More Than Meets The Eye

Chapter 5

He decided he must still be drunk as fuck because he thought he heard the creak of their front door open, which obviously couldn't be true because who would visit his and Kaeya's dorm on a Saturday morning? Even more so, who actually had the keys to the dorm except for him and Kaeya? Sure, they'd gotten wasted last night, but they'd also locked the door, which meant that there literally couldn't be a single person who would be opening their dorm door right now. With that careful deduction, which made his hungover brain hurt even more, Childe decided that he had no reason to get out of bed, and instead snuggled further into the inviting warmth.

Still, his mind kept playing tricks on him - for some reason, he kept thinking he was hearing someone walk around the apartment, which, once again, couldn't be true because he and Kaeya were definitely not the ones walking around, and it wasn't like anyone else had access to the apartment. Oh, except for Zhongli, who was probably still too busy to even send Childe a text, and a potential robber. If it was the latter, then honestly, Childe would let them be. If they were expecting to steal something expensive from a college dorm of all places, then they were in much more need of education than Childe or Kaeya. Also, Childe simply couldn't care enough about anything in his apartment getting stolen to actually get up.

So he let them be. Hell, in his current state, he didn't even care if it was a murderer that broke in. If it meant that they'd take him out of the misery of the headache that he could already feel in his skull, then he almost hoped that it would be a murderer rather than a figment of his imagination that was walking around his dorm. Only when a very loud creak came from yet another faulty floor board did Childe consider that maybe, just maybe, it wasn't his imagination after all. That was an issue, because it meant that he had to actually get out of bed to deal with whoever it was that decided now would be a good time to visit. 

Maybe it was Diluc stopping by to apologize for being a dick to Kaeya. Yeah, that had to be it. No one else would actually pay them a visit right now, right? And that meant that Kaeya should be the one to handle it, so Childe should go right back to attempting to sleep off the headache. He should probably get some painkillers later. 

"Childe?" A hesitant voice came, and Childe barely heard it over the pounding in his skull. Okay, so maybe he'd have to actually be the one to deal with it instead of Kaeya. "Are you here?"

Childe made a feeble attempt to get up, but it was almost like something was keeping him rooted to his bed, and he simply gave up. If the person wanted to see him so bad that they'd paid an actual visit to his dorm, then surely, they wouldn't mind just going into his room to talk to him. It would definitely save him a whole lot of pain and energy. So he lay down, pushed himself further into the bed to keep the warmth from escaping, and waited. 

"Childe, I'm so sorry that I didn't reach out to you all week," the voice came again, this time much closer. Wait a second, Childe knew that voice. "I was hoping I could make it up to you, maybe we could go out or-" 

The door to his room pushed open, and Childe raised his head to see, just as expected, Zhongli stepping into the room. His eyes lit up when he saw Zhongli, and he, again, tried to get out of bed, and again, it was like something was holding him down. He opted to just look up and meet Zhongli's eye instead, and-

And he saw Zhongli shatter before him in what felt like slow motion. He saw it in his eyes first. His eyes, his usually-shining eyes were sunken in as if Zhongli hadn't slept in days. They were rimmed with red, and deep eyebags adorned his face. His cheeks were definitely sunken in, too. So Childe had been right. Zhongli was skipping meals again. And his hair, his long beautiful hair which was usually kept in a sleek ponytail was rough and tangled and so very different from what Childe was used to. Still, Childe would've found him to be the most beautiful person alive if it weren't for the fact that his expression was that of someone whose heart had just been crushed into a million tiny pieces.