cupid’s chokehold
pairing/s: cyno, diluc, scaramouche x gn!reader
summary: it’s simple, really. one moment you’re laughing, the light of the sun brightening your features, and the next his heart is beating out of his chest, face warm and breaths short, an almost pleasant twist to his gut when you lean close. you look at him with fondness dancing in your eyes, and he realizes, oh, he might just be in love. or — the moment they find out they love you.
note: this is really just an excuse to write diluc being whipped, also this was supposed to include childe heizou and xiao but i lost motivation so here ya go!
CYNO
He finds it hard to believe that you’d be so incapable of writing a simple essay. You once admitted to him how you only got accepted into the Akademiya through sheer luck, but he didn’t believe it then. The Akademiya is known for its strict rules and thorough examination of every student it takes on.
But seeing you struggling not to plagiarize an essay is truly pushing his patience. He’s not one to snap or bark out harsh words to those undeserving of it — and he can think of no one more undeserving of his wrath than you — but it is frustrating to watch you stumble even at the easiest of assignments.
“I think I’ve got it! Oh, I made a little mistake on the spelling there, but this is the one that’ll blow my professors away! Cyno, can you proofread this for me?”
He’ll tell you later that he didn’t mean it, and you’ll accept it without hesitation with an accepting smile — but right now, the searing sun made worse by the humid weather makes a short fuse even for the most patient of saints.
“If you can’t do something so simple, then I see no point in partaking in this fruitless endeavor. The Akademiya is harsh and has no room for error, you would be better off leaving than continue struggling futilely.”
He didn’t mean to come off so harsh, as if he’s belittling all your hard work and effort and telling you that you don’t belong in the Akademiya. But the damage has been done, and your hopeful look turns into shock at his outburst, retreating into yourself and quickly retracting the paper you’d been in the middle of handing out to him. Your face closes off, clutching your essay close to your chest and darting your eyes anywhere but his general direction.
“Sorry,” you say, awkward and fumbling, resolutely not meeting his eyes, “For being annoying, among other things.” Then, you rise to your feet abruptly. He can see the way your fingers are clenched tightly at your paper, tight enough to wrinkle the edges such that he knows you’ll regret later for ruining yet another paper. “I won’t bother you again.”
Your voice is uncharacteristically quiet, almost sounding choked off. You turn and give him a brief glimpse of your face, and he realizes that you’re on the verge of tears.
He catches your arm just before you can take a step forward. “Wait.”
You freeze, muscles tensing beneath his touch. He instantly releases you after he feels how uncomfortable it must have made you. The silence between you is so tangible he can almost see it permeating the air, cloying and thick and utterly unwelcome.
He parts his mouth a few times, going through every possible scenario where he says the wrong thing that pushes you to the edge and makes you hate him forever. The mere thought is enough to steal him of his breath. No, he can’t have that, can’t bear the thought of a world where you aren’t there greeting him brightly in the morning and being so shameless as you fall into step beside him despite his rank and engage him in idle chitchat. He doesn’t think he’s ever told you before, but he looks forward to that part of his day the most.
After what seems like eons of standing in silence, he finally speaks. But what comes out of his mouth isn’t the apology he rehearsed in his head.
“Why did the bike fall over?”
You turn to him with an almost incredulous look, eyes wide with unshed tears that he berates himself for. Then, hesitantly, you ask, “…Why?”
The response comes naturally to him, years of reading through his notes and making them himself has all but ingrained such information in his mind.
“Because it was two tired,” he delivers this with a straight face, tone flat and completely at odds with the nature of his joke.
You stare at him for a moment, lips parted in surprise at the sudden joke. He sees your grip on your paper loosen, shoulders relaxing, mouth twisting into something he can’t quite discern, and then—
“Pft.” It starts out small, quiet as you bring a hand to cover your mouth, before it dissolves into a full blown laugh, the kind that has your shoulders shaking and eyes closed, head tilted back and the sound of your laughter filling his ears. He’s never considered that laughs could produce such pleasant sounds, so it comes as a surprise when yours makes something in him want to lean forward to hear more. Or perhaps it’s just you.
The light from the sun bounces off your skin, making your expression all the more radiant.
And Cyno? Cyno doesn’t think he’s ever seen such a mesmerizing sight before.
You’ve never laughed at his jokes, or rather, he’s never seen fit to tell you any of them, seeing as you’ve always been so at ease around him that telling a joke was never necessary. He’ll have to rectify that, he thinks, watching the way your mouth curves up in a smile, eyes dancing with mirth as you finally meet his eyes.
