fishnkoi_

He does not notice them at first. The path is narrow, the terraces crowded with green growth, and his attention is momentarily occupied with locating the correct house of the elderly widow he has come to visit on behalf of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor. He steps forward—there is a soft, devastating crunch beneath his shoe—and he stops. Slowly, he looks down. A small green sprout lies bent sideways in the dirt. He moves his foot, and there is another crushed stem.

He blinks once. Then twice. “…Oh dear.”

“You have got to be kidding me.”

There is a voice that comes from behind him, and Morax turns. You stand just a few steps away, staring at him in horror as though you have just witnessed a murder in its cold-blooded glory. (Perhaps murder is not far from the truth, of course—the plants are surely dead now.)

Your gaze drops to the ground. Then back up to him. Then back to the ground again. “You stepped on my jueyun chilis,” you say flatly.

Morax follows your gaze again, taking in the small row of plants he has apparently trampled with great efficiency.

“Ah, yes,” he says after a moment, looking only slightly apologetic. “It would appear that I have—my apologies for my carelessness.”

“These were only just sprouting,” you cry, crouching down to inspect the damage. “Now I’ll have to restart these sprouts,” you look up at him, utterly unimpressed.

“My apologies,” Morax says sincerely. “That was not my intention.”

You stand, brushing dirt off your hands, and look him up and down. Morax watches your eyes as they assess him properly—he can practically see the way you pick apart his appearance right before his eyes as you make your deductions. (He is dressed far too nicely to be a farmer or a villager. Too clean. Too proper. He can see it written plainly all over your face that you have already figured he is from the more urban parts of Liyue.)

“You’re not from here,” you say. “Liyue Harbor?”

“That is correct.”

“I can tell.”

He inclines his head slightly. “I am here on behalf of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor.”

Your expression shifts immediately.  “Oh.” The irritation does not disappear entirely, but it softens. Dare he say, your expression even saddens some. “You’re here for Madam Lu, then. For her late husband,” you say.

“Yes.”

“She’s been expecting someone.”

Morax nods as he explains, “I’ve come to discuss the funeral services she seeks. However,” he adds, glancing down at the damaged plants again, “I appear to have caused some trouble before arriving.”

You cross your arms at that. “Yes. You did.”

“I will compensate you for the loss,” Morax offers.

Your brows lift slightly, unimpressed—you are deeply, wholly, entirely unimpressed by him. It is a fascinating change of pace. Morax (or, perhaps sooner or later, he will have to grow more used to Zhongli) is not someone people look at so disdainfully. So dismissively. So irritably. The only individuals who have ever cast a look at him in such a manner are foes long fallen, long since taught the power of the Geo Archon and slain for daring to stand against him in battle.

“Do you think you can simply just pay for the damages you have caused to my agriculture?” you huff at him.

He hums, nodding as he says, “If that is what is required of me, I certainly can.”

You study him for a long moment, then snort softly. “You really are from the Harbor.”

“I take it that is obvious.”

“Painfully.” Then, you look down at the plants again and sigh. “Well, they’re not all dead,” you say. “You only destroyed…several. Not everything.”

“I am relieved to hear the damage is not total.”

You give him yet another look. “You’re very calm for someone who just committed agricultural sabotage to a small, humble villager’s plants.”

“I find panic rarely improves a situation,” he says honestly. 

You stare at him for a second longer. Then, much to his surprise, you laugh. He blinks, slightly taken aback. (Where goes all your agitation from just a few moments prior, he wonders.)

“You’re rather strange,” you tell him. 

“Am I?” he asks, slightly amused. 

You crouch again and gently press some soil back around one of the bent sprouts, trying to prop them upright. “Yes—quite strange indeed. You said you’re from the funeral parlor?” you ask.

“Yes. I am here to help Madam Lu arrange her husband’s funeral.”

Your hands slow slightly at that. “Right,” you say quietly. That sad look is back on your expression. You must have known him, Morax surmises—though, of course, that would not be all too surprising. Qingce Village is a small place, after all. “Master Lu was a good man. He passed last week. His wife is not taking the news well.”

“Yes, so I’ve heard,” Morax replies evenly. “That is why I have come in person. Aside from the fact that she is grieving, it would be difficult for her to travel to Liyue Harbor at such an old age.”

Your gaze softens at his words—something…rather grateful seems to replace the earlier traces of resentment as you look up at him.  “That was kind of you.”

“It is only part of my duties at the parlor. Nothing worthy of praise.”

You stand again and wipe your hands on your skirt. For a moment, Morax locks his eyes with yours—they are rather easy to get lost in, he thinks to himself. Time is preserved so simply when he is looking into them, so effortlessly that he almost feels the eroded fragments of his soul settle down and rest. (This is all he has ever hoped to have for quite some time—just the chance to simply rest his old, eroding soul and enjoy something outside of the divine. How frightening that it is as simple as looking into the eyes of a village girl.)

“Well,” you say, gesturing up the path, “whether you can complete your duties to be worthy of praise or not, we will never know if you insist on going the wrong way, Mister…”

Morax, he itches to say. Instead, he smiles politely, says “Zhongli,” and introduces himself before continuing, “and I had suspected as much.”

You answer him by murmuring your name. It’s a beautiful name, he decides as he tests it on his tongue—as is everything else about you. Your smile, and the simple way you are dressed under the gold cast of light the sun coats you in, are easily the most breathtaking parts of Qingce village. Despite the lush patches of grass and the soft petals of glaze lilies in the distance, Morax finds he cares little for the sights of the village when you are in his line of vision.

“You’re heading toward the terraces,” you tell him. “Madam Lu’s house is in the other direction.”

“I see.”

You start walking off, and he stands there, partly stunned and partly not. Something about you makes it so that he is not entirely shocked by the abrupt way you saunter away, but he finds that being kept on his toes is not all that terrible. Especially not if he gets to watch you walk away, either—you are not a poor sight from behind, that is for certain. Then, just a moment later, you glance back at him.

“Come on, you fancy old harbor man. I’ll take you there before you destroy anything else.”

Morax huffs a small, amused laugh. Harbor man. When was the last time someone addressed him so casually? So carefree? His memory fades to long, distant times. Times he does not forget, of course, but times that are long enough into the past that he cannot help but lose his grasp on what it feels like to enjoy his days the way he once did. 

“I appreciate your assistance.”

“You can repay me by not stepping on any more plants,” you wave a hand off dismissively. 

“I will make every effort.”

He walks in silence alongside you for a few moments through the village. He eyes the terraces and takes in the breathtaking view of such simplistic beauty. The waters are clear, and the petals of the blooming flowers are wide as they face the sun like open arms. It has been a long time since Morax has come to this village—a long, long time, indeed. The last he remembers of this place is the great battle he’d fought before that wretched serpent god had fallen. They seem to be doing fine, he notes in satisfaction. Of course, that is not a surprise to him—he would surely hear about it, perhaps even make an appearance himself, had they not. 

But the villagers of this small, peaceful patch of land are doing well. And Morax is faced with the haunting proof that he has done his duties once again. Quite exceptionally, too—exceptionally enough that he wonders if he truly has any duties left for much longer. 

It’s not long before you glance sideways at him. “So…do you do this often?”

“Do what?” He hums. 

“Travel all the way out here to help people arrange funerals,” you say as you lead him over a small, wooden bridge. He is mindful not to trample a stem of jueyun chilis that grow along a patch of grass on his way. 

“Yes,” he nods, “if the director asks it of me, I tend to travel to clients.”

“That sounds…like a rather depressing job. It must suck the excitement out of the travels when you are working so closely with the dead.”

“On the contrary,” Morax says calmly, “I work with those still living. Funerals are for the living, not the dead.”

You glance at him with a slight scoff. “That is a very funeral-parlor thing to say.”

“I imagine it is,” he chuckles, “but it is true nonetheless.”

You walk a little farther before suddenly saying, “You know, you talk like an old man.”

Morax does not react immediately. He’s certainly heard that phrase before—how many times has he been called old? It’s…not exactly false, if he were to be technical about his age. “…Do I?” he asks. 

“Yes,” you snort, eyeing him in amusement. “Very philosophical. You sound like you’ve been alive far longer than you look.”

“I assure you that is not the case,” is all he says. If only you knew. 

“Mm,” you say skeptically. “I don’t believe you.”

He almost smiles.

Morax, as he follows you, reaches a small house near the edge of the village. Smoke curls faintly from the chimney, and the grass is perfectly trimmed with glaze lilies neatly sprouting along a line beneath the front window of the house. You eye them for a moment before sighing as you murmur, “The old woman hasn’t been watering them again—it can only be expected.”

Morax says nothing. He’s an observant person at his core—he has not reigned over Liyue for a short period of time, and that reign of power did not come to him overnight. Such is his nature as a god, as an adepti, as a warrior, to be observant. It’s easy to see that this old couple—this old widow, now—means something to you. That alone would not be a shock. Qingce village is a small place, and it would not be hard to piece together that a small village and its people are well-connected. 

But the grief on your face, coupled still with that familiar, fond expression as you sigh over the neglected flowers, suggests that there is more to your relationship with Madam Lu (and by extension, her late husband) than the average villager. Morax almost wants to pry, but if there is anything that being a funeral parlor associate—and, of course, a god who has seen many battles—has taught him, it’s to never pry when the grieving grieve.  

“That’s Madam Lu’s house,” you gesture at the door, “she’s home, so you should be able to take care of business rather swiftly.”

“Thank you,” he says. He pauses, then adds, “And again, I apologize for your plants.”

You roll your eyes as you wave a hand dismissively. “You should be. But, I suppose they’ll survive. Well—probably.”

“I am most hopeful that they do,” he nods. 

Morax watches as you start to turn away, walk to the flowers and inspect the slightly dry soil beneath them, and reach for the watering can abandoned at the side with a sigh. 

“You know,” you say, glancing back at him, “you’re not what I expected for someone from a funeral parlor.”

“In what way?” he raises a brow. 

“I don’t know,” you shrug. “I thought you would be gloomy. Or cold. Maybe a little creepy.”

“I see,” he smiles in amusement, “I would hope I am none of those things, lest director Hu receives complaints.”

“Hurt no more of my chilis, and I will allow you to leave Qingce village with no complaints, harbor man.” You grab the watering can and start walking away towards a well in the distance.  Then, you pause and call over your shoulder: “Do try not to get lost on your way out—I cannot escort you every time.”

“I will try my hardest,” Morax hums. He watches you go for a moment before turning toward the house.

────────────────────────

You end up seeing plenty of the harbor man for the next few weeks to come as you help plan Master Lu’s parting. 

Master Lu was a well-respected man in the village, and his doting wife strives for nothing less than a proper tribute for his send-off. Qingce village is a simple place. The people here lead plain, straightforward lives—most are those who seek something quiet and easy after retiring. They are people who have aged and feel the tug and pops of their aching muscles and bones. They are people who know that life is something to cherish before it is easily taken from you, before you are ready. 

As such, funerals are done properly. There are traditions to honor, respect to pay, and well wishes to part the dead with before they are off to the afterlife. 

You don’t know what is waiting for you in the afterlife—nor do you even really know if you believe in one at all, but you do know you cherished Master Lu. He took you in, after all, when you were nothing but a young child—too much of a responsibility for your adepti father, who had enough as is to do, evidently. And too much of a burden for your mortal mother, who could not bear the so-called injustice of having a non-human lover and child. 

So, following the abandonment of your parents—two different reasons for the same betrayal—you end up dumped in Qingce village because that is where it is safest to abandon young children, apparently. And that is where Master Lu, alongside many others in the village, finds you, at your tender age of ten, with your helpless, bitter distrust of adults around you. Slowly, but surely, he is but one of the many who rebuilds your image of the world you are surrounded by, much like he rebuilds practically anything with those adept, carpenter hands of his.

Your first bed, and the swingset in the grass that you played on, and that little bench where you’d sit and watch Madam Lu water her crops in the distance. He had built them all for you with his own callused hands, much like he’d built that easy trust that mended your wounded child-heart. 

And now Master Lu is gone. But he has helped build you a stable enough, sturdy enough foundation that even without his cunning smile and his crinkled eyes, you trust the world around you despite it all. And you trust that funeral consultant, too—clumsy as he may be around your precious plants. 

“Madam Lu tells me you have arranged for a florist to bring flowers from Liyue Harbor,” you hum, walking with him through the terraces. 

He nods, inspecting a glaze lily. “Yes, but there will be glaze lilies supplied by the village itself—we do not often see glaze lilies bloom like this in Liyue Harbor. Not so naturally, that is. They are artificially sprouted by modifications, but they lack the same fragrance.”

“Qingce village didn’t always have glaze lilies as full as these,” you say proudly, “it was only after I came to the village that they grew so fresh and full—it brought Madam Lu lots of business, you know. No one seems to be able to tend to them the same way as I, no matter the effort.”

“I see,” Zhongli says thoughtfully. Almost like he sees through you. 

You quickly change the subject—you wouldn’t want him to realize you aren’t human quite yet. (Not that it’s a dark secret that you keep, of course. But you find mortals tend to feel more at ease around you when they believe you, too, are yet another mortal.)

“Have you trampled any more chilis on your way here?” you huff, “don’t even consider lying because I will find out in due time. I will be deducting the damages from our final bill, you know.”

“I assure you all of your chilis are fine,” he chuckles, “and I have already informed director Hu of the discount you will be afforded for my mistake.”

“I hope your position is still intact,” you tease. “I’d hate for your livelihood to be at stake for such a simple mistake.”

“Well,” he smiles with what you can only describe as a bit of a devious grin, even despite how proper and polite he holds himself, “it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve cost the funeral parlor a mora or two. Such is the risk of running a business—some losses are to be expected.”

At the start, Zhongli left immediately after his weekly visits with Madam Lu to plan the funeral services. Master Lu has already been buried, of course, but the funeral itself won’t be held until the following month to ensure that all the proper traditions are seen through. But, well…Madam Lu is a lonely woman, and Zhongli is good at conversing with the elderly. Almost too good. She has grown rather fond of his presence, and you think that Zhongli is equally as fond of her cooking as he is shirking off his duties for a bit, so he puts up little argument when she asks him to stay for lunch. 

And that is how you end up entertaining him for the time it takes for her to cook her meals. 

Couldn’t you cook your meals ahead of time, you’d asked the old, nagging woman, it’s not as though you don’t have the time to spare.

And how often do you see such a handsome, young face in this village, she’d tutted, giving you a disapproving look, I have to stall for time somehow, so you can charm him. He is a fine man, you stubborn child—make sure you waste no opportunities. I want grandchildren.

You’re already an old granny, you’d huffed, fighting back the flustered look that threatened to make itself apparent on your face. 

That damned old lady and her damned need to meddle where she didn’t have any place meddling. But you suppose that is why you grew up the way you had—so loved and well looked after, despite being practically an orphan in function. And you suppose that Zhongli of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor is not…the worst candidate for a man, should you choose to settle down. 

Not that you would choose. 

Your life span is too long for that of a mortal lover, and adepti are difficult enough to come by as it is. Never mind the fact that they are likely all too old to settle for someone like you—you are still a young lady in mortal years. Surely, if a strong, capable adepti man were looking to settle down, he would spare little time with someone like you who does nothing more than tend to crops with your days. 

You have never dreamed of settling down and loving a man—not when mortals such as your mother can see the true curse that it is to fall in love with a long-lived being such as yourself. Mortal men, especially gentlemanly, smooth-talking, and granny-pleasing funeral consultant mortal men from Liyue Harbor of all places, would waste little time with you. 

But you shake the thought off as you turn to look at the old lady’s house in the distance, and see her waving by her front door to indicate that lunch is ready. You nod before turning to Zhongli to bring him along with you—

—and the world is suddenly shifting. Why is it shifting? Why does it feel like gravity is no longer keeping you firmly cemented in an upright position on the ground, and why does it feel like air is rushing past you all too fast? Surely…surely you couldn’t be falling?

Except you are. If your poor luck as a half-mortal, half-immortal being wasn’t enough to deter you from charming a man, your clumsiness sure is. And you had the gall to call him clumsy, you think. Not…not that you care to charm him of all people anyway because…well, because why would you? You do not. 

But if you were to care, well then. This would be your sign to swiftly put those dreams behind you. It’s a good thing you never cared for such silly fantasies anyway. 

But, just as quickly as you are falling over the edge of a terrace and onto the ground a hefty distance away, the earth beneath you is shifting. It shakes and rumbles, and then it lifts so that soft soil reaches your back faster than heavy impact can. It isn't long before you are carefully raised to the terrace once more, where Zhongli is waiting for you with a polite, respectful hand outstretched just close enough that you don’t have to stretch to reach it, but just far enough that it doesn’t impose on your personal space, giving you the option to decline it. 

You take it. Because you are shaken, and not because you would like to hold his hand, of course. And he gently pulls you, where he steadies you easily as you shake on your wobbly legs when they take your weight. 

“What…” You furrow your brows, confused. Dazed. Still a little shaken. 

“You slipped on some of the wet soil,” he says calmly, “and lost your balance over the edge. I caught you using Geo.”

“Geo?” You furrow your brows deeper.

“My vision,” he explains simply, “I made a construct to catch you.”

“Well, thank you,” you nod slowly. 

Geo…you think to yourself. Undoubtedly, his power certainly was Geo. But…but you have felt the sensation of Geo around you before from a vision wielder, and…this power is different. More powerful? No—more concentrated. Like it is the source of Geo itself. Like it is where it all stems from, with how fierce and deep the energy runs through it. You know little of your lineage or of how the elements work, but you know that for a vision wielder, he seems abnormally strong. Almost…almost like his power is not that of a vision at all. Almost like he is the power—he and he alone. 

And then you blink, eyeing him suspiciously. 

“When did you get your vision?” you ask, hoping to sound casual. 

He hums, looking at you. And there it is again—that look. Like he sees right through you. “Perhaps I will tell you in due time,” he chuckles, still holding your hand as he pulls you alongside his steps forward. “Come, Madam Lu is waiting.”

He is not human, you think—no, you know. And for a short, brittle, fleeting moment, you dare to hope that perhaps Zhongli of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor is not a mortal, and that he might have enough time to spare in this life to waste it with you. 

────────────────────────

Morax values those who follow traditions closely. It is sacred and ancient, the culture of Liyue. And Liyue is a richly cultured nation, indeed. Qingce Village, he is pleasantly surprised to find, pays its respect to the dead properly and does the culture of this nation justice.

You are standing in front of Master Lu’s grave, holding your offering with trembling fingers as he watches in the distance.

“You don’t have to worry about the old lady,” you mumble, voice oddly shaky. Morax never hears your voice shake—you are always so sure of yourself and what you say, so at peace with your existence and the way that your life is. But you are so different now, faced with grief.

For a while, you almost didn’t seem to be grieving at all. You spoke so easily to him—so casual and at times, playful with banter. All that really hinted that this passing was a tragedy to you was just a small, sad smile when you’d think about or mention the late Master Lu and his lonely, widowed wife. Just a tiny, long look like you’d been parted from an old friend rather than lost a dear loved one. 

Morax has seen loss and the many different shades it comes in. It’s a devastating color—it washes out all of the other colors that paint life. But you seemed almost like this passing was just any other passing in the everyday world. Just a natural occurrence that you couldn’t help. You’d been strong when Madam Lu couldn’t—spoke with a strong, steady voice as you continued the discussion on the services when the poor old lady broke down in sobs or simply couldn’t bring herself to speak at all. 

For a while, Morax almost wondered if you were grieving at all. If you were simply at peace with an inevitable goodbye.

But he sees your grief now—here, as you are kneeling on soft yet cold soil, clinging to your offering like it’s the last piece of Master Lu you will ever have. 

“I’ll watch over her. Her and those flowers she doesn’t water anymore—that old granny. Always insisting she isn’t aging,” you scoff—fond, exasperated, sad. “It’s like she doesn’t look in a mirror at all. Doesn’t see the way her skin is sagging more and more. It's like she thinks she’s immortal or something—can you believe it? You’d think losing her… her husband would make her take a look at herself for a second and worry about her own health, but she’s still… still that same old meddling old woman. But I’m going to… t-to take care of her—the stubborn old thing. Don’t you worry.”

Your voice breaks off into a quiet sob as you press a small wooden box into the soil before covering it carefully with dirt to keep it buried in place. It’s worn—Morax had only gotten a small glimpse of it as he’d walked with you to the grave. As the overseer of this funeral, it’s his duty to make sure the offerings made to the deceased are appropriate and respectful, to keep the dignity of those who have passed on intact.

He hadn’t asked you what the box meant to you, nor what was in it, but the way you clutched onto it so tightly, so desperately, could only mean that it was important.

“That old lady keeps talking about joining you soon,” you sniffle, rubbing your chin free of the tears that have collected there. “Says you’ll get lonely over there, dead all by yourself. She’s not alone, even if you’re not here—she has me. And Madam Yundan. And Master Hanfeng is still eyeing her, too—too bad you’ve gone ahead and died and can’t keep an eye out for his advances anymore, you fool. He’d still try to match me with that son of his at Liyue Harbor if he could, I bet. But the old lady needs me here, yeah? So I have to stay. And I need her, so you’ll just have to wait over there for a while before anyone joins you. You…you’re the one who left after all, so that’s on you. You old man.”

You sniff again, quieter this time, and brush some loose dirt from the top of the grave, patting it flat with absent care, like you’re smoothing down a blanket.

“Don’t go wandering off too far, alright?” you mutter. “If there’s an afterlife, you'd better stay where she can find you when she gets there. Don’t go gambling, or go drinking, and don’t go getting into trouble like you always did. You always did say she kept you in line, so you’d better behave until she gets there to do it properly again.”

You let out a small, shaky laugh that turns into something breathier, something that almost sounds like another sob before you swallow it down.

“She keeps pretending she’s not lonely,” you continue quietly. “Says the house is only quieter now, that’s all, without all your hammering and sawing and nonsense. Says she sleeps better without you snoring. But she sits by your chair, you know. Still sets out two cups when she makes tea sometimes. Then she gets mad at herself and puts one back.” You wipe roughly at your eyes, like you’re frustrated with the tears that won’t stop. “So you’d better be waiting for her. I doubt it’ll be too long before…before she comes and finds you. Maybe a few years. Maybe a decade, if she’s stubborn. She always is, so who’d be surprised? I’ll probably take some more time,” you say—it almost sounds bitter. Resigned in a way Morax almost…almost understands. You’ll probably take plenty more time. 

