Nie Mingjue wakes, and he is still where he slept. It is not the sunlight seeping through the slatted windows to flood the room that draws him to consciousness, but the smell of woodsmoke, wafting in from outside.

He is the first to rouse, but Nie Huaisang is not far from it, just as he is not far from Nie Mingjue. When Nie Mingjue shifts to stretch, muscles shuddering stiffly as they shake off the lingering sleep, Nie Huaisang stirs. He’s turned over, at some hour or another, within the wind of Nie Mingjue’s arm around his waist, and has put his back to him. Nie Mingjue’s fingertips trail up his ribs gently as Nie Huaisang starts to move, and fall away when he finally kneels up, sluggish, face scrunching around his yawn.

Nie Mingjue watches Nie Huaisang’s throat work around a wispy rumble of sound as he pulls himself up onto his elbows, likely meant to be a greeting, lost partway on his tongue. He climbs, clumsy, over Nie Mingjue’s shins, and lopes to the door in the lazy minute Nie Mingjue takes to sit himself up and kick his legs over the lip of the bed. Nie Huaisang does not call out when he opens the door and leans past the threshold, but whistles, instead. Nie Mingjue feels no pressing need to twist himself to better see who comes as beckoned, or strain to hear what is said.

It is simpler to find himself beneath his own skin, this morning, than it was the last. Nie Mingjue does not have to sink deep, or search far. It’s a strange sensation, for it to lack the accustomed effort. Nie Mingjue is not sure what to make of it; if another worry should sprout up to take its place. He chooses to make nothing of it, at all, for now; turns his attention instead to his brother, wandering back to him, a copper wash basin balanced in his arms.

“How do you feel?” Nie Huaisang asks, voice still scratchy with sleep, eyelids hooded heavily. His hair is fluffed up where it frames his face, the strands frizzy from the friction of rubbing and rolling against the bed and Nie Mingjue as he’s moved about in the night. Nie Mingjue plucks the basin free of his grip, and his hands immediately float to his face, one cupping his neck as it cranes, the other covering his mouth to catch his yawn.

“Good,” Nie Mingjue answers, setting the basin down at his side. It’s a strange answer to give, without a catch and even in consideration of their present circumstances, but it’s the one he has. Nie Huaisang hums his happy satisfaction and leans over, plucking the cloth from the water and wringing it out, the bridge of his nose crinkling with a faint flinch as he tongues the cut on his lip absently, now scabbed over but apparently no less sore for it.

“Mn, good, good. How about your energy?” He dabs his eyes with the edge of the cloth, then sweeps it down to run beneath his jaw and around his neck. “Does anything feel different? Lesser?”

Different, yes, but Nie Mingjue isn’t certain the cause of it is entirely the dreaming state. Lesser, however, he can answer. “No.”

Nie Huaisang hums again, and Nie Mingjue takes the cloth from him when it is held out, wiping the grit of his sleep from his own eyes and the long dried sweat from his temples. “You’ve always had a large pool to draw from, so that makes sense. Harder to notice the sip missing from the sea.”

It is something Nie Mingjue should notice, however small, given due introspection. That he is not sure just where he stands on the shore, still, stalls him from seeing the full scope of it. “How long was it before you noticed?” he asks, returning the cloth to the basin, and Nie Huaisang casts a glance to the roof as he thins his lips.

“Two days,” he says, after a beat, flicking his gaze back to Nie Mingjue’s. His hand curls back behind his nape, and he starts gathering his hair to pull it forward, over his shoulder, fingers toying with the ends. “We could try exhausting you. Maybe it will help get a better sense of if and how the erosion affects you?”

He raises his eyebrows, questioning, and tips his chin to keep his eyes level with Nie Mingjue’s as Nie Mingjue makes to stand, taking the basin back in hand. It’s a sound enough idea: drain to dry, map the sense of it, and hold it to the light against the sense of the pool once it has replenished. Nie Huaisang curls his shoulder back towards himself, as if to make room for Nie Mingjue as he steps past, carrying the basin to the small table, perching it on the edge, out of the way.

“Could throw you at Wencheng and Yongrui for a little bit,” Nie Huaisang adds, light. Nie Mingjue imagines, were he to turn around, he would see the glint of mischief in Nie Huaisang’s eyes made to match the hint of it in his tone. “Put them through their paces. Ah, ah, Da-ge, while you’re there, the comb and pins, I’ll braid your hair.”

Nie Mingjue returns with them and sets them down in the raised cup of Nie Huaisang’s joined palms, stilling the exaggeratedly impatient crook of his fingers. With the last vestiges of his rest shaken off, Nie Huaisang’s smile is bright and broad, his scraped lip twitching around a twinge as he turns his face towards the bed, prompting.

“Still no hunger, or thirst?” Nie Huaisang asks, trailing close to his heels. When Nie Mingjue shakes his head, he makes a wordless sound of consideration, then takes a half-step to the side to pull himself up onto the bed alongside him as he sits down. “I suppose that settles that.”

He draws himself back far enough to only brush against Nie Mingjue when he has brought his legs up onto the bed after him and crossed them, hands settling instinctually at his knees. “They’ve cooked, anyway, if you wanted something,” he continues as he inches forward to bring his kneel up against Nie Mingjue’s back, voice muffled, likely around the cinch of the hairpins between his teeth.

Nie Huaisang continues to fill the quiet, like that, speaking distractedly of things for the sake of it rather than to hold any manner of conversation. It’s more distinct in his mind, now, than he’s used to, but it is no more distracting for it. Much like the drift of his hands as he gently combs Nie Mingjue’s hair, Nie Huaisang’s voice is pitched low and even, with a lulling lilt that laps against the far reaches of Nie Mingjue’s awareness as he clears his mind and lances his attention inward.

It is quiet, there, too. Just as it was yesterday, when he last looked. Right, in a way that feels indefinably wrong.

The blunt, prepensive scrape of Nie Huaisang’s nails against his nape surfaces him. Nie Huaisang makes a sound in the back of his mouth, as if admiring his work, hands gently patting the fall of it where the strands skim the slope of Nie Mingjue’s spine. His head is again heavy with Nie Huaisang’s guan, freely given where it should be carefully kept. “Here,” he says, arm snaking around Nie Mingjue’s waist, the comb and ribbon pinched between his fingers. “Help me with mine?”

It’s inevitable that Nie Mingjue thinks of the last time he braided Nie Huaisang’s hair, as they trade places on the bed; Nie Huaisang, for his slightness, slinks easily into the space set out for him between Nie Mingjue’s thighs, and for his greater height, Nie Mingjue does not have to kneel up in order to see properly as he sets his hands to work. Much like everything else between them, it’s familiar to Nie Mingjue for having happened in the past months of his awareness, and faded for Nie Huaisang for having happened in the furthermost years of his remembrance.

Nie Huaisang had ended up rending his own braids from his hair, the culmination of one of their uncountable arguments that had come to define their ever-reaching rift. Nie Mingjue can remember the encounter clearly, the rage of it, from and between both of them, but not the particulars. Not what had enraged him, not what had enjoined him to find Nie Huaisang, in the midst of it, and see it erupt into something that could not be taken back.

He had refused to have them replaited. It was a statement Nie Huaisang had chosen to stand by, at the time, for all the spite of it. And so that was how Nie Mingjue had taken him to their ancestral halls, in the end, hair loose where it was gathered in the loop of his guan, flowing free save but two of the simplest braids, pulled taut down from the crown of his head to tuck behind his ears then thread back into the curtain of his hair.

Another peculiarity, that Nie Mingjue could not find the purpose of, after — why he had taken Nie Huaisang at all, when it only promised to endanger him.

It was not the morning after the night of their return that Nie Huaisang had sought him out. He had left Nie Mingjue to his space, and had taken some for himself, to mend the worst of his own hurts. Weeks later, Nie Huaisang had come to his room, while the dawn was still so new in the sky that the light of the sun stained it blue, head bowed and hair undone. Comb in hand, he had asked, with a quiet reservation that hurt Nie Mingjue to hear more than any barb, if he would help him with his braids.

Nie Huaisang had not once been slighted, by anyone, for removing them. Similarly, no-one would have known differently, or ever dared disparage him, had he simply returned to styling them as custom. That he had asked Nie Mingjue was an acknowledgement of the silent wound he’d inflicted in retaliation to a grievance now forgotten alongside forgiven, swept clean away. It was an apology that was not required; one that Nie Mingjue did not ever expect, but was grateful to accept.

His brother had sat between his spread thighs much like this, on his bed, his spine sloped in slight subdual as Nie Mingjue had combed the tangles free and laced the strands until every braid that belonged to Nie Huaisang was returned, gathered up and pinned tidily to his head, clipped in place by his guan.

There had been no business more pressing, after it was done, than to sit until Nie Huaisang’s shoulders no longer shook, an apology of his own offered back in the press of his chest to Nie Huaisang’s back, his forehead to his hair.

His brother makes a sound, something not-quite-pain and not-quite-discomfort, but what could become one or the other or both, and Nie Mingjue takes heed of its warning to prise the teeth of the comb free from the tangle in the ends of his hair that has snagged them. There is a temptation to be slow that Nie Mingjue does not take, but he does not hasten himself, either, as he finishes threading Nie Huaisang’s braids in on themselves, sets the pins, and binds it all in place with the ribbon.

Nie Huaisang lifts a hand from his lap to touch the crest of his braids the moment he feels Nie Mingjue’s fingers drift away. He turns his head to look at Nie Mingjue over his shoulder as he begins to trace each ridge with the tip of his finger, teeth peeking out from between his lips as he smiles. “I suppose I’ll have to trust your work, Da-ge, as my mirror is broken.”

He chuckles, and then hisses as he tongues, compulsive, at his lip, the skin darkening as the edge of the scab teases open and blood rises to the surface. Nie Mingjue is reaching for him before he realises he is moving at all; once he does catch himself, he does not reconsider it. He slides his hand over Nie Huaisang’s shoulder, taking his chin between his fingers, palm cupping the underside of his jaw. At the first press of Nie Mingjue’s spiritual energy against him, Nie Huaisang scrunches up his nose, frowning, as though he is being scolded, not soothed.

“Ah, it’s fine,” he complains with a pout, the swell of his bottom lip pushing against the pad of Nie Mingjue’s thumb. “Or is this to use some of your energy? Does this mean you agree with my plan?”

“It’s wise,” Nie Mingjue says, both because it occurs to him that he has not made it clear, and that it stops him saying anything to the contrary of Nie Huaisang insisting his cut is fine. With it on his lip, he’ll continue to probe it open with every careless swipe of his tongue.

He takes his hand away, and Nie Huaisang does not disappoint his presumption, immediately licking over the abraded skin, now scabbed over deeply enough that he will have to more thoughtfully worry at it to tear it back open.

“Hm,” says Nie Huaisang, then, turning his face away, “just don’t break either of them, Da-ge. They haven’t done drills with someone like you before.”

Nie Mingjue considers both the implication and the intent of that as Nie Huaisang hops to his feet, patting down his inner robe. He casts a glance towards their upper layers, still draped atop the headboard, considering, before he heads for the table instead. Though Nie Mingjue stands to follow, he trails only as far as halfway before he stops. It’s still a bewildering experience, beneath and beyond all else that is happening, to be unoccupied. He is not waking to a day that is already directed for him, but one that seems to drift as Nie Huaisang deigns. And Nie Huaisang is rarely one to hurry, no matter the harry.

The robes Nie Huaisang pulls from his qiankun pouch are creased from being folded over themselves, but it is hardly as if they will be holding court. Nie Mingjue takes what is held out to him when Nie Huaisang comes closer, the fabrics simple and patternless, charcoal layered over grey, and puts his back to his brother to dress, hearing Nie Huaisang’s feet scuff through the loose dirt on the floor as he does the same. The robes fit well enough; the sleeves taper to his wrists, a better cut for motion and purpose than the draping robes Nie Mingjue now knows he died in.

Nie Huaisang’s robes are similarly unadorned, and it is, admittedly, jarring to see him in a state that is so unelaborate. Between the plain greys and the ribbon wrapped around the base of his braids, he looks nothing like a second young master of any sect— or, well, the leader of any sect, now, Nie Mingjue reminds himself.

The sunlight is brighter, now, where it fills the room, and the smell of smoke has ebbed away. It does not tell Nie Mingjue much as to how much time has passed. Nie Huaisang curves around him as he brushes past, returning with Nie Mingjue’s belt in hand, offered out.

Unexpectedly, he does not take his pouch or even his fan from the table, instead crossing to the door while he fastens his belt around his waist. He tips his face back to Nie Mingjue as he begins to pull his boots on, and Nie Mingjue feels his gaze sweep across his shoulders as he turns and retrieves Nie Huaisang’s sabre.

Nie Huaisang’s men are not far; easily spotted within seconds of the both of them stepping out over the threshold. Even Nie Huaisang has to dip his chin, just a little, to stop his braids from catching on the eaves. They are both turned away from the farmhouse, stood in the field just beyond the gate, the jut of their sabres strapped to their backs almost distracting from the bow of their heads, as though they are mid-conversation.

Nie Huaisang whistles, and Nie Mingjue watches them both stop, both turn, practised. It’s a sharp sound; not like the one from earlier, but the same as the one from last night. Once the thought of the pattern and the proposition of its purpose rises in Nie Mingjue’s mind, unbidden, he finds it hard to shake, or even stow, for later.

Jia Wencheng and Yu Yongrui jog up to join them, faster than he and Nie Huaisang move to meet them. They offer them both a humble salute in greeting, and without the distraction of Nie Huaisang’s fan in his hand or the distance between them, this morning, Nie Mingjue sees Nie Huaisang’s fingers tap against his bicep, arms slung in a loose cross over his chest. Three short, alternating taps: at ease. Not a bold, outward gesture, not like how Nie Mingjue signals, but something subtle, surreptitious, easy to miss unless sought.

“Sect Leader,” Jia Wencheng greets, then, “Chifeng Zun.” His eyes do not reach Nie Mingjue’s, though they rise high enough that he does not denigrate himself brazenly with the avoidance.

