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Jiang Cheng hesitates to put his bell down. It would rest next to Lan Xichen’s, like it does every night, and while Jiang Cheng knows that Lan Xichen has accepted his marriage proposal—as he accepted Lan Xichen’s in return—he can’t help but to wonder what would happen if Lan Xichen knew him completely.
Jiang Cheng is still surprised enough that someone like Lan Xichen would even accept his temper and his rudeness. He doubts Lan Xichen will stay if he finds out how ugly Jiang Cheng truly is.
“What’s going on, my heart?” Lan Xichen suddenly asks from behind him, and Jiang Cheng puts the bell down.
He knows he will never get over how it looks; two very similar bells next to each other, the meaning behind them more than clear to anyone familiar with the Jiang traditions.
Lan Xichen can’t deny that he belongs to Jiang Cheng when he wears it.
Jiang Cheng wonders if Lan Xichen will still want that once he finds out.
“I’m just thinking,” Jiang Cheng slowly starts, dread settling in his gut but he knows he has to do this.
Before they take the vows and can’t come back from this. Lan Xichen deserves to know the truth, before he pledges himself to Jiang Cheng without a way back.
“That’s never good,” Lan Xichen teases with a small smile as he encircles Jiang Cheng from the side, peppering his cheek with kisses.
Jiang Cheng leans into Lan Xichen for a moment, allows himself to pretend that everything is alright, before he steps out of his arms.
“Don’t you ever wonder why I won’t take my shirt off around you?” Jiang Cheng starts, and he knows he can’t go back now. Not after he put it out in the open.
“You don’t want to, that’s all I need to know,” Lan Xichen gives back and Jiang Cheng closes his eyes.
He still isn’t sure how someone as perfect as Lan Xichen is even on this earth right now. And how Jiang Cheng got so lucky to call him his, if even just temporary.
“But you must be curious,” Jiang Cheng tries again and Lan Xichen’s gaze goes gentle.
“And you’ll tell me when you’re ready,” he easily gives back but Jiang Cheng shakes his head.
“What if I’m never ready?”
“Then you never take off your shirt.”
“Just like that?” Jiang Cheng asks because it can’t be that easy, it just can’t.
“Just like that,” Lan Xichen agrees and then takes a step forward to take Jiang Cheng’s hand in his. “A-Cheng, I love you. You, not whatever it is that you’re hiding. It doesn’t matter to me, as long as you want to stay by my side and love me, too.”
“Don’t you ever think that I don’t trust you? Keeping this from you?”
“A-Cheng, I live with you in your family home. I have your bell. You let your nephew call me Uncle. You allow me to sleep next to you, to stand by your side. There is no more trust you can give me.”
Jiang Cheng has to blink back tears at that. He really doesn’t deserve Lan Xichen.
“What if you don’t want me anymore once you know?” Jiang Cheng still asks, because that’s his biggest fear: that Lan Xichen will take one look at the mess of scars on his chest and turn around, leaving Jiang Cheng.
“I doubt that one thing could make me not want you anymore. Not when there are a thousand reasons that make me want you.”
“You’re such a goddamn romantic sap,” Jiang Cheng breathes out, his shoulders relaxing and he steps closer to Lan Xichen again.
“But I’m your goddamn romantic sap,” Lan Xichen mumbles as he slides his hand under Jiang Cheng’s shirt and puts it warm and comforting on the small of his back.
Jiang Cheng hasn’t allowed this for the longest time in the beginning, too afraid that Lan Xichen would slide it to the front and feel his scars, but of course Lan Xichen had noticed how uncomfortable this has made Jiang Cheng.
It was a bit of trial and error for Lan Xichen, to find out where Jiang Cheng would accept to be touched, but he never abused that trust. He keeps his hands to Jiang Cheng’s back, and his sides sometimes, and his hands never stray too close to the scars.
“You are,” Jiang Cheng breathes out, leans easily into the kiss that Lan Xichen gifts him, and he doesn’t voice his other thoughts.
‘I wonder for how long,’ he doesn’t say because maybe, just maybe Lan Xichen will surprise him.
Jiang Cheng usually isn’t one for hope, but he learned a thing or two from Lan Xichen.
They are both breathing a little more heavily when they part and Jiang Cheng pulls them towards the bed.
“I can’t—not today,” Jiang Cheng blurts out, and then immediately curses himself, because what if Lan Xichen misunderstands?
“Whenever you’re ready,” Lan Xichen says and bites soft kisses into the line of Jiang Cheng’s throat, making him shudder.
“What if I’m never ready?” Jiang Cheng gasps out as Lan Xichen starts to suck at the soft skin under Jiang Cheng’s ear.
“Then it’s never,” Lan Xichen mumbles into his skin, and Jiang Cheng groans.
He really doesn’t deserve Lan Xichen.
“Stop talking,” he instructs as he topples them over on the bed and Lan Xichen laughs against him.
“You’re the one who keeps talking,” he teasingly chides Jiang Cheng who has the perfect solution for that.
There are lots of other things they can do with their mouths after all.
~*~*~
The thought won’t leave Jiang Cheng.
What if Lan Xichen really accepts his scars? What if he won’t even find them disgusting?
It’s not something Jiang Cheng dares to think too often, it still can go wrong after all, but the quiet confidence with which Lan Xichen has answered his questions makes him think that maybe, just maybe, one thing in his goddamn life won’t go wrong.
