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Jiang Cheng did not have time for this.
He had an exam today. It was worth seventy-five percent of his grade. There were no retakes allowed. If he flunked it, his mother would skin him alive. And yet here he was, dealing with an unforeseen situation only fifteen minutes before he had to leave to get to campus on time.
A man dressed in dark green brocaded robes sat on the floor of Jiang Cheng’s apartment with tears pooling in the rims of his eyes. The robes he wore had delicate golden trim, and the golden crown in his hair that held his topknot was tied with a white silk ribbon. Fabrics and accessories like these weren’t something that the average person would see on a typical day to day basis in the modern world. Unfortunately for Jiang Cheng, he was quite familiar with them.
For the past week, he’d been dealing with surprise visits from a time traveler. That’s right. An actual time traveler from ancient China.
Jiang Cheng wasn’t the type to believe in such nonsense either, alright?
But one night, when he was in the middle of rinsing his hair out in the shower, the bathtub suddenly filled with an ungodly amount of steam, completely blinding him. By the time the fog had dissipated, there was a man Jiang Cheng never seen before sitting right between his legs, completely bare ass naked himself. Of course, Jiang Cheng had reacted like any normal person would have: he screamed and reached for the nearest object to bash the intruder over the head with. Said object had ended up being a bottle of shampoo. That had successfully incapacitated the stranger. But then Jiang Cheng was forced to lug a strange naked man out of his bathtub and dress him decently before figuring out what the fuck was going on.
After the man woke, he had acted like a straight up amnesiac. He practically hadn’t known his left from right, unfamiliar with everything from modern technology to basic turns of phrases everyone should know. The only thing he did know, was Jiang Cheng. Or rather, Jiang Cheng’s face.
According to this lunatic, Jiang Cheng looked just like his husband, who was also called Jiang Cheng in his timeline. After staring at his face for an uncomfortable amount of time, the stranger concluded that Jiang Cheng was likely to be the reincarnation of said husband.
To Jiang Cheng, that was a bunch of bullshit. No way any of that shit was true.
But as soon as he got the idea to drop this weirdo off at a police station, the man had literally vanished before his eyes in a poof of smoke.
He thought he’d dreamt the whole thing, that he had pulled too many all-nighters and had hallucinated an entire person.
Except that it happened again.
That same man was in his bed when he woke up one morning some days later. Thankfully he’d been dressed that time, in a thin robe that people from the modern world definitely did not wear to sleep. That had also ended in disaster.
Two times might have been a coincidence, but by the fifth time Jiang Cheng had no choice other than to believe the time traveling business—it was either that or check himself into a mental hospital.
“Jiang-xiong—” the era displaced man whined from where he pitifully sat on the foyer’s floor. “Jiang-xiong, you can’t leave! I don’t know how to do anything in this era!”
Jiang Cheng took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He’d been afflicted by a curse.
And that curse was named Nie Huaisang.
“Nie Huaisang,” Jiang Cheng pinched the bridge of his nose as he stood in the doorway, about to head out. “You have the absolute worst timing.”
A pair of slender hands adorned with jewelled rings desperately grasped at Jiang Cheng’s clothes. “Please—”
Jiang Cheng resolutely tore Nie Huaisang’s tightly gripped hands off of the hem of his shirt. “I can’t stay with you, I have an exam today!” Slipping his feet into his sneakers, he shrugged his backpack on and fixed Huaisang with a scathing look as he gripped the doorknob. “Stay here and don’t go out. If anybody sees you, you’ll probably be sent to some sort of laboratory and get experimented on.”
Jiang Cheng ignored Nie Huaisang’s pathetic crying and shut the door behind him.
There was nothing he could do for that weirdo anyways.
He made it to campus on time and took his exam, a whiny voice playing in the back of his mind all the while.
Nie Huaisang was gone by the time he got back. But that was nothing to celebrate over, because the time traveler was back again the very next day.
“Why do you keep showing up here,” Jiang Cheng dropped his book bag to his bedroom floor and sighed heavily.
