Work Text:
Nie Huaisang is at his wits’ end. He paces back and forth across the private covered pavilion attached to the house he and Jiang Cheng share at Lotus Pier. He tries to calm down, to focus on the rhythmic slap of water on the legs of the pier and the breeze as it catches on the windchimes that Jin Ling hung the last time he visited.
“Alright. Okay. Who is responsible for this?”
“My no good, dirty, rotten, pig-stealing great-great grandfather,” Jiang Cheng says without thinking.
“What?”
Jiang Cheng quails under Huaisang’s glare. “Sorry. Jin Ling’s been reading Holes at school and then calling every night to tell me what he’s read.” He laughs. “Apparently he called Jin Guangshan that when they had family dinner last week.”
That is funny, but Huaisang is angry. He’ll laugh later. He pinches the bridge of his nose and exhales slowly.
“Who is responsible for my husband being mostly invisible?” he asks. He’s really being very patient.
“Ah.” Jiang Cheng can’t blush in his current state, but he does look sheepish. “That would be me.”
Huaisang raises an eyebrow. “Really? Not Wei Ying?”
“Uh, no.”
“Explain.”
Jiang Cheng sighs, and Huaisang is relieved to feel the rush of air. He’s not incorporeal. Whatever has happened is cosmetic. He is getting a little queasy looking at the shimmering form of their home through the transparent body of his husband.
“So, Wen Ning brought a box back from his trip to Greece. He met up with a cultivator who emigrated a few hundred years ago, a distant cousin or something of his. The woman had a box of things she’d brought from Qishan. Said they’d been cluttering up her house and anyway, she didn’t want some rando to find them if something happened to her.
“Anyway, in the box there was a small bag with a few Jiang items, including a ring.”
Huaisang smacks his forehead. “A-Cheng! Tell me you didn’t put on the forbidden ring!”
“I didn’t! I’m not stupid!”
“So why are you fading?”
“I’m getting to that!” Jiang Cheng hisses.
“I--” Huaisang narrows his eyes. Jiang Cheng wasn’t speaking to him. “What is going on?”
“No, I have to tell him… No! Mingjue-ge will murder me, not you!”
“Jiang Wanyin, you have three seconds to --”
“It’s Xichen-ge.” Jiang Cheng waves his hand and it smacks against the air beside him. “He was with me when Wen Ning brought the things. The ring didn’t feel malevolent, but it was clearly powerful. He had Liebing with him.” Jiang Cheng hisses something to the space on his side. “Xichen-ge has been working on a new take on the Lan musical cultivation, some take on Inquiry, I think.”
Huaisang can feel a migraine coming on. He sits down hard on the bench at the end of the pavilion. He wants to toss his husband and brother-in-law into the lake. He’s fighting his temper as well. It helps that Jiang Cheng looks truly pathetic, eyes cast down, fingers worrying the hem of his shirt. He imagines that Xichen is looking similarly upset.
“Okay. Okay. Alright,” Huaisang says. “So, Xichen-ge played something with Liebing, and then…”
Jiang Cheng looks to his side. If Huaisang squints, he can see a shimmer in the space beside him, like a heat mirage on a road.
“We’re not sure,” Jiang Cheng says after a moment. “We -- no, it can’t be that,” he tells the shimmer. “Because it doesn’t feel like one of his talismans!”
“A-Cheng, darling, lover,” Huaisang says, his voice raising, “what the fuck is going on!”
Jiang Cheng sighs again. “Xichen-ge thinks it might have something to do with Su Minshan.”
Huaisang feels the blood drain from his face, and he’s very glad to be sitting. He rests his hand unconsciously over his scar.
“See, this is why I didn’t want to say anything!” Jiang Cheng shouts at the empty space beside him. “At least not until we had some proof!”
“A-Cheng.” Huaisang reaches out his hand, and a rush of relief fills him when he can at least hold Jiang Cheng’s hand. “It’s alright.”
“It’s not!” He squeezes Huaisang’s hand.
“Look,” Huaisang says, rallying for his husband’s sake, “how are you feeling? Both of you? Are you in any pain?” He turns Jiang Cheng’s hand over and presses his fingers against his wrist, feeling for his qi. “How’s your energy? I can’t feel anything.”
Jiang Cheng closes his eyes. “I feel okay.” He steps back to Xichen’s side and takes his hand.
“Can you see er-ge?” Huaisang asks as he watches Jiang Cheng seemingly hold nothing.
“Yeah.” He frowns. “Why, can you not?”
“Just a bit of a shimmer,” Huaisang says. “You, I can see. Well, you look like your form has been turned to water. I can see all the shape of you, but I can also see right through you.”
“So nothing’s really changed?” Jiang Cheng quips.
Huaisang smiles in spite of himself. “Don’t tease. I’m scared, and I’m super mad at you.”
“Yeah, I know,” Jiang Cheng says, chastened. “To answer your earlier question, Xichen-ge’s energy feels fine to me.” He holds out his wrist. “He says mine feels nor-- he says it feels fine. Not normal though. What do you mean, fine but not normal?”
He listens, and Huaisang strains to hear as well, but he can only hear the wind and the water.
“He can’t explain it better than that,” Jiang Cheng tells Huaisang.
“Okay. Alright. Okay.” Huaisang rubs his eyes. “Listen,” he says, “we need help. You know what I have to do.”
Jiang Cheng’s frown deepens. “You’re sure you don’t have any ideas?”
“I don’t. I really don’t.” Huaisang’s heart hurts as Jiang Cheng tries to smile for him. “Truly. I don’t even know where to begin.”
Jiang Cheng hangs his head.
“You’re right,” he says. “Call him.”
Huaisang looks over Jiang Cheng’s shoulder to the spot where Xichen is probably standing.
“Sorry, er-ge, but you are gonna be in so much trouble when your uncle gets here.”