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The rain begins precisely thirty-six seconds before Childe lunges.
Zhongli, ever the considerate partner, does not point this out. He merely shifts his stance—fractionally, delicately, devastatingly—and lets the first raindrop trace the length of his jaw. He breathes in the scent of wet stone and worse decisions.
Childe’s boot splashes across the mud.
“Did you schedule the storm, just so you could make a dramatic entrance?” he demands, already halfway into a reckless feint, hydro-construct blooming under his heel. “You pretentious bastard.”
Zhongli doesn’t move.
“It is hardly my fault that nature prefers to assist me in my flourishes,” he replies, raising a brow. “Unlike some, I do not need artificial drama to supplement my technique.”
Childe swings. Zhongli’s reply is a parry so gentle it feels like a critique.
“You’re leaning too far forward,” Zhongli murmurs, as if commenting on posture in a ballroom and not deflecting a broadsword with the crook of two fingers. “Overcompensating. Again.”
“I’m not—!”
“Overcompensating,” Zhongli repeats, and smiles.
The smile is devastating.
The kind of smile that has conquered nations.
The kind of smile that has turned diplomats into devotees.
The kind of smile that says: I once made a contract with a god to rearrange the tectonic structure of Liyue, but I’m still more proud of how I can make you blush mid-spin.
Childe, to his everlasting shame, does in fact spin. Not elegantly. Not coolly. Like a blender set to frustrated bisexual.
The mud kisses his boot again as he circles. Zhongli is still—still—still.
“You’re insufferable,” Childe hisses.
“And yet,” Zhongli replies, “you continue to request our sparring sessions.”
“Yeah, because it’s the only time you let me throw you down!”
There is a pause. A silence. A drip.
Zhongli does not blink. He merely hums.
“Incorrect. I allow you to try.”
Childe’s entire soul short-circuits.
Lightning flashes.
And Zhongli is already moving, finally moving, graceful as a sermon in an empty cathedral. The polearm glints and Childe meets it with dual hydroblades that hiss on impact.
---
Their sparring, to outsiders, would look like a duet choreographed by gods and madmen.
To insiders, it sounds more like:
“Did you just moan when I blocked that?”
“I exhaled, Childe. You would know the difference if you had better focus.”
“I have perfect focus. Especially when you’re groaning like you just remembered how hot I am.”
“You are constantly reminding me, dear.”
“Oh?” A vicious cross-cut, playful and violent. “Do tell.”
Zhongli catches his wrist, rotates it, leans in until their mouths are a breath apart.
“Your thighs,” Zhongli says with academic calm, “are excellent at stabilizing your stance, but you refuse to utilize the power in your hips.”
Childe blinks.
Then: “Did you just compliment my thighs as a critique?!”
“I find that combining instruction with praise yields better results,” Zhongli says smoothly. “You respond well to positive reinforcement.”
“I respond well to not being called out for hip movement during a duel.”
Zhongli leans closer, the rain drawing silver into the gold of his hair.
“Then stop grinding every time you dodge.”
“I am NOT—”
“You are.”
“I’m fighting for my life.”
“You’re flirting with your blade.”
“And you’re flirting with your god complex!”
Zhongli sighs, tragically, like he has been wounded not by steel but by melodrama.
“You are the one who requested this,” he says. “You asked to spar. You said, and I quote, ‘Hit me until I cry, xiansheng.’”
“I didn’t mean emotionally.”
“Your footwork implies otherwise.”
Childe makes a sound that can only be described as feral dignity in collapse.
He lunges again, this time lower, sliding in the mud to aim a kick at Zhongli’s legs. Zhongli steps aside like he’s dodging an inconvenient puddle and lets Childe fall straight into a full-body skid that ends, gloriously, at the hem of his robes.
There is a beat of silence.
Childe, face-down in the dirt, lifts his head and spits out moss. “I hate you.”
---
“This lunge,” Zhongli says calmly, tilting his head as he steps—gracefully, precisely—out of the way of Childe’s spear, “would benefit from a tighter core engagement. Your stance is two degrees off-center. I believe you’re compensating for your left ankle.”
Childe, panting, growling, actively bleeding from his lip and vibrating with chaotic desire, barely stops himself from screaming, “Are you SERIOUS right now?”
“Yes,” Zhongli replies, utterly serene, as if they aren't currently in the middle of what Childe has definitely dubbed a no-holds-barred, winner-gets-to-pin-the-other match, “I’m always serious when it comes to form. Would you like me to demonstrate?”
“No—what I’d like is to win!”
Zhongli sighs as if Childe has said something foolish, like “I love bureaucracy” or “tea is best served cold.”
“You’re distracted,” Zhongli says, twirling his polearm once, and—unforgivably—adjusting his gloves mid-motion, as if Childe’s attempts at murder are mildly inconvenient dust on his sleeves. “Perhaps if you didn’t stare at my hands every time I parry, you’d land a blow.”
