smiling up at the thing standing in front of him.

A herculean, muscled man in a loincloth with an arm full of gifted clothes, but it's not a man, because it stood ten feet tall with the massive mascot head of a frog with large, unblinking eyes like it belonged on a ridiculous costume and-

"Whaat is that?" Childe asks, a slightly upwards lilt to his tone.

Kaeya has absolutely zero clue.

And it's talking.

Talking with a deep, baritone, robust voice; dignified, stately.

"Thank you," it says to Xu. "The nights were long and cold. I asked many travelers if I could borrow a shirt or two but they always fled, terrified and screaming. I know not why."

Was it being serious?

"I had noticed that travelers liked to eat the sunburst fruits upon the trees. So I gathered and set them around the trunks of the woods they might so choose to slumber beneath. But the humans, though drawn to the offerings of peace, shouted and tossed things at my head as I stepped from where I hid to greet them. They injured themselves in their fear. It seemed my method would not work. For many days I was discouraged. For many months, hope dwindled."

Okay, but what exactly was it?

What was it?

What was it doing here?

Was it really only looking for clothes?

"Your kindness is not one I have encountered for years. I would see this debt one day repaid. Should you have need of me, little wanderer, shout my name upon the winds and I will come." The creature thinks for a moment. "But only once. You must give me more clothes if you need my assistance again."

Why!

Xu nods. "Sure!"

"Don't agree to that," Kaeya mutters the same time Childe morbidly mutters, "I bet it ate his brother."

"It didn't eat his brother."

"Do you see him anywhere around?"

No.

No Kaeya didn't. But it didn't mean he had gotten eaten.

More reasonably, this thing was a curse only Xu could see- and for some reason give things to.

"Before you go, what's your name?"

"You may call me.... Mr. Frog."

"Neat!"

It had obviously made the name up on the spot.

It was obviously a fake name.

Its name couldn't have been more clearly not Mr. Frog.

"I will go now. Your company returns."

And the creature turns abruptly, bounding off with disturbing speed and height, across the river, into the dark trees on the other side of the rushing water.

Xu enthusiastically waves goodbye. The eyeball imp by the fire flits up to his shoulder and perches on it.

"I know," Xu tells it. "What a nice guy."

"Little brother?"

Xu spins around.

Kaeya and Childe's eyes flit to the side.

There is the older brother, healthy and well and alive, a bamboo fishing rod in one hand, a string of caught fish in the other.

"Hello big brother! You came back! How did fishing go?"

"It was alright," his brother murmurs. His gray eyes are on the woods across the river. "What were you doing with that?"

"You could see it?"

"...Yes."

"It wasn't a curse?" Xu wonders.

"No." His brother looks at him. "It wasn't."

"Oh." Xu looks in the direction the man-beast-frog had gone. "Okay."

No, wait, not okay!

If it wasn't a curse then what had it been?

What in the name of Celestia had that actually been? 

Why had that creature been walking around on two human legs in the middle of the woods searching for clothes like that?

What part of Liyue was this?

An unexplored area of Lisha in the mountainous woods and cliffs full of terrifying things?

Where had it just run off to?

For all the questions running rampant in Kaeya's bewildered mind, Xu's brother shares none of the same.

He simply sets down his catches on a nearby rock, and rests his rod along its side.

"So long as you're happy little brother. Be careful, that's all. It's another week to Minlin."

Childe snorts. Threat of the creature gone, he steps out from under the purple canopy and the trees, onto the edge of grass marking the start of the riverbank.

"There's something called being a good brother and something called being an overindulgent one. He doesn't look like he knows how to make it work."

Kaeya joins him, frowning moderately. "And you would know about that, would you?"

"I have siblings," Childe answers, matter-of-fact. "And they're younger, one of them just as reckless."

"I didn't know that."

"You didn't ask."

Kaeya glances at him out the corner of his eye.

Rain slides down Childe's neck. Kaeya tracks it.

It vanishes down his chest.

He tears his eye away.

In front of them, the memory within the soulscape carries on.

Xu's brother kneels in the jagged, rocky riverbank. From within his travel cloak- a belt of flaying knives and minor seasonings in pouches.

Preparation for a meal at the fire crackling steady on the bank.

Xu sits and scoots next to the older, pulling out his own belt of knives and seasoning from under his cloak- although the knives look like plastic ones and the seasoning appears to be little baggies labeled with the names of herbs with nothing actually in them.

"Is your head feeling better now?" Xu asks after a minute, watching as his brother contemplates over a blade for descaling fish.

His brother selects one. Xu picks the plastic imitation of the same one from his own belt.

"My head?" His brother questions, softly. "Did something happen to it?"

"Huh?" Xu's mouth twists. "Big brother, you fell pretty hard on it a while back when we were at home. How come you never remember when I ask?"

"Fall? Did that happen? Were you hurt?"

Xu puffs out his cheeks, fussing. "I was fine, I'm asking about you!"

His older brother laughs gently. He ruffles Xu's hair calmly and reaches for the fish splayed on the rock beside them. "It must've been a dream you had."

"I don't think it was a dream," Xu dubiously says.

Childe and Kaeya listen and watch the conversation as it carries on. They listen and watch as the conversation switches to a small lesson on cleaning fish. They listen and watch as seasonings as discussed. Further listen and watch as Xu's brother instructs him with patience and kindness.

And then they glance at one another.

Childe speaks first.

"... I have so many questions."

Perfect.

Kaeya did too.

"Ignoring whatever the hell 'Mr. Frog' was-"

Agreed-

"Should that kid be remembering something we did?" Childe jerks a thumb in Xu's direction.

"No," Kaeya answers, eyes on the boy in question. Bothered. "Not at all."

"So why is he?"

"I don't know."

"Is this going to be a problem?"

"I don't know."

"Well I hope you know something useful, Alberich, because this is getting more bizarre by the second."

"You don't have to tell me that."

He knows. 

Kaeya nearly brings a hand to his covered eye to peel away its covering and look around. But he knows it's useless.

Their Visions. Any sort of... otherworldly ability they possessed. It couldn't be used in a place like this.

Messy memories and inconsistencies, shoved and jumbled in one space. 

How deep did the depths of a soul go? 

Where was Chao Xing and Wei Yin within it?

He gnaws on the inside of his mouth.

After a moment of watching Xu and his brother grill fish over the fire- he gives in, and admits to his own shortcomings.

"...I don't know enough to tell you what's going on."

"That's typical."

Kaeya faces him. "And you know nothing. So be quiet."

"Soulscapes-" and the Harbinger says it near skeptical despite standing right inside of one, "-aren't my area of specialty. Hocus-pocus is yours."

"Hocus-pocus? What do you think ordinary common people are taught in Khaenri'ah?"

"That's what I'm saying. I wouldn't know," Childe points out. Then his eyes slant. Judging. "But I guess neither would you."

Kaeya furrows his eyebrows. The words are contradictory to what Childe had said before.

Another meaning in them?

He doesn't speak, trying to discern it. But it's unnecessary- because Childe goes on.

"I'm talking about what you are, Alberich."

It takes everything in Kaeya to keep his expression schooled, to keep his feet in place and stop himself from jolting back in any sort of alarm.

He chooses to rest a hand on his hip instead, smirking small.

"What I am? What a funny choice of words. Did you change your mind? Am I now something different than the dirt beneath your boot?"

The world around them appears to change, a sweeping darkness, yet neither Kaeya nor Childe pay it any mind.

Not quite.

Echoing. Dripping water.

Rain falls heavily and footsteps walk beyond the void of black, but they aren't privy to the journey taking place beyond.

It sounds like the thunderstorms of Mond.

The footfalls sounds like the mismatched ones of a father and son.

Childe states it bluntly. "You're not human."

Kaeya's eyebrows furrow even deeper.

Of all the nonsense he had expected Tartaglia to shoot out of his inane mouth that was the last thing he would've ever predicted. What had put such a ridiculous idea into his head?

"Maybe you're the one who's knocked his head on something," he tells Tartaglia, and he's not sure why but as he says it, he hears the rain around them breaking, bursting on abandoned roads in his ears and recalls his father's face in the downpour, the hand on his shoulder, his words.

And then what?

Crepus hadn't found him right away.

It'd been freezing cold and miserable so Kaeya had gone beneath a tree and stood for ages before sitting down and...

He shakes his head.

No. That had no relevancy here. None of that did.

Not to the situation. Not to Xu or his brother. Wei Yin or Chao Xing.

Especially no relevancy to someone like Tartaglia.

He draws up his chin.

Sets both hands on his waist with self-certainty.

He didn't get his Vision being a lie of something else after all. He had gotten it for being himself. The one that despised the lies and was sick of the manipulations and orders still trying to reach him though he had found an escape in Mondstadt's winds and skies.

"I'm human," he repeats to Tartaglia. "Same as anyone else left in Khaenri'ah."

The storms clears in his ears.

The blackness they stand within is silent and still.

His mouth curls in a mirthless smile under Tartaglia's flat eyes and the Harbinger's poor attempts to know more. He curves the direction of the talk. "We're not like sinners from the Abyss. People like you who make deals with it to learn its heretical teachings."

Tartaglia travels the curve and brings the talk right back to where it began, unrelenting. "And you what? Cover your eye for show? I saw what you were."

"My eye has nothing to do with anything. And my eyepatch never came off."

"It didn't have to. I could see your face."

"And I could see yours. Are we pointing out the obvious now? For what purpose? In case you haven't noticed, I'm hardly the most important thing we should be talking about here."

Childe stops talking.

Not for anything Kaeya had said, but for his own reasons. There is something different now.

Different above them.

Stars and galaxies.

But it feels like they're sinking into something. Something deep beneath the earth.

The thread between them glows quiet.

"You don't remember," says Childe.

"Remember what?"

"Being in the Abyss."

"I was never in there."

"You were."

"I wasn't." Kaeya studies him- and does so for once without ire- intently. "You're getting things mixed up."

He knew there was a drawback to getting mashed in a soulscape while bound together by some god's dictation.

Wei Yin's father had said something back at that resthouse. Something Childe had been too caught up in his sourness over their 'engagement' to properly hold a discussion over when he had sent a glance over.

Body and spirit in commitment. Soul and mind.

At this rate, time wouldn't be the lone danger of being brought here, would it? They were going to end up confusing pieces and experiences of who they were-

"Kaeya, that's not it."

Kaeya's thoughts trail off.

Baffled.

His eye had gone and fallen to the dark ground and soil between them but now he raises his head sharply to the man across from him, stunned.

"What did you just say?"

"I said that's not it," Childe answers, a degree of annoyance in his tone. "Whatever you've got running through your mind is wrong. I can tell right away. Nothing's gotten jumbled. In the Abyss, you were-" he stops speaking. Kaeya is looking at him with a spooked expression. "What?"

Kaeya continues to look at him, uncomprehending.

"Why did you say my name?"

Childe stares at him. "Because it's your name."

"Don't do that," Kaeya tells him. "Don't call me that."

"Don't call you... your name," Childe says, blankly. "You call me Tartaglia all the time."

"That's different."

Childe rolls his eyes. "Alright, Kaeya."

"Knock it off."

"Sure thing, Kaeya."

"Stop it-" 

"If you call me Tartaglia then I'm calling you Kaeya-"

Windchimes in the breeze.

Mountainous cliffs.

They're in a vast, vast plane. Blue skies of eternity.

Papers, pages of journals fly about, inked and scrawled upon endless, thoughtful words. Regal and gentle; a colossal crown of white, the clouds encircle the mountain top and its bowing, grassy plain.

It's a jarring change from the abyssal depths and shadowed contemplation shared between them both seconds before, but Childe isn't paying attention to that, he's paying attention to the knight stepping away from him in between the windblown papers, and the absolute redness and panicked look to his face.

He steps forward and bats a nuisance of a paper in that briefly hides Kaeya's expression from his sight as it floats down, and says incredulous- something lurching inside him, coiling in his stomach he can't place-

"Are you joking?" 

He grabs a hold of the hand Kaeya lifts in an attempt to push him away, and pulls him in instead.

"Hearing me say your name makes you that hap-"

Kaeya grabs the nearest floating paper with his other hand and smacks it into Tartaglia's face. "You'll call me Alberich," he hisses.

An angry cat.

Childe is no longer trying to pull him close.

He is now trying dragging him into a lock, attempting to shove the piece of paper he'd been slapped in the eyes with into 'Alberich's' mouth.

"Please don't desecrate my little brother's thoughts."

They pause in their scuffle.

They turn their heads.

A familiar youth looks at them, pale skin and dark eyes, a scar through his left one and long hair tied high upon his head.

A common white shirt, simple pants, a neatly pressed cloak pinned by a winged brooch.

Welcoming in the midst of the fluttering journal pages.

An eyeball-imp rests content on his shoulder. 

He smiles, kind.

"Well met," he says. "If you could... please spit that out."
 

---

 

Kaeya and Childe stand a good five feet apart.

"It's good to meet who was poking around in Xu's soul."

To Kaeya's humiliation, the vision of the youth that is Xu's older brother unballs the wet paper that had been halfway stuffed into his mouth and straightens it out while introducing himself.

"I'm Shen. Xu's big brother. But I suppose you might've worked that out. You've been in here for a while."

A while.

It's not what Kaeya wants to hear.

"How long is a while?"

"I can't say. I... have no access to anything beyond where we are," 'Shen' replies.

"So you serve no purpose. You're useless," Tartaglia states.

Probably annoyed that he couldn't finish getting that paper in Kaeya's throat- the asshole.

"This is why that runt's gone off the rails? Following people around and flinging spirit bombs of death? Because you somehow got yourself blasted into here too?"

"Ah... a misunderstanding."

The visage of Xu's brother is apologetic.

He lets go of the wet and marginally crinkled paper, letting the next light wind carry it up, high far and away.

"I'm not him. Not the 'brother' you believe. Not exactly. You could say I'm just... a figment of the precious things he's stowed away."

But there was only him and the flying curse high up on the mountain and the plain.

Was there nothing else?

Kaeya's slapped lightly in the face by another wayward sheet of paper.

Right.

Those two- and these.

He brushes it off without looking. "What are all of these?"

Had Shen said 'thoughts' earlier on?

Shen's eyes brighten a faint degree. "They're Xu's feelings. His written thoughts. His sent letters and dedicated notes within his kept diaries. Although... it has been a while since he's written anything."

"Too busy firing demon-banishing spells at innocent people," Tartaglia remarks.

Kaeya scoffs. "You can't possibly consider yourself to be innocent."

"I'm plenty innocent," comes the response.

"In what?"

"Things, Alberich."

"Like what?" 

Tartaglia doesn't answer- but he does squint very narrowly in Kaeya's direction.

Kaeya rolls his eye. "That's what I thought."

Still, the Fatui does make a point about something.

For a kid spitting foul language and stomping around, covered in invisible curses and wielding potent 'spells', this mountaintop and its blue skies and fresh breeze and sunlight are peculiar.

"Where are we?"

Shen considers him and Childe- then considers the space around them. The eyeball imp chirps and tucks itself comfortably under his chin from its perch on his shoulder.

"You could call this the purest pocket of Xu's soul. It's untouched by the truths outside. I suppose everyone has a part like this within themselves, though I don't think it's often reached. The skies are clear. The air is crisp and the colors are vivid. Joy and ease. In other words. True happiness."

And Kaeya's eye finds the spot past Shen, towards the clouds and skies, a fascinating sight as Childe's unwanted gaze swings on over his way, and there is a note in his voice, that disbelieving tone, that lilting raise; something smug, childishly gleeful like he's discovered something to treasure and hoard for centuries.

"Happiness huh. Of that level. How deprived of something someone must have been that a tiny word or two would ever carry them straight to the peaks of joy. I guess businessmen and bandits don't bother with names. Now what am I supposed to do with this information?"

"Nothing," says Kaeya acerbically. Shortly. Tight. "Shove it down your throat. Choke on it. Suffocate."

"That's a little more your speed isn't it? I'm almost flattered. You should've told me you wanted us to be more friendly."

"That's not what I want," Kaeya snaps.

This mess of a soulscape with three different pieces and two wayward, lost heirs doing who-knew-what on their own- it was the more logical reason for why he had been feeling and thinking odd things this whole time.

Childe can't help it. The look on Alberich's face is a pinched, furious one far too tempting to leave alone.

"Sex that good? It flipped a switch in you?"

It's a burning, burning look of hellfire and wrath. He nearly sighs in joy himself at the sight of it.

"Oh-" Shen. "Lovers. I see. That explains a thing or two."

"We're not lovers," Kaeya grinds out.

"But I'm starting to think he wishes we were," Childe says.

"Either way," Shen notes as Kaeya's hackles further raise, "you coming here of your own volition is surprising. You're outsiders and of no relation to Xu. Nor do you bear any connections or experiences that have left a lasting impression. But given that you're in my little brother's soul to begin with, speaks to unusual circumstances. It's strange. I sense traces of my little brother in the wake of your footsteps, and traces of yourselves broken and merged in strange corners of Xu's spirit. How you arrived here must have been unorthodox."

"For an imaginary person in the soul of your brother who's a kid, you sure speak big words," Childe comments.

"Xu is an intelligent boy. His attitude can...diminish first impressions."

"What do you do up here?"

"I watch. I listen. I feel and observe what rumbles below. But mostly I exist. And I wait."

"Wait?" Kaeya repeats.

"For Xu to find his way here. It's a difficult journey for many. I'm content to be patient."

"I don't mean to sound like any sort of jerk," Childe says, sounding like that's what he intends on doing, "But that journey that little runt is going to have to take to get in this 'special' place of happiness, isn't going to happen any time soon. He was out in the real world weaving signs of death."

"Xu," says Shen quite calmly, "is not a bad kid. The practices the Yuan Clan can have... negative influence on those inside it in a lot of ways."

Hearing that, Kaeya casts aside his foul thoughts towards Tartaglia as the words cause him to think of Chao Xing.

"You'll have to fill me in," he says. "How did Xu end up in the Yuan Clan? It didn't seem like he or his brother were anywhere near Liyue."

"I believe Xu's mother, and those on his mother's side, were similar to Xu himself. A frightful thing like seeing and bearing curses naturally from birth is not so welcomed in many parts of the world. I think they must've left where they were from and found a quiet, more isolated village to try and live in. As for the clan..." Shen's eyes lower. They raise. They wander. They return. "Shen, his brother, took him to the mountains where the Yuan Clan resided. And Xu was taken in."

"And not his brother?" Childe questions. 

"Shen wouldn't be of interest to them. There was nothing about him. So he departed."

A gust of wind at the words and Shen reaches up to grab a loose paper flitting by.

He looks at it for a long, long time.

Then he shares and reads. 

"I don't really get what they want. I have to sit in these dark chambers and read a lot of stuff I don't understand to this circle of creepy adults with owl masks over this candle with a green flame that never goes out, and they make me take classes with some other kids. The rooms are nice I guess. There's a big bed with soft sheets. But the other kids are mean to me and keep saying I don't belong. The teachers like me a lot though and like to give me extra things to write and take me on small trips in the valley to speak to the things the others can't see, and I even got a book to write and draw all the names of my friends. No one else can see them but I think that's fine! There are a lot, and the instructors and adults keep giving me looks and talking when I walk by. Something about giving me a different room, further in the Clan Pavilion where other special people get to go. But I don't think I want to do that. Simple rooms are nice. Kinda like... being at home. Um. But it's much warmer here. And I think I like that better. I just. Think it would be nice, big brother. If you were here too." 

The page is released. Another is grabbed.

"I tried to cook something for my classmates today to maybe make them like me more, and for our instructor, but something went wrong. They threw up and a bunch passed out and our instructor stopped moving for half a day and the cave we were in was full of weird bat things like Carmella except they weren't nice and they tried to take over the bodies of everyone. But big brother, you told me my cooking was the best in the world. Maybe I didn't add enough salt?" 

Carmella?

That was the name of the flying eyeball curse?

Kaeya gives it a wary look. It blinks at him and flaps its wings, spinning lightly- and flighty and friendly as it appears, he has to wonder.

...What happened to Xu's class?

What were they doing in that dark cave to begin with?

Was that why his brother had been teaching him how to grill those fish? Why his 'cooking supplies' were plastics and fakes? Because he'd wipe out people otherwise?

A paper flaps against the side of his head and he peels it off, eye naturally falling to read it in his head.

They keep sending me into a strange place to make more friends. They mark the pages of my book and drawings. Then they ask me to bring my friends out and they take them away.

That place they make me go to. It makes me feel weirder and weirder. Upset sometimes and mad. But- of course I'm not scared! I was taught lots of techniques to protect myself! It makes the scary things I run into inside go away forever.

There's a lady here who I study under now. I think she's important. She always has this guy fanning her with a big leaf and she lies in a fancy couch thing with cucumbers over her eyes. But I'm... a little worried I guess. The more I go to find friends, the more strange things cling to me. And I don't know how to get them off. My new master... She says it's normal. That I should carry as much as I can with me because I'll get stronger and later I can help bring her a profit.

What do you think I should do? 

There is a paper Tartaglia is reading himself when Kaeya looks up and away.

He lets go of it.

Kaeya catches the tail end of the simple words written on it. 

Big brother. Will you ever write back?  

"It seems like a simple thing to do between family; between siblings with such a strong bond," Shen comments drawing both their attentions. "Surely though they were far apart, at the very least, their words could reach one another. Xu was different then. Younger. It was what he once believed. You could call him naive. But the more he learned, the older he grew, the more he realized what had happened. His temper was not like this. Too much time in the veil; too many clinging curses, harmful- they corrupt. They sink into the mind. As much as they protect their host, they silently destroy. It's... cold outside the memories. Barren and sealed. That's the nature of this soul. At least," murmurs Shen, "on the surface. But you two have come here with your companions, missing from you though they are, and you have delved past that defense with seeking hands to find Xu within. So you see things others aren't allowed."

"What happened to his brother?" Childe. He says it, gruff. "Can't imagine he'd leave his kid sibling given their 'bond'."

Kaeya wants to know the same. Was he dead?

Shen himself had said he was a 'precious figment' tucked in the safe faraway reaches of Xu's soul.

The thought- does something to his face. He's not sure what it is, but Shen takes note of it and Shen lowers his gaze to the thread hanging, tangled, wrapped comfortable between Tartaglia's right hand and Kaeya's left, despite the distance they keep. 

"Bonds. They are important things," Shen agrees. "To have one as undying as your own is what some might call a blessing."

Childe and Kaeya say it as one. "You've got the wrong idea."

A faint laugh.

"Is that right? But still you've come all the way here together."

"We're saying you have the wrong idea," they tell him again.

Shen doesn't appear to hear them, growing distant, if not absent in voice. "Xu wrote many letters, he paged many notes in his journals, missing his brother. But his brother never returned them. Indeed that brother never returned at all." He smiles, eyebrows creasing. "That brother, Shen, couldn't wait to be rid of him."

Childe and Kaeya share a blink.

Shen's smile stays, though his eyes are grieved.

"Exchanged for the highest coin. A child who could see curses would be worth a lot to someone somewhere. Poverty- he wouldn't have to suffer it. Ostracized- he wouldn't be subjected to the gossips and the stares. Their father who abandoned them for the monster that he believed his son was. Their mother who died in giving birth. Shen, whose scar came from Xu himself, who in fear of what creatures lurked and sought him out in waking nightmares, lashed out and accidentally brought injury. Shen had tried for a time to look after his brother. But it was too much. They were alone with nothing but judgment. They were alone without comfort. Xu never saw the way his brother envied others; never thought about the long trips his brother took on journeys; never considered the fact that his brother might not come back. Or perhaps he had. A part of him feared but chose to live in denial of the possibility that his brother too would leave his side. So he chose to believe that everything was fine. He chose to live brightly, earnestly, to welcome that brother with a smile and cheer in reassurance that so long as they had each other, everything would be alright."

Shen turns his head and brings his gaze to the plane of open sky and wind.

"The realities of the world aren't pleasant. They aren't the utopias our hearts desire. We'd like to forget. Rather... I believe Xu himself would like to forget. The love he had given to a brother he cherished and who in turn seemed to cherish him despite what he was... The betrayal of that changed him greatly. And so he closed off. And so he turned his eye from anything that would remind him of the one family he had left. Angry. Recalcitrant. Displaced- but still too young. What he lost was painful. And there was no one to allow him to cry. Into the hold of the Yuans and their teachings. Into the veil. He poured into the dark ventures to blot out the suffering. Yet. A heart that bleeds, will bleed until there's nothing left."

There is a clash of flame, there is a raging storm of thunder and breaking clouds, there is blood in the dirt and blood in the grass and there are the eyes of the mansion, their dead father, their silent, grief-wrought butlers and maids at the windows and the doors and the stairs.

The consequence of a truth, and the years of countless lies.

Such things.

No... couldn't be patched by any bandage or few words.

Kaeya had limped, bruised and bleeding, dragging himself through the woods behind their home after, the tip of his sword, marking a trail as it hung limp in his grasp. And his steps had faltered, and the nearest tree had become the stability and the shelter missing not any different than the first time he'd been cast aside by family.

But the choice was his own. And the result was deserved.

A liar. A traitor.

But. 

But. Even so-

"Because I am only the good of Shen that Xu saw, I can't claim to know. But those thoughts do come," Shen speaks. "To Xu. That ruse put on by Shen, up until the very end when Xu had been left. Even as he watched the hand of his brother accept the pouches of gold. Even as he watched the shadow of his brother depart with a promise that he would later return to bring him back to home. In the years of isolation that followed among strangers, evil and curses. Xu would wonder. Maybe some part of Shen had fallen for his own lies. Maybe Shen had doubts about what he was doing. If it was right. If it was wrong. The care he had shown to Xu- surely not all could be false. Because for all the betrayal, his brother had still remained in those crucial moments from birth, attempting to give and attempting to try a hand at normality. The reason for my being here, could perhaps be just that. Or else why would such a kind piece of me remain in his memory and linger in his soul."

The eyes on Kaeya belong to Tartaglia, but Kaeya is looking very purposefully towards the ground and its vibrant, swaying grass.

What does he want?

Doesn't he have anything better to lay his attention on?

Shen.

Was a garbage excuse for a brother. Wasn't he?

There is every part of Kaeya that wants to strangle the neck of the apparition before him.

Childe, a big brother, should want to do the same.

"Why is he obsessed with Chao Xing?" he hears himself ask in the calm quiet that's fallen among the noise of blowing letters and pages that never reached the one Xu sought. "Why the hatred with Wei Yin?"

"Well that's a little different."

Shen sounds thoughtful enough that Kaeya stops wondering how to bury himself in the earth to get away from Tartaglia's gaze and looks towards the visage of Xu's brother instead. Sure enough, the muted acceptance that had swept Shen's features has gone, replaced with consideration and lightness.

"There will always be strife between the clans. If you saw what the property of the Wei and Yuans looked like in the valley you'd know what I mean. They've got a strange situation going on with how the Pavilion and Estate are built. They should... probably just build a fence..." he murmurs.

Memories of a somber past leave Kaeya in place of confusion at the words. "A fence?"

Shen clears his throat. "Nothing. Sorry. To be honest, Xu's anger is largely built from the hatred instilled within most children of the Yuan. Particularly those who reside in the shadows as sorcerers. They have no need to bother themselves with the false pleasantness the faces of the clans show to one another in meetings and in the public eye. But...the situation with Wei Yin and Chao Xing is more because of Carmella."

"The floating eyeball?" Childe asks, looking at it, no longer fixated on Kaeya- though he still stands with his body facing him, arms crossed.

"Yes." Shen's smile has returned, but it's similar to the one first showed when he greeted them. A sincere one. He reaches and rubs the head of the sentient curse, laughing quietly. "Carmella was Xu's first friend. The first curse he could see that didn't look to harm him, and the only one that wanted his company at the time."

