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Jiang Cheng lugs his brother’s ungrateful ass away from the Cloud Recesses punishment grounds on his own (aching! He may not have undergone the same amount of punishment as Wei Wuxian, but he’d taken fifty strikes! And without whining, unlike some people) back, toward the women’s wing where A-jie is no doubt anxiously waiting. Wei Wuxian, draped over him at the best angle to complain directly into his ear, weighs roughly as much as an ox. No, two oxen. Three.
“I can’t help being dead weight right now! Gusu Lan doles out such barbaric punishments,” Wei Wuxian whines, grinding his sharp chin down into Jiang’s shoulder. “And the whole thing was barely even my fault. I didn’t mean to get Lan Zhan drunk! And I apologized properly, too! How was I to know he would get so mad about a little teasing?”
Jiang Cheng sneers, even though from this angle Wei Wuxian can’t see it. He’ll at least be able to hear it. “Piss off! Your ‘little teasing’ seriously offended both Lan Wangji and Lan Qiren. When you die—which will no doubt be soon!—nobody’s gonna bury your corpse for you.”
“Ah, ah, Jiang Cheng.” Wei Wuxian kicks his feet for no discernable reason, then flings his arms around Jiang Cheng’s neck and squeezes. “You’ve already buried my corpse, metaphorically speaking, so many times before—what’s one more time, to get me out of trouble?”
Then—out in public, where anyone could see, any random Lan could glance over and know—he smacks a fast, secretive kiss to the nape of Jiang Cheng’s neck.
(It is the fifth whole time Wei Wuxian has kissed him—practice kisses for the wives they’d have in future, so it doesn’t exactly count, Wei Wuxian said, but Jiang Cheng still thinks it counts as something. And a kiss on the neck this time, not even properly on the mouth?! Shameless! But hang on, does not-the-mouth count as a kiss? Maybe only a half-kiss? So he’s actually at four and a half? Shameless either way.)
Jiang Cheng startles at the half-kiss and almost drops Wei Wuxian on his ass. “Go to hell,” he snaps. His voice gives him away, gone disgracefully breathless. “I’ll knock your teeth out before I bother to bury you, you ingrate!”
Wei Wuxian yowls with laughter, flailing his feet and smacking Jiang Cheng on the shoulders. Jiang Cheng curses some more. Then he hitches Wei Wuxian up higher so he won’t fall, and hauls them both onward toward A-jie.
~ ~ ~
After it’s all over—once the dead of Nightless City have all been collected and accounted for (the dead, including—including)—
After, Jiang Cheng goes to search the foot of the cliff. No cultivator of any skill dies of a mere fall, but things were—circumstances. Were. The circumstances were unusual. So Jiang Cheng has to check. To make sure.
His body is heavy as he slowly descends on Sandu, his weight seeming to sink the sword down as much as his will. The tip of the blade is dulled where he’d rammed it into the rock face with closed eyes. He stares at that dull patch and doesn’t fall off.
He gets to the bottom of the cliff. Everything down here is smoke and blackened ash and melted rock and the occasional hissing pool of lava, and it all blurs together. He searches, every identical inch of it, until he thinks there must be nothing to find after all. The resulting emotion tears through him, clawing at the underside of his skin.
Then he sees the red ribbon, uncoiled along the ground.
He follows it with his eyes. It leads to more red, liquid instead of fabric, sunk into the cracks in the dirt. Red, and black, and mottled gray skin, and red, and red, and red. The colors eventually coalesce into a half-familiar shape.
Jiang Cheng looks, and looks, then, feet dragging along the ground, he walks over. When he gets there he looks again.
There is ash in Jiang Cheng’s mouth and ash in his eyes and ash in the wounds his own disciples had slashed into him as they fell and died and then rose again. Ash and blood and gore beneath his nails—those same disciples’, and his sister’s, and other people’s. Drying on him, itching at him. Jiang Cheng feels it at a distance. He stares down at the thing responsible for it all that lies at his faraway feet, then kneels in the dirt and gathers the… pieces… to himself.
The flute is easy; he tucks it into his sash. The body is mostly intact. Some parts, however, are wet and red and slippery. He can’t get them all. They get everywhere. His hands are clumsy and heavy, and everything he tries to handle gingerly he ends up crushing. Still, he keeps working as the light dims.
