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I. The First Time – A Flower in the Snow
The first time Tartaglia was flustered, it was snowing.
Not the cruel kind of snow—sharp, wet, relentless. No, this snow was gentle. It drifted like a sigh, as though Snezhnaya itself had paused in her endless brooding to exhale a soft breath of wonder. The flakes fell in slow spirals around them, quieting the world to a hush that even war could not breach.
Lumine stood in the middle of a frozen square in Morepesok, the wind catching strands of her golden hair like threads of sunlight stolen from summer. She was staring at a stray dandelion that had somehow pushed through a crack in the ice, swaying like a tiny act of rebellion. Tartaglia—Childe, to his enemies; Ajax, to the few who knew—stood beside her with his arms crossed and his scarf flapping like a flag of blood and mischief.
“You’re staring at a weed,” he said flatly, trying not to smile.
“It’s not a weed,” Lumine replied, her voice dipped in that unbothered lilac tone that always made his brain go a little static. “It’s a wish.”
Childe blinked. “It’s a plant.”
She turned to look at him then—slowly, like a secret forming—and her eyes were lit with a kind of amusement he hadn’t earned but desperately wanted to keep. “You’re very poetic, you know.”
“I’m—what?” he asked, caught off-guard.
Her eyes twinkled. “Calling it a weed instead of a wish. That’s practically tragic.”
Tragic. Him. The Eleventh Harbinger, who once cut down six bandits with one bloodied flick and laughed through the gore. Tragic. He felt heat rise to his ears like he was a Sumeru scholar reciting love poetry in front of the Grand Sage.
“I—I wasn’t being poetic,” he stammered, then winced. “That’s not what I meant.”
“You don’t like wishes?”
“I—what? No. I mean—yes, I mean—I don’t think about them, really.” He scratched the back of his neck, suddenly aware of how tall he was and how close she stood and how the snowflakes were getting caught in her lashes like little stars. “I fight. That’s more my thing.”
“You can do both,” she said simply.
He gave a breathless, confused laugh. “What, fight and… wish?”
“Sure. Maybe you’re fighting for something, even if you don’t admit it.”
There was silence then. Not awkward, but weighty, like the pause before a snowfall that changes everything.
Childe turned his head, unable to keep looking at her. His face was definitely red now—his ears burning, his thoughts spinning like Foul Legacy might crawl out and take over just to spare him the embarrassment.
“You’re messing with me,” he muttered, though his voice lacked venom.
Lumine shrugged, still watching the flower. “Maybe.”
The wind stirred her cloak, and for one infinitesimal moment, she reached out and tucked a snowflake-laced lock of hair behind his ear. His breath caught. Not because she’d touched him—he’d been hit harder and closer before—but because it had felt tender. Like he mattered in a way that wasn’t owed, earned, or bought in blood.
The dandelion trembled between them, its seeds barely clinging on.
“Make a wish,” she said.
He shook his head. “That’s your thing.”
Her lips curled into a smile that should’ve been illegal. “Then I’ll wish for you.”
And she blew the dandelion seeds into the wind.
He was flustered for three hours. Couldn’t look her in the eye for most of it. Even Skirk would’ve laughed at how off-balance he was, and she didn’t laugh often.
Later, when they camped out in the forest and she was fast asleep beneath the stars, he glanced at her and whispered to the snow:
“I wish you knew what you’re doing to me.”
II. The Second Time – The Shirt Incident
The second time Childe was flustered, it involved laundry.
Not a battlefield. Not a duel. Not even a deadly mission gone sideways. No, the second time was painfully, horrifically domestic—and perhaps that’s what made it so mortifying.
It began in Liyue, where Lumine had insisted they take a brief break from their “chaotic murder tourism,” as Paimon eloquently phrased it. Childe had agreed, albeit reluctantly. His reasons were entirely tactical, of course. Rest was essential for optimum combat output. Stretching legs. Gathering local intelligence. Watching Lumine smile when she tried unfamiliar food. Tactical things.
They’d found a quiet guesthouse tucked between a garden and a sleepy stream, run by a kindly old woman who seemed completely unfazed by the fact that two of her guests were a known Harbinger and a walking celestial question mark.
And so, Childe—Ajax, here in disguise and off-duty—found himself standing in the small laundry courtyard, holding a wooden bucket and looking utterly and irreversibly doomed.