"And it's here," Childe says, making a point. "With you."

"Yes. There was an incident," Shen hesitates to say. "With Wei Yin and Chao Xing. You could say Carmella was caught in the crossfire. Xu's...feelings towards them likely emerged from that. Actually-" his speech grows stilted as he thinks. "That's probably. Where he is. Now that I think about it. Back in that place."

"Do you want to be specific or should I beat it out of you?" Childe says.

There it was.

Kaeya knew the other was waiting for an excuse to toss the 'precious' memory of Xu's brother around. He snorts very softly, bemused.

"You- You don't have to do that," Shen is quick to respond, apparently able to sense a new sense of danger even within the happy clouds of the field. "If you go there, you're sure to find him. It was a special place he sat with Carmella and where he wrote his letters to his brother. "

And... Wei Yin and Chao Xing had been there?

Together?

Younger than they were now? Without a doubt less mature?

Shen is not the only one experiencing a mild sense of impending danger and doom.

"How do we get there?" Kaeya asks with dread.

The eyeball-imp, Carmella, flaps her wings and trills, spinning slowly and playfully before settling on top of Childe's head.

Kaeya stares as it burrows itself in the curls of the lieutenant, making itself comfy, settling content.

Childe's face.

Is harder stone than it had been back at the window in the tavern,  indicative of an inner death. And Kaeya really... really hadn't thought it possible.

The Fatui reaches for the curse.

Kaeya stops his hand with his own, unable to tear his gaze from the creature.

Childe's eyes drop to him.

"Leave it," Kaeya says, transfixed by the sight of something so... adorable making itself at home in the cousin-to-the-devil's hair.

Childe's expression bunches and twists in irritated grievance, but he doesn't argue against it and rather moves his glower to Shen who is merely watching. "This thing better not take us anywhere weird."

"Don't worry," Shen says. "Carmella is a great guide and only carries the best of intentions for Xu. She'll take you to him."

"If not I'm coming back here for you."

"...Please don't do that."

"How would you even get back here on your own?" Kaeya says to the Harbinger. "Is there some mystical happiness buried inside all the dead bears in your soul?"

"Those bears have nothing to do with anything," Tartaglia responds, an unspoken but very loud 'idiot' tagged onto the end of it. "Besides- isn't our bond undying? Wherever I go, you'll be with me. Isn't that the gist of it?"

"So?"

Tartaglia's mouth curls. "So it won't be too hard getting back here if we need to, will it? Babe."

Kaeya opens his mouth, flustered and incensed. It was a thousandtimesworsethanhearinghisownname-

Shen chuckles, cutting off their next argument without a doubt ready to begin. As their eyes fall on him, he bows his head in small acknowledgement. The papers about him stir and swell with gusto. "Should you return, I hope it will be with the good news that you have found my little brother safe and unharmed. You have my thanks. And my apologies."

Kaeya frowns.

Childe does too.

Their thoughts are one and the same.

"We don't owe you anything."

Shen chuckles once more. He begins to vanish in the swirl of dancing letters. "Thank you, friends."

"No, seriously," Childe starts, "you sorry excuse for a sibling, you better be dead outside in the real world because if I see you-"

With Carmella's comforting trill, they are whisked from the mountains.

They are whisked from the clouds, they are whisked and carried and dropped in a swell of wind and white and warmth and ringing, soft bells-

Into one of the most beautiful gardens sweeping through a valley, colorful, ponds and stone bridges, rich wood gazebos, blossoming verdant, pink and gold-leafed trees.

A flowered, budding bush, round and robust, tall as the saplings hung with bird feeders beside it.

They tumble into one together.

Full of thorns.

There isn't any way the sharp brambles haven't stabbed themselves into Tartaglia's back and skull. The eyeball-imp rests on his face, cheerfully, blocking half of it from sight.

Kaeya, dragging his face out of the Harbinger's collarbones for the second time that day, has a very good reason to believe Tartaglia is dead, as the man hasn't yet tried to push him off. But there are hands on his waist, gripping tight, and it's the one sign Kaeya takes- disgruntled as he is at the ridiculously strong hold on him- that Childe is still alive.

Potentially.

"Well?" he questions after a period of silence. "Are we moving or am I going to have to drag you around by the foot?"

The hands on his waist squeeze. They briefly trail up. 

Then shove him off.

Kaeya topples out the bush.

He hits the pebbled gravel of the winding gray path lined in stone lanterns, and scowls.

Childe picks himself out a moment later, flowers in his curls, scowling just as much as he holds Carmella by the head.

"Fine.  Alberich," he says sourly.

The threaded bond between them stays strong.

"Let's go find our missing kid." 

 

 

 

Notes:

one of my favorite groups had a memeworthy, amazing as hell comeback today, we are now known collectively as jenshin impact, and i have had the blackest and coldest of coffees, thus i am both alive and dead inside. it's a great day! i hope this chapter finds you well on the start to a new weekend <3

oh! i had a burner twt account made about a chapter and half ago, thinking about readers who might not be subscribed or have bookmarked this as guests. if you'd like updates or want to share thoughts you're not cozy sharing in the friendly comments down below, please feel free to do so there!

*edit* i didn't add my handle i'm so clown

**edit** 💀
Okay I have it now! If you ever stop by please know you will be looking at a very blank feed and page until I figure out what I'm doing huhuhu-

@justaway_cannon

come say hello! but only if you want!

Chapter 10: be a little more honest. and buy a crib

It takes exactly one minute to find Yuan Xu.

Because they turn around and step on him.

They stare down at him, one foot each on his stomach.

He's unmoving. 

Older.

The one they had encountered in Liyue. The one who was likely aged thirteen.

His eyes are closed but there is ink on them drawn to make it appear as though they were open.

His hands are folded neatly on his chest. Cloaked buttoned and pressed.

He looks dead.

"....We didn't do that when we stepped on him, did we?" asks Kaeya aloud after a very, very long and prominent silence.

"If we did then it was your foot that dealt the killing blow," Childe responds.

They stay standing with one foot on the kid. Carmella floats in between them, blinking, emitting a noise of curious confusion.

A ripple and a burst.

On the gravelly, stone path ahead, two extremely familiar people appear- as if violently ejected from another part of Xu's soul.

They're arguing.

They're arguing loud. 

There is a paintbrush in Wei Yin's hand. A trash bag in Chao Xing's, carrying cluttering, clinking, mysterious objects.

Their clothes are scorched. They look like they've blown through six houses and three walls.

"-said not to touch it!" Chao Xing is snapping angrily.

"It was shiny! What were you expecting me to do? Not throw it?"

" Yes. We barely managed to find the others you threw after I told you not to, and now you have launched the last one, the most important one, into a place we cannot reach! How will we wake him now?"

"Well if you had just caught it when I said, 'Hey Chao Xing catch!' , it wouldn't have vanished into the fire and that weird monster's mouth." Wei Yin points his paintbrush at her, inking her forehead. "You can't blame me for this! Carp told me all about this! People who try to pin the blame on others and not take responsibility for themselves. You should be ashamed- ashamed- apologize to me. Apologize to me and Carp!"

"The bandit you cheated on me with?" Chao Xing throws his brush aside.

"My paintbrush! You-! " He rounds on Chao Xing, upset. "It wasn't cheating- it was totally consensual! And I'll do it again!"

"The nerve -"

She whacks him with her fan.

Then whacks him with the trash bag.

Wei Yin goes down like a rock. Chao Xing steps on him.

"This is how you treat someone you 'like'?" Wei Yin yelps into the ground. "This is why I told you to go ride off on your broom-"

Childe and Kaeya look at them. They take a step back, off of Xu.

"Mother of the Abyss," says Childe.

Yes, Kaeya agrees. That about sums it up.

It feels like he hasn't seen them in ages. It feels like he's seeing them too soon.

Relief and dread.

Kaeya raises his voice. He calls out to them.

Chao Xing looks over, surprised, getting off Wei Yin. Wei Yin perks up. He gets to his knees- leaps to his feet.

He's a tousled mess of sloppy clothes and spilling hair in disarray with a dirt-stained, pebble-ridden face, yet he bolts over with the purest of smiles and cheer.

"Oh- Vinny!"

"Yes, hello Wei Yin-" Kaeya begins.

He's dragged forward and swept into a spinning, spinning hug.

He's set on the ground.

He stumbles dizzily.

Wei Yin straightens him out and Kaeya is struck with the memory of this particular sort of things happening before on a beach, on a Shoal, in what seemed like a lifetime ago in another world.

"I missed you," Wei Yin greets. He gives Kaeya a good once-over. "You look no worse for wear."

Kaeya wishes he could say the same. He wipes the dirt and pebbles off of the heir's face, exasperated. "What in the world did you two do?"

"This and that. Nothing important."

Wei Yin grabs his hand and points with his other, excitedly, turning them around to get a proper look at their surroundings.

"These are our gardens. They're mostly Wei Clan property, but the Yuans keep trying to pretend it's theirs. I'm not sure why you can't see it in the little squirt's soul, but the Wei Estate is normally to the south, and the Yuan Pavilion is the north. The branch families are sprawled along the rest of the mountain to the east and west, all the way into the valley. Up here in the gardens is just where the main families operate and do business. A total waste if you ask me. Instead of dumb dinners in the halls, we should be drinking and getting frisky in the trees."

"Incorrigible," Chao Xing judges as she joins them.

Kaeya acknowledges her, then takes a good look at the gardens now that he isn't stepping on some questionably lifeless boy on the path behind them.

Past Wei Yin's shoulder- to the colorful, vibrant bushes and black ivory posts wound in leafy vines and blossoms- to the gazebos and stone bridges beyond, to the fringe-trees and fish-filled ponds, the imported wisterias, the stone statues of serpents, and serpents strangling birds- whimsical in design, well-maintained, endless galleries, warding sticks and blue-tiled shingles.

An assortment of open, structured halls and pavilions, sweeping over water, through the boundless enclosure of trees.

Stately buildings through the leaves. Some with a single story, several with two, appearing to be for study or quiet contemplation.

A distance ahead, further along the path Wei Yin and Chao Xing had appeared on, was a stone terrace over the curve of moon bridge, home to a clustered, mini-garden, encircled by benches and a massive, multi-tiered cast stone fountain amidst gold and blue flowers.

"It's certainly impressive," says Kaeya, eye lingering on the nearest bush at their side, bearing white gardenias and verdant leaves.

Wei Yin notices and pulls one out, offering it.

It's yanked out of his hand by Tartaglia who reaches from over Kaeya's shoulder and tosses it out of sight.

Kaeya turns, coincidentally half into him, and makes a face up at him. "Was that necessary?"

The Harbinger glances down at him. "Not at all."

"Then why did you do that?"

 "Because you didn't need it."

Kaeya elbows him.

Childe grabs his side and pinches it, and Kaeya hisses and fumbles around fully into the other man to seize a hold of a nipple and twist it with full force.

"Yeeou- fuck, ow!" 

"Whoa, take it easy there lover-boys!" Wei Yin says, amused. "We're in public. I'm not sure Chao Xing would want to witness a round two."

She turns his way. "Are you implying you'd want to watch?"

"Who wouldn't?"

Three sets of eyes fix upon him.

He's oblivious to the judgment in them, curiously looking past Childe and Kaeya to where Xu is on the ground.

"It's good to see the little buddy didn't get up and wander off while me and Chao Xing were trying to fix him, but what's that thing sitting on him?"

"Fix him?" Kaeya shoves away from Tartaglia who's trying his damnedest to get his own hand on Kaeya's nipple to rip it off. He takes shelter behind Wei Yin and smirks at the Harbinger when Fatui stops and tightly stares.

What- frightened by Wei Yin's unknown ward abilities?

Kaeya didn't think he was the sort.

"What do you mean fix him?" he finishes, following Wei Yin's gaze towards Xu from over the heir's shoulder. "Were you the one who painted his eyes?"

"I sure was!" Wei Yin says. "You're so observant. As expected from someone with a sexy brain and sexy legs."

What was he saying? Anyone would've noticed the fake eyes painted onto the kid.

"That's a curse belonging to Xu. She goes by the name 'Carmella'," Kaeya divulges. "...You don't recognize her?"

Wei Yin glances back at him. "Should I?"

"Yes, Young Master, you should." Chao Xing beholds the curse sitting idle on Xu's chest with mild confusion. "I could've sworn years and years ago with a curse that looked like this we accidentally..."

She stops.

Finish the story, Kaeya thinks.

She doesn't.

Childe crosses his arms with scrutiny. "Why are you holding a trash bag? What's in there?"

Her confusion leaves. It's replaced by ire.

"It's Yuan Xu," she answers. "All the pieces of him we've gathered." 

 

---

 

They stand around Xu's comatose 'body'.

Chao Xing holds the black trash bag as Wei Yin rummages inside it, pulling out a handful of palm-sized, glass orbs.

They are colored.

They are encased in what looks like harsh black roots and veins.

Six of them- and Carmella blinks her eyes, makes a loud noise of recognition, and flies up to hover around Wei Yin's hands.

"You are one funky bird," he tells her. "Sorry about what Chao Xing did to you back then. She shouldn't have been in those bushes."

"Young Master that wasn't me, that was you," she says, not bothering to spare either a look as she addresses Kaeya and the Harbinger next to him.

They've all come to a state of temporary peace to resolve the matter at hand. Kaeya and Childe have already briefly shared their experience with Xu and his brother 'Shen'. They don't discuss the bond binding them to one another or its growth.

It seems, despite its change, neither Chao Xing or Wei Yin can see it.

"It's your turn," Tartaglia states, like they're in an interrogation. "Fess up."

"It's a long story. We shouldn't get into it," Wei Yin responds.

"No," says Kaeya, folding his arms the same time Tartaglia does. "Get into it Wei Yin. I would like to hear."

"Well-" Wei Yin chuckles, "if you're the one asking. Sure!"

"S u re! " Tartaglia mimics beneath his breath.

"After you two fell off, we wound up in a strange snowy place like the one we first dropped into, zooming like a rocket on Chao Xing's spell. It seemed super intent on carrying us to this cabin all isolated on the outskirts of some dingy village, but Chao Xing doesn't know how to drive and it wasn't letting us stop for some reason, so we ended up blasting straight through six houses before wiping out the cabin and blowing half of it to smithereens."

...Was that not Xu's childhood?

Was that not his childhood they had blown to smithereens in his own soul?

"We were stuck for a bit afterwards because she ran out of stamina and we couldn't figure out how to rev it up."

Rev what up? Her spell? Her carpet of a spell?

The invisible carpet of a spell that in no way should have been operating like an engined craft from Fontaine capable of beyond human speeds?

"We ended up settling down in the remains of the cabin and trying to cook some stuff-"

Why! 

"-but nothing was working and the fireplace wouldn't start no matter how many flames Chao Xing tried to conjure. We were in the middle of trying to tear apart the planks of the floor for better firewood when this demon-kid-thing appeared behind us like a ghost, asking us for help. He was all transparent and sad-looking and glowing blue and black and surrounded by terrifying monster-things, and he started reaching for us-"

Wasn't that kid a visage of Xu? Hadn't that kid been a lonely and troubled visage of Xu?

"-so obviously I punted him through the wall. Then me and Chao Xing tied him up and tried to perform an exorcism, but neither of us knew how to do one properly, and instead of going to the place in the sky- he just exploded."

"I assure you, we had the best intentions," Chao Xing speaks.

How.

"We were caught off guard at the time, but I realized the gravity of what occurred after."

Why not before?

Where had common sense been before?

"Traces of Xu scattered and we sought to hunt them down. We arrived at several locations once my spell recharged, and found ourselves wandering through places that must have been dearly personal to him. Upon landing-"

"-crashing-"

"-into those precious memories of his-"

"-only two were set on fire-"

"-those traces took shape, oddly, into tangible pieces we could hold; these colored orbs as you see."

"-the bedroom with the soft sheets and squishy pillows and good dreams, we agreed they probably they weren't important-"

"However, though we tried our best to figure out how to put back together what had been broken, we were unable to, and we traveled for a time until we came to these gardens and discovered Xu lying as you see him now. He must have been here before we destroyed the spirit of him elsewhere. It became obvious as I tried to spell the orbs into him and as the Young Master doodled on his face in boredom that we had missed a vital part of him someplace. The true 'core' of his spirit, you could say. I came to the conclusion it was where we hadn't looked- the first place we had 'exorcised' him, and in the rubble and the snow, we did indeed find the part of him that had initially been calling out to us for help."

She pauses.

"The Young Master picked it up and threw it."

"I was really far away," Wei Yin complains. "Up on a hill- and she was holding the trash bag open like anyone would be able to drop it into there from a quarter of a mile away. Why wouldn't I have tried to throw it?"

Because it was a delicate piece of someone's soul they had obliterated.

Because general logic said not to toss important, fragile things around inside unusual places with unseen consequences they had yet to face.

"Regardless of who's to blame, we have lost sight of the last piece- and I'm uncertain of how to reach it."

...It's certainly a lot to take in.

Were they all ignoring the fact that Wei Yin said they had set the good dreams and small place of comfort and rest that lied inside of Xu's soul aflame?

Were they ignoring that?

What was Xu going to be like when they came out of soul? When they 'put him back together'?

When he 'woke'?

Had anyone thought about that?

Not for the first time, Kaeya wishes he had any sort of an idea of what they'd be dealing with. But he didn't. So. One thing at a time.

She didn't know how to reach it. Alright. But at the very least-

"You have an idea of where it is?"

"...I do." Though Chao Xing looks far from thrilled. Rather- disconcerted. "Who we encountered in that cabin, the true 'Xu', consumed by leech-like curses... he would be in a place where such beasts lurk. In a place of his 'truths' and perhaps his 'regret', where malevolence can freely fester and thrive. Beneath that evil would be a safe retreat. Although I believe that is merely a bold assumption."

It's all they had to go off of.

"Sounds like a fun place to me," comments Tartaglia. "I've been itching to get a few things out of my system."

Kaeya has a pretty good sense of what those things are. There's another matter that bothers him, however.

"Why are you able to utilize your 'sorcery' here?" he questions.

When he and Tartaglia couldn't do anything involving their Visions?

"Do you not recall what I mentioned when we gathered before the gateway that allowed us further into Xu's soul?" She scoffs. "Perhaps not. You were awfully distracted by clothes. 'Sorcery' isn't the word for it. It is spirit-based. One's essence. Anything not naturally a part of the soul you were born with cannot be used here. A power achieved through other means beyond the spirit of one's self, for example, would be a futile effort to try and gather."

She says it as if knowing precisely what Kaeya is talking about. But that couldn't be right.

...Had she seen them with their Visions?

"My spirit has been refined under Yuan teachings, same as Xu's. It is why I am able to, for the most part track, discern where the pieces of him lie. You could call us of a kindred sort. My 'spirit' can thus create things like 'spells'."

"Every time you explain something, why is it more confusing than it should be?" Tartaglia suddenly says to her.

She eyeballs him. "Excuse me?"

"Someone who's not a sorcerer isn't able to perceive this kind of environment or understand it. If you're not a sorcerer, the chances of you being able to manipulate your way through someone's soul or spirit isn't feasible. The kid is a part of your clan. You understand the layers of a soulscape because you've studied it extensively and trained. That's it. That's all you had to say."

"That is what I said."

"You filled it with hosh-posh speech."

"It is how a l ady of fine decorum speaks. That your uncivilized ape-man brain cannot interpret the meaning in my speech is due to your obsession with body and brawn and might," she crossly defends.

"Why would I have to interpret anything you said to begin with?" Tartaglia crossly rebukes.

"Why are you two arguing about this to begin with?" Kaeya intervenes.

"Stay out of this," they tell him together.

Kaeya looks at them with more crossness than either of them could dream of having. He makes sure they understand perfectly clear what he thinks of them in this moment without using his words, before dragging his gaze to where Wei Yin has been standing, patiently waiting. 

This space is doing something strange to all of them.

Too many people and personalities in the same space that didn't belong, jointly merging and- 

Carmella is nowhere in sight and the colored, glass orbs apparently holding all of the bits of Xu are no longer in Wei Yin's hands and Kaeya stares at the same time Chao Xing and Childe do as they all take notice of it.

" Where did they go? " all three of them demand.

Wei Yin rubs beneath an eye, blinking out dirt, relaxed. "The funky, curse eyeball ate them," he answers. “And then she kind of vanished into his body. You guys were talking and I didn’t want to interrupt.”

All the times he had interrupted conversations before and this was the one time he had chosen not to?

Xu snaps to sitting.

Rapidly.

Stiffly.

Upright with perfect posture.

He doesn’t rise to his feet as much as he levitates to them, eyelids cracking opening.

Quite suddenly there are three people standing behind Kaeya, pushing him to face Xu alone.

He looks at them disbelieving, Tartaglia most of all.

The Harbinger straightens.

He coughs, once, loud. 

“They brought me back there."

“You brought yourself back here,” Chao Xing says.

“Hey. Be quiet.”

“Oh no, Harbin, do stay back there,” Kaeya can't help but goad. “I’ll protect you.”

“Not needed from you .”

Tartaglia steps around next to him, all idiotic bravado like he hadn’t gotten spooked at the sight of a levitating child that was… still levitating in front of them.

It was nothing new for Kaeya personally, but it was no less a fascinating, bewildering sight to behold. Because studying the floating boy staring dead straight at them in admittedly creepy silence, there’s a feeling he has.

“...Carmella?”

Xu blinks.

His body- straight as a pencil- zooms around them as Wei Yin screams and Chao Xing starts swinging at it like it’s a giant humanoid fly, and as Tartaglia grabs a hold of Kaeya's arm with the tightest grip-

“Stop holding onto me,” the Harbinger snaps, clustering them both together with Wei Yin and Chao Xing, and Kaeya really thinks he’s been thrown into the middle of an infernal circus down in the seventh ring of an abyssal hell.

Ten seconds later, Xu stops circling them and sets feet onto the grass by the bush of gardenias Wei Yin had ripped one from earlier.

There are three people behind Kaeya again.

He gazes towards Xu with the flattest of looks, thoughts on the Fatui using him as a shield.

Not scared of curses and beasts and monsters and battlefields, but frightened of ‘ghosts’.

Kaeya had words of judgement for Tartaglia.

Ones he would save for later.

When they were back in their respective cities.

A year or two from now.

When Tartaglia had forgotten all about this. When Tartaglia had forgotten all about him.

Kaeya would hire a troop of the Fontaine Cirque de Le using Diluc's funds to act as flying ghosts around the man’s living quarters and terrorize him.

But all in due time. As any proper, good revenge for endless harassment should be done.

As it is, Kaeya simply says to the curse possessing Xu and holding Xu's 'pieces', “You’re able to contain everything without trouble in there?”

Xu works his throat.

Their throat.

Struggling to speak.

When words come, they do so haltingly, rough, high-pitched and excited.

“Y-es! Xu! Good care, I take!”

“Do you know where to go?”

“Yes! Come!”

Xu- Carmella- perhaps realizing their flying terrified the three grown adults taking shelter in Kaeya's shadow, doesn’t float. They start skipping off through the bushes and grass, over a tiny wooden bridge of a pond full of fish, for a gazebo shrouded by the weeping, blowing thin branches of a fringe tree.

“….You can stop hiding behind me now,” he says to the others. “They’re harmless. His spirit is technically missing. She’s only filling it with her own and the pieces of him you found for the time being. It won’t be permanent.”

Childe, for the second time, steps around him. He regards him with blatant judgment.

As if he had the right.

“Hocus-pocus. I knew it. Why do you know so much about this? Shouldn’t that be her job?”

He jerks a thumb in Chao Xing’s direction.

She brushes down her skirts, imperiously, pink, giving Childe the most foul of glowers. “Curses do not frighten me. It is most unusual for any to fly about so strangely. Anyone would be caught off guard.”

“But not you,” Wei Yin wraps an arm around Kaeya's shoulder and begins to walk them off to where Xu had vanished. “That’s so interesting. Does the Ragnvindr House do exorcisms and hunt down demons too?” 

“No.” Kaeya resigns himself to being led. “You needn’t concern yourself with that. It was… a personal experience.”

Involving half of Mond, Diluc, Oswald and 'Crepus', yes.

Personal indeed.

“Can you take me on a ghost hunt?”

“I said we don’t do that.”

“Okay but can you take me-“

“Wei Yin-“

An arm slings around Kaeya's other shoulder. He jostled and squished quite suddenly against the heir’s side as Tartaglia's unwanted self appears.

The Fatui's hand, close to Wei Yin, flicks the heir in the face.

“Ow!”

“Oh, whoops,” Tartaglia uncaringly deadpans.

“You men are a most embarrassing sight,” Chao Xing says on their heels and Kaeya cranes his neck around through the two different arms trying to squeeze the life out of him to see her judging them with pure displeasure.

“Please help me,” he says.

“No,” she says back. “You may suffer.”

It turns out he doesn’t have to suffer whatever bizarre contest Wei Yin and Tartaglia have going on, because as they pass under the fringe tree at arrive at the gazebo and ascend its steps, a gaping, jagged black hole sits in the midst of it; misted, freezing, frigid cold just by being in near proximity, and Xu rises up halfway out of it from its center spinning in a circle before halting in greeting.

And it’s really not as adorable as it would be coming from a ball-sized curse when it’s a human being with no emotion on their face doing it instead.

“Come- below in darkness-“ they say. “Xu. Here.”

“Is it safe?” Wei Yin wonders. 

Xu blinks at him, certain. “Yes. Very safe! Very-” 

They’re abruptly yanked down into the void.

 “Aaaackgjjrjekfkkf-” 

They stare. 

Wei Yin slips away from Kaeya, worried, running to the edge of the hole in the gazebo. He cups his hands around his mouth and shouts down. “Little demon squirt! Are you alright? Clap once for help!” 

Kaeya shrugs Tartaglia off and goes beside the heir grabbing the back of his hanfu to stop him from accidentally falling into it and joining Xu. 

Wherever they went. 

His hair stands on edge. 

Without a doubt. 

This was where Xu’s curses slithered and crawled.

But through it all? 

Through them all to the bottom of it- to that place of truth and final piece of Xu? 

It seems like Tartaglia and Chao Xing share his thoughts, for when he spares a glance their way, they are looking at the swirling, waiting black hole with narrowed eyes and thought. 

“We proceed,” says Chao Xing, “Past the curses will be the place we need to go. If something took him - then it is to keep him. We should be careful.” 

This is starting to sound like the first time they had all gathered in one place within Xu’s soul to find him. The first time Kaeya and Tartaglia had been whisked off. 

…He hopes what happened doesn’t happen again. 

“I don’t know how to tell you this,” Childe says to her, “but there are only two bozos here who haven’t been careful- and it’s not us.” 

She narrows her eyes. “Well it is not me either, for I am not a bozo.” 

“Oh you’re a bozo alright,” Childe assures her. “An even bigger one for letting that dumbass act up.” 

“ Me ? I have done my best in the presence of the Young Master who runs about like a child, what would you know-” 

Wei Yin stretches, arms above his head, twisting and cracking his back and neck. “I’ve been practicing some diving,” he says to Kaeya in the meantime who is watching him concerned as Chao Xing and Childe argue at their heels. “It’s all about the arch. Do you know how to dive?” 

“Yes…” he answers warily. 

“Oh- great! Can you give me a score then?” 

“A score for what?” 

Wei Yin performs a perfect dive. 

Straight into the hole. 

He’s vanished. 

Without sound or word. 

“ Wei Yin -” 

Where did he just go ? 

Chao Xing and Childe cease their blaming and turn their heads in time to witness Kaeya throw himself into the hole. 