(If the Jin get here. If anyone else gets here, they’ll scatter all of this. They’ll burn it. They will. They should. It’s the right of any cultivator who fought at Nightless City, their right in exchange for all their dead at the Yiling Patriarch’s hands, to ensure such evil is never reborn; no one could deny them that. Jiang Cheng simply got here first, to—so. So he gets first chance, to scatter and burn.)
Eventually he can’t see anything else to gather, so he gets to his feet. It’s hard, with the weight in his arms. Sharp ribs, shattered dangling limbs. A head tipped against Jiang Cheng’s chest in a way that would hide how the skull is caved in, if Jiang Cheng could not feel the sharp-wrong shape of it digging into him, the half-dry slick of blood seeping into his clothes, A-Xian’s—
Jiang Cheng nearly loses his grip. On the thing in his arms, on the almost-thoughts in his head. But the ring on his hand and the sword at his hip and the flute shoved into his belt keep him anchored. He can’t lose his grip if he is so weighed down.
He turns and walks through the heat and the ash away from the base of the cliff. It’s hard to move. Everything feels off-angle, wrong. He is weighed down with his own wrongness. Wrong for his entire life, a despicable fool with blood on his hands and knives for innards and poison in his blood and bitterness on his tongue. The body in his arms is nothing but ash and sharp cracked bone, wet and too-light, for all that he can barely keep himself upright under its weight.
Jiang Cheng once knew the exact shape of this man, the exact weight of him; he believed he’d know him anywhere. Yet he recognizes nothing in the thing he carries now. This body is too light and too shattered and too empty to be his brother. It can’t be true. It’s the wrong weight, wrong—
No. Jiang Cheng is wrong, in a different way than that. Whatever man had inhabited this body had never been Jiang Cheng’s brother. Jiang Cheng had mistaken him, fatally, shamefully. A-jie had died because Jiang Cheng had mistaken him for someone who cared. And in return he’d thrown himself off a cliff, and when Jiang Cheng had screamed for him to go to hell, he’d—
(Since when did he obey Jiang Cheng in anything? He hadn’t obeyed when one of his corpses was slashing A-jie across the back, as Jiang Cheng screamed for him to stop it, stop it, stop it. He never did anything unless he was already going to do it anyway—)
—he’d smiled like none of it mattered, and said Jiang Cheng’s name, and let go.
His brother would never have—
So he’d never had a brother.
He carries the body that isn’t his brother until the indistinguishable blurred landscape changes from burnt black to ash-gray—dusty soft soil, and skeletal trees, and tumbled rocks. He summons Sandu from its sheath with a twitching movement of his hand. The ground gives easily under the edge of the blade. The hole is shallow, but it’s as deep as it needs to be.
(Scatter everything and burn it: The right, the duty, of anybody who lost someone at Nightless City. If a person doesn’t destroy these remains, how could they be called filial? What a disgrace it would be to the people the Yiling Patriarch killed, practically spitting on their sacrifice. A-jie is dead. She died, for—)
He puts Wei Wuxian in the hole.
He doesn’t burn the body. He covers it again with earth. He says no words over the grave, doesn’t even look at it once it’s covered. He just turns again, and keeps walking. His thoughts stall and stumble like his heavy feet.
Once he gets far enough from the site, he’ll mount Sandu, and fly back to Carp Tower, then to Lotus Pier. There are funeral rites to prepare for. A-jie. His disciples. There’s so much he has to do. There are so many more people to bury. He’s alone, but his body feels heavier than ever, as if he were still carrying the corpse that was not his brother—dragging it behind him, with him. He braces himself on the rigid shape of the flute in his sash, and keeps walking.
Jiang Cheng will never forget this exact weight. He will never forgive this. Never, never, never. This weight sinks down into his bones.
