The Tender Intimacy Between Exes Who Find Their Way Back To One Another... Fuck - Blog Posts

eYOOOOO IK I ALREADY SAID THIS BEFORE BUT CONGRATS ON THE MILESTONE !!!!!!! I'd love to make a request for childe but my brain is just in the mindset of "AS LONG AS ITS SFW AND TEN IS THE ONE WHO WRITES IT IM SOLD" which in itself is,,,, not very specific for a request. ANYWAYS GOODLUCK WITH YOUR REQUESTS <333 ROOTING FOR YA

again

pairings: childe × gn!reader

genre: slight angst/comfort

summary: though the two of you have separated, the universe has a funny way of bringing the both of you back together (or, in this case, the tsaritsa)

wc: 1.9k

warnings: swearing (only once i think)

a/n: now, ik you didn’t intentionally put this as a req but i took and ran with it anyway— i think you put too much faith in me 😭 but i hope you enjoy >:)

you can find my masterlist here

sometimes you hated the icy hell that was snezhnaya. the monotonous white of the landscape only served to bore your mind and the constant chills running up your body did nothing to help your already sour mood. at some point you had resorted to playing with your pyro vision, absentmindedly toying with a small flame in the palm of your hand, purely for some form of entertainment.

yes, you concluded. you absolutely did not want to be here. especially not with this imbecilic ginger.

“i can hear you grumbling, you know.”

speak of the devil…

“yeah, no shit. i’m right behind you.”

the man who you now refer to as childe, rather than ajax, heaves a particularly heavy sigh as the pair of you continue to trudge through your home country.

you’d curse celestia for your circumstances if it wasn’t for the the fact that you knew exactly whose doing this was.

your archon thought it a good idea to pair the two of you on a mission to retrieve a stolen artefact but there were several issues with this;

first of all, you had no idea why something as menial as fetching some toy concerned the attention of a harbinger. surely this could’ve been left to the lower ranks? but most importantly, you were even more baffled as to why she had to pair him with you of all people. while it’s true that you were an accomplished healer, that didn’t mean there weren’t any others with twice your experience.

you’d ponder these questions with more scrutiny but you’d be damned if you spent more time dwelling on your situation if it meant you had to stay with the ginger for even a split second longer.

archons, just looking at him and his stupidly long legs carrying him through the snow is giving you a headache… same with the way they seem to accentuate his annoyingly tall figure. and his rather broad shoulders that supported his head of soft hair. and the way that his jaw clenches beautifully in concentra—

hold on, beautifully? that doesn’t sound right.

“—n we can make a fire in the shelter over there.”

ah… you’re being spoken to.

“h-huh?”

childe stops in front of you suddenly, shooting you a look of confusion and you nearly bump into the body you were just fawning over. you had to shake your head quickly in order to get rid of the thoughts manifesting in your mind.

“have you listened to anything i’ve just said?” he questions, daring you to answer with those bottomless azure eyes.

you blink. focus, you simpleton!

“of course i have,” you reply dumbly.

much to your irksome, a gloved hand sits cockily at his left hip. “great! mind leading the way, then?”

a tease.

you’ve played this game with him many times before but you’re certain you don’t want him to find any amusement this time.

it’s no use, though. you unknowingly entertain him anyway.

your legs are quick to take you in a direction that wasn’t even close to what childe had suggested a few seconds ago. you were headed the exact opposite way, in fact.

a smirk slowly makes its way onto his face but you’ve already marched ahead of him, too far away to notice. childe huffs, full of mirth, before he decides to follow close behind you.

being forced into a situation with him like this… well, you couldn’t help but wonder where it all went wrong. you might have been the one to sever your relationship but as soon as the wave of anger resided you found yourself wishing you didn’t. celestia knows how much you’ve tried to distract yourself from the pain, and admittedly you were doing pretty well. that was until now, at least.

memories of arguments resurfaced as you willed yourself to remain unresponsive. if the both of you were less frustrated in the moment, would the two of you still be together? or were the reasons of your breakup too glaring to dismiss?

after all, staying up for nights on end wondering whether or not your partner was even alive wasn’t exactly ideal for your mental health. neither was having to lecture him after dressing many of the unsightly wounds he’d regularly come home with. you could only cope with the stress for so long.

but you couldn’t help but miss him.

the pair of you had wandered for another half hour or so when the situation seemed to take a turn for the worse, the telltale signs of a snowstorm beginning to fester in the skies above. this wasn’t good. you’d both be dead if you were caught in a snowstorm, pyro vision or not.

willing the flame to grow larger in your hand, you looked around for anything that could be used to protect yourselves from the oncoming storm when childe suddenly gathers you into his arms without warning.

“h-hey! what do you think you’re doing?!” you yelp in shock as you flail about in his arms.