“No need to stand on ceremony,” Nie Mingjue says, and Nie Huaisang hums his agreement.

“Right, aren’t we all brothers here?” Nie Huaisang concurs. Jia Wencheng straightens, shoulders squaring as he exhales through his nose. Yu Yongrui is quieter about it, his reactions as small and slight as the rest of him, but Nie Mingjue’s eyes are sharp enough to see the way he himself shifts to accommodate the authorisation.

It is obvious to see how Nie Huaisang’s fingers reach to touch and toy with things, as well, when he’s denied his fan, his thumb and forefinger pinching at his sleeve to roll the fabric between the pads. When he was younger, it was often his hair that met with his fiddling; now, the loose strands that once framed his face have been swept back. “Da-ge will train with you both today. He has graciously agreed to be gentle.”

“Sect Leader is so generous,” Jia Wencheng quips, voice still pitched around a nagging nervousness.

Nie Huaisang’s brows raise to his hairline, and he turns his head to look up at Nie Mingjue. “I have changed my mind,” he declares dryly, “please beat Wencheng into the ground until he can no longer stand.”

Yu Yongrui’s laugh is a dwarfing shout, strong enough that his head is thrown back as it tears free of his mouth. Between it and the smile that stretches across Nie Huaisang’s face, the corners of his eyes crinkling with measured mirth, Nie Mingjue finds his own smile, even as something bitter lodges, deep, in the back of his throat.

There’s unerringly blind faith, here, in the way they appear to accept all that Nie Huaisang gives them no matter the lack of clarity that comes with it. It is something Nie Huaisang has always had, between him and the rest of their sect, and what he more than deserves. And yet, here, in this proof and display of it— Nie Mingjue is not sure if he resents or regrets it more, and certainly does not understand, entirely, why he even feels either of those ways towards it at all. He knows, at least, that he has no right to it.

“Yongrui, go first,” Nie Huaisang instructs, and Yu Yongrui bobs his head. “Wencheng, come tell me what you found yesterday, before my brother smacks it from your head alongside your senses.”

Though Jia Wencheng moves to join Nie Huaisang at his side, Nie Huaisang does not regard him at once, his eyes darting down to his sabre, held in Nie Mingjue’s grip, before returning to his face. Nie Mingjue traces the scabbard with his thumb under the attention, understanding. For Nie Huaisang’s sabre, the scabbard is as much a part of the weapon as the steel itself, an intrinsicality that Nie Mingjue has not built himself up around. It can be adapted to, just as how the very balancing of Nie Huaisang’s sabre compared to his own can be, but to try both at once will leave each half disserviced.

He unsheathes it, and Nie Huaisang’s hand wraps around the throat of the scabbard to take it, fingers threading through the bands. He nods to Nie Mingjue, once, as he lowers it to his side, and Nie Mingjue takes it as his leave.

“Did you not sleep well, Sect Leader?” he hears Jia Wencheng ask, wry, from behind him, as Yu Yongrui falls into his step.

“Ah, Jia-xiong, Jia-xiong, Jia-xiong,” Nie Huaisang tuts back, “whyever would you think that?”

Jia Wencheng’s scoff is the last thing that carries itself down the breeze to his ears. Nie Mingjue feels the pang of the urge to turn and look back in his neck, but pushes down on it. From the corner of his eye, he can see the smile tugging at Yu Yongrui’s mouth from overhearing the same exchange.

They have to go some paces down the slope from the gate to find enough flat ground to allow for a decent range of movement. Much of the grass is flattened, trodden into the earth from weeks of being underfoot for rote movement; deeper-set in some areas more than others.

Yu Yongrui does not immediately cross over to mirror him when Nie Mingjue comes to a stop, but loiters, instead, a few steps in front. It is far enough to not feel like an obtrusion, but close enough that Nie Mingjue can see the hesitant pinch of his lips.

He makes his peace with it before he has to be impelled, meeting Nie Mingjue’s gaze for a beat before he lowers his head, hand respectfully clasped over the backs of his knuckles. “Nie-gexia, this one is grateful for this opportunity. Sect Leader speaks both often and highly of you.”

Nie Mingjue nods stiffly, teeth clicking together as he clenches his jaw around a frisson of tension. If his discomfort is obvious, Yu Yongrui does not react to it, merely dropping his hands and lifting his head before he strides over to take up a position at Nie Mingjue’s opposite, sabre drawn from his back.

Nie Mingjue wonders just what Nie Huaisang says of him, even though the thought of knowing makes his throat tight with dread. The choice to simply settle into his stance is an easier one to make. He lets his focus blear from the fine tip point of his mind, bleeds it out to drape over his body instead. Nie Huaisang’s sabre is an unfamiliar weight, but the way it is held is not. The way it drives forward with the lunge of him, his own weight centring in his abdomen, is not. The way the edge cleaves through the air before him when it is swung does not.

The way they move to open their body to training proper and the time they take has not changed in his absence, but it is, with that, what he least expected to. Nie Mingjue is not sure if it is a fortuitous coincidence or purposefully timed, but Jia Wencheng does not return from his debrief with Nie Huaisang until after he and Yu Yongrui have completed their warmup. No words are required, and so none are exchanged; he takes Yu Yongrui’s place across from Nie Mingjue as Yu Yongrui swaps out to go to Nie Huaisang, drawing his sabre and settling into the starting position of the first regimented stance.

Sweat is beginning to prick the back of Nie Mingjue’s nape, more from the heat than from exertion. For the second attempt, Nie Mingjue finds he does better: he does not overreach or overstep so much with the sabre, too used to something that requires more of him pooled into it for the same flow of motion.

Yu Yongrui returns more swiftly than Jia Wencheng, and lingers on the outskirts of their circle, hands folded behind his back, patient and at attention. Jia Wencheng punctuates the end of their exercises with a sigh, flicking his arms out, and Nie Mingjue casts a glance over his shoulder as he straightens. Back up the slope, barely a step off from where he was first left, Nie Huaisang has settled in on the ground in a languorous sprawl, propped up on one elbow, other raised to cock his arm over his eyes, shielding them from the glare of the sun.

“Nie-gexia,” Yu Yongrui calls, “would you prefer to spar with us both at once, or in turns?”

“Both,” Nie Mingjue says, turning back to face them. With the way the shadow from the brim of his arm covers his face, Nie Mingjue can’t tell where Nie Huaisang is looking, or if their eyes even met at all.

“Armed?”

Nie Mingjue nods.

Within the first few seconds, Nie Mingjue is able to grasp, with startling precision, what it is that unseats him about holding Nie Huaisang’s sabre. He is still moving as if he is holding Baxia, but it is not about their differences in bulk, not entirely. Nie Huaisang’s sabre does not compel in the way Baxia does. Nie Mingjue finds himself following some ill imprint of instinctual bloodlust, driving him to blows that lash towards him, even as his body tries to flow around them. It makes for a clumsy schism, dashing him out on the jutting rocks between two counteractive and counterintuitive movements.

Yu Yongrui and Jia Wencheng suffer no such impediments: where Nie Mingjue fumbles, they flow, between and around and through. Though neither can land a blow, they are able to push Nie Mingjue into a metaphorical corner, until he’s bent back and forced into a position that can only endure.

If Nie Mingjue were to fight them as though they were a foe to fell, he could overcome them. That his purpose in engaging them isn’t to kill them is what, ultimately, traps him in an inevitable loss. Just how long had he been so out of balance, that even their sect’s ineffaceable internal teachings, rooted deeper than their Dao, are no longer inmost? His eyes must have been closed for years, for him to never realise it before his death swept the fog from his head, left him scraped clean and out and pristine, as good as unstained.

Nie Mingjue’s mind has never been clearer, not for as safely and surely as he can remember.

The three of them are still snarled in a stalemate when Nie Huaisang’s shout sounds down, scattering them. “Stop! Stop, all right, really, that’s enough!” He’s still dusting dirt from the backs of his thighs as he skids down the slope and into view, scabbard tucked under his arm, beaded sweat glistening along the column of his throat and his temples.

Nie Mingjue’s receding adrenaline is a whetstone to his numbed senses. The cold comes first; the sweat soaking through his robes, sticking them to his skin. Then the heat; the burn of his skin, baking beneath the sun, the sear of his limbs as they shudder from the strain. Nie Mingjue feels, all at once, satisfied but spent; drained yet tireless. At home and at ease in long-dead flesh.

“Is something the matter, Sect Leader?” Jia Wencheng asks, breath catching around a wheeze as he wipes his eyes. Nie Huaisang simply stares at him, slack-jawed with incredulity, before his hand flails overhead, forefinger pointed sharply towards the sun, which has drifted far further across the sky than its typical afforded passage for a spar.

Yu Yongrui drops his head, the point of his sabre burying itself in the dirt as his body sags into the sway of the bow. “Forgive our carelessness, Sect Leader.”

Though Nie Huaisang shakes his head to downplay it, face scrunching, Nie Mingjue can see how his expression retains a minute tightness, even after it gentles out. “So troublesome…”

He pulls the scabbard out from under his arm and passes it to Nie Mingjue, one-handed, the other tugging his sleeve up over the cup of his palm so he can dab his forehead dry. Yu Yongrui bows to him again, and then to Nie Mingjue, and Jia Wencheng does the same, still flushed.

Nie Mingjue sheathes Nie Huaisang’s sabre and holds it at rest at his side, thumbing at the join between the pommel and the lanyard inattentively as he observes, outward, to the three of them, as much as inward, beyond the pull of well-used muscles and a slowing pulse to the flow of his qi through his meridians.

“Does Sect Leader require anything else of us?” Jia Wencheng asks. He straightens and sheathes his sabre, before wringing out his hands, glance dancing between Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang, brows knitting when his eyes take in the latter’s countenance.

Nie Huaisang purses his lips, which softens the jaggedness of the dark, unreadable thing skirting the edges of his expression, but does not subdue it. “No,” he says, after a moment. “Unless you’d like to build me a table, so I can work outside.”

“I see Sect Leader has tired of carrying his table between the house and the yard,” Jia Wencheng remarks.

Nie Mingjue struggles, for a moment, to pay them and the conversation enough attention as tries to gauge the condition of his pool of spiritual energy. His mind keeps stumbling over the depth of it, the dearth of any dent to the whole. His brother’s sabre is a spiritual tool, in the end; sister-steel to his own, forged together from the same overnight iron. It takes energy to wield. It stands to reason that Nie Mingjue should have spent at least some in the handling of it.

“And my patience for it outlasted your estimate by weeks,” Nie Huaisang snips. “Don’t be smug, it’s unbecoming. And don’t go far. I’m going to update the map.”

Nie Mingjue does not need to be startled to break back through to the surface from his sink into his thoughts, but Nie Huaisang pinches his sleeve, anyway, just above the hem of the cuff around his wrist. His grip holds, following even when Nie Mingjue lifts his hands to salute respectfully to the disciples, a swift, snapping gesture softened only by his genuine desire to be polite with it.

“You both fought well.” His praise is sincere. For all its brusqueness, it appears to be taken in the same faith it is given: Jia Wencheng’s eyes fly wide in a pleased surprise Nie Mingjue is comfortable assuming is uncommon on his face, and Yu Yongrui bows low again, the bend of his spine severe with reverence. Even Nie Huaisang’s breath hitches, fingers rubbing at his sleeve, the sound almost delighted, a preen.

“Nie-gexia honours these humble ones,” says Yu Yongrui, and Nie Mingjue feels Nie Huaisang’s grip on him tighten, reflexive, at the honorific, muddled dismay overlaying the dark shine in his eyes. The first two fingers of his free hand flick up, pressed together, then jab outwards, away from his body: dismissed.

The question presents itself in the set of Nie Huaisang’s jaw long before he asks it, teeth ungritting once they’ve made their way back through the gate and up the path. “Are you all right, Da-ge?”

The dark, unreadable thing haunting the fringes of his expression makes itself known: apprehension.

“You were moving—” Nie Huaisang begins to clarify, in a rush, weaving beneath the eaves. He stops himself, palm skidding against the door as his eyes narrow, harsh, before he recovers, resumes. “I don’t know. I really don’t know. Strangely? How do I even put it?”

“Huaisang,” Nie Mingjue says. It’s sharper than he wants, but as steadying as he needs. Nie Huaisang catches the stumble of his own feet over the threshold before he starts to trip, and stops the stutter of his words. “I’m fine.”

“Are you?” Nie Huaisang blurts out, then flinches, jerkily, face screwing up. “Sorry, I’m sorry.”

It is not so much an apology to Nie Mingjue as it appears to be a scolding for himself, his tone heavy with self-flagellation, his eyes wide and brow furrowed. Does he hope to preempt a chastisement from Nie Mingjue with it, he wonders, or is the punishment meant with sincerity?

Nie Mingjue won’t lie to himself, won’t deny that the snap nearly does make its way past his teeth, to demand that Nie Huaisang settle and sort himself. He breathes through it, instead. Asks, when they have both kicked off their boots and begun to approach the table, to sit at one another’s opposites, “Tell me what was strange about it.”

The command forces Nie Huaisang to assess his impression, in a way that a question might instead drive him to defend himself or flee the topic entirely. Even as they both kneel, Nie Huaisang reaching for his pouch as Nie Mingjue sets down his sabre, he can see that Nie Huaisang is examining it, eyes darting to and fro, almost unseeing, boring through the motions of his own hands.

“I don’t know,” he says, at last, mouth a thin, pale line. Nie Mingjue simply sits, and waits, patient, for his actual answer to follow, and is not disappointed. “That you wouldn’t stop? Or couldn’t, but...”

Nie Huaisang shakes his head, chasing the thought away, and swallows thickly, gaze refocusing on his fingers as they set out his inkstone, his brush, and a well-curled scroll of paper. He has to pin either end down underneath something else on the table to stop it snapping back shut on itself.

