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saetoru · 1 year

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[ TO LOVE ] SCARAMOUCHE.

to love is to betray—at least that’s how scaramouche has always seen it.

and then he meets you.

“this is my bath,” you tease him lightly, and even despite the shooing motion of your hand, even despite the soft glare sent your way, you still make room for him to settle between your legs.

“well, it’s also mine now too,” he huffs.

he leans his back against your chest, let’s his body melt in against yours, let’s the soft trace of your hands fill the empty cracks with something he’s lacked for long time.

scaramouche is almost certain you realize he’s in love with you before he comes close to knowing himself. and it’s funny—even though you fall first, he falls harder.

maybe it’s just the world being cruel once again, just as it always has been with him. it’s cruel, downright evil, really, that something about you makes him forget so easily who he is, who he’s supposed to be. love has always written itself as betrayal—but you make it seem so promising, luring out the softest parts of him, the naive ones that hope and hope…just to crumble in the end, like always.

but then you wash his hair, lathering shampoo into your hands and working through his hair softly, slowly, delicately like he’s fragile.

“admit it. you just like it when i wash your hair, huh?” and you’re still teasing, still using that slightly amused tone when you speak to him. he should be insulted, he thinks, but there’s a smile on his face.

for a moment, he notes that he’s lucky his back is facing you and the smile stretched across his lips is hidden—otherwise you’d have the satisfaction of knowing you’re right. because he does love when you wash his hair, he loves the closeness and the safety and the feeling of being wanted. of being cherished. of being something to someone without having to earn it first.

but he can’t bring himself to admit it, so instead, he scoffs, leaning more weight onto you as he quirks a brow.

“well, why wash it myself if you’re around?”

it’s his way of giving himself the upper hand—his way of convincing himself that love is not the reason why he so desperately chases the tenderness of your fingers against his scalp. no, instead, he convinces himself that mortals such as you were made to serve him like this. to treat him like he’s holy and divine, like he’s the god you’re meant to worship as you kiss his shoulder with a giggle.

“that’s true,” you hum, “why would you do it when i can take care of you?”

but you’re different—and it scares him a little. you don’t worship him like he’s a deity, like he’s all mighty and the answer to your prayers. instead, you simply love him, like it’s a choice, like it’s something you want.

you cover his eyes as you rinse out the suds. love. you cup his cheek and admire him. love. you lean down and press a kiss to the tip of his nose, teasingly grazing over his lips before pulling away. love.

everything about you is completely in love—but to love is to betray, and he knows the inevitable will be soon to come.

so he denies the urge to pull you back in, ignores the almost painful need to feel your lips press against his, turns away every part of him that screams to let i love you spill from his lips.

because every time he loves, every time he so graciously gives every piece of himself—like the heart he doesn’t have, even offering the parts that don’t exist and giving them up anyway—love always tastes like a bitter sip of betrayal.

i love you, he wants to say. but he knows as soon as the words slip, so will you from his fingers. just like the last time—just like the first.

“you don’t need to take care of me,” he grunts, “i’m fine on my own.”

“on your own,” you hum in thought, as if you’re carefully taking in his words. “isn’t that lonely?” you ask softly. by now, your hand has resigned to rubbing slow circles into his chest, pulling him in closer, almost as if proving a point.

i’m right here. you’re not alone.

“no,” he says stubbornly, “i’m above needing—”

“cause sometimes i’m lonely,” you admit, cutting him off. there’s no shame in your voice, not even a trace of hurt or sadness or even hatred. instead, you smile, pressing another kiss to his shoulder, and then the crook of his neck as you murmur, “but i guess not so much when i’m with you.”

“me?”

“yeah,” you nod, resting your chin on his shoulder, cheek pressed against his, “you. cause i love you, you know?”

and once again, scaramouche realizes he’s in love. he’s been so painfully in love for so long—and he thinks you’ve known it for even longer.

and to love is to betray, he thinks—but you’re still here, still holding him tight in your arms as you smile into his skin. so he finds a little hope, a little relief, as he closes his eyes and listens to your heartbeat against his back.

after a moment, with a tight grip on your thigh and wobbly lips, he quietly whispers, “i think i love you too.”

