Chapter Text
Nie Mingjue didn’t know what had caused him to regain his consciousness, or the things that had happened to him between his death and the point at which he had woken up to find himself in a completely unrecognisable time.
Really he didn’t want to know, it was hard enough coming to terms with the fact that all his loved ones were long gone and beyond his reach. That he would never know what had happened to them had been an almost debilitating pain as he had slowly come to terms with his life...or was that death, perhaps?...now.
It had taken him a long while to get to grips with the world he had awoken in, because it couldn’t have been more different to the one he had died in; everything was technology, everything was speed and efficiency, distance and materialism.
He had been such a fish out of water in those early days.
He was intelligent, however, and resourceful, and he had tenaciously learned. He had discovered the internet, and used it to absorb information, to assimilate and to conquer this new world, as was his warrior’s creed.
He had learned how to converse in the modern tongue, and how to make money, how to dress in the fashions of now, how to have his hair styled so he didn’t stand out too much. He had adapted.
Nie Mingjue didn’t necessarily like this new world, but there were many things that were convenient, easier, less dangerous. And whatever his opinions of it, it was where he now lived.
He wouldn’t pretend he hadn’t considered the alternative, on some of those long, lonely nights when he’d first stepped into this new, modern society, but there was something that called to him to carry on. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it was a distinct feeling that in time something would happen that would make everything worth it.
He genuinely didn’t know what that could possibly be, however.
Nie Mingjue sat that evening cleaning Baxia down with sword oil, the ritual was comforting, one he performed every night without fail, as he had during his life, a bridge spanning the two times. Baxia was the only link he had to that old life, although her rapacious sabre spirit was long gone, gluttonous no more. He didn’t know if the spirits had all passed away into nothingness, no longer relevant in this world, or whether it was merely due to his personal circumstances. Qi, life energy, wouldn’t answer to him anymore.
He had a small television set in the corner, that he sometimes left on in the background for company. Tonight was one of those instances. He almost exclusively left it on a channel that showed costume dramas. He never paid a lot of attention but having the wuxia and xianxia themed shows was sometimes comforting, sometimes entertaining as he watched modern interpretations of the world he had lived in in his youth. They presented demons and monsters and ghouls as high fantasy; sometimes Nie Mingjue wondered what would happen if this modern society was confronted with the fact that it had all been real.
“Sect Leader Li, your bride will arrive soon”
“Thank you”
Baxia slipped out of his hand and clattered to the floor.
That voice.
He looked to the television.
It wasn’t just the voice.
The sight of his husband on the screen, dressed in ceremonial red wedding robes, as he had appeared so long ago; was like a physical blow.
The actor looked so much like Lan Xichen had on their wedding day he couldn’t even think for a full straight minute.
Then his brain drove into high gear.
He didn’t just look like Lan Xichen, everything about him; the sound of his voice as he uttered his lines; the soft look in his eyes, even down to the way he moved, so graceful and controlled.
And finally Nie Mingjue knew what he had clung on to life for. It absolutely had to be this; for Lan Xichen to be returned to him. Karma seemed to have granted them a second chance, against odds that must have seemed insurmountable.
***
Lan Huan was zipped up tightly in his winter coat as the door to the studio was opened for him and he stepped through. Filming had been a long and gruelling process, although he was becoming more used to it now he was coming to the end of filming his third series.
A transfer into acting had seemed to be the next logical step for his career, and although, like his music, it was hard work, he was receiving positive feedback on his contributions.
There were haters. Of course there were haters. There was always someone who took not liking someone to silly levels, but on the whole fans had been supportive.
He was being herded towards his car when his neck prickled with something like premonition. He looked up and around, and froze in place as his eyes fell upon the man stood off to one side, who watched him intently. He knew that face. He had dreamed of it.
From his earliest childhood he could remember occasionally, usually in times of very high stress, dreaming of this man. Even down to the thick black lines up his neck which as a youngster he had thought must be tattoos.
He looked like someone the triads might send to collect money from a debtor, in his dark jeans and black biker jacket, with his undercut hair with the longer top gelled into place. Even though he stared relentlessly Lan Huan didn’t feel threatened. Whoever he was, whatever he wanted, he didn’t mean Lan Huan harm.
He was so distracted it took a few moments to hear the shouts of his security, who he turned to find ran towards him.
Except his security was too slow, and a pair of immensely strong arms wrapped around Lan Huan and yanked him out of the way of a bicycle weaving wildly past.
Eyes wide with shock he looked up into that strongly handsome face. They looked at each other, trapped in the other’s gaze, as if no one else in the world existed, and for a brief few moments they didn’t.
The moment vanished as the clamour around him broke into their bubble, with people checking he was alright, thanking the man who had pulled him out of the way and pulling him this way and that to check him over.
He genuinely was fine. Shaken. But fine. And the majority of that feeling came from his meeting with the man who had held him in his arms, however briefly, like he was precious glass.
Eventually he emerged from his confused state, and approached the man; he needed to talk to this man who wore the face he had seen in his dreams all his life.
“Thank you for saving me from injury. Would you join me at that cafe so I can thank you properly?” he pointed across the road where a small, discreet cafe was located.
The man nodded and Lan Huan’s security bundled them both across the road and into seats at a table in the corner, then they went to order drinks.
“Thank you again, it would have been disastrous for my management company and schedule if I’d been hurt, you’ve saved us all a lot of trouble” Lan Huan said lowly, not wishing his voice to carry far. It was a survival instinct he had developed in his years in the public eye; and he was about to say something completely insane to the other man, which he hoped no one else would hear, in case this man, who he had always known as Nie Mingjue in his dreams, rejected him, laughed at him, walked out on him. “Please don’t think I’m being silly, but I feel like I already know you” he murmured, and the other watched him with a sharply assessing gaze.
“I don’t think you’re being silly, A-Huan, and if you are, so am I. I think you’re the reincarnation of someone I was very close to, long ago” the other man’s words were a salve for his tightly strung nerves and vindication for all the times he’d felt like he was perhaps having mental health issues for dreaming of the same then-unknown person over and over again.
“I think I am too, Mingjue-xiong. You are him, aren’t you?” he asked tentatively, then added, “I mean genuinely, not like I am, reincarnated, but you’re actually him. I always saw the black lines. They aren’t tattoos are they?
“No, A-Huan, they aren’t. And yes, I’m not a reincarnation” Nie Mingjue had observed him carefully before answering; but Lan Huan had already shown so much of his hand the other couldn’t doubt he was being sincere.
Lan Huan nodded then.
“Mingjue-xiong, would it be too much of me to expect, if I asked if we might get to know each other?”