"I want to know what love is, Zhongli." Childe stated. He had shown up at the Wangsheng Funeral Parlour on a seeming whim, but Zhongli had seen no reason to turn down his request for tea and a chat. Archons know that kids nowadays don't stop to enjoy the relaxing parts of life enough.

"...I am afraid that is an area beyond my expertise." The part-time consultant may already have been regretting his open courtesy.

"Xiansheng, onegai ."

"Ah, been to Inazuma recently, have you, young Master Childe?" Zhongli said, mildly impressed that the Snezhnayan battle merchant took time out of his busy scheduling of scheming and murdering to learn a new language. A shame it were not Liyuean, but alas.

Also a shame it were that word used with an expression of pleading on the young man's face, but alas.

"No, as much fun as it would be to see just how tough their Vision Hunt Decree is, Her Royal Majesty has requested I lay low here, at least for the moment."

"Oh, then how did you come about such a turn of phrase?"

"Ah, I had a short discussion with Hu Tao regarding an object of, er, passion, of mine. She said that would be, quote, the superest duperest Liyuean please~!"

"So, I like fighting," Childe started,

"Mhm mhm," Hu Tao replied, spinning her mini-ghost around her like a yo-yo.

"And I have this, er, specific weapon that I like"

"You're sexually attracted to exotic metals, ok, ok!"

"Yeah ex- I mean, no, not really. In any case, the like for combat and the like for this gir-weapon, this weapon , they are not the same." Childe explained, very smoothly.

"Alright, uh huh..?"

"And I don't think I know what I'm doing. So, if you're willing-"

"As the 77th Funeral Director of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlour, I am obligated by law and my outstanding moral compass to inform you that this is a place to bury dead people~! No~t feelings!"

"..."

"Buuuut, as recognition for giving me so many customers over the past few months in which you Fatui have barged into Liyue and ruined everything… I'd be willing to do some civil consultation ." Hu Tao made sure to waggle her eyebrows as convincingly as possible.

Although Childe just stared at her blankly, unamused.

"Ok fine Captain Serious, what's your experience with trashy romance novels?" Hu Tao asked, eyes lighting up while she cuddled her spectral friend. Boo-Tao, she'd called it once? Childe couldn't remember.

"...I've heard the receptionists talking about Love Persists Through the Heat-Death of the Universe while sharpening my weapons, does that-?"

"Oh, my... great-grand-uncle! That one is so good! My favourite part was when Benzhu thought Dansan had died so she shanked someone else and then poisoned herself!" Hu Tao gushed.

Childe was understandably a bit confused and a bit on edge. He began to think, why did I choose to ask the loner, prankster, dead-people-handler for romantic advice?

Hu Tao continued, heedless and very excited.

"Anyways, what you need to do is next time you two clash your weapons in a show of utter violence and Lady Ningguang-annoying property destruction is wait for a break in the action then hold her chin and say in your deepest, darkest, mysterious-consultant-est voice, Ojou-chan, kisushite, onegai.

In Liyuean, that means oh light of my day, stars of my night, you who bring meaning to my existence in this foreign land against which I am hostile, and which is hostile unto me. I request that in a matter more befitting of my impression of your countenance, we may clash weapons ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) I ask thusly that you give my thoughts ample time for consideration.

The onegai part is the most important, it's that I ask thusly yada yada line. It's like, the superest duperest Liyuean please!"

"That seems like a lot of meaning to fit into, what, 10 syllables?" Childe was dumbfounded. That was more what he was expecting, Hu Tao the poet instead of Hu Tao the very unhelpful maybe-still-a-teenager, but this may have been all a bit much.

But what did he know? From what he'd heard from his parents, his mom had crushed a watermelon, with just her thighs, to woo his dad, and his dad had replied by cracking open a sack of walnuts with just his biceps. The sheer amount of mora they had both wasted importing such exotic foods to Snezhnaya just to break them inefficiently... maybe all cultures' mating rituals were excessive to this degree?

" Oh-nay-guy , then, that's the important part? I can do that. Thank you, truly." If it was an intricate and excessive ritual that was needed, then an intricate and excessive ritual would be what Childe Ajax Tartaglia Athanasioussen Petrovich would supply.

