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The last thing Jiang Cheng wants to see on a night hunt is a black robe surrounded by white.
His luck was bound to run out eventually, but at least there are small mercies. The Lan disciples accompanying Wei Wuxian are the two youths Jin Ling likes, with no Hanguang-jun in sight, and no sign of Wen Ning lurking in the treeline.
Lan Sizhui — the polite one Jiang Cheng prefers to deal with, who clearly learned from Zewu-jun's example over Hanguang-jun's passive-aggressive ass — greets their hunting party first, taking the lead of his own party of younger disciples. The loud one who asks to see Zidian and Sandu every time they meet without fail (and has thus far not taken the hint that it won't be happening) quips something to Wei Wuxian, and squawks like a startled hen when Wei Wuxian cuffs the back of his head.
Wei Wuxian, standing between them, looks— healthier than the last time they met.
Healthier is relative. Mo Xuanyu had been gaunt, bordering on frail, when he sacrificed his life to summon Wei Wuxian's soul. But all of that was years ago. Wei Wuxian no longer looks haunted, and from the fit of his robes it doesn't look like he skips meals, so he must be properly cared for in Cloud Recesses.
It isn't his place to care anymore, no matter how much Jin Ling pushes and hints, so Jiang Cheng returns a brief greeting and turns his attention to his disciples, who are his responsibility.
Tonight's hunt is simple. The yao is a small creature, fawn-like in size and shape, tricky to wrangle but otherwise benign. They're mostly known for leading travelers astray along wooded roads, abandoning the lost at the first sign of a stronger yao or a wandering corpse. It's quick and smart enough to pose a challenge for his uncertain junior disciples, but a misstep here would be embarrassing rather than fatal.
The Lans are a welcome addition to their lesson. This group of Jiang disciples have worked together before, have built a rapport and some confidence in their abilities as a team, but they've yet to collaborate with another sect on a hunt. Working together with other sects and rogue cultivators will become the norm once they move on to difficult night hunts, requiring quick thinking and adaptability to work together toward a common goal without tripping over each other's swords.
The hunt itself is uneventful. The two groups integrate quickly, working in tandem to corner and dispatch the yao with simple sword techniques. Jiang Cheng lingers at the edge of the formation, sticking close to the treeline to watch and bark corrections to the youngest disciples' forms when they slip up in the excitement of the chase.
One of the last remaining yao, the smallest of the bunch, clears the line of disciples and leaves behind a swirling confusion of purple, blue, and white as it lunges for the low vegetation at the forest's edge. It comes mere steps away from the thicket of chest-height white flowers and low-growing shrubs before the Jiang and Lan disciples can regroup to cut it off.
Sandu's edge cleaves the flowers and branches from their stems in a wide arc, sending up a flurry of powder-fine seeds along with the yao's severed head.
Jiang Cheng breathes in sharply, on reflex, before he thinks to cover his nose and mouth with his vambrace, signaling to his disciples to stay back. The Lan children follow their lead.
Never one to listen when he could act instead, Wei Wuxian comes to a halt at Jiang Cheng's flank and sneezes twice into his sleeve. His eyes glitter with mischief over the black fabric; his voice comes out muffled and teasing. "Kind of overkill, don't you think?"
Jiang Cheng sheathes Sandu and turns away without acknowledging him. "Regroup," he shouts, and his disciples scramble to attention.
The trek back to the inn is uncomfortable.
There's a growing restlessness, a buzzing pulse under Jiang Cheng's skin, an unease that's unwarranted for how well the hunt went.
There's no real reason to feel so strongly now. The disciples of both clans did well. Wei Wuxian has kept his distance, for the most part, lecturing and teasing the juniors of both clans with the same easy comraderie Jiang Cheng remembers from their youth, tempering his criticism with praise in a way Jiang Cheng has never managed to master.
