It Must be Love

Lather

"Keaya, wake up!" someone says, shaking the bluenet's shoulder sending waves of mild pain to his brain.

"Ow, stop it!" Kaeya snaps at the person, his hands pushing them off him blindly because his vision is blurry.

"Relax, it's me," the man says. Kaeya blinks rapidly which clears his vision to see his brother as his side. He is healthy and fully healed, only some scars to prove he was hurt in the first place. "What were you doing?" Kaeya questions, still a little rattled by his dream.

"You were crying in your sleep," Diluc explains. "You called out my name and told me not to leave."

Kaeya looks at his brother dumbfounded. 'I talked in my sleep? He must think I'm an idiot! What a weirdo he must think of me.' Kaeya stares at anywhere but his brother. The wall in front of him. The curtain to the right of him. His blanket that lays on top of him. The blank ceiling that has only a few lights. The floor, which consists of checkered tiles. Anywhere.

"Are you okay?" Diluc asks, a look of concern on his face. His eyebrow raised and his eyes filled with confusion but a hint of worry. It was like if someone walked in on someone committing a crime but they didn't know the person was doing something illegal.

"Um..."

"Why were you calling my name? What did you see?" Diluc says, as if he is catching on to the crime that Kaeya committed. 'He's catching on,' Kaeya notes.

'Why was I calling your name? Oh, I don't know, maybe it's because you left me for dead in the dream,' Kaeya thinks to himself. Silence blew through the open window. The curtain blowing in the light breeze. A shiver shakes up Kaeya's back. Diluc simply stands over him in the silence, the man seeminging used to it.

The red-haired man removes his blanket and wraps it around his brother. "Uh, Diluc?" Kaeya questions giving him a look that says, 'What the heck are you doing?' Now wrapped in two medical banklets Kaeya asks, "Why are you acting so weird?" His brother doesn't respond, instead he softly sits down on the side of Kaeya's bed. The two bask in the silence.

"I love you."

Kaeya doesn't open his mouth, he doesn't even dare to move a muscle. Diluc, his sworn brother, loving him? What a joke! He had always hated him from the day he had confessed his origin. Him being from Khaenri'ah.

"You might not believe it but I love you," Diluc says. "That's why I traded places with you when you were taken by the Abyss-"

"It wasn't a dream?" Kaeya interjects.

"Is that what you were dreaming about?"

"Yes, but it was weird. I saw myself as a child instead of how I really am."

"That's because you were."

"What?" Kaeya says, his face confused. Something that doesn't happen that often.

The door opens as two people enter. Barabra and Albedo stop in front of the brothers. "Good morning Kaeya, Master Diluc," Barabra says, nodding towards both of the boys. "What is the last thing you remember?" Albedo asks, skipping all pleasantries.

Kaeya goes silent trying to remember what he remembers last. Diluc answers for him, "Kaeya just had a dream about when the Abyss mages came and used him as leverage against me."

"Kaeya?" Albedo says his name when he doesn't say anything.

"The last thing that I remember is running to leave the city after I had visited with Jean previously at the knights headquarters. I see the fountain.

"What about after that?"

"...It's all lather," Kaeya confesses. "It's unclear and I don't remember most of it. I only get bits and pieces."