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It begins, as all ancient catastrophes do, with an unreasonable amount of longing.
Zhongli—no, Rex Lapis—is an ancient creature. A god. A dragon, scaled and seething beneath layers of culture, contract, and tailored suit jackets. He has watched nations fall, wars rise, tectonic plates shift. He has witnessed the turn of ten thousand suns. He knows patience. He knows composure. He knows how to properly steep oolong.
He does not, unfortunately, know what to do with a twenty-something Fatui war criminal who smiles like a sunrise and fights like he wants someone to pin him against a wall and call him precious.
This is a problem.
The first time it happens, Zhongli watches Childe spar with a particularly tenacious Ruin Guard and thinks: Yes. That one. I will hoard him.
This, of course, is deeply inappropriate.
He is a respectable man. A consultant. An Archon. He wears gloves. He drinks tea. He bows with precision. He pays for nothing, and yet leaves tips calculated down to the mora.
But the dragon in him—the one that sleeps beneath his ribs like a curled serpent dreaming of gold and glory—likes the Harbinger. The dragon likes the bloodied grin. The reckless devotion. The sea-glass eyes and the endless monologues about how, actually, this mission to destabilize a nation is not personal, he just needs to feed his twelve siblings and also fight God recreationally.
The dragon says: Mine.
Zhongli says: “That is not how relationships work.”
The dragon says: Give him gifts. Bite him. Roll in his scent like an animal. Fill a cave with shinies and lure him in.
Zhongli says: “This is incredibly unorthodox. Also probably illegal.”
But the dragon does not listen.
The dragon has decided.
---
There comes a moment in every dragon’s unnaturally long life where they decide, against all wisdom, against millennia of stoic solitude, against the soft hiss of slumbering tectonic plates that beg do not, do not, do not—
to fall in love.
Zhongli has already lived through three mortal epochs and a dozen minor heartbreaks, a handful of cataclysmic betrayals, and once, a rather distressing culinary incident involving Sumeru spices and a brass teapot. He has watched civilizations rise and crumble like sandcastles abandoned by impatient gods. He has kissed emperors with ash still cooling in their mouths. He has forgotten entire dialects of love.
But this one—
Tartaglia. The Eleventh Harbinger. Fatui dog. That insufferable ginger menace who insists on calling him “xiansheng” while disarming hilichurls with a grin that belongs on wanted posters and in back-alley sonnets.
This one, Zhongli decides, is worth the return of rituals.
---
It begins like all great disasters do: with a gift.
Not a normal one, of course.
No.
A dragon gift.
Which is to say: unasked for, unreasonable, and utterly impossible to decline.
It starts with a teacup. A single, antique, impossibly ornate Liyuean teacup. Gold-rimmed, painted with long-forgotten flowers, humming faintly with geo energy and the scent of the stone it was carved from—a glaze made of powdered cor lapis and things far older than time. One-of-a-kind. Possibly stolen from an imperial vault. Possibly from the Archon War.
Delivered to Childe’s doorstep with no explanation and a small, handwritten card.
For your hydration needs, should you ever grow tired of blood.
—Z.L.
“...The fuck?” says Childe, because there is no normal way to respond to being courted like an ancient wyvern seducing a sacrificial maiden.
He drinks from it anyway.
---
Childe, to his credit, is very difficult to impress. He has, after all, seen horrors.
He has been to the Abyss. He has walked into war like it was a dance hall. He has flirted with death and his coworkers in equal measure. He cannot be charmed with something as simple as “flowers” or “poetry” or “eye contact.”
Zhongli is undeterred.
He gifts a rock this time.
Not just any rock.
No, this is an immaculate, polished, jadeite obsidian chrysanthemum he found three thousand years ago in a cave sealed by seven geo seals and a contractual blood pact. He’s been saving it for a moment like this.
He places it on Childe’s windowsill at sunrise.
No note.
Just… Rock.
He waits.
That evening, he is rewarded with a letter, written in blood (probably his own) and chicken scratch handwriting:
Hey! I think you left your rock at my house? It's neat. I licked it.
Also—are you mad at me? You’re acting weird. If you want to fight, just say it.
Yours in chaos,
- Childe
Zhongli rereads the line “I licked it” thirteen times and makes an unholy sound.
The dragon is very pleased.
The next day, he brings him an entire fossilized Geo Vishap skull.
The day after that, a custom-tailored crimson coat woven from Silkflowers, Ruin Guard plating, and disrespect.
The day after that, a poem.
A terrible poem.
It reads:
Your violence is the marrow of my desire.
Please consider mating rituals.
I have several caves.
-Z.L
---
The first time it happens, Childe is halfway through a commission in Liyue. Treasure Hoarders. Nothing fancy. He’s covered in soot, sweat, probably someone’s blood, when—
The sky splits open.
Meteors. Golden wings. Morax, Archon of Contracts, Lord of Geo, Zhongli, descends in full regalia, his voice ringing across the battlefield like thunder in a cathedral.
“LEAVE MY MATE ALONE.”
(He lands directly on a group of Hoarders. There is not enough left to sweep up.)
“Mate,” Childe whispers, dazed, as Zhongli stalks toward him.
“You are wounded,” Zhongli murmurs, touching his face with such reverence that it makes Childe shiver. “I will bathe you in celestial salt and sacred oil.”
“Are you trying to seduce me or exorcise me?”