He’s gone in an instant. 

Silence and a sensationless breeze blow through the gardens and the trees. 

Childe uncrosses his arms. 

Slow.

“….I can’t take you anywhere.” 

It’s not his voice that speaks. 

It’s not Chao Xing he speaks to. 

Kaeya falls and there is nothing to stop his descent. 

It’s infinite darkness, a terrifying drop into a void with no up or down. 

Evil and malevolence. 

Invisible, blackened ,beastly hands that reach for him amongst yawning shadows, their jaws abyssal- and Wei Yin had tossed himself into this with no defense and little care- and Kaeya isn’t frightened in the slightest. 

He’s abruptly driven. 

Khaenri’ah and the Abyss. 

Kaeya tumbles head over heels through the blistering lonely cold into the true pits of Xu’s soul, among monstrous curses with wings and claws and eyeballs and grotesque bulging forms- and he rights himself- regardless of what his eye can and cannot do in this child’s soul- 

And he pushes its patch aside. 

The screeching, shrieking dissonance in the wake of its reveal to the monsters around him. 

He drops into them all. 

Flowers. 

Kaeya thinks of them.

A furious crackling storm. 

Kaeya thinks of it. 

Something grabs at him. 

Another seizes a hold of him. 

Greedy malignance attempts to drag him under. 

Far far away up above him, black lightning thunders down.

 

---

 

Khaenri'ah. 

Had never been known for having gardens. 

It had never been known for its flora at all. 

It was a place deep beneath the earth, a civilization built underground, with spiraling staircases, sweeping bridges and countless imitations of buildings, contraptions and devices studied over centuries from those who had ventured aboveground. 

Along those bridges in the bowels of the black earth, lit by fluorescent blues and burning golds, flames and their braziers on great stone pedestals rising from the dark, unseen depths below, were several strongholds defended by old machinery, built with the genius of tinkerers, scholars, warriors and alchemists alike, for the people of Khaenri'ah- the true Khaenri'ah- had always worked towards new heights in unison. 

Trading knowledge and skills. 

Sharing thoughts and solutions. 

They progressed as one. They fell back as one. 

They understood this comradeship as it was what had enabled them to the greatest heights of any living civilization on Teyvat.

The passages leading from under to above were vast and wrought with oddities and perils. In the height of its glory, those who lingered in its heart did rarely venture out.

A false sky of eternal night, littered in constellations. 

A stone dial in the borough square, colossal and grand, engraved in the seals of the ancients, turned by the seneschals who brought new sections of the night in accordance to the observing seers who could see, in their blindness, Celestia's heavens and Teyvat's stars. 

Mini Ruin Hunters floated on patrol, whirring alongside mages and the faithful. Rhinedottir's teachings were stowed in the archives; sealed in the vaults, protected by the lectors, allowed access to only the most prominent of names and influential of status. 

Few civilians of the nation of Khaenri'ah laid eyes on the hidden heart of their civilization; though they knew of its existence well enough.

 It was one pocket of the underground kingdom. 

One pocket of many- scattered- nestled in the weaving lattices of Ley Lines and Domains, and minor outlying towns and cities of stone and steel built throughout the down-under. 

The grandiose trees that connected the cities and towns together were not trees at all, but mimicries of ones, white and blue and glowing; swift passageways from one inhabitance of Khaenri'ah to another. 

Revered priests and Keepers- and the royal family that once existed- were the only ones privy to this knowledge of travel. 

Most denizens of Khaenri'ah simply believed the trees were what continued to maintain their possible existence in a place so entirely void of natural oxygen, resources and light. 

The exceptions to this were the sanctioned warriors, the Initiated, recognized by the highest degree, sanctioned by the courts, acknowledged by the Keepers themselves. 

The Inititated were allowed to utilize this method of travel, but those who sought swift journeying still needed a permit, and to have their request for 'accompaniment by a priest' approved. 

There was a pattern to them, and a needed understanding of how they operated, as after the fall of the nation, numerous trees no longer led to thriving pockets where people lived, but to pits of the Abyss, full of monsters, cultists and the cursed. 

Kaeya knew this due to his father. 

He knew this due to Dainsleif. 

He knew this due to his mother, who on one of her trips through the veil, had been more than delighted to share the intricacies of the greatest man-made nation to ever exist.

Kaeya himself hadn't grown up in any particular place belowground- but in a partition of the nation on the rocky cliffs hidden on the outskirts of a dense forest and unknown valley whose misshapen city rose halfway from the deadened earth. 

It was originally a soaring outpost and collection of small homes with a well-traveled road abovegrounders of Khaenri'ah used to use to run information on the outside world to those who presided down below. 

Particularly to the elite force of guards belonging to the royal family. 

It had later become a location of cratered decimation where a smattering of gods had gathered five hundred years ago to agree on the necessity of Khaenri'ah's demise and divine imprisonment of Rhinedottir. 

In a short series of events later, it had also become the location where the peeved citizens of Khaenri'ah had surrounded those very gods with an army of machines and booted them out with a vengeance-fueled barrage of well-aimed missiles and what gods would go on to mumble about hundreds of years afterwards 'demonic chants of death'. 

The destroyed land had thus been reclaimed, the ruins reconstructed, and towers and homes and walls rebuilt out of spite. 

For those of Khaenri’ah rarely took beatings lying down. 

And those within the rebuilt walls became self-proclaimed resurrectionists- and although over the decades that passionate fervor dwindled, the thought of 'fight' was replaced by a tired gathering of people who simply sought to live without drawing ire of any god again, the descendants of warriors, the children of priests, they clung to the vision; to the lost pride. 

Something about holding 'Khaenri'ah's last defense'. 

Something about being the 'gateway and gatekeepers' from Teyvat to the Veil to the remnants of the kingdom underground. 

Growing up on the small, refortified piece of land had been nothing short of disorienting. 

The stairways were long, the venturing dark and abysmal, and Kaeya had been constantly made to go back and forth between the 'city' above and the second half of it below, caught in the indecisive politics of the council who couldn't decide whether to let him live on the top half as a commoner, or send him further into the depths of what remained of Khaenri'ah for the sake of their 'revival'. 

And as Kaeya made no showings of being 'The One'- except the one to bring them grief and disappointment- they had continued this extremely peculiar run-around of exposure to the old dynasty and its throne and his heritage, right up until he'd been packed and ditched in Mondstadt for that 'ancient plot' he had wound up driving a cutting blade through himself. 

How they had tried their best prior to sending him off. 

He had been sat before countless books depicting colorful illustrations of the seven ruling nations of Teyvat, made to study Mondstadt's terrain and history, but for all their efforts, he had taken an interest not in any of the old aristocracy, weaponry or spirits or gods that had given the wind-blown land its reputation and name- 

But in its grassy fields and tumbling hills.

Its nature and its lakes and rivers and ponds.

They had wildlife. 

Butterflies and birds. 

Vegetables and gardens and flowers. 

And his eye had lingered on the flowers and the gardens and the vegetables the most, for plant-life was a rarity beyond the dark, depressing forests of the cliffs and beyond the empty glades where graves were made and honored. 

Seeds simply could not be grown on the war-struck cliffs- though attempts had been made on multiple occasions from the most persistent denizens. Everything withered and died. 

And belowground everything was either poisonous or simply replicas; luminescent creations that could neither be used nor consumed. 

The expansive boughs underground where the royal family once ruled from possessed the last true garden of Khaenri'ah, but none had access. 

Aside from, of course, the royal family themselves- and their descendants and their guards. 

And Dainsleif refused to take him. 

"I'd like to visit the garden, Dainsleif." 

"No." 

"Please." 

"No." 

"I said 'please'." 

"And I said 'no'." 

"I hate you." 

Yet the more he 'studied' Mondstadt, the more he noted its beauties and natural flora the divided grounds of Khaenri'ah could never have, the more resolved he grew to have a blooming flower for himself. 

He had researched gardening. 

He had gathered the tools. 

He had dug a plot in the dirt 'yard' of his isolated, little rick-rack of a house his father for some reason believed was perfectly suitable to leave a kid in alone while he handled matters of the aboveground warriors and the belowground council. 

Then he had sat beside the newly-dug plot, sticking his spade in the rough earth, and waited stubbornly for three days in a meditative trance, neither eating, sleeping or getting up to use the bathroom, skipping every lesson and training he was supposed to attend, until Dainsleif had been forced to find him.

The Keeper had taken one look at what he had done- and had exhaled, short, beneath his breath. 

"Kaeya." 

"Bring me seeds, Dainsleif. Or I'm not moving." 

Dainsleif hadn't brought him seeds. 

He had stood next to Kaeya- a crown prince of nothing- until Kaeya's traitorous body had betrayed him and he had passed out. 

As Kaeya lay lifeless in bed for a solid week afterwards, Dainsleif had sat in a chair at his bedside, transcribing every book Kaeya had been ordered to study into journals without illustrations with the smallest print no possible human could read without holding the journals a centimetre from their face with severely squinting eyes. 

The people of Khaenri'ah always had a knack for being the most brilliantly, creative and petty menaces of Teyvat. 

Dainsleif was just one of the passive ones. 

"You'll read all of these," the Keeper had told Kaeya as soon as Kaeya had opened his eye. 

Dainsleif turned towards the desk at Kaeya's bedside where stacks of handwritten journals had been set in piles of tens. 

"You'll write an essay on each one." 

Kaeya had stared at them- then stared at his 'guardian'. 

"You can't make me do that." 

Dainsleif had. 

He had stayed to ensure it would be done. 

So Kaeya, after squinching his eye at the pages of illegible print for six-days straight, had done what any other fed-up, eleven-year old, stuck at a desk would've done. 

He had stood up, thrown the leather book in his hand aside and spun around towards Dainsleif standing in his bedroom doorway like a jail warden. 

Before the Boughs Keeper could take one alarmed step towards him, Kaeya had ripped off his eyepatch, an unseen force brimming- but it couldn't have been magic , he had none - hissing something pent-up, years in the making- 

"Quit making me do stuff. You're not my father and you're not my brother either, Dainsleif. Get it through your big, fat, immortal head- I don't want to be here!"  

And he had gone. 

Letting the dormant eye of his carry him elsewhere. 

Where he had gone- he didn't know. 

What had happened- he wasn't sure.

 It had been the longest period spent in a state of a total blackout. 

He had woken back in his bed remembering nothing, impossibly drained and weakened, finding not Dainsleif at his side, but his father. 

His father who’d been standing, looking towards the desk with a frown. 

For what rested on the grained wood weren't books, but bunches of hand-picked, limp-looking flowers, slightly clawed and scorched- and a jar of random fruit seeds and shiny, colored rocks, ruby, blue and purple. 

A note on a dirt-stained, slightly crumpled paper had been folded and dropped inside the jar in poor penmanship, seemingly random, giving no context. 

You little demon- I never want to see you again. 

And for the last time, my name isn't Skirk. It's Ajax . 

If you’re dead after all of this, I’ll kill you. You better value these rocks and seeds with your life. We didn't go through all that trouble with those stupid 'heavenly disciples' for nothing. 

P.S If I turn out to have rabies, I'm fashioning a stake and hunting you down. 

P.S P.S. If you’ve already died, and I turn out to have rabies, I don’t care. I’ll still fashion a stake and hunt you down. You’ll be the first to die twice.  

His father hadn't said a word about the seeds or rocks or the flowers or blatantly violent threats from the ‘Ajax’. 

He had taken a look at the note, lowered his brows at its mention of 'heavenly disciples'- and had departed, leaving it and Kaeya behind. 

"Good to see you too," Kaeya had mumbled towards the ceiling. 

He had rolled over afterwards, vomited on the floorboards, and grabbed a hold of the delicately-petaled, orange and white flowers, confused. 

He hadn't understood the note- but he had kept it all the same, stowing it in a hole in the wall he stored the collection of 'forbidden things' he hid from his father, along with the jar of seeds and rocks. 

He hadn't wanted to waste them. 

They were a precious find. 

Though how he had gained them was the big mystery. 

An ‘Ajax’ he didn’t know, but the name of his mother's old companion, 'Skirk', was familiar, and she had to have been involved. 

Had she come to the underground of their city? 

And why had his father been there and not Dainsleif?

They were questions he had wondered yet didn't have answers to. 

On the other hand, he had seemed to have achieved his goal.

Flowers, real flowers, were in his possession. 

Kaeya had stuck them in a tin canister- one of the only things he had been able to scrounge around and find in his cupboards- only to watch by eveningtide as they had wilted and shriveled and died despite his best efforts to keep them alive. 

Attentively, Kaeya had then stuck them on his windowsill, wondering if the sun would bring them back to life. 

It hadn't. 

He had buried them, upset. 

A few weeks down the road, after days and days of silence from Dainsleif, left bothered by the Keeper's absence, left to ruminate on if his last spoken words to the only person who had been looking out for him- aside from his traveling grandfather- had caused Dainsleif to give up on him, Kaeya had found a book of Mondstadt's native plants with gorgeous, detailed artwork, left under his pillow.

Calla Lilies. 

The page had been bookmarked, penned message Dainsleif's familiar writing.

There is a place in Mondstadt where such flowers bloom in numbers. 

Springvale. 

A home of hunters and gatherers and simple, peacefully-living civilians. 

On your mission, you might find solace there. 

Kaeya had, of course, met with and began studying under the supervision of the Keeper again. It turned out the man had only been journeying on behalf of the new magistrate in the bowels of the underground. 

They never spoke about what Kaeya had said to him. 

But oddly enough, Dainsleif did visit more often than before. At one point bringing a watering can with a solemn offer to aid him in planting the seeds he had been given into the plot he had dug. 

"That's alright, no thanks," Kaeya had responded, embarrassed. 

The seeds had never been touched. 

He gave them to Dainsleif for safe-keeping. 

He had apologized for his past behavior, staring off to the side. 

Dainsleif had taken the jar with thought. He had rested a hand briefly on top of Kaeya's head. Then he had disappeared off to whatever weird den he lived in with parting words to remember.

"They'll be here when you return."  

One year later, at the age of twelve, Kaeya had been brought to Mondstadt.

In the hesitant months following his adoption, he had followed in Diluc's footsteps on small errands on behalf of their 'father' to the hunter's village. 

He had discovered the lake and its lilies and had gathered them in number- an endeavor that took weeks of dedicated and countless excuses to convince Crepus that they had a reason to stop by Springvale every time they ventured from the city of Mond to the Winery. 

Though it had soon become clear, excuses weren't necessary. 

Crepus and Diluc indulged the whim without complaint, even as the bedrooms and halls of the Ragnvindr mansion became filled with pots and vases of all sizes with the same plant. 

“If it reminds you of home, it’s alright,” Diluc had said. 

A visiting trade-partner of Crepus had been one of the brave, bold guests to comment on it once with ignorance. 

"Er- Master Crepus. Is there a woman coming around? Why are there so many...feminine decorations? I noticed several bowls of jewels and gold by the foyer…" 

Kaeya had been with Elzer and Diluc by the fireplace, putting another set of lilies into a giant pot Elzer had found in one of the vineyard's sheds. And Crepus, signing off lightly on an agreement, had said- 

"Because my son enjoys them." 

And Diluc, completely uninvited to the meeting between adults at the long table behind them, had looked over his shoulder and said, smiling, to the visiting man, "It's not a problem, is it?" 

"Oh- uh- no. Not at all, Young Master Diluc." 

"Oh," Diluc had brightly laughed. "That's good." 

"Um. Yes, I suppose so," the trade-partner had said. 

Diluc had continued to smile at him. 

Elzer and Kaeya had continued to transfer the uprooted Calla Lilies from a basin of water into the pot.  

The trade-partner had stared, apologetic.

 "...Please stop looking at me-" 

Eventually, the minor obsession with the first real plant Kaeya had ever laid his eye on and beheld had gone away. 

His fondness for them, however, never did.

Tied to something he couldn’t recall. 

A note and a jar. 

A name. 

 

---

 

Kaeya startles awake. 

The ground beneath him is soft. 

No.

...It's not ground at all. 

In a dark, dark cave, he lies on a bed of flowers, surrounded. 

A face leans over his from behind. 

Handsome and pale. 

Eyes dark and shining brightly as they notice his sudden return to consciousness. 

Kaeya’s head is in his lap. 

“You’re up,” greets Wei Yin. “On a score of one-to-ten, how was my form?”

 “Four,” he answers, faintly. 

Wei Yin. Dejected. “I should have done a flip.” 

Kaeya tries to remember what had happened; how he had gotten to where he was. Where this place where they were, was. They should have been in a pit of curses. Not one of flowers. 

Where he could hear water. 

Where the cavern walls were pale and glowing, a deep, deep sea-blue.

“Are you alright?” he checks with Wei Yin. 

“I’m fine. Great actually. I was caught in this weird thing’s mouth and it was super gross and I was about to get swallowed but you obliterated it I’m pretty sure, and dragged us straight through the dark to here. I’m not sure how you did it. I couldn’t see much with all the stuff flying around us, but I think you worked hard, so I want to thank you. I thought you deserved some rest, and I figured I would keep watch. And watch you I did. I thought I would cry from the lack of blinking.” 

…What was he talking about? 

Kaeya lifts his hands. 

He gazes, not at the lily he’d accidentally pulled up with it, but at the bright, green bond around his wrist and between his fingers. 

The bond Wei Yin can’t see and doesn’t know of. 

But there on his right hand and arm- 

Wei Yin's ward. 

It had spread there too. 

Why?

His mind goes to Tartaglia who is missing from his side. 

“Where are you?” he wonders absently.

“I’m over here. You’re free to quit lying around when you’re done traveling down memory lane in someone else’s lap.” 

Kaeya drops his hand quickly. 

Like being yanked back to reality. Splashed with something cold. 

He sits up swiftly. 

Wei Yin allows him to move away and Kaeya sees what’s around them fully for the first time. A large cavern. Patchy grass and flowers. A tunnel to the left of them. A tunnel to the right. A pool of near luminescent water, cerulean and pale, the palest of blues. 

Glacial frost and traces of sparkling snow bend the curve of it. 

There’s a familiarity to the cavern and all of it and Kaeya feels as if he should know why, but there is a missing slot in his mind. 

Tartaglia stands at the foot of the water, back turned, observing it. 

Kaeya frowns, confused. 

How had he even known Kaeya was asking about him? 

Chao Xing is a few good feet in the middle of them all. Her eyes are on the ceiling of the cavern. 

Kaeya follows them. 

It ripples, reflected by the water. 

Xu looks down at them, eagle-spread and splayed, plastered to it, pale and soaked and unmoving. 

Unblinking. 

“…..Why is he like that?” 

“Not sure,” Wei Yin answers, getting up and helping Kaeya to do the same afterwards. Wei Yin brushes loose grass off him and adjusts Kaeya’s rumpled clothes. “When I landed I was able to catch you and sat down with you for a bit as a bunch of things roared above us out of sight in a big blackness, and then this ceiling appeared like it was protecting us and the kiddo was on it like a beetle. I tried throwing my boots at him for a while but I couldn’t get enough height so I gave up and left him.” 

“I too threw my slippers,” Chao Xing shares, “but my aim was off. I was only able to hit the Young Master with them.” 

That sounded like a different story. 

A targeted story. 

With Wei Yin as the target.

Tartaglia turns around and his gaze isn’t on any of them, but stuck up above on Xu. "My little brother, Teucer," he starts. 

It's random enough that it catches all of their ears and eyes. 

"My brother. I lost him in a cave like this once. He snuck out, chasing adventure- like his big brother. I went after him as soon as I saw my parents’ faces. But I wasn’t fast enough. I found him in an icy cave with a pool no different than this. I thought he was dead.” 

Tartaglia reminisces.

“The worry was unfounded. He was fine, actually. Heavily confused, but alive. Anyway, I gave him the scolding of his life. He didn’t understand why I was upset, and sometimes I think he still doesn’t. Family is very important to me. As important as keeping loved ones safe.” 

They look at him.

He blinks. 

He drops his head and looks right back at them. 

“Wh yyy did I just say that?” 

“Because it was on your mind,” Chao Xing responds slowly. “Because we are in a ‘place of truth’, where Xu’s missing piece has somewhere rolled. And you were reminded of something that made you want to speak about it."  

“What a touching, harrowing tale,” Wei Yin says. “I’m glad it had a happy ending.” 

“It wasn’t for you to hear,” Tartaglia says sharply. 

“Well. I don’t know how to break it to you, Harbin, but we heard it.” 

They certainly had. 

What did Tartaglia mean he had found his brother ‘just like this’? 

On the ceiling of a cave?

Like a possessed demon? 

Kaeya needed some clarification. What was the situation with that? 

No.

Focus. 

What had Chao Xing said? 

That seemed important. That seemed like something they should remember. 

"Can we control that?" 

"Yes. Simply have some measure of restraint." 

He's not sure why it sounds like she's scolding him. Kaeya showed nothing but restraint. She should've been directing that foul expression of hers at Tartaglia who had just shared a piece of his memory no one had asked for.

She doesn't appear to care what Kaeya thinks, though, as she goes on. 

“No matter the nature of this place, we should not wait for… Xu or his curse to … stop doing what they are doing. Much of the curses are gone above the ceiling of the cave due to… unexplainable forces, but there are ones below us somewhere, I am certain. Xu's piece the Young Master lost should be there.” 

“Unexplainable forces?” Kaeya echoes. 

“Yes.” She glances at Tartaglia who doesn’t glance back at her. “On the other hand, I’m not sure what this means for Xu. Curses shaped him as it would any Yuan sorcerer. They have been blasted apart.” 

Kaeya isn’t sure what anything means for Xu. 

What hadn’t they destroyed and fussed with and interacted with in this soulscape of his? 

“Best we search the tunnels. They branch off into smaller ones and similar caverns. We came from the right,” Chao Xing explains at the questioning brow Kaeya lifts. “Your man and I did not land where you and the Young Master did. We were- unable to explore.” 

He ignores the ‘your man’. 

“You encountered trouble?”

Her eyes rest upon him. “Not quite.” 

She changes the subject shortly after, to Kaeya’s mild confusion. 

“That piece of Xu is here. It should be nothing more than a walk and search.” 

“There are two tunnels. Let’s split up,” Wei Yin suggests. “Chao Xing you can go to a different one than me. I’ve been with you for ages, and I don’t want us to be walking and any weird truths come spilling out of me. I’m a private man.” 

“No you’re not,” she refutes. “How many times have you been caught having sex outdoors?” 

“Hey! Why do you know about that?”

“Because it is outdoors . Word of mouth spreads.” 

“Those Harbor guys. Always gossiping,” Wei Yin complains, put out. “I was wondering why stupid father kept bringing up all these warning letters to me from the city. Whatever. Who cares. Vinny’s coming with me. Harbin’s your ‘guest’ so go bond with him.” 

Were they pretending that was still a thing? 

It should’ve been obvious at this point no one was a guest to anything anywhere anymore. How many days had passed out beyond?

One?

Perhaps two? 

Or had it only been a few hours? 

It didn’t seem as if they were here for long. But Shen’s words of ‘a while’ were concerning. 

Kaeya finds himself gazing towards Tartaglia. 

The Harbinger is already looking him. For a different reason. “I’ll walk with the Wei,” he says, as if Wei Yin is a creature and not a human. “You can go with the little missy.” 

Was he joking? 

Kaeya wouldn’t leave Wei Yin alone with Tartaglia for anything. Wei Yin wouldn’t come back from wherever the man buried him.

“No.” 

“Then come with me.” 

That’s another no. 

“Sure. Let’s share a few heartwarming stories or two. I’m sure it’ll be pleasant for the both of us.”

“You’ve never heard of walking in silence?” 

“That’s impossible with you. You have too many shortcomings to point out. I wouldn’t be able to help myself.” 

"Are you talking about yourself?" 

"I couldn't have more clearly said the word 'you'." 

They regard one another, mouths pressed thin. 

“ Riiighh t. We’re gonna go now-“ Wei Yin says, hooking his arm through Kaeya’s and dragging him backwards for the waiting tunnel on the left side of the grass. “Before you guys try and jump each other’s bones down here. I don’t think I’d like to see that.” 

“Didn’t you say the opposite up above?” Kaeya asks, distracted by how Zhongli’s thread stretches taunt at the created distance between himself and Tartaglia before appearing to disappear. 

Yet he could still feel its weight. 

“Maybe I was lying.” 

Kaeya tilts his head back and looks at the heir dragging him, wondering at the admission. 

They leave Tartaglia.

They leave Chao Xing. 

The shadows of the tunnel blanket over him and Wei Yin. 

He doesn’t get to see the sort of expression on Tartaglia’s face, but he doesn’t think he needs to. There’s an uncomfortable feeling in his chest. 

A feeling of losing sight of something he shouldn’t. 

They share it.

 

---

 

The Abyss didn’t have gardens. 

It didn’t have flowers or vegetables or fruits. 

It was an endless labyrinth, a barren scape beneath Teyvat, pockets of corrupted space, some places void and still and empty- blackened with ash no different than the Mare Jivare where dreams had wilted and vanished, beset by twisted, malignant forests among the broken mountains and collapsed bridges of gold and rich blue stone that once led to the nation it had been torn from. 

Filled with monsters. Filled with lectors. Filled with preachers of the ‘Divine’. 

But there was a place- one place- where proper flowers had grown. 

Where they had been planted and where they had miraculously bloomed in seconds. 

Back then- way back then- Tartaglia had been Ajax. A scrawny student-in-training, in-over-his-head. 

In bloodstained chaos, ridiculousness, exhaustion and irritation, in the cave found and escaped into, Tartaglia, in the foulest of moods had stopped thinking of the nightmare of the punishment Skirk would give him when he returned to her. 

He had stopped thinking about it because he had ended up watching- in that dark, depressing, dripping cave of weird, blue grass- as the pointy-eared, little brat he was stuck with, uncupped his hands from the mound of dirt he’d been gathering, and smiled at the impossible blossoms that should have never bloomed.

Like it was a treasure. 

The disciples had found them after. 

What happened next was… 

Well. 

Annoying. 

Childe touches the scar hidden on his chest.

Chao Xing ceases her final investigation of the kid on the cavern ceiling and makes for the tunnel. Childe sweeps his gaze over the flowers and the blue grass. He settles them on the tunnel Wei threat and Kaeya had ventured off into. 

He tears his eyes from it. 

His eyebrows lower. 

He follows after Chao Xing. 

Seriously. Annoying.

 

---

 

For where they are, it’s surprisingly peaceful. 

Or maybe that’s a direct result of the company. 

There is much to think about and Kaeya is grateful for the companionable lack of words shared in Wei Yin’s familiar presence. But Kaeya doesn’t know where to begin. He doesn’t know which thought to pursue and think on. 

Concern for Xu? 

This so-called ‘cave of truths’? 

Its bizarre sensation he’d set foot in a place similar before? 

Why despite Wei Yin being here, he would enjoy Tartaglia’s added self- if only to step on the back of his heels- for the sake of stepping on the back of his heels and angering him. 

He remembers Khaenri’ah. 

He questions himself silently, disturbed, over what had happened in the fall down.

What Wei Yin had mentioned.

Why in this place his eye had ‘listened’ and ‘worked’ when it shouldn’t have.

His intention had only been to see through the darkness and find Wei Yin. 

Yet it had reacted to something. 

And Wei Yin’s ward had reacted to that . Now spread to his other arm. 

But the only thing this highly questionable ink had ever reacted to in the past before was- 

“The asshat,” he mutters. 

His circling thoughts circle further on the man, just like before. What were the secrets behind that menace to his well-being? 

Fingers grab Kaeya’s sleeve and easily guide him back before he walks into a wall. 

He apologizes to Wei Yin, half distracted, moderately irritated at the Fatui Harbinger from afar. 