Nie Mingjue can presuppose that the strangeness in Nie Huaisang’s mind is not the impression that Nie Mingjue would not stop, but a distinction between what he saw and what he knows, from experience, he sees in Nie Mingjue to know that his brother has reached where he becomes unreachable. Nie Mingjue knows what it is like, from the perspective of the tool that comes to, after, windswept and bloodsoaked and stopped in place only by the lack of anything else to rip and tear at and apart. Knows that it is a sharp breath and a screaming burst of consciousness, an undoing, nothing like it was during the spar— a clarity and an enduring. His surprise is that it was such a perceivable change; his regret is that it has caused Nie Huaisang such an acute unrest.

“I felt no change in my spiritual energy,” Nie Mingjue offers, “before or after.”

Nie Huaisang drops his inkstick with a clatter, fingertips stained with soot. “What? Let me see.” He is already reaching across the table as he asks, in such a rush that he does not even take a moment to wipe his hands clean. Nie Mingjue meets him halfway, uncaring as the pads of Nie Huaisang’s thumbs smear soot across his palms, turning the half-dried sweat there dark.

He feels the brush of Nie Huaisang’s own energy before it recedes, like a wave lapping the shore, and he watches as his brother’s eyes settle shut in concentration. His features, slack at first, soon begin to sharpen, narrow, contort; shaping with each discovery as he peers into Nie Mingjue’s meridians through the egress of their joined hands.

“How strange,” he murmurs, quiet, “how could this be? Da-ge, pour your energy into me, let me see what happens.” Then, as if suspecting Nie Mingjue will argue, he adds, cracking open an eye, “Don’t worry about overflow, I only need a moment.”

Nie Mingjue had not intended to argue, but he accepts the assurance all the same, grounds himself to earth, and pushes back against the connection. Nie Huaisang closes his eye again, but Nie Mingjue keeps his open, fixed on his face, as the flow of his energy stops breaking against the shore of their bridge and spills over and through it instead.

The seconds pass like minutes, warping, wrung out. Nie Mingjue watches as Nie Huaisang’s eyes dart behind his eyelids, his nose scrunching, lips pulling back to bare his teeth as he almost— grimaces, through the sensation, as Nie Mingjue experiences it, coupled with and to it; how the energy expends and yet does not deplete.

Nie Huaisang snatches his hands back with a shuddering breath, snapping their connection, eyes flying open. He fixes them on Nie Mingjue’s, expression a picture of flustered confusion. “I, ah.” He licks his lips, the point of his tongue lingering over his mostly-healed cut, and averts his eyes for a breath while he finds his fan, among the clutter of the table, and flips it open, leaf skimming his neck as he starts to waft it.

“Perhaps it makes sense?” he continues when he meets Nie Mingjue’s eyes again, head tilting. “Death is the separation of the qi. You are not one with your body, but you’re, you appear alive, here.” His voice cracks around it, appear, the catch and the caveat.

“An illusion,” Nie Mingjue follows.

Nie Huaisang twists his hand, taps the point of the monture of his fan to his chin. “Mn. But why? It has to come from somewhere. I thought— ah, I suppose it doesn’t matter.” He shuts his fan and smiles, the tug of his lips wan, as he sets it back down and picks his inkstick back up in its stead, rigid, almost reticent. “I’m no Daozhang. It’s all beyond me.”

He shrugs, reaches for the copper wash basin, and takes the cloth, gingerly wringing water into the inkstone before setting the stick down to grind it. “You’re all right, though, Da-ge?”

That he continues to ask betrays the depth at which his anxiety is running rampant. Nie Mingjue does not miss how Nie Huaisang doesn’t even seem to catch it for himself, that the same question keeps coming forward, regardless of all prior answers, with no relief setting in. Nie Mingjue feels the urge to reach across the table again, the same as last night: a scratch up his wrists that he resists with the repeat of curling his fingers against the wood.

“Yes,” he says. He thinks of more to add, of I’m here and Are you?, and does not proceed with either, with any. It’s enough; Nie Huaisang’s shoulders slope with relief, slight, as he sharpens the bristles of his brush to a point between his tongue and teeth, and dips it in the ink.

Nie Mingjue looks down to follow the swoop of his hand as it puts the first thin, precise stroke to paper, taking in the rest of the lines already carefully filled in. As the most skilled astronomer in Qinghe Nie, it stood to reason that Nie Huaisang was the most skilled cartographer, too, and it is clear to Nie Mingjue from the work on display that this fact has not changed. He had adjusted and redrawn every map displayed within their main hall turned war room during the Sunshot Campaign himself, with little complaint beyond lip service to Nie Mingjue running him ragged.

Nie Mingjue had indeed run him ragged, across those long and many months, and Nie Huaisang had not let it show nearly as much as he had been entitled to. If Nie Huaisang was the best astronomer and cartographer in Qinghe Nie, then, once, Meng Yao had been the close second. Without the latter, Nie Mingjue had no-one else but his brother who he could trust to chart the Heavens and the Earth for him.

He had wondered, briefly, and after, if he had trusted the map of the Nightless City that had led him to his capture not only because it had been delivered by Lan Xichen’s hand, but because he had recognised, however subconsciously, some of Nie Huaisang’s signature in it as well. Nie Huaisang had refined Meng Yao’s knowledge with his own, after all. It had been easy for Nie Mingjue to distinguish between their crafts, at first; by the end, when Meng Yao had taken to it so exceptionally, exceeding it as he did with all his undertakings, Nie Mingjue does not think he would have been able to tell between his and Nie Huaisang’s work, not with any confidence

Meng Yao— Jin Guangyao— who he was, who he became to be, what had been true and what had been a lie, if he was only cruel or if there had been something kind, there, underneath the grime— what did it matter, now? He is no longer a man but dead in the ground, dead as Nie Mingjue, dead as Nie Huaisang will be, someday, too.

So far back in the past, Nie Huaisang had said, of it and all the rest. Let’s just leave it there.

It still aches, but not in the way Nie Mingjue grew used to — not in the way he expected it ever would. Without the anger, what is the hurt even supposed to be? Without his anger, who is Nie Mingjue even supposed to be?

Nie Huaisang has always glowed beneath any notice he’s coveted, and under Nie Mingjue’s undivided attention, he is as bright as the midday sun. With his worry abated, for now, if not at least put aside, there is nothing to hue his broad, pleased smile, or the shine in his eyes when he peers up at Nie Mingjue from beneath his eyelashes. “I am trying to find the entry point of the array,” he explains. For all Nie Mingjue knows that Nie Huaisang must be sure Nie Mingjue could guess the purpose, he knows that Nie Huaisang has always enjoyed his captive audiences, too.

Nie Mingjue can see the map well enough, even inverted; can make out the neat jottings of the landmarks and other points of interest, strewn across the page. “So you send your men to scout,” he remarks, “but you do not go yourself, unless it is to the south.”

It’s an invitation to elaborate that Nie Huaisang draws out to breaking point before he takes it. He averts his eyes for only the breath it takes for him to scribe something precise, and then lifts his head again as he wets the tip of his brush with fresh ink. “Wencheng and Yongrui are both from the south— ah, far south, near Linqing. They’re not as familiar with this part of Qinghe, not like I am. I thought, if they were to look, they might see something that I could miss.”

Nie Mingjue nods, and Nie Huaisang’s smile curls up at the corners, all too open. It creates an imitation of immaculate naivete, making him seem so young it is as if he hasn’t learned how to hide his heart quite yet; as though he’s not experienced something harsh enough to warrant the lesson.

“You’ve covered considerable ground in three weeks,” Nie Mingjue observes, as Nie Huaisang inks in a gully to the northeast, then resharpens his brush between his pinched lips, staining the pink skin with loose ink.

“They’ve worked hard,” Nie Huaisang agrees, airy.

Nie Mingjue reaches between them to trace a finger across the outline of the border of the map, ghosting just shy of the paper even though the ink there is long dried, faded in. “You can’t cross into Gucheng.” He narrows his eyes, dragging them back down the map, and then up again.

“No, we get turned around, no matter what.” Nie Huaisang hums, pausing with his brush still poised towards the inkstone when Nie Mingjue starts to rise. “Da-ge?”

“Let me see,” Nie Mingjue says, coming around the table and dropping to his knee, the other cocking behind Nie Huaisang’s back, bracketing him between his thigh and the table as he leans in. Nie Huaisang holds his brush aloft, glancing between the paper and Nie Mingjue’s profile.

It is easier, with the map upright before him, to make out the distances between the points Nie Huaisang had filled out. Nie Mingjue taps his forefinger against the southern village, and turns his head to catch Nie Huaisang’s eyes. “Here is twenty-four li from our position. You said the southern limit was twenty-eight. Did Yongrui find this was the same to the west?”

Nie Huaisang’s mouth parts, and his teeth graze his bottom lip, scraping some of the ink from the reddening skin. “He did. Or, he has been, so far. It’s been the same for Wencheng, except for when he’s come up against Gucheng.”

“Show me where he was yesterday,” Nie Mingjue asks, and Nie Huaisang pinches the tail of his brush between his teeth and starts tugging up his sleeves, nodding.

“Here,” he answers, slightly muffled, pointing at the fresh gully, still drying, then down, curving around the fringe of the border. “He didn’t find anything of note, though. Just grasslands.”

Nie Mingjue stares at the stretch of the map outlined by Nie Huaisang’s finger, frowning. Though it had been some time even when he was still alive since he had last passed through there, places do not change nearly as swiftly as people do, over the years. It does not sit right with him. “There should still be remains there,” he says, and it drags Nie Huaisang’s attention back to him with a start, “of a farm. We went together when we were younger. The shanxiao.”

Nie Huaisang makes a shocked sound, wet, yanking the brush roughly from between his teeth. “Right! I remember, I— I slipped down that gully in the dark and sprained my ankle. You had to carry me back.”

It had been Nie Huaisang who had wanted to come, in the first place, with Nie Mingjue and some of the most senior disciples. A shanxiao hardly warranted the force they had sent to take care of it, but Nie Mingjue had allowed Nie Huaisang to come, in the end, precisely because of how many people would be there to protect him. Unfortunately, no-one could protect him from nature and his own awkwardness, which were, in retrospect, the most common dangers to him, of all things. To his credit, he had only wailed partway back to the farmhouse, carried on Nie Mingjue’s back, before he tired himself out, tucked his face into his brother’s neck, and quietened down to only soft sniffles and hiccups.

The shanxiao had chased the farmers from the land in the first place; it was only when they began to trouble merchants on the road that they had even learned there was a problem at all. To Nie Mingjue’s knowledge, no-one had ever returned, in his lifetime, to that small span of land, but the carcass of the house had still remained, even gutted and plucked clean and beaten down by the elements. It is not right that Wencheng found nothing, as though the land had never been touched or tilled at all.

“Did he find nothing because he does not know something should be there?” Nie Huaisang wonders aloud. He starts to reach across the table, pressing against Nie Mingjue, and Nie Mingjue shifts his weight back to give him room. Nie Huaisang pulls out another piece of paper, finer than the map, thinner, covered with looping and overlapping shapes that Nie Mingjue can recognise as various permutations of trigrams, reverse and complement and change. Nie Huaisang gingerly holds it over the top, angling it towards the sun, and squints down at it, trying to make out the map beneath. Nie Mingjue braces his hand on the table as he leans back forward, looming, mindful of his shadow.

“I have to assume we’re the centre,” Nie Huaisang rambles. “Spent half of the second day here trying to find it, but the luopan just kept spinning.” His eyes dart towards Nie Mingjue, and then back to the paper as he painstakingly adjusts it just a fraction further, chasing the fractured beam of the sunlight through the window. “I don’t even know if I should divine by Fuxi bagua or Houtian bagua, either, so it’s been each and both.” He rolls the paper back up and stows it, then leans back on his haunches, weight settling against the brace of Nie Mingjue’s thigh.

“I’ll send them both tomorrow,” he decides, tapping the end of his brush against the table. “See if it changes, and whether or not their reports are the same, if they’re sent separately and not able to compare with one another.” He exhales, and it punches out of him almost as a laugh, his chin skimming the rise of his shoulder as he turns his face towards Nie Mingjue. “Ah, my Da-ge really is amazing. I never would have realised it.”

Nie Mingjue is neither deaf nor a fool, and can hear, plain, underneath Nie Huaisang’s playful tone, the disdain. “Don’t denigrate yourself, Huaisang,” he admonishes, and Nie Huaisang’s eyes widen in surprise, shoulders jerking up towards his ears.

It is— he can see his fault, in how it shocks Nie Huaisang to hear, when it shouldn’t. Nie Mingjue is not unaware of how infrequent and indirect his praise is, but that has never been because Nie Huaisang is not praiseworthy. It is more as if— it became harder, as they became older, for Nie Mingjue to know just how to praise Nie Huaisang. Harder for him to see the worth in all Nie Huaisang did and chose to do, to see the value in it for being something he enjoyed or wanted to pursue.

“You would have seen it eventually,” Nie Mingjue continues, quieter, tempering the flare of the prior admonishment into something gentler. It still does not come out— entirely right. But it is better. “Or found the answer another way.”

He is not sure what makes it all flow, water-easy, in this moment, assurance and accolades both; if something has changed with him in the giving, or if something has changed with Nie Huaisang in the taking. But Nie Huaisang’s expression settles, softens, his shoulders sinking back down. His smile is shy, and he swipes his bottom lip with the pad of his thumb, as if to rub free the last smears of ink, as he turns his face away. The shift sees to it that the splay of his hand shields and shrouds his expression in its entirety from Nie Mingjue.

“Maybe,” he accepts. When he lowers his hand, his countenance is carefully schooled into something pleasant, but placid. “Help me go over the rest?” he asks, setting his brush down against his inkstone and adjusting his sleeves where they are still rucked up to his elbows. “Just to make sure there’s nothing else that I’ve missed.”

“Of course.” Nie Mingjue lowers himself onto his knees proper, arm draping around Nie Huaisang’s back for balance, both hands bracing on the table to steady his weight. Nie Huaisang hums his pleasure, and then reaches between them, elbow nudging at the fan of Nie Mingjue’s ribs, to point at the furthermost left of his map.

“We’ll start here,” Nie Huaisang says, “and work across.”

