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The sudden downpour caught them off guard, and they are drying off in the jingshi where Wangji had offered Nie Huaisang a change of clothes while they wait for his to dry.
And Wangji doesn’t think that Nie Huaisang is tiny, as such. He is shorter than Wangji is, has been since he was twelve years old, but he isn't built delicately at all, bones solid and sturdy.
Sure, he had seen Nie Mingjue pick up Huaisang casually and just set him aside when he was in the way, but that was Nie Mingjue. Everyone looks small next to him. And Wangji knows that despite… well, everything about him, Huaisang is still a cultivator, still a Nie-sect cultivator, and packs a lot more power in his frame than most would expect.
Yet somehow, the way that Nie Huaisang’s body actually fills out his borrowed robes still surprises Wangji (Surprise? Is that the right word for how he feels like he should be clutching a hand to his chest right now? Right over his suddenly rabbit-fast heartbeat?). The hems trail on the ground a bit, and Nie Huaisang does something clever to the waist of the robes that helps hide the fact that they’re too long for him by at least the span of a hand.
But the chest. The hips-
Wangji fights to drag his eyes up to somewhere more, ah, appropriate, before Huaisang turns around. But then Huaisang asks him to help with his hair, and Wangji’s hands are lifting the silky wet mass over Huaisang’s shoulders, almost without Wangji’s explicit permission, and his eyes are fixed on the way the fabric of the fabric falls over the curve of Huaisang’s arms instead of hiding his shape entirely like the dirtied set, and-
"Thank you, Wangji-xiong," says Nie Huaisang, smiling sweetly over his shoulder.
Wangji has to discreetly take deep, calming breaths to get his suddenly shaky hands under control.