#Only You chapter 12 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

eleanorfenyxwrites · 9 months ago

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The Waves are Rising and Rising

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Chapter 12

I feel like y'all are either desperately ready for this one or not ready at all, I can't decide which. Chapter 13 will post on Monday!

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It’s a moment of weakness that pushes Jin Guangyao to finally write to his sworn brothers and schedule their next dual cultivation session as he’d promised himself. The Incident (and the emphasis is entirely necessary) involving his almost being allowed to hold little Jin Ling had set quite the precedent around Jinlintai; Now no matter what Jiang Yanli is doing, no matter if Jin Ling is fussing or asleep, no matter if there are nursemaids around or not to help their beloved Jin-shao-furen with her squirming child or relieve her tired arms…no matter how desperately Jin Guangyao yearns to actually get to feel the acceptance that Jiang Yanli had so cautiously offered him that day, he isn’t allowed near enough to the pair to even think of being allowed to try again.

His tentative, wistful hopes of that first month after Jin Ling’s birth had been so thoroughly dashed by Jin-furen and the rest of the court so strident in following her example in the weeks since that now when he happens to catch a glimpse of the swaddling in Jiang Yanli’s arms or hear Jin Ling crying or cooing (one just as likely as the other) somewhere nearby, he forces himself to turn away and find something to keep him busy elsewhere until the danger of another emotional lapse like the first (and, so far, only) has passed.

There isn’t much he can reasonably do about the rare occasions he’s called to attend a family meal in which all important parties are present, however, and it’s after one such evening in which he serves his father rather than being allowed to sit and eat like the rest of the inner family that he slips into his rooms earlier than usual in order to write his letters, one bound for Gusu and the other for Qinghe.

All he wants is to be treated as an equal; not a servant, not a bastard child of a whore, not a stain on his family’s gilded reputation. He still believes that he can find that someday in Jinlintai, one day his hard work will be recognized and rewarded, and when that day comes he’ll take his rightful place as a recognized son of Jin Guangshan with all the privilege and lack of worldly cares that Jin Zixuan currently enjoys. But at precisely this moment that isn’t so, no matter what he might wish, and so he takes deep breaths in to steady his hands and loosen the knot of emotion choking him in order to ask his sworn brothers to please inform him of the earliest day they can meet in Bujing Shi.

Please.

He arrives in Qinghe two days after he receives their replies, and the moment he steps off Hensheng he shoves his father’s reminders of his purpose in Nie Mingjue’s life to the back of his mind in favor of hurrying as politely as possible to his rooms to divest himself of his weapons and other traveling necessities.

He’s just finished putting himself to rights for friendly company when there’s a knock at his door and his heart leaps at the possibility that the light tapping on the wood might be Lan Xichen, arrived before him and as anxious to see him as Jin Guangyao is the reverse.

He opens the door to find a servant waiting, ducked into an appropriately low bow.

“Chifeng-zun has requested Lianfang-zun’s presence in his quarters for the evening meal,” the servant informs him and Jin Guangyao’s excitement doesn’t necessarily dim so much as it twists in a new direction. He thanks the servant and decides it’s not that he’s excited to see Nie Mingjue, it’s that he’s excited to be invited to a meal in which he knows he’ll be expected to sit down and actually eat, and no one will glare daggers at him for daring to glance at the infant Jin heir in Jiang Yanli’s arms. That’s all.

He makes his way quickly through Bujing Shi and gives Nie Mingjue’s door no more than the most perfunctory of raps with his knuckles before he slides it aside and steps into Nie Mingjue’s quarters. Lan Xichen isn’t here yet either, Nie Mingjue hasn’t even sat down at the table where a tea service sits steaming gently, but Jin Guangyao still can’t help but feel something in him relax anyway. Nie Mingjue turns to look at him over his shoulder through the gap where his arm is bent up for him to unpin his guan, and he’d swear he sees the corner of his eye crinkle, like he’s smiling where Jin Guangyao can’t quite see.

“Hey,” Nie Mingjue greets, casual, and returns to his task with the rustling of his heavy silk outer-robe as he readjusts his hands to better reach the pins buried in his pile of braids. “Xichen just arrived, someone at the gates will tell him to come here when he can.”

Jin Guangyao hums his acknowledgement and tamps down the strangest, most unacceptable urge to go over and bury his face in Nie Mingjue’s back. He can almost feel it, soft warm pressure against the entire front of his body and darkness behind his eyelids, almost like lying facedown in bed but with the bonus of getting to wrap his arms around someone solid and warm as he gets some rest—

He’s far too tired. That’s the only explanation for the strange lapse in good judgment. Rather than snuggling up against Nie Mingjue now shaking his coils of braids down to hang loose around his shoulders, he sits down at the table in his usual spot stacked with an extra cushion and, after a moment, he allows himself to be so sloppy as to forgo kneeling to instead sit in a more Nie style, legs crossed loosely on the floor in front of him in the way that takes most of the pressure off his hips and knees.

Nie Mingjue finishes taking the round floral ornaments out of his hair in silence and shrugs out of his outermost robe next, Jin Guangyao blinking up at him in surprise as he hangs it properly over a rack rather than just dropping it on the floor like he usually does. For one wild moment he wonders if they’re just going to… start their session and let Lan Xichen join in whenever he gets here. He immediately banishes such an absurd thought, but he isn’t fast enough to stop his cheeks from growing a little warm as he very determinedly does not picture what that might look like (and how much Lan Xichen would probably enjoy it).

Nie Mingjue spares him and settles in at the table then, thankfully still mostly dressed, though he squints at him for a long moment in an assessing way that Jin Guangyao can’t say he particularly cares for.

“Can this one help you with something, da-ge?” he asks, a little too dry to come across as obsequious as he would usually aim for.

“You look like shit. Why aren’t you sleeping?”

Alright, rude. Jin Guangyao blinks slowly at him and watches the silent admonishment land a moment later in the way Nie Mingjue jerks his chin up a little, haughty, but won’t quite meet his eyes for a moment.

“Well you’re not,” he mutters sullenly, though without any true anger behind it like there would be if his temper were in danger of flaring.

“I am sleeping perfectly fine, da-ge.” It’s not even a lie; he sleeps like the dead for the hour or two of rest that he’s allowed after he finishes his work with Xue Yang. Alright fine; it isn’t strictly a lie, but it also isn’t the truth as Nie Mingjue would like to hear it and he’s always so good at knowing that, so his eyes flash with irritation anyway as he huffs a sharp sigh.

“Fine, don’t tell me then. But if you don’t sleep tonight I’ll knock you unconscious to make sure you get some sort of rest.”

“There are less violent ways to ensure I’m worn out enough to sleep, da-ge.”

The innuendo doesn’t land until Jin Guangyao very pointedly smirks and glances down the length of Nie Mingjue’s body and then at the bed, feeling bold. Nie Mingjue looks so shocked by the implication despite the fact that that’s what they’re here for that Jin Guangyao is equally startled into laughing behind his wide sleeve.

For the briefest moment he wonders which incident Nie Mingjue is remembering — Jin Guangyao’s last disastrous effort to dual cultivate with him in which he’d passed out, or the fact that Nie Mingjue had enjoyed himself so thoroughly when they fucked him in the bath that he hadn’t even been awake long enough to dress afterwards. Judging by the flush quickly spreading through Nie Mingjue’s cheeks (and for the sake of his own pride), he’s going to assume the latter.

Nie Mingjue grumbles something under his breath that Jin Guangyao doesn’t try too hard to catch as he pours tea for both of them. When Nie Mingjue hands him his cup Jin Guangyao doesn’t even tease him for being too flustered to remember they’re waiting for Lan Xichen, he just takes his cup and sips at it, letting the gesture more than the beverage warm him from the inside out.

It’s his favorite again. Jin Guangyao sips and delights in finding all the layers in it, bright and fruity at the start and deepening into something almost bitter on the finish, though not unpleasantly so. It’s a light tea so unlike what’s usually had in Qinghe, delicate and requiring care to brew properly.

Nie Mingjue always makes it just right. For him.

The silence suddenly feels deafening as Jin Guangyao’s eyes sting and his heart gives a too-hard thump in his chest.

“...A-Yao-” Nie Mingjue somehow gives the impression of desperately wanting to clap his hand over his mouth without even moving a muscle to do so when Jin Guangyao focuses on him quicker than his too-fast heartbeat, vindictive elation already clawing its way out of his chest. That soft, half-remembered ‘A-Yao’ from so long ago wasn’t some exhaustion-induced hallucination! He was right, and now that he’s not half-dead on a horse halfway to Lanling he can make Nie Mingjue own up to this weakness—

“You did, you called me A-Yao that time when—!”

Nie Mingjue raises his hands in clear surrender, looking as panicked as it’s possible for him to (which isn’t much, granted, but he does still look vaguely like a caged animal caught in a trap of his own making so Jin Guangyao approves), but his victory is cut off at the knees by a polite tapping on the door. This time it actually is Lan Xichen, and when he enters Jin Guangyao and Nie Mingjue both freeze except to turn their heads to look at him, which means that Jin Guangyao has a surprisingly enjoyable moment watching Lan Xichen stop in his tracks and look very affably confused, with a tentative smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“Are you two… alright?” he asks with a pointed glance at Jin Guangyao’s extended hand still jabbing an admonishing finger towards Nie Mingjue’s chest and Nie Mingjue’s hands raised in surrender.

“Fine,” Nie Mingjue answers for both of them. Jin Guangyao looks at him again with his eyes narrowed, assessing just as Nie Mingjue had done to him mere minutes ago. Nie Mingjue’s long-suffering look very clearly communicates how desperately he doesn’t want this conversation to continue at all, but especially not with their current audience. Considering Jin Guangyao knows precisely how much Lan Xichen would likely read into this (admittedly strange) development, and how earnestly he would ask if this means they’ve magically sorted out all their issues and are therefore willing to be close again as they once were, he can (reluctantly, slightly guiltily) understand the desire for discretion.

Of course Jin Guangyao would very much like to ask very similar questions himself, but at least he would do so with the knowledge that it’s impossible Nie Mingjue has actually forgiven him for the things that caused their miserable separation in the first place, and for his part Jin Guangyao is as unlikely to apologize for them as he ever has been. He did what needed to be done, Nie Mingjue has staunchly refused to accept that into his worldview. Thanks to such luxury, he has instead decided to make every action that doesn’t align with his own personal moral code — to which he alone so strictly adheres — Jin Guangyao’s malicious fault and absolutely no one else’s, and will hear no opinions that say otherwise.

