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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And how do you know that?”

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

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

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

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

“It’s wrong,” Jiang Cheng concludes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“—Ah?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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