Chapter Text
There couldn't be anything more boring in life than Lumine's closing shift at the coffee shop. Hardly any people came in to get espresso at 11pm aside from college students that were facing down an all nighter, or two or three young EMTs starting their graveyard shift, relegated to the midnight hours by lack of seniority. Honestly, so few people came in the last few hours she didn't know why Zhongli bothered to keep the place open that late; it couldn't be profitable. Her landlord slash boss was an extremely… eclectic man. It was generally best to not worry about it too much. He was old money; really old money, and he owned a sizable chunk of the block she lived on. That meant he was in a position to do whatever he wanted.
However, there had been an interesting new addition to Lumine's utterly boring closing shift recently. A red head, probably around her age, started coming in most nights and staying up until Lumine had to politely ask him to leave, to which he always acquiesced, with a smile and a quick 'night!'. He only ever ordered black coffee (though she knew she saw him add sugar once or twice when he thought she wasn't looking), always tipped her 15%, and headed back to his seat in the corner of the shop with a commercial worthy smile or a wink. He'd stay there working on something on an expensive looking laptop, fussing with his fluffy red hair, and occasionally coming up to get a refill of liquid energy. They exchanged standard customer service pleasantries; she didn't know much about him.
(The second time she got his change was when she first realized how blue his eyes were. Deep, reflecting nothing like a stagnant pool of water. )
Her mystery guest had been coming in for two weeks when she finally decided to ask him his name. Normally, it would have been easy enough to get his name from his credit card, but he always paid in cash. She walked over to where he was sitting, his eyes dully reflecting the light off of his screen, vacant and bored. She hummed and placed a fresh cup of coffee in front of him.
"Here. A fresh cup, on the house tonight."
He raises his brow in confusion at first, a bit startled by her sudden approach, but his expression relaxed quickly and he flashed that stupid smile at her. She didn't think it was cute. Not even a bit.
(Okay, he was kind of cute. His fluffy hair and the faded line of freckles that you could only see up close helped.)
"What's the occasion girlie?" He asked, beaming at the simple gesture.
Girlie?! Her goodwill to her strange late night companion took a severe hit. Ouch. Stupid dumb smile.
"My name is Lumine," She replied, tapping on her name tag, a bit harsher than intended, but really, he deserved it for calling her girlie, "and I was hoping to get yours. You've been coming in every night for two weeks and I like to know the regular's names."
She thought she saw him switch whatever tab he was looking at on his laptop, but she didn't pay it much mind. If he was writing erotic sci-fi werewolf alien stories, then good for him. Lord knows she had friends just as eccentric. Cringe was dead, among other things, as Hu Tao so often reminded her.
"Childe." He said happily, leaning to his right in a relaxed position. "Nice to meet you, Lumine."
-----
Childe, of course, already knew Lumine Viatrix's name, as well as her brother's. He also knew her class schedule (astronomy major, so she had to be smart right?) and the fact that she lived in the apartment right above the cafe itself that Zhongli owned.
It hadn't been terribly difficult to find out information on her while he was working, though he had no particular reason to; he was just curious, maybe even a little bored.
(Her being rather cute and feisty had nothing to do with it, of course, or her honey colored eyes and hair spun out of golden thread.)
The cafe was close to his apartment and had a shockingly fast internet connection. That, and its steady supply of admittedly, very tasty coffee, made it an excellent choice for a pseudo office space. He also couldn't help but find his blonde barista good entertainment; sometimes she'd curse out the espresso machine when it wasn't cooperating, threatening to hit the inanimate object. Other times he'd catch her making the funniest, most scrunched up face when annoying customers came in (a group of five frat boys that grossly overestimated how much caffeine they could handle being the most recent). She could change her expressions on a dime. After she'd introduced herself and gotten his name, a sort of camaraderie formed between them. Sometimes she'd throw him an exasperated glance, seeking some solace in the fact that someone else had to put up with her irritating customers. All he could do in response was smile back, or hold back a snicker. Once they had a conversation entirely in pantomime while an angry recently friend-zoned businessman rambled out his whole life story to Lumine while she made his latte, not paying attention to his surroundings even a bit.
Their charades ended when Childe gestured rudely to the man and ran his finger across his throat with his tongue out dramatically; Lumine couldn't help herself and a laugh sputtered out, which evidently, was not the correct response to whatever the man had been rambling about. He left with his drink in a huff, leaving Lumine and Childe to share a good laugh at his expense.
(Childe double checked to see if the jackass was on his list; unfortunately he wasn't, but maybe he'd pay him a visit anyways. People like that tended to have skeletons in their closet and you only needed one kidney anyway.)
