Work Text:
Contrary to popular belief, merfolk and sirens were not separate species. Yet they were not one and the same.
No, sirens were a desperate last scrabble for survival. Born out of the dying screams of merfolk. When all in the ocean was suffused with nothing but resentment and regret, the poisonous miasma of gods and mortals alike. When there was nothing to hold onto, not even one's family, was when a merperson turned, transformed, morphed, grotesquely, into a siren.
That was when they began craving the flesh and blood of prey far more intelligent than fish. Humans. Gods, but they were never that successful.
No mer wanted to admit that they were even tangentially related to the monsters.
It was irreconcilable with their sensibilities.
Yet, of course, sirens had no such sensibilities, having clawed their way out of hell, in which morality and qualms died a sad, painful, death.
—
In the sleepy coastal town of Morepesok, where the population never broke five thousand and the people's traditions hadn't changed in thousands of years, merfolk were as common as air. Yet in the older days they strayed only to the boundaries to infrequently meet humans for various needs, often keeping to themselves, even though they were not wary of humanity. They were simply self-sufficient. As the Tsaritsa took the leash of Snezhnaya from her predecessor, the Belyi Tsar, however, the shift of sentiment and power from the mystical and magical to the human and practical still echoed to even the relatively stubborn and steadfast town. And mer could yearn for material objects, too. So it was only natural as manufacturing became more advanced, as did the inter-Snezhnaya transport, mercantile groups and trade became much more pronounced in the region, travelling to Morepesok more frequently, the mer, too joined the humans in their society much more frequently, to obtain the exotic and fascinating gadgets brought by sleazy and wide-eyed salesmen alike. Furthermore, after the chaos of the Cataclysm, the rot of the Abyss having suffused into some of their safe havens underwater, they too sought new homes, and the coastal town, already used to their presence, quickly accepted their new mer brethren. It also helped that they were fantastic fishermen and hunters, and the glut in export of freshly caught commodities only brought more economic opportunities to the town.
And so, five hundred years after the Cataclysm, the underwater kingdoms of the mer living nearer to Snezhnaya— though kingdoms would be a bit of stretch, considering they never and would not take royalty, unlike their surface counterparts, choosing to form communes that they, at their leisure, would uproot themselves from if dissatisfied with the quality of life (they were quite independent species in that regard) — quickly became uninhabited, as it became easier and easier to integrate into life with the humans and the occasional fae (though those stuck to their domains, which were not often within the same spaces as humans) on land, given the convenience of being able to access all the goods they wanted. So they built houses, and became fellow countrymen of Snezhnaya, most of them settling alongside the coast, which included, most of all, Morepesok.
It was thus very normal in Morepesok to see one's neighbour strip their clothes and jump into the sea, only to emerge as half a fish (the bottom half, of course) in the cold sea.
As such, no one really blinked an eye at little Ajax Rybakov transforming into his mer form, jumping off the dock into the cold sea, at the age of fourteen. They all assumed he was off seeking fish to eat, perhaps. Excitable boys, they thought.
Ajax Rybakov was idealistic, and naive, but not excitable. No, in that instant, he was not searching for a run-of-the-mill adventure like his fellow adolescents. No, he was searching for an Adventure, reminiscent of the likes of heroes his father told him of, such as his namesake, Ajax of Hyperborea. Grand, life-changing. Something to transform him from shy and meek to powerful and resilient.
Of course, he was thinking of all the more wistful and happier tales of Ajax, in the instance that he jumped into the cold waters of the sea. The ones with dragons slaying and giving gold to the poor and the grand warriors' feasts.
He knew of the tale, of course, but it slipped his mind, really, all too focused on all the more intriguing parts of the tale.
If Ajax had remembered that his namesake's fate ended in opening the gates of Pohjola and being split into seven pieces, would he still have chased the gnawing maw in his chest to the deepest, abyssal parts of the sea?
