a river of changing faces

I open my eyes: you are watching me.
Almost over this room
the sun is gliding.
Look at your face, you say,
holding your own close to me
to make a mirror.
How calm you are. And the burning wheel
passes gently over us.

(Louse Glück, from “Happiness”)

I. QINGHE, TWENTY YEARS BEFORE THE DEATH OF JIN GUANGYAO

Meng Yao once told Nie Huaisang that he never eats until he’s finished answering da-ge’s correspondence; this usually takes up the entirety of mao shi, even with a hand so brisk and precise, and until then he subsists on tea. Meng Yao and da-ge are both early risers. Da-ge tends to his own training amid the early-morning frost, before the soldiers and disciples assemble for instruction. Before long, Meng Yao, too, will emerge and flit around the Unclean Realms like a slight midday shadow, but during that quiet time when the only other people stirring in the palace are bakers, gardeners, and the other servants whose work starts with the sun, Meng Yao is alone at da-ge’s desk, attending to the business of ruling.

Nie Huaisang will occasionally bring a tray of food to the study if Meng Yao is still at it when he’s finished his own breakfast. Meng Yao seems startled by it each time, as if this is an unprecedented act of kindness.

“Let’s take dinner in the pavilion tonight. We could ask the kitchens for some wine; they’d give it away if it was you, they only keep it from me, and that’s just because they’re scared of da-ge.”

He’s braced for a gasp and stern talking-to from his adversary, and already has in mind his counterargument wherein he alludes, with the attitude of a grizzled war hero, to the fact he’s already taken punishment strikes at Cloud Recesses for drinking and so has earned his right to be treated as an adult in his own home, but there’s no need. Meng Yao blinks mildly and looks up from his letter. “If I agree, will you run through your blade forms today?”

Halfway to victory, but confound him! Nie Huaisang only just returned from Cloud Recesses, where the hardest challenge—besides Lan Wangji, who Nie Huaisang didn’t even bother looking in the eye—when it came to mischief companions was Jiang Cheng, who was easy to rope into anything as long as his pride was at stake. Nie Huaisang forgot what it was like to face off against a master negotiator who has probably never slacked off in his life. But what other option does he have? Da-ge will return tomorrow morning, and the priceless opportunity of being able to talk Meng Yao into doing anything remotely naughty will vanish like smoke in the wind.

He hopes he sounds as pitiful and defeated as he feels. “Oh, please don’t make me do it in the training yard in front of everyone. You know I get stage fright.”

Meng Yao sets down his brush and looks Nie Huaisang in the face. His expression is reproachful, but there’s lightness in his voice.“We can go to Chifeng-zun’s private courtyard, since he’s away. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind, if it was in the pursuit of your sabre cultivation.”

“We?”

Meng Yao smiles one of his flinty smiles, which Nie Huaisang enjoys seeing directed at others but less so at himself. “It’s no trouble at all.”

It plays out thus: Meng Yao in the shade with his sheaf of papers and Nie Huaisang swinging his sabre around under the late morning sun like a sweaty fool. Meng Yao does glance up at him from time to time, no doubt to make sure Nie Huaisang is fulfilling his side of the bargain, but he never corrects Huaisang’s form or offers critique of any kind, so Huaisang is able to get away with flailing in whatever way looks most convincing when he gets to the stances he’s forgotten.

He could do the stances properly if he really tried, but Nie Huaisang likes to do as little work as he possibly can at all times. It's fun to get fussed over by Meng Yao, which is a good enough motivator for Nie Huaisang to cultivate his artful helplessness to new heights. It’s not particularly hard, but is he to be expected to ignore low-hanging fruit, even when it's so delicious? He has made a discipline out of forgetting instructions as soon as they’re uttered, being frightened of things he knows can't hurt him, and delicately swooning on hot days. One of the finest moments of Nie Huaisang's coddling campaign thus far came when a very convincing imitation of one of his past fainting spells got him out of an extremely grueling kinesthetics session; before he knew it, he was reclining on a sedan with Meng Yao kneeling by his side and pressing a folded cloth, damp with cool water, against Nie Huaisang's brow. It's a memory he has revisited more times than he can properly account for, but is that a crime?

When the sun crests in the sky and Nie Huaisang is little more than a pile of soggy cloth—oh woe, woe, here lies Second Young Master Nie, gone before his time!—Meng Yao at last stands and gathers up his work.

Nie Huaisang drops his sabre on the ground where he stands and pushes his bangs back off his sticky forehead with the back of his forearm. The light filtered through the leaves above him casts Meng Yao’s face in dappled shadows. When their eyes brush, Nie Huaisang is met with a small smile. It sings within him for the rest of the day.

Picking a plum off a tree in summer: that's how easy it is get Meng Yao to scold him on his innumerable follies with poorly hidden affection, all the while patting Nie Huaisang on the hand as if to say, Oh, you silly little creature, whatever will I do with you? Nie Huaisang has never claimed to possess such fortitude of spirit as to resist temptation.

There is a courtyard within the Unclean Realms’ inner recesses where only inner family members and their guests are permitted. Being the only inner family member of the Nie clan currently present, the courtyard and its garden pavilion are Nie Huaisang’s domain until da-ge returns. It’s early autumn, but the evening is still warm enough that Nie Huaisang needs his fan for utilitarian purposes. The one he withdrew from his collection this morning was given to him by Meng Yao for his last birthday. It is an excellent piece, with some of the most delicate silver filigree Nie Huaisang has ever come across.

Meng Yao is already there on his arrival, as are the necessary table settings, covered boxes of food, and, as promised, a very modest bottle of liquor. The spirit is harsh, almost acrid at first, but after a few sips Nie Huaisang's mouth acclimatizes and he can taste the flavours hiding underneath the alcoholic burn: juniper and smoke. A far cry from Emperor's Smile, but Meng Yao procured it for him on Nie Huaisang's request, and he wants to savour the attention it’s easy to get in da-ge's absence.

“Does da-ge ever do this?” Nie Huaisang has been happily shelling peanuts since he sat down; he offers a handful to Meng Yao, who demures and takes none.

“What's that?”

“Drink and gossip with you.” It probably sounds—lewd, what he's asking, but he doesn't mean that. It's only that he wants to know if Meng Yao gets to hear da-ge laughing. Nie Huaisang hasn't heard it in a long time, but he remembers it, how warm and large a sound it is, how it fills up a room. Someone deserves to hear it, even if that can't be him.

Meng Yao's eyebrows float upwards, but his mouth quivers, suppressing a smile. “We talk, yes. He usually saves alcohol for special occasions.”

Nie Huaisang snorts around a mouthful of peanut. Yes, that sounds like da-ge. Hopelessly upright and stuffy. What’s the point of being a sect leader if it makes you sullen and grouchy and you never let yourself do anything fun?

He and Meng Yao really do suit each other; most days, Meng Yao is pleasant and logical to the point of boredom. It takes real effort to pry some fun out of him. A few months earlier, Nie Huaisang persuaded da-ge to let Meng Yao escort him to watch the jiao li tournament down in the city. Nie Huaisang had used the cover of his fan to run increasingly risqué commentary on the competitors’ strapping physiques, and he swears he managed to shock a laugh out of him. Meng Yao is very respectable and well-mannered and has, Nie Huaisang is sure, never dreamed of taking the kind of liberties with the more red-blooded denizens of Qinghe that Nie Huaisang would in a heartbeat, if not for his pitiable situation as the off-limits didi of a sect leader no one dares to cross, but Meng Yao has a pulse. And, well, he and da-ge—

He hears what people say, of course. Fear of being accused of corrupting Chifeng-zun’s only heir can only do so much to shield him from gossip, and Nie Huaisang has lived here his whole life; he has his ways. He isn't sure how much to believe. It certainly can't all be true, but he's not naive. It’s only that he never expected, when he was young, that this is how his family would look. Perhaps the strangest part is that he really does like Meng Yao’s company. It’s a rare person to get along with both da-ge and himself.

Meng Yao is far too polite to make jokes of his own, at least where Nie Huaisang gets to hear them, but his laugh is quite sweet, and he's good-humoured; maybe he brings it out in da-ge, the lightness Nie Huaisang seems to remember him having, some time ago, though sometimes he isn't sure if he isn't just putting a rosy cast on memories of times that were hard even then.

Luckily for Meng Yao, Nie Huaisang has nothing but time, and with da-ge away his methods are much expanded.

“Meng Yao… may I ask you something...”—Nie Huaisang flicks his fan open with the skill of a master; stage actors may not be so dextrous— “Personal?”

Meng Yao purses his lips and lets his eyebrows arch up his forehead before drifting back down, as gently as evening snowfall. “What would Second Young Master Nie like to ask?”

Nie Huaisang half-closes his fan in his fist and props his chin on his folded-over wrist. “What did you think of Zewu-jun?”

“The First Jade of Lan is an impressive cultivator.”

Nie Huaisang wrinkles his nose. “Oh, you like to play coy, Meng Yao, but you have eyes. I'm not going to tell da-ge, if that's what you're worried about.”

Meng Yao blinks at that, and unless Nie Huaisang is wrong, which he rarely is about this kind of thing, he swears a rosy blotchiness rises out of Meng Yao's collar.

“He's the top-ranked male beauty in the cultivation world! I would reassess my judgement of your character if you didn't think he was—”

A truly rare thing happens then: Meng Yao, paragon of manners, interrupts the heir to the Unclean Realms! “—Second Young Master Nie…”

Nie Huaisang is seemingly incapable of stopping the words coming out of his mouth. He feels pleasantly floaty, and everything he has to say is very funny. “I've known him for a long time because he's da-ge's good friend. If I told you the kind of dreams I used to have about Xichen-ge I think we’d both die.”

Meng Yao is quiet for a moment. He daintily sweeps all of the peanut shells into a linen pouch produced from somewhere. Nie Huaisang almost thinks he's found the one subject that can leave Meng Yao at a loss for words when Meng Yao replies, his voice an odd tone that Nie Huaisang can’t remember hearing before: “Zewu-jun is a very striking gentleman. This one is honoured to have met him.”

