Chapter Text
Childe can’t count on one hand how many times Zhongli has told him he loves him. Because the thing is, he has never once told him he loves him.
It’s not that he doubts the man’s devotion to him, because he knows that Zhongli isn’t the kind of person who would continue staying with someone he isn’t interested in. But after these few months, the lack of obvious affection was sort of… kind of? Maybe making Childe feel like the relationship isn’t anything special anymore.
Not that it has to feel that way, because he’s well aware that romance eventually mellows out to something more comfortable. But if he’s being honest—really honest, this level of mundane, subtle, gentle affection isn’t enough for him.
And Zhongli is… well Zhongli is the same as ever, teaching at the university before coming back to their apartment later in the day to work on his research as well as his second job as a crime consultant.
He’s sitting down in the kitchen again, a cup of hot tea in one hand while the other thumbs through a thick stack of papers. It’s late at night and Zhongli is once again spending every second of his free time working.
”Zhongli…” Childe whines, sliding his arms around Zhongli’s shoulders. “Come to bed with me. It’s ten already.” He leans down, mouth close to Zhongli’s ear as he murmurs, “it’s been a while since we’ve done it.”
“Apologies, but I have work.” The response is immediate and succinct. So unlike the man who used to spend hours rambling about the most boring things like where the teacup he’s using is from, who made it, how it was made, and why it’s a masterpiece.
Childe enjoyed these long, oftentimes one-sided conversations where he could listen to Zhongli talk on end. These were times where they could leisurely spend time together, but recently, it seems as if Zhongli’s headspace is constantly occupied with work.
Is it because he’s beginning to feel tired of this relationship?
Lips pressing together, Childe immediately zeros on the vintage teacup that sits delicately on a saucer shaped like a flower. He has the urge to snatch the teacup up and throw it across the room. Or simply swipe it off the table like an angry cat and see what happens when it shatters on the wooden floorboards. Would that get Zhongli’s attention, then? And would Zhongli care about the broken teacup that’s now completely unusable? Or would he make sure that Childe wasn’t hurt since the porcelain shards would surely scatter and bounce up from the impact, embedding a few broken pieces into his leg?
His fingers twitch at the thought, but he tightens them into fists, covering his dominant hand with his other. Toxic. So fucking toxic. He already went through this before. And every single person got tired of him, except for Zhongli who was patient in dealing with someone like him. Who was—again—so damn gentle that it sometimes makes Childe’s skin crawl uncomfortably.
He doesn’t know why. It’s not that he doesn’t like being treated well—it’s not that. It’s different. It’s—
Childe is already making his way to the front door before his mind can finish the sentence. He shuts it out and forces it blank, biting down on his bottom lip as he grabs the first jacket he sees before stuffing his shoes into a pair of boots and yanking the door open. It slams shut, but he doesn’t flinch at the noise. He has never flinched at this kind of noise before. At least, he doesn’t remember the last time loud things scared him enough to elicit a physical reaction.
“Oh!”
Childe almost collides with someone else coming from the opposite direction but stops abruptly at the sudden outburst.
“Oh,” the person repeats, this time softer—and it’s now that Childe realizes it’s Jean, their neighbor. Or otherwise known as the acting Chief of Police. The one Zhongli apparently works with when he’s called in as a consultant. “Hi there, Childe.”
She seems to have come back from grocery shopping, both hands full with reusable bags while also balancing a bottle of wine against the curve of her arm. Childe briefly notices the ring on her left hand, sucking in a breath of air before promptly brushing past her without saying anything.
He doesn’t say anything else at all, nothing during the two-hour train ride to a place he thought he’d never go back to. He doesn’t say a single word until he reaches a familiar tall building and pushes back a set of tall, wooden doors.
“I wanna kill someone. Give me a bounty.”
The Tsaritsa doesn’t even blink when Childe strides in, ignoring the fact that she’s having a meeting with the rest of the Harbingers. They’re all neatly seated around a long rectangular table, all seats occupied save the one that Childe left almost half a year ago.
Every single one of them seem to be composed enough, despite the fact that it’s been months since they’ve last seen their junior member.
Childe can feel a set of eyes burn through his body. Well, he’s only kept contact with one of them after a botched mission landed him straight into Zhongli’s arms, and it’s obvious that he’s not happy to see Childe back.
“My Eleventh,” the Tsaritsa acknowledges, beckoning him closer, “it has been a while since I last heard from you.” Her voice is clear and unwavering. As if she’s not surprised he came back… as if she has been expecting him.
Childe kneels at her feet when he approaches, and when her frigid hand cups his cheek, he doesn’t move back despite how cold it is. “It has.”
“And what have you been doing in your absence from your duties?”
Heart hardening, he remains still. “Useless things that aren’t worth mentioning.”
“Oh?” She raises a brow. “And where is this wound from?” Her thumb brushes against his bottom lip before pressing into it, pointed nail suddenly digging into the skin.
