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Part 1 of on the nature of one's—
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TartaLi Week
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Published:
2021-07-15
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2,734
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1/1
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6
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320
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imperfections

Summary:

“Before I leave,” Childe asks, “will you fight me, Zhongli?”

“Fight you?” Zhongli replies, his expression open and his gnosis gone, and Childe feels his heart beat heavy within his chest. “To what end?” 

Childe takes a breath. “Because,” he says simply. “I want to.” Then, he amends, “because I need to.” There’s a burning selfishness that curls inside him at the admission, and Childe bites his lip, then continues a final time: “please.”

Or, in which Zhongli and Childe fight (and then Zhongli tends to Childe's wounds, afterward).

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

“Before I leave,” Childe asks, “will you fight me, Zhongli?”

“Fight you?” Zhongli replies, his expression open and his gnosis gone, and Childe feels his heart beat heavy within his chest. “To what end?” 

Childe takes a breath. “Because,” he says simply. “I want to.” Then, he amends, “because I need to.” There’s a burning selfishness that curls inside him at the admission, and Childe bites his lip, then continues a final time: “please.”

Zhongli hesitates, then nods.

And Zhongli absolutely decimates him.

- -

“Your wounds will scar unless you let me attend them,” Zhongli frets, ushering Childe into the small of his apartment, and Childe waves away his concern, too tired to do anything more than collapse atop Zhongli’s (rather uncomfortable, if he’s being honest—) couch. 

“What’s a few more scars in the grand scheme of things?” Childe replies, and even though his eyes are closed, Childe can feel the weight of Zhongli’s gaze from the other side of the room. Childe breathes in through his mouth, and tastes the coppery bite of blood. 

Zhongli doesn’t reply as he moves to pull stuff from his cabinets, and Childe would feel guilty about bleeding all over Zhongli’s couch if it weren’t for the fact that it was Zhongli who’d bloodied his body so badly in the first place. Fight me, Childe had asked of him, thinking that the fight would be far fairer with the god’s gnosis gone. Fight me, he’d asked. Please.

Childe keeps himself from laughing out of courtesy to his lungs, yet still cracks a smile.

He’ll buy Zhongli a new couch before he leaves. A couch, he thinks as he shifts, the bruises across his torso aching with the motion, that’s a little more comfortable than this.

Zhongli drops a chair next to Childe’s couch, and Childe hears various objects clatter out onto the table next to them. He cracks open an eye—sees tinctures, bandages, and a wet rag in Zhongli’s hands—then closes it again.

“You don’t need to tend to my wounds,” Childe says, though he’ll admit he finds the gesture sweet, “just let me sleep, xiangsheng—I’ll be better in the morning.”

Zhongli scoffs, the sound rough and soft, and Childe stifles his surprise as Zhongli picks up his arm—his grip careful enough not to strain Childe’s wounds.

“These will scar,” Zhongli repeats, “unless you let me attend them,” and Childe cracks his eyes open fully to look up at the other man, sees a guilty sort of determination simmering beneath Zhongli’s stare.

“I’ve got more scars than you realize,” Childe tells him, his smile teasing yet thin, “and honestly—I wouldn’t mind knowing these ones are from you. Let me keep them to remember you by—”

Zhongli’s resulting frown is small, yet clearly there, and Childe breathes out a sigh, glancing up at the ceiling to where one of Zhongli’s lanterns hang. The light is warm, and Childe blinks away the fuzziness in his gaze. “Really, Xiangsheng,” he continues, “I’ll be fine—” and then Zhongli makes that small scoffing noise again, going back to clean Childe’s wounds with a quiet sort of care.

“You asked me to fight you,” Zhongli tells him simply; “now let me care for you afterward.” Childe sighs again, sees firm noncompliance in Zhongli’s face, and his arguments die quickly upon his lips. Zhongli’s hands are sure as they move to clean the lacerations that run up and down Childe’s arm, and Childe feels the steady thump, thump of his heart within his chest once more. Every part of him feels warm.

