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Three filets of sturgeon.
Cut fresh from the day's catch. The ships just rolled in hours earlier, the behemoth fish from the deep on their bow. Childe doesn’t mind watching– the work and toil, chains heaved, commands yelled, the catch tossed around. It’s something he was fascinated by as a child when he watched the fishermen come in with the dawn.
“Two thousand mora will do it.”
It’s a fair enough exchange. Childe takes them, wrapped up in last year's newspaper. Death of an Archon, huh? The corpse of a dragon, not the Exuvia but something generic, blazoned across the cover. His fingers tighten, crinkling the paper beneath.
Mhm.
Childe buries his face into the warmth of his fur collar. The frigid air of the port whips around him, and suddenly, he’s reminded of another. Of waves crashing to the breakwater, churning the boats held within and a sticky, salty wind wafting from its waters.
Ah.
His chest swells in a painful feeling, as if deprived of sweet oxygen for too long, and these memories he’s worked so hard to stifle bubble forth.
A fleeting affair.
That’s how Childe once justified it before realizing what once was friendship grew to more. In affection, he thinks, with the ease he handed over his wallet, welcoming the consultant’s every whim and desire. And in attraction, because, fuck, Zhongli held him captive with the simple nip of a close tailored suit and the mere peek of wrist beneath the cuff.
“Have you heard?”
The voice of an older woman catches his attention, the tone and thick accent reminding him much of his own grandmother. Two walk side by side, their gossip aired loud and shrill above the wind.
“Heard what?”
“There’s a foreigner in town. They don’t usually venture much outside the capital.”
“And in a blizzard, too! I invited the poor man to my home. Offered him some of my son’s clothes– you see, he was terribly underdressed. How he made it this far without losing a foot–” She huffs in displeasure. “But, he declined. A shame, really.”
It’s a silly thought. That every bit of news– of a man with dark hair, the lilt of an accent not Snezhnayan– could be the one he left behind.
Oh, Zhongli.
Childe remembers. He remembers too much. Sees the sly amber that begets bottomless knowledge in the warm glow of a window pane in the local bakery. The bell chimes when he opens its doors.
One violetgrass.
Impossible to grow in the arid cold of his home country. However, not impossible to substitute. Yes, Childe thinks. Once the bakery door opens, he’s hit with the scent of fresh bread and herbs. A selection is lined up, the carefully tied leaves drying in the window. He plucks a particularly floral specimen. A sprout that grows near the moist roots of trees.
Eh, close enough. He slides the mora across the counter and takes his flowers along with a heaping pouch of salt.
The only thing left is…
Childe’s fingers graze his chapped lips. His tongue longs for the taste of jueyun chili. The pain it brings, all spiced and warm. As warm as the hand which covered Childe’s own offering a shared drink to his lips. The warmth of his whisper, spoken to his ear in a sultry fondness. And the warmth of–
Childe’s face heats up, his nose a bright red with an equal flush dashed across his cheeks. He… ah, doesn’t need to remember that here.
Zhongli. Curse him. Separated by an entire continent, the man still holds the young Harbinger’s mind captive.
What did he expect? The moment Zhongli invited him to his bed, Childe was a goner.
Childe spent too many nights in the solitude of his own, too large and empty, craving another to fill the void. His hand was a pittance. And, once Childe tried to coax another to him. Harbinger is a hard title to deny, and Childe is reluctant to think the man was obligated. But… it had been all wrong. The voice too high, the hands too rough, and when he kissed him? Childe had shoved him away.
It doesn’t compare. How could anyone? And in that thought and wanton loneliness, the swell in Childe’s chest aches with something he knows.
He sighs.
One jueyun chili.
A fruitless venture. Or so, Childe once thought. He was surprised when his feeble request for imported goods resulted in a small bag of dried peppers dropped off at the doorstep of his modest home.
Dried not fresh, a sacrifice he’s willing to make for a taste of home.
The electrical wires overhead creak and groan from the onslaught of wind and snow. A storm’s picking up on the horizon, swirling with churning clouds. He longs for the sun. For the heat against his skin, darkening the freckles he had long forgotten. Each one kissed beneath soft lips, the memory of which burned to his flesh.
