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“Ah—surprise!”
Childe’s mother certainly looks surprised. It’s an entire adventure, watching the journey that her facial expressions make. Anticipation is first, as well as excitement, but both of those quickly transition to faint befuddlement before that leaks like sugar out of a sieve to leave only a familiar blankness.
“Haha,” Childe adds only semi-flatly, fingers curling in from where he’d spread his hands into a little ‘voila’ motion. “I’m home! Your son! For the first time in—uh, a year or so! And look, I brought my soon-to-be husband!”
This time, the ‘voila’ motion is a lot more dramatic, because Zhongli at the very least deserves a little bit of pizzazz when he’s presented. Childe steps to the side with a flourish, eager to show off his fiance, and makes sure the band on his finger is visible when he spreads his hands.
(The engagement ring took Childe by surprise, actually. He doesn’t recall anything like it from the multiple primers Zhongli had given him on Liyuean wedding traditions during the time he had, apparently, been psyching himself up to propose. Apparently, Zhongli has been trying really hard to get with the times, though, so—engagement ring! And a wedding band later, too. Childe’s usually not much of a ring guy, but he’d never expected to get one ring, nevermind two, so he’s been showing it off as much as he can over the past couple of months.)
It works. His mother’s face flickers, turns into something relieved and wondrous as she looks over Zhongli, and she waves them inside.
“Didn’t you get my letter?” Childe asks, once they’re seated at the kitchen table and his mother is putting a kettle onto the stove. Between the tea she’s about to serve and the lackluster welcome, he’s sure Zhongli is in the middle of getting the shock of his life, and at least one of those things Childe can try to do something about if his mother plays along—
“We don’t open your letters.”
Or, no, or she could… just say that. That works, too. Okay.
“Ah,” he says, and the rest gets stuck in his throat. Archons. He’d sent it through Zopalyarny Palace this time, hoping they might open it if it came with official letterhead, but—of course. Of course.
Tonia opens his letters, sometimes. Teucer is too young to rifle through the mail. Neither of them would open something that came from the palace, and his parents aren’t stupid. They probably figured out it was him. After all, they’ve only got one son that joined the Fatui, don’t they? Even if ‘joined’ is a strong word for how the initial recruitment went down.
Zhongli reaches over under the table and squeezes Childe’s hand. One of his non-marriage-related rings clinks against Childe’s engagement ring as he strokes a thumb over Childe’s fingers. Childe smiles at the back of his mother’s head and does not look at Zhongli’s face.
“Madam,” Zhongli starts, the first thing he’s said since arriving. Childe’s mother blinks hard at the voice, turning from the stove to pour boiling water into a large ceramic teapot that she’s scooped three teaspoons of black tea leaves into. “It is a pleasure to meet you. My name is Zhongli. I’m a consultant at Wangsheng Funeral Parlor in Liyue Harbor. I proposed to your son three months ago, and it was my greatest honor that he accepted.”
All of this—Zhongli had told him to put it in the letters, had told Childe to write letters at all. He had. He had. His mother still looks like she’s hearing it for the first time.
“Well,” she says, setting out the teapot. Three cups, a saucer of milk, cubes of sugar, spoons for everyone, and a box of pryaniki. He hasn’t had a pryanik in—a year, maybe. They don’t make them in Liyue. The sugar always gets everywhere, you can’t really eat them with gloves on and he can’t take his gloves off without taking his ring off first. Childe grabs two, and puts the second on a napkin for Zhongli.
“Well,” his mother repeats, and settles into her seat. She looks at Zhongli, at his long coat and the nice broach over his tie and his cor lapis eyes and the expensive earring. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Zhongli. I apologize for my shock—I’m expecting my husband and other children to come home soon, as well as an important visitor from the Tsaritsa’s service.”
Childe blinks. “From the palace? Who’s coming?”
Childe has Pulcinella’s word to look after his family while Childe isn’t around, but the Rooster doesn’t usually do so in person. If somebody from the palace is coming to visit them—well, it’s hard not to see it as a bit of a threat. Especially with Childe’s marriage to another nation’s archon looming.
The question is: who? The Tsaritsa blessed the union. Hell, she’s invited to the wedding!
His mother smiles, pressing her hands together. “A Harbinger! The Eleventh himself, Tartaglia. He sent a letter ahead, saying he had important business to discuss. Can you imagine? Somebody like that, important business with us?”
Childe chokes on his tea. Zhongli whaps him on the back, solid as stone, until he’s in less danger of asphyxiating at his mother’s dining table.
“Ah,” Childe wheezes. “That’s great, mom.”
“Isn’t it?” she says. “Tartaglia. Now, there’s a man who’s made something of himself. I’ve heard he’s very young to have achieved the rank he’s at. How impressive! Your father and siblings are out getting groceries to prepare for his arrival.”
If tea down his lungs wasn’t going to kill Childe, then the irony would. Forget hacking his way out of the abyss at the tender age of nine years old, he was going out from the sheer power of the full-body cringe he’s experiencing right now. Archons, he might actually have a leg cramp from it.
Because, here’s the thing: He never actually told his parents that he’s a Fatui Harbinger.
