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Zhongli was a god of untold age, the oldest tree in a stone forest, the final word in diplomacy, death, and dignity.
And Childe was a menace. A beautiful, gleaming menace, like a knife dipped in honey and thrown with the force of a sugar-high toddler across a battlefield made of flirting.
He had exactly two goals on this perfectly ordinary Liyue morning:
1. Destroy the Fatui’s reputation through flamboyant acts of charity and muscle-flexing.
2. Make Zhongli flustered.
The second goal was more important.
---
Zhongli liked to think of himself as a composed man.
He liked to think of himself as many things, in fact: refined, courteous, vaguely mysterious in a way that kept people interested, and, above all, possessed of the stoic dignity befitting the Geo Archon. He was a statue carved by millennia, all marble patience and amber eyes that had watched empires rise and fall.
And yet.
And yet.
There were exactly thirty-seven ways Childe could fluster him on any given day, and the bastard knew every single one.
It always started innocently enough.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Childe would say, when Zhongli stepped out onto the Liyue balcony with all the serenity of a man who still believed in peace. “Or should I say—my sunshine. Bright, devastating. A menace to my fragile heart.”
Zhongli would raise a brow. Not dignify it with a response. Sip his tea.
Unbothered. Untouched.
Until Childe leaned in, whispered something filthy in Old Liyuean under his breath—something probably illegal in three nations and guaranteed to turn Zhongli’s ears a regal shade of crimson—and then just. Walked away.
As if nothing had happened.
As if he hadn’t just whispered, “Would you rather break your tea cup or ride me till it shatters?”
He had.
He absolutely had.
Zhongli spilled the tea.
“You’re doing this on purpose,” he said once, composed, voice even.
Childe, from where he was flopped across the couch like an overgrown golden retriever with bad intentions, tilted his head. “Doing what? Loving you? Breathing near you? Yearning with the power of a thousand waves? Sorry, xiansheng, can’t really help that.”
“You are being insufferable.”
“I’m being romantic. There’s a difference.”
“You ambushed me in the silk flower garden and called me your ‘stone-cold dilf of destiny.’”
Childe grinned. “Still romantic.”
Zhongli contemplated divine smiting. Or exile. Or finally just saying “fuck it” and turning to dust.
Instead, he adjusted his cuffs and muttered, “You are an unending torment.”
“I’m your torment,” Childe said cheerfully. “Your sexy, chaos-infused, water-himbo of a companion.”
Zhongli blinked slowly. “Please never say ‘water-himbo’ again.”
“I’m gonna embroider it on your funeral suit.”
---
This time, it began with tea.
Zhongli, composed as ever, sat across from Childe in the teahouse, hands folded, sipping osmanthus with all the reverence of a man who remembered when it was first cultivated.
Childe watched him like a hawk. A very gay hawk. A hawk who had not seen a crumb of affection in months and had decided Zhongli’s composed little sighs were the feast he would dine upon.
“So,” Childe said, voice full of intention and impure thoughts, “What do you think would happen if I kissed your hand in public?”
Zhongli blinked.
“Would I be fined?” Childe mused aloud. “Censured? Celebrated? Do we think the Millelith would applaud or drag me into the sea?”
Zhongli sipped. A beat passed. Another. “Why,” he said slowly, “would you kiss my hand?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Childe countered, leaning forward like a devout man at prayer. “It’s the only logical course of action, considering how elegant your fingers are. They're almost... obscene.”
Zhongli choked on his tea.
It was, by far, the greatest moment of Childe’s life.
---
There were rules to making Zhongli flustered. Childe had, of course, created a list.
Backhanded compliments work best when they’re front-handed.
Casual touches are deadly. Forearm = minor blush. Waist = severe event. Hand on shoulder = nuclear.
Anything spoken in Snezhnayan must sound vaguely erotic even when it isn’t.
Call him “xiansheng” with the intonation of a man who is imagining him in silk robes and nothing else.
Today, Childe employed all four.
They were in the marketplace. Zhongli was lecturing him about stone quality (again), and Childe had decided the conversation would be more exciting if he whispered “You know, back home, I used to think ‘Geo Daddy’ was just a joke. But now I think it might be prophecy.”
Zhongli went silent. Dead silent. Like the mountains before an avalanche. Then:
“Please never say those words again.”
Childe grinned. “Which part?”
“All of them.”
“Even ‘Daddy’?”
Zhongli left.
He walked away.
Childe followed, utterly unrepentant, trailing after him like a delighted cat. “You’re blushing. Admit it. You're glowing, xiansheng. Are you crystallizing from embarrassment? I could make a shield out of this!”
---
It happened during Lantern Rite.
Zhongli had been trying to be polite. Childe had been trying to be himself, which meant chaos.
They were watching fireworks. Childe had just fed Zhongli a skewer with such sensual slowness that a grandmother gasped.
Zhongli had tried to hold a philosophical conversation.
Childe had whispered, “You’re beautiful when you’re trying not to strangle me.”
Zhongli had smiled. It was the smile of a man who had been patient for seven thousand years and was now about to lose his religion.
“You are incorrigible,” he said.
“You love it.”
“I tolerate it.”
“You tolerate it with a blush.”
“I do not blush.”
“You do,” Childe said, leaning close enough to brush his nose against Zhongli’s. “You’re doing it right now.”
“You are mistaken.”
“Sure,” Childe whispered. “And I don’t dream of marrying you in five different Liyuen provinces, each more extravagant than the last.”
Zhongli blinked.
“…Do you?” he said, quiet.
Childe froze. For a moment, he looked almost sheepish. Almost shy.
Then he smiled, all teeth and war declarations and wild devotion. “You bet your jade ass I do.”
