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The sun seeped through the windows, the birds singing a soft melody. Flapping their little ones and tending to their young, insisting still to sing for others. Zhongli found it odd Venti didn’t join their song.
“Dear, that is a horrid habit.” Zhongli commented, tilting his head away from Venti, who carelessly lit a cigarette in the early morning. Zhongli placed a hand on Venti’s knee, grinning stupidly despite his protest of Venti’s choice of action. “…Dear.”
Venti took a huff from the cancer-stick, blowing it on Zhongli’s neck, whose response was to further tilt his head away. In spite of himself, Zhongli continued to smile sweetly at Venti’s presence. “Is it not too early for that?” Zhongli reiterated.
Venti only groaned, rolling his eyes in annoyance as he flailed his hands, his fists landing on the sheets that crumpled below him. “Isn’t it too early to rain on my parade, Morax? Gosh, you’re such a buzzkill.”
“You’re unappealing when you smoke.”
“Just call me ugly.”
“That’s not what I’m…” Zhongli sighed, rubbing Venti’s knee affectionately as if to let him know he was still there. “Just because we are not affected by these… in the same way mortals are does not mean we sustain all damage.” No response. Zhongli continued. “Is this what you have been up to since my ‘death’?”
“This and crying.” Venti chimed, though not quite as whimsically as he usually would. “And… writing sonnets, drinking and… whoring around.” Venti choked out the word, not because it brought him any shame, but because he knew it did to Zhongli.
Zhongli sighed, taking the cigarette from between Venti’s fingers and burning it out on his own palm. He winced, but just slightly. Years of war and hardware, endurance and pain, those things were no problem to facing a slight tinge of fire. Venti whined at his cigarette having been taken away, Zhongli only smirked victoriously. “Got quite lonely now, did you not?” He cupped Venti’s chin with the hand that had been on his knee, another palm crawling up Venti’s back and soothing it softly. “You have never been good at that. Being alone.”
Venti rolled his eyes. “Shut up.” He spat bitterly, wrapping his hands around himself, suddenly too vulnerable. “It shouldn’t serve to offend you, we never even married.”
“I still stand by the fact that we should have.” Zhongli pulled Venti closer, burying his head in his neck and taking in that sweet scent of cecilias that lay deep beneath the one of drugs and alcohol. Venti nearly jumped out of his skin, Zhongli chuckled at the reaction. “I am here now, Barbatos.”
Venti let out a low breath, now wrapping his arms around Zhongli’s neck and pulling him impossibly closer. Impatient as ever, at his core, Barbatos was a being that was utterly alone. He was so desperate to turn his soul into one with Morax’s to become one, though that’d be an impossible task without any proper magic, and it’d serve no greater purpose but to cure the Anemo Archon’s loneliness.
“Morax…” Venti whispered, the sound soothing to Zhongli’s lovesick ears. “I— I'm sorry.”
“You should not be the one apologizing.” Zhongli gently ran his palm through Venti’s back, rubbing his spine with a soft precision that nearly drew an elated moan from Venti’s lips. “I should have given you some form of warning ahead of time. I was not aware you had awoken from your slumber, had I known—.”
“You didn’t even tell the Adepti.” Venti was suddenly interrupted by his own gasp as Zhongli began to pour kisses down his collarbone, melting as Zhongli’s hand on his chin slipped down. Zhongli’s rough hand gave Venti’s small breast a harsh squeeze, a tear of pleasure pricked at Venti’s eye. They continued down to his stomach, scratching tenderly on Venti’s ribs before landing exactly on their rightful place. Venti’s cheeks flushed bright, sweat dripping from his forehead as his legs instinctively spread. “Ah,” a heat pumped through his vagina, a wet, need infecting every corner of his body. “Mm, Morax…” he whined, pulling Zhongli closer to himself.
Zhongli found his dick throbbing, but he furrowed his brows in response to his embarrassment. The Geo Archon used to not feel such shame over his primal needs and desires, always falling into Barbatos to have them met. Yet now, it felt strangely different.
