Sui Zhou was never made for precisive work with frangible things, but that has not once stopped Tang Fan from taking him in hand and seeing him put to that purpose.
After— after. When Tang Fan is home, and safe, Sui Zhou sees to it that he is comfortable, then moves to take leave of his imposition.
Given such a tender gift, how can Seimei not tease him?
“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 …
“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.
The possibility that keeps him up at night is that Meng Yao came into his service an honest man, and over time changed into what he sees before him now. That, as his ambitions rose and his world grew grander, he reshaped himself and discovered the things he was capable of, all the while looking like his familiar self, but transforming under his skin into something Nie Mingjue could hardly recognize.
Talking at someone is only fun for so long. That's all being a sect leader is: talking and talking to people bound by courtesy to listen to you. It's so fucking dull. A relief, then, to face one’s equal, and no less an old friend who is inclined to interrupt you whenever you ramble. He likes it. It’s one of Jiang Cheng’s best qualities.
In the years after Guanyin Temple, Nie Huaisang attends to unfinished business.
They haven't really talked about what's going on between them, except this morning while Jiang Cheng was eating breakfast and Wei Wuxian was lying on the sofa with his arm over his eyes, Wei Wuxian said, "Are you going to be weird about it if I hold your hand in front of our friends?"
Jiang Cheng chewed his youtiao.
"Just let me know," Wei Wuxian said. "It's chill."
Oh, Jiang Cheng knew very well that it was not chill. But he wasn't like Wei Wuxian; he couldn't just do<…
They haven't really talked about what's going on between them, except this morning while Jiang Cheng was eating breakfast and Wei Wuxian was lying on the sofa with his arm over his eyes, Wei Wuxian said, "Are you going to be weird about it if I hold your hand in front of our friends?"
Jiang Cheng chewed his youtiao.
"Just let me know," Wei Wuxian said. "It's chill."
Oh, Jiang Cheng knew very well that it was not chill. But he wasn't like Wei Wuxian; he couldn't just do things like that, like it was nothing. Wei Wuxian could name his sword—gleaming now on the rack above his head—Suibian, he could do whatever he wanted. He got all the curses and the blessings of being always inside and outside the Jiangs, and Jiang Cheng got everything else.
"You can hold my hand," Jiang Cheng said after he swallowed, feeling like he'd just walked over a bed of hot coals.
If he cannot ask, if he cannot even bring himself to, to say, I want this of you, then how can he expect Sui Zhou to answer? Sui Zhou is a man of fewer words than he is motions, but talking is an act that most often transcends tactility in its clarity.
"Have you no care?" Tang Fan berates. "Or is this clumsiness?"
"I don't step beneath blades on purpose," Sui Zhou bites back, now sufficiently baited.
Sui Zhou hears Tang Fan coming long before he arrives, because he knows intimately, resolutely, the shape that Tang Fan takes in his life.