The spark of it starts small, well beneath Jiang Cheng’s notice, but builds steadily.

Aches within the pulse of his wrist that creep and crawl up to coil through where the join of his scapula meets his clavicle. Spurious spates of accidie, just as the mornings yawn into the afternoon, and stretch further out before him, impossibly long and intolerably meandering. A wet sting behind his eyes; a cloudy fog rolling through his head. The way he will stop, somewhere, for only seconds, and his breath will not seemingly come to him, the air too thick in his mouth.

Jiang Cheng attributes it all too easily to exhaustion: the kind that can only come from being so far from home, and so put upon by happenings. The lectures are taxing, and Wei Wuxian’s delinquency is trying. But Jiang Cheng must push forward, and push through, because the only other alternative left to him is to fall behind.

He struggles enough as it is just to keep the pace. He is exceptional, in several comparative regards, but little of it comes either easily or effortlessly. Unlike some, Jiang Cheng is burdened with the need to strain himself in the striving.

They’ve been afforded a day of rest, between lessons. It's one that Wei Wuxian is unable to appreciate, holed up as he is with the Second Jade; copying long-overdue rules that he will undoubtedly fail to finish by sundown at best, and foolishly exacerbate at likeliest.

The temptation tugs at him, after he’s had breakfast, to simply slide back between his sheets and return to sleep, but the opportunity the next few hours promise is too great to pass on. So, Jiang Cheng slips back out of his room and winds his way down one of the innumerable overgrown paths that seem to weave across the Cloud Recesses, heading for the waterside. Rivers and falls never seem to be far, in Gusu; the region sometimes feeling more like a blockade of pillared fortresses, swathed by motes and mist, than mere mountainous ranges.

He stumbles and sweats his way through his stances with Sandu, gritting his teeth every time he feels his feet slide or his weight sway out of form. Time stops and sweeps, smoothing over the top of him. There’s only a disruption to the flow of it, like a stone kicked into a pond, when a voice peals out from the craggy cliffside overhanging the riverbed.

So much for peace and progress, but at least Nie Huaisang has the decency to announce himself where he lacks the sense not to intrude in the first place. It does abate the flare of Jiang Cheng’s annoyance, somewhat, as well, to see that Nie Huaisang already looks awful by the time he’s finished clambering down; aggrieved by the heat and the exertion, face pink and the loose wisps of his hair plastered to his temples.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” Jiang Cheng asks him by way of greeting, and Nie Huaisang’s answering laugh is more of a wheeze as he fumbles for his fan.

“Than...?” Nie Huaisang cocks a brow at him, and it would almost look smooth, cool and unaffected, if his face wasn’t so peppered with flecks of sweat. He starts waving his fan against his chest hastily, the leaf skimming the pale column of his throat as he carefully toes his way closer.

Wander about, Jiang Cheng thinks. Watch me. He flicks his hand jerkily instead, gesturing broadly, as if that will serve to explain. Nie Huaisang laughs again, apparently satisfied with having just that, and starts kicking off his boots.

“Not really,” Nie Huaisang says.

“I can think of a few things.” Jiang Cheng blinks sweat from his eyelashes with a grimace when Nie Huaisang’s red-lipped smile only broadens at his churlishness. He huffs and turns on his heels, whipping away, brushing his hair back from his forehead roughly before he raises Sandu from its neglected hang at his side.

“I’m sure you can,” Nie Huaisang replies brightly. His breath gusts out of him in a rush as he sits, his own weight dropping a bit too sharply onto the stone, and then a splash of water follows. Jiang Cheng casts him a glance over his shoulder, but is disappointed; Nie Huaisang hasn’t fallen in, only dropped his feet in to lazily mill within the water, the skirts of his disciple’s robes hiked up over his knees. “You know,” he adds, and Jiang Cheng rips his gaze back in front of him when he sees Nie Huaisang’s face begin to tilt in his direction, “it might do you some good? To take a break?”

“I can see just how much good it’s doing you,” Jiang Cheng snaps, hoarse. He lunges forward, and feels the whip of his breath as his exhale tears out of him, ragged enough to be dizzying.

“You’re too young to sound so much like my da-ge,” Nie Huaisang complains. “Are you afraid if you relax that you might find you enjoy it?”

“Nie Huaisang,” Jiang Cheng hisses, irritated, shoulders tightening as he suffocates the urge rising within his body to spin around, “will you honestly not shut up unless I sit with you?”

“Jiang-xiong,” Nie Huaisang says, sounding strangely soft, almost sweet, “you have not once managed a duli lunpi without either lifting your wrist or misplacing your right foot since I first spotted you down here.”

Jiang Cheng straightens abruptly. “You’re a distraction,” he justifies, terse.

Nie Huaisang hums, somehow managing to make the note of it sound both argumentative and agreeable. “If you sit with me for a stick of incense, I’ll be quiet,” he offers reasonably, after a pause, and Jiang Cheng scowls, swears under his breath, and sheathes Sandu.

Nie Huaisang leans back against the rock on his approach, luxuriating obnoxiously in repose, and Jiang Cheng is all too glad to stoop low and, once he’s pulled off his boots, swing the butt of Sandu’s sheath through the river in a clean slice, splashing water into the basin of Nie Huaisang’s lap. Nie Huaisang squawks, indignant, and the shrill sound almost drowns out Jiang Cheng’s stunned gasp when he goes to sit and falls into it a bit too hard himself. When he looks up, Nie Huaisang is watching him from beneath his long eyelashes, shaking the water from his skirts. The pinched twist of his mouth is clearly not entirely attributable to his being scandalised by his newfound dampness, and Jiang Cheng closes his eyes as he eases himself down onto his elbows and then flat onto his back, feet dipping into the water.

It’s too hot. The air is heady with humidity, and his body feels heavy with sweat, his robes sticking to his skin, strung around his limbs like ropes. Jiang Cheng squeezes his eyes shut all the tighter against the sun, the bright blare of it bearing down on him from overhead, and there’s a shuffling from beside him and a splash from below before a shadow casts itself over his face. When he goes to sneak a glance, he finds it is, of course, Nie Huaisang, who has scooted closer and rolled himself onto his side, his fan held aloft to shade Jiang Cheng while he uses it to cool himself. Their legs are just a twitch off tangling together, and Jiang Cheng’s toes curl, absently, in the water, at the brief touch of the thought of it happening.

