Work Text:
Untamed verse
Paperwork.
The bane of Nie Huaisang’s life.
It wasn’t that he didn’t know he was moderately clever, sometimes scaling up to very clever if he was irritated, but somehow he’d never had the ability to keep facts and figures and exact sentences straight in his head. Any teaching done through rote memorization (in other words, most of it) was wasted on him, and the few things he could keep track of, usually in over-abundant and hyper-specific detail, weren’t the sorts of things that were especially helpful.
Or, well, they were helpful in figuring out what clothing to wear or whether art was good or bad, and occasionally in being able to figure out where people should sit in a hall in order to either minimize or maximize the opportunity for incidents that would create gossip, but they really weren’t helpful if what you were trying to do was run a very large and very industrious sect.
His brother handled the majority of it, of course, as sect leader, and naturally he hadn’t stinted on hiring talented deputies – admittedly, the Nie sect threw around the word deputy the way an especially enthusiastic firefighter tossed around water and sand, but most sects had a more settled bureaucracy in place than the Nie sect did and it was an important position, even if it was usually just a gateway to being put somewhere you actually fit rather than a permanent spot for most people – but in the end there were some things that required the signature of a member of the Nie clan and Nie Mingjue, Nie Huaisang very reluctantly supposed (if he had to), couldn’t do everything.
He groaned and put his head down on the table.
This never happened when Meng Yao was here, he thought bitterly.
Meng Yao had been one of his brother’s finds, someone he’d promoted in a fit of temper as usual, but to just about everyone’s surprise he had turned out to be amazing at logistics and organization, able to quickly gain expertise in really everything and anything a sect needed to run. After a few months he knew most things, and the things he didn’t know he could either figure out or speculate on with relative accuracy. He’d been amazingly efficient, and it had made Nie Mingjue happy – happy not just to have such good help and to have his taste in subordinates confirmed, but also to see Meng Yao flourishing as his deputy, his real deputy, to see him pleased and respected the way his talents so obviously deserved…
Nie Huaisang sighed. If only his stupid brother had gone ahead and just sworn brotherhood with Meng Yao when the idea had been proposed!
If only he’d done that, Nie Huaisang could have been acting cute and calling Meng Yao – no, wait, it was Jin Guangyao now, he kept forgetting – he could have been calling him ‘san-ge’ right now and hanging off his arm and soon enough Jin Guangyao would yield and do all the work for him, leaving only the actual signing for Nie Huaisang to do. And the work would’ve gotten done better than he would have ever done it, in less time, and he could’ve been spending his precious time doing literally anything else.
Ugh.
Well, he supposed it wasn’t entirely his brother’s fault that the whole plan hadn’t gone through. He hadn’t been the one to back out of the brotherhood idea – that’d been Lan Xichen, for some reason, even though he’d been the one to originally propose the idea, and obviously Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangyao weren’t going to swear brotherhood without him. It was Venerated Triad, not Venerated Duo.
It was just so unfortunate that the absence of a sworn brother relationship meant that Nie Huaisang had no basis to ask Jin Guangyao to help him out. Or, while he was imagining things, why not just go all the way and imagine that Jin Guangyao could just come back to Qinghe already.
He could run things in a way that made sense and was efficient, which would reduce Nie Mingjue’s stress levels, and Nie Mingjue’s stress levels going down meant that Nie Huaisang’s stress would go down. Way down. And Jin Guangyao’s stress levels would also be way down as well by virtue of, well, being back at Qinghe, where things made sense and he didn’t have to deal with his awful family of his which he seemed to value for some reason that Nie Huaisang didn’t understand and honestly didn’t want to understand. It’d be a win all around!
Ugh.
Life was just better when Jin Guangyao was around.
