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The man who saves her from the Liyuean Millelith is a ginger.
She’s never seen one up close.
Well — she’s seen some here and there, and gingers are quite similar to redheads like Master Diluc from the Dawn Winery, but there’s something this ginger man has that the mighty redheaded Diluc Ragnvindr doesn’t: freckles.
Hundreds of freckles decorated his face, from the bridge of his nose branching out onto the apples of his cheeks. Lumine has half a mind to go ahead and put her hands on his face to keep him still and just get to counting now that they’ve settled down from all the running.
She decides against it because she doesn’t know who the ginger-haired man is nor does she know why exactly he decided to do the saintly act of helping them run away. Maybe from the pure goodness of his heart is what she’d think, but he’s a ginger, and a girl from a world she was in five (maybe ten) worlds ago said to her in a chilling tone gingers have no souls.
Paimon catches her breath beside her, but now that Lumine thinks about it, what muscles does floating even use for her to be breathing so loud? She voices her question, gets called insensitive, and then Paimon seems to move on to questioning the ginger — freckled. More freckled than ginger — man who’s saved them. She tends to flutter around like that.
Anyway, the freckled man.
He calls himself Childe. Asks them about meeting someone named Signora in Mondstadt.
“You’re a Fatui!” Paimon exclaims when she makes the connection.
Lumine’s freckle-counting dreams are immediately crushed. The freckled man was an enemy.
He goes on to explain that he wasn’t going to hurt them, but that’s exactly what an enemy would say to gain their trust, which she wasn’t very keen on giving to people like the Fatui who’ve hurt (freckle-less) people like Venti, who was her (freckle-less) friend.
She tells him to leave, but he keeps talking and talking and — is she still listening?
Anyway.
He has at least twenty-three freckles on each cheek. She’s sure of it.
So, he really is an enemy, and it really is such a waste to put perfectly good freckles on a villain.
Not that it matters; there must be plenty of people with just as magnificent freckles as his in Teyvat. Childe (if that really even is his name) was only a blip on her radar, something ordinary in an extraordinary world full of people with freckles like his.
Still, a small — big — part of her is disappointed. Lumine tries to remember his face, and his body language, his freckles. How many freckles did she count, again? Twenty-something. Twenty-five. Thirty-eight?
She thinks of her brother, Aether, her twin, half of her heart, her soul, the only reason she’d ever encountered the freckled man. And then she thinks of the man who saved her from impending doom.
Maybe she has a reason to meet him again, after all.
(Ah, she remembers, later, in the middle of an errand.
Twenty-three on each side.
She tucks a piece of her hair behind her ear, deep in thought.
Forty-six freckles.)
“Why do you like my freckles so much?”
Lumine pauses, and turns her head around to look at him. “Hm?”
“I don’t know, girlie, but sometimes it feels like you only look forward to sparring with me so you can count my freckles after you win,” Childe chuckles in that way he chuckles, light-hearted and deceptively flippantly, but Lumine knows enough about him to know when or when he isn’t joking. “Don’t tell me — you only hang out with me because I’m a ginger with freckles?”
Lumine’s face wrinkles in a grimace. Childe laughs. “You know I’m kidding.”
She hums, lips quirking upwards. “Your freckles are the only thing fascinating about you.”
Childe whines, and calls her mean. His eyes close, and she is suddenly very close to him. His eyes snap open, and she doesn’t bat an eye. “Girlie?”
Lumine plants her hands firmly on his much bigger, broader shoulders. His eyes widen. “Ajax, please, sit still. Close your eyes.”
He gulps, but complies, anyway. He goes very still as he feels the light touch of her small fingers on his eyelids. She counts eight freckles on his left eyelid. Eleven on his right. She shares this information with him, and once she turns around to record this new found information, he lets out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding.
If someone were to ask her to describe Tartaglia, number eleven of the Fatui Harbingers, she’d think of his freckles, first, before telling them he was okay. Ordinary, fine, alright: okay. If asked to describe Ajax, though —
She thinks of her own older brother, strong and intelligent.
Aether. Ajax. Aether. Ajax.
Teucer loves his older brother Ajax like she loves her own. Pure, innocent. He loves him, no questions asked, eyes always wide with admiration, heart never to be swayed by anything anyone might say. She loves her brother like Teucer loves Ajax. She needs her brother like Teucer needs Ajax, but Aether isn’t here.
Ajax is, though. Freckles and ginger hair and all. He looks at his younger brother like Aether looked at her, warmth and love radiated in beautiful eyes, and Teucer loves him for it. Ajax —
Ajax.
Ajax is good to his little brother, no matter what anyone might say. Ajax is good to her, lets her count his freckles while he cradles his brother in his arms. Ajax is gentle, and kind, and Ajax is good, no matter what anyone says.
Aether is still out there, and Ajax has twenty-seven freckles on his forehead.
One night, she wakes up, and it isn’t counting his freckles on her mind, but Ajax himself.
She doesn’t know how to tell him. She doesn’t even know if she should tell him. Certainly not oh, Ajax, I’m not here for your freckes, I’m here for you, or hey, Ajax, I like you and your freckles. Aether would be the one who’d help her in times like this, but Aether isn’t here, and neither is Ajax and his hundreds of stupid, small freckles.
Seriously, why was she so obsessed with counting them, anyway? No reward awaited her. His freckles weren’t even that interesting. So why — specifically — Childe’s freckles? An excuse to get close to him?
No, she thinks.
Maybe.
She inhales, finally ready to admit the truth to herself.
Yes.
She’ll tell him, she decides. She thinks about it for a few days before working up the nerve to tell him. Really, how hard could it be to walk up to him and say hey, Ajax, I think I love you?
Only she doesn’t think, she knows, and she isn’t just scared, she’s horribly terrified.
Paimon has probably caught on by now (because everyone but her knows about her feelings, apparently), waiting impatiently outside of the Golden House and ready to zip away to Xiangling’s at any notice. Lumine appreciates her presence, though.
The doors open, and she is just about to crawl out of her skin.
“Lumine,” he greets with a bright smile — the kind of smile that makes your heart beat faster, or your face redder, and oh, is it hot in here, or is it just me? It’s much too hot in here. It’s definitely too hot in here.
She wants to melt.
Actually, maybe she already is a puddle of Lumine-goo on the floor. She can’t do this. What was she thinking? “Lumine, breathe,” Childe shakes her shoulders gently, and she’s brought back to reality. “Are you okay?”
“I — ”
Say it.
“I, um, Ajax, there’s something I want to,” she gulps, “say to you.”
Say it.
“I — you — ”
Childe looks at her expectantly. Hopefully.
“ — have a hundred and three freckles!”
Yup.
She’s gone. It’s over.
“Oh,” Childe chuckles that fake chuckle of his, disappointment lacing his tone like snake venom. Ah, she messed up. Lumine is a little concerned but more embarrassed than anything. “My freckles.”
“Yes,” she breathes out. “I finished counting. You don’t need to worry about me counting them anymore. I — ”
Childe looks away, lips paper-thin.
“Love you,” she admits, whispered more to herself than to him, so quiet that she’s sure he wouldn’t hear. Lumine studies the trim of her dress, tears pooling in her golden eyes.
After a tense silence, that might have been measured in seconds or heartbeats — time seems unimportant now — she looks up to face him.
He is looking straight at her. His eyes are very blue, and his freckles are the furthest thing from her mind when he smiles, and says I love you, too.
When she wakes up next to him, she sighs contently into his chest, before realizing that she was wrong, and Ajax doesn’t have only a hundred and three freckles.
She’ll probably have to start over.
Luckily for her, he doesn’t mind.