Without the mediation of Wei Wuxian’s company, Nie Huaisang’s presence still feels odd, at times. Uncomfortable, but not unpleasant. There are times where Jiang Cheng falls too easily into his sway, Nie Huaisang the moon to his tide; others where they are water and oil, passing over one another, unable to come together in agreeance.

It’s not impossible that Jiang Cheng’s uncertainty about Nie Huaisang is entirely self-orchestrated. He just can’t seem to shake the sensation of being appraised whenever they’re alone, of being pried into, without discernable cause or probability of resulting gain.

It’s a solid, intent focus. Unsuiting of Nie Huaisang, who so wholly embodies a Yin-rooted cultivator: soft and slow, yielding to force and passive to pressure.

“Why are you down here, anyway?” Jiang Cheng asks, pausing to swallow thickly when his voice cracks. “Were all the other rivers full?”

The drift of Nie Huaisang’s wrist slows, and the resulting breeze gusting both of their faces gentles in turn. “I just like this one,” he says, and Jiang Cheng can hear the shrug of his shoulders seeping into his voice. “There is a nesting bolao in the treeline across the shore.”

Jiang Cheng’s lungs lick fire up between his shoulder blades when he sighs out. He shifts against the stone, and drags Sandu up to rest against his chest, curling his fingers around it, thumb toying with the tassel. “Really? A bird?”

“It’s a zong bei bolao, Jiang-xiong! They’re not often seen in Hebei, but they’re common in Jiangsu. Should I point it out to you, if I see it?”

“Absolutely not,” Jiang Cheng scoffs, then, “weren’t you going to be quiet?”

“I was, after— ow!”

“Child,” Jiang Cheng snips, tucking his elbow back against his side.

“I think throwing elbows is the more childish of our two actions, here!” Nie Huaisang protests, sulking. Jiang Cheng listens to him knead at his own chest and whine out in one long, dragging note, before he finally seems to set his performative pitifulness aside, the languid waft of his fan resuming.

He’s quiet, though, after that. Quiet enough, at least, for Jiang Cheng to drift, body sinking back against the stone, tension unfurling in his shoulders, the breath in his chest unlatching. He stirs only when cool fingers brush against the blade of his cheek, and then his brow, Nie Huaisang’s tongue clicking wetly behind his teeth in thought.

“You’re really flushed,” Nie Huaisang remarks.

Jiang Cheng bats his fingers away, grunting. “You’re just cold.” Nie Huaisang’s touch feels like a frost-tipped breeze brushing his face, almost; there is a momentary relief before the bite of the chill follows through. It’s too hot a day for him to feel so cold on contact, but when Jiang Cheng tries to turn the thought over in his head, tries to consider it more closely, it slips cleanly out from his grasp.

Nie Huaisang pulls his hand away, and Jiang Cheng opens his eyes, blinking slowly, chin tilting up. Nie Huaisang looks back down at him, brows raising. His delicate features are fringed with a concern that the exaggerated pout of his lips can’t quite manage to conceal. It’s— agitating. It itches at Jiang Cheng, somewhere lodged deep, out of reach.

“Maybe we should head back up?” Nie Huaisang suggests.

“We?”

“Inside,” Nie Huaisang explains, “away from the sun.”

“We,” Jiang Cheng enunciates, and he feels his eyes roll reflexively when Nie Huaisang snorts, his mouth curving.

“Far be it for me to impose on your solitude, Young Master Jiang,” Nie Huaisang replies, teasing. “My room is closer, though.”

“Why would you even think that’s enticing?” Jiang Cheng asks incredulously, headbutting the monture of Nie Huaisang’s fan as he hefts himself up onto his elbows.

“It’s hot?” Nie Huaisang tugs his fan out of harm’s way with a flick of his wrist and rolls back over to sit upright. “Every step saved is a step you don’t have to sweat through.”

“Of course,” Jiang Cheng retorts dryly. When he slides up and crosses his legs, Sandu coming to rest in his lap, he feels his head sag in on itself, body swaying. He props his elbow up against his knee and pinches the bridge of his nose to smooth it all over, sighing.

“It’s very kind of me,” Nie Huaisang continues, captious.

Jiang Cheng stands, just as Nie Huaisang does. He feels himself lurch, wet feet slipping against the smooth stone, just as Nie Huaisang stumbles against his side, clutching Jiang Cheng’s sleeve to catch himself. Jiang Cheng stops short of snapping at him for it: for all the clumsy flail of it, Nie Huaisang’s weight had not landed all that heavily, and certainly wouldn’t have managed to knock either of them over.

“I also have peaches,” Nie Huaisang adds, once he’s properly righted himself and unlatched his fingers from Jiang Cheng’s robe.

Jiang Cheng squints down at him, brow creasing. Nie Huaisang cups his hand around the backs of his knuckles as he raises his fan up to hide the lower half of his face.

“So you want me to help you dispose of your contraband?” Jiang Cheng snorts, tucking Sandu into his sash before he slings his arms across his chest. “Such a generous Young Master of Qinghe Nie.”

Jiang Cheng can tell he is being pouted at from the way Nie Huaisang’s eyes narrow ever so slightly. “They were fairly acquired! Xichen-ge gave them to me.”

“Scrupleless,” Jiang Cheng scolds. “Shameless.”

Nie Huaisang taps his nose with the leaf of his fan and spins around, skirts twirling around his legs as he skips off the stone. “So,” he says, his voice adopting an exasperatingly sing-song tone as he starts to pull on his boots, fan tucked under his arm, “you’re coming?”

“Fine,” Jiang Cheng relents, stepping down after him.

Nie Huaisang slips into his stride as gracious host the moment they step over the threshold into his room, waving Jiang Cheng away in a vague invitation to make himself comfortable before he scurries off. And so, dismissed, Jiang Cheng kicks off his boots and heads for the low table in the middle of the room, still shunted off-centre from his last visit. He sets Sandu down flat on the wood, and sinks into a low, sprawling slant, cheek pressed into his palm, eyes sliding shut.

