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The first time they sleep together, it’s an impersonal thing.
At least, Childe thinks it is. They both drink a little too much osmanthus wine and they’re tipsy enough to be impulsive and uninhibited. Lumine asks first, and Childe folds so, so easily. He’s wanted this for a while — a chance to touch her, to make her happy, to love her — and he can’t let the opportunity pass by.
It’s an ungraceful affair. Childe has no idea how to undo the ties on the back of Lumine’s dress, and she struggles with the foreign buckles on his clothes. Then, when they finally land on the bed, they land in a tangle of limbs. Their teeth clash against each other on their first kiss because it’s uncoordinated in its desperation. Childe has to reach up and twist his hand into Lumine’s hair to deepen the kiss. He’s not particularly proud to admit that he wants to devour her, and it dulls the edge of his skill. He’s slept with other people before, but he’s out of practice and unsteady when it’s Lumine. All because it’s her and her alone.
“Have you done this before?” Lumine says after she tears away from Childe. Her voice is breathy, and there’s a line of saliva slipping down her lip. It looks so damn alluring, and it makes him want to kiss her again and again and again.
“Yes,” Childe says, and before she can say anything else, he pushes her back on the bed and resumes kissing her. He bends over her, tracing down an erratic line down her neck and torso. Childe is selfish in that he nips and bites every now and then. He wants to mark her as his and his alone, even though he knows that’s mostly a pipe dream.
“Eager, aren’t you,” Lumine laughs, and she reaches for him, hands outstretched. He can’t help but fall into them, as easy as breathing. She skates one of her hands over his body, tracing the line of his waist, and she tweaks one of his nipples with her other hand. Childe can’t help but moan at her touch, and again, he is simply so, so desperate to be hers.
Childe slips a hand between Lumine’s thighs, and he searches for that bud between her slick folds. He’s not very good at this, has had more experience with men, but he finds it slightly higher than he expected. He starts by making small circles around Lumine’s clit, and he’s rewarded with Lumine moaning against his mouth. She tastes like osmanthus wine, heady and sharp, and although he wants to taste her further below, he’s too enamored by her kiss.
Lumine bucks her hips against him, trying to get more friction, and Childe takes it as a sign to press against her clit harder. He speeds up, and as she tenses up, he pinches it lightly between his index finger and thumb. She cries out and clutches onto his shoulders, sharp-nailed, as she comes against him.
Childe fully expects her to lie limp after her orgasm, and he wants to take that opportunity to start leaving hickeys all over her body. But to his surprise, she pushes him back with a devilish grin. Once she makes a little more space between the two of them, she slots one of her legs between his own and flips him over on the bed. Lumine pushes herself up on her knees and slides against his cock, leaving a trail of slickness on its underside. Childe lets out a hiss, and Lumine smiles and says, “Let me do the rest.”
She rocks against him, using the friction to rub her own clit and the veiny underside of Childe’s cock, and it gets both of them wet with Lumine’s cum. Then, she lifts herself up a little more and starts stretching herself out with her fingers. Childe’s eyes are glued to the way Lumine’s fingers dip in and out, and Lumine laughs. She brings her fingers to Childe’s lips and he obediently licks them clean. She tastes salty and musky, but there’s also something different about it that he doesn’t recall from previous encounters before.
“Ready?” she asks. Childe nods, and then, she sinks onto Childe, taking all of him in one full go. He groans at the sheer feeling — too warm, too tight, perfect, perfect perfect — and Lumine shudders around him. “You’re thicker than I thought,” she admits.
“You’re tighter than I thought,” Childe shoots back. He wants to regain some sort of control back over the situation, so he bucks his hips up. Lumine gasps, and he wants to hear her become undone. Childe reaches for Lumine’s hips for more leverage and starts thrusting into her, steady and slow.
Lumine starts adapting to his rhythm, rocking in when Childe thrusts up, and it intensifies the feeling too much. She reaches to unlatch one of his hands from his iron grip on her hip, and instead of pushing it aside, she holds in, fingers entwined. Childe groans at the sight; he wants to make it mean more but this is supposed to be a one-time fling, made while they were both too drunk for common sense.
She slips her other hand down between her thighs, and her fingertips brush against where they connect. It sends jolts down Childe’s spine. She drags her index finger up and starts touching herself as Childe thrusts into her, and she becomes so impossibly tight as she gets closer to coming again. “I want to come,” she breathlessly says.
