Crowned in Glory (fear no more)

by Pip (Moirail)

Summary:

It doesn't take an especially strategic mind to recognize that a poorly-maintained weapon is no weapon at all. Nie Mingjue can fix that.

Notes:

my twt, the title

thank you thank you for letting me steal your ideas kyle!!

now with art holy shit KYLEEEEE in-line with the text so be a little careful if you're scrolling in public

Chapter 1

It’s been a long day. A long series of days, made longer by the blood and gore and relentless exhaustion that beats up against even Nie Mingjue’s broad shoulders. They have all been in battles. No leader among them has gone untested. But there are battles and sorties, and there is war, and Nie Mingjue is tired. 

Killing is exhausting - for all that wetting Baxia’s blade with blood makes his own blood sing with her in his hand, for all that her killing intent and the energy he draws from the spirit of her has kept him safe and alive, it doesn’t make Nie Mingjue anything more or less than human. Human and exhausted. 

The real problem is the noise. 

It would be different, he thinks, if there were any break from the noise of it, but the problem with fighting an endless army of the undead is that they don’t need to sleep, and they moan and scream and rattle over the fortified ridge no matter how many of them are cut down. 

Nie Mingjue finds himself looking over that ridge more often than he’d like to admit, watching it for some sign that Wen Ruohan’s army has finally gathered the strength and mass to press forward, to spill into their fortified camp and tear them all apart. 

It hasn’t happened yet, but that doesn’t stop Nie Mingjue from looking, from jolting with shock when he sees a narrow little slip of a figure up on the hill. 

The shadow slips down the ridge, avoiding the firelight of the little posted-out camps that the soldiers - cultivators, sect cultivators, Nie Mingjue’s own shidi - have set up around the perimeter, like a ghost. Like a demon. Like - 

“Wei Wuxian,” Nie Mingjue calls, not loud. They’re not too far apart - Nie Mingjue is still, but the shadow is fast. The shadow swivels to face him, alabaster-faced and blank-eyed, and he knows that he’s right. 

“Nie-zongzhu.” Wei Wuxian’s red mouth twists into something a little ironic. It’s not a smile. Nie Mingjue doesn’t know the Jiangs well - his sect’s politics have always been more entangled with the Lan than the Jiang - but he remembers Wei Wuxian being a smiling, sweet boy. Joyful, graceful in the way that deer are as they’re growing out of adolescence. 

There is nothing joyful in Wei Wuxian now, no coltish grace or self-conscious care in his movement, like he’s aware that his limbs are a little too long for his body and he’s working to correct it. He is unnaturally still in the way he stands, even when the cold wind flicks the end of his ponytail like a playful hand. 

“Where are you going?” Nie Mingjue doesn’t mean it in any particular way, and his tone’s as neutral as it ever is, but he can see immediately that Wei Wuxian takes it wrong. He takes a lot of things wrong, these days, like every word is bladed and has intent to twist. 

“I wasn’t aware there was a curfew,” Wei Wuxian says delicately, stepping a little bit closer. His hands are folded behind his back. He’s probably holding his flute, not his sword, and there’s something about it that pings the back of Nie Mingjue’s mind strangely. 

A cultivator should always have a sword, of course. It’s only right, and Nie Mingjue vividly recalls Wei Wuxian’s talent and beauty with the blade, with the bow, with all sorts of martial skills. It’s not like it’s particularly strange to eschew a sword in lieu of a musical instrument, though - Nie Mingjue has probably seen Liebing more than he’s seen Shuoyue, even though Lan Xichen is spectacular with a sword in his hand. 

Wei Wuxian’s flute feels different, though. He tips his head to the side, eyes narrowing in consideration, and Wei Wuxian tips his head back. He looks defensive, like he thinks Nie Mingjue is accusing him of something. 

“Your flute -” He says, and Wei Wuxian’s face splits into a smile that makes him look beautiful and terrible. He has such sad eyes. 

“Mm? What about Chenqing?” His biceps flex beneath his robes, like his knuckles are going tight in their grip. 

Nie Mingjue isn’t stupid. He never has been, for all that sometimes it’s easier to let people believe it, to let them think that he has countless advisors by his side when all he’s really ever needed is himself and his brother. Nie Mingjue is a smart man, and he realizes, all at once, two things - 

First, that Chenqing feels just as Baxia does, with the seething resentful energy making its presence sharp and unkind. There’s no spirit, he doesn’t think - he can’t imagine a flute spirit, though maybe that’s just his limited imagination. He’ll ask Huaisang, Nie Mingjue decides. Huaisang would know. 

Second, though, and more importantly, he realizes that Wei Wuxian is terrified. 

For a moment, he’s unsure. The front that Wei Wuxian puts on is so aggressive, so lilting, so close to flirtation that it loops back around to being offensive and makes people want to rip him apart. But - no. Now that they’re face-to-face in the relative quiet (with the howls of the undead echoing, because there is no true quiet in war), Nie Mingjue can see just how brittle a front it is. 

Wei Wuxian is frightened, and he is haunted. He has hollows beneath his cheeks that speak loudly of too little food, and the alabaster-pale of his skin isn’t the affectation of powder or - or. 

Nie Mingjue doesn’t know why he’d thought, somehow, that the signs of Wei Wuxian’s growing distress, the increasing evidence of his unwellness, have been airs that he’d been putting on. Maybe because Wei Wuxian wears it like armor, drawing illness and spite around himself like it can keep him safe. 

Nie Mingjue switches topics again, doesn’t bother picking up the thread of the conversation where he’d dropped it, and says, “Are you well?” 

Wei Wuxian’s mouth twists into something a little unkind before he smooths his expression flat and drags a smile onto his face. He looks scared. Angry. Angry at being scared. “What makes you think I’m not?” 

Nie Mingjue takes a step closer and watches Wei Wuxian sway back, just a touch. Watches his pupils dilate. He wonders if Wei Wuxian is scared of this, too, or if there’s something else there. 

“I haven’t seen you eating.” 

“No one wants to share a pot with a monster,” Wei Wuxian says, and tucks Chenging into his belt so he can show his hands. “There’s not enough to go around.” 

“Hm,” Nie Mingjue says, and sweeps his eyes up and down Wei Wuxian’s body. Looking for injuries. Something like that. “Come, then.” 

Wei Wuxian doesn’t move. He stares at Nie Mingjue like he’s grown a second head, or lost his mind entirely. “I think not,” He says, mouth going flat and sad, like Nie Mingjue's done something to hurt him. “I’ll stay, if it’s all the same to you. I don’t need a minder.” 

“I’m not your minder,” Nie Mingjue says, though now that Wei Wuxian’s put the thought into his head he doesn’t think, so much, that he’d hate it. “I’m your -” 

He can’t think of the last word. Friend? That’s a lie. General? Wei Wuxian isn’t a soldier. He’s a weapon, if anything, but Nie Mingjue thinks that the description would go over like baijiu at a Lan wedding. 

“I’m not your anything,” Wei Wuxian says. His eyes are mania-bright, rimmed with red. He looks like a tragic spirit, like something out of a children’s story. He looks beautiful and alien and too thin, fragile and powerful. “I’m not. I’m no one’s responsibility but my own.” 

“Yes,” Nie Mingjue agrees, and it makes Wei Wuxian blink in a way that makes him look owlish and startled and suddenly, very young. “But that doesn’t mean that you don’t need to eat, and I have food and a tent.” 

“Why?” Wei Wuxian asks, jaw going hard and furious. “Why would you care?” 

Nie Mingjue sighs. Not even his fussy, uppity, too-good-for-it little brother is this resistant to being given what’s best for him. 

“Wei Wuxian,” He says, sweeping a hand out for Wei Wuxian to follow the line of it, to look where he’s looking. He does, bright eyes sweeping over the ridge. “Would you say that you have been helpful?” 

Wei Wuxian’s shoulders snap tight, tense. He looks fragile to the point of snapping, like a sword that’s been heated and quenched once too many times. Brittle along the fault lines. “Haven’t I?” 

“I’m asking you,” Nie Mingjue says, settling something calm and steady into his tone. 

“I don’t know.” 

“I think you do.” 

“Yes,” Wei Wuxian spits. “Yes. I’ve been helpful.” 

“Yes,” Nie Mingjue agrees, and some of the fight seeps out of the set of Wei Wuxian’s shoulders. Maybe he'd expected Nie Mingjue to disagree, though he doesn't know why Wei Wuxian would think him that unkind. “You have saved many lives. You have given our armies hope where there was none. If there is a victory, it will be, at least in part, in credit to your efforts. Why would I, hearing the oversight of a war hero going hungry because of what the cultivators whom he would save do not understand, sit idly when I have more than enough to give?” 

It’s not that simple. People don’t turn aside Wei Wuxian because of his devilish tricks alone, or because of the air of resentment that lingers around him. If it were that, the Nie would be just as outcast. No. Wei Wuxian's presence is shadowed with dark foreboding. He brings with him everywhere an air of misfortune, like there’s some great misery just around the veer in the path, and even a common cultivator can feel it like a headache that settles behind the eyes. 

Wei Wuxian feels like a tragedy waiting to happen. Nie Mingjue knows that Wei Wuxian knows it, too, and doesn’t know how to make it stop. He knows the urge to claw out at the bewildering unkindness of destiny, as if fate is something that can be altered simply because it’s not fair, and he knows what a heavy burden it is when every choice you make brings you, ever closer, to the shadow that has loomed over your entire life. 

For someone like Wei Wuxian, who had been so desperately promising, so deeply loved, to feel lost and scared and unable to change his own course - 

Of course. What could Nie Mingjue do but help him balance on such a narrow path, when the only way out is through or down, plunging into the unknown? 

Wei Wuxian’s mouth goes soft and a little trembling, eyes brightening up with wetness that Nie Mingjue pretends not to see. 

“Okay,” Wei Wuxian whispers after swallowing a few times, and Nie Mingjue wonders vaguely how long it’s been since someone had spoken kindly to him at all, with the way all the brittle edges of him are crackling to show the soft inside. 

Nie Mingjue wordlessly leads Wei Wuxian back to his tent, leaves him there alone while he goes to scavenge for the spare rations that people always leave him like offerings (his core burns brighter, like a sun, and he is hungrier, but he can’t, won’t, take from the mouths of the people he protects-). 

When he gets back, fruit and long-cold meat buns in his hands, Wei Wuxian’s back is to the entrance of the tent, and he’s stripped bare to the waist. He has scars across his shoulders, around the narrow line of his waist. Like claw marks. It’s easy to look at him, slender as he is, and think him delicate. His hair is a dark, sleek waterfall, pulled free of its tie. 

Nie Mingjue must make some kind of startled noise because Wei Wuxian looks over his shoulder and lifts an eyebrow. He really is thin, thinner than a man of his height and build should be. Nie Mingjue can see the tight muscle of his shoulders and the bumps of each of his ribs, slowly rising and falling as he breathes. 

He’s so pale he looks like he shouldn’t need to breathe at all. Like a corpse. Nie Mingjue can see the flash of blue veins at his wrists. 

“They’re dirty,” Wei Wuxian says, like that’s enough of an explanation. Maybe it is. No one wants to eat with corpse dust on their robes. Nie Mingjue inclines his head and drops the meal on the table, crosses the room to his travel chest to find something new for Wei Wuxian to wear. 

Wei Wuxian must have his own tent. He doesn’t need to be taking his clothes off in Nie Mingjue’s. Nie Mingjue watches, though, the play of muscle in Wei Wuxian’s strong, slender arms and in his too-sharp shoulder blades. He wonders what Wei Wuxian’s game is. 

The answer comes when Wei Wuxian turns around, picking at the laces of his own pants with his long, fine-boned fingers. His hips roll, a little, unpracticed at seduction but trying for the art of it like he’s overheard people talk about it. There’s something of the boy that he was in it, in the way that his fingers hesitate on the tie just before it’s about to pluck loose like he’s not sure he actually wants to commit. 

“Aren’t you going to feed me, dage? Or maybe you want me to call you Nie-jiang jun?” He asks, eyelashes falling low. Like he’s flirting, but he doesn’t know quite how. It’s charming more than it’s sensual, beautiful only because Wei Wuxian is. It feels like a blade in the hand of a beggar. Out of place but dangerous and intriguing for it. 

“Aren’t you going to put on clothes, didi?” Nie Mingjue holds out the robe that he’s taken out of the travel chest, making Wei Wuxian’s fingers fumble to a halt. He’s going pink, a little bit, across the tops of his cheekbones. It makes him look young and alive. 

“Don’t - I’m not your -” He struggles for the words. He’s the one who’d started it. 

“Not my didi?” Nie Mingjue stands to his full height. He’s not much taller than Wei Wuxian, except that Wei Wuxian is hunching his shoulders like he’d like to be smaller. “What are you, then, if you’re not my didi?” 

