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The wings aren't new.
Well, not entirely new. As long as she can recall, the two of them always had wings, golden and star-bright, emerging from between the angles of their scapulae. Strong, unfaltering, made from pure power and with edges sharp enough to cut.
She’s lived longer with them than without, the memories of when she was young and unflighted hazier than a dream. There were times, of course, in which they had to shed them—in one world the twins bore scaled tails within a perfect pink sea, in another they were rooted in the earth, petals instead of skin. Even a world where Lumine and Aether existed as dust on the breeze. Their bodies adapted to the lands they visited, and winged species were few among them.
Teyvat, atleast, does not suffer the same.
Lumine wakes for the first time in the middle of rolling hills and a patch of sunset-colored flowers, with a pair of golden, feathered wings on her back.
— ✦ ✦ ✦ —
There are problems, of course, when you suddenly grow extra appendages that don’t conveniently disappear at a thought.
One is that they’re heavy. Lumine had tripped every other step for weeks, unused to the shift in her balance. Another is how they’d got in her way when fighting—having permanent, soft, and real wings means more surface area to defend. It took a while for her to nurture that caution too, on top of everything else, like this foreign world, and the absence of her brother by her side.
Had Aether been here, he’d have protected her back, like she did his. But Aether isn’t here—instead it’s just her, and people who were battling a thousand other problems, like a mad dragon and a dead god.
The dragon turned out to be corrupted by the Abyss, and the dead god turned out to be not-so-dead. In the end, mortal complications tended to solve themselves, with her intervention. If only her own problems could do the same.
Aether is still missing. Venti told her nothing, though she scented that he was hiding something. Zhongli too, had been unhelpful, bound by an ancient contract to beings as old as him. As for her wings—she’s better with them now. She thinks.
Her’s are smaller than most peoples—Albedo had called them a “hovering type”, meant for agility and mid-air acrobatics, in between a gentle lecture on wing anatomy and classification.
And they’ve proven to be useful, Lumine has to admit, while she barrel-rolls mid-air and out of the range of a torrent of sharp, hydro-powered arrows.
Fast.
A flash of color catches her eye, a splash of freshly-spilt blood. Childe’s wings are a pallete of browns and ivory, long crimson-red primaries. Long, and sharp tipped, like a bird of prey. He fights like that too, a predator scenting the kill. Dancing out of reach like it’s a game, before swooping in for the kill.
The man’s discarded his bow already, an azure lance now dancing in his hands, spun and held parallel to his arm. A bloodthirsty grin. Childe eyes her, gaze dark with bloodlust, voice edged and cutting.
“Is that all you’ve got?”
She bares her teeth in response, and sends an anemo tornado in his direction to thoroughly get the message across.
He’s always been vicious in battle, but something has rendered him unbearable today. She should have called their spar off when she felt it, the shift in the air when his eyes landed on her. The unknown glint in his eyes, before he concealed it with a smile and a coaxing call to begin.
It’s dangerous. She knows that. Forged for battle and bloodspill, a honed instrument of war. A wolf in sheeps clothing, a traitor and a not-friend. Their first battle had been a necessity. The second, a concession, to get him of her back.
She doesn’t know what number they are on now.
And they shouldn’t even be on a number. She should have cut him down when she had the chance, and spared Liyue the destruction he wrought. Spared herself his persistence and easy smiles and the hunger in his eyes when he thinks she’s not looking—
Ozone scents the air, and Lumine desperately veers to the side. The sudden movement costs her; a muscle catches in her back; she hisses as she dips wildly, electro striking just inches away from her, sparks singeing her skin.
Violet irises glow eerily at her from the middle of the chamber. “You know I don’t like it when you’re distracted, Traveller.”
Fuck him. “I was planning how I’d kill you,” she snaps, flexing her wrist, and angling the blade.
Childe laughs. “As long as you're thinking of me. Why don’t you come closer and show me what’s in that pretty little head of yours?”
Gladly.
Sparring in the Golden House is more a handicap for him than it is for her, not that Childe cares, as long as he gets a good fight—Lumine can maneuver easily in closed spaces, unlike him. Except that even that hardly fazes him, a harbinger as adept on land as he is in the sky, a weapon built for indiscriminate destruction. Too quick to violence, ravenous for victory. Dangerous.
He’s on her before her toes hit the floor, a lashing sweep of Hydro that would have split her into two had it landed.
Urgh. She tucks her feet up and dissipates the geo energy that would have lanced him if she come into contact with the ground. Spin, and she launches herself over his head using the flat of his blade. Swings her sword across the flat of his wings. He twists, blocking the blade with the hydro lance.