“You’re kidding,” he said, staring at the laundry lines like they were guillotines. “I don’t even know how to wash clothes properly.”
“You stain them often enough,” Lumine chirped from beside him. She wore a loose shirt tucked into traveling trousers, her hair braided in a relaxed, uneven plait. She looked maddeningly at peace. “It’s good training.”
“This isn’t training. This is humiliation.”
“You’re holding a bucket, not confessing your sins.”
“Same thing.”
Still, he rolled up his sleeves with the grave resignation of a man preparing to face divine judgment. His fingers fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, and when he caught Lumine glancing at him sideways, he made the mistake of smirking.
“Don’t get distracted, girlie,” he teased. “I know it’s hard, but try to focus.”
But Lumine only raised an eyebrow. “I was going to say you’ve got a huge stain on the back. You probably sat in grilled tofu.”
He froze.
“What.”
“Yep. See?” She pointed. “Right there. Tofu-shaped tragedy.”
Childe twisted, trying to see the back of his own shirt like a dog chasing its tail, then groaned in defeat. “Unbelievable. Fine. I’ll change.”
She nodded, supremely unbothered, and went back to scrubbing her own laundry at the basin.
And that was where the danger began.
Because he changed right there. Not out of arrogance, but efficiency. She wasn’t looking, after all, and they’d traveled together enough for comfort to replace modesty. The problem was, halfway through removing his shirt, she did look up.
Just a glance.
A perfectly innocent, purely accidental glance.
But Childe caught it. And Lumine caught him catching it. And suddenly there was a moment suspended between them like a blade drawn but not yet struck.
Her gaze lingered—just a second too long.
He went still.
Her eyes widened.
He flushed.
She turned away sharply, her hands attacking the laundry with newfound violence. “You’re not as muscled as you think you are.”
His ears went red.
“I never said I—what? That’s not—” He gaped. “What do you mean ‘not as muscled’? That’s a lie.”
“I’m just saying. You hype it up a lot.”
“I don’t hype anything. You looked.”
“I looked because you looked like you were losing a fight with your shirt.”
“You lingered.”
“I observed. Briefly.”
“Oh, briefly? So now it’s an academic interest?”
“Exactly.”
“Scholar of abs, are you?”
Lumine finally snorted, pressing a hand to her mouth. “Ajax, you’re blushing.”
“I’m not—!”
“You are! Oh my Archons, you actually are. This is a historic event. Write it down.”
“I’m not blushing. I’m cold. It’s the breeze.”
“It’s thirty-two degrees.”
“Wind chill factor. Very real.”
He turned away, mortified, grabbing another shirt from the drying line and nearly putting it on backwards. His hands fumbled so badly he looked like he was wrestling a sentient octopus. Lumine, of course, was still grinning behind him, not that he dared turn to see it. He was too busy pretending he wasn’t melting from the neck up.
The rest of the day passed with him sulking behind a pillar every time she smiled at him. Paimon didn’t understand why they kept elbowing each other during dinner, or why Childe refused to make eye contact for a record-breaking seven hours. Lumine was positively glowing with smug victory. She even offered him tofu during lunch the next day.
“Look,” she said sweetly. “Now you can match your shirt.”
He almost stabbed himself with a chopstick.
Later that evening, as they walked beneath Liyue’s lantern-lit sky, she finally offered him an olive branch—or rather, a peace dumpling.
“You know,” she said, handing it to him, “you are actually kind of... fit.”
He choked on the dumpling.
“Sorry, what?”
She shrugged. “You heard me.”
“You mean that? Like, not academically?”
Her smile curled like moonlight across a still lake. “Maybe.”
And just like that, he was flustered again.
Worse this time.
Because now, every time she looked at him, he couldn’t stop wondering if she was thinking about the shirtless moment or just waiting for the next opportunity to ruin him with one sentence and a smile.
Either way, she was winning.
And he was helpless to stop it.
III. The Third Time – The Letter He Didn’t Mean to Write
The third time Childe was flustered, it started with a letter and ended with him considering exile.
He blamed it on the rain.
It was one of those miserable Mondstadt days when the heavens opened and the cobblestones became rivers. Lumine had dragged him to the library, seeking “peace and quiet,” which translated to: hours of you being ignored while I drown in books and you sit there doing nothing like a very bored puppy.
Childe lasted approximately eleven minutes.
