Chapter Text
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.
My sin, my soul.”
— Humbert Humbert , Lolita
Kaeya had met the woman at work and their relationship had blossomed in a natural, banal progression. She was a beauty with her long, flowing brown hair and warm brown eyes, dainty features accentuated with a small mole below the corner of her mouth. Their office romance had gone on for months before she invited him home to her apartment. Though she had never expressed it with words, her reluctance spoke its own language, and when supplied with the information that she had a teenage son it was easily deduced as to why.
If he were to be honest, though he had stuck around for a couple of months before the woman finally invited him over for the first time — their time together outside of work up to that point having been spent on dates bathed in city lights and passionate nights at his own lavish apartment — it had never been his intention to settle down with her. The fact of the matter was, he had grown accustomed to being bored by others — he didn’t anticipate to find anyone who stimulated him enough to keep him interested, and so, he had grown content with going from woman to woman, sticking around for a while like a restless cat only to move on to the next with cool indifference. (He knew how to play his cards to avoid them turning on him, too, instead leading them to turn their pain inwards and blame themselves as he went on with his life in the same fashion.)
The invitation to come over to her residence didn’t come as a surprise, however. From the months they had spent together, his gentle touches and warm words that belied the true frostiness of his mind and intent, and from the blooming love in her eyes and sincerity of her smiles, it was clear that she was infatuated. He figured he may as well settle with the woman for a while longer, finding their relationship comfortable enough and at least a bit more stimulating than one-night stands (for the time being), and so it was natural that he graciously accepted the offer.
He wasn’t nervous about meeting the woman’s son — one might say the word ‘nervous’ wasn’t a part of Kaeya Alberich’s dictionary, as overused as such a locution may be — but he braced himself for it nonetheless. The look in her eyes upon inviting him had told him the meeting would not be a painless affair, and yet, despite bracing himself for the worst, the venomosity that met him that evening when he first came over to the Ragnvindr residence had gone far beyond his expectations.
It was not an unpleasant surprise, however; far from it, in fact.
That evening, Kaeya’s icy blood had thrummed hot in his veins as his cold heart beat hotly in his ears, and a forbidden pathway had opened within the dark, cold, never-ending maze of his mind, the latter of which led into its most depraved, hidden chambers; for the sight — the being — that met his eyes that evening had ignited something within him, something dark, dangerous and so far beyond all conventions of decency he knew for certain he would no longer be able to cheat Hell. But that did not matter—
From that evening onwards, only one thing would come to matter.
“Diluc!” the brown-haired woman’s voice rang inside the modest apartment as she let the tanned man inside, a fancy, voluminous bouquet in shades of blue in her arms that contrasted the wine red of her dress — a generous gift from a gentlemanly guest, though he himself were entirely indifferent to their beauty.
The woman’s call was followed by the sound of a door swinging open and closed, and just from the sound, the azure-haired man could detect exasperation; it was clear her reluctance to invite him over had not been unfounded, because if the child gave off such emotional outbursts in little details like that, there was no question he was going to be a tough nut to crack. ( And crack, he would. )
Kaeya took a moment to take in the apartment — it was quite modest in size considering it was in such a good neighborhood, but clearly furnished with love and care. Over the months he had learned the woman was quite invested in interior design, and she had clearly done what she could with the space. He had initially been surprised at how she could afford to live in such an area, because she did not hold a high position at the firm they both worked at, but he had felt no need to pry. Information would unveil itself with time — it always did.
The soft padding of socked feet came to a halt just as a spark of bright red entered his field of vision from the corner of his eye, and the man’s musings came to an abrupt halt when he turned his gaze towards the third person who had joined them.
Had Kaeya been a weaker man, his breath may have caught in his throat at the sight of the boy. The youth peeked out from around the corner of a half-wall that seemed to separate the hallway from the remainder of the otherwise mainly open plan apartment, clearly reluctant — or unwilling — to fully commit to his mother’s request, an act of subdued defiance; however, those reflections all diminished into the back of his mind as he took in the boy’s appearance.
Over the years, Kaeya Alberich had spent nights with the most exquisite beauties one could imagine, and yet, in that moment, they all paled in his mind’s eye — just as the brunette standing beside him did, and would continue to pale in his eyes in the months that would follow.
To call the boy a beauty would have been an understatement.
With long scarlet red hair and bright crimson eyes, porcelain skin and an immaculately pretty face, his physique visibly dainty despite his modest choice of dress; the contempt burning bright in his red eyes making the boy’s beautiful visage all the more striking.
