dusk | various genshin imagines

home [ayato]

ayato was smiling like a maniac.

well, not in that kind of sense. but he's smiling like a maniac. tender smile beaming towards your direction. hands tucked in his slacks, standing tall in front of the university doors as if he owned the place - gazing at your way far too long than a normal person would.

12:05 p.m., the warm but placating afternoon breeze slightly lulling your skin. strays of hair in a marginal but closely noticeable frenzy, a book in hand of what seems to be charlotte bronte's jane eyre, reading under the sway of the sacred sakura tree — almost too soothingly for his liking.

you're deeply immersed in your own world, far too engrossed in a piece of fiction to the point that you don't notice his loving gaze from afar.

and to ayato, it just felt so right.

if it were up to him to rewrite the narrative, you weren't like a shot of espresso. you are more like a cup of white hot chocolate in the cold of winter. you are more like the smell of freshly baked cookies, the crackle of the fireplace, the flip of the page of a jane austen novel. you're not like being bathed in sunlight, but you basked under the cool of the university's gust — every puff of air co-mingling with your state of calm. in place of being incredibly energetic and enthusiastic, you're his serenity and his heart's ease.

he never precisely knew what to call that specific feeling, wrangling off the tip of his tongue, until now that is.

you felt like his every ideation of polished wood floors and a graceful banister that curved up toward a soaring second floor gallery, beautiful high arched windows with velvet drapes, lazy mornings cloaked under silk sheets, pride and prejudice in hand next to the comfort of the crackling heat courtesy of your abode's fireplace.

you felt like home.

"good afternoon my love, bronte again?"

you beamed a smile as you hoisted your head to meet his warm gaze. "mhm! shall i read it to you next time?"

by gods, did it feel so right that he never thought he could ever want a person as much as he wants you.