Archive of Our Own

You last exactly three nights, out in the wild, after you run away from home. 

That is; three nights spent resting under trees in shaded areas, avoiding monsters, letting Mondstadt’s cool breezes and the soft warm air of spring-almost-summer lull you to sleep. The few rations you had managed to throw tearfully into the small bag you had taken with you had not lasted you past the first night, but you had been lucky enough to find apple trees, sunsettias, bushes bursting with plump yellow berries, and you had used those for sustenance. 

But on the fourth night, torn and ragged as you are, the storm comes howling. 

Your dress has already been cut to shreds by cruel branches and thorns of the Whispering Woods; there is dirt beneath your fingernails from sleeping fitfully upon the grass, dirt (you’re sure) dusted over your exposed skin because you are not brave enough to do anything more than splash yourself with clean water from the lakes (fear of being taken unawares by a group of hilichurls whilst completely bare dance across your thoughts when you consider letting yourself take a full dip). You are a mess, you think, ruefully, as you stumble through the lush forests of the Windwail Highlands. 

Lightning cracks. Thunder roars. You shiver in your soaking wet gown and pray that the storm will pass fleet-footed, but it is not meant to be. A half-hour later, the only thing that has happened is that the wind has whipped more branches into your face, and you can feel blood trickling down a cut beneath your eye. 

If the storm rages on, and things get worse . . . it would not be at all unusual for a tree to be felled, and you to find your body crushed and broken beneath centuries of oak. For lightning to strike, racing through your body and leaving you twitching and burnt for the wolves to feast on your flesh. You need shelter. 

You do not realise how close you have stumbled to Dawn Winery until you see the grapevines, groaning beneath their loads. The crystalflies are still hovering over them, despite the storm that rages - much like most Mondstadters, they wish to be as close to wine as possible. The cottages and houses themselves that dot Master Diluc Ragnvindr’s estate are home to his tenants; farmers, winery workers. You could not possibly ask them to shelter you. 

Who knows if your parents have already promised a reward of jewels and glittering Mora to whoever brings you back unharmed? You are not so cruel as to deny a poor peasant farmer the extra income, though you know that Master Diluc pays his employees well - the fortune your parents could afford to spare on bringing their only child home would surely be life-changing for so many who live in these neat but small lodgings. 

Too, who knows if they would have sympathy for you - if they would not simply tell you to swallow your protestations and get on with things. Mondstadt may be the city of freedom, your father had said in his thundering voice, but it does not mean you can run away from your responsibilities forever. This is all for you, he’d insisted, as you’d begged him not to condemn you to a future you did not choose--

Ah. Focusing too much on that will just make you more maudlin; increase the chances that lightning would strike you down, for standing so long in one place. 

The winery manor itself is welcoming; a warm orange candlelit glow emanates from the windows. Master Diluc himself is not known for his warmth - they say he was, long ago, a far easier and more friendly young man. But life has a way of making even the most tender of hearts frigid, and you know that Crepus Ragnvindr’s death was a great blow to Mondstadt as much as to his son. You move in high societal circles, because of your family’s name - but Diluc moves in some higher even than those. You do not think he has attended any balls since his father’s tragic loss. 

But you are desperate.

So you let yourself cut through the grapevines, careful not to tread on anything important or to bring harm to any of the heaving fruits (Master Diluc’s harvest will be bountiful, it seems - good news for all of Mondstadt, really). Your fine slippers are caked over in mud; you had no time to change into riding boots or anything more practical before you had fled from the only home you’ve ever known. You are aware, as your trembling hand reaches for the carved knocker, that you must look a perfect fright. 

The polished brass is in the shape of an owl; the knocker seized between its beak. You hesitate for just another moment - but lightning cracks behind you, far too close for comfort, and it forces your hand to rap hard with it out of fear. 

The light inside flickers. You hear thudding footsteps on polished floors, even through the wood of the front door; you try and rehearse what to say in your mind to whoever answers the door. Ought you to tell them the truth? Ought you to run now and try and keep a thread of your dignity intact?

Locks sliding and clinking, and the door is being pulled open - and there is a fair-haired maid, looking at you with puzzlement in her glance. Beyond her, you can see the manor’s entrance hall - carefully polished tile, an imposingly ostentatious chandelier, fine wooden furniture and soft warm carpets, candleglow making the whole room look comfortable and warm and homely.

It is so, so much like your parent’s entrance hall that before you know it, tears are rolling in fat droplets down your cheeks - and the maid’s face softens. 

“Young Miss,” she says, “please. Step inside and warm yourself. The storm tonight looks to be raging; you’ll surely come to harm if you stay out there a moment longer, not to mention catching your death of cold--”

Her voice is firm but fair. It brokers no argument - again, it is so like your own housekeeper that it makes you ache . You suppose something in your bearing must give away that you are no ordinary young lady; that you come from luxury and society, that you are not simply a peasant maid, and that it is entirely likely the housemaid speaking to you is luring you in only to deliver you back to the claws of your parents and the unwitting marriage you have no desire to be trapped in - but you cannot bring yourself to care about that, as you step into the entrance hall and feel blessed floor beneath your feet instead of squelching mud. 

You didn’t realise how cold you were out there until you feel the warmth of glowing candlelight against your skin; cannot help but let your shoulders untense for what feels like the first time in days. The maid smiles at you softly. 

“The Master is currently away,” she says. “I am afraid I can’t offer you much, but you are welcome to sleep in the kitchens for the night by the fireside - I can find you one of the other maid’s shifts to wear whilst your own clothes dry out a little.”

“You have been more than kind,” you tell her. “I would like that very much indeed.”

If she is surprised by how cultured your voice is contrary to the ragged appearance of your poor soaking dress and ruined slippers, mud caking your feet, she does not show it - simply continues to smile that warm-but-polite smile. 

“Ah--” You say, pausing, embarrassed, suddenly unsure of how to broach this. “I . . . I’m afraid I’m rather a mess.”

“I will bring you a basin of water myself,” she says. “Here. I’ll take you to the kitchens.”

It’s most peculiar that she seems to be the only person here - you know that Master Diluc was once a figure of great romanticism and that such thoughts waned a little after his father’s death, but it seems strange that such a grand old house would be home to only her and the Master himself. Especially since, after his return, those old desires and daydreams of the folk of Mondstadt returned--

(So stoic , they say, with a sigh. So terribly handsome and tragic and so desperately in need of warmth and love in his life. I could provide that, they think to themselves - not sparing a moment of thought for why such a man may prefer to be alone. Since the insistence of your parents that you must leave home and set up hearth with some man you have never met, Master Diluc’s solitary existence has suddenly seemed extremely attractive).  

Still. It’s not your place to pass judgement on such things as a Master wanting to be alone with his favourite maid, you think - and so, instead you follow her like a docile little lamb, horrifically aware of what a mess you look in such opulent surroundings. 

She tells you her name is Adelinde, when she brings you a basin of warm water and a plain white shift that looks to be about your size. She apologises for the quietness of the house; says that Master Diluc is rather a reserved young man and he prefers his independence, hence why he runs such a small household. She tells you there are two maids - Moco and Hillie - who come during the daytime only to dust and clean, but at night it is simply her (and the Master, when he is at home). 

“Thank you,” you tell her, ardently, as you reach behind you to try and unlace your own gown. Your fingers slip on the damp ribbons, clumsy and awkward - the position making your shoulders ache. Adelinde watches you for a moment, and then hides a smile behind her hand as she says, entirely polite;

“Do you require some assistance, young Miss?” 

You let your hands drop in frustration. Your own lady’s maid, Edina, had always attended to such matters for you. Laced corsets and clipped stockings and tied ribbons, dealt with fastening your jewelries and preparing you for bed. Your mother had said Edina would come with you to your new husband’s home, but--

Was it so awful for you to wish to stay at home? To choose your own lover? 

To choose your . . . own life? 

“I won’t ask what has brought you to Dawn Winery,” Adelinde says, as she helps you pull off your garments and you stand there in nothing but your stained chemise. “There are any number of reasons a lady of good breeding may find herself thrown out in the cold, and I’m a quiet woman not in the habit of scandals.” Her face is encouraging; sympathetic. You cannot believe how lucky you are to have stumbled here in the midst of the storm. “But . . . the Master is not a man who enjoys socialising. Do you think anyone may come looking for you?” 

You take a shuddering breath. 

“Not here,” you say, eventually. “They . . . I left a trail of my things leading towards Liyue and double-backed upon myself. They have no reason to think I’d stay in Mondstadt, and even littler reason to think I’d be so louche as to force myself upon Master Ragnvindr’s hospitality--”

This makes Adelinde pause; a flash of something crosses her face. A lack of surety; a kind of guilt. You remember that she had said Master Diluc was away on business; perhaps he would not be so kind to a poor desperate wandering soul as yourself. As a man with a legacy heavy on his shoulders, perhaps he would insist you turn right back around and do your duty to your family name. 

“Don’t worry,” you say, and you give her a tremulous smile. “I do not have a plan, really, but . . . before the thunderstorm, I was doing perfectly well. Life has a way of working itself out. I will leave by dawn, Master Ragnvindr may not need know I was ever here at all.”

Some of the fearfulness leaves her face; she smiles at you again as she hands you a plain linen shift, of the kind an estate like this may very well provide as part of a maid’s uniform. It is mercifully warm from being held so close to the fire, the linen surprisingly soft - you hold it to your chest.

“Thank you,” you tell her, and you mean it entirely. “You . . . you do not know what this means to me.”

She sighs at you and reaches forward to cup your cheek, the action so motherly you want to cry. Why could your own mother not be so understanding, as this housemaid you have just met for the first time? 

“You are most welcome, young Miss,” she saves - and then she hesitates again a moment, her eyebrow creasing. “If I may . . . please give me your word you’ll not venture beyond the hearth tonight? The Master is, as I’ve said, away, but . . . he’s a most particular man, and the Winery can be somewhat disconcerting, especially in the dark. I will sleep far more soundly knowing you are safe.”

“Of course not,” you promise her. “I’m not about to intrude any more on your hospitality, Mrs Adelinde--”

“Ah,” she laughs a little. “Yes, a properly bred young lady indeed. I’m aware most housekeepers are indeed Mrs, but I am simply Miss Adelinde, as I have been since I was a young girl in Master Diluc’s father’s employ.” She turns from you, and deliberately leaves a pile of matches on a small table, you suppose for if the fire goes out (though you’ve never lit a fire before in your privileged life, you’re sure it cannot be so difficult). “Sleep well.”

“I’m sure I shall,” you reply. “It will be nice to not worry of monsters finding my sleeping spot.” 

A soft breath of amusement escapes her - and the heavy kitchen door closes behind Adelinde’s sweeping skirts, leaving you alone in the warm glow of the fire and finally able to get off your own stained chemise in peace. 

Slipping into the warmed maid’s shift feels like a luxury; soft fabric against your mostly cleaned body. You had managed to fix the few wounds you had incurred from wandering and traipsing through the woods, though there are still some angry welts marring your skin - at least, you suppose, you do not smell terribly of blood and rain and someone who has been unable to wash for some days. 

Adelinde has left a pile of blankets and furs for you by the fireplace; more than you would have expected. Enough for you to make yourself a comfortable nest that far outweighs the feeling of laying your stiff body upon grass and hard rocks and stone - it does not take you long to settle within the warmth you have been provided, nestled within the comfort of knowing you are safe. It does not take long at all for your eyelids to drift closed, lashes resting against the curve of your cheeks, soft sigh escaping your mouth as you fade into the land of slumber.

When you start awake, you are at first terrified.

You do not remember where you are; you are expecting, at first, to be back at home amongst your own luxurious bed covers and featherdown pillows. When that fades, you think you must be back in the woods, on hard ground with skinned knees - but neither of those seem quite right for the conundrum you’ve actually found yourself in. There’s a fire gently curling by your side (though it looks to soon be going out), you are beneath piles of humble and plain but warm blankets, you are wearing a shift that is not your own--

In small degrees, you remember last night. Stumbling torn and messy through the wilds of Mondstadt, knocking on the door to beg shelter - and Adelinde, dear Adelinde, housemaid of Dawn Winery, offering you some small respite in the form of this little patch of warmth in the manor’s kitchens. 