Of course he would.
He was, after all, doomed.
His fate was sealed the moment his father made the terrible mistake of naming his son after a tragic hero.
Of course, it wasn't his father's fault either. It was a deep and profound, unexplainable, compulsion to bestow his son with that name. As if the entire world was urging him to.
—
All merfolk could sing. Of course, it had minor powers, but nothing so strong or magical as the fae. They had no compulsion to speak of. Of course, humanity was always wary of magic, but the mer's were truly so negligible. Many assumed that was because most of their magic was used to transform, that little was left for other uses. Healing small scrapes. Making seashells sparkle. Things of that sort. Beautiful little ditties that helped in small ways, but were, functionally, just to be heard for their beauty.
Of course, this was a vestigial trait that was once used for something greater. In the early, more fierce, time of the world, where monsters and gods were frequent, and the merfolk had to share their waters with the domains of mercurial sea gods. In order to escape, to flee, in the case of danger, the merfolk had to sing,, to bewitch their attacker, to ensnare them, so that they were halted just long enough for the mer to flee. Their songs could also be woven into attacks, into barriers, into shields.
None of this was really quite needed in the peaceful era of the Archons, and they slowly lost the power, until only slivers, traces of it, remained. A beautiful voice all of them held, nonetheless.
—
When Ajax Rybakov fell into the Abyss, he hardly noticed it immediately — the cold, suffocating pressure of the deep water felt indistinguishable from the similar smothering presence of the Abyss. He was swimming on instinct already, and his eyes shut with tears he never quite noticed that his tail was slowly being stained even greater with black, that it was growing longer. Previously, it was the bluntsnout and upcurved flippers of a narwhal, mottled with black over a pure white, with a short and curved tail fluke. Slowly, however, as he plunged into the Abyssal air, thick and chilly, the tail was elongating, the tailbone forming new bone spontaneously, though through his distress he never noticed the searing, singing pain richocheting through his nerves. The tail fluke, too, was expanding in surface area. His back hurt — he attributed it at the time to the pain of swimming for so long and so deep, yet it was actually the formation of a much more pronounced and elongated dorsal fin than the short dorsal ridge that all narwhals had. Black, and triangular, it protruded from his back, taking the place of where he had once had his dorsal ridge. The mottled patterns of white and black dotting his tail began to coalesce into more solid groups, separating a clearer, more distinct boundary between the black and the white.
As his tears fell away from him as he cried, plummeting down to the Abyss at a frighteningly high speed, white spots formed beneath his eyes. His short horn, still fragile, soft in his youth, was steadily staining black from the bone white as well. It would never grow beyond its short nub.
An orca, he would later figure out, tracing the new additions to his body. A whale killer.
But he would not notice any of this for a long time, for the first thing he did was to open his eyes through the tears, and realise that the air was wholly unsuitable for his mer form. And realise he was plummeting to his death.
He couldn't die, he couldn't. He wouldn't allow himself to die. He would never die. The mantra sang through his mind, and he grit his teeth, despite not seeing the ground, knowing it would hurt, he screeched, and with all his might wove a song — it could not be called a song, a cacophony of wails, an arrangement of howls, pained, screeching, begging — to save himself, instinctually. It was not wholly conscious or planned. It was a last ditch effort, hailing the Archons and begging for mercy. It was in part a curse, promising to return from being cast down to the depths of death. It was an evolutionary trait that recalled the suffering of its ancestors. Calling upon their old power.
As he fell, he transformed back to a humanoid shape, and it was with his remaining magic he wove his survival. He wins a Hydro Vision for his troubles.
Later, Ajax would wake up with no recollection of his entry into the Abyss. He wouldn't realise the changes to his mer form until long after he left the accursed place. It was how he retained so much hope in returning to his family, after all. He didn't know that he was no longer one of them yet.
