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The slumber of the gods is no mere rest. In sleep, in dreams, the world took shape: the mountains rose and fell and rose again, the lakes swelled and flooded to seas, thought became image, and image sound, and from there came language.
Zhongli may insist he has no need for it, but he is a creature of indulgences. Retirement, Childe thinks, only brings it out in him. The man with all the time in the world: it is an elastic thing to him, from evening to night, and lunches taken until dawn and littered with porcelain, and spices, and the rich aromatics of ginger and garlic, cloves and star anise.
On mead and memory, the God of Anemo is said to sleep for centuries; if time is a disparate thing to beings like them, Rex Lapis’s recent catnapping cannot be considered much more than a moment to rest his eyes, he supposes, but he certainly does seem to enjoy it. Keen, golden, wound in silver and wrapped in wool, Morax is still shrewd, but in the safety of his wards, beneath silk hangings and behind carved rosewood, he lets his guard down.
Since he had first met the consultant Zhongli, Childe had thought him the type to sleep like the pharaohs of old; on his back, dressed in linen, arms crossed over his chest like crook and flail. This fantasy would someday be shattered, falling into bed with one another with wine on their breath and remorse much more bitter. Childe was unsurprised to wake to implacable golden eyes staring back at him. Even then, the red camellia oil that lined them was untouched, as though they had not sundered the night from one another.
Now, however, is another story.
He pulls at the strings of his muddied boots and leaves them in the sunken marble of the foyer. By now, Zhongli is often waiting for him at the door—that is, conveniently coming around the corner, as though it is sheer coincidence that their paths collided upon the hour. The apartments would smell of tea, if not baijiu, already decanted and left to air. Tonight is noticeably silent, devoid of his heavy presence, and when Childe calls a tentative hello out to depths of the dimly-lit house, it only echoes, soon to be sapped away by Sumerian wool and painted silks.
Childe thinks better of putting away his dirtied coat, but that does not stop him from sweeping through the closet. Zhongli’s greatcoat waits upon its hanger, lined as meticulously as always among every occasion of silk, twill and leather. Laces tied, freshly polished, his Oxfords sit below it, fragrant cedar holding their precise shape.
“Fastidious as ever,” Childe murmurs to himself, and closes the closet door again, for if he is a creature of indulgences, he is also one of routine. No afternoon is complete without tea; no evening without a stroll through the hanging gardens. When it rains, Zhongli can be found sitting at the highest pavilion, and when the moon is half-full, the night will always take him to the southern wharf.
It comes with the soft of gust air, then; he recognizes it over the blood and dirt that cling to his clothes and hovers damp in his lungs: the spiced smoke of temples and shrines; the sweetness of pear. Childe draws a deep breath of it—it smells like Zhongli—dare he say home—and finds it lacks only the rich notes of amber and glaze lily that he has come to associate with him. Incense is an incessant presence among the houses and businesses of Liyue, and he knows by heart how Zhongli prefers agarwood, heavy and sweet; tonight smells sweeter, smoke hanging in the doorways and windows, its soft gray outlines exposed by but one lonely lamp.
“Zhongli?” he calls from the doorway, to no avail. Following the yellow warmth of the last light, flickering softly from the depths of the bedchamber, would afford him an answer. His rings click against the carved door as Childe pushes it the rest of the way open.
The scent is stronger here, headier, and Childe nearly wrinkles his nose before he is stopped by sheer, pure appreciation.
Morax, warrior god and great consolidator, is never so vulnerable as he is now, laid out in marble like an odalisque. Childe’s hunger is immeasurable and unending, wrought of dream and death alike, and it comes to life again at the sight of his mortal form ripe for the taking. His ochre robe falls from his shoulders to expose the swell of his breast and the inkwash at his arms, where man ends and god begins; his hair is loose, unplaited, for it is Childe’s right, if not his duty, to tame it for him, and he has been gone two moons now, chasing phantoms in mountainous wastes.
“There you are.”