Nie Huaisang exhales an amiable half-laugh, but it takes effort. He has a sense, in the pit of his stomach, that to tease Meng Yao now would ensure he can never get anything like this out of Meng Yao again. After a moment, he nods weakly. “Yes, he's really something. And that xiao!”

Before long, it’s full dark. The wine vanishes at a frightening rate. They talk about everything and nothing; Nie Huaisang’s mind slides around from topic to topic. At one point, Meng Yao asks him what he dreams of for his future, and Nie Huaisang confesses he daydreams of being married off to someone wealthy who wants an ornamental spouse who does nothing but paint and read poetry and entertain guests.

Meng Yao is sedate, but there's a brightness around his eyes. At a few moments throughout the conversation, he pauses mid-sentence to select his words with more deliberation than Nie Huaisang has ever seen him need. This is a fine chance, Nie Huaisang must not let it slip him by—a chance for what, you ask? Nothing in particular, nothing he can name in so many words. To see Meng Yao as no one else sees him; to be reassured that below the self he shows the world, Meng Yao is, after all, a scarce few years older than Nie Huaisang, and has more in common with him than, perhaps, anyone Nie Huaisang has ever met. That he's not just humouring him, but that he can enjoy Nie Huaisang's company, that his smiles and occasional laughs well up from a spring deep inside him but still flowing, sight unseen. He has small tastes of Meng Yao's pity quite often, and even enjoys it from time to time. It can be pleasurable to be thought small and weak by someone compassionate. But still—

“Meng Yao,” he begins, aware of exactly how much of a childish whine it is once it's come out, but forging on all the same: “Do you mind it? Having to look after me?”

“You are the heir to a major sect. It's an honour for this one to have been entrusted with your safety.”

He's allowed himself to believe Meng Yao is sincere, all the times he's praised the things about Nie Huaisang no one else seems to like. What does Meng Yao see, when he sees Nie Huaisang? Does Nie Huaisang want to know? He hopes it's something that pleases him, that Nie Huaisang isn't the only one who feels a kinship between the two of them beyond what they are to each other in name.

Nie Huaisang crosses his forearms on the table and lays his head down on them, staring out into the dark garden disconsolately. “Da-ge comes back tomorrow and he's going to be so angry with me... I haven't done anything he's asked, except train today, and that was only because you bribed me. In fact, I've done worse than that, I've corrupted you...” He bites his lip—earnestly, this time. “If he tries to get you in trouble for this, tell him it was all my fault. No, of course you won't, you’d never say that, but I'll tell him, Meng Yao, don't worry. I'll tell him I commanded you to drink with me, and you were protesting with tears in your eyes.”

“Second Young Master Nie is very thoughtful,” Meng Yao replies, “But unless things take a turn for the worse, I don't think you need to worry about what Chifeng-zun will think.”

Nie Huaisang pauses for a moment, his mind moving very slowly over the words until he understands, in a flash, what Meng Yao means. He sits back upright, gasps, and bats Meng Yao on the shoulder three times with his closed fan. “Meng Yao! Hiding things from Chifeng-zun! I knew you had a dark side! Does da-ge know you're so sneaky? I won't tell him, but I'll know.”

The corners of Meng Yao’s mouth quirk upwards. He gave Nie Huaisang an appraising once-over, something mischievous drawn on his typically serious face. Meng Yao reaches out and pushes some of Nie Huaisang's loose hair, having fallen over his shoulder, back into a semblance of order. He takes his time with the touch. He shouldn't be able to feel it the way he does, since Meng Yao doesn't touch a bit of Nie Huaisang's skin, but it surges over his body like an immersion in warm water.

Meng Yao is close to him, his gaze muted from its usual sharpness, and the silver he wears on his eyelids looks, under the moonlight, heavy and dramatic, like he's an actor on a stage or an empress on a dais, instead of the unnameable thing he is when he sips wine under the night sky with Nie Huaisang like a friend.

With an unpredictable rush of intensity, Nie Huaisang blurts, “Why do you wear your face like that?”

Nie Huaisang's hand comes up partway to Meng Yao's face before his fingers curl inwards. Meng Yao's eyes go wide and tremulous before the corners of his mouth curl into a small smile, like one of the soundless laughs shared between them in the midst of a banquet speech. When Nie Huaisang is able to get those out of him, he feels like he's won something. It happens more often lately; Vice-Envoy Meng Yao has settled into life in the Unclean Realms so deeply it’s strange to think of a time he wasn’t here. He wears Nie Mingjue's approval for all to see, just as he does Nie Huaisang’s handed-down robes.

That's how it is with Meng Yao: any conversation with him is a conversation with da-ge, too. But perhaps not this one. It’s hard for Nie Huaisang to imagine how even Meng Yao could confide this to Nie Mingjue without running into a cliff face of confusion.

Meng Yao doesn't chastise him; he fixes Nie Huaisang with a look that says he already knows the answer to the question he's about to ask, but he wants to hear Nie Huaisang admit it himself. “Have you never had your face done up before, Second Young Master Nie?”

“No,” he replies; his brother may accept such things from Meng Yao, but surely not for his own flesh and blood, not with all the allowances he’s already extended on that score.

“Would it please you to try?”

“Yes,” Nie Huaisang says a little too quickly, lurching into his enthusiasm with half a bottle of wine's lack of hesitancy. Meng Yao has the decency not to laugh at him, but he looks close.

When he gets to his feet and pulls Nie Huaisang with him to Meng Yao's own rooms, Nie Huaisang lets Meng Yao do all the steering; he walks through the garden with his head tipped back, watching the stars.

“How did you learn?”

“I used to play around with my mother’s things when she was out,” he says, and Nie Huaisang’s eyes open wide. He’s never heard Meng Yao mention his mother, though she’s the first thing anyone else mentions about him. “I thought it was magical, to be able to change the way you looked.”

Perhaps the alcohol has affected Meng Yao more than Nie Huaisang had thought; Huaisang has never heard him speak so candidly. He wants to seize upon the chance to reach out and grab hold of the things Meng Yao keeps to himself, if it is being offered the way he hopes it is, but he doesn't know if acting overeager could cause Meng Yao to retreat once again behind smiles and obsequious courtesies.

“My mother was my father's concubine,” Nie Huaisang says, for no reason he can think of. He rarely verbalizes this; to a Nie clan member, it is an unremarkable fact. “She became his wife after da-ge's mother died, but she was his concubine when I was born.”

“Does that trouble you?” Meng Yao doesn’t look up from his task as he sets a series of jars and brushes in a neat row in front of him.

Nie Huaisang flicks open his fan to buffet himself in a contemplative breeze. “No, I don’t think so… I've always been raised a Nie, and both of our mothers died young.”

“Did he treat her well?” Meng Yao’s voice is cool and even, like he’s greeting a guest.

Nie Huaisang frowns behind the fan. “I don't know, really. I hope so!”

Meng Yao nods, smiling vaguely, and turns to look at Nie Huaisang straight on. He places a smooth hand on Nie Huaisang’s wrist; Huaisang starts at the touch, until Meng Yao gently pulls his fan away from his face, and Huaisang laughs at the obviousness of it—yes, of course, Meng Yao has to see his face for this. How silly of him to forget.

His hands curl around the closed fan in his lap in an attempt to stop fidgeting. This is the most exposed he's felt in a long time; there's nothing to cover his face, and Nie Huaisang can't recall the last time he was watched so intently. He tries to stare at nothing, which is difficult because in front of his eyes is Meng Yao, biting his teeth into the corner of his bottom lip, his brows drawn in concentration. His eyes are unbearably large up close, and Nie Huaisang can't seem to meet them; he flitters his gaze around the corners of the room until Meng Yao clucks his tongue softly. “Stay still.”

Nie Huaisang can feel a blush bloom up his neck. He fixes his gaze on the top of Meng Yao's head, for want of a neutral object of attention. Meng Yao’s hand is deft and careful; he pats white powder over the surface of Nie Huaisang’s face, starting at his hairline and moving down to his nose, cheeks, and chin. Nie Huaisang holds himself tight, trying not to sneeze or jostle Meng Yao’s arm.

The powder cushion in Meng Yao's hand, having covered Nie Huaisang's face, moves down to his neck; for a moment Huaisang is horrified he's doing it just to cover up Huaisang's embarrassing flush, but Meng Yao only dabs along the underside of his jaw, blending the pale shade of his face into the natural skin of his neck so the difference isn't so stark. Down here, especially, the powder cushion is unbearably soft, and Meng Yao has a deft hand. It's not until Meng Yao pulls back for a moment, setting down that tool and picking up another, that Nie Huaisang realizes he's been holding his breath.

“Doesn’t this take you a long time in the morning?” The movement of brushes on his face is faintly ticklish; he's afraid any stray motion of his might make him sneeze.

“I enjoy it. It's the only time of day I have to myself.”

The next tool in Meng Yao's hand is a thin brush with something dark on the end, like ink but thicker. Meng Yao holds it aloft between two fingers, appraising. Nie Huaisang tries not to fidget.

“This part might tickle, but I need you to close your eyes until I tell you to open them. Don't blink.”

Having to shut his eyes is a relief, but it's short-lived; before he knows it, Meng Yao has a few fingertips placed on Nie Huaisang's upper cheek, pulling the skin around his eyes taut. The bristles of the brush are almost unbearable on the delicate skin of his eyelid. He has to fight not to let his reflexes ruin Meng Yao's hard work.

As if sensing he needs the distraction, Meng Yao resumes the conversation: “Second Young Master Nie's skin is so fair, he hardly needs to be powdered at all.”

“Oh?”

“Oh, yes. You must be the envy of all the girls in Qinghe.” One last brushstroke to the corner of Nie Huaisang's left eye, and then Meng Yao's fingertips leave the corresponding cheek and alight on the right. In the few seconds of freedom he has from Meng Yao’s touch, Nie Huaisang blinks his eyelids, noting the heaviness of the painted one and the lightness of the other, a feeling he’s, until now, taken for granted. Meng Yao is dipping the brush back into the pot of smudgy paste, and as soon as Meng Yao straightens, Nie Huaisang closes his eyes without having to be told.