“Um -” 

“Maybe you’re my shidi,” Nie Mingjue says, and prowls a step closer. Wei Wuxian takes a step back, like they’re dancing, “Maybe you’re looking to be taught a lesson.” 

“I’m -” 

Wei Wuxian is pink all down his throat, all down his chest. His belly, too, where his waist narrows down to nearly-nothing. Nie Mingjue could put his hands there, he thinks, and his fingers would touch if he held Wei Wuxian hard enough. He thinks that he’d like to hold Wei Wuxian down like that. Hard enough to keep him together.

Wei Wuxian’s face, like this, is a marvel. He looks like he doesn’t know where to go, like he doesn’t know whether it’s safer to run or to fight. He looks scared, almost, and Nie Mingjue wonders absently if it makes him a bad person that it’s that expression that makes him hard, instead of all the naked skin. 

“No?” Nie Mingjue asks archly. He’s close enough to Wei Wuxian to touch him, now, to feel the vibration in the air where Wei Wuxian is so tense he’s nearly thrumming. He reaches around his shoulders and Wei Wuxian flinches, full-bodied, when Nie Mingjue - drops the robe around his shoulders. Takes a step away. 

Wei Wuxian stares at him, breath heaving in his chest, and says, strangled, “What.” 

“Eat,” Nie Mingjue says, gesturing at the table. 

“Or - or what,” Wei Wuxian asks, half like he’s curious and half like he’s terrified. 

Or what, Nie Mingjue muses. Or what. Is it a question of what Wei Wuxian needs or what he wants? What will keep him safest and healthiest, or what he’d like most? 

“Or you’ll regret it,” He says, borrowing one of Lan Xichen’s blander smiles. The one that sits pettily on Lan Xichen's face and terrifyingly on Nie Mingjue’s. 

Wei Wuxian sits at the low table, tugs the robe a little closer around his bare chest, and grabs one of the buns. He eats like he’s starving, like he doesn’t even care that the sleeves of the robe are too wide and too long for him, getting in his way. They’re nearly of a height but he’s swimming in Nie Mingjue’s clothes, like a very young man, and that’s good, too. Nie Mingjue likes that. He looks safe, bundled up like that. 

He sits cross-legged across from Wei Wuxian and watches him eat, his chin resting on his hand. He doubts that all of Wei Wuxian’s sharp corners will be worn down by largely mediocre rations and a rare fresh dessert, but he wonders - he wonders how he would look, like that. With all of his barriers down. No presence of mind for spitefulness, for thought, let alone resentment. 

Nie Mingjue thinks that he’d like to see it. 

Wei Wuxian licks his fingers clean, unselfconscious in a way that’s infinitely more sexy than his fumbling seduction attempts before, and grabs for a peach, which he scuffs on the breast of Nie Mingjue’s robe before taking a bite that rolls juice down his chin. 

“Messy,” Nie Mingjue says, vaguely amused. He’s seen the way Wei Wuxian drinks liquor before, too. The kid seriously cannot keep things in his mouth. “Do you need me to feed you?” 

Wei Wuxian looks bewildered, like someone had just come by and slapped him across the face and he’s not quite sure why yet. He smears the juice on his chin away with his wrist, then clearly realizes what he’s done and freezes awkwardly. 

Nie Mingjue catches his narrow little wrist and draws it over. He swipes his tongue from the drip of peach juice up the tendons of Wei Wuxian’s wrist, broadly across his palm, to the very tips of his fingers. Wei Wuxian wheezes and shifts on the floor. Nie Mingjue licks each of his fingers clean, slow and methodical, until Wei Wuxian’s so red in the face he must be dizzy. 

“Anywhere else?” Nie Mingjue asks. His voice is rough and he wishes he could explain it away with anything but want. 

“Uh?” Wei Wuxian asks, swaying a little. The peach in his other hand only has one bite out of it and it’s getting his fingers shiny. 

“Is there anywhere else,” Nie Mingjue clarifies, “That you need cleaned?” 

Wei Wuxian’s mouth works, helpless. He’s got a very nice mouth, all soft and open and shiny even in the dim light of the tent. 

“Um,” Wei Wuxian whispers, and carefully puts the peach down on the table, bitten side up, so it doesn’t get the table sticky. He puts his wet fingers into his own mouth, brow furrowing when he uses his tongue (fuck, Nie Mingjue thinks vaguely, fuck), and says, around them, “My - face.” 

“Your face,” Nie Mingjue repeats, and leans across the table to catch him by the jaw and draw him close, to lave his tongue from the point of Wei Wuxian’s chin where a drop has gathered and then all the way up to his mouth. It’s not kissing, but it’s not not kissing, either, when Nie Mingjue sucks Wei Wuxian’s bottom lip into his mouth and licks the flavor of peach off of it. 

Wei Wuxian whimpers when Nie Mingjue pulls away this time, tongue chasing along his own bottom lip, and Nie Mingjue settles back onto his palms. Wei Wuxian looks at him, pupils blown wide with want, and he clenches his fingers in borrowed sleeves. 

He looks like he doesn’t know how to ask for what he wants, which is fucking - adorable. It’s cute and endearing and it’s taking Nie Mingjue’s mind off of how bone-weary he is, letting him push aside the aching hopelessness that’s been growing in the pit of his belly ever since they all realized that Wen Ruohan’s army could drag themselves back together from two halves into one whole. 

Nie Mingjue stands and offers Wei Wuxian a hand up, which he stares at like it’s a live snake. “Shidi,” Nie Mingjue says, voice curling with amusement, and Wei Wuxian bares his teeth. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Putting you to bed,” Nie Mingjue says, and reaches down to haul Wei Wuxian up without waiting to see if he’ll take the hand. 

“Are you -” Wei Wuxian cuts off, flushed and embarrassed. His shoulders go up. He’s such a sharp, beautiful sword, swathed in Nie Mingjue’s too-big robes. “Is that -” 

“Are you asking for lessons, shidi?” Nie Mingjue asks, very calmly. 

“Stop calling me that,” Wei Wuxian snaps, and claws up into a kiss. Like a wild creature, mean and unpracticed. He bites like a wildcat, too, sharp little teeth against Nie Mingjue’s bottom lip and then his tongue. 

Nie Mingjue scoops him up by the backs of his thighs, braces him with one forearm so Wei Wuxian can squeeze around his hips with all of the strength in his legs. He gentles the kiss intentionally, like he really is teaching Wei Wuxian (and he is, he is, he can tell that Wei Wuxian’s never kissed or been kissed by anyone, has probably never been touched or licked or fucked, either, fuck -) the technique of it, slow and slick and easy. 

“Don’t, don’t -” Wei Wuxian gasps between kisses, dragging his nails down the back of Nie Mingjue’s neck hard enough to sting. “Don’t treat me like I’m gonna break, stop -” 

“Ssh,” Nie Mingjue hushes him. “You’re alright, I have you.” 

“I can take it!” Wei Wuxian squeezes harder at Nie Mingjue’s ribs, hard enough to ache, and bites the corner of his mouth. “I can take it, I’m fucking - you can’t do anything to me, don’t treat me like I’m about to -” 

Cry, fall apart. He looks like he is. His thighs are trembling where they’re caught around Nie Mingjue’s waist. 

“I know you can,” Nie Mingjue soothes him, but it just makes Wei Wuxian yank his hair, harsh and surprising. He won’t be taunted into hurting him - he knows better, knows himself better than to allow it, but -

If Wei Wuxian wants to be pinned down and made to take it, to stop having the option, Nie Mingjue can provide that, too. 

Nie Mingjue huffs and catches Wei Wuxian’s mouth in another kiss and lets him turn it brutal almost immediately, flicks his tongue against Wei Wuxian’s bottom lip and drinks the noise that he makes in response. He drops him onto the bed roll and follows straight after him, caging Wei Wuxian in with his body. 

Wei Wuxian squirms, arching his hips up restlessly, thighs parting and going tight against Nie Mingjue’s hips like he’s forgotten that he’s not just a pillow to grind up against. He’s beautiful, his hair all fanned out on the pillow and Nie Mingjue’s robe open to flash his pale chest, his pretty pink nipples. 

“Needy,” Nie Mingjue says, and leans down to put his mouth on one of Wei Wuxian’s nipples, scraping his teeth over it until Wei Wuxian whimpers desperately above him and shoves his hands into Nie Mingjue’s hair. 

“Fuck - fuck you, I don’t need anything, I don’t -” 

“You do,” Nie Mingjue says, pressing Wei Wuxian’s thighs further apart and rolling his hips into the crux of them, up against the stretch of thin fabric that makes up Wei Wuxian’s pants. “You need it, and I’ll give it to you.” 

Wei Wuxian makes a high, hungry noise, yanking Nie Mingjue’s hair so hard by the roots that it aches, and jerks his hips up. Nie Mingjue, who doesn’t actually like getting his hair pulled that much, catches both of Wei Ying’s hands in one wrist and pins them to his chest. He leaves him with his fingers scrabbling at his own throat while he presses his tongue, hot, to Wei Wuxian’s other nipple. 

The noise that Wei Wuxian makes at that is a fragile, shattering thing, hands jerking against the grip that Nie Mingjue has on them, and when he can’t move at all he makes another, lower noise. Like it’s been yanked out him. Nie Mingjue is so hard. 

“I’m going to fuck you,” Nie Mingjue says, like it’s some idle curiosity. He sits back on his heels and draws his free hand down the line of Wei Wuxian’s body, thumbs at the narrow cut of his hips. “You can take anything, can’t you?” 

“I-” Wei Wuxian’s eyes flicker down, but Nie Mingjue’s still wearing all of his layers, and there’s no way for Wei Wuxian to know what he’ll find. “I’m.” 

“You can take it,” Nie Mingjue says, trying to keep the smile out of his voice. “You’re beautiful and powerful. You’re dangerous. You can take anything that I give you.” 

Wei Wuxian trembles at the praise, at the almost-threat. Nods. Licks his lips just in time for Nie Mingjue to lean down and kiss him again, until he’s taking trembling little sips of air and trying to rub up against Nie Mingjue’s thigh. Nie Mingjue presses Wei Wuxian’s wrists down a little harder against his chest and says stay so he can start peeling himself out of his layers of clothes. 

Wei Wuxian watches avidly, helplessly. There’s something heady in it, in the breathless attention of someone who can’t look away, even as Nie Mingjue reveals first underlayers and then skin. 

“- I can’t,” Wei Wuxian says when Nie Mingjue’s naked, thighs pressed together like he’s shy. “I can’t.” 

Nie Mingjue shoulders his thighs apart, casual as anything, and hitches his hips up so Wei Wuxian doesn’t have anywhere to hide. Wei Wuxian’s hands drop to hide his pink face and he makes a soft, mournful little noise. 

“You will,” Nie Mingjue tells him, and rubs his knuckles fondly across the base of Wei Wuxian’s cock. “I’ll make you.” 

“It’s too -” He hiccups down the rest of the sentence, and Nie Mingjue can’t help but grin. 

“Too what?” He prompts, rubbing his thumb in a slow, idle circle. “Tell me, my cock is too what for you to take?” 

“Big,” Wei Wuxian struggles for a moment but can’t fight out of the hold that Nie Mingjue has on his hips. He doesn’t even try that hard. “It’s too big, I can’t, I’ve never.” 

Nie Mingjue had known that, but he can’t help but hum, “Oh, a virgin? And you were going to seduce a sect leader?” Wei Wuxian’s next hitching breath sounds a little wet and ashamed. Nie Mingjue pets a fond hand up from Wei Wuxian’s hip to his ribs. “It’s alright. I’ll help.” 

He strips Wei Wuxian of his pants and underwear but leaves the robe, because he likes seeing Wei Wuxian tangled up in it. Wei Wuxian tries to cover himself with a knee and Nie Mingjue uses a hand to pin him open, rubs his thumb into the crease of Wei Wuxian’s thigh just beside where he’s so needy he’s dripping. 

Wei Wuxian makes a desperate, despairing noise and comes, arching up like he’ll be able to touch Mingjue’s belly that way, which he won’t. Nie Mingjue watches, faintly bemused, and runs a hand through the fresh come on Wei Wuxian’s belly once he’s finished and panting dizzily. 

“That easy?” He asks, and puts his come-covered fingers into Wei Wuxian’s panting mouth, smears his own come on his tongue until he swallows. “I told you that you needed it.” 

“Mngh,” Wei Wuxian manages around Nie Mingjue’s fingers, trying to shake them free, and Nie Mingjue hooks them down so he’s pressing on Wei Wuxian’s tongue instead, making spit slip out of his mouth. Messy and unpretty and hot. He can feel Wei Wuxian’s teeth. 

“You’d love sucking someone off,” Nie Mingjue tells him, testing the extent of Wei Wuxian’s gag reflex by pushing his fingers back too far. Wei Wuxian’s hips hitch up, anxious and needy. “But I think I made a promise.” 

