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“Hey, Morax…hic…what’s your favorite color?” Venti giggled and slumped onto the table where he and Zhongli were supposed to be having a relaxing afternoon drink. His wings draped over him like a blanket, and they threatened to knock over the large collection of empty wine bottles they had accumulated over the last few hours.
Zhongli sighed, swiftly catching a falling bottle. “Barbatos. For the third time today my favorite color is ORANGE.”
Venti giggled again. “I knew it!”
“Of course you did!” Zhongli snatched the bottle of wine from Venti’s hands. “No more wine!”
Venti whined and feebly reached out at the bottle. “Moraaaax! Give it!”
“No. I’m cutting you off. What kind of god drowns themself in wine, anyways? How do you expect your people to respect you?” Zhongli gave Venti a stern look, opening the window next to him.
“You’re gonna let the bugs in!” Venti cried, now suddenly terrified of bugs as if he didn’t sleep outside on all of the nights he didn’t pass out in Zhongli’s home.
Zhongli rolled his eyes and threw the bottle of wine out the window, immediately shutting it after.
Venti whimpered. “You’re so mean…”
Zhongli laughed. After nearly five hundred years of being a god, he would have thought that Barbatos would have grown up a little, but here he was, complaining about bugs and wine. “I’m going to get you some water and something to eat. Perhaps it will sober you up.”
Venti groaned, picking up one of the 27 empty bottles of wine cluttering the table and putting it to his lips, shaking it for any drops of wine that may have clung to the sides.
Zhongli gave him a concerned glance, and left the room to get sustenance. He flinched when he heard something shatter in the room he just left, followed by some very creative swear words Venti seemed to have invented. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Don’t touch the glass, Barbatos! I’ll clean it up in a moment!”
He didn’t receive a response, but that didn’t bother him too much as anything the other god would have said probably wouldn’t have made sense, anyways. After he finished gathering the food and drinks, he returned to his dear friend sitting on the floor, frantically moving around pieces of broken glass.
“Barbatos! I told you not to touch that!” Zhongli set down what he was holding, and stormed across the room. He grabbed Venti’s arm to pull him away from the glass, but he froze when he realized it wasn’t a wine bottle that Venti broke.
“I-I didn’t do it.” Venti slurred out.
Zhongli let go of Venti, and he muttered something under his breath.
Venti squinted at him, trying to read his expression through his drunken stupor. “What are you saying, Morax? Am I in trouble?”
Zhongli sighed. “That vase…the one you broke. It was priceless. Irreplaceable.” His voice was barely a whisper.
“Uh-oh.”
Zhongli stared at Venti, expressionless, which was somehow even worse than him yelling. “I will give you a ten second head start, Barbatos. One…”
Venti blinked at him in surprise. What was that supposed to mean?
“Two…”
Venti shakily stood up. “Morax?”
“Three…” Zhongli sighed again. “Start running, Barbatos. Four…”
The reality of the situation finally clicked in the anemo archon’s mind. Venti stumbled towards the door. It took a few tries for him to locate the doorknob, but he got it eventually.
“Five…”
He ran out the door, spreading his wings for flight. As he took off, he couldn’t really tell how fast he was going, or what direction he was going, or if he was even moving at all, but he was trying his best and that’s what counts. He frantically flapped his wings, struggling to fly in a straight line. He glanced down, catching sight of Zhongli standing outside with his arms crossed. His heart leapt in his chest at the realization that he was still on the same mountain top as Zhongli, and was flying maybe six feet off of the ground. He turned his gaze back in front of him, but he caught sight of something yellow and glowing in the corner of his eye.
He shrieked at the sight of the gigantic boulder that was being hurled at him from the sky, and he swerved, narrowly avoiding it. The boulder crashed into the neighboring mountain, the impact shaking the ground. Venti looked back at the lunatic who was hurling boulders at him in awe.
Zhongli was…smirking? Venti felt the fire in him return. “Is that all you’ve got, old man?” He stuck his tongue out at the other god.
That blockhead just continued to stand there and smirk, looking right behind Venti. Venti twirled around, and was met with another, larger rock being thrown from the sky. Venti expertly dodged it. Or at least, he thought he did. To Zhongli he looked like a fledgling that barely knew how to steer itself, but Venti imagined that he looked very stealthy and very cool.
“Ha! Missed me again!” Venti almost forgot to flap his wings as he taunted Zhongli, and he fell a bit before remembering how to fly.
“Yes, I’m the one who looks stupid here.” Zhongli quipped, sending about a dozen more boulders for Venti to dodge.
Somehow, (probably by luck) the drunkard managed to avoid all of them, and Zhongli began to feel a little irked. He wanted to hit that idiot at least once to teach him a lesson.
Venti continued to taunt him, not noticing that thousands of rocks the size of fists were falling from the sky like rain. Venti heard them hammering the mountain tops nearby, but it wasn’t soon enough for him to do anything about it. He screamed as one of them hit his wing and he plummeted towards the ground.
Zhongli watched with a bored expression as he approached the approximate place Venti would fall. He twirled his heavy-duty umbrella and placed it on the ground. He held his arms out, waiting for Venti to slowly and dramatically fall, his wings acting as a parachute.
Eventually, Venti fell into Zhongli’s arms, and the older archon stumbled forward a bit from the force of catching him.
“Moraaaax! You’re so mean to me! Look what you did to my wing!” Venti whined as Zhongli carried him back to his dwelling.
Zhongli rolled his eyes. “It’s just a bruise, Barbatos. It’ll heal in an hour.” He honestly didn’t feel like this was any kind of punishment or retribution fitting of Venti’s crime; if anything it felt almost like playing fetch with a dog. That is, if dogs ran away screaming from balls that were thrown at them.
Venti continued to complain as Zhongli carried him inside, and eventually Zhongli was able to placate him with another bottle of wine. Zhongli attempted to reprimand him, explaining the importance of taking care of one’s things, but Venti just drank his wine happily and giggled at every other word Zhongli said. Eventually, Zhongli gave up, and spent the rest of the evening listening to Venti’s colorful drinking songs. Thankfully, the anemo archon passed out around one in the morning, leaving Zhongli to enjoy a brief moment of peace.
As Zhongli draped a blanket over Venti’s shoulders, he gazed upon his angelic sleeping face. Zhongli smiled. Barbatos was quite adorable, in his own eccentric way, but he knew not to be fooled.
This would be only the first time of many that the anemo archon would have to dodge his boulders.