Breaking Up, Breaking Down

breaking up, breaking down

pairing/s: albedo, childe, diluc, kazuha, scaramouche, xiao, venti, zhongli x gn!reader

summary: if there’s anything you can expect to be consistent in life, it’s that everything has an end. or — genshin men and how they are after you break up with them.

note: angsty in everyone’s part, but it got too lighthearted in childe’s bc i simply cannot take that ginger seriously (affectionate)

ALBEDO

There aren’t any notable changes to his routine. He’d still go about his day, working on his experiments and scribbling down notes, occasionally taking a break to sketch a pretty flower he saw or the wing pattern of a passing butterfly.

And then he finds himself drawing the outline of an eye, then a nose, then lips. Until he suddenly stops in the middle of drawing a strand of your hair blowing in the wind, your face frozen in a smile staring back at him through the canvas of his sketchbook.

It hits him then, the realization, the heart-wrenching clarity of what happened that leaves him sitting in his chair, staring at your face in paper and wondering where he went wrong.

He tries to distract himself by continuing his research, but his mind has a hard time focusing on what needs to be done. It’s agonizing, he doesn’t think he’s felt this way before, never even thought he’d ever feel such pain. In a way, he’s glad his master isn’t here to make a study of what emotional pain means to an artificial human like him.

He sees you two weeks after you broke up with him, laughing as you tried to haggle with a merchant for their wares, unaware of the charm you exude that draws people in like moths to a flame. But then your gaze moves, searching through the crowd—and Albedo should really leave now, avoid barging into your life because there simply isn’t a place for him there anymore—but he does none of that.

Your eyes meet. He doesn’t think he was imagining it when he saw yours dim for the briefest moment. (His heart hurts. Why are you looking at him like that?)

You make your way through the busy street to reach him. He tells himself he should leave, but for the first time in his life, he does what contradicts his logic and stays.

“You look good,” you tell him, something melancholic in the tone of your voice. Oh, if only you knew.

“You as well.” He wants to say more, wants to say how radiant you looked under the sun, the light hitting you in just the right way that has him itching to grab a pencil and immortalize the image in paper—but he holds his tongue. “I need to go.”

Your face falls. He wishes he wasn’t the cause of it. “Ah, right. You must be busy, as usual.” There isn’t a hint of bitterness to your voice, just resignation.

He leaves after bidding you goodbye, feeling the heat of your gaze at his back as he walked away.

CHILDE

He wants you and he will do everything in his power to have you back.

In the early days after you broke up, you won’t hear a word from him. Not a peep. You only hear passing news that dead monsters and hilichurl camps near the vicinity of your home have been utterly eradicated. Passing travelers claim how the areas were ‘strangely flooded’ even though it hasn’t rained in weeks.

Then come the gifts. From flowers to clothes to accessories to different delicacies that are all worth more than your entire life’s paycheck. And when that doesn’t work, Childe sets to work on his recruits.

You suddenly find yourself constantly being approached by a startling amount of Fatui recruits ranging from normal lackies to gunners to cicin mages, and even that one memorable time when a mirror maiden approached you in the middle of buying groceries and proceeded to buy everything in the store, saying all of it was for you.

The Fatui recruits had one thing in common: they all had nothing but praises to say for the Eleventh Fatui Harbinger.

“Master Childe defeated all the recruits in under ten seconds!” “Have you heard how Lord Harbinger killed twenty geovishaps and came out without a single scratch?” “I saw him buying that exact same shirt yesterday, it cost one million mora! He’s so rich!” “Lord Tartaglia has been so down lately. He keeps saying how much he misses his beloved.”

“Did you know? Even Lady Signora wept after she heard that you and Master Childe broke up.” That one, you’re certain never actually happened, and you made sure to tell that with an unimpressed look to the pyro agent who told you. As if Signora would ever cry, she’d probably throw a party for you for finally leaving Childe.