Your beating-fast heart calms. 

You are safer than you have been in days. 

So what woke you up?

You struggle out of the tangle of warmth you have rolled yourself into whilst you slept, a little sad to no longer feel the heat seeping through it. You have never been a light sleeper - your maid would always complain she had to knock far longer on your door than anybody else’s. So for something to have woken you when you finally feel safe after your few days living wild, surely there must be something. 

You strain to hear--

And that’s when it floats into the room, as if carried on its own breeze.

Somebody, somewhere in the house, is playing the piano. 

No .

Playing is not quite the right word. It is something more than that; the music that is floating through the cracks of the kitchen door is haunting, otherworldly, and terribly beautiful. More beautiful than anything you’ve heard before, though your parents had taken you to many concerts growing up - more beautiful than your own harpsichord playing, though you had diligently attempted to learn it to please your family and make yourself into the proper young lady they so desperately wanted. It makes your heart ache in a way you don’t understand, your breath catch in your throat.

There is something lonely about it. 

You forget your promise to Adelinde that you will not go wandering about the manor at night. You feel as though you are in a trance as you climb to your feet, the pretty notes not ceasing their echoing for a moment. There is a candlestick on the plain wooden table to one side of the kitchen (you assume the table where the kitchen maids take their meals); you pick it up, fumbling for one of the matches Adelinde had left, so at least you are not wandering in the dark.

For how heavy and aged the wooden door is, it swings open as if it is expecting you. You place the candle a little ahead of you, so eerie shadows are cast upon the stones. Your feet are quiet as cat’s paws upon the cold bare stone, as you ascend the stairs slowly in search of the source of the music.

You do not know why, but you feel that - if you do not find who and what it is making that beautiful, wistful melody - you will live a life half-realised. It touches you down to your soul in a way you do not understand - a plaintive sonata that seems to settle in your bones. 

You pass by a bedroom in the servant’s quarters with the door ajar. You look into it, briefly, but you do not even register that it is Adelinde that makes the shape beneath the covers, breathing in and out in a slow, peaceful rhythm. Even being caught going against the one request Adelinde has made of you cannot deter you from your newfound goal. 

The entrance hall, and it is fine rugs that you feel beneath your bare feet now. The light of the candle illuminates the paintings and draperies, flickering softly - but Dawn Winery feels like a home, and you are not afraid. The music is getting louder the further you let yourself wander. 

And the house is empty, is it not? If Adelinde is asleep, and the Master away on business . . . perhaps it is the Anemo Archon himself who has blessed you with this ballad that seems to touch in all of the darkest places of your mind and make itself a home within those recesses. It is of no problem, you’re sure, if you wander just a little. 

The music. You cannot simply lie there in the kitchens and never know what the music meant, when it strikes chords inside of yourself you have never realised were even there. 

For all you need to know the source of the music, you do not think about who it may be - the player is a negligible figure in your mind, less important than the way the notes stir your soul. You wander like a ghost, clutching a silver candlestick, in white linens with your eyes wide and your mouth parted. If somebody were to come across you, you would look like a spirit yourself - but that, too, is unimportant. 

There. 

It has gotten louder now - not merely in your head, though it certainly has made a home there - but in person. You are tantalisingly close to it. Your eyes are drawn to one of the doors; one that seems to beg for your hand to find the polished brass door-knob, for your hand to push forth past the threshold. 

A single, lonely candelabra burns on top of a sleek black piano. The windows are open enough for the red-and-gold drapes to billow in the winds of the storm. And there, seated upon the piano bench--

A beautiful red-headed man. Eyes half-closed as long fingers dance across ivory keys, a look of such intense wanting on his face that it hits you like a physical blow. He’s wearing a white shirt stained with . . . stained with something, undone to show rather a lot of pale sculpted chest. You cannot tear yourself away from the doorway. You are no fool. You know this is Master Diluc Ragnvindr, and Adelinde had not wanted you to cross paths with him. 

But your gasp is too loud - and so the music pauses, and a pair of eyes as red as Agnidus Agate fly from the keys to meet your gaze.

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Diluc says, later on in the deep night, as Adelinde lights a candle for him in his study and you sit behind his desk on your hands, still utterly improperly dressed in your shift with your shoulders bare. “I . . . I cannot imagine the courage it must have taken, to flee from your family.”

Indeed, reminders of Diluc’s family weigh heavily upon him; the red hair and red eyes you have heard his father was possessed of too, the crest of the family, paintings and antiques and an estate and a business built on his name. Despite his wealth and his freedom, you cannot help but feel a touch of sorrow for him. 

“I’m sorry to have troubled you, Master Ragnvindr,” you say to him. “I . . . I hope that you will not punish Adelinde for any of this. I cannot express how grateful I am to her, truly.”

Diluc seems uncomfortable in your presence; eyes carefully studying the walls behind you with a kind of practised calm. His own hands are on his desk, seemingly motionless - but you can sense there is a slight tremble in his proud jawline. You suppose it has to do with your state of deshabille ; he can hardly be blamed for being uncomfortable with a young woman he has never met so scandalously wandering his estate. 

Adelinde shoots you an agonised look. 

“No,” Diluc shakes his head. “Please do not be sorry. I-- thank you, Adelinde, for offering shelter to this young lady.”

“It was storming terribly,” Adelinde says, quietly. “I didn’t want her to be alone out there.”

“I’ll be on my way,” you say to them both. “I’m sorry to have caused you such grief. I--I thank you both for your hospitality, my gown ought to be dry by now--”

Those crimson eyes meet yours again, fully, for the first time since you had caught him at the piano. 

(He had thought you were a ghost at first, you’re certain. Had stood from the piano and approached you with his eyes wide, before he’d paused and taken a deep breath of the air as if tasting it on his tongue, and whispered aloud;

“Oh. You’re real.”

Adelinde had been summarily called; wringing her hands in her own apron - how she had the time to dress again, you did not know - apologising to her employer for it all, until you had felt so awful that you simply could not bear it and the whole sordid tale had come tumbling from your own mouth. 

You had been surprised at how Diluc had bridled as you’d explained your parent’s desire to marry you off to a much older, wealthier man whom you had never met, expecting him to be traditional and staunch in his insistence that as your parent’s only child, you had a duty to marry well and diligently follow all commands. He had even smiled a little - a brief twitch at the corner of his mouth - as you’d explained that you’d dropped belongings along the path to Liyue to hoodwink anyone your family may send looking, that your beloved maid had promised not to betray you--

“You must have a special relationship indeed,” he’d said, and his eyes had slid to Adelinde and then back to the desk in front of him). 

“I can’t let you go back out there,” he says, and there’s a kind of apology in his tone. Fear flares hot and sour up the back of your spine - for all of his sympathy, surely he does not intend to deliver you back into the wolf’s jaws of your parents? Damn you to a life of drudgery with some stranger? 

“Please,” you say, voice a little broken. “I-- I promise I shan’t bring any shame on you, nobody need know--”

His brow knits.

“Oh. Th-that’s not what I meant-- I simply meant that I . . .” Helplessly, he gestures a hand in the air. He has changed out of the stained shirt, apologising before he reappeared, saying something about red wine - which you suppose is a common issue, in a winery. “I would be remiss if I put you in danger.”

“I . . . I’m afraid I don’t follow, Master Ragnvindr,” you say. 

Adelinde walks up to him; leans down to quietly whisper something in his ear. Diluc frowns at whatever she says, and then shakes his head - and you are reminded once more that Master Diluc keeps only one staff member in the winery during the night, and it is entirely likely you have interrupted some kind of illicit rendezvous. Your face burns. 

“I think what Master Diluc is saying,” Adelinde says, and she shoots him another sharp look that you don’t understand, “is that you are welcome to stay here.”

“O-oh!” This is a surprise. “I--I couldn’t possibly intrude on your hospitality,” you’re babbling. What if this is an elaborate trick, to make you stay until your parents can come and fetch you? “I’ll be fine, really! I d-don’t . . . I don’t want to be a worry, or to interrupt you, I know you’re a busy man, I can simply be on my way as soon as the sun rises--”

Diluc reaches across the desk, not without hesitation - but despite that, he lays a hand atop of yours.

You’re surprised to discover that his skin is ice-cold. Despite the Pyro vision you see burning bright at his hip, and despite the flame coloured locks waving over his shoulders . . . the hand that is on yours feels cool as a winter snowstorm. 

“Please,” Diluc says. “The less-populated areas of Mondstadt are dangerous.”

“I--I survived perfectly well--”

“For but three days, young Miss.” Adelinde’s voice is disapproving. “Master Diluc is making you an offer--”

Diluc looks at her - you get the absurd feeling that he ought to be blushing, from the petulant way that his mouth purses and his eyebrows tilt, but no blood floods his pale cheeks. 

“D-don’t put it like that, Adelinde,” he says, almost bashful. “I am merely - offering a solution. I’m a businessman, after all.”  

“A solution?” You repeat. You have only just met Diluc Ragnvindr; and though a part of you feels as though you have known him for your whole lifetime (a part of you certainly urged on by the delicate melody that flowed from his fingertips and wormed deeply into the hollows of your soul), you can still not believe that you could truly be so lucky. Not after everything that could possibly go wrong in your life has gone wrong these past few months. “Surely I would just be intruding more upon your hospitality, Master Ragnvindr?”

“No,” and this time his voice is firm. “Mondstadt is the city of freedom. You are safe here. I shall not deliver you back to your . . . family.”

A melancholy fills his voice as he says the word; you wonder if he is thinking of his own father. You wonder if, perhaps, he is thinking of the adoptive brother you have heard tell he once had, before some disagreement brought down their brotherly bonds. 

“I--I hardly know what to say,” you twist your own fingers in your lap, toying with the linen of the shift. “I can make myself useful, if you have need of me - I’m not versed in cooking or cleaning, but I’m sure it cannot be so difficult--”

Adelinde lets out a bark of laughter. 

“You’d be more trouble trying,” she says. Diluc shakes his head. 

“You’re a young lady of fine breeding,” he says. “I won’t put you to menial work. You may stay here as long as you need. My library is open. I . . . I will visit your parents myself, in time, when my work allows me to.” His eyes take on a steelier glint. “They ought to be reminded of what the Anemo Archon wants. Until then . . . Ah,” he looks a touch shamed. “I shall ask you to stay within the Winery, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“Nobody would dare send anyone to seize you here,” Adelinde says, kindly. “Dawn Winery is as impenetrable a fortress as any.”

“Adelinde will care for you well,” Diluc says. “Moco and Hillie are good girls, too - and I suppose I’ll see you sometimes, though my working hours can be unpredictable--”

Adelinde practically trips over herself to add on to these words;

“Master Diluc works better at night,” she explains. “He’s away on business a lot, and it’s common he sleeps during the day time. Don’t trouble yourself too much if his presence is missing more often than not.”

“I suppose a man as well-revered as you deserves your eccentricities,” you say, through lowered lashes and a shaking smile. “I shall do my best not to disturb you, Master Ragnvindr--”

“Diluc,” he says. “Diluc is fine.”

You should be calling him Master Diluc, at the very least - Mr Ragnvindr would be proper, too. Your mother would be justly horrified if she knew that you were going to refer to a man such as Diluc Ragnvindr by his given name, without an ounce of the etiquette drilled into you by tutors and her alike - but it seems a silly thing to quibble over, when Diluc is offering you something so momentous. 

(He said he would speak to your parents for you; that the Anemo Archon could surely not want for you the life that they are attempting to give. The thought of Diluc , of all people, coming to your family’s estate . . . oh, you think even your stubborn father and society-climbing mother might give pause to their plans if they were to be scolded by the tycoon of the Dawn Winery). 

