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When they first arrive in this place, this America, there’s a lot of trial-and-error as they adjust to the culture. But Jin Guangyao and Lan Xichen are skilled cultivators, and they have existed in political worlds for most of their lives. They might be slow to adapt to the day-to-day life of this place, but navigating the politics comes naturally.
Besides, they have survived much worse than this world. They have survived the burning of Cloud Recesses. They have survived so much bloodshed together.
They survived—
No.
Don’t think about the temple.
Don’t think about the world you came from.
When they’re testing the waters, little A-Yao does better than Xichen in the eyes of the audience. At first, it’s surprising — Xichen is broad-shouldered, tall, reassuring. A-Yao struggles to deal with the idea that anyone, let alone the majority, could prefer looking at him over Lan friggin’ Xichen, the first Jade of Lan.
But A-Yao is passionate, leaning heavily on emotional phrasing. He is charming. He loves the cameras as much as Xichen loathes them. He learns, in time, that this game they’re playing is less about strength of character and more about willingness to lie. After that, it makes sense why he’s the one favoured.
It helps, of course, that A-Yao—with his carefully angled studio lighting, with his filters on all his videos—passes as white. By the time the voters realise he is, in fact, a very small Chinese man, they’ve already committed to supporting him. Questions of his nationality crop up, as expected, but his fanbase are ready with careful documentation showing how he is very much an American citizen.
The documentation is too perfect. But the people are looking for flaws, not the over-polished gleam of something overworked, so their eyes slide right past it.
Neither of them have birth certificates here, because this isn’t their home. It is so, so very different from where they’ve lived all of their lives. Very few people take the time to cultivate their golden cores. The power hasn’t disappeared entirely—they recognise it sometimes in the auras of their roaming countrymen, in the smiles of visiting C-Drama stars and the tired but hopeful faces of the many diaspora Chinese who support them, in the energy of so many exhausted Chinese people just trying to get by in a country that does not easily welcome them. But it is thinly spread.
This is not a cultivation world anymore. If it ever was.
They were not born here. They will never belong here. But in absence of any way back home, Lan Xichen and Jin Guangyao do their best with what they’re given.
*
@POTUS lmfao congrats on reaching the top teir
@POTUS a liar is always a liar, like a murderer is always a murderer
[Taken from ‘@’ mentions to the presidential Twitter feed during the presidency of Jin Guangyao.]
Jin Guangyao is very used to listening to music and adjusting the tune to his own tastes. He only started doing this recently, with the Song of Clarity, but the ability came to him as easy as breathing.
As if, all his life, he had been doing it. He just didn’t have the words to describe it.
In politics, he finds this skill ready and waiting and different again. Shifted, but familiar. He listens to the popular talking points; he keeps one ear on the pulse of national feeling. He repeats their desires back to them, but he shifts the tune—warmer, more reassuring, sometimes. More terrifying, other times.
He tells the people what to feel, and they feel it.
It’s enough to make him giddy. A rush to his senses. A power he’d been so close to grabbing back home, but so far from, as well. He takes it gladly, revelling in it, but he is careful. What comes easily to him will come easily to others.
He recognises, in his rivals, a hunger similar to his own. Sometimes it is deeper, older, darker. He has long been comfortable with pain. He has never shied away from blood. But the violent promises in the eyes of his competitors… that gives him pause.
In retrospect, A-Yao was always going to be the Republican darling. He is, after all, the one who wears white best out of them both. His robes are always a brighter white than Lan Xichen’s cool tones and blue-tinged white robes. Lan Xichen's robes are better at staying white, now that Meng Yao does his laundry for him, but Xichen still couldn't tell the difference between alabaster and ivory if his life depended on it.
Jin Guangyao looks just slightly whiter, and he's quicker with his smile. A little less humble, a little more designer, and he knows how to lie without shutting his eyes. That is enough.
Plus, the voters like his hat. Some would rather it was white and more pointed, perhaps long enough to cover his eyes, but they make do.
