Chapter Text
Twirling the glass in his hand, Meng Yao took a sip of his tea. It was the perfect combination of sweetness and acidity, the ice glistening as it sat in the cup. Lan Xichen was still talking, his chopsticks placed neatly on top of his bowl of rice as expected of someone raised with impeccable manners.
“—he came to pick me up right outside the law firm. Oh A-Yao, you should’ve seen the way he looked driving the car with one hand, it was so cool—”
As Lan Xichen continued the recount of his night with Nie Mingjue, Meng Yao listened distractedly, his mind working desperately to figure out what exactly about this situation was so familiar. The story? No, definitely his first time hearing it. The restaurant they’re at? Rare for him to come, but not unheard of. Then Meng Yao realized. The way Xichen was talking about Nie Mingjue was almost—no, exactly —like the way his brother would talk about Jiang Yanli. That was the moment Meng Yao connected the dots.
Oh, Xichen’s in love.
The second he put it into words, he knew it was true. Lan Xichen’s so incredibly in love and it’s beautiful, the sun glinting off the dark brown of his eyes as he continued to tell Meng Yao how capable Nie Mingjue is, how politely he treated the waiters. And it hurts, breaking something inside of him as Meng Yao continues to smile, nails digging into the flesh of his palms while nodding along to whatever Xichen is saying. No one else gets to see Xichen like this—with the sparkle in his eyes and pure unadulterated joy in his face but him—and perhaps Mingjue. Meng Yao’s heart, which he thought was already broken, cracked a little more.
“And so, he brought me to the door. How sweet is that?” Lan Xichen sighed. “I envy his future partner.”
“Da-Ge is quite the respectable person,” Meng Yao agreed, biting the inside of his cheek.
“Right?” Lan Xichen exclaimed, finally picking up his chopsticks to resume eating now that he’s finished his story.
Meng Yao thought he tasted blood. He still forced himself to smile and nod. And the worst thing is, it’s not like he doesn’t understand where Lan Xichen was coming from. Maybe he even understood too much. Nie Mingjue with his scary-looking exterior actually hid the softest, most protective and good heart to exist. Meng Yao couldn’t hope to compare to that. He knew himself, and he knew at his core that he wasn’t the kind of person that could even begin to measure up to either Lan Xichen or Nie Mingjue. He wasn’t blind to his own faults, which meant he knew exactly how not good his heart was. Meng Yao smiled wider, his cheeks aching as his dimples deepened.
“I’m so glad you get me,” Lan Xichen placed a hand on Meng Yao’s. The contact burned, Meng Yao aware of the lightest glance of skin against skin as he struggled between wanting to withdraw while craving for more touch. “Seriously A-Yao, who else can I talk about this to? Definitely not Uncle or Wangji.” Then Xichen laughed, and Meng Yao wanted to die . He was surprised that angels weren’t descending from heaven from the pure effervescence of Xichen’s laugh.
As he looked at the curve of Xichen’s lips, and felt the warmth of his skin, Meng Yao realized that he was fucked. So incredibly fucked.
Meng Yao continued to organize his computer files as he listened to Nie Huaisang’s tinny voice through the speaker of his phone.
“So then,” he was saying. “I saw the most beautiful fan to ever exist and of course I had to buy it. Oh, the intricate gold designs on it and the way—are you even listening to me?”
Meng Yao sighed, placing another PDF into the folder titled ‘latest project’. “Of course, Huaisang. You know I’m perfectly capable of doing two things at once.”
“Hmmm, I don’t think it’s the files that’s got you so distracted though today. Anything wrong?” Meng Yao could almost see Nie Huaisang’s teasing but concerned eyes in his mind.
“Nothing really,” he responded. “I just recently realized something that I should’ve known earlier.”
“What is it?” Nie Huaisang asked, voice turning serious .
Meng Yao let himself start a new spreadsheet, adding three separate items into it while deliberating how to answer. On one hand, it was likely that Huaisang already realized, given he’s Nie Mingjue’s brother. On the other hand, saying it out loud to someone else made the fact even more real than it already was. And Meng Yao didn’t know if his heart could handle that. For how much he prided himself on being logical, his emotions seemed to control him an awful lot recently. Meng Yao closed his eyes, mentally counting to five and putting another two items into his spreadsheet before opening his mouth, “Er-Ge is in love with Da-Ge.”
“Oh,” Nie Huaisang didn’t seem surprised.
“You already knew, didn’t you?” Meng Yao’s finger clicked on his mouse as he copied and pasted column A’s items into column B.
