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The funeral banquet at the Unclean Realm was the most somber one that Lan Huan had ever attended. He was from Cloud Recesses, where banquets were largely silent affairs, yes, but after the food was put away and the tea brought out, the quiet conversation was cheerful and broad-ranging. This was nothing like that. The sect masters and sect heirs who were present spoke in hushed voices, except when they stood, wine bowls in hand, to proclaim their admiration for the deceased Nie Heqiu and their support for the new sect master, his son. Nie Mingjue presided over the event from his late father's seat. His little brother Nie Mei, barely twelve years old, sat at the next table, tears dripping unashamedly down his face.
Nie Mingjue's eyes glittered like jet in a face much paler than Lan Huan had ever seen it before. That face should be brown with sun and mobile with laughter, not pale with sorrow and stiff as A-Zhan's at his most stubborn. Nie Mingjue accepted the offered toasts with jerky nods of his head, drinking bowl after bowl of Qinghe wine as if he could barely taste it.
When Uncle rose to give his toast, Nie Mingjue met Lan Huan’s eyes for the second time that evening (the first being when he had greeted them as they entered the hall) and his mouth flickered for a second—a barely-there smile?—before returning to immobility. He inclined his head gravely to accept Uncle’s toast, then drank again. Lan Huan downed his tea, then sat and refilled his cup in preparation for the next toast.
Someone behind him and to his right said, “An insult, that’s what it is. An insult!”
The first speaker’s companion replied, “Does Wen Ruohan think he’s the literal sun in the sky? That he only sent his son and didn’t come himself?”
Lan Huan slid his eyes sideways, tilting his head to see the speakers. They were two sect heirs from minor Qinghe clans. They were complaining quietly enough that it didn’t seem like Nie Mingjue had noticed, but Wen Xu, seventeen years old (like Nie Mingjue himself) and arrogant with it, certainly did. He narrowed his eyes at the speakers, who noticed and fell into an uncomfortable silence. Wen Xu was seated at a lower table than was technically appropriate and he seemed conscious of the insult; Lan Huan didn’t quite know what to make of that.
There were political undercurrents in the room that Lan Huan was only just beginning to understand, but he'd have to learn quickly if he was going to be any kind of help to his friend.
Eventually, the banquet ended. Nie Mingjue made a short speech thanking everyone for coming and then left with his brother, leaving the disciples, his disciples now, to guide the guests to their rooms. Lan Huan hesitated at the exit of the banquet hall.
"Shufu," he said, looking a question at his uncle that he couldn't quite articulate.
"Go," Uncle said, nodding in the direction of the Nie family quarters. "That boy could use a friend right now."
Light still flickered inside Nie Mingjue’s room, so Lan Huan knocked on the door.
“Who’s there?” Nie Mingjue’s voice sounded rough.
“It’s me, Mingjue-xiong,” Lan Huan called softly. “Lan Xichen.”
There was a long pause, during which Lan Huan had enough time to start to worry that he was overstepping. Then Nie Mingjue said, “Come in.”
Lan Huan slid the door open and stepped in, sliding the door shut behind him. Nie Mingjue was sitting on the floor between the bed and the table as if he’d simply lost his strength halfway through walking across the room. “Xichen-xiong,” he said and now that Lan Huan could see his face, he could tell that his voice was rough not just from overuse but from tears, which were trickling in a steady stream down his face, as well. Nie Mingjue didn’t bother to wipe them away, just let them drip down his chin and into the collar of his robes.
Lan Huan moved to sit in front of Mingjue, settling onto the floor with all the grace he could muster after the long evening. “Mingjue-xiong, you did well today,” he said gently. “You shouldn’t have had to, not this early. But you… I think your father would be proud.”
Nie Mingjue made a low, wounded sound at the mention of his father. His hands gripped the skirt of his outer robe so hard that the tendons in them stood out. “I will kill Wen Ruohan myself for what he did,” he snarled.
Lan Huan blinked, shuffled closer so he could touch Nie Mingjue on the shoulder. “I thought Nie-zongzhu was injured on a night hunt.”
“After his saber shattered,” Nie Mingjue said. He leaned into Lan Huan’s hand, but didn’t look up. “Wen Ruohan did something to weaken it. The Qishan Wen sect— They think they’re so high up that nothing can touch them, that, what— Just because it is six months removed, I can’t tell something is murder? What do they take me for? What do they take the Qinghe Nie sect for?” He paused in the fever pitch of his tirade, breathing heavily, and then suddenly his rage broke and he let out an honest-to-Heaven whimper. “Xichen-xiong,” he whispered, head bowed. “I can’t do this.”
Lan Huan moved to sit beside Nie Mingjue and put an arm around his friend’s shoulder. Nie Mingjue turned into the embrace, burying his face in Lan Huan’s robes. “I can’t do it,” he said again, breath shuddering wetly out of him. “I can’t go out there and be Nie-zongzhu. All those people with their pretty speeches, they’re all out there waiting for me to fail, waiting for Qinghe Nie to become just another tributary of the Wen.”
