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“So you want me to catsit,” Childe pauses, then scans the entryway of the apartment, “ And apartmentsit.”
Zhongli grimaces at the thought. “Please do not sit on my cat.”
Childe cuts him off before Zhongli can go on about how impractical it would be for him to sit atop the roof of his apartment, especially since he lived on the third floor out of four. The fact that Zhongli even had an apartment despite being dirt poor was baffling to him already— it was in the center of the harbor’s shopping district, a block away from where Childe was staying for the meantime. (That alone should be enough on how pricey a mere studio apartment was in these parts, the fact that Childe could see Zhongli’s place from the window of his hotel room.)
When Zhongli showed up at the bank earlier in the day and invited him over he had instantly said yes. He was far from recovering over the pure heartbreak the god inflicted upon him exactly two weeks ago, but Childe follows nonetheless— the daydream of Zhongli groveling before him asking for his sweet forgiveness clouded his sense of reason.
But of course Zhongli asks him to play housewife.
(They weren’t married, anyways. Childe would say no if Zhongli dared to ask.)
“Why couldn’t you ask… Aether or someone else?” As a part of the Adventurer’s Guild, Childe routinely watches the other outlander run around Liyue Harbor, murmuring about needing to kill exactly eight hilichurls and defeat a slime balloon before the time runs out. (Whatever that means.) “They’re no stranger to such a mundane task.”
Zhongli answers as if he’s rehearsed for every complaint Childe could think up, as if he made flashcards full of excuses. “Aether has left for Dragonspine. A detour until a road to Inazuma magically opens itself up to them, I assume.”
This is a lie, of course— on Childe’s calendar in his Northland Bank office, there’s a certain date circled in marker. The note over it says “Dinner @ Xinyue Kiosk, 8pm”, as next Wednesday is reserved for treating Aether and Paimon to a helping of some of the most expensive and luxurious food in Liyue Harbor. The cost is a simple playful spar in the valley under Mt. Tianheng, but Paimon’s persuasion skills prove themselves rather useful at times. Aether would leave next Wednesday, and it was only Sunday.
“I see,” Childe nods anyway.
For a god to leave the region he protects is a bold idea to Childe— but Zhongli is no god nowadays, with no Archon responsibilities balancing upon his shoulders. While he retains his abilities except for a small power trip without his Gnosis, Zhongli can still make mora if he wished, can still control Geo as if it was an extension of his own body.
For a mortal to leave the region he’s lived in for so long for a day or two was not bold, nor peculiar. It was natural, as natural as when Childe asks the Tsaritsa for some time off after being sent to three regions in a span of two months.
“It is only three days in Mondstadt,” Zhongli explains, “To see an old friend of mine.”
Childe knows that if Zhongli says his friend is old, then he really must mean old. Perhaps thousands of years old— likely an Archon. Maybe they will pop a few bottles over their new shared status as Gnosis-less gods. “Why not invite them here? I’m sure they’d love to see Liyue.”
“He’s… ah… allergic to cats.”
Strange. He can’t fact check that.
Zhongli’s guidelines are very simple: The cat’s name is Lily. He likes to eat the food Zhongli keeps in the cupboard. He is quite well-mannered and Childe only really needs to feed him a few times a day.
“And the apartment?” Childe asks after Zhongli’s brief rundown.
“You don’t need to worry about it.” The apartment was tidy enough, though Childe stares at the dust bunnies forming discreetly under Zhongli’s futon and the picture frames on shelves that almost certainly need dusting.
“I’ll do it,” he says after a moment, “But don’t think this means we’re friends now. You’ll have to pay me back with a spar once you come back.”
Zhongli wonders how many times Childe will fall for his thinly-veiled tricks. After all, a man with all the mora in the world would never ask for more mora.
To the naked eye, Zhongli’s apartment is completely and extraordinarily clean.
But after further inspection, Childe can see the cracks in Zhongli’s fragile perfection; the dust bunnies multiplying under the futon, the dishes obviously hastily washed, the fact that Lily the tabby is without a doubt overdue for a haircut.