“If you come, I can’t stop either,” Childe warns. “I need to pull out then.”
“Don’t,” she breathes out. “Come inside me. Please.” She circles her finger around her clit again and when she comes, she cries out, “Childe, Childe, I’m going to— Ajax!”
The sound of his real name on her lips is what finally tips Childe over the edge. He fucks into her once, twice, and then he spills over, completely unraveling within Lumine’s warm touch.
They lie there for a moment, blissful and silent save for their panting, and Childe wonders why she chose to use that name instead. Lumine still holds onto his hand, refusing to let go, and he lets himself stay like that: buried to the hilt inside her and tenderly holding onto her hand.
The second time they sleep together, Lumine is, again, the first one to ask.
They’re passing through Dragonspine, and it is brutally cold. It reminds him a lot of his home, so he feels perfectly at home. But Lumine is shivering when she asks, “Can we share a tent tonight, please? I’m so cold.”
How could he say no? He nods, and she crawls into his tent first. When Childe crawls in next, she’s still shivering, and he can’t help but ask, “Do you have any woolen undergarments? Is your sleeping bag lined with some kind of fur?”
Lumine shakes her head, and Childe swears under his breath. She would freeze to death in Snezhnaya if she went there before coming to Dragonspine. Her teeth chatter as she says, “I forgot what it was like to be this cold. It’s so odd being more mortal like this.” Childe raises a brow at that, and she adds, “I lost it when I lost Aether and my wings.”
Childe sighs and starts laying out his own furs. “Look, I can’t let you sleep like that,” he says. “Use my furs tonight.”
“Why can’t we both sleep together?” she asks. Childe blinks at her, and she wrinkles her nose. “Why not? We’ve done it before. Back when we were in Liyue, drinking osmanthus wine.”
Childe’s cheeks flush red, and he looks away. “Sure,” he manages to get out.
Lumine slips into bed beside him, and her skin is ice-cold. He doesn’t know how she’s managed to get this far without getting frostbite. Her skin is almost translucent, and it’s the first time that she’s ever looked a little less than human. She looks older sometimes — it shows in her gaze, in her sighs, in the memories that she sometimes shares — but never like this. He wraps his arm around her to warm her up, nothing more and nothing less, but his desire is still bright and burning.
Lumine rocks her hips against him experimentally, and he chokes at the sudden burst of feeling across his crotch. “What was that for?” he sputters.
“Do you want to?” she asks. She says it as if it were so simple.
Childe doesn’t know what to say. Of course he wants to. He wants to claim her so badly, consume her whole, leave his mark on her skin so that no one else can touch her. The force of this desire drives him insane, and sometimes, he wants to throw this feeling into the frozen lake and leave it behind. He’s so used to being independent and relying on nothing but himself, but now that he’s traveled so long with Lumine, he finds that he cannot forget the shape or scent of her. It follows him around whenever he’s not with her, and he feels her absence more acutely whenever he has to leave for work. He just doesn’t know how to put it into words.
“Do you?” he asks, voice scratchy and raw. “Do you want to?”
“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want to,” she says while blinking almost owlishly.
Childe shudders against her, and he wonders out loud, “What are we then?”
He’s almost afraid to hear her answer. What happened to him? He’s not usually like this. It’s undeniable though. He doesn’t want to hear that she only wants him for this temporary warmth, that she has others that she shares her body and her heart with, that she is fleeting as the summer light. But it’s the most likely thing that he can conceive of.
Lumine sighs and reaches up to cup Childe’s face with her cold hands. “Whatever you want us to be,” she promises. “I won’t anchor you down.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Childe says, the syllables almost tripping into each other. “I want you to do that. I want, I want— I need you so badly, but I don’t know how.”
“I’m an outlander,” Lumine murmurs. “I cannot promise what I cannot give. You know what will happen when I find Aether again.”
“I know,” Childe says miserably. “I know, but can you blame me?”
“No, not when I want to as well,” she sighs.
A flash of hope. It flickers and sparks inside his chest, and he holds Lumine’s hands, still on his cheeks. “You do?” he asks, desperate to know.
Lumine shakes her head and laughs bitterly, “Why else would I do this to you and me? I think I could love you and then I remember that I’m not supposed to stay. This world isn’t meant for me. But I think I could love you sometimes and that makes it even harder.”
