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There’s an elegant finger tracing the rim of the cup in front of him. Rich black leather drags across the porcelain: gentle and calculating, never a moment wasted. His glove catches on a minuscule crack that probably does not go unnoticed by the brown-clad man. If he does, he pays it no mind.
Ajax wonders if he would touch him in the same manner — would it be featherlight, dancing across his skin like star conches washing up on the shore? Would he run his fingers slowly across his arms, his back, his face, because if anyone had all the time in the world, it would be him? Would his fingers pause at each and every scar he wore proudly? Would he like them like Ajax does? Would he be just as certain; one step in front of the other because he’s built mountains with his hands with ease?
Ajax doesn’t get to ask.
“There’s a ship heading to Snezhnaya in three days,” is all he says. It’s blunt and he thinks it should have shook the earth beneath them, but all it does is land quietly on the wooden surface of the table. It settles on his chest, ugly and baring its fangs. It grazes his lungs, leaving another scar. Ajax thinks Zhongli wouldn’t like this one.
Zhongli lifts the cup to his mouth. Ajax tries his best not to stare at the way the man purses his lips or the way his throat bobs as he swallows. Ajax tries not to think of kissing him. Bitter tea be damned. He could learn to love the taste in due time.
“Have you settled all the paperwork and the new task delegations at the Northland Bank?” Zhongli asks, because of course he does. Molten gold eyes give way to no emotions. Ajax is glad he doesn’t see relief in them at the prospect of this dinner at Third Round Knockout being one of their last, but he doesn’t see sadness in them either.
A soft breeze brushes through Zhongli’s hair. The yellow-orange horizon adds a nice glow to the amber tips of the strands. The chatter at the other tables surrounding them fade into the background. They don’t matter. Zhongli is still waiting for an answer, so Ajax nods.
“There’s nothing left for me to do here in Liyue,” Ajax replies as he struggles to pick up a piece of meat with his chopsticks. He thinks it sounds too much like he’s lying so he adds, “Except I never learned how to use these things.”
“You never heeded my instructions properly,” Zhongli says quietly, and it’s so soft that Ajax looks up to find an odd expression on his face. There’s a slight pull on one corner of his mouth, and if Ajax lets himself hope, it could have been a smile. It’s gone before he can make sure. “I suppose no amount of time will be sufficient for you to be adequate in the art of chopsticks.”
Ajax snorts. “Are you teasing me, Xiansheng?”
A smile appears this time. Ajax is sure of it. It’s as certain as the sun sinking behind them. “l am merely telling the truth.”
“You wound me,” Ajax grins, feeling a lot lighter. “Contrary to what you know, I am quite the fast learner.”
“That, you are.” Zhongli sets the cup down. “It seems that I do not know much about you, Childe.”
Then there it is again: it’s a monster and it’s ugly; it’s baring its fangs. Ajax sets down his chopsticks.
“I’ve been here a long time.”
“Mn.”
“I thought I was going to hate it here.” Ajax lets out a sharp laugh. “It was so warm, beyond anything I could have imagined coming from back home. Almost every dish has jueyun chili in it. People don’t use forks or knives.”
“And do you remain to hate it here, as you say?” Zhongli hums.
How could I hate anything that has you in the middle of it?
How can I hate anything you’ve built from the ground, with all the dirt and rubble and brute strength? How can I hate what you fought so hard to protect? How can I hate anything that you love, if it gives me the chance to sit across you in this moment, who we are beneath all our masks tossed over our shoulder like they never mattered?
To love Liyue is to love Zhongli. To live in Liyue is to walk along his spine. His bones are not fragile.
“There is a place in Guyun Stone Forest with four ruin guards,” Ajax says instead, albeit gingerly. Zhongli doesn’t move, patiently waiting for him to continue. “I went there after having to contact one of my Fatui Agents stationed in the area. I nearly lost my arm in a stray blast, but I’ve never felt so alive.”
What I mean to say is that I love it here. To love Liyue is to love you.
“Hungry for a fight as always,” Zhongli chuckles. “I take it that Liyue has grown on you.”
Ajax doesn’t reply to that. Ajax tries not to think of kissing him . There is a pool of want at the pit of his stomach; Ajax finds that he always wants. He wants and he wants and he wants so he takes and he takes. Everything he has ever held had his fingernail indents on them. He wants, so he takes, but there is a certain beauty in this unmarked man before him: his skin from where it shows beneath his glove at times and the unmarred plains of his neck and jaw like a blank canvas for him to paint on. Ajax is not an artist. He is a warrior. He only knows how to leave scars.
“What time does your ship depart?” Zhongli asks when the silence stretches on far too long. Ajax grips his cup too tight.
“Midday,” he forces out. He doesn’t want to talk about it despite being the one to bring it up. The monster in his chest latches itself on him and refuses to let go.
To leave Liyue is to leave him.
The god watches him for a minute.
“You do not wish to leave,” Zhongli states after a while, and it was never a question. He says it with full certainty and Ajax thinks about the ex-archon’s finger running in circles on the rim of his cup. He tries not to think of kissing him.
When Ajax looks up after a moment, there is something unreadable in Zhongli’s eyes. Ajax swallows thickly. He thinks he can’t breathe.
“The answer to your predicament is quite simple,” Zhongli continues. He looks straight into Ajax’s eyes and the latter is reminded that this is a god over six thousand years old. Ajax would never win against him.
“How?”
A leaf from a nearby tree falls to the ground. The couple seated next to them get up as they finish their meal. The world continues to move, but for Ajax, all has ceased. He wants to kiss him. He always wants.
“Stay.”
Zhongli says this like he leaves Ajax no choice. Like there was a choice to begin with. Like Ajax wouldn’t choose him.
There is still so much of Liyue he has yet to see. I am not done falling in love with you yet.
“ You know I can’t." And it feels like the thing in his chest had finally gotten to him. This soft plea, an alternative to the future they both know they can’t control and yet—
And yet it’s everything to Ajax, born and raised in Morepesok amongst frozen lakes and a bunch of people who looked a lot like him. Fallen to the Abyss, losing himself, then finding it beside a man who talked about Liyue like he built it from ground up (perhaps he did). Eleventh of the Harbingers. Son, brother, diplomat, soldier, vanguard, a boy who had lost his childhood. There is a god who built his nation amidst a war and he wants Ajax to stay. He wants to.
“It is unfair of me to ask that of you as you have duties towards your god,” Zhongli’s mouth curves upwards again. Ajax wishes for once that it didn't. Not here. Not now. He is beautiful regardless. “I am not your god.”
“You are not.” An echo.
“It was merely a wish.” Zhongli is steady, and certain, and Ajax does not want to kiss him goodbye. “A desire I wanted to make known.”
Zhongli also wants. And when he wants, he takes. Perhaps he, too, wanted to leave one less scar on Ajax’s body. He would get more of them anyway in a nation far away. He wants and he takes as well.
But he doesn’t.
He doesn’t, not when Ajax gets up to ask for the bill. He doesn’t, not when they meet midday, three days later. He doesn’t, not when Ajax boards the ship and watches Liyue become a memory instead of a home.
Ajax should have kissed him after all. Bitter tea be damned.