he loved me on a tuesday, he loved me in spring (tartali, 1/1)
summary: Childe is on assignment in Natlan over his birthday. Zhongli comes to visit.
rating: E
notes: Happy birthday Childe! My best boy & Genshin main; here's to another year of killing things together!
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Zhongli stepped down onto the Natlanese mountain (impressively old; it grumbled at length beneath his feet) and turned his attention toward a familiar pull. He tucked an arm behind him and the other out to occasionally brush the lush, dripping vegetation out of the way as he climbed to meet his betrothed.
Childe, back somewhat turned to Zhongli, was gripping a hissing snake by its body and a pinching hold to the back of its skull, and speaking to it.
“Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “Didn’t realize that was your nest. But you really shouldn’t pick fights you can’t win. If I let you go, I expect your complete surrender and immediate retreat.”
Zhongli smiled, both at Childe offering advice he would not heed himself, and that conversations with local aggressive fauna was how he apparently entertained himself whilst alone. His nature was one of a perpetual light, breezy charm. Zhongli stepped closer, deliberately disturbing the leaf litter so his approach would be heard, and saw Childe grow alert.
“That is a blood snake,” Zhongli said before Childe could launch an offensive. Childe turned, still holding onto the frantically writhing snake. “They are non-venomous, but known for their rather feisty appetites. They will eat scorpions, alongside other large, dangerous prey.”
“This little guy?” Childe peered closer at the snake. “Wow! A true warrior then. I offer nothing but my highest respects, and will wear its bite as I do any other battle scar.”
With that, Childe knelt to set the snake gently on the ground, and for a moment it lay twisting upon itself, arching up to once again bare its fangs in a hiss, before turning tail and racing off into the undergrowth. Childe dusted off his gloved hands, and then turned his engagement ring around his finger.
“I’d ask how you found me,” Childe said, “but I already know the answer. Hello, Xiansheng. To what do I owe the honour?”
Zhongli came closer, keen for little more than to touch after nearly a month apart. Though Zhongli could use both his free time and ability to traverse Teyvat at will to see ever-travelling Childe whenever he wished, there were assignments Childe required privacy for. Whatever he had been doing in Natlan had left him with a sunburn, the lingering bitter scent of old blood under the sweat of exertion, and a curious gem in his pocket which radiated power. Hmm. The local archon may take umbrage with that last detail; Zhongli asked the stone to quiet to a barely perceptible thrum as he took Childe by the hands and gave them a squeeze.
“Zhongli-xiansheng?”
Mortals moved through their conversations at such speed, though Childe was normally more patient than this; it had only been a few moments. Still, it was understandable. Zhongli’s presence was an unexpected variable while Childe was in the middle of his duties.
“I know you are at work,” Zhongli said, “but if there is any day which may call itself exception, certainly it would be today.”
“What?” Childe looked genuinely puzzled. “I’ve been in this stupidly hot jungle for ages ... what is it, Morsday?”
They both smiled at the subtle jest, and Zhongli gave Childe’s hands another squeeze, reassured by how solid and steady they felt. That stone was not one a mortal should likely hold onto for long.
“It is Barosday,” Zhongli informed him, “and also your birthday.”
“Oh!” Childe laughed, giving their hands a playful swing. “Ah, I forgot. Happy birthday to me! Twenty-three and getting cuter every day.”
He winked. Zhongli’s smile grew, heart warm with affection.
“Happy birthday,” he said. “I wish you a year filled with food, and travel, and battle, and love ... and I am here to give you your gift.”
“Present?” Childe grinned, drawing Zhongli closer. “Is it you?”
“If you have the time for such a diversion,” Zhongli replied, confident Childe would take that as a challenge and act accordingly, “but there is also this.”
He freed one hand, plucking the finely carved wooden box from his private realm, and offering it to Childe, who accepted it. He turned it over a few times as if attempting to divine its contents, listening to its gentle thunk at these sudden reversals, and then let go of Zhongli so he could open it, leaning back against the tree he must have found his serpentine friend in.
“Oh! Xiansheng ...”
Childe pulled out the engraved jade dagger, unsheathing it and immediately twirling its grip into a proper hold and admiring its subtle curve, tilting it to examine its edge, and then flicking it over to catch it by the blade and examine the handle and guard.
