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Say what you would and what you may, but there is no greater force on this earth that can bring two people on opposite ends of a family conflict to an unlikely truce other than the definite opportunity of publicly shaming Yumengjiang Sect’s Leader, Jiang Cheng, Jiang Wanyin.
In Jiang Cheng’s defence, he was late, and robes can be mended all the time. That’s how they were made, and how they will continue to exist in, through continual processes of renewal. He didn’t understand what’s the big fuss concerning the ripples of snickering and the looks he received as he slid into the meeting hall, earlier than more than half of those who were mandated to attend.
“My,” Lan Xichen smiles at him, all good wills and no threats, but Cheng feels distinctly on edge. That’s the same exact smile all the Lan disciples unleashed onto their unsuspecting loose spirits before beheading them. He returns a courtesy bow and steps towards his designated seat, keeping a close eye on the Lan Sect’s leader, who keeps on smiling at him like that.
Hanguang-Jun needs not to attend these overly formal discussions, but chooses to attend regardless, and his headache takes on a heavier edge as not one, but four human-size headaches trample in after the graceful second Jade of Lan.
Two of those headaches are seized solely by Wei Wuxian alone, an admirably horrifying feat. A single person should not be able to harbour so much sheer blood-curdling annoying abilities in a single body, but Wei Wuxian had gone and died and came right back as if dying is just a cornerstone of approaching your thirties, and Cheng cannot fathom how Lan Wangji can stay sane with that hanging off him like seaweed refusing to relinquish its gross and slimy hold onto his white robes.
The rest of the four human-size headaches are shared equally between his own, Jin Ling, and the two Lan brats, both who are Wei Wuxian’s.
They’re not going anywhere and they are intent on making his living hours a living demonstration of what would be awaiting him when he passes beyond the world of the living. Just Wei Wuxian and his three minions, dancing around in a circle and jeering at him as he descends in the many gates of hell, just for the sin of being alive.
“Jiang Cheng!” Wei Wuxian spots him, throwing his arms out and clasping his shoulder, jostling him jovially. “How early! How lovely it is to see your abomination of a face on this otherwise lovely day!”
“You have one second where you can retract everything and have all your limbs intact,” he warns easily, taking a sip of his wine. Wuxian’s grip on him intensifies as he forgoes everything Jiang Cheng had forewarned him, and instead everything is directed solely at the sleeve of his robe, undone from him taking off his arm bindings, inspecting the embroidery done on the edges, tucked away from sight.
Without warning, Wuxian yanks his arm up heavenward, rising and gasping dramatically, loudly and shamelessly.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji warns his betrothed, tone slightly homicidal, which passes like water poured over ox’s ears, as one would expect of Wei Wuxian.
Another gasp picks up, more exaggerated than the last, and Cheng's headache increases twofold.
It’s not that he doesn’t mind having Jin Ling attend meetings with his father, but, first of all, he still barely tolerate Jin Zixuan after all these years; second of all - Jin Ling had picked up annoying habits from Wei Wuxian and intended to be even worse by his uncle.
He prays for strength every time he comes into contact with the two of them existing in the same space. Notwithstanding the fact that Jin Ling still hates Wei Wuxian deeply, with all the shallow callings of teenage angst intermixing with confused admiration. Once they merge as one entity of sheer and complete chaos, he knows his days are numbered, before he gets evicted from Yunmeng for committing homicide.
“What now,” he sighs, looking at the sleeve. It’s just a sleeve. Why are there whispers rising and two of his idiot family members trying to out-whisper each other?
It’s just a sleeve, he would mournfully recall later.
That would help, if there was a sleeve to dispute facts over.
What was meant to be a complete sleeve, though unbound by his arm guards, ought to have been there. But only a cleanly sliced fragment of a sleeve hangs, incriminating, loudly enough that he can hear the repercussions of such attire beating him over the eyes with their fluttered fans of gossip.
Oh for heaven’s sake -
Everything is still in disarray, and made worse by Nie Huaisang entering, fluttering a triangle of a cut sleeve, an identical fit to the missing portion of Jiang Cheng's loud exhibition of such behaviour.
“Oh dear,” Lan Xichen can be heard stifling his laugh, as Jin Ling zeroes in on the Nie Sect Prince.
“Honourable Sir,” the kid begins, as Huaisang immediately dismisses the formality.
“Say what you must, but without the flattery, young master Jin.”
“Is that not a cut sleeve, my good sir?”
He really needs to throw himself off from the pier and just disappear. Just like that.
“Huh,” Huaisang inspects the piece of cloth. “I do suppose it is. I was on my way to returning it to its rightful owner.”
Eyes immediately zero in on Jiang Cheng, frozen from Wuxian’s barnacle grip on his arm. Lan Wangji’s eyes flit between the two of them, and realisation spreads across his cold, aristocratic face.
“Ah,” he blinks.
In the same vein, his brother utters a laughing Ah, indeed, brother, as they watch on as carnage splays out before their very eyes, content to just observe and not participate, unless, of course, full-fledged murder occurs.
“Yes?” Wuxian jostles his arm, smile climbing up solely on one side of his face. The other side winks at him. “ Yes? Who’s the rightful owner, A-Sang?”
He can't feel his face or the skin of his cheek when Nie Huaisang shrugs and tucks the cut sleeve under his belt, grin slow and devastating.
“Why, I do believe this is the same embroidery our beloved Sect Leader Jiang is most fond of,” he blinks slow eyes over the fluttering hand at his mouth. “An incredibly profound service you had done by me, Master Jiang, though you mustn't sever your clothing for this lowly one. I could have moved readily had you told me so.”