Though there is little, comparatively, to cover, it takes them hours, dragged out by the nigh-constant distraction of reminiscence, lying in wait at every landmark. By the time they are done, it has grown dark, and they have found nothing else amiss. It does not at all feel like the time spent was a waste.

Nie Mingjue wakes at dawn, the next morning, for having gone to bed so early the night before. No disruption had roused him; no dream had visited him.

Nie Huaisang is awake first, though he is peacefully still against Nie Mingjue’s side, head pillowed on his arm, his hands folded together in the basin of his lap. He opens his eyes when he feels Nie Mingjue’s chest shift against his arm, the rhythm of it disrupted by an inhale made sharp by his stirred awareness.

“Good morning,” Nie Huaisang murmurs. His voice is a soft scrape, but Nie Mingjue can tell it is from a lapse in use, not from sleep; for all Nie Huaisang does not look too tired, his hair is flat against his head, showing he’s moved very little since they both climbed into bed.

He sits up before Nie Mingjue can return the greeting, flattening his hand against his chest as he climbs over, feet setting themselves to the floor. His fingers trail his collarbone, his gaze drags, lingers; a smile stretches across his lips when he meets Nie Mingjue’s eyes over his shoulder before he steps away.

It is impossible not to feel as though his brother is amiss; inconceivable that it would escape his notice so up close. As Nie Mingjue rises, he commits not to confront it, at least for now, in the state it stands.

Nie Huaisang does not whistle out past the threshold, respecting the early hour, but his quiet voice beckons someone forth nonetheless. Nie Mingjue can see, in the corners of his eyes, as he goes to the table, Yu Yongrui’s hands meeting Nie Huaisang’s own as he gestures, close to his chest, his head bent low to better listen as Nie Huaisang speaks. Nie Mingjue can hear snatches of it, must listen to them because they are the only other sound there is to hear, besides the rustling kicked up by his hands as he rummages through Nie Huaisang’s qiankun pouch.

“Yongrui will go to scout that farm now,” Nie Huaisang explains, once he’s toed his way back to Nie Mingjue’s side. “He should be back before Wencheng wakes.”

He holds out his hands, expectant, until Nie Mingjue has retrieved the comb and the ribbon-wrapped hairpins and set them down for his fingers to curl around. By the time they hear the dull clatter of clay crockery through the wall and smell the smoke from the fire, the sun has risen well into the morning, and Nie Mingjue is all but done with Nie Huaisang’s hair, his own already neatly combed back and plaited by Nie Huaisang’s deft fingers.

“Yongrui is back, if the fire is lit,” Nie Huaisang tells him, as he pulls his outer robe over his shoulders and flips his hair out from under the pin of the collar. “Food won’t be much longer, if you, well. If you wanted.”

“Do you no longer eat?” Nie Mingjue asks, without looking up from his belt. Nie Huaisang’s exhale shakes out of him, the end of it cutting off with a huffed laugh.

“Ah,” is his breezy reply. The sunniness in his tone is shallow, and smoothes poorly over his surprise. “No, no, I still do, I just.”

Nie Mingjue watches, from beneath his eyelashes, as Nie Huaisang’s hands flit up his belly, following the pull of his shoulders as he shrugs. He does not fill the silence, even when the need to do so surges viciously in his gut that it burns like bile up his throat, even when he has to clench his teeth so hard he hears his jaw creak just to stifle it.

“Spates of inedia help me keep track of the erosion,” Nie Huaisang finishes, voice reaching for stoic and falling short at small. “That’s all it is, Da-ge. I didn’t mean to hide it. Or worry you.”

He looks up, at that, and Nie Huaisang looks down, if only for a moment, before he drags his gaze back to Nie Mingjue’s. He’s wearing the ever-familiar sulk that Nie Mingjue is all too used to seeing turned on him, when Nie Huaisang suspects he is being or about to be punished, but there is a genuine remorse, there, too.

Did he think Nie Mingjue would not notice, that he would not find it noteworthy, or that he would simply not mention it? Regardless of which, he’s penitent, and it is a silly thing for him to be sorry for when Nie Mingjue’s only concern is that he is safe.

Nie Mingjue reaches out between them to cup Nie Huaisang’s elbow, giving it a brief squeeze before he withdraws. “Don’t be foolish with it,” is all he says.

Nie Huaisang’s expression shutters on something complicated and confessing, before a smile spreads across his mouth. “I’m always careful, Da-ge.” He punctuates it with a pat against Nie Mingjue’s chest before he steps away, an unsounded laugh crinkling the corners of his eyes.

One of the two disciples, if not both, have dragged the stump of a felled tree up the slope to serve as a makeshift table. Nie Huaisang nearly butts his head against the eaves in his haste to dart back inside when he sees it, resurfacing with his pouch and fan in hand.

“I wouldn’t say this is built,” he calls out, one hand cupped around the corner of his mouth, “but it will do!”

“Sect Leader honours these insignificant ones with his praise!” Jia Wencheng shouts back from the safe reaches of the field, sabre already in hand and in wait for Nie Mingjue to join him.

Even the stances feel more natural, come easier, for the second day’s attempt. Nie Mingjue has always been a quick study, in this respect. Has always needed to be, of course, but he cannot deny the burden was lightened by talent and affinity.

Yu Yongrui joins them midway, this time, stepping into place and falling into sync instead of waiting on the sidelines. They move as three into sparring, and Nie Mingjue finds his clear mind follows him, even when greater thought falls away to action. Nie Mingjue had never quite realised he moved as not one but two, separate to but subdued and strung along by his sabre, and now that he’s learned it, it’s a relief to find that he is not so far gone that he can’t find his way back.

So long as he is here, with Nie Huaisang, it is not wasted effort; it is not betterment for no purpose.

They don’t run over. When the sun reaches the point in the sky that tells them their time is spent, they separate, with Jia Wencheng offering brusque salutes before he sets off to see Nie Huaisang. At a distance, Nie Mingjue can make out how his brother is bent over himself, sun glinting off something thin and bronze, held between his teeth, his hair gathered over his shoulder.

Yu Yongrui stops Nie Mingjue not with a hand, but with a sound in his throat, pulling his attention away. “Nie-gexia,” he says, “can you accompany me through the drills that I missed? If it pleases you.”

Nie Mingjue nods his assent, and turns back on his heels, resettles his weight into a neutral stance, ready to bring himself low and out with a lunge. Yu Yongrui nods his thanks, the stoop of his spine shallow enough to almost seem casual, for him, and paces back into place.

It fills time that would have dragged for Nie Mingjue, otherwise, but not time enough, it seems, for Jia Wencheng to have both gone northeast and returned from the venture. Nie Huaisang is still alone on the slope, preoccupied, when they look up, and he offers an absent hum of acknowledgement when Nie Mingjue and Yu Yongrui have approached close enough for their footsteps to be apparent against the grass.

Up close, Nie Mingjue can now see that the bronze in his brother’s mouth is a set of gilt tweezers, which he pulls from his teeth and pinches between his thumb and forefinger when he lifts his gaze to take them both in. “Done already?” he asks, before casting a glance up, shielding his eyes from the sun. “Ah, I suppose that’s right.”

“Sect Leader, do you require anything else of me?” Yu Yongrui asks. Nie Huaisang hums again, head tilting in consideration.

“Do you think you could make me a weimao?”

Yu Yongrui, unfazed, simply bows his head. “I am afraid, even with the materials, such a request is beyond this one’s abilities.”

Nie Huaisang sighs, with mock sufferance, and clamps the ends of the tweezers back between his teeth. “Bah, fine,” he mutters, muffled, waving his hand, “you can go.”

Yu Yongrui goes, as directed, with a parting salute to Nie Mingjue, leaving just the two of them. Nie Huaisang returns his attentions to his fan, carefully set out on the flat of the stump, and pats the grass beside him in invitation.

“Come sit with me, Da-ge,” he says. Then, his brow cocking as his tongue darts against the tweezers between his teeth, he adds, voice cheeky, “Don’t worry about being caught taking a break, the current Sect Leader Nie is very lax.”

“You’re a brat,” spills out of him with a sigh, to Nie Huaisang’s delight. He picks up the scabbard at Nie Huaisang’s side to sheathe his sabre, then steps around to settle into the grass to the right of him, propping himself up on his elbows. He can almost feel the phantom lash of the discipline plank between his shoulder blades that would have been meted out for his slouch on its own, let alone all of the ones he would have earned for both him and Nie Huaisang’s slacking.

Nie Mingjue had been sect leader longer, practically, than he’d been at an age and in a position to be punished so outright for transgressions, but the marks still impressed their harsh lessons on him, even now.

Nie Huaisang simply smiles and leaves it unchallenged. Nie Mingjue can see, from where he is, laid low and close to Nie Huaisang’s flank, the green-black ink staining his fingers and the fine, loose soot dusted over his knees, glittering even against the dark grey of his skirts. He pulls the tweezers from his teeth and uses them to carefully ease free a part of the leaf of his fan, cut away from the rest.

“Ah, there was no sparing it,” Nie Huaisang explains, casually, when he catches Nie Mingjue watching. “Simply painting over it would hide the stain, but blood rots.”

His smile broadens, and then he turns his face back away to pore over his task proper. Nie Mingjue finds himself, as the seconds stretch out, settling down from his elbows and flat onto his back, his eyes sliding shut. The offbeat percussion of Nie Huaisang’s fiddling disrupts the unnatural silence that sets in, blunting the jagged edge of his guard enough that he can almost relax and drift to the sounds of it. Even when his inkstick clatters too heavily against his inkstone and Nie Huaisang’s hum snaps off into a hiss, Nie Mingjue doesn’t feel his hackles raise more than a brief flinch that ebbs back away within a breath.

Nie Mingjue opens his eyes, ignorant and indifferent to how much time has passed, when he feels Nie Huaisang finally lie down beside him, their arms pressing together as he sidles close.

“See?” Nie Huaisang’s cheek comes to rest on Nie Mingjue’s shoulder as he holds his fan aloft, wrist swivelling to angle the leaf so the sun is bearing down through it, illuminating the dark ribs between the thin paper. “Can’t even tell where it’s been cut apart, unless you hold it just right and know just where to look.”

He’s not wrong. Nie Mingjue has keen eyes, but even with it held against the glare of the sun, he can’t see the join where the new paper has been glued over the gap in the old, only the smear of fresh ink painted over the top, blending into the fog hemming the mountainside. But it will dry quickly, and fade soon after, taking the only proof that draws the eye towards the promise of a blemish underneath at all.

“The ink is too fine to run,” Nie Huaisang continues. He lowers his hand to tuck his elbow into the divot of his waist, bringing his forearm into a loose sling across his belly. Nie Mingjue watches, through the awkward angle brought on by the press of his chin towards his collarbone, as Nie Huaisang’s lips purse into a pout. “Ah, but I can’t close it until it dries properly. I was hoping Wencheng would be back before I finished.”

He starts to waft the fan against his chest in lazy crests, eyelids hooding. Nie Mingjue tips his head back against the grass, craning his neck to unseat his braids where they dig in, and takes to watching the barren sky in wait. It is not uncomfortable, not quite; it is not much of anything at all.

Jia Wencheng returns late enough that sunset has scorched the sky ombre red, and Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang have moved back inside. He skillfully preempts Nie Huaisang’s annoyance the moment he opens the door to his knocking by offering an appropriate apology, attributing his delay to thoroughness. When he proceeds to recount everything, Nie Huaisang proceeds to challenge him on every detail with such unerring precision that Nie Mingjue feels a stirring of pity for the other man. Simply putting him into a kowtow and berating him to the point of tears instead may have been a kindness, when held up in comparison.

Nie Huaisang’s all-but-agitation, a simmering thing that lacks a scald, lingers even after Jia Wencheng has been dismissed. Fan on the table, he makes do with needing something to do with his hands by tapping his fingers against his mouth, thin-lipped, his brow furrowed.

“Yongrui said the same,” he says through his hand, “and it’s how I remember it, too.”

Nie Mingjue can sense the wrongness of it, just as Nie Huaisang seems to, but he can’t see what. It hangs back, out of reach, making him just aware enough of its presence that it unsettles him, for how close it feels to how his own death had evaded him, that first morning, when Nie Huaisang had asked him if the half-truth was all he remembered.

“We will go there in the morning, and see it for ourselves,” Nie Mingjue tells him.

It’s enough to cut down the race of Nie Huaisang’s thoughts before they can run too rampant, which is all the purpose it needs to serve. He takes his hand from his mouth, letting it drop into the loose furl of his arms across his chest as his features calm.

“Not tonight?” Nie Huaisang quips, and while there is still a catch of something heavy in his tone, the rest is a breathy blitheness. “That’s— hah. Well, if my da-ge doesn’t feel it’s concerning enough to rush off to check in the dark, then how can I be worried?”

It’s simply practicality, but Nie Mingjue does not say as much, and Nie Huaisang makes good on his half-said promise to no longer panic, though he insists on taking Nie Mingjue’s braids out for himself for want of something more to preoccupy his time.

It should be alarming, Nie Mingjue thinks, how quickly the monotony has all taken a turn into a complacent ritual. So much so that it feels strange to disrupt it, how their mornings have come to typically go, by cutting down their joined habits halfway.

“Our robes to wash are set out over the table,” Nie Huaisang tells his men, when he has crowded all of them into the kitchen space. “Ah, and don’t wait for us. We may be gone for some time.”

“Sect Leader,” says Yu Yongrui. He looks up from the recessed wok on the kao only long enough to catch Nie Huaisang’s eyes through the smoke before he bows his head back to his cooking. “When should we search for you, if you have not returned?”

Nie Huaisang hums, considering, fan fluttering against his chest. “If something were to happen, with my da-ge with me, you’d really be out of luck, wouldn’t you?”

He glances up to Nie Mingjue, unheeding of Jia Wencheng’s protest, and there must be something to the set of his expression that takes Nie Huaisang back enough to relent. “Three days will do,” he concedes, prim, as he snaps his fan shut. “If we’re not back by then, start at the farmhouse and work north.”

