Chapter Text
Childe must not have heard him right. He thinks he’s delusional. Perhaps he drank too much, or maybe the heat of the Jueyun peppers went to his head. No, no. Zhongli is looking at him with that kind of earnest expression that shows he doesn’t realize that what he said has ground the gears in his head to a full stop. And damn, if Childe feels like his brain has entirely overloaded.
By the Tsaritsa, is he for real? One hundred fucking years?
“You don’t, you know,” Childe explains slowly. He makes a crude gesture with his hands. This is not the kind of polite conversation they should be having at Wanmin. Really, it’s not one they should be having at all. But Zhongli dropped it so casually, he’d be hard pressed not to bite.
If only out of burning curiosity. Ha, who the hell is he kidding? Childe has a vested interest in the man’s sex life.
Zhongli’s face is totally blank. There’s nothing going on up there, no recognition of what he is trying to hint at, and dammit, if he doesn’t find the way he cocks his head in confusion so- fucking- cute.
Childe leans halfway across the table. His voice hidden beneath his hand.
“Jerk off.”
“That is a colloquial term, yes? For masturbation?” Zhongli announces with the same tone he’d wax on about proper seasonal cultivation techniques for silk flowers.
Childe nearly chokes. Actually, he does.
“Are you quite alright, Childe?”
Zhongli reaches out to him. All it takes is a punch to the chest and he’s sputtering out a mess of words. “No! Is it necessary to announce it so loudly?” He’s sure this is going in Ekaterina’s report. “This isn’t exactly appropriate conversation.”
“These things are perfectly natural. You mustn’t be embarrassed.”
Zhongli will be the death of him. If he wasn’t convinced of it before, he sure is now.
The tabletop, aged bamboo harvested from Wuwang or so Zhongli had explained earlier, looks like an awfully tempting surface to bash his head into with the direction of this conversation.
“This isn’t about me. It’s about you.” About the casual revelation that Zhongli has not cum in over a century. If he was still an Archon, Childe might have found it farfetched but possible. But now, given his current situation. Uh, ouch. It’s nearly incredulous. “You’re for real, though? Not once, never?”
Zhongli takes a long drink.
Really, the God of Geo? There must be no shortage of mortal or adepti willing to jump into bed with him. And even since he’s been masquerading as a human, plenty have taken interest in the handsome, enigmatic consultant to the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor.
Even one Snezhnayan ex-pat whose found himself lingering longer in this city than he ever intended.
“I have not taken a lover in many years, and to sate your curiosity- no, I have not partaken in any acts of self-pleasure either.” His eyes glint in the lantern light, amused. “Do not look so shocked. As an Archon, it is not the same.”
“You’re not an Archon anymore. You’re as good as human. Flesh and bone. Chained to your urges. You have them. Don’t you, Zhongli?”
Childe feels his breath catch in his throat. There’s a break in the impasse Childe has found himself at. Zhongli’s legs cross under the table. He shifts in his seat. The direction of his gaze flicks from blue eyes, down to his hands where Childe toys (in ever growing familiarity) with his chopsticks. Then back up. He zeroes on the exposure of skin near his collar and the slight flush that blotches up along his neck.
Childe finally coughs when the moment has stayed too long, and Zhongli averts his eyes somewhere more civil.
After a pause, he says, “I am… not interested in a casual affair. If I must take things into my own hands, then so be it. But it has yet to come to that.”
Childe doubts that. He’s known Zhongli in his human form for upwards of a year. How long he’s actually occupied it, he’s not sure.
“Do you feel desire? Is that something you are capable of?”
“Yes. I feel things just as you.”
“Has no one piqued your interest?”
“I have been preoccupied. There is always time. I am a patient man.”
“You’re mortal now. You don’t have a millennia to wait around.” Zhongli appears yet to grasp the concept of time, just as he neatly avoids the necessity of having a wallet. All is well and good when Childe is here to pick up the slack.
It’s easy to think, to picture Zhongli in such a compromising light. It makes his imagination spiral, but its not like he doesn’t already have a repertoire to work off of.
“You know,” Childe teases in a long drawl. “The first one after a hundred-year dry spell, that’s really going to knock you on your ass. All that tension built up. You’re like a volcano ready to blow. Don’t know how you do it. Think I’d be as good as dead.”
Childe laughs.
Zhongli touches his chin. A small furrow forms in his brow.
“You are a human of prime reproductive age.” He blanches at the phrasing. “How often do you-“
“Have sex? Get off?” He finishes before Zhongli can come up with anymore questionable terms for it. “Almost daily. The former less often. More strings to pull as you can imagine.”
He wants Zhongli to imagine. To picture what it’s like to bed him.
“Hm, interesting.”
That’s it, huh? Despite the tepid reaction, he swears the ex-archon’s face is dashed a tinge pinker.
“It’s hard being a Harbinger, having to keep your guard up. I’m sure you can understand- Archon and all. Lots of people will sleep with you for money and power. Makes it hard to truly let go. Have you ever done that? Been completely vulnerable with another, Zhongli?”
He doesn’t answer, completely preoccupied in his own head. Childe thinks he’s managed to hook him.
“You’re looking a little red. How are you feeling?”
Zhongli jerks back when his hand grazes his forehead. His eyes go wide, and his knees knock into the table. It topples his tea. The cup spills over and shatters on the floor.
“Oh, my apologies.”
“Shit, I’ll get that.” Childe scrambles for him. He drops to his knees to collect the shattered glass from the ground. From here, he carefully eyes the man next to him. “You’re distracted.”
Obviously. Intentionally, on Childe’s part.
“Apparently so, you have led my mind elsewhere, Childe.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“It is as you would say not ‘ appropriate conversation’ .”
“I am rather interested in what inappropriate thoughts you have come up with.” Childe pulls himself back to his feet. He sits against the table, hunched slightly toward Zhongli.
He gives him nothing. A stone cold façade hidden behind flickering amber. It is there that Zhongli betrays himself. Childe brushes his hair. His fingers thumb a piece of his bangs between them. It’s terribly sentimental, all things considered.
“Tell me then,” He whispers in a quiet secret. His foot nestles on the edge of Zhongli’s chair, poignantly placed between his thighs. “Have I made you hard?”
“ Ajax.” Zhongli stops him on a chillingly even keel. The inherent danger in it shoots a shiver down his spine. Childe’s face grows wilder, canines flashing in pure white.
He puts together a plan, purely on impulse.
“New contract.” Zhongli loves his contracts. And Childe would be remiss to pass this opportunity up. Even if the prospect makes him dizzy with desire. “A mutually beneficial affair. I get you to a mind-blowing human orgasm. Perhaps, a few more if we’re both amenable. And if it is satisfactory for you, I get to fuck a god. Or namely, an ex-god. You .”
Zhongli’s arms cross. He grows contemplative like this is any old business contract.
It isn’t.
“You have considered this before.”
“You picked an appealing form. Surely, that is no oversight on your part. And I enjoy your company. I don’t waste time with people I have neither interest in nor something to gain from. Is this sufficient, Zhongli? I am no stranger to you. No casual man off the street. Do you accept these terms?”
“Is this what you would call a ‘friends with benefits’ arrangement?”
Childe snorts. “Yeah, I suppose so.”
“Could it extend past the initial encounter?”
“If you wish it to, I’m willing.”
Zhongli mulls it over. Still so damn thoughtful and careful. Even with a damn boner. Not even hormones can deter a God of Contracts.
Childe doesn’t breathe for the near minute it takes him to decide.
“I accept, then.”
Oh, shit. It actually worked.