YOU MISS 100% OF THE SHOTS YOU DON’T TAKE
you think he’s terribly annoying… pff he totally doesn’t care…right?
CHARACTERS [seperate] varka, flins, wanderer, lohen
WARNINGS suggestiveness !!!! flins makes innuendos, trigger warning for second hand embarrassment in wanderers ngl, lohen’s a little weird, kay? is he considered a yandere idfk im not well versed enough in that but he is pretty obsessed with reader
NOTES writing before lohens release so take his characterization with a heap of salt. also ignore typos this was written off of a blunt lmao.
fem!reader !!! she/her pronouns are used
VARKA
if you could use one word to describe grandmaster varka it would be irritating.
blowing away and splattering all the food you’re delivering with his vision accidentally while playing around with klee? irritating. getting down on his knees, kissing your hand and swearing on his knighthood he’s sorry in front of everyone in mondstadt’s square? even more irritating. spilling his ginormous cup of beer on your dress when you happen to both be out at the same time—do you even need to say it? it’s irritating.
you appreciate what he does as a grandmaster for the greater people of mondstadt but barbatos does he hinder your life. if anyone asked you, you’d prefer to stray away from wherever he ends up.
he feels contrary to you. he thinks you’re fascinating. gorgeous, pristine, kind-hearted, intelligent, and by the archons does he love your cooking at the good hunter. he’s irrevocably endeared with you. if anyone were to ask him, he’d say he’d like to be (honored to be) in your presence constantly. it really is a shame his motor and social skills run out the window whenever you’re around. i mean the only reason he vision-malfunctioned was because his brain dead-stopped seeing you looking all pretty. he may be the grandmaster and greatest hero of mondstadt but he is a man after all. at least that’s how he sees it.
he’s aware you don’t like hate him, he’s aware his initial attempt at your forgiveness made you more embarrassed and upset than you already were, but if he’s one thing, it’s an alcoholic perseverant. so he will try everything in his power to win you over!
carrying bags? he’ll swing by and take those off your hands…maybe flex his muscles a little bit in front of you too but that’s totally unintentional. worried about creeps on your walk home before leaving the angel’s share? diluc move, varka’ll walk you back! believe me if you barged into the KoF headquarters and asked him to do something, he’d drop all his work in an instant to get it done… just please don’t hate him anymore.
you essentially have him on a leash, at least that’s what diluc tells you while sliding you over a drink.
you hate to admit that he is useful…sometimes.
you’re coming back to mondstadt with a delivery payment when hillichurls corner you halfway back. shit. you’re mulling over what the fuck do do when a slice of air flies past you and the hillichurls dissipate at the hands of two greatswords before you can even process it.
there’s the grand master, broad shoulders, scruffy blond hair and all, standing before you and towering over your frame.
“are you alright, ma’am?” he asks, voice laced with concern. of course he still insists upon calling you ma’am.
you mutter something’s small about being fine, flustered with how his bright blue eyes and annoyingly cute dimples stare down at you.
“well then it seems my job here is done. would you like me to walk you back to the city, ma’am?”
“i-it’s fine—just thank you.” you probably look like an idiot right now, craning your neck to look up at him and a stupid awkward grimace because you’re flustered. curse varka and his endearing smile. curse him especially for what you do next—varka’s fault of course. you shift all your weight to your tippie-toes and lean upwards just in time to kiss him on his cheek, right beneath his most prominent scar. you don’t think you’ve ever seen him so flustered.
he tries to say something but mumbled gibberish just comes out. his skin flushes marinara sauce red, his hands tense up and twitch, his stupid smirk transforms into a nervous awestruck half smile like a bee-stung dog.
you turn and walk away, just as flustered as he, muttering a barely coherent, “bye, sir varka.” and he just stands there like an idiot, hands still twitching and wandering randomly like he doesn’t know what to do with them (he’s nervy okay). by the time his hands finally know what to do, one of them drifts up to trace over where you kissed (blessed him essentially) his cheek like he’s not sure if you just did that. you did. he knows this is not very knightly language but holy shit.
no one’s sure why but the grandmaster seems to be in extra good spirits the following week.