It is no easy thing being kept apart. The cold heights of Dragonspine are reminiscent of home in their harshness, in the vast snow plains and countless stars glittering overhead, but of late, Childe has learned of warmth, and soft things: down pillows plucked from the cream-white geese that flock to the marshes of Qiongji Estuary; a baritone as welcoming as his corded arms and gentle, distant smile, resonating against his back and curled warm around his body. Where he and his men snatch twenty minutes of shuteye in the shelter of a crevasse, Zhongli lounges alone in the silk-stuffed duvet he had ordered specially from a merchant of Qiaoying Village, where over the centuries, the silkworms have adjusted from an esoteric diet of mulberry leaves to tea leaves.
“Silk is much more breathable than down or wool,” Zhongli had told him as they stood before the merchant’s stall. The bolts were stacked to the ceiling, organized by color and hue and thread count, and the shopkeep perched on the highest rung of his ladder to pull free the specific shade of cinnabar red that Zhongli had gestured to.
“Is that right?” Childe hummed, watching with amusement as Zhongli shook his head and pointed to the red bolt beside the one that was just pulled free. From where they stood, the only difference in shades would be their shadows, thought Childe.
“You were certainly vocal about how hot the nights get here, don’t think I have forgotten.” Zhongli turned a smile toward him then, and the look in his eyes told Childe he was on the verge of a tangent.
“At least in Sumeru, it cools down at night. I swear, it only gets hotter here.”
“Yes, Liyuean summer is known for its humidity. You simply aren’t accustomed to it.” How Zhongli remained in his three-piece suit and waist-length hair will forever be beyond him, but Childe would not deny himself the sight, nor the feeling of tangling his fingers in it and pulling until his long throat was bared to him.
“Now, unlike the silk of your shirt or scarf, the filament used for batting is not unraveled during production. Rather, it is stretched into a web and layered as floss is. When the duvet is filled…”
Above them, as he remembers, the merchant attempted precariously to extricate the fabric from its stack. The ladder wobbled, its proprietor went wire-taut, yet no one made a move to grab it. Zhongli’s low voice rolled through his head and his belly as he continued to describe the three hundred to four hundred layers of stretched, white silk that would fill it; beneath his mouth he would flush as brightly as the cover itself, yet you would hardly know it looking at him.
“In the end, the comforter comprises thousands of cocoons, yet is no heavier than a disk of tea.”
And there he lies upon the sea of blood-red silk; it rises between his legs and pillows his body, and despite being carved of granite and gold, Zhongli goes easily when Childe comes around and gives him an idle push. His sigh is soft, muffled into the sumptuous nest of silk and down pillows.
“No ‘welcome back’? No ‘I missed you’?’ I’m almost offended.”
The gradient of Zhongli’s skin will never fail to fascinate him; he should take it as a sign of comfort that he lingers in the in-between of man and god before him, stained by ink, as igneous as the magma that formed the first rings of their earth. His feet and hands glow with gold; they cool then, darkening to obsidian where they meet sculpted olive flesh. He has lived for millennia and yet he wears none of his years except for those he chooses—the lines at his eyes, nose, and mouth, carved by laughter, by curiosity and consternation—and Childe: oh, Childe is a mess of scar tissue wrangled and sewn into the shape of a man. Zhongli tells his stories as if they are both his and another’s; Childe wears them on his skin, and every one is a lesson learned, be it by him or another. Such wonder Zhongli finds in his blemishes and lesions, as if they are the same lines engraved in wood, stone or rubber, something to be inked and stamped in multiple. Childe feels no shame for their lines, but being subject to an appraiser’s gaze is not an easy task.
Perhaps it’s easier like this, then. Despite his needling, Zhongli has yet to stir. In fact, he seems all the more content for his company, the slab of his body somewhere near pliable as Childe runs his hands down his chest, his ribs, his waist. The sash of his robe is loosely tied, and is meaningless in the end, anyway. What battle is left in Childe is quick to rise again as he rucks it over Zhongli’s slender hips and exposes the supple flesh of his ass.