But what could be done about it? He couldn’t exactly suggest being sworn brothers with Jin Guangyao himself – you needed to do something impressive together to justify that, usually – and for all that he had his brother wrapped around his little finger, he knew perfectly well that Nie Mingjue might hire an unknown man as a deputy in a fit of temper but he’d never hire someone he fired, even if Jin Guangyao were willing to take the role of deputy again. Which he probably wasn’t now that he was all legitimate and recognized and stuff; it was probably beneath him.
If only there were another position available, something not a deputy, not a sworn brother, something where he could just run the Nie sect for the good of everyone –
Wait.
There was.
And, thanks to his brother’s misanthropic ways, the position was available.
Perfect!
-
“Congratulations, da-ge!” Nie Huaisang announced grandly, sweeping into his brother’s study.
“Just tell the treasury to cover the cost of whatever it is you broke or bought,” Nie Mingjue said without looking up, which, first, rude, and second, really? Awesome. Nie Huaisang was going to get so much mileage out of that one.
“Oh, da-ge, really. I wasn’t talking about me –”
“A miracle.”
“– shut up. I was congratulating you! It’s what little brothers like me should do for big brothers like you on the event of their engagement!”
There was a silence of about five deep breaths.
(Or at least, that’s how long Nie Huaisang assumed it was, provided that his brother was listening to his doctor’s orders about managing his anger, which he had damn well better be.)
Nie Mingjue put down the piece of paper he was working on, and gently laid down his brush to avoid breaking it like so many of the others, and looked up at Nie Huaisang, fixing all of his attention on him.
“Huaisang,” he said, his voice only slightly above a growl. “My what now?”
“Your engagement!” Nie Huaisang beamed at him. “The Sunshot Campaign is over, our father is avenged, and you’re already in your mid-twenties – that means it’s time to get moving on finding the perfect Madame Nie, and I’ve got a great candidate in mind for you.”
His brother looked uncomfortable. “Huaisang,” he said, and his voice was almost delicate. “You are aware…”
“I’ve taken your preferences into account,” Nie Huaisang assured him, and he was only mostly lying. His brother had liked Meng Yao a great deal, once upon a time, and even if they’d never actually slept together – his stupid anti-social brother probably hadn’t even hinted that he might be interested, what with the power differential and Meng Yao’s unfortunate familial history – there was no reason he couldn’t like Jin Guangyao, too, if only he’d give him a chance. Just because he didn’t like him right now didn’t mean anything about his preferences generally. “It’s not like I missed the vast increase in the amount of cutsleeve pornography in our library, okay?”
“That was not me.”
“I know it wasn’t you, but you got the benefit of it, didn’t you? Like I said: don’t worry. It’s a man. You can stop worrying, relax, and let me handle it.”
His brother’s face was doing the skeptical look again, the one where he looked like he was seriously doubting Nie Huaisang’s ability to put on clothing in the morning. He wasn’t five anymore, da-ge! Okay, eight, but only because he kept putting stuff on backwards while he was rushing. Maybe ten for formal clothing... “No, Huaisang.”
“No, really, I can –”
“The answer is no, Huaisang.”
That sounded depressingly final.
“What if I do the puppy eyes at you?”
“The answer is still no,” his brother said, going back to his paperwork, although he was smiling a little. “No, you may not set up an engagement for me; no, I will not agree; no.”
Damnit.
Okay, maybe Nie Huaisang should be tackling this from a different angle.
-
“It’s so good to see you!” Nie Huaisang gushed. He wasn’t entirely sure what to call Jin Guangyao now – after all, the other man was a few years his senior, and now that he was recognized by his father there wasn’t a class difference that would make it permissible for Nie Huaisang to call him by name the way he’d used to call Meng Yao. But they’d known each other for years, so Jin-qianbei might come off as pretentious and too formal, Jin-gongzi was definitely too formal, and were they really at the stage where he could call him Jin-xiong?
(Plus he already called Jin Zixuan Jin-xiong, so he’d have to figure out where Meng Yao fell in the hierarchy – except no one had ever clarified one way or the other. He was pretty sure Meng Yao was older, but even if he was it probably wasn’t appropriate to go around calling him Jin-da-ge.)