The man dressed in exquisite brocade looked up at him helplessly. “I-I wish I knew…”
Jiang Cheng sighed again, crossing his bedroom to toss some magazines on his nightstand over to Nie Huaisang before sitting at his desk to study for another upcoming exam.
Whether he liked it or not, Nie Huaisang was now a regular ‘guest’ at his apartment, showing up at odd hours without warning and messing up his schedule. This man did not know what refrigerators were, how to use the stove or microwave, and that the toilet was just a kind of latrine and was not a water monster that would suck out his soul from his ass. He was completely useless and helpless, and could only rely on Jiang Cheng to help him navigate this strange new world.
Despite being older than Jiang Cheng, he was whiny, needy, and spoiled. He spoke strangely, and he always carried around a folding fan like some fancy fop. According to Nie Huaisang, he was from a time where people ‘cultivated’ to reach immortality. Organizations of men and women would hone their minds and bodies in the efforts of reaching this goal, serving the public by eliminating supernatural threats like ghosts in the process. Apparently, Nie Huaisang led one of those organizations as an official but eventually stepped down after marrying another cultivator—the man Jiang Cheng was ‘reincarnated’ from.
It was good that Jiang Cheng no longer had a roommate living with him in his apartment; there was no way he’d be able to explain something like this to another person when he could barely believe it himself. Jiang Cheng just tried to live his life as normally as possible in the meantime, attending his classes and working at his part time job.
A trembling voice distracted Jiang Cheng from his reading. “J-Jiang-xiong…”
“What.” Jiang Cheng pressed two fingers against the space between his eyebrows as he stubbornly tried to focus on his work.
Nie Huaisang gripped at his hand fan nervously. “Jiang-xiong, this one is hungry.”
“I bought you some pork filled bao and some cold noodles last night. You know where the fridge is.”
“This one already ate them though…” Nie Huaisang replied timidly. “Is there not a servant here who provides your regular meals?”
Jiang Cheng snorted as he looked through his notes, “I’m a fucking college student, I don’t have servants.”
“W-Well perhaps—”
Jiang Cheng was getting fed up with this man’s pestering. He slammed his hand down onto his desk and whipped his head around. “Quit bothering me, I’m busy! Why don’t you just go to your brother you mentioned having?! I’m sure his ‘reincarnation’ is around here too, right?!”
At that, Nie Huaisang became deathly quiet. His honey eyes averted to the side, looking shuttered and distant. The man would often recount how strict his elder brother was with him, but any time Jiang Cheng questioned this strict brother’s whereabouts in his original timeline, he would change the subject.
At Nie Huaisang’s cheerless expression, Jiang Cheng realized he’d said the wrong thing and backtracked. Rubbing his forehead, he swivelled his chair around and spoke, “…Look, you…you can still stay here alright? We just need to set up some boundaries first.”
Nie Huaisang seemed to look a little less cowed. “Boundaries?”
Jiang Cheng nodded his head awkwardly.
“Like, for example, you don’t go into my bedroom without permission. Don’t go into the bathroom while I’m in there either.”
Nie Huaisang had already seen Jiang Cheng in his birthday suit twice now.
“The spare bedroom is all yours. I don’t care what you do in there as long as you don’t trash the place. You can eat whatever you want in the fridge. You’re not allowed to go outside without me. Don’t open the door for anyone either if someone comes by while I’m not home.”
“This one will do as Jiang-xiong says. Will you also help me figure out why I keep ending up in this timeline?”
Jiang Cheng pursed his lips at that. He’d already done plenty of google searching regarding this predicament, and all that had come up were movie synopses and baseless forum discussions by lunatics and film fanatics. He supposed his university’s library could be a better source of information worth trying though. “…I’ll try,” he answered eventually.
Helping Nie Huaisang would also be helping himself anyways. The sooner they were able to resolve this time traveling business, the better.
“Alright, now stay close and don’t wander off.”
Jiang Cheng glanced around carefully as he led Nie Huaisang out of his apartment complex in broad daylight. The other man was wearing a pair of his own sunglasses, a baseball cap, along with some gym shorts that didn’t fit him anymore and one of his old swim club shirts. Nie Huaisang’s hair was extremely long and eye-catching, so Jiang Cheng had braided it for him beforehand as well.
