by a_seagulls_hubris
Rating: Explicit, M/M, Complete Work
Published 7 March 2023
Before war between Celestia and the Tsaritsa breaks out, Childe pays a visit to some old friends.
And maybe, just maybe, give in to an almost decade-long hunger.
Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Tartaglia | Childe/Zhongli (Genshin Impact), Tartaglia | Childe (Genshin Impact), Zhongli (Genshin Impact), Explicit Sexual Content, Character Study, childe's beta design, pre-hell breaking lose with celestia, Service Top Zhongli (Genshin Impact), Mutual Pining, this relationship has no happy ending, Biting, Blood, Power Bottom Tartaglia | Childe (Genshin Impact), Consensual Sex, no beta because i'm scared of talking to people, Anal Sex
A friend challenged me to write smut. I am not a coward.
I'm starvin’, darlin’
Let me put my lips to something
Let me wrap my teeth around the world
–Eat Your Young, Hozier
He arrives unlike the first time, this time in late afternoon, unannounced at his door. It's not as if he's surprised; Childe's job requires at least a pinch of unpredictability.
He wears an eyepatch over his left eye, and when he smiles the scar at the corner of his mouth prevents his lips from curving upwards.
'Hey.' There's something missing in his voice. 'It's been a while.'
There is no correct response to that, so Zhongli simply lets him in.
He limps over to the couch and sinks heavily into it, a soft groan escaping him when he massages his left arm. It's bandaged, and the wrappings look as though they haven’t been changed in some time.
Zhongli needs a distraction, so he begins talking. 'Why are you here?'
They both know he has something better to do; notably, helping stir up the storm his Tsaritsa has been brewing for years now. He displays the mockery of a smile again. 'Visiting old friends. I may be a heretic, but I have feelings too.'
'I see.'
'You're not the only one,' he says, rubbing his remaining eye. 'I managed to get to know quite a lot of people after Liyue. You know Lumine. There's Yoimiya too, from Inazuma—'
'Does she know?'
He closes his one eye and leans back. 'That's the reason I'm visiting them. Telling them... this is the calm before the storm. And I'm going to be part of it.' He cracks open his eye. 'Aren't you going to sit down?'
'I was going to make some tea.'
A low chuckle escapes his throat. 'Ha. What did I expect?'
Zhongli can feel Childe's gaze on him when he stands to get his tea set out of the cupboard. It's a familiar stare, the wariness of a trained warrior, but now with the tiredness of one as well. He wonders how long Childe has been travelling without a break.
They continue with hot cups of tea on the table before them. Zhongli has a feeling neither of them are going to touch their drinks.
'What did they say?'
'Oh, you know Lumine. Trying to convince me to run away with her, stay safe for my family. According to her, there’s still some hope for me yet. I thought her little floating companion was going to bite me with the way she was yelling.' He laughs. 'I told her I can't back away from this challenge. Not if I want to hold this world in my hands. Plus, she might actually not hold back when I meet her on a battlefield.' He tilts his head. 'You're not drinking your tea.'
'You're not either.'
'That's true,' he says. His stare does not move from Zhongli.
Zhongli places his teacup down. 'What about the others?'
'Yoimiya says she understands. That's good enough for me.'
His thousands of years have given him a valuable skill in conversation. Zhongli lets his thoughts settle.
Childe says nothing, then, 'You know, I might finally get that fight with you. You may be retired, but you will defend this harbour to your last breath.' That smile again. 'I only ask that you don't hold back.'
'You are confident in your strength, it appears.'
'Oh, I've been practising. Strength comes with a price, however.'
He gestures to his eyepatch. Zhongli sighs, an old habit that has returned with Childe.
'You're going to die.'
'And history will remember me.’ He yawns, stretching his arms over his head. Zhongli has a sudden urge to get closer, to curl up with him as they sleep.
‘Rest.’ He stands up and heads to the door. Anything to push down the taste of salt at the back of his throat. ‘You’re obviously exhausted.’
‘And I trust you to not kill me in my sleep.'
Just like that, he leans back, the tension in his limbs seeming to release all at once. The sight fills Zhongli's chest with something warm, yet barbed.
~~~
Childe only wakes up after Zhongli brings back dinner. His snap back to attention is somewhat jarring, though not unexpected for a boy who grew up in the military.
‘It has been some time,’ Zhongli says, laying out cutlery on his dining table, ‘I apologise if I can’t remember what your favourite dishes are.’
‘I’ve forgotten too.’ Childe sits directly across from him, a faint glimmer in his dull eye as he takes in the spread before him. ‘But I trust your taste in cuisine.’