Now, Nie Huaisang had more or less made it his life policy to adopt virtual strangers as brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles, the more the better, but he also didn’t want to offend Jin Guangyao by making it seem like he didn’t respect his new position.
Especially when he wanted Jin Guangyao to do something for him.
“It’s good to see you too, Nie-gongzi,” Jin Guangyao said, and no, that wouldn’t do at all.
Nie Huaisang poked at him with his fan. “How many times do I have to tell you? Just call me Huaisang, the way da-ge does. You were almost my san-ge, remember?”
“Nie-gongzi…”
“Huaisang!”
Jin Guangyao had an indulgent look on his face. “Very well, Huaisang.”
“Anyway, I know you’re busy with dealing with sect things – that hunt last month was great, sorry about da-ge being overenthusiastic but at least he had a really good time – and stuff like that, but I just wanted to swing by Lanling to congratulate you!” Nie Huaisang said, deciding to take the moment to barrel onwards. “I didn’t get a chance to talk to you last time, and so much has happened since you left Qinghe! You got accepted into the Jin sect! Recognized by your father! Given a name! A fancy title! A position! An engagement! A nice hat!”
“I’m sorry,” Jin Guangyao said. “I got a what?”
“A nice hat!”
“Nice try, Huaisang.”
“Oh, come on, you don’t even know who I’m setting you up with yet!” Nie Huaisang whined. “And it’s not like you don’t want to get married! Weren’t you thinking of marrying the Qin sect’s girl? I mean, before they backed out on account of swearing vengeance against your father and the Jin sect and all…”
“I appreciate your thoughtfulness, Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao said, gentle and polite as always, but in his own way just as firm as Nie Mingjue. They really would be a good match, and not just because it’d make Nie Huaisang’s life so much easier. “But I’m really much too busy to think about anything like that. Matters in the Jin sect, you understand…”
“But –”
“Huaisang, please.”
Damnit.
-
Nie Huaisang was going to need to think about this.
He hated thinking.
-
“It’s just so unfair,” Nie Huaisang moaned. “Why do people insist on making things hard? When it could be so easy if only they’d listen…”
“It sounds like a real tragedy,” Lan Xichen said, pouring him a cup of tea.
He was just barely managing to resist smiling, which was good – he didn’t smile that much anymore, not since whatever it was that happened to him a month or two back around the time the sworn brother ceremony was supposed to happen. No one knew what it was that happened, not even Lan Wangji (Nie Huaisang had asked), but it was making everyone worried; Nie Mingjue had wanted to go over to demand answers practically ever since but things just kept happening.
Mostly due to Lan Xichen, actually, now that Nie Huaisang thought about it.
First there was that failed sworn brotherhood thing – he’d been the one pushing the idea in the first place, but only a week before they actually did the ceremony Lan Xichen had suddenly showed up at the Unclean Realm, bursting into Nie Mingjue’s bedroom while he was resting during his recovery from the events at the Nightless City, and insisted they call the whole thing off. He’d been pale, his eyes wide and scared, but he’d refused to explain anything no matter how many times Nie Mingjue asked; he’d only been sad and oddly clingy for the entire week, refusing to leave until the planned date of the sworn brotherhood ceremony had passed with it unfulfilled.
Then he’d gone home, and things had seemed to be fine, only after the hunt at Phoenix Mountain and Wei Wuxian’s impromptu theft of a bunch of Wen prisoners of war – neither of which appeared to be due to Lan Xichen, admittedly – and right when everyone had been gearing up to go make a big fuss over it, Lan Xichen had abruptly revealed that he’d been investigating the Jin sect and they were up to their necks in all sorts of unfortunate things.