A-Yao wears robes when other presidential candidates have worn shirts and slacks. The voters accept this easily, taking it in their stride. They are white robes. That is the most important thing.
He is wicked enough to win the vote. He takes the presidency, and adapts easily. It is all just politics, same as it’s ever been.
He is nobody good. He never has been. But he is not the worst of them, either.
That is enough.
*
@POTUS poor Qin Su, being ignored
@POTUS treating poor Qin Su like a thing to be used, an object to him just like LXC is, which really speaks to JGY’s narcissistic nature.
@POTUS just an object, a sidepiece, to be kept hidden from the world. even worse for qin su
@POTUS dirty little slut
[Taken from ‘@’ mentions to the presidential Twitter feed.]
Qin Su is with him, in this other world. Perhaps he should have mentioned that sooner, but oh, it is so easy to forget Qin Su, isn’t it? The media are always quick to overlook her. The news prefers to focus on Xichen at his side, smiling placidly for the cameras.
Lan Xichen is, in many ways, a better wife in their eyes. He is quiet. He is unreadable. Most importantly, he is not a woman, and especially he is not a woman with opinions, a woman who lets her emotions display on her face.
They dislike the clarity of feelings Qin Su has. Or, more precisely, they dislike that she actually says them instead of burying them deep.
Qin Su has more feeling in her little finger than most of his competitors have in their entire bodies. She aches for this country and for its struggles. While Jin Guangyao vamps for the camera, she turns his presence into money and funnels it towards fixing all that is wrong with this wounded, limping nation.
Behind the closed doors of the White House, they work side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder. A-Yao reminds her to take breaks, to drink water. Qin Su reminds him to sleep, to eat. Between the two of them (and the gentle care of Lan Xichen) they function as a complete human even when the world drains them both to husks.
They are comfortable with each other, in this house more sprawling and empty than any temple, more flush with wealth than even Koi Tower. Jin Guangyao and Qin Su sit side-by-side, legs touching. They lean against one another, and fall into power naps on the couch while the other works.
They talk easily in this space. Touch easily, here. As siblings. As it always should have been. She is the family he should have had. He tries to be that for her, as well.
He apologies to her easily, for the slightest thing. She tells him off for it, asks him to stop being ridiculous, to stop the sorry s and the forgive me s. To stop rushing to apologise if they pick up the same document, or bump each other, or move unexpectedly, or do any one of a thousand small mistakes.
He doesn’t stop. The well of apology within him is too deep to stop, the flow unceasing, and he wants her to have every single one of them.
This world has many problems, but it has many upsides too. The secret service barely bat an eyelid at Qin Su’s position as a wife for the cameras only. It doesn’t surprise or disgust them that A-Yao spends his nights with Lan Xichen.
They have accepted many things from their presidents. This, in the grand scheme of things, is a tame sort of secret to keep.
*
It’s a shock to A-Yao’s system when they’re introduced to Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli, ambassadors for China, at an overpriced and overhyped charity dinner. Seeing Jin Zixuan feels like plunging into ice water.
He remembers the pale, blank-eyed face being carried home. Remembers Yanli, always slightly ill-suited to Jin colours, sobbing over his body.
But they show no signs of remembering that. Jin Zixuan’s grip on his hand is farm and as warm as his smile. A-Yao wonders if it’s a choice to forget… but it can’t be.
If it was a choice, he would forget it all.
(But would he, really? For all the awfulness of the ending, he had been a sect leader . He had been loved. Could he really part with the last and most precious of his possessions, the only ones he had left? Would he give up the memory of Xichen’s fingers brushing his? Of course not. Not ever.)
“A pleasure to finally meet you, Mr President. My people tell me we’re distantly related, did you know that?”
Of course, brother, A-Yao almost says. But he catches himself, and smiles, letting it be just a little bit fake, a little bit for the cameras, so that the ambassador won’t suspect a thing.
“I had no idea. But it explains why I feel like we’re old friends,” A-Yao says.