And so, the combination of good coffee and a cute barista led to Childe staying there till the place closed at 11:30, taking care of the boring work of his otherwise fun job. He really couldn't stand paperwork, but after his last, lengthy scolding from Signora about him being sloppy and making the secretaries jobs a nightmare, Childe decided to get everything done early just to avoid getting scolded like a… well, child, again.
Noting the time, he placed his things back in his bag before approaching Lumine, who absentmindedly mopped a section of the floor she'd already cleaned, clearly bored out of her mind.
"Hey, do you walk home by yourself every night?" Childe finds himself asking, even though he already knows she just heads up into the residential part of the building. It was a pretty good arrangement she had.
"Why do you ask?" She replies, not cold or hostile, but refreshingly blunt. He's impressed, really; being cautious helped you keep all your organs in your body.
"Just curious mostly." He shrugged, watching as she moved on to do some weird cleaning ritual on the espresso machine. "I mean, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit concerned; there've been all those weird disappearances here lately."
Lumine shoots him an odd look and he has trouble reading her expression, though he was eager to see her reaction. Probably a bit more than he should have been. What exactly did she think about Liyue's unfortunate circumstances? The Fatui's reach was far and wide.
"I've already gotten the whole spiel from my brother," she sighed, "but trust me, I don't really have much trouble getting back to my place every night."
Her brow furrowed in the way that it always did when she was thinking about something, clearly trying to decide whether or not to tell him where she lived, pondering if they were close enough for personal details yet. It definitely wasn't cute.
(It was super, super cute.)
"I live really close by and security's good. Should I be worried about you, Childe?" She responded with a smirk, turning the question on him.
He laughed and waved her playful jab off. "Nah, you should always bet on me in a fight."
"Oh, so you're a tough guy then?" She said, amused as she crossed her arms.
Childe smirked and stepped closer to her, tilting his head down to meet her eyes. She was letting him get closer to her lately."Possibly the toughest."
"A tough guy that puts sugar in his black coffee while he thinks no one's watching?" Lumine fired back.
Oh, she was observant too. As attractive as that was, being too observant was a liability when it came to keeping all your organs.
"Oh, have you been watching me?" He hummed in his best sing-song voice. One of the things he'd learned about Lumine over the past few weeks was that it was both easy and altogether too fun to get her flustered. She looked cute with her eyebrows furrowed and her cheeks dusted red, pouting indignantly.
"There's not much else to watch when there's literally no one else in the shop. Don't flatter yourself."
"Hey, I love flattering myself."
"You would, wouldn't you?"
"Obviously. Want some company while you close?" Childe snickered and asked the question that had really been hiding on his tongue. He always left while Lumine officially closed the shop and got everything sorted but…
She raised an eyebrow at him before resting her chin against the mop with a playful smile.
"Sure, as long as you promise not to break anything."
"Pinkie promise!"
"What are you, five?"
—
A week passed with Childe staying through her close when she felt something off. Not with her customer, but more like with the night itself. She wasn’t one to put much stock into unscientific premonitions, but there was something in the air that evening that just made the hairs on her neck stand at attention.
It wasn’t as though anything bad had happened; it was an average slow evening at the cafe, and Childe was sitting in his corner working as usual, half slouched in his chair as he typed away.
(She asked him the other day what he was working on; apparently he worked for a debt collection agency. It didn’t really seem to fit him, but Lumine couldn’t blame anyone for taking whatever work came their way.)
She was starting to close things down as closing time approached, when a rather scraggy looking man with a wild look in his eyes shoved open the doors. He didn’t even spare Lumine a passing glance before he spotted Childe, marching purposefully over to where her late night customer sat. He looked up and greeted the man with a smile, only to be met with a colorful string of expletives (Lumine hand even known that was an expletive; did people actually say that? She made a mental note to look it up later).
She kept an eye on the situation, slowly moving to grab the bat that was hidden behind the counter for emergencies. Naturally, the cafe was too old to have one of those fancy ‘call the cops’ buttons, but Lumine was fine with a bat, and she was more qualified than your average person when it came to these situations. Overqualified, some might say, not that it was something she kept at the top of her CV.
The conversation between the two men escalated, though Lumine couldn’t hear what they were saying. Well, it was more that she could hear the intruder perfectly fine; Childe somehow managed to keep a steady measured tone the entire time, still wearing a shit eating grin with a wicked look in his eyes she wasn't familiar with. She slipped out from behind the counter, bat in hand, and approached the two carefully. The big guy was far too worked up to notice her, though she did briefly make eye contact with Childe, a quick cold glance that left Lumine feeling very confused as to what Childe’s plan was; he certainly didn't seem to be defusing the situation.
