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English
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Part 23 of ZhongChi / ChiLi Oneshots
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Published:
2025-07-20
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1,345
Chapters:
1/1
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18
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307
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When Your Boyfriend is an Ancient Lizard God and You're Into It

Summary:

Now, Childe wasn’t saying he had a thing for dragons.

But he had, that night, in the privacy of his Liyue apartment (with Zhongli staying over, of course, because “it is impolite to sleep alone, my dear”), turned to his notebook and scribbled in large, spidery handwriting:

PROS OF DATING A DRAGON:

Sexy voice.

Literal god. Will protect me from death and taxes.

Has a hoard. Probably full of rare artifacts, bones, and tea.

Tail.

And underneath, in much bolder, much more desperate handwriting:

FUCKING TAIL.

In which Childe awakens his inner dragon simp and Zhongli regrets having ears.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

There were many things Tartaglia had been called in his life.

A menace. A harbinger. A simp. (Mostly by Scaramouche.) A disaster bisexual with the battle instincts of a shark and the romantic subtlety of a frying pan to the face. But above all—

—he was now, quite definitively, a dragonsexual.

It all started—quite unceremoniously—with a teacup.

It was a porcelain little bastard of a thing, delicately painted with cranes and clouds, perched dangerously on the edge of the table like it wanted to swan-dive into Tartaglia’s lap. And it did. With the kind of dramatic flair one could only expect from Liyue crockery.

Childe swore (loudly, Snezhnayanly), but Zhongli merely lifted an elegant brow, the kind of brow that said, “I am 6,000 years old and immune to your mortal nonsense.”

“What the hell, Zhongli,” Childe said, flicking tea off his thigh. “It’s always the tea. Every time I’m over.”

“Perhaps it is the way you sit,” Zhongli offered, folding his hands together like the world’s most ancient, attractive librarian. “You perch like a cat ready to knock everything off the counter. Which, admittedly, you do.”

“Don’t psychoanalyze me with your Archon eyebrows,” Childe huffed, flopping backward on the plush couch like he owned the place. He probably had paid for it, come to think of it. “Also, you’re a dragon.”

Zhongli blinked.

“That is correct,” he said slowly, as though being accused of dragon-ness was not a daily occurrence for him.

“You’re a dragon,” Childe repeated, now with full gesticulation. “A big, sexy, rock-lizard with an ancient hoard and a—do you have a tail? Wait, no, don’t answer that. I want to find out myself. Scientifically. For science. For—draconic studies.”

Zhongli exhaled through his nose, which was dignified-speak for “I’m questioning all my life choices.”

“And yet,” he said, leaning forward, “you continue to invite yourself into my home.”

“Yeah, well,” Childe said, eyes narrowing with the kind of grin that only heralded disaster and/or horny violence, “you keep answering the door. Which makes me wonder if the old dragon likes being worshipped.”

A pause.

Then: “Worship is… not unfamiliar to me.”

Childe actually choked on his tea.

---

Now, Childe wasn’t saying he had a thing for dragons.

But he had, that night, in the privacy of his Liyue apartment (with Zhongli staying over, of course, because “it is impolite to sleep alone, my dear”), turned to his notebook and scribbled in large, spidery handwriting:

PROS OF DATING A DRAGON:

Sexy voice.

Literal god. Will protect me from death and taxes.

Has a hoard. Probably full of rare artifacts, bones, and tea.

Tail.

And underneath, in much bolder, much more desperate handwriting:

FUCKING TAIL.

Was he okay? No. Absolutely not. He had not been okay since Zhongli had leaned over during their last date, hand gently on Childe’s knee, and said in his low, silky voice:

“My kind mate for life.”

Childe had screamed. Internally. Externally. Spiritually. His soul had evacuated his body and gone to live in Mondstadt where things made sense and people didn’t just drop lifelong monogamy bombs over dim sum.

Now? He was ruined.

He looked at Zhongli differently now. Like a man might look at a priceless vase. Or a giant meat pie. Or a priceless vase filled with meat pie.

He stared at Zhongli’s hands and thought, those claws could shred me to pieces. I want that. He stared at Zhongli’s throat and thought, he could swallow me whole. And then, because Childe was a depraved little shit with no self-control, he added, hot.

---

Childe had seen the hoard once. The hoard.

It wasn’t just gold, which he’d expected—it was books, jade carvings, ancient scrolls, carved stone tablets, a mummified Qilin’s tail (“It was a gift,” Zhongli had said casually), and the softest silk robe Childe had ever touched. Which he did. Repeatedly. Naked.

