flower in the mirror
by fruitjuicer

flower in the mirror

fruitjuicer

Summary

“You missed the discussion conference,” Jiang Cheng snaps back at him, whipping his head up stiffly from his perfunctory bow.

Nie Huaisang’s smile doesn’t waver, his entire expression perfectly, painstakingly polite. He looks pale, but anyone of his mettle would, clad in the violent contrast of silver and black. It all relinquishes nothing to Jiang Cheng but the means to inflame his irritation for the situation and for himself. He had left the conference too quickly to contemplate his choice, and now, in Qinghe Nie’s main hall, he’s slowed down enough for the whiplash of regret to be both immediate and immense.

Notes

Imported from Archive of Our Own. Original work id: 43389372.

To Bring a Bramble

Nie Huaisang is the only Sect Leader not to attend the discussion conference.

That is, in itself, not entirely strange to the rest of them, or particularly unexpected. Nie Huaisang had not attended the last discussion conference a few months prior, either — though he had, of course, sent a written apology with his disciples that was politically balanced between formal and flagellating.

This time, however, there is no apology for him in-hand with his representatives. There is no-one from Qinghe Nie at all.

Those that had more openly derided Sect Leader Nie’s unreliableness at the first instance are now the quickest to give voice to the burgeoning distrust that has begun to sweep through them all in the wake of his absence. None of the ones running their tongues were present at Guanyin Temple. None of them are privy to the intimacies and intricacies of just what happened there.

Even though their disrespect rankles him, Jiang Cheng concurs with their sentiment. He’s closing ranks, he thinks. “Really?” is what he says.

The conversation scatters, leaving a terse silence. Jiang Cheng continues to sit, mindful of his appearance within the eyes of his clustered peers, even as he wets his mouth with a sip of tea and fumes beneath his skin. “Did none of you suffer enough losses in the strife that has just passed us all over?” he continues, after a steadying beat. “You’re that desperate for trouble that you’re looking to make it, and in the most unlikely place?”

“It is questionable—” Sect Leader Yao begins.

“—Sect Leader Nie is hopeless,” Jiang Cheng interjects, “harmless. A fool. Didn’t you say this yourself, during our last meet?”

“It was not only me who made such remarks,” he argues, though the cut of Jiang Cheng’s words has, notably, lopped the blustering volume from his voice. There is some murmured agreement from the crowd at his back, but none that identifies itself enough to be counted as outright support.

“It wasn’t,” Jiang Cheng agrees. He sets down his cup, thumbing with a deliberate casualness at the ceramic lip. “Still. Is it more plausible that Sect Leader Nie has come into a rapid proficiency for scheming over the last three months, or that he’s simply forgotten that he has this engagement?”

Jiang Cheng is careful to look on the room as he can see it from his seat, but not at Lan Wangji. Something else happened in that temple between Jin Guangyao, Lan Xichen, and Nie Huaisang. Something all the more terrible; something that Jiang Cheng witnessed but did not see.

If Lan Wangji feels strongly about Nie Huaisang’s hand in it, and the guilt and cruelty that can be ascribed to him, it is not strongly enough to feel any need to speak unfavourably of him here, where there’s an opportunity in want of taking.

Maybe that’s an indication as to the truth of what happened, or maybe it isn’t. Jiang Cheng has put that aspect of the night from his mind, as he has with many other thoughts of and around Nie Huaisang, to a place better left uncharted.

There’s something to be said, either way, of moments of anger and their aftermaths of sorrow. No-one challenges what he’s said, and so Jiang Cheng leans back, accepts another serve of tea, and leaves it where it rests.

“This is unexpected, Sect Leader Jiang,” is what Nie Huaisang manages to settle on, days later, after Jiang Cheng has made himself known at the gates of the Unclean Realm and demanded an audience by force and virtue of his presence. “But not unwelcome!”

“You missed the discussion conference,” Jiang Cheng snaps back at him, whipping his head up stiffly from his perfunctory bow.

Nie Huaisang’s smile doesn’t waver, his entire expression perfectly, painstakingly polite. He looks pale, but anyone of his mettle would, clad in the violent contrast of silver and black. It all relinquishes nothing to Jiang Cheng but the means to inflame his irritation for the situation and for himself. He had left the conference too quickly to contemplate his choice, and now, in Qinghe Nie’s main hall, he’s slowed down enough for the whiplash of regret to be both immediate and immense.

“Something came up,” Nie Huaisang explains, all too easily, tapping the leaf of his fan against his lips. “Ah, quite suddenly, at that. By the time it was resolved, it was too late to be punctual.”

“But not too late to come at all,” Jiang Cheng points out.

There’s a shade of something dark in Nie Huaisang’s eyes as he raises a shaped eyebrow, too chasmic to be a mere trick of the light. It only aggravates Jiang Cheng further, and the words that follow it do his temper no favours. “You’re right, Sect Leader Jiang. Was that all?”

Jiang Cheng allows himself the split second to suck in the breath necessary before he speaks to level his voice below a shout. “Am I to take it that I’m being dismissed, Sect Leader Nie?”

Nie Huaisang holds up his hands in placation, his smile shrinking. “Oh— I meant no disrespect, forgive me. I just don’t want to keep you away from more pressing matters of business.”

“You won’t be,” Jiang Cheng tells him. “Will I be keeping you away from more pressing matters of business, Sect Leader Nie, if I take the time to recount the conference you missed?”

He may not be as deft a hand at the game of talking as the other sect leaders, but Jiang Cheng has picked up some of their methodologies over the years. He knows how he’s seen, and that it’s not entirely untrue.

It’s worth it, to waste a later chance to take Nie Huaisang entirely by surprise, if only to see the way his mouth parts around a gasp that never quite leaves it. It’s there in one moment and gone the next, but the second in-between is long enough for Jiang Cheng to commit the sight to memory.

“Would you?” Nie Huaisang asks, appropriately awed, as he folds away his fan. “I would be indebted to you. Will you need a room?”

“For three days worth of talking?” Jiang Cheng scoffs. “I would think so.”

Nie Huaisang rises to his feet, one hand slipping his fan into his belt, the other smoothing out the skirt of his outer robes as he makes his way down the steps from his throne. “I’ll see it done. Would you like to start, while we’re on our way?”

He gestures with his hand, politely, for Jiang Cheng to join him at his side, and so Jiang Cheng does, gaze sweeping over him, from his thin wrists to the high collar swathing his throat. If there is something there to be seen, it is not seen by him.

“Now?” They both know it's a toothless protest, for Nie Huaisang only laughs softly, sweeping his loose hair back from his face, and as they both fall into step together, Jiang Cheng begins.

Few of his memories of Qinghe are ones that he would call good, and it is difficult not to reflect when he is left alone with them. Jiang Cheng has only known the Unclean Realm in states of war and mourning, and even Nie Huaisang, as its benefactor, brings little levity to its tall walls and sallow pallor.

No servants come to attend him in the morning, and so Jiang Cheng rises late, scrubs his face with cold water from the basin left on his table, and struggles, half-starved and hot-tempered, through taming his hair and bundling himself into his old robes.

Nie Huaisang laughs at the sight of him when he decides to make an appearance shortly after midday, and Jiang Cheng shoves him at the arm hard enough to make him stumble, scowling.

“Ah, sorry, I’m sorry!” Nie Huaisang sounds as delightedly unapologetic as he looks, his eyes crinkling as he crowds back into Jiang Cheng’s space. Jiang Cheng has an insult pressing against the backs of his teeth when he feels the flutter of Nie Huaisang’s fingers skimming down his hair, straightening it out, and he nearly bites down on the tip of his tongue instead to subdue the shudder that prickles up his nape.

Nie Huaisang, unreadable, whips the touch away as quickly as he gave it, hand dipping into his wide-brimmed sleeve as he props his elbows up on the balustrade. He plucks a kumquat from the loosened hem and holds it out, the corner of his mouth twitching as Jiang Cheng blinks at him.

“Is that your peace offering?” Jiang Cheng narrows his eyes into a glare. “How cheaply do you think I can be bought?”

“Would you like it with the skin on, or off?” Nie Huaisang asks by way of reply, and Jiang Cheng huffs as he snatches it from him.

It’s not escaping his notice, how he and Nie Huaisang have already fallen into a pleasant camaraderie that feels out of place between them. It’s more like the friendship that could have once been, in another lifetime, instead of anything they’ve actually built and should rightly have.

Jiang Cheng lifts the kumquat to his mouth and bites through it, nose scrunching at the sour juice that spills down his tongue and across the pads of his fingers. He looks out into the garden as he chews, but he doesn’t see anything his gaze manages to land on, Nie Huaisang’s arm warm through his sleeve where it’s brushing against him with every sway of his steady breaths.

When Jiang Cheng at last scrounges up enough of the scraps of his courage to spare a glance down at his side, Nie Huaisang meets his eyes, another kumquat pinched between his thumb and forefinger.

“Seriously?” Jiang Cheng swipes it from him and pops the whole of it into his mouth. “Do you keep a whole banquet in there?” he says around it, chewing. “Who needs so much fruit?”

“I get hungry during meetings!” Nie Huaisang protests, mouth prim. “Aren’t you benefitting quite a lot from my idea? It won’t kill you to admit to some envy.”

“It might,” says Jiang Cheng. He swallows, then, “Zidian sits better with huwan, anyway.”

Nie Huaisang bumps against him, just slightly, the feel of his arm frigid, wound tight, as though it was from a fuller range of motion, stopped halfway. “Of course, yes. Where were we?”

Jiang Cheng wipes his fingers clean on the underside of his bracer and lifts his chin. “Is there a point to telling you anything, if all you’re going to do with it is forget?”

“I haven’t forgotten! I just… need to be reminded!” Nie Huaisang pouts, brow furrowing from the pressure of Jiang Cheng’s scrutiny. He pats at the chest of his robe, hums, and pulls out a ripe creeping fig, the green fruit quickly making its way into Jiang Cheng’s palm. “I’ve run out of fruit.”

“And I’ve run out of patience,” Jiang Cheng retorts. He closes his hand around the fig and pushes up from the railing, turning away from the courtyard. Nie Huaisang follows his lead without the need for prompting, fan finding its way into his hand from his belt, fingers tapping nonchalantly at the black monture. “Moling Su.”

Nie Huaisang nods. “Right, the Gusu Lan pretender remnants. They’re still around?”

“More or less.” Jiang Cheng steps over the raised threshold, sparing a glance back at Nie Huaisang before he continues along. “They haven’t decided what should be done with them.”

“What do you think should be done with them?” Nie Huaisang asks.

They curve around a bend, striding into a narrow corridor, and pause, briefly, to acknowledge the salutes of two disciples approaching from the other side. Though what they’re discussing is hardly a matter that warrants secrecy, Jiang Cheng still waits until they’re out of sight before he answers. “End the misery of this waiting and disband them.”

Nie Huaisang hums, fanning himself lazily. “Not unreasonable. I imagine there’s no argument against that from Lanling Jin, Gusu Lan, or Hefei Tse.”

“Gusu Lan has been abstaining from offering their input.” Jiang Cheng considers, as the remark hangs between them, giving voice to further clarification, even though he knows it is unnecessary. Surely Nie Huaisang suspects, if he does not outright know, that Lan Xichen is still in seclusion. With Lan Qiren acting in his stead, and Lan Wangji refusing to intervene as Chief Cultivator, the matter has been left to stagnate for almost an entire year of ceaseless, circular conversation.

Jiang Cheng turns the fig over in his hand, sliding his thumbnail across it to split the skin, and decides against it. There’s no point in wasting words when he’s being called upon to use so many as it is.

“I suppose it’s really only Lanling Jin and Hefei Tse who stand to lose or gain with what happens with Moling Su, either way,” says Nie Huaisang. “Gusu Lan has never much cared for such things.”

It’s deliberate, his casualness. Jiang Cheng knows this; Nie Huaisang confirms it for him in the way he glances over to him, fan hitching slyly upward to shield his mouth. Nie Huaisang wants him to know that he has left something unsaid so that he will ask. Jiang Cheng wouldn’t, out of spite, if he wasn’t already certain whatever trap Nie Huaisang might have laid would also already be long sprung.

“You would know a lot about what Gusu Lan does and does not care for, would you?” Jiang Cheng asks, pointed.

It’s low enough to be unexpected; Nie Huaisang covers his instinctual flinch well, but not completely. Jiang Cheng isn’t sure, entirely, how to feel about landing a blow that should have rightly glanced off Nie Huaisang’s guard. “Only historically,” Nie Huaisang answers, tone airy, temperament believably unharmed. “It would be strange for them to suddenly care about gaining territory. That’s all.”

Jiang Cheng stops still, thumb jaggedly piercing through the fig, smearing seeds and juice up his hand. “Without Moling Su, it returns to sectless territory.”

Nie Huaisang laughs, the sound almost shy, shamed. “Right,” he replies. “Of course it does. It would be absurd for any of them to argue a claim to it, just for sharing its border. Even if Lanling Jin could say they granted the land in the first place, Hefei Tse could say they’d expanded so close to the border without reprimand before that they were all but promised it prior, and Gusu Lan could say that all the sects witnessed their cultivation techniques used by Moling Su, so why should it not fold into what is already theirs?”

He shuts his fan with a snap and stows it back in his belt before turning to Jiang Cheng. His smile is genial, kind, but there’s a tightness to his gaze that edges it dangerously close to a glare. “Truly a ridiculous notion,” Nie Huaisang concludes dismissively, cupping the back of his hand as he bows. “Excuse me, Sect Leader Jiang.”

An objection is on the tip of his tongue, but Nie Huaisang is quicker; he’s already slid out of Jiang Cheng’s reach before he can blink, and he’s off and out of earshot soon after.

They’re all stupid, hypothetical arguments, but to his frustration, Jiang Cheng can see how they can be spun into making sense. The longer Jiang Cheng is left alone with their half-finished conversation, the more his mood worsens. By the time the sun sets, he’s foul, and all but storms through the Unclean Realm until he’s turned himself around enough to happen back upon his room. His resentment bitterly roils into a rage that leaves him restless, and there is both no-one to turn it on and no-one to blame for it but himself.

Jiang Cheng wakes late once again the following morning, but there is, at least, lukewarm water in the basin for him to wash with, as well as a pot of tea and a plate of fruit to pick at and dull his hunger as he sulks. There are fresh clothes for him as well, folded over themselves, tidy silver layering over grey layering over white. Jiang Cheng weighs up his residual annoyance, but finds he’s already resolved to put what is left of yesterday behind him before he finishes leafing through the fabric. None of it fits precisely, but none of it was made for him, and the cuts aren’t all so far off that the way it warps his silhouette can’t be disguised by the drape of the outer robe.

Nie Huaisang’s build was never all that dissimilar to his; they're more than likely his clothes. Though he does make himself look quite small, through mannerisms and styling, Jiang Cheng has—

He nearly tears out his hair with his comb when it snags in a knot, and he scowls at himself as he works it loose, face hot with frustration. It has been years since he’s found himself truly idle, and it’s difficult, now, to shake the habitual urgency that sees his unpreoccupied thoughts race off in want of a focus. Nie Huaisang needn't be that focus, no matter Jiang Cheng's presence as his guest in Qinghe.

If Nie Huaisang holds any lingering negative feelings towards him for their last meeting, they are well concealed, even for him, when he finds Jiang Cheng observing drills in the early afternoon. “You can join them, if you want,” is how he announces himself as he draws up against Jiang Cheng’s side, gaze already swung outward to appraise his disciples.

“You think your juniors have anything to teach me?”

Nie Huaisang chuckles. “Regarding the sabre? They might.”

Jiang Cheng tilts his head towards him, brows raised. “Oh, they might? Good, we’ll go down there together, then.”

He can’t quite get the tone right for jest, but it comes out lacking enough sharpness to it that Nie Huaisang’s smile softens with relief. “Ah,” he murmurs, “but my form is so rusty— look, they are finishing up, anyway. What a shame.”

“What a shame,” Jiang Cheng mimics, and Nie Huaisang touches his hand to his throat, palm fanning over his high collar, as his head tips back with the blow of his laughter.

It’s too easy— Qinghe and Nie Huaisang are too easy, and it’s winding him up, setting him off towards the edge. It’s not supposed to be like this, all of his instincts are telling him: Nie Huaisang has never been fool enough, pretend or otherwise, to let a risk run unchecked. Jiang Cheng wouldn’t suffer the insult of not being thought of as a threat if he thought it to be the true reason he’s being granted so much free reign and companionable complacency. He’s still being watched, he knows, from the shadows, as any interloper would be, least of all amongst a sect as tightly bound together as Qinghe Nie, he just— there is no secret to it, and he can’t figure out its purpose.

“Where were we?” Nie Huaisang asks, prompting him from his reverie, and just as Jiang Cheng opens his mouth to snap at him, he holds up his hand. “Moling Su! I know, I know! Just, surely you’ve said all there is to say about them?”

“We’re done with them,” Jiang Cheng confirms. Before them, the disciples have begun to splinter apart, spilling off into different directions; a few of the closest stall as they notice Jiang Cheng, before they resume their stride, bowing mid-step: respectfully to Nie Huaisang, and then more reservedly for Jiang Cheng.

Jiang Cheng watches how Nie Huaisang’s expression gentles, so openly and so honestly, just for a moment, as he regards them and is regarded by them in turn, before they pass by and his features settle back into place. It’s— he breathes out, and it’s hard enough to yank Nie Huaisang’s attention back onto him.

“Are you tired?” Nie Huaisang asks, and Jiang Cheng feels his mouth twist into a scowl, hackles rising despite his better sense.

“It’s been an exhausting two days of doing nothing, yes.”

“Torpor can be quite taxing in its own right.” Nie Huaisang steps back and gestures towards Jiang Cheng invitingly, palm upturned. Jiang Cheng almost falls to the impulse to take his offered hand before he catches himself, hands curling back, fingers clawing within the shroud of his borrowed sleeves. He steps out, and Nie Huaisang lowers his hand once Jiang Cheng has joined him at his side. “We can resume later. I’ve been putting something off, anyway.”

“So you’re putting me off instead?” Jiang Cheng can’t help but point out, a bit too terse than what’s appropriate, even coming from him, but Nie Huaisang’s smile only broadens.

“You make me sound so irresponsible, putting it like that!”

“Aren’t you?” Jiang Cheng pauses as Nie Huaisang’s elbow smacks against his bicep with just enough strength behind it to lose its veneer of coincidence. “How would you put it, then?”

Nie Huaisang tilts his head, cupping the collar of his robe around his neck again absently as he casts a glance upward in thought. “Ah, well, I would put it as… I am behaving as a proper host, by showing attentiveness towards the needs and comfort of my guest. What do you think?”