~ ~ ~
It’s him. It’s him. It is—
Jiang Cheng watches the masked man with Mo Xuanyu’s name chatter and leer at Lan Wangji and flit around like an idiot. Something heavy and immense, something too big to process, looms just out of the corner of Jiang Cheng’s perception. Zidian hadn’t expelled anything from “Mo Xuanyu” when Jiang Cheng lashed him, just given him a shock and probably the barest bruise. So this is not the man Jiang Cheng once knew the exact shape of. Not the thing he’d buried in the ashes below Nightless City, the grave gone undisturbed every year since. The pitch of the voice is wrong, the name, the body, the mouth that definitely isn’t the one that kissed Jiang Cheng exactly five and a half times (they only kissed once after Gusu, a measly peck stolen during a morning swim. The Wens invaded Lotus Pier by that afternoon, and after that, they hadn’t—they never). The wrong mouth, even if Jiang Cheng can see what might be a tiny, faint, familiar mole beneath the bottom lip—but he moves exactly like—
“Aiyo,” says the idiot, pulling an exaggerated grimace at Jiang Cheng as he rubs his (nonexistent; Jiang Cheng has perfectly good spiritual weapon control) injuries, “Sect Leader Jiang, this is too much! You think you can beat whomever you want, just because you’re rich and powerful?! Just so you know, your clingy attention isn’t welcome. Even if I like men, I don’t like all men, and I definitely don’t just go home with just any man who waves at me. I’m not into your type!” And he skitters around to hide behind Lan Wangji’s voluminous sleeve.
—he moves like him. Plus, there has only ever been one person this fucking irritating.
Some hot, sharp emotion rises like bile up Jiang Cheng’s throat, spills across his tongue like bitter poison.
No. He’s not wrong, this time.
He suspected. He always suspected there was a risk the Yiling Patriarch would return, even if the body stayed in that shallow grave. And he was right. As Jiang Cheng steps forward toward the living man whom he has every right to destroy, to scatter and burn—and he should scatter and burn him, should want to, can’t he want to—
Wei Wuxian reels back from him, imposter eyes wide behind his mask but the look in them familiar.
He was right. It was true, after all: Jiang Cheng would know him anywhere.
So Jiang Cheng steps forward, toward him.
(Despite the rage entangling his limbs, it’s slightly easier to move now than it has been, these past sixteen years—like Jiang Cheng has dropped a little of the great, crushing, ever-present weight that drags at him, and has left it behind him in the fresh grass of the mountainside. Easier to move, as long as it’s toward Wei Wuxian.)
~ ~ ~
Jiang Cheng drags Jin Ling across the temple floor, away from the roaring storm of resentment that is Wen Qionglin (he’d stopped the saber, he’d stopped it; a Wen had cut his hands bloody to keep the blade from striking Jiang Yanli’s son) and the possessed saber of Chifeng-zun. Jin Ling doesn’t up a fight, too stunned to shake Jiang Cheng off; Jiang Cheng can barely feel Jin Ling’s weight, terror and protective rage lending power to his qi-starved limbs. His nephew, his sister’s child, the child he’s supposed to keep safe. He flings Jin Ling forward and puts his body between his nephew and whatever resentful clash is happening behind them, running his numb, bloodstained hands along Jin Ling’s throat and face and chest.
The cut on Jin Ling’s throat is still bleeding, but only sluggishly. The blood on his shoulder and chest is all Jin Guangyao’s. His face is ashen, but it’s not the pallor of oncoming death. No fresh blood, no new injuries. The blade didn’t cut him. He’s safe. He’s alive. Jin Ling blinks several times, gulping for air, then finally mumbles, “Jiujiu”—dull with shock, but there’s an edge of that complaining tone he uses when he thinks he’s being coddled.
Jiang Cheng’s chest feels like it’s cracking open with relief (assuming that’s not just the stab-wound). All the strength abruptly drains out of him, leaving his limbs so weak he can hardly stand upright. He forces himself back under control and straightens up, supporting Jin Ling.
—just in time for a blast of resentment to slam into his back.
He staggers, then twists around. Wen Qionglin has rammed the possessed saber a handsbreadth-deep into a wooden pillar, the blade lashing and snarling in his grip like a crazed dog trying to shake an attacker’s hands from around its throat. Resentment seethes across the saber’s surface, then pours out of both blade and corpse. It rips at the temple’s silk hangings, tears splintery chunks from the walls, slices through paper lanterns, shatters porcelain tiles to whip around in a wave of slashing, stinging shards. Jiang Cheng’s sleeve, and the object contained within it, swings heavily as he lashes out with one arm to knock debris away from Jin Ling, who stumbles to lean against his back. Nie Huaisang lets out a little scream and dives for cover. Jin Guangyao, lying in his own blood with Su She on the floor, groans. Zewu-jun and Hanguang-jun labor desperately at their instruments, trying to calm the resentful energy with music, and failing.