—
Perhaps the rest of Teyvat had their fill of monsters, after the Cataclysm. Not the Tsaritsa. It could be said that every one of her her handpicked Harbingers were all various degrees of monsters. Some simply retained more human traits than others. Some wished to be rid of them more than others. Il Dottore, for example, was known for his greatest folly: to become wholly, indisputably, the 'prime example of humanity breaking through the barriers.' Il Capitano was not a monster in morals, but in appearance he very much was, a rotting corpse held together only by cryo magic and sheer will. Monstrous, he was deemed so by Celestia. Columbina, the most divine of them all, born of a single ray of pure moonlight, was pure in a divine manner, but her sense of morality and ethics was hazy, her naiveté preventing her from truly understanding the pain that she inflicted. To her, everyone was a god, with godly resistance to harm. There was Pulcinella, who was fae nobility, and nothing more needed to be said, especially on the nobility aspect. Multiple Harbingers carried the faces of dead legacies, Scaramouche carved in the legacy of an Archon long dead, Sandrone, in part a repainting of the beloved sister of a Fontainian reseracher. Arlecchino was deemed monstrous by Khaenri'ah's Eclipse Dynasty, as a humorous contrast to Il Capitano. Pantalone was a former research subject of Il Dottore who willingly followed and partnered with the man, and even that alone was enough, not taking into account the ruthless and cutthroat businessman he had styled himself into. Signora was more flame than woman, a cryo exoskeleton over liquid pyro.
So it was only natural that Tartaglia fit neatly into that menagerie, all sharpened teeth and craving for blood.
—
Tartaglia's first kill had been in the Abyss. It was in battle. Enough said.
His first kill in the Fatui had not been in battle.
He was perhaps sixteen going on seventeen, and he was already ravenous, baying for blood. He had managed to tamper it down a little, feeding off fresh kill in the forest, such as boars and wolves and the like, but still, he was always a little on edge, and he had not fed on any fresh blood in several hours at the time.
Still, he was keeping himself busy, seated at one of the rest tables, humming to himself a little working-song as he carved out on a wooden block his newest project for Teucer, who was quickly growing into being able to babble. He was halfway through shaping the mishappen half-circle for a narwhal with his carving knife, humming sweetly the song that his father and mother had sung back when things were much simpler, when he was... well, accosted. The singing was sweet, yet it was full of longing, subconsciously, because he longed for the warmth, the affection, that he was now divorced from, and he craved so badly...
He found out quickly that he had a... problem.
Circling around him, like panting, needy dogs, were his squadmates, whose eyes seemed glazed over.
"What's wrong with you guys?" He hissed, eyes darting left and right, the instincts he had gained in the Abyss flaring at the thought of so many possible combatants surrounding him.
They did nothing but drool, inching closer.
Someone got close enough to lay a hand on his shoulder. It was a little too firm, too insistent.
"Get off," he gritted, panicked. None of them did, only in trancelike motions moving closer to reach at him. More, more hands, approaching him —
— kill.
—
Eat, hunger, ours, food, survive.
Survive.
Survive.
—
Siren, boy, what have you become, what have you done to yourself, you have become an abomination, oh boy what do we do with you, we must let you go you are no mer anymore only a monster, you are no narwhal you are our killer, where's my darling ajax where,
—
Pulcinella, the Fifth of the Tsaritsa's Esteemed Ten Fatui Harbingers, sighed as he surveiled the carnage wrought by the very petulant protege in front of him.
"You really must learn to control those urges of yours," Pulcinella massages his brow.
"I have!" The boy protests, stomping his foot on the ground. It reminds him that despite the fact this boy fights with the experience of one twice his age, in the matters of sense and cognition he is still very much a teenager. It's almost endearing, if they weren't standing in the midst of a dozen dead and very much desecrated bodies. Goodness, there's still blood dribbling out the corner of the boy's lip, and some of the agents have had their skin and flesh bitten off down to the bone. Their chests have all been ripped apart, the cavities empty, the hearts fully consumed. Just how hungry has the boy been?
