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The first time Childe cooks for Zhongli, it was part of an unplanned visit.
Their set-up is like this: lunch break in Northland Bank meant an entire hour for Childe to get something to fill his stomach in between the monotony of copious pen-twirling and paper-signing. He would go down the spiraling staircase perpendicular to the bank’s entrance, go down a few more, walk two blocks before turning right to the Wangsheng Funeral Parlour. The undertaker, on some days, would be right in front of the building, greeting visitors with nary a twitch of her lips. Then, Childe would make his way through the lacquered doors, gracing the consultant with his presence (and his heavy money pouch). Zhongli would look up from his desk, forms for different orders of flowers or perfumes momentarily forgotten as he suggests trying a new dish at Wanmin Restaurant this time in order to ease Childe into the wonders of Liyue’s gastronomy.
Today was rather different.
Childe went down the usual staircases, walked two blocks, and turned right before the undertaker stopped him.
“Mister Zhongli is on leave today,” she says, her voice raspy with disuse.
“Huh.” Childe quirks a brow. In the three months since he’s been stationed at Liyue, he has never seen Zhongli take a leave from work. He had just assumed the man lives and breathes the machinations of funeral rites, because no matter the day (or even the time, of day for that matter, because Childe never limited himself to just visiting Zhongli only during lunch break) the consultant would always be at his desk.
The undertaker seemed to notice his confusion, and pipes up helpfully, “Miss Hu Tao has a directory of all her employees’ addresses. You can ask her for it if you need to meet with Mister Zhongli.”
Childe tilts his head in gratitude. “Thank you. Is your boss in right now?”
The undertaker nods.
Perhaps out of habit, but Childe almost expected to see Zhongli at his desk, despite being told literally minutes ago that he wasn’t at work. It was odd seeing the desk empty, cleared of papers and its occupant.
“He’s not gone forever, boy, no need to sulk over there.” A boisterous voice rang out, from the far end of the parlour. A figure stands up from their desk and saunters over towards Childe. “What business would a Snezhnayan diplomat have at my humble funeral parlour, hm?”
“Are you Miss Hu Tao?” Childe asks, eyeing a petite, twin-tailed woman in black, who looks a tad too young to run a funeral parlour, much less talk down to someone taller and older-looking than her. She only gives him a toothy grin. “Indeed I am.”
“I don’t want to impose, but – ”
“You want Consultant Zhongli’s address, right?” It’s probably just Childe’s imagination, but this tiny lady’s grin just turned shit-eating.
“Yes, I do.”
Hu Tao hums, a certain glint in her eye that keeps Childe wary. “Interesting! I didn’t think that stick in the mud would have it in him.” Childe has no idea what ‘it’ is in Zhongli, but whatever he thinks it is he hopes it’s not what Hu Tao’s referring to. She skips towards this cabinet at the far back of the parlour, tugs on a rather large drawer, and pulls out a folder. From the folder she pulls out a single paper. Quickly, she scans it then pauses at a particular line. She walks back to Zhongli’s desk and rummages around for a spare, clean sheet and a pen.
“Alright, here you go, Fatui boy.” She waves a folded paper in her hand, the address copied onto it.
“Thank you for your assistance, Miss Hu Tao,” Childe says, a smile of relief pulling at his lips as he bows a bit lower. Hu Tao only cackles.
“Go get him, boy.”
Zhongli, not surprisingly, lives in a rather modest, secluded apartment in Feiyun Slope, a stark difference to Childe's living quarters in the Fatui residence in Yujing Terrace.
Childe knocks thrice and waits.
When no one comes to receive him, he opens the door of his own accord, and lets himself in.
Zhongli’s home is, for lack of a better term, a dragon’s nest. Shelves upon shelves were filled with books and scrolls Childe guessed to be various texts on Teyvatan literature and history, and crammed in between were ornate vases and souvenirs from operas. On the walls were tasteful antique paintings of serene mountaintops and raging rivers. Childe bumped into a small dresser, and it rattled. When he pulled a drawer open, it was almost full of just rocks – slivers of Cor Lapis and Noctilucous Jade, some perfectly round pebbles, and a few starconches.
Childe chuckles to himself. The consultant has a bit of a hoarding problem, so it seems. Rex Lapis would go green with envy if he ever beheld Zhongli’s collection.