In the center of it all, as usual, stands Wei Wuxian. His throat is streaked with blood but his lips purse in a high, piercing whistle—trying, too, to quell the storm.
Yet even he can’t do it. He can’t make himself heard through the chaos. He needs—
Jiang Cheng’s body is leaden with exhaustion. He has been completely drained of spiritual power twice over in less than two days, fought a band of corpses, been stabbed in the chest, been dragged to the edge of qi deviation over and over and over by horrific revelation after horrific revelation. His core—no. The core. The core—
(Wei Wuxian’s core, cold and foreign. He can feel it like a stone in his lower dantian. It drags at him so heavily that he thinks it might sink through his body like he’s water and tear free, plunging itself down into the earth. He might even welcome that, so long as it got that fucking thing out of him—stolen, shameful, he would never have taken it if he’d known, get out, get it out, get it—)
The core weighs on him.
Yet—
Jiang Cheng has been wrong his whole life. He always knew so, though the full extent of his mistakes was beyond what even he could comprehend. But he had been right about one thing, as he buried Wei Wuxian’s body in soft dirt and ashes:
Wei Wuxian had not loved him. The man he buried sixteen years ago—the man who had, less than an hour ago, touched his cheek as they knelt on the temple floor to politely thumb away his tears—was never his brother. Jiang Cheng had always merely dragged Wei Wuxian down with his own weakness. The millstone around his neck.
It’s settled, now. Jiang Cheng can finally be sure.
More to the point, he can also be sure that Wei Wuxian’s indifference toward him is irrelevant. The only thing that matters now is whether Wei Wuxian can be trusted—not with Jiang Cheng’s fucking feelings, but with what is actually important.
He lets the weight he’s been carrying in his sleeve drop down into his hand. “Wei Wuxian,” he shouts. Before he even gets out the first full syllable, Wei Wuxian is already turning toward him.
Jiang Cheng throws the flute.
(The thing upon which Jiang Cheng had braced himself for sixteen years. This one last physical object Wei Wuxian left behind. Wiping it free of ash and blood. Keeping it. Maintaining it. Purifying its resentment. Deluding himself that if nothing else, Wei Wuxian would come back for this—which, so much for that. But he’d kept the damn thing in better condition than Wei Wuxian ever did, at least.)
Chenqing at first feels heavy, dragging down the swing of his arm—then, as it leaves his hand for the final time, it seems insubstantially light. It arcs across the room so quickly Jiang Cheng thinks he misjudged the distance and overshot. (Wouldn’t that be the perfect cap-off to this fucking clown show.)
But of course, no: Before he’s even fully finished turning toward Jiang Cheng, with barely even a glance at the flute, Wei Wuxian snatches Chenqing out of the air like it’s nothing.
For a split second he just stares at Jiang Cheng over the smooth curve of black bamboo, wide-eyed. Then he gives Jiang Cheng a tight little grin, a nod, then turns away to press his lips to the flute. Jiang Cheng stands far across the room from him, hands fully empty at last, Jin Ling a warm pressure against his back, and watches Wei Wuxian get on with saving them all.
~ ~ ~
Jiang Cheng’s second-in-command enters Sword Hall, interrupting Jiang Cheng’s semi-weekly meeting with Farmer Xiang (an interruption Jiang Cheng welcomes; Xiang spends more time trekking to Lotus Pier to complain to Jiang Cheng about how the neighboring farm’s pigs are too noisy, supernaturally noisy, Sect Leader—probably they’re demon swine! You hate demonic things, right? than he does tending his own damn land. But he’s been a Yunmeng fixture since Jiang Cheng’s father’s time and gives Lotus Pier excellent deals on grain, so Jiang Cheng puts up with him) to inform him about the visitor at the west gate.
Jiang Cheng rewards her by letting her kick Xiang out of Lotus Pier, a task she always enjoys. Jiang Cheng, for his part, strides over to the west gate. He doesn’t rush, exactly, but he moves quickly. Wei Wuxian would never come to Lotus Pier—never intentionally cross paths with Jiang Cheng—unless something was seriously wrong.
