#Jin Guangshan is gonna GET. HIS. and literally nobody will be sad about it

[eleanorfenyxwrites]

Soldier, Poet, King

Part 11

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]

[AO3] [Masterpost]

Heavily implied SongXueXiao in this one, but it can be read as either romantic or platonic I think - they’re all living together (plus A-Qing of course), but I don’t delve at all really into their dynamic or how it happened since it’s not important to the narrative I’m telling. (SongXiao are married and Xue Yang is just kinda There and Super Healthy™ about it lol)

-/-

Lan Xichen – like most people, he would assume – is perfectly capable of recognizing Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen on sight. That doesn’t change the fact that for the long, breathless moment in which it’s silent enough in the lab to hear a pin drop, he has absolutely no idea what he’s looking at.

The last anyone had heard of the two genuinely legendary Mach 1 pilots, they’d disappeared into retirement following their hardest-won Kaiju battle, and though Shanghai’s press statements had already long dried up into the barest bones of information, this had been shocking enough that the truth had slipped through the shatterdome’s tight security.

They’d been injured – badly so, to the point of being nearly unrecognizable (according to sources that claimed to be inside the ‘dome). It had taken months more for further information to leak, and when it had Lan Xichen had selfishly wished that it hadn’t. Acid, right to both of their faces, people around the world had whispered, hushed and fascinated. Xiao Xingchen’s eyes, Song Lan’s tongue – gone! Just like that!

A rumor like that, no matter how much or how little truth it contained, was naturally bound to lead to…assumptions. Mental images that were painful to imagine, but that were nonetheless inescapable, especially for a fellow pilot – someone who lived with the reality of something similar happening at any moment in the course of their work.

And yet here, now, years after their retreat from the world, stand Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan both smiling gently at Nie Mingjue and (mostly) appearing whole and healthy.

“You-” Nie Mingjue starts and attempts to stand before the nodes attached to his temples prevent him from doing so. He makes an irritated noise in the back of his throat and makes as if to rip them off, which thankfully galvanizes Nie Huaisang and Mo Xuanyu, at least, into scrambling forward to get them unhooked from their contraption. Wei Wuxian is still frozen staring at their guests from behind the computer bank, but Lan Xichen thinks that’s more than fair considering he knows precisely how much this means to him.

“Us,” Xiao Xingchen replies, still smiling. Lan Xichen gets slowly to his feet as well while the man steps around the desk to allow Nie Mingjue to pull him in for a hug that looks nearly violent, but Xiao Xingchen doesn’t complain. Lan Xichen glances at Song Lan to see him studying Jin Guangyao through slightly narrowed eyes, and without thought Lan Xichen steps in front of his partner to block him partially from view. The last these two had seen of Jin Guangyao, after all, had been his expulsion from Bujing Shi and Nie Mingjue’s subsequent depression after he was gone. He can’t imagine they’re thrilled to see him here now as one of Nie Mingjue’s co-pilots.

“It’s alright, Zewu-Jun.” It takes Lan Xichen a long moment to realize that the deep, smooth, vaguely mechanical voice is, in fact, Song Lan’s, though naturally his lips don’t move along with it. “We do not hold needless grudges.”

Jin Guangyao rests a careful hand on the crook of his elbow, but it still takes a reassuring nod from Song Lan before Lan Xichen steps aside again so that Jin Guangyao can offer the man a bow.

“I feel that my intention to offer further apologies for arriving unannounced is no longer necessary,” Xiao Xingchen says with a hint of a strain for being squeezed so tightly. Nie Mingjue’s suspiciously wet laughter breaks some of the awed tension in the room.

“You know you’re always welcome here, anytime,” Nie Mingjue huffs as he withdraws and slaps Xiao Xingchen’s shoulder hard enough that Lan Xichen is sure he sees the man put genuine effort into not stumbling under the impact. “I never expected to see either of you again. But it seems like things went well in the States? Fixed up your faces and everything, ah?”

Lan Xichen is at once relieved and dismayed by his partner’s shocking lack of tact. Mostly relieved – now that he’s over his shock he’s desperate to know how they’ve recovered from such horrific injuries (that he now knows from Nie Mingjue’s memories that they definitely sustained, and that in fact the gossip had actually downplayed their severity).

“Mm they did, eventually. It was difficult to track down what we needed, but we managed. One of Zichen’s eyes for each of us even though I told Zichen I was fine without it. So yes, eyes for each of us, reconstruction surgery and skin grafts to repair more superficial damage to our necks and faces, and Zichen’s throat. Cybernetic replacements for our non-functional eyes to compensate for the loss. And for a special treat, a thought-to-speech implant for Zichen – one of a kind, from Auntie Baoshan herself.”

Wei Wuxian makes a hastily-muffled noise like a dying cat and Lan Xichen has to duck his head to hide his amusement at his friend’s predicament. For as much as Mo Xuanyu is not subtle at all in his hero worship of Wei Wuxian, Lan Xichen knows that Wei Wuxian himself would be hard-pressed to hide his own worship of the Immortal pair even before they’d mentioned Baoshan Sanren (and her work with cybernetics that sound like a mad inventor’s dream).

“Good.” Nie Mingjue’s gruff pronouncement is laced with too many emotions for Lan Xichen to parse through, but he’s sure they’ll have a discussion about it later so he doesn’t mind. “Do you have quarters picked out yet?”

“Not here,” Song Lan says, turning his unreadable look – made more so by the nigh-on unnatural stillness of his face – on Nie Mingjue again. “We do not wish to be any trouble.”

“We already have a place in town, if you don’t mind sparing us in the evenings,” Xiao Xingchen adds smoothly, his smile apologetic even as his tone brooks no argument. “But we will stay and discuss whatever you’d like until curfew, we traveled at a comfortable pace and we are well-rested.”

“I need to go over the experiment we just finished with the research team,” Nie Mingjue says with a gesture towards their ‘peanut gallery’, as Jin Guangyao had called them, who are once again all behind the row of monitors watching this all play out in front of them with wide eyes. “You remember my brother Huaisang?”

“We do,” Xiao Xingchen smiles. Nie Huaisang flutters his fan in a weak little wave.

“The other two are Mo Xuanyu, the youngest Kaiju genius in the world -” Mo Xuanyu flushes crimson at the praise and offers a shaky bow - “And Wei Wuxian, one of the three Heroes of Yunmeng, and Lan Wangji’s new co-pilot in Immortal Mountain.”

“Of course, your career is very impressive, Wei-gongzi. We look forward to meeting with you properly in a little while,” Xiao Xingchen says with a nod for Wei Wuxian, who looks ready to pass out any moment. “Please don’t let us keep you from your duties, we merely wanted to say hello as soon as possible, lest word of our arrival precede us. We were hoping to go see Immortal Mountain next..?”

