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A moth circles the lamp, bumping softly against the shade. Moonlight has settled over the tiled roofs of Mondstadt and Lumine is curled in an armchair with a book.
Paimon is already snoring in the bedroom, and Lumine should be in there with her. But when else will she have the luxury of a proper room and a whole night with nowhere to be?
The Serenitea Pot is nice, but there is something about spending the night in a real place that the teapot cannot quite match. So she indulges, sometimes. A breath of air stirs the curtain — she left the window cracked open. Kaeya insists every room needs a little Luft, and somehow she has picked up the habit. The wet-earth smell of the garden drifts in with it.
Her brief foray beneath Petrichor left her with command of Hydro and a stack of books full of old legends, and the element is the more interesting of the two. The pages tell of sunken halls and kings remembered only for the grievances of the drowned. Outside, water climbs unseen through every stem in the garden, each leaf lifting toward the memory of the sun, innocent of history.
Two abrupt knocks sound against the balcony glass. Lumine raises her head, looking into the darkness beyond. The knocking repeats.
She sets the book aside and goes to open the door. A familiar tall figure slips inside.
Of course.
He pulls her into a kiss almost immediately. It's hungry and clumsy and a little awkward — he has to hunch for her to reach him, and they bump noses on the first attempt, and it dissolves into a hug with her laughing into his shoulder. He smells of wildgrass and night air. Something bright flickers through her chest: he's fine. Which is ridiculous. It's been a month since Port Ormos. Even he can't get into that much trouble in a month.
Probably.
She looks up, fingers brushing along his jaw. "Hi." She smiles. He looks happy in a way he only ever does when she offers him to spar.
"I missed you," he beams.
She didn't think about him at all.
Lumine pulls him down by the scarf into another kiss before he can read her expression but there's still a frown on his face when she lets go. She almost feels guilty, especially considering what she has to say next.
Not that she had ever complained about handsome young men delivered to her doorstep, but there's a small problem. Small in the most literal sense.
"Paimon's asleep in the other room," she says. "She wakes up if I so much as think loudly."
He gives one of his awkward little laughs, pulling her into a hug again.
"Would my lady be interested in a picnic?" He murmurs, kissing the curve of her ear. "The stars are beautiful this time of the year."
She had expected, at most, to finally discover what the rooms inside the Goethe Hotel looked like. She had not realised their arrangement included midnight picnics. Fascinating.
"I would."
"Meet me at Windrise in an hour," he says into her hair.
"Mm." She hugs him tighter. "I'll be there."
She lets him go. He backs onto the balcony, waves, and vaults over the railing with entirely unnecessary flair.
This guy, really.
*
Crickets sing in the night air. Childe is waiting exactly where he said, under the great tree at Windrise, a blanket spread among the roots with a picnic basket holding down one corner.
"Comrade!" he beams, patting the space next to him.
Lumine looks at him for a moment with a wry smile, gathering her skirt to step across the blanket. She has a better idea.
She straddles his hips and wraps her arms around his neck, feeling his breath catch. She leans in, lips at his ear.
"Don't comrade me. I've seen you naked."
There. So the great Tartaglia can be surprised.
He recovers fast, arms coming around her, gloved fingers brushing her back.
"Well then, what should I call you?" He sounds almost coy.
"I have a name."
He huffs. Perhaps he knows it's not a real name. She's pretty sure Tartaglia isn't a real name either.
They sit like that for a moment, beneath the murmuring leaves. The ornaments on his coat press unpleasantly against her skin.
"Take off your gloves," she says.
He obeys immediately. For all his swagger, he can be wonderfully easy to command.
"And your coat."
She leans back and lets him wrestle with the clasps and the scarf — the scarf catches on the ornaments, then in his hair — until he is down to his shirt, hair mussed. She traces the strap across his chest. The Fatui, for all their faults, employ good tailors.
