Day 2: 'Deer in the Headlights'

CW: angst


He watches him back like a deer in the lantern light.

"Ajax," says Zhongli, his voice quiet. Hoarse. Unsure. A wrinkle mars his brow as though he isn't seeing correctly because Childe shouldn't be there, feet planted against the stone-cold ground of Liyue Harbor.

And Zhongli is right. Childe made a promise all those years ago.

It was a blustery day at the port, the salty-sea air sour and tangy on his tongue. They stood there stiffly, awkwardness wracking their bones. Zhongli remembers the desperation that filled him as though it was yesterday.

"Well, Xiansheng—" Childe's voice dripped with sarcasm, curdled by annoyance and the pain of betrayal. "One thing's for certain, you got exactly what you bargained for, right?"

"Childe—"

"No, no—" Childe held up a hand to cut him off. "You don't get to explain."

"If you would just listen—"

"Would it change anything?" Zhongli will never forget it, the way that his voice contorted with hurt, and how his voice fell to a dangerous whisper. "I gave you just about everything, Zhongli, and for what? To have it thrown back in my face?"

Zhongli will always regret not finding the words. Childe gave him the opportunity to apologize, to say something—anything. He stood on that dock waiting forever and a day until the ship's captain dragged him onto the boat by force.

Childe never answered his letters. Zhongli penned hundreds of them, and while many weren't sent, the ones that mattered did.

They went ignored to no one's surprise.

And now, half a decade later, Childe stands there on his doorstep, leaning against the porch railing. He looks older. More ragged. His shoulders sag with exhaustion, and that once singular lock of pale hair now stretches half his scalp.

"Ajax," says Zhongli again, sounding utterly defeated. Six thousand years on this earth and he still doesn't know how to parse out his feelings.

"I brought you tea," says Childe. He holds up a crinkled bag. "It's the shitty stuff, though. I don't have a palate and it's slim pickings up north."

"You're here."

Childe snorts, dragging a hand through his hair. "I mean—yeah, okay. Your surprise makes sense."

"Business?" guesses Zhongli.

"Something like that." A vague response. Exactly what's expected of a Fatui Harbinger. Childe bites at his lip, hesitating. "Look—"

"Why are you here?" Zhongli's voice sounds foreign the moment he says it. Archons don't sound so meek, even if they're old and retired. Even he can fear what comes next.

Childe's jaw tenses as he thinks. His chin drops and he sighs. "I thought I could come here and avoid you, but I can't. Even now, I'm like a moth to a flame, even if it's nothing but a slowly burning ember." He thinks he's pathetic for clinging to the past, but he's wrong.

Zhongli's heart clenches, unused to such heartbreak and hope. He steps closer, his expression relaxing, looking less like startled prey, and more like the dragon that he is. "Tea," he murmurs.

Childe smooths a thumb over the beaten paper bag. "Yeah, but like I said, it's absolute shit. You know it's bad when it makes me cringe."

Zhongli reaches out to pluck the parcel from his hand. His fingers linger against his skin, dragging over his wrist. And then the touch is gone, fleeting. Zhongli opens the door to his flat with the simple turn of a key.

He wonders if Childe still has his copy.

"I wonder what you could possibly want to talk about?"

It is Childe's turn to look bewildered, caught in a moment of vulnerability as his expression crumples. "Everything," he says. "Zhongli, there's so much that you don't know."

Zhongli stands in his entryway, palm pressed flat against the wooden door. A thousand things go through his mind, but the one that sticks out is the way that Childe watches him back like a wounded deer.

It will be awkward. But it will be worth it.

"All right," he says then. "For old time's sake."