"I regret to inform you, Master Childe, that you have been tricked, backstabbed, and quite possibly, bamboozled, by the one we must unfortunately both consider an acquaintance." Zhongli tutted, pouring his tea in a sheet of perfectly laminar musty brown liquid.

"If you tried saying that to Lum-your attraction, she would arrest combat with you to laugh in your face. I can tell you that as fact."

"Do you mean I have an excuse for violence then?" Chile said, standing up and materializing his weapon collection, idly picking through them.

"Please do refrain from splashing Director Hu's blood too excessively on Liyue's streets, Master Childe. I have heard they are quite difficult to fully clean." Zhongli took a sip of his tea. Perfect, rich tannins on the tongue and hints of hibiscus further along the body.

Childe, seeing that the consultant was making no moves to stop him, leapt up, Hydro daggers in hand, and ran for the front of the parlour.

"Ahh wait! If I die now I won't be able to profit from my own funeral! Zhongli is gonna select a boring pyre pyre pants on fire! old laminated pine casket for me, his tastes are an affront to the very spirit of Wansheng!"

And as the tea moved further along in the mouth there was a note of that sharp, mountain sun in the summer along the rocks of Mount Tianheng, truly an exquisite brew controlled precisely.

"Ahaha, maybe you should've considered that before you decided to double cross a Fatui Harbinger then!"

"Single cross! I mean, zero cross! Don't you know the best way to a girl's heart is through humour!"

"On the contrary, I find the best way to anyone's heart is through their kidneys, to avoid the ribs. Hahaha!"

To finish, a warm rush through the throat and a pool like gold within the stomach. Masterful tea was so very underrated by the populace.

"Why does hot water ow! burn aiya! so much!? That is so~not~cool!"

The clash of weapons and whooshes of fire and water were hard to miss on a peaceful Sunday afternoon.

Well, a formerly -peaceful Sunday afternoon.

"Paimon thinks it's Mister Moneybags!" Paimon said, pointing at what seemed to be a localized firestorm in central Liyue Harbour.

"You could say that almost anytime you hear fighting, and you'd be right though." Lumine grumbled,

"Let's see which poor soul he's roped into a fight this time." She finished, as she set off at a leisurely pace towards the chaos happening kilometres away from their spot on a cliff to the north of the city.

"...Shouldn't we go faster? What if people are in trouble?" Paimon screeched, poking at Lumine's back. "Up, up and away, general!"

"It'll be fine, if Totellini Murderoni wanted someone dead, they'd be dead quickly. He's just having fun. And stop poking me or the next sticky honey roast I eat is gonna have some mystery meat in it."

"Ooh, ooh! Can we do whale? I've always wanted to try something Snezhnayan!" Paimon stopped mid-poke as she imagined the possibilities. Wild polar pork, eldritch sea monster fillets, the works!

"Hmm, I was thinking something more Paimonian." Lumine breezily tossed over her shoulder as she kept strolling.

"Oh that sounds ama~zing! Hey, wait,

wait a second .

Paimon is not exotic food!" Paimon took off at full speed towards her partner, and Lumine zipped off, laughing.

"Come back here, you meanie! I will have my vengeance! "

Childe was the first to notice the travelers approaching. Which is to say, he was facing their direction and couldn't miss the storm-force winds headed right at him.

And the angelic sound of 1 (one) ethereal traveler's laughter.

Also the banshee screeching of a floating… star-spangled pet… thing. But unpleasantries could be exchanged later with that.

"Hey Girlie!" Childe exclaimed, opening his chest up wide,

wide open for Hu Tao's spear.

"Woah woah woah, I can't kill you yet, you dummy harbinger! There's no way your minions are going to pay for the same quality of caskets for themselves that you do!" Hu Tao said, managing just to halt her spear at the last moment.

"And get that disgusting smile out of my face! I'm going inside with Mr. Old-and-boring. You look like you're in love and I am so~ not gonna get in your way . Have fun killing each other!" She snickered, traipsing off towards her next (and most frequent) victim.

"So eh, heh, come here often?" Childe said, attempting to play cool by dematerializing his Hydro swords and leaning on a charred post.

Which gave out and sent him tumbling to the ground.