He tried reading. He tried sketching a battle plan on the back of a recipe page. He even tried engaging Paimon in a rousing game of “how many library fines would it take to bankrupt the Knights?” but was shushed by a terrifying Lisa, who somehow made a whisper sound like a guillotine.
So, naturally, Childe did what any rational, terminally bored, not-at-all-smitten-with-his-traveling-companion Harbinger would do:
He wrote her a love letter.
It started off as a joke. Honest.
The ink was wet, the page stolen from a discarded history book, and he was not being serious. It was sarcasm. A farce. A parody of a lovestruck fool.
Dear Lumine,
Today you spent four hours reading a book about Mondstadt’s agricultural exports and ignored me the entire time. I’ve never felt more seen. I think I might be in love.
A joke.
A harmless, cheeky little note.
But the pen kept moving.
You laughed when Paimon sneezed into the flower vase. You covered your mouth, but I saw it. You don’t know what that smile does to me. It’s worse than any blade, worse than Skirk’s training, worse than a Pyro Slime to the face.
He paused.
Shifted in his chair.
The library was quiet save for Lumine flipping pages and Paimon humming to herself near the cookbooks. Childe looked down at the paper.
His pen moved again. This time, slower.
I don’t know when you started making everything else dull by comparison. Maybe it was the time you punched a ruin guard in the eye. Maybe it was when you saved that street vendor in Liyue and wouldn’t let me take credit.
Another pause. He could stop. He should stop.
But…
You look at the world like it’s broken but worth saving anyway. You look at me like I’m not beyond repair. I don’t know what to do with that. I was raised to be a weapon, but around you I feel like something softer. Something human.
Don’t worry. I’ll burn this before you ever read it.
He signed it with a dramatic flourish:
Yours, fatally compromised,
Childe.
And that should have been the end of it. He folded it, tucked it between pages, and fully intended to destroy it on the way out. Catharsis. Fun. No harm done.
Except fate, it seemed, had other plans.
They returned to the inn after the rain let up, and he’d almost forgotten about the letter until the next morning when Lumine entered the room holding the very same folded page between her fingers.
Childe froze mid-toothbrush.
Lumine didn’t speak. She simply walked in, held up the paper, and asked in the most terrifyingly neutral voice he’d ever heard:
“Did you write this?”
He stared at her.
Then the letter.
Then her.
Then the toothbrush.
Then her again.
“Wh—what?” he croaked, foam trailing like a panicked cloud at the corner of his mouth.
“This,” she repeated, waving the page. “Your handwriting. Your name. Your... unhinged confessions.”
“I—I can explain—”
“You were going to burn it?”
“I meant to. I swear. It was a joke. Mostly. I mean, some of it. Not the part about the ruin guard. That was impressive. And the vendor. And maybe the part about you ruining me with your smile. But the rest was sarcasm. Probably. Mostly.”
She said nothing. Just stared.
Childe, the Eleventh Harbinger, master of masks and mayhem, stood before her shirtless, toothbrush in hand, hair a disaster, and soul rapidly leaving his body.
“This is a nightmare,” he muttered.
“You signed it,” she said.
“I was possessed.”
“By who?”
“Romantic impulses. Very rare. Probably contagious. You should keep your distance.”
“Hmm.”
She stepped closer.
He backed up so quickly he almost tripped over a chair.
“Okay, look, I know it’s weird,” he said, brushing foam off his lip. “I didn’t mean for you to read it, alright? It was just... one of those things you write to get it out of your system. Like bleeding on paper. Only less dramatic. Or more. Depends on how you read it.”
Lumine held up a hand. He went quiet.
She unfolded the letter again and read aloud:
“You look at me like I’m not beyond repair.”
He groaned. “Please, I am begging you, stop quoting me to myself—”
“I was raised to be a weapon, but around you I feel like something softer.”
“Okay, definitely never saying anything poetic again—”
“Don’t worry. I’ll burn this before you ever read it.”
Lumine finally looked up.
And smiled.
It wasn’t mocking. It wasn’t cruel. It wasn’t even smug.
It was gentle.
“I liked it,” she said simply.
Childe blinked.
“What.”
“I liked it,” she repeated. “It was honest. Dramatic. Embarrassing, sure. But sweet.”
He stared at her like she’d just announced she was defecting to the Fatui.
“Are you messing with me?”
“Nope.”
“Because this would be a really cruel time to prank me.”
She stepped forward again, now close enough that he could see the faint freckles on her nose, the way her braid had loosened overnight, the little crinkle at the corner of her eyes when she smiled like that.