Scandalous yelps from the second coming of the Twin Lan Jades emit raucously, with exaggerated charades from Jin Ling, fluttering someone's forehead ribbon in substitution of a fan, between Huaisang and him.
He must confess. The context is much further than the evidence had implied what the transgression of events between him and the I don't know Deputy Leader of the Nie Sect. Being able to blow things out of proportion and plucking them right out of context is a natural-born talent that Wei Wuxian ardently cultivates, outside of his legion of dead corpses, a disastrous legacy he had been able to bestow upon the willing heads of Jin Ling and Lan Jingyi. Thank goodness Lan Sizhui takes after the Lan Sect’s measured and mediated mannerism, otherwise he would have the four horsemen of misfortune upon his head, breathing about his personally tailored apocalypse.
Before he could justify himself, and extricate his incriminating sleeve from beyond Wuxian’s grip, Jin Zixuan enters, jie gliding above the ground before him, and the noise subsides, with only shocked and scandalous whispers remaining at the back of his head. She smiles, bright and gentle, not even batting an eye at Wuxian cutting off blood flow to his fingers, and does a full circuit of greeting all of the guests, half an embrace here, a curtsy there.
She reaches around to fix their robes and hair, and makes absolutely no effort to address the very evident problem of him being incapacitated by his own brother, in their own home, along with many other guests, who are still whispering.
He can hear them.
“Save all of your troubles for after the meeting,” she reminds Wuxian smilingly, and pats his own cheek, before departing to take a seat at the central table reserved for the Leader of the Jin Sect.
Nobody bother to even correct her. It is unprecedented, and never seen before, but truthfully, she is the leader of the Jin in everything but blood, in which her family forbade her to lose even a drop of.
Madame Jiang settles, and the rest of the esteemed guests start filtering in, occupying their seats.
Nie Huaisang settles genially into the seat next to the Lan Sect, fluttering a fan open as Nie Mingjue enters and takes a seat, eyes roving about at the gathering before him.
The Demon Nie Senior bares a sole canine and all attention quickly diverts to teasing Jiang Cheng, as if he is the lesser devil next to Chifeng-Zun.
Wuxian relinquishes his hold on him - but not before tucking away his inappropriate sleeve and bounding over to the Lan Sect, inserting himself snugly between a Lan son that he adopted, Cheng forgot which is which now.
He thought it would stop, and all of the gossip would pick up beyond the formal setting of the meeting hall.
Absolutely. Wrong.
Apparently, no greater force out there can rival the sheer excitement of being able to ridicule Jiang Cheng, so much that it brought two unlikely allies together to actively plot for his demise, Jin Ling pressing close to the Lan Sect and murmuring with Wei Wuxian.
The meeting ran its course to about halfway, until Jin Zixuan speaks -
“My esteemed guests,” who evidently can’t ignore Wei Wuxian and Jin Ling huddling together and whispering loud enough for the passing disciples to eavesdrop and bunch up before the pavilion, just as many other guests had begun rumbling among themselves. “Your gossip ought to be saved for a later occasion.”
“But Jin-xiong ~!” Wuxian wheedles in a tone that specifically targets weak men who won't be able to stand a flutter of his eyelash batting. “It is a matter of utmost importance!”
He then adds in the Sultry Eyelash Batting. Most are immune to it. Jin Zixuan, who grew up far and away from Wei Wuxian at his worst, only heard tales of how downright psychotic the Yiling Patriarch is on the battlefield. People expected Wei Wuxian to have fangs, horns, a bear head instead of a human, body stitched out of different body parts of his fallen and cut down enemies. Those are the tales.
But Wei Wuxian is, before everything else, an opportunistic scavenger. He will use all of his assets to his advantage, hone them into an edge that will serrate skin and bones. He will do whatever it takes to achieve his goals, and he will do them without a shred of shame. The scraps that were tossed to him, the harsh woods in which he lived - they proved unnoticed obstacles besides his hunger for the completion of his ambition. If beauty and demonic cultivation are skills that will get him to places he needs to be, then so be it.
Wei Ying is more cunning than prodigal talents, but many don't get the honour to tell that tale to the many undeserving ears of the cultivating world.
There is a hushed breath, and he can audibly hear the scandalised gasp his brother in law took. Poor bastard. He saw more people fall for the edge of that borderline lascivious smirk more than the amount of dead bodies that the Yiling Patriarch claimed as war spoils.
Subtly he slants an eye over to Lan Wangji, gauging to see if there will be a historical divorce court unfolding before his own courtyard. Cut sleeves don't get to marry much or at all around here, but with the combined forces of sheer fear and reverence that are Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, the world could not deny them the simple joy of celebrating their union. Plus, who could tell them no, realistically? No one. Jiang Cheng certainly gave up after the Hanguang-Jun almost bowed before him and he didn't need that on his conscience or the kids to know of it back home, so he hastily told the man to get up, get out and please get married.
Cut sleeves don't get married much, but he's sure that they don't get divorced, at all. Or ever. Divorce cases are always fun to adjudicate, and most of the time the problems tend to resolve themselves without him needing to intervene. But if there is a third party at hand for the inevitable botch of this marriage, he is moving to Gusu and never coming back home, doorways ridiculing him be damned.
He meets the eyes of an also interested party, calculating the distance between all the forces in motion, awaiting the push that will spark an explosion.
Jade meets dark brown, and a single tap of a fan to a mouth. Wait. Watch.
He might have waited and watched that faint flick of a wrist beneath drooping robe sleeves, a sliver of a mouth behind the flutter of a fan.
Nie Huaisang flashes a blunt tooth at him and turns away.
Cheng feels distinctly like he was vivisected under that gaze and he had passed an unknown test. Yes, but what know? What could they say to the populace that wouldn't devolve into the forbidden word?
