Work Text:
Jiang Cheng was doing paperwork alone in his tent on a sticky, humid, too-hot autumn night, and he wanted nothing more than to crawl right out of his own skin.
Four hours ago he'd killed a nest of demon wasps. Three hours ago he'd promised his deputies that he would clean himself up and rest. Two and a half hours ago he'd retired to his tent on the very edge of the Jiang encampment on the outskirts of Xianning, where nobody would be close enough to see what he was or wasn't doing, lit the lantern by his desk, and started grinding ink.
There was always so much to do these days. Yunmeng Jiang was limping along in the aftermath of the Sunshot Campaign—
(just like Mother, with her cane and her scars and her halfway burned-out golden core.)
—bruised, maimed, but still dragging itself back and forth from night hunts to discussion conferences, as though nothing had changed. As though Jiang-zongzhu wasn't a boy in over his head, instead of the man who'd—
(hugged Jiang Cheng before going to his death, and then Father had turned to Wei Wuxian and Meng Yao and asked them to take care of Jiang Cheng. As if Jiang Cheng was something precious. As if he wasn't a disappointment, always coming in second place to either of his genius shixiongs.)
—well. Jiang Cheng could at least play the part of Sect Leader Jiang. He'd learned that much from Father.
(Doing it without Wei Wuxian still hurt.
Wei Wuxian had promised him they'd always be together. Then, six months into the war, while recovering from injuries sustained in a Wen ambush, he'd met a little group of Wen defectors sheltering in the Cloud Recesses under Lan Xichen's wing and started collaborating on medical cultivation techniques to treat Sunshot's civilian casualties. The rest was history.
Wei Wuxian and Wen Qing's work on medical cultivation was going to change the world, and Jiang Cheng wasn't selfish enough to hold him to a teenage promise when Wei-daifu was doing so much good for everyone.)
(Mother had been furious.
In the depths of his own heartbroken anger, Jiang Cheng had demanded to know why she was so pissed off when she'd always wanted Wei Wuxian gone and made no secret about it. Shouldn't she be turning cartwheels of joy? If Jiang Cheng hated someone as much as she seemed to hate Wei Wuxian, he'd throw a fucking party if they finally got the hell out of his life.
Turns out, he'd only thought Mother had been furious before.
Getting in her face about it resulted in a fight that counted five broken vases, three doors slammed off their hinges, and Father's old desk as casualties.
The two of them had barely spoken to each other since then, the better part of a month now. They'd never fought like this before; never fought at all, really. Jiang Cheng wasn't the kind of son who mouthed off to his mother. Yu Ziyuan wasn't the kind of mother who was cruel to her son.
Maybe it shouldn't have been such a surprise to them both that losing Wei Wuxian had changed things between them.)
(On the steps of the Sword Hall, in the dead of a humid summer night, Meng Yao caught Jiang Cheng's chin and tilted his face up so their eyes met. "You really think she's not cruel to you?"
Jiang Cheng didn't comment on the hand on his chin.
In the absence of Wei Wuxian, their da-shixiong had taken it upon himself to make up for his loss by handling Jiang Cheng constantly, as if he were trying to socialize an unruly kitten. Hands on his chin, in his hair, on the back of his neck, fingers pressed to his temples and between his eyebrows, all with a serious expression, as if he was trying to memorize Jiang Cheng by touch alone. Jiang Cheng told himself that he let Meng Yao get away with this unchallenged because pushing Meng Yao off had certain…connotations that shoving Wei Wuxian away while telling him to get fucked did not.
This was a lie, and not a very good one. The fact they'd been falling into bed together since two months after Lotus Pier was attacked didn't matter one way or another, in Jiang Cheng's opinion. Meng Yao was one of the paltry handful of people who wanted to touch Jiang Cheng who he could actually tolerate, a handful that included his mother, his sister, and the terrified prostitute his mother had brought home in a fit of spiteful rage to throw in his father's face who had somehow become more of a mother to him and his siblings than the woman who'd borne him, but not his own father.
Not until the very end, anyway.
"She's not," he insisted.
The bandages on Meng Yao's fingers scraped against the bruise on the hinge of his jaw. He hissed.
Meng Yao immediately let go and leaned in to kiss the spot where he'd hurt him before saying, very softly, "I think she's crueler to you than she is to anyone but herself."