He doesn’t reply until Meng Yao is back at work bringing Nie Huaisang’s face back into symmetry, tracing above his eyelashes with a steady hand. “Don't tease me, Meng Yao.”

“I would never tease you. Certainly not with the truth.”

The second eyelid takes him less time than the first; perhaps Meng Yao is adjusting to the difference between making up his own face and someone else's. The rest of the process takes less time, or perhaps Nie Huaisang has just gotten used to it, lulled into a sense of calm by having nothing to do but sit in place and let Meng Yao take care of him, as he always does.

They’ve been in a position somewhat like this once before, but their places were reversed. Nie Huaisang spent an afternoon kneeling behind Meng Yao, playing with his hair and fixing his creations in place with pins and combs. Untrammeled, his hair was thick and voluminous; he must put a lot of work into taming it so smoothly. That was a year or two ago. He hasn’t thought of it in a while; the sight of braids on Meng Yao’s head has become so commonplace it hasn’t merited thought until now, as Nie Huaisang tries to hold still under Meng Yao’s own careful attentions. He doesn't open his eyes again; he guesses by sound and feeling what Meng Yao is up to next. There's the clatter of brushes being set down and others being picked up, of containers opened and closed. Meng Yao scrapes something across the length of Nie Huaisang's eyebrows. He dusts more powder across the apples of his cheeks. He holds Nie Huaisang in place with two fingers under his chin, and runs a brush of something waxy and slightly fragrant over the bow of his lips. It's not until Meng Yao speaks again, further away from him, now, that he opens his eyes.

“Would you like to look?”

Meng Yao turns Nie Huaisang by gentle hands on his upper arms until Huaisang faces the bronze mirror. From behind him, Meng Yao leans in to look into the mirror too. Nie Huaisang can feel the warmth of his body even before the point of Meng Yao's chin comes to rest on his shoulder.

“Do you like it, Sang-meimei?”

He’s never spent much time looking at his own face, so Nie Huaisang can’t be sure how much of the strangeness that greets him is Meng Yao’s handiwork. The faltering candlelight casts shadows over a small, even face, symmetrical if not especially pretty, its worried mouth painted into a red bow. Did his mother look like this? He doesn’t know. Da-ge would remember, but he can’t imagine asking him, these days, about sentimental things like memories and mothers.

Ah, Meng Yao asked him a question, but Nie Huaisang has no words remaining to him. Unsure how to acknowledge such a gift, something he didn't know how badly he wanted until it had been given to him. To joke or laugh would shatter something. But it would be rude not to reply, after Meng Yao has been so kind to him, and so Nie Huaisang nods.

In the burnished surface of the mirror, Meng Yao is smiling very wide. It's almost wicked. Nie Huaisang has never seen Meng Yao give that kind of smile to anyone else; to be trusted with it feels like another secret, another gift. He thinks, I want to hold onto this; I must clutch this moment tight. Meng Yao brushes a loose strand of Nie Huaisang's hair behind his ear and proclaims, his voice bright with satisfaction, “You look very beautiful. And now you should get to bed, or else Chifeng-zun will have my head.”

II. LANLING, SIX YEARS BEFORE THE DEATH OF JIN GUANGYAO

The years pass by, but some things stay the same, among them Lianfang-zun's irreproachable skills as a host, as well as his ability to keep his expression immaculately free of frustration when Nie Huaisang arrives to the steps of Carp Tower alone, uninvited, and visibly day-drunk.

More accurately, his state is the dull tiredness of a habitual oversleeper, the dehydration that follows a crying jag, and, much less significant than either, a residual vague tipsiness. He had been very drunk the night before, but all he's had since he woke up is the requisite cup knocked back in the morning to dull the hangover. It's a trick Wei Wuxian taught him, which should be enough to give him pause—not for fear of demonic repercussions, but because, near the end, seeing Wei Wuxian with a bottle in hand typically heralded disaster—but it does work, and Nie Huaisang isn’t precious about methods that get results.

To the casual eye, however, his wobbly, bloodshot state is only the product of one of Sect Leader Nie's many indiscretions. Which brings him to this moment: a steward rushes out to meet him, and hardly any time at all passes before Lianfang-zun himself descends the golden stairs and places a steadying hand on Nie Huaisang’s arm.

Jin Guangyao takes a sip from the cup in his hand, and sighs happily in a way he might even mean. “You bring me the best tea, Huaisang. Every cultivator in the world knows your taste is unparalleled.”

It was a few days after da-ge’s death before anyone remembered to address Nie Huaisang as zongzhu, even those Nie retainers he saw every day. He couldn’t blame them. He didn’t insist on it, content to go along with whatever anyone called him. He wished he wasn’t the sect leader, too. To this day, Jin Guangyao never makes an effort to call him Sect Leader Nie unless he’s speaking in an official capacity. Such is the privilege of brotherhood.

“Thank you, san-ge. I thought I should bring you a gift, in exchange for turning up unannounced.”

“You’re always welcome in my home,” replies Jin Guangyao, quite affably; if Nie Huaisang didn’t know him so well, he wouldn’t register the slight flare of his nostrils that gives away his annoyance. Some habits persist long after circumstances change. Jin Guangyao is Chief Cultivator and the family head of the Lanling Jin sect, but he still speaks with a modesty that marks him as having served more than his share of masters. He converses in a language of delicate suggestion, holding apologies and alternate plans on the tongue. His words are bundles of ash readied to suffocate stubborn fires.

“It’s really too bad er-ge couldn’t be here, too, but he’s caught up at Cloud Recesses until the lectures conclude. I know how much his presence means to you.”

Someone’s feeling lonely, and perhaps a little neglected. Well, poor put-upon Lianfang-zun will have to make the best of his evening entertaining his uninvited guest. Nie Huaisang’s business here requires dropping in unannounced.

“Lanling is so confusing! I don’t know how many times I’ve been here, and I always forget my way unless I have someone to show me around. The last time I visited I tried to buy a peacock to take home, and that was the hardest day I’ve had in ages…”

He regales Jin Guangyao with the whole, rambling story, mostly fact, pulled apart at the seams and rearranged to put all of the blame on himself instead of a combination of sly merchants poised to wring every last coin out of the famously spendthrift Sect Leader Nie and a wagon driver who thought his counterfeit poultry operation was very slick indeed. Jin Guangyao listens attentively, though his eyes begin to glaze over and travel around the room by the time Nie Huaisang explains how a painted pheasant got loose in the best guest suite of one of the innumerable inns between here and Qinghe.

By the time he finishes his anecdote, they’ve nearly finished their tea. Jin Guangyao takes advantage of the first significant pause to change the subject: “How goes your painting?”

“Oh, I don’t do much of that anymore. I just can’t find the time, and I’m an amateur, anyway. It takes discipline to become a serious artist. I’m more of a patron. That’s alright, though; artists need people like me.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I hope you pick it back up someday. I cherish all the pieces you’ve shown me over the years.”

“San-ge, you are too kind.” He is: public opinion on Nie Huaisang's tastes is not so complimentary. He is a dilettante with deep pockets and a lack of sense. Hardly something the common people find endearing, or fellow cultivators find inspiring.

He is selfish, he is indolent. He cares little for the business of ruling. It's immaterial that he does it anyway, in his roundabout fashion. How else would he go about his life? Men cannot change their natures by wishing, not even cultivators, and he was never very good at being either a cultivator or a man.

“What was it you needed help with, Huaisang? You sounded so flustered when I greeted you outside. Whatever could be so serious?”

“I’m a little ashamed to tell you,” Nie Huaisang replies, ducking behind his fan until only his eyes are visible.

The real reason Nie Huaisang invited himself to be dined in Lianfang-zun’s private chambers is that his initial attempts to find the entrance to Jin Guangyao’s treasure room have led nowhere. The most logical place for it would be, of course, the sect leader’s personal apartments. Nie Huaisang is sincerely grateful that Jin Guangyao is such a gracious host.

“It can’t be so bad, I’m sure.”

Nie Huaisang sighs and re-emerges. “Please promise not to tell er-ge, it’s so embarrassing, but another one of my acquaintances—”

“Acquaintances?”

Nie Huaisang levels Jin Guangyao with a meaningful look. After a moment, Jin Guangyao’s mouth opens into a small O, and he nods.

“I see. Go on, Huaisang.”

“Yes, well, another one of them is after me for money again. He was all well and good for a little while, but it wasn’t anything serious, and I certainly didn’t promise him anything, but he keeps sending me letters and saying he’s going to go around telling people…” He sets his fan down on the table so he can put his face in his hands.

“Huaisang, please understand I only mean this out of care for you, but… perhaps you should be careful with whom you allow yourself to become acquainted. People are so harsh, but the way they talk about my poor brother Xuanyu has made it quite difficult for him.”

Nie Huaisang spreads his fingers to peek through them. “Oh? Young Master Mo? I thought that was all just rumour.”

Jin Guangyao shakes his head, pleasantly dismayed. “He’s not been the most discreet about his personal business. I’ve talked to him about it before, but I may have to speak with him again. Gently. He’s a good boy at heart.”

Mo Xuanyu—he’s hard to miss: a tall and gangly youth skulking around Carp Tower’s darker corners, usually made up like a courtesan even in his golden Jin disciple uniform. Something in Jin Guangyao’s tone piques Nie Huaisang’s curiosity, but before he can ask further, Jin Guangyao sets his mouth in a way that heralds a piece of firm brotherly advice.

“Huaisang—don’t you think you ought to start finding yourself a wife?”

Nie Huaisang clutches his fan. His laugh is very shrill. “Oh, san-ge, you can’t possibly mean that.”

“It’s sentimental of me, but I like stories with happy endings. And what ending is happier than seeing all one's good friends married and prosperous? Maybe a lady of the house would help liven the place up again.” After a decorous pause, he adds, conspiratorial: “Or a consort of any kind.”