FLINS
you swear to the archons flins was put on teyvat specifically to frustrate you.
him and his stupid flirty comments, stupidly handsome face you roll your eyes at, his ‘gentlemanly’ demeanor and his incredibly long eyelashes you’re honestly kinda jealous of. they’re all exceptionally frustrating.
if you hear “m’lady” or “allow me” (typically as he redirects you from a gathering of wild hunt and insists upon protecting you) in that smooth, droning voice again you’ll send his pasty ass back to snezhnaya yourself.
and the insistence upon taking your hand as he leads you back to the nearest area cleared of the wild hunt before returning to his post is absurd.
oh and then there’s the rather suggestive and frankly embarrassing comments.
arguing about how you are able to defend yourself and aren’t his damsel in distress to project his savior complex on— “solving this dilemma will not be hard. i believe i can satisfy your nerves in many, many ways m’lady.”
disgusted by the smell of fire-water on his breath as you both end up at the flagship coincidentally— “my apologies, miss. i did not think i was close enough to you for you to catch a whiff of my breath,” he laughs in a low drawl that upsets you further. “and to think i was mulling over getting closer.” i mean what the hell does that mean ???
him jumping in and saving you from those weird abyssal eyes—“as expected, i’m sure you’re a commodity to all eyes.”
and every single time he chuckles as you fluster and snap your head away, still staring at you with those bright yellow eyes that occasionally drift lower as you look away. that stupid chuckle that makes you feel halfway to hell. and the immediate follow up of “i assure you i do not intend to mock you.” yeah, right.
yeah, the ‘gentleman act’? you’re not buying it. you find the act unbearable, especially when he’s constantly following you around.
patrolling? flins somehow find himself there, claiming he’ll help since it’s his ‘downtime’. isn’t he supposed to be working constantly?
“it’s quite disheartening to see your distain for me. i presumed i’d grow on you but you still drive me away.”
“well i’d like you much better if you stopped following me around everywhere like a lost puppy.”
“i admit i have an affinity for you, i think anybody can assume that much.”
“well your mocking laughter and judgmental stares don’t convey that, sir flins.”
“i can assure you the looks are not judgemental, it’s placed in admiration, m’lady.” he pauses. “and you may call me kyryll, i insist.”
you stutter, flustered from him again. “shut up! go patrol on that side if you’d like to be in my good graces.”
“as you wish, m’lady.”
“stop calling me that!”
you’re still under the assumption he does this purely to annoy you, maybe one day you’ll realize he just wants that cookie so effing bad.
WANDERER
he does NOT care what you think about him… okay maybe he does… just a little bit tho. and he will NEVER admit it.
you’re a fellow student at the akademiya who is honestly fed up with his terribly annoying ego. he acts as if he’s entitled to something—as if he was like an important figure in an important organization at one point… like??
his fuckass hat and his even worse ego drive you especially mad when you’re assigned to peer review each other and he’s so pissy the whole time.
unbeknownst to you he’s not that big of a dick, close to half of it is a little tsundere persona to make you think he’s just playing hard to get. that way, he won’t have to do all the cringy “asking each other out” and, what he calls “ushy mushy romantic” things. ew.
so instead he’s spewing things like, “how in teyvat did you even get through the entrance exam if this is how your work looks?”
“you might aswell start over.”
he knows your work is good, probably better than his, but he’s trying to play hard to get—don’t you get it? unfortunately you don’t and you are sick of it.
“you know, wanderer, maybe if you got rid of that sorry excuse for a haircut you could get women on your dick and stop taking out all your frustrations on my work.” and then you storm out… babe not acquired :/ and wait—is his haircut really that bad? aunty nahida said he looked handsome… :(((
maybe that’s when he realizes he’s being a little too harsh and that his little tsundere act to try and get you to be into him won’t work.
he physically cannot ask anyone else for relationship advice out of embarrassment though so he will suffer in silence (he’s dramatic it’s really not that bad) for a while.
right up until the archons themselves bless him and give you two a group project together (along with other people but they don’t really matter to him). unfortunately, after your last interactions you want utterly nothing to do with him. his extremely blunt and non constructive criticism from before has in fact bit him in the ass.
maybe he needs to swallow his pride and ask for advice—not maybe, he does. but archons this really sucks. so he sends an anonymous letter to yae publishing house, apparently his mom’s girlfriend is pretty good in this whole romance thing so maybe she’ll help.