Jiang Cheng listens, distantly, to the crackle of the fire as Nie Huaisang lights the pit, the clatter of the Yixing clay teapot as it is filled and set to boil. It’s monotonous, mindless; he relaxes into it only to startle, later, sluggish, when Nie Huaisang clears his throat from somewhere nearby.

Jiang Cheng opens his eyes, and shifts his head so his chin slots into his palm, fingers fanning against his jaw. Nie Huaisang, peach in hand, meets his gaze, concern edging back into his expression. The knife sunk into the pit of it shifts with the tremor in his fingers, and juice dribbles down his wrist.

“Jiang-xiong,” Nie Huaisang says, “are you sure you’re feeling all right?”

Jiang Cheng grunts. “Less and less so the more you fuss, Nie Huaisang.” He closes his eyes with a shudder as Nie Huaisang shifts the peach between his hands to lick his wrist clean, and then jerks as, seemingly seconds later, there are cool fingers pressed to his brow again.

Jiang Cheng blinks the blur from his eyes, breath shaking out of him. Nie Huaisang’s brow knits all the more harshly, his lips paling from the terse pinch they’ve fixed themselves into. Jiang Cheng can no longer hear the fire, or the boil of the water, and the peach is gone; Nie Huaisang can’t have gone away and then back so quickly, unless...

“Jiang Cheng,” Nie Huaisang calls, quiet, uneasy, “don’t get angry at me for this, but—”

“I’m already angry,” Jiang Cheng grumbles, flinching when Nie Huaisang’s fingers drift down to tuck against the column of his throat. “Just spit it out.”

“Uh,” Nie Huaisang stammers, “ah, well. Um.” His fingers — and their now-blessed cool — leave Jiang Cheng’s neck only to reach between them, circling his wrist, thumb kneading the tender skin over his fluttering pulse. “You wouldn’t happen, to be—” he stops himself, bites his lip, and shakes his head. “I think we need to find a doctor. Your Yang is really… low.”

It takes a moment for him to realise just what Nie Huaisang is saying, when he’s not outright saying it. Jiang Cheng flinches back when it hits him, and yanks himself out of Nie Huaisang’s grip.

“No,” he blurts out. He doesn’t elaborate, but he doesn’t really need to: it’s a protest to everything, perceived and potential. It can’t be. It’s surely not— possible.

Nie Huaisang’s gaze is too heavy, and Jiang Cheng squeezes his eyes shut and clamps his jaw to try and at least dull the sharp blade of it, pointed at him. It’s quiet, for a too-long pause, save their mingling breaths, as though Nie Huaisang is considering his words before he next speaks.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, “the specifics. Yang vacuity is bad no matter how it happens.”

Jiang Cheng’s eyes begin to sting, wetly, behind his eyelids. He scrubs his hand over them, lips curling into a snarl. “I was careful,” he relents, raw, already hoping it’s too quiet to hear even before it leaves his mouth. He might not be able to call it a secret, not anymore, but in no way does that make him eager to admit to it.

Nie Huaisang seems to consider that, somehow, too, in the ensuing beat of silence: that Jiang Cheng wants to speak but not be heard. “It’s the tea,” he says, and then he laughs, nervous and snappish, “Gusu Lan’s eminent hospitality, extended to its most esteemed guests. It can sneak up on you.”

He stands, and takes that thought with him before Jiang Cheng can catch it and contemplate it further. Jiang Cheng opens his eyes to follow his retreat. “I’ll go find someone for you,” Nie Huaisang concludes, hands dusting down his robes, fingers flitting, fleeting, over the faultless folds of the fabric.

“Don’t.” Jiang Cheng does not beg, but he comes ruinously close.

“Your Da-jie?” he tries, tsking when Jiang Cheng only grimaces and shakes his head stiffly. “I think— you might need to swallow your pride, just this once.”

“I don’t really care what you think,” Jiang Cheng growls, hating the bite of it, how it cuts through where he doesn’t want to land a blow and glances off where he wants to wound. It’s not Nie Huaisang’s fault that he’s here, seeing Jiang Cheng like this.

“I’m not asking you to,” Nie Huaisang replies. It’s too gentle, giving; Jiang Cheng grits his teeth as he swallows, only to choke on it. “You don’t have to. But you should at least listen to what I have to say.”

It’s a shock, how quickly Nie Huaisang’s pull flips into a push; Jiang Cheng feels as if his very words are pressing down on the back of his neck, and he fists his hands in his sleeves, shuddering.

“I’m guessing you’ve been ignoring this for some time,” Nie Huaisang observes. It’s not chiding, but— conciliatory, almost. Jiang Cheng burns beneath it all the same. “It’s likely too late to stay its course. It will be bad, even if it’s not your first. If you don’t want to tell your family, and there’s no one you… trust, I’ll speak to Zewu Jun.”

It’s Zewu Jun, now, then. Not Xichen-ge.

“It’s unnecessary,” Jiang Cheng argues, voice tight, “I’m fine.”

Nie Huaisang doesn’t move to disprove it, not directly, but there’s a defeat in the way his shoulders slump, eyes hooding. “Okay,” he breathes out, “all right. I’ll help you.”

He’s crowding Jiang Cheng’s space before Jiang Cheng can decline, his hands tucking under Jiang Cheng’s armpits. Jiang Cheng’s words die on his tongue with a strangled yelp as he’s dragged to his feet, and then lifted, arms snaring around Nie Huaisang’s shoulders in a shaky stranglehold, thighs cinching around his waist.

“What—” he gasps, stunned, body bouncing against the mattress when Nie Huaisang drops him onto it without forbearance or fanfare. He struggles up onto his elbows, head spinning, and tries to track Nie Huaisang as he strides off back across the room, skirts whipping at his ankles.

“Hold on,” Nie Huaisang calls out, harried, as he stoops over and starts pulling out a luggage chest.

“You picked me up,” Jiang Cheng says stupidly.

“You’re not very heavy,” Nie Huaisang fires back. He even has the audacity to sound bewildered by Jiang Cheng’s surprise, as if he hasn’t allowed Jiang Cheng to freely assume that even lifting a sword is both terribly taxing on his body and some manner of personal slight.