The boy — Diluc — visibly hadn’t taken kindly to Kaeya and made little effort to hide his displeasure, a cold glare swimming in those ruby red orbs and a scowl marring his delicate features that he had seemed to half-heartedly try to play off as indifference, though the display had certainly not fooled the man. As he tried to play his displeasure off as indifference, the hostility burning in the child’s ruby red orbs made no secret of his true feelings— he was likely trying to spare his mother the pain of seeing him be openly hostile towards the man who held her affections, whilst directing his anger at the tanned man with the full intention letting him know how he truly felt.
How cute.
The slender boy was clad in an oversized black sweater and acid-washed skinny jeans. The deep neckline of the sweater hung haphazardly off one shoulder to reveal it in its pale, dainty glory whilst the exaggerated sleeves undoubtedly hid more of his creamy, slender physique; the sweater was large enough, the boy could’ve worn it as a dress had he wanted to. The way the acid-washed denim clung to long, slender ( twiggy ) legs made no secret of their daintiness ( frailty ). Surely the boy had made no effort to show himself off — far more likely, he had gone out of his way not to dress up for the occasion — yet unbeknownst to him the pretty display he made with his unruly long hair and an outfit that displayed as much as it hid only served to make one wish to peel away the layers and leave him entirely bare for hungry eyes to devour.
The woman briefly introduced the two males — “Sweetheart, this is Kaeya; Kaeya, this is my son, Diluc” — before scurrying off past the half-wall the boy was hiding behind into the kitchen area to find a vase for the large bouquet the azure-haired man had so generously gifted her, leaving them alone with one another.
Their first few moments alone together had been like a hidden clash of elements, of thinly veiled, white-hot anger like a blazing little fire and a cool calm that settled over the environment like a sheen of ice on a winter lake. It had been a wordless battle between wills, one hot and piercing, the other cool and calculated. Though entirely unspoken and playing out between a scalding glare and a frosty, dispassionate yet curious gaze, it would have been too palpable for the third party not to notice the tension should she have been present.
Kaeya found himself quite enjoying their little clash of fire and ice, observing the kaleidoscope of emotions flashing hotly in those scalding ruby orbs. The boy’s beauty was something else, that much he knew now, but he could tell from the storm of emotions swirling in his red eyes that there was far more to him than the gruff teenager he may have looked like to anyone else. The raw emotion in his eyes complemented by the defiant ( cute ) scowl marring his pretty features hinted at a plethora of untold stories whilst his beauty had left a searing mark on the man’s mind, his cold heart ignited with the thrill of finding something worthy of his interest. Indeed, the blazing little beauty was something else entirely, and in the months to come, his fascination with the pretty thing would only glow hotter and brighter as he intentionally and with purpose dove deeper into the boy’s unwitting temptation.
As the woman came back from the kitchen area and the boy averted his glare from the man’s icy yet smoldering gaze; the boy had already been branded with Kaeya’s mark. The azure-haired man had his mind and very intuition set, the icy essence of his being alight with something dark and dangerous that sept into every fiber of his being, and there would be no place for the boy to hide, nowhere in their shared plane of existence where the man would not reach him.
The evening had gone on as the man had expected and even as he engaged with the woman and took the lead in sophisticated conversation as though he were the host of the evening, the boy — who seemed to retract into himself and refused to engage with them, stubbornly remaining silent as he played the part of a sulky teenager to a T — remained at the very forefront of his mind, icy shadows cloaking his radiant form.
As the tanned man had left the apartment that evening, he contemplated not only the meeting with the boy as everything around it receded into nothing, but also everything that were to come — an intricate plan was taking form in his mind, and he would later follow it diligently and with purpose to bring his newfound desire to fruition. The woman all but forgotten aside from the key part she played in his plan, the man’s mind’s eye gazed upon that fiery beauty once more and sighed with contentment— this was what he had needed all along, what he had been searching for . He was not the least bit deterred by the newfound object of his interest’s hostility towards him, no; it only riled him up, made him want to extinguish that fire only to see it blaze up in defiance again and again, shaping it in his icy palm and making it his and only his —
The fire of his loins.
The weeks wore on after that evening and Kayea had found himself gravitating towards the little apartment, spending more and more time over there after work hours to the point that a less cynical man may have considered it his second home. The woman was clearly overjoyed by his frequent visits, though she had no way of knowing his true intent for coming over.
