Chapter Text
They are on the cliffs just off the main road that leads down to the harbour, lying in the grass. The late afternoon sun glimmers off the surface of the water below, and in the distance people are moving to and fro about the pier: workmen shifting crates, clerks tallying the stock on their ledgers, children playing, merchants hawking their wares… The scene from a few weeks ago, when he’d first taken in the harbour with the fresh eyes of his younger self, blends with the memory of a harbour freshly built some few hundred years ago.
Much has changed since then, and much will change again — after erosion comes to claim his crumbling body, after the grass grows high over his beloved’s grave; but for now they are lying in the grass on the cliffs overlooking the harbour, listening to the sound of gulls crying and the rasp of the waves.
“…when will you be leaving?” he asks at length.
“Next week,” says Childe. “I meant to tell you much earlier, but I wasn’t sure how you’d take it after the…” — he waves a hand vaguely over his chest — “after what happened.”
Zhongli sighs. It’s been a little over a week since the incident at the ruins and Childe’s wound has healed enough for him to be up and around again. And though no legal repercussions had come knocking at their door after the incident, it still remains a sore spot between them.
Cutting off that line of thought, he reaches a hand out toward Childe and asks: “How long will you be gone?”
Childe takes his hand in his, and flips it back and forth on the grass. “A couple of months, maybe more — but I’ll be back the first chance I get.” Then he attempts a smile: “And I promise I’ll write.”
Zhongli returns the smile, and brings their hands to his lips to lay a kiss on Childe’s knuckles. “Fontaine suddenly seems so far away,” he says.
Childe shrugs: “Closer than Snezhnaya, at least.”
They lapse into a pensive silence, filled only but the cries of gulls and the quiet rasp of the waves. The wind rustles through the tall grass around them, stirring it in a gentle whisper.
Zhongli feels a sudden conviction not to leave things unsaid.
“Childe,” he says, turning on his side to face him, “you’ve said you’re a subject of the Tsaritsa — I should let you know, I understand what that entails now.”
A look of surprise passes over Childe’s face, and he turns his head to meet his gaze.
“I can’t say all my memories have returned in their entirety,” Zhongli continues, “but the questions you asked me that morning — Snezhnaya, the Cryo Archon, the Cataclysm — I remember all that now.”
He takes the other’s face in his hand, and tucks a lock of hair behind his ear. “Childe,” he says, “if you put yourself in danger out of recklessness or your own indiscretion, I will be upset; but when it comes to something your heart and your duty compels you to do — I will not stop you. Not as a foreigner, not as the subject of another Archon, but as the one I cherish,” he says, running his thumb over the curve of Childe’s cheek, “I will not stop you from doing what you must.”
Childe reaches his hand up and lays it over Zhongli’s, and looks at him with an unnamable emotion in his eyes.
“Where’s… where’s all this coming from?”
Zhongli drops his gaze and lets out a breath. “I think,” he says, and perhaps his voice quavers involuntarily, “I think at long last I’ve come to terms with the future I must face without you.”
Childe is silent for a moment, drumming his fingers against the side of his thigh, then at last he smacks his lips and gives a quiet laugh.
“So what I’m getting, is that you don’t need me around anymore?” he says jokingly — or perhaps not as jokingly as he intends to.
“Nonsense,” says Zhongli, “how dare you suggest that.” He leans over Childe and puts both his hands on his face. “Look at me,” he says: “even if I must lose you while you’re young or watch you fade away in old age, if eventually you die on the battlefield or in your own bed; not once will I ever regret loving you — not ever.”
Childe lets out another laugh, but this time his nose scrunches as if to suppress tears. He lets out a noise somewhere between a scoff and a sob, and then grabbing Zhongli by the front of his shirt, he pulls him down into a forceful kiss.
Zhongli leans into it, opening his mouth and letting him push his tongue in deep against his. He moves and moves against the insistent press of Childe’s lips, drinking down the sweet taste of his fevered breath.
And then when they pull back from the kiss, both breathing hard and half laughing as they stare into each other’s faces, something seems to shift in the air between them, like a subtle change in the wind. Zhongli eyes the other’s parted lips, rubbed red from the kiss and still damp with their mingled saliva, and slowly lays a hand on Childe’s waist.
Childe, as usual, isn’t slow on the uptake.
“Here?” he asks, casting a dubious glance around them. “Really? Right here?”
“Yes,” says Zhongli, “right here. Are you opposed to it?”
He can see the hesitation in the other’s eyes, and the want clearly roiling beneath it. Childe says nothing, but the bob of his throat as he swallows is difficult to miss.