“I think,” says Jiang Cheng, mouth curving, “that you’re full of shit.”

Nie Huaisang’s laughter is still lingering in his eyes when they part, some minutes later, and Jiang Cheng is left feeling somewhat lighter by the sight.

Later, when the hours have dwindled down to the fine line bridging the night and the new morning, there is a knock on Jiang Cheng’s door, loud enough to disturb but not enough to wake.

Nie Huaisang, hair loosened from its braids and garb stripped back to only his high-collared middle clothes, holds up two jars of wine twined together in the curl of his fingers. They’re relinquished swiftly into the snatch of Jiang Cheng’s hand, and he sidles past him to step into his room, fan wafting against his chest.

“Not one of yours?” Jiang Cheng finds himself asking, before he can catch himself, the remark striding boldly into unpermitted territory. Nie Huaisang parts his lips, momentarily speechless, before a complicated, shuttered comprehension dawns on his face, hastily shaded over with an amused smile.

“Ah, no. A gift from the merchant clans in Shanxi.” He turns his face away, the gesture easily permissible as an accommodation for taking in the room and how Jiang Cheng has made his home in it. Jiang Cheng is not nearly so forgiving as to call it anything but a blatant escape. “I never did quite get the hang of winemaking.”

It’s the confirmation Jiang Cheng doesn’t need and doesn’t especially want, between them, of what is forgotten and what is not.

He sinks to his knees at the low table, and Jiang Cheng joins him, setting the jars down a bit too harshly, the glass clattering against the wood as he crosses his legs and tries to swallow around the tightness in his throat, breathe through the hitch in his chest.

Nie Huaisang sets them each down a cup, and Jiang Cheng uncaps one of the jars, sniffing at it. A floral, sticky-sweet scent catches in his nostrils and he grimaces reflexively before he starts pouring it out, Nie Huaisang braced half across the table to hold the cups steady, his fan set aside. “It smells like a rose garden. Have you given them a reason to poison you?”

“I should hope I haven’t,” Nie Huaisang replies, “they broke my back this year. I think our vaults are the emptiest they’ve ever been, since… ah, it’s hard to say.”

Nie Huaisang lifts his cup, holding it beneath his nose as he sniffs it, nose scrunching minutely before his features smooth over. He touches the rim to his bottom lip, as if to take a drink, but he stops himself, glancing up from beneath the swoop of his dark eyelashes. “Core cycling functions better when it’s complementing traditional mithridatic practice, but— I could teach you?” He tips his chin, swallowing back the contents of his cup, before he sets it back on the table with a pointed clack. As if sensing Jiang Cheng’s reflexive refusal, he licks at his bottom lip and rushes to add, “As payment. A favour for a favour.”

Jiang Cheng takes a long pull from his cup, draining it. He circles his thumb in the basin of it absently, the tacky beads of the wine’s dregs smearing across his skin. “What, afraid I’ll call on you later for something I might actually want?”

Nie Huaisang huffs out, lips shaping around the laugh that doesn’t follow through, and he leans over to take the jar of wine in hand. “Is indenturing someone like me really that valuable to you, Sect Leader Jiang?”

“Of course it is.” Jiang Cheng scoffs, eyes drawn to the pull of Nie Huaisang’s fingers as he lifts his free hand to his throat to adjust the ruck of his collar. Everything he’s worn over the last few days has had under clothes with such a high-sitting collar; it’s unseasonal. “You know how this goes. You’ve been part of this game for long enough.”

He tosses back his drink as soon as it is poured, tension bearing down on his shoulders, an insistent, incessant brace of pressure, and it’s barely back on the table before Nie Huaisang is filling it for him again, his own refreshed cup left untouched. Jiang Cheng doesn’t know what he’s doing, even as he’s talking, or what he could possibly— hope to accomplish. Against any wisdom or self-preservation, he’s come to the tiger’s den, he’s stuck his hand in the tiger’s maw, and now he’s desperate to force its teeth to bite down to spare himself the anxiety of an expectation entirely of his own making.

“Then keep your favour, Jiang Cheng,” says Nie Huaisang, with a considered carefulness that stokes a shudder to slide down Jiang Cheng’s spine, “I’ll still teach you. Consider it what I owe you for—”

Jiang Cheng lunges half across the table, snatching Nie Huaisang’s wrist, the cuff of his palm winding so tightly in his rush that he feels Nie Huaisang spasm beneath him and hears his bones creak. He doesn’t know if Nie Huaisang would dare to— would even care to— it doesn’t matter what Jiang Cheng thinks when he’s already moved and can’t take it back.

Nie Huaisang’s eyes flash dangerously in the candlelight as he falls silent, and when he tests for any give in Jiang Cheng’s grip, it seems more for the sake of appeasing spite than abating suffering. “For our long… acquaintance,” he finishes, incisive, just as the pause is on the turn to unsettling, “unless Sect Leader Jiang finds that too presumptive?”

Jiang Cheng releases him, biting the inside of his cheek to scold away the looming scowl as he watches Nie Huaisang flick out his hand, exaggeratedly slighted. How could he know what is presumptive and what is not, when they have met so sparingly in their entire relationship that it seems as if the years of their mutual familiarity well outpace individual instances of conversation? When he knows how Nie Huaisang feels bearing down on his naked lap, knows the shape of his cock in his hand and how his breath shudders out when he comes?

“Fine,” Jiang Cheng concedes, clipped. “How could I deny Sect Leader Nie his gratitude?”

Nie Huaisang spirits Jiang Cheng’s empty cup from the loose pinch of his fingers and refills it before sliding it back across the table, the curve of the ceramic slotted against the webbing of his thumb, thin fingers curving back, as if he’s a maiden offering his knuckles out to be kissed. Jiang Cheng doesn’t need to push him away; the moment he reaches for the wine, Nie Huaisang resigns his grip and retreats.

“Let me think,” he says, heading off Jiang Cheng’s building impatience at the pass. He takes his open fan back in hand and taps the edge of the mount to his chin. “Step back through yourself until you’ve pared your awareness down to your core. Feel how every part in-between both joins and separates.”

“I have meditated before,” Jiang Cheng barks, churlish, and Nie Huaisang’s head lilts languidly as he fans his face, arching his brows.

“I’m not asking you to meditate, Jiang Cheng. This isn’t an exercise in cultivation.” He closes his fan with a pointed snap and sheathes it in his belt before he swoops forward, elbows bracing on the table, chin coming to rest atop his laced fingers. “The purpose is to distinguish between the map of your meridians, both jingmai and luomai, your dantian, your core, and the rest of your body. To learn how your blood feels when it flows, how your chest feels when you breathe, your stomach when you eat and drink.” Nie Huaisang drums his fingers against the back of his wrist, hands furling over themselves to veil the sliver of skin left bare on his throat. “If you can’t come to know that of yourself,” he concludes, “how will you ever be able to tell when something is wrong quickly enough to neutralise it?”

It takes Jiang Cheng a shameful moment to truly grasp what Nie Huaisang is saying. It is something Jiang Cheng knows, of course, inherently, but in Nie Huaisang’s voice and Nie Huaisang’s words, there is an impression that there is something other, beyond the encompassing three treasures, the segmentation of the souls. “The principle and extraordinary meridians are the body,” Jiang Cheng observes, vigilant, voice pitched low. “What do you actually mean when you speak of cycling your core?”

Nie Huaisang glances away, the motion a damning tell, before he brings his eyes back to meet Jiang Cheng’s, his visage soundly stoic, unflinching.

“There is more to the body than that.”

Jiang Cheng’s derisive laugh is shocked out before he can think to suppress himself. He shakes his head, temper flaring beneath his skin, and drinks his wine to try and quench the burn of it, before dragging the jar over to pour himself another cup. “You sound very sure of that,” he says, not meeting Nie Huaisang’s eyes, instead choosing to focus on his own fingers, the backs of his knuckles. He tells himself it’s not cowardice, denying himself the knowledge of how Nie Huaisang’s face must look, confronted with Jiang Cheng’s ridicule.

However he might appear, Nie Huaisang’s voice is, at least, unaffectedly even when he next speaks. “My ancestors were butchers. We knew, and still yet know, more than any other sect, how everything between this world and the next interconnects, and just what composes a flesh vessel.”

Just as Jiang Cheng sets the jar back down, Nie Huaisang thrusts out a hand, snatching it, and Jiang Cheng jerks his chin up, gaze forced to follow the violent swing of motion, catching on Nie Huaisang as he throws his head back, the arch of his throat cruel, the work of it harsh as he swallows his wine. When he lowers his face again, eyelids fluttering open, his expression is stripped back of all of his guises and his composure. He looks almost enraged, eyes wet, jaw clenched tight, skin mottling an ugly red, and Jiang Cheng feels an answering shudder rip up his bare skin, breath snagging in his throat, the white-hot shock of fear and something else, illicit and unbidden, sloshing down to pool at the floor of him.

“We take the qi from our meridians,” Nie Huaisang explains, the lightness in his voice a vicious, terrifying contradiction to the contortion of his face. Calmly, collectedly, his steady hands pour out another serve of wine, which he downs in one fluid motion, glass slapping back down to the table in the next breath. “Raise it out, direct it instead to the body that encases it, overhead. Then we flood out what is wrong and not welcome, and pull it back, with the qi, into the pathways, channelling it back to the core to be purified.”

“That’s—” the white-hot sensation curdles, flipping over itself until it feels like ice water, dousing him, and Jiang Cheng has to cut himself off, has to put every lick of his control left into attenuating the urge to seize Nie Huaisang by the throat and drag him over the table for his sheer contumacy. “You Qinghe Nie qi deviate on purpose in this way?! What,” and Jiang Cheng sneers, even as his better sense screams at him to stop, here, to not take the last, condemnatory step, “your sabre isn’t defilement enough?”

It’s too far, it would almost be too far for someone Jiang Cheng considered an enemy, let alone Nie Huaisang, who he isn’t entirely sure of, but knows, with absolute certainty, that he anything but hates. He wishes an ensuing apology was already on the tip of his tongue, but he’s not that good of a man, never has been, and so he only sits in stunned, excruciating silence, hostage to the sight of Nie Huaisang going terribly still, blinking, before tears begin spilling down his splotchy cheeks, drops catching in his eyelashes.

“Ah.” Nie Huaisang breathes out shakily, fingers creeping up to trace, numb, at the tears trickling down his jaw. “Excuse me,” he apologises, voice flat, rehearsed, and Jiang Cheng grips the edges of the table until his knuckles pale as he watches, useless, as Nie Huaisang gathers himself to his feet, staggers, then breaks into a run to flee him.

No matter who or what else he is tonight, Jiang Cheng is Nie Huaisang’s guest; he is not the angry child of his teenage years; he is trying to no longer be the angry man of more recent times. And so, when he at last stands, he does not proceed to wrap his hands around everything he can break in his room and set himself to the task of ripping it apart. Instead, Jiang Cheng extinguishes the candles, strips himself out of his borrowed robes, and bundles himself into the burrow of his bed to fill the hours before his body forces him into sleep with anything but the banefully familiar sight of Nie Huaisang shattering before him.

The refilled water in his wash basin is warmer again than yesterday’s, and there is a new set of robes, slate layering sage layering white, waiting for Jiang Cheng to change into. He scrubs his face, under his arms, between his thighs and down the backs of his knees, the swipe of his hand unduly rough, and then, in a mild fit of pique, Jiang Cheng takes a seat at his table, still damp and naked, and proceeds to sullenly pick at the plate of fruit that’s been left for him for the better part of an hour.

Eventually, though, he has to get over himself, and so he scowls through the clumsy comb and braid of his hair, pulls on his new robes, takes Sandu out of the weapon rack for the first time in as many days, and sets out. Finding Nie Huaisang, as it turns out, is a task that proves difficult to complete when the object of it, Jiang Cheng suspects, does not particularly want to be found. Jiang Cheng doesn’t want to take the chance on the unknown factor that is Nie Huaisang’s potential pettiness to risk asking any of his sect members where their leader might be, and so he loiters and lingers for hours instead, listing between the familiar retreads of the last few days.

Jiang Cheng eventually finds him addressing a small group of disciples outside the main hall just past midafternoon, and makes a very petty point of loudly announcing his presence before Nie Huaisang can extricate himself.

“Ah, Sect Leader Jiang,” Nie Huaisang greets him. His tone is faultlessly civil and his smile is snidely placid, which tells Jiang Cheng very plainly just how much of a grudge he is still bearing after last night.

Jiang Cheng steps in to join him, offering a brief nod in turn to the gathered disciples as they salute. Swathed in Qinghe Nie’s colours and hair fashioned in braids reminiscent of their traditional style, Sandu stands out in his hand just as Jiang Cheng stands out at Nie Huaisang’s side; with all the virulent disparity of a bruise.

“Sect Leader Nie,” Jiang Cheng returns, proper by way of practice. He is acutely aware of the tug of his features on his face and the resonance of his voice, as he is of all the eyes and ears trained on him. “When will you be free to resume where we last left off, regarding the discussion conference?”

Jiang Cheng expects it, even before it comes: Nie Huaisang’s lips shift into a demur moue as his brow furrows with commendable regret. “I’m terribly sorry, Sect Leader Jiang,” he says, “I’m afraid an urgent matter has arisen that must be attended to. Perhaps you could send me a letter summarising the remaining key points, once you have returned to Yunmeng?”

Jiang Cheng knows, with where they are, with who Nie Huaisang is, and with what witnesses they have, that he can’t simply argue. Instead, he smiles, polite, and angles his shoulder so that he can flatten his palm against the small of Nie Huaisang’s spine, just out of sight. Zidian’s chain clinks quietly, the cuff of it scratching at the lavish cloth of Nie Huaisang’s robe. “That’s unfortunate,” he says, convincingly regretful, face tipping towards Nie Huaisang’s ear, “but I must insist that I finish relaying them to you in person, given that they are confidential matters.”

Nie Huaisang holds all of the power in Qinghe, and could challenge him with no real fear of recourse, if he really wanted to. It would be an effortless matter for him to turn this encounter on its head and paint the Sect Leader of Yunmeng Jiang in the worst possible light. Jiang Cheng knows this, and he knows that Nie Huaisang must know that he knows this.

There is a long pause, and then Jiang Cheng feels Nie Huaisang’s back shift against the brand of his palm as he exhales. “You’re right, Sect Leader Jiang,” he concedes, then, “however, the disturbance near my ancestral halls won’t keep. You are welcome to join us, or you can choose to remain here.”

“I’ll go,” says Jiang Cheng.

The corners of Nie Huaisang’s mouth twitch, brow furrowing almost imperceptibly before he turns his attention back onto the five disciples clustered but a few short paces away. “Could you please bring an additional horse back with you for Sect Leader Jiang?”

“You go on night hunts, now, then?” Jiang Cheng stupidly, foolishly asks, once the disciples have left with their dismissal, his hand still on Nie Huaisang’s back.

Nie Huaisang hums; Jiang Cheng feels the echo of it rumble against his palm. “On occasion.”

And because Jiang Cheng really is an utterly, impossibly impulsive fool, he leans in, feels his hand slide further up Nie Huaisang’s back, until it comes to rest against his dantian, the crucible of his golden core. “And you think that’s wise,” he remarks, “given your cultivation?”

He pushes his fingers in, an idle tease of pressure more than anything, qi pooling at his fingers as if to prod against Nie Huaisang’s own meridians for emphasis, and Nie Huaisang whips out from under his grip in a dizzying rush. He puts a wide stride between them both before he finally turns back to face him, expression dark with a severity that seems strangely misplaced, even given their current friction.

“It is not a matter of wiseness, Sect Leader Jiang,” Nie Huaisang retorts, acerbic. “It’s my duty to my family and my sect.” He pulls out his fan and opens it with a measured flick of his wrist, the rivet pin balanced in the cup of his palm. His index and middle finger begin to tap against the obsidian guard in a haphazard rhythm as his expression settles into something wrung out, wan, gaze drifting to fall somewhere behind the hill of Jiang Cheng’s shoulder. “I’ve buried my brother twice already, after all,” he adds, quieter. “I’m loath to have to bury him again.”

It is truly meritable how Nie Huaisang avoids speaking to him again, after that, until well after his disciples have returned and their audience necessitates his return to participating in vague niceties. The cut of his offence simmers, foul, beneath Jiang Cheng’s skin, but he endures it benignly for the sake of biding his time.

Jiang Cheng does question the reason for the horses, at first. But as their ride takes the procession well past what Jiang Cheng knows to be the jutting outcroppings of Qinghe Nie’s little man-eating castles and further into the wilds, the bleak energy that seems to permeate all around them turns turgid, tangible, and that provides him with the answer he had committed not to ask for. Better to save what energy they can when the place they are going to will seek to sap it of its own accord by merit of their intrusion.

Jiang Cheng’s addition has broken the balance of their group’s formation, and so he rides alongside one of the disciples as Nie Huaisang rides alone, pincered in the middle of their paired rows. The conversation between all of the cultivators, which had started the moment they left the gates, jovial and sociable and even joined, at intervals, by Nie Huaisang, tapers off into reserved silence as the sky overhead grows dark, independent of the sun’s towering position in it.

They stop to dismount before the path becomes too cluttered and perilous, and Jiang Cheng watches as the disciples immediately cluster around their leader, the closest even extending a hand for him to take as leverage to lower himself to the ground. Jiang Cheng, admittedly, knows little of Qinghe Nie’s accoutrements to easily distinguish their ranks, but from faint recollections and general comparisons, he feels it is a very safe guess to conclude they are skilled, senior, and close enough to Nie Huaisang to treat him — and be treated by him — with casual intimacy.

The one that helps Nie Huaisang to his feet keeps their hands clasped together even after he’s steady, and leans in close, guarding both of their faces with the angled hitch of a broad shoulder as they exchange words. Something snarling and hideous snaps through his gut, and Jiang Cheng grits his teeth hard enough to feel them scrape uncomfortably against themselves as the disciple separates from Nie Huaisang with a bow and begins to approach him.

“Sandu Shengshou.” He salutes, and Jiang Cheng thins his lips, expression close to a glower. “Sect Leader Nie has requested I apprise you.”

Jiang Cheng shoves out his hand, fisted around his horse’s reins, for the disciple to take. “You are?”

“Nie Jianhong, Jiang-daren.”

The honorific is appropriately, politely stressed on all the right consonants. Jiang Cheng immediately takes a disliking to him. “Speak, then.”

Nie Jianhong obediently takes the reins, clicking his tongue against the sides of his teeth to call the horse over to his side before returning his attention to Jiang Cheng. “We are searching for a guchong. Our suspicion is that its master is a demonic cultivator that has so far thwarted our suppression attempts.” Jiang Cheng has to hold his tongue in check at that revelation, casting a glance off to where Nie Huaisang is speaking to his other disciples, back turned to him. “Such a creature poses no threat to Sandu Shengshou, but the cultivator is versed in dark tricks that can afflict one’s golden core. In the event he should surface, please ensure your qi is primed to reflect any such targeted curses.”

