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Each time starts the same. Dusk, a cultivation conference breaking for the night. Nie Huaisang flits through the crowd, smiling and bowing just this side of too-low for one of his station. He chats and flatters, never lingering long but not so quick to depart as to be rude. At the end of his journey, Huaisang always finds his mark.
Honey-sweet words earn terse, barely-proper replies. Huaisang laughs, his conversation partner scowls. Routine and rote. Just as how, when Huaisang departs the hall with a lingering touch to his companion’s broad shoulder, without fail a purple shadow follows not long after.
Only once both souls are cloistered within a private room, door firmly shut and a lantern lit between them, does Huaisang shed one of many illusions.
—
Wine sloshes in Huaisang’s cup. A few drops spill over, dewy on her fingers. She downs her drink and sets aside the cup. To Huaisang’s lips rise her now-sticky fingers, cleaned moments later by a lazy tongue.
Eyes burn into her, gaze heavy with an unspoken tsunami. One Huaisang could chart the nuances of blind. Smile pulling at the corners of her mouth, Huaisang tips forward to hide behind her fan. She wipes her moist hand on a spare discarded outer robe and meets her companion’s razor-sharp stare.
Jiang Cheng is a creature of utmost focus, Huaisang knows. Much like his beloved dogs, Jiang Cheng will do all sorts of things for mere scraps, never wavering. These days, Huaisang has found herself in bountiful supply of scraps for Jiang Cheng.
“A-Cheng,” she hums, pouty and spoiled in the way Jiang Cheng seems to both hate and covet in turns. Fan fluttering, Huaisang watches him with doe eyes over the paper. “Why do you glare at me so?”
Tch. Tongue clicking, Jiang Cheng busies himself with downing his own drink. The cup slams against the table, rattling their shared bottle of wine and Huaisang’s own cup.
“Stop that.”
“Stop what?”
“Don’t play dumb.”
Huaisang can so clearly envision flattened canine ears as a snarl twists Jiang Cheng’s face. Even as they both drift closer and closer to their fortieth year, he can’t quite keep a hold on his childish temper. Huaisang wonders when that stopped being a trait she resented him for.
It’s almost endearing these days. In the quiet low-light, Huaisang finds herself charmed by the ugly curl of lip over bright teeth. Amused as he bristles and growls but never bites. So tame, counter to his barely-restrained demeanor.
“I truly am sorry, A-Cheng. I don’t know what you’re talking about…” Smile hidden behind her fluttering fan, Huaisang extends a leg under the table. Her foot skims along hardwood, then the warm line of Jiang Cheng’s knee. A gentle pressure, teasing and deceptively innocent – or perhaps it would be, if they hadn’t done this dance together a dozen times now.
Jiang Cheng’s reaction is instantaneous; a new shade floods his cheeks that has little to do with wine, his shoulders coil tight, and his gaze snaps to the tabletop. He is no complex instrument, yet Huaisang finds fulfillment in playing him all the same. Her job only gets easier with time, too. He’s so easy to train…
Toes tap-tap-tap along the outside of Jiang Cheng’s calf. Silk rustles against silk and Huaisang watches how the sound flusters him further. It fills the cavern of her ribs with a mean-spirited bliss, one that burns brighter still as her foot trails back, then pushes into the small space between his knees.
Instantly his legs snap open wider. Eager, accommodating, obedient.
Hauisang doesn’t bother suppressing her giggles, mixed mocking and delighted. By now she knows that it only riles Jiang Cheng up further when Huaisang laughs at his expense. The proof is in how he jerks at the sound, ducking forward over the table. She can see how his arms shift, hands most certainly coming to tangle white-knuckled in his lap.
She really does mean to draw this out – as is their routine. A few minutes of teasing touch there, double that left in denial. Each turn winding and winding and winding until Jiang Cheng is a hair away from snapping.
On a normal night, she would pull back now and allow him some time to stew. Huaisang finds she isn’t in the mood for it. Instead, a cruel thought has resurfaced. Or a memory, were she to bother with accuracy. Her wine-loosened tongue aches to lash out – she knows it’s misdirected, yet this whole affair was born from such misdirections. Huaisang had hungered for another soul to fall into her mire and drown alongside her in the misery of a worthless lifetime filled with loss and bloodsoaked revenge.
That’s why she had picked Jiang Cheng to start with; their shared history made it easy to slot herself into his life, but it was his dirty hands and harrowed soul that set him in Huaisang’s sights.
“Do you remember when we did this for the first time?” Her foot has stalled, settled just inches from Jiang Cheng’s knee. It digs into the flesh of his inner thigh through his robes.
Jiang Cheng shoots her a strange look. When he speaks, Huaisang is impressed he doesn’t fumble his words. “It was not so long ago, I would not forget it.”
Ah, perhaps she wasn’t clear. Huaisang waves away the answer with a flick of her fan before snapping it shut. She gestures towards the now-empty bottle. “No, no. The wine, A-Cheng. You, I, Wei-xiong. Locked up tight in our rooms at night in the Cloud Recesses. That was plenty long ago.”
Confusion mars Jiang Chen’s brow, furrowing as he attempts to guess where this sudden topic is meant to go. Muddled as she can tell his mind already is, Huaisang has to nudge him with her foot to prompt the answer she’s owed.
“Yes. I remember.”