#idrk what this is but that’s okay. it’s for me u. just a jumble of thoughts about him and me <3 #teepods.writings #drabbles.#scaramouche x reader #scaramouche fluff #scaramouche x you #kunikuzushi x reader #genshin x reader #genshin x you #genshin fluff #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact x you #genshin impact fluff

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solarisfortuneia · 2 months

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— 𝐟𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐬.

and the smell of camphor dancing in the wind.

✦ info: he didn't know he'd lose you so soon. (come back, please. even if it is just for five more minutes.)

✦ featuring: alhaitham.

✦ warnings: angst, character death (reader), heartache, 1.2k words, somewhat proof-read.

✦ notes: i cried so goddamn hard writing this. why is my first work after hiatus pain. why did i pick up the angst wip. but!! i'm writing again, so that's good. (more notes at the end.)

he didn’t know that it was your last day together.

he didn’t know that the smile you gave him that afternoon, your eyes sparkling like sunlight upon the serene waves of the ocean, would be the last he’d ever see. that the playful light in your gaze would fade so very soon, slipping through his fingers like sand.

he didn’t know that last night would be the last time he held you close while you drifted off to sleep. he didn’t know that today would be the last time he’d wake up with you.

he didn’t think he’d lose you like this.

he didn’t think he wouldn’t be able to save you from that blow.

“please, please,” he begs, both to you and to whatever force that is just barely holding you together. “just stay with me for five more minutes, please. until i can get you somewhere.”

the rain soaks him to the bone, clothes and hair sticking to his skin. your lips stay motionless, eyes shut.

“wake up, please,” he bargains. “you can have all the five minutes of extra sleep you want later, i promise. just—” his vision blurs, and something shines on the ground before it is gone, swallowed by damp earth, lost amidst drops of falling rain.

desperately, he tears off parts of his traveling cloak to staunch the bleeding. deep inside, he knows it is futile. he knows your wound is too great. he knows what lies ahead. but he cannot help but press the cloths to your wound and pray.

please, please tell me it’ll be okay.

please stay with me, beloved. i’ll read you all the books in the world. i’ll sleep in with you everyday, even if we end up whiling away our time.

please. stay. stay with me. i can’t lose you yet.

“— just wake up, beloved.”

by some miracle, your eye flutters. just a bit. just enough to set hope ablaze, just enough for the grip on his heart to loosen a tiny bit. he buries his face in your shoulder, resting his head against your neck, uncaring of the blood that stains his clothes. your blood. on his clothes. his hands. everywhere.

no. no. this can’t be happening.

he feels you strain beneath him, your unwounded arm gently, weakly brushing his back. he jolts upright, eyes trained on your face. you send a frail smile his way. he clasps your face softly as you nuzzle into his palm.

“alhaitham—”

his full name. archons, how long has it been since you called him that?

“— take good care of yourself, okay?” you tell him, chest heaving, your fingertips touching a tear on his cheeks. “i love you. so much.”

those are the last words he hears fall from your lips. he presses a kiss to your forehead, to your eyelids, and to your cheeks and to your lips, over and over and over until he feels your breath slow, hoping they’ll say what he knows he cannot manage to choke out.

i love you.

he stays there next to you for who knows how long, holding you until the rain slows and a faint rainbow smiles in the sky.

until he can’t smell camphor anymore.

—

every person has their curiosities.

they’re just the little traits that set them apart from others, the things that make them tick just a little bit differently, the things that make them, them.

for instance, someone may be obsessed with collecting tiny furniture, while another eats the crusts off their sandwich before actually consuming it. someone may have an affinity for the most niche aspects of linguistics, while another can accurately predict the next raindrop that slides down a window pane.

after all, no two people are exactly alike, are they?

alhaitham knows he’s got his fair share of these curiosities himself. his aversion to soup and all things that resemble it, to name one. and with you, he’d noticed two things.

number one: the scent of camphor that seems to linger on every inch of your person.

he’d caught whiff of it almost immediately the first time you met. you were but one of his juniors in the akademiya, filled with bright-eyed curiosity and anxiety to match. you had tripped over a stair and bumped into his table in the library, bringing the mountain of books in your arms crashing down.

and with subsequent coincidental meetings, he learnt that the subtle scent of camphor dancing in the air meant you weren’t far away.

you were, unfortunately, one of the poor souls who seemed to be cursed with constantly recurring minor illnesses, and almost always walked about with a stuffy nose. and so, you always carried a small disc of camphor in a handkerchief, as well as in your pocket.

you swore up and down, left, right and center that sniffing the vapors helped make breathing easier.