“I can take you,” Lan Xichen offers before he can think twice about it. “I believe Wangji is observing her maintenance crew this morning, as well, if you’d like to meet him.”

Lan Xichen isn’t quite prepared for the twin bows the two offer him, genteel and graceful.

“Thank you, Zewu-Jun, we’ll follow your lead then.”

Lan Xichen isn’t often at a loss for words. For all that he was raised in relative isolation compared to the vast majority of people, it had been instilled in him since he was a young boy that he should know how to comport himself at all times. And then, following his and Lan Wangji’s descent from their mountain home into training centers and shatterdomes at the start of the war, he’d learned quickly, naturally, how to make up for his brother’s lack of speech that most people found disconcerting at best, if not downright rude.

It’s an extremely unpleasant moment, then, when he realizes that he’s alone with two of his teenage heroes, and he has absolutely no clue what to say to them. Were it not for the fact that he knows Lan Wangji genuinely doesn’t care one bit if the people around him are uncomfortable, he would wonder how his brother can stand it.

“I hope you aren’t upset to see new pilots in Immortal Mountain,” he finally manages when they come to a junction, the perpendicular corridors bustling with enough people that the noise soothes some of the awkward tension – enough for Lan Xichen to find his metaphorical footing again, anyway. People naturally stop to gawk at them as they pass through the jostling and clanging space, but neither Song Lan nor Xiao Xingchen seem to take too much notice of it.

“Not at all,” Xiao Xingchen soothes, lips tipped up at the corners again right on cue. “Surprised, I suppose, that anyone would still wish to pilot a Mach 1 even when poorer shatterdomes than Shanghai can boast much newer tech, but not at all upset.”

“My brother and Wei Wuxian are both enamored with Immortal Mountain for a variety of reasons. Wangji is quite fond of tradition and is pleased to be able to honor the first generation of pilots in this way; Wei Wuxian is an engineering genius who would probably like to take Immortal Mountain apart down to her every last nut and bolt to figure out how she works were he not asked to pilot her instead.”

“Good hands for her, then,” Song Lan says simply, and that’s that. Lan Xichen leads them along another corridor, the walls now cluttered with more and more pipes and steam vents as they approach the Jaeger bays. He’s certain that the others know this shatterdome even better than he does and need no direction through their old stomping grounds, but they allow him to lead them the rest of the way down to the echoing caverns of Bays 1 and 2 without complaint.

Unlike the day they’d arrived from Tokyo, Bay 1, home to Immortal Mountain, is now as brightly lit as Bay 2 next to it. Also unlike that first day, repairs have ceased on Sparks Amidst Snow, the Jaeger silent and gleaming perfect, ready to be sent out on the next Kaiju run. All the cacophony of a working bay is coming from Immortal Mountain, maintenance crew members everywhere he can see swarming like ants as they work on bringing the Jaeger back into working order as quickly as Jin Guangshan has demanded to save face. Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian have already taken her out for the exhibition run, of course, but a quick step out into town for a wave and publicity shots does not at all translate to the old Mach 1 behemoth being ready to get dropped into the ocean and pitted against stronger and faster Kaiju than she had been designed to fight.

Lan Xichen steps away from his companions with the excuse of looking for Lan Wangji to give them a moment of privacy as they’re faced with their Jaeger after years away from it. He spots his brother a few levels up from where they’ve entered on the ground floor, little more than a speck of white at this distance where he’s standing on one of the catwalks near Immortal Mountain’s thighs covered in massive hydraulic pistons and backup weapons the size of typical suburban houses. He snags the closest grease-smudged crew member he recognizes from Tokyo and requests that they please use their comms to get someone to tell Lan Wangji to come down and find him, and only then does he return to Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen.

“Wangji will join us shortly,” he reports, and…runs out of words. Again. He must have a fever or something.

“Zewu-Jun,” Song Lan interrupts his moment of dismay, lips quirked up ever so slightly into a smirk, the most obvious facial expression he’s made yet. “You seem to have something on your mind.”

Lan Xichen smiles politely around the shape of the invasive and utterly inappropriate question that immediately springs to the tip of his tongue.

Xiao Xingchen’s gaze is shrewd over his ever-smiling lips as he says, “You would hardly be the first person to ask what happened to us, Zewu-Jun, if that’s what you’re curious about.”

Despite the flush in his ears, Lan Xichen offers them a bow that’s more than half-apology, his smile twisting towards rueful. “Ah..I have only just seen your injury for the first time in Mingjue’s memories today. I hope you will forgive me, but seeing you hale and hearty immediately after is…surprising. My apologies.”

Xiao Xingchen’s gaze softens. “No apologies necessary, Zewu-Jun. We were quite lucky to have found Auntie Baoshan when we did to help us, and the process of healing has been harder than it may seem now when you’re seeing us as healed as we'll ever be.”

It is perhaps Xiao Xingchen’s gentle understanding and Song Lan’s calm, non-judgmental aura that loosens his tongue enough to blurt, “Do you really have one of Song-daozhang’s eyes?” It’s only his years spent in Lan Qiren’s comportment lessons that keep him from clapping his hand over his mouth like a child catching themselves in a lie.

“Xingchen is an ungrateful husband and wouldn’t accept both of them,” Song Lan says, so deadpan in the flat, mechanical way of early computer speech that Lan Xichen can’t help but be shocked into laughter. It’s probably for the best that his next questions (which ones are Song Lan’s eyes? Do the prosthetic eyes do anything interesting since they were designed by the genius Baoshan Sanren?) are cut off mercifully at the knees by Lan Wangji’s arrival. Lan Xichen feels his face light up in happy recognition the moment he spots his brother over his companions’ shoulders, and so he has the pleasure of watching Lan Wangji jerk to a stop in shock when the Immortal pair turn around in synch to see what he’s looking at for themselves.

“Ah. Hanguang-Jun,” Song Lan greets with a nod that Xiao Xingchen mirrors beside him. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Lan Wangji blinks three times in quick succession before he steps forward again to finish closing the distance between them, and Lan Xichen hides an indulgent smile behind his hand at his brother’s startled awe. He covers it well enough by dipping into a deeply respectful bow, though there’s no hiding how starstruck he is (at least not from Lan Xichen anyway) when Xiao Xingchen reaches out to pull him out of it again with a gentle hand under his forearm.

“It’s alright, we’re all equals here,” Xiao Xingchen is quick to soothe. “You’re a pilot for Immortal Mountain now too, after all, aren’t you?”

“Mn,” Lan Wangji recovers enough to respond, though his eyes are still a bit too wide. “With Wei Ying.”

“Yes, of course. We just met your Wei Wuxian downstairs, and naturally everyone’s heard of his incredible innovations – even those as removed from the news cycle as we are.”

Lan Xichen doesn’t bother hiding his fond smile when praising Wei Wuxian and his work turns out to be precisely the correct way to make Lan Wangji loosen up enough to push past his surprise, his lips and the corners of his eyes softening ever so slightly as he nods (though Lan Xichen is sure he’s the only one present who can see that as a sign of his brother relaxing).