“It can be both.”
---
Zhongli is not normal.
This, Childe knows.
This, everyone knows.
But knowing a thing and experiencing it first-hand are, as it turns out, vastly different undertakings. Like hearing of a tidal wave and marrying the ocean. Like learning of a dragon and then waking up every day with your bed full of rocks, rare minerals, and silk robes because he’s “nesting.”
“Dragons hoard what they value,” Zhongli says one day, eyes glinting gold in a way that makes Childe’s entire soul try to do a cartwheel off a cliff.
“I’m not an object,” Childe retorts. “You can’t hoard people.”
Zhongli tilts his head, all slow understanding and unbearable elegance. “Then you have never met a dragon.”
Childe chokes on his tea. The teacup hums ominously.
The next gift is a spear.
Not just any spear.
His spear.
The Vortex Vanquisher.
It gleams like regret. It sings like vengeance. It crackles faintly when Childe touches it, as if it resents not being in Zhongli’s grasp. As if it knows this is an engagement present.
“Why the hell would you give me this?” Childe demands, clutching the ancient weapon like a scandalized bride handed a flaming dowry.
“It has protected me through the millennia,” Zhongli says. “Now, let it protect you.”
Childe, very softly: “I am going to scream.”
Zhongli nods. “Then let it be a war cry.”
There is no middle ground.
Zhongli does not "date." He enshrines. He immortalizes. He carves you into stone and places you in his treasury like a myth meant to be worshipped for generations.
The courting escalates alarmingly.
He gifts Childe:
A jade statue of him mid-laugh, lifesize, disturbingly accurate, and possibly enchanted to purr when touched.
A live Ruin Guard painted gold with a ribbon on its head and a tag that reads: “To protect you in my absence.”
A week’s worth of dumplings folded to resemble Fatui emblems, which is either the most passive-aggressive romantic gesture ever conceived or a declaration of war. Possibly both.
He also composes a 3-hour guzheng piece titled “Ode to My Crimson Tide of Violence” and performs it publicly. During peak market hours.
Childe has never been more mortified.
Or flattered.
Or hot and bothered.
The conflict is unbearable.
“Are you trying to seduce me?” Childe asks one night, only half joking, because Zhongli has just deposited a box of what appear to be ceremonial silk undergarments onto his bed. They’re sheer. There are tassels. There’s a note that says:
To be removed with reverence.
—Z.L.
“I am courting you,” Zhongli replies, as if those are not the same thing when you’re built like an immortal deity with the voice of thunder and the patience of tectonic plates.
Childe stares at the box.
He stares at Zhongli.
He very calmly picks up a pillow and screams into it for seventeen seconds.
---
Dragons do not flirt. Dragons make declarations.
They carve their affection into the bones of the world. They raise cities in your name and write poetry on mountainsides. They whisper promises that echo through centuries.
And Zhongli, dear fucking Morax, does all of this in a very annoying, very poetic, very persistent way.
And Childe, who has been called everything from a monster to a soldier to a harbinger of death, does something far more terrifying than any of those roles:
He starts writing back.
Little notes.
Snarky ones. Stupid ones. Slightly unhinged ones.
Your statue winked at me.
Also: you spelled my name wrong in the dumplings. Again.
—Childe
To which Zhongli replies, with infinite grace:
It was not a wink. It was a blink of devotion.
Also: You have too many names.
—Z.L.
Childe draws little knives on the corners. Zhongli draws hearts. They are both emotionally repressed and catastrophically smitten.
Eventually, Childe snaps.
Not in battle. Not in rage.
In bed.
Zhongli—glorious, infuriating, stupidly gorgeous Zhongli—has just gifted him an entire cave of gemstones, each carved with some trait or memory of Childe’s. “So I may remember you from all angles,” he says, hand resting casually on Childe’s lower back like he isn’t saying something deeply unhinged.
And Childe just—loses it.
“You’re driving me crazy,” he growls, grabbing Zhongli by the collar. “Do you want me, or do you want to entomb me?”
Zhongli’s eyes flare gold, molten and endless. He leans in, voice low.
“Both.”
And that’s when Childe climbs him like a tree and ruins centuries of sacred celibacy in about ten minutes (fifteen if you count foreplay, which you should, because holy hell, dragons have tongues).
Afterward, they lie together in a bed of silks, jade, and ruin.
Zhongli strokes Childe’s hair like he’s something precious.
Childe buries his face in Zhongli’s shoulder like he’s trying to disappear.
“...You’re still hoarding me,” he mumbles, because there are literally geo sigils glowing on his thighs, which seems unnecessary.
“I have merely claimed what is mine,” Zhongli replies, calm as ever. “It is tradition.”
“You’re a menace,” Childe says, halfheartedly. “You’re the oldest, most dramatic sugar daddy to ever exist.”
Zhongli hums. “And you are my most chaotic treasure.”
Childe grins.
“...You gonna keep courting me like this forever?”
Zhongli looks at him.
Eyes full of aeons.
Voice like the birth of mountains.
“Yes.”
And Childe, stupid Childe, beautiful Childe, war-born and love-starved, does the only thing one can do when faced with a dragon’s love.
He accepts it.
He sharpens his knives.
He sends Zhongli a matching teacup.
And on the inside of the rim, in his barely-legible, deeply chaotic scrawl:
Mine too, you ancient bastard.