Dream House

Author's Note: Hello once again and welcome to another Genshin Impact fanfic, its been a long while since my last one and though I rarely play the game anymore, I still love the characters. This was originally an old Snowbarry Flash fanfic I wrote way back 2017 and I repurposed it for this story, honestly it felt better suited for them tbh.

Warning: This is unbeta'd so all mistakes are mine, it is also fairly short than what I usually write so apologies for that. This is an AU so characters are kind of OOC. With that, I hope you enjoy.

-0-

It hits Diluc one cold morning when the rain outside is calm and peaceful, he remembers it as he practically shoots out of bed. The entirety of the dream is still fresh in his head and the weight of the pain still in his heart as he grabs his paintbrush and heads to his small studio on the bottom of his two story studio apartment. Tucked in the corner near the kitchen, there laid an empty canvas on the easel, the canvas he has agonized over since he lost the point of painting the beauty of life in the first place, the canvas that now taunts him with the tainted dream as he begins painting.

He remembers the dream every time he closes his eyes, the smell of the flower and breeze of the warm air, the noises of the water cascading on the shore, even the feel of the wooden steps underneath his feet, and he sees her there too.

And so he paints, he paints the fluffy white clouds and blue skies, he paints the small meadow dotted with yellow, red, and orange flowers, he paints a tree with a small tire swing tied to one of its huge branches, he paints the grass and the small road and the pretty little stream that sat beyond the meadow in the backyard. Then he begins to paint the house. He paints the windows, the roof, gamble dormers even the chimney. The feeling begins to weigh itself down on him as he paints the small, cracked window that stood in the small front porch of the house.

Then he stops at the small empty space, he hesitates, he doesn't know if he can...or should, but she was there. In his most somber memories and hopeless daydreaming she was always there. So he paints her sitting on the front porch smiling at him. He paints her dimpled smile, her shining grey-blue eyes, her blonde hair tied into a small braid, he does what he can to paint a portrait of Jean Gunnhildr in their dream house.

When he finishes he takes a step back and admires it and it's almost as beautiful as he remembers it, the house that they dreamed together, the house she had loved, the house they could've been happy together in. He smiles and he feels a tear run down his cheek as he looks at Jean in the painting, it was as if he was right there with her, that in her dreams there was actually a place for him somewhere. In the painting it's springtime, the house is basked in the light of the sun and flowers and trees looked bright and alive and Diluc smiles sadly to himself as he thinks how beautiful it all could've been.

And as always Diluc doesn't bother to frame it, somehow the appeal of the painting bare and naked with all its jagged and messy edges gets to him and he doesn't bother to get it framed or even sell it. Lisa tells him it was possibly the most beautiful thing he has made, Rosaria encourages him to showcase it at the local art gallery and even Kaeya tells him he wants to buy it. Sadly, Diluc turns down the offers, wanting to keep something selfishly to himself for once. He nails it to the brick wall on the small hallway near his front door just past the living room so he can pass it whenever he leaves or enters the apartment.

-0-

You can do this Jean...she tells herself...just get in there and try to get out before anything can happen.

Jean stood nervously outside his door, she can't stop herself from feeling nervous and she's doing that biting her lower lip thing she does when something heavy weighs on her mind, and there was. A million things were running in her mind right now but now's not the time, she was just here to get what she needed and she'll be gone in a flash.

She takes a deep breath and raises her hand to knock only to have it miss the door completely when it swung open and Diluc is standing on the other side of it and Jean notes his messy hair, wrinkled shirt and five o'clock shadow. Christ…she thought…he looks like a mess.

"Morning", he groggily greets her, scratching the back of his head.

"Actually it's 11 in the afternoon", she answers.

Diluc pauses for a second and looks behind him and sees it was already 15 past 11 and lets out a sigh, he was oversleeping again it seems and turns back to her.

"Right I was working late last night and - "

"I uhm...I accidentally left my sweater here", she mumbles out, cutting him off, the embarrassed shy girl she thought she had long since outgrown slowly surfacing.

Diluc ducks his head and nods and invites her in, she curses at herself for not even saying a quick greeting or even a Hi as she enters the apartment. He even offers a cup of coffee but she refuses and tells him she was just here for the sweater and notes Diluc still does his awkward mannerism and she almost smiled to herself as she watched him bound upstairs to retrieve the supposed sweater and she stands in the middle of his living room and looks around, the place hasn't changed one bit.