"Probably a lot more often than I would if there weren't a whole scene breaking out here every other day." Lumine answered, gesturing to the carnage around the funeral parlour and summoning a rock from below the soggy, burnt foundation of the fence to push Childe back up to his feet.

(The parlour itself was mysteriously immaculate, with only a faint, golden shimmer around it betraying the reason why)

"Well you know, gotta keep my skills up to snuff and all that. Anyways, interested in sparring?" Childe grinned, before wincing as the groaning limbs of a gateway collapsed off to the side.

"No she is not! We're gonna clean this place up, you're going to pay us for the trouble so Paimon can have a full stomach tonight, and then we're leaving!"

"Yeah, what she said! I can't believe I had to rush over here to check on you and make sure you and your stupid sexy body weren't hurt!" Lumine shouted.

"...What?"

"What?"

Paimon clapped a hand over Lumine's mouth as everyone realized what had just been said.

" ...I'm leaving! Bye, see ya never!"

Childe, being a veteran of many fights, as well as a master of getting his butt kicked, saw an opening to either go for the kill or get his butt kicked.

If it were Lumine, he'd be very happy with either outcome.

"Wait!" He said, as he got off the Geo construct propping him up and took powerful strides towards the Traveler. Lumine attempted to round the corner of the building, blush creeping up past her ears, but Childe stuck his left arm out to corral Lumine and his right leg up past her shoulder, trapping her against the wall.

"Wow, he's really flexible huh…" Paimon whispered in awe.

" Ojou-chan . Kisushite. Onegai." He purred, channeling all of his hours pretending to listen to Zhongli wax poetic about how 'boats are made for transferring commodities back and forth, and those that come across Liyue tend to stay a while.'

Lumine, being the strong, independent, (rational) multi-millennial demigod that she is, responded by screaming, grabbing Childe's leg and flip-spinning him to the ground with the power of Anemo before running away as fast as she could, face so red she felt she was about to combust.

"I. Am. In. Love ." Childe wheezed out.

Hu Tao, who had obviously not gone to bother Zhongli as she'd said but instead had been eavesdropping behind the parlour's door the whole time, saw Childe's crumpled form on the ground and provided her verdict.

"You are sooo whipped , you poor, pathetic excuse for a bad guy! Go climb a mountain and bring a dragon's head back for her or something you sicko! Your expression's so sweet right now I'm gonna go barf!"

Dragonspine.

A daunting prospect to traverse for even the most hardy adventurers, filled with rocks and ice, monsters and anthropomorphic (and very deadly) wildlife. No sane person would climb this imposing mountain for sport. Many had tried and failed, only to become relics of hubris, doomed to lie dormant forever on the crags and slopes of the mountain where those who die do not decompose as a warning to future would-be climbers.

Which is to say, in the current season alone, there had been 420 successful summits, only 418 parties of which contained a certain Honorary Knight of Favonius.

"Whew! Is it snowing like this in Snezhnaya too? I wonder what Teucer and the rest of them are getting up to." Childe said gleefully, slashing through the heart of a Frostarm Lawachurl.

"Hey you!" slash "Can you tell me," rip "Where I can find" tear "A dragon?" Childe took a look at the ring of hilichurls around him slowly fading into light and realized something.

"Silly me, even if you knew you wouldn't tell me. I get it! Time for some field training then!"

He bounded down the path to a Fatui camp, joy in the air. But as he approached visual distance, he cracked his knuckles and put on his superior officer face.

Which meant, really, that he pretended La Signora was walking next to him and scrunched up his face accordingly as he marched perfectly at 70 BPM into the camp, ever the picture of a rigid, proud, overly superior Fatui Harbinger.

"Recruits. I trust training is going well?" He said, mimicking as best he could La Signora's snotty 'I will step on you and you will beg for more' voice.

"Yes sir! What brings you to our camp… sir!?" A brave skirmisher answered while his companions attempted to disappear in place.

"Where is the dragon for whom this mountain is so named?" Childe boomed. Look at me , he thought. Look who belongs as a harbinger. It's this poor ice fisher from the shores of Moropesok. That's right. Go shawty, it's your birth...day…

"Sir, if I may… it died hundreds of years ago, from what the locals say." The skirmisher squeaked, looking to his peers for encouragement.

