#I wanted to write it for the discord's valentine event but it just couldn't happen

[ibijau]

What is the xisang sandwich valentine?

currently on hold because, again, it needs to be a longer fic than I can handle right now

but basically, the xisang discord got chatty a few weeks ago about the concept of nhs(director)/nhs(headshaker). Which eventually led to the idea of "and also they're both in love with lxc". Also, my partner was watching a korean drama at the time that had a fun plot.

so the fic was going to be nhs accidentally meeting a rogue cultivator who just happens to look exactly like him, takes the man home, makes him pretend to be himself so that the real nhs can freely go around and investigate jgy's wrongdoings. fake nhs is a mess of a cultivator/sect leader, but a sweet enough man, so lxc and him start falling for each other. Real nhs is also increasingly endeared to his double who is smarter and more useful than expected. Then eventually the truth is revealed, and everyone gets two boyfriends.

Some might have called it an interesting coincidence, or a warning, but Nie Huaisang took it as a sign from fate when he saw that man, and promptly invited him to share his meal.

"It's funny," the man says after they've had some food. "You look familiar. Have we met before?"

"I doubt it," Nie Huaisang replies, trying to be politely distant but instead sounding harsh to the point of rudeness, even to his own ears.

Which is the issue, of course. He's had trouble keeping his temper in check since realising that his brother has been murdered. So far everyone has blamed his bouts of anger on the grief of losing Mingjue barely more than a year ago, but it has already been over a year, and that excuse won't hold much long longer. People will expect him to recover, to stabilise.

Impossible, when Mingjue's murderers come visiting every month.

But this man, here, could be the solution to Nie Huaisang's problem. A man who looks so much like him that Nie Huaisang would ask his mother if he was born with a twin, had she not died years ago. A man terribly down on his lucky, by the looks of it.

“Right, of course we can’t have met,” that providential double mumbles. “How silly of me. Even when my master was alive, we didn’t really get to rub elbows with sects, let alone one as big as Qinghe Nie. Although he says he had his moments of fame, once. Xxx, my master’s name was. And his teacher was xxx, who did study in a proper sect, before he decided to leave. Perhaps you’ve heard of them?”

“I don’t think I have. Your master, was he a relative of yours?”

“Oh, no. No, he’d have died of shame if we’d been of a same blood. But I was an orphan when he found me, and since I didn’t have a last name, he was generous enough to give me his. Gave me a first name, too, because the old one didn’t please him. So now I’m Xiao Zhu.”

“Xiao Zhu… Little Pig?”

“Ah, well, my master used to joke he should have called me that,” Xiao Zhu replies with far too much good humour after being insulted like this. “But no, it’s the Zhu of bamboo. It’s fine, I know a lot of people jump to that conclusion.”

Nie Huaisang smiles. A little pig, what a perfect find for a son of butchers.

“Xiao gongzi, I think I’m right in guessing your fortune has not been particularly good in recent years?” Nie Huaisang asks, as if the other man’s tattered clothes aren’t already a sign of that.

“It has been a little difficult since that Sunshot campaign,” Xiao Zhu confirms. “Before that I had my master to take care of most things, you see, but the Jins accused him of being a spy and executed him. I was lucky he’d sent me on an errand, or I’d be dead too.”

“I’m surprised, I thought even rogue cultivators could easily make a living these days.”

“I’m not much of a cultivator,” Xiao Zhu confesses. “My master took me in too late, and he didn’t manage to teach me much before he died.”

“How tragic,” Nie Huaisang says.

How wonderful, he thinks, and continues to interrogate Xiao Zhu.

The man doesn’t drink alcohol (his master’s method forbade it), he doesn’t gamble (he doesn’t even have enough money for that), he can’t afford brothels (and half confesses that women hold little charm to him). His main vice would be food, but probably more because he is often hungry than because he is a glutton. Interestingly, Xiao Zhu doesn’t seem stupid, just very awkward and lacking in self confidence, especially when it comes to his very patchy knowledge of cultivation. He is polite, and well behaved, and most importantly he is desperately eager to please.