Wei Yin holds no offense and assures him it’s fine. 

They turn along the damp, cold passageway and tread into another tunnel, narrower, with a lower ceiling. It’s barely standing-room. 

They press together and wander to where a pale light glows from the far other end of it. In the darkness surrounding them, Wei Yin speaks. His cheek is warm against Kaeya’s own, hair slightly damp and clinging. 

It’s a cold contrast. 

“Time passed differently.” 

“While I was out?” 

“No. Up above. When I was with Chao Xing. She said it was normal. That everyone experienced time at their own speeds in here. It felt like I was with her for all twenty plus years of our childhood again. She said it felt like weeks. When I’m here next to you, it only feels like it’s seconds. And it’s not enough time for me.” 

Kaeya glances sidelong at the heir. “I’m….sorry,” he says for lack of any other words at what actually sounds terrible. 

He hadn’t noticed any difference in speed with Tartaglia. 

It had just been what it was. 

“You don’t have to apologize over it or anything. It’s only what I noticed,” Wei Yin shares. “I spent most of my time thinking about you, if I’m being honest. What you were doing. If you were having fun without me. If all of your legs are smooth. You’re a grown guy just like me, but I wax my legs when I get bored. There’s this brand of gold tape you can buy for a hefty sum of Mora. The lady I buy from keeps telling me to stop using supplies for arts and crafts for it, and to use gel, but it’s not as shiny.” 

“Wei Yin please use the gel.” 

“I’ll send you the tape.”

“Just send me the gel.” 

“It won’t make your legs glitter.” 

“I don’t need them to.” 

The tunnels spills into a cave. A smaller one than the first they had left. No less filled with flowers, grass and unnatural blues. 

They agree between themselves on a tiny search and spend a number of minutes combing in the grass and in its shadowed corners for anything that looks like Xu’s missing soul piece. 

They come up with nothing. 

Wei Yin shrugs and flops back into the grass, a gaze fixed absently above. 

Kaeya walks over. “Feeling alright?”

“I feel great- same as before. If you keep asking about me, I’ll think you’re worried for me.”

“I am.” 

For a number of logical reasons. 

Wei Yin sighs. “You’re a good friend.” 

“I do the bare minimum.” 

“So you think.” 

No, it was true. Kaeya knew himself well. 

Lately he’d been abhorrently lacking in trying to do things. 

He pinned the blame on a certain man bound to him not currently at his side. 

Wei Yin’s eyes drift down to him nonetheless. 

It’s a thoughtful, thoughtful, thoughtful sort of contemplation he wears. 

“Mm. Vinny. While we’re in here. Let me talk to you.”

 

---

 

Childe doesn't know what to make of it that he's gotten so used to being stuck with Chao Xing it feels like it's only natural he'd be walking next to her again.

There's a tension between them. 

Of the unspoken happenings they have yet to drag up in clear air. 

But they keep their mouths shut and hold onto the silence. 

They travel and investigate with their eyes, alongside one another, not bothering to branch out further without a clear purpose, for there’s no need when they can both sense what needs to be sensed. 

An echoing roar in the distance ahead. 

Another waterfall? 

Or was it the same one they had just departed from? 

Childe silently maps their route in his head. 

The tunnels curved. They dipped down. They looped in bends and shadows. 

They descended into its depths- vastly unconcerned. 

The time goes on. 

It's unclear how much of it’s lost. 

Eventually Chao Xing raises her fan to her mouth, pensive. 

Eventually Childe decides to breach the subject first. 

“Don’t tell me you’re scared. Haven't you seen scarier monsters in the Veil than me?” 

She casts a quick glance at him, brows knitting deeper. “I am hardly frightened. I am thinking.” 

“Really now?” 

“Yes, really, ” she says, imperious. "...And I have never gone into the Veil." 

"I thought you said you had a 'contract' with a demon." 

She purses her lips more stubbornly. "...I do." 

"Can't say I believe you, little Miss Yuan." 

"Oh be silent." 

Childe rolls his eyes. He holds his skepticism towards all her answers- on all fronts. Specifically her first ones. 

As he should. 

Since breaking through and hitting the ground. Since landing, standing in a great wind of force. Since releasing her and dropping the protection Foul Legacy naturally offered to those in its clutches. Since tearing apart the greedy curses of the blackened holes walls with a single straight drop- 

Chao Xing had maintained a distance and never looked his way. 

The only time he’d felt her gaze actually on him was as the Abyss-fueled, Foul Legacy seized control and stalked off through the dripping caverns, irritated in its hunt to find where Alberich had gotten off to. 

It wasn’t a long hunt. 

He had stood in the opening of the flower and water-filled cave taking stock of the situation and their surroundings while the Abyss possessing him fixed its sight on Wei Yin and bristled and snarled with aggressive thoughts of murder. 

Stop that , he had thought annoyed. 

“Stop that ,” Chao Xing had hissed behind him. And she had thwacked him in the back with her closed fan, smacking the Abyss right out of him. 

To the Abyss’s very loud, departing confusion. 

Wei Yin had looked up and away from Kaeya slumbering body then, and welcomed them both cheerfully. “Isn’t he adorable? Dreaming of flowers!” 

It wasn’t adorable. 

Because Childe knew exactly why they had appeared in the first place. 

Unwanted memory of a time he never needed to relive again that it was. 

“Let me see your fan,” he says to Chao Xing. 

She leans her head and hand away as he swipes for it. “What for?” 

He swipes for it again- this time managing to take it in the midst of her protest. He turns it over in his grasp as they continue through the tunnel. 

Ordinary. 

Plain.

 Purple and blue and black and silver. Wood and fine silk and paper. 

It definitely shouldn’t have been able to smack the demon out of him. 

“Why was it able to do that?” 

“Dismiss the evil from your person?” Chao Xing remarks, irate, nearly stepping on his heels in her attempts to keep her gaze on her fan in his grasp. “I know not. It was a gift from the Young Master. He did not carry any fans on him, so I presume it first belonged to his mother.” 

His mother. 

What was it Kaeya had said back then in his explanation beneath that tree? 

Second head to the clan? Powerful sorceress? 

Spirit sorcery? 

He narrows his eyes and snorts and passes the fan back to Chao Xing who whips it far from his reach. Yelena was wrong. 

These clans were trouble. 

Although he guessed if he hadn’t encountered Kaeya and spun into this mess to begin with, the clans would’ve continued to live their existence as they always had. Undisturbed and largely unknown by any agents of Snezhnaya. 

“...I sensed what occurred.” 

Chao Xing- in the small bout of perusing quiet that settled over them as they ventured forward. 

They round a corner and step into another tunnel, this one slanting sharply, steeply down. There’s something at the bottom of it. Something malevolent. 

Its hisses echo off the passage walls. 

Chao Xing slows her steps. 

Childe carries on, unconcerned. “Sensed what?” 

“A peculiar bond between the both of you. It called you down.” 

“I wasn’t called anywhere.” 

“You were.” 

She recalls the abrupt rupture of a purple blackened storm in the midst of the gardens, the armor forged in the blink of an eye, the arm that grabbed her and dropped them through the darkness decimating every curse in its inhumanly fast descent only a minute after the husband-snatcher’s disappearance. 

The look in the man’s eyes before a mask had slipped over it was nothing short of feral. 

Frightened yes- she had been- but only for an instant. 

The anger hadn’t been for her.

“I knew you two possessed Visions from the time I spied upon you on the boat. I did not realize a true bond would grant you such powers. You must love him a great deal.” 

She watches the man trip over his feet as she trails behind him. 

“Perhaps I was wrong in my previously held assumptions. You do not wish to only sleep with him. If I myself find such a love so genuine, will I be granted such powers too? It is thought-provoking.” 

Childe sputters and coughs and doesn’t so much as turn around as he fumbles to face her, stopping in the middle of the tunnel. Jeezus what was she saying? “First of all- no. You’ll never have power like that.” 

And thank Celestia. 

If someone untrained with a slew of useless gimmicks and spells, yet holding inhuman strength and a magical fan she never let go of, imbued with some power from a spirit sorcerer- could send Foul Legacy packing with a tap - he didn’t want to imagine what she would’ve been like in another time and world should she have dropped into the Abyss and never known the meaning of ‘love’. 

Provided she didn’t die from lack of stamina in the middle of training. 

“Didn’t you say power wasn’t important?” 

“It’s not. I believe that firmly. Seeking it brings nothing but loss and trouble. However your love enables this power. I find myself most interested in how it works.” 

“Stop saying that. I don’t love -” and he retches on the word- “-that idiot.” 

“You’re lovers.” 

“We aren’t lovers.” 

Childe understands now what Alberich must’ve felt like all those times before. 

"It was a lie. All of it," he announces. 

"For what purpose?" 

"Because." 

"That's not an answer." 

"I don't care." 

Chao Xing tilts her head, noting his words. Then she smiles small. 

Childe looks at it. Looks at her. 

Chao Xing nods then, once, conceding to his proclamation with obvious dryness. She ventures past him. “Come along. There is a beast down here, and I feel the piece of Xu among it, similar to the others the Young Master and I sought out before. This beast must have snatched it before slithering to hide. Slay the curse and I will collect it.” 

“You’re not the boss of me,” he tells her. 

“Then remain where you are,” she responds, fanning herself idly. “I will return with the spoils.” 

The spoils of what? Her defeat?

He crosses his arms. 

She disappears into the darkness. 

He scoffs. 

He decides to humor her for thirty seconds. Like she’d be able to- 

An explosion. 

A howling screech. 

A bombarding blast of wind. 

A solid, resounding smack ! Followed by six more. 

Childe stares. 

Quiet falls for a long minute. 

Chao Xing re-emerges, ornaments in her hair slightly out of place, and winded, but otherwise unharmed. She fans herself tiredly but unbothered still, passing by Childe and depositing into his hand an ocean-blue orb, ensnared by black veined roots.

“Let us rejoin the Young Master and your ‘not-lover’ lover,” she says as she ascends back up the passageway. “I have many suspicions that left alone to their own devices in a place of truth such as this, they’ll start having sex.” 

Childe stops staring at the orb in his hand and moves that stare to her retreating form. “They aren’t having sex.” 

“They slept together once. Why wouldn’t they do it again?” 

“They didn’t sleep together.” 

“They did.” 

“No, they didn’t.” 

“On the boat.” 

“They didn’t.” 

He catches up to her. She keeps her eyes ahead. 

“I left them with lube. You didn’t truly believe they had gotten so close in such a short period of time without any sort of reason, did you?” 

“Wei Yin doesn’t like guys.” 

“The Young Master likes what he likes. That he has never slept with or spoken of a man prior to meeting yours does not indicate his disliking of them. It only means he did not come across one he liked before. I know the Young Master well, but it does not take twenty-six years of knowing someone to notice where their gaze wanders.” 

“He said he didn’t do anything with your fiancé.” 

“I am certain he would have. You two, however, appear to be partaking in a strange game of fabrications and poor decisions because you- as said by you yourself- can. Is it so unthinkable he’d sit on the Young Master’s dick and enjoy someone who showed proper interest?” Chao Xing inquires. “I've heard more than enough stories of the Young Master's talents. I cannot say your lover would return to you if he decides he likes it better." 

Childe shoves the orb back into her hand. 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

He passes her. 

She snorts. 

Her lips curve in good humor. 

She hides it behind her fan as she watches the man set off briskly in the wake of her partial truth and lie.

 

---

 

"Wei Yin, not that I don’t enjoy time sitting with you,” Kaeya begins, indeed now sitting beside the heir in the middle of the luminescent blue, grassy cave with no apparent reason for the glowing source of light or earth, “but why are we sitting here?” 

“Because I like your company,” Wei Yin answers, patting him on the knee before going back to twisting a wreath of blue and green grass and white flowers. 

A crown- and he crafts it with care. 

"We can leave finding the little buddy's soul-thing to Chao Xing. She got the others on her own so it shouldn't be a problem. Between you and me- and keep it a secret- I was kind of messing around the whole time. My attention span is way too short to bother with stuff I don't want to do." 

Even so, he had a remarkable concentration and dedication to what he did enjoy. Particularly creative crafts. 

They had been resting for a near eternity. 

Kaeya wasn't truly concerned about wherever Chao Xing and Tartaglia were; both were capable and could handle themselves fine. It was Xu he had begun to have reservations on. 

Was he still on that ceiling? 

Having the time to run the oddity through his mind, recalling a situation similar when Diluc and the Knights of Favonius and Kaeya himself had gone running into the cathedral to find that 'Oswald' in the same position, there was a chance what had happened was that Carmella had momentarily left the body; accidentally freezing it where it was. 

She’d been attacked and dragged into the pits here by some other curse after all. 

Perhaps she was wandering these odd tunnels herself on Xu's behalf. 

He couldn't say. 

She could probably protect herself too. 

…Mondstadt. 

It's a whisper in his head.

Since Mondstadt, he felt like he’d been running around for ages. Not in this soulscape. 

Everywhere. 

He didn't think he had slept; he didn't think he had even eaten right, or showered. The most time he had spent unconscious in a mild state of recovery had been here. 

He wanted a shower. 

He wanted a bed. 

He wanted to be able to pull copious amounts of blankets over his head and to roll over and forget anything outside of a deep sleep existed for a day or two.

But he couldn't have those things, and it seemed like he wouldn't any time soon, so the closest thing to a 'bed' he was getting was going to be this grass or someone's lap. 

…Would Wei Yin let him do it again if he asked? 

He likely would.

Kaeya looks at the grasses their boots rest in. 

He looks at the flowers he had picked himself in his hands and at the ink now crawled along them both. 

How permanent was this? 

How long would this reminder that someone else was involved with his well-being last? 

He was so used to Wei Yin; so comfortable with him despite knowing him for a blink in comparison to those important to him in Mond- and why was that? Because like with Mikhail, Kaeya didn’t need to bother with much pretense at all? 

And there was someone else, an asshole-someone-else, with a glowing, green reminder of his own, that had temporarily gone out of sight in his absence. 

The biggest tool in the tool-bag. 

Who Kaeya was now stupidly used to as well. 

What was he going to do after this when all was said and done? 

Plans of hiring a circus troupe to scare the spirit out of Tartaglia aside- hundreds of days down the road ahead- because he would follow through with that- he didn't see how anyone could expect him to bid farewell to the Fatui and go on about his life in Mond. 

What sense did that make to let Tartaglia go waltzing back to his motherland with answers of the Abyss and the warrior that he was from it, unsolved? 

With that weapon he possessed? 

With that scar? 

With that ridiculous claim of his to ' know' what Kaeya was? 

No. Absolutely not. 

Kaeya would get answers from him, even if he had to sit on the man's dick and wring it out of him dry. 

He narrows his eye. 

He would find the most horrible, cramped place to do it in too. The one that brought the least comfort- so he could lord over Tartaglia smugly and grind on that stupid dick of his in the worst of ways and maybe drop a few buckets on his head in the process on ‘accident’- 

"I'm sensing some horniness from you." 

Wei Yin's casual comment breaks Kaeya from his plotting thoughts. 

"I'm not horny." 

"You can't lie to me," the heir says, putting the finishing touches on his grass creation. "You're thinking about doing something kinky. A sub always knows. One sub to another." 

"What?" 

"You miss that guy real badly huh?" 

"I don't."

"But you seem to know exactly who I'm talking about," Wei Yin muses. “And I never said a name.” 

"I don't like him," Kaeya frowns. 

"I didn't say you did. I said you were horny. But you must be telling something close to the truth if you're saying that so clearly without trouble in this cave." 

"It is the truth," Kaeya persists, frowning more and more. "I don't want anything to do with him. Not like how you're thinking." 

Wei Yin hums. "Sometimes when you say stuff like that I start thinking you don’t really like him, because you sound like you mean it." 

"I do mean it. I just said it. I’ve been saying it. Multiple times. We aren't lovers. We aren’t in love." 

“No,” Wei Yin agrees lightly, for what may possibly be the first time forever. “I don’t think you are. I just think you two have very complicated feelings and a few things to figure out. But maybe I can help you." 

Help? With what? 

There was nothing that could help Tartaglia on this planet. 

"Where did you meet?” 

“In a tavern.” 

“Where’s the first place you messed around in?” 

“A shed.” 

“The second?” 

“A hotel room- why are you asking me this?” 

“When did you first see each other and talk?” 

“A few weeks ago- Wei Yin, I don’t understand why it matters-” 

“It doesn’t matter. I just wanted to make sure.” 

“Of what?” 

Wei Yin sets the crown on top of Kaeya’s head. “That I’m not overstepping bounds on anything long-term or serious. I’d hate to get in the way.”

Kaeya touches the crown before regarding the heir, confused. “Get in the way of wh-” 

The lips on his are soft and gentle. 

A thumb across his cheekbone. 

It brushes carefully. 

Wei Yin draws back briefly, before settling his hand on the curve of Kaeya’s jaw and bringing their mouths back together. An asking tongue caresses across the bottom of Kaeya’s lip and he opens his mouth in bewilderment to say or do something about it but for one reason or another his mind goes blank and he doesn’t. 

Wei Yin is soft. 

Bizarrely his tongue is too. And he tastes like sunsettias. 

Their tongues rub and slide unhurried, rolling, with ease- and an uncanny memory of tumbling down a grassy hill in Mond in the middle of summer comes and lingers in the back of Kaeya’s mind as his face is cradled more securely, but no less carefully, and as Wei Yin explores. 

It’s a drowning, comforting, honey; a sinking pool of it, and he struggles to wade out of it when the other man finally draws back and presses his smiling mouth to the corner of his hidden eye. 

Wei Yin leans away. 

He adjusts the crooked crown on Kaeya’s head and smiles even more. 

“You and your husband-boyfriend-lover don’t look like you know what you want to do. It’s causing you problems. If you’d like to do stuff with each other, you should go on ahead and do them. Treating yourself to all the good things you want- stupid father says it’s irresponsible. Chao Xing says it’s over-indulgent. But happiness for happiness. Pleasure for pleasure. It's alright to enjoy things like this. You can like things like this, and not feel bad for it. So long as you don’t hurt yourself.” 

Kaeya doesn’t understand a single thing that’s just happened or what the heir is saying. And Wei Yin must see this because he rises and takes a hold of Kaeya’s hands, pulling him to his feet and beginning to casually waltz them in a small, spinning dance. 

It feels disconcertingly off-beat. 

Yet Wei Yin pays no mind to it, musing as he dances them slowly through the flowered grass.

“Mothers and fathers. Husbands and wives. That’s all the Clan promotes. And those are the only kinds of magazines I used to find under my brothers’ beds when looking for markers, and in father’s locked box of secrets when looking for candy, and in my mother’s bathroom when I went searching through her closets for ideas of clothes to design. They’re pretty inflexible. The main family, the branch families, the families of the families. Chao Xing’s too. All about tradition. Did she ever tell you that? The Yuans are the most anal about it. They’re all about making babies and continuing on the longevity of the Clan so their power and wealth never dies. It’s a boring thing to chase after, but they are a boring clan so I get it. Personally, I think it’d be really fun to have a baby, but I don’t think I’d be a good parent. I’d have to read a real book for the first time. Carp could probably steal a couple. She and I could totally teach our kiddo all the tricks of the trade if we ever had one.”

Kaeya stops staring at their feet and looks up at him, trying to make sense of all the jumbled rambling spilling out of the taller man’s mouth. Wei Yin looks down at him in return. 

“Sorry. I should be more clear, right? You can join us if you’d like. I think you’d be a great parent. It’d be a lot of fun showing you too.” 

“Showing …me?” he repeats. 

“How to really ditch your responsibilities and spoil yourself. You work hard and you think a lot. You deserve a vacation. So when we get out of here, wherever we end up, we can do the things you want to do. If you write a list I’ll do my best to remember. I’ll also take you shopping. If you like jewelry and flowers, I’ll buy them for you. I can’t cook but there are lots of places to eat. There’s a boat in the Harbor where they make you paddle yourself into the water, but if I throw some coins at the oar guy he’ll take us. Just gotta make sure not to hit him in the eye with it or he’ll ditch us like he did to me in the middle of that storm one time.” 

“…Why were you in a paddle boat in the middle of a storm?” 

“The waves looked fun and I wanted to ride them. It didn’t work out though. Oh! Your lover can come along if he wants , but he’ll have to stay in a different room because I don’t think he’d appreciate the sort of rubdown I’d give you. It’d be very detailed. I’d show you your best spots.” 

He squeezes Kaeya’s fingers. 

“And at the end of the day you’ll get a better idea of it.” 

“Of what?” 

“How to love yourself a little more.” 

Wei Yin stops them in the middle of the grass as Kaeya runs the statement through his head and tries to comprehend it. “I like myself,” he says. 

“You don’t love yourself,” Wei Yin says back. “I knew someone a long time ago who maybe wasn’t so unlike you. Who maybe did things too carelessly. Who maybe didn’t know at first how to find the kind of appreciation and love he needed or wanted. But he wasn’t a bad person, probably, he was maybe acting out. He had maybe gotten a lot of things confused. He maybe ended up liking sex a lot and it became a big part of who he was because he lost the important brothers who were supposed to do big brother things and guide him, and because his mother was too busy with Clan things and because he was suddenly expected to get married to a girl knowing nothing about girls or things like relationships because he was a kid. Also because his father was stupid and expected him to be okay with it. Stupid father. His father was so stupid,” Wei Yin makes clear. “But that someone figured it all out on his own eventually. And came to the conclusion. It’s okay not knowing what you want for yourself and it’s totally okay to enjoy wild and strange things- but you have to be nice to yourself, and you have to find others who’ll be nice to you too.” 

He laces his fingers with Kaeya’s. 

He bows his head and pulls him forward and kisses him again- but this time Kaeya realizes there is nothing romantic in it- Wei Yin is telling him something, in the way he shows his love. 

Languid, slow, tugging; full of sincerity and warmth. 

When they separate- when Kaeya’s face is fully flushed- when his heart is in his throat and when he finds himself dazed with stolen breath in a way he only thought was possible in the middle of rough sex, Wei Yin gazes at him kindly and says- 

“Try and follow what I’m going to share. The point might get lost. I get distracted easily but I’d like to focus for you. Alright?” 

“Alright,” mumbles Kaeya back.

"Alright!” Wei Yin affirms, brightly. “In the relationship Carp and I have- or had I guess- she took great care of me. She's into that stuff. Ropes and bondage- the whole dominating thing- stepping on the dick, funky positions. She's all muscles and weight, and she's way stronger than I could ever be. I'm alright with that though. It balances us out. I'm not sure what you think about when I tell you of all the women I've slept with or from what others say, but I'm rarely in charge. I make the first couple moves and then they take over. Or the bold ones just go for it. The ladies like my soft hands and skin and stuff, and I try my best to give them exactly what they want, and do what they tell me to. That way they get the best experience they can, and I get to feel like I've done something good for someone else. When we're not in a rush, and when we're not in any danger of getting caught from angry boyfriends or husbands or other cheaters, and when we're not in any strange places like rain gutters and rivers, I'll ask and they'll sit with me afterwards and help me with my notes. I've told you about those, right? My notes for study. How to take care of someone, how to make them feel good before and during and after, so that everyone's happy; so that everyone's safe and it's fun. It's always been a worthwhile investment." 

Wei Yin thoughtfully meets Kaeya’s gaze. 

"A long time ago when I was nineteen, I was out in a brothel hiding from Chao Xing who wanted to do 'couple things' at a food festival. It's a neat place. I still visit sometimes. Back then, I happened to be having a good time helping the women inside pick out their next day's outfits and they taught me how to play this nifty betting game with wooden chips. They were in the middle of wiping me clean of Mora when the door was kicked in and this guy appeared. Maybe.... six or seven years older than me? He was a handsome enough guy but he kept flashing his abs every few seconds when no one wanted to see them, so I thought he had a spider on him or something and I went over and started swatting him with this wooden stick the ladies used to beat out the bedsheets of the brothel after washing them. He didn't like it much," Wei Yin admits. 

It was understandable why. 

"To apologize, I offered to buy him a drink. He laughed at me and misunderstood and said I wasn't his ‘type’, but he took me up on the offer, had the drink, then eight more, and another six when he realized I had money. He called me 'buddy' and was nice to me, and when he asked me for Mora to 'buy a lady', I gave it to him- even though his choice of words was one I didn't like. If someone wanted to enjoy their night, I should help them. That's what I had thought at first. I had a strange mindset back then. One that tried to be friends with everyone. But that guy was terrible. Without the drinks, I still think he would've been." 

Wei Yin frowns. 

He studies Kaeya. 

He tucks a loose piece of hair behind Kaeya's ear, rubs the ear lightly, and carries on. 

"I touch to communicate because it's the best way I know how to show proper appreciation. He wasn't like that. He touched because he thought he was entitled. He started acting up around the women; he started yelling, he got angry when they said they didn't want him and when they told him to leave. He started flashing his abs again, talking about what everyone was missing out on. We all agreed he had another spider on him and we started beating him with the bedsheet sticks. He stumbled off into the night streets filled with glowing festival lights, furious, but he fled limping- because one of the ladies had given him a splinter up his ass. Afterwards, the atmosphere in the brothel was different. Some of the women were frightened, and they asked me to leave, so of course I did. Chao Xing was squatting in a bush outside and we went to get dinner, and when she asked what it had all been about, I told her, and then told her I would never, ever be a guy like that." 

Wei Yin's thoughts wander. 

"She seemed pleased when she heard it, but then she started moping, muttering about how I was never nice to her. So I told her back for the hundredth time if she stopped trying to marry me and canceled the wedding maybe I would be, because we'd spent an entire childhood together and- Vinny, you have to understand- the Yuans are like this annoying house of removed cousins who refuse to get off our yard- and we should probably build a fence." 

…Hadn't Shen said that?

"Chao Xing has no idea, but those journals Chyou shared with me about the clans and unity had super detailed trees of our families and branch families over the course of fifteen-hundred years. When I went back through them after her death, able to understand more when I was older, I'm pretty sure I saw that we are cousins- sixth removed, twice added, seven times expelled and once re-added- somewhere on their mother's side and on my father's." 

He shakes his head. 

He speaks the truth the 'cavern of truths' seems intent on bringing out; the truth muddled and mixed in with Wei Yin's attempted message on love. 

"Chao Xing totally misunderstood that whole situation with her sister. Chyou didn't like me for any romantic reason. She was just convinced I wasn't real." 

Kaeya's brain suffers whiplash. "I’m sorry?”

"Chyou. She liked botany, she loved the gardens, and she liked to study and take notes on me. She thought I was a sentient acorn. It's a long story involving a magician at her sixth birthday party." 

" What -" 

"So anyway, I'd never be interested in Chao Xing. I can’t even convince myself I can be. I've been wondering for a long time how to break the news to her. It’s been years and I don't want to hurt her feelings too much or anything." 

Kaeya stares . "How about 'Chao Xing, we're somewhat cousins'?" 

"No... too vague," sighs the heir, distantly. "She'd ask for the proof in blood. I only have so much to give." 

"Why would you need to give her your blood?" 

"It's what Chyou asked for to investigate my existence as a human being." 

That was something else. 

That was something else entirely. 

Sweet and kind and thoughtful? Chyou was a mad scientist in the making. 

What had actually been the reason behind her making Wei Yin 'smell the flowers'? Because she was under the impression he was a living, breathing acorn that could thus speak to the bushes? 

Was Wei Yin that much of an enigma that people just assumed he couldn't be real? 

"You don't have to look concerned," Wei Yin reassures him. "I'll spill the beans to Chao Xing as soon as I figure out how to replenish my own blood-" 

So never-

 "-that's not what I was trying to say anyway. Ugh . Stupid cave!" 