He looks back at her and does not move. Waiting, hands resting loosely at her waist. Lumine moves a strand of hair away from his face and wonders how far can she push him.
There's a strip of bare throat above his collar, pale in the starlight, and he's holding very still, and something about it pulls at her like current.
She glides her fingers up, over the flutter of his pulse, and lets her hand settle loosely around his throat, not pressing yet, feeling the delicate structures move beneath his skin.
He closes his eyes for a second. She feels him swallow against her palm. Then he lifts her hand away gently, and kisses the inside of her wrist.
"Not my thing," he whispers.
"Mm." She cups his cheek. "Fine. I'll play nice."
Playing nice is a relative term. When she kisses him he comes apart with almost embarrassing speed — breath ragged within a minute, hands losing their choreography, and she notes with satisfaction, how easy he is to rile. She pulls back to study him, thumb moving idly along his jaw, entirely composed while he is entirely not.
Something sharpens behind his eyes. She remembers that look from the Golden House.
"Are you attached to these?"
She feels a brush of Hydro at the hem of her bloomers. There's a sharp flick of cold against her hip and the whisper of fabric parting.
Her hand closes around his wrist before the sound finishes, weight shifting for a counter. The night goes very quiet.
She is arranging her face into the flat, unimpressed reaction this deserves — when she registers his expression.
He's grinning, wide and lit from inside with something close to wonder, the way men look at the night sky.
"There you are," he says softly.
Lumine stares at him.
It would have been easier if he was gloating.
She loosens her grip slowly. A boy with a water knife should not be tripping wires that deep. She doesn't like this about herself.
"You know," she blurts, frowning, "Usually, discovering someone could kill you ruins the mood."
Childe laughs.
"You can kill me just as easily." He sounds delighted. "If it makes you feel better."
Lumine's brows draw together. She tilts her head. "Do you find that thought arousing?"
His smile turns dreamy and wicked. "Yes." He sounds pleased to have been asked.
They look at each other for several moments. An extremely unwise idea occurs to her.
Hydro gives you power over many things. Still holding his gaze, she calls to the ocean in his blood. It answers — a sluggish, primal current. Slowly, deliberately, she begins to draw it under her control. She feels the shift, the subtle resistance of his own rhythm yielding to her command.
She knows he feels it — the wrongness of his own body no longer entirely his own.
There's a flicker of cold murderous rage in his eyes. Her breath freezes in her chest — however he responds she won't have the time to react. Lumine stops, expression calm, and lets her stillness speak for her: she means him no harm. She does not retreat, but she does not reach further.
He seems to understand. The rage does not vanish. It turns, brightens into excitement, that expression from the Golden House again. He closes his eyes, his shoulders loosening, his hands move slowly to rest on her waist.
"Don't stop," he whispers.
She closes her eyes too, her mind reaching inside him, listening to the tide of him climbing through narrow dark. Bodies were not designed to be entered this way, only inhabited, and only by their owners. She follows each motion as though running her fingers around the rim of something fragile.
His heart is at the centre of it.
She knows she could stop it with a thought. She knows he is very much aware of that.
Lumine caresses his heart with his own blood flow and the small broken exhale he makes has nothing of him in it that she recognises.
Then, only for a moment, she presses — a suggestion of what she could do.
She feels it flutter under her touch. His breath rattles sharply in his throat and Lumine releases instantly. He reaches for her hand and laces his fingers through hers.
She suddenly doesn't know what this game is anymore.
She withdraws. Slowly, carefully, trying not to hurt him, until the Hydro sense folds back into her own body, and the sudden absence of his pulse from her awareness is disorienting and too quiet. She feels oddly bereft.
He doesn't let go of her hand. His grip is too tight, nearly painful.
A lock of hair has fallen across his forehead, hiding his eyes. There's a dark spot on his lower lip where he has bitten through it. She leans in and kisses him, tasting blood. He returns the kiss without urgency.
