Chapter Text
Childe was clearly dreaming.
Most people would question waking up in a room that was so opulent he could feel dollar signs wafting out the furniture. He had never been in such a room before, much less waking up in one. So clearly, he was dreaming.
“Lord Tartaglia!” A quiet but urgent knock on the door. “May I come in?”
Childe stared at the door. If he didn’t say anything, could he go back to sleep and let the dream pass?
“Lord Tartaglia?” The knocking intensified.
Childe sighed. He wasn’t whoever Lord Tartaglia was, though the name sounded familiar for some weird reason. Nevertheless, dream logic was dream logic. They never made sense. Might as well go along with it. “Yes, come in?”
A man walked in with a tray full of pastries and tea. “Lord Tartaglia,” the man bowed. “I am here to remind you that you’ll be meeting your fiancé today.”
His WHAT?
Wait. Why was he being called Lord Tartaglia? Oh, fuck it. Dreams were strange.
“Uhhhhh, right,” Childe coughed. “My fiancé.”
Go with it. Go with it. Dear gods, was his brain strange. He never entertained the thought of marriage for himself before, and now apparently dream him had a fiancé.
The man (what was his name?) set the tray down on a table nearby. He bowed again, which was a surreal experience that Childe had never had the pleasure of having, and then left the room.
Right. Well, first things first. Might as well eat because his dream stomach was grumbling. Childe pulled himself up, taking a crumbling pastry and biting into it. He almost moaned. What the fuck, how was dream food so damn good?
It was flaky and sweet without being too sweet. He stared at the pastry in his hand. Was there a way he could recreate this?
The pastries were gone in a flash, residing in his satisfied tummy. He’d be down to staying in this dream if he gets royal treatment like this.
Although, who was Lord Tartaglia…? Childe mused to himself as he browsed through the clothes in his wardrobe. They all looked stuffy and way too fancy for his tastes. Not that he had a choice if he didn’t want to walk out in his pajamas into the street.
He tsked to himself as he tried to figure out the many buttons on his jacket. Screw it, he decided as he let most of the buttons stay unbuttoned. This was a fashion statement.
“Lord Tartaglia.” Another knock, but a female voice this time.
“Come in,” he said, still glaring at the mirror.
“Lord Tartaglia, the carriage is rea –” The woman who stepped in had paused in seeing his attire.
“Yes?” He huffed.
She recovered admirably fast. “The carriage is ready for you.”
“Great. Thanks,” he nodded to her. Somehow, that had gotten more bewildered staring out of her than his haphazard jacket did.
Where the fuck was the carriage? Thankfully, she led the way because this mansion was huge. What the fuck was this place.
Childe was glad for his ability to keep a straight face because it was serving him well here. Even if it was a dream, shouldn’t he at least act the part?
The carriage itself was also opulent as hell. He got into it, feeling uncomfortable. He was used to public transportation, stuffed like sardines into cans. Not… this.
Gazing out, he saw golden trees swaying in the wind and mountains rising in the distance. Wherever this was, he had never been before.
It’d be nice if someone gave him a cheat sheet of some sort. He did not know the names of anyone around him, much less the name of the supposed fiancé he was going to meet.
The carriage came to a stop. The door opened, the man from before bowing as he greeted Childe.
“Lord Tartaglia, we’re here.”
If he was going to be in this dream any longer, could he ask them to stop being so formal? He was going to go insane at this rate.
Instead, he nodded, and tried to embody the rich snooty characters he saw in historical dramas. Since that was apparently the setting of the scene.
“Very well,” he said in the snootiest tone he could muster. Apparently, that worked, because the man nodded with a bit of relief that was barely hidden.
“Your fiancé, the Emperor of Liyue, is waiting inside,” the man said.
The WHAT of WHAT?
Childe was sure grateful he was not drinking water, because he would have spit it out.
“The – !” Childe said, before stopping himself. “Right. Of course.”
Goes to show someone with a pretentious title like Lord Tartaglia would be engaged to an… Emperor? And what was a Liyue?
He would assume that was the place they were in right now. It just felt right. Seriously though, Liyue sounded familiar as well. Where had he heard it before? Was it a small country that the news had reported on once?
He walked inside of what was probably a restaurant. It was the fanciest restaurant he had ever seen. Hallways led down to different rooms, which were all private and closed. The attendant had led him to the last room, which had large doors engraved with dragons swirling around it. Childe clenched his teeth, a strange feeling rising up in his chest.
Inside the room was a man with the most mesmerizing eyes he had ever seen. Were amber eyes like that even possible? They caught his eyes and held. Dishes were already piled onto the lazy susan in the middle, steaming with the most incredible smells.
The man (his fiancé??) stood, and inclined his head. “Lord Tartaglia,” he said. Dear gods, his voice was all rumbly and shit. Childe, mortifyingly, felt his face flush immediately.
Childe immediately bowed, because he was apparently an emperor of some sort.
What was he supposed to say?
Thankfully, someone came to the rescue. The woman from this morning who had been following him also bowed. “Those of us from the House of Harbingers greet your Imperial Majesty,” she said.
Right. Whatever she said.
A nod from the emperor before them. “Please,” he said to Childe. “Take a seat.”
Childe was suddenly conscious of the fact that his jacket was barely buttoned up. He wouldn’t get executed for this faux pas, right?
He stared at the plate in front of him and then saw the utensils. Shit. Chopsticks. His mortal enemy.
He cleared his throat. “Your Imperial Majesty…”
“Please,” the man said while taking a sip of his tea, “Call me Zhongli.”
Childe found himself staring with his mouth open. It was like lightning struck him. Zhongli… Zhongli… He knew that name!!!
Zhongli, one of the main characters in one of the most popular romance novels of their time. So popular, in fact, that Childe had found himself reading it because everyone had been talking about it even though he usually did not like that kind of genre. The Emperor of Liyue… And he remembered now. Lord Tartaglia, the minor villain who was so unimportant to the plot that he had only been mentioned with a few lines before being tossed out as plot fodder.
Holy shit. Was he in a book???