“Fine,” Jiang Cheng snaps dismissively, then, “thank you.”

If a demonic cultivator has gone to ground in Qinghe Nie territory, and so close to their ancestral halls, Nie Huaisang must have cause for abstaining from any measure that would involve dispatching men further into the forests and to all reaches of the Stone Castles to neutralise the threat. It may be an ill-thought and ill-sighted cause, but it seems it is not to be Jiang Cheng’s business to know, so he can’t confirm if it is so.

Jiang Cheng seizes on the opportunity to integrate with the group when it splinters, briefly, to tie up the horses, and places himself to Nie Huaisang’s left, eyes deliberately set towards the dark of the deeper woods before them.

“We would cover more ground if we separated.” Jiang Cheng levels his tone so that it seems as if it is a remark made in passing, and not the double-edged blade of both a slighting cut and a press for information.

He sees Nie Huaisang tip his face towards him in the corners of his periphery, but Jiang Cheng doesn’t turn to meet him halfway. “The caution is warranted here. Please stay close by.”

Jiang Cheng does, and tells himself it is because he’s neither stupid nor in possession of a death wish, not because Nie Huaisang considers it a danger enough to worry after him.

Each of the disciples adopts a formation around them, a loose circle with them as its heart, and Jiang Cheng does not consider the implications of it, how well versed and how practised all five men are at being Nie Huaisang’s bulwark. Not even twenty paces from their starting point, the dark swims so thickly around them that two of the disciples have to light torches to pierce the suffocating gloom, making the necessary sacrifice of subtlety for the sake of sight.

The further they go, the more Jiang Cheng feels tension coil around the rungs of his spine, drawing his shoulders in, tight, thrumming in his palms and down his thighs. It’s anticipation without fear, expectation without delight; the clutch of a body in waiting, held in the purgatory preluding the answer as to whether or not it will remain predator or if it will become prey. Nie Huaisang, in disparity, seems only calm when Jiang Cheng steals a glance at him; as though he has his confirmation, already, as to whether or not he is today’s hunter or its hunted.

They smell it before they see it: the rancid fetor of rotted blood sheeting over decaying flesh, and within seconds the disciples have drawn their sabres, torches doused to be replaced with conjured flame. The beast’s many eyes flicker and blink as it lumbers out from between the gnarled trees, it’s sprawling, coiling mass bent over itself from the drain of the many wounds and breaks in its hulking carapace, the skin around its gaping maw burned away by the acidic drool leaking out from between its teeth.

For such a massive, shambling thing, more nightmare than insect, it moves with startling speed. Jiang Cheng feels the hand on his shoulder shoving him away before he even hears the shout to move, and he feels the clip of claws through the hem of his robe’s skirt as the guchong lurches past in a blur, Zidian coming alive in his hand to counter with a jagged lash towards its vulnerable legs. It’s— it continues to move, screeching, more and more of its body spilling into the clearing after it, the length of it seemingly endless as it coils and writhes, threading through the group and forcing them apart.

Jiang Cheng, stupidly, jerks his head wildly amidst the commotion, eyes darting, until he finally catches sight of Nie Huaisang, forced to the far opposite of the clearing but safe behind the barricade of Nie Jianhong, the man’s sabre pointed outward, stance defensive. It costs him precious seconds that could be more sensibly spent, but it gives Jiang Cheng enough assurance to allow himself the leave to focus solely on the fight rapidly unfolding, the cacophony of human shouts above inhuman gurgles and cries reaching an ear-splitting pitch.

The beast is already flagging, worn down by its preexisting injuries to the desperate thrashing of the almost dead, but that only makes it more dangerous as it flails and leaps, its spit sizzling as it drips and splatters across the ground, burning through everything it touches. The smell of boiling flesh catches in Jiang Cheng’s nose before he hears the scream of pain that accompanies it, distant, muffled by the rush of his own blood in his ears. Through the gloom, he can see the guchong rear up, and he pivots his arm, flinging Zidian in a wide arc to lasso around its neck, grunting as he has to drop Sandu to grasp the pillar of his forearm, heels digging into the dirt with the effort of holding it prone for the others to attack its underbelly.

“Sandu Shengshou!” someone cries out, and Jiang Cheng whips his head towards the sound, vision filling out with the sight of the end of the guchong’s body swinging towards him. He knows he can do nothing to avoid it, even if he released Zidian from its collar on its neck to in turn free himself to run, and so he stays, wasting his last moment to suck in a bracing breath.

The blow doesn’t come: instead, a cacophonous note of sound made manifest screams past him, rending through the guchong’s body in one slice, reminiscent of Gusu Lan’s signature Chord Assassination Technique. Another sings out after it to shield him from the splatter of the beast’s corrosive blood, and Zidian goes taut, the electric rope of it crackling as the beast howls, sagging in on itself. Jiang Cheng finds himself flailing around again for the second time in as many seconds, at a complete loss to understand what he’s just witnessed.

His eyes soon find Nie Huaisang, his fan clasped oddly in his hand, fingertips still aflame with energy. He meets Jiang Cheng’s gaze, expression shuttering, and Jiang Cheng feels the earth tilt alarmingly beneath his feet, head swimming with more than adrenaline.

“Sect Leader!” all of the disciples shout as one, and Jiang Cheng can’t comprehend their sheer panic: they’ve won, and Nie Huaisang, the source of their concern, appears untouched, safe and clear of harm. Jiang Cheng swoops down, retrieves Sandu, and takes a staggering step forward despite himself as he watches Nie Jianhong pull Nie Huaisang’s fan from his grip, the rest of the disciples sheathing their sabres, uncaring of their own wounds, as they race to close the gaps between them and their leader.

Nie Huaisang’s mouth shapes around something incomprehensible to Jiang Cheng as he averts his eyes, brow furrowing. All at once, the blade-thin thread of tension strung through the clearing snaps. Nie Huaisang’s face grows ashen in warning before his whole body seizes, blood seeping from his eyes and staining his teeth as he vomits it onto himself. Jiang Cheng has vaulted over the guchong’s corpse and crossed the entire distance before the thought even registers that he needs to move, forcing himself through the wall of disciples without a care for how it looks or how it might be taken.

“What?” he hears himself spit out, falling into a crouch as Nie Huaisang buckles, going to his knees, the unsteady lurch of his spasming frame caught by the fan of Nie Jianhong’s broad palm against his sternum. “What happened? What hit him?”

Nie Huaisang’s head lolls back as he looks up at him, the whites of his wide eyes now red, tears mingling with the spidering tracks of blood dripping down his cheeks. He starts shaking his head, frantic, lips parting, but all Jiang Cheng sees is his tongue roll against his teeth before he starts retching again, chin dropping to his chest as he spits blackened globules into the litterfall, too thick and coagulated to only be blood.

“Get him up!” Jiang Cheng barks, the why of the situation and the source of its cause no longer mattering to him. He surges forward to clumsily grapple Nie Huaisang beneath his arms, tugging his sagging body up against his chest, Nie Jianhong’s hand sliding free. Somehow, Jiang Cheng gets himself to his feet, gets Nie Huaisang secured against his chest, arms draped around Jiang Cheng’s shoulders, his blood smearing against the collar of Jiang Cheng’s robes as he tucks his face weakly into the crook of Jiang Cheng’s neck before passing out, his wheezing exhale chilling Jiang Cheng’s sweat-damp skin.

He flattens his hand between Nie Huaisang’s shoulder blades and drags his palm down over his dantian, intending to immerse him in his own energy, impel his meridians to hasten its sure attempts to mend whatever hurt is lurking beneath the surface. His energy is rejected, expelled, and Jiang Cheng recoils from the disfigured shape of Nie Huaisang’s core that has been uncovered by his questing.

Jiang Cheng looks up and takes in the faces of all the other men gathered, rage budding at the first, in full bloom by the time he reaches the last; all of their eyes alight with recognition, all of their expressions flattened with recalcitrance. Their panic of minutes before, now given this context, no longer feels misplaced in retrospect: the worry had never been for a new injury unseen by Jiang Cheng, but a concealed one unknown to him.

He slides his palm up Nie Huaisang’s still back to cup his nape, his other hand fisting against Nie Huaisang’s thigh, rending at his robes, fingers wracked with angry shivers. He exercises no restraint on his venom as he turns his face to Nie Jianhong, lips pulled back over his teeth in a snarl. “You will come back with me,” he demands icily, “and you will tell me everything on the way.”

Truly, so few of his memories of Qinghe are good ones.

The worst of them, though, is not one Jiang Cheng carries with him from the times of the Sunshot Campaign.

It is this: one month after Nie Mingjue’s death, Jiang Cheng, en route to Lanling, had let an inscrutable whim carry him to Qinghe. Nie Huaisang, still in mourning white, had greeted him with the same simple smile Jiang Cheng remembered, the same one he now found no longer fit properly on Nie Huaisang’s face, no longer reached as high as his eyes. Jiang Cheng, clueless and adrift, had stolen only enough of Nie Huaisang’s time to keep his company until he could steal a moment of secrecy, backed into one of the many winding halls of the fortress that inevitably spilled out into the courtyard.

Jiang Cheng had never had a head for condolences, but there had been— something, about Nie Huaisang, then, that had urged him to take him by the arm. Had coaxed him to press until Nie Huaisang’s shoulders were flat to the wall, Jiang Cheng crowding over him, shielding him and them from sight. Had pushed him to tell Nie Huaisang the nonsense assurance Jiang Cheng had wanted someone, anyone, to give him, back when everyone he loved had been ripped from him, again and again and again, one and two and all after the other: It wasn’t your fault.

Nie Huaisang had shrunk in on himself, paling, and then they had both flinched at once, shocked, as Nie Huaisang began to cry, tears flooding soundlessly down his cheeks, his expression hauntingly serene. He had touched his hand to his own face, almost in wonder, brow furrowing, mouth slackening, eyes going wide when they at last met with Jiang Cheng’s. Jiang Cheng had, as much for himself as for Nie Huaisang, feigned blindness until Nie Huaisang had finished returning himself to some semblance of order, and had left not long after.

And Ask for Punishment

A few li out from the gate, Nie Jianhong pulls a xun from the breast of his outer robe and blows into it, the notes shrill, made sharp by their urgency. Its purpose is apparent when they clear over the last of the treeline and hit the barren field that stretches to the high gate of the Unclean Realm; it has already been lowered, and the dust plain is swimming with colour and movement. Jiang Cheng barely has his feet on the ground, the point of Sandu sunk into the earth, when sets of hands are pulling Nie Huaisang out of his arms, seamlessly undercutting his reflexive resistance.

Nie Jianhong had explained, with embittering brevity, that it was a curse, one that rooted itself in a cultivator’s core and seemed, for all they could surmise, to steadily eat away at it from the inside. Refraining from use slowed it, but did not stop it. He did not clarify it beyond that, and did not endeavour to answer anything of when it happened, why, or any specifics in-between, but Jiang Cheng could see a picture when it was painted before his face. He’d witnessed the apparent outcome on the afflicted should they choose to draw from their well to use their techniques, and the likely source was the same cultivator that was locking them into a stalemate. How better to know an enemy’s abilities than to have experienced them firsthand?

There is not much Jiang Cheng can do, Sandu in hand, returned to its scabbard, his arms heavier at his sides from the absence of Nie Huaisang’s body than they were while brandishing it. He follows the procession back through the gates, not quite running to keep up with their pace. Nie Jianhong splits from the throng early into the building commotion, leaving Jiang Cheng to be swept up into the crowd as it escalates in pitch but, strangely, not in panic. How accustomed are the people of Qinghe Nie to carrying their people— their leaders, bloodied and limp, through their streets in times of peace? How many times have they done this for Nie Huaisang?

Jiang Cheng is stopped, eventually, from going any further with the group when they begin to cross over the threshold into what voices keep referring to as the inner garden and yard in turns. The stewards that bar his way are quickly backed by actual guards, who look only as penitent as station divide requires them to.

“No outsiders may enter at this time, esteemed Sect Leader Jiang.” They all bow, as if that is meant to be a balm for the insult, and Jiang Cheng takes a shuffling half-step forward, more frustrated lurch than controlled motion, and meets the hand of one of the guards, extended past the shoulders of the front pair of stewards to halt him.

“Don’t touch me,” Jiang Cheng snaps viciously, bringing up his forearm to shove the hand away. What prevents him from starting his own scene to rival the current one is his loss for what words he can possibly say next, what arguments he can make; I’m not an outsider is false, and Just let me see him holds no weight.

Jiang Cheng lowers his arm, seething, and shakes out his hands with a jerking snap, straightening himself. “Fine,” is what he settles on, as though conformance is a concession of his own choosing and not the only real choice he has. “Send for me when— this is done.”

Nie Huaisang is unlikely to appreciate waking back up into a world where Jiang Cheng has either cut down or been cut down by several of his own cultivators in protest of being told no, of all things.

The guards step back, but one of the stewards makes an aborted sound when Jiang Cheng moves to retreat in turn, gesturing nervously to Jiang Cheng’s robes when he catches her eye.

“Does esteemed Sect Leader Jiang need a doctor? One can be sent.”

Jiang Cheng lowers his chin, following the path of her hand, to the drying stain of blood that’s bloomed on his shoulder. The petals of it are stark against the bare skin of his throat and the lighter fabric of his collar, but swallowed down and washed out by the dark outer robe.

“I don’t,” he replies, voice tight. “It’s not mine.”

The sun has begun to set by the time he makes it back to his room, sunk so low along the horizon that it’s almost slipped beyond the brim of the Unclean Realm’s towering walls. Jiang Cheng feels such an acute, bone-deep exhaustion, better suited for the restless passage of days, not mere hours.

The first thing he sees is his robes, the arrayed purples a blemish against the hues of the rest of the room. Jiang Cheng returns Sandu to the weapon rack, then strips himself down, putting his wrist into pulling the innermost layers free, fused as they are against his skin by Nie Huaisang’s blood. He leaves everything in a pile on the floor, uses the cold water in his wash basin to scrub and scrape his jaw and neck clean, then dabs his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose and pretends it’s only tiredness throbbing at the fringes of his temples.

After a long, obliging pause, he pulls on his own inner and middle clothes, then pats them down over himself in enough of a semblance of decency that it doesn’t strip his face bare to step back outside and flag down the first steward he finds. They take his soiled robes from the floor, and return within the half hour with a pot of tea and every other one of his idiosyncratic requests: a sheaf of paper, seal paste, a small cutting of bamboo, a brush, an inkwell, a dagger. They get as far as setting the tray down on the table before Jiang Cheng dismisses them brusquely.

His responsibilities, first and foremost and forevermore, are to his sect. Such things can be set aside for moments of selfishness, but only ever briefly. Duty was a purpose that robbed a man of his personhood, as it was meant to, as it should. The concerns of another sect and the maladies of its leader were not his to own or to bear.

Jiang Cheng growls under his breath. He takes the dagger and whittles at the bamboo rashly, then rips the first sheet of paper into shreds for the fleeting satisfaction of a temporary blunting to his churning apprehension. After he’s done, he pulls out the second sheet from the pile, sharpens the bristles of the brush to a point with his lips, dips it into the ink, and sets to work. When the steward returns some hours later to bring him dinner, Jiang Cheng — no more dressed or composed for the passage of time — intercepts them at the door, takes the tray for himself, and shoves several letters into their hands, the oily red paste of his seal still yet to dry on any of them.

Pacing across every reach of the room fails to calm his perturbation or deplete any of the restless energy thrumming through his limbs. Jiang Cheng hates waiting; the uncertainties it brings and how so often it leads to the worst outcomes. It is too great a proof for him to ignore, let alone endure, of the truth that he is inherently powerless and adrift in a world outside his scope of control.

He must snatch a snippet of sleep from somewhere at his table, because he jerks into waking at a knock on his door, eyes stinging, shoulders knotted in on themselves. The first time he opens his mouth, dry lips catching on themselves, his voice doesn’t follow, and he swallows, scowling, until the itch in his throat is sanded down enough for him to actually speak.

Jiang Cheng rises to his feet, unsteady, before he’s even properly told that Nie Huaisang is awake. He washes his face perfunctorily with cold water, washes his mouth out with staling tea, then pulls on his outer robe, hands fumbling to tie it around himself as he walks. The entire trip yawns out, apparently endless, unassisted by the pace kept by the steward unnecessarily leading him.

He’s not sure what to expect, but perhaps Nie Huaisang, sitting at his low table in his middle clothes and looking little worse for wear, should come as no surprise. Were it not for the off hour, the haze of herbal smoke pervading the room, and the cup clasped in his thin fingers that looks to contain a concoction more salve than syrup, it would be by all appearances just another ordinary occasion.

Jiang Cheng knows how he must look — like some sleepless, anguished wife — and he feels a profane stab of resentment for Nie Huaisang and the recognition that rises to his eyes for having ripped this vulnerability from him, unasked, like the others that have come before.

“Here, sit,” Nie Huaisang beckons, voice rasping faintly, and Jiang Cheng goes to his knees across from him, flicking out his sleeves. “I’ll have something brought out for you.”

“Forget it,” Jiang Cheng snaps, then, “what were you thinking?” He doesn’t continue; he doesn’t think he can. Any attempt to refine such a question into something more illuminating carries too formidable a personal risk.

Nie Huaisang’s answering smile is awkward; a brief pull of his mouth and a flash of his teeth before he dips his chin, swallowing. “I panicked,” he explains.

Jiang Cheng swears, exhaling in a fuming rush. Idiot, he thinks, bitter. “You endangered yourself for nothing. Make better choices, or don’t make them at all.”

Nie Huaisang averts his eyes, sipping at his drink. “I wasn’t thinking,” he says, tone soft and strange, “I was under a lot of pressure.”

Jiang Cheng tries not to think of the time he’s heard those precise words before and wonder what, then, is Nie Huaisang’s tolerance for and ascertainment of pressure. He fails; Nie Huaisang meets his eyes again, heavy and heated, when he sucks in a whistling breath.

“I’m sorry,” Nie Huaisang adds, and it is almost pointed, precise, in a way calculated to make the hairs on the back of Jiang Cheng’s neck stand on end, hands fisting in his lap.

“Spare me,” Jiang Cheng retorts, rolling his eyes, as much to express displeasure as to give him a momentary reprieve from looking at Nie Huaisang head-on. “Tell me when this started.”

Nie Huaisang finishes his cup, grimacing as he swallows. He thumbs at his throat through his high collar before he dutifully pours himself out the last of the jar of whatever medicine he’s been tasked to take. “Ah, some months ago. It must be half a year, now.”

