by: badabab
1.
"Any luck with jobs, Miss Mona?"
The girl looks as sullen as Venti feels, her wallet as empty as Venti's. Despite her obvious lack of spirit, she still manages to shoot Venti a scathing glance.
It's kinda scary and a little very hot, but Venti's seen scarier before and has felt more confusedly aroused before and so unlike most of the men (and a good amount of the women) in Mondstadt, he can just breeze past the future astrologist's glare.
"No? Well, I'm not having much luck either." Venti sighs, sweeping his bangs back dramatically. "Though if it's you, Miss Mona, I'm sure there're plenty a person ready to help you out."
The girl simply scoffs and turns away, strolling off with all the self-confidence of someone with a star fetish, and Venti waves cheerily at her disappearing back.
"Don't you think there's, ah, 'plenty a person' ready to help you out as well, Mister Bard?" A hand lands roughly on Venti's head, almost knocking his cecilia off in the process. Judging from the teasing tone and the messy (but still nice!) headpatting, it's probably...
"Ah, the handsome Mister Kaeya!"
The dark-skinned male grins, leaning in as if he's about to divulge some super-top-secret secret, and Venti can't help but get caught up in the motion.
"Ah, it's really a nice confidence boost that you say that every time we meet! You know," the one-eyed boy says, "Our dear Master Diluc pretty rich... And pretty lonely-looking... If you get what I'm saying."
Venti's quite sure that this is just all a ploy to bring Kaeya his weekly entertainment, but, well, Venti does live to entertain after all.
"Why Mister Kaeya," Venti turns to face the Cryo user, making sure to peak up through his lashes in that not-at-all innocent way, "I don't get what you're saying at all! Maybe you could explain it to me later? Alone?"
Kaeya grins very, very handsomely.
2.
See, the thing about Diluc is that he seems to be incredibly stuck on acting like a cold, rich and tyrannical male lead and refuses to do otherwise under any circumstance.
Except those guys actually have friends. Kinda.
Well, whatever. The moral of the story here is that even if Diluc absolutely adores you, he won't show it. At least not in public anyways. The claymore wielder acts like he absolutely despises Venti and everything about him, so that means one of two things: Either Diluc actually secretly loves Venti as much as he not-so-secretly loves acting on his sadistic tendencies, or he really does hate him. And wants to act in his sadistic tendencies in less perverted ways and more fucking horrifying ways.
It's probably the latter, but Venti's willing to take the chance. Besides, it's not like it's the first time he's won over a darkly-dressed boy with messy red hair tied back into a low ponytail. How different could it be?
"Why are you here," is the first thing the prickly bartender says to him once Venti's hunted him down. He's sitting on a rock. Alone. Behind the winery. With a scowl on his face.
It's kind of pathetic to be honest, but what's even worse is how easily he can get away with it just because he's handsome and looks good doing it.
... Maybe Morax had been onto something with that tall-dark-handsome look...
"Scram," is the second thing Diluc tells him, and then the redhead's reaching back to retrieve what Venti dearly hopes isn't his claymore.
The fact that this exact scenario has happened to him before (with Vennessa, actually,) is at this point pretty much the only reason Venti hasn't gone crying to kind, handsome, gentle, incredibly sketchy, probably incredibly sadistic Kaeya yet.