And he’s suddenly struck by the thought of how much he likes seeing you like this — hair mussed from the wind, exhilaration lining your lips, breaths short from laughing too hard, and gazing at him in delight.
And maybe he’s overthinking things too much, maybe the pounding of his heart and the sudden intake of breath is a result of something else, but he wants to believe it’s because of you.
Later, he’ll come up with a proper apology, something a little less joking and a little more serious. But right now, you’re looking at him like he’s the only person in the world, and that’s all that matters.
DILUC
The sun is particularly hot today, bordering on sweltering, but still, you insist on accompanying him in this menial task of picking grapes.
Diluc has always preferred solitude since he came of age, doing things alone and being lost in his thoughts have become things that he finds strangely pleasant, almost calming. But you’ve never been one to settle in silence, always needing to voice your thoughts and fill the room with chatter about all sorts of topics. It’s something he should dislike, all things considered due to his preference for quietness, but you, he finds, have always been an exception to what he considers the norm.
He wonders why.
“And just then, a hilichurl comes out of nowhere and starts throwing rocks at me — rocks! They have crossbows and shields and those battering things, but that one chose to use rocks to attack me! It’s like he thought I wasn’t even worth the effort!”
He idly plucks a group of ripe grapes from a vine, listening to you retell your encounter with a hilichurl that led to you discovering its camp that held a precious chest, only to open it and find nothing but cabbages. You bemoan how it was a total waste of effort, all that fighting just for a few pieces of vegetables you don’t even like.
A small, amused smile flits its way into his lips. It doesn’t escape your notice.
“So you think my suffering is funny, huh?” You narrow your eyes at him.
He turns away and briefly considers the merits of admitting to smiling, not at your plight, but at the various inflections in your tone as you regaled him with your story and the little laughs you let out when you got to a funny part and the way you looked at him with a smile so wide it crinkled the corners of your eyes, reflecting the light from the sun in its near-blinding intensity.
When he turns back to face you, he’s met with fingers on his lips and something small and round being pushed into his mouth. His teeth bites down into it, tender and sweet. A grape, he realizes, meeting mischievous eyes set upon a face that’s full of promises for future teasings and pranks.
The pads of your fingers are soft against his lips. His eyes wander against his will, landing on your lips twisted into a smirk, and his mind conjures an impossibly dangerous thought. Perhaps your lips would feel softer against his.
And then heat is creeping up his skin, searing red across his neck that reaches his cheeks and stops at the tips of his ears.
It’s nothing ostentatious. Not like the stories told in books where they meet each other’s eyes across the room and falter as their hearts beat as one, where they meet in the carnage of a battlefield, offering each other’s hands and knowing without a doubt that they will only ever have their backs for each other until the day they die. It’s not even one where he holds your hand and feels the way his heart leaps at the contact as he realizes what it might mean.
But this is still as meaningful, still as beautiful, suspended in time and carved in stone upon his memories until the winds of time erode it away.
A gentle breeze blows past you, and he catches the barest hint of a scent that consumes his mind and fills it with thoughts of nothing but you and your fingers lingering on his lips and how he’s never wanted to kiss a person more than he does now.
And oh, oh.
It’s a fanciful thought, but he imagines if his life were to become a book, then it should be one with an ending that intertwines with yours.
He considers that, for such a book, it would begin like this — the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and Diluc Ragnvindr is in love.
SCARAMOUCHE
If Scaramouche were the kind to think thoughts that would have him put below the pedestal he’s placed himself at, he’d think there must be something wrong with him.
“Did you really think you could have defeated those monsters all on your own? You’re lucky I was nearby, otherwise you’d be nothing but a bloody splatter on the ground.” His words are as harsh as ever, carrying that biting tone that’s labeled him unapproachable and unlikeable to most anyone — that is, most anyone who isn’t you.
He doesn’t understand you, the reasoning behind your actions and words and generally everything about you that makes you so infuriating. It grates at him, not knowing something, especially when that something pertains to you. Though why that would even matter is beyond him.
You smile at him, a sheepish little thing, utterly unrepentant and unaware of the possible consequences your actions could have brought. Not that he cares if anything happens to you. He’d just rather not deal with the trouble of handling your papers should you die under his service.
(That was, admittedly, a very weak argument that he’ll chastise himself for later. A Harbinger would have more pressing work to do than handle every paperwork about a dead subordinate. Not that the fact about him handling your papers upon your death was untrue, only that it’s only your paper among his countless other subordinates who’ve died that he’ll bother doing.)
