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It happened during the quiet, deep-blue hours of the night.
“Beautiful,” Zhongli breathed into his collarbone, “oh darling so… s-so beautiful.”
Childe screwed his eyes shut and focused on not shattering into million pieces; a thing made excessively difficult when his lover moved like that. A quiet keen escaped him and the ginger felt Zhongli’s smug smirk against the skin of his neck.
“Stunning, absolutely divine my dear,” the god continued, trailing his lips across a crisscrossing of pale lines marring a freckled shoulder. “If only you could see yourself now. Thousand… thousand years would not be enough to sufficiently commit this sight to memory.”
Childe felt something winding in his chest then; something small and spiky and achingly painful. “S-Stop,” he whimpered quietly, as his eyes burned with more than just pleasure and he slowly but surely shook apart.
Zhongli froze immediately, peering at him through those long eyelashes and the sight of him made the thing in Childe’s chest tighten a bit more.
“Baobei?”
“Don’t just… k-keep moving, only… please, stop talking.”
Because something in those words pulled at a forgotten cord inside the younger man, something he wasn’t really prepared to face yet. He buried his face in Zhongli’s shoulder and wound his arms around him, squirming his hips in encouragement.
The Adeptus released a long breath, before leaning forward and pressing a sweet kiss against his lover’s neck.
“I got you.”
———
Later, when Childe was hovering at the edge between content dozing and true sleep, Zhongli pressed his lips against those mused red locks and sighed. His gold-brown arms were wound securely around his lover and the ginger truthfully couldn’t manage more than an inquisitive hum.
“Do you perchance… dislike my voice?” the Adeptus finally asked, soft insecurity painting his tone in almost unnoticeable wavers.
Childe dragged himself back to consciousness and peered up at him. “Of course not,” he snorted, “you know that I love your voice.” He grinned with a hint of mischief then, all rosy cheeks and half-lidded eyes. “I wouldn’t have spent so much time listening to your rants anyways.”
But instead of continuing with their playful debate in the regular manner of pretending insulted dignity, Zhongli only gently stroked his face. “And yet you requested my silence today. Why? Was it something I have said?”
Childe blinked at him, startled, before turning his head to the side and laughing awkwardly. So much for the hope of the Adeptus simply forgetting his momentary slip up. “Oh, it was only getting a bit… distracting. Didn’t want it to end too soon you know.”
But his lover only frowned deeper, easily recognising the forced cheer as a lie and the grin for bared teeth of a scared animal.
“You must forgive me for not fully believing you. You have been… distraught.”
Childe, familiar with that determined arch to Zhongli’s eyebrow, sighed and hid his face in their pillow. “Can we just, not talk about it?”
Zhongli gently traced random patterns on his freckled back, tense muscles slightly quivering under his touch. “My heart, if something troubles you, please tell me so.”
“I told you it’s unimportant.”
“And yet I worry.”
The Adeptus clutched him tighter, whispering in his ear. “You have never showed any dislike to my voice before - on the contrary, I vividly remember several instances in which my ‘rambling’, as you put it, was met with much enthusiasm instead.” Childe hid his burning face in the bedding and cursed that flawless memory.
“So what was different this time?” Zhongli continued, barrelling on. “I have merely been singing you praises and- oh?”
Sometimes, Childe really hated how the man, the god, could read him so easily, from the slightest twitch of his fingers to the shaky breath released into the night air.
Zhongli kept quiet for a long time, a warm, immovable anchor to clutch onto at the edge of a cliff. “But you do deserve it baobei, surely you are aware of that?” he asked quietly and before he could stop himself, the ginger was already shaking his head.
His lover was a blockhead and endearingly oblivious sometimes, but also infuriatingly stubborn and determined. When Zhongli finally perceived a slight in the world, he would pursue it with all the inevitability of an incoming landslide - and when those ochre fingers gently brushed over a jagged line upon Childe’s lower back and were answered by a full-body tremble, he sucked in a quick breath of realisation.
“Childe,” a tipping point, a precipice over a deep canyon, but always with the promise of strong hands catching him if he ever slipped. “Are you… ashamed of your scars?”
“No.” And it was the truth, because the Harbinger could never be ashamed of the proof that he survived; but it also wasn’t the truth, because… “No I am not.”
“And yet you tremble like a leaf in my arms whenever I trace them. Why? Surely you must know, that they only make you more exquisite in my eyes.”
Childe released a long breath, once again hiding his face in his lover’s chest. He knew each of his scars like the back of his hand, knew all the fights and stories that led to those pale lines crisscrossing his flesh and he was proud of them. They were a visual reminder of all he had accomplished, all he had overcome; the parallel gashes from rifthound claws of the Abyss, the sprawling net of electro burns from when he was first mastering his delusion, even the little halfmoon over his left knee from when he fell off a tree as a kid, long before he learned what it really meant to Fall.
So he didn’t flaunt them, but he also never hid them, a part of him as intrinsic as his red hair. It was only that sometimes…
Sometimes he looked at Zhongli, his lover, his dragon, his god and it felt a little bit like staring into the sun.
“I am not ashamed,” he repeated firmly. “I just…”
Zhongli, with all the patience of an immortal, simply stroked his hair and waited.
