You could be the moon and still be jealous of the stars. - Gary Allan

Lumine cleared her throat and reached for his stack of pages. "So, what are your terms?" She asked brightly, with a prim and perfunctory smile. "I'm probably fine with them but I suppose I ought to know what they are."

"Girlie, please," he said. His eyes were wide with an expression that looked like a cross between rapture and horror. He looked like he couldn't quite decide if he wanted to kneel before her and beg, or back away and start nailing planks over the doors and windows. "You worry me. Have a stronger sense of self-preservation about this." She must have looked confused, she assumed, because he gave an aggrieved sigh and explained himself. "If someone wants you to sign a contract with them, be a little more wary of it."

She snorted and crossed her arms over her chest – but under her bust, and she smirked a little when she caught him glancing down from her face and back up. Teasing Childe was fun. Especially dangling something just out of reach. He would just make the most desperate, hungry expression, like a baby staring at… well, the same thing that he was looking at. Boobs.

She gently lobbed a curveball at him. "Especially if it's a suspicious person like you, huh?"

To his credit, he promptly nodded and gave up on trying to sneak glances down the front of her dress. "Especially."

Well, that didn't sit right with her. He agreed too easily. She frowned and leaned across the table and touched his forearm. "I don't actually think you're a suspicious person, I was kidding."

The look on his face suggested that his opinion differed, but he offered no rebuttal.

"Obviously, yes, I know you're a Harbinger. And I'm against the Fatui – as in, I have opposed most of the actions they, as an organization, have taken in Tevyat. Basically, when your team gets involved, I tend to disagree with their means and their ends." She watched him recline further in his chair as if trying to recoil from her without actually increasing the space between them, but his expression was remorseless. He merely nodded, granting her point. She continued. "And yeah, you unchained Osial and almost let thousands of innocent people die, I haven't forgotten that. However. As a person, individually, when it doesn't relate to the Archons, I like to think you're pretty trustworthy."

"Gosh, thanks." His smile was tart and there was an underlying scoff in his voice.

'Did I have to bring all that up?' She thought to herself. Hadn't she just been relieved, moments ago, when she asked for his honesty, and he agreed to give it, and no feelings got hurt in the process? He didn't fling, 'oh, so you need to put a truth-telling clause in the contract because I'm Fatui scum' in her face, so why did she have to throw it into his?

Lumine knew she was fucking this up, she wasn't saying it right, and this is exactly why she usually just let Paimon make all the long statements. With Paimon doing all the talking, Lumine only had to be responsible for chiming in with the, "Yes I can definitely defeat that for you"s.

Words weren't her strong suit.

They were Aether's.

Even if they said the exact same thing, he would have sounded sincere and complimentary. He wouldn't already feel jaded after spending a single day trying to navigate Ritou. He could just charm the shoes off the Inazumans like Thoma did, because that's just how people reacted to Aether.

He was the sanguine sibling, the one born with social graces and naturally selfless sensibilities. She was melancholic and choleric in turns, and stuck now, alone, wearing his ill-fitting cast-offs. Pretending to be her brother whenever she needed to right a wrong, make a stand, or be the hero.

But she shouldn't have to be Aether here. This was her very own personal, private realm. Her sanctuary. Sure, she had shown many of her friends the Teapot, but it meant something that she was willing to bring Childe back and meet him here repeatedly, alone. Lumine spent her days slicing off slivers of herself and handing them out to people, being whoever they need her to be, just for that minute. Out and about in Tevyat, that's what she had to do. In here was supposed to be different… This is the only place she could safely be whole.

Besides, even if she wanted to do her Aether Impression, she didn't have a model for how he would behave in this kind of scenario. And it might throw things off: Tartaglia was interested in her, damn it, not in what she could do to help him.

(As far as she knew. And there was that little voice of doubt, always holding back. Seeing the crash coming even before the fall. Spinning contingencies in the background. She'd marveled on other worlds at how Aether, her twin, could be so different from her as to never seem to have a backup plan. He simply won whatever he set his mind to and seldom, if ever, appeared to consider the alternative.)

Childe had gone from bitter to pensive. If she didn't interrupt him and plead her case, would he get up and leave? Say this was a mistake to begin with?