“Where did you say we were going?”
“To get you some normal clothes in your size,” Jiang Cheng answered impatiently. He didn’t own a car, so they would have to take the local bus to get to the clothing outlets downtown. He gripped Nie Huaisang by the wrist and pulled him along the sidewalk until they reached a crosswalk. Jiang Cheng pressed the pedestrian call button and released his grip on Nie Huaisang. Then he thought better of it and grabbed the man again, worried that he might run into traffic or something. Nie Huaisang was enraptured by the changing traffic lights. He reached over to press the call button himself, amused by the chirping noise it would make each time he did so. Eventually the beeping got on Jiang Cheng’s nerves and he swatted the time traveler’s hands away from the device. The signal changed and Jiang Cheng hurried them across. It would be another block of walking before they reached the bus stop.
Jiang Cheng quickly realized that putting Nie Huaisang in this getup made him more suspicious than not, as other pedestrians walking past them would often send strange looks their way, probably curious if he was a celebrity or something. Nie Huaisang was too enraptured with the city’s scenery and bustling streets to notice, pointing out almost every pigeon and other birds perched on the road signs and street lamps as they walked. “And what kind of bird is that?”
Jiang Cheng didn’t bother to look up from his phone as he answered, “Don’t know. Let’s hurry, the bus should be here soon.”
Sure enough, the creaking brakes of the city bus sounded out before it came to a gradual halt at the bus stop just as the two of them arrived. Jiang Cheng herded Nie Huaisang onto the vehicle, paid for both of their fares, and then had the man sit in the window seat while he took the aisle seat. “It’s a half-hour drive,” he told his companion. “Just sit quietly until then.”
Unfortunately for Jiang Cheng, Nie Huaisang was much too fascinated by the sights their bus was driving past to be silent or still, pestering him the entire way with curious questions. Jiang Cheng was exhausted by the time they arrived at their destination, but he still had to complete the main objective of today’s excursion.
“Try this on.” Jiang Cheng stacked another shirt onto the pile of clothes steadily rising in Nie Huaisang’s arms. “This one too. And this.” Jiang Cheng moved to the section where the men’s bottoms were hung onto a clearance rack. “You need pants, but these all look too large,” he said as he rummaged around. He ended up asking a sales clerk for help, who showed him where they stocked bottoms in Nie Huaisang’s size.
The man from ancient China hadn’t the slightest clue what was going on judging by the owlish look upon his face. All of his clothes were probably hand tailored for him or something.
Once Jiang Cheng was more or less satisfied with what he’d picked out for Nie Huaisang, he led the man to the changing rooms. “Put them on one at a time and then come out to show me how it looks.” He shoved Nie Huaisang into the small space and waited. After about ten minutes of waiting, he barked, “What’s taking you so long?!”
Nie Huaisang cried from behind the curtain, “I don’t know what I’m doing! These clothes are so strange! There are these metal things on them—no sashes or belts!”
“Oh, for the love of—” Jiang Cheng pushed the curtain open and marched inside the changing room. He now knew what it was like to have a hopeless little brother who needed help for every little thing.
“Lift your leg. Your other leg, idiot! Okay. This zips up like this, then you button it up.”
Most of the clothes that Jiang Cheng had chosen ended up suiting Nie Huaisang pretty well. As the older man appraised himself in the large mirror after putting on the last few items of clothing, he smiled and turned his head to look over at Jiang Cheng.
“Hehe, we match,” he said, gesturing to the shirt Jiang Cheng was wearing. Jiang Cheng looked down at himself. Nie Huaisang was right; he was wearing a purple crewneck shirt under a plaid shacket, while Nie Huaisang was wearing the exact same thing, only in green.
“…Yeah,” he mumbled. The dressing room suddenly felt rather heated. Jiang Cheng blamed it on the building’s shitty air conditioning.
“What. Do you want.” Jiang Cheng opened his bedroom door after a knocking had disturbed him from going through his latest reading assignments.