"What does that matter? She's my—" Mother, Jiang Cheng bit off, because it didn't count when it was your mother. Because the two of them were too alike: unloving, unlovable, the kind of person you left behind without a backward glance.
Another vase shattered somewhere in Mother's suite on the other side of the lake. Voices were raised to carry over the water—Mother's, mostly—and A-jie came hurrying out along the walkway from Mother's room, red-eyed and stiff with frustrated anger.
Meng Yao let go of Jiang Cheng and picked up his pipa. "Time for my next shift," he murmured. "Do you think she'll enjoy 'Watching the Moon in Brahman Land' or would she prefer some uplifting court banquet music?"
Jiang Cheng grabbed Meng Yao's wrist as he stood up. "You've been playing that pipa so much for her that your fingers are fucking bleeding," he said, running his thumb over Meng Yao's palm and pinching the bandages around his index finger.
Meng Yao looked down at him with a tiny smile. "A small price to pay for the generosity of the Jiang family. And, as you said: she's your mother."
Jiang Cheng was about to—he didn't know what. Yell? Cry? "You can't play court banquet music on a pipa," he said instead, like an idiot.
Meng Yao's smile took on a sardonic edge. "I'm versatile," he purred. "I'll manage."
Meng Shi appeared just then on the walkway, running to meet A-jie and pull her into an embrace. She comforted A-jie for a few minutes, then sent her on her way to her own room, straightened herself up like a general preparing for battle, and marched into Yu Ziyuan's rooms herself.
Seeing this, Jiang Cheng shot to his feet and started to run after her. Meng Yao caught him around the waist and reeled him back. "Let her handle it," he told Jiang Cheng.
"But she's—!"
Mother shouted something. Meng Shi didn't raise her voice, but her tone when she replied was the same sort of razor-and-barbs that Meng Yao used on his shidis when he was done with their shit.
Whatever she said, it made Mother laugh.
They still didn't talk to each other the next day, but at least the atmosphere between them wasn't so thick that it threatened to choke the entire pier.)
So here he was, itching and miserable, all around bad company.
It was his own fault, really. He'd climbed into the nest to slaughter the demon wasps before they could boil out and assault his disciples. He'd come out mostly unscathed aside from some embarrassing swelling, but he'd been stung, repeatedly, and the venom still lingered in his body. His golden core was dealing with most of it, but the pain and heat of the toxin made it impossible to sleep and unpleasant to try to burn off.
Jiang Cheng felt like a polyp on the verge of bursting.
Obviously, this was the perfect time to get some paperwork done.
The tent flap rustled. Jiang Cheng looked up.
The four little shimeis who'd been cleared for their first night hunt tonight—the reason he'd climbed into the nest personally instead of just blasting it open, like hell was he letting those monsters loose on a bunch of kids—had pulled back his tent flap and were all clustered together staring at him accusingly.
It was like being judged by a bunch of baby owls.
Framed in the torchlight beside them, Meng Yao smiled. "Jiang-zongzhu. Didn't you promise you were going to rest?"
It was a very sweet smile, if you didn't actually know Meng Yao.
"I said I'd break the legs of anyone who bothered me after lights-out," Jiang Cheng growled. The four little monsters had the nerve to roll their eyes at him. "What are you kids doing up this late?"
"Making Da-shixiong pretty," said the oldest shimei. Now that Jiang Cheng looked, Meng Yao did have on more eye makeup than he usually went for, a ruddy shade that made his golden-brown eyes look even bigger and his ridiculously long eyelashes even longer. "We got interrupted. Because of you."
Jiang Cheng said, dumbly, "He's already pretty."
"We know that," the youngest one retorted, with another eye roll.
"Makeup time with da-shixiong is a reward for good behavior, which means no running off or getting into trouble during hunts," Meng Yao said with a sidelong smile at the girls. "Now off you go, little ones, it's past your bedtimes."
They obeyed, scowling. Meng Yao and Jiang Cheng were left alone in Jiang Cheng's tent.
"They're never going to leave you alone after this, you realize," Jiang Cheng said to Meng Yao. "Wei Wuxian let the older girls do makeup on him once and every single night hunt for the next five years they were after him about it. I think they only stopped when he…" Jiang Cheng swallowed.