“It’s… they are important to me and I will never try to hide them, but I… but you,” he stumbled over his words, the usual eloquence forgotten in the moment, before finally whispering his quiet admission. “But you don’t have any.”
It was silent then, only their breaths intermingling between the scent of sandalwood and petrichor and Childe wordlessly berated himself for causing his lover worry over something so stupid and silly. It didn’t even really make sense, foolish worries turning around and around in his head untill loosing their shape entirely and shattering into thousands of needle-sharp pieces.
And Zhongli still didn’t say anything, silent as the mountains watching over Liyue. Childe was halfway convinced to just launch into insincere giggles, steering the conversation away and never coming back to it, before an ochre palm took his hand and tangled their fingers together.
“Wh’t,” the ginger slurred tiredly, but the Adeptus simply pressed Childe’s digits to a place under his ribs and gently brushed them upwards and sideways.
“A sword,” he said simply, “from when I was still getting used to human form. A neighbouring godling that never would have stood a chance otherwise managed to catch me off guard and skewer me to the mountainside. I buried then underneath the very same mountain.”
Childe’s breath caught in his throat then, as understanding dawned on him. But Zhongli only gave him a gentle smile and brought their joined fingers to the left side of his face.
“A beast warped by the Abyss almost clawed out my eye once. It has taken me several months to accumulate enough energy to properly restore it then.”
Two taps along Zhongli’s shoulder blades. “When fighting in my dragon form, an enemy clambered onto my back and sunk their blades along my spine, in hopes of stunning me enough for the kill.” His golden eyes were fever-bright, scattering bright flickers around them.
“A water lasso wrapped around my arm. A swarm of demonic entities with the ability to shoot razor-sharp spikes from their tails. A wound from an old ally turned vicious foe.”
Each new admission whispered into the space between them, Childe’s fingers mapping the contours of past injuries that may not have left a mark on the body, but stayed on the soul. Zhongli talked about millennia of fighting, thousands of scars that once sprawled upon his skin with a steady tone, as if he was merely recounting a long list instead of reliving his painful past.
Childe then wrapped around him, trapping their joined hands between them and halting that deep baritone. “It’s okay, I understand now.” He couldn’t watch anymore as those brilliant eyes grew so dull. “I get it, you can stop.”
His lover only huffed incredulously before flipping them suddenly; the ginger ended on his back with a little eek, a sharp twinge in his abdomen reminding him of their previous activities, while Zhongli leaned on his elbows, caging him between his gold-brown arms and cocked an eyebrow.
“Do you really?” and honestly, it should not be allowed for his lazy drawls to sound so enticing. Childe blinked at him a bit dazedly and was rewarder with the slightest curl of a lip.
“They may not have remained physically, since this body is but a vessel, but my scars were once present just the same.” Zhongli leaned closer then, pressing a line of kisses along Childe’s jawline. “So do not dare to feel ashamed just because your injuries still linger over your skin.”
Childe gazed silently at the ceiling and his lover exhaled a long breath, warm air tickling his collarbone as Zhongli tucked his head closer, ochre fingers gently stroking over freckled shoulders.
“I hate seeing you hurt,” he admitted quietly. “I would place you in my nest, amongst the finest silks and softest furs, all my treasures paling in shame against your radiance. And I would curl around you and never let you leave, so that you would never again have to experience any harm.”
The Harbinger chuckled gently and tangled his fingers in his lover’s hair, unravelling the glossy dark strands. “I would not thank you for such life.”
“I know.” Zhongli sounded somber but Childe could feel his smile against his neck. “Which is why I would not do so, even if I remain tempted all the time.”
Zhongli pressed his face against the ginger’s chest, inhaling shakily and winding his arms tighter around Childe’s waist, listening to his heartbeat. “But make no mistake; just because I find myself unable to fully find joy in those of your reckless endeavours that end in injury, I can still whisper praise to each of your scars.”
The Adeptus continued before Childe could protest, pressing tighter against him, as if he wanted to bypass the mortal shell and fully blend their very souls together. “They remain a proof of your accomplishments, your survival, your will, even against impossible odds. How can I not find myself charmed by so many traces of your determination to come to me?”
Childe pressed his lips together then, because yes, some of his injuries he should not have survived. Except he did.
“You do realise that I got most of these long before even meeting you, right?” he still tried to diffuse the situation in humour, gently brushing through his lover’s silken strands of hair, before pressing a kiss to his forehead.
Zhongli peered upwards then, the barest hint of glowing gold visible between dark lashes and smiled in that particular way that somehow showed all his years, but also made him look impossibly young.
“Ah, please forgive this old dragon a bit of sentimentality, but I like to imagine that we have always been meant to meet, in one way or another.”
Childe grinned, pressing his palm against Zhongli’s cheek, as the Adeptus arched to land a butterfly kiss against it. “Hah, as if something as mundane as a little flesh wound could ever stop me from coming to you.”
But the thing in his chest was lighter now, flowing gently upon the waves of warm gold that was a god’s love, and he could only float and sincerely hope, that he somehow managed to show it back. Zhongli’s fond gaze told him that he did.
Later, when his eyes could no longer stay open, he whispered into his lover’s hair, holding him close, closer still. “Ah, but it has… all worked out in the end… quite nicely. Hasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Zhongli whispered back, drawing their blanked over them before settling back into their joined embrace. “It has.”