“This must be ancient,” he said, thumb brushing against the ridged ornamentation of the handle, carved to the shape of a curled dragon preparing to strike. “It’s ceremonial?”
“Yes,” Zhongli said with a nod. “It has a long, bloody history, however. Initially carved by Rex Lapis as a gift for the first Tianquan, as symbol of the trust he was placing in their leadership, it soon fell into new hands when the Tianquan was assassinated by a jealous rival in business, who tore the blade from the Tianquan’s belt in the midst of a heated argument and struck. The Tianquan would be buried with this blade, but graverobbers seeking divine treasures soon unearthed it and it began its travels across Teyvat, being sold to various collectors who each fell to misfortune soon after, as a gift of the divine so corrupted by an act such as murder becomes a lodestone for ill will. When it returned to Liyue’s shores a thousand years later, it was to the point where anyone who grasped it was suddenly compelled to murder.”
Childe had eyes which revealed nothing and a lord’s training in self-restraint atop this, so at times Zhongli, already no specific expert on mortal feeling, found him difficult to read. Yet Childe was also generous with his smiles, and the way his hand tensed on the hilt and wrist idly turned suggested he was imagining these countless deadly thrusts, so Zhongli was sure he must be enjoying this story.
“So you got me a cursed blade? Xiansheng, you shouldn’t have.”
“It is no longer cursed,” Zhongli said. “Though I am sure you would enjoy such a gift, and would perhaps possess the self-control necessary to resist its impulses, the blade has been subject to a long purification process in the heart of Jueyun Karst.”
“Aww.” Childe’s teasing pout soon shifted into a wide smile. “What if I start killing with impunity with it?”
“You may,” Zhongli replied, taking the box from Childe and shutting it so he could return it to his realm; he would place it in their bedroom later. “This would indeed likely return it to its bloodthirsty state. That which is healed still remembers its injuries ... this is, of course, your choice.”
Childe laughed, spinning the blade a few more times, seemingly playful but no doubt memorizing its weight and balance.
“What kind of choice is that?” he asked. “It’s a gift from you, twice over, and you wouldn’t want it to be cursed. Don’t worry, Xiansheng. I’ll keep it pure.”
With that, he tapped the flat of the blade to Zhongli’s jaw before leaning in to kiss him softly, and from the gentle shushing sound between them, sheathed the dagger.
“Thank you,” Childe murmured against Zhongli’s lips. “I love it. I love you. And I love blades!”
Zhongli’s chest thrummed with amusement at that, pressing his hand to Childe’s chest and giving it a rub.
“It is to my benefit you do, for it does make for an easy time, deciding upon a gift.”
“Get me a sword that cuts stone or something next year,” Childe said, shifting so he could use the silken red rope Zhongli had freshly affixed to the sheath to tie the dagger to his belt, wearing it by his Vision, in place of prominence. “Oh, aren’t I lucky ... you coming all the way to this stupidly hot place just to give me a gift ... what a husband he’ll be, they’ll sing in the streets --” (sometimes, Childe was in the habit of going off on a tangent as if he imagined an invisibly audience before them) “-- and really, you must be even hotter than me! You could have worn something light, you know, not that you don’t wear a suit so handsomely. Are you okay? I have a water flask.”
Childe was consummately attentive, a caretaker at heart, and Zhongli surely loved him more than he had ever loved anyone in his long life. He shook his head, with great fondness.
“I am alright. Perhaps you could extend your break a little longer, however?”
“For you? Always.”
“Then I hear a waterfall, a short distance away. Let us take a stroll.”
Childe smothered a giggle, no doubt at a private joke over Zhongli’s formality, and then bowed before taking up Zhongli’s arm as if a young lady expecting escorting.
“Lead away, Zhongli-xiansheng.”
Zhongli lay his hand over Childe’s on his arm, indulging this joke, and they carefully began to make their way through the forested slope, stepping over thick, smooth grey roots which bulged out of the ground and ducking under heavy vines whose drooping red flowers attracted a kaleidoscope of white-and-gold butterflies the size of one’s palm. Colourful birds sailed overhead, a large snake eyed them as they passed from where it was curled around a trunk, and the heavy press of humidity made all of this seem to glisten. It was remarkably beautiful, and alive, and it reminded him of the man at his side, though as a son of snow Childe would likely not see himself in such environs.
