Work Text:
“There’s no other way this can end.”
That’s- Okay. It’s not like Childe has a lot to go on, because in their (admittedly short) relationship Zhongli has said a total of what, like, 15 words? (“I often speak at lengths on a variety of topics,” the Zhongli who unfortunately has taken up residence in his head, probably because it’s too poor to find a better, less scarred landscape to occupy, says.) But he’s certain Zhongli has better lines than that.
Not that he has game - the man might look like a living breathing god, but he thinks a lecture at the local geological society is a good one month anniversary date.
And Childe went.
What that says about him, he thinks as he ducks behind the kitchen counter, he’ll contemplate later. Probably at Zhongli’s funeral.
As if there’ll be a body left to bury.
“Xiansheng,” he calls out, waiting until he can hear Zhongli’s footsteps retreating back into the living room (big dining room chairs denying him a clear line of sight, that ugly vase he insists on using as a centerpiece even though it means nobody will be able to see each other because the thing is fifteen feet tall, he’ll never risk shooting it), “you should ask your colleagues to help you with your banter. Youth are really eager to help the elderly, have you noticed that? We’re really raising a much better generation.”
He slides the knife out of his his left boot. It’s a thin blade, but the handle feels heavy in his hand. A good weight. Goes in clean, comes out clean. Zhongli doesn’t deserve much, but Childe will still give him that. A good death.
Zhongli is silent. He’s practiced at that - silent on dates, silent in bed, silent when Childe found him standing in the bedroom, staring down at Childe’s go-bag and the dossier inside of it. Childe thought he hid it well, but not well enough. Maybe he wanted it to be found-
If he had the breath to spare he’d snort. Sentimentality like that only exists in the kind of trashy spy novel Scaramouche pretends he doesn’t read. Childe got sloppy. He won’t die from it, though.
He calls out, only really hoping to annoy: “Did you know we have a name for the Wangsheng Gang?” Silence. “In the Fatui.” Silence. “It’s in Snezhnayan - I’m from Snezhnaya, by the way, not Springvale,” he lets the Mondstadt drop from his accent, embracing the rich, autumn-colored accent of his homeland, “but I’ll translate for you. We call you and your operation the Funeral Parlor.” Silence.
Childe’s guns are in the bedroom, where Zhongli left them. He’d laid them all out one by one as if they were one of his precious antiques. He could probably tell Childe the history behind every make and model. He loves history, Zhongli, and he’s good at it, making the past come to life, coaxing stories out of even the smallest shard of glass. It’s rare to meet a man who has two talents which shape and define his life, but Zhongli has always been rare.
Fastest path to the bedroom: crawl behind the kitchen table, duck behind the fridge, sprint down the hall, past the pictures they just hung last weekend, picked them out a month ago, a new house needs to have new decorations, my love, it was the first time Zhongli gave him that name, although not the first time he’d used the word-
“And there’s a special name for you, too. Do you want to know what it is, xiansheng?”
Time to risk it: Childe dives from behind the kitchen counter and underneath the kitchen table, no time to think, just time to let his training take over. His body is a weapon and he knows how to wield it. He barrel rolls across the stone tile (special-ordered from the Guyun Stone Forest, never let it be said Childe isn’t good at playing a part), just as the shots ring out, three in rapid succession, bang, bang, bang, chipping holes which will never come out in Zhongli’s precious floor.
Childe hugs the fridge. Breathing heavy. Heart a wild, rearing thing. The bullets were millimeters, not centimeters, away from Childe. Zhongli knew where he was aiming. He was shooting to hit.
It was never going to be an easy job, Childe reminds himself. It was never going to be an easy kill.
“Morax is old,” the Tsaritsa had whispered, her voice like warmed honey, although it chilled Childe to the bone, “but we were trained by the same masters. Fought in the same wars. It would not do to underestimate him, my Harbinger.”
A clawed finger underneath his chin. Her breath, its hints of peppermint. Zhongli always smelled like osmanthus flowers, although they both carried smoke - old gunpowder - on their skin.