“Wangji, I should go back down to research for the debrief. Would you mind escorting our guests for the day?”

“Mn. An honor,” Lan Wangji says, as cursed with the Lan Sincerity™ (as Wei Wuxian has coined it) as Lan Xichen himself is. “I was observing the repair of a patch of deteriorated armor,” he adds, his attention solely on Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan. “If you would prefer not to do so, we may do something else.”

Song Lan’s smooth, mechanical voice is a visible balm to Lan Wangji’s startled tension, his brother’s shoulders sliding down the inch or so they’d crept up towards his ears when the man says, “No, that sounds good. We’ve already seen one old friend here, it’s time to say hello to the other.”

“Mn.” Lan Wangji says nothing else before he turns on his heel to march back the way he’d come, slowly enough that Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan have enough time to offer Lan Xichen small twin smiles and quiet thanks before they take their leave. Lan Xichen watches them go until they disappear back in the direction of the lifts to the upper levels of the bay. Only once they’re out of sight does he give into the temptation to shake himself all over like a wet dog and pinch himself on the arm for good measure.

If anyone had told him when he’d still been in Tokyo that coming to Shanghai would mean meeting and befriending (and romancing) so many fascinating people – people that he’s looked up to for so many years – he never would have believed it. Still can’t entirely believe it, honestly, though his completed drift with Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangyao is strong evidence that he can’t possibly refute that all of this is really happening.

Teeth and brain thoroughly rattled (yet everything still exactly as it had been moments before), Lan Xichen turns his feet once again towards the corridors that’ll take him back to his partners, and has to put genuine effort into keeping himself from running pell mell down them just to see them sooner. 

 -/-

 “Close your mouth, Wei,” Nie Mingjue gruffs once Lan Xichen has left with Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen in tow. When Wei Wuxian stays frozen staring at the doorway, Nie Mingjue cuffs him (lightly) on the back of the head to get him in gear and the man startles out of his stunned stupor with a little yelp and an overly-theatrical rub at the back of his head that can’t possibly be smarting just from that.

“Holy shit,” he breathes and looks around as if to check that everyone else saw what he did. “Holy fucking shit!!”

“You have a job to do before you’re free to go ask for their autograph,” Nie Mingjue reminds him, though he’s relatively sure he can trust Wei Wuxian not to do something so shameless as that, even if they are his heroes. (He abruptly remembers his and Lan Wangji’s extremely shameless nightly endeavors and adjusts that ‘relatively sure’ to something more like ‘desperately hopes’.)

With a loud snap of his fingers in front of Wei Wuxian’s shining eyes he adds,“Talk to me about the Drift, Wei,” and that, finally, seems to get the man’s hyperactive mind back on the right track. Talking about his work usually does, even if little else is capable of doing so.

“Right! Drift. Uhhhh yep, yeah, here’s your readout, everything is honestly textbook perfect. We’ll probably get you to do it here in the simulator again a few more times under slightly different conditions each time just to make sure everything goes smoothly each time you Drift and make sure it can happen as quickly as it needs to now that you’ve established the connection, but yeah you guys are good. You won’t be able to Drift without the accommodations we made, that’s already well established, but with all three of you in there to distribute the neural load and with the dampers on each of your connections to make sure you don’t burn yourselves out like me, you can Drift just like anyone else out in the field, no problem.”

Nie Mingjue glares down at the long roll of paper covered in incomprehensible figures that Wei Wuxian had handed him and is eternally glad that the only men in the room who can likely tell he’s about to cry are his brother and Jin Guangyao, both of whom are too busy fussing over their precious Drift rig to notice.

He can Drift again. Properly. Without hurting either of his partners – men he would die for in a heartbeat, without an ounce of regret. He doesn’t have to hold Jin Guangyao back anymore. He can be who his partner wants. Who Jin Guangyao needs.

“I mean not that I’d recommend the three of you hopping in a Jaeger to join the rotation – ah..hah not that I’m doubting your judgment, Chifeng-zun! Do whatever you think best, of course. But obviously one of the biggest risks with three-man teams is losing all three pilots in a fight, which is just…numerically a bigger problem than losing two! But of course you already know that, ha..”

“Wei Wuxian, if you don’t get ahold of yourself in the next ten seconds I’m grounding you for the next two weeks,” Nie Mingjue growls to try to cover his own Moment, though Jin Guangyao looks up at him at that precise moment and it’s no use trying to hide how much he’s affected by all of this.

“Mingjue, be nice,” his partner chastises. “You’re just as rattled as he is to see the Immortals, and they’re not even your childhood crushes.”

“Crushes?!” Wei Wuxian yelps. “They’re not..I didn’t…Their work is just very inspiring, okay?! Everyone in Asia is fascinated by them!”

“It’s okay, Wei-laoshi,” Mo Xuanyu says sweetly, his own celebrity crush still apparently going strong even after spending weeks working in close quarters with all of Wei Wuxian’s chaos. If anything it’s probably gotten a bit worse. “I understand perfectly.”

“You still have posters of Wei-xiong wallpapering your bunk, of course you understand,” Nie Huaisang snorts and their stupid back and forth helps settle some of the things that have rattled loose in Nie Mingjue’s chest, at least for now. He’ll probably have to talk about it all with Jin Guangyao and Lan Xichen later, but for now he doesn’t have the luxury of giving into his emotions – nor would he want to, what with their current audience being what it is.

“Da-ge,” Jin Guangyao murmurs at his side as the other three bicker happily back and forth, none of them apparently embarrassed at all by their own behavior. He doesn’t say anything else; he doesn’t have to. Nie Mingjue slings his free arm around his slender waist (a rare show of PDA that he normally wouldn’t allow) then decides to just go for broke and ducks down to press a lingering kiss to the top of his head. Jin Guangyao leans into him easily and reaches over to take the readout from his other hand. Nie Mingjue relinquishes it easily of course – it’s Jin Guangyao who reads the same sorts of data from the computers up in the comms tower anyway, Nie Mingjue can never get his eyes to focus long enough to make heads or tails of them and usually just winds up with migraines for trying.

“Thoughts?”

“Wei Wuxian is correct. It’s textbook, right down to our heartbeats once we completed the Drift.”

Nie Mingjue takes a deep breath in and turns slightly, just enough to block Jin Guangyao from the view of the others in the room with his body. His partner blinks up at him, eyes deep and unfathomable.

“You can be a pilot, A-Yao. With me.”

The naked want that crosses Jin Guangyao’s expression nearly hurts to look at, but Nie Mingjue doesn’t look away. They haven’t gotten as far as they have now by flinching in the face of each other’s most vulnerable moments.