In the end, after cycling through so many recruits, he had no choice but to come to you directly.

…Which is how you woke up at six in the morning to the ground shaking and the sound of an eerily familiar laugh right outside your house.

You open your window to find Childe fighting a lawachurl right in front of your house, a ring of Fatuus surrounding and cheering him on. His smile brightens to an almost comical degree once he sees you and your bedhead squinting out from a window.

“You look so stunning today, beloved!” He steps back from an earth-shattering punch by the lawachurl. “I’ve brought you the biggest lawachurl I could find so I can show you how worthy I am of you!”

He then proceeds to—and you have to blink a few times to see if you’re not hallucinating—fist fight the lawachurl. And he’s actually winning. No vision, no weapon. Just his bare fists.

When the commotion wakes up your entire neighborhood, you have to go down there and yell at him to stop or take this fight somewhere that isn’t right in front of your house! He complies with a grin and a promise saying he’ll meet you later.

There’s something fond curling in your chest that you try and fail to smother. With an exasperated tone, you tell him that yes, you’ll find time in your busy schedule to meet him. He lights up like you just agreed to marry him and yells out rapid orders in Snezhnayan to his recruits.

“I’ll see you later!” He blows a kiss in your direction that you ignore. You turn away and walk back into your house, trying (and failing) to fight the growing smile on your face.

DILUC

It’s not evident to anyone who doesn’t know him well, but Diluc takes it close to heart and buries it among countless other regrets that have accumulated in his life. The turbulent feelings that threaten to overcome his mind at any hour of the day manifests itself in him becoming more withdrawn.

He’s gloomy, more brooding than usual, and the reason becomes apparent once the other patrons notice the lack of a certain person who usually sits by the bar during his shifts. Your usual laugh accompanied by teasing grins and playful swats at his long hair when you think no one is looking are nowhere to be seen.

One particularly drunk person had come up to him as he was wiping down the counters and asked why you weren’t there. Anyone who had been there to see the sight would tell you that he didn’t say anything, hadn’t been able to say anything. He just… stood there, hands frozen mid-motion and eyes drawn somewhere, lost in thought.

He slips up sometimes. Asks the maids to prepare a dinner for two only to stop in the middle of talking as he realizes what he just said. At breakfast, he pauses in the middle of reading his daily papers to turn his head to the right, a question on the tip of his tongue that dies when he sees the empty spot you usually occupied. It’s the pitying gazes that follow when he slips up that he hates the most.

He makes your favorite drink sometimes, on the days when he’s on shift and feeling particularly self-destructive. It stays hidden under the bar counter, hoping against hope that you’ll walk through the door and greet him with an upbeat ‘good evening!’ that makes his day all the more better. You never do.

It’s on a bright, sunny morning when he’s out overseeing the delivery of wine to the tavern that he sees you again. His heart soars for all but a second before it comes crashing down, because Diluc Ragnvindr does not deserve nice things.

You’re holding the hand of some nondescript man, grinning and laughing and emitting such a great sense of contentment that he can almost feel it from where he’s standing meters away from you.

You’re happy. It’s been months and he’s still wallowing in old hurts. You’re happy.

Did you ever smile like that when you were with him? He likes to think so, but the realistic, pessimistic thought is that you’re probably better off not being with him. You’re happy. Happier now than you were when you were with him.

Everything he’s ever loved has been hurt directly and indirectly by his hands. He turns away from the sight of you and pretends to be preoccupied with his task. Maybe it’s for the best that you left before it could happen.

KAZUHA

He tries not to take it to heart. He understands why you left, knows it before you even made the decision to leave. And in the aftermath, much like a leaf adrift in the wind, he roams about aimlessly, lost in thought.

Grief is not an emotion he’s unfamiliar with. As he sits by the cliffs overlooking the endless ocean, grief burrows its way to his chest like an old, unwelcome friend. He doesn’t fight it. He’s learned the hard way that fighting it is a losing battle, like picking at a scab, hoping that doing so will make it heal faster, yet only succeeding in worsening the wound.