“You know exactly what I’m asking, Nie Huaisang,” Jiang Cheng grits out. “Tell me when you were cursed.”

Nie Huaisang closes his eyes as he lifts his cup to his lips. “I did,” he replies, quiet, against the rim.

Half a year. “Half a—” Jiang Cheng slams his clenched fist into his own thigh, feeling his limbs run cold, all the heat in him dragged up to ensnarl his chest, the sensation of it utterly nauseating. “You had best hope you know the cure and that it’s complicated enough to justify why you have left yourself like this for half a year!”

It explains his absence from the last two conferences all too perfectly. Qinghe Nie had been closing ranks after all, but not for the reason any of them could have expected. With the head of their sect ailing, it was natural for them all to turn inward, to concern themselves only with that.

And yet— it is such reverent care to give to someone so apparently useless and unappreciative.

Opinion of Nie Huaisang has never been high. Even the common folk of Hebei don’t speak of him with confidence or courtesy, that much is no secret. Jiang Cheng had always thought such a widely carried impression would sprout from the very heart of the sect, but he’s seen for himself over the last few days, if nothing else, that it is not the case. Not a single one of Nie Huaisang’s people treats him with anything but respect. Not a single one lacks apparent faith in his leadership.

Nie Mingjue had inspired incredible loyalty, but even that legacy would have only ever carried Nie Huaisang so far. Jiang Cheng feels his mouth thin as his brow furrows, the thought causing his throat to tighten, harsh. It all makes so little sense, when it is actually considered by the sum of its parts, rather than its supposed whole.

“It’s… complicated,” Nie Huaisang admits at last, evasive. “That a curse of this nature afflicts the caster gave us some leverage, at first, but we’ve exhausted all possible methods for cleansing it without, ah, entirely knowing what it is.” He sets his cup down, gaze pensive as he peers up at Jiang Cheng beneath the swoop of his eyelashes. “Now it seems as if we’re trading blows while we bide our time. If it kills him first, well. That might do it?”

“You know where he’s hiding.” Jiang Cheng doesn’t dilute his acerbity; if his throat has to burn with it then Nie Huaisang can suffer the bite of it, too. “Killing him might fix it? Send your men there and be done with it.”

“I won’t.” Something crosses Nie Huaisang’s features, the ghost of a feeling all too gnarled and unspeakable for Jiang Cheng to truly grasp, let alone name. “It’s too dangerous.”

Jiang Cheng can sympathise with that. He does not enjoy sending men into danger and to their deaths, either. But to not, when the cost on the balance is your own life, when you are the leader of your sect, is not practical. “Do you make all your disciples from clay, now? Between them and you, the choice is clear.”

Nie Huaisang shakes his head, once, the motion snappish, jarring. “Jiang Cheng, I know.” His voice scrapes so coarsely that Jiang Cheng feels it scratch up his own throat. “It’s under control. I would be sending men off to die meaningless deaths. I won’t do it again.”

Again springs the snare of the trap in his thoughts, catching him in it, the loop of Nie Huaisang’s admittance. He should take it, not because it’s allowed, but because it’s here and he can, but— Jiang Cheng can’t. Damn him, it’s fair, it’s his due, and he can’t. “You have it under control?” is what he presses in with instead. “Not the word I’d use.”

Nie Huaisang shrugs stiffly, eyes fluttering shut as he takes a steadying breath. When he opens them again, a smile paints his lips, as shallow as the rest of the facade he’s seamlessly pulled over himself. “His position is worse than mine. He has to call on his core more deliberately and thoroughly just to survive.”

“You don’t have much of a core to burn through,” Jiang Cheng argues back. “Your little stunt with— your fan, that’s certainly done you no favours.”

“Ah, yes.” Nie Huaisang chuckles, thready. “That might be so.”

Jiang Cheng considers him. More things about Nie Huaisang seem to elude him by nature than not; each and any, when uncovered, only further convolute the idea of him rather than construe it. He doesn’t know of any other technique that functions in the way Nie Huaisang’s had, save Gusu Lan’s. But that relies on their instruments — it’s in the very name of it — and Nie Huaisang’s fan, while similarly opulent and ostentatious, isn’t stringed.

Every now and then, over the years, when the topic of conversation turned to the head-shaker of Qinghe Nie, someone or other would make a mention of his skill. Quite ingenious. Very talented in magic. But. There was always an objection, an exception, a heel-turn. He had leaned on others often and easily for their help, and yet Qinghe Nie had always been in a better state than what it should have been from what it received. Not as wealthy as Lanling Jin, as respected as Gusu Lan, or as tenacious as Yunmeng Jiang, but commendable. Its incidents tended to remain within its borders, and its people never seemed to truly struggle more than what was ever expected.

Of course he would have fumbled in leading, not least of all at first. But for so many years? Hadn’t he thought Nie Huaisang to be eerily cunning, once, a lifetime ago? And again, even more recently? He had been raised as the second young master beneath the emblem of the beast. In hindsight, Jiang Cheng can only feel— ridiculed, almost, though he really only has himself to blame.

The rot of that revelation roots deep once he’s had it, and it takes an extraordinary amount of effort for him to leave it be and move on. “Tell me everything you know,” Jiang Cheng demands, scrubbing tiredly at his face, all but spent. Nie Huaisang unsettles and unseats him and it is all beginning to show its wear. He almost wishes, frailly, foolishly, that he was back in his youth, back at the Cloud Recesses, sitting across from Nie Huaisang and having a far better conversation about nothing of importance or impact.

If only.

“All right,” Nie Huaisang accedes. He calls one of his stewards in to bring them both tea, and when it comes, he pours them both out a cup. Then, he sinks back into the pillows he’s seated on, loose-limbed and languorous, drink left untouched, and begins to tell Jiang Cheng everything he knows, which takes him well into the morning to accomplish.

After a day of rest, they resume where they left off.

It’s so very wrong, in a way, how they proceed: as if the more gruesome and inconvenient parts of the past days have been cut free and set aside. Nie Huaisang continues as if he is not living by the grace of stolen time, and Jiang Cheng spends the few hours they both converge together on relaying what is left to tell of the recent discussion conference until the pretence is exhausted.

It doesn’t seem, to him, like Nie Huaisang cares much for healing his own sickness at all; as though he’s already accepted his impending and precipitous end to it. But he is also sly, and so Jiang Cheng has to, for now, let that assuage the worry he’s already unfond of having.

“You’ve been away from home for some time,” is Nie Huaisang’s greeting for him today. Jiang Cheng glances up from his table to acknowledge him, before returning his attention to his papers.

Nie Huaisang invites himself to take a seat opposite him, leaning back on his hand, the other lazily wafting his fan. It’s a polite distance from what he has every reason to assume is Jiang Cheng’s private business. “Is this irresponsible sect leader of Qinghe Nie starting to influence the sect leader of Yunmeng Jiang a little too much?”

Jiang Cheng scoffs, lashing his brush with ink. “What kind of paper sect do you think I have built, that it will blow away with me gone?” He puts the brush to paper, schools the tremor from his hand, gentles the taut pinch of his fingers, and starts to write. “They know where I am and how to send for me if they have need to.” Indeed, they’ve done this already; though Jiang Cheng had written to them first, among others, that night Nie Huaisang had been sequestered in his rooms. “And the consequences for calling me back for anything simple.”

“I see, I see.” Jiang Cheng dips his brush again; watches, from the corner of his eyes, Nie Huaisang’s elegant hands and draping sleeves as he leans forward, fan set aside on the table to free him to pour tea into Jiang Cheng’s drained cup. Jiang Cheng lets it sit until Nie Huaisang has retreated, until he hears the wave of his fan once again, over the sigh of his breath. “Of course, this does make Sect Leader Jin’s recent night hunt in Hubei quite an amusing coincidence, no?”

“Very amusing,” says Jiang Cheng, pausing to sip his tea. He’s going to strangle his nephew; maybe a bout of suffocation will scare into him a sense of subtlety.

Nie Huaisang’s answering laugh is pleasant and relaxed. Jiang Cheng wonders if it is honest. “If only you’d known, you could have asked him to bring you some of your clothes. Ah! Should I send for a tailor?”

Jiang Cheng sets his cup down. “Oh, will you send the resulting robes to Lotus Pier for me to never wear? What I have now is fine.”

Nie Huaisang’s hands return to his field of vision, circling the handle and belly of the teapot as he dutifully pours Jiang Cheng out the last of his tea. “True, it would be a terrible waste,” he agrees, slinking back out of reach. “Yunmeng is so humid, and our colours don’t suit you.”

Jiang Cheng flicks him a look, brows raised. Nie Huaisang is the picture of innocence, fan clasped against his sternum, mouth crooked. Even if it is said only for the sake of childish mischief, Jiang Cheng would do well to be dismissive of it. He looks down, dips his makeshift bamboo seal into the ceramic paste box, and dabs it down onto the corner of his letter. “All colours suit me,” he says.

Nie Huaisang makes a little gasping sound, delight barely disguised as mock scandal, and Jiang Cheng has to bow his head lower, blowing air against his seal, to deny Nie Huaisang the opportunity of seeing his mouth twitch around a smile. “You’ve been lied to, Sect Leader Jiang. It can’t be left to stand.”

Jiang Cheng folds his letter over itself and sets it aside. “Don’t you have a sect to run?” he snips, lifting his head. Nie Huaisang inches his fan up higher, until the swerve of the leaf is shrouding his mouth, but not the set of his jaw that tells Jiang Cheng he is beaming. “I can pour my own tea. Go hold court. Shuffle papers. Be elsewhere.”

Nie Huaisang goes, though he does sigh a very put-upon sigh as he does, one that tapers off into an unmanly squeak as Jiang Cheng picks up his inkwell and feigns throwing it at him to hasten his exit. However enjoyable his presence may or may not be, without it, Jiang Cheng feels freer to think.

He can’t shake the feeling that there is something he’s not been told, and it picks at him, incessant and irritating. Jiang Cheng does not need Nie Huaisang’s cooperation, in any matter, let alone this one, but— it’s galling to suspect he’s being denied it, particularly when Nie Huaisang’s very life is what is at stake. Perhaps it’s fair that Nie Huaisang doesn’t trust him, perhaps Jiang Cheng hasn’t given him any particularly convincing reason to trust him, but he already knows Nie Huaisang is dying. What specificity or secret could Nie Huaisang possibly value the sanctity of more than that risk and that revelation?

Jiang Cheng rubs his palm against his mouth, shakes those thoughts from his head, and pulls a fresh sheet of paper free from the thinning pile at his elbow. He may not have any new insights on the information Nie Huaisang has shared with him, and he may not have any answers, but he does, at least, know where he can start to look.

Sect Leader Yu’s reply is the one that keeps Jiang Cheng waiting. When it at last arrives, almost a week later, Jiang Cheng reads it over twice, as if the contents will change for the better from a second viewing. Then, he holds it over the bare flame of a candle until heat licks at his fingertips, ash smattering his skin.

Nie Huaisang’s penchant for finding him sees him join Jiang Cheng in one of many small gardens Jiang Cheng has uncovered in the process of filling the hours of the last few weeks. There is so little green in the rest of the Unclean Realm; it’s as if Nie Huaisang hoards it here, in the little hollows where the stone and steel wanes. The path to the one Jiang Cheng has chosen to sit in is walled with young haitang trees, and all of the soil beds are bursting with the rich colours of tai zi shen, ren shen, and qing dai, their mingling fragrances almost choking him.

He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like any of them. No matter which garden he goes to, they only ever bring him anything but peace of mind and spirit. They make him homesick for Yunmeng, for places and times that barely even exist, anymore, in the memories they’re kept in. But he doesn’t know, anymore, where else he can go or stay and be easy for Nie Huaisang to see, or harder, or not at all.

“Has something happened?” Nie Huaisang asks, so gently, and with such honest, truthful care, that Jiang Cheng has to spend an achingly long moment just letting himself pretend it’s not what it is. He wants nothing more than to rage until the flame charring and consuming his insides runs out of tinder and sputters out; he wants to take Nie Huaisang by the shoulders or by the throat and spit blame at him. Tell him It’s you, and You happened, and You did this to me. Nie Huaisang is a pitiful, pathetic idiot hastening to his demise for no reason he sees fit to make apparent to Jiang Cheng, and Jiang Cheng should not care, but he does. He does, and even if he wasn’t helpless, Nie Huaisang doesn’t want his help, so he’s resigned, instead, to watching it happen, like he always is when he makes the same mistake of caring for someone who doesn’t care for him.

And he can admit none of that; not even to himself, but especially not to Nie Huaisang. “No,” Jiang Cheng snaps back, voice brittle to his ears, words crumbling from his mouth.

Nie Huaisang leaves him alone before Jiang Cheng has to grit out a command for it, and he’s absurdly, dismally grateful for the allowance of leniency. He needs to breathe; in, out. Then, he needs to think.

It takes him five attempts to compose the letter he doesn’t want to write to Jin Ling. The last thing he wants is his nephew to come careening down the countryside to find him, and the second last thing he wants is for him to worry, so he chooses and changes his words several times over until he’s satisfied enough to commit to them.

Don’t argue with me, he writes, and Don’t come to Qinghe. Just do as you’re told and write back with what you learn.

His nephew’s answering letter is four times the length of Jiang Cheng’s initiating one, and so rambling and churlish that Jiang Cheng feels assured none of the elders or advisors of Lanling Jin have had any opportunity to pass an appraising eye over it. Uncle, there must really be something wrong with you, the letter reads, once Jiang Cheng has skimmed his nephew’s many complaints about being snapped at by script. Ghost General said those books were burned, and sorry. But some of the others said your description was familiar. There’s a legend about a woman who lived on the Yuan River who choked on flowers that grew inside her. Is that what you’re looking for? Information about some old love story? Go home soon, Qinghe and that head-shaker are turning you strange.

“Brat,” Jiang Cheng grouses under his breath as he burns the last slip of paper. He almost dismisses it, but it keeps snagging on a washed out memory, sitting just shy of his reach. Choking on flowers— absurd. Nothing is rising in Nie Huaisang, in his lungs or otherwise; only receding.

And yet— he continues to circle around it, uncontrollably, the consideration an apparent distraction enough that even Nie Huaisang feels the need to draw attention to it. “You are very far away,” he remarks, reaching for lighthearted, but the sentiment not quite landing, his hand trailing against Jiang Cheng’s forearm almost in afterthought. “Look!” he adds, lifting his fingers away to gesture down at the stone placements on their weiqi board. “I’ve been cheating for the better part of a half hour!”

“At least have the sense not to admit it,” Jiang Cheng mutters, dour. He turns his piece over in his fingers, idle, but does not place it.

He can hear Nie Huaisang click his tongue, the lazy lilt of his fan against his chest pausing. “I wouldn’t want to presume your business,” he says, careful, letting it hang between them both.

“Then don’t.” Jiang Cheng places his stone down and sits back, the drag of his robes against the backs of his thighs almost muffling Nie Huaisang’s sharp intake of breath.

“But,” Nie Huaisang continues, leaning his weight towards his knees as he reaches to take his own turn; a legal one, at that, now he’s provoked Jiang Cheng’s attention. “Lotus Pier must be missing you. That’s all.”

“Say it outright.” Jiang Cheng meets his eyes, already despising how he can feel his brow knitting, hear his voice cracking over the stoked flame of his ire. “Have I overstayed my welcome?”

Nie Huaisang bites his lip, a pinprick of pressure, before he tries to conceal it with a swallow. The smile he puts on doesn’t quite reach his eyes, and his eyes don’t quite reach Jiang Cheng’s. “Not at all,” he replies, tone edged with an emotion Jiang Cheng can’t place, his inflection perplexing, taut. “Just, ah, others are beginning to talk… far more than they already do.”

Let them, Jiang Cheng thinks, but he can’t even hold that in his head with any conviction, let alone speak it aloud. He knows as well as Nie Huaisang must, deep down, that he lacks the heart to forsake too much appearance. Nie Huaisang has long grown out of any care for how he comes off to others, but Jiang Cheng hasn’t. It’s unlikely he ever will, living as he does in the shadow of an esteem he climbs and climbs for and never seems to reach.

“I’m expecting correspondence,” is his lie. “It’s urgent, or I’d just go home and wait for it to make its way back to me there.” He lifts his chin, as if to goad Nie Huaisang with his overstep, to force him to find where he’s buried his spine and bring it out if he wants Jiang Cheng to leave before Jiang Cheng is ready. “Will that be too much of a trouble for you, Sect Leader Nie?”

Nie Huaisang looks down, gaze narrowing onto the back of his own hand as he places his piece on the board, the black stone enclosing the flank of several others against Jiang Cheng’s pieces. “You’re always welcome here, Sect Leader Jiang,” he states, sounding just sincere enough to be believed, flicking the captured white stones up into the cup of his palm.

Later, he tells himself this will be the last of it. If he uncovers nothing of substance or use, he will go home, and he will put it all from his mind. He’ll leave Nie Huaisang where he is, to do what he will, regardless of whether or not what he will is fix himself or die. Nie Huaisang is not Jiang Cheng’s concern, and he never will be, however much Jiang Cheng wants to think the truth is otherwise in terrible moments of weakness.

If it’s to be the last of it, though, it matters little if it’s frantic. He claws through his thoughts, turning them over again and again in his hands, tapping his brush against the rim of his inkwell. There’s something. There’s something about the river, something about flowers. Something missing.

Yuan River, he writes. Youxi River. Dead cultivators. Curse of flowers.

Most of their records were spared when Lotus Pier fell; others were never kept there to begin with. If there is any truth to the flailing, desperate reaching of his foggy recollections, surely, somewhere, what he’s looking for can be found.

The reply arrives in the dead of the night not even a half week later, Jiang Cheng’s demand for haste taken with loyal literim. He is barely still present on the right side of waking as he starts to read it, and all of the satisfaction he’s rightly earned for his success soon comes undone in the pit of his stomach.

It’s a marvel he remembered any part of it at all; he can’t have been older than eight when the body was dredged from the water. Thought drowned, at first, as many they retrieved were, victim to fatigue or a force all the more malevolent. But his discoloured skin had protruded too strangely at the chest, distended too broadly at the belly, and, fearing something terrible had made its nest there, they’d cut through his sternum and snapped open his ribs. In the bed of them they had only found the flourishing mao she xiang blooms, the golden core they’d rooted in long since shattered by their bulk and dissipated upon death, their delicate purple petals speckled with foamed up blood.

Jiang Cheng had never seen it; had been driven off long before they’d pulled the gauze sheet back to begin, but he had heard about it, after. He can picture it vividly, now, as it is described back to him. It is an utterly dreadful curse, with an all the more despicable cure.