“Fine,” Childe replies, quietly, “fine.”

Zhongli moves to his other arm after cleaning and dressing the wounds on his first, and eventually Childe lets Zhongli move him upright, exhaustion pulling at his body as he moves to sit up. Zhongli doesn’t speak as he cares for Childe’s injuries, and the two of them sit in uncharacteristic silence as Childe’s chest continues to ache. The man who sits before him is a man so different than the one he’d come to know—so different (yet so similar, all the same). Zhongli’s admissions of divinity and his contract with La Signora had come as a shock, and Childe had taken time away from them both to organize his thoughts in the aftermath.

And yet.

Fight me, Childe had asked of him, pleaded with him before he’d left. Fight me—because I want to; because I need to.

And gods, if that need doesn’t feel juvenile now. There had been such a large part of him that had wanted to prove that he could have won—could have taken Zhongli’s gnosis by force, if he’d had to—and it had felt so urgent to him before; so necessary to prove before he’d returned home with figuratively empty hands... and then, Zhongli had beaten him into the ground. The man had barely even broken a sweat. 

Childe breathes in, and feels his chest continue to ache.

The fight had felt good—just as good as a fight always does—and beneath the mortification, there’s a small part of him that does feel put to rest: content with the knowledge that even if he’d tried to, he wouldn’t have won. It’s the opposite of what he’d originally intended to prove, yet Childe supposes it scratched the same itch, anyway. 

Zhongli’s fingers are careful as he secures bandages around Childe’s arm, and Childe chances a glance up.

The man who sits before him is the man who gave up his godhood to usher in a new age of Liyue. He is the man who let Childe get close to him—buying dinners, trinkets, and gifts—all for the ultimate purpose of letting Childe fall. He is a man who used Childe, simply through lack of information divulsion, and he is the man who now sitis quietly next to him, cleaning Childe’s injuries with quiet care.

When Zhongli had first admitted that he’d been leading Childe one, Childe had concluded that their entire relationship had been borne under false pretenses, and that Zhongli had never actually cared.

And yet, as Zhongli continues to attend to him now—more careful than he’s been in all of their days prior—Childe finds himself no longer certain.

“I will attend your legs, now,” Zhongli tells him, and doesn’t wait for a reply before he’s shifting his chair over and lifting Childe’s leg up onto his lap: hands soft as he moves over the bruises that pepper Childe’s skin. Childe watches as he cuts at Childe’s already battered pants to clean the wounds down his thigh, and Childe finds Zhongli’s actions as meticulous as they always are, yet still unexpectedly sweet. Childe looks away. His emotions are all over the place, and gods above—Zhongli is just as beautiful as he always has been (even if he did consciously manipulate him, then beat Childe into the ground, at Childe’s own request).

“Your torso, next,” Zhongli says, as he finishes with both of Childe’s legs, and Childe hesitates as he lets his legs fall down. His back holds secrets in a way his arms and legs do not, and Childe looks over to find Zhongli staring back at him, face impasse.

“No need,” Childe tells him, forcing a carefree sort of smile onto his face. “You’ve already done more than enough—I can sleep now, xiangsheng. I’ll be back to my old self, in the morning.”

“Hm,” Zhongli replies, noncommittal, then shakes his head. “If you are worried about what I will see,” Zhongli replies with a terrifyingly knowing look, “then do not be. I am not new to the sorts of scars that a Fatui Harbinger might hide.”

Childe hesitates, then closes his eyes. Zhongli’s hands are soft against his arms, and there’s a familiarity in Zhongli’s tone of voice that makes Childe want to give in. Childe has always been weak for this man—whether he still be a god, or not.

Childe takes off his shirt, gritting his teeth as the dressings on his arms shift with the motion, and he hears Zhongli take a quiet breath.

“I told you I had a few scars already,” Childe says quietly, awkward as he sets his shirt aside, and Zhongli frows back, reaching out to run a hand across the spindly burns that crack across Childe’s skin.

