Always and Forever / ZhongChi

Chapter 44 - Marriage is difficult

Zhongli pov

I woke up to Childe laying on me, what was he doing? He started this whole thing about splitting up, and now he was acting like it was my fault, he had pushed me away instead of explaining to me his discomfort, he had slept on the couch all week, but somehow us splitting up was my fault. How could this be my fault? All I had been trying to do was pleasure him, and suddenly it was my fault that he couldn't simply tell me that he was tired, or that he didn't want to. I just didn't understand, weeks ago, he was telling me that he missed sex, and the way that we used to have sex, but then he told me he felt like he was being used, that it felt like I was treating him like some sex doll, this was so confusing, does he want to split up, or does he love me, does he want to have sex, or is he too tired, or feeling like he's being treated like a sex doll, there was no in between with him. Although Childe and I were upset with each other, I wanted to savor this moment, because even if for a couple minutes, it could be like before we were fighting. I gently caressed his hair, he looked so perfect, so calm and collected. I started to get up from bed to wake Mei up, but Childe grabbed my arm, clearly still asleep, but murmuring,
"Please don't go..." I looked at him, he was still very much asleep, so I stayed, just to humor his sleeping desires.

Mei pov
I awoke to the sound of yelling, papa and dad were yelling at each other, I wondered what had happened to them, papa was obviously keeping something from me when he told me that everything was okay and that him and dad weren't fighting, but if I told him I knew he was lying, he would tell me I'm too young to understand, tell me to savor my youth and innocence while it lasts, because growing up is more like a curse than it is a blessing, because you understand more of the twisted way that the world works. I got dressed and put my hair in pigtails, papa said that he liked my hair, it was like dad's hair, straight and silky brunette with a ginger fade on the ends, although I wasn't related to either of them, I seemed to look a lot like them, almost like how papa and his siblings looked like their parents, or how Cindy looks like her mom, and how April has this gorgeous curly hair like her mom, although April's hair is like a burnt ember rather than blonde like her mother's. It was almost like even though I couldn't possibly be related to them, if you looked at it from any direction, I very much could be. I have papa's blue eyes and fair skin, and dad's hair. Papa's siblings and parents also tell me I remind them of papa when he was my age. I grabbed my bag and walked downstairs, papa and dad were in the living room fighting so I just made myself some toast and went out the door. Although it annoyed me, papa was right, I am too young to understand, they married each other, and then they got me, and in all the stories people that were married were in love and they didn't fight a lot, so did that mean that papa and dad didn't love each other anymore? I really hope that dad and papa still love each other, I don't want them to get a 'divorce' like April's parents did. Because April's parents moved away from each other in different houses and they fought in an important building over who April stayed with, I didn't want to leave either of my parents.

Childe pov
After weeks of me and Zhongli sleeping in the same bed but still not talking unless we were arguing, we were going out to drink because I had told him that maybe it would fix this if we just let Mei go to her friend's house overnight while we got drunk and had sex, because that was how we usually fixed our problems with each other. So that was what we did. Mei went home with her friend April, and me and Zhongli went out to a tavern. We drank like we used to, but it got a little out of hand, and I woke up on the couch, naked, with Zhongli. I looked around, did we have sex on the couch? What time is it? I got off of Zhongli and hastily walked to our bedroom, I took a quick look in the mirror, and it sure looked like we'd had sex, or at least tried to. My skin was no longer clear, it was riddled with hickeys and now that I thought about it, I realized that the feeling was back, the feeling of having been pleasured the night before. I quickly got dressed and checked the clock, it was already almost noon. I rushed to the living room to wake Zhongli up, but he was already awake and walking towards our bedroom, but he averted his gaze when he saw me, what was wrong now? I was putting my shoes on to go pick Mei up from her friend's house, when I realized two things.
1)I didn't know where said friend lived.
2)Mei had told us she would walk home on her own.
And So I took my shoes back off and walked to where Zhongli was sitting at the table eating and asked him,
"What's wrong now? You got the sex you wanted, so what is it you want now?" He looked up from his food and frowned at me,
"I don't think anything is wrong, except the fact that we had sex on the couch, in the living room, that doesn't have a door. And Mei saw us." I stared at him in shock,
"She's home? When did she get back?" Zhongli finished the small amount of food he had left on his plate and looked at me as he walked to the sink in the kitchen to clean his dishes,
"She got home pretty late last night. Apparently April got into a big argument with her mom and her mom sent Mei home." I glanced in the direction of the stairs that led to Mei's room, then looked back at Zhongli,
"How do you remember this? How much did she see?" Zhongli turned back to the dish he was now drying,
"She's 10, Ajax. We were drunk enough and she saw enough to know what was going on." Zhongli is even less of a lightweight than me, so he was probably just a little past tipsy last night. Drunk enough to not care much that we were on the couch though. I walked over to Zhongli and took the plate he handed to me,
"So are we getting back together?" Zhongli didn't answer my question verbally, he just looked at me, it was a look I'd seen from him enough to know what he meant. That had been it, even if we were bound to hook up again or something, that was the end of whatever unhappy long-term relationship we would've had ahead of us if we didn't split up for good. That had been goodbye. I looked away from him as he walked out of the room,
"Fuck..." I muttered, I knew it was coming, the way he had been talking to me lately, it was painfully obvious he'd lost interest, the only thing I had before this was the tiny sliver of hope that I was wrong, that he was just unhappy. I knew this was happening, and that it should have happened a long time ago, but we were naive and held onto the hope that the flame could be reignited for so long, years, and after we got Mei, after we got married, it just made us more determined to fall in love with each other again, even though the feeling was long gone, from both our hearts. And we agreed that night that even if we were no longer seeing each other, we'd play the part, because we didn't want Mei to grow up in a broken house with fighting parents. We agreed to see other people, but we were still close, that couldn't be helped after everything we'd been through together. We agreed that we would keep whatever relationships we got into from Mei because she would freak out if she found out we were seeing other people and think we might get a divorce or something, and we agreed that neither of us wanted to put Mei through that.