That sort of cavernous rift is not something that can be crossed easily, not when both parties are unwilling to bend for the sake of the other’s comfort, so in the end nothing’s really changed at all. Saying as much would only hurt and disappoint Lan Xichen, which will forever remain a line Jin Guangyao will do his utmost not to cross.

The fact that the reminder sits like a rock in the pit of his stomach is one that he will not be addressing for at least the next two to three days, if ever.

“We’re fine, er-ge, come sit down,” Jin Guangyao says and returns to his demure sipping, consoling himself for the lost chance at making Nie Mingjue uncomfortable with admiring Lan Xichen as he sinks down gracefully to kneel across from him in a flutter of silk, his eyes and smiling lips full of a secret mischief only they share. It soothes his loss immensely to be so coyly reminded of what he and Lan Xichen did together the last time they were in Qinghe, to know that Lan Xichen still thinks of it too whenever they see each other, and he has to hide a smug smirk behind the next sip of his tea.

“Oh good, you’re even worse here,” Nie Mingjue mutters, his frown hard enough to make his face look like it was carved from stone as he pours tea for Lan Xichen and passes the little cup to him almost rudely, an inelegant bump of their fingers rather than a careful transfer.

Lan Xichen has the good grace to look confused, but Jin Guangyao already knows he, at least, is going to refuse to apologize even if Lan Xichen will be moved to. The guilt he’d been afraid would surface once the afterglow of their… mutual success wore off hasn’t reared its head yet, so as far as he’s concerned there’s nothing to apologize for.

“Pardon?”

“Don’t.”

Jin Guangyao goes still as all hints of playfulness abruptly dissipate in the wake of Nie Mingjue’s glare, the hard cut of his command. Jin Guangyao glances at Lan Xichen again but this time there’s nothing sly in either of their eyes, simple caution and, in Lan Xichen’s case, perfectly innocent confusion.

And it is innocent confusion. Jin Guangyao realizes in a sudden burst of clarity that Lan Xichen hadn’t even realized what he was doing — what they were doing. He does feel guilty then, just a little, for accidentally dragging Lan Xichen with him, unknowingly, into the path of Nie Mingjue’s irritation.

“You’ve done something,” Nie Mingjue tells them, still glaring between them for a moment before he settles on just glaring at Jin Guangyao (what else is new, he thinks, suddenly tired). “I didn’t say anything in Lanling because it’s clear you didn’t want to talk about it, but we’re not in Lanling anymore so just say it. What are you hiding from me?”

Jin Guangyao entertains the idea for the briefest of moments — barely a conscious thought before he recoils from it — of undermining Nie Mingjue’s suspicions. It would be so easy to do, a disparaging comment about how the final decline, nudged along by the vicious saber spirits, always starts with paranoia, and is he really sure they’re hiding something from him? Why would they have anything to hide from him, as his sworn brothers? Doesn’t he trust them, or at least Lan Xichen? The fact that they are wouldn’t matter; he could plant that seed of doubt, he could make it harder for Nie Mingjue to trust the evidence of his own senses to guide him properly.

He could report the beginnings of his success to Jin Guangshan and perhaps in doing so earn a reprieve from the miseries of Jinlintai, the degree of relief directly proportional to his father’s rising or falling opinion of him.

Jin Guangyao clutches his teacup so hard his fingers ache and says nothing.

“It’s nothing serious, da-ge,” Lan Xichen soothes in his place, reaching across the table to place a gentle hand over Nie Mingjue’s. “A-Yao-” Jin Guangyao and Nie Mingjue both twitch, though neither acknowledge it “-and I simply conducted some… experiments, but we haven’t had adequate privacy in which to tell you the results of them yet. It’s nothing we wanted to keep from you indefinitely.”

Is that so? Jin Guangyao raises an eyebrow and sips at his tea to avoid looking at Lan Xichen; they hadn’t outright discussed the issue of telling Nie Mingjue about their extracurricular activities, and privately he’d sort of thought it could be just for them, something special they shared, considering it was nothing at all like their ‘experiments’ to date in which Nie Mingjue has been involved. Still, he supposes that since the excuse to be intimate together was to improve his ability to dual cultivate, it’s understandable that Lan Xichen would want to share their success with the one of the three of them for whom proper dual cultivation is truly a matter of life and death.

It stands to reason that Lan Xichen had always intended to tell Nie Mingjue of their night together without him, and Jin Guangyao couldn’t possibly ask him not to do so without also addressing the weight of what they’d deliberately left unspoken between them that night, so. There it is. The secret had been nice while it lasted.

Nie Mingjue looks back and forth between them again for a long moment before he sighs and scrubs at his eyes with one broad hand, muttering behind it, “Fine. Just tell me now, then, so you can stop looking at each other like that. I had enough of it in Lanling.”

Jin Guangyao can see it in the delicate moue of Lan Xichen’s mouth, in the way his gaze turns coy again, that he’s going to dance around saying it in a way that Nie Mingjue, already frustrated by months of not knowing what they’re hiding from him but knowing that they’re hiding something, will certainly not appreciate.

“Er-ge and I had sex,” Jin Guangyao says instead, brisk and businesslike. And then, because he still feels like the cat that ate the canary about it all, he adds, “Quite good sex, too, actually.”

It at least knocks the wind out of Nie Mingjue’s sails, his irritation fading as he looks between them yet again, no longer glaring but… hurt? That can’t be right.

“You did what?”

No, he’s definitely upset, and it’s not anger. The guilt that Jin Guangyao has successfully avoided for months suddenly curdles in his belly without warning, urging him to make his excuses to escape the weight of Nie Mingjue’s unexpectedly plaintive gaze.

“I thought it might help our situation if A-Yao got a chance to practice sharing his qi without any… pressure to do it well.”

“So you needed to have sex with him?”

The implication — that sex hardly needs to be had for basic qi sharing (‘taught to children,’ his mind still sneers in Nie Mingjue’s voice whenever he thinks of the much more basic form of the practice) — is painfully clear in the sarcastic drawl of his question, and it at least seems to make Lan Xichen realize that Nie Mingjue is truly upset. If Jin Guangyao were inclined to specify, he’d dare to say that Nie Mingjue is jealous, but of course that’s ridiculous. What in the world does he have to be jealous of? He certainly can’t be jealous of Lan Xichen, considering he’d likely rather sit through at least three of Sect Leader Yao’s sanctimonious tirades one right after the other than have unnecessary sex of any kind with Jin Guangyao. But to be jealous, then, of Jin Guangyao for getting to have Lan Xichen to himself for a single night? Ridiculous.

It’s clear — it has always been clear — how much Lan Xichen loves Nie Mingjue; that he would move heaven and earth to do everything he can for his childhood friend. Lan Xichen is the one holding this entire operation together with little more than his ironclad belief that this is something they can accomplish and his desire to see any amount of softening between Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangyao, no matter how slight. Is it not abundantly clear how much Jin Guangyao is simply a minor addition to the lifelong devotion Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen had already been looking for any excuse to legitimize for years, at least to the extent any leaders of two Great Sects can do?

So no, jealousy can’t be right, but he supposes the true label hardly matters. Whatever flavor of emotion it is, Nie Mingjue is upset, and it’s something that they need to fix if Jin Guangyao is going to leave here having gotten what he wants out of this encounter.

Lan Xichen sits up a little straighter and meets Nie Mingjue’s skeptical gaze with a cool confidence that’s unfairly attractive, especially considering what it is he’s defending so readily.

“Yes, I did. I wanted to have sex with A-Yao, and he agreed that it was a good idea to try. I’m glad that we did, as well, because that night he and I figured out how to truly dual cultivate.”

Mmmm the smugness is back, barely tainted by the slowly-receding guilt still churning in his belly. He did that, he put that easy confidence in the set of Lan Xichen’s shoulders, the relaxation around the corners of his eyes. Jin Guangyao, not Nie Mingjue, finally figured out how to align himself so utterly with Lan Xichen, down to their very cores (literally), that for a few blissful moments every single aspect of them — body, mind, and soul — had been entirely in harmony. No matter how devoted Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen are to each other, it was Jin Guangyao who finally helped Lan Xichen crack the mystery of the thing that will hopefully save Nie Mingjue’s life.

Nie Mingjue is going to owe him a lifetime of favors in exchange for his incredible and supremely selfish night with Lan Xichen — that they’d had under Nie Mingjue’s own roof!

Delicious.

“Don’t gloat,” Nie Mingjue snaps at him and Jin Guangyao blinks, surprised to have been caught out because yes Nie Mingjue is definitely looking straight at him, not admonishing Lan Xichen for the easy authority in his defense of their night together.

“I wouldn’t dream of it, da-ge,” Jin Guangyao lies so baldly that even Lan Xichen shoots him a little disapproving look, though it isn’t enough to make him take it back. Why should he? In the grand scheme of a lifetime of being kicked around and passed over, why shouldn’t he be proud of what he was able to accomplish with nothing more than patched-together cultivation training and a desperate desire to not disappoint Lan Xichen? Nie Mingjue has a lifetime of achievements both hard-won and gifted to him through privilege, what difference should it make to him?

Nie Mingjue glares at him for a moment more before he seems to give up, shoulders slumping ever so slightly and his hand dropping to pick up his abandoned teacup again with an air of defeat.

“Alright, fine. So you slept together and figured out dual cultivation; guess that’ll make things easier from now on.”

Jin Guangyao once again meets Lan Xichen’s eyes across the table and finds the little smile the man gives him more reassuring than he would’ve expected. Perhaps it has something to do with the way Lan Xichen had just defended his own actions in a way that made it clear, in no uncertain terms, why he’d decided to do what he had. He hadn’t even given their excuse the second time.

I wanted to have sex with A-Yao.

Lan Xichen wanted him, and in his eyes that was enough to justify accidentally upsetting Nie Mingjue. He hadn’t backed down at all, but had rather claimed full, intentional responsibility for having both suggested the plan and followed through with it.

Jin Guangyao is glad that he’s already sitting down as the rush of it is heady enough to make the room wobble a bit.

Although on second thought the little dizzy spell might also have something to do with the way his empty stomach growls immediately upon registering the smell of food in the moment before a servant interrupts them with a knock.