“Diluc, then,” you say, giving him a shy smile. He does not smile back; he ducks his head, as if embarrassed. The name does sound terribly intimate on your tongue - but the two of you are housemates, now. “I-- I really am sorry to have disturbed you. The music you were playing was beautiful. I was sad to hear it end--”

Diluc swallows visibly.

“You think so?” He asks. This time, he gives a small twitch of his lips. “Ah. Thank you.”

“It’s one of his own compositions,” Adelinde says, when it becomes clear that Diluc has nothing else to add. “Master Diluc! There’s no need to be so modest.” He coughs behind his hand whilst Adelinde smiles at him fondly, and it clicks into place for you that this is not a romantic relationship at all. If anything, it is . . . maternal. Your heart aches. 

“If you’ll excuse me,” he says, still sputtering but somehow remaining stern and stiff. Standing, he inclines his head towards the window. “The sun is coming up, and I’m afraid I’m feeling rather tired after being awake all night and travelling home in the storm.” 

“Oh! Of course,” you stumble to your feet at the same time as Diluc rounds the corner of his own desk, and before you can catch yourself the two of you have found yourself tangled together. Your bare shoulder pressing against his chest, his hands come to your waist to steady you, breath caught in your lungs as your heart hammers against your ribcage. 

You can feel the cold seeping through his hands even with the linen - you stare up at him, all ruffled and off-balance, blood beating in your ears. His head has come close to the space where your neck meets your shoulder, as he’d leant to assist you; and if you didn’t know better, you’d swear that he took a deep breath in, before he straightened himself up again. His eyes are crimson-dark in the violet of not-quite-morning. 

“I’m sorry,” you say to him. “I d-didn’t mean to--”

“You ought to both be more careful,” Adelinde says, and the two of you realise that you have been stood in a tableaux for longer than propriety should allow, and leap backwards. Adelinde has her fists balled on her hips as she looks from Diluc to you, every inch the scolding housemaid - though as she sees you looking, her smile softens. “If you’re to be staying longer, young Miss, I’ll take you to one of the guest rooms. We can’t be having you sleeping by the fires. The kitchen maids will riot.” 

Adelinde comes over to you, fussing - cupping your cheek and smiling down at you, like you have been a member of the family just as long as Diluc. Her hand on the middle of your back, gently propelling you out of Diluc’s study - but as she goes, she turns to speak to her Master. 

“Sleep well,” she says, evenly. And then, in a voice so quiet you’re not sure if you were supposed to hear it; “Be careful , Master Diluc.” 

After this, your life at Dawn Winery slips into something that’s almost comfortable . 

It seems wrong to consider it so - when you are, for all intents and purposes, a stowaway in a carefully oiled machine - but it is so all the same. You awaken to the golden streams of dawn from a beautiful window, in a neatly appointed little guest room. The white coverlets are embroidered all over with Lamp Grass, a motif repeated in the eyelet curtains; a painting of a plump blue finch hanging on the wall that Adelinde tells you was painted by Master Crepus. 

(“He preferred eagles,” she’d said, with a smile on her face, “but Diluc’s mother begged him for just a few of the pretty birds she liked to watch from the windows--”). 

You rise when you want, and wander down to the kitchens to ask for something to eat. You’d been afraid, at first, that they would resent your presence - so used to only having to deal with their Master - but they had been delighted by you, showing up at the little arched doorway at the bottom of the stone steps. You had not been used to such enthusiasm greeting you whenever you popped your head around the door to smile and ask if you may have a little bread for toasting, and jam if they could spare it--

One of the kitchen maids tells you that Diluc’s appetite is small - that he only sends for food occasionally, that though Dawn Winery pays well even when their services are not required, it is nice to have something to occupy their time with. 

“And it helps, of course,” she says, laughing, “that you’re very sweet and well-mannered! If the Master had seen fit to bring in some spoilt little peacock, why--”

Her voice had petered out, and she’d given you a sideways glance. They do not say it aloud - but they look at one another, across the table and when they are polishing candlesticks and over the glow of the ovens, and you know that they think you Diluc’s lover. And, though it is untrue, you suppose (much like your own assumptions on Adelinde and Diluc’s relationship), there is a certain incriminating air to the way this has all come about. Some strange young lady, kept in one of the prettiest rooms in the house by a Master who has shown little interest in the fairer sex for some years . . . Yes. You’re aware that, if the positions were reversed, you would probably fill quiet hours by the kitchen fireside with idle gossip too. 

In the evenings, when Master Diluc is at home, he often invites you to dinner. The first time he had done so, he had been terribly stiff and awkward - formally bowing, his words seeming to get caught in his throat. 

“I think it is the done thing,” he’d said, “though I should warn you I am what some may call taciturn. I am no sparkling conversationalist. But, if it would please you . . .” 

You had wanted to show your gratitude to Diluc in any way you could, so you had gratefully accepted his invitation, though fear of showing yourself up in front of a man from higher echelons of society than you did roil hot and sour in your gut the first time you had dressed for dinner. 

You had only two other gowns with you, and neither had been suitable for a dinner in the hall at Dawn Winery - but when you had bemoaned this, Adelinde had only laughed and told you not to be so utterly foolish. 

“Master Diluc is hardly the kind of man who’ll notice if you’re in crepe-de-chine, taffeta, or plain old cotton,” she’d said, as she’d picked out your favourite of the three dresses (pale yellow, embroidered all about the hem with little red roses). “Wear this one. If he even notices the colour, I’ll-- well, I ought not to lead you into bad habits like betting.” 

As it turns out, she is right. Diluc asks politely, that evening, how you are finding the Winery, if you have everything you need, if the staff have treated you well. You try and ask him a little about his business - and he smiles wryly, wrinkles his nose, and deftly turns the conversation back to you like he has done the same thing a thousand times before. He passes no comment on the colour of your gown (quite unsuited for an evening), or the fabric (really a walking-dress, not a dinner-dress), nor the fact that you hadn’t realised when you’d balled it into your little bag that you had outgrown it some since last you wore it and the swell of your bosom is almost too much for the neckline. 

Perhaps you notice his gaze linger on it, once - a gaze that makes you thrill all over at the same time as it makes you feel cold and nervous and on display. There is something hungry in his gaze that you do not quite know how to feel about. You know men have hungers, of course, but there is something in Diluc’s sad crimson eyes that sets you all aquiver. 

He does not eat much, but he has Adelinde pour him a glass of some dark red concoction that at first you assume to be one of the Winery’s fine vintage blends. She does not offer you any of it, but you smile nonetheless (aware it would hardly be proper for you to drink in the company of only an unmarried young man and his maid). 

“Is it a particularly rare vintage?” You ask, for conversation. Diluc blinks at you, his gaze clouded with confusion. “The wine, I mean?”

“The wine . . .? Oh, the wine! Ah. It’s not wine at all.”

You pause, forkful of some hearty meat dish halfway to your mouth. 

“Not wine?” You ask, with no small trace of puzzlement in your voice. “Do you not sample your own wares, Maste-- Diluc? Surely a wine tycoon serves only the finest for his own dinner?” You smile at him, a little trembling thing, in the hopes that he thinks your question amusing and not impolite. But his brow has knitted. 

“It’s fruit juice,” he says, eventually. “Apple. I . . . I cannot abide the feel of wine in my mouth.”

This is so deeply surprising that it is a test to not let your mouth fall open, but you do your best to school your expression into one of just mild surprise. 

“Besides,” he says, and he tries to give you an awkward smile in return. “I have seen the wrecks wine can make of man, and I have far too many things to do.”

He lifts the crystal glass to his lips; his face very pale, his teeth very white. You cannot help but notice the viscous slick of the red liquid - the apple juice - as he tips it into his mouth. The way it lingers on his lips, giving some colour to the pale countenance, before he drains the glass and bids Adelinde to take it away from him. 

No scent of apples lingers in the air. But Diluc is seated far across from you, on a table made for dinner parties and not for the solitary young Lord of the manor and a young woman he does not quite know. You cannot see how much of his own meal he has eaten, but you realise with a strange feeling that you do not feel like you saw him chewing much at all. 

“Thank you for joining me for dinner,” he says, as the two of you stand - Adelinde’s hands whipping away his own plate before you can glimpse what he has left upon it. “I shall visit your parents as soon as I can. But - if I may be so bold, it is nice to have some company about the Manor.” He inclines his top half in a stiff bow - and then, as if seized by a sudden fit, one of his hands reaches for your own. 

You see it as if you are viewing a play at the theatre, a spectator of your own body - as Diluc brings your hand up to his mouth and lays the most chivalrous kiss upon it you have ever received. You see the fluttering of your pulse below in the wrist, the way your mouth parts, the way Diluc seems to take another breath in--

And then, you are back in the room.

Diluc’s lips are cool upon your bare skin, his fingers icy where they rest against that same quivering pulse point. His breath, even, feels cold - and once more you think of his vision, pulsing at his hip. You have heard Pyro vision holders tend to run hotter than most - but you suppose this must just be scandal and rumour, with no basis in fact. 

(They say the opposite of Cryo visions; you have gathered from gossip amongst Moco and Hillie and some of the men who occasionally wander into the winery’s manor that Diluc’s former adoptive brother, Cavalry Captain Kaeya of Ordo Favonius, possesses a vision of exactly that nature - and it makes you smile to imagine that he, somewhere off in the Headquarters of the Knights, is burning hot to the touch when people expect icy cool). 

He smiles at you, and there is something tender and true in it that reminds you of how his music sounded, at the piano. It tumbles out of you in a rush. 

“I should like to hear you play again, one day,” you tell him, and his eyes and his smile are the only warm things about him. 

“Would you?” He asks. “If it would please you, I am more than willing.”

Your heart is hammering against your too-displayed bosom as he bids you a goodnight and disappears from the dining room towards his office. It is now well into eventide, but Diluc does not head for his own bedchambers. You, though - having spent the morning embroiled in a book from Diluc’s library, your afternoon working on a pretty piece of embroidery out on one of the benches in the courtyard (accompanied by both Moco and Hillie, twittering to one another and glad to be given such a simple and easy duty that gave them ample time to slack off) - you retire to bed. To the cosy little bedroom that Diluc has so generously provided for you, away from the insistent voices of your parents as they discuss your dowry and your wedding chest and the man you are to marry without ever having spoken a word to. 

You wonder what Diluc is doing. You wonder if he has ever taken it in his mind to marry - you wonder if his eye strays to pretty young things when he goes into town in the evenings, if he imagines bringing them back to Dawn Winery. 

You find that the thought makes you feel cold all over, jealous, despite the fact you have no claim on him and will surely be moved on once he has finally carved time to go and visit your parents and berate them--

That night, you dream of blood red apple juice dripping onto white snow. 

There are still, of course, moments that give you pause. This is a household other than the one you have been raised in, and some traditions are strange and alien to you - more to the point, despite the splendour and opulence of Dawn Winery being far more than you are used to, it is run in a very different way. 

Diluc never comes down for breakfast, nor does he come down for lunch. You and he have dinner together as often as he can - you ask, once, for a taste of that same apple juice he seems so fond of, and his face creases in distress. 

“You may,” he says, but he has Adelinde fetch you a different bottle to pour your share from. You cannot help but notice that there is a different viscosity to the liquid as it drips into your faceted goblet, but you keep your mouth in an encouraging smile and do not pass mention of it. If Diluc wishes to keep the best only for himself, that is his right as master of his own dominion. 

At least the apple juice (looking at it now, a slightly more transparent hue than Diluc’s own) tastes good in your mouth, fresh and cold with the tang of an orchard in a rainstorm. You tell Diluc in honesty how delicious it is on the tongue and he smiles at you. 

“No interest in our wine?” He asks you, and you shake your head firmly - and you think you see a flash of pleasure in Diluc’s pretty eyes, like you have passed some kind of test you didn’t realise you were partaking in. “I’m glad. I should not like to see you made a wreck.”

