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Soulmates are a tricky business, very tricky indeed. On the surface, they sound wonderful. Children love to hear the stories of soulmates finding each other at any stage of life, from toddlers to grandparents and everything in between. Every year the romance film industry must make at least a dozen films on the subject in various places around the world, some of them usually decent, a few of them truly wonderful - but a lot of them trite and overdone and just cliché enough to be sort of charming in their own way and under the right circumstances.
But the thing about humans - and therefore human connection, in every form it takes - is that they’re messy . Very rarely are things really so cut and dry as the stories and movies and songs and general media (propaganda, Meng Yao thinks uncharitably) would have everyone believe. Meng Yao has seen every iteration of soulmates he needs to to know that hardly anyone at all gets their fairytale ending.
There’s his mother, first of all, who had so desperately wanted to find hers she had clung to the first man with a mark close enough to hers to settle for. He had taken what he’d wanted and left her in trouble. Heartbreak, misery, death.
There are the men who used to come into the pleasure houses his mother worked when he was young, their marks clearly matched, the lines of them filled in with riotous color or beautiful, delicate shading, or further linework to flesh out the images. Men who had their partners waiting at home and yet would come to drink away their coin and their time and grab for anything soft and warm to grope at or sink their cocks into. Heartbreak and misery aplenty, certainly, though he wouldn’t be surprised if death chased some of them as well.
He’s seen friends, lifelong friends, platonic soulmates marry other people and get dragged apart. People whose soulmates are belligerent drunks or narcissists or miserable bottom feeders with nothing at all to contribute. Siblings so close they’re each other’s bonded, once again ripped apart by spouses or deaths or family dramas -
He’s seen enough.
Meng Yao knows he has a soulmate somewhere out there. He has a mark, after all, and it’s still the ghost of what it could one day become, so he hasn’t met him yet. Most days Meng Yao is utterly certain that he doesn’t want to. He’s not foolish enough to think he might happen to be one of the lucky ones - when has he ever been? But sometimes a small part of him (one he secretly thinks must be inherited from his too-romantic mother) wonders if maybe..it’ll be alright?
Most of the time he doesn’t think about it. He lives his life without the shadow of a future soulmate - if they want him they’re going to have to meet him wherever he’s at, he doesn’t have time to stay in one spot hoping to be found. And so he continues on into proper adulthood still firmly unmatched, his empty outline of a mark a genuine novelty by the time he’s in his thirties and everyone around him seems to have found their soulmate, for better (rare) or for worse (uncomfortably common).
And then all of Meng Yao’s careful pessimism and lifetime of low expectations are promptly and thoroughly derailed by a man who seems like he must have stepped right out of the pages of a romance novel. Lan Xichen is handsome and gentlemanly and sweet in a way that would be far too much to handle were he not so sincere about it. And Meng Yao’s soulmark fills in a soft, feathered, watercolor swirl of blue. Lan blue, he learns quickly. Theirs and their partners’ marks are always the same shade, a bit of a family quirk.
Because this is Meng Yao’s life though, and not a fairytale novel, there’s a catch. There’s always a fucking catch. Because while still early on enough to be in the honeymoon glow of things, Lan Xichen drops the bomb - well, perhaps it’s more of a hand grenade - that they’re actually a threesome , not a blissfully domestic twosome.
“I apologize for not saying so earlier,” Lan Xichen tells him over dinner at his place. “I ah…desired proof that you are his soulmate as well, and not only mine. Your mark is incomplete without his, so I believe it’s true.”
Meng Yao does not blush at the delicate way Lan Xichen dances around the fact that they’d needed to have sex - or at least be naked and intimately involved - for him to see Meng Yao’s mark high on the inside of his thigh, practically in his groin. He’d gotten a very good look at it the previous evening when Meng Yao had broken and deigned to turn himself into a booty call too tempting to resist. And, well. Meng Yao would be lying if he said he hadn’t taken a look at Lan Xichen’s as well, right in the small of his back, framed on either side by the dimples at the base of his spine. It looks just like his, save for quick, bold strokes through it that form an animal Meng Yao hadn’t been able to discern from his quick glimpse (in his defense he’d been very distracted).