“So how are things in the city?”
“Well, though the director declared our last order of pine coffins to have been made of a haunted tree, and is insisting I find a way to earn us a refund without explanation to our carpenter ...”
They caught up over the hike under guise of a stroll, though it was too short a journey for Zhongli to share all he wished to. When they were apart, he would find himself noting the smallest things and wondering what Childe would say to them. Would he be charmed by the way large bees tumbled off the unsteady platform of the neighbour’s underwatered, limp-stalked peonies? Would he like the way Zhongli had reorganized the spice cabinet to place Childe’s favourites near the top? Would he see Zhongli boil too much water for tea, mind on two cups when only one was needed, and feel poorly for it?
They had, in truth, never lived together for any time worth noting, but Zhongli still thought of him often at home, a place that seemed to always be expecting someone it had not had time to learn to miss.
“Now that’s pretty!” Childe tugged Zhongli forward once they broke through the treeline to see the narrow waterfall, tumbling in a slow spray of silver down rocks thick with moss and thick-leafed plants, to reach a deep, clear pool at the bottom feeding onto a stream winding further down the mountain. “And it looks cold ... say, how about a swim?”
Zhongli replied by reaching for his tie, and Childe beamed at him as if Zhongli would have had any reason to refuse.
“Honestly, the heat’s not so bad after a Liyuen summer, but the bugs ... if I start scratching, just pretend you don’t see it ...”
“Hmm. I apologize for not thinking to stop by Bubu’s Pharmacy before my visit for a soothing ointment.”
Childe laughed at that, stripping off his clothes with his usual careless tugs at clasps and seams, though folded them and set them in a neat pile with a soldier’s precision all the same. He gave the dagger a stroke before finishing his undressing; Zhongli set his clothes next to Childe’s, liking the sight of them touching, and then with a whoop Childe jumped into the pond, sending water cresting over its sides. Zhongli smiled, waiting for Childe to reemerge, pushing wet hair back, before he entered at a more sedate pace, happy to give Childe the chance to watch him, which he always did with sharp focus.
“Hello,” Childe said, swimming up, though the pond was not deep enough to need swimming in, and wrapping his arms around Zhongli’s middle to tug him down. “Aren’t you beautiful?”
Childe always said such compliments not so much marvelling, but as if he was satisfied to have observed a fact. Zhongli pushed a stray lock of hair back from Childe’s face, noting that Childe looked a little thin in the face; was it the growing maturity this birthday noted, or was he not eating enough? It seemed more the latter; Zhongli wished he could bring Childe home, and cook for him, though Childe would always insist on helping. He was not an easy man to spoil.
“It is your birthday,” Zhongli said. “I believe it is upon me to observe your beauty, not the other way around.”
“My birthday, my rules, and rule number one says you’re the most beautiful ...” Childe pushed Zhongli through the water, until Zhongli’s back reached the mossy stones which bordered the pond, Childe’s arms preventing any jarring at the sudden move. He was exceptionally gentle as a lover and required urging into more, which perhaps not many would guess at, but he had a steel grip of methodical restraint under his chaos and playfulness. “Though I am also a definite looker, so really, everyone’s jealous when they see us go by ...”
Childe placed a kiss to Zhongli’s ribs. Zhongli relaxed with a fond sigh, tracing a thumb along the curve of Childe’s ear, dripping down to set sway to his earring, and then sliding back to rest on Childe’s nape, rubbing the dip where neck met head, deeply scarred as if someone had once nearly severed his spine. Most of his scars were hidden from the casual observer, and Zhongli had come to learn them all.
“Childe ...”
“Mh-mm?”
Childe glanced up from where he was stroking his hands down Zhongli’s waist, kissing down his chest in a light, teasing way.
“Your birthday, and your rules, but may I make a suggestion?”
“Suggest away, Xiansheng.”
Childe made a show of folding his arms atop Zhongli’s middle and fluttering his lashes, but his patient attentiveness was true, and Zhongli smiled. Childe’s care was noted, and appreciated, in all its forms.
“Here,” Zhongli said, gripping Childe’s broad shoulders and giving a suggesting tug. “Sit on the edge.”