“I only have the people of this village, you know,” you say after a long silence. “So that old lady is stuck with me. And I’m stuck with her. So you don’t have to worry about her being alone. I won’t let her be. I’ll fix the roof before the rainy season, as you showed me. I’ll carry the buckets of water so she doesn’t try to do it herself and hurt her back again. I’ll make sure she actually waters those flowers she keeps talking to like they’re people. I’ll listen to her complain about the heat every morning like she always does. So you don’t have to worry. I’ll handle everything here. So just…rest, alright? You worked enough already—worked until the day you died, you stubborn old man. What’s all that you said about retiring? And to think, you live where people come just to retire, you old fool. But anyway…don’t rush her to come find you. Let her stay here a while longer.”

Your hand lingers on the soil for a moment longer before you finally pull it away.

“…Goodbye, Master Lu,” you murmur, all too quietly. “Don’t be lonely over there. We’ll come visit you—I know you love to hear that old woman babble, anyway.”

You stand slowly after that, brushing the dirt from your hands, but you don’t leave right away. You stay there for just a little longer, staring at the grave like you’re trying to memorize it, like you’re trying to make sure he knows you really did come.

“You must see this plenty,” you mumble finally, looking over your shoulder to Morax. He stays silent, so you continue. “Still, sorry you had to see such a sorry display.”

Morax does not answer immediately. He stands with his hands folded behind his back, gaze resting not on you, but on the grave, the disturbed soil where you’d buried your offering. Only after a long moment does he speak.

“There is nothing sorry about grief,” he says at last, “a funeral is not a display of composure. It is a contract between the living and the dead.” You blink at him, a little confused and a little exhausted, too. “The living bring offerings, words, remembrance. The dead leave behind their names, their stories, perhaps a legacy, even. Both sides fulfill their duty. That is what gives a life a fair and just ending. Grief is proof that the departed were loved. Tears are an offering no less valuable than incense or mora. There is no shame in them.”

You let out a small breath through your nose, something halfway between a laugh and a sigh. “You really do talk like a funeral consultant.”

He inclines his head slightly, smiling just a little. “It is my profession, after all.”

“Do you ever hear people say the wrong things?” you murmur. “At funerals.”

“All the time,” Morax replies without hesitation. “Well, I suppose wrong and right are subjective—but there is always a time and place, most would agree. But thankfully, the dead never show they are offended.”

That pulls a small, real laugh out of you, quiet and brief as it is. 

“That’s good, at least,” you murmur. “I called him an old fool at least three times.”

Morax looks at the grave, then back at you. “Then I am certain he departed this world feeling accurately remembered.” You snort softly at that, wiping under your eye again. After a moment, Morax speaks once more, voice softer now, less like a consultant and more like the old man that he is (not that you would know, of course). “It is the belief of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor, and many, I’m sure, that farewells do not end at the funeral. The living always continue to speak to and of the dead. In this way, the dead are not yet forgotten, nor are they truly gone—they are simply living somewhere else, where we cannot yet follow.”

You stare at the grave for a long moment after that. And he wonders if you perhaps do know that he isn’t the young mortal that he appears, as you say, “You sound especially like an old man now…but I’ll come visit and complain to him a lot,” you huff. “He always liked to gossip.”

“A good plan,” Morax agrees.

You nod once, satisfied with that answer, then brush the last of the dirt from your palms.

“Alright,” you mutter. “Let’s go, harbor man. The old lady will knock me with a watering can if I’m late for dinner.”

Morax turns to walk with you, but before you leave, you glance back at the grave one last time. As if to make sure the old man knows you really did come.

-- — --

Dinner with you and Madam Lu is as pleasant as it is heavy. Both of your eyes are red and slightly swollen from the crying that comes with a funeral service (as to be expected), but there is also the silent, but oh so obvious reality that this is Morax’s last meal with you and the elderly woman.

He will have no reason to return to Qingce village again after this, and as a result, this is the final time he will eat (such lovely) cooking by Madam Lu and converse with you over his food. 

He takes his time eating. 

The goodbye comes all too quickly, and your face is mortified as Madam Lu brings Zhongli down to her height by his cheeks as she says, “Young man, do come and visit! Such a handsome face like yours is rarely a sight we get, you know! You’d keep my stubborn child good company. Think about it, alright?”

“M-madam Lu!” you hiss, quickly intervening as you pry her hands off of him and give her a withering look. “Mister Zhongli is here for business—you mustn’t make him uncomfortable!”

“I assure you,” he grins, just a little too amused, he’s sure, for your comfort, “it is quite all right. I’m flattered you think so highly of my presence, miss.”

Your glare extends to him, then, too. 

And then you are both leaving the old lady’s residence, you on your way to your own home, and he on his way to leave the village and return to the harbor as always after a hearty meal from the woman. 

It just so happens to be the same direction, so you both walk together.

“You could always stay the night, you know,” you murmur. 

“Is this your way of offering your residence?” he raises a brow. 

You sputter, giving him another heated look before you hiss, “No, you sneaky little schemer! I meant there are inns for passing travelers in this village, and the journey to the harbor is surely more risky at night as opposed to during the day. That’s all.” 

He chuckles. “I appreciate the thought, but I assure you, this isn’t my first time making a journey at this time of day.”

“Yes, well, it only felt right to offer, that’s all,” you shrug petulantly, still flustered by his earlier comment. 

Morax keeps his chuckle at bay for your sake, but you seem to know he is holding back a laugh anyway, so you send him a sulky-looking warning glance before continuing to look ahead as you walk to your home. 

You reach it in no time. And now…now Morax must say goodbye to you properly. For the last time, likely. Unless there is yet another death in Qingce village that requires his travels, but he doesn’t think that is an appropriate circumstance to hope for in order to be in your presence some more. 

Your presence—what a fascinating reality it is, now, that he wishes for it more and more. He has taken to thinking of you when he is back at the parlor, and he often finds he leaves earlier than necessary when it is finally time to come make his journey to the village. Almost as often as he pushes back his time to leave. 

Morax turns to you as you stand by your door, unwilling to look into his eyes. 

“Well,” you mumble, “I suppose this is the last time you will have to come to his boring old village, isn’t it, harbor man?”

“Yes, for now,” he nods, “but boring is perhaps not the word I would use for this village.”

“Is that so?” You finally look up, raising a brow as you afford him a smile, “Do tell, what is so interesting about a small farmland?”

“For starters, those who tend to the crops are exceptionally skilled at creating difficult walking paths,” he murmurs, “therefore, I must always be alert when wandering this village. It’s as though they are trying to make it difficult—perhaps for a discount or two from wandering businessmen.”

You laugh, bright and free, and back to that steady version of yourself he is so used to. The grief is gone, even if only for a moment. That is how grief works, he supposes—it comes and goes as it pleases. Chokes and releases when it is feeling particularly punishing or merciful, depending on its mood. But grief is not all bad, he has learned. Both from experience as a warrior and a funeral consultant. 

It is grief that tethers people to the memories of loved ones. Grief that makes it so that life is not just a constant forward-moving force. There are still old, stubborn rocks that stay still, refusing to rush along with the current. That isn’t so bad—sure, the pain is there, but so is the preciousness of old memories. Memories that have no business being forgotten, no matter how much time passes. Memories that make it so that a life is not merely just a life, and an existence is not merely just an existence. 

He wonders then, if he died, how long his memory will go on. How long he will be grieved for, and how long the grieving will keep his memory sitting stubbornly in that stream that pushes forward, so willing to move on with or without him. 

You look at Morax with a soft, delicate look. You are fond of him; he is not a fool. He has lived thousands of years, and he has learned what a look of fondness looks like, even if he has never quite understood what it feels like to be so fond of someone, or to be the object of it himself. 

But you look at him like that, and he finds he enjoys the simplicity that comes with the way life is when you live like a mortal. When you live like you do not have enough time to leisurely be in the same place for hundreds of thousands of years. When you live as if you may pass on to the next life, and must move on from one thing to another, so that you may experience enough. 

Morax has been alive for so, so long. And yet, he wonders if the mortals have lived more than he has. 

So, when you fiddle with your fingers as you murmur, “Perhaps I made it difficult to walk along this village so it would take wandering businessmen longer to leave. It’s not often that they make their company known in a place like this,” he steps closer. 

“Is that so?” Morax asks. 

You don’t meet his eyes as you nod. You’re a funny being, he thinks—so sure of your existence, yet so unwilling to step beyond what you have deemed yourself worthy of. You are confident with your life. Happy with your place and sure that you belong where you are. So certain that you are deserving of what you have and what has been given to you, but you never dare ask for more or take beyond the scope of what you allow yourself. 

Even if you want it. 

But perhaps you are starting to change, he thinks. Because you step closer as you nod, looking at him as you say, “I have never wished for a businessman to stay until now. But there is always a first time for everything.”

He laughs. Low and amused as he says, “I have never felt compelled to stay the night anywhere on my journeys—but there is indeed a first time for everything, you are correct.”

And that is how Morax is kissing you. 

He has yearned for it for some time, he thinks. He has yearned for you for some time, and there is no point in denying it. You and your chilis and your flowers and your simple ways of life. You and your soft smile to the villagers and the gentle way you play with the few children that reside here in this far, distant, yet peaceful land that he saved so long ago. He is glad he saved it—of course, he would never regret this deed, whether or not you existed here. But he is especially glad for it now. 

He has done his duty—hasn’t he? Then isn’t it only fair that he rewards himself with the luxury of enjoying his accomplishments? 

Morax is kissing you, and you are kissing him back, and he thinks you have wanted this for just as long. Your lips are soft, and the lip balm you use is sweet and sticky against his own mouth. He swallows down the taste with a low hum, fingers grasping at your hips as yours latch onto his coat. You are so small against him—he towers over you even in his human form, and you have to crane your neck up just as much as he needs to bend his down to end the gap between you for your lips to touch. 

Your breath is hot against his as you exchange it between every kiss, and he tastes you on his tongue with every time they swipe against each other. He has never felt desire like this—never felt his cock twitch like this between his legs or press so tightly against his pants. (Oh, how he aches, he thinks, to take you in his proper form, and satisfy…both of his endowments. But for now, he must settle for this much, in this form, and that is if you even allow him to take it that far. He is not a scoundrel, after all.)

He is grateful that the front of your home is angled so that there are no nearby houses to see you both this way. The path that people walk along faces the back of your home, and that gives him all the encouragement he needs to shamelessly press you against your own door and kiss along your neck, sinking his teeth into your skin and sucking as you let out a soft cry. 

The sound shoots straight to his growing member—and he is reminded just how lonely he is from these duties as a god. Just how lonely it is at the top. 

He is hard between his legs, and you are aware of it, too, because you boldly move your thigh to slot between his. The first brush of you against his clothed cock, and he lets out a low, satisfied groan that makes you shiver. You are encouraged, it seems, by the sound to keep going, rubbing against his bulge and creating that sweet drag from the friction. 

It’s so good, he thinks deliriously—so, so good. He feels the way blood rushes to his cock, the way it makes him ache with how he swells, and then there is a jolt of something so pleasant and mind-numbing when there is pressure against his girth. 

Morax has been alive a long, long time. Longer than some of the mountains and trees shape Liyue, and longer than some of the villages that make up the nation for what it is. He is no stranger to pleasure, and he is no stranger to what it feels like to grind against something when he is fully hard and aroused.

But he is a stranger to carrying affection for the person responsible—at least, affection of this kind. So he groans, loud and uncaring in a way only someone inexperienced might, and you seem to find pleasure in that with the way you smile against his lips as you tilt his jaw and bring him back to your mouth and away from your neck. 

“My, my, harbor man,” you tease, “it’s as though you wish for the old lady to hear us from here. Are you trying to get her attention or mine?”

“A fine one, you are to talk,” he bites at your bottom lip, smiling smugly when you whimper, “you are touching me so freely out here in the open, where anyone may wander by and hear closely. Tell me, do you wish that they do? Perhaps you are even, dare I say, excited by the prospect.”

You stiffen under his arms before you give him a (weak) glare as you huff. “Alright then, you loathsome man,” you say indigantly, reaching behind you to open your door as you fiddle with the lock, “if you insist on doing this properly, then so be it.”

 Morax pushes you into your home as soon as that door opens. It shuts behind him, and he pushes you and pushes you and pushes you—keeps on going until there is a hard wall behind you, and something to keep you in place as he quickly closes the gap and kisses you again. 

You’re not mortal—he has known that as soon as he met you. How could he be considered the prime of adepti if he did not recognize his own kind? But here, under him, pinned and dripping and so pliant for him, he can smell it. The sweet, lingering scent of adeptal blood in your veins and the way it radiates off of you between your thighs.

(How kind the greater divine has been to him, if they are in charge of destiny, to grant him the luxury of developing these affections for a non-mortal. For someone who will not die in what is considered a small fraction of his time. He will have proper time with you—to explore you and this world that he will now live in as his new self if he allows it to be. And oh, how he wants it to be.)

“You smell sweet,” he grunts, “so ridiculously sweet, I wonder how I’ve held myself back all this time.”

“So you’ve been lusting for me for some time now, is that it?” you hum, and edge of cockiness to your voice. He smiles despite himself, exasperated. “What a shallow businessman you are, indeed. What, the meals didn’t satisfy your fill?” 

“Is it so wrong to hope for seconds?” he chuckles. 

Then he is crouching down, and your eyes widen as you register the loss of him against your upper half, pressing his heat against you. When you blink, looking down, he is already hooking a leg over his shoulder as he kneels between your legs, lifting your skirt and pulling your panties aside. 

Wet—you are, for lack of better words, fucking dripping down your thighs, and Morax is having simply a ball. He grins, trailing his nose along the wet trail along your inner thigh, inhaling the scent of you before pressing his tongue to get a taste of your essence. You let out a mortified, choked sound, squirming, and he tightens his grip along the plush of your leg.

“Don’t move too much,” he says lowly, “that is the agreement we are to have, if you want this.”

Evidently, you do want this—and badly, with the way you still immediately. He chuckles before pressing his lips to your clit, kissing it sweetly once, twice, a third time just to tease and swipe his tongue against the sensitive nub while you whimper. Your walls clench around nothing, and he hums in amusement at the sight. 

“You are a foul businessman,” you huff, “loathsome. You ought to hold your end of the deal, seeing as I am.”

“My apologies,” he grins wickedly. 

And then Morax latches onto you, hungry and thirsty and unwilling to be satisfied until he’s turned an inch into a mile, a drop into a stream. He sinks his tongue into you, tasting your sweetness and exploring between your folds. You whine, throwing your head back against the wall, gripping onto his shoulder tightly as your one knee, not thrown over his shoulder, buckles from weakness. 

He hums, pausing only for a moment as he says, “Put your full weight against me. I can take it.”

“But—” you try to protest, but he cuts you off. 

“I said,” he all but growls, “put your full weight against me. I can take it.”

Morax—Rex Lapis—the warrior, the god, who shaped mountains and slayed more gods than you could ever imagine existed. The strong, fierce divine being who could not be crushed by even the largest of boulders, and you are worried by the weight of your body. How laughable—how ridiculous. You hesitantly lean some of yourself on him, and he grips your thigh, digging his fingers into the meat of it as he pulls the rest of you in. 

You squeal—it cuts off into a high-pitched moan when his mouth latches onto your clit, sucking while he rolls it back and forth along the swollen bundle of nerves. It’s a nice sound—the way you wail. He likes the way it makes him feel powerful. He almost wonders if there is more power now, when you are crying for the mercy of his tongue, than there is when opponents are crying for the mercy of his stone spears. 

His fingers sink into your cunt, feeling your walls close around his digits as he stretches you open—you are so tight. So impossibly tight, he feels his cock twitch between his thighs at the thought alone of sinking past them. He thinks for a moment about how warm it would be when you clench around his fucking aching cock instead of his fingers, and then he is groaning against your heat as he feels a wave of desire burn at the pit of his stomach. 

You seem to like that—you shiver at the vibrations he makes against you from the sound, and he hums in appreciation at that. His fingers sink deeper into you, pressing against the back of your walls until he feels you tense before humping into his hand and letting out a desperate cry when he hits a particular spot. 

So you like him there, he thinks. He can certainly do that. After all, a skilled fighter such as Morax is adept at pinpointing exactly where his blows will land. Striking his fingers is infinitely easier than striking large spears of stone or giant boulders, so his fingertips bully mercilessly into that sensitive spot over and over again as his tongue flicks back and forth along your swollen clit. 

Once, twice—and then you are rolling your hips into his face, completely abandoning your worries about him holding your weight (which he is taking exceedingly easily, thank you very much) while you come undone on his tongue, on his fingers, on his face. 

There is the wet essence of you smeared around his lips, partially on his cheek and his chin, sweet and sticky and delicious. Like a sweet sunsettia that he has devoured without care for having an ounce of shame. There is no shame in tasting you, he would argue—only a fool would savor his taste of this nectar instead of devouring it. 

He works you through the entirety of your orgasm, until you are quivering from the aftershocks and whimpering, squeezing your legs to get away from his hungry lips that stay latched to your cunt. 

“S’too much,” you whine, “s-stop.” 

(It’s a cute plea. He’ll entertain it for now.)

Morax is fucking throbbing between his legs. His cock is hard enough that he knows there is a wet patch on his pants against his crotch—he can feel the dribble of precum even before he has freed himself from the confines of the tight fabric. When he stands, keeping your steady with an arm around your waist, he is burying his face into your neck as he groans deliriously into your neck. 

“I have little patience, if not, little sanity left,” he says, voice gruff and low. “Tell me now if this is what you want because it won’t be long before I will be in no position to stop what you are starting.”

“You are starting this,” you have the gall to argue, even after he has fucked you so thoroughly with his fingers alone, “and I will finish it, so don’t even consider the idea of stopping—not unless you intend to be a coward.”

A coward. Oh? What a fierce, stupid little thing you are. He wonders if allowing yourself to have what you have always denied yourself the possibility of has made you bolder than ever. Maybe now, you consider the possibility that you may take as you please if what you wish for is right there in your reach. 

Morax, the god of Geo, has never been known for being a coward, and he will not start today. So he grabs you easily, bringing your legs to wrap around his waist as his hands dig into the plush roundness of your ass. 

“Which way to your bedroom, then?”

“Down the hall, first door to the left,” is all you can say before his lips are immediately on yours. That lip balm you use—the taste of it will drive him to madness. You will drive him to madness. 

When you are tossed onto your mattress, there is only a second’s interval he bothers to allow you to catch your breath before Morax is impatiently hovering over you. He is raking his eyes over your form hungrily. You, and that skin that he has committed to memory under the sun, and those delicate fingers that tend to plants and pull weeds that are now fisting the sheets. He is going to take you, sink into you inch by inch, and mold you onto his cock, and you are going to look beautiful as he does it. 

And when he is done, he will ask you if there is anyone else better suited to fuck you like that. (The answer, he is confident, will be no. No one could hope to fit you better than Morax himself—and you are only seeing one of his cocks tonight.)

Stripping you fully is easy enough—you are eager, very eager to shed your clothes, and even more eager to pull his own off of him. You marvel at the size of him—first his torso and the sheer broadness of him and his muscled physique, and then his cock and the thickness of him at full mast. His hands toy with your breasts, squeezing and groping as his thumbs roll over your nipples, and you impatiently gasp while trying to roll your hips lower to rub against his hard cock. 

You succeed for a short second—and that short second is enough to make him pause as the wet friction brushes against him. He shivers, lets out a low groan—and then whatever patience he had left snaps. 

“I’m going to fuck you now,” he says bluntly, “and you are going to take me fully. Here.”

His finger draws a line against your belly where his cock lies flat against you, long and thick and fucking swollen with desire. Your breath hitches as his fingertip trails over his tip, right along your skin, and then you whimper as you breathe, “P-please.”

“Say it again,” he grunts. “Say please—I want to hear you want me.”

“Please, Zhongli,” you sob.

Morax, he wants to correct—for a tense, fleeting second, he almost does. He debates it, decides against it, and grits his jaw in frustration. Frustration that he can only be rid of if he sinks into those tight walls of yours, he’s sure. 

So he does. 

He grips your jaw, pulls you into a hot, searing kiss, and presses his tip to your entrance, rubbing along your folds, coating you in his precum while coating himself in your own arousal, and when—and only when—you are sobbing out an incoherent plea of how badly you need him, how hard you want him to fuck you, how deep you need him to be, does he sink into you. 

Because Morax is still Morax. And a god is still a god. He is to be worshipped before he will answer. 

“Zh-zhong—li,” you whine the latter syllable of his name when he sinks fully into you, fully bottomed-out and pressed into your wet, hot folds. You take him well, he thinks—so good and pliant and obediently accommodating for the less than humble size of him. 

(He did take his time preparing you, of course, but he isn’t one to skip out on giving credit where credit is due. You are good—so good. Good to him and good for him. He will reward you accordingly for it.) 

“Yes, yes,” he chuckles, “worry not, I will answer your little prayers.”

“You loathesome, arrogant man,” you hiss, still filled to the brim with him. And yet, that does not stop you from speaking so freely. He’s amused, really. 

“You certainly are not one to sweet-talk those whom you bed,” he notes. 

“And you’re not one to be humble with those whom you bed,” you argue back.

“No, I suppose not,” he laughs. 

And he will prove it to you, he is certain, that he deserves to be at least a little arrogant when he starts to fuck you. His hips pull back, almost fully slipping out of you, before he snaps them forward and buries himself all the way again, rolling and thrusting with a steady rhythm that angles the blunt head of his cock exactly against that same spot he found earlier. The stretch this time, of course, hits harder, hits spots his fingers couldn’t reach, drags along areas that he didn’t press into then. But he does so now, and you clench around him in response, welcoming him in, gripping him hard and tight and so fucking hot, his mind blanks for a second. 

“Fuck,” he hisses, “fuck you’re tight.”

“Yeah, and full, too,” you whisper into his ear as his face buries into your neck, “feel that? I’m full of you—all of you.”

Oh. He’ll get you for that. Get you for the way you make him moan so shamelessly at your words, for the way he loses his rhythm a little and fucks into you a little more desperately, for the way you giggle as he twitches inside of you. 

He’ll get you, so he brings his lips lower, to your breast, and latches onto a nipple, rolling his tongue over it and sucking harshly so that your back arches into his touch when you feel it. 

“Indeed, I do feel it,” he murmurs, switching over to the other breast, not leaving one nipple neglected in favor of the other, “I feel how needy you are around me, squeezing. I can hardly move, you know—are you really that desperate to be fucked?”

“B-be quiet, you awful thing,” you hiss. 

He laughs. Chuckles as he finally lets go of your breast with a pop, before his lips are on yours. Kissing you, he finds, is the only thing that makes it even a little bit possible to lose consciousness of that tight, pleasant sensation of you around him. Kissing you is the only thing that could hope to distract his mind a little bit from you. Kissing you is the only thing that could be more important than this—than you, taking him, fitting him, and making yourself his just as much as he is yours right now. 