“I’ll get it,” Lan Xichen hurries to reassure and gets smoothly to his feet. The silence is only slightly awkward as the pair of serving girls bring in rice and a few platters to array in the center of the table — mostly meat, as is customary here, save for a few vegetarian dishes in deference to Lan Xichen’s typical diet. They leave behind a fresh pot of tea, the strong, dark stuff usually served at meals in Qinghe, and leave again without another word. Nie Mingjue casts the usual privacy wards over the room the moment they’re gone and somehow it takes some of the edge off immediately.

“How is the baby, A-Yao?” Lan Xichen asks when they’ve all settled again to begin serving themselves and each other from the communal plates. Jin Guangyao pauses for the briefest of moments, a particularly well-seasoned piece of wild mushroom pinched between the tips of his chopsticks just over Lan Xichen’s bowl.

“Jin Ling is doing very well,” he says as neutrally as he can, frantically cramming the emotional turmoil of the last month and a half or so as far down as he can get it. His sworn brothers haven’t been to Jinlintai since Jin Ling was born. Their last visit for Nie Mingjue to sit through a good few rounds of the Song of Cleansing had been near the middle of Jiang Yanli’s second trimester, before things around Jinlintai grew so tense and hectic that Jin Guangyao couldn’t dream of playing host to two Great Sect leaders, even if they were his own sworn brothers. They will, of course, be invited to the hundred-day celebration and he’s very much looking forward to that even now as he sits here with them, but that’s some time away yet, and it will be their first sight of the youngest Jin Heir.

It’s natural that they’re curious as to how he’s doing. It’s perfectly normal to ask him about his neph- about the latest addition to the Jin household. It’s not his er-ge’s fault that it brings the perpetual lump in his throat right back from where he’d swallowed it down and makes his eyes burn with the humiliation of what the boy’s birth has meant for him, personally.

It hurts, like lancing a wound that just won’t heal, but Jin Guangyao forces himself to finish the gesture, to serve Lan Xichen the roasted vegetables he’ll like best, to do the same for Nie Mingjue, giving him the crispiest, fattiest pieces from the platter of roast boar, and keep talking like he actually gets to be an active part of the boy’s life rather than hear about his progress through eavesdropping on servants’ gossip whenever he can.

He continues, “Xiao-gongzi is healthy and vigorous. Jin-shao-furen already has a small army of nursemaids to assist her in his care and may require more once he begins walking, depending on his curiosity.”

“A-Sang was like that as a baby,” Nie Mingjue snorts inelegantly around a bite of pork. “Er-ma was exhausted, I swear half of Bujing Shi had to try to help her corral him into safe areas and get him to go to sleep every night, including most of the disciples.”

Jin Guangyao smiles around the way that digs in under his ribs; not only the idea of mere disciples being allowed to tend to their beloved second young master, but the idea of an entire Sect — essentially an entire village — of people making the care of one child a primary concern. He thinks of Meng Shi, exhausted and working herself to death just to take care of him all on her own while others in her life actively attempted to make it all so much harder for her, and he swallows down a bite of greens with more bitterness than can be blamed on the cooking.

“Mm. Jin Ling is similarly doted on by his nursemaids and family.” And Jin Guangyao can’t even begrudge the boy all the people who want to spend so much of their time holding him, bouncing him gently in their arms, offering up toys for him to choose and shout his delight or derision for — he longs to be one of them, after all.

“Does he recognize you yet?”

Jin Guangyao would very much like it if Lan Xichen were even slightly less invested in his life, he thinks. He aims his gaze somewhere around the middle of the table and finds he can’t offer his sworn brother anything better than his tightest smile as he picks up another delicately roasted mushroom and places it with some finality on top of the rest of the serving in Lan Xichen’s bowl.

“I believe it’s still too early for the little master to be able to distinguish anyone, save his parents.”

“Perhaps,” Xichen allows with warmth in his voice, in his smile. “But he must still recognize being held by his shu-ow!”

Lan Xichen cuts off abruptly and Jin Guangyao looks up from his dedicated study of the table through the watery wobbling in his vision to find Lan Xichen darting a confused look at Nie Mingjue sitting perfectly still and innocent like he didn’t just kick their sworn brother under the table.

“Enough. How are things going in Gusu?” Nie Mingjue asks a little too stiffly for it to feel entirely natural.

Lan Xichen still looks confused as he replies, “Fine?” like he isn’t sure if he’s meant to actually change the topic or not. He must truly be tired if he’s so sloppy that Nie Mingjue can see the emotion on his face. Jin Guangyao fights to get his expression back under control as Lan Xichen darts a glance at him out of the corner of his eye, but he must see something similarly incriminating because he suddenly settles into the entirely new topic with ease and perhaps a little too much enthusiasm. After all, there’s only so much excitement one can find in the logistics of housing, clothing, and feeding a small tribe of displaced refugees-turned-war-prisoners-turned-refugees-again, but Lan Xichen talks of the previously abandoned village the Wen remnants have settled in for long enough that Jin Guangyao doesn’t feel like he’s in danger of bursting into tears anymore, not even when Nie Mingjue casually places choice little morsels in Jin Guangyao’s bowl without seeming to think about it as they listen.

Lan Xichen tells them of how helpful it’s been to have so many extra hands to contribute to the rebuilding efforts where possible, and of Wen Qing’s arrival and her tireless work with Wei Wuxian in their attempts to treat the near-fatal wounds Wen Ning had sustained in the work camp at Qiongqi Pass — to the point where the Lan doctors have practically begged to be allowed to practice alongside them in order to learn new methods to treat their own people, which is apparently going just as well as (nearly) everything else with help from Lan Wangji to smooth their way amongst the clan elders and the Sect as a whole.

By the time they’re finished eating and stacking the empty dishes neatly away to be returned to the kitchens in the morning, Lan Xichen is sighing morosely over the one sour note in his hopeful narrative; namely, the fact that somehow Wei Wuxian remains oblivious to the fact that Lan Wangji isn’t doing all of his aggressive helping purely out of the goodness of his heart (though there is also his well-known desire to see injustices rectified to use as an excuse to anyone in the Sect who dares to get overly nosy about his motives).

“I just don’t understand how Wei-gongzi can be so determined not to see what’s in front of him,” Lan Xichen sighs over a final cup of dark tea. “I can’t imagine what more Wangji could do to make his intentions clear except… perhaps…”

Nie Mingjue snorts and gets to his feet to start tugging down the covers on the bed. “Let me guess — he hasn’t actually told him, with words, what it is he wants?”

“Well… he worries for Wei-gongzi’s precarious position! The last thing he would want is to put pressure on him when Wei-gongzi has aligned himself with the Wen, who still rely on us almost entirely for supplies and protection,” Lan Xichen hedges, ever the loyal older brother. Jin Guangyao finds it admirable that he wants to defend his brother and also wildly ironic that they’re having this conversation about those two rather than…

No, actually, on second thought he does not want to consider how much of that whole… situation could apply just as easily to them if they were in a position to talk about it together. He does not think about himself and Lan Xichen lying in bed together, tangled up and still sweaty from the incredible sex they’d just had, unable and unwilling to actually say that they’re in love but meaning it with their entire hearts all the same.

“Perhaps Wei-gongzi really is just that blind,” Jin Guangyao sniffs. Because while yes, he and Lan Xichen haven’t said what they feel, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know. Wei Wuxian is simply stupid, that much is clear no matter how brilliant (and, as Xue Yang is unfortunately proving, one-of-a-kind) his work in demonic cultivation is. “Lan-er-gongzi’s feelings are perfectly clear, it’s hardly his fault he fell in love with an idiot.”

“A-Yao,” Lan Xichen chides, but he does it with that familiar, mischievous twinkle in his eye and the smallest of smiles tucked in the corner of his mouth, so he must agree with him on at least some level and he’s simply too diplomatic to say so. Jin Guangyao will still count it as a win.

Nie Mingjue sighs as he dumps the extraneous bedding unceremoniously on the floor and then begins untying his outermost robe, a little more slowly than usual, almost lazily. “Do we really have to talk about them right this minute?”

Lan Xichen smiles and shakes his head, looking almost unbearably fond. “Of course not, da-ge. I actually have a proposition I’d like to make though, before we begin.”

Nie Mingjue raises an eyebrow at him but doesn’t pause in his lazy stripping that Jin Guangyao is not watching with any discernible degree of craving. It’s perfectly natural, after discovering one is touch-starved whilst in a position to do little to nothing about it, to be drawn to the first hint of warm, bare skin that could conceivably be his for touching; the fact that it’s Nie Mingjue baring himself (and in such a teasing way without even seeming to intend to be a tease) has nothing to do with any of it.

“Oh?”

“Mm. I thought perhaps A-Yao could go first this time.”

What?

Jin Guangyao blinks, lets that register, and turns his startled gaze on Lan Xichen still sitting at the table looking perfectly serene.

What?

“Er-ge?” Jin Guangyao asks, bewildered. They definitely didn’t talk about this, and what’s the point of breaking the pattern now?

Almost as if he can read his thoughts, Lan Xichen smiles up at him and replies, “I believe we may have become too stuck in our ways. A-Yao and I tried something new and found our way to true dual cultivation; perhaps all that’s needed here are a few simple changes as well.”

“Alright, that’s it — just what the hell did you two do?” Nie Mingjue huffs like he’s been dying to ask it all evening. He shrugs out of his final top layer a little too aggressively and drops it to the floor to put his hands on his hips over his trousers riding a little lower than usual. (Has that trail of dark hair beneath his navel always been there? Does it have any right to be so tempting??)

“I feel like simply talking about it wouldn’t be all that helpful. Would you like one of us to show you?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake Xichen, come on, just spit it out, you’re being ridiculous-”

“I’ll show you.”

As has happened before, Jin Guangyao wonders very briefly who said that only to realize it was… him. Offering to have sex with Nie Mingjue. For fun.

Because that’s what he and Lan Xichen did differently together, wasn’t it? Lan Xichen had fucked him in the same pattern — the same rhythm, even — that he always uses with Nie Mingjue; he’d gone slowly enough at first to teach him how to circulate his qi while they were together, yes, but that’s not a lesson Nie Mingjue needs, it’s presumably something they’ve already been doing, so that wasn’t actually any different either; the only thing he can think of that was truly new was that they were already attuned to each other so much even before there was any penetration at all because Lan Xichen had kissed him, touched him, taken him into his mouth and made him feel incredible and loose and eager to accept anything and everything that was given to him.