One evening, he finds you in the library, and asks if he may sit with you whilst the two of you read. You sneak a few glances at him from over the top of your own book - a slim red-bound volume of Mondstadt folk tales - and cannot help but admire him. The crimson wave of hair over his shoulders, the aristocratic nose and the sensual mouth and the look of concentration on his face. He catches you looking only once, and starts in surprise - smooths a hand over a lock of his hair before he asks you, a little anxiety in his tone; 

“Is something the matter?” 

“No,” you say. You cannot help but feel your cheeks heat at the concern in his voice, think on how sweet he is that he thinks of you so. “I’m sorry. I’m not used to company whilst in your library. Usually Moco and Hillie prefer to stand outside to chatter--”

He laughs, and it sounds like he has not done it properly in a while. His laugh is nice; a rich, deep thing that settles about your shoulders like a fur cape. 

“I am not used to company either,” he says to you. “In here or in the rest of my life.” A swallow; you see the bob in his white throat, bared somewhat by a loosened cravat. “I find I mind it far less than I expected. I should be happy if you may join me in here, sometimes, if I ask for you.” 

You have heard much gossip about Diluc Ragnvindr, throughout your life. Turned from adoration (the youngest ever Cavalry Captain of Mondstadt, a vision at ten years old, a Knight who would inherit a fortune) to sadness (such tragic loss, for one so young - where could he have gone to, leaving the Winery in the care of his servants?) and then back once more to adoration. These later paeans, though, came with caveats - that he was stern, that he was sad, that he was stoic and had no time for joy or laughter any longer. 

The nervous young man in front of you with eyes the colour of candied apples does not seem to you stern or stoic at all - though there is, you think, a sadness in him. Something in the depths of him that stirs something in the depths of you in return. 

“I would be honoured to be asked,” you say - and then, once more gathering up some courage, you give him a smile from under lowered eyelashes. “And will you play for me? I see there is a little pianoforte in the corner, there--”

It is very much a drawing-room type pianoforte; the kind a young woman might have played on to amuse guests, much like the harpsichord at what used to be your home that sits in the receiving room, unplayed now your presence is no longer there to labour at it. You wonder if it once belonged to Diluc’s mother. 

“The violin too, if you’d like,” he says. “On one condition.” 

“It would be churlish of me to deny you anything,” you tell him, honestly. “When you allow me so much and do so much for me, despite owing me nothing at all.”

A cast darkens over his eyes. Something in him goes colder; retreats further back. His voice is a little more strained when he speaks. 

“I hope you will not consider it a burden,” he says, awkwardly. “I . . . do not wish for our friendship to be borne only of bargains.”

You have offended him, it seems. Implied that the relationship - the friendship , he had said, and your heart thumps steadily at him giving a name to it that makes it seem all the less like a fleeting moment in time and all the more like an immutable fact - is purely transactional. 

“That’s not what I meant,” you say, a little softer. “I’m sorry. You must be very used to people using you for things.” 

Diluc’s eyebrows pinch, and he considers his words very carefully before he speaks. 

“It is the nature of mortals,” he says, after a moment. “And I cannot deny I use them in return.” He stands and he gives you a smile once more - not quite as warm, but not quite as guarded. You have done a little, then, to tamp down on the wounded pride. “Do you know how to play chess? There are several books on it in the library. I will be away for some days this week, I think . . . when I return, we shall have dinner, and then I shall ask you to play me at a game.” He pauses, realises he has given you a direct order, and amends himself - ever-careful, you suppose, that you not feel indebted to him and agree for only that sake. “If you would like,” Diluc says. 

Would you like it? 

You think of his slender fingers on the piano, long and white and lovely - imagine them pushing black pieces about a chess board. You think of the look of concentration on his face, his features softened by evening fireglow - imagine winning over him, and getting one of those smiles and those gazes that make you feel all strange and fluttering and unsure. You think you would like it. 

“Yes,” you say to him - and he pauses, and he smiles, and there is sadness and pleasure in it all at once. 

“The house seemed lonelier without you in it,” he says - and then, coughing, he rises from his chair. Once more, you have the feeling that he is blushing despite his cheeks remaining pale. “Excuse me. I have business to attend to.” 

He takes your hand once more; lays another kiss upon the back of it. His lips remain like cool marble, but his eyes burn like fire - and so does your blood, singing out in your veins, as if it wants him to never stop. 

Diluc is away, that time, for five days and five nights. Towards the end, you begin to wonder if he has, perhaps, finally made time to visit your parents - and, though once the thought of being able to go home safely to a familiar maid and familiar hearth would have filled you with joy, you find that the idea of leaving Dawn Winery makes your heart feel heavy in the cavern of your chest. 

You find that you miss him. Knowing that he is there in the house had been a comfort; seeing him for dinner, hearing the maids sighing over him, hearing the door go at strange hours of the night - all had reminded you that you were underneath Diluc’s protection, and in Mondstadt that is no little thing. 

You do not know what it is that wakens you, that sixth night, aside from a sudden burning need to be free of the sweet little bedroom you are sequestered in. You awaken at - according to the china clock on your nightstand - three in the morning, and do not realise what you are doing until you have put on a dressing robe (acquired for you by Adelinde, some three nights after you’d imposed upon her, with a warning not to go frightening Master Diluc again by wandering about in just a nightgown) and have a silver candlestick once more within your hand. 

There is no music to guide you, this time - but you have learnt Dawn Winery some in this golden time you have spent there, and the wood and the stone feel like home beneath your slippered feet. 

Down your own little corridor; past the bathrooms, the other empty bedrooms, the little day room and the room that Adelinde told you Master Crepus once used for painting, due to the position of the window and how the light filtered through it--

Down other hallways, through a sitting room . . . You drift through them all like a ghost, half knowing where you are going and half not. Something tells you that there is something in the house, simply waiting for you to discover it - like a spark in your chest. 

You know Diluc is back. You cannot explain how, but you know.

You are on the third floor when you hear the hush of voices, and that glow in your chest tells you this is what you have been looking for. You approach the door you can hear soft murmurings from, sticking to the shadowy side of the wall like glue, unsurprised when you hear Diluc’s voice and then Adelinde’s in turn. 

They sound like they are arguing. 

“I fear you’re playing a dangerous game,” comes Adelinde’s voice, careful and sharp and needling - you sense this is a delicate matter that you shouldn’t be privy to, and you stick closer to the shadows of the door, eavesdropping on a conversation you have no right to. You want to know more about Diluc; want to draw him against you and learn him, where he is all prickly and difficult. 

“It is my game to play, isn’t it?” Diluc says, his own voice just as guarded. “I am not hurting her.”

“She thinks herself half in love with you already, Master Diluc!” Adelinde says. “Would you break her heart by telling her the truth?”

You realise with a strange little jump that they are talking about you. 

“She does not,” Diluc says, sounding a little stung. “She is a companion. If anything, I--” He stops himself. You see him in your mind’s eye, pressing that full mouth together, his brow straight, his features carefully schooled. 

“You are too fond of her,” Adelinde says. “Master Diluc, you are in no position to be making connections like this-- you’re playing with fire. The moment she discovers what it is you’re hiding . . . Forgive me. I don’t want you to be left broken-hearted.”

It’s tender; the voice of someone who truly cares of her charge, and has done since he was a boy. 

“Would you have me be alone all of my life?” His voice is soft now. A ragged little thing. It calls to that part of you once more - that well in your chest - that had first been stoked by the piano. You see, now, that the fire has been smouldering since then - poked at carefully by sharing dinners and libraries with him, by strange little smiles and kisses on the back of your hand. “However long it may be?” 

“You know that I would never want that for you,” Adelinde says, tone comforting. You see her, too, in the little picture in your mind - comforting him, smoothing red locks from his brow. “But you promised her back to her family. You and I both know you don’t have it under control. Master Kaeya has already offered to take her into the protection of the Knights, whilst you talk to them, so that she does not fall prey to anything untoward in the Winery--”

He laughs a bitter laugh.

“Oh, so her mortal soul might be saved, but with Kaeya at the helm who knows about her virtue --”

“Master Diluc,” Adelinde is a little reproachful now. You think of how she worked for Master Crepus as a young girl - imagine her as a young woman, raising two little ragtag boys, scolding them. Carding her fingers through a mess of red hair as a younger, pouting Diluc clings to her aprons and sticks his tongue out at a boy further away, one whose features are not so obvious to you. 

“You’ve always liked him better.” 

“I like you both the same,” Adelinde says, primly. “Master Diluc, I implore you to at least think about it. You’re doing her no good the way it is now--” Adelinde takes a deep breath, and then says; “Rumours are already spreading about town that Diluc Ragnvindr has a young lady guest in attendance on his estate, with no chaperone in sight. Would you leave her to that fate?” 

There is a quiet lull in the conversation, in which you feel sure that the two of them must be able to hear your heartbeat with how loudly it is echoing in your own head. 

You know that the servants who are not Adelinde think you are Diluc's lover, or his mistress - a pretty thing with no purpose other than to please him. You know, too, that the very thought should give you paroxysms of shame; that you have been so properly brought up, and yet everyone is so quick to reduce you to rack and ruin in their minds. The idea that this rumour has spread even up to Mondstadt City proper should fill you with cold fear, for people there will look at you with pity that you are so low and despoiled--

But, if they think Diluc has despoiled you . . . your father and mother may give up any thoughts of ever finding you a suitable match; set you free with your dowry as a gift, to get out of their sight and not remind them that they have a failure of a daughter. 

(You do not wish to address, either, the fact that there is something not unpleasant about being thought of as Diluc’s lover, of all people). 

“I should miss her,” Diluc says, eventually, after the pause has stretched on for what feels like an eternity. “I haven’t . . . Adelinde,” and he sounds like a young boy, “Adelinde, I have never felt this kind of longing for anyone.” 

“You almost died tonight,” she says, sending a cold shock directly into your heart. “Because your mind and your heart were somewhere else.”

“. . . My duty.” There’s a sigh of resignation to Diluc now; you imagine him slump-shouldered. “Father. The . . . filth that needs to be purged. Yes, you’re right. She’s . . . sunlight. The dawn. And I am merely the night.”

A quiet stillness descends as Diluc thinks on what he has just said. 

“I think it would be good for us all if you rested, Master Diluc,” Adelinde says, finally. “Nobody need know you’ve come back until tomorrow evening; you’ve all the day to recuperate a little. And on the weekend--”

“I understand,” Diluc’s reply is rather short. “I’ll visit the parents.” 

Diluc’s boots stride across the floor, and panic seizes you at the idea of being caught wandering in his house yet again. Your gaze flickers like a startled mouse amongst the other doors of the corridor, and as Diluc approaches you throw yourself at the nearest and pray to Barbatos that it will not be one of the doors that is kept locked by Adelinde’s ring of keys. To your immense relief, the handle goes - and you bundle yourself into the room and neatly close the door as quietly as you can, hoping that Diluc is too caught in his own mind to notice the quiet thump of a closed door or your forcibly-quietened breathing. 

It is a storage cupboard of some kind. Shelves run the short length of the back of it, heaped with linens, barely leaving room for you - a broom rests against one side of the wall, an upturned bucket with something glimmering on top of it. 

Seeing nothing else to do until you could be sure the coast was clear, you squint against the darkness of the cupboard to make out the glimmer. A small crack of moonlight is the only illumination you have, but as you lean a little closer you begin to be able to discern something of a shape. Sharp points, and gold, a faintly familiar kind of feeling as you stare at it and will your brain to work--

It’s a Fatui insignia, you realise. 

Not just any insignia, for you have seen the little brown shield things that mere recruits wear pinned to their uniforms as badges of honour - no, this is for someone far more than a mere pawn. Diluc has made it quite clear over dinner, when you have made idle chit-chat, that he has no time for the Fatui. In fact, you would even go so far as to say that when the topic of the Snezhnayan organisation had passed your lips and lingered on the dinner table, a certain kind of terrifying coolness had settled on him like frost on a winter morning. 