“We…We have to talk it over with Huan-ge,” Jin Guangyao says with clear difficulty. “And approach battle cautiously, as Wei Wuxian has suggested. Just because we can Drift properly does not mean we can fight, particularly with the issues you and I have with just seeing a Kaiju on a screen. And we can’t exactly leave the ‘dome in just anyone’s hands if all three of us are out there anyway.”

“I know. But-”

“Not yet,” Jin Guangyao interrupts him, softening the sharp bite in his tone with soft, apologetic hands petting the lapels of his jacket, smoothing over his chest as Jin Guangyao looks up at him again with a tiny smile. “I’ll tell you when, alright? Just trust me.”

“Always do,” Nie Mingjue says, because these days it’s the unquestionable truth. Jin Guangyao smiles a little more widely up at him, dimples in his cheeks, and it’s only the sound of the other three horsing around behind him that keeps him from leaning down to kiss those dimples as he and Lan Xichen both love so much to do.

“Ah…Chifeng-Zun?” Mo Xuanyu hazards a moment later. Nie Mingjue has had more than enough bad news delivered to him in his life to know that he’s not going to like whatever the boy has to say next. Still, he doesn’t even sigh before he turns around to look down at him, one eyebrow raised ever so slightly.

“What is it?”

“I wanted to wait until after your Drift to tell you, but..I’ve finished decoding what I can understand of Xue-laoshi’s notes.”

It takes a supreme act of will not to curl his lip in disgust at the respectful title for that rabid dog of a man, but it’s not an argument he wants to have right now – not with Mo Xuanyu, and not with Jin Guangyao either, despite the fact that he knows that the main reason the man hasn’t been put down yet is because of Jin Guangyao’s protection and assurances to Jin Guangshan that Xue Yang is more useful than he is harmful, at least for their purposes. Nie Mingjue disagrees – heartily and vocally – but he’s not feeling up for a shouting match at the moment so he lets it slide. For now.

“And?”

“Wen-daifu wasn’t lying to Yao-ge before. It’s his fault the Kaiju are coming faster, and that they know who to target and where and how.”

Nie Mingjue takes a deep breath in, holds it, and releases Jin Guangyao’s waist to turn around properly with his arms crossed over his chest as he exhales again to try to find his very shallow reserves of patience. “Tell me. Start from the beginning.”

Mo Xuanyu takes a deep breath in of his own as he turns to his computer to start furiously clicking and typing through screen after screen in quick succession until Nie Mingjue is fairly sure they’re all looking at the unencrypted contents of the hard drive that Wen Qing had said contains Xue Yang’s records. The labels of the files are incomprehensible to Nie Mingjue, but Mo Xuanyu starts navigating them with the ease of the hours he’s spent poring over them in between his study of past battles and Kaiju biology.

(Nie Mingjue thinks a bit ruefully that he works his brother and Mo Xuanyu far too hard, but there’s just no one else he trusts to handle such sensitive material, and the fewer hands it passes through the better anyway. Unfortunately, it seems to be his lot in life to make all sorts of uncomfortable or less-than-savory decisions such as this, even when it’s his family involved. He just has to hope that the time in which it’s necessary is coming to an end soon.)

“Okay. So – Xue Yang. Obsessed with Wei Wuxian’s work in Kaiju research, we all know this, he’s never bothered to hide it. But Wei-laoshi has had a lot of ideas that have never been put to the test – because they shouldn’t be, either because they’re either extremely dangerous, highly unethical, or both. Usually both.”

Wei Wuxian laughs a little sheepishly but pointedly doesn’t correct his newest mentee in these assertions. He doesn’t have to – they all know Mo Xuanyu is telling nothing but the truth.

“The difference between Wei-laoshi and Xue-laoshi though is that Xue-laoshi will do anything if it sounds interesting enough, no matter how much he really shouldn’t, especially when he’s not here for us to keep an eye on.”

“You don’t have to explain that dog or his madness to me,” Nie Mingjue growls. “Just tell me what he did so we can fix it.”

“Sure, boss. He Drifted with a Kaiju.”

The silence that follows that statement is absolute, and for a brief moment Nie Mingjue has the blissful thought that he’s definitely misheard, or at least misunderstood. The momentary illusion is shattered by Wei Wuxian leaning in close enough to grab Mo Xuanyu by the shoulder and turn him around, his ancient leather office chair squeaking in protest at the sudden movement.

“He did what?!” Wei Wuxian yelps, sounding far more terrified than Nie Mingjue would have ever guessed he could.

“Drifted with a Kaiju brain, harvested fresh right after a battle near Tokyo when it was still alive enough to talk to the rest of them wherever they are. So…I don’t think we actually can fix this one, if I’m being honest, if my guesses are correct about what this all means in the long run.”

“That’s…I thought about doing that once! And I immediately followed it up with at least a dozen reasons not to do it right off the top of my head! Even at my worst I wasn’t insane enough to actually try it!!”

“Reasons which I’m sure he saw in your journal and immediately ignored because as we all know, he’s fucking insane,” Mo Xuanyu says with a shrug. Nie Mingjue has to fight the urge to rub at his temple to alleviate a tension headache he can feel looming, completely irrespective of the Drift experiment he’d just finished with his partners.

“Alright, so Xue Yang Drifted with a motherfucking Kaiju. What now? How did this happen, and will it happen again?”

“I’m so glad you asked,” Mo Xuanyu trills and turns back to his computer to begin pulling up a new round of records as he talks. “The short answer is no, it won’t happen again. It really fried up Xue Yang’s brain according to Tokyo’s head doctor’s notes during his assessment of him afterwards, I don’t think even Wei-laoshi could design something to accommodate him in the Drift. I don’t think Baoshan Sanren could design him something, and I’ll bet a month’s worth of snack rations that he tried to ask for it while he was following the Immortals around the States during their miracle healing.

“But to answer how he made it happen –” Mo Xuanyu sits back again and gestures at the rows and rows of figures on his screen, each one attached to a coded name that he’s decoded into a separate document pulled up next to it for their benefit.

“Wen Ruohan’s finances?” Jin Guangyao asks, startled. “Why did he keep — ah, of course. Insurance.”

“Blackmail, Yao-ge, call it what it is,” Mo Xuanyu huffs. “~Blackmail for a black soul doing black deeds for the black market~,” he singsongs in falsetto under his breath next and for a moment it’s eerily like Xue Yang and his love for levity when it’s least appropriate. Nie Mingjue swallows back the urge to tell him to cut it out in favor of asking something much more pressing.

“Are we implicated in this should any of it be found out by the public?”

“Hmmmm yes and no, Chifeng-Zun,” Mo Xuanyu shrugs again and swivels his chair around again to blink up at them. “ ‘We’ as in Shanghai Shatterdome? Oh yeah, no doubt about it, we’d be doing damage control for months probably. ‘We’ as in any of us personally who aren’t Father or Xue-laoshi? Harder to say.”

