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He plays a little with the letter as he opens it, running his thumb along the sharply-folded crease and such, just to delay the actual reading of it. It's not even that he's afraid of the contents, for he has not feared anything since he was fourteen, but that doesn't really want to hear from his fiancee.
The envelope is embossed with her personal sigil, a little floral motif. It's a kind of snowdrop, if he recalls correctly, that she grows in her family's gardens and that he has never seen in real life.
He unfolds the paper, tearing through the flower, and laughs. It would seem he has it wrong. She has, at last, managed to please him. Childe can't help but feel a pang of guilt at that– this is a breakup letter, after all. Even though they have never met, and there is nothing between them, he does not doubt that it was hard for her to write this.
She was, and is, a lovely girl, or so he has been told. His would-have-been wife was the daughter of some wealthy family in Snezhnograd, whose father had some idea that it would increase their standing to marry their daughter to a Harbinger. He'd had some idea that'd it be good for him to marry a girl not from the rough and tumble background of his life, and so they had been aligned. Their marriage probably would have been pleasantly fine.
But– here she is, telling him that she must decline the match, that she refuses to marry into the military. He probably would have liked her, for she is a good deal braver than him.
A weight seems to lift off his shoulders, and he toasts to her good sense. He is after all, he can admit, not the sort of man who should be getting married. Even as they had begun to seriously plan this now broken engagement, he had not bothered to come home.
~
It's a little bit muggy in a way that should feel strange but only feels familiar. He relishes in the salt air, enjoying his lunch as much as he can as he ponders what he ought to write.
He will, of course, have to write. He'll send her a letter wishing her the best, and her father one saying the arrangement is off. The man might be hard to placate, but there is surely some business partnership he can enter into with him instead. If he plays his cards right, he can pawn that off to Pantalone, so that is not the letter that troubles him.
No. It is the first letter, the simple one. He sighs, and reaches for the chopsticks he mostly remembers how to use. There's a kind of delicate nature around the whole business he can recognize but is unable to deal with neatly that he will have to forge through to let her know– what, exactly? That he accepts her rejection? He has something else to say, he thinks, and he does not know what.
“Childe?”
He looks up from his noodles, guarded. There are not many people who call him that.
“It really is you,” Zhongli says. He looks just as he remembers him, which he figures, somewhat spitefully, makes sense.
Zhongli takes a step closer, then stops, seeming to reconsider. He looks a bit sad, somehow. Childe doesn't think it suits him.
“I didn't know you would be in Liyue,” he says, a little stilted.
“It was very last minute,” Childe replies. It was on a whim, too, but he won't tell Zhongli that. He'd just– needed to get out of Nod Krai, after everything, and did not want to go back home. So, he'd looked up the next ship to Liyue, and here he is.
He might have told Zhongli all of this, once, but it has been some time since they've spoken. He is no longer sure how to put the words together.
“... How long will you stay?” Zhongli asks. He has taken another step forward, as if forgetting himself and whatever boundary he'd tried to set into place. Childe doesn’t really care about whatever rule is in his head, and wishes he'd just come as close as he pleases.
He has no plans to leave. Zhongli doesn't need to know that, so he shrugs.
“I do have business to attend to back home, but there's a few things I need to wrap up here. It'll be a few weeks before I leave, I imagine.”
A very strange look washes over Zhongli. Childe tries, but finds he cannot place it– it is almost hopeless, and almost sad, but lands on being neither.
“Might I ask if you're free tomorrow night?” Zhongli ventures. “We could get dinner.”
Some words are left unspoken. Childe cannot guess what they are.
“Sure,” he says. “Name the place.”
~
He tries again to imagine himself as a husband. His bride would have been resplendent in her white gown, and the venue adorned with flowers, and he would've been there too. The Tsarista had given him a dress uniform. He probably would have worn that, and looked very out of place.
“Your parents are well, I hope?”
“Ah. Yes. As good as ever,” Childe says. Zhongli fiddles a little bit with his cup of tea.
“And your siblings?”
“Doing quite well. Tonia took up embroidery, last I heard, and is driving my mother crazy– she keeps forgetting her needles all over the house.”
Zhongli laughs, then stifles himself with a sip. Childe had almost forgotten the exact golden yellow of his eyes– it is, upon inspection, not unlike Cor Lapis. He'll have to look out for a piece that's the right color to bring home with him.
“How is Liyue?” Childe asks, because he ought to reciprocate the questions, but Zhongli does not have a family. All he has is his, admittedly fine, nation. Childe wonders if he doesn't ever get lonely.
“Better than ever. It's flourished in my absence.”
Zhongli glances at him again with a look Childe cannot decipher.
“Do you forgive me?” He asks.
Their food grows cold as Childe considers the question. This, after all, is far from the first time they've gone out together– for nearly a year, they'd meet almost daily. They'd get meals, or head to the market, or walk along the harbor and talk about nothing at all. Zhongli would have been the closest friend he ever had, if the whole thing wasn't a lie.
And yet.
Here they are. Nothing, really, has changed, except Zhongli is not lying anymore and they have not seen each other in several years. Perhaps his broken engagement has put him in more of a mood than he realized, because Childe for a moment feels as if he really does forgive him.
