@ragingtdes: to be rid of the god who possesses his body for but a few days had become a reprieve, and yet, it doesn't feel it. a month now it had been, childe's hotel room littered with ancient text of both human and adepti origin to find some sliver of hope. he needed to be extracted from, the dying god was a cesspool of rage and sorrow, trapped in a body already too crowded to function right.
osial's rage on top of childe's misery meant that he only rose from his bed, cleaned and presented himself when zhongli came to visit, and even then keeping up his cheerful facades would be momentary at best. the whisper of osial's will and his memories available for childe's perusing in times such as these were tempting, a break from the monotony of pages and pages of research.
' maybe it would have made me go insane too - '
childe looked up from his position on the settee, dark blue eyes framed with the growing scales brought on by possession. there was something intense there, born of longing, hints of anger, something dispaired, and heartbroken. childe held the former archon's gaze, longer than he had all these weeks. the rain beat down against the windows outside, and childe looked away, gills fluttering weakly.
' - to be loved by you. '
i might have turned out like him, like osial.
' good thing you don't, huh ? '
in all his eons of existence, morax had encountered numerous a painful situation - conundrums that would drive a mortal man mad with their dilemmas. and all that time, his decisions had been swift and impartial - judgments called upon in the name of contracts and the lord of geo's own stalwart divinity. the last contract to, had come at a price of conundrum - the relinquishing of his gnosis to the tsarista right beneath the nose of man his stone heart had hewn a crack of gold for. zhongli had told himself, when he saw that look on childe's haggard face as he passed his key to the heavens to signora's hands, he had told himself that this was the last one. this was the last time he'd let godhood get in the way of what guizhong had described as 'feelings.'
it was supposed to be over then. childe was to be free of the shackles of an ex archon's attention and all the mess that came with it. he would return to snezhnaya and in the wake of osial's attack, zhongli's life in liyue would turn to normalcy. he should've known better, of course. old gods were vengeful creatures; zhongli would know. he technically was one.
it'd been raining for days and days, liyue's mountain springs and lakes swelling with burgeoned sky water and the silkflowers wilting under the endless onslaught. the only reprieve was the younger's rare bouts of good moods, and even then zhongli felt the sunshine was too brief, and missed the ability to control that too, at his whim. still - this was not about him. he'd learned that rather quickly. learned that when the body of the harbinger that had begun to tug at his affections had been so conveniently hijacked by a vengeful ex-lover, and put zhongli right back in one of his never ending conundrums. from that moment on, he'd been looking like a man possessed, even going so far as to enlist the assistance of many of his adepti to hunt down the secrets of this world. osial had taken up residence in something the lord of geo could not help but feel was his - and thusly, another war was on.
but there was no battle today. not as that rain poured and he sat across from childe in the dim hotel room. texts are scattered about them, unorganized yet carefully maintained. zhongli sits on the floor, clawed fingertips (his gloves and jacket are gone, sleeves rolled up, ready to fight at a moment's notice if needed) running along the frayed parchment of a scroll older the entirety of childe's blood line. words catch his attention, and cor lapis hues - fringed in impossibly dark eyelashes and blood red tattoos - raise to meet abyssal depths on reflex. not for the first time - the look in those eyes frightens him, so different from what he knows, and as they've been slowly plumed by familiar scales... there's an ancient tug at his heart, memories of a bygone era of times spent with another voracious lover. the old and the new, fracturing a stone heart into tiny little pieces... osial had picked his host well. too well.
the words - they hurt. they hurt more than any battle wound, more than any loss or despair. the line of gold that had hewn across his stone heart cracks in a way he can swear is audible. for once, unreadable features - they flinch, and he feels the breath leaves him in one unending whoosh, punched out of his lungs like a fist to his gut. zhongli stares up at the harbinger - his future, his past - with eyes so akin to being fractured, it feels as if another chasm has begun to yawn between them.
his on his feet in an instant, standing faster than the eye can perceive. he's before the settee now, bending towards childe's person - so close to the end of his pony tail droops between them, and drags across the harbinger's chest like the tail of some great beast. " do not listen to him. " he murmurs, soothing baritone lit with the commanding presence of a deity used to being listened to. he shoves it all away - or tries to - the flood of guilt, of memories of where he had wronged the god of the vortex and childe too. he replaces it instead with a firm grasp to childe's chin, clawed grip gentle and veins of geo pulsating in delight at the contact of flesh - despite the circumstances.
" look at me, childe. " he breathes out, the strange pupils of his eyes slitting further. propriety, possessive, pained. " look. " is this the face of a man - a god - who cares for you naught? " focus on me, and breathe. " to be a mortal loved by a god is to already have courted insanity and chosen it's affections; to die a thousand little deaths over and over again in the wake of possession so deep and bone-chilling, ancient scriptures could not divine the sensation. to be a mortal loved by morax - it is akin to courting the sun, and allowing oneself to be consumed to ashes.
yet this time - zhongli finds - perhaps it is them both that shall go up in divine flame.