It’s now that Childe actually reacts to something, head snapping back as his hand comes up to his mouth. His lower lip is split, the broken skin already swelling. He tests the wound with his tongue and sucks in a breath when he is met with blossoming pain.
His mind is blank for a moment as he touches the wound with a few fingers and stares at the blood that covers them. Oh. It must have happened when he stormed out of the apartment. He bit his bottom lip so hard that it split. It has more or less scabbed over during his ride here, but, of course, the sudden pressure the Tsaritsa made opened up the wound and deepened it. Blood dribbles from Childe’s mouth, rolling down his chin to dot the white marble floor.
“And that coat you’re wearing—it is obviously not yours. Too large, it seems. Too…” She waves her hand in the air, the pointed nail on her thumb now crimson instead of silvery white. “Too ordinate to be yours.”
Childe touches the front and looks down to find himself wearing Zhongli’s coat. Zhongli’s favorite coat that he wears almost every day. The angry fire in his chest falters for a moment, its flames lessening.
“You swore loyalty to me when you first arrived nearly ten years ago. And now it seems you belong to someone else.” The Tsaritsa leans forward. “So, tell me, dear Eleventh, how can you prove to me that you are completely mine?”
“Anything.” The words slip out of Childe’s mouth before he can think. “I’ll do anything.”
He finds a grin replacing her once expressionless face. “That is what I wish to hear, my Eleventh.”
The Tsaritsa waves at the empty seat where he used to sit, nodding to give him permission to join them. And he does, but he can’t seem to focus on what she’s saying or what’s going on. It’s not until after the meeting that someone jolts him out of his semi-dazed state.
“Are you fucking stupid?” Scaramouche drags him from the meeting before depositing him in his room. The door slams shut—so characteristic of him that no one ever questions the noise. “You dumb ass piece of shit.”
“Kuni—“
“Shut the fuck up, Tartaglia. And don’t call me by that name.” He points at the bed.
Childe blinks.
“I’m not asking you to fuck me, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Scaramouche’s face twists, brows coming together in what looks like mild disgust. Of course. “The bed or the floor. Take your pick.”
Ah, okay. Childe gets this. Whenever Scaramouche wants to yell at someone, he prefers if they’re at a lower height. And since Childe is almost a head taller, he wanted him to sit down somewhere. So he sits on the edge of the bed, head lowering as he touches his mouth again, which is still bleeding.
Wordlessly, Scaramouche rummages through the mess he calls a desk before pulling out a small tin box underneath a stack of… whatever Childe can’t make out, then sets it on top of everything.
He goes to Childe’s side, yanking his chin up to scrutinize the wound, face scrunching together even more. “What the fuck did you even do to yourself?”
“I bit my lip.” Childe pauses. “Well, split it, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“It was an accident. I didn’t even notice it until the Tsaritsa made it worse.”
Scaramouche goes back to the tin box before pulling out a wad of gauze. “Mm-hm.” He disappears into the adjoined bathroom and energies with a cup of water.
Childe clenches his jaw. He can still feel the anger from earlier that night summer at the surface. “What? You think I’d split it on purpose?”
“You hurt yourself all the time—“
“It’s an occupational hazard—“
“—intentionally,” Scaramouche finishes. “Intentionally, Tartaglia.” Dipping a wadded-up piece of gauze into the cup of water, he starts dabbing it against Childe’s mouth. “You think I somehow forgot everything like a fucking dumbass? You’re the dumb one who came crawling back here after what? An equally dumb squabble with your golden lover?”
“It’s not—“
“I told you not to come back here. Do you know how fucking difficult it was to convince the Tsaritsa to let you go?” The dabbing becomes more like stabbing the more Scaramouche rants, but Childe doesn’t flinch. “And now you’re back, how absolutely fucking marvelous. She’s gonna use you again until you almost die like last time. Except—“ He lets out a short laugh. “Who knows if Zhongli is gonna be there to save you again.”
Hand coming up, Childe grips Scaramouche’s wrist. “Kuni.”
There was a time when he used to say that name fondly, would utter it at nighttime when he was too tired to move and say it gently in the morning, voice still soft and groggy without its full energy. Childe would call him Kuni, never Kunikuzushi, never with kuzushi because he knew how much Scaramouche hated it. How it brought back memories of betrayal and made it hard for him to breathe properly without falling back into that painful fury.
The same way Childe’s heart twisted uncomfortably whenever he thought about his family and the way they treated him when he came back covered in blood after that incident.
It was good that Childe ended the relationship. They both had baggage that combined to form a poison that was drizzled with saccharine syrup. It wasn’t apparent at first, but it became clear after a while that they didn’t actually love each other romantically. They just used each other as a sponge to soak up each others’ trauma and wring it all out before repeating the same thing over and over again.