Childe would have argued with Zhongli, telling him that as a Harbinger he has much better things to do than watching a cat lick water for twenty minutes and rewash some dishes, but they both know Childe’s boat ticket home is collecting its own dust in the drawer of his office. His time in Liyue is dwindling, resulting in him making losing bets with agents and saying “I guess I have to do debt collection today!” over and over as a means of staying in Liyue and very far away from Zapolyarny. The thought of the Tsaritsa guffawing at him sends shivers down his spine, the image of her asking “You truly didn’t realize he was Rex Lapis?” as her respect for him collapsed kept him as far away from the palace as possible.
But one can only use the same excuse so many times. Today, Ekaterina begrudgingly wrote down reconnaissance under his itinerary. Technically it was reconnaissance; if Childe happened to find any confidential information that would help gather the other four Gnoses, would that not be beneficial for the Fatui?
“I think it’s nothing short of a miracle that you- of all people- were picked as the eleventh Harbinger,” said Ekaterina this morning after Childe revealed his marvelous excuse to her over the reception counter. Yet she does not understand the shame in coming home a fool in front of two Archons and one of his own, or a problem to every Fatui diplomat who spent years meticulously forming good relations with the Liyue Qixing.
Dusting these old picture frames, Childe argues, is self-preservation if anything.
The frames are nothing short of pristine now after Childe cleans them, but the photos they protect are fading, blurry and losing color around the edges. He assumes they are thousands of years old— one of the photographs depict a Liyue Harbor early in its making, with Zhongli standing as stiff as a slab of wood while people around him smile and present a newly-built Yuijin Terrace. Another shows Zhongli, a young woman and a bird sitting around a stone table, with the clouds blanketing Jueyun Karst in the background.
The last photo, hidden behind all others, is of the same woman from before. This time she is smiling even wider, lying amidst a field of the most dazzling Glaze Lilies.
Childe wonders, where is Zhongli in this one, before understanding that Zhongli is the man who took it, the man who wanted to capture this moment for himself instead of the terrace builders or the bird where Zhongli is not smiling at the camera.
Maybe when taking this moment in particular, Zhongli is smiling behind the camera.
Childe puts back the picture frame and returns it to its home amongst the others. Later he dusts the bookshelves filled with books he suspects are long out of print— their words are in another language, their ideas otherworldly as they describe a time before the Archon War and before Liyue Harbor and before Childe. Later he is snooping through Zhongli’s desk drawers before accidentally stubbing his toe against a square meteor which glows even in the dusk of Liyue, but Childe has learnt enough in such a short amount of time to leave it alone and to simply feed Lily the tabby instead.
Though Zhongli’s apartment now looks like new, everything within is so very old. The photos, the books, even the resident is older than anything.
And Childe— he is twenty-four next month, isn’t he?
What is twenty-four years in comparison to six thousand years of friends, lovers, tedious upkeep of the city he raised like it was his child? Only the cat was younger than him, unless he too was an adeptus and secretly hundreds of years old.
Maybe it was selfish of him to assume that Zhongli was his friend after a couple of dinners and some weeks spent together as he and Aether ran around Liyue preparing for the Rite of Parting. To Childe, a month is so long; but to Zhongli, a month could feel less than a second.
How many people has he met in his lifetime who look like him? How many people look exactly like him, from the hair to the eyes to the smile? How many people talk like him, walk like him, lie like him? How many of those people have met Zhongli? Befriended Zhongli? Loved Zhongli?
The Tsaritsa has always cherished him, but her words from his induction haunts his dreams twice a night.
“There are endless replacements,” she whispered into his ear, her warning making a home inside his thoughts like an earworm. She has told him countless times about a knight from centuries ago who had the same tangerine hair as him, the same ambitious glint in his eye who wanted anything and everything in the world.
But perhaps this- his desire to be another photo on the shelf, to look up from struggling to eat his meal only to see Zhongli chuckling at him- was too ambitious for a man who wants to conquer a world who will outlive him.