Long story short - he believes Lan Xichen that there’s a third piece to their little puzzle, and though he’s not totally sure how he feels about the idea of sharing his newfound soulmate with anybody else (yes he is, it sends warning alarms blaring in his head in every single way), he’s willing to give it a shot.
They agree to meet somewhere neutral for all of them, a new restaurant in town that caters to both Nie Mingjue’s apparently insatiable appetite and Lan Xichen’s desire for not-shitty vegan food while also managing to be upscale enough for the both of them to feel like they’re treating Meng Yao properly. That last one is sweet but unnecessary, though Meng Yao won’t tell Lan Xichen that. He just looks so happy to introduce them, after all, so naturally Meng Yao will do everything he can to facilitate that happiness.
His first impression of Nie Mingjue is that he’s gorgeous. He sees him across the restaurant and clocks him right away, and for the briefest of moments he’s riding the abrupt high of bagging not one but two enormous and stunning men to dote on him. Lan Xichen gets up to greet him with a kiss to the cheek and Nie Mingjue looks up at him with his eyes narrowed, and suddenly with a dizzying sense of vertigo Meng Yao gets the sense that - he knows this man. He must know Nie Mingjue already to have such a visceral reaction to him - and it’s not a good one.
He barely manages to keep his upper lip from curling in furious disgust and instead paints on a tight smile, his best customer service one. Despite his superhuman self-control, Nie Mingjue snorts and shakes his head as he goes to pick up his water glass.
“Nope. No way,” Nie Mingjue tells Lan Xichen as if Meng Yao isn’t standing right there, what the fuck?!
“Mingjue?” Oh, Nie Mingjue is going to pay for that devastated look on Lan Xichen’s face, Meng Yao will make sure of it.
“Absolutely not. I know you’re right, he’s our third because of course he is, but I want no part of it.”
“Yes hello Nie Mingjue, how lovely to meet you, thank you for agreeing to see me,” Meng Yao says as icily as he can manage, and something about the thunderous look on Nie Mingjue’s face sets off another wave of vertigo, like there’s something he should know and he’s so close to recalling it. It’s a ridiculous thought since his memory is near-perfect, but there’s no other way to describe it.
“Nah. Give it an hour, you’ll be agreeing with me.”
“Excuse me?”
“Could we please not do this in the middle of a restaurant?” Lan Xichen sighs, beginning to sound much more resigned than Meng Yao would like. He shoots his freshly-minted soulmate an apologetic look and gives Nie Mingjue a confused glare that the other man just shrugs in response to. And with that Meng Yao proceeds with what is perhaps the most awkward lunch date of his entire life, and that’s saying something.
The feeling of deja vu (and accompanying spates of dizziness) persists throughout the meal, but it isn’t until they step outside that the pieces he’s been reaching after finally slot into place. Nie Mingjue steps outside first into the afternoon sunlight, and as he turns his head to look back at him Meng Yao gets an image, a strange overlaying of what he’s seeing and what he knows in a way that’s deeper than simple memory.
What he knows is Nie Mingjue with long hair half braided to support the crown on his head, his gaze stern and unyielding as he looks down at Meng Yao with distrust, distaste. What he knows down to his bones, to his soul, is slowly poisoning Nie Mingjue’s mind and spirit with bittersweet vindictive relief.
What he remembers is centuries trapped in a coffin with him after his own death tearing each other to shreds as their angry spirits refused to rest.
“Oh good god ,” Meng Yao huffs in a rare show of irritation. Nie Mingjue raises an eyebrow at him while Lan Xichen sighs long and slow.
“Well. Thank you for making it all the way to the sidewalk, I suppose,” he says in tired resignation.
Nie Mingjue smirks, “Told you.”
God Meng Yao wants to go back to poking out his eyes over and over again, that was a good one.
“It’s the three of us again ?” he demands instead of jamming his very nimble fingers in Nie Mingjue’s tender eye sockets. “How many times are we going to do this?!”