There is no reason for him to have this badge; no reason, either, for it to be sitting abandoned in a storage cupboard in a little used corridor of the Winery. There have been no guests but you here since you arrived, and from the talk of the servants, there very rarely are. . . so how had it come to be here, incongruous on the shining silver of the mop-bucket? 

There is a stain on the gold; something dried dark brown, like rust spots. You do not want to think of what it might be. Your throat goes tight as you wrench the door open, suddenly unable to breathe in the little space - grateful, as you tumble out, that Diluc is not there waiting for you in the hallway to quiz you about what you might think you are doing. 

The door to the room that Diluc and Adelinde were formerly occupying is partly open; you cannot resist, as you sidle past in the shadows, peeping within to see if they have left anything of the strange conversation you have overheard. 

(Diluc means to finally visit your parents; means to cast you out of Dawn Winery for good, though it had come from his own mouth that he was fond of you, that he longed for you . . . and you think, looking back on the tightness in your throat and the inescapable pull of his music, you long for him too). 

(But there had been such finality, such resignation in his voice--)

(You do not want to go. You do not want to leave). 

With a start, you see that Adelinde is still there. 

There is a round wooden tub before her, full of water; bubbling with some kind of oils or salts or powder that gives off a faint cedarwood scent even from where you are skulking. In her hands is one of Master Diluc’s shirts - ripped, torn, perhaps beyond repair--

And she is scrubbing at a large, red stain, spreading across the shirt like an ink-blot. 

It is the second time in your life you have made plans to run away, barely less than two months from the first.

You have been at the Winery, you realise, for over a month. A month, for you to grow fond of the way the candlelight plays on Diluc’s hair and the satisfied look on his face after a sip of his apple juice, the way his lips feel against your skin when he chivalrously kisses your hand. A month for you to feel like you are indeed mistress of the Dawn Winery, and not simply a charity case that Diluc is willing to shelter. 

And he wants you, now, despite his profession of missing you and wanting you, to go back to your family. You think, perhaps, that is a worse fate; to have had what you want (him, and the Winery, and the life that you have slipped so easily into. You think, for that, you would ignore the stain on his shirt that must be blood and the definitely blood-splattered Fatui insignia. For Diluc), and to then have it snatched away and to return to the dull life you lived before. 

No. Now you have had a taste of what it is like to live without such shadows hovering over your head, you think it better to perhaps make for Liyue as you had faked doing. Perhaps there, you can find a different life - perhaps there, a different person to love, who isn’t so maddeningly distant and wantable all at the same time. It is better to make a clean break. In Mondstadt, Diluc’s name would follow you wherever you chose to go. In sitting rooms and in gossip and in your father’s liquor cabinets, you would be forever haunted by the shadow of what could have been.

Running away seems the safest option.

The next night, Diluc asks you to come with him to the library after dinner and play the chess game you promised him, back before he had gone away and returned with a bloodied shirt and reluctant plans to be rid of you. 

He looks ill; gaunter than usual, with bandages wrapped about his chest, some of the shine in his eyes and his hair gone, but he still seems determined to play the game with you as he had promised. He still remains genteel, polite, as if the thought of breaking an appointment with you brings him great pain. 

You suppose that he does not have much chance left, if he truly does enjoy your company, to partake in it. 

“You’re even quieter than usual,” Diluc says, after he has set up the gleaming chessboard; one he told you once belonged to his father. It’s a fine piece of workmanship; exquisitely carved, each piece a masterpiece in its own right. You had been surprised to see, when he had tumbled them out from a little velvet bag, that the pieces take the form of birds; a row of little finches for pawns, an eagle for a king, an owl for a queen. “Did you not have time to read the books? We don’t have to play--”

“I’d like to,” you say, with no further elucidation. He has put the white pieces towards you, allowing you the pleasure of the first move. You don’t want to look up at him, but now he is sat across from you over the board, so much closer than when the two of you merely share the quiet solitude of reading, you have no choice. 

You move a pawn and look at him, trying not to see him. It will be more painful when you go, if you can recall too well the smooth paleness of his cheek and the lines of his slender fingers, the comforting red warmth of his hair and his eyes. 

The two of you trade turns, for a time. It is clear you’re outmatched; Diluc moves his pieces with all the precision and quick thinking of a man who was once the Cavalry Captain of the Knights of Favonius, and who has been playing since he was a child. You have read a little, and played littler than that; your finches are quickly seized from the chessboard. Once, Diluc is too quick to take his turn and your fingers have not quite left the pheasant that serves as a bishop, and his hand brushes across yours. 

He has taken off his gloves for the task, and you are not surprised that his fingertips are cool against your heated skin - but you are surprised by the sudden, unexpected contact. You drop the piece and gasp quite against your will, drawing back, the parts of you that he had brushed seeming to be on fire. 

“I’m sorry--” Diluc says, but there is a woundedness to him that cuts you raw. You never pull back from him like this. You look up at him once more and wet your lips. 

“No,” you say, softly. “I-- you simply surprised me. I’m sorry, Master Diluc, I’m wasting your time.” 

“Diluc. What ? Don’t be foolish--”

“You’re going to call checkmate any time now,” you say, standing up, wobbling a little in your haste. “You’re far better than me.”

He seems confused.

“The fun is in the playing,” he says. “Guessing what your opponent may do, changing your thoughts on the fly, not on merely winning. I am enjoying playing with you. I enjoy your company--”

“Don’t,” your own voice breaks. Is this what he thinks of you? A piece to be moved about a chessboard; to be enjoyed only for a while, and then to be returned to the velvet pouch of your parent’s hold as the game ends? “I can’t bear it.” 

He is standing now, too. His hands reach out for you - cool fingers settling around your wrist as he pulls you closer, around the table. He whispers your name in that low, lovely voice, his brow tilted in confusion, til you are so close to him you can see the separate fan of his eyelashes and the way that his skin is pale and smooth as marble all over, even in the places you would expect to see a fluttering pulse or the thumping beat of a heart. 

(He must be able to sense yours; all of you feels to be going utterly haywire at his proximity). 

“I am simply telling you a truth,” he says - his body is pressed against yours. Your breasts, pushed up in their corset, press against the hardness of his chest - Diluc’s eyes linger upon you, a hunger in his eyes that you feel mirrored in yourself. You want to run your fingers over those sculpted muscles; learn him by heart, feel the thrum of his life below your palms as you slowly, slowly, strip him of his clothes and let him do the same to you. 

“You want me to leave,” you breathe to him, giving away his secret - that you know that he has plans to return you back from whence you came - and his face twists in agony. 

“Not want ,” he says to you. “I do not want that. But . . . You don’t understand --”

“I understand I am an annoyance to you,” you whisper, bitterly, though there is no real ice in the tone - how can there be, with Diluc so close to you? “I understand I am a complication that you would rather see gone from your life than admit to.” 

Diluc looks upon you with that same beautiful gaze that lingers in your dreams. He speaks, quiet, his voice roughened with feeling; 

“Let me make an admittance, then.” He says. “I am . . . better with actions than I am with emotion.”

And Diluc dips his head down and he kisses you. 

He is still cold. You almost expect him to be raging fire, all over hot as his lips crash against your own - but Diluc’s fire is all, instead, in the desperate way he kisses you. The way that one of his hands comes to cradle the back of your head, the way that the other lets go of your wrist and curls about your waist to pull you even closer to him. 

The kiss is the apex of everything; as he kisses you, as his mouth messily finds purchase upon your own, you realise that he knows. He had felt that inexorable pull between you both, too, that night you had heard his music and something within it had touched your spirit. He had tried to keep away, but . . . it had consumed him just as thoroughly as it had felt like it had consumed you. 

You have not been kissed before - you are not worldly. You don’t know how worldly Diluc is, but the unsure movement of his lips on yours suggests he has only a little more experience. You have, of course, read romantic novels and gotten some of what you think it might be like into your head . . . but it doesn’t prepare you for how it truly feels, to have Diluc’s lips on yours after weeks of wanting. 

It is pure instinct that makes your hand go to tangle into his hair, too - he groans as your fingers scratch at his scalp, pulling you in further, as if he wishes to devour you. There is a taste lingering on him that you can’t place, but you know it is not apple juice - the chessboard lies discarded, one move away from Diluc’s checkmate, as the two of you let the tension that has been brewing come to a head. 

The hand around your waist moves down; cups your rear through your gown, and you whimper against him without realising why as it sends a hot flash of want all through you. Something hard is pressing against your stomach, and you realise it’s the length of him; wanting and wanting and wanting. The space between your own thighs feels warm and unreal. 

Diluc pulls back, eyes all hazy. 

“ Archons ,” Diluc breathes, looking at you - his face still unflushed, but his gaze speaking for him. “You’re beautiful.” 

“Kiss me more,” you beg him - and he obliges. Presses his mouth to yours once more, as you run your fingers through the crimson locks and your other hand finds purchase on his breastbone, just above his heart. He kisses and he kisses and he kisses , and you are utterly spellbound; like he has performed some miracle of hypnosis on you, and all you can feel is him. Your own heart beats in the rhythm of his name. 

Something sharp nicks against your lower lip. Diluc, being not careful enough with his teeth - and you open your eyes and are about to pull back and laugh and scold him, when something in the air changes. 

His grip tightens. A soft growl comes from the back of his throat. He stiffens all over, as his mouth closes on said lower lip as if to suckle upon it. Another nick, harder this time, with something more needful behind it - and you realise that Diluc is biting on purpose now. 

He pulls you even closer, if it were possible. He sucks sharply against the soft skin - and though you try and pull back, he is holding too tight and his grip is too bruising. Fear flickers across your synapses - the first time you have truly been scared of Diluc, and not simply what he may do. He lets out a soft little noise of pleasure, as the sharp tang of your own blood fills your mouth. 

You can barely draw breath, let alone form syllables, but as Diluc’s eyes slowly open to meet your own gaze you see that there has been a change in him. 

Something cruel lies within Diluc’s eyes, now; a monster that has lain dormant. Something terribly hungry and wanting, in a different way to how his hands had felt cupping at your rear and his stiff length had felt through layers of fabric. This monster, you have no problem equating to blood-spattered Fatui insignias and ripped up shirts. 

You have been a fool. 

You try and pull yourself back from him, wrench your body away; but your lip is still caught between his teeth (his fangs ), and all you can do is sharply hiss through what little mouth movement you have; 

“ Diluc --”

A soft moan in reply, as he continues to suck; as more and more of your blood fills both of your mouths. You feel a trickle of it down your chin, dripping onto the swell of your bosom. 

“ Diluc !”

This one is sharper, crueller and louder - and it startles him enough that his fangs disengage, for a fraction of a second, and you can wrench yourself back from him, stumbling over your skirts and staring at him with red staining your mouth and your gown and your chest. 

He stares at you across from him, bewildered. The cruel hunger in his eyes subsides to something more recognisable, but the damage has been done. 

You should have known. From the moment you’d seen him like a marble statue and he’d looked at you with those inscrutable eyes in a bloodstained shirt, you should have known. If not then, when he’d touched you and been freezing cold - when he’d been unable to blush, when you’d watched him drink goblets full of juice-that-was-really-blood, when you’d seen him never take a true bite of his meal--

Just now, when you had placed your hand on his chest and felt no heart beating beneath it. 

“ Archons ,” Diluc whispers, but it is less in awe at your beauty and more in anger and frustration and resentment . This time, it is not directed at you. He says your name again. “Archons, I’m sorry --” 

You bring a hand to your mouth, to feel the sticky cloying blood there. Your lower lip is throbbing. 

“I never meant to-- I didn’t want to-- I wasn’t supposed to . . . This is why I . . .”

You recall him saying he isn’t good with emotion; his stuttering words, the agonies in his tone and his face, his inability to pull up his misery and make it form words . . . all of those things certainly lend credence to that. 