No. She had to learn Electro from him.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I could have phrased that better. But please believe me: I wouldn't have invited you into my home like this, told you to come and go as you pleased, and sought you out for help, if I thought you were someone I needed to be careful around. Okay? Regardless of whatever other skeletons are in our closets. I'm still at this table, still talking about training with you, even considering we – considering what you warned me about."

There was some tension lingering in his body language, but he laughed and shook his head. Childe seemed to want to drop that line of thought and move on from it entirely.

"Right, well, even so," he said. "Please look over these terms carefully, and if there's anything objectionable, point it out."

He watched her slide the papers closer and start reading.

And he tried not to dwell on anything she had said in the last few minutes.

The terms as laid out before her were pretty standard – or as close to boilerplate as they could be, given the circumstances.

She was barred from telling anyone about the training, obviously. She should neither repeat the contents of the lessons nor describe the nature of their agreement to any third parties. Even if questioned about her training, she must not actively or tacitly expose his identity. She would take responsibility for ensuring Paimon abided by the same non-disclosure requirements.

Then four embarrassing pages practically ripped from Zhongli, with just enough words changed that they weren't verbatim copies. A long, dry definition of consent as it pertains to sexual activity. A terrible paragraph about contraceptives and prophylactics, basically stating that it was each individual's responsibility to look after their own sexual health. That was followed by a thoroughly awful, yet explicitly non-exhaustive list of places that sold products to prevent pregnancy and the spread of STDs.

Notable highlights:

Ying-er had a lotion, and you would know you had the right one because it came with a booklet of instructions and a borderline obscene illustrated diagram.

There was a tea made out of the bark from Silk Flower bushes. Brewing instructions could be found in an addendum to Customs of Liyue, Vol. 3.

There were a few terse lines about some horrifying thing that could be made out of boar's intestines and fitted over the penis prior to intercourse.

It was all rather off-putting.

But not, perhaps, as unsettling as the section that followed immediately after.

The sexual health section had a sort of clinical aloofness that allowed it to be read in the detached voice of a bored medical practitioner. It was wordy and numbing and easier to skim over than actually read each and every word.

The next section had no such advantages. It had wide-open spaces – breaks between paragraphs and blank spots within sentences – intended to be filled in at a later date.

And aside from the ominous white, empty areas, the page was filled with painfully uncomfortable phrases and their brutally sincere explanations.

"Safeword." "Soft/hard limit." "Switching."

He was trying to subtly adjust his posture and relieve some of the strain in his pants when he saw her get to the first page of the sexual half of the contractual terms.

She paused.

And then Childe had to watch Lumine glance up at him, her giant, golden eyes filled with a long list of unspoken questions.

His brain kicked into overdrive to figure out answers before she could ask those questions. He was making a hundred split-second decisions simultaneously, trying to decide in advance how honest to be. Knowing she would immediately catch him if he tried to lie. The truth, then.

He remembered belatedly that he had promised that anyway.

"So… who wrote this contract?"

'Zhongli,' he thought instantly, but his jaw just worked soundlessly as he mouthed the word.

As an aside, Zhongli's original document had no mention of pregnancy. It was a liaison between two men. Pregnancy was, as the saying goes, off the table.

So Childe had personally figured out exactly how to include pregnancy-related verbiage that matched the voice and word choice of the STD warnings. He had to reread the entire packet and imagine it wasn't supposed to be about or for a gay man. Edited out every last word that wouldn't make sense to a female audience.

When Zhongli first sent the damn thing, Childe had thought it was a coverless book, like some kind of printed love story as a weirdly romantic gift. It helped that Zhongli seemed like exactly the kind of old-fashioned weirdo who would know the appropriate offering to give a man after an over-the-pants handjob.

Then he had unwrapped it and discovered an idiotically long contract. The kind of insultingly excessive, painfully tedious, logically recursive bit of writing, that set his very teeth on edge for how sheerly unreadable it was.

And Childe sat there, filling it out and seething, and thought, 'This dick better be good.'

So that was why he was also wanted to answer, 'I wrote it,' even though his contribution was merely one concept out of many. He had assembled it. He curated it. It was a collection of stolen ideas, but he was the collector. He went through that whole thing and only forced her to face the distilled bits. That had to count for something.

Yet try as he might, he could not make a sound.

The first thing Lumine thought when she read through the terms was, 'Oh, so he was worried about the Fatui finding out that he had divulged their secret methods.'

She wasn't sure how to feel about that, but she had the most distinct impression that she shouldn't have been surprised.