“They are not, however,” Zhongli replies, “of the kind I’d expected.”

Childe looks away. They’re scars he’s had for a long time, ones that run across his chest and his back, and Childe lets Zhongli stare even as his stomach churns. They aren’t like his other scars—the small, white things that pepper the rest of his body. These are thin and far-reaching, like violent violet lightning forever cast into the pale of his skin. Electro scars. 

Elemental dissonance. 

Childe isn’t embarrassed by them, yet the act of sharing this final secret feels like Zhongli breaking down the last wall that Childe has erected for himself. This is his final secret laid bare, shared even in the wake of the other man’s betrayal. Childe takes a steadying breath.

His emotions are still in turmoil; however, he keeps his face as neural as he can as Zhongli’s hands run across his skin—gloves removed long before he’d begun dressing Childe’s wounds. His heart continues to beat—even beneath his scars—and Zhongli’s fingertips are soft.

“Your delusion did this to you?” Zhongli finally asks him, and Childe nod is small.

“In combination with my vision,” Childe admits, “though most of it has faded with time.” He forces himself to laugh a bit, and the strain of the motion causes his body to ache. “As it turns out, hydro and electro don’t always nicely mesh.”

Zhongli shakes his head, then begins to tend to the wounds that run across Childe’s chest—large cuts and mottled bruises scattered across his skin. Childe continues to chatter idly as he does so, talking vaguely about what it was like when he first learned to control his delusion, and the conversation takes his mind off of Zhongli’s touch as Zhongli turns him around to tend his back.

Zhongli’s hands are sweet as he runs bandages around Childe’s torso and shoulders, and Childe sits patiently, his words trailing off, as Zhongli finally finishes. 

Zhongli's hand against Childe's bare (and incredibly scarred) back.

“When do you leave?” Zhongli asks him, and Childe stares out over the back of the couch to where Zhongli’s kitchen sits.

“Two days,” he says, and he feels Zhongli’s palms against the flat of his back.

“Oh,” Zhongli replies, and Childe’s heart beats ever faster. “I see.”

“I’ll be back to visit eventually,” Childe tells him, the words tentative, “if you’d still like to see me?” and Zhongli cuts in—

“Yes,” only to be followed by a pause. “Of course.”

Childe is glad not to be facing Zhongli’s way, if only because he isn’t sure of the emotions that might be sitting upon his face. Of course, Zhongli says, as though Childe could think otherwise, and it’s a strange sort of relapse into the relationship they’d had before Childe’s fall; before Zhongli had handed over his gnosis to a Harbinger that wasn’t Childe.

“Do you want a cup of tea?” Zhongli finally asks, and gods—it really is like everything is the same as it was. Childe laughs, careful as he lays back upon the couch, and Zhongli picks up the remaining bandages and ointments and ferries them back to the kitchen. Childe hears him put a pot on, and Childe stares up at the ceiling again.

He’ll be gone in two days, making his way back to Snezhnaya on the boat he’d secured separately from La Signora. It might be years until he comes back to Liyue, back to Zhongli, and the thought leaves him adrift, a strange end to the almost-courtship that the two of them had had. 

Childe does not believe that it had been one-sided, and yet—after everything that happened with Osial and Zhongli’s stream of admissions—Childe finds himself no longer sure. It’s strange, this lull that their friendship has dipped into, and with Childe leaving soon, there feels little he can do to properly fix it. Asking Zhongli to fight had been for his benefit, and his alone—an itch he’d needed to scratch lest it remain there forever—and Childe lets the dull ache of his wounds bring an uneven smile to his face.

Zhongli steps back to him a moment later, two cups of tea in hand, and Childe shifts his body upward—making himself a little less vertical. Childe takes his tea, and Zhongli takes a seat.

“I’ve added painkillers to it,” Zhongli tells him, “as well as something that will help you sleep. It will be important that you rest before your departure this week.” 