Wei Yin tilts his head back. 

"I hate you!" he shouts. 

His voice echoes. 

His shoulders slump. 

He looks so horribly disheartened Kaeya finds himself squeezing their hands. This was... Wei Yin's way of communication, wasn't it? 

Kaeya says his name. 

Wei Yin stops frowning. He squeezes Kaeya's hands in return, brightening considerably. "Yes, that's right. I wanted to talk about you, Vinny. Thanks for the reminder." 

"Me." 

"That's right.” He must see something on Kaeya's expression at that moment because he laughs, tickled. "You- oh Vinny. You're so…” He laughs once more, decidedly. “I think I really want to take care of you. Ever since you went to get that lube. I knew you didn't want to, but you did it anyway, just like you hung out with me though nothing and no one was telling you to stay. You looked so lost when you left. I remember thinking you were nice. And that you were seriously pretty cute. There's this thing you do with your expression when you don't know what to do or say. Like the one you're wearing now- where you bunch your face up and looks all grouchy and bothered. I think it's so endearing." 

Kaeya attempts to 'unbunch' his face, and is rewarded with a face that feels infinitely more twisted in denial and displeasure than before. "That's not true." 

"Okay," Wei Yin indulges him. 

Kaeya doesn't want to hurt Wei Yin's feelings- but how to say it? 

"I don't... need to be taken care of. I'm quite competent and capable of handling things on my own." 

"I know that." Wei Yin says it without a trace of dishonesty. "I can tell just from watching you how seriously you take things; how hard you work. But I'm not talking about business. I mean you as a person. A person who has wants and needs and wishes. I started thinking about it a lot lately. Especially after your lover joined us. Especially after you started being so... open with him." 

He considers. 

"All the while I was with Chao Xing, it bugged me. Like back in that bedroom. Like when I saw-" his eyes go to Kaeya's neck, "-when I see those. It must've hurt. Chao Xing and I woke up a long time before you did when we first dropped here. We cleaned the both of you up, but we had to pay extra close attention to you, and I poked around inside your ass to make sure it was alright before Chao Xing stopped looking away all stubborn about your 'privacy' and worked her little healing spell to fix up some of what had been torn-" 

"You what-" 

"-then she told me all belatedly being a soul naturally had some repairing abilities and you'd eventually be fine so I should take my hand out of you, and then we agreed that I wasn't mistaken. Even Chao Xing had to admit you have a nice butt-" 

" Stop this story Wei Yin -" 

The heir does, but only because he's gone back to his previous half-lecture started in the den with the clothes and scarf they had never quite finished. 

"He was so rough with you. I mean, it's fine to like stuff like that- keeps things spicy and kinky- and it's pretty much what me and Carp had going on, but as I said, she takes good care of me, and we had a safe word." 

Wei Yin drops his hands from Kaeya's in favor of settling them on his shoulder, and gripping them worried. 

"Do you guys even have that? For when it gets to be too much? Are you sure that's what you want?" 

"It's... never been too much," Kaeya answers honestly. 

If anything it hadn’t been enough.

They'd only sexed it up once, after all, and it was hardly unpleasant. It was exactly what Kaeya wanted from a douche with a dick that big. Not that he wanted Tartaglia. 

Just his dick. 

And his hands. 

And his body. 

Those were all important parts of the experience. 

The Fatui's face wasn't entirely rotten, but his eyes were too knowing at the most inopportune times, and his smug mouth said the most idiotic jargon when Kaeya least wanted to hear it, so perhaps if he found a way to hide both of those things from sight.... 

…A burlap sack?

That could- 

That could work. 

Maybe. 

Kaeya attempts to visualize it, deeply troubled.

 Could he still get turned on thinking about getting fucked into a mattress by a Fatui Harbinger with a burlap sack on his head? 

The answer was no. 

Archons.

That was a terrifying concept beyond belief. 

"Um. Vinny." 

"Yes?" he murmurs, distracted. 

"What are you thinking about?" 

Wei Yin sounds strange. Kaeya looks at him, concerned. 

“Nothing. Why?" 

Wei Yin's eyes are fixated past Kaeya's shoulder. "There's a..." 

Kaeya glances over his shoulder. 

He jumps. 

Wei Yin pulls him behind him quickly- then has a thought- and pushes Kaeya right back out in front of him to act as a sacrifice. 

A Harbinger with a burlap sack over his head. 

Conjured from his thoughts. 

Still as a statue. Buck-naked. A cursed, cursed image. 

He's holding a bouquet of flowers. 

Lilies. 

Calla Lilies.  

Kaeya and Wei Yin's eyes, however, are on one place and one place alone. 

"...Wow," says Wei Yin after an infinite eternity. "Kink of the creepy bag aside, look at him . This is Harbin, isn't it? I didn't know he liked to bring you flowers. Maybe I was too hasty with thinking he was a bad person. That's sweet of him." 

"He's never brought me flowers." 

"Then you must want him to. This weird-creature thing is what a part of you wishes for, right?" 

It most certainly wasn't . 

Who would want such a godawful, frightening thing lurking in their presence, bringing them flowers? 

Where were its clothes? 

"You've got to admire those legs," Wei Yin squints, rubbing his chin. "That's some pretty lean muscle. Those thighs are lethal. I'm totally jealous. And that dick is huge - geez forget my whale, the veins on that erect thing, it's like a sea monster-" 

Wei Yin has an epiphany. 

"Was that the monster beneath the ship- "

Kaeya, hastily, blustering- “ Alright that’s enough of that-” 

The 'Harbinger' disappears abruptly. 

"Oh no, bring it back," says a voice no one ever wants to hear behind them. "Let's give that sea monster another look. Let's get a real good look at it. That way all of us present know what you really like having stuffed inside you." 

Kaeya spins around. 

Wei Yin turns, far less horrified, rather intrigued. "Long time no see, Harbin. How come your dick's so big? Special seasoning?" 

Special seasoning?  

Gods Wei Yin , Kaeya thinks.

"Oh no, no seasoning," Tartaglia humors the heir without an ounce of humor on his flat face. "I've just been blessed." 

By the god of douchebags. 

"It makes finding good pants difficult." 

"Oh no, the struggle," Kaeya can't help but comment, dry as a board, as Tartaglia comes on over. But Tartaglia doesn't so much as stop beside Kaeya as much as he stops in between him and Wei Yin, and he faces Wei Yin without responding to Kaeya's jab. 

"We found what we were looking for. It wasn’t hard." 

“You’re pretty competent,” Wei Yin compliments. 

“Yeah. I am.” Tartaglia folds his arms across his chest. "Go meet with Chao Xing. She's with the kid. The tunnel I came from leads in a circle back to it." 

He reaches behind him and swipes the lopsided crown of grass right off Kaeya's head. He frisbees it at Wei Yin's face. 

"And take this with you. Maybe if you give it to her, she won't kill you." 

Meaning what? 

Wei Yin hums in contemplation. 

He glances between them. 

His eyes linger on Kaeya. 

"I don't know..." 

"Wei Yin," says Tartaglia without calling him any variation of an idiot. "Get out of here before I deck you." 

"Ho ho! Kinky!" Wei Yin commends. "Alrighty." He raises on his tip-toes to get a final look at Kaeya as the Harbinger between blocks half the view. "Don't get too crazy. Remember what I said. If you really do like it rough, go for it- but use better protection. In fact, why don't you go on ahead and think of my ward like a big condom. I would be honored." 

Well I wouldn't. Forget it!  

Why did Wei Yin even say that? 

Now Kaeya suddenly felt like he was sleeved in a giant, sentient yet slumbering condom against his will. 

"I didn’t tell you while I was doing it; Chao Xing might’ve said something, I’m not sure, but wards of the Wei Clan last for as long as their creator wishes for when they’re inking. I wasn’t sure how long we’d be together for back then so I intentioned it forever," Wei Yin confesses. 

Why!  

“You barely knew me.” 

“I knew you were the one.” 

The one what? 

“It actually probably won’t last long,” Wei Yin further confesses. “I was worried for you in our separation so I pestered Chao Xing a bunch until she twisted my arm behind my back and told me to be quiet. While I was suffering she then told me it’d likely lose potency while we’re in this squirt’s soul and get eroded by all the spirit energy inside. So that’s a bummer. But even if that’s the case and it goes away in here, just know a part of me will be a part of you forever.”

He pauses. 

He looks at Tartaglia. 

“I’d like you to know that.” 

Tartaglia’s fingers on his crossed arms twitch. 

“ Forever, ” Wei Yin emphasizes. “No matter how far away. No matter who he's with. I will live in Vinny’s heart." He beams. "I’m pretty hard to get rid of!" 

Hey, stop saying weird things! 

Kaeya beams his thoughts intently towards Wei Yin, begging them to get through.

Who exactly are you telling that to? Why are you telling him that! You’re setting us both up! 

“Well, my job is done,” Wei Yin steps back, pleased, and ventures off with earnest parting words. “Think about what I said, Vinny. I’ll always have a place for you next to Carp. I’ll do my research for you, so let me know if you ever need a soft orgasm or two. We’ll tie you up and finger you good.” 

He disappears, a lighthearted shadow through the tunnel leading away. 

Kaeya watches him go. He resists the urge to call him back because what in the world had he been doing antagonizing Childe like that?  

He starts after him, swiftly. 

He is tugged to an abrupt halt. 

Not by any hand. 

By a certain morphing bungee band bond. 

Disgruntled, he faces the Harbinger and says, "Let go." 

Tartaglia’s eyes are on Zhongli’s blessing. His lips are curled in distaste. 

He doesn't say anything. 

Kaeya already knew he despised it but he didn’t have to look so openly pissed about it. It irks him and he scoffs. Tartaglia must have some sort of hidden superpower to piss Kaeya off just by breathing the same air as him moments after reunion.

"We'll track down Zhongli when we get out of here. Don't worry," he bites. “ We'll get rid of it. " 

Tartaglia scoffs right back. He drops the end of the 'bond' he’d been holding. “You’d like that wouldn’t you?” 

“Wouldn’t we both? It’s a nuisance and serves no purpose.” 

“I guess Wei Yidiot’s ward isn’t a bother to you.” 

“It’s not the same thing. And it’s not the same person.” 

"So you enjoy walking around with a giant condom on you." 

"It's not a condom ." 

“He’s just an idiot.” 

“He’s not an idiot.” 

“You won’t see him again after this.” 

“After what? Are you threatening to murder him?” 

“No, you dumbass. After all of this. When I toss him on a boat with his one-hundredth removed cousin and ship him out to sea.” 

The insult flies over Kaeya’s head in lieu of alarm. 

He was there for that whole conversation? 

A second after, he’s made more alarmed as he thinks about what Childe had said about Wei Yin and Wei Yin’s flower crown. 

Had Chao Xing been with Childe at some point- creeping in on him and Wei Yin? Had she heard what Wei Yin said about their clans? 

Then the words of the Harbinger and the meaning of them actually sink in. 

Kaeya drops and unfolds his arms that had been unconsciously crossed in a mimicry of Tartaglia’s stance. “You… still plan on taking them from Liyue if they want?” 

Tartaglia scrutinizes him. “I said I would.” 

“But back in the room you said-” 

“It was an argument. Don’t people normally say a bunch of random things in the middle of one?” 

They hadn’t really been random things. 

Targeted viciousness to be honest- 

“Well. Alright.” 

The conversation has taken a bit of a... strange turn. Kaeya’s not sure whether he should be trying to fight the lieutenant with barbs again or try to hold a civil conversation. 

"...If that’s the case, then you have to know I’m not sure anymore if I’ll be able to get you the mushroom. Rather- when I’d be able to. Or where we’ll be after leaving here." 

“It doesn’t matter.” 

Had he misheard? 

It didn’t matter? 

Tartaglia looks at him and doesn’t look away. 

His crossed arms tuck into themselves deeper. His body language is forward. 

Self-certain. 

“I don’t need the mushroom.” 

“Why wouldn’t you need-” 

“I’ll be taking you instead.” 

Kaeya stares. “Where?” 

“Snezhnaya.” 

Kaeya keeps staring. 

Tartaliga keeps staring back. “What.” 

“You can’t do that.” 

“Sure I can. Why would I bother with a mushroom when I can deliver her someone born and raised from Khaenri’ah? Someone who can give her all the answers she needs?” 

It’s like having a bucket of freezing water tossed at his face. 

For a moment he’s nothing but stunned. 

Childe tilts his head, expression dulled. “Between the two of us, I think we both know who’s stronger. I’ve been doing some thinking myself on this little journey through the caves, and you know, it just seems obvious. Being around you for too long must’ve muddled my sense of reason. When I was with Chao Xing on the way over here, realization dawned. I have you. You’re stuck with me. You’re my ‘fiance’. You’re mine . Zhongli’s curse is a blessing in disguise. I could drag you all the way around the world and there’s nothing you’d be able to do about it.” 

Silence. 

Childe goes on. 

“In fact. How about we ride the boat to Snezhnaya together. You and me and Wei useless and Chao Xing. A nice trip, full of bonding. I’ll give them to my subordinates. Let them take them to a nice village where they can live the rest of their lives as refugees away from their clans and responsibilities. Because that’s what you’d like, isn’t it? That sort of thing would make you happy because you’re really strange. Your wishes fulfilled, my mission completed. The Tsarista can have you for a bit- and when she’s done with you- I’ll keep you.” 

He lifts his hand and glances at the bind he’d been so against before. 

“It’s a pretty useful leash to have. Her Majesty might have continual need of you for matters involving the Abyss. I'd honestly like to go back there myself. There’s people and places I’d like to revisit. A couple things to investigate. We can enjoy it together.”  

It’s full sarcasm. 

Sarcasm with bizarre sincerity. 

Kaeya can’t believe what he’s hearing. The Fatui was off his rocker. 

“I’m not going anywhere with you. Ever. And if you think I’d just allow you to ‘walk around the world’ with me like I’m some dog , you’re sorely mistaken.” 

Childe spreads his arms, casual, idly taunting. “Would it be so bad? I’ll never put a bag on my head but you can sit on my dick all you’d like. I’ll indulge you. I might even praise you. Don’t worry, I’m sure wherever we go in my travels there’ll be a spare room with a dog bowl.” 

Kaeya laughs. Brightly. Thinking of murder. “For yourself no doubt. You understand who the begging mutt in this relationship is, yes?” 

“I don’t know. Do you?” The Harbinger pretends to be thoughtful. “I know I’m not the one between us who gets down on all fours.” 

Kaeya aims for his throat. 

Childe sidesteps, grabs his wrist, and easily uses the momentum to throw him up against the wall. He holds him there, a hand on his chest. 

“Leashes and collars.” 

He looks at the ward visible through Kaeya’s sleeve; along Kaeya’s arms. 

He clears his throat. 

His palm on Kaeya’s skin, through his clothes, is warm. 

He looks at a spot not anywhere on Kaeya directly afterwards but at the shiny flecks of sediment visible on the rough and cold grainy rock past Kaeya’s head. He clears his throat again. 

“What Wei moronic imbecile was running his mouth off about. You wouldn’t be… interested in that would you?” 

It takes a long long time for Kaeya to process the question. 

Childe holds his gaze on the wall. 

As Kaeya stands there with the weight of the lieutenant keeping him in place- as he realizes what Tartaglia is asking- his mind goes void of thought. 

Water drops somewhere in the cavern. 

More water drops.

In the godawful heavy and awkward quiet, Childe finds words. 

Vaguely. 

Haltingly. 

“Not that. I would treat you like that. I wouldn’t. Force you to go to Snezhnaya. I was just saying that. I wouldn’t drag you around. I’d blackmail you. Make it more fair. It’d be boring otherwise.” 

When he clears his throat for the third time, it sounds greatly strained. 

Is he choking? 

Dying? 

Kaeya looks at the open cavern space beyond Tartaglia’s head. At the flowered grass. The luminescent walls. “What’s wrong with you.” 

“Be quiet Alberich. I’m trying to say something.” 

“Well spit it out.” 

“Don’t rush me. I didn’t see you rushing Wei nuisance when his tongue was in your mouth.” 

Kaeya’s not even surprised he saw that. If he'd been around for the reveal of Wei Yin and Chao Xing's relationship, of course he would've been around for that.  

Of course.

“We weren’t doing anything.” 

“Like on the ship, huh.” 

The ship? 

Why was he bringing that up?

“Yes, like on the ship. I told you I didn’t sleep with him.” 

Childe snorts, quiet. “ Alr ight.” 

Kaeya side-eyes him. What al right? 

That was the most sarcastic thing he’d heard out of the Fatui’s mouth yet. 

“Tartaglia-” 

“Degrading you. Dirty talk,” Tartaglia cuts him off. “I can do that fine. It’s easy because I hate you.” 

Now Kaeya snorts. “Good for you, having that realization. Did Chao Xing insult you? Did she injure your pride? Is that where this is coming from?” 

“I'm not like you. I don't get bothered over words.” 

"You sound so stupid right now." 

"Shut up." 

"You shut up." 

Kaeya's trying to remember what Wei Yin had been telling him. 

Something about a condom. 

Loving himself with a condom. 

That had been the main point of that talk, hadn't it? 

To go on ahead and have sex with Tartaglia again if he wanted to, but to this time use a condom for safety and pretend he was protected by a giant condom sleeve. 

But he had already taken Tartaglia bare so what was the point? 

“I’ve slept with other people,” Childe comments. 

“I know that.” 

“I’ve had sex with them.” 

“Isn't that what that means?”

Childe brings his eyes from the wall onto Kaeya. “I’m a versatile guy.” 

“What are you bragging at me for?”

“I’m not bragging. I’m telling you.” 

He’s ridiculously close. 

His lashes are surprisingly long. 

The heat radiating off him is a burning one, trapped between them. 

Kaeya shifts. 

“I can treat you really poorly in a bedroom,” Childe says, “if that’s what you’re into. But I don’t have to.” 

“So what?” 

“So nothing. Just so we’re clear.” 

Kaeya averts his gaze. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.” 

“Yes you do.” 

“Then say it clearly,” Kaeya mutters. “If there's something you want, then tell me. I won’t understand otherwise.” 

“Because you’re an idiot. I know.” 

“Because you’re an idiot. Getting bothered by Wei Yin.” 

The Fatui’s hand leaves his chest and slides to his waist. It’s soon joined by his other. “I want him to mind his own business. He doesn’t know anything about me.” 

Kaeya’s hands fall on top his own. What a familiar position. “Neither do I.” 

He’s pressed very carefully, further back into the wall. 

“Then maybe you should try learning. Maybe you should stop listening when he talks.” A knee slides between his legs. Shifts against his thighs. “Fiancé’s just a word. It doesn’t have any meaning to me. It doesn’t have any meaning to you. But for the sake of a few things, maybe it should.” 

Kaeya rocks on the knee slow. 

He offers his neck. 

Childe settles his face in the curve of it. He rubs his knee up under Kaeya’s dick just as teasingly slow. He mutters. “Don’t get any funky ideas in your head about that supreme Wei cabbage-head. He can’t do half of what I can.” 

Kaeya’s hands on the Harbinger’s tighten. His stomach clenches. 

“If you just asked me to, though it means nothing,” Tartaglia says against his skin- against the bruises of his throat- “I’d fuck you gently too.” 

Kaeya doesn’t get to groan. 

Tartaglia’s mouth is on his. 

Frustrated. 

For reasons Kaeya can’t quite place. 

What was going through Tartaglia’s head? Was he bothered by Wei Yin that much? 

Kaeya found himself appreciating the heir like nothing else, but he wouldn’t sleep with him. Wei yin didn’t have an interest in that. Neither did Kaeya.  Because Wei Yin wasn’t Tartaglia. 

He didn’t feel like this. He wasn’t what Kaeya was drawn to like this. 

Wei Yin, for all the good that he was, couldn’t be this . 

There was no Abyss in him. No familiarity of war and home. 

And Kaeya doesn’t like this man, he thinks very little of him, but he thinks of Calla Lilies and a radiant field of false flowers beneath the ground- and he doesn’t know why he’s suddenly frustrated himself. 

What does Tartaglia want from him? 

What does he know about the Abyss that he isn’t saying? 

This isn’t about any mission from their nations. 

This is personal. 

This is private . 

They give each other closed mouth kisses, unwilling to open themselves further, refusing to further explore. 

Childe rubs his knee harder. Kaeya grinds on it more. 

There’s an anger in it. 

And they stop. 

And they scowl. 

And they stay where they are. 

They breathe heavily. 

They don’t look at each other for a moment. 

Kaeya’s eye hidden away burns. “Why were you in the Abyss?” 

Childe keeps his chin beside Kaeya’s jaw, his mouth against Kaeya’s cheekbone. “It wasn’t my choice.” 

“You’re a warrior.” 

“Yeah I am.” 

“Then it was your choice.” 

“I’m saying it wasn’t.” 

There’s a poignant- important- pause. 

Childe turns his head, brushing his mouth across Kaeya’s face. He gazes at him, annoyed.

“My scar’s because of you.”

They’re unfathomable words. 

“You’re lying.” 

“No.” Childe says it so calmly it’s unnerving. “I’m not.” 

He lets go of Kaeya’s waist. 

The touch lingers, a ghost of a sensation, and Kaeya seizes ahold of him before he can step too far away.  

He looks at his hand on Childe’s wrist. He removes it. 

Childe distances himself. 

“That’s nonsense,” Kaeya says, eye fixed on the Fatui’s chest as if he’d be able to see through his clothes to the garish scar. “We’ve never met.” 

Childe says nothing for a while. 

Then he does. 

“What’s nonsense is this situation. What’s nonsense is where we are. What’s nonsense is the bag you wanted me to wear over my head in the event we ever had sex again. Alberich. I want you to look me in the eyes and tell me that isn’t a real kink of yours.” 

Kaeya lifts his gaze. 

He lifts it and holds his lone eye upon the entirely serious lieutenant before him. 

Matters of the Abyss, of Khaenri’ah, of that accusation were serious, yet here the Harbinger was with the most vacant expression, thinking about something else, having gotten worked up over something else- over Wei Yin- over an insult to his pride on his ‘capabilities’, and despite saying something so serious that required serious thought and serious discussion-

“Tartaglia, I don’t believe you,” he breathes. 

The Harbinger scowls. “Stop laughing.” 

“I’m not laughing.” 

“You look like you’re about to laugh.” 

“Because it’s not a kink of mine, I was only trying to think of ways to hide your face.” 

Tartaglia suspiciously squints. “And why would you do that?” 

Because you see too much when you look at me , seemed a bit dramatic to say. So Kaeya says, blithely- 

“Because I only like you for your body.” 

The remark is caught for what it is and Tartaglia snorts, deciding to play along. “Figures. I had you pegged from the start. You’re a dick guy through and through. Obsessed with them.” 

“You have a sense for those things, do you?” 

“Only for people of interest. It’s good to know where you’re shooting your shot.”

Their eyes settle on one another. 

“Is that right?” 

“It sure is.” 

They step a little closer. 

There's something a bit lighter. An odd resignation. 

An acceptance. 

Kaeya tells him, seemingly out of the blue, but it’s not for there’s intention, "I can't say I ever let myself get tied up without a fight before. Even then it was a humiliating experience." 

"Someone’s tied you up before. That’s interesting." 

“It was." 

“Who was it?” 

“An acquaintance. A bandit. We were looking for treasure." 

"Did you find it?" 

"No. We got stuck in a vault. And grew distracted. I don’t seem to remember the rest of the details.” 

“Maybe we should re-enact it. Jostle the memory. We can even chat about the Abyss.” 

“How benevolent.” 

Their hands settle on each other’s collars. 

They take the time to smooth them out, adjust them- tug on them slightly. 

“Of course,” Childe agrees. “I’m a benevolent guy. Keep in mind we’ll be in some dingy inn halfway to Snezhnaya when it happens because I do have to take you to the Tsarista and exploit your origins.” 

“Aren’t you wealthy? Why would we be somewhere dingy?” 

“Because it’s what you deserve. You’d probably get off on it anyway.” 

“I probably would.” 

They lean in close. 

“I’m not going to Snezhnaya,” Kaeya tells him. 

Childe thumbs the knight’s mouth open with ease. “We’ll talk about it later.” 

Kaeya tongues the finger slowly, and smiles small at the sudden heat in Childe’s eyes. “Alright.” 

The Fatui quirks a brow at the go-ahead. 

"How about we try this again?" he proposes after a second of watching Kaeya mess around with his thumb. "This time you can tell me how you'd like it. Fast or slow. Gentle or hard. Your pick." 

"Will you actually listen to me?" 

"I might. It depends." 

"On what?" 

"On how you beg for it." 

Oh. 

Kaeya likes the sound of that. 

He slides his hands up into Childe's hair and grabs a solid hold of it, tugging his head down. "You can give it to me both ways and I'll decide." 

Childe meets his tongue halfway. And only halfway. 

Because-

“ IIII don’t hear any cheeks clapping and your time is up-!” 

They break apart. 

Sense slaps them both in the face. 

Wei Yin pops his head back through the shadows of the tunnel leading out of the glowing cave. 

Kaeya moves from Childe like fire. 

Childe looks at Wei Yin like he’ll set him on fire.  

Wei Yin shakes his head at the both of them, disappointed. “Here we were waiting for the good stuff to come echoing down the cave. A quickie only takes two seconds.” 

Where? 

In what part of what world? 

“Too much foreplay,” the heir laments. “One day I’ll teach you guys how to balance it right, or else you'll keep getting worked up with no results.” 

Or maybe everyone in Teyvat could stop interrupting them . 

“Anyhow, the demon-possessed squirt finally fell off the ceiling into the water. It activated something. And Harbin, you were totally wrong! Chao Xing didn't want my flower crown. It really hurt when she threw it at my head."

 

---

 

They look at the body floating face down in the middle of the water. 

What had falling off the ceiling activated? 

Xu's death? 

…Had Carmella gone back in there? 

Chao Xing stands at Wei Yin's side, holding the blue orb of Xu's wayward 'spirit', appearing deeply conflicted. Though whether it's over how to handle the matter of Xu's or because of Wei Yin is unclear to Kaeya. 

That flower crown the heir had crafted is crushed beneath her foot. 

Childe looks around them, studiously avoiding eye contact with Kaeya, and finds a rock in the grass by the waterside. 

He tosses it at Xu's body. 

It ricochetes off Xu’s back. 

A shout erupts from the depths of the water. 

"Wei Idiot!" 

It echoes. 

"Wei Idiot!" 

"Wei Idiot!" 

They stare. 

"What the hell was that-" Childe starts. 

"Carmella noo!"

"Noo!" 

"Noo!" 

They stare some more. 

The pond ripples. The pond settles. 

Silence falls. 

Xu's body suddenly flops over. His legs sink; he treads. He spins around slowly a full three-hundred and sixty degrees before facing them. 

He says nothing. 

He doesn't blink. 

Kaeya brings two fingers to his temple as he's pushed to the forefront of the water by three sets of hands. 

Wei Yin snatches the orb from Chao Xing, peeking from behind her as she peeks out from behind Tartaglia, who's pretending like he's not digging his elbow into Kaeya's spine as he looks over his head at the child in the water. 

“Yoo-hoo! Little buddy! Squirt! Come on out. We need to give this to you- so stop being a complete creepy, possessed doll- you’re freaking me out here!” 

Xu does not ‘come out’. He continues to regard them blankly. 

“Well alright,” Wei Yin huffs. "If you're not coming to us-" 

Kaeya has a feeling- 

“Catch!” 

Xu does not ‘catch’ . 

The glass ball smacks him in the forehead- and shatters. 

“ Wei Yin-! ” 

It’s Chao Xing and Kaeya who exclaim it in unison but Childe who turns to strangle him- yet none of them get the chance to do anything because blinding white light erupts and consumes them.