Nie Huaisang is still awake when Jiang Cheng bursts into his room, and has the barefaced temerity to jerk upright at his table, mouth agape. Though Nie Huaisang is barely dressed, hair spilling freely over his shoulders, only his middle clothes belted around him, it’s Jiang Cheng who looks improper, barefoot and rumpled, like a man possessed.

Jiang Cheng clenches his fists until his nails cut into his skin, Zidian crackling against the furl of his trembling knuckles. “Send them out,” Jiang Cheng snarls, shaking, “whoever is in here with you, get them out.”

“Jiang Cheng,” Nie Huaisang stutters out, stunned, “What— I don’t know—”

“You know,” Jiang Cheng interjects. He feels as if the whole of him is about to break or burst, chest heaving for breath that doesn’t reach through him, the corners of his eyes stinging wetly, face burning. “Hua tu bing.”

Nie Huaisang’s face crumples in on itself in a grim flinch, and it takes him a long breath through his numbly parted mouth before he can smooth it back out. He leans forward, slow, as if he thinks any sudden movement might spook Jiang Cheng, or spur him, or worse, and props his elbow up against his table, hand raised. He tweaks his wrist, fingers flicking in the air as if to abate an ache, and Nie Jianhong glances Jiang Cheng as he spills out of whatever shadow he’d wreathed himself in to obey the silent command of the signal.

“Is he always in here?” Jiang Cheng blusters out before the door is even closed, because he’s never been able to help himself when he’s in the best of his moods, let alone when he’s toeing around hysteria.

“Not always,” says Nie Huaisang, the brace of his elbow pushing back from the table as he settles back into the lazing sprawl he surely must have inhabited before Jiang Cheng’s intrusion.

“Have you enjoyed watching me make a fool of myself for you?” Jiang Cheng takes a step forward, snapping his hand towards the room in an aimless, agitated jerk, Zidian’s chain clinking sharply against itself. Nie Huaisang’s mouth thins hesitantly, but he doesn’t shrink back, even when Jiang Cheng takes another step, more deliberate, until he’s all but bearing down on him.

“Jiang Cheng.” Nie Huaisang’s conciliatory tone only sounds condescending, whipping Jiang Cheng’s temper into more of a maelstrom of fury. “Please sit? Sit with me? You’re not a fool. Let me explain.”

“I won’t!” Jiang Cheng lashes out, bitter and rotted through and unable to decide who he loathes more, in this very moment: himself or Nie Huaisang. “Is this just who you are, now? What you do? Lie, and play with people, for—” he can’t even finish. He can’t even finish it, and he grits his teeth against the words that won’t follow.

“I haven't played with you," Nie Huaisang dissents, stricter, now, as though he thinks a firm hand will be better to take Jiang Cheng in than a gentle one. "I haven't lied." He sounds as if he believes himself, which makes Jiang Cheng laugh, hollow, as he gives into the need rattling through his wrists to lunge for him. Nie Huaisang makes a broken off little sound in the back of his throat as Jiang Cheng seizes the neck of his robes, gathering it into the clutch of his shaking hands. He doesn’t struggle; he almost doesn’t even move, save to draw his knees up towards his stomach to spare his ankles from bashing into the wood as Jiang Cheng drags him up over the flat of the table. Jiang Cheng pulls him in until their chests are flush together, faces level, his elbows digging into the slope of Nie Huaisang’s ribs. Nie Huaisang clasps at his forearms but doesn’t claw in, just braces himself there, feet dangling beneath him, toes barely skimming the floor.

“You really are so barefaced,” Jiang Cheng gasps out, shaking his head, a wretched smile twisting on his lips. “It’s always come so easily to you.”

Nie Huaisang’s eyes flash, a knife-edge glint in the low light, but the grip of his clammy palm is tender as it edges higher, cupping over the cuff of Zidian, his wrist, the back of his hand. “I didn’t lie,” he repeats, gaze steady, meeting Jiang Cheng’s own, “but I didn’t tell you the whole truth, yes. What good would it have done you to know?”

“What good—” Jiang Cheng shakes him, though it’s more him that shakes and Nie Huaisang who feels the ricochet of Jiang Cheng juddering apart through his hands. “I wouldn’t have spent all this time looking for an answer you already had!” Humiliation washes over him, white-hot, singing over the rage. He is so angry, so anguished, so everything and anything in-between, and there is nowhere for the churn of it to go but him or Nie Huaisang, no reprieve for it to be found.

“And then?” Nie Huaisang asks him, damning, and Jiang Cheng feels his fists twinge from his much more tightly he manages to clench them, choking around a growl. “I knew you couldn’t help, so I spared myself some shame.” His other hand glides up Jiang Cheng’s forearm, a rhythmic scrape of pressure, and Jiang Cheng feels his shoulders sag as if to follow after it, tension still a rope around his neck, even as his grip bends to allow Nie Huaisang to get his feet back against the floor. “I’m not enthused to be like this,” he finishes, lips pale as they quirk into a wan smile. “It’s a— somewhat embarrassing way to die.”

“Dying?” Jiang Cheng barks out a raw, breathless laugh, the hook of his fingers twitching against Nie Huaisang’s robes. “From this? You’re really going to— lie down, and let yourself be done in by some small curse? So you’re capable of shame, but not pride?”

Nie Huaisang thins his mouth into a fine line, as if to stave off some further schism between his desire and his composure. It is almost cruel, that he is allowed to retain his semblance of collectedness while Jiang Cheng unravels. “You have to admit it’s fitting?”

Jiang Cheng releases him, pushing himself a half-step back, off-balance. “I don’t have to admit it’s anything but bullshit.”

He does look away, at that, if only for a beat, a breath, before his eyes drift back, still jaded and jagged. “What should I do?” he asks Jiang Cheng. Then, as if to prove he is actually seeking his approval, now, and his answer, he adds, “What would you have me do?”

“Cure yourself.” The tumult afflicting him is beginning to wane, agitation giving way to an off-colour exasperation, a coiling nausea. Without his outrage he cannot ignore his inability, and that digs in deeper underneath the pull of his skin, notching at the bone.

Nie Huaisang pulls his hands away and pats down his robes, straightening the creases; Jiang Cheng, who had almost forgotten that he was even being touched, now feels the absence of it like a blow. “I’ve tried,” Nie Huaisang tells him. “Every alternate method— I really have tried.”

“Then use the one that’s already proven to work!” Jiang Cheng can’t grasp it; of all the things for Nie Huaisang to balk at, this method gives him pause. Truly he’s in possession of one of the most bewildering, crooked moral compasses Jiang Cheng has ever had the misfortune of witnessing. “Isn’t it just— Caibu?”

Nie Huaisang pants out a strained laugh, eyes widening. “Oh,” he mouths, then, “you don’t know.” He touches the pads of his fingertips to the back of his own wrist, nervously circling them, tongue flicking out to wet his bottom lip. “No, it’s, well it is, but it’s not— it can’t be just any cauldron, any jing. It has to be… precise.”

Jiang Cheng flexes his empty fingers, half furled as they still are around the phantom of Nie Huaisang’s clothes. “Why? What difference does it make? Jing is jing.”

Nie Huaisang frowns. “And water is water, but it makes all the difference whether you drink it from the gourd or the ground. It’s…” He trails off, venturing a glance up at him, and when Jiang Cheng reluctantly meets his eyes, Nie Huaisang’s expression turns deceptively shallow, still as a pool of water. It would be easy for Jiang Cheng to think him dead for how he looks, for how he seems to submit, were it not for the fear hemming his mouth and darkening his gaze. “It’s impossible,” he finishes at last.

“Why?” Jiang Cheng knows what impossible is, and though this comes close, for all Nie Huaisang seems to want to orchestrate it to be, it is not. It can’t be. “Why can’t it be me?”

It’s ripped free of him with such a desperate force that Jiang Cheng can’t help but choke around it, breath rattling wetly. In the deafening silence that immediately follows, all of the strength seeps out of him, until there’s only smoke left to linger above the snuffed frame of his humiliating desperation. Nie Huaisang’s fingers scrape against his wrist, circling it when Jiang Cheng flinches, steadying him in place without force, holding him up without effort.

“You know why,” he says, and though his voice is kind, it is something that can only ever be said unkindly.

Jiang Cheng scoffs, overwrought. “Why would I ask you a question I know the answer to?” He points his glare past the shell of Nie Huaisang’s ear, jaw clenching as he feels his bottom lip start to tremble. “Do you think I enjoy wasting my time talking pointlessly?”

“No,” Nie Huaisang admits, the lilt of his voice muted, manifold. “Does it, does this really bother you so much?”

“Of course it does! Who wouldn’t be—” Jiang Cheng stops himself, biting down on his shaking lip viciously as he heaves in a breath, rough.

Nie Huaisang is stunned into silence for a too long moment. Jiang Cheng still doesn’t look at him, chin dipping, eyes pulling further and further away. He doesn’t trust himself; he doesn’t dare. “Do you know what you’re offering?”

“Yes,” Jiang Cheng hisses out, the sound wrecking his throat, scraping it raw. He knows, he knows exactly what he’s trying to give, and he doesn’t know what will be worse for him; if Nie Huaisang refuses, or if he makes him put words to it until there can be no question as to the nature of the promise.

“Then,” Nie Huaisang pauses to exhale, slow and tired, the band of his fingers around Jiang Cheng’s wrist drawing tighter before they go slack. “Then, yes. All right.”

Jiang Cheng forces out the breath that’s trapped itself in his chest, feeling it shake up his throat and out his mouth. It doesn’t feel like relief, but a refrain. Jiang Cheng can’t risk admitting to himself that there’s a part of him that wants this as badly as he does, not when he can read the room of their situation but can’t read Nie Huaisang, but he can let himself get lulled into the reconciliation that they have, at least, been here before.

Nie Huaisang releases him, and Jiang Cheng digs his heels into the floor to kill the urge to sway and step after him. He watches, anxious, as Nie Huaisang begins to walk away, his hands sweeping down his sides before they burrow into the skirt of his robe. He frees his fingers only to busy them with a shelf, the span of his shoulders shrouding his movements, and when he turns back to face Jiang Cheng properly, there is a jar of wine cradled between both of his palms.

Jiang Cheng feels sick, the taste of his spit in his mouth sour, temples throbbing. “Don’t force yourself,” he bites out, bitter beyond even his own belief.

Nie Huaisang’s features shudder, his brow drawing in, his lips trembling when they part. He swallows, the bob of his throat slow, strained, but when he speaks, he sounds almost unshaken. “I’m not. I’m really not.” He glances away, and then closes his eyes, taking a deep pull of air as he blindly removes the cap from the jar and sets it aside. He opens his eyes again as he lifts it to his lips and sips from it, but his gaze plateaus at Jiang Cheng’s collarbones, his sloped shoulders. “You can still leave,” he ventures, when he’s circled back within reach, pushing the jar into Jiang Cheng’s hand. He does smile when Jiang Cheng pins his gaze, but it’s a thin, thready thing.

It’s enough to make Jiang Cheng lose his nerve, but something else slides in to take its place, spiteful and wanting, and so he drinks deeply from the jar, nose crinkling at the tart taste, before he leans to set it down on Nie Huaisang’s table. When he rises, slow, inexorable, Jiang Cheng hooks his shaking fingers into his belt, meeting Nie Huaisang’s gaze. He has it half undone, loose around his waist, before Nie Huaisang stops him.

“Wait,” he whispers out, faint, “wait,” but he doesn’t give Jiang Cheng the moment he needs for his shame to catch up. Nie Huaisang’s long fingers are quaking, nerve-rattled, as he presses them in beneath Jiang Cheng’s hands, guiding Jiang Cheng to brace his grip over Nie Huaisang’s knuckles as he begins to pull his belt the rest of the way free, chin dipped towards his chest so he can watch himself. He drops it to the floor, and lets the sound be a prompt for him to lift his face again, seeking out Jiang Cheng’s eyes for some sort of— confirmation, perhaps.

Jiang Cheng doesn’t know what to say, and he feels the deep furrow of his brow, the taut set of his jaw, the flush mottling his neck. He reaches between them, clumsy, and claps his hands on Nie Huaisang’s hips, thumbs curving into the divot of the jutting bone. He feels Nie Huaisang shiver, clenching up, his gaze turning prying for a breath, before the crease between his eyebrows eases, and he turns his attention back to his hands, now bare. Jiang Cheng feels his ragged breath rip through his chest as much as he feels it in the knead of the heels of Nie Huaisang’s palms as he drags them up Jiang Cheng’s ribs, his sternum, until his fingers glide beneath the neck of his robe, scraping the bare skin of his throat, down to his shoulders.

“Hurry up,” Jiang Cheng grits out, because it’s terrifying, how Nie Huaisang touches with revelatory reverence. Nie Huaisang is looking at him and seeing him and taking his time with him, and all Jiang Cheng can feel is a cold horror that can’t dampen the hungry heat licking up his throat and scalding his skin; a fear that Nie Huaisang is going to uncover, through the measure of him, that Jiang Cheng is only going to leave him wanting. That there isn’t enough to him, to do or be whatever is needed.

Nie Huaisang looks back up at him, through him, almost, lips parting, and then the corners of his mouth twitch into a private smile as his hands resume their unremitting pace, no more hastened by Jiang Cheng’s command. He eases each layer off, delicate, until Jiang Cheng is stripped to only his pants, until he has to relinquish his grounding grasp on Nie Huaisang’s waist so he can work his elbows from the latches of his sleeves, let his clothes pool to the floor. It’s impossible to hide how hard he is, and inconceivable that Nie Huaisang doesn’t already know, hasn’t seen— but he grants Jiang Cheng the smallest of mercies by letting his gaze settle on his chest, eyes charting the course of his fingers as they map the raised gnarl of scar tissue cleaving through his pectoral. His thumbnail skates over Jiang Cheng’s nipple almost idly, and Jiang Cheng chokes around his surprised gasp, the friction sending a frisson of pleasure rolling down his spine, and he snares Nie Huaisang by the wrist to hold him still.

“Get on with it.” Jiang Cheng tells himself he’s not begging for it, that it’s a demand, that Nie Huaisang is submitting to him rather than soothing him when he curls his fingers into his palm, bending his wrist back in pacification.

“It, ah.” Nie Huaisang turns his wrist in the cuff of Jiang Cheng’s grip, slipping loose. “Right,” he continues, voice uneven, “you’re right.” He clears his throat. “Just…”

“What?” Jiang Cheng interrupts.

Nie Huaisang glances away, one arm wrapping around himself as he slants over, lifting the jar of wine from the table. He takes a drink, and then another, his lips wet when he finishes. He doesn’t hold it out to Jiang Cheng, instead sparing him from having to work through his nerves to decline it by setting it back down. “Just,” he continues, once he’s straightened himself, shoulders drawn back and chin raised, "the jing, it’s better, when you enjoy yourself. What do you want me to do?”

Jiang Cheng’s heart lurches, uncomfortable, slamming his breath out of him, and Nie Huaisang falters for a painful moment before he remembers himself. “Do what you want,” Jiang Cheng forces out, tongue too thick in his mouth. It doesn’t sound right, but it has to be enough; anything else is too much to speak aloud.

“Jiang Cheng,” Nie Huaisang presses, and Jiang Cheng scowls even as he shudders, feeling his cock twitch against his thigh. Nie Huaisang steps back into his space, drawing them back in together; Jiang Cheng watches his skirts drift over his bare feet before his hands lift between them, piercing through Jiang Cheng’s line of sight. “Ah,” he starts again, measured and guarded, “touch me, too?”

Jiang Cheng hadn’t realised what he was waiting for was permission, not until the moment it lands against him that it’s been given. He grasps Nie Huaisang’s hips again, rough enough to jostle out a gasp, and fans his fingers out, thumbs tracing the buckle of his belt. When he tries to loop his fingers into it, working it loose, Nie Huaisang takes him by the wrist. It’s feather-light, a barely perceptible press of contact, but it slams through him like a blow. “Wait,” Nie Huaisang repeats, fingers tightening on Jiang Cheng’s wrist when he jerks against them. “The curse, when it’s in its later stages, um, manifests?”

“Is this really the time to be precious?” Jiang Cheng points out, rudeness masking relief as he shifts his hand, just slightly, and finds Nie Huaisang is using his hold only as a means to stop Jiang Cheng from retreating, not from resuming. He works the leather free from the clasp, the hand in Nie Huaisang’s grip sweeping up his stomach, over the hitch of his ribs as he sucks in a breath, until he’s hooking his fingers in Nie Huaisang’s collar.

“Show me,” he says, when Nie Huaisang’s belt is unlooped and undone, a lifeless coil on the floor atop Jiang Cheng’s clothes, his nails catching on the clasp keeping the neck of Nie Huaisang’s robe cinched, the bob of Nie Huaisang’s throat as he swallows caressing his knuckles. Jiang Cheng pulls it open with enough disdain to rip the button from its stitching, and it tumbles into the drape of Nie Huaisang’s robes. It comes free a breath later, with a rapid clatter against the floorboards, when Jiang Cheng peels the fabric down the hills of his shoulders until silk gives way to skin.

It’s subtle, at first; a discolouration at his neck, barely perceptible beneath the shadows cast on his skin in the dim candlelight by the brace of Jiang Cheng’s forearms, but as Nie Huaisang shies his face away, eyelids hooding, Jiang Cheng sees the tug of flesh and something other as it shifts over muscle and bone. He rolls his thumb against a streak of it, and Nie Huaisang shivers, shoulders tensing, as Jiang Cheng’s nail catches on a lump; he uses the heel of his palm to turn Nie Huaisang by the shoulder towards the light until he can see him properly. They’re seeds, Jiang Cheng realises, and they’re sprouting, green shoots spidering out from the masses, hard to the touch and dark beneath the sheet of Nie Huaisang’s skin.

Nie Huaisang’s fingers wrap gently in the sleeves of his robes before he eases them off his arms and drops them to the floor between them. His breathy hiss is tinged with a distant sympathy as he watches Jiang Cheng’s quivering hand drag down his chest to press into his dantian, kneading at the slight protrusion of the thick knot of stems gradually strangling his core.

“Oh,” Nie Huaisang murmurs, “it’s gotten worse.”

Jiang Cheng pushes down, harder, and feels as much as he hears Nie Huaisang suck in the breath Jiang Cheng can’t manage to bring himself to take. They remind him of lotuses; how they overwhelm when left to grow without oversight, choking their riverbeds and any and all life sharing the water with them. “Does it hurt?” Jiang Cheng asks, hating the coarse scrape of his voice and the searing brand of his still hard cock against his thigh in equal measure.