“Yes,” Nie Huaisang sighed. “Yes I did.” There was a pause and then a click as if Huaisang closed a door. “Da-Ge might think he’s hiding his feelings well, and Er-Ge might be as oblivious as can be, but it’s clear they love each other.”
Meng Yao paused in his task, before methodically resuming his clicking as he reflexively smiled despite there being no one to see him, “Da-Ge is in love with Er-Ge too?”
“Honestly, I think he’s loved him since they were teenagers, and he’s never wavered,” Nie Huaisang confessed. There was rustling on the other side of the line like Huaisang rolled over in his bed. “Personally, I could never understand. There’s so many pretty people in the world, how can Da-Ge be so loyal?”
Meng Yao felt like laughing even as he mindlessly opened another file, categorically putting it where it belongs, “Perhaps you’ll understand one day.”
“Huh,” Nie Huaisang’s voice turned contemplative. “San-Ge, have you ever been in love?”
“No,” Meng Yao said without pause.
“Really?” Disbelief coloured the word.
“Yes, really,” Meng Yao affirmed. Another click, another item added to the folder. “Huaisang, don’t you think we should try to get Da-Ge and Er-Ge together? I mean, they genuinely deserve each other.”
There was no response, Nie Huaisang seemingly considering the idea deeply. “To be honest, San-Ge, I’m not sure. I think it’s a delicate situation. They’ve known each other their whole life and if we get this wrong? It could end so badly.”
Meng Yao made a noise of understanding, before pursing his lips. “It’s not that I don’t agree. But I’m equally afraid that they’ll dance around each other indefinitely if we don’t do something .”
More shuffling, before Meng Yao heard Nie Huaisang sigh. “You’re not wrong.”
The two remained in silence for another couple minutes, Meng Yao working on his files, Nie Huaisang seeming to bring out his paint supplies by the sound of drawers opening and pens clinking.
“What do you propose?”
“Well,” Meng Yao contemplated. “Do you think Er-Ge even knows that he likes Da-Ge? He might be one of the kindest men alive, but he’s unfathomably dense when it comes to his own feelings and from the way he talked to me, I’m almost one hundred percent sure he has no idea.”
Nie Huaisang laughed, “You’re right about that. I think the first thing to do would be to have Er-Ge realize his feelings or we’d get nowhere.”
“Er-Ge might be one of the most oblivious people alive, but he genuinely loves Da-Ge. I feel like it won’t be that hard to make him realize? He just needs a push. Perhaps we can get Da-Ge to confess?”
“San-Ge,” Nie Huaisang said skeptically. “Do you really think we can get Da-Ge of all people to confess? Maybe when undead corpses start roaming the land.”
“Alright,” Meng Yao acquiesced. “No need to sound that incredulous. I simply wanted to give him a chance. I mean, you’ve got to understand my perspective. If someone like Da-Ge confessed to me after one of those oddly romantic dinners they have, it’d be difficult to refuse even if I didn’t love him. Add that to Er-Ge’s gentle demeanour and the starlit night sky and you can understand right?”
There was silence on the other side of the line as the sound of clattering was heard.
“Huaisang?” Meng Yao paused for a second in his filing. “Are you okay?”
“You love them,” Nie Huaisang sounded breathless, even as notes of shock mixed in. “Oh, you love them.”
Meng Yao paused, before asking lightly, “What?”
“You love them,” Nie Huaisang repeated, voice sure despite his bewildered tone. “Both of them.”
“That is simply—”
“Please, San-Ge. You love them,” Nie Huaisang softened his voice.
Meng Yao didn’t say anything, fingers tapping against his keyboard as he continued to work on autopilot, before he sighed, “How did you know?”
“To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure until a minute ago. I suspected, but that was all it was. But when you spoke just now…” He trailed off. “You love them. Oh god, now that I recall previous times…oh god. You love them so incredibly much I can’t believe I didn’t notice sooner. I’ve been so blind to miss that look in your eyes. You really look at them like they hung the moon in the sky and breathed life into every flower. It’s so obvious.”
“I—” Meng Yao didn’t know how to continue his sentence. After all, everything Nie Huaisang said was true, from the flowers to the love.
“You love more deeply than you believe,” Nie Huaisang spoke gently, as if he was afraid of breaking Meng Yao’s heart, as if there was still anything left of it to break, smashed into pieces as it’s been ever since he was young.
Meng Yao could only manage a bitter smile, even as his computer finally lay forgotten in front of him.