Work Text:
Me
Tartaglia
Are you busy
childe 🐳💙
No not rlly
i have a prep period now
Why
Me
[Request for $5]
childe 🐳💙
bro
“You have got to start carrying pocket change,” Childe tells him ten minutes later as he reaches for his wallet. When Zhongli turns his pockets inside out, he’s lucky to find more than a quarter, change likely left over from running to the laundromat two days before. “How much is the happy meal, again?”
The cashier in front of the two answers before Zhongli could peer over the counter to catch the pricing, before the menu transitions to the next screen. “Four dollars.”
“Here.” Four singles, flat as ever, plainly placed on the counter. “Oh, and can you replace the apple juice with a small ice tea?”
Zhongli is a shockingly simple man. He goes to the laundromat every Monday and Thursday morning, runs errands until around noon, then works on his countless work-in-progress history books and various documentaries on Liyue until five hits and the doorbell rings. There was a routine to how he carried on each day, each week, and this schedule included the weekly mishap of finding his pockets empty trying to buy a snack from McDonald’s.
“I hope I didn’t take you away from work,” he says, watching Childe sip on the miniature drink while flipping through a thick manuscript constantly. As if by the goodness of the universe’s design, each time he calls Childe asking for a couple of dollars aligns with one of his prepping periods— which leads to him coming in person instead of simply sending the money over the phone.
Childe shakes his head, the straw moving and squeaking against the plastic as he does so. “No, no, Zhongli, it’s fine, really—” He’s immediately face-to-face with the manuscript, his eyes glancing over the play’s title Rex Incognito before focusing on the line Childe taps twice with his blue pen. “But as payment, you could check this paragraph for me to see if there’s any inaccuracies. I was going to end up calling you about it anyways.”
After years of listening to Zhongli ramble on about the history and intricacies of Liyue’s culture, he feels some sort of pride in the fact that the first play Childe decides to direct as the school’s theatre director is a work inspired and chock-full of his own explanations. “His eyes are specifically amber, not gold,” he moves the tip of Childe’s pen to the exact point on the page as the manuscript flies out of his hands and into the other’s for corrections.
He thanks him wholly and suddenly his phone rings— papers flying in many directions as Childe scrambles to stack all his papers in order and Zhongli places the cup on the pile like a cherry being the finishing touch to a hastily-made sundae.
“I—” The phone dings again, a sure sign that his next class was set to start soon and his students are rather particular about some made up fifteen minute rule, “I have to run back. I’ll see you later, yeah?”
Zhongli nods. “Yes, later. Love you.”
Despite the stack of papers, despite the wobbling teetering cup above it all, Childe never fails to kiss his forehead before he leaves. “Love you too.”
Despite popular belief (not popular, per se, rather an inside joke from his boyfriend and the next door twins who pay his bus fare occasionally), Zhongli does not always forget his wallet. He forgets it when he’s about to walk to the nearest café for some coffee, when he needs to ride the bus to his editor’s place, etcetera. Yet he never forgets his wallet when he sees a new book by Childe’s favorite author, when he’s babysitting Qiqi and she’s out of coconut milk, or when he’s buying thank-you chocolates for the twins next door after they paid his bus fare last week.
The only times Zhongli truly forgets his wallet is when he needs the money for himself— if he misplaces it, that’s his own dilemma. But when the money is going towards someone else’s happiness, his wallet almost appears out of thin air. He can’t ask Childe if he has a ten-dollar bill when he’s buying a present for him because it’ll ruin the surprise, obviously.
“You know, I do love it when you buy food,” Childe remarks with a half-full mouth, “But I also think it’s really really cruel that I have to use chopsticks when eating this.”
He shrugs. “A double-edged sword, then. The food did come with chopsticks, so it’d be rude to not eat the food with the utensils given.”
It’s been years since Childe sincerely attempted to use his chopsticks correctly, just like how it’s been years since Zhongli last tried teaching him. Nowadays Zhongli watches in disguised horror as he pokes through a clump of rice that miraculously stays together long enough to reach Childe’s mouth.
Compared to Zhongli, Childe is an enigma. He tries to do a million things at once- he credits it to being ambidextrous, the most ridiculous excuse Zhongli has heard in his lifetime- whenever he wants. One day he’ll find him hunched over his play manuscript, the next he’ll be talking Zhongli’s ear off about an essay one of his students turned in, and sometimes he’ll find Childe taking an impromptu nap on his desk and he has to carry him to bed in the evening.
Zhongli is the rhythmic melody of rain as it trickles down a rain gutter, while Childe is a storm and a tornado all at once. He could shoot a bullseye blindfolded but his archenemies are chopsticks and Zhongli’s sweet requests to honor the restaurant’s wishes every time; a jack-of-most-trades.
Even when Childe takes longer to finish the rest of the meal, Zhongli stays. Perhaps he stays merely because he loves him, or maybe he finds enjoyment in watching Childe struggle to pick up a meager piece of shrimp five, ten times over.
“Can you make hot chocolate?”
Childe has a state-of-the-art coffee maker, and still there’s no automatic setting for hot cocoa. A fatal mistake on his part, really, when Zhongli loves the drink yet refuses to press any of its many buttons in fear that he’ll activate a top secret self-destruct feature that may or may not be somewhere in the system.
“Tartaglia… hello…” He shakes his shoulder so gently, the request almost at a whisper as he tries to wake him up carefully. A couple of more taps later Childe breathes slightly heavier than usual, before coming alive with a whine.
“It’s…” In the dimly-lit room, he watches the shadow of Childe’s hand as it slaps around the wood of the bedside table until it feels something more plastic. He shuffles underneath his blanket, looking up at the analog clock’s red digits. “Two in the mooorning, Zhongli…”
Zhongli learned to say nothing after Childe whines about the time like always, because seconds later Childe will roll out of bed and onto the carpet with a muffled “Ouch!” like always. The whale-shaped night light flickers to life when Childe passes by it; a signal for Zhongli to follow.
There are times when Childe is stagnant, similar to him— a rock in some way, possibly derived from Zhongli being ever present in his life and his habits were rubbing off on him. There are times when Childe is predictable, though predictable in the way where even Zhongli finds him unpredictable despite watching him so closely like two stars in perpetual orbit.
But yet, he only ever wears sweatpants to sleep, while Zhongli chooses to wear a shirt along with an interestingly designed pair of boxers with Pikachus printed all over it. Together, they’d make a whole outfit.
The coffee maker whirs to life when Childe turns it on, as Zhongli sits at the table watching him go through the many menus before the promised hot chocolate spills into his regular mug. (It was never verbally promised, yes, but over time he’s realized that Childe prefers contracts carried out through his own actions rather than verbal promises.)
“Ta-da.”
A perfect hot chocolate, with four small marshmallows floating in the very middle. It baffles him how he could navigate the appliance when his eyes are still half-lidded, his voice still slightly deeper and drowsy as he drifts in and out of sleep. In a very Childe-like fashion, he never fails to surpass expectations.
“Thank you.”
He expects Childe to wobble his way back to their bed (Childe’s bed, if he was being specific, though he’s slept in it so often that it could be considered his as well by now), off to catch a few more hours of sleep before waking up at six, but he pulls up the chair next to Zhongli instead. His head falls onto Zhongli’s shoulder with little grace, as if it was his own magnificent pillow waiting for him on the mattress a couple of feet away.
“Are you not going to bed?”
“Wanted to wait for you.”
He would argue. He should drag him back to bed and tuck him in for the night so he would not be bothered by Zhongli’s restlessness. But when he wraps his arms around Zhongli’s own with such persistence, he cannot help but allow Childe to wait.