The boy, unsurprisingly, secluded himself to his bedroom during the tanned man’s visits but that did not deter him one bit, for the redhead’s willful absence was yet another expression of his little attempts at defiance and made it all the more satisfying when the woman forced him to come out of his hiding and, to quote her, ‘be a little social’. ‘Being a little social’ constituted the boy curling up on the couch with red glares and delicate features marred by scowls of varying intensities, though it was clear he at least made some effort to play it off as indifference for the sake of his mother’s feelings (and an attempt to avoid being scolded behind closed doors, most likely). Though he would never give it away, smiling politely and seemingly respecting the little redhead’s silent demands to be left alone, the man quite relished in the boy’s unwilling presence.
They never spoke beyond perhaps a few words when prompted by the woman who was so clearly under the delusion that the boy was warming up to the azure-haired man, despite the boy’s speech being curt and quite biting to the trained ear, like the barely-audible hisses of an angry kitten. Kaeya did not mind when the boy was silent, though he certainly enjoyed the boy’s clear discomfort when forced to speak to him, avoiding the man’s icy yet amused gaze all the while.
During the very brief moments when they were left alone, neither spoke, and yet so much was said. The child’s piercing ruby glares and little scowls said more than a thousand words ever could, and though Kaeya schooled his expression into a pleasant indifference to the boy’s nonverbal animosity, these were the moments he enjoyed the most. It was a needed stage in the progression of his plan and he enjoyed every moment of it; the redhead’s pitiful attempts to make the man feel as unwelcome as possible to scare him off were simply too adorable not to be savored.
Weeks turned to months as the illustrious facade of his romance with the woman continued to bloom, and the resignation in the boy’s glares grew more and more potent as it gradually dawned on him that the man was going nowhere— to call it adorable wouldn’t have even began to cover it, and the same applied to the man’s enjoyment at the naïve child’s thinly veiled distress. The redhead stood his ground, however, and refused to engage with the man beyond biting words and his crimson glares that were still oh so piercing even as the resignation in his eyes grew deeper with each passing day.
Sex with the woman was better than ever, for when buried deep inside her, thrusting into her warm body with the fervor of a starved man, he saw something so much prettier when his climax hit him and his vision turned white - he saw long, unruly red hair splayed over the pillow like a scarlet halo, ruby eyes glassy with unshed tears and porcelain skin dyed in pastels from bruises as that dollish visage contorted in both pain and pleasure.
It was during those nights that his icy patience melted into pure, unadulterated liquid desire, craving to touch that soft supple skin, bruising ivory with his calloused touches as he drank in that porcelain doll face cracking into pain interwoven with carnal desire as silent screams bounced off the walls in ghost echoes. He regained his composure by morning for he knew his icy resolve could not crack when it mattered most. The ice that ran through the seams of his very being had brought him everything he could have wanted up until that point, and it would not melt until he at last had what he most desired of all. If it did melt, by then, so be it; it couldn’t be helped. If it were to happen, the boy would only have himself to blame.
He knew exactly when the woman had fallen sufficiently deep into the intricate trap he had crafted with sultry charm and ice cold intent.
He had her wrapped around his long fingers, so hopelessly in love as she gazed upon him with the adoration of a little girl who believed she had found her prince charming.
It had been 13 months since that fateful evening when he had first laid eyes upon the boy that he proposed to her, and he already knew her answer. The woman had collapsed in tears of joy as she cried from pure happiness— it had been the first time the tanned man had seen the brunette cry.
It had also been the first time the scarlet-haired boy had a real outburst.
His porcelain mask had cracked that evening, and Kaeya had never seen something so beautiful.
Cries of betrayal intertwined with the scorching blazes of rage and it was that raw display of emotion, the heartwrenching vulnerability , that once and for all cemented for the man he had made the right decision all those months ago when he had first laid eyes on the boy. When the boy glared upon the man that evening, his crimson glare was glassy with unshed tears, gleaming like polished, spotless rubies; and when the tears spilled and glittered down his cheeks, his beauty was indescribable, beyond any depiction a human mind could possible formulate no matter how eloquent or embellished.
It was a display so wondrous, it couldn’t have been meant for human eyes.
Kaeya had never felt closer to godhood.
He had expected the boy to hurl expletives at him, but to his surprise, the boy only uttered only a single phrase, and it was directed at his mother.
“How could you?!”
As the boy had stormed off to his room and slammed the door behind him, a deafening silence had ensued, followed by the woman furiously apologizing to Kaeya for her son’s behavior.
(Of course, he had feigned concern with such perfection that the woman seemed more concerned for him than she did for her own very clearly distraught child.)