That’s, well. Jiang Cheng would like to say all he’s feeling is affronted, beneath the nauseating crests of heat, churning through his body, but it’s too hard a lie to even start trying to tell. He elects to concede instead, and suffers through a strained silence as Nie Huaisang pulls a silk-wrapped bundle out and staggers to his feet, almost tripping over the trail of it in his haste to return.

Jiang Cheng can see the talismans stitched into the fabric through the blur hazing his eyes when Nie Huaisang comes to a stop, and he makes a cut-off sound as Nie Huaisang starts rending through the twine holding it all together. “Wait,” he rasps, surging up, trying to catch Nie Huaisang’s wrists, “you need that.”

Nie Huaisang turns his palm outward, smoothly rebuking Jiang Cheng and pressing him back into his sprawl against the bed, and the— ease with which he does it makes Jiang Cheng’s throat feel too tight, closed up. “I don’t.”

“You might,” Jiang Cheng hisses, flushing. Nie Huaisang flicks out the beizi and drops into a kneel on the mattress, drawing it around Jiang Cheng’s shoulders. It’s too little, too late, either way: Nie Huaisang already broke the seal on the silk’s script by unbundling it. Without the spell caging it, the Yang energy transferred into the coat will dissipate, whether or not Jiang Cheng takes it into himself in turn.

It feels heavy on his shoulders, heavier than even his own leaden limbs; the fabric plush and the embroidery elaborate. It likely belongs to Nie Mingjue, intended to be Nie Huaisang’s succour should he meet with strife, to stave off his own heat.

“I won’t,” Nie Huaisang assures him, drawing the excess fabric around to pool in Jiang Cheng’s lap. His bottom lip catches between his teeth as he peers at Jiang Cheng’s face, searching. Jiang Cheng’s not sure what he’s looking for, or even if he glances away, after, because he’s found it.

Jiang Cheng fists the tails of the coat and heaves in a breath, ragged. He can feel it; the residual coolness, like a breeze and a wave, drifting down over him. It’s not enough. It’s really not enough. “You don’t know that,” he snaps, surly.

“Well,” Nie Huaisang admits, turning away. “I do.”

The way he’s angled his back obscures both what he’s busying his hands with, halfway across the room, and his face. His voice is not revealing anything Jiang Cheng wants to know, not offering answers to any of Jiang Cheng’s rising questions. It takes Jiang Cheng far too long to understand each of the implications, the branch of their paths.

“The tea,” Jiang Cheng mutters, dark, because of course, and Nie Huaisang huffs out a laugh, hoarse.

“I failed last year,” Nie Huaisang says, “because I had to go home, three months into the lectures. Worst, uh, rut of my life. My spiritual roots burled.”

He leaves it at that. It’s enough, as it stands; it’s too much. Jiang Cheng shivers, sickened, suffocating. He wants to sever the tension at the neck, wants to say I’m sorry, or You would have failed, anyway. Something. Anything.

His voice won’t come to him. The words won’t claw out any further than their knot in the back of his throat. Jiang Cheng knows, if only because Nie Huaisang is all too eager to share, that Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen are close friends. Perhaps this is why he does not set entirely aside his partiality towards Nie Huaisang: not because of his bond with the elder brother, but because he can be blamed for destroying the younger’s very ability to cultivate to his body’s full inherent potential.

Or, perhaps not. It's possible Lan Xichen doesn't know. It's almost certain Nie Huaisang doesn't care, which is— worse, to Jiang Cheng.

“Do you feel any better?” Nie Huaisang asks.

Jiang Cheng shakes his head, in answer to all respects with which Nie Huaisang has asked the question. Then, because he can’t be helped, he adds, “Why hide it?”

Nie Huaisang shrugs, the roll of his shoulders deliberate in its dismissiveness, and turns back around to face him. His features are schooled into a placidity that’s disconcerting; as though he’s waiting for some manner of cue from Jiang Cheng before he decides just what to show of himself.

“Why hide anything?” is Nie Huaisang’s forgivingly diplomatic answer. It’s an almost undeserved kindness, that he’s not giving Jiang Cheng enough rope to hang himself with. He should be grateful, and yet—

He’s not. He’s not sure what he is, precisely, in this moment, underneath the blaze of the fire charring him from the inside out, but he knows he’s anything but that. Jiang Cheng wonders if all of Nie Huaisang, where he bends and relents, is a trick, or if it’s his truth despite his disguise. Jiang Cheng wonders if it’s less that Nie Huaisang is deceiving anyone, and more that he’s just allowing them all to deceive themselves with their assumptions, left uncontested.

Jiang Cheng does not wonder about himself, and does not think about whether or not Nie Huaisang is wondering about him.

“I should find someone,” Nie Huaisang says. His voice is clipped, but it’s not cruel. “I really should find someone—”

“No.” Jiang Cheng draws the beizi more tightly over his shoulders, panting out with a flinch when a droplet of sweat drips into his eyelashes.

“Jiang Cheng.” There’s a fair exasperation, there, in the way Nie Huaisang exclaims his name, but there are questions, too.

Jiang Cheng can’t answer either of them, not satisfactorily. Not Do you know what you’re asking for?, and never Are you sure? But he can meet Nie Huaisang’s agitation with his own annoyance, match his ire to that irritation, so he scowls, severe, and says, “Nie Huaisang, get over yourself and come here.”

Nie Huaisang’s laugh tears out of him; something frustrated and fearful and utterly incredulous. He obeys, nonetheless, with little scrutiny, scooting back over to the bed. Before Jiang Cheng can react with any dignity, Nie Huaisang’s hands are against his hips, hoisting him up to deposit him back a few generous inches, making room for himself to clamber onto the mattress in pursuit.

“Stop that!” Jiang Cheng yelps, slapping his forearms.

“Stop what?”

“Picking me up!” He punctuates it with a fumbling kick as Nie Huaisang draws his legs up beneath himself, crossing them.