In his memories, Jin Zixuan’s glassy eyes shift suddenly to him, and there is accusation there. Deservedly.
But this is a different world.
*
@POTUS JGY is already slutting it up with NMJ
@POTUS gotta keep his options open when he climbs to power
[Taken from ‘@’ mentions to the presidential Twitter feed.]
A different sort of shock hits when he first finds Nie Mingjue waiting in his office, casually pouring over a stack of paper. It’s a shock like surviving an attack on a night hunt, a shock like finding Lan Xichen alive when Cloud Recesses is burning.
It’s relief. And he feels dirty for daring to feel it, for daring to be glad that Nie Mingjue is here.
Unlike A-Yao, Nie Mingjue has eschewed the current fashion for robes—he is in black trousers, black leather belt, and… not a dress shirt, but a t-shirt, one that hugs his chest in a way that absolutely has to drive the internet wild.
He has a coat draped over the back of his chair, too. Green, with gold accents—the same almost khaki shade as his t-shirt, a tone that along with his body makes his military history clear.
He’s got bluetooth headphones resting around his neck, the wire connecting the two buds so thin that for a moment it looks like darkly stitched thread and A-Yao’s hands tense into fists at his side.
Nie Mingjue looks up from his papers, surprise shown openly on his face. A-Yao has never seen him so off-guard. He’s been nowhere where he could be this off-guard.
“Ah, apologies, A-Yao. I was in my own world there,” he says, smiling. “I should be more aware, shouldn’t I?”
“Not here. There’s no need,” A-Yao breathes. Hearing A-Yao in his da-ge’s voice sends a flood of warmth through him. He’s not Mr President here. He is just A-Yao, as it should be, as it always has been.
Instead of sitting at his desk, he slides another chair right beside Nie Mingjue’s and tucks himself down on it, finding a space between the wall and Nie Mingjue’s shoulders that feels tailor made to fit him.
It is not presidential to sit like this. To make himself small. But it is right, here, to take this space that’s meant for him—to allow himself to be small beside Nie Mingjue. To lean against him, and rest his chin on his shoulder, and look at the papers.
(And not think, absolutely do not think, of that other world, that other Nie Mingjue.)
He holds his breath as he tilts his chin down to touch Nie Mingjue’s shoulder. He waits for the dream to end. For the walls to crash down. For the temple, crumbling.
Nie Mingjue goes soft and pliant against, and lets out a small, comfortable sigh.
Because they’ve done this before. They’ve had this for… he doesn’t know how long. But they are familiar with each other in this place, like they used to be.
This is a better world.
*
@POTUS it’s a great kudos to how false their happiness is, how JGY has to hide the worst parts of his personality to keep LXC trapped
@POTUS AHAHA if only xichen knew the truth of how manipulative and conniving jgy truly is XD XD
@POTUS get a glimpse of how truly nasty jgy is ;D
[Taken from ‘@’ mentions to the presidential Twitter feed.]
After that, it is unsurprising to bump into a frazzled young man in the halls, his hair dyed-bright and ears covered in piercings. The young man stammers apologies before he even realises who he’s talking to, and when that realisation dawns, he is frozen. Starstruck. His eyes practically sparkle.
A-Yao smiles. His cheeks and throat ache with it.
“Don’t worry about it, Mo Xuanyu,” he says, gentle, patting the younger man’s arm. Mo Xuanyu goes statue-still at the touch, his gaze fixed on A-Yao. A-Yao holds it, holds the smile, even as his whole face hurts.
“Ah. I didn’t—I wasn’t sure you remembered me, Mr President.”
A-Yao slides his grip down Mo Xuanyu’s arm to his palm, holds it tight in both of his hands. He can feel Mo Xuanyu’s pulse thrumming like a hummingbird. The man is breathing fast and shallow, almost vibrating out of his skin.
“As if I could forget you, A-Yu,” he says. In a fit of possible madness, he pulls Mo Xuanyu into a hug, holding him there until his breathing levels and the shaking subsides.