Lan Huan felt his heart breaking for Nie Mingjue. He held him tighter with his arm, brought his free hand up to stroke through Nie Mingjue’s braids. “You don’t have to,” he said. “You don’t have to do anything tonight.” His hand drifted beneath all of the braids to find the warm skin of Nie Mingjue’s neck and he stroked the skin there as gently as he could, feeling Nie Mingjue tremble with the weight of his emotions. “All of that—being zongzhu, defending your sect—it can wait. I’m here. You have me and with me you don’t have to do anything”—Nie Mingjue let out a horrible gasping noise, wept harder into his chest—“nor be anything.”
Lan Huan didn’t know how long he sat there, arms around Nie Mingjue, stroking his back while he made wounded animal noises into Lan Huan’s chest. “Xichen,” he wept as a fresh wave took him over, and Lan Huan felt hot tears spilling down his own cheeks in sympathy. “Xichen.”
“I’m here, Mingjue,” he murmured, pressing his lips to Nie Mingjue’s head at the base of his topknot. “I’ve got you.”
When Nie Mingjue’s sobs quieted down to occasional hiccups and whimpers, Lan Huan started to pull away a little, to give Nie Mingjue space if he needed it. Nie Mingjue grabbed his arm as soon as he began to move, holding him in place. Nie Mingjue had always been large, but in the last two years he’d shot up in height, broadened across the torso—Lan Huan was still catching up to him in this way, though even at this age when he knew he wasn’t yet done growing, he knew he’d never really catch up to Nie Mingjue—and his grip was incredibly strong. Lan Huan stopped, feeling the warmth of Nie Mingjue’s broad fingers even through his layers of formal robes.
“Stay,” said Nie Mingjue, in his tear-rough voice—and Lan Huan couldn’t help but think about how in the last two years Nie Mingjue’s voice had also deepened noticeably and how compelling he found that voice, even now—“please.”
“Okay,” Lan Huan said. He brushed his fingers across Nie Mingjue’s cheeks, wiping away tears. “I’m not going anywhere.” Nie Mingjue’s grip on his arm loosened at the assurance. Lan Huan shifted his hand to cup Nie Mingjue’s cheek and tilted Nie Mingjue’s chin up with his newly free hand so their eyes could meet. “I’ll stay as long as you want,” he said. Then, “Can I help you get ready for bed?”
Nie Mingjue breathed in sharply, once, and stiffened, a flush rising to the skin of his cheeks. “Have I become so incapable?”
Lan Huan laughed and shook his head. “Think of it like a night hunt,” he said softly. “Don’t we take care of each other when we’re injured? Just because you’re not hurt in your body…” He trailed off, but the way Nie Mingjue sagged told him that his point had been made.
Nie Mingjue took a breath and straightened his back, then looked sidelong at Lan Huan, the corner of his mouth curling slightly. “Then I put myself in your hands, Xichen-xiong.”
It was Lan Huan’s turn to breathe in sharply at his words. He licked his lips and then set it aside; he didn’t want to read too far into Nie Mingjue’s words, not now. He shifted away just far enough to get up onto his knees. “Don’t move, Mingjue-xiong,” he said, and then used his new vantage point to start taking apart Nie Mingjue’s elaborate hairstyle. The pewter ornament came out first and Nie Mingjue let out a long sigh as his head was freed of its weight. Then, Lan Huan began taking out the pins holding his braids in place. He noticed how Nie Mingjue’s shoulders loosened with each successive hairpin removed and smiled, bending to press a kiss to the top of his head again. “Do you want me to leave the braids?” he asked.
Nie Mingjue hummed consideringly, then shook his head and said, “Up to you.” So Lan Huan began the painstaking process of unbraiding Nie Mingjue’s hair. At some point, Nie Mingjue shifted to lean on Lan Huan, back flush against his chest. Shortly thereafter, he began to talk. “I don’t know how I’ll protect A-Mei now,” he said quietly. Lan Huan could feel the vibrations of Nie Mingjue’s voice in his chest as he worked. “When he was just the younger brother of the heir, it was all right for him to neglect the saber. Well, not all right, but I could cover for him. Now… he’s my heir.” Nie Mingjue sighed and leaned his head back to rest it in the hollow of Lan Huan’s neck. Lan Huan’s fingers stilled in Nie Mingjue’s braid for a moment—he looked at Nie Mingjue’s face, warm in the lantern-light, eyes closed, lashes leaving shadows on his cheeks—then started up again, continuing to tease apart the plait. “All he wants to do is paint and look at birds and pretty things. But, Xichen, it’s going to be war someday soon, and he has to be ready. We all have to be ready.”
Lan Huan’s heart hammered in his chest at the weary certainty with which Nie Mingjue spoke. No boy of seventeen should sound like that. “Mingjue, how can you be sure?”