Nie Huaisang hides the bottom half of his face behind his fan again, scandalized, as if they hadn't begun this conversation discussing how to manage the men he's let into his bed. As if the man sitting before him hadn't been Nie-furen in all but name, once. Jin Guangyao is the man of the house now, the master of his domain. He's still small and pretty and pleasant, as he can hardly help the face fate gave him, but Meng Yao kept house for his sect leader, while Jin Guangyao has a wife of his own. He’s fulfilled his filial duties admirably; he even had a son, for a while. Was any of it real, the things Nie Huaisang once thought they had in common? When Nie Huaisang imagines entering a hall as a woman's husband as Jin Guangyao walks with Qin Su, her delicate hand in his own, he feels an unfocused itch, like his clothes are chafing against his skin.

“I'm not ready to settle down yet, san-ge. I like my freedom too much. I'm not diligent like you. You were born to be a good husband. Someone like me…” He closes the fan and gestures through the air with its tip, twirling it in delicate curlicues like a petal carried on the spring wind. “I'm like a songbird, you see. I like to be appreciated, but only if I can fly away from my troubles.”

While Nie Huaisang spoke, Jin Guangyao exchanged their tea for wine. Nie Huaisang drinks his first cup too fast, and makes sure Jin Guangyao can see him. It seems to hit him immediately, though he knows that’s not possible.

“I thought you liked to keep birds as pets.”

“Ah, but that's different.” He flicks open his fan again and peers over the top, his eyes crinkling. “I'm their keeper. It doesn't mean I want to be kept.”

“It comforts me that you've changed so little over the years, even as so much else has.” Jin Guangyao smiles deeply, the dimples in his cheeks sinking inward like harsh canyons in the surrounding flesh. “But even so… a conflict over the Nie sect's succession could become very nasty. We've been blessed to live in a time of relative peace since the Yiling Patriarch was defeated. I would hate to see that disrupted over something so easily avoidable.”

“You're quite right, of course. At least I’m not in much danger of qi deviation. Perhaps I’ll live into old age. Wouldn't that be nice?”

“That would warm my heart, indeed. But no one thought da-ge would pass so early, either. Things can turn for the worse so quickly in this life.”

Ignore the revulsion at speaking of da-ge so casually with this man; register the tightening around the heart and release it. “Maybe I'll adopt a little orphan one day. Wouldn't that be darling? There ought to be some spare urchins in Qinghe, running around on the streets. It wouldn't be hard to scoop one up.”

“You’re quite sure you’ll never have any children of your own? Through marriage or... otherwise. These things happen.” Jin Guangyao's face is so placid as he speaks that one could believe it’s a purely hypothetical prospect to him, as if he's lived his whole life under this name, inside these gilded walls.

“Good heavens, I hope not. I'm not cut out to be a father, I don't think. Could you imagine? If I had a son like da-ge, he’d pick me up and toss me to the other side of the room if I ever tried to scold him.”

Jin Guangyao takes a delicate sip. “You might be surprised, Huaisang. Children can turn out so different from how you expect.”

This is the part where Nie Huaisang must give words of consolation for Jin Guangyao's own child, but he can't bring himself to offer it. The wine has made him even weaker than usual, and he can't bear to look that particular tragedy in the face. After a moment, Jin Guangyao accepts that Nie Huaisang will not take the opportunity to do the courteous thing, and he reaches out to refill Nie Huaisang's cup. “The Unclean Realms seems so quiet these days. I remember when it was always so full of clanging and shouting; when I first arrived I didn't know how I was ever going to get over my fright enough to walk through the practice yards.”

“Some disciples still drill, but you might be right; it did used to be louder, didn't it? I'm not quite sure what they get up to now. I let them come up with their own training regimens. I would be worse than useless to help.” Nie Huaisang picks up the cup when Jin Guangyao sets it down and sips it from behind the privacy of his sleeve. “Don't worry, san-ge. I know my place.”

Nie Huaisang’s place: where would that be? Da-ge’s study, where Meng Yao spent misty mornings, has been collecting dust for years; he goes inside now and again whenever the elders get really impatient with him and he needs to look like he’s doing work, but he can’t stand to be there for long. It looks like neither of them ever left, and Nie Huaisang is once again eighteen and wandering the compound to avoid his readings.

“Do you remember when you did my face once, when da-ge was away?”

There isn’t much room on Jin Guangyao’s side of the table, but Nie Huaisang tucks his legs under himself and Jin Guangyao doesn’t pull away or hold Huaisang at arm’s length. Strong eyebrows, still darkened even though he's let most of the rest of his ornamentation go, rise delicately on Jin Guangyao's face. “Of course. Sang-mei looked so pretty.”

“I've tried it on my own, you know, but I don't have your touch.”

“It just takes practice. I could show you again, if it would please you.”

They were sitting this close to each other, then, too, on the same side of a table covered in empty bottles and half-full cups. Jin Guangyao had requested more bottles from the cellars of Carp Tower to host Nie Huaisang in private than Meng Yao had withdrawn from the Unclean Realms' storerooms. There was no da-ge anymore to catch them at it.

Nie Huaisang lowers his head onto Jin Guangyao's delicate shoulder.

“I’ve been so lonely, san-ge.”

“I thought you had lots of visitors.”

“That’s not the same thing as having friends. When you’re a sect leader you can’t really be truthful with anyone. Everyone wants things from you. You understand.”

“I do.” Jin Guangyao’s hand begins running over Nie Huaisang’s hair, smoothing it into place, working through the strands with his fingers. “But you can always come to er-ge or I. You know that.”

“I’d be lost without you.”

“Do you need to go back to your own rooms? It’s gotten quite late.”

His gut lurches. Nie Huaisang hasn’t snooped around at all, yet; Jin Guangyao hasn’t had the decency to get up and call for a servant even once.

“Yes, but—I don't want to go back yet. Let me stay a little while, please?"

“Of course.”

He shakes his memory for more winding anecdotes or frivolous dilemmas he could lay at Lianfang-zun’s feet, to pass the time. It isn’t hard; Nie Huaisang’s mind is a fish-net for inconsequential things. He doesn’t open his mouth to speak. Instead, Nie Huaisang reaches out for Jin Guangyao’s wrist.

He feels for resistance when he gives it a simple tug; none comes, and he pulls Jin Guangyao’s hand into his own lap. Rests it there, his little finger balanced on the ridges of Jin Guangyao’s bones, the heat of his veins. Waiting.

He’s had enough to drink to register that his body still traitorously sparks to life at the touch of this man’s skin against his own. In the silent stillness, he feels a nervousness of which he didn’t think he was still capable. Even if Jin Guangyao recoils, this can be excused in the morning as the drunken indiscretion of the permanently grieving and fragile Sect Leader Nie. The possibility shouldn’t make his breath harden in his throat—and still—

Jin Guangyao whispers, “Oh, Huaisang.”

His own voice is so flat it’s hardly audible. “I miss you. Taking care of me.”

“Don’t I take care of you?” Jin Guangyao stays still, his blood pulsing through the pulse point on his wrist where Nie Huaisang clings to him.

“I always liked you, you know,” Nie Huaisang mumbles against an embroidered shoulder.

Fingers unfurl against Nie Huaisang’s thigh until the pad of Jin Guangyao’s thumb rests against the hollow where Huaisang’s legs meet under the silk.

“Hush,” Jin Guangyao murmurs. “It’s alright. Hush now.”

The feeling of Jin Guangyao’s soft palm curling around him muffles all other senses. Nie Huaisang is distant enough from his body that he feels as though he can observe himself from another corner of the room; his head nestled into the crook of Lianfang-zun’s neck, panting against his perfumed skin, their sides touching and Nie Huaisang’s hand grasping at the stiff texture of an outer robe. He isn’t sure which of them it belongs to.

Jin Guangyao’s wrist has burrowed through Nie Huiasang’s hastily parted layers, and though he requires some coaxing—he hasn’t pulled back any of the times san-ge had refilled his cup, though he's learned to hold his liquor a little better since Cloud Recesses—his body is quickly engulfed by a maddening numb heat.

He’s never been reduced to such a state by a handjob. His desperation is pathetic. Jin Guangyao is surely reassessing his understanding of Nie Huaisang, adding notes in the records of scorn he keeps on everyone around him: somehow, even less self-respect than previously thought. That’s fine. Nie Huaisang hasn’t gone anywhere expecting to be respected in some years, Carp Tower least of all. He shakes under Jin Guangyao’s grasp. Gasps and whimpers tumble from his mouth while his thoughts slosh around inside his head.

Jin Guangyao shifts his face, and for a sickening moment Nie Huaisang thinks he’s about to be kissed on the mouth. He’s spared that; instead, lips press a tender kiss to the crown of his head. Not for long, just enough to make sure Nie Huaisang feels it, and can’t mistake it for an accident. He gasps at the slow scratch of an evenly filed fingernail over his steadily leaking slit. He’s melting away at the touch. The black screen that makes up the floor of his heart is cracking and he is falling through it into the chasm below. He will probably come soon, all over his own half-opened robes, all over Lianfang-zun’s soft hand.

Oh, I hate you, I really do.

“San-ge, stop,” he whispers into the hot flesh of Jin Guangyao's neck, smelling of osmanthus and peony. “It's too much.”

The movement of Jin Guangyao's hand on him slows further. It ebbs and flows like the motion of waves on a shoreline. “Shh. Don't you want me to take care of you?”

He’s so close he’s sprawling, resting all of his weight against Jin Guangyao; he might as well be sitting in his lap. Nie Huaisang’s head rests on Jin Guangyao’s sternum, staring at nothing, his gaze floating amidst the gold furnishings of the room, while Jin Guangyao looks down over Huaisang’s shoulder to watch his hand working between the edges of Huaisang’s barely-parted robes.

“I don’t want it to be over yet.”

“Do you get this way with all your lovers? I see now why they won't leave you alone.” He knows this one: the teasing but chastening big-sister tone. Jin Guangyao seems to be enjoying himself, slipping between seducer and seduced as it suits him. He keeps stroking at the pace of meditative breathing. “Will you be good and tell me what you need?”