The older man standing on the other side flashed a bright smile towards him. “Is Jiang-xiong busy?”
“Yes.” Jiang Cheng attempted to close the door on this time traveling nuisance, but Nie Huaisang was quick to place his foot into the doorway, preventing this action.
“Please show mercy Jiang-xiong! This poor one spends all day alone with no one to talk to!”
“That’s not my problem!” Jiang Cheng pushed at the door until Nie Huaisang had no choice but to remove his foot, lest it be crushed. The door shut, effectively locking out his unwanted guest. A series of bangs were then heard as Nie Huaisang desperately pummelled his fists against the wooden door.
“Not even your original incarnation was ever this cruel to me!”
Jiang Cheng could not fathom why his past self would ever want to be with someone so annoying and whiny. “I already gave you my iPad to watch videos and play games on! Did you forget how to use it?!”
He’d even disabled the stupid password so he wouldn’t have to keep punching it in every time it auto-slept or shut off when Nie Huaisang accidentally pressed the wrong button. Since there was nothing for it but to continue dealing with each other, Jiang Cheng had begun slowly but surely assimilating Nie Huaisang into modern society—at least, enough so that he didn’t have to worry so much whenever the man was left to his own devices. He’d introduced Nie Huaisang to smartphones, reality TV, weighted blankets, instant noodles—all sorts of things that would keep him distracted. Apparently none of these things were enough though, because the man still insisted on being a pest.
“The portable talking box is not sufficient enough! I require human interaction, Jiang-xiong! I am going mad, I tell you!”
When Jiang Cheng reopened the door, Nie Huaisang fell inside his bedroom with a yelp, landing awkwardly onto his front.
“Fine. You can come in, but if you can’t behave yourself and refrain from being annoying I’ll banish you forever.”
The time displaced man eagerly agreed to his conditions, getting to his feet and sitting on Jiang Cheng’s bed. Jiang Cheng opened his mouth to discourage this audacious gesture, but when he saw Nie Huaisang’s pleased expression as he kicked off his shoes and made himself comfortable, the words seemed to die in his throat.
As he begrudgingly resumed his studying, Jiang Cheng quietly noticed the way Nie Huaisang would occasionally sniff at his bedding with a satisfied smile, or fondly hug his stuffed dog plush out of the corner of his eye. Nie Huaisang seemed to find great comfort in the things that had Jiang Cheng’s scent. The man quickly fell asleep like that, and by the time Jiang Cheng had finished his work and looked back over, he had already vanished back to his own timeline.
Despite having an iPad and a Nintendo Switch at his disposal, Nie Huaisang preferred spending all his time in Jiang Cheng’s room any time he was home. Jiang Cheng allowed this simply because he couldn’t handle Nie Huaisang’s whining any time he shut his bedroom door. This man was stickier than an open jar of honey.
A wooden fan tapped against Jiang Cheng’s problem set packet, “And what is this?”
Jiang Cheng nudged the object away with his pen and grunted, “Homework.”
“What’s ‘homework’?”
“They’re assignments given to me by my professor that I need to complete and bring back to class for a grade.”
Nie Huaisang immediately wrinkled his nose in disgust at the explanation. “Ugh! You’re telling me there are lectures led by others similar to the likes of Lan Qiren in this era as well? Now I understand why you are so irritated all the time.”
Jiang Cheng looked up with a frown.
“How’d you know my professor’s name?”
Nie Huaisang’s face grew even more unsightly.
He tapped his wooden fan against his forehead and sighed, “I do not belong here.”
Though Jiang Cheng had been using some of his spare time to research Nie Huaisang in the campus library, he hadn’t come up with much of anything thus far. It didn't seem like Nie Huaisang would be ceasing his frequent visits to the modern world any time soon.
Even though Jiang Cheng already had his plate full with his own personal life, it was…kind of nice having someone around again. After Wei Wuxian left to go live with his boyfriend, Jiang Cheng sort of stopped doing the things he used to do for fun and just focused on school and work. Now that Nie Huaisang was here, they’d play video games and watch movies sometimes—Jiang Cheng would even take him to the park or skating rink. (He took Nie Huaisang to the gym once but that had ended in disaster.) Anyways, Jiang Cheng had actually been enjoying Nie Huaisang’s company, and he often looked forward to coming home from work or school to find the man there waiting for him.