 

---

 

Thunder breaks. 

Tumultuous clouds. Sheets of slanting rain. 

Bowed grass and a footpath of worn stone; a dense, forested enclosure. 

A flat wooden home sits in the middle of it in a state of disrepair. A rickety porch with splintered steps. A door off its hinge. There are windows, rectangular and latched. A black iron windchime, tasseled in blue and green and gold ornamental, glass birds. 

They stand in a puddle, ankles soaked and freezing, drenched from head to toe. 

Xu is in front of them. 

But it's not Xu. 

It's Carmella. 

“…. To my friend, I was this important. Out of everyone he met. I wonder why. Was it because I was his dear and precious first friend?" 

... Who the hell was this? 

What had returning that 'spirit' orb done? 

Give Carmella a whole new personality? 

"This is the final resting place. This is where I was brought in the valley, among the woods of Minlin. I remember the weeping boy. The determined one who spent weeks at my weakened side, sneaking from the Pavilion, trying his best methods to bring my waning spirit back to life. The mushrooms were many. Thus, I became a mushroom in his soul." 

What. 

"The true mushroom of Xu's soul." 

Why would he need that? Why would anyone need a mushroom for a soul? What had Xu been doing with those mushrooms? 

Carmella tilts their head back. Rain strikes their pale face somberly. 

"I could not be revived. Even with the sorcery of Lady Chao Xing who did her best to prolong my existence, I rose." 

They close their eyes. 

"To the mushroom beyond in the sky." 

Enough of the mushrooms. Knock it off with the mushrooms.  

"Yes." Carmella open their eyes. "I became it." 

They face them. 

They smile at Kaeya as if reading his thoughts. 

"I became an eternal mushroom. One that will forever protect and heal his soul." 

Stop smiling at me! There's no context to this conversation! There's nothing I know! 

She departs. 

She departs, anticlimactically, without reason. 

For good. 

Xu sways. 

Xu collapses. 

He isn’t caught by any of them- because none of them had tried.

 

---

 

There's a minor discussion from the porch steps and doorway of the house as the four of them gaze out from under the slanted roof towards the body face-planted in the soaked dirt in the yard. 

"It's not that I don't want to touch him," Wei Yin says, wringing out his outwear onto Childe's boot who looks down at the onslaught of dirty water staining his shoe before slowly lifting his head to stare at Wei Yin. "But I don't want to touch him," he says to Kaeya. "What if he starts levitating again?" 

"He's not going to do that," Kaeya says for the fifth time in this round of a conversation they've been in for the past fifteen minutes. "The curse, Carmella, left him. I don’t know where."

Maybe she returned to Shen. 

Chao Xing uses his arm to balance herself as she adjusts her wet slipper and as she does Kaeya asks her- 

"What did she mean by your ‘sorcery’ helping her? What was all that mention of mushrooms for?" 

"Likely medicinal," she utters, displeased by many, many things, more than her simply wet slippers, "After the tragedy that befell her, Xu must've studied herbs a great deal in realizing what little spirit energy I had to offer could not maintain her continued existence for long. Though at the time of discovery the curse, I was not aware she belonged to him. I helped only because I saw she was injured. But... perhaps that was why I found Xu so often on my balcony for that period of a few weeks. He was searching through my things. For at one point, there was a time I too sought the use of...potent medicine in the wake of loss." 

The reason for it goes unsaid. 

Kaeya has a feeling of what it had been. 

Tartaglia must've had an interest in the topic of curses, revival and medicines because he inserts himself in the talk.

"What's the deal with that curse anyway?" 

Wei Yin releases a deep, deep sigh. "I guess if you're asking me to answer-" 

"I wasn't." 

"-I'll have to come clean. Four or five years ago, I was in the garden writing in my book of punishment given to me by my father. I got in trouble for leaving toys out in the hall when guests had visited. Some important guy stepped on one of them and broke his ankle. So the punishment was five thousand tiny wards like the one on Vinny in a journal that was supposed to fit on ten pages. That kind of thing was impossible but I wanted to stick it to him and show him it could be done, so I got this back end of a knife instead with a super thin blade and after dulling it, dipped it in ink to use as a better pen." 

Wei Yin pauses and takes the time to wring out his hair on Tartaglia's other boot. 

"Halfway through, a few hours later I remember having to whizz. I found this interesting hole in one of the garden hall’s on the way there and got distracted though so I ended up being gone for a good hour.” 

Kaeya stops planning how to step in between Tartaglia and Wei Yin without making it too obvious he was trying to stop a murder in the making. 

What hole. 

What kind of hole would Wei Yin have discovered in a garden wall? 

And on a serious note, what kind of toy had that visiting guest stepped on? What kind of toys was Wei Yin going around leaving in the halls? 

“I happened to be visiting at the time as well,” Chao Xing contributes, with dimmed enthusiasm. “The rock I was behind was uncomfortable so I rose to move to a bush.” 

Who had she been visiting from behind a rock. 

Who did she believe she was trying to visit from within the leaves of a bush.

“As I settled in the hedges, I noted a winged curse flying past. At the time I had believed it was an unfortunate lost one that escaped from the Veil and the eyes of the sorcerers who must have been holding teachings within it. Of course, now I see it had been Xu's curse. She had been carrying a journal identical to the one the Young-“ 

She hesitates. 

She frowns. 

She continues on. 

“A journal like the one the Young Master had been inking out his punishment in. On her way to deliver it- presumably now we can say- to Xu. It was a heavy book. She stopped for rest on the bench the Young Mas-“ 

She stops. 

She purses her lips. 

They wait on her. 

She huffs under their attention. 

“The curse rest herself on the bench for a time, nearly as long as the time Wei Young Master Yin was gone-” 

“You feeling okay?” Wei Yin questions, piping in. “You’re getting weird with my name. Are you choking on something?" 

Chao Xing looks at the man she had believed was supposed to be her fiancé thanks to the oversight of two jumbled clans like she wants to kick him. 

“No, I am not choking , and you- you are such a fool Wei Yin! No wonder Chyou thought you were an acorn!” 

The outburst is a loud, pent-up one. 

She glances between them all, embarrassed. 

She bites her tongue. 

She flushes. 

But she does not regain her composure and steps from them, off down the porch, into the rain and grass, shoulders to her neck, stiff. 

Wei Yin frowns after her. "Aren't you going to finish the story?" 

"Finish it yourself," she glares. "Have a care not to fill it with secret lies ."  

She spins and begins stalking the long way across slippery muck and unsteady stone towards where Xu is flopped over. 

Wei Yin keeps frowning. He calls, pointing out- 

"It's super wet and cold out there! If you touch the kiddo he might zap you someplace weird and we all only just got back together! Also if you twist your ankles and drown in a puddle, you know I won't come out to help you, right!" 

"Yes, I am aware! " she snaps back. 

Kaeya brings his gaze to Wei Yin, exasperated. "Maybe leave her be for a time... and refrain from holding conversation." 

"If you think that would help," Wei Yin contemplates. 

The three of them watch as Chao Xing pokes at Xu's body with her toe suspiciously, then prods at him with her fan, before deigning it safe to make physical contact and attempting to pick him up. 

As she struggles for some reason under the nonexistent weight of a child, Wei Yin says, "Chao Xing would tell the story better, but we can just say the little kiddo's friend exploded and leave it at that. I tried to glue her back together but it didn't work." 

Kaeya and Childe turn their heads to look at where the heir stands in between them. 

Where did the details of that story go? 

A splash. 

A yelp. 

Chao Xing does exactly what Wei Yin said she would do and trips in a puddle, rolling with Xu. 

Childe looks at Wei Yin for a while longer like he's starting to believe the heir isn't a real person either before descending off the porch and stepping out into the rain. 

Kaeya watches him go, listening to the muttered, incredulous, " -can destroy a monster in a labyrinth but can't carry a kid- " and watches alongside Wei Yin as he drags her to her feet and gathers Xu from the grass himself. 

In the downpour it’s hard to discern the sort of expression he wears- but even as he stands and handles the boy with a sort of care and consideration Kaeya has never seen him use before on another living being- even as he finnesses Xu onto his back- at this distance, an expression isn't necessary. 

His eyes are darkest and the bluest Kaeya has ever seen. 

It's the most bizarre thing. 

There's not any particular reason for it, but as the Harbinger starts picking his way over grass and dirt and muddy stone towards the door of the house Kaeya waits near, Xu on his back, Chao Xing at his side, Kaeya thinks empty, meaningless thoughts of things that don't matter. 

Things slow and careful, unhurried. 

A proper bed and comfortable sheets. 

The smell of rain and flowers. 

His eye stays on Tartaglia as the lieutenant sets foot on the bottom porch stair and looks up at him disgruntled through terribly clumped lashes and plastered darkened hair in the low, rumbling storm. 

It’s unfair how attractive he is. 

It’s unfair how capable he looks. 

And Kaeya thinks it’s time to leave. 

"Take Yuan Xu inside," Chao Xing orders to no one specific, coming up the creaking steps and giving herself back the shelter she had left on her own accord; like she's not covered, undignified in mud. "Wake him naturally. Do not slap him awake." 

"So you want us to slap him awake," Wei Yin notes.

Chao Xing sits on the top step of the porch. "Forget it,” she utters. “Do as you please." 

"Alright. Your words not mine." 

Wei Yin jostles open the door of the flat house. 

He wanders in- and Childe goes in behind him- and Kaeya turns and looks after them, for once not thinking of Wei Yin first. 

Childe stops and turns around himself in the darkness of the home. 

They stare at each other. 

Their eyes wander. 

They return.

"If there's something you want-" and the Fatui is giving Kaeya his own words spoken in the cave right back to him "-then tell me. I won't understand otherwise." 

Kaeya takes several steps forward. 

Childe starts to go to him- Xu on his back and all-

And Kaeya closes the door. 

Separating them. 

Shutting out the sight. 

He stands on the porch. 

He looks at his hand on the knob. 

He listens to the rain and the dull, pounding in his ears- and backs away from home's entrance. 

He takes a seat beside Chao Xing on the top step of the porch. 

And just like her, pretends not to think for a long, long while.

 

---

 

In the bout of quiet, in the falling rain as they gaze out into the yard, to the woods, the gray clouds- it's Chao Xing who talks first. 

"I suppose it's a good thing the Young Master never showed affection to me after all, and that the extent of our 'intimacy' was limited to my spying on him from the bushes and hearing of his exploits with other women from afar. It does make walking in on him terribly awkward however. Though I suppose I have seen more women than he himself thanks to his habits. He does enjoy multiple partners at once." 

"...I'm sorry you had to find out this way." 

Chao Xing had dedicated nearly her whole lifetime trying to make herself like Wei Yin like her sister, and when she had grown respect and loyalty and admiration for the one who had inspired her to become a stronger, bolder person, she had reality throw a bucket of mud on her face. 

So yes, Kaeya does mean what he says. 

He means it with all the blankness in his head and chest. Because that’s all he’s capable of feeling at the moment. Blankness born from the bucket of particularly foul mud reality must have been preparing for him for years in advance for this moment. 

Not that there was a reality he needed to face. 

Chao Xing looks at the fan she holds, open, limp in her lap, dismayed, oblivious to Kaeya’s inner turmoil. 

"That the one man's body I have seen the most is yours in all these years, attractive though you are. There is no hope for me in this world. Why do your legs have such curves? Why were you able to absorb Wei Yin's hand into your rear so well?" she murmurs. "You have a body honed from years of training and battle. I could see that. What were those battles that shaped you? Battles with dicks? Fearsome ones?" 

"...Please stop following that line of thought." 

Chao Xing continues to lament sullenly. "I have not the knowledge. I have not ever slept with another person and I will die alone." 

"That's not going to happen to you," Kaeya tells her. 

"My fortune from that teller said I would find love with an old man. Clearly he means to say I will be on my deathbed when that day comes." 

Or there was another explanation. 

A more logical- less demoralizing one. 

Kaeya just... couldn't think of one to give her right now. 

Chao Xing's regret returns to its point of origin and as it does, Kaeya recalls that this abandoned house of efforts in the woods of a valley far from the world, was supposed to be that. 

So what nonsense did that say about his circling thoughts on Tartaglia? 

"All these years the Young Master rebuffed me. I don't understand why my sister wouldn't have said anything. Did she believe I would judge her- that I would lose the ideal image I held of her for her kindness and grace merely because she sought experimentation to discern if Wei Yin was real? Back then, holding low opinion of him as I did, I would have gladly helped her figure out the truth. And to think she allowed me to strike her down." 

Chao Xing's eyebrows bunch, uncomprehending. " Why? There must have been a reason for it. What was it? Why an acorn of all things? " 

It was a good question. 

And Kaeya had no answer. 

They sit outside for a while longer with too many unsaid things left to fester and sprawl out of control.

 "Chao Xing," Kaeya says. 

His eye is on the woods. 

His resignation at himself and the situation has never been so high. 

He doesn’t have anyone else to talk to so candidly. 

"I was never trying to be a guest for your wedding. I was never trying to do anything pointless with a wine. I only wanted to get the mushroom Wei Yin had said he wanted to kill you with. I needed it for a mission. I'm a Knight, from Mondstadt. It fell into the wrong hands." 

Chao Xing folds her fan. 

She sets it in her lap. 

"If I ask you who the man you travel with truly is, will you tell me?" 

"I wouldn't." 

It's not his place to go exposing other's secrets- only to figure them out. 

"I did note you two had Visions. Among other oddities. I suppose your name isn't 'Vinny'." 

"It is. To a degree. I wasn't being untruthful about my position in a prominent family." 

Chao Xing regards him. "A mushroom." 

"...Yes." 

"You have done all this for a mushroom." 

He pauses for a longer time. "......Yes." 

"When you could have simply asked." 

"I did ask. Wei Yin misunderstood." 

It's enough to explain everything without explaining anything further in detail at all. 

"I see," says Chao Xing. "And now you have fallen in love with the man who has so joined you." 

"Ye-" 

He halts and backtracks quickly. 

"No." 

His brows furrow. 

"It's not that kind of relationship." 

"Saying 'relationship' implies that there is one to begin with. You already consider yourself involved." 

"Because he's an obstacle to my mission." 

"You cannot expect me to believe everything you have done in your time spent with him is over something as ridiculous as a mushroom. Particularly a mushroom of no consequence, as it is a mushroom and I have had it sitting in a display case for days and days leaving it to rot. You two are imbeciles, yes. But not to that degree." 

Kaeya doesn't get the chance to assure her that he and Tartaglia are exactly those kind of imbeciles- and that the mushroom is a mushroom of consequence- as she carries on. 

"Perhaps your journey began for one reason or another, but that is not why your gazes linger and it is not why you are unable to go five minutes in one another's company without reaching out your hands."

 That was the hatred. 

Those were hands reaching out to strangle. Nevermind what happened in the 'cavern of lies'. 

"...I don't want to talk about this anymore," is what he says aloud instead. 

"So be it. You are stuck here now regardless, in the situation you have brought about." 

"I hope your lover is an old man in the woods." 

She thwacks him with Wei Yin's fan. 

Rain splatters on the stone. 

Rain falls lightly in their ears. 

"This is the longest trip I have ever been on," Chao Xing comments a short minute later. "I wish for it to end before one of us has a sudden discovery that Yuan Xu is actually a far-off, removed sibling- or one of Wei Yin's children born from his years of messing around." 

The second notion is an impossible yet frightening concept. Kaeya couldn't agree more with her. 

And yet, as she ruminates darkly, and as Kaeya holds his attention to the yard, he is overcome with a mild, horribly inappropriate need to tell a joke. 

It's a feeling he hasn't felt in ages. 

"You know. Wei Yin expressed to me in those caves he'd like to have a child. There could already be many versions of him running around that we don't know about. You should start preparing yourself to be called an 'aunt'. 'Aunt Chao Xing'. It has a ring to it." 

She raises her fan. 

He leans away and raises his hands, placating, swiftly- 

"I jest, don't take it seriously-" 

"It is not a joking matter you-" She glowers- and glowers at him with an already brewing vengeance. "Wipe that pleased look off your face. When you and your current lover have a child of your own, expect my smug laughter to reach your ears as you bear the title of 'father' and are subjected to a lifetime of denial-filled, domestic bliss." 

Kaeya's mirth drops instantly. 

He narrows his eye at her. 

At the newfound, unwanted, cursed image in his head. "That's never going to happen. Because we aren't lovers. Because we aren't domestic ." He narrows his eye impossibly further. "And I've never heard you laugh."

She turns up her chin; turns up her nose.  "You will. One day. Even if it years from now, you will. As you bear witness to 'Aunt Chao Xing' bringing your child a gift." 

"Do so," he encourages. "I'll be most gracious in returning the favor of bringing flowers to your husband's grave on your first anniversary’s eve.”

The cabin door swings in. 

They cease their nonsensical talk. 

Wei Yin sticks his head out. 

They twist around. 

He gazes at them for a long, long time. 

He gazes at Chao Xing for even longer. There's seriousness in his eyes. There's a small sense of apology. 

Chao Xing straightens marginally. "Wei Yin, you've come to say sorry for the deceit-" 

Wei Yin pulls a face. "Sorry for what? I’m not the one who planned the marriage. Someone must’ve known it wouldn’t work out. I bet it was your Aunt Yu or my mother.” 

It was the most logical thing about the Wei and Yuan Clans and their nature he had said yet. And surprisingly insightful. 

Chao Xing blinks, as if it hadn’t occurred to her.

But Kaeya thinks. Then what had Wei Yin’s father been doing? What had Chao Xing’s mother? Why had Chyou ‘allowed’ Chao Xing to ‘kill’ her? 

What was going on with that?

It seemed like a whole separate kind of mystery too big to understand?

Wei Yin scratches his nose. 

“Anyway, I came to tell you the kid's awake and that we didn't need to slap him or anything awful because he woke up and started transforming into something right away-" 

 

---

 

Kaeya and Chao Xing stare. 

"Who is this?" Kaeya says. 

"Xu," says Wei Yin. 

No it's not. 

"Not it's not," he repeats. 

"Well it can't be anyone else," Wei Yin replies. 

An empty room. 

They gather in it. 

It's the only room of the house now that they've walked in, tracking in small puddles and dirt. Barren of all furniture. 

Lit with yellow light from a source unseen. 

Tartaglia's arms have been folded plenty of times before, but this time, in the wide, spaced-out, circle they four of them have found themselves in, they are loosely crossed, indicating a Harbinger genuinely caught off guard with no clue of what's happened. 

Not that Kaeya can read Tartaglia's constant arm-folding habit; he had just been stuck seeing it so many times it was impossible to not start understanding the lieutenant's uncreative gestures as another language.

"Why is this thing here?" Tartaglia says. 

"It's not a thing," says Kaeya, staring down at the thing in the center of the floor. "You were the one left alone with Wei Yin and Xu. What did you do?" 

"I didn't do anything, Alberich. I didn't go zooming around on a magic carpet breaking into houses and blowing up souls." 

"He has a point," says Wei Yin like he wasn't a part of that. "It was Chao Xing steering, so this is probably her fault." 

"Half the time I crashed was because you kept trying to take the steering from me."

"What the hell were you two bozos steering on something without a wheel?" Childe says to them. "Whatever, forget it, this is pointless. We'll put it to a vote." 

Why? 

Childe looks up from the floor and at Kaeya. "It was him." 

"Alright," Chao Xing concedes. 

"Sounds about right," Wei Yin agrees. 

All three of them look at him. 

Kaeya wonders which of them to throw outside first. 

Wei Yin chuckles. "Don't look like that, Vinny. You can handle it. And if you can't, then you can rely on me. I'm on your side!" 

Whose side had he been on point-two seconds ago? 

"I know this seems like a problem, but it likely isn't,” Wei Yin reassures him. “It's okay." 

Good on him for being delusional on behalf of the rest of them. 

Kaeya bends and picks up Xu from the floor. 

Xu wrapped up tight in his own cloak and clothes. 

Xu silent and bright-eyed and stubby. 

Xu who- without any question, in the wake of several questionable people who had altered things in his soul- was a baby. 

Forget transforming. 

They had given birth to a new human being entirely in the blink of an eye as soon as Xu woke with half his childhood blasted apart and the curses filling his existence obliterated. 

Kaeya holds the baby under the arms, away from his body, staring. 

He looks past the baby at Tartaglia. 

"We are never getting out of here." 

 

Notes:

Happy Holidays, you guys!! Take care and stay safe! I tried to get this out to you before the busy weekend hit haha, but please do spend time doing what you enjoy with yourself or loved ones and save this chapter for next week's reading ^^ Eat something nice and treat yourself 🪅 Work and final and school and life kept you all busy; in the words of Wei Yin: You worked hard, get some rest! The next time we meet might be in the new year haha, so enjoy a safe new year as well.

...I feel like I should have put that at the beginning of this chapter but-

Whelp.

I hope the chapter was okay to end the year on! I'm open to any questions you guys might have in the meanwhile
(っ ͡◕ ‿ ͡◕)っ🎔

Chapter 11: welcome back to the great outdoors!

Two weeks after Mondstadt's Calvary Captain had disappeared from the city, it became apparent there was a problem.

To be exact, problems within the Knights that needed tending to- except there was confusion on how to address them. Because despite the bright wishes for their captain's questionable, romantic pursuits, it had dawned on them belatedly, heavily, what time of year it was.

Spring.

Spring that meant tax season, tourist season and trade season in the markets for wine.

It had been coined years ago by Varka as Mondstadt's big three T's and Tax, Tourists and Trade had been standard-issued among all Knights of the Ordo by Lisa at Varka's off-handed suggestion so those responsible for greeting visitors and aiding small business owners in their daily affairs could have an idea of what to expect during the, oftentimes busy and bizarre, rolling months of the breezy season.

Though these meet-and-greets and aid and observation of business accounts and trade affairs had been swooped up and seized by Kaeya. 

While those originally assigned to the task had been confused, they were vastly more appreciative of the gesture. 

The knights left in the closet of the Headquarters, the one they had crammed into hours prior in an attempt to hide from the searching Grandmaster Varka, wiped the tears they had spilled over the confusing numbers and trade terms they knew nothing about, and blubbered their thanks through sobs. 

Yet all Kaeya had done in the wake of their appreciation was wave it off and wander for the downstairs staircase with a suggestion to hide in a bigger closet next time.

The knights had been infinitely filled with the warmth of their superior's benevolence. 

"That's our captain, all right!" 

When Kaeya hadn't been sitting behind a desk in the Grandmaster's Office or the library over books and documents, he had been out in the caves of the valleys and forests and tunnels along the coast, addressing bandits and businessmen who weren't businessmen but more bandits in disguise, and leading patrols along less-than-ideal, but incredibly-more efficient, routes.

There had been only minor issues in going about accomplishing the same tasks with the main leadership of the Cavalry Captain's division missing.

On a Tuesday-

"Hello! You by the water! Are you a bandit or a business guy?"

"Oh, I'm all business! A business-sy guy, y'know! Just packing away my crates and crates of precious unstolen wares into this non-suspicious boat!"

"Okay! Have a nice day!"  

"Sure thing dumbass!"

"What?"

"I said I'll miss your grass! It's very green!"

"Okay!"

On a Wednesday-

"Can you guys quit hiding in this hole?"

"No."

"Don't make us come down there."

" Then come down here, you stupid knights."

"...It's wet. Can we come to an agreement?"

"No! Get the hell out of here!"

"...Alright. Well, we tried fellows- let's call it a night-"

On a Thursday while fleeing for their lives from swinging, flaming clubs and a volley of arrows-

"I don't get it! The tribes always listen to the Captain when he asks them for their weapons and to leave!"

"I said we should have studied Hilichurlian-"

...Kaeya's division had yet to figure out where twenty crates of apples, slime concentrate, and ground dandelion seeds had gone.

They had also failed to stop the hilichurls camped in Windrise from encroaching further inland.

And Tommy, so boldly claiming to know all the unusual routes of his captain by heart, had taken over Friday's patrol.

"Captain Kaeya always said I had it in me to do great things-"

They hadn't quite found him yet.

He had fallen from an awfully high cliff and into a river but he had been calling to his fellow knights up above as he was swept away so at least he was still alive.

The following Monday, as Kaeya's division gathered by the gates of the city and played a panicked round of rock-paper-scissors to decide who would lead the next patrol on the cliffs, a strange encounter had occurred between a textile and spice broker from Sumeru and Huffman- who had been watching the knights of Kaeya's division with appropriate concern.

"Is your Cavalry Captain not here? I'm usually received in the city... quite differently."

"Ah- you have my apologies for my distraction, good sir. Captain Kaeya's on a...mission outside of Mondstadt at the moment."

"Odd. Will he be coming back soon? It's the spring. My visit should have been expected."

"I'm sorry. We don't have an estimate on his return-date."

"Then what am I supposed to do with this gag and these cuffs?"

"...What-"

The broker had left amicably enough, but the newly negotiated price of spices and linens was more than thrice its usual rate.

Huffman had frowned, standing at Jean's side as she reviewed the agreement with furrowed brows. 

"I don't know. Do you think I should have taken the gag and kept it for the Captain as a gesture of goodwill?" 

Jean had lifted her head.

"What?" 

Needless to say, the rest of the week had followed in a similar fashion of unusual events.

Not just in Kaeya's questionable-to-begin-with-division, as the man was a Cavalry Captain and wasn't supposed to have general greenhorn knights under him- but slowly, through the rest of the regular knights who worked within and beyond the city. 

"So random how they're popping up like this."

"We haven't trouble like this before. Or at least I haven't noticed if we did. Do you think it's just a busier spring than usual this year?"

"Maybe. But that's the third accountant and sixth trader to ask for the Captain. And look-"

Otto, of the Knights of Favonius, had stood up from the ground he'd been knocked to in the camp of hilichurls they had barely managed to apprehend.

The 'monsters' had been far more aggressive. Otto had been struck in the face by a tossed shield. That shield had been picked from the grass and shown to his fellow knights on duty.

An eyepatch and crooked smiley face had been painted on with valberry juice.

It had dried somewhat demented. 

"Do you think they miss him?"

This too Jean had looked at with furrowed brows for when it was brought back to the Grandmaster's Office.

"There were some other odd things we saw drawn- like a sun and a moon and some weird kingdom place with mountains underground, but we figured it wasn't important."

By Friday, as the second week reached its end and the status of their Cavalry Captain remained M.I.A. Jean had delegated to Gwaine the patrols outside the city once belonging to Kaeya, and to Huffman- the job of putting together a division of knights to remediate the sudden influx of banditry and tax fraud present within and around Mond.

She had also begun frequenting the Angel's Share Tavern, studying its occupants, holding conversations with the Master of the Ragnvindr House on the second floor no one was quite able to listen in on.

And although Huffman had earnestly offered to help if there was suspicious activity present in the taverns and had questioned hesitantly if that was the reason she made such visits, she had smiled small and assured him otherwise and once more asked him to focus on the reluctant task of finances and business absolutely no one wanted to do.

So Huffman had gathered familiar faces and names, named them a 'specialized task force' and split them up to investigate different areas of interest.

Though what any of them specialized in was a mystery to them all.

It looked like Huffman had gone and picked whatever knight he had found wandering the streets at first sight.

Raymond and Otto weren't complaining though. Searching the captain's house was a far better job than pouring over accounts for discrepancies and trying to memorize the names of important merchants scheduled to arrive in the city.

"The Captain's home?" Huffman had wondered. "Why would you need to go there?"

"It's where he keeps his records on traders and bandits," Otto had replied. "Wouldn't it be useful to grab it?" 

"Well... alright, I suppose. How are you going to get in?"

"He has a window." 