"Sir?" With no response, the other recruits cowered further within themselves, but the skirmisher, in his infinite wisdom, continued on.

"Sir, it's not all bad! I'm sure someone high and mighty as yourself, sir, could slay the current king of the mountain?"

Childe had been shooketh by the dual revelations that Dragonspine was a poser name and that he should really do something for his birthday in two days, but the news of a new king of Dragonspine brought him back to reality.

"A new king, recruit? Tell me where." He demanded.

So maybe he should have asked what exactly this new king was before snap-promoting the recruit to a lieutenant and marching off according to the given directions, but it had sounded like a good opportunity at the time. It would be a little awkward though if it was some sort of Hydro elemental considering he hadn't thought to bring Lumine or Ekaterina along with him.

Oh well , he thought as he glided slowly down into what that skirmisher had called The Arena , which looked more to him like another nondescript clearing amongst the hundreds on the mountain. I think I have maybe enough arrows if I throw them all instead of shooting .

Upon landing, however, Childe found himself greeted not by some avatar of wrath but silence. Silence as quiet as that of the rest of the mountain.

"..."

Superior officers were meant to give and take, surely? That's how it worked? Progression in life can't always be a linear path. If he just marched back and drove a dagger through the guy's heart, well, he'd just be doing his job and instilling fear into the Harbingers… right?

Before fantasizing too hard about sending some more Fatui clients to Hu Tao, Childe noticed some bright red stones on the cliff faces to his right, and what seemed like a snowed-in cave. Perhaps this 'king' did exist, and it hibernated, and Childe could burn its door down and wake it up for arena combat? That would be fantastic. He remembered from previous trips with Lumine up the mountain that those red stones burned large swathes of snow wherever they touched, so this would be a simple operation. He could get home before the weekly Monday spar for sure!

Having hatched a plan for combat glory, Childe got to work on the first scarlet stone.

In life, there are moments, even for those who only like to look forward and not backwards, of regret. Perhaps, when you turn 10 and remember that one time you missed the chance to catch a fish for your dad because your arms were too weak. Perhaps, when you are 17 and regret beating up some bullies for your little sister because your parents looked so disgusted with how you didn't drag them into a back alley first to make it less of a scene. Perhaps, when you are a highly successful man in your early 20s who...

"Why in the ever loving abyss did I just spend from noon to sunset chiseling one blasted rock? Which idiot has 7 weapons but none of them are good for mining? Ajax, your parents would be so disappointed in you right now." Childe muttered to himself.

At least it may have taken 6 hours, but it was over now. One fully emancipated weird red rock.

"If this doesn't work… I'm going to lay down here and cry until Lumine finds me."

Childe trudged over to the presumed cave entrance and closed his eyes, praying to Her Majesty all the way across Teyvat that this small quantity of stone would be enough,

And when he opened his eyes again, he was face to face with a supersized boar who looked none too happy with being woken up by a scrawny ginger boy with messy hair.

"Heh, this is getting interesting!"

The weight of a dead, multi-ton boar may not have been the best for Childe's organs, but it sure was a warm blanket for the night which he sorely needed, having spent the last six hours fighting an overgrown slab of ham and the six hours before that shaming his ancestors and friends by being defeated by a stupid rock.

When he awoke, the sun was doing its best to blind him without providing any warmth (and succeeding), so he took out his Hydro daggers and started cutting the boar into food-sized chunks, making his way up slowly through it until he could take a full breath again. Very slowly.

And then of course once he was free to step up and out of the carcass, he took his polearm and really got to work breaking the already-frozen meat apart. He'd have to thank that adeptus later for showing him this technique; not very efficient for fighting, but very nice for butchering a large, dead animal. And if with every thrust he got just a bit more ragged and a bit more aggressive, who could blame him? Even the most glorious of fighters don't want to be oinked at for half a waking day as they slowly whittle down a pig that a recruit (currently a lieutenant, soon to be dead, Childe reminded himself) dared to trump up as the current 'king of the mountain'.

When at last the meat from the boar was scavenged and all that was left was bone, Childe took one look inside the cave, filled with shining, glittering rock, one look back at the obscenely massive, stupidly sharp hind thighbone, and knew there was only one way forward from here.

