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The cool autumn breeze drifting in through the open window carried with it the familiar sounds of Liyue as the city wound down for the evening. The steady bustle of people heading home for the night underscored the farewell calls of children and the answering cries of seabirds. The last few tenacious merchants still hawked their wares, and somewhere nearby the sizzle of a grill was accompanied by distant laughter, the scent of grilled meat floating in to tease at the senses.
Inside, tranquility reigned. Childe sighed contentedly, nuzzling in against Zhongli's chest, the slow beat of his heart in his ear as comforting as the mundane chaos below. Fingers traced along his back, a gentle brush along the column of his spine and sweeping out along his ribs. They lingered over the sensitive skin of an old scar, one of countless that speckled Childe's skin like stars in the night sky.
"Do they hurt?" The low rumble of Zhongli's voice didn't break the silence so much as it harmonized with it, like the slow beginnings of a lullaby.
"Does what hurt?" Even subdued, Childe's voice seemed harsh to his own ears in comparison, but then he'd always liked the quiet lull of Zhongli's voice. Zhongli claimed to like his in turn, and that was enough for him.
"Your scars." The soft sweep of fingers resumed, and it was only then that Childe realized their path had not been as idle as he'd thought, but instead traced the map of memories carved into his skin by force.
"Not anymore," he answered, mostly honestly. Scattered fault lines in bone and flesh ached when it rained, but here in the warmth of Zhongli's arms he felt nothing but comfort.
Silence fell between them for a long moment as Zhongli's fingers continued to wander, feather-light and ticklish down Childe's side. Childe let him chart his body as though he didn't already know it as intimately as his own, listening to the soft catch in his breath with every nearly-mortal wound etched upon his skin that he passed.
"Hey," he interrupted, covering Zhongli's hand with his own. He could guess where his thoughts had strayed. For all history liked to paint him as an enigma, the old lizard was remarkably easy to read, particularly when faced with reminders of Childe's mortality. "I'm right here."
Zhongli drew in a startled breath. "How did you...?"
"I know you," Childe said simply, twisting to sweep his thumb along Zhongli's cheek. "But I'm not going anywhere, so you have nothing to worry about."
The creases at the corners of his eyes remained, but he offered Childe a small, private smile that set his heart at ease. It was always so easy with him, so comfortable. One look could soothe the weight of the world from his soul. Childe could only hope he might offer a fraction of the same succor in return.
"What is this from?" Zhongli asked after a moment, tracing once more along a particularly vicious wound just beneath his ribs.
Childe pursed his lips, trying dredge up the memory of that specific battle amongst a sea of countless others. "You don't have to discuss it if you do not wish to," Zhongli's gentle voice cut in.
"Hm? Oh, no, that's not it. I'm just trying to remember."
"Ajax, this wound looks like it nearly eviscerated you. How could you not remember something like that?"
The soft chastisement in his voice made Childe's cheeks heat despite himself. Somehow he doubted responding with 'I've been on the brink of death so many times I couldn't possibly recount them all,' wouldn’t come across as the reassurance he meant it as. "It was a long time ago," he said instead. A paltry excuse before a man whose life was measured in millennia, but Zhongli seemed more exasperated than distressed with his response, so he marked it as a victory. A pregnant pause filled with hesitancy and expectation fell between them, before Childe offered, "I could tell you the stories behind the ones I do remember, if you'd like."
Zhongli's arm tightened around him, and he worried it had been the wrong thing to say. Perhaps drawing more attention to the scars marring his flesh was not the wisest course of action. The press of lips in his hair chased away his worries. "I'd like that."
Childe relaxed into his embrace, reaching to twine their fingers together and guide Zhongli's hand over to a puckered puncture wound on his thigh. "This is from Teucer's first shot with a bow. It was a beautiful shot, straight and sure, except for the fact that he missed the target by about 100 feet and hit me instead. Poor boy was beside himself and refused to touch his bow for weeks afterwards, but it healed up just fine."
Together, they traced higher, over the rough ridges of poorly healed battle scars and the thin silver lines of those so old they were scarcely noticeable any longer. They spotted him like the freckles that spread over his shoulders, each one telling a story even if Childe didn't remember it. He lingered over those he did, telling of fish hooks caught in his flesh and burns from the stove, of Abyss Heralds' water blades and shrapnel made of ice, of injuries mundane and mortal carved into his skin until it seemed every inch was covered in memories. Not a single one escaped Zhongli's attention, his fingers brushing reverently over the cartography of Childe's body as though he were learning it for the first time, each tale that spilled from Childe's lips folded away and stored carefully in his own memory, that no others should be lost to his lover's casual disregard for his own life.