He doesn’t know if he can even do that with Nie Mingjue; it’s possible that the rift between them really is too deep and wide to cross, even to do something that requires no emotional attachment (he’s going to ignore that there were definitely emotions with Lan Xichen during everything, he’ll somehow convince himself that’s not the important part). But Meng Shi didn’t raise a quitter, and he had done it with Lan Xichen, the dual cultivation bit. He’s bound and determined to prove to Nie Mingjue that they can do it together as well, that this is viable no matter what the other man has thought in the past about Jin Guangyao’s motives or abilities.

Jin Guangyao meets Nie Mingjue’s challenging gaze with one of his own and doesn’t take his eyes off him as he starts to undress as meticulously as ever, a challenge in every flick of his fingers and the curious tilt of his head when Nie Mingjue’s glare flickers down the length of his body, just once, when he slips off his embroidered outer robe.

“Alright, fine. You can show me,” Nie Mingjue allows. Gracious of him.

Jin Guangyao shrugs, easily pretending like it doesn’t matter to him one way or the other, and crosses the room as he continues to unpick the knots of the closures on his robes, his shirt, and slides each one off to fold over the decorative screen under the window. When he turns back to the room at large it’s to find Nie Mingjue already naked sitting on the edge of the bed facing away from him — and Lan Xichen staring at them both with wide eyes and his mouth hanging open ever so slightly, his ears flushed bright red.

“Xichen, you alright?” Nie Mingjue asks as Jin Guangyao climbs onto the bed behind him to kneel at his side, his forearm propped up on Nie Mingjue’s broad shoulder to lean against him ever so slightly as his knees twinge.

“I’m great,” Lan Xichen says with a little too much breathless enthusiasm. Jin Guangyao raises an eyebrow and turns his head enough to glance at Nie Mingjue to find a similarly skeptical (and amused) expression on his face. Actually he’s downright smirking across the room at Lan Xichen, which is so unfairly attractive Jin Guangyao would very much like to bite him about it.

“Yeah I’ll bet you are. What next, Guangyao?”

Jin Guangyao barely resists the urge to snort and decides he’s not done attempting to knock Nie Mingjue off-balance (off his damn high horse, more like). Rather than answering him at first, he adjusts to kneel behind him and slide both arms straight out over Nie Mingjue’s broad shoulders, leaning his chest against his back and ignoring the way it makes Nie Mingjue tense up in favor of pressing his mouth against the hot shell of his ear.

“‘Guangyao’,” he muses, too low for Lan Xichen to hear, hardly louder than an exhale, “is not what you called me an hour ago.”

“Watch it,” Nie Mingjue warns him, but he tilts his head to the side anyway so Jin Guangyao takes a chance on accepting the invitation, brushing his parted lips down behind his ear and along the line of his neck to kiss the juncture where his neck meets his shoulder.

As Jin Guangyao had half-feared, now that he’s got the skin-to-skin contact his entire being has been aching to get for months, he finds himself feeling unacceptably greedy for more. He tucks himself closer to Nie Mingjue’s back and pets idle fingertips up and down the contours of his well-muscled (and well-cushioned) chest with the faint rasp of coarse hair against his skin. He shivers when Nie Mingjue does and presses another open-mouthed, damp kiss to a single random spot amongst the miles of warm, bare skin on display.

He trails a few more kisses idly out to the curve of Nie Mingjue’s shoulder, over the slight pucker of a silvery star-shaped scar without pausing, and then trails inwards again until Nie Mingjue exhales slowly, carefully controlled, and tilts his head forward to bare the nape of his neck. Jin Guangyao sacrifices the pleasure of stroking his chest to bury one hand in his thick, unbound hair instead and push it out of his way so he can scrape his teeth lightly against the top of Nie Mingjue’s spine; he’s promptly rewarded with another full-body shiver.

Nie Mingjue curls over a little further, elbows braced on his knees, so Jin Guangyao lays himself against his back fully to nip at his as-of-yet untouched ear on the other side, and Nie Mingjue tilts his head the other way to allow it so quickly he nearly clips the tip of Jin Guangyao’s nose.

Jin Guangyao makes the mistake then of flicking a glance up through his lashes to gauge Lan Xichen’s state across the room, wary of him getting jealous even though this had been his idea. That single glance at least proves that he isn’t jealous, though Jin Guangyao does worry for the safety of the table that he’s clutching the edge of so hard his knuckles are white. There are probably divots in the shape of his nails bitten into the lacquer. It’s probably a miracle that the wood hasn’t splintered under the force of his grip.

“Sit up straight,” Jin Guangyao kisses into the spot just below Nie Mingjue’s ear and he has to scramble to keep his arms locked around Nie Mingjue’s broad chest to avoid being flopped back onto the bed when he jerks upright again with a little half-gasp. Rather than making some quip about how quick Nie Mingjue is to obey the slightest touch of a firm hand, he nibbles on the crook of his neck and tugs a little around Nie Mingjue’s chest until he gets the message to slide further back onto the bed, just far enough for Jin Guangyao to swing around and plant himself firmly in Nie Mingjue’s lap without fear of falling off the edge of the wooden frame beneath them.

He sits down on the tops of Nie Mingjue’s thighs to give his knees a bit of a break, and even though it puts him beneath Nie Mingjue’s eye-level he realizes with a heady little jolt that he still feels very… in control. He swallows heavily, checking Nie Mingjue’s face for any possibility of a negative reaction, for any indication that he has gone too far and is about to be cast away — but Nie Mingjue is watching him intently, his eyes heavy-lidded and gaze fixed on his mouth even as his hands curl tightly around Jin Guangyao’s hips. Jin Guangyao ghosts the tip of his index finger up the shallow valley of Nie Mingjue’s sternum, circles it a few times in the hollow of his throat, and then trails it slowly up further over the knot of his throat until he can carefully hold his chin delicately between thumb and forefinger.

Nie Mingjue leans in with just the mere suggestion of guiding pressure, aiming unerringly for a deep kiss that feels, if anything, like a simple continuation from the last time they’d kissed despite the months that have passed since then. Nie Mingjue’s mouth is familiar and delightful, firm, confident movements of his lips and sweeps of his tongue that Jin Guangyao meets with equal confidence, giving no ground but taking none either.

From a purely technical perspective, kissing Nie Mingjue is so incredibly different from kissing Lan Xichen. They both make his stomach swoop and his heart race, but there almost all the similarities end. Nie Mingjue kisses like he does everything else — with an unshakeable air of authority. His delusions of authority in this particular situation can’t quite hide the desperation that lurks a little deeper, though, and that’s what Jin Guangyao chases more of with more eagerness than he would ever claim outright.

He nips at Nie Mingjue’s bottom lip, gently at first and then a little harder when he feels the man’s grip on his hips tighten, his entire body tense with anticipation. Jin Guangyao breezes right past any thought Nie Mingjue might have of taking control of the situation and forces the man to adjust to him and what he wants, changing up the depth or the rhythm of their kisses as he sees fit until Nie Mingjue finally gets that he won’t be allowed to direct him and settles down. Jin Guangyao rewards him with a tug on his hair that tilts his head back far enough for Jin Guangyao to duck down to bite the spot below his ear that made him shiver before; this time it makes Nie Mingjue groan, hastily muffled but still perfectly audible from this close, and Jin Guangyao can’t help but preen just a bit.

It feels… good. Pleasing Nie Mingjue feels good in a way that being what Lan Xichen wants doesn’t; it’s not better than being with Lan Xichen, it’s just different in some way he doesn’t have any interest in attempting to define at this point in time. He has more important things to worry about, like continuing to do the things that are turning Nie Mingjue soft and pliant.

Well. Not all of him is soft.

Actually there’s a very distinctive part of him that’s not soft at all. Jin Guangyao tuts with (only half-faked) sympathy and rolls his hips exactly once to give him a bit of friction, and the groan Nie Mingjue bites off is headier than an entire jar of the most expensive wine Jin gold can buy.

“Do you really want to know what er-ge and I did together?” he muses. He tugs Nie Mingjue’s head back a little farther and walks his free hand up the exposed length of his neck, light brushes of his first two fingertips in a teasing saunter that makes Nie Mingjue swallow thickly, the knot of his throat bobbing with it. Jin Guangyao leans in to kiss it, feeling strangely possessive.

“Do you want me to know?”

Ohhhh he does, Jin Guangyao realizes. Now that the secret’s out and Nie Mingjue knows they did something, he finds that he does actually want him to know the specifics. He wants Nie Mingjue to imagine them together in exquisite detail, he wants to make him so jealous he’s sick with it (he wants Nie Mingjue to have even more reasons to want him like he apparently does right now, judging by the erection Jin Guangyao is currently sitting on).

Jin Guangyao brushes those same two fingertips around the overheated curve of Nie Mingjue’s ear and gets his knees back under himself to lean up and nibble on his earlobe, shivering a little himself when it makes Nie Mingjue exhale against his ear in a rush.

It’s clear he has Nie Mingjue’s undivided attention, and he savors the weight of it on his skin (literally, in some respects, as Nie Mingjue drags his hands around to his back, his ass, and holds him tightly) as he begins, “Er-ge invited me in for… tea.” He makes sure to emphasize ‘tea’, the stress on the word making it clear that they’d had far more than that in mind. Even Nie Mingjue, with his usual disregard for such subtleties as innuendo, huffs a breathless chuckle and hums a nearly inaudible, “Mm?” to keep him talking.

“I accepted, and he prepared it for me. He does it so beautifully, doesn’t he? I think it’s his hands, they’re so… elegant. Even when he’s fingering you open, it nearly looks like an art. What a gentleman.”

Nie Mingjue shudders and turns his head enough to press his cheek tight against Jin Guangyao’s, his lips parted and so close to pressing a clumsy kiss to his skin, though he doesn’t quite press close enough to actually do it.

“I asked if he could tell me more about dual cultivation, I had some new questions. He offered to give me a practical demonstration instead. I accepted, and he put his mouth on me.”

Jin Guangyao thrills to feel Nie Mingjue’s cock twitch beneath him, bumping against the soft inside of his thigh, and he turns his head to press a trail of featherlight kisses along Nie Mingjue’s jaw, teasing across his parted lips, and then down the other side to pay some much needed attention to the other ear.