“Please,” he says, moving away from you and towards the door. “I’m sorry. I’m a monster. I-- I’ll see to it your things are packed, I’ll visit your parents, I’m sorry --”

But.

This is the first time he’s hurt you; and you recall that he’d come in scratched and messy and bloody. His gaze had changed, yes, but when he’d come back to himself his eyes had seemed brighter than before, where they’d been dulled with five hard days . . . 

Would it be so bad? You know what it is he wants. He’d dragged himself off of you, after being reminded. If you, sometimes, perhaps tilted your head to one side and offered him a taste of what was pulsing beneath your skin . . .

You open your mouth to speak, but Diluc has already turned and fled. 

Nobody sees you, as you go to the closest water closet to peer into the looking glass and scrub yourself of the blood crusting on your skin. You do not wish to explain yourself - and you cannot bear the thought of Adelinde seeing it, and knowing what has happened. Your dress has a stain, but that will have to do - you go about cleaning yourself as quickly as you can, aware that you need to find Diluc before he can think himself into a tailspin. If you do not reach him in time, anything you say - any insistences that he is not a monster, that it is natural that he needs to feed if he is what you think he is, that you would not mind, if he needs it, if he slaked that thirst on you - would surely not penetrate his occasionally thick skull. 

You rush out of there again once you are almost presentable. It is after dinner, but the chess game had not lasted too long; you think it is perhaps eleven or so, past the time that other maids have gone home but not past Adelinde’s working hours. You do not think he will have gone back to the library and the forgotten chess game - perhaps he has gone to the mews, to be with his falcon (he has told you her name is Dusk), or to his garden to sit in quiet solitude, or even out into where the grapevines hang lush and the crystalflies flitter in order to think. 

You try and look through windows, but you see no distinctive head of red hair in the moon-illuminated darkness. Just rain, soaking the window panes, the trees swaying in violent winds. Though as you reach the entrance hall, you see that the coat rack that normally houses Diluc’s outdoor clothes is missing his favourite coat. 

Adelinde emerges through the front door from outside, even as you stand there, and she looks terribly surprised to see you. 

It feels the inverse of that first night, where you had stood on the doorstep to beg shelter from Dawn Winery. If Adelinde had known then what she knows now (that you would drag Diluc from his self-imposed solitude and away from the clandestine work he so clearly values, putting himself at risk of revealing his true self to a relative stranger), would she have turned you away in that thunderstorm? 

She must see something in your eyes, because she sighs. 

“You know, I suppose?” She asks. “He didn’t tell me exactly what happened.” 

“Please,” you bite out. “Where is he?”

Adelinde looks surprised - as if she was expecting something different. Slowly, her eyes travel over you. 

“You’re not dressed to go out,” she says. “Your things--”

“I need to talk to him,” you say. “I need to-- I need him to know it’s not his fault, I need him to know how I feel--”

Now there’s real surprise written clear across her face. You realise, too late, she was expecting you to be by the front door because you were fleeing - expecting you to have your things slung over your back, your cloak on and your outdoor shoes. Those all seem foolish pursuits, though, with the fear that Diluc gets ever farther and farther away the longer you spend here with her. 

“. . . You’re not going to--”

“Adelinde, please .” Your voice is desperate. “I know you care about him. I know you’re afraid for him. But I have no cruel intentions, I promise. I-- I loved him, and I love him still --”

The first time you have said it aloud, and even as the syllables are coming out of your mouth you know that you mean it. Diluc, who had offered to take care of you knowing only what stories you’d told him - Diluc, who played music that touched your soul, who bargained for your company with chess games and gave his beloved falcon a name and tended his Cecilias only at night, who held himself back from you only because he was afraid he would hurt you . . . Yes. You love him. 

Adelinde stares at you, but then she gives you the smallest, trembling smile, as if she cannot believe what you are saying. 

“He left in a rush,” she says. “He said he needed to work something out, that his head was spinning, that he was . . .” She closes her eyes, and takes a deep sigh, her next words all in a jumble. “I don’t have time for everything. You should know he is involved with an organisation that hunts down Fatui. That his father’s death and his current being are all intertwined with them, and when he needs to feed he does it on the violent ones out there in the wilds who are involved in the trafficking and the murdering and the . . . production of what killed Master Crepus--”

(You hadn’t known any of this, but the blood-spattered Fatui insignia makes perfect sense now). 

“He’s heard tell of an encampment of them, out in the parts of Wolvendem that people don’t wish to go into - he headed that way--”

You nod, and then you are brushing past her, opening the door that she had not time to lock behind her, slipping out into the rainstorm in search of Diluc. 

It is indeed a cruel echo of the night you had come to Dawn Winery, though thankfully there is no lightning this time - only the sleet of the rain against your face and the regret that in your haste, you did not grab your cloak. The rain will make the stain of blood on your gown near impossible to wash out, but perhaps Adelinde is capable of miracles still. Your shoes slip and slide on the mud, branches snagging in your hair and tearing at your gown, as you head towards Wolvendem and hope you will find Diluc before anything befalls him. 

Though the blood he had taken from your lip seemed to have invigorated him some, he had still been unusually gaunt and looked tired after returning from whatever business he had needed to attend to, and you are afraid that he is going to get into trouble that he cannot escape from. The rain does not make you hopeful; you think of Diluc’s Pyro vision, of his flaming sword, and how it could rain down upon him and extinguish his light as enemies moved ever closer.

You are faster, you think, than you have ever been in your life. Lampgrass turns to Wolfhooks, and you are fully in Wolvendem, ignoring the howls of wolves in the distance and the great claw-marks that mar stone and sand and dirt. They are unimportant - the only important thing is Diluc, and finding him, and making sure that he knows you do not think him the monster he called himself. 

You don’t know exactly what you’ll say to him - but you do know that if you don’t try, you will regret it for the rest of your life, however long it is. You need to find him, to look into his eyes and touch his cheek and tell him everything. 

You hear the clang of metal against metal; see a great plume of fire from somewhere, hear raised voices and grunting from behind a tree line. You rush towards it - teetering on the edge of a small fall downwards into a clearing, clinging to a great fir tree that helps both keep your balance and shields you from the action of what is happening down there. 

This is a Fatui encampment indeed; you recognise the deep blue fabric and the gold insignia emblazoned upon it, so much richer than the shabby green-or-red of adventurer’s tents you occasionally came across in the wild. A makeshift rack and a couple of barrels stand by it, a smouldering campfire with the remains of a dinner that must have been put to bed by the rainstorm. 

And in the middle of it all stands Diluc. 

He looks proud, a huge greatsword clutched in hand, his chin thrust up and his eyes blazing even from this far away. Curls of smoke rise from the sword, but it’s clear that - much like the sad little campfire - conditions are not optimal for him. You can see his vision pulsing at his hip. Some of your blood is still smeared over his marble cheek. 

You can’t hear what anybody down in the clearing is saying - but you see one of the bigger men raise something, and a stream of Cryo comes pouring out of the contraption that Diluc only narrowly escapes from. With the rain pouring so, if it had managed to catch him, he’d be easy pickings--

He’s outnumbered, too. Three Fatui men stand before him; one, the large man with the strangely shaped device that streams out Cryo, one a man dressed in red holding a large gun that occasionally spits out little bits of Pyro, and one a man in purple wielding a war hammer. The latter two are less of a problem, you surmise - the Pyro gunner suffers from the same disadvantage as Diluc, and the hammer man is clearly Electro in some way, and would not risk electrocuting both his comrades and himself. 

But Diluc is not at his full strength, and he is flustered from what occurred between the two of you in the library, and he is still just one man against three. When the Cryo wielder swings his huge weapon again in an arc of blue-white frost, Diluc tries to return the fight but doesn’t move quite fast enough. It catches enough of Diluc’s fingers to make him swear aloud - and his claymore clatters from his grip, hitting the ground with a dull thunk. 

The others do not waste time - they move on Diluc as one, the Pyroslinger taking his arm with the frostbitten fingers on one side and the Cryogunner grasping him on the other, effectively pinning him between them with his sword too far away. Diluc is utterly at their mercy as the Vanguard comes bearing down, grabbing Diluc’s face in a bruisingly huge grip. 

You don’t realise that you’ve pitched forward from the tree until your shoes are slipping and sliding on the incline, desperate to rush towards him and save him though you have no vision or mastery of the elements or even combat experience yourself. The fall is not so bad; it’s not as steeply inclined as it could be, and you make it to the bottom with only the faintest twinge of pain in your ankle and stumble forward towards the trees and the clearing. You can hear voices now. 

“Look at him,” one of them is sneering. Diluc is thrashing uselessly in their grip. “Protector of Mondstadt? He’s just a common slaughterer, he’s no better than any of us--”

“A monster,” takes up the other. “How much blood is on his hands?”

“We should execute him. Tear his head from his body and drive a stake through the hole his heart would be.”

“Oh, but he’s fascinating,” A coo, from the Pyroslinger. “Imagine what the Doctor would do, to get his hands on a test subject and a specimen like this one.”

You don’t know who the Doctor is, but mention of him makes Diluc still where he’s caught. You see, from your place in the trees, a look come over Diluc’s lovely face; abject horror and disgust and righteous fury, all converging on his pretty eyes and fine nose. You shake for him at the power of it. 

Diluc’s sword is behind them and slightly to one side; they are confidently assured that nothing now can save Diluc. He is so utterly in their grasp that there is no chance he could lunge for the sword, especially with some of his fingers all frosty and unbendable. 

They are, of course, not thinking about you. 

“How would you like that, huh?” There’s the sound of a fist hitting a face; the Vanguard punching Diluc. The latter does not even make a sound. “It all comes back to the Doctor eventually. Your father was happy to take the spoils of his research--”

Your feet skid on the wet floor. Your hands reach out for the greatsword; heft it up - and only then, as you grunt in effort, do the Fatui realise that something is happening. 

“ What the --”

“ Grab her, you idiots--”

“The vampire--”

You have provided a distraction if nothing else. You heave the greatsword as best you can - you don’t think of yourself as weak, but you have not been trained to wield a weapon since almost-birth, as Diluc has - and you try and swing it, helplessly, towards the Fatui who is coming closest to you. 

Everything is a blur. You have never been in quite so much danger before - even the danger of being dragged back to your parent’s house kicking and screaming as an ungrateful little traitor does not compare to the danger of fire and ice and electricity as the Fatui deal with an obstacle thrown into the cogs of their machine. 

It’s clearly enough of a distraction for Diluc to shake himself free, for all three of them are coming towards you instead. Your attempt to hit a blow on the closest - the Pyroslinger - comes to no fruition at all. Ice bounces from the blade, close enough to make your skin sting at the cold. Fire uselessly sizzles onto the wet ground beside you. 

And then a bolt of Electro hits you square in your shoulders. 

You’ve never been hit by elemental energy before; you cry out at the feeling of it, white blinding pain that zaps from your shoulder down to your middle and out again down your arm, making your fingers cramp and your wrists shake. You drop the claymore just as Diluc had. 

“She’s no use to anyone, killing her would be kinder--”

You barely hear it over the sizzling in your brain, overtaking all of your senses. Another painful bolt of Electro hits you in the stomach, and you swear it feels like a gunshot that enters out the other side of your spine. You double over in agony, crying out. 

You don’t realise you have cried out Diluc’s name until you hear the screaming. 

You can’t look up, as you fall to your knees, your body pulsing in a kind of physical torment it’s never been privy to before. All you can do is stare at the ground, whimpering, tears falling from your face and onto the raindrops already decorating the grass and the mud (you don’t remember when you started crying), as sickening sounds from above you fade into the pounding in your head. 

You can only hope it is not Diluc; that the screams do not belong to him, the painful sound of bones being snapped and crunched, the gurgles of men who know they are in their last moments on earth. Someone cries out for their Archon, but from where you are you cannot parse what Archon it is they are begging for mercy. 

The pain ebbs away, slowly, slowly. 

