Work Text:
zhongli gazed upon the framed pictures that hung from wall of the gallery. he stared lovingly, tenderly—with the softest eyes one could picture on a person.
‘the definition of beauty’ was this show’s theme. he was given the task of capturing moments he thought were most beautiful. they could’ve been anything: a seaside view, an enchanting sunset, even a stray dog he saw while on the way to his gallery.
however, instead of those, he chose a single man. out of the countless amount of beautiful things in the world, a single man surpassed all of them.
his attention was pulled away from the pictures as, in the corner of his eye, a young girl stood by his side. she seemed to be staring just as tenderly as he had some seconds ago. she looked away from the pictures to meet his eye.
“who’s that, sir?” the girl asked.
“he’s.. someone special,” zhongli replied, “someone very dear to me.”
“is he beautiful?” the girl questioned him again.
“i like to think so. if i didn’t, he wouldn’t be here, would he?”
zhongli switched his gaze back to the pictures, a gentle expression presenting itself on his features once again.
“he’s very beautiful to me.”
this man, the one most beautiful to him, was a complex man. he wasn’t an open book, he didn’t like people knowing too much about him as it was painful. he once lived cheerfully as a child should, but many things, specifically bad, happened.
he’s lost things and people that were most dear to him. he spent most of his years on his own, and he believed it would stay like that till he drew his last breath. however, despite that thought, he found someone. that someone was zhongli and somehow, someway, he was no longer walking the path of loneliness.
he was stand-off-ish. he didn’t want to get too close, he didn’t want to risk losing another person that he had grown fond of. he couldn’t because, if he did, he’d go mad. so he rejected tenderness, rejected the warmth and kindness zhongli offered whilst unknowingly providing zhongli exactly that.
he tried to run from the thing called love as he was terrified of it, but it caught up to him. it was inescapable, there was no way he couldn’t fall in love with him—zhongli. from the clumsiness of his money spending to the offerings of tours around his homeland. diluc ragnvindr grew to love all of them. every bit of zhongli had seemingly meant everything to him.
zhongli had grown to understand him, or at least understand him as best he could. to zhongli, diluc was a book—a complex yet beautifully written book.
this book had many pages, pages that made up the being named diluc. some of its pages were beautifully crafted to perfection, some were blank while some were filled to completion. some were scribbled over, purposely made hard to read. they were messy, covered with thick and heavy black lines. they were parts of diluc that he had yet to come to understand, and he was okay with that.
no matter how many scribbled over, blocked out pages there were, diluc would still be the most beautifully crafted book zhongli had ever had the chance of reading. he knew diluc’s book was still unfinished, and he understood there were parts of diluc’s story that were needed to be discovered.
there were parts that needed to be gently handled and carefully looked over as every new page is one most meaningful to zhongli.
even if it took years, zhongli was going to read diluc’s story to its completion. he was going to take all of him in, accept every bit of him, just as diluc did.
he was going to stay, till the very end, because diluc ragnvindr is his one and only. his definition of beauty.