Jin Guangyao hums, “Mm. Tell me what Father’s involvement is specifically.”

Nie Mingjue knows that tone in his voice too well. Almost unconsciously he begins a countdown in the back of his mind, and he can’t find it in himself to be too upset to realize that Jin Guangshan’s days are very much numbered – likely not beyond double digits.

“Uhhh well…. Okay : If you’re the obscenely wealthy patron of a shatterdome with an already questionable reputation because of nepotism and historically shitty pilots and all, plus a policy of keeping a tight lid on information about your inner workings in a way that makes people a bit suspicious already, what do you do when you want to do highly unethical and dangerous experiments using Kaiju parts?”

“Outsource it,” Jin Guangyao says shortly. It’s curt enough that Nie Mingjue is sure he’s already figured out whatever it is that they’re being led toward. He gestures for Mo Xuanyu to keep talking anyway, since he’s not afraid to admit he’s not quite as quick-witted as Jin Guangyao is, nor as good at thinking along the same lines crooked men do.

“Right — you get someone else to do your dirty work. Someone whose reputation is big and bad enough that nobody messes with them anymore.”

“We already knew he was working with Wen Ruohan,” Nie Mingjue growls. “Tell me what I don’t know.”

“Wen Ruohan is only a small part of it, actually. But okay, so! If you want to run experiments on Kaijus in the tight privacy of a private lab you have a lot of logistical problems to consider – most of them can be solved by working on parts. Tiny bits of corpses. Cutting dead Kaijus up into pieces and dragging the pieces in here. Which we do! Every shatterdome in the world does that, and for the most part it’s on the up and up, we only take the bits we need to study, right? Acid sacs and eyeballs and exoskeleton chunks – and what we’re pretty sure are maybe meant to be their bones even though sometimes they’re like really weirdly squidgy-“

Nie Mingjue’s patience is not improving one bit. “Make a point, Xuanyu!”

“You start a black market! That’s the point. You play the long game and start a black market. Kaiju parts on the cheap to people who will turn around and jack the prices way up when they’re selling it to their contacts and then give you a good cut. When your buyers have driven the prices high enough, you start taking a cut of the physical spoils too – your finances stay consistent, but you siphon off which Kaiju pieces you want for your experiments while selling the rest for more money to cover the gap. You store the Kaiju parts in the warehouse where the corpses are already dismembered anyway, you have your people mark them all as ‘sold to private bidder’ just like the other black market shit that actually makes it out the door. Then you hang onto them yourself until it’s time to go pay a visit to your dear friend in Tokyo, perhaps to begin negotiating a legitimate Pilot Program deal for a totally random example, and you bring along a little gift – plus someone who has some really batshit insane ideas for what to do with them.”

“Xue Yang.”

“Exactly. So you take your Kaiju bits and your certifiably mad scientist over to Tokyo, and you let Wen Ruohan’s reputation keep away any nosy reporters wondering what the hell you’re working on in there. Then, once you’re not being watched anymore because this is all clearly legitimate, you let your mad scientist try Drifting with a Kaiju to see what happens.”

The stunned silence in the room is interrupted only by the sound of severely overworked computer fans trying to keep up with the sheer volume of programs Mo Xuanyu is running and the never-ending background noise of the rest of the ‘dome above their heads.

“All of that all these years just to ultimately have Xue Yang Drift with a Kaiju?” Jin Guangyao finally asks.

“Yep!”

“Why?” Nie Huaisang finally manages to demand – the first thing he’s managed to say during the whole explanation  – sounding as horrified as Nie Mingjue has ever heard him. “Why Drift with the Kaiju at all?! Even Wei-xiong’s notes said it probably would be useless considering they’re literally completely alien to us. How would we even understand what we’re seeing, if you can overcome physiological differences long enough for it to work in the first place? What’s the point?”

“Wars make money if you’re the one selling the dead,” Nie Mingjue grunts, disgusted and more than a little nauseous with it. “If you can find some way to tell your enemy valuable information about your defenses — like who to attack and how and where — then you’re guaranteed fresh meat delivered right to your doorstep, ready to be sold, and terrified people ready to pay you any amount of money to protect them from the monsters you called to their door. And with Xuanyu’s prediction algorithm getting better and better…”

“Always follow the money,” Wei Wuxian pipes up, the same disgust Nie Mingjue feels dripping from each word. “Men like Jin Guangshan and Wen Ruohan? It’s all about the money, and everyone at the bottom dies for it. Is any of this really a surprise in the end?”

“The lengths that they will go to to accomplish these things is somehow still unfortunately a surprise, yes,” Jin Guangyao mutters darkly at his side. Nie Mingjue wonders briefly if he should attempt to comfort him – this is his father’s doing, after all – but thinks better of it when he glances down to catch a glimpse of the look in his partner’s eyes. Hard, cold, and so familiarly deadly it puts a chill up Nie Mingjue’s spine. He doesn’t think that he and Lan Xichen will be able to distract him this time.

Nie Mingjue doesn’t want to distract him.

This is no longer a matter of personal distaste for Jin Guangshan and the way he treats everything under the ‘dome’s roof like it’s a business deal. This is no longer a matter of personal safety, or the safety of only his pilots, or of the population of the Shanghai Shatterdome, or the entire sprawling city of Shanghai itself. Jin Guangshan, in his greed for money and delusions of power, has endangered the entire human race. Of course he knows that Xue Yang is far from innocent in this and he’d love to get rid of that mongrel too, but he knows who the driving force really is behind all of this. If not Xue Yang, then Jin Guangshan would have found another tool to use to the same ends. Perhaps his tool would have even been Jin Guangyao, had Jin Guangshan played his cards right once upon a time.

Nie Mingjue glances down at Jin Guangyao beside him again to find the man already looking up at him, steel and fire in his wide, dark eyes. Between the two of them, no words are needed. He knows Jin Guangyao can read his (begrudging, but unflinching) acceptance of what needs to be done in the set of his mouth, the angle of his brows…or however the fuck it is Jin Guangyao always knows how to read him like a book. He’s never revealed his secrets when Nie Mingjue has asked.

Jin Guangyao slips his hand into Nie Mingjue’s and doesn’t break eye contact as he says, “A-Sang, we’re going out tonight. Time to see how good your informers really are.”

Nie Mingjue raises their joined hands to press a short kiss to Jin Guangyao’s knuckles before his partner withdraws and storms off at a sharp, precise clip without another word until he steps aside just inside the door to allow Lan Xichen to re-enter the lab, looking the tiniest bit flushed, like he’d jogged the whole way down from the Jaeger bays.

“What’s wrong?” Lan Xichen asks, as perceptive to everyone’s moods as ever. “A-Yao?”

“Come here, Xichen,” Nie Mingjue calls, finding himself desperately wanting the softness the man can offer him that Jin Guangyao usually can’t, even under much better circumstances. “There’s something you need to see.”