Secret demonic cultivation experiments, which one might understand, and buying corpses, a subject on which the Nie sect had always been remarkably open-minded, but also stealing beloved corpses and tomb robbing, more-than-likely murder, possibly even massacres of entire small clans, all as part of their experiments, and to top it all off there were a whole big number of rapes attributed to Jin Guangshan personally.
Madame Qin among them, which was why Jin Guangyao’s original marriage plans had fallen through. It wasn’t even worth considering it, not when there was a risk that poor Qin Su, who’d had such a crush on the gallant Jin Guangyao, might be his sister…
Anyway, while the Jin were still too powerful, as a Great Sect, to fully suffer the consequences of their actions, the Jin sect had been disgraced at the very moment that they thought they were on the rise. Jin Guangshan had even been talking about taking up the post of Chief Cultivator following Wen Ruohan’s demise, which he might have been able to swing since Nie Mingjue thought the idea of having a Chief Cultivator at all was bullshit, but now obviously that was completely out of the question.
Plus the whole thing had retroactively cleared Wei Wuxian’s name, leaving him free and clear to return to the Jiang sect as a hero who stood up against Jin sect presumptuousness and overreach when no one else would, which was a pretty big change from his previous political position, which was being widely known as an arrogant and dangerous hothead on the verge of being cast out of the sect for the good of the cultivation world at large despite them very, very obviously not wanting to do it.
Wei Wuxian had even been able to bring the Wen sect members he’d rescued back to the Lotus Pier with him, and now there was even talk that Jiang Cheng might marry Wen Qing (as someone who went to the Cloud Recesses lectures with them both, Nie Huaisang wasn’t surprised by the suggestion at all) once his sister concluded her marriage with Jin Zixuan, which was going to be a far less sumptuous affair than originally planned. After all, the politics of the situation had reversed almost entirely, with the disgraced Jin sect needing the marriage to the reputable (and, thanks in large part to Wei Wuxian, powerful) Jiang sect to help keep what was left of their reputation and influence intact.
Perhaps the Jin sect’s crimes were the reason that Lan Xichen had been acting strangely distant from Jin Guangyao, even though no one had ever proven anything about his involvement – Jin Guangshan’s attempt to throw the blame entirely on his newly adopted son were dismissed as the fabrications they so obviously were – but Nie Huaisang wasn’t so sure.
Lan Xichen wasn’t the sort of person to worry about politics, after all. But then why…?
“Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?” Lan Xichen asked, settling in his own seat with his own cup of tea. He looked very serious, as if Nie Huaisang’s opinion on things mattered to him.
It was nice. Most people just looked really long-suffering when they talked with Nie Huaisang, and those were the people that actually liked him.
“Okay,” Nie Huaisang said. “So. Theoretically, if a person were trying to set up a marriage between, hypothetically, two people who would be perfect for each other, and I do mean disgustingly everything-would-be-wonderful-for-everyone sort of perfect, and they were just, you know, refusing for absolutely no valid reason other than their own stupid issues –”
“How in the world did you figure out that I was trying to get Wangji to confess his affections to Wei Wuxian?” Lan Xichen said, sounding stunned. “I didn’t tell anyone…You really are a genius, Huaisang.”
Nie Huaisang blinked, then lifted his head off the table, settling his chin on his hands.
“That actually wasn’t what I was talking about,” he admitted. “But now you have my full attention and I don’t care about my issue anymore. Tell me everything.”
-
“So, fun fact!” Nie Huaisang said, bouncing into his brother’s bedroom just in time to help him undo his braids before sleep. It was his favorite chore, no matter how much his brother protested that it wasn’t a chore and also that he’d been doing it for himself for years and seriously he could do it himself if Nie Huaisang wasn’t so stupidly possessive about being the only one allowed to do it any time they were both at home with violations punished of having Nie Mingjue’s fingers smacked with Nie Huaisang’s fan, all of which Nie Huaisang treated as the irrelevant and pointless statements they were. “I was just over at the Cloud Recesses visiting Xichen-xiong and he’s clearly super into me.”