His thoughts are swiftly shut down as a clamour appears behind the curtains, signalling an unexpected presence. Madame Yu swiftly sweeps through the hall, and Jiang Cheng had a brief moment of cruel satisfaction as witnessing both his sect disbanding as a sea of seagulls would in the face of adversity and Wei Wuxian shutting up and stashing his look away, the innocent and demure act almost convincing.
“How discourteous of us to not invite our honourable guests to our quaint lunch,” she smiles, iron in between the rouge press of her artfully drawn lips. “Please rise, everyone, and follow this old servant through to our east garden, where the juniors and cooks have begun setting up a luncheon.”
The crowd momentarily postpones the speeches and rises to the direction of Fairy tottering down the steps to lead them to the corner of the garden. Mother then busies herself with entertaining the most hardened of the guests, set about to engage the Nie Sect Leader, pausing very briefly to glare at him and the four hellish monkey entourage.
All he did was breathe . And not have a sleeve. Leave him be.
Madame Yu's loud ChiFeng-Zun, how fare you?
almost drowns out all ambient noises, but not enough for Jin Ling to creep up behind him, his sect brother close by, a troublemaking smile firmly on his lips.
“Uncle,” he beams. “Which wind was it that blew you to the ways of us cut sleeves?”
Nie Huaisang, most likely meaning well, arrives by the crook of his elbow, fluttering a fan open.
Cheng does not possess enough foresight to grasp how much more can this misunderstanding be blown out of proportion.
“I do believe that wind was me, storming into your study all uninvited, and falling asleep on your sleeve. I must apologise, Master Jiang. It was most -”
He doesn't get to finish his sincere apology, Cheng is sure of it, as Wuxian screeches, finger pointing between the two of them.
“I knew it!”
Lan Xichen is seen taking away a small bag of goods from Song Lan, and look, he doesn't even want to know.
“Shut up,” he hisses at his brother. “I'll tell you later when we're in the training ground. Split up and sneak off.”
He casts a look at the growing interested masses and tries to not bite his tongue.
A tap on his arm. He slants an eye down, beyond the ostentatious robes and golden embroidery, in which he's certain he did half of that for a hefty sum of farming goods from Qinghe, beyond everything pretense and performative -
Now Huaisang winks at him, as he tilts an eye, letting only Cheng see the slow brush of the row of upright lashes.
An open invitation. For a dance.
He tucks away a stray lock of hair behind his ears. An acceptance.
A hand, careful, firm, on his arm guards, and he is pulled away, a dance among the crowd, the escape sweet on the sole of his boots as they wind around others and each other, Huaisang giggling as they disappear among the lotus leaves.
Jin Ling turns, and his uncle is long gone. Off to thin air, away with Nie Huaisang.
“Uncle!” He calls, no Wei Wuxian in sight. There is only Lan Wangji, who looks right at him. “I need to catch uncle Cheng! Can you tell mama I'll be late to lunch? Thanks, bye, see you, eat well!”
With that, he also disappears. Sizhui pats his father in consolation as he processes through the fact that Jin Ling called him an uncle. Jingyi mourns the loss of an opportunity to witness Murderous Sect Leader Jiang throw hands with Nie Huaisang, but Jin Ling will return and regale them with tales and live reenactments.
Hopefully. Or he could be killed in the process, so that there are no witnesses to the murder of Nie Huaisang.
He subtly prays for a safe return so he can stash away some money from that bet with the Jiang disciples of - Jiang Cheng, Cut Sleeve or No?
It goes a little something like this -
There is a knock at his study. The same rhythm and staccato he made sure his two closest friends learnt, their own little secret, at the age of six, so that they can identify each other, no matter how far.
Nobody really knock in this place anymore. Any intimidation he thought he possessed had long fizzled out from the hearts and minds of his sect, most of them treating him as a treading deck, trampling all over his study and sleep chambers for whatever inane reasons they deemed fit for their self interest, and he had long since given up on disciplining all of them. Their loyalty is unmitigated, so at least there is that. Wuxian long taught him that loyalty does not always translate to fear. They may not fear him, or respect him, but they would willingly lay down their lives for him. Good. It’s not as if he asks for a lot to begin with, but the dying slowly, over time, had also become something they hold over his head. He begged them, and they had laughed right back at him. Please don’t die for me, that’s really stressful and traumatising for me to grieve over you and organise your funerals out of our limited sect funds.
Sect Leader Jiang, they all chorused back, we would literally let you step on us.
Jiang Cheng told them to swim laps around the Lotus lakes and embroider a good section of the village’s clothing supply, but that teasing edge had never quite gone away.
No. It's worse now.
The kids think he was serious up to the age of eight, and then he lost all Terrifying Sect Leader credit and was subsequently bumped into Grumpy Uncle Waste Chute.
“No need for formality,” he wearily intones, because if they have the respect to knock, Jiang Cheng is half ready to marry them into the sect already. “Please enter this humble abode as you wish.”
“Dear me, Master Jiang,” a laughter like a set of bells, a game they played since youth. “Does no one knock around Yunmeng? Are there any doors barring entrances over at the Lotus Pier? I barely glimpse any locks or doors on my path here.”
He would explain the entire history of why there are no locks - besides cloth dyeing and dance, the disciples here are trained on lock picking and dismantling entrances. Having doors and locks would just be an incentive for them to commence unnecessary practice outside of training. He had to supervise and ending up repairing too many doors for this to be a laughing matter. After Wei Wuxian was carted away on a door and tossed into the pier, Father Jiang took away all the doors and sat the sect down on a lecture about privacy and respecting boundaries.