So Zhongli leans in and gently nips at his ear. “You know, I’ve noticed,” he whispers, “between the two of us, you don’t seem so used to playing the voice of reason…” He drags his tongue teasingly over the rim of Childe’s ear, and then darts it inside for a lick just as he slides his hands down to knead his ass.
Childe jolts against him as bites back a moan, and grabs him by the lapels of his jacket.
“Horny old lizard,” he says with a hoarse laugh, “you’ve given me more than enough practice.”
“Mmm,” he answers, sliding a finger over the length of Childe’s jaw, “talk me out of it, then.”
Childe spares a moment to snap his teeth at that finger, then pulls back to give him a smirk. “What if the patrolling millelith catches us, hm?” he asks even as his own hands begin working open the buckle of his belt.
“The patrols won’t reach here,” answers Zhongli. It’s not entirely true, but the private on duty at this hour was indeed prone to cutting corners with his route.
Below, the rasp of a zipper, the rustle of fabric, and then: “And if someone comes looking for herbs?”
“They don’t,” says Zhongli, “at this time of the year,” — and that one’s an outright lie. He undoes the buttons of Childe’s shirt and slips it down over his shoulders, and places a kiss in the hollow of his throat.
“What if some stray tourist stumbles on us?”
Zhongli smiles: “Then I suppose we’ll give them a good show.”
“Shit,” Childe answers breathlessly, and Zhongli knows that’s got him worked up now.
Childe shucks his pants down the rest of the way and kicks them off along with his boots, and thrusts his hips up against Zhongli’s body. And Zhongli laughs, kissing along the curve of his neck as he grinds back against the movements of Childe’s body.
He feels like a schoolboy sneaking out after curfew, or a child stealing plums or pears from a neighbour’s garden. The thrill of it tingles in the back of his neck like a wicked tinkling of bells, and fills him with a desire to commit some act of roguery, of mischief, to become co-conspirators in some crime with that little rascal in his arms.
He slips off his gloves and takes Childe’s stiffening length in hand, stroking it with the naked heat of his palm. And in turn Childe lets out a low and needy whimper, bucking his hips up into the slide of his hand. Zhongli almost laughs in wonder, as he presses his lover into the grass: in the thousands and thousands of years he’s lived, never once had he imagined he could feel so young; tumbling his lover about in the grass, making love out in the open where anyone might just stumble upon them. It’s as if he’d forgotten how simple it was to be happy, that knowledge fallen from him somewhere along the long road; and yet how simple it was to be reminded, to learn it all over again in the arms of his lover, and in the kisses he bestows from his laughing lips.
Zhongli brings his other hand to those lips and presses the pad of his thumb between them; and without having to ask, Childe simply parts his lips wider to let it sink into the moist heat of his panting mouth. His tongue rasps wet and soft as it lifts and sinks against the press of his thumb, and Zhongli moves to replace it with two fingers, pressing in deep. Childe swallows around the new intrusion, his breath puffing hot against Zhongli’s bare skin; and then he gasps as the fingers slide in further, pushing almost to the back of his throat.
His throat shudders and squeezes, and he shuts his eyes as if to fight down an urge to gag, but his cock twitches hard in Zhongli’s other hand, spurting a little dribble of wetness. Zhongli eyes him with some hesitation, and draws back a little to watch his reaction, but Childe closes his lips around his knuckles and sucks him back in with a low moan. He continues stroking Childe’s length in his right hand, and with the left he carefully, gingerly, presses down on the back of Childe’s tongue, slowly increasing the pressure until the other chokes and jolts against him. The cock in his hand dribbles further, and he presses harder, until tears begin to well up in the corners of Childe’s eyes and a strange noise gurgles in the back of his throat — then he lets up, quickly pulling his fingers out of Childe’s mouth and stroking his thumb over the line of his jaw to soothe him.
Childe sinks back into the grass, breathing hard; his eyes are glassy and wet with tears, the corners of them faintly reddened. He coughs, then clears his throat, then coughs again and speaks: “If you do that again,” he rasps, “I’m really… I’m really not gonna last…”
“Then what do you want me to do?” asks Zhongli.
Childe takes a few more deep breaths, then hooks a leg over the small of Zhongli’s back and pulls him bodily toward him.
“I want you to get in here already,” he says, between gritted teeth.
“In where?” Zhongli asks, teasing. But he doesn’t need to be told twice — he slips his wet fingers down to his beloved’s entrance, and traces over his rim in light circles.
Childe huffs and pushes back against him, clearly impatient to be breached. He brings his legs up over Zhongli’s shoulders and tilts his ass up toward him, and Zhongli takes that as his cue to hurry up and get on with it. He pushes both fingers firmly into Childe’s entrance — but barely makes it an inch in before his hand stills. Childe is unusually tight, his hole seizing up at only the barest touch — despite the way he’s panting so desperately, despite how riled up Zhongli has got him.
