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QUICK ANGSTY REQUEST!!! diluc telling reader that he can't be with her because he's putting her in too much danger and reader's like "you can't just say that to me" Please please please im hungry for angst right now. I also posted this on your other blog because im annoying 🤠but just ignore it if you can't do it
Warning: angst / comfort
A-n: I cried the whole time writing this …
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This … this couldn’t be true, right? It had to be a cruel joke that someone put him up to, a farce, a nightmare that’s what it was. Only a nightmare but, no matter how many times you shook your head, how hard you dug your nails into your skin, how desperately you swallowed the pain building in your throat, nothing woke you up.
This was real.
It was all far to real.
“Don’t … don’t say that.” You stepped toward him, hand shakily extended to reach for the arm that once held you so carefully, so protectively close to the pounding heart you never wanted to stop hearing. You reached, but the heart shattering reality broke you when he took a step away.
“It’s the only way.”
“It’s not, there are other options!” The agonizing weight of his words felt like boulders and each time he glanced at you only to sigh and turn his head, every single time he spoke with that voice you recognized the first thing in the morning, the voice you’d know through distant fog when nothing else made sense - he made sense, he always made sense. Your hand captured the fabric of your shirt as you eyed him and you did your best to ignore the stinging in your nose.
“… to keep you safe. It’s too — I’m too dangerous, I’ll only hurt you too.” The hair you knew the feeling of, knew the comfort of from the countless times you’d passed your fingers through it now shielded his face from your vision and the removal of him ripped away another part of you.
“I’m capable, you told me yourself.”
“Not for this. You nearly got yourself killed and for what?” His tone turned harsh but his shoulders angled themselves just enough so you could see the color of him.
It hurt, to hear him get angry at you, to hear his tone slip into one you’d only ever heard directed at annoying bar-goers, but what hurt most of all was the fact that he saw so little of his own life as if it wasn’t worth sacrificing everything for. “For what? For you, I couldn’t just —“
“That’s exactly my point, Y/N!” He turned and you saw his eyes. The knee-rattling, breath stealing torment he held in those eyes made the tears fall down your cheeks. Where you crying from your own heartbreak or empathizing with his own. “I will not see you destroy yourself for me.”
“It’s my life!” He scoffed, pinching the bridge of his nose. You knew that tactic, you’d employed it many times when trying to hold the tears and emotions at bay but, right now, you were merely a victim to your crumbling heart.
“Why are you being so stubborn?”
What a stupid question. “… because I l-love you.” Your lip quivered, the breath you exhaled stuttered like a teakettle just beginning to reach the right temperature. “With everything that I am … I love you.”
He turned to you, eyes shaded by the color of the burning dawn and you felt your tears cool as they curved around your jaw. Even before he began to speak, long before you heard his words you were already shaking your head to avoid them. “Y/N, I don’t …”
“Please, don’t say that to me. Anything I beg you. Hate me, curse me, walk away and don’t look back but, archons, don’t say you don’t love me.” Trembling, you covered your mouth and hid from him. “I couldn’t take it.”
The soft sobs you couldn’t hold back anymore began to fill the room, your cheeks were soaked in the heartbreak erupting from every inch of your being. The man you loved, the man you’d stand next to come hell or high water was also the man currently creating a hell you were sure you wouldn’t survive, and the thought of that broke you.
Time moved so slowly and you were certain if you lifted your wilted face from your palms you’d find yourself utterly alone. It was so quiet that when you heard the sound of his footsteps the pressure of your fingers against your forehead felt nothing compared to the silent wail from your lips.
Warmth, heat, arms so strong you could be crushed by them.
The steady beat of a heart you memorized the rhythm of pounded in your ear while fingers you loved to touch weaved into the hair you were sure was a disaster.
Confused, emotionally overwhelmed sobs became muffled in a coat you knew the scent of, the feel of, and when your nails dug into the fabric the tears you wept dampened the cloth.
“Why are you so stubborn.” He asked, voice strained as he pulled you so close to him you thought you’d suffocate but were so ready to accept that fate. You could feel him shaking, or was that from your own rattled heart and tired arms you snaked around his shoulders, under his hair, and stretched yourself until the floor seemed like an afterthought.
“I-I le-learned from so-someone I care ver-very deeply f-f-for.” You stuttered against him, face twisting to bury itself in his neck while he did the same to yours and the feeling of his breath there forced a sound of relief from your throat. The two of you embraced for an unbelievably long time. The comfort of his arms around you, the heat radiating off of him it drowned out everything else, even the tingling pain in your legs as you pushed against him felt so far away.
Diluc tightened the hug so much you groaned; it was his emotions getting the better of him so you returned his intensity with a squeeze of your own. “I was so … scared.” He whispered, fingers adding pressure to your back and slightly pulling your hair.
“I’m sorry.”
“The darkness, the evil and corruption that follows everywhere I go means you are always at risk.” Nodding your head, you pushed his hair away from his neck and curled your fingers around his coat. “If I were to … if it took you …”
“It won’t.” He was shaking again, his voice becoming muffled by your shoulder and trying to pull his head to where you could see was like pulling a tree from the ground, roots this deep were nearly impossible to sever. “H-hey.” You called to him, forehead pressing against his before he could hide away from you again. Your thumbs brushed away his damp cheeks, eyes searching his before they closed. “I love you, okay?” His hands gripped onto the fabric of your shirt and you stumbled more into him. “I will fight.”
“Y/N-“
“Hold on.” Your fingers rested against his lips and your heart flipped at the touch. “For me, I’ll fight. For Teyvat, I’ll fight. I’ll fight every day if it means you get to be here and, and …” You stopped him from speaking even if the sensation of his lips grazing your skin made you weak. “I know you’ll do the same for me. We are a team. I won’t abandon you just because it gets a little scary … so … don’t abandon me.”
The tears welled up in your eyes. The crooked and tight smile you shared with him was an attempt to hold back the feelings threatening to spill out for the hundredth time but the sigh that escaped you out when his hand cupped your cheek tipped the scale.
“It’ll be dangerous.”
“I don’t care.”
“Why?” His lips were right there, so close, so warm you could feel the heat of them, the heat of his breath.
“You know why.”
“Say it again, please.”
“I love you, with all that I have I lo-“ Diluc captured your words on the lips that could banish the darkness, the lips that curled into a smile you’d never stop protecting, the lips that called your name and now, as he kissed you as if to give you his life, they became the lips that held yours.