Work Text:
The problem with being a Harbinger, Scaramouche quickly realizes, is how limited his choices of sexual partners are.
He knows the recruits get around; he’s heard them enough times, entirely against his will, through the hotel room walls whenever there’s downtime during missions, and they aren’t exactly being subtle with their little giggles and their poorly concealed moans. He’s seen them walking to and from their tents with rumpled clothing and limping gaits. He tries not to think about those late afternoons and nights spent in camp—mostly because he doesn’t want to be overcome with bitterness that big and burly Sergei and shy little Oksana are probably getting more sex than him.
They all fear him—which, of course, they better fear him, because he won’t settle for anything less—but fear isn’t exactly the best emotion to elicit from your subordinates when you want one of them to throw you down on a cot in the dead of night and fuck you to Celestia and back.
Theoretically, he can go for his fellow Harbingers. But Dottore would much rather dissect and analyze Scaramouche’s dick than suck it, and Pantalone cares little for much else other than his bathtub full of gold bars and money.
That leaves him with Childe, Tartaglia, Ajax, whatever the fuck his name is—and, well, at this point Scaramouche is desperate, so he really can’t be blamed anymore for his poor choices.
Which leads him to this:
Scaramouche and Childe aren’t friends per se, because he’d sooner attempt to cut Signora’s hair and be stabbed with an icicle for it than admit that he and Childe get along well enough to be called friends. But they certainly have benefits.
It’s not a daily thing—or even a weekly thing, honestly—since they’re rarely in the same nation for long periods of time, but it’s an unspoken arrangement that they will find time for each other whenever the opportunity arises. In Mondstadt, in one of those lavish suites in the Goth Grand Hotel that Pantalone always books for their delegations. In Liyue, back at the place Childe is renting, dimly lit by lanterns of red and gold.
(Sometimes, if Scaramouche is feeling particularly adventurous and impatient, in one of the back rooms in Northland Bank, with only a wall and a door to separate the two of them from their subordinates. He isn’t ashamed to admit that those are some of the times he comes the hardest.)
What they have certainly isn’t a regular thing, much less a relationship thing, but it happens often enough that Childe knows what he wants, adjusts his actions and his words based on the noises he can wring out of Scaramouche, touches places that have long since become familiar and yet still bring so much pleasure. Scaramouche, in turn, gives as good as he gets—pliant when he wants to be, and bratty when Childe goads him into it.
It’s an acceptable arrangement. A fine one, even, if you catch Scaramouche on a good day.
What Scaramouche doesn’t realize fast enough, however, is the danger of this game they are playing.
When they first started, Scaramouche had been ticklish. Childe set him on the edge of the bed, made him stay upright with only his arms clutching the sheets for leverage as Childe got on his knees in front of Scaramouche and started kissing his way up, from the balls of his feet to the crease of his thighs.
Scaramouche often squirmed and tried to curl up to move his body away. Kicked Childe far too many times to count in an attempt to make him stop. But Childe was oddly persistent.
“What you want from me is my dick inside you,” he said, back then. “What I want from you is this.”
And maybe it was a sense of generosity that made him yield, or maybe it was the thought of equivalent exchange. Somehow those words were enough to appease Scaramouche, and from then on, he let Childe perform his weird worship of Scaramouche’s lower body, until the sensation of it changed from unpleasantness to something akin to a muted and slow form of ecstasy.
It’s practically a ritual by now. Childe marks his thighs with nips and bruises in the shape of his mouth and fingers, enough to last a few days, tucked away and hidden under clothes—and Scaramouche, for some reason unbeknownst to his own self, lets him.
Tonight isn’t any different. Childe sits on his knees, head between Scaramouche’s thighs yet again. His fingers are inside Scaramouche, stretching him open.
“What the fuck are you waiting for?” Scaramouche complains. “For the snow outside to thaw?” He tugs harshly on Childe’s hair and presses his foot down on Childe’s naked cock. It’s wet enough with pre-cum that Scaramouche can easily slide his foot up and down, sensually stroking the hard length.
Childe bites down hard on the meat of his inner thigh, not enough to break the skin and draw blood but enough that Scaramouche will be wearing a mark in the shape of Childe’s teeth in the coming days. Childe’s fingers deliberately target his prostate too, stroking along it and bringing him to the brink of both orgasm and overstimulation. Scaramouche feels the pleasure of the bite and the fingers more than the pain, and instead of being deterred, he just moves his foot faster.