He resists the urge to tug his robes straight as he walks. It’s fine. They’re already neat. Wei Wuxian doesn’t care what Jiang Cheng looks like, anyway.
(He last saw Wei Wuxian several months ago, when Wei Wuxian’s wanderings happened to bring him to Carp Tower at the same time Jiang Cheng was checking in on Jin Ling. Jin Ling took the opportunity to needle them all into eating dinner together; Jiang Cheng acquiesced, even though Lanling food is oversweetened to hell.
The dinner was appalling, and not just because of the food. Appalling and awkward. Appallingly awkward. Jiang Cheng had only seen Wei Wuxian a few times, at a distance, in the months since Wei Wuxian began traveling, though he knew Jin Ling and his little gremlin friends met up with him occasionally for night-hunts. Seeing him up close, separated only by the length of the table, Wei Wuxian was too lean and a little too ragged around the edges for Jiang Cheng’s liking, though he looked otherwise well.
But of course he would be well—flushed with sunlight and buoyed by fresh new experiences, unburdened by old debts. Jiang Cheng could hardly stand to look at him. He spoke polite pleasantries through the disgusting sweetness on his tongue, and Wei Wuxian was polite right back.
Appalling.)
Now, Wei Wuxian is waiting just outside the gate, back turned to stare out across the river docks, which bustle with crowds even as it gets on toward evening. Nothing appears wrong with him at first glance. The setting sun lines his messy hair in glowing gold; his clothes are torn and muddy, especially down his left leg; he looks a little less thin than he had during the awful dinner—though he holds himself more clumsily, off-kilter like he’s about to pitch forward and sprint away. Or, Jiang Cheng amends upon closer observation, like he’s favoring the leg.
“Wei,” he begins automatically, and manages to pivot to “-xiansheng,” at the exact same time as Wei Wuxian wheels wobblingly around at his arrival, yelping, “Jiang—!”
They stare at each other. This is already another disaster. Jiang Cheng clenches his jaw.
“Ahaha,” says Wei Wuxian at last. “I, uh, when I requested entry and the door guard said he’d call his superior, I thought the person who’d come tell me off would just be a slightly fancier disciple. I didn’t, uh—that is to say, what a surprise for the sect leader to bother with this matter! I would have thought Jiang-zongzhu was surely too busy for this humble wanderer!”
“Like I wouldn’t take any excuse to stop getting yelled at by angry farmers,” says Jiang Cheng without thinking better of it. Wei Wuxian lets out a noise, more shock than laugh, then bites it off. Jiang Cheng’s brain then catches up to the rest of the sentence. “You… requested entry.”
(He had thrown Wei Wuxian out. Not even a year ago, Wei Wuxian had taken Lan Wangji into the Jiang Ancestral Hall; Lan Wangji, who held no respect for Jiang Cheng’s parents, for Jin Ling, for A-jie. He’d taken Lan Wangji there, without a word to Jiang Cheng. Sneaking over there under Jiang Cheng’s nose like a thief—or, worse, like Wei Wuxian had the right to do it, as if he were still a member of Yunmeng Jiang, as if he hadn’t spent years before his death and months after his resurrection trying to throw off every tie between himself and Lotus Pier. As if Jiang Cheng hadn’t told him that all he fucking wanted was for Wei Wuxian to come back and explain himself in that hall, and Wei Wuxian only responded by sprinting for the fucking hills.
When loudly reminded of this, Wei Wuxian had clenched his fists into Jiang Cheng’s robes, his fingers searing-hot through the silk. Angry on Lan Wangji’s behalf, not his own, not Jiang Cheng’s. Demanded that Jiang Cheng apologize for insulting Lan Wangji. As if every second of this farce wasn’t a slap, wasn’t spitting in Jiang Cheng’s family’s face—
He threw Wei Wuxian out, because Wei Wuxian had long since proved he’d always wanted to go.
And yet. Here he is again.)
“You requested entry,” Jiang Cheng repeats. “To Lotus Pier.”