Home… hrm.
It’s comical, really. His home is a warm fire, the smell of his mother’s sweet bread, and the loud chatter of his siblings. And yet, something else conjures the same feeling. The ring of a chuckle low and comforting, the sweep of a gloved hand to his temple, and the murmur of sweet affirmations kissed to his skin.
Childe is nearly there now. The cobblestone under his feet builds up in snow drifts. They’re sure to be trapped inside for a few days. The entire city shutting down until it's cleared away.
It’s no matter. Childe isn’t eager to be called back to Zapolyarny anyways. He heaves the bag of ingredients up in his arms. It teeters too tall, as if on the verge of tipping over. Childe would never allowed it. He has at least that much skill.
A good black perch stew.
That will settle this need clawing in his stomach. Give him something familiar to cling to, and satiate whatever this is which leaves him dreaming of a warmer climate, a bustling city, and a familiar touch.
Childe’s house is a small thing. He had denied the estate promised to him with his Harbinger title. Something Signora had scoffed at. Instead, offering it to his family. Childe’s own residence, he takes just on the outskirts of the city.
It’s old, a little musty. He prefers it that way, reminds him of his childhood home and more recently of a certain consultant's abode, covered in a eon’s worth of dust. The door rattles with his key, and once sinking into its warmth, Childe settles in for a long night.
The small kitchen swelters in the boiling heat of his stew, the air laced in heady spice which brings Childe to the verge of sneezing. It’s… messy. He is no chef. Zhongli made him aware of that in no uncertain terms.
‘It is a sweet gesture, if not… lacking in skill. Perhaps, if you were to cut the vegetables smaller next time, and, ah, Childe… have you considered toasting your seasonings? The added heat releases natural oils and makes their flavor more potent.’
Yeah, yeah. He hadn’t taken it personally at all.
(He had, a little bit. After all, disappointing Zhongli is a heinous crime.)
The soup simmers on the stove with little chunks of fish floating about. Childe stabs one when it breaches the surface to sneak a bite of (scalding) tender, white flesh.
It’s then he hears what he assumes is a crash. This loud sound that has even a Harbinger nearly jumping from his skin. He’s grown too accustomed to the quiet of the town and the silence of fresh snow.
It's a knock, a slow one from his door. Weird. It’s not as if he expects company , and in this weather, too? He convinces himself it’s the wind until it repeats a second and third time in quick repetition.
Childe eventually grumbles and takes to the door. If it's the Fatui again–
It swings open in the blazing storm. The snow pelts him in the face and makes him sputter before he can even make out the figure in his doorway. If it's Andrei telling him the Tsaritsa specially invites him to another ball. Ugh, the other Harbingers revel in it, but Childe loathes the politics his title entails.
However, what Childe is faced with is not a Fatui at all. Who else would be so determined to risk the elements to call upon Childe’s presence? He blinks once, convinced the snowfall has formed some sort of mirage, then rubs away the flecks of snow that cling to his lashes because he is certainly mistaken.
Dark hair, framed in wispy fur, the face beneath a furious red. Ill-prepared for the elements, just as those elderly women had said. It’s a face Childe thinks he knows. That is… if any of this is real at all. There’s a word on the man’s lips, something lost to the howl of wind, and Childe slams the door closed in his face.
Huh.
This would be a very elaborate scheme by Dottore, creating an android in the former Geo Archon’s likeness. That’s low, a little complex, just to jab at Childe’s nerves. The sound of a fourth knock, and the muffled call of his name brings him back to his senses. If it's not Dottore, then could it really be?
Childe opens it a second time, stares dumbfoundead at this Zhongli who stands in his doorway. In Snezhnaya. The man near frozen solid, buckling beneath the blizzard in clothing not meant for it and with a constitution even weaker.
“It has been a millennia since I have set foot in your country’s soil, and yet, in the rule of your own Archon, it has grown even more inhospitable.”
Oh, Childe thinks lamely. He’s cold, freezing out there in the doorway while Childe’s brain buffers through what’s happening. Zhongli shivers at the whip of a flurry. It mottles through his hair, some strands of them frozen, and each breath from his lips, comes out in a dense cloud.