In the dining area was the man himself, bent over a book, right hand absently tracing the curves of his teacup.
Childe clears his throat, and Zhongli startles in his chair.
“Childe.”
“That’s me.” He walks over to the dining table, and takes a seat right in front of Zhongli. “What’s that you’re reading?”
“Rex Incognito, volume two. But more importantly, what are you doing in my home?” In one fluid motion, Zhongli sets his bookmark in between the worn pages, and closes the book, his full attention now at his unexpected visitor.
“I asked your boss for your address.”
For a split-second, something akin to displeasure crosses Zhongli’s face at the mention of Hu Tao, but it disappears just as quickly. “So it seems,” he says instead. Childe should ask about that, but maybe next time.
“I didn’t know you take breaks from work,” Childe admits, “Imagine my surprise when I go down for our lunch routine only to find out you’re not there!”
“For that I apologize,” Zhongli explains, bowing slightly, “I had gone to work early today, but that…Miss Hu Tao insisted that I take a break instead.”
“Miss Hu Tao seems quite the character, huh,” Childe muses. This time, Zhongli scrunches his eyebrows in apparent disbelief. “But well, since it would take more time to drag you out to have lunch in the harbour, what do you say to eating here instead?”
Zhongli blinks slowly. “You can cook?”
“Yep. Did it all the time back home.”
The consultant’s gaze flits to the kitchen area behind Childe. “There isn’t…much in my kitchen. I rarely eat at home nowadays.”
Childe is the direct cause of that. “That’s fine. I’ll just make fried rice.”
Zhongli seems to mull over this for a while, until he meets Childe’s steady gaze once more, and relents. He gets up from his chair, and Childe takes pause in how the consultant is dressed down today. Gone was the four-tailed coat and the bespoke vest and the black gloves, he’s stripped down to just his usual pants and grey button-down, the sleeves folded up to reveal toned forearms. As Zhongli took his book to slot back on the shelf where he got it, a quick glance down told Childe that the consultant was wearing indoor slippers.
Huh. Liyue in the noon is definitely something else. That’s the only reason why he’s suddenly sweating.
“Childe.”
“Yes.” He snaps back to attention. Zhongli is gesturing towards the kitchen area. Right.
Childe takes note of the containers of spices and pickled vegetables, how the jars are starting to gather a thin layer of dust. Fresh ingredients were sparse, but they're manageable. Zhongli ducks down, opens a cupboard and pulls out a wok, and a rice pot. He rinses them quickly in the sink next to the stove when his fingers come away with a significant amount of dust, and dries them with a kitchen towel before placing them on the stove.
“All right, then.” He turns to Childe. “The kitchen is yours.”
“I’ll holler if I need help,” Childe reassures. Zhongli acknowledges this, then leaves Childe to his own devices.
In truth, Childe has never made fried rice before, being only familiar with Snezhnayan recipes, but judging from the way it's plated, it seems easy enough for him to decently bullshit. He starts by eyeing the small sack of rice off to the side. One of Zhongli's porcelain teacups in hand, he scoops up a full cup, and dumps the grains into the rice pot, fills the teacup with water, and pours the same amount twice into the rice pot. He sets the fire on a low heat, to let the rice boil properly.
Next, he sets about preparing the eggs. He cracks three eggs one-handed into a small bowl (he could hear Zhongli's mild gasp of amazement, and he smiles to himself) and whisks them speedily. As he's adjusting the heat under the wok, Childe finds himself surprised that despite the recent disuse of all these cooking tools, the consultant isn't running out of them. It paints a rather lovely picture too, thinking of Zhongli preparing his own meals prior to his arrival in Liyue.
(Childe is immediately assaulted with an image chock full of sickening domesticity: of the funeral consultant, dressed down as he is now, an apron over his clothes, humming softly as he prepares a simple spread of food for him and Childe to share, and no it's just an interesting thought, that's all!)
He pours a small amount of vegetable oil onto the wok, and pours the whisked egg to fry. The sizzling sound attracts Zhongli's attention, and from the corner of his eye Childe could see him turn around in his seat to see what's happening. Childe catches Zhongli's eye, and in a sudden desire to show off to the consultant, Childe spins the wooden spoon in his hand (and Zhongli claps softly, of course). Quickly, he snags a plate from the dish rack, and plops the egg onto the plate.