“I,” says Wei Wuxian. He wobbles again (seriously, what the hell has he done to his leg), then pastes on a wide, bright grin. “Well. Yes! Demanded it, practically! You know what they say, the Yiling Patriarch is absolutely shameless! But it’s only proper that Jiang-zongzhu not let any suspicious people into his home. So! Just point me towards any especially cheap inns in the area, or, ha, I can sleep by the river somewhere, anyway, I’ll be on my way—”
“Wei Wuxian,” Jiang Cheng snaps—and shit, he didn’t address him properly, shouldn’t have snapped at all; it shows too much emotion, too much fucking investment, and Wei Wuxian never wants to see him like that—"what’s wrong with you?!”
Wei Wuxian’s grin flickers.
The blaze of Jiang Cheng’s irritation extinguishes itself, leaving him tired. He pinches the bridge of his nose, takes a breath. More calmly, he says, “Explain why you’ve come.”
“Ah,” says Wei Wuxian. “Well. It’s—nothing. It’s silly, really. See, that last time I was at Carp Tower—you remember, that awful dinner where all the food was horrifically sweet, seriously, do Lanling cooks just dump sugar into everything?—anyway, after dinner Jin Ling made me a bet, you see. To do with you! And today I figured, well, I was in the area—the Yunmeng area—so. I’m here to win that bet! I can’t wait to collect my prize.”
Jiang Cheng raises an eyebrow. “A bet.”
Wei Wuxian’s eyes widen. “Ah, not a bet against you! Your part’s already over, don’t worry. No, Jin Ling says he’ll give me a lifetime supply of apples for my unruly donkey if I win. ‘If’—ha! I already won. Can’t you guess the terms?”
“I don’t care.”
“Ah, you never care about anything.” Wei Wuxian wiggles his eyebrows. His grin looks like rictus. “He told me to come over here and do something totally shameless. To demand entry into Lotus Pier! The heart of Yunmeng Jiang itself! And he bet you’d let me in!” He laughs. “As if there’s anyone on earth who doesn’t know how ridiculous it would be for me to expect... Ha!” He throws back his head and laughs again, too hard, too high, the sound almost sharp, like a yelp of panic.
The noise grates along the inside of Jiang Cheng’s chest. A bet. A joke. Everything’s always a fucking joke to this man. Jiang Cheng doesn’t know what he expected; even Jin Ling, who has been pestering Jiang Cheng to talk to Wei Wuxian since Guanyin Temple, apparently knows such a thing is a farce. All debts are paid, all ties broken. Wei Wuxian might as well be a stranger—might as well be a random farmer, showing up to complain about pigs. What a waste of time.
It pisses him off. It pisses him off.
“So, an easy win for me! Frankly, I think that nephew of yours just wants to get me screamed at and tossed out onto the street—”
“I haven’t,” Jiang Cheng says through clenched teeth, “tossed you out.” This time.
Wei Wuxian’s laughter cuts off. His face snaps around toward Jiang Cheng. Without his head tossed back or his mouth hanging open to cackle like an idiot, with the evening shadows gathering on his face, he looks… almost shaken.
“So you lose,” Jiang Cheng adds, just to make a point.
“But—” says Wei Wuxian. He’s staring. “But you are kicking me out. Yeah? Or, barring me entry. So I still… So…” His eyes travel down Jiang Cheng’s body, held taut but held back, then, to the gate of Lotus Pier—a side gate, to be sure, but still a gate, thrown wide—then, slowly, back up to his face. “So…?”
Jiang Cheng crosses his arms, sneers with full force, and tips his head toward the open door. Daring him. To do what, exactly, even Jiang Cheng doesn’t know.
Wei Wuxian’s mouth slowly opens.
But he doesn’t finish his thought about what a victory it is to never return to Lotus Pier, because at that moment, his left leg gives out.
He drops with a yelp. Without thought, Jiang Cheng lunges forward to grab him.
His hand wraps around Wei Wuxian’s arm, just above the bend of the elbow. Wei Wuxian is bony. His skin is warm even through the rough cloth of his sleeve. His muscles, still disgracefully noodly but at least a bit more substantial now than they had been when he was half-starved and freshly resurrected, shift and tighten under Jiang Cheng’s palm. For a suspended moment, he’s just touching Wei Wuxian, not actually taking any of his weight, both of them just hanging there goggling at each other like morons.
(Wei Wuxian’s nose and cheeks are slightly sunburnt from his travels. If Jiang Cheng were a stupider man, he might think it makes Wei Wuxian look like he’s blushing.)