He slips his fingers out of Wei Wuxian’s mouth and flips him onto his belly instead, smears come onto the blankets while he finally strips Wei Wuxian of his robe and leaves him bare and slender and shivering, thighs parted where Nie Mingjue is still leaning up between them. 

He thinks it’s a little amusing that, skinny and underfed as Wei Wuxian may be, he still has a plush ass. Nie Mingjue pats the side of it fondly and Wei Wuxian squirms in agonized shame. 

He spreads Wei Wuxian’s ass with both hands, watches the way that he flushes all the way from his tailbone to his hole, clenched tight and anxious and fluttering. Nie Mingjue strokes his wet fingers across Wei Wuxian’s hole, slow enough to feel the shocked clench, and taps two there, light and tacky. 

Wei Wuxian’s hips hitch back in a tiny, restless motion, and he buries his little noise into the sheets. Nie Mingjue wonders, idly, where all his attitude’s gone. 

“Open up for me,” Nie Mingjue tells him, and presses his fingers hard enough into Wei Wuxian’s hip bone that he grunts. “Just like that, that’s a good boy.” 

“Don’t -” Wei Wuxian gasps when Nie Mingjue fits a finger into him. It’s tight and uncomfortable, the spit already dry, but Nie Mingjue fucks it slowly in and out of him anyway, watches the way his hole clings. 

“Don’t what?” Nie Mingjue asks, idly curious. “Don’t fuck you?” 

“Don’t call me that,” Wei Wuxian says, helpless, and shudders out a noise when Nie Mingjue taps lightly against his prostate. “Don’t, ah - don’t -” 

“But you are,” Nie Mingjue says, and leans up so he can get the oil from underneath the pillow. He uncorks it with his teeth and drizzles it over his fingers, makes the slide easier but just as tight. “You’re being a good boy.” 

Wei Ying bucks up with a furious little noise, like he’s trying to get Nie Mingjue off of him, and Nie Mingjue holds him down with a broad palm between his sharp shoulder blades. “No,” He half-sobs, “No, I’m -” 

“Ssh,” Nie Mingjue says, and presses another finger into him as carefully as he can, makes him tremble every time his fingers glance across where he’s most sensitive. “Be still. You’re doing well.” 

Wei Wuxian shakes his head, fretful, but he can’t stop grinding into the blankets. He’s opening up for Nie Mingjue’s fingers like he’s made for it, and Nie Mingjue tells him so just to see the way it makes him flush, hot down the back of his neck to the top knob of his spine. 

He uses three fingers and then four, flirts with the idea of a fifth just for the fun of it while Wei Wuxian’s whining and clawing at the pillows, trying to climb away from the creep of overstimulation. Nie Mingjue hasn’t been careful in keeping him from getting oversensitive, hasn’t been nice in the classic fucking-virgins sense of the word. 

He takes his fingers out and slicks up his cock, which is so good after so long it about makes his eyes cross. He wipes his hand on the blanket, which is ruined anyway, and taps the blunt head to Wei Wuxian’s open hole. Like he’s testing it. 

Wei Wuxian rocks back, just the littlest bit, and looks over his shoulder at Nie Mingjue. “What are you -” He bites his lip, hole clenching shut in a little flutter against the head of Nie Mingjue’s cock before he goes bonelessly relaxed again. 

“Ask me for it,” Nie Mingjue says, and Wei Wuxian shakes his head rapidly. Nie Mingjue hums a noise and drags his cock against Wei Wuxian’s hole instead, slow against the wet-open heat of him. 

“Fuck,” Wei Wuxian’s voice hitches, a little, in his chest. “Fuck, you-” 

“Fucking you, really,” Nie Mingjue notes, and catches Wei Wuxian’s ankle before the kick can connect. He pins him down wide enough that he can’t get any leverage. All Wei Wuxian can do is hitch his hips in tiny motions against the head of Nie Mingjue’s cock and beg. 

“Put it in me,” He finally says all in one breath, shoulders hitched around his ears. “Fucking - just give it to me, fuck me.” 

Nie Mingjue shoves into him, hard enough to fuck a noise out of him, and sets a mean, rapid pace that drives Wei Wuxian’s cock into the blankets under him. 

“Oh - oh, no - oh -” Wei Wuxian says, higher and higher. The angle must be good, it must be painfully good, because he’s going so tight around Nie Mingjue it’s almost uncomfortable. “Oh!” He clenches in a long wave, shuddering out pathetic half-stifled noises into the pillows. 

Nie Mingjue bars an arm across his collarbones and hauls him up so he can hear, slows his pace until it doesn’t sound so much like Wei Wuxian’s gagging for air, and strokes his free hand down Wei Wuxian’s belly. It’s not that soothing. 

He presses in deep and Wei Wuxian makes a miserable, overstimulated noise, trying to squirm - away, closer, it’s anyone’s guess - and failing. His thighs are trembling. 

“Okay?” Nie Mingjue asks, and Wei Wuxian hesitates for a moment before nodding soundlessly. He loops one of his arms around the one that Nie Mingjue has at his throat and sets his hand on top of the one at his belly, curling their fingers together. It’s so sweet. Nie Mingjue wants to fuck him until he cries. “Good boy, that’s my good boy. You can take anything I give you.” 

When Nie Mingjue starts to fuck him again, Wei Wuxian makes a pathetic, half-strangled yelp, clenching all over. He’s obviously sensitive, probably so sensitive it aches, but he doesn’t ask to stop so Nie Mingjue doesn’t. 

His noises shift from little whimpers to fucked-out grunts, sharp ah-ah-ahs that make Nie Mingjue want to shove him on his face and press so deep that they can both feel him in Wei Wuxian’s belly. 

“Hurts,” Wei Wuxian mumbles, half-broken, and untangles their fingers so he can pin his own cock against his belly, bare stimulation. “Fuck, I’m gonna -” 

“Can you?” Nie Mingjue asks, and suddenly he’s desperate to see it, to hear the way that Wei Wuxian falls apart again. 

“Uh-huh,” Wei Wuxian whines, high and frantic, and claws his fingers into Nie Mingjue’s hip. “Oh-h, fuck, please, please - dage, I -” 

Nie Mingjue turns his face to kiss him viciously, biting at his bottom lip and swallowing the sobbing gasps that Wei Wuxian can’t seem to help but make. 

He’s still tight as a fist, tighter than anything, and the hot wet clutch of him is so good that Nie Mingjue could die here. He fucks Wei Wuxian until he’s run out of words to beg with, until he’s sobbing and spilling over the loose grip of his own fingers like he can’t even help it. Nie Mingjue keeps fucking him after he comes, too, selfish with it, and shoves so deep for his own orgasm that Wei Wuxian babbles something and claws at his own belly. 

They’re a mess when Nie Mingjue pulls out, his come spilling out of Wei Wuxian immediately and slicking both his thighs and the ruined blanket. 

“Ow,” Wei Wuxian complains breathlessly, and reaches back to touch where he’s open and wet and slick. He tests it with two fingers, hitching his thigh up, and Nie Mingjue watches helplessly. His cock gives a valiant twitch, reminding him that, actually, he’s only in his twenties and really he could probably come again, right now. 

Nie Mingjue drags a hand down his face and climbs over Wei Wuxian to grab a cloth to clean up with. He’s unsteady on his feet and the sort of pleasantly sore that he’ll feel in the morning. 

When he returns with a cloth in hand, Wei Wuxian’s watching him with bright, clear eyes. He looks healthier when he’s flushed like he is, sweet instead of manic. 

“You think you can fuck the resentment out of me?” He asks, parting his thighs to let Nie Mingjue wipe in between them. “Think there’s enough qi in you for it? Get there before you deviate?” 

Nie Mingjue considers this. “Think I could fuck a core back into you.” He says, staying still while Wei Wuxian’s entire body goes tense and afraid. Nie Mingjue taps two fingers low on Wei Ying’s belly, where his lower dantian is buried. 

“Ah,” Wei Wuxian says, and clenches his fists in the sheets. “I’m -” 

Nie Mingjue rubs a soothing hand down his thigh and taps Wei Wuxian to lift his ass up so he can extract the blanket. “You don’t owe anyone an explanation,” He says, tossing the blanket and rag away and opening his arms for Wei Wuxian to curl up into them. 

He does, slow and tentative, like a skittish animal, and rests his forehead against Nie Mingjue’s chest. He falls asleep that way, bundled up small and warm even without a blanket. 

Nie Mingjue doesn’t. He stays awake for a long time in spite of his exhaustion, thoughts chasing each other around in circles until he finally buries his face in Wei Wuxian’s throat and can't hear anything over the sound of his heartbeat. 

Chapter 2

Notes:

you may notice that this fic is no longer complete. (: well. things got a little out of hand.

It turns out that it’s not just the burial mounds that are cold without a core. Wei Ying hadn’t even realized how cold he’d been all the time until suddenly he wasn’t cold anymore, with Nie Mingjue wrapped around him and breathing softly into his hair. He can no longer thermo-regulate, it turns out, and he’s constantly freezing, even in the heat of Qishan. 

Except - less, now, maybe. Not that he’ll admit it out loud, that sounds fucking unberable, but he’s been warmer since Nie Mingjue looked at him instead of through him and had seen - something. Something worth -- 

He doesn’t want to say worth saving, because Wei Ying isn’t someone who needs to be saved, alright, he’s the one who does the saving, he can claim that - Jiang Cheng has yelled at him enough about it, after all, about always trying to be the hero. 

Worth something. Worth feeding and holding and pressing tender bruises into his hips, worth teeth at the back of his neck and fingers in his mouth and a bath, just this side of too-hot. Worth taking care of. Worth-

Defending. When Yao-zongzhu sneers at him and calls him wicked and useless in the same breath and Nie Mingjue calmly stands and asks Yao-zongzhu what, precisely, he’s done to forward the war effort when his front is constantly on the back foot, what he’s done to provide aid to the Nie cultivators who go to die to bolster his lines, and then, when Yao-zongzhu has no answer, simply blinks slowly, like a panther. 

Wei Ying feels worth something, in Nie Mingjue’s eyes, and it’s fucking - bewildering. He doesn’t know what to do with it, exactly, even when he’s sitting in Nie Mingjue’s tent with his arm wrapped around his knee and Nie Mingjue brushing out his hair, careful enough to keep the comb from tugging at even a single knot. Wei Ying can tell that he’s done this for his brother before, because no one but Huaisang would be so awfully fussy about getting their hair combed out. 

“What are you doing with the Nie,” Jiang Cheng asks one evening, his voice hard and brittle and raised to carry over the shrieks of the undead where they mass below the ridge. Wei Ying stares out over the field of them, shambling corpses that they are, and wonders what the fuck Jiang Cheng is doing, focusing on the little things that can’t be fixed rather than the vast problem laid out in front of them. 

Jiang Cheng shoves him and Wei Ying blinks, looking over at him with his eyebrows up. 

“I said what are you doing,” Jiang Cheng snarls, every inch his prickly shidi, his beloved sect leader, the man for whom he’d go to war. 

Wei Ying puts his hands behind his back and curls his cold fingers together. “I’m waiting for the meeting of the generals,” He says, intentionally misunderstanding, “So we can go over the same plan for the fourth time, as if something will have changed in the night.” 

Jiang Cheng, unfortunately, is too smart to be distracted. “I - Wei Wuxian, ” He snaps. He has a very specific way of saying Wei Ying’s name. He has ever since they’d both been tiny, and it always makes Wei Ying smile. 

“What answer are you looking for, Jiang Cheng?” Wei Ying asks, finally turning to face him fully. “Are you asking me if I’m going to defect and run off to the Nie? Are you asking if he’s giving me sparring tips? Why are you so curious, shidi?” 

Jiang Cheng gapes at him for a moment and then shoves him again, hard enough to make Wei Ying stumble back a few steps. He’s been getting better at keeping his feet, but - well, Jiang Cheng has a core, and Wei Ying does not. If Jiang Cheng wants to push him, Wei Ying will be pushed. 

“Maybe I’m fucking worried about you, you bastard!” Wei Ying wants to protest, vaguely, that his parents had been married, and really it’s more appropriate to just call him an asshole, but he doesn’t begrudge Jiang Cheng his vocabulary. “What the fuck? You think I’m trying to dig up some dirt on you, or something?” 

Wei Ying shrugs. It’s safer than admitting that he kind of had thought that. 

“I’m - I don’t give a shit if he’s teaching you saber forms or, or whatever. Maybe you’ll finally start carrying your sword with you if he shows you his style.” Jiang Cheng pauses and fidgets, hands clenched into fists, and spits, “I just wanted to make sure he’s not - not.” He’s going pink enough that Wei Ying can deduce the end of the sentence. 