Thank the archons for pocket dimensions, because this was way too much precious stone and meat for one person to actually carry no matter how big they were!

Childe and Lumine had a ritual. Every Monday, 7PM exactly, inside the Golden House, no matter its state of repair and no matter how much the Millileth worried for their vast mora reserves contained within. No matter what happened throughout the week, the two of them would meet, and they would spar, and they would then go their separate ways.

But their spars were only that; there were to be no feelings, no thinking, just mindless combat chatter and the clashing of weapons. Childe had never won, and he felt himself slipping further behind, but that was more due to Lumine's progression than his own stagnation. Every week he would show up fitter, stronger, meaner, ready to take the crown back and see the Traveler humbled before him, if even for a moment.

Inevitably, Lumine would show up having progressed even more, every few months gaining mastery of a new element, every other week marching under the blessing of a new set of artifacts, every week kicking his ass five ways to Sunday regardless of whatever had happened in the six days before. But this week,

This Monday,

July 19th,

The sparring partners met outside the door, looked once at each other, and immediately turned away, blushing.

"You guys are so lame! It's like I'm watching a scene at a children's school!" Paimon shouted, doing her best to aggressively stab a finger at both people simultaneously.

"Get in there and beat each other to a pulp already! You can do all this lovey dovey stuff once Mr. Moneybags is down for the count and I get to root through his pocket dimensions… I mean uh… ehe?"

Childe whipped around while materializing his latest financial accounts, whipping Paimon in the face.

"So that's where the missing mora is! Do you know how much effort my accountants had to go through trying to look for it? Everybody had to sit in a circle in the Northland Bank lobby while Ekaterina gave a three-hour lecture. I felt such pity for my people like you can't believe."

"And you couldn't just… let it go?" Lumine asked, blush definitely gone from her cheeks, replaced with the burning of righteous fury against the rich and wealthy.

"I can't believe myself for thinking you're boyfriend material! I'm heading in there, you're going to come in after, and I'm going to beat you up. Ok?" She yelled, kicking open the door with a little bit of Geo assistance and marching in as indignantly as her small 5' 2" frame could muster.

"I thought it was an interesting lecture personally…" Childe muttered to himself, deserted at the doors by the Traveler pair.

"Well alright then girlie, you want to get beat up so bad, I'll give you a right buttkicking, I'll kick so much butt, your floating pet will ask me, how much butt could a… butt butt butt... if a Childe could kick butt!

...Okay maybe not that exactly, but prepare yourself, I'm coming for you!" Childe yelled, blasting the remaining door down with a shot of Hydro.

Only to be met with a surge of Anemo in response.

"Alright fine, I'll put this door back in place first, and then we'll dance!" He yelled again, hopefully in Lumine's direction.

"Good to know we're on the same page!" She yelled back, somewhere deep within the Golden House already.

After doing his best to reverse the property damage, he made his way inside. This was already different than it usually was; he was the one who waited like a cartoon villain for Lumine to arrive, never the other way around. What else would be different that night?

"Well, well, well, Childe Tartaglia Ajax Something-ich Something! This opportunity is quite hard to… speaking of hard, is that a dagger in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?" Lumine announced, doing her best to remember how the Raiden Shogun had spoken before doing mean things and getting put on Lumine's 'black iron for every holiday' list.

"Why don't you stab it and find out, girlie?" Childe sneered, fully into the thrill of the battle already.

At least until both Lumine and Paimon visibly recoiled.

"What? Did I say something wrong? I just crawled down off Dragonspine this morning, I honestly have no clue what's happening. Can we fight already?"

"Oh ho ho, Master Childe. I see through you and your di- diversory tactics . I will not fall prey to your petty makine- makinay… words are hard, just get beat up!" Lumine shouted, dropping the pretense and pulling out her sword. Paimon wisely took this as a clue to exit into her pocket dimension, knowing the two fighters would be at it a while before either of them scored any meaningful hits.

Except her expectations were shattered when Childe failed to block the very first hit aimed for his right, grunting in pain instead.