Nie Huaisang was definitely weird, but he was also kind of fun. He was a chatterbox that asked too many questions and went on unrelated tangents, but he always asked Jiang Cheng about his day or what he was up to.
Someone like that—who genuinely seemed to care about him—wasn’t something Jiang Cheng was used to outside of his sister and best friend.
If Nie Huaisang never figured out how to stop winding up in Jiang Cheng’s timeline…maybe that wouldn’t be so bad after all.
The duration of how long Nie Huaisang would stay in the modern era was strangely getting longer and longer. Normally Nie Huaisang would vanish by nighttime, but these days he’d been having to sleep in the guest room overnight.
“What should I do?” Nie Huaisang tapped the butt end of his folding fan against his lips with a troubled look as he reclined on Jiang Cheng's bed. “It’s been three full days since I’ve winded up here again. A-Cheng must be so worried…”
Jiang Cheng glanced at the other man from his desk, pausing in his work for a moment. He knew Nie Huaisang was referring to his Jiang Cheng—Jiang Wanyin—and not him, but hearing the term of endearment his own family uses for him coming from Nie Huaisang’s mouth made him feel funny.
Jiang Cheng looked down at his unfinished notes and chewed at the eraser end of his pencil. “…What’s he like? This Wanyin person.”
“Well…He’s a lot like you unsurprisingly,” Nie Huaisang said, his mood improving slightly. “Irascible, moody, ornery, strict, quick to anger…”
Jiang Cheng scowled, somewhat offended. “All you’ve said are bad qualities. Why marry someone like that?” The fact that his supposed original incarnation was still able to get himself a husband in spite of his horrid personality while Jiang Cheng couldn’t keep a girlfriend for longer than two weeks also grated on his nerves.
A small smile graced Nie Huaisang’s lips as he shook his head. “Beneath all of his thorns, he’s someone who genuinely cares for those close to him.” The shorter man hugged the throw pillow to his chest. “And he loves me very much.”
Jiang Cheng looked at the man for a while before he asked, “How did you two meet?”
What made him love you? What made you love him back?
Nie Huaisang’s smile grew mischievous. “Ohoho, curious are we? Shall I tell you? Mine and my beloved A-Cheng’s love story is quite the entertaining tale~”
Suddenly feeling irritated and embarrassed, Jiang Cheng turned his body away and refocused on his studies. “Never mind. I don’t care.”
“Ah-ah-ah, I’m afraid it is too late to change your mind! I’ve already decided to tell you!” The annoying time traveler loudly cleared his throat. Jiang Cheng groaned and reach for his earbuds, cursing when he realized their batteries were out of juice.
And that was how Jiang Cheng became subjected to a three hour long love story that could have been told in less than fifteen minutes.
Midterms had passed like a breeze in the wind and now the semester was nearing its conclusion with finals coming up. Jiang Cheng was mentally preparing himself for a busy next couple of weeks. He probably wouldn’t have much time to deal with Nie Huaisang, even more glued to his textbooks and laptop than ever before. He had just exited Lan Qiren’s lecture hall and was heading to his next class when he spotted a familiar man with a long braid barrelling straight towards him.
“Huaisang?!”
Nie Huaisang was dressed in the clothes Jiang Cheng had bought him, so he didn’t look too out of place out in public. The older man came to a screeching halt before him, an elated expression upon his face.
“Jiang-xiong! I saw him!”
Jiang Cheng glanced around, wary that the other students on campus would notice something off about Nie Huaisang despite his modern appearance. “What? Saw who? What’re you doing here?”
He didn’t know how Nie Huaisang managed to find this place, much less he himself on such a large campus. Unfortunately, Nie Huaisang’s answer only added to his confusion.
“Myself!”
