Chapter Text
He’s never been much of an attentive person. Not when there are so many other factors that vie for his attention every waking moment. He begins noticing in his second year of high school, when they do icebreakers in third period. Maybe it’s because this year, people are so uninspiring that he’ll be satisfied with anything. This year, he needs something, just about anything to pique his attention. It starts when the boy at the front stands up (“Tell us something interesting about yourself, Zhongli.”) and begins to talk about water. The subject itself isn’t all that fascinating, but it’s the cadence of his voice, the splendour and warmth he pours into his words, the abnormality of such a response that captures his attention in a chokehold.
It all unravels from there.
The boy— Zhongli— transfers out of the class the next day, but Childe never stops seeing him: sees him in the library before school with his head bent over a new book everyday; sees him in the halls between classes; sees him in the cafeteria at lunch with people he recognizes but doesn’t know, laughing at something he’s just said; sees him get picked up by a sleek white car everyday after school while he’s still waiting for the damn bus to arrive.
“I think he transferred to the AP Chem class,” Signora tells him about a week into the first semester.
“What?”
“Apparently he did second year science last year.” She shrugs. “From what I heard.”
So Zhongli’s one of those smart kids with a personality other than having a 4.0 GPA and compelling tastes in drinks and a voice that could melt the snow right off the sidewalk. And that definitely piques his attention.
They never (or rarely) run into each other. If Childe ever sees him in the halls, it’s not because he’s looking for him— it’s because Zhongli draws attention like moths to a flame. First semester passes in a blur, and the second follows just as quickly. They don’t have classes together— he wouldn’t be surprised if Zhongli was already finishing his first year of college somewhere— but Childe recognizes him in all the places he frequents.
In the library.
In the halls.
In the cafeteria.
By the bus stop.
All the way up to graduation, he considers his attention thoroughly grasped in the palm of the hand of a man with whom he’s barely exchanged two words with. On the last day, he walks across the stage and accepts his diploma with a gracious smile and gives a nod of acknowledgement to the crowd. He can just make out his parents; his mother is wiping away tears and his father’s claps are loud enough to rival a thunderstorm. He can see his friends: Signora applauds him like the older sister he never had, a smug grin stretching across her face; beside her, Scaramouche gives a begrudging nod; and there, in the middle of the sea of blue caps and gowns, he sees Zhongli. He’s smiling and applauding like the rest of the people there, more out of respect than any personal admiration, but Childe feels his smile widen.
It hits him after they’ve thrown their caps, when he’s hugging Signora and trying to find Scara to do the same, that this is likely the last time he’s going to see him. He shouldn’t feel this— whatever this black hole in his chest is. They’re not friends. They’ve hardly spoken. For all he knows, this is the first time Zhongli’s learned his name. By the time his parents have come over to wrap him in a spine-crushing hug, he’s managed to exhale most of whatever’s constricting his chest.
It’s just a silly high school crush— can you even have a crush on someone in high school if you’ve never spoken? It doesn’t matter. He’ll go off to college and find someone new to admire and forget all about Zhongli and his oddly specific taste in tea and his voice that feels like velvet against his eardrums.
The charade lasts throughout the summer. He’s already responded to the school and scouted out a house not too far off the campus. It’s a bit of a walk, but he enjoys the outdoors, likes watching the green bleed from the leaves as summer gives way to autumn. There’s a bus nearby that would shorten the journey to something over five minutes, but the slight bite of the morning air keeps him awake. He finds a roommate about two weeks into the first term, a studious man in his year who’s interesting in his own, quiet way. The most noteworthy thing about him— which he eagerly sends to Signora and Scara as soon as he’s able— is that he keeps a pet snake.
He finds a job at the bookstore he passes everyday on the way to class. It’s an old, run-down shop that looks about two months from falling apart— scratch that, it looks like it would collapse as soon as he’s set foot through the door. A faded wooden sign hands above the entrance, spelling We’re Open! in worn cursive. It’s cozier inside than he’d anticipated, with sleek wooden floors and well-kept shelves and a few patchwork bean bag chairs in the back. The kid— he looks younger, maybe a third year in high school— he submits his application to gives him a once over and hires him on the spot.