That speech went surprisingly well, and many had upheld that outlook well beyond the passing of the leadership title to Cheng. Somehow respect for privacy trumped over being a bunch of menacing little brats, and so now they don't have doors. He hasn't seen doors for too many years now, and trips outside of Yunmeng is always an experience. The amount of doors he and Wuxian walked into had been beyond ridicule and gossip inducing, and they vowed to never enter a doorway first, not after Cheng himself fell through the study of Lan Qiren that one time and had not since recovered.
He looks up, weariness upon his brow, and an eye widens as Nie Huaisang steps into his shabby study, fan at his smiling mouth.
It takes him approximately three strokes of the sun character to blurt out - “The sect is concerned Wei Wuxian will be tossed into the pier again if there are doors to throw him away on” - and Huaisang laughs right at him.
That was rude. But then again, he didn’t project himself out there to be very intelligent, outside of being downright unpleasant and belligerent. At least that teased out a laugh from the otherwise placid Nie Prince.
“One would never expect,” Now Huaisang swallows down a mouthful of air, the back of a delicate hand to his mouth, fan dropping in abandon. “Well, I certainly have not, expected such an entertaining comment from you.”
He furrows his brows, defensive stance easing out of the line of his shoulder as Huaisang approaches, feet padding on wooden flooring.
“Was I not funny to you before, Nie Huaisang,” he drawls, clearing space on his cluttered desk to welcome Nie royalty to depart from his finery and settle onto such bare minimum furniture. The Wen thoroughly swept through the barest possession they had anyways, and he was in the process of recreating the shredded stitches left on a princess’ handkerchief they had way back. It was a sect favourite, and he, as esteemed leader now, stole that job from Yanli and meticulously slaved over it.
“You were full of cheek in our past, Master Jiang, even as you had grown up belligerent and unpleasant,” is the half answer he received, accompanied by the usual fan fluttering. “Are your fingers not tire of such repetitive chore, Jiang Cheng?”
It is a step closer. These days they are stepping closer and closer together, until there is a vague boundary that he daren't cross, not with the large looming cloud of What is this, breathing down his neck.
The last person who dared to breathe down his neck received an outright lashing of Zidian to the face and hadn’t recovered themselves to a standard where they can meet him in the eyes again. He made a note to attend to the person he unknowingly inflicted painful injuries upon their person, but by that time they had already left the Lotus Pier and he was inconsolable for many moons.
Nie Huaisang had to bear the brunt of his hysterical letter. He hadn’t stopped bringing it up so that Cheng can forget it ever happened, because they’re imprinted onto each other and mutual tormenting is how it will go on to be.
Nie Huaisang is watching him still, fan an elaborate pattern tapping against his nose and lips. One moment he think he can see everything that the fan hides, and a moment later it is swept away by a brush of a fan.
“Nah, stitching calms me down,” he snipes the long thread short, tying a knot. “Take a seat. Don’t be a stranger.”
Nie Huaisang decisively does not take a seat and lingers by his open window, gazing out onto the lake of blooming lotuses.
“I couldn’t impose -” he grins behind his fan.
Cheng lobs a packet of lotus seeds at his belt and snarls, without any bite behind it. “Drop the act, Xiao Sang. I know your knees are weak. Just sit.”
Huaisang pretends to be hurt, clutching his belt and sagging against the wall of his window, in full theatrics™ mode.
“Sect Leader Jiang had mortally wounded me. I fear for the wrath of my brother, who would avenge my honour,” he moans, lying flat on the straw matted floor.
He rolls his eyes and tucks away all of his needles, lest he sticks them into the neck of the second coming of Lan Xichen. The repercussions of that might lead to a full blown siege battle, or worse, a scolding from both Xichen and Madame Yu.
He’s not very keen to sit through one of those. The last guy was sent out in hysterics and nobody knew what happened to him thenceward.
Huaisang remains resolutely on the floor, rolling to his side to peer up at Cheng on his low desk.
“When did you get here?” He rises, rolling his eyes as he bends down to pull this man-child up. Wuxian got to him before Cheng. It explains why a thirty-something, grown, smart man, had been reduced to the dramatics of Wei Wuxian and a three year old.
“Just before noon,” Nie Huaisang throws all of him and his abundant of sleeves at Cheng’s face and arms, and sags even further to the ground as Cheng drags him like he used to drag a drunk Wuxian home from the tavern, a sack of rice just bumping merrily on dirt road, winding back to Lotus Pier.
“How early,” he breezily comments, throwing Huaisang at the corner of the desk where there is a cushion to prevent an actual broken neck if that ever would happen. “Also are you eating? Are they feeding you in Qinghe? You're lighter than I remembered.”
Huaisang lifts slanted eyes up at him. “I find it concerning that you know how much I used to weigh.”
“I carried you on my back when you rowed all the way to Yunmeng on a raft. Thank me, by the way, for being the only person who was concerned that you might have died, carried you back,” he gripes, irritation a facade as Huaisang drapes his expensively embroidered sleeves all over his manuscripts and scrolls, fan tucked inside his belt.
Huaisang’s hands wander to the top of his hairdo, unravelling the elaborate braids, as locks of thick, wavy hair spilling down onto his shoulders and ears.
He spends an inordinate and frankly embarrassing time staring, mapping out each dip of the hair framing the fair face, hanging behind the round tuck of an ear, sprawling over the protrusion of a royal shoulder piece.
The breath he takes in is in tandem with the air Nie Huaisang lets out as dark jade eyes meet dark brown, lotus leaves becoming one with the murky water below their stalks.
“You’re so good to me, Jiang Cheng,” the Nie Huaisang demurs. “How could I ever let you go?”