“He owed me an orgasm from the bath, you see. Technically you did, but he decided to take on your debt seeing as you were indisposed and I wanted the debt cleared as soon as I could get it. He made sure the first one was just to please me. Do you think that was enough of a change of pace to make a difference in our cultivation?”

Nie Mingjue makes some vague sort of noise in the back of his throat, which seems to be the only reply he’s capable of making at the moment; Jin Guangyao bites at his own bottom lip to keep from laughing. He feels drunk (giddy) with it, knowing that he’s reduced Nie Mingjue to this with just a few words and knowing where to kiss him for the best effect; still, he wouldn’t want his laughter to be misinterpreted. Nie Mingjue wants this, that much is clear, though there’s still a part of Jin Guangyao insisting caution, caution, this man is unpredictable… but it’s hard to pay attention to it with Nie Mingjue’s big, warm, calloused hands on his skin.

He pretends like the half-moaned-something was an affirmative and nods, cheek brushing against Nie Mingjue’s. “Mmm yes, I think so too. I don’t think I’ll use my mouth on you tonight, though. I think we’re just fine like this.”

Jin Guangyao pulls back just enough to press a few kisses to Nie Mingjue’s mouth and take a quick look at him through lowered lashes; he looks wrecked already, flushed all the way from his neck up to his ears and a little glassy-eyed as he stares at Jin Guangyao’s mouth, as he licks his bottom lip quickly and steals a damp peck of a kiss when Jin Guangyao drifts a little closer.

“Er-ge?” Jin Guangyao raises his voice just a bit to call. He can actually feel the slightest hint of a breeze against his bare back as Lan Xichen crosses the room, hastening to come to him when called. Jin Guangyao turns his head to look up at him and finds he doesn’t look much better than Nie Mingjue, equally as glassy-eyed and watching his every move like he’s desperately waiting for his turn. Hm. A possibility to be explored later, he thinks. “May I have the oil, please?”

Lan Xichen wordlessly fishes the little pot out of his sleeve and carefully takes off the lid to hold it out for him to scoop a generous amount onto two fingers.

“Thank you. You’re still wearing clothes?”

Jin Guangyao turns his attention back to Nie Mingjue and is pretty sure he hears a seam rip behind him as Lan Xichen hurries to strip.

“Fuck, A-Yao,” Nie Mingjue finally manages to murmur, slurred and already sex-drunk; he hasn’t even been touched yet but Jin Guangyao knows that tone of voice well enough.

“I will, just be patient.”

Nie Mingjue’s disbelieving huff of laughter cuts off quite abruptly; he even takes his hand off Jin Guangyao’s ass to clap it over his own mouth to attempt to hide that he’s moaning again, and though Jin Guangyao would have liked to hear him properly he doesn’t begrudge him wanting to muffle himself. He curls his hand a little tighter around Nie Mingjue’s cock and slowly drags it up, his way eased by the oil coating his fingers far more generously than necessary, so much that some of it drips off his knuckles and into the hair between Nie Mingjue’s legs. Not that either of them really care, of course.

When he pauses his stroking right at the tip, leaving Nie Mingjue trying and failing to catch his breath in the wake of it, Jin Guangyao tells him, “Er-ge can do incredible things with his mouth, though, maybe if you ask nicely I’ll let him show you exactly what he did to me.”

“I want to,” Lan Xichen breathes as he slides into bed, naked and apparently done with watching from across the room. Jin Guangyao shifts enough to let him slide up behind Nie Mingjue to press close, his hands wandering shamelessly and his mouth pressed to Nie Mingjue’s broad shoulder right where Jin Guangyao had started his own explorations.

Jin Guangyao strokes Nie Mingjue again, a quick downward push and another slow drag upwards, and Nie Mingjue’s head falls back to rest heavily on Lan Xichen’s shoulder as he doesn’t even bother muffling himself this time, too busy pulling Lan Xichen in closer with an arm wrapped, somewhat awkwardly, up and backwards around his neck and the other still wrapped around the entirety of Jin Guangyao’s waist to hold him on his lap.

His attention strays from Nie Mingjue just for a second, a brief moment to glance at Lan Xichen and check in with him —

He’s completely naked.

Not just a ‘he’s removed his clothing for convenience’s sake’ sort of naked, but a ‘he’s not even wearing his ribbon’ naked. Jin Guangyao is momentarily shocked out of the heady confidence born of turning Nie Mingjue into a puddle of arousal and barely-contained desire, but Lan Xichen just smiles at him so beautifully it breaks his heart a little (in the best way possible) before he tucks his face into the crook of Nie Mingjue’s neck with a happy hum.

Jin Guangyao does his best to scoop his confidence back up into his hands and keep working on getting Nie Mingjue to relax enough to get off without the excuse of dual cultivating, and thankfully manages it while Nie Mingjue is distracted with turning his head to try to seek Lan Xichen out for a proper kiss. Jin Guangyao allows it for a few moments strictly because Lan Xichen deserves as many kisses as he can possibly receive, but when their few moments he’s so generously allotted for them are up he does what he can to remind Nie Mingjue in no uncertain terms who he’s meant to be paying attention to at the moment. As he’d suspected, squeezing just shy of too hard around the base of his dick is more than enough to get him to focus again.

“Ah — shit, would you be careful?” Nie Mingjue hisses, but his hips still twitch like he’d very much like to fuck them upwards and is just barely restraining himself, so Jin Guangyao decides not to take the admonishment to heart.

“As I was saying-“ he says crisply, “-if you ask er-ge nicely I might let you have his mouth, but for now, I have other plans; you’ll just have to imagine it while I touch you, won’t you?”

Nie Mingjue squints up at him from his spot lounging on Lan Xichen’s shoulder. He seems to gather his wits about him with an effort and sits up straight again, slowly, carefully levering himself up until they’re eye-to-eye. Jin Guangyao’s hand flexes around Nie Mingjue’s cock utterly involuntarily and he actually watches the sensation travel through Nie Mingjue’s expression, a ripple of pleasure that ends with his eyelashes fluttering for a moment, softening the intensity of his glare for the length of a single sharp inhale.

“I’ll imagine it later. I have something else to focus on right now,” Nie Mingjue tells him, deliberate and slow. Jin Guangyao goes still and blinks at him, unsure what else to do as Nie Mingjue drops his arm from around Lan Xichen’s neck to tangle their free hands together and raise Jin Guangyao’s to his mouth so he can press hazy kisses to his knuckles, eyes still locked on his.

Isn’t he jealous that Jin Guangyao did things with Lan Xichen that the other two haven’t done together? Doesn’t he want to feel Jin Guangyao’s hand around him and imagine that it’s Lan Xichen’s mouth instead? Isn’t any sex with Lan Xichen — even imaginary — infinitely preferable to even the best Jin Guangyao can do??

Nie Mingjue nips at the base of his thumb and soothes it with a kiss, and he’s still looking at him like he’s thinking favorably of letting Jin Guangyao eat him alive. Jin Guangyao watches him closely as he resumes his lazy stroking, barely aware of Lan Xichen feeling Nie Mingjue up from behind as he focuses exclusively on the task at hand.

It’s easier if he convinces himself it’s a challenge, rather than desire, burning in Nie Mingjue’s gaze. If there’s a challenge there then there’s a sudden (unwelcome) reminder that he can fail at this. Lan Xichen wants him to show Nie Mingjue what they figured out together, which means if they don’t achieve proper dual cultivation with him here, right now, then even considering the fact that this is going much better than anything else between them has yet, Nie Mingjue could still decide to accuse him once again of sabotage.

Well. Jin Guangyao didn’t come here to lose, and certainly not to lose to Nie Mingjue. He ducks in to knock Nie Mingjue off balance again with a calculated attack, nipping and kissing his kiss-tender mouth until Nie Mingjue shudders and wraps his arms around Jin Guangyao’s waist to hug him tightly.

Oh a whim, Jin Guangyao releases Nie Mingjue’s cock long enough to arch his back into the hard press of his arms and gasp a faint, “Gege!” that at least makes Lan Xichen whimper quietly, so that’s already a win of sorts if not the one he’d intended. Nie Mingjue’s erection twitches against his thigh again, his hips bucking ever so slightly, and he parries the teasing with a too-sharp bite to the curve of Jin Guangyao’s shoulder.

“Fuck off,” Nie Mingjue hisses between bruising kisses and this time Jin Guangyao is so startled he isn’t quick enough to keep from laughing, though he does stifle it in Nie Mingjue’s hair as he presses a flurry of half-hearted apology kisses to his temple.

“Ow — Stop biting me, ge, it hurts,” he chides when his silent apology goes unheeded. He can’t quite stop from flinching when Nie Mingjue just bites him again even harder than before in retaliation, a sharp, hard pinch that shocks through his entire body. He will not, under any circumstances, admit that he also whimpers a little in a way that’s entirely unacceptable for someone as accustomed to pain as he is, not to mention unwilling to show weakness if at all possible.

Nie Mingjue goes still for a moment, trembling with the effort of it, and then turns his head to nuzzle the tip of his nose under his ear to murmur what seems to be a truly contrite, “…Sorry, A-Yao.”

Turnabout is fair play, and all is fair in love and war, but Jin Guangyao still doesn’t think it’s actually fair that all the sharp, cold bits of himself that he carefully curates and maintains with the obsessive care of an imperial gardener sort of… melt in direct response to both the apology and the diminutive. That shouldn’t be allowed, it’s far more disarming than is fair for what has turned into a surprisingly friendly(-ish) spar.

Lan Xichen gasps softly and it can’t possibly be a coincidence, but he also seems determined not to interrupt them too much so he says nothing; Jin Guangyao can practically hear his thoughts racing to try to figure out what it means without interrupting them to ask outright, but he can’t focus on that right now. He still has Nie Mingjue to tend to, after all, and so he slides his free hand between them again to curl a loose fist around Nie Mingjue’s cock to pick up where he left off.

It’s easy to settle into a rhythm, and Jin Guangyao applies himself to his assignment with the single-minded focus that he brings to everything he attempts. In hardly any time at all Nie Mingjue is no longer able to kiss him, instead just holding him close with one hand in the small of his back and the other pressed to the back of his head. Jin Guangyao presses his flushed cheek to Nie Mingjue’s and breathes with him, ragged and harsh, as they meet each other in the middle for the first time in a very long time, working together on a level deeper than physical. He can feel it even without actively reaching for Nie Mingjue’s core, their qi pulsing closer and closer to the same rhythm as their hips rock together and their ragged breathing syncs in barely-noticeable increments.