“Not taking advantage of me?” His mouth twists in a vague little smile. “I wouldn’t worry about that, shidi. Nie-jiangjun is an upstanding man.” He doesn’t say you can’t take advantage of the willing, because that’s not necessarily true, and besides, he really doesn’t need Jiang Cheng asking about his - 

What does he call it? His sex life? His romantic liaison? His bizarre and shockingly uncomplicated relationship with Nie Mingjue? 

Regardless. He doesn’t want Jiang Cheng asking about any of it, and he will ask. He’ll do it blushing furiously, but he’ll still ask. 

“Well - good!” Jiang Cheng snaps, angling his face away so Wei Ying can’t watch him blush head-on. “That’s - that’s good.” 

“Aah, worried about your shixiong?” Wei Ying grins and it feels like cracking ice across his face, strange and unfamiliar in the way it sit. There hasn’t been a lot to smile about, lately. 

“Who would be!?” Jiang Cheng sounds furiously embarrassed about it, because obviously having human emotions is a sign of weakness. It feels - tentatively good to tease him. Like things aren’t quite so brittle between them. “Not like you disappeared for three fucking months, or anything, who would even -” 

He chokes off the end of the sentence, turning fully around to give Wei Ying his back. As if Wei Ying can’t see his shoulders shake. 

And maybe, if Wei Ying were more tired, or more lonely, or angrier. If he hadn’t been defended and been made to feel worth something, he would have - ignored this. Wouldn’t have had the conversation at all, wouldn’t have teased. Maybe, he would have pushed Jiang Cheng back, and fanned the fight into something bigger. 

But Wei Ying can feel Nie Mingjue looping an arm across his waist and murmuring, no, you’re doing well, you are good, and he thinks ah. 

“Jiang Cheng,” Wei Ying says, and drapes himself across Jiang Cheng’s back, puts his weight on him and presses his forehead to the back of Jiang Cheng’s neck. They’re cuddling like kids, like they used to when they’d shared beds after nightmares. “Jiang Cheng, shidi, listen.” 

Jiang Cheng sniffs furiously and snarls, watery, “What?” 

“I - I didn’t mean to go away. For three months. I didn’t mean to, and I’m sorry for leaving you, okay? You were so brave. You’ve done such a good job. I can’t tell you what happened yet because I’m - it’s. It’s really-” He inhales, long enough to make his lungs ache, and exhales. “It’s scary. And it’s hard for me to talk about, because I - I don’t. Like. I don’t like parts of what happened. But I will. I’ll tell you- everything. When I can. Because you’re my sect leader, and my brother, and you deserve to know.” 

Jiang Cheng’s so, so still, so quiet. His shoulders rise and fall as he takes a deep breath. 

“Okay,” He whispers, and turns around so he can press his face into Wei Ying’s neck. They mutually pretend that he’s not dotting Wei Ying’s black robes with tears while Wei Ying blinks his glassy eyes at the smog-red sky. “When you’re ready. You - it feels like you’re running. You don’t wear purple anymore.” 

“Not from you,” Wei Ying says, wobbly but fierce. “I promise, not from you. I just - I don’t want to make things difficult.” 

“You don’t want to make things difficult?” Jiang Cheng says in abject disbelief, and then they’re clutching each other and laughing and nearly crying, holding each other too tight. 

 

══════════════════

 

Mingjue glances up when Wei Ying ducks into his tent, quiet as a ghost, and his eyebrow arches. Wei Ying freezes in his step when he sees Nie Huaisang, whom he hadn’t expected to see anywhere on the front, sitting across from Nie Mingjue at the low table. 

Nie Huaisang smiles vaguely and flicks his fan idly in front of his face. “Ah, Wei-xiong,” He says. “Fancy seeing you here.” As if it’s not the strangest thing for them to be meeting in Nie Huaisang’s older brother’s tent, where he is living, where his room is, by all counts. Wei Ying sort of wants to climb out of his skin. 

“Ah, yeah, weird,” He says, and fidgets awkwardly until Huaisang takes pity on him and waves him over to the table. 

“Da-ge and I were chatting,” Nie Huaisang says, and Nie Mingjue rolls his eyes. 

“Chatting about the defenses of Nightless City, didi, you really don’t have to tone it down for him. He’s not going to tattle on you for not being a helpless little idiot.” 

Huaisang rolls his eyes, hard enough to make his head move. “We’re trying to be subtle, da-ge, are you serious?” 

Wei Ying watches them both with wide eyes. He’s always known that Nie Huaisang isn’t quite the moron that he pretends to be, just like how he knows that Nie Mingjue isn’t exactly the all-brawn-no-brain general that he pretends to be, but he’d never really expected to be looped into the secret. 

“I’m serious,” Nie Mingjue says, and waves a hand at Wei Ying. “You look cheerful. Something happen?” 

“Nothing important,” Wei Ying says, even though, actually, he sort of wants to talk about it. He just doesn’t want to talk about it with Huaisang, too. “What’s this about the defenses?” 

“There’s a weak point,” Nie Huaisang says immediately, picking up the thread of the conversation like it had never been dropped. He drops his fingers to the map that’s spread between them and Wei Ying leans over it greedily. “Here, here - we think that if we have a concerted effort, just there, we’ll be able to punch through.” 

“You’ll be vulnerable,” Wei Ying says, tracing the line that Huaisang’s indicating with his own finger. “Here, the ranks will close behind you. You’ll be in the city, but you’ll get torn apart.” 

Nie Huaisang shakes his head, drawing his finger over to the western side of the map. “Most of Wen Ruohan’s force is here - the city is nearly empty, we think. There’s a limited number of dead that even he can call up. He has them deployed elsewhere. We’ll be vulnerable from behind, but we don’t have a lot of alternatives. Da-ge’s told me about the meetings.” 

Mingjue rolls his eyes, perfect mirror of Huaisang. “They’re fucking agony. If I need to hear Yao-zongzhu go in one more circle about how he couldn’t possibly spare more of his men from defending his border, I’m going to flip the table straight through his head.” 

Wei Ying chews the pad of his thumb, looking down at the map and angling his head this way and that to consider. “The Jiang are holding here,” He murmurs, mostly to himself, “The Yao, the - have you heard anything from the Jin at all?” 

“No,” Nie Huaisang answers, shaking his head. He snaps his fan closed and rolls it between his palms. “Nothing worthwhile, anyway. What are you thinking?” 

“If they could cover the flank here,” Wei Ying sketches out the flank to the east, “And then pincer inwards as you move through there, and the Jiang could hold the rear so you’re not pressed from there -” 

“Mm,” Nie Huaisang looks considering. “But they’ve been, quote, holding the line, unquote. No movement from them for nearly a fortnight.” 

“Jin Guangshan’s under-committing,” Nie Mingjue says, shaking his head. “He’s got his son out there playing baby general, and he’s doing well enough, but he’s not even got three hundred cultivators under him. They’re in no position to shore up any front. We’re lucky the line hasn’t broken there.” 

“Is there any way to force him to commit more?” Wei Ying asks, frowning. “The Jiang have been decimated and we’ve still brought more disciples than that.” 

“They’re trying to keep the profit margin,” Nie Huaisang says dismissively, drumming his fingers against the table. “I don’t - mm, da-ge, is there a way to appeal to his pride? Not Jin-Zongzhu’s, but Jin Zixuan’s.” 

“Nah, he’s a good kid. I’d be surprised if he hasn’t already given it a shot - he’s gotta know they’re not pulling their weight.” Nie Mingjue leans over his elbow, chin on one hand. 

“We could ask,” Wei Ying says. “What’s the worst that can happen?” 

“Never say ‘what’s the worst that can happen’ again,” Nie Huaisang says critically. “It encourages the worst thing to happen, and we already have terrible luck.” 

“Not as bad as it could be,” Wei Ying grins. Nie Mingjue makes a faint noise to his side, but shakes his head when Wei Ying glances over. “Where are the Jin camped, again?” 

Nie Huaisang taps a fingertip against the map. “They’re holding the front here. It’s a pretty secure position. Good bottleneck.” 

“Hm,” Wei Ying says, and rubs his nose thoughtfully. 

“You’re thinking about something,” Nie Mingjue says, raising his eyebrows, and Wei Ying wrinkles his nose. 

“I’m always thinking of something. I’ll tell you if it becomes anything.” 

They end up talking over dinner, trying to find different paths of attack that all lead back to one thing - the little notch in the defenses of Nightless City, and the amount of pressure it would take to touch just there. Nie Huaisang starts nodding off part way through arguing about whether it’s possible to attack by water (it is not), and Nie Mingjue orders him out with stern instructions to rest, didi, no more maps ‘til morning. 

Wei Ying - lingers, awkward and unsure of his welcome, at the edges of their routine. Huaisang flicks Wei Ying a look before he ducks out, something questioning in his gaze that he doesn’t give voice to. 

Nie Mingjue leans back and nods his chin up, and Wei Ying goes to him like he’s magnetized. 

“Less happy than when you came in,” Nie Mingjue notes, opening an arm for Wei Ying to fold himself down into his space. Wei Ying goes gratefully, climbing into Nie Mingjue’s lap and putting his face into the crook of his neck. It’s so quiet, other than Nie Mingjue’s breathing - he’d let Wei Ying put up new silencing talismans the other week, drawn with blood, and so far, they'd worked to keep out all the ambient noise of the dead. 

“Mnrgh,” Wei Ying says into Mingjue’s shoulder, and bites him softly over his robes. Nie Mingjue sets his hands on Wei Ying’s waist, hot along his sides, and squeezes like he can get secrets out of him like that. “Talked to Jiang Cheng.” 

“Shouted at him, you mean?” 

Wei Ying wheezes a little laugh. “No, talked. Terrible. He cried like a baby.” 

“And you’d never cry,” Nie Mingjue’s voice is terribly dry. Wei Ying figures he’s earned that, given the number of times he’s seen Wei Ying crying or on the edge of it. 

“Absolutely not.” He slips his cold fingers up Nie Mingjue’s sides, tucking them against the warmth of his ribs. It’s nice to be held, this way. “I could ask the dead to attack the Jin.” 

Nie Mingjue stiffens beneath him, hands going painfully tight against Wei Ying’s sides. “No.” 

“It could be - nobody would have to get hurt,” Wei Ying says, pushing himself closer into Mingjue’s chest like a cat. “It would be fine, and it would make the Jin realize they need to commit more cultivators.” 

“No,” Mingjue says again, more forcefully. “No. I don’t deny that you’ve been helpful in the campaign, Wei Wuxian, and I can’t deny that this is the only path that you have open to you, but you will not use the dead this way for our benefit.” 

“They’re already up, ” Wei Ying argues, squeezing Nie Mingjue’s hips with his thighs, like he can pressure him into it that way. “I’m not desecrating them any more than they are, and I’ll liberate them afterwards, you can’t say that’s not what a cultivator does.” 

Nie Mingjue is very still, so Wei Ying continues, “I’ll get Jin Zixuan’s permission first, he’s - I hate him, but he’s not - whatever, I’ll get his permission, it’ll just be a - to scare them, to make them look weak. If the line gets broken there, it’d happen anyway, but he might actually die. My Shijie will cry if he dies here, I can’t - they need more people, we need more people.” 

Nie Mingjue is so, so still. Wei Ying pulls back to look at him, suddenly fearful that he’s gone too far, that Nie Mingjue has suddenly remembered what it means for Wei Ying to have his feet set on this path. He looks - Wei Ying doesn’t know what the look on his face means. Something a little agonized, a little tormented. A little scared. 

“If they catch you,” He starts, fingers digging bruises into the lean muscle of Wei Ying’s back, “If they catch you, they’ll kill you. They’ll have reason to.” 

Wei Ying leans back even further, looking into Nie Mingjue’s eyes with a rapid flicker. “You’re worried,” He realizes, and touches Nie Mingjue’s cheekbone with his cold fingertips like he’s trying to figure out if he’s real. He is, a little bit. He’s not convinced he’s not - what, hallucinating? “You’re worried about me.” 

Nie Mingjue hisses a sound between his teeth, something rough and gritted-out. Suddenly Wei Ying’s in the air, supported under his thighs by Nie Mingjue’s arms, and he yelps a laugh that he can’t stop. 

Nie Mingjue drops him on the bed roll and climbs over him, eyes hot and intense, and smears a thumb across Wei Ying’s mouth. 

“Why shouldn’t I?” He asks, pressing the pad of this thumb against the edge of Wei Ying’s incisor when he opens up. “Why shouldn’t I worry? Are you not worth my concern?” 

Wei Ying strangles out a noise, because - wow, just, that sort of takes him from zero to one-hundred in less time than he’d like to admit. “Uh-” He says, and hitches his hips up for more solid contact against Nie Mingjue’s belly. “I, sure, I don’t know.” 

Nie Mingjue replaces his thumb with his mouth, kissing Wei Ying with sweet promise. “I know that it’s not possible,” He says, hot against Wei Ying’s mouth, “To keep you safe. We are cultivators and warriors, and I would never ask you to be less than who you are for -” He cuts himself off again to lick into Wei Ying’s mouth, swallowing his pitiful little moan and pressing his shoulders harder into the bed. 