A-Yao, to all appearances, is as calm as a still lake throughout the hug. But when he releases Mo Xuanyu, his dear little brother, he feels a fresh lightness blooming in his chest.
Mo Xuanyu smiles brighter than A-Yao has ever seen him smile. His eyes are lined dark with perfect fox-eye liner, surrounded by vibrant red eyeshadow that captures the light. He’s impeccably dressed, his shirt unbuttoned to show a V of hairless chest.
This world suits him, A-Yao thinks. It is so much closer to what he’d always deserved.
He is more careful to watch for Mo Xuanyu in the halls after that. He is often there, working hard, always starry-eyed at a glimpse of Mr President. His best friend is a small young man, but Jin Guangyao sees him rarely.
He stops by Nie Mingjue’s desk to ask about Mo Xuanyu’s friend. He could ask Mo Xuanyu, of course, but he doesn’t want to give the poor dear a heart attack--and he knows that Nie Mingjue will have the details on everyone here. When it comes to collecting stories and information on the other cultivators--ah, the other staffers--Nie Mingjue is rivalled only by Su She’s ever-listening ears, and of course, by Nie Mingjue’s ferocious little brother. He hasn’t seen Nie Huaisang at all in these halls, which seems a shame--he’d love it here. The gossip, the drama, the constant one-upmanship and backstabbing and utter lack of any real work being done. A-Yao can’t think of any place he’d enjoy more.
He almost asks Nie Mingjue where his little brother is, but he’s distracted by the reaction his question gets--a scowl as deep as the Burial Mounds.
“Are you messin’ with me, Mr President?” Nie Mingjue asks.
“No. Please, da-ge, I just need a little hint--you know I’m usually better with faces than this, but I guess I’m losing track of these young ones.”
Nie Mingjue hmphs. “Just stop and look at him properly. I’m sure you’ll work it out.”
And that, it seems, is that. It seems like a bit of a short response for, well, especially towards the President of the Free World (a title A-Yao assumes has to be some sort of dark humour). But A-Yao likes that Nie Mingjue still teases him like this, still hints rather than telling, like they’re back in the Unclean Realms and da-ge is teaching him how to become a cultivator no one will dare mess with again.
Da-ge seems so happy here, in his little oasis of quiet in the middle of the chaotic house. He’s rarely angry anymore, without the drain of his cultivation. Instead, he is quiet and attentive. He speaks rarely, but when he does, it’s difficult to stop him--he is shameless in his love of details, of strategies to defend against terrorism, and suggestions on how to quell turmoil with other countries.
He has always been the smartest man Jin Guanyao knew. But he is comfortable in that, in this world. He doesn’t try to posture with blades or, like some of the more insecure male staffers, ludicrously showy machine guns. He lets his posture, his physique and his well-known military history speak for itself, and saves his energy for nerding out about the movements of naval fleets, the latest in aircraft, and a hundred other things that make A-Yao’s eyes glaze over.
He’s only really ever cared for the human, political side of warfare, not the blood and guts reality of it. He’s learned that getting his hands dirty rarely ends well. But Nie Mingjue is happy here.
This world is meant for him.
Having made zero progress in his inquiries, Jin Guanyao hunts through the halls until he finds Mo Xuanyu. His friend is missing from his side today, making Nie Mingjue’s suggestion to stare at him utterly pointless.
“Where’s your shadow?” A-Yao asks.
“He’s unwell,” Mo Xuanyu says.“You know how it is.”
He nods and smiles, but of course, he doesn’t.
The next day, Mo Xuanyu’s shadow is back by his side. Jin Guanyao finds them at a table in the canteen, grabbing lunch with the blind woman in marketing who's infamous for both her data manipulation skills and her habit of stealing all the stationary in that wing.
Jin Guanyao looks at the man beside Mo Xuanyu--really looks--and feels his world shift on its axis.