“Hmm...?”
“I wish to taste of you.”
Childe blinked, and smiled slowly.
“Well ...” Childe drew the word out, shifting off Zhongli in a ripple of cool water. “I guess, if you insist ...”
There had been times Zhongli had to insist. Childe was truly a remarkably controlled person, with many walls. Zhongli had felt at times he was an ocean wave hopelessly battering a sturdy seawall, and how strange, to think this mountain would feel such a way about a living tempest.
“I think you must like my insisting.”
“Oh no, Xiansheng, not at all, it turns my poor head.”
Childe sat next to him for a moment with a grin before pushing himself up onto the rocks in a splash. Zhongli moved before him, bracing his hands against Childe’s strong thighs, feeling along the line of muscle and yet more scars. Childe hummed, spreading his legs a little and leaning back against his bracing hands as he gazed down at Zhongli. Zhongli looked back with immeasurable affection, and Childe’s expression softened, usual roguish smiles replaced with a small, gentle one. One of his hands lifted, cupping Zhongli’s face to brush a thumb against his lower lip.
Zhongli caught that thumb between his teeth and ran the tip of his tongue against the callous of it, and Childe’s lashes lowered.
“Hmm ...”
Childe pushed his thumb a little deeper, stroking against Zhongli’s tongue for a moment, thrusting loosely once, twice, coaxing out a heat and a wetness that made Zhongli swallow. He pulled back slowly, and then dropped his hand to his cock, touching himself as he looked upon Zhongli’s parted lips.
“I think you must have heard my thoughts, all the way in the Harbour, because I was imagining just this the other night ... there’s always something a little cute about Xiansheng like this. But if you can read minds, you have to tell me, or I’m going to start embarrassing us both.”
“You could hardly embarrass me when my own thoughts would betray me,” Zhongli replied, watching a droplet of water making its tremulous way down Childe’s flexing muscles, as if seeking to join the wet slide of skin on skin, Childe’s scarred fist about his heavy cock. “To be in bed, or making tea, thinking of how it is to be an unfurled flower in richly tilled soil, dripping with nectar and waiting for your tending touch ...”
Zhongli’s hands slid higher, and one joined Childe’s on his cock, stilling him. Childe let out a long breath.
“And what kind of touch have you wanted, Xiansheng?”
“I could offer you a novel’s worth of fantasies, but simply put ... I want to feel opened around you. To feel you, deeply.”
His thumb against the veined skin, he could feel Childe’s cock twitch at that.
“That can be arranged ... c’mon ...”
Childe’s other hand swept into Zhongli’s hair, combing it back and palming the back of his head, and then pressing firmly down. Zhongli gladly sank, slowly, to continue enjoying the firmness of Childe’s hand, and soon his mouth was where it had longed to be, split wantonly around the thick, eager weight of Childe’s cock; he moaned for the satisfaction of it.
“Ah? What was that sound? You must have really wanted this ...”
Childe slipped his hand free from his cock, leaving it to Zhongli’s touch alone, and Zhongli stroked as he sucked, palm hot and tongue gladly burdened. This was an act he had not been sure he could enjoy, and his lover’s size was intimidating to an effective amateur, but when he had decided to try, Childe had been exceptionally careful with him. He still was, and Zhongli could go flush, to know such a kind side of this man who frightened so many.
He could still smell the blood; he had never thought he would enthusiastically bed a killer, had not dreamed of longing for him, of loving him, but they had come to understand each other, their values and their ambitions and the things they kept in the most secret corners of their heart. It was not a shy, naive love; it was bursting and all-consuming, filling as Childe’s burning heat.
“You’re so perfect,” Childe breathed, hand tensing, blunt nails an eager scrape to Zhongli’s scalp. “So hot and wet ... can I go a little deeper? Mmph ... you like that, don’t you?
Zhongli took him deeper, curled his tongue, worked his hand, from the tenderest skin of the sack up to meet his own lips and feeling their parted slickness, humming in pleasure. Childe continued his praises, his sounds, ever-generous, and then was giving a tug to Zhongli’s hair.
“I’m going to come,” Childe warned. “You wanna swallow, darling?”