Kazuha isn’t a stranger to loneliness, of letting the wind kiss his tears away as they dried on his cheeks. He is, however, unfamiliar with this new kind of ache in his chest. And only after much rumination does he conclude what it might be.

The loss of his family, the loss of his heritage, the loss of his friend, and now, the loss of his lover. A master of loss, he could almost call himself. His old friend would certainly find such a title amusing.

He finds himself writing letters to you, even with the knowledge that he’ll never be able to send them to you. It’s the thought that comforts him, the pretense that he still has someone to tell of his travels, someone to simply come home to, even when he knows he isn’t welcome anymore.

In his weakest moment, when he had too much to drink and too little self-restraint, he sends one of the letters to you. He’s forgotten whether it’s the one where he laments the loss of your presence, the one where he begs you to have him back, or the one where only three words are written, a small blot in the ink where a stray tear had fallen.

He waits, and waits, and waits a little more, staying for a whole month in the small village he’d addressed the letter from for the small, improbable event that you may have written back. He learns later on that the letter never made it to your hands. The ship it had been on had lost all its cargo to the sea, including his letter. When he heard the news, he hadn’t known whether to be relieved or lament on what could have been.

It isn’t unpleasant to see you again. Kazuha has had time to let go of his hurt, but still, the image of your nostalgia-inducing eyes leave in him a sense of loss he thought he had already settled. Your mirage smiles, “Kazuha.” Had he been a weaker man, he would have folded and swept you up in his arms.

Nobody asks why his eyes have a slight sheen to it after he forces himself to walk away from you. He stands atop the beach and lets the waves wash over his bare feet, closing his eyes and imagining what could have been had he let himself succumb to the desire of holding you one last time, even if you were merely a mirage from the past.

Truly, the golden apple archipelago is a place where dreams are made into reality.

SCARAMOUCHE

He tries to act above it all, feigning indifference as if the entire thing is just a mild inconvenience to him.

Oh, you’re leaving him? That’s fine, he doesn’t care. Do you know how many people would kill to share his bed? You were tolerable, a way to pass time. Don’t think you were anything special. You, a normal person? Don’t make him laugh. You were nothing more than a pet he kept because you entertained him. It’s good that you’re leaving, actually. It saves him the trouble of having to get rid of you.

He’s… not very kind about it all. Defensive and on guard, hackles raising with every word that comes out of his mouth. He hates every second of it, but he can’t stop because stopping is to admit defeat, it means having to acknowledge that you meant something to him after hundreds of years of loneliness. He let you in his carefully guarded walls, and now—now you’re leaving him? Abandoning him after he bared himself open to you?

You are just like her.

Scaramouche stops before he can say those last words. The red that had been threatening to overcome his vision slowly recedes, leaving a numbing sort of clarity that washes over him like the rising tides of Inazuma’s beaches. His mouth feels dry, throat closing up.

There are tears streaming down your face.

He wishes you’d do something. Hit him, yell at him, curse his name. Anything. Just… anything but this silence that hangs heavy in the air, cloying in it’s thickness and threatening to drown him with words that can never be taken back.

He doesn’t apologize, won’t ever apologize. He is a god, and not even you would make him say those damnable words. He sees the way your eyes dim in understanding as you realize the same thing, and that, perhaps, is why you turn your back to him and walk away.

He wishes he could say that he called out for you, that he grabbed your arm and made you stay, that he just… held you. Instead, he watches you leave him, face blank and a phantom ache resonating in his hollow chest. The silence after you leave feels like the night before his creator abandoned him.

He tells himself it’s fine, that you’ll come back. You always do. This is just one of many arguments that always get resolved after a day or so—except. Except, he doesn’t let himself think of any other possibility. You’ll come back. (You have to.)