Of course he knows. Of course, of course. How could he forget. Of course he knows the face of his own son, fully grown. Of course he knows the child he held in his arms for years, sat awake through nights of coughing and laboured breathing, nights of wondering: is this my fault? If he dies, will it be because of me?
(It will be, but not for the reasons he fears right then, in those long nights of watching and waiting and holding his breath whenever A-Song fell quiet.)
Jin Rusong has always been poorly, and always loved and doted on by both Qin Su and himself. Part of the reason they got into this political hellscape was to secure a future for him, and a career path that didn’t rely on the strength of his body to succeed.
So he smiles at Jin Rusong when they pass in the corridors. When Jin Rusong smiles back, his nose wrinkles, and his glasses try to slide right off his face before he nudges them up.
Jin Rusong’s smile sends a flood of nostalgia through him. It’s a dimpled smile, his smile, but he so rarely gets to use these days.
A president, after all, must be reserved. Collected. So he keeps his brightest smile for quiet times. It’s not a huge difference. Xichen has always been the main recipient of that smile, anyway.
He doesn’t linger, as much as he wants to. He doesn’t want to embarrass the boy, that’s too cruel. Xichen, on the other hand, takes great pleasure in ruffling hair and play-fighting whenever he sees little Rusong. He’s not a touchy-feeling sort of person… but he makes an exception for those two young men, fighting with them for the best food in the canteen, messing with them in their work days.
Xichen is a good dad. His face around Jin Rusong and Mo Xuanyu is so, so soft, a face A-Yao has only seen when er-ge is with Lan Wangji. It feels like a long time since he’s seen that face.
He can’t remember the last time he saw the Twin Jades together.
A-Yao’s chest hurts looking at them, but chest pains are nothing new for him.
Everyone treats Mo Xuanyu and Jin Rusong as fragile, breakable things. Xichen is the only one who doesn’t. He knows how capable they are, and they rise to meet his expectations, as everyone does around the gravitational force that is Lan Xichen.
A-Yao should be glad of this: glad to be loved by a man who sees the strength in his son, who is unafraid to treat him like any other young man his age. A part of him wants to join in their rough-housing.
But. There is still a part of him that sees Jin Rusong, sees his son, fully grown, and twists dark inside of him. A part of his soul draws as taut as a guqin string, and that part watches Jin Rusong laughing, and pushing back, and falling , and
(it goes red red red he sees red he wants blood that is his son they will not touch him)
He knows that Xichen will not hurt his boy. But he knows, also, that others did, and he wasn’t there, he couldn’t stop it. He was, in fact, the cause of it.
Seeing his little boy fully grown, every small risk sends his instincts roaring to defend him. Because he knows his son was taken from him. He knows he can’t protect him.
He loves A-Song, and he is the reason A-Song died. No matter what, he would always have been the reason. It was all his choices that paved the path.
Even if A-Song hadn’t been killed, he had to die. He could only die. If we let him grow up, you and I….
Even here, in another world, he cannot forget this. He sees his son, fully grown, and something dark twists inside of him. The part of him that destroyed entire clans in A-Song’s name, who slaughtered just as boldly as Xue Yang but no one cared because he was sect leader.
A part of his soul draws as taut as a guqin string, and that part watches Jin Rusong laughing, and pushing back, and falling , and
(it goes red red red he sees red he wants blood that is his son they will not touch him)
His chest aches. His arm burns. He has to look away from these moments, these games, because this is a world where he has guns at his command and honestly , why does anyone have such power, they should never. They haven’t earned it.
Like his father, they were born to power and never taught to respect it. Like with his father, all it takes is one rotten man to leave a trail of dead women and destroyed lives.
Fuck, he hates guns. He misses Hensheng, misses the music of cultivation flowing from his hands. He misses Shuoyue, who held back Baxia from him. Shouyue, who held steady at his throat, not touching. Even at the end, she was as gentle as she could be, as smooth and sharp as any blade could be.
(He doesn’t blame her for what happens any more than he blames Er-ge.)