---
Childe’s methods of wooing were unconventional.
He brought Zhongli a live boar once. “For protein,” he said.
He showed up bleeding after a mission. “Sorry. Thought you'd like the color red.”
He recited a twenty-seven stanza love poem composed entirely of innuendo and metaphors about minerals. Zhongli refused to comment. But he kept the poem.
“Why do you do this?” Zhongli asked one evening, sipping wine, hair unbound, eyes soft like melted amber.
“Do what?”
“This,” Zhongli gestured vaguely, “Campaign of… flirtation. Chaos. Vulgar affection.”
Childe leaned in, suddenly earnest. “Because you’re the first person who looks at me and sees something other than what I kill.”
Zhongli blinked.
“…You are also, incidentally, hot as hell.”
Zhongli put down his wine. “There it is.”
“You’re welcome.”
---
Zhongli kissed him during a thunderstorm.
Childe hadn’t expected it. He’d been talking about—what else?—how fine Zhongli looked in the rain, water glistening on his skin, the wet hem of his robes clinging to his thighs, the—
And then Zhongli just. Kissed him.
It was not gentle. It was not slow. It was a kiss like tectonic plates grinding against each other, like old gods remembering youth, like stone cracking under pressure and finding new shape.
Childe melted.
“Finally,” he gasped, when they parted. “Do you know how long I’ve been trying to get you to do that?”
Zhongli wiped his lips. “Since the osmanthus tea.”
“Since I saw your hands.”
Zhongli groaned.
Childe cupped his cheeks. “You know,” he said, giddy, “You’re even prettier when you’re embarrassed and covered in rain and about to murder me with affection.”
“I am going to do no such thing.”
“You’re going to love me forever,” Childe whispered, “and you’re going to blush about it every day.”
“…Perhaps,” Zhongli admitted.
---
They had dinner at Wangshu Inn once. Peaceful. Quiet.
Zhongli dared to hope.
Until, halfway through their meal, Childe loudly told the waiter:
“I’d like to order dessert, and by that, I mean him.”
And pointed at Zhongli.
Deadass.
In the middle of a crowded inn.
Verr Goldet dropped her tray. A couple at the next table gasped. A bird fell out of the sky.
Zhongli choked on his tea and had to excuse himself for “personal reasons.”
Childe sipped his juice smugly.
---
It wasn’t always public.
(Though sometimes it was, and Zhongli considered that the seventh circle of emotional hell.)
But even in private—where one might think Childe would restrain himself—he was worse.
“Darling,” Childe would say at night, sprawled half-naked across their shared bed like a seductive sea serpent with no boundaries and too many abs. “Don’t you ever get tired of looking that good?”
Zhongli, trying to read a historical treatise on Fontainean tax reform, did not look up.
“You wear that robe like it’s a threat. I want to misbehave just looking at it. What if I undid the sash with my teeth?”
“I will bury you under Mt. Tianheng.”
“Hot.”
“Stop saying hot to potential geological grave threats.”
“What if I moan about it?”
Zhongli flung the book at him.
It bounced off Childe’s chest, thudded to the floor, and Childe groaned theatrically. “Hurt me again, daddy geo.”
But it wasn’t all madness. (It was mostly madness.)
Sometimes Childe would fall uncharacteristically silent, hands trailing reverently down Zhongli’s spine like he was memorizing old fault lines. He’d press his forehead to the nape of Zhongli’s neck and whisper,
“I love you like a flood loves valleys. I can’t help but rush in.”
And Zhongli would stand there, trembling in the ruins of his composure, and think, I am doomed.
---
They moved in together. Somehow. Mysteriously. One day Childe just never left, and Zhongli never kicked him out.
It’s chaos. It’s bliss. It’s—
“Stop staring at my neck,” Zhongli said one morning over congee.
Childe, halfway to kissing said neck, grinned. “Can’t help it. It’s so… biteable.”
“This is breakfast.”
“That’s not a no.”
Later, Zhongli found a shopping list on the counter. It read:
Almond tofu
Silk flowers
New knives (don’t ask)
Zhongli’s neck framed in oil paint
He never commented on it. But he did turn ever so slightly pink.
---
When Zhongli tried to retaliate—tried to fluster him—it always backfired.
He once leaned in close, eyes half-lidded, and said, “You are quite pleasing to the eye.”
Childe blinked. Flushed.
Zhongli smirked.
Then Childe grabbed his hand, slammed it over his own heart, and gasped, “Take me. Take me right here on this rock formation, you absolute mineral daddy.”
And somehow they were surrounded by Adepti within moments, including Cloud Retainer, who lectured them on public decency and mountain erosion.
---
Zhongli tried. He truly did.
He tried silence. He tried subtlety. He tried pretending he was immune.
But one night, curled up beside Childe on the couch, tea cooling on the table and Childe humming some awful Snezhnayan sea shanty off-key—Zhongli turned his head and found the man smiling at him with that ridiculous, reckless, devoted expression.
Like Zhongli was the entire world condensed into one body. Like love was a thing you chose every single day, even when it was difficult. Like he’d burn himself to keep Zhongli warm.
“You are ridiculous,” Zhongli said softly.
“I know,” Childe said, pressing a kiss to his knuckles. “But I’m yours.”
---
BONUS: Zhongli’s Internal List of “Childe Phrases That Should Be Outlawed Immediately”
1. “Rock me, baby.”
2. “I’d climb you like a mora tree.”
3. “Do you think your pillar technique is applicable in bed?”
4. “If I die, bury me between your thighs.”
5. “Let’s geo-dance. You know, horizontal tectonic shifts.”
He filed six formal complaints with the Celestia Suggestion Box.
None have been answered.
He suspects Barbatos is laughing.