The concerns that end up last on the agenda at a discussion conference are the kind of thing so inconsequential it doesn’t matter if half the sect leaders in attendance are thinking about going home the next day and fucking their wives. For his part, Nie Huaisang runs a fingertip around the whorls in the wood grain of his table, fans himself, and watches Lan Jingyi’s knee jiggle where he sits with the other inner Lan disciples behind the Chief Cultivator. Some tics of boredom not even Gusu Lan discipline can eradicate, though perhaps Lan Wangji is just indulgent about such things.

If Nie Huaisang is still following the thread of the proceedings, Qin Cangye is bringing to a close his winding defense of his sect’s handling of a series of hauntings. The Chief Cultivator himself is watching impassively as ever. Lan Wangji would surely rather be somewhere else; he’s always palpably miserable at these proceedings, but until a better candidate—or at least a willing one—comes forward, he will remain His Excellency instead of joining a traveling theatre troupe with Wei Wuxian, or doing any of the other things Nie Huaisang is sure Lan Wangji would rather suffer through than politics.

Lan Wangji seems to have taken the lesson that the Chief Cultivator ought to behave as differently as possible from Jin Guangyao as to avoid Another Round Of All That, and so he puts the minimum amount of effort into maintaining social graces. The thing Lan Wangji misses is that, despite his other faults, Jin Guangyao kept the cultivation world’s affairs well in hand. Lan Wangji would never take advice from Nie Huaisang—whom he has held in contempt since they were ten and steadfastly avoiding eye contact as their elder brothers exchanged a solemn and dignified version of gleeful adolescent gossip—even if Nie Huaisang were inclined to give it.

What is er-ge doing right now, in the Hanshi? No one except for, possibly, some of his family or sect members has seen him ever since he went into seclusion. It’s impossible to be certain he’s even still alive. His family could be keeping the secret quiet for as long as possible. Lying is prohibited in the Cloud Recesses, though it hasn't stopped them before.

Nie Huaisang feels certain that Lan Xichen is exactly where he’s said to be. It’s in his nature to take his self-imposed punishment exactly as promised. Perhaps Nie Huaisang should pay him a visit while he’s here.

Qin Cangye’s speech ends, and the hall fills with low mutters signalling the collective eagerness to stretch legs. Nie Huaisang can just fit his fingernail into the groove in the wood grain. He’s aware of the sound of someone getting to their feet, and doesn’t look up when he hears Jiang Cheng say, “Your Excellency, one last thing.”

No sound follows, but he must assume Lan Wangji begrudgingly nods, because Jiang Cheng adds, “I've heard reports of the Qinghe Nie sect hosting an unusual amount of guest cultivators lately. Is that true, Nie-zongzhu?”

Nie Huaisang lifts his head and blinks as if he’s just woken up from a dream.

What is it about Jiang Cheng’s face that makes him look so accusatory no matter what he’s saying? He’s been like that his whole life.

Nie Huaisang sits up a little straighter yet—he could stand up, as Jiang Cheng has, but that’s a lot of effort for so late in the day—clears his throat, and licks his bottom lip. “I’m not sure what Jiang-zongzhu is referring to.”

A vague, discontented murmur passes over the room. He’s not sure to which of them it’s directed; maybe both. Nie Huaisang keeps his eyes wide and a little dazed. It isn’t hard. He’s tired.

Jiang Cheng’s lip curls. “So you deny it?”

Oh, good grief, he makes it sound so sinister. If Nie Huaisang were to interrogate Jiang Cheng in front of the whole cultivation world on how he runs his sect, he’d be laughed out of the hall!

Not to mention—how does he know about it? He didn’t think Jiang Cheng even had spies. Is this a vestige of his Wei Wuxian-hunting days? Hasn’t he had a chance to calm down about the menace of demonic cultivators hidden in their midst? The worst outcome on that front, in Jiang Cheng’s eyes, has already happened. Nie Huaisang made sure of it.

“Oh, I really don't know. I host a lot of people. I like having guests. I had this dog breeder come by recently, he has the tiniest little puppies, they could fit in the palm of your hand…”

Lan Wangji interjects. “Jiang-zongzhu. Is this urgent?”

Jiang Cheng’s nostrils flare, and for the first time since taking to his feet, he looks away from Nie Huaisang. He might be the second unhappiest man in the world that Lan Wangji has replaced Jin Guangyao as Chief Cultivator, besides the man himself.

None of the other sect leaders seated at the table look half as concerned about these vague charges as Jiang Cheng. On the contrary, he’s being given dirty looks by most, probably for keeping them from their dinner. This is where you end up if you cry wolf too many times, Jiang-xiong; perhaps you should've thought of that. Jiang Cheng works his jaw and visibly considers how much he feels like arguing with the Chief Cultivator.

The only figure in the room who’s looking elsewhere, besides Nie Huaisang, is Jiang Cheng’s nephew. Nie Huaisang taps his fingers on the tabletop and studies Jin Ling. His gaze is fixed on the table in front of him, but his jaw is set just as firmly as his uncle’s.

Jiang Cheng backs down, and Lan Wangji releases them to go enjoy themselves as best they can at a banquet where both alcohol and talking are prohibited. The idea of the Cloud Recesses playing host to dancers and serving up platters of sweets is like the start of a bad joke, but they do serve dinner, plain though it may be, and once the tables are cleared the expectation is that the sect leaders and their disciples may take the opportunity to interact in a less formal capacity.

Nie Huaisang stays long enough for the first courses to be served and then slips out of the hall, taking with him a handful of dried plums that he scooped into his palm under the table. His disciples won’t fret; they’re used to him disappearing at inappropriate moments.

The path to the Hanshi is as immaculately kept as it ever was. Nie Huaisang takes a meandering path, eating out of his hand as he goes. Is Xichen-ge taking his evening meal, still abiding by that regular Cloud Recesses tempo even in seclusion? If Nie Huaisang knocks on the door of the Hanshi, will he disturb him?

He never gets the chance to find out; Nie Huaisang can hear someone coming down the path behind him.

“Nie-zongzhu.”

He smiles to himself. That quick, irritated stride is truly unique—who else is ever in such a perpetual hurry?

Nie Huaisang turns around and blinks, slow and wide-eyed. “Oh, Jiang-xiong. Enjoying the evening?”

“Where are you going?”

He keeps his face open and pleasant, which makes Jiang Cheng’s eyes narrow further.

“I’m taking a walk. Cloud Recesses is beautiful at night, don’t you think?”

Jiang Cheng gives him a disdainful once-over. “May I have a word?”

Nie Huaisang laughs. “Of course, of course.”

Neither moves. Jiang Cheng breaks first.

Stiffly: “I’d prefer to go somewhere more private.”

Nie Huaisang fans himself, a smile blossoming across his face. “I don’t see anyone around.”

But he indulges Jiang Cheng in his desire for privacy; they wander one of the innumerable narrow paths through the woods. Once they leave the open areas the air feels heavier, lusher. Jiang Cheng wants to walk briskly, but Nie Huaisang refuses, and he notes with satisfaction that Jiang Cheng slows his stride to accommodate him.

“What brings you away from the banquet so early, Jiang-xiong? Just wanting to catch up with me?”

In response, Jiang Cheng gives Nie Huaisang something between a grunt and a scoff. Admirable, the innovations he has made in the art of casual rudeness to old friends. That’s to be expected, but he doesn’t answer the question at all, which is unlike him; Jiang Cheng was born with the incurable need to explain himself.

It’s still early enough in the evening that the light gives a faint shine to Jiang Cheng’s hair. Nie Huaisang watches the cool shadows of leaves and branches play over the warm black, and Jiang Cheng stares ahead, heedless.

“I don’t know who you think you’re fooling,” Jiang Cheng eventually manages, once they’ve passed fully out of sight of any onlookers.

“I really don’t know about anything like that. Who am I fooling?”

“Whatever you’re doing...” Jiang Cheng’s stare hardens, and he turns to look at Nie Huaisang for the first time since they began walking; Nie Huaisang looks away in turn, but he can feel Jiang Cheng’s regard boring into Nie Huaisang’s temple. Someone needs to watch their footing; it’s darker out here, under the branches.

“Don’t think anyone owes you. You can’t carry on like he did and expect people not to notice.”

Nie Huaisang hasn’t heard the title Lianfang-zun spoken since he died, there’s a new Jin-zongzhu in the Fragrant Palace, and there are only two people alive for whom he remains san-ge.

“Is that what you think I’m doing, Jiang-xiong?” An ungainly snort comes through Nie Huaisang’s nose.

“The act doesn’t work on me anymore. I was there.”

He says it with particular intensity; but ah, there’s Jin Ling, that silly, meddling boy. Nie Huaisang dislikes being held responsible for that: Jin Rulan wasn’t even supposed to be there, but family is family. He can understand Jiang Cheng’s resentment where this is concerned.

After some less-than-companionable silence, Nie Huaisang changes the subject. “Is it strange for you, having to address your nephew as a sect leader?”

Jiang Cheng’s eyes flicker around their surroundings as though looking for some hidden threat to emerge and give him an opportunity to vent his frustration. Doesn’t he get tired? “If you decide to claim further reparations from him, I expect you to declare your intentions publicly.”

He sighs. “Haven’t we finished negotiating? I don’t want to hear anything about politics until I’ve had a chance to sleep this week off.” Jiang Cheng makes a mirthless sound, and Nie Huaisang adds, “I'm surprised you aren’t taking the opportunity to spend time with Jin Ling. It must be harder to see him, these days.”

“I don’t see how that’s your business,” Jiang Cheng spits, with enough sudden vehemence that Nie Huaisang's interest is really piqued. Now that he thinks about it, he can’t remember seeing Jiang Cheng crossing the room to loom over his nephew’s shoulder and hiss into his ear even once all week. Curious!

In the early years at Carp Tower, when Jin Ling was small enough to be carried by one arm, he was surrounded by governesses and had a grandmother and an aunt besides. It would’ve been acceptable for his mother’s brother to do nothing more than send him a few token gifts a year and watch his sword practice whenever business brought him to Lanling, but Jiang Cheng ran himself ragged, taking the boy back to Lotus Pier whenever he could, as though afraid something terrible would happen to him as soon as his own back was turned. Prescient, really; Jiang Cheng was paranoid to a fault, but Carp Tower wasn’t a safe place for Jin children back then, was it? Or for anyone else.

Before Jin Ling became enough of a person for Jiang Cheng to work himself into knots criticizing him, the whole thing had been quite cute. Jiang Cheng had been skinny and pale, with dark circles under his eyes, and Nie Huaisang had known even then it couldn’t all be attributed to the demands of surrogate parenthood—the rumours of what Jiang Wanyin would do to suspected demonic cultivators were already circling—but he’d been able to overlook that, since it didn’t affect him. He’d been fond of Jiang Cheng, even after the Burial Mounds and Heavenly Nightless City, and Nie Huaisang was skilled at not letting himself think about the things done by people he’d liked, if it let him keep liking them. He enjoyed Jiang Cheng’s presence quite a lot, even then, when Jiang Cheng could hardly have been said to be fun. His state of being young and overworked was familiar—Nie Huaisang remembered what da-ge had been like just after their father died—and Jiang Cheng had never been bad-looking to start with. It could be said, then, that Jin Ling was part of why Nie Huaisang had…

“You’re forty this year, aren’t you, Jiang-xiong?”

“Not until next year. And so are you.”

“You look well.”

There it is: at first, he assumes it’s only wishful thinking, but he glimpses a flicker of bashfulness that even Jiang Cheng’s frightfully sour face can’t suppress. That’s the thing about Jiang Cheng; he can’t keep his thoughts to himself. Luckily for him, his expressions are usually variations on the same basic themes of exhaustion, irritation, and rage. But not always; not always!

Nie Huaisang remembers stumbling along these same paths in haste to escape Lan Wangji’s wrath, drunker than he’d ever been, and tripping and falling against Jiang Cheng’s back. Little more than a year later, after Wei Wuxian’s first return from the dead, Jiang Cheng had let his newly-minted sect leader’s seriousness slip for long enough to tug Nie Huaisang around the Unclean Realms by the elbow and ask him fumbling questions about banquet arrangements. Nothing life-changing, by anyone’s standards, but they’d enjoyed each other’s company, hadn’t they?

And there was that evening. The whole thing had been over in less time than it took to drink a pot of tea, but Nie Huaisang had been looking for distractions, and he was silly and inexperienced enough to think that a favour given to one’s sometime-friend meant something. Da-ge was already so sick. Nie Huaisang had been deluding himself by thinking there was any chance they could have—whatever he thought they might. Six months later, he was sobbing into his sleeves at a treaty negotiation while the other sect leaders, Jiang Wanyin among them, looked on in distaste, and they hadn’t socialized privately since.

He’d assumed that Jiang Cheng hadn’t given it a second thought, or if he had, only as retroactive proof that Nie Huaisang had never been anything but a hedonistic, irresponsible excuse for a sect heir, let alone a sect leader. He may have been an active participant at the time, but Jiang Cheng was good at making excuses for himself. Nie Huaisang looks at Jiang Cheng’s ducked gaze, a decade and a half later, and thinks, perhaps he hasn’t forgotten, and perhaps a mountain scaled once can be scaled again.

He smiles, and for the first time that evening it requires no effort. On the contrary; this one Nie Huaisang has to restrain.

Nie Huaisang grips the fabric around Jiang Cheng’s bicep for just long enough to stop him in his tracks. “Jiang-xiong, it’s getting dark. I don’t want to get lost out here. The rabbits scare me. I don’t like their red little eyes.”

Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes, but not before Nie Huaisang catches him glancing down at the place on his arm where Nie Huaisang’s hand had been. “I know how to get back.”

Boredom makes him reckless, and life is very, very boring lately. His self-control weakens by the moment in favour of gnawing hunger, accompanied by a persistent voice that says, Why not? It’s not as if you’ve got anything to lose that wasn’t already lost a long time ago.

He leans in close, so the fabric of their sleeves brushes together, and whispers, “Will you go to His Excellency if I tell you I’ve broken a rule?”

“Just tell me,” Jiang Cheng says, his voice dripping with disgust—but Nie Huaisang is reasonably confident that Jiang Cheng would rather walk on nails than go crawling back to Lan Wangji for the second time that night to rat him out.

Nie Huaisang weighs the benefits of being coy, but Jiang Cheng isn’t a subtle man. He stands up on his tiptoes, bringing his mouth close to Jiang Cheng’s ear, and puts his hand back on Jiang Cheng’s forearm to steady himself. If he acts appalled now, all it will cost Nie Huaisang is having to endure an awkward walk back to the guest quarters, since Jiang Cheng is obliged to help him find his way.

“I brought alcohol into the Cloud Recesses. You’re welcome to have some, if you don’t mind sharing.”

In twilight’s blue gleam, Jiang Cheng’s arm is tense beneath Nie Huaisang’s fingers, but this time, Nie Huaisang doesn’t release his grip, and Jiang Cheng doesn’t pull away.

“I’m sorry, Jiang-xiong, I would’ve put more effort into the room if I thought I’d be hosting visitors.”

Jiang Cheng follows Nie Huaisang into his room, but doesn’t go much further than the threshold. He watches Nie Huaisang light candles with visible apprehension. What does he think he’s going to do? Poison him? There’s nothing that Nie Huaisang needs to get out of Jiang Cheng that would require those sort of tactics. Everything that Nie Huaisang wants out of Jiang Cheng right now is strictly a matter of wanting.

He keeps thinking, this is the point at which Jiang Cheng will curl his lip and turn on his heel, and he keeps being proven wrong. He’s almost hoping that Jiang Cheng will rebuff him. At least, then, Nie Huaisang will have a sense of the shape of things. He’ll know what is and isn’t allowed. He’s tired of everything being so unfixed, so uncertain. At least before he knew what to do with himself, and what other people were to him.

Nie Huaisang sinks into a crouch next to his luggage. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Jiang Cheng’s eyes track his descent. Nie Huaisang would’ve been happier to get out of bed this morning if he’d anticipated that this was the type of evening he’d have.

His fingers touch cool ceramic, and he picks up the bottle of Emperor’s Smile he’d nostalgically picked up in Caiyi Town. He crosses the room to where Jiang Cheng still stands, hands by his sides, clearly unwilling to sit without an invitation. Nie Huaisang tucks his fan into his belt, opens the bottle, and takes a dainty sip. His eyes don’t leave Jiang Cheng’s face.

Jiang Cheng’s eyebrows twist. “Don’t you have cups?”

“I’m not sure where I put them. I didn’t think you were so fussy.” He only lit a handful of candles when he came into the room, and in the dimness it feels as though they stand outside of time. “You don’t mind sharing it this way, do you?” He murmurs, and smiles when Jiang Cheng hisses through his teeth, reaches out, and takes the offered bottle.

Jiang Cheng is careful to grasp it by the bottom half, to avoid having to brush hands, but Nie Huaisang drags his pinky finger down to touch the top of Jiang Cheng’s thumb before he lets go. He makes no attempt to hide the way his gaze fixes on Jiang Cheng’s mouth when it parts around its neck. Jiang Cheng pauses, halfway into tipping it into his mouth, before he lifts the bottle higher. The cords of his neck ripple as he swallows. The knot of his throat juts out enough to be noticeable even in the half-dark, and Nie Huaisang wants to sink his teeth into it.

Now that Jiang Cheng has sipped from the same bottle, he can’t go telling anyone what they’ve done without incriminating himself, too. And even if he did: what’s there to say about Nie Huaisang that hasn’t already been said? Nie-zongzhu is frivolous, can’t hold his liquor, and makes indiscreet advances unbecoming of a sect leader? Yes, yes, would go the rumour mill, tell us something we don’t know.

The hand with which he’d passed Jiang Cheng the bottle is still aloft, and he reaches forward just enough to run the tip of his index finger down Jiang Cheng’s chest, following the line of his lapel until he meets the leather of his belt.

He looks like a hunted animal. It’s time to commit, Jiang Cheng; hold your ground or retreat. Use that good tactician’s sense of yours.

“What are you doing.”

“Did you really forget, Jiang-xiong? I know it’s been a long time, but I thought I did a good enough job.”

Jiang Cheng’s lips are still half-parted, and he breathes in and out through his mouth as if he can’t get enough air in his lungs. He still holds the bottle, but he hasn’t taken a drink since Nie Huaisang touched him.

Up this close, Nie Huaisang has to curve his neck to meet Jiang Cheng’s eyes. He could kiss him, if he pulled him down by the shoulders enough to reach.

Nie Huaisang’s left hand joins his right, feeling along the metal ridges of Jiang Cheng’s belt for the clasps. “You had just finished working something out with da-ge. I don’t remember what. I didn’t pay attention to anything back then.” He unhooks a fastening, and then moves his hands around the circumference of Jiang Cheng’s waist to where the leather is looped together behind his back.

“After he let you go, I dragged you back to my room to catch up. You didn’t really want to socialize, but I think you didn’t want to seem rude in front of da-ge.” The tongue of the belt slides free, and Nie Huaisang releases his grasp: the whole of it falls to the floor with a thud that fails to obscure Jiang Cheng’s sharp intake of breath.

Nie Huaisang brings his hands back around to Jiang Cheng’s front, but doesn’t touch him yet; he holds his right hand close enough to the parting of Jiang Cheng’s robes that he must be able to feel its presence in the air. “We had dinner, and then drinks, and then I asked you if you’d let me blow you. And you did.”

“Nie Huaisang.” Jiang Cheng’s tone is a warning. Nie Huaisang slides his hand between the layers of fabric to caress the infuriatingly taut stomach beneath, and Jiang Cheng flinches at the contact, but it’s the flinch of being startled; he doesn’t step backwards, or lift a hand to push him away.

“Will you pass me the wine?”

Nie Huaisang slides his palm over Jiang Cheng’s fingers when he passes it over. He takes a much bigger draught than he had the first time. The mouth of the bottle is warmer now than it was, thanks to Jiang Cheng’s lips. He swallows, wipes the lingering wetness at the corner of his own mouth with the pad of his thumb, and then sinks to his knees.

He caps the bottle, of course, and sets it a safe distance to the side. No use letting it go to waste.

Jiang Cheng has, it must be said, an above-average cock in both shape and appearance. Nie Huaisang would never tell him this. He wonders if he’s already aware. Severely doubtful.

He’s quite flatteringly hard already—Nie Huaisang had not expected so warm a welcome. He experiences a moment of pleasure over how small his hand looks with Jiang Cheng’s cock cupped in his palm.

Jiang Cheng’s hand lands on top of Nie Huaisang’s head, gingerly, like he’s not sure if he’s allowed. It feels almost nice, but the more tentative that Jiang Cheng acts, the more that Nie Huaisang wants to give him a reason to be, so he frowns upwards. “Keep your hands on the wall, Jiang-xiong, it’s distracting.”

Jiang Cheng withdraws his hand like he’s been burned, and then slowly—does he think Nie Huaisang is going to change his mind?—takes the half-step backwards necessary for him to flatten his palms on the wall. He’s apprehensive. Isn’t that endearing of him. Nie Huaisang shuffles forward, smiles—no longer worried about making Jiang Cheng feel laughed at, he now suspects Sandu Shengshou’s stalwart erection could survive such a thing, perhaps even flourish under those conditions—and murmurs, “That’s it,” before taking him into his mouth.

He can feel Jiang Cheng’s thighs tense next to his face. Jiang Cheng makes an undignified sound, and Nie Huaisang lets himself savour the satisfaction: see, all these years he hasn’t spent his time completely in vain! He’s learned a thing or two, put the time in to study skills that come in handy more often than elaborate cultivation techniques. Jiang Cheng ought not to be so smug unless he could best Nie Huaisang in this arena, as well.

Oh, that thought is worth thinking—but perhaps another time.

Jiang Cheng makes a choked spluttering noise. He likes the sounds, most of all, but ever since Nie Huaisang closed his lips around Jiang Cheng’s cock, Jiang Cheng has been sagging back against the wall, and he likes that, too. Jiang Cheng is a mouthful, like he remembered—he hadn’t been sure if it was just the judgement of his easily-impressed younger self, but he’s not disappointed today. His right hand curls around the base of Jiang Cheng’s dick, squeezing him harder than he’d usually dare, but he’s worried Jiang Cheng will go off too early, and his first exploratory strokes led him to believe Jiang Cheng likes it on the tighter side. He’s proven right, because Nie Huaisang’s left hand grips Jiang Cheng’s leg, and he feels in his fingertips each shudder and muscle spasm as Jiang Cheng goes to pieces.

Nie Huaisang enjoys giving head for the way it leaves him with nothing to think of but sensation and the vague desire to be told how cute or pretty or dirty or whatever any given man thinks he looks. He likes to be that, for however long the encounter lasts, and to not have to be anything else. That isn’t how he feels now; he can’t forget himself with the way his mind is turning over hazy possibilities for the rest of the night. The alcohol warms his chest and slows his thoughts, and he’s surprised by how much he wants out of Jiang Cheng, now that he has him in his grasp. He wants to make the most of it, before the opportunity is gone.

He curls his tongue under the head, glances up at Jiang Cheng’s face, and even in the dimness Nie Huaisang makes out the gleam of his wide, shocked eyes. When their gazes meet, Jiang Cheng’s lips fall open, and Nie Huaisang feels a surge of giddy viciousness that takes him by surprise. He barely restrains himself from taking his mouth off of Jiang Cheng’s cock to say, Be careful; you’ll make me want to put something in there if you keep it open like that.

Nie Huaisang swallows around Jiang Cheng one more time before sitting back on his heels to catch his breath. His chin and cheeks feel sticky, and strands of his hair have become dislodged to hang around his face. He leans back in, but doesn’t take Jiang Cheng’s dick fully back into his mouth; Nie Huaisang runs his tongue over it idly, just enough to keep it hard and aching, while his free hand roams. He wants to see just how far Jiang Cheng will let him presume.

Nie Huaisang’s hand fondling Jiang Cheng’s balls produces a soft ah. He moves further back, running an inquisitive thumb over the taint before pressing a single fingertip between his cheeks to brush over Jiang Cheng’s hole. He wonders if he’ll get smacked for this, or if not, whether Jiang-zongzhu has other dramatics in store. Nie Huiasang touches it again, more boldly, but still playing with the pucker gently, like a dance meant to whet the appetite, not satisfy.

Jiang Cheng’s spine curves, and Nie Huaisang realizes that Jiang Cheng is babbling under his breath, a string of disconnected words, “No, yes, I, why, you, I—”

Nie Huaisang leans back. “Was that too much for you, Jiang-xiong? I was just teasing, I’ll stop if you like.” His voice is a little hoarse, even though Jiang Cheng has been good and hasn’t thrusted at all, besides unconscious hitches of his hips.

One long cycle of breath passes, and then another. Jiang Cheng is silent. His cock is slick in Nie Huaisang’s palm. Jiang Cheng just swallows (audibly—his poor dry throat—) and keeps his hands where Nie Huaisang ordered them. Nie Huaisang’s gaze drifts there, to where he’s holding himself in check, and can count the bones in the back of Jiang Cheng’s hands, jutting out of the skin.

“I didn’t expect you to like this. I’m impressed.” He kisses along the side of his cock a few times, idly, and then asks, “Have you been fucked before?”

“No,” Jiang Cheng replies incredulously, as if this is a shocking thing to wonder about a man who had just been moaning over a little petting around his hole.

“Do you want to?” Nie Huaisang asks brightly, because he wants to know the answer. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if Jiang Cheng says yes. He’s been enjoying the developments of the evening too much to ruin it by doing something that always makes him feel ugly and vaguely embarrassed.

“I don’t…”

Jiang Cheng can’t finish his answer. His jaw is clenched like he’s got a mouse in there that he’s trying not to let escape. Terror makes him look—sweet, and that isn’t a word Nie Huaisang has had reason to associate with Jiang Cheng in a very long time. Nie Huaisang feels a predatory twinge, and he pulls away to sit back on his heels, looks up to meet Jiang Cheng’s eyes—wild, open, black with desire—and breathes, “Turn around. Keep your hands on the wall.”

Will he do it? Will he really? Oh, will you look at that, Jiang Cheng’s fingers flex like he’s trying to conjure up something to strangle but he does it! He’s lucky no one but Nie Huaisang is daring enough to brave the trials of his company, because if word got out that this is what Sandu Shengshou gets like after a little head, he’d be ruined.

Nie Huaisang gets to his feet, slowly, as not to startle Jiang Cheng, though Jiang Cheng’s back is turned. He can’t restrain himself from clicking his tongue. “I’m learning so much about you tonight, Jiang-xiong.”

The long line of Jiang Cheng’s neck and throat tightens, but he doesn’t turn around in response to Nie Huaisang’s taunting. Nie Huaisang would be very surprised if Jiang Cheng gives him so much as a glance for the rest of the night, now that he’s been thoroughly embarrassed. It just makes Nie Huaisang want to embarrass him more. It’s so easy, and the rewards so great.

Nie Huaisang steps forward, one foot and then the next. He was close enough to start with that it brings him flush against Jiang Cheng’s back. The top of Nie Huaisang’s head only comes up to the top of Jiang Cheng’s shoulder. He’s inexplicably tempted to lay his cheek against Jiang Cheng’s shoulder blade. Nie Huaisang likes the warmth of Jiang Cheng’s body under his. Through their clothes, he can feel the solidity of the hard-earned physique Jiang Cheng has had since they were young.

What does Jiang Cheng think is going to happen, here? Just how much would he go along with? Nie Huaisang is making this all up as he goes along. He braces his forehead against Jiang Cheng’s back and curls his hand around his cock. This close, he feels Jiang Cheng’s shudder pass through his own body.

Jiang Cheng is hot and wet in the palm of Nie Huaisang’s hand. The harder he grips him, the faster Jiang Cheng’s barely suppressed whines tumble out of his throat. It must hurt. Surely it hurts. He doesn’t tell Nie Huaisang to stop.

Nie Huaisang is short of breath; he pants against the fabric of Jiang Cheng’s robes, feeling faint dampness gather on the cloth. He gets some stimulation off of the push of Jiang Cheng’s ass back against him, but not enough to get anywhere. Nie Huaisang’s body is vibrating at a high pitch. Nie Huaisang stands up on the tips of his toes and rests his weight against Jiang Cheng’s back as much as he can while still keeping his grip. He can’t get his mouth level with Jiang Cheng’s ear; his face presses against Jiang Cheng’s hair. In a moment of fevered impulse, Nie Huaisang reaches up with his free hand to gather a fistful of it and yank, tipping Jiang Cheng’s head back so that Nie Huaisang can whisper, “I wasn’t expecting you’d bend over like this, Jiang-xiong—”

Jiang Cheng whimpers, a fractured, pained sound, and comes all over Nie Huaisang’s hand.

Heavy rain drums on the roof overhead. The sheer loudness of it feels wrong. Excessive noise is prohibited in the Cloud Recesses.

As he has each morning of the conference, Nie Huaisang wakes up disoriented. At first, it’s the confusion of being in an unfamiliar place; after that, recognition of the physical space sets in, and he feels lost in time.

Nie Huaisang comes back to himself, to his own day, courtesy of the faint soreness in his shoulders. His current quarters are more luxurious than most in Gusu, but he’s become a pickier sleeper with the decades.

He pulls the blankets around himself a little tighter and admires the elegant dark-wood beams and tasteful furnishings. It’s almost unbelievable that the Cloud Recesses were burned down little more than twenty years ago. The Gusu Lan have rebuilt a perfect replica of what was lost. Jin Guangyao’s investments keep paying returns even after he’s dead.

Nie Huaisang’s jaw is also vaguely sore. His belongings are scattered around the room more messily than he’d normally leave them in an unfamiliar place; his gaze migrates over to the stoppered bottle sitting on the floor, and he experiences the creeping feeling up his spine that comes with remembrance of events that would have been better left forgotten.

Before Nie Huaisang had even let go of him, Jiang Cheng’s head went down to hang between his shoulders. He’d been unwilling to move away from the wall, and it took Nie Huaisang a few moments of confusion before he’d laughed softly and said, You can move your hands now, Jiang-xiong. Jiang Cheng had turned around to face him, his face flushed and eyes wide, and gazed at Nie Huaisang as though he expected to be told what to do next.

He had suddenly wanted to be alone. He’d never liked being someone people looked to for guidance, or solace.

This was a mistake, he’d realized, almost as soon as it was over. Don’t go giving anyone ideas, or getting them yourself.

Nie Huaisang had helped him dress, just in the interest of speed, and then ushered Jiang Cheng out of the door, saying, You don’t want to wake up here, do you? People will talk.

However accurately Yunmeng Jiang reconstructed the buildings, the Lotus Pier that stands now is a different one than the one that was razed. The character of the place has shifted; less carefree, more disciplined. Jiang Cheng would take it the wrong way if Nie Huaisang told him so, even though it’s something Nie Huaisang admires. He wishes for that strength of character. He’s in the position himself of trying to remake his sect, to die leaving behind something fundamentally different in nature than what he was given.

As he does every morning, Nie Huaisang sits up, shakes out the sleep-creases from his hair, and closes his eyes to silently recite his list. Fortify the tombs. Secure an heir. Find a better way to soothe the sabre spirits of the living. And then, he…

He has obligations to the ancestors, to the sect, and to da-ge. Once he’s met them, he could do anything: recede into seclusion, like Xichen-ge; wander as a rogue cultivator, like Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan; or flee to Dongying, as Jin Guangyao hoped to do. He could take his own life inside an unimportant room, like Mo Xuanyu, alone and nearly forgotten. Some of these futures are more likely than others. There’s no one who will miss him, not really.

Lately, his litany is followed by meditation. Nie Huaisang! Meditating! Voluntarily! Let it never be said people can’t change their ways.

He’s hosted a variety of rogue cultivators over the past half-year. Many of them were charlatans, of course, or aspiring Yiling Patriarchs, but some did genuinely have novel cultivation methods up their sleeves. No theory is too dubious to be pitched to the Head-Shaker. One woman from a far northern steppe purported to have learned a unique method of qi stabilization by aiming to regulate irregularities in yin energy. Be careful, she’d said; too much of this type of manipulation of yin energy can have unintended effects. A cultivator I know found that, before long, he...

Nie Huaisang has not, strictly, been careful. One could go so far as to say he has been reckless.

Ducking through the immaculately groomed corridors of the Cloud Recesses, trying not to be spotted by certain people: this is also nostalgic. His head disciple’s face is flooded with visible relief when Nie Huaisang emerges to join the rest of the Qinghe Nie retinue. They know better than to ask him too many questions about where he went last night or why, but they’ve managed fine in his absence. They’re packed and turned out in travelling clothes, sabres ready for the flight home, and it strikes him once again how much they’ve learned to get along on their own in the years since da-ge died, and how little they need him at all.

“Let’s hurry to make our goodbyes to our hosts, then. I’d like to get there before Jiang-zongzhu.”

The group laughs a little, cautious about poking fun at another sect leader but glad that their own is in a good mood, if looking a little tired. He leads the party into the same hall in which Lan Qiren has been nodding thoughtfully since the first time Nie Huaisang ever came here, and they make their bows accordingly. There’s no Meng Yao by his side, so Nie Huaisang recites all the formal politenesses himself, only forgetting a few lines, and only one of them on purpose.

Since returning home from the discussion conference, Nie Huaisang has kept as busy as he ever is, which is both very much and not at all.

Over the past month, he’s paid three trips to the sabre tombs to attempt new methods of suppressing the blades’ resentful energy. None were successful, but thankfully only one of their forays actually angered the blades any further than their usual state, and none of the disciples were hurt worse than what a golden core could patch up overnight. Beyond that, it’s just been the usual tedium: his current head disciple—a competent but forgettable man eight years Nie Huaisang’s junior, son of a minor retainer—drops off the day’s mail, and Nie Huaisang puts aside some competent but forgettable poetry he’d picked up in Gusu.

There’s a letter from the foreman of the temple project, informing him of their progress. He should pay the site a visit, but he’s not sure of the next time he’ll have a good opportunity to head to Yunping. He sets that one aside in the pile for matters he wants to take care of himself, as opposed to the much thicker one on the other side of the table, which he will foist on a clerk at the earliest opportunity.

Midway through the stack of bills for services rendered and reports of minor fierce corpse activity in this village or that, things get a little more interesting; there’s a letter stamped with Jiang Cheng’s seal. Nie-zongzhu, it reads: I hoped to discuss further the unresolved concerns brought forth at the discussion conference. I was disappointed to find your delegation left the Cloud Recesses before we were able to continue our conversation. I would like to visit the Unclean Realms before the first snow— and so on and so forth.

If he knew that bringing in a few guest cultivators was going to lead to Jiang Cheng breathing down his neck, he might’ve at least chosen different ones; it’s been months and he’s got hardly anything to show for it, as far as the sabres are concerned.

The next letter is a polite and humble inquiry from a father of little means, asking as to what he would need to offer in exchange for Qinghe Nie to take on his daughter as a disciple. These sorts of requests come along every so often. The sect’s intake of disciples has slowed somewhat in the years since da-ge was killed, but they’ve remained steady enough; incompetent sect leader or no, having a child raised by a great cultivation sect is something of which many ordinary people could only dream. He hasn’t been concerned about keeping up the numbers, though now and again the senior disciples bring it up as politely as they can. They’re afraid of further losing face in front of the other sects, understandably so.

He’s not going to let the sect die out, obviously, but can he be held at fault for wanting to stem the tide a little, until he’s got things a little more in hand? After all, every disciple who trains with Qinghe Nie is his responsibility; each sabre that begins to harness killing intent in a new student’s hand, Nie Huaisang may as well have placed there.

Midday arrives, he tires of lying to himself about the likelihood that his work will get any more interesting by staring at it, and so Nie Huaisang elects to meander, just to feel the wind on his face.

Some of the older juniors are running through sword forms in the practice yard; it’s cool enough at this time of year for exercise under the beating sun to be comfortable instead of stifling. “Zongzhu, you’ve arrived just in time. Care to join us?”

The crowd of disciples share a laugh, not bothering to hide it; they know they won’t get in trouble. It’s a back-and-forth they’ve all been exchanging for a little while. One of the training masters will invite Nie Huaisang to lead the day’s practice, and Nie Huaisang will come up with an excuse as to why he can’t possibly, but please ask him another day and it would be his pleasure. Humour taken at his expense is hardly an expense at all, and it’s surely better to let his disciples acknowledge the fact their sect leader is weak and non-martial than have them whisper about it in private. It’s less likely to cause discontent if they all feel like they’re in on a good-natured joke, and, when mingling with the disciples of other sects, at least Qinghe Nie cultivators can at least content themselves that their sect leader isn’t one to punish ordinary disciples for minor offences.

Back when he still went to sabre practice—so, a long time ago—one of the other juniors had commented with what, in retrospect, it’s clear was more envy than malice that if Nie-er-gongzi just put some effort into training, he could bulk up easily, just like the sect leader and Nie-gongzi. Huaisang had pushed him into the dirt. In a contest of strength they were woefully mismatched, but he had surprise on his side; no one had any reason to expect Huaisang to give them a shove.

Da-ge had walked him to their father’s study to be disciplined, and Huaisang felt his curious stare on the top of his head the whole way. It was far from the first time he’d knelt before his father to make apologies, but the reason for it was new. Huaisang had never gotten into a fight before.

His father was silent for a long time. Like da-ge, he didn’t know what to make of it. He thinks that they might have been glad to hear that it was possible to get Huaisang riled up enough to use force, but even Huaisang was aware that his explanation for what had happened didn’t make sense. It wasn’t as though he’d been insulted.

He didn’t lie to them, but he couldn’t just come out and say, I don’t want to look like you. He’d already learned that there was a difference between telling untruths and keeping secrets, and that there were things no one wanted to hear him say out loud.

In the end, Huaisang got lucky: his long-anticipated growth spurt never came. Instead, a few years later, da-ge’s new deputy took one of Nie Huaisang’s ink-stained hands in both of his own and said, Nie-er-gongzi, your fingers are so delicate. At the time, he’d thought that Meng Yao was commenting on their size, but, many years later, he wonders if instead Meng Yao referred to Nie Huaisang’s absence of calluses. Perhaps Meng Yao was not paying him a compliment, all those years ago, though he delivered it like one.

Now, at the edge of the training yard, Nie Huaisang blinks owlishly at his disciples before smiling and flapping his hands: Oh, no, please, anything but that. “You’re too kind! But your good master there looks like he’s got a whole routine planned out. I, ah, wouldn’t want to interrupt.”

Nie Huaisang has, for a long time, bathed at odd hours. He likes the quiet. That evening, he washes himself perfunctorily, not particularly lingering, and throws a robe around himself immediately upon getting out of the water, without looking down at his own body. He’s always done this; he can’t remember the last time he took all of his clothes off around another person.

The evening dimness is forgiving; his reflection in the mirror looks young. He watches his reflection pull oil through his hair to keep the strands from drying out in the crisp Qinghe air. Most of his life, he had attendants for this sort of thing, but when his most recent one asked for permission to leave his service to go marry a commoner from some backwater town, Nie Huaisang, being a generous sort, let him go, and he never got around to finding another.

Later on, the memory becomes blurred by panic, so it’s hard to tell how exactly things unfolded. What he remembers is combing his hair, watching himself in the mirror, and noticing his robe is hanging open. He pulls it around himself a little tighter, tugging at the lapels, and his finger brushes over something on his chest that feels odd, swollen and a little sore—

He yanks the comb through a knot hard enough to make himself wince and then sets it down. His hands tremble.

A sudden draft wafts through the room. Nie Huaisang pulls the rest of his clothes around himself and folds his arms across his stomach to keep warm. He sits on the edge of the bed with his feet dangling over the side, and he taps his toes against the floor arrhythmically, just to do something with his body. After some time has passed, he cautiously feels through the cloth.

Beneath his hand, Nie Huaisang feels a very small, budding curve of flesh that did not exist for most of his life. He doesn’t let go, this time; his fingertips map out the shape, noting the almost painful tenderness of the skin to the touch.

He didn’t think it was actually going to do anything. Until now, there haven’t been any changes he dismiss as the product of too much attention paid to himself. That’s fine, he’d thought, with not insignificant relief; wasn’t the point of it just qi regulation? He hardly uses his cultivation for anything more strenuous than snuffing out candles without crossing the room, but Nie Huaisang has no idea what it looks like for those of his family line to grow to old age. He can’t help but think that one day something will catch up to him, whether qi deviation or a more mundane kind of hereditary madness.

Now that he knows that it is working in that way, he’ll stop while he can, before it goes far enough that people notice. He ought to, now that his morbid curiosity has been satisfied.

It doesn’t make much of a difference if he just needs to hide it, for a while. It’s easy to obscure what’s underneath one’s clothes when one wears as thick of robes as he tends to, and he used to dress even more loosely.

He goes through all of the clothing he still has in storage, running his hands over the robes and considers the textures, the way they hang on his frame, how well they layer with other garments. Some of his robes from back in the day aren’t in his possession anymore; casualties to his occasional midnight sprees of weeding out everything that reminded him of Meng Yao which he could afford to be rid of.

His hands linger on a piece of sable silk. He remembers an afternoon spent sending up motes of dust, swirling in the candlelight: Mo Xuanyu had poured over the embroidery of some of Nie Huaisang’s cast-offs with obvious longing, and grumbled about how he wished he wasn’t so tall.

Nie Huaisang left a half-empty jar of wine under his desk before attending the cultivation conference. The taste bears out that it’s been sitting, open, on a floor for weeks, but after the first few mouthfuls he stops noticing.

Really, there isn’t much difference between this and the way he’s been living his life for as long as he can remember. There have always been things he’s kept to himself, even when he was young, while da-ge still lived. It’s not really lying. And even when it is, some lies are comforting, like warm blankets to cocoon oneself inside.

He never put away his writing set before leaving for Gusu; uncharacteristically careless of him. There’s a half-written letter on top of the desk, and at a glance he remembers why he started it. He pushes his loose hair back over his shoulders, out of his way, and begins wetting the ink.

When he left off, he had been saying something about the weather and the turning of the seasons: The leaves are changing already, er-ge. Such an early season, this year. Remember when you and san-ge came together to visit me around this time? That must have been five or six years ago. San-ge brought me a case of very expensive incense, and he never would tell me where he bought it. I still have some. I can send it to you, if you like.

He’s not sure what he’d intended to communicate when he began writing it a few weeks back. Surely not anything important, or he would’ve delivered the letter in person instead of letting it gather dust on his desk. It hardly matters, since er-ge never replies to Nie Huaisang’s letters anymore. Nie Huaisang doesn’t know whether he even reads them.

It would be a waste of good paper not to finish it, so he dips his brush. I was in the Cloud Recesses recently for the conference. I thought about paying you a visit. I’m not sure His Excellency would let me near the Hanshi, but I like to think you’d open the door if I knocked. You’ve always been accommodating with your time. I am grateful for that.

His calligraphy is messier than it should be, considering he hasn’t had that much to drink, and he doesn’t need to embarrass himself in front of er-ge anymore. He leaves the letter at that, signing off simply with his name. He hasn’t been called anything other than Nie-zongzhu in a long time. There are times when he finds himself absentmindedly missing the sound of his name in Jin Guangyao’s voice. He keeps writing to er-ge in hopes of some more familiar address, but so far for naught. He could call himself Lan Xichen’s affectionate didi, as he once would have, but that might be laying it on too thick. He would like a reply, one of these days, or at least he thinks that he would. He can’t imagine what it would feel like to actually get one.

He’s not sure what he’d do, were he in Lan Xichen’s place. Nie Huaisang isn’t strong enough to survive shutting himself off from the world forever. It’s the nature of a younger sibling to want a hand on the shoulder, even if he doesn’t need it anymore.

He stays at the desk, staring at his own name drying on the page, until his eyelids are falling shut and he’s listing over to the side. Only then does he crawl into bed, pull the blankets over himself, and let his hands roam underneath his robes. Each time he touches his own skin, familiar and strange, it scares him in a way that little has since that day at the temple.

The fourth time Nie Huaisang wakes up that night, he decides he may as well just get up.

Early frosts have come, and the ground crunches underfoot in the silvery dawn; the sun has not risen high enough yet for the light to be warm.

Da-ge’s body was lost for almost fifteen years, but everyone knew that he was dead. No members of the Nie inner family line within living memory has outrun qi deviation, unless they were taken by something else first. Had he not seen da-ge qi deviate before his own eyes, Nie Huaisang may have held onto vain hope that his brother had vanished into the wilderness or gotten lost somewhere in Lanling in the midst of a fugue, but ever since the first time da-ge had turned Baxia on him without recognition, Nie Huaisang had known, in the pit of his stomach, that they were approaching the end, though he did all he could to avoid having to admit it.

That night in Lanling was clear and starry under a sickle moon. Jin Guangyao had held Nie Huaisang back, wrapped in his arms for safekeeping. San-ge had always looked out for him, but he’d never spared Nie Huaisang the truth, and so when, a few days later, Jin Guangyao gently told him that there was no point holding out for a miracle, Nie Huaisang had asked him to take care of the funeral preparations on his behalf. Nie Huaisang had thanked him for it.

The ancestral shrine in the Unclean Realms is a cold, quiet place, where any approaching footsteps can be heard far in advance. It’s not unusual, among this company, that da-ge’s body itself hasn’t been buried; the two of them saw the remains of some of their forefathers down in the death chamber of the sabre tomb. Nie Huaisang used to come here to burn joss sticks and talk to his brother. It’s far enough away from the rest of the sect compound that he wouldn't be overheard. He would tell da-ge about his day, or ask for advice on the problems of his current supplicants. Apologize for mistakes that went unspecified. Even here, it wasn’t safe to speak some things out loud.

Da-ge’s body now rests with his in a coffin in Yunping, but the kind of things Nie Huaisang has to say to him he refuses to speak within earshot of Jin Guangyao, so he kneels in the family shrine, as he’s always done, and addresses only da-ge.

“There was another accident the other day. I thought we might have been onto something, but the sabre just went flying around the tomb. By the time we calmed it down, it’d broken a few walls.”

Baxia had its own death song. It whistled through the air a way no mundane blade could. Spiritual weapons have their own hungers; even wielded by a will as strong as Nie Mingjue’s, his sabre sometimes seemed as though it could leap out of its sheath and devour someone whole.

He speaks softly, as not to have to hear his own voice echoing back at him off of the walls. “No one told me the truth about the sabres until we visited the tomb together, da-ge. Was that just because I didn’t cultivate enough? Did father tell you before he died, or did you only find out afterwards?”

It must have been harder for da-ge to learn the truth than it was for Nie Huaisang. Baxia was a part of him, nearly. Even after death, it absorbed its master’s will. It must have hurt da-ge to learn that his descendants would be burdened with it even after he was gone.

What would the sect look like, if Nie Huaisang told the parents of every prospective new disciple the truth about what they would be getting their children into? It’s not as though they’ll all qi deviate—no one would send their children to the Unclean Realms, if it were that simple—but the way of the sabre won’t lead anyone to immortality. Qinghe Nie cultivators are formidable in battle, the backbone of any force; it’s understandable that power like that couldn’t be bought without a price. Some junior disciples would still be willing to continue with their training, if they knew what they were risking, but surely not all of them. Nie Huaisang didn’t, did he?

Then again, he’s changing now. Perhaps it’s in his nature as a Nie to transform into something other people would hardly recognize and can’t understand.

He doesn’t know whether he could’ve tried it, were da-ge still alive. Nie Huaisang already disappointed him enough as it was.

In the silence of the shrine, Nie Huaisang watches the incense curl and spiral up to the ceiling, and feels the familiar wash of guilt through his stomach, like nausea. It’s been so long, and he still doesn’t know how to live with the feeling. Or live without it.

At his desk—not the one in his own bedroom, but the one in the room where he continues the never-ending work of trying to patch up his ancestors’ leaky boat—Nie Huaisang blinks away his missed hours of sleep for just as long as it takes to nod through morning reports. After they’ve left him alone, he folds his arms on the surface of the desk and lays his cheek on his sleeve. If he closes his eyes he will fall asleep, which sounds quite nice but will leave him with a sore neck, so his gaze drifts around the room. Like the rest of the official halls, it’s all gleaming metal, heavy lines, and a few pieces of art he’s installed over the years to soften the look of things a little. Pride of place in here is one of Xichen-ge’s paintings: the valley surrounding the Unclean Realms as seen from a great height, like the side of one of the surrounding peaks, or the blade of a sword in flight.

The Unclean Realms taught Nie Huaisang more than he realized, when he was younger, about beauty. Whenever he’s away for too long he misses the bracing clarity of the air and the austerity of the interiors. Art is balance, the delicate intertwined with the harsh. This is something Jin Guangyao understood less and less over the years; the longer he spent at Carp Tower, the more extravagantly tasteless his gifts for Huaisang became. Everything was so gilt and shiny the form itself was clouded. A fan, after all, should be a beautiful thing, but it has function. If it can’t keep you cool in the summer heat, it’s just a waste of materials.

Nie Huaisang doesn’t suit this place, but he has made it suit him a little more than it did when he was born. If all that remains when he’s gone is some rooms made a little more harmonious, he supposes that will, at least, be something.

Nothing he has to take care of today can’t wait for tomorrow, and he’s tempted to crawl back into bed and sleep through the rest of the morning like he used to, but he’s already sitting down, and getting into bed would require first getting up, which sounds like more trouble than it’s worth.

Without sitting up, he reaches out for the stack of unanswered mail. Unfortunately, most of it remains unanswered because he doesn’t want to answer it, and his feelings have not changed. Jiang Cheng’s charming self-invitation is still in want of a reply, and if Nie Huaisang doesn’t get back to him soon he’ll probably do something ridiculous.

It’s not even that he’s opposed to seeing Jiang Cheng; he does wonder whether there’s any truth to the premises of Jiang Cheng’s letter—whether he actually harbours any serious suspicion that Nie Huaisang is recruiting shady characters for his own version of Jin Guangyao’s treasure room cabal, or whatever Jiang Cheng thinks might be happening—, or if he just wants to get sucked off again. If it’s truly only the latter, that’s fine, but he doesn’t want to give him any ideas about what half of an evening at the Cloud Recesses means for the relationship between their sects, or what people can and can’t demand of Nie Huaisang. If anyone has accusations to make, they can go ahead and make them, but he doesn’t intend on making it any easier; he’s had enough of people rooting through his ancestors’ graves. Even so, it’s hard to feel much urgency about secret-keeping now that Jin Guangyao is dead. It’s been a while since he had reason to be genuinely afraid of anyone.

His hand hovers over the page until a drop of ink threatens to fall, and then he begins to write. Jiang-zongzhu, your company is always welcome here. I’ll let you into all of my treasure rooms, so you can do as much exploring as you like. I promise there won’t be any nasty surprises. We do still have some puppies here, too, like I was telling you about at the Cloud Recesses, and I think you like that sort of thing?

He folds up the letter, and when at last he summons the will to get up and find someone to send it for him, he first loops back to his own bedrooms. He wouldn’t want er-ge to feel left out.

Jiang Wanyin arrives like a turbulent wind. Something prickles on the back of Nie Huaisang’s neck, and not long after a guard comes scurrying to announce that Jiang-zongzhu has arrived without a retinue.

Alone, ah? Well, he ought not to let an old friend get lonely in the reception chamber.

They bluster through greeting courtesies, but once they run out of those Nie Huaisang plucks the edge of Jiang Cheng’s sleeve between his forefinger and thumb. “Come on, Jiang-xiong. Let’s play weiqi.” Jiang Cheng lets himself be led like this for a surprising number of steps before shaking his arm free with an acidic hiss of breath, to which Nie Huaisang cheerfully Sorry, sorry, sorry-ies as they make their way down the hall.

“I thought my letter was clear about wanting to discuss serious matters with you. I see it wasn’t clear enough.”

“We can talk while we play. It’s my house, so you’ll have to indulge me.”

What, does Jiang Cheng want Nie Huaisang to sit on the throne and hear Jiang Cheng out in the middle of Blades Hall like a stranger? Nie Huaisang once held Jiang Cheng’s hair back for him as he vomited into an immaculately groomed Cloud Recesses bush. They’re beyond such formalities, and besides, the chair really is uncomfortable.

And it’s not a pretense; Nie Huaisang does like weiqi, and he’s short on opponents. He doesn’t like to play the same person too often.

“I’m out of practice, so you might have to go easy on me.”

“If we’re playing, I’m going to play properly.”

Nie Huaisang sighs. “Just don’t hold it against me if it’s over too quickly.”

Weiqi was the only gentlemanly art da-ge could stomach, and they used to play together occasionally, before their father died. Da-ge was only interested to the extent that the game could be used to think about military strategy, but Nie Huaisang found it easier to follow along when it was a question of pieces on a board. However, it was Meng Yao, not da-ge, who was Huaisang’s favourite opponent. He’ll never know whether Meng Yao ever figured out that Huaisang used to throw matches just because he could tell that Meng Yao liked to win, and Huaisang liked Meng Yao.

They don’t play in silence, like real, serious weiqi masters would; how stuffy and unbearable. Jiang Cheng takes black, Nie Huaisang takes white, and they exchange opening plays. Nie Huaisang adds, “I used to be better. While everyone else was fighting in the war, I was here, and there wasn’t much else to do.”

Da-ge was away from home during the war, of course, but Huaisang pestered the skeleton crew of retainers to play matches whenever he was bored of his solitary pursuits, and occasionally allies and friends would stop at Qinghe to resupply on their way to and from the Qishan borderlands—Xichen-ge came by a few times, and Jiang Cheng himself once or twice.

Jiang Cheng responds to that noncommittally, and then he glances across the board at Nie Huaisang with a steely look in his eye. Nie Huaisang shifts in place, obligingly.

“I don’t see any of these guests of yours. Did you hide them away before I could get here?”

“I think the wandering life just called for them again.”

Last week, he waved farewell to the last of his rogue cultivator houseguests. Things are already less lively, but he’s not too sad to see them go. Keeping tabs on a bunch of strangers eating him through house and home had its drawbacks. He doesn’t enjoy being anyone’s benefactor, anyway. There is a comforting simplicity to belonging to a hierarchy so directly, and it’s never hard to puzzle out what anyone wants out of him when they see him as a sect leader before anything else. Still: he misses being unimportant.

“I’m curious what Jiang-xiong thinks I could’ve been learning from them that could worry him so much.”

“Qinghe Nie’s never been particularly concerned with innovating cultivation techniques under your leadership. What’s changed?”

“Oh, but that’s exactly it. The elders had been nagging me for so long to put more effort into the sect, so I thought this would be the simplest option that wouldn’t require me to… you know. Do things myself.”

Jiang Cheng gives him an unimpressed look, but he’s making moves each turn, so he can’t be having such a miserable time, really. He’s not half-bad at weiqi; certainly better than the way that Nie Huaisang remembers him playing during the war, though Jiang Cheng might’ve just been distracted at the time.

Back then, the days were blurs of vague dread; he worried about da-ge in an abstract sort of way, in between letting the elders tell him what to do with the war refugees, complaining about being shut up in the fortress instead of being allowed to go ride around the countryside, and spending too long fantasizing about the ridges of Wei Wuxian’s neck. Even though Nie Huaisang was relieved every time they got news from the front of da-ge’s safety, it was hard back then to imagine that anything could actually hurt him. He seemed as indestructible as the mountainsides.