“saving our lives,” he quips not even a second after.

shaky arms are quick to instinctively wrap themselves around childe’s neck in order to prevent yourself from falling. he subconsciously responds by holding you closer to him, both as if to prevent you from slipping and to shield you from the bitter cold.

you’re too caught up in panic to notice the quickening beat of his heart.

soon enough, childe manages to find a small crack within a nearby cliff and he swiftly manoeuvres inside with you still in his hold. he shuffles so that his back is pressed to the back of the cave, trying his hardest to keep the both of you as far from the entrance as possible. he slides down into a sitting position and moves you so that you were sitting sideways in his lap- your head resting on his shoulder.

you sit in silence for the next few moments with only the howling of the wind to keep yourselves company. being outside in the frigid cold for so long had sapped your energy and you were about to fall asleep there and then when you felt your companion start to tremble. it was normal to shiver in these conditions but the way his body started to violently shake had alerted you from near slumber.

untucking your head from his neck you looked up at him with furrowed brows, “childe?”

“ ‘s fine,” he grits out through chattering teeth. “don’t worry about it.”

your frown grows. it’s easy to see how the moisture in his eyelashes have caused them to clump together due to the sheer temperature, and it’s even easier to feel how intense his shivers are.

this won’t do.

quickly shrugging off your scarf you begin to wrap it around his neck when his hand catches your wrist.

“i said it’s fine,” he protests, increasing the pressure of his grip.

but you stand firm, “i’m not playing around, you fool.”

“and neither am i, so keep your sca—”

…why was he always so stubborn?

you don’t give him time to finish his rebuke as you quickly wrap the article of clothing around his neck. too worried to care about your proximity, your face inches closer to his to ensure that none of the skin of his neck could meet with the bitter cold.

his breath hitches, caught in his throat, but you don’t acknowledge it.

“i won’t have you dying cause of hypothermia, you brat. just listen to me for once. please,” you whisper the last bit out shakily.

you hate how your voice wavers.

thankfully he relents under your insistence and instead settles back into the wall, tentatively rewrapping his arms around your shoulders.

you can’t bear to look at his face for prolonged periods of time and so you bury your own back into his neck, cushioned by the soft scarf you had just successfully swaddled him in.

there’s nothing for you to make a consistent fire out of and so you resort to heightening your body temperature in the hopes of keeping the both of you warm. you hate this. you should hate this, but you find that you can’t help but nuzzle into him no matter what you beg yourself to do.

but it’s not like he’s pushing you away, either.

silence passes between you once more but the air is much thicker than last time. it’s suffocating; threatening to consume you whole. maybe you’ve crossed the line this time, overstepped your unspoken boundaries.

“you’re doing it again.” childe comments, breaking the tension.

with hesitance clearly on your visage, you look up towards his face.

“stop chewing on your cheeks. you’re gonna hurt yourself.”

a gloved hand reaches out for your face, but he retracts it before you could notice his mistake. a habit, it seemed.

you scoff in disbelief, but the disdain you intended to put behind it lacks any real punch. you reply with a quiver in your voice.

“really…? you’re unbelievable. don’t you dare lecture me about hurting myself. it’s hypocritical, childe.” it didn’t take a genius to pick up on your solemn tone.

childe.

for a split second you think you see a hint of regret spread across the young man’s face but it’s gone the second you look at him again.

he looks at the ground past you, and whispers,“what happened to ajax…?”

“pardon?” you reply, perplexed by his question.

a sigh of defeat leaves his thin lips. childe then pulls you closer to him but with the way his eyes seem so distant you can tell it wasn’t done on a conscious basis.

“i said, what happened to ajax?” he repeats a little louder.

your brows furrow once more, but it was more so due to confusion than worry. “nothing happened, i just don’t call you that anymore cause we—”

“i,” he interrupts as if he doesn’t want you to finish that sentence. breathing in in frustration as he balls his fist, he continues, “i know, just… i just miss the way you used to say my name. forget i said anything.”

and at this, you freeze- eyebrows raised and mouth slightly agape.

as if sensing your shock, childe drops the subject and turns his head to the side away from your astonished face.

what the hell is happening?

with your heartbeat thrumming away in your chest, you slowly let your head fall back onto his shoulder.

a third and final silence settles; this time filled with realisations and unspoken feelings. it settles like the first wave of sunlight waiting to thaw out the fjords of snezhnaya after the long, gruelling months of its unforgiving winter.

childe— no, ajax, chances a glance at you once he’s certain you’ve fallen asleep and he finds that his heartbeat sings in time with yours. they thump in unison, and ajax falls asleep feeling less lonely than before. he cradles you and lets his cheek rest on the top of your head, not before untangling your scarf so that it covers the both of you comfortably.

someday, someday he’d get to hear his name roll off your tongue once again. he’d make sure of it;

and somewhere in the grand zapolyarny palace, the tsaritsa smiles.

published on 27/03/22