Zhongli draws out and rubs a knuckle over the little puckered entrance, trying to massage away the tension.
“Relax, my dear,” he murmurs, placing a gentle kiss on his thigh.
But Childe turns his head away, distracted — “Zhongli, did you hear that…?”
“Hear what?” he asks, still nudging at his entrance.
Childe eyes the rocky ledge above them, listening intently, then he shakes his head and turns back. “I thought I heard something.”
Zhongli gives a last grind of his knuckle, then reaches over to stuff Childe’s mouth up with his fingers. “ Relax, my dear,” he says again — and the other moans, loud and sloppy, around the hand in his mouth.
It’s the same hand that’d been up his ass, but neither of them says a thing about it, both too worked up to spare a second thought — that, or perhaps it was another of Childe’s strange inclinations, but Zhongli doesn’t have the time for questions.
He presses down against the flat of Childe’s tongue, swiping up as much spit as he can between two fingers; and then he adds a third, sliding his hand in and out against the undulations of his tongue. Then he draws his fingers out and presses his palm to Childe’s lips.
“Now lick,” he urges — “More.”
Childe licks hard at his open hand, thrusting his tongue between Zhonglis fingers and forcing them apart by turns; he laps at the shallow web of skin between them, sliding his tongue roughly over the tender skin. And then he drags his tongue down to the hollow of his palm, laving it in short licks like an animal lapping at a stream.
Zhongli’s untouched cock gives a jerk in his pants, straining harder against the fabric that traps it. He frees it with an unsteady hand.
“It arouses you, doesn’t it?” he says, and just where are these words coming from? “— the thought of someone stumbling on us.”
Childe’s only reply is a garbled moan as he keeps licking over his palm.
Zhongli clucks his tongue at him: “Quite the little degenerate, aren’t you?”
And Childe moans again, louder.
He pulls his hand away from Childe’s mouth and brings it back to his ass, prodding two fingers again at his entrance. But strangely — as his fingers touch the rim, he finds Childe already wet — wetter than he’d left him, dripping, almost, with some viscous unknown liquid.
He looks up and catches Childe’s eye, letting the question show on his face. And Childe tilts his head towards his pair of pants discarded in the grass, with the Vision glowing at his belt. Ah.
Zhongli chuckles and leans over to kiss him, murmuring into his lips, “You little devil.”
He works first one finger, then two, and three, slowly into the thick wetness with shallow thrusts. Childe is still tight, but he opens up soon enough, the on-the-fly lubricant doing a surprisingly good job of easing the way. Good enough that when Zhongli runs his slick fingers at last over his throbbing length and presses the head to Childe’s entrance, he manages to take him without much trouble.
He pushes in steadily in one long motion, pausing now and then to allow Childe time to adjust to his girth; and when the other catches his breath and looks up to meet his eye, he continues, the velvet heat parting around him and hugging tight to his cock as it makes its way deeper. Childe pants, his chest softly heaving, his fingers digging into the grass beneath him. His walls are tight and perfectly supple, perfectly encircling, thick as a rich, heady syrup, and vicious as its languid flow. Zhongli sinks into him like water, and Childe engulfs him, closes over him, as if to suck him under.
At length Zhongli’s balls press up against the back of Childe’s ass with a soft slap, and he finds his length finally sheathed to the hilt. Childe gives a tentative little squeeze around him and adjusts the angle of his hips.
“Yeah?” he asks.
“Yeah,” Childe answers.
And then a rustle in the grass has them both leaping almost a foot in the air.
Childe clenches painfully tight around him as he gives an involuntary jerk, and they both wince as their bodies jar against each other. Zhongli bites back a curse: he’d been so absorbed, so distracted that he hadn’t noticed the patrolling millelith approaching from yards away.
Zhongli quickly pushes Childe flat against the ground and signals for him to be quiet. They can hear the millelith soldier’s footsteps now, stirring the grass on the rocky ledge above them, but thank the heavens and the earth, he stops before he reaches the edge.
“Hello?” tries the soldier.
Zhongli and Childe lock eyes for a moment, each holding their breath.
“If you’re up to any funny business, it’s best you give yourselves up now…!” says the soldier — though he doesn’t, however, sound very convincing.
A beat of silence. Then a shuffle of feet. The soldier seems to be debating whether or not he should come closer to investigate.
Zhongli decides to help him with that decision: he lets out a snarl, deep and inhuman, decidedly not a sound his mortal form should be able to make. Childe turns to him in astonishment.
“What are you doing!” he mouths at him.