“Don’t wait up for me tonight, Huan-ge. I’ll see you both in the morning,” Jin Guangyao murmurs, and he gives Lan Xichen the same squeeze of their hands that he’d given Nie Mingjue before he sweeps away properly, footsteps echoing steadily back down the hallway — a death knell, if ever Nie Mingjue has heard one.

 -/-

 Jin Guangyao knows, logically, that of course the way that he lives is not normal. Normal people don’t spend their days holed up in a deteriorating sprawling military facility centering their life around the same twenty-or-so people on any given day and mind-bogglingly massive interdimensional murder aliens. He knows this, and he’s never once claimed to be normal, not even before his life was exactly that.

But stepping out of the gloomy austerity of the ‘dome into the dazzling nightlife of Shanghai still feels like waking out of a vaguely unsettling not-quite-nightmare only to be doused immediately in sticky sweet, neon-colored alcohol and way too much cologne.

“Ooo Yao-ge, this way!” Nie Huaisang shouts excitedly, tugging on his arm. His face is splashed with so many colors off the signs around them it’s difficult to settle on one, but his teeth flash red in the glare of the closest bar’s advertisement, something bold and oversized that he doesn’t bother to read. Jin Guangyao lets himself be towed around, for once, and simply does his best to avoid bumping into the people crowded into the street with them — there’s far more bare skin and cleavage and cocktail-redolent laughter than he would like, and he thinks longingly of his partners probably getting settled in for the evening right this very minute in their quarters without him.

Nie Huaisang tugs him to the left at some signal Jin Guangyao doesn’t bother attempting to identify and he follows. Nie Huaisang pulls him down a short alleyway out into the next block of neon highrises. Here in the heart of the city they tower over everything, level after level after level of pleasure and fun advertised in every shade of neon imaginable, each shade somehow searingly bright enough to make his teeth hurt. Down here, in the pulsing, growling belly of it all, Jin Guangyao feels himself drowning, getting lost in the throngs and looking up into the night sky so far away it’s nearly impossible to see. Criss-crossing wires and sky bridges and the forced perspective of visual noise gradually fading up up up into the blackness of space leave him dizzy with vertigo if he looks for more than a moment.

Jin Guangyao drops his eyes back down to Nie Huaisang’s back just ahead of him in the crush and reminds himself of their agreed-upon task for the evening as a distraction.

“Ahh here we are!” Nie Huaisang finally cries, releasing Jin Guangyao’s wrist for the first time since they left the ‘dome in favor of throwing his arms wide as if to hug the building they’ve stopped in front of. As far as their surroundings go, this place sticks out like a sore thumb. Not a hint of neon on the place, not even a backlit sign board. Instead, a flickering spotlight — dim and yellow, the cheapest bulb money can buy — offers up a dingy epithet with no other context. White background, big black vinyl letters: The Cockpit.

“A-Sang,” Jin Guangyao interrupts, smile fixed where it should be with cutting precision. “I am not here to prevent your being stabbed for the sake of a subpar back alley blowjob -“

“That was one time, Yao-ge, and they only nicked me a little! I’m telling you, if he’s in Shanghai, which we have every reason to believe he is, then he’s here. I’m sure of it.”

Jin Guangyao eyes the bar again, just as dubiously as the first time. The place is a black hole amongst all the glittering allure of the nightlife around it, a shabby brick-and-mortar nothing little hole in the wall. Unfortunately, this all tracks far too well for Jin Guangyao to doubt his friend.

He heaves a world weary sigh, dodges a drunken lurch with an accompanying grope from someone passing behind them, and waves Nie Huaisang forward with an imperious gesture. “Let’s go.” He sighs again; the ‘let’s just get this over with’ is perfectly implicit.

The interior of the club is, somehow, even darker than the outside. Or it at least feels that way, the ceiling low enough that Jin Guangyao has to fight the urge to duck despite the ceiling being nowhere near his head. Much like the exterior, everything inside, even the floor, is painted a deep black that absorbs the low light thrown off by a collection of dark-shaded lamps he can count on both hands for the entire club.

It’s loud enough the moment they step into the space that Jin Guangyao has to watch Nie Huaisang’s gesturing hands to figure out where to go, and he follows the wordless instruction to go find them a table while Nie Huaisang buys them a round of drinks. Even if he could speak and be heard he knows his protests would fall on conveniently deaf ears so he just does as instructed, picking his way slowly through shadows and tables and the blurring outlines of the club’s patrons until he finds an empty table near the back. The music is slightly less deafening with a couple of half-walls in the middle of the space to block it, though of course the pounding bass is inescapable. It reverberates through the thick soles of Jin Guangyao’s standard issue boots and around all the hollow spaces in his chest until he feels less like a man and more like a drum for some unseen fists to pound on.

Nie Huaisang finds him surprisingly quickly under the circumstances, and when he slides into his seat with an overdramatic flounce Jin Guangyao ushers the drinks he’d deposited closer to the center of the table to avoid any of them sloshing free of their glasses.

“He’s here,” Nie Huaisang leans in to shout in his ear. “Just have a drink and wait.”

Jin Guangyao nods to show he’s heard and reaches for the less offensive-looking option of the drinks Nie Huaisang has brought. Almost all of them are some shade of sickly sweet artificiality and he suspects the presence of far too much flavored vodka in them, but there’s a dark purple something glittering in the dim lighting that seems safe enough so he takes it, sipping at it carefully in tiny little mouthfuls until he’s sure it won’t make his teeth feel like they’re going to vibrate out of his skull.

He’s made it most of the way through the purple thing – enough of it swirling through his head that he thinks it’s actually pretty good now – and grown numb to the thundering music when a dark shadow seems to oooooze its way out of the press of too many bodies in the cramped spaces between tables to slip into the only unoccupied seat at their table on Nie Huaisang’s other side.

“Hey babes,” Xue Yang greets, too quietly to be heard over the din, but Jin Guangyao can manage to read his lips. The predatory grin stretching across his manically expressive face needs no interpretation to know he’s up to no good, but Jin Guangyao just sips at his drink and watches Nie Huaisang tip his neck enough to let Xue Yang lean in and nibble at him in greeting. (There is a Reason, capital R, that Nie Huaisang comes out to places like this, and once upon a time Xue Yang had been one of his regular hookups until they’d gotten bored of each other’s neuroses and settled into a weirdly combative and flirtatious truce. Jin Guangyao doesn’t like being reminded of that period of their lives too often, since they’d both been completely insufferable throughout it.)

Nie Huaisang allows the necking for roughly half a minute before he catches Jin Guangyao’s raised eyebrow and swats Xue Yang away with his closed fan, eyes a little unfocused from the trio of cocktails he’s already downed with impressive disregard for how they must taste.