As much as he should be alarmed by their rituals, Nie Mingjue knows it should concern him, too, in equal if not greater measure, that Nie Huaisang has so seamlessly readopted shards of his habitual helplessness around him. No matter how unpleasant Nie Mingjue finds it, he can’t be the lone one that Nie Huaisang relies on, here.

It occurs to him that he could deter it, just as it occurs to him that he won’t. What else can Nie Mingjue do, then, given that, other than indulge, endure, and wait for the threads to unravel, the changes to come? To make the best of the time that has been given, and hope Nie Huaisang is not cut too deeply when the things he’s getting his hands back around are inevitably ripped from him again, beyond either of their choice or their control?

Nie Huaisang has to all but climb into him for both of them to be able to fly on his sabre. It is yet another one of the many things that differentiates Nie Huaisang’s blade from Baxia; yet another one of the many things that Nie Mingjue almost— prefers. There’s no room for perfunctory positioning. He smells like spice and ash from where the smoke clings to his robes just as tightly as he clings to Nie Mingjue, arms slung around his neck, legs dangling over the brace of Nie Mingjue’s hold, hooked behind his knees.

Nie Huaisang says nothing of it, though Nie Mingjue can see how a remark teases at his lips throughout the trip, how it all colours his features, amusement tipping into something heated, something different.

The farmhouse to the northeast is precisely as it was described, twice-over; exactly how Nie Huaisang and Nie Mingjue left it, tens of years ago. It is a more finished structure than where they are staying now; a once-loved and well lived-in place that is beginning to suffer the disrepair and defects of abandonment.

Nie Huaisang is quiet, save for his breaths and his comments, muttered thoughts half-formed as he toes his way through the front garden, always a ways ahead of Nie Mingjue, but never beyond sight or reach. It’s a strange sight, all of it; the place as much as his brother within it, the only thing apparently touched by time across the span of the horizon.

Nie Mingjue wonders, as he steps past Nie Huaisang, lowering into a crouch at the overgrown kitchen garden, and towards the house proper, if that is simply it. In the dream, time has not weathered this place to be a minute older than it was when their hunt ended, when they both went back to the Unclean Realm with their men. It surely looks nothing like this, in actuality: something that can be mended, something that can have a home made within it again, given due care.

The overhang of the thatched eaves above the door has been caved in and broken away by thrown stones that still litter the dirt, so Nie Mingjue does not have to bow his head when he stands there. Though he means to look out into the yard as a whole, his gaze leads itself back to Nie Huaisang each time he drags it elsewhere; to where he’s finally settled on his knees, at Nie Mingjue’s left. His thumb and forefinger rub absently against the dark green leaves from one of the growing qing cai while he thinks to himself, the white stem beneath visible in the loose clasp of his fist.

Nie Huaisang looks over his shoulder, and his mouth parts when he meets Nie Mingjue’s eyes. His fingers stutter-stall; it takes him a moment to speak. “It’s too perfect, isn’t it? What do you think, Da-ge?”

“It’s too perfect,” Nie Mingjue agrees. And yet— it still nags at him, the crawling unease that something is just out of place, but he can’t see it.

Nie Huaisang sighs, and then turns his face away as he begins to pull the qing cai in his hand from the earth, dusting it with his palm. “It’s never changed like this before. Things shift around, fall out of focus, lose detail— but an entire place?”

Nie Mingjue can only listen, watching him, as he deposits the qing cai in his lap and starts uprooting another, purposeful. “I feel like I know less and less, the more I learn. I wonder if the array is flawed, somewhere. Perhaps unfinished?” With the second pilfered vegetable wiped down and dropped into his lap, Nie Huaisang gathers up his outer skirt around them and clambers to his feet, half-turning on his heel towards Nie Mingjue. There is something about him, in that moment, that Nie Mingjue’s mind trips over: his wide eyes, almost playfully innocent, smile wide and head tilting, hands wrapped up in his robes.

It’s familiar. Nie Mingjue has seen it before, but differently. The same expression, just on a younger face; the same pose, just on a smaller body; in the same garden, just stood elsewhere within it.

“Wait,” he says, before he has finished turning it over in his head, before he even has anything else to add. Nie Huaisang startles, but stays, brow furrowing in the meanwhile.

The morning after Nie Huaisang had sprained his ankle, Nie Mingjue had left him in the company of one of their disciples and resumed the hunt with the others. It had been sunset when he returned, the shanxiao tracked down and dealt away with; late enough that they had decided it best to stay a further night rather than fly in the dark. He had seen the line of Nie Huaisang’s back through the flimsy yard fencing, and his shout had almost sent him stumbling over as he shot up and immediately put too much weight onto his ankle in a moment of forgetfulness that he felt the consequences of for long minutes afterwards.

Nie Mingjue can’t remember quite what he said, only that Nie Huaisang had looked sheepish, and that his shoulders had crept closer and closer up to his ears as Nie Mingjue started up the path at a pace just short of a jog. His robes had been bunched up in front of him, bulging with picked herbs and vegetables, the kitchen garden behind him, to Nie Mingjue’s left.

At the door, now, facing out towards the yard, Nie Huaisang and the kitchen garden both are on Nie Mingjue’s left.

“It’s not right,” Nie Mingjue finishes, stepping out from the doorway, back into the yard. “Everything is flipped.”

Nie Huaisang makes a senseless sound of surprise, casting his gaze around jerkily. “What?” he manages, taking a blind step closer to Nie Mingjue’s side, then another, fingers clenching around his robes. “Are you sure, Da-ge?”

Nie Mingjue nods, even as his jaw sets, stiff. He is sure, but not certain — it is an old memory. He is unable to narrow his focus onto details, to sharpen them past their blur, but he has always had a keen awareness of Nie Huaisang amongst any surroundings, where he stands and whether it falls within or past his reach. Nie Mingjue remembers his brother standing elsewhere in the garden, and that is enough to convince him.

“I believe you,” Nie Huaisang assures him, all too readily, despite the dark crumple of his own expression, eyes stormy with thought and mouth thinned into a pale, trembling line. “I just— I would understand if I was wrong. Why do both Wencheng and Yongrui’s reports match what we see, match what I remember, but not what you do?”

He adjusts his grip to hold the bundle of his outer skirt one-handed so he can scrub at his face, frustrated, arm bumping against Nie Mingjue’s. Nie Mingjue does not have an answer for him; he does not even have an answer for himself. It’s little assurance, compared to that, to offer, but he offers it nonetheless, bringing his hand up to rest between Nie Huaisang’s shoulder blades. He feels the tension in his spine sink down beneath the span of his palm, and then Nie Huaisang takes a breath, a deep pull that spreads his chest wide and presses him back, firmer, into Nie Mingjue’s touch.

“Ah, I don’t know, I don’t know,” Nie Huaisang rambles, dispirited. “I really don’t know, Da-ge.”

“You will,” Nie Mingjue says. Nie Huaisang’s breath shakes out of him, back juddering against Nie Mingjue’s hand. “You have your men to help you,” he adds, then, “you have me. We will overcome this together.”

“Nothing we cannot do together, right?” Nie Huaisang agrees, acceding. He tips his head back, smiling up at Nie Mingjue as he wraps his freed arm around his neck. “All right, take us back, before it gets dark and they worry.”

Nie Mingjue bends his wrist, swivelling his hand against Nie Huaisang’s back to better brace the brunt of his weight as he stoops to lift him, other arm brought to hook beneath his knees. Nie Huaisang is light when he is a live weight; it takes nothing at all from Nie Mingjue to lift him and keep him aloft against his chest. It takes even less, sabre drawn, to keep them both afloat above the ground.

Jia Wencheng and Yu Yongrui aren’t able to hide their relief, not entirely, when he and Nie Huaisang return, though they both try to. If Nie Mingjue sees it, Nie Huaisang must. He does not tease them for it, electing instead to needle them over leaving the kitchen garden untouched as he hands over what he’s taken from it and pats his hand-creased robe back into place.

The moment they’ve retreated inside, Nie Huaisang goes to the table, unceremoniously pushes everything but his map aside, and pulls all of Nie Mingjue’s outer robes into his lap. “Here, Da-ge,” he says, holding out one hand while he wrests open his pouch with the other, “give me the robe you’re wearing, too.” When Nie Mingjue has only gotten as far as coming to stand at his side, belt undone in his hands, Nie Huaisang drags his gaze up. “It’s not for anything strange!”

Nie Mingjue believes him. That does not stop him from looking down on him, pointed, brow arched, as he shrugs his outer robe from his shoulders.

“Okay,” Nie Huaisang relents, grimacing, as he takes Nie Mingjue’s robe from him and drops it into his lap. “I’m going to unpick the hems and stitch a foci talisman into the lining. It will seem strange to you, but it makes sense for the greater spell it can be used for, and it’s safe. Yongrui and Wencheng have them already.” He speaks it all in a rush, as though he’s expecting Nie Mingjue to interrupt him at any moment, and so he’s in a race to beat his brother to the beratement. A scowl settles on his face when it dawns on him that Nie Mingjue has done nothing but lower into a kneel at the table at his side and wait for him to finish, amused.

“I’ll help you, Huaisang,” he says. It is as much because he wants to, and there is little else to do otherwise, as it is to preempt his brother’s indignance at feeling foolish.

“With talismans?” Nie Huaisang retorts, but there’s no authenticity to the snideness, no depth to the mockery; his voice lilts too brightly to carry the intended impression, and his smile stretches too broadly.

“Who taught you your first sigil?” Nie Mingjue asks, and Nie Huaisang barks out a laugh, head bowing forward with it, bringing it back into his own chest.

“Can’t recall,” he answers once he's recovered, holding Nie Mingjue’s robe back out for him to take.

Idleness has never much suited Nie Mingjue, but he has always known this, even when he was still alive. It was a blessing, of a fashion, that he had duties beyond those to Nie Huaisang to fill his waking hours, for he very much doubts, now, that, given the opportunity, he would have found enough monsters in all of the provinces to busy himself with of his own accord.

Idleness, here, does not even seem to suit Nie Huaisang. He has had longer to come to terms with it, to spill himself into the monotony of lethargy and freedom, but he has always been malleable where Nie Mingjue is invariable. Quick to adapt where Nie Mingjue breaks himself against change.

Despite this, Nie Huaisang is struggling. Nie Mingjue could see it sooner, but only after their visit to the abandoned farmstead in the northeast could he put it to any greater substance than instinct. He thinks, at that, that he understands not only that his brother is struggling, but why. Part of why he and Nie Huaisang have such an undefinable and unequalled understanding of one another, after all, is that, at the core of them, they are not unalike.

Nie Mingjue had gone on untold night hunts, throughout his life, but he won’t claim to have been the predator in every single one. There had indeed been times, though few and far between, where he had come up against a quarry that had outplayed and outrun him.

The ones that outwitted him, however, were the ones that stayed with him. The ones that had been smart enough to see not only a just and straightforward man, but an impatient one. The ones that taught Nie Mingjue that, when you became the prey, there was only so long that you would ever be afraid, before it would all fall away and apathy would take its place. Where you’d become something so desperate to feel the bite of the beast’s teeth that you’d beg for it, anything, if only it meant you’d no longer be bored.

Atypical son of Qinghe Nie he may be, Nie Huaisang was still born under the Taotie, and bears the blood of generations of hunters and butchers, same as Nie Mingjue. He craves a chase, in the end: anything and everything so long as it means it’s not tedium, wasting him away. He can’t run when it is his ankle in the trap.

His propensity for patience is greater than Nie Mingjue’s, but his patience is not without its limits. Nie Mingjue was not the dagger in the dark Nie Huaisang must have been wishing for at least half as much as he was expecting, and now, feeling as though he has lost more ground than he has gained, he is back to inactivity. Back to balancing on the cliff’s edge of desiring a blade to bare itself so that he can fall on it belly first and feel something other than the emptiness of waiting.

Nie Mingjue has hit enough breaking points to see the same signs in his brother. It is his shame and his frustration both that hitting those points for himself has taught him nothing as to how to help him stop Nie Huaisang short of them.

“It has been five days,” is how Nie Huaisang broaches the topic, “and you are really in need of a shave.”

He leans over himself, until he’s almost bent in two into his own cross-legged lap, elbows loosely propped against his thighs, his hand smoothing over his own jaw as he peers up at Nie Mingjue from beneath his lashes. They have only moved as much and as far since waking to sit up in the bed, and not an inch more.

Five days is a reasonable wait. An expected wait, even, when not afflicted with any muck or grime that can’t be scraped and scrubbed away by cloth and water from a basin. Nie Huaisang never waits five days between baths; much like anything and everything else, he takes his pleasures precisely how he likes them and when he wants them, unheeding of anyone else’s annoyance or advice. Nie Mingjue had stopped listening, eventually, much like he imagines Nie Huaisang had stopped listening long before him, whenever their various physicians opined on his brother’s constitution outside of any immediate concerns and impacts to it. Their most typical and oft-heard counsel was that Nie-er-gongzi’s health and fortitude would improve immensely if he would only stop soaking so often, and sleep with far less cushioning between his back and the wood of his bed. Nie Huaisang, of course, would sooner die than do either, and so went his ongoing stalemate with them.

The sheer logistical nightmare drawing the bath presents speaks volumes to Nie Mingjue as to why Nie Huaisang is being more frugal with it. There is no fire pit in the house to heat the water, and nowhere for it to properly drain off into after. Nie Huaisang shows him how he’s made do with getting rid of the water by pulling away the block of wood serving as the raised threshold, but even with that, the floor promises to dry slowly and for it all to make a mess of the loose dirt that’s been dragged in by their feet or isn’t otherwise tamped down. The shallow wooden tub, rib-deep at best, almost doesn’t fit through the door. Dressed only as far as their boots and middle robes, hair still loose, they arduously loop back and forth between the house and the well until they’ve both drawn the water they need to fill the bath to a point where it is enough to make all the effort worthwhile.

“You need the bath alone to wash away all it takes just to draw it,” Nie Huaisang complains, loudly and gladly, for the lone audience of Nie Mingjue, as he smacks talismans around the belly of the tub. The water that will inevitably slosh over the rim and spill out of the bath will turn the paper soppy and limp, later, and they’ll be a mess all of their own to clean, but for now, they’re all they have to put some warmth into it.

