CW: Angst
"You aren't ready for this."
Searing words that stung at the moment. Childe's beautiful, handsome face split by anger and longing. He so rarely says things truly meant to cut but that night is burned eternally into Zhongli's mind.
Zhongli carries so very few scars but this one remains a searing gash on his heart.
"You aren't ready for this, for us."
Wrong. Zhongli has been ready for Childe since the moment they first met in the harbor. Lingering looks, whispered words in the night, sheets warmed by body heat; Zhongli's heart has been stretched wide by the devotion that he feels. In the morning, it is not Liyue he thinks of, but Childe and that rapscallion smile, how he laughs, those rough-cut callouses that drag over Zhongli's skin, raising gooseflesh.
"I am," murmurs Zhongli to no one. His teapot is empty save for himself, having stolen away after that blustery morning at the port.
Just the beginning of winter when the afternoons are still warm but the end of the year chill creeps in. Early mornings crusted with frozen dew, mid-afternoons underneath a bright sun, late nights on the porch, warning their veins with wine and fire water.
Zhongli isn't sure when those moments became all that he breathed. He wonders when he stopped living for the sake of just retirement and started because he truly yearned.
"You lied to me, Zhongli."
He did not, he was wary—wary for Childe's sake. Childe was sent to cause chaos and Zhongli didn't mean to fall so deep. He cannot crawl out of the hole carved by his love, so the bitter-tang taste of his regret sits heavy on his tongue.
It was the right choice but sometimes, the right choices are not the correct ones.
Childe laughed that day at the dock, dragging a hand through his hair. "It isn't that you are Morax, or that you had a plan, or that I was a part of it. Zhongli, it's that you didn't tell me. You aren't ready for this, for us."
Zhongli stood there, just off the dock, his boots solidly locked onto the ground. Stubborn in his old age, ancient in the way that he thinks he knows better. He does—but perhaps not with this. Hindsight speaks volumes when he looks back on the past.
He should have thought like Childe but he was too distracted by kisses, laughter, and the way Childe's cheek fit perfectly against his thigh when Zhongli would read to him aloud. Zhongli's eyes slip closed as he thinks, remembering, living in those stolen moments.
His teapot is too quiet without Childe's raucous, overbearing disposition. It reminds Zhongli too much of the old days, the ones thrown away so he could retire back into just mere godhood.
Childe pulled him close even as everyone on the dock stared. His glove was cold against Zhongli's hot neck, foreheads pressed together as they shared chilly breaths that puffed between them. "Gods, I love you, but you lied to me Zhongli." Words upon words about Zhongli's ill-advised decisions, and then—
"You aren't ready for this, for us—but when you are, I'll be waiting."
His tea is too cold and too bitter, steeped for too long because he hadn't paid it mind. Zhongli stares at it, thinking. The teapot suffocates with its silence and it's easy to imagine that Childe's head will pop around the corner.
"You were right," admits Zhongli, finally. All that anger, annoyance, depression, and love—it's been lifted from his shoulders as he thinks of penning a letter that is way past due.
It has been a year. Or maybe two—or has it been three? Has time slipped through his fingers unbidden, like sand in a timepiece, having gone unnoticed?
Zhongli is not good with time.
He wonders if he's too late.