Nie Huaisang furrows his brow, considering, as though it’s a question without a straightforward answer. “Not really?” he replies. Jiang Cheng does not feel reassured by it; Nie Huaisang barely even manages to sound convinced. Nie Huaisang must sense it, feel it in the subtle tense of his palm, because he lifts his hand to cup the backs of his knuckles. Then, slow and unsure, Nie Huaisang cranes his neck, turning his face back away from the light to regard Jiang Cheng again. The ends of his loose hair, spilled down his shoulders, brush against their fingers as Nie Huaisang laces them together.

“Jiang Cheng.” There’s a compelling sharpness to it, the way he curls his tongue around his name, but the smile that rises on his lips when Jiang Cheng meets his eyes is soft. “Come to bed.”

He does not pretend to ask, and so Jiang Cheng can’t pretend that it’s not a subdual, a surrender, to be led without hurry by their joined hands, to flow with the prompt of Nie Huaisang’s fingers as they slot into his bare ribs and push. And push, and push, until the backs of Jiang Cheng’s knees hit his bed and he can do nothing but sink into it and shudder as Nie Huaisang follows, pooling into his lap.

“Does it matter,” Jiang Cheng blurts out, spurred by the heat of Nie Huaisang pinning his cock, heavy and real, “how it’s done?” He’s not particularly eager to elaborate, to further unmask his ignorance; Jiang Cheng knows only of Caibu as a cautionary tale, but his knowledge of dual cultivation through heqi is just as scarce.

“Who is penetrated?” Nie Huaisang prompts as his arms circle Jiang Cheng’s shoulders. “Ah, some would answer the cauldron, but it makes no difference in practice. You don’t even need to go that far to establish transference.”

He’s seemingly incapable of humiliation as he says it, leaving Jiang Cheng to shoulder the burden of experiencing shame enough for the both of them. Something sour curdles in his gut, and Jiang Cheng feels his mouth run dry. “And you know that from experience?” he snaps, the flare of jealousy as petty and pathetic as it is resigned.

Jiang Cheng realises all too late that the veneer of his indignation has worn thin. He witnesses, with perfect and mortifying clarity, the moment that Nie Huaisang looks at him and actually sees him, and though he can jerk his face away, dragging his eyes from Nie Huaisang’s mouth as it parts in surprise, there is nowhere he can hide.

“I know that from research,” Nie Huaisang replies, quiet, the assurance skillfully spun as defensiveness, and Jiang Cheng screws his eyes shut, shuddering. Jiang Cheng has never been too difficult to figure out, but Nie Huaisang has always been able to read him better than almost anyone else, when there’s been a need for him to do so. Jiang Cheng had wittingly and willingly yielded to the risk of discovery the moment he’d chosen to come to Qinghe. He can’t even blame Nie Huaisang for simply doing what he does so well, but he can certainly blame himself.

“Jiang Cheng.” Nie Huaisang’s fingers skate along the line of his jaw, encircling it. “Can I see you?” Though the pitch of his voice drifts upward, bearing every resemblance to a question, Jiang Cheng feels the insistence in the pinch of his grip, the pressure abating only when Jiang Cheng opens his eyes and tips his face back to meet Nie Huaisang’s gaze.

“It needs to be good for you,” Nie Huaisang tells him. Not it’s better if, not it should be; it’s no longer an invitation to him but an instruction, and Jiang Cheng groans, cut off, in the back of his mouth, hips squirming beneath Nie Huaisang’s thighs. “What do you want?”

“I don’t care,” Jiang Cheng grits out, voice tight, every word an exertion. It’s the only cession he has the courage to give; an ugly, barbed thing that he can’t wield. He can only entrust it to Nie Huaisang and hope in his hands he can read it for what it is; can hear in it You and Anything. He’s fucked into his own fist until he’s stripped his cock raw more times than he can count to Nie Huaisang’s sweat-slick thighs clamping down around him; to the filthy, fluttering rasp of his broken voice; to Can you endure it for a bit longer? and Can you take it? and That’s it. It had utterly ruined him for anyone and anything else. How is he supposed to be able to ever admit that? How is he supposed to be able to ever accept someone else having so much power over him?

“All right,” Nie Huaisang replies, with such a fondness that it’s frightening, and Jiang Cheng makes a terrible, bereft sound as Nie Huaisang climbs out of his lap, feet kicking out against the floorboards. Nie Huaisang holds out his hand, palm upturned, his elbow tucked against his ribs, forcing Jiang Cheng’s eyes to the fan of his fingers and the braid of the flower stems enmeshed with his skin. “Can you take Zidian off for me?”

When Jiang Cheng freezes up, jaw clenching, Nie Huaisang does not say Now, does not ask Don’t you trust me? He smiles a nervous smile, tilts his head, and admits, “It’s a little daunting.” It gives Jiang Cheng the space to scowl, reluctant, even as he’s already thumbing at the cuff of the tail around his wrist.

“Better?” Jiang Cheng asks when the deed is done, too breathless to sound snide, pushing his knees together with a shiver as Nie Huaisang curls his fingers around the chain. He’s absurdly grateful when Nie Huaisang only takes it and sets it aside; he knows if Nie Huaisang were to slide the ring onto his finger that Zidian wouldn't reject him, and Jiang Cheng is not ready to confront that in the open just yet, between them, if ever.

“Better,” Nie Huaisang confirms, bright, as he steps back into place, the bump of their knees together prompting Jiang Cheng to spread his legs out, unthinking; his head swims as he gasps out, and when he flinches, trying to press them back together, Nie Huaisang catches him at the knees. He hooks his thumbs in behind them, and Jiang Cheng slides back, slipping on his elbows, until his shoulders are flat against the sheets, as Nie Huaisang starts folding him in on himself. He should be ashamed, and so he is; Jiang Cheng throws his head back, arching cruelly, thighs trembling as Nie Huaisang draws himself up into a kneel between them.

“Here,” Nie Huaisang murmurs, and then his hand is cupping the small of his spine, his hips hitching, urging him further up the bed. Jiang Cheng lifts his arms above his head, fingers clawing through the sprawl of his tangled hair to grip at the sheets for purchase, and when Nie Huaisang braces over him, he feels his cock push against the crease of his thigh, the hot snub of it punching a broken whine out of him. “That’s it.”

“Do you love the sound of your own voice that much?” Jiang Cheng stutters out breathlessly, agitation strung over his fraying nerves, the race of his pulse battering his throat. “You really— you can’t even be quick about something when it’s killing you. Unbelievable.”

Nie Huaisang’s soft laugh does nothing to temper the hot clench of need panging low in his gut, and Jiang Cheng grimaces, scraping his teeth against his bottom lip, as he feels his cock throb, precome smearing up the crease of his thigh. “I, ah, don’t think the danger I’m in is as immediate as you’re making it out to be.”

Jiang Cheng feels him shift against the backs of his thighs, feels the twinge in his hips as his knees are angled back towards his chest, and it’s awkward, for how much shorter Nie Huaisang is than him, when Nie Huaisang bows over him. Jiang Cheng starts to try and disentangle his fingers from the sheets and his hair, so he can pull himself up for a better look, but Nie Huaisang’s fingers against his elbow stop him in place. When he draws his hand away, Jiang Cheng doesn’t try again, even when he feels the clasp of his hand around his cock through his pants.

“Stop,” Jiang Cheng groans out, because it’s too staggering a reminder of how hard he’s been for the better part of this entire encounter and how close he is to coming, but Nie Huaisang only hushes him.

“Jiang Cheng,” Nie Huaisang soothes, and Jiang Cheng plants his feet against the mattress as he’s coaxed into a shape Nie Huaisang can use to strip his pants away. “You can come more than once,” he continues, when he’s got his hand back around Jiang Cheng’s bare cock and is setting a pace that could only be torturous, the pull of his tight fingers long and languorous, “I know you can.”

He feels the teasing trace of Nie Huaisang’s hair trailing against his stomach, and when he slants his chin towards his clavicle, breath catching in the uncomfortable fold of his throat, Nie Huaisang isn’t even looking at his face. His back is bent as if he’s in prayer, intent only on the sight of Jiang Cheng’s cock shifting through his hand, Jiang Cheng’s insensate little thrusts causing his strokes to stutter inelegantly. Jiang Cheng makes a sound, something whining and broken off, and Nie Huaisang knows what it means before he does, brings his other arm down to pin him by the hips as he chokes on his own spit and comes.

“There you go,” Nie Huaisang remarks, voice scratchy and breathless and pleased, and Jiang Cheng doesn’t miss it, how when he releases Jiang Cheng’s hips and tips his face up, he has to wipe his chin against the back of his wrist to clean where Jiang Cheng’s spend has streaked up his face, and that’s— Jiang Cheng lets his head fall back, teeth gritting, as he feels his cock twitch again, cupped in Nie Huaisang’s palm.

“Shut up,” Jiang Cheng groans out, flinching as Nie Huaisang slips from the sprawl of his thighs, letting his hips fall back to the bed. There’s no bite to it, the protest as wrung out and trembling as the rest of him, but Nie Huaisang lets him have it, lets him lay there and pretend he’s gathering himself back together. When his hand returns to his cock, Jiang Cheng actually whimpers, toes curling, mouth pulling into a frown, but Nie Huaisang only touches him as much as he needs, wiping him down with the corner of one of his sheets. Jiang Cheng opens his eyes again the moment he knows Nie Huaisang is done; when he feels his weight slanting the mattress as he stretches out beside him, feels the command in his palm as it rubs at his bicep until Jiang Cheng unwinds his fingers from his hair and lowers his arms.

Nie Huaisang has undressed the rest of the way and is now watching him pensively when Jiang Cheng opens his eyes to chance a look. It’s somewhat reassuring to see that he doesn’t look entirely unaffected, skin flushing prettily, bruise-red mouth curving into a smile when their gazes meet. “That worked,” he instructs gently, cheek pressing into the shelf of his own palm as his eyelids hood, “we can stop here.”

Jiang Cheng turns away, glancing to the ceiling, swallowing around the catch in his throat as his eyes begin to burn. “Oh, so you’re feeling rushed, now? Interesting how you always find your sense of haste when it concerns getting me to leave.” It’s a little upset, and it’s a little underhanded; Jiang Cheng doesn’t take all that much satisfaction in hearing Nie Huaisang’s sharp intake of breath. He can barely help himself from this kind of sabotage as usual fare, let alone now, when he’s been stripped back and Nie Huaisang just seems calm, collected and certain.

“Jiang Cheng,” Nie Huaisang mutters, his exhalation edged with exasperation, “really.” Jiang Cheng turns his face back before he needs to be told, and Nie Huaisang reaches between them, using the fingers of his free hand to comb Jiang Cheng’s hair back from his face. “Who could not want you here?” he adds, quieter, and Jiang Cheng shudders, feeling the weight of it settle around his neck.

“It’s a bit late to flatter me. No,” Jiang Cheng interjects, when he sees Nie Huaisang open his mouth only to close it, “speak what you have to say.”

Nie Huaisang licks at his swollen lip. “I think,” he begins, with flimsy hesitance, “you’re creating your own anger because it’s easier for you than the alternative.” His fingers drift down from Jiang Cheng’s hair, tracing his cheek, circling his tensed jaw, more idle than intentioned. “You’ve always been like this, ever since we were children. Haven’t you learned by now that the outcome is the same, when you deny yourself something in thinking it will save you from eventually being denied it?”

“And what?” Jiang Cheng scoffs, eyes narrowing into a glare, the point of it already blunted down by the roll of Nie Huaisang’s thumb down the column of his throat as he swallows. “You’re no better. What’s the alternative, then?” He’s not entirely right, but he’s not completely wrong; Nie Huaisang’s position isn’t especially lofty, considering their present circumstances, and it is laughable that he’s lecturing from it. Jiang Cheng might be the exact type to conceal he’s afflicted with hua tu bing, but Nie Huaisang is the one that’s actually guilty of the charge.

“That I’m telling the truth,” Nie Huaisang answers, the flutter of his fingers settling against Jiang Cheng’s collarbone, mouth pinching, the furrow of his brow turning strange and pained. “You’re right. I am no better, but at least here I can admit it.” He rises onto his elbow, and Jiang Cheng watches, bound in place by his gaze, as he leans over him, the tangle of his hair overflowing its frame around his face, eyes dark and wide. “I know who I am, Jiang Cheng,” he whispers at last, breath grazing his lips, head tipping in appraisal, “do you know who you are?”

Yes, Jiang Cheng thinks, grim, as he lashes out, fisting Nie Huaisang’s hair at his nape and dragging him down. Nie Huaisang makes a desperate little noise against the seal of Jiang Cheng’s mouth, and his bough breaks beneath Jiang Cheng’s teeth nipping at his bottom lip, hiccuping, his hands clutching at Jiang Cheng’s face, his throat, his shoulders, blunt nails scratching lines into his skin. It’s vicious and messy and then Nie Huaisang cranes his neck and it’s perfect, Jiang Cheng’s jaw held open by the knead of Nie Huaisang’s thumbs as he licks into his mouth, swallowing Jiang Cheng’s sob.

“Wait,” Nie Huaisang pants against the corner of his mouth, unable to pull away any further than that, collared in place by Jiang Cheng’s hand, “I can’t, I can’t draw from you again so soon—”

Jiang Cheng tugs on his hair, cutting him off, soothing the sting with a kiss, open-mouthed and wet, against his chin. “Then don’t,” he grunts, mouthing it into the jut of the bone, teeth scraping his skin, “then don’t, who even said that’s what we’re doing?”

“Oh,” Nie Huaisang chokes out, “oh,” and then he’s angling their mouths back together again, kissing him properly, shifting from insatiable to irrevocable, backing Jiang Cheng into the corner of such a slow pace that it hurts to match it, hips bucking up against Nie Huaisang’s thigh as he straddles his lap. He feels Nie Huaisang’s fingers scrabble against his knuckles, and then he’s working Jiang Cheng’s grip free from his hair and pushing it back against the bed, Jiang Cheng’s other hand still joining it, wrists fettered in place at either side of his face, his throat curving cruelly as he chases the retreat of Nie Huaisang’s mouth.

Even with the abnormal pearls and threads of the flowers and their seeds pebbling his skin, he makes a beautiful sight, and Jiang Cheng shivers, half-wrecked, as Nie Huaisang laughs delightedly when he sits back and Jiang Cheng leaves his hands where they’ve been left.

“Have some patience,” Nie Huaisang chides in reply to the gutted contortion of Jiang Cheng’s aggrieved expression.

“Have some propriety,” Jiang Cheng hisses back, ruined, as he watches Nie Huaisang palm his own cock, flushed red and leaking from the tip. He squirms his hips when Nie Huaisang lifts his weight away from the sturdy cage of his thighs across Jiang Cheng’s lap, scratching uselessly at the sheets rucked up beneath his head. “If you leave me here, I’ll—” die, he finishes in his head, biting down viciously on his bottom lip to leash his voice.

“I’m not leaving you,” Nie Huaisang stammers out, breathy and divine and shameless, a whine stringing itself out of his parted mouth as he settles back into the basin of Jiang Cheng’s lap. “I won’t leave you.” It’s a promise and it’s a threat, and Jiang Cheng whimpers when Nie Huaisang grips his cock in a too-slick grip; he cranes his neck, panting, and sees his fingers are soaked in oil, from— somewhere, in his bed, and Jiang Cheng can’t even breathe, can’t even think, his entire body coiling up, thoughts stutter-stalling on that little knife of information, that obscene revelation.

“Come here,” Nie Huaisang commands, “come up to me,” and Jiang Cheng obeys without question, surges up until he’s seated, Nie Huaisang’s thighs clamped around his hips, Jiang Cheng’s fingers skating against his cock as he tries to get his hand around them both. “That’s it.” The praise is so insignificant, but Jiang Cheng’s reaction to it is immense, inordinate, gasping and wrecked and pathetic and undone. Nie Huaisang lets him unravel, unjudged, pressing kisses against his sweat-damp temple and his hair as he shapes Jiang Cheng’s fingers around them both, squeezing down on his knuckles to direct Jiang Cheng’s grip to tighten until it’s just on the right side of aching, his strokes clipped, the flick of his wrist punishing.

“Good,” he pants, and Jiang Cheng shakes, feeling as maddened and mindless as Nie Huaisang sounds, thumbnail snubbing at Nie Huaisang’s slit, swiping away the beading precome there, his own cock throbbing where it clumsily ruts against Nie Huaisang’s shaft. “Good, good,” and then he’s choking on his own breath, face crumpling with— discomfort, almost, but not quite, not entirely, and Jiang Cheng tucks his forehead into the crook of Nie Huaisang’s neck, looks down between them, at the filthy crook of his fingers as they press up into himself.

“Fuck,” Jiang Cheng croaks, “what,” because he’s not entirely— ignorant, but seeing it is different, seeing it is too much, makes his face hot and tears prickle at the corners of his eyes.

Nie Huaisang bucks into his fist, groaning, his fingers sliding free to wrap around Jiang Cheng’s wrist, digging into the tremor of his pulse, whipping beneath his skin like wildfire. “I’m almost,” Nie Huaisang whines out, “ah, stop, wait, wait, help me up, help me ride you,” and the thin wire of Jiang Cheng’s rationality snaps, his palms grappling Nie Huaisang’s hips and his ass, blind and bruising, as he hefts him up onto his knees, holds him open with the single-minded purpose of being good, using every ounce of focus he can scrounge up in his head.

Nie Huaisang’s fingers fumble and flail around his cock, awkward, knees slipping, and then he’s arching his back with a garbled wail, the sound slammed out of him by the hot snub of the head of Jiang Cheng’s cock against his hole, tip catching on the rim. Jiang Cheng feels his strength buckle in on itself, and Nie Huaisang chokes on his own tongue as Jiang Cheng’s hands begin to tug him down to seat in his lap, the blunt intrusion of his cock stretching him wide, keeping him open.

Jiang Cheng doesn’t know where to look, doesn’t know if he even should, if he’s supposed to be allowed the sight of Nie Huaisang’s shattering expression or the view of his own cock fucking into him, the sensations immense and intolerable, too hot and too tight and too slick. He tries to lean back, tries to steal snippets of both, and it jostles the shove of his cock into an angle that rips a shuddering scream right from the pit of Nie Huaisang’s chest as he comes, not even half way down his shaft, the backs of his thighs quaking, the bite of his nails against Jiang Cheng’s back breaking skin. Jiang Cheng stops, a groan shaking out of his mouth, and Nie Huaisang drags a hand up to palm at his nape, fingers snagging in his tangled hair.

“Move,” Nie Huaisang begs, splintered and shivering and spent, “move, A-Cheng,” and Jiang Cheng has to sink his teeth into Nie Huaisang’s neck and suck a bruise into the tender skin there just to gag his sob as he wrenches Nie Huaisang down, seats him fully in his lap.