Childe’s ‘xiansheng’s were really just petnames, but to hear him use a proper one, as he did on occasion, made Zhongli frisson with want as he sucked harder. Childe moaned, hips raising and hand tensing as he gave a few shallow, urgent thrusts until he spilled. Zhongli did not love the slimy cling of it on his tongue, in his throat, but there was the raw eroticism of the act, of knowing he could take everything Childe had to offer ... but he still preferred having Childe between his legs, and feeling as if Childe was trying to fuck a child into him, planting his seed deeply within.
Zhongli swallowed, with grace if not ease, and pulled back to look up at Childe, whose face was set with a direct, fervent passion he only showed during sex and battle.
“Happy birthday to me,” he said, and his smile returned, nudging Zhongli back so he could slip back into the water, kissing him deeply. He tasted himself on Zhongli’s tongue, sucking on it until Zhongli was shifting against him. “Hmm ... you wanna rinse your mouth?”
Childe shifted back, offering a cupped palmful of water with a smile that was only partly teasing, and Zhongli shook his head with a smile, grabbing that hand and directing it back underwater.
“I would rather you apply yourself to another way to ease my discomfort.”
“Eh? But it’s my birthday, not yours ...” Childe pulled Zhongli into his lap, settling on the shallow bottom of the pond's edge and grinning up at him. “Shouldn’t I just send you home wanting more?”
Zhongli hummed, draping his arms over Childe’s shoulders and shifting to straddle him; Childe’s hands grabbed his hips, their fond, familiar rest. Perhaps an obvious counter to this teasing banter would be to suggest returning such a favour at the end of the year, but Childe would gladly bring Zhongli off through multiple orgasms before considering his own.
“I suspect this would be more of a denial for yourself than me.”
Childe was perhaps too much used to seeing himself as the weapon, the tool, there to act upon others and not to consider himself as a soft thing wanting a gentle touch.
“What are you talking about? I once spent a whole week not masturbating. I’m right next to a monk.”
While Zhongli certainly enjoyed Childe setting their pace and drawing things out, attending to Zhongli so lovingly, he would also see his husband-to-be feel so good as he deserved.
“Shall I step aside to encourage further self-discipline, then? I have many mountains on offer, should you wish to retreat for a year of meditation.”
Childe pulled a face – he was not so bad at meditation as he claimed, though if he were a student under Zhongli’s tutelage Zhongli would consider him capable of reaching greater heights – and sighed dramatically.
“Alright, alright, you win. If it saves me from such a fate, I suppose I can be kind ...”
Childe’s hand danced back, sliding down to rub two fingers against Zhongli’s entrance, and Zhongli arched into the touch, relaxing for it with a pleased sigh.
“Offer me all of your kindness,” Zhongli said, “and I will offer you all of mine.”
“Hehe ... if we weren’t already engaged, I’d say you were proposing.”
Zhongli smiled at that, and dipped his head to kiss Childe, moaning as Childe’s finger curled teasingly inside. When he pulled back to speak, Childe chased him, surging up in a splash of water as his mouth claimed Zhongli’s. Zhongli allowed a few moments of Childe’s eager tongue and lips drawing out a soft, spooling heat from his innermost core before he finally retreated, a hand to Childe’s chest to still him.
“I would gladly propose to you every conversation, until we should be married, and even then, I would ask you again, simply for the joy of hearing you say yes.”
It was important for Childe to know this: Zhongli’s want was such an active, desirous thing that it was almost a need, and he would never let Childe doubt that.
“Ah, Xiansheng ...” Childe pushed a second finger in; Zhongli took in a sharp breath. “I would say yes. Over and over and over again.”
Zhongli smiled, and kissed him once more. The water moved in gentle, lapping waves, rippling out from their joined forms as Childe eked out Zhongli’s orgasm with clever fingers; not long after he was moving in Zhongli, pressing him to the mossy stones as he rocked between Zhongli’s folded legs, sucking kisses along Zhongli’s neck until he was sure to have marks, however little time they may linger. At the urgent edge of his climax Childe was wildly resplendent, taking as he wanted, just as Zhongli liked it, and Zhongli peaked around him with satisfaction and approval dripping off his tongue.