“You’ve really done it this time, Xue-xiong,” Nie Huaisang pouts, somehow loud enough that Jin Guangyao can just hear him over the music. “Messing around with Kaiju brains? Naughty naughty.”

Xue Yang throws his head back to cackle, his long, sharp canines teeth glinting strangely in the lamplight. “Finally figured it out?! Took you long enough, I heard you got hold of my notes weeks ago! ~Someone’s out of practice~!” Jin Guangyao grinds his teeth around the urge to smile at Xue Yang’s sing-songy needling, his ability to pick up on and prod at sore spots as unerring as ever. Right on cue, Nie Huaisang pouts and hits him with the fan again, hard enough this time that Jin Guangyao knows it must’ve actually stung at least a little (though naturally pain is not exactly a deterrent for Xue Yang).

“I have better things to do than read through all your batshit ramblings, Xue-xiong! A-Yu is doing it, I’m still mad at you for destroying all my trackers.”

“Shoulda hid one in my ass if you wanted me to keep any of them,” Xue Yang snorts and makes a grab for the last drink on the table, something blood-red and glittering like Jin Guangyao’s had been. “At least then I could’ve had some fun with it before I took it out back and shot it.”

“Perhaps this is a conversation we could continue somewhere that won’t permanently destroy our hearing,” Jin Guangyao offers, grimacing at the sight of Xue Yang licking his cocktail-red lips with an overly theatrical eyebrow waggle, the glass already drained in three massive gulps.

“Sure, Yao-ge, whatever you say! Let me show you to my ~office~.”

Said ‘office’ is a room (to be very very loose with the word) made out of moldering crates in the suspiciously damp back alley behind the bar. Jin Guangyao doesn’t bother resisting the urge to rub at his temples as the fire door swings shut behind them with a loud clang that reverberates off the brick walls tight around them.

“Your existence both terrifies and disgusts me.”

“Aww, I missed you too, Yao-ge.”

Jin Guangyao sighs and crosses his arms over his chest, leveling an unimpressed Look at Xue Yang sprawling out over the staggered stack of the crates like they’re the most comfortable throne in the world. It’s just as dim back here as it had been inside, perhaps moreso, but at least the music is now nothing more than a thumping he can feel only in the soles of his boots, so it’s…debatably an upgrade.

“So – you finally came to find me. Took you long enough! To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“You know you’re supposed to come back to the ‘dome if you’re in Shanghai,” Nie Huaisang pouts as he sits down on Xue Yang’s shins hard enough to make the crates creak ominously and Xue Yang winces around the lollipop stick between his teeth, though whether that’s from the damage to his shins or from the thought of coming back to the shatterdome is unclear.

“No can do, Sangsang. Got too many projects out here, you know how it is.”

“Projects like trying to figure out how to get the Kaijus to work for the worst men imaginable?”

Xue Yang’s creeping grin grows so wide Jin Guangyao personally believes it shouldn’t be allowed to exist on a human face, predatory and sharp at the edges, his lollipop stick trapped in the gap between his abnormally sharp canine and its counterpoint in his lower jaw.

“How’s Daddy Mustache liking that one?” Xue Yang asks him, not even bothering to pretend to deny it. “He figured it out? Pissed? Gonna come after me lecturing me about righteousness and seducing me with threats to chop my head off just like old times?”

“Mingjue has more on his mind than the actions of one unhinged man,” Jin Guangyao says smoothly despite the fact that everyone present knows precisely what he really means. It’s hard to just turn off a lifetime of self-preserving lies, even now, even with the two men – besides his partners – who know him more thoroughly than anyone else.

“So you haven’t told him the full extent yet because it will ruin so many of your elaborate schemes if you tattle on little old me and get me tied up nice and tight again so I can’t work my magic,” Xue Yang translates in that obnoxious way he has of yes, getting to the point, but doing it in such a way that’s so irritating Jin Guangyao’s first instinct is still to double down on his lies. But Nie Huaisang’s gaze is just as sharp on him over the edge of his fan, a silent warning away from old habits that got him in hot water before, so he takes a deep breath and sweetens his smile, unnervingly saccharine and perfect. A counterpoint to Xue Yang’s feral grin.

“Yes. I have a vested interest in making sure you continue to walk free for a little longer, dangerous as that might be for the general populace and every piece of candy within a ten mile radius.”

Xue Yang throws his head back to cackle again and when he sits forward again he slings his arms around Nie Huaisang’s waist to tug him up onto his knees instead of his shins, resting his head on his shoulder to pout up at Jin Guangyao through his eyelashes.

“You got me candy, Yao-gege? Just for me?”

Jin Guangyao raises his eyebrows at the man as Nie Huaisang wards him off with a few more good whacks from his fan, though he still doesn’t stand up from his perch on Xue Yang’s lap. Jin Guangyao already knows better than to so much as think about Nie Huaisang acting like this with Xue Yang while around Jiang Wanyin, who’s apparently taken it upon himself to bully Nie Huaisang into actually taking care of himself and becoming a slightly more functional human being in a slightly aggressive courting ritual that makes sense only to him (and, he supposes, Nie Huaisang). Xue Yang is still – probably more than ever – very much a massive flight risk at every moment, and sitting on him (i.e. giving him the sort of semi-violent affection he sorely needs but can only barely tolerate at the best of times) is pretty much the only surefire way to keep him around long enough to actually talk to him.

“I might have,” Jin Guangyao shrugs. “It’s difficult for me to remember when I’m so busy attempting to clean up one of your extremely dangerous messes. Again.”

Xue Yang huffs at that and slumps back, pouting and crunching on his lollipop a few times loudly before he spits out the bare paper stick and holds his hand out imperiously.

“You’re no fun anymore, Yao-gege, what happened to you?” he asks, his jutting lower lip and upturned brows quickly morphing into another manic grin when Jin Guangyao sighs as if put upon and slaps a fresh lollipop into his waiting palm. The plastic wrapper crinkles too loudly as he rips it off with his teeth and pops the sucker between his lips so fast Jin Guangyao hears the candy clack sharply against his front teeth. “Okay fine, you can spend another day off the list of people I’m gonna kill. But seriously, where’s your edge these days?! I found a way to talk to the giant aliens attacking all the stupid little humans!! No one else is doing that, not even Wei Wuxian! Call me a good boy at least, Yao-gege!”

“It is a lot like the kinds of things you and A-Yu used to get up to before Da-ge caught on and shut it down,” Nie Huaisang says with a shrewd little glint in his eye that Jin Guangyao doesn’t want to admit gets his hackles up, spine tingling with the need to defend himself and his past desperate measures. “Looking to start up the demon squad again, Yaoyao?”

Jin Guangyao pinches at the bridge of his nose again as he begs the unforgiving cosmos for some sort of extra ration of patience. “There was never such a thing as a ‘demon squad’, and if I were to ever start a group dedicated to ethically reprehensible, underground, black market research I would not allow my angsty teenage brother to give it a name at all, but especially not the ‘demon squad’!”

