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It begins, as all terrible things do, with a book. A harmless book. A dusty, oversized, bound-in-basilisk-hide kind of book with a pretentious title in gilded script like On the Nature of Draconic Soulbinding and Long-Term Copulatory Tendencies Amongst Rex Incognito. Zhongli reads it aloud at the table because of course he does. Because it’s a Sunday morning, the tea is hot, the porch is sunlit, and Zhongli hasn’t yet realized what a godforsaken mistake he’s made.
Childe, mid-bite of almond tofu he’s absolutely stolen off Zhongli’s plate (the audacity), stops chewing. Zhongli, oblivious, continues with the same grave, sonorous voice he uses to recite divine contracts and coupon expiration dates: “—as previously documented, primordial dragon species form monogamous bonds for life. Once a mate is chosen, the dragon will remain singularly attached, both biologically and spiritually, to their partner until death, and sometimes beyond—”
Childe swallows his tofu and his dignity in the same breath.
“What.”
Zhongli looks up.
The sun is shining. Birds are chirping. Somewhere, a cat yowls as if it too understands the horror Childe is about to unleash.
“What did you just say?” Childe demands.
Zhongli blinks. “Only that dragons, as a rule, form—”
“Oh my god.”
“—lifelong—”
“Oh my fucking god.”
“—mating bonds.”
Silence.
A beat passes. Then:
“Do you?” Childe says, leaning forward like an interrogator, eyes wide, mouth already curved into the manic grin of a man about to derail both their lives. “Do you also mate for life?”
Zhongli, elegant bastard that he is, takes a sip of his tea. “I believe I just said as much.”
“You’re serious.”
“Of course I’m serious.”
“You’re telling me,” Childe says, his voice increasing in pitch with every word, “that you—you, the fancy funeral consultant who lectures pigeons and alphabetizes his tea cabinet—you’re biologically wired to marry the first person you screw and stick with them forever?!”
Zhongli, impassive: “I wouldn't put it quite so crudely.”
Childe: “You wouldn’t put anything crudely, you gilded fossil!”
Zhongli arches a brow.
Childe slams his hands on the table. “Do you realize what this means?!”
“No,” Zhongli lies. Zhongli, whose tail is curled just slightly tighter around the leg of his chair. Zhongli, who is starting to suspect he may not survive this breakfast with his dignity intact.
“It means,” Childe says, eyes blazing with the sort of deranged glee only possible from someone who once tried to flood a nation as a workplace prank, “you’ve already picked me!”
Zhongli pauses.
Then he says, slowly, as if it will help, “Yes. I believe I have.”
Childe makes a noise that could only be described as feral delight mixed with romantic hysteria. “Oh my god.”
“Again with the divinity references,” Zhongli says, sipping his tea, “You flatter me.”
Childe flings himself across the table. Not metaphorically. Not suggestively. Literally. He launches his entire body at Zhongli like a missile of pure love and chaos, knocks over the sugar dish, lands half in Zhongli’s lap and half on the shattered remains of his composure.
“You’re stuck with me,” Childe whispers, absolutely beaming, “Forever.”
“I am aware.”
“Forever-ever.”
“Yes.”
Childe wraps his arms around Zhongli’s neck like a clingy octopus in heat. “You poor, beautiful, ancient thing. You’re doomed.”
Zhongli—stoic, refined, long-suffering—does not sigh. But it is a near thing.
One Hour Later:
“Zhongli,” Childe says, sticking his head into the study where Zhongli is pretending to work. “Zhongli. Hey. Babe. Darling. Light of my life. Mate of my forever-life.”
Zhongli stares at him. “Yes?”
Childe holds up a crude drawing.
It depicts a stick-figure version of Zhongli next to a stick-figure Childe with a very muscular torso and sparkles for eyes. There are hearts. So many hearts.
“I drew us.”
Zhongli closes his eyes.
Childe kisses him on the forehead. “This is your future now.”
Two Days Later:
Zhongli, attempting to buy peace with silence, sets down a book on historical warfare.
Childe sets down an engagement ring.
“Darling,” Zhongli says slowly, “Is that from my vault?”
“Yes,” Childe beams. “I broke in.”
“You broke into my vault.”
“For us,” Childe clarifies.
Zhongli breathes in through his nose.
“Do you even know what that ring means?”
Childe shrugs. “Eternal devotion and/or a blood pact?”
“That ring,” Zhongli says, placing it back into the velvet-lined box with the care of a man handling a nuclear warhead, “literally brands the soul.”
Childe wiggles his eyebrows. “Kinky.”
Zhongli stands up. “I need tea.”
Childe follows him. “I can be your tea.”
Zhongli walks faster.
Childe sprints after him. “Your piping hot life-long infuser of emotional warmth and sexual satisfaction.”
“Please stop.”
“I will never stop,” Childe says, catching his arm. “I am your mate. Your one true chosen beloved. You doomed yourself to this when you got into bed with me.”