He snaps his hips faster, and you drink in the low groans he lets out just as much as he drinks in the high mewls you feed him. 

And when you cum again, erratically clenching around him as your walls spasm with the force of your second orgasm, he can hardly breathe as he feels his own high approaching. He tries—Morax tries, to his credit, to pull away and spill elsewhere, but you insist as your legs wrap tightly around his hips and pull him in closer, deeper. 

“Inside,” you babble, “p-please inside!”

“Are you…” He pants, head spinning and vision blurring as you squeeze around him yet again. He’s so close—and it aches so good. “Are you sure?’

“Yes, yes, yes,” you cry, still babbling away as you ride out the final waves of your pleasure. 

You finish, and Morax starts—the end of your orgasm triggers the beginning of his, like the ebb and flow of the tide, one wave retreating only for another to roll in and take its place.

Hot, thick ropes of his seed spill into you, and he tenses as the force of his pleasure crashes over him, hard and brutal and dragging him into the depths of some hazy, incoherent place in his mind where he can hardly breathe. Your hands are on him—distantly, he’s aware of that. One is in his hair, and the other is shakily gliding over his back, like you’re trying to soothe him while he’s gone—so far gone into the throes of pleasure. 

“Fuck,” he barely registers his own voice, “fuck—th-that’s…good.”

When he’s done—when his hips are finally finished rolling and give you a break from the extra stimulation, he collapses beside your body, and you instantly shuffle closer to cling to him, resting against his chest. 

He lets you—happily, he lets you. His arms are tight and wrapped around your body, and you are so close that he can feel your erratic heart right against his. 

“I don’t think this is what the old lady meant,” you mumble into his chest as you curl into his side, “when she said to keep me company.”

“I don’t believe she specified that this was what she didn’t mean,” he grins tiredly, and oh, you are so beautiful. So breathtaking when you are so small and vulnerable against him, and only him. “So we have not breached any agreements.”

“You are a bothersome businessman,” you yawn.

He chuckles, and then you sleep. 

────────────────────────

When dawn comes, he awakens you with a kiss to your temple, and a soft promise of, “I will return when time allows it of me, this I promise if you will be waiting.”

“I’ll be waiting, harbor man,” you mumble sleepily. 

He hums, presses yet another kiss to your temple, before he says, “Then we have an agreement.”

He is gone by the time you are properly awake, his clothes gone, and his scent lingering. The only proof that he truly was there, and that your mind is not playing tricks on you, is the simple qingxin he leaves on your bedside table and a note that reads, a flower that is not from your own fields, from a wandering businessman who hopes to evade incurring any further losses.

Perhaps time is not wasted, you think with a smile, if time is well spent. And perhaps Zhongli would not mind spending some of his abundant time with you. 

-- — --

Zhongli keeps his word and returns not long after that. 

And then he leaves, and then he comes back again. It goes on like that for some time. He never stays for long, but he comes and goes at least once or twice a month. For now, that is enough—you have a long life ahead of you, after all. What’s a few weeks to you? You can wait. 

The more he visits, the more thrilled Madam Lu gets, much to your dismay—and worse, the more he visits, the more attached the two seem to be with each other. You cannot spare yourself from her horrifyingly embarrassing words now and then, nor can you save yourself from his thoroughly amused looks as she says them. 

Zhongli, you think, could cut your long life span into a quarter of what it is at this rate. He starts every trip he makes, first, with a visit to Madam Lu—who, without fail, insists he stay for breakfast every time (and, of course, she does not have to insist for long because he agrees to her meals so easily), before sending you both off afterwards. Not without giving you a pleased, knowing smile as you leave, of course. 

You shoot her a glare before tugging Zhongli along by the wrist, hissing something like, come—before that old lady says any nonsense that will fry your brain. He chuckles every time, eyeing you with mirth, before following you without much argument.

In the time that you wait for his next return, there is news that the god of Geo has fallen. Rex Lapis is dead, they say. 

You are shocked to hear it—you are part adepti, after all. The Geo Archon is of your kind, and though you were never a devout worshipper, you have heard of the deeds he has done for your village, your people. You glance at Madam Lu as she sighs heavily, shaky and bony fingers watering her plants. 

You grab the watering can from her hand, and she lets you. 

“So much loss as of late,” she murmurs sadly, “how will people deal with so much grief, I wonder. At the very least, I hope they honor the lord well with a proper funeral.”

“I’m sure they will,” you hum, “after all, a funeral is for the living, not the dead—and the living cherish the Geo archon well, wouldn’t you say?”

“You’ve spent an awful long time with that funeral consultant,” she grins, eyes gleaming with excitement—with a certain glint that tells you she knows more than you’d like. “When is he next returning, then?”

“I’ve not a clue,” you huff, “he’s a busy man. He’s no reason to come spend all his free time here.”

You walk off, swiftly crossing over to another side of her garden to water flowers a distance away, but Madam Lu already has heard what she wants to—what she needs to. 

“Not a clue, hm? So you do expect him?”

“Leave me alone, you nagging old lady!” you hiss over your shoulder. She only laughs, and even if it’s at your own expense, you are glad to finally hear the sound from her. 

-- — --

There is much to catch up on with Zhongli the next time he comes—the most current update of the Geo Archon’s passing at the harbor, the investigation and the controversy surrounding it, the rite of parting he is handling on behalf of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor with the aid of some wandering traveler passing by and her odd, floating companion. 

You listen closely, feeling an unfamiliar, unsettling weight on your chest as he tells you about all the progress she has helped him make with the many, many ceremonies. And by contrast, there is little to tell him—nothing more than the idle gossip the older women conjure up in all their free time in the village, or the disagreements there have happening between merchants who purchase and transport the crops you grow and sell here. 

He tells you of all the knowledge he has on Liyue and its history, on its late Archon, on all of the duties he is so graciously carrying out, and you listen with interest—you do. But there is still an acrid taste lingering on your tongue as you swallow down his stories. 

“This traveler friend of yours,” you mutter, “she seems very capable—what a stroke of luck it is that she’s helping you.”

“Yes,” he agrees easily. You are self-aware enough to know that there is a pout on your face—you cannot help it. And he chuckles as soon as it curls onto your lips. “Why the long face?”

“I’ve no long face, you bothersome man,” you huff, “this is my everyday face. You don’t like it?”

“I like your face enough to tell it apart from your everyday one and your sulky one,” he teases with an amused smirk. 

He enjoys this, you realize—enjoys the way you are…well, what are you, exactly? Jealous? Insecure? Bitter? Or simply scared? Or are you everything all at once? You don’t know. 

When the shift occurs on your face, the one where you are deep in thought, he gently pulls you by the hand and laces his fingers with yours as he walks up to your home. You are pressed against the door—and suddenly, you are getting deja vu from very different yet similar times where you were pressed against this very door by this very body.

“There is no need to sulk,” he murmurs. 

“I am not sulking,” you huff.

“Well, in that case, if you were,” he laughs, “then there would be no reason to. I’ve come to keep you company—it was an agreement I made, after all. I am a businessman of my word, you see.”

Your chest is lighter as you look up at him with a small grin, and when he kisses you, you let him back in past your doors again, and into your bed. And you afford him some of your abundant time, just as he affords you some of his. 

You’ll tell him, you think to yourself as you free his cock from his underwear—he groans when your hand wraps around him, and you watch the way his lips tug between his teeth as you stroke him slowly. You’ll tell him that you’re not just a mortal, just like he isn’t either, and that you have plenty of time to spend with him if he’ll spend it with you, too. Time that won’t be a waste.

“You can go faster, you know,” he says tensely, chest falling and rising rapidly as he tries to keep his breathing steady. 

You smile, pressing a kiss to his forehead as you shift on his lap, looking down at the way his girth makes your hand look so small. You marvel at the weight of him in your hold, giving him a small squeeze, teasing your thumb along his slit as he leaks pre cum, and he throws his head back with a choked gasp. 

“Where’s the fun in that?” you quip, “then this will all be over before we’ve begun. Surely, you have better patience than that.”

“I don’t see you enough to have much patience,” Zhongli says flatly, unimpressed by your teasing. Still, he lets you have your fun, as much as it seems to pain him, sitting patiently under you while he waits for you to get him off. 

You kiss his jaw, his chin, his Adam’s apple as he swallows thickly, before finally moving your hand again, gently squeezing around the tip with every upward tick of your hand. Zhongli likes it that way—you’ve learned that when you touch him with the intention of making him cum, he likes it when you squeeze at the tip and when you slow down when he’s close and drag it out a bit longer, even if he might complain. He likes showing off his stamina—for such a polite and polished man, he can be a bit of a show off when he wants to be. 

You watch as his face slackens, as it morphs beautifully into that look of raw and pure pleasure. You admire the way he bites his lip and parts his mouth and says your name when he feels particularly good. You admire the way he looks when his abs clench, his hips buck, and his brows crease when he’s getting close. 

“You came to spend time with me,” you murmur against his cheek as you nuzzle your nose into it, kissing it softly. “Right?”

“Yes,” he pants, giving you a flat look even despite the way he is teetering so close to the edge, so worked up. “Of course I did, or do you think I let just anyone touch me so freely?”

“Just making sure,” you giggle. “Businessmen are known for being greedy.”

“I think the real greedy one is you,” he breathes. 

You kiss him softly, quickening the pace of your hand, and with a twitch of his cock, he spills into it. You drink in the low moans and gasps he lets out as he cums, smiling when he croaks your name in between ragged breaths. It tastes so lovely when you drink in the sound of your name from his tongue. So sweet and decadent and rich. 

“I’m the only one who waits so patiently for you, you know,” you peck his lips as he catches his breath when he’s finished coating your hand with his seed, “so you should only keep me company.”

He chuckles, shaking his head as he wipes the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “Is that the new term of our agreement?”

“Yes,” you huff. 

“Well, as I said, I am a businessman of my word.”

“Good.”

You’ll tell him, you think resolutely. Soon, you’ll tell him the truth of who, of what, you are, and perhaps he will tell you the truth of his in return. And you can continue to spend more time in abundance together, you can finally stop wasting your days and simply passing them by—they’ll have meaning soon. 

────────────────────────

“Qingce village was ruled by a terrible god once,” you murmur to him one day, “or so the legends say.”

Morax feels your fingers trace aimlessly along his bare chest. He breathes steadily under your wandering little digits. For a moment, he tries to decipher what pattern it is you are tracing into his skin. He comes up with nothing. Another intricate design on the cloth that is mortality, he thinks—such seemingly frivolous acts of touch. Shapes drawn without thought, wandering lines with no meaning in mind, and yet they are not meaningless at all. There is something tender in it, regardless. Affectionate, perhaps, and expressed by the small comfort of touch alone.

He wonders if such things will become natural to him if he tries his hand at this life for long enough. They are natural to you—and you are far from mortal. He knows you are, even if you don’t tell him. Surely, if it were possible to become natural for you, then there is no such thing as impossibility for him. 

“Ah, so you are familiar with the legend of Chi,” he murmurs, “though I suppose it’s to be expected of someone who was raised in this village.”

You pout, gaping at him in shock. He smiles at the sight. “Is there anything of Liyue’s history you don’t know?” you huff. “Just when I think I can teach you something.”

He chuckles at that—you feel it rumble under your cheek against his chest where you lie. The deep, fond sound alone washes away any lingering trace of irritation you had just a moment prior. “Very well,” he hums. “Teach me.”

“You already know the legend,” you point out flatly.

“Teach me anyway,” he insists. “Hearing the same story told by numerous people is advantageous still. One comes across many different viewpoints, you see.”

“You still talk like an old man, huh?” You snort. “Imparting life lessons one after the other—I suppose working at a funeral home and seeing so many losses has all but turned you into one.”

“A terrible fate,” he says mildly.

You huff again, though there is little heat left in it. Your fingers continue their idle wandering over the warm expanse of his chest as you begin.

“Well,” you say, “the people of Qingce say there was once a great demon called Chi. Some sort of dragon-like creature that forcefully took over this place. They say he was powerful enough to challenge the gods themselves.”

Morax listens silently beneath you.

“But he was defeated,” you continue. “Slain by the Geo Archon long ago. Afterward, his body was broken apart so he could never rise again. Each of the parts was sealed away in different places—hidden in the mountains and fields around Qingce so that none might gather them. Rex Lapis even taught the people of Qingce Village to make Geo statues to crush the Chi’s remaining power.”

Your fingertip traces a slow circle over his sternum as you think.

“Oh—and the villagers say those ruins scattered around Wuwang Hill? Those are the seals. Old mechanisms the Archon left behind to keep Chi’s remains locked away. If they were ever undone…” You pause, wrinkling your nose faintly. “Well. I imagine that would be rather bad.”

“That would be a reasonable conclusion,” he murmurs.

“And the old stories say the people of Qingce protected those seals for generations,” you go on. You tilt your head, glancing up at him. “That’s why the village values its stories so much. They’re not just stories. They’re warnings told through traditions, you could say.”

His gaze lowers to you.

“An admirable tradition,” he says quietly. “I did not realize the people of this village looked at it that way.”

Your finger pauses against his chest as you beam. “Ah, so I did teach you something.”

He smiles faintly—fondly. Yet there is something hollow in his eyes as he says, “Yes. You did. You’ve taught me quite a lot more than you realize, you know.”

“How so?” You raise a brow, reaching over to poke the tip of his nose. “I taught you the joys of bedding an easy woman, is that it?”

He laughs at that, bright and warm as his arms tighten around you. There is something akin to affectionate exasperation in his expression as he leans down and presses a kiss to your forehead.

Your breath hitches at that. He notices it so easily. Morax notices so much about you. He cannot afford to give you such physical affection as often as he’d like, given how little you see of him. He holds these small, fractional moments close to his heart the same way you do, as well, whenever they come—they are few and far between, after all.

“You have taught me the joys of sharing a bed,” he agrees, pinching your hip teasingly (and he makes sure that he is rather careful to remain gentle, too), “the joy extends elsewhere, too, however. Not just the bed.”

“Mister Zhongli,” you gasp, “dare I say a businessman such as yourself has turned sentimental on me?”

“Ah, yes. A most strange development indeed,” he plays along, shaking his head in amusement. 

────────────────────────

When you awaken in the morning, your bed is empty. Zhongli has already made his departure for Liyue Harbor. Before disappointment can claw its way to your chest and make you bleed, however, you pause as you sit up and look to your bedside table. 

A single qingxin is laid carefully there, waiting for you, along with a single coin of mora. 

You smile to yourself—time is not wasted. Zhongli will afford you more time. 

-- — --

The next time you are visited by Zhongli—or rather, this time you suppose it would be more accurate to say he hunts you down—he is desperate to touch you. You have never seen him this way.

You are tending to the crops when you notice him striding toward you across the fields, his pace unusually hurried. You straighten, brushing dirt from your hands as a smile pulls at your lips.

“Back so soon?” you call lightly. “Don’t tell me your bed was so lonely you had to come all this way just to see—oh!”

He catches your wrist before you can finish, his grip firm but not painful, and immediately begins pulling you along behind him.

“Zhongli—?” you protest, stumbling once before matching his pace. “Where are we—?”

He does not answer. Instead, he guides you away from the fields, away from the paths the villagers usually take, toward the rocky edges of the mountains that loom behind Qingce village. The ground grows uneven beneath your feet, tall grass giving way to weathered stone and uneven ground. There is a small opening for what seems to be a cave of sorts at the base of the mountains, and he leads you inside. 

You recognize the place soon enough. And then your eyes widen.

“Zhongli,” you hiss, tugging slightly at his hand as he finally stops inside the cave. Moss-covered stone walls and old mechanisms greet you, and you shiver just from looking at them.

The ruins. The seals. This is one of the places, you are certain—one of the places where, according to the stories, remnants of Chi still lie, dormant and fragile.

“What are you doing?” you whisper sharply. “We cannot—” Your protest cuts off when he pulls you close. The movement is sudden enough to steal the breath from your lungs as his hand finds your waist, and his other settles against the back of your neck. “Zhongli—!”

Your words dissolve the moment his mouth finds yours. It is not the slow, measured affection he usually affords you. This kiss is urgent—desperate, almost. He pulls you flush against him like he fears you might disappear if he loosens his hold even slightly.

For a moment, you are too startled to respond. Then you melt and kiss him back. Then, when your senses return, your hands brace instinctively against his chest as you pull back just enough to stare at him.

“Have you lost your mind?” you whisper, scandalized. “We cannot do such…such indecent things here!” You gesture vaguely toward the ruins around you. Of all places. “Do you not see all this around us? This has to be where the seals are, Zhongli!”

He does not release you. If anything, his hold tightens slightly, amber eyes searching your face with an intensity that makes your irritation falter.

“I am aware,” he says quietly.

You sputter at how calm he seems to be. “That does not make it better!” 

But he is already kissing you again, slower this time, though no less needy. His fingers curl into the fabric at your waist as if grounding himself. The mountains around Qingce stand silent, but it feels strangely like the ancient stone is watching over the two of you.

You are weak to Zhongli, however. Not even ancient deities and the thought of awakening them to wreak havoc on your home is enough to change that. He presses you against the hard wall of stone, and you let him, angling your head so he can kiss your neck.

He hums in appreciation. “Allow me to make it better then,” he tells you. And your resolve crumbles instantly.

────────────────────────

Morax knows exactly what sleeps beneath this place. After all, he is the one who sealed the parts of Chi away all those years ago. And his memory is exceedingly good—he does not forget such things so easily. In fact, he does not forget them at all.

He also knows what is coming to Liyue.

Soon, the sea will rise, and soon, an old god will stir. Morax knows what such god lies beneath the seas, pinned by his own stone spears. Osial has never been anything short of a tyrant—he remembers those days well. How tall and unforgiving the tsunamis were, and how easily Osial tormented the mortals of this land with such harsh waves, all for the sake of his own gain. The people of Liyue will not suffer at the hands of such shameful deities. Whether it is because they have fended off this threat alone or because of Morax himself, he will have to see soon enough.

But oh, how Morax longs for the day that he will step away from this role he has carried for millennia. How he longs for a time when he is nothing more than a wandering man in the streets, living peacefully among his people in bliss. And how he longs for the simplistic joys indulged in by the lifestyle of mortals—of affection and delicate touches and fond smiles.

So he kisses you again—because in this moment, with your hands fisted in his coat and your breath catching against his lips, he needs to know that choosing this life will be enough. That stepping away from being a deity, should his people succeed, is a proper choice and not a foolish mistake. Morax is not known for being a fool. He is a wise god and a capable fighter. He has led his people to prosperity, and in return, he is worshipped sacredly by the people of Liyue.

Morax does not make mistakes. Not when his decisions involve Liyue.

But then he wonders—what god leaves his people to fend for themselves during an oncoming disaster? A disaster that they are unaware of is on the horizon, no less. What god would step in only when his people are at the brink of defeat, and not simply from the beginning to ensure they are always guarded? That is his role, is it not? And such roles surely do not expire, do they?

But erosion has chipped away at his heart of hard stone—until the unyielding bedrock of it has worn thin, leaving something far more fragile beneath.

Morax, after so, so long, yearns for a life outside of what he has always known. What he has fought and slain countless divine beings for. What he has always thought to be his fate forever. 

You break his kiss once more, breathless. And he, when you gently cup his cheeks with those tender hands, feels weak to his knees in a way he has never felt. The Geo Archon called Morax has never felt weak. (What a laughable choice in word, in fact. And yet…that is the unbearable truth. You have weakened Morax—far more than any erosion is capable of doing.)

“I still think this is a terrible place to do this,” you mutter weakly.

His quiet laugh brushes your lips. “Noted.”

And yet he does not move away. If anything, he makes sure to settle his hands more firmly at your waist, drawing you closer until there is scarcely a breath of space between you. 

“You are impossible,” you murmur, though, he notes, your protest lacks conviction now. Your fingers remain curled loosely in the front of his coat, as though you have forgotten to let go.

“Am I?” he hums.

You open your mouth to retort, but the words falter when he leans in again—not quite kissing you this time, but close enough that your breath mingles with his. His gaze drops briefly to your lips before lifting back to your eyes, searching your expression with intensity. He finds exactly what he is looking for—want, need, desire. Love, dare he say. 

Do you love him? Morax knows he has grown to love you. You have taught him what it means to be human, after all—or at least live like one, and he has never wanted to live like a human more than he does now in all of his long, endless life. 

“I know you are aware how dangerous this place is,” you scold him softly.

“Mm.”

“That should concern you.”

“Perhaps.”

You huff faintly, glaring. “You are not taking this very seriously.”

Something warm flickers in his eyes at that—at the way you so easily make his heart squeeze with something as simple as an expression on your face. Everything he has sought you out for has fallen into place. You are the clarity he has searched for. His people will prosper, he thinks—a new age of Liyue has grown for years now. The age of the mortals. No longer do they need him to guide their way of life, and perhaps…perhaps Morax can take his place alongside them. As an equal and not a deity. 

And perhaps he can take his place alongside you, as well. 

His hand slides from your waist to the small of your back, guiding you a fraction closer, until your body presses fully against his. Your breath catches.

“Zhongli—”

Your warning dissolves when his lips find the curve of your jaw instead, slower now, lingering in a way that sends a shiver down your spine. The sensation steals the rest of your protest before it can form.

“You said this was a dangerous place,” he murmurs softly against your skin.

“Yes,” you manage.

“And yet you have not left.”

Your fingers tighten slightly in his coat. Your heart pounds traitorously in your chest.

“Well,” you say, attempting dignity and failing somewhat, “that is because you have not given me the opportunity to.”

A quiet chuckle rumbles against your throat. 

“Ah,” Morax says gently. Then his hand slides higher along your back, and the rest of your protest fades into another kiss. “Alright then.”

He steps away. Your fingers tighten their clutch along his coat for a moment before letting go, and you stare at him incredulously. Like you cannot fathom that he has pulled away. 

“What—”

“Go on then,” he challenges. Rather smugly, too—Morax is a god, sure, but he is not without his own flaws. He remembers his less-than-humble days during the era when he was a much younger deity. “You may leave if you so desire. I won’t stop you.”

“You are a loathesome man, you know,” you grumble. And then you pull him back in, and he hums in satisfaction against your mouth. You kiss him—just as desperately as he does, and this is how Morax knows that his place has changed. 

His place is no longer on the throne of the divine, watching and guiding a nation that has evolved to survive without him. No, his place is here. With you. Where you will make his old, aging heart feel young and new again, learning and experiencing the joys of a life he has never thought possible for himself. 

“So you’ve said,” he murmurs in between kisses. 