Zhongli follows up with a low, continuous growl. He tilts his head in the direction of the ledge and gestures with his hand.
Childe raises his brows with a look of consternation, and hisses under his breath: “Zhongli.”
But Zhongli only raises a finger to his lips as he continues growling.
There’s another rustle in the grass; the soldier seems to take a step back. Zhongli smiles and gives a rougher growl, snapping his jaws like a threatened animal. The soldier seems to hesitate a moment more, then at last, backs away in the direction he’d come from.
Before Zhongli can congratulate himself on his success however, Childe seizes him by the collar of his shirt.
“Are you crazy!” he says in a harsh whisper. “What if he came up to check!”
Zhongli is a little surprised at the reaction, but he smooths a hand along Childe’s thigh nonetheless. “He wouldn’t have,” he assures him.
“He’s a millelith soldier,” says Childe. “If some dangerous animal was on the loose, that’s his job!”
“You’ll find not all humans tend to be as intrepid as you, my dear,” says Zhongli.
“Well, thank fuck he wasn’t! Imagine if he’d caught us: two half-naked perverts fucking in the grass and growling at the law enforcement — man, I’m not sure I could live that one down.”
Zhongli supposes he does have a point. He strokes the side of Childe’s thigh again, by way of apology; then he pulls Childe’s shirt back up over his shoulders and buttons it closed. “There,” he says, “now we’re two decently-dressed, law-abiding citizens.”
“I don’t know about that,” Childe snorts: “your balls are still out and my ass is still bare.”
Zhongli shrugs: “Two law-abiding citizens in a state of athletic undress,” he amends. “Nothing immoral or illegal going on here, only two good friends practising their… wrestling moves.”
Childe laughs and gives an impatient jerk of his hips. “If you don’t shut up and start doing your ‘wrestling moves’, I’m gonna shout for that millelith to come back.”
And laughing, Zhongli accedes to his threats.
He sets an easy pace between them, drawing out and pushing back into his lover’s body with leisurely thrusts. He slips his hands under Childe’s shirt and runs them over the ripple of his lean, hard muscle, his spare and supple flesh — so wonderfully fluid beneath his hands like flowing water, like a trembling stream silver-threaded with translucent light. He kisses Childe’s brow, his nose, his cheek, and nuzzles into the crook of his neck to breathe in the scent of his rapture; and Childe throws his arms around him to draw him closer, pressing their bodies together into the rustling grass.
A faint fragrance wafts up from the broken blades of grass and wildflowers crushed beneath them in the dirt, and mingles with the smell of their bodies, their sweat, of their arousal. The grass wavers around them like washing waves, stirred by the wind in soft rasping whispers as if to echo the noise of the sea below. He feels as though every pleasure of his existence has coalesced into one drop, one moment, hanging pendent, trembling with all colours and all sensations.
Childe stutters against him as he nears his peak, and Zhongli takes his cock in hand to stroke him over the edge. Childe gasps, and gasps, and hot spend spills from his shuddering length, spattering the tight space between their bodies. The velvet heat of his insides seizes tight around Zhongli, and pulses, pulses, till it tumbles Zhongli over the edge after his lover. The drop, the all-moment, distilled from all sensations, falls in silent ecstasy, and scatters in a shattering of light as it hits the ground.
For a moment Zhongli stays pressed against his lover, breathing hard against the heavy rise and fall of his chest beneath him. The afternoon light has sunk beyond the horizon and cool shadows have begun to steal over the cliffs. At length he pulls out and rolls off onto his back, stretching his limbs with a quiet sigh. Childe lies beside him, legs spread and still panting softly; the warmth of his body familiar, animal — assuring.
And it’s then, lying in the grass under the first stars of the darkening sky, on the cliffs just off the road that leads to the harbour, that it finally dawns on him. Hurriedly he props himself up on an elbow and turns on his side:
“Ajax,” he says, “I think I’m in love with you.”
Childe turns his head and stares at him for a second — and then his lips part and he bursts out laughing; a beautiful, merry laugh, sweet as a silver bell and crisp as the tinkle of jade beads falling on a platter.
“I’m in love with you,” Zhongli says again, and kisses him full on the lips.
Childe tangles his hand in his hair and returns the kiss, and in spite of both their states of undress, it remains surprisingly chaste. They simply lie pressed together in the wavering grass — his hands on Childe’s face and Childe’s arms around his neck, foreheads touching as they laugh quietly into each other’s mouths.
Beyond in the harbour, the last ships are coming into the docks, and lanterns begin to cast their shimmering reflections across the water. There are workers going home to their families, others coming out on the pier to enjoy the evening breeze; friends gathering for a drink, lovers meeting under the cover of dark — it’s the end of the day, and the night is just beginning.