A calmness settled within the tanned man in that moment, for the woman’s behavior was proof in itself that she would cling on to him and their ‘love’ more than she would seek to make the supposed ‘betrayal’ up to her son. All the while, he replayed the boy’s raw. vulnerable display of tears and fire in his mind and felt even more satiated than he did after climaxing inside the woman with red in his mind’s eye.
Another milestone in his plan had been reached, and he was closer than ever to claiming that lustrous little fire for himself.
The wedding had been a small affair with only their closest friends and family attending. The man had a rich network of contacts, but few were close enough to warrant an invitation. He only had one person he deeply desired to be there, and that someone had no choice despite the fact that Kaeya recalled overhearing said someone claiming that he would much rather gouge his own eyes out than attend the ceremony. ( An interesting visual, surely. )
When Kaeya gazed into the woman’s chocolate brown eyes swimming with tears of happiness as they made their vows, he imagined the way the boy’s pitiful scowl would mar his dollish visage while crimson orbs glared with childish anger and resignation. ‘ How adorable he must look right now ,’ a dark voice murmured within his mind and he recognized it as his own, ‘ No need to worry about missing it this time. In the future, no such delights will escape me. ’
When he gently moved her veil aside to kiss her, he imagined soft unclaimed lips against his own and sighed inwardly with contentment.
When he held her hand as they gazed upon their modest audience, he fixed his eyes on the boy as icy sapphire met gleaming rubies, and to his delight, though subdued, there were still little fires crackling within them.
The happiness — may he call it that? — that his smile conveyed that day was genuine, not because of his radiant bride, but because he had at last reached the final milestone in his plan.
Now, all he had to do was wait.
Though the woman was eager to change her last name, the boy, to no one’s surprise, refused to change his own surname and clung to ‘Ragnvindr’ the way a child desperately clung to their last favorite toy as everything else had been taken away. The comparison wasn’t far from the truth, he supposed, and the boy’s desperate defiance and refusal to give in to what was so clearly already finalized was adorable.
Their honeymoon didn’t last for long, but it seemed to satisfy the woman enough while the azure-haired man just wished to get it over with. During their ‘romantic’ stay, he found his mind continually drifting to where the boy might be, what he was up to, who he was seeing, the latter of which caused something dark to flare up inside him. When he fucked the woman, he continued to imagine the little redhead in her place, though he of course had control of himself and still called out her name. He did not slip up, not once— he rarely did and he would certainly not do it now, not when he had reached this milestone and was so close to claiming what would rightfully be his — what was rightfully his since he had first laid eyes upon it.
When they came back, the boy was curled up asleep on the sofa like a little cat. His delicate features were so at peace and relaxed and he once more looked like a little porcelain doll, pure and delicate, not yet marred by the cruel world and the rough, selfish hands of man. Something dark and dangerous inside Kaeya laughed cruelly at the sight as he was overcome with a desire to wake the boy, to see those large red eyes narrow and delicate features twist with fear and anger… Of course, his resolve was like a glacier and he resisted the urge with relative ease.
Patience.
He wouldn’t have to wait much longer.
The weeks after they got back from the honeymoon went on and it wasn’t long until they moved into a far more spacious apartment in an even fancier neighborhood to make more room for their little ‘family’ ( oh , how a word could carry so many connotations). The boy had once more broken his bitter silence to protest the change, but as with the marriage between his mother and the man she had known for only a year, his wishes were not even taken into consideration. The development corresponded with what the man’s mind’s eye had foreseen, but it was nonetheless satisfying to see the boy so upset, exasperation, anger and resignation all interwoven into a raw display of emotion that the man would be lying should he tell himself he did not find it the least bit titillating.
The boy had not shed any angry tears this time, but the glassiness of his red eyes made it clear to the tanned man that he wasn’t far from it. Having only recently turned fifteen, his body and mind having only just begun to approach adulthood, he supposed the little outbursts were understandable. The boy had no control over his life, though he would surely never admit it Kaeya could tell that he was scared of how quickly his existence had been so firmly uprooted and thrust into something foreign to him, and more than anything, he was angry. At life, at his mother, at Kaeya; the teen probably felt the entire world was out to get him and it was quite ironic. After all, the tanned man would become his world with time, and it was obvious that the boy was directing most of anger at the man.
His world, Kaeya; with time, they would become synonymous.
She had only mentioned what had happened to Diluc’s father briefly, but Kaeya knew he needed the fuller picture. So he sat her down, lulled her into a feeling of comfort with her loving husband at her side, and she broke down and spilled everything. How it had only been two years since the man’s untimely passing, how the boy had adored his father more than anything in the world and how years later it was clear the child still wasn’t done grieving.