She only realizes how close they are when the heat of his breath washes across her lips.
Familiar amusement dancing in his eyes, a cut lip from where she slammed her fist earlier tips to the side teasingly. “Look at you, you're already tired.”
“I’m not the one bleeding.”
“Ah, just a little scrape. You’ve probably done worse to the idiots you fought on the way here.”
That wasn't untrue, exactly. Except how on Teyvat did he know—
“Are you spying on me?”
Childe doesn't answer, laughing in response. And that should have been a warning on its own, but she’s too incensed by the fact that he’s stalked her—again!—to notice the shadow growing over the chamber, or the nebula reflected in Childe's eyes. “That’s it! I’ve warned you enough, Childe, that if I find your men following me—”
His lips brush against the shell of her ear. “Duck.”
Huh?
And then the bastard is gone, a puddle in his place, and a mourning cry echoes above her.
Fuck. Fuck—
If she ever gains the ability to manipulate hydro, the first thing she’s going to do is throw a giant whale on him, just so he realizes how archons-damned terrible it feels.
Her vision is still blurred when the harbinger speaks again, the sound of his footsteps drawing closer. “There’s blood in your feathers,” he says. “ Most of your secondaries are matted together with Archons knows what. I don't need to have you followed when I can use my eyes, Traveller.”
Another lance of pain shoots through her knee, concentrated where it had slammed against the floor. Gods, she hopes it’s not busted, she can’t afford another trip to Bubu Pharmacy this week. Dragging her eyes open against the throbbing pain, she groans, and squints at the looming figure.
“You know, you promised your Mondays to me. Now you’re fighting with others on my time.”
“Is that why you’ve been so—” she grits her teeth as another jolt of pain cuts through her as she tries to sit up. "—damn prickly today, you ass—”
“I’m a jealous man,” he retorts cheerfully. The Childe-shaped blurry figure squats in front of her, arms loose over his knees, wrists dangling. Not a single note of concern to be heard, the bastard.
“It’s not like I asked them to ambush me,” she mutters, sucking in another breath. “And it was two days ago, alright?”
“What?”
“I said, it was two days ago.”
“Two days,” he repeats, except now there’s something other than confusion thrums in his tone.
There really is no reason for her to feel like this, she thinks, when he echoes her statement quietly. No reason for the hair on the nape of her neck to stand on end, for every instinct in her body to screech in alarm. She hasn't said anything incriminating.
And yet—
“Could be three,” Lumine lies, scrabbling back, drawing distance between her and the currently featureless blob. Squeaks when a hand deftly seizes her ankle. “I don’t remember.”
“Mm.” Her vision finally clears enough for her to see more than indistinct blobs. Childe smiles mirthlessly.
“They were easy to handle anyway. Barely ten minutes. Blink and you’d miss it—”
“Lumine.”
Fuck. That tone of voice always spelt trouble, velvet sheath slid over sharp edges. She sucks in a breath, squaring her shoulders in preperation for a fight. Some muscle in her back cramps in rebellion, and she has to muffle a pained hiss. “What?”
Too late, she realized that his gaze is trained behind her, skin still sparking with the remnants of electro.
“Where I’m from,” he says, head bent to observe her, ginger locks falling over darkened blues. “Only destitutes and the impoverished have wings like yours.”
“What are you even getting at—”
“I noticed it the first time we met too,” His smile grows wider. A chill seeps into her veins. “But I thought, ‘there’s no way the famed Honarary Knight of Liyue would walk around with soiled wings. She has plently of friends and benefactors to take care of her. I must have caught her at a bad time.’ Except, everytime I see you, Lumine, you look worse.”
He’s slow in his movements to reach out, fingers barely skimming the tips of her feathers. Her heart beats wild, all the way up in her throat. “That’s none of your damn business, Childe.”
“If my sparring partner can't keep up with me, it is my business,” he retorts easily, that gaze sharpening to an cutting edge. A hunter before prey. “Tell me when was the last time you had your wings preened.”
“I’ve been fighting just fine—”
“Lumine.” His words echo with wrath. “When.”
“Everyday,” she snaps back.
“Alone?”
Stubborn silence sweeps the chamber.
He doesn't need to tell her. She knows. She’s heard it enough since she stepped onto Teyvat.
“Lumine,” he says again. This time her name is sweet, crooning; far too affectionate when every other word has been spelling certain demise. Her hackles rise in alarm.“I’ve decided. My win, today, yeah?”
“Wait,” she hisses, as the harbinger leans closer. “No, whatever you’re thinking, absolutely not—”
Childe grins at her, lopsided and boyish. Reaches out, the pads of his fingers digging into her hips for just a second. So easy and warm, that she cant help but behave, only for a moment, before he throws her face-down on the floor.