‘it’s my grandmother’s remedy, alhaitham! camphor always works wonders. well, that and eucalyptus oil.”

alhaitham may not know the validity of your claim or the legitimacy of the cure, but he knew to never, ever question a grandmother’s remedy. that, and he’d much rather refrain from starting a back-and-forth about something so small.

and number two: your neverending pleas of different variations of ‘just five more minutes!’

“five more minutes, ‘haitham. please.” you’d whine grumpily when he woke you up to start your day. “let me sleep in for five more minutes.”

“five more minutes, habibi,” you’d ask when he put down the story you’d requested he read out to you before bedtime. “read me the part where she finds the music box?”

“five more minutes, baby,” is what you’d tell him when he asks how much longer you’d take getting ready. “you can’t rush perfection!”

those five more minutes were never five minutes long.

but he’d always, always indulged you and those pleading eyes of yours. as stoic as he appeared to be, you lived in his heart. of course he could never deny you anything under the sun.

—

alhaitham remembers that silly little song you sang over and over, the one you’d learnt from a kid in the bazaar. he’d taken you to see one of nilou’s performances, and, friendly soul that you were, you’d struck up a conversation with some of the eager audience members before the play.

“oh, how i wish i was a bird flying free,

i’d see the world, every mountain and every sea!

oh, how i wish i was a cloud in the sky,

wouldn’t you like to wave to me as i pass by?”

you’d hum that rhyme on every idle afternoon.

loss is inevitable. he knows that, with how logical and rational and straightforward he is. he’d lost his parents, but he was far too young to remember. he’d lost his grandmother, but she passed in her sleep of old age, serene and wise.

but you? he didn’t think you’d leave him this soon. a singular wish sits in his soul, making its home in his bones.

a wish that you’d come back, somehow.

he wishes you gave him five more minutes, just as he always did. but he knows that you could’ve given him five more hours, five more days, five more years and five more decades and it would still not be enough time spent with you.

a blue feathered bird comes to perch on his shoulder, interrupting his musings just as he raises his face to the sky. he sees the heart shaped cloud that floats idly above sumeru city.

he thinks of the rhyme again, and something in him tells him to wave. and so he does. a scent so familiar lingers, faintly brushing his nose in the wind that picks up.

“alhaitham, it's time to go.” kaveh calls his name softly.

alhaitham doesn't move. “five more minutes,” he says, echoing your favorite phrase. “i smell camphor in the breeze.”

✦ extra notes: my alhaitham characterization for this fic stems from how i believe that when alhaitham is attached, he's attached. so i focused more on that, and less of all that rationality and whatnot. this one loves deeply, yk?

that camphor thing is a real grandma remedy in our household (my mom would tie some in a hanky and put some under my pillow and still to this day reminds me to do it when i'm sick) which is what originally sparked the idea for this

when i'd initially started this wip, i didn't expect it go this way. usually i write with my brain, but i think i wrote this one with my fingers working faster than i can think hsjhsj so sorry if it's kinda out of place lmao but yk what? i'm happy with it still even though i feel like it doesn't have my usual quality.

thanks for reading.

#—🖋#・ nouveau livre ˎˊ˗#astronetwrk #genshin x reader #alhaitham x reader #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact x you #alhaitham x you #genshin x you #emotional blabbering ahead in the tags beware #this is hitting me in a place i didn't know existed hjsjs #like. i haven't lost anyone but i have lost my life as i know it?#this past year was full of so many endings and i've been struggling in some way everyday #like i didn't know that the last time i saw my friends would truly be the last time we ever saw each other #i didn't know that i'd be bidding goodbye to my parents as i left home through an airport #ANYWAY ENOUGH DUMPING. ig i'm just telling you to hug the people you love tighter and cherish every moment you spend with them #time goes by really quickly and you don't know where it'll go #ily guys #ew barf feelings </3 /j

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