“Childe–” He drawls on again, and it is that – the utterance of a codename long dead– that solidifies it. “Would you invite me in? I have traveled a great distance, and…” How pitifully he pouts out of his element in the sleet and cold. “I may be losing the feeling in my fingers.”
“I, uh, yeah. That’s fine, er… Zhongli.”
It almost feels foreign. The few times it crossed his lips have been with cock in hand in the late hours of night. For him to be here now. In his house, his land, his home. It’s too much for Childe to handle.
His cheeks steam when Zhongli drapes his dampened clothes near the fire. Childe had stoked it earlier, placed fresh wood bought in the market to the burning fire. The man crouches in front of it to warm his tingling fingers, frozen beneath thin leather gloves.
“So–” Childe says. This feels unreal. The lord of Geo kneeled before his fireplace, hair messy and clothes in disarray. His cheeks still twinge pink, chapped from the cold. It's a far cry from the image emblazoned in Childe’s mind. One of Zhongli melded with surroundings, natural and effortless as if he were the stone the very harbor was built upon. Here, he is out of place. “Why are you–”
“Is that jueyun chili?” Zhongli asks of the potent scent in the air. His stomach growls, and he lets out quite the pathetic moan for a god. “I fear that your people are not as keen on monetary negligence as my own.”
It's because they know, Childe thinks. That the peculiar man who showed up unannounced with textbooks worth of knowledge is at the very least an adeptus, and for the most astute, their former Rex Lapis.
Zhongli peels past him. A hand, heavy and warm, shoots a shiver down his spine when Zhongli rests it upon his shoulder. The mere seconds in which it lingers rams his heart raw into his ribcage. Childe gasps, and when Zhongli asks, “ May I?”
Childe forces a nod.
Zhongli makes himself at home, without warning and without question. The pitiful semblance of a black perch stew simmering low in a great iron pot, he helps himself to. Starving, he must be to forgo speech and manners. Why did he then– if Zhongli is presumed to be the only strange foreigner this side of Zapolyarny– why did he decline that woman’s invitation?
Surely she could see it, much like his own fretting grandmother who was so quick to stuff him full of pastries as a child. Was it for him? Had he been so determined to locate Childe’s home before the onslaught of the storm hit this little fishing harbor in full?
“Ah,” Zhongli says between spoonfuls of the stew. Childe has just sat across from him. It's a small dining set, only used for one before now. “Despite the limitations of available ingredients, I would dare say you’ve improved. It lacks a certain aroma of the herbs, and the peppers are less potent. But–” Zhongli offers Childe the slightest smile, and in that, his eyes grow wide.
His chest aches again, and whatever stupid nonsense threatens to spill from his gaping mouth, Childe stuffs full with his own efforts. It's not bad. But, Zhongli is being kind in his assessment. It is the thought of Liyue. The inspiration is clear but the flavors do not quite match. The Snezhnayan sturgeon is denser than the perch found in Liyue. The violetgrass non-existent, and the peppers duller in flavor. Despite it, Zhongli praises him.
Childe’s face heats.
It’s like the first time Childe realized attraction wasn’t the only thing he felt towards the consultant. The night on Yujing Terrace with the fireworks overhead. Childe had listened to Zhongli through the afternoon. His hand cupped in the bend of his elbow, leading the young Harbinger through the city’s festivities. No one… no one had ever treated him like that.
It was then Childe knew, and much like then, Childe finds himself watching Zhongli at a total loss for words.
Zhongli flits about his kitchen when they're done, opening each cabinet to check its contents, cleaning the dishes and setting them aside. Eventually, he settles on a tin of dried pine needles, steeps them in boiling water and offers a hot cup to Childe’s hands.
Their fingers brush, and Zhongli stifles a laugh.
“You are nervous. It has been some time since you have felt that way in my presence. Is it the lack of announcement? I would have sent a letter, but you did not give me your address.”
Yeah, because he thought they were through. Childe left, and Zhongli remained. Cut and dry, a break up of distance and responsibility.