The months following your absence is a blur, spikes of irritation mixed with hateful words and barbed insults directed towards anyone who so much as breathed the wrong way. His subordinates are half-contemplating desertion just to escape his wrath. They all wonder where you’ve gone. You’re usually the one who soothes the Balladeer when he’s in one of his moods, like the godsend that you are. Though none of them are brave enough to mention your name after what he did to the foolish recruit who asked of your whereabouts.

Years pass. You never did come back.

He still gets the occasional reports about you and your general wellbeing, still sends out his best soldiers to clear out any monsters who’ve settled near your home. You never find anyone else after him. It brings a strange sense of relief in him when his monthly reports on you end up without a hint of a new lover.

He tries to forget you, but even with a new heart and the ascendance to godhood, there is still a lingering sense of loss and past regrets.

XIAO

He lets you go without argument. He’s used to people leaving him, but this is… different.

The thought of you there, physically within reach yet unable to to cross the distance that separates you from him. It’s a different kind of agony from the ones that have afflicted him for millennia.

He sometimes finds himself standing by the balcony of Wangshu Inn, eyes roaming over the vast landscape of Dihua Marsh, looking for the slightest hint of your silhouette. The sound of footsteps coming up the stairs always attracts his attention, anticipating your signature greeting and the smell of whatever mortal sustenance you’ve deigned to make for him to, as you once put it, let him experience the delicacies that this world has to offer.

You can’t call yourself ‘having lived a long life’ if you haven’t tried all the tasty food, Xiao!

…He misses you, though he will never admit it, perhaps not even to Rex Lapis himself.

His time—which once consisted of you, killing monsters, you again, roaming the lands for the remains of old gods, tasting whatever you cooked for him, and accompanying you so you can get home safely—is now comprised of nothing but endless slaughter. He tells himself it’s not a distraction, but it’s a thinly veiled excuse, weak even to his own ears. How low he has fallen to create such feeble excuses to justify the hurt that spreads from his chest to the tips of his fingers.

He used to pick up small things and trinkets in his time scouring the land for evil. A shiny pebble that reminded him of your eyes, a particularly large sweetflower that you would gape comically at once he showed you, qingxin flowers he plucked from the highest mountains just so he can see the way your face lights up in a smile. He still does all these things, only now, the objects are stored in a realm made in the likeness of your home, placing each one in a shelf or table that he thinks you would have arranged them in.

One time, he panics when he sees the flowers start to wilt, and in the heat of the moment, he placed adeptal power in them to ensure they will never die. To this day, he isn’t sure why he did so, only that he imagined at the time how upset you would be that they died in his care, even though he knows how unlikely it is that you will ever discover his hobby of collecting flowers and storing them in his realm.

Perhaps he hopes you’ll come back to him, so that when you do, he can see the way your eyes brighten up once he shows you everything he got for you while you were away.

It’s unlikely, he knows, but it’s nice to dream of it. He thinks his siblings would be proud to see him finally have a little hope for something.

VENTI

He spends the rest of the week in the tavern drinking as much as he can. For once, Diluc doesn’t try to reproach him for drinking what he can’t pay for.

He doesn’t exactly get drunk—can’t get drunk, more like. To a god like him, drinking a hundred barrels of Mondstadt’s finest wines won’t even be enough to get him tipsy. He is the god of freedom (and wine, he’d like to add), he can outdrink every single one of the archons and still have enough semblance to go to war. And yet…

You appear on the seventh day like a salvation, face contorted in worry when you see him slumped on the counter and one inch away from falling off the stool. It isn’t difficult to act the part of a drunken bard, pretending to sway on his feet and donning a fake intoxicated grin as he asked Charles for another glass.

The wind tells him of your arrival, but he ignores it just as he ignores the way his heart soars when the wind brings him the barest hint of your scent. He wishes you didn’t come here. He wishes he didn’t act so drunkenly. He wishes you were more heartless and ignored whoever must have tattled on him drinking Angel’s Share into bankruptcy.