It just… didn’t seem like a wise move. He’s been on the outs with his parents ever since he fell into a hold in the ground and came out three days (or three months) later sans the sparkle in his eye and plus a whole lot of rather worryingly violent habits. Even as a nine-year-old brat, he wasn’t completely oblivious: he’s aware that the way his dad frog-marched him to the nearest Fatui recruitment site was out of fear.
His parents had tried, after all. Oh, they’d really tried. But there’s only so far that love can get you. He’d overheard his mother speaking to his father, once—she’d said that being around him was like looking at a doppelganger possessing the corpse of her actual son. Like she was looking at a dead thing that was still pretending at being human.
The sentiment is a little dramatic, if you ask Childe. But he could imagine how it would be uncanny to see your own kid that way, so off to the Fatui he went.
The problem, then, is this: he still loves his family very much, and he does not want them to be afraid of him. That’s why he hasn’t told Teucer the job he does at all—probably his only decision in recent years that his parents approve of, bar presumably his upcoming marriage to to a seemingly-wealthy aristocratic type—and it’s why he lets his parents think that he’s a low-ranked thug among the Fatui at best. If they think he’s barely ranked up all these years and are still afraid of him now, well—he’d rather not let them know he’s slaughtered more enemies in the Tsaritsa’s name than anyone can bother keeping count of by this point.
He just, ah, didn’t quite expect it to bite him in the ass like this! ‘Tartaglia, a man who’s made something of himself’—really, mother! What would she even do if she found out it was really meant to be him visiting them? And who the hell in the palace decided to mail his missive under his title instead of his actual name?!
“We’ll make sure to keep out of the Harbinger’s way, then,” he eventually manages, smiling in the half-hysterical way that is the only shape his face wants to make right now. His mother never meets his eyes anymore, anyways—she won’t be able to tell how dishonest the expression is. “Is the spare room still free?”
It is. His mother is only too eager to get Childe bustled away, and stops only to tell him to go unpack while she gets to know his fiance. He’s meant to sit down for a proper dinner with her and his father later. His younger siblings are apparently away on a trip with his older ones—his parents may respect the Harbingers, but they’re smart enough to keep the children out of such business—but his parents still want to get to know his future husband. The Harbinger, his mother says, isn’t due to arrive until tomorrow.
“Don’t stay too long!” his mother calls after him. “It would be better for you to leave before the Harbinger arrives!”
“This is what I get for arriving ahead of schedule,” Childe whispers frenetically as soon as the door to his old room, now a guest room, closes behind them.
Zhongli doesn’t reply. Or maybe he does reply, by making some kind of kind and loving expression in Childe’s general direction, as he sometimes does, but Childe can’t see it. He’s too busy fussing around the bed, beating the blanket to make sure there’s no dust on it, and setting down the bag he packed for himself and the bag he repacked for Zhongli once he realized Zhongli had mostly packed trinkets and books. He can’t see Zhongli at all this way, which is for the best, because he’s pretty sure that if he sees his fiance’s face right now, he’s going to sink straight through the floor and end up back in the Abyss.
Arms wrap around his waist from behind, and Zhongli presses his cold, cold lizard-person nose into the back of Childe’s neck.
“Childe,” Zhongli murmurs. His nose may be slow to warm up after a trip through the snow, but his lips are warm against the side of Childe’s throat.
Childe swallows. Then he wriggles around in Zhongli’s arms and drops his head onto Zhongli’s shoulder.
“Zhongli,” he mumbles in return, with less of Zhongli’s sexy gravely undertones and more generalized misery in his voice. “Sorry. I warned you that I was probably going to freak out, right? I did say it. So don’t be weird about it. It’s fine.”
Zhongli runs a palm up Childe’s back, then back down, around and around until each circle is unwinding just a bit of tension from Childe’s shoulders.
“I have it on good authority that I have a general tendency towards weirdness,” Zhongli says, “but I will endeavor to keep it to a minimum.”
Childe snorts into Zhongli’s shoulder. “Alright, alright. Go talk to my mom before she physically drags you out.”
“You think her capable?”
“Hey, don’t forget, she’s my mother.”
Zhongli looks suitably both mollified and amused by this, and trails out the door.
Childe promptly abandons his homemaking endeavors to skulk outside of the kitchen. There’s no way he’s letting his mom talk to his future husband unsupervised, just like there’s no way his mom isn’t going to try to wheedle out information from Zhongli now that Childe’s out of the room.
“What a respectable young gentleman you are,” his mother is saying as she and Zhongli settle down in the kitchen. “It’s nice to see that my son has finally found someone like you to straighten him out.”
“I am glad to have made a positive first impression,” Zhongli says. His eyes skate over where Childe lingers in the doorway behind his mother’s back. They do not catch on Childe’s silhouette at all. “I did want to speak to you about something.”
“Ah?” his mother asks. “I hope he hasn’t been causing you trouble, our Ajax. He’s always been a wild one, you know—well, I suppose you must, if you’re marrying him.”