His hands work at the bottom of your skirt, gently lifting it to trail his fingers at the thin hem of your panties. He slowly pulls them down along your thighs, just midway, and enough to expose your heat to allow his fingers to sink in. And sink in they do, feeling the warmth of your walls squeeze around his digits. 

That familiar scent of yours invades his nostrils—that scent that he finds he can no longer ignore. 

“...You are not human,” he says thoughtfully.

You freeze. For a moment, you simply stare at him, utterly incredulous, breath still uneven and labored from his fingers working your folds apart, pressing into your deepest, most sensitive parts. 

“Y-you…you cannot possibly be bringing that up right now.”

Morax’s expression remains maddeningly calm. “I felt it best to confirm.”

“Confirm?” you repeat, aghast. “You choose now to confirm?”

You gesture vaguely between the two of you, clearly referencing the rather compromising position he has put you in. His thumb brushes idly along your hip as though he does not find the timing nearly as outrageous as you do. You glare at him for that, and Morax is all too pleased by your expression. 

He only smiles in amusement. 

“I have known since the beginning,” he says.

Your eyes narrow. “…You have?”

“Yes.”

“And you are only saying something now?”

“It seemed the appropriate moment.”

Your mouth opens. Closes. Then opens again. “This is the least appropriate moment imaginable!”

You are just adorable, he thinks as a chuckle escapes him. “I happen to disagree.” 

And then, because Morax cannot help himself, and because he has decided that leaving his divine duties behind means that he can allow himself a moment or two to be utterly distasteful, he thrusts his fingers into you faster, his thumb brushing over your clit in slow circles. He watches as your mouth falls open, a soft, ragged moan tearing from your lips as you breathe his name. 

“U-unbelievable,” you stutter, “have—oh, fuck—have you no sense of shame?”

“You are half adepti,” he continues calmly, with his fingers still inside of you. “It is not difficult for one such as myself to recognize.”

“Oh, is it not?” You glare at him between your panting.

“No.”

You squint up at him. His fingers hit a particularly sensitive spot in the back of your walls, and your eyes flutter shut as you let out a long, wanton moan. Then, slowly, your eyes blink open. A faint, unimpressed smile curls at the corner of your mouth.

“Well,” you say breathlessly, “that makes two of us.” His brow lifts a fraction. “You think I h-haven't figured it out by now? You—ngh—are n-not…human either, Zhongli.”

For the first time since this conversation began, he actually pauses. The pace of his fingers in your cunt does too, and for that, you give him a hard glare as you whine in protest. But he cannot bring himself to care. 

“…Oh?”

You snort softly. “Please. Your eyes glow when you use elemental energy. Humans do not do that—I had my suspicions you were also some sort of adepti.”

A quiet laugh escapes him then—low, warm, and thoroughly entertained. “How perceptive,” he murmurs, “I did not realize you noticed me so closely.”

You huff, flustered. “And for the record,” you add dryly, “most people would have this conversation before putting their hands where yours currently are.”

Morax hums thoughtfully at that, resuming his earlier movements along your folds. “…Duly noted.”

You cum on his fingers not long after, and once you have just barely caught your breath, he pulls you into a deep kiss. 

Morax, despite all the growth and wisdom he has accumulated in his…well, thousands of years' worth of growth and wisdom to accumulate, still has his moments where he is nothing but an arrogant, cocky bastard. 

And that is exactly why he is going to fuck you here, in these ruins, where there is a god laid to rest. A god that could easily awaken if these ruins were to be tampered with too carelessly. He needs to see it for himself—as fucking pompous as it is—that he has done an undeniably good job at his duties. That he can disrespect a god by fucking the woman of his affections in their ruins, and still risk nothing. Still worry not one bit about the safety of his people. Still exist and live his life exactly as he wants it now—with you and only you, and not deal with the headache of a threat. 

“You always take me rather well,” he murmurs, groaning as he pulls his fingers from your cunt, as your pussy flutters around the digits while he unburies them from your heat. 

He means it when he says that—you always do. You take him in so easily, so effortlessly, so readily. Of course, he’d like it if he could take you properly here—and if he could have it his way, he’d strip you completely, pin you against this wall, fuck you from behind as he glares smugly right at the vault that holds Chi’s spirit, and make you cum before he fills you to the brim with his seed so you can walk out of here with the evidence of his accomplishments. 

But he doesn’t have that time nor patience, and something tells him that being that zealous would perhaps break you from your own need-filled trance and force you to draw the line. 

He doesn’t want that. 

He wants to feel you—he wants to watch you fall apart on his cock, feel himself fall apart as he kisses you senseless, and then leave knowing that he’s making the right decision for the right reasons. 

You are his reason. And you could never be a mistake. 

And now, with the fact that neither of you is a mortal acknowledged and out of the way, he can fuck you how he really wants—with both of his cocks. He pulls his own slacks down just enough to free two hard, aching cocks, giving one of them a few slow strokes and gritting his jaw as his breath grows labored, before staring down between you both as he brings the tip to your entrance. He watches as his tip sinks into you, disappearing with the slow press of his hips forward. This much, you’re familiar with, of course. 

What you’re not familiar with is the second hard, curved length that mirrors the one buried inside of you. Your eyes widen, and you stare at it in awe—maybe, dare he even say, a little bit of fear that shoots right to his crotch and makes his second length twitch. 

“Two…?” You breathe out, “what—”

“Surely this much is not hard to believe if you know I am not a mortal,” he chuckles lowly, pressing a kiss to your cheek as you quiver beneath him, itching for him to move already as he stays perfectly still while buried to the hilt inside of you. 

“But…th-they won’t…they can’t both fit,” you breathe out in alarm. 

Morax laughs—low and smug and amused enough that you fix him with a sharp glare as you flush under his slightly egotistical gaze. 

“Maybe not today,” he agrees, “but I know you’re good—good for me, good at taking me. With a little patience, I think you’ll handle them just fine, don’t you think?”

You shiver, swallowing thickly as you stare at his second, well-endowed arousal before slowly nodding in a trance. Morax grins—because of course, of course, you would be so perfect for him. So pliant and easy to agree to his whims and requests, with how plainly good you are to him. And he is, as he always has been, a generous, giving deity, so he will reward you well for it, as he always does. 

For now, though, he focuses on gently grabbing your hand, bringing it to the cock that isn’t pressed deep into your dripping cunt, and watches as you instantly, obediently make a fist and wrap your hand around him, slowly stroking just the way you know he likes. You’ve done this plenty of times before, but he never gets used to how well you know him—how easy it is for you to do all the right things and touch all the right places in all of the right ways and make him feel so fucking good. 

“Fuck,” he curses, “you have always known too easily how to drive me mad, you twisted woman.”

You huff, using your free hand to tug him close by his jacket, pressing his forehead to yours, “And you have always known too easily how to do the same, you loathesome man.”

That’s all it takes for him to decide that he wants you now. Needs to feel you good and proper. Needs to watch you as he sinks in and out of you, and watch as you struggle to concentrate as you pump the cock in your hand while the one in your cunt drags along your sensitive folds and presses deep into all the right places. 

The first roll of his hips, you hiss. The second, your jaw slackens, and you whimper his name. The third, you squeeze your fist around him without realizing it, and he feels his mind fucking blank for a moment as he feels the tightness of you around him—whether that’s your hand or your cunt—not once, but twice. 

Morax groans, leaning forward and pressing his forehead against your shoulder as he snaps his hips and fucks you, and you mewl when his thumb finds your clit, rubbing circles mercilessly against the delicate, swollen bundle of nerves. 

“You—your company was a dangerous agreement to make,” he breathes against your shoulder, “do you realize that? How easily you have taken over my head. Every thought I have, every agreement I make, every contract I sign—it all reminds me of you. You, your smile, your annoying chilis, your stubborn words.”

“I’m not stubborn,” you argue. 

He chuckles, disbelieving and out of breath. You drag your hand up along his cock, squeezing around the tip before quickly dragging it down and twisting at the base—he moans. Loud and uncaring, giving that damn vault (the one with Chi’s defeated spirit, he likes to haughtily remind himself) a smug look because, well fuck—he can simply just do that if he pleases. And he does. And he will continue to. 

“No,” he hums—it comes out more like a low rasp. “No, I suppose not. I suppose I only think you are stubborn because you will not leave my thoughts, and perhaps that blame is on me to bear, not you.”

He snaps his hips once, twice, a third time—by the fourth, you’re already clenching around him as you come undone, letting out a soft cry of, Zhong…li!, while he chokes on the feeling of you squeezing so tight and so fast around him like that. 

Morax wants this life. You. The easy, simple knowledge that he can step down, spend his days freely with you, beside you, (and yes, perhaps in you, too), all without breaching the contract he has with his nation, with his people. He wants to tiptoe around your chilis, and leave qingxins on your nightstand, and tell you stories of Liyue’s history, and laugh when you are flustered by that old woman whom you love so much. 

He wants this easy, simple, mortal existence after so long. The one where affection and endearment are so simply woven into his being, where power is not the reason he is here, where wisdom is not the burden he must bear. He wants you and the life you make him fantasize about. And he wants it badly. 

As badly as he wants to cum and fill you up right now—and one final thrust of his hips, sloppier in pace now that he’s so close, and he spills into you. You pull him into a kiss, and he thinks about what it would be like to kiss you like this every day, and he feels himself spill onto your hand at the thought as you continue to pump him through his high. 

“You—” he gasps, cutting himself off with a low, needy moan, “you are the one I want to keep me c-company. Always.” 

You smile against his jaw at that, leaving soft, open-mouthed kisses as he finishes riding out the last few waves of his orgasm before murmuring into his skin, “I’ll keep you company if you keep me company, too. Deal?”

“Deal,” he breathes, cradling your cheeks like you are gold as he brings your lips to his. 

And Morax, if his people pass this final test, he decides, will have his answer for good this time. 

-- — -- 

The crisis of Osial’s summoning ends not with the drowning of Liyue, but with its salvation.

The sea recedes. The waves calm. And the people—his people—stand victorious. From afar, Morax watches the harbor where mortals and Adepti come to a truce. He watches proudly. Watches in relief. Watches with a quiet ache, despite it all, as the end of his era as the Geo Archon is finally, after so long, solidified. 

And almost immediately after he takes care of the loose ends, he leads his feet away from the harbor and up the narrow paths toward Qingce village.

Toward you.

────────────────────────

You find him near the edge of the fields just as the sun begins to sink behind the mountains. The sky burns amber, turning the terraces gold. Zhongli stands where the path curves, hands folded neatly behind his back as though he has been waiting for some time.

You slow down when you see him.

“…You’re okay,” you say gently.

Zhongli tilts his head faintly. “I was not aware my well-being had been in question.”

You cross your arms. “Oh, forgive me for worrying,” you mutter. “There was only a sea god trying to drown the entire harbor.”

At the mention of the event, his gaze shifts briefly toward the distant horizon.

“Yes,” he says quietly. “So there was.”

You study him for a moment. Something is…different. Not in his appearance. Zhongli still stands as composed and elegant as ever—still in such fine silk, even with little mora to his name. (How he has such poor finances, you will never understand.) But there is a strange ease to him tonight, as though some invisible weight has finally been set down from his chest.

“You didn’t come all this way just to stare at the sunset,” you say eventually.

“No.”

“Then?”

He is quiet for a moment. Long enough that you begin to wonder if he may not answer at all.

Then he says, “There is something I have not told you.”

You snort at that. “Well, that’s not unusual,” you reply flatly. “You are a very secretive man.”

“This matter,” he says carefully, “is somewhat…larger than most. And not one I could evade in good conscience if…I would continue to pursue you in this way.”

That gets your attention.

Pursue you. 

You have not discussed the details of this…arrangement between you and Zhongli. Not outside of when you might next see him, or if either of you will be particularly busy in the coming weeks to meet at all. Hearing him say so candidly that he considers himself to be in pursuit of you brings a delicate ache to your heart—an ache of longing. 

You want him. All of him. And you have avoided asking him all this time if that might be a possibility for fear of losing him altogether—but he has handed you your desires so easily with one sentence—confirmed he wants it just the same as you do, even. That he has been seeking you out all this time and not just the familiar convenience of your body. 

You smile at the idea and look at him with bright eyes. 

“Alright. Pursue me properly then, Mister Zhongli of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor.” He winces at that title a little. Your brows furrow. 

“You are aware,” Zhongli begins slowly, “that I am not human.”

You blink at him like he has grown two heads. “…Yes. We have established that, or did you forget? And neither am I, so there is no need to be concerned that I would worry over something as meaningless as that.”

“That is not the issue,” he sighs. 

“…Okay,” you say slowly, a bit more cautiously now. “Then what exactly are we talking about here?”

Zhongli exhales slowly. “I…am Rex Lapis,” he says bluntly. 

You stare at him. Blink once. Then twice. And then you break out into a fit of giggles as you look at him incredulously. 

“No, you are not. What a silly thing to say—now tell me really what this is all about.”

“I am,” he insists, almost mildly offended.

“You absolutely are not.”

“I assure you—”

“Rex Lapis is the Geo Archon,” you interrupt, pointing vaguely toward the harbor far in the distance. “The god of Liyue. The one who—”

Your voice falters as you take a look at his face.

You know that face. You have studied it over the course of weeks. How it looks when it is sleeping and peaceful, how it looks when it is tired and glum, how it looks when it is bright and joyed, how it looks when it is lax with pleasure and need, and how it looks when it is painfully serious and honest. 

You know him. You know how to read him inside and out. How to tell when he is telling the truth or evading it altogether. You know him because he is yours—he has been for quite a while. And you know that he is being truthful. 

Your stomach drops.

“…Oh. I see. You are not lying, then,” is all you say.

Zhongli inclines his head slightly. “No, I am not.”

“Fascinating.” You nod slowly. 

“You are taking this rather well.”

“Let’s not be so hasty to assume—I am still deciding if I should throw something at you.”

“That would be understandable.”

You run a hand over your face. “Let me get this straight,” you say slowly. “You are telling me that the man I have been—” you pause and clear your throat, “—um…spending time with is actually the god of Liyue?”

“Yes,” he says easily. His eyes flash with a momentary fit of amusement. 

“Well, disregarding the matter of why the Geo Archon would be parading around as a representative of a funeral parlor—you thought it would be appropriate to mention this only now?”

“There were…complications.”

You stare at him. “Complications,” you repeat.

“Yes.”

You let out a long breath. Then you gesture vaguely at him.

“Well, go on then, Your Divinity. Explain.”

Zhongli does not react to the sarcasm. Instead, he looks out toward the distance. “For thousands of years,” he says quietly, “I have ruled Liyue as its Archon.”

You huff, “Yes, I am aware of the history.”

“But Liyue is no longer the nation it once was. Mortals have grown. They have built their own institutions, their own systems of governance. Trade flourishes without divine intervention. Contracts are honored by people who no longer require a god to enforce them.”

Your expression softens slightly. “Your people still have reason to need you,” you say, stepping closer, “there is no need to doubt your purpose as their god—”

“It is not about what they need,” he shakes his head, staring down at the grass as he sighs. “It’s about what…what I need. What I want. I have longed for ages now to know that I have done my duty. And perhaps rest this old, eroding soul of mine. Osial’s defeat has given me the reassurance that I may step down without worry.”

“So the sea god…”

“Was a test.”

You stare at him again. “…You let a sea god attack Liyue as a test?”

“Well, I was not the one to summon it,” he defends, smiling faintly with mirth at your bewildered look, “I was simply aware it would happen. But I was prepared to intervene if necessary.”

“Well, did you intervene?” You ask.

“No. I was pleasantly impressed to see the Qixing and the adepti handled it swiftly.” 

Silence settles between you again. Then you let out a soft, delicate sigh. “Well,” you mutter, “that explains things, I suppose.”

“Does it?”

“Only a little.”

A faint smile touches his lips. “Erosion is not the only reason,” Zhongli says quietly.

You look back at him. “Oh?”

His gaze returns to you. “I have carried the role of Archon for millennia,” he says. “Longer than most living beings can even comprehend. And yet, in recent years, I have begun to wonder whether there is more out there to experience than simply being a powerful deity.”

“Being a powerful deity is no simple matter,” you scoff in disbelief. 

“No, it isn’t, I suppose,” he chuckles. “But, still, there are more things to experience in life—I learned that when I met you.”

You blink. Your chest tightens slightly. “Meeting me hardly seems that relevant.”

“But it is. You…” he says quietly, “your chilis and your flowers. Your laughter. Your skin under the sun. Your voice. Your stubbornness. You have altered my perception of what it means to be alive as opposed to simply be living. Even your scolding,” he hums with a pointed look, and an endeared smile. 

You pause as it sinks in properly who he really is, and how you’ve been engaging with him—and then, your breath hitches before you gasp in horror. “Oh—I insulted the Geo Archon.”

“Yes, it would appear you have. Repeatedly.” He gives you a slightly cheeky look as he says, “Some would consider that an unforgivable sin, you know.”

You cover your face. “I am never showing my face around you again.”

“That would be unfortunate.”

You peek at him through your fingers. “…Why?”

“Because I would miss you.”

The words are spoken so simply that it takes you a moment to process them. Your hands slowly lower. “What do you wish to gain from such easy flattery?”

Zhongli—or perhaps Morax, you should call him, maybe even Rex Lapis—meets your gaze, laughing softly. “I stepped down because Liyue no longer needs its Archon,” he says. Then, more softly: “And because I wish to live as a normal man. To walk among the people I once ruled. To learn their customs not as a distant observer, but as one of them.” His voice grows quieter. “To experience the small joys of mortal life.”

“You will not be mortal,” you scoff, “even if you step down.”

“But I can live like one,” he says easily. “There are many joys to the mortal way of life.”

Your throat tightens. “Is that so?”

“Yes. And I find,” he says gently, “that many of those joys seem to involve you.”

You stare at him. “Me?”

“Yes.”

You look at him a little longer—cautious, careful. You think back on all the little moments that led you here—that first damn day he came to your quiet, small village, stepping on your sprouting chili plants as he walked confidently in the complete opposite direction of where he needed to be. That easy, effortless way he’d helped your grieving heart fill the empty place left behind by Master Lu’s passing before you’d even realized something was missing at all. The kind, thoughtful way he spoke to Madam Lu and ate her cooking, talking with her like an old friend, like someone who understood her loneliness without her ever having to say it aloud. And that soft, delicate way he slowly made you realize that your existence, outside of this small, gentle village, could belong beside other people. That you, with your half-adeptal blood and that quiet, lingering sense of abandonment you had buried down all those years ago, could still be worth something to someone beyond the only place you had ever believed you were allowed to belong.

You love him—oh, you think, how you love him so easily and desperately and hard and deep and fierce. You love him with that mixed blood in your veins and that broken part of you that has always wondered, somewhere in the back of your mind, if you truly, really belonged anywhere at all. You love him because he keeps you company, and you love him because keeping him company is the easiest thing you have ever known how to do.

You want to keep loving him. When years and years and more years pass—ten, then twenty, then fifty, then one hundred—you want to love him still. And you want him to love you, too. You want to spend your long, endless days with him and watch time pass slowly and steadily at your side. He has so much of it to spare, and so do you, and you want to spend that time believing that not one day is a waste if you spend it together.

You love him, and you want to dare to believe that he could, after all this time, grow to love you the same way.

“This sounds like a confession,” you whisper. 

He looks at you with a small glint in his eyes. “I believe you could call it that, yes.”

“You are the former god of Liyue.”

“Yes.”

“And you are confessing to me.”

“Yes.”

You let out a long breath. It’s relieved. It’s joyed. It’s fucking exasperated and annoyed. “Well,” you mutter, “be that as it may, you have deceived me, deity or not. And any man who deceives a lady must make up for such egregious wrongdoings.”

A quiet laugh escapes him. “Then I will do that. I hope it will be satisfactory. Do offer me some leniency, if you will—I have only been living as a mortal for so long.”

You study him for a long moment. Then you sigh, stepping closer. “…You are still a loathsome man.”

“I have been told.”

“But,” you add reluctantly, stepping closer, “you are the loathsome man I have grown fond of, nonetheless.” 

He steps closer, too, invading your space so freely and easily, as if he exists simply to do that. Like it is his right to do so, no questions asked. He grabs you by your wrists, pulling closer and flush against him, pressing his forehead to yours as he studies your eyes. You love him, you think, oh, you love him so much, it could kill you—it could rob you of all the endless time that you have. 

And if he knows that, then he decides to spare your poor heart and your poor life span, too, as he murmurs, “I have fallen in love with you. Won’t you let this old, eroding man settle down in your company and pass his days in peace?”

You laugh (and it’s a watery little thing) as you shake your head in disbelief. “Say that again—and then I will believe you.”

“I love you,” he chuckles, raising a brow, “must I write it in a contract before you believe me?”

“I love you too, you loathesome, bothersome man,” you sob, “I’ll keep you company too if you stop deceiving me like the shady, untrustworthy businessman you are.”

He brings you into a deep, desperate kiss, cradling your face like it is the precious remainder of his long, endless lifespan pressed into his palms. You kiss back. It’s familiar. It’s new. It’s weird and odd and frightening, all at once—and yet, somehow, it is the most effortless, and correct thing that you do. 

“It’s a deal,” he murmurs, “yes?”

“Yes.”

-- — -- 

“Does that traveler girl know that you are Morax?” you ask against his bare chest, tracing your fingers along his skin. He is still catching his breath as he pulls your naked body against his, sighing as he gives you a look. Like he already knows where this is going. 

“Yes,” he says, warily. 

“So she knew before me, then,” you narrow your eyes. 

“Technically, that is the case, yes. But that is only because—”

“Perhaps you should seek her company, then,” you say petulantly, huffing as you dramatically roll away from him. 

Zhongli—after much questioning from you over whether he should be Morax now, or perhaps Rex Lapis, he has firmly insisted that this is the name you are to call him by—sighs as he takes your wrist and tugs you back against him. He gives you an exasperated look (and yet, despite it all, there is unmistakable fondness beneath it) before leaning down to press a kiss to your forehead.

“Do not sulk.”

“I am not sulking.”

“And don’t be so stubborn all the time.”

“I’m not stubborn,” you say defiantly. 

He gives you a flat look. “Seeking out your company is not for the weak, is it?”

You give him a smug, bright grin at that—and you almost think you watch him fall in love with you all over again. “Get used to it, then, old man—you have a long, long time of my company ahead. And it certainly is not for the weak, you’re right.”

He laughs—low and warm and quietly endeared, but above all, certain. “Good,” he hums. “That is fine by me. I have always been known to be rather strong, you see.”

You curl into his chest, and he holds you close, and you and Zhongli have all the time in the world.

(And no—none of it is a waste.)