When she pulls away, he lowers his head onto her shoulder and stays there, breathing against her neck.
She strokes his hair. Neither of them speaks.
"I have a question," she says at last.
"Shoot," he murmurs into her shoulder.
"You said this is not your thing." She puts her hand on his neck briefly. "But you liked..." she stumbles searching for a word for what just happened. There's none.
Childe leans back to look at her, a corner of his lips curls a little.
"You have to mean it for it to work."
He watches her expression and leans in again, lips almost brushing her ear. "Try bringing a knife next time." The last word frays slightly on his breath. He presses a kiss to her neck, lingering.
A faint unease moves through her.
"Have you ever tried that? With a knife?" she asks.
"No." He does not elaborate.
He seems to notice her unease, and does not push. Letting go of her hand, he just takes her by the waist and moves her to the spot beside him, like she weighs nothing, and leans for the basket.
"Grape?" he asks, grinning.
She almost laughs. "Sure."
She accepts a grape cluster and watches him dig through the basket, setting out the rest of the picnic. He pours wine with great ceremony.
"So. What brings you to Mondstadt?" she asks, when they're settled, her glass balanced on his knee.
"I've told you. I missed you."
She looks into her glass.
They talk, of nothing in particular. Mondstadt's roads. Wine varieties. Whether the Knights of Favonius could be defeated through paperwork alone. When Lumine works the ruined underwear off beneath her skirt and folds it beside the blanket, he watches it with visible pleasure but says nothing.
At some point he lies down with his head in her lap. He asks her constellation and names a few stars for her. "Stars start to feel a bit like friends once you know what they're called," he says.
Lumine looks up for a while, turning that over. When she looks down again he's asleep. She combs her fingers through his hair.
It doesn't last long. A bird cries in the branches above them and he jolts awake all at once, eyes wide, body already halfway to somewhere else.
"Just a bird," she whispers, her hand still tangled in his hair.
He swallows and nods, relaxing back into her lap.
"Forgive me for saying so," she says, "but you look exhausted."
"Because I am." He sounds matter-of-fact.
"Should I let you go home and sleep?" she teases.
"Nah." His eyes are closed again. "I need to be at Port Dornman in the morning."
She frowns at the horizon. "That's a long way from here." Three hours, at least, and that's if he doesn't stop.
"Mm. I'll leave at dawn."
"Like an evil spirit?"
"Like an evil spirit." He laughs, head thrown back, and sinks into her lap with a content sigh.
He falls asleep again. She watches him and the wind in the grass and the stars. Sleep smooths the grin from his face. Without it and without the sharp attention behind his eyes he looks startlingly young.
*
Dawn comes up grey and thin. He sits up with a sigh, rolls his neck, and gives her a smile — a small one this time, one that doesn't perform anything at all.
"I should go."
She stands when he does. The blanket lies rumpled between them, the remains of the picnic scattered.
"It's getting stale," she says, "watching your back as you leave."
He looks confused for a moment, then frowns and steps in, kissing her: slow, careful, unlike any of the night's other kisses. It feels almost like an apology.
"Close your eyes," he whispers against her mouth.
Wondering what he has in mind, she does.
A bird starts up somewhere. Wind brushes her cheek. Nothing happens.
"Childe?"
Nothing.
She opens her eyes. The blanket, the tree, the remains of the picnic — everything is exactly as it was, except that he's not in it. No figure on the road and no footsteps in the grass.
Lumine sighs, exasperated.
She packs up the picnic, because someone has to, and he certainly didn't. Dawn is coming up properly now, gold leaking over the hills. Paimon will want breakfast.
*
She wonders if she perhaps should have given him a token for the teapot. An address of her own so he could visit. However unwise it could be to invite a Harbinger to her home.
There's always next time, she tells herself.
And then the next time is Fontaine and everything happens too fast — the prophecy, the trial, the verdict — and she doesn't get to say anything at all.
And then he's gone.