Nie Huaisang had been more annoyed than ever that da-ge had sent Meng Yao away for reasons he wouldn’t even give Huaisang a straight answer about. He should have been there, helping Huaisang figure out things to say.

Ever since the temple, his life has felt like Sunshot all over again: aimlessly passing the time at home, as if any day now da-ge is going to stride through the doors and tell him, It’s over, Huaisang. You can get down from that throne now.

Nie Huaisang surveys the array of white stones on the board and taps his finger on his chin as he contemplates which of them would make the best blood sacrifice to probe Jiang Cheng’s defenses. People are intimidated by Jiang Cheng, with good reason, but especially here, under his own roof, Nie Huaisang can look past the sect leader and see the worn-down, harried bachelor who, in casual settings, is just as stilted as he was at nineteen.

“Hey, Jiang-xiong. When was the last time you were here? Da-ge’s funeral?”

Across the board, Jiang Cheng looks up at him, and for once his expression is hard to read. “Yes.”

“I didn’t realize it’d been so long. I would’ve invited you sooner.”

“I don’t do much casual travelling.”

“Ah, of course. You’re a busy man.” The stones on the playing field have begun to form coalitions, gathering together in force and numbers, with the stragglers hanging, vulnerable, in the empty expanses of the board. Jiang Cheng’s style tends towards the defensive; he likes to feel secure, with his feet dug into the earth and his weapons pointing outward. Nie Huaisang tuts his tongue and floats his hand indecisively over the action, a piece in hand, his fingers wiggling in the air. “You spent some time here during the war. Does it look any different to you now?”

Jiang Cheng’s head is bowed over the board to consider his next move. “I wasn’t paying much attention to the decor at the time.”

“Fair enough, fair enough.” Nie Huaisang places his stone. “You’ve done a good job with Lotus Pier, though. It’s very stylish.”

He doesn’t lift his neck again, but Jiang Cheng’s eyelashes flicker as his gaze darts up to Nie Huaisang before returning to the game. “Thank you.”

Accepting a compliment he can’t take as a backhanded insult seems to pain him. The sight of it is perversely satisfying, like biting into something tart.

“Frankly, Jiang-xiong, I don’t think you get enough credit for your artistic eye. Sure, the Lans are very cultured, but the Cloud Recesses aren’t very welcoming, are they. Sleeping there makes me feel like I’m in prison.” Jiang Cheng doesn’t acknowledge this; he still hasn’t placed his next stone, and his right hand is held in a loose fist on the table next to the board. He tightens his grip as Nie Huaisang speaks, and Nie Huaisang’s eye is drawn to the blue of his veins, which a lingering summer tan can’t hide completely. Here, Jiang Cheng’s thirty-nine years are beginning to show; young men don’t have hands like these.

“Your guest rooms are much nicer. Did you decide on the furnishings yourself? If so, I have to—”

“It’s hard to decide on a move when I can’t think,” Jiang Cheng interjects, as wrathfully as one can while the ridges of one’s ears are faintly pink.

Nie Huaisang blinks with shock, his mouth falling open, and he laughs involuntarily. Giddiness rises in him like a rush of blood to the head.

Talking at someone is only fun for so long. That’s all being a sect leader is: talking and talking to people bound by courtesy to listen to you. It’s so fucking dull. A relief, then, to face one’s equal, and no less an old friend who is inclined to interrupt you whenever you ramble. He likes it. It’s one of Jiang Cheng’s best qualities.

Their pieces make gentle clacks as they’re set in place, troops assembling across this most accommodatingly smooth field of battle. It’s Nie Huaisang’s turn, now: he surveys the situation. Da-ge would have said, Look here, Huaisang, look at the thickness of his defenses; he’s hemmed you into the corner of the board. And so Jiang Cheng has. The impenetrable line of black pieces have pushed Nie Huaisang’s white stones into a position of no return. His back is up against the place where the wood ends in a neat right-angle. Soon, it will be settled. Nie Huaisang’s luck has run out. But just as he once teased da-ge, Just think how much harder it would be if the board had hills, like in real life, the illusion fails here, too; for even as Nie Huaisang lets out a disappointed sigh, all but conceding defeat, he thinks, but in reality there are no corners, there is no board. There is always a place to move beyond the field of play, if you can only imagine it.

Nie Huaisang wrinkles his nose. “Oh, I walked into this, didn’t I.”

It was Meng Yao who got him into the habit of throwing games, but he’s kept it up ever since. The tricky thing is to determine the right point at which to fail; it’s harder than it looks, to make it believable. But no one likes to lose, and people are better company when they aren’t nursing wounded pride. Jiang Cheng, doubly so.

The puppies have never seen snow before. They’re little lapdogs with curly coats, small enough even when fully grown to be picked up in the crook of an arm. When Nie Huaisang lets them loose in one of his courtyards they spring around, intrigued enough by the texture of this unfamiliar substance to brave the cold of it on their soft paws. Most of their lives thus far have been spent puttering around Nie Huaisang’s sitting rooms or napping on cushions; they haven’t had to develop much hardiness.

The Unclean Realms are predisposed to harsh winters. It snows every year, yet the first fall always takes Nie Huaisang by surprise, and this year the sky turned white almost immediately after Jiang Cheng arrived. Since waking this morning, all of the roofs and uncovered corridors have been covered in a thick layer of snow that muffles the coming and goings of Qinghe Nie. Nie Huaisang had dragged out his daily tasks as long as he could, but by midday he tired of wasting his own time and took pity on Jiang Cheng, who was, after all, promised some dogs.

When Nie Huaisang was a child, snowfall always seemed to cushion them inside the valley. It was a time for huddling under blankets and forgetting about the outside world until the sky cleared. As he got older, he realized the dead are impervious to cold, and resentful spirits are as happy to stir trouble for the living in a blizzard as on a sunny day. In a cultivation sect, the only ones for whom snow means leisure are children and the very spoiled, of which he was both.

There’s a group of five or six of the younger juniors tossing snowballs at one another on the other side of the courtyard, and when they notice the puppies yapping, they come over to investigate. They give Nie Huaisang nods and quickly murmured “Zongzhu”-s before bending to introduce themselves to the dogs snuffling through the snow.

“Your disciples are very familiar,” Jiang Cheng mutters loudly, and the children’s heads whip up. They clearly hadn’t noticed he was there, or at least not put together who he was, and they’re so stricken at the sight of him that Nie Huaisang wonders if one of them might faint. But no; they straighten, make proper reverences to Nie Huaisang and Jiang Cheng, and then beat hasty retreats.

“You have an intimidating face, Jiang-xiong. Watch where you point it. I think my juniors thought you were going to eat them.”

Snow still falls lazily, though the clouds have tired themselves out. Flakes catch in Jiang Cheng’s hair, and his cheeks are pink with cold. “Did you forget I raised a child myself?”

Nie Huaisang hums and pushes his hands further into his sleeves. “Do you find things too quiet at Lotus Pier, now that your nephew is all grown up?”

Jiang Cheng makes a noncommittal sound. “There’s always work to be done.”

“You don’t find it hard, doing it all on your own?”

“I’ve made it this far.”

Jiang Cheng is wrapped in a dark cloak against the white backdrop of the courtyard. The colours, his scowl—for a sweetly painful moment, they remind Nie Huaisang of da-ge. “Yes, you have, haven’t you?” The sentimentality leaks into Nie Huaisang’s voice, so he coughs, and adds, “I’ve wondered if you’re going to start looking for a Jiang-furen. I know you’ve had some trouble with matchmakers, ah, but there’s still hope, right?” Nie Huaisang lifts his hands to his face to rub feeling back into his cheeks. “I’ll think if I know any nice girls. What were your requirements, again? You had lofty standards. Naturally pretty, from a good family, not too talkative—there were definitely more than that, but it’s been so long—”

“What, so I should just take the first unmarried woman I see?” He looks disdainful, but the tips of Jiang Cheng’s ears are as pink as his cheeks. “And what about you?”

“What about me?”

“Have you even spoken to matchmakers?”

“No, I can't say I have. Tell me, what kind of wife should I look for? I wouldn’t know where to start.”

Jiang Cheng furrows his brow, like he’s really giving this some thought, which makes Nie Huaisang laugh. “To tell you the truth, I think I just don’t like the idea of having someone in my house. What happens if you want a little peace and quiet?”

“The point of marriage isn’t to get whatever you want.”

“Then it sounds like I’m better off avoiding it for as long as I can.”

He’s sure that if Jiang Cheng had the necessary high-ground he would say something scathing about how Nie Huaisang is shirking his filial obligations, but Jiang Cheng doesn’t, on this score, so Jiang Cheng responds with a sour frown instead. The impact is tempered by the way he pulls off one of his gloves and kneels in the snow to let the dogs greet his fingers with their slobbery little mouths.

Nie Huaisang kneels beside him and picks up one of the puppies, which he deposits in his own lap. It turns around in circles, looking for the most comfortable way to tuck itself against his robes for warmth. “Do you really plan on doing this forever?”

“Doing what?”

He gestures around them at the courtyard, now empty but for the two of them. “All this. Sect leadership. Don’t you get tired?”

“There’s no one else to do it.”

“Well, it’s different for you. You always knew this would be your life.”

“Hasn’t twenty years been long enough for you to get used to it?”

“I’m afraid not. You know me, I try not to think further ahead than next week.” Nie Huaisang hums. “So, what do you think of my dogs?”

Jiang Cheng picks the nearest puppy up by the scruff and lifts it to eye-level, supporting its feet with his other hand. He checks its inner ears and the composition of its paws, and sticks his finger into its mouth to feel along its teeth and gums. The puppy doesn’t struggle much, besides a little perfunctory wiggling. Its tail thumps against the heel of Jiang Cheng’s hand.

“Toy breeds are a waste. Dogs are meant to be working animals.” He carefully lowers it to the ground, and it runs off his palm to rejoin its siblings.

Nie Huaisang has always been fond of animals, but the baying, sinewy hounds they keep for hunting used to frighten him as a child; he’d run by the kennels as not to get barked at, though he eventually figured out that sudden movements just made them bark more. Jiang Cheng shares a tendency with that kind: single-minded and tireless, sleek and dangerous. Easily startled and ready to snap at nothing.

“I bet they could catch some rats if they were hungry. It’s my fault for spoiling them.” The puppy in Nie Huaisang’s lap begins to gently gnaw at his finger. “But isn’t it enough just to look cute and be good company?”

Before long, the dogs start to shiver, and Nie Huaisang scoops them up and takes them inside to be passed off to their keeper. This leaves him with Jiang Cheng in tow and nowhere pressing that they’re needed to be, and Nie Huaisang takes them on one of the quieter routes back to the inner recesses of the Unclean Realms, following paths tamped into the snow by earlier travelers.

“What else would you do, then?”

“What?”

“If you were no longer the head of the sect.”

Nie Huaisang looks away from Jiang Cheng to the ground ahead of him to better watch his footing. He lifts his arms a little for balance, in case he slips on a patch of ice on the stone. He wonders whether Jiang Cheng would catch him. He should hope so; Jiang Cheng came all this way to visit him, and the least he can do is put his sword strength to use.

“Oh, you know. Sleep in until midday and paint all afternoon.”

“It seems as though you already have plenty of time for leisure.”

They’ve reached the parting of the ways, the fork in the corridor where the guest wing diverges from the hallway to the inner family’s chambers. Nie Huaisang could make all sorts of excuses, either genuine or false, about the things he unfortunately must attend to rather than spend more time with Jiang Cheng. Were their positions reversed, he can’t imagine Jiang Cheng would clear a day to do nothing but enjoy Nie Huaisang’s company. At least, he couldn’t have imagined it before this week. It seems to be exactly what has happened.

“Do I? It feels like I’m always so busy, but I’m sure you have it worse.”

Jiang Cheng meets his eyes; he studies Nie Huaisang with a curious expression. Disdain or suspicion, he would have expected, but this is something else, and Jiang Cheng doesn’t look away when caught.

His pulse skitters, and the pattering of Nie Huaisang’s feet quickens. “You work too hard. You always have. It’s good that you came to see me. I can teach you the secrets to living a lazy life. Come, Jiang-xiong, let’s go warm ourselves up a little.”

Nie Huaisang props his face in his palm. “You know, I’ve always wondered what you did to get blacklisted.”

Jiang Cheng huffs, but doesn’t turn around. When they made it back to Nie Huaisang’s room, he’d insisted on preparing the tea, for some reason. “Do you interrogate all your guests?”

“You invited yourself to my home, so I can be a little more casual, don’t you think?” Jiang Cheng’s hair is frizzy from the wind and his cheeks are rosy from the cold. He sets the teapot on the tabletop with a faint tap. Nie Huaisang continues. “I have theories, though.”

Jiang Cheng smiles mirthlessly, even as he busies himself with pouring. “If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you.”

“I’ve given it a lot of thought over the years, if you can believe it. You’re wealthy, and handsome, and a war hero—not like me, I’ve never accomplished a thing in my life—so it must have been really something, and I’ve wondered—why? I’ve seen you do politics, you can be polite enough.”

Unlike in the winter air outside, within his bedroom Nie Huaisang can unfurl his fan without being hit by cold. The paper flutters back and forth, regular as a heartbeat, and he notes that Jiang Cheng’s eyes are on his wrist, where the skin peeks out from the sleeve.

“I didn’t realize you had such an interest in my private affairs. There’s so much we don’t know about you, isn’t there, Nie-zongzhu?”

Nie Huaisang hums. “I’m just nosy. But can I tell you my theory?”

“Why bother asking? You’re going to tell me anyway.”

“My theory is that you want to get scolded.”

There’s a moment of silence, and then Jiang Cheng lets out a pissy little laugh. “I don’t know why anyone listens to a thing you say.”

“They don’t, really.” Nie Huaisang leans a little closer to him across the table. “But you know, I think if you told them upfront, there must be some ladies who would be willing to tell you off. It’s only rude to spring it on them unawares.”

“You are unbelievable.” Jiang Cheng has one hand laid flat on the table, and his fingers keep flexing and releasing. Nie Huaisang wonders whether he’s conscious of it.

Nie Huaisang doesn’t have alcohol to blame for his actions, this time, which is perhaps poor planning on his part, but he’s having fun, so he jabs the air with his fan, stopping short of Jiang Cheng’s chest. “It’s good for me to know these things, you know, if you came here looking for something in particular.”

Jiang Cheng goes still. Blank apprehension plays out on his face, and then he looks down into his cup of tea as though the leaves will offer him some guidance.

When Jiang Cheng seems in no hurry to respond, Nie Huaisang takes a few noisy sips of his own to fill the silence with something irritating, and it works as intended—Jiang Cheng’s head jerks back up, and he asks, in a rigid tone, “What are you offering?”

Nie Huaisang takes a leisurely sip, but he left his tea untouched too long; it’s lukewarm and bitter on the tongue. He sets it down and then shuffles, on his knees, around the table.

Jiang Cheng shrinks backwards, leaning on his elbows, seemingly shying away from Nie Huaisang’s approach but not, in fact, meaningfully removing himself from the situation at all—and what would a cultivator like Sandu Shengshou have to fear from a weakling like Nie Huaisang, in any case?

“Have you had your fill of gawking?”

Nie Huaisang blinks. “Is that what I’m doing?”

When Jiang Cheng first pulled his shirt off, Nie Huaisang had momentarily frowned, but it had been out of honest confusion. Soon after, he’d remembered the gist of the rumours about Jiang Cheng’s treatment at the hands of the punishment whip. They’re the only scars Nie Huaisang can see on Jiang Cheng’s body, which isn’t surprising. Jiang Cheng doesn’t strike him as the kind to have earned many beatings as a child.

“I know they’re ugly. You don’t need to spare my feelings.”

“I would never spare your feelings,” Nie Huaisang says, sincerely.

Funny, that Jiang Cheng should be ashamed of the way his body looks in current company; da-ge would’ve wept if Nie Huaisang ever managed to get half this toned. Some scars bravely acquired in wartime can’t negate that.

“Aren’t you going to undress?”

“No patience these days,” Nie Huaisang replies. He feels amiable. He’s not sure why he put this off; what was he afraid of? Jiang Cheng thinking less of him for being easy? Nie Huaisang hasn’t been afraid of anyone thinking that in ages, and as it turns out, angle Jiang Cheng the right way and he’ll roll over like a log in the river.

Jiang Cheng is fully naked while Nie Huaisang is clothed. It’s a luxurious feeling. Jiang Cheng hasn’t managed to put aside his self-consciousness; he watches Nie Huaisang like a puppy beseeching him for a pat. Nie Huaisang runs a hand down Jiang Cheng’s chest, feeling the scar tissue without lingering, and though Jiang Cheng shifts at the touch, he doesn’t bat his hand away. They’ve done this once—no, twice now, and each time, Nie Huaisang has been pleasantly surprised by the things Jiang Cheng will put up with without much more than token protest.

“Have you always been like this?”

With a lift of his chin, and in a tone as if each word physically pains him, Jiang Cheng replies, “I’m not like anything.”

Oh, good grief, Nie Huaisang wasn’t asking Jiang Cheng whether he thinks of himself as a cutsleeve. Nie Huaisang couldn’t care less, and he’s pretty sure he knows the answer—the fact Jiang Cheng is currently naked in another sect leader’s bedroom notwithstanding. He means the rest of it: the way he blushes and squirms like a man half his age. Jiang Cheng makes it impossible to tell between his shame and his arousal, since they appear to be the same thing.

“Of course, of course not. I guess what I should’ve asked is, what have you liked, with other people?”

He wonders what, exactly, Jiang Cheng told himself he was coming for when he left Yunmeng for Qinghe. When they’d fooled around years ago, they were in Nie Huaisang’s bedroom, like they are now; Nie Huaisang kept his old rooms even after becoming sect leader, and left da-ge’s empty. The blowjob itself had been graceless and breathless; Nie Huaisang had pretended more experience than he had, while Jiang Cheng was clearly out of his depth. It had been the least intimidating Nie Huaisang had ever seen Jiang Cheng since Wei Wuxian died, so he’d wondered, even at the time, if he was the first person to ever have Jiang Cheng at all. But there must have been something since; if Jiang-zongzhu had a reputation for noteworthy vice, Nie Huaisang would know, but there are varying levels of permissibility, and Jiang Cheng is a powerful man. He’s more than capable of keeping things discreet.

“What do you mean?”

Nie Huaisang laughs. “There have been others, haven’t there?”

Jiang Cheng looks at him balefully, his complexion growing more ashen by the moment, and Nie Huaisang’s breath catches.

Jiang Cheng is rich and handsome; one of the two is usually enough to bring a man as many dalliances as he would like, let alone both. If a bad personality was a suitable deterrent, the gentry would’ve gone extinct long ago. Nie Huaisang knows that his equipment is functional; there’s no impotence plaguing Yunmeng Jiang’s bloodline, only its sect leader’s apparent lack of interest in finding himself a wife—or perhaps only exacting tastes and insufficient knowledge to act on them, at least until recently?—Nie Huaisang had meant it as a joke, earlier—

“Oh, I didn’t realize—Am I really the only one?” Quickly, he adds, “Not that I’m not touched, but I wouldn’t have left you in such a long dry spell, if I’d known. You should’ve asked!”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

Nie Huaisang doesn’t know what to say to that, so he moves on. A cursory look reveals Jiang Cheng is already half-hard. Nie Huaisang folds his hands in his own lap and watches Jiang Cheng’s gaze follow them in a way Nie Huaisang would describe as—hmm.

“Would you get on your hands and knees?”

He’s expecting it to be an effort in persuasion, but after a long moment, as if he’s expecting Nie Huaisang to laugh and say he was only joking, Jiang Cheng presses his eyes shut and does as he's told.

Nie Huaisang withdraws the fan tucked into his belt and runs the tip of it up the line of Jiang Cheng’s spine, tracing the curve of his back, before following it with the flat of his other hand. He touches him as dispassionately as he can manage. He thinks of Jiang Cheng evaluating Nie Huaisang’s dogs, and from there, of Nie Huaisang’s own memories of being a child and watching his father in the stockyard, talking to the butchers while running his hands over animals’ flanks.

When his hand reaches Jiang Cheng’s neck, Nie Huaisang grips a loose fistful of his hair just to watch him shudder before letting it go. When he takes his hand away, Jiang Cheng lifts his head, for a moment, to follow the touch.

Nie Huaisang tips Jiang Cheng’s chin up with the end of his fan and ignores his piteous eyes. Instead, Nie Huaisang raises his free hand and presses two fingertips against Jiang Cheng’s lips. After a moment’s prodding, Jiang Cheng parts his mouth, and Nie Huaisang slides his fingers over his tongue, his gums, his teeth, as if searching for defects. The longer that Jiang Cheng keeps his mouth open, the more saliva pools around his fingers. He can feel as much as hear the ragged quality of Jiang Cheng’s breath.

Nie Huaisang considers making an arch comment about Jiang Cheng’s good breeding, but he doesn’t know if he could say it without making himself laugh. He pulls his hand away and wipes his fingers dry on Jiang Cheng’s ribcage; Jiang Cheng shivers.

Jiang Cheng has so much skin on display that Nie Huaisang can’t decide where to look, let alone where to put his hands or his mouth. There’s a freckle on his stomach; unfair, to keep something so cute hidden away under his clothes when he didn’t even have anyone looking underneath. Even better, there’s one on the inner cleft of his ass. He might not even know it’s there, and if that’s the case, who does? Surely this is exclusive information held by childhood bathmates, his physician, and now Nie Huaisang.

“Do you remember what we talked about, last time?”

“Be more specific.”

“I mean, what it was I said when you came. I think we were talking about your ass. Does that help?”

Jiang Cheng makes a noise so affronted it’s as though he hadn’t come all this way for this very thing. As if Nie Huaisang hadn’t already teased him about this once, to bombastic effect.

“You seemed interested back then. I was just thinking out loud, I didn’t think it was going to be what made you—”

“Do you have a point?”

“I think I want to put my fingers in you. That’s all, nothing scary. Would you like that?”

Jiang Cheng is so taut. Every bit of him. He’ll need to relax a lot more than that, if they are, in fact going to do this, but he seems so unwilling to bend, unable to even answer so straightforward a question, that Nie Huaisang’s heart thaws, and he leans in close to Jiang Cheng’s ear. Maybe it’s easier for him if he doesn’t feel like he’s being watched.

“You can just nod or shake your head, if that’s better,” Nie Huaisang murmurs. The sound is muffled by their hair, so it comes out sounding softer than he intended.

Jiang Cheng gives a jerky nod that Nie Huaisang feels rather than sees.

“Have you ever done it to yourself?”

One shake: no.

“So it would be the first time anything’s been inside you?”

Yes.

Nie Huaisang lays one of his palms over one of Jiang Cheng’s fists. They’re sun-roughened and strong, with prominent knuckles. “I’ve done it lots, so you’d be in good hands. If you don’t like it, I won’t make fun. It’s just that I think you might.” After a moment’s consideration, he adds, “And I’d like to see it.”

One heartbeat, two, five, and Jiang Cheng mutters in a voice scorched with embarrassment, “Fine.”

Nie Huaisang smiles, and wonders whether Jiang Cheng can feel it against his face.

He strokes his thumb over the back of Jiang Cheng’s hand before straightening up.

Nie Huaisang doesn’t want to scare Jiang Cheng away; he doesn’t plan to make a habit of these encounters, but he likes to keep his options open, and Jiang Cheng’s virgin ass is a once-in-a-lifetime event! He should make the most of it. Nie Huaisang runs his palm over the length of Jiang Cheng’s spine to the small of his back, resting there for a moment, hoping the message comes across—stay where you are, I’ve got it all in hand—before getting up to scan the room for something suitable.

When he returns to Jiang Cheng’s side, Nie Huaisang settles in; he picks up his skirts enough to kneel without getting tangled whenever he rises again, and sets his fan on the floor next to him with a gentle, metallic clack.

He wouldn’t actually go at it with spit alone, like some kind of barbarian, but the temptation is too strong to avoid reaching out and turning Jiang Cheng’s face toward him once again in order to tap his cheek. “Open up.”

Jiang Cheng glares at him reproachfully, but does as he’s been bid, and Nie Huaisang slides his first two fingers across Jiang Cheng’s tongue once more. “Can you get them wet for me? You’ll be glad you did.”

Once he retracts his hand, he tucks his sleeves up out of the way of stray grease stains before pouring oil into his palm. “Jiang-xiong, your ass is so cute,” Nie Huaisang murmurs, and pushes a slick finger inside Jiang Cheng with gentle relentlessness.

It is cute. There’s not much of it to speak of, really, but his thighs are as muscular as would be expected, and Nie Huaisang finds himself delighted by the sight of Jiang Cheng’s flat little ass, so bony and pale and tentatively, hopefully quivering, as he once again fails to keep his reactions in check.

Nie Huaisang doesn’t usually take on the active role; he’s never liked vigorous exercise. Even so, he feels almost relaxed; he sits stationary, except for where his finger is pressing slowly deeper into Jiang Cheng. It would be easier, ergonomically, if he was kneeling behind Jiang Cheng instead of by his side, but then he wouldn’t be able to see his face, which is the best part. He’s not even really fucking him in the sense of putting much effort into it with his arm, but Jiang Cheng is clearly unused to the sensation and wholly unprepared.

“It’s weird the first time, right? That’s okay, everyone’s got to start somewhere. But you’re lucky my fingers are small. I’ve got some things stored away that would make anyone cry, I think—Oh, don’t look so afraid, I’m not going to get up.” He’s not sure where his words are coming from; they’re just tumbling out of him.

“You’re a pervert.” This accusation loses some of its ferocity when Jiang Cheng lets out a barely-suppressed ah immediately after speaking, and Nie Huaisang can see his arms tremble where he’s holding himself up on white-knuckled fists. He has the most hard-done-by look on his face, as though he can’t believe he’s found himself so cruelly used.

“Am I? I thought I was being very nice to you.”

Nie Huaisang starts nudging his entrance with the tip of his second finger, and he can’t miss the fluttering of Jiang Cheng’s eyelids as his eyes roll up in his head. It’s almost enough to make Nie Huaisang feel sorry for him, so he adds, “You’re doing great. You take it really well.”

It’s a matter of perspective; Jiang Cheng’s hole is so tight that they’d be here all evening if Nie Huaisang was going to fuck him with anything beside his hand, but he doesn’t plan on it, and there’s no rush; even if the snow has stopped coming down, it’s already getting dark out, and Jiang Cheng won’t be able to head back to Lotus Pier until the next day.

He can imagine what this feels like. The first few times he was getting fucked on someone else’s fingers, he’d been taken aback by how much more intense it was to not be able to predict the way they’d move. The longer he looks at Jiang Cheng on all fours, the more lurid the possibilities in his mind become. It’s flattering, the trust Jiang Cheng seems to have in Nie Huaisang to guide him through this; for all his grumbling, he hasn’t put up so much as a token resistance all evening. Jiang Cheng arches his back, pressing against Nie Huaisang’s hand. He supposes that Jiang Cheng has no way of knowing that Nie Huaisang’s hardly any more experienced than Jiang Cheng is, in terms of being the one to take charge. Nie Huaisang knows what he is, and he knows what he has going for him in bed: a cute face, an empty head, and a lack of shame. He couldn’t say what Jiang Cheng thinks of him in any other circumstance, though he can make some guesses, but he doubts that Nie Huaisang’s lack of shame is what Jiang Cheng is preoccupied with at the moment, as Jiang Cheng struggles and fails not to make a show of himself.

As Jiang Cheng gets better at letting him in, the movements of Nie Huaisang’s fingers are becoming less focused and more hurried. It doesn’t matter how brittle a person is; everyone is soft and giving in here. Jiang Cheng is so warm inside. Nie Huaisang leans back a little and tilts his head, looking underneath Jiang Cheng to where he’s still valiantly supporting himself on hands and knees, and sees that Jiang Cheng is fully hard. And to think that Nie Huaisang hasn’t touched his cock for him once since all this began! He’s really too vital.

“I think you could come on my fingers, but my hand is getting tired, so I might help you along.” He ghosts the fingertips of his free hand over Jiang Cheng’s side, across his stomach, and skims them down the length of Jiang Cheng’s length before taking it in his grip.

The fingers of his other hand, inside Jiang Cheng’s ass have slowed their movements. Nie Huaisang is absolutely not coordinated enough to manage both of these kinds of motions at the same time, but he makes sure to keep pushing them in and out whenever he has the presence of mind to think about anything but how slick Jiang Cheng’s cock is, would you believe he hardly needs lubricant at all, and Nie Huaisang is about to say something about it when he brushes his palm over the head of Jiang Cheng’s cock on one of the first gentle strokes. Jiang Cheng’s frame locks in a moment of tension that Nie Huaisang almost doesn’t recognize as an orgasm until he’s spending in pulses over Nie Huaisang’s hand.

He laughs out of shock. Jiang Cheng makes a low, anguished sound that seems to rumble through his bones, and then sags on his elbows. Nie Huaisang flexes his fingers inside Jiang Cheng’s ass once, to remind him how he got here, and then withdraws them. Both of Nie Huaisang’s hands are a mess of oil and come, and when he scoots back a little, Nie Huaisang sees that his beautiful floor is wet, too.

Nie Huaisang tuts his tongue. “Oh no. You’re not going to make any Jiang heirs like that.”

Jiang Cheng turns his head back enough to look Nie Huaisang in the eye. Nie Huaisang expects him to look stricken, and it's not that he doesn’t, but his mouth is slack and flushed. His hair is in disarray. Instead of anger or shame, the look on his face is closer to relief. It’s so easy to do this to him, it turns out; easier than Nie Huaisang would’ve dreamed possible. He wants to keep pushing until the tension peaks and snaps back on his hand. Until he manages to earn Jiang Cheng’s genuine disgust, Nie Huaisang doesn’t know how he’ll get his own curiosity to subside.

He sighs and draws his come-slick fingers, the ones that had been on Jiang Cheng’s cock, through the mess on the hardwood. “And look what you’ve done to my floor! I hope you plan on cleaning up after yourself.”

Nie Huaisang extends his hand to Jiang Cheng’s face and lifts his eyebrows. It’s a joke-suggestion, almost entirely. Jiang Cheng’s mouth is going to curl, he’s going to reel backward and put on a performance of his disdain, and everything will return to its usual rhythm until, maybe, the next time their paths cross at a conference when they have an evening to waste.

Jiang Cheng squeezes his eyes shut, steeling himself, and leans forward enough to part his lips for Nie Huaisang’s fingers. He licks them clean obediently, like a dog.

The floor of Nie Huaisang’s stomach falls through. Jiang Cheng’s eyelashes fan out like crow’s wings against his cheek. The curl of his tongue is hot and the slightest bit rough. Nie Huaisang is so turned on that he thinks he’d fall over if he stood up too quickly. Oh, Jiang-xiong, it’s so sad you went so long without this. You’re a natural talent.

When Nie Huaisang returns from washing his hands, Jiang Cheng is still kneeling on the floor, though he’s sitting up, better to target Nie Huaisang with wide, cowish eyes which make it obvious that Jiang Cheng wants to know what Nie Huaisang thought but can’t bring himself to ask.

Nie Huaisang feels quite fond of him at the moment, so he can indulge him by stretching a pleasant evening out a little longer. He whispers against the shell of Jiang Cheng’s ear, “There are nicer places in my room than the ground, you know.”

Jiang Cheng shudders, perhaps at the sensation of Nie Huaisang’s breath, but he nods. When Nie Huaisang extends his hand, Jiang Cheng takes it. His legs look satisfyingly quaky.

“Come on, then,” Nie Huaisang says, and he steers Jiang Cheng over to a settee. It’s a tight fit for two, but the only alternative is Nie Huaisang’s bed, which might give Jiang Cheng the wrong idea about what they’re doing here. Jiang Cheng goes loose and pliable when manhandled, which is not due to any reserves of Nie Huaisang’s own strength; Jiang Cheng is letting himself be arranged. Nie Huaisang doesn’t shove hard, but Jiang Cheng goes down on the couch, and before either of them can overthink things, Nie Huaisang follows him.

At first, Nie Huaisang sits upright with his legs tucked under himself while Jiang Cheng half-sprawls against the armrest, but it’s not very comfortable to be folded up like a dumpling, so Nie Huaisang shifts until they’re squished together, side-by-side, with, in practice, Jiang Cheng bearing most of his body weight. He’s tough. Nie Huaisang doesn’t have to feel bad about it. In order for them both to fit, their legs slot together, and one of Jiang Cheng's thighs ends up between Nie Huaisang’s. It demands his attention whenever either of them shifts around. He wants to press closer into it; he wants to shy away.

Nie Huaisang isn’t sure whether he ought to fold his hands primly together or embrace the circumstance by pawing at Jiang Cheng’s chest. They flutter before Nie Huaisang settles his grasp on Jiang Cheng’s shoulders.

Resting precariously across Jiang Cheng’s frame, Nie Huaisang is more aware than he’s been all evening of how much smaller his own body is, but the feeling dissipates when Jiang Cheng tilts his head back to look at him, eyes blown out, throat vulnerable and exposed. He wonders if Jiang Cheng is going to kiss him. Nie Huaisang likes to kiss, if it’s idle kissing for kissing’s sake; it’s fun. Leisurely. Nie Huaisang’s never met anyone less leisurely than Jiang Cheng, but right now Jiang Cheng feels good. He’s warm all over, pliant, damp with sweat.

Nie Huaisang leans closer, and his hair falls around their faces like a screen shielding them from consequences—and what consequences are those, anyway? Nothing sufficient to move him, compared to the persuasive counter-argument that is the way Jiang Cheng’s eyes look: attractively glassy. He looks like he’s barely holding himself back from nosing at Nie Huaisang’s cheek. Nie Huaisang hasn’t had anyone look at him with this much desire in a long time. He hasn’t had anyone look at him with this kind of desire maybe ever.

Jiang Cheng wouldn’t admit that he likes any of this, but the evidence is not in his favour. He let Nie Huaisang feed him his own come off of the floor. Now Nie Huaisang is considering letting said floor-come-tongue into his own mouth, and is not repelled by this prospect in the slightest.

Nie Huaisang hooks his arm around the back of Jiang Cheng’s neck and leans in the rest of the way.

Jiang Cheng is, predictably, a bad kisser, but it’s not hard to improve with a little instruction. He’s so tractable and tender that it’s easy for Nie Huaisang to mould him with a few tsk-ing comments and rearrangements of his limbs. He likes this inexperience, this freshness. It’s rare for Nie Huaisang to teach anyone anything, and his body is maintaining a steady hum of satisfaction. His hips are moving of their own volition in circles against Jiang Cheng’s thigh; he’d be more embarrassed by this if Jiang Cheng wasn’t letting out startled, pleased noises every time Nie Huaisang brushes their tongues together. If Nie Huaisang’s legs keep spreading wider, present company is in no position to hold it against him.

Whatever seal came loose earlier in the evening from Jiang Cheng’s determination never to enjoy himself has not yet come back into place. Jiang Cheng’s already gotten off, but he seems to genuinely just want to kiss. His topknot has become completely disheveled; Nie Huaisang has to lift his hand off of Jiang Cheng’s shoulder to pull Jiang Cheng’s stray hairs out of his own mouth. Jiang Cheng keeps shifting in place beneath him, rocking between Nie Huaisang’s thighs, and he moans into Nie Huaisang’s mouth when Nie Huaisang takes his bottom lip between his teeth. He doesn’t bite Jiang Cheng, simply holds the threat against him.

Gingerly, Jiang Cheng brings his hands up to touch Nie Huaisang in kind. He clutches at Nie Huaisang’s face, his neck, his shoulders, all with an unsteady hesitance. For heaven's sake, they’re thirty-nine! You’ve never before been at the bottom of the pack, Jiang Wanyin! You have catching-up to do!

Jiang Cheng lays back, docile and pretty, and takes it while Nie Huaisang—uses him. All the blood in Nie Huaisang’s head is draining elsewhere. He’s learned that a body can change quickly when you don’t spend much time paying attention to it; suddenly, it’s unfamiliar territory, governed by new laws. Half a year ago Nie Huaisang would’ve been hard for ages already, but these days he takes a little more coaxing. It doesn’t matter much, because he’s getting there from the way he’s inadvertently riding Jiang Cheng’s thigh, but he’d thought himself fully under control, and is only discovering now the high pitch to which his body has been tuned. He likes kissing, to be sure, but he’s never liked kissing this much, for this long. The sensation of hands pushing up his sleeves to caress his bare arms sends pulses of arousal from Nie Huaisang’s core to his fingertips.

Nie Huaisang is licking a stripe up the side of Jiang Cheng’s neck when Jiang Cheng’s hand pushes past his lapels to run across Nie Huaisang’s chest. Wanting and being wanted has put a lazy sheen over all his thoughts, so it’s not until it’s almost too late that Nie Huaisang remembers that it’s been months since anyone felt him up this way, or that he and Jiang Cheng were in the same room, and some things have changed—

Nie Huaisang pulls Jiang Cheng’s hand away from his chest by the wrist, and Jiang Cheng breaks the kiss to splutter, “Why won’t you let me touch you?”

Jiang Cheng sounds more disappointed than aggrieved, which is unlike him.

“You are touching me,” Nie Huaisang replies, and bites into the place he’d licked.

It must have been harder than intended, because Jiang Cheng gasps and arches under him. His voice is put-out, but breathy. “Then what's the problem?”

Nie Huaisang chooses distraction; he pulls Jiang Cheng’s hand between his own thighs.

“You can figure this out, can’t you?”

Jiang Cheng’s hand makes short work of Nie Huaisang’s clothes, pushing layers aside and pulling open ties, and then his long-fingered hand is holding him in its grasp, and Nie Huaisang curses against Jiang Cheng’s neck, helplessly.

Jiang Cheng never got him off either of the times they did this before. Nie Huaisang never asked. He’s content to take care of himself; he dislikes having to show people what he likes. He hadn’t, either of those times, felt so close to the brink as he does now; the ability to give consideration to future consequences is beyond him. There are too many sensations running through Nie Huaisang for him to focus on any one thing. The lingering feeling of Jiang Cheng’s sword callouses over his skin has him feeling warm despite the sickly dread that hasn’t fully died down in his gut. It won’t take much. He hardly thinks it’ll take anything.

He jerks Nie Huaisang off arrythmically with his right hand and grasps Nie Huaisang’s hip for balance with the left. The points of his fingers dig into Nie Huaisang’s ass.

Nie Huaisang kisses Jiang Cheng again, open-mouthed, and sucks on his tongue, prompting a spasm of Jiang Cheng’s fingers where he’s holding Nie Huaisang in a grip that Nie Huaisang once would’ve thought was amusingly hesitant but now feels right, like he’s a delicate thing that Jiang Cheng is being granted the privilege to hold. Nie Huaisang shuts his eyes against that thought but it clatters through his head anyway, and in vengeance he bites Jiang Cheng’s tongue. Jiang Cheng groans, heavy, and the sound passes through his body in a sudden flinch. The pulse of pressure in his grip tips Nie Huaisang over the edge so quickly that for a moment he feels afraid, like he’s going to lose something on the way down.

Enough time passes that Nie Huaisang begins to worry about falling asleep. Beside the uncomfortable angles at which he has to fold up his limbs to fit on Jiang Cheng’s lap, the position could be worse. It feels like pressing your hand to the side of a hot cup of tea, not because you really want to drink it, but to absorb the heat.

Nie Huaisang lays his head on Jiang Cheng’s chest, their faces a hand’s width apart, and watches Jiang Cheng’s breathing even out. He's gazing loosely at the ceiling. How long has it been since someone saw Jiang Cheng like this? If anyone knew how easy it was to draw this side out of him, Jiang Cheng would have no shortage of would-be lovers trying to snap him up. It’s strange for Nie Huaisang, of all people, to have received this dubious privilege. He isn’t sure that he wants it. He certainly never would have asked.

“Come on, Jiang Cheng, this isn’t as comfortable as it looks. I gave you my best guest rooms and everything.”

After cajoling and tugs at his arm, Jiang Cheng follows Nie Huaisang to his feet. Nie Huaisang is feeling gracious, so he collects Jiang Cheng’s scattered garments for him, and Jiang Cheng recovers enough self-possession to mulishly dress himself, including batting away Nie Huaisang’s hands when he tries to help.

He let Nie Huaisang do it in Gusu, so what’s the difference this time? They enjoyed each other, but now the sweat is cooling on their skin, and the longer Jiang Cheng lingers in Nie Huaisang’s rooms, the more deeply Nie Huaisang wishes for some solitude. Last time, Jiang Cheng wouldn’t stop staring at him in the aftermath; this time, he can’t seem to look at Nie Huaisang straight-on, which should be preferable but isn’t. He’s not being subtle about it, and it’s so clearly intentional that it makes Nie Huaisang feel embarrassed for him. His deep flush is visible across his neck even when he finishes pulling his robes back on.

Soon, Jiang Cheng is decent enough to be seen in the halls by passers-by, though his hair is less than orderly. Nie Huaisang finger-combs Jiang Cheng’s hair into something that makes it a little less obvious he’s just been fucking. Jiang Cheng lets him do this much, at least.

“I’ll walk you back,” he offers brightly, and the unease in his stomach coils further when Jiang Cheng finally meets his eyes and, after a momentary pause, gives him a gruff nod. Come on now; Nie Huaisang didn’t think Jiang Cheng was actually going to go for it! He just wanted to hurry him along, and now Nie Huaisang has to follow through! Who are you, Jiang Cheng—a nice young mistress with a chaperone, who can’t make a walk down the hall on her own?

The guest wing isn’t too far from Nie Huaisang’s rooms, certainly close enough to make the walk at a brisk but leisurely pace without the need for conversation to fill the time. When they arrive, Nie Huaisang ushers Jiang Cheng ahead of him, and follows him through the doorway to keep them from stalling too long in the hall, where anyone could see them, but he immediately regrets it.

Nie Huaisang sighs. “I feel so tired I could die. Let’s hope the skies are clear in the morning and you can be on your way, right?”

The walk has restored a little of Jiang Cheng’s composure; he’s lost his glassy look, and his jaw has recovered some of its rigid surliness. And, yet, his expression shudders, like an involuntary twitch of the spine in the cold. He hasn’t taken the opportunity to step back from Nie Huaisang into the room; they stand close enough to touch. His eyes flicker to Nie Huaisang’s mouth.

Nie Huaisang imagines how he must look, seen through another’s eyes. He put himself together well enough to look decent, and his household has seen him in dire conditions many times before, but he feels out of sorts, like a reflection smeared by grease on the glass. He needs to stop being the one to host; it puts him at a disadvantage. He wants the freedom to get up and leave when things come to their natural end.

He’s about to turn on his heel and walk away, but Jiang Cheng takes in a fortifying breath.

“Do you…” He peters out, and tries again. “I—that was—”

Nie Huaisang puts his palms on Jiang Cheng’s chest. It’s a reflexive action, as if he can hold Jiang Cheng’s words back like a rattling shutter closed against the wind, but as soon as he realizes what he’s doing he drops his hands.

“Sweet dreams,” he says, and gives Jiang Cheng an unnecessary half-bow before turning and leaving him to his own company.

It can’t last, of course, but an evening of peace was better than nothing.

“It looks like you have room at your table.”

Nie Huaisang blinks a few times. “Yes, I—I do, don’t I? I’m sorry I didn’t call for you. I thought you might want to catch up on your sleep.”

Jiang Cheng shakes his head curtly and takes a seat across from Nie Huaisang.

Nie Huaisang has his routines. This is his own home, isn’t it? He’s been sect leader for long enough that no one but the occasional visiting auntie can tell him what to do. He rises when he likes and takes breakfast alone in the little room with the fancy windows, where he distantly remembers napping against his mother’s side while she read. He doesn’t break this habit for anything less than an emergency. Usually, his disciples wouldn’t have even let anyone in, but he can’t blame them for giving way to the coiled malice of Jiang-zongzhu. Now that he’s sitting, the malice has given way to one of the twisted-up expressions Jiang Cheng gets when he’s trying to come off as controlled and failing, badly.

“Is there something you need? Are you still hungry?” Nie Huaisang holds out a steaming bowl of congee, but Jiang Cheng doesn’t take it. He’s giving Nie Huaisang a puppy-dog look again, but it’s less cute in the light of morning. He knows that Jiang Cheng has a low opinion of his work ethic, but he must realize that even Nie Huaisang can’t spend all of his time waiting on his houseguests.

“What we did yesterday. Do you... do that often?”

Nie Huaisang slept fitfully, and had a new variation of a recurring dream of being lost in the crypts below the sabre tombs. He was looking for a way out, but Jiang Cheng was there, too, making a nuisance of himself, tripping over stones and grumbling. When Nie Huaisang told him to be more careful so the ancestors wouldn’t get angry with him, Jiang Cheng insisted on holding onto Nie Huaisang’s sleeves and making Nie Huaisang lead him around. It wasn’t the Jiang Cheng of today, but a younger version of him, from back in Gusu days, and when Nie Huaisang scolded him he’d felt like he was bullying a child.

“How often is ‘often’?”

“Before me, there were others.”

Nie Huaisang begins to remember every gut feeling he spent the previous evening ignoring.

“I thought the cutsleeve rumours were already floating around? Anyway, I know you have a pretty high level of vigor, but I don’t usually have sex first thing in the morning.”

“That’s not—is this how you always are, afterwards?”

“I’m sorry if my hospitality is lacking, I don’t know how you do things at Lotus Pier—”

“I admire your ability to be so businesslike in your transactions.”

If Jiang Cheng is lonely and looking to pass the time, that’s one thing, but if he wants someone to take care of him, what is he hanging around Nie Huaisang for? Doesn’t he know Nie Huaisang well enough to understand what a ridiculous idea it is to turn to him for comfort?

“What are you talking about? Stop being silly.”

He’s sneering now, and Nie Huaisang welcomes it; it’s familiar. “I apologize if my performance was below your usual standard. Maybe you should go back to one of your others, I’m sure they’re much more able to satisfy you. It seems as though you have enough to choose from.”

“I really don’t know what it is you’re upset about, Jiang-xiong, but whatever it is, I swear I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“Don’t play the fool with me.”

“I think you might have the wrong idea. We had fun, ah, but our lives are so complicated already. It’s best to just enjoy an evening and leave it at that, right?”

“We did—” A sickeningly plaintive burst of emotion shines through Jiang Cheng’s stormy expression before he’s able to cover it. “And you expect to go on like nothing’s changed?”

This is so tiring. Jiang Cheng really is a fool if he can’t realize that he’d regret it before long if Nie Huaisang let him treat this like something it isn’t. If Nie Huaisang knew that this was what he was getting into, he would’ve left Jiang Cheng unsatisfied at the Cloud Recesses. He wishes he could tell his past self, it’s not worth it, Jiang Cheng will look at you like a jilted bride if you don’t proclaim your devotion after getting him off, or pat him on the cheek and tell him he’s good, or whatever it is that he feels robbed of at the moment.

Maybe Nie Huaisang would feel differently if he hadn’t known Jiang Cheng as a young man, but he remembers the way Jiang Cheng coveted Wei Wuxian’s attention. They all did, back then, but Jiang Cheng is clingy. It doesn’t matter that he’s nearly forty and scary when his temper’s up, because Nie Huaisang sees through the bluster and feels vague distaste. He wishes that Jiang Cheng would just make it easier on both of them and go. His breakfast is getting cold.

“How else is there to be? You didn’t corrupt my virtue, so it’s alright, you don’t need to marry me to save face.”

How does Jiang Cheng go through life this way, practically asking someone to strike him in each of his painfully obvious weaknesses? Everyone’s like that when they’re young, but they’ve had more than enough time to grow up.

Jiang Cheng gives him a look that could wither a weaker person. This is how he earned the title of Sandu Shengshou. Other men get testaments to their strength, their brilliance; Jiang Cheng gets delusion, attachment, and hostility.

“Nie Huaisang.”

“Yes?” There’s a cold feeling filling out through his limbs. It’s somewhat invigorating. Does Jiang Cheng forget who raised him? Nie Huaisang can’t be shouted down so easily. Compared to da-ge, Jiang Cheng is a cheap imitation. Rage alone isn’t enough.

I didn’t lie to you. I didn’t even invite you here. Don’t look at me like I have anything to give you.

“The sky’s improved since last night, Jiang-zongzhu. Have you been able to take care of all of your concerns? I’m sure your disciples are missing your guidance. I’ve already taken up enough of your time.”

Jiang Cheng stays perfectly still, with his eyes open and face so far from serene that Nie Huaisang wonders whether he ought to brace himself for Zidian’s lash. He is spared that fate; Jiang Cheng gets to his feet and leaves Nie Huaisang in his little room with his congee, which is by now cold, congealed, and thoroughly forgotten.

Two weeks later, Nie Huaisang receives a stack of morning mail topped by a distressingly thick sheaf of papers bearing the Yunmeng Jiang official seal.

Nie-zongzhu,

I appreciate that you were willing to meet with a fellow sect leader, as I know you have a very busy schedule.

Since returning to Lotus Pier, I have reviewed the most recent fifty-year agreements pertaining to grain tariffs applicable to all shipments along Yunmeng waterways. As fifty-nine years have passed since signing and no new agreement has been made, the tariffs have increased by 15%, as stipulated, and Yunmeng Jiang is entitled to nine years of back payment. Please review the attached copies at your earliest convenience.

You may also be happy to hear that I’ve been looking out for your interests. I spoke with my grandmother in Meishan recently about my cousin’s marriage prospects and advised her not to send any delegations to Qinghe, as Nie-zongzhu has little time to spare for such things.

Jin Ling’s correspondence style owes more to his jiujiu than his shushu, as does the rest of his personality. There’s no frippery or eloquent leading remarks, just the requisite opening lines to address a senior sect leader, followed by a request for confirmation of Nie Huaisang’s availability for a specific date. Nie Huaisang is free, of course he’s free; he’s been watching the steady approach of this day for months. We hope that Nie-zongzhu will be able to meet us in Yunping for the sealing ceremony, Jin Ling writes, and Nie Huaisang delicately turns the letter down on its face.

In the aftermath of Jin Guangyao’s downfall, the Lanling Jin sect was placed in the unenviable position of losing its sect leader amid public disgrace, as well as the revelation that even the sect leader before that one was a rapist whose debauchery resulted in incest and death. They were desperate to rehabilitate their reputation, and one of the strategies pursuant to this goal was to offer very large and very public reparations gifts to those sects considered to be most wronged: Laoling Qin, for example, but primarily Qinghe Nie, in recognition of Jin Guangyao’s culpability in the death of Nie Mingjue.

It was a shallow satisfaction, particularly knowing how da-ge’s death had been received by the wider cultivation world at the time. Back then, everyone paid da-ge the appropriate respects, but Nie Huaisang knows that the news was met with no little relief from some corners. Da-ge was a hero in wartime and a just man in any conflict, but he frightened people with his disdain for half-measures and empty words. Qinghe Nie had always been an outlier among the great cultivation sects for being more concerned with martial strength than the pursuit of various higher callings, but every other sect benefited from that state of affairs for as long as the Qishan Wen had held power. The Unclean Realms was the bulwark between Heavenly Nightless City and everyone else. Without that threat, what was Nie Mingjue to other cultivators but a troublesome brute more concerned with honour than compromise? He was mourned, to be sure, and his name still lives on as soldierly legend, but for the power-brokers of the world, Chifeng-zun’s ineffectual lesser brother was much more convenient.

So yes, there was something gratifying about the public acknowledgement of guilt, but Nie Huaisang hadn’t avenged his brother because he wanted money. Rather than pressing for more, Nie Huaisang had paid a visit to Jin Ling and told him what he really wanted: the title deed to the Guanyin temple in Yunping, and all of the funds and labour necessary to seal away da-ge and Meng Yao for good.

Progress has been slow; the resentful energy from the coffin is so thick that there needs to be cultivators present whenever the labourers are at work, but they’ve seen it through, and at last everything is coming to an end.

Nie Huaisang wets his brush and writes a simple reply confirming his availability before setting both letters aside, out of his range of view. While he’s at it, Nie Huaisang should probably get back to Jiang Cheng before he does something drastic and uncomfortably public. It’s a real danger, with that man.

Nie Huaisang could drag on the whole business with the tariffs for at least a year. There are sundry methods: he could misplace the papers Jiang Cheng has sent him, or they could be unfortunately damaged, and will Jiang-zongzhu please send him another copy? Just that song and dance alone could be drawn out until the summer, and then there’s the actual matters at hand; he could play dumb about the terms and require extensive inter-sect meetings to be held where both of their sect’s advisors try and explain trade contracts to him while he struggles to hold back tears of frustration, or he could send back agreements that blatantly misinterpret the original premises. At this type of thing, Nie Huaisang is a master.

Jiang Cheng is probably chewing the heads off of helpless disciples at this very moment, but if it gets his frustrations out, it’s for the best. When the next discussion conference rolls around, the only feeling Jiang Cheng will have about the whole thing is derision and relief that he got out early. Nie Huaisang isn’t so foolish as to think that his charms have that much staying power.

He’s been weighing his options for so long that the ink on his brush has dried and needs to be cleaned to avoid clumping. He washes the bristles with more force than is wise, and doesn’t notice until it’s too late that he’s gotten ink splatters all over his sleeves.

Nie Huaisang sits back down and pushes away the paper bearing his false starts. Jiang Wanyin can wait a little longer. If he decides to make a scene, he’ll only embarrass himself. Nie Huaisang has years of training to weather such things, and will need more than that to be swayed.

He’s already got a brush in his hand, so Nie Huaisang puts it to paper and draws the familiar strokes of Er-ge.

I do miss you, you know. I do. Once, I would’ve thought you would’ve missed me too, but I got in your hair so often even back then, so maybe not.

Writing to Lan Xichen gives him the same satisfying sting as picking at a scab, and is just as difficult to stop once he’s started.

I wonder sometimes whether you would’ve gone with him to Dongying, if you’d had the opportunity. You would never have admitted that’s what you were choosing, but you could’ve made some excuse: that someone needed to ensure he wouldn’t put anyone else in danger, or something like that. I think you would have. Tell me I’m wrong.

What would you have done there with him? You would need to change your names, change your clothes—no more Gusu Lan forehead ribbon. You probably could have made a good life together. You were both clever, and you the foremost cultivator of your generation! I think you might have been happier like that than you ever could’ve been here.

I think about abandoning my sect. too. Who wouldn’t take the chance to start over? There must be some interesting landscapes to paint in Dongying. Maybe I’ll go away in your stead. I just don’t know if I could hack it. I’ve never been good at fending for myself. As you well know.

In the beginning, he had only started practicing meditation again out of fear. Not of his own mortality, but of what could happen to him before he dies. Throughout his life, he’s done as little sabre cultivation as he possibly could, but you’ll forgive him for not being reassured.

A week earlier, the wizened lady who has been the sect’s head doctor since Nie Huaisang was a child had spread her palms over his shoulder-blades and frowned. “Something’s off.”