Cheng distinctly feels the revisitation of that one time he got tossed off a horse and kicked in the guts when he was thirteen, all air knocked right out of his lungs and momentarily suspended in time, before the pain arrived and scrunched him up in a ball of fury.
He blinks. In quick succession. Deep down he can feel the bubbling emergence of a stupid comment again, Jiang Cheng Brand™.
“That comment was unnecessary,” he grits out instead, aggressively pushing away a crease in his sleeve as he unravels his arm bindings. “Take care of yourself more.”
“I have gege taking care of that for me, don’t worry,” Huaisang laughs, and it passes, the moment, into something familiar and teasing again.
He is not quite sure if he misses it.
“So why are you here,” he piles packets of pins by a sleeve of Huaisang, effectually encasing him onto the desk. “Go bother jiejie. Find Wei Wuxian.”
There is another flash of those jade eyes, dew drops spinning madly in spreading lotus leaves, undulating in a drop of the heaven’s tear.
A lot is told, but nothing is said. Huaisang only smiles with half of his mouth, and waves him away with a toss of his head, blowing a strand of hair from his eyes.
“You know with me, I’ll just sit and stitch,” he rolls his eyes, clearing out the desk even more for the man to sprawl more easily. He is playing the part of a good host. There is no other motive behind his actions.
If the tip of his fingers grazed and brushed by sheer coincidence, against the cascade of hair spilling all over his desk, then they are simply coincidences. Nothing more to them.
Nie Huaisang watches him out of shuttered eyes, half closed and half open. Noon is approaching, but by the waterside, there is perpetually a chill and humidity in the air, his open window inviting in humid airs from the river mouth.
He has half a mind to drape his coat around Huaisang’s tender shoulders. He carried that body on his back once. He sparred with Huaisang before in the springs of their youth. He knows many widths of a hand that entire shoulder, from left to right, take up. This Nie will snap in half if the wind happens to blow too strongly in his direction. Yunmeng’s river winds are never nice to foreigners.
That coat is sounding more and more of a good idea as he notes the slight tremors behind the thick mane of hair.
He would have done it, taken the coat and dump it on Huaisang’s stupid shoulder, but this one got there before him. Huaisang taps the surface of the desk, and he, as if the movement is already interwoven into his bones and skin, gives an arm, sleeve unbound, for the celebratory embroidery Yanli did for him on his inauguration as the new Jiang Sect Leader to splay out in rich display of quiet pride before one who saw him mature from a brat to a competent leader of a powerhouse sect.
“Your work?” Huaisang traces a fingernail on the flowers adorning the edges of the robe sleeve.
"Jie's," he swallows, the intensity of the gaze on the fabric affecting him strangely. “Eldest gets the honour of decorating the leader’s formal robes at the inauguration ceremony.”
“You wear your formal robes at home?” Huaisang lifts his head, incredulity on his tongue, the veneer of a scheming mastermind falling to just Nie Huaisang. Nothing more. Never anything less.
“Jie was very enthusiastic,” Cheng only tells him in ways of explanation. “She embroidered a lot of my robes, even ones that are not for formal conduct. I didn’t have the heart to tell her no.”
Huaisang lifts the sleeve, scrutinising it.
“It is marvellous work. Intricate, well done. The Jin Sect is very lucky to have her among them,” he marvels at the twists of the designs, thumb pressing onto an embroidery of a lotus blooming.
Cheng does not dare move, too wound up tight as a sailor’s hitch as he holds in all breaths and movements, so that Huaisang does not relent this exquisitely torturous grip on his sleeve.
Huaisang notices. He always does.
The sleeve is loose, falling under slowly retreating fingers. A back of a hand, covering lotus petal-tinted mouth. “You need not mind me, Chengcheng. Return to your chore as you had before. I am simply a visitor. I will take my leave soon.”
Something in Cheng's chest does not wish for the departure to arrive so soon. Something in his chest wishes that he can contain this moment, stitch it onto as many robes as his hands allow him to make, until he cannot anymore.
“No,” his throat is clogged up, drying, but he fights it, speaks the embroiling bundle of emotions to existence, to the human tongue. “It is perfectly alright, what you were doing. I will live. Stay.”
Huaisang’s hand covers his mouth, but he sees the pull of the cheek, the flash of a corner of a mouth. The little something in his chest whispers to him, the rush of air through the exhale of his lungs. It might be a smile.
Huaisang toys with the edge, turning it over and under his fingers, until he yanks it forward, Cheng with it, towards where his head meets the surface of the desk, resting firmly on it.
Cheng does not dare disturb such a rare thing, the cautious Nie Huaisang, resting before a childhood friend, yes, but a stranger in adult years, an acquaintance who sees him in fleeting glances across pavilions before their paths diverge to the meandering clouds obscuring their roads from ever intersecting again.
That is how it should have been, but he had long learned that nothing is ever permanent on this forsaken country they live in, and they keep on meeting, again and again. Strands of silk tangle and fuse into one, but they have withstood the dry and wet seasons, the harsh press of wind from the mountains to the airy humidity of the river side. Bound together, a tender creation of a long time labour is birthed. Pressed snugly between them, this airy softness like a sheet of silk entangling skin after it had dried under hanging clouds. So tender, and tightly-knitted, that he does not dare move. Does not dare breathe, only lift eyes carrying the want of many years onto the fallen star from the peak of the mountain range. A life of always looking forward at their wayward siblings and glancing behind for those who wish to harm, they are cautious only from the world crowding them into trusting only their own shadows. For trust is a wisp of air that one can hold. Too easily it can be shattered into a million scattered shards of ceramic, flung away to the depths of the ocean. Betrayal, the shattering of this ephemeral wisp of air, is inconceivable. He must not. He dares not.
What is this, he had asked himself, over and over again, the space between the two of them, where their mortal flesh do not touch. What is this, and do I want more of it?