So many of the people he’s forced to interact with seem to lack not just a golden core, but a moral core. Lives are not lives to them, just numbers, and A-Yao tries to understand them—he tries, he really tries, he’s been there—but he comes up short.
These men (of course, it’s always men) have never had to kill someone up-close, and it shows.
He tries to be careful when he makes decisions that will affect millions. He spends entire days running the numbers, getting his team to simulate the effects even minor bills and chances will cause.
If his staff ever tells them this isn’t a life or death change, he makes a particular point to find the data to prove them wrong. At their level, it’s easy to lose sight of just how what they do affects the country.
But things ripple out in unexpected ways. Jin Guanyao can never prepare for all of them, but at least this time he prepares for whatever he can, knowing now more than ever the terrifying wildness of human behaviour.
The world is easily influenced. A small nudge towards the dark, and it will fall headfirst into it. He’s seen it too much for any one lifetime, the way things spin out of his control. Mo Xuanyu and his desperate, miserable madness. Qiongqi Path. Even that whole mess at Yi City, which he wants to blame on Xue Yang, but he should’ve known Xue Yang wouldn’t flee to safety. He was never the type.
These people around him--world leaders from so many different cultures and backgrounds--almost all suffer from the same mistaken belief he once held: that what happens can be controlled.
It can’t. It can only be influenced, and even that is as much luck as it is skill.
His mouth tastes like the air in the wings of the house that are being renovated to suit his presidency. Dust and rubble on his dry lips. A price paid unthinkingly when he should have never, ever moved without thinking.
He does not allow himself to play rough with his boy. But he allows himself every moment of gentle touch he can get, every hug.
This world is far from perfect, but he’s glad those boys have it. They really deserve it. More than A-Yao ever could.
*
@POTUS FAKE IMBALANCED RELATIONSHIP
@POTUS LIKE A PET WITH A LEASH, OR AN EXPENSIVE OBJECT TO BE KEPT,
[Taken from ‘@’ mentions to the presidential Twitter feed.]
After all of that, it’s unsurprising when the speaker of the house of representatives, Su She, greets him as an old friend. He’d half expected Su She to show up closer to home—leading his security team, maybe. But he is a natural fit here. A voice for the people.
He has always felt so strongly for the underdogs. So loyal to those who helped him.
He is a fantastic speaker, unafraid to be open with Jin Guangyao. Unafraid to be sharp when needed. He always speaks kindly of the president, he moves around the White House with the same ease as all those years in that other world.
Su She and Qin Su get along like lifelong friends. They spend long days and nights together, discussing the problems facing the people they represent, figuring out ways to fix them for everyone. They grow close, fast.
A-Yao knows there is more than just friendship there. He keeps his own feelings about that to himself, especially the black spike of jealousy, the loss that hits him when he sees how they look at each other.
They never belonged to him. He should be happy for them.
He isn’t, yet, but he’s trying to be. He knows his flaws. He holds too tightly.
(It is kinder to push people away, sometimes. For their own sake, and for yours.)
(You do not want him in the rubble with you.)
(And yet, and yet.)
But there are moments, too, when Su She and A-Yao work together late into the night and the air changes. When the pressure of key votes and bills is heavy on their shoulders. On nights like that, Su She will stop to drink a cup of tea or a glass of wine on the same couch A-Yao and Qin Su regularly nap. He will nurse the drink for a long time, breathing hard, hand to his chest.
“Are you alright, A-She?” A-Yao asks.
Su She looks up at him and smiles, even though his eyes are bright with pain and his fingers splay white-knuckled over his chest. “I’m fine. Just phantom pains.”
A-Yao thinks of the way his own chest spikes sometimes. The way jagged lightning bolts of pain run down his arm. He’d thought it was a heart attack, the first few times, but doctors always gave him a clean bill of health.
“It’s just in your head,” his doctor always tells him. “Your body is in perfect health.”