“What,” his brother said.
Nie Huaisang cackled and dug his fingers into his brother’s thick hair – he was so jealous, his own was thin and stringy and brushing it definitely did not feel like petting a tiger the way it did when he did Nie Mingjue’s hair. He watched in the mirror with satisfaction as his brother’s shoulders immediately relaxed, all the anger and tension flowing out of them at once as a result of Nie Huaisang’s careful training over the years, although Nie Mingjue’s eyebrows still stayed sky high.
“I’m serious!” Nie Huaisang said, starting to release the braids. “He said that he respects me, and that he thinks I’m a genius. He has to have a thing for me. The only possible reason anyone would respect me is if all the blood had left their brain and they were blinded by my overwhelming prettiness!”
His brother seemed torn between denying Nie Huaisang’s statement that no one could respect him and telling him to stop being so full of himself about the overwhelming prettiness comment.
“Maybe Xichen just went insane,” he ended up saying instead. “That seems marginally more likely.”
“An excellent point,” Nie Huaisang acknowledged because, well, it was. “Now, totally unrelatedly, did you know that the Jin sect is treating poor Jin Guangyao just awful? Madame Jin throws things and Sect Leader Jin yells and blames him for stuff and it’s just so sad, we should do something about it.”
“Something like invite him here to live as my brand new bride, I’m guessing,” Nie Mingjue said, voice extremely dry. “You’re incredibly not subtle.”
Nie Huaisang freed a hand and held up a finger pointedly. “Ah, ah! Xichen-xiong says I’m a genius.”
His brother fell silent for a few moments. “You’re right,” he finally said. “He must have a crush on you. Not even insanity would explain this.”
Nie Huaisang sniggered.
“Also, really, Meng Yao?” Nie Mingjue asked. “That was who you were planning on setting me up with? You have to know that wouldn’t work.” He shifted in his chair. “…are they really beating him there?”
Huh, maybe Lan Xichen was right and Nie Huaisang really was a genius.
He wisely decided not to answer – it would work better if his brother investigated and found out the (admittedly fairly awful, according to the servants’ gossip) details for himself – and instead said, “Why’d you kick him out, anyway? I thought he got stabbed saving you. Whatever he did, how big of a deal could it have been, really?”
“He committed premeditated murder. In the middle of an attack on the sect, no less.”
Damnit, Meng Yao! Can’t you make things easy on me for once?!
“Okay,” Nie Huaisang said, tugging on one of the braids until Nie Mingjue, who’d tensed up, relaxed again. It was a nice that his brother was so easily trainable, or at least he was on everything other than saber practice. Surely that was a selling point that Jin Guangyao could appreciate in a man? “Uh. Have you considered that, uh – well, maybe it could have been justified?”
“I asked him for an explanation,” Nie Mingjue growled. “His reason boiled down to ‘that guy was a dick to me’.”
“Wow,” Nie Huaisang said. “I have such strong empathy for Meng Yao’s position, you have no idea.”
“Huaisang.”
“I’m just saying, if we could stab everyone who acted like a dick…”
“Huaisang. No.”
“You know you want to.”
“But I don’t,” Nie Mingjue insisted. “He used the cover of battle, a Wen sword…he even tried to blame Xue Yang for it when I literally saw him holding the sword in his hand! I should have executed him right then and there, and I would have, if he hadn’t saved my life.”
A tricky one, Nie Huaisang thought. But not a match for me, Nie Huaisang: Lan Xichen-certified genius.
“Okay,” he said. “But…you already punished him for that, right? You exiled him. He was exiled. It was all very sad, tears were shed, mostly by me but also a bit by you – we’re an emotional family – and just possibly by Meng Yao, though who even knows, maybe Jin Guangshan’s spawn are all born without tear ducts as a congenital deficiency. But any way you look at it, it’s done now, and that means he can come back!”