You call his name. He pretends he’s asleep just so he doesn’t have to face his problems. Ha. How ironic. Will he wake up to Mondstadt destroyed by the remains of Khaenri’ah this time? He nearly did once.

He hears you sigh before he feels you bring his arm across your shoulders. You help him get off the stool, an arm around his waist to help keep him steady. The weight of Diluc’s disapproving gaze for deceiving you about his drunkenness is heavy, but he tells himself it’s alright. He just… wants to be selfish for once. If he has to act drunk to feel your arms around him again, he’ll suffer this humiliation as many times as he can.

“Venti,” you start as you walk him in the direction of your home. “I was worried, you know. Aether told me how much you’d been drinking since…” You trail off. He feels you shaking your head before continuing, “Just… don’t be so reckless with your health.” You laugh, mildly sardonic that’s directed more towards yourself than him. “Ah, what am I saying… you won’t even have any recollection of this tomorrow anyway.”

He wants to say something, but saying something means breaking this moment between you, it means revealing that he doesn’t actually need your help because once he starts speaking, the dam will break and everything will come spilling out. I’m sorry, I miss you, I love you.

The front door to your house opens. He’s gently placed down your couch, a blanket thrown over him as you thoughtfully take his shoes off for him. He feels you linger by his side, can practically hear the conflict in you.

He’s unprepared for the feeling of your warm breath on his skin, your lips hovering over his face before placing a chaste kiss on his forehead. “Goodnight, Venti.”

He leaves before the sun rises.

ZHONGLI

He only smiles, small and understanding with a hint of sorrow at the corner of his eyes.

He tells you he’ll respect your decision, but should you change your mind, he will always be here. You say it’s doubtful, he would’ve probably found someone else by then. Zhongli doesn’t correct you, only leans in and places his lips on the top of your head, as gentle as he’s always been with you, somehow managing to convey with a single gesture how high he holds you in regard.

And for the barest, infinitesimal moment, you half-contemplate the idea of staying. It’s a wishful thought. You end up leaving before you can change your mind.

He’s still as grounded as ever, but there’s a fragility to it, a certain brittleness that threatens to crumble from within him. He is the Lord of Geo, and yet he is so easily undone by you. The pain is temporary, he knows from past losses, but it doesn’t lessen the ache that resonates in his chest.

For the first time in his long life, he curses his golden memory that makes him incapable of forgetting, though that which he curses is also something he is grateful for. He can’t bear having to suffer losing the memories of your time together.

Your relationship is amiable, like that of old, awkward friends you had fallen out of touch with rather than that of old lovers. It’s what you wanted after all, this sense of normalcy. He has become such a vital part of your daily life that you simply couldn’t cut him off of your life entirely.

He doesn’t know which is worse; having to act as a mere friend when he wants nothing more than to wrap you in his arms and never let go, or to have no contact with you at all.

Morax is not one to ask for things, not one to plead his case to anyone. He was a selfish and proud god, a necessity that was shaped from him by the war. To love a mortal enough to leave his throne and fake his death would have been unthinkable. But that is why he is no longer Morax. He is Zhongli.

And Zhongli? He wants you. Desperately. Enough that he is willing to beg should you ask it of him.

His deceased enemies would laugh in mockery at what has become of the fearsome Morax. How low he has fallen—but it is a burden he is willing to bear. He will suffer as many humiliations as it takes to have you back.

The only issue is that you don’t want him anymore. But he is a man who finds gold where others would see stone. If he has to build his way up from friendship all over again, then it is a task he will do so gladly. As many times as it takes for you to want him back.

Ask: Hii!! Can I request Zhongli/Xiao/Scaramouche (optional)/Albedo/Diluc reacting to their s/o body who has lots of past scars and bruises? S/o was an adventure who loves taking risk no matter how big it is. So I was wondering about their reaction!!! I hope it makes sense!