“No!”
“I promise I’ll be gentle,” he speaks over her impassioned threats of violence, clamboring over her prone form. A load of bull; the damn Harbinger wouldn't know the meaning of gentle even if it tap-danced naked across his chest, and she’s not going to let him test it out on her—
“I said no, you bastard!”
“Your wings are a mess.” Warm breath washes over her ear, the admonishment sinking heavy into her gut. She doesn't know why she reacts the way she does except that she does—shame flooding her, hot and heavy, but also something else, insidious, insides clenching at the edged words.
There’s a reason she doesn't let anyone touch her wings.
Flocks preened their own, and her flock was too busy dallying somewhere in the Abyss instead of staying by her side. The thought of anyone but her brother touching her wings disgusted her. Instinct, Lisa had explained, gaze trained on the knights sparring on the grounds. We don't let anyone we don’t trust near them.
And depending on who the person is, well… the librarian had smiled. Preening can be an enjoyable process too.
Damn him. Damn him to the Abyss.
“Would it kill you to ask for help, Traveller?” Childe tsks, pinning her to the floor with a knee against the small of her back. Willfully ignorant to her reactions, the shudder of her shoulders— in fury, in fury. A wave of his hand sends a hydro tide across the room, carrying her sword out of range of her questing hand, a snarl leaving her mouth as it does.
“Childe—”
“You know it’s my win. You owe me.” Without warning, his hands sink into the golden expanse of her wings. She freezes. Every nerve-end in her back vibrates.
“So, you’re going to behave and let me take care of this for you.”
No no no—
“Fuck off—”
And then Lumine is squirming for dear life, because now the Harbinger’s fingers are combing through the plumage where her wings meet her back, and in response every muscle in her body has decided to mimic the consistency of slime.
“You fucking—bastard, I’m going to rip your throat out—”
Even blind, she’d know that cursed grin, lips pressed to the nape of her neck. “Shh. Don't be a brat, Lumine.”
“I’ll show you brat—nnngh!”
The threats in her mouth dissolves into a noise she didn't know she was capable of when he scratches his nails against skin instead of feathers.
“You’re so sensitive,” he croons between absent nuzzles and bitten off curses and deft hands, and Lumine would have been embarassed if she was capable of rational thought, or any thought other than the fact that it feels too good, and she cannot let him keep doing this, even if, even if—
“You’re doing it wrong.” Accusation, a wet hiccup in her throat. She’s seen people grooming wings—Fischl and Razor picking debris out of Bennets ivory and ink feathers, Xiangling’s father brushing soot out of her dark-blue down. Tears prick her eyes from his hands on her, the sheer sensation. “It’s not—it’s not like this when the others do it—”
“Then you should have asked one of them to help before your wings got to this state. Look at you,” he tsks, sinking a thumb into a persistent knot in her neck. “Just needed someone to pin you down and take care of you, huh, baby?”
The shame, and it has to be shame, oozes straight between her ears, mind melting syrupy at the edges. It’s embarassing, and she has to, needs to protest, gritting out every word with the dying resolve in her bones.
“Don't treat me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m a chil—ah—ah!”
The rest of her sentence cuts off when he plucks a primary out of her wing with a casual flick of his wrist, and she’d be gutting him for the action if it hadn't felt so good, body shuddering in abject betrayal as a drawn out moan escapes her.
She wishes the floor would swallow her up. His hands finally pause. And then, disbelieving—
“Lumine.”
“Don’t.”
“Are you getting off on this?"
“No.”
And now he sounds awfully pleased, of all things, mouthing at the junction where her wing meets his back. A warm chuckle when she arches into him, then grows slack, fruitlessly attempting to conceal her growing arousal.
“Liar,” he croons, and strokes her ear.
She’d fight him over this, the pain in her knee and aching muscles be damned, but the longer Childe touches her, the more the contrariness leeches out of her, and instead of the lazy calm she expects she feels hot all over, fire building underneath her skin.
And she cant even say anything, because she knows the moment she opens her muth she wont be able to hold back from begging for more.
Somehow, Childe unerringly finds the knots in her muscles, fingers deftly massaging the tension out. She shivers under his terrible, talented ministrations, the heat building in her threatening to spill, stifling her moans until he grabs the joint of a wing and pulls. And then she realizes that he’s doing it on purpose, teasing the breathy sounds out of her, relentless, until she’s keening little ah ah ahs between his rumbling praises.
“Poor thing,” he says, loosening the tie of her corset, freeing more skin for his perusal. “Too shy to ask, is it? Would you like me to decide, from now on? Trap you and groom your sensitive wings until you can't say no? Archons knows if you’d take care of yourself otherwise. This would be easier, mm?”