Jiang Cheng knows he probably worries too much about this; not even just the fact that he’s about to show his scars to Lan Xichen, but also about the when and where and how, and in the end he decides to just do it the next time he and Lan Xichen are together in privacy.
He did not expect Lan Xichen to walk in the very second he thought that.
“You’re awfully pale, my heart,” Lan Xichen says, worry clear in his voice and he hurries over, roams his hands over Jiang Cheng to check him for injures.
“Let me show you,” Jiang Cheng brings out, and his voice is wobbling more than he would like.
“Jiang Cheng,” Lan Xichen says seriously and rests his hands over Jiang Cheng’s who are worrying the hem of his under-robe. “Don’t do this because you think you have to. Only do it if you want to.”
Jiang Cheng smiles at him, and he’s aware of how watery it is, and he presses a quick kiss to Lan Xichen’s lips.
“I want you to know all of me, even though I’m terrified,” he admits and turns his hands to grab Lan Xichen’s instead of his under-robe.
“There’s nothing terrifying about the people who love you knowing all of you,” Lan Xichen gently tells him and Jiang Cheng shakes his head.
“There is when it could mean they leave me,” he gives back and Lan Xichen sighs.
“A-Cheng, my heart, you asked me if it ever bothered me that you don’t trust me,” he says and Jiang Cheng frowns, confused why Lan Xichen brings this up now. “It doesn’t bother me that you don’t trust me with this,” Lan Xichen says and gently tugs at the fabric under their hands, “but it does bother me that you don’t trust me to love you, no matter what.”
“Most of the people who loved me are dead or gone,” Jiang Cheng mutters and Lan Xichen pulls him into a hug.
“And I am still here. I promised to marry you, to always love you. Why won’t you trust me that I will stand by my word?”
Jiang Cheng has to swallow a few times before he finds his voice again.
“I’m trying to,” he eventually mutters, because that’s all he can give Lan Xichen right now. “And this is me trying to,” he goes on as he pulls away from Lan Xichen, hands going to the hem of his robe again. “Let me.”
“Okay,” Lan Xichen easily agrees and he leans forward to kiss Jiang Cheng’s brow. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Jiang Cheng breathes out and then just sheds his robe.
He figures quicker is better than a long, slow reveal.
Jiang Cheng keeps his eyes a little bit to the left of Lan Xichen, isn’t ready to see the look on his face, but he still hears the faint gasp Lan Xichen lets out.
Lan Xichen reaches out, before he curls his fingers inwards and pulls his hand back.
“Can I?” he asks, and Jiang Cheng can do nothing but shrug, because he knows his voice would fail him.
But Lan Xichen isn’t running, and he can’t be too disgusted if he asks to touch.
“What happened?” Lan Xichen lowly asks as he brushes his fingertips over the scars on Jiang Cheng’s chest, causing Jiang Cheng to flinch.
Lan Xichen immediately takes his hand back.
“Do they still hurt you?”
“I’m not used to someone touching them,” Jiang Cheng admits and finally looks back to Lan Xichen again.
He wasn’t prepared for the look of complete and utter heartbreak on Lan Xichen’s face.
“A-Cheng, what happened?” he asks again and Jiang Cheng works his jaw a few times before he finds his words.
“These,” he starts and gestures at the mess on his chest, “are a token from the Wen Sect, right before Wen Zhuliu burned my core out of me. This,” he goes on and points at the vertical scar on his lower abdomen, “is from the core transplant.”
“And you survived both,” Lan Xichen breathes out and gently trails his fingers over the criss-crossing scars on his chest again.
Some of them were really deep, Jiang Cheng knows that logically, and he can still see it, by how thick they have become, but he doesn’t remember it. When he came out of his catatonic state, they had already been mostly healed.
“I did,” Jiang Cheng agrees, because what else is there to say to that.
“What were you so afraid of?” Lan Xichen asks him, honestly curious like it seems, like he can’t figure out what has gone through Jiang Cheng’s head all this time.
“You finding them disgusting. Thinking me weak,” Jiang Cheng admits, as he drops his gaze.
Powerful cultivators barely have scars. Jiang Cheng knows Lan Wangji has some on his back, but they are from a punishment that’s meant to scar. The spiritual energy usually doesn’t allow scars to stay, and only the weaker cultivators have some.
It’s just another reminder that Jiang Cheng is average at best.
“Oh, A-Cheng,” Lan Xichen sighs out and grabs Jiang Cheng by his shoulders. “You had your core burnt out of you. That alone would have killed lesser men. And you didn’t only survive that, but also a transplant on top of those injuries on your chest. Even if I didn’t know you, those scars would tell me that you are the strongest man I have ever met.”
Jiang Cheng can feel the tears burning in his eyes and he raises his hands to grab Lan Xichen’s wrists. Lan Xichen shifts his hands without dislodging Jiang Cheng’s and cradles Jiang Cheng’s face in his hands.
“They don’t make you ugly or weak. They just show everyone what I already knew: that you are the strongest and most beautiful man ever.”
“You can’t just say things like that,” Jiang Cheng sobs out and Lan Xichen smiles at him.
“I can, if they are the truth.”
“A-Huan,” Jiang Cheng says, voice coated with tears and Lan Xichen kisses the tears from the corner of his eyes.
“I love you and I am still going to make you mine,” he promises and Jiang Cheng is openly sobbing now but Lan Xichen is holding him safely, allowing Jiang Cheng to let it all out.
Jiang Cheng still doesn’t understand how he ever got this lucky, but he will never allow Lan Xichen to leave him.
Not that there is anything that can send him running, apparently.