“Patience,” Childe says when he pulls away, which is rich coming from the man who stripped the both of them naked the moment the door closed behind them, some long minutes earlier. He wraps his hand around Scaramouche’s ankle, making him stop, but he makes no move to separate his dick from the foot pressed on it.
“Like you’re not desperate to get this thing inside me either.”
Childe grins. “You have a point.”
He finally gets up from his knees, and pushes Scaramouche further into the bed and makes him lie on his back. Any longer of this teasing and Scaramouche might’ve started threatening him with violence. Childe’s muscled and scarred form looms over him and gives off the illusion of Childe being able to physically tear Scaramouche apart.
For a while they just stare at each other, taking careful catalogue of each change to the other’s body after such a long separation. There are new scars littered all across Childe’s abdomen and arms, small enough that Scaramouche knows they were insignificant wounds. He contemplates what Childe sees in him, who has never really outwardly changed in all his time as a Harbinger—much less in the amount of time that Childe, as the newest in their ranks, has been around. He is supposed to remain static, stagnant, absolutely eternal; his creator made sure of that.
He doesn’t quite know what Childe sees, but Childe must like it anyway, because he leans down and steals a kiss that is equal parts dirty and desperate. Scaramouche instinctively wraps his legs around Childe’s waist. They grind against each other, making sure that Childe’s hard cock is catching against Scaramouche’s rim, almost but not quite penetrating. They’re both panting when the kiss ends.
“You’ve been good, holding out for me when we were apart,” Childe whispers into his ear, husky and deep and utterly breathless. “And good boys deserve rewards, don’t you think?” He grabs the bottle of lube from the nightstand and slicks himself up. And then he pushes inside in one smooth motion, burying his length right to the hilt.
Scaramouche keens, his nerves set alight. So many times he’s had Childe’s hard dick inside him, but he seemingly never gets used to its length and girth. It always feels like he’s being split in half, in only the best ways. He presses down on his stomach, feeling for the bulge that is always there whenever Childe is inside him, and he hears Childe’s groan alongside his own.
“Don’t do that if you don’t want me to finish quickly,” Childe warns him.
Scaramouche sneers at him. “That’s fucking pathetic, even by your standards.”
He won’t admit that deep inside, he is preening at the thought of being wanted so badly that every little action of his has Childe on the verge of coming too soon.
His thigh is squeezed hard in retaliation, right in the spot where a number of bruises will show come morning, and he has to swallow down a moan. By now it’s clear that Childe is aware of how he’s changed Scaramouche’s body, how a puppet who once struggled to feel has become a mess of frayed nerves and sensitive flesh under the lightest press of calloused fingers.
Waiting for Childe to move is more painful than the stretch itself. He claws at Childe’s back, trying to mark Childe as Childe has marked him, using his nails—instead of his voice and teeth—to beg and to claim.
After what feels like a hundred years, Childe finally cants his hips, and his large dick presses right up to Scaramouche’s sweet spot each time he grinds in. It’s slow, because Childe always wants Scaramouche to feel each scrape of his raw cock against Scaramouche’s walls as he pumps in and out. It makes Scaramouche’s breath hitch.
Childe gets progressively rougher and faster the more unyielding Scaramouche and his hole become. He digs his fingers into Scaramouche’s hips, moving him down to meet Childe’s cock as he fucks up into the pliant body. Pleasure steadily pools in his gut.
Scaramouche feels so blessedly full.
“Ajax, more,” he whines, and if he were just a little bit more aware and a little less deep into his bliss then he might’ve had the decency to be ashamed at his own desperation for Childe.
He is rewarded with more deep and hard thrusts, Childe pulling out until only the crown of his cock remains inside Scaramouche’s tight hole and then slamming back in down to the root. “That’s it, sweetheart, that’s my name,” he croons. The endearment makes Scaramouche want to kick him in the shins, but his legs feel limp and useless. “You’re taking me so well. Still so tight and hot even after all the times I’ve filled you up before, hm?”
He clenches down hard on Childe’s cock, intending it as payback or punishment or revenge or just something, but all it does is make Childe grin like a maniac. The dangerous glint is back in his eyes as he hastens his pace. He’s ruthless, now. All Scaramouche can do now is clutch at the sheets, scrambling for purchase as he gets pushed further and further into the bed—until the only thing keeping him from hitting the headboard is Childe’s hand gently cradling his head.