They’re nearly perfectly in tune when Nie Mingjue chokes on a groan in his ear and Jin Guangyao smears a clumsy kiss to his jaw to try to help him close that last bit of distance to where he needs to be.

“Mingjue-” he presses against one spot he’d nibbled a pink little bruise onto, the word embarrassingly desperate. He’d started it without really knowing what he wanted to ask for, but it would seem he doesn’t have to. No sooner has he smeared the plea into Nie Mingjue’s sweat-salty skin than Nie Mingjue throws his head back to press hard against Lan Xichen’s steady shoulder and comes on Jin Guangyao’s hand still wrapped around him and his thigh where he’s still straddling Nie Mingjue’s lap. His knees and hip are aching too fiercely to continue ignoring and his thighs are trembling with enough physical exhaustion that he can’t focus enough on pleasure to tumble over the edge of his own climax with Nie Mingjue, but he doesn’t even care.

Nie Mingjue is glorious as far as Jin Guangyao is concerned, pinned underneath him and against Lan Xichen’s chest, lost entirely in pleasure in a way Jin Guangyao doesn’t think they’ve managed for him yet, at least certainly not when he’s been trying on his own to make it happen. He strokes Nie Mingjue through his orgasm and into oversensitivity, and Lan Xichen looks at Jin Guangyao like he hung the moon, maybe even the stars too, and that’s good enough for now.

Jin Guangyao lets Nie Mingjue recover for approximately ten rabbiting heartbeats before he nuzzles up close to his ear again and smiles widely enough he’s sure Nie Mingjue can feel it pressing against his own cheek.

“After I finished, er-ge fingered me open.”

Nie Mingjue shudders hard enough the bed creaks a little and Jin Guangyao tuts sympathetically.

“He tried a new trick with his qi while he did; do you want him to show you?”

Nie Mingjue’s enthusiastic nod is hardly a surprise — who wouldn’t say yes to such a tantalizing prospect as being the sole focus of Lan Xichen’s attention? Rearranging their positions is the work of a few short moments of awkward shuffling (and wandering hands that are certainly not helping), and by the end of it Jin Guangyao has somehow wound up on his back beneath Nie Mingjue’s pressing bulk, rather than in his usual spot beside the other two when it’s not his turn (their time in the bath notwithstanding, considering those had been very unusual circumstances).

He manages a vaguely articulate, “Ah…?” of a question that Nie Mingjue is clearly in no real position to answer, focused on recovering his powers of speech as he still is, but Jin Guangyao blinks up at what he can see of Lan Xichen’s pleased smile over Nie Mingjue’s shoulder in a bid for an explanation.

“I’d like to continue to watch you both simultaneously, if that’s alright,” Lan Xichen so sweetly explains as he hauls Nie Mingjue’s hips up to where he wants them. Jin Guangyao glances at Nie Mingjue to gauge his reaction and finds him looking a little less bleary-eyed, just in time to raise an eyebrow down at him in silent commiseration for Lan Xichen’s ridiculousness. “I have a new idea to try that will be best attempted like this. You’re both doing quite well together already, you’ve been very good, but I think we can do even better.”

Jin Guangyao watches the praise, simple and plain though it is, land hard on Nie Mingjue; he is unfortunately perfectly capable of recognizing the signs of suddenly feeling warm and tingly all over, considering he’s feeling the exact same thing. He meets Nie Mingjue’s hooded gaze and returns the little lift of his brow with one of his own; it passes between them in an instant, the mutual understanding that they will not be addressing what it feels like to be good for Lan Xichen together, and Jin Guangyao decides to seal the silent moment of agreement with an almost perfunctory kiss.

It takes Nie Mingjue a beat too long to return the brief press of lips against his but he gets there when Jin Guangyao chuckles and does it again, prompting. Once they part again Jin Guangyao gets comfortably settled underneath him with a few shuffles of his shoulders and slightly-aching hips as he chides, “Don’t fall asleep yet, da-ge, we’re not done.”

“Shut up,” Nie Mingjue grumbles, clearly embarrassed but not angry, and Jin Guangyao can’t help but smile around the tentative little fledgling hope that things between them could possibly improve, as unlikely as that seems. Of course that would probably require talking about things, which just sounds like hell considering he’s still certain neither of their stances have truly changed enough to have a civil conversation about fundamental moral differences — and of course there’s always Nie Mingjue’s saber-stoked temper to account for — but maybe they can be good enough for this.

Jin Guangyao brushes his fingers cautiously through some of the thick hair hanging over Nie Mingjue’s forehead and he watches, a little breathless, as Nie Mingjue just turns his head into it enough to kiss his palm — not just a fluke, then, but a pattern that Jin Guangyao can replicate whenever he’d like. He’s certain that thought won’t haunt him during his lonely, miserable nights in Lanling.

“Fuck- I’m awake!” Nie Mingjue yelps, eyes flying open, and Jin Guangyao tilts his head a little to the side to look up at Lan Xichen once again in question.

“Just thought I’d make sure,” Lan Xichen replies, his mischievous little smirk sneaking into his voice just enough for Jin Guangyao to hear, though he doesn’t think Nie Mingjue will be able to tell.

Nie Mingjue twists enough to look over his shoulder and huff, “So you had to pinch my ass?!”

“Mn. Would you rather I bite it? That could also be arranged.”

The betrayed glare Nie Mingjue turns on Jin Guangyao when he has to stifle a short laugh is entirely worth it. The glare falls away quickly though as Jin Guangyao presumes — from the way Nie Mingjue shivers and drops his shoulders to press his forehead to the bed just beside Jin Guangyao’s neck — Lan Xichen stops his own snickering long enough to finally start fingering him.

As he’d realized in the bath the last time they were all together for this, Lan Xichen is something of a menace when he’s fucking Nie Mingjue. When it had been him and Lan Xichen alone, he’d been achingly sweet about everything, smiling and laughing along with Jin Guangyao and, most importantly, loving him in the way that Jin Guangyao has always wanted. It stands to reason, since they’re two very different people, that Lan Xichen would behave a little differently with Nie Mingjue; Jin Guangyao just thinks it’s funny that the main difference seems to be a drastic spike in what could only be described as erotic mischief.

Jin Guangyao slides his hand further into Nie Mingjue’s hair to hold his head close where he’s buried his face in the crook of his neck in a poor attempt to muffle himself while Lan Xichen gives him no quarter, fingering him steadily and giving him an equally steady stream of qi. From what Jin Guangyao can tell it seems to be more qi than he’d given when they’d tried it, but that’s to be expected when Nie Mingjue’s core and meridians are able to handle so much more than Jin Guangyao’s. He can feel it now like he could in the bath, a silk-sheets-on-naked-skin sensation as Nie Mingjue kisses wherever he can reach and Lan Xichen runs a hand up and down the broad expanse of Nie Mingjue’s back, a steady circuit that follows the rhythm of his fingers and his qi washing in and out of Nie Mingjue’s core like the incoming tide.

“You said you want to try something new, er-ge?” Jin Guangyao prompts after a few hazy minutes of their prepping Nie Mingjue, though it hardly feels like their usual clinical preparation for dual cultivation so much as it feels like… foreplay. Does it count as foreplay if Nie Mingjue has already come once? Maybe it just means that they’re having even more sex that’s also just for the fun of it.

“Mn, I had a thought, I will explain myself in a moment.”

Nie Mingjue’s ragged voice is low, his smiling mouth warm against Jin Guangyao’s ear as he mutters, “Is he too busy getting off on watching his own fingers in me to string enough words together to explain?”

Jin Guangyao hides a snicker in Nie Mingjue’s shoulder, both for the unexpected baldness of the question and the fact that Nie Mingjue can’t even see Lan Xichen but, from what Jin Guangyao can tell, he’s exactly right.

“C’mere A-Yao,” Nie Mingjue mutters when Jin Guangyao’s snickering fades and he doesn’t even need the careful hand on his cheek to coax him into turning his head enough to meet Nie Mingjue for a kiss deep enough to curl his toes and leave something warm sitting heavy with promise in his belly. He sucks a sharp breath in when Nie Mingjue’s teeth worry at his bottom lip, a nip that doesn’t hurt, just startles. Nie Mingjue gentles the kiss instantly, soft tugs and a brush of the tip of his tongue against the spot as if to soothe the imagined sting.

“Sorry,” he presses into the corner of Jin Guangyao’s mouth and Jin Guangyao shakes his head a little, tips his chin to steal another kiss.

Barely audible, and with hardly any space between them, he murmurs, “It’s alright, Mingjue, you can. Just… gently?” His heart hammers at the liberty he’s taking again, each time a fresh risk; he isn’t actively getting Nie Mingjue off at the moment (yet), maybe he’s not allowed to call him by only his name if he doesn’t also have his hand wrapped around his dick —

Nie Mingjue huffs a short exhale against his mouth but before Jin Guangyao can worry any further that it’s out of anger for his presumptions Nie Mingjue is biting him again, clearly holding back in a way that somehow feels more desperate than an outright mauling would. He’s shaking with the restraint of it as he first nibbles and then bites a little more confidently when Jin Guangyao just threads his fingers deeper into his hair in silent encouragement.

Alright. So he’s allowed to call him ‘Mingjue’ now. That’s only fair, if Nie Mingjue is going to continue giving him minor heart palpitations with his unbearably soft ‘A-Yao’s — in front of er-ge! There’s no way to take it back after that, there’s no possible world in which Lan Xichen will let that pass indefinitely without comment, it’s just a matter of when he’ll decide it’s the right time to address it. So really this is just another ‘turnabout is fair play’ sort of situation. It doesn’t have to mean anything, he’s only upping the stakes every time Nie Mingjue does. In the end it’s just a competition like everything else — and he’s winning.

He slips a hand between them again, petting curious fingertips down the deceptively soft contours of Nie Mingjue’s chest, his belly. He stops just shy of wrapping his fingers around him properly, hand tucked comfortably between his legs, and a fresh, irritated plea for him to get on with it is cut off rather neatly by a tight, “A-Yao would you just — fuck, A-Huan!”

Jin Guangyao realizes, in a burst of clarity, that this is fun. Keeping Nie Mingjue suspended between them like this, blindsiding him with pleasure, teasing him mercilessly while also making sure that one of them is giving him exactly what he wants at the same time… He could do this for hours and still likely want to do it a little longer.