“I just wish he would find peace with it,” she had cried, “I’ve tried so hard to move on and now I’m finally happy, I wish he could move on too.”
The image she painted wasn’t far from the one Kaeya had visualized in his mind for a long time, but it was beyond useful to finally have it confirmed. In order to keep up the facade of the perfect lover, the man hadn’t wanted to pry but now it was only natural that she tell him about what happened to her son’s father.
He was the boy’s stepfather now, after all.
It all made such perfect sense — Diluc’s refusal to accept him, the kaleidoscope of painful emotions swirling in those sad ruby eyes; the boy missed his daddy and clung to his father’s memory like a helpless little child, for that was what he was, really. Two years wasn’t a long time, either. Kaeya couldn’t say he was entirely familiar with the harrowing surge of emotion one may experience when they lost a loved one— it just didn’t apply to his own personal case. But he had always been a master of figuring people out as though they were open books, and he was confident he now understood the scope of the boy’s issues.
A lost, confused and angry child.
How adorable.
He yearned to explore the intricacies of the boy’s naïve mind ( and body ), and he would— sooner than he had expected back then, even.
His opportunity had come earlier than he had expected it to.
Clearly he had well and truly gained the woman’s full trust, because just a couple of weeks after their conversation regarding her deceased husband, she had told him she meant to visit her mother out in the countryside. She would only be away for a weekend, and if Kaeya didn’t mind, it may be a chance for him and his stepson to get closer. ( Bury the hatchet, you mean. )
He could tell from the way she requested it that she had not brought it up with her son, because if she had, he would have flat-out refused.
They had been living together in the spacious, lavish apartment for months now as a ‘proper’ family and the boy still avoided the tanned man like the plague, growing further and further away from his own mother in the process. However, by this point it was obvious that the two of them weren’t particularly close. If they were, she would never have gone against his wishes again and again in the selfish pursuit of her own happiness. Even when telling the tanned man about the way her previous husband’s death had affected the boy, she continued to put herself at the center of it, seemingly concerned for him first and foremost depending on how his feelings and actions affected her own happiness. With such a mother, it wasn’t particularly odd that a child would grow much closer to their other parent. It had all worked brilliantly in the azure-haired man’s favor and with the relationship between the boy and his mother the way it was, his end goal felt closer than ever with little risk of repercussions.
Her words implied she had not let the boy know of this arrangement for fear of him throwing a temper tantrum — she didn’t use that term but it was quite clear that that was how she saw it — about it, and so Kaeya would be the one forced to deal with Diluc’s reaction upon finding out he was to be alone with the man he so loathed for a whole weekend, and there was nothing the boy could do about it.
Kaeya didn’t mind at all.
Though the request had taken him quite by surprise with how soon and with such short notice it came, he was pleased.
The pretty boy would be like a caged rabbit, cute and helpless and unable to escape. Kaeya had learned the boy lacked friends ever since they moved into the city two years prior and he had no relatives in the area either ( no place to hide ). He was so sheltered and lacking in meaningful relationships, he would have no one to turn to; yet, even so, the man knew staking his claim on the boy would be no easy feat. The boy was a fiery one, still resisting everything forced upon him despite there being no way for him to win; he had lost again and again, yet he refused to give in. The azure-haired man wanted that crackling little fire in his palm, suffocating it only to allow it to flare, keeping the boy on the brink of losing himself only to pull him back just as his mind starts falling apart.
Everything had fallen into place with only minor prodding on the man’s part; it was as though the universe wished for it to happen, as though God himself had turned his back on the pretty little thing.
The boy may hiss and snarl like an angry little kitten, but prey, he was.
Beautiful things were meant to be broken but the most exquisite of them all were meant to be pieced back together only to be shattered anew, the ice in his own veins bleeding into the cracks were the pieces fit together, leaving the boy dependent on him to the point he would soon only be an extension of Kaeya’s own desires.
Cruel and perverse, it was.
Even with his tar-black heart and the ice running through his veins, Kaeya was only a man of flesh and blood, and when presented with such a pretty gift as if sent from the heavens, he would be a fool not to accept it, claim it, make it his own through and through until the pretty thing could no longer function without his breath in its ear and his touch on its body.
The child, with all his naïvité, could never have even begun to fathom what would be forced upon his body and soul, for if he did, he may very well have ended himself before it had a chance to happen.
With the knowledge of what was to come, Kaeya allowed himself to smile.