It probably hadn’t involved getting punched in the face, even though that’s exactly what happened. Childe reeled back, wiping a smear of blood away from his mouth with a near feral look in his eyes that sent shivers down her spine. There wasn’t any time to process that though (and she didn't really want to anyways); a customer had just been assaulted. She moved quickly, catching the large intruder off guard, in a weirdly practiced fashion, before gripping her bat (making sure her form was correct of course, God forbid she pulled a muscle), before slamming the hardened aluminum straight against the man’s skull. He went down like a popped balloon, crumpling onto the ground, hopefully unconscious. She let out a held breath before dropping the bat and moving over to Childe, who was staring at her with wide eyes, though he seemed… happy? That couldn't be right. That was not the expected reaction.
"Childe, are you alright?" Lumine asked, trying to get a better look at his split lip.
"Oh, I am extremely alright." He replied happily, grinning all the while with his lip slowly trickling blood like a broken water fountain running up a water bill.
"... That kind of response makes me think you lost a few brain cells."
"No it's because you-" Childe suddenly coughed into his hand. "Because you saved me. That was amazing, seriously."
(He was very happy he caught himself before he blurted out something lascivious. Most normal people didn't tend to share his sadomasochistic tendencies. Most people were boring.)
Lumine opened her mouth to respond when the big idiot lying on the ground groaned, slowly coming to his senses. Childe had half a mind to kick him until he broke a few bones, but Lumine beat him to it, quickly delivering a well placed palm strike which thoroughly knocked the man out cold.
Childe had to hold onto the table to stop himself from falling over. That was easily the hottest thing he'd seen all year.
--
"Ekatarina?'
"Hm?"
"How should I ask a girl out?"
His coworker spat some of the electric green energy drink she'd been sipping on. Luckily, they were plenty far away enough from where Vlad was working; no risk for contamination.
"You're a grown ass man, shouldn't you figure it out?"
Considering that his first gut instinct had been to tell Lumine how hot it was that she knocked a guy out cold in front of him and then scoop her up and fuck her on the counter of her coffee shop, he figured he could use a pointer or two.
"Yeah, but you have a wife so you must have some advice."
"Sure. My advice is figure it out yourself."
"You really do wound me sometimes.” Childe sighed, shoving another potato chip into his mouth. Ekaterina was one of the few people beneath him in the Fatui that he would allow to sass him. If it were anyone other than his faithful assistant he would have just gutted them and turned them into spare parts.
… though that would have made a huge mess, considering the poor idiot already split open on the floor. He continued to munch on his snack while he watched Vlad move said idiot’s liver into the icebox next to his kidneys and lungs. It’d be going faster if Childe and Ekaterina were helping of course, but they were on break, and his chips weren’t going to eat themselves.
“Where did that come from anyways? I thought you didn’t have ‘time’ for dating.” Ekatarina followed up, wrinkling her nose at the unnatural stale and sterile air of the warehouse.
“Well, I am a very busy man. But when you see a girl punch a guy in the throat… well, you just have to make time.”
"So that's what gets you off? Go figure."
"I like a woman that isn't afraid to toss me around a little."
"Uh, guys…"
"Huh? What's up Vlad?"
"I-I think that's everything." The new guy answered nervously.
"Oh. You're right! Good work Vlad." Childe chirped, throwing his now empty bag of chips into the trash. They really were lucky Zhongli let them use some of his properties to do their dirty work. It gave them a lot more wiggle room; he wouldn't be able to eat chips if they were at a random crime scene; too much potential evidence. The entire operation could be derailed by a single, delicious salt and vinegar potato chip.
Probably. That's what happened on those true crime shows, right? But this way was the best. They'd grab whoever their target was and spirit them off to the warehouse, where their debts would summarily be repaid by the (un)lawful seizure of their organs. He personally never really cared about who he killed, though they generally weren't very good people. Good people generally didn't get themselves involved in back market debt dealing and trade. The work was good money and he got into some excellent scraps; it was a great job really.
Childe walked over to the tarped part of the room, the plastic film underneath his feet squeaking with every step, careful to avoid getting any blood on his work boots (a difficult task, but not impossible. The Fatui were nothing if not meticulous about their work. He and Vlad lifted the now full cooler, easily heavy enough to be a two person job, considering that it contained a good chunk of a person in it, and headed down to the loading dock where Ekatarina would be waiting with the totally-not-an-illegal-organ-transporting van, gassed up and ready to go. Together they got the cooler in the cold back, where Vlad also had to sit (you know, seniority and all that), while Childe slid into the passenger side of the van and unwrapped a candy bar.
"Seriously? Show tunes again? Childe groans, his ears crinkling up as he hears Ekatarina's choice of music.
"My turn, my choice."