The contrast between Childe’s roughness and Childe’s tenderness, experienced all at once, will probably be enough to make lesser men cry.
But Scaramouche is certainly not lesser. And a puppet certainly will not cry.
He focuses on the physical sensations instead, on the thick and delicious drag of Childe’s hard length inside him, hitting places that no one person has ever hit before. On the way his thighs, wrapped around Childe’s waist, tremble subtly each time his prostate is grazed.
On Childe’s calloused touch on his cock, his nipples, his waist, his face—fingertips pressing into Scaramouche’s skin the secrets and the feelings that neither of them has the courage, or the tenderness, to say out loud.
The edges of Scaramouche’s vision begin to blur as his orgasm creeps in. He tightens his legs around Childe’s waist, a signal to the other Harbinger, and Childe crashes their lips together in response.
By no means is it an elegant kiss; that has never been their style. But it’s hungry and wet, and they kiss like they won’t see each other for months because they really won’t, and this will have to satisfy them until the next time, whenever that may be. They’ve had enough practice that it isn’t difficult to keep their lips connected and their tongues entwined while Childe pounds in and out of him, steadily losing his rhythm.
The closeness allows for Scaramouche to rub his dick against Childe’s scarred stomach and the friction on his neglected dick leads him higher, and higher still, until he has to tear his mouth away to take in harsh breaths and his vision completely whites out.
“Ajax,” he breathes out.
His hole is still tight around Childe’s cock, and Childe’s thrusting goes erratic and inconsistent. His movements are shallow, barely pulling away from Scaramouche before he goes back to pushing in, until Childe releases a final guttural groan, the sound almost animalistic, and sticky warmth immediately floods Scaramouche’s insides.
“Baby,” Childe moans, in between pants of hot air against Scaramouche’s cheek, and Scaramouche’s back arches off the bed as every nerve ending in his body lights up in response.
(And if he notices the faint spark of life flash in Childe’s eyes right before Childe spills his come inside? Well, he looks away, too preoccupied with his own breathlessness and oversensitivity, and rightfully doesn’t comment on it.)
They aren’t the type for post-coital cuddling; Scaramouche has the distinct thought that Childe has the desire for it, as tactile as he is, but doesn’t make any attempts due to his own sense of self-preservation. But they stay the night in the same room whenever they can, inching closer and closer to each other throughout the night but never really initiating touch. Pretending to be asleep, though their breathing is too even and too deliberate to be convincing. Always flirting with the idea of a farewell fuck again in the morning before they inevitably have to go their separate ways once more.
It used to be enough for Scaramouche. He refuses to believe that it isn’t enough anymore, because there shouldn’t be a single universe where Kunikuzushi, who has ambitions and dreams and goals beyond Celestia’s reach, is just the right amount of stupid to feel a single ounce of affection for Ajax.
Weeks—maybe months—will pass before they’ll see each other again. When daylight comes, Childe will be bound for Liyue, and Scaramouche will be subjected to Pierro’s whims and orders while he searches for a way back to Inazuma and his birthright.
He can’t afford to falter here and now. And unnecessary attachments will only compromise his plans.
“Where do you think you’re going next?” Childe asks, breaking the silence just when it is about to cross the line into uncomfortable and dragging Scaramouche out of the downward spiral of his thoughts. Childe isn’t looking at him, preferring to look at the steady Snezhnayan snowfall outside the window. He’s trying so hard to project an air of nonchalance, but Scaramouche knows better.
“Don’t know. Wherever the fuck Pierro wants me to go, I guess,” he replies. It’s not the most satisfying answer, but it’s the best and most honest one he can give. And his honesty, as Childe knows, is a luxury he rarely gives to anyone.
Childe hums. Scaramouche can’t tell if it’s in thought or in disappointment or both. And then a mischievous look blooms on Childe’s face.
“It’ll probably be a while before we can meet,” he says, his voice growing light. “Don’t miss me too much, sweetheart!”
“What the fuck,” Scaramouche says, flatly. “What makes you think I’ll miss a dumbass like you?”
Childe ignores his insult and pushes on.
“You know that I can actually make toys, right? Since you’re always this hungry for my cock, I could make you a dildo that’s an exact replica of it. To keep you company when you’re lonely.” He has the audacity to waggle his eyebrows.
Scaramouche’s only reply is to electrocute Childe right in the tender flesh of his inner thigh, hiding his smirk in his pillow as Childe’s howls of pain and indignance echo throughout the room.