“Huh—”
Before Jiang Cheng could get any further clarification, Nie Huaisang gasped and darted off again. “There he is! Jiang-xiong, this one is going to speak to him!”
“What?! Huaisang, don’t speak to anyone! Hey! Come back here!”
Jiang Cheng sprinted after the eccentric man, praying to any god that was listening that nothing horrible would come of this.
Nie Huaisang was surprisingly fast when he was determined to do something; Jiang Cheng chased him all the way to the library where he lost sight of the man only because he got stuck waiting at the entrance as several students suddenly filed out of it carrying stacks of books. As soon as he got inside, he whipped his head back and forth, scanning the building’s interior for the person he was looking for. He thought he saw the tail end of a braid flicking behind one of the aisles of books in the back section and hurried over. However, he was so focused on catching up to Nie Huaisang that he failed to noticed the other student coming from that direction off to the side. In his rush, Jiang Cheng accidentally shoulder checked the student with an ‘oof!’, causing them to lose their grip on whatever they were carrying. Slips of paper flew into the air while pens and pencils scattered everywhere, creating a huge mess.
“Shit!”
Jiang Cheng bent down and hurriedly picked up the other student’s things. “Sorry. Did you see a man with—” he paused mid sentence as he looked up to hand over a messy stack of papers, his eyes widening like giant saucers.
“Huaisang?!”
The other student blinked at him. Although his hair was only shoulder length, he had Nie Huaisang’s exact same face, right down to the shape of his eyes and curvy slant of his nose.
But…if this wasn’t the Nie Huaisang of the past that drove him crazy, then this had to be the modern day Huaisang!
“Um, do I know you?”
Not yet, Jiang Cheng thought.
“Uh, I think we had a class together once,” he lied.
“Oh.” It didn’t seem like the present day Nie Huaisang believed him. The other student looked down at the stack of papers still held in Jiang Cheng’s outstretched hand and frowned. “Oh, man. My paper’s ruined. I just printed it out, too.”
It was then that Jiang Cheng noticed the giant footprint on the uppermost sheet of paper. That was definitely his fault.
“Sorry…I’ll pay the fee to get it reprinted.”
Nie Huaisang seemed satisfied with that, surprisingly not making a bigger deal out of it. Jiang Cheng had a thought.
If the Nie Huaisang of the past belonged to Jiang Wanyin, then maybe this Nie Huaisang of the present could belong to him.
“Hey. Let me also buy you a coffee in apology?”
“I don’t like coffee.”
Ancient Nie Huaisang didn’t like coffee either; when Jiang Cheng had let him try it he said it was an evil concoction of horribleness meant to steal the souls of the innocent. The Nie Huaisang from the past hadn’t liked coffee, but he did end up enjoying a different kind of drink Jiang Cheng had introduced to him.
“Bubble tea?” he tried instead.
Modern Nie Huaisang perked up at the suggestion, spreading his lips into a smile.
“Okay.”
If the time traveling Nie Huaisang was still running around campus, Jiang Cheng had completely forgotten about that dilemma by now. He was too busy getting another copy of the paper he’d ruined printed and making conversation with the other version of the man, quietly noting their similarities and differences and getting to know this modern Nie Huaisang.
“A-Cheng, I can’t find the rolling pin.”
Jiang Cheng looked up from his laptop at the young man who was standing in his bedroom doorway. There was flour dusted all over his hands, some of it smeared onto his cheeks as well.
“Last I saw it, it was in the bottom cabinet,” he replied.
Nie Huaisang made a noise of frustration, turning away to head back into the kitchen. “I already looked in there.”
Jiang Cheng made sure to close out of the browser he had open showing the tracking information for expensive paints he’d recently purchased before he stood and followed him. “Just use your hands to roll the dough into balls or something.”
Huaisang answered sulkily, “That would defeat the entire purpose of me buying those bird shaped cookie cutters.”
“We could just order some cookies at the bakery…” They could probably make them bird shaped or whatever.
His boyfriend wasn’t pleased with his suggestion.
“No! I want to make them myself from scratch—they have to be made special! It’s not everyday you get to celebrate an anniversary, y’know.”
That much was true but...