“Is it bad?”

She continued checking Nie Huaisang’s meridians, and the crease between her brows deepened. “No. Actually, your qi is moving more smoothly than usual. Have you been cultivating for once?”

“I’m not sure… maybe?”

“Better late than never, I suppose.” She glanced him over, and added, “Keep it up, but come back right away if you notice anything strange.”

He’s continued meditating, but has kept the resulting strangeness to himself.

When he’d first heard about the ways that people had used similar obscure cultivation methods to change their bodies, little by little, either by accident or intention, he’d felt queasy shock followed by blistering curiosity. Upon further contemplation, it began to seem less outlandish. If a powerful golden core can extend one’s youth, is it so surprising one could use it in other ways? Not to mention the dark things that Qinghe Nie’s sabre cultivation was capable of doing to a person. In any case, he’d thought, even if he did experience strange side effects, it couldn’t be worse than stabbing his own leg had been. Much like that, it was a bargain he was willing to strike. An unpleasant means to a worthy end.

He wasn’t supposed to want it. Well—want is too strong a word, but each time he undresses, it's with a breathless lurch in his stomach that isn't wholly dread.

Nie Huaisang should go back to regular meditation—however ineffective it’s been at saving his family in the past—or stop entirely; he’s made it to thirty-nine while neglecting his cultivation, and he can do so again if he must. He will. He tells himself every morning that he will. Just not yet; just a little longer.

His morning routine remains otherwise unchanged; he tosses and turns through the early hours, gives himself the exhausted mental lecture necessary to get out of bed, meditates, eats breakfast, and then checks his mail, hoping for everything received since the previous morning to be suitably mundane for him to delegate out of his way. Today, it has been, until he reaches the bottom of the pile: at first he thinks he’s imagining it when he happens upon a paper marked with the official stamp of Gusu Lan.

Nie Huaisang pushes the rest of the papers aside. His fingers are steady when he holds it up to read, and stiller yet as he blinks in confusion before reading it again.

He can’t remember speaking with Lan Wangji one-on-one since they were children. Once, the prospect would’ve frightened him, but Nie Huaisang hasn’t felt intimidated by Lan Wangji in some time; the effect wore off when Nie Huaisang ceased to care what someone like Hanguang-jun, with his sword and his sterling reputation, had to think of him.

On his way to Gusu, Nie Huaisang had wondered whether he was on his way to stand trial for something related to the things that had happened leading up to the evening at Guanyin Temple. The specifics didn’t really matter, Nie Huaisang’s response would be the same, but it was mildly entertaining to imagine having that conversation with Lan Wangji. “Did you have accomplices?” Yes and no, or rather, shouldn’t you know, Your Excellency? His body sleeps next to yours every night.

Instead, upon Nie Huaisang’s arrival, he is taken to task on something less severe but somehow more frustrating.

“I used to rely on er-ge for so much. Now I can’t even write to him?”

“You may write to me, or my uncle, if there is something urgent.”

He’d expected Wei Wuxian to be present as well, so two of them could play Nie Huaisang off against each other, like they had when they interrogated him about the sabre tombs. Nie Huaisang wishes that were the case; on his own, Lan Wangji is hard to outlast, even for someone as patient as Nie Huaisang.

He sighs. “I don’t want to talk to him about sect business.”

“What do you have to say to him?”

He flutters his fan a little faster. “I’m sorry, Your Excellency, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s hard to think on the spot. There’s too many things!”

Lan Wangji’s expression says, I’ll wait.

Wei Wuxian seemed to think there was a chance that Nie Huaisang was going to pose a threat to Lan Wangji, for some reason—if Wei Wuxian thinks Nie Huaisang’s goal has been to free up the position of Chief Cultivator for himself, then Nie Huaisang questions whether Wei Wuxian ever really knew him at all. This open mistrust from Lan Wangji, on the other hand; at least Nie Huaisang can understand it. If Nie Huaisang were a better person, maybe he would take this devotion to an elder brother as common ground, but he is what he is, and what he feels is a deepening of scorn.

Xichen-ge always shared Lan Wangji’s eloquence and poise, but had the warmth and humour his brother lacks. When Nie Huaisang thinks of er-ge in the Hanshi, he imagines him skin-and-bone, wasting away in the dark. What a luxury it must be to take yourself into solitude with your grief, knowing you have an uncle and a brother to do what you cannot.

After all, that must be the reason Lan Wangji took this post, which he neither suits nor enjoys. It’s clear that he’d rather be off wandering the countryside with Wei Wuxian. Jin Rulan is still hardly more than a child, so there are limited options left in terms of directions the balance of power may tip, and Lan Wangji has sacrificed his own freedom to keep any more authority out of the hands of Nie Huaisang or Jiang Wanyin. Maybe Lan Wangji tells himself that it won’t be for long, that a few years of secluded meditation will suffice, and then Lan Xichen will, like Lan Wangji once did, emerge to live a life again, and on that day Lan Wangji will pass off the mantle he’s been keeping warm. Surely, Lan Wangji has to believe that.

Even at the end, Nie Huaisang had looked at da-ge and thought, it’s getting bad, but he’ll hang on for a few more years. Just a few more years. He’d figured, in the vague way that people figure things they don’t really want to think about, that someday Nie Huaisang would wake up capable of selflessness and responsibility, and then the thought of what was to come when da-ge left him behind would stop being so impossible to confront.

“He comforted me after da-ge died. Don’t I owe him the same?”

“When he leaves seclusion, he may choose to contact you.”

“How long will that be?” After a long silence, Nie Huaisang huffs and adds, “How is he?”

Lan Wangji looks at him with open contempt written across his icy, beautiful face. “He is in mourning.”

Even a face as beautiful as Lan Wangji’s can’t make up for the boring and exhausting ordeal that is being given a scolding, as if Nie Huaisang is a student again, and Lan Wangji has taken Lan Qiren’s place. He imagines telling Lan-er-gongzi the truth: the letters mean nothing. None of them. The words are just a pretext for what he really wants, which is to ensure that Lan Xichen remembers how this happened. Why this happened. That there was a man Lan Xichen swore himself to, who thought Lan Xichen was as close to perfect as a person could get, and was wronged beyond imagination.

At the temple, Xichen-ge had hardly even brought da-ge up. He was too stunned by his own pain, too aghast at the revelations of all of san-ge’s many crimes, but wasn’t he da-ge’s dearest friend, and shouldn’t da-ge have mattered the most that night, when he was laid out in a coffin, pale and cold and failed by everyone? Nie Huaisang will never forgive Lan Xichen for giving da-ge reason to believe he was anything less than beloved, and he wants to know that Lan Xichen has thought of a single other name in seclusion but Jin Guangyao’s.

The movement of his fan has slowed, and his eyes wander; Nie Huaisang gazes, unfocused, at the curl of smoke rising from the incense burner on the table between them. “I miss him.” It’s even true. He wishes it wasn’t true.

Enough. He blinks, and meets Lan Wangji’s intractable gaze. “Say, if that’s all—is Wei-xiong around? I’d like to catch up.”

At last, that produces a reaction, though a small one by anyone else’s standards: the way Lan Wangji holds his eyes shifts. “Wei Ying is not here.”

“Oh. That’s too bad. I was really looking forward to seeing him. Will he be back later?”

Lan Wangji looks at Nie Huaisang like he can’t think of anything he’d rather do less than answer his question, but he begrudgingly replies, “He may return tonight.”

“Ah, thank you—and thank you, Your Excellency, for helping me understand. So much has changed, it’s hard to know how to act anymore.”

They put him up in the usual quarters for important guests, which are conveniently distant from the Hanshi, but the Gusu Lan would never be so gauche as to put him under guard, so after the lights go out, Nie Huaisang goes walking. He’s not going anywhere in particular; it’s just too early for him to sleep, and he wants to move. The stones on the orderly paths glow white in the moonlight, so he’s content to let them show him the way.

He thinks he’s seeing things when he makes out the dark outline of a figure a few paces ahead of him. It’s moving with an odd gait that he recognizes, after a moment, as the walk of someone who is trying not to make noise but doing a poor job of it.

Nie Huaisang stage-whispers, “Wei-xiong!”

Wei Wuxian freezes like a schoolboy caught out in mischief before his frame goes fluid and he turns around. There’s an open bottle of liquor in Wei Wuxian’s hand, and Nie Huaisang’s eyes are adjusted well enough to the dark to see an odd look pass over Wei Wuxian’s face. “Nie-zongzhu, is that you?”

He doesn’t sound surprised to see Nie Huaisang. That’s to be expected; he didn’t think Lan Wangji would hide something like his summons from Wei Wuxian. He wonders just how much Lan Wangji told him. Probably everything.

Nie Huaisang steps closer, so he can whisper in earnest. “I’m glad I’m not the only one up past curfew. I just can’t sleep so early!”

They end up on the roof of a small building on the outskirts of the Cloud Recesses, which is as elegant in design as everything else around them but is probably just a storage shed of some kind. After a castigatory sigh, Wei Wuxian reluctantly helps Nie Huaisang climb up. Wei Wuxian seemed very confident while leading them to this secluded spot; alcohol is forbidden in the Cloud Recesses, as is roaming around after hours, so Nie Huaisang imagines that Wei Wuxian spends most of his time up here alone.

“I’m surprised they let you in so late.”

Wei Wuxian laughs. “Lan Zhan gave me the entry pass. I can come and go.”

They don’t have any cups, so they pass the bottle back and forth between them, like Nie Huaisang had with Jiang Cheng the last time he was in the Cloud Recesses. “I guess you really do live here now. That’s so strange. Who would’ve thought, ah?”

Wei Wuxian isn’t usually around for conferences; at the last one, he was away, apparently helping investigate some mysterious animal deaths in a small town near Gusu. It’s not too surprising; Wei Wuxian never liked banquets, or conferences, or anything where he has to sit still in one place and stay quiet while other people talk. Lan Wangji never liked banquets or conferences either, but he does his duty, and he at least is good at sitting still in one place and staying quiet. It’s his foremost skill, besides the qin, the sword, and formidable glaring.

Wei Wuxian foregoes answering Nie Huaisang entirely, and breezily remarks, “I hope Lan Zhan wasn’t too hard on you.”

Nie Huaisang twirls the bottle around by the neck. “Oh, you know, he’s always so intense. I never know what to say to him.” In response, Wei Wuxian gives him one of his easy smiles, but Nie Huaisang isn’t completely convinced by its sincerity.

When they were kids, Wei Wuxian had an unusually high alcohol tolerance. The first time the three of them drank together, neither Nie Huaisang nor Jiang Cheng could walk in a straight line, but Wei Wuxian looked like he was ready to take to the archery range. Maybe he was just a good actor, but Nie Huaisang watches the way he drinks now, in a new body, and it strikes him as unlikely that alcohol tolerance is part of the soul that the sacrifice ritual brings back. If he had to guess, Nie Huaisang would assume it’s a skill that must be earned through practice.

For his own part, Nie Huaisang passes the bottle back, and tries to tally how much he’s had so far. He hasn’t been paying attention. He never used to do this kind of thing—getting too drunk in public—when da-ge was alive, but it was easier to be around san-ge while intoxicated, even if Nie Huaisang did usually play it up. It made any flashes of anger easier to explain away. He doesn’t need to put so much work into playing the fool anymore, but what else is he going to do? He’d rather be home than spending the night in Gusu, but he can’t leave this late in the evening, so he might as well be a little less here.

“Say, Wei-xiong. What do you do these days?”

Wei Wuxian shrugs in a smooth, nonchalant full-body ripple, but Nie Huaisang knows it’s a practiced motion. They were like this with one another back then, both delighting in having someone to play off of. They spurred each other on to be more expansive, more theatrical, more in love with being young. “Ah, being a married man is busy work.”

“It must be!” He keeps his tone slightly flirtatious, just a little teasing. It’s easy. They used to be like that, too, though it never meant anything. Daydreaming was free, and he clung to the knowledge that he and Wei-xiong had once made use of the time Jiang-xiong spent practising the sword to practice kissing. It didn’t really matter that it was only a few hours after Wei-xiong was rebuffed by Lan Wangji, and that he had turned to Nie Huaisang with a desperation that had little to do with him. No, back then Nie Huaisang already knew better than to attribute Wei Wuxian’s winking, smiling manner with any more meaning than that, but he occupied his time stuck at home during the war daydreaming about what it would be like to be whisked off his feet by such a hero.

He shouldn’t have invested all that time in pining over Wei Wuxian; if Nie Huaisang had to moon over someone during the lectures, he might as well have saved himself the heartbreak and chosen Jiang Cheng—though, on second thought, that would have made the current situation even more of a mess.

“Lan Zhan is very good to me,” Wei Wuxian adds, and his voice is quiet. Anything said while drinking on a rooftop at night will come out sounding melancholy, but everything about this encounter feels almost comically maudlin. It reminds Nie Huaisang of how Wei Wuxian was at banquets during the Sunshot Campaign; those are memories which produce no nostalgia at all.

He wonders what Wei Wuxian would say if Nie Huaisang let slip what he’s been getting up to with his erstwhile shidi. Would Wei Wuxian believe him, if Nie Huaisang told him that Jiang Cheng is more fun to drink with? It’s even true; Jiang Cheng’s tolerance has never been high, and his cheeks get all flushed.

“But doesn’t it get boring here? I mean, Lan-er-gongzi has his duties, right?”

“That’s what the outside is for,” Wei Wuxian replies, before offering him the bottle one last time. Nie Huaisang declines, and the corner of Wei Wuxian’s mouth twists in an expression that Nie Huaisang can’t place. He reaches out and plucks Nie Huaisang’s closed fan from where Nie Huaisang had held it loosely in his hand.

“What about you, then?”

“Hm?”

Wei Wuxian spins Nie Huaisang’s fan between his fingers and watches him with intent, any visible drunkenness completely suppressed. “What do you do these days, Nie-zongzhu?”

Nie Huaisang’s fingers fall to the slanted tile below them and curl until he can feel his fingernails scrape. “Oh, you know. This and that. The same as ever.”

Wei Wuxian laughs, tilting his long neck back a little, and Nie Huaisang laughs with him. It goes on a little too long, and when it ends, Wei Wuxian reaches out to tuck Nie Huaisang’s fan back into his belt.

“Same as ever, ah? Good. I like to know what to expect.” Wei Wuxian stands up, and Nie Huaisang realizes that he’d forgotten just how tall he is. It’s impossible not to notice, when he’s being loomed over in the dark. “This has been fun, but I should go home. I don’t want my husband to worry.”

When he returns to his guest quarters, Nie Huaisang wants to break something precious, but nothing here belongs to him. The thoughts filling his head are sluggish and petty, and he removes his clothes with a complete lack of care, letting his outer robes fall to the ground around his feet. In the cold winter air, the single layer he keeps about himself may as well be nothing, but it’s the principle of the thing, of avoiding nakedness when he already feels raw. He makes his unsteady way to the bed and crawls under the covers. He is drunker than he ought to be. He is only realizing now.

When Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian call themselves married, what does that mean? Wei Wuxian has a jade entry pass to the Cloud Recesses. Jin Guangyao had that, too. When Wei Wuxian eventually dies for the second time, will he be interred in the Lan family crypts alongside Qingheng-jun and the rest of the ancestors? How much understanding is the Gusu Lan sect willing to extend to Lan Wangji’s unconventional life? If Nie Huaisang is jealous of anything, it’s not their “marriage”, but the brazenness it takes to claim that they have one with a straight face, like just by saying it they can make it true.

Nie Huaisang doesn’t begrudge them their happiness. Really, he doesn’t! He doesn’t envy the stifling closeness that must come from sharing quarters with one’s lover while living as a perpetual barely tolerated guest. It’s only that Wei Wuxian has subjected himself to every form of disgrace, yet Hanguang-jun sleeps next to him at night and calls him husband in public. Does Wei Wuxian know how lucky he is, to have returned from death at such high cost, with a man by his side who looks at his wreck of a life and says that it’s good, that he deserves to be held?

In any case, Nie Huaisang doesn’t want to live that way. He meant what he said to Jiang Cheng. He doesn’t want there to be someone waiting up for him, frowning about the late hour and asking him where he’s been. He’s too old to start being expected to explain himself now. He’s been wrapping himself in secrets for so long that he thinks that someone trying to peel them away would reveal nothing but emptiness. The shell is all that remains.

Goosebumps are pricked all over his limbs. He curls up under the blankets with his thighs tucked up by his chest, like a baby or a sleeping animal; an uncomplicated body. It’s the alcohol that’s to blame, too, for the petulant yearning he feels for touch. Not sex, even, just to feel some warmth and weight on the other side of the bed.

If he hadn’t handled like that with Jiang Cheng, maybe they could’ve had something manageable, just an addendum to their working relationship and whatever remained of their old friendship. But he hadn’t accounted for how deliriously good it would feel to share someone else’s air, even if Nie Huaisang had been buzzing just as much from fear as pleasure. Proximity means offering yourself up for examination, in body if not soul, and if Jiang Cheng had asked him to make explanations for himself, all Nie Huaisang would be able to say is, I don’t know, I really don’t know, and mean it.

The sect leader’s study at the Unclean Realms was off-limits to Nie Huaisang when it was his father’s; he only entered it when he was about to be reprimanded. Later, Nie Huaisang came in to bother da-ge or Meng Yao when he was lonely or bored. He’s avoided it ever since it became his own; it looks too much like it did when it was theirs. It even smells the same, which doesn’t seem like it should be possible, but is: dust, paper, and something primal and masculine, like the sweat of hard work. He’s set foot inside now and again over the years when he needed to find something he couldn’t send someone to fetch, but he doesn’t linger. However, his reply to Jiang Cheng is by now very late, and Nie Huaisang doesn’t want to disclose the details of that situation to his disciples if he can avoid it—or field an impromptu visit from an impatient Jiang-zongzhu—, so the day after he returns home from the Cloud Recesses, Nie Huaisang enters that dusty room in search of the relevant contracts. Nie Huaisang should use the opportunity to go over the family records. He’s been putting it off for years, but it’s long past time that he made a list of all the potential heirs, just in case.

It quickly becomes clear that a proper inventory is long overdue. The room is a graveyard of documents and old keepsakes, a surprising amount of which are personal effects rather than anything related to the sect, and da-ge’s papers are mixed in with their father’s. No doubt later users of the room were less meticulous than Meng Yao had been.

Nie Huaisang wonders whether da-ge, too, felt like a trespasser in here. It’s hard to imagine da-ge feeling inadequate for anything, but even though Nie Huaisang was young at the time, he remembers how uncharacteristically nervous da-ge was in the months after their father died. Maybe no one else would’ve noticed, but Nie Huaisang knew him best.

Sure enough, there are thick family registers and genealogies, which he scans until the names of a few noteworthy ancestors jump out; he sets those aside, and continues sorting through the untidy piles of paper he’s arranged around him on the floor. He unrolls a scroll to find an unsophisticated painting he recognizes as his own work, which he must have given to da-ge; Nie Huaisang hadn’t even been very proud of it, he’d just wanted it to have a purpose, and da-ge could hardly tell the difference between good art and the merely competent. The sight of it makes him feel winded. He rolls it back up and places it with the rest of the things that he hasn’t decided whether to keep or discard.

Nie Huaisang pauses when he uncovers a stack of letters tied together with string. He has to look twice to be sure of what he’s seeing, but the paper on top is addressed to his mother. The twine comes apart with a gentle tug, and the letter itself, once unfolded, is faded and heavily creased. He scans the page in search of a foothold in this conversation into which he’s intruded, and his eye is caught again by names, though this time they’re more familiar.

I hope Nie-zongzhu is well, and Mingjue isn’t giving you trouble. Is he still big for his age? I don’t envy you; imagine if yours turns out the same! You little scamp, I can’t believe you held out on telling me for so long. Am I not your dearest friend? But now that I know, you must tell me everything. How are you feeling? The first time is always hard, but you’ll manage. Please write if you need anything. I’m sure I can manage a visit before you’re due.

All my affection,— the letters are signed off by a name he doesn’t recognize: a woman’s name, maybe a nickname.

The old Nie-zongzhu had been morose in the years following the death of his first wife, and the hope within the sect was that his second would bring him another son, and with him renewed strength for the family bloodline. The second son came along, but the second Nie-furen wasn’t long for this world either. She suffered an accident while horseback riding. Just a miserable fluke of fate. After that, Nie Huaisang’s father treated him with a kind but distant regard. He doesn’t have anything to complain about. Da-ge was grateful enough for a sibling that Nie Huaisang never doubted he was wanted, even when he got older and began to understand that the second son his father wanted was very different from the one he got.

As for what his mother would have wanted, Nie Huaisang will never know—or so he’d thought; he flicks through the stack of letters with shaky fingers and tries to puzzle out the missing half of the conversation. He has a cute face, just like you, goes a lavish, gushing brushstroke hand. Nie Huaisang can’t remember his mother’s face, so he can’t say whether or not it’s the truth.

If things had been different, and he had been born the other way—how would that girl have grown up, with no mother, and father and da-ge already at a loss most days with what to do with Nie Huaisang as he was? He knows he was a sweet kid, because it let him get away with far too much. He was coddled by the older disciples when he was young, even if he didn’t make many friends his own age. He ran barefoot in the summer and made his own fun. But Nie Huaisang remembers those days from the inside-out; when he tries to picture that boy as he was seen by everyone around him, there’s a disconnection, as if he’s watching someone else’s child and thinking, wouldn’t it be nice to live that way, to be that simple?

Sitting on the floor surrounded by the detritus of generations past, he still feels like a child playing with grown-up things. Forget da-ge; Nie Huaisang is getting close to the age their father was when he died, and his family left him no good examples of how to get old. When Nie Huaisang was younger and he really thought he might be the lucky one, the only Nie to live a peaceful life, he would sometimes daydream about his wedding. He likes banquets and beautiful things, but felt only squirming discomfort about the idea of having a wife and some children and doing whatever it is second sons do when they grow up. Nie Huaisang has been sect leader for longer than da-ge ever was, and the sealing ceremony—the last of da-ge’s many burials—is closer yet, but even now, when Nie Huaisang tries to picture himself in twenty years, it’s like looking out a doorway at night.

The day is unseasonably warm, even in a dim room like this, but Nie Huaisang is shivering. He feels as he did during childhood fevers, when he thought he might shake away into nothing.

The registers are full of the ancestors who built a sect out of nothing and kept it strong against Wen encroachments for centuries, only for the lists to peter out with the quiet indictment that is Nie Huaisang’s name at the bottom of the page. Nie Huaisang got into the habit, long ago, of not leaving evidence of anything he might regret others laying eyes on. He still burns most of the letters he gets after he’s read them; though he’s no Jin Guangyao, Nie Huaisang’s memory is quite good. Maybe that’s why otherwise inexplicable anger and panic spike in his chest when he sees himself impersonally referenced by record-keepers; he can’t redact himself from forty years of documents, and even if he did, he doesn’t know what he’d write instead.

Evening falls, but he’s not hungry, so Nie Huaisang lights some candles and remains in the study. It took a not insignificant amount of will to enter in the first place, and he’s still in the stage of cleaning where the room is in a worse state than it was when he started. The evening has become chilly, and he idly wishes that he had some companionship.

He was wrong, back at the Cloud Recesses. The reason he’d kept writing to Lan Xichen was because he doesn’t have anyone else. He’d rather get a letter full of invectives than have Lan Xichen pretend he never knew him. Even if Wei Wuxian did want to carry out a pantomime of friendship, it remains true that Wei Wuxian was never any good at keeping up with correspondence. No patience for it. The only person Nie Huaisang can think of whom he knows for certain will reply to his own letters is Jiang Cheng, and that’s because Nie Huaisang probably owes him money.

San-ge was always available for a sympathetic ear, and even after da-ge died, there was something real in almost every morsel of Nie Huaisang’s heart that he fed Jin Guangyao to keep him sated and complacent. When he wrote to san-ge, as he once had, that he wished he had his own Meng Yao to help him, he’d meant it. Nie Huaisang wished he could afford to let anyone in that close.

He pities er-ge. He holds him in contempt. Nie Huaisang loves him, too—he’s known Lan Xichen most of his life, and can see better than anyone how the trouble Lan Xichen got himself into is a result of the qualities Nie Huaisang always admired him for: his kindness, his modest indulgence, his insistence on giving people the benefit of the doubt. Nie Huaisang also understands, more than Lan Wangji ever could, what it feels like when it takes Jin Guangyao’s death to realize that he was the pin holding your life together.

He’s spent so long dissimulating. It goes back before Jin Guangyao, before da-ge died, back to when the only role Nie Huaisang had to play was that of the second young master of Qinghe Nie, which never came to him naturally, birthright or no. There are no rules anymore, no mission, no reason to keep himself wrapped in secrets so tightly that he can’t tell if there was ever anything underneath, but what is he, without pretense?

Nie Huaisang is sober, but he failed to leave the desire for touch back at the Cloud Recesses. Maybe it’s because he’s been thinking of his mother, who is usually a faded figure on the outskirts of his memory. He’s too old to be wishing he still had a mother to hold him, but he does—he wants something, at least. Perhaps just to see her face and judge whether they still look alike.

By the time the candles are stuttering, he’s organized the chaos enough to be able to pick up where he left off another time. He realizes only as he’s straightening the last of the piles that he never found anything relevant to the trouble with Jiang Cheng. Nie Huaisang huffs, and fumbles for the nearest writing set and blank paper he can find.

Jiang-zongzhu,

Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention—how embarrassing! I’ll take your word for it on the tariffs; I don’t have a head for numbers.

Once again, his brush hovers for long enough it threatens to drip ink onto the page. He lowers it with the giddy trepidation that accompanies decisions he already knows he’ll come to regret.

As your nephew may have told you, I’ll be in Yunping soon. The address where I’ll be staying is below. Feel free to drop in and discuss terms. You can come by for breakfast, if you like.

The building is drab; it was designed to be inconspicuous from the outside, like a warehouse. Even if an intrepid thief were able to bypass the reinforced gates around the courtyard, it’s nearly impossible to navigate inside of the building unless you know the correct route. A labyrinthine structure has been built around what used to be the centre of the temple, where the Guanyin’s feet used to stand. That centre is now a stone-lined pit built to fit the shape of one coffin in particular.

In the tomb, they carry torches. There are, of course, no windows. He finds himself, as he often does these days, the most senior member of the group, and this is not a matter on which he could reasonably defer to anyone else, so Nie Huaisang leads the way through the winding maze of corridors and hidden doors. Even the air is preternaturally cold. Nie Huaisang dressed warmly that morning in anticipation, but it’s not enough to overcome the chill. The closer they get to the coffin, the more the hair on his arms prickles beneath his sleeves.

In some ways, it’s like any other suppression ritual he’s witnessed: the smell of incense, the patterns of arrays laid out in cinnabar, and flashes of talismans in the dim light. The majority of senior disciples of both the Jin and Nie are present, in case of an emergency, but intervention isn’t necessary; the layers of wards they’ve been laying for months hold, and when the last slab of stone is pulled over the vault, Nie Huaisang experiences a jolt of terror that he’s forgotten something important. He searches his mind, but they performed every element of the ritual perfectly. It wasn’t for nothing that they spent months in preparation. Once again, Nie Huaisang is reminded that the more planning a thing requires before being undertaken, the more frantic the speed at which it flies past you once it’s begun.

No one knows what to do when it’s over. The gate is locked behind them, and solemnity becomes unease.

Nie Huaisang’s eyes are dry. He is holding himself on a tight leash. Jin Ling looks a bit more stricken, but he’s not crying the way Nie Huaisang that would’ve expected of him a few years earlier. He must have learned since then how the immediate relatives of the deceased are always held under scrutiny. This is especially true at funerals, or anything vaguely like them. Other people watch you and judge the quality and veracity of your grief, until you’re doing the work of mourning for the living, with the dead as an afterthought.

Jin Ling turns in his direction and clears his throat before asking, with all the self-serious dignity he can muster, “Nie-zongzhu. May I have a word?”

Now that they’re closer to one another, Nie Huaisang can see that Jin Ling’s eyelashes are caught with the glistening residue of suppressed tears.

“Of course, of course.”

Nie Zhuoyue, his current head disciple, steps up to Nie Huaisang. “Zongzhu, would you like us to wait up for you?”

Nie Huaisang feels a flash of uncharitable irritation. He’s nurtured his disciples’ concern for him over the years by casting himself as the whole sect’s didi to be fussed over. It’s an easy transfer of sentiment left over from da-ge’s day, since Nie Huaisang was hardly the only disciple to refer to Nie Mingjue that way, even if he was Nie Huaisang’s da-ge first, and most. But it’s too much, when he’s already sick of being looked at, to endure their mother-henning.

“Oh no, no, you can take yourselves back. I’ll be along.”

After they’re out of earshot of the disciples, Jin Ling clears his throat again. “Did the ceremony meet Nie-zongzhu’s expectations?”

Jin Ling has, like his uncle, a face designed for unhappiness, and like his uncle, the gnarled lines of his brow give him the effect of always either expecting a scolding or being poised to give one. At the moment, he looks guarded, a little nervous.

“Oh, absolutely. Jin-zongzhu has been very diligent.” There are people all around, but most are too busy to pay them mind except as a pair prospective customers. Yunping proper is full of barking dogs, squealing children, and market stalls displaying goods of every shade. “By the way, do you know where your uncle might be? I thought I’d see him at the ceremony.”

The mausoleum is the culmination of Jin Ling and Nie Huaisang’s joint work for the past several years—Nie Huaisang put forward a variety of plans and work orders, while Jin Ling had financed them and provided the labour power. The most important element of the tomb’s defenses is a system of signal flare talismans set up to alert the closest cultivation sect in case of forced entry. As it happens, the closest cultivation sect is Yunmeng Jiang, who agreed to this back when it was first being conceptualized. Nie Huaisang had expected Jiang Cheng to attend on the basis of that practical consideration, whether or not he had any desire to see Nie Huaisang privately.

Back at the inn, the early morning had bled into midday without any sign of him, and Nie Huaisang’s senior disciples began to hover, their facial expressions politely inquiring as to whether Nie Huaisang would like them to begin preparing to leave for the temple. Eventually, he’d had to accept that Jiang Cheng would not be taking up his invitation. It had been an impulsive idea to start with, and he doesn’t know why he expected Jiang Cheng to be able to forgive such a blow to his pride.

It wasn’t so terrible a disappointment; Nie Huaisang would’ve spent the morning queasy with anticipation in any case. He hadn’t been able to eat since he’d gotten up, and fuming over Jiang Cheng was a welcome distraction.

“He’s away.”

“Ah, that’s a shame. I hope it’s nothing serious.”

Jin Ling sets his jaw. “No, I don’t think so.”

Did Jiang Cheng ever tell Jin Ling unflattering anecdotes of Nie Huaisang from their youth, as a way of instructing him on the political world that lay ahead of him? Likely. Did they revisit the subject after the temple came down? They must have. He can only imagine what was said.

Nie Huaisang has known Jin Ling since he was careening toothlessly around the Carp Tower gardens; he’s perfectly polite, but these days he speaks to Nie Huaisang as though he’s feeling out a muddy road for sinkholes. Ever since that night, Jin Ling has viewed Nie Huaisang with a palpable suspicion that refuses to fade, however many lovingly-crafted, personally commissioned little jackets Nie Huaisang has sent him on his birthdays to be given to his silly dog.

Jin Ling’s hair glitters even under the overcast sky, and Nie Huaisang realizes that the gleam is coming off of the beaded hair ornaments that Jin Guangyao gifted his nephew. San-ge was always generous with the various lost lambs with which he enjoyed surrounding himself. Nie Huaisang wonders whether Jin Ling chose them this morning on purpose.

“Do you remember my brother at all, Jin-zongzhu?”

“I was too young, when he… was killed.”

It’s what Nie Huaisang expected to hear; it’s not da-ge that Jin Ling mourns for. If Nie Huaisang steps to the left of his own mind, he realizes that it’s an unfair thing to hold against him. Even so, it stings.

Da-ge insisted on taking a beating for Nie Huaisang, once, when they were young. Nie Huaisang had done something stupid or willful enough to earn himself real punishment—he’s forgotten the specifics of what—but da-ge always hated to see him cry, which was a fact that Huaisang exploited thoroughly enough that he’s ashamed to remember it now. He’d cried to see it happen, in any case. Da-ge was always hurting in Huaisang’s stead, even when Huaisang deserved it.

Down in the lower chambers of the sabre catacombs, when they were trapped together, before he’d found the way out, Nie Huaisang had felt quietly resigned. He hadn’t wanted to die, but dying with his brother in the same place as their ancestors was as good an end as any. Even after they made it out, Nie Huaisang had continued with stubborn dedication to distract himself from acknowledging the inevitable: that da-ge was doomed to die before him. He couldn’t imagine the kind of life he was expected to live without da-ge looming large enough to make up for his own shortcomings.

Nie Huaisang is missing something that in everyone around him seems to be innate, and it isn’t anything to do with golden cores. The stubborn, shirking evasiveness he’s had since he could remember goes beyond a lack of martial spirit. There’s something in him that chafes at his surroundings, and pushes him to take flight at any opportunity. But he and his brother were such opposites that it gave Huaisang room to be all the things da-ge wasn’t; he was the slight, pale moon to da-ge’s blistering sun.

The corner of Jin Ling’s mouth curls in thought. “There was one time… but I was so little, I don’t know if it counts.”

“Oh?”

“We were visiting somewhere. I was hitting a toy sword against a tree trunk, and then this huge man stopped me. I thought he was going to get me in trouble with…” Jin Ling swallows. “He just told me to stop, because blades don’t like to be treated like axes.” He adds, in a self-conscious tone, “I don’t know if it actually happened or if I made it up.”

Nie Huaisang closes his eyes. “He was always lecturing me about things like that. I was just terrible, though. You were probably better with a sword at three than I was at ten.”

Da-ge expected the best from everyone, but only because he believed they were capable of it. Nie Huaisang was scolded for his failures and mistakes more times than he could count, but da-ge never laughed at him. Mockery was a thing for lesser men. He was fierce and brave and good with a blade, utterly worthy of the title of Chifeng-zun, et cetera; it doesn’t make up for the fact that vanishingly few people besides Nie Huaisang still remember who he was before he earned such a name, when he was a surly boy with a wispy moustache, gangly and shy, trying for the thousandth time to correct his brother’s blade forms, as if this time the instruction would stick.

Nie Huaisang doesn’t know what he thought he would accomplish by asking Jin Ling about it. He begins fanning himself out of habit, though it makes him too chilly.

“What’s next for you? You’ll have some extra time now that this is settled.”

Jin Ling stands up a little straighter. “I’m renovating.”

“Ah, what a good idea!” Nie Huaisang has only been to Carp Tower very briefly since Jin Ling took ownership, but he remembers the murals in Jin Guangyao’s image that visitors had to pass by to enter; he can’t imagine those are long for this world. “I can’t wait to see what you do with the place.”

He’s not very good at giving reassurance, even if Jin Ling were inclined to take it from him.

“I shouldn’t keep you any longer, Jin-zongzhu, but thank you for all of your help.” Nie Huaisang hesitates. “Don’t be a stranger. Qinghe isn’t so far away.”

Judging by the look on Jin Ling’s face, that may have come across as more of a threat than intended, but Jin Ling nods and makes his farewells. Nie Huaisang stays where he is and watches until Jin Ling’s golden figure is blotted out by the other colours of the crowd.

As for Nie Huaisang, he ought to make his way back to the inn, but the thought of drinking alone and stewing over how Jiang Cheng hates him so much he chose not to attend his own nephew’s diplomatic event sounds grim. Instead, Nie Huaisang lets his feet take him on a winding path through the city streets, in which his conscious mind plays no part.

When Nie Huaisang was young and got permission to go into town, he was fascinated by the way ordinary people lived. Their world seemed so full of life compared to home, with its discipline and muted colours. He’s familiar enough now with Yunping, but his time here has always been in the service of tasks that didn’t put him in the mood to enjoy the city. The temple was built atop the ashes of the brothel where Meng Yao was born. He must have known every corner to hide in, which shopkeepers could be sweet-talked into deals, which alleys were dangerous and to be avoided by defenseless children.

None of the other people browsing at shopfronts or chatting in groups in the square recognize him, not the way they might Jiang Cheng, as a local authority. That’s pleasant, in its way. Nie Huaisang misses being of no consequence. San-ge did terrible things to make himself a name, so it must have been a less attractive prospect for him to leave his life behind for foreign shores than the idea is to Nie Huaisang when he contemplates it. He’s not one of the great cultivators, like Zewu-jun, who can mope in closed-door meditation until he ascends to immortality or rots. Nie Huaisang likes to do things, to see people and be seen. It used to be his very idea of a good time to wander namelessly through unfamiliar cities, buy more artisanal paper than he’ll ever use, and make conversation with friendly strangers. The simple pleasures he’s spent much of his life pursuing have for some time felt either pointless or inaccessible, but right then he feels sick, physically, with nostalgia: not for his hobbies, just to exist as something more than a figure hidden behind a curtain and casting shadow plays on the wall.

Nie Huaisang feels a drop of rain on his cheek, and looks overhead to see that the clouds have darkened. The people of Yunping are scurrying for cover: merchants pull their goods inside of storefronts and mothers tug their children by their hands. Nie Huaisang is buffeted along in this current of activity—why hadn’t he thought to stow an umbrella in his qiankun pouch?—until he realizes that he’s left behind the district he recognizes and is now lost in a city far from home, in the rain, as if he were every bit as stupid as he’s always played at being.

He slips into the first alley he can find, leans back against one of the buildings and lets his legs give way until he’s sliding down the wall to sit on the ground in a puddle of skirts and sleeves. There may be an actual puddle forming, but it’s too late to regret that now.

Nie Huaisang tucks his face against his knees to smother the choking hitches of his breath. He’s not afraid of strangers seeing him cry. There’s no reason he should give in to embarrassment now. But if someone reached out to him in sympathy he thinks he would melt like a wet sheet of paper, or vomit, though that might still happen anyway; his body feels like it’s trying to turn itself inside out.

Death may not always be final, but it will be for Nie Mingjue. The unfairness of it had chewed away at Nie Huaisang throughout all the time he spent trying to think of a way to contain the hate seeping out of that coffin. He got as much justice for da-ge as he could, and now da-ge’s remains are locked away in a prison with him for eternity—though, of all the things Nie Huaisang has done in his name, da-ge might have been the most tolerant of this. For a Nie, it’s a fitting fate. Now that Nie Huaisang is without an adversary, he understands this more than ever.

He would do it all again, and it would hurt just as much. It’s a dull, aching pain, like a wound in the sole of a child’s bare foot, worsening with every step. He’s said goodbye to da-ge so many times, but he once again fell into the trap of thinking there would be just one more thing to take care of; it’s been done, but nothing has really changed. He’s still poisoned with bitterness. Nie Huaisang has lived half his life as a series of interludes between moments where things are supposed to come to an end, and after the dust settles he’s still here with his greedy little heart.

The rain falls so thick he can’t tell if there are tears on his face or if his chest is just seizing up dry. It’s drenching his robes, and the fabric clings to his skin in a way that makes him feel sticky and trapped. The ground is cold. The water on his skin is cold. His fingers are cold, though they may have been numb since before he left the ceremony from the force with which he'd gripped the torch.

Nie Huaisang wishes he could have spoken to him one last time when they were in the tomb, though he doesn’t know what he has left to say to da-ge’s body. It had taken a whole night to sew him back together, and Nie Huaisang had filled the silence. He’s unsatisfied; he still wants to hear things back. When he was little, he would bombard da-ge with questions: Do you like my painting? Can’t I come with you to the Cloud Recesses? If we had another brother, would I still be your favourite? He still craves the brusque answers, even when they weren’t the ones he wanted. He wants to whine, in the petulant tone that da-ge was sometimes soft to, a series of questions that all distill to Can you forgive me?

By the time the stone in his throat has lessened and his crying has slowed to ragged breathing, the darkest of the clouds have begun to drift away on the wind. They’re followed by patchy whitish ones which are of a loose enough weave that occasional flashes of sun leak through, though the sky has the golden quality of near-dusk. If he got lost in the daylight, he’ll certainly stay lost in the dark. He is less than moved by this fact.

His contentment with his sorry state can't last indefinitely, however, and when, an indeterminate stretch of time later, he arrives back at the inn, Nie Huaisang is shivering, ravenously hungry, and lighter by the weight of one fan, which he kindly allowed to be pickpocketed off of him at the end of the walk back by his eventual rescuer: a conspicuously helpful street urchin who, it must be acknowledged, did lead him to where he needed to go without luring him into any back-alley muggings or other situations of that nature, the possibility of which Nie Huaisang was morosely resigned to.

As soon as he enters the inn, the mother-henning ensues. Nie Huaisang blinks and dithers and pouts his way through an abbreviated version of the truth, that he was unexpectedly caught in the rainstorm after parting with Jin-zongzhu. He comes and goes frequently without telling his disciples where he’s gone or when he’ll return, but they’ve been particularly attentive to him these past few days in anticipation of what was to come. Even so, some well-chosen complaints about the day’s petty trials quickly reassure them that he’s had an unremarkable afternoon following the ceremony and not been, say, crying in any alleyways. Nie Huaisang is beginning to feel some semblance of calm when Zhuoyue pulls him aside to let him know that Jiang-zongzhu did come by after all, about an hour ago, and he’s waiting upstairs, just as Nie Huaisang had requested.

Nie Huaisang sighs and nods, eyes shut in beleaguered acceptance, feeling nothing more than the vague irritation of being given more work at the end of a day, before his mind wraps itself around the news.

“Oh. I see. Thank you.” When he opens his eyes, Zhuoyue is still there, still placidly gruff, and clearly not thinking much more of this than an oddly timed meeting between sect leaders. Nie Huaisang blinks a few times and absently tugs his robes into some kind of order. “Well, I shouldn’t keep Jiang-zongzhu waiting.”

On the way up the stairs that lead to the private rooms, he contemplates whether it’s worth fainting his way out of this. A tumble down the stairs would be suitably dramatic to stall for a few hours if he makes enough of a fuss, no? However, his legs traitorously carry him to the top of the staircase and down the hall, compelled by the thought of getting to sit down in a warm room among his own things, and it’s this vision of comfort that puts some steel into Nie Huaisang’s spine when he turns the corner of the hall.

Nie Huaisang widens his eyes in his best look of vapid astonishment. “Ah, Jiang-zongzhu. No breakfast?”

“You don’t mind being kept waiting, do you?” Jiang Cheng leans, arms folded, against the wall across from Nie Huaisang’s rooms. He gives Nie Huaisang a long, withering once-over. “What happened?”

Nie Huaisang doesn’t know why he expected that, after the way they left things, speaking with Jiang Cheng would be any different than it was with Wei Wuxian, or Jin Ling, or any of the other people who used to like him well enough and now don’t let him out of their sight if they’re in the same room. It’s not a thought of self-pity, just dull acknowledgement.

“It’s raining. I forgot to bring an umbrella. I also buried my brother.”

Whatever retort Jiang Cheng had in mind dies on his lips. It was a cheap thing to do, to bring up da-ge as an admonishment, but Nie Huaisang makes an effort not to regret things he can’t take back, so he turns away from Jiang Cheng to open the door.

“I’d like to dry off, if that’s acceptable. You’re welcome to come along.”

Nie Huaisang doesn’t close the door behind him, and sure enough, he hears footfalls and the rasping slide of wood as the door is pulled closed. He doesn’t pay Jiang Cheng much attention; Nie Huaisang is so dishevelled and wet that he doesn’t know where to start pulling himself back into civilization, so for a while he just stands in the middle of the room, struggling to come up with an order in which to do the things that need doing. Does he look like he’s been crying? The rain must have taken care of that. If it didn’t, it’s not as though Jiang Cheng’s never seen him in tears before, though those instances were usually less physically gruelling than the real thing.

Nie Huaisang kicks his boots off in an untidy pile next to the door, hangs his outermost robe over a folding screen to dry, and then sits at the dining table in the centre of the room. The rest of his clothes are still uncomfortably damp, if not sopping, and Nie Huaisang feels like a wet dog.

He eyes Jiang Cheng, who looks somewhat cowed but still venomous.

“I was surprised you didn’t come to the ceremony. Your nephew said you were out of town, but here you are.”

Jiang Cheng stands on the other side of the room with his arms folded and back against the wall. “If you wanted my attendance, you could’ve asked. I know how you hate assumptions to be made about when you desire someone’s presence.”

“I invited you to meet me here this morning, didn’t I? I’m not sure what else I could do to make you feel more welcome.”

“There’s such an elaborate set of rules for interacting with Nie-zongzhu that you’ll have to forgive my lack of confidence. He’s not been particularly forthcoming with the details.”

Must everything be met with this level of intensity? You’d think Nie Huaisang had gone out of his way to insult him. He really is just like his nephew: sour, serious children grown up into boyish, insecure men.

Nie Huaisang studies his own hands in his lap. “Can I get you anything? A drink? Are you hungry?”

“I’m quite fine.”

“What would you like from me, then?”

“An apology, to start.”

Oh, that’s very funny. Nie Huaisang may have written to Jiang Cheng while he was feeling sorry for himself, but he’s not so pathetic that he’ll grovel for Jiang Cheng’s forgiveness just out of a desire for there to be someone in the world who would be happy to see him. Nie Huaisang has made too many apologies he didn’t mean, aided by that guilelessness people have always seen in him, to consider them of any value.

“What would you like me to apologize for? I’m still not sure what I did to upset you.”

A muscle at the corner of Jiang Cheng’s mouth twitches, and when he pushes himself off the wall, Nie Huaisang’s heartbeat quickens. Jiang Cheng crosses the room to a few paces from where Nie Huaisang sits, but he doesn’t come any closer than that. Under his stare, Nie Huaisang feels very small, but not in a way that he thinks is likely to help him—rather than endearing him to Jiang Cheng, it has Nie Huaisang feeling like an animal on its back. He can’t resist the impulse to cross his arms over his chest in an instinct of feeble self-protection.

Jiang Cheng is easy to disdain if you’ve known him for long enough, or have seen him at his weakest—running wild-eyed around his own pier brandishing his brother’s sword, or being taken apart on a temple floor by Jin Guangyao—but Jiang Cheng hasn’t earned a reputation as a dangerous man through bluster, and as Nie Huaisang finds himself held in place by Jiang Cheng’s fury, he’s unable to call up a compelling reason why it matters to resist it sweeping him away.

Eventually, Jiang Cheng grits out, “You made a mockery of me.”

This hostility isn’t entirely unwelcome. If he thought Jiang Cheng would beg for Nie Huaisang to take him back, Nie Huaisang wouldn’t have written to him. Jiang Cheng’s anger is scouring, like alcohol applied to clean a wound. Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian weighed their words, in their respective ways, and let Nie Huaisang infer the intended threats; Jiang Cheng spares him that task by laying his accusations out in the open. Nie Huaisang would go so far as to say he appreciates it. If there was anything motivating him to write to Jiang Cheng, it was a yearning to be spoken to in the way that no one but Jiang Cheng dares to speak to Nie Huaisang any longer. It’s not unlike the occasional temptation to pass his hand through a candle flame to see if he’s quick enough not to get burned.

However, these were not the conditions he had in mind. When he imagined this conversation, Nie Huaisang thought it would be easier to hold onto his own scorn.

Nie Huaisang closes his eyes and squeezes water out of the hair hanging over his shoulder. It would be easy to reply with nothing but more questions. He could continue spinning Jiang Cheng around in circles until the sun has set and they’ve said nothing of import to each other, but Nie Huaisang is so tired. He feels heavy, slow-moving, and chilled to the bone.

After a deep, slow breath, Nie Huaisang’s fingers fall from his hair and lifts his head to look Jiang Cheng in the eye. He doesn’t think that his face could be said to have an expression. That might be for the best. He doesn’t want Jiang Cheng to accuse him of putting on a show.

“I didn’t set out to mock you. I thought we had an understanding, but I had misjudged the situation.”

His desire for Jiang Cheng to look away is second only to his desperation for Jiang Cheng to hold his gaze. Jiang Cheng’s face flickers, but he continues to watch Nie Huaisang with a bright intensity that scares him more than any of Jiang Cheng’s bull-headed anger could.

Nie Huaisang looks down and returns his hands to his head to feel around for the pins fastening his braids in place. His hair is never going to dry if it stays up, but he can’t see his own reflection and his fingers still have twinges of numbness, so it’s clumsy work.

In a few strides, Jiang Cheng stands before him. Nie Huaisang is too surprised to back away, or even flinch. He supposes that Jiang Cheng is going to hit him, or shake him by the shoulders, or maybe kiss him, hard, as a punishment. The thought provokes no sense of urgency, and transforms into no action on Nie Huaisang’s part. He’ll survive this, whatever it is. He always does.

Jiang Cheng kneels so that he’s level with Nie Huaisang and knocks Nie Huaisang’s wrists out of the way with the backs of his own hands. He slides his fingers into the wet mass of Nie Huaisang's hair, feeling for the pins. By way of explanation, he mutters, “It was painful to watch.”

Nie Huaisang continues to hold his forearms aloft for a long time. He feels like he’s taken a sudden blow to the head.

His wet hair clings together more than it would if it was dry, but Jiang Cheng is deft, and he withdraws the guan and pins with minimal pinching. Nie Huaisang expects him to back away, but Jiang Cheng doesn’t stop there; he uncoils Nie Huaisang’s braids and sets about unweaving them with his fingers. Though Nie Huaisang wouldn’t go so far as to call him gentle, Jiang Cheng’s hands are careful not to tug any of Nie Huaisang’s hair in uncomfortable ways, though Nie Huaisang occasionally feels the there-and-then-gone scrape of fingernails. He’s quick, and doesn’t linger. Nie Huaisang imagines him taking care of his nephew like this when Jin Ling was small.

When Nie Huaisang finally finds his voice, it comes out as a low undertone. “When you’re done, could you go downstairs to get a tub of hot water sent up?”

“Am I your manservant?”

“You could bring up dinner, while you’re at it. I have a tab.”

Jiang Cheng has been so thorough about avoiding skin-to-skin contact that when Jiang Cheng’s finger brushes the side of Nie Huaisang’s neck, Nie Huaisang flinches, and Jiang Cheng hastily pulls his hand back.

Neither of them moves or says anything, and then Jiang Cheng gets to his feet. The bulk of Nie Huaisang’s hair now hangs loose around his shoulders and face, and it makes him feel more naked than he ever has around Jiang Cheng. Nie Huaisang has been embarrassing himself for so long; why does he feel precious about it now?

Jiang Cheng scowls, his eyes somewhere on the floor. “Don’t take too long in the bath. I’ve waited around for you enough already.”

The water was brought up too hot for his taste, so Nie Huaisang sits on the edge of the bed and listens to the steady, purring downpour on the roof. The rain must have resumed while his attention was elsewhere. Without Jiang Cheng, the room feels very small and quiet. While the steam rises off the surface of the tub, Nie Huaisang loosely ties his hair up and out of the way, so it won’t get wet again. He doesn’t need Jiang Cheng to scold him for putting his hard work to waste.

He told Jiang Cheng to take his time downstairs, but Jiang Cheng is not a particularly patient man. Nie Huaisang ought to get through this as quickly as possible, but once he’s tucked himself inside the small tub, the chill that had plagued him dissolves into the water, and he thinks he might have to be dragged back out again. While he washes himself, he tries to think about anything other than the feeling of Jiang Cheng’s fingers on his skin. It’s a struggle; with all of his hair up, every draught of air skims his neck like a phantom touch.

With significant regret, he eventually steps out, dries off, and puts on the robes he had planned to sleep in. It’s getting late, he doesn’t want to have to change again, and he and Jiang Cheng are past propriety with one another.

He takes his place at the table again, so he can try and look casual. To pass the time, Nie Huaisang lets his hair down and starts finger-combing his damp hair into sections. Even without a mirror, his hands know the motions of braiding his hair the way that his tongue knows speech. Yet, his eyes linger on the neat pile of silver fastenings Jiang Cheng left on the table, and he lets his fingers trail through his loose hair and drop into his lap. Past propriety indeed.

“I was wondering when you’d be up. I was about to go begging for scraps.”

Nie Huaisang sits with his chin propped up on one raised knee. He had been paging through a book, and he lifts his gaze to Jiang Cheng in the doorway without raising his head from its slight tilt toward the table surface. Jiang Cheng bears a tray on one arm, and hesitates on the threshold before crossing the room to join Nie Huaisang at the table.

“You said you wanted privacy.”

“Yes, and you were a perfect gentleman.” Jiang Cheng had barked muffled demands for confirmation that Nie Huaisang was decent before he would open the door. “Now, I haven’t eaten all day, so come sit.”

Jiang Cheng must be hungry too; he sets the dishes out with brisk efficiency. Nie Huaisang helpfully lifts his book off of the table surface for him. “How are things downstairs?”

He spares Nie Huaisang a glance as he ladles fish soup into their bowls. “Quiet. Your disciples are keeping to themselves.”

Nie Huaisang accepts his serving without comment. Any other night, one would expect modest revelry from disciples in an inn when the sect leader is keeping to himself, but the group he brought here knew da-ge, even if they were young when he died. Naturally, the mood is inclined to be sombre. They also remember the following long years, when it wasn’t uncommon for one or two of them to escort Nie Huaisang on strange outings according to his eccentric whims. Some of their number have spent considerable amounts of time in Yunping, dressed in plainclothes and staying in less comfortable lodgings than these.

He’s so hungry he’s almost nauseous, though he’s also faint in a way only food will alleviate, so Nie Huaisang picks at plain rice and blows cooling breaths over spoonfuls of broth. This keeps him from having to make conversation with Jiang Cheng, who also sets into his meal in a businesslike fashion, though he keeps giving Nie Huaisang scrutinizing looks. He’s not much more put-together than he was when Jiang Cheng went downstairs, though he feels more in control of himself. Thankfully, the atmosphere is that of the amiable lull of a meal shared by hungry people.

Of course, it can’t last. Eventually Jiang Cheng’s expression shifts to his stern politician's face. “Do you want to discuss terms?”

“Oh, the tariffs? I don’t care. I’ll pay you what you want, interest included. I’ll take care of it when I get home.”

Jiang Cheng makes a noncommittal yet pissy grunt and picks up his cup of the very watered-down wine. “How did the ceremony go?”

Nie Huaisang turns a cabbage leaf over this way and that, staring into its folds like they contain hidden pearls. “Successful, I think? I never know how to judge these things.”

“How did a-Ling conduct himself?”

“He was very grown-up.” Now it’s Nie Huaisang’s turn to level a pointed stare across the table. “You know, Jiang-xiong, I hate to pry—”

“Do you? That’s news to me.”

“—but are the two of you avoiding each other for some reason?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, best of luck. I'm sure it’s nothing that can’t blow over.” Jiang Cheng offers him nothing but irritated silence in response, and Nie Huaisang adds, “You should try being the one to cave in, whatever it is. I think Jin Ling would be so surprised he’d drop the whole thing.”

