hello!! i hope you’re doing great today :))
i’ve never requested before so i hope im doing this right
could i request something v angsty with diluc?
thank u!! <3
＃ GENSHIN IMPACT !! ♡ — SUNSETS WITH(OUT) YOU (DILUC X READER).
#. synopsis! — sometimes, moving on feels impossible. guilt sits in diluc's gut like heavy stones. he'd do anything for one last chance .
#. characters! —diluc .
#. warnings! — heavy angst .
#. word count! — 1.8k .
#. alt accounts! — @ddollipop (nsfw) @yyolkchi (reblog/spam) .
#. others! — navigation & masterlist .
The pain comes in waves.
Sometimes, it laps at Diluc's shores like a comforting kiss, —the kind you used to pepper thoughtfully down the line of his jaw after a day’s work. The kind he'd all but melt under, reducing himself to putty in your hands. Other times, it crashes and roars like the howling wolves of the forests, pulling him in and under, washing him out to sea until he's lost, confused, and losing his will to move forward.
Tonight, he's hurting.
He stumbles in through the door after a night at the tavern serving drinks to cheerful drunks and rowdy lightweights. Kaeya wasn’t there. He hasn’t been since he heard the news, though Diluc isn’t sure why. Or maybe he does know, somewhere deep inside, and yet feigning ignorance is easier than facing things head on. All Diluc really knows for certain is that Kaeya wasn’t there. . . But he’s starting to wish he’d show up again. He’s starting to wish he’d come waltzing in through the door, no need for pity or anything of the sort. Just that cocky smirk and arrogant aura, making snide comments on little things just because he can. Yeah. . . Diluc could use that normalcy.
His heart is heavy with the thought of you. It's been a while, but the wound is fresh. It bleeds and bleeds and bleeds until Diluc lets it consume him, lets it strip him down to a mess on the floor. It bleeds until he falls apart, knowing that come morning he'll have to piece himself back together with reckless abandon and hope for the best. It'll never last long, but he has to admit that sometimes it's nice to pretend that he's learned how to live with the loss. It might even be easier to pretend that it doesn't always poke at his heart, reminding him of the hole you left behind that he doesn't know how to fix or fill.
Tonight, he's drowning again.
Diluc looks around at his bedroom and exhales, shakily so, listening for the sound of his mask of security shattering away into nothingness at his feet. He can't bring himself to throw away the dead flowers on the nightstand, —the ones he got for you in celebration of nothing in particular. Once a beautiful bouquet of cecilias, the petals are long past the point of being shriveled. They've blackened and fallen away from their rotting stems, curling into pathetic shells of what they once were. If Diluc were to pick them up, they'd crumble into dust in the palm of his hands. The vase is void of water now after quite a bit of neglect, but he'll make up for that in the morning. He'll water those long-dead stems and gently sweep the corpses of those lifeless petals into a little pile.
Not that it'll make him feel any better.
In fact, it might as well be making things worse. But he'll do it in spite of that, because you once held those now-dead flowers close to your chest with a beaming smile on your face. You were happy in that moment, and he can’t bear the thought of getting rid of them when you were the one who carefully filled that little vase with water, the one who placed it on the nightstand next to your bed. His bed. The bed you once shared with him each night, wrapped up in each other, thinking maybe if he loved you hard enough it would shield you from the world itself.
Some days, he wakes up and has to fight the urge to slam that vase to the ground, watching as it shatters against the floor. And then Diluc is sure that he’d cry, fall to his knees atop all the shards with no regard for the pain it’ll cause him once he’s wrung himself dry again.
He’s good at making himself miserable.
That’s why he hasn’t washed the sheets in months, —because he’s tricked himself into believing that your side of the bed still smells like you, even after all this time. Acknowledging that it’s faded is far more hurtful than the alternative of clutching onto the pillow you always used, closing his eyes, and pretending that you’re still there with him, snuggling into his chest and mumbling something about how he made you feel safe.
His heart throbs.
All you ever wanted was for him to keep you safe, and yet here he is having completely failed you. And the worst part of all is that he knows you’d be the first person to tell him that he did the best he could, —that he tried, and that it was enough, even though he knows it wasn’t. Diluc knows you wouldn’t blame him. . . So he’s blaming himself enough for the both of you and then some.
Not because it’s what you’d want, but because it’s what he thinks he deserves.