“What was that, Mingjue?” he teases, innocent like he isn’t kneading firm circles around the base of his quickly-hardening erection while Lan Xichen holds him still with both hands curled around his thighs to sink into him. Nie Mingjue doesn’t bother answering him; he takes his hand off Jin Guangyao’s cheek to instead slam his palm flat against the bed frame above Jin Guangyao’s head, his entire arm flexing hard enough that Jin Guangyao can appreciate the sight of his well-corded forearm, the definition of his enormous biceps, even the suddenly-tight definition of his chest. His breath is coming in short little gasps he buries in Jin Guangyao’s hair, each sharp exhale hot against his ear.

Lan Xichen tuts a comforting, “I’ve got you, you’re alright Mingjue,” that sounds just as unrepentant as Jin Guangyao feels.

“I’m going to kill you both,” Nie Mingjue grits between clenched teeth.

“Er-ge, I don’t believe death threats were part of our night together, were they?”

“Mm, not to my knowledge. A-Yao, would you like to try passing da-ge some qi?”

Jin Guangyao might be thoroughly caught up in whatever it is he’s got going on with Nie Mingjue, but he’s not so out of it that the request under the current circumstances doesn’t give him a moment’s pause. Not that he’s exactly opposed to coming so hard he’s knocked straight out of his body again like the first and only time they’d all tried cultivating together, but… if he does that then this will be over before it can really truly begin, and he’d sort of… like it… maybe… if he had an excuse to keep kissing and teasing Nie Mingjue for at least a little while longer. Is that really so much to ask?

“Er-ge, are you sure?”

They could do more aligning of their qi before there’s any dual cultivation, another orgasm or two would probably work quite nicely to get them all working in tandem and they could still dual cultivate after that with all the qi Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen will have to help them recover, it doesn’t have to end now —

“It’s alright, A-Yao.” Jin Guangyao blinks, startled, and glances at Nie Mingjue who turns his head enough to kiss his cheek to punctuate his thoroughly unexpected reassurance. “It’s alright if you can’t.”

Oh fuck that! Jin Guangyao wrinkles his nose and just barely resists the urge to bite Nie Mingjue’s ear. He’s trying to be nice, and in a way Jin Guangyao can appreciate that Nie Mingjue is, in a round-about way, telling him that failure to dual cultivate no longer equals suspecting Jin Guangyao of sabotage. But he can do it, he’s not a failure, and he refuses to let Nie Mingjue think he is for another moment (although that would mean that they really have been having sex just for the hell of it if Nie Mingjue didn’t actually expect him to be able to cultivate and really that’s just something to be considered at length later because right now he’s-)

He-

Jin Guangyao digs his fingertips into the soft give of Nie Mingjue’s belly as he throws his head back with a gasp, a man drowning finally coming up for air. Nie Mingjue slams his palm against the top of the bed frame again and swears a heartfelt, “Motherfucker!!” that comes out more-than-half a groan. Even Lan Xichen isn’t unaffected, bowing over Nie Mingjue’s back with an audible whimper and a sharp snap of his hips that they all feel as a sudden pulse of qi, zipping through Nie Mingjue’s meridians and through Jin Guangyao’s in almost the same instant before circulating back to Lan Xichen.

They don’t all come like they had the first time, but in a way Jin Guangyao sort of wishes they would. Lan Xichen’s qi alone had been overwhelming ecstasy, pleasure nearly to the point of flirting with pain. Both his and Nie Mingjue’s qi twisted together stretches his meridians to their absolute limits but it’s-

It’s-

Exquisite.

It feels like being remade. It feels like becoming someone else, someone who doesn’t ache at all with old injuries, someone who isn’t worn down to the bones with exhaustion and overwork. His lovers’ combined qi sings through him and back out again, a steady wash of the tide that takes away everything but pleasure and he wants to drown in it. With an effort he forces himself not to, to instead actually help Lan Xichen purify and circulate it rather than allow himself to be a passive conduit, and as he focuses on attempting to carry out his task without giving into the incandescent siren call of letting it drag him fully under, he barely even notices Nie Mingjue dropping more of his weight down onto him until they’re pressed together from hips to shoulders.

It feels right. Jin Guangyao wraps his free arm around Nie Mingjue’s broad shoulders and holds him as close as physically possible, but it only feels entirely right, it only feels like they’re finally close enough, with the man’s qi (entwined inexorably as it is with Lan Xichen’s) coursing under his skin.

And then Lan Xichen moves in time with the rhythm of their cultivation and Jin Guangyao nearly cries from the sheer relief of the intimacy of it making up for months — years — of wanting so desperately to be touched and held kindly. Some small rational part of his mind that has survived the onslaught of sensation reminds him that he’ll only feel worse after this is over, that having had it he’ll only want it even more, he’ll only get weaker, more pathetic when he has to leave this all behind again. There’s a reason he’s maintained distance, there’s a reason this was supposed to be purely medical when he felt there was no alternative but to agree to the arrangement, he’d had arguments and they were sound.

Nie Mingjue pulls back just enough to press his lips to his forehead instead of burying his face in the bolster and Jin Guangyao’s hair splayed across it; maybe missing this once it’s gone again will be worth it since it means he has it now.

Getting his hand properly wrapped around Nie Mingjue’s cock again is a bit harder when they’re so distracted and pressed together this closely, but he’s hardly going to ask for space. Lan Xichen helpfully pauses in his thrusting for just long enough for Jin Guangyao to get situated and then he’s back, inexorable and steady as a sunrise, and Jin Guangyao is doing his best to stroke and squeeze in time, and Nie Mingjue is an incoherent mess of, “Fuck yes!” and “A-Huan!” and “A-Yao!” until he goes still with a choked noise in the back of his throat and comes on Jin Guangyao’s hand and hips for the second time tonight. The majority of the qi they’ve been passing between each other coalesces naturally in Nie Mingjue’s core with more than enough for Jin Guangyao’s to feel filled to the brim, perhaps even more so than after he’d shared everything he had with Lan Xichen.

Jin Guangyao still doesn’t come when Nie Mingjue does, but Lan Xichen’s orgasm rocks through all three of them when his qi suddenly spikes with it two thrusts later, and Jin Guangyao, wound up as tightly as he is, comes untouched.

Surprisingly, it’s Nie Mingjue who finds the capacity for speech first. He presses a deliberate kiss to Jin Guangyao’s forehead and lingers, mouth still resting against his skin when he mutters a heartfelt, “Fucking hell that was good.”

‘Good’ feels like something of an understatement, to be quite honest, but Jin Guangyao is far too winded and thrumming with qi he has to find something to do with to argue about semantics. He attempts something like a very brief and probably not very effective meditation to try to work the qi into his core properly while Lan Xichen pulls out, gives Nie Mingjue a very quick perfunctory clean with a cloth (that Nie Mingjue presumably had left out for just that purpose) and helps him lie down, before joining them laid out flat on the mattress. They lay there for a few long moments in the companionable silence of breathing returning to normal, and the soft brush of skin- or silk-on-skin, and Jin Guangyao is very close to drowsing despite the influx of energy still coursing through his spiritual veins when he hears someone’s breath hitch, and someone else shift as if to sit up.

“Mingjue?” Lan Xichen asks, “Shh, what’s wrong? What is it?”

Jin Guangyao’s eyes snap open and he looks quickly at Nie Mingjue lying on his back between them; he’s covering both eyes with one hand but he can’t hide the tear tracks glistening on his temples and Jin Guangyao can’t remember the last time he moved so quickly as he curls onto his side to put his hand on Nie Mingjue’s lower dantian and check the flow of his purified qi.

Nie Mingjue shakes his head, sucks another sharp, hitching breath in, and lets Lan Xichen gently pry his hand away from his eyes so they can look at each other where Lan Xichen has leaned up on his elbow to study him anxiously.

His voice is thick and rasping when he replies, “Nothing’s wrong. Nothing.” Some of the tension leaves Jin Guangyao; he keeps his hand on Nie Mingjue’s belly but he stops prodding at his qi — which is of course perfectly fine — and just strokes his thumb back and forth against warm, soft skin and coarse hair still slightly tacky with sweat and, he’s assuming, come.

“Are you sure?” Lan Xichen murmurs, free hand pressed to Nie Mingjue’s cheek. Jin Guangyao watches Lan Xichen lean in for a soft sip of a kiss like he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it, and he doesn’t devote any attention to examining why he truly isn’t jealous of the gesture at all, not even a little bit.

“I’m sure.”

Jin Guangyao curls closer to carefully rest his head on Nie Mingjue’s shoulder only to immediately find himself wrapped up in a tight embrace, Nie Mingjue’s arm looped securely around his waist to pull him close. (And maybe that’s why he’s not jealous, because after all of that how can he not be sure, at least for now, that if he wants to be kissed or held he doesn’t even have to ask, he can just… exist, and his sworn brothers will show him how much they want him? He’s sure it’s temporary confidence, but it’s heady while he has it.)

Nie Mingjue takes another shivering breath and Jin Guangyao hums sympathetically, a counterpoint to Lan Xichen’s soft tutting and the brush of his thumb against the outer corner of Mingjue’s eye to brush away a fresh tear.

Nie Mingjue whimpers, clearly overwhelmed, “It’s — I swear I’m fine. I feel fine- I feel good-“

It’s the emphasis that does it. Jin Guangyao’s unconsciously presses his hand more firmly over Nie Mingjue’s core and uses the leverage to prop himself up as well, dropping a kiss to Lan Xichen’s shoulder before he looks down at Nie Mingjue’s watery gaze to catch his eye.

“How loud is Baxia right now?”

Nie Mingjue’s chin wobbles and he shakes his head, which is answer enough.

Achieving dual cultivation with Lan Xichen had been… one of the best moments of Jin Guangyao’s life, honestly. Nothing will ever take that away from him. But this? This is what they did it for. As much as Jin Guangyao had thought his lovers had achieved dual cultivation last time they were all three together clearly they hadn’t quite reached it, because Nie Mingjue hadn’t seemed all that different after they were done. He’d been a little more relaxed, a bit more affectionate with Lan Xichen, but in the end he’d still just wandered off back to his quarters to sleep off his orgasm, not much different than every other time he’s withdrawn from them as soon as their business is over.

Now? Nie Mingjue is holding them both close, one on either side, and looking up at them like he’s really seeing them as he manages to say, “I can think so clearly-“ around the tight knot of emotion clearly choking him.