“I liked it, Ajax.”
He forgot how to breathe.
“Ajax,” she said again, softer now, his real name like honey melting on her tongue.
He dropped the toothbrush.
It hit the floor with a sad, wet plop.
“I—uh—okay,” he stammered. “Okay. Um. Good. That’s good. You liked it. I mean. Yeah. That’s... wow. That’s really—are you sure?”
She reached up on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek. Light as moonlight. Quick as a secret.
“Very sure,” she whispered.
And then, because she was Lumine, and absolutely cruel, she added, “Yours, fatally compromised.”
Childe actually squeaked.
He didn’t recover for three days.
Even Paimon noticed. “Is Childe broken?”
“Possibly,” Lumine said, tossing him a smile that made his heart do twelve backflips.
And he realized then:
She hadn’t just read the letter.
She’d answered it.
IV. The Fourth Time – The Dinner Party
The fourth time was a mistake.
A grave, colossal, world-ending mistake.
The kind of mistake that only starts with the words, “We should have dinner with my friends.”
Childe should’ve known better. He had wrestled ruin guards, dined with debt collectors, and once eaten fugu that was, in hindsight, probably still alive—but nothing had prepared him for the uniquely harrowing social combat of dinner with Lumine’s friends.
Specifically, the Knights of Favonius.
And even more specifically, Kaeya.
It all began with Lumine’s innocent suggestion as they crossed Windrise one golden afternoon.
“Kaeya invited us to a dinner party.”
Childe’s first mistake was responding with: “Sure, sounds fun.”
He was distracted. Lumine’s braid had a curl loose and dancing in the wind, the sun had painted her skin in liquid gold, and the way she said “us” made something in his chest melt like Pyro slimes on a bad day.
But now, standing in the Knights’ dining hall, dressed in a pressed shirt that felt too tight, surrounded by finely carved wine glasses and floral arrangements that looked expensive on purpose, Childe was beginning to understand just how far he had miscalculated.
Kaeya greeted them with a grin so smooth it should’ve been illegal.
“Well, well, look what the wind dragged in. The golden traveler and her charming plus-one.”
Childe smiled, all teeth. “Charmed to be your plus-one. You do know that title comes with a death clause?”
“Oh? I thought you were the romantic type. You did write Lumine that adorable little letter, didn’t you?”
Childe choked on nothing.
Lumine, bless her traitorous heart, sipped her wine delicately, eyes sparkling with mischief. “Oh, don’t be shy, Childe. I’m sure Kaeya would love to hear the part about being fatally compromised.”
Amber leaned in from across the table. “Wait, this sounds like a story.”
Lisa, lounging like a cat with secrets, smirked. “How poetic.”
Venti, who hadn’t even been invited, popped up out of nowhere holding a lyre and a plate of free food. “Did someone say love letter?”
It was a massacre.
Childe, normally eloquent, silver-tongued, ready with a comeback, found himself blinking dumbly at a table full of gleeful, nosy, entirely too invested allies.
“I was under duress,” he muttered.
“Of your own heart?” Kaeya cooed.
“Or your brain?” Venti chimed.
“Or another part entirely?” Lisa added with a purr.
Lumine raised an eyebrow, and Childe decided that if there was a Pyro slime under the table, now would be an excellent time to kiss it and explode.
He tried to recover. Really, he did.
The appetizers came out—Mondstadt grape salad on crystal plates—and he seized the opportunity to reclaim dignity.
“So, how about this weather,” he said, stabbing a grape with unnecessary force. “Rainy one day, sunny the next. Makes you wonder if Barbatos is just... drunk.”
“I am, actually!” Venti called cheerfully.
Childe choked on the grape.
Lumine leaned over, patting his back in that gentle, cruel way of hers. “Careful. Wouldn’t want to be taken out by fruit.”
“Tell my family I died bravely,” he wheezed.
Amber was still giggling. “You’re really different than I expected.”
“How so?”
“I thought you’d be more... composed.”
“That was your first mistake,” Lumine said. “He’s a disaster. Just a well-dressed one.”
Childe groaned. “I am never writing another letter again.”
“You say that,” Kaeya drawled, refilling his wine glass, “but I’ve already started a collection.”
“What collection—”
Lumine, with terrifying innocence, pulled a small pouch from her satchel and handed it to Kaeya. “He’s written me three more. I thought you’d appreciate the prose.”