He does not notice them at first. The path is narrow, the terraces crowded with green growth, and his attention is momentarily occupied with locating the correct house of the elderly widow he has come to visit on behalf of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor. He steps forward—there is a soft, devastating crunch beneath his shoe—and he stops. Slowly, he looks down. A small green sprout lies bent sideways in the dirt. He moves his foot, and there is another crushed stem.

He blinks once. Then twice. “…Oh dear.”

“You have got to be kidding me.”

There is a voice that comes from behind him, and Morax turns. You stand just a few steps away, staring at him in horror as though you have just witnessed a murder in its cold-blooded glory. (Perhaps murder is not far from the truth, of course—the plants are surely dead now.)

Your gaze drops to the ground. Then back up to him. Then back to the ground again. “You stepped on my jueyun chilis,” you say flatly.

Morax follows your gaze again, taking in the small row of plants he has apparently trampled with great efficiency.

“Ah, yes,” he says after a moment, looking only slightly apologetic. “It would appear that I have—my apologies for my carelessness.”

“These were only just sprouting,” you cry, crouching down to inspect the damage. “Now I’ll have to restart these sprouts,” you look up at him, utterly unimpressed.

“My apologies,” Morax says sincerely. “That was not my intention.”

You stand, brushing dirt off your hands, and look him up and down. Morax watches your eyes as they assess him properly—he can practically see the way you pick apart his appearance right before his eyes as you make your deductions. (He is dressed far too nicely to be a farmer or a villager. Too clean. Too proper. He can see it written plainly all over your face that you have already figured he is from the more urban parts of Liyue.)

“You’re not from here,” you say. “Liyue Harbor?”

“That is correct.”

“I can tell.”

He inclines his head slightly. “I am here on behalf of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor.”

Your expression shifts immediately.  “Oh.” The irritation does not disappear entirely, but it softens. Dare he say, your expression even saddens some. “You’re here for Madam Lu, then. For her late husband,” you say.

“Yes.”

“She’s been expecting someone.”

Morax nods as he explains, “I’ve come to discuss the funeral services she seeks. However,” he adds, glancing down at the damaged plants again, “I appear to have caused some trouble before arriving.”

You cross your arms at that. “Yes. You did.”

“I will compensate you for the loss,” Morax offers.

Your brows lift slightly, unimpressed—you are deeply, wholly, entirely unimpressed by him. It is a fascinating change of pace. Morax (or, perhaps sooner or later, he will have to grow more used to Zhongli) is not someone people look at so disdainfully. So dismissively. So irritably. The only individuals who have ever cast a look at him in such a manner are foes long fallen, long since taught the power of the Geo Archon and slain for daring to stand against him in battle.

“Do you think you can simply just pay for the damages you have caused to my agriculture?” you huff at him.

He hums, nodding as he says, “If that is what is required of me, I certainly can.”

You study him for a long moment, then snort softly. “You really are from the Harbor.”

“I take it that is obvious.”

“Painfully.” Then, you look down at the plants again and sigh. “Well, they’re not all dead,” you say. “You only destroyed…several. Not everything.”

“I am relieved to hear the damage is not total.”

You give him yet another look. “You’re very calm for someone who just committed agricultural sabotage to a small, humble villager’s plants.”

“I find panic rarely improves a situation,” he says honestly. 

You stare at him for a second longer. Then, much to his surprise, you laugh. He blinks, slightly taken aback. (Where goes all your agitation from just a few moments prior, he wonders.)

“You’re rather strange,” you tell him. 

“Am I?” he asks, slightly amused. 

You crouch again and gently press some soil back around one of the bent sprouts, trying to prop them upright. “Yes—quite strange indeed. You said you’re from the funeral parlor?” you ask.

“Yes. I am here to help Madam Lu arrange her husband’s funeral.”

Your hands slow slightly at that. “Right,” you say quietly. That sad look is back on your expression. You must have known him, Morax surmises—though, of course, that would not be all too surprising. Qingce Village is a small place, after all. “Master Lu was a good man. He passed last week. His wife is not taking the news well.”

“Yes, so I’ve heard,” Morax replies evenly. “That is why I have come in person. Aside from the fact that she is grieving, it would be difficult for her to travel to Liyue Harbor at such an old age.”

Your gaze softens at his words—something…rather grateful seems to replace the earlier traces of resentment as you look up at him.  “That was kind of you.”

“It is only part of my duties at the parlor. Nothing worthy of praise.”

You stand again and wipe your hands on your skirt. For a moment, Morax locks his eyes with yours—they are rather easy to get lost in, he thinks to himself. Time is preserved so simply when he is looking into them, so effortlessly that he almost feels the eroded fragments of his soul settle down and rest. (This is all he has ever hoped to have for quite some time—just the chance to simply rest his old, eroding soul and enjoy something outside of the divine. How frightening that it is as simple as looking into the eyes of a village girl.)

“Well,” you say, gesturing up the path, “whether you can complete your duties to be worthy of praise or not, we will never know if you insist on going the wrong way, Mister…”

Morax, he itches to say. Instead, he smiles politely, says “Zhongli,” and introduces himself before continuing, “and I had suspected as much.”

You answer him by murmuring your name. It’s a beautiful name, he decides as he tests it on his tongue—as is everything else about you. Your smile, and the simple way you are dressed under the gold cast of light the sun coats you in, are easily the most breathtaking parts of Qingce village. Despite the lush patches of grass and the soft petals of glaze lilies in the distance, Morax finds he cares little for the sights of the village when you are in his line of vision.

“You’re heading toward the terraces,” you tell him. “Madam Lu’s house is in the other direction.”

“I see.”

You start walking off, and he stands there, partly stunned and partly not. Something about you makes it so that he is not entirely shocked by the abrupt way you saunter away, but he finds that being kept on his toes is not all that terrible. Especially not if he gets to watch you walk away, either—you are not a poor sight from behind, that is for certain. Then, just a moment later, you glance back at him.

“Come on, you fancy old harbor man. I’ll take you there before you destroy anything else.”

Morax huffs a small, amused laugh. Harbor man. When was the last time someone addressed him so casually? So carefree? His memory fades to long, distant times. Times he does not forget, of course, but times that are long enough into the past that he cannot help but lose his grasp on what it feels like to enjoy his days the way he once did. 

“I appreciate your assistance.”

“You can repay me by not stepping on any more plants,” you wave a hand off dismissively. 

“I will make every effort.”

He walks in silence alongside you for a few moments through the village. He eyes the terraces and takes in the breathtaking view of such simplistic beauty. The waters are clear, and the petals of the blooming flowers are wide as they face the sun like open arms. It has been a long time since Morax has come to this village—a long, long time, indeed. The last he remembers of this place is the great battle he’d fought before that wretched serpent god had fallen. They seem to be doing fine, he notes in satisfaction. Of course, that is not a surprise to him—he would surely hear about it, perhaps even make an appearance himself, had they not. 

But the villagers of this small, peaceful patch of land are doing well. And Morax is faced with the haunting proof that he has done his duties once again. Quite exceptionally, too—exceptionally enough that he wonders if he truly has any duties left for much longer. 

It’s not long before you glance sideways at him. “So…do you do this often?”

“Do what?” He hums. 

“Travel all the way out here to help people arrange funerals,” you say as you lead him over a small, wooden bridge. He is mindful not to trample a stem of jueyun chilis that grow along a patch of grass on his way. 

“Yes,” he nods, “if the director asks it of me, I tend to travel to clients.”

“That sounds…like a rather depressing job. It must suck the excitement out of the travels when you are working so closely with the dead.”

“On the contrary,” Morax says calmly, “I work with those still living. Funerals are for the living, not the dead.”

You glance at him with a slight scoff. “That is a very funeral-parlor thing to say.”

“I imagine it is,” he chuckles, “but it is true nonetheless.”

You walk a little farther before suddenly saying, “You know, you talk like an old man.”

Morax does not react immediately. He’s certainly heard that phrase before—how many times has he been called old? It’s…not exactly false, if he were to be technical about his age. “…Do I?” he asks. 

“Yes,” you snort, eyeing him in amusement. “Very philosophical. You sound like you’ve been alive far longer than you look.”

“I assure you that is not the case,” is all he says. If only you knew. 

“Mm,” you say skeptically. “I don’t believe you.”

He almost smiles.

Morax, as he follows you, reaches a small house near the edge of the village. Smoke curls faintly from the chimney, and the grass is perfectly trimmed with glaze lilies neatly sprouting along a line beneath the front window of the house. You eye them for a moment before sighing as you murmur, “The old woman hasn’t been watering them again—it can only be expected.”

Morax says nothing. He’s an observant person at his core—he has not reigned over Liyue for a short period of time, and that reign of power did not come to him overnight. Such is his nature as a god, as an adepti, as a warrior, to be observant. It’s easy to see that this old couple—this old widow, now—means something to you. That alone would not be a shock. Qingce village is a small place, and it would not be hard to piece together that a small village and its people are well-connected. 

But the grief on your face, coupled still with that familiar, fond expression as you sigh over the neglected flowers, suggests that there is more to your relationship with Madam Lu (and by extension, her late husband) than the average villager. Morax almost wants to pry, but if there is anything that being a funeral parlor associate—and, of course, a god who has seen many battles—has taught him, it’s to never pry when the grieving grieve.  

“That’s Madam Lu’s house,” you gesture at the door, “she’s home, so you should be able to take care of business rather swiftly.”

“Thank you,” he says. He pauses, then adds, “And again, I apologize for your plants.”

You roll your eyes as you wave a hand dismissively. “You should be. But, I suppose they’ll survive. Well—probably.”

“I am most hopeful that they do,” he nods. 

Morax watches as you start to turn away, walk to the flowers and inspect the slightly dry soil beneath them, and reach for the watering can abandoned at the side with a sigh. 

“You know,” you say, glancing back at him, “you’re not what I expected for someone from a funeral parlor.”

“In what way?” he raises a brow. 

“I don’t know,” you shrug. “I thought you would be gloomy. Or cold. Maybe a little creepy.”

“I see,” he smiles in amusement, “I would hope I am none of those things, lest director Hu receives complaints.”

“Hurt no more of my chilis, and I will allow you to leave Qingce village with no complaints, harbor man.” You grab the watering can and start walking away towards a well in the distance.  Then, you pause and call over your shoulder: “Do try not to get lost on your way out—I cannot escort you every time.”

“I will try my hardest,” Morax hums. He watches you go for a moment before turning toward the house.

────────────────────────

You end up seeing plenty of the harbor man for the next few weeks to come as you help plan Master Lu’s parting. 

Master Lu was a well-respected man in the village, and his doting wife strives for nothing less than a proper tribute for his send-off. Qingce village is a simple place. The people here lead plain, straightforward lives—most are those who seek something quiet and easy after retiring. They are people who have aged and feel the tug and pops of their aching muscles and bones. They are people who know that life is something to cherish before it is easily taken from you, before you are ready. 

As such, funerals are done properly. There are traditions to honor, respect to pay, and well wishes to part the dead with before they are off to the afterlife. 

You don’t know what is waiting for you in the afterlife—nor do you even really know if you believe in one at all, but you do know you cherished Master Lu. He took you in, after all, when you were nothing but a young child—too much of a responsibility for your adepti father, who had enough as is to do, evidently. And too much of a burden for your mortal mother, who could not bear the so-called injustice of having a non-human lover and child. 

So, following the abandonment of your parents—two different reasons for the same betrayal—you end up dumped in Qingce village because that is where it is safest to abandon young children, apparently. And that is where Master Lu, alongside many others in the village, finds you, at your tender age of ten, with your helpless, bitter distrust of adults around you. Slowly, but surely, he is but one of the many who rebuilds your image of the world you are surrounded by, much like he rebuilds practically anything with those adept, carpenter hands of his.

Your first bed, and the swingset in the grass that you played on, and that little bench where you’d sit and watch Madam Lu water her crops in the distance. He had built them all for you with his own callused hands, much like he’d built that easy trust that mended your wounded child-heart. 

And now Master Lu is gone. But he has helped build you a stable enough, sturdy enough foundation that even without his cunning smile and his crinkled eyes, you trust the world around you despite it all. And you trust that funeral consultant, too—clumsy as he may be around your precious plants. 

“Madam Lu tells me you have arranged for a florist to bring flowers from Liyue Harbor,” you hum, walking with him through the terraces. 

He nods, inspecting a glaze lily. “Yes, but there will be glaze lilies supplied by the village itself—we do not often see glaze lilies bloom like this in Liyue Harbor. Not so naturally, that is. They are artificially sprouted by modifications, but they lack the same fragrance.”

“Qingce village didn’t always have glaze lilies as full as these,” you say proudly, “it was only after I came to the village that they grew so fresh and full—it brought Madam Lu lots of business, you know. No one seems to be able to tend to them the same way as I, no matter the effort.”

“I see,” Zhongli says thoughtfully. Almost like he sees through you. 

You quickly change the subject—you wouldn’t want him to realize you aren’t human quite yet. (Not that it’s a dark secret that you keep, of course. But you find mortals tend to feel more at ease around you when they believe you, too, are yet another mortal.)

“Have you trampled any more chilis on your way here?” you huff, “don’t even consider lying because I will find out in due time. I will be deducting the damages from our final bill, you know.”

“I assure you all of your chilis are fine,” he chuckles, “and I have already informed director Hu of the discount you will be afforded for my mistake.”

“I hope your position is still intact,” you tease. “I’d hate for your livelihood to be at stake for such a simple mistake.”

“Well,” he smiles with what you can only describe as a bit of a devious grin, even despite how proper and polite he holds himself, “it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve cost the funeral parlor a mora or two. Such is the risk of running a business—some losses are to be expected.”

At the start, Zhongli left immediately after his weekly visits with Madam Lu to plan the funeral services. Master Lu has already been buried, of course, but the funeral itself won’t be held until the following month to ensure that all the proper traditions are seen through. But, well…Madam Lu is a lonely woman, and Zhongli is good at conversing with the elderly. Almost too good. She has grown rather fond of his presence, and you think that Zhongli is equally as fond of her cooking as he is shirking off his duties for a bit, so he puts up little argument when she asks him to stay for lunch. 

And that is how you end up entertaining him for the time it takes for her to cook her meals. 

Couldn’t you cook your meals ahead of time, you’d asked the old, nagging woman, it’s not as though you don’t have the time to spare.

And how often do you see such a handsome, young face in this village, she’d tutted, giving you a disapproving look, I have to stall for time somehow, so you can charm him. He is a fine man, you stubborn child—make sure you waste no opportunities. I want grandchildren.

You’re already an old granny, you’d huffed, fighting back the flustered look that threatened to make itself apparent on your face. 

That damned old lady and her damned need to meddle where she didn’t have any place meddling. But you suppose that is why you grew up the way you had—so loved and well looked after, despite being practically an orphan in function. And you suppose that Zhongli of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor is not…the worst candidate for a man, should you choose to settle down. 

Not that you would choose. 

Your life span is too long for that of a mortal lover, and adepti are difficult enough to come by as it is. Never mind the fact that they are likely all too old to settle for someone like you—you are still a young lady in mortal years. Surely, if a strong, capable adepti man were looking to settle down, he would spare little time with someone like you who does nothing more than tend to crops with your days. 

You have never dreamed of settling down and loving a man—not when mortals such as your mother can see the true curse that it is to fall in love with a long-lived being such as yourself. Mortal men, especially gentlemanly, smooth-talking, and granny-pleasing funeral consultant mortal men from Liyue Harbor of all places, would waste little time with you. 

But you shake the thought off as you turn to look at the old lady’s house in the distance, and see her waving by her front door to indicate that lunch is ready. You nod before turning to Zhongli to bring him along with you—

—and the world is suddenly shifting. Why is it shifting? Why does it feel like gravity is no longer keeping you firmly cemented in an upright position on the ground, and why does it feel like air is rushing past you all too fast? Surely…surely you couldn’t be falling?

Except you are. If your poor luck as a half-mortal, half-immortal being wasn’t enough to deter you from charming a man, your clumsiness sure is. And you had the gall to call him clumsy, you think. Not…not that you care to charm him of all people anyway because…well, because why would you? You do not. 

But if you were to care, well then. This would be your sign to swiftly put those dreams behind you. It’s a good thing you never cared for such silly fantasies anyway. 

But, just as quickly as you are falling over the edge of a terrace and onto the ground a hefty distance away, the earth beneath you is shifting. It shakes and rumbles, and then it lifts so that soft soil reaches your back faster than heavy impact can. It isn't long before you are carefully raised to the terrace once more, where Zhongli is waiting for you with a polite, respectful hand outstretched just close enough that you don’t have to stretch to reach it, but just far enough that it doesn’t impose on your personal space, giving you the option to decline it. 

You take it. Because you are shaken, and not because you would like to hold his hand, of course. And he gently pulls you, where he steadies you easily as you shake on your wobbly legs when they take your weight. 

“What…” You furrow your brows, confused. Dazed. Still a little shaken. 

“You slipped on some of the wet soil,” he says calmly, “and lost your balance over the edge. I caught you using Geo.”

“Geo?” You furrow your brows deeper.

“My vision,” he explains simply, “I made a construct to catch you.”

“Well, thank you,” you nod slowly. 

Geo…you think to yourself. Undoubtedly, his power certainly was Geo. But…but you have felt the sensation of Geo around you before from a vision wielder, and…this power is different. More powerful? No—more concentrated. Like it is the source of Geo itself. Like it is where it all stems from, with how fierce and deep the energy runs through it. You know little of your lineage or of how the elements work, but you know that for a vision wielder, he seems abnormally strong. Almost…almost like his power is not that of a vision at all. Almost like he is the power—he and he alone. 

And then you blink, eyeing him suspiciously. 

“When did you get your vision?” you ask, hoping to sound casual. 

He hums, looking at you. And there it is again—that look. Like he sees right through you. “Perhaps I will tell you in due time,” he chuckles, still holding your hand as he pulls you alongside his steps forward. “Come, Madam Lu is waiting.”

He is not human, you think—no, you know. And for a short, brittle, fleeting moment, you dare to hope that perhaps Zhongli of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor is not a mortal, and that he might have enough time to spare in this life to waste it with you. 

────────────────────────

Morax values those who follow traditions closely. It is sacred and ancient, the culture of Liyue. And Liyue is a richly cultured nation, indeed. Qingce Village, he is pleasantly surprised to find, pays its respect to the dead properly and does the culture of this nation justice.

You are standing in front of Master Lu’s grave, holding your offering with trembling fingers as he watches in the distance.

“You don’t have to worry about the old lady,” you mumble, voice oddly shaky. Morax never hears your voice shake—you are always so sure of yourself and what you say, so at peace with your existence and the way that your life is. But you are so different now, faced with grief.

For a while, you almost didn’t seem to be grieving at all. You spoke so easily to him—so casual and at times, playful with banter. All that really hinted that this passing was a tragedy to you was just a small, sad smile when you’d think about or mention the late Master Lu and his lonely, widowed wife. Just a tiny, long look like you’d been parted from an old friend rather than lost a dear loved one. 

Morax has seen loss and the many different shades it comes in. It’s a devastating color—it washes out all of the other colors that paint life. But you seemed almost like this passing was just any other passing in the everyday world. Just a natural occurrence that you couldn’t help. You’d been strong when Madam Lu couldn’t—spoke with a strong, steady voice as you continued the discussion on the services when the poor old lady broke down in sobs or simply couldn’t bring herself to speak at all. 

For a while, Morax almost wondered if you were grieving at all. If you were simply at peace with an inevitable goodbye.

But he sees your grief now—here, as you are kneeling on soft yet cold soil, clinging to your offering like it’s the last piece of Master Lu you will ever have. 

“I’ll watch over her. Her and those flowers she doesn’t water anymore—that old granny. Always insisting she isn’t aging,” you scoff—fond, exasperated, sad. “It’s like she doesn’t look in a mirror at all. Doesn’t see the way her skin is sagging more and more. It's like she thinks she’s immortal or something—can you believe it? You’d think losing her… her husband would make her take a look at herself for a second and worry about her own health, but she’s still… still that same old meddling old woman. But I’m going to… t-to take care of her—the stubborn old thing. Don’t you worry.”

Your voice breaks off into a quiet sob as you press a small wooden box into the soil before covering it carefully with dirt to keep it buried in place. It’s worn—Morax had only gotten a small glimpse of it as he’d walked with you to the grave. As the overseer of this funeral, it’s his duty to make sure the offerings made to the deceased are appropriate and respectful, to keep the dignity of those who have passed on intact.

He hadn’t asked you what the box meant to you, nor what was in it, but the way you clutched onto it so tightly, so desperately, could only mean that it was important.

“That old lady keeps talking about joining you soon,” you sniffle, rubbing your chin free of the tears that have collected there. “Says you’ll get lonely over there, dead all by yourself. She’s not alone, even if you’re not here—she has me. And Madam Yundan. And Master Hanfeng is still eyeing her, too—too bad you’ve gone ahead and died and can’t keep an eye out for his advances anymore, you fool. He’d still try to match me with that son of his at Liyue Harbor if he could, I bet. But the old lady needs me here, yeah? So I have to stay. And I need her, so you’ll just have to wait over there for a while before anyone joins you. You…you’re the one who left after all, so that’s on you. You old man.”

You sniff again, quieter this time, and brush some loose dirt from the top of the grave, patting it flat with absent care, like you’re smoothing down a blanket.

“Don’t go wandering off too far, alright?” you mutter. “If there’s an afterlife, you'd better stay where she can find you when she gets there. Don’t go gambling, or go drinking, and don’t go getting into trouble like you always did. You always did say she kept you in line, so you’d better behave until she gets there to do it properly again.”

You let out a small, shaky laugh that turns into something breathier, something that almost sounds like another sob before you swallow it down.

“She keeps pretending she’s not lonely,” you continue quietly. “Says the house is only quieter now, that’s all, without all your hammering and sawing and nonsense. Says she sleeps better without you snoring. But she sits by your chair, you know. Still sets out two cups when she makes tea sometimes. Then she gets mad at herself and puts one back.” You wipe roughly at your eyes, like you’re frustrated with the tears that won’t stop. “So you’d better be waiting for her. I doubt it’ll be too long before…before she comes and finds you. Maybe a few years. Maybe a decade, if she’s stubborn. She always is, so who’d be surprised? I’ll probably take some more time,” you say—it almost sounds bitter. Resigned in a way Morax almost…almost understands. You’ll probably take plenty more time. 