When their coupling was done, Zhongli gazed up at the gap in the forest’s canopy which spilled bright sunlight upon them, watching a flock of long-tailed birds sail overhead as he pet Childe’s hair, his lover contentedly draped against him, head pillowed atop Zhongli’s chest.
“I know well the joys of flight,” Zhongli murmured. “I have seen the furthest reaches of the sky ... but still, you bring me heights I have never before reached."
“Mmm?” Childe gave him a half-squeeze of a hug. “God of Sex right here, I know. I’m so good at so many things I amaze even myself ...”
Zhongli shook his head at the deflection, Childe ever caught up in the steps of his dance. Zhongli had learned to follow the rhythm, though he could not claim to be so good at matching it, and it was not a thing he needed to learn.
“You are that,” he agreed gently, “but you are also someone who makes me very happy.”
Childe huffed, and shifted to kiss Zhongli’s breastbone. Sometimes, Zhongli thought he would gladly let Childe crack open his chest and reach inside. He had no gnosis, but there was nowhere within him he would not let his lover reach.
“You make me happy too, Zhongli,” Childe said, quietly, but not hesitantly. “Happier than I ever thought I could be.”
Zhongli knew well how Childe felt; to dream of a pleasant, unobtrusive retirement, where he could find contentment if not something greater with the weight of so many years and their memories upon his shoulders ... and then to meet a corrupted young warrior from afar, who had worked himself almost unintentionally into Zhongli’s heart, and helped him see all the more he could dream to have ...
“If happiness is the greatest gift I may offer you, then I will ensure you always have it.”
“You’re sweet ...” Childe laughed. “But I don’t know if it’s the greatest gift. I mean, ancient cursed murder knife. Also very neat.”
“Hm. I shall have to peruse my collection, then, and see if I should chance upon another.”
“Zhongli-xiansheng’s armoury ... now there’s a sexy idea ...”
They lingered in each other’s holds for a little longer, talking softly enough that even the waterfall’s laconic tumble downwards covered their words. A private world of their own, in this beautiful corner of Teyvat, free of any pretense or responsibility for a spell.
Time kept its hold, however, as it always did. The sun moved, and Zhongli had to see the carpenter, and Childe had to make for the ruins at the mountain’s peak. They parted, and took a few more minutes to dry in the sun; Childe laughed when Zhongli told him he had installed a new birdfeeder for the sparrows.
“Such an old man,” Childe teased. “Will you show me how to build one, so I can make one for my family?”
“Of course,” Zhongli said, drawing Childe’s hand to his mouth and kissing it. “We may do it together.”
“I know Mama misses you ... we need to let her sigh about what a real gentleman looks like again ...”
This family would be Zhongli’s family; their lives would be each other’s lives. Zhongli had agreed to a proper wedding, but Childe had been too busy for it yet, so Zhongli felt he would offer an elopement before the year was out. Happiness, he found, had a way of encouraging haste, but Zhongli had yet to regret seizing every opportunity he could with Childe.
“Back to my hike I go,” Childe said, giving his new dagger a pat and gazing up at the waterfall, no doubt contemplating climbing up the slick rocks. “Not much longer now ...”
Childe did live a dangerous life. Zhongli did not resent him this, and would not stop him from seeking out that danger, but he knew to value every moment he shared with this warrior.
“And I will see what I may offer our carpenter.”
Childe looked back at him, smiling with great kindness.
“I’m sure you’ll fix it right,” he said. “Zhongli-xiansheng can do anything ... ah. Visit again, in three days? I should be out of the jungle by then. We’ll have a bed and everything.”
“I will,” Zhongli said, and inclined his head. “Goodbye, Childe, and my best wishes again.”
Childe nodded, darting in to kiss Zhongli’s cheek before pulling back with a grin.
“Thank you, Xiansheng,” he said. “And thank you for remembering.”
Zhongli always would. He took one last chance to admire Childe’s colouring against the greenery, the affection in his toothy smile and the way he kept one hand on the dagger, and then left, returning to the steadily banked golden glow that was Liyue, always warming him no matter how far he was from home. Here, atop the cliffs which overlooked the harbour, he took a moment to cast his gaze south-west to the distant pull that was Childe and his ring, before heading into the city with a smile.
Three days. It was not so long, but he would mark the days all the same.
END
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