When Childe came back home, life went back to the bizarre and decidedly abnormal normal that Lumine had gotten used to. She never worked up the courage to confess her feelings to him, and he continued to treat her the same way that he always had.
Three months into their relationship, Lumine organized a benefit at her place of employment in partnership with a charity organization that focused on shogunate samurais and their post-war health. She was able to invite her circle of friends to the benefit, and they all showed up to support her, including Childe.
He showed up in a black suit and black tie, hair slicked back on his head and all smiles when he gave her a hug and kiss on the cheek to congratulate her for her stellar work. He also told her that she was beautiful in her dark blue silk evening gown and matching jewelry that was actually on loan from Yanfei, and she beamed at him as she thanked him, feeling like she was on top of the world. He looked so very proud of her, and she was proud of herself as well.
The event went off without a hitch, and a staggering amount of money was raised for vets that might. Lumine didn't think that anything could possibly ruin her night, but as always, she could count on the universe to never fail to prove her wrong.
She happened to be walking past the bar when she caught a glimpse of Childe striking up a conversation with a blue-head in a white cocktail dress. From the looks of things, he had even bought her a drink, and they were sharing a laugh when Lumine walked by.
She knew the girl. Her name was Ganyu and she worked alongside Xiao with the Adepti Corporation. She was nice and very pretty. Nobody ever had a bad word to say about her, and that made it even worse because Lumine couldn't even properly hate her or selfishly warn Childe to keep his distance.
Lumine realized she was staring when Ganyu said something that made Childe really laugh, the sort of laugh where he wrinkled his nose a little and closed his eyes, and it hurt because that was one of his most genuine ones.
She forced herself to turn and walk away, doing her best to ignore the sensation of what felt like a dull knife jamming straight into her heart. The pain pulsed with every step she took, jealousy and anger and sadness making her want to cry in the middle of what was supposed to be one of her best days.
I can't do this anymore, she thought to herself, and she made up her mind - she was finally going to have that talk with Childe later that night. She was going to lay all of her cards on the table because she couldn't put herself through this anymore, and she couldn't bear to lose him to some girl that he met at her own benefit. In fact, she couldn't bear to lose him to anyone.
But later, however, when the party was over and Childe found her again, asking her if she wanted him to escort her home, she realized how severely she had overreacted to the whole thing. After some casual questioning, he told her that yeah, he'd had a drink with Ganyu but that had been the extent of it. She'd seemed to like him but he wasn't particularly interested in her, so they parted ways with polite goodbyes and not even phone numbers exchanged, and that had been it.
She was both instantly relieved and instantly | disappointed, because she lost her nerve for "the talk" the minute the words left his mouth. She simply smiled and then made a bit more small talk before accepting his offer to take her home, all the while mentally punching herself in the face. She was, as always, her own worst enemy.
Childe took her home that night and almost made her forget what she had been so upset about in the first place. She could not, however, shake the sense of an inevitable and miserable separation looming somewhere in the future. She knew that it would happen, and yet instead, of doing something about it or voicing even a fraction of the thoughts swirling through her 'head, she closed her eyes and imagined that when he held her close and moaned roughly and loudly against her ear as he fell apart, that maybe, just maybe, deep down, he felt at least something of what she felt for him.
Hutao was right. She deserved better. But she knew that she wasn't gonna do a thing to change it. She would see this thing through to the bitter, miserable end.
From the day that Childe had met Lumine, he knew that she was something special. There were very few things in life that he was sure of, but he knew that beyond a shadow of a doubt.
She had burst into his studio three years earlier with a crumpled up newspaper ad in hand and a declaration of "I got mugged yesterday and I need to learn how to take care of my money because this is the worst city ever and I can't believe that I moved here."
He had looked her over, about 5'8 inches of freaked out 20-something blonde with golden eyes that were as determined as they were angry and scared, and he had replied with, "Getting mugged is a rite of passage. Welcome to Liyue." After she stared at him incredulously, he pointed to a clock on the wall and said, "Have a seat. I'll be right with you in a sec."
He hadn't expected her to become one of his best friends, but he had long ago learned to expect the unexpected when it came to life. It was just so rare to have received something good among life's usually much less pleasant surprises.
For all of Childe's charm, wit, and seemingly easy smiles, there was a lot of darkness hidden beneath that lighthearted exterior. Because of his experience in the spiral abyss for three months, he learned to use humor and his outgoing nature as a coping mechanism, and while that was certainly better than heavy drinking or bed-hopping - though he'd done his fair share of those things too - it didn't come without downsides.
In general, he found that he was either on one, end of the emotional spectrum or the other, and there wasn't a lot of in between. Either he felt good enough to get up, get out of his apartment and go to work, maybe hang out with Xiao or the others after and have a good time and laugh and be his usual self, or he could barely find the will to get out bed and he spent most of the day trying to quiet the demons in his head when they would try to mount a comeback and drag him back to hell. It was this struggle that built the foundation of one of his most self-destructive beliefs: that he was just too damaged and messed up to be truly loved.
Xiao and Childe created a unique friendship that resulted with them relying on one another as often as one thinks. The others, Hutao, Yanfei, and a handful of others, they cared for him too, and the same was true of Lumine. She was so sweet and giving, and once upon a time, back when he had still been just getting to know her, he wondered if maybe their connection was more romantic than platonic. She was gorgeous to be sure and just his type, and she made him laugh the way very few others could. The idea made perfect sense, and yet nothing ever came of it.