“Huaisang. That’s not how exile works.”
“Uh, I think you’ll find that it does,” Nie Huaisang said haughtily. “There are at least five incidents in the Nie sect’s history where something comparable has happened.”
“Really.” His brother’s voice was very, very dry.
“Really,” Nie Huaisang insisted.
“And you, with your amazing ability to retain facts, know this…how?”
“Okay fine, I made that up,” Nie Huaisang confessed. “But I will find some and prove to you that it’s a thing! And then you’ll have no choice but to agree with my plan!”
“That’s not how that works, either,” Nie Mingjue said. “But if you’re willing to knuckle down and do the historical research to justify your bullshit, I’ll – consider it.”
“I will! You’ll see!”
-
“Xichen-xiong!” Nie Huaisang wept, clinging onto Lan Xichen’s arm. “You have to help me! There are so many books! And they’re all so long! They’re doing it just to spite me personally!”
Lan Xichen managed, with a truly remarkable amount of skill, to detach Nie Huaisang from his arm and settle him down in a chair in record time. If Nie Huaisang didn’t know better, he would have guessed that he’d done it before dozens, maybe even hundreds, of times, but of course they didn’t know each other that well.
Pity, that. Nie Huaisang might not need him as urgently as he needed Jin Guangyao, but losing out on having Lan Xichen as his er-ge was also a big downside of the whole not-swearing-brotherhood thing.
“What’s the problem this time, Huaisang?” Lan Xichen asked. He did not seem all that concerned, which...yeah, fair.
“I need you to do some research for me,” Nie Huaisang said, batting his eyelashes at him to see if that would work. “Nie sect history. Please?”
Lan Xichen tensed a little. It was a minute gesture, barely even noticeable. “On…what subject? Does your brother know?”
“Free passage laws and border restrictions,” Nie Huaisang said, and Lan Xichen visibly relaxed. “And of course he knows, he assigned it! Do you think I would do boring old historical research for fun?”
Lan Xichen smiled again, and Nie Huaisang counted it as a victory.
“All right, I’ll help,” he said indulgently, then paused. “Just…this isn’t part of some scheme, right?”
“Of course not,” Nie Huaisang said, injured. “Why would you even ask that? I am the most scheme-less person you could ever meet in your life. There are newborn baby rabbits that are more scheming than me!”
This was because newborn baby rabbits were dicks. Lan Wangji made him hold one once and Nie Huaisang was pretty sure it deliberately pissed on his fingers.
Lan Xichen coughed into his sleeve, just barely managing not to laugh in his face. “I’m sure you are. No reason for asking. Did you bring the records you wanted me to look through?”
“By total coincidence, in fact, I did! Not that I would assume that you’d agree, of course.”
“…of course, Huaisang.”
-
“Jin-xiong!” Yes, Nie Huaisang was going for it; Jin Zixuan was just going to have to deal. “Jin-xiong, I have been informed by reliable sources that you’re a big fan of power, am I right?”
Jin Guangyao actually reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose – he must be very tired, to react that way while Nie Huaisang was still present.
In fairness, he really had been having a hard time of it recently. Even putting aside how awful it must be to live with Sect Leader Jin and his wife – it was no surprise (to Nie Huaisang, anyway) that their own son and heir spent a disturbingly large portion of his time visiting the Lotus Pier with his wife, even accounting for having to deal with the world’s most over-protective brothers-in-law – there were all the problems the Jin sect was having, the way Sect Leader Jin’s nasty and arrogant reactions to being challenged only seemed to be making it all worse, and then of course there was also the fact that Nie Mingjue had literally punched Sect Leader Jin in the face after he’d come in unexpectedly and caught him throwing a cup of tea on Jin Guangyao.
