merita :]

“Let me kiss you.” Blunt, to the point, so unlike the lilting riddles he’d spin and confuse you with. You shake your head. 

“I smell of blood.” you’d overseen the surgery of one insistent patient, a short lifer whose stomach cramps stemmed from an inflamed appendix. Even after washing yourself down you can’t quite rid the tang iron rimming your fingertips. 

Jing Yuan laughs. To him, everything may as well be a joke. Or a threat. Or a simple amusement. You consider it the happy experience of going senile with age ( you had expressed it to him. He’d laughed even harder till the birds in his hair clear out and his shoulders shook and trembled like his being was wracked with earthquakes ).

“Trust me, I’ve smelled far worse.” he assures you, leaning forth to take your hand, his lips pressing up against the palm. “Come.” A tug. You’re a slave to the way his eyes shine. You hate how he has you so easily stringed up and weak for his words ( your heart is racing, it’s a traitorous little thing ripping away at your chest and stealing your breath and warming your cheeks ).

His large hands settle you easily on his lap, drumming staccato over your hips. His lips find your temple next. “Darling mine.” he whispers. “Darling mine.”

“Yes.”

Jing Yuan smiles and shuts his eyes, curling his grip around the hook of your legs. The action in firm, steady, half patient, half wanting. “Look at me.”

You turn your head away.

He presses his face to your hair. “No?” he intones with feigned disappointment. “I cannot see your face?”

“No.” you play along, reaching for more of the rock candy. Jing Yuan stops you, and it’s warm, warm, warm all over. There’s is something tempered in his gaze. It’s a lazy adoration. 

“Is there any way I can appease my beloved then?” he muses. “Should I beg on my knees? Wax poetry?”

You groan. “No, no poetry, Jing Yuan.”

“No poetry either? My, you are a tough case, aren’t you?” he’s sweeping you away from the floor, draped on his lap and his chest. Your grasp lays upon his heart. You feel it beat. Your head turns and you face him, lips pursing as you try to stifle back the flustered curl tugging at the corners. “There.” he whispers. A finger taps at your jaw. 

He lets you close the gap and steal away gaping kisses.

“I’m weak for you, aren’t i?” you mumble mournfully between them. Jing Yuan softens to it. “An utter fool. An idiot.”

“Maybe. But I’d be a hypocrite for belittling you for it, no?” he’s chasing after your lips again in a rare moment of greed. He’s not a selfish man. Jing Yuan would let himself be rend by a thousand swords or scorched by starfire if it means another lives a life in peace. It’s a simple truth nestled in him, so blatant in its presence yet artfully tucked away beneath paraphernalia and other quirks picked over the centuries. 

( Jing Yuan who’d let himself bleed, bleed, bleed. )

Your nose nuzzles at the column of his neck. You will not be thinking of tragedy today. “Just keep holding me.”

His eyes crinkle at the corners. He is flesh and blood in your grasp. he is whole. He is him.

The respite is welcomed.

❪⠀🎬⠀❫ AINE SPEAKS ;;

working through this event like the damn aventurine boss jk jk. anyway i am ill for this man and i want him to hold me thank you.

anyway, this evenfall post was requested by @floraldresvi!! i hope you like it!!!

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This time he’d been stabbed clean through. Most of it was healed on camp, mages tucking viscera back to place and mending blood vessels and ruptured nerves. Lacerations that would have given way in your hands. Burns you can’t heal yourself. It leaves a sourness in your mouth that never quite goes away.

“I was impatient.” he admits with a silly little laugh when you unbutton his shirt. “I had to see you again. How could I possibly function if I don't?”

“You could have spared a few hours.” you mutter. “Look at this. You’re still bleeding.” And you point. His bandages were a sticky scarlet. It rubs off on your hands and you feverishly pray it’s not infected. 

He laughs again, like his life was a game, a gamble. You feel like you’ve been stabbed. It’s selfish, maybe, wanting just a little less recklessness in a soldier. “I can’t stand anyone else touching me like that. Not if it’s you.” he muses, tugging you down on top of him. His touch brushes against your hips, your thighs. Hunger. It soothes the ache in your chest. Just a little. You’ll want more soon enough. 

“Can’t you be a little more careful?”

Your voice is soft, a little defeated. Your hands work. Undo the soiled linen. Sew his wounds. It’s like second nature to you. Muscle memory. Your mind rewiring and purging uncertain clumsiness.

“I can’t test my luck if my opponent is stronger than me…” 

“Ajax.”

Childe does not shut up. “...But I'll always come back to you.”

“In a casket, maybe.”

You finish sewing. The look you focus him with is something rawer than you’d like. Reckless man, you want to scream. Reckless, reckless man. You want to tug at his hair. You want to stuff him away in your home where there is no battle, no wars. 

The bandages are next. They’re tugged tight enough, tied and pinned away. He grabs your wrist. “Alive,” he promises. “I’ll come home alive, zolotse.”

"If you don't"

He's disarming. You despise him for it. "Have a little more faith in me." he croons. 

You’ve had enough. You kiss him, for every day left with a cold side to your bed and a meal for one. Childe lets you as he falls back, and he tugs away at your clothes. It’s viscous. And soft. It’s both.

( And it’s voracious. )

“Off.” he whispers, breath hitching to a whine. You move your legs, let him do as he pleases, testing teeth against your shoulders and tugging your innerwear down for the heat of his palms. And you draw him back to the surface when he sinks too deep, when he forgets he’s wounded in his haze.

His fingers spread you apart, stroking against your cunt, pressing up to your clit. He nips at your lips. He demands another kiss. Rust and sweat hang off of him. It’s familiarity, a chilling comfort, something twisted that Childe turned tender. You embrace him. 

“Ajax. slowly.” you whisper into his shoulder. “Slowly, love. You’re still hurt.”

He slips a finger inside. You buck your hips and whine. 

“But I missed you.” he croaks out. “I missed you zolotse.” He dares to be sweet now, lips pressing up against your shoulders while he works on you, works you apart, as easily as he mans his swords. 

You tug at his hair, let him drive you further, drive you mad. “I missed you too, Ajax.” you finally admit. You know the tragedy that dances beneath the lines here. It’s glaringly obvious, it’s heartbreaking. You hold him tight, so tight like he’s something delicate, something breakable.

( Human. And monster. )

He brushes up against your g-spot. Your hips falter. “Please.” you whisper to him. “Please stay a little longer. Please.”

You don’t understand why you still insist on it. You let ecstasy take you anyway and it loosens your lips and makes you beg and say those whispered secrets stowed and locked away. And Childe listens. He listens to all of them as he enters you with a quiet groan, rocking your body with shallow thrusts. You wonder if his shoulders sunk with guilt then. You wonder if he wished for a little more as well. 

You’re soaked. He’s pressed his face into your chest. His hips canting, his pace quickening. Your body still through numbness and ecstasy, sight gleaned over when the first climax picks you apart and empties out your ramblings to unintelligible cries.

The battlefield calls for him a few days later. He lingers by your bedside. You watch his smile and remember it all.

His side of the bed is cold after. 

❪⠀🎬⠀❫ AINE SPEAKS ;;

kjhgfvghjk this fic was initially suppossed to include kaeya in the roster okijuhygfgbh but my brain and energy was like "just one sweetie." "but-" "just one, sweetie." see my sense of freedom is non existant in the face of burnout kijhgvfghnj and i'm sorry i like childe a little more i went through a whole enemies to lovers arc with him jo you were there when i told you lkjnhbnjmk.

anyway, this evenfall post was requested by @mysnowmanandmebaby!!! i hope you like it!!!

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