Childe lifts the lid on the rice pot, and it's boiling nicely. He turns off the heat on the stove, then looks around the utensils rack for a colander.
“Hey, Master Zhongli?”
Zhongli pads into the kitchen area.
“Do you happen to have a colander?
He nods slowly. “What for?”
“For the rice,” Childe says. Like it was obvious.
“For the rice,” Zhongli parrots blankly. “Why.”
It’s supposed to be a question, but the intonation falls flat.
“Because the rice is cooked, and I need to drain the rice.”
The silence that befalls them the next second is enough to unsettle Childe the slightest and make him backtrack his last words, in case he said something wrong.
Zhongli wordlessly walks over to the rice pot, lifts the lid, and turns pale.
“Childe.
“Yes.”
“Why is the pot still full of water?”
Childe chooses his next words carefully. “I will need to drain the rice.”
Zhongli is deathly still for the next minute, eyes unseeing and mouth agape, and Childe panickedly wonders if the emotional backlash equivalent for a Geo vision is its user petrifying themself, with just how unmoving Zhongli is from what he thinks is shock.
Slowly, Zhongli closes his mouth. Swallows. There's a tiny twitch in his eyebrow. Something at the tip of his tongue.
"You are serious."
"I am."
It's as though something breaks inside Zhongli. He says nothing and only sighs deeply, taking out the colander from a nearby shelf and setting it on the counter. "Do as you must," he relents, waving a hand and heading back to the dining area.
Right. Childe can ask about that after he finishes preparing the food.
He takes the rice pot off the heat, and drains the contents into the colander. Childe is more than sure that the rice is looking good, but there's something about Zhongli's pained expression that holds him back from fully fleshing out the thought. Almost as if he was a kid and Zhongli was a father giving him an incredibly piercing, disappointed look.
Childe shakes off the thought. The rest of the time he spends cooking is less eventful––spent plucking large cloves of garlic and crushing them, dicing a sizable onion bulb, going through Zhongli's cupboards and finding a small slab of ham that he could slice and toss into the rice. He lets the niggling worry sizzle along with the vegetable oil.
Zhongli pops his head back into the kitchen area when he smells the frying onion and garlic, but his eyebrows scrunch when he sees Childe tip the colander full of rice into the wok.
"Does the way I cook rice really bother you?" Childe finally asks, setting down a plate of steaming fried rice on the table in the dining area. Zhongli had fished out his nicest looking plates and spoons (and ran them through water upon noticing the dust). The same disgruntled expression settles on Zhongli's face, and seeing it up close makes Childe want to giggle at how ridiculous(ly cute) the consultant looks, if not for the fact that he might just receive a grand lecturing of a lifetime.
Instead, the consultant cuts to the chase. "You do not...prepare rice like it was Fontainean pasta."
Childe only manages a simple 'ah'.
"It's much more preferable to rinse the rice grains first in order to remove the starch, and to clean it of any other debris that might have ended up mixed among the grains. This rinsing may be done directly in the rice pot. This would usually take up to two rinses, and you would need to sift through the grains manually as well. While I respect using a one-to-one-half rice-to-water ratio in order to obtain fluffy rice, I find it more efficient to measure the level of water simply by using one's finger." Zhongli breaks from his lecture to gesture with his hand. "When the rice level is almost equal to the water level, then the rice will cook perfectly."
Another pathetic 'ah' escapes Childe, but something interesting snagged his attention.
"Master Zhongli, is that the general consensus on the proper way of cooking rice, or is this simply a personal preference?"
Zhongli's eyes glance over to the friend rice Childe prepared, and sighs. "While I do admit that there seems to be no harm in your manner of preparation, it is simply…appalling to behold."
Childe almost laughs at the consultant's choice of words. “It’s still edible, at least.” He serves himself some of the fried rice, takes a spoonful and eats it in one go, to prove his point. He exaggerates savouring his own cooking just for the kicks.
Zhongli rolls his eyes, a first in their few months of knowing each other. He puts his own serving on his plate, and despite his earlier rice-fuelled harangue, he approves of the fried rice with a nod. “Maybe next time you will learn to cook rice properly, under my tutelage.”
Childe’s breath catches, and his heart fills, and fills with – with something (dangerous) that he can’t put a name to. How odd.
“Next time.”