(That particular disaster was still ongoing, actually, and at very high volume – Jin Guangyao had been waiting anxiously outside the door, which wasn’t going to do him a single bit of good, but luckily for him Nie Huaisang was here to distract him from all of his troubles. Wasn’t Nie Huaisang a wonderfully nice person?)
“Jin-xiong,” Nie Huaisang whined, tugging on Jin Guangyao’s sleeve until the other man had no choice but to follow him further down the hallway and further away from the receiving room where the current Nie-Jin shouting session was happening behind them. “Tell me. Am I right?”
“You’re really excitable today, Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao said instead of answering. “Are you feeling all right?”
“Actually, I really, really, really hate flying on my saber and I’ve had to do it so often recently, it’s been terrible, you have no idea how much I’ve suffered, but I’m at least marginally hopeful that it’ll all be worth it in the end. But enough about me. You, power…how would you really like to tell your father and his wife where to shove it?”
“Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao said helplessly. “We’re in the middle of Koi Tower. Can you at least keep your voice down?”
Pssh, like Nie Huaisang cared what some Jin sect retainers thought. His brother just punched their sect leader in the face, what in the world was he going to do that would top that?
“Really,” he insisted, deciding to ignore Jin Guangyao’s clearly misplaced objections. “Consider it for a moment. How would you like to obtain fame, power, wealth, legitimacy – of the public-recognition variety, not the familial sort, you got that already – the ability to rub your success into your father’s face and also possibly jump up and down on it a few times, and, just as a bonus, also maybe become Chief Cultivator?”
Technically, wife of the Chief Cultivator, but in reality there was no way he wouldn’t be the one doing all the work. People were being really insistent about there being one, and with Jin Guangshan out of the picture, Lan Xichen acting weirdly shifty, and Jiang Cheng being Jiang Cheng, the entire cultivation world were all currently forming a consensus that it was going to be Nie Mingjue regardless of whether he actually agreed to take the job. So if Nie Huaisang’s poor beleaguered big brother was going to get stuck with the title, why not give the work to someone who’d actually enjoy it?
“Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao said, and his voice was so overtly sorrowful and pathetic that Nie Huaisang actually stopped to goggle at him. “I have never once sought personal power nor pursued ambition on my own behalf, and I regret that you think of me in that way.”
He paused for a moment.
“You can keep talking, though.”
“Excellent,” Nie Huaisang said. “So the plan is –”
-
“Forgive my language,” Lan Xichen said, his voice a little strangled. “But what the fuck?”
Nie Huaisang giggled. “I didn’t know the Lan sect permitted swearing.”
“It doesn’t. I’ll punish myself later,” Lan Xichen said, still staring blankly into space. “I just…they’re getting married? All those changes, and they end up getting married?”
“Technically, they’re eloping,” Nie Huaisang said. “Since they’re not actually getting Jin-xiong’s father’s permission and all…oh, Madame Jin looks angry enough to eat glass. I love weddings!”
Lan Xichen turned to look at him with narrowed eyes.
“Huaisang,” he said warningly. “This was a scheme on your part, wasn’t it?”
“Uh, I mean, okay, maybe a little,” Nie Huaisang confessed. “But only a little. A mini-scheme. A micro-plot. A stratagem. Oooh, did I intrigue? I like that. I’m intriguing.”
“You certainly are that,” Lan Xichen said dryly. “But…why?”
“Because now Jin-xiong – we can still call him that, right? I don’t think his father has the right to take back the name once it’s given, even if he does go ahead and disown him the way he’s threatening to – now Jin-xiong can do all the paperwork and make things run efficiently back home, and also it’s now totally in his best interest to make sure my brother stays sect leader and Chief Cultivator forever because otherwise he loses the basis of his own power,” Nie Huaisang explained. “And thus far I haven’t seen anything that Jin-xiong – oh, I can call him sao-zi now, that’s much more straightforward! – anything that he can’t do if he puts his mind to it. Which means I am now guaranteed to have a nice long life full of sweet, blissful nothing! No responsibilities! Freedom!”
