Cross-posted on AO3

Day 8: "Hey, Hey, This Is No Time To Sleep"

He had no idea how this happened, but Diluc was seriously starting to curse his luck.

He and Kaeya had just started to get along and then this happens. He huddles closer to his brother's body as he pulled the thin blanket over both of them. He knew that they were extremely lucky to have landed near a camp.

Well, more like fell.

This time, he couldn't even blame it on the monsters.

They had been climbing to the top of the mountain to go dungeon diving together.

He had heard about some cool ice artifacts being up there and felt like it would be nice to help Kaeya out with it. If Kaeya were stronger, at least it would stop keeping him awake at night so often. The two had just happened to come across part of a frozen civilization and – while they had both been curious, they decided to move on.

They had just come up to the steps when he had heard Kaeya let out a short curse.

When he had turned to see what was the problem, he was met with the sight of Kaeya disappearing from view as he fell. Rushing to the edge, he was able to catch sight of Kaeya hitting the ground and winced. While he couldn't really hear anything over the wind, he knew that the man had hit the ground hard.

And he wasn't getting back up.

Throwing caution to the freezing winds, he found himself scrambling down the side of the drop. The sight of blood had him panicking, but he tried to think about what Adelinde had told him when he was little, about head wounds bleeding a lot even when they weren't dangerous. With a little effort – the younger was a lot lighter than he anticipated – he lifted Kaeya into his arms and tried to find a place to hide out from the snow.

He felt extremely lucky as he saw what looked like a couple of empty camps up ahead. Once he was closer, he noticed something that he had initially missed, the recruit symbol for the Fatui.

While he was tempted to find another camp immediately, he didn't know where he would find another one quickly, let alone far from this one.

Looting through the bags in the tent, he found a blanket that was thinner than he was happy with, but it was better than nothing. Wrapping it around them, he made sure to hold Kaeya as close as possible and used his Vision to heat up his body and the air under the blanket. Thankfully, neither of them was really wet, so they could avoid stripping.

That would have been too awkward.

He felt Kaeya stir for a moment before he huddled closer, curling his freezing body against his brother's as he sighed almost happily. He almost jerked away at the contrast but knew he needed to stay still. Kaeya's eye finally opened again as he peered up at Diluc and – yeah, he definitely had a concussion.

"Sit still, idiot," he gently reprimanded. "You hit your head pretty hard and likely have a concussion."

Kaeya made a noise in the back of his throat before he registered the odd feeling of foreign clothing and looked down, noticing the blanket.

"Where'd you get the blanket?" he asked curiously.

"Well," he started sheepishly, "I may have raided a Fatui camp."

He smiled when his words got a laugh out of Kaeya.

"Oh?" the blue-haired man teased. "When did beating up the Fatui get so boring that you moved on to stealing from their camps?"

"Hey," he chuckled playfully, "I wouldn't have had to if my reckless little brother didn't go tumbling off cliffs."

This caused Kaeya to hum as he rested his head on Diluc's shoulder, trying to take in more of the heat that radiated off of the elder. He knew there was zero bite behind the words.

"Don't fall asleep now," Diluc warned softly, but firmly. "We both know that sleeping with a concussion is a bad idea."

Kaeya nodded in affirmative and lifted his head, knowing that if he settled down too much, he would be tempted to give in to the urge to sleep fogging his mind.

"How long has it been since we've been here?" he asked sleepily.

"Long enough that Jean will definitely send someone to come look for us if we aren't back in the next couple hours. We'll probably need to rest for while anyway so that we can wait until you can walk without your legs giving out. There's a camp at the foot of the mountain that could wait at."

Kaeya merely nodded in agreement without any complaint, knowing that he was going to need Diluc's help for the next couple of days. He felt the urge to laugh or groan at the mental image of Diluc forcing him on bed rest for the next week.

Diluc came to the same conclusion and felt like smacking his head against something since he knew that Kaeya was a terrible patient and that the next week or so was going to be exhausting.

The two wound up staying there until the Traveler discovered them almost an hour later and told them they could teleport them to Mondstadt. Thank freaking Barbatos.

A/N: The draft was written on the 29th of January and was finally written on the right day. Hopefully, I can write the ALT prompt tonight or tomorrow morning. Just some good old fluff of one brother getting hurt and the other protecting him until help arrives.