Jiang Cheng cast a wary glance at the mess of ingredients laid out on their kitchen counter. He spotted some eggshells still stuck inside the bowl of raw cookie dough and winced. Nie Huaisang, bless his heart, was a poor baker at best. At worst he was a walking fire hazard.
Come to think of it, the Nie Huaisang from the past couldn’t cook either. The one time Jiang Cheng had allowed him to use the stove he ended up having to open every window in the apartment to air out all of the smoke before dragging the man outside so they didn’t die of smoke inhalation. It had been some time since Jiang Cheng had thought of that version of Huaisang.
Mysteriously, Jiang Cheng never saw the time travelling man again after that day in the library. It was as if the time traveler had been replaced by the modern version of himself or something.
The only memento left of the odd man was a silk hand fan adorned with lotus flowers that was left on Jiang Cheng’s desk. Jiang Cheng ended up gifting it to the modern Huaisang. It felt only right. Though it was a bit saddening that he never got to say goodbye, Jiang Cheng knew it was probably for the best.
“—Are you listening to me?”
His thoughts were pulled back to the present as a shorter man with hair that reached his shoulders poked at his cheek impatiently. “Uh-huh.” Jiang Cheng casually swiped a finger through some of the flour on the countertops and wiped it on Huaisang’s nose; it paired up nicely with the flour that was already smeared on his cheek.
Nie Huaisang was unamused. The shorter man turned his body away with a huff and glared down at his baking catastrophe, seemingly having given up on getting any help from Jiang Cheng with his current dilemma. “Maybe if I smash it down with a large plate…”
Whatever Huaisang ended up doing to bake his cookies, Jiang Cheng knew he’d probably wind up locking himself in the bathroom after forcing himself to eat them out of pure love.
Whatever, it was fine. He’d gone through worse things for Huaisang.
“You’re heavy.”
Jiang Cheng didn’t budge from his comfortable position in resting his head atop his boyfriend’s, simply mumbling an agreement into the man’s soft hair. He lifted his arms and wrapped them around Huaisang’s middle, fighting back a smile when Huaisang leaned into his touch.
When Nie Huaisang came to, he was lying on a settee that was positioned near a lattice window overlooking a small courtyard. A gentle breeze wafted inside the room, bringing the calming scent of plum blossoms along with it.
“There you are.”
A deep voice from nearby jolted Nie Huaisang into sitting upright.
“I should have known you’d be hiding in here. This place is the most suitable for taking a nap.”
“A-Cheng!”
Jiang Cheng grunted in mild surprise as Nie Huaisang leapt from the settee and tackled him in a fierce embrace without warning.
“I missed you so much!” The man in his arms smelled of lotuses and fresh autumn water. Oh, how he’d yearned for this familiar scent and touch.
Jiang Cheng clicked his tongue in faux irritation. “Don’t be dramatic. We just saw each other this morning.”
Nie Huaisang tipped his head and blinked up at his lover.
“En? But I’ve been gone for weeks…”
“What are you on about now?”
Jiang Cheng shook his head and unceremoniously disentangled himself from Nie Huaisang’s arms, heading outside. “Come,” he beckoned with a jerk of his head, “You’ve slacked off enough for one day. Join me in my study.”
“Gladly.”
Jiang Cheng nearly tripped on the step leading into the courtyard at Huaisang’s response, looking back over his shoulder. “What did you say?”
Jiang Cheng’s bewildered expression caused a laugh to ripple from Nie Huaisang’s chest.
“I said I would gladly accompany you to your study, husband.”
When Nie Huaisang did not follow up with a joke or silly comment, Jiang Cheng asked, “…Are you feeling unwell?”
Nie Huaisang trotted over to loop his arm around his cultivation partner’s. “Not at all. This one simply wants to be by your side.”
Jiang Cheng seemed to recover himself. He shook his head slightly before he headed out of the courtyard with Nie Huaisang still attached to him. “What nonsense. You’re always by my side.”
Nie Huaisang's eyes fluttered shut as he rested his head against the other’s arm and nodded.
“Always.”
help him