It was still a mess, she thinks this place is a manifestation of Diluc himself. Books are still tucked in a small shelf under his TV, his small collection of movies, albums, and TV shows still on the small windowsill, his couch has blankets over it and she thinks he likes sleeping there rather than his own bed. There were coffee rings on the top of his glass coffee table along with dozens of sketch pads placed underneath it and on it, she even sees some of his sketches and drawings strewn haphazard on the ground and she notes the one he made of a dandelion, she doesn't focus on it longer when Diluc comes back down with her sweater in his hands.

"Thanks", she says as she takes the sweater back.

"No problem", he replies and smiles at her and she mentally kicks herself for overthinking the entire scenario in her head.

See? He's perfectly fine, Christ Jean you're the messed up one here...she mentally scolds herself.

"I should get going", she begins walking towards the front door with Diluc following behind her but not before the painting catches her eye and she stops. "That's new...", before realizing what it was. "...oh".

Diluc holds back the twinge in his heart when he sees Jean look at the painting and hopes she doesn't recognize it. But of course she recognizes the farmer's porch and the small crack on the window and the springtime meadow in the backyard. It was the house, their house, the house they spent months finding, the one with the small front yard but had a huge back yard where Jean can make her own little meadow and had that small little stream that snaked on the backyard just over the wooden fence. There was even that big tree that had a small tire swing.

Then there was her-she recognizes herself where she was sitting on the front porch wearing that blue dress she always loved, her hair was as long and elegant in the painting and she's smiling there with her old, dimpled smile. It was as if Diluc took a picture of the first time they visited the house, maybe he did, he was always the sentimental one between them.

There was a pregnant silence before Diluc can speak up "I-uhhhh made it you know, I had a dream and-"

"Did you even want the house?", she cuts him off once more with the question that bites the air in his throat, she wasn't even looking at him when she asks, still admiring the painting.

"You-you wanted it", he shyly replies as Jean turns her gaze back to him.

"That doesn't really answer my question", she answers back remembering all those "I want/I dream/I need" conversations they had laying wrapped in each other arms in the late hours of the night.

"It-it meant something to you", Diluc says as he rubs his neck before stopping and looks at the painting. "To me it was a house to live in and that was it, but it meant so much to you that if you wanted a house with a tire swing, I would've given it to you". He turns to her and drops his arm down and she could see the pain behind the words. "I would have been happy living in a cabin or-or a fucking RV as long as it had you".

She scrambles her mind for any possible excuse to go and leave it all behind, but she can't, she doesn't want to. She wonders why they're standing in a cold dingy apartment rather than the house they've always wanted, why they were behind old walls and shitty looking windows rather than the big ones and open spaces and too many rooms for them, she even questions the distance between them in the small apartment.

For the first time in her life she doesn't want to have a reason anymore, she didn't have to be scared like she was back then, she wasn't ready back then. Because she saw how her parent's love and marriage dissolved over time and she was terrified of it happening to her and Diluc. Because she was 26 years old and was about to have a house and everything she ever wanted but she was so scared that she ran away from it all. She ran away from a future she always wanted because it terrified her so much.

"I-I didn't come for the sweater to be honest", she finally admits and the knot that tied in her chest slowly loosening as she takes a step closer to him.

"I could see that", he replies as he tries to close the distance between them.

"I miss you". she says and Diluc tries to hold back the sob at her words.

"I miss you too", he answers.

"I'm so sorry", her voice cracks as the tears spill, the tears of regret and sorrow she hasn't shed and now comes pouring out. "For everything, for-for leaving and-and…".

That's when Diluc pulls her into a tight hug and she buries her face on his shoulder. He breathes in the lingering scent of her strawberry shampoo and her warm skin.

"It's okay", he reassures as they pull back and close the distance between them once more.

A light rain begins pouring down outside, it finds its way into the apartment and fills the silence that follows afterwards.

-0-

Diluc finally tried replacing the old tire swing with a proper plank of wood and ropes a couple of months after they moved in. He complained that he needed it in case he gets a flat tire while driving but she knows it's because he doesn't fit in it. She sits on the front porch with a cold glass of lemonade in her hands as he stalks back to take shelter and get away from the late afternoon sun. She wipes the sweat from his back and tells him he didn't need to replaces the old damn thing if he doesn't want to, but he just tells her to trust him and it was going to be fun and she rolls his eyes at him and smiles fondly as she watches him take another crack at it.

The painting sits on the hallway on the foyer above where they keep their car keys and wallets, it was still unframed, the jagged and messy edges blend seamlessly with the rest of the house and it's not perfect but they're happy.