Footsteps. Loud, deliberate. Zhongli wants him to hear.
The bedroom door is just a few steps away, still flung open from where Childe initially ran - not, initially, to take a tactical position, but to escape the look in Zhongli’s eyes when he finally raised his eyes from the dossier. They belonged to a man he had never met before. They have shared a bed for eleven months.
The footsteps grow louder.
Childe’s breathing gets faster.
Now, or never.
He runs.
He runs.
He runs.
His skull remains intact.
No shots ring out.
Childe slams the bedroom door shut behind him and locks it tight. His hands are trembling, although they were trained not to do that. He is Tartaglia, the Eleventh Harbinger of the Fatui Operation. He is Childe, the most feared sniper this side of the Inazuman islands. He is Ajax, the boy who never backs down.
The bed is still unmade from this morning. Zhongli’s hair was rumpled when he leaned down to kiss Childe awake; some of it fell into Childe’s eyes, but he didn’t complain, just twisted it through his fingers as he reached up to pull Zhongli closer. The Tsarista said this would be a difficult one. She didn’t say- She didn’t prepare him-
His breath stops.
The guns are still there, laid out on the bed one by one like little marching soldiers. All three of them, his prized Delusions, made by Dottore to fit his hands. Handles worn smooth, his fingerprints practically engraved on the triggers. All three of them.
Which means Zhongli hid guns of his own in the house.
Which means…
The doorknob rattles. Childe reaches out, blindly grabs at the closest gun (Foul Legacy, Scaramouche laughs at him for naming his guns but what else should he do with them? “Just choose better names,” Scaramouche retorts, but Childe isn’t going to take advice from someone who calls himself the Balladeer).
He rolls across the bed, scattering the pages of the dossier. They snow over him as he hits the ground, carpeting the floor with the best intelligence a far-reaching paramilitary organized crime syndicate can russle up: Morax, the Warrior, the Contract Keeper, the single best contract killer the Golden House has ever produced. When Childe first saw his picture he’d thought, I can take him. When he’d first seen his smile he’d thought-
The doorknob rattles again.
Childe is on the floor of the bedroom of the condo he just bought with his live-in boyfriend. He is on his bedroom floor and he is holding a gun, and that gun is going to put a bullet into Zhongli’s head.
The doorknob rattles again, and again. And then stops.
There is a silence. Why are there always silences?
The door breaks down.
It is a splintering, more than a breaking; there was Zhongli’s foot, and now there is not a door. They paid so much for that wood, Childe thinks, had a fight about whether it should be fir or fragrant cedar-
And then there isn’t time to think, because Zhongli is standing above him, and Zhongli has got a gun of his own.
The gun is up before Childe can think. It’s his, he realizes as he’s firing, he’s the one who will still be alive-
Zhongli’s eyes, looking down at him-
Now, this morning, that first day across the cafe, when for a moment Childe allowed himself to forget-
Click.
Click, click, click.
The other shoe doesn't so much drop, as slam heel-first into Childe's stupid, soft skull.
He took out the bullets. He has his own guns. He was ready. He knew.
There is a dossier with Childe's name on it somewhere in this house.
“What,” Zhongli says, and his voice is like nothing Childe could ever match a simile to, “is the special name they call me, in your home of Snezhnaya?”
Childe has been on his knees in front of Zhongli many times before, but never like this. Zhongli is so much bigger, especially when he’s drawing himself up to his full height; Childe works out, but Zhongli has so much more of him in his body, in his mind, in his way of being. It feels like he’s kneeling before an altar, instead of the murderer he’s been sent to repay.
This gun has been in Childe’s hands many times before, but it has never felt like it does now: useless. He stares up at Zhongli, and Zhongli stares down at Childe, and Childe has a moment of deja-vu.