"They didn't stop," Meng Yao said, amused. "They're currently militating for a crowd hunt with Gusu Lan."
"Sweet fucking emperor of heaven." Jiang Cheng rubbed his temple—a mistake, ow—and demanded, "Who snitched?"
Meng Yao's smile grew sugar-sweet. "A good spymaster treasures his informants, A-Cheng."
"Was it Ma-shidi? I bet it was Ma-shidi."
Meng Yao's smile softened as he walked past Jiang Cheng and headed for the chest where they kept the tea-making supplies. "Don't be silly. As if I'd ever tell you. If you can't sleep, how about some tea, hm?"
Jiang Cheng twisted in his seat to watch him, then regretted it an instant later. He couldn't stop a low grunt from escaping between his teeth at the sharp, jagged spike of pain radiating out from his shoulder blades and over his ribs as his golden core forcibly cleared another wave of venom out of his muscles.
Meng Yao noticed instantly.
He closed the tea chest, sat down next to Jiang Cheng, and stared at him intently. It was a bit like being watched by a fox: curious, too-intelligent, almost hypnotic. Jiang Cheng never felt smaller and more vulnerable than he did when Meng Yao looked at him like this.
"So when you said you were fine," Meng Yao hinted.
"I was gonna sleep it off," Jiang Cheng muttered. Meng Yao's so-calm expression cracked, and he reached for Jiang Cheng.
Jiang Cheng flinched away, then hated himself for the look on Meng Yao's face. "It's not—just, don't, okay, it hurts. If you touch me I'll probably fucking—scream, or something else pathetic and undignified."
"You're in pain," Meng Yao said sharply. "Let me help you—"
"Your core isn't strong enough! You're drained from today, too, it won't—just leave me alone," Jiang Cheng growled. "I'll be fine tomorrow."
Meng Yao stared at Jiang Cheng as though he were a puzzle he was trying to solve, an eerily similar expression to the one Nie Huaisang wore on idle nights in Qinghe or Gusu when he was scheming the best way to take Jiang Cheng to pieces, or Meng Yao, or both at once. Then his face softened. "May I at least touch your hair?"
Jiang Cheng stared at him. "My hair?" It was the only part of him that didn't hurt, but…
"Just a thought I had," Meng Yao said, undoing Jiang Cheng's guan and letting his hair fall in messy waves down his back. Then he waited.
Jiang Cheng sighed. "Sure," he said, and then, because that wasn't actually an enthusiastic agreement, "I'd like that."
Meng Yao produced a comb from his own sleeve and began running it gently through his hair from root to tip. "Carry on with what you were doing as if I wasn't here, hm?"
It was…nice. It was very nice. Jiang Cheng's scalp tingled pleasantly, and the tension in his shoulders began to unwind itself with every pass of the comb, as if he was being stroked like a cat. Meng Yao's attentive touch, his careful handling, all combined to turn the miserable heat in Jiang Cheng into something sunlit and lazy. His vision doubled as he relaxed into the touch.
There was no fucking way he was going to get finished annotating this treaty. He rolled it up and put it away, then hung up his brush. His back had stopped screaming at him every time he moved or twitched.
Jiang Cheng was lost in a haze of almost unbearable lassitude when he realized that Meng Yao had finished combing his hair quite some time ago, but he was still…playing with it. "What are you doing back there," he mumbled, waking up a little.
"Braiding your hair," Meng Yao said cheerfully. "I like your hair, it's very soft, and I rarely get an opportunity to play with it as much as I would like."
Jiang Cheng slumped forward. The resulting tug was barely detectable. Meng Yao was being so careful with him tonight. If he were anyone else, he might cry about it. "What kind of braids?"
"Ahem."
"You're putting Nie braids in there, aren't you."
"Maybe."
"Because Huaisang is coming to Lotus Pier tomorrow and he'll lose his mind about it."
"Perhaps." Meng Yao fiddled with the end of the braid he'd been tying off. "I need to distract him with something, A-Cheng. He's been threatening to write a poem about your ass."
Jiang Cheng woke up a little at that. "You think this'll help?"
"Mm, possibly not," Meng Yao allowed, moving on to the next section of Jiang Cheng's scalp. "For what it's worth, Nie braids are specifically designed to reduce malign spiritual influences on the wearer's body."