“So, how did you find me?”
“Ah, the Tsaritsa is very giving with information inconsequential to her, and after the arrangement we made, all I had to do was ask.”
“It was that easy…”
Childe would curse it. His Archon giving away his location so easily, but… it brought Zhongli here, and despite his bluster, Childe has missed him dearly.
Zhongli had spoken of Liyue. Of the Fatui he once worked beside who still remain in the city. Of Xiangling and Xinyan. Of the Tianquan and the Adepti. Those whom Childe became a footnote in their lives. He speaks of everyone but himself, and the reason for his sudden arrival.
Childe raises the bitter, minty cup of tea to his lips. It tingles against his tongue. Zhongli is pleased by it, his expression softening around him. Childe has to look away.
What this man does to him. It’s so cruel.
“Why,” Childe asks bluntly when he sets his cup cooly to the table. “Why are you here, Zhongli?”
He seems surprised by it, and with a sentimental gesture, his hands brush over Childe’s own. He traces each knuckle, reminding Childe of those nights where he mapped the scars cut to his skin, and the hot tea tremors in his grasp.
“Ajax,” Oh . With one word, Childe knows it's serious. “You do not understand the longing I have felt. Call me spoiled if you will, but having your presence in Liyue was something of great comfort and pleasure for me. I hope I do not burden you by selfishly feeding my desire to see you again.”
Selfish? Childe wants to laugh, but instead, he chokes.
“I understand that this is sudden, and that I may overstay my welcome. But, there are a few things I’d like to discuss before I leave. Ah,” Zhongli says in pause, as if stumbling upon a great realization. He looks out the window, fogged from the inside and beginning to ice over. “I had not considered the ports would be closed due to the storm.”
A chat? That's all he wanted. Thousands of miles just to see him.
What Childe says next is without thought, running on pure instinct, “You’re staying the night.”
This one and the next. A whole week. However long it takes.
It’s not as if he could toss him back out to the cold, or deny him once he’s traveled over land and sea. Even if Childe could… he wouldn’t .
“I do not need you to feel obligated–”
“No.” Childe insists, and oh Archons, Zhongli. He can’t quite put this whole thing together in his mind. It's as if he’s living through a dream. One of the many he’s concocted since returning to Snezhnaya– a home that doesn’t feel quite so once he left his extended stay in Liyue.
“ Zhongli– ” He says, and this time, it is Zhongli who grows stiff. Maybe, he’s a selfish one, too. Easily begging Zhongli to stay, unable to set free the opportunity to be held under molten gold once more.
“Stay, please.”
Childe knew what he was asking the moment ‘ stay’ crossed his lips. It’s an entanglement that has Zhongli in his bed. Once cold and lonely, warmed with shared body heat and Zhongli’s leg slotting easily between his thighs.
The snowstorm pelts the window, and the old building groans and creaks beneath it. Inside the boiler burns, and Childe sears.
It's every touch. Kiss. The little words. Soft, sentimental things no one but Zhongli has ever uttered to him. Childe drowns in it– welcomes it – and with it, Zhongli fills the void left in his absence. To Childe, it is as if they were never apart.
Zhongli brushes his hair aside, thumbing down the high point of his cheeks where freckles, once darkened by Liyue’s sun have faded pale. He kisses him there, gently, near the corner of his eye and then lowers to the seam of Childe’s mouth.
Childe swallows it down. The simple kiss. The taste of minty pine and residual pepper still on his tongue. “I have thought of you through many nights.” Zhongli confesses in a whisper.
“Thought,” Childe asks, his grin mischievous. “Or, thought?”
“I cannot imagine what you imply.”
A lie.
“I have,” Childe admits easily, as easily as his hand snakes beneath the covers, searching for Zhongli’s thigh. He grazes muscle and downy hair, teasing upwards until he wraps around the half hard length of his cock.
Zhongli’s forehead bumps to his cheek with a softly breathed groan.
“Oh, Ajax. I–”
“Did you touch yourself?” He asks, stroking both in kindness and cruelty. The warm swipe of his palm cradles the curve of his cock but stops short once reaching the crest. Zhongli mutters a frustrated sound, canting up to Childe’s touch. “ Like this? ” He says, and Zhongi whines.