“I only have the people of this village, you know,” you say after a long silence. “So that old lady is stuck with me. And I’m stuck with her. So you don’t have to worry about her being alone. I won’t let her be. I’ll fix the roof before the rainy season, as you showed me. I’ll carry the buckets of water so she doesn’t try to do it herself and hurt her back again. I’ll make sure she actually waters those flowers she keeps talking to like they’re people. I’ll listen to her complain about the heat every morning like she always does. So you don’t have to worry. I’ll handle everything here. So just…rest, alright? You worked enough already—worked until the day you died, you stubborn old man. What’s all that you said about retiring? And to think, you live where people come just to retire, you old fool. But anyway…don’t rush her to come find you. Let her stay here a while longer.”

Your hand lingers on the soil for a moment longer before you finally pull it away.

“…Goodbye, Master Lu,” you murmur, all too quietly. “Don’t be lonely over there. We’ll come visit you—I know you love to hear that old woman babble, anyway.”

You stand slowly after that, brushing the dirt from your hands, but you don’t leave right away. You stay there for just a little longer, staring at the grave like you’re trying to memorize it, like you’re trying to make sure he knows you really did come.

“You must see this plenty,” you mumble finally, looking over your shoulder to Morax. He stays silent, so you continue. “Still, sorry you had to see such a sorry display.”

Morax does not answer immediately. He stands with his hands folded behind his back, gaze resting not on you, but on the grave, the disturbed soil where you’d buried your offering. Only after a long moment does he speak.

“There is nothing sorry about grief,” he says at last, “a funeral is not a display of composure. It is a contract between the living and the dead.” You blink at him, a little confused and a little exhausted, too. “The living bring offerings, words, remembrance. The dead leave behind their names, their stories, perhaps a legacy, even. Both sides fulfill their duty. That is what gives a life a fair and just ending. Grief is proof that the departed were loved. Tears are an offering no less valuable than incense or mora. There is no shame in them.”

You let out a small breath through your nose, something halfway between a laugh and a sigh. “You really do talk like a funeral consultant.”

He inclines his head slightly, smiling just a little. “It is my profession, after all.”

“Do you ever hear people say the wrong things?” you murmur. “At funerals.”

“All the time,” Morax replies without hesitation. “Well, I suppose wrong and right are subjective—but there is always a time and place, most would agree. But thankfully, the dead never show they are offended.”

That pulls a small, real laugh out of you, quiet and brief as it is. 

“That’s good, at least,” you murmur. “I called him an old fool at least three times.”

Morax looks at the grave, then back at you. “Then I am certain he departed this world feeling accurately remembered.” You snort softly at that, wiping under your eye again. After a moment, Morax speaks once more, voice softer now, less like a consultant and more like the old man that he is (not that you would know, of course). “It is the belief of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor, and many, I’m sure, that farewells do not end at the funeral. The living always continue to speak to and of the dead. In this way, the dead are not yet forgotten, nor are they truly gone—they are simply living somewhere else, where we cannot yet follow.”

You stare at the grave for a long moment after that. And he wonders if you perhaps do know that he isn’t the young mortal that he appears, as you say, “You sound especially like an old man now…but I’ll come visit and complain to him a lot,” you huff. “He always liked to gossip.”

“A good plan,” Morax agrees.

You nod once, satisfied with that answer, then brush the last of the dirt from your palms.

“Alright,” you mutter. “Let’s go, harbor man. The old lady will knock me with a watering can if I’m late for dinner.”

Morax turns to walk with you, but before you leave, you glance back at the grave one last time. As if to make sure the old man knows you really did come.

-- — --

Dinner with you and Madam Lu is as pleasant as it is heavy. Both of your eyes are red and slightly swollen from the crying that comes with a funeral service (as to be expected), but there is also the silent, but oh so obvious reality that this is Morax’s last meal with you and the elderly woman.

He will have no reason to return to Qingce village again after this, and as a result, this is the final time he will eat (such lovely) cooking by Madam Lu and converse with you over his food. 

He takes his time eating. 

The goodbye comes all too quickly, and your face is mortified as Madam Lu brings Zhongli down to her height by his cheeks as she says, “Young man, do come and visit! Such a handsome face like yours is rarely a sight we get, you know! You’d keep my stubborn child good company. Think about it, alright?”

“M-madam Lu!” you hiss, quickly intervening as you pry her hands off of him and give her a withering look. “Mister Zhongli is here for business—you mustn’t make him uncomfortable!”

“I assure you,” he grins, just a little too amused, he’s sure, for your comfort, “it is quite all right. I’m flattered you think so highly of my presence, miss.”

Your glare extends to him, then, too. 

And then you are both leaving the old lady’s residence, you on your way to your own home, and he on his way to leave the village and return to the harbor as always after a hearty meal from the woman. 

It just so happens to be the same direction, so you both walk together.

“You could always stay the night, you know,” you murmur. 

“Is this your way of offering your residence?” he raises a brow. 

You sputter, giving him another heated look before you hiss, “No, you sneaky little schemer! I meant there are inns for passing travelers in this village, and the journey to the harbor is surely more risky at night as opposed to during the day. That’s all.” 

He chuckles. “I appreciate the thought, but I assure you, this isn’t my first time making a journey at this time of day.”

“Yes, well, it only felt right to offer, that’s all,” you shrug petulantly, still flustered by his earlier comment. 

Morax keeps his chuckle at bay for your sake, but you seem to know he is holding back a laugh anyway, so you send him a sulky-looking warning glance before continuing to look ahead as you walk to your home. 

You reach it in no time. And now…now Morax must say goodbye to you properly. For the last time, likely. Unless there is yet another death in Qingce village that requires his travels, but he doesn’t think that is an appropriate circumstance to hope for in order to be in your presence some more. 

Your presence—what a fascinating reality it is, now, that he wishes for it more and more. He has taken to thinking of you when he is back at the parlor, and he often finds he leaves earlier than necessary when it is finally time to come make his journey to the village. Almost as often as he pushes back his time to leave. 

Morax turns to you as you stand by your door, unwilling to look into his eyes. 

“Well,” you mumble, “I suppose this is the last time you will have to come to his boring old village, isn’t it, harbor man?”

“Yes, for now,” he nods, “but boring is perhaps not the word I would use for this village.”

“Is that so?” You finally look up, raising a brow as you afford him a smile, “Do tell, what is so interesting about a small farmland?”

“For starters, those who tend to the crops are exceptionally skilled at creating difficult walking paths,” he murmurs, “therefore, I must always be alert when wandering this village. It’s as though they are trying to make it difficult—perhaps for a discount or two from wandering businessmen.”

You laugh, bright and free, and back to that steady version of yourself he is so used to. The grief is gone, even if only for a moment. That is how grief works, he supposes—it comes and goes as it pleases. Chokes and releases when it is feeling particularly punishing or merciful, depending on its mood. But grief is not all bad, he has learned. Both from experience as a warrior and a funeral consultant. 

It is grief that tethers people to the memories of loved ones. Grief that makes it so that life is not just a constant forward-moving force. There are still old, stubborn rocks that stay still, refusing to rush along with the current. That isn’t so bad—sure, the pain is there, but so is the preciousness of old memories. Memories that have no business being forgotten, no matter how much time passes. Memories that make it so that a life is not merely just a life, and an existence is not merely just an existence. 

He wonders then, if he died, how long his memory will go on. How long he will be grieved for, and how long the grieving will keep his memory sitting stubbornly in that stream that pushes forward, so willing to move on with or without him. 

You look at Morax with a soft, delicate look. You are fond of him; he is not a fool. He has lived thousands of years, and he has learned what a look of fondness looks like, even if he has never quite understood what it feels like to be so fond of someone, or to be the object of it himself. 

But you look at him like that, and he finds he enjoys the simplicity that comes with the way life is when you live like a mortal. When you live like you do not have enough time to leisurely be in the same place for hundreds of thousands of years. When you live as if you may pass on to the next life, and must move on from one thing to another, so that you may experience enough. 

Morax has been alive for so, so long. And yet, he wonders if the mortals have lived more than he has. 

So, when you fiddle with your fingers as you murmur, “Perhaps I made it difficult to walk along this village so it would take wandering businessmen longer to leave. It’s not often that they make their company known in a place like this,” he steps closer. 

“Is that so?” Morax asks. 

You don’t meet his eyes as you nod. You’re a funny being, he thinks—so sure of your existence, yet so unwilling to step beyond what you have deemed yourself worthy of. You are confident with your life. Happy with your place and sure that you belong where you are. So certain that you are deserving of what you have and what has been given to you, but you never dare ask for more or take beyond the scope of what you allow yourself. 

Even if you want it. 

But perhaps you are starting to change, he thinks. Because you step closer as you nod, looking at him as you say, “I have never wished for a businessman to stay until now. But there is always a first time for everything.”

He laughs. Low and amused as he says, “I have never felt compelled to stay the night anywhere on my journeys—but there is indeed a first time for everything, you are correct.”

And that is how Morax is kissing you. 

He has yearned for it for some time, he thinks. He has yearned for you for some time, and there is no point in denying it. You and your chilis and your flowers and your simple ways of life. You and your soft smile to the villagers and the gentle way you play with the few children that reside here in this far, distant, yet peaceful land that he saved so long ago. He is glad he saved it—of course, he would never regret this deed, whether or not you existed here. But he is especially glad for it now. 

He has done his duty—hasn’t he? Then isn’t it only fair that he rewards himself with the luxury of enjoying his accomplishments? 

Morax is kissing you, and you are kissing him back, and he thinks you have wanted this for just as long. Your lips are soft, and the lip balm you use is sweet and sticky against his own mouth. He swallows down the taste with a low hum, fingers grasping at your hips as yours latch onto his coat. You are so small against him—he towers over you even in his human form, and you have to crane your neck up just as much as he needs to bend his down to end the gap between you for your lips to touch. 

Your breath is hot against his as you exchange it between every kiss, and he tastes you on his tongue with every time they swipe against each other. He has never felt desire like this—never felt his cock twitch like this between his legs or press so tightly against his pants. (Oh, how he aches, he thinks, to take you in his proper form, and satisfy…both of his endowments. But for now, he must settle for this much, in this form, and that is if you even allow him to take it that far. He is not a scoundrel, after all.)

He is grateful that the front of your home is angled so that there are no nearby houses to see you both this way. The path that people walk along faces the back of your home, and that gives him all the encouragement he needs to shamelessly press you against your own door and kiss along your neck, sinking his teeth into your skin and sucking as you let out a soft cry. 

The sound shoots straight to his growing member—and he is reminded just how lonely he is from these duties as a god. Just how lonely it is at the top. 

He is hard between his legs, and you are aware of it, too, because you boldly move your thigh to slot between his. The first brush of you against his clothed cock, and he lets out a low, satisfied groan that makes you shiver. You are encouraged, it seems, by the sound to keep going, rubbing against his bulge and creating that sweet drag from the friction. 

It’s so good, he thinks deliriously—so, so good. He feels the way blood rushes to his cock, the way it makes him ache with how he swells, and then there is a jolt of something so pleasant and mind-numbing when there is pressure against his girth. 

Morax has been alive a long, long time. Longer than some of the mountains and trees shape Liyue, and longer than some of the villages that make up the nation for what it is. He is no stranger to pleasure, and he is no stranger to what it feels like to grind against something when he is fully hard and aroused.

But he is a stranger to carrying affection for the person responsible—at least, affection of this kind. So he groans, loud and uncaring in a way only someone inexperienced might, and you seem to find pleasure in that with the way you smile against his lips as you tilt his jaw and bring him back to your mouth and away from your neck. 

“My, my, harbor man,” you tease, “it’s as though you wish for the old lady to hear us from here. Are you trying to get her attention or mine?”

“A fine one, you are to talk,” he bites at your bottom lip, smiling smugly when you whimper, “you are touching me so freely out here in the open, where anyone may wander by and hear closely. Tell me, do you wish that they do? Perhaps you are even, dare I say, excited by the prospect.”

You stiffen under his arms before you give him a (weak) glare as you huff. “Alright then, you loathsome man,” you say indigantly, reaching behind you to open your door as you fiddle with the lock, “if you insist on doing this properly, then so be it.”

 Morax pushes you into your home as soon as that door opens. It shuts behind him, and he pushes you and pushes you and pushes you—keeps on going until there is a hard wall behind you, and something to keep you in place as he quickly closes the gap and kisses you again. 

You’re not mortal—he has known that as soon as he met you. How could he be considered the prime of adepti if he did not recognize his own kind? But here, under him, pinned and dripping and so pliant for him, he can smell it. The sweet, lingering scent of adeptal blood in your veins and the way it radiates off of you between your thighs.

(How kind the greater divine has been to him, if they are in charge of destiny, to grant him the luxury of developing these affections for a non-mortal. For someone who will not die in what is considered a small fraction of his time. He will have proper time with you—to explore you and this world that he will now live in as his new self if he allows it to be. And oh, how he wants it to be.)

“You smell sweet,” he grunts, “so ridiculously sweet, I wonder how I’ve held myself back all this time.”

“So you’ve been lusting for me for some time now, is that it?” you hum, and edge of cockiness to your voice. He smiles despite himself, exasperated. “What a shallow businessman you are, indeed. What, the meals didn’t satisfy your fill?” 

“Is it so wrong to hope for seconds?” he chuckles. 

Then he is crouching down, and your eyes widen as you register the loss of him against your upper half, pressing his heat against you. When you blink, looking down, he is already hooking a leg over his shoulder as he kneels between your legs, lifting your skirt and pulling your panties aside. 

Wet—you are, for lack of better words, fucking dripping down your thighs, and Morax is having simply a ball. He grins, trailing his nose along the wet trail along your inner thigh, inhaling the scent of you before pressing his tongue to get a taste of your essence. You let out a mortified, choked sound, squirming, and he tightens his grip along the plush of your leg.

“Don’t move too much,” he says lowly, “that is the agreement we are to have, if you want this.”

Evidently, you do want this—and badly, with the way you still immediately. He chuckles before pressing his lips to your clit, kissing it sweetly once, twice, a third time just to tease and swipe his tongue against the sensitive nub while you whimper. Your walls clench around nothing, and he hums in amusement at the sight. 

“You are a foul businessman,” you huff, “loathsome. You ought to hold your end of the deal, seeing as I am.”

“My apologies,” he grins wickedly. 

And then Morax latches onto you, hungry and thirsty and unwilling to be satisfied until he’s turned an inch into a mile, a drop into a stream. He sinks his tongue into you, tasting your sweetness and exploring between your folds. You whine, throwing your head back against the wall, gripping onto his shoulder tightly as your one knee, not thrown over his shoulder, buckles from weakness. 

He hums, pausing only for a moment as he says, “Put your full weight against me. I can take it.”

“But—” you try to protest, but he cuts you off. 

“I said,” he all but growls, “put your full weight against me. I can take it.”

Morax—Rex Lapis—the warrior, the god, who shaped mountains and slayed more gods than you could ever imagine existed. The strong, fierce divine being who could not be crushed by even the largest of boulders, and you are worried by the weight of your body. How laughable—how ridiculous. You hesitantly lean some of yourself on him, and he grips your thigh, digging his fingers into the meat of it as he pulls the rest of you in. 

You squeal—it cuts off into a high-pitched moan when his mouth latches onto your clit, sucking while he rolls it back and forth along the swollen bundle of nerves. It’s a nice sound—the way you wail. He likes the way it makes him feel powerful. He almost wonders if there is more power now, when you are crying for the mercy of his tongue, than there is when opponents are crying for the mercy of his stone spears. 

His fingers sink into your cunt, feeling your walls close around his digits as he stretches you open—you are so tight. So impossibly tight, he feels his cock twitch between his thighs at the thought alone of sinking past them. He thinks for a moment about how warm it would be when you clench around his fucking aching cock instead of his fingers, and then he is groaning against your heat as he feels a wave of desire burn at the pit of his stomach. 

You seem to like that—you shiver at the vibrations he makes against you from the sound, and he hums in appreciation at that. His fingers sink deeper into you, pressing against the back of your walls until he feels you tense before humping into his hand and letting out a desperate cry when he hits a particular spot. 

So you like him there, he thinks. He can certainly do that. After all, a skilled fighter such as Morax is adept at pinpointing exactly where his blows will land. Striking his fingers is infinitely easier than striking large spears of stone or giant boulders, so his fingertips bully mercilessly into that sensitive spot over and over again as his tongue flicks back and forth along your swollen clit. 

Once, twice—and then you are rolling your hips into his face, completely abandoning your worries about him holding your weight (which he is taking exceedingly easily, thank you very much) while you come undone on his tongue, on his fingers, on his face. 

There is the wet essence of you smeared around his lips, partially on his cheek and his chin, sweet and sticky and delicious. Like a sweet sunsettia that he has devoured without care for having an ounce of shame. There is no shame in tasting you, he would argue—only a fool would savor his taste of this nectar instead of devouring it. 

He works you through the entirety of your orgasm, until you are quivering from the aftershocks and whimpering, squeezing your legs to get away from his hungry lips that stay latched to your cunt. 

“S’too much,” you whine, “s-stop.” 

(It’s a cute plea. He’ll entertain it for now.)

Morax is fucking throbbing between his legs. His cock is hard enough that he knows there is a wet patch on his pants against his crotch—he can feel the dribble of precum even before he has freed himself from the confines of the tight fabric. When he stands, keeping your steady with an arm around your waist, he is burying his face into your neck as he groans deliriously into your neck. 

“I have little patience, if not, little sanity left,” he says, voice gruff and low. “Tell me now if this is what you want because it won’t be long before I will be in no position to stop what you are starting.”

“You are starting this,” you have the gall to argue, even after he has fucked you so thoroughly with his fingers alone, “and I will finish it, so don’t even consider the idea of stopping—not unless you intend to be a coward.”

A coward. Oh? What a fierce, stupid little thing you are. He wonders if allowing yourself to have what you have always denied yourself the possibility of has made you bolder than ever. Maybe now, you consider the possibility that you may take as you please if what you wish for is right there in your reach. 

Morax, the god of Geo, has never been known for being a coward, and he will not start today. So he grabs you easily, bringing your legs to wrap around his waist as his hands dig into the plush roundness of your ass. 

“Which way to your bedroom, then?”

“Down the hall, first door to the left,” is all you can say before his lips are immediately on yours. That lip balm you use—the taste of it will drive him to madness. You will drive him to madness. 

When you are tossed onto your mattress, there is only a second’s interval he bothers to allow you to catch your breath before Morax is impatiently hovering over you. He is raking his eyes over your form hungrily. You, and that skin that he has committed to memory under the sun, and those delicate fingers that tend to plants and pull weeds that are now fisting the sheets. He is going to take you, sink into you inch by inch, and mold you onto his cock, and you are going to look beautiful as he does it. 

And when he is done, he will ask you if there is anyone else better suited to fuck you like that. (The answer, he is confident, will be no. No one could hope to fit you better than Morax himself—and you are only seeing one of his cocks tonight.)

Stripping you fully is easy enough—you are eager, very eager to shed your clothes, and even more eager to pull his own off of him. You marvel at the size of him—first his torso and the sheer broadness of him and his muscled physique, and then his cock and the thickness of him at full mast. His hands toy with your breasts, squeezing and groping as his thumbs roll over your nipples, and you impatiently gasp while trying to roll your hips lower to rub against his hard cock. 

You succeed for a short second—and that short second is enough to make him pause as the wet friction brushes against him. He shivers, lets out a low groan—and then whatever patience he had left snaps. 

“I’m going to fuck you now,” he says bluntly, “and you are going to take me fully. Here.”

His finger draws a line against your belly where his cock lies flat against you, long and thick and fucking swollen with desire. Your breath hitches as his fingertip trails over his tip, right along your skin, and then you whimper as you breathe, “P-please.”

“Say it again,” he grunts. “Say please—I want to hear you want me.”

“Please, Zhongli,” you sob.

Morax, he wants to correct—for a tense, fleeting second, he almost does. He debates it, decides against it, and grits his jaw in frustration. Frustration that he can only be rid of if he sinks into those tight walls of yours, he’s sure. 

So he does. 

He grips your jaw, pulls you into a hot, searing kiss, and presses his tip to your entrance, rubbing along your folds, coating you in his precum while coating himself in your own arousal, and when—and only when—you are sobbing out an incoherent plea of how badly you need him, how hard you want him to fuck you, how deep you need him to be, does he sink into you. 

Because Morax is still Morax. And a god is still a god. He is to be worshipped before he will answer. 

“Zh-zhong—li,” you whine the latter syllable of his name when he sinks fully into you, fully bottomed-out and pressed into your wet, hot folds. You take him well, he thinks—so good and pliant and obediently accommodating for the less than humble size of him. 

(He did take his time preparing you, of course, but he isn’t one to skip out on giving credit where credit is due. You are good—so good. Good to him and good for him. He will reward you accordingly for it.) 

“Yes, yes,” he chuckles, “worry not, I will answer your little prayers.”

“You loathesome, arrogant man,” you hiss, still filled to the brim with him. And yet, that does not stop you from speaking so freely. He’s amused, really. 

“You certainly are not one to sweet-talk those whom you bed,” he notes. 

“And you’re not one to be humble with those whom you bed,” you argue back.

“No, I suppose not,” he laughs. 

And he will prove it to you, he is certain, that he deserves to be at least a little arrogant when he starts to fuck you. His hips pull back, almost fully slipping out of you, before he snaps them forward and buries himself all the way again, rolling and thrusting with a steady rhythm that angles the blunt head of his cock exactly against that same spot he found earlier. The stretch this time, of course, hits harder, hits spots his fingers couldn’t reach, drags along areas that he didn’t press into then. But he does so now, and you clench around him in response, welcoming him in, gripping him hard and tight and so fucking hot, his mind blanks for a second. 

“Fuck,” he hisses, “fuck you’re tight.”

“Yeah, and full, too,” you whisper into his ear as his face buries into your neck, “feel that? I’m full of you—all of you.”

Oh. He’ll get you for that. Get you for the way you make him moan so shamelessly at your words, for the way he loses his rhythm a little and fucks into you a little more desperately, for the way you giggle as he twitches inside of you. 

He’ll get you, so he brings his lips lower, to your breast, and latches onto a nipple, rolling his tongue over it and sucking harshly so that your back arches into his touch when you feel it. 

“Indeed, I do feel it,” he murmurs, switching over to the other breast, not leaving one nipple neglected in favor of the other, “I feel how needy you are around me, squeezing. I can hardly move, you know—are you really that desperate to be fucked?”

“B-be quiet, you awful thing,” you hiss. 

He laughs. Chuckles as he finally lets go of your breast with a pop, before his lips are on yours. Kissing you, he finds, is the only thing that makes it even a little bit possible to lose consciousness of that tight, pleasant sensation of you around him. Kissing you is the only thing that could hope to distract his mind a little bit from you. Kissing you is the only thing that could be more important than this—than you, taking him, fitting him, and making yourself his just as much as he is yours right now. 