“I love you, Venti.” Zhongli murmured softly, Venti shrieked.
Almost immediately, Venti shoved Zhongli away, shutting his legs and attempting to pull himself together.
A beat of silence passed between the two of them. One that stretched and lasted a long, humiliating millennia making them fools.
Venti finally spoke, running his hands through the wavy remains of his braids, having been lost in the passion of last night. “I…” he began, biting his lip with what seemed to be the intention of breaking it. His nails had overgrown in the past few weeks or months, Venti had lost track of how much time had truly passed. “I think I need a moment…” he took a look around Zhongli’s new chambers, seemingly to distract himself. He remembered how Zhongli had traveled all the way to Mondstadt to apologize, Venti accepting it with no hard feelings.
‘Perfume.’ Zhongli had stated that night while they both sat on the palms of the Anemo Archon’s statue. ‘You never use it, you say that the artificial properties give you headaches.’
Venti had groaned, rolling his eyes. ‘Times change.’
‘Or, you have resorted to smoking again and are purposely attempting to hide that fact from me.’
They wasted the night away, and when it was over, Zhongli had asked to visit Venti’s place. Venti had blushed solemnly, hiding behind his palms and asking if they could go to Morax’s chambers instead.
‘You wish to walk all the way to Liyue? This late into the night?’
‘And who might you be to question me, love?’
‘I seem to be unable to argue with that.’
Venti’s current place was nothing short of a pathetic mess. Bottles upon bottles of alcohol just pathetically rolling on the floor. Cabinets filled to the brim with scattered notebook pages burnt by cigarettes. The floor was covered in more poems and sonnets dedicated to who he had believed to be his departed lover.
The Anemo Archon was never messy about his mourning. This was different. Not any better. He had assumed he had lost a companion which was that of the Original Seven, his dearest. He had close contact with his children and past comrades, kisses upon kisses of past flings, but none of them held him as tightly as Morax did.
Morax hadn’t seen any wrong with scars and shed of war marked on Barbatos’ body, Barbatos hadn’t seen any wrong back then either. But the people of Teyvat had a way of infecting all which was pure. Rather than becoming a god of blessings and song, Teyvat’s laws and shames sought to make the once carefree Anemo Archon feel a need to hide himself.
“Venti, I…” Zhongli reached for Venti’s palm, the two of them shaking rigidly and with caution. “I spoke out of turn, please—”
Venti interrupted his rambling. “The whole world speaks of you as if you are dead, Morax.” He stood from the bed, though rather weakly. His legs were worn and tired, having been ruthlessly thrust into last night, having lost their ability to take all of Morax in the last five hundred years. The silk sheets fell almost uselessly on the floor, Zhongli found them and pulled them back on the bed. Venti used the wind to dress himself, still tumbling over his legs as his cheeks flushed an even deeper red in his self-consciousness. “You did what was best for your people, but seriously, what did you expect? If you weren’t planning to tell me then, when was it? Would I just awaken under the impression you were gone if I had awoken in another five centuries?”
“Barbatos… please.”
“Just…” Venti crossed his arms, letting another low sigh out. “Don’t look for me.”
And with that, the winds dispersed, leaving Zhongli a mess once more on the bed. Morax was used to this, being ditched in the early mornings. Zhongli, on the other hand, attempted to adjust. It was difficult, especially when a being so keen on never holding grudges always seemed to hold one against him.
An empty and shallow sorrow enveloped Zhongli, he threw himself on the bed and put his arm over his eyes. “Barbatos, dear lord…” he huffed in exasperation.
He ran a hand through the small braid that was decorated somewhere along his tangled hair, letting out a low breath as he shut his eyes in the sun’s light.
He stared at the burn mark on his palm, running his other hand through it with gentle precision.
Never mind that, the Geo Archon was accustomed to this. Waiting around like a little dog for his master to return. Freedom was a price Barbatos’ devoted followers could afford, not a price Barbatos’ most devoted lover could. While Morax was not a worshipper in the mortal sense, he was the most dedicated one.