The steady rhythm of Zhongli's breathing faltered as Childe spoke of his battle with the Traveller, thumb sweeping over the ragged edges of a scar that cleaved across his chest. Childe trailed off as Zhongli repeated the motion, again and again, a faint tremble to his fingers as he brushed past Childe's heart, so frighteningly close to the upper edge of the wound. Childe reached up, flattening his hand over Zhongli's so his palm spread flat over Childe's heart, the unwavering beat of it a steady thrum up their joined hands. "I'm right here," Childe reminded him.
Zhongli's breath shuddered out of him, as rough and ragged as the scar. "So many times have you danced with death. How many more can you come out the victor? How many more until your luck fails you?" Childe knew that tone, knew the somber sorrow that suffused his voice, and he shifted until he could look up into Zhongli's face. The weight of eons stared back at him, despondent and daunting.
"All of them," he swore quietly, and those ancient eyes of gold blinked at him, surprised by the intensity of the oath. "I promise, I will always come back to you."
"Ajax..." Zhongli turned his head away, expression pained as he shut his eyes tight against the brash optimism of youth. "Don't make promises you can't keep. Not to me."
Fingers curled around his chin, their grip gentle but unyielding as Childe forced Zhongli to look at him, to face him and the naked earnesty in his gaze. "You know I don't break my promises. Not to you, and not to anyone. I will always come back to you, Zhongli. I'll swear whatever vow and sign whatever contract you'd like."
Zhongli wanted to believe him. He could see it in his eyes. Wanted to, but didn't. Childe was as ever changing as the water he wielded, and Zhongli was as immutable as stone.
But even stone would give way to water if given enough time. "I'm right here," he repeated, pressing Zhongli's hand tighter against his chest. His thumb stroked softly along the sharp planes of his face. "I'm here, and I'm alive, and I'm yours." He stretched to catch Zhongli's lips in a kiss, freeing them from the thin line he'd pressed them into as Zhongli opened readily for him, the taste of desperation on his tongue. Desperate to remember. Desperate to forget.
Childe swung his leg over Zhongli's hips, rising to straddle his narrow waist. "Shall I show you? I'll remind you just how alive I am, until every shred of doubt has vanished from your mind." He rolled his hips, his cock filling out as he looked down at Zhongli below him, the taste of his lips still on Childe's tongue.
Zhongli's body responded immediately, stiffening to press into Childe's inner thigh, but Childe read the hesitancy in the tightness around his mouth. There was an air of vulnerability surrounding him that the prospect of sex did not alleviate, and Childe hesitated. "If you would rather I just hold you close until you fall asleep, I would be happy to do that instead," he offered softly.
Zhongli's hands landed on Childe's waist before he could shift off him, holding him in place astride Zhongli's hips. "No. No, I want to feel you. To hold you as you unspool around me, and know that you are mine. Remind me?"
As if Childe would ever refuse him. He captured Zhongli's lips again in answer, arms braced on either side of his head as he kissed him soundly. Zhongli's arms rose to embrace him as their tongues tangled, pulling him closer until they were pressed chest to chest, fingers digging into the meat of Childe's shoulder as if that grip were all that kept him from crushing Childe against him. Childe gave himself over willingly to the bruising strength of that embrace, grinding his hips down against Zhongli's to frot their lengths together. Teeth clashed as Zhongli nipped at him, pressing greedily up into him to try to claim more of him, to feel every inch of Childe's body against him all at once. His free hand dragged down Childe's back, blunted nails marking each knob of his spine before dipping between the pert muscles of his backside. Childe shivered above him as the calloused pad of his finger traced the puffy rim of his hole, still loose and slick from their earlier love making.
Two fingers slipped easily in, drawing a low groan from Childe as he rocked back against Zhongli's hand. Zhongli responded in kind, muffled need rumbling through his chest as he tested the limits of Childe's body and his patience. Precum leaked from their aching cocks to smear their skin with their mingled fluids, as hopelessly entwined as the bodies they painted.
Childe whined as Zhongli pulled free of him, but in the next moment he was on his back, Zhongli hovering over him and the thick head of his cock brushing at his entrance instead. The unbound fall of Zhongli's hair teased at Childe's chest as he lowered his head, stealing a kiss before Childe had even reconciled the change in position. "Forgive me my impatience," he murmured.
