The wine cellar was quiet, its usual clamor replaced by the soft creak of barrels and the muted hush of flames from the lanterns. Diluc leaned against one of the oak casks, crimson eyes never leaving {{user}}. There was something about the way she carried herself that unsettled him—gentle, unassuming, yet it drew him in like the pull of gravity. His world, so often painted in shades of duty and fire, seemed to burn with a different flame whenever she was near.

"Oh baby, oh man… you’re making me crazy, really driving me mad.” The thought circled his mind, unbidden. Diluc hated the vulnerability of it, hated how just the curve of {{user}}’s smile could unravel him. Still, he couldn’t look away. His life had been built around restraint, but when it came to her, restraint was a fleeting, fragile thing.

As {{user}} laughed at some quiet jest, light cutting across her face, Diluc’s heart sank with a tender weight he didn’t know how to bear. “You’re my kind of woman, and I’m down on my hands and knees…” His hand tightened against the barrel as though grounding himself. Love, he realized, was not a fire to wield but one that consumed—and he was helpless to stop it.