“Ah-” Wei Ying says once his mouth is free, reaching to yank out the pins that hold Nie Mingjue’s braids together, to try and one-handedly untangle his hairpiece while Nie Mingjue presses wet, biting kisses down his throat. “Ah, da-ge, fuck - I know, I know. I’m, I just - we need to, there’s no- ngh, no -” 

“No other option,” Mingjue agrees darkly, and sucks a bruise to Wei Ying’s collarbone that’s so dark and painful it throbs in time with his pulse. “I fucking hate it. I’m tired of my shidi going to die.” 

“They’re kids,” Wei Ying gasps, arching his back so Nie Mingjue can get his hands beneath his waist, long fingers testing the breadth of it. “Just, - uh, they’re so little, they don’t - I want to end this stupid fucking war.” 

“One assassin,” Mingjue mouths at the center of his chest, over his middle dantian where he no longer pools with the warmth of spiritual energy. “Just one, why not just-” 

“Ngh, guards-” Wei Ying yelps when Nie Mingjue strips him all at once, tugging off a belt and three layers and leaving him nearly-bare on top of them, spread out like a gift in wrapping paper. “And, ah, suicide mission, you can’t-” 

“One man,” Nie Mingjue says darkly, and Wei Ying tangles his hands in his hair helplessly when he dips his tongue into Wei Ying’s belly button. “One man for an army, one man for tens of thousands.” 

“Who - aah, fuck, da-ge -” He gasps, lifting his hips so Nie Mingjue can strip off his pants and underwear at once. “Fuck, please, yes -” 

“I don’t know,” Nie Mingjue says, and presses nipping little kisses along the line of Wei Ying’s hip bones. “I couldn’t ask that.” 

“No,” Wei Ying agrees, and arches when Nie Mingjue bends far enough to lick a stripe up Wei Ying’s cock, so so so hot. Wei Ying has never had this - no one has even done this before, and it’s so good it’s almost terrifying. “Ngh, fu- ah, hah, should let me go, I’ll be your -” 

Nie Mingjue takes him deep enough to make himself gag, forcing Wei Ying to cut himself off with a little shriek. He lets go of Nie Mingjue’s hair to claw at his shoulders instead, nails pressing crescents into Nie Mingjue’s skin. 

He bobs his head until Wei Ying’s trembling on the precipice of his orgasm, the muscle in his belly trembling, and then pulls off entirely, sitting himself back on his haunches. Wei Ying looks at him wildly, chest heaving with exertion. 

“No,” Nie Mingjue says simply, and flips Wei Ying over with his hands on his hips, so easy it’s fucking embarrassing. 

“Yeah,” Wei Ying sighs and rocks back against Nie Mingjue’s bulk when he stretches up to grab oil, slow and encouraging. “I’ll be your assassin, you get me -mm, get me in, and I’ll - for you, for you.” 

“No,” Nie Mingjue says again, and presses his tongue into the dimples to either side of Wei Ying’s spine, slow and hot enough to make him shiver. “I don’t want that.” 

“I’ll be Jiang Cheng’s, then,” Wei Ying says, cracking an eye open so he can watch Nie Mingjue over his shoulder. Nie Mingjue catches his eye and raises both eyebrows, faintly amused. “I’ll kill Wen Ruohan for him, but I’ll carry a trinket with me, so wh- mm, when I die, it can be for you -” 

Nie Mingjue bites the back of his thigh hard enough to make him yelp, cock jumping to tap against his belly, and then licks into him while he’s still gasping with the surprised pain. It’s - so much, too much, and Wei Ying grabs the blankets to keep himself from falling to pieces. 

“Hhn-” He strangles out, high in his throat, and Nie Mingjue responds with a deeper noise, slipping his tongue into Wei Ying. It feels - so strange, so invasive, hot and wet and a way that’s embarrassing, and Wei Ying wishes he could hate it but it’s - he’s so- “Da-ge, da-ge, I’m gonna- I’m-” He can feel himself tightening, edging closer, closer, ah- 

Nie Mingjue pulls back, putting his teeth back into Wei Ying’s skin and not touching his cock at all. Wei Ying sobs a bitter noise and claws at the blankets, helplessly rocking his hips into nothing. 

“Fuck you,” He says, gasping for air, and Nie Mingjue strokes a soothing hand down his spine, like he’s a big cat. 

“Not yet,” He says, perfectly sweetly. Wei Wuxian grits out a moan and tips his hips up, showing off the flexibility of his spine. He’s so wet between his legs that it’s getting cold in the air, strange and shivery. 

“Fuck me,” Wei Ying says, same tone, and Nie Mingjue laughs. 

“Not yet,” He says again, darker, and trails his fingers down from Wei Ying’s tailbone, testing where he’s wet and relaxed. He nudges the tip of a finger inside, slow and exploratory, and Wei Ying shivers but takes it and whimpers for more. 

Nie Mingjue gets three fingers in and spread before he goes for the oil again, and Wei Ying has a noise forced out of him at the dry catch of his hole. 

“Ah- da-ge, Mingjue, come on. I need you.” 

“Hhm,” Nie Mingjue says, and slips his oiled fingers into Wei Ying’s hole. The slide is smooth and easy, not nearly as tight as it had been, and it’s so good that Wei Ying could cry. “You do, don’t you?” 

“Yeah, yeah-” Wei Ying gasps, rocking his hips back. “Fuck, fuck me, I really-” 

Nie Mingjue replaces his fingers with his tongue and laughs when Wei Ying shrieks, clenching up tight. He bullies his way back up to three fingers and his tongue, slipping them in and out interchangeably and letting Wei Ying squeeze helplessly around him when he gets so so close but can’t tip over the edge. 

“Da-ge,” Wei Ying sobs, clawing at the sheets. “I need to come, I’m gonna die, let me -” 

“Say please,” Nie Mingjue says, and then presses back in with four fingers, deep enough to make Wei Ying shudder all down both of his thighs. “Say please and you can.” 

“Please, please -” Wei Ying gasps, and comes as soon as Nie Mingjue wraps a hand around his cock and strokes, all of his fingers hooking down into Wei Ying’s prostate. “- ah! Fuck! ” The stimulation is immediately, painfully too much, making him shudder and try and pull away and push back and sob, all at once. 

He’s gasping for air by the time Nie Mingjue stops torturing him and lets him sprawl out flat on the bed roll, still shivering faintly but no longer wracked by hiccupping spasms. “Agh, what the fuck,” Wei Ying says hoarsely, looking back over his shoulder. “How the fuck. You killed me, da-ge. I’m dead now.” 

Nie Mingjue’s got a hand around his cock, idly touching himself to the pink-tinted span of Wei Ying’s back to ass. Wei Ying tilts his ass up helpfully, but doesn’t even bother to go back up on his knees. “That’s a shame,” Nie Mingjue says, casually spreading Wei Ying open with one hand and riding his cock up the slick space there. “How are you meant to die for me in Wen Ruohan’s throne room if I kill you with one decent orgasm?” 

“Decent ?” Wei Ying protests, hitching his hips up to give Nie Mingjue a better angle to rock up against him. “Obviously - mm, better than decent, first of all, and second, I wouldn’t die in the throne room, alright, some credit please. I’m gonna - ah, make a dramatic last stand, gonna - mmh. Make you cry.” 

“Thanks,” Mingjue says drily, and drags Wei Ying’s hips up. He thumbs him open and starts pressing his cock into him, and it’s so too much that Wei Ying shifts uncomfortably, but he’s open and loose and the slide is easy. It’s slick and good, even with the ache of overstimulation, and Nie Mingjue keeps the pace nice and lazy. “I’ll give you a good funeral, how about that?” 

“Burn paper money for me,” Wei Ying says, burying his face in the cushions to stifle the noises that Nie Mingjue is fucking out of him with his hard, slow thrusts. “Mngh-” 

“I didn’t hear that,” Nie Mingjue loops his ponytail around one hand and pulls, until Wei Ying’s curved into a fragile, trembling arch. 

“Ow,” He protests, getting his hands underneath him to relax some of the tension on his scalp. “Fuck, ah - you’re so mean to me, fuck, it’s so much.” 

“Don’t talk about dying anymore,” Nie Mingjue says all at once, shoving into Wei Ying so hard that he loses all his words for a moment, is forced to swallow the protest that Mingjue’s the one who’d brought it up in the first place. “Don’t - I don’t want you to-” 

“Aw,” Wei Ying pants, reaching back to loop an arm around Nie Mingjue’s shoulder. Mingjue lets go of his hair and bars an arm across his chest instead, just holding him close and overwarm. “Y- ngh, you -” 

“I,” Nie Mingjue agrees, and fucks him with deep, hard strokes that angle straight into Wei Ying’s prostate and make his cock give a valiant, extremely unlikely effort to get hard again. “Stop pretending no one gives a fuck about you.” 

Wei Ying wheezes and drops his head back, squirming and helpless and pinned on Nie Mingjue’s cock. “Ah - that’s not -” 

“It is,” Mingjue says, and shoves Wei Ying forward, pins him to the pillow with a hand on the back of his neck and the other wrapped around his waist. “Self-sacrificing little shit.” 

“Jia-ang Cheng says the same thing,” Wei Ying’s laugh breaks around the middle, fucked out of him and cracking. “Oh, fuck, you’re gonna - I don’t know if I can -” 

“You can,” Nie Mingjue says, pressing him more deeply into the pillow and making Wei Ying’s eyelashes flutter. “You should listen to your sect leader.” 

Wei Ying doesn’t have a response to that, because which one isn’t appropriate, so he just buries his face in the pillows and lifts his hips to meet Nie Mingjue’s thrusts, squeezing down around him to make it good, better. 

Nie Mingjue’s pace stutters and he leans down to press his teeth into Wei Ying’s shoulder, achey in a bizarrely comforting way. He doesn’t feel close, really, so much as he feels fucked-sideways, like he’s looking at the entire world from an askew angle. 

Nie Mingjue draws a hand across Wei Ying’s belly and gets a hand around his cock again, strokes it with feather-light touches until Wei Ying’s yelping and squirming and oh, actually, maybe he’s close after all, maybe he’s going to come right this second, maybe - 

He squeaks when Nie Mingjue shoves deep and comes in him, hot and wet, and immediately slaps Mingjue’s still hand away so he can jerk himself off rapidly while there’s still a cock hard inside him. His orgasm is a little spikey and mean, the pleasure too much to be comfortable, but it’s good, fuck, it’s good. 

Nie Mingjue pulls out and fondly pats Wei Ying’s ass, helping him get his knees out from underneath him so he can sprawl in the comfort of the ruined blankets. 

“I still think,” Wei Ying starts, and Nie Mingjue’s sigh echoes. It’s not even that loud, just emphatic. 

“I’m not saying that I miss when you were sad and angry instead of a little brat, but I’m also not not saying that.” 

Wei Ying gasps, feigning offense, and opens his legs so Nie Mingjue can clean him up. “You’re going to have to take responsibility,” He says, casual, “Like when you feed stray cats and they keep coming back.” 

“Stray cats don’t offer to kill and die for me,” Nie Mingjue grumbles and Wei Ying reaches to pat his face fondly. 

“You haven’t met every stray cat in the world, jiangjun. Maybe some of them would kill and die for you.” Privately, he’s sort of convinced that anyone that Nie Mingjue gave individual attention to would be willing to do the same. 

“Hm,” Mingjue says, dubious, and sweeps Wei Ying’s messy ponytail to the side to press a kiss to the line of his jaw. “We’ll talk about it with Huaisang and Zixuan. That kid has a good head on his shoulders.” 

“Pretty bold of you to call him a kid when you’re, what, three years older than him?” 

Nie Mingjue waves a hand. “Maybe even less. I don’t know. He just has a…” 

“Spoiled toddler aura,” Wei Ying says wisely, and Nie Mingjue coughs to hide his laugh. 

“Yeah. Takes one to know one,” He says, and pats Wei Ying’s ass a little too firmly to get him to move over, sliding behind him in spite of his sputtering protests. 

 

══════════════════

 

Nie Huaisang corners Wei Ying the next day, pinning him in between two tents with a fluttering fan in one hand and a smile on his mouth, looking surprisingly threatening for someone who stands nearly ten centimeters below him. 

“Wei-xiong,” He says, cheerfully enough. “Join me on a walk, won’t you?” 

“I need to talk to Jiang Cheng,” Wei Ying protests, mostly to get out of it but partially because he really does need to talk to Jiang Cheng. He’s got a keen strategic mind, and he thinks that Jiang Cheng would be able to help in spite of - well. Being who and what he is, which is an unrepentant asshole. 

“He can wait,” Nie Huaisang says sunnily. “Here, come here, Wei-xiong, come on.” 