—and then Wei Wuxian’s arm pulls taut and his full weight yanks against Jiang Cheng’s hand, and he collapses with a belated squeak. And Jiang Cheng—
Keeps Wei Wuxian from falling.
It’s easy. It’s nothing. He just holds Wei Wuxian up, pulse hammering, until Wei Wuxian gets his good foot under himself.
“So on your latest night-hunt, did you happen to injure your leg,” Jiang Cheng says drily, oozing scorn to cover the fact that his heart is still drumming far faster than it should be from an extremely mild surprise and even milder physical exertion.
“Aha,” says Wei Wuxian. He doesn’t shrug Jiang Cheng off, and Jiang Cheng, for his part, doesn’t let go; Wei Wuxian’s footing seems sure now, but Jiang Cheng keeps hold of him until he’s certain he won’t fall on his ass again. “Haha! No. Technicallyyy it was the yao I was hunting yesterday that injured it. But it barely twinges!” He wiggles his foot in Jiang Cheng’s direction, grinning, then winces. “Ow.”
It must really hurt for Wei Wuxian to actually show pain. For Wei Wuxian to let Jiang Cheng, of all people, see him in pain. Jiang Cheng half scoffs, half snarls—“Fool”—and starts to haul him through the gate, inside.
Wei Wuxian full-body startles like a scruffed kitten. “Ah, Jiang Cheng—Jiang-zongzhu! Wait, I don’t think you understand—”
“I understand you’re a fucking fool who requires medical treatment. Sandu Shengshou may have a reputation for violence, but not unnecessary violence. I don’t need rumors spreading that I struck down a poor, defenseless, injured rogue who came to my door to beg for assistance and left him lying in the dirt.”
“Beg?” Wei Wuxian yelps. “Poor?!”
“So poor he can’t afford even the cheapest of inns. Defenseless. Injured. Pitiful and pathetic.” A beat. “And a loser. Have fun telling Jin Ling he wins your bet.”
Wei Wuxian starts yowling with offense, flailing his free arm around. “Hey! I bet you’d throw me out; he bet you’d welcome me in. This isn’t a welcome! This is grudging-tolerance-only-due-to-medical-necessity! If Jin Ling and I were both wrong, then technically we both lose. Or rather, we both win! So the real loser is you!”
“Sounds like something losers say.”
Another yowl. Despite the flailing, Wei Wuxian’s captured arm never yanks free; he even leans in, putting more of his balance, more of himself into Jiang Cheng’s hands. Jiang Cheng’s heart is still pounding.
(Wei Wuxian fell because he’d shifted his weight. Jiang Cheng had seen. Before he fell, Wei Wuxian had shifted his weight to start to move.
To move, ever so slightly, toward the open gate.)
Jiang Cheng keeps his grip firm, but not tight, so Wei Wuxian could pull away if he wanted. Wei Wuxian thrashes, but not so hard Jiang Cheng could drop him unless it were intentional. They’re both so thoroughly focused on mocking each other that they cannot glance down at the doorsill—the boundary between the rest of the world and the inside of Lotus Pier—as they half-drag, half-escort each other across, and through, and in.
~ ~ ~
Jiang Cheng stands at the edge of the lakeside pavilion, watching Jin Ling and his friends splash around like children half their actual ages (Jin Ling is practically Jiang Cheng’s height, now, and might still have further to grow). Jiang Cheng could scold them for their lack of dignity—but it’s the height of humid, broiling-hot Yunmeng summer, and practically half the disciples are in the lake too. So Jiang Cheng just folds his arms, leans against one of the pavilion’s pillars, and presides, loomingly, over the impromptu swim party.
(He’s fine where he is. This is more than he ever thought he’d have again: All his people safe. Happy. All of them acting like idiots in the sunlit water, yelling and splashing and alive. All of them, here. Even—huh. Jiang Cheng doesn’t see him, actually.)
Jin Ling, who had been busy getting dunked underwater by Lan Jingyi, fights his way back up, spits a stream of water into Lan Jingyi’s face to deter retaliation (“Eugh, Young Mistress! I don’t wanna swallow your spit-water!”), then, grinning, waves up at Jiang Cheng. “Jiujiu! I’m sure I can beat you in a race by now, come in and—” His eyes flick behind Jiang Cheng, then widen.