“Don’t even give him credit, Sangsang, I got it all from Wei Wuxian’s notes anyway, not his,” Xue Yang sighs, breezy and carefree. “And don’t help him avoid my question, either! What the fuck’s happening under Daddy Warbucks and the stupid Mustache these days, hm? They beating you up in there? Tying you down? Kink should loosen you up, Yao-gege, not wind you tighter. What are you riding my dick for all the sudden?”

“A-Sang,” Jin Guangyao says pleasantly, refusing to rise to Xue Yang’s clumsy baiting. He’s getting rusty, and Jin Guangyao has at least one solid theory as to why, though he’s not going to debase himself enough to ask. He doesn’t have to. “I’d like to talk to Xue-xiong alone for a moment if you don’t mind.”

“Aiyah,” Nie Huaisang pouts up at him from his perch. “I go to all this work to track him down and bring you out here to see him just like you asked, and now you’re brushing me off?? Rude, Yao-ge!”

Jin Guangyao sighs and withdraws his rarely-used cell phone from his pocket, clicking through a few screens quickly as Xue Yang crunches on his sucker and eyes Nie Huaisang’s exposed jugular like he’d very much like to chew through that instead.

“I just sent you money for drinks, go get whatever ridiculous concoctions you want and I promise I’ll drink one if you wait for me inside.”

“A man who knows the way to my heart! Thanks Yao-ge!!”

“Hey — nothing with tequila!” Jin Guangyao calls after his friend’s rapidly-retreating back, but considering all he gets in return is a maniacal cackle he’s pretty sure he’s in for a bitch of a hangover tomorrow either way, tequila or not. He looks down at Xue Yang again where he’s still lounging as the door slams shut behind Nie Huaisang again. Xue Yang — always better than anyone at scenting blood in the water — immediately grins his wickedly wide smile, all sharpened canines and eyes glittering with the sort of mischief that leads to world-shattering catastrophes…like Kaiju suddenly targeting specific Pilots with personally tailored attacks, because Xue Yang told them to.

“I don’t work for free,” Xue Yang says. “You know how steep my real prices are for the good shit.”

“I know. I’m offering you protection.”

“Mm you’re already doing that for me, gege, don’t try to play coy. You’ve got to up the ante now.”

“Not for you; for your family.”

The grin flickers off Xue Yang’s face quick as a burnt light fizzling out, expression as cold and furious as Jin Guangyao had expected.

“I don’t have a family.”

“Alright.” Jin Guangyao shrugs. “But that’s my offer. Anything you need to keep them safe you’ll have — money, papers, medical care, a house somewhere the Kaiju will never reach. Whatever it takes.”

In the blink of an eye, Xue Yang is no longer lounging on his stack of musty crates, but is instead snarling right in Jin Guangyao’s face, the cold bite of a knife at his throat as his back collides with the slimy bricks on the opposite side of the alley.

“Shut up!! I don’t have a family!” Xue Yang bites out, his breath redolent with sugar; underneath it, the thick tang of blood. Jin Guangyao quietly flicks his own knife out of his sleeve, though he doesn’t threaten Xue Yang with it just yet.

“Fine, so they’re not your family. Sugar daddies, then, though from what I understand they donate as much of their royalties and pensions as they can to orphanages and relief shelters, so I’m not sure if they can really qualify as anything other than your ‘handlers’ at best.”

Xue Yang withdraws as suddenly as he’d pounced, affecting an utterly flawless (and therefore obviously fabricated) aura of cold indifference. “I’m not doing anyone favors, Yao-gege. I don’t work for free, I told you, and I don’t need your fucking protection so just leave me alone.”

“You don’t need it – or they don’t, because they’ve already got such a good guard dog?”

“You have no goddamn idea what you’re talking about!” Xue Yang’s hackles are up again, knife flashing anxiously between his fingers as he spins it too fast to be seen clearly in the dim alley light. “What do they even have to do with anything?! You think you have a right to meddle in their lives just because they decided to walk back into your stupid Shatterdome for a day? They’re my toys to play with, not yours!”

“Mature, xiao-Yang,” Jin Guangyao drawls. “If you’d rather torture them than help them, that’s your business. I don’t want to force you to help me, but I will if I must. This is your mess, and you will help me clean it up, and you underestimate the lengths I’m willing to go to to ensure you get it done. You’re alive because I won’t allow you to die, and you’ll do as I say until I decide you’re no longer useful.”

“Hey!!” Jin Guangyao doesn’t take his eyes off Xue Yang as a young, high voice suddenly shouts above them, punctuated with the clang of something knocking hard against a metal grate. “Get your ass back in here, Yang-ge, the daozhangs are back! Stop playing tough and come eat dinner!!”

“Get back inside the house before I chop your stupid head off!!” Xue Yang shouts up at whoever it is, an ugly snarl on his face that Jin Guangyao can only assume is masking embarrassment more than genuine anger. His knife is still flickering between his fingers, after all, and if he were truly angry it would likely be sailing through the air to lodge itself somewhere in this person’s face by now.

“My offer stands,” Jin Guangyao says in the ringing silence of the window slamming shut again. “You can say you don’t want it, but you can’t hide from me forever, A-Yang. The Immortals aren’t fit to return to active duty, and you’ve doomed yourself to an early grave with your little Drift experiment – if the Kaijus don’t kill us all first, your nerve damage will come for you almost as quick without proper care. Do this last task for me, and I’ll send you so far away everything you’ve seen and done here will be nothing but a fever dream. You’ll never want for anything again, and neither will they.”

Xue Yang is glaring at him again and breathing hard like he’d just run a mile, his teeth bared, hands clenched white-knuckled at his sides. He takes a deep breath in and visibly centers himself before he closes his eyes and forces his grimacing lips into his signature grin.

“Anything to get you to leave me the fuck alone again,” he chirps. “What’s the goal? I’m assuming I can have as much fun with him as I want?”

It’s Jin Guangyao’s turn to take a deep breath in. He’s been wanting this for so long – thinking of it in abstract even when it still made him sick with guilt. Daydreaming of it when it was no longer an ‘if’ but a ‘when’. Making quiet, hidden moves to line things up just right in recent months, just in case.

Just in case.

“Make it hurt,” he tells Xue Yang, even though he knows that’s a given, “and before it’s over, make sure he has no doubts as to who is standing behind you telling you to pull the trigger.”

Xue Yang nods and turns to go without another word, knife still flashing and spinning rapidly between his clever fingers. Jin Guangyao allows himself five deep breaths before he returns to the noisy, black interior of the bar, and when he finds Nie Huaisang back at their table he downs three shots of something in quick succession without so much as a grimace. Nie Huaisang just hands him a pint glass of water before he lines up the next shot with silent, grave understanding.