“Da-ge,” Lan Xichen murmurs, velvet-soft sympathy punctuated with a slow kiss to Nie Mingjue’s cheek.

“I didn’t think it would actually — but it’s working–”

Jin Guangyao smiles and Nie Mingjue runs his hand up his back, a smooth skating of his calloused palm along Jin Guangyao’s spine.

“Perhaps we should have all become Jiangs instead,” he muses, swirling the tip of his index finger in lazy circles around Nie Mingjue’s navel, so near to where his suddenly much more evenly-balanced core is spinning much faster than his caresses, “as we seem determined to attempt the impossible.”

Nie Mingjue grins — grins — at him, dimples and everything, and Jin Guangyao instinctively shies away from how much it makes him want. This will fade, he reminds himself sternly. The afterglow will only last so long. The effect of the dual cultivation is not permanent, not by a long shot. Nie Mingjue will grow to resent him again, he’ll remember why they're always at odds, he’ll forget that they could have this so Jin Guangyao shouldn’t even want it while he has it so as not to set himself up for further pain and disappointment —

“You should both stay in here tonight.”

Oh for fuck’s sake, why must Nie Mingjue ruin every single carefully laid plan?! Every single rational intention Jin Guangyao is attempting to shield himself with is abruptly thrown out the window without a care and honestly at this point he feels deserved in wondering if he can claim some sort of recompense for everything Nie Mingjue does to him.

Nie Mingjue’s grin morphs into a smirk when Lan Xichen makes some appropriately enthusiastic noise and ducks down to kiss somewhere in the vicinity of Nie Mingjue’s ear and what is he supposed to do, go back to his room alone while these two have a private night together? Absolutely not, that’s the whole reason he’s tangled up with them in bed now! He’d very much like to wipe that knowing smirk off Nie Mingjue’s face since it’s clear he’s not going to turn the request down when Lan Xichen is so obviously on board and they both know it; a deep-bordering-on-filthy kiss is a passable way to do that, at least.

Nie Mingjue returns the kiss for just long enough for Jin Guangyao to feel that he’s won and then he pulls back with visible effort, gaze locked on Jin Guangyao’s mouth as he says, “Wait, I have — I need to get something done before we get… distracted.”

Jin Guangyao raises an eyebrow at that and glances down to where Lan Xichen has paused, face currently level with Nie Mingjue’s stomach and his intention clearly to continue moving further down at the first indication that he’s alright to keep going.

“He was supposed to ask for that, er-ge,” Jin Guangyao reminds him, amused, and Lan Xichen’s returning smile is once again utterly unrepentant (and so unbelievably happy).

“I thought it was fairly obvious that he’d more than earned it.”

“Of course he has, but that’s not the point. Rules are rules, gege.”

Nie Mingjue clears his throat loudly and ruins his stern glare with a new smile tugging insistently at the corners of his mouth. “I have some work to do, so if we can table this discussion for later…?”

Lan Xichen heaves a sigh and pouts ever so slightly as he sits up to kneel beside them and begins combing out his hair with his fingers, a graceful detangling made unexpectedly erotic by the fact that he’s still completely naked and glistening ever-so-slightly with sweat where the warm light of the lanterns dotted around the room catch him just right.

“What is it you need to do then, da-ge?” he asks and somehow manages to convey that he’s doing Nie Mingjue an enormous favor by allowing him to do something that isn’t lying in bed and letting Lan Xichen suck his dick.

“I have, uh-” Nie Mingjue, staring openly at Lan Xichen, clears his throat and visibly forces himself to look up at Jin Guangyao instead with the air of a man who needs to do so to think straight, “I have reports — something’s wrong with the accounts? Zonghui just brought it to me today. I should look at it while I’m so…”

“Mm. A clear mind is best for that sort of thing,” Jin Guangyao acknowledges. He leans more of his weight on Nie Mingjue’s chest and brushes his fingertips through the kinked waves of the front of his hair, curly from the tight braids he’d been taking out when Jin Guangyao had arrived.

“Mhm.”

Despite his insistence, Nie Mingjue makes no immediate move to get up and get started, and Jin Guangyao certainly isn’t going to complain. He tucks a lock of hair further back and trails the back of his index finger against the now-dry tear track on Nie Mingjue’s temple, a little pale and flaky with salt. Jin Guangyao smiles, just a little, when Nie Mingjue turns into the touch and readjusts his arm around Jin Guangyao’s waist to settle in more comfortably.

“Mingjue.”

“Mhm… What?”

“Your reports?” Jin Guangyao smiles wider when Nie Mingjue sucks in a sharp breath and gives himself a quick shake, jostling Jin Guangyao in his grip before he sits up and carefully maneuvers Jin Guangyao off himself so he can roll to his feet.

“Right. I’m up.”

“That makes two of us,” Lan Xichen sighs with a glance down at his own lap, still pouting, and finally Jin Guangyao laughs outright, a true belly-laugh startled out of him by both Lan Xichen’s petulant innuendo and the sheer pleasure of feeling so comfortable.

Jin Guangyao affects a little pout himself and gets comfortable in the rumpled bedding before he stretches his arm out to brush a couple teasing fingertips against the top of Lan Xichen’s bare thigh, too far away from his unflagging erection to be of any help with it.

“Poor er-ge,” he tuts, “asked to stop when you’re only just getting started. And if da-ge is as… meticulous with his numbers as he used to be then you’ll be waiting for at least a shichen for him to find whatever’s gone wrong with his books, let alone fix it.”

“Hey!” Nie Mingjue pauses with his outer robe only just hooked over one arm and therefore doing absolutely nothing to cover him just yet. It’s a good look, in Jin Guangyao’s utterly unbiased opinion. “If you’re going to insult my perfectly acceptable accounting abilities then why don’t you come over here and show off by doing it in a fraction of the time I would take?”

Jin Guangyao’s breath catches in his chest, but he’s far from afraid that Nie Mingjue is irritated with him. He knows quite intimately what that sounds like, and this isn’t that. This is teasing, which is a marvel in and of itself, but it’s also inviting him into Nie Sect business. It’s inviting him to the sort of private Sect business that he used to handle on a daily basis, and that no one would ever allow someone they suspected of being an inter-Sect spy to see. Especially not someone who can remember everything he sees with the same accuracy as if he were still looking right at it hours, days, months later.

It’s the sort of golden opportunity to find another weakness for Jin Guangshan to exploit to leverage more pressure against the Nie Sect that Jin Guangyao is expected to find on these trips. It’s another thing that could possibly buy a hint of his father’s goodwill on his return to Lanling. Something that could ease his burdens, and isn’t that what his sworn brothers have vowed to do for him? He can ease Nie Mingjue of this small, momentary burden, and then allow his eldest sworn brother to be of (unknowing) use in bettering his situation in return.

He won’t. He’s honest enough with himself to acknowledge the curl of nausea in his stomach for what it is, considering it’s hardly the first time the thought of double-crossing Nie Mingjue and exploiting his weaknesses has left him feeling ill. He could do it, but he won’t.

Jin Guangyao slides out of bed with a sigh and steals the first robe he finds, one of Lan Xichen’s finely-woven, pure white underlayers, and drapes it imperiously around his shoulders despite the fact that it’s so thin it hardly counts as clothing at all on its own.

“Give it to me, then,” he says with his hand held out palm up towards Nie Mingjue who, to his credit, doesn’t allow Jin Guangyao to call his bluff. He finishes putting on his outer robe and belting it shut rather haphazardly before he turns to rummage through the things on his desk in the study through an open archway deeper into the quarters, and when he returns he slaps a thick folio — a few different ledgers tied together with a thin scrap of leather — into Jin Guangyao’s waiting palm.

There’s a look in his eyes that Jin Guangyao can’t quite decipher, but it feels… unlikely that they aren’t thinking along similar lines, at least in terms of Jin Guangyao so unexpectedly fulfilling one of his old duties, and feeling entirely normal and unemotional about doing so.

“There are new income streams since you last saw the books,” Nie Mingjue tells him, fingers lingering on the folio. “Sit with me and we’ll go over them together.”

The pair of them have sat up together plenty of times before, of course, going over all manner of business for the Sect. Even not having done it in years, even thinking it would never happen again, Jin Guangyao still knows the routine of it down to his bones. But of course, leave it to Nie Mingjue to take what Jin Guangyao remembers and cheerfully turn it on its head without any prior warning whatsoever — he definitely never conducted Nie Sect business from the comfort of Nie Mingjue’s lap (no matter how much he might have liked to once upon a time), and a naked Lan Xichen going about the business of oiling and combing his hair properly without a shred of shame about the indecency of it is a distraction he’s certainly never had to contend with while worrying about unaccounted for increases in the cost of ore mining for Qinghe’s bladesmiths where they shouldn’t be.

By the sixth time his mind wanders away from the comfortable, even march of facts and figures to stare after Lan Xichen’s comings and goings, Nie Mingjue sits up straighter and says, through chuckling that vibrates against Jin Guangyao’s back, “You know you’re really not helping us finish this any faster, A-Huan.”

“I am not attempting to,” he replies as he at least returns to bed, though when he gets there he lounges back on his hands in a brazen display of every inch of all the long lines of him which is really just as distracting as everything else he’s done in the last half hour. “Waiting can be just as enjoyable as instant gratification, I am simply exploring my options.”

Jin Guangyao twists enough to look up at Nie Mingjue (and marvels, in the back of his mind, that it doesn’t hurt his hips or his back one bit to do so) and snickers at the confusion on his face.

“Oh dear, da-ge. I believe you should have asked me for his mouth first after all.”

“You’re both being weird again,” Nie Mingjue huffs, “just say what you mean and stop playing coy.”

Jin Guangyao doesn’t take the bait, he simply sniffs and returns to poring over the expenditure records laid out on the table; if Lan Xichen wants to explain the concept of edging then more power to him, but Jin Guangyao suspects he’s planning to just show Nie Mingjue himself.

He finds the discrepancy amongst the records of the last horse market in just over half a shichen. They return to bed and spend much longer than that letting Lan Xichen ‘punish’ them for making him wait.

|NEXT|

#the untamed fanfic #3zun #The Waves are Rising and Rising #Jin Guangyao #Nie Mingjue #Lan Xichen #Also don't be alarmed (be very alarmed) when you remember we're only on chapter 12 out of 17

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