Childe nods, and his face screws up involuntarily as he drinks. It’s a significantly worse tea than the ones Zhongli has made for him in the past, and Zhongli smiles encouragingly as Childe continues to drink. He has his own tea—“without the additives, of course”—and sits in the chair he’d attended to Childe’s wounds in, chatting mindlessly as Childe sips.

Zhongli is as beautiful as he always is, his voice smooth as he sinks into explaining the various herbs that he’d added to Childe’s drink. Childe watches him, listens to him, and thinks: this doesn’t feel all that different, then feels suddenly guilty for the thought. Still, Zhongli continues on as though nothing had come between them at all, and the feeling of it pulls at Childe’s heart, weighing heavily upon the longing that had already begun to form.

“Come back with me to Snezhnaya,” Childe cuts in then, and Zhongli's explanation stills.

“In two days?” Zhongli asks him, and Childe shrugs, then shakes his head.

“It doesn’t have to be then,” Childe replies, “but at some point? Soon?”

And Zhongli stares back at him, blinking once, then says: “okay,” those two syllables making Childe’s heart skip one heavy beat. 

Okay, he replies so casually, okay. 

Childe hadn’t really expected Zhongli to say yes.

"Seriously?” Childe pushes, “would you really?” and Zhongli nods back. 

"I don’t see why not,” Zhongli replies, “when I am no longer the Geo Archon.” He blinks again, his eyes curiously bright. “I will ask Hu Tao to give me some time off work. I've never done so before, so I'm sure that she'll accept."

Childe feels lazy and languid as he laughs, a knot he hadn’t known was there coming loose within his heart.

“Perhaps not tomorrow,” Zhongli continues, “but soon. I will make plans in your absence.”

“Yes, please—” Child grins, “I can give you my family’s address, and you can write me when I’m gone. We can figure it out?”

Zhongli smiles small. “We can figure it out.”

He takes their empty teacups then, and Childe shifts back down to stare at the ceiling once more as Zhongli moves about his kitchen.

In two days he will leave Liyue to return to Snezhnaya. It will be the end of so many things, and yet—at the same time, it will not. The end of this chapter, Zhongli might tell him, yet the start of another—and Childe can rest easy with that.

His eyes feel heavy, and his heart still beats fast. His blood is all over Zhongli’s couch, and he reminds himself that he’ll need to buy Zhongli another before he leaves. Perhaps they can go shopping together one final time, tomorrow. The thought makes Childe smile.

“Are you happy now, xiangsheng?” Childe asks quietly, and the sounds of Zhongli cleaning up in the kitchen still. He listens to Zhongli step back over to him, and Childe keeps his eyes closed.

“Am I happy?” Zhongli prompts, and Childe smiles wider.

“That you got to dress my wounds,” Childe finishes, and suddenly, his body feels heavy too. “I definitely won’t scar anymore, now that you have.”

The apartment is quiet and Childe feels his breathing begin to even out: the ache in his chest no longer the death grip it initially was. Sleep lulls him in, and the silence between them is slow and drawn out. 

Childe is nearly asleep when he hears Zhongli’s quiet reply. “Yes, Childe—” the once god says; “you make me inordinately happy.”

And Childe replies, “me, too,” and falls asleep knowing that he is smiling, still.

Notes:

This is the first of seven (!!!) collaborative fics that @bekkomi and I have planned for the various ZCZ weeks that are happening over the next two weeks. The prompt for this fic was "scars" from @Tartali_Week. Each fic will be standalone, yet all seven fics will connect to form a cohesive story should you be interested in reading each one. Additionally, please understand that I do not take top/bottom preferences into account when writing sfw ship fic; thus, not all prompts will be taken from strictly C/Z events. Each fic in this series will be rated T or below.

All that said, thanks so much for reading! As always, you can find me on twitter as @alainey_lee, and I would encourage you to show @bekkomi some love for their gorgeous (as always) artistic accompaniment to my fic.

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