He is the leader of a cultivational sect. Next to Wei Wuxian, the prodigal son, the demonic cultivator, the ravenous soul yearning for sustenance, next to Jiang Yanli, whose gentleness and words thaw more conflicts and lives than swords can bear to cut down - next to them, he is simply Jiang Cheng, wielder of Zidian, the Sandu Shengsou, nothing more, nothing -
Nie Huaisang had told him that he speaks too harshly of everyone else, but he is the harshest with himself. There are a wall of standards in which he measures himself up against, the standards which clearly are others to conquer and never his to amount up to. A conformer of rules, always eager to please, but he had never broken the mold, had never set out the terms and rules for his own life. Not many can afford that luxury, and therefore he must lead by example, must fold himself to the rules, must be more than his family, more than -
“I can hear you fretting,” Huaisang’s voice mutters. “Do you need to go somewhere?”
Because Jiang Cheng is first and foremost a fool, he blurts out - “The meeting. That, I must attend to.”
Huaisang groans, and burrows further onto the wall. He could stay here - the meeting only requires the sect leaders participating in an exchange of knowledge from their regions of cultivating, improving on the ways they are managing their sects and inter-sect relations. Guests are always welcomed, but their society had grown to be the one where roles are shared and the title of leader is fading to obsoletion, with many others burdening the responsibilities, and therefore, those who share in those roles also attend.
He’d much rather see Wei Wuxian on guest visits to Gusu, but gege misses him and is always around Yunmeng when he wants to, and Cheng had told him off for a good year until he gave up. It’s not harming anyone, and truthfully, he misses his brother too. Lan Wangji would perpetually be attached to Wei Wuxian’s side, and Mother and Father had permanently affixed his name onto the ancestral burial sites for their son-in-law in true Jiang fashion, committing him unto and beyond death to Wei Ying, a promise Lan Wangji is perhaps more than happy to fulfill.
The point is that it is not mandatory that Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji attend all the sect leaders meetings, but they do anyways, but that same courtesy needs not to extend to Nie Huaisang, who is weary of all social gatherings after long travels. Besides, he only ever talks to Jin Ling and Cheng during meetings, eyes observing the rest of the guests, therefore it is preferable if he stays in Cheng's study.
“I don’t want to move,” Huaisang bemoans to his desk, bunching up his sleeve even tighter under his head, arms coming up to grip the edge of embroidery.
“I’m not making you move,” he pulls forth a pair of scrolls, tossing them at Huaisang’s head. “I’m moving. You can stay for however long you wish.”
He has royalty in the shabbiest room of the Jiang home, who returns back to napping as if he fits exactly in Cheng's routine, does not blink an eye at his caustic words. He had been pampered too much by this little fool. That nagging shred of thoughts still mutters to him, vile and cruel like his own voice. You will not amount to a standard that is acceptable in the company of Nie Huaisang.
Actually though, that sounds a bit funny. He’s fully aware of that, he had a whole moment about it. But he can doubt and scream for as long as he wishes to at the pier, it does not erase a Nie prince sprawling all over his sleeve and table, hair the curls of ink swirls that a brush dips into water. It does not take away the easy words they share, the silk warmth pressing tight onto the skin of his face and the space that lies snug behind his shirt collar, a pouch of heat warming cool skin at the draft of the river blows untoward his open window.
It does not take away the rare deliberation of choice, something he and Huaisang could rarely ever afford, without it costing too much out of them, that Huaisang had oh so blatantly gone out of his way to show to Cheng. Nie Huaisang is a prince of a powerful cultivational sect, who is a charming individual to those he associates with. Nie Huaisang can invest his time for the betterment of his sect, yet he chose to spend valuable time with the upstart Jiang Cheng, the abrasive and downright irritable Sandu Shengshou. The him who many avert their eyes from, Nie Huaisang readily matches gazes with, bright calculating eyes beyond the flutter of his deceptive fan.
There must be an equivalence that he can return to extend his gratitude for this sole gesture. But that sentiment cannot be returned if he is murdered from arriving late at a Jiang-hosted meeting, on his home turf, death by the hands of benevolent and kind Mother, as Father manfully wipes away tears and bids all of his work in progress to the highest buyers.
He hoists a knee to rise, but his arm is chained back to the desk. Ah. Yes. Nie Huaisang is still on his sleeve.
Cheng truly doesn’t want this one to wake from this rare slumber, away from home, away from comfort and familiarity.
Habit is a drugged addiction many find difficult to break apart from, him included. This is just another picture of the past, when he and Huaisang fell asleep on each other’s arms in the libraries of the Cloud Recesses. Jiang Cheng had not pulled away in the past, and he will not be embarking on new journeys of self-discovery this very day by yanking his sleeve rudely from under a sleeping man and tromping off to his sect meeting.
With the practised ease of someone who wields scissors more often than he does his sword, the blades break apart, come together, slice a perfectly straight line down his long sleeve, and that is that.
He rises, absently tucking his severed sleeve under loose bindings, and does get to drape that coat around Nie Huaisang, shoulder hidden under hair and his royal attires.
If he lingers for too long, fingers curling at being enveloped from the mane of inky hair - that is knowledge only visited by him.
The story only goes something like that, yet his bastard family will not heed a single sound that he utters from his mouth, choosing to dive at conclusions that he cannot fathom how they could have constructed up.
Huaisang presses his arm tighter against him, warmer, under all of the robes and sleeves, and Cheng doesn’t remove his hand from that loose grip around that dainty arm. He hears something like a laugh bubble from the way Huaisang’s shoulders shake and tremble, as they weave past disciples who not only do not greet him as their leader, but hoot and cheer as he is seen essentially attached to the second prince of QingheNie.