San-ge is nothing if not accommodating. His indulgence is legendary. He toys with those he has in his sway and calls it generosity. And aren't they all in his sway, now? Lianfang-zun holds them all in the palm of his delicate hand. But—just this once, Nie Huaisang won't let Jin Guangyao write their exchange on the ledger of the debts he’s owed. Nie Huaisang will continue to coast on Jin Guangyao's credit and good counsel in the morning, but this evening will be different. Tonight, Nie Huaisang will pay his portion of the bill. He will give as good as he gets.

“Take me to bed.” He licks his parched lips.

Jin Guangyao pauses; all of Nie Huaisang’s breath leaves him. San-ge shifts, curling his arm around Nie Huaisang's shoulders so Huaisang rests against his chest in an incomplete embrace, and then Jin Guangyao taps Huaisang’s cheek with his index finger. “You sound like a young mistress about to ruin her good name.”

“So you will?”

Jin Guangyao turns Nie Huaisang’s face up by the chin, presses a chaste kiss to the corner of his mouth, and then murmurs against his skin, “I can’t say no to you, Sang-mei.”

If he’s to continue living this way, as a hollow mirror of a person, he must allow himself, now and again, to feel something so real and strong and terrible it knocks him back into his own heart. Is that really so strange—to want to exist, for a moment, as nothing but a vessel for another person’s desire?

After removing his pants and his outer layers, Nie Huaisang reclines on the bed in unsteady disarray. His skirts are separated and spilling out on the sheets on either side of him, but his torso is still mostly covered besides some loosening around his collar. He props himself up on his elbows to watch Jin Guangyao, a few steps away from him, undress himself without particular haste. He places his hat on a small table, and next to it he folds each layer of his impossibly expensive robes more precisely than anyone Nie Huaisang has ever fucked. He wonders whether Meng Yao was ever responsible for caring for Nie Huaisang’s own wardrobe, back before da-ge promoted him out of obscurity. He does not ask Jin Guangyao for the answer.

Jin Guangyao pauses, midway through disrobing one of his inner layers, and turns to Nie Huaisang with pursed lips: “Do you need help undressing, Huaisang?”

Nie Huaisang blinks owlishly and then laughs behind his hand. “No, no, san-ge. It’s just that you keep your rooms so cold.”

He must keep some things secret from this man; his nakedness is the one sacred thing he refuses to give over. Nie Huaisang will keep his body to himself and live on, after today, knowing he never let Jin Guangyao feel the surface of his chest or see the small of his back.

When he finally turns back to the bed, Jin Guangyao is wearing only his most inner robe, its sash low on his hips and barely tied. His hair is still up, but it’s simply knotted with a ribbon. It’s been a very long time since Nie Huaisang last saw him without a hat, or at least an intricate circlet of braids.

Don't hate me, da-ge; I'm already sorry and it hasn't even happened yet.

At some point, Jin Guangyao links their fingers together. This is the most unforgivable touch they've exchanged thus far. Nie Huaisang clings to his grip as if afraid he will back off now, as though he's likely to turn away and change his mind, too disgusted to go through with it.

That, certainly, will not be the case. Nie Huaisang has known this man since they were both little more than boys. Jin Guangyao is a good actor, but around Nie Huaisang he's never felt a need to try very hard. Jin Guangyao is hot and hard against him; his breathing is quickened; he watches Nie Huaisang with contemptuous hunger. It's not despite the fact Nie Huaisang debased himself so thoroughly tonight that Jin Guangyao is allowing him to lay on top of his golden sheets; it's because of it.

Jin Guangyao looms overtop of Nie Huaisang with his knees bracketed on either side of Huaisang's left leg. His weight, insubstantial on its own merit, is suffocating.

Nie Huaisang has idly wondered for many years how Jin Guangyao would kiss. The answer: his mouth is exactly as clever as it looks. His smile is palpable even as he presses soft, almost demure pecks across Nie Huaisang's cheeks, his jaw, his mouth, before pressing more intently against his lips, prying them apart, delving into the wet heat that surrounds Nie Mingjue's little brother's tongue. Nie Huaisang is panting, he's whimpering; neither performance nor pain. Genuine pleasure and something beyond emotion, the feeling of what he imagines it must be like to wander a wasteland with the knowledge you will never see another human face.

He presses up closer against Jin Guangyao's slim body, rucking against the oppressive constraints of his own robes and Jin Guangyao's hips, not trying to break free but trying to wrest something from him. He just wants to feel his cock, to have the satisfaction of knowing how terribly and earnestly Jin Guangyao wants him despite his air of arch indulgence. Jin Guangyao wants to fuck Nie Huaisang. Nie Huaisang knows better than to think he can leverage this against him for any practical purpose; he'll know, is all. He’ll come away with the proof that san-ge is not so clever as not to think with his dick like other men.

In response to his struggling, Jin Guangyao pins his wrists above his head, gently, and pulls away from his mouth. His brows are skewed up in concern; his eyes are dark waters without a ripple in sight. “Are you alright?”

Nie Huaisang tries once again to grind up against his body; he spreads his legs further to accommodate Jin Guangyao’s knee, pressed between his thighs. Jin Guangyao watches him with a wicked and delighted look, like Nie Huaisang is a pet he would consider eating if not for the permanence of such an act.

Nie Huaisang begins, his voice a sincere whine: “Please, s—”

Jin Guangyao lets go of one of his hands to pinch the inside of Nie Huaisang's thigh through his innermost robe. Even through fabric it hurts; he chose the tenderest place, high up near the groin, and his fingernails are long enough to cut through skin. Nie Huaisang's free leg kicks out in shock.

Sweet, hushed, a trusted piece of advice from one sister to another: “Keep your legs together. What is a man supposed to think of you, if you open yourself up like that? You can't be giving yourself away to everyone, or you'll regret it later.”

Did you regret it, Meng Yao? Is that why you killed him? Did you give my brother something you could never take back?

His hips move in small circles against Jin Guangyao’s thighs despite himself. Nie Huaisang’s robes are rucked up around his hips, but he doesn't mind as much as he might otherwise. It doesn't matter as much to him, somehow, when he's facing down.

“You can't help yourself, can you?”

Nie Huaisang shakes his head. Jin Guangyao can decide what it means.

He allowed himself to be rearranged this way; he has no one to blame but himself. He balances precariously on his front, lying over Jin Guangyao’s knees with his head resting on the sheets beside him. His third brother’s feet dangle off the edge of the bed. Nie Huaisang doesn’t need to see to know how deeply Jin Guangyao is enjoying this.

“You used to complain so much about da-ge taking a firm hand with you. But maybe that's what you need. Er-ge and I try to look after you, but I don't know if we scold you enough for your own good.”

His voice is impossibly gentle and kind. Surely, no one who sounds like this could lead anyone to harm. On the sheets, next to his face, Nie Huaisang's fingers curl into small fists.

“How many men have you let have you this way?”

Nie Huaisang lifts his head just enough to protest: “Oh, I really don’t know, I can’t remember things like that! You know my memory i—”

The sound of Jin Guangyao’s palm striking the back of Nie Huaisang’s thigh is deafening. All thought leaves Nie Huaisang’s mind for a few blissful moments, scourged out by the blossoming burn of pain and the cold wash of shame. His face, too, is hot with blood. He can hear himself panting out of his open mouth.

“So many you can’t remember? Huaisang.”

His hands are small but quite strong. One slap is pleasantly shocking; it's once he builds up a rhythm, striking the same places on his ass and thighs again and again, that Nie Huaisang begins to shift in earnest, rocking both towards and away from it. Jin Guangyao holds him in place by a firm hand on his hip.

Nie Huaisang doesn’t turn to look above him, but he’s still scalded by Jin Guangyao's gaze. He doesn’t need to see Jin Guangyao to know he’s watching the effects of his handiwork accumulate on Nie Huaisang’s pale and unblemished skin. Nie Huaisang rests his forehead against the surface of the bed, bracing himself against the blows. Jin Guangyao can’t see his face, but he clasps his hands over his eyes all the same.

He wishes Jin Guangyao would leave him with bruises or scratch marks, something to take with him in the morning as a reminder of how close he’d flown to the jaws of that smiling creature. He already knows he won’t; leaving marks is too uncivilized for Lianfang-zun’s sensibilities. He doesn’t like to leave more evidence than he can avoid.

It feels disgustingly, nauseatingly good. His mind is empty but for the cacophony of skin on skin and the lightheadedness of humiliation. He’s gone into exile from himself, his heart having retreated into some distant recess of his own body, so nothing troubles him as he’s taken apart by the sensation of Jin Guangyao punishing him with hands that have done—have touched—

He lets out a distressed little noise. Jin Guangyao pauses, his hand resting just above the surface of Nie Huaisang’s ass.

“Are you going to come from this?”

When the moments of silence stretch on and no blow follows to distract him, Nie Huaisang swallows and mumbles into the sheets, “I don't know.”

Jin Guangyao wraps the length of Nie Huaisang’s loose hair around his fist and pulls. “I'm sorry, Huaisang, but you need to speak clearly.”

Nie Huaisang will kill him. He will watch him die. He lifts his head as much as he’s able; his neck is trembling. Across the room, he makes eye contact with himself in the surface of a large mirror. He clenches his eyelids at the sight.

“May I?”

Jin Guangyao hums, but doesn’t move. Nie Huaisang gives in, then. He pleads.

His face starts burning immediately; odd, for this to be the one line he found it harder to cross than he expected. It’s the naked need in his voice, the lack of any separation between the way he’s acting and the way he feels. He means every word he says: that’s how low to the ground he’s been brought. He’s brought himself here. Jin Guangyao only went where Nie Huaisang pulled his hand.

Eventually Jin Guangyao relents; he lets go of Nie Huaisang’s hair and reaches between their bodies to finish what he’d started. Nie Huaisang hopes his palm hurts. He thinks Jin Guangyao’s grip is hotter than it was back when they fumbled at the table. Nie Huaisang’s arms sprawl out in front of him on the bed—he lets his forehead fall back down to the sheets—

When he slides down to the side of the bed, Nie Huaisang is grateful for still being partially dressed. The layers of his robes he still wears form some kind of cushion against the floor. He is over thirty, with a weak golden core; he can no longer be reckless with his knees.