Wei Ying goes. He really doesn’t have another choice. He tucks his fingertips into his belt and tries to look casual while all of the cultivators give them a wide, uncomfortable berth. He still evokes a creeping sort of dread when he passes. Nothing he can do about it, really, but it still bothers him. He misses Lotus Pier, where people had called to him and smiled and refused to let him pay. 

He misses a lot of things about Lotus Pier. 

“You’re going to do it, right?” Nie Huaisang asks once they’re out of hearing-range of most of the camp, close enough to the ridge to smell the fierce corpses down in the valley. 

Wei Ying stares at him, bewildered. He almost stupidly says but we’ve already done it, and stops himself just in the nick of time. “Ah - ask Jin Zixuan for a favor from his father?” 

“Mm, yes. And the other thing.” 

Wei Ying treads cautiously, folding his hands behind his back. The mark that Nie Mingjue had sucked into the base of his spine stings. “Which other thing was that?” 

“The thing you were thinking about last night. The thing you went silent for. I’m not an idiot, Wei-xiong, please.” 

“Ah, ah, I can never be too careful, hm? Yeah, I - it depends. It depends on what he says.” 

"He’ll agree,” Nie Huaisang says like he’s sure, all the confidence in the world. 

“You don’t even -” Know, Wei Ying wants to say, but it kind of seems like Nie Huaisang knows everything, a little bit. 

“Calling the dead? It just makes sense, Wei-xiong, really. I’m asking because I have some things that I can set into motion if - when - you do.” 

Wei Ying breathes a short sigh and nods, once. “I’ll ask.” He’ll need to talk to Jiang Cheng, first, just in case, but he can’t imagine that Jiang Cheng will disagree. 

“Ah, and one more thing -” Nie Huaisang says as Wei Ying turns to go. He turns back to face Nie Huaisang, eyebrows up. “Please be kind to my brother. He’s really quite fond of you.” 

Wei Ying chokes on air and wheezes, clutching at his robes, taken entirely by surprise. Nie Huaisang looks smugly knowing about exactly what he’s done, and sails past entirely too cheerfully. 

Wei Ying stares after him. He doesn’t understand at all. 

 

══════════════════

 

Talking to Jiang Cheng is both more and less difficult than expected. Less, because when he looks at Wei Ying - in black robes with a purple sash, the first nod he’s made to Yunmeng Jiang in a long time - he goes visibly soft like butter. He looks like he could be convinced of just about anything. 

More, because - 

“Absolutely not,” Jiang Cheng says, shaking his head to double up on the point. “Fuck no, fuck that, fuck you. No. You’re not doing any self-sacrificial shit.” 

Wei Ying holds his hands up, biting his tongue at the very idea of telling Jiang Cheng that Nie Mingjue had said the exact same thing. It would come off - right. Wrong. Badly, because it’s right. 

“I’ll be fine,” He says coaxingly, “More than fine, I have Chenqing, don’t I? And -” He glances around, as if he hasn’t put up more than enough talismans for them to not even hear a bomb go off outside, “- this, too.” 

The Yin tiger tally isn’t - he doesn’t flash it around, generally, for one thing, because the Jin are greedy and avaricious and just love holding onto shit that isn’t theirs, but for another - something about it, he knows, feels a little… 

Well, it’s hard to describe. Wrong. Off-putting. It’s not just the resentment of it - resentful energy, at this point, welcomes Wei Ying like a friend, like a - lover’s an uncomfortable comparison, but easily and happily, without the biting edge of the tiger tally. 

But it’s undeniable that it’s a weapon, and it’s his (for as long as he can hold onto it, he tries not to think about), and it’s phenomenally powerful. It can change the tide of the war, he knows, because he knows just how much he'd had to put into it to make it at all. 

Jiang Cheng stares at it like it’s a live snake. “You should put that away,” He says, shaking his head. “You should - not carry it on you, what the fuck. It’s buzzing, it feels fucking terrible.” 

Jiang Cheng, Wei Ying imagines, is not welcomed like a lover by the resentful energy that makes the tally so powerful. Wei Ying guesses that’s fair enough. He tucks it away, safe as he can get it, and shrugs. 

“I can handle it,” He says, not specifically of the seal but of the plan in general. “And if I can’t, won’t my big, strong shidi come to get me?” 

“I’m your sect leader,” Jiang Cheng grits out, looking like he’d like to take Wei Ying by the shoulders and shake him until he makes sense. “I can’t just cover for you like when we were shooting kites or swimming late, Wei Wuxian, if something goes wrong, it’s-” 

“It’s not going to go wrong,” Wei Ying says, soothing. “It’s not, it’s fine. I can control it, I can.” 

Jiang Cheng looks at him for a long, frozen moment, and then his eyelashes flutter as he looks down. “I’m trusting you,” He says, soft, and puts his hand gently on Wei Ying’s forearm, where he’s wrapped Jiang purple around his bracers. “Don’t fuck up.” 

“I won’t,” Wei Ying says. “I promise.” 

Notes:

yin tiger tally - this has too many translations and i don't know what i prefer, so it is what it is. we're sticking with yin tiger tally throughout.

Chapter 3

The day dawns brighter than it should, all things considered. It’s sunny and pretty out, barely even a trace of the smog that usually makes the atmosphere feel so grim. Wei Ying stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Jiang Cheng, robes whipping around his legs, and breathes out a long sigh. 

“Are you sure?” Jiang Cheng asks for probably the third time. 

“Too late if I’m not,” Wei Ying says, smile twisting his mouth a little. He waves off Jiang Cheng’s concern when he glances over, shaking his head. “No, no, relax, zongzhu. I’m sure.” 

“Wei Wuxian…” He trails off, eyebrows coming together in a little frown. “It’s not - if you don’t think-” 

“I can do it,” Wei Ying insists. “And the peacock already agreed, so - it’s just a matter of time, right? I can do it.” 

“I’m not worried about whether you can start it,” Jiang Cheng mutters, rubbing the heel of his hand hard into his forehead. “Just-” 

Jiang Cheng’s worrying is interrupted by a red flag whipping in the wind below, suddenly cut loose of its pole and sallying wildly off into the distance. 

“There’s the signal,” Wei Ying says with a certain amount of forced cheer. “You wanna-?” 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m going,” Jiang Cheng says. “I’m gonna be next to Wangji the whole time, you massive embarrassment, so don’t think about anything other than your actual job.” 

“Oo-ooh, Wangji, how familiar! Don’t worry, A-Cheng, I won’t watch your back even a little. I’m sure Wangji will look out for you.” 

Jiang Cheng gives him a disgusted look and takes the long way down the rocky hill that backs the Jin’s encampment, manfully pretending he’s not turning bright-ass fuchsia. Adorable. 

Wei Ying watches him go, the wind tossing his hair into his face with enough force to sting. He gathers it up in one hand and ties it off with the ribbon, shading his eyes to peer over the field. 

The Jin are in a good position - well-fortified, if not well-manned - which is probably the only reason they haven’t been squashed like little bugs under the pressure of Wen Ruohan’s army. There’s other questions to be asked there, too, about the apparent friendship between the Wen and the Jin patriarchs, but Wei Ying’s not about to be the one to ask it. 

They’re about two days out from the Nie embankment on foot, and it’s been beyond strange travelling with his brother and Lan Zhan both, who snipe at each other like a fucking married couple. He’d spent more than a few hours watching them argue back and forth about the right and wrong way to boil water for soup - Jiang Cheng had spoken loudly and vigorously in favor of one thing, and Lan Zhan had made disparaging little noises and spoken for the exact same thing, and yet somehow they had still argued about it? 

Wei Ying doesn’t get it at all. Lan Zhan had been smiling towards the end? Jiang Cheng’s cheekbones had been flushed? -- He doesn’t want to think about it. It’s only been a couple of days, but he misses Nie Mingjue’s steady presence in a way he really would prefer not to contemplate too deeply. 

Jin Zixuan had started out confused about why they’d come, transitioned into furiously embarrassed, and settled into something closer to resignation. He’d known, as Nie Mingjue had suspected all along, that the Jin had under-committed to the campaign. 

My father, He’d said delicately, and then trailed off. -- Perhaps if he will not listen to reason, he will listen to you. 

Which - rude, alright, but fair. Jin Guangshan had clearly needed something to shift the balance to change his mind. 

Wei Ying is here to shift the balance. So to speak. He hunkers a little lower behind the rocks, elbows braced on his knees (don’t get caught, he thinks, faintly amused, as if it’s going to be an option. It will either happen or it won't). 

He purses his lips and whistles, low enough to be snatched by the wind and carried off, and then spiraling higher and higher until it’s less a drone and more of a shrill little thing, something that says, clawing, don’t you have something you want? Resentful energy comes on the tail of it, drawn to someone who knows what it means to make sacrifices, and it eddies around Wei Ying’s legs in a flurry. 

He changes the pitch again, pushes his direction into the tone - aren’t you angry, he asks it, and resentful energy isn’t quite sentient but it’s not quite not, either. Aren’t you tired of being alone, he pitches the whistle all the way down and the resentful energy pools around his feet, writhing with the sensation of yesyesyesyesYESYES- 

He pauses to take a breath and it shivers all at once, all of the spirits that have clawed together at his call, and he feels a touch - just a touch, a little tug - at his ankle. Testing. He shivers and whistles again, short and sharp and loud, bright release, and the resentful energy shudders again, indecisive, before it tears off over the hill to find - 

Wen Ruohan’s army, milling around and waiting for orders, because they’re not stupid enough to push a choke point unless Wei Ying drags them to it, unless he brings them to be thrown on Jin blades and to push the Jin encampment with no heed for their continued existence. There’s a reason that Wen Ruohan wouldn’t push this point so daringly - strategically, it’s a nightmare. The upside to taking out a chunk of the Jin isn’t worth the loss of so many bodies, even Wen bodies, which are unfortunately numerous. 

But Wei Ying doesn’t care about that. He can’t. 

Aren’t you angry, He calls to the resentful energy, and it snakes its way into the ranks of Wen Ruohan’s army, sliding up their spines and their cores and into the heart of them. He has them, he has them, like a thousand points of light all dragging together into one condensed mind that he can grab and pull at. There’s so much awareness it makes him dizzy, swaying in his hiding place, but he needs - he needs. Come, come here, you’re angry, let me feed you, I will help you, come - 

They come. It’s two or three at first, turning from their fires to look at the no-man’s land between their encampment and the Jin’s blockade, and then fifteen, fifty, a hundred, five hundred. There are so many people looking with Wei Ying’s eyes. He whistles and tugs at the hooks of resentment in their chests, the things that keep them awake at night, the resentful spirit's hunger for humanity, and the splinter of Wen Ruohan's army stands and turns and comes. 

It starts with an alarmed shout from a Jin scout, who notices two moments too late to stop an arrow, set alight with oil and a spark, from hitting the wooden barricade behind which he’s posted. A bell, in the camp, clangs. 

Wei Ying can’t spare a thought to Jiang Cheng, to anyone, because he’s coughing around the blood that’s dripping down the back of his throat and pulling Wen Ruohan’s western flank close, close, like lambs to the slaughter. 

They break on the shore of the Jin’s barricade and smash it utterly, because when a body doesn’t care how it’s broken, it’s nothing more than a weapon. The Jin cultivators scatter and scream and go for their weapons, because they hadn’t been expecting an attack, and no one had been prepared. Wei Ying has to yank at the front line of the army, blood pooling on his tongue, to keep those scurrying Jin from getting run through. 

No deaths. No deaths. As few as possible. It’s hard. His head is - it - 

He licks his teeth and bites his tongue so the spark of pain can bring him back to himself, whistling a low mourning note to hold the resentful energy more closely in check, and swallows the blood. 

He just - just a little bit, he just has to wait a little bit longer, and then he can join them in the camp and join the fight against what he’s brought. They’d agreed, all of them had, that he’d need to be a part of the battle - otherwise, they would not win. They couldn’t. And it would look suspicious if they did. 

There’s a sharp cry from below, human and high, and it feels like it’s breaking the silence even though it’s not silent at all. It’s painfully loud with the rattle and cry of armor and swords. Wei Ying drags his wrist across his face to smear the blood dripping from his nose. He can’t look up, because if he looks up, he won’t be able to concentrate, and he needs - 

He shudders at the burden of it, the clawing inside of him of a thousand spirits that say hungry scared stop hurts want givegiveGIVEGIVE MORE - 

Wait, he wants to tell it, but he can’t - resentful spirits don’t know what it means to be patient. They know hunger and pain and loss and clawing, desperate need for fulfillment, and it’s easy to make a thousand promises that can still rip him up inside. 

There’s a sharp whistle from below and he sags with relief, scrambling out of his hiding place and skidding down the hill. He keeps as tight a leash as he can while he moves but it’s next to impossible, and he can feel his reins slipping as he runs. Every juddering step is another blow to his concentration, and the howl of the resentment rises up around him like something physical. 