“Technically, it was on the kitchen counter.”
“Exactly.”
Three Weeks Later:
Childe has begun calling Zhongli “husband” in public. Not like a husband. Not as if they’re married. Just husband. Straight-up. In front of the vendors. The Millelith. Hu Tao.
Zhongli is running out of excuses.
“He’s joking,” he tells one merchant.
“I’m manifesting,” Childe tells the same merchant, smiling like a threat made of sunshine.
“Is it working?” Zhongli mutters.
Childe leans in. “You tell me, sweetheart.”
Zhongli, traitor that he is, flushes.
He tries ignoring it. He tries deflection. Diplomacy. Very ancient sighing.
He even tries seduction.
But none of it works.
Because Childe is feral with joy. Ungovernable with it. Clingier than resin on a condensed domain. He wakes Zhongli up every morning with forehead kisses and coffee and “good morning, my forever mate” and also, for some reason, new pet names like “geode snack cake” and “my little sediment layer.”
Zhongli should be annoyed. He should be horrified.
He should have him exorcised.
But instead…
Instead—
Instead, he finds himself… fond.
Terribly, inexcusably fond.
There is something unspeakably tender about the way Childe stumbles over the word “eternity” like it’s a hope he never expected to have. About the way he says “mate for life” and means I want you even when I’m old and boring and broken and you deserve better. About the way he throws himself, whole and laughing and utterly ridiculous, into a concept that means permanence. Forever. Undeniable.
No one has ever wanted Zhongli like this.
No one has ever dared.
He is old. He is stone. He is war-torn and weary and full of things that do not end.
And Childe—loud, reckless, impossible Childe—looked at all of that and said:
Yes. I want you anyway.
That night, Childe tries to initiate an oath renewal ceremony with a glow-in-the-dark slime ring and a plush geovishap.
Zhongli sighs. Then, in the slow, inevitable way of all earthbound things:
He lets him.
They are in bed. Childe is shirtless, which is neither new nor interesting. What is new is the look on his face—soft, and sort of terrifying. Like he’s about to make a vow in the form of a dick joke.
Zhongli watches him warily. “You’re thinking something.”
“I am,” Childe says. “I’m thinking that if you ever try to leave me, I’ll find you.”
“That is not comforting.”
“I’ll carve our initials into the petrified remains of your departed lovers.”
“That is deeply unsettling.”
“I’ll cry. Very attractively.”
Zhongli closes his eyes.
Childe rolls over, drapes himself across Zhongli’s chest like a smitten weapon of mass destruction, and purrs, “I’m going to get us matching tattoos.”
“You are not.”
“Of course not. That would be ridiculous.”
Zhongli exhales.
“I already have yours.”
Zhongli opens his eyes.
“What.”
Childe grins. He kisses a line down Zhongli’s collarbone, slow and smug, and mumbles, “Left hip. Right under the waistband. Wanna see?”
Zhongli does.
Very, very much.
Later, when Zhongli is boneless and draped across silken sheets and wondering how he, the great Geo Archon, has been reduced to a very warm, very naked pillow, Childe strokes his side gently and says, “Y’know. I wasn’t joking.”
“About what?” Zhongli murmurs, half-asleep.
“The soul-bonding thing. Dragons mate for life. So do I.”
Zhongli hums, one long, thoughtful sound.
“I suppose,” he says, “I’ll have to stop pretending I mind.”
Childe kisses his jaw, then his shoulder, then the corner of his mouth.
“You love it.”
Zhongli considers this.
Then he smiles.
“Unfortunately.”
One Month Later:
They are lying in bed.
Childe is sprawled across Zhongli’s chest like a weighted blanket made of bad decisions and undying affection. He has drawn a heart on Zhongli’s arm in permanent marker. Inside the heart: Z ❤️ C 4EVA.
Zhongli has not tried to remove it.
“You know,” Childe says, “I never thought I’d settle down.”
“Mmm.”
“Thought I’d die young in a blaze of glory.”
“That still may happen.”
“Romantic,” Childe says, smirking. “But you—you, xiansheng, ruined me.”
“I do try.”
“I was going to be a menace forever.”
“You still are.”
“But now I’m your menace.”
Zhongli looks down at him. His eyes are gold. Glowing and beautiful.
“Yes,” he says softly. “You are.”
Later, much later—
They do the soul-bonding thing.
Zhongli warns him twenty times.
Childe, wild-eyed, shirtless, holding the ceremonial dagger like it’s a Valentine’s Day present, says, “Pierce my heart, you sexy fossil, and make me yours for eternity.”
Zhongli does.
It’s obscene. It’s poetic. There is biting involved. A tail and glowing veins. Vows spoken in Old Teyvatian. A lot of moaning.
At one point Childe cries and claims it’s just allergies from the incense.
Zhongli doesn’t call him on it. Instead, he kisses his forehead. “Mine,” he whispers, low and absolute.
Childe laughs through the tears. “I was already yours, idiot.”