Nie Mingjue is not shy in this regard, by any means, but the way Nie Huaisang keeps curving in and around on himself, nerve-struck, bleeds over and through, makes his own skin itch with a misplaced, anxious agitation. When there is absolutely nothing else Nie Huaisang can do to stall, all his soaps and oils and everything else pulled from his qiankun pouch, he simply stands at the edge of the bath, hands frozen on the ties of his robes, eyes not quite reaching Nie Mingjue’s.

It is— they’ve bathed together before. Certainly not in many years, and so infrequently since becoming men that to call it rare still seems to be too much, but they’ve been bare before one another in ways that reach beyond the skin. If Nie Huaisang has changed, in this way or another, over the last fifteen years, it is nothing he should feel he needs to hide from Nie Mingjue.

It’s foolish, and Nie Mingjue does not know what else to do with it but spite it, almost, as he starts untying his inner robe at the waist. He hears Nie Huaisang’s laugh gust out of him, the sound damp, strained, but it is followed by the scratch of his nails down silk when Nie Mingjue turns his head to pull his robes from his shoulders. He bows his head, next, to strip out of his pants, and he does not need to look up at Nie Huaisang as he steps into the bath. The water stings his skin, but does not scald it, hot less in temperature and more for its difference to the cool air that has swept into the room from the propped open door.

When he looks up, Nie Huaisang is naked, and has his hands braced on the edge of the tub, as if considering how best to heft himself over. He looks— closer to similar than the same, but no less familiar, from what Nie Mingjue gathers, without lingering on it or him. Nie Huaisang meets his eyes, leaves them, then circles back, in seconds quick enough that anyone else but Nie Mingjue might find no noteworthiness in their passage. Once his gaze is there to stay, though, the way Nie Huaisang holds it to Nie Mingjue’s own is steady, certain.

He huffs out a breath, dislodging some of the wisps of his hair which have fallen free over his face. Nie Mingjue kneels forward in the bath, up, and holds out the brace of his forearms for Nie Huaisang to sink his weight into through his palms. It is not so deep that Nie Huaisang can’t manage to climb over and in on his own, but the offer denies him the opportunity to excuse further lingering.

“How did you manage, without me here?” Nie Mingjue asks, as he leans back, leads Nie Huaisang into the water. It’s not— the wisest way to phrase it, but he truly does not mean it any more deeply than for this moment, this time.

Nie Huaisang, fortunately, only replies with a matching shallowness, for whatever else he might think as to the question’s layered meaning or its connotations. “I pulled over the table.”

He could have pulled over the table today, if he’d seen fit to fold his map back up, gather his papers and the scatter of his other various possessions, pile them aside or pack them away. He had not.

Nie Huaisang doesn’t let go, not until long seconds after he’s sunk down and fully seated, but Nie Mingjue doesn’t rush him, and is not made to crowd him in by virtue of leaving his arms aloft, supporting his weight as it drips away. The bath is large enough for many, a small family, as is so often the case with rural places. It can certainly fit two grown men, even if there is sparse space to spare between their limbs.

It’s quiet. It is so quiet, save the drip-drop of the water, the glide of it as their shifting bodies slice clean through it, the sigh of their breaths. The way Nie Huaisang’s skin flushes pink from the heat is almost a sound in and of itself. His skin is paler than Nie Mingjue’s, still, but darker than he remembers, sun-kissed, now, all over, in a way that bids more than questions to rise from the hollows of him.

Whatever tension there is, roping itself, heavy-set, through the air between them, is ripped down when Nie Huaisang lifts his arms over his head and crosses them, stretching, a sigh stumbling out through his lips. It pulls the sheet of his skin sharply over his clavicle, drawing the scar tissue of an old wound across the bone, still pale and puckered despite the many years it has been left to settle. Nie Mingjue remembers it; had cleaned it out himself, when Nie Huaisang had come staggering back to the Unclean Realm with it from the indoctrination in Qishan, without his sabre or the spiritual energy left to even open their gates. Nie Mingjue still thinks, even now, even without the flare of the rage behind it, that they were so fortunate it was by Nie Huaisang’s clumsiness and not Wen cruelty that he was hurt. If it had been otherwise, not a single one of the dogs would have been spared his wrath, ground to tower.

“Ah, I’m starting to remember why we stopped doing this,” Nie Huaisang remarks. It’s light, cheeky; his smile crooks with it. “So cramped.”

“Perhaps you’ve gotten bigger,” says Nie Mingjue, and Nie Huaisang drops his arms back into the water heavily enough that he can splash him but deny the purposefulness of it. It spares the both of them from saying anything else. There was no particular reason why they’d stopped, other than a sense that they should, once they had gotten older. Their separate rooms became separate lives as the years went on, and while their overlap continued to extend to many intimacies and proximities between them, bathing had not been one. The last time they had bathed together, Nie Mingjue had not even been in the bath, but behind it, keeping a catatonic Nie Huaisang’s head above the water. The body in his hands had been too limp and too thin, then, his eyes clouded over, his voice barely able to break through its own terrible grating rasp to be coherent, though few of the words he managed to speak had made sense.

“Taller, maybe,” Nie Huaisang replies. He is not too limp or too thin, here, now, but filled out, even if the shape he’s taken is less soft for all the sharp edges and catches the long years have whittled into it. He splashes Nie Mingjue more obviously before he can make a comment to the contrary, then rises onto his knees, leaning out over the rim of the bath. Water sleets to the floor off his back and arms as he plucks up a gauze-wrapped zao dou and shucks the linen. More spills over as he sits back down in a rush, thumbnail already carving into the rough middle of the block to split it apart for them to share.

“Here,” Nie Huaisang says, needlessly scooting forward to hand half over, once he’s crumbled it enough to crack it in two. “You can use this one in your hair, too.”

It feels grainy against his fingers, and smells pungent, sandalwood and something deeper, earthy but floral. The crinkle of his nose either mustn’t be subtle, or simply expected: Nie Huaisang laughs at him as he settles in, flicking his hair back where it has spilled over his shoulder with a damp smack before he starts to scrub up his neck.

“The smell doesn’t linger nearly as much as you think it might,” he assures him, adopting a manner that is completely unassuring, eyes alight with delight, “it’s also good for you. Please endure it for me.”

Nie Mingjue is hardly so delicate that he is going to take umbrage at smelling like a temple garden. But if it keeps Nie Huaisang tipped towards amusement to think as much, instead of angsting over whatever it is that seems to be agitating him underneath his skin, he’ll allow it to lie left alone.

The bean comes apart quickly in his hands as it starts to take on water, but not so messily that he can’t keep a grip on it as he runs it through his hair, taking care when lathering the strands damaged by the daily braiding, from the twist of ties and the teeth of pins. Nie Huaisang hoists himself up to perch on the edge of the bath while Nie Mingjue scrubs his face, one hand grappling the rim, the other sweeping hastily down his chest and hips.

Nie Mingjue can see, beneath the shadow cast down his chest by his arm, folded over himself, the downward swoop of another scar, clipping through the ladder of his ribs. It’s a small thing, but undoubtedly the work of a blade, and unfamiliar to him. It’s possible that Nie Huaisang gained it during the years between Sunshot to Nie Mingjue’s demise. It’s doubtful that he did. He knows too much about the likely nature of the wound, all at once, from looking at it: a close blow, an awkward angle. It would have cracked through his ribs. It’s possible the blade was long enough and the blow swift enough to run him completely through, to leave a mirroring scar on his back where the point made its exit. He knows nothing at all as to how Nie Huaisang could have gotten hurt in such a way.

He has to not look, so that he does not stare. He has to not think, so that he does not wonder. Both threaten to enflame his blood to boil from what he can only call anger, though it feels too inapt a name all the same.

Nie Huaisang slips back into the bath, and sucks in a breath before he bows forward, between his own spread thighs, to submerge his head. He claws his fingers through his hair before he surfaces, eyes squeezed shut. “Are you done, Da-ge?” he asks, sputtering a bit around the water sopping down from the drape of his hair into his mouth. He gathers it up in his hands and tries to pile it back into place, blinking through water caught in his eyelashes to squint over at Nie Mingjue. “The water is getting cooler. The ink must be starting to run.”

Nie Mingjue nods, rinsing his face. When Nie Huaisang draws his legs up to lean out of the bath again, he uses the space he’s made to curve in towards his side, ear pressed to his shoulder, the cups of his palms dragging water up to rinse what he can’t comfortably get underneath. When he straightens, Nie Huaisang is there, just inches back from crowding him in, a bronze razor wrapped between his fingers, the blade half-unfurled from its hinge into the handle.

“Ah, now how are we going to do this?” Nie Huaisang asks. Though it is aloud, and though it is we, the way it stutters out speaks to Nie Mingjue that it was a question meant to be kept quiet, meant for only himself.

Still, now it is out in the open, it warrants an answer. “Come here,” Nie Mingjue says, and Nie Huaisang shifts in between his thighs, teetering and tentative, his hand with the razor kept aloft, blade angled away from the both of them, the other coming to rest against Nie Mingjue’s chest. Between them, Nie Mingjue stretches his leg out until he can plant his foot flat against the side of the bath, the bend of his knee sloping his leg enough that Nie Huaisang can sling his thigh over him to straddle it, the swell of his ass braced against his knee.

“That works.” Nie Huaisang breathes out. The hand on his chest lifts away, traces the air, and finds purchase again on Nie Mingjue’s throat, tipping it as he leans in, and in, and in. “Hold still, Da-ge.”

Nie Mingjue does, but only once he’s draped his arm around the edge of the bath, only once he’s brought his other hand up to cup Nie Huaisang’s back, tucked around his ribs. He finds the scar he expected to, the pair to the one around the front. Part of holding still is not tracing his fingers across it, mapping it, considering it, and so Nie Mingjue does not.

The hand against his neck shakes, the tips of his fingers skating up Nie Mingjue’s jaw. The hand that holds the razor does not. The bath is cool enough now that it cannot explain the way Nie Huaisang’s skin is flushed pink, from his cheeks to the hint of his belly where it is folded over itself before it disappears beneath the surface of the water. It cannot explain the sweat that beads at his temples; drips down to mingle with the drying water, streaking his face, his chin, his red mouth, made redder by the way his teeth and tongue keep scraping over the swell of his bottom lip. It can explain how hot Nie Mingjue burns, in turn, how viciously the urge itches in his hands to just claw down, against the bath, against Nie Huaisang’s back.

It is impossible not to feel, not with how close they are, entangled and ensnared together, the rub of Nie Huaisang’s cock against his thigh, half-hard. Nie Huaisang, in turn, can’t pretend he does not feel Nie Mingjue’s cock twitch against him, heavy, when he scrapes the razor up the underside of his jaw. His breath comes out hard, and he pauses, before he resumes. A moment that they both leave alone, do nothing with, but can’t ignore the passage of.

When Nie Huaisang is done, he leans back, wipes the razor clean beneath the water, and closes it. “Here,” he croaks. Swallows, mouth crimping. “Here,” he repeats, “have a look, tell me if I missed anything.” He kneels up, curves at the waist, and leans out of the bath, thighs clamping down around Nie Mingjue’s to steady himself. He settles back in with a bronze mirror in hand, the surface tarnished, but still able to serve its use.

“It’s fine,” Nie Mingjue says, voice rough for how it has to fight its way up a tight throat and out a dry mouth. He can’t see that Nie Huaisang has missed any patches across his skin, even when he cranes his neck, tilts his chin, checking over the hardest to reach places. He doesn’t think he could see them anyway, if he tried, in fairness; he can’t even see the reflection of Nie Huaisang’s fingers, folded beneath the real ones holding the bronze angled. Certainly can’t see a glimpse of the rest of his brother in the metal as he curves it back towards his chest, clasps it there in one hand as he stands, the other lowering to cup around his cock, as if he could hope to hide it in the cage of his fingers instead of drag every fibre of Nie Mingjue’s being and intent down to focus on it.

He snaps his eyes higher, where it is safer, but not safest; the jut of his hips, the dusting of hairs that trail his navel, that darkens behind the bridge of his wrist where the thatch of them thickens between his legs. Nie Huaisang steps out of the bath so quickly that Nie Mingjue can’t even see his reflection catch in the rippling, sudded water as it sluices free of him to spill over and across the floor.

He doesn’t go far. Nie Mingjue hears, robbed of any choice otherwise, how his footsteps stop just around the back of his field of view. How the drip of the water begins to slow where it spits and spatters against the floor at his feet. When Nie Huaisang sighs, at last, and steps off again, skirting Nie Mingjue’s periphery like the ghost of a hallucination when he sets down his mirror with a clatter, the shift of silk as he pulls his inner robe back on, still so wet that it sticks to his skin.

Nie Mingjue could leave, he knows. Could set a space down between them to breathe around it all, let them resettle back in amongst it. It feels too much like a concession, when he considers it; yielding to something, but not what he or Nie Huaisang want to yield to.

It would be cowardice, certainly, regardless.

So, he doesn’t. He stands, when the water is cooler and his cock is soft, and he tips out the bath. He sweeps as much of the excess water from his skin with his hands before he pulls on his own inner robe around himself, his pants up his legs, and pads to the bed. The bed, where Nie Huaisang has settled in, flat on his back, combed hair spun around his head like a tossed-back bride's veil, bare legs dangling over the side, toes skimming the floor. The bed, where Nie Huaisang chokes on his inhale with hot expectation when Nie Mingjue sits down beside him, drags his own legs up and crosses them, lets his wrists fall to his knees.

Nie Mingjue meditates, and does not think, again and again and again, of the sound Nie Huaisang had made in the back of his throat when he had rocked down on Nie Mingjue’s thigh. Does not think of the way Nie Huaisang’s breath had shaken out of him, seconds after Nie Mingjue had joined him on the bed, exhale thick with a deflated— disappointment. Does not think of the way Nie Huaisang shies away from the line of his back even as he rises of his own volition to kneel around it, or the way his fingers tremble around the comb as he runs it through Nie Mingjue’s hair, straightening it out.