“Good,” Nie Huaisang breathes out, patting down his hair, his neck, his shoulders, anywhere he can reach while keeping Jiang Cheng circled by the cradle of his arms and legs. “You’re almost there.” Jiang Cheng shifts his hips, testing the waters, and earns a senseless croon of praise; he lets one of his hands wander up to flatten against the swerve of the small of Nie Huaisang’s spine and Nie Huaisang’s fingers tug at his hair in turn, the sting blooming out from his scalp. “Can you come again?” Jiang Cheng unlatches his teeth from Nie Huaisang’s neck, laps at the copper tang of the blood that’s welled up from the broken vessels, and Nie Huaisang tightens down, hips jerking. “Ah.” Nie Huaisang turns his head, lips ghosting against the shell of Jiang Cheng’s ear, breath gusting against his hair. “Can you come for me?”

“Stop talking,” Jiang Cheng grunts out, snapping his hips, the rough grind of his cock punishing him as much as it punishes Nie Huaisang.

“But you like it,” Nie Huaisang murmurs, and Jiang Cheng burrows his face back into the crook of Nie Huaisang’s neck as he comes, the whimper wrung out of him a guttural, wrecked thing, his thighs chafing and his hips aching. He squeezes his eyes shut, tears catching in his eyelashes, and there’s a moment where his head rolls back in on itself, thoughts whiting out, senses narrowed down to the gentling comb of Nie Huaisang’s fingers through his hair, and then the slap of cold air on his damp thighs has him gasping back into awareness as Nie Huaisang gets his wobbly knees underneath him. He manages two stilted movements before his elbows buckle and he promptly collapses on his side, limp, breath wheezing out of him as Jiang Cheng jerks unconsciously towards him, already too late.

“Ah,” Nie Huaisang blurts out, then, “ow,” and then he’s laughing; a ridiculous, strained sound, his teeth baring in a grin even as his brow furrows with discomfort.

“What,” Jiang Cheng splutters, reeling, “are you hurt?” Nie Huaisang shakes his head, and Jiang Cheng feels his mouth pull into an incredulous scowl, no edge to it, just as there’s no strength behind the shove of his hand against Nie Huaisang’s bicep. “Then compose yourself. Stop trying to move if you haven’t even got the coordination to get where you want to go. Hopeless.” It tumbles out of him in a rush, all bluster without bite, and he feels his scowl wavering as Nie Huaisang only smiles up at him, forsaking any pretension of contrition. It’s entirely too honest, and Nie Huaisang doesn’t let Jiang Cheng escape it, or him, fingers lacing with Jiang Cheng’s when Jiang Cheng starts to draw back.

“Sorry,” Nie Huaisang replies, unrepentant, the gleam in his eyes dangerous as he narrows them. “I was, ah, well, feeling very full—” Nie Huaisang cuts himself off with a yelp, having the decency at least to blush when Jiang Cheng pushes at him again. “Sorry! Can you get the cloth from my wash basin for me?”

“Shameless,” Jiang Cheng berates, cheeks burning, “stay there.” He’s steadier on his feet than Nie Huaisang as he rises, but not by a far margin; exhaustion has begun to set over the shudder of his well-worked muscles, and once he reaches the basin, Jiang Cheng splashes some water onto his face, as though it will stave off the tide of sleep lapping at the shores of his consciousness. He wipes himself down, rushed, then rinses it clean and carries it back, dropping it into Nie Huaisang’s outstretched hand.

“Why didn’t you trust me?” Jiang Cheng asks, regretting it immediately; Nie Huaisang sucks in a breath that can’t solely be attributed to the scrape of the warm cloth between his thighs. Jiang Cheng leaves the rest unsaid, doesn’t think he could settle on any one occurrence if he tried, anyway, and Nie Huaisang glances away as Jiang Cheng crawls back into bed and kneels beside him.

“I did,” Nie Huaisang says, soft, then, “I do.”

Jiang Cheng watches his face, the complicated, fraught little crease that settles in between his knit brows, and can’t help his snort. “Do you expect me to believe that?” It’s dismissive, hurt, and Jiang Cheng hates the sound of his voice and resents how it’s not even about tonight, or the last few weeks, but something else that’s long dead and should be left laid to rest.

“Jiang Cheng,” Nie Huaisang whispers, turning to face him, cheek pillowing against his folded elbow, other palm settling in the valley between both of their bodies, fingers fanning out. “I have always trusted in you.”

Jiang Cheng doesn’t know what to do with that; doesn’t know if there’s anything he can. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Would you have kept my confidence?” Nie Huaisang asks, emphatic yet reposeful, and Jiang Cheng grits his teeth, jaw creaking. “Would you have helped me?”

Nie Huaisang doesn’t need an answer; doesn’t need Jiang Cheng to tell him something he already knows. He can’t help but think of Wen Qing, as he still does, at times; as anyone might and would, when it came down to young loves and infatuations and longstanding regrets. He thinks of the vow she saw through, too, remembers the comb she had pressed back into his hand and curled his fingers back around with utter conviction. She had seen, and come to learn, as Nie Huaisang surely had, somewhere, over the years, Jiang Cheng’s promises only carried themselves so far, only ran so deep. That there was a limit, always a limit, to what he was willing to lose when he pledged to give.

Jiang Cheng swallows around the tightness in his raw throat, lets his eyes drop to the prod of Nie Huaisang’s fingertips against the hill of his knee. “Did it work?” he asks instead, though that’s a question no safer than the last.

“I’m not sure,” Nie Huaisang admits, palm closing over his knee gently. He gives it a shake, then pulls back to haul himself up onto his hands and knees, huffing out a drained breath. “Will you stay?”

“Yes,” Jiang Cheng says, because it’s the only answer he can give.

“Then come here,” Nie Huaisang orders him, tender but firm, as he holds his hand out for Jiang Cheng to take. “We can try again after some sleep. Maybe it needs multiple draws from a cauldron, or a certain amount of jing. There’s time left to figure it out.”

Jiang Cheng takes his hand and lets himself be led, until Nie Huaisang has him rolled onto his side, his back pressed to Jiang Cheng’s chest. He drapes Jiang Cheng’s arm across his ribs, and laces their fingers together, clutching the join of their hands against his dantian. Jiang Cheng tucks his chin against the crown of Nie Huaisang’s hair and closes his eyes with a shaky breath, grateful he no longer has to see the other man’s face; that Nie Huaisang can no longer see his.

In Want of Humbling

Jiang Cheng has long grown out of being accustomed to sharing his bed with another body, but his sleep entangled with Nie Huaisang is restful enough that he only stirs when he feels the chill of the twilight air against his bare chest.

There’s a muffled sound; a whimpering retch, and Jiang Cheng snaps to attention, struggling to his knees, fingers clumsily shaping around a sigil to relight the room’s candles. At the edge of the bed, bent in on himself, is Nie Huaisang, his quaking back turned towards him, his skin pulled too tightly over the knobs of his spine and shoulderblades as he starts to choke.

“Huaisang!” Jiang Cheng calls out, and Nie Huaisang jerks one of his hands up from the bed, gesturing frantically behind himself, towards his door. Jiang Cheng doesn’t need any further instruction; he clambers from the bed and has just enough sense to pull a set of inner clothes from the floor around himself before he races out into the corridor, hands shaking around the ties.

Nie Jianhong sees him come spilling out from halfway up the hall, and already has his xun pulled from the lining of his robes before Jiang Cheng has to muddle through his senses enough to get his mouth to work. For a terrifying moment, as Nie Jianhong races towards him, Jiang Cheng thinks he’s going to be made to leave, backed out of the inner sanctum of the Unclean Realm and left in some purgatory of waiting, but he’s simply passed by, allowed to stumble back in and watch, stunned, as Nie Jianhong goes to his knees at Nie Huaisang’s feet.

“Er-gongzi, please take your hand from your mouth,” Nie Jianhong bids, calm, and Nie Huaisang does; Jiang Cheng can see the shift of his arm and the red glisten of blood slicking his fingers as they’re pulled free from between his teeth. Jiang Cheng finds himself stepping closer, aware of his uselessness but unable to stay back, and as he circles around the bed he catches a glimpse of Nie Huaisang’s face where it hangs, tucked towards his chest. There is blood leaking from his closed eyes, his nose, his lips. Desperate puffs of shallow breaths are leaking through the seal of his mouth, delicate features screwed up in agony, and Jiang Cheng lurches forward the last few steps, helpless, until he can touch his hand tentatively to the swell of Nie Huaisang’s bare shoulder.

Their state of undress; the bruises tarring Nie Huaisang’s hips and throat; everything incriminating and ruinous is so distantly placed in his mind, so far removed. There will surely come a time where Jiang Cheng is ashamed, later; right now, he can’t imagine that time coming soon.

Nie Jianhong rises from his kneel. “Jiang-daren,” he says, and Jiang Cheng flinches, gaze snapping up from the tight line of Nie Huaisang’s profile, “have you brought a weapon with you?”

“What?” Jiang Cheng splutters, because what else is he supposed to say to that? What relevance does it even have to anything that’s happening? He opens his mouth, intending to say more when it comes to him, but Nie Huaisang shaking his hand from his shoulder distracts him, and when Jiang Cheng looks down, Nie Huaisang is slapping the flat of his palm against the underside of his wrist. Zidian, he thinks. “Yes,” he answers, rushed, striding towards the small table he vaguely remembers Nie Huaisang standing around the night before. Thankfully, it’s not hidden; Jiang Cheng didn’t realise how naked and vulnerable his wrist felt without it until it has slithered back in place. “Why?” he asks when he’s back, hand returning to Nie Huaisang’s shoulder.

Nie Jianhong’s gaze flicks away, glancing over the contorted crumple of Nie Huaisang’s expression before he returns his attention to Jiang Cheng, chin dipping with a deference that would be suiting in any other situation but the one they have all found themselves in. “Sect Leader Nie is qi deviating.”

Jiang Cheng feels his blood run terribly cold, the chill on the air suddenly sharp enough to feel as if it’s steadily flaying at his skin. He lets himself sink down onto the mattress astride Nie Huaisang, their knees bumping as he numbly pulls one of the bunched sheets over his lap. “You little fool,” Jiang Cheng hisses, voice cracking, “just what did you do?”

Nie Huaisang makes a snuffling sound that would surely be a laugh, if there was space in his throat for it to come out, and blood drips from his chin to speckle his covered thighs.

“This is hardly funny.” Jiang Cheng cannot help but sound bitter; anyone would allow him that, here, surely. But he hates how bereaved he sounds beneath his brusqueness. He can’t have slept for more than a few hours: what had Nie Huaisang done to himself in that time to cause this? Or was this the result of their transference, the bodily rebellion of Jiang Cheng’s jing when applied to Nie Huaisang’s qi? “Just be quiet and behave,” he adds, before he can succumb to Was this me?

There’s a clatter from the neck of the room, and Jiang Cheng throws a look over his shoulder to watch as another person enters; an older man, notably thin and long-limbed even in the thick bundle of his robes. The man, thankfully, closes the door that Jiang Cheng had left wide open behind him, and balks only for a half-second before he’s bowing, half-braided hair fanning his harsh features, hairpin clasped in the fist he cups his palm around.

“Esteemed Sect Leader Jiang,” the man greets. “I am physician Ma Zan. Please forgive my sorry state.”

There’s a lot of things Jiang Cheng will gladly forgive if it will make this supposed physician cross the room to Nie Huaisang with more haste. He waves off the bow snappishly, and Ma Zan scurries across, holding his hairpin up for Nie Jianhong to take. Jiang Cheng does not miss how his eyes widen as they catch on the bruising, but his expression is quickly smoothed over into something resembling professional indifference, and he tosses a cloth-wrapped bundle on the bed before he takes Nie Huaisang’s chin between his fingers.

Nie Huaisang opens his mouth, and Ma Zan tsks when he pushes his tongue flat with the pad of his thumb, squinting down his throat. Behind him, Nie Jianhong has gathered up his hair in a loose twist and is piling it against his head to clip in place. It’s Jiang Cheng who laughs, now, the sound strung out of him by the sheer inanity of what he’s seeing. As if Nie Huaisang choking on his own blood as his xuewei rupture one by one by one is— unremarkable.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult for Jiang Cheng to convince himself that the knot threading itself through his ribs is agitation and not apprehension. He lets his hand drift from Nie Huaisang’s shoulder, fists it in his lap instead, crumpling the thin cotton of his inner robe.

“I see it,” says Ma Zan. He leans to fumble for his discarded bundle, blindly parting the layers and tracing his fingers over the steel implements holstered within the fabric until he stops on the teeth of a set of pliers. “Sect Leader Jiang, I must trouble you for a moment.”

“Yes,” Jiang Cheng snaps. It’s all too sharp; he crinkles his nose at the whip of his voice. “What, tell me.”

Ma Zan’s gaze maintains its dagger-keen focus on Nie Huaisang’s mouth as he slides the pliers in past his parted teeth, but not yet further; Jiang Cheng can see the discomforted flick of Nie Huaisang’s tongue as it rebukes the intrusion. “Please hold him down, and watch his back. If any more of his points burst, tell me immediately.”

Jiang Cheng untwists his hands from his thighs to use them to drag himself further up the mattress, until he can circle around behind, his knees settling against Nie Huaisang’s hips, his hands cuffing Nie Huaisang’s wrists, trapping them at his sides. He chokes around another disbelieving, desolate laugh, and feels Nie Huaisang’s fingers curl against him, soft enough to be dismissed as idle, ignored as unintentional.

Jiang Cheng squeezes down, sets his jaw, and nods jerkily to Ma Zan. He sees the spasm sweep up Nie Huaisang’s spine before he hears him gag, the sound a revolting gurgle, slick with spit and far too much blood.

“Ah, Nie-qianbei,” Ma Zan mutters, absent, his elbow stuttering towards his chest as the plucking motion blooming from his shoulder meets resistance, “it’s coming free. I need the basin.” Nie Jianhong steps out of Jiang Cheng’s field of view, and he catches Ma Zan’s eyes when he glances up from the sweat beading between the rungs of Nie Huaisang’s vertebrae, painfully pronounced beneath the taut pull of his trembling skin. “Be ready, Sect Leader Jiang.”

The moment Nie Jianhong has balanced the wash basin in Nie Huaisang’s lap, arms propped up on Ma Zan’s shoulders, Ma Zan pulls, and Jiang Cheng has to pin all his strength into his fists as Nie Huaisang screams, raw and ruined, like his throat has been cut through, fingers scrabbling at the lip of the mattress as he tries to fight himself out of the snare of Jiang Cheng and Ma Zan’s joined clutches. Jiang Cheng very nearly loses his hold, fingers shaking loose with a repulsed shudder, but he bears down, grits his teeth, and presses his forehead between Nie Huaisang’s shoulderblades, enduring. It’s a lifetime before Ma Zan pulls the obstruction free; Jiang Cheng hears it in the rattling, sopping breath Nie Huaisang sucks in, feels it in the jerk of his ribs before he sags forward, vomiting, blood and something denser splattering into the basin.

Jiang Cheng feels something wet drip down his forehead and snag in his eyebrow; he thinks its sweat, for a breath, before he tips his chin and his vision blurs red. “Blood,” Jiang Cheng stutters out, stunned, “he’s bleeding.”

“Which point, Sect Leader Jiang?” Ma Zan questions, shaking his pliers out.

Jiang Cheng just blinks at it, lips parted, the sight striking the answer from his head.

“Shen zhu,” Nie Huaisang rasps, hoarse, then, “keep going.”

“No—” Jiang Cheng interjects, the protestation rushing out of him in a heaving breath, and Nie Huaisang’s wrists test at his grip snappishly.

“You’ve broken every point in your mouth,” Ma Zan argues, sighing. “You are done for now.”

Nie Huaisang makes a senseless sound, nettled and infantile. He sways forward, and Jiang Cheng feels the precise moment all control seeps out of the swing of his body. Jiang Cheng yelps, bitten off, as he slings his arms around Nie Huaisang’s waist to stop him from crumpling to the floor, Nie Jianhong and Ma Zan steadying the basin, water sloshing out to soak Nie Huaisang’s shins.

“Quickly, get him up,” Ma Zan orders, twisting out from beneath the half-tipped basin and between Nie Jianhong’s arms, “up, before he drowns,” and Jiang Cheng does, palm smoothing up to clasp against his pectoral, the bar of his forearm drawn tight across his sternum. Between the jumble of the three of them, they get Nie Huaisang’s head tipped back against Jiang Cheng’s shoulder. When Jiang Cheng turns, just for a moment, tilting his face away to take a breath that isn’t pressed to Nie Huaisang’s sweat-damp hair, his gaze hitches on a shape in the water of the basin, floating within the cloudy film of blood and bile.

The thick stem of a lotus flower, the sepals at the tip already peeling away to reveal the pink petals nested within.

Somewhere, between the soiled sheets being stripped back from the bed and the dried blood being gently dabbed from Nie Huaisang’s face, Jiang Cheng pulls the rest of his clothes around himself and steps out, over the raised threshold, and into the hall.

The sun is beginning to rise, and Jiang Cheng is aware of the frost on the air, feels how the floors beneath his bare feet have been washed with cold. It’s centring, in a way; almost meditative, in how it keeps him to the ground, holds him into his own body, as he starts to wander without particular direction or destination.

Though it is the hour that the Unclean Realm should be waking, as should any other place, everywhere Jiang Cheng goes has been stripped of its life; the halls are bared, unguarded and uninhabited by the living and spirit alike. Jiang Cheng eventually finds himself in the small inner courtyard that swathes Nie Huaisang’s private quarters, and he is not sure, entirely, how long he has been sitting on the stairs staring out at nothing of consequence when Nie Jianhong approaches him; only that it must be quite some time, for how high the sun has risen during his study.

“How long?” Jiang Cheng asks, after he has turned his face back to the garden, away from Nie Jianhong and the pillar his frame makes where it has stopped, stooped beneath the archway. He suspects it is a futile effort even as he speaks; Nie Jianhong has proven already that he is loyal to his master, and in the habit of keeping his master’s secrets.

Jiang Cheng is not sure how to feel about that. He knows how he should feel about that, that he should be glad Nie Huaisang is not entirely alone, that there are people he can and does take the comfort in leaning on, but— he has always found it easier to be begrudged than beneficent when he perceives a personal slight the offender has in no way intended to land. It is not Nie Huaisang’s fault his people care for him. It is not Nie Huaisang’s debt to Jiang Cheng to deny himself ever having someone to serve as his right hand just because Jiang Cheng does not; because Jiang Cheng cannot, when that position at his side was only ever meant to be filled by one, and now it is ruined for the shape and space of anyone else.