“You’re being really weird about that,” Nie Huaisang remarks. “I mean, considering how weird all of this is—”

Jiang Cheng unhands the beizi and lunges, snatching Nie Huaisang by his biceps, fingers clawing in his sleeves. Nie Huaisang cuts himself off with a squeak, high-pitched, as Jiang Cheng musters what energy he has left in him, beneath his feebling fever, to lift him and flip him onto his back, his breath barreling out of him as he hits the mattress.

“See?!” Jiang Cheng grouses, catching himself on his hands when he sways dangerously, trailing his own momentum. “How do you like it?!”

Nie Huaisang blinks. “I see,” he says slowly, “I think?”

“And?”

“I think it’s not comparable— ow!” he whines, cringing away when Jiang Cheng smacks his arm. “I dislike it. I dislike it!”

Jiang Cheng huffs, and then teeters forward when his elbows buckle, just barely catching himself on his forearms before his face hits the sheets. His whole body feels as if it’s lurching out of its bounds, the trailing aftermath of something unnameable, and his face crumples, pained.

“Oh,” Nie Huaisang mumbles. Jiang Cheng sucks in a whistling breath through his teeth as he feels the mattress shift beneath his arms. Nie Huaisang’s palm cups his brow, the furl of his fingers absently combing his hair back from where sweat has stuck the strands to his skin. It’s a balm, however brief; how cool he is to Jiang Cheng’s heat.

"This isn't—" working, he doesn't finish. There's no need to; it's a waste of Jiang Cheng's dwindling sense to state the obvious.

"Sorry.” Nie Huaisang’s fingers slip away alongside his apology, snatching a bereaved sound from Jiang Cheng's mouth as they leave, and Jiang Cheng feels a humiliated heat settle atop the rest of the sear of his skin.

“That doesn’t help,” Jiang Cheng retorts, mithering.

“I know.” Nie Huaisang rolls onto his side fully, with a gentle fluidity begetting a grace Jiang Cheng is only just learning now that he has in the first place, and pillows his cheek on his bicep, palm upturned between them. With his other hand, he reaches for his sash, pulling free his fan to unfold it. “Here, come down here.”

Jiang Cheng does, if only because he knows he will soon lack the freedom to even choose, from the way it seems his very sinew screams its protestations when he slumps down on his side, scowling. He pulls the beizi back up over his shoulders, until the hem is ghosting his sweat-damp throat, and reaches between them to press his fingers into the cup of Nie Huaisang’s hand. Nie Huaisang hums a lone note, closes his eyes, and crooks his fingers until the soft pads of them are pressed to Jiang Cheng’s wrist.

Jiang Cheng doesn’t feel anything else, at first, but that cool pressure and a cooler breeze, kicked up by the sway of Nie Huaisang’s fan. It’s soothing, but skin-deep; a provisional panacea. Through the unbearable warmth blanketing him, Jiang Cheng almost doesn’t even notice it when it finally happens; when the first tendril of Yang energy crosses the conduit of their hands and douses over his enflamed meridians. The freshet of it is so fleeting, so fragile, and it spurs a chuffing laugh through his teeth, tinged with a muddled hysteria. It’s less than nothing, somehow. There is no possible way it can help him.

“How do you,” Jiang Cheng starts. Stops. Swallows, and licks his lips, before he forces his eyes open, squinting. The rhythm of Nie Huaisang’s fanning falters for a beat, and the furrow of his brow deepens, the twist of his features aberrantly austere. As if he’s teetering over a precarious ledge of focus.

“Mm?” The line of Nie Huaisang’s mouth draws thinner, and his chin jerks, as if his voice needs the very motion of it to carry out past his throat.

“Deal with it,” Jiang Cheng finishes. “This.”

The next lap of Nie Huaisang’s energy feels— braver, perhaps. There’s more body to it, the way it washes through, but it still feels strange. It is nothing like Jiang Yanli’s, when passed through his and her hands; a burbling brook, and a drowning deluge, when the need calls for it, but always an easing constant.

Nie Huaisang’s nails scrape his bounding pulse when his fingers twitch, and Jiang Cheng watches the tension thread through his arm, wrist to shoulder, as he breathes out sharply. “Ah, well— like this? It’s not, often, really.”

Jiang Cheng shifts his shoulder, grunting, and his fingers slip against the sweat pooling in the basin of Nie Huaisang’s palm. The waft of Nie Huaisang’s fan stalls again, and then strengthens, as if out of spite. “Like this.”

“I have an attunement,” Nie Huaisang elaborates, answering the question Jiang Cheng in no way wanted to ask with the information he in no way wanted to know. Jiang Cheng feels something well up from the pit of his gut, brittle and bitter and burning white-hot, and he jerks, bodily, when Nie Huaisang’s energy next crests through him, feeling— wrung out, when it recedes, as though it’s both giving and taking all at once.

“Is it helping?” Nie Huaisang sounds strained, and Jiang Cheng has to blink several times to reorient, shaken, missing the time between the last touchpoint of Nie Huaisang’s energy to the newest. Nie Huaisang looks worn out, the flush of his skin branching beneath the collar of his robe, sweat soaking through his hair.

“No,” Jiang Cheng says, then, fevered and foolish, he adds, “what do you even mean, attunement? Did you suddenly learn shame, that you can’t just say—”

“Wh—” Nie Huaisang blurts out, eyes flying open with a jolt, his shoulders snapping up towards his ears, stiff. It almost undoes the bridge of their hands, and Jiang Cheng lurches to snatch his wrist, keeping them together. “Did you think I meant... heqi?”

“Shut up,” Jiang Cheng snaps, utterly humiliated, because he’s an idiot, and of course it’s not that, why would he even think it’s that? “Just— what is wrong with you?”

Nie Huaisang’s laugh is silent, all movement without sound, his teeth baring in discomfort as he twists his wrist in the cuff of Jiang Cheng’s grip. “Ah, there’s a lot,” he gasps out, wretched, “and I don’t have much of a surfeit, so I was trying to do a conjoint transference.”

He pauses, gulping down a mouthful of air, then another. Jiang Cheng does not know and absolutely does not understand what he’s trying to explain. Nie Huaisang is borderline unintelligible, and not just from the slur smearing his speech. It’s as if he’s half a province away; as though they’re having two severed conversations.