They barely exchange any words during their meal. Childe still struggles with chopsticks, though he has found a better way to discreetly use them as skewers.
Even with his cutlery troubles, he manages to finish off a significant portion of the food. Zhongli lets him. With a pang, he realises that this is probably the first full meal he’s had in a while.
‘Good as always,’ he says. ‘Now, if only you had wine… aha. Your impeccable taste remains intact, I see.’
His eye darkens further when Zhongli pours the wine into glasses. ‘A toast, then?’ he says, snatching the glass as soon as it is full. ‘Firewater. I guess I do have one last chance to drink myself into a stupor.’
‘Don’t.’
‘You’re not my mother.’ He picks up the bottle and takes a swig from it. The bitterness in his voice had not been missed.
Zhongli takes the abandoned glass, though he doesn’t plan on drinking any of its contents. ‘About your family…’
‘I’m not drunk enough for this.’ He tips the bottle back once more. ‘Fine. Go on.’
‘They found out. What I do for a living.’
His voice is slightly hoarse. Zhongli presses on. ‘Are they willing to talk to you?’
‘I’d prefer to not know that,’ he says. Then, ‘I haven’t been back home in years. I’ll have to though, soon. Evacuation… all that.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘We all knew that day would come.’
His voice is so soft that Zhongli reaches for his hand on the table, against his initial reservations. When their fingers are intertwined, he wishes they had taken their gloves off.
He can’t look away as Childe continues to drink, a low flush beginning to build on his cheeks. The sharpness in his posture, his shoulders seem to drain away from him, and he has to lean against a table when he is halfway through.
Zhongli doesn’t pull away when he moves his chair closer, just so he can rest his head on the consultant’s shoulder. He wishes his gloves are taken off again when he brushes Childe’s hair behind his ear.
He does not imagine the way Childe leans into his palm.
Childe finishes the bottle. ‘Ugh. I’m still conscious.’
‘That’s good.’
‘It’s not. I’m going to say something embarrassing.’
‘You know very well that I do the same.’
‘Not a fair comparison,’ he says, his words beginning to slur. ‘You always make things sound so beautiful. Divine. And I’m this eternally hungry, devouring, monstrous… thing.’
‘No one said the monstrous could not be beautiful.’
‘Eager to prove my point, I see.’ He slips his hand out of Zhongli’s grip and tugs at his gloves, depositing them on the table. ‘They weren’t joking about your eccentric taste.’
Zhongli reaches for his own gloves. ‘I like to think that I am simply more observant than most.’
‘You’re insane,’ Childe laughs. ‘You know very well that this is our last truce. After today I will have to fight, maybe even kill your people. You’ll have to fight me with your true strength, and one of us will not survive. And here you’re being so poetic about something between us that probably should have died years ago? You know what,’ he says thoughtfully, ‘maybe that’s why I like you so much.’
Zhongli chuckles once. ‘As if you’re any better yourself.’
In a flash, Childe is sitting on his lap, his hands on Zhongli’s, his lips so close to his ear that every word he speaks now makes his tassel earring stir. ‘You’re right,’ he murmurs. ‘I’m worse.’
Zhongli matches his tone. ‘How so?’
‘On the ship back to Snezhnaya, when I first left. You haunted my dreams every night . I let you place your hands all over me, and I hated every moment of it. And then, the next day, I’d want more.’
Childe leans closer, sinking his teeth into Zhongli’s earlobe for a brief moment before withdrawing. His breathing is ragged, the sharp tang of alcohol clinging to every exhale. ‘Some part of me still wants you.’
He pauses to tuck a strand of Zhongli’s hair behind his ear. ‘Unfortunately for the two of us, every single part of me is beyond saving now.’
His fingers curl around the back of Zhongli’s neck, and their lips meet.
Thought Childe’s lips are warm from the alcohol, the kiss feels like a breeze in winter. Zhongli doesn’t pull away, lets him take whatever twisted revenge he thinks he’s owed.
He comes to his senses when Zhongli places a hand on his cheek and pulls away. His face is flushed, though his previously cloudy eye has a certain clarity to its gaze now.
‘I told you. This is embarrassing even for me.’ He eyes the plates on the dining table. ‘I’ll help you clean up, then I’ll leave, and we can forget this ever happened.’
‘Wait.’
He pauses in the act of pulling his gloves back on. ‘What is it?’
Despite the attempt, a hint of desperation remains in his voice. And Zhongli has never been a cruel god, but now he wants, despite knowing what will come after.
‘What did I do to you in your dreams?’