“Two years after his accession,” says Nie Jianhong, after he has taken a long pause and an even longer breath, as if to better measure out his words and weigh the heft of the divulgence. “Save the last year, they have been infrequent.”

As though that could bring him any comfort. Jiang Cheng shakes his head to himself, a scornful chuckle sliding through his teeth before he clenches them, fingernails scratching at the wood of the stair beneath him.

“He doesn’t cultivate with the sabre,” Jiang Cheng mutters under his breath, casting a glance towards the overhang of the roof. “He doesn’t even cultivate with the sword.” At all rests heavy on his tongue; he swallows it back.

Nie Jianhong does not answer, and after a beat Jiang Cheng hears the scuff of his boots and feels the creaking sag of the step as Nie Jianhong toes past him, retreating into the courtyard. What little he’s given Jiang Cheng seems to be his limit, and it’s all the more unsettling and unbearable a revelation than what Jiang Cheng could have ever extrapolated from silence. Jiang Cheng wishes he had never asked; wishes more that Nie Jianhong had never answered.

Jiang Cheng rises to his feet, long after the dark line of Nie Jianhong’s figure has swept itself from his sight, and he turns back to head inside. He knows that it is not for any kindness he feels towards Nie Huaisang that he returns to Nie Huaisang’s room, but for a self-serving selfishness. It is all that much harder for a person to leave when they are watched; perhaps, if Jiang Cheng keeps Nie Huaisang in an erebus beyond the one sunk low in his chest that keeps his want for things he shouldn’t have, he will not awake alone again.

Nie Huaisang sleeps through until the dawning hours of the following morning. Jiang Cheng is not quite asleep, and so he easily wakes when he feels the tentative brush of fingertips against his arm; when he turns onto his side, blinking the blur from his eyes, Nie Huaisang’s attention is fixed on him, and he is all too wound-wrought to hide the tender wonder on his face that Jiang Cheng is there with him at all.

The sight slides between his ribs like a knife, deeper and all the more dangerous than Jiang Cheng thinks Nie Huaisang could ever intend to do or hurt him with.

Jiang Cheng reaches between them only because he can, flicking his nail between Nie Huaisang’s shaped eyebrows to illicit a grumbling gasp. “Don’t even start,” Jiang Cheng tells him, quiet, as he rubs his thumb over the welt to soothe the fleeting sting. “Stay here.”

It takes him some time to find a steward. The inner house is still sealed off from the rest of the Unclean Realm, and though Jiang Cheng has been allowed his comings and goings, few others appear to have been afforded that freedom. When he had been first barred, from the outside looking in, Jiang Cheng had reasonably assumed the purpose was to keep others out. Now, having looked from the inside out, Jiang Cheng has learned, without needing to be taught, that it means to serve the use of keeping Nie Huaisang locked in.

Jiang Cheng is not sure what to ask for when he has someone to ask, and so he asks for Ma Zan. Nie Huaisang is asleep again when Jiang Cheng returns, curled in on himself in a lazy, relaxed drape, the settle-swell of his back steady, and so Jiang Cheng plucks a book from one of his shelves for the sake of busying himself and whittles away the time until Ma Zan arrives, two servants on his heels.

Nie Huaisang is pettish in his second waking, mumbling monosyllabic gripes as Ma Zan enlists Jiang Cheng to help him haul him up into a seated position. One of the servants has brought a tray of medicinal soup, water, and something of more substance for Jiang Cheng to dull the edge of his own hunger; the other has sheets, gauze, salves.

While the curse has been washed from his golden core, Jiang Cheng’s jing intermingling with Nie Huaisang’s qi to kill the lotus flowers down to their roots, the seeds and stems both yet remain within his body. Ma Zan muses to himself more than explains that they will have to be cut out, and Nie Huaisang will have to remain awake and aware for the ones ravelled around his dantian.

Nie Huaisang is— subdued, as he is sliced into. His skin loses the little lively colour that it’s only just barely regained, setting into pallid wax. He is not silent; his breath hitches around pained gasps, groans, but he’s quiet.

Jiang Cheng watches him from where he’s seated beside him on the bed, as he carefully channels his own spiritual energy into Nie Huaisang’s meridians, fingers tucked into the twitching tendon within the crook of his elbow. It is as if the guise has been drawn back, lifted from Nie Huaisang’s face by the intimacy of their current cohabitation like the veil from a bride on her wedding night. Jiang Cheng thinks of the flighty, frail boy who fainted at the Nightless City during the Wen indoctrination; who fainted within Jin Guangyao’s treasure room the night of Wei Wuxian’s unmasking.

Thinks of Guanyin Temple, and how Nie Huaisang had yowled and wailed, stricken, as he babied the cut on his leg dealt by Su She, while Su She—

—stammered his innocence futilely for the last few seconds he was allowed life. Before Baxia, pulled from Wei Wuxian’s charm by Nie Huaisang’s distress, had flung back across the temple to run him through.

Jiang Cheng breathes out, shaky, and feels Nie Huaisang shift beneath his fingers, arm turning at his side until his damp palm has cupped around Jiang Cheng’s ankle, brought within reach by the tuck of Jiang Cheng’s knee to his own chest.

Nie Huaisang is sweaty and shuddering, chilled to the touch, when Ma Zan decides he can risk no more and sets aside his knife and pliers. Jiang Cheng looks down at his chest, slick with blood, the hint of bone glinting out from the heart of the gash. It will need to be opened again, to take out the dregs still left, so Ma Zan binds it only with paste before he wraps it with gauze.

It will scar. Jiang Cheng knows this by sight, by a sympathetic echo of sensation; an ugly mottling knit of flesh that will pull as he moves, will stab through him as the shift of muscle and sinew will undo it all beneath the flimsy sheet of his skin, his body stitching itself up beneath the surface again and again and again. Such is the way of wounds that are ultimately survived.

Nie Huaisang is allowed to sleep only when he has sipped half of the medicinal soup, and he looks so sallow and so still against the sheets that it is as if he’s taking rest on his deathbed. After Ma Zan and the servants are gone, Jiang Cheng unfurls his legs and disentangles himself from Nie Huaisang’s side. He takes the tea and the food that has been left for him, carries it to the low table, and resumes reading the book he picked; some story he can hardly follow, the prose esoteric and elegant, lording above his understanding.

Nie Huaisang is a terrible patient, and in lieu of either he or Jiang Cheng discussing, with any desire or seriousness, the strange dance with which they have found themselves partnered in, he makes the inconveniences of his recovery Jiang Cheng’s problem.

Ma Zan returns the next morning, not to reopen Nie Huaisang’s chest, but to cut some of the shallow-sitting seeds out from beneath his flesh. Jiang Cheng finds he hasn’t the stomach to watch, and so he withdraws back to his guest room to gather his things, and then to burn further time within the pretence until he is more certain than not that Ma Zan will be done and gone by the time he returns.

If Jiang Cheng can turn his cheek away from the parts of Nie Huaisang that leer out from beneath the cracks running along his surfaces, he can buy himself the time to make it a confrontation that comes in the future where he is hopefully prepared for it. Jiang Cheng knows it is an inevitability; knows that he will bend the knee to his need to know the truth. He knows, as well, that Nie Huaisang will not give it freely. Jiang Cheng knows the secret he will find himself sharing; the one he struggles all the more, now, to carry.

He is afraid of what he will find, and what he will come to learn, when Nie Huaisang truly shows himself. Jiang Cheng suspects some of what lies and lingers there, and though it is monstrous, the last vestiges of his ignorance keep him from becoming subsumed by the thought of it. Most of all, though, Jiang Cheng is afraid of what he will do; he fears he will condemn Nie Huaisang, but he fears all the more that he will condone him.

When Jiang Cheng returns with Sandu and his few other possessions, owned and borrowed both, Nie Huaisang is propped up against the pillows, papers fanning his lap, his tongue black with ink as he idly reshapes the point of his brush. On his bedside table is a jar of seal paste and his seal, a stout ivory tube with obnoxious embellishments Jiang Cheng can see even from the doorway.

“No-one thinks you’re actually working,” Jiang Cheng quips by way of announcing his return, stepping over the threshold. He catches a glimpse of Nie Huaisang’s face before he’s turned towards the table; sees his lips, bitten red and swollen by the worry of his own teeth, crimp into a pout.

“I am working,” he grouses, the sound of crackling paper sounding out through the room as he indents it with his seal too roughly. “Ugh.”

“I’d say this will teach you to stay on top of your obligations, but that’s a lesson you never learn.” Jiang Cheng takes a seat, setting Sandu down at his side.

It’s become a routine he’s sunk into with little critical consideration; he says something inane, and then so does Nie Huaisang, and they talk and talk of nothing of meaning at all until they land on an actual topic or stop. It’s a waste of both words and time, and can’t quite be called pleasant even at a stretch, but it keeps them from heavier silences and stops Nie Huaisang from pulling his chest open in pursuit of entertainment.

“Jiang Cheng.” Nie Huaisang sighs, soft, through his teeth. Jiang Cheng pauses where he is, guard drawing up when Nie Huaisang’s tone is not as playful as he expects. “You should go back to Lotus Pier.”

Though he’s glad neither of them is looking at the other for this turn of the conversation, Jiang Cheng finds he’s not— angry, that Nie Huaisang is telling him to leave, in his infuriating roundabout way of posing it as a suggestion Jiang Cheng cannot spurn. He doesn’t even feel as though he’s upset, entirely; it’s a tired, middling middle ground between resistant and resigned.

Jiang Cheng thinks, for a beat too long, on what he wishes to say; what he is more or less willing to give away. “We haven’t found who cursed you,” is what he chooses, argumentative but reasonable.

“Ah,” says Nie Huaisang, “for now, they are either long gone or soon dead.”

Jiang Cheng doesn’t concede the loss just yet, turning his face to look at Nie Huaisang from over his shoulder. “What if they curse you with this again?”

Nie Huaisang averts his gaze only to return his seal to his table and gather up his papers. Once everything is set aside, his attention falls back to Jiang Cheng, single-purposed and heartfelt. “They can’t.”

“And how do you know that?”

Nie Huaisang opens his mouth as if to explain, before he decides better of it, discarding saying for showing as he beckons Jiang Cheng to him with the crook of his fingers. Jiang Cheng comes as called, and once he is within reach, Nie Huaisang takes him by the wrist, fingers interlocking with the winding cuff of Zidian. He holds Jiang Cheng’s gaze for a breath, testing the waters of his resistance, before he looks down to his chest, guiding Jiang Cheng’s fanning palm to hover above his golden core. “Here, look.”

Jiang Cheng does, for his own assurance as much as at Nie Huaisang’s invitation. He centres himself, eyes drifting shut as he breathes in through his nose and begins to reach out, bridging the gap between their bodies with his qi, then dipping further in. It is difficult to get a sense of Nie Huaisang’s core, at first reach, but he knows that from experience already; the work of Nie Huaisang’s stunted cultivation and late core formation showed in the shallow, shaded shape. The moment Jiang Cheng manages to discern the whole of it, fingers instinctively fanning wider where they ghost against Nie Huaisang, he can see the wrongness of it. Can feel, for himself, how Nie Huaisang’s core has warped and wound, half out of its bounds, branching upward, power following the paths of the roots and stems that once surged to sever and strangle it and his meridians. Jiang Cheng’s sense of it spirals between familiar and foreign, but Jiang Cheng can no longer tell where the intrinsic ends and the intrusion truly begins: it is mangled, but it is now all authentically one with Nie Huaisang.

Jiang Cheng inches his hand back, but he does not shake the steady circle of Nie Huaisang’s fingers from his wrist. “Does it hurt?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” says Nie Huaisang, utterly honest with him. “It’s— hard to describe?”

“It’s wrong,” Jiang Cheng concludes.

He can see why Nie Huaisang is convinced he cannot be afflicted a second time, however, no matter how little he likes the actuality of it. How the cure has inadvertently misshapen the golden core will prevent it from taking twice: there is nowhere left with enough room for a seed to take proper root at all.

Nie Huaisang does not say anything else, not with words; instead, he draws Jiang Cheng in by the wrist towards him, until he can cup Jiang Cheng’s neck between both hands without moving his chest too much. When Jiang Cheng slips back in his grasp, Nie Huaisang’s fingers catch on his jaw, and though there is no strength in them to stop Jiang Cheng from leaving, there is a command in them for him to stay.

So, Jiang Cheng does, and when Nie Huaisang’s hands drift further up, his clammy palms cupping around his cheeks, Jiang Cheng leans in, dips his chin, and obediently presses their mouths together.

Two days later, Jiang Cheng returns to Lotus Pier, as he was always meant to.

The Qinghe Nie delegation is out in full show and grovelling self-reproach when it comes time for all of the sects to again return to the Cloud Recesses for a discussion conference. Nie Huaisang’s penitence is especially performative, and, notably, almost entirely undertaken by the other sects on his behalf: they are all too happy to put words in his mouth as to his lack of discipline and decorum, and he graciously allows them to do his work for him.

It is difficult for Jiang Cheng not to watch him, as the day and its talks drone on, though he knows he shouldn’t. Jiang Cheng’s attention is less the fine point of a sharpened blade and more a bludgeon; it is brusque and battering and immediately obvious to all else when it is beating down on someone or something. But, it really cannot be helped: Nie Huaisang beneath Jiang Cheng’s adjusted perspective is alluring.

So, when he can, Jiang Cheng watches how he works. Much of Nie Huaisang’s efforts lie in making no real effort at all, but there are the rare instances, as the discussions oscillate between civil chatter and heated arguments, where Nie Huaisang will turn to someone to his left or to his right, and make a comment that Jiang Cheng cannot make out from the shape of his mouth. Then, Jiang Cheng will watch that comment travel halfway around the hall before it is spoken aloud in its final form by another delegate.

Nie Huaisang meets his gaze fleetingly, almost by accident, somewhere in the middle of a discussion of territory in a place that in no way borders Hubei and has thus lost any and all of Jiang Cheng’s interest. He’s turned towards one of his people, face half-hidden by his fan, and under Jiang Cheng’s observation, he cadges a handful of peanuts from the disciple.

Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes at him and looks away, but does not miss how Nie Huaisang’s face tilts, ever so slightly, his eyebrows raised, his expression tinged with the makings of an intimate secret.

“Sect Leader Jiang,” Nie Huaisang greets him, later, when Jiang Cheng has come to find him as they both surely always knew he would.

“Sect Leader Nie,” Jiang Cheng says, stepping into line at his side.

It is not the most concealed of locations they could be having this conversation; Nie Huaisang has only strayed to the fringes of the main hall’s courtyard to content himself with the view, and most of the other delegates are mingling closeby. It is, however, one of the most private locations they could be having this conversation; because there are so many others around them, and so many competing voices and concerns, little attention is being actually paid to them.

“You really know everything, don’t you?” Jiang Cheng continues, dry, because it comes infinitely easier than Good to see you, or Glad you’re well.

Nie Huaisang laughs softly, the sound tempered by the lazy waft of his fan against his chest. “Ah, only for things I should, I think! Anything else is outside of my business.”

It’s more of an honest answer than Jiang Cheng was expecting, but it may just be the one that he’s earned. He tucks his arm behind himself, the backs of his knuckles brushing down the dip of the small of his back, and follows the line of Nie Huaisang’s gaze out to the mountainside.

“Is Yunmeng Jiang your business, now?” Jiang Cheng asks, and Nie Huaisang’s hand stumbles against his chest, the rhythm of his fan stuttering blatantly.

“—Ah?”

“I just find it very interesting,” Jiang Cheng continues, “how you seem to know a lot of what is going on behind my borders.” Both of them know it’s nothing Jiang Cheng has told him, but Jiang Cheng had seen it today; in how Sect Leader Ouyang had made some manner of comment aimed at Jiang Cheng without being bluntly pointed, and how Nie Huaisang had slumped forward at his table and made some manner of his own comment, mouth pursed. It had ended thirty seconds later in Sect Leader Yu giving Sect Leader Ouyang a tongue-lashing that was civil only for its brevity.

He turns his head, fixing his stare on Nie Huaisang’s profile, and watches as he glances up, as though to comb through his memory to unearth where, precisely, he has overstepped and been thusly caught. It does not take him long to find it.

“Ah,” Nie Huaisang answers, diplomatic, then, “well, I suppose it is not up to my discretion as to whether or not the business of Yunmeng Jiang falls under my purview. That would be yours, Sect Leader Jiang.”

Jiang Cheng tosses a subtle glance over his shoulder before he unhooks his arm from behind his back and promptly shoves at Nie Huaisang’s elbow as punishment. “You know, it’s still not endearing how you talk in circles, Nie Huaisang.”

Nie Huaisang clears his throat. His boot scuffs along the ground, a physical idleness made deliberate by intent, the arc of the motion causing him to turn his body towards Jiang Cheng. “I’m always concerned with the interests and general livelihood of my allies.”

“There,” says Jiang Cheng, “was that so hard?”

Nie Huaisang flicks his fan pointedly, angling the unfurled leaf towards Jiang Cheng. “Jiang Cheng,” he breathes out, on the cusp of laughing, “it would have been easier for me to simply put my fingers in your mouth and pull your teeth out for you myself. At least when I talk in circles I talk at all.” He shakes his fan again, the snap of his wrist all the sharper.

Jiang Cheng notes how, between the both of them, they have managed to curve their bodies so inwards that the joint span of their shoulders and backs, along with Nie Huaisang’s extended fan, have created a shield for their faces. To anyone behind them, it would likely look like they were having a heated discussion, as signalled by the rigidity of Jiang Cheng’s frame as it stoops towards Nie Huaisang, and the flail of Nie Huaisang’s fan towards Jiang Cheng, his back arched to bring their faces level.

“Yes, yes,” Jiang Cheng dismisses, mock-snide, “you’re so good at talking.”

Nie Huaisang does hit him with his fan, swift enough to get away with, his other hand curving over his mouth to stifle his laughter. Jiang Cheng feels the warm curl of desire wrap around his neck as he thinks, impulsively, of kissing Nie Huaisang against his fingers; he pulls away and straightens himself instead, shaking the urge from himself with a roll of his shoulders.

Nie Huaisang mirrors him, returning to his original position with practised ease, but he is still smiling when Jiang Cheng looks at him, the soft curl of his lips highlighted by the artful angling of his fan against his cheek.

Even here, his features shaped with unburdened and unguarded tenderness, Nie Huaisang does not look at all free like he once did. But he is, at least, if not at last, beginning to look like who that boy might have grown into, in kinder times; mouth curved with a mirth that reaches high enough to soften his gaze.

Jiang Cheng wonders, not for the first or the last time, as Nie Huaisang catches his eyes, if he now sees that very same hopeful potential within Jiang Cheng, gently reflected back.