“I missed you,” he says, because that's closer to the truth. “We should do this again before I leave.”
~
He starts to write that letter. It's a little clunky, and does not quite say what he wants it to say, but it exists. He wishes her peace and happiness, knowing he will never get the same.
~
Zhongli watches him with a fond smile. A thin sheen of Slime Condensate coats the ground, and Childe takes care not to slip as he stands.
“You've improved,” he notes.
“You noticed?”
It had only been a quick little fight, just a quick skirmish against a couple of slimes blocking the road, but Zhongli had noticed his form. He truly is remarkable.
“If course I did,” Zhongli replies, and Childe realizes that if he'd noticed the improvement then he must still remember how he used to fight. It's a little embarrassing, and he tries to laugh it off.
“You're–”
He stops without finishing his sentence. It's quite unlike Zhongli, who had gone on for ten minutes about how they have to see the view from the particular mountain they're heading up now.
“Come on, what is it?”
“Nothing, really,” Zhongli says, a little quiet, almost bashful. “I was just thinking I'll miss you when you're gone.”
It's funny because they have done this before. Zhongli should know how to miss him. Childe certainly does– he'd boxed up all his memories of the man and hidden them in the deep recesses of his mind. It had worked quite well until they met again.
“There's no need to worry about that yet. I'm right here, aren't I?”
Zhongli looks up, and smiles. It looks nice on him.
“Yes,” he says. “You are.”
~
Childe finishes the letter. He still thinks it is missing something, but he cannot delay any longer. It will make her happy, he hopes, for it is accepting her rejection. He owes her at least that much.
Still– he wonders what it is he really wanted to say.
~
“I can hardly believe I've been back in Liyue for a month,” Childe says, his tone light, almost joking. “Time really does fly.”
Zhongli almost drops his food from his chopsticks, but manages to set it back on his plate in as graceful a manner as befits him.
“Zhongli?”
“I'm sorry work keeps you here,” he says quietly, not looking him in the eye. “I imagine you must want to go home and plan your wedding.”
Childe nearly chokes, and has to take a long sip of water before he feels ready to speak.
“How do you know about that?”
He certainly hasn't spoken about it, because it isn't happening. Even if it was still on, he somehow can't imagine bringing it up with Zhongli.
“I overheard the workers at the Northland Bank talking about it. Forgive me if I've overstepped.”
“Oh, it's fine, really.”
He will, perhaps, have to remind them that the walls have ears. Still, there's far worse secrets they could have spilled than something as silly as this.
He looks up, ready to say something, and finds Zhongli has risen from his seat. Normally, they hardly have any height difference at all, but now with him sitting Zhongli seems to tower over him.
“I know I have no right to say this to you, but– please, let me say it anyway.”
Zhongli throws his arms around his shoulders, and wraps one hand around the curve of his jaw. Childe stills, surprised, but the touch isn't unpleasant. Then, holding his face quite gently, Zhongli kisses him.
Childe has never been kissed before, but this kiss, he thinks, must be one of the better ones out there. It's warm and soft but still passionate. Childe likes it.
Zhongli separates from him after a moment, his face flushed and eyes wide. He does not look like an Archon at all.
“Don't marry her,” he says, breathless. “Just– don't.”
Childe forgets how to speak. His beating heart, too, stills in his chest. He has never felt like this before.
Zhongli starts to pull away, though only a little, as if he knows the moment ought to end but cannot bear to let it go.
“You don't have to marry me instead, I don't expect you to, but this is my selfish wish,” he says.
“Okay,” Childe says.
Zhongli’s eyes snap to his in an instant.
“What?”
“I'm not marrying her.”
“This is–”
“The wedding’s already off,” he admits. “She broke things off with me.”
Zhongli laughs, and leans back in a little closer.
“Then I've made a fool of myself for nothing.”
“No, no. Not for nothing.”
Childe reaches out for him. He has never wanted anything as badly as he wants this now. He thinks he might die if he can't kiss him again.
~
“Ah,” he says, much later, tangled in bedsheets while the moon streams in through the window. “I've figured out what I wanted to say to her.”
“... I'm right here, and you're still thinking about her?” Zhongli grumbles. He sounds rather jealous. Childe quite likes it, nearly as much as he likes the look of his skin dyed moonlight silver.
“In my letter accepting her rejection,” he replies, hitting him lightly on the arm. “I couldn't figure out what to say– I realized that I wanted to thank her for rejecting me, because I've been in love with you.”
“All this time?”
His voice sounds sad, somehow. Childe quickly elaborates.
“Don't think of those years as wasted time. I needed time to let it simmer, I think.”
Clearly, because he certainly hadn't known it when he left Liyue. He's needed a kick in the teeth too, of course, but he doesn't regret their time apart. He won't let himself.
“... Simmer…”
“What?”
“Bamboo shoots are in season,” Zhongli says. “There's a stall at the market that sells particularly high quality ones. If we go tomorrow, I should be able to have slow cooked bamboo shoot soup ready in two days, or so.”
“I’d like that,” Childe says. Mostly– he likes that he'll be around, and they'll be together.
Zhongli smiles, and he trusts he knows that too.