He snaps his hips faster, and you drink in the low groans he lets out just as much as he drinks in the high mewls you feed him. 

And when you cum again, erratically clenching around him as your walls spasm with the force of your second orgasm, he can hardly breathe as he feels his own high approaching. He tries—Morax tries, to his credit, to pull away and spill elsewhere, but you insist as your legs wrap tightly around his hips and pull him in closer, deeper. 

“Inside,” you babble, “p-please inside!”

“Are you…” He pants, head spinning and vision blurring as you squeeze around him yet again. He’s so close—and it aches so good. “Are you sure?’

“Yes, yes, yes,” you cry, still babbling away as you ride out the final waves of your pleasure. 

You finish, and Morax starts—the end of your orgasm triggers the beginning of his, like the ebb and flow of the tide, one wave retreating only for another to roll in and take its place.

Hot, thick ropes of his seed spill into you, and he tenses as the force of his pleasure crashes over him, hard and brutal and dragging him into the depths of some hazy, incoherent place in his mind where he can hardly breathe. Your hands are on him—distantly, he’s aware of that. One is in his hair, and the other is shakily gliding over his back, like you’re trying to soothe him while he’s gone—so far gone into the throes of pleasure. 

“Fuck,” he barely registers his own voice, “fuck—th-that’s…good.”

When he’s done—when his hips are finally finished rolling and give you a break from the extra stimulation, he collapses beside your body, and you instantly shuffle closer to cling to him, resting against his chest. 

He lets you—happily, he lets you. His arms are tight and wrapped around your body, and you are so close that he can feel your erratic heart right against his. 

“I don’t think this is what the old lady meant,” you mumble into his chest as you curl into his side, “when she said to keep me company.”

“I don’t believe she specified that this was what she didn’t mean,” he grins tiredly, and oh, you are so beautiful. So breathtaking when you are so small and vulnerable against him, and only him. “So we have not breached any agreements.”

“You are a bothersome businessman,” you yawn.

He chuckles, and then you sleep. 

────────────────────────

When dawn comes, he awakens you with a kiss to your temple, and a soft promise of, “I will return when time allows it of me, this I promise if you will be waiting.”

“I’ll be waiting, harbor man,” you mumble sleepily. 

He hums, presses yet another kiss to your temple, before he says, “Then we have an agreement.”

He is gone by the time you are properly awake, his clothes gone, and his scent lingering. The only proof that he truly was there, and that your mind is not playing tricks on you, is the simple qingxin he leaves on your bedside table and a note that reads, a flower that is not from your own fields, from a wandering businessman who hopes to evade incurring any further losses.

Perhaps time is not wasted, you think with a smile, if time is well spent. And perhaps Zhongli would not mind spending some of his abundant time with you. 

-- — --

Zhongli keeps his word and returns not long after that. 

And then he leaves, and then he comes back again. It goes on like that for some time. He never stays for long, but he comes and goes at least once or twice a month. For now, that is enough—you have a long life ahead of you, after all. What’s a few weeks to you? You can wait. 

The more he visits, the more thrilled Madam Lu gets, much to your dismay—and worse, the more he visits, the more attached the two seem to be with each other. You cannot spare yourself from her horrifyingly embarrassing words now and then, nor can you save yourself from his thoroughly amused looks as she says them. 

Zhongli, you think, could cut your long life span into a quarter of what it is at this rate. He starts every trip he makes, first, with a visit to Madam Lu—who, without fail, insists he stay for breakfast every time (and, of course, she does not have to insist for long because he agrees to her meals so easily), before sending you both off afterwards. Not without giving you a pleased, knowing smile as you leave, of course. 

You shoot her a glare before tugging Zhongli along by the wrist, hissing something like, come—before that old lady says any nonsense that will fry your brain. He chuckles every time, eyeing you with mirth, before following you without much argument.

In the time that you wait for his next return, there is news that the god of Geo has fallen. Rex Lapis is dead, they say. 

You are shocked to hear it—you are part adepti, after all. The Geo Archon is of your kind, and though you were never a devout worshipper, you have heard of the deeds he has done for your village, your people. You glance at Madam Lu as she sighs heavily, shaky and bony fingers watering her plants. 

You grab the watering can from her hand, and she lets you. 

“So much loss as of late,” she murmurs sadly, “how will people deal with so much grief, I wonder. At the very least, I hope they honor the lord well with a proper funeral.”

“I’m sure they will,” you hum, “after all, a funeral is for the living, not the dead—and the living cherish the Geo archon well, wouldn’t you say?”

“You’ve spent an awful long time with that funeral consultant,” she grins, eyes gleaming with excitement—with a certain glint that tells you she knows more than you’d like. “When is he next returning, then?”

“I’ve not a clue,” you huff, “he’s a busy man. He’s no reason to come spend all his free time here.”

You walk off, swiftly crossing over to another side of her garden to water flowers a distance away, but Madam Lu already has heard what she wants to—what she needs to. 

“Not a clue, hm? So you do expect him?”

“Leave me alone, you nagging old lady!” you hiss over your shoulder. She only laughs, and even if it’s at your own expense, you are glad to finally hear the sound from her. 

-- — --

There is much to catch up on with Zhongli the next time he comes—the most current update of the Geo Archon’s passing at the harbor, the investigation and the controversy surrounding it, the rite of parting he is handling on behalf of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor with the aid of some wandering traveler passing by and her odd, floating companion. 

You listen closely, feeling an unfamiliar, unsettling weight on your chest as he tells you about all the progress she has helped him make with the many, many ceremonies. And by contrast, there is little to tell him—nothing more than the idle gossip the older women conjure up in all their free time in the village, or the disagreements there have happening between merchants who purchase and transport the crops you grow and sell here. 

He tells you of all the knowledge he has on Liyue and its history, on its late Archon, on all of the duties he is so graciously carrying out, and you listen with interest—you do. But there is still an acrid taste lingering on your tongue as you swallow down his stories. 

“This traveler friend of yours,” you mutter, “she seems very capable—what a stroke of luck it is that she’s helping you.”

“Yes,” he agrees easily. You are self-aware enough to know that there is a pout on your face—you cannot help it. And he chuckles as soon as it curls onto your lips. “Why the long face?”

“I’ve no long face, you bothersome man,” you huff, “this is my everyday face. You don’t like it?”

“I like your face enough to tell it apart from your everyday one and your sulky one,” he teases with an amused smirk. 

He enjoys this, you realize—enjoys the way you are…well, what are you, exactly? Jealous? Insecure? Bitter? Or simply scared? Or are you everything all at once? You don’t know. 

When the shift occurs on your face, the one where you are deep in thought, he gently pulls you by the hand and laces his fingers with yours as he walks up to your home. You are pressed against the door—and suddenly, you are getting deja vu from very different yet similar times where you were pressed against this very door by this very body.

“There is no need to sulk,” he murmurs. 

“I am not sulking,” you huff.

“Well, in that case, if you were,” he laughs, “then there would be no reason to. I’ve come to keep you company—it was an agreement I made, after all. I am a businessman of my word, you see.”

Your chest is lighter as you look up at him with a small grin, and when he kisses you, you let him back in past your doors again, and into your bed. And you afford him some of your abundant time, just as he affords you some of his. 

You’ll tell him, you think to yourself as you free his cock from his underwear—he groans when your hand wraps around him, and you watch the way his lips tug between his teeth as you stroke him slowly. You’ll tell him that you’re not just a mortal, just like he isn’t either, and that you have plenty of time to spend with him if he’ll spend it with you, too. Time that won’t be a waste.

“You can go faster, you know,” he says tensely, chest falling and rising rapidly as he tries to keep his breathing steady. 

You smile, pressing a kiss to his forehead as you shift on his lap, looking down at the way his girth makes your hand look so small. You marvel at the weight of him in your hold, giving him a small squeeze, teasing your thumb along his slit as he leaks pre cum, and he throws his head back with a choked gasp. 

“Where’s the fun in that?” you quip, “then this will all be over before we’ve begun. Surely, you have better patience than that.”

“I don’t see you enough to have much patience,” Zhongli says flatly, unimpressed by your teasing. Still, he lets you have your fun, as much as it seems to pain him, sitting patiently under you while he waits for you to get him off. 

You kiss his jaw, his chin, his Adam’s apple as he swallows thickly, before finally moving your hand again, gently squeezing around the tip with every upward tick of your hand. Zhongli likes it that way—you’ve learned that when you touch him with the intention of making him cum, he likes it when you squeeze at the tip and when you slow down when he’s close and drag it out a bit longer, even if he might complain. He likes showing off his stamina—for such a polite and polished man, he can be a bit of a show off when he wants to be. 

You watch as his face slackens, as it morphs beautifully into that look of raw and pure pleasure. You admire the way he bites his lip and parts his mouth and says your name when he feels particularly good. You admire the way he looks when his abs clench, his hips buck, and his brows crease when he’s getting close. 

“You came to spend time with me,” you murmur against his cheek as you nuzzle your nose into it, kissing it softly. “Right?”

“Yes,” he pants, giving you a flat look even despite the way he is teetering so close to the edge, so worked up. “Of course I did, or do you think I let just anyone touch me so freely?”

“Just making sure,” you giggle. “Businessmen are known for being greedy.”

“I think the real greedy one is you,” he breathes. 

You kiss him softly, quickening the pace of your hand, and with a twitch of his cock, he spills into it. You drink in the low moans and gasps he lets out as he cums, smiling when he croaks your name in between ragged breaths. It tastes so lovely when you drink in the sound of your name from his tongue. So sweet and decadent and rich. 

“I’m the only one who waits so patiently for you, you know,” you peck his lips as he catches his breath when he’s finished coating your hand with his seed, “so you should only keep me company.”

He chuckles, shaking his head as he wipes the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “Is that the new term of our agreement?”

“Yes,” you huff. 

“Well, as I said, I am a businessman of my word.”

“Good.”

You’ll tell him, you think resolutely. Soon, you’ll tell him the truth of who, of what, you are, and perhaps he will tell you the truth of his in return. And you can continue to spend more time in abundance together, you can finally stop wasting your days and simply passing them by—they’ll have meaning soon. 

────────────────────────

“Qingce village was ruled by a terrible god once,” you murmur to him one day, “or so the legends say.”

Morax feels your fingers trace aimlessly along his bare chest. He breathes steadily under your wandering little digits. For a moment, he tries to decipher what pattern it is you are tracing into his skin. He comes up with nothing. Another intricate design on the cloth that is mortality, he thinks—such seemingly frivolous acts of touch. Shapes drawn without thought, wandering lines with no meaning in mind, and yet they are not meaningless at all. There is something tender in it, regardless. Affectionate, perhaps, and expressed by the small comfort of touch alone.

He wonders if such things will become natural to him if he tries his hand at this life for long enough. They are natural to you—and you are far from mortal. He knows you are, even if you don’t tell him. Surely, if it were possible to become natural for you, then there is no such thing as impossibility for him. 

“Ah, so you are familiar with the legend of Chi,” he murmurs, “though I suppose it’s to be expected of someone who was raised in this village.”

You pout, gaping at him in shock. He smiles at the sight. “Is there anything of Liyue’s history you don’t know?” you huff. “Just when I think I can teach you something.”

He chuckles at that—you feel it rumble under your cheek against his chest where you lie. The deep, fond sound alone washes away any lingering trace of irritation you had just a moment prior. “Very well,” he hums. “Teach me.”

“You already know the legend,” you point out flatly.

“Teach me anyway,” he insists. “Hearing the same story told by numerous people is advantageous still. One comes across many different viewpoints, you see.”

“You still talk like an old man, huh?” You snort. “Imparting life lessons one after the other—I suppose working at a funeral home and seeing so many losses has all but turned you into one.”

“A terrible fate,” he says mildly.

You huff again, though there is little heat left in it. Your fingers continue their idle wandering over the warm expanse of his chest as you begin.

“Well,” you say, “the people of Qingce say there was once a great demon called Chi. Some sort of dragon-like creature that forcefully took over this place. They say he was powerful enough to challenge the gods themselves.”

Morax listens silently beneath you.

“But he was defeated,” you continue. “Slain by the Geo Archon long ago. Afterward, his body was broken apart so he could never rise again. Each of the parts was sealed away in different places—hidden in the mountains and fields around Qingce so that none might gather them. Rex Lapis even taught the people of Qingce Village to make Geo statues to crush the Chi’s remaining power.”

Your fingertip traces a slow circle over his sternum as you think.

“Oh—and the villagers say those ruins scattered around Wuwang Hill? Those are the seals. Old mechanisms the Archon left behind to keep Chi’s remains locked away. If they were ever undone…” You pause, wrinkling your nose faintly. “Well. I imagine that would be rather bad.”

“That would be a reasonable conclusion,” he murmurs.

“And the old stories say the people of Qingce protected those seals for generations,” you go on. You tilt your head, glancing up at him. “That’s why the village values its stories so much. They’re not just stories. They’re warnings told through traditions, you could say.”

His gaze lowers to you.

“An admirable tradition,” he says quietly. “I did not realize the people of this village looked at it that way.”

Your finger pauses against his chest as you beam. “Ah, so I did teach you something.”

He smiles faintly—fondly. Yet there is something hollow in his eyes as he says, “Yes. You did. You’ve taught me quite a lot more than you realize, you know.”

“How so?” You raise a brow, reaching over to poke the tip of his nose. “I taught you the joys of bedding an easy woman, is that it?”

He laughs at that, bright and warm as his arms tighten around you. There is something akin to affectionate exasperation in his expression as he leans down and presses a kiss to your forehead.

Your breath hitches at that. He notices it so easily. Morax notices so much about you. He cannot afford to give you such physical affection as often as he’d like, given how little you see of him. He holds these small, fractional moments close to his heart the same way you do, as well, whenever they come—they are few and far between, after all.

“You have taught me the joys of sharing a bed,” he agrees, pinching your hip teasingly (and he makes sure that he is rather careful to remain gentle, too), “the joy extends elsewhere, too, however. Not just the bed.”

“Mister Zhongli,” you gasp, “dare I say a businessman such as yourself has turned sentimental on me?”

“Ah, yes. A most strange development indeed,” he plays along, shaking his head in amusement. 

────────────────────────

When you awaken in the morning, your bed is empty. Zhongli has already made his departure for Liyue Harbor. Before disappointment can claw its way to your chest and make you bleed, however, you pause as you sit up and look to your bedside table. 

A single qingxin is laid carefully there, waiting for you, along with a single coin of mora. 

You smile to yourself—time is not wasted. Zhongli will afford you more time. 

-- — --

The next time you are visited by Zhongli—or rather, this time you suppose it would be more accurate to say he hunts you down—he is desperate to touch you. You have never seen him this way.

You are tending to the crops when you notice him striding toward you across the fields, his pace unusually hurried. You straighten, brushing dirt from your hands as a smile pulls at your lips.

“Back so soon?” you call lightly. “Don’t tell me your bed was so lonely you had to come all this way just to see—oh!”

He catches your wrist before you can finish, his grip firm but not painful, and immediately begins pulling you along behind him.

“Zhongli—?” you protest, stumbling once before matching his pace. “Where are we—?”

He does not answer. Instead, he guides you away from the fields, away from the paths the villagers usually take, toward the rocky edges of the mountains that loom behind Qingce village. The ground grows uneven beneath your feet, tall grass giving way to weathered stone and uneven ground. There is a small opening for what seems to be a cave of sorts at the base of the mountains, and he leads you inside. 

You recognize the place soon enough. And then your eyes widen.

“Zhongli,” you hiss, tugging slightly at his hand as he finally stops inside the cave. Moss-covered stone walls and old mechanisms greet you, and you shiver just from looking at them.

The ruins. The seals. This is one of the places, you are certain—one of the places where, according to the stories, remnants of Chi still lie, dormant and fragile.

“What are you doing?” you whisper sharply. “We cannot—” Your protest cuts off when he pulls you close. The movement is sudden enough to steal the breath from your lungs as his hand finds your waist, and his other settles against the back of your neck. “Zhongli—!”

Your words dissolve the moment his mouth finds yours. It is not the slow, measured affection he usually affords you. This kiss is urgent—desperate, almost. He pulls you flush against him like he fears you might disappear if he loosens his hold even slightly.

For a moment, you are too startled to respond. Then you melt and kiss him back. Then, when your senses return, your hands brace instinctively against his chest as you pull back just enough to stare at him.

“Have you lost your mind?” you whisper, scandalized. “We cannot do such…such indecent things here!” You gesture vaguely toward the ruins around you. Of all places. “Do you not see all this around us? This has to be where the seals are, Zhongli!”

He does not release you. If anything, his hold tightens slightly, amber eyes searching your face with an intensity that makes your irritation falter.

“I am aware,” he says quietly.

You sputter at how calm he seems to be. “That does not make it better!” 

But he is already kissing you again, slower this time, though no less needy. His fingers curl into the fabric at your waist as if grounding himself. The mountains around Qingce stand silent, but it feels strangely like the ancient stone is watching over the two of you.

You are weak to Zhongli, however. Not even ancient deities and the thought of awakening them to wreak havoc on your home is enough to change that. He presses you against the hard wall of stone, and you let him, angling your head so he can kiss your neck.

He hums in appreciation. “Allow me to make it better then,” he tells you. And your resolve crumbles instantly.

────────────────────────

Morax knows exactly what sleeps beneath this place. After all, he is the one who sealed the parts of Chi away all those years ago. And his memory is exceedingly good—he does not forget such things so easily. In fact, he does not forget them at all.

He also knows what is coming to Liyue.

Soon, the sea will rise, and soon, an old god will stir. Morax knows what such god lies beneath the seas, pinned by his own stone spears. Osial has never been anything short of a tyrant—he remembers those days well. How tall and unforgiving the tsunamis were, and how easily Osial tormented the mortals of this land with such harsh waves, all for the sake of his own gain. The people of Liyue will not suffer at the hands of such shameful deities. Whether it is because they have fended off this threat alone or because of Morax himself, he will have to see soon enough.

But oh, how Morax longs for the day that he will step away from this role he has carried for millennia. How he longs for a time when he is nothing more than a wandering man in the streets, living peacefully among his people in bliss. And how he longs for the simplistic joys indulged in by the lifestyle of mortals—of affection and delicate touches and fond smiles.

So he kisses you again—because in this moment, with your hands fisted in his coat and your breath catching against his lips, he needs to know that choosing this life will be enough. That stepping away from being a deity, should his people succeed, is a proper choice and not a foolish mistake. Morax is not known for being a fool. He is a wise god and a capable fighter. He has led his people to prosperity, and in return, he is worshipped sacredly by the people of Liyue.

Morax does not make mistakes. Not when his decisions involve Liyue.

But then he wonders—what god leaves his people to fend for themselves during an oncoming disaster? A disaster that they are unaware of is on the horizon, no less. What god would step in only when his people are at the brink of defeat, and not simply from the beginning to ensure they are always guarded? That is his role, is it not? And such roles surely do not expire, do they?

But erosion has chipped away at his heart of hard stone—until the unyielding bedrock of it has worn thin, leaving something far more fragile beneath.

Morax, after so, so long, yearns for a life outside of what he has always known. What he has fought and slain countless divine beings for. What he has always thought to be his fate forever. 

You break his kiss once more, breathless. And he, when you gently cup his cheeks with those tender hands, feels weak to his knees in a way he has never felt. The Geo Archon called Morax has never felt weak. (What a laughable choice in word, in fact. And yet…that is the unbearable truth. You have weakened Morax—far more than any erosion is capable of doing.)

“I still think this is a terrible place to do this,” you mutter weakly.

His quiet laugh brushes your lips. “Noted.”

And yet he does not move away. If anything, he makes sure to settle his hands more firmly at your waist, drawing you closer until there is scarcely a breath of space between you. 

“You are impossible,” you murmur, though, he notes, your protest lacks conviction now. Your fingers remain curled loosely in the front of his coat, as though you have forgotten to let go.

“Am I?” he hums.

You open your mouth to retort, but the words falter when he leans in again—not quite kissing you this time, but close enough that your breath mingles with his. His gaze drops briefly to your lips before lifting back to your eyes, searching your expression with intensity. He finds exactly what he is looking for—want, need, desire. Love, dare he say. 

Do you love him? Morax knows he has grown to love you. You have taught him what it means to be human, after all—or at least live like one, and he has never wanted to live like a human more than he does now in all of his long, endless life. 

“I know you are aware how dangerous this place is,” you scold him softly.

“Mm.”

“That should concern you.”

“Perhaps.”

You huff faintly, glaring. “You are not taking this very seriously.”

Something warm flickers in his eyes at that—at the way you so easily make his heart squeeze with something as simple as an expression on your face. Everything he has sought you out for has fallen into place. You are the clarity he has searched for. His people will prosper, he thinks—a new age of Liyue has grown for years now. The age of the mortals. No longer do they need him to guide their way of life, and perhaps…perhaps Morax can take his place alongside them. As an equal and not a deity. 

And perhaps he can take his place alongside you, as well. 

His hand slides from your waist to the small of your back, guiding you a fraction closer, until your body presses fully against his. Your breath catches.

“Zhongli—”

Your warning dissolves when his lips find the curve of your jaw instead, slower now, lingering in a way that sends a shiver down your spine. The sensation steals the rest of your protest before it can form.

“You said this was a dangerous place,” he murmurs softly against your skin.

“Yes,” you manage.

“And yet you have not left.”

Your fingers tighten slightly in his coat. Your heart pounds traitorously in your chest.

“Well,” you say, attempting dignity and failing somewhat, “that is because you have not given me the opportunity to.”

A quiet chuckle rumbles against your throat. 

“Ah,” Morax says gently. Then his hand slides higher along your back, and the rest of your protest fades into another kiss. “Alright then.”

He steps away. Your fingers tighten their clutch along his coat for a moment before letting go, and you stare at him incredulously. Like you cannot fathom that he has pulled away. 

“What—”

“Go on then,” he challenges. Rather smugly, too—Morax is a god, sure, but he is not without his own flaws. He remembers his less-than-humble days during the era when he was a much younger deity. “You may leave if you so desire. I won’t stop you.”

“You are a loathesome man, you know,” you grumble. And then you pull him back in, and he hums in satisfaction against your mouth. You kiss him—just as desperately as he does, and this is how Morax knows that his place has changed. 

His place is no longer on the throne of the divine, watching and guiding a nation that has evolved to survive without him. No, his place is here. With you. Where you will make his old, aging heart feel young and new again, learning and experiencing the joys of a life he has never thought possible for himself. 

“So you’ve said,” he murmurs in between kisses. 