Jiang Cheng is going to have a very long talk with them after this.
They make it as far as the sight of the pier spreading out before them before Jin Ling’s shrill summoning of their immediate return halts their hasty departure.
“Heavens and hell -” he is about to toss another family to the bottom of these lakes, not before Huaisang's hand finds the dìp of his shoulder, one eye winking at him as the Nie Prince passes before him to receive Jin Ling.
“Master Jin,” he smiles. “Surely a stroll around the Pier would be permissible by the madame's decree?”
Jin Ling is positively vibrating on the ball of his feet, grin threatening to split his face open in half.
“You must answer by her before that, I am afraid, Your Highness,” he bows, none of it genuine. “Are the Jiang and Jin sects such company that you would deprive us of your wondrous presence in the midst of our intimate gathering?”
All of that, down to the degree of the bow, is a complete amalgamation of jiejie and Wuxian's teachings. He only taught the kid the required survival skills. He taught him none of whatever he is doing after.
Huaisang flashes him a look of utter resignation. What can we do but play along into his trap? Twinkling eyes smile at him from the depth of their jade shine.
Cheng levels a devastating glare, to zero effect, at Jin Ling, for a good passing of time before gruffly agreeing, leading them to the open garden space, where the luncheon is hosted.
No one really noticed he was gone, or that Nie Huaisang absconded with him. Good. A missile dodged, without needing to regale them with the nitty gritty details.
“Jin Guangyao, my esteemed brother, sadly could not attend our merry gathering,” Jin Zixuan with fake despair and very much joy, informs everyone.
Jin Ling snorts into his cup of rice wine, the one that had been vetted by at least four adults before it could rest firmly under his palm.
“You are always so mean to your brother,” Xichen scolds the Jin leader lightly, shaking his head.
Nie Mingjue doesn’t spare any prisoner. “That’s good for us. I don’t think he can show his face to Huaisang, in fear of further embarrassment.”
Huaisang only flutters his fan in abashed acknowledgement, fan raised to the lower row of his lashes. Cheng stands close to him, appraising and anticipating the question. It would only arrive, sooner than later -
“Brother,” he hears the sickeningly sweet tune of Wuxian bespoking death into his marrow. “So about that sleeve -”
“What sleeve?” Mother descends upon their shoulders, a tiger ready to pounce on unsuspecting deers, except that Cheng knows this is going to happen, but he held onto the hope of escaping it outside of Madame Yu’s persecution.
“There is no sleeve!” His voice rises, shrill. Huaisang takes a shuffling step away from him, fan beginning to flutter faster.
“There was a sleeve!” Jin Ling enters the fray, also screeching. “Until you severed it!”
Mother’s eyes cut to him in the span of one whip crack, thunderous disapproval and malicious glee evident marring her eyebrows.
“Xiao Cheng. How dare you deface the clothes you squandered lessons to stitch and weave for.”
He quickly offers her subpar apologies, but she is not listening. The expression of outright ill-intent radiates from the very flash of her teeth, directed at his chin.
Is it too late to bash his head on a pillar yet?
Jin Ling, because nobody can touch the kid without bearing the wrath of four sects and a spiritual dog, dances around him, spewing forth his expiry date.
“Honourable Leader. Sir. Supreme Whip Crack Overlord. Stupid Yelly Man,” he sucks in an exaggerated breath. The spectators watch on with baited anticipation. “Do you even know what you have done.”
That does not sound like a question. And answering it would only seal his fate in the newest coffin on express delivery and burial on the ancestors’ resting grounds.
Jiang Cheng, because he has too much to say on this matter, stupidly opens his mouth and signs away a deed to his embroidery collection and numerous purple cloaks.
“It’s just a sleeve,” he states, with dignity. “It got stuck under Master Nie’s. I had to go, so I cut it loose.”
He sees roughly five people stuffing their fists into their mouths, coughing deliriously.
Cheng's brain takes a bit longer than that to process it, and -
“Oh,” he blinks, then abruptly colours. “Right. Huh. No. Not. A. Word. From any of you.”
Wei Wuxian is seen dancing around crowing He cut his sleeve! He cut a sleeve! He acknowledged his true calling! By literally cutting a sleeve!
The other three junior demons start to huddle and tally down numbers onto a scroll, nodding and shaking hands as if it was -
He can’t help his voice rising here.
“Did you little brats bet on me?!”
Jiang Yanli is seen offering Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen a lotus cake each, smiling amidst literal carnage unfolding before them.
It is a miracle that he is allowed to break free from the torment to walk Huaisang to his chambers, their pace quick and brisk, breaking off from the drunken family reunion and drinking games that the inter-sect meeting had devolved into.
“Why did you come to see me today, before anyone else?” He asks, at the threshold of the private chamber. The kids hastily constructed a door just for this purpose, because foreigners need doors or they will speak nastily against the Jiang Sect.
“I wanted to see you,” Huaisang stops his excessive fan fluttering, opting to cover almost all of his face. Cheng cannot construct what the rest of his face looks like.
“And?” He hedges.
“Sometimes, A-Cheng, there is no ‘and’,” jade eyes squeeze into two crescents of harvest moon. “I simply wanted to see you. Nothing else to it.”
“I do not believe I am agreeable company -”
The fan is lowered, until he can grasp the sight of Nie Huaisang, baring the full sight of his visage for many flickers of a candlelight, to a rapt audience.
Jiang Cheng can already see himself embroidering that dip on his upper lip onto pieces of silk, over and over, until he can recall the shadows that fall from his lashes even from the moment his eyes close.
“If you are not, then I would not have graced you with my presence to readily and easier, Master,” the fan is folded, the tip of it tapping dead centre on his chest, “Jiang.”