It is less of a surprise, to Nie Mingjue, now, how the scholar-gentry could make a whole day out of bathing, so often and so readily. By the time the floor has dried out enough, it is dark, and the kao has been lit and extinguished again, the tangy smell of fried doufu, ginger, garlic and onion still thick in the air. Nie Huaisang breaks his fast by eating some slices of the curd from a bowl that he doesn’t even take from Yu Yongrui’s outstretched hand, apparently seeing no need to for how swiftly he decides he’s done with it. He washes it down with a few sparing sips of water, bids Yu Yongrui good night, rights the threshold to the door by slotting the wood back into place, and is the one to suggest to Nie Mingjue that they both go to bed.

If there is lingering tension, Nie Huaisang is adamant in his apparent desire to not see it addressed. He curls against Nie Mingjue’s side, as he has every other night, drapes his arm across his waist, and presses his cheek to his chest. For all he lies still, however, limbs soft and slack, he seems to sleep little as the night deepens and drags on. Nie Mingjue does not need to sleep, and so he does not sleep at all.

They rise and rite, as though it is any other morning after an uneventful day before. The semblance of normalcy they’ve adopted in a place where there should be none at all does not begin to splinter until hours after; after Nie Huaisang has drawn his legs up and crawled around Nie Mingjue to leave the bed, after his fingers have trembled through the braiding of his hair, after his shoulders have jerked and curved with the garbing of his robes. For all he seems to have become some shy scared thing over one sleepless night’s making, Nie Huaisang’s composure is convincing enough to deceive even the most cynical.

It cannot deceive his brother. He seems to know it as well as Nie Mingjue does, and though they don’t give it greater power by speaking of it, Nie Huaisang’s forbearance still gives way and snaps the tenuous truce in two shortly after the morning’s drills.

He excuses himself inside by claim of exhaustion, and Nie Mingjue knows he is not unwelcome, that he is anything but. That does not make it wise for him to go to Nie Huaisang, though, nor does it make it what either of them need.

He walks, instead. Not to the south, or to anywhere, in particular, at all. He simply walks, his brother’s sabre in hand, until he finds where the grasslands start to feed into the forest, where the trees tower overhead and he can stand beneath them and feel trapped against the earth and stable in a way that he can’t when the sky is so open and sprawls so wide.

It has become no clearer to him, through the days, what he is supposed to do with himself. Perhaps no small part of it is that Nie Mingjue no longer has a self to do anything with, in a sense. But— here, in this dream, he lives. Here, in this dream, he has no duties left but his ones to Nie Huaisang, and there is no danger to his charge, for now, but time, which has never been something Nie Mingjue could protect him from. It has never been something he could protect even himself from.

That there is only he and Nie Huaisang left is where the problem for them both lies. For all that there was to never be anything they kept from one another, anymore, before Nie Mingjue’s untimely death, there is always space to hide where there is no room left for secrets. Much like it is difficult to find where anything stops and starts between the both of them, so too does this carry on and through, to the walls they’ve built around parts of themselves and the weapons they’ve forged only to wield against one another in innate and insidious ways.

Nie Mingjue sinks to his knees, and feels the forest floor dig into his shins, billowing roots from long-seeded trees and scattered leaves striping marks into his skin through the skirts of his robes when he slopes his weight down into the ground of him. He sets his hands on his thighs and lets the heels of his palms grind in. He wonders when this all began, when it all bloomed, when it started to burn. He has no answer; he cannot find the moment he first looked at Nie Huaisang and wanted more. He cannot remember when he first looked at Nie Huaisang and saw that Nie Huaisang wanted more, too. Within the constant of them, it had simply crept in, taken its place as though it was always meant to be a part of them, alone and together.

He could ignore it, then, and he had. It had not been a relief to do so, so much as it had been easy: every desire cast off and aside to make room for duty in its stead. Nie Mingjue could allow himself the clemency of the facade, could feign that he was only who he was meant to be, and felt only what he was supposed to feel. And Nie Huaisang, for all he’d never been denied anything he ever wanted, would never be denied anything he ever wanted, for all he was predisposed to simply taking— had left Nie Mingjue be with it. A hesitancy, a guilt, a kindness, a monster made manifest of the three— Nie Mingjue is still not sure, now, why he did, what it could have been.

The want is not set aside, here, now. It can’t be. There is nothing else left that it can be set aside for.

Nie Mingjue wonders where the dreaming state sits; if his ancestors are looking down on him now from above, or across at him from beyond. If they can see him, past the canopy or through the thicket, as he bends forward, bows in on himself. One hand leaves his lap to find the dirt, the other to part his pleated robes and palm his cock where it strains against the seam of his pants. If they know it is for his own brother that he’s shucking his robes open just enough to pull himself out, cold air a slap to bare hot skin, dry fingers dragging up his shaft in a rough, roaming stroke.

What would they think of him, of them, of this? Does it even matter, really, at all, when he is already all too aware of the heft of the debasement, how it brings him low and weighs him down, and all it serves to do is make the loop of his fingers draw tighter?

It’s hardly the worst thing he’s ever done; certainly not the worst thing their ancestors have done, either, at that. It has Nie Mingjue hissing, through his teeth, how he thinks it half as much in his own head as he swears he hears Nie Huaisang’s voice speak it. Hardly a lofty perch to pass judgement from, he would argue, lips to the shell of Nie Mingjue’s ear for the spite of it, as much for him and them as for their forebearers, and Nie Mingjue would agree.

He is not gentle with himself, nor is the pace he sets a gradual one; it isn’t meant to be, and he doesn’t need it. It’s neither for pleasure or punishment that he scratches at the ground until dirt stabs up beneath his nails, that he strips his cock in his fist until it feels chafed and rubbed raw. It barely even measures up to a chase after release; lies closer to a call for relegation than anything else, something endured where it cannot be exorcised.

Nie Mingjue pants through his parted mouth, breath damp, feels sweat stroke down his neck and chin, and thinks of Nie Huaisang, still pliant from the bath, pressed up along his thigh. Thinks of how effortless it would have been to turn him over on his side and drag him up, to wrap his arm around his chest and pin him with a palm to the throat as he rucked the hem of the robe up to his hips, strung up in the snare Nie Huaisang set by dressing only in his thin robe that clung to every inch of his drying skin and nothing else. That Nie Huaisang would have taken it as Nie Mingjue held him down and fucked between the clamp of his thighs until the soft skin bruised up bright red and stung sweet from his blunt cock— that he would have taken it and begged for more until his voice broke— that’s what has Nie Mingjue coming in seconds and hours and all at once, spilling over his fingers and out onto the dirt in thick ropes.

It takes little time for him to catch his breath, and less to rise; to wipe and dust himself clean, to smooth his robes into place and dig out the dirt from beneath his nails.

The sun is low in the sky when he surfaces into the clearing again, but still has some hours left of crawling towards the horizon before the sky starts to dim and darken. Nie Huaisang makes no mention of the time they’ve spent out of one another’s sight and away from one another’s side when Nie Mingjue returns, but his gaze rests heavily on Nie Mingjue’s back as he kicks off his boots, perhaps heavier than even he realises or especially means for it to, the pry of it pointed and surreptitiously averted.

Nie Mingjue knows what he is wondering, what he is watching for. Nie Mingjue is watching him, and he is wondering the same, too.

It is to be expected, then, that the later they have both pushed the matters they are most reluctant to address to comes not when it is called for but when it is least wanted.

Coincidence wakes Nie Mingjue more than any cause, two nights later, and sees him met with an empty bed. He does not need to search far for Nie Huaisang; the lantern is lit, and so he follows the sprawl of the light, turns over on his side and sits up after it. His brother is hunched over the table, dragged further centre into the room than where it was last left, and his back is to Nie Mingjue. He barely stirs at the noise he makes as he stands; shows little awareness in his state of anything that surrounds him at all, save the slightest straightening of his stiff spine.

Nie Mingjue knows how to prowl around wounded game, how to court and coax it into the net, and he does no such thing to Nie Huaisang, here, as he abandons a gentler approach and a softer touch to instead step to him at once, settling down in alongside him at the table. Nie Huaisang’s throat bobs around his swallow, but that is all the acknowledgement Nie Mingjue gets from him and for now.

“Nightmare?” Nie Mingjue asks, quiet, voice still hoarse and heavy with sleep. It seems— the safest thing to say. Nie Huaisang had terrible nightmares as a child, and had not grown out of them so much as grown around them, but no man was ever imperturbable, even by horrors he’s well-acquainted with.

“No,” Nie Huaisang answers. He does not look up from his hand, where his wrist lies on the table, bent up, his fingers curled limply into his palm. “I don’t have them, anymore. Or dreams, either.”

It is not what Nie Mingjue expects to hear, or even what he thinks he could have ever expected to hear, but now he has, he must do something with it. He leans forward, bracing his arms against the table. He does not reach for his brother, but his hands settle within reach all the same. “Since you were trapped?”

“Uh,” Nie Huaisang starts, stopping when it’s more croak than consonant. His eyes narrow; his mouth thins. When he swallows again, it’s harsher. His jaw clicks with it, and clamps down, after, as if to bite through what threatens to slip out in the gap between it and his next breath. “At all. For the last year. Except the night we came,” he amends, after a moment too short for Nie Mingjue to have gained any bearings, “I dreamed then.”

It is not his right to ask, but it rises unbidden on his tongue, anyway, and meets the gate of his latched teeth. He breathes out through his nose, sharp, and Nie Huaisang’s fingers twitch in their lazy hang before they tighten stiffly.

“You’ve been sent here to test me,” Nie Huaisang says, when not enough time has passed between them to ready either of them for it at all. That is what finally bids his blank gaze to lift from his hand and find Nie Mingjue’s eyes to narrow down upon, sharpening into something serrated. It’s not an accusation, but weary accedence.

Nie Mingjue feels it, here, finally, at last, so brutally and so blatantly that it breaks the last of his hopes that he can ignore it: he does not want to go. He does not want to leave here, and the look in Nie Huaisang’s eyes is the clearest confirmation that he can no longer hide from Nie Mingjue how much he wants to stay, too.

“I have not,” he promises. Again, again, the urge, the need, to close the last expanse of distance between them and lace their hands together itches through his wrists. Again, again, Nie Mingjue survives it without surrendering to it.

“Well,” says Nie Huaisang, “you’re, you’re absolutely not here to show me that I’m about to lose someone, are you?” He jerks his chin, as if to tear his eyes away, but they don’t follow the violent jolt of his head, holding steady and steely where Nie Mingjue’s gaze is keeping them still. “There’s no-one left to lose. You’re not here to lead me to Diyu, either. You would have asked me to leave with you by now.” His fingers flinch in, in, until his fingernails start to bite down into the flesh of his palm; Nie Mingjue can’t see without leaning up where they’re cutting crescents into his skin, but he can see the colour draining from his knuckles.

“So, what else is there, then?” Nie Huaisang finishes, fraught. “Why are you here, if not to trial, or tell, or take?”

Nie Mingjue suspects that there is no answer Nie Huaisang wants, that they are not even the questions that Nie Huaisang wants to ask, but there is nothing he can do with it all but let it sink in and damn the both of them. “Is that what matters most?” he asks, knowing, already, that it does. That of course it does. That, to Nie Huaisang, why could come second only to when: when will Nie Mingjue leave him again?

What Nie Mingjue is here for is irrelevant, though it is what Nie Huaisang keeps circling around, stumbling on, stalling with. What he was brought here to be or do is nothing in the face of what he wills himself to be or do for Nie Huaisang’s sake.

Nie Huaisang laughs, a short, stuttering sound, steeped in something savage. The dagger-point of his gaze is a sliver of a slit, now, the wet glint of his dark eyes almost swept over by the storm sieging his stony face. “Who are you, really?”

For all Nie Mingjue has capitulated to the untread ground they’ve both stepped out onto, and has tried to compensate for Nie Huaisang’s own wilding unpredictability by readying for a swing to come screaming out from the blind dark of their conversation— how could even due warning have served to spare him from that? It transcends beyond a blow to something unspeakable, bordering on unforgivable.

For all it batters through and breaks him open, though, Nie Mingjue will not bleed out from it. He has to take the time to breathe through the worst of it, though he’s unable to stop himself from caving in, to carving across the space between their hands to clutch at Nie Huaisang’s, to crook in his fingers and coax Nie Huaisang’s nails out from where they’ve cut into the meat of his palm.

“Your brother,” Nie Mingjue tells him, after too long a wait, too terrible a quiet. Then, “Still.”

Nie Huaisang’s eyes soften in one second, and widen in the next. His mouth opens around silence. “I know,” he stammers, stun-struck, “I know that. I just—”

The sob sunders him, next, and he sucks in a shaky breath as he shuts his eyes tightly, the tears framing them sliding free. Nie Mingjue holds his hand steady beneath Nie Huaisang’s fingers as the shudders wracking his shoulders stream down his arms. When Nie Huaisang snatches at Nie Mingjue’s fingers with his other hand, snagging them, as if to stop him from fleeing, Nie Mingjue only squeezes down, firm, where he’s held. Shows Nie Huaisang that he is staying and that he is safe.

“This is not who you were,” Nie Huaisang chokes out, lips drawing up into a sneer around it. Something frustrated and furious and folded back in so it flays only himself. “You’re being, so, it’s— who you should have been. Who you wanted to be. Not who you ended up as.”

“I know,” Nie Mingjue says. He does. That he is a stranger to himself shows just how much of him was his sabre, and for so long, before he succumbed. Of course he is a stranger to Nie Huaisang, too. How could he not be? Stripped free of Baxia, there’s hardly anything left to him. So much of what separated Nie Mingjue from his sabre had been swallowed whole by anger, and— fear. He can see that, now, too. That his rage was not always the seed, but often the shield, instead, for the interminate terror that tormented the totality of his life.

“You see it.” Nie Huaisang shakes his head. The smile that draws across his mouth is shallow, thin-lipped and pained. His eyes are still wet with tears when he blinks them open, red blurring through the whites. “So you see that, I’m, I’m not, either. Not who you think I am. Not anymore.”