His hands work at the bottom of your skirt, gently lifting it to trail his fingers at the thin hem of your panties. He slowly pulls them down along your thighs, just midway, and enough to expose your heat to allow his fingers to sink in. And sink in they do, feeling the warmth of your walls squeeze around his digits. 

That familiar scent of yours invades his nostrils—that scent that he finds he can no longer ignore. 

“...You are not human,” he says thoughtfully.

You freeze. For a moment, you simply stare at him, utterly incredulous, breath still uneven and labored from his fingers working your folds apart, pressing into your deepest, most sensitive parts. 

“Y-you…you cannot possibly be bringing that up right now.”

Morax’s expression remains maddeningly calm. “I felt it best to confirm.”

“Confirm?” you repeat, aghast. “You choose now to confirm?”

You gesture vaguely between the two of you, clearly referencing the rather compromising position he has put you in. His thumb brushes idly along your hip as though he does not find the timing nearly as outrageous as you do. You glare at him for that, and Morax is all too pleased by your expression. 

He only smiles in amusement. 

“I have known since the beginning,” he says.

Your eyes narrow. “…You have?”

“Yes.”

“And you are only saying something now?”

“It seemed the appropriate moment.”

Your mouth opens. Closes. Then opens again. “This is the least appropriate moment imaginable!”

You are just adorable, he thinks as a chuckle escapes him. “I happen to disagree.” 

And then, because Morax cannot help himself, and because he has decided that leaving his divine duties behind means that he can allow himself a moment or two to be utterly distasteful, he thrusts his fingers into you faster, his thumb brushing over your clit in slow circles. He watches as your mouth falls open, a soft, ragged moan tearing from your lips as you breathe his name. 

“U-unbelievable,” you stutter, “have—oh, fuck—have you no sense of shame?”

“You are half adepti,” he continues calmly, with his fingers still inside of you. “It is not difficult for one such as myself to recognize.”

“Oh, is it not?” You glare at him between your panting.

“No.”

You squint up at him. His fingers hit a particularly sensitive spot in the back of your walls, and your eyes flutter shut as you let out a long, wanton moan. Then, slowly, your eyes blink open. A faint, unimpressed smile curls at the corner of your mouth.

“Well,” you say breathlessly, “that makes two of us.” His brow lifts a fraction. “You think I h-haven't figured it out by now? You—ngh—are n-not…human either, Zhongli.”

For the first time since this conversation began, he actually pauses. The pace of his fingers in your cunt does too, and for that, you give him a hard glare as you whine in protest. But he cannot bring himself to care. 

“…Oh?”

You snort softly. “Please. Your eyes glow when you use elemental energy. Humans do not do that—I had my suspicions you were also some sort of adepti.”

A quiet laugh escapes him then—low, warm, and thoroughly entertained. “How perceptive,” he murmurs, “I did not realize you noticed me so closely.”

You huff, flustered. “And for the record,” you add dryly, “most people would have this conversation before putting their hands where yours currently are.”

Morax hums thoughtfully at that, resuming his earlier movements along your folds. “…Duly noted.”

You cum on his fingers not long after, and once you have just barely caught your breath, he pulls you into a deep kiss. 

Morax, despite all the growth and wisdom he has accumulated in his…well, thousands of years' worth of growth and wisdom to accumulate, still has his moments where he is nothing but an arrogant, cocky bastard. 

And that is exactly why he is going to fuck you here, in these ruins, where there is a god laid to rest. A god that could easily awaken if these ruins were to be tampered with too carelessly. He needs to see it for himself—as fucking pompous as it is—that he has done an undeniably good job at his duties. That he can disrespect a god by fucking the woman of his affections in their ruins, and still risk nothing. Still worry not one bit about the safety of his people. Still exist and live his life exactly as he wants it now—with you and only you, and not deal with the headache of a threat. 

“You always take me rather well,” he murmurs, groaning as he pulls his fingers from your cunt, as your pussy flutters around the digits while he unburies them from your heat. 

He means it when he says that—you always do. You take him in so easily, so effortlessly, so readily. Of course, he’d like it if he could take you properly here—and if he could have it his way, he’d strip you completely, pin you against this wall, fuck you from behind as he glares smugly right at the vault that holds Chi’s spirit, and make you cum before he fills you to the brim with his seed so you can walk out of here with the evidence of his accomplishments. 

But he doesn’t have that time nor patience, and something tells him that being that zealous would perhaps break you from your own need-filled trance and force you to draw the line. 

He doesn’t want that. 

He wants to feel you—he wants to watch you fall apart on his cock, feel himself fall apart as he kisses you senseless, and then leave knowing that he’s making the right decision for the right reasons. 

You are his reason. And you could never be a mistake. 

And now, with the fact that neither of you is a mortal acknowledged and out of the way, he can fuck you how he really wants—with both of his cocks. He pulls his own slacks down just enough to free two hard, aching cocks, giving one of them a few slow strokes and gritting his jaw as his breath grows labored, before staring down between you both as he brings the tip to your entrance. He watches as his tip sinks into you, disappearing with the slow press of his hips forward. This much, you’re familiar with, of course. 

What you’re not familiar with is the second hard, curved length that mirrors the one buried inside of you. Your eyes widen, and you stare at it in awe—maybe, dare he even say, a little bit of fear that shoots right to his crotch and makes his second length twitch. 

“Two…?” You breathe out, “what—”

“Surely this much is not hard to believe if you know I am not a mortal,” he chuckles lowly, pressing a kiss to your cheek as you quiver beneath him, itching for him to move already as he stays perfectly still while buried to the hilt inside of you. 

“But…th-they won’t…they can’t both fit,” you breathe out in alarm. 

Morax laughs—low and smug and amused enough that you fix him with a sharp glare as you flush under his slightly egotistical gaze. 

“Maybe not today,” he agrees, “but I know you’re good—good for me, good at taking me. With a little patience, I think you’ll handle them just fine, don’t you think?”

You shiver, swallowing thickly as you stare at his second, well-endowed arousal before slowly nodding in a trance. Morax grins—because of course, of course, you would be so perfect for him. So pliant and easy to agree to his whims and requests, with how plainly good you are to him. And he is, as he always has been, a generous, giving deity, so he will reward you well for it, as he always does. 

For now, though, he focuses on gently grabbing your hand, bringing it to the cock that isn’t pressed deep into your dripping cunt, and watches as you instantly, obediently make a fist and wrap your hand around him, slowly stroking just the way you know he likes. You’ve done this plenty of times before, but he never gets used to how well you know him—how easy it is for you to do all the right things and touch all the right places in all of the right ways and make him feel so fucking good. 

“Fuck,” he curses, “you have always known too easily how to drive me mad, you twisted woman.”

You huff, using your free hand to tug him close by his jacket, pressing his forehead to yours, “And you have always known too easily how to do the same, you loathesome man.”

That’s all it takes for him to decide that he wants you now. Needs to feel you good and proper. Needs to watch you as he sinks in and out of you, and watch as you struggle to concentrate as you pump the cock in your hand while the one in your cunt drags along your sensitive folds and presses deep into all the right places. 

The first roll of his hips, you hiss. The second, your jaw slackens, and you whimper his name. The third, you squeeze your fist around him without realizing it, and he feels his mind fucking blank for a moment as he feels the tightness of you around him—whether that’s your hand or your cunt—not once, but twice. 

Morax groans, leaning forward and pressing his forehead against your shoulder as he snaps his hips and fucks you, and you mewl when his thumb finds your clit, rubbing circles mercilessly against the delicate, swollen bundle of nerves. 

“You—your company was a dangerous agreement to make,” he breathes against your shoulder, “do you realize that? How easily you have taken over my head. Every thought I have, every agreement I make, every contract I sign—it all reminds me of you. You, your smile, your annoying chilis, your stubborn words.”

“I’m not stubborn,” you argue. 

He chuckles, disbelieving and out of breath. You drag your hand up along his cock, squeezing around the tip before quickly dragging it down and twisting at the base—he moans. Loud and uncaring, giving that damn vault (the one with Chi’s defeated spirit, he likes to haughtily remind himself) a smug look because, well fuck—he can simply just do that if he pleases. And he does. And he will continue to. 

“No,” he hums—it comes out more like a low rasp. “No, I suppose not. I suppose I only think you are stubborn because you will not leave my thoughts, and perhaps that blame is on me to bear, not you.”

He snaps his hips once, twice, a third time—by the fourth, you’re already clenching around him as you come undone, letting out a soft cry of, Zhong…li!, while he chokes on the feeling of you squeezing so tight and so fast around him like that. 

Morax wants this life. You. The easy, simple knowledge that he can step down, spend his days freely with you, beside you, (and yes, perhaps in you, too), all without breaching the contract he has with his nation, with his people. He wants to tiptoe around your chilis, and leave qingxins on your nightstand, and tell you stories of Liyue’s history, and laugh when you are flustered by that old woman whom you love so much. 

He wants this easy, simple, mortal existence after so long. The one where affection and endearment are so simply woven into his being, where power is not the reason he is here, where wisdom is not the burden he must bear. He wants you and the life you make him fantasize about. And he wants it badly. 

As badly as he wants to cum and fill you up right now—and one final thrust of his hips, sloppier in pace now that he’s so close, and he spills into you. You pull him into a kiss, and he thinks about what it would be like to kiss you like this every day, and he feels himself spill onto your hand at the thought as you continue to pump him through his high. 

“You—” he gasps, cutting himself off with a low, needy moan, “you are the one I want to keep me c-company. Always.” 

You smile against his jaw at that, leaving soft, open-mouthed kisses as he finishes riding out the last few waves of his orgasm before murmuring into his skin, “I’ll keep you company if you keep me company, too. Deal?”

“Deal,” he breathes, cradling your cheeks like you are gold as he brings your lips to his. 

And Morax, if his people pass this final test, he decides, will have his answer for good this time. 

-- — -- 

The crisis of Osial’s summoning ends not with the drowning of Liyue, but with its salvation.

The sea recedes. The waves calm. And the people—his people—stand victorious. From afar, Morax watches the harbor where mortals and Adepti come to a truce. He watches proudly. Watches in relief. Watches with a quiet ache, despite it all, as the end of his era as the Geo Archon is finally, after so long, solidified. 

And almost immediately after he takes care of the loose ends, he leads his feet away from the harbor and up the narrow paths toward Qingce village.

Toward you.

────────────────────────

You find him near the edge of the fields just as the sun begins to sink behind the mountains. The sky burns amber, turning the terraces gold. Zhongli stands where the path curves, hands folded neatly behind his back as though he has been waiting for some time.

You slow down when you see him.

“…You’re okay,” you say gently.

Zhongli tilts his head faintly. “I was not aware my well-being had been in question.”

You cross your arms. “Oh, forgive me for worrying,” you mutter. “There was only a sea god trying to drown the entire harbor.”

At the mention of the event, his gaze shifts briefly toward the distant horizon.

“Yes,” he says quietly. “So there was.”

You study him for a moment. Something is…different. Not in his appearance. Zhongli still stands as composed and elegant as ever—still in such fine silk, even with little mora to his name. (How he has such poor finances, you will never understand.) But there is a strange ease to him tonight, as though some invisible weight has finally been set down from his chest.

“You didn’t come all this way just to stare at the sunset,” you say eventually.

“No.”

“Then?”

He is quiet for a moment. Long enough that you begin to wonder if he may not answer at all.

Then he says, “There is something I have not told you.”

You snort at that. “Well, that’s not unusual,” you reply flatly. “You are a very secretive man.”

“This matter,” he says carefully, “is somewhat…larger than most. And not one I could evade in good conscience if…I would continue to pursue you in this way.”

That gets your attention.

Pursue you. 

You have not discussed the details of this…arrangement between you and Zhongli. Not outside of when you might next see him, or if either of you will be particularly busy in the coming weeks to meet at all. Hearing him say so candidly that he considers himself to be in pursuit of you brings a delicate ache to your heart—an ache of longing. 

You want him. All of him. And you have avoided asking him all this time if that might be a possibility for fear of losing him altogether—but he has handed you your desires so easily with one sentence—confirmed he wants it just the same as you do, even. That he has been seeking you out all this time and not just the familiar convenience of your body. 

You smile at the idea and look at him with bright eyes. 

“Alright. Pursue me properly then, Mister Zhongli of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor.” He winces at that title a little. Your brows furrow. 

“You are aware,” Zhongli begins slowly, “that I am not human.”

You blink at him like he has grown two heads. “…Yes. We have established that, or did you forget? And neither am I, so there is no need to be concerned that I would worry over something as meaningless as that.”

“That is not the issue,” he sighs. 

“…Okay,” you say slowly, a bit more cautiously now. “Then what exactly are we talking about here?”

Zhongli exhales slowly. “I…am Rex Lapis,” he says bluntly. 

You stare at him. Blink once. Then twice. And then you break out into a fit of giggles as you look at him incredulously. 

“No, you are not. What a silly thing to say—now tell me really what this is all about.”

“I am,” he insists, almost mildly offended.

“You absolutely are not.”

“I assure you—”

“Rex Lapis is the Geo Archon,” you interrupt, pointing vaguely toward the harbor far in the distance. “The god of Liyue. The one who—”

Your voice falters as you take a look at his face.

You know that face. You have studied it over the course of weeks. How it looks when it is sleeping and peaceful, how it looks when it is tired and glum, how it looks when it is bright and joyed, how it looks when it is lax with pleasure and need, and how it looks when it is painfully serious and honest. 

You know him. You know how to read him inside and out. How to tell when he is telling the truth or evading it altogether. You know him because he is yours—he has been for quite a while. And you know that he is being truthful. 

Your stomach drops.

“…Oh. I see. You are not lying, then,” is all you say.

Zhongli inclines his head slightly. “No, I am not.”

“Fascinating.” You nod slowly. 

“You are taking this rather well.”

“Let’s not be so hasty to assume—I am still deciding if I should throw something at you.”

“That would be understandable.”

You run a hand over your face. “Let me get this straight,” you say slowly. “You are telling me that the man I have been—” you pause and clear your throat, “—um…spending time with is actually the god of Liyue?”

“Yes,” he says easily. His eyes flash with a momentary fit of amusement. 

“Well, disregarding the matter of why the Geo Archon would be parading around as a representative of a funeral parlor—you thought it would be appropriate to mention this only now?”

“There were…complications.”

You stare at him. “Complications,” you repeat.

“Yes.”

You let out a long breath. Then you gesture vaguely at him.

“Well, go on then, Your Divinity. Explain.”

Zhongli does not react to the sarcasm. Instead, he looks out toward the distance. “For thousands of years,” he says quietly, “I have ruled Liyue as its Archon.”

You huff, “Yes, I am aware of the history.”

“But Liyue is no longer the nation it once was. Mortals have grown. They have built their own institutions, their own systems of governance. Trade flourishes without divine intervention. Contracts are honored by people who no longer require a god to enforce them.”

Your expression softens slightly. “Your people still have reason to need you,” you say, stepping closer, “there is no need to doubt your purpose as their god—”

“It is not about what they need,” he shakes his head, staring down at the grass as he sighs. “It’s about what…what I need. What I want. I have longed for ages now to know that I have done my duty. And perhaps rest this old, eroding soul of mine. Osial’s defeat has given me the reassurance that I may step down without worry.”

“So the sea god…”

“Was a test.”

You stare at him again. “…You let a sea god attack Liyue as a test?”

“Well, I was not the one to summon it,” he defends, smiling faintly with mirth at your bewildered look, “I was simply aware it would happen. But I was prepared to intervene if necessary.”

“Well, did you intervene?” You ask.

“No. I was pleasantly impressed to see the Qixing and the adepti handled it swiftly.” 

Silence settles between you again. Then you let out a soft, delicate sigh. “Well,” you mutter, “that explains things, I suppose.”

“Does it?”

“Only a little.”

A faint smile touches his lips. “Erosion is not the only reason,” Zhongli says quietly.

You look back at him. “Oh?”

His gaze returns to you. “I have carried the role of Archon for millennia,” he says. “Longer than most living beings can even comprehend. And yet, in recent years, I have begun to wonder whether there is more out there to experience than simply being a powerful deity.”

“Being a powerful deity is no simple matter,” you scoff in disbelief. 

“No, it isn’t, I suppose,” he chuckles. “But, still, there are more things to experience in life—I learned that when I met you.”

You blink. Your chest tightens slightly. “Meeting me hardly seems that relevant.”

“But it is. You…” he says quietly, “your chilis and your flowers. Your laughter. Your skin under the sun. Your voice. Your stubbornness. You have altered my perception of what it means to be alive as opposed to simply be living. Even your scolding,” he hums with a pointed look, and an endeared smile. 

You pause as it sinks in properly who he really is, and how you’ve been engaging with him—and then, your breath hitches before you gasp in horror. “Oh—I insulted the Geo Archon.”

“Yes, it would appear you have. Repeatedly.” He gives you a slightly cheeky look as he says, “Some would consider that an unforgivable sin, you know.”

You cover your face. “I am never showing my face around you again.”

“That would be unfortunate.”

You peek at him through your fingers. “…Why?”

“Because I would miss you.”

The words are spoken so simply that it takes you a moment to process them. Your hands slowly lower. “What do you wish to gain from such easy flattery?”

Zhongli—or perhaps Morax, you should call him, maybe even Rex Lapis—meets your gaze, laughing softly. “I stepped down because Liyue no longer needs its Archon,” he says. Then, more softly: “And because I wish to live as a normal man. To walk among the people I once ruled. To learn their customs not as a distant observer, but as one of them.” His voice grows quieter. “To experience the small joys of mortal life.”

“You will not be mortal,” you scoff, “even if you step down.”

“But I can live like one,” he says easily. “There are many joys to the mortal way of life.”

Your throat tightens. “Is that so?”

“Yes. And I find,” he says gently, “that many of those joys seem to involve you.”

You stare at him. “Me?”

“Yes.”

You look at him a little longer—cautious, careful. You think back on all the little moments that led you here—that first damn day he came to your quiet, small village, stepping on your sprouting chili plants as he walked confidently in the complete opposite direction of where he needed to be. That easy, effortless way he’d helped your grieving heart fill the empty place left behind by Master Lu’s passing before you’d even realized something was missing at all. The kind, thoughtful way he spoke to Madam Lu and ate her cooking, talking with her like an old friend, like someone who understood her loneliness without her ever having to say it aloud. And that soft, delicate way he slowly made you realize that your existence, outside of this small, gentle village, could belong beside other people. That you, with your half-adeptal blood and that quiet, lingering sense of abandonment you had buried down all those years ago, could still be worth something to someone beyond the only place you had ever believed you were allowed to belong.

You love him—oh, you think, how you love him so easily and desperately and hard and deep and fierce. You love him with that mixed blood in your veins and that broken part of you that has always wondered, somewhere in the back of your mind, if you truly, really belonged anywhere at all. You love him because he keeps you company, and you love him because keeping him company is the easiest thing you have ever known how to do.

You want to keep loving him. When years and years and more years pass—ten, then twenty, then fifty, then one hundred—you want to love him still. And you want him to love you, too. You want to spend your long, endless days with him and watch time pass slowly and steadily at your side. He has so much of it to spare, and so do you, and you want to spend that time believing that not one day is a waste if you spend it together.

You love him, and you want to dare to believe that he could, after all this time, grow to love you the same way.

“This sounds like a confession,” you whisper. 

He looks at you with a small glint in his eyes. “I believe you could call it that, yes.”

“You are the former god of Liyue.”

“Yes.”

“And you are confessing to me.”

“Yes.”

You let out a long breath. It’s relieved. It’s joyed. It’s fucking exasperated and annoyed. “Well,” you mutter, “be that as it may, you have deceived me, deity or not. And any man who deceives a lady must make up for such egregious wrongdoings.”

A quiet laugh escapes him. “Then I will do that. I hope it will be satisfactory. Do offer me some leniency, if you will—I have only been living as a mortal for so long.”

You study him for a long moment. Then you sigh, stepping closer. “…You are still a loathsome man.”

“I have been told.”

“But,” you add reluctantly, stepping closer, “you are the loathsome man I have grown fond of, nonetheless.” 

He steps closer, too, invading your space so freely and easily, as if he exists simply to do that. Like it is his right to do so, no questions asked. He grabs you by your wrists, pulling closer and flush against him, pressing his forehead to yours as he studies your eyes. You love him, you think, oh, you love him so much, it could kill you—it could rob you of all the endless time that you have. 

And if he knows that, then he decides to spare your poor heart and your poor life span, too, as he murmurs, “I have fallen in love with you. Won’t you let this old, eroding man settle down in your company and pass his days in peace?”

You laugh (and it’s a watery little thing) as you shake your head in disbelief. “Say that again—and then I will believe you.”

“I love you,” he chuckles, raising a brow, “must I write it in a contract before you believe me?”

“I love you too, you loathesome, bothersome man,” you sob, “I’ll keep you company too if you stop deceiving me like the shady, untrustworthy businessman you are.”

He brings you into a deep, desperate kiss, cradling your face like it is the precious remainder of his long, endless lifespan pressed into his palms. You kiss back. It’s familiar. It’s new. It’s weird and odd and frightening, all at once—and yet, somehow, it is the most effortless, and correct thing that you do. 

“It’s a deal,” he murmurs, “yes?”

“Yes.”

-- — -- 

“Does that traveler girl know that you are Morax?” you ask against his bare chest, tracing your fingers along his skin. He is still catching his breath as he pulls your naked body against his, sighing as he gives you a look. Like he already knows where this is going. 

“Yes,” he says, warily. 

“So she knew before me, then,” you narrow your eyes. 

“Technically, that is the case, yes. But that is only because—”

“Perhaps you should seek her company, then,” you say petulantly, huffing as you dramatically roll away from him. 

Zhongli—after much questioning from you over whether he should be Morax now, or perhaps Rex Lapis, he has firmly insisted that this is the name you are to call him by—sighs as he takes your wrist and tugs you back against him. He gives you an exasperated look (and yet, despite it all, there is unmistakable fondness beneath it) before leaning down to press a kiss to your forehead.

“Do not sulk.”

“I am not sulking.”

“And don’t be so stubborn all the time.”

“I’m not stubborn,” you say defiantly. 

He gives you a flat look. “Seeking out your company is not for the weak, is it?”

You give him a smug, bright grin at that—and you almost think you watch him fall in love with you all over again. “Get used to it, then, old man—you have a long, long time of my company ahead. And it certainly is not for the weak, you’re right.”

He laughs—low and warm and quietly endeared, but above all, certain. “Good,” he hums. “That is fine by me. I have always been known to be rather strong, you see.”

You curl into his chest, and he holds you close, and you and Zhongli have all the time in the world.

(And no—none of it is a waste.)