Childe turns away, pretending to be examining a stove. ‘I thought I told you.’
‘You were sparse on the details.’
‘And why is it so important that you know?’
‘I would rather your dreams become memories.’
He turns around, his face now thoroughly red. ‘You—you’re insane. I need to be on the ship home by tomorrow afternoon.’
‘That’s more than twelve hours of time.’ Zhongli picks up his glass of firewater and downs it in one go. ‘Enough to let you indulge in your desires.’
‘Pinning it all on me, huh? You desperate old man.’
Then Childe is straddling his waist, his lips pressed against Zhongli’s, his hands sliding lower from where they are placed on his waist. And Zhongli let him kiss harder, all tongues and teeth and desperation.
When they finally separate, breathless, Childe asks if his couch is sturdy enough.
‘The bed definitely is,’ he answers, before standing up and leading him by the hand.
~~~
The smell of blood that clings to him has only gotten stronger.
Now that he is sitting still, Zhongli has an opportunity to examine his hands. They are heavily scarred, with a particularly nasty welt running across the back of his left hand, and markings on the palm that looked as though they could only be obtained by wrapping his fingers around a handful of glass.
He knows his thoughts have begun to wander when the soft click of Childe's tongue sounds from behind him. 'What are you looking at?'
He gives Childe's hand one last squeeze before turning to face him. He is lying on the bed, his mask of boredom failing to hide the blush that still rides high on his cheeks. 'So eager a moment ago, and now you've got cold feet. If you've changed your mind---'
'No.' He leans down and kisses the back of his hand. 'I will see this to the end.'
Childe laughs. 'Once a god of contracts, huh?'
Zhongli leans in to kiss him again, but he pulls back and slides two fingers under the edge of his eyepatch. When it is removed, the large gash running across the empty eye socket leaves no question as to what happened there.
He begins unfastening the clasps that keep his shirt barely closed, shoving away Zhongli's hand when he reaches out to help. It goes onto the floor, and then Childe is grabbing his tie.
'You'll have to take all that off too,' he says, a new kind of cool, calm confidence beginning to creep into his voice. 'It's only fair.'
'This isn't a fight.'
'It will be easier for you if you pretend it is.'
The low note in his voice is a warning, but Zhongli can handle it. No matter what heretical teachings he has taken up, what engineered strength he has injected into his bones, Childe is still mortal.
Maybe that is why when, as soon as his shirt comes off, he lets Childe lunge forward, a hungry gleam in his eye, and sink his teeth into his palm.
His teeth are sharp, much sharper than a human's had any right to be. Pain shoots up his arm, intensifying when Childe sinks his teeth deeper, tearing through flesh. He will recover after this, but something in Childe has changed.
That smiling young diplomat seems an eternity away now.
Childe tears away, red staining his teeth, the look in his eye making the hairs on the back of Zhongli's neck stand up. Whatever he thinks he is now, no amount of talking will change.
Zhongli flexes his fingers. 'Is this what you meant?'
He is on top of him now, bloodied teeth still bared, legs wrapped around his waist. 'I'm starving.' He leans down to trail his lips over Zhongli's shoulder. 'And I'll keep on starving for the rest of my life.' He finds a spot near his neck and bites down, briefly. 'The thing with hunger is that it makes us more beast than man.'
And then he is sinking his teeth into his neck, his hands like vice grips on Zhongli's shoulders, his breath hot and fast against his skin. Zhongli lifts a hand to brush his hair behind his ear, and he pulls back with a shudder.
'We're here,' he says, tracing the bite marks on Zhongli's neck, 'and you're still so gentle. Going to cradle me when I bleed out on a battlefield? Kiss my forehead?'
Zhongli cups Childe's face, letting blood from the bite wounds coat his cheek. Childe leans into it, a grin pulling at his lips.
'Blood on my face. That's much better.'
He kisses Zhongli again, this time sliding his tongue over his teeth, and when Zhongli responds in kind, he bites down, drawing blood from his lip.
'You bleed red.' He slides lower, his breath ghosting over Zhongli's nipples. 'The Tsaritsa could make some statement about it, but all I can say is that it looks good.'
Waves of pleasure roll through his body when Childe's tongue makes contact with him. He tangles his hand in Childe's hair, not letting go even when he begins to bite. All he knows is that Childe is touching him, his fingernails digging into his sides, his waist, and he wants this moment to last.
A low gasp escapes Childe's lips when Zhongli wraps his hands around his waist, then explores higher, light fingertips ghosting over his back, tracing each scar and muscle, counting the ridges of his spine. Childe pulls back when Zhongli presses his hand on his chest, over his heart.
