eternal flame | tartaglia x reader

Chapter Fourteen

It's the sunshine flooding the room that wakes you up in the morning. A simple luxury, one that you've come to cherish after living under the constant clouds of Snezhnaya your entire life. A groan escapes your lips as you reach your arms out in a stretch.

Barely a second of your ignorant bliss passes before flashes of last night's events come back to your mind. A wave of embarrassment rushes over you so quickly, you're frozen in shock for a moment. How are you supposed to face Ajax now?

Luckily, when you finally muster up the courage to leave the bedroom and take a peek out to the rest of the apartment, it's empty. A weird sense of deja vu strikes you and you're brought back to the morning of Ajax's eighteenth birthday. Once again, you wake up alone.

You're disheartened, to say the least, wondering if anything has really changed, if either of you have really grown at all.

However, as you drag your feet through the kitchen towards the front door, you notice a piece of paper with a familiar messy scrawl.

Had to get to work early this morning, didn't want to wake you up!!!

Things have been busy with the Rite soon, can we meet up for dinner in a week at Third-Round Knockout??

There's hangover soup on the stove as well.

Ajax

You can't fight the smile that consumes your entire face, a bounce in your step as you look through Ajax's cabinets for a spoon.

As things so often do with Ajax, dinner goes wrong. Well, to be fair, it never happens. Two days before the dinner is supposed to take place, Rex Lapis is murdered. You're not at the Rite when it happens, but you've heard the horror stories from every sobbing Liyuean who has approached you looking to purchase one of your elegant paintings of the god. The general grief of Liyue's citizens, combined with the sudden influx of custom commissions, has made you much too busy to attend any dinners for leisure. You have the courier send a letter to Ajax's apartment expressing this, and he replies with understanding and kindness.

You sigh in relief when you read the letter, placing it on a table before turning back to yet another custom commission of Rex Lapis. Over the past few days, you've been feeling closer to the god than a native-born Liyue citizen. You've been raised with nothing less than the highest loyalty to her majesty the Tsaritsa, so you can't say that Rex Lapis' death has affected you too harshly. That is, except for your work, as you paint Rex Lapis over and over again.

Rex Lapis in his dragon form, Rex Lapis during the Archon War, Rex Lapis as a woman, Rex Lapis with families, children, with grandparents, with family dogs.

You've seen so much of the Archon that it feels wrong to address him as something so impersonal as Morax at this point.

At least you've got this room at Wangshu Inn for the next two weeks, and you're able to enjoy one of the most gorgeous views in Liyue as you paint. Speaking of, you ought to begin searching for a new apartment soon. Not that the stakes are too high, if it comes to it you can always take refuge on the Crux. At least you'll have a bit of spare mora to put down on a deposit, with the seemingly endless sales. Rex Lapis was the god of commerce, to the very end.

When the date for the Rite of Parting is announced, your pile of requests only grows larger. Eventually, it grows to the point that you barely have the time to leave your room and get something from the Inn's kitchen more than once a day.

Any rational person would have closed their commission queue by now. But you're now single, and living in Liyue Harbour can tend to get expensive, so you need to milk this death as far as you can for the mora. Sure, it's taking a bit of a toll on your sleep schedule and social life, but it's going to be worth it once you collect on the stack of invoices waiting to be delivered alongside the paintings.

Speaking of, it seems that the courier is back to deliver the next batch of artwork when you hear a knock on the door of your room.

"Just a minute, Hui," you call out, gathering a stack of canvases and addresses in your arms.

The knocking continues, a little bit more rushed this time. The funeral rush must be getting to everyone, you suppose.

When you swing open the door a moment later, you are not met with Hui, but a very flustered looking Ajax.

You can't help but perk up a little bit at the sight of him, "Hey, Ajax."
"Hey," Ajax replies, but he's panting as if he's run halfway across Teyvat. "You're doing okay? Been busy these days?"

"I'm fine, but are you alright? You look exhausted."
He takes a moment to catch his breath before replying, "I'm good, but listen, I need you to stay here for the next few days. We can get you a bigger room, and I can buy you whatever meals. Just tell me what you need, okay?"

You shake your head to decline, "You don't need to do that, really. I'm too busy these days to take more than ten steps from this room anyway, but is something wrong?"

It's as if Ajax physically deflates with relief as he hears your words, finally managing to take a posture that doesn't resemble a strung-out animal.

"Nothing for you to worry about, just promise me that you'll stay away from the harbour for a while?," he asks.

"I promise," you confirm with a smile. If you weren't so busy, you'd jump at the chance to invite Ajax in to spend some time with him, but you really can't afford to do that right now.

Ajax returns your smile tenfold, leaning forward to press a quick kiss to your forehead.

"Okay, good luck on the paintings," he says, taking a glance around the room before taking off once again.

True to your word, you stay away from Liyue Harbour for the next while. Not that you'd even have the time to make the trip there, if you wanted to. True to his word, Ajax has meals delivered to your door three times a day. You don't really have time to even ponder why Ajax requested this so desperately, so you decide to shrug it off as another one of his enigmatic hunches.

Until, six days later, when you finally have a moment to stretch your legs and take a walk around the inn. You order some food and wait at a table outside. The other patrons seem... quieter than usual. They speak in few words using hushed whispers. You don't mean to eavesdrop when you overhear the conversation a few tables over, you really don't. It's just that, everyone else is so quiet, you can't help but listen to the only thing that's making noise.

At least your eavesdropping gave you the answer as to why Ajax didn't want you near the harbour, you think as you hear the woman speak.

"I've heard that the one who released that evil god on the harbour is the same as the assassin who murdered Rex Lapis. Supposedly the culprit is that young fellow in the Fatui- I think they called him Childe."

A/N: Thanks for all the love on this story!! I appreciate all the comments and votes <3