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Childe was woken up by Zhongli softly cupping his cheek. His long fingers pushed his fringe behind his ear and the ball of the man’s thumb was pressed into the soft pliant flesh by the motions. The unfamiliar room smelled like incense, and sunlight and silk flowers were drifting in through the open window. Childe kept his eyes closed. He never stayed the night with the lovers that he took. Never eager to share the vulnerability of sleep with strangers if he could help it. He kept his eyes closed. This state between asleep and acknowledging that he was awake quieted something in his head, a strange buzzing static that was always there. Sometimes it was louder, sometimes quieter, but he was used to it now. It was the call of the abyss. In this rare moment of quiet, he could remember clearer what came before…
“Ajax! Ajax come look I found something really special!” Maxim had been the only boy he’d ever loved. No matter how unkind life was to him, and life had been unkind, there had never been anything but loveliness in that boy. He’d lost a tooth in an accident in the factory but never smiled less. He’d use his meager salary to take care of his family but always used a little bit for caramels to share with his friends. And Childe, or rather Ajax – he was Ajax back then, was his best friend. He’d vowed that one day he’d become the richest man in Snezhnaya and buy the object of his affection everything he could possibly desire.
He had been slightly reluctant to leave his fishing rod but they hadn’t been biting for an hour now so he risked it. Besides he’d never been able to deny Maxim anything, not even a simple request to come to look at what he’d fished out of the cold river.
Maxim was holding something in his hands like it was a very rare treasure. Childe hugged him from behind to look over his shoulder at what it was.
“Huh, it’s just a rock?”
“Not just a rock! It’s a perfect cuddle stone.”
“You can’t cuddle stones. They’re hard.”
He’d much rather keep cuddling Maxim like he was right now. He was ten years old and his love for maxim was simultaneously a feeling so big he couldn’t comprehend it at all, and so perfectly simple that it was as self-evident as snow being white. It wasn’t muddled with any complicated desires yet, he just loved Maxim.
“No look Ajax-” the rock was placed in his hand. “Feel it with one finger, very slowly, see it’s very soft. The river made it completely smooth. Did you ever touch something so soft?”
“… No. It’s really soft.” He was a bit amazed. That was Maxim’s power, he could make something as hard as stones soft.
“You should keep it. Then if you’re scared at night, you can hold it against your cheek like this-” Maxim demonstrated it by raising Ajax’s hand with the stone to his cheek and rubbing it against it.
Ajax let his hand linger there for a moment too long and then drew it back with a challenging smile.
“I don’t get scared at night anymore!” He looked at the rock. “Can I really have it? You found it…”
“Yes! That’s why I called you! I also have one at home, my dad found it for me. Now we both have one, so I can think of you when I touch my stone and you can think of me.”
It had been his biggest treasure; he’d sown it into the pocket of his coat using a fishing line and hook. He’d worn that coat on that night.
Maxim had disappeared from his life. He didn’t die, there was no big dramatic departure. His parents had just packed their family up and left that deplorable little town to try elsewhere, and then again elsewhere, and again… and at some point, their letters stopped reaching each other.
Where was it now? His stone… Lost. Lost like everything that is most precious to a ten-year-old.
Childe opens his eyes and lets the foreign room dance into focus, smiling as he looks into the most intense amber eyes in the world.
The ball of Zhongli’s thumb against his cheek felt hard and cool… smooth like a river rock. So impossibly soft for something so hard.
Maxim had been the only person he’d ever loved.
Maxim had been the only person he’d ever loved.