“If I’d like Nie-zongzhu's sage advice, I’ll be sure to ask.”

“Da-ge was proud too, but I could usually wait him out.” He doesn’t know why he’s talking about da-ge again, unprompted, when it casts a chill over the room. “You know, I did appreciate it, when you came to give your condolences after the funeral. I had other things on my mind, so I never thanked you properly.”

Jiang Cheng is quiet for some time. “It wasn’t until I was in Qinghe listening to people call you the sect leader that I could believe he was dead.”

“Faster for you than me, then.”

Maybe Nie Huaisang is bringing da-ge up because Jiang Cheng actually knew him. The two of them were never close, but Jiang Cheng can at least remember what it felt like to be around him, and that’s what matters, isn’t it? Not the lines of someone’s face, or any of the other small details time eats away, but the way they made you feel. It’s the only thing that lasts.

Jiang Cheng looks at him with an expression scraped bare of polite pretense. “Did you already know, back then?”

He doesn’t specify what he’s referring to, but Nie Huaisang knows. What else?

“Yes.” A shiver passes through Nie Huaisang’s chest at his boldness in admitting such a thing, even in such vague terms.

Ever since da-ge died, Nie Huaisang has had to give himself his own stern talking-tos, and there are a few rules he’s come up with, to keep this collapsing house of his standing for as long as necessary. He leaves nothing in writing; any information that needs collecting he must hear in person, with no record left to incriminate him. He doesn’t hint at his true intentions in conversation with anyone; if the First Jade of Lan was in Jin Guangyao’s pocket for free, there is no one who can’t be bought off with money. He keeps his social life ephemeral; he doesn’t socialize with his disciples or retainers more than is necessary, and he never goes to bed with anyone he can’t afford to cut out of his life without warning. Everything he’s done with Jiang Cheng since the discussion conference has flown in the face of these strictures, and it’s time to bring himself back in hand. It’s just that—who else could possibly come close to understanding? If Nie Huaisang must answer to someone, it’s hard to think of a more potentially sympathetic figure.

“I don’t understand how you waited so long. I would’ve killed him.”

“I didn’t want him dead. I wanted him in shreds.” Nie Huaisang sets his chopsticks down. If it’s going to be like this, he wants Jiang Cheng to look at him; really look at him. Do you believe it all now, Jiang Cheng? Am I just as bad as you feared? Do you feel stupid for not realizing sooner? Jiang Cheng swallows. “And he had da-ge, and I needed to get him back.”

“I guess you got what you wanted.”

He tucks his hands into his sleeves to keep them warm. “Did you?”

Jiang Cheng’s mouth twists. “I didn’t want anything.”

He’s being mean, choosing this time to pick on Jiang Cheng, but he is curious, and will there ever really be a better time to ask inappropriate questions? “Then what was all that, ah, vigorous interrogation for? Seems like a lot of effort to go to for nothing.”

“You think you have the right to lecture me? Considering the things you’ve done?”

He sighs, and rubs his temples. Curious, but not enough to push. “Oh, this isn’t a lecture. We’re just talking, aren’t we? And, well, it doesn’t matter anymore, does it. It’s over.”

Nie Huaisang’s arms are prickled with gooseflesh, and as he speaks he leaves the table to pick up one of the robes from his set of travelling clothes—looser, more comfortable, and plainer than anything he’d wear for a public appearance—and pulls his arms through the sleeves. Through the corner of his eye he can see Jiang Cheng watching him dress. He feels especially uncoordinated under observation.

He’s not blind to the fact that, by all indications, it would take very little effort to get Jiang Cheng’s clothes off again, since Jiang Cheng already got what he came for—assuming that was to take his frustrations out on Nie Huaisang verbally—and seems to be at a loss for what to do next. The main thing holding Nie Huaisang back is his own uncertainty about where they stand with one another. They are friends, after all. He’s particularly aware of it, having recently realized just how few others he could be said to have. It’s not something he’d prefer to do away with over something as mundane as sex, but he does want to know the lay of the land.

“What was it you wanted to say to me, before I left?”

“What?” Jiang Cheng’s attempt to pretend like he doesn’t know what Nie Huaisang is talking about is winsome.

“After I put you to bed. Don’t you remember?”

“Are you asking so you can mock me again?”

Nie Huaisang huffs and returns to the table, not bothering to mess around with belts. “You make me sound so mean. Humour me, will you?”

“I was going to ask if you’d stay the night. With me.”

“Ah.” Nie Huaisang’s mouth forms a gentle moue of surprise.

Jiang Cheng clenches his fist. “That’s all you have to say?”

“What would you like me to say?”

“How should I know? You wanted to know, and I told you.” Nie Huaisang drums his fingertips on the table and asks, as cold and flat as he can manage: “Did you think we could be like Wei Wuxian and Hanguang-jun? I’ll never be able to go home with you, you know. I’ve got my own people to think about.”

“I’m not a fucking idiot.”

“Your sect might have something to say about it even if I could. I don’t think I’m the kind of girl your mother would’ve liked.”

Jiang Cheng’s face hardens with a rapidity that takes Nie Huaisang by surprise. “Don’t talk about my mother like you know what she would’ve wanted.”

He puts his hands up in repentance. As though every word is pried from his mouth like a rotten tooth, Jiang Cheng adds, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to waste my time any further waiting for you to get bored and move on to someone more—experienced—”

“Experienced? When did I say anything about that?” Nie Huaisang blinks.

Hadn’t Jiang Cheng said something out of the blue last time about his performance not meeting Nie Huaisang’s standards? Nie Huaisang hadn’t thought much of it at the time, as it was only one of an onslaught of bizarre proclamations, but now a horrible picture of the situation begins to come into view.

Heedless of Nie Huaisang’s dismay, Jiang Cheng forges onward: “I’ve never done this before. As you know.”

Shouldn’t they be beyond this kind of foolishness? People such as themselves have surely outgrown adolescent tug-of-wars over kisses and sleepovers. Has Jiang Cheng spent the weeks after his visit to the Unclean Realms brooding over everything he had done or said, yet ignoring the things that actually mattered—what is Nie Huaisang thinking, of course he has.

And to such inaccurate ends. It wasn’t that Nie Huaisang didn’t like Jiang Cheng’s eagerness. He liked that too much, in fact.

“This kind of thing isn’t like cultivation! You don’t have to put in training first!”

“Then what is it? What don’t I—” Jiang Cheng laughs mirthlessly and then bites his tongue.

Nie Huaisang’s hands fall into his lap to fidget with the fabric of his robes. The texture of the embroidery between his fingers is familiar in a way nothing else is in this strange room or exhausting conversation. “It really doesn’t have anything to do with you. Even if we could, I’m just not that kind of person.”

“Not—what kind of person?”

Someone who could love you, or even just sustain being an object of affection. Jiang Cheng is a singular piece of work, but he deserves that. It’s not as though he doesn’t have it in him to be devoted. And yet, for all that he wants to feel Jiang Cheng's censure, it’s tempting to let him believe, for a few moments more, that the version of Nie Huaisang that he wanted to invite to bed actually exists.

“Anyway, you worry too much, you really do. It was good!” Nie Huaisang regrets saying it immediately; he adds, “And we can still be friends,” hurriedly, in an attempt to bolster his previous case. Nie Huaisang means exactly what he said. He wants it to work out that way.

Jiang Cheng looks at him like there’s some kind of secret code in his words. “Is this how you usually are with your friends?”

“Why does it matter? I like you. I’ve always liked you.”

That’s the trouble, isn’t it? He does. It’d be easier if he didn’t.

Something in Nie Huaisang’s chest goes limp, like a sigh with no breath behind it. “Can I tell you something, if you promise not to spread it around?”

Jiang Cheng’s brow furrows. “What is it?”

“I mean it, Jiang-xiong, I need you to swear to keep it to yourself.”

“That depends on what it is.”

“I’m not going to tell you until you do!”

Jiang Cheng’s jaw clenches, but he says, “Fine, I swear. What is it?”

Nie Huaisang feels lightheaded with queasy anticipation. “There’s another reason why we can’t… well.”

If he doesn’t say it, it might stay nothing more than a delirious fantasy. Safe and controlled and predictable. If he stays that way, he may as well be dead already.

“I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around.”

“You’re—you’re dying?” Jiang Cheng braces his elbow on the table, leaning in closer, fixing Nie Huaisang with his scrutiny.

He didn’t know he’d made up his mind until he’d started talking, but he needs to see it through. To speak it into being real. If da-ge could see him now, what would he think? Would he be disgusted? I’m sorry, Nie Huaisang thinks of saying once again. Can you forgive me for this, too? He’s not even sure what he's asking for, but he feels it with desperation.

“Oh no, no, nothing like that.” He regrets the loss of his fan, for something to hide behind. “It’s not anything bad, I just… I never wanted to be the sect leader, Jiang-xiong, you know that. And now that… I’m sure someone else could do a better job.” Nie Huaisang’s not sure that’s true, but he has to believe it, otherwise he’ll never let himself go.

Jiang Cheng has moved from concern to outraged confusion. “You don’t even have an heir.”

Nie Huaisang makes an impatient and offended sound. “I’m not that stupid! I’ll find someone.”

“Where are you going?”

“There are lots of places.”

“Is someone—” Jiang Cheng frowns. “After you?”

That makes him laugh out loud. “No, no. Do I have to be in danger to go—to go?”

What’s there to say to a man like this? Back when they were both just heirs who thought themselves a lifetime away from inheritance, Jiang Cheng was already looking his destiny in the face, while Nie Huaisang did everything he could to hide from it. Jiang Cheng was disciplined and eager, talented and hardworking: the kind of son any man should’ve been grateful to have. Even when he had to take his father’s place far too young, like da-ge had, it suited him: Jiang-zongzhu, tall and brave and full of righteous fury.

Nie Huaisang is very patient, and can exercise self-control when it matters, but it’s difficult to believe that anything matters very much anymore. There are things he must do, of course: he has a list of the responsibilities he doesn’t trust anyone else with. But at the end of that list there is an end, and Nie Huaisang doesn’t think that he wants to die, really. That in itself feels like a revelation. He wants freedom from consequences, which he believed for a long time meant death; he’s not sure that’s true anymore. Nor does he believe there’s anywhere in the world where one can simply exist outside of life’s uglier demands, but there are places he’s never seen, where the people have never seen him, and he longs to find them.

“Anyway. I just thought you should know.”

Jiang Cheng’s lip curls. “How nice for you.”

“What?”

“You get to leave, while the rest of us have to stay?”

“I don’t get to do anything. I’m running away. You could, too.”

Instead of rising to the bait and calling Nie Huaisang a coward and a good-for-nothing, et cetera, Jiang Cheng looks at him as though Nie Huaisang is speaking a foreign language.

“Don’t worry, Jiang Cheng, I understand. That’s not the sort of person you are, either.”

Has Jiang Cheng ever, in his life, made a choice for no reason other than because it would make him happy? It’s difficult for Nie Huaisang to fathom, having never gone without self-indulgence, but he begins to feel as though he’s been kicked in the chest.

This is why Jiang Cheng has clung to whatever it is they’ve had. Why he was willing to come back on Nie Huaisang’s invitation, despite how the earlier rejection surely stung his pride. Nie Huaisang may have unwittingly given Jiang Cheng something he’d been going without for a very long time.

They finished the last of the food long ago, and neither of them have moved towards having any more of the wine. Nie Huaisang doesn’t feel much desire to drink, considering how maudlin he got the last time he had liquor. There’s nothing keeping Jiang Cheng here beyond their conversation.

“It’s still raining, isn’t it?” Nie Huaisang hesitates, waiting to see if his sense will return to him. No such luck. “Why don’t you stay the night? Just to sleep,” he adds, hastily. “So my disciples don’t see that you stayed late. You can leave as soon as it’s light out.”

He just wants a little more time. It’s nothing more complex than that. He doesn’t want to beg.

Nie Huaisang leaves all of his robes on. They’re practically sleeping clothes already. He arranges himself on the far side of the bed as nonchalantly as possible while keeping Jiang Cheng in the edges of his vision.

Jiang Cheng strips perfunctorily, but Nie Huaisang is mesmerized by the deep violet undershirt and pants he settles on. When Jiang Cheng looks up and they meet eye contact, Nie Huaisang doesn’t pretend not to have been caught. Jiang Cheng is hot around the neck, but he has a determined set to his mouth, and he doesn’t shy away from Nie Huaisang’s sight.

It’s not as if Nie Huaisang doesn’t want it. He’s holding himself back from trying to get Jiang Cheng out of his ridiculous underclothes by force of will. If he doesn’t scavenge some prurient morsels, there’s no way he’ll make it through the night.

He pointedly turns away to rest his cheek on his forearm and let his eyes roam the room. “Get the lights, will you, please? I’m tired.”

After some requisite grumbling, Jiang Cheng snuffs out the candles and gets on the bed. Nie Huaisang doesn’t need to be able to see to sense that Jiang Cheng holds himself like a beached fish, but Nie Huaisang doesn’t know what to do with his own limbs, either. As soon as he felt the weight of Jiang Cheng’s body on the mattress, his mind plummeted down a well of desire. As his eyes adjust, he recognizes the shadowy outline of Jiang Cheng resolutely staring at the ceiling.

In this new, hushed silence, the rain sounds from the roof are audible once again. Nie Huaisang listens past it for the rhythm of Jiang Cheng’s breathing. It’s juvenile to be so self-conscious, but Nie Huaisang must have been a juvenile the last time he’d shared a bed for the purpose of sleep alone. He grew up a spoiled young master with rooms of his own, even while everyone he knew was sleeping in battlefield tents, and he never goes night hunting. One of the only occasions he can remember was when he let Jiang Cheng pass out in his dormitory at the Cloud Recesses, after they’d tumbled into Nie Huaisang’s bunk, inebriated and incandescent with their own daring. Nie Huaisang had been conscious of Jiang Cheng’s close body, but that hadn’t meant much; he spent his youth as a would-be connoisseur of men, with an expansive, though untested, palate. Nie Huaisang doesn’t remember feeling like this: watching Jiang Cheng’s silhouette in the darkness, or monitoring his own breath for any catches that might draw Jiang Cheng's notice.

From the careful stillness on the other side of the bed, he thinks that sleep may be eluding Jiang Cheng as well. He’s probably being responsible about it and meditating, or something. If Nie Huaisang was the slightest bit more shameless, he would roll close enough to nestle against Jiang Cheng’s back and pass it off as nocturnal tossing and turning.

If Jiang Cheng’s parents had survived the war, would he eventually have extended himself enough leniency to enjoy a silly, youthful romance or two, or gone travelling, or had whatever other frivolous allowances he could justify? Ah, but Nie Huaisang can’t start going down that road now; it just goes on and on. If da-ge were still alive, would Nie Huaisang have been able to continue evading marriage indefinitely, all while spending far too much time at Lotus Pier than could be respectably explained? Or—he’s really going to start laughing soon, and then Jiang Cheng will turn over and look at him like he’s insane—if Nie Huaisang had been Nie-guniang, would they have been betrothed at a young age?

It’s not even as if he wants that. It’s just so desperately unfair, all of it: the things they’ve lost, and the things they’ve had to go without.

Judging by the quality of the light, he wakes early. Jiang Cheng shifted in the night to face Nie Huaisang, and his arm is strewn across the sheet. He is very handsome. Nie Huaisang has always known this, but it’s different at such close range.

His dreams were shadowy and hardly lingered upon waking, but he knows from the warm restlessness under his skin that they were spring dreams—unsurprising, given the tenor of his thoughts before falling asleep. He thinks he remembers hands all over him and an inquisitive mouth to match. In the dream, it hadn’t made him afraid.

A faint cough comes from the other side of the wall, and Nie Huaisang realizes that, though this is a strange room, there are familiar people all around; he rented out the majority of the top floor, and up and down the hall are his disciples and retainers. It may be early, but Nie Huaisang’s early and the early of people who actually perform their morning calisthenics are not the same, and a tableau unfolds before his eyes in which Jiang Cheng is spared the fate of risking a late departure from Nie Huaisang’s rooms only to make a much more incriminating walk-of-shame past most of Qinghe Nie’s senior disciples downstairs. Nie Huaisang’s done a lot of brazen things over the years himself, but he’s not so cruel as to put Jiang Cheng through that if he can avoid it.

He should just wake him up now and preempt the situation. Nie Huaisang practically told him last night that he would, if not in so many words. But Jiang Cheng’s eyelids are twitching, and there's a little crease between his eyebrows, even in sleep, which Nie Huaisang itches to smooth out with the pad of his thumb. Nie Huaisang is sufficiently selfish to savour this for as long as he can.

He pulls the edge of his sleeve from where it’s caught under Jiang Cheng’s arm, careful not to jostle him. With similar caution, he steps off of the bed and makes his way to the door. Sliding it open is a delicate piece of work, but Nie Huaisang has been evading curfew since he was old enough to have one, and he slips into the hall without crisis.

He is acutely aware, as he tiptoes down the hall in sleeping clothes and socked feet, that this is one of the most ridiculous things he’s done in recent months, which is a testament either to settling down in his old age, or to how exposure to Jiang Cheng seems to makes him lose all sense.

Nie Huaisang knocks a quiet but firm pattern on the head disciple’s door until Nie Zhuoyue appears in the open doorway, red-eyed but alert.

“Sect Leader?”

Nie Huaisang affects a listless and careworn manner; it doesn’t require much acting. “I didn’t sleep very well, so it’s going to be a bit of a slow morning. Tell the disciples not to rush to pack up, will you?”

After a short exchange over whether Nie Huaisang wants breakfast sent up (yes) or needs any sleeping tonics (not at the moment, but he allows himself to be bullied into taking a few back with him anyway), Nie Huaisang retreats to his rooms, though he has to pause with a hand on the door-pull to collect himself. Once inside, he makes for his personal effects. By the time Jiang Cheng wakes up, Nie Huaisang will be dressed and packing his things to leave. This is a solid plan that lasts just long enough for him to believe it will work.

“I thought you'd left.”

Nie Huaisang turns around; Jiang Cheng sits upright, but his hair is mussed, his cheeks are flushed and pillow-creased, and Nie Huaisang’s stupid, stupid immediate thought is that he looked this way when they’d been kissing in Nie Huaisang’s bedroom. As if in defiance of Nie Huaisang’s sentimentality, Jiang Cheng’s eyes are sharp. Of course he isn’t going to sleep in; he’s the sort who would get up at Gusu Lan hours just to prove they’re no better than him. Nie Huaisang himself must look just as dishevelled as he had the previous night—worse, seeing as he’s been caught on his way back from creeping down the hall like a child stealing from the kitchens.

“I wasn’t gone long.”

“How was I supposed to know you were coming back?”

Nie Huaisang lets his fresh robes fall from his hands and sits on the edge of the bed. “What would you have done if I hadn’t?”

Jiang Cheng’s jaw is typically intractable. There have been times when Nie Huaisang has thought of Jiang Cheng as a pathetic fool for his naked expressions, but now he feels as though maintaining eye contact with Jiang Cheng would reflect back—something; not the same look, but one which Nie Huaisang would rather keep to himself.

“Gone to Qinghe and demanded answers.”

Nie Huaisang’s palm is damp where he grips the edge of the mattress. He twists to face Jiang Cheng properly. “What if they weren’t to your liking?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Fair enough. I did mean what I said last night, though.”

“You didn’t say you didn’t want to.”

Very annoying, that Jiang Cheng is correct: Nie Huaisang does want to. Terribly, in fact. And if not now, when? Never again? What a waste, when they’re here with a slim margin of uninterrupted daylight left before they return to playing the parts of their father's sons, no matter how miserable it may make them.

He thought that Jiang Cheng was out of his depth, but Nie Huaisang doesn’t know what he’s doing anymore either. He lost hold of the thread some time ago, and it’s all knotted up around his feet.

He takes Jiang Cheng’s chin between his forefinger and thumb and tilts it slightly upwards. Serious, now. “If we do this, it’s going to go the way I want, you understand?”

Yes, some rules; a good idea, if he can think of any. It’s a good way to remind Jiang Cheng that, though Nie Huaisang is going along with this, he shouldn’t presume too much. Jiang Cheng looks wary but expectant, and Nie Huaisang casts around for potential infractions.

“You have to ask before touching me.” Jiang Cheng nods, and Nie Huaisang adds, “With your hands,” in the interest of clarity.

This would be easier if he had a plan in mind. He’s usually alright at thinking on his feet, but he feels uncharacteristically daunted. Nie Huaisang wets his bottom lip, and Jiang Cheng’s gaze flickers to his tongue before returning to his eyes.

“You’ll tell me when you’re getting close.” Jiang Cheng nods again—a little too readily—and Nie Huaisang appends, “And you have to tell me if you don’t like something. That’s one of the rules.”

There are too many things he wants and not enough time. Jiang Cheng has a plaintive look in his eye; he really always gets like this, doesn’t he? Nie Huaisang can’t stall forever, so he brushes a thumb over Jiang Cheng’s lips to see him tremble.

At once, Jiang Cheng goes soft and easy. Nie Huaisang guides Jiang Cheng’s hands down by the wrists to rest on the bedspread before closing his own eyes and replacing his thumb with his mouth.

It’s shallow, at first. Cautious pressure, as though they’re both trying to remember how to do this. Nie Huaisang leans closer, clasping Jiang Cheng’s biceps for balance, and feels Jiang Cheng’s arms flex from the strain.

A slight brush of their chests presses Nie Huaisang’s tits against Jiang Cheng’s front, and it sends a hot flush through Nie Huaisang’s whole being. His mouth parts around a low, surprised moan. This part of his body is perpetually tender lately, and he’s almost angry at the intensity of sensation, as though his body has run off on its own and left his thinking mind behind.

Nie Huaisang slides back until he’s no longer in Jiang Cheng’s lap, but makes up for it by touching him with renewed urgency. He grips Jiang Cheng by the jaw by one hand and kisses him like he could pull his heart out through his mouth. Nie Huaisang’s other hand goes roaming. The thin fabric of Jiang Cheng’s undershirt hardly obfuscates the contours of his chest, and Nie Huaisang feels him up the whole way down to the inseam of his slightly parted thighs.

Nie Huaisang leans out of the kiss and trails the back of his hand over Jiang Cheng’s erection through his pants. He laughs into Jiang Cheng’s ear. “You’re always so happy to see me!”

Jiang Cheng squirms. “Fuck off.”

Now that they’re at the good part, Nie Huaisang should probably make Jiang Cheng earn it somehow, but Nie Huaisang doesn’t currently have the patience to do anything but reach out and touch him. He likes touching him. It’s both simple and relentlessly satisfying. Nie Huaisang fumbles with the ties of Jiang Cheng’s trousers just enough to get his cock in his palm. He puts his forehead against Jiang Cheng’s shoulder to brace himself as he watches what he’s doing; it's slightly curved, and in daylight he can notice that the head flushes very dark, just like Jiang Cheng’s face.

He thinks, in a cascade of thought fueled by base instinct, a series of things: first, that he likes Jiang Cheng’s dick far too much for what it is, which is an ordinary organ of a kind Nie Huaisang has seen many times before, albeit a handsome example that does credit to the whole genre; second, that he wants it in his mouth again, but ought to restrain himself, lest Jiang Cheng get spoiled; third, that Jiang Cheng won’t get the chance to be spoiled if this is the last time, so in fact there’s no good reason for Nie Huaisang to deny himself. Nie Huaisang scuttles down the bed, props himself up on his elbows, and makes short work of the rest of Jiang Cheng’s laces, while Jiang Cheng sucks in a hissing lungful of air.

It's not necessary to show off in front of Jiang Cheng, who has no basis for comparison, but if it’s his last chance, maybe Nie Huaisang wants to anyway! He has a flexible tongue, as tongues go. Nie Huaisang’s other hand rests on Jiang Cheng’s thigh, and the muscles shiver under his palm. When he closes his lips and sucks properly, instead of teasing, Jiang Cheng’s cock jerks in his mouth. Energetic as ever. This is why having sex with Jiang Cheng is, to Nie Huaisang’s misfortune, very fun; he rewards every bit of effort paid to him.

When Nie Huaisang starts to lose breath, he pulls off and bites his lip. His mouth is sticky, and not just with spit. He wants to take a good look at the scene in front of him, for memory’s sake. Jiang Cheng’s face is tipped down, but his eyes dart around Nie Huaisang, as if afraid to make direct eye contact. He’s all pink, and very pretty. It’s a shame that no one knows Jiang Cheng can look like this but Nie Huaisang; he means it with all the honesty in the world. Has anyone ever seen Jiang Cheng and thought, That one is mine, I’m going to have him, and keep him, and there’s no one better?

Nie Huaisang takes this nonsensical wistfulness and channels it into practical matters. He keeps his eyes open while sucking Jiang Cheng’s cock, though it’s not his habit. Jiang Cheng meets Nie Huaisang’s stare.

“Can I touch you?” He sounds like he’s asking whether he’s allowed to ask.

Nie Huaisang blinks, and lets Jiang Cheng’s dick slip from between his lips. “Where?”

“Your shoulders.”

“Hmm. Yes, I think so.”

Jiang Cheng takes hold of him gingerly, but once his hands are in place he clings to Nie Huaisang like Jiang Cheng needs him to stay afloat. Nie Huaisang closes his eyes, swallows, and tries to take as much of Jiang Cheng into his mouth as he can; may as well give him something to hold on for.

The longer Nie Huaisang is at it, the more enterprising he becomes. He told Jiang Cheng that he was going to set the rules, but Nie Huaisang has hardly bossed him around at all yet. He wonders what Jiang Cheng would be willing to do if Nie Huaisang allowed himself to be fucked afterwards. It’s been a while. He thinks it would be good—Jiang Cheng is strapping enough, right? He could probably get the hang of it, given the chance.

Nie Huaisang is so caught up in the pleasantly overwhelming state of having his mouth full and Jiang Cheng’s thighs blocking out sound around his ears that he fails to pick up on the warning signs. It was already sloppy, so the amount of fluid leaking out of Jiang Cheng’s cock onto Nie Huaisang’s tongue doesn’t stand out to him. Jiang Cheng is always reactive and flustered whenever sex is involved, so his moans and desperately clenching fingers are no reliable metric. Besides, Nie Huaisang really hasn’t been at it long.

He’s just starting to consider whether or not it would be worth it to have Jiang Cheng inside him for real when Nie Huaisang closes his lips around the head and hums only for Jiang Cheng to freeze up, hands suddenly pushing at Nie Huaisang’s shoulders, and gasp something that Nie Huaisang doesn’t catch before he’s coughing on a mouthful of come.

When his coughing subsides, Nie Huaisang pulls back and blinks, getting his bearings, and then gives the softening length in his hand a gentle, tidying swipe of his thumb before letting it go. He looks up. Jiang Cheng is propped up on his wrists, face blanched and dismayed.

Truthfully, Nie Huaisang’s subsequent thought process is not elaborate. Falling over himself to reassure Jiang Cheng will be rightly taken as an act of pity, while doing something disgusting will move Jiang Cheng’s mind off of his self-proclaimed unsuitability for sex—or whatever silly thing he’s about to brood on—and onto the indignities that Nie Huaisang puts him through, regardless of how Nie Huaisang wouldn’t be so bold as to do what he is about to do with anyone else. Nie Huaisang is only going here because Jiang Cheng has proven himself perfectly happy to let Nie Huaisang put things in his mouth, when in a certain state of mind.

Nie Huaisang walks forward on his knees until he’s almost back in Jiang Cheng’s lap, but this time he threads a hand in Jiang Cheng’s hair and tugs his head back, forcing him to blink upward. He’s got his lips closed to hold onto the load Jiang Cheng left in his mouth. With his free hand, Nie Huaisang taps Jiang Cheng’s cheek three times. Let me in. He tries to make it as obvious as possible what he wants, to give Jiang Cheng an out, but Jiang Cheng seems to understand. His brow is still bunched in distress, but he squeezes his eyes shut and lets his mouth fall open. Nie Huaisang leans close, just shy of a kiss, and gives it back to him.

When he’s finished, Nie Huaisang gently pushes Jiang Cheng’s mouth closed with a fingertip under the chin. “Now swallow,” he says, and hopes it sounds less raspy to Jiang Cheng’s ears than it does to his own. The knot of Jiang Cheng’s throat bobs. His expression is of beatific anguish. Nie Huaisang wipes a few stray drops of come and sweat off of Jiang Cheng’s lip with his thumb, and then pets over Jiang Cheng’s face with his fingertips, stroking his smooth cheeks, his strong jawline, the arch of his nose. “There you go,” Nie Huaisang adds quietly.

When Jiang Cheng opens his eyes, he and Nie Huaisang watch one another, each looking for a sign. Jiang Cheng rallies himself, aiming for indignation but not quite making it: “I tried to warn you.”

“Oh, shush.” Nie Huaisang presses against his side and lets the hand that had pulled Jiang Cheng’s hair drift down Jiang Cheng’s neck until Nie Huaisang is once more exploring the firm surface of his chest. He flicks one of Jiang Cheng’s nipples through the cloth with a fingernail, and gets a small wince. This is for both their sakes; he doesn’t want Jiang Cheng to twist himself into knots over not being able to last, but Nie Huaisang also wants to hold onto this fragile moment for as long as he can.

“You like my mouth that much, huh?”

His hand starts to migrate down Jiang Cheng’s ribs and across his navel to where his cock rests, slippery and soft, in the curve between his leg and his hip. Nie Huaisang brushes his length with the backs of his knuckles, then comes back to caress the head with his fingertips.

“It’s not going to get hard again for a while,” Jiang Cheng mutters through clenched teeth.

“I know,” Nie Huaisang replies, peaceably, and wraps his hand around Jiang Cheng’s cock once again. Jiang Cheng shudders. “If you don’t like it, tell me, and I’ll stop.”

What he’s doing couldn’t even be called stroking; Jiang Cheng is still too limp for that. Fondling is probably a better word. When Nie Huaisang gives him a faint squeeze, the muscles in Jiang Cheng’s upper thighs jump, and he lets go much too late for Jiang Cheng to think he didn’t notice. It’s delicate business, hurting someone on purpose. Nie Huaisang wonders how long it’s been since anyone touched any part of Jiang Cheng’s body like it was weak instead of strong.

Jiang Cheng’s clothes are all askew, so while he’s at it, Nie Huaisang grazes the exposed part of Jiang Cheng’s clavicle with his teeth and sucks over the imprint. The mark will be covered when Jiang Cheng gets properly dressed again, but he likes the idea of Jiang Cheng being startled later that evening by a token that Nie Huaisang gave him to remember their morning by.

Nie Huaisang murmurs, close to Jiang Cheng’s ear, “It probably hurts a bit, right? I mean, so soon after you came.”

Jiang Cheng nods. Nie Huaisang doesn’t acknowledge his response except to release Jiang Cheng’s cock and reach behind to grasp his balls in a light but present grip.

“Is it too much?”

Jiang Cheng bites his lip and shakes his head. Desperation rises off his skin like steam. Nie Huaisang begins to rake his nails over Jiang Cheng’s soft cock, from the base up to the head, into which he begins to dig spirals. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

“No,” Jiang Cheng gets out. It certainly sounds pained. “I can take it.”

Nie Huaisang kisses his cheek, once, and then does it again when it makes Jiang Cheng’s dick twitch against his fingers. They’re chaste little pecks, dusted across his cheek, chin, and jaw. The longer Nie Huaisang is at it, the redder in the face Jiang Cheng becomes, and Nie Huaisang thinks the kisses might be affecting Jiang Cheng almost as deeply as the work of Nie Huaisang’s hand; Jiang Cheng is probably more practiced in bearing pain than displays of affection.

Helpless noises keep welling up from deep in Jiang Cheng’s chest, and though it pains him, Nie Huaisang puts his free hand over Jiang Cheng’s mouth. On the other side of the wall, his disciples are probably starting to wake up.

He looks down at his hand: “Wow, Jiang Cheng, look at you. So impressive.”

Nie Huaisang tightens his fist around Jiang Cheng’s stiffening shaft. Jiang Cheng shakes Nie Huaisang’s hand loose to tuck his face on Nie Huaisang’s shoulder, stifling his sounds against his robes, and the motion rubs wetness into the cloth.

When he’s warming himself against the low-burning flame of Nie Huaisang’s cruelty, Jiang Cheng’s whole being takes on a captivating wooziness. His body is so stubbornly resilient that Nie Huaisang can’t imagine where its outer limits lie for pleasure. In any case, Nie Huaisang doesn’t think this is the right moment to test them, and he’s already so affected by Jiang Cheng shaking against him and soaking Nie Huaisang’s skin with his tears that it’s making him dizzy. If he were to stand up too fast, he thinks he’d sway on his feet.

“I’m going to keep going until you come again.”

Jiang Cheng’s words are muffled and addressed to Nie Huaisang’s collarbone: “I can’t.”

“When you came so easily before? I think you could go again if you really try.” Nie Huaisang’s mind is all fondness and fevered certainty, and he feels as if, as long as they’re in this bed, he has the power to make everything in the world work out exactly how he wants.

He presses another kiss against the top of Jiang Cheng’s head. “No one even knows how greedy for this you are, do they? They’d probably say such awful things.” Jiang Cheng’s hands are obediently planted against the mattress, and his knuckles strain white. “That’s really sad, Jiang-xiong, I’m sorry. It’s okay. You work really hard, and all you want is to come home and let your wife be master of Lotus Pier for as long as she’s touching your dick, right?”

Nie Huaisang doesn’t have to be careful with his words when he’s being this kind of nasty. The chatter doesn’t really mean anything. He’s got enough of his wits about him to avoid saying anything he’d regret.

When Nie Huaisang was imagining having Jiang Cheng inside him, he’d thought of parting his legs, pulling Jiang Cheng closer with a hand gripping Jiang Cheng’s shirt, and saying, Come here, by which Nie Huaisang would mean, Just this once you can hide yourself away, I’ll hold you, I’ll hold everything you have.

Jiang Cheng’s legs keep jumping slightly, and Nie Huaisang has tucked himself against Jiang Cheng’s side to make sure he doesn’t get kicked. Jiang Cheng’s body is struggling—why wouldn’t it be? It’s the most basic impulse, self-protection. Nie Huaisang is putting the most vulnerable part of him in peril, yet Jiang Cheng is trying as best he can not to get away. He can be so good. Nie Huaisang doesn’t want to let on just how good, or else what’s there left for Jiang Cheng to work for?

At one point, he feels Jiang Cheng’s lips move against his clavicle, and he turns Jiang Cheng’s face up with his free hand. “What’s that?”

Jiang Cheng can’t meet his eyes, but Nie Huaisang will forgive him for that. Just barely audible, Jiang Cheng mutters, “I think I’m close.”

Nie Huaisang interlaces his fingers with one of Jiang Cheng’s hands. “That’s good. See, I know what I’m talking about sometimes. You’re going to make such a mess of yourself.”

Nie Huaisang murmurs incoherent praise, and Jiang Cheng clings to his hand. They’re so close together that he ought to be able to feel Jiang Cheng’s pulse beating under his own skin. Nie Huaisang feels out of his own body, but not in a bad way. Jiang Cheng’s breath comes rougher, and Nie Huaisang leaves off kissing him to just watch Jiang Cheng’s face, noses brushing, sharing each other’s air.

He finally starts jerking Jiang Cheng off in earnest. Fast, at odds with his sense of tranquil purpose.

There’s some fear in Jiang Cheng’s eyes. It’s not uncommon for Nie Huaisang to make people nervous these days, if they know certain things, or think they know; he still hasn’t gotten used to it. Jiang Cheng could knock Nie Huaisang aside, but he stays where he is, sitting with his fear, and Nie Huaisang glimpses, as if through Jiang Cheng’s eyes, the picture Nie Huaisang himself must make—mussed hair and two layers of oversized robes; unkempt, petty, and merciless. It must show on his own face how much he likes this, too. He can tell that he’s flushed, with a swollen mouth. Jiang Cheng watches him like a petitioner to a goddess of judgement: punish or spare him, Nie Huaisang, according to your will.

A prickling on the back of Nie Huaisang’s neck causes him to tighten his grip on an upstroke, and then there’s an expression he’s gotten to know. Jiang Cheng looks so sweet when he’s about to come.

A guttural sound wrenches free of Jiang Cheng’s lungs. His hips writhe. Nie Huaisang’s hand in Jiang Cheng’s lap is wet. Nie Huaisang laughs, a little startled, and following a few moments’ delay, there’s a raspy echo; Jiang Cheng tips his head against the wall, and it’s only by the slight upturn of his mouth that Nie Huaisang can tell he’s laughing, too. It might just be a reflexive result of exhaustion, but it’s so charming that Nie Huaisang is preemptively bereft of ever hearing it again.

Nie Huaisang wipes his hand on Jiang Cheng’s thigh before reaching for Jiang Cheng’s nape. He guides his face back down to Nie Huaisang’s shoulder, and the soft, slowing snuffle of Jiang Cheng's breath puffs against the crook of Nie Huaisang’s neck. He drapes his arms loosely around Jiang Cheng’s back and paints curlicues around his spine with his fingers. Jiang Cheng’s not so heavy that Nie Huaisang can’t hold him a little while. He feels warm and alive; the sunlight streaming in through the cracks in the window shutters has entered him, too, and every part of him has turned to soak up its warmth.

As requested, breakfast is delivered to their door. Before its arrival, Nie Huaisang consumes a sizable dollop of their morning by doing nothing but stroking Jiang Cheng’s hair while holding Jiang Cheng against his chest. After a time, Nie Huaisang coaxes Jiang Cheng to lay with his head on Nie Huaisang’s thigh, and when Nie Huaisang gets up to fetch their food, Jiang Cheng grumbles about being put back down on the pillows.

By the time Nie Huaisang returns with the serving tray, Jiang Cheng is sitting up and has pulled himself together a little, though he still has an air of uncharacteristic equanimity. As Nie Huaisang nears, Jiang Cheng makes a halfhearted attempt to get out of bed, but Nie Huaisang tells him to stay where he is. Jiang Cheng seems content with this until Nie Huaisang puts the tray down on the bed-sheet, which sparks a burst of outrage.

“Eating in bed? You’re disgusting.”

“I’m sorry, I thought you didn’t want me to get up?”

Sure enough, when Nie Huaisang takes back his place next to Jiang Cheng in bed and starts helping himself to food, Jiang Cheng stops complaining, at least until Nie Huaisang tries to stick a piece of youtiao in Jiang Cheng’s mouth and Jiang Cheng slaps his wrist with a bout of cursing.

Eventually he begins to dart glances at Nie Huaisang. “Do you actually like doing that with your mouth?”

At the moment, Nie Huaisang has a piece of youtiao halfway to his mouth, so it takes him a moment to realize what Jiang Cheng is actually referring to. He chews contemplatively, and then asks, “Is that so hard to believe?”

“I thought it was only pleasurable for one person.” Jiang Cheng wisely doesn’t mention anything about it being degrading, either because this is now the third time Nie Huaisang has blown him (if you count his maladroit attempt back in their youth), or because he’s aware he doesn’t have a leg to stand on in this regard himself.

“Some people only like it one way or the other, or not at all. But that’s how it is with everything.” Nie Huaisang chews contemplatively. “I lost my virginity that way. We took turns.”

“Who was it?”

“Some no-name cultivator who stopped at Qinghe during the war.” He shrugs. “Probably long dead now.”

“So you like it both ways, then?”

Perhaps Jiang Cheng feels obliged to offer because Nie Huaisang didn’t come, but the curiousity in his tone sounds genuine.

It’s not as though he never enjoys it. He doesn’t want anyone to make it into an athletic event—which might be hypocritical, but there it is. When he imagines it with Jiang Cheng, he thinks of the wet warmth of his mouth and of how patient he can be, when given a manageable goal. All good things. More than good. It’s just… a complicated matter, especially lately. He wants to say, Maybe someday, but they’ve established that this is all the somedays they’re ever going to get.

“Mm. If we’re asking questions, I am curious, and don’t take this the wrong way. Do you always go off that fast, or is it just with me?”

“Haven’t you had enough fun at my expense already?”

“I liked it! I told you yesterday, didn’t I? You’ll leave me with no face if you keep making me say it.”

“You’ll have no face? After—”

“Shh, shh. I really don’t think it’s a bad thing. But does it bother you?”

“How long is it supposed to take, then?”

It had really thrown Nie Huaisang for a loop when he’d found out that Jiang Cheng hadn’t been with anyone else, but it turned out to have its advantages; Jiang Cheng doesn’t have bad habits to unlearn, and he takes direction well. Nie Huaisang remembers how Jiang Cheng touched him, the last time, so hesitantly, like Nie Huaisang was something to be treated with reverence and care. He’s never been so torn up by gentleness before; he didn’t think he had the capacity. Maybe in a different period of his life, he would’ve laughed over Jiang Cheng’s lack of stamina, but even that has its enticing potential, as he’s learning.

For his own part, Nie Huaisang has never been like this with anyone else, either.

“It depends. You’re on the early side, but it’s not worth worrying about.” He can sense that this reply is less than suitably reassuring, so he adds, “Some people like that, even.”

There is some deep injustice to the fact that, whoever they are, the next person Jiang Cheng sleeps with will owe Nie Huaisang a deep debt. They won’t even know the work he put in, let alone be properly grateful.

“You know, we talked about why you’re not married, but you’ve never told me why you haven’t had any lovers.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Well, yes. But it’s been quite a long time.”

“I’m not the sort of man who gets distracted by—dancers, or…” Nie Huaisang nods, trying to keep his expression free of amusement, but Jiang Cheng still glowers at him for asking. “I’ve been able to do without.”

Nie Huaisang can’t really laugh at him for this, for all that it is funny. It’s easy enough, when you can’t make sense of what you want, to think you don’t want anything at all.

He doesn’t feel overjoyed at the prospect of Jiang Cheng finding someone else, but he’s the one who’s leaving, and he doesn’t need Jiang Cheng pining after him for the rest of his life. They’ll both move on, in time, and Jiang Cheng has his good qualities. What he needs is someone who can see him for what he is and not give way to his fits of emotion. It’s not a comfort to Nie Huaisang to think of Jiang Cheng going back to his dry and dusty bachelorhood once Nie Huaisang is gone, is all. Maybe after the two of them go their separate ways Jiang Cheng will have gained the necessary confidence to go looking for what he wants socially, but he doubts it. He’s not overwhelmed with friends among their peers, anyway—why else would he be here?—and he’s too sentimental for paying for it to be anything but a disaster.

“You know, it’s been long enough that I’m sure you could have some luck if you tried to find a wife again. Now that you know a bit more about what you like, maybe it would go a little better.”

A wife with an adventurous spirit is probably Jiang Cheng’s best bet. Those women the matchmakers must have brought didn’t know what to do with Jiang Cheng—how could they? They didn’t know that Jiang Cheng has been this way since he was young, and it’s nothing personal. It’s simply his nature. They hadn’t known him long enough to see the charm in it, either. It’s his difficult qualities that make him so eager: he’s desperate to belong to someone as a prize, not a consolation.

Nie Huaisang hasn’t been to Lotus Pier in some time, but he’s liked it on previous visits; it’s warm and open, the air slightly sticky with sweat but sweet-smelling from the lushness of fresh water and growing things. He’s never visited Jiang-zongzhu’s personal apartments, though he knows they’re tucked away near the back of the sprawling complexes. He imagines a private pier looking out at the surface of the lake, drinks on a table, and winding, inconsequential conversation. A big dog with its head in his lap, closing its eyes under his idly petting fingers. Evening breeze drifting over the back of his bare neck, and when he gets tired, saying he wants to be carried to bed, and being indulged in this, even if it’s with requisite grumbling. It’s hardly the worst fate he can imagine.

“Not likely.”

He gives Jiang Cheng a once-over. “Are you only interested in men? That wasn’t my impression, but I could be wrong.”

“I’m not interested—” Jiang Cheng begins, and then ends, perhaps realizing the absurdity of arguing over technicalities at a time like this. “No, that’s—of course I like women.”

Nie Huaisang has wondered what exactly has been going on in Jiang Cheng’s mind on this score; he takes a little pity. “The world isn’t divided into cutsleeves and people who aren’t, you know.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Men and women aren’t so different. Some people just like one more than the other.”

“Of course they’re different.”

“Ah, I used to think so, too, but these days, I don’t know. Maybe less different than you think.” He keeps his tone light, teasing, and fidgets with a bit of blanket.

“Is this about whatever’s going on with you?”

“What?”

Jiang Cheng narrows his eyes, and coldness sweeps through Nie Huaisang’s abdomen. He’s giving Jiang Cheng too much credit if Nie Huaisang thinks he’s going to have picked up on anything regarding—

“There’s something—happening. To your body. Did you think I wasn’t going to notice? Of course I’m going to look at you when we—” Jiang Cheng bites off the rest of his words, as if verbally acknowledging the fact they’ve been fucking is the risky part of what he’s just said, rather than everything else.

Nie Huaisang has been playing with fire. He knows it. When you’re trying to outrun something that you also want to catch up to, either way you’ll eventually lose. He just hadn’t thought it would happen this way. He hadn’t been able to think of a way it could happen and not be terrible, so he hasn’t thought about it.

And he’s earned this, after poking and prodding at Jiang Cheng so relentlessly: his body, his sexual history, everything. It was a matter of time until Jiang Cheng figured he could do the same.

Nie Huaisang’s face has been covered in faint surprise since Jiang Cheng spoke, and he laughs absently before his mouth curls into a crooked, vague smile. The thinking part of his brain has taken flight, and it’s up to whatever’s left to salvage this situation, if it can be done. “Oh, fine. I wasn’t totally truthful when I told you why I’m leaving.”

Jiang Cheng’s brows fold. He’s still watching Nie Huaisang with an excessive amount of focus. “What?”

Nie Huaisang tuts his tongue and makes a face. Gropes along in the dark. “It’s hard to explain to someone who doesn’t cultivate with the sabre. I mean… you know most of the previous Nie sect leaders eventually died of qi deviation.”

“How could you be qi deviating? You barely cultivate.”

“It can have effects even if you’ve only done it a bit. Especially in my family!” Nie Huaisang casts around for some plausible bullshit and hopes that only a reasonable amount of panic makes it onto his face. “It’s like… well… it’s this pretty rare thing. It’s only happened a few times, and it was a big secret, so the other clans wouldn’t have heard about it, you understand?”

“Just spit it out.”

“I’m getting to it!” He flaps his hands and then takes a breath. “Here’s the thing. You have to promise not to laugh, okay? Sometimes if the inner family members don’t cultivate enough with the sabre, other things can happen. It starts affecting your body instead of your spirit.”

Jiang Cheng frowns, but it doesn't look angry; instead, genuinely confused. “I've never heard of anything like that.”

Nie Huaisang waves his hand. “Sabre cultivation has a lot of oddities. You wouldn’t have heard of most of them.”

He’s gambling that Jiang Cheng has never read any of the horrifically boring didactic epics of the Qinghe Nie progenitors, which describe the intricacies of the sect’s unusual cultivation style through various allegorical sequences that nonetheless never imply anything along the lines of what Nie Huaisang is cobbling together now. Though, if pressed, Nie Huaisang could probably improvise some exegesis which would deter a more amateurish scholar from calling his bluff. He’s certainly spent enough time with Whispers of the Five Peaks while researching the sabre spirits to pull up some quotations at will.

“What does that even mean?”

This conversation feels unreal, and the walls Nie Huaisang put up long ago in his heart are as porous as they’ve ever been. Jiang Cheng has no one to tell, and if he did, it would sound unbelievable. The stakes won’t get much lower. Nie Huaisang affects a front of blasé sheepishness. “Well, you know. All kinds of things can happen. In my case—oh, it’s going to sound so silly, but I don’t know how much longer I’m going to look like a man.” He waves a nonchalant hand as he says it, like this is an everyday problem. “This is pretty embarrassing, so I want to leave before other people start to notice. I’ve dishonoured my family enough already, haven’t I!”

The rest may all have been nonsense, but that part is true; the admission thuds through his body, bone-deep. Nie Huaisang has deadened himself to humiliation, even practiced tuning out physical pain, but some limits remain.

He sits still and lets Jiang Cheng’s gaze strip him bare. Nie Huaisang himself barely understands why this is the form his self-ruination has taken, but there’s something particularly laughable about trying to explain himself to someone who’s known him for long enough that he’ll never look at Nie Huaisang without seeing the aggregate of years of extended boyhood.

He waits for Jiang Cheng to get up and leave. If this won’t scare him off, what can?

“But how are you going to—” Jiang Cheng keeps blinking and turning his head between Nie Huaisang and the room, as if the furniture holds answers for him. “How are you so calm about this?”

“If it’s just the way things are going to be, I don’t see the point in fighting it.”

Trying to paint a picture of his future that Jiang Cheng can grasp is excruciating, not least because Nie Huaisang hasn’t managed to do so for himself, either. It’s not like he wants to give up all his freedoms for needlework. There are lots of things about his life that he likes, and in many ways he’s been very lucky. He just can’t remember ever feeling at ease with himself, and he’s so sick of it, and there’s little enough left to lose for him to hold back any longer from admitting defeat at the business of being the son his mother had hoped for.

“So now you know why I’m leaving. Don’t accuse me of keeping secrets.”

Jiang Cheng looks at him for a long while.

Nie Huaisang spent so much time early in his life running away from duty, but he’s learned that duty tells you who you’re supposed to be. Without it, the expanse of choice is overwhelming. Jiang Cheng knows this; it’s the principle by which he’s lived his whole life. But Nie Huaisang is going to be a shirker, true to form, and he will eat his shame and move forward. This is the principle he’s gotten by with until now, whether or not Jiang Cheng could ever understand it.

At last, Jiang Cheng speaks. “You said there was nothing stopping me, but I have a-Ling. I couldn’t—he still doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

There’s nothing glib to be said to that. Nie Huaisang envies Jiang Cheng for having someone. At the same time, Nie Huaisang wouldn’t be able to leave if he did, and anyway Nie Huaisang can only imagine he’d have done a worse job if da-ge had left him a child to raise. He didn’t have any love in him to give.

Nie Huaisang folds his legs up in front of his chest and puts his chin on his knee. “He needs to stand on his own, you know. People won’t respect his authority if it looks like you’re making his decisions for him.”

Jiang Cheng scoffs. “He should be grateful those are the sorts of problems he needs to worry about. He doesn’t know how good he has it.”

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

A complicated look twitches across Jiang Cheng’s face.

“I’m already too soft on him. I’ve never even hit him.” It sounds like an attempt to convince himself of something.

“People do stupid things when they’re young. He’s probably glad he can fight with you, since you’ll still be there in the end.”

If it were all a lost cause, Jin Ling would just hate Jiang Cheng in private and take the path of least resistance to his face.

“I would’ve given anything to have had family looking out for me. Some of us didn’t have enough of a sect left over to let our disciples take care of everything.” It’s not that Jiang Cheng’s expression is without anger, but it’s a different type than Nie Huaisang expected; it’s smouldering, and he’s not sure of its target. “Why are you so concerned about a-Ling now, anyway? You almost got him killed once. Don’t think I’ve forgotten.”

What does Jiang Cheng have left that matters? A sect, but Nie Huaisang knows how heavy a burden that can be. His nephew has his own responsibilities, and has probably gotten tired of being scolded like a child. Jiang Cheng may no longer be trying to kill Wei Wuxian, but some things are difficult to come back from. There’s a time when you must admit, at least to yourself, that you’ve made your choices, and no one is obliged to understand or forgive. But it’s not all just over, either.

“When I saw him yesterday, it looked like he missed you.”

It’s hard to imagine Jiang Cheng has ever told anyone he’s missed them in so many words, but a flicker of relief passes over his eyes. It really is one of the things he likes most about Jiang Cheng that, with him, Nie Huaisang rarely has to guess.

Nie Huaisang adds, blithely, “Who knows, maybe you’ll qi deviate, too, some day. You could stand to be more serene. Would you like to die with him thinking he’s disappointed you?”

Don’t be so selfish, Jiang Cheng. Jin Ling’s a good boy. He doesn’t deserve that kind of guilt.

He’s almost angry that Jiang Cheng hasn’t taken this conversation more poorly. Nie Huaisang had prepared himself for humiliation, and he doesn’t know how to respond to whatever this is instead. Jiang Cheng is still looking at him cautiously, assessingly, like he’s trying to solve a riddle, but it’s not so far off of how he looked at dinner, or when Nie Huaisang had his cock in his hand, so it doesn’t make it easier to understand the terms on which they’re engaging. Keep on trying to make the pieces fit together, Jiang-xiong, for all the good it will do you.

In retrospect, he supposes he could’ve just denied everything. Jiang Cheng would’ve sounded ridiculous if he had dug his heels in about so outlandish a claim, and eventually might have dropped it. But Nie Huaisang thinks he understands, a little better than he did before, why Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji go about calling each other husband regardless of if a wedding has ever been possible. It’s not for other people’s sakes, but their own.

Nie Huaisang yawns exaggeratedly, and then pats his own cheek a few times, as if to wake himself up. “I do have to go home sometime. I’m sorry, it’s a longer trip for me than for you.”

Once again, Nie Huaisang helps Jiang Cheng get presentable. Jiang Cheng’s hair is a little thicker and coarser than Nie Huaisang is used to, and it feels heavy in his hands. He does a tolerable job of putting it up in an approximation of the way Jiang Cheng usually wears it. While Nie Huaisang draws Jiang Cheng’s hair through his guan, Jiang Cheng folds his lapels smooth, ties his sashes, and puts on his belt. The question of how he fastens it, when he wears it with the clasp in the back, is answered: Jiang Cheng does the belt up in the front and then slides it around, which causes the fabric underneath to bunch, and requires additional fidgeting. The whole thing is so fussy Nie Huaisang can’t stand it, and it tugs a brief smile out of him.

“You came on Sandu?” Nie Huaisang still feels vaguely guilty about the thought of sending Jiang Cheng back down the stairs.

“I did.”

“Why don’t you leave through the window? I don’t want the gossips to lay into you on my account.”

Jiang Cheng doesn’t take much further convincing. Nie Huaisang opens the window shutters and stands to the side, resting an impatient hand on his hip, as Jiang Cheng climbs out of the window. Once Jiang Cheng has got his balance on the flat of the blade, he floats down so that their eyelines are roughly even.

After a moment of uncertain mutual silence, Jiang Cheng clears his throat. “I’m going to write to you. For reports on your... health.”

Nie Huaisang laughs. “There’s really no need for that.”

“I’ll expect replies.”

Nie Huaisang’s spine is tense. He wants to argue. He says, “Okay. Alright.”

Jiang Cheng squares his jaw. It’s unlike the pouty little argumentative shows he often puts on. He hadn’t looked this hardened even when they were in the thick of their argument, when Nie Huaisang was braced for things to be difficult. Couldn’t he have done this when Nie Huaisang was ready for it? Why did he have to wait?

Jiang Cheng takes Nie Huaisang’s face between his palms. Nie Huaisang clutches the windowsill for balance, and then he is being kissed.