He paused.
“Oh, and obviously they’ll be great together, really happy and all that,” he added. “That’s important too.”
Lan Xichen put his hand up to his forehead, but he was smiling broadly now – not the tiny little smiles Nie Huaisang had managed to steal up out of him up until now, but a big old grin.
“Anyway, now that that’s over and done with, I promise, no more schemes,” Nie Huaisang added, putting his hand on his heart. “This is the last one, okay? If you don’t believe me, you can write it into our marriage vows.”
Lan Xichen huffed a little, clearly not believing him, but he sounded fond about it. “Whatever you say, Huaisang – wait. Hold on. Our what?”
“Our marriage vows,” Nie Huaisang explained. “At our marriage. On account of your total inexplicable crush on me, which upon reflection I have generously decided to accept and return your affections.”
Lan Xichen’s mouth was opening and closing like a fish.
“Of course, we’re not going to be so lucky as to just elope,” Nie Huaisang continued thoughtfully. “Da-ge can’t have a proper wedding ceremony because people will be too afraid of irritating Sect Leader Jin to attend, but if we have a nice big party to announce my engagement to you, well, that’s different, right? They can all come to that. It’ll be like a secret-not-secret wedding that everyone knows is a wedding but with the plausible deniability that it’s totally just an engagement party. But if we have the big announcement, there’s no getting out of doing all the steps and rituals and whatnot, and, oh, we’ll have to deal with your uncle and our elders…it’ll be a disaster, really. So much work!”
He sighed. “Oh, the things I do for you, Xichen-gege! You’re very lucky I like you so much!”
Lan Wangji cleared his throat behind them both, and they turned to look at him – he was standing there with his arm around Wei Wuxian’s waist, which was more or less the same posture he was always in these days. Now that was one marriage – arranged as it might have been originally, with Lan Xichen pressuring Jiang Cheng until he agreed – that had gone very well, even if Lan Wangji was still a little cold with his brother over the extremely aggressive tactics he had employed in getting them together.
“Congratulations on your upcoming nuptials, brother,” Lan Wangji said, somewhat stone faced. “It couldn’t have happened to someone more deserving.”
Wei Wuxian, by his side, smiled and nodded. “If you’d like any help planning the wedding –” he started to say.
“Oh, would you?” Nie Huaisang exclaimed, clapping his hands in excitement. “Wei-xiong, you’re the best. We’re going to need at least a thousand of those spirit summon flags of yours.”
“A – a thousand? Do you know how long it’ll take me to draw a thousand talismans?!”
“Well, how else will we guarantee that we have a hunt so impressive that no one will ever stop talking about it?” Nie Huaisang asked, because obviously that’s what his da-ge would have wanted for his own wedding and since Nie Huaisang messed that up for his own purposes, having it at his was the least he could do to make it up to him.
Best of all, as the bride, he’d be all decked out in jewelry and fancy clothing and exactly nobody would expect him to participate. Win-win!
“Chop-chop, Wei-xiong! The wedding’s happening sooner rather than later, so if you think you’re going to have problems keeping up with demand, I’ll send some Nie sect disciples with decent handwriting over to you to learn. I think some of the people sao-zi is bringing with him from the Jin sect have some background in demonic cultivation too, I don’t know, but I’ll find out and let you know as soon as possible. You need to train up some people anyway so that you can ramp up production – once you start selling your talismans, more people will use them, and people will be much less afraid of you. Isn’t that wonderful?”
Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian were both gaping at him. Possibly he had used too many words at once for them – or maybe it was just the speed in which he’d said it?
Lan Xichen started laughing.
“This is fine,” he said, wiping his eyes. “It’s just so much better than – yes, this is fine.”
Nie Huaisang was glad he agreed.
It meant the epic getting-together scheme that he’d had half-planned in the back of his mind in the event Lan Xichen said no could be safely shelved for another day.
Victory!