"Then what is this? This is a liability, boy," Pulcinella scolds. "The Tsaritsa cannot have her soldiers being ripped apart willy-nilly."
"It wasn't — willy-nilly — it happened, they were all surrounding me, and —" The boy gulps, and his eyes are wide with realisation. It shows off the red-rimmed skin, a thin and crimson membrane wet with tears.
"Oh. Oh. It is my fault," he trembles. "I sang."
"Is that not what merfolk do?" Pulcinella raises an eyebrow.
"I'm not just a mer anymore," the boy says, hushed, as if its a secret when its right on the incident report that had the boy admitted as a ward of the Fatui. "I'm a siren."
So it's not about the Abyssal form. It's about the siren thing. Admittedly, he's never quite heard of sirens much except for their whole 'eating people' thing. And the singing — oh.
The singing.
For merfolk, singing is a harmless little activity that can somewhat aid in daily life.
For sirens, singing is a weapon to be honed. Singing is a tool.
Singing is a lure.
And the boy's only sixteen.
Pulcinella sighs. "We're going to have to get those wandering eyes off you for the time being, boy, aren't we?"
—
The Boy does not sing after that, not at all. Of course, not all his singing was doomed to lure every person within a five-mile radius to be his feast, but he wouldn't know that, because he would never dare to try after that.
He doesn't dare get close to anyone after that, either.
—
The Tsaritsa is benevolent and beautiful, for a woman who has ten monsters under her yoke.
She touches a cold hand to his face, and breathes across the plane of his cheeks a spell.
A similar gift to Signora's. Something to quell the burning desire to eat. He feels when it settles properly — suddenly his gums stop aching, and though his teeth are still that of a carnivorous animal he doesn't feel the urge to gnaw off the arms of everyone in sight. Later, he finds that he can even choke down fibrous foods, like vegetables. Like kelp.
He missed kelp, he thinks, picking at a new bowl of pickled kelp, later on. It's cooling. Refreshing. It feels good not to throw it up. It feels good to eat just fish, and not yearn for anything else.
His new blessing settles over him, crystallised into a Cryo Delusion, for him to use at his leisure.
—
Liyue is beautiful. Bright. And too hot.
Humid, too. The humidity makes his instincts scream at him to transform. He tries to hold off on that and just opt to remove his outer jacket, leaving just the maroon undershirt. The women in the Harbour begin ogling him quickly after that, eyes trained on the flesh framed by the harness he straps across his chest. It feels like the glassy eyes of a million dead fish stare at him, their slimy stares slipping over his skin.
He begins to wear the second layer instead again, even though it swelters. He just cycles Cryo across his skin instead.
—
Zhongli-xiansheng is a man whose placid expression breaks for no one, not even the stupidly alluring Young Master that has graced the Harbour. It's refreshing — not once does the man's eyes trail down the line of his neck to his collarbone, or stare far too long as his derrière. Instead, wholly unbothered by the monster that sips hot tea next to him and fumbles with his chopsticks over a plate of Crystal Shrimp, he continues to regale him tales of Rex Lapis and his land. Said Young Master tells himself that he's listening so very intently because he was latching onto information about his target. He tries not to let it slip the thought that, perhaps, despite the fact that he was the siren, Zhongli-xiansheng seems to have the voice that could put him to sleep in its sweet softness.
—
One dinner turns into twenty. Zhongli-xiansheng remains unaffected by it all, keeping his usual distance — not too intimate, yet not too cold. Sometimes he brushes his hand against the Young Master's, strange, not quite appropriate. Still, they're so brief, they cannot be said to be improper. Sometimes, he lets the Young Master rest his had into his shoulder during a particularly long opera. The Young Master, on the other hand, feels like a fucking hypocrite, because he can't help but wonder, in between bouts of tearing apart the soft white flesh of the Black-Backed Perch, how it would feel like to sink his teeth into the soft junction between Zhongli-xiansheng's neck and shoulder, to part that white flesh readily between his jaws. He feels disgusting for even thinking it. He feels yearning for the thought. It can't even happen. It shouldn't, with the Tsaritsa's blessing. Still, it does.
