#funny enough all my sibs and i did and its cause my older sister begged our parents

[todayisafridaynight]

Ichiban is so into his street surfer that he got all his buddies including old Grandpa Kiryu to start using one.

Street Surfer need that E For Everyone rating mk its good for your typical tourist its good for your stubborn-as-dick grandpa with Allegedly radiation cancer and it's great for your lesbian crawfish and her hermit crab girlfriend

[robininthelabyrinth]

CQL-verse! The characters have the same age gaps between them as their actors and actresses! Wwx and Jyl are the same age, jc is 5 years younger than them. Lxc is 3 years younger than wwx&jyl and lwj is 3 years younger than him. Nmj is two years older than wwx&jyl and nhs is 8 years younger than him and the same age as lwj. (1/2)

Meng Yao is 2 years older than nhs and jzx is 2 years older than MY. I'm leaving the Wen Sibs out of this because otherwise WN would be the same age as wwx and WQ would be 4 years younger than him. But hey! If you want to go with that, go crazy! I was thinking more of Yunmeng Sibs focus, but I will be happy with anything! (2/2)

ao3

Untamed

Nie Mingjue hated the Wen sect to the point of death and war, but he had always had trouble hating sad and gentle Wen Ning.

Wen Ning was technically his peer – there were only two years between them in age – and therefore capable of the same sorts of responsibilities and duties towards righteousness as Nie Mingjue, meaning that he ought to hate him as much as all the rest. But at the same time, Wen Ning was only part of the main branch family indirectly, a ward of Wen Ruohan; he was constantly suppressed and even tormented by Wen Chao, the eldest son of that family. If anything, it seemed almost as if he’d been brought into the family just to act as the family’s scapegoat, the inferior copy that was so hapless that he made that self-indulgent hedonist Wen Chao appear somewhat competent in contrast.

Nie Mingjue couldn’t imagine treating any of his own cousins that way.

He and Wen Chao were often compared, both being about the same age, and their young brothers were of similar age as well, both of them only fourteen; this juxtaposition made sure that every single person in the cultivation world talk of them in the same breath. Nie Mingjue always came out the better in the comparison, and Wen Xu the same for his, which in the minds of most people balanced out, but which caused Wen Chao no end of rage. He knew he couldn’t take out his anger on the talented Wen Xu and so took out on poor Wen Ning instead.

Nie Mingjue hated the Wen sect.

He did not hate Wen Ning.

Wen Ning, who should not be here.

“Please,” Wen Ning said, nearly in tears, as he threw himself down to the floor in front of Nie Mingjue. He’d burst into the room in the inn Nie Mingjue was staying at, the guards that no sect leader could do without no matter what they wanted following close behind in alarm until Nie Mingjue had waved them off with a gesture; he’d been panting so hard that he’d only just now caught his breath. “Please help this useless older brother do one good thing with his life.”

Alarmed, Nie Mingjue reached out and caught Wen Ning by the shoulders, pulling him to stand and even forgetting himself enough to reach forward with a sleeve to dab away the tears staining the other man’s face.

“What is it?” he asked, feeling anxiety curdling in his gut. He’d spoken with Wen Ning before during the discussion conferences, both when he was younger and even, in a few stolen moments, after he became sect leader; he knew Wen Ning had a steady personality, if a weak one from all the bullying he endured, and that he was not given to unnecessary hysterics. If he could tolerate Wen Chao’s endless torment with a faint smile and a don’t worry sect leader Nie once you’re used to it it’s more funny than anything else, then what could make him act like this? “What is that you need help with? I do not understand.”

Wen Ning looked tired. He always had, his health had always been poor, but now it seemed worse than ever; there were circles under his eyes, and Nie Mingjue had no idea how he’d managed to get away from the Nightless City to come find him. The town he was currently in was close to the border the Qinghe Nie shared with Qishan Wen, but it was still an effort, especially for someone like Wen Ning. He might be a member of the Wen family by name, but his freedom was significantly curtailed, and it wasn’t only because he was sickly.

“My little sister is going to be attending the lectures at the Cloud Recesses,” Wen Ning said.

“The - Lan sect lectures?” Nie Mingjue repeated blankly. It was a stupid thing to say; of course it was the Lan sect’s lectures, who else would give lectures at the Cloud Recesses? And yet, at the same time – “The Wen sect hasn’t gone to them in generations.”