“Open your mouth.” Jin Guangyao still sounds mild, even when he's ordering Nie Huaisang into something obscene.

Nie Huaisang obeys. He watches the expressions that cross Jin Guangyao's face: satisfaction, lust, disdain. His cheeks are flushed. He smiles as though he’s proud of what he sees.

Two fingers land on the flat of Nie Huaisang’s tongue, feeling out the texture of its surface. “Will you close your lips and suck for me?”

Nie Huaisang lets his tongue undulate around the slim digits, in no way playing coy about what this is.

After a few heartbeats of this, Jin Guangyao removes the fingers of his left hand from Nie Huaisang's mouth and laces their hands together. The stickiness of Nie Huaisang's saliva wets his own skin. With his right hand, Jin Guangyao pushes Nie Huaisang's head down, gently, between his very shapely and hairless thighs.

“Do you know what to do?”

Nie Huaisang presses a kiss to the base of Jin Guangyao's cock and hears breath catch above him.

He keeps his gaze demurely downcast, so he can’t see Jin Guangyao’s face when he tsks, rubs a thumb over Nie Huaisang's hair, and says, “Whatever are we going to do with you, meimei?”

Long ago, Meng Yao saw something in Nie Huaisang hidden from the rest of the world. Well, not hidden, but willfully overlooked, except as something to suppress and hide away. Nie Huaisang will keep that knowledge, and the fondness it brings, tucked away within his heart. Maybe forever.

Nie Huaisang closes his lips. He closes his eyes. He sets his hands down on the bed frame to brace himself against something that doesn't require him to touch Jin Guangyao with anything but his mouth.

He's done this before, he told the truth about that, but Jin Guangyao is happy to steer him anyway; he guides Nie Huaisang up and down with a steady hand on the back of Huaisang's skull. He never holds him down for long enough for Nie Huaisang to choke, but there are a few times he fears he might. He wonders whether Jin Guangyao is testing his ability, or just trying to work out arithmetic: how many cocks does a wayward sect leader need to suck before his gag reflex disappears completely?

Jin Guangyao pants over him. He's let so much of his ugliness slip, and he sounds ragged, now, like any other man close to coming down an easy throat. Nie Huaisang's face is blotchy with arousal and shame. His eyes are screwed up tight from overwhelm. He would let Jin Guangyao fuck him on his hands and knees like an animal, if he deigned to, but perhaps san-ge thinks that would be too intimate, too much skin-on-skin. Maybe he holds that act sacred to the ones he owes fidelity. What does this make him: the cheap and eager thing Jin Guangyao can toy with when he feels like straying from the man with whom he strays from his wife? As it stands, all this can be dismissed later, if that suits the good judgement of Lianfang-zun. He offered his unruly didi a few affectionate embraces, as comfort offered to an old friend, and some gentle correction, too. Jin Guangyao is a good sworn brother, a good teacher, a good sect leader, a good Chief Cultivator. He's been trying for so many years to bring Nie Huaisang up right. Say what you will about Nie Huaisang: he is filial where it counts.

They lay together on Jin Guangyao’s embroidered pillows for a very long time. This is new to Nie Huaisang; he rarely lingers. His knees are sore after all. He can’t get the taste of Jin Guangyao’s come off his tongue; he considers walking to the table to swish leftover wine around his mouth, but he feels very tired, and he wouldn’t know what to do with himself after. He needs to linger. Wasn’t that the whole point? The fucking was a means to an end. He’s here to examine Sect Leader Jin’s private chambers for anything out of the ordinary. If he was to get to his feet now, it seems unimaginable he could make himself come back to the bed.

Once again, Jin Guangyao pets Nie Huaisang’s hair. It’s the same way Nie Huaisang strokes the feathers on the top of his birds’ heads once he’s trained them to eat out of his hand. The only things who will let themselves be touched like that are those who’ve traded their dignity for luxury and forgotten what it was like to be free.

His gaze roams around the room, taking in the gilded furnishings, the tasteful decor. There’s nothing strange about any of it. It’s all lavish and useless to him. He sees nothing at all.

Nie Huaisang squeezes his eyes as tightly as he can. He breathes in deeply, his nose pressed against Jin Guangyao's bare breastbone. He doesn’t register the strange, cool feeling on his cheek until Jin Guangyao’s finger brushes his skin and comes away wet. Jin Guangyao inhales through his teeth at the sudden sensation, before embracing Nie Huaisang, clicking his tongue, and whispering, “Oh, Huaisang, don’t cry. You’ll make a mess of your pretty face. Look, you’re getting all puffy.”

III: MO VILLAGE, FIFTEEN MONTHS BEFORE THE DEATH OF JIN GUANGYAO

“Xuanyu! I was beginning to worry you’d lost your way.”

His face is painted and powdered, just as Nie Huaisang remembers; his skin is a stark white except for garishly red cheeks. The hollows around his eyes are darkened as a pair of overripe plums, and this Nie Huaisang thinks is fully natural.

Mo Xuanyu wrings his hands. “I got caught up in the market on the way over, I haven’t left the manor in so long—”

“Oh, don’t apologize to me. To tell you the truth, I got lost on the way here, and I would’ve been making you wait if you hadn’t been held up too…”

Nie Huaisang lays a comforting hand on Mo Xuanyu’s shoulder-blade and escorts him up the stairs of the inn to the room he rented for the duration of his visit. Mo Xuanyu is so tall that Nie Huaisang feels a momentary flicker of that old pain, brought back up to the surface whenever he walks side by side with a man much bigger than himself.

“I kept thinking about how lonely you must be here. Have you been getting many other visitors?”

Mo Xuanyu stiffens and lies, badly: “Sometimes.” Still prideful! Nie Huaisang hadn’t expected he had any haughtiness left in him, the way things have been lately. It reassures him; pride is cousin to spite, and he has gambled quite a lot on the strength of Mo Xuanyu’s spite.

Nie Huaisang knows very well Mo Xuanyu hasn’t entertained anyone since his expulsion from Carp Tower; they’ve remained in correspondence via letters exchanged by a variety of couriers under Nie Huaisang’s employ. The ones Nie Huaisang receives from Mo Manor are usually rambling diatribes against the Mo family, the weather, or the village itself. It must be very hard to come back to a place like this after Carp Tower. Occasionally he’ll reference his old demonic pastime, in veiled language, in case the letters are intercepted: I miss my studies; I have nothing to practice on out here. Would you be able to send me any of the tools I need? But in secret, my cousin will take anything he sees.

Sometimes he reminisces about places he and Nie Huaisang visited together in younger days, theatres and teahouses in Lanling, in tones that clearly ache. He never writes of Jin Guangyao. Sometimes it’s nothing but plain, abject misery, the kind it’s easier to speak into the emptiness of a blank page than to someone’s face: I can’t stay in this place much longer, but I have nowhere else to go. Everyone in the world would like it better if I’d never been born. I wish I was dead at Carp Tower instead of alive here. In the letter Nie Huaisang received before leaving Qinghe, Mo Xuanyu had written, in a disorganized hand, I had a dream about the first time I met you, at that discussion conference at Carp Tower. I must’ve been eighteen then. You looked so young compared to the other sect leaders, even Jiang Wanyin, who’s younger than you. When you came up to talk to me in front of everyone I thought you must have mixed me up with someone else. In my dream I was there again, looking for you, but I couldn’t see you anywhere in the hall.

Nie Huaisang reaches across the table to top up each of their cups with the rather bad wine the inn had to offer. He could’ve made a fuss and shaken them down for their best reserves, but he’s never enjoyed throwing his name around in public when he can avoid it, and, besides, he’d like to keep this personal call private. He’d prefer not to stoke rumours that Sect Leader Nie was spending time at Mo Village.

“Oh, I’m so glad to hear it. I thought you might be wasting away out here, the way people are talking about you! But I should know by now not to believe everything I hear.”

They’re interrupted by a knock at the door; a waiter, bearing trays of food. Nie Huaisang rises to his feet as if to help, but does absolutely nothing besides flick his sleeves and get in the way. He follows the steadfastly blank-faced waiter to the door, thanks him twice, bows as if the man were a court official, and whispers in a theatrical undertone that he and his guest would prefer to dine in private, and could their room be left alone until the evening?

He returns to the table to see Mo Xuanyu has touched nothing but the wine.

“You’re so polite, Xuanyu! But you should eat, there’s no need to wait on me. I’m just here as a friend, you know.”

“I ate before I left. ”

Nie Huaisang nods, serving himself a little extra to show he’s taking Mo Xuanyu at his word. He’s skinnier than he ever was at Carp Tower; Nie Huaisang wonders whether the cause is undereating or being underfed.

Mo Xuanyu watches him as Nie Huaisang begins to eat. “You know what they’re going to think we’re doing in here.”

Nie Huaisang looks up at him, wide-eyed, with a dumpling halfway to his mouth. “I’m sorry, Xuanyu, what do you mean?”

“They all know who I am. And even if they didn’t…”

The Mo family may not be cultivators, but they are clan heads; they have some means but little manners, being the biggest fish in a backwater little pond. It’s only natural that their disgraced nephew would become a village pariah, even if he rarely leaves the house. Does Mo Xuanyu see a kinship between them, shameful lesser sons that they are, whose personal failings are public fact? Nie Huaisang turns this thought over, testing its weight like a weapon in the hand.

Nie Huaisang chews and swallows his dumpling before replying. “Oh! That. You’re very kind to worry about my reputation, but I think it’ll be alright. We aren’t doing anything wrong. Lots of people have private meals with friends.” He gestures to and fro with his chopsticks. “But if you’re worried, I can pay them to be quiet before I leave. It’ll be like you were never even here.”