He sits by the window now in that same spot you used to watch the sun set, slinking its way out of the sky as your eyes reflected the dimming rays. Diluc can hear you now as he gazes from the same window you once did, —gushing over the beautiful blend of colors awash in the sky. . . You’d always invite him to share the moment with you. Now, he regrets having said no so many times. If he could go back in time and do it all again, he’d never turn down a single offer. He’d hold you close, wrap you up in his arms, kiss the sweet spot just below your ear to hear you hum ever so lightly in bliss.
He really wishes he could do it all again.
The thought of it often keeps him awake at night.
Diluc feels that same wave of dread wash over him that he’s felt at every sunset since that fateful day. He might have grown to hate them by now if it weren’t for your love of them, —if it weren’t for the lingering shreds of your presence that he swears he feels when he gazes off toward the horizon as the sun lowers itself out of the sky to make room for the moon’s humble glow.
Maybe it’s just another way he’s deluding himself, watering down the agony that reaches for his heart every chance it gets, but it’s better than the emptiness that awaits him as an alternative. It’s better than the nothingness that Diluc knows would swallow him whole if he were to accept things as they are. Bleak. Completely desolate. . . Colder than even the windiest strips of mountainside atop Dragonspine’s all but infinite summit.
At least here he can trick himself into believing that your fingertips are trailing along the back of his hand the way they always did, like little nimble spider legs just dancing along his flesh. Though Diluc has long been a man who prefers his space, you were one of the few people he would thoughtlessly allow close, —closer than anyone else could ever dream of being. So close that it might have been suffocating.
For the millionth time, Diluc is forced to come to the sobering realization that this room no longer feels like his own. This manor, the one his father took such care of when he was alive and well, has been reduced to nothingness. It feels utterly forsaken.
There’s nothing left here, and yet this room of things, dead flowers, little trinkets, and all the memories he can’t seem to part with, is all he has left of you. If he doesn’t come here, where else is there to go? He doesn’t feel you this strongly anywhere else, —not along Mondstadt’s cobble streets, not in the tavern where you’d swing by every now and again to entice him upstairs and onto the balcony, stealing kisses just to leave him breathless under the stars. He doesn’t feel you next to Starfell Lake where you used to feed the ducks and call them by names, —one’s you’d given them. Diluc still isn’t sure how you managed to tell them apart, or even if you ever truly did at all.
He doesn’t feel you like this at the top of Starsnatch Cliff where he took you on a first date, one that was sloppily planned and poorly executed on his part, but you said nothing of it and held his hand below an inky black sky anyway.
Try as he might, he only feels you so stirringly here in the room you tended to when Diluc himself chose not to. When work would pile up for him, you’d take care of all the smaller things just to give him a soft place to land at the end of each day.
Needless to say, the room has divulged into calamity without you.
Diluc wishes he could pull himself together, keep up with the tasks you always took care of with ease. He wishes he could fill your place, but it’s painfully obvious that he doesn’t have the will nor the strength to do so. He’s drained himself of every last drop. There’s nothing left to find inside him. He’s running on empty, and try as he might, there’s seemingly nothing he can do to fix it.
And above all else, Diluc just wishes that everything were different.
He wishes that his dad was still here to talk him down, to give him advice, to point him in the right direction. He wishes Kaeya were here, even if he’s still angry with him. He’d give the world to have a shoulder to cry on, —to have his brother here for the first time in forever. It’s selfish, he knows, considering Diluc drove the wedge between them himself and has since adamantly denied every last one of Kaeya’s attempts to mend things. . . But right now, selfishness is one of the few things Diluc can manage to conjure up.
And selfishly, he’d let the entirety of Teyvat burn to a crisp around him if it meant he could have your lips pressed against his again, even if only for a moment.
Diluc reaches out to open the window. The sunset is gone and the stars don’t glimmer as brightly as they once did. He feels nothing but bitterness well up inside as he listens to the song of the wind and trees. He’s sure you’d want to dance to the tender melody of the breeze stirring the branches up above. Maybe, he ponders, if I send a message off with the wind, it just might reach the right place. . .
With a heavy, aching heart, Diluc traces the window sill, fingertips easily sliding over the smooth material. A sob creeps up the back of his throat as he closes his eyes, feeling that same breeze caress his skin under the moonlight. It’s nowhere near as comforting as he wishes it was, but it’s all that remains. It’s all he’s got left.
Though the words nearly die on his tongue, Diluc forces himself to speak; sending that message off with the wind in hopes that you might hear it wherever you are now.
“I love you.”