Your body still aches, but your head can be moved - you can blink back tears of pain to see that . . . there are bodies dotting the campsite. There’s the Cryogunner, neck bent at an unnatural angle, a tangle of wires and sparks and blood from the mask that’s been pulled halfway off his face - almost as if it were surgically attached to him, not really worn . . . There’s the Vanguard, and from the abominable bend of his body, and the spread of dark red blood beneath him, it seems as though he’s been cleaved in two almost perfectly at the waist.

And there is Diluc. 

Diluc, holding the body of the Pyroslinger in his arms, head buried in the man’s neck where he’s torn at furs and uniform to get to bare skin. Diluc, bloodstained and handsome and drinking a man dry before you, his hair gaining some lustre back, his grip getting more and more certain as he drinks deeper. 

He’s terrifying, like this. Wild and untamed and vicious, the monster he had said he was, blood running in rivulets down his face, his clothes all ripped. But you think of what Adelinde had said, you think of how the Fatui had turned so quickly upon you, you think about their threats of the Doctor and all that it may entail - and you think, too, of Diluc’s hungry kiss in the library and his music and the way he makes your heart beat faster. 

He’s beautiful, too.

He sees that you have raised your head. The Pyroslinger falls from his arms, onto the ground, and before you can do anything he is on his knees before you and reaching for you with one ungloved hand, hovering over your cheek. 

It’s the hand that was caught by the Cryogunner, and the two fingers on the end are red and raw - but he places it against your cheek anyway, and he whispers, low and urgent and desperate;

“Why did you come?” 

“ I love you ,” you breathe out to him in return. “Diluc, I love you. I don’t care about any of it. I love you and I want you and I--”

“They’d have killed you,” He’s shaking. “They’d have taken you away from me, they hurt you, they’d have . . . I thought they’d killed you! I can’t face losing you!”

“You ran from me,” you say to him. “I was scared you wouldn’t come back.”

It’s no place to have this heart-to-heart, with the bodies of men Diluc has killed surrounding you and the rain still coming down - but it is, too, the only place it could ever have happened. You lay your heart bare for him. 

“How long?” He asks, quietly. “I-- when I saw you there, that night, all wide-eyed and beautiful and come to me from the music . . . It was a love song, you know.”

“Since the moment I heard you play,” you say to him. “You’re not a monster, Diluc.”

This time, it’s you who leans forward, despite the ache and the blood still staining his mouth. It’s you who presses your lips against his, who winds an arm around him and pulls you into him to deepen the kiss. Diluc stills for a moment, slack-jawed - and then he starts to kiss you back, with all of the hunger of a man who has been holding himself back for far too long. 

You are both messes; he in blood, and you in mud and dirt, but that does not seem to bother him as he tugs at your bottom lip. He breaks away for a moment, to wipe his mouth with the back of his ragged sleeve so the Pyroslinger’s blood does not stain you any more than your own has - but he’s quickly tugged back against you with your own persistent hands. 

You slip his coat off his shoulders at the same time as Diluc begins to ruck up your skirts to your waist - the endorphins making both of you feel as though you are floating somewhere far away, driving you forwards and onwards. The only thing that matters is sensation. Diluc’s lips against your own, his hair between your fingers, the feel of his hands as he parts your thighs. 

You break the kiss to gasp, as two long fingers stroke at your core over the fabric of your underwear. Diluc murmurs quiet platitudes, kisses the corner of your mouth, as hungry and wanting as you yourself feel. All thoughts of your reputation have gone out of the window - the only thing that matters is the tight knot of heat you feel deep within yourself, the one that wants Diluc to touch more and kiss more and take you right here and right now beneath a full moon on the cold hard ground. 

“Tell me if you want me to stop,” he breathes, ragged, against your ear - before he kisses at it, tugs the lobe with his teeth. He whimpers your name again. “Archons, you’re soft.”

“Don’t stop,” you beg, hand fisting into his torn shirt as his fingers pry beneath the thin, damp fabric to find you wet and wanting for him. “ Diluc --” 

He pulls you closer into him. He’s on his knees between your thighs, your arm still wrapped about his neck, your legs spread wide either side of him. The position should be uncomfortable - especially with your injuries - but you’re not currently thinking of anything other than the way his long, elegant fingers feel and the way he keeps breaking his kisses and whispers and murmurs against your cheek and neck and face to look at you, bewildered, like a man who has had all of his dreams dropped into his lap at once. 

Two fingers stroke over the length of your slit; brushing the pleasure point of your clit, coating themselves in your slick. His fingers are cold enough to make you start and whimper - but you simply pull yourself closer, spread your thighs wider, in a silent urge for him to continue.

“So warm,” he mumbles against your hair, kissing the top of your head. “You’re so . . . so beautiful . . .”

Two fingers slide inside of you, aided only a little by your own slick. You bite down on your lip at the sudden stretch, but it quickly dissipates - instead, there’s a kind of delicious fullness, a part of you that says that having Diluc’s fingers inside of you is the right thing to be happening right now. His thumb brushes over the swollen pearl of your clit again and you sigh, fingers tightening on whatever they can reach. He crooks his fingers just so, winning a soft moan from your parted lips--

“My, my ! Master Diluc, surely you could have waited to get her to at least a likely hay-bale before bedding her--!”

Diluc starts guiltily backwards, pulling his fingers out of you (you let out a whine of dissatisfaction before you realise exactly what’s going on), rocking back onto the balls of his feet and then straightening up. 

“Kaeya,” Diluc says, flatly. 

It takes you a moment to put your thoughts back together, as a slim young man wearing an eyepatch jumps down from the same incline you had tumbled down earlier (looking far more elegant, you must say). 

“C-Captain,” you say, struggling to your feet, wiping down your dress though it’s far beyond repair. “I--”

“That’s no way to greet me,” Kaeya says to Diluc, smiling a secretive, dangerous smile. “Not when I came out all of this way to save you from more trouble . . .”

“As you can see, I didn’t need saving.” Diluc gestures flatly to the Fatui bodies all around, and Kaeya laughs again. 

“My. Here I thought I was helping! My Vision, as you know, is far more useful than yours in a rainstorm.” His gaze flickers about the clearing, before they return to Diluc, and then to you. “Oh,” he says, deliberately light. “This is the young lady that’s been causing poor Miss Donna to have intermittent fits of sobbing, then?” 

Diluc moves closer to you, a protective arm wrapping about your shoulders - but that just makes Kaeya laugh again, the sound like velvet. He bows to you, taking your hand and pressing a kiss onto it in the same way that Diluc had once. His mouth is very warm. 

“Don’t be like that,” he says to Diluc. “I’m pleased for you, really. Still, even I can find a bed when one is needed.” 

“I suppose we were caught up in the heat of the moment,” Diluc says, but his voice seems a little less stiff now. He doesn’t move his arm from where it is. “We can’t all have your foresight.”

“Ah,” he says, winking at you with his uncovered eye. “Well, when one only has the use of one eye . . .” 

Diluc snorts, and you see them as brothers, suddenly - and you wonder how much of Diluc’s feigned disinterest and anger at Kaeya is about not putting him in danger, and not the great argument you had heard rumour of. 

“You did well,” Kaeya says, looking around. “I’ll have to clean this up, of course, but they were causing a dreadful trouble for us and you know we can’t interfere in diplomatic matters . . . I wouldn’t have thought you’d come out in a rainstorm though. Mondstadt couldn’t bear to be without its Dark Night Hero, if things had gone the wrong way!”

“. . . Don’t call me that.” 

“Ooh, I think it rather suits you.” He looks at you again. “Is this your Dark Night Heroine? How romantic.”

“I should be heading home,” Diluc says, a little softer. “Adelinde would be glad to see you, if you’re up for a . . . very late dinner.” 

Kaeya’s eye flickers from you and then to Diluc, and then back again - he laughs, shaking his head. 

“After how you two are clearly burning with pent-up energy, like two teenage lovers on Starsnatch Cliff? I’d rather not be a third wheel, thank you.” 

“Promise to come visit her,” Diluc says, steadily. “She misses you. She begged me to take your offer, but I think she mostly just wanted to see you again.” 

“Is that so?” He muses. “Well. She always did like me better--”

“That’s what I said to her.” 

Kaeya throws back his head and laughs. He has an easiness about him that his adoptive brother does not have; is all fluid water, where Diluc is a stubbornly burning flame. You understand why Diluc had sounded worried about your virtue; Kaeya has the air of a man who could talk a young lady into just her petticoats within two sentences. But he is not Diluc, and there is no inexorable pull towards him. You settle further against Diluc, into the crook of his arm. 

“You know what he is, don’t you?” Kaeya asks, and he is speaking to you. You raise your chin and give Kaeya a little nod - and some of the easiness of water dissipates, so you can see a man who truly cares for his brother. “You would stay with him even so?” 

“Yes,” you say simply. “I love him.”

The look in Kaeya’s eye may even be jealousy; his diamond-shaped pupil sparkling in the moonlight. But there is satisfaction, too; you have passed some unspoken test. He is happy for Diluc. He is sad for himself. He is lost, adrift, alone, confused--

“Take care of him,” he says to you, quietly. “He needs it.”

“I don’t mind,” you say to Diluc, gently, as you wrap a bandage about his two injured fingers. Adelinde had fussed over your wounds - and fussed even moreso when Diluc had warned her of Kaeya’s visit the next night - but she had looked at you both, and given you a smile that transformed her whole face, and left you both to your own devices. “If you . . . if you’re hungry.”

“I’m sorry for losing control in the library,” Diluc says in return. His hands touch the entry point on your shoulder of the Electro bursts; where it stands out, shiny like a burn on your skin. Now the prickling has subsided, it hurts only when touched - you think you shall have a scar there, when all is said and done. “I . . . Ugh.” He sighs, swallows, and takes up the thread of his words once more. You wait patiently; Diluc bearing his heart is a gift. “I didn’t feed, whilst I was away. I don’t need to kill, I only kill the Fatui that I know Teyvat is better without . . . I can take just a little a night and be perfectly fine. I knew how I felt about you, though, and I thought . . . if I could wean myself off of it completely, perhaps I could tell you the truth --”

“It was blood, wasn’t it?” You ask him. “In the wine glasses? Not apple juice?”

A soft chuckle of amusement.

“Yes.”

“And . . . you didn’t eat dinner? You were sleeping during the day, only going out at night . . .”

“It happened the day my father died,” he says, and you get the impression from the quiet way he speaks that this is a story very few have ever heard. “I was mad with grief, you understand. I couldn’t face going into Mondstadt with his blood still all over me, and I wandered into the trees to look for some river or pond I could wash it all off with . . .” He sighs. “A man covered in blood, even someone else’s, is a walking meal for someone of. My kind.”

You reach for him; cup his pale, cold cheek in one hand, and press another kiss onto his mouth that he accepts with only one blood-tinged tear rolling from his eye. 

You pull back. 

“I love you,” you tell him, again - and Diluc smiles a sad, beautiful, lonely smile. “I’ll stay with you, if you’ll have me.” 

“I cannot imagine my life without you,” he replies. And then - despite his injuries, he is standing, and you have been pulled into his arms, cradled princess-fashion. How much you weigh and how tall you may be put by the wayside; Diluc’s strength is as preternatural as the rest of him, and he holds you as if you are merely a sack of feathers. “Let me take you to bed.”

“Take me to yours ,” you say to him. “Surely a gentleman always finishes what he starts, Master Ragnvindr?” 

His eyes widen in surprise - but then, he smiles something wicked and secret, and he laughs. 

“Ah. Well, if it is your request . . . who am I to deny my own rescuer?” 

He is gentle as he places you down, onto your feet - as he kisses you, slow and soft and adoring. You wrap your arms about his neck once more, to draw him in further - to enjoy the feel of having him solely to yourself, and knowing you are in a safe place. Nobody will interrupt you, this time. Diluc will finish what he has began; and you, in return, will hopefully give him what he has longed for too. 