Jiang Cheng thinks he can guess, and guess well, based on the evidence. Not that it matters: there’s no victory to be found in being right if his suspicions are correct.

“Plucking and nurturing?” Jiang Cheng can’t help his scoff when Nie Huaisang nods, nor his sneer. “You, you can’t hold a sword, or remember more than five rules at a time, but you know something like this?”

“Those are uninteresting,” Nie Huaisang wheezes, wry, lips curving into a wan smile, “this is important. It didn’t, ah, work, anyway.” He pointedly taps the rivet of his fan, only barely still balanced within the binds of his trembling fingers. “I couldn’t figure out how to carry it through while keeping it separate.”

“You idiot,” Jiang Cheng seethes in furious realisation, voice cracking, “unbelievable,” and he’s dragging Nie Huaisang in by his wrist before he can stop himself or Nie Huaisang can stop him. Somewhere within the seconds that whip past them, between one battering heartbeat and another, Jiang Cheng kicks off the beizi draped over him, and Nie Huaisang loses his fan within the sheets, the monture rattled free of his clasp by the claw of Jiang Cheng’s fingers as his hands scale up the plains of his arms.

It’s graceless, how they come together: with all too much force and ferity, their knees knocking as Jiang Cheng fists the neck of Nie Huaisang’s robe and draws him so close that their chests meet, that they’re sharing the same breath. Nie Huaisang is glacial, even through his robes, and Jiang Cheng almost bites through his tongue from how his relief rends through him, his moan tearing out through his teeth.

“Forcing your own rut,” Jiang Cheng rants, powerless to stop it, the way his every jumbled thought keeps falling out of his mouth as he tries to pull Nie Huaisang’s robes loose enough at the chest that he can rip them down over the hills of his shoulders, “is your common sense finite?!”

“It wasn’t deliberate,” Nie Huaisang retorts, rueful, the flats of his palms juddering up Jiang Cheng’s chest as he’s jostled unceremoniously, “I only wanted to help—”

Jiang Cheng doesn’t want to hear that, and he can’t let it stand. It’s the last thing he thinks he will be able to bear: that this is his fault, too, even if Nie Huaisang won’t impart the blame, just as it is his fault they were ever even here in the first place.

He should have exercised more caution. He should have shown more concern. Now, well. It’s unlikely he would have chosen differently, still, knowing the outcome. If nothing else, he’s always been good at playing the part of the proud.

“You really have done everything but help,” Jiang Cheng croaks, stripping Nie Huaisang’s outer robe down until it snags on his elbows. His fingers fumble over the ties of his inner robe, and the next breath that rattles out of him is too resemblant of a sob. He’s so incensed, and there’s just nowhere left for it, inward, so it can only go outward, onto and into Nie Huaisang, who deserves it the least of the two of them.

“I know.” Jiang Cheng shudders, gasping, as Nie Huaisang’s fingers skim his throat, his arms unbound from his sleeves to brace against Jiang Cheng’s chest, his face tipped up to meet his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

It’s terrible, how Nie Huaisang apologises; like he means it, like he believes it. Like he’s listening to all of the frantic things Jiang Cheng keeps saying and finding a double-edged truth in them, something that only cuts through the both of them in the handling. Jiang Cheng can’t even think, not with the fever fogging his head or Nie Huaisang’s penitence roping around his neck, and none of it feels like it’s helping, each new stretch of bare skin he can press himself into teasing him with relief, only to tear it away again.

Nie Huaisang just looks at him, brow furrowing, lips ghosting against his chin when they part, and Jiang Cheng doesn’t want to hear it, whatever regret or recognition he still has left to say. That’s the reason, that is the only reason why Jiang Cheng fists his hand in Nie Huaisang’s hair, tugging his guan free and hooking his fingers into his braids for leverage before he slams their mouths together, messy and bitingly rough. Nie Huaisang doesn’t speak, but he does make a sound, a shaky, whining thing, his thumb curling against Jiang Cheng’s throat as his fingers furl back to cup his nape, collaring him.

The wane of the most jagged edge of the heat is immediate and immense, a hallowed cool washing over him like a wave. It sweeps him up from the shore of his madness and sets him out to sea, held aloft and afloat by the line of Nie Huaisang’s frame, tucked against him. Jiang Cheng tugs on his hair when he tries to unlace his fingers from his braids, and Nie Huaisang gasps, raw, his shudder rocking through him and rolling into Jiang Cheng, and then he’s burrowing closer, digging in, the shove of his knee forcing Jiang Cheng’s legs to part around it, Nie Huaisang’s thigh rutting up to pin against his cock.

Nie Huaisang jerks his face away, pressing it into the sheets with a fissuring pant, the grip-loosened locks of his dark hair spilling over his cheek like a silken veil, a stark dark stain over the mar of his blush-mottled skin. Jiang Cheng can see the mindless flick of his tongue against the backs of his teeth in his mouth, like the glint of a dagger gleaming out through the dark, and he snaps his hips with a growl, dragging his cock along the hot brace of Nie Huaisang’s thigh, his vision fraying at the edges, wet.

“Why,” Jiang Cheng grits out, chest heaving, “why is it like this? What did you do—”

“I don’t know,” Nie Huaisang sobs, trembling, the sound of it turned against the bed, his kiss-rouged lips grazing the linen with every word, as if that will muffle his voice, “I don’t know, I don’t know—”

Jiang Cheng leads him in by the leash of his braids and swallows down his hiccuping moan, hating the way Nie Huaisang melts against him, the clumsy scrabble of his other hand as he grips the chest of Jiang Cheng’s robe and holds tight. As if it’s the only thing he can do; as if he’ll fall if he doesn’t. Of all the things he lacks, of all the things he can be measured in and found wanting, Jiang Cheng never thought he would be undone and unmade by his own control. Never thought he’d be the kind of man he was always warned about: too far gone, forcing himself onto another person.

And maybe part of the fear that brought on the lie at all was not simply losing control, but having it taken from him, merely because he’s been born to bend. It doesn’t matter that Jiang Cheng is the one taking, here; he’s still bending. He’s still breaking. He’s just snapping Nie Huaisang in half alongside him, as well, in turn.