Anyways, Zhongli-xiansheng hates seafood, so naturally, he would also hate to be torn apart by seafood, correct?
—
So he reluctantly draws himself away. It is the only way. His family had the right idea all those years ago. There is nothing to stop a siren from slaking its hunger. The only way to curb those desires is not to see the object of them.
He refuses all meetings on the basis that he is busy.
It still hurts to watch Zhongli-xiansheng from the window of the bank, striding the streets alone with those long, shapely legs, that, the siren thinks, might taste heavenly beneath his teeth. He doesn't have any fondness for muscle in his meat, preferring the soft yield of fat, yet for this man, he has a persistent thought to try it.
It's a sign he's descending into madness. He shoves a hydro blade into the thin membrane of his hand's skin. It bleeds. Madly, he reaches up to lap it up.
It doesn't abate the desire curling in his gut at all.
His Cryo Delusion feels useless, heat bursting through his veins, even against its ringing, insistent press of cold.
—
Of course. Of course.
It wasn't what he was thinking at all. It wasn't hunger, what he felt for Zhongli — no, Morax.
It was a warning, an instinctual urge to bite before the predator bit them.
Why else?
Unfortunately, he didn't listen to his body's warnings, so here he is, the predator having mauled his heart half to death already.
It's a bit ironic, but he accepts it as veritable punishment for eating the hearts of every single one of those soldiers all those years ago.
"Have a good retirement, Morax." He spits, and flees the bank before he can entertain the stupid, still persistent yearning to taste the god's blood on his tongue.
He'll only die in vain, after all.
He knows what happens to sea monsters who dare to touch Morax.
They get sealed under the ocean floor.
And contrary to popular belief, he does have some self-preservation instinct.
It is, after all, the whole reason why he is the way he is now.
—
He still has duties to complete in Liyue, but he pointedly avoids the Harbour, and spends most of his days tearing apart the monster population of Liyue both literally and figuratively. He eats raw Mitachurl. It's not his best moment.
He pretends, furtively, that he doesn't want to eat something else, soft, pliant, and with golden eyes. The man doesn't deserve it, anyway. He's a god and he's a mortal. And it would be blasphemous to think about it completely.
He doesn't think about the fact that if it was merely a response to danger, he would feel the exact same yearning coiling in his bones when he stepped foot into the Palace, the den of snakes.
—
It's all too much for him. The heat. The humidity. The betrayal. The yearning.
He responds by shucking his entire uniform off and diving into one of the pools in Luhua.
Even the cold waters at night, the moon silently judging him, don't quite cool him down.
Instead, in his accursed siren form, he feels the urge triple insistently. His tail fluke slaps agains the rocky side of the pool in frustration. He yelps in pain as it scrapes a little too hard and jumps away.
It's not satisfactory. Nothing is. Damn it, his gums hurt again, his teeth elongating even more, somehow, at the thought of taking Rex Lapis into his teeth and piercing hard brown scales, accessing the soft flesh beneath. Like a coconut, his mind supplies. Zhongli's smile wafts back into the picture, laughing, ebullient, as he finds out the reality of the Cocogoat. It's beautiful. It's innocent. It's not Rex Lapis, but it doesn't really matter, because his hunger has always been the same no matter if man or dragon. Absently, he wonders if he bites down hard enough on those golden horns, will his teeth break underneath the force of pure geo, or will they yield under the snapping jaws of a siren?