Nie Huaisang gasps against Jiang Cheng’s mouth, and he feels a small gust of breath from Jiang Cheng’s nose against his cheek. The edge of a tooth drags against his bottom lip. Jiang Cheng’s hands are firm—he must have held Nie Huaisang in place to ensure he would do it right the first time, and not miss—and when he pushes his fingers back through Nie Huaisang’s hair, a desperate, full sound escapes Nie Huaisang's throat.

When Jiang Cheng pulls back, Nie Huaisang is leaning halfway out the window. Jiang Cheng coughs, having the decency to look abashed. “I’ll see you.”

Nie Huaisang is too dazed to do anything but nod.

Jiang Cheng doesn’t dally. Nie Huaisang draws the window closed, turns around, and sinks to the floor. The onset of spring is more noticeable in the south, and as he sits amidst his own disarray like a flower with half its petals molted, he can hear the clarion trill of birdsong through the shutters.

At seven, or perhaps eight, Nie Huaisang performed one of his most infamous disappearing acts. A nearby sect leader had visited with his family and Huaisang was supposed to keep his younger sons entertained, but they were getting on well with the other Nie disciples his age, and he doubted he’d be missed. He had been occupied with important business before his home was invaded by strangers; he’d taken recently to finding interesting stones to take home and polish, and his collection wasn’t going to expand by itself. He was usually careful to mark his way when he snuck out, to avoid getting lost, but he had been too caught up in the euphoria of acquisition to remember to tie his strips of cloth to bushes.

By sundown he had eaten through his bundle of snacks, and his terror of being alone in the dark surpassed the desire not to be caught playing truant. He settled in the forked bough of a tree, so that passing animals couldn’t eat him, and cried, and thought that maybe now their father would marry again and get a better second son, who would do what he was told and make his family proud. Huaisang could feel bearing down on him the shame of all of the Nies that had been, who were now presumably despairing of how they could’ve produced such a pathetic descendant, and that just made him cry even more.

As the last of the sunlight faded, he heard barking dogs and distant but familiar voices calling his name—his birth name; no one called him by his courtesy name until his father died and it became important that he grow up. Huaisang blubbered, “Da-ge?”, and immediately lost his balance. Nothing broke when he fell, but his arms and legs were blotchy purple for a week, and he sprained his right hand, so da-ge carried Huaisang on his back. His grip was steady enough that by the time they neared home, Huaisang was nodding in and out of sleep, but even in his half-conscious state, he remembers thinking that he was lucky, out of every boy in the world, to have the strongest and best of all brothers.

Da-ge later told Huaisang, in a chilling tone, never to do something like that again, and it was one of the first times Huaisang understood that it scared him when Huaisang misbehaved, but even then, da-ge waited to scold him until Huaisang’s bruises and dignity had healed.

Did da-ge already know his own fate, back then? How long had he been carrying Huaisang’s innocence? If Huaisang had known, he wouldn’t have made such a nuisance of himself, always giving da-ge new things to worry about. Or maybe he would have. He was a spoiled child.

Jiang Wanyin,

I apologize for startling you with the contents of my last letter! Needless to say, you have my express permission to burn any of my correspondence after reading, if it makes you feel more at ease. But on that previous topic of discussion: you’re in luck that the pursuit of one’s erotic fulfillment is the rare topic on which I am qualified to give counsel. My personal library is not limited to smutty trash, and I have some philosophically oriented works on pain and pleasure which you may find worthy of your time. I admit I’m too delicate to enjoy being subjected to such things myself; you impress me, really, you do, so take that to heart! I’ve sent a few texts along—labelled as bridge safety audits, don’t worry, no one will be tempted to look. Needless to say if those readings prompt any fancies of yours, I, your diligent advisor in these matters, am eager to hear them.

Since we’ve renewed our friendship, allow me to gently remind you that my birthday is not far off, and as I’m too busy to entertain at the moment I would accept gifts delivered to me on your behalf. You know my taste.

Will you be present at Carp Tower for your nephew’s gathering? If you’re worried about uncomfortable social situations, I understand, but I’d be happy to keep you company. Or, if you’d rather, I’m sure Yao-zongzhu would jump at the chance to tell you about the bad luck he had recently with a ditch-digging contractor; the last time I had to meet with him, he courteously spared me from effort by taking so long to explain this anecdote I hardly had to think of anything to say myself.

By the way, I appreciate the prompt replies; my desk has been much livelier than usual. It makes me more inclined to sit down and do my work, so really the whole sect ought to thank you. Enjoy the warm weather, and my sympathies about that bit of flooding; hopefully you’ve seen the last of it.

Your thoughtful friend,

Nie Huaisang

The juniors gather around the archery range and huddle in whispery cliques. Wei Wuxian stretches and tests the draw of his bow for no apparent reason beyond demonstrating the limber grace he brings even to a second-hand body. Its original occupant had none, so Nie Huaisang can be sure it’s a quality of Wei Wuxian’s essential enough to be brought back with the rest of his soul.

Wei Wuxian loves to show off, and doubly so around adolescents who are easily impressed and don’t have memories of his first life. To them he’s just charming, wicked Wei-qianbei, who is only dangerous in a way that makes them feel daring for coming near him. Though, in fairness, he’s not that much older than some of them, by the numbers. Nie Huaisang is forty in a few weeks, so Wei Wuxian is what, twenty-four? Bracing.

When he’d written to Wei Wuxian, he’d done so with a level of impassive formality he’d hoped would pique the man’s curiosity enough to bring him out to Qinghe, and he was right. Nie Huaisang had received Wei Wuxian in the main hall with, for once, the appropriate ceremonial gravity. He had enough of dishabille in Yunping. He’s glad that he did so, seeing as Lan Wangji came along, too, uninvited and luminous, as if actively trying to make everyone else look shabby. He had hoped Wei Wuxian would come alone, but could hardly say so. Whatever. It’s not as though it really matters. Wei Wuxian would tell Lan Wangji everything upon his return, anyway, and it’s nothing Lan Wangji doesn’t already know. However, Nie Huaisang is still a sect leader, thank you very much, Your Excellency, and he will not be made self-conscious in his own court! He’d settled himself on the dais like a hen ruffling her feathers as she makes herself comfortable in the straw, and waited to be saluted—Wei Wuxian did so with a bemused twist to his eyebrows, as if surprised to see Nie Huaisang behaving like someone respectable—before Nie Huaisang laughed and invited him to discuss their orders of business over lunch. It would just feel too odd to keep that act up with him for long. There are other acts which are more appropriate.

That was earlier, and Wei Wuxian decided to pass the rest of the afternoon by going up against some of the seniors at archery. Because Nie Huaisang knows what his disciples want, whether or not he shares their passions, he keeps the training grounds in good condition, and he’d had the range refurbished and expanded the previous summer. The area is near the back of the fortress, up against the hills, and the high walls cast long shadows over the competition field.

He knows that the compound looks grey and foreboding to unfamiliar eyes. When he was little, it was a sprawling playground, with each cranny ready to be exploited. (This came back to bite him in his adolescent years, since when he was small he had occasionally been able to cajole da-ge into hide-and-seek—which was always one-sided, because da-ge only liked to do the finding—and as a result, da-ge knew all of his hiding spots. Nie Huaisang had to employ more resourceful means to disappear for a little while to read, or do his scribblings, or avoid being made to sweat.) Even the high walls felt friendly, when growing up inside them. They were there to keep his family safe, so how could they not be? He used to sit up top on clear days, looking out at the vanishing point and feeling comfortably insignificant.

Now that he knows the expense that goes into the upkeep of a place like this, he can’t help but wonder whether it’s still necessary. Qinghe is at the foot of Qishan in no sense except geography. There are no more border skirmishes to test their defense for weaknesses, or tense meetings between sect leaders who may as well have laid their blades out on the table in front of them. It’s a bit of a farce to keep up the maintenance of a fortress no one plans to storm. When something is built in response to an adversary, what’s left of it when the threat is gone?

(During that lunchtime conversation, Nie Huaisang picked at his food and kept his tone earnest and apologetic as he explained his proposition. Wei Wuxian rubbed his chin and leaned back in his chair with his legs splayed in artful carelessness.

“Seems to me I’ve done you a lot of favours lately, Nie-zongzhu.”

It seemed to Nie Huaisang that Wei Wuxian was alive because of him. “I promise I won’t be mad if you’re too busy. I just thought—well, I guess I thought I was doing you a favour, in a way. I know you like projects.”)

A pair of juniors scamper onto the range every so often between rounds to fetch the used arrows. Nie Huaisang watches their little legs go, taps his closed fan on the point of his chin, and asks, “Are you going to Jin-zongzhu’s party?”

“I’d never dare jilt shijie’s son.”

“It’s been ages since anyone held a good banquet.” Nie Huaisang glances over at Lan Wangji, standing like a pillar of stone on Wei Wuxian’s other side. “No offense meant, Your Excellency.” Lan Wangji doesn’t grace Nie Huaisang with a response.

He knows he shouldn’t say the next thing even before he does, but he can’t help himself. It rolls out of his mouth of its own accord. “Say, Wei-xiong. You wouldn’t happen to know if anything happened between him and Jiang-zongzhu lately? It seems like they’ve had a spat over something, but no one will tell me what.”

Over the course of the match, Wei Wuxian has been steadily eliminating his competition. He notches and draws his next arrow with deliberation. Nie Huaisang is beginning to think Wei Wuxian simply didn’t hear him when Wei Wuxian finally shoots—hitting the target dead on the mark; he must’ve been waiting for the wind to blow just the right way—and replies, “I’m not sure it’s my business to say.”

Nie Huaisang presses on, voice gently wheedling: “I did ask Jiang-zongzhu about it himself first, but he refused.”

Wei Wuxian takes his time selecting another arrow, checking them all over for the quality of the fletching. His voice is flat, but not cold, as such. Just... removed. “That’s just Jiang Cheng. He’s always been like that. Don’t expect him to change.”

He’s wrong, though, and Nie Huaisang feels as irritated by it as he does by Wei Wuxian reacting as though Nie Huaisang has ulterior motives in asking. Jiang Cheng is still young enough. He just needs someone to show him how to act like it. Wei Wuxian wasn’t around, anyway, for all those long years; he doesn’t know better than any other young person what time can and can’t do.

He’s tempted to tell Wei Wuxian, I’ll take Jiang Cheng if you won’t. He’s fun in bed and his letters make me laugh. Nie Huaisang has enough wits left to know that sounding smug about such a thing is mortifying, so he refrains. In any case, Jiang Cheng would go apoplectic if he knew.

On the second day, Wei Wuxian persuades Lan Wangji to go take care of some business he apparently has in the area on his own while Wei Wuxian stays behind at the Unclean Realms. Lan Wangji departs reluctantly. Once he’s gone, they discuss Nie Huaisang’s delicate matter in earnest.

“To be honest, I don’t know if it’s the kind of problem you can fix while keeping up the sabre technique. Resentful energy needs to go somewhere, and I don’t know how you can keep it suppressed when the style relies on cultivating it.”

“Well, we can’t switch to swords. None of the disciples would go along with it.”

“Not even if you told them the truth? About all of it?”

Slowly, grudgingly: “Some of them already know.”

They can’t afford complete honesty. If the true costs of sabre cultivation got out to the other sects, Qinghe Nie’s reputation would be finished. Nie Huaisang has done enough damage to his ancestors’ names already.

“You could take my sabre back to Gusu with you to experiment with, if you like. I never use it.”

Wei Wuxian is the world’s foremost resentful energy expert, and though sabre cultivation isn’t demonic, Nie Huaisang has reached the limits of his own ingenuity.

“Don’t these things become connected to their owners’ spirits? Giving yours up seems like a big risk.”

“It’s not doing me any good here. If you could learn something from it, then we might as well try, right?”

Nie Huaisang isn’t sure what this will accomplish, if anything. He doesn’t think they’ll discover some way to continue cultivating just as they have been and escape all consequences—though life may sometimes work that way, cultivation does not—but there are surely some things his ancestors never thought of. Some newer methods of mitigating the damage to the living and managing the restlessness of the dead.

If not—if this is just another dead end—he’ll set down his hopes, Nie Huaisang supposes. No one said, Nie Huaisang, the trouble with the sabre spirits is your duty to resolve; never mind all your forebears who put the problem into place. If he’s to be a reluctant custodian of his ancestors’ worst legacies, so be it. He just hates to feel ashamed of his family, and he doesn’t, for anything except this, and time is running short.

In the end, Wei Wuxian sighs. “I’ll see what I can do. But as a… consultant, you understand.”

“As opposed to what?”

“I’ll tinker around as a favour, but I don’t work for you. No offense meant, Nie-zongzhu.”

“A friend helping a friend, then?”

Wei Wuxian’s only answer is a wry twitch of the mouth.

Later that evening, Lan Wangji returns, and the two fly home before dark. Nie Huaisang’s long-neglected sabre is in a qiankun pouch on Wei Wuxian’s hip. The parting is quick and impersonal; Nie Huaisang is eager to see them off. He got what he needed, if not what he wanted.

He gets no pleasure from being distrusted. He brought this about himself, of course, but he doesn’t like it.

Ah, well. There’s no one to pick him up and carry him home anymore when he gets himself into trouble. Time to dust himself off.

Carp Tower under Jin Guangyao was a well-trafficked place, both because he had regular discussion conference obligations as Chief Cultivator and because he had a gift for organizing events for any occasion. Nie Huaisang attended them all, and often invited himself to Carp Tower even when there was no good excuse. The collective uncertainty about Jin Ling’s fitness as a family head and suspicion of persistent corruption within Lanling Jin aside, cultivation society at large is glad for the opportunity to have a real party again, or at least drink and stay up past nine.

The agenda is standard: an initial lavish banquet designed to showcase the recent renovations, followed by three days of night hunting in the forests outside Lanling, and then another banquet upon return to Carp Tower, with some performances and contests alongside it. Nie Huaisang will stay behind for the night hunt; he never joins in, and he’d rather not go camping if he can avoid it. He’s confident his senior disciples will have things in hand.

Carp Tower had welcomed him with dreams of a familiar face. Last night, Jin Guangyao hadn’t given him any of his usual indulgent smiles or worried lip-purses; he had looked up at Nie Huaisang from a desk full of blank papers, brush in hand, and with skin-crawling, heartbreaking pity, said, Don’t make me do this, Huaisang. You won’t like what happens. When Nie Huaisang woke, he couldn’t remember what it was that had constituted the threat, though in his dream it had been clear to him, and terrible.

In the daylight, it’s strange to look at the changes around them and know, I did this, though Nie Huaisang’s hand never lifted any of the tools. He feels muddled about the knowledge that, in order to take Jin Guangyao’s murals down, the panel containing da-ge and er-ge at the sworn brotherhood had to have been removed as well. He wonders what happened to the marble: whether that image of his brother has been carved into something else, perhaps repurposed to grace some nobleman’s home, or if it’s been rendered to dust.

The whole palace is full of the lingering presence of people who served their purpose for him. There are entrance rooms Qin Su once presided over with magisterial charm, ponds Lan Xichen would meditate beside on his visits, and courtyard nooks Mo Xuanyu had shown him, where discreet meetings could be held.

Qinghe Nie arrives a half-day early, before most of the other sects have reached Lanling. Nie Huaisang brings a present for Jin Rulan: a young stallion of the Qinghe mould, sturdy and not easily spooked, but slender and lighter on his feet than most. He delivers it with minimal pomp or fuss, simply taking Jin Ling down to the stables to get horse and boy acquainted. If Nie Huaisang were Jin Guangyao, he would have delivered the gift with an eloquent message—“In hopes of prosperity for generations to come, or simply pleasant riding,” something like that—but he’s wary of his neutral statements being misinterpreted as containing hidden implications, so he just says, “It’s too bad there aren’t any horses with spiritual power, Jin-zonghzu, or I would’ve brought you one of those.”

Nie Huaisang inherited da-ge’s childhood pony when da-ge outgrew it, which didn’t take long, and Huaisang was able to ride it until he was almost an adult, since it took him a long time to outgrow anything. He enjoys animals well enough, though the less demanding they are, the better. As a rule horses are not only demanding but cold and vengeful, but Jin Ling is a spry young man with enough money to afford good horse-keepers, so he should get along alright.

“How is Fairy these days?”

Jin Ling had left her behind so as not to scare the horses. He looks surprised by the question. “She’s good. ”

“How old is she, again? You were so little when you got her.” Fairy was another present from Jin Guangyao, who gave so extravagantly to all of the young ones under his wing. Jin Ling is thinking of this, too, by the look on his face. It’s not lost on Nie Huaisang that he’s doing the same thing, now, giving a pet as a gesture of goodwill, but he can’t fault san-ge his methods in this respect.

“She’s twelve. Spiritual dogs live longer than other dogs, so she’s not getting old yet.”

“That’s right.”

Nie Huaisang lets the horse snuffle against his palm. Jin Ling watches him with open curiosity.

For a long time, it didn’t matter what anyone would think of the things he’s done once his debts were settled, because he didn’t have a future, or at least not one that felt as though it would ever really arrive. If Jin Ling were to burst into a room one day when Nie Huaisang least expects it and tell him he was there to take vengeance for his shushu, Nie Huaisang imagines he’d feel resigned. If Jin Ling keeps that wound salted and open, like Nie Huaisang once did, it doesn’t seem worth it to fight an outcome that Nie Huaisang admits he may have earned. He has reason to be grateful, then, that despite the strength of physical resemblance, Jin Rulan resembles Jin Guangyao in personality very little. It’s preferable that he should favour Jiang Cheng so strongly, in his moments of awkward, surly sweetness. If Jiang Cheng were harbouring a grudge, you would know it.

Jin Ling runs his hand across the horse’s withers. He has a gentle, steady manner, and doesn’t seem afraid of its size. “How old is he?”

“He’s three.”

“Oh, you’re just a baby,” Jin Ling murmurs, and pets the horse’s neck again, this time more affectionate than assessing. He doesn’t look self-conscious about it at all, not the way that Jiang Cheng would, like he thinks that it makes him weak to take joy in another living thing.

Nie Huaisang was wrong, he realizes: it’s not his jiujiu that Jin Ling takes after the most. It’s his parents. The horse stamps a hoof and huffs in protest of a fly buzzing around its eye. Nie Huaisang mutters nonsense to soothe it.

He thinks of his own mother, thrown from the saddle. He thinks, too, of how Jin Ling surely cannot remember Jiang Yanli’s face, and then he doesn’t think of it any longer.

The delegation from Yunmeng Jiang enters Carp Tower on the far edge of acceptably late. Until then, Nie Huaisang drifts through the proceedings with a vacant expression and irritable spirit. Few of these people outside of his own sect like him, and the feeling is largely mutual; where disdain is absent, his attachments are incidental. He could spend his time surrounded by the buffer of his own sect members, but then what would be the point of coming to the party? He may as well have begged off, and gotten to sleep in his own bed.

If this were five years ago, Nie Huaisang would have puttered around, lapsing in and out of conversations, and drank too much. Depending on the occasion and the others in attendance, he might’ve taken advantage of the opportunity to snoop around rooms, or verbally gather information, or perhaps just find some beautiful nobody with whom to while away an hour or two where nobody was watching. Possibly all of the above.

He won’t deny he’s been waiting for Jiang Cheng to arrive. It’s funny; no one would describe Jiang Cheng as a great literary talent, but Nie Huaisang thinks letters may be his ideal medium. His skill at political negotiation is at its best at a remove, where he can let his reputation do the menacing without giving way to one of his fits of temper. He even manages to affect indifference in response to Nie Huaisang’s reports of tawdry gossip, though his replies are lined with scathing glee, if you know him well enough to see through his turns of phrase. Within a few weeks, Jiang Cheng’s missives became increasingly prolix; he has many things to say about other people’s business, and Nie Huaisang imagines his social calendar is not especially full.

Jiang Cheng gets in just before the banquet begins; he takes a seat, his disciples trailing behind him, and sets his jaw in agitation. To someone else, his expression might not look any different than his usual irritability, but Nie Huaisang senses legitimate unease. The dinner becomes even harder to get through with Jiang Cheng here on the other side of the hall, because there’s now something specific that Nie Huaisang would rather be doing, and only endless toasts and speeches are keeping him from it.

They exchange glances—not too many, not enough to be noticeable to others—and it’s gratifying, how Jiang Cheng sits up straighter when he knows Nie Huaisang is watching him. He’s dressed well—to his credit, Jiang Cheng always dresses well—so Nie Huaisang takes in the cut and patterns of his robes, and has a little laugh under his breath about the image of how Jiang Cheng must look when he puts his outfits together: as severe as he does doing anything else, Nie Huaisang would guess.

He’s not much more relaxed himself; every time Nie Huaisang’s eyes stray toward the Gusu Lan party, his gaze is drawn to Lan Xichen’s absence. When Nie Huaisang looks away, he feels Lan Wangji’s cold stare crawling over his skin, judging him and finding him wanting—as if someone like Hanguang-jun, someone feared and respected by people who haven’t even met him, whose skill with a sword is legendary and who, Nie Huaisang is sure, has never had to resort to low cunning, has the right. He’ll never make someone like Lan Wangji understand the life he’s led, or the choices he’s made. It’s fruitless to try to justify himself to such a person.

When the last courses are cleared away, Nie Huaisang makes his way to Jiang Cheng as quickly as he can without drawing attention to himself. He stands a few paces away, fans himself lazily and examines some artwork on a nearby wall. It’s one of Xichen-ge’s old ones, from back when he did such things. There’s a similar one back home. This one used to be displayed in Jin Guangyao’s study. Jin Ling must have moved it out into one of the main areas, perhaps to remove it from its original context. It is, in fairness, a beautiful piece; it would be a shame to lock it away.

A sliver of Jiang Cheng is visible out of the corner of his eye, and Nie Huaisang remarks, as if speaking to the painting, “I was getting worried you wouldn’t come.”

Before each recent meeting of theirs, Nie Huaisang has told himself that he will be aloof, this time. After all, it’s only Jiang Cheng; not exactly someone with a strong grasp on the art of seduction. Somewhere between being kissed out of a window and beginning an exchange of racy letters, Nie Huaisang let go of the pretense. He’s only able to practice abstinence of any kind when it has a clear object, and in this case it doesn’t seem worth the effort of self-delusion. He’ll admit to being relieved to see—not a friendly face, as such, but someone to whom he can be reasonably candid. If Jiang Cheng maintains fear and suspicion of Nie Huaisang, it’s not to a degree that hampers this nascent and tentative thing they have established.

From the edge of Nie Huaisang’s vision, Jiang Cheng takes him in from tip to toe. Nie Huaisang’s spine prickles as if the look were a physical touch.

“Half of the pier is still flooded. I couldn’t just leave it unaddressed for a week.”

“No, no, of course not. You’re too diligent for that.” He means it to be teasing, but it sounds like an earnest compliment, and he lifts his fan a little higher up his face. This was simpler when it was only letters. On paper, everything can be presented as half-jokes and flippant flirtation.

He hadn’t anticipated that he’d feel so—shy. Maybe he should have. They’ve been in such frequent correspondence, and it’s been so easy, that the reality of Jiang Cheng standing at arm’s reach from him has brought the memory of the last time they met out of Nie Huaisang’s mind and into his body.

Nie Huaisang wishes there weren’t so many people around. Granted, it provides them with cover—most people in attendance are busy in their own clusters of conversation, and those in closest proximity to the two of them are senior Jiang disciples Nie Huaisang recognizes by sight, who aren’t likely to think much of their sect leader speaking with one of his peers. At least, that’s his hope.

Perhaps Jiang Cheng feels the same way, because after a quiet moment, he says, “It’s too stuffy in here. And unless Yang-zongzhu steps in, his disciples are going to make a scene.”

The disciples in question are a handful of cultivators from a minor sect who appear to be engaged in some kind of arm-wrestling contest that’s attracted a small crowd, though by the degree of disdain in Jiang Cheng’s voice, they might as well be drunkenly brawling.

Nie Huaisang hums consideringly, tilts his head, and then looks at Jiang Cheng sidelong through his lashes. “We could take some air. If it’s not too rude of us to leave such a nice party.” If anything, most of the attendees will feel more at ease, consciously or not, with the two of them out of sight. Your average cultivator of today is hardly desperate to drink and joke with Jiang-zongzhu or Nie-zongzhu. “Anyway, sect leader business never leaves off, does it?’”

Jiang Cheng visibly relaxes when they leave the crowded pavilions for the cool night air. They wind their way through lantern-lit twilight and away from the sounds of revelry until Nie Huaisang can hear small noises, like a soft plop on the surface of a nearby pond. He wishes he could hold Jiang Cheng’s hand as they walk through the garden, as if to show whatever remains of Jin Guangyao’s shade, See how much has changed? How far life has gone on without you? You would never have predicted this; even your mind has limits.

This is the silly, errant heart of a silly, spoiled child who runs away from events he isn’t enjoying, not an adult who could have grown children of his own by now, had he lived his life differently. Nie Huaisang retains all of his childhood vices, though he’s added to them, as time and necessity have frayed the edges of what he will permit himself to do and feel. He’s still flighty, wilful, and acquisitive, the type that lives to collect things and store them away for his own admiration, or his own brooding.

“Where are we going?”

“I know a few good spots. Maybe I’ll give you a tour.”

Now that they’re out of earshot, Nie Huaisang fills Jiang Cheng in on what he missed earlier in the day. It’s nothing much of note, for people who’ve attended countless gatherings like this before, as they have.

He doesn’t mention the stables. Nie Huaisang wants to ask Jiang Cheng about Jin Ling again, but he doesn’t think this is the right time; Jiang Cheng still looks so miserable, he’d probably think that Nie Huaisang was picking on him for sport. It isn’t his place to meddle. They’ll sort it out themselves, or they won’t.

Talking about family trouble isn’t what they came out here for, in any case. Nie Huaisang needs a distraction, and Jiang Cheng has proven himself very convenient. Of Nie Huaisang’s skills, one of the foremost is the ability to make use of other people. They might even both enjoy it.

Luckily for Jiang Cheng, Nie Huaisang has a strong working knowledge of which parts of the Carp Tower grounds are difficult to see from a distance. It’s late spring. The air is sweet and they are trespassers, in spirit if not reality. There’s no one in sight but the faraway silhouettes of servants going to and from pavilions, back the way they came. They’ve made their way well past where the lantern-light can reach.

They reach a secluded corner of one of the older, less impressive gardens, where a tree in full bloom blocks the view for any passers-by who wander along even in the daytime, nevermind after dark. There’s nowhere to sit, so he turns to the side, so he can watch Jiang Cheng with one eye and keep a lookout with the other.

“This is what you usually do at Carp Tower? Hide behind trees?”

“Oh, like you’ve never wanted to yourself.”

“When I want to be alone, I go to my own rooms.”

Spoken like someone who’s never had informants! At least not of the kind Nie Huaisang has planted in the past.

“Variety can make some things more exciting. If you’re daring.”

“You—in a garden?” It’s hard to make out details of his expression in the dark, but the hollows of Jiang Cheng’s eyes are fixed on him intently.

The motion of the fan in Nie Huaisang’s hand slows to just the suggestion of a breeze. His voice is a low drawl. “I’m a fallen woman, you see. What does the location matter, if I let another man take what he wants?”

He has no doubt that Jiang Cheng came out here expecting something along these lines, his scandalized pretenses aside. When they were walking, he’d imagined they would draw the flirtation out longer, but there isn’t much reason for Nie Huaisang to delay, really, if Jiang Cheng is willing to play along. The sooner he’s too occupied to think, the better.

He hears the slick, quiet rasp of Jiang Cheng’s tongue wetting a dry lip, and Jiang Cheng murmurs in a cracked, gravelly tone, “What’s there to be taken?”

Nie Huaisang’s heartbeat kicks up; he feels pleased and oddly nervous. “I don’t know. Anything you like. This young master presumed to kiss me before, so I suppose I can allow another.”

Jiang Cheng snorts. “‘Young master’?”

Nie Huaisang flicks an imaginary speck of dust off of Jiang Cheng’s shoulder. “Does Jiang-gongzi wish to be introduced to worldly ways?”

He feels the hot press of Jiang Cheng’s gaze against his skin. It shouldn’t surprise him that Jiang Cheng is game; he tends to be. He’ll act long-suffering, but he hates to back down or concede.

Just as predicted, Jiang Cheng clears his throat, and replies, brittle, anticipatory, “Come on, then. Don’t waste my time dallying.”

“How bold! In that case…” Nie Huaisang flicks his fan closed and tucks it away. He places a hand on Jiang Cheng’s collar; in the moonlight and against the indigo shade of Jiang Cheng’s robes, it looks like a grasping, ghostlike paw. He curls his fingers before closing his eyes and whispering against Jiang Cheng’s lips, “And people say you’re no fun.”

Nie Huaisang wasn’t going to be taken by surprise—it would happen on his own terms—yet when their mouths meet, he still sways on his feet. Jiang Cheng kisses him slowly and carefully, making up for finesse with thoroughness, and in lieu of any part of Nie Huaisang’s body, Jiang Cheng clutches at the hanging fabric of his sleeves. Nie Huaisang’s mouth parts of its own accord, and he sighs a thick, sweet sound that rolls up from the soles of his feet.

When he leans back, Nie Huaisang drops his hands to his sides and curls his fingers in his own sleeves to contain the impulse to touch Jiang Cheng again. He shouldn’t be too eager; it wouldn’t fit the character he’s playing, although he’s only feeling her out by the moment.

“You may kiss my neck,” Nie Huaisang says, attempting to line his voice with the coy imperiousness of a haughty young wife straying from her husband. “But only my neck.”

Jiang Cheng’s mouth is hot wax in the cool night. His lips make small, wet noises against Nie Huaisang’s throat. Nie Huaisang tips his head back to expose more of his skin and murmurs, “What else do you want from this lowly one?”

“Anything,” Jiang Cheng mutters against his skin.

“You’ll have to do better than that.”

“Huaisang.” His name is a distressed gust of breath. That’s right, Nie Huaisang should take pity on him; Jiang Cheng would rather be commanded to do something perverse than to admit he wants something mundane.

Everything they’re doing is very nice, and all, but Nie Huaisang still feels frantic, as if there are eyes out there watching him in the dark. His heartbeat buzzes under his skin like a trapped wasp. Though he speaks softly, the lightness has left his voice. “What would you do, if I asked? If I told you to kneel, would you kneel?”

He can feel Jiang Cheng’s frame tense up, but he sounds heady: “Here?” Something about it catches in Nie Huaisang’s chest and snags.

He wanted distraction, and yes, Jiang Cheng is doing a good job of entertaining him, but Nie Huaisang finds he doesn’t want to be reminded of the way Jiang Cheng looked at him, the last time they fucked. He liked it then, when it came as a surprise—to think, Jiang Cheng staring at Nie Huaisang in a manner that could only be called worshipful—but at the moment Nie Huaisang has had enough of being made aware of himself. It’s not because he’s disinterested in what Jiang Cheng has to offer him; it’s the opposite problem. He wants so much from Jiang Cheng that the intensity of desire frightens him.

Jiang Cheng likely won’t notice where Nie Huaisang mood drifts, as long as he gets what he came for. They’ve sought each other out to spend some idle time with pleasant company. Nie Huaisang can just stick to the script.

“I think we’ll hear anyone coming. Though I’ll keep an eye open, for the sake of your reputation. So go on.”

Jiang Cheng goes to his knees, his perfectly-styled robes pressed against the well-raked gravel. The sight licks through Nie Huaisang’s stomach in a hot curl. He places one splay-fingered hand on his hip, looks down at Jiang Cheng, and continues: “Even if someone did walk in, you only have to stand up before they see you. They might think we’re plotting, but you have no patience for crookedness, so there’s really no harm. They’d say, ‘Nevermind the Headshaker, that Jiang Wanyin is an upright man.’ Isn’t that right?”

Jiang Cheng makes a tetchy sound, embarrassment in the guise of irritation, and Nie Huaisang doesn’t hide the smile it puts on his face. Perhaps that smile lends Jiang Cheng some bravery: he grasps at the fabric of Nie Huaisang’s skirts. Not pulling. Just holding, and watching Nie Huaisang’s face as though anticipating being kicked away.

When it becomes clear he will not be, his hand slowly reaches under the hem and pushes the fabric up before cupping Nie Huaisang’s ankle in a loose, breakable grip. This is the boldest Jiang Cheng has yet been with Nie Huaisang’s body. He’s still not confident in what’s welcome, and only knows that some things are, and others are not. Nie Huaisang experiences a fleeting, delighted urge to slap him across the face for the presumption, though this feeling is not accompanied by a desire for Jiang Cheng to let go.

Carefully, Nie Huaisang holds his foot aloft. Jiang Cheng slides his palm over the swell of his calf. A breeze lazily ruffles the leaves of nearby trees, as if it keeps waking from slumber and remembering it’s on duty. He’s not sure he will be able to walk a garden path again without being returned to the sumptuous dangerousness of this moment.

“Nobody knows, do they? What you’re really like.”

Nie Huaisang strokes Jiang Cheng’s hair back from his face. It’s the first reciprocal touch he’s given since the kiss. He has been rationing them, though toward what end he doesn’t know. He lowers his leg out of Jiang Cheng’s weak hold to knock Jiang Cheng’s knees wider apart with his foot until Jiang Cheng is knelt, legs spread, on his own heels. Throughout this, Jiang Cheng is obliging, and that is why Nie Huaisang presses the toe of his shoe down between his open thighs.

“Aren’t you being pretty lewd? Do you want me that badly, or would you just let anyone do this?”

“No.”

Even through sock and sole Nie Huaisang can feel him getting hard. “What do you mean, no?”

Defensively, Jiang Cheng mutters, “I wouldn’t do it with anyone else.”

That’s worse. How can he not realize that’s worse?

A feeling settles over Nie Huaisang’s shoulders, and he recognizes it as the grey chill that comes over him before he writes to Lan Xichen, like he’s a child about to pull the wings off a fly.

“Poor choice, I’m afraid. I’m very selfish and mean.”

“I know you are.”

Nie Huaisang’s voice is incapable of sounding threatening, but he speaks each word with soft deliberation. “Do you think I wouldn’t hurt you?”

It’s too dark to make out the look in his eyes, but Jiang Cheng’s voice is equal parts raspy and sulky. “I’ll take my chances.”

“What do you think it is about you that makes you enjoy this? Is it because you think you deserve it, or do you just like to grovel?”

Jiang Cheng makes an utterance, possibly unconsciously, that sounds like it got stuck in a drainpipe somewhere. Nie Huaisang digs in his heel, hard enough it can’t be pleasurable beyond whatever erotic thrill Jiang Cheng seems to get from pain.

This compulsion to hurt is nowhere to be found in memories of the first half of his life. It’s one thing when he wants to watch Jiang Cheng suffer for its own sake—they both like it, and they’re hardly the inventors of such things—but right now Nie Huaisang is full of bilious resentment and looking for any victim nearby, and the fact Jiang Cheng enjoys it is incidental. He’s so different from the Nie Huaisang that found it easy to be kind and couldn’t have imagined speaking to anyone like this, let alone the closest friend Nie Huaisang still has in the world. That’s what Jiang Cheng is, after all. Certainly the only person Nie Huaisang daydreams about taking care of.

How cruel can he be before Jiang Cheng balks? Nie Huaisang has been trying to learn this for months, but he must find the limit; he needs to know that there is an edge, and that Jiang Cheng will push him away before Nie Huaisang tips him over.

He thinks of conversations they’ve had, and things he’s said that have seemed to affect Jiang Cheng more deeply than provoking reflexive irritation.

“What would your parents say, if they saw you like this?”

He doesn’t know what he’s expecting. To be cursed out or slapped, maybe. What happens is that Jiang Cheng makes a sound like he’s been punched in the stomach, and his mouth drops in a look of swooning despair.

Nie Huaisang rolls his heel in slow circles and softly adds, “Tell me to stop.”

Insanely, Jiang Cheng shakes his head.

Nie Huaisang shakes his own mind, hoping that what he wants instead of this will fall out. Preferably something straightforwardly acquirable. Does he wish their positions were reversed, and he were feeling Jiang Cheng’s cock in the back of his throat? Does he want to shout at him? He felt such relief when Jiang Cheng arrived; why? What did he think he was going to get? When will he have had his fill?

“What, you want to hear more? It’s not enough for you?”

His voice rough, desolate, and eager, Jiang Cheng replies, “Do you think I can’t stomach it?”

Jiang Cheng is still so hard. He hasn’t made the slightest motion to get up. Nie Huaisang feels as though he must be dreaming, and realizes that he himself is blindingly angry and on the edge of tears.

He sets his foot down on the earth. His fists are clenched within his sleeves. “Jiang Wanyin, you are a fool.”

Whenever they’ve done this kind of thing before, there’s never been any real grievance between them. The scolding and mockery was all pretense, like the exposition to set the scene in a spring book. There still isn’t any actual transgression; Jiang Cheng hasn’t done anything to him tonight but provide an opportunity for Nie Huaisang to indulge his worst habits, but he’s angry with him for that, and afraid—afraid of the generosity being extended to him. He’s untrustworthy with the welfare of others. He can’t name a single living person whose life was improved by knowing him, besides Wei Wuxian, and a boy had to die for that.

The stars above them twinkle merrily as they watch this petty human drama. His vision has adjusted enough that Nie Huaisang can make out that Jiang Cheng’s expression is lost, a little dazed.

Nie Huaisang swallows. “Don’t look at me like that. Please.”

“You’re telling me to leave?” Not in this state, surely, Jiang Cheng means, and well should he. He’s still on his knees, still hard from Nie Huaisang’s ridicule, and he didn’t even get off.

“No,” Nie Huaisang replies with a suddenness that surprises even himself. The laughter from the other party guests is too distant to be heard, so he supplies his own. If he doesn’t, he’ll cry, or scream. The sound blows through his body like wind through hanging sheets. He wants to hide somewhere in the trees in earnest now; he helplessly says, “Don’t go. I’m just—I’m tired, and I really hate these gardens.”

Nie Huaisang reaches down, hand open, palm-up. Jiang Cheng doesn’t need the help, but he lets himself be tugged to his feet; his grip is warm, strong, and damp with sweat. When they face one another, Nie Huaisang’s chin tips up slightly to meet Jiang Cheng’s eyes, as if he’s fishing for another kiss, after all that. Maybe he is. Kiss me or carry me away or tell me we’re through, just let me know what kind of a mess we’ve found ourselves in. Once I knew, and now I don’t.

“We’re not going back to the banquet.”

“I don’t care where we go. Just not here and not there.”

Jiang Cheng frowns. “Are you sick, or something?”

“What?”

“You’re shivering.”

“Oh. I guess I am.”

Closer together, as they are now, it’s easier to read Jiang Cheng’s face, and Nie Huaisang sees him reach a decision: he lets go of Nie Huaisang’s hand and goes for his own belt. Nie Huaisang stares, dumbfounded, as Jiang Cheng unloops the leather, pulls his arms free of his sleeves—didn’t Nie Huaisang make it clear they weren’t going to do anything else tonight?—and drapes his outer robe roughly around Nie Huaisang’s shoulders.

When he steps back, his belt re-fastened and clothes straightened, Jiang Cheng looks reduced without the bulk of his sleeves, and equally surprised, as if his body acted without his permission. He takes a few fortifying breaths, grabs Nie Huaisang by the wrist, and tugs. “Come on.”

Nie Huaisang follows, holding Jiang Cheng’s robe in place with his free hand. After a few steps, Jiang Cheng’s grip loosens, and Nie Huaisang catches his fingers before they can slide away. Jiang Cheng continues pulling him by the arm, a stride ahead of him, and Nie Huaisang follows at a brisk little trot. He has no idea where Jiang Cheng is taking him, and doesn’t care. Under the pitter-patter of their feet, he keeps letting out hysterical half-laughs. Look, san-ge. I said you wouldn’t believe it.

Dark shapes flit about, like holes cut out of the night: bats, enjoying their own modest feast. Nie Huaisang leans against the wall of a small, empty pavilion. Jiang Cheng had intended to put Nie Huaisang to bed, but Nie Huaisang complained that his feet were hurting, and so persuaded Jiang Cheng to stop and rest. They’re closer to the festivities now than they were, and can hear faint strains of music, but they’re secluded enough they can still speak freely.

If Nie Huaisang goes to sleep, then he’ll be alone, and that sounds unbearable. Even feeling that way is humiliating. He can keep his own company. He doesn’t need people.

Jiang Cheng stands, arms folded, and Nie Huaisang pulls his borrowed robe around himself more tightly. He didn’t think he was cold, but now that he has the extra layer, he’s glad for the warmth. It’s always evening when they spend time with one another—with the exception of that morning, last time, when the fresh light that suffused the room could be blamed for the things Nie Huaisang had said and done, since it made everything seem unreal.

“Remember when your sister got married here?”

Nie Huaisang likes going to weddings, even if he’s always had trouble imagining his own. He likes parties, and good food, and he was a romantic once, did you know? He believed in the kind of love people write about in poems. What a privilege it is, to have only felt the extremities of emotion through verse, and to be a tourist of the heart.

“I didn’t know you were there.”

“Of course I was there! It was my brother’s sworn brother’s brother’s wedding! But don’t worry, I wouldn’t have expected you to remember, with everything else going on.” That was back when Nie Huaisang could fade into the background of any scene as a charmingly-dressed bit player who would be dead before the end of the second act.

“Stop trying to embarrass me.”

“I’m really not. You always had your sect leader face on, back then. I was glad to see you relax a little.” He doesn’t think anyone begrudged the young Jiang-zongzhu some exuberantly drunken tears on his sister’s wedding day. Maybe things would’ve been different if Wei Wuxian was carousing by his side, but his conspicuous absence had at least provided some social leniency. But he’s sure Jiang Cheng remembers that side of things well enough without Nie Huaisang reminding him.

Jiang Cheng is quiet for a while, and then he murmurs, “I guess that was everyone’s mistake. Overlooking you.”

Nie Huaisang has lived two lives; there’s a bifurcation separating a naive and good-natured boyhood from an adulthood of duplicity, sorrow, and malice. The former died with da-ge on the Carp Tower stairs, and what’s left may as well be a snake taken residence in the shed skin of another. He’s made peace with the fact that he will never recover what he’s lost, and he’s content enough to continue playing out, around others, the same superficial imitation of his old self that he’s been performing for many years. He’s not too bitter about having to put up an act; if he were anyone else, he’d rather know the soggy, spineless Nie Huaisang than the other one, who is fit for no company but his own. This is what unnerves him, you see, about the way Jiang Cheng looks at him. There are times when Nie Huaisang has given him glimpses of the person he is in empty rooms, and Jiang Cheng has stared back as if saying, Open the door, and I’ll let you lock us in.

“Oh, I don’t mind. I miss being inconspicuous.”

If Jiang Cheng asked him in so many words what Nie Huaisang has to say for himself and the things he’s done, how would he answer? I don’t regret any of it is certainly not right—or is it? What does regret mean, anyway? It shouldn’t have happened, or I would do things differently, were I back there again? The former is true, but not the latter.

Though they’ve written of many things since striking up a frequent correspondence, both lurid and mundane, neither of them has broached the subjects they discussed the last time they spoke face to face: brothers, nephews, guilt, reconciliation, the future, or the question of where Nie Huaisang is going, and why, and who he’ll be when he gets there. Admittedly, Nie Huaisang would very much like to never speak of such things again, but now that the wind has shifted and the mood has changed, he feels their breath on the back of his neck, and so he's not surprised when Jiang Cheng says, “I couldn’t understand how you could be so carefree. I knew you admired your brother.”

“Yes, I probably disgusted you. But I was always angry.”

“Isn’t everyone?”

“I didn’t used to be.”

Nie Huaisang can’t ever come here without thinking about the night he died. He saw it, but he doesn’t know if da-ge recognized him. He’s not sure, if it were him in da-ge’s place, which option he’d prefer.

He’s older now than da-ge ever got by a good ten years. Nie Huaisang would’ve shaved off his lifespan and given it to him, if he could; da-ge would’ve put the time to better use. But that’s a thought he's been having for years to no effect.

“I didn’t know your sister very well, but I bet she was happy to see you loosen up a bit, too.”

Quietly, Jiang Cheng replies, “I know I’m not… easy. To be around.”

It’ll be hard not to keep thinking about him, when Nie Huaisang is gone. Worrying about him. Nie Huaisang wants him to be well, though he’s not sure what Jiang Cheng being well would entail. Jiang Cheng isn’t someone who comes by happiness naturally. He’ll go grey if he keeps up his constant restless worry, prodigious golden core or no. Though it would suit him.

Jiang Cheng looks so small and fragile in this partly-dressed state. Nie Huaisang feels a flash of indignant sadness that there’s no one who will properly comfort him; it surely wouldn’t take much. “Oh, stop being stupid. I find it easy. I wouldn’t do it otherwise.”

His face burns—thank heaven for the dark—when Nie Huaisang realizes just how much of an idiot he is. He cups Jiang Cheng’s cheek in his palm, and tries to communicate without words, but as keenly as he can, just how little obligation he feels in doing this. The feeling of Jiang Cheng’s skin warms him all the way through, and it’s so much easier to hold someone when he can tell himself it’s for their sake rather than his own, so Nie Huaisang hooks his arms around Jiang Cheng’s neck and pulls him close so that he can muffle his voice against Jiang Cheng’s hair.

“Will you… When you get back from the night hunt, come find me, if you can spare the time. I won’t make you go sneaking around outside again. We can just sit and play weiqi, it’ll be very civilized.” Jiang Cheng’s right hand lands, very tentatively, on the small of his back; after this is met by no resistance, it’s followed by his left, placed on Nie Huaisang’s waist. Nie Huaisang closes his eyes and tries to empty his mind of all thought. For the first time that evening, he manages it. He adds, “You should let yourself have fun, and then you’ll see.”

There’s something restful about visiting family shrines, even ones belonging to other families. Earlier that morning, Nie Huaisang had taken advantage of the unusual quiet at Carp Tower to paint, but his heart wasn’t in it. He switched to paperwork out of boredom—how far he has fallen in his old age! Eventually that, too, became interminable, so he went for a wander around the grounds. The gardens in daylight are prettier and more benign than they appear after dark. Jiang Yanli’s lotus pond is still thriving, after all these years, and the sight of the blossoms brought him back to that strange evening with Jiang Cheng, before everyone left for the crowd hunt; that, in turn, brought Nie Huaisang to the Jin ancestral hall.

There’s a tablet there for her next to Jin Zixuan; Nie Huaisang didn’t know her well, but lights some incense for the pair of them. Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng both adored her, and Nie Huaisang can extend sympathy on the count of shared little-brotherliness.

If she were still here, would Jiang Cheng tell her about what they’ve been doing together? Nie Huaisang can’t imagine he would, Jiang Cheng has too well-developed a sense of shame, but maybe if she sensed something, and asked first… ah, but what would Jiang Cheng even say? Despite months of thick and fast correspondence, there are many things Nie Huaisang hasn’t asked. One of these is the question, When you think of me, what words do you use? There are many answers Nie Huaisang doesn’t think he would like, which have little to do with which ones are the most truthful.

Nie Huaisang will continue to sign himself off as Jiang Cheng’s friend. He hopes that, whatever else, he will remain that.

The shrine has had new additions since the last time he visited. Qin Su has a tablet now, near to that of her son, who has been here for years. Jin Rusong was born not too long after Jin Ling; he’d have been nearly an adult now. Nie Huaisang remembers that Lan Xichen had said something eloquent and optimistic at the baby’s celebration about new life bringing prosperity. Da-ge was there; he’d given his well-wishes, at least in formal terms, to Jin Guangyao’s son during the narrow window of time either he or the baby had left to themselves.

Jin Guangyao himself is not present. That decision would’ve been made by the sect elders, back when Jin Ling was still too young and green to make all of the decisions himself. Da-ge was the same age when he took hold of Qinghe Nie, maybe a little younger, and at the time it had certainly seemed to Nie Huaisang that da-ge was in control of everything from the start, but Nie Huaisang was young then, and could’ve failed to notice the subtleties of da-ge’s relationship to the various distant uncles and seasoned warriors that make up the bulk of the sect’s surviving older generation. Even then, though, Nie Huaisang doubts it was quite the same as Jin Ling’s situation. When Nie Huaisang became sect leader, certainly no one within the sect was jostling to take up the position of grasping right-hand advisor. But Qinghe Nie is a smaller sect than Lanling Jin, with fewer branch families and less plentiful a number of ambitious cousins. Da-ge also had the kind of manner that made grown men hesitant to talk over him even at age fifteen. Jin Ling is more like Nie Huaisang had been, in that way; he’s a pampered child whom no one can avoid comparing to older war hero relatives.

Regardless of whose decision it was, Jin Guangyao would’ve hated the result more than anything Nie Huaisang did to him in life. He lights some incense for Qin Su and her son, because he’s already here, though he’ll be happy to put them out of his mind again.

Before he leaves the shrine, Nie Huaisang glances around for any sign of Mo Xuanyu. Of course there’s nothing. Mo Xuanyu was expelled from the sect, and never formally recognized even before that. His memory is still reviled by the public regardless of whether or not he really committed half the things he was kicked out of Lanling Jin for, and the rest of his family—you know how it ended. It’s only Nie Huaisang, perhaps, who would even think to wonder whether anyone would set up a tablet for him anywhere.

“Nie-zongzhu. May I have a word?”

Nie Huaisang is trailing after a line of his disciples, and the whole row of them stop and turn around at the sound of Jiang Cheng’s voice. The disciples make their signs of respect to another sect leader—they’re a good bunch, very polite—and Nie Huaisang follows suit, after a moment, when he’s sure he’s had a chance to put on a suitable expression. He blinks a few times, his face sliding into a timid smile. “Of course, of course—you all can go ahead. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

His disciples hesitate a moment, but eventually they slink away. It’s a bit sweet, the way they often seem reluctant to leave Nie Huaisang alone, but they’ll forget about him soon enough, when the wine starts flowing and the warm, dim light starts to make everyone look attractive. If there hadn’t been a war, he would’ve spent his early twenties kissing people in shady groves, too.

Jiang Cheng is on his own, clearly having already seen his disciples off to enjoy themselves on their last evening in Lanling. He’s dressed nicely; he must have changed since getting back from travelling, because his current set of robes are not at all practical. Nie Huaisang opens his fan just to peek around its edge. “Come to collect on my debt?”

The coquettishness of the gesture is so false it reveals itself as a game, and thereby sets a tone for Jiang Cheng to follow as he sees fit. Nie Huaisang plays coy sometimes, but he knows himself and his desire, and has always been extremely forthright with Jiang Cheng in these matters.

“You don’t look very busy, but correct me if I’m wrong.”

“Oh, no, absolutely not. I’ve been waiting all day for it.” It’s more true than he hopes Jiang Cheng will realize.

They settle in that sort of public-private space that palaces like this one are full of—open doorways onto empty courtyards through which anyone could walk through, but as of yet has not. There had been some attendants hovering around, just nondescript Lanling Jin servants, but Nie Huaisang had sent them away after they’d brought him the weiqi set he’d requested. He knows better than to think that means they’re necessarily unwatched.

“Your disciples did well. It’s a pity you weren’t there to see.”

“Yes, they made out alright, didn’t they? But not as well as yours.”

Nie Huaisang rarely attends crowd hunts with the rest of the Qinghe Nie disciples unless there’s a reason for him to do so. He’s put a not insignificant amount of time into making sure that the right people are in the right places within the sect so that he doesn’t need to stretch himself far past his capacity, or spend his energy in places it’s not likely to give good returns. Being able to recognize one’s shortcomings can be a strength, in its own way.

Yunmeng Jiang were the winners of the crowd hunt, narrowly edging out Gusu Lan. Jiang Cheng doesn’t often broach the subject himself, but clearly likes to be asked about his successes. Nie Huaisang sees the pleased glint in his eye before he turns away to examine the board. Jiang Cheng wants to seem like he doesn’t care about petty things like that, but he does. That’s okay. Nie Huaisang can indulge him. It feels good when people take an interest in your life.

They are still on the waxing side of the summer solstice, and even during sunset the light is abundant. Nie Huaisang feels unaccountably serene. The weiqi board sits on the table between them, still covered only sparsely with stones. They each have a bowl filled with pieces by their hands, but the game has proceeded only leisurely so far; can you forgive Nie Huaisang for stretching out the evening a little? He’s been waiting around for days wishing he was doing this instead.

Jiang-zongzhu plays black, Nie-zongzhu white. His opponent has played a characteristic set of opening moves: quick and decisive. Jiang Cheng tends to start out this way, though he’s a defensive player at heart. Nie Huaisang compensates each turn by dithering over his options before selecting a cautious, probing position that nonetheless appears nonsensical taken in aggregate. His choices probably seem chaotic and impulsive, but he’s waiting for Jiang Cheng to show his hand with regards to this evening’s strategy. In the interim, Nie Huaisang asks Jiang Cheng to give him a detailed summary of what Nie Huaisang missed out in the woods, which requires little coaxing. His commentary on the participants is enjoyable to listen to for its own sake; at a different time in his life, Nie Huaisang would have felt sorry for the unfortunate nobodies who draw Sandu Shengshou’s scouring gaze, but no longer.

Jiang Cheng’s really been quite bold, bringing himself in such close social proximity with Nie Huaisang multiple times during one relatively short event. Maybe in early days—before Nie Huaisang systematically alienated all of his peers who knew him well enough to see the cracks in the mask up close—their sudden closeness wouldn’t have been noteworthy, but a few scant years ago the sight would’ve turned heads. Perhaps in his old age Jiang Cheng has finally grown a bit thicker of a face—what a thought.

Nie Huaisang reaches for his next piece in an inelegant manner; he pushes his fingers through the bowl of cool stones, savouring the sensation, like when he was a child and snuck into the kitchens for treats only to amuse himself by sticking his hand into a sack of rice.

“If Gusu Lan got second place, does that mean Wei Wuxian was there too?”

It’s as if a cold wind has blown through the room.

Before long, Jiang Cheng begrudgingly answers, “He was there, but didn’t hunt.”

“I see. Well, yes, I did figure he would’ve come along. It seems as though he and your nephew have a surprisingly good relationship these days.”

Jiang Cheng replies through his teeth. “A-Ling is an adult. He’s capable of making his own judgments.”

Nie Huaisang picks up his next stone between his first two fingers and places it without deliberation. “I know it’s not my business, but is this about Wei Wuxian?”

Jiang Cheng’s face hardens as his skin goes pale. Nie Huaisang had been striking mostly blind, but he’s hit something solid. “Why? Has Wei Wuxian been talking about me? I’d love to hear what he has to say.”

“No, don’t worry. I met with him recently about sect business, and he didn’t say anything about you even when I asked.”

Rather than consoling Jiang Cheng, this seems to make him more pained and subdued than he has been yet in their conversation. This is one of the differences between the two of them: Nie Huaisang grew up his own best friend, his own confidant, his own partner in crime. He had da-ge, and for a while he had Meng Yao, but they were something different to him than what Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian were to one another. Jiang Cheng has never really moved past that. Part of him still waits for his other half to come back to him, and to stay; the rest of him is so wounded by the humiliation of being abandoned that he couldn't accept it even if Wei Wuxian did.