It gives Jiang Cheng a split-second warning—that, and the realization that the drum of feet on the wooden slats of the walkway behind him is approaching at ramming speed.
He pivots to the side, slamming down a foot for balance as he says, "Wei Wuxian, don't you fucking dare—" The flying tackle doesn’t hit him dead-on, but instead rams into his shoulder. Two wet arms wrap around him as he spins on his grounded heel; Jiang Cheng instinctively throws his own arms around Wei Wuxian in turn. Wei Wuxian’s full body weight (after months of eating Lotus Pier’s food, he’s finally back up to a proper weight) swings out over the water, legs kicking. Then back over the walkway as Jiang Cheng turns them, then back out again, tipping them both right to the edge of the pier. Jiang Cheng’s stomach swoops. He staggers, trying to right his balance, trying to keep his hold—
Wei Wuxian is laughing, of course. “Almost had you!” he crows. His eyes sparkle; his wet ponytail streams across his face, the ends lashing both his own cheeks and Jiang Cheng’s; his red mouth, with that familiar freckle on his lower lip, stretches wide with the simple joy of sun and water and movement and mischief. “But I refuse to be defeated! Jiang-zongzhu will be dunked!” As his legs arc out over the lake again, he tightens his grip around Jiang Cheng’s shoulders, clearly trying to drag Jiang Cheng down with him even when Jiang Cheng lets go.
Jiang Cheng looks at his brother, laughing in his arms, and doesn’t let go.
Instead, he tightens his own arms around Wei Wuxian, coils every muscle, and, at the furthest arc of the spin, launches them both off the pier.
Wei Wuxian’s laugh breaks open into an O of surprise; his eyes go equally round and wide as his mouth. He looks so breathtakingly stupid that Jiang Cheng laughs in his face, cackling as they hang over the sparkling water. Wei Wuxian’s expression opens up even more into an open-mouthed smile. His hands slide up from Jiang Cheng’s back, to his nape, into his hair—warm and familiar, the touch at first light, then tightening.
Gravity wins out. They hit the water. There’s a jolt of impact that knocks their bodies into one another (so many flailing, potentially deadly knees and elbows and skulls. Jiang Cheng did not think this through. But thankfully, Wei Wuxian’s forehead thwacks mostly-harmlessly into his cheekbone instead of breaking his nose, so! Minor miracle). They plunge down and in. A sudden breathlessness, weightlessness, the cool cradling rush of water as it swirls through their robes and tangled hair and then holds them suspended. Jiang Cheng’s been swimming since he was born, so he doesn’t inhale like an amateur, but the laugh still batters against the inside of his chest, bursting from his mouth in a stream of bubbles. He shakes the sting out of his cheek and opens his eyes.
Everything is blurred underwater, save for Wei Wuxian’s face. Even that, he only sees for a second, a flash of bruising forehead and smiling mouth—only a second, because Wei Wuxian’s hand is already tightening in Jiang Cheng’s hair, then pulling him in to be kissed.
(Six and a half.)
Their mouths press together, then the churn of water draws them apart. Unbearable. Wei Wuxian wriggles to keep close; Jiang Cheng wraps his own hand around the back of Wei Wuxian’s neck and pulls him in this time, kissing him again, again, again, his mouth, his neck, his cheek, his eyes, his silver-streaming mouth again, and Wei Wuxian kisses him back just as fiercely. Jiang Cheng loses track of the number of kisses. The laugh in his chest expands, drawing the both of them upward, bobbing toward the surface like bubbles.
They break the surface still tangled up in each other, though they’re such a mess of sodden robes and hair flopped over each other’s faces like pondweed that probably nobody else can tell. He certainly can’t see anything through the wet sheet of hair. The disciples are hooting with glee to see their sect leader acting like a fool; Jin Ling is yelling something, Jiang Cheng can’t tell what, but he sounds cheerful enough. He gasps for breath, scraping the hair off his face. Wei Wuxian appears again, hazy with sunlight, beaded with water, light and laughing, still keeping one hand wrapped around Jiang Cheng’s wrist to keep them tethered to each other.
Jiang Cheng grips Wei Wuxian’s hand, tips them backward into the warm, familiar waters of Lotus Pier, and floats.