Lumine instantly let up in worry at having injured the Harbinger already (somehow), but she was met by a return strike aimed to her left, and a soft thunk. She flipped away and used a Geo construct to separate her and Childe, and found that a chunk of… Starsilver? was on the ground by his feet.

Interesting tactics, using ore as loose armour in a non-lethal spar… that'll let him last a bit longer before going into his Delusion. That has to be localized, though! Where are you open!?

She launched forward again, and Paimon, having sensed the first hit connect, rematerialized to serve as a cheerleader.

"Yeah, Lumi! Do it again!" Paimon cheered as Lumine used her sword hilt to bash Childe on the left side, away from his guard.

He grunted in pain but once again, less than expected. The culprit made itself known a second later as a mostly-frozen chunk of meat fell out of his coat pocket and squelched as it landed on the floor.

Both combatants froze for a split second as they took time to process what had just happened.

"Uhh… Do you usually go around carrying chunks of meat in your coat…?

"Well of course, a good warrior should know the most important part of winning a war is logistics." Childe grinned, taking the opportunity to catch his breath and his concentration. In hindsight, sleeping only a few hours and spending the whole day trudging across Liyue may have been suboptimal preparation for the weekly spar.

"Okay, stop looking at me all disgusted, girlie. It's from the king of Dragonspine . He was a really, really big pig. It took me 6 hours to kill him, can you believe that?" Seeing that Lumine had relaxed her stance and backed away slightly, he felt some irrational need to explain himself.

"Of course I can believe that, Childe. A normal person would shoot a boar in the eye and call it a day. But knowing you, you probably spent half the day pricking at it with your little daggers like Oh, look at me, Tartiglione the Haribo! Look at me fighting so gracefully as my sweat glistens in the sunshine and my muscles ripple so - oh Archons, you- you didn't hear that. Not again." Lumine took a further step back as the blush from earlier returned in full force and she buried her hands in her face.

"Wooow, Paimon thinks you two should just get a room and-"

"It's not like that!" "That's unethical!"

Paimon and Lumine both looked intently at Childe, any pretense of combat gone.

"...Unethical, Mr. Moneybags? What do you mean by that ?"

"You know, in Snezhnayan culture, it's typical for the prospective groom to pay the bride's family a dowry before consummating their relations. In the absence of a family to pay dowry to…" Childe trailed off as he de-materialized his Hydro daggers. And took a deep breath.

This was it. One shot, one opportunity. To seize everything he'd ever wanted. One moment, would he capture it, or would he let it slip?

He opened the pocket dimensions containing all his acquisitions from the excursion up to Dragonspine.

All Lumine and Paimon could do was stand and stare as hundreds of chipped-off Starsilver chunks and copious hunks of boar meat poured out slowly, nearly all making large thuds on the floor as his metaphysical pockets emptied little by little.

Only when the Traveler heard creaking did she realize what effect this would have on the poorly reconstructed Golden House floor.

"Wait Childe, that's enough, stop dropping those out onto the-AHHHH!" She screamed as the floor gave way under her. Every week this would happen, but typically only when Childe had enough of getting nicked, shanked, and stabbed and activated his Foul Legacy.

This was definitely a novel way to break all her ribs.

"Don't worry, comrade, I've got you." Childe swooped in to save her, still very human. He looked a bit like a knight in shining armour like this, luscious maroon locks flowing in the wind, clothes flapping (and revealing even more of his abs than he usually liked to, delicious), rouguish smirk on his face.

"I'll turn the floor below into water, and you shall have the most graceful landing you will have ever experienced in these halls."

"...Have you ever heard about the difference between falling on concrete and water at 30 metres?" Lumine asked, already preparing for impact.

"There is none, Ajax ."

In times like these, Lumine was very glad to have Paimon as a travel partner. Thanks to the interplay in this world between the elements and her body, any food she ate would have near-immediate and intense beneficial effects, a fact she gleefully abused throughout her travels. She'd gotten very familiar with one meal in particular.

"Hey Lumi, remind Paimon that we have to cook up some more Sweet Madames later! You've eaten so much doodoo recently that we're almost out already!" Paimon gleefully yelled, knowing very well that she was annoying the Traveler with how loud and close her voice was, but also knowing Lumine's body was far too broken at the moment to do anything about it.