Nie Huaisang takes a moment to reassess, wondering whether it’s worth it to keep ruining their nice evening, but this is important, so he steels himself before softening his tone. “It really doesn’t matter what happened.” He’s not just being placating; as he says it, he realizes it’s true. “You don’t need to tell me. It really isn’t my business.”

“Then why ask about it?”

Nie Huaisang rummages for his next stone. “I just hate seeing people fight. It’d be better if we could all get along.”

Jiang Cheng hardly spares a glance for the placement of Nie Huaisang’s last piece before playing his next. He makes himself so easy to entrap. His chosen position is naive, the kind of sloppy move he’s usually better than making, but when he speaks, his voice is thin, low, and sharp. “If you want to know so bad, I’ll tell you, but not here.”

Nie Huaisang lifts his eyebrows. “Oh, sure. I’ve got some nice wine back in my rooms, but it’s too much for me to drink myself.”

He passes his next stone between a few of his fingers, the kind of simple trick of dexterity he’d spend lazy afternoons perfecting in his youth. As he sets it in place, he says, “Da-ge used to drive me crazy.”

Jiang Cheng furrows his brow. Nie Huaisang doesn’t wait for him to interject.

“We used to fight all the time. Real fights, with yelling. He’d be so stubborn about the silliest things, even though he’d turn a blind eye to other things I did, and then he’d get mad if I pointed out that it was arbitrary.”

Jiang Cheng is watching him closely, and the slightly abashed surprise is visible on his face when he realizes he’s overdue for his turn in the game. While Jiang Cheng sighs at himself and reaches for his next stone, Nie Huaisang carries on.

“We’d been orphans for a pretty long time. Being the only ones each other has… that’s too much pressure, don’t you think? Things can get difficult. When there are other people, there’s more room to breathe.” He remembers the days when Meng Yao slid seamlessly into their lives. It had felt like an answer to prayers he hadn’t thought to make.

Nie Huaisang hums, fingers twiddling through the air, before picking up and setting down his next piece. “The way I talked to him was terrible, sometimes. Very unfilial. I didn’t understand how hard it was for him. He wasn’t my father. It hadn’t been his idea, to raise me on his own. He was just doing what he could, and sometimes he did a bad job.”

Jiang Cheng looks at the placement, then up at Nie Huaisang’s face, then back down at the board. The silence is taut and sinuous. Worrying away all the time, and for what? There’s so much that Jiang Cheng misses. Make your play, Jiang-xiong; it won’t get any easier than it is right now.

Nie Huaisang murmurs, “But I don’t regret it, much. I meant what I said, and I think if I hadn’t said them, a part of me would still be angry about it, and I don’t want to resent him. Do you understand what I mean?”

A muted, fatalistic click of stone on wood, and Jiang Cheng mutters, “Just make your move.”

“I am, I am!” Nie Huaisang takes another moment for lip-chewing indecision before setting his next piece in place. “Now you go.”

Jiang Cheng surveys the board with grim resolve. He has walked into a trap; his cause will soon be done, and they both can tell. Perhaps he is also thinking back to all of the previous matches they’ve had where Nie Huaisang bumbled his way into fatal errors at the crucial moment. Perhaps Jiang Cheng is remembering how then, too, Nie Huaisang would babble to the point of distraction. He wonders whether da-ge would've seen through the strategy, where Jiang Cheng has not; da-ge who was better at weiqi, but may not have even recognized Nie Huaisang as he is now.

Frowning, Jiang Cheng sets a stone in the narrow path Nie Huaisang left open for him. Nie Huaisang opens his fan and gives himself a gentle breeze in which to consider his options.

There’s no rush to finish him. The outcome is nearly decided, but a consistent trait of Jiang Cheng’s is his willingness to trudge on to the bitter end, regardless of how dire the circumstances. It seems cruel to strike him when he’s already down, emotionally speaking, but Nie Huaisang can’t throw the match now and make it believable; making Jiang Cheng think Nie Huaisang is taking pity on him would do more damage to his pride than trouncing him fairly. Anyway, Nie Huaisang is trying to show him something, isn’t he? With every stone set on the board, Nie Huaisang is being as honest as he’s capable.

Nie Huaisang rests his cheek on a propped-up palm and takes pity: “I know you hate to lose, but I won’t think less of you if you concede. I promise I won’t go telling people.”

After a short but taut stretch of time, Jiang Cheng quietly says, “Let’s see how good this wine really is.”

Then again, you mind a bit less when you’re losing to me.

The truth comes out in fits and spurts. The wine that Nie Huaisang quickly procures them as soon as the door to his rooms closes behind them may be helping smooth the way, or it might just be providing enough deniability that Jiang Cheng is allowing himself to say things he otherwise might not. Nie Huaisang is drinking enough to set the tone, while trying not to actually get drunk; it lines his mind with fuzzy heat all the same.

The concrete facts, as Nie Huaisang understands them: a little under a year ago, there was a disagreement; Wei Wuxian was involved, somehow, though from the sounds of things was more of a topic of contention than an active party; harsh words were spoken; an ultimatum was laid. Jiang Cheng, in his stubbornness, has failed to meet its conditions, which may, if Nie Huaisang permits himself to speculate, simply be to say he’s sorry. And so he’s arrived here, helping himself to more of Nie Huaisang’s (genuinely very good!) wine, gritting his teeth audibly, and staring at the cup in his hand like it’s responsible for all of his problems.

“You’ve been too hard on him,” Nie Huaisang says; not, he thinks, without compassion.

He’s prepared for the inevitable argument, but it doesn’t come. Jiang Cheng’s face is a quite frightful grimace, but his tone is almost plaintive. “You think I don’t know she would’ve done better by him?”

It’s funny, isn’t it, that their paths have crossed so many times over the years, in sorrow and celebration. Nie Huaisang doesn’t need to explain, when they talk about da-ge. Jiang Cheng can mention his jiejie and Nie Huaisang can fill in the rest. They’ve seen each other in some truly unflattering conditions. At least they know each other, right? They know what to expect. If not in the particulars, then the broad strokes. Live long enough, and anyone becomes ashamed to look their family in the face. How can the living possibly meet the standards of the dead?

Nie Huaisang softens his voice. “I’m not trying to chastise you.”

“Isn’t that what you’ve spent the last hour doing?”

“Oh, no. I’ve hardly got a place to do that from, anyway.” Nie Huaisang supposes he’s known this all along, though not put it into so many words: Wei Wuxian’s resurrection has been to Jiang Cheng what Jin Guangyao’s death has been to Nie Huaisang. The weapon impaling you has been removed; out gushes the blood. It bears remembrance, as well, that Nie Huaisang did this to him, though Jiang Cheng seems, for now, to have either overlooked or forgiven this fact.

He adds, “I doubt I could’ve done much better. It’s a pretty raw deal for the world that it was da-ge who died and me who lived.”

Jiang Cheng’s lip twitches, and he looks up from the cup in his hand to cast Nie Huaisang a doubtful look. “That’s a stupid thing to say.”

“Excuse me?” The quality of the air has shifted.

“You aren’t the reason he died. If you’re going to wish him back, just wish him back.”

“Oh, it’s not that. I don’t know if I could face him now,” Nie Huaisang says lightly. If da-ge had never died at all, and Nie Huaisang stayed the person he always was before—it should be a comforting thought, but it’s so far away from reality it feels impossible to even imagine. It’s been nearly twenty years. Half a lifetime. He wouldn’t be able to recognize himself.

“So you'd rather he was left alone, like you were?”

“It’s not the same,” he replies, and then runs aground.

Nie Huaisang’s youthful blunders can’t be compared with the things he’s done since da-ge died. Da-ge would never live under the same roof as someone with Nie Huaisang’s record of treachery. The rest of the world stood by and let Jin Guangyao go unpunished, so it has no right to judge Nie Huaisang for what he did to collect that debt, but if da-ge was to look at Nie Huaisang now and slap him, Nie Huaisang wouldn’t say a word in his own defense. That was how he felt before he knew he was going to abandon his position, that their father’s bloodline would go to the grave with him, and—everything else. Even if he hadn’t made himself into the kind of person da-ge hated more than anything, he doesn’t know how he could explain any of that in a way that his brother could understand. It’s not the same as the way that Jiang Cheng has been left alone. Empathy has limits.

Jiang Cheng looks at him strangely, his face absent of contempt but full of a mixture of things he recognizes and some he doesn’t. A thick, clotted feeling fills Nie Huaisang’s throat. It’s difficult to swallow past it, so it’s far too late when Nie Huaisang manages to speak again.

“Will you let me give you a bath?”

Jiang Cheng is taken aback. So is Nie Huaisang; he doesn’t speak impulsively anymore, it’s something he trained himself out of long ago, but Jiang Cheng brings out his bad habits.

“I ordered one to be sent up before bed. It should be here soon.” Nie Huaisang empties his cup, and looks over Jiang Cheng without reservation. Under his eye, Jiang Cheng straightens a little in his seat. Nie Huaisang wonders whether he knows he’s doing it. “I’m trying to get you naked. Plus you might find it relaxing.”

It’s a typically humid late spring in Lanling, so even though Nie Huaisang had asked for the water to be not too hot, it’s still brought up warm enough to make him sweat just sitting beside the basin. He considers only briefly whether he should make an effort to avoid the servants noticing that Jiang Wanyin is here with him, but decides it’s not worth the effort. They’re peers. They’re both dressed. Nie Huaisang can say the water is for later, if anyone asks.

The contrast between Jiang Cheng’s naked skin and Nie Huaisang’s cocoon of clothing makes the textiles feel especially sumptuous and fine, though they’re stifling in the steam, too thick for the season as they already were. Nie Huaisang’s small hands look even smaller coming out of an effluence of sleeves. When he holds one sleeve out of the way to keep it dry, rather than a polite gentleman serving tea, he feels like a painting of a village washerwoman, or some other quaint romanticization of manual labour dreamt up by a soft-palmed aesthete, such as himself, who has done very little of it.

Nie Huaisang has been in a position of responsibility for many years, but caretaking has never come naturally to him, outside of the small comforting gestures he used to perform for da-ge when he was overburdened, before da-ge’s burdens grew far too great for Nie Huaisang to meaningfully lessen. He’s too much of a youngest child to be good at it. This, though, is simple. Anyone can scrub away someone’s sweat and dead skin.

As Nie Huaisang makes methodical progress across Jiang Cheng’s body, he enjoys not only the scented oils and the satisfying scritch of a skin-scraper over flesh, but the sights. Jiang Cheng sits with his feet planted on the bottom of the tub and his knees sticking out of the water, which rises to mid-chest. His upper calves are dusted with hair. His tits are almost bigger than Nie Huaisang’s own, truth be told. Doing one’s drills has some advantages. When Nie Huaisang’s hand goes a little further down Jiang Cheng’s chest, he cops a feel with a blandly innocent expression on his face. Jiang Cheng’s jaw tightens.

Nie Huaisang pauses, assessing, with his fingers curled in the air, and then says, “I don’t need to touch them. I mean, if you’d rather I ignored them.”

Nie Huaisang had been fascinated by Jiang Cheng’s scars, the last time Jiang Cheng took off his shirt in front of him. He hadn’t thought much of the way that Jiang Cheng had looked somewhat uncomfortable; Jiang Cheng always came across as wrong-footed when he was the object of desire (though, less and less so). Jiang Cheng had reacted like Nie Huaisang had been teasing him, which perhaps he had been, but not largely. It interested him, the stories Jiang Cheng’s body told of his suffering. He found the contrast between the puffy and discoloured scar tissue and the serpentine strength of the surrounding muscle attractive. But he hadn’t been particularly concerned with the more sensitive of Jiang Cheng’s feelings then. He’s ashamed of himself now.

“Whatever. You’ve already seen them.”

“Do they really bother you that much?”

“Touch them or don’t. I just don’t want to think about them.”

“Okay.”

Nie Huaisang finishes washing the area briskly and then moves around the basin to scrub Jiang Cheng’s back. He has to drape Jiang Cheng’s hair over his shoulders to clear the way; Jiang Cheng didn’t put it up before getting into the water, so it’s hanging loose, and Nie Huaisang will have to wash it too. For now, the bulk of it is dry, but the ends swirl around.

The longer Nie Huaisang spends time looking at Jiang Cheng’s body, the more things he finds that are worth examining. Maybe it’s the soft duskiness of candlelight, but everything is lovely to his eye, like the handful of freckles and moles scattered over Jiang Cheng’s bare back, which he’s noticing for the first time. He’s never done this for a lover before.

“Did you ever want to get married? I mean, when you were younger. If things had worked out differently.”

“I thought I would once, but there was never—no.”

“Do you regret it?”

“It wasn’t in my power to change.”

“But your parents never betrothed you to anyone? They did your sister.”

“That was only because our mother was close with Jin-furen.”

“I see, I see. Well, it’s a shame; if things had really worked out differently, you could’ve made an honest woman out of me.” If Nie Huaisang hadn’t been drinking, maybe he’d be able to be coyer. He says it casually, but Jiang Cheng doesn’t answer and his face is turned away, so Nie Huaisang adds, “But then you would’ve had to work up the courage to ask da-ge for my hand. Not for the faint of heart.”

“I would have,” Jiang Cheng retorts immediately. Nie Huaisang wonders if he put any thought into the implications of saying so, or if it’s just his reflexive need to disprove anyone who doubts that he’s capable of doing something.

“Mm. But it was probably for the best, right? What a useless wife to have, when you needed help rebuilding, and who would’ve looked after da-ge? I couldn’t have left him all alone.”

Of course, da-ge didn’t get married either. Huaisang used to feel petulant about it: why couldn’t da-ge go and have a baby so Huaisang wouldn’t have to be his heir anymore? Preemptive jealousy over having to compete for da-ge’s attention was assuaged both by the relief it would bring Huaisang and by the thought of nieces and nephews. (Huaisang has been told that when da-ge was little he had very fat cheeks, but Huaisang wasn’t born yet, and didn’t get to see.) He had his reasons for avoiding it, same as Nie Huaisang has—some of them the same, others not—but Huaisang wonders what da-ge told himself to keep the guilt at bay.

Jiang Cheng makes a muted sound which Nie Huaisang can’t identify as agreement or argument, and Nie Huaisang continues, a touch more off-handedly: “You know, he thought well of you. He would’ve given you a hard time at first, but I think he would’ve given in.”

No answer comes, and Nie Huaisang sets down the scrub-brush and turns Jiang Cheng’s face towards him with fingertips under the chin. Jiang Cheng’s cheeks are warm from the water, and he blinks like he’s confused—Nie Huaisang thinks that’s it, until he sees the wetness sticking in Jiang Cheng’s eyelashes. Oh.

Tears don’t frighten him the way they do some people. He and da-ge were both easy criers. He’s still disconcerted by the sight of it when it’s Jiang Cheng: not that Nie Huaisang is surprised that Jiang Cheng is capable of this kind of feeling, but that he’s willing to show it in front of Nie Huaisang.

Nie Huaisang lets go of Jiang Cheng’s chin and pretends he didn’t see, to give him some face. The next time he speaks, his voice is carefully indifferent. “I really did just want to give you a bath, you know. We don’t have to fuck.”

“Did I say I don’t want to?”

“Well, I didn’t want to assume.” Lest Jiang Cheng think he’s being pitied, Nie Huaisang doesn’t linger on it. “But if we’re going to keep this up, you should probably tell me what you don’t like.”

“What do you mean?” Jiang Cheng asks in a tone of vague irritation, but Nie Huaisang suspects he’s being intentionally obtuse.

“Haven’t you done your homework, after I sent you my books? People get up to all kinds of things. Don’t you worry I’ll make you do something you don’t enjoy?”

Though it’s been a while now, Nie Huaisang is still perplexed that Jiang Cheng enjoys having these things done by Nie Huaisang, specifically. It wasn’t long ago that Jiang Cheng said he didn’t trust him. Though there are different sorts of trust.

Jiang Cheng snorts. “Your cultivation isn’t strong enough to make me do anything.”

On the one hand, it’s true, and has occurred to Nie Huaisang as well. On the other, it’s naive of Jiang Cheng to think that physical strength is the only method by which someone can take advantage of someone else. Not to mention that Nie Huaisang only likes to hurt Jiang Cheng because Jiang Cheng leans in to take it, and is easy to patch up when it’s over. The satisfaction of just ruining things turns sour, eventually.

“So there’s nothing at all you wouldn’t do? And you call me a pervert.”

That does the trick; Jiang Cheng hisses Nie Huaisang’s name like a curse, and then goes quiet before saying, in a clipped tone, “No breaking skin.”

His cock, suspended in the water, gives Nie Huaisang’s wrist a neighborly brush as he washes along Jiang Cheng’s navel. “Yes, alright.”

“But you can hit me,” Jiang Cheng adds brusquely, and then adds again, “if that’s what you want.”

“Sure thing, Jiang-xiong.”

“I can’t think of anything else.”

“Well, if you do, just tell me, okay? Promise?” He doesn’t want to sound entreating, and he thinks he manages it for the most part, but he doesn’t want to linger on the topic. Nie Huaisang begins pulling Jiang Cheng's hair back over his shoulders to cover his back, and he reaches for more of the soap. “I really do like this, though. Thanks for indulging me.” He means the bath. Mostly.

“I don’t know why you like half the things we do.”

With a little pitcher, Nie Huaisang runs enough water through Jiang Cheng’s hair to wet it, and then sudses it up, making an effort not to let individual hairs snag on his fingernails. “What’s there to not understand?”

“How good could it be for you? Half of the time you don’t even come.”

Nie Huaisang laughs. “You know you’re a good-looking man, don’t you?” He massages Jiang Cheng’s scalp a little as he goes, watching the soap form a thicker lather.

“You don’t need to talk me into bed. I’m already naked.”

“I’m just telling you the truth! Give me a little credit, will you? I have excellent taste.”

Jiang Cheng valiantly presses on. “Well—what does it matter if I can’t… satisfy you?”

“I’m not sure what to tell you. There are things to enjoy about sex that don’t involve coming. Maybe it’s hard for you to believe, because you come so easily—”

He turns around indignantly. “Nie Huaisang—”

“—but it’s true.” Nie Huaisang hums, genuinely somewhat thoughtful. “Does it bother you that I don’t always come?”

Jiang Cheng grits through his teeth, “I understand if you don’t want to put us through the embarrassment of having me try.”

As if Nie Huaisang wants much more than he wants that, these days!

When Wei Wuxian told Nie Huaisang about Jiang Cheng’s list of the traits of his prospective bride, they’d laughed at his lofty standards, but most of it was only to be expected of a sect heir’s wife. Nie Huaisang wonders, as he had wondered then, how much of it really mattered to him, as opposed to being what he thought he ought to want. Jiang Cheng has desires—clearly—but prurient mind and all, the Nie Huaisang who had giggled at Jiang Cheng’s self-consciousness at the time would not have foreseen them ever doing this kind of thing together. He didn’t imagine that Jiang Cheng was capable of humbling himself for pleasure. How lovely to be wrong.

Nie Huaisang is about to shuffle back around the basin to face Jiang Cheng’s front again, but he changes his mind. “Turn back around,” he says, and warmth suffuses his stomach at the readiness with which Jiang Cheng complies.

Jiang Cheng’s face is pink and apprehensive, and meeting his gaze makes the hair on Nie Huaisang’s arms and legs prickle. His own face is impassive, but he doesn’t want to spend too long making eye contact, in case he fails to maintain it that way. Nie Huaisang lathers a little more soap at Jiang Cheng’s hairline, and wipes away stray trickles making their way down his forehead, in case they get into his eyes. It’s easier that way to say, “You’re always coming up with things to stew about, it’s silly. You don’t need to be thinking all the time.”

Jiang Cheng’s eyes dart to the floor, a little bashful—why? After everything they’ve done?—and Nie Huaisang feels, suddenly, so fiercely protective of him he doesn’t know where to put the feeling. He certainly doesn’t have enough room for it within himself.

Like a joke that isn’t, Nie Huaisang says, “Come on, Cheng’er, tip your chin back for me.” Jiang Cheng’s eyes dart back up and he gives Nie Huaisang a long look, but he tilts his neck enough for Nie Huaisang’s purpose. Nie Huaisang dips his own hands in the water to rid them of soap. “Hold your breath,” he adds.

He’s expecting some resistance on principle, some superficial protestation that Jiang Cheng doesn’t need Nie Huaisang to show him how to wash his hair, who does Nie Huaisang think he is, Jiang Cheng’s mother, but Jiang Cheng looks back at him and takes a visible breath. Nie Huaisang pinches Jiang Cheng’s nostrils between finger and thumb. Jiang Cheng’s gaze is a supplicant flicker, and then he closes his eyes.

Nie Huaisang places his other hand on Jiang Cheng’s shoulder and pushes until his head is submerged in the water. He works quickly but thoroughly, running his hand through Jiang Cheng's hair, rinsing out the soap. Jiang Cheng’s hair infuses the water around him like spilled ink. When Nie Huaisang has done a passable job, he pulls Jiang Cheng back up and releases his airway. Jiang Cheng is panting, and Nie Huaisang feels its echo in his own lungs. There’s an intoxicated look on Jiang Cheng’s tipped-back face that wasn’t there before, despite the wine. Droplets of water course down his breastbone. When their eyes meet, Jiang Cheng looks shocked—at which of them Nie Huaisang isn’t sure. In one way, Jiang Cheng is right; Nie Huaisang couldn’t have drowned him, not if Jiang Cheng wanted to live, but Jiang Cheng’s compliance makes Nie Huaisang want to sink his blunt little teeth into every piece of Jiang Cheng’s tender flesh. He settles for pushing a lock of wet hair back off of Jiang Cheng’s temple, and then Nie Huaisang looks away, reaching for oil and a comb he’d set aside earlier. “Now, hold still. I’ll try and be quick, okay?”

Once his hair has been taken care of, Jiang Cheng steps out of the bath so that Nie Huaisang can towel him off. When he finishes, he doesn’t let Jiang Cheng go, but stays sitting in front of him, towel hooked around the small of Jiang Cheng’s back, and looks up at Jiang Cheng’s face. Jiang Cheng has regained a bit of his scowl, though he’s naked as the day he was born and looks almost as fresh, his skin pinkened from the rubbing of cloth. Nie Huaisang tugs at the towel a few times, and on the third Jiang Cheng gets the hint, and sits in front of Nie Huaisang on the floor.

One of Nie Huaisang’s hands comes to rest on Jiang Cheng’s lower thigh. It’s still warm from the water, though rapidly cooling in the air. Jiang Cheng looks at it, and then back at Nie Huaisang’s face. Something has opened in Jiang Cheng’s eyes that hasn’t yet closed. Jiang Cheng says, with transparently feigned impatience, “What now?”

Nie Huaisang reads widely, when it comes to spring books: ones with just men, with men and women, and even sometimes only women, if something piques his interest. He thinks about the different male types—strict tutors, inexperienced gentleman-scholars, lecherous priests, dashing warriors. Though the rest of the world knew him as Sandu Shengshou, a man as callous as he was dangerous, his lover knew better. With grace befitting a high-level cultivator, Jiang Wanyin… What? What kind of man would it be fun for you to be with me, Jiang Cheng?

He has some guesses, but he wants to know what the sticky dreams of Jiang Cheng’s early mornings look like. Does he fantasize about Nie Huaisang half as often as Nie Huaisang fantasizes about him? There are some well-trod paths in Nie Huaisang’s mind these days, when it comes to time spent in contemplation with his own hands, and though it’s all very complicated, it’s also quite simple.

In smutty stories, the women are always beautiful and alluring, unless it’s one of the ones where she turns out to have been something else in disguise, like an animal or a wicked old hag. Nie Huaisang has a cute face, is not quite as uncoordinated as he’s made himself out to be, and can be charming in a facile way around the right company, but is otherwise a far cry from a heroine, even of this kind of trash; however, his imagination is robust, and he’s familiar enough with the genre to imagine how it might read. Nie Huaisang had to make the most of their liaison; they had only until midnight before they would have to part, and pretend they had never known the ecstasies of each other’s embrace. These forbidden flowers could bloom for only a moment before being plucked. But while they still had time to enjoy their exotic fragrance, they had to drink deeply of it. Though no maiden, she took a trembling breath, and answered— “My turn, isn’t it? I don’t want the water to get cold.”

Jiang Cheng’s eyes sharpen with curious intent.

That same Nie Huaisang who had long ago thrown away her virtue sighed, and went on: “Would Jiang-gongzi treat me as his wife? Just for the night? Would he rub my ankles, and wash my back?”

There’s a folding screen Nie Huaisang could use to bathe in private, but Nie Huaisang doesn’t want to do that, not really. Nie Huaisang purses her lips like she’s thinking, and then pats Jiang Cheng’s knee. “Go get yourself a robe, and another for me. There’s a few by the vanity, and will you grab something to put my hair up? I don’t want it getting wet.”

While Jiang Cheng fetches her things, Nie Huaisang takes her hair down, slowly. She’s buying time, in case she’ll see sense. She looks back over her shoulder and watches Jiang Cheng going through Nie Huaisang’s things with careful deliberation. He dressed himself in the spare robe, as Nie Huaisang told him to, and though it’s too short for him in the arms and legs, the sight of him in Nie family colours gives Nie Huaisang a pang in the chest.

Just as they had when Jiang Cheng unbraided Nie Huaisang’s hair in Yunping, his hands in her hair now make the room seem small. Once again, Nie Huaisang is surprised by the assuredness with which Jiang Cheng handles another person’s hair, which she shouldn’t be, after the time spent today discussing how Jiang Cheng raised a child.

“When you’re done, won’t you help me get undressed? I’m so tired, you really wore me out.”

Nie Huaisang gets to her feet, arms aloft by her sides, and Jiang Cheng begins unfastening her leather belt. The sash beneath it is next, and then the first of a series of robes. Without the layers of a scholarly leisurer, Nie Huaisang doesn’t know what she looks like, but is fairly sure it isn’t Nie-zongzhu. Because Jiang Cheng is very good and clever, he folds each item tidily before setting it aside.

When she’s down to trousers and an inner robe, she turns around, head sheepishly cocked.

“Jiang Cheng,” she starts, dragging the sounds slowly through the air. “I think I need a little more oil.”

He gives her a beleaguered look, but he returns to the vanity to look through the jars, and Nie Huaisang takes the opportunity to finish undressing and get into the tub. The water only comes to her breastbone, and she curls her toes against the inside of the basin. Jiang Cheng turns around, having found what he was looking for, and surprise flickers across his face, and then is cleared away—hastily, and not entirely.

Nie Huaisang hums and then turns around inside the tub, sitting away from Jiang Cheng with her knees propped up to her chest. “Wash my back for me?”

Moments of silence, broken only by the residual soft lapping of water, and then calloused hands, first one, and then the other, on her shoulders. When Nie Huaisang had bathed Jiang Cheng, her object had been to wash him clean of something more pernicious than dirt. Jiang Cheng’s skin had been scrubbed a dusky pink in places, the old surface thinned out to make way for the new. This is not how Jiang Cheng bathes Nie Huaisang. His hands are slow. His thumbs map out her shoulder-blades and upper back in a craftsmanlike fashion. Nie Huaisang helpfully signals her approval with hums and sighs whenever Jiang Cheng does anything particularly nice. She folds her forearms over each other on the rim of the washtub and rests her chin on top before closing her eyes. It’s not a harsh touch, but he does apply pressure, sometimes hitting on twists in Nie Huaisang’s muscles Nie Huaisang didn’t know were there until they’re loosening under Jiang Cheng’s fingers. She shifts, adjusting to the unique nakedness of having her bare neck exposed; somehow, it feels more palpable than the air on her spine.

“Are you going to start dressing,” he hesitates, “differently?”

Oh, so they’re talking about this? Very well. “Well, I couldn’t do that now. Can you imagine?”

“I mean eventually.”

Nie Huaisang trails the fingers of her free hand through the water. It feels lovely, even if the temperature is approaching lukewarm. “I’ll be far away by then.”

“So you will. Wherever you’re going.”

“If I feel like it,” Nie Huaisang says, dispassionately, like it’s a choice. It is, in a sense. There’s always a choice, but in this case it’s like the choice whether to stay in bed forever or get up; eventually life or nature will force one’s hand. “I mean, I’ll still be myself. Though,” Nie Huaisang adds after a moment, “I probably won’t go out much. I’ll just live quietly, and it won’t matter if I look ridiculous.”

The idea of what self-imposed exile will look like is slippery, and hurts to touch even as it slides out of her grasp. But justifying the things you must do is the hard part. The rest—thinking through the practicals—comes along in time, but only after you’ve committed to the task. It doesn’t do to get queasy halfway through and let everything you’ve already done go to waste.

As if sensing the direction her thoughts have taken, Jiang Cheng asks, “Are you going to come back?”

She’ll surely have to find a way to return to her family’s graves now and again while she’s still alive, to care for them, but as for herself... Where will she be interred? Da-ge's remains are also in exile. It seems deeply unjust that Nie Huaisang should be allowed to rest at home, and not him.

A lancing sting to the heart, and then Nie Huaisang folds the thought up and stows it in the locked box where she keeps all of her unlived lives. “Maybe.”

His dutiful washing has extended down her arms, and she lets him keep at it a little longer before gently shaking his hands free and swivelling around again, so she faces him. It’s no exaggeration to call him a beautiful man. He looks attentive and careful; not without his usual intensity, in fact it’s very present, but giving him a straightforward task settles him enough to make him nearly nice.

He’s retracted his hands, unsure what’s coming; a reprimand? No, not that. She gives an artificially lofty sigh, and then says, “You were doing so well before.”

Jiang Cheng snorts, not unkindly—she’s familiar with his long-suffering act, though it reminds her of how he was with Wei Wuxian, long ago, and it stirs at her strangely to see it directed at herself—and gingerly touches the side of her neck. Her spine shivers. He gently rubs soap along her collarbone and the upper part of her breastbone, but seems cautious to go down any further until Nie Huaisang places her palm over his knuckles and guides his hand to her half-submerged breast.

His face is excited-solemn-hopeful-nervous. When Jiang Cheng was a youth he was all of those things, but the expressions have been submerged beneath spite and hollow resignation for so long that every time they drift to the surface, it surprises her. The skin he touches is still impossibly sensitive, tender in the sense of young meat, and her stomach swoops when he brushes her with the pad of his thumb. He touches Nie Huaisang like he’s trying to learn her. She wants that, like she wants so many things from him. She wants him delicate and strong, tentative and bold. To know how to touch her, and how to hold back when she doesn’t want to be touched. Nie Huaisang takes his other hand and places it on her waist, below the water. Thankfully Jiang Cheng had the forethought to tie his sleeves back.

They’ve come to the part of the book that Nie Huaisang would revisit often enough for the spine to crease. Jiang-zongzhu could repress his desire no longer. In the face of his commanding yet tender caresses Nie Huaisang swooned, her—

—purchase slipping as she tries to kneel upright within the tub. Nie Huaisang clutches for something to give her balance; she’s aiming for the lip of the basin, but she ends up clinging to Jiang Cheng’s forearms—

—which brought her so near to his smouldering stare. Every channel in her body felt open and quickened, desperate for sensation; Nie Huaisang couldn’t bear it, but knew too well there was no escape from the force of their molten passion. In her anguish, she did the only thing left for her to do—

—she kisses him instead of looking away; anything to close her eyes. It should be impossible to feel this wild just from some petting. When they stop to breathe she can’t suppress small bursts of disbelieving laughter. Jiang Cheng looks a little dazed, understandably so, as Nie Huaisang is all but jumping him, any restraint abandoned—

—and she knew his sense of noble pride would keep him from asking for what he truly wanted. Nie Huaisang kissed him once more, and then brought her quivering lips to his ear—

—“Do you still want to get me off?” His fingertips dig into her flesh a little more, and he nods. Nie Huaisang takes his earlobe between her teeth for a moment before letting it go. Her fingers and toes are getting pruney, and the water isn’t as warm as it was. “I can finish the rest myself. Go over to the bed and wait for me, will you?”

Before long, Nie Huaisang sits on the edge of the amply sized bed, wearing only the clean robe Jiang Cheng had laid out for her. Jiang Cheng kneels, fingers curled against his thighs in loose fists. He’s capable of such stillness. Nie Huaisang can only get like that when she’s pretending to be unconscious, and it takes work. It’s not that Jiang Cheng is comfortable in his skin. Nie Huaisang thinks that Jiang Cheng simply sees his physical form as a tool to be kept well-honed, and from which he demands only the best performance.

She pulls her skirts up and out of the way, holding the loose material in bunched folds by her hips. Without them she’s aware of her body’s lack of elegance: weakly muscled, all bones and fat. Fleshy knees and a mostly-soft cock and a gnarled knot of scar tissue on one of her thighs.

Jiang Cheng meets her eye—she gives him a small nod—and places a palm on Nie Huaisang’s calf. It roams upwards until it falters past her knee. He’s looking at her mid-thigh; he’s found the scar. After a moment, it comes to him: “Su She.” Jiang Cheng frowns. “No. It wasn’t, was it?”

He examines Nie Huaisang’s impassive face, looks back at the scar, and then decides not to press for more. His hand slides further up Nie Huaisang’s inner thigh. Nie Huaisang takes a crisp, reflexive inhale, as if in anticipation of pain, and her knees fall apart.

Nie Huaisang feels more wrongfooted every time they fall into bed with each other, not less. With strangers, or near-strangers, Nie Huaisang doesn’t need to be Nie Huaisang, only a naive but fuckable fool. Jiang Cheng knows—oh, but what does it matter? She wants this anyway, despite her hesitance. Nie Huaisang likes to work Jiang Cheng over, more than she ever expected to, but she is a lazy person most days, and longs to sometimes lay back and be pleased. Can’t she have that, when it’s there for the taking?

“Wait—open your mouth.” Nie Huaisang holds her palm open below Jiang Cheng’s bottom lip. Jiang Cheng looks up for confirmation, incredulous—of this of all things?—before spitting into her hand. Nie Huaisang wipes his lip with the pad of her thumb before slowly stroking herself with the wetness. While she’s at it, she pushes Jiang Cheng back on his heels with a light shove of a bare foot to his shoulder. “If you use your teeth I’ll slap you, I mean it.”

When she lets herself go, their eyes meet for a quick moment: a question and an answer. Jiang Cheng swallows as if he’s about to go into battle, and then tentatively picks her cock up from where it rests in the crook of her thighs. He holds it in his warm palm, supporting it with his fingers, before he lowers his head between Nie Huaisang’s thighs. She feels his hot breath on her skin. Experimental laps of his tongue are followed by his parted lips, brushing from root to tip. His lips are slightly chapped but give way to the silken inside of his cheeks, and his free hand rests proprietarily on Nie Huaisang’s hip.

He pauses and takes his mouth away just long enough to shift one of Nie Huaisang’s legs over his shoulder, and then he wraps his hand under Nie Huaisang’s other thigh for better leverage. Nie Huaisang’s senses take in the scene only in shards: Jiang Cheng’s fingers splayed over scar tissue. Her fingers curled in the rumpled cloth of her robe. The heat of him, his flushed face and slippery mouth. It makes her feel torn up inside.

Jiang Cheng leans forward, slowly enveloping Nie Huaisang in his mouth, and Nie Huaisang moves one hand to touch the side of Jiang Cheng’s face. His eyes lift to meet hers before slipping closed again. Jiang Cheng’s wet hair sticks to the side of his face, and it makes him look ten years younger while at the same time emphasizing the gauntness of his face, which in certain light looks as though his body has rid itself of any nonessential comforts.

An unsteady thumb caresses the trough of his eye and then gently taps his cheek. Her own voice sounds like a stranger’s, throaty and hushed. “Stay still a moment. Just—like that.”

Jiang Cheng breathes somewhat laboriously through his nose, but he obeys, cradling Nie Huaisang on his tongue. Nie Huaisang wishes they had all night, that Jiang Cheng could actually stay here without it causing them problems in the morning, because his mouth is sweet and welcoming and Nie Huaisang thinks she could remain like this for ages, held safely between his lips, only idle, habitual suction buffeting at the edges of her control. But, unfortunately, their time is not endless and she’s been spendthrifty enough with it already, so she sighs and whispers, “Okay, keep going,” and Jiang Cheng pulls back to suck the tip again.

Blood blooms high and fetching on his cheeks. He looks gorgeous and more sure of himself by the moment. Nie Huaisang makes sounds to encourage him when he does something nice; it doesn’t take active effort so much as it is a choice not to suppress the body’s natural reactions. The planes of his face look smudged, messy, like paper when the colours run. Despite that, Jiang Cheng somehow looks a bit smug, not at all the tremulous stuffy virgin he was when they started out. His first time sucking dick, and he thinks he’s good at it? But, it must be admitted, Jiang Cheng is good at something, even if his motions are clumsy and he hasn’t figured out how to help himself out with his hand. Jiang Cheng would probably like to be told in exactly which ways it’s good, but right now she’s too cowardly to do it.

Nie Huaisang feels sixteen again, or twenty-two, ages when it felt like the body was something that existed for sex and it was very annoying to be expected to do other things with it, except instead of a lot of fervent, idle fantasy Nie Huaisang has what she actually wanted, back then: someone pretty, who wants her back, and has the will and the means to help her figure out the difference between what she likes and what she only likes in books. These days, when Nie Huaisang’s fantasies are pared to the core—those wordless longings and starkly crude images that defy conscious interpretation while they’re being thought—Jiang Cheng is everywhere. Sometimes it’s only a part of him. Long legs, distressed brow, flushed mouth. The curve of a hesitant smile when it’s turned against Nie Huaisang’s palm.

Now, in a similar state of mind, her thoughts are flowing unbidden and unmoderated for sense; Nie Huaisang thinks that, if she really were Jiang Cheng’s wife, Nie Huaisang would demand this from him often, like the worst kind of domestic tyrant. He’s so mellow and receptive, his eyes closed and lashes dark against his skin, suckling gently with hollowed cheeks. It’s a good thing he isn’t hers, because Nie Huaisang wants to take him home and put him in a vault, with the rest of her valuable things too precious to go on public display.

Her whole being is a dam on the verge of breaking, and Jiang Cheng leans forward and takes a bit more than he can handle—he gags but doesn’t pull back, instead letting his eyes redden and lashes get damp. The sight overtakes Nie Huaisang before she can do Jiang Cheng the courtesy of warning him; how many times is he going to make Nie Huaisang into a hypocrite? The thigh propped against his face twitches wildly. Jiang Cheng makes a muffled, reflexive sound of effort, but stays where he is, fingers tightening on her flesh. The tightness of his mouth and throat are impossible. She gasps, soundless, in pleasure that nears pain.

Nie Huaisang’s body feels as though it’s melted outwards from the core to her extremities. She’s made up of nothing but liquid. Liquid doesn’t get bruised or feel shame; it simply rests in whatever container it happens to fill. At some point, she must have fallen onto her back, though she has no memory of this; when her vision returns, she’s looking at the hangings over the bed. She doesn’t see it when Jiang Cheng eventually slides his mouth free, only feels the loss. Don’t go away, Nie Huaisang thinks, stay a bit longer, but he just rests his forehead against Nie Huaisang’s thigh. She sighs, slowly, letting something leave her with her exhaled breath, before sitting up on one elbow. He leans back on his heels and meets her eyes. His lips are wet, but it looks like he swallowed without any prompting, which gives Nie Huaisang an inexplicable urge to kiss him on the brow.

Jiang Cheng’s erection is visible through his robe. As Nie Huaisang closes her legs and pulls her own robes back into place over her lap, she gives him a pointed glance. “Sorry to have left you high and dry. You’ve been a good sport about it.”

“Shut up.”

“Maybe we should do it more often. Practice your stamina.”

“I mean it.”

Nie Huaisang could continue to ignore it, but she doesn’t find it likely she’ll enjoy denying him more than she’ll enjoy giving him what he wants after he’s been so agreeable. “Come here, come here.” She pats the bedsheet beside her, in case her words aren’t clear, and after a moment’s confusion—in his defense, it’s difficult to think straight when one is as aroused as Jiang Cheng appears to be—he gets to his feet. She sits up to direct him so that he kneels astride her hips, and then she lets her head fall back against the bed.

He doesn’t touch himself right away. Nie Huaisang places her hands on his thighs, pushing the hem of his robe up as she slowly runs her fingers through the hair on his legs, and tilts her head.

“Alright, you had your fun with me. Now show me your cock already.”

Jiang Cheng huffs, but pulls his robe aside to grasp himself. Up close, Nie Huaisang can see how tightly he fists his dick; it gives her a little sympathetic discomfort, though it’s not truly surprising that he uses a harsh grip. It makes her feel a sort of fond tut-tutting, like, Ah, of course; oh, you.

Nie Huaisang could watch this for days. He looks so fucking good it’s stupid. They’re both nearly naked, in nothing but Nie Huaisang’s spare under-robes, and she can see the tan line at Jiang Cheng’s collar where his skin is usually covered up. Jiang Cheng’s gaze can’t seem to stay on any one part of Nie Huaisang at a time: it flits from neck to navel to parted mouth.

Before she can think too much of it, Nie Huaisang lifts one of her hands off of his thigh and brings it to her chest. Nie Huaisang is loath to disturb him while she’s admiring the view, but she needs someone’s hands on her. She doesn’t know—isn’t sure this won’t look silly—but when she cups that paradoxical softness and firmness, so unlike the feeling of a man’s chest, it’s like her heartbeat hasn’t gone down a bit. Her ribcage still rises and falls with quick, unsteady breaths. He places his free hand on her other breast, but isn’t even really feeling her up so much as steadying himself as he leans in a bit closer, his muscled thighs squeezing her sides more tightly, as he touches himself to her touching herself until he lets out a choked ghost of a sound. She withdraws her hand just in time for him to come in jagged strokes over her tits and stomach, and Nie Huaisang moans in a way that would be less embarrassing if it was staged.

Jiang Cheng keeps wringing what he can from his dick for as long as he can stand before releasing it with a susurrous sigh. Nie Huaisang would usually play flustered about getting come on, like she can’t believe how naughty this whole predicament is, but none of that impulse comes to her admittedly dazed mind. It doesn’t seem important, in the way it had always been important, to pretend she hadn’t intended for things to happen like they did. Instead, she paws at his sleeve. “Come on, Jiang Cheng, you made such a mess. How are we supposed to cuddle like this?”

He’s too far gone for false modesty. Jiang Cheng bends over her but pauses with his lips parted over the nipple. The feeling of his hot breath alone makes it tighten and her toes curl before he lowers his head the rest of the way and takes it in his mouth. While he sucks, his thumb rubs circles over the other. Nie Huaisang’s tits really aren’t big, they hardly justify such careful attention. Eventually he moves on, travelling south: Jiang Cheng’s mouth follows the slight valley between Nie Huaisang’s ribs to Nie Huaisang’s belly, cleaning up his own spend, kissing her skin, messy and open-mouthed.

Afterwards, when Nie Huaisang is restored to some kind of decency, he lays on his back beside her. After a time, Jiang Cheng turns to look at her, but not at her face; his eyes trace her body. Nie Huaisang looks away from the ceiling and fixes him with a stare, suppressing the urge to fidget.

Between the late hour and the residual sleepy satisfaction of sex, they both seem content to enjoy the closeness. Nie Huaisang has known plenty of truly tall men, so she knows that he isn’t really that tall, but next to Nie Huaisang in the bed, he seems so long.

“I don’t think any wife in Carp Tower has been treated so well tonight,” Nie Huaisang says, magnanimously, because it’s true, and he deserves to hear it. A person could grow old like this.

Jiang Cheng makes a little tch that means he’s touched but can’t just say so, and Nie Huaisang rolls onto her front so she can watch him more easily, propped up on her elbows.

Zidian sits on his hand; he never took it off for the bath. Spiritual weapons don’t rust, she supposes, so why risk losing it? It’s an angry thing. Nie Huaisang has seen it crackle with dormant rage on Jiang Cheng’s fist many times. How come a tool like that can exist without taking from its owner so cruelly, but their sabres cannot? What is it about their own cultivation that’s so set on making them pay for whatever they get out of it? What’s wrong with them, to dream up something like that?

Nie Huaisang has never wanted children, even before she knew what having children in their family meant. But that means no one to care for you when you’re old, no one waiting by your bedside while life slips away from you. She’d known she would likely die alone, but she’d thought—while still sect leader, she could assume that someone would be around who would be concerned for her, even if it were only the obligatory concern of a disciple for a lackadaisical master. Nie Huaisang could leave a note, she supposes, with whichever strangers end up in closest proximity to her, to be delivered to Qinghe upon her death, letting them know she’s truly never coming back. The news would filter out to the rest of the world eventually. Jiang Wanyin would hear it before long, if he outlives her, which seems likely based on their levels of cultivation. The thought doesn’t rest easily, and Nie Huaisang amends that perhaps she should leave two notes, and do him the courtesy of learning the news from her own hand. So that he doesn’t dismiss it as rumour. He’s prone to holding onto disbelief when it comes to things like that.

Usually, Nie Huaisang can contemplate these things clinically, but right now it gives her a leaden feeling. She doesn’t love life, but she lives it. One is not required for the other. But, when touched like this, she’s grateful to still have a body.

“We were pretty foolish to wait so long to do this.” To wait until there’s almost no time left for them at all, she means.

Flatly: “Yeah.”

Regardless of the reasons why they shouldn’t do this anymore, it’s clear without either of them having to say it that they’ve both given up on self-denial, at least for now. It’s not that they’ve gone back on their word. They can only sustain this intimacy because it’s circumscribed.

Her fingertips have found the back of Jiang Cheng’s hand. She pets the skin over the sharp bones and the soft blue veins.

“But it’s nice to be able to pick.” Nie Huaisang’s voice is quiet and small.

Jiang Cheng sounds muffled, on the edge of sleep; he sounds like he should be talking into a pillow. “What are you talking about?”

“You know.” Nie Huaisang hasn’t felt drunk in a while—in all honesty not since they sat at the table—but there must be some wine still flowing in her blood, because her mouth is saying things without the permission of her mind. “You’re not here because anyone told you to be. I just—invited you.”

Sometimes she thinks that, in order for this lifetime to have turned out so poorly, there must be another Nie Huaisang in another world, on the other side of a door somewhere, who has succeeded in keeping the things that this one has lost, or never had. Right now that door must be very close; it's like she can hear the sound of voices on the other side.

When Jiang Cheng took Lotus Pier back from the Wens, he rebuilt every damaged or burnt building as a near-replica of the one that had come before. Jin Ling’s recent renovations to Carp Tower are nearly entirely aesthetic; We’ve broken with the past, the gleaming fixtures and tiles say, though the bones of the structures are more or less intact, and only time will tell whether reinvention or inheritance will win out.

Nie Huaisang thinks of this, as she says her farewells to Jin Ling before Qinghe Nie departs for home, and thinks also of the home that awaits her. Barring a few redecorations and upgrades, the Unclean Realm remains near-identical to the place where Nie Huaisang was born. That’s in part due to the fact it survived the war intact, but in a few decades, what visible remnants of her time as sect leader will remain?

She always thought—and maybe for a while thought of it as a comfort, as something that made her stronger than others—that she didn’t care about whether she would ever be mourned. It was an advantage, at times. She thinks Mo Xuanyu may have thought they had in common. More fool both of them, then, as Nie Huaisang remembers him with something like regret, and no longer thinks it’s likely that no one alive will remember her with sadness, either. It’s the kind of thing she ought to be happy about, isn’t it? But it makes everything so much harder.

After the formalities are through, Nie Huaisang pauses, contemplative; but ah, screw it. “I’ve heard from your uncle about this little disagreement you’re having.”

It takes little to jar Jin Ling out of his sect leader's demeanor, which is still largely reliant on rote memorization. He looks skeptical, suspicious. “I hadn’t realized you and Uncle were so close.”

“Really? We’ve known each other since we were young. I guess maybe he doesn’t talk about those days.”

“Uncle’s never had many friends. I’d never seen you spend much time together until lately.”

“Oh? Have we been?” Nie Huaisang can’t, she supposes, claim they’ve been very subtle. “Well, anyway, what I mean to say is… I know it’s not my business, and I don’t like to meddle. I won’t tell you to make nice if you don’t want to. You shouldn’t unless you mean it. But whenever you do, I don’t think there’s much he wouldn’t be able to forgive of you. He’s just... You know how he is, but people can change. And don’t tell him I said this, but he’s lonely.”

Jin Ling’s mouth twists—he looks so much like Jiang Cheng; she thinks this every time she sees him, but it remains true—but he mutters, “I know.”

“If you have things to say to him, you should say them. We never have as much time as we think.” It doesn’t make it much easier when you love them, Nie Huaisang knows.

Nie Huaisang wants to say, Look after him, even though Jiang Cheng isn’t old enough yet to justify it. But if not Jin Ling, then who? Who else is close enough to Jiang Cheng to disregard his own disregard for his happiness?

Instead, Nie Huaisang steers the conversation back to calmer waters. She asks Jin Ling about design: where did he get the inspiration for the newly remodelled interiors? He’s shy about it, like he thinks he’s being tricked into something, but he’s done a good job with the place, truthfully, even if it does all bear that signature Lanling Jin garishness. Eventually, Jin Ling mutters, “I didn’t do much of it myself. I’m not good at that kind of stuff.”

“Well, then, congratulations on your choice of designers. That’s a skill too, you know.” By his expression, Jin Ling thinks Nie Huaisang is mocking him, but she means it. “I don’t know what your uncles told you, but a sect leader doesn’t need to be good at everything. Get good at finding people who are good at the things you aren’t. It’ll get you by just as well, and you might get some time for yourself now and then.”

Now Jin Ling looks at Nie Huaisang like he’s hallucinating. Well should he! What’s next, after Nie Huaisang dispensing sensible advice? “But what do I know,” Nie Huaisang adds, and flutters her fan a little faster.

Eventually, a year will come in Qinghe when no one remembers Nie Huaisang at all, and that might be for the best, even if it’s sooner than one might otherwise anticipate. Perhaps especially then. The sect managed to get by, during her long stint of dragging its name through the mud; surely it can manage again without her direct supervision. Nie Huaisang has made it into a machine that can maintain itself.

Sorry for ruining your life, Nie Huaisang thinks, though she is and she isn’t. What she is: glad she didn’t get him killed. And she ought to give Jin Ling credit; he’s muddling along well enough.

“Thank you, Nie-zongzhu,” Jin Ling says eventually. It’s still gruff, still uncertain, but not unkind. He’s a good boy, really. Jiang Cheng, you raised a good boy, despite yourself. Don’t get in your own way now.

If asked about it after the fact, onlookers at that year’s discussion conference assembly might describe Nie-zongzhu as having been an unusually sombre sight: subfusc in dress and distant in expression. However, few people in the room that day are paying attention to Nie Huaisang, and if they are, that attention is quickly diverted. In the hubbub to come, observations of this kind will be easily forgotten in favour of more gripping things.

Regardless of the topic of discussion, today Nie Huaisang appears distracted by nearly everything. The leader of Qinghe Nie is recently forty but still in possession of a boyish look—not the ethereal verdure of high-level cultivators, but an aristocratic doughiness attributed to having been spared most of life’s physical hardships. If anything, Nie Huaisang’s cheeks seem fuller than this time last year.

For her part, Nie Huaisang hasn’t so much been distracted as she has been paying very close attention to her surroundings—the two states can appear indistinguishable. It’s not due to the conference itself being of any particular interest. The subject matter is nothing new, and the only good part of the morning so far was when Nie Huaisang dragged a snort out of Jiang Cheng by leaning across a lunch table to whisper behind her fan about how ugly the Ouyangs’ new sect uniforms are. But she must pay attention nonetheless; eventually there will come a lull in the proceedings, and then she must seize her moment.

When she delivered the news the first time, the various elders, advisors, senior disciples and high-ranking retainers of Qinghe Nie had been sitting fanned out around her at the meeting table back home. That group, which passes for an inner circle—it’s important that there appears to be one, so that no one outside the sect questions how the bills always get paid on time and Nie Huaisang’s blunders never seem to harm the sect members in a lasting way—are the most useful and trustworthy she has. She’s known most of them since she was a child, and they’ve served this role since the days early in her leadership when her overwhelm with the tasks required of her was hardly feigned. When Nie Huaisang was young, she thought she was the cousin of everyone even close to Heijan, but that was because she had so many aunties and uncles it was hard to remember which ones she was actually related to.

Nie Huaisang may never have intended to become sect leader, but she’s not without skills. One of these is that she can carry conversations without trouble, and knows how to make most people into friends. She delegates, but never gives any one disciple enough information about her plans or pursuits to come to conclusions other than that their sect leader has eclectic interests and is prone to indulging flights of fancy. Over the years, she’s taken to appearing around the compound, unannounced and often at odd hours, to politely request to watch the preparations being made for the next day’s training, or to have a late-working clerk explain sums. This habit, sustained over the years, has given the effect that the disciples of Qinghe Nie believe their sect leader could be anywhere, at any time, ready to hold them to account. Nie Huaisang takes pains not to make them feel overburdened, so that this doesn’t provoke resentment; she brings gifts and is always complimentary. Still, she watches, and she lets them know she watches. She keeps a rotating schedule of lunch partners from all levels of the sect, and asks over their birthdays, their families, their interests. No one is given reason to feel forgotten, or as though their conduct goes unobserved, and her confidantes are everyone and no one.

Over the weeks before she called the meeting, Nie Huaisang had been letting the news trickle through the sect via off-handed comments made in this conversation or that. For this reason, when she came out and said it outright in front of the whole council—she’s going into seclusion, far from the Unclean Realms; it’s important and she isn’t sure when she’ll be back; things should continue as usual in the meantime—the surprise was mostly performed for her benefit. Still, she let it play out in murmurs and heavy nods while she fidgeted until the room became silent once again.

“Now, I don’t want to leave you all in the lurch,” she said, voice tripping over itself like a child in overlong robes, “so I’ve prepared some lists of things it would be really helpful for you to take care of while I’m away…”

That is how it began in earnest, the process of running away from her own long shadow.

Today, in Gusu, the remarks of Sect Leader Whoever wind to a close. Nie Huaisang fidgets again, half-consciously, and sits up straight. She clears her throat with a barely-audible self-deprecating laugh, and opens her mouth—

“There is still one item,” intones Lan Wangji from the head of the room, and she bites her tongue.

In his fashion, Lan Wangji gives no further preamble. “I am withdrawing from the position of Chief Cultivator.” The air clots with a sticky silence. “I am leaving in the spring, by which time the next appointment will be finalized.” He sits down, face inscrutable as ever, and for moment nobody says a thing. It doesn’t last long; quickly, whispers spread throughout the hall. One sect leader starts out, “But, Your Excellency—”; another, down three places from him at the table, begins, “Surely—”; and then the room erupts in a conflagration of dismay and no little outrage. After all, it doesn’t take much guesswork to arrive at the conclusion that when Lan Wangji says he’s leaving, he doesn’t mean alone, and if he's travelling with company, there’s no mystery as to the identity of his companion. If there were any doubt, Lan Wangji practically confirms it by the stony look on his face as he weathers the questions and answers none.

