Chapter Text
"You want me to what," Wen Qing said, staring at Nie Huaisang as if he'd grown eight extra heads.
"Marry my brother," Nie Huaisang said brightly. "It's actually perfect, bear with me: you know each other, he respects you, you enjoy causing him pain…"
"I'm his doctor," said Wen Qing. "I don't enjoy causing anyone pain, quite the opposite."
"But…"
"You're making this unnecessarily weird, Nie-gongzi, please get to the point."
Nie Huaisang slumped with a sigh. "Okay, okay, fine, listen: if you marry into our family, it sends a message to the Wens who might want to desert from your uncle that they're safe to do so, and, and! There's this big chunk of northeastern Qishan that was annexed from the Nie about a hundred years ago…"
"Oh, so that's what it is," Wen Qing said. "You only want me for my vast tracts of land. How typical of a man."
"I don't—I mean, obviously, I do, you're very beautiful—!"
"Marry me yourself, then," Wen Qing shot back. "I'm not marrying my own patient, it's horribly cliché."
"…okay," said Nie Huaisang, who'd made it his life's work to avoid any kind of personal responsibility. "Um. Before we go any further, there's something we should probably talk about…"
#
"You might have considered asking me out before you got married," Jiang Cheng growled at Nie Huaisang, who fanned himself and looked perfectly innocent about all of it.
"Well, I would have, but I didn't think you'd be interested, and Qing'r likes you..."
"She does?"
Jiang Cheng was not an idiot and did not miss Nie Huaisang's smug little smile. "Absolutely, but there's certain things that are deal-breakers for girls, and being stressed out about getting murdered by your monster of an uncle for treason against the sect for kissing a boy really snuffs out the flames of love, you know?"
Jiang Cheng rolled his eyes at him. "That'd kill the mood for anybody, genius."
"Fortunately," Nie Huaisang went on as though he hadn't heard him, "Wen-daifu is now married to the successor of the Qinghe Nie sect and hidden behind a wall of violently overprotective meat slabs who have stopped seeing her as a Wen dog and started seeing her as the woman who saved their beloved sect leader's life." He twirled a lock of his hair around his finger. "Also I promised her we could be as unusual a couple as she wanted, so long as we talked things out beforehand. None of this sticking her in the inner chambers."
"I'd sure fucking hope not," Jiang Cheng said hotly. "She deserves better!"
Nie Huaisang shot him a particularly foxy smile. "She does, doesn't she?"
Jiang Cheng shifted uneasily in his seat. "So what are you getting out of this?"
Nie Huaisang tapped his fan against his chin. "Besides an exquisitely aesthetic wife with a strong grasp of politics that I myself lack and incredible talent as a medical cultivator? Gosh, you really do have ridiculous standards…"
"I mean this—fucking ménage thing you're proposing with me, smartass!"
Nie Huaisang fluttered his lashes at him and dropped his voice. "Oh, that? I like mean boys." He paused for effect. "Also, Lan Wangji is very much off the market."
Jiang Cheng sighed deeply. Lan Wangji had taken to visiting Lotus Pier a lot lately, and Jiang Cheng's room was right next to Wei Wuxian's. He hadn't gotten enough sleep in recent weeks, which he would later blame for the decision he was about to make.
"Okay, fine," he said, "but I want to talk to Wen Qing first and make sure she's okay with it before we decide anything."
Nie Huaisang waggled his eyebrows offensively at him. He was cute, in a sort of dainty and dorky way, Jiang Cheng guessed. And it wasn't like Jiang Cheng had time to fritter away on matchmakers or visiting brothels (not that he'd ever had time or inclination anyway), what with his father making noises about stepping down as sect leader soon…
#
"As long as it doesn't interfere with your workload," Wen Qing said sternly, "then it's fine. Now take your clothes off."
"Thank you for being actually sane about this," Jiang Cheng blurted out, half a second before Nie Huaisang tackled him into bed.
#
Ten years later, Jiang Cheng's mother marched into his office, barred the door, and turned on him with a chilly glare. "I want you to explain," she said icily, "why Nie Huaisang and Wen Qing's two youngest children look like Jiangs."
Jiang Cheng wondered if he could escape out the window. Probably not. "Coincidence," he tried.
"Try again."
"They don't look that much like me," Jiang Cheng said sulkily, which also wasn't true, but he was Jiang-zongzhu now and he was much too old to be yelled at by his mom.
Anyway, they were adorable kids. Not that the older two weren't cute, but he'd contributed some damn good genes to the Nie and Wen clan pools…
His train of thought derailed as his mother thrust her finger under his nose. "I will assume," she said in deadly tones, "that the first by-blow was the result of a 'little oopsy', but where's your excuse for the second one?"
"Force of habit."
"Wen Qing," Madam Yu said sweetly, "specifically invented a cultivation process that allows healthy cultivator males to bear in vivo children. You may remember there was a bit of a fuss about the matter, especially when her husband volunteered to test out the process! You expect me to believe that your impregnating Nie Huaisang was an accident?!"
Jiang Cheng remembered. It had been a very eventful discussion conference. Jin Guangshan had had a fatal qi deviation about it. He set his jaw and said stiffly, "It's more reliable with two males. She's still working on the—"
"I don't care what she's working on," Madam Yu hissed. "Do I, or do I not, have two unacknowledged grandchildren?!"
Jiang Cheng nodded, prepared for the worst. He hadn't seen his mother this angry since Lan Wangji turned up on the doorstep with Wei Wuxian's dowry: several tons of expensive Gusu lumber, a talismanic paper processing technique that was the envy of the cultivation world, and, inexplicably, half a hundred chickens.
"Right," said Madam Yu, and turned on her heel to leave, pausing only to pick up…
…a sack of children's toys, including some quite expensive ones.
"Wait," Jiang Cheng said hurriedly. "Nie Mingjue already gave them that weird green thing with the bobbles sticking out."
Madam Yu turned back, her eyes narrowed. "Are you sure?"
"They've been hitting me in the head with it enough times on a day to day basis," Jiang Cheng said darkly, "so yeah, I'm sure."
"It's supposed to be educational."
"Well, it's teaching them something."
Madam Yu sniffed. Turned to go, paused, and then said "Well done," in a small voice.
Jiang Cheng was so stunned he hardly remembered to say goodbye to her as she left.
#
"'Well done'," Wen Qing said darkly. "For this?" She put an arm around Jiang Cheng's shoulder. "Your mom sucks," she muttered.
Jiang Cheng frowned. "No she doesn't," he said, though his heart wasn't in it.
"Yes she does," Nie Huaisang announced, and his two eldest chorused blunt agreement from where they were all painting a scroll (the oldest two were 'helping', mostly by making a mess of the paper and putting inky handprints on their father's face). "Terrible mom, acceptable-on-sufferance grandma. I still like her better than your dad, to be clear," he added. "He's on my shit list forever."
Wen Qing nodded and put an arm around Jiang Cheng's shoulders. "You're good for more than this," she said grimly. "You work hard for your sect. You could be Chief Cultivator someday."
Jiang Cheng blinked at her. "You think so?"
"I'm sure of it," Wen Qing said. "Nobody in their right mind would want the job. You'd be great at it."
Jiang Cheng looked at the kids—his kids, even if they didn't all share his blood—and thought about the kind of world he'd like to make for them. He thought of Jin Ling, twelve and gawky and awkwardly sweet.
"Yeah," he said quietly, "maybe I would."
#
At the very least, breaking up fights between helicopter uncle Nie Mingjue and intensely involved grandmother Yu Ziyuan was excellent for Nie Huaisang's combat cultivation skills.