His doctor is a slight, dark-haired woman with a tone that cuts through him like a knife. She’s a Wen, like all the other medical team across the house—the youngest of them by a long shot, though he’d much rather they’d sent Granny Wen with her soothing voice and steady hands, or even Uncle Four who always smells slightly of wine no matter what time of day it is.
He can’t be certain, but he thinks she remembers the other world. There’s something in her eyes, when she looks at him. Like she wishes he was dead, but acknowledges that they are both here, alive. She’s not happy about it, but here she is.
“Don’t worry, Mr President, you’ve got a long life ahead of you yet,” Wen Qing tells him, and it sounds more of a threat than a reassurance.
There are so many things in his head that hurt in similar ways. Real pain, but no evidence to support it. He doesn’t know what this means.
That’s not true.
He knows. He just doesn’t want to see it yet.
*
The work isn’t easy. He hates every moment of running this damn country, sometimes.
But he knows, when he closes his eyes alongside Lan Xichen every night, and alongside Lan Xichen and Nie Mingjue on particularly delightful nights, that it is better than the alternative.
Sometimes he wakes screaming, staring at the point where Nie Mingjue’s neck becomes covers and his body disappears.
Sometimes, when he’s riding on top of Xichen, the sweat under his palms feels heavy and tacky and he goes still, every part of him, and Xichen has to stroke his hair and speak softly and bring him back to this place, to this world, that he doesn’t deserve, where he doesn’t belong.
“Shhh, shhh, A-Yao, I’m here, I’m here.”
But you shouldn’t be, A-Yao thinks, his heart a trapped bird breaking loose. You shouldn’t be, you shouldn’t be, oh fuck why are you here.
He doesn’t dare even hint at the topic with Nie Mingjue, who’s so soft with him up close. Because when Nie Mingjue is just on the edge of his peripheral vision, he thinks he catches him staring. Angry. Dark.
He tries to catch up, snapping his head up. Da-ge will smile softly and absently, switching to a warmer smile when he sees A-Yao watching.
Some nights, when Nie Mingjue is fast asleep, he stares at A-Yao with blank and empty accusation in his wide-open eyes. Often, he is snoring. A-Yao can hear the rise and fall of his sleeping breaths. He knows, if he reaches out, he will find those eyes closed in sleep.
But in the dark bedroom, that face never takes its eyes off him.
He tries to live with it. To make do. He sleeps curled in the warmth of da-ge’s arms, Nie Mingjue’s head tucked against his neck, tickling the skin there every time he breathes. Sleeping this way, he can’t see the sightless eyes he knows fall onto him as soon as this world’s Nie Mingjue sleeps.
But he only makes things worse. The blanket is a crushing weight on top of him, pinning them both together. Xichen, inches away, feels miles apart from where the two of them lie trapped.
Every time he tries to sleep, he feels Nie Mingjue’s hand slide up to grip his throat. He knows it isn’t really there. He knows, out of his peripheral vision, that da-ge’s arm remains tucked under the pillow.
He knows, also, that if he turns around to check those eyes will be waiting for him.
A-Yao doesn’t check. He lies awake, throat pressed tight, chest aching under the weight of so much fallen stone. Nie Mingjue is holding him gently, sleeping peacefully, and A-Yao is falling apart.
Why isn’t he allowed to fix this?
It isn’t fair.
It never is.
*
The closest he comes to mentioning the other world to Nie Mingjue is a simple question, a harmless question.
“Will little A-Sang be visiting us any time soon? It feels like so long since I’ve seen him, da-ge. I miss him.”
Nie Mingjue’s head turns to him too fast, a violent speed to the motion. His expression is black and angry, like the Nie Mingjue at the corner of his vision, but his eyes—his eyes aren’t dark.
His eyes are glassy, sagging into the sockets.
“A-Sang will never come here,” Nie Mingjue says.
He blinks, and his eyes are the warm, soft, alive things that A-Yao remembers. He tilts his head, looking a little lost for a second, and smiles that same old smile—but it’s less comforting now, and more distressingly vacant.