The chaos is such that, when Nie Huaisang slides another announcement into the agenda just before the talks come to an end, hardly anyone is giving it their full attention. Sure, it may be odd for Nie-zongzhu to go into secluded meditation when he’s never cared about developing his cultivation before, but Hanguang-jun is eschewing his duties to go gallivanting around the countryside with a man everyone thought he’d at least have the propriety to pretend was his dirty little secret! I mean, one of these events signals the disappearance of one of the cultivation world’s most prominent leaders from public life, and the other one is about Nie Huaisang!

Jiang Cheng is looking at her; Nie Huaisang can tell, though she doesn’t turn to meet his eye. He may be the only person in the room more focused on her than on Hanguang-jun. Let him look, for what good it will do either of them.

“Enjoying the evening air alone, Jiang-zongzhu? Or are you waiting for someone?”

Jiang Cheng gives her a sour look, nearly friendly in the familiarity of its exasperation, and Nie Huaisang laughs.

After dinner, people are still milling around, engaging in a subdued, Cloud-Recesses-appropriate form of wheeling and dealing. Nie Huaisang had exited the dining hall as quickly as possible, and fell into step with Jiang Cheng almost effortlessly.

They walk amidst the sunset, with no particular destination. “I suppose congratulations are in order,” Jiang Cheng says begrudgingly. Nie Huaisang looks at his face in profile, and her mental register of Jiang Cheng Expressions comes up with nothing.

“Only if they’re sincere.”

“I’m sure you’re glad it’s over with.”

She chooses to respond by being cautiously blithe. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”

If there was something more that Jiang Cheng wanted to say, he’s in no hurry to do so.

Nie Huaisang steers the conversation to more neutral ground, and they make an idle way through the Cloud Recesses at a pace that makes Nie Huaisang feel as though they ought to be stroking their nonexistent beards. Jiang Cheng begins enumerating his critiques of the Caiyi waterway system, and Nie Huaisang hums encouragingly and asks prompting questions whenever required. Most of her attention is, in truth, focused on Jiang Cheng’s hair; the evening light plays reddish on the black. She thumbs the hem of her innermost sleeve and lets her gaze move to the way he walks; rigid but graceful. For this reason—her distraction—she doesn’t recognize the shapes coming towards them out of the corner of her eye until Jiang Cheng's spine goes rigid and all of his gracefulness flows away.

The covered walkways are not spacious enough to allow passing parties to easily avoid one another. They stop, all four of them, and it’s Jiang Cheng who speaks first.

“Hanguang-jun.” He gives the tiniest of salutes and a bare incline of the head, which is more than Nie Huaisang was expecting. In a tone as though it takes him great strain, he adds, “Wei Wuxian.”

Nie Huaisang quickly makes her greetings, a trifle more warmly, as does Wei Wuxian. Lan Wangji does the same, after enough of a pause that his disinterest is fully articulated. She expects that to be all and for everyone to run along, but Jiang Cheng looks Lan Wangji square in the face and asks, “So, is the wedding going to be before or after you leave?”

It’s a testament to how well-practiced Nie Huaisang is at controlling her face that her eyes don't go wide with horror. They were having a nice evening before, really, Jiang-xiong, must you escalate everything—but rather than Lan Wangji lashing back out at him, the question is answered by Wei Wuxian, who looks wary but level. “After we get back. We’re hoping that Zewu-jun will have finished his time in seclusion by then.”

Nie Huaisang fans herself and smiles pleasantly, looking between the three of them. Lan Wangji continues staring at Jiang Cheng with naked enmity. Jiang Cheng’s shoulders and jaw are squared, but he’s not, it appears, actually been sarcastic, or even done anything particularly objectionable, though there’s still time for him to change that. Wei Wuxian, however, is looking at Nie Huaisang—and now at Jiang Cheng, and now back to Nie Huaisang—with a curious eye that fills Nie Huaisang with suspicion.

Blessedly, no one insists on keeping the conversation going longer, and everyone goes on their mutual ways. Nie Huaisang waits until they’re well out of earshot, and even then lifts her fan to shield her mouth from any other passersby: “Their wedding? Hold on… you knew that all this was coming, didn’t you? And here I thought you kept me abreast of your gossip.”

“I don’t think they’re putting much effort into keeping anything under wraps.”

She hums. After several silent minutes, she says softly, “I think that’s the most mellow I've seen you around Wei Wuxian in years.”

“I know how to act in polite society. You make me sound like some kind of village ruffian.”

Nie Huaisang’s mouth curls in a wry smile, but she decides not to push it.

“I can’t say I’m too sorry to see Lan Wangji leave his post.”

Darkly, Jiang Cheng replies, “Let’s hope whoever takes over will let us drink after sitting through these circuses.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it. Odds are it’ll be Lan-lao-qianbei—not that he’ll be pleased! Unless you’re volunteering yourself.”

She’s not sure what she’s expecting in response—A gleam of ambitious pride? Uncouth dismissal?—but when she looks back at Jiang Cheng, he only looks distracted.

“What’s gotten into you, then?”

Jiang Cheng glances at her face, and then quickly away. “Come see me before curfew sets in. If you can spare the time.”

“Oh?”

She’s expecting him to play coy, following which she can pretend to talk him into having fun, which is their pattern—and an enjoyable one!—but Jiang Cheng just replies, “Come or don’t, I don’t care.”

The air is pine-scented, fresh and brisk; Nie Huaisang’s stomach is still full from a surprisingly satisfying, albeit meatless, dinner. There’s still enough daylight for Nie Huaisang to count Jiang Cheng’s delicate freckles.

“I suppose I could make the walk.”

It’s the first time they’ve had a private meeting in Jiang Cheng’s room, instead of Nie Huaisang’s. The knowledge tingles in her stomach as she makes her way through the open-air corridors. She raps on the doorframe—two knocks, quiet but clear—and runs her fingers through her hair while she waits.

She’s expecting to be admitted promptly, and she is. Very promptly. Jiang Cheng must have been quite close to the door when he heard her knock; that, or he dropped whatever he was doing, which his rushed air seems to imply. She shouldn’t linger in the walkway, where any passerby could see her, but she pauses a moment before coming in. He looks at her, ruddy-cheeked. Nie Huaisang looks back, probably the same, then remembers what she came here for, and blinks expectantly. Jiang Cheng gives his head a little shake, and then moves aside to let her in.

She closes the door behind her. The sound of the base sliding in its track sends goosebumps up her arms. When she turns around, Jiang Cheng is standing very close. Of course, he was very close—he only just moved aside enough for her to pass—but, like this, his shoulders block out most of the light, and the very quality of the air feels different.

The moment her back hits the wall, arousal drops through her chest like a match falling to the kindling. Nie Huaisang couldn’t say whether she chose to lean against it or if she was pushed by Jiang Cheng’s advance, but she tips her head back and loses herself in his attention. A knee bullies its way between her legs, and her thighs squeeze around it reflexively as she gasps into his mouth. He reaches for the place her collar folds over; she reluctantly takes her hands out of his hair in order to unfasten her belt so that Jiang Cheng can get his hands under her robes.

They were in frequent contact over the summer by mail, and were even able to make time for a handful of overnight meetings, but it’s been a month since they saw one another, and some things can’t be done on paper. She’s put more than a little thought towards how they could best spend their time, the next opportunity they had to take an evening for themselves, but her elaborate plans feel far away compared to the immediacy of touch just for touching’s sake.

If she’s not imagining things, she thinks they might both be feeling the scarcity of the moment. They shed items of clothing while stumbling over the floor, heedless of tearing, and every few steps they stop to resume kissing and grasping at one another in a way she would describe as frantic. Jiang Cheng’s eyes are blown out, dark and desolate. When she parts his robes enough to touch his bare skin, Nie Huaisang snakes her hand around his waist to rake her nails down his back. She swallows each of the little gasps that follow, and is still left ravenous.

As she so often is, lately, she finds herself caught up in regret. Her mind combs through the past, looking for moments that she can latch onto—if only this day or that one went differently, could we have had this together sooner?—though she knows perfectly well there was never any way. She had traded away the ability to be close to other people. It bought her what she needed it to, but the price was even more sore than she realized. She didn’t know what she was missing until she’d actually had it.

At one point, Jiang Cheng seems to regain a bit of his senses. He catches one of her wrists. “You aren’t… too tired?”

“If I was, I just wouldn’t have come. I’m terribly flaky like that.”

“I didn’t ask you here just for… I mean, we don’t need to—”

“You’re very gentlemanly, Jiang Cheng, thank you, but there’s such a thing as being too respectful.” Nie Huaisang doesn’t bother trying to keep her impatience from her voice, and when she tugs at his robes with an expectant expression, he gives way. If they give themselves too much space for contemplation, she’s not confident she won’t unravel.

From there, it takes no time at all to head towards a real destination: they make it to his bed, where Nie Huaisang spills over Jiang Cheng’s lap, half-laying, half-sitting up, propped up against pillows. He kneels between her spread thighs with one hand lifting up one of her knees and the other, slick with oil, under the single loose robe she’s still wearing, and so close—but not quite—to where she wants it.

He’s not teasing her on purpose. Jiang Cheng has done a good job making up for lost time when it comes to his lack of experience, but being playfully withholding in bed is not an impulse she imagines would come naturally to him. More likely, he’s nervous because he wants to do it right the first time. Nie Huaisang is partially to blame for this. She braces her other heel on the bed, opening her legs a little wider, and thinks back to the letters they exchanged before coming here. She had given him a bunch of lurid threats that she wasn’t going to let him come until she was wholly satisfied, blah blah, but only because she thought he would get off on it. Being playfully withholding is her thing!

Her voice is casual, fond, chastening. “You remember what it’s like when I do you? Just do the same thing. I’ll like it too.” She taught Jiang Cheng how this goes, didn’t she? He knows what she likes already, and he doesn’t even know it.

Jiang Cheng won’t meet her eyes. A high blush stains his face, but he sets his jaw, and the tip of his finger begins circling her rim, exerting firm and steady pressure.

Nie Huaisang tips her head back and lets her eyes roam around the room. She doesn’t want to make him feel too self-conscious. His things are kept in meticulous order, and there’s enough visual reminders of his presence here to tug a wry smile out of the corner of her mouth. Heavy purple robes are being aired out on wardrobe racks. The incense burning on the table is more heady and floral than something she’s ever smelled in Gusu before. It’s endearing to think of him bringing a little thing like that from home. She admires anyone who knows their own tastes and feels no shame about indulging them.

When she speaks again, her throat feels thick. “You can push a little more than that. Just be patient. I can take it.”

Soon, he’s penetrated Nie Huaisang up to the second crook of his finger, and he’s still careful, but curiosity seems to have gotten the better of his overabundance of caution. He’s taken to massaging the inside of her body with keen focus paid to the response each experiment produces. She touches him while he touches her, running her hands possessively over his shoulders, his arms, his back. She can’t help it; she’s a greedy person.

By the time he introduces a second finger, Nie Huaisang is no longer confident that she can maintain even a smokescreen of distance from sensation. Jiang Cheng has a determined little expression on his face, and his long fingers can reach much further than her own can. Her hole clutches around him every time he pulls his fingers back. She feels improbably tight even as she focuses on her breath, willing her body to let him in.

“That’s enough, now. Lean back—there you are—”

Nie Huaisang helps him along, in a sense, pushing him down by the shoulders before swinging a leg over his hip. Jiang Cheng bites his lip, and she’s distracted for a long moment by the red swell of his mouth. She lets her skirts fall back down, draping over both of their waists, and then reaches behind her to grasp his dick and pull him into position very smoothly, she thinks, for it being sight unseen. His tip nudges at her opening—his shaft throbs in her hand, and her own body gives an answering pulse against her thigh—she releases a deep breath, clears her mind, and lets him push inside.

She can immediately tell that she went too fast, but she came here wanting to get fucked. It’s not difficult, exactly, but there are always moments when it isn’t easy, either: there’s a struggle between the body's insistence that it can't be done and the mind’s cool memory of all the times it has been done before. Bare knees press into the sheets on either side of Jiang Cheng’s waist, and she pauses for breath halfway down. She opens her eyes—unsure when she shut them—to see Jiang Cheng watching her with an incredulous, near-offended expression that makes her laugh, which relaxes her muscles enough for her to sink down a little further, so it trails off into a weak moan.

She comes to a standstill around the pressure of his cock inside her and leans against his thighs for support. Jiang Cheng’s head is tipped back, and she watches light and shadow play over the hollow of his clavicle and the ridges and tendons of his throat.

“Give me your hands.”

Nie Huaisang takes his wrists and braces Jiang Cheng’s palms on her hips. She places her own hands on her thighs for balance. Her heartbeat pulses from the inside out. “Don’t move, okay? Stay still.”

Anticipation runs through Jiang Cheng’s body; she feels it in the tensing of hands on her haunches. She doesn’t move, or tries not to. It’s a bit of a struggle, keeping it together. She wants him like this, quite badly, and shudders run through her every time she shifts in place. The real issue to be accommodated for is his limited stamina, and she also likes to make him beg for it. She is patient, exceptionally so, but a tantalizing flush is flowing from places she didn’t always associate with pleasure: her scalp, the base of her neck, the centers of her palms.

Softly, Nie Huaisang caresses Jiang Cheng’s cheekbone. His face is warm and damp with sweat. “You’re being very good,” she says, and the intensity of his eye contact slackens in a way that burns her up, deep within. The sight of him losing his composure helps her gain back a little of her own, so Nie Huaisang blinks down at him, placid as a tigress in repose, and then draws her hand down his face to trace circles around his lips. “Now it’s your turn. Let me in, will you?”

He looks at her reprovingly, but he opens his mouth. Nie Huaisang slides two fingers onto his tongue, and then taps the underside of his chin with her other hand. Jiang Cheng takes the hint; he screws his eyes shut and seals his lips.

“There you are,” she murmurs. “See how good you can be, when you’re in a nice mood.” Her thumb strokes his jawbone. It’s late enough in the day that she can feel the beginnings of tomorrow morning’s stubble. His mouth is just as silken and inviting as the last time she felt it from the inside, and the sight of him uncharacteristically complaisant makes the blood run hot between her thighs. Nie Huaisang can’t stop herself from rocking back and forth slightly around the pressure of him inside her, so it may be time to stop delaying what they’ve both come here for.

She withdraws her hand, letting spit-soaked fingers trail across his cheek on the way out. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a tease. But—I’m having fun. You know that, right?”

His voice comes out cracked and a little desperate. “What are you waiting for.”

“Oh, nothing, really. It’s okay, I’ve made you wait enough. You can fuck me now.”

Nie Huaisang wants to keep him on the edge longer, but can’t keep denying herself; she folds her calves tighter against his body and then slowly pushes herself up, feeling him move through her, from her core to her fingers and toes.

She hasn’t quite been sure why she’s put this off for so long—being fucked by him. It used to be one of the centerpieces of her sexual life. She likes the way it feels, and the idea of it, with him, has been the subject of no little amount of fantasizing. It may be because of how different it is from the other things they’ve done together, at least on the surface. They may both enjoy being on the receiving end of this type of act, but it’s for different reasons. Nie Huaisang hopes that Jiang Cheng knows that. She’s felt a not insignificant amount of hesitance around muddying the waters, but her departure is increasingly imminent, and she doesn’t want to leave behind unfinished business, even something as unimportant as an unsatisfied whim.

Nie Huaisang has many fond memories of being fucked in the back rooms of one bathhouse or another by some burly man who didn’t know Nie-zongzhu from any other wealthy sybarite, or at least had the decency to pretend not to. It was a straightforward kind of pleasure, which fulfilled both the need for sexual gratification and the more pitiful craving for any kind of affectionate touch. In-the-body without being of-the-body. But—Jiang Cheng—she wants to look him in the eyes, and for each of them to find it impossible to pretend the other is anyone else, or that they themselves are anyone else. Even as it plays out around them, Nie Huaisang is already stamping this moment into the pages of her memory with a methodical hand.

She rests her hands on his thighs to steady herself, and sinks back down. There’s something very raw about the feeling. Their eyes meet, and a searing tightness constricts in the pit of her stomach.

“Do you like it?” The pitch of her voice is somehow both husky and fluttery. “Is it good?”

What even is that? She hasn’t said something so inane in a sincere attempt to be sexy since she was twenty at the absolute outside, but everything else that comes to mind is equally foolish and even more earnest. The risk of seeming foolish has never stopped her before, but she can live without the consequences of telling Jiang Cheng that she loves the way his cock feels in her ass. Or calling it her pussy just to see what his face does. Or saying that she hopes he’ll never have better sex with anyone else, because it wouldn’t be fair.

Jiang Cheng responds with a feverish nod, so at least she doesn’t need to worry about feeling inarticulate by comparison.

“Help me out a little, Jiang Cheng—put your hands on my—oh, yes, that’s perfect.” He reaches under her robe; though she can’t see it, Nie Huaisang feels his fingertips dimple her flesh. The next time she speaks, her voice is just as hoarse, but gentler. “You don’t need to hesitate.”

A shadow of nameless emotion passes over his eyes.

The muscles in his upper arms shift as he moves to the pace she’s set for them. It doesn’t even look like it takes him much effort, but it is a lot easier to ride him when she’s not supporting her own weight. Nie Huaisang runs her tongue over lips parched from open-mouthed breath, and says—thankfully having regained the capacity for flippancy—“Look at you, you workhorse,” and then snorts at his indignant expression. Jiang Cheng’s hair is tousled around his face, rumpled from motion. He’s never looked better.

She doesn’t know if she’s ever had sex so slowly. Usually, she wants to be pushed headlong into intensity, striving for everything faster, harder, until she can’t think, but she doesn’t want him to come yet, and she’s not sure she’d want them to speed up even if that weren’t a concern. Jiang Cheng has found a rhythm, rolling his hips up into her at a moderate but steady pace. He’s got the right idea; the more carefully they sway together, the harder it becomes to distinguish between his movements and her own. Her robe is sticking to the small of her back. It’s too good to bother trying not to moan; before they made it to the bed, Nie Huaisang had the forethought to set up a silencing talisman, and she’s glad for it now—

“—Do you have to be so loud?”

Jiang Cheng’s face is bright red. He looks desperately embarrassed, extremely turned on, and considerably pleased.

Nie Huaisang makes an outraged sound and then wiggles to try and spur Jiang Cheng into moving again. “Have you heard yourself?”

(Honestly! When he’s the one—it doesn’t matter whose fingers or what kind of toys are involved—!)

Strands of Nie Huaisang’s hair cling to her neck. She’s not hard, and doesn’t feel any urge to change that. She might be able to come just like this—she has before—and if she doesn’t, she doesn’t think she’ll regret making the effort.

Their faces are so close together. When did they get so close? Her hands are on his chest, and she wants to kiss him again, but she’s cautious—no, not cautious, afraid—

“Jiang Cheng,” she says, instead of letting her thoughts run any further, and guides one of his hands up to her breast. He’s good at this part—just touching her. Jiang Cheng runs his fingers over her skin like he thinks he’s about to get caught doing something he shouldn’t, and he needs to make the most of it while he can. He fits his palm over her nipple and pushes up inside her at the same time, and Nie Huaisang’s thighs tremble. She’s quite close after all, she realizes.

The tips of her extremities begin to tingle. The sensation spreads up to the base of her spine, and she hears herself as though she’s out of her own body, making little startled sounds, and as Jiang Cheng keeps fucking into her from below, he fits her nipple between two of his fingers and squeezes—and after that, well—

She feels sore; sore, and good. It’s as though something was taken from her, but she doesn’t miss it. A weight, lifted.

He finished a heartbeat after she did, so there wasn’t any time for him to pull out. Nie Huaisang is usually fussy about that, but right now she thinks there’s something to it. In a few minutes, she’ll make Jiang Cheng retrieve some washcloths, but for now she won’t let either of them get up. Jiang Cheng curls around her body with his chest to her back, and she can feel his forehead rest against her hair. One of his hands rests on Nie Huaisang’s ribcage. Nie Huaisang hooks a foot around one of his ankles, just to trap him further. Don’t you dare get up, Jiang Cheng. Let me have this.

But he seems in no hurry to move, either. She listens to his breath, and to the barely-there whisper of doors rattling in their runners against the pressure of the wind. Her arms and legs still feel weak from effort, but it’s pleasant. Nie Huaisang considers doing something that she’d consciously decided she wasn’t going to do when she made her way over here—she toys with whether she should sleep over, and just sneak out in the early morning. It’s undoubtedly more dangerous than it would be to make her way back to her own lodgings under cover of night, and risks serious consequences if her disciples can’t find her in the morning and don’t know where she’s gone—let alone what would happen if she’s seen exiting Jiang-zongzhu’s rooms in the morning, which, unlike even a late-night departure such as this, cannot be excused as a late-night catchup between friends and peers. It would be obvious to everyone that the situation is exactly what it looks like: she spent the night in Jiang Cheng’s bed. But, ah, what a prospect.

She feels momentarily young in a way that makes her feel acutely old, but she almost likes this version of herself, even when she’s thinking stupid thoughts. It reminds her of when she was much more stupid, but undoubtedly more pleasant to be around. And to be.

The well-finished Gusu timber that supports the shaded porch of Jiang Cheng’s quarters doesn’t creak under their weight. The lodging itself is quite similar to the one Nie Huaisang is given whenever she comes to stay at the Cloud Recesses in a sect leader-ly capacity, but where the back of her own quarters looks out on the wall of a small garden, Jiang Cheng’s borders the trees. The rest of the Yunmeng Jiang disciples who accompanied him are staying in the smaller houses nearby, but Jiang Cheng’s is the furthest back, and so they are out of sight, here, of anything but nocturnal animals. The candlelight escaping from the door behind them is enough to destroy their night vision, so all they can see are the vague shapes of trunks and branches and the blackness beyond, but the night smells fresh. It rained intermittently in the early evening, and the air is scented with petrichor and decaying brush. It’s cool enough for Nie Huaisang to be chilly in her undressed state, and she curls inside Jiang Cheng’s arm around her shoulders.

“Your golden core isn’t strong enough for you to come out here in this little clothing.”

“You’re too young to sound like a grandmother, Jiang Cheng. Warm me up, then.”

The difference between Jiang Cheng’s fussing and Nie Huaisang’s disciples’ mother-henning is that Jiang Cheng isn’t deferential about it at all, so Nie Huaisang can actually enjoy it. It’s quite difficult to take pleasure in interactions which hinge entirely on her being the sect leader. That, and Jiang Cheng’s chest runs hot, and he’s fairly patient about letting himself be used as a furnace.

“You’re not really going into seclusion, are you?”

“No, no, of course I’m not. That sounds awful.”

“Where are you going, then?”

“I might go stay by the sea for a while. I’ve never seen the ocean.”

“Are you going to tell me where?” Jiang Cheng sounds oddly sulky.

“I don’t have a fixed address just yet.”

She has a few prospects in mind. When Nie Huaisang began to accept that there was no way to settle things without treading in dangerous waters, she began to siphon a slush fund out of the general budget in case she ever had to go to ground. The sect’s accounts were doing well enough at that point that they could afford it, considering that fiscal management was one area where Nie Huaisang is more apt than da-ge was, so she doesn’t feel particularly guilty. It wasn’t done out of concern for herself, anyway. Nie Huaisang refused to die with da-ge unavenged, and there was no one else to do it if she could not. In any case, the money is still stashed away, and there’s enough to sustain her in modest comfort for the rest of her life.

“It’d be a pretty long way for such a busy man to travel, anyway.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

Nie Huaisang pushes her hands a little further into her sleeves. “Do you ever take vacations? You should. It would be good for your health.”

“Why would I waste my time traveling? What does anywhere else have that I can’t get in Yunmeng, without having to endure worse food?”

It’s cute, the way he never delivers anything he says like it’s a joke, even if it’s funny. There’s nothing worse than someone who thinks of themselves as funny when they aren’t; it's much better for one’s sense of humour to be a private quality, ready for delighted discovery by those intrepid enough to find their way to it.

“Sometimes going away helps you appreciate home that much better.”

“Maybe for you.”

Jiang Cheng sounds a little bitter. Fair enough. He’s been in exile from home, had it ripped from him and retaken it with everything he had. Yunmeng is, also, very beautiful. Qinghe is beautiful too, but this isn’t an argument that Nie Huaisang needs to win.

“So what would Jiang-zongzhu do if he had a week to himself? No obligations at all? Just stay home and work on his accounting?”

“Sometimes I go out on the water.”

“You swim?”

“No. Well, yes, of course I can swim, but I mean boating.”

“Boating! Where do you go?”

“Up and down the river. Where else is there to go?”

“Do you go by yourself?”

“I take a-Ling. Or, well, I used to. He’s too busy these days to spend time with his uncle.” The tone he takes for this complaint is scathing, which is a good sign; Jiang Cheng is most content when he’s being pettily irascible.

Nie Huaisang nods, and then, after a weighty, pointed moment, Jiang Cheng says, “I knew about Hanguang-jun’s… wedding plans because a-Ling told me.”

“Oh? You’re speaking with each other again?”

Another long beat, and then Jiang Cheng grits out, “Yes.”

He’s in no hurry to provide any further details, and Nie Huaisang decides not to push him for more. That alone was more than she expected to get. She hums airily, to acknowledge that she heard him and is consciously choosing not to press, and then says, “So tell me about your trips up the river.”

“There’s a… cabin, I guess you could call it. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s secluded, and the local lowlifes know better than to go trespassing on Jiang sect territory. It’s not good for much besides fishing, mind.”

“There’s some other things I can think of. Don’t overlook the virtues of privacy.”

“Do you think of anything besides—?”

To tell the truth, she wasn’t even really thinking of sex. Three days and a cabin in the woods, nobody around but each other: she thinks about kissing out of doors. Being able to sit like this, Nie Huaisang tucked against Jiang Cheng’s chest, in the daytime, and it not mattering a bit.

“Too bad you can’t take me with you, next time. I’d clear my schedule. I’m not very good at fishing, but I’d give it my best.” Her voice sounds awful, like something’s caught in her throat. If she were putting on a performance for him, right now, Nie Huaisang would be kicking herself for overdoing it.

Jiang Cheng’s face does something odd; he looks grave, but at the same time his expression is covered with a horrible sheen of almost-hope, and it gives Nie Huaisang a sense of foreboding. Bluster she could handle, even some of Jiang Cheng’s bizarrely charming form of flirting—this is what she calls the way he gets when he’s trying in earnest to keep a conversation from petering out—but she doesn’t know what to do with this. Yet, it does something to her, to be looked at like that.

She shivers, and Jiang Cheng snaps, “I told you not to come out here dressed like that!” Abruptly, he gets to his feet. “Come on. Back inside with you.”

Nie Huaisang allows herself to be tugged along, sliding the door closed behind her, and wonders if this is her cue to leave, but Jiang Cheng adds, “I have something for you.”

“Oh?” Nie Huaisang sits on the edge of the bed and waits.

Jiang Cheng fishes his inner robes off of the floor—unnecessarily, in Nie Huaisang’s opinion; it’s only the two of them, they were just having sex, and bearing witness to Jiang Cheng’s indecency isn’t a hardship—and then retrieves something from amidst his personal effects. She pulls her robe a little more tightly around herself.

When Jiang Cheng returns to the bed, it’s with an object held in one of his hands, but she can’t make out what it is, and he doesn’t pass it over. He takes a deep breath. “I know you’re not going to be leading your sect for much longer.”

“I’ve explained to you why I can’t,” Nie Huaisang says, in what she thinks is a very patient manner, considering.

“I know that. Don’t you think I remember? You don’t need to tell me again.” His nostrils flare. “But since you haven’t even figured out where you’re going…”

“Jiang Cheng, I…”

“Here.” He thrusts the object at her, and after a moment, she takes it. It’s a rectangular box; a nice piece of work, lacquered, with a good, even weight. It’s a little thinner than the width of her hand, and a little longer than the length of one. Before she can open it, Jiang Cheng continues: “I still don't really understand what's going on with your… qi situation—”

She can’t blame him for that, since she made it up on the spot. Before she can reply with something vague enough to keep him in his state of benightedness, he says something that makes her blood run cold.

“Come to Lotus Pier.”

“I’m sorry?”

“We’ve got room to spare. I—there are enough skilled cultivators in my sect to make sure nothing gets out of hand if you start qi deviating, or—instead of being foolish off on your own somewhere because you’re too stubborn—”

She starts laughing, patently forced in a way designed to implicate another party in its awkwardness. “Oh, I don’t know, Jiang Cheng—I told you, it’s all to do with side effects of my family’s cultivation method. Even the doctors back home don’t know what to do about it. I really don’t think…”

“Cultivation is cultivation. Maybe you need the intervention of someone from outside the sect, anyway, since you lot seem to be unable to control its negative effects on your own.”

“That really doesn’t seem necessary.”

“You’ve said yourself that you can’t stop it. How do you know what else will happen? Just because you treat the life your parents gave you with so little concern—”

“I told you, I’m not going to die!” She can feel herself going pale and agitated. “Is the rest of it really so bad?”

“How do you know—”

“Nothing’s wrong with my meridians. I’m not going to qi deviate. This isn’t like what happened to da-ge.” He looks like he’s going to say something else, so Nie Huaisang cuts him off: “It’s just my body. That’s all.”

“I—”

“I don’t hate it, and I don’t want your help.” Nie Huaisang feels light-headed. Before Jiang Cheng gets the chance to say something else insane, Nie Huaisang lifts the box he gave her. In the corner of her eye, he braces himself.

She slides the lid open. Inside rests a pair of silver hairpins on a bed of black silk.

At a glance, she can tell that they’re expensive; the shapes are uniform and elegant, and there are delicate engravings winding around the body of the pins. She picks one up to examine it in better light. The metal feels quality, and she sees no visible flaws in the craftsmanship. The style is unobtrusive, but not plain. She doesn’t know why she’s surprised—she wouldn’t go so far as to even describe herself as surprised that they’re nice—since Jiang Cheng knows how to dress, but it’s not so much that they’re in good taste that has her taken aback, but how precisely suited they are to her own taste.

Jiang Cheng sits stiffly beside her. His hands are curled into fists on his thighs. Nie Huaisang isn’t sure what sight he’s being met with; the blood has drained out of her face. She should, she supposes, say something. She manages a second, even more vacant “Oh.”

Jiang Cheng makes a tetchy sound. “Have you forgotten how to say anything else?”

“They’re very…” Nie Huaisang sets one pin back down in the case, and then picks up the other for a similar inspection. “They’re very nice.” Her voice sounds strangled.

She doesn’t look up from the hairpin in her hand, but she can tell that Jiang Cheng is sitting just as he was before, tense and visibly expectant. If he had a cup, she thinks it might have shattered in his grip.

Nie Huaisang clears her throat and lowers her hand to her lap, hoping her voice will come out neither shaky nor overly serious. “Jiang Cheng…”

“If you don’t like them, just say so.”

“Of course I like them,” she says, and then clamps her mouth shut.

She’s felt his hands in her hair enough times before that she can’t stop herself from imagining the way his fingers would run through it after a night of being rumpled on the pillow. Kneeling before a bronze mirror in the morning with Jiang Cheng behind her, trying to figure out how best to pin her braids up, and thinking, so this is the first day of the rest of my life.

“Then why do you look like that?”

“Well… it’s just…”

“Say what you’re going to say. I hate it when you act cryptic.”

Nie Huaisang takes a long breath, and then asks, “What do you mean by giving me something like this?”

“You were nagging me about not getting you a birthday present.”

Oh, well if that’s all; she exhales, and then Jiang Cheng adds, in a voice small and tense, “And do I have to spell the rest out for you?”

She thinks, Jiang Cheng, you ridiculous fool, you overgrown boy. Stop showing me your guts.

Nie Huaisang opens her mouth to stall, but what comes out is, “I think we should stop. Doing this.”

She’s braced for outrage, for elevated voices and protestation. Instead, Jiang Cheng’s voice is quiet. “What?”

Nie Huaisang looks up at him and blinks, her eyes wide, glassy, stupid: Jiang-zongzhu, this one is foolish and needs things explained. “What do you think is going to happen?” Bile rises in her throat. “I can’t stay.”

She can’t, and she wouldn’t if she could. She’s trying to forge a fate that she can live through, and there’s no future for Nie Huasiang here. To be precise, there’s no Nie Huaisang who can have a future here. This Nie Huaisang came into being out of necessity, following catastrophe, and there’s no place in the world any longer for that man. The only way to live—and she does want to live, regardless of whether she deserves to—is to let go of everything that keeps her fixed in this life. Resurrections don’t come cheap.

He stares at her in one of those ways of his, like he’s a fresh orphan again, Jiang Wanyin, Poor Thing, and now Jiang Wanyin, Poor Thing asks through a raw throat, “Is this hard for you, or is it easy?”

“Don’t get me wrong, I had fun. I hope you have too. I mean, you’re good company. You’re—you’re lovely.” Her voice cracks on the word. “It’s just… this—People like us, we can’t just… live that way.”

The pad of Nie Huaisang’s thumb traces the engravings of the hairpin in her hand. The metal has warmed to the touch, though she can feel cold sweat on her palms. She’s not sure which way she means. In a state of disgrace? In defiance of the lives our parents intended for us? Happy?

Jiang Cheng’s face is ashen, but rapidly hardening. “So what do you want out of me?” The volume of his voice rises, and Nie Huaisang is once again grateful that she had the foresight to set a talisman. “You want me to tell you to pick up your clothes and leave as soon as we’re finished? Don’t tell me that you do, because I won’t believe it. You can come and go as you please, but then I’m the pathetic little idiot—”

“—Jiang Cheng—”

“—even though you want me to hold you every time we sleep in the same bed?”

Every time I ever reassured you on one of your insecurities, I was lying so that you would let me fuck you. Nie Huaisang nearly tries out the shape of the words in her mouth. It’s not only me that people laugh at; they mock you too, they just do a better job of hiding it to your face. They’re right to do it. You are deluded and pitiful and no one but me would ever want to sleep with you.

She finds herself unable to say any of these things, either because she wishes they weren’t true or because they aren’t, and for the first time in many years she has little trust in her ability to convincingly lie. This is why she used to keep her distance from people—these were the stakes—Nie Huaisang is an idiot, and she hates Jiang Cheng really unbearably.

Jiang Cheng paces the room, and Nie Huaisang is very aware of her physical disarray. She sits on the edge of the bed, one layer away from nakedness and still looking like she’s just been debauched—which she has, but she isn’t enjoying the aftermath at the moment so much as she normally would—and has an urge to ask Jiang Cheng to adjourn their conversation until she can get dressed, so she can get her head in order, but he would probably think she’s mocking him.

Her mouth opens, but it’s been made useless by a heavy tongue. Nie Huaisang can’t even look him in the eye. If she does, she’ll lose her nerve. She tucks the pins away in her sleeve so that she doesn’t need to keep thinking about them, and manages, “You don’t actually want this, you know. I’m sparing you from doing something you’ll regret.”

What has she done for him? Gotten him laid and paid attention to him? Such a low bar to clear. He deserves those things, yes, but from someone who means it as more than just the means to an end.

He looks at her for a long moment, eyes full of bitter fire, and then he turns away. “What are you still hanging around for, then?”

Jiang Cheng doesn’t look back when she leaves, and she knows she’s won. In a manner of speaking.

Nie Huaisang makes it the whole way back to her rooms without incident. On the way, she doesn’t think of anything besides hoping that her robes are suitably fastened to be seen in public, in case she’s stopped by anyone else wandering the Cloud Recesses after hours; she got dressed in a hurry, and she feels like she left something behind on Jiang Cheng’s floor, though she can’t think what. She slides the door to her rooms closed behind her, takes four steps, and crumples inwards. One of her knees hits the floor at an unfortunate angle. It’ll probably bruise. Nie Huaisang rubs it with the heel of her hand, and thinks of the reasons why she had to make him look like that. She’s out of breath before she’s even realized that she’s crying.

After some time, she reins herself in enough to get up and throw herself on the bed. She crushes her face against the pillows, but she’s quickly reminded of how rigid and uncomfortable the Cloud Recesses beds are, which is too much to be weathered at the moment. It starts up again, boiling from a hot spring inside her chest and scalding her throat, her lungs, her sinuses. Her face is tight with blood and embarrassment. She wipes her running nose with the back of a hand. It only makes her feel more disgusting. Eventually, she resigns herself to getting it out of her system; this is less comforting than she would like it to be.

As she attempts to unfasten her belt and kick off her shoes without sitting upright, her motions are as fitful as one would expect of actions fuelled by impotent rage. Only one shoe ends up on the floor; the other rests on the foot of the bed. Nie Huaisang may have a reputation for poor discipline, but she’s always kept her rooms tidy and her belongings neat. The sight of the stupid lonely shoe makes her throat hitch again, but she is at least able to suppress this one more ruthlessly than the last few.

Falling asleep with metal pressing into her scalp is wretchedly uncomfortable, so she begins to take the guan out of her hair, but when she unwinds her braids, she just thinks of Jiang Cheng’s gift. The guan falls from her loose fingers onto the bedspread. Nie Huaisang rolls onto her back and rummages through her sleeve until she retrieves the box.

She examines it in the glow of the single candle she had the wherewithal to light. There are delicate mother-of-pearl inlays on the lid and sides; the detailing is similar in colour to some of the lighter robes she was wearing over the summer. Either he found something perfectly suited to her after quite a bit of effort, or he had it commissioned. Jiang Cheng doesn’t do things by halves, does he? He commits. That’s something she’s liked about him. It’s something they had in common, though not in this respect, clearly.

Nie Huaisang throws it across the room. It hits the wall with a sick crack. The violence of the sound startles her so thoroughly she stops crying.

She crosses the floor to pick up the box. The pins are still inside, but an ugly, splintered rift runs across the box’s corner. Nie Huaisang feels nauseous. There’s little that she hates more than carelessness with fine goods.

Before long, there’s a soft rapping at her door. Her heart lurches, and then she hears a muffled, sleep-scratchy voice call out, “Zongzhu? Are you alright?”

She shakes her head, clears her throat, and then replies, “Yes, don’t worry.” Before he can go back to bed, Nie Huaisang adds, “But come in here for a moment, will you?”

One of her chief disciples pokes his head through the sliding door. “What is it?”

If he’s surprised by the sight of his sect leader sitting on the floor, half-dressed and in stocking feet, in the middle of the night, he doesn’t show it. The behaviour isn’t so at odds with the person she’s been to them over the years. Nie Huaisang is no longer crying; her expression, if she could be said to have one, is of distant but focused thought. She couldn’t say whether it’s real or a facade, or whether the difference even matters at a time like this.

Nie Huaisang asks for ink, a candle, and lots of paper to be brought to the writing desk in the centre of the room. Her disciple putters around very efficiently and quietly; Nie Huaisang wishes he was making more of a nuisance of himself, as she is finding it impossible to pull her mind off its course, and she’d appreciate a distraction.

For a long time, the future after Jin Guangyao was nothing more than an open pit that Nie Huaisang knew would swallow her one day, but until then was none of her concern. It’s no longer true; at some point, it became the repository for all her dissatisfactions and deferred desires. She’s shaking loose the layers of sediment that have accumulated over too many bitter years, and she’s not going to let Jiang fucking Cheng, of all people, keep her trapped here, under the weight of countless failures and certain successes which weigh on her nearly as heavily.

Nie Huaisang doesn’t need Jiang Cheng. What is he? A needy man with a bad temper and slightly-above-average dick, who was easy pickings when she was hungry for touch and distraction. Hardly the only person in the world to fit the description!

Her disciple bows his way out, and with tremendous strength of will, Nie Huaisang trundles her way to her desk. The edges of her consciousness bloom with prickles of primal unease, as though she’s still under observation.

The way that she’s been preparing herself to live—it’s only acceptable if Nie Huaisang fades out of history. She’s brought down the family name plenty already, hasn’t she? And the jianghu doesn’t have much to its credit that would entice her into staying, either. Certainly few other cultivators will regret the loss. And those who do… those who do need to learn, after all these years, how to set their hopes on people who will return the favour. The idea blows through her like a cold wind, though it’s not the first time the observation has crossed her mind.

Nie Huaisang doesn’t get any pleasure out of the thought of leaving Jiang Cheng miserable and alone. Whatever Jiang Cheng might have to say about it, Nie Huaisang isn’t the only one who clings at night, and it’s really—it suits him, to look… devoted. It brings out the best in him. Nie Huaisang did a lot of moping about how little she matters to anyone alive, and then someone insisted on assuring her that she does, and that might be worse.

More than anything else, she feels hollow, which is notable, because she only now realizes that she hadn’t, before. She’s been living like that for so long that she hadn’t noticed she’d stopped.

Nie Huaisang is not stupid. Neither is she in the habit of being dishonest within her own mind. It is for both these reasons that, when it becomes impossible to avoid admitting a fact which she has been trying very hard not to know, she resigns herself to it. She doesn’t waste her energy on battles that have already been lost.

She’s been grinding the ink too messily; tiny flecks of pigment cover the top of the desk, and with the way her night is going they’ll stain. Carelessness again, and a beautiful thing will bear the damage forever. Nie Huaisang disgusts herself, which is nothing new, but this is not usually the reason for it. She wishes she had stopped to centre herself before pushing blindly on with the task, but just as she wishes she didn’t love him, it’s too late for that now.

Jiang Wanyin,

What an absolute mess you’ve made. Even I have limits to the foolish spectacle I will engage in.

Nie Huaisang gets no further before burning the paper in the candle flame. She retrieves her fingers just before the fire can touch them, letting the ash drop to the already ill-used tabletop. She sits on the floor with her face propped up on the knuckles of one fist and gazes into the flame until her eyes sear. They would tear up, if she hadn’t already cried them dry.

She gets up. Swallows a mouthful of water. Washes her face. Her skin still burns with blood, risen to the surface. Nie Huaisang runs the backs of her fingers over her cheek, and then further down, palming the ridges of her neck.

She used to imagine how it would have felt to hold Jin Guangyao’s throat in her grasp like this. Her own skin feels softer than it used to, though it might be wishful thinking, but surely that skin would have been as soft as it always looked. The knot of his throat would have vibrated against Nie Huaisang’s palm, and she would learn just how wide those eyes could get—

But as midnight fantasies go, this one doesn’t titillate her anymore. It’s always been an idle thought, anyway; when it comes to people, Nie Huaisang’s never done her own killing.

That thought reminds her, naturally, that there is one recipient she would have written to in this type of situation, but she isn’t supposed to talk to him anymore.

Just the prospect of taking this particular mood out on Lan Xichen puts her into a ritualistic frame of mind; that sort of mechanical, dreamlike lucidity. Nie Huaisang taps her index finger on her bottom lip, and imagines putting her shoes back on and taking the well-groomed path to the Hanshi. He’s so close; it gnaws at her stomach. She would be in a lot of trouble if it ever got out that she’d been trying to see him, and she knows how foolish it is—utterly needless—but he owes her, doesn’t she? Or she owes him? Or both? Whatever the direction, they are bound in debt, and Nie Huaisang is making an effort to close her accounts.

But if she did get caught, and word got out—Jiang Cheng doesn’t have a leg to stand on surrounding other people’s vengeful fits of pique, but he’s not an idiot. He could surely figure out what had put Nie Huaisang in such a state to begin with, and she doesn’t think he’d be inclined to view her with much sympathy. This should not matter to her, but she finds that it does.

Nie Huaisang had begged Jin Guangyao to stay in the Unclean Realms for the week following da-ge’s funeral, to help set the house in order. That was before Huaisang realized, of course. After that, he couldn’t exactly take it back, so he kept to himself as much as he could, but san-ge was gently persistent, so Huaisang succumbed to being puppeteered around the fortress and familiarized with the duties of the sect leader’s office. There was a reason, after all, that Huaisang had asked this favour of san-ge, not er-ge; Jin Guangyao was as good a teacher of the responsibilities of a Nie sect leader as anyone raised in Qinghe. Better, in many ways.

There’s a big book in the sect leader’s office that contains a record of every one of Nie Huaisang’s antecedents, written in their own hands—except for the end of each entry, which is recorded posthumously by its subject’s successor. Burrowing into family records always reminds Nie Huaisang of when she was lost in the crypts below the sabre tombs: they’re her property, and she ought to have mastery of them, but in fact they are the territory of her ancestors, and possess depths she’ll never see.

She remembers the only time she ever added to this tome herself: san-ge’s soothing hand on the small of Huaisang’s back, guiding him to sit and fill out the last portion of da-ge’s history. The page before it was written in da-ge’s hand—heavy and artless, legible before anything else, but dear to Huaisang’s eye—and was a matter-of-fact record of battles won or lost, spirits suppressed or destroyed, and disciples trained or fallen. None of it was boasting; da-ge had enough accomplishments that there was no need to embellish. When presented with his own blank page, Huaisang cried again about the absurdity of the situation. This caused san-ge to take pity and narrate Huaisang’s own life, so Huaisang could transcribe it in his own hand. Nie Huaisang, born in the spring of the year of… There are a few bare details of what noteworthy achievements Huaisang had accrued between birth and da-ge’s death: Attended lectures at the Cloud Recesses three times. Sent to Heavenly Nightless City to attend Qishan Wen indoctrination. Spent the Sunshot Campaign in Qinghe maintaining the defense of the Unclean Realms. (Some generous phrasing from san-ge.) In his twenty-third year, assisted Chifeng-zun in suppression of sabre tomb disturbances. Named sect leader the following year after Chifeng-zun’s fatal qi deviation.

She hasn’t updated it since, so below the underwhelming beginnings of her time as sect leader, most of the page remains empty. Nie Huaisang doesn’t envy her eventual successor the job of having to close her entry for her while maintaining an appropriate degree of reverence. There’s little to be written about anything she’s done since that would be both flattering and truthful.

The last time that Wei Wuxian came to the Unclean Realms, he was blessedly alone. As such, Nie Huaisang received him in her own personal rooms, something she would not have done if Hanguang-jun were present. She was in the middle of taking an inventory of her things, and it was the kind of work that could easily be done while carrying on a conversation.

Wei Wuxian sat with his legs splayed and his back against the wall and watched as Nie Huaisang knelt on the floor, surrounded by the remnants of a patrician life: towers of books, scrolls, and papers, chests with the lids hanging open, stacks of jewelry cases, and countless piles of trifles. Nie Huaisang’s sabre rested on the floor between them. For once, it didn’t look out of place among her things; it suited the company of dusty, nigh-abandoned treasures and broken objects she never got around to fixing.

Nie Huaisang has recently felt a renewed sense of urgency about how she spends her time. Up here, summer is a fleeting season, and Nie Huaisang would prefer not to move house in the snow, even if she wasn’t trying to be discreet about it. Earlier that morning, she had all of her personal effects taken out of storage in order to sort the goods worth keeping from the sentimental junk. Nie Huaisang is taking some of it with her, of course—she’s not taking a vow of poverty and going to live in a monastery, heaven forbid—but after she dies, the sect might do anything with the rest of the collection. The culture of Qinghe Nie has never been particularly, well, cultured, so if they don’t display or sell her treasures, they might just stow them deep enough they won’t have to think of them often, as she’s already done with Jin Guangyao’s numerous gifts.

“You were saying? About the talismans?”

She thumbed through the sect leaders’ biographical tome in her lap one last time, appraising the pages for water or insect damage, and then set it down on a spot on the floor she’d designated for documents which needed to be kept readily available rather than put into storage.

For the most part, the things she’s leaving behind are less significant to the rest of the sect than this. Much of it is standard—painted scrolls and fans; ornate serving trays, tea sets, incense burners, and guans; vases, urns, and decorative figurines in all sizes and media. There are some more distinctive goods as well, such as a number of gilded birdcages. A sense of vague guilt always led Nie Huaisang to spend an inordinate amount of money on cages for her pets, as if the birds would be able to tell that they held pride of place in her personal budget, and thus be able to sense that she cared about their comfort—but did she, even? She pampered them, but the cages are empty; if she ever knew how to keep things alive, it’s a skill she lost long ago.

“I thought talismans might be a route, but they didn’t end up going anywhere. I played for it, when all else failed, but any change that brought was temporary.” Wei Wuxian absently toyed with some crumpled paper from one of the junk piles. His clever fingers had folded it into the shape of a bird. Under her eyes, it flapped its wings, though it didn’t appear to be able to get enough lift to leave his palm, and Wei Wuxian disassembled it with a mortician’s pragmatism. “You’ve never used it to kill anyone, have you?”

She gave him a sullen look, which appeared to amuse him.

“I don’t mean it as an insult, Nie-zongzhu, don’t worry. It’s just that it’s hard to tell if anything I did had any effect, since your blade is pretty inert. You haven’t cultivated much resentment for me to alleviate.”

She thought, I certainly have. It’s just not kept in a sabre.

“But you managed to come up with something in the end, of course. I mean, it’s you!”

“I’ve got some theories, but…” Wei Wuxian made a face. “I’m not sure you’ll like it when I tell you.”

“Whatever it is, I’ll be surprised if it’s new to me. I’m not the first member of my family to try and work this out, you know.” She had put her skills towards this long before she enlisted Wei Wuxian’s help. Years of interviewing everyone from priests under vows of silence to some of the strangest fringe cultivators to have sprung up this side of the Yiling Patriarch’s death, and she has reached the edges of her own ingenuity.

“I just kept thinking, swords are killing weapons, too. So a sabre… what is it about them? Yes, the stances are different, and the swings are heavier, but…” Wei Wuxian had his arms folded, and finger and thumb on his chin. “But it’s not about the sabre, is it.”

Nie Huaisang straightened a stack of papers beside her. “If not the sabre, then what?”

“It seems to me that a style built around eradicating evil might run into problems when there isn’t any evil around. If there’s nothing else to feed on, it’ll turn on itself. That’s not anything to do with the sabres themselves. You could switch to wielding swords tomorrow and not resolve the problem, if nothing else changed.”

Nie Huaisang’s bottom lip trembled. “So there's really nothing for it but to start developing a cultivation style from scratch?”

Wei Wuxian shrugged.

They were both quiet, and then she sighed. “Wei-xiong.”

“You disagree?”

Nie Huaisang bit her lip and glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “You were supposed to tell me things I don’t know.”

“You think so, too?”

“Of course I do,” she snapped, and it was as if the room suddenly tilted, like an overburdened sheet of ice had finally cracked.

“But you called me for help, so you must need something.”

Her blood was thick with gelid rage. Nie Huaisang replied, “I needed you to come up with a better answer than I could myself.”

“I appreciate Nie-zongzhu’s great faith in my abilities, but even I can’t work miracles.” There was a weighty pause, and Wei Wuxian looked her over with open interest, all disaffectation vanished. “Ah, I see. This is what you really look like. I’ve been wondering.”

You don’t know the half of it. She laughed, and felt an artisanal satisfaction in its audible misery. “So what would you have me do?”

“You could always just stop.”

“Stop cultivating?”

“Stop cultivating the way you have been. Replace the old Nie style with something else.”

“How?” She laughed again, this time with genuine humour. “No, really. Tell me how.”

“Don’t ask me. I wouldn’t dream of meddling in your family affairs.”

Nie Huaisang put her chin on her knee and thought. While she was at it, her eye moved to the sabre by Wei Wuxian’s side. It was given to her upon the severely tardy formation of her golden core, many years ago now, but it still feels like an unfamiliar object, one to which she’s formed no relationship, neither good nor ill. She’s always said she had an innate lack of cultivational talent, but she’s also been wilful since birth, and looking back she couldn’t tell how much of it was ineptitude versus an unwitting rejection of the future intended for her, or if the two were meaningfully distinct.

On some level, she had been prepared for this answer from him. Maybe she had enlisted his help simply so that she could point to him and disavow her own choice in the matter: look, see, even Wei Wuxian said there’s no other way. She has become habituated to taking the unthinkable step, to thinking a path into being where others may not see it, but as problems go, this is a room with no door. Like the hall in the family blade catacombs: a chamber where one goes to die.

A childish, petty part of her was raging, not about the unfairness of the situation as a whole, though it is terribly unfair, but about the fact that had fallen to her to deal with it.

Back in the old days, people say, the Nie-furens used to run everything, since they usually outlived their husbands, but that clearly hasn’t borne out in recent generations. There’s not been a woman of the Nie inner family since Nie Huaisang was four years old, and she doesn’t know what her mother looked like, besides maybe a little like herself.

It’s not as though she’s the only person she knows in a similar position—left to shoulder the weight of a sect alone—but the Jiangs were murdered. Her family has let itself get eaten up, tied by the bonds of tradition and piety. They weren’t stupid, her forebears; surely they, too, had doubts, but what could any of them do about it, being descendants themselves? The dead may not speak as loudly as the living, but they are more insistent, or at least are beyond anyone’s power to reproach.

Jiang Cheng,

I wonder if you’ve ever wondered why it was you to whom I sent Bicao and Sisi. It wasn’t a random decision. You were less involved in the whole affair than most, which is part of it—you were relatively objective, as much as anyone who was in the position to do anything about the information I gave you could be—but not the whole reason. Your motives have never been mysterious. You were both predictable and reliable, which was very helpful for me, as I’m sure you can imagine.

You really did give me a shock last night. It feels like a drunken nightmare, but I remain painfully sober.

I regret every time I told you to find a wife. When I think of you marrying someone else I get so angry I want to spit.

The candle gets that one, too.

Nie Huaisang draws another blank page towards herself in lieu of having anything better to do. The tip of her brush begins to chart a series of small, tight lines—painting, from memory, the lines of the walls and gates back home. The tableau is oppressive and foreboding on the page, the way she imagines it looks to visitors who don’t know its charms.

When she was a child, Nie Huaisang felt like the only breakable thing in a stronghold full of strong people, and most of the time the feeling brought her a great deal of comfort. How precious must that thing be, to be so well-protected? And then she grew older, and learned that there are kinds of weak points which can be difficult to see from the outside, and learned, also, that even a delicate person can become a fortress, if they are diligent about locking away the parts of their spirit capable of being hurt.

She is tired of being unassailable.

Nie Huaisang puts aside the half-hearted sketch and selects another fresh sheet. She feels relatively desperate, and is trying to write her way out of the dark.

Over the course of an hour, it becomes a letter, and by the time she’s finished with it, the candle has burned itself down by the length of a knuckle, and the weariness that left her body in its panic has come back to collect interest.

She signs her name at the bottom, waits for the ink to set, and then finishes the task she had started earlier—undressing herself, then folding her clothes and straightening her shoes. She cleans her brushes, but doesn’t otherwise clear off the surface of the desk. Nie Huaisang crawls under the blankets and is engulfed almost instantaneously in a dreamless sleep which holds her for two hours.

She wakes before the dawn and sees through a truncated version of her morning routine. It is only when she is dressed in fresh clothes that she sits back down and prepares new ink for a second letter.

Jiang-zongzhu, she begins.

Nie Huaisang takes the time to make her calligraphy particularly neat, and at the end, Nie Huaisang stamps her name with her official seal. The press of it is heavy and final.