He sucks in a breath, ready to counter with wit that he had seemingly lost track of, mesmerised by the parting of the supple lips, hint of uneven teeth peeking from beyond the lotus-tinted hues.
“Uh,” he blinks, committing that to memory. “That is a good point.”
“It’s been know to happen, me making good points,” he can feel the breath of this one, a butterfly resting upon the bow of his own lips, cautious, about to leave again.
“That’s great to know,” his response is automatic, as he tilts and undulates, leaning closer, and closer. “I apologise that it is a continuous matter. I simply doubt myself too much to believe that one as yourself would -”
The fan taps against the plump of his lips, and he immediately ceases speech.
“Chengcheng-ah, my little one,” the shorter guy says, as Cheng is continually pitching himself face first towards the depth of twinkling jades that rest on Huaisang’s face. “I like myself best when I am with you. That had always been, and will continue to be. I will not feel enough, but with you, I am content with this knowledge, because you had never made a lesser man than who I am. You see me as who I am, not who I ought to be. You cut your precious cloth for me. This - it’s. It’s more than enough. You’re more than enough. For me. For everyone else.”
He had effectively lost all and everything function of his voice or cruelty to himself or hatred towards the harsh ways he brought himself up - he is blinking, a blank cloth before him, and he does not know how to proceed, what designs should be set upon the white sheet. Unprepared, that is what he is, despite the loudly incriminating cutting sleeve incident.
“I,” he chokes, because he simply hasn’t anticipated this level of sheer and raw honesty from anyone in recent years, barring Lan Wangji kneeling for his permission to court Wei Wuxian, which, not a welcoming image. “I am not a wordsmith, such as you are. I -”
He blinks for too long into Huaisang’s wide eyes, but he does not give a single shred of care towards it.
“These bones have long been devoted to you,” he gasps out. “I - I cannot offer much, only these weary bones and my hands. You carved comfort and calmness from my temper. I, well, I believe myself rotten and unworthy, but all the parts of mine that have worth, they will and continue to be yours.”
Silence. He counts the spider web of dark threads spinning intricate nets across the sweep of Nie Huaisang’s lashes, content to just leave things as they are.
“What a liar, Master Jiang,” Huaisang giggles, touching his fan to his lip, pale lotus hues tinting the white tip of the fan. “The wordsmith here is you.”
“I didn’t even -” he flails in protest, and promptly hangs his mouth wide as the tip of the fan comes to rest on his own lips.
This one. This Nie Huaisang -
“You -!” He flails once more, gasping, scandalised and baffled at the sheer audacity. Nie Huaisang’s lips touched that fan! Repeatedly!
“Have a good sleep, A-Cheng,” Huaisang’s strings of giggles persist even as he leaves to shut the door in Cheng's face. “I will see you before I leave.”
Nie Mingjue, instead, sees to him before they leave.
It shed less blood than he expected. It shed no blood at all, actually.
“A-Sang,” the fearsome Chifeng-Zun coughs, pacing before him. “Had rarely been given a choice at no consequence to himself. I. Thank you. Please look out for him.”
“Chifeng-Zun -” he begins, and is cut off.
“Please,” Nie Mingjue is this close from rolling his eyes before Jiang Cheng's mortal eyes. “Nie Mingjue is fine.”
“Are you marrying off Xiao Sang to me or what,” he hacks out a laugh.
ie Mingjue meanwhile doesn’t acknowledge his jab, instead choosing to squint far and wide behind him.
“Likely outcome,” he hums back down at Cheng.
He doesn’t have a good feeling about this.
Turning, he sees Jin Ling, elbow occupied by Nie Huaisang, fan amissed, hair - hair that is very different.
There is an elaborate knot and braid combination twisting up on the top of his head. An incriminating purple ribbon flutters in wild abandon of the early morning breeze, along with the Nie’s signature jade ribbon.
“Nie Huaisang,” he grits, as he extends an arm out, shooing Jin Ling from their conversation. His nephew only inches aside, too invested in this conversation to worry about the possibilities of being tossed into the pier right after, blinking in rapt attention as the two of them step in tandem, closer together.
“A-Cheng,” Huaisang’s blinding smile can kill people in direct sight of it. Good thing he is all too immune to it.
“Don’t you A-Cheng me. What -” the words are tossed into the pier as Huaisang steps closer, fixing his collar, smoothing the creases out of them, as his hands wind themselves to pressing upturned edges of the royal robes. “What are you doing with my ribbon?”
Mingjue only shakes his head in consolation as Huaisang skips right past him, a tug to his belt, a full smile blooming in optimum radiance across his face.
“Isn’t it obvious, Jiang Cheng? I’ll see you when I see you, darling.”
He is left spluttering on the deck, screaming at Huaisang half to eat well and keep warm, and half to go drown yourself.
Jin Ling is trying to vibrate himself from the deck and onto the clouds. He sighs, too tired for this. It’s the early hours of the day. Only the Lan Quartet are up. He has thinking to do, and paperwork to complete if it is what he thinks it is.
“Uncle -” Jin Ling turns to him.
“I’m not opening the floor for question. Shove it down your throat,” he grunts in return.
“But look on the bright side. When you get married, you can just make all of your wedding ceremonial robes because you are a seamstress by trade. Saves more that way - don’t throw me into the pier I’m only trying to help you budget!"
None of the Jiang disciples bat a single eyelid when he is seen carrying a fan, signature of a certain prince in QingheNie, around Yunmeng.
(They do shame him when he stares at it for too long, with a sickening soft look for someone who will soon be there.
He makes them polish their swords, his swords, the farmers’ cleavers, until they shine.)