He’d already paid the innkeeper for her discretion before Mo Xuanyu even arrived. Such things aren’t binding, and he won’t put too much faith in a woman who owes him nothing once he’s gone back to his faraway home, but it’s worthwhile to try and maintain the bare minimum of caution. Not over his bedroom exploits, real or imagined, but he has other business here. Lovely as the weather is closer to the coast than Qinghe, Nie Huaisang didn’t come to Mo Village for the climate. He sets his chopsticks down next to his half-finished plate and stage-whispers: “Now, Xuanyu, did you bring those things we talked about?”

Mo Xuanyu had mentioned, in one of his earliest letters, that he’d managed to hold on to a handful of demonic cultivation manuals when he was expelled from Carp Tower. When he withdraws them, it’s obvious they’ve been poured over; the pages are dog-eared, the spines bent from use. Wei Wuxian’s name is emblazoned on the front covers.

He reaches over Mo Xuanyu's hand to point to a drawing on one of the pages. “What is this for? I've never seen anything like it.”

It takes little prompting to get Mo Xuanyu to explain to him, in fits and starts that quickly lose their nervousness and give way to excitement, the basic principles of demonic cultivation. He speaks of harnessing the resentful energy of the restless dead with a casual air that reminds Nie Huaisang again of Wei Wuxian, bright-eyed and charming, debating with Lan Qiren in front of a room of auditors.

When Mo Xuanyu shows him a page of instructions on the use of blood for talisman painting, Nie Huaisang hums. “Doesn't it degrade your body?”

Mo Xuanyu laughs scornfully at Nie Huaisang's naiveté. “Of course it does. If you can't handle that, you should stick to meditation.” His eyes gleam. “There are worse rituals than this. The Yiling Patriarch invented full spirit sacrifice.”

Is Mo Xuanyu trying to frighten him? Well, Nie Huaisang can indulge him. He gasps a little, and clutches his fan to his chest for good measure. “Does that really work? Wei Wuxian couldn't have tested it.”

“Maybe they tried it at Carp Tower before I got there. Or after.”

Nie Huaisang looks down at Mo Xuanyu’s lap, studying the open page once more, catching characters and frantic illustrations in the margins: blood sigils, physical degeneration, fierce corpses. Demonic cultivation is the recourse of the desperate—why else would one stray from the decent path? Mo Xuanyu is desperate; that much was clear before Nie Huaisang stepped in the door. Sitting next to him on the bed, one glance is all it takes to recognize the sight of a man wearing his body like ill-fitting clothes. Who else but the desperate could look to Nie Huaisang for help?

He's desperate, too, but he's had long years to get used to it, and he, at least, has no family left to make his life miserable.

“I knew him, you know,” Nie Huaisang comments. They sit next to one another on the edge of the bed, and he watches over Mo Xuanyu’s shoulder as he flips through the pages with loving care. His own gaze moves between the pages—ghastly diagrams and complex talisman illustrations—and Mo Xuanyu’s face in profile. “Wei Wuxian.”

Up close, they really do look strikingly similar. Nie Huaisang wonders whether Mo Xuanyu had the sense to make himself scarce when Jiang Wanyin came calling on his nephew at Carp Tower. He’s fidgety, too, like Wei Wuxian could be, but on Mo Xuanyu it looks like nervousness.

He doesn't look like Jin Guangyao at all. If he didn't know, Nie Huaisang would've never guessed their relation.

Mo Xuanyu looks up at Nie Huaisang. “I thought you didn’t fight in the war.”

“I stayed home for all the battles, da-ge’s orders. But we were friends at Cloud Recesses, when we attended the lectures.”

A glaze of awe slides across Mo Xuanyu’s eyes. “Was he everything people say?”

“Depends what you mean,” Nie Huaisang replies, with a stuttering laugh. “But he was very powerful. Everyone got tense when he entered a room. You could feel it coming off him.” He blinks and flutters his hands. “Speaking of—I brought what you asked for, too.” He withdraws from his sleeves a small bag, which he hands to Mo Xuanyu.

“I hope that’s the kind of tools you wanted. I don’t know the slightest thing about all this.”

Mo Xuanyu opens the bag. Inside are orderly stacks of blank talismans and lures, ready to be painted. He stares at the contents for a very long time. When he speaks, his voice is near inaudible.

“Thank you, Sect Leader Nie.”

He forgot, in the time spent apart, how much he does like Mo Xuanyu's company. Jin Guangyao was right: he is a nice young man, albeit prone to daydreams and dark jokes. While it may have started by extending a pragmatic hand to gain an ear to the wall in Jin Guangyao's home, Nie Huaisang really did have fun taking him shopping and asking him gossipy questions about what went on behind Carp Tower's closed doors. Even after Jin Guangyao broke the boy's heart and sent him away, Nie Huaisang enjoyed his letters, when they contained anything enjoyable. It's inconvenient to still want, on some level, to do good by him.

Nie Huaisang pats the back of Mo Xuanyu’s hand. “Oh, don’t call me that when it’s the two of us, it makes me feel like my father.” He leans in closer, brushing their shoulders together. He doesn’t miss Mo Xuanyu’s inhale, quiet and sharp. “But I’m glad you like it.”

“What should I call you, then?” Mo Xuanyu looks wary, afraid this is a trap. “Gege?”

Nie Huaisang pulls back, his face a perfect moon of shock. “I don’t know if I’ve ever been called anyone’s gege before.”

Mo Xuanyu bites his bottom lip in such an earnest attempt at coquetry that Nie Huaisang snorts at the sight, not unkindly. “Do you like it?”

He is really too cute—to be trying so hard, with Nie Huaisang of all people!

“It’s sweet of you. You can call me anything you like, as long as it’s not Sect Leader Nie.” He leans in to whisper into Mo Xuanyu’s ear in a tone warm with confidentiality: “I mean it. Whatever you like. I could be jiejie if you’re feeling bold.”

“Jiejie?”

“Oh, you’re right, of course. I’m too old for that, now, and you ought to be sensible and call me Nie-furen instead…”

Mo Xuanyu blinks and huffs out a soundless chuckle.

The books have been long forgotten. Nie Huaisang reaches for Mo Xuanyu’s lap—Mo Xuanyu’s eyes fly open—but he only picks up the volumes and gently sets them aside. When he turns back to Mo Xuanyu, his companion is watching him intently, his lips slightly parted.

Very slowly, Nie Huaisang rests his palm on Mo Xuanyu’s knee.

“Xuanyu—I hope I'm not too forward—”

Mo Xuanyu's hands clutch at Nie Huaisang's sleeves. His wrists are so thin; have they always been so thin? He seems caught between his obvious wanting and something holding him back, as though he feels guilty for this. Surely it’s not that his heart still belongs elsewhere—not still, after all this time—but Nie Huaisang knows how little betrayal can do to cure the heart of its foolish desires, its weak fondnesses.

“No, no, I just—”

Nie Huaisang doesn’t wait for him to finish speaking before brushing a wayward lock of hair behind his ear. This close, he can see that the blush on Mo Xuanyu’s cheeks was applied with an uneven hand. He had noticed, when he came in, that his limbs are plagued with faint tremors. Nie Huaisang can’t remember whether they always did, back at Carp Tower, or if this is new.

He can't even settle on the right lie to tell himself. Is this an attempt to purge the inconvenient tenderness for good, or does he think Mo Xuanyu will become like putty in his hands if he seduces him? As though Nie Huaisang's affection is as powerful as that.

He is too weak to admit the truth: he wants to touch Mo Xuanyu the same way Nie Huaisang once wanted to be touched. He, too, once wanted to be held while he was falling apart, regardless of the danger of the one doing the holding.

Nie Huaisang holds Mo Xuanyu’s face between his palms, blinks a few times, wide-eyed, and whispers, “Would you like to go to bed with me, didi?”

Mo Xuanyu’s eyes flicker from one moment to the next between dull and luminous, alight with a wicked fire, like flames coming off the roof of a burning building.

“I thought you’d make me wait all night.”

Mo Xuanyu kisses like he’s stealing something. His hands are broad, and they waste no time in groping Nie Huaisang over his clothes, grabbing at his ass, sneaking long fingers under his lapels to touch his chest.

He pulls away from his lips to mouth at Nie Huaisang’s neck before murmuring, “What do you want, jiejie?”

Nie Huaisang has had long years of extended adolescence to roll in and out of the beds of a variety of inconsequential lovers. He has to pass the time somehow. He's sure he's been older than some of them, but he's kept some of his baby fat, and the travelling merchants and wandering poets with whom he's spent eventful evenings seemed to like that. There's a thrill, he suspects, to the idea of corrupting the virtue of someone guileless and boyish, even if they have to pay him obeisance in every other situation, at least to his face. He's never played the other part, and, like it or not, it takes no effort to call upon a specific memory. Nie Huaisang walks through his life under Jin Guangyao's shadow, and his touch is something he'll never forget.

Nie Huaisang swallows, tries to conjure up the way he'd spoken when he'd pushed Nie Huaisang onto the bed with four gentle fingertips, and sets his right hand on Mo Xuanyu’s chest, above his heart. “Lay on your back, will you please?”

Mo Xuanyu is perfectly compliant here, all traces of his stubborn reticence gone. Mo Xuanyu’s hands shake when he reaches up to part the first layer of Nie Huaisang’s brocade outer robes. Surely it’s not nervousness, surely he’s done this before; he couldn’t have earned such a reputation over rumours with nothing behind them.

Mo Xuanyu works quickly; in no time at all, he reaches up and pushes Nie Huaisang’s outer robe down over his shoulders to pool on the bed behind him. Nie Huaisang stills him from going much further with the touch of a hand.

“Thank you for that, but I’d rather look at you than me.”

Mo Xuanyu stares Nie Huaisang in the eye balefully before shrugging himself out of his own threadbare robes. Nie Huaisang takes in the expanse of his skin without a change in his face.

Under Mo Xuanyu’s clothes, things are quite dreadful. He's too thin, but you could tell that from the outside. More disquieting than that are the patchwork of irregular scars across his upper thighs, out of sight of anyone but someone in Nie Huaisang's position, stripping Mo Xuanyu of his layers in a private room where they're not likely to be overheard by anyone who would care. Some are old, white and faded; others are newer, still pink in places.