“Wei Ying!” Lan Zhan’s voice has a way of cutting through the crowd, and he catches Wei Ying around the biceps before he has time to fully crumple. “Focus.” 

Wei Ying takes a sharp breath, gags on blood, and nods. Lan Zhan shakes him like a naughty kitten before spinning off to protect Jiang Cheng’s back against the encroaching army that Wei Ying has called. 

It gets - easier. He can take out Chenqing then, without fear of being recognized, and the resentful energy comes so much more easily, called by its own. I know, he plays for the spirits that have their claws in Wen Ruohan’s army, I know, I know, I know. He plays them a hymn to understanding their pain, to recognizing and seeing their sorrow. It’s almost like the Lan’s cultivation, and the idea of Lan Qiren’s expression at that comparison is almost enough to make him smile. 

He plays for them to convince the spirits possessing the army to tear them apart, instead of the Jin. He drags his control of them in a hairpin turn and makes them fall on each other with shrieks of despair and agony, and he tries not to think about the wet rip of flesh that he can hear over the sound of the dizi. 

“You’re bleeding,” Jiang Cheng gasps the next time they meet. His sword is dripping in blood, slippery down his hand, and Wei Ying stares at it, dazed. Jiang Cheng reaches with a bloody hand and grips the side of Wei Ying’s head, shaking him gently. “Wei Wuxian.” 

Wei Ying coughs around the next note he plays and has to shake off Jiang Cheng’s hand to spit blood, politely off to the side instead of on Jiang Cheng’s robes. Not that it’d make much difference. They’re both covered in gore. 

“Should call me shixiong,” He rasps, and tips his head back on a laugh when Jiang Cheng gives him a wild sort of look. “Focus, focus. Nearly there.” 

They’re not, really, but it’s close enough. They were always going to win. 

The hardest part is convincing the resentful energy, the thousands of spirits that Wei Ying has dragged up and pieced together, that it’s satisfied with the remnants of Wen Ruohan’s western flank, instead of tearing into the Jin cultivators standing by so readily. He plays and plays and plays, eddying up and down in trills and pleading flourishes, until at last the resentment slips away into nothing and the battlefield is left to men and nothing else. 

Jin Zixuan takes a blade to the shoulder in the last fifteen minutes of the sortie, as intended, and makes a scene and a half of it, also as intended. The fight ends and suddenly there’s silence, cultivators panting and staring at each other. There is not a single golden robe on the ground, unless one were to count Jin Zixuan, falling to his knees. 

He looks very noble and pale, sinking to the dirt clutching his shoulder (not of his sword arm, because regardless of Wei Ying’s personal feelings on him, he doesn’t believe in cutting a man’s career short for theater), and his mother shrieks when she emerges from a tent and sees him. It’s so perfectly dramatic that one would think she’d been let in on the secret of it. 

Wei Ying wipes his bloody chin on his shoulder and looks at Lan Zhan, who’s gore-covered from throat to shins, all his pristine white and blue dyed a muddy brown. Jiang Cheng doesn’t look much better, all his royal Yunmeng purple made sludgy with blood. 

“Let’s never do that again,” Wei Ying rasps, quiet as he can, and shoves Chenqing into his belt. He coughs to clear his throat and has to swallow blood back down, which makes him wish he didn’t have a body to be nauseated in. “Fuck.” 

Jiang Cheng wipes his face with a wrist and comes away worse for it. He grimaces. “Fuck.” 

Lan Zhan looks like he’s going to sheathe his sword, hesitates at the sheer amount of gore on it, and ends up just standing awkwardly. He doesn’t say fuck, but he projects an aura of it, anyway. 

“Did Zixuan die?” Jiang Cheng asks, sounding a little bit like he couldn’t give less of a fuck. Lan Zhan flicks him a scolding look and Jiang Cheng furrows his eyebrows back, and they have a completely silent argument that sort of makes Wei Ying want to set himself on fire. 

“No,” He says, trying to break the tension between them. “Madam Jin’s screaming, but he’s fine.” I was careful, he doesn’t say, because the point of subterfuge is to keep it on the low-down. 

He wants to take a bath. He wants to sleep for a million years. He really, really, deeply wants to see Nie Mingjue. He can do - one of those things. 

“I’m gonna go dunk myself in that river,” He says to no one in particular, because Lan Zhan and Jiang Cheng have engaged in another uncomfortably charged staring contest. He remembers, rather abruptly, that Jiang Cheng had said something about how often they’d been thrown together on missions that couldn’t be entrusted to anyone else. 

Suddenly, things make so much sense. 

“Not too long,” Jiang Cheng says, blinking himself back to awareness for a moment. “You’ll get cold.” 

Wei Ying waves a hand lackadaisically and staggers off in the direction of the closest source of clean water, electing not to engage with the mother-henning. 

 

══════════════════

 

They’re all weary to the bone, trying to tidy up the nightmare of the Jin encampment, and Wei Ying passes out before Lan Zhan does, which is just embarrassing. He can already hear the whispers when he wakes up, half-buried in stolen blankets, and they’re- not what he’d been expecting, considering how badly most of his plans had gone to date. 

Only two-hundred cultivators, Someone whispers from outside his tent as he struggles into his robes, stiff with not-enough-actual-washing. Like he wanted us to die -

Wei Ying pulls his belt tighter, eyebrows coming together in a frown. It’s the same outside, but- more. 

“- Wouldn’t have been able to do anything,” Another cultivator mutters, hiding behind their hand, “If it weren’t for - you know -” 

“Ssh,” His partner hisses at him, pushing him lower, “Don’t talk about it so loud, they’ll hear.” 

Wei Ying is hearing. He’s hearing and he’s confused. 

The words 'Jin-zongzhu' are the beginning of half the rumors, and they’re all - very, very negative. That he’d left them to die. That he’s intentionally trying to thin out his sect. That he’d rather pinch pennies than save lives. They’re probably not all true, but they’re murmured with a great deal of conviction, and it really doesn’t matter if they’re true or not. 

The other half of the rumors, bewilderingly, are about how terribly, wonderfully heroic he is, how brave and strong Lan Zhan is, what a remarkable leader and cultivator Jiang Cheng is. Hearing positive adjectives associated with his name is fucking bizarre, after so long having his hems spit on, and Wei Ying doesn’t quite know what to do with it. He wonders, somewhat hysterically, if these are the things that Nie Huaisang had been referring to when he'd mentioned setting things in motion. 

Jin Zixuan is, of course, elevated nearly to martyr status, even though he’s not even dead. Wei Ying peeks into the tent where he’s convalescing and is deeply amused to see him looking remarkably aggrieved by the sheer number of gifts and get-well-soons he’s been plied with. 

Wei Ying plunks himself down at Jin Zixuan’s bedside and tucks his fingers under his own chin, blinking at him winsomely. If Jin Zixuan looks disgruntled at being bed-bound, then he looks downright churlish when Wei Ying starts fluttering his eyelashes. 

“Yes,” Jin Zixuan says before Wei Ying can even ask, presumably to try and get him the fuck out of the tent. “I think it worked. My mother’s worked herself up so much she nearly turned purple.” 

“Have you heard the rumors?” Wei Ying asks, mostly because he wants to confirm that he’s not hallucinating them. Jin Zixuan rolls his eyes, of all things. Wei Ying wonders what fucking reality he’s inhabiting. 

“Who hasn’t? They want to elevate you to some sort of patriarch, you know.” 

Wei Ying recoils with a grimace. “Augh, of where? The fucking western front of Qishan? No, thank you.” 

Jin Zixuan coughs a laugh and barely flinches, even when it jars his shoulder. Wei Ying really had been careful. “Not especially auspicious, hey? In any case, the fact that not a single Jin died is -” 

“Really fucking unlikely,” Wei Ying says darkly, but he can’t bring himself to think that maybe they should have killed a disciple or two for authenticity’s sake. A few men might be worth an army, but Wei Ying doesn’t want to be the one making that choice. He’ll leave that up to actual leaders. 

Jin Zixuan smirks, but doesn’t disagree. “We’ll pretend,” He says, pitching his voice low like it’s a secret, “That it’s because the Jin are truly just remarkable swordsmen, hm?” 

Wei Ying is startled to find that he doesn’t hate Jin Zixuan when they’re not sniping at each other over his treatment of Jiang Yanli. He’s sort of appalled at himself at this revelation. 

“I need to get back to - uh. Back.” He says instead of telling Jin Zixuan maybe you’re not that much of a piece of shit after all. “Want me to pass anything on?” 

Jin Zuxuan considers this and shakes his head. “I’ll send word when I hear back from my father.” 

He, Lan Zhan, and Jiang Cheng leave no more than an hour later, juggling hot ba ming between two hands while they walk. They make good time - the sky’s still clear and bright, it’s warm, there are even bird chirping. They make camp the first night and it’s almost pleasant, having company in the warm glow of the fire. 

The next morning, after they pack the camp back up, Wei Ying’s already tired of the quiet. 

“I told you it’d be fine,” Wei Ying says, walking backwards along the narrow, winding path. Jiang Cheng has to keep grabbing him to keep him from tripping straight into the weeds, but that’s not nearly enough to make Wei Ying turn around. “It was totally fine!” 

“You were bleeding from your mouth,” Jiang Cheng says, mouth a flat, dissatisfied line. “And your nose, and basically crying blood, and -” 

“Shut up, wasn’t,” Wei Ying gasps, and leans to punch Jiang Cheng in the shoulder. 

“Hm,” Lan Zhan says, which is about as much as Lan Zhan ever seems to say. “It was fine.” 

Wei Ying makes a triumphant noise and gestures, like heyo! Lan Zhan gives him a look. 

“Nothing more than fine. You did look unwell. You exhausted yourself.” 

Wei Ying presses his hands together because - yes. Not untrue. But he hadn’t died, had he, and he’d kept his promise. It had been fine. He hadn’t even lost his mind a little bit (for all that he can still feel the clawing hunger inside him for something that he can’t quite name, for rest and restitution of spirits long dead), and they were nearly back to the established forward camp. 

“Aah, Lan Zhan, did I remember to thank you for watching my sect leader’s back? This humble one is in your debt, gongzi.” 

Lan Zhan gives him a deeply unimpressed look. “Jiang-zongzhu can protect himself admirably. Perhaps he would be able to focus more if you were distracting him less.” 

Wei Ying gapes at him, too startled to protest, and finally flips around to walk the right way around so Jiang Cheng can stop catching him when he trips. 

They’re still a few li out when they hear the very faint sound of metal on metal. Jiang Cheng and Lan Zhan glance at each other, a tiny darting thing, and Wei Ying tips forward to listen more closely. 

“Is there - a fight?” He asks, bewildered. “But he was supposed to wait until we came back with confirmation from the Jin."  

Jiang Cheng swears under his breath, casting a look behind himself. “Yeah, shit changes - come on, we need to go, if there’s actually something to worry about, we need to move.” 

They hurry and it’s - it’s bad. They come over the ridge and it’s a nightmare, even in the brutal sunshine. Worse, almost, for not being so cloudy. It’s as if all of the lives that Wei Ying had spared in the Jin camp had been taken in equal measure here, Nie corpses sprawled out so thickly around the outer perimeter it’s like a field of grey robes and red gore, rather than dirt. 

“Fuck,” Wei Ying says, helpless, and starts to run. His heart pounds a tattoo on the inside of his chest, something like Mingjue Mingjue Mingjue, and he ignores Jiang Cheng’s startled shout behind him. 

 

══════════════════

 

Nie Mingjue has blood sheeting into one eye and is really starting to regret thinking that today might have been a good day. He’d lost track of Huaisang ages ago, too long ago, he has no idea where the fuck his brother is and his arm is going numb with Baxia’s weight. He has to back over his shidi’s corpses because he has run out of advantages to press and fuck, fuck, he needs to find Huaisang but he’s - 

Outnumbered. Not outmatched, never, but outnumbered, fuck, there are so many people and they hadn’t been ready at all. They hadn’t been expecting an attack, and the irony doesn’t escape him that Wen Ruohan’s strategist and Wei Wuxian had had the same plan at nearly the same time on different fronts and for different sides. 

He ducks a wide sword-swing and kicks the wielder back, whirling away from another swing and throwing Baxia straight through a Wen cultivator who goes down with a gurgle. It doesn’t make him any less fucked, really - it’s more… what? Drawing out the inevitable? 

He’s sweating blood into his own eyes, squinting against the bright glare of the sun off the fallen sabers of his sect (fuck, fuck, fuck -), when suddenly the sun - 

The sun goes out. 

Nie Mingjue takes advantage of the distraction to pull Baxia out of the hapless cultivator with a disgusting sucking noise and kill the two that are harrying him like dogs. The sky is painted black behind their heads, deep roiling clouds that can’t be natural under any circumstances but especially not now, on what had been a perfect, cloudless day. 

Something - someone? No, Mingjue thinks, because he refuses to believe that something that can make that noise could still be human - screams, high and tearing and too-loud. It echoes over the entire field, over the camp, over the corpses, over everything. 

The darkness falls and rolls in like the tide, swamping over tents and putting out campfires, racing through the pathways that Nie Mingjue and his cultivators had walked for weeks. 

Another shrill note, a wail, and suddenly the darkness freezes and writhes and sinks into the corpses of Mingjue’s fallen sect members and Wen alike. They peel themselves off the ground jerkily, like puppets, and Mingjue watches the man he'd just killed try to drag himself upright, his spine neatly severed. The young man swivels like he’s on a string, eyes sliding straight over Nie Mingjue and his loose grip on Baxia, to face the west, and then takes off running, sheeting blood. 

Cultivator’s corpses around him pick themselves up and shamble forward, or crawl if they can’t walk, and Nie Mingjue takes a stutter-step back at the horror of it, climbing up his throat. There’s something that doesn’t let him stop watching - respect, maybe, doing his shidi the service of watching them throw their corpses at an enemy they’re no longer cognizant of. 

A scream - no, Nie Mingjue realizes, it’s not a scream. A dizi, amplified far past reality, played with thin desperation. The dizi spirals higher and as a unit the corpses turn to face the Wen army, who are already starting to scramble to break ranks. 

They crash into the Wen like a tide and every single one they kill comes back as one of them. Nie Mingjue watches a boy, fifteen at best, maybe a cook, not a cultivator, punch a hand straight through a sunburst insignia and come out the other side. The Wen cultivator slumps with a gasp but doesn’t even have time to spit the blood before he’s reanimated by - by what must be Wei Wuxian. It couldn’t be anyone else. 

Distantly, Nie Mingjue can hear screaming, shouting, can feel the roiling resentful energy of something too vast to be just Wei Wuxian alone, but he can’t do anything but watch helplessly while the corpses of his disciples claw the eyes out of Wen cultivators and then Wen cultivators turn on their own ranks and devour them. 

Nothing is spared. Living Nie cultivators are torn apart like wet tissue paper. It is - horrifying. Inevitable. There is nothing that he can do and for the second time in his life (the first had been learning about the mingling curse and blessing of the saber spirit), Nie Mingjue feels painfully helpless. 

“-jue, Mingjue, da-ge!” He hears, and Nie Mingjue whips around to catch Nie Huaisang, stumbling out of the gloom with his saber in one hand. “What, what’s -” 

Nie Mingjue shakes his head and drags him forward, heading west like he’s being called, and he doesn’t even know what to say to his brother. He doesn’t know how to explain what he needs to do because he doesn’t even know himself, really - all he knows is that Wei Wuxian needs help, or will need help, because. Because.   

He likes to think that at this point, after so long of waking up with Wei Wuxian curled into him, he knows him. He knows that Wei Wuxian wouldn’t just - 

He wouldn’t. 

“Da-ge,” Huaisang says, and Nie Mingjue shakes himself out of it to look at him, at least. “I- let me go, let me find the people who- who survived the ambush, alright?” 

Mingjue wavers, because he knows what’s right and he knows what he wants and they are not the same. ‘I’ll go with you,” He says. In the end, he’s a sect leader to his core. 

Huaisang shakes his head hard and shoves Nie Mingjue two steps left, and Mingjue is startled enough to let him. “Don’t be stupid, are you serious? Go deal with Wei-xiong, are you fucking kidding me?” 

Nie Mingjue stares at him and breathes out a soft, only sort-of panicky noise. “Okay,” He says, and takes his brother by the shoulders. “Be safe, be smart - didi, I need you to -” He takes a long, deep breath. “I need you to be safe. See if you can find Wangji or Jiang Wanyin, if Wei Wuxian’s back, so are they.” 

Nie Huaisang nods sharply and twists out from under Nie Mingjue’s hands. Nie Mingjue watches him until he fades back into the billowing gloom, then turns to face the west, where he can just barely see Wei Wuxian’s silhouette at the top of an outcropping, lit from behind by fire. 

It’s a much easier trip than it should be. There are no cultivators between the two of them, and the corpses ignore him completely as they claw themselves off the ground and towards the Wen. Nie Mingjue reaches the ridge so much more quickly than he should, and finds Jiang Wanyin at the bottom, clutching his ribs but holding his sword with a furious determination. 

“I won’t let you -” He cuts himself off to cough, fingers spasming against his side, “He’s not, it’s not his fault, he’s helping, I won’t let you do anything to him.” 

Nie Mingjue stares at him and says, filter entirely absent with the shock of the day, “Are you a fucking idiot, boy, move so I can save your stupid brother.” 

Jiang Wanyin says, bewildered, “Don’t call me ‘boy’,” but he moves so Nie Mingjue literally could not care less. 

Nie Mingjue climbs. The thrum of resentment gets stronger with every step, until he can feel it in his teeth, in his fingertips, everywhere. He crests the hill and the yin tiger tally is waiting for him, spiraling gently just out of Wei Wuxian’s grasp. 

Wei Wuxian does not look well. It’s sort of the understatement of a lifetime, but it’s what stands out first and foremost to Nie Mingjue, who has made it his business to know every slender line of him. 

Wei Ying looks agonized, red ribbon a slash of color against the inky dark of his hair. The unnatural wind tears around him, whips into his mouth when he turns to Nie Mingjue and opens it to say - 

“ Da-ge, ” He whispers, words snatched away by the howl of the wind. Mingjue can read them in the shape of his mouth. 

Wei Wuxian is pale like Nie Mingjue has never seen him and it becomes clear why, exactly, when he twists and his ribbon isn’t the only red on him. Someone’s caught him with a sword in the side and it’s bad, fuck, it looks bad. The fact that he’s standing at all is a miracle, and Nie Mingjue can’t stop looking at him and thinking he doesn’t have a core. 

People without cores don’t come back from injuries like that. He can’t think past it. Wei Wuxian’s grip is loose on his dizi and he looks like maybe he’s been dying the whole time he’s been playing, winning a fight for Nie Mingjue that he doesn’t plan to see the end of. 

“Wei Wuxian,” Nie Mingjue says, and takes a step forward just in time to catch Wei Wuxian as he crumples. The yin tiger tally is still shriekingly powerful, agonizing to be near, but Nie Mingjue doesn’t know what to do with Wei Wuxian bleeding out in his arms. “Wei Wuxian, A-Xian-” 

Wei Wuxian’s eyes flutter open and he gasps an agonized little noise, clutching for Nie Mingjue’s robes. “Da-ge, I’m -”

Nie Mingjue’s not much of a healer but he knows enough for this, putting pressure on the wound and cradling Wei Wuxian with the other arm. It’s disgusting - he’s already slippery with blood, and it’s just blood on blood, it’s horrible, but the spiritual power that he can spare is enough to help. 

“Wei Wuxian, can you stop it? I need you to stop it, I need you to turn it off, let it go, it's killing you -” 

Wei Wuxian looks painfully confused, reaching to touch Nie Mingjue’s cheekbone, the corner of his mouth. “I can’t,” He says, helpless and small and scared. “I don’t know how.” 

Nie Mingjue looks at him and imagines corpses tearing his brother apart, tearing Wei Wuxian’s brother apart, clawing out of the ground and consuming the world because Wei Wuxian doesn’t know how to stop it and he’s dying, he’s dying, Nie Mingjue hasn’t felt such clawing panic before in his life - 

“You do,” He says, helpless, “You do, you’re good, you do know, you can do it. I know you can.” 

Wei Wuxian hushes him and smears a hand across Nie Mingjue’s face, painting his own blood from one of Mingjue’s cheekbones to the other. “Don’t cry,” He says, tiny and desperate. “Don’t, I can - let me try, I’ll try, give it to me.” 

Nie Mingjue doesn’t want to touch it. His skin crawls at the thought of it on his skin, but he’s out of options and they’re running out of time. He has to ignore Wei Wuxian’s little gasp of pain when he leans forward to grab the tally and it buzzes an icy-cold shock up his arm, so painful his body wants to let it go immediately. 

Wei Wuxian hiccups in agony when he shifts to take it, the movement jarring his ribs, but he cups it to his chest and rocks into it, mouthing to it like someone might whisper comfort to a child. There’s nothing for Nie Mingjue to do but tilt down to press his mouth to Wei Wuxian’s hairline, wishing, helplessly, for a miracle. 

The wind sputters out. Below, down the sweep of the ridge, there is an echoing silence. 

“Oh, thank fuck,” Wei Wuxian breathes, and breaks the tally cleanly apart, shoving half into Nie Mingjue’s hands. “Take this, take it, I can’t- I can’t-” He sounds almost sick with fear over it, over having any part of it, but Mingjue shakes his head and shoves it back at him. 

“Give it to your brother,” He says, rough, and curls Wei Wuxian’s fingers around the two halves when they try to go lax. “It belongs with your sect, don’t - I don’t want it.” 

Wei Wuxian’s eyes slide closed and he breathes a slow breath. In, out. It makes him wince and make a tiny, pained little noise. “Hurts. Da-ge, it -” 

“I know,” Nie Mingjue says, putting as much pressure as he dares on the gash in Wei Wuxian’s side. “I know, we’ll - it’ll be okay. I’ll take care of you.” He feeds his spiritual energy into the bottomless cup of Wei Wuxian’s body and watches the sky as the clouds start to clear. 

 

══════════════════

 

Wei Ying tosses himself into Nie Mingjue’s lap and laughs when he startles, taking Mingjue’s wrists in his palms and placing them on his waist, one at a time. 

“I’m so mad at you,” He informs Mingjue very cheerfully, which doesn’t sound terribly convincing, but he doesn’t especially want to try again. 

Nie Mingjue looks at his forehead in consternation, because Wei Ying is too close to look anywhere else. 

“What did I do this time?” He asks, hover-handing over the place a Wen cultivator’s sword had gone into and out of Wei Ying’s side, clean through-and-through. He’s still careful there, even after the time spent healing, and if it weren’t so precious Wei Ying would have asked him to stop. 

“You! You know what you did!” He pulls back a little, bracing his hands on Nie Mingjue’s chest for balance, and sees on Mingjue’s face that, actually, he has no fucking clue what Wei Ying’s talking about. “Or - hm, no? Okay, well - well!” He squirms uncomfortably, trying to figure out how to start the conversation without the main hook of it. 

Nie Mingjue slides his hands up to cup beneath Wei Ying’s shoulder blades and squeezes gently. “The point, A-Xian.” 

“I told Jiang Cheng about- about the core thing.” It had been a dizzying relief, at the time, even if it hadn’t been the whole truth. He couldn’t leave it between them anymore, the lies about why he wouldn’t carry his sword and why he couldn’t help rebuild and why he was so fragile, why it had taken him nearly a month and a half to only mostly-heal rather than a few days at best. He hadn’t told him about - about Jiang Cheng’s core. He couldn’t. Probably wouldn’t ever. 

But he’d told him enough, enough to be honest. 

“Mm?” Nie Mingjue makes an encouraging noise, feathering a kiss against Wei Ying’s hairline. Wei Ying squirms with pleasure and drapes his arms around Nie Mingjue’s neck, done with maintaining the facade of annoyance. 

“And he said that he already knew, and that he’d been waiting for me to tell him.” He doesn’t keep the vague offense out of his voice. Nie Mingjue shakes with what can only be poorly-stifled laughter, and Wei Ying stretches up to bite him hard on the cheekbone. “How the fuck could he already know!” 

“You were pretty obvious,” Nie Mingjue says, because he’s rude, and curves his fingertips into the line of Wei Ying’s shoulder blades. “Upon reflection, I’m not entirely sure how everyone doesn’t know? Huaisang clocked it from half a li away.” 

“How!?” Wei Ying gasps, outraged. He’s been careful. 

“Probably from all those times you didn’t bring your sword to a war,” Nie Mingjue says thoughtfully, scooting back so he can lean against his travel chest. “Or the time you didn’t want to fly by sword. Or the time everyone took turns dumping spiritual energy into your stupid, skinny body and it didn’t circulate anywhere.” 

Wei Ying mouths an ‘oh’. When it’s laid out that way, he supposes. “Well.” 

“Well,” Nie Mingjue agrees, and leans in to kiss him soundly. “You know, I think we should talk about something else?” 

“Oh, do you,” Wei Ying laughs, and lets Nie Mingjue roll him over, gently as anything. “Is it about having sex with me?” 

Nie Mingjue hums, contemplative, and says, “Actually, it’s about how I’m gonna ask your brother if I can court you properly.” 

Wei Ying wheezes, helpless, and sputters when Mingjue drops a friendly kiss on the bridge of his nose. 

Notes:

we're done! i have so much planned in this verse and i'd love to answer questions so feel free to dm me on twitter or comment bc I have... many thoughts. on the butterfly effect of nie mingjue's loving arms.

this fic on twt

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of forever may you reign