As an afterthought, she jots a quick third letter on a remaining page before she puts her writing set back in order. She stamps her name at the bottom here, too. It feels right: impersonal.

She fans the papers dry, folds and tucks them away, and then goes out in search of Wei Wuxian.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said. About the family cultivation style.”

Nie Huaisang politely waits until Wei Wuxian’s hand has left the bag of melon seeds before reaching for some herself. The morning light has stained the sky pink and gold, and it’s warm enough that they can only barely see their own breath.

“Oh?”

“I’ve known for some time that I would be leaving eventually. I’m not sure for how long, but I think it’ll be long. Long enough that it would have been in my interest to find a straightforward solution that could be put into practice while I’m gone. So you see what I mean when I say this is inconvenient for me.”

“I see your point.” Wei Wuxian tosses the next seed in the air and successfully catches it in his mouth. “But?”

“But there’s nothing for it, I suppose.” Coldness thrills the pit of her stomach, but it’s accompanied by a giddy rush to the head that comes from admitting it out loud.

It’s nothing new to her, the idea that she will go down in history for the shame she has brought the family. She thought she’d acclimated to it, as much as one could, but apparently not. Or, at least, she didn’t think it would be because of this. This goes beyond shirking duty, or being a disappointment. She could be accused of showing contempt for everyone who came before her, for spitting on their graves, for showing the highest levels of unearned pride.

“You understand why I haven’t gone this route before, don’t you? I mean, no offense meant, Wei-xiong, but I’m not as good as you at going my own way.”

“I don't think you’re giving yourself enough credit,” Wei Wuxian says, in a tone she doesn't think is wholly complimentary.

When she began cultivating her qi in its current manner, the effort started out as, at best, an attempt to set herself on fire to keep herself warm. Regardless of the effect on her cultivation as such, it would either do nothing, or do something so impossible to imagine that, whatever the cause, it would force her hand: make up your mind. Stay or go. Live or die.

If she really is to do it—to be the one to say, enough now, we’re going to do things another way—the shame might kill her. But the fact is that their cultivation is already killing them.

Nie Huaisang hasn’t been unmarked by her family’s teachings, whether or not she ever uses her sabre. She does believe in righteous punishment. She believes, too, that some problems can only be solved by violence. But justice is fickle and hard to come by, and the sect has other things to it than destruction. Qinghe Nie prizes tenacity, determination, and strength of will. Loyalty. Responsibility for those beneath you—which is what this is about, isn’t it? Better late than never.

“Does that mean seclusion is off, then?”

Nie Huaisang fidgets with the hem of her robe. “I didn’t say that.”

“So what will you do?”

She takes a deep breath. “Make it someone else’s problem.” Her voice is airily unconcerned; her mind mulls over names of people within the sect, people she can trust to follow direction, who aren’t as disgruntled as some others over the differences between the Qinghe Nie that may once have existed and the one that exists now. Overseeing change of this magnitude in absentia is nearly impossible, but if she delegates well enough and sees the process into motion before she leaves, then perhaps…

“You’re not really going into secluded meditation, are you, Nie-zongzhu?”

Nie Huaisang’s eyebrows lift. “Of course not. I think I’d rather be buried alive.”

Wei Wuxian laughs. The sound is sweet, unexpected, and genuine. “I figured that was a load of nonsense. I know you have hidden depths, but really?”

“I’m not up to anything bad. I’ll be keeping to myself. And don’t worry, I don’t think I’ll have reason to pester you for more favours.” Wei Wuxian looks somewhat unconvinced, but doesn’t press her on it.

The place they have found to sit is a small overhang above a pond; not one of the proper cold springs, just a tranquil, creek-fed body where the day’s earliest waterbirds are skimming breakfast off of its surface. It’s not the kind of sight easy to come by in Qinghe.

“Say, Wei-xiong. You went travelling for a while before settling down here, right? Why did you come back?”

“I missed Lan Zhan,” he says, in a lofty tone.

“Was that the only reason?”

“Why do you ask?”

Nie Huaisang twines her fingers through some of the loose grass. “After you came back to him, did you miss being out there?”

“Sometimes,” he says, which is a more straightforward and truthful answer than she expects to receive.

“And was it worth it?”

“Of course it was worth it. I like being on the road, but it’s Lan Zhan.”

She eyes him closely from underneath her lashes. “You never regretted it? Even when you were shut up here all the time?”

“You make it sound like I was in prison!” Wei Wuxian plucks a long stalk of grass and sticks it in his mouth to chew on. He’s still quite a gorgeous man; this body served him well as raw material. But perhaps it’s the true mark of Nie Huaisang’s entrance into middle-age that youths don’t hold much sway over her anymore, regardless of how charming they might be.

For all the wariness with which he still treats Nie Huaisang, Wei Wuxian glows with an energy she hasn’t seen on him in a very long time. It’s not so surprising that making his own exit plans has had this effect on him; Wei Wuxian, of all people, wasn’t meant to live out his days cooped up in Gusu, even if he’s here for love.

She envies him this warmth he’s found. Nie Huaisang tucks her legs against her chest and wraps one arm around them; autumn is brisk up here, and it’s very early in the day. Her other hand strokes a patch of damp, verdant moss. Behind her eyes, she sees Jiang Cheng on a riverbank at dawn, watching the cranes; it’s a sight she has never seen, but can imagine splendidly. She feels as raw as a skinned knee.

“Are you satisfied with where you’ve left things with Jiang Wanyin?”

Of everything she’s said to him since Wei Wuxian began his second life, she thinks this is one of the first times he hasn’t been sure what to say in reply. Eventually, he replies, apparently unruffled, “What do you mean by that?”

“Oh, just what I said.”

“And where would you say I’ve left them?”

“That’s not for me to say, is it?”

“Pardon me for being frank, Nie-zongzhu, but I’ve got this feeling that you already know.”

Sure, let’s go with that. “Oh, but no one else is as good of a storyteller as you. Humour me.”

Wei Wuxian takes his time folding his arms behind his head before laying back and addressing the sky. “A while back, Jin-zongzhu had—well, I’m sure he thought it was a good idea.”

“I’m sure he did.”

“A real silly child, that one. Loves meddling. Though, considering who raised him…”

“Yes, it’s hardly his own fault.”

They realize at the same time that they’ve both lost their glibness; Wei Wuxian recovers quickly, however, and continues. “Oh, there’s not much to tell, Nie-xiong, and I really mean that.”

As if she doesn’t know that Wei Wuxian loves the sound of his own voice!

She gazes, absorbed, at Wei Wuxian’s face, to mask her impatience. There are other things she needs to attend to today; this is only the first account she must settle. She could leave—nothing truly keeps her here—but for the curiosity. It feels pressing to get these secondhand accounts of Jiang Cheng, now that the man himself is inaccessible to her.

“Let me guess—was he trying to reconcile the two of you?”

A long, weary sigh. “I came to Carp Tower on his invitation. Jiang Cheng was there. I hadn’t expected him, and he was definitely not expecting me. And you know how he gets when he feels like he’s been ambushed.”

“Mm.” She does know.

“I think Jin-zongzhu thought that if he could get us to sit through a meal in the same room, then… I don’t know what he thought.”

Nie Huaisang wonders whether Wei Wuxian knows how obvious it is to everyone that knows him well that Jiang Cheng wishes he had a family again. Whether Wei Wuxian would believe it.

“I take it things didn’t work out how he’d hoped?”

“You can use your imagination.”

“And Jiang Cheng said something rash. To you, not to his nephew.” This much is extrapolation and a hunch, but she takes Wei Wuxian’s non-reaction as confirmation. If they were just squabbling with one another, it would have blown over in a few days.

Wei Wuxian is quiet for a long time, then. Nie Huaisang closes her eyes, and puts herself in Jin Ling’s shoes. He must have felt like he’d been made to look a fool for hoping that he could do a good thing for people he loves. Humiliated, for daring to think the best of people.

Nie Huaisang tips back her head and looks at the early morning clouds passing over the sun. “But he must have come to you with an apology eventually.” Unless Jin Ling let him off easy, but she thinks he has more backbone than that.

Wei Wuxian replies, after a stretch of silence, in a deceptively casual tone. “Eventually.”

A lump forms in Nie Huaisang’s throat, even as she’s struck with delighted horror at the thought of what such an apology must have looked like. How difficult must it have been for Jiang Cheng to swallow his own pride enough to capitulate to his nephew in this? She thinks of Jiang Cheng as a young man: ill-tempered and easily bruised, yes, as he is still, but even so; she may think of him as eternally youthful in all the wrong ways, but he’s come a fair distance over the years. And he could be worse. He has been worse.

She adds, “He doesn’t… enjoy it, you know. Being the way he is. He just doesn’t know another way to be.”

Wei Wuxian picks up one of the seeds and holds it up at eye level, inspecting it like a jeweler. “You tricked me out here with snacks, Nie-zongzhu. Ruthless alright.”

“I do think he’s… trying.”

The Jiang Wanyin of ten years ago, or even two, wouldn’t have been capable of the things he said last night, or the terrible glow in his eyes as he said them. Nie Huaisang repaid his effort by reminding him why he’d held back in the first place.

Disquiet must show on her face, for Wei Wuxian’s expression shifts somewhere between apprehensive and amused. “You seem like good friends, lately.”

“Of course he’s my friend. You know that he’s my very old friend.” Her voice comes out humiliatingly flustered.

That, too—his friendship—was an inheritance from Wei Wuxian. She bites her lip in lieu of screaming into her palms.

It should be easier to escape… people. Their remnants. It doesn’t matter if they’re estranged, or dead, or just sitting across from her, sharing an uneasy conversation; she’ll never shake them off of her heels.

Nie Huaisang takes a deep breath, and then rustles through her sleeve and withdraws a letter. “If I can ask one last favour of you…”

His eye falls on the paper, but he doesn’t move. “Oh?”

“This is for my er-ge. If you’d take it to him for me, or give it to Lan-er-gongzi to deliver it for me, I’d be grateful. You can read it first, if you’re worried there’s something awful in there. I don’t mind.”

For a moment, she thinks he will refuse, but with a sigh, Wei Wuxian plucks the paper from between her index and middle finger. The letter is neatly folded shut.

Nie Huaisang adds, “Of course, I don’t know how Lan-zongzhu would feel about knowing someone else has been opening his mail, but that’s out of my hands.”

The view of the Cloud Recesses’ tumbling hills and dewy trees really is quite beautiful, particularly in the hours just after dawn. For one with a painter’s eye, as Lan Xichen has, it’s hard to think of a better place to be sequestered.

He once complimented Nie Huaisang’s technique as a painter, when she was still a little boy and very amateurish. The compliment—a kind word for the angle of Huaisang’s wrist with a brush in hand—was tucked amidst some insightful criticism, which made the encouragement feel real and earned. Lan Xichen was just da-ge’s friend at the time, and their fathers were still living. Huaisang knew that he was important, but didn’t give it the slightest thought before addressing him, like Huaisang would have any of the elder Nie disciples, as Xichen-ge.

The informality pleased him; Huaisang understood this even at the time. He was happy to be known as cordial, inconsequential Xichen-ge for as long as he could.

Well, you’ve got your wish now, er-ge. Keep hiding for long enough and you really will become no one of consequence.

But she can’t fault him for that wish. She wants the same for herself, even if the specifics differ.

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Wei Wuxian consider the paper in his hands. He turns it over in a motion that is only kept from looking fidgety by the elegance of his long fingers; Nie Huaisang could never pull it off, but that’s alright.

Wei Wuxian tucks the letter into his robes, its original creases intact. So he can still give her answers that she likes to hear.

The pink of the sky has been overtaken by blue, and she feels a renewed sense of clarity about the path ahead. She knows that it’s the poor sleep having cleared away all but the most essential functions of her mind, and as such will not last, but she’ll make use of it. She has places to be this morning: other judgements to proclaim, if only to herself.

Nie Huaisang gets to her feet. She dressed this morning in dark enough colours that the wet patches aren’t horrifically obvious, but she brushes herself down with her hands in case of errand blades of grass.

“I’m sure your husband is waiting on you.”

“I’m sure he is,” Wei Wuxian says, and there’s that note in his voice again, the one that comes of presenting a remark as lighthearted and inconsequential in a way that fails to obscure its sincerity and warmth.

Nie Huaisang is aware that she teeters on the edge of a pool of nauseous emotional extremity. The man beside her—his body, his soul, and the miraculous, horrific state of the convergence of the two—is the best and the worst of which Nie Huaisang is capable. She doesn’t enjoy being confronted with the reality of it, as much as she’d missed him—and she had missed him. Nie Huaisang used to feel such unpleasant reminders of her legacy as pestering presences on the edge of her consciousness. In this moment, she feels it clearly as a profound, unfocused sorrow on the behalf of herself, Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, the entire world, and also a boy she once looked at over a pot of tea and asked, If you’re going to throw your life away, would you at least let me put it to use? How did she ever live before she learned how to choose the emotions she could afford to feel? Why is the skill leaving her now?

She is able to suppress the ludicrous upswell of desolation for as long as it takes for her to exit the conversation; she gives Wei Wuxian a friendly bow, and the corner of her mouth quirks upwards in a way that probably looks sardonic. Nonetheless, she is fully sincere when she tells him, “I hope you enjoy your journey, however long it lasts.”

“To you as well.”

Nie Huaisang adds, “And have a happy married life.”

“Thank you.”

She hesitates, and then says, “Take care of yourself,” before turning back to the path.

Of all the sheets of paper that Nie Huaisang used up in the small hours, only three letters had ended up neatly pressed and tucked away inside the folds of her collar, over her heart.

Er-ge,

As you may have already heard by the time you read this, I’m leaving for seclusion. I suspect I will abdicate my seat before long, but haven’t chosen a successor yet, so I haven’t said anything official. I trust I can count on you to be discreet?

I still have your painting up in the hall at home—the one you gave to da-ge. It’s beautiful, but I don’t have a need for it any longer. I’m going to leave it for the sect along with the bulk of my collection, but if you wish to have it back, you may pass word through your brother and my people will have it delivered to Gusu promptly.

I have not forgiven you and I don’t believe I ever will. I don’t hate you, which makes this complicated. For your part, I don’t expect you to forgive me and might respect you less if you did. I would give you my permission to hate me, but what would be the point? You have it, but it’s not the sort of thing that needs to be given.

Otherwise, I suspect these will be the last words we exchange in our lives. I can’t imagine what goes through your mind these days—not for lack of effort, I assure you—but if any part of your reluctance to re-enter the world comes from aversion to seeing me, you won’t need to worry about it for much longer.

If it matters, some days I do still think of you fondly.

My regards to your family.

Nie Huaisang

Da-ge,

I’m sure it’s cold and dark where you are. I wish I could’ve thought of something better.

All my life I’ve thought of you when I needed to strengthen my spine, and I do still. In the same way, every time I make a choice, I think of what you would think of my actions, but the thought rarely sways me. As for my current decisions—it’s selfish, but I can’t help but ask: please don’t hate me. You have every reason to, considering the things I’m in the process of doing, but I want you to love me.

What I will say for myself is that I haven’t chosen the path of least resistance, this time. These things I’m in the process of doing are quite hard.

We cannot keep carrying on this way, da-ge. I want the sect to outlive you and I, and at this rate it won’t for long. I think that deep down you knew it, too. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that nothing is beyond threat of collapse, no matter how strong it may seem, and our present foundations are very shaky. I think they can be made sturdier, but it will require gutting the house.

You may disapprove, and consider it a dishonorable and cowardly path to walk, but there are a good deal of weaker choices I could have made, believe me. I earned our ancestors’ approbation long ago, so it may as well fall to me to set in motion the process of leaving many of their teachings behind. What’s a little more disgrace, so what happened to you stops happening, so the future leaders of the sect live out full lives, and no one else takes themselves to die alone and underground? Perhaps I was born to do this. It would explain a great deal about our lives which is otherwise only attributable to the cruelty of uncaring fate, otherwise known as san-ge.

What I can tell you is that if things stayed as they were for much longer, I would have killed myself. The effect on the sect would’ve been the same in the end, so can you understand why I decided to live instead?

There are a few things you did that still make me angry; forgive me. Why didn’t you confide in me sooner? I don’t know what I could’ve done for you, but it would’ve been better for you not to have had to bear it alone, right? You didn’t want to worry me, but that was inevitable.

But it doesn’t matter now. I have, of course, already forgiven you a thousand times over. I think there is something missing in me that allows for regret, or else it takes on strange forms, but the regret which I feel regards my failure to help you more in life.

When I think about marriage, I think about your sworn brotherhood. What do vows mean? Just words. Just… dust in the air. Yet, for the first time, I feel cheated for not having had the opportunity to tie myself to someone. I’ve wondered why you went along with it, and I suppose I’ll never know, but I at least now understand the desire to believe that a promise could mean what it claims to mean.

I hope you would wish me well. I want to believe that you do, even if what I’ve become is unintelligible to you. All I can hope is that I will succeed in making myself unintelligible for reasons besides doing things that appall you. I still have some good qualities. Some of which you used to bully me about lacking! I’m certainly wiser than I was. More patient, too. I have developed somewhat of a sense of responsibility, and am much more independent and capable. But all of that has been true for years. The newer things… let’s just say that there are fields inside of myself I thought I salted, where things have taken root nonetheless.

I still dream of you often, but in the most recent one, you were a child. I was my own age in the dream—the age I am now. I didn’t know how to speak to you, since we were the same height, and I the sect leader and you just Nie-gongzi! You just called me by my name, like you always do.

I’ve gone on long enough; my arm is tired. What matters is this: I’m sorry for everything; you will always be first in my unworthy heart; and, whatever else, I will think of myself as your didi for the rest of my life.

With gratitude,

Huaisang

Jiang-zongzhu,

Though I understand if you would prefer not to hear from me again, I find myself unable to go without clarifying a few things.

First, I must return some things that belong to you. Your taste in gifts is excellent, but my conscience won’t let me enjoy them. Please keep them until a more suitable recipient emerges.

After some consideration, I have come to better understand how our misunderstanding came about. I have been saying one thing and doing another for some time.

The only other thing I regret about our time spent together is there not being enough of it. You are much better company than you give yourself credit for, and I will cherish the memory of being your friend. In another lifetime I could’ve been more than that, and I would have been very lucky.

Wishing you health and happiness,

Nie Huaisang

After parting with Wei Wuxian, Nie Huaisang’s body begins rustling with faint tremors; she returns to her own rooms, vomits—mostly stomach fluid—into a basin, rinses her mouth, drinks some tea to ward off the morning chill, and then carries on with her tasks.

As she approaches the door of Jiang Cheng’s makeshift office, she can hear the quick patter of Jin Ling’s voice on the other side. She had been let into the anteroom when she indicated that she was in need of an audience with the sect leader, and now she considers turning around and leaving entirely, like this is a fated reprieve—but if she takes the coward’s route now, she’ll have to bring his gift home with her, at a time when accumulating more unwanted artifacts is the last thing she needs to do.

Nie Huaisang is gazing into the middle distance, weighing cost and benefit with an expression of abstract concern, when the door flies open. Jiang Cheng emerges; he’s saying something to his nephew, but he breaks off in the middle of his sentence when he sees her.

In the span of a few seconds, Jiang Cheng’s face plays out every emotion ever named by humankind, and a few no one has thought of before. However, he pulls them back admirably quickly, and greets her with all of the warmth of an empty hearth. “Nie-zongzhu. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Nie Huaisang wishes she could strangle herself for the callousness with which she spoke to him last. She wishes she had said worse, so there wouldn’t be any yearning left in him for her to see. It would be preferable, she thinks, to be wholly unwanted.

“I’ve just got some things left over from last night that I ought to return.”

A light behind Jiang Cheng’s eyes shutters, and then his expression turns into one of his macabre grimace-smiles. “I’m needed elsewhere for a moment. You don’t mind keeping your own company, do you?”

He goes the way Nie Huaisang came, calling for some disciple. To her surprise, Jin Ling stays behind; with a huff and half an eye-roll, he says, “Well, good luck. Uncle’s in a mood today.”

“Oh, well,” Nie Huaisang says pleasantly. “I wonder why that is.”

If Jin Ling thinks anything is strange about Nie Huaisang’s presence here, he doesn’t say so. “Do you think you’ll be back in time for Wei-qianbei and Hanguang-jun’s wedding?”

“It’s hard to say. Maybe I’ll enjoy secluded meditation so much I’ll lose track of time!”

“I guess,” Jin Ling said, visibly doubtful.

It pleases Nie Huaisang to be spoken to by this young man in a mildly disrespectful tone. Jin Ling has been insolent since he learned to talk, and though he was never egregiously rude, he spoke to Nie Huaisang the way that one might speak to one’s shushu’s indolent nuisance of a sometime-little brother, whom one was no doubt told about, by one’s tutors, as a cautionary tale. Right now he addresses Nie Huaisang more politely than that, but he sounds refreshingly unconcerned; there’s almost none of the cautiousness she had reluctantly become used to from him since the temple. Perhaps he’s just forgotten, temporarily, but still.

Jin Ling looks then as though he’s realized that he sounds very rude, and he summons up his personal dignity in order to offer her some formal congratulations. He’s very proper and cute about it, and he says he looks forward to the wisdom that Nie Huaisang will gain from secluded meditation, which is very funny.

It’s the kind of thing san-ge would have said, not only for the sake of the addressee, but for the benefit of the young listener, as he never shone more than while playing the patient instructor. She wonders what it was like to be raised under that congenial eye from birth. Nie Huaisang only had a few years of it, and even those left their mark. Was it as treasured an experience for Jin Ling as it was for Nie Huaisang, to earn Jin Guangyao’s sincere praise?

The long night and difficult morning have left Nie Huaisang unsettled enough for the wash of ill-timed nostalgia to dizzy her. Jin Ling is watching her closely; perhaps it shows. She never let herself think about this kind of thing, before. She couldn’t afford to feel the kind of proximity to other people that threatened to stay her hand.

Nie Huaisang swallows and straightens her spine. Looks him in the eye. “I paid respects to your parents and your aunt, during the crowd hunt. I hadn’t been to Carp Tower in so long.”

Jin Ling looks startled, but recovers well; his gaze flickers around, but he mostly doesn’t stumble over his words. “Thank you for that, Nie-zongzhu.”

“When I was there, something occurred to me. You wouldn’t happen to know whether the people of Mo Village put up memorial tablets for the family, would you?”

“No, I don’t know.”

“That’s alright. I didn’t really expect you to have been in touch.”

“I can write to them.”

She nods absently. “It’s not urgent. I was just curious.” Her pulse continues flickering away in her throat, and she tightens her fist within her sleeve before sharpening her gaze once again. “Actually, Jin-zongzhu, would I be able to ask a favour of you?”

“Oh? That’s—uh, of course, yes.”

“Will you? Write to them, I mean? And if not—if no one made a place for Mo-gongzi your uncle, would you do it? I’m happy to provide land for it, or anything else you might require.” Jin Ling doesn’t require material help from her for anything, but it’s the principle of the thing.

Nie Huaisang never looks this part of her life in the face. She still isn’t, really; she’s gazing somewhere just to the left of it, but still close enough to make her tremble.

“Ah—yes. I can do that.”

The conversation comes to a lull, which is more than Nie Huaisang can stand; she looks back at the door through which Jiang Cheng left with his disciples, willing him to return. When this fails, she breezily turns back to Jin Ling for distraction: “What about yourself, then, Jin-zongzhu? Do you have any prospects?”

“What kind of prospects?”

“Marriage! I’m curious whether His Excellency and Wei-xiong are going to spark a year of weddings.” Jin Ling makes a wrinkled face, like a twelve-year-old being asked about his crushes, and Nie Huaisang laughs out loud. “I’m sorry, it’s none of my business. Enjoy your youth.”

Jin Ling surprises her, then; he folds his arms and looks at her with the twinkle of genuine interest in his eye. Nie Huaisang takes a small, encouraging step closer. On cue, Jin Ling casts a prudent gaze around the hall before muttering, “There’s a rumour that jiujiu is courting again, but I don’t believe it.”

Nie Huaisang blinks once, and then several times in quick succession. If she were a shade less skilled at schooling her reactions, she would have choked. As it is, she looks at Jin Ling expectantly with indulgent but impersonal interest. “There is?”

“He hasn’t said anything, but he never would unless it was a sure thing. But that doesn’t mean it’s true. I think some of the disciples just got bored and started making things up.”

“Mm.” She nods agreeably. Guilt ferments in her abdomen.

Jin Ling continues, still glancing around watchfully in case he’s caught. “If he’s been acting weird, I think he’s just getting old.”

“Right,” Nie Huaisang, five months Jiang Cheng’s elder, agrees, and then makes a decision before she can think better of it. She grabs hold of Jin Ling’s wrist, her face imploring.

“Jin-zongzhu, will you do something else for me, too?”

Jin Ling looks like he’s trying to work out an imperial examination question in his head. “Yes? I mean, probably? I mean, I’m sure—”

“Get your uncle a dog.”

“A dog?” His guileless expression is such that you could be forgiven for thinking he’s never heard of the creatures.

She waves her free hand around. “A spiritual one would be best, but anything will do, as long as it’s energetic. Don’t listen to him if he says he doesn’t have the free time—”

The door at the end of the hall opens, and Jiang Cheng re-enters the antechamber, a pair of disciples behind him. Nie Huaisang hastily lets go of Jin Ling’s arm and gives Jiang Cheng a friendly bow.

“Jiang-zongzhu. Thank you for, ah, making the time for me.”

Jiang Cheng’s only response is to cast his eye around the room.

"Everyone else, you can leave us."

Next to her, Jin Ling shuffles his feet in a juvenile, un-sect-leaderly way—Nie Huaisang is tempted to copy it—and then says, “I’ll see you later, jiujiu,” before ducking away through the door.

Jiang Cheng’s eyes follow him down the hall; he doesn’t say anything until he’s sure Jin Ling is out of earshot, and then he jerks his head in the direction of the open door to his makeshift office. Nie Huaisang meekly lowers her head, and when Jiang Cheng doesn’t make another move, enters the room ahead of him.

When the door has shut behind Jiang Cheng, he takes a seat behind the office desk like he's formally receiving Nie Huaisang, sect leader to sect leader, which Nie Huaisang supposes he is. “Telling tales to my nephew?”

“Just killing time, really.” She looks down at her hands for a moment, checking her fingernails. “Are you heading back to Lotus Pier later?”

“Midday.”

The nails on her left hand are all clean; now for the right. “Ah, I see. Well, we’re leaving not too much later. I hope the weather stays fair.”

“So you’re here to waste my time with small talk?”

Nie Huaisang glances up at him and then quickly away; to the walls, this time, where she observes the tasteful but spare Cloud Recesses furnishings. “I’m sorry if I seem scattered. I didn’t get much sleep.”

“You poor thing.” Jiang Cheng sounds wonderfully unpleasant.

She lifts her chin to look him in the face for the first time since they entered the room. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t know whether you’d let me in.”

“Don’t worry, I’m still considering changing my mind.”

Nie Huaisang nods, yes, yes, exactly as you say, this humble one would never presume, and continues to presume. She withdraws from her collar the pins, folded inside a piece of letter paper. Please don’t let him ask about what happened to the box.

As soon as he sees what she’s holding, Jiang Cheng’s lip curls. “Don’t you dare try and give those back to me. Go throw them in a well for all I care.”

Nie Huaisang wets her bottom lip—one of those nervous tics that was once genuine, but which she’s overused to the point that she can no longer tell the difference between when she does it out of embodied habit or a deliberate attempt to downplay her own certainty—and clears her throat. “You know, you really took me by surprise. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I didn’t think you had it in you to do something like that.”

“How could I possibly take that the right way?”

There’s no answer she can think of which isn’t in some way insulting, but she really doesn’t mean it like that. She’s proud of him, and it’s getting harder and harder to justify why it felt so unavoidable to push him away for his own good.

“I don’t know what to do with—with this.” Her hands have fallen by her sides. She’s talking about the pins. She thinks she’s probably talking about the pins. It’s clear that Jiang Cheng doesn’t know what to say to that, and Nie Huaisang presses the advantage. This much is conscious. The mealy-mouthed, sulky tone her next words come out in, less so. “Jiang Cheng... You knew that I’m about to go away. What were you expecting?”

“You’re the only one who keeps saying it has to be forever.”

“I’ve told you why.” Nie Huaisang scuffs her shoe, and then looks him in the eye. “It’s not easy. You asked if it was easy for me, and it isn’t.”

“Why did you come here?” A tendon works in Jiang Cheng’s jaw, and Nie Huaisang feels an excruciating tenderness for him.

She makes out a quiver in his gaze, and takes a step toward him. This is not what she came here to say, or to do, but she thinks, da-ge, put some steel in my spine once again.

“What exactly did you mean by this? Spell it out for me. I’m very stupid, you know.”

Jiang Cheng stands up, at last. Her heart thuds, but then—he turns away from her. His shoulders are up like an angry cat. She tucks the pins away and then takes another step, making sure he can hear her footfalls. Avoiding another ambush.

“You really wanted to take me home with you?”

“Doesn’t matter anymore, does it.”

She takes a third step, and then a fourth. “It does.”

Nie Huaisang waits to see if he’ll walk away. If he does, she won’t follow, but he stays still, and so when she gets close enough, Nie Huaisang lays the palm of her left hand on his shoulder-blade. His muscles tense at her touch, but he doesn’t brush her aside.

She cares for him so terribly. Now that she has acknowledged this, it’s difficult to understand how she could have gone so long without admitting it. After all this time, she really knows nothing at all.

Nie Huaisang wants to peel off her skin and bury herself in a hole in the ground—but she doesn’t really, does she? There is an unyielding core of her which kept her alive, until it didn’t, anymore, and now that it's beginning to crack, she doesn’t know how to live.

Slowly, carefully, she embraces him. As gently as she can, she relocates her hand from his back to his chest, over his breastbone. Her cheek presses against his shoulder, and she can feel the groove in the muscle surrounding his spine. It strikes her how familiar his body has become, that she can visualize it perfectly through his clothes. Nie Huaisang places her other hand on his stomach, atop the hitching intake of his breath.

Nie Huaisang feels, rather than sees, Jiang Cheng grip her wrist. His grasp is firm, on the verge of overly so, but he doesn’t pull her hand away from his body, as she’d feared he would. He just holds her where she is, and her stomach flips over.

She can’t remember the last time she so utterly lacked a way out; the paths from this room are murky to her, so she can only act in the present, and face the consequences as they come.

Nie Huaisang knows with the instinct only earned by experience that if she stays silent now, she will never have another chance, and she will regret it for the rest of her life. She just doesn’t want to write herself any more fucking letters.

“I want to be with you,” she says, in a faraway tone. “I want to come home to you. I want people to see you and know that I chose you.” Jiang Cheng inhales sharply, and Nie Huaisang curls her hand more tightly in the front of his robes. “But it feels like, if I try and have that, then something will just—I don’t know. Something… terrible will happen.”

When he speaks, his voice is cracked. “You’re a coward.”

She laughs. “Yes.” Jiang Cheng used to be, too. How was Nie Huaisang supposed to know he’d grow out of it?

He turns around, and she isn’t quick enough to compose her face.

His lashes are caught with water. Nie Huaisang’s own eyes sting and refuse to clear even if she blinks. Even so, she tries her best, so that she can hold his gaze.

She wants to hold him with all the strength she has. Nie Huaisang pulls out her fan to prevent herself from doing so. She opens it about half the width of a hand, fidgets with the ribs, and snaps it shut. Repeat.

“So—what? I’d—be your houseguest, and hope no one notices?”

“Let them say what they have to say to my face, if they have the stomach.”

“Everyone would talk about you, and most of them wouldn’t be very kind.”

“Who has the right to chastise me? Lan Wangji? At least I have my household in order.”

Her mind is so full it’s empty.

Jiang Cheng straightens his shoulders, but all the good posture in the world can’t slacken the entreating pull of his voice. “I’ll—I’ll build you a house. You can paint and do nothing all day, I don’t care.”

Nie Huaisang thinks, I can’t; what would I tell da-ge? She thinks, but da-ge isn’t here, and there aren’t many things I couldn’t talk him around on, if he knew I really wanted them. If it meant something to me.

“Well—I—” She casts around for anything else; there’s so many reasons this is impossible that they should surely be easier to bring to mind. “I’ll never—you’re not going to get any children out of this, you know.”

“Jin Ling’s only just grown up. What makes you think I want to start all over again?”

“I live a very pampered lifestyle and I don’t intend to stop.”

“Do you think Yunmeng Jiang is a sect of paupers?”

She’s pointing, accusatory, with the end of her fan. “I’ll be a terror. I used to use any dirty trick I could think of to get da-ge to do what I wanted.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not under any delusions about the kind of person you are.”

“But—”

Nie Huaisang stills. One of Jiang Cheng’s hands travels down Nie Huaisang’s sleeve. With an irritated expression she doesn’t give much credence, he takes the fan out of her loose grip and stuffs it back into her belt.

Her hand hovers, purposeless, before flying up to grasp his upper arm.

Nie Huaisang hasn’t failed to realize that she has walked up to one of the precipices of her life: a moment the result of which will determine the choices given to her by all that follow. It frightens her, but less than she would expect. She’s running out of fear, and all that it leaves behind is suffocating lightness.

She feels his breath on her cheek. Her face tips up of its own accord.

The first kiss is plucked from her lips and over in a heartbeat. It is followed by several more, each deeper than the last. Together, they form one long, sweet, poetical immediacy. The last part of her mind capable of thought ponders whether she is at risk of a genuine swooning fit. It’s been a year or two since she had one for real, and they are not usually caused by kissing, but she feels weak in the knees. Her hands tighten in his robes. Even if she is, Jiang Cheng must deal with the consequences.

Eventually, they part. Nie Huaisang straightens herself as much as she can without taking her hands off of him. He frowns, and pushes back a piece of hair that she thinks was stuck to her lips.

She’s been thinking, as it’s come closer to becoming reality, about what it really must be like to live on one’s own. Even if she’s been lonely, Nie Huaisang has never been truly alone. There have always been people around—attendants, servants, fellow disciples. She likes the creature comforts of civilization; it’s part of why this idea she’s peddling of herself going off into secluded meditation in some cave like an immortal master is so funny. It does beckon to her, solitude, it does, and of course it will be a lonesome enterprise, to make her own fate. But…

Nie Huaisang clears her throat softly and then says, “Give me a year. One year, and then—and then we’ll see which of us is right.”

Jiang Cheng looks down at her, brows grim, eyes shining, cheeks pink, mouth full and flushed. He ought to be kissed every day.

“You better keep your word.”

“On my honour, I swear.”

He makes a sound that indicates how highly he values her honour, and then says, “Don’t keep me waiting.”

Nie Huaisang is grinning like a fool, but that’s alright. No one is going to see except for a man who is a fool by anyone’s measure, and as he is its cause, that makes Nie Huaisang a fool as well. A better sort of fool than the kind she’s been known as until now.

“No, no. Don’t worry. I don’t think I will.”

Esteemed Jiang-zongzhu,

If you’re reading this, I’ve made it to the cottage. I call it a cottage, but it’s a large house; larger than I wanted, in all honesty, but I was attached to the location. There’s an excellent papermaking studio in town and I’ve admired their work for years; how was I to resist?

The journey ran overtime, but just due to minor inconveniences; nothing worth the ink to relay to you. It did solidify my conviction not to go anywhere further than a day-trip for as long as I can avoid. That won’t be such a terrible fate, since I’m not too far from town and the amenities are adequate. I had any dry goods I’m particularly picky about brought in by the crate, so I should be alright for some time. If I get desperate for anything else, I might have to ask you to pull some strings, since I think your contacts in waterborne trade far exceed mine, but hopefully that won’t be necessary.

The previous owners of the property maintained quite an impressive garden, and I feel a little guilty to have taken ownership of it myself, since paying to maintain the whole thing for just my own enjoyment seems a bit much. Maybe if I stay here for a bit longer I’ll get too irritated by the sight of it looking ill-tended, and go looking for a gardener; that, or learn how to do it myself. It’s amazing how much more time I have on my hands at the moment, considering what a committed delegator I was. I’m at a bit of a loss with what to do with it all. Perhaps I’ll start writing awful poems.

Make sure you’re alone now, I want to talk about sex—

Remember what I teased you about, the last time we met in person? I really don’t have it in me to be that mean, I hope you know, but I had to threaten you because I knew you would find the idea interesting in a horrible sort of way, and judging by the look on your face, I was right! Rest assured, I don’t have so little care for your health and happiness to actually tell you not to come for who-knows-how-long until we see each other again, and to be honest I’m more compelled by the thought of you getting yourself off thinking about me than I am by the thought of you going without, at least when I’m not around to witness all the pitiful expressions you might make. However, since the carriage ride was so much longer than I’d planned, I had time to contemplate, and I had a proposition for you: what if I told you that you need to keep a record every time you get yourself off until we meet again, with the date, and where you were, and what you thought about? I wouldn’t make you send them back in the mail, I know that probably crosses a line of just how closely you’re willing to court disaster, but you can keep them on your person until we see one another, and then hand them over to me. What do you think? If you don’t want to, you should tell me so, but if you don’t say anything in your next letter, I’m going to expect you to hand it over the next time I see you.

Anyway, I ought to get back to settling myself in. I hope you are well, and your nephew is well, and your disciples are well, etc. I know you’re very occupied, but make a little time to write me back when you can, please? My ability to stay abreast of news is in your hands. I have to be slow in my replies to anyone else, since they all think I’m busy achieving enlightenment.

Sincerely,

Nie Huaisang

Jiang Wanyin,

Is all well at Lotus Pier? I hope so; I like to imagine this letter reaching you on a sunny day when your patience has only been minimally tried. If I’m wrong and things are less idyllic than that, please tell me about it in as much detail as you like. Though you can’t see it, I look very sympathetic.

As far as my own day-to-day life, there’s really not much to tell. Sometimes I go to the market to do the shopping, if I’m looking for something to do. I’ve made friends with the butcher, who I think believes I am someone’s wealthy housewife, or something like that? In any case, because of my family I have enough knowledge of the industry to talk shop with him, and the last time I went into town he gave me a quail with the rest of my order, gratis. Being a more worldly sort has its benefits; I bet nothing like this happens to the Lans. Well, they probably get offered free quails, but for different reasons, and they can’t even eat them.

The sea is very nice, though. My expectations have been met. The property overlooks the ocean, and on a clear night, you can see the moon on the surface. It would be less novel to you than to me, no doubt, but we can’t all have grown up on the water.

That’s about all I have to report. The truth is, the countryside is very dull with no one to share it with. The housekeeper isn’t very chatty, which is why she was hired (though her cooking is also quite good), but one of these days I’ll just start talking to myself and I won’t be able to stop.

In good spirits, if a little understimulated,

Nie Huaisang

Jiang Cheng,

I used to feel like being at home was suffocating me. Everything at the Unclean Realms reminded me of the people who used to live there but don’t anymore, and it drove me crazy. Now, though, I miss being there. Even that part. It’s freeing, to be untethered, don’t get me wrong, but, ah, there’s something to be said for being somewhere you belong—which is something I don’t know if anyone else would say about myself and the place I come from, but I’ve had a long time to make it suit me, and I don’t think it’s been entirely unsuccessful.

As you might imagine, trying to play matchmaker from a distance isn’t the easiest thing I’ve ever done, but my attempts continue nonetheless. Though I have no immediate family, I have a plethora of cousins; too many, in fact. If there were, say, four, it wouldn’t be so hard to work out the path of succession, but once you start looking into the third cousins, there are probably thirty people out there with some type of claim to the throne of Qinghe Nie, some of whom are not even cultivators. It’s a mess, and I would probably die of frustration if my attempts to make my exit from my position as painless as possible come to naught and the sect crumbles into factional in-fighting, so I’m trying to ascertain which of my female cousins might be willing to marry my head disciple, so I could pass it off to him and be done with it. He’s not a blood relation, but that’s probably for the best, at this point, and best of all he is a very boring person with a small ego and respect for my opinions, which is what I would prefer in a successor, since I will hopefully be still alive when I do the handing-off. All of that is to say that trying to steer this from my current position is a slow and painful process.

I hope you’re not getting tired of hearing from me; I know it’s the third time I’m writing to you this week, and they’re all going to get delivered at once anyway, but I keep thinking of things I forgot to say, and rewriting them sounds tedious.

I shouldn’t downplay the enjoyment it brings me to get your letters—needless to say, I revisit them often. I even like the weather reports, and you should make time to finish a book soon so you can give me another review.

Oh, and I hope you’re eating well enough. Don’t think I haven’t noticed how often you skip lunch. I don’t care how busy you are; one of the prices you paid for wanting to marry someone who has experience as a sect leader is that you can’t claim that I don’t understand the breadth of your responsibilities, so when I say there’s always time for lunch, there’s always time for lunch.

As I’ve said, I’m ready to play hostess any time you like; my schedule is nothing but open. May the revered Sandu Shengshou find a single grain of pity in his stern heart, and deign to relieve this lowly one of her boredom!

I remain your faithful friend, among other things.

Nie Huaisang

My dear,

I suspect you will not receive this until after you’ve returned to Lotus Pier from having come to visit me. As a letter, then, it’s quite useless, since I’ll have the opportunity to tell you anything important to your face before you’ll get to read this. Alas, this doesn’t deter me from wanting to write it!

I think I already told you when we were settling on a date that I recommend you fly to the open field down the road, but I’ll repeat it in case either you or I forgot; it’s just easier. I will walk down the path to meet you there around midday. Tell me if there’s anything you’d like to eat when you get in, and I’ll make sure it’s readily available.

If you arrive on schedule, the housekeeper will be gone for her day off, which presents a few inconveniences but lots of opportunities. The bathtub here is big enough for both of us if we don’t mind being close, so I think I’ll have you draw up lots of hot water, and then I will make sure you’re no longer all sweaty from traveling.

After we’re all done with that, I’ll take you to bed, of course. I feel spoiled for choice when I think about actually getting to fuck you again. It won’t surprise you to know that I’ve put a fair amount of consideration towards this, and I am interested in your thoughts as well, but sometimes I don’t think I’ll get as far as leaving the tub before making a mess of you. Whatever happens, I will clean you up again and kiss you, and then we will share a meal while the sun’s still out. Doesn’t that sound nice?

If by some miracle you get this before you leave, do hurry. I have been waiting very patiently in your absence but am not built for this kind of thing. You wouldn’t jeopardize my health and sanity, would you? Not when I’d go so far as to guess that you’d enjoy the opportunity to see me, too?

Your perpetually dutiful, humble, prudent, and chaste companion,

Nie Huaisang

He could only spare two weeks away from Lotus Pier, though, in truth, this is longer than she expected. Nie Huaisang would never ask him to choose between his sect and herself, because however much he may have come to enjoy her company, she knows better than to think he will choose anything over his duty. As such, she should make the most of all the time she has, but she will pretend to be asleep a little longer. It was a hot night; they slept nearly naked, and his skin is so warm under the sheet.

She lays like that, breathing evenly, visualizing her whole body as heavy enough to sink through the floor—it’s how she’s learned to approximate the kind of dead weight physicality of unconsciousness—as he stirs into waking beside her. He silently yawns and rubs his eyes with the heel of a hand. She can feel the shifting of his weight on the mattress beside her as he sits up. Turns towards her. Watching her sleep, or watching her pretend to sleep; she wonders which he thinks it is.

Four fingertips on her shoulder, gently testing to see whether she’s awake. You wouldn’t believe how gently he can touch a person. Nie Huaisang makes her decision; she turns her head so he can see her face in profile, and she opens her eyes to meet his gaze—just barely, as the angle is awkward for her. And then he is sliding back her hair to bare the nape of her neck, and when this meets no response but a slow, satisfied roll of her shoulders, he leans in closer, and his mouth brushes the nape of her neck. She rises up into the touch, and he returns with a firmer kiss, and then another, following the notches of her vertebrae down the curve of her spine.

There are things she wants them to do with their limited time, which require them to leave this bed. She wants to walk to town and have lunch together at the tea-house, sitting at a table in the main room, so everyone can see them together. There will be other hours of the day for this, when the daylight has run out and there is nothing better to occupy their time with than touching each other. But they are so close to one another, and she is irresistibly compelled by the thought of his mouth, so she turns herself around and hooks an ankle around the back of one of his thighs. Pulls him over her, and up. They can spare a little of the morning yet.

She and da-ge once argued—well, they argued about everything, but this case is specific—about the way Huaisang dressed. Da-ge’s interest in fashion was completely perfunctory, but he did always put effort into the keeping up of appearances, at least as much as he needed in order to represent the sect appropriately, and it could never have been said that he was a sloppy dresser. Neither is Huaisang! Perish the thought! But she likes to be comfortable, and dressing loosely is comfortable! But they had a row once, as usual, where da-ge demanded to know why Huaisang could spend triple his allowance on jade pendants without being able to wear clothes that fit properly, and after that, Huaisang kept at it out of spite. And then da-ge died, and Huaisang was sect leader, and couldn’t look at his own clothes without thinking about what a spoiled brat he has always been, so she started to dress properly. It felt odd, then, to have to go back to those older clothes, once it began to behoove her to obscure her body. It felt like dressing up as a different version of herself, which was different and more strange than dressing up as a different kind of person, one which she ought to be.

She had to acquire some new clothes as part of her relocation process, naturally; nothing drastically different from the things she’s worn before, but more in common with Nie-zongzhu than Nie-er-gongzi, besides the types of minor styling touches that differentiate otherwise similar men’s and women’s zhiju. She makes Jiang Cheng dress her in the morning, most of the time, because she can tell that he likes it more than he would admit. The domestic ceremony of it is intangibly satisfying for her, too, and she thinks that Jiang Cheng enjoys the opportunity to be thorough and fuss over her. It’s one of many idle daydreams she began generating more frequently than ever after going into temporary exile, since her habits were all disrupted and there was room for fantasies to fill the gaps. He dresses her, though she picks out her own clothes, and then he dresses himself—sometimes she likes to help him with this, but not in the mornings, usually; it’s more fun for her to do when he’s just been fucked or brought to some other kind of tragic state, and she can make affectionate fun of him while she makes him presentable again—while she finishes getting ready for the day by the vanity.

He likes to help her with her hair, whether or not she tells him to. She had to show him how to braid more efficiently, or else they would never get to eat while their breakfast is still hot, but he’s a fine enough hand with it now. Very tractable when he wants to be, in this as in most things, and Nie Huaisang knows that he’s the type who does better showing his affection through actions than words.

Jiang Cheng kneels behind her while Nie Huaisang sits in front of the mirror, briskly powdering her face. He has three fingers of one hand in her hair, separating out different sections, and small pins balanced between finger and thumb of the other. At this proximity, she can smell the fragrance of his usual soaps, which have lingered in his hair. Nie Huaisang wouldn’t have noticed if she wasn’t already familiar with the scent.

In the process of collecting some stray strands of hair, Jiang Cheng runs a finger across her temple, and then over the shell of her ear. His fingertip brushes the simple pearl earring that hangs from her earlobe. He hasn’t asked how she came about them, though she can tell he wants to. There’s not much of a story there. A needle hot from the candle-flame, a mirror, and Nie Huaisang dipping into her well of grim resolve, which, happily, doesn’t see much other use these days.

They arrive to the market square in mid-morning, early enough that some of the quality produce is still available but not so early as to force them out of bed too soon. The cottage isn’t too close to the town—it’s perfectly walkable, and the roads are in good condition, but it requires prior planning. The sun is out, though, and she wants to people-watch, and besides, Jiang Cheng loves haggling. By the same token, shopkeepers look at him and see a well-to-do cultivator, even if he’s somewhat dressed-down, as he is now—dressed down by his usual standards is still dressed up by the average person’s—and they pick up on his sense of himself as someone who brooks no nonsense and sees through petty tricks of the merchant’s trade. As a result, they adjust their tactics to cater to his ego-driven desire to feel as though he has earned whatever concessions they may appear to make. The result is a battle of wits where each party sees themselves as seeing through the other’s machinations, and Jiang Cheng is game to partake in it for much longer than she would herself.

As planned, they go for tea after they finish shopping, and they arrive back at the cottage around mid-afternoon. They eat, and then Jiang Cheng goes outside to work on sword forms now that the sun has cast some shade, and Nie Huaisang settles down on the settee in the room that functions as a makeshift study, sitting on a cushion with a stack of letters in her lap, to familiarize herself with the latest dispatches from home.

They are made up of a lot of words in which not much is relayed, besides that progress on the projects of interest to her—scouting out marriage possibilities in the interest of preserving the family name, on the one hand; the first of what will undoubtedly be many marginally-productive closed-door councils on the future of the sect’s cultivation style, on the other—has been slow. She expected no better, but still. It chafes her to only hear what has happened secondhand, and no doubt at a significant delay. She spent a lot of effort, once, making sure she was the first point to which important information would flow, rather than the last. Nonetheless, she suppresses the irritation. The way she used to tackle problems, the terrible ruthless clarity of mind—that part of her will be present no matter what she does, she thinks, but she has the freedom now to indulge in indecision.

He comes back inside before she’s much further than halfway through. When he joins her on the couch, she shifts, without looking up, to sit with her body slightly inclined towards Jiang Cheng and her legs folded between them, her toes tucked beneath his thighs. Her left arm is outstretched, and his thumbs work over her palm while the slightly callused undersides of his fingers skim over the thin, veined skin of the back of her hand. Before long, it begins to feel good enough to drive her to distraction, even if she tries to let the sensory observations flow in and out of her consciousness without overrunning it.

Making him wait on her leisure would no doubt bore him, if it was all he ever did, but she realized some time ago that he enjoys her selfishness, when it’s directed at taking advantage of his diligence and desire to exceed expectations.

“Jiang Cheng,” she says, not looking up from the paper.

“What?”

“I think you should take off your clothes. You can use them to kneel on, so it’s easier on your legs.”

His thumbs stop on her palm; she gives him a few moments before looking up at him out of the corner of her eye, hardly turning her head. “Yes?” He can’t be surprised; it’s not as if they haven’t been getting up to this kind of thing at a ludicrous rate since Jiang Cheng stepped through the front door.

Indeed, Jiang Cheng doesn’t look surprised, but his eyes already have that slightly glazed look she’s come to expect from him when they do things like this. That’s flattering. They’ve hardly even started yet.

She has him push her skirts up past her knees, and he begins to work his way down Nie Huaisang’s calf, massaging any stiffness away. She does her best to stay focused on the last piece of mail she has to read, and not let him see the effect his touch has on her, but by the time he makes it to her ankle, she’s at the bottom of the letter, and her eyes keep sliding over the characters in a futile attempt to maintain her own focus.

Whenever she glances down at him, he looks so focused and quiet she can’t stand it. She wants to eat him. When his thumb slides over the softer part of Nie Huaisang’s insole, her whole leg jerks. Jiang Cheng holds tighter, probably instinctively, before seemingly thinking better of it and letting go. Nie Huaisang laughs, and puts her foot back where it was in his grasp. “Watch out. I’m ticklish.” He’s more careful after that, but at one point he places pressure with his thumb on a certain place on the arch of her foot that makes her nearly wince, but not from the bad type of pain; just working a previously undiscovered knot out of muscle.

Seeing him on his knees reminds her of how he’d looked the first time they made love after he arrived—well, technically not the first, but the first disregarding the time they barely made it to the bed. She’d done many things to him, but she most deeply remembers telling him to take off all of his clothes and crawl to her, and the way everything inside of her lurched sweetly to watch him do so without protest. Because he looked gloriously abject, of course, but also because, at least in that moment, he didn’t bother pretending he didn’t want to.

A shudder runs through her, and as if he read her thoughts, Jiang Cheng mutters, “I still don't know why you like to see this.”

“Really? Come on, Jiang Cheng, I hate false modesty.”

“I know you like to see me naked,” he says, crossly, as though his cheeks haven’t gone pink. “I mean having me act… weak.”

Nie Huaisang kindly doesn’t bring up the fact that, even if she got nothing out of it herself, he clearly does, which alone would have piqued her interest. “I don’t think you’re weak. A lot of men aren’t strong enough to let anyone see them like this. But you’re so good at it.” She pauses for a moment, sets aside the papers, and considers how to articulate the thing she has next to tell him. “I just like it when it doesn’t matter what you want.”

Jiang Cheng’s eyes flutter closed, though his hands don’t let go of her ankle. Her right foot, the one not in his grasp, slides slowly up his inner thigh.

“I think you want some time when you’re not responsible for anything except doing what I tell you. Does that sound about right? Thinking about everything all the time is so hard.” She prods at his cock with her toes. “So it makes sense that you like it when you don’t have to make decisions, and if you do, they’re just tiny little decisions. Nothing that matters.”

She understands what it is to desire an enclosure around your self and the things of which it’s capable.

A few days ago, Nie Huaisang was delighted to learn that Jiang Cheng had, in fact, followed her instructions and made a deceptively neat, albeit borderline-illegibly tiny, ledger of every time he jerked off for the past five months. His “explanations” of his fantasies are for the most part so euphemistic she honestly isn’t sure what they mean, but she hadn’t actually expected him to follow through with it to start with, and apart from the few that she made him define for her—the rest she responded to with raised eyebrows and muttered Oh, wow’s while he knelt in front of her in sweaty anguish—she decided to leave Jiang Cheng with a few mysteries. The most consistent and clear of them, however, was use of the word “talking”, usually without elaboration. This afternoon, she is bullying him, not punishing him; the distinction may appear arbitrary, but is not.

“Out of curiosity, what do you want right now? I’m not saying I’ll give it to you, but I want to know.”

Nie Huaisang presses his cock up against his belly, where it leaves a shiny little smear of precome. As predicted, Jiang Cheng is getting harder by the word. The sight and feeling of it skitters along her pulse points. It’s not a surprise, but it pleases her nonetheless.

Being away from Qinghe has been very nice in many ways, don’t get her wrong. She hasn’t regretted it, but she does miss home, and there have been an awful number of cold nights where she’s wondered whether she had too high of an opinion of herself to think she could manage to get by anywhere except the place she’s spent her entire life. It’s caused her to worry, in particularly maudlin moods; she still hasn’t given Jiang Cheng an official answer, technically, and she’s not going to transplant herself yet again if she’s not certain she could sink down new roots wherever she ends up.

It’s so pedestrian, to realize that she was just lonely.

The way he touches her makes her feel more herself, not less, and the more she gets used to having it on demand, the unlikelier it seems that she’ll be able to settle for anything else. There’s a great deal of work ahead of her, but if she needs to take more drastic measures upon her return to Qinghe in order for the process of casting off her duty to be sped along, she’s willing to do it. She’s only got so long to live.

She drags it out a while longer, but eventually she stops messing around and lets him put his mouth on her, which is what she knew that he wanted ever since he got on his knees; and then it’s an embarrassingly short length of time before Nie Huaisang is nodding frantically and gasping, “Yes, yes, yes,” until she hears a gust of breath, and Jiang Cheng leans back just enough to demand “Yes what?”, sounding more indignant and confused than any man in his position ought to sound, and Nie Huaisang laughs a little. Isn’t it clear? Yes, Jiang Cheng, yes. Yes.