Thus they stand in the captain's study, flipping through journals and binders off the shelves.

"What neat handwriting," Otto comments, skimming through a noted excerpt on Hoarder travel patterns from Liyue to Mondstadt in rainier weather.

"And everything's color-coded," Raymond agrees, trying to figure out what the colored tabs in the binder he holds means. It's a binder of businesses, certain names highlighted, others underlined, some scratched out kindly, others with irritation. "There are a lot more oranges than yellows. Blues and greens. A couple of reds. Only one pink. Interesting. Do you think orange is his favorite color?"

"Is orange anyone's favorite color?"

"He scribbled in the margins. They look like reminders. One in blue says: enjoyable. A yellow: debatable. But the orange has its own box at the back of the first page. Well-liked but not a personal favorite. Don't let them use too much'. There's not any other details," Raymond observes. "Odd. Maybe it's the color these guys like that the captain has strong feelings on. Is color that important in business?"

Otto plops down in the chair behind the captain's modest desk. It's littered with trinkets and shiny artifacts.

"Who knows. People do advertising nowadays don't they? The captain has a critical judgment when it comes to having things well-put-together. They probably had ugly-colored brochures or color schemes on their proposals."

He fiddles with a few objects on the captain's desk.

A broken compass, a conch shell, a mini-wooden chest full of gems and Mora.

It had been discussed for a while among the knights whether the captain's claims of pirate ancestry was true. Alcohol and treasure, gold and jewels, the shirt and corset; the ability to always be where he was least expected and somehow swindle half of them into overtaking random errands he deemed unnecessary for himself so that he could find a patch of shade to lie down in and sleep.

There were nautical paintings and decor in a lot of parts of the house.

Seeing the baubles on the captain's desk like this was almost a reminder to Otto himself that the highly-capable knight and shady, fixer-upper they had all grown accustomed to had come from elsewhere, beyond Mond, and had probably seen more of the outside world than Otto ever had. Even if only for a short while as a kid.

"I wonder if Sir Kaeya will ever return," he thinks aloud.

Raymond's going through another color-coded binder, thicker than the last, but in depth on aspects of seasonal inventories, investments and benefits and drawbacks in relation to the city's overall economic funds.

"Return where?"

"To where he came from. I've never heard him talk about missing it. Or if he'll go start another life in Snezhnaya with the Fatui."

"If he does, he does. If he doesn't, he doesn't. We'd miss him. But it could be a situation like with Thoma." Raymond pauses meaningfully. "You know."

"...Ah. Right. Never came back after that, did he?"

Otto's gaze wanders along the rest of the captain's desk. A small, square, glass box full of glitter sits beneath a lamp at the corner. He sets aside the journal he'd been holding, interested.

"What do you think he does with this?"

He picks it up.

"He's pretty awful at arts and crafts-"

A standing bookcase along the wall by curtained windows, spins around.

Otto stares.

Raymond stares.

The box of glitter is set back down in its spot. The bookcase spins closed.

Otto picks up the glitter again.

The wall behind the bookcase is revealed once more.

They stare for a longer time.

Raymond's eyes go to the binder in his hands.

Otto speaks slow.

"Can't help... but notice. There are a lot of color coded things here too. A lot of orange-"

He meets Raymond's gaze.

The glitter is set down, the bookcase slides into its original place and the two knights hastily grab whatever folders and files and notebooks in close proximity without looking properly at what they are.

They skedaddle into the hall, through the foyer and out the front door, hitting the streets and noon sun.

"So we don't mention that-"

"No, we don't mention that-"

"For the captain's sake-" 

"For the captain's sake-"

"You saw the label on that thing though, the one still with its tag: From Sucrose: use with care-" 

"I've been talking about the wonders of alchemy for years and how it's always the quiet ones-"

They cross through the streets, up stairways, around corners, and by a bakery six bends over on their way to rejoin with Huffman at the designated 'share-and-study-materials' location the senior knight had chosen by a nondescript inn and cobbler-

Not noticing the Fatui delegate inside or the blond youth that accompanies her.

"There's not enough frosting," the young blond inside chides, bent and peering through the display case of colorful, sugary confections. "We don't buy things for the cookie do we? We buy it for the stuffing and topping."

He moves to the basket of bread loafs wrapped and set by the register.

"These are sticking straight up. It's unappealing and I find it offensive."

"Hey," the baker says behind the counter. "Shut up."

"That's not very nice. It's only friendly advice."

"Fatui. Take your kid and leave."

"He's not my kid," says Yelena, Fatui, personal aide of the Tsarista's forces.

She addresses the young blond in a cloak and overalls nonetheless.

"Pick what you want and lets go, Finny. We don't want to be seen by the Acting Grandmaster of the Knights."

"They're so persistent," Finny laments. "I wish they'd believe me when I said I don't know where their captain went. Or the guy who came before."

"Yes..." says Yelena. "You were one of the last to make contact with either of them. In particular, our Fatui Harbinger."

"The scary guy with ugly fashion taste," Finny remembers. "He's a great baker. Dresses like a giant, gray trashbag."

He points to the rack of bagels with other dry breads along the wall.

"Can I have a blueberry?"

Yelena pays for it.

Finny spends a number of minutes checking out the beverage list and worrying over the descriptions beneath each written on the black chalkboard. He argues with the baker over chalk to add 'corrections'.

Yelena watches, knowing this boy knows nothing about Tartaglia's whereabouts, as technically she herself and her subordinates were the last to see Tartaglia off on his boat bound for Liyue's Harbor. None were any stranger to the lieutenant's mission, but it was clear what should have been a simple retrieve-and-return was no longer such.

Truthfully, many of the Tsarista's hand-picked authorities privy to the nature of Tartaglia's assignment hadn't taken it seriously.

'Potential dangers' aside- it was a mushroom.

A mushroom.

Although it went unsaid that they would do their utmost best to see Her Majesty's wishes through regardless of what the details entailed.

Still, there hadn't been high expectations Tartaglia would be able to accomplish the goal in question.

A mushroom was a mushroom, and it was known to only be one, and there were far too many circumstances involving it that pointed towards obvious failure in losing sight of where it was. A secondary-plan had long-since been in the works in the event their Eleventh Harbinger wasn't able to infiltrate his way into the so-called wedding of the Yuan and Wei Clan heirs.

Several months prior to the Osial debacle in Liyue Harbor, a shadow division of Her Majesty was already in the midst of preparations to descend into the bowels of Khaenri'ah themselves in an expedition.

Certain measures needed to be put into place. Several facts confirmed as truth or falsities.

They had planned accordingly. 

Should Tartaglia have returned empty-handed the day after the planned weddings of heirs on last week's Monday and Tuesday, they would have had him lead the expedition into Khaenri'ah.

Of course they hadn't informed him of this- and the only others among the Harbingers who knew were Pierro and Pulcinella.

Tartaglia, who was the most adept at dismantling the strongholds of the toughest defenses, who prowled beneath the surfaces of threats and cut his way down through the hidden bellies of monsters with no contention. An underground kingdom, sunken, tainted by curses of the Abyss, would hardly be a difficult beast for him to navigate his way through either. No trouble at all for someone like him to up-end if necessary.

He had already proven that with his actions in Liyue.

The Tsarista had seen this and taken note- and had relayed to her personal aides that the test she had designed- had been one passed.

That he had lost sight of the Gnosis was a small thing, as she had directed La Signora in advance to observe his actions from behind-the-scenes and retrieve Morax's Gnosis on her own terms in whichever diplomatic manner the Crimson Witch saw fit.

Destroying Liyue, destroying any nation, wasn't the intention of Her Majesty.

Conquering them, yes, spreading her reign and reach of power.

These were to spread her dreams and goodwill; to protect the motherland and the ignorant nations from the 'Gods' that sought to eliminate any faction of humankind that dared strive to reach their 'heavenly heights'. Simple, yet complex, goals worth fighting for.

Goals Khaenri'ah could no longer do itself in the wake of its destruction.

An alliance was in the makings between Snezhnaya and the remnants of Khaenri'ah, but Khaenri'ah was a broken, broken place with many factions and disputes, ruled by no one but overseen by an arguing council and magistrate that couldn't get their acts together. The problems of the Abyss were getting in the way of what promised to be a lucrative, shared benefit between two nations largely ignored and judged by the world, and that was an issue, for their alliance needed to succeed.

...A mushroom had never been in these initial plans.

A bulk of the plans had originally been to have Tartaglia address pesky Abyssal problems on behalf of Khaenri'ah so that the rest of the agents accompanying him could proceed with their talks, agreements and investigations in the depths of the underground.

Opening a path of study.

Opening an exchange of warriors for cross-nation training.

It had been an idea 'reigning authorities' on Khaenri'ah's side had been open to.

A council session- aboveground for the first time in centuries in a show of good faith from Khaenri'ah to Snezhnaya- and Yelena had been dispatched with a small, private number of other elites to observe the daily handling of Khaenranian affairs.

It took exactly one hour for circumstances between all of them to change.

For the mushroom to get involved.

For the Tsarista's expedition and exchange to be delayed.

This... mushroom was a minor thing, in the end, in the grand scheme of what was going on.

An added boon.

Something of a bargaining chip- but not a necessity- but the Tsarista left no advantages unattended without attempts to claim them.

So had come about the mission detailed to Tartaglia without giving him the actual details.

After all, all the better it was Snezhnaya's best fighter, the one intentioned to oversee the warrior-exchange program, who returned with it.

And if not, they could all come to a consensus and say it had been tried.

But now Tartaglia had disappeared off the face of the planet. So all plans were currently at a stalemate.

That Khaenri'ah's personal 'bargaining chip', Mondstadt's Cavalry Captain himself, had vanished along with Tartaglia, did little to resolve anything.

And the man in question- the Boughs Keeper responsible for the change in circumstance and debacle of the one-hour meeting- was nowhere to be seen.

As such, Yelena had resorted to another measure in drawing him out.

Taking his 'apprentice' on a walk, hoping it'd be perceived as enough of a threat to the boy's well-being that the 'Twilight Sword' of Khaenri'ah would appear to throw him back into protective holdings. Although 'protective holdings' was a horrendous exaggeration.

The Knights of Favonius were- for better lack of words- grossly incompetent.

They had been arguing over the incorrect use of 'semantics' versus 'syntax' in a discussion over corn chips in the chamber of the underground bunker Finny had been stowed in when Yelena arrived, and had been arguing over the grain-to-corn ratio in said cornchips when Yelena had departed from the unlocked bedroom with Finny in tow at her side.

She had further walked through the streets of the city in broad daylight, pretending not to know Finny whilst keeping an eye on him from a distance as the blond wept on his knees in public at seeing sunlight for the first time in two weeks.

They had gone shopping; she had purchased him a new set of overalls and boots and a brooch for his cloak.

After that, they had traveled the close roads to the city and she had combed the knots from his thick curls as he sat on a log talking about fifty kinds of teas, their benefits and their uses, the bandit who had stolen the mushroom whose name was 'Mabel'-

"-but if you meet her, don't ever call her that because she hates it and she'll string you from a pine tree-"

And after that, they had gone back inside the city to the greetings of two Favonius Knights and eight more on patrol as they made their way to this bakery Finny had been intent on eating from.

What Yelena had surmised from the experience was that Finny's stay in the city and the reason for it was information only a few of the Knights- likely their higher-ranks- had knowledge of.

And that she doted too much on anyone who reminded her of her younger siblings back home in Snezhnaya.

Family was an important value in the motherland.

It couldn't be helped.

"This bagel is dry," Finny is saying to the out-of-breath, purpling baker who had only just managed to rip the chalkboard of beverages from the blond's hands. "I can give you some pointers," he offers sincerely, "I think it's a matter of yeast-"

"Enough, Finny," Yelena intervenes before the baker can lunge over the counter and strangle him.

If the Twilight Sword wasn't coming on his own-

"Let's go. I want you to call your master."

Finny falls in line beside her, curious as they leave, eating the rest of his bagel as blue skies and hanging clouds greet them outside the modest bakery.

They sidestep a few Mondstadtians, trail in the steps of several others, branch off towards the cathedral and the small gardens and graves behind it.

"You know Master Dainsleif?" Finny asks as they journey.

"We're acquainted," responds Yelena shortly.

Audible fascination.

"I thought he didn't have any friends."

"We aren't friends. It's business."

Finny doesn't seem to hear. "And you're Fatui too. Because I could've sworn when he visited me to drop off that mushroom he said people from Snezhnaya-"

He stops in his steps.

Halfway up the steep stairs towards the church.

He gasps and drops his bagel, looking at Yelena, gawking.

"Are you one of the ones who-"

Quite abruptly, Finny is standing in the middle of a snowdrift.

A freezing wind blows.

There's nothing around him for miles but white and blizzard.

He glances around. His boots are already backtracking, fumbling over themselves, in the wintry terrain.

"Oh no. Oh no, no-"

He spins and catches his balance and bolts.

It's a pure, open space.

There's quite literally nowhere to go.

Dainsleif appears before him.

"Oh my GOD-!" Finny screams.

He collapses to his knees a foot away, knees soaking cold and burning, hands plummeting through a straight pile of hardened snow in a full bow.

"Master Dainsleif, please forgive me for the sins I have committed! The mushroom-!"

"I'm aware you don't have it."

The interruption is an unconcerned one.

Finny stops blubbering into the snow.

He whips his head up.

"You are? I knew it was psychological warfare you were using on me. Why did you wait so long? It's been weeks and I was in that dungeon-of-a-bedroom beneath Mondstadt because they all think I have something to do with the disappearance of their important people and they never let me join in on their card games and I kept getting watched by this creepy Fatui, Viktor, in my sleep who was determined to expose my secrets and- and-"

Finny grabs a handful of snow, upset, and throws it at the Keeper's chest as he gets to his feet.

"And I miss my cabin! Do you have any idea how many vegetables I've planted must've died while I was gone? I put a lot of care into those!"

Dainsleif glances at the snow tossed against his armor. He lifts a hand- Finny leaps back-

"I'll do your laundry, I'm sorry-!"

Dainsleif brushes the snow off, calmly.

It's a thousand times more terrifying than it should be.

Yet-

"You have no need to worry about your vegetables," is what the Keeper says. "I tended to them in your absence as I passed through the woods."

Finny straightens. "What? I thought you weren't up here. Weren't you doing stuff belowground because of the council? Isn't that why you gave me the mushroom in the first place?"

"The mushroom I gave you was a matsutake mushroom collected in my journeys, mutated by expiration and alchemical transmutation. It's of little consequence or danger to anyone."

Dainsleif takes a pause.

"Aside from those who might attempt to eat it."

"Uh-"

"The woman you walk with. The Fatui. Do not share you know where she has been or mention the council meeting held. It will cause more problems than solve them."

"Er- Master-"

Finny shivers in the winds and wraps his cloak tight around his flimsy overall and shirt meant for warmer weather.

"Not to try and sound smart, but wouldn't it solve problems a whole lot easier if you just brought the candidate to everyone and made them make everyone shake hands and sing and dance and then everyone could get along and the disciples would go away?"

"No."

Dainsleif's eyes, vibrant, green, are a vivid sight in the howling whiteness of their surroundings. Unbothered by the cold. Unfazed by the situation and the stakes involved.

Which was strange to Finny- because he could have sworn no one had a bigger stake in any of this than the Keeper himself.

"Um. Okay," Finny agrees nonetheless. Mostly because he doesn't want to know what'll happen if he tries to argue back.

He's in some strange, unmarked, civilizationless land.

There'd be no one to find him if Dainsleif just took off.

"Can you explain to me about the mushroom though? Why did you give it to me and tell me all those things about it if it wasn't important?"

Dainsleif gazes upon him for a time. A time long enough to make him regret ever asking. But the Keeper nods his head slightly, acknowledging.

He glances about them afterwards, speaking.

"Because the chase was necessary. You've played your part well."

"Not...really sure what part I played," Finny says, awkwardly, "but you're welcome? I guess?"

"There's something more I'd ask of you."

"Master Dainsleif..."

"It's minor."

"You said that about the mushroom and then I got beat up by my childhood friend, ditched, waterboarded by a Harbinger and interrogated by some other random lackey of yours who turned out to be a captain in Mondstadt."

Dainsleif smiles small.

"Hey- it's not funny!" Finny protests.

"That's not what my humor is for," Dainsleif responds, deep voice deepening further in bemusement. "The 'random lackey', the captain of Mond. That was the candidate."

Finny hears the words.

Finny registers them.

Finny sputters and shrieks.

"That was him? Master Dainsleif!"

He raises his hands, raises his arms- drops them at a loss, makes an odd grabbing gesture with his fingers, grasping at the air- gives up and drops them.

"I served him tea. Low-quality, terrible tea- though it was the best I had at the time- but still. If I had known I would've- I would've-"

"A favor," the Boughs Keeper says patiently. "Involving the Fatui. I'll explain it to you. Do have a care not to be suspicious about it."

And Dainsleif shares his order.

And Dainsleif thanks him in advance once more.

And Dainsleif departs.

And returns a minute later realizing he's left Finny standing in a snowstorm.

And Finny is deposited, abruptly, back into the sunshine and spring breeze of Mondstadt, crumbled bagel at his feet, on the stone stairs to the city's grand cathedral, Yelena regarding him.

"Did you hear what I said?" she's asking. "I asked you if-"

She stops.

She narrows her eyes, sharp.

"Why are you wet and covered in snow?"

Finny, not at all suspiciously- because Dainsleif had asked him not to be suspicious and so he wouldn't be suspicious- bolts down the stairs away from her at the inquiry.

"I have to use the bathroom!"

"Wha- hey."

She pursues him.

They toss aside citizens and knock over flower pots and startle dogs and cats on the cobbled road in the flee-and-chase.

Jean frowns at the sound of the ruckus rising from the upper tiers of the city.

She resists the urge to investigate and steps into the familiar busy atmosphere of the Angel's Share Tavern instead.

The door shuts behind her.

She's welcomed by the six-fingered bard at the entrance and greets him back, distracted, as she goes to the bar where Amber and Lisa sit, engaged in some sort of argumentative conversation with Charles.

Her Outrider and Librarian had started dropping in as often as Jean herself did the longer Kaeya's absence prolonged.

It was unspoken, their purpose behind it.

It was the same reason Diluc was in the city nearly everyday taking over morning and night shifts.

But Kaeya hadn't ever miraculously showed.

Even if he showed with that damned Harbinger, they would've taken it.

"I'm saying it's unrealistic," Charles is insisting to Amber. "Two strangers with zero connections, zero conversations, are deeply-intertwined lovers bound by fate and parted by circumstance? I'm supposed to believe something like that? That doesn't sound like anything an author would write. It sounds like something a strange fan of an author would write over two characters they fell in love in. Why is the plot so complicated? Why is the story so pointlessly long? How many threads in this story exist? Why haven't they spoken to each other? Why was the last page them sitting in silence on a bench in Liyue full of hate?"

"If you want answers, you have to read the next installment," Amber refutes, clearly wound up by the discussion. "You don't understand love, Charles! They're not like the stories with Fabio!"

"I'm married! I know love! Who's Fabio?"

"You know don't him? He's the ideal romantic lead in love in those cheap romance books from Fontaine. If you don't know Fabio, how can you say you understand the difference between that love and this one?"

"Why would I need to know Fabio? Who cares about Fabio?" Charles exclaims "They're both made up romances that would never happen in reality!"

He swipes the drink from in front her.

"And you've had too much!"

Amber gets up from her stool and reaches for it, features pinching. "I didn't even get to sip it-!"

"What," Jean starts, finally taking the last halted step forward to join them in full. "Is going on?"

Amber drops back onto her stool. "Charles is insulting Kaeya."

Charles does a double-take. "I am not."

"They're talking about this," Lisa speaks from Jean's left.

A hand in her chin and she smiles, pushing over a sturdy-string-bound book with a cheaply-made, blank, brown and dark blue cover that looked like it was torn off a cardboard box last minute.

"Sir Gwaine received it from a Fatui in the valley, Pavel- who claims to have received it from a comrade in Liyue Harbor who was most eager to share it. Nadia? Was that the sweetheart's name? Either way, I was gifted this fascinating work thanks to her, and spent the night reading it in its entirety."

Jean flips the odd cover of the book open, confused. "What does this have to do with Kaey-"

Her words leave.

She reads the first page.

She can't tear her eyes from its content.

Lisa kindly turns to the next page for her.

And then the third.

As Jean's eyes hit the bottom of that one, Lisa muses on a bell of a laugh-

"There's a section here I find riveting in the rain and mud of Liyue's forested valleys involving a man with an eyepatch with his legs wrapped around another man and his back against a tree-"

"Not necessary to read," Jean shuts the cheaply-made book shut.

Mortified.

"What is this?"

"A first draft of a work in progress rumored to hit full circulation in another month. Apparently free copies of the draft were passed out at a stall in the Harbor center to observe how it might sell once finished."

"This is Kaeya," says Jean. "This is Kaeya and- him. Who wrote this? Who even thought-" she stops.

She collects herself.

She looks towards Amber, expectant, and as presumed, the Outrider shares-

"Eula knows the legal advisor in Liyue well. They're good friends. Not as good as Eula and I but-" Amber clears her throat. "Anyway, according to this 'Yanfei', two people matching the descriptions in this book were in the Harbor. And they got married. Or- engaged- Eula said the particulars of the rites of the gods in question who performed it were too vague and too complex for even someone like her to get at first listen. She also said she read the book and though she enjoyed it, there were changes she'd make herself. Something about adding more dancing and erotica but I didn't really want to imagine or think about Kaeya sexing it up more than I've already read in here, and to be honest, I'm not sure I can look him in the eye if he returns without ever thinking about it."

"Do keep in mind this is all speculation," Lisa chimes in. "The similarities written could be nothing more than similarities."

Jean highly doubted that.

She knew they all doubted that but were pretending.

The descriptions were near exact.

The last place Mondstadt's Cavalry Captain had been seen was by the Outrider herself, boarding a boat bound for Liyue Harbor with a Harbinger at his side, dressed for a seaside adventure. Who else would it be someone had written about?

And why? 

Had they actually seen all of this- or was this some... fabricated machination from an eager hand and eager mind?

Also-

Jean stares at Amber as the words hit her. "Did you say married?" 

"Yeah. But in the book they don't get married," Amber frowns. "There's this third guy who swoops in halfway and creates conflict."

"Acting Grandmaster."

Charles, looking horribly grieved, works his way into the talk before the Outrider can go on a tangent about the mysterious, handsome stranger again.

"Please ensure this book never ever hits Mondstadt's streets should it get published. I barely managed to rip off the pornographic cover when Miss Lisa set it on the counter as Master Diluc passed by, and barely managed to find and cut-out cardboard from a box to fit its dimensions before he returned. Fiction or not, he can't see this."

Jean agreed.

She had plans to burn the book already and find some miracle potion to purge the memory of its contents from her mind.

"Amber, did Eula say she would further search the Harbor or outskirts for Kaeya?"

Amber nods, determined. "Yup! She sure did! Don't worry, Jean, if anyone can get to the bottom of this outside of Mondstadt's borders, it's her. She said she would send word of her progress, but if she doesn't have results by the end of next week, it might be better to send more reinforcements."

Right.

They didn't want to appear too urgent and alarm Mondstadt and its people.

Fatui presence in the city had increased trifold in the absence of that Harbinger, relaying to Jean and those close to Kaeya and the situation, that the Harbinger's disappearance wasn't planned either.

For now they were being civil, playing nice.

The lower-ranking knights and Fatui diplomats were oddly friendly and acquainted. But it wasn't the case for the higher-ups and both sides were going along with the surface-ruse that the influx in Fatui was due to the marital nature that had risen between the nations thanks to the 'relationship' between Kaeya and 'Childe'.

Would waiting one week more for Eula's reports before heading to the Harbor herself be the best course of action?

Amber and Lisa were unaware, but Barbatos had poked his head into the door of the Grandmaster's Office several days ago, casually mentioning he'd be stopping into the Harbor to 'visit a friend' and bring back some answers.

If he had known about Eula also being on the case, he didn't say so, merely whisking away in a flurry of wind and song.

He had yet to make a reappearance in Mondstadt, but Jean could count on the fact without a doubt the Archon of their nation would return home.

If only it was the same with Kaeya.

She tries to hide her frustration on the matter.

She addresses Charles, hiding her disheartened voice with a prefaced, slight clearing of her throat.

The original reason she had come-

"Is Diluc here?"

"Upstairs," Charles nudges his head, giving Amber her drink back who clamors to hold it in two hands before he can change his mind. "He's been up there for hours. I'm not sure what he's been doing, but he's been silent. So. Please be wary, Acting Grandmaster."

"Noted. Thank you."

"Mm?" Lisa casts her a sideways glance, feigning hurt. "No thanks for me?"

For the reading material she had etched into every nook and cranny of Jean's head?

"No."

She goes upstairs as Lisa pulls a face and calls her a 'poor sport' and as Charles questions Amber who 'Fabio' is and as Amber passionately answers something about a romance character from books in her youth.

The Ragnvindr wealthy tycoon, her ex-superior, once knight and captain, sits in a corner of the crowded upstairs at a table alone.

Jean dismisses the curious stares and whispers at her back from other patrons-

"She's sitting with him again?"

"Is Mondstadt in danger?" 

-and takes the chair across from him.

"I'm sorry I'm late."

"It's fine."

His face is impossible to read.

She frowns to herself.

She's hesitant seeing it.

"The meeting with the head of the Wei Clan. Don't tell me he had no answers either."

Diluc crosses his arms. "A representative was sent in his place. The man himself suffered injury in an odd explosion that wiped the Inn he was in off the map alongside his memory. No one knows what happened- there's no one else around. The guards rumored to have accompanied his son from the Harbor vanished too."

"And Kaeya and the Fatui were with them."

"We can't say. Possibly. Possibly not."

For someone who had received possible news that his brother was essentially dead, Diluc's disposition was remarkably uncaring.

Or maybe it was that he simply refused to go along with any notion that Kaeya would be taken from them so ridiculously and abruptly in another country where neither of them could reach him.

Like Jean.

"What's your Knight outside the city doing?" he inquires.

Eula.

Jean understands.

"She asks for a week. If the finds aren't conclusive, I'll act myself."

And she knows what Diluc wants to say to her; that she should have acted the day after the wedding of the clans Diluc shared information on had fallen through.

But he doesn't, because if he did, he would have to answer her on why he hadn't acted either.

Their answers were the same, regardless.

Trust, which Kaeya believed his knights and companions had none in regards to him- they wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt- for his sake, not their own.

They had gone through alternative methods in the meanwhile, in the two weeks that had come and gone, relying on their personal contacts, holding out for word of mouth from those who could try and paint them a picture of what was going on with the young man they stubbornly cared for.

Kaeya deserved the right to go where he pleased with who he wanted without eyes monitoring him, questioning his motives.

That was his freedom; his basic right as an individual born into the world.

Yet he also deserved to be looked after, with eyes monitoring him, questioning the motives of those around him; questioning the motives of Kaeya himself.

It was no secret to either of them how uncannily self-destructive he was at the core of his behavior beneath the giggles and tricks and mirth.

Genuine though he was in the persona he shared and showed to the people of Mond, he was equally deceitful.

Although deceitful was a harsh word, and not quite the right one to use.

Layered in complexities.

Ones Diluc knew far better than Jean herself could.

Not for lack of trying.

For all Kaeya shared with her, there was still too much he kept away.

"Whatever your Knight finds," Diluc states, after a moment, "I'd like to know."

"Yes," she says.

That was a given.