Then Lumine got to the next few pages and her nervous energy was so intense that it manifested as a palpable need for actual, physical wiggles and squirming. She could feel her muscles twisting themselves into knots as she tensed with the urge to writhe. The sensation was so strong, she wanted to call it bruising and searing simultaneously – she was getting crushed to death and burned alive all at once.

And she felt oddly cheated: she had heard that arousal could feel like this, but she'd never experienced it before, and she now felt like she had been missing out all this time.

That loss ached like a familiar absence, a bodily emptiness. She also happened to notice a bit of an unmistakably slick, sliding sensation when she shifted in her chair.

She needed to focus on anything else. 'Stop, before he notices what a shivering pervert you are, sitting over here getting horny over paperwork. Quit!'

That internal scolding calmed her just enough to let her see the words on the page again. Once faced with them, she had to acknowledge an obvious truth: Childe would not have come up with all of this on his own.

Was it… a standardized form? Something the Fatui kept on hand for training purposes? Was Childe already someone else's "trainer" and she was just joining a rotation? Surely… Probably not, right? He was a Harbinger, he was way too busy to just train any random person… She wanted to ask but something sealed her lips. Maybe the intensity in his expression, maybe just fear of the answer, but she couldn't bring herself to voice the question.

Safer to assume that he was – and maybe he had other sexual partners on the side, hence the importance of the whole page of warnings about transmittable diseases. She should let the sharp pinch in her throat be a reminder to not become greedy. She was already asking a lot from him, having him divulge all this secret information. She shouldn't also want him to be exclusive with her. That would exceed the scope of their relationship.

Um. Right, the words on the page. Something wasn't right, Childe didn't write this. Who did?

Lumine looked up, and Childe was staring back at her. Her legs pressed tightly together, and she had to consciously will the tendons and ligaments to relax.

She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. "So… Who wrote this contract?"

His mouth opened. Nothing came out. He closed it again.

Childe's facial expressions still came with subtitles but now it was just a jumble of letters.

She nodded. Okay, that's as much of an answer as she really expected to get. She went back to the contract and kept reading. And yeah, the sex-related pages were embarrassing, until she got through reading them and made it to the other side. The last page talked about notice in advance of contract termination, then there was a summary of all of the warnings he had given her, and finally, space for signatures.

Lumine skimmed over the acknowledgments about pain and discomfort and let her eyes linger on a neatly-written line item that just read, 'increased likelihood of arousal, intimacy, or activity of a sexual nature.'

It was terribly awkward to see it in writing, but at least Zhongli wasn't sitting at this table with them. She couldn't imagine Zhongli in a sexual situation at all, even knowing how old he was, he just screamed 'virgin hermit' to her.

"Okay, this is all fine." She picked up the brush and signed on the line beside her printed name. She looked up and caught him gaping at her. "Oh, you don't have to answer that question from earlier. It's not really related to the training, so you're not obligated to be honest about that."

He almost looked like he wanted to argue, but then he just let his shoulders drop and signed the contract himself.

"Great," she said. "Now can we start?"

If his face stayed in that shocked expression for too long, wouldn't it get stuck that way? He shook his head and then leaned forward and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"No, it's getting late. We'll pick up with the first lesson next time," he said, sounding exhausted.

She groaned but didn't want to argue with him. Instead, she rubbed her eyes, laid her head down on the desk, and dreaded going back to Inazuma to deal with Werner and the International Trade Association. She had hoped that at least this would feel like it was going somewhere. "We spent all day on paperwork, can't you give me a little intro lesson? A demonstration? Some homework, even?"

Moments later he was scrawling something on a blank piece of paper. She didn't turn her head, so she heard the sounds and felt the vibrations through the wood of the table, rather than saw what he wrote. He leaned over and tucked the note into her hand.

When he spoke, his voice sounded unnaturally calm. "These are book titles. Go find them at Wanwen bookstore. Ask Jifang if you can't find them. Read them. I'll see you in a few days."

She turned slightly to look up and saw no light reflected in his eyes, hardly any emotion visible on his face. He stared down at her with an expression too blank to even be called impassive. Lumine opened her mouth to ask what was wrong, and he turned away and left the room.

He walked all the way downstairs, out the door, off the porch, and didn't stop until he was out of her realm entirely.