Whines, my gods.
“Zhongli,” Childe wants to hear him. He’s desperate for it, his own cock growing hard beneath his navel. “Did you think of me?”
“Ajax–”
This time he buries his face to the crook of Childe’s neck, breathing him in as if drinking from his very soul. Childe shivers at that, and lower, he says, “I thought of you.”
Too much. Too often. How could Childe ever forget?
(He wouldn’t. No matter what, Zhongli had engraved himself upon Childe’s memory in perpetuity.)
“Do you know how long it's been?” Childe mutters, pumping Zhongli’s cock beneath the blankets. It twitches in his hand. Sensitive and wanting, begging for a warm hole to sink into. Childe will provide in due time. For now, Zhongli moans, bucks to Childe’s hand, and the teeth bared to his throat threaten to pierce right through. Childe hisses a little at that.
“Six months, seven days, and sixteen hours.” Zhongli answers.
“Oh?”
“I kept count.”
He exhales with a laugh, offering his lips back to Zhongli for another kiss. Is he drunk? It feels like it, or has he been so starved of another’s touch that this is enough to render him this way?
“What did you think of?” Childe prods. He takes pleasure in it, watching Zhongli skirt around his playfully crassness. The question brings him to a sudden quiet. “Don’t tell me you’re embarrassed. Didn’t you once ask me to share my fantasies with you?”
“I did.” He huffs, the great Archon pouting like a child. Liyue would rue the day, but Childe merely buckles in laughter. Zhongli sighs and with joy rising to Childe’s face, gives in. “Your energy. I doubt you realize how radiant it is. It’s similar to…” Zhongli searches for the right words. “ Citrus – bright, strong, and invigorating.”
“I missed holding you. How you would crumple beneath me, curled inwards in your slumber as if trying to protect yourself. Do you realize, you only stopped once sharing a space with me? It’s rather endearing, Ajax.” He laughs as if recalling a fond memory, and Childe feels rather foolish in asking this question, at all. After a pause, Zhongli coughs in a mock of propriety and finishes with, “ Your body. ”
That Childe can cling to– it's easy, fun and doesn’t make his chest ache as if it's been stabbed right through.
“What about my body?” Childe teases.
“You really are a devilish thing, aren’t you?”
“It’s part of my charm.”
Zhongli heaves him over, pushing Childe flat to his back, the man pinning him in from above.
Oh .
Childe’s eyes round out. Zhongli has an immaculate way of making him feel so small with such a little gesture. Dark hair, tousled and loose from Childe’s hand, pools over his shoulder. Zhongli smolders. Archons, he does. The mere graze of his knees to Childe’s hips lights his nerves afire, and it only grows when he draws two oiled fingers over his entrance.
“Is this what you wish of me, Ajax?” Zhongli teases him there, coating the cleft of his ass with the warm slick substance. He traces the furl, and when he edges past the entrance, sinking both digits inside, Childe wheezes. His legs kick up instinctively, followed by a gasp and the pathetic twitch of his dick. Zhongli chuckles. “I see your body has answered for you.”
(Childe deserves it. Probably.)
“ –’s not fair.”
“Is it not?” Zhongli chides, his fingers sweep Childe’s hot insides, teasing him apart with each slick thrust inside. “Were you not the one inquiring as to how I imagined fucking you while taking pleasure in my own hand?”
Mean.
“You never did tell me.”
“In due time.” Zhongli teases yet again. He is ruthless when the mood strikes him, making Childe putty beneath his hands. Zhongli kisses across the bridge of his nose. He lingers there when Childe chokes on a groan, hips tilted up when Zhongli nudges his prostate. “You may find the desires of a terribly old dragon to be rather mundane.”
Childe doubts it. Nothing about Zhongli is mundane, no matter how he disguises himself.
“You’re holding out on me.”
“Am I?”
Gold glimmers mirthfully. It washes over him, along with each prod of delicate, honed fingers to his prostate. It’s been so long since he’s felt the touch of another. Childe’s gotten by with himself, but… it's not the same.