She buries her face in the floor, or tries, wishing again, desperately,that it would put her out of her misery. The coolness of the marble does nothing to alleviate the heat on her cheeks. “Nnnggh—shut up.”
“Still talking.” His hand slides over the small of her back, dancing over the waist of her bloomers. “I must be doing something wrong.”
She sobs when he sets his teeth there, the slide of his tongue against her skin maddening, and almost cries when he nips and suckles—because that’s going to leave a mark, because that feels dangerously close to the throbbing gland she doesn't think about, a frisson of pleasure lancing through her and leaving her slipping at the edges.
“If you want to come,” he murmurs, leading a trail of kisses up to the nape of her neck, sighing soft as she shudders beneath him. “You have my permission.”
“I’m not—”
“Don't be embarrassed. It’s just me here.” The path of his hand isn't subtle, stroking the soft, tufty down across her back, drawing soft patterns up her sides. Even those small movements are enough to drag her to the edge, vision whiting—she tries her best to keep still, to stop reacting so pathetically, but she can’t, frantic noises leaving her with every exhale, her wings fluttering in response.
“Childe, please—”
“Ah. I get it.”
The weight on her back shifts. And then there’s pressure against her centre, his calf slotted between her thighs, knee pressed against her centre.
“Needed this, did you?” he coos over her sobs as he guides her hips, rocking her against his knee, her body trembling. It feels too hot, too much, she can't take it.
“Are you going to come for me, Traveller?” Lumine shakes her head, crying when he scrapes his nails under the wingbone. Another when he presses his mouth to the same spot, teeth scraping against feather and flesh. Feels like she’s burning, pyro in her bones, threatening to reduce her to ashes.
“Childe—It’s—you have to stop—”
His hands don't falter at the plea, smoothing down fluffed up feathers in long strokes. “I want to see you come. Please, you’ll let me, won't you?”
“That’s not—you asked to preen, not—nnngh!” It’s too much. She clenches so hard it makes her miserable, tears stinging her eyes. Nearly blind with it. Panicky wet breaths against the cold floor, already sticky with drool.
“It’s a fun bonus.” His laughter reverbates through her, low and thrumming with dark amusement. “Mm. Gods, sweetheart. Look at you.”
When she finally comes, it’s with a keening whimper, muffled into the floor. Not that Childe misses it.
“That’s it. Good girl,” he says, and she barely hears him over the sheer pleasure cresting over her, wings thrashing, held down only by the weight of Childe’s body, his hold on her hips, the sweet praises that go straight to her centre, pressed down on his knee. Sweet girl, so good for me. You’re beautiful like this, thank you for letting me take care of you—
Distantly, she can hear Childe still speaking, but it seems so far away. His hands on her again, carding through her plumage, teasing out the tangles. The pleasure is still there, but muted now, by the haze that’s settled over her. She feels him smooth out the twisted feathers, scratching at the spots where the itch of new feathers tinge, press his fingers into the aching knots of muscle. He passes over her wings, twice, thrice, fingers slowing like he’s just enjoying the pleasure of her boneless and pliant underneath him.
“There. Almost done,” he eventually says after what feels like hours. Pleased and smug, another kiss, this time to the hollow between her scapulae. “That wasn't so bad, was it?”
Fuck, she can't even reply, or give voice to the garbled string of curses in her head. She tries, then, even, as much as she can, but all that leaves her mouth is a pitiful whine. “Nngh.”
His laughter makes her toes curl.
And then warm, strong hands grip her waist and flip her over again, and her eyes land on deep blues, the gaping maw of his pupils expanding. The sight of it hits her in a he gut. He inhales too, sharp, knees digging into her sides, voice hoarse and wondrous. “Gods. You're wrecked.”
She doesn't want to think about what she looks like right now. Doesn't want to think about how she let someone who’d stab her in a blink touch her wings. Doesn't want to think about how she liked it.
She doesn't want to think.
His thumb dries her sticky eyelashes, swipe across the apple of her cheeks. Between her legs, his body shifts—something stiff presses at the junction of her legs, with a pressure that makes her keen weakly.
Bastard. She tries to lift her arms but they don’t respond, so she folds a wing over her face instead, or tries to, but her body refuses to obey her, content with lying slack with pleasure.
Childe likes it too, watching her achy and obedient, a wickedly pleased smile flitting across his face.
Weakly, she commands him. “Get off of me.”
A chuckle, low and molten. His lips press against her jaw. “You're forgetting something.”
Then, low and unyielding, still utterly satisfied—
“Where’s my thank you, Lumine?”