Chapter Text
Lumine has been listening to Childe talk for the past two hours.
There’s really no reason for her to stay in an uncomfortable wooden chair in a private sector of Xinyue Kiosk that Childe rented out for their weekly lunches. By now, it’s mid-afternoon, and Paimon is conked out after clearing enough tables of food to feed an entire wedding venue. Lumine doesn’t exactly have any plans for the rest of the day, as she completed her commissions earlier, but she would quite literally be willing to do almost anything else.
It’s not that Childe’s nonstop talking is an issue. It’s more about…his topic of choice. Namely about a certain funeral consultant from the renowned Wansheng Funeral Parlor, who has a taste refined enough to rival critics, but with none of their money. Lumine has learned more about Zhongli in the past two hours than she has in every interaction she had with him. She’s not sure that knowing his meal preferences and habits down to “he prefers green tea over jasmine when he eats a variety of dishes because it’s a palate-cleanser, apparently” or “he always sips exactly two spoonfuls of broth from any soup before commenting on it” are ever going to be useful.
If he knows Zhongli down to that fine of a detail over eating habits, Lumine shudders to think of the amount of detail he’d know about other topics. And there are certain ones that she can very much live without.
With that thought in mind, she reaches across the table chock-full of empty dishes to grasp one of Childe’s hands in both of hers. “Childe?”
He pauses his rant immediately, half a syllable into describing other extremely specific details about Zhongli. “Huh? What is it?”
“Can I ask you for a favor?”
“Yeah, sure. Go for it.”
She squeezes his hand between hers and smiles sweetly. “Please shut the fuck up.”
Childe squawks in disbelief, eyes blinking rapidly. “What?”
Lumine’s grip grows tighter along with her smile. “Shut. Up. Please and thank you.”
There’s still confusion in his eyes as he sputters. “Wait, wait, you can’t just—” his hands flail around as he struggles to find the words— “tell me to shut up and not tell me why!”
“Childe,” she starts gently, “if I have to hear you wax poetic about Zhongli one more time, I’m going to commit homicide.”
He opens his mouth to respond. Lumine cuts him off immediately. “I’m going to make it the most boring homicide for you. You won’t even die from a fight; I’ll just poison your tea.”
Childe closes his mouth and slightly scoots his half-filled teacup away from him.
Lumine continues verbally tearing into him. “I can’t believe I had to listen to you for two hours, and it was only about Zhongli. It’s like I went to a bar, and the only bar trivia they had was on some ancient rock.”
“…speaking of rocks, Zhongli loved this o—”
Lumine slams her hand over his mouth with a resounding clap. “If you mention Zhongli one more time,” she hisses, “I will not fight you next week.”
He raises his hands up in surrender.
She removes her hand and stands up from her chair for once after two hours of sitting and mental pain. “I can’t fucking believe this,” she mutters under her breath, pacing adjacent to their table. “It’s the worst pining I’ve ever witnessed, and I’ve been alive long enough to make a serialized list. How can someone be this emotionally dumb? Were you dropped down a ravine as a child?”
“Yes, actually,” Childe admits.
Lumine just stops in her tracks and stares. “…there’s so much to unpack in that statement, and I do not have the brainpower to do so.”
“Understandable.”
She then continues pacing enough to the point that her boot marks are darkening with each step. “Fucking hell , if it’s bad enough like this, what’s next? You’re gonna calculate the dimensions of his ass? You’re gonna empty the Chasm of all its ore so Zhongli can appraise it?” She throws her hands in the air in exasperation. “At this rate, you’re gonna fight a fucking oceanid to impress him!”
There’s silence for the next few moments. Then Childe stands up, glee glittering on the hills of his cheeks and stretching his smile wider than what should be humanly possible.
Lumine has a very bad feeling about this. “Childe—”
“Lumine,” he says, nearly squeaking on the last syllable. If Lumine was blind enough, she’d think that the voids that were his eye substitutes were shining. “You are the best. Comrade. I’ve. Ever. Had.”
His voice raises in pitch with each word. Her instincts are blaring out alarms left and right. “Childe,” she begins, “don’t you fucking dare.”
The next thing she knows, Childe is not in front of her and the window is lifted wide open. “Oh, fucking dammit.” One look out of the window shows the Harbinger happily running on the Liyue streets, his scarf flowing giddily behind him. Lumine curses before setting one foot on the windowsill and preparing to give chase.
“Uh, ma’am?”
Lumine swivels her head toward the voice. “Yes?”
The waiter smiles sheepishly, holding out a small clipboard. “Unfortunately, you can’t leave unless either you or your companion pays the bill…although, I suppose it’ll have to be you, since your companion is not here.”
Lumine returns the smile, but she can feel her head begin to pound. “Of course,” she grits out, her mouth straining to keep her lips upturned. She holds out her hand. “Please, give it to me.”
The waiter hands her the bill and the pen. She picks up the pen, before reading the bill once. And then twice. And then three times, because there is no fucking way that she has to pay essentially three-quarters of her wallet for a Sunday lunch.
“Um, ma’am? Would you like a new pen? The one in your hand is…ah, broken.”
Lumine smiles at the waiter again, her face straining. “Yes, please. That would be very much appreciated.”
He gives a short bow before leaving to get another pen. Lumine loosens her grip, and pen fragments and black ink fall pitifully onto her skirt. Her white, recently cleaned, skirt.
Her polite smile is stuck on her face as she receives the new pen, signs off on the paper that demands 500,000 mora in pretty black ink, and sets the given amount on the clipboard. It’s only a few moments, but it feels like decades as Lumine waits patiently for the waiter to return. Paimon wakes up then, yawning as she floats sleepily toward her. “Lumine?”
“Yes, Paimon?”
“Why is your face like that? And…where’s Childe, anyway?”
“Oh, no reason,” Lumine says sweetly. “As for Childe…”
Her smile tightens sharply at the corners. “…I’m going to send him straight to hell.”