'I've waited long enough,' he growls, gripping the clasp of Zhongli's belt. 'I want you inside me.'
There is desperation in the way he tears off his own clothes, then Zhongli's, and in that moment Zhongli wants to ask him: how long have you wanted this? But then Childe's hands are wrapped around his cock, and his mind goes blank.
He has not done this in some time, and Childe knows it. The harbinger's amusement shows in his small chuckles when he manages to draw out sound after sound from Zhongli, merciless even when Zhongli's vision begins to blur.
Childe's hand finds his face, tilting his gaze forward. He doesn't imagine the sharp inhale. 'Gods. You're beautiful.'
Zhongli sees what he's trying to do when his vision clears. Childe tries to pull his wrist free of his grip, pupil blown wide, thighs quivering as he positions himself over Zhongli's cock.
'No.'
'I can take it.'
'I won't let you hurt yourself.' Blearily, he turns to his left, facing his bedside table. 'Here.' He hands the container of cream to Childe.
Childe makes sure Zhongli is watching when he slides his fingers inside of himself, opening him up. Those same fingers clench over Zhongli's upper arm when he slams down, impaling himself on Zhongli.
It knocks a breath out of the two of them. Childe's one eye is glassed over with lust as he takes Zhongli deeper, and Zhongli doubts he is any better himself, with how desperate he is to grab Childe's thighs and waist and squeeze.
He lets Childe set the pace, until all he can feel is the slap of flesh against flesh, the low thrum of Childe's stifled moans, his warm skin underneath his fingertips, the building pressure in his groin. He wants to get closer, to kiss him again, but Childe's arms, braced on his chest, prevent him from moving up.
The lights from the harbour are faint, just enough to illuminate the trail of dried blood from Childe's face to his thighs. Zhongli sincerely hopes this is the last time he sees him covered in blood like this. Childe's insides are warm, and he is so close---this man, he thinks, his mind barely piecing together thoughts, this strange, burning man. Despite all of it, despite all that's going to happen, he wants to hold him close.
His hands find Childe's shoulders and he lurches forward, wrapping his arms around his lean, scarred form. Childe gasps, fingernails sinking into Zhongli's sides, and Zhongli buries his head in Childe's neck.
'Don't burn,' he whispers, 'not so soon.'
Childe sighs, all the tension in his muscles releasing with his breath. 'That’s not up to me.'
His lips find Zhongli's, and Zhongli is falling. Whatever satisfaction he feels is eclipsed by the new, hollow feeling in his stomach. Pain creeps in at the edges of his consciousness: his bitten palm, the marks on his chest and neck. Wetness on his stomach, and Childe is panting, his arms braced on the sheets.
'Don't move yet,' he murmurs, pulling Childe down onto him. Childe tenses for a moment, then obliges.
'You're bigger than I expected,' he says next to Zhongli's ear, then laughs when Zhongli turns away in embarrassment.
'Are you going to stay the night?'
Childe shrugs. 'I have time.'
Zhongli runs his still-bleeding hand through his hair, the lump in his throat slowly dissolving.
~~~
Later, with his wounds bandaged and sheets cleaned, Zhongli lies on his side, facing the open window. Even at this time of night, the harbour is still lively.
He tries to keep his gaze from straying to the man next to him, knowing what will happen if he notices. Childe is more perceptive than that, however, and he turns away to face the wall, not bothering to pull the blanket up over himself.
Zhongli sighs and tries to sleep.
~~~
It may have been early in the morning, or only several hours later, but Zhongli feels someone wrap his arms around his waist and kiss him on the back of his neck, his lips lingering longer than they needed to.
Deliciously ironic, a former god sleeping with a heretic that would gladly tear down the city in the sky. But for now Zhongli doesn’t think.
He falls asleep to the sound of Childe’s breathing, the thrum of his pulse under his warm skin.
Unconsciously, he intertwines his fingers with Childe’s, and smiles when Childe holds on tighter.
I desperately need a beta reader.
Also Zhongli is not allowed to feel positive emotions. He may not remember those who share the memory but I remember his war crimes.
Supplemental: holy shit. This fic has gotten much, much more attention than all the others. I never thought I’d amount to much, especially when my writing is bound to get lost in the ocean that is Childe/Zhongli fics. Thank you all for making my day!
Update 7/6: man I’m un-anon-ing this just because I like clout. Tbh this is probably the only smut I’ll write in my lifetime because I heavily disliked writing this one. Typing the funny penis word makes me laugh for years