Kaeya opened the pouch.
Amber leaned over.
Venti, gods help him, started reading aloud.
“To my sunshine in a world of knives—”
“Today I saw a star and it reminded me of your eyes—”
“If love is a battlefield, I surrender—”
“Venti,” Childe said, voice rising in horror, “do not—”
“—my heart, my blade, my everything, forever yours, Ajax.”
The table burst into chaos.
Amber nearly fell off her chair. Lisa was cackling. Kaeya raised a toast. Venti strummed a dramatic chord. Even Jean cracked a smile in the corner, sipping from her goblet with quiet amusement.
Childe’s face burned like a Pyro Abyss Mage in a sauna.
He slumped forward, forehead thunking against the table.
“I am leaving Teyvat,” he declared into the wood. “This is it. My villain origin story.”
Lumine leaned down, whispering near his ear, “I actually liked the battlefield one.”
He turned his head slightly, peering up with one eye.
“You’re not just saying that to stop me from setting Kaeya’s ass on fire?”
“Nope.”
She smiled. Soft. Real. It wrapped around him like a warm breeze.
He sighed.
“Fine. I’ll allow the public shaming.”
“You didn’t have a choice,” she said sweetly.
He sat up, straightened his collar, and tried very hard not to look like a man whose soul had just been paraded around the dinner table like a roast boar.
After dessert (which was wine-flavored, because of course it was), Lumine reached under the table and squeezed his hand. Just once.
And that—more than the wine, more than Kaeya’s teasing, more than the unbearable poetry recital—that was what truly undid him.
Because it meant something. Something quiet. Something constant.
She hadn’t let go all night.
Later, back at the inn, Lumine pulled off her boots and glanced at him across the room.
“So,” she said casually, “about that new letter I found in your bag—”
Childe screamed into a pillow.
V. The Fifth Time — The Lantern Rite Confession
It was the night of the Lantern Rite Festival, and Liyue Harbor had transformed into a living constellation.
Paper lanterns floated like fireflies across the sky, thousands upon thousands of golden lights bobbing gently on the ocean breeze. Fireworks bloomed above like celestial flowers, their thunderous hearts echoing across the stone walls and reflecting in every glazed windowpane. Music swirled from open balconies and crowded streets, laughter spilled like wine, and the air smelled of sugar-dusted tanghulu and fried dumplings.
It was beautiful. Magical. Absolutely perfect.
So naturally, Childe was having a nervous breakdown.
“Okay,” he muttered under his breath, pacing the rooftop of the inn like a very well-dressed raccoon. “You’ve got this. You’re calm. You’re cool. You’re composed.”
He looked down at the red envelope in his hands.
The confession letter inside trembled like a leaf caught in a hurricane.
“You’re a Harbinger. You’ve fought dragons. You’ve taken a polearm to the ribs. You have been publicly roasted at a dinner party. This? This is nothing.”
He peeked over the edge of the roof.
Lumine stood below, waiting for him.
She was wrapped in a pale robe embroidered with cloud motifs and thread-of-gold lotuses. The wind tugged gently at her sleeves and caught a small paper lantern that hung from her wrist, making it sway like a captured star.
She looked radiant. Luminous. Like a story someone had whispered into the sky.
And suddenly, Childe remembered exactly how to panic.
He hadn’t meant to confess like this.
It was supposed to be quiet. Intimate. Maybe in the woods outside Qingce, where the world was small and still and they could sit on the moss-covered rocks and pretend they weren’t made of tragedy and war.
But no. Hu Tao, who was now his mortal enemy, had gotten wind of his feelings and decided to “help.” Which meant she told Zhongli. Which meant Zhongli arranged for Lumine to get a personal invitation to release a “special lantern” with “someone important to her.”
Which meant Childe was now expected to show up and not die of embarrassment.
His hands were sweating. His heart was rioting. The letter was slightly crumpled.
He would rather have fought Azhdaha barefoot in a storm.
But he straightened his back, shoved the envelope inside his jacket, leapt from the roof, landed beside her, and offered his most dazzling smile.
“You look like a wish,” he said before his brain caught up.
Lumine blinked.
His brain screamed. His mouth kept going.
“I mean, not like a wish, more like the best one. The... um... deluxe package.”
She raised an eyebrow. “The deluxe package?”