Childe lifted his hips in invitation, brushing his fingers through the mussed fringe of Zhongli's bangs. "Nothing to forgive."
Zhongli sank into him in one long thrust, old oil and his own spend slicking the way, his head falling to bury his face in the crook of Childe's neck. Childe clung to him, wrapping his arms around the muscled planes of his back as Zhongli bottomed out within him, twin groans dragged from their throats. Zhongli filled him so well, as though his cock was made to sink into his body, like a sword into its sheath. The lingering soreness from earlier seemed to melt away beneath the glorious sensation of being speared upon his lover's cock, spreading him wide and pressed deep into the most intimate parts of his being. No one else knew him like this. No one else could stare into murky depths of his soul and not turn away. There was none other he would bare it to anyway.
"Ajax." His name, whispered like a prayer into his skin. Zhongli's lips pressed against the scar over his collarbone, rolling his hips back to thrust sensually into Childe's body. He set an impossibly slow pace, intent on drawing out their time together for as long as possible, though the mounting pleasure that tightened in Childe's gut with each thrust of Zhongli's hips warned that he would spill himself sooner rather than later.
Childe made no effort to hold back the moans that rose as Zhongli moved within him, knowing full well that his love liked to hear him, loved the evidence of just what he could do to Childe with his cock or his fingers or his tongue. So he gave voice to the pleasure that Zhongli rained upon him, his head tipping back to spill messy auburn curls over Zhongli's pillow and his walls clenching around the hard length that speared into him and dragged at his rim.
"So perfect, so perfect for me," he gasped out as Zhongli mouthed his way across his chest, lips lingering over every scar that marred his pale skin. Not one escaped his notice, from the jagged ridges of deadly gashes to thin tendrils nearly lost amongst his freckles. With quiet reverence he worshipped them all, long-forgotten pains soothed beneath the press of his lips.
Childe writhed beneath the attention, the trail of his mouth somehow more intimate than the thrust of his cock between Childe's legs. "Please. Zhongli, please." He didn't even know what he was pleading for, but true to form, Zhongli did. His lips returned to claim Childe's for his own, swallowing down the noises he made as Zhongli shifted his grip to drive more purposefully into Childe's body. The change in position drove him against Childe's prostate with every pass of his manhood, and Childe whined into Zhongli's mouth, an unfettered mess below him.
"Let me feel you come. I want to feel the pulse of life thrum through you as you lose yourself on my cock. Come for me, Ajax." A whispered supplication turned rough by need, lust thick in Zhongli's voice as he murmured his request against Childe's lips.
As if Childe could ever deny him. The pleasure coiling through his belly snapped at the sound of his own name spilling from Zhongli's tongue, and he cried out as he came, painting his own stomach white with his cum. His ass clenched tight around Zhongli, wringing his pleasure from the glorious glide of Zhongli's cock as he thrust into him, riding him through his orgasm.
"Zhongli," he gasped out, and when it drew a ragged groan from him, he repeated it again and again, clinging tight to him. It was just a name, just one of many Zhongli had worn, but in the quiet of their bed and caressed by Childe's sex-roughened voice, it was everything. Zhongli's pace grew uneven and stilted, rutting into Childe's heat as Childe came down from his high. But even as the euphoric heights of climax faded, pleasure lingered, warm and comforting like the sun on the earth.
"I love you," Childe breathed, and then Zhongli's mouth was on his, stealing his breath from his lungs as he buried himself deep within Childe's body and filled him with his seed. Childe took it all, eagerly accepting everything he had to give, his walls flexing around Zhongli to milk every last drop of pleasure from him.
Childe petted soothingly down Zhongli's back as he slumped against him, letting Childe bear his weight as he recovered. Their ragged breathing echoed through the room, the sounds of the quiet city outside filtering back in as reality resumed its rightful place, breaching the timeless moment that held them. Childe traced the groove along Zhongli's shoulder where pale skin gave way to black, his human form faltering beneath the tide of bliss. Childe hadn't even noticed, too caught up in Zhongli's embrace. Somehow, he doubted Zhongli had either.
"I love you too," Zhongli murmured into his chest. Wearily, he lifted himself, just enough to plant another kiss against that vicious scar over Childe's heart. "So you had best keep your promise."
"I will," Childe vowed, holding him tight. "I swear I will."