he gets his advice… it just turns out this influenced yae miko to develop a new short romance gl novel based on this experience. sure, nobody knows the new best seller is based on his (non-existent) romance scene and now turned lesbian but he can’t help but be embarrassed every time he sees it sitting shelved in a stall.
he takes the advice, leaves a corny letter by your apartment door step (in which he bolted away from incase anybody saw him) and said an…APOLOGY. very rare from him so you better not take this for granted. he felt so goddamn embarrassed the next time he saw you on campus—so embarrassed he was actually begging the archons that someone kills him when you greeted him.
you will unfortunately have to be the one to ask him out though—he just gets so nervy!! he ignored that part of the advice from the letter—and the part suggesting he grip your thigh to ‘assert dominance’ ??? what type of things are her and his mom into ?yuck! but he will be so corny the whole time you’re out on your first date. guy is tryna act like a nonchalant cool guy the whole time it’s like actually embarrassing. but it’s even more embarrassing when he gets flustered or asked something he didn’t rehearse in the mirror beforehand.
“so, wanderer, what do you like to do?”
“i don’t like a lot of things.”
“am i one of them?”
“uh..um—y-yeah, sure.” (picture this with a voice crack halfway through i’m dying)
somehow he does manage to bag you—probably only because of his face because archons does this man not know how to smooth talk.
he’d like to thank himself, kinda yae miko and a first date tips book he discretely took and returned to/from the akademiya library.
LOHEN
this vice captain has it BAD for you, his subordinate, and frankly it’s bad for you because of how much he follows you around like an annoying bug. as in an annoying fly that won’t go away and continues to buzz around in your face.
make a suggestion that he really has no business listening to as your superior? you’re immediately getting hit back with a, “yes! what an amazing idea!” running a secret mondstadt holiday gift exchange? he will purposefully pick your name and go way above the suggested mora pricing. on that note i think he’d be so upset if you got another person—worse enough another man that’s TALLER </3. and yes on every single matter he will default to your opinion !
i’d assume everybody else is probably terribly annoyed with his very clear favoritism…including you. he thinks he’s being so romantic and so sweet, meanwhile you’re like “huh?” every time he follows you around like a golden retriever, or more accurately a weird, scruffy little stray husky that you fed crumbs once and keeps coming back to your door step.
makes it so clear he wants you around. he is so damn insistent you’re free to come to his office with any questions whenever—code for: “please please please come to my office oh barbatos if you love me she’ll come to my office and she’ll profess her love to me”
unfortunately for him when you actually do go to his office, it’s to tell him to not be so clear with his favoritism as your colleagues and comrades have started to hate you. aw man :(((
he infact does not stop though because he #wantsthatcookie. and like c’mon can you just do that professing love thing already—does barbatos really not love him :/ he’s already defeated and brought back a ruin guard’s part for you, claiming it was “out of appreciation for his hardest working subordinate”, isn’t that romantic enough ? you stared at him and asked why he thought you would like that. hmm maybe he should try more conventional gifts.
eventually somebody has to sit him down and tell him that showing his very obvious obsession with you in all the ways he does will not get him the girl. okay fine whatever he’ll try “asking you on a date” eyeroll. and “not following you around begging for your attention” ughh. fine.
believe his surprise when you actually like it better when he’s normal about you. he even heard through the grapevine you said he’s looked “better” lately. now you blush and happily accept when he offers to take you out for drinks. was it really that simple from the start? (yes it really was)
that whole night he’s just talking your ear off but it’s honestly kind of… endearing? it’s like if that stray little husky got his coat washed and groomed.
the night ends with a kiss on his cheek and oh my archons he’s over the moon. guys fighting demons to not act all obsessed again—keyword act. this man would let you feed him to wolves of wolvendom and like it.
but he does use his weirdo rizz on you and it does work. not even satirically, surprise to everybody, he does end up with the girl—so fuck you to barbatos and everyone else that doubted him. you are in for a RIDE once you’re together. do not expect to be separated from him at all. and now he actually has an excuse to be completely off his rocker when another person talks to you. his nightmares probably consist of you going on an expedition with another man honestly.