Zhongli, he–
He knows everything. Sure, one would expect that of a 6,000 year old adeptus. But for Childe, it's his every button. What makes him squirm, keen, and cry out his name. What sinks the pit of his stomach in longing and desire, and makes it nigh impossible for him to ever find another.
Because no one is like Zhongli.
Childe chokes on a whimper. His eyes grow glassy in Zhongli’s care. Eventually, he huffs. ‘Impatient as always’ or so, Zhongli would chide him for beneath the amber lanterns of the harbor.
“Quit talking, and fuck me already.”
Zhongli smiles at him. A kindly one that barely marks at the seam of his lips. It never fails to make his heart skip and the tips of his ears burn. His eyes crinkle up with it. All genuine and sweet when he adds a third finger to Childe’s hole.
“Ah, Ajax. You grow embarrassed, but I do not wish for this to be over so quickly.” His wrist twists, fingers hooking, and Childe bucks up with a cry, his cock nearly on the verge of spending.
“Perhaps, we could hasten this if you ask nicely. I am not so cruel as to deny you, after all.”
“You–!”
Zhongli tuts. Does that thing again with his hand, and Childe feels all shame slip away.
“P-please! Zhongli–”
His eyes squeeze shut, a tear slipping from its corner. He hasn’t … it's not the sex that brings him to the verge of tears. Not really. That’s what makes it all the worse. Zhongli leans to him, catches the droplet on his tongue and purrs with a low rumble.
“Very good.”
Childe melts beneath the affection Zhongli showers him in. He leaves him empty only for the shortest time. Childe parts his thighs a little wider and allows Zhongli to fit in the space between. His chest balls tight, anticipation keeping the breath in his lungs, and when the blunt head presses to his entrance and smoothly slides in, Childe loses it all.
Even Zhongli buckles with it, that first slow sink inside. The first one for them both in months. He groans with a whisper of Childe’s name, eyes sliding shut until the width of his cock is taken nearly all the way inside.
It’s hot. Every inch of Childe is, and every inch begs to be touched. Childe stretches out, fingers twining in Zhongli’s hair and when he circles them around Zhongli’s neck and swoops the once Archon down to his chest, Zhongli gasps. He gasps, and Childe takes his lips between teeth, tugging him into a kiss.
It’s everything. Zhongli draped around him, taking him slowly with languid, long thrusts, sighing these perfect, little moans. Childe eats up each one, desperate for all Zhongli has to give. He hikes his hips a little higher and meets Zhongli’s thrusts with fervor.
A punched moan rips from his throat, and Childe’s cock weeps in the space between their bodies.
“Zhongli,” He says– too breathless and with too much pent up feeling for a Harbinger. “I–” Childe knows what he wants to say. It’s this feeling that only festered in Zhongli’s absence. When they were together, Childe never noticed. Only when apart, did it tear at him. Bit by bit. Day by day. He wonders briefly if Zhongli felt the same, and if that’s what drove him to Snezhnaya this day.
“I’ve missed this.” That’s not quite it. Childe is still holding back. “ You.”
And, how quickly Zhongli integrated himself into his very life, entangled and knotted, such that to free himself Childe would have to cut away parts of his self.
Zhongli bumps into his forehead and takes in the depths of lifeless blue.
( Lifeless. Childe had joked once. Zhongli had taken offense to it and insisted there was so much light and life brimming inside him.)
“I, too.” He says.
Oh.
Quieter Zhongli adds, “More than you can ever fathom, Ajax.”
Childe chokes on a sudden nausea. The pit of his stomach thick with arousal, and his chest, it throbs. Each pulse of his heart, hammering blood through his system. It makes him hot, dizzy, as if he’s being fucked to the verge of passing out.
Zhongli, he–
Childe has no doubts anymore.
(Zhongli loves him. He must. What else would drag a retired Archon all the way across the continent to the most inhospitable of all the nations? Love. What a thought.)
Childe’s nails scrape across his back, biting blunt red marks to Zhongli’s skin. Unsteady legs hook around his waist, urging the man deeper inside with each thrust. A tremor wracks through him with his head jutting back to the pillows. Zhongli takes the opportunity to nip small bites to his bare throat.