There were several reasons as to why. Lumine, while she was an orphan who had not lived a particularly easy life, was still nowhere near the damaged goods that Childe considered himself as being. He thought of her as far more pure and innocent than anyone else in his life, and the thought of defiling that or asking her to take on his baggage the way that she would have to in a real romantic relationship... he simply couldn't do it to her and would not ask it of her.
And so, early on, he had bottled up any potential feelings that might have existed and he forced himself to view Lumine in a strictly platonic light. It was fine because she seemed to feel the same way about him, and she never said a word that made him think otherwise. It was best that way for both of them, and he never had a reason to doubt that. Sure, it made things a little awkward when he'd see her in some great dress or she'd do or say something that made his blood run a little hotter, but he couldn't help that he was attracted to her. He could, however, pretend that he wasn't and completely ignore the occasional desires to kiss her or bury his face in her hair and let its scent overwhelm him.
So that was what he did, and after a while he started to believe his own lie. He had other lovers - well, mostly one night stands - and she had boyfriends, and they were there for each other in every way that extremely close friends could be. She was one of the highlights of his days, always so upbeat and silly and uniquely able to get his mind off of whatever was plaguing it. It was why she was who he called in the middle of the night when the nightmares were too much, and it was why her door was the one that he showed up to when he was drunk and didn't want to go home to his empty apartment.
But that was also why he knew that she'd never love him in that way. She had seen him both high and scarily low, taken care of him when he had bad nights and simply wasn't there, so she knew better than anyone how fucked up he was. With her, he couldn't lie or pretend to be someone who had his life together, like he could with the girls he picked up and brought home, at least until he took his shirt off and they saw the horror that was his torso and left arm.
He'd never find his own "Hutao" to his "Xiao", that much he was sure of. He was happy for Xiao, of course, but sometimes he wondered how Xiao could make coming home and getting better and moving on look so damn easy when they both knew it wasn't. Xiao still had his own demons to deal with from the war, and yet Childe couldn't help but feel different, like the abyss had a grip on him that wouldn't let go no matter how many years passed.
But that was his life now. He had no choice but to keep getting up every morning and smile and laugh his way through each day in the hopes that one day, doing so would come naturally and not be such a struggle. Without his friends, he didn't think that he would have been able to do it at all. He owed them all so very much that he knew he'd never be able to truly repay.
Lumine, though, she was something. Even when he'd gone and screwed with the natural order of things by suggesting they give the 'friends with benefits' thing a shot, she didn't run away or tell him he was crazy but instead rose to the challenge like the brave soul that she was. He couldn't have been happier with the turn their relationship took, because it allowed him the luxury of comfort and familiarity and trust in a lover without the romantic entanglement that would usually come with such a thing. Instead it was perfect and evenly balanced, no expectations or complications, and it also happened to be possibly the best sex he'd had in his life.
They were both free to end the arrangement and move on whenever they wanted to, but four months in, they were still going at it and he didn't have any desire to change that. Not only did he greatly enjoy her company and her friendship, but she had gotten to know his body so well over those four months and she knew exactly what he liked, where he was sensitive, and what would make him get so loud that he'd probably wake the neighbors. He hadn't stuck with one girl long enough for them to learn those things in a long time, but Lumine... She made an art of it. And he was all but addicted to her.
Then one day, it finally all caught up with him. The denial and the self-doubt and the partial sheer idiocy his thought process made for a ticking time bomb, and when he least expected it, it went off in his face.
At 4:32 AM on an otherwise normal Thursday morning, Childe's eyes shot open and he awoke with a ragged, painful-sounding gasp. He didn't shoot up in bed or immediately recognize that he was safe and that this was his own room in his own apartment. Instead, he laid there in the center of his bed, staring up at the ceiling with his body drenched in a cold sweat, his eyes slowly growing less wide and less scared as the dream slowly faded away and reality replaced it.
His heart was racing, pounding against his chest, and his breathing was uneven and slightly labored. He closed his eyes and cursed at himself for the thousandth time, swallowing down a lump in his throat and wondering when this would finally end. All these years later and all it took was a dream to put him right back there, right in the middle of hell, and there was nothing he could do about it.
There was never any going back to sleep after a nightmare like that. Instead, after his heartbeat had calmed some and he had laid there long enough to fully return to himself, he got up and dragged himself into his tiny kitchen and started making coffee, resigned to being awake and alone for the rest of the very early morning.
It was going to be one of his bad days. He could always tell right away whenever it was time for one of those.
He didn't have work that day but everyone else he knew did, so he was on his own. He didn't leave his apartment the entire day, even though the food in his fridge was scarce and fresh air may have worked wonders for his state of mind. Instead, he sat around and stewed in his own thoughts, trying to distract himself with TV and whatever books he had laying around, but it was a losing battle. It was just one of those days.
Around five in the evening, his phone dinging woke him up from a nap he'd accidentally taken on his couch. He blinked and squinted at the screen, finding a text from Lumine asking him if he wanted to go out for a drink around 8 with her and Hutao and Xiao. Being in no mood to go anywhere or do anything, he declined with as little explanation as possible. But as it turned out, Lumine knew him well enough to read between the lines of his day-long silence and uncharacteristically short reply to her question.
He managed to drag himself off the couch to take a shower and change clothes afterwards, but he didn't bother to order dinner or even think about the fact that he really needed to eat something at some point. He wasn't hungry and he didn't care, so when he ended up back on the couch half-watching whatever barely interesting thing was on TV, he planned on staying there the whole night until he passed out and hopefully slept through the night this time. Maybe he'd get smashed along the way to help aid the sleeping process.
Then, when he heard a knock on the door right at 8 o'clock exactly, he looked at the door in confusion before making himself get up and answer it. When he opened the door and saw who was on the other side, he smiled for the first time all day.