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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If only.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What?” Jiang Cheng interrupts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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