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Zhongli was having a difficult day. The Qixing tried to assassinate Childe again while they were out on a date, which led to Zhongli having to work overtime to throw off the assassin and storming into Ningguang’s office asking if she could kindly stop trying to kill his boyfriend. Hu Tao had been unusually relentless with her advertising that day, and he had to stop several people from assassinating her. Xiao, as an attempt to create a healthier bond with Zhongli, had come to him to vent about some of his problems. Unfortunately, many of his current problems were relationship based, and there were only so many times Zhongli could hear Xiao rant about Venti’s beautiful melodic voice before wanting to throw himself into the harbor.
But thankfully he had a small source of comfort. Venti, as an apology gift for having sex with Xiao in his house, had gotten Zhongli a crate of his beloved Osmanthus wine. Zhongli, being broke, hadn’t gotten the chance to have Osmanthus wine in a while and he was very much looking forward to it. He waited until Childe had left for the night and sat down on his sofa, cracking open a bottle of Osmanthus wine and taking a delicate sip…
…which he immediately spat out. What the FUCK was that? That didn’t taste the same as he remembered! He checked the side of the crate. The brand was the same, as well as all the ingredients. He had to contact Venti at once.
“Xiao!” Zhongli calls. Xiao teleports into his living room, on top of the accursed crate of wine.
“You called?” Xiao asked.
“Take me to Barbatos, please,” Zhongli said. “I have a question for him.”
Xiao was slightly confused. Was Zhongli still mad about the sex incident? The wine was supposed to be an apology. Unless Venti did something to it, but he promised he wasn’t going to.
“Okay?” Xiao teleported them both out of the room and into the Angel’s Share Bar.
Diluc did a double take at the sight of two random men appearing in the middle of his tavern. “What the hell-”
Zhongli pointed across the room at the table where Venti sat, alone and probably wasted.
“Barbatos,” he said loudly.
Nobody in the tavern noticed this, because when it came to Venti’s identity the entire nation of Mondstadt was under some sort of weird hypnosis.
Venti turned towards the sound and paled at the sight of Zhongli, pissed the fuck off in the middle of the tavern. “Fuuuuuck” he said.
Zhongli grabbed Venti by the front of his stupid frilly shirt and lifted him several feet in the air. “Why doesn’t Osmanthus wine taste the same as I remember?” he asked calmly.
Venti, who was being choked to death by his shirt collar, could not answer.
Xiao held a bottle of the offending beverage in his hand and watched Zhongli and Venti with a neutral expression, as if conversations like these were a normal occurrence for him, which they probably were. Diluc, meanwhile, looked absolutely horrified.
“He can’t answer if you’re choking him,” Xiao offered helpfully. Zhongli then realized that oh right he indeed cannot speak if I am holding him by the neck and very gracefully dropped him on his face. Venti gasped for air, despite probably not needing to technically breathe.
Zhongli leaned down. “So? What happened to the wine?”
“I don’t know,” Venti said.
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I mean, I don’t know! The wine should have been perfectly good. I bought it with actual mora and everything. Why don’t you ask Master Diluc? He knows more about this stuff then me.”
Zhongli abandoned Venti, who was dying on the floor, and went over to Diluc.
“Master Diluc, I presume? Tell me, what happened to my wine?”
Diluc tried to compose himself as much as he possibly could in front of a man with glowing eyes and an all-consuming aura of murder. “Well, uh, what’s wrong with it?”
“It doesn’t taste quite the same as it used to,” Zhongli said. “It’s more bitter than before, and I can pick out a stronger burning taste that’s new- likely an increase in alcohol content.”
“Do you know what brand it is?”
Xiao passed Diluc the bottle. He glanced at the label, understanding dawning upon him.
“Ah,” Diluc said. “That’s a rather old distillery company, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. It’s been a part of my family history for centuries.”
“The last remaining member of that family died a few years ago. He passed the business to his godchild, who rebranded the whole thing, publicized it, and changed several classic recipes to accommodate more alcohol content.”
Zhongli’s eyes turned dark. “Do you know where the distillery is currently located?”
“It should be somewhere on the outskirts of Springvale. Why?”
Zhongli turned to Xiao. “Let’s go, Xiao. I have a new destination in mind. Get your polearm ready- this is going to get a little messy.”
The two teleported out of the Dawn Winery, leaving Venti still lying on the floor, Diluc immensely confused about whatever just happened, and the drunken bargoers of Mondstadt somehow blissfully unaware that anything had happened at all.