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Zhongli speaks just as dawn is creeping up into the sky, bleeding through a gap in the curtains. His hand is on the back of Childe’s neck, curling gently through the hair at his nape. He never used to do that. Childe might occasionally comb his fingers through Zhongli’s ponytail, when he was especially tired or drunk, but it’s only recently that Zhongli has started doing it in return.
“Remind me how many days it is,” Zhongli says. He doesn’t sound tired. Childe knows he can sleep, if he puts his mind to it, but he often doesn’t. “Until you leave.”
Childe doesn’t open his eyes. His voice is muffled against Zhongli’s arm. “Next week. Tuesday, I think.”
He knows exactly, and has felt the days sliding out from underneath him, but he’s not going to admit that. Zhongli’s fingers keep circling in his hair.
“I should like you to stay longer, if you can,” he says.
Something clenches in Childe’s chest, but he forces himself to crack an eye open, to turn his head and smirk. “Someone’s getting clingy.”
In the half-light, Zhongli’s eyes are like sparks. “Can you stay?”
“Not a chance,” Childe replies. He’s already lingered far too long. “You’ll find a way to amuse yourself without me, I’m sure.”
“Hm.” Zhongli looks back at the ceiling. “I expect I will. But I would still like you to stay.”
Childe's chest tightens even further. It’s not the words themselves, exactly, but the way Zhongli says them. There’s no hesitation, no embarrassment – they’re plain and unguarded, and they hang heavily in the air. Zhongli doesn’t need him to stay, but he wants him to. The reality of that makes Childe’s head spin, but he forces it back. Clears his throat. Laughs.
“You’re going soft,” he says, nudging Zhongli with his foot. “Definitely hanging out with humans too much.”
“I’m not especially sociable.”
“Well, someone’s clearly been a bad influence. You’ll be writing me love letters next.”
Zhongli turns his head slightly. A smile ghosts his lips, but there’s a concerned notch between his brows, too. Childe can’t tell if he’s more expressive than he used to be, or if he’s just better at reading him now.
“Emotion isn’t an exclusively human purview,” Zhongli says. “Contrary to common belief, gods do feel. Perhaps more deeply than people do. It isn’t something we learnt from you.”
Childe makes a sceptical noise at the back of his throat. “The Tsaritsa’s pretty frosty. In more ways than one.”
“Yes, but that is a different matter.” Zhongli’s fingers return to Childe’s nape, and his skin tingles at the contact. “Our lives are long. Many gods avoid affection, or purposefully distance themselves from others, so as to shirk the inevitable loss. But that isn’t the same as not feeling it.”
“Is this your way of saying you’re a lifelong hopeless romantic?”
“I’m not sure I’d use that phrase.” His free hand smooths the blanket. “I’ve had lovers.”
“Oh yeah? How many?”
Zhongli pauses. “I’m not sure of the exact number.”
“Wow.” Childe lets out a bark of laughter. “And I thought I was a slut.”
Zhongli’s quiet smile returns, gathering creases around his eyes. “Most of them are from generations ago, of course. I mingled with humans more frequently then.”
“You did more than mingle, by the sounds of it.” Childe shifts fully onto his side, cheek pressed against Zhongli’s arm. His flesh is lukewarm, much colder than Childe’s. It always is. “Who was before me, then?”
“A lady from the Qixing. Her name escapes me now.”
Childe laughs again. “You really are a slut.”
“This was over a hundred years ago. It wasn’t a particularly long affair.”
“No wonder. Can you remember any names?”
“Several.” He leans back against the pillow, casting his eyes over the curtains. “There was Daiyu. Bohai.” He hesitates momentarily, and his hand stills on Childe’s neck. “Guizhong.”
The name makes Childe look up. At first, he’s not sure where he recognises it from, but then the dust stirs at the back of his mind – dust. The God of Dust. He’s not one for history, but he read his fair share about Liyue when he first arrived, taking particular care to research the gods. Guizhong’s name cropped up a few times.
“The goddess?” Childe says. “She’s the one who – Guili Plains, right?”
“Indeed. We ruled the Guili Assembly together.” Zhongli’s eyelashes fall low for a moment, catching the rising sunlight. “She felt as deeply as any human. But then, she spent much of her time in their company. Perhaps there is something in that, after all.”
Childe wants to reply quickly, to steer the conversation into lighter waters, but no words come. There’s only a tunnelling feeling in his stomach, like a crevasse yawning open. Even though he has known Zhongli’s identity for months now, he doesn’t often feel the weight of it. It’s only in small moments that he truly gets a sense of how old he is – when Zhongli uses a word nobody can recall, or talks of a location long since lost to the sea. Sometimes it’s something even subtler still. An inhuman stillness, or a stare held too long without blinking.
Yet it’s never felt quite as stark as this. Here, laying in a shadowed room, talking about lovers thousands of years dead. Childe looks over at him, at the burnt gold of his eyes, the curve of his nose and lips. He looks like a monument, something carved from stone, as old as the cliffs and the mountains. Childe feels every one of the years between them, and knows that there will be thousands to come. It makes him feel smaller than he ever has in his life.
But then Zhongli’s eyes flicker, and the pads of his fingers press against Childe’s neck. The years fold together again, and suddenly they’re just two people in a room, in a bed, with their legs tangled together.
They lapse into silence. A bird calls as it flies past the window, and Childe watches the shadow of it flit across the floor. Zhongli’s fingers circle in his hair, and Childe leans into the touch, closing his eyes.
“Reckon you’ll remember my name?” he murmurs.
He hears the smile in Zhongli’s voice. “Almost certainly.”