Note: Heya! This is more focused on the ‘having scars/bruises’ part rather than the adventuring. I’m a bit late but I hope you enjoy it :D !!THIS IS A REPOST!! THE FIRST TIME IT DIDNT SHOW IN TAGS

You’re an adventurer. You take on quests from the adventurers guild weekly, and you’ve explored a big part of Teyvat in the past. Your experience is something that makes people respect you. Though, your significant other can’t help but worry when there’s a new scratch or bruise on your body.

You’re capable of defending yourself. Diluc knows this. It’s not uncommon for you to take on commissions without him. But, every time you kiss him goodbye, he freezes in his place. Diluc’s crimson eyes would follow your figure as leave him behind for the day, and no matter how many times you’ve returned, he can’t help but feel that this might be the last time he’ll see you.

It’s early in the morning when Diluc takes a break from the work in Dawn Winery,– he can’t sit still and do paperwork,–   so he visits Angels share to help Charles. He’s good at hiding his emotions, but the people close to him notice the distant look in his eyes.

It’s in these moments that Kaeya tends to keep to himself, choosing to not tease the redhead for today. He’d watch his brother from the corner of his eye. Diluc is undoubtedly swimming in the endless pool of his thoughts, thinking about you and your safety. Both brothers know why the redhead acts the way he does. It’s not that Diluc doesn’t trust you,  –   it’s the past that chains him down with fear.

In the evening he arrives back home. He’d patiently wait for your return home. With a book in his hand he’d pretend to read, not that he’s able to focus on the words when you’re late. The moment he hears the door open a heavy weight lifts off of his shoulders. His gaze is strong but you see the fragility in them as he approaches you. Warm hands cradle your face and he firmly presses his lips onto yours.

Should you have any wounds, he’ll personally take care of them. Diluc has his own scars and doesn’t bat an eye to any you have. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. You’ve lived your life, and he lived his. But from this moment onwards he’ll be by your side, so please, keep yourself safe for his sake.

‘’Welcome home, love. How was the commission? Oh… Yes, my day was alright. The book?’’  he gazes over to the table where he had left the object. His face flushes red when he noticed what he’d been reading. ‘’Ah… You’re right, it’s a dictionary. It seems I mistakenly grabbed the wrong book while I was awaiting your return.’’

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stop what if

Heizou probably has a habit of accidentally flirting with everyone. Probably you got so fed up with it, you ended up breaking up with him.

Thoma feeling bad that he accidentally spent way more time with Ayaka than he spent time with you.

Childe accidentally hurting you by his excruciatingly big ego, he misunderstands “i’m worried about you” by “you’re not strong”.

Dottore accidentally screaming at you because you disturbed him in an important experiment. Little did he know he forgot you were more important.

Scaramouche keeps denying your love to him after his dark past, people leaving him. You said you weren’t leaving and he doubted it. But now you actually did leave him, all because of him. He regretted it.

Gorou’s loyalty to Her Excellency seemed more important than his love for you, or your love for him. He probably didn’t even notice you left until Kokomi mentioned it.

Diluc gets upset everytime you mentioned about him getting along with Kaeya. He ended up breaking up with you, but he was the dumb one now. It was just a request. Why was he so overdramatic?

Zhongli probably only used you as a coping mechanism, as if you were Guizhong. After you left, he fell inlove with you far too late.

Sometimes Ayato gets overworked. Asking him to rest is difficult. He found you annoying. You left. He misses your annoying personality.

Alhaitham’s suspicious activities.. always trying to find information about the Canned Knowledge Capsule seems to be more prioritized than your well-being to him. Were you just for display?

You hate how Kaeya spends his night in the Tavern than spending time with you. As if he was cheating on you with the Tavern. Ridiculous.