It's not ideal that they met tonight, but Jiang Cheng will deal with it, just like he's dealt with being in close quarters with Wei Wuxian before. The hour is late. It makes sense that they're all rooming at the same place. Odds are low that there would be another inn nearby with enough lodgings for all of his disciples, and before long they'll all be in bed in their separate rooms anyway.
Jiang Cheng will deal with whatever's wrong with him behind a closed, locked door, and the sooner the better.
He tries to ignore the feeling of wrongness that's taken root and spreads, bleeding from his throat into his chest, pumping into his limbs with the rush of his blood.
By the time they reach the inn, the restless feeling has progressed to a subdermal itch, impossible to ignore.
Jiang Cheng's instructions to the most senior of his disciples, a fresh-faced boy of thirteen, are clipped and muttered through grit teeth. The young disciple shrinks back under his glare, but he sets off with Jiang Cheng's coin purse in hand to negotiate supper for their hunting party and get the group started on their reports.
When Jiang Cheng finally retreats to his rented room, blessedly alone, his skin is pulsing hot and alive.
Jiang Cheng stumbles to the bed, sits down heavily, and brings all of his experience with meditation to bear, desperate for relief. Circulating energy through his body is second nature: drawing the itching discomfort out of his limbs and inward to his golden core to be cleansed is a practiced skill.
The effect is instant.
The itch gets worse everywhere, but worst at his core, an ache too far under the skin to scratch that overwhelms any attempt at rational thought or distraction. It bows Jiang Cheng in half, leaves him clawing at the tight fit of his belt and sash, then into the layers over his abdomen when loosening those ties offers no relief.
What the fuck. Not likely a trick played by the yao; they aren't uncommon, and he's never heard of them having an ability like this. As if Jiang Cheng needs whatever the hell's happening to his body on top of everything else that happened today.
The moonlight is further across the floorboards when he's drawn out of his insensate state by a knock at the door.
Meditation didn't work, so Jiang Cheng turns to pain. Fumbling to draw his sword a few inches from its sheath, Jiang Cheng bears down on Sandu's cutting edge, slicing clean into the meat of his hand. It works to ground his focus long enough to stumble the few steps to the door and fumble with the lock.
Wei Wuxian's voice comes to him like a shout through water, distorted and strange like his matching expression. "Shit. Is that blood? You look rough, Jiang Cheng." This might as well fucking happen, Jiang Cheng thinks, and apparently says out loud because Wei Wuxian snorts and tips his head like they're sharing a joke. "Aiya, you tried cultivating it away. Figured you would."
Jiang Cheng is aware enough to catch the judgment, the unspoken obviously you did.
Wei Wuxian rambles, light and unbothered, while he marches Jiang Cheng back into the room. Every shuffling backward step chips away at Jiang Cheng's hard-won clarity. "The cook noticed the pollen on my sleeve and told me something interesting! The flowers in that meadow work great on cultivators. You try to circulate it through your meridians, it gets into your energy through your core, and you're down for the count until you find an outlet. The yao makes a getaway while you're busy working out the pollen's effects. Clever."
Jiang Cheng can barely work his mouth to ask. "Outlet?"
Wei Wuxian makes a loose circle with his thumb and middle finger and moves his hand in a crude jerking motion. "You're really going to make me say it! Haha. The trick is to remove as much of the bad essence as you can. I guess bleeding it out also works, in theory, but that's no fun."
Shameless. Some things never change. "I don't—"
Wei Wuxian tuts and slaps Jiang Cheng's hands away from his collar, letting the sides of his outer robe fall limp so he can push off the first layer. "What, you don't know? Well, you should have paid more attention to Huaisang's yellow books, yeah?"
Jiang Cheng isn't brand new. He's aware of his own arousal, used to tamping it down until it's no longer endurable, then dealing with it quietly and efficiently.
The wounded sound that leaves Jiang Cheng is unintentional. Wei Wuxian stops dead.