“Ah, A-Sang is out of state for a while,” Nie Mingjue says, as if unaware of anything he’s just said. “You know how it is, with his work. Tensions are high, people are sensitive. It would not be wise for him to visit.”
Jin Guangyao is careful not to ask about Nie Huaisang after that, or even breathe his name. There are no photos of Nie Huaisang in Nie Mingjue’s office. He never mentions him.
In that other world, Nie Mingjue would never go a day without mentioning his precious little brother. The absence leaves a hollowness in his presence in the White House.
It becomes harder to look at Nie Mingjue, after that. Harder, even, than those times a sightless head watched him throughout the night.
He invites Nie Mingjue to their bed less often. If he notices, he doesn’t say.
Jin Guangyao starts tasting dust and stone more often. He wakes up with it coating his throat. He goes days where his mouth never feels free of it.
He calls a halt to any remaining renovations.
Some nights, he wonders who built this world. Who brought it to life.
Was it him?
He hopes it wasn’t him. He has a terrible track record when it comes to making things. They either grow out of his control, or they fall down around him.
This world does not deserve to crumble.
*
His mother comes to visit, sometimes. She doesn’t like the cameras, so they keep her visits quiet, executed with all the stealth of a coup.
(Truthfully, Jin Guangyao suspects it's actually far stealthier than any coup would be, but he hopes he never has to find out.)
But she is always so happy to see him. To pet his hair and straighten his hat and hug him close.
“I knew you could do this. My little A-Yao.”
He cries when she first visits. The tears start and won’t stop. They are not careful and controlled, like so much of him is, like it always should be—they are ugly, desperate sobs that shred out of his throat.
Lan Xichen runs to him. Holds him. Runs a hand down his back while his mother pets his hair. Lan Xichen’s touch is firm, but his mother’s is more so—a hold like stone around him, arms as unyielding as a statue.
“What’s wrong, A-Yao?” someone says. He doesn’t know which one of them.
He feels their hands on him. Their reassuring murmurs in their ears. On the far side of the room, the Secretary of Defense is waiting. He doesn’t look away from this—instead, he meets A-Yao’s gaze.
A-Yao can never read Nie Mingjue’s expression. He does not know what this gaze means.
But he feels like he is standing in the heart of a crumbling temple. He’s trapped in a room with the corpses of everyone he’s ever loved. The air is thick with dust and his chest hurts so much, so much, it never stops hurting.
*
His mother comes to him again, when the scandal hits the press. When the tabloids are hounds baying at his door. He is paying all the bribes he can to bury it, to hide it, but there are things that won’t stay buried.
There is Nie Mingjue, facing them both, trembling with restrained fury.
“Did you know?” he asks.
And of course, Xichen knew. Xichen has known every second of their life in this world.
“It’s not that I didn’t know what you’d done, but I always believed you had your reasons,” Lan Xichen says, and the words are a blade straight through him.
The words are walls crumbling.
“Please. I’ve worked so hard to build this all for you. Don’t you want to know the reason?” Jin Guangyao asks, soft and steady. He already knows they don’t want to know the reason. He cannot stop the collapse.
All he can do is decide who makes it clear of the destruction. He will not be one of them.
He is always in this temple.
He has never left the temple.
Guanyin Temple is beautiful, the walls bright and white, a palace built on top of terrible things. The White House is beautiful, bright-lit and gleaming, a palace built on blood.
He hates this place. This temple. Always crumbling around him, but never fallen, never gone. He never should have built it. Never should’ve tried to be his father.
He smiles, broad and dimpled, so wide he has to shut his eyes for a moment. The smile is a reset switch, returning him to the White House, to his mother and his lover holding him close while Nie Mingjue waits to see him, alive and happy, and Su She and Qin Su sit together a few rooms away and excitedly talk about the ways they can change this country for the better.
This world is broken. But it is his. A place to fix his mistakes. A place to avoid all of his regrets.
It doesn’t matter if this world is real. It feels real. It feels like a resurrection.
He holds on to this world. It is not perfect, but it’s enough.