Childe lets out an unholy sound that can only be described as "wretchedly aroused beast noises."
“Not fair,” he huffs, launching himself forward again. “Your hands are cheating.”
“My hands are merely hands, Childe.”
“No they’re not! They’re… elegant instruments of divine destruction! They’re carved from Liyue mountain stone and soaked in refined tea and long, slow poems. And when they touch a weapon it’s like—like—”
“Yes?” Zhongli asks politely, catching Childe’s blade between two fingers. Two fingers. Fucking casually.
“LIKE GETTING RAW DOGGED BY A CELESTIAL SYMPHONY,” Childe howls, and then promptly trips over his own feet.
Zhongli blinks once. “Colorful phrasing.”
“You knew what you were doing!” Childe accuses from the floor, wheezing.
“I simply corrected your form.”
“While moaning critique in my ear!”
“I do not moan, Childe.”
“You whisper like sin was invented just so it could be read aloud in your voice.”
Zhongli stares down at him, the expression on his face deeply amused and mildly condescending, which is Childe’s exact kink and everyone knows it.
“You’ve been terribly wound up today,” Zhongli says, crouching beside him as if they're in a park and not the middle of their ninth sparring match that has devolved into war-flirting. “Did something happen? Did you not sleep well?”
“Oh I slept just fine until you entered my dreams in those gloves—”
“Mm. So you were distracted.”
“By you! You wear those smug little silk gloves and murmur things like ‘engage your core’ and expect me NOT to dissolve into a puddle of horny static?”
Zhongli looks contemplative. “Would you prefer I correct your form using touch?”
Childe’s brain blue-screens.
Zhongli, unfazed, reaches for Childe’s waist. “For example, when you lunge, your hips—”
“NOPE,” Childe yelps, bodily rolling away and scrambling to his feet. “I will NOT let you play me like a flute made of horny war crimes and trauma kink!”
“War crimes?” Zhongli repeats, amused.
“You know what I mean.”
“I don’t, but I’d be delighted if you showed me.”
“That’s entrapment.”
Zhongli smiles, slow and terrible. “Indeed.”
---
Midway through the duel, they crash into each other hard enough to knock the breath out of both lungs. Childe ends up pinned beneath Zhongli, teeth bared in a grin so wide it could be illegal in several nations. Zhongli doesn’t even look winded. He’s perched on Childe’s chest like a judgmental gargoyle.
Childe, heroically, licks his lips. “So. You come here often?”
Zhongli’s voice is dry. “Yes. Usually to win.”
“Oh baby,” Childe sighs, “I’m so into that.”
Zhongli raises a single eyebrow. “You’re aroused by defeat?”
“I’m aroused by you,” Childe says cheerfully. “Honestly at this point you could quote tax code and I’d be halfway to unzipping my—”
Zhongli shoves him into the dirt.
Childe moans. Loudly.
Zhongli looks skyward and whispers something about Liyue needing stronger walls.
“Say something else ridiculous,” Childe murmurs, wrapping a leg around Zhongli’s waist like he’s daring him. “Go on. Critique me again. Real slow.”
Zhongli hums, dark eyes gleaming like polished amber. “Your grip lacks discipline.”
“Oh fuck yeah,” Childe breathes, grinding up just to be a menace. “Give me another.”
“Your parries are too reactive.”
“Say that slower.”
Zhongli leans down, voice like carved obsidian.
“You—are—impatient.”
Childe keens. Loudly. Filthily. Some poor Adeptus probably hears it in the next region.
---
Later, Zhongli lets him up.
Childe immediately tackles him again, because self-control is for cowards and he was raised in a nation where love is expressed through violence and biting.
Zhongli, unbothered, flips him with minimal effort and pins him with a knee between his thighs.
“You overcommit on grapples,” he says.
Childe wheezes. “I overcommit on you.”
“Regrettable.”
“Do it again.”
Zhongli leans down. Their noses are almost touching.
“There are... more efficient ways to express interest,” he says smoothly, like he’s explaining loan refinancing options.
“Yeah?” Childe rasps, grinning like a man on fire. “You gonna teach me those too?”
Zhongli studies him. Long and slow. Like a man considering the placement of a statue.
“Very well,” he murmurs, and kisses him.
They make out in the dirt like teenagers. Vicious, laughing, desperate—half-flirting, half-trying-to-kill-each-other. Zhongli tastes like tea and divine judgment. Childe tastes like salt and ambition and something that can’t ever be tamed.
Their sparring gear is halfway gone by the time Zhongli finally breaks the kiss to mutter:
“You still lead too much with your left.”
Childe flips them over.
“Then retrain me, xiansheng.”
Zhongli does.