Every shuddering breath of Nie Huaisang’s he feels, every artless nip of his teeth on Nie Huaisang’s lips and every hungry lave of his tongue as it dips into his mouth— every touch he takes is a whetstone to his dulled, splintered senses, sharpening their edges, drawing them back in together. Jiang Cheng is no longer afraid that, should he still, for a moment, and think, that he’ll stop. He’s afraid he’ll stop, and then start again, unheeding and uncaring of Nie Huaisang.

Nie Huaisang’s thumb kneads beneath the jut of his jaw, digging in just enough to make Jiang Cheng’s mouth fall open with a groan, and Nie Huaisang tilts his face back, away, panting, sinking back into Jiang Cheng’s hand, still snared in his hair.

“Please, stop,” Nie Huaisang begs, wrecked, and Jiang Cheng feels vile, Heaven and Earth, but the moment his heat breaks he’s going to slit his own throat, if Nie Huaisang doesn’t do it first—

Bile scalds Jiang Cheng’s throat; his head swims violently, and then Nie Huaisang’s hand is wedging its way between the mattress and Jiang Cheng’s cheek, cradling his face, the other still a fetter on his throat, a constant. Jiang Cheng squeezes his eyes shut and grunts weakly as his hips stutter-stall, the animal rhythm of the grind of his cock against Nie Huaisang for friction hitching mid-thrust. “Wait, wait, Jiang Cheng!”

“Don’t,” Jiang Cheng whimpers, threadbare, because I can’t is inordinate, and Sorry is impossible. His voice breaks in two, and he heaves out a sob, and it’s only when Nie Huaisang makes a grave, tender sound, his thumb circling against his cheek and his neck, that Jiang Cheng even realises he’s crying.

“It’s not,” Nie Huaisang babbles, fervent, “it’s not, Jiang Cheng, please, I’m going to come, I can’t—”

Jiang Cheng is moving his hand before the words even reach his head, the cinch of his fist tightening in Nie Huaisang’s hair, his other gripping Nie Huaisang’s ass, pinning him in place, holding him down into the sloppy grind of his hips.

“Just do it,” Jiang Cheng bites out, and Nie Huaisang thrashes within the cage of his hands, wild, as he comes with a warbling wail. His Yang follows after in a remorseless, resounding blow, rending through Jiang Cheng worse than the sight of Nie Huaisang unravelling, ripping the air from his lungs. When he sucks in a breath, Jiang Cheng is surprised to find it— sticks, settling deep, before sprawling out, sweeping away the haze and the smoke cast over him. The heat remains, but it’s a controlled burn, now, tolerable, subdued beneath the sensations closer to the shallows of his skin; the sweat that clings to him, the throbbing ache of his cock, leaking precome steadily against the seam of his hip, soaking through his pants.

Jiang Cheng reels from it, the shock, for long moments as Nie Huaisang settles against him, evening out. He expected— he expected... what, exactly? Hours of sufferance, while he and Nie Huaisang worked themselves through to equilibrium? Wringing orgasm after orgasm out of one another until finally it was enough to break through the impasse of both of their cycles?

Nie Huaisang’s fingers twinge against his cheek, and Jiang Cheng’s breath catches as a faint sting follows it, the throb threading into its place within his broader awareness. Nie Huaisang, eyes still cloudy, purses his mouth, expression crumpling beneath a blow of reticent remorse.

“Forget it,” Jiang Cheng rasps, heading off his inevitable apology. They’re just scratches; they’ll heal before morning, if he pays them any attention. He has more than half a mind to move, to untangle them, even — especially — with how hard his cock still is, how urgent the churn of his need is in the hollows of him to come, but Nie Huaisang’s hands are gentle, and cool, and immovable, so he pries his fingers from Nie Huaisang’s hair, instead, and lets his other hand drift back to come to rest on the bony jut of Nie Huaisang’s hip.

“Okay,” Nie Huaisang assents, and he looks— obscene. Truly untamed and undone and filthy, half undressed and half fucked out, every stretch of his bared skin splashed with red. Like one of the illustrations in one of his stupid, smutty books, and Jiang Cheng has to screw his eyes shut to steady himself after that revelation.

“Fuck,” he swears, raw, when he can’t shake it, the sweet little sear of heat that snags in his throat and soaks him through to the core. Nie Huaisang shifts against him, hips squirming, and Jiang Cheng’s breath slams back out of him with a strangled moan when he feels the snub of Nie Huaisang’s cock, still hard, sliding against his own. It’s— he’s a mess, the cotton of his pants soaked through, sticking to each of them as he tries to move, but the glide is slick and stunning, sending shivers scraping down Jiang Cheng’s spine.

“Is this,” Nie Huaisang whispers, “can I—” but he shakes his head before Jiang Cheng can even think to silence him, face tipping to bring their mouths back together with a tentative brush, easily reproved.

It’s a relief and a refrain unlike the energy they’ve passed between each other, or anything else he’s felt before. Something deep in the roots of him, ugly and gnarled and choking, untwines, freeing him of a worry he could barely name, that he’d committed something truly reprehensible, gone somewhere that he couldn’t return from. It’s— it’s good, in a way that Jiang Cheng does not want to reflect on, to receive the confirmation Nie Huaisang is choosing to give.

The kiss seems clumsy, to Jiang Cheng, as much by his part in it than for Nie Huaisang’s, now the fervour has quelled. Their teeth clack together with a jolt when Nie Huaisang bucks against him, and he almost bites down on his tongue where it slides, too wet, against Nie Huaisang’s, spit smearing their chins. It’s still, well; it isn’t as if Jiang Cheng has any other experience to compare it against, and it’s almost— it’s nice, and it’s far hotter than he wants to realise. He drags their mouths apart with a hoarse groan, flinching, full body, against a slap of molten heat, when he peers between them and sees the pink tip of Nie Huaisang’s tongue flick out, snapping the strand of saliva strung between their lips.

