Etched In Stone

Honeymooners

With their relationship newly cemented, all Childe and Zhongli seem to do is stare at each other.

--

Maybe it's because they've finally fucked but Zhongli watches him like a hawk.

Childe squirms, but not in discomfort. That damn golden-eyed gaze makes his gut curl and he can't not think back to that night out on the porch by Guizhong's garden. Ever since, Zhongli has been obsessed, with small possessive touches or lingering gazes, anything to keep Childe within his eyesight and reach.

Zhongli explained it in the barest of terms before turning bright red in the face. "Instincts," he'd muttered into Childe's ear. "It's embarrassing."

It shouldn't be. Zhongli is as much a dragon as he is both a god and a man. If he's driven to constantly keep Childe within his sphere, he certainly won't complain because only Celestia knows the hours Childe has spent just... watching Zhongli. Waiting. Begging for Zhongli to make a move, praying that he wouldn't have to be the one to do it.

And ever since they cannot stop staring at each other.

Today, Zhongli watches him with a fond golden gaze that makes Childe's heart soar. His expression is liquid, and love drips from his pores, strangely tangible. Childe thinks about what Zhongli said to him that night—"When you hold this dirt, It's as if you hold my heart. I feel it."

Childe still feels the heavy weight of that soil Zhongli poured into his hand. He thinks about those words, about how every time he touches the earth, Zhongli knows. Childe has never thought himself to be romantic but it's impossible to deny when every time he looks up, he sees those golden eyes glittering with mirth.

"Do you understand Ajax?"

Theoretically, yes. But even if Childe knows what he feels it's hard to grasp exactly what it is that swirls through Zhongli's mind. "We who are as old as time do not say these things easily."

A gentle touch on his wrist pulls him away from his thoughts. "What are you thinking about?" Zhongli's question isn't so much probing as it is genuinely curious.

"Ajax, I love you like the stars love the sky, like the earth loves the tide that crashes into it."

"Nothing," says Childe, which isn't untrue. After a moment, he amends with, "Everything."

"Nothing, but everything," repeats Zhongli. "Sounds like you." He sits there on the porch, staring long enough that his tea has gone cold. Still, he sips at it, eyes never leaving Childe's face as he just watches him with wonder.

#

It is effortless, the way they move around each other. The staring is not awkward, it is welcome, and Childe is indulgent in the way that his eyes drag over Zhongli's form.

"I would ask what you're thinking," says Zhongli, his mouth twisted by amusement, "but I do think that I can figure it out."

Childe has him boxed in against the kitchen counter. Dinner boils over the stovetop and the air smells like bone broth and boar. Zhongli looked so handsome in nothing but loose trousers and a robe, and Childe stared for so long that his skin itched to touch.

"Mhmn, take a guess."

"That you want to touch me."

Childe laughs and leans forward, kissing Zhongi's cheek. "Guilty—but I'm always thinking that."

"You're hungry then," tries Zhongli for a second time. His hand skirts down Childe's side to pinch at his waist. "Too thin," he teases.

"I'm a growing boy," quips Childe. "But, no."

Zhongli falls quiet then, leaning back against the counter. Childe wonders how his eyes can be both ageless and ancient. Zhongli reaches out to cup his cheek sweetly, thumb smoothing over the bone there. "Is it strange to think the entirety of us feels ordained?"

No. It shouldn't feel so natural between them, not with Celestia hanging in the sky like a cloud of doom. But here, in the teapot, it is only them. Childe leans into his hand, kissing his palm. "I love you," he says. The words are still new, rolling off the tongue a little awkwardly. "I was just thinking that I need to practice saying it."

"Ajax, it isn't a matter of practice."

"I know. But after thinking it for so long, it just—" Childe sighs. Zhongli's hand is smooth against his face, unlike his own calluses. "You've been staring at me," he says, changing the subject. "Every time that I look, you're always watching me."

Zhongli pushes away from the counter and presses closer. "Of course, I look," he mutters. "Ajax, you are everything to me. There isn't a day that I would spend watching something else."

Childe still worries that this is a dream, that he'll wake up one morning, alone in his bed to find that they never took those steps forward.

"I had thought I'd lost you," says Zhongli then, a rare moment of vulnerability. His thumb drags over Childe's bottom lip, smoothing over the chapped skin. "I had thought many things, but most of all that you wouldn't come back. That I would have to spend my retirement in my lonesome, that I would have to watch you from afar."

Zhongli has done this lately, shared bits and pieces of what's lurking in his mind. It comes with the way that they're relationship has shifted into something solid, those three words uttered over and over in the sheets, under the sun, holding hands as they walk the shoreline. Zhongli is a vision not in his half-nakedness but in the ease of his gait, in how he sleeps in their bed, in the way he pulls Childe close with laughter that befits anyone else but an ancient dragon.

"You will not lose me," says Childe. A resolute promise. And there's something in the way that Zhongli's expression creases, not quite falling, but tipping into something that he doesn't mention. "Hey, what's with—"

"I'd rather kiss you," cuts in Zhongli, grasping his chin in a firm but gentle hold. "Can I kiss you?"

Zhongli knows that he needn't ask but he does so anyway because he likes to hear the answer.

Childe laughs. "Tired of staring?"

"Never. But, if presented the opportunity for the opposite, I'll happily indulge."

Their mouths meet lazily. It is a sweet kiss, tongues exploring, teeth clacking as they still try to figure out a rhythm. Fresh and new, like honeymooners that have just married, still in that touch-starved period where they cannot get enough of each other. Every touch is like lightning even when chaste.

Childe sinks into it, Zhongli swallowing his chuckles as they just kiss and kiss, their forgotten dinner burning away on the stovetop.