“Sect Leader Wen asked A-Qing to look for something,” Wen Ning said. “I don’t know what. He talks to her more than he talks to me, when she’s treating him with acupuncture and other such things – he only wants blood relations treating him now, so she’s passing along what she can do, the doctors all say she’s talented – he told her something, I think, but I don’t know what, he doesn’t talk to me…and she doesn’t talk to me, either.”

“She’s sixteen, they’re like that,” Nie Mingjue said, trying to offer comfort, but he didn’t like the sound of that – Wen Ruohan growing reliant on the medical skills of a teenager, talking with her as if she were an adult…it didn’t speak well to the Chief Cultivator’s state of mind. “So she’s going to go spy on them?”

“She is. And maybe more. There’s – there’s something back in the Nightless City, something Sect Leader Wen is refining in order to increase his power. Whatever it is, it’s powerful and evil.” Wen Ning looked paler than usual, somehow. “It was something that was kept in a cave near our village when we were younger, once. Sect Leader Wen took it away to study, and it made something go crazy, I got hurt, and my parents – anyway, it doesn’t matter. I can’t go near it without losing my senses, so I really don’t know anything about it. But I know that Sect Leader Wen only has a piece – and the Lan sect has another.”

Lan Xichen had never mentioned such a thing, but then again, he wasn’t really old enough that Nie Mingjue would expect him to know everything about his sect – he was after all a full five years younger than Nie Mingjue, three years younger than Wen Ning; he was still only seventeen, having only just graduated from his uncle’s classes the year before. He was only very technically sect leader, in the same way Nie Mingjue had only been technically sect leader after his father’s death, although unlike Lan Xichen Nie Mingjue had fought his way to step up to the task for real early on. He himself was only barely considered an adult at the age of twenty-two; it was no surprise that in the Lan sect, which had Lan Qiren to rely on, Lan Xichen might not know it all.

Or perhaps he knew, and simply didn’t say. Each sect was entitled to its secrets.

“What are you thinking?” Nie Mingjue asked.

“I’m thinking that my sister is constantly afraid for me, even though she’s younger than me,” Wen Ning said solemnly. “I’m thinking that she will break her own principles into pieces to protect me. I’m thinking that she’ll find whatever it is, or find a hint to it, and then Wen Chao will take his forces to burn the Cloud Recesses to the ground in search of it.”

Nie Mingjue could see that.

He didn’t want to, but he could.

“My brother is attending those lectures,” he said blankly. Nie Huaisang was there right now. He could be in danger – no, he would be in danger. Nie Huaisang wasn’t a good cultivator, and at fourteen, he was just a baby. Nie Mingjue had sent Meng Yao with him, nominally as his attendant, but in fact to get the benefit of the classes himself and also bully Nie Huaisang into actually learning something – he’d brought Meng Yao into the Nie sect after Jin Zixuan, full of guilt over how his father had treated a boy only two years his junior, had sent him a letter beseeching him for help following Meng Yao’s public and humiliating rejection from Jinlin Tower – but Meng Yao was only sixteen, of age with Wen Qing; what could he really do?

Moreover, sending Wen Qing and not Wen Xu, even though Wen Xu was the same age as Nie Huaisang and Lan Wangji, indicated that Wen Ruohan didn’t want his more promising son to get involved in whatever it was that he was planning, or maybe in whatever consequences followed. If Wen Chao really were to try something violent, they couldn’t afford to have a weakness already there…

“I need to get A-Qing out of the Wen sect,” Wen Ning said, and Nie Mingjue turned to look at him in shock. “Permanently. I’ve begged her to go, but she won’t leave me, she won’t leave our family of the Dafan Wen, but she has to. Something bad is going to happen soon. I know it. I don’t mind trading my life for hers, but she has to live.”

“Is there any way you can go to the Cloud Recesses as well?” Nie Mingjue asked, his mind already racing. He’d long ago given up on helping Wen Ning because he knew the other man wouldn’t turn traitor against his family, being an upright and filial child, but if his family had reached such a depth of corruption as that, then it was only right to leave them behind. If Wen Ning was finally accepting that, maybe there was something he could do. “You’re sensitive to the – whatever it is. Right? Maybe Wen Qing can suggest bringing you around to help her find her way to it.”

“How would that help?”