Itto’s personality.. could be a little hard to understand. He never takes things seriously and probably has the biggest ego. He would never take serious discussions.. well.. seriously.

you guys seem to really like this, so here’s a longer version for Scaramouche, Zhongli and Thoma! HERE

I just want them to talk.

do not disturb | wc: 2.7k

Cyno hums in contemplation, the cool water flowing over his fingers. He turns the faucet off just as he hears footsteps on tiles and takes a towel to his hair, counting the four seconds he knows it takes to get to the room.

“Cyno, I really don’t- oh,” you stop in your tracks, right on time. He doesn’t have to turn around to know you’re holding a familiar folder of papers with complaints outlined in red ink. “Sorry. I didn’t…”

“You should really learn to knock first.” He thinks it’s funny because the rooms here don’t actually have doors, just sweeping arches for the great big important spaces, and then tiny arches for less important rooms (like his apparently), and then medium-sized ones for… well other things. Kaveh was the Kshahrewar graduate, not him.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. And… and…” He can just hear you bristle. You even straighten up a little judging from the faint shuffling. “And I don’t know, maybe you should put up a sign or something.”

Cyno rubs the white towel over his head slowly, finally standing up from where he’d been kneeling. “Maybe I should.” He’s seriously considering it—you always bring up good points. “Though, I thought everyone knew only my room is in this wing. You’d have to go out of your way to get here.” That and he’s just come back from an expedition. No one bothers him after those.

Thick water droplets and remnants of the desert circle around the drain. You hadn’t walked in on much. He had been rinsing off the sand grains that stuck to his arms and shoulders and were especially annoyingly weaved in his hair, but he’d also removed his armor—he didn’t typically wear much anyway so to see him with even less was probably too cruel, even by your standards.

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cw: somno, yandere, dub-con

it’s been a long while since dainsleif has travelled with anybody for a prolonged length of time, much less somebody who he looks at and imagines what it would be like to kiss. he holds himself back, apart from you, knowing what he is and what he’s seen and thinking how you should never have to deal with the hideous fallout that is being beloved of the twilight sword (knowing him, loving him, he thinks, is a death sentence). but he cannot stop himself from imagining how silky soft your skin would be, if he were brave enough to strip off his gloves and touch you. how sweet the lingering taste of your lips against his would be, how warm and soft and solid and real you would be in his lap - and how tightly he would cling to you, like a raft in raging seas. 

there is no time that these feelings hit him so deeply as when you are asleep.

dain sleeps little nowadays; he does not really need to sleep to function, though he does take a few snatched naps when he feels safe enough to do so in order to recharge. but you - so solidly and normally human, so fragile and ordinary despite all of this - you require sleep, so he watches over you when you do. sometimes the two of you have a hastily constructed adventurer’s tent, and you have some semblance of shelter - sometimes you sleep straight on the ground with the stars and moon lighting your pretty face.

it’s then that dain’s mind starts to run wild with itself.

for you’re so wonderfully peaceful asleep - your chest rising and gently falling, your lashes resting against the curve of your cheeks, your lips slightly parted. the soft noises you make, sighing and mumbling, when you stir just a little and your brow creases. you’re so, so beautiful. dain can’t help himself.

he can’t help himself strip off a single glove - to caress your face and almost feel he could finally pass away there and then as he remembers how soft the skin of another human is. when you nuzzle into his palm, brush your lips sleepily across it in an echo of a kiss without waking up, he wonders if this is it and his torment has finally been brought to an end and this is celestia.

a touch turns to more - the brush of thumbs across lips, of his hand across your collarbone. he loses count of how many nights he has touched you so softly and so gently with one hand and wrapped his other gloved hand (the abyss touched one, the one that does not deserve to be bare against you) around his cock as he muffled whimpers and whines of your name into bitten lips. it’s enough, he tells himself, fiercely, as he comes over his hand and wishes he was spilling it inside of you. you would not want him. you do not deserve to be touched by filth like him–

but as nights drag on, and you sleep closer and closer to him, smile at him more, fall asleep with your head on his shoulder and a sleepy mumble of his name on your lips … dainsleif isn’t sure how long it will continue to be enough.