Nie Mingjue opened his eyes again, looked up into Lan Huan’s face, then straightened up and turned around. Lan Huan’s fingers tangled in his hair as he moved and he hissed, but didn’t move away. They looked at each other for a long moment, less than a handbreadth between their faces. “Because Wen Ruohan won’t ever stop,” Nie Mingjue said, dark eyes focused on Lan Huan’s face with an intensity he’d only ever previously seen in combat. Lan Huan held his breath, listening with matching focus. “What he did to my dad—he’s never liked having a powerful sect like the Nie at his border, people who wouldn’t bow to him. He’s not going to be satisfied with the small sects already under his control in Qishan. One day, he’ll go too far, and it’ll be war, and if we’re not ready, we will all fall under his yoke. Xichen, I mean it. It’s going to be bad.”
Lan Huan nodded with a shaky exhalation. “I believe you, Mingjue. I’ll tell Shufu.” He untangled his hand gently from where it caught in Nie Mingjue’s hair, slid it down the back of his neck again and smiled a little when Nie Mingjue’s eyes fluttered at the touch. “There’s only two braids left. Let me finish, please.”
“Yes, Lan-da-gongzi,” Nie Mingjue said dryly and turned back around. Lan Huan moved swiftly to unbraid the rest of his hair, then rose to find Nie Mingjue’s comb and hair oil. When he had retrieved them from the dressing table and turned back around, it was to see Nie Mingjue divesting himself of the third layer of his robes and sitting down at the small table in the center of the room. “I thought I’d make it easier for you,” Nie Mingjue said when he met Lan Huan’s eyes where he’d frozen. Lan Huan swallowed; he’d seen Nie Mingjue with much fewer clothes plenty of times—swimming in the rivers of Gusu, treating each other’s wounds after night hunts—but there was something shockingly intimate about being alone with him in his private rooms, seeing him in only his inner robes. When Nie Mingjue had been crying, Lan Huan had thought of nothing but comforting his friend. Now…
He blinked himself out of his staring and nodded, smiling as he walked to kneel behind Nie Mingjue again. “Thanks.”
Working the oil through Nie Mingjue’s hair with the comb was meditative, in a way, and Lan Huan could see it having the same effect on Nie Mingjue, the way his entire body softened and relaxed, head listing a little bit as the oil smoothed his braid-curled hair. As he ran the comb through Nie Mingjue’s hair, Lan Huan found himself talking softly of Cloud Recesses, of the lessons he was taking separately from his agemates, the education necessary for a sect heir, of spending time with A-Zhan, so different from Nie Mingjue’s own exuberant little brother. By the time Nie Mingjue’s hair lay smooth and soft down his back, they were both sleepy and relaxed. Lan Huan braided Nie Mingjue’s hair into a single thick plait, tied it off with a ribbon. “All done,” he murmured.
Nie Mingjue turned around in his seat, looked up at him with a soft gaze that Lan Huan had never seen before. “Xichen,” he said softly, lifting a hand to Lan Huan’s cheek. “Thank you.”
Lan Huan felt himself flush. “That’s—” he broke off, tripping over his words for the first time in a long time. Funny, he thought, last time he found himself at a loss for words it was on his first night hunt with Nie Mingjue. “You don’t have to thank me,” he said at last. “Mingjue, if you ever need me, I’m here.”
At that, Nie Mingjue smiled. “I know,” he said and used the hand on Lan Huan’s cheek to guide his head down. Nie Mingjue moved slowly enough that Lan Huan parsed his intent and was shaken by it; he hadn’t come here intending to kiss Nie Mingjue. But he wasn’t opposed to it, far from it actually, and if Nie Mingjue was smiling and thinking about kissing, that meant he’d accomplished the goal with which he’d arrived to his quarters—to wipe away that frozen look on Nie Mingjue’s face that had so unnerved him at the banquet. Nie Mingjue's lips were soft, his breath warm and wet against Lan Huan's mouth. Lan Huan brought his hands up to Nie Mingjue's shoulders, steadying himself, and felt more than heard the sound Mingjue made at the feel of his hands just one step removed from skin.
This last year, Lan Huan had felt an increasing awareness of Nie Mingjue. Now, he felt sparks through him from every point of contact between them: the hand on his cheek, each calloused finger on his skin; the silk of Mingjue’s inner robe under his hands, the warmth of Mingjue’s shoulders under his stroking thumbs; the subtle movements of Mingjue’s lips against his own. Lan Huan’s stomach plummeted as though he were still fifteen and racing on his sword down the Cloud Recesses waterfall, Mingjue laughing beside him, cold spray on their skins, except that he was warm, so warm, and hungry in a way he was only beginning to understand. When Mingjue pulled back, he made an involuntary sound of protest that had Mingjue chuckling and the heat rising to Lan Huan's cheeks. If he weren't close enough to see how wide Nie Mingjue's pupils were and feel the panting breaths from his mouth, he might have been a little put out by that chuckle. "That better not have been by way of thanks," Lan Huan said instead of any of the other things running through his head.
Nie Mingjue smiled, almost shyly, a flash of dimple in the lantern-light, and shook his head. "No," he said in his usual straightforward way. "I kissed you because I like you. And because having you here has been the only good part of this awful day. "
At those words, Lan Huan wrapped his arms around Nie Mingjue and kissed him again. He thought he could endure any number of bad days, if he could be the bright spot in Mingjue’s.