Your mask fell off somewhere in the middle of that rather pathetic fight. It’s a breach of protocol to not be wearing your mask while on duty, but Scaramouche chooses to ignore that particular rule. He’s a Harbinger, he’s the one who decides the rules. Having to order you to go fetch your mask to put it back on would be a waste of time and effort. Much more efficient to simply speak this way, he reasons. It’s most definitely not because he wants to see your eyes and the myriad of emotions that pass through them. And even if it is, it’s only a way for him to better read your expressions and discern whether you’re lying or not. He can’t have anyone betraying him the Fatui.
“I apologize, my lord. It seems I’m still unaccustomed to my new uniform.” Your voice carries a sort of lilt to it that makes it more tolerable than most people he’s ever spoken to. It’s not a compliment, lest his mind go against him and begin creating false narratives, it’s an observation rooted in fact. The sky is blue, the stars are false, and your voice isn’t unpleasant to listen to.
He does frown at your explanation. “Unaccustomed? It’s hardly that different from your previous uniform.” He would know, of course, he spent hours watching you in it. Not that he was watching you simply for the sake of watching, no, never, he was merely criticizing your choice of color scheme and the scuff marks and dried blood that never quite went away no matter how many times you washed it. You’ve complained to him enough times about it in a way that no subordinate should to their lord, but he was in a good mood then, so he let it slide… among countless other things he let slide.
You pull at the collar of your uniform. “It’s a bit constricting. I think they may have gotten my measurements wrong—”
He scoffs, crossing his arms and narrowing his eyes. “And you didn’t think to tell me? What use would I have for a recruit who can’t even move properly because of a tight uniform?”
“Well, you did tell me not to bother you anymore with my inane concerns, so I figured you wouldn’t want to hear about this…my lord.” The last part is added almost as an afterthought. He decides to let it slide.
He does recall something along those lines, sometime when he was in a foul mood and had no patience for your presence and the contradictions it brought in his behavior. He remembers being lost and dumbfounded the next day when you turned to leave after giving your report instead of lounging on his office’s couch and telling him about your day and the gossip you recently heard. He hadn’t actually meant for you to stop talking to him, but he was too proud to say so to you, which resulted in a week of silence on both parties. It was completely unbearable, but Scaramouche would sooner cut his own head off than admit it.
“Fine. You’re allowed to speak such drivel to me again, since you clearly can’t function without any sort of assistance from me.” It’s easy to twist the situation as if you’re the one who’s been dying to talk to him normally again instead of the other way around.
You laugh beneath your breath, something bordering on a giggle — a giggle, of all things. The last time someone had the audacity to giggle in his presence was…was a long time ago. Something he won’t dwell in.
“If you insist, my lord,” you say, an almost teasing twinkle in your eyes, and Scaramouche has never been more grateful exasperated that you aren’t wearing a mask. Who do you think you are to show such an emotion like happiness in front of him?
He’ll let it slide though. Just this once.
“Let’s return to the camp. I don’t want to be seen any longer with you looking the state you are now.” He deliberately ignores the fact that people will only see the two of you together once you’re back and not at this lone clearing. You turn to place your mask back on and he lets you. Wouldn’t do much good to have others see your face and plot whatever nefarious schemes their minds will cook up, like talking to you or, gods forbid, flirting with you—
And then he stops, completely frozen in place and unable to hide that shock that bleeds through his carefully crafted mask. He’s lucky you’re standing behind him, otherwise he’d have to kill you for seeing him in such a state. Not that he believes he’ll be able to go through with it, but the thought is needed though not necessarily appreciated.
He turns to you after he’s gotten ahold of his expression, eyes scanning your features and, with an almost sickening lurch in his stomach, finding that you’re not exactly unpleasant to look at.
Your hand reaches out for his arm with worry, and he nearly reels his hand back at the sheer audacity you have for assuming he is someone who needs worrying for but—but.
He rather likes the feeling of your fingers brushing against his skin.
So he lets you close your hand around his arm and look at him with through a mask he knows harbors a concerned look behind it. He nearly laughs at the notion of someone being concerned for him, but alas, you’re such an anomaly that even he can’t bring himself to mock even the worst trait you possess.
You are truly the most vexing person he’s ever had the displeasure of meeting.
Perhaps if you keep touching him like this, he’ll let that one slide too.