Mo Xuanyu watches the path of Nie Huaisang's gaze and lifts his chin, defiant. Daring to be asked to explain himself. What would he say, if Nie Huaisang pressed him for a story, leaning on him with all the persuasive might of being, in name, if not in reality, one of the four most highly regarded men in the cultivation world? But he won't ask; Mo Xuanyu doesn't owe him that. Doesn't owe him anything. Nie Huaisang is the one taking things he has no right to. Let the boy keep his pain and his pride.

How strange it is to find that warmth continues to bubble up to the surface of the heart, and yet not once has it made him falter. Kind feelings, the warmth of human touch—they linger but do not stay his hand. He wonders if it's this way for Jin Guangyao, too, who has been so gracious to Nie Huaisang for so many years. Does he hold the two tastes on his tongue at once, as Nie Huaisang does, the sweetness clouded by the bitter bile but never overtaken completely?

There is a place beyond this place, a garden deep within himself, where Nie Huaisang can imagine keeping Mo Xuanyu. He's easy on the eyes, or he was before he began to look oddly translucent, like a piece of linen scrubbed clean too many times. Hate has poisoned Mo Xuanyu, as it has poisoned Nie Huaisang, as it poisoned da-ge, too. His own sabre was never even given a name, let alone cultivated enough to pose a danger to his qi balance, but even so Nie Huaisang hates. He hates Jin Guangyao, but it's bled outwards, seeping into the groundwater of every feeling he possesses. Some days, he'll wake up in the morning and loathe the sun for daring to shine.

But inside that garden he can see brief glimpses of another life, where he brings Mo Xuanyu back to the Unclean Realms under the dubious protection of Qinghe Nie. Jin Guangyao himself once told Nie Huaisang he ought to settle down, and if the best he can do for himself is settling into the pantomime of domestic bliss two cutsleeve embarrassments can act out, made possible by vaults of silver from the mountain mines and a family name that still carries some weight—that ought to do. Mo Xuanyu can be to him what the soldiers once thought his brother was to Nie Huaisang's brother, and while away his days reading as many demonic cultivation manuals as he likes in the privacy of the sect leader's chambers. The soil is tainted, but the flowers have not yet died, and Nie Huaisang enters that garden now, to play pretend, if only for a sunny afternoon.

Their legs twine together; they huddle in the sheets almost innocently, like a pair of maidens in a meadow. Nie Huaisang turns Mo Xuanyu toward him with a finger on the cheek. Their eyes meet, and Mo Xuanyu searches for something in Nie Huaisang's face that he won't find. No one in this story will end up happy; at least Nie Huaisang can say that for himself. He will not be spared.

Nie Huaisang reaches down to curl his hand underneath Mo Xuanyu's knee, and when he presses up, up, up, Mo Xuanyu bends.

Amidst the rumpled sheets, Nie Huaisang leans close. He caresses Mo Xuanyu’s collarbone with the tips of his fingers, feeling the ridges of it. Mo Xuanyu watches him silently, his mouth parted. He still breathes like he’s been running for his life. Nie Huaisang traces his hand a little higher up Mo Xuanyu’s neck to where the fine white powder begins. It rubs off onto Nie Huaisang’s skin. He brushes his knuckles gently across Mo Xuanyu’s rouged cheek and then retracts his hand.

“I’m sorry, Xuanyu, I think I messed up your face.”

Mo Xuanyu tenses; he thinks Nie Huaisang is mocking him. “It’s fine.”

Softly: “Would you like me to fix it for you? I’ve done this kind of thing before. It’s too much trouble for me, but it’s fun.”

Mo Xuanyu’s gaze drops to the corner of the room. “I left it all back at the manor.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I brought you another present.”

When Nie Huaisang returns to the bed after retrieving the box of cosmetics, Mo Xuanyu is half-dressed, his robes pulled on but not fastened. His eyebrows are creased; it didn’t take him long to regain his suspicion.

The products Nie Huaisang brought with him from Qinghe are almost certainly of better quality than whatever Mo Xuanyu has been able to get from roadside peddlers. They are fragrant and not too waxy; a sect leader’s wife couldn’t ask for better. Nie Huaisang remembered his colours, which haven’t changed since Carp Tower, though his application style has increased in severity. He is all white, black, and crimson.

There’s a pleasing rhythm to it, like all work done with one’s hands. When Meng Yao painted Nie Huaisang’s face, he felt as though he was being made over, moulded into something else, something more orderly and more beautiful than he’d been before. His own face, reflected back by another’s eye: see, this is what you could be, under my guiding hand.

But that isn’t what he’s doing now, is it? He could take Mo Xuanyu’s hand at any second and spirit him away. Qinghe is a big place; Nie Huaisang could hide him somewhere safe, where Mo Xuanyu could spend his days in peace, looking pretty and playing with whatever crafty tricks strike his fancy. But the things Nie Huaisang will need, eventually, to ask of him are not these. A little comfort and companionship for an evening is a pitiful gift in exchange, but it’s what he has to offer. Someone saw your beauty, Xuanyu. I’m sorry it had to be me.

When Nie Huaisang sat still for Meng Yao, he closed his eyes. He couldn’t bear to look at Meng Yao’s looking, as if all Nie Huaisang’s imperfections would be mirrored back in the still pools of his eyes. Mo Xuanyu has no such qualms; he watches Nie Huaisang all the while. Even when Nie Huaisang moves on to each of his eyelids, he keeps the other open.

Perhaps his thoughts show on his face. The next time he lifts his brush, Mo Xuanyu reaches out to still his hand. “Why are you here, Sect Leader Nie?”

Nie Huaisang blinks, his face falling into vague concern. “I know it’s terrible of me to have waited so long to see you, Xuanyu, I really—”

Mo Xuanyu’s thin mouth tightens. “You don’t have to be like this with me, you know.”

“I’m sorry—I don’t know what you mean.”

One of Mo Xuanyu’s eyelids is crimson, the other white. It makes him look like he’s standing half in shadow, like a ghoulish creature ready to leap out and strike. “Do you have fun acting stupid? Do you think it keeps people from realizing you think they’re stupid, too?”

Nie Huaisang counts his heartbeats. He casts around for a lie and finds none. He pulls back his hand, still gripping the brush, and looks Mo Xuanyu in the eye. “Why do you wear such frightful colours on your face, Xuanyu? Does it scare people away from hurting you?”

Mo Xuanyu bares his teeth in an imitation of a smile. “The villagers warn their children to stay away from me, so I guess that’s something.”

Mo Xuanyu doesn’t look away from Nie Huaisang, but the smile decays. Before long, there’s no emotion on his face. He still looks beautiful; Nie Huaisang hasn’t produced a good painting in ten years, but he’s always been handy with a brush.

“Why are you here,” Mo Xuanyu repeats.

Nie Huaisang’s gaze wanders, deflecting, shy, embarrassed to be caught out in elision. “Your letters were starting to scare me.”

“I’m flattered that a great sect leader cares enough about my lowly life to worry. If I wanted to kill myself, do you think a visit from you would change my mind?”

“I’m your friend.”

Mo Xuanyu snorts. “No. You’re not. You’re here because you want a pet demonic cultivator for whatever it is you're planning, otherwise you’d leave me to rot. Isn’t that right, Sect Leader Nie?” More quietly, but no less vicious: “If you cared about me, you'd take me away.”

His spite makes him sound so young. Nie Huaisang thinks of what he was like at twenty-three: spoiled and brainless as one of his finches.

“I can't,” he says. He's never sounded like such a coward. “I can't risk making him suspicious until—until it's over.”

“How's it going to end, Sect Leader Nie?”

Weakly: “That's what I'm trying to figure out.”

Do his ancestors revile him now more or less than they once did? He sits on the edge of a bed in a seedy inn, taking powder and paint to a handsome young man’s face, but he may as well be pressing a cleaver to Mo Xuanyu’s quivering neck. He’s followed their example: accepted the necessity of the occasional sacrifice, and learned how to hold steady as he waits to strike.

Nie Huaisang is quiet. After a moment, Mo Xuanyu’s gaze falls to the floor, and he laughs. He sounds exhausted.

“You’re just like him.”

Sweat has gathered in Nie Huaisang’s palm where he’s been clutching the brush-handle. He doesn’t let it go; he doesn’t know what he’d do with his hand. “You loved him, didn’t you?”

Mo Xuanyu’s eyes snap back up to Nie Huaisang’s face. “Something like that.”

And you?, he doesn’t ask, but he may as well have for how loudly Nie Huaisang can hear it ring out. And you, Nie Huaisang?

Abruptly, Mo Xuanyu gets to his feet. “Don’t worry, Sect Leader Nie.” His face is still only half made-up. Nie Huaisang’s little lopsided hanged ghost. “I won’t let your gifts go to waste.”

Nie Huaisang watches Mo Xuanyu gather his belongings and pull on his boots until he’s nearly ready to leave, and just as he turns to make for the door, Nie Huaisang gets to his feet and goes to him.

“Let me fix your robes before you leave,” he says. His voice sounds quite mysteriously pleading.

Mo Xuanyu turns his head enough to look down at Nie Huaisang through the corner of his eye. He says nothing, but he stops all the same.

Nie Huaisang’s hands move quickly over his clothes, smoothing out the creases, untying his belt and sash to fold his lapels over properly. He doesn’t linger, isn’t trying to seduce or tease him. It takes him less time, in all, than it had for Mo Xuanyu to pick up his paltry handful of possessions to sneak back into Mo Manor.

When he finishes, he murmurs, “There you are. Now you look like yourself again.”

Mo Xuanyu inclines his head, stiffly, in thanks, watching Nie Huaisang all the while. His face has not recovered a trace of its usual manic spark.

This, he realizes, is the angle from which Jin Guangyao’s shared blood is visible in Mo Xuanyu’s face: looking down at Nie Huaisang, his eyes wide and fathomless.

“Travel safely, Young Master Mo,” Nie Huaisang whispers. There is warmth in his voice he can’t trace, considering he feels very cold. Here, their brother has left his mark also.