His bedroom is neither sparse nor opulent; little mementos of a life once lived are scattered across his tables and drawers. Unfinished correspondence that is too secret for his study, cufflinks and tie-pins and cravats, a hairbrush all full of red strands - a little porcelain statuette of an owl, books on falconry and gardening and sheet music . . . It is all terribly him, and it feels like you have been allowed into a private sanctuary.

“Do not forget,” he murmurs, as he breaks away from you and stares at you so tenderly you ache. “You have the right to tell me to stop at any moment.”

“Diluc,” you reply, patiently as you can. “Please. Touch me. Undress me. I’m yours.”

A soft, shuddering breath. 

“You don’t know what you do to me,” he says, and he pauses - and then, as if testing the words on his tongue, he says; “Beloved. Darling. My love.”

“I fear your fingers have already felt exactly what it is you do to me.” 

You win a laugh again. 

Diluc’s hands do not tremble as he reaches for the lacings of your gown - pitiful as it is. He moves with a slow, methodical grace entirely different from the hungry way he had torn at you back in the clearing, amongst the corpses of men who would have killed you. Your protector. The Dark Night Hero you have heard whispers about for months now . . . though from the way he had responded to Kaeya, you think perhaps it is better to not mention the moniker he has won. 

Your ripped, stained gown falls to the floor and onto the red carpeting beneath you, so you stand in your underwear and corset and chemises, bare-legged. Your stockings have been consigned to a fire, Adelinde having being horrified at the state of them. Diluc, in turn, removes his outer layers, til he stands before you in only his trousers. 

His chest is pale and scarred; a little trail of red leads from his navel into the tantalising vee of his hips, but that is all. You stare at him like a marble statue; his length presses stiff and wanting against his placket. 

“You’re beautiful,” both of you say, at the same time - and then you meet one another’s eyes and you laugh. 

“Come here,” Diluc says tenderly, and he bids you turn so his fingers can deftly work your corset laces open. You take a deep, shuddering breath as the garment falls to join your others, as you are left in just your chemise. You are the one to lift that, to work your underwear past your thighs until you stand before him, utterly bare.

Diluc’s gaze is hungry and wanting and adoring all at the same time. Worshipping. He doesn’t need to say that you’re beautiful again - he makes it clear in the way he looks at you. 

“Get on the bed for me,” he murmurs. “At the edge, my love. Legs apart.”

You don’t know what it is that he is going to do, but he seems to have a little more experience than you and you are glad to follow his need as you perch your bare body upon the edge of his bedclothes and shyly spread your thighs for him. Diluc sinks to his knees, a congregant at the altar. 

His cool lips brush the smooth skin of your inner thigh, and a gasp catches in your throat as you realise what he means to do. 

“Diluc--”

More kisses. The gentle nip of teeth on bare skin, careful to make sure he does not nick you with his fangs. Cool breath fanning over the length of your sex, where you are slick and hot and aching. 

His tongue is cool, too. 

It reaches out, flicks teasingly against your clit. He urges you further apart, his tousled red head pushing deeper between your thighs. The sight of him bent there sends a shudder down your spine that is twinned with the shock of pleasure that overtakes you when instead of merely teasing, he uses the flat of his tongue to take one long, slow stroke from clit to perineum. 

“Fall back,” he murmurs, through a tongue heavy with your own honey-sticky slick. “Hold onto my hair. Don’t try and keep yourself up. Just . . . enjoy the feeling.” 

How can you do anything but obey? Let your back thump down amongst piles of blankets and bed covers and pillows, your back arching as Diluc greedily pulls you in. He is drinking in a different kind of life-force now, you think, and the little joke makes you feel giddy and light. 

He does. He drinks you in like he’s hungry; tongue working over lips and folds and clit, dragging and lapping at you until all you can concentrate on is the feeling of his mouth working you over. Your hands tangle back into his hair. Your feet find purchase in the smooth knots of muscle just beneath his shoulder-blades, just so you don’t turn entirely to jelly beneath him. 

Kiss, lick, suck . . . You lose sense of anything with Diluc’s mouth on you like that. There is nothing but the heat of him, the feel of his muscle working you open - slowly learning what kind of touch you like. The way your thighs tremble and shake when he circles your entrance, the whimpers that come careening from your mouth when he sets his lips about your clit and suckles upon it--

His fingers are against your thigh. Moving closer. His mouth wraps around your clit again, sucking in a slow but steady rhythm. Two fingers slide inside of you again, and your back arches and you whimper out his name into the ceiling because it feels so impossibly good . 

You are panting, but Diluc is not breathing at all. You suppose he doesn’t need to come up for air - and that means that you are instead fully submitted to the feel of his mouth and tongue on your pulsating clit, as his fingers scissor you open wider and rub at your sweet spots and curl mercilessly inside of you. 

He finds a spot that makes you see stars. 

You can’t explain it; you have read romance novels, you’ve even giggled at things that your maids have whispered to you . . . but none of those really prepare you for it in its real entirety. The feeling of heat that suffuses every part of your body, from your fingertips to your toes to the top of your head - it’s like being shot with the Electro once more, only this time every shuddering crackle of electricity is pleasant instead of heart-rendingly painful. You feel yourself clam up, all of your muscles knot together--

And all at once, Diluc does something - a flourish of his tongue in tandem with a curl and drag of his knuckles and a groan against your sex - and the knot comes undone. Pleasure flashes through you like a pyre being sent up in flames. You lock and tighten up, and then all of the tension drains out of you in glorious bright colours as you come for him, shaking and whining and moaning and soaking his face in the throes of your release. 

Diluc guides you through it; his tongue slowing, his fingers ceasing their merciless fucking. He lets you hover on the edges of the pleasure, the aftershocks rippling through you like waves in Liyue Harbour, and then he presses another kiss to your clit and pulls his fingers out. 

“You taste . . .” Diluc whispers, and then shakes his head, your fingers falling from the soft red locks. “You’re perfect. Do you think . . . may I . . .?”

“If I don’t get to make you feel that good,” you breathe out to him, voice hoarse, “then I will simply take my things and leave the Winery tomorrow morning when you can’t follow.”

He laughs. 

Diluc is slow undoing his placket, ridding himself of his trousers - his cock bobs out before he is done, curved against the flat planes of his stomach. Lovely and elegant and thick, flushed at the top, damp with precome . . . despite your own recent orgasm, you feel yourself clench at the thought of him inside of you. It nudges your thigh, and you take a deep, shuddering breath. 

Diluc presses his lips against yours and you taste yourself on him. 

“You can still tell me to stop,” he whispers, after the kiss. “I won’t be angry--”

“Don’t be a fool,” you tell him, pulling him back down - winning, for once, a groan from him as his cock rubs against the slick folds of your cunt. “You’re stuck with me now.” 

He reaches down to guide himself in; position his cock against your entrance, where you are still slick and wanting and empty. He sighs prettily, eyelashes fluttering closed. 

“I hope that is a promise,” he says to you. 

Your fingernails dig into his shoulders - the positions have changed a little, now that he is no longer on his knees on the floor. Your ankles instead cross beneath his waist as he begins to slide himself inside of you, inch by inch. 

You were right about him being thick; it is far more of a stretch than his two fingers were. But with the ease and glide of your earlier orgasm and your need for him to claim you completely, the stretch remains pleasant, and you simply pant and moan as he works himself slowly inside of you. 

Neither of you speak, as Diluc claims you in this most final of ways. You are happy to be his - he is happy to take you. You belong to one another. This is like full-circle, of the pull you felt the first time you heard his music - now, your hearts are entwined with one another fully. It is no ache, no need, no whisper that you are two halves of a soul . . . for instead, the two of you are one. Joined completely.

He fills you up completely, bottoms out inside of you, his length aching and thick and perfect where it pulses against your needy walls.

“I’m going to move,” he warns you, after you’ve had a little time to adjust, when your heart has stopped beating quite so rapidly. You wonder if Diluc can feel it. 

“Please,” you say raggedly to him, and Diluc puffs out a cool laugh against your mouth.

It does not take long for him to fall into a rhythm that works for both of you. The two of you are, after all, two halves - and there is nothing else that needs saying, as Diluc pumps himself in and out of you in a slick wonderful messy glide of pleasure that makes you moan and sigh and rock. 

Pleasure. All over you, like a warm blanket, a soothe to the coolness of Diluc’s bare body on you. A clock ticks somewhere, your heart beats, and you sigh and pant and moan whilst Diluc groans and grunts and does not breathe. You think you would be happy here forever, if this moment could be suspended in time. 

But Diluc’s peak approaches. His thrusts become less and less smooth. His muscles twitch and he whimpers as his orgasm licks at his heels, wanting to overtake him. 

You want to be his in every conceivable way. 

He’s so close.

You reach up to him; cup his cheek as he whimpers out your name with tenderness and adoration that make you feel like you’re floating. Curve your hand around and into his hair instead. 

It is now or never, you think - there may never be so good a chance for you to ask him to do this. He so often whispers about being a monster, if you don’t seize upon it now maybe he will never let you see that part of him he is so afraid of. You want both of you to belong to one another, body and soul and blood and sex.

You speak.

“Bite me,” you say to him, fingers tightening in his hair as he hovers on the edge of his peak, his cock still hungrily pumping in and out of you like he can never be satisfied with how deeply he is plumbing the depths of your body. “Diluc, Diluc, Diluc . . . I want you to-- I want to be yours.”

“You do?” He groans. “Beloved--”

His fangs sink into the delicate skin of your neck, above your pulse, at the same time as his cock twitches and pulses inside of you and you feel him paint your insides white with his come. 

It’s as cool as the rest of him, but you don’t care - you simply lock your legs about him, breathing deeply, his sucking in time with the slow rocks of his hips as he ekes out his orgasm. That feels good, too - there was only an initial pinprick of pain, as fangs pierced your body, and now the spot he suckles and feeds from feels only pleasantly warm and tingling.

It is a moment suspended in time; a perfect, shimmering golden moment, on Diluc’s bed, as he both fills you and takes from you at the same time and you lay beneath him content and happy to give yourself entirely to him. You don’t know how long he stays there, rocking his hips into you as his cock softens inside of you, feeding on life-force willingly given. 

All you know is that you feel pleasantly sated when he finally withdraws from both spots, leaving you empty but full at the same time. He kisses over the wound of his teeth and you feel skin knit itself back together, as if he is just as capable of healing and hurting.  

You lay there, basking, glowing, in love. 

“I will keep you safe for as long as I exist,” Diluc breathes, against your throat, as the two of you lay entwined and bare on his sheets with sweat and arousal slicking your bodies damp and sticky. “If you will have me.”

“Of course I will,” you say to him, fingers idly toying with strands of his hair. “I can’t promise to keep you safe, but I can at least pull you back from the brink when you threaten to throw yourself into it. And in return, I shall only ask . . . Hmm.”

“Anything,” Diluc kisses the spot he had bitten into once more. “Anything, anything, anything.”

“Ah. Then you have to teach me to be better at chess, play for me whenever I want, and make up for my poor lost virtue--!”

“I’ll see your parents tomorrow,” he mumbles, leaning into the touch of your hand on his head. “Announce our engagement, I’m sure they’ll be delighted--”

“Diluc !” 

He laughs, bright and lovely. Moves his head, and stares you directly in the eyes, with a beautiful crimson gaze that leaves you utterly speechless. “What? You wanted me to appease your virtue, didn’t you? Well, what better way? I’ll invite Kaeya to the wedding and tell him he owes me a better wedding present than that wretched vase . . . Adelinde will be overjoyed to make a menu for so many people, though of course it will have to be an evening wedding--”

He kisses you again, deep and yearning and right. You hum happily against his lips, letting your eyes drift closed. 

“And you won’t mind?” He whispers, against your ear. “Only being able to go outside when it is dark? Sharing my meals and my wine bottles? If I . . . make you like me?”

You are drifting off to sleep. Diluc’s arms around you feel like safety. 

“Not as long as you’re by my side,” you tell him. 

You mean it.