“Return to Zhongli,” Scaramouche says, not bothering to try and free his arm from Childe’s grasp. “I don’t know what happened, but you should go back. I’ll just think about another excuse that will appease Her Majesty. I’m good at bullshitting my way through things when shit gets fucked; it will work out.”
“I won’t.” Letting go of Scaramouche, Childe lets out a loud sigh, head falling against his hand. “Go back to him.”
Having cleaned the blood off Childe, Scaramouche returns to the bathroom.
“Why were you all having a meeting so late at night anyway?” Childe notices a glint from the bathroom door and his body reacts faster than the flash of silver that flies past his head and embeds itself into the wall behind him.
What now? Scaramouche is trying very badly to kill him? And for some reason, this is what sets Childe off, and now he’s standing, hands clenched so hard that he can feel his nails split the skin on his palms. His knuckles crack at the pressure. “If you wanna kill me, try harder.”
Another knife flies at him, but Childe dodges it once again with ease. Scaramouche emerges from the bathroom with another one, but instead of throwing it, he marches out, lunging at Childe.
It’s all a sloppy mess—one after another. Childe already knows this, of course, but Scaramouche quite literally can’t do anything when he’s this upset. It’s like trying to swing wildly at someone when you’re both blind and deaf with little to no skill.
So after a full minute of full-on defense, Childe goes slack, arms falling to his side as Scaramouche brings the blade down. It bites his cheek, slicing the skin before burying hilt-deep into rumpled sheets and mattress. The new wound is deep enough for blood to soak the cotton bedding.
“You missed,” Childe points out, staring up at Scaramouche as the latter pulls out the knife and lifts it up again as if to try again.
“Shut up.”
“A little more to the right, and I’ll die.”
“Shut up.”
“Probably.”
”Shut the fuck up!” The knife is buried hilt-deep again, except this time through the wall beside them.
A long wave of silence washes over them before Scaramouche releases his hand from the knife and slams his hand against the space next to Childe’s head, where all the blood has collected. His fingers dig into the mattress as his other hand follows suit, pulling at the sheets and finally ripping them from the top corners of the mattress altogether.
“You’re gonna ruin it—” Scaramouche rambles, voice low. “He appeared, and there was a chance, and now you’re gonna ruin it if you don’t go back. If I had the same chance you did, I would’ve taken it and never let it go—” His voice warbles at the end, straining on the last syllable before cutting off. “You fucking dumbass.”
“Yeah,” Childe murmurs. “Yeah, I am a fucking dumbass. Thinking I could be with someone when I’m still like this? I shouldn’t get involved with anyone if I still can’t control myself.” He sits up, then slides his legs out from underneath Scaramouche before standing. “I appreciate you covering for me when I left, but you don’t need to do that anymore.”
Scaramouche is still hunched over, choppy hair falling like a dark veil over his features as Childe makes his way to the door. He takes one step out of the room before meeting a familiar face he’d rather not meet again.
“Fancy meeting you here, Tartali!” Dottore claps his hands together, an unpleasant smile on his face. Childe notices his eyes drifting to the fresh cut on his cheek. “How was the, ah, personal reunion with our dear Balladeer?”
“Did the Tsarista send you here?”
“Her Majesty has a bounty for you—er, rather, multiple bounties in one singular night. But she also requested I patch you up before that happens. Something about dress code and how unsightly wounds should be covered.”
Dottore stops talking, but it’s more like a pause. Childe knows he has more to say—something that he’s interested in.
“And?”
“There’s something I’d like to test out. A new serum of sorts that would prove useful for the future.”
“So she wants me to be your guinea pig again, huh?”
“Consider it part of your punishment for taking so long to come back when you’ve sworn loyalty to her until death,” Dottore reasons. “I can’t tell you exactly what it is, but I promise it’s painless this time and! It will no doubt prove it—your loyalty, I mean. You mentioned you would do anything, after all.”
After everything that’s happened in one night, Childe doesn’t even wonder what’s going to happen. As long as he’s able to settle back into the life he had before he met Zhongli, that is enough.
“Besides, you’re most certainly the perfect subject to test on, given your study body!” Dottore waves his hands in the air as his grin widens. “You can probably withstand anything I give you. And your mind…” He trails off in thought before shaking his head. “Hm, your mind is pretty messed up already. I don’t find it an issue if it gets a tiny bit worse.”
At this, Childe brushes past him in the direction of Dottore’s study.
“Eager to return to Her Majesty’s side, aren’t we, Tartali?”
Not eager, of course. The role he played as the fervent follower of the Tsarista has been gone for a while now. He climbed the ranks only because he was sick of being the stepping stool. He only worshipped the ground at her feet because he knew she only wanted people she could ultimately trust as one of her Harbingers. He became a Harbinger, her vanguard, because he wanted to feel worthy to someone. Well, it also meant he was given a myriad of bounties to fulfill every week, which kept his hands full of tasks to do so his mind wouldn’t wander.
And if he died while trying to complete a mission, he would accept it. Months ago, he should have met death rather than Zhongli.