“Don’t—don’t do that,” Zhongli had muttered, walking in to find Childe draped in 6,000 years of Liyue’s most sacred textile, hard as a rock and purring.

“I’m just saying,” Childe said, tilting his head like a smug fox, “you have a lot of soft things for a man who looks like he’d crush spines for breakfast.”

“I did crush spines for breakfast. It was a very long war.”

“Hot.”

Zhongli pinched the bridge of his nose and mumbled something about Foul Legacy brain damage.

But then Childe leaned close and whispered, “Do you shed?”

Zhongli went still.

“No.”

“Because if you did, I’d collect every scale,” Childe said with a shiver that was entirely unholy. “Polish them. Keep them in a little glass jar. Sniff ‘em before bed.”

“You’re disturbed.”

“And you like it.”

Zhongli didn’t respond.

Which was not a no.

---

“Let me see the tail.”

“No.”

“Just a peek.”

“No.”

Childe was in Zhongli’s lap. This was not unusual. He lived there now, unofficially. Like mold. Sexy, ginger mold with a foot fetish and an inferiority complex.

Zhongli was trying—valiantly—to read Beyond the Clouds: Philosophical Analects of Rex Lapis, but it was hard to focus when Childe was licking his neck like a popsicle.

“You have claws. Horns. A growl that makes the walls shake. I know you have a tail. I feel things sometimes at night—”

“That was my leg.”

“No, the other night—when you were... growling and whispering Geo incantations into my—”

“Enough.”

Zhongli closed the book. With finality. The room trembled.

Childe blinked.

Then smirked.

“Oh?”

---

“I just think,” Childe gasped, mid-wall-slam, “that your claws—fuck—should be legalized or regulated—maybe by the Millelith—”

“Silence.”

Zhongli's voice was low. Dangerous. Dragonish. With a rumble like distant thunder beneath it. He was glowing. Glowing.

“Is this about the tail?” Childe managed.

A flash of gold behind Zhongli. Something heavy. Something serpentine.

“Oh,” Childe whispered reverently. “Ohhh. You were saving it.”

The next several minutes were a blur of scales, profanity, wood splintering, and prayers to the Archons (mostly from Childe, loudly and in at least three languages).

The floor did not survive.

Neither did Childe’s knees.

Zhongli made tea.

Childe lay naked on the destroyed remains of what was once an elegant tea table, covered in faint bruises and dragon bite marks, positively glowing with satisfaction and dehydration.

“Are you going to hoard me now?” he asked, yawning.

Zhongli, in a robe of gold silk that clung to his hips like sin, arched a brow.

“You would not make a very obedient treasure.”

“Then put me in a display case. I’ll preen.”

Zhongli handed him tea. “Drink this before you die.”

“I’d die happy,” Childe said, sipping. “Drained by a dragon. Horns in my thighs. Legs still shaking.”

“Dignity,” Zhongli muttered.

“Never heard of her.”

---

It became a thing. An obsession. A divine comedy of chaos, seduction, and geology.

Childe wrote love poetry to Zhongli’s horns. He left tributes in the form of dumplings and suspiciously phallic dragon statues. He built a shrine in their closet. He licked his scales.

“Do you realize what you’re doing?” Zhongli asked once, amused but exhausted. “You are treating my existence as a dragon like a sexual performance.”

“Exactly,” Childe said, holding up a handmade ticket. “It’s called Foreplay: A Rex Lapis Experience. You’re the main event.”

Zhongli dragged a hand down his face. “And what, pray tell, are you?”

Childe grinned. “Your number one fan.”

And then, with no shame: “Also your devoted dragonfucker.”

Zhongli blinked slowly.

Then smiled.

It was not a safe smile.

---

Childe did eventually behave himself.

For five minutes.

Then he discovered the dragon form in full.

There are not enough words in Teyvat to describe what happened after that. Scholars will argue. Historians will burn records.

But in the wreckage of shattered walls, ruined beds, and divine moaning echoing across the Harbor, one truth would remain:

Childe was perhaps a little too into Zhongli being a dragon.

But he was also—undeniably, irrevocably—in a little too in love.

And Zhongli, to his own eternal confusion, loved him back.

Scales, teeth, chaos, and all.

Notes:

Hope you enjoyed! Childe just likes his dragon a bit too much, haha. Honestly same though.

Stay tuned for next week's ZhongChi oneshot! I post/update something ZhongChi weekly; if you want to stay updated on this oneshot series, please consider subscribing or bookmarking this series.

You can find me on Bluesky ( @the_wild_poet25 ) and on my new Twitter account (the_tamed_poet) if you want to connect. I'm also on Discord too!

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