“How,” Jiang Cheng blurts out, his groan sliding free of his chest when Nie Huaisang’s hand leaves his throat, flitting between the tight tangle of their bodies to cup against his shaft, the heel of his palm scuffing his sensitive tip. “Wait, what about you?” He feels— ridiculous, immediately, for saying it, his blush deepening punishingly, but he’s not able to dwell on it, not when it makes Nie Huaisang whimper, ragged, his fingers squeezing down reflexively around Jiang Cheng’s cock. For a moment, heady and heated, their sensations seem to loop, through him to Nie Huaisang and back again, and when Jiang Cheng hits the ground back in the centre of himself, he’s gasping, wretched and wrecked, Nie Huaisang quaking harshly against his chest.

“Fuck,” he pants, overwhelmed, “what?”

“That was, ah, my fault, that time,” Nie Huaisang admits, embarrassed, “but not on... purpose.”

Jiang Cheng blanches, toes curling against the bed as his hips twitch, idle, up into the brand of Nie Huaisang’s palm. “What.”

Nie Huaisang has the sheer gall to look frazzled. “Jiang Cheng,” he says, sounding unjustly vexed, “can I touch you first? Please?”

And, well, Jiang Cheng can’t say no to that— he can barely even say yes to that, instead managing little more than a stunned nod before Nie Huaisang presses their mouths back together, hand leaving his cock only to spread the skirts of his robes across his thighs, haphazard and harried. Jiang Cheng hisses against his lips, the sound tapering off into a shameful whine when Nie Huaisang finally hooks his fingers in the waistband of his pants and finds enough give to tug the fabric down his hips. He’s expecting the cold that seems to accompany Nie Huaisang, the one he’s becoming accustomed to, when his hand wraps around his cock, thumb swiping over his tip, but all he gets is clammy skin and a middling warmth.

Jiang Cheng bumps their foreheads together, fumbling, dragging in a fluttering breath when he finally angles his face just right, just enough to peer out from beneath his eyelashes and down the braid of their bodies to Nie Huaisang’s hand, wrapped around his jutting cock, flushed angry red and leaking at the tip, precome slicking Nie Huaisang’s fingers and wrist. He can feel his need flanking him, built up just to the brink of spilling over, but even when Nie Huaisang begins to work him, strokes clipped and clumsy, he can’t seem to follow through.

“Ah,” Nie Huaisang mumbles, after what feels to be the longest few minutes Jiang Cheng has ever had the misfortune of existing through, “I, is it…?”

Jiang Cheng chokes on his own breath and spit and his damn tongue, mortified, feeling the whole line of him draw taut with tension, even as his cock throbs, twitching in the loop of Nie Huaisang’s fingers.

“Can I try that— what I did before?” Nie Huaisang presses the question against his cheek, breath hot, and Jiang Cheng trembles, mouth twisting.

“What?” he manages, and he feels Nie Huaisang’s lips quiver, parting around words that don’t seem to follow. Then, after a beat, he flicks his wrist, rough, just as he ruts his own cock into the crease of Jiang Cheng’s thigh, and— Jiang Cheng whines, vision whiting out, as the strange sensation sings through him, again, a delusive, drifting pleasure, ricocheting between the both of them, building into a storm.

“That,” Nie Huaisang heaves, and Jiang Cheng can only manage a strangled sob as he comes, spilling over Nie Huaisang’s fist and their stomachs, hips juddering when he feels Nie Huaisang’s teeth ghost against his jaw, bared around his groan as he follows after.

“What,” Jiang Cheng rasps, when he’s collected himself enough that he can get his tongue to work around the words in his mouth, “was that, that, conjoint transference?”

“U-uh,” Nie Huaisang stutters, a drained laugh tingeing his voice, “no, that was. I don’t know what that was, yet.”

Jiang Cheng just— slumps, slanting against Nie Huaisang limply, spent. He really has nothing left, anymore, least of all to waste considering what that utterance entails in regards to Nie Huaisang being some sort of secret sex spell savant.

Now that he’s had a few precious seconds of peace to catch his breath, he is feeling— shamefaced and sticky, though it is only sweat sheeting his skin. His and Nie Huaisang’s come seems to have only soaked down as far as his disciple’s robe, which is. Well. It’s easily one of the more unpleasant sets of sensations he’s survived today, at least so far. Nie Huaisang seems to be suffering similarly, if the way he rolls onto his back with a rough sigh is anything to go by, pinning Jiang Cheng’s arm between the sheets and his spine. He starts to pull at his sash to loosen his robes, still in a tangled disarray around the slip of his frame, and Jiang Cheng seizes the opportunity to snatch his arm back when Nie Huaisang has to roll himself up to squirm out of his pants.

“And before.” Jiang Cheng swallows, bringing his reappropriated hand up to cradle, awkward, against his sternum. He’s not sure how to put it into words, but Nie Huaisang doesn’t seem to need him to, though he is quiet for several moments as he wipes himself down with his own scrunched up pants.

“Oh, that,” Nie Huaisang says, faint. He sinks back onto the bed, lifting his arm to cover his eyes in a manner that is too stilted to be believed as idle, indifferent. “My crucible is inverted.” He shrugs, the hitch of his shoulders stilted. “Terrible for cultivating, but, ah, means I make a terrific— cauldron.”

It clicks into place, the crux of Nie Huaisang’s lie. Jiang Cheng understands well enough how their world works to understand why Nie Huaisang would choose to operate within it as Yin-rooted, a counterbalance to Nie Mingjue rather than a competitor, at least to outsiders looking in. The safest place for him to be, with that condition, is in the heart of his own sect.

Jiang Cheng closes his eyes and breathes out. He feels infinitely heavier, now; released by one concern, beset by another. He may have asked, but Nie Huaisang should not have answered. Not with that.

“We’re even, Jiang-xiong,” Nie Huaisang says softly, after a while. “I mean— your secret, for mine.”

They’re not, and Jiang Cheng knows it. They’re incomparable weights, incompatible burdens. But, well, perhaps Nie Huaisang knows him better than he once thought, than he could have led himself to believe, even mere hours ago: for if he did not think Jiang Cheng would concur, he would never have offered the comfort of the lie, and all of its composed credence.

“Fine,” Jiang Cheng concedes, voice tight. “All right.”

And, at least for now, that has to be that.