Autumn fades into winter just as he scrapes by with low eighties on his finals. He’s exhausted. Maybe Baizhu’s pet snake, Changsheng, has the right idea about hibernation. (“She’s not hibernating, she’s brumating.” Childe doesn’t bother asking the difference; to him, sleep is sleep.) The charade lasts until the first day of second term. It happens when he’s already seated, trying to rub the cold out of his hands while waiting for the professor to show. It happens when he walks back into his life and has the audacity to sit two rows in front of him. Childe nearly chokes on his water.
Zhongli.
And then his resolve crumbles to dust.
It takes him an (admittedly) embarrassingly long time to realize he’s struggling. As in, he spends the night staring at the bolded 62% at the top of his screen. The other midterms had been fine; he’d gotten help from the professors, and when they weren’t available, some of the other students had been willing to talk through a few concepts with him. He doesn’t remember Calculus being this difficult in high school. The thought that he’s losing to a series of squiggly lines on a sheet of paper isn’t a nice one.
He wants to sleep. His vision sways as his eyelids try to fight gravity. All he wants to do is pass out here on the kitchen counter and wake up to find out he didn’t get a 62% on his midterm. Maybe then he’ll have good news to tell his parents when he goes home for the long weekend. Yes, that’s what this all is. Some nightmarish figment of his imagination, a result of the lack of sleep he’s been suffering as of late. When he wakes up, everything will be fine. The low hum from the fridge calls to him like a lullaby….
The sharp ringing from his phone is enough to startle him out of his fatigue, and he scrambles to answer it before Baizhu hears.
“Hello?”
“What do you mean you're failing math?” Signora asks.
““Are you seriously calling at” —he glances at the little green numbers on the microwave— “almost three in the morning to ask about my grades?”
“I thought you said you were doing well now.”
“I thought I was.”
“Clearly,” she scoffs to herself. “Did you ask for help?”
Childe gathers his laptop and notebooks, still glaring at the 62% as he moves to the couch. “She’s not great at explaining things and she barely elaborates during the lectures. And she’s always busy, or something. I don’t know.”
Signora hums on the other end of the line. “Do you have anyone you can ask for help? Get someone to tutor you.”
“Who?”
“I bet there are several hundred kids in that hall everyday at the same time you are, and you’re telling me you haven’t made any friends?”
“Not really.” This is true.
“There’s no one you know in that class?”
A certain dark-haired man with a specific inclination for tea comes to mind. “No.” This is a lie.
“One person. There isn’t one— literally one, Childe— that you can talk to?” His hesitation is enough for her to pounce on. “Who is it?”
“Do you remember, uh—” he coughs “—that one guy, from high school, that I—”
“You have Calc with Zhongli and you never thought to ask him for help? Didn’t he literally transfer to one of the AP math classes?”
“He’s— also busy, something, just—” Childe sputters, feeling the tips of his ears go warm.
“Do you still like him?”
Like him? No, you don’t like someone you’ve never spoken to, never interacted with, someone who may not even know you exist. And god, did she have to make it sound like he was some middle schooler with a silly crush? “No, I don’t.” He manages. “And I never did.”
“As if I didn’t spend three years of my life watching you go red at the sound of his name.”
“I never—” he inhales sharply and lowers his voice. “I admire him, okay? That’s all.”
“Your version of admiring is what others would call stalking.”
“That’s harsh.”
“Listen.” Signora emphasizes her words by clapping with each syllable. “You’re always watching him, you’re obsessed with him—”
“I am not.”
“—but you’ve never spoken. Hence, stalking. And generally, it’s very poor taste to stalk the person you plan on asking to be your tutor.”
He bites back a groan. Of course she would bring it back to his studies. “Okay, genius, what do you think I should do then?”
“I don’t know, maybe try talking to him? Literally, just go up to him, and talk.”
No.
No, because he’s likely busy, either volunteering somewhere, or preparing for the seminar on Tuesday, or otherwise occupied with whatever task that only he can do, because no one else can accomplish it the way he would.
No, because he’s a good student, studious and disciplined in all the ways Childe isn’t, and spending time with him would only further distract Zhongli from his own work.
No, because asking out of the blue would, on some level, insinuate that they’re friends. Zhongli’s got his own friends, Childe knows, a group that he isn’t part of and one in which he would surely feel alienated.
No… just because no. That’s the plan. That was the plan.
“If, hypothetically, I did, what would I say?”
But carefully crafted plans never hold his attention for long.