As the food began to take effect on her, she rolled herself over to look at Childe who was limply shoving raw boar into his mouth like a malfunctioning marionette.

"I have to say, that drop is more pleasant in Foul Legacy." He groaned out.

"Childe, you are such a dumb individual. Any time I think you can't top yourself, you go out and do something even further beyond my understanding." She said, crawling over to him as she regained a bit of function in her limbs.

"That's why you *cough* like me though?" He weakly muttered, trying to sit up slightly to meet her.

Lumine took a once-over at his broken body, and decided (against good reason) to open her mouth.

"... I regret to say it, and I'm sorry Paimon but…

It seems that I am morosexual. So yes. And you'd better count your lucky stars that not only am I attracted to stupidity, I'm generous and forgiving." She sidled up to him, materializing more Sweet Madames to put into his body instead of raw, frozen meat from a centuries-old creature.

"And very kind and beautiful as well, a true printsessa ." He smiled up at her, before ruining the moment by coughing some blood up all over her.

"So… Paimon's just going to leave you two lovebirds to bleed all over each other, and cough blood all over each other, cause that was really gross just now. If you need me, I'm going to be spending Mr. Moneybags' money at Xiangling's place. See ya!"

"My.. accounting statements…" He futilely lifted a hand towards Paimon, but she was already far, far out of his recovering reach. Oh well, he could only do so much to insulate his people from Ekaterina's wrath. Maybe he would learn some more about asset depreciation when he got back to the Bank.

"Just eat your food and stop talking, dummy. This dress used to be white and now it's all red thanks to you." Lumine sighed, pressing her face into Childe's hair.

It felt like a good moment, a time of soft, peaceful contentment. Through the skylights visible past the shattered main floor, it could be seen that the night had been chased away by the sun, and birds were starting to sing. Lumine slowly fed both herself and her debilitated now-boyfriend. It was too good of a moment not to ruin, by Childe's estimation.

"So girlie, now that we're a thing …" He turned his head up so he was looking Lumine straight in the eyes, the beginnings of a smirk on his face.

"Childe I swear to Zhongli if you say it-"

"Wanna spar ?" Childe grinned weakly at her and gave his best eyebrow waggle.

"We were having a moment !"

Thanks for reading, if you liked it, thank you :)
...If you didn't, Mitsuboo takes full responsibility for giving me this idea *wipes hands clean* wasn't me.

A few notes on stuff in the body of the story (Spoilers for this story and Genshin's story obvs):

In paragraph 3 when Zhongli says: 'Archons know that kids nowadays don't stop to enjoy the relaxing parts of life enough.' The joke is that he's watching Childe, Lumine, and Hu Tao run around doing all this wacky stuff instead of having tea with him. The archons is him. He knows.

In paragraph 5 when Zhongli calls Childe 'young Master Childe', he's making a little linguistics joke about how Childe already means young master. He's saying young Master Young Master for the memes.

When Hu Tao and Childe are talking about the 'trashy romance novels', yes, that's the plot of a certain Shakespearean play. No, the names are not completely random. The title was my intentionally butchering a friend's suggestion, and the names of the main characters came from me asking that same friend for help, with the stipulation that they be surnamed 'ben' and 'dan', which taken together means dumbass. As a result, 'Benzhu' can be read as 'Dumb Pig', which is a thing parents call their children who are being stupid, and 'Dansan' can be read colloquially in Cantonese as a person who is absolutely useless and serves only to consume space and resources. So yeah, very happy with the Chinese (Liyuean) in this one for sure, even if it only showed up in one scene.

Way later in the story, when 'how much butt could a… butt butt butt... if a Childe could kick butt' is said/thought, this should be read to the rhythm of the woodchuck tongue twister (how much wood could a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood). Do kids even learn that in school anymore?

Finally, when 'One shot, one opportunity. To seize everything he'd ever wanted. One moment, would he capture it, or would he let it slip? ' comes up in the story, I want y'all to mentally yell "Mom's spaghetti!" or vibe along. If you do either, my work here is done.

Anyways, that's all from me! Once again, thanks for reading, and I'll see you again in 2 years I guess when I come out of my hobbit hole to crap out another random fic and dip like always. Peace!