Work Text:
Jiang Cheng stood at the entrance of the Cloud Recesses, staring at the gate, at the long stairs up. He hardly noticed the Lan guards doing their best not to stare back at him, only occasionally interrupting their downcast gaze to cast sideways looks at each other, neither willing to risk questioning why the sect leader before them seemed frozen in place.
Jiang Cheng had not expected to get this far. It had been a long journey from Lotus Pier, believing each landmark to be the last he would cross before turning around. But by the time he made it to Caiyi Town, his stomach started to turn in knots realizing that if he had made it this far…
He huffed out an annoyed breath. If it had been too late then, it was even more so now. He wasn’t going to turn and flee, not with these two Lan disciples here to witness it.
The Lan guards, on their part, only nodded their heads lightly as Jiang Cheng passed, knowing full well that even if Jiang Cheng was not invited, they were far from being able to be even a minor inconvenience to him.
He had not been here for a long time. Maybe not even since… He stopped again, contemplating the dense bamboo forest surrounding him. It couldn’t have been that the last time was the lectures? He gripped the package in his hand even more tightly, just hardly restraining himself from cracking. How much had changed since then? How many faces – lively, carefree – were now gone? Or had survived at the cost of being hardened by truths they had yet to encounter at the time?
He remembered walking this path. With Jiejie. With… He shook his head, but a little part of him, a part that sounded like a-Ling on a particularly stubborn kick, but might just have been his own teenage self, admonished him. You’re here to see him, aren’t you? And you can’t even say his name in your head? What kind of a leader does that make you?
Jiang Cheng bit down on his lip and kept moving.
Fine. He retorted to himself. Fine, I’m here to see Wei Wuxian. Happy?
He almost rolled his eyes at himself in response to the petty bickering in his own head.
Why hadn’t he just turned around when he could?
The answer came unbidden. Shame, of course.
Jin Ling, though still certainly still a child in Jiang Cheng’s mind, had apparently inherited some of his Shushu’s more indirect tactics. His nephew had noted the invitation as an aside over dinner one night, just so happening to be within earshot of some of the top Jiang disciples.
“Oh,” he’d said innocently, blinking as though he’d just remembered something, “Sizhui mentioned that the Chief Cultivator is hosting a celebration of some kind, and that he’d like us sect leaders to attend. Near the end of next month, I think?” Jiang Cheng didn’t miss the little self-satisfied smirk Jin Ling tended to have whenever he mentioned his status, coupled with the smugness with which he nonchalantly mentioned the date.
He suspected he knew exactly why the Chief Cultivator would be hosting a celebration at the end of next month. Unfortunately, inter sect politics was not a topic of conversation he encouraged among the Jiang disciples, nor did it seem to be a subject with much draw at the Yunmeng Jiang sect. So the implications of the invitation were lost on the nearby cultivators, as was the significance of the date, and so for the next several days, he was confronted by an incessant assault of questions about preparations, how he wanted the disciples to proceed in his absence.
Not one seemed to consider asking him whether he in fact intended to accept the invitation, leaving him very little room to refuse without bringing up even harder questions.
And so Jiang Cheng had done what he’d always done: the proper thing. What he was expected to do. Even if he did so begrudgingly.
So now he was here. In the Cloud Recesses, and realized he had not even begun to let himself think through what he might say once he was confronted by…
“Sect leader Jiang?”
The voice was small, hesitant, hopeful. Achingly familiar.
Jiang Cheng turned towards the voice, coming from just off the path, to see the man’s – his brother’s – face. Wide-eyed, mouth gaped, setting the rabbit down gently before slowly rising to his feet.
And Jiang Cheng was suddenly looking, not at a grown man, or at a practiced and experienced cultivator, but at a young boy. A child asking, hoping to be let in. To be allowed to rest, to sleep, after so long of having nowhere and no one to call home.
Of course, this time, it was Jiang Cheng who was in the other’s home. Though somehow it still felt as though Wei Wuxian was the one asking for Jiang Cheng to open the door.
Maybe his heart warmed, just a little, at the man’s tentative smile, starting to loosen something long held tight. A wave of affection burned through him, setting light to the carefully restrained, difficult to identify, emotions. Reflexively, he put his shields back up, “Who’re you calling ‘Sect leader,’ huh? I get that the Gusu Lan sect is so much more respectable,” his voice dripped with derision, “But is it really so hard to even acknowledge a connection to the sect that raised you?” Jiang Cheng crossed his arms, rolling his eyes.
The other man chuckled, stepping lightly and quickly over to the path and through the shield as though they weren’t even there, “Of course not,” he said, then paused, giving both men another moment to wonder if Wei Wuxian correctly saw through Jiang Cheng’s hardened stance, “Shidi?”
Jiang Cheng felt a pang through his chest at the word, Wei Wuxian being, as usual, right on the mark.
“Hmph,” was Jiang Cheng’s only reply.
“I can only assume this was a-Yuan and a-Ling’s doing?” Wei Wuxian asked, tone still cautious, as though tiptoeing around a dozing serpent, but casual.
“And your husband’s too, I think,” Jiang Cheng scoffed, “Apparently the Chief Cultivator role gives someone a lot more free time than we’re supposed to think.”
Jiang Cheng didn’t want to think too hard about the blush this inspired in his brother, “Ah, Shidi,” Wei Wuxian chuckled, voice still softer around the long unused familial term, “I’m just…” he looked up, an earnest smile on his face, “Either way, I’m glad you’re here.”
“Of course,” Jiang Cheng said gruffly, looking down as he turned the box over in his hands “Otherwise how would I get this to–“
He looked up, to see Wei Wuxian holding a small gift box of his own out towards Jiang Cheng.
Not to be outdone, Jiang Cheng hurriedly extended his own arm, and spit out, just as Wei Wuxian did the same, “Happy birthday, brother.”