“It gets you somewhere safe, while I can rescue Dafan Wen – without a threat to you or to them, your sister would have no reason to insist on staying,” Nie Mingjue said, though it wouldn’t be him, exactly, that did the rescue – he’d need a firm alibi lest Wen Ruohan use it as an excuse to start something with his Nie sect. He might have prepared for war as much as he could, but the Wen sect was still stronger; if war broke out, he needed to make sure that he had the moral high ground.

Luckily, Wei Wuxian, that walking calamity of a head disciple of Yunmeng Jiang, had of late developed the habit of wandering over to visit various other sects, including Qinghe (and Nie Mingjue in specific), at his leisure, and no one ever would think to blame him for such a strange thing as a subsidiary sect of distant Wen sect cousins disappearing.

After all, Wei Wuxian had no reason to know or care about the Dafan Wen, and everyone knew he abjured politics completely, violently and repetitively, so as to make no mistake about anyone who might otherwise see him as competition for the Jiang sect’s true heir, Jiang Cheng. The five-year gap between their ages kept them from being compared – you couldn’t expect a child, and at fifteen Jiang Cheng was still very much a child, to keep up with an adult just turned twenty like Wei Wuxian – but there had always been whispers given everything with Cangse Sanren, and Wei Wuxian had had to work very hard to put a stop to them.

Wei Wuxian’s wandering habit had started back when he’d been trying to find Jiang Yanli a new fiancée to replace the engagement he’d broken by fighting with Jin Zixuan, however shameful it was for him to fight with a boy two years his junior. It was for that that he had come to Qinghe to meet Nie Mingjue, leading to them hitting it off as friends despite Nie Mingjue expressing that he had absolutely no interest in getting married to Jiang Yanli, or indeed to any nice young lady at all; then, in turn, Nie Mingjue had brought him to the Lan sect to meet Lan Xichen. They’d gotten along as well, although the most notable outcome of that visit had been little Lan Wangji developing a crush on his elder brother’s new friend while Wei Wuxian remained blissfully oblivious. His wanderings had continued even after Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan had found their way back to each other, affianced once again through their own choice rather than their parents’.

Said parents had not yet been informed of this new situation, as they were waiting for the right time to mention it. Or perhaps more accurately, the right situation to exploit with it…

Now, Nie Mingjue thought. Now was the time. It would work perfectly.

And not just as a distraction.

“Are you sure…?”

“I am,” Nie Mingjue said. “Whatever it is, Wen Ruohan must be kept from obtaining all of the pieces; he’s already too powerful, and more power will only make him more arrogant. I’ll speak with Lan Qiren. Once I take the Dafan Wen back to the Nie sect, your sister will be able to testify to whatever it is that she was asked to search for, which will give Lan Qiren the evidence he needs to get his sect’s approval for retaliatory measures. Moreover, using Wei Wuxian to help me will force Jiang Fengmian to support me as well; there’s no way he’d ever refuse to back him to the hilt.”

“The Jin sect –”

“Will join us,” Nie Mingjue said, thinking of Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan’s yet-to-be-announced engagement. Once Jin Guangshan realized that he would be pulled into the same boat as the rest of them whether he wanted to or not, any resistance he had would crumble like a structure made of sand being beaten down by the tide. “They won’t have a choice. Is there anything else I should know?”

“There’s a child,” Wen Ning said, biting his lips. “Around the same age as your brother or my sister, or maybe the Jiang sect heir, I don’t know, around that. He helps Sect Leader Wen with whatever he’s doing.”

“A child helps him?”

Nie Mingjue didn’t like the sound of that.

“I don’t know. Some secret his family knows, I think…his surname is Xue.”

Nie Mingjue frowned.

“I don’t know much about him,” Wen Ning added. “Only that he has some history with the Yueyang Chang clan. Bad history.”

“That’s a good start,” Nie Mingjue said. He realized that he hadn’t yet released Wen Ning’s shoulders, and gave them a small squeeze before doing so. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I will do everything I can to help you.”

Wen Ning looked at him with admiration in his eyes, making Nie Mingjue feel a little hot under the collar.

“Thank you, Chifeng-zun,” he murmured, and Nie Mingjue shook his head.

“Call me by name,” he said, and tried to smile. “You’ll be here a lot in the future, if all goes well.”

Nie Mingjue hated the Wen sect, but he didn’t hate gentle and sad Wen Ning.

He didn’t hate him at all.