“Can you believe how long it’s been?” Cheerful, conversational. She doesn’t expect a reply this time, nor want one. Huaisang is simply refining her dagger’s edge. “You know, A-Cheng…”
Leaning forward with a conspiratorial smile, Huaisang tap-taps the tip of her fan to her lips. She watches how Jiang Cheng gets lost tracking the movement. “I wanted to do this…” That teasing foot slips an inch further, then two. “To you then, too. I even tried to make it happen, once or thrice.”
His eyes snap up to meet her, widening in confusion then narrowing in desperate recollection. It’s cute to watch him struggle.
“I was young, curious. Wei-xiong was always leading us on adventures. I had hoped, however briefly, for myself to follow him on this one too… Yet the call never came.” A wistful sigh slips from her, played up as always.
Huaisang can feel the moment that Jiang Cheng picks up the thread and follows this discussion to its conclusion. His thighs tense first. Then tremble. A life-long wound reopened with a deft and wicked cut, drawn out on purpose. Huaisang can taste blood in the air and it satiates the ugly part of herself that only a handful have ever seen laid bare. Jiang Cheng is catching glimpses often these days.
“I would not be swayed, of course. You know how I was; I was not brave, but I was wily. So I decided that while Wei-xiong chased his beloved Lan Zhan’s skirts, I would take adventure into my own hands.” Feeling that the air was becoming stale, Hauisang flicks her fan open once more to stir it up. “You really were so single-minded, back then. I did my best, I truly did. You vexed me greatly, A-Cheng. No amount of attempts to derail boring study sessions or to tempt you with sodden robes slipping down shoulders while we played in the river paid off.”
Jiang Cheng’s body is winding tighter and tighter, a far cry from the desire he had coiled with not so many heartbeats ago. Huaisang is impressed he has stayed so quiet. She takes up short, feather-light strokes of her foot against his leg; paltry comfort indeed, he barely twitches in response.
For a few long and near-silent moments, it feels good to not be alone. To cut into someone who bleeds just as Huaisang does – neither of them have truly been appreciated, been anyone’s first choice, worth anything. It is blissful… until it isn’t anymore.
Somewhere between blinks, as Jiang Cheng finally loses reign on his expression and it twists into a wreckage of such sharp hurt, the cruel joy of making your own company in misery crumbles away. There, then gone.
One would think that a woman as sharp as Nie Huaisang would learn from her mistakes. Yet here she is, pulling strings to run another man through only to be surprised when the satisfaction flickers out in seconds. A return to the echoing emptiness Huaisang’s chest has harbored for far too many years.
It is Jiang Cheng who breaks the silence.
“Am I still that to you?”
A replacement, Huaisang knows he cannot say. That may gouge the wound too far – something he would never be able to recover from.
Huaisang ponders the answer, though she has known it even before she voiced her first cruel thought. One heartbeat, three, ten. It is a terrible silence. She draws a deep breath in, the flutter of her fan masking both the sound and half her face.
“No,” she says simply. Huaisang considers leaving it at that. Something long-foreign bubbles up, spills over the brim of her heart and out her mouth. Raw with honesty in a way Huaisang hates the moment it leaves her. “You have only been yourself in my eyes for many years. I see you, not a shadow of someone else.”
Jiang Cheng sways, as if this a mortal blow. His shaking hands untangle and one snaps down to curl around Huaisang’s ankle. He grips her like a lifeline. As if she is the only thing keeping him from drowning in whatever storm has bloomed in his heart. Huaisang pities him, but she understands. In a sick way, Jiang Cheng has become her own anchor; the closest anyone has come to looking at her and seeing the truth is these private moments, him wrapped around her malicious finger with jiejie on his tongue.
Another breath steadies Huaisang’s own heart. She loathes this nakedness, a few layers too many have been stripped away from her expertly shrouded soul.
“Come here.”
A gentle kick spurs Jiang Cheng into motion, more than the spoken command. He shuffles around the table. Huaisang almost breaks the moment with laughter, his movements so uncoordinated in the aftermath of it all. By the time he settles at her side Huaisang is composed.
Snap. Cold metal slips under Jiang Cheng’s chin, the closed fan tipping his face up, up to meet hers. Huaisang smiles sweetly as his eyes meet hers. For a moment she simply studies him. He waits, like a well-trained dog.
Only when Huaisang sees his senses return – no longer subsumed by hurt or desire – does she ask a now-familiar question; “What shall I do with you?”
She expects a request to retire for the evening now Jiang Cheng is in his right mind. Huaisang is not so foolish as to pretend she did not cross a line in her lust for cruelty. He has left for much less. Yet her often predictable paramour opens his mouth to offer her a rare surprise.
“Whatever you want, Jiejie.”
“Ah,” Huaisang breathes. She cants forward, drawn into Jiang Cheng’s orbit. A hand takes his chin as the fan falls away, guiding him with a firm grip into a just as firm kiss. Under her fingers, Jiang Cheng melts like wax. Huaisang burns.
“To bed then. Carry me.” Her words are peppered in-between presses of lips, audible to none but him. Arms wind around his neck. “I don’t care to walk.”
Jiang Cheng scrambles to comply, calloused hands sliding under Huaisang’s legs to drag her away from the table then into his arms. It is not a far journey, but Huaisang savors it. Wrapped up in him, and him in her, giggles bloom unbidden in her throat. Like this she feels treasured. As if she were something precious and beautiful, despite her ugly nature.
Not for the first time, Nie Huaisang is thankful for Jiang Cheng.