“That remains unclear. Shall we talk about this somewhere private?” Meng Yao has to admire Lan Xichen’s devotion to not letting them make a scene, but with the first memories returning Meng Yao is starting to remember other lives between that one and now, other times fate had smooshed them all together in her hands without a care in the world. This isn’t the first time their reunion had caused a scene, and he doesn’t dare claim it will be the last.
Nie Mingjue seems to be of the same mind in that at least as he makes no move to go somewhere quieter. “Why are you asking me how many times it’ll be?! It’s not like I would ever choose you again! Xichen and I were doing just fine this time around until you showed up.”
“Oh so that argument works when it’s you who found him first this time but back in the 20’s it was my fault because he came and found me first?”
“Fuck off, he and I grew up on the same street in the 20’s, I had him first!”
“The 1820’s da-ge, keep up.”
Meng Yao turns to look at Lan Xichen when he hears the man sigh again and he watches him rub his forehead, right where his ribbon used to sit so many lifetimes ago. “Could you two please attempt to make up properly this time? I don’t think this will end until you do.”
Meng Yao has a conciliatory reply all ready to go at the tip of his tongue, but then he glances up at Nie Mingjue still glaring at him and he grinds his teeth together, his jaw going tense.
“Absolutely not,” they say in unison, and Meng Yao finally gives into the urge to sneer up at his eternal tormentor. Nie Mingjue is matching him glare-for-glare though, so he feels justified.
Lan Xichen’s lamentation is quiet but heartfelt. “Good heavens. I suppose the lovely thing about this century is that I can call myself a car and leave you to it.”
“Xichen?” Nie Mingjue asks as if startled, and Lan Xichen looks up with his perpetually gentle smile.
“While you two argue some more I am going to go to yoga. Text me if you need me.” Meng Yao blinks and stares unseeingly in the general vicinity of Nie Mingjue’s chest as Lan Xichen kisses first him on the cheek and then Nie Mingjue before he turns to leave.
“Did he just-“
“Yep.”
“Huh.” Meng Yao is, quite honestly, so nonplussed that he momentarily manages to forget that Nie Mingjue is his sworn enemy and has been for too many lifetimes now to bother counting. “I suppose..the 21st century suits him?”
“His latest hobby is all this ‘self-care’ shit that gets peddled everywhere.”
“He has had worse.”
“Suppose so. Wanna go beat the shit out of each other for a while?” Nie Mingjue offers next and it nearly sounds friendly. An odd sort of friendly, a twisted and bitter sort of friendly, but it’s at least a suggestion borne out of the familiarity of centuries together, whether they want to be or not. Meng Yao squints up at Nie Mingjue again, still hulking and huge, and he lets his face slip into a scowl.
“Why are you always huge every single time we reincarnate?” he grouses even as he falls into step beside Nie Mingjue to go with him to..wherever they’re going, presumably to beat the shit out of each other as suggested. “It’s never a fair fight with you.”
“We were undead fierce corpses stuck together in a coffin for 300 years and haven’t been able to reincarnate away from each other since then. You wanna talk about what’s fair ?”
“Preferably not, I’ll only find it depressing.”
“Okay then.”
Meng Yao scowls afresh for Nie Mingjue getting the last word, but at least he can rest assured (?) in the knowledge leftover from previous lives that they’ll have plenty of opportunities to fight in this life. He’ll just have to up his game next time to make sure he comes out on top.
“I really hate you, you know,” he finally manages just as they step into a boxing gym.
“Feeling’s mutual, so don’t get pissed when I go for your face.”
“Likewise.”
So. Soulmates are messy. Disgustingly, tragically, awfully messy. But Meng Yao sort of misses when just
normal
soulmate relationships were disasters he could watch from the sidelines. Having soulmates who also happen to be his sort-of-lovers from a time so long ago most normal people don’t even think of it as having existed is
by far
the Messiest Bitch thing he can think of. (A point driven home unnecessarily by Nie Huaisang laughing his ass off at him the moment all three former sworn brothers step into the Nie-Lan house together. Bitch.)