Nie Mingjue has to stop, not to measure how to spare Nie Huaisang further agony, but how he can make the mortal blow a swift one. Sometimes it is for the best, and for the kindest, to cut a hurt thing down than to try and care for it when it is limping on its last legs. “You’re not,” Nie Mingjue confirms, voice level. Then, because he is not one to deal untold and undue suffering, he does not draw it out. “You were wise and considerate, once. Now, you've become cold and cruel.”

It takes Nie Huaisang a moment to feel that it’s a dual-edged knife; the very same he plunged into Nie Mingjue’s chest, all those years ago, only reforged before its required return. When he does, though— Nie Mingjue can tell the moment it has hilted in the heart of him, for how he burns up, bright and brutal, face flushing with fury.

“What choice did you leave me with?!” he demands and he damns, the sob in his voice warping to a gnarled, ugly snarl, mottled and thick where it tears from his throat. He surges at once, seizes, fixing himself to flee, and Nie Mingjue brings his other hand up to trap him by his wrists, tying their hands together with the tangle of their fingers. Good, he thinks, as Nie Huaisang thrashes against his grip, struggling with a vehement violence all the more virulent than mere death throes. It verifies the life still left in him, the life Nie Mingjue had faith he’d find if only he forced Nie Huaisang to fight for it.

“We were never meant to be separated,” Nie Huaisang seethes, kicking his legs out, knees bashing against the base of the wood of the table. His writhing has wrapped his hair around his face, the dark strands spidering across his skin, sweat sticking clumps of them to his temples and around his throat. “It was you, it was all your fault, you did this to us! If not for San-ge—” he stumbles on it, spits it out, and scowls around the empty space it carved out for itself in his mouth. Nie Huaisang’s eyes blacken impossibly darker with something Nie Mingjue thinks may be shame, white-hot and breath-brief, before pure rage pours back over him. “If not for Jin Guangyao, how long did you have left? Months? A year?”

Nothing Nie Huaisang throws at him is not true, for all its honesty is fragmented and flawed. It’s real and it’s deserved, but for all he’s wielding his words as his weapon, Nie Mingjue knows how Nie Huaisang can only roar out with his anger after its metamorphosis. When he’s ripped out all of the love and desire and fear and grief that’s wrapped all up around it. Every blow breaks skin, bludgeons and bruises and bleeds, but it’s nothing, not at all, compared to the sum of the parts he’s had to take away just to get his hands around the hilt of it.

He can feel him start to flag underneath his hands; Nie Huaisang’s flame burns hot, but fast, fleeting in the face of Nie Mingjue’s fortitude. Still, Nie Mingjue would be a fool to underestimate him, and so he holds firm.

“We should have stayed and died together in Suoxian Pavilion,” Nie Huaisang heaves, panting, his features contorting, crumpling, as his anger begins to abate, as the lash of every wild and wide swing starts to recoil into him, too. “You should have killed me at Koi Tower! Let me go, Da-ge—”

And where will you go if I do? Nie Mingjue thinks. But that’s easy, isn’t it? Nie Huaisang will run, and Nie Mingjue will chase him; will catch him somewhere out on the grasslands, and in the dark the risk will be so much greater that they fall prey to doing something that cannot be undone. Here, walled in with the candlelight, it is easier to bring the beasts beneath to heel.

“Why did you come here with your men?” It’s unexpected enough that it stuns Nie Huaisang for split seconds before he starts to squirm again, wrist twisting in the cuff of Nie Mingjue’s palm, knees bumping hard against the table. If he could swivel until he snapped his shoulder free of the socket for the sake of escaping him, Nie Mingjue has no doubt Nie Huaisang would if only to spite the both of them. As it stands, he’s all too sapped to see it through.

“Da-ge—”

“Huaisang.” He feels the submission in the way Nie Huaisang’s fisting hands go slack in his grip; the way his wrists stop trying to slip free of his fingers. He sags forward, forehead pressing to their joined hands, shoulders shaking as he sucks in ragged breath after ragged breath. “Huaisang,” he repeats, quieter. He wants it to be gentler, too, but that is too far out of reach, so he will have to make do. “Why did you come here with your men?”

“What,” Nie Huaisang huffs out, hoarse, lifting his head to rest his chin on their hands instead, face turning to cast a bleary gaze over to Nie Mingjue. “What, hah, what a question, of all, of all things.” Nie Mingjue only stares, and Nie Huaisang sniffs, wet, and sighs out. “The elders and generals both argued against sending a second group. The harvest was poor, this past season, and they suggested that the people here had simply—” he shrugs, shoulders snapping up sharply, before he swallows, sets his mouth into a pinched line, and takes a breath. “They would have not been the first to choose to disappear, given that shame,” he continues, “but I overruled their decision and said I’d pick the men to bring by hand and come see it for myself.”

“Why?” Nie Mingjue asks, and Nie Huaisang laughs, breathy and weary and utterly wrung out, his exhale gusting up the back of Nie Mingjue’s wrist.

“Have I not made enough of a fool of myself for you tonight?” he snaps back, but there is nothing behind it but a bone-deep resignation, reservation and regret, all threading together and through. “I, it’s not that I thought they were wrong, just. I thought I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself, if it turned out we were mistaken, and something had happened.”

A benevolence, then, and he’d been punished for it; something had happened, after all, and now here they all were.

Nie Mingjue gently untangles his fingers and turns his hand over underneath Nie Huaisang’s chin, leaving his other hand between the loose furl of both of his brother’s as he instead sets himself to the task of gingerly brushing Nie Huaisang’s sweat-clumped hair back from his face. “I would not have done the same.” Nor would he have felt guilt, he does not think, if he had been mistaken. Grief, and remorse, but not guilt.

“Of course you would have,” Nie Huaisang mumbles out in a rush, angling his head, as much to push into Nie Mingjue’s fingers as to better see Nie Mingjue's face. “I would have made you.”

Nie Mingjue raises an eyebrow at him, and waits the breath it takes for the realisation to sink in.

“Oh.” Nie Huaisang’s eyes begin to shine again, a wet shimmer of tears skirting just out of bounds, made all the starker when he narrows them into a glare, heatless. “Was that your point?”

“That we are still brothers, and that is what matters?” It’s still not as gentle as he would like. But Nie Mingjue thinks, perhaps, that his hand on his brother’s face helps sweeten it.

“You couldn’t,” Nie Huaisang’s voice cracks around a laugh that takes a heartbeat to break out into a sob, “you couldn’t, just, say that? You’re awful, Da-ge, really—” he smiles around it, through it, and it swings back into a shuddering laugh. He squeezes his eyes shut, and spreads his hands out from Nie Mingjue’s, his fingers blooming up from the bud of their vice.

“Would you have listened, if I had?” Nie Mingjue asks, giving the blade of his cheekbone a parting stroke before Nie Huaisang lifts his head, sluggish, swaying with it.

“Not to a word,” Nie Huaisang admits, unnecessarily, then, eyes lowering, he adds, whisper-quiet, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, for— everything. For that.”

He needn’t be, but Nie Mingjue knows that is not what Nie Huaisang must hear. “It’s forgiven,” is what is necessary, and is what he says. “All of it.”

It still aches. The pangs have dulled, but the flesh is yet to knit back together. It will remain tender for days at least, may yet pull open again in future weeks and take them both unawares, but for now, the sorrow and the sundering are satisfying, too, for having been survived. It is not perfect; it is not even right. But the slope of Nie Huaisang’s frame is visibly lighter, shoulders no longer stooping under the shadow of a burden of a weight he’d convinced himself only he need carry, and that is more than Nie Mingjue can fairly ask for; that is more than enough.

“Maybe you were right, Da-ge,” is what Nie Huaisang settles on, after stretched-out and splayed-thin minutes, when he’s laced his hand with Nie Mingjue’s again, their palms turned to the table, their fingers steepled. He’s propped his elbow up on the wood to rest his cheek on the shelf of his other palm, too, to keep the slope of his frame mostly upright. “Maybe there is nothing more to this than what we see, and I’m looking for answers elsewhere because I don’t like the ones I’ve been given.”

He could be speaking of only this just as easily as he could be speaking of so many other things, from days gone by in the dream and from lives now long since lived. Nie Mingjue considers it, and decides to say nothing at all, instead stroking his thumb across Nie Huaisang’s to show he is, at least, still listening.

Nie Huaisang closes his eyes. Breathes in; out. Slow, slow, slow; but he's not done yet. “I honoured you,” he whispers, soft enough to be silent. It's given over with such reverence that it can only be a confession. “Not always well, but. I think— I like to think I have gotten better at it, by now. That I do well by you.”

What could he possibly say to that, in return? What could he ever give, that would even come close to suiting? I’m sorry; he is, but— I’m here; he may soon not be, but—

“I’m proud of you,” says Nie Mingjue.

Nie Huaisang tenses, imperceptible to the eye, but not to the touch; Nie Mingjue does not see it so much as he feels it through their hands. “Are you?”

“Of course.” He truly never said it enough, but can it not count for something, that he is saying it now? Can it not make something anew, if it cannot mend what is old and what was left?

Nie Huaisang’s mouth thins, his brow creasing and face crumpling. His eyes dart behind the lids, but don’t flick open. “There’s a lot to be proud of,” he replies, voice tightening, “in what little you’ve seen.”

Nie Mingjue sighs out, and it is not without its own serrated scrape of stress. “I have always been proud of you, Huaisang,” he says, hoarsely heartfelt and honest and hopeless. “I always will be.”

“Da-ge.” Nie Mingjue watches his lips part around his shallow inhale, how his throat works around the swallow he takes to soothe the rasp of his voice, jagged as a sob, a splinter off shattering entirely. “But you don’t know. You don’t—”

“I would understand,” Nie Mingjue interrupts. “Eventually, if not at first.”

All they have is each other, after all, and all they are is one another. How could Nie Mingjue not accept him? How could they not adapt to accommodate what and whoever they’ve become, if allowed the time?

“How could I ever want to leave with you here?” Nie Huaisang confides, crushed.

How could he, how could Nie Mingjue, how could the two of them, indeed? If only it was about their wants and not their needs; it would be a different story, then, from beginning to end. As it is, and as it should be, Nie Mingjue can only school himself into steel and say, “You have to,” because he must. If Nie Huaisang knows without room to doubt that Nie Mingjue wants the same, what else would it accomplish but to demoralise him? To deter him from his duty?

Nie Huaisang opens his eyes and lifts his head; frail-smiled and teary-eyed, he still looks better than how Nie Mingjue found him when he woke. “I know,” he huffs, nonchalant, as though Nie Mingjue is simply bothering him and not completely breaking him. “I’m only being delicate, Da-ge, don’t encourage me. You’ll undo all the hard work I’ve undertaken to become responsible.”

“So be it.” Nie Mingjue falls short of flippant, himself, but not all that far from it. He almost can’t stop the sadness from shading his voice, but he manages to help himself, if only barely, if not by much. The responsibility has bent his brother into a shape that strains him, and Nie Mingjue had promised to spare him from it. But it suits him, too, as Nie Mingjue always knew it would, if Nie Huaisang had ever wanted it. Of the two of them, Nie Huaisang wears the mantle of Sect Leader best, for each and every reason that meant and made Nie Mingjue the better choice to bear the blade at Nie Huaisang’s right hand.

“Will you rest now?” Nie Mingjue asks, to see the night move on when the wait has come and gone and grown too long. Nie Huaisang’s fingers twitch against his own before they start to unlace, unprompted.

“I suppose,” sighs Nie Huaisang, sounding more sleepy than sulky. When Nie Mingjue begins to lean back from the table to rise, however, Nie Huaisang’s hand finds his knee with surprising swiftness, a silent bid for him to stay.

Nie Mingjue is not expecting him to crawl around the table to come up against his side, or to fold in on himself, forward, until his face is tucked into Nie Mingjue’s lap, cheek to thigh, as though he is a child again, seeking his brother’s comfort in the wake of a scolding. For a moment, Nie Mingjue feels a cold panic sluice down his spine that Nie Huaisang will— press. Will use the advantage he’s stolen out from underneath Nie Mingjue’s guard to slide the rest of the blade of his body home to the hilt. That he will turn his head over and crane his neck until the bow of it brings him close enough to mouth at Nie Mingjue’s cock through his inner robe, and Nie Mingjue will look within for the conviction to deny him and find it and himself lacking.

It is not an unfounded fear: Nie Huaisang is at his greediest when he is made vulnerable. Taking and taking as though it will satiate the void of him when it has been laid bare and delved into. There is nothing else for him, here, to put his hands to, but Nie Mingjue. Nie Mingjue, who has, for Nie Huaisang’s greater good, opened him up and hollowed him out until what he felt outstripped mere hurt. It would take little for Nie Mingjue beyond surrender, for his part in it, to wrap Nie Huaisang's hair in his fist and twist it into a tether. Less to lead Nie Huaisang into his lap by it and pin him there. Nothing at all to feed his cock into his brother’s mouth, to fuck his throat until he forgets everything but the feeling of being filled, of being full.

Nie Mingjue buries his fingers in his brother’s hair, and hushes him when he mouths out a sound against Nie Mingjue’s thigh that strays off into sorrow, damp and hot. He strokes him, soft, from scalp to nape, until the shudders sundering his shoulders subside, until his every breath stops shaking out of him. Nie Huaisang falls asleep against him without pushing past the boundary that would bend to him at first pry. Nie Mingjue does not take a touch more than what he needs to take to gather Nie Huaisang up in his arms, to extinguish the lantern, and to carry him to the bed.

It poses too many problems to lay them down together, not in the least when the risk of rousing Nie Huaisang is so great; when every further movement only escalates it to greater. Nie Mingjue is comfortable enough sitting upright, anyway, and so he does not even begin to try. Nie Huaisang fits perfectly in the cradle of his lap, small as he is, with his knees bent towards his belly and his cheek pressed to Nie Mingjue’s collarbone, hands loosely furled between their chests. He does not stir once for the rest of the night, and nor does Nie Mingjue, who settles in to wait for the sun and for his brother to wake.