The dossier beneath his feet - 102 confirmed kills, 52 unconfirmed, wanted in 8 countries for murder, terrorism, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity-
The bed behind them both - sheets they picked out together. Not too soft, because they were always scratchy when Childe was growing up, and he can’t sleep in luxury. Zhongli smiled when he said that. Called him lovely.
Zhongli isn’t smiling, but over the last year Childe has become intimately familiar with the geography of his mouth, his lips, and he knows that the angle their corners are hitched up to would pass, on a normal human’s face, as a sad, wistful smile. But Zhongli’s eyes are cold. Dead things are cold.
The muzzle against his forehead is cold.
“What,” he repeats, “do they call me, Tartaglia?”
Even that name, which is a killer’s, sounds beautiful coming out of Zhongli’s mouth.
“How long did you know?” It doesn’t matter. He still has the knife, he could cut his tendons. He still has the gun, and even unloaded it’s good for bashing knees. He still has a voice, he could beg, plead, cry, which he hasn’t done in decades but he’s pretty sure that part of his body still works, you have to be able to cry, they can’t take that away from you.
“I would appreciate you answering the question, my love.”
Childe can’t help it - he glances up sharply, his face is reddening, this is literally the worst possible moment anyone on any planet on any reality could imagine of getting bitchy during but he doesn’t like being mocked, Zhongli knows that, Zhongli of all people knows-
It’s a real smile now on his face. Real, and tender, which means monstrous.
Well. If he’s already dead.
“Exuvia,” Childe’s soon-to-be corpse says. “It means…”
“I know what it means.” Not like Zhongli to cut someone off - to allow rudeness, but situations must, Childe supposes. The only place where they’re touching is the muzzle of the gun. It’s cold. Childe is shivering. He thinks about yelling for Zhongli to turn up the heat (another perennial fight), but then remembers that Zhongli isn’t near the thermostat, he’s the one making Childe cold by pointing a gun at the place where his brain matter is. And then he starts shivering more.
“I would have done it,” he offers, when it’s been another heartbeat and Zhongli still hasn’t gone through with it. “I would have killed you.”
He doesn’t know why it’s important to say, but it feels like it is. Signora tells him he gets stupid when he’s scared, and he tells her he’s never scared, and she just looks at him and laughs. Looked at him. She’s dead now. Always accused Childe of copying her. He hates it when she’s right.
There’s heat, just a little of it, but it feels good. Zhongli has placed his other hand against Childe’s cheek, and Childe’s body, which is a traitor, and a coward, and has been trained well, lilts towards it. Zhongli strokes his fingers up and down, up down, the same rhythm as he does at night when he’s awake and thinks Childe is fast, fast asleep. It soothes him more than it soothes Childe, probably. No use reading into that now.
“Would you like to know what we called you?” Zhongli says, continuing as though he hadn’t heard Childe speak. Like he’s up so much higher than Childe and his pitiful dead man’s words can’t reach his hallowed ears. “I promise you, it is not insulting, although I know some might take it that way. When I first heard it - when I was first told this was the man, the boy, really, they were sending to kill me - they told me the name we knew you by and I thought,” he cups Childe’s cheek in his hand, tenderly, like his body is beloved, “what a treasure, to be sent my way. What a precious thing.”
Childe wants to know. Childe doesn’t want to know.
“Please,” he says, and he doesn’t know what the end of that sentence is. Doesn’t know how many words he has left. Wants to use them wisely - here, at least. At the very end.
Zhongli’s smile grows as he leans down. It’s reaching his eyes now, which was always Childe’s favorite part. When Zhongli’s whole body was lit up with joy, when he glowed with it. The gun is still on his forehead but Zhongli’s hand is on Childe’s shoulder, his thumb on the pulse point where it strokes gently, feather-light touches, as if he’s checking, and checking, and checking, to make sure of Childe’s pulse.
Childe turns his head up, so that he can hear Zhongli better. Zhongli brushes the hair from Childe’s ear, so that his lips are unobstructed.
The gun remains, unwavering. Childe shuts his eyes, and listens.