“Yep,” he said cheerfully, praying for divine intervention. “Very rare. Five-star quality.”
Silence.
Then, Lumine grinned. “Guess I’ll make a wish, then.”
Childe promptly forgot his own name.
They walked together along the stone path beside the harbor, dodging children with lanterns and couples holding hands and food stalls with suspiciously flammable decorations. The sea glittered below. Boats bobbed like little toys.
Childe kept fiddling with the letter in his pocket like it was a live grenade.
“I have something for you,” he blurted suddenly.
Lumine tilted her head. “Oh?”
“I mean—it’s not weird. Or, uh, it’s not too weird. Just... something I wrote. For the Rite. For you.”
She stopped walking.
He handed her the envelope.
Her fingers brushed his.
And Childe nearly passed out.
While she read the letter, he tried to act normal.
Which was hard, because the letter said things like:
I think of you when I fight. Not in a weird way. In a grounding way. Like you're the reason I come back alive.
You're my peace in all this noise.
I don't know if this is love, but I do know it terrifies me more than death and I'd still choose it, every time.
You're more than a dream. You're the reason I wake up wanting to be better.
I think I’ve been falling since you first looked at me like I wasn’t a monster.
He stared at the sea. At the sky. At the lanterns. Anywhere but her face.
Then he heard her breathe in sharply.
Then silence.
Then—
“I’m going to light my wish now,” she said.
He turned, startled.
She was holding one of the large sky lanterns, the kind only released during the final moment of the festival. The kind that carried your most important wish into the heavens.
She struck a match, lit the candle, and whispered something into the lantern’s heart before letting it go.
The lantern rose.
She turned to him.
“You want to know what I wished for?”
He nodded, breath caught in his throat.
She leaned in, warm and close, the scent of her like moonlight and flowers and something heartbreakingly safe.
“I wished,” she whispered, “that you’d kiss me.”
And then she stepped back and smiled.
Childe short-circuited.
“You—me—now—what—did you just—” he stammered.
“I said kiss me.”
“Willingly? Like... you want me to?”
“Only if you want to.”
He wanted to.
He really, really wanted to.
And yet.
His brain chose that exact moment to remind him he was Childe. Harbinger of chaos. Lord of bad timing. Master of messing everything up.
So instead of kissing her, he stepped forward—tripped on a discarded lantern pole—and fell face-first into a dumpling cart.
The cart owner screamed. Dumplings flew. Sauce splattered.
Lumine wheezed with laughter.
Childe, covered in garlic and shame, stared up at the fireworks and wondered if being hit by one would be less painful than existing in this moment.
“Romantic,” he muttered. “So romantic. I should write a book.”
But then Lumine was kneeling beside him, plucking a scallion from his hair, and smiling so gently that he forgot the sting of soy sauce in his eye.
“You’re lucky I think you’re cute.”
He groaned. “You have terrible taste.”
“I know,” she said, and leaned in—
And kissed him.
Later, as the fireworks rained stars and the harbor sang with joy, Childe stood on the pier with his arms wrapped around Lumine and his face still warm from the kiss.
“Did I actually just fall into a dumpling cart?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Was it charming?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Would you do it again?”
She looked up at him. “Only if you catch me next time.”
He kissed her again, dumpling-scented and deliriously happy.
VI. The One Time Lumine Was Flustered
It began with a letter... again.
Not a fancy, wax-sealed, Fatui-insignia-bearing letter like the ones Childe sometimes sent when he was being particularly dramatic. No, this was a scribbled piece of parchment with a tomato sauce stain in the corner and slightly singed edges, delivered by a panting courier who’d apparently run all the way from Snezhnaya.
Lumine unfolded it on the inn balcony in Mondstadt, where the wind carried flower petals like wandering thoughts, and Paimon was mid-bite of an apricot tart.
Come meet my siblings,
Please. Before they assume you’re a spy I invented to sound cool.
There will be soup. Possibly chaos. Definitely a bear trap or two.
-Tartaglia
(yes, that one)
(yes, the one who fell into the dumpling cart and still denies it)
Paimon nearly choked on her tart.
“A family visit? That’s, like, real relationship stuff!”
Lumine blinked at the letter.
Her heart did a thing. A flip. Possibly a pirouette.
She was in so much trouble.
And that’s how she found herself in Morepesok, a quiet snow-draped village nestled deep in Snezhnaya’s tundra, standing in front of a house that looked like it had been built out of love, wood, and exactly thirty-seven generations of controlled chaos.