"I believe I'll give questioning Finny another chance tomorrow. Putting Liyue to the side, this 'mushroom matter' is still causing me to shake my head. That he was the one who led both Fatui and Kaeya to the Harbor and is so adamant about keeping quiet even in the wake of Rosaria who sharpened all seventy-nine knives hidden on her body... I can't say my initial suspicions about him and his involvement are unfounded. Several of the Fatui have been found trying to watch him in his sleep. As if waiting for something- or someone to appear and take him away."

"Who else would do that outside of the Fatui?"

"I'm not sure. We don't have answers or a reason. I was certain it was only the Fatui after him, but this... mysterious third party could have a hand in Kaeya's missing status. It shouldn't be ruled out."

Diluc scoffs. "I agree. So don't let the kid out of your sight. Assign more competent knights to him."

Jean lowers her brows. "Diluc, the Knights of Favonius are competent-"

"They were arguing with Fatui last night until closing over how to shuffle a deck of cards," Diluc cuts her off. "The night before about the taste of grass compared leaves."

"They were- they were likely drunk."

"Hmph."

If grunts could condemn a man, Mondstadt's Knights would've been evaporated into vapor years ago.

"Whatever."

He reaches into his jacket, now looking about as annoyed as he sounded.

"A drunken fool brought this over to me while I waited. I since saw him removed. But maybe you'd have an explanation for it. You were downstairs with Charles for a while."

And he brings out from within his jacket the aggressively torn-off cover of a book that was one floor below, depicting two caricatures explicitly involved with one in the startling likeness of his little brother choked and tied and bound by threads.

Jean surges across the table and rips it from his hand, crumpling it in her hand.

Crumpling it forever.

Diluc looks at her flatly.

"Where's the rest of the book?"

 

---

 

"I have to say," Venti muses, flipping through a number of pages, "your people are pretty whacky. And that's coming from an Archon of Mondstadt where anything but oppressors are welcomed."

"My people are skilled and diverse and creative," Zhongli commends.

He turns from the window of his preferred private room in his favored two-storied restaurant of the Harbor. He returns to the table to check on the tea that had been seeping for nearly an hour, lifting the lid of the pot and appreciating the deep-flowered scent.

"Would you care for a cup?" he questions to the young, flighty god.

Venti snorts, legs kicking uncrossed as he stops lying back on the table and sits up. "You asked me that ages ago and you're asking me again? How long will it take this time? Isn't it finished?"

"It needs another hour."

"For what?" Venti eyeballs him. "When I return to Mondstadt, I'll be telling the Acting Grandmaster it was a cup of tea that delayed me. We've been chatting about old times and wandering the mountains and visiting your departed friends, but honestly I could bring us a bottle of wine and we could do the same thing from within the Harbor here. This is my sixth time offering."

"And my sixth time refusing. The smell is not one I enjoy."

Venti shakes his head, displeased. "You're missing out. But I won't pester you about that anymore. The real question is why you had this book of wild sexcapades lying around here about one of my Knights."

"I wasn't aware it was about the young man who visited several weeks ago," Zhongli replies, adding a handful of dried bark and stems to the pot of tea before closing its lid again. "I thought it was well-written, despite its inaccuracies in the depictions of the gods. Understandable. I trust any youth from this time not born with adepti blood would be left to presume the appearances and nature of the illuminated beasts that once were."

"That's what you found inaccurate?" Venti exclaims, in disbelief. "Not the double-penetration going on between this fake-Kaeya, knock-off Fatui and cheeseball third-wheel? They wouldn't fit. And whatever those weird mystical, magical strings were- they definitely don't work like what was written in here."

He looks at the cover of the book as if confirming the sight with his own eyes and recalling what was depicted inside on page one-hundred, seventy-two.

"No way."

"They can."

Zhongli states it simply. He takes the seat beside where Venti sits on the edge of the table.

"If they are anything like the power I bound them with, I'm sure two healthy, flexible young men can do whatever they choose."

Venti quirks his brow. "The 'power' you 'bound' them with? Why does that sound unpleasant?"

"It can be, if either party is unwilling. They expressed to me, though, it was wanted."

"So they're what? Stuck forever? Attached at the hip with no way out of it unless you remove it yourself like the 'god of earth' did in this porn-story?"

"There is nothing to remove," Zhongli replies, tilting his head at the young god. "It will go away on its own accord under either of two conditions."

"And those are...?"

"When their hearts are entirely committed. Or when their hearts have lost faith completely."

"Those are godawful conditions, Morax," Venti chides despite being thousands of years younger.

He sets the book on the table and hops off to put his hands on his hips and stare the older god down.

"How legitimate is what you did to them anyway?"

"I assure you it was no ruse. The act was done in whole-hearted earnestness as it was what they wanted."

"That's the second time you're saying that. I don't claim to know everything about my special Knight from Khaenri'ah, but given what's going on down there right now, this is the last thing he needs. Not that he knows I know. But the wind speaks loud- and what I do know is what's best for him. And it's not a Decarabian I'm pulling here so don't look at me like that. He's not ready."

"Going on in Khaenri'ah?" Zhongli inquires, interested.

"It would take an hour to tell, and I don't have it in me to try and recount all the drifted pieces carried over sea and mountain that reached my ears. You said you know where they are. Can you bring them back?"

"I know where they are, yes," Zhongli notes, regarding Venti with newfound thoughts sifting into his mind on the circumstances of Khaenri'ah he had been involved with five hundred years ago. "But despite knowing, I would be unable to bring them back. It's outside of my capabilities in a more... spiritual affair. You needn't worry. They've alive. Your nation's defender would be pleased with hearing that."

"It wouldn't satisfy her in the slightest. And there's a brother I wouldn't put past murdering a person or two in your Harbor if Fatui or Knight don't show up. There's one Knight here already. How long before there's more?"

Venti thinks about the scenario more.

The breath he releases is an exasperated one, coupled with slumping shoulders.

"If they did show up, that bond of yours wrapped around them would still be a problem. You can't expect them to stay together. They have responsibilities; lives of their own. How sure are you that this 'eternal marriage' was something they actually wanted? They barely knew each other. I don't even think it was a week. I'm all for freedom of rights and freedom of love- but this sounds like a complete and total accident you solidified on their behalf."

Zhongli turns his gaze from the younger god at the brazen, accusatory tone directed his way.

His eyes rest on his brewing pot of tea.

Considering.

"You misunderstand. My blessing was only a blessing. When I refer to 'binding power', it is nothing physical or metaphysical. It's a sensation; a feeling of contentment when the other is at their side, discontentment when the other is not, as they notice there is something missing from their side. But I did not create these feelings. It's merely acknowledging what was there- and highlighting it within their burning spirits that possessed such sentiment. So it cannot be removed. It will not be changed for the better or worse unless they themselves decide."

"What?" Venti knits his brows. "So there weren't 'strings'? It's really just an imaginary thing from this book?"

"I did not procure 'strings of fate' from anywhere," Zhongli says. 

His amber gaze remains on his teapot in nothing but contemplation in the wake of the minor information Barbatos has shared.

"That 'string' that bound them was already there. From the moment they first walked in." 

 

---

 

"This is ridiculous," Kaeya breathes from up in a frosted tree.

The branches are thick, the pines prickly, the sap unnecessarily sticky and aggravating to the touch, and his cheeks are heavily flushed, and his neck is frigid but the sweat running down it, clinging to his clothes brings uncomfortable, stinging heat against the contrast of the winter wind, and Tartaglia is all he can see in front of him, with an arm wrapped around, the other keeping their balance in place, hand hooked on a snow-dusted branch above.

And in this awkward, partial embrace, stuck on his lap with a swollen dick balls deep inside of him, the Harbinger has the nerve to tell him-

"Stop moving for a second and lower your voice."

Kaeya glowers past the lieutenant, into the depths of the rest of the snowy woods spread beyond, and though he hisses out his next words, his speaks quieter all the same. "This is your fault."

He swings a fist down onto the man's shoulder.

"You did this."

"Stop that," Childe complains.

He shifts, scooting forward in the nook of the tree and wide branch they're caught on, hitting Kaeya's prostrate with targeted intent. He doesn't apologize, absorbing the sound it brought out, and leans over the knight's shoulder instead, looking over and down to the wintry ground a good thirty feet below.

Kaeya's only fussy because they'd been interrupted anyway, so Childe doesn't take it seriously.

He doesn't even take them seriously. 

He and Kaeya are dressed in matching, twin-coattail tuxedos.

Like they've just finished hosting a circus.

A gaggle of bandits pick through the drifts in the clearing, gathering pinecones underneath their tree.

"My grandma's from Mondstadt y'know," one of them is saying, bundled cozy, voice muffled as he squats and observes two cones of different sizes. "She used to make hashbrowns with these but I really don't know how she did it. Is it weird that I've been eating pinecones all my life?"

"Hey," says the bandit beside him, scuffing the hardened snow off the bottom of his boot on the nearest tree trunk. "No one asked. And no one cares."

"I care," says a third bandit sympathetically from the other side of the clearing.

The fourth bandit at the third's side, scoffs. "Don't you eat rocks? Your opinion is invalid."

"There's no difference between a rock and a hashbrown."

"Yes there is?"

"Not the way I cook 'em."

Was he talking about the rock or the hashbrown?

Whatever. Either way, Childe was curious about the latter.

He had noticed himself while in the city that first week before trying and failing to gleam information out of Kaeya.

Mondstadtians loved their fried and battered food almost as much as Inazumans.

"He has a point about the hashbrowns," Childe notes, a murmur against Kaeya's ear. "You have flour. Why wouldn't you use that?"

"The pinecone isn't the main ingredient, of course we use flour," the knight automatically starts to respond, before stopping. "That's not important!"

Childe squeezes him. "Shh."

Too late.

The bandits below straighten and look around them on alert.

"Did you hear something?"

"I told you this place was haunted. I told you there were footsteps here before ours that suddenly disappeared at the base of the tree over there. I told you it was weird we found a half-used jar of lube, still warm. I said it reeked of sex and desperation and the angst of a horny love-"

"Why would you be picking that up from a ghost-"

"We should've listened to the innkeeper when he said we'd regret being here-"

"He was just trying to get rid of us! Knock it off! Stop freaking me out!"

From the unmarked path leading east out the woods to the village Childe and Kaeya had fumbled and fucked their way through three times, comes a rustle in the frosted brush and tree branches; the crunching of boots, clanging weapons and rusted armor.

Six more bandits.

Haggard and rugged and simultaneously perplexed and annoyed- they surround two certain heirs who trudge through the snow, close together- one of which has an angrily babbling baby in their hands.

"Oh you've got to be kidding," Childe utters.

"What? What is it?"

Kaeya attempts to twist himself around to see and nearly sends them both toppling off balance out the tree.

Childe barely manages to keep them in place. 

Barely. 

He grips the branch over his head harder.

He fucks up into Kaeya twice. "Stop. It."

The knight grabs at him, squirming, and Childe, muscles tightening, cock throbbing, shifts them sideways and settles his back against the trunk of the tree- if only so Kaeya could turn his head and see what was going on and quit accidentally rolling his hips on his dick.

And Kaeya does turn his head, and Kaeya does see, and the redness from the biting cold and piss-poor attempt at 'gentle' fuckery they were engaged with prior, drains moderately with a paleness as he processes the procession in the clearing underneath.

"What are they doing?" Kaeya says.

He stares.

He brings that stare to Childe and they're really only a few inches away, and it's with a great deal of self-control that Childe doesn't close the distance between them as the knight, for a second time, asks-

"What are they doing?"

"Hello!"

Wei Yin's loud and stilted, echoing, proclaiming voice sounds out.

"We are being kidnapped and I have a baby in my arms that wants me dead. I will not use this evil baby as a shield in this situation because that is wrong, but I think it would be really nice if my best friend and his husband could stop having sex in the trees and come save us. Thank you. And have a nice day. Also congratulations."

For what? What was he doing?

Leaving an automated message?

"He's been saying the same thing since we set foot into the woods and found that unopened condom," the leader of the six bandits surrounding Chao Xing, Xu and Wei Yin grouses as they rejoin with the four who had been in the clearing prior. "We can't get him to stop. It's freaking annoying."

"Why wouldn't you knock him out?" the bandit with the pinecones says.

"He's holding a baby."

"Okay- so give the baby to the woman and then knock him out."

"I do not want to hold the baby," Chao Xing says, drawing herself up impertinently with the damned, cursed pigeon on her shoulder.

"See? She doesn't wanna hold it."

"Why don't you wanna hold it, lady? It's a baby. Isn't it yours?"

"The baby is not mine. It belongs to a pair of idiots who have vanished into the pits of debauchery."

She pauses.

"Also, the child will not stop crying when I hold him."

"Well how are you holding him?" a bandit asks.

"Like a baby. How else?"

"Okay, but you're clearly doing something wrong if it's crying."

"Are you insulting me? Are you saying I don't know how to hold a child?"

"Uh- you said it yourself. What-"  

Childe and Kaeya look at the bandits- and they look at Chao Xing- and they look at Wei Yin who is studying his surroundings with uncanny observation- and further look down towards Wei Yin who raises his head after a minute of contemplation-

And looks directly back at them.

And Childe and Kaeya and Wei Yin keep looking at one another as the very much real bandits engage in an argument with Chao Xing over how to hold a baby without making it cry.

Because this is no soulscape, this is the outside world, and Kaeya can smell the evergreens and the sex and the sap from broken branches between himself and Tartaglia, and feel the clutching heat of the Fatui's spare arm around his waist, the rough bark against his calves, the scratches torn into his back from the prior two trees the Fatui had fucked him up against, and the howling, nipping winds of frost-

And it's another bucket of brutal reality.

This time full of ice and water.

This time with the briskness of the northlands, in Teyvat.

And Kaeya thinks and thinks and thinks to himself, seated there on Tartaglia, still staring down at Wei Yin who is now giving them the most obvious thumbs up- that this is Tartaglia's fault, and this is his own fault because he should've abandoned the Harbinger and let him become a magician in that town square after all for all the grief and frustration and mixed signals exchanged between them and for giving him that book of curses that was actually a book of curses.

But more than anything, Kaeya thinks that this is absolutely, one-hundred percent Wei Yin's fault, because none of this would've happened in the first place if Wei Yin hadn't launched Xu straight out of his soul and into the sky. 

 

---

 

The first mistake was ever letting Xu out of Tartaglia's hands.

The rainfall outside the wooden house and room they were in from within Xu's soul had continued its downpour.

The thunder had rumbled, its deep booms shaking the grained floorboards, and they had come to a consensus that staying indoors would bring them no answers and lead them towards nowhere. They had stepped out onto the porch and peered through the slanting sheets splattering on eroded stone and splintered wood, Xu swaddled in a black and silver sling made of Tartaglia's own outerwear, cradled easily in the lieutenant's arms.

The newly-acquired, sorcerer baby, grumpily napped and gurgled in the sleep, slobbering over the one finger and knuckle the Harbinger had offered the second Xu had been settled in his hold.

A result from a small occurrence prior of moderate consequence.

After the three hooligans posturing as travel companions had more-or-less directed the responsibility of picking up Xu from the floor onto Kaeya, and after those same three hooligans had watched and waited for something untoward or malignant to happen to either Xu or Kaeya from the prolonged contact- which nothing had- the uncertain tension in the air had dissipated.

Chao Xing and Wei Yin had moved in towards him, one curious, one scrutinizing, on either side of him to get a better look at the chubby-cheeked, big-eyed, babbling child, Kaeya now held with proper care.

"I wonder if he's cursing us out," Wei Yin had mused, leaning near.

He had tickled Xu on the belly.

He had cooed.

"Are you? Hm? Are you calling us all big, bad names, little kiddo? That's totally hilarious!"

Xu's palms had risen swiftly and jointly slapped Wei Yin in the eyes.

The heir had keeled over, weeping.

"Fatherhood has betrayed me!"

Kaeya had sighed.

Chao Xing had ruminated on a vital question.

"Can he understand what we're saying? Does he, in fact, retain some memory of who he once was and what he experienced? Xu?" she had crowded past Kaeya's shoulder and poked the child in the forehead. "Do you know who I am?"

Xu went cross-eyed looking at the finger.

Xu burst into tears.

Wei Yin, straightening with a hand over his blinded eyes, had smiled in the direction he thought they were standing as Kaeya stepped out of range of the both of them and tried to calm the fussing baby down.

"Ha! He hates you too! Probably remembered you were a part of his eyeball bird dying while we were in here."

Chao Xing had bristled. "That is not true! And you are speaking to a wall. You look most like a fool."

Wei Yin had turned a full three-sixty and gone back to cackling at the wall. "You look most like a fool. At least I didn't make a baby cry!"

"No, he only stabbed you in the eyes-!"

"It's not the same thing-!"

Kaeya would have stopped them from arguing and working Xu into further fits of tears, but he couldn't- because his head was bowed, a fistful of his bangs caught in Xu's stubby grip who seemed intent on ripping them out.

The baby was evil- no doubt about it.

The evil version of Xu they had encountered in Liyue who despised him and Wei Yin, mixed with the soul version of Xu that was grieved over losing Carmella again.

There couldn't have been any other explanation.

Or maybe this Xu was just pissed the 'glass ball' containing his spirit had been thrown at his head at neck-breaking speed and exploded.

Yet as Kaeya had hissed and struggled to tug his bangs free, Tartaglia had come over, separated them with ease, and scooped Xu into his arms for himself.

And Xu had stopped crying, and Chao Xing and Wei Yin had stopped recalling the vague events of the day that led to Carmella's demise full of plotholes and inaccuracies, and Kaeya had stared at the Harbinger's chest because his outside robe was gone and all he had was the black undershirt that had been on beneath, showing off the lines of the muscles on his chest without any room for doubt that they were there.

So Xu had been left to be tucked and wrapped in the Fatui's care- because evil was drawn to evil- and Chao Xing and Wei Yin had been left to follow in the man's footsteps as he headed out the room and down the hall for the door outside, and Kaeya had been left to trail in all of their wakes and eyeball the dip and curves of Tartaglia's back through his sorry-excuse for a shirt.

Wei Yin, on the edge of the porch, stuck his head out from under its protection and tilted his head towards the clouds.

"Still raining," he observed.

Obviously.

Had he needed to even look at the sky for that?

"Chao Xing, I found a cloud that looks like you. Check it out."

"If it is a cloud of something strange," Chao Xing began, going to join him nonetheless.

Tartaglia and Kaeya hadn't moved from outside the door.

The sound of the downpour had sat in both their ears.

And Kaeya had frowned, watching the heirs, thinking on the newfound circumstances.

"...Tartaglia," he said after a prolonged second.

"What."

"I think we need to talk about this."

"About what?"

"The situation. What's going on. Us."

"Oh good. I was wondering if we were going to ignore it or not."

There was something hard to discern in the way the Harbinger spoke.

Something combative.

It was unwarranted- and Kaeya dragged his gaze from the pair of questionable cousins to confront what it was.

"Well we can't ignore it. It's right in front of us," he said, keeping his eye not quite on Tartaglia's face but slightly past it.

Apparently it was the wrong thing to do.

"Are you that scared of looking at my chest? You didn't seem to have a problem before," Tartaglia commented blankly.

"What? Be serious."

"I am being serious. You can at least look me in the eye."

Kaeya did so, moderately taken aback by the utterly unamused expression sobering the otherwise relaxed features of the Fatui's face. "Are you that upset?"

"I'm not upset," Tartaglia said stonily. "I merely think we should make up our mind about what's going on with this before it turns into something else. It was one thing in the cave, now it's another up here apparently."

Kaeya's eyebrows lowered. "I realize that. But I don't know what this is. That's why I'm bringing it up with you."

"Well you need to decide."

"Me? Why would I have to decide? It's a problem for the both of us."

"It's a problem for you."

"No it's not."

"Yes it is."

Kaeya's mouth flattened.

Xu stirred.

Kaeya's eye went to him. Then got distracted by the outline of Tartaglia's abs.

"That's exactly what I'm talking about," the Harbinger said. "That- right there. Even back in the cave. Maybe it was a game to the both of us at first, but it's not one now."

Kaeya returned his eye to Tartaglia's hardened face. "I've never thought this was a game. That was you."

"So give me a straight answer."

"I don't have any. I keep telling you that."

"Then find some and stop staring at me and giving off signs you want me to fuck you so bad. You think anyone's supposed to make proper sense of what you want when you do that and then shut the door in my face?"

"Tartaglia I'm talking about Xu being a baby and us being stuck here what the hell are you saying?" 

A hand on both their shoulders.

They looked at one another, wide-eyed and incensed.

They looked at the hand on each of them.

They looked at Wei Yin.

His dark eyes were somber. Pale, rain-streaked features grave.

"Couldn't help but eavesdrop," he said, "since you weren't whispering. But."

His eyes went to Kaeya.

His eyes went to Tartaglia.

He waited.

Tartaglia stared. "But what?"

Wei Yin blinked. "But nothing. I'm just waiting for you guys to continue. Go ahead."

Tartaglia shrugged his hand away, squinting, full of venomous distaste. "Uugh, get off me."

Wei Yin fixed his gaze immediately onto Kaeya, deadly serious. "Can I count on you?"

To do what? 

"Wei Yin. Give us a moment," is what Kaeya told him, sighing.

Wei Yin searched his eyes. "If that's what you want."

He glanced down at Xu.

Xu who was awake and starting to look displeased at being crowded.

"I'll go," he said, "but I'll take the little kiddo. You shouldn't argue around him, you silly parents."

And he scooped the sorcerer baby away from Tartaglia before the Harbinger could react.

Paying no mind to the way Xu attempted to tear off his nose, he hustled off the porch and into the rain and yard where Chao Xing already stood, contemplation in her eyes, opened fan a useless umbrella above her soaked head.

...How long ago had she left to give them space in the middle of their arguing?

How long had either of the heirs been listening in?

No- more importantly-

Kaeya started after the Wei Clan heir, alarmed. "Wei Yin, don't take him out into the rain-"

Tartaglia snagged his wrist and dragged him back.

"Xu-"

"The kid's an evil baby, he'll be fine."

Kaeya wasn't concerned about Xu.

He was concerned Xu would somehow manage to evaporate Wei Yin in retribution for taking him out there.

And Tartaglia agreed he was evil?

That was the group consensus?

No. Even more, more importantly-

"What did you mean just now?" Kaeya asked, staring at the Harbinger intently. "What was that that came out of your mouth?"

Childe dropped his wrist.

"I shouldn't have to spell it out for you."

"I'm not asking you to spell it out," Kaeya told him. "I'm asking you to say it. Say it again. Why did you-"

"Because it's what you said-" Childe interrupted. Awkwardly. "Down there. Or. Were you lying?"

"I wasn't-" Just as stilted, Kaeya answered. "I wasn't lying. About that. If you wanted to."

He disguised his embarrassed cough for the clearing of his throat.

He slid back into composure.

He fixed his gaze upon Childe, resolute.

"But this isn't the place to be doing anything."

And Childe blinked.

And blinked again.

Slowly.

"...You're interested."

"In getting....'this' out of our system, yes. It's getting in the way."

"Getting in the way."

"Of more important issues."

"More important issues."

"Are we standing in another cave? Am I listening to my own echo?"

Childe grabbed him by the nose.

As Kaeya fought to push the offending hand off his face and snagged the Fatui's ear, dragging him several inches bent down in return, Childe peered at him in the close proximity and said-

"A one-and-done. Nothing attached to it. A single lay and all our problems will go away. That's what you think, huh?"

He released Kaeya and Kaeya released his ear in turn, and Kaeya wondered what in the world Childe was looking at him so judgmentally and contemplatively for.

"Fine."

Kaeya eyed him. "Fine what?"

"When we get out of here. Sleep with me. See what it does."

As opposed to what it had done before involving a big-dick-to-an-even-bigger-dick transformation, blast-to-the-past misinformation and getting dropped into some child's soul they'd hit the biggest 'reset' button on?

"Fine," said Kaeya. "To be done with it. Solve the problem. One more time- and never again."

"Fine."

"Good."

"Alright."

"Okay."

"So you're saying you're going to have sex with me-"

"That's what it implies, now drop it-"

Squealing and enraged babbling.

They tore their gaze from each other and turned their heads.

In the midst of the thunder, in the midst of the rain, Wei Yin threw Xu up into the air with gusto and cheer and caught him.

Then he threw Xu up a second time, stepped in a patch of mud, stumbled- and nearly missed catching the babified sorcerer on the frightful drop down. But Wei Yin snagged Xu, successfully, securely, and did so with the biggest, exhaled rush of relief and exclamation.

"Whew! And you said it couldn't be done!" he crowed to Chao Xing who glowered, scathing.

"So what if he doesn't let me hold him without looking as if he'll burst into tears? That doesn't mean anything. He's barely tolerating you."

"Jealous much? You always did admire my people skills."

"I regret that."

"Boo! No take-backs!"

Wei Yin nuzzled his face against Xu's.

"See? We should ignore her; I told you we would get along, little buddy!"

Xu barked. 

Wei Yin spun himself and the raging baby around.

"Every kid's dream is to fly like a balloon! Let's get some more height-"

Kaeya bolted off the porch.

"Stop throwing the baby Wei Yin!"

The heir paused, Xu lifted, ready for take-off.

"Hey, Vin. Finished your talk? You just caught me on my last throw- then you can try."

Kaeya was halfway across the yard. "No- put him down-"

"One more time, I promise that's it-!" Wei Yin insisted.

And before Kaeya could reach him and before Childe following in Kaeya's footsteps could get around the knight and retrieve the kid, Wei Yin tossed Xu up excitedly, exclaiming-

"Fly high, little squirt!"

And Xu did.

Five Feet.

Then ten.

Then twenty.

Then higher up, high above, high and far away.

Wei Yin's arms stayed raised.

His head stayed tilted back.

All of their heads stayed tilted back.

And in the period of silence that fell, they watched the bundled figure of Xu become a silent speck in the storming clouds.

"...Why isn't he coming back down?" Wei Yin asked, still looking up. "...Where is he going?"

There wasn't any logical answer. 

There wasn't an answer at all. 

And Xu disappeared.

And the four of them stood looking.

The four of them stood looking for a long, long time. 

 

---

 

And there- right there- was when it all went wrong.

When their journey in the northlands began.

When Tartaglia became a magician.

When Kaeya became his lackey.

When Wei Yin and Chao Xing had stripped themselves of their status as clan heirs.

When the four of them murdered Shen.

 

 

Notes:

Happy New Year's Eve!!! One last chapter before the year officially ends.

Thank you so much for tagging along with me <3 Bang some pots and pans!

Chapter 12

Hi guys! How have all of you been doing?? Don't worry I'll be deleting this little extra chapter add-on but it's been a thousand years with no contact/updates so i wanted to reach out. I know I've been gone for a long time and still have unfinished work! (lots of ups and down with work and school and health). Maybe you've read my other stories under other usernames or in other fandoms! There's been a few. BUT I finally got a bit settled and some footing beneath my feet finally stopped moving COUNTRIES, and have been hoping to jump back in with making content again. I made a social! if you guys happen to be on tiktok feel free to follow me there @campbell_crashout, I'd love to dive back into the fandom and see what everyone else has been up to if you're also active. I know not every might still be around. Three years is FOREVER. But if you're here and reading my works still, I'd love for us to support each other or if you'd like to be friends or follow each other or just talk about random multi-fandom stuff ^ ^  (I haven't played genshin since Fontaine ended. I need to CATCH UP  T T ) I also hope to start dropping edits, so I hope you guys get some time to swing by and check it out once I do as I play hsr and some other games too. I hope each and every one of you has an amazing rest of your day and week, that you're still taking care of yourselves, and enjoying fun works and life!

I feel like I posted on this story before about updating.... and it never happened - 

I hope it still makes you laugh whenever you come back to it though haha

And my apologies for the disappearance <3