Really, what need has an Archon for such shape? Is it vanity that incites him to choose his form, or is it inherent? Is he simply the ideal in all ways? Man cannot choose his form, he can only amend it, revise it, modify it. Once, innocuously, he had asked Zhongli why he looked the way he did (because Her Majesty forgive him, but Childe had never felt such hunger for another). Zhongli answered as only Zhongli could; it was no answer at all. Rather, he was forced to forget about it in the face of a detour.
But there is no pretense in sleep—the body is vulnerable and defenseless, bared to its naked nature. The brain, Dottore has said, is at its most active; the ego is rendered helpless, left to the desperate desires of the id, flinging itself into the unsubdued forefront of the mind; the unconscious is an open playing field: “Man is, above all, the plaything of his memory.”
“You would like Fontaine, Tartaglia,” Pantalone had laughed beside him. “No, no—I should say they would like you. They’ve a full legion of artists who claim that the simplest act is of art is walk into a crowd and pull the trigger. You might find yourself some success there.”
Oh, if Pantalone could see him now. Some would call it heresy to worship another god like so. Would it infuriate him? Would he think him justified? It doesn’t matter; he is nothing but talk, hiding behind his desk and scales, while Morax is still as stone beneath Childe’s hands, his skin only pebbling in betrayal where they stroke his thighs, their blackened outsides and their velvet insides, and part them.
One by one he loosens the fingers of his half-gloves; he takes them into his teeth and yanks until he can throw them away, and Zhongli’s flesh is bed-warm, sleep-warm beneath his hands. Childe squeezes, watching it pale; he pushes, watching him open for him. The tight furl of his hole flutters for him, quivering dark where he pulls each half of him apart. Already he sits hard in his trousers, but this opportunity is a rare one—most of the time, Zhongli reads beside him as he steals sleep, or he wanders off to his study to write his letters and his scrolls. Childe indulges in another firm knead, and leans idly down.
He has long learned him in all senses, and yet he cannot help but to moan to himself for the extravagance of it; of his tongue against sacred, still skin. He presses his mouth to him, spreading him apart with his hands, and traces the give of him in circles. To have the golden earth quaking at his fingertips—there is nothing that can measure up to it. Zhongli twitches, and the sheets whisper in tandem, but Childe pays it no heed, his mouth flush to him. Another circle earns him a shiver, and a sigh, and slowly, slowly, Childe traces a finger against his hole. It gives easily, sucking him in; his tongue presses in together, and if he didn’t know any better, he would think it is a moan he hears.
Unlike him, his flesh is giving. Zhongli opens for him gladly, hot and silken around his wet tongue and thick knuckles—one, then two, then two more as Childe presses a second digit into him, sucking loud when he pulls off from his hole to watch them disappear into the impossible softness of his body, over and over again. The red duvet darkens beneath Zhongli’s prone form, precome pooling between his thighs, and Childe is almost surprised his own fly hasn’t torn. It gets louder as he fingers him open, alabaster shuddering, cracking, bucking into the mattress below.
“Tartaglia,” he gasps, “oh, Tartaglia, yes.”
Childe laughs, his fingers curling cruelly; Zhongli moans again, pushing back against his motions wanton and eager—“Took you long enough, Zhongli.”
Finally, finally, his heavy lashes part, eyes of molten gold peering past the veil of his hair to pin Childe like an insect beneath glass.
“What’s that look for?” Childe’s motions slow, the veins of his wrist prominent even in the darkness. Zhongli is so wonderfully, terribly warm around his fingers where they fuck into him. “Aw, did I wake you up?”
Zhongli rumbles, an inhuman sound, and his lips curl back to reveal the impossible points of his teeth.
“Grumpy, aren’t we?”
Childe crooks his fingers—three this time, just the way that Zhongli likes it; stretching, just this side of too raw—and basks in the way his jaw drops just so, mouth parting in ecstasy.
“Come on, you were sleeping so soundly, I didn’t want to disturb you. Go to back to sleep.” Again he finds the subtle change in him, the wracking of his spine in ecstasy, and his cock throbs to exploit it. Childe’s fingers will have to do. He croons, “It’s just a dream. I’m not even here.”
(He’s not supposed to be, technically. Not for another day.)