—
Another night, another monster hunting spree. He doesn't even care for propriety, now. He digs his hand into another Mitachurl and rakes his teeth across the flesh of the heart. It's hard and stringy, pure muscle, yet he's been craving for it more and more, imagining it instead to be Morax's flexing thighs. Eating hearts used to be a more clinical, apathetic, animalistic affair, he mourns. Now all he can think of is one man-woman-dragon-god-thing, instead of the taste of blood, it has to be the taste of his blood.
It's stupid, too, because he has no chance against Rex Lapis, even as he held delusions of fighting and winning the Gnosis off the god.
Of course, he has always been delusional. Ever since he gained the form of a whale killer he has been obsessed with hunting down a celestial whale from beyond that far outpaced him. It even looked like his former form. He would kill it, given, that he already killed a different narwhal, and that was himself.
He has always yearned for what cannot be his. Blood, guts, and love.
He doesn't want to admit that last one.
—
He succumbs, because he has little self control and Liyue is unspooling him like the terribly knitted scarf Tonia sent him when he was still merely an agent rank in the Fatui, that he clutched to his heart until it unravelled in a battle, dirty and unable to be retrieved, torn, scattered, and that was when he knew that he was not meant for delicate things. Back then, she too, didn't understand that she was dealing with a monster. When her parents had found out she was sending him letters, she was promptly barred from the post office. All he got was a last tearful message telling him it would be her last letter.
Liyue is unspooling him from the spindle that the Tsaritsa had carefully wound him on, and he's expanding, unravelling, lengthening, in both gluttony and pain. He wakes up in cold sweat, with deep wanting. He counts to ten, imagining white, fluffy sheep. He imagines slicing through them and eating them raw. He still can't sleep.
He's unravelling, and everyone can notice it, how he stays out late and comes back late, hair a mess and uniform splattered with blood, how his teeth are sharper than they already are. His reputation's already terrible after Osial, but now he's downright disgusting. Liyue itself seems to be chasing him out, but he hasn't gotten an approval from the Tsaritsa to leave yet, so he is stuck on those cobblestone streets that want him out.
So he jumps into the sea. It is a Harbour, after all. And he curls up on the seafloor, tail tucked in on itself. And he tries not to cry. He doesn't notice if he succeeds.
—
Something lands on his head — bronze, heavy, and ancient. A chalice? It spills salt, into the water, into his eyes, and he coughs, swimming away, yet it seems to spill onto his tail, so he swims faster, away, away, until he finds himself propelling out of the surface, spraying droplets of water off the surface, the sun glistening, and he finds —
— on the beaches of Guyun, where he has just propelled himself towards, is Zhongli, wide-eyed, slack-jawed.
And he is nothing if not stupid so he yells, first thing, not even asking if Zhongli hates this form, his species' predator,
"Was that your fucking chalice that hit me on the head?"
—
Zhongli catches him. Long fish tail and all. Are killer whales fish? Despite being half-fish he isn't that familiar with their taxonomy.
Zhongli catches him, slimy tail and all. The god's fully dressed in his facade, long and opulent gold-stitched robes that no funeral parlour consultant should be able to afford. It smells a hundred years old. It smells of silkflowers.
"I thought you hated seafood?" He asks, holding back the far more difficult questions he's been holding back for this entire time. Can I please eat you was not a proper conversation starter.
"I have no intention of eating you," Zhongli hums. He still thinks of him as Zhongli. Wonder. He's been dreaming of chewing through sinewy dragon flesh for two weeks but now it's Zhongli, Zhongli, Zhongli, prancing irritating circles through his mind.
Of course with that his mind blanks, and he blurts, of course,
"What if I wanted to eat you?"
—
Fuck.