It was beautiful.
There were icicles on the roof. A crooked snowman with a pinecone nose stood guard out front. Children’s laughter spilled from the windows, warm and golden, even against the biting cold.
Lumine adjusted the scarf Childe had wrapped around her neck at the harbor before their journey—a ridiculous, fluffy thing shaped like a Cryo Slime—and tried to remember how to breathe.
She could fight gods. She could cross dimensions. But apparently, knocking on a door was too much to handle.
Before she could gather her courage, the door burst open.
A blur of wool and freckles launched itself into her legs.
“You’re the girlfriend!”
Lumine stumbled backward.
Then looked down.
Teucer.
Oh no.
What followed was an avalanche.
Not of snow, but of siblings.
Toone, the tall, smug one, raised an eyebrow and gave her an exaggerated once-over, clearly assessing whether she was worthy.
Anthon, the quiet one, offered a timid smile and a tray of cookies shaped like hilichurls.
Tonya, the tiny tyrant of the household, shoved a snowball down her boot in a move that could only be described as war.
And amidst the chaos, there was Childe—who was not Tartaglia here, but just Ajax, grinning like a fool, flour on his cheek and a soup ladle in his hand.
He looked at her like she was something softer than sunlight.
And she, who had faced monsters and madness and once stabbed a god, promptly forgot how to function.
She had expected... many things. A formal introduction. An awkward silence. Maybe even a prank involving frozen fish.
She had not expected:
Childe wearing a sweater knitted by his babushka, with tiny mittens embroidered across the chest.
Childe carrying three children at once and singing a Snezhnayan lullaby with frightening accuracy.
Childe burning the soup and pretending it was “infused with the fiery spirit of the Fatui.”
Childe dancing in the kitchen with Tonya balanced on his hip while spinning a ladle like a sword.
Childe, Ajax, brushing her hair behind her ear with flour-dusted fingers and asking, very softly, “You okay, solnishka?”
She was not okay.
She was entirely not okay.
Her face was doing strange things. Warm things. Things that made Teucer smirk and whisper loudly, “She’s turning red like a tomato!”
She had to escape.
She stumbled into the kitchen.
Unfortunately, that was where Mama Natasha was waiting.
Mama Natasha was four feet of wrinkled wisdom and steel, armed with a rolling pin and the ability to sense fear.
“You love my boy?” she asked without preamble, rolling dough with surgical precision.
Lumine blinked. “I—um. I—”
“You kiss him?”
“I—”
“You plan to break heart?”
“No! I mean—what? No! I—”
“Good,” the old woman said, slapping the dough with finality. “Eat pelmeni. You’re too skinny. He needs a strong wife.”
Lumine may or may not have choked on air.
Dinner was bedlam.
Teucer spilled beet soup on the rug and blamed the cat.
Toone and Anthon started a fork duel over the last dumpling.
Tonya told a long story about how Childe once cried over a fish that looked like Lumine. Childe looked betrayed.
And Lumine—
Lumine watched it all unfold like a scene from a dream. Laughter rang like windchimes. Candles flickered. Ajax winked at her across the table, sipping from a mug that said World’s Most Modestly Humble Harbinger.
She felt dizzy.
Not from the noise. Or the soup.
But from belonging.
Later, when the kids were asleep and Mama Natasha was knitting a scarf for the family dog, Childe led Lumine outside.
Snow fell in delicate flakes. The world was hushed.
They stood beneath the stars, wrapped in borrowed blankets, breath rising like ghosts.
“You were great,” he said.
“I was a disaster,” she replied, still red.
He laughed. “The pelmeni approved of you.”
She groaned. “I forgot how to speak three separate times.”
“You forgot how to blink.”
“I’ve fought abyssal horrors with more composure.”
He stepped closer. “You were beautiful.”
That stopped her cold.
He touched her cheek. “You still are.”
She looked at him—really looked. The softness in his eyes. The quiet strength. The unspoken promise that, somehow, this was real.
And for the first time, she didn’t know what to say.
Her words stuck.
Her heartbeat betrayed her.
Her face did the tomato thing again.
And Childe grinned, victorious.
“Finally,” he whispered. “Got you.”
They kissed under the snow.
Not as a Harbinger and a Hero.
But as Ajax and Lumine.
Two people who had every reason to fall apart—
—and chose, instead, to fall in love.