Zhongli smiles at her serenely. Childe vaguely recalls last week, when Zhongli smiled the exact same way before acquiescing to one of Childe’s very frequent requests to spar and soundly beating Childe into the ground. There’s more than one way to settle a person, he supposes, but he also supposes that more than anything he just wants a rematch.
Maybe they can include a spar in their wedding. Instead of dances or whatever other people do after bowing three times. Do they do that in Liyue? Would Zhongli want to do that? He doesn’t like to spar Childe that often. Maybe it’s because he also thinks Childe needs to calm down. Maybe he’s talking to Childe’s mother right now because he agrees with her, and is going to call off the wedding, because Childe is uncontrollable and Zhongli hadn’t realized what he was getting into until Childe’s mom told him—and maybe Childe is catastrophizing because he’s used to beating up his problems and ‘awkward relationship with your parents’ isn’t a problem that violence would help resolve.
Zhongli taps his fingers on the kitchen table. “Initially, I simply intended to ask for your approval for our union. I know it would mean a lot to… Ajax. But I am starting to suspect I already have that.”
“Of course!” Childe’s mother sounds delighted. “You seem like the type that would be good to calm our Ajax down. It’s lovely to see him getting settled. And with such a scholarly type, too. I never would have imagined.”
“To be honest,” Zhongli says, “I have no intention of doing so. To be frank, I fell in love with your son with the full knowledge that, at the time, he intended to more or less tear my heart out of my chest.”
There is a long moment. Chlide can’t see his mother’s face, but he can imagine the expression. Probably the same one she made when Childe was five and broke her favorite teapot. “... Figuratively, you mean?”
Zhongli’s smile ticks a fraction wider, though it remains close-lipped. “Instead of asking for your approval of our union, I would rather implore you to give that approval to Ajax himself. This marriage involves two people, and while I’m very relieved to meet the standards of my partner’s parent, I can also see even from the brief time I’ve spent here that Ajax would find your blessing much more meaningful than I ever could. You are his mother, after all.”
Childe’s mother scoffs. She starts speaking, something that Childe doesn’t catch. His blood is rushing in his ears, and—
He doesn’t want to hear the answer. He can’t stay here anymore. He flees down the hallway, quiet until he reaches the door and lets it slam behind him as he flies into the flurries of snow that are swirling through the air outside.
The snow muffles everything, once he’s in it. His boots squeak and crunch in the freshly-fallen powder, but the sound doesn’t travel far. His nose stings, and his ears start to get cold. It’s a painful sort of peace, like entering a cold grave. A beautiful canvass, but not one that he plans to paint with his own carcass, so he keeps moving forward to keep his blood flowing.
It doesn’t take Zhongli long to catch up with him. This is no surprise: Childe wasn’t subtle in his exit. The last time he stormed out of the house like that, he was ten years old and his mother locked the door behind him. He’s ended up the same place now that he did then: crouched in front of a tree hollow, a scant hole in the ground with a clearly visible bottom that he spooked a den of snow foxes out of.
Nothing about it resembles a bottomless pit.
And yet.
Being here makes him feel like a monster. So he acts like one, too: the hydro blade he swipes at Zhongli’s throat is rimed with frost, the ever-sharp crystal fragments of the Tsaritsa’s cold heart. It’s so cold that Childe’s fingers prickle with it, numb in places and stinging in others, and yet Zhongli ducks away with a fluidity that no cold-blooded creature should have in conditions like this.
Childe feels like a feral thing in comparison, scuffling in the snow with claws and teeth. He lunges again.
It’s not a long fight. Perhaps it isn’t a fair one, either: Zhongli doesn’t bring out his spear, merely yanks Childe’s arm forward and shoves a palm into the back of his neck, tumbling Childe into the snow. He lets himself fall with Childe, and Childe ends up pinned, a cloudy snarl of air puffing out in front of him as he gives up on his hydro weapons and goes for Zhongli with his teeth.
Zhongli grabs him under the jaw and meets him halfway.
The kiss is warm: the warmest thing Childe has felt since coming back home, maybe. Zhongli crowds him into the snow, crushed powder shifting around Childe’s ears, and turns his head to press closer.
By the time he lets Childe go, the tears have frosted at the corners of Childe’s eyes, and the snowflakes have melted off his eyelashes.
“Marry me,” Zhongli murmurs into the corner of Childe’s mouth, cradling his head like he’s worth being gentle with.
“Didn’t I…” Childe rasps, and clears his throat. “Didn’t I already agree to do that?”
“Mm,” Zhongli hums. “But it brings me such joy to hear you say it again, Childe. Won’t you marry me? Won’t you make a family with me?”
Childe laughs, and it comes out wet. “Sure, professor. Any day of the week.”
Zhongli kisses him again.
The last time Childe stormed out of the house like this, he spent an evening crouched outside in the snow, rubbing his stinging fingers together and huddling against the doorframe. Eventually, the light went out indoors, and he pried the lock open with an icicle. His mother told him to repair it the next day.
This time, he doesn’t go home at all. His parents never do receive that visit from Tartaglia, but the bed and breakfast in town is more than serviceable. His home town, he finds, looks better from the cozy confines of his husband-to-be’s arms.