—
Zhongli blinks once. Twice. His eyelashes are long. They're framed by crimson eyeliner. He wants to lick them off his eyelids. It's weird. His tail twitches in Zhongli's strong hold. Godly strength — the siren's not just muscle, he's also a couple pounds of blubber. He's twice as heavy as a human man. Yet effortlessly he is cradled in the god's arms. He licks his lips, tongue running over his teeth, and wonders if the god will let him have just a taste of the gold in those eyes. Maybe his blood? If Mora is Morax's blood then won't his blood be gold? His thoughts are speeding faster than electro, bouncing back and forth, and his eyes are wide and dilated, just at the thought of —
— "Hush," Zhongli whispers, pressing a single manicured finger to the siren's lips. He wants to eat that finger, he thinks. "I have met your kind before. It is impressive to think that you have held the urge in this long."
Has he been saying all of this aloud?
"Yes, darling," Zhongli shuts his eyes. They crinkle in amusement at the corners. "You have. It is endearing, perhaps, that even in my folly you still yearn for me."
Is that a yes? A no? He feels like sea jelly in this man's arms. He heard that this man can be a woman, too. He wonders if that'll affect the taste any different? Maybe there'll be more delicious fat. He wants to tear the skin off and find out the taste of her subcutaneous fat.
"If you would like," Zhongli huffs amusedly, "though I'm afraid that you might find yourself much less ravenous than you think, once you get a bite."
"Really?" He rasps out, "you would let— let a monster?"
"Oh come now," Zhongli laughs, "I roamed the land in the days when your kind were all teeth and bite, a little nip here and there wouldn't be anything out of the possibility."
Zhongli halts. Peers with that golden gaze directly into his dead abyssal eyes. "Monster? Oh, we must correct this notion. You are simply an ancient creature. I am one as well. As you can tell,"
Zhongli brushes a golden — clawed, he notes absentmindedly, to match his own teeth, — hand across the stump where his horn never finished growing. "I am very selfish, to lie to you and then want you back. Will you have me back?"
"You wanted me?" He responds, eyes wide. No one has ever said they've wanted him, except for his siblings, who have been stopped from asking for him.
"Want, present tense," Zhongli corrects, "I want you. Can I have you?"
"I'll want to have you, if you want to have me," he warns, gripping the lapels of Zhongli's suit with both hands, baring his teeth, showing off the glint of the sharpened teeth, all the better to bite and tear at flesh.
"A fair contract," Zhongli shrugs, shrugs, and he shucks off his coat and then shucks off his underlayer, and guides the siren's mouth to that spot he was staring and dreaming about for the past year, right there at the neck and the shoulder. "Won't you sing for me?"
He is in the middle of nipping at the skin, testing the waters, when he looks up.
"Sing?" He whispers dumbly. "I..."
"No one is around, except for dead gods who cannot move," Zhongli explains, as if talking about jade deposits or cor lapis cleavage planes, but instead he's asking him to sing, as if it isn't the most dangerous thing he can do.
"I... I want you to be conscious," he says. "If I sing..."
"You presume too much, my little siren," Zhongli murmurs against his ear. "Do you think your songs could ensnare a god?"
"What if I hurt you?" He asks.
Zhongli hums. Thinks. Stares.
"Give me a name," the god offers. "I will call it if you hurt me."
A name. He has many. None are suitable for this endeavour, every single one a mask to conceal the monster beneath. The man in front of him seems intent on stripping it all down.
The closest thing to a true name is — well —
"Ajax," he offers up, wide-eyed.
"Ajax," Zhongli smiles, self-satisfied. "Sing for me. And then I want you taste me."
—
He shouldn't.
—
He really shouldn't.
—
But the god is willing and offering and he's never been hungrier.
—
So he takes a bite.
—
And it's delicious.
—
Indeed, sirens craved the blood of a god. And, he found, for good reason.
He forgot every inhibition under the taste of the ichor, and felt for a moment he was crawling into Zhongli's heart and living in his veins.
—
After he's done, Zhongli brings his mouth up for a proper kiss. He brushes over Ajax's horn.
Ajax asks if he's bothered that he's had to kill himself to survive.
Zhongli replies, well, not having a horn in the way makes it much easier to kiss his beloved.