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It takes about two seconds for Jiang Cheng to realize what’s happening, push Jin Zixuan away, and kick him in the shin hard enough that the other boy falls on his back in the middle of Cloud Recesses rocky path. His eyes are wide, robes splayed awkwardly around his calves—he’s never looked this undignified before. Jiang Cheng can’t help the laugh.
“What?” Jin Zixuan demands, shuffling up from the ground and brushing off his robes in a dignified manner that does nothing to belay the unseemly display of moments before. Jiang Cheng keeps laughing. “You’re the one who said you didn’t want to have to admit to any girls that you’d never kissed anyone before!”
“That doesn’t mean I want to kiss you,” Jiang Cheng replies with a scoff, crossing his arms and looking away from the other boy.
“At the rate you’re going, your first kiss is going to be on your wedding night, thirty years from now!”
“At the rate you’re going, you’re never going to get married at all!”
And that’s about when Jiang Cheng remembers A-Jie. He spins around, fisting Jin Zixuan’s robes in both hands and pulling the other boy toward him, ignoring his spluttering. “You can never, ever, ever tell A-Jie.”
Jin Zixuan wrenches his fingers off his robes and shoves him a more respectable distance away, chin raised haughtily. “As if I would speak to her anyway,” he says, ineffectually smoothing the wrinkles caused by Jiang Cheng’s firm grip, his rapidly reddening cheeks further ruining his regal air.
“Or Wei Wuxian,” Jiang Cheng continues, panicking. “Or Nie Huaisang, or—”
“How about we agree to never talk about this ever, to anyone, until the day we die?”
Jiang Cheng smiles in relief before he realizes what he’s doing and forces his face back into a scowl. “Deal.” He bows down, sword extended in front of him, just a tiny bit lower than he would have the day before. Jin Zixuan hesitates, rolls his eyes, and bows a fraction shallower than his own had been, his flashy sword clenched between his hands hard enough that his knuckles whiten. Jiang Cheng scoffs, and storms away back toward the guest disciples quarters without a backward glance.
“Jiang Cheng, Jiang Cheng!” He stops short at the shout, panicking as Wei Wuxian runs toward him, a scowl on his face, as he wraps his arm around Jiang Cheng’s shoulders, pulling him along the path, back toward the direction he’d just come from. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. What were you doing with that peacock?”
Jiang Cheng panics. “He, uh, he was just saying he’d be nicer to A-Jie.”
Wei Wuxian beams, pulling him closer, arm squeezing tighter around his back. “Well, if he’s mean to her again, I’m going to punch his face in!”
When a few weeks later, Wei Wuxian punches Jin Zixuan in the face and gets sent home, he barely holds himself back from doing the same. He can’t believe that asshole was his first kiss.