Childe sighs, and his eyes flutter back.
“Fuck, fuck.”
He feels full, heavy as if ready to pop. Zhongli pulls out, the tip just catches at his rim and with a slick thrust seats himself all the way inside. Childe strings up again, back arching, heels dug out into the sheets.
Zhongli teases him, “Always eloquent.” Rather inopportune, Childe might add.
“It’s not the time to–”
Childe catches Zhongli by the back of head and smushes him face first to his chest.
“Oh.”
OH.
It catches him off guard, the moment he cums. His nerves blaze, a fire of gooseflesh risen across his skin. Childe moans on Zhongli’s name. All of them. Whichever sticks, but it’s ‘Zhongli’ that feels just right.
His insides milk over Zhongli’s cock, held deep within his gut, and Childe’s own pools hot cum at the base of his stomach. Zhongli manages to wriggle from his grasp when Childe is left slack and sated for the first time in ages.
He huffs a little, annoyed. Zhongli’s face grows unnaturally flushed, his pupils wide and dark. It almost makes Childe’s dick stir again.
“I wished to see you.” He admits.
Huh.
Despite his feigned irritation, Zhongli lurches forward and swoops an arm beneath Childe’s lower back. He pulls Childe towards him, deepens the angle, and urges him forward. He meets him with each thrust. All full and warm with the promise of Zhongli’s cum on the horizon.
“Are you close?” Childe asks in a dreamy haze.
A furrow forms in Zhongli’s brow, and the swell of his dick twitches inside. Oh, so he is.
Childe grins lazily and offers him a messy kiss.
“Please, Zhongli. I want to feel you inside me. Don’t you know how I’ve craved this? How long I’ve waited. I’ve fucked myself raw on my fingers, my Vision, but it was never the same. Won’t you give this to me?”
Zhongli does.
It’s the stutter of his hips. Zhongli bottomed out completely, his cock swallowed down to the base. It still rubs over Childe’s sensitive prostate and raises their shared moans to the air. Childe cradles him there in his sweltering soft heat when Zhongli finally cums. The building gives a great heave, as if the foundation beneath shakes from it, and knowing Zhongli, it may.
Zhongli cums inside. The tacky heat of it is a strange comfort. There’s something about it, the orgasm shared that leaves Childe more satisfied than before.
Zhongli collapses to him in the aftermath. His face buried to Childe’s heightened pulse. He sucks little marks there, possessive as he’s always been. A mark left behind, an exchange of clothing, or a palm weighted to Childe’s lower back. Zhongli has always claimed him as his own.
Zhongli whispers things. Inconsequential and sweet. Childe doesn’t want to tear himself from this. The warmth beneath a body and bed. The comfort of Zhongli’s cock, grown softer still held within him.
Childe reeks of him. Must. Every part of him coated and claimed by Zhongli.
Eventually, he speaks up, having found his voice again. The snow still pelts the window, the cold air seeping where the insulation has cracked.
“Zhongli,” He asks, to the subtle peek of his head. “How would you feel about spending the day in bed?”
His answer is a chuckle murmured to his temple. Zhongli brushes over his eyelashes again, before settling at the corner of Childe’s mouth.
“I am rather weary from my journey, I suppose that would be quite the agreeable arrangement.”
Weary. Yeah, right.
“Ajax, I must ask.” Zhongli suddenly broaches while trying to throw together some semblance of a meal from Childe’s meager stores. The light outside is dim, still raging in a snowstorm, but what would normally be a cold morning is instead incredibly warm. “I would like to stay here for a while if you are amicable to it. My freight of luggage is back at the international port outside Zapolyarny. The Tsaritsa kindly waived the import fee for my belongings as the mora it would require… I think even you would balk at it.”
Childe sets down his cup of thick hot chocolate with a curious sense of dread.
“Zhongli… how much stuff did you bring?”
“All of my belongings. Each one is of great necessity for a comfortable extended sabbatical in your home country.”
“Oh.”
Childe’s going to need a bigger house.