And yes, that was worryingly distant behavior for him. He seemed more like the long, drawn-out goodbyes type. But that entire train of thought was derailed when she focused on the titles he'd written on that little bit of spare paper and actually processed what they said.

The first was "Basic Principles of Physics: For Beginners", and the other was "Purini's Introduction to Anatomy".

By the time he walked away from the table, he needed time away from her more than he needed air to breathe. They had been sitting there for well over an hour. It had gone from late afternoon to early evening; the light had changed as the sun began to set.

It had felt like only a few seconds. It felt like days.

Hours later he had the thought he had not been willing to think in her presence.

He would simply have to reject her. He would smile and play pretend, to the best of his ability, wearing the only mask he had: acting like everything was okay. That she had nothing to be concerned about.

That was the only performance he had ever been able to fool anyone with; false normalcy. He would just let her believe that everything was fine and the lessons were progressing smoothly. She would be nudged into assuming that, at some point, later down the line, they would be in a situation where sex felt like a natural conclusion. He'd lead her to expect that point would come any day now. Then he would just have to surprise her with an abrupt end to the lessons and congratulate her on her graduation. Fully trained, in accordance with the contract, but with her virginity intact.

At least where he was concerned. She could fuck anyone else she wanted. He just could not let himself be available to her sexually.

And she would hate him for leading her on and she would never want to see him again and that, difficult as it would be for him to accept, would be in her best interest.

He was the monster who unleashed an apocalypse on Liyue. He didn't just paint a target, he fired a weapon.

It didn't matter that he was completely certain that Morax was alive and watching, and that the Geo Archon would step in before his city got destroyed. No amount of confidence in Morax's survival or strength justified risking the lives of everyone in the Harbor, because what if he had been wrong? He couldn't bring them all back to life if Osial drowned the babies in their cradles and washed every last body away.

And even aside from that, it was irrelevant that his family still lived in Snezhnaya. So what? So they were all there, every day. So their lives were in the Tsaritsa's hands. What, like if she ever detected a hint of his disloyalty, they'd be in danger? When nothing stood between her and them? Noooo. Who cares? He shouldn't have obeyed her orders, no matter how much blind faith he had to have in his Archon. Protecting strangers was more important than guaranteeing the safety of his parents and siblings.

So he shouldn't touch the traveler, ever, because he was so evil he had done something so unforgivable as playing his part in a plot where Rex Lapis and La Signora conspired to trick him into doing exactly what they wanted. If that's how she saw it, there was no need for nuance.

He was a bad guy. It had never felt so derogatory to call himself that.

She cared that he risked all those lives in Liyue Harbor, even if none of them were ultimately harmed. She didn't care that his dream had always been to be a fairytale folk hero, and all of his darkness came from his failure to attain that ideal. You know, like how if he couldn't be the perfect good guy, he'd just embrace being the best bad guy around? And if he wasn't the hero he could still be a major character, maybe even a deuteragonist, as long as his goals were clear yet open to interpretation?

And after all, as a knight-like fellow

(his original nickname had been, "Young Master," and then, "Sir," but he was too baby-faced, so they landed on "Childe." But they had meant, "Sir," like, "Sir Ajax, Honorably Knight and Loyal Subject of Her Majesty The Queen")

one of the elements of chivalry was to pledge his oath to a noblewoman and follow her every command. Did she know that?

And did she know that chivalric knights were also known to love beautiful women, the way he loved Lumine?

Oh. There it was.

He loved her.

And if he touched her, knowing that she was only allowing him to in exchange for something, and that she was repulsed by him, and that she wished she didn't have to let him touch her… That would break him. He wouldn't be able to go on.

So he was preparing his fake, apologetic smile for the day when he might have to shrug and push her away and say he, "wasn't interested in her," and that she, "wasn't his type."

Knowing that would make her cry, question herself, and hate him for humiliating her.

Because he would rather her feel that pain and confusion. That was a teaspoon, compared to the mountains of agony they both had in store if he gave in and loved her the way he wanted to. Openly. Requitedly. Passionately.

The risk of rejection wasn't even a real concern. Much more real was the fear that she would reciprocate, and then she would be ripped away from him. They would go up against the Tsaritsa and lose, as two mortals against an Archon. Or they'd go against Celestia and be annihilated.

And maybe that was his fate regardless, but it didn't have to be hers.

He'd keep his dick in his pants and his hands to himself and his heart unbroken.

Somehow.