"Jiang Cheng," Wei Wuxian says, lilting and mean. He considers something for a moment. The smile that lights his face is fake as hell. "Most people wander into that field and get a light dusting of pollen on their clothes. If you hadn't gone in sword-first, you wouldn't be in this mess, but it's too late to worry about that now, yeah? If it bothers you that much I can get someone else, or we could try it your way… Just figured you wouldn't want anyone else to know you were tricked by a little yao."
Jiang Cheng's mouth doesn't want to move, but this is important. "Don't have to. I don't expect."
His words seems to take the mean edge off, but Wei Wuxian still looks thrown. "It's not like that. I'm offering."
The first brush of Wei Wuxian's palm on the bare skin of his shoulder sends Jiang Cheng's energy into a tailspin, and then Sandu is no longer tied at his hip, and digging his own nails into the wound doesn't have the same effect, and each movement blurs into the next until he finds himself seated on the bed mat again, with Wei Wuxian no longer in front of him.
There's a buzz in his ears — someone talking close by — but all Jiang Cheng can do is stare down at his chest, at hands parting the final layer of robes between calloused palms and bare skin, taking in only what he can see. One hand flattens against his stomach, pulling him back against a solid surface, while the other closes around his cock.
Jiang Cheng knocks his head back onto a solid support, overwhelmed and unable to focus on anything beyond the live pulse of want beneath his skin, the rough friction of callouses where he desperately aches. It takes no time at all to reach the edge.
Jiang Cheng gasps back to awareness to the wet cup of Wei Wuxian's palm around the head of his cock, working him through the last pulses of his climax. It feels like someone punched Jiang Cheng in the gut, knocking the wind out of him, and he can't gulp in air fast enough to fill his lungs.
From the easy rise and fall of his voice, almost rhythmic, Jiang Cheng assumes Wei Wuxian's been talking to himself the entire time, while he was too far gone to understand. "Do you enjoy the sound of your own voice so much?" His throat feels dry as ash, raspy and new.
Wei Wuxian falters, then laughs, loud and bright, into the damp skin of Jiang Cheng's bared shoulder. He gets even by smearing come across Jiang Cheng's stomach. "Guess you're feeling better, huh? Figured that would take the edge off."
"Stubborn. Of course you'd be the one to find out," Wei Wuxian chirps. "It's fine. We'll take care of it together, yeah?"
Jiang Cheng weakly goes where Wei Wuxian moves him, until he's sprawled on his front across the bed mat, hips propped up by Wei Wuxian's knee.
"So, listen," Wei Wuxian hedges. His voice still sounds wrong, traveling to Jiang Cheng from far away, though everywhere their skin touches feels charged, urgent. Jiang Cheng recognizes the smell of the oil he keeps in his qiankun pouch; when had Wei Wuxian had time to dig through his things? Oil-slicked fingers massage at the curve of his ass, making an unnecessary mess and stalling for time. "I don't know if you know how two men—"
This idiot can't be serious. Like hell is Jiang Cheng going to sit through a lecture on sex from the same brat who'd shamelessly lied about his conquests in their youth, especially not when Wei Wuxian probably learned everything he knew about sex from the Iceblock of Gusu Lan, and who knew where Lan Wangji learned anything beyond his own self-righteous hand. "Stop running your mouth and get on with it, or I'll do it myself."
He can't see Wei Wuxian's expression, but at least he stops talking.
Jiang Cheng isn't sure whether it's Wei Wuxian's hand or his body shaking. He feels those oiled fingers working him open with halting, uncertain motions, not nearly enough to scratch the itch.
At least Wei Wuxian knows better than to waste his time teasing when Jiang Cheng is already frustrated enough to snap. He lines up and slides into Jiang Cheng in one long inward thrust, holding firm, grasping white-knuckled at Jiang Cheng's hipbones while Jiang Cheng clings to the bedding. "Huh. I need. I need a minute."
Jiang Cheng passed the point where he could have held back ages ago. He pushes back, frantic, desperate for the relief he knows is coming, for thoughts that don't swirl away before he can catch them. The last thing he wants is to sit still and think about any part of this.
"So impatient!" Wei