“You will not be so fast to fool me,” Zhongli growls, his hips pitched high and spine arched low.
“You’re dreaming, Zhongli-xiansheng. Why don’t I show you what your dream entails?”
Childe slips his fingers free then, but only so that he might spread him for himself—to watch how his hole gapes and winks, and how Zhongli’s expression goes tight in confusion. No Tartaglia of his dreams would leave him unfulfilled, they both know that much.
“Am I?”
“Didn’t you miss me?” breathes Childe instead. He presses his fingers over his perineum, a slow massage that reaches all the way up to his prostate and makes Zhongli’s face go slack. “It’s been too long, I know. I missed you. I miss you. You need me like I need you.”
His gaze of amber remains placid, half-seeing, as if frozen in time, and yet his thighs tighten, and it is all Childe can do not to touch himself. …But he is no god, only man; his stomach trembles under his own touch, rubbing down, then up, then down again, and his belt comes quickly loose, his cock springing free just as soon as he shoves his fatigues down to his thighs. “This is what you want, right? What you need.”
There is a particular look Zhongli gets when he wants something; most often it is directed at specimens of jade and porcelain and ivory, and scrolls as long as he is tall. The look alone could consume him, and yet Childe wishes for nothing more than to devour his lover whole; anything but his cold hand and the bath of memory, so warm and golden as he is. His teeth grit audibly against the force of such a look, and Harbinger or no, Zhongli is not alone in his hunger and his desperation and his sleep-hazed longing, and Childe takes himself in hand, a firm stroke doing so little to stave off the need. The slide of his cockhead up against his hole and between his thighs, bumping up against the firm round of his balls—oh, it does nothing to take off the edge of weeks.
“You want me to fuck you, Zhongli?” Childe offers it into his spine and his neck, the last of the invite whispered into his ear, followed by the pinch of his teeth around his pierced lobe. It’s a rhetorical question as he rubs up into pliant muscle, slick only with drying fluid and spit. Zhongli’s thighs tighten again, but his pretty little hole gives him away. The velvet crown of him weeps wet against it; surely, the open zip of his trousers will leave a mark, but neither of them mind in the least. (Already he wears the shape of Zhongli’s sharp bite: in his neck, on his hip, in his thighs.)
Proud Morax, Rex Lapis, god of contracts and wealth and prosperity—he does not beg, he has no reason to beg from the likes of men and yet Childe watches with glee as his lips form a perfect ‘O,’ then fall open again, shaping the syllables of his name as he rocks back against him. Once, twice, his cock bumps his hole, and Zhongli’s breath draws tight, and Child’s nails dig into his hips as he holds him still. “It’s your dream, Zhongli. You only have to say please.”
He won’t, though: no, he breaks his farce and reaches for him, spreading himself open with one hand and pressing Childe’s heavy cock against himself with the other, and Childe is only a man; a man that has spent the month away, and dream-trawling cannot compare to the feeling of the physical self. Zhongli’s hand grasps him firmly, his body hot where it swallows him down, and with crescents reddening his ilia Childe drags him back and sinks home, the still silence of the room broken with their synchronized groan of pleasure.
“Yes, Tartaglia—“
He fucks him to the root, until they are flush back to chest, and mechanically, automatically, Zhongli contorts backward to kiss him with his serpentine tongue, filling him much the same, all the way down to his throat, and Child has nowhere to go but forward with one abrupt jerk of his hips; it turns to two, then three, until his strokes run slow and hard and Zhongli is arching back into every one of them, his aureate hands clenched in the silk comforter—it runs beneath his sharp talons, but he cannot think to complain so long as Childe fucks him hard enough and fast enough, until the heat that builds in his belly is not only his own. Rather, he clutches at Childe’s red curls, pulling his broad body over him to kiss him through it, a moan of his name left on his lips when he comes.
(Later comes the report of an earthquake along the fringes of Minlin and Lisha, where the tectonic plates sit just slightly askance.)
Only when he lies full and sated, Childe hot along the length of his back, does he turn over, running a hand beneath his wrinkled uniform shirt, to say, “Welcome back, Tartaglia.”