“Try it,” Childe says, silver-quick. “We could try. What’s so wrong about trying? Could you blame me for wanting?”
“No,” Lumine says thickly. “No, I couldn’t. Not when I want you so badly too.” She leans in to kiss Childe, and he kisses her back, hot and heavy with wanting.
Her hands are first to scrabble against his clothing, and her fingers are more deft than they were last time. She pries apart the buckles, and Childe reaches behind her back, knowing exactly how to untie her dress. When they kiss, they know the shape of each other’s mouths now, and they don’t click their teeth together.
Lumine reaches down and starts stroking Childe into full hardness while kissing him. He groans and tries to reach for her, but the bedroll is tight with the two of them crammed in there. “Shh, let me take care of you,” Lumine whispers. She nips at him, right between the junction of his shoulder and neck, and he gasps under her touch. Her skin is so cold, but everywhere that she touches feels like it’s burning up.
She braces herself against him, rocking against him to get more friction, and Childe bucks up against her, desperate for more of that feeling. She slides her fingers against her folds and his cock, gathering his pre-cum and her wetness, and reaches behind him to probe at his ass. He sighs at the sheer feeling of it but reluctantly says, “I don’t have lube with me.”
“Shame,” she mutters. “We’ll have to try next time.” She pulls back her hand and resumes stroking him, and now that her hand is slick, it feels even better than when she first started. She kisses his nipples, and they pebble against her cold touch. Childe can’t do anything except whimper and curl into her touch for more.
There are so many things he wants to try next — he wants to have his cock in her mouth, to have her sit on his face, to try all kinds of different positions, to kiss her in between every one of them — but they are limited in resources and in heat. So, Childe stretches one hand up to cup the swell of her breasts, twisting a nipple between his fingers. With his other hand, he tries to reach for Lumine’s clit. It’s a rough thing, and it’s less good than the first time he’s touched her, but she rocks into his touch, demanding more.
Archons, she’s so beautiful. Childe wants to memorize every line of her face, every sound that she makes, but he settles on making her cum. It’s hard to focus, especially when she’s working him so beautifully, but he presses on her clit with determination. She grinds against his hand, and he keeps her climbing higher and higher. “Ajax,” she pants out. “Ajax, please, you’re so good, I’m close.”
It’s almost too intimate when she says his true name, but right here, right now, he focuses solely on her. “Come for me,” he says roughly. “Please, I want you to come all over my fingers.”
Her thighs shake around him, and in her pleasure, her hand stills on his cock. He’s grateful for that; he doesn’t want to come early like an immature boy. He slips one finger inside her before working in a second finger. She whines at the loss of touch on his clit, but then, he pushes his left hand between them to keep touching her right where she needs it. There’s no warning save for her muscles tensing, and she comes against him, crying nothing but his name. His fingers are soaked with her come, and he keeps working those same two fingers in and out of her. After all, she said that he was thicker than she expected that last time. He wants to slide inside of her without it hurting.
Lumine hitches one of her legs up and pushes against Childe’s cock impatiently. It keeps slipping away, so she lets out a small huff and lines them up before sinking down on him. Again, it takes his breath away. Even though her hands were cold at the beginning, her cunt is nothing but hot and gorgeously tight. She purposefully clenches around him, and he groans, “Lumine, I can’t keep going for long. I’m going to come soon.”
“Excellent,” she says. “Let’s see how fast I can get you to come.”
She rocks against him, setting the rhythm, and Childe can do nothing but follow after her. Her hands reach for him, grabbing his hair and yanking him down so that they can kiss. This kiss is sharper than the previous one; Lumine nips his bottom lip when he doesn’t open his mouth fast enough, but he likes it when she does that. His thrusts start getting erratic, and he starts frantically kissing her as he gets closer and closer. Lumine keeps him steady, fucking him with her own rhythm while he goes off course, and she keeps kissing him with her teeth and tongue.
Then, she pulls back and says, “Come for me.”
Childe can do nothing else except obey. He shudders and jerks against her, filling her up. He ruts into her a few more times, still erratic and jerky, as his orgasm fades out into bliss. Lumine kisses him, gentle this time.
He sighs against her skin, and for a moment, that terrible hunger for her is satisfied. Lumine curls around him, rubbing soothing circles on his back, and he tucks a few strands of hair behind her ear. They lay there, warm and sated.
Childe thinks he could pretend that this could last forever.