Jiang Cheng started to turn around to stare at Meng Yao and got his hair tugged on for his troubles, which shouldn't have felt good, but fuck Jiang Cheng's life apparently. "He told you that?"
"On pain of death by Da-ge if it gets out," Meng Yao said primly. "So you didn't hear it from me."
"Betraying his sect's secrets to his boyfriends," Jiang Cheng grumbled, shaking his head. "Why is our taste in men so bad?"
"Oh, I don't think it is," Meng Yao said, finishing off one last braid and tying it off with a scrap of red ribbon. "There. Very pretty, although Jiang-zongzhu is already pretty."
Jiang Cheng took a gamble and leaned back against Meng Yao's chest. It didn't hurt, not even when Meng Yao wrapped his arms around him from behind and tucked his chin over Jiang Cheng's shoulder to kiss his cheek.
Jiang Cheng pressed as close to Meng Yao as he dared before the pain came back. In return, Meng Yao tangled his fingers in Jiang Cheng's hair and just held on, scritching lightly at his scalp.
"You had a hard hunt, too," Jiang Cheng said half-heartedly. "You should go get some sleep."
Meng Yao blinked at him. "Here?"
Jiang Cheng swallowed. "I don't know if I can manage any, uh, activities, but if you'd like to sleep in my bed regardless…"
"I always like to sleep in your bed," Meng Yao said firmly. "Any 'uh, activities' are merely an enhancement to an already pleasurable experience." He gave Jiang Cheng an affectionate, full-body shake. "I will go to bed when you do."
"You…ugh. There's one thing left for me to do," Jiang Cheng said, boneless, his face pressed to Meng Yao's neck. "The Jins are pushing to finalize A-jie's marriage contract."
A few years ago, any mention of the Jins would have made Meng Yao tense up or flinch. Now, with Jiang Cheng snuggled against him, he just laughed. "They must be worried about some other eligible bachelor snapping her up for themselves. She is the only maiden daughter of a Great Sect in our generation."
"They've really gotten pushy about it these last couple of months," Jiang Cheng said slowly.
Meng Yao smirked, just a little, into Jiang Cheng's braided hair. "That's about right," he said. "The rumors I spread about Zewu-jun and Chifeng-zun being in a romantic standoff over her hand six months ago seem to have reached Jinlintai right on schedule. Zixuan must be reconsidering his dawdling on the matter."
Jiang Cheng stared at Meng Yao with his mouth hanging open like a concussed fish.
Meng Yao blinked at him, ever so innocent, then his face softened. "Mother always says that trapped things become desperate," he said softly. "Shijie deserves to be free, doesn't she? And I'm certain to be more welcome as a visitor at Jinlintai when she is Jin-furen."
"You will," Jiang Cheng said faintly. "She does." His eyelids were drooping. "Will you stay?" His tongue was thick in his mouth as exhaustion took him. "With us?"
The last thing he saw before he dropped off to sleep was Meng Yao's golden eyes glistening in the torchlight. "Always," Meng Yao whispered.
Madam Yu was waiting with Meng Shi and Jiang Yanli to greet them at the docks when they arrived back home. She didn't apologize—it was weakness to apologize for speaking what you knew to be the truth, and she and Jiang Cheng had both used truth as their weapons—but she did step forward, brush a little imaginary dust off Jiang Cheng's robe, and straighten his lapels out. "Welcome back," she said. "Next time, don't tarry so long, hm? You worried your sister."
Jiang Cheng, weak with relief, smiled at her.
Behind Mother, Meng Shi beckoned Meng Yao over and wiped a little eyeshadow off his cheek with her sleeve, then pulled him into an embrace along with Jiang Yanli, for no other reason than she could.
Jiang Cheng had a lot to do before the Nie delegation arrived, but he offered his prickly, unlovable mother his own prickly, unlovable arm. "A-Niang," he said, "let's go for a walk around the docks together," and his mother's face lit up like autumn dawn.
When Jiang Cheng saw Wei Wuxian a few months later in Gusu, the first thing he said was, "It's good to see you again." Then he gave him a hard time for his new Jianghu Medical Corps robes—navy blue really wasn't Wei Wuxian's color, and the cut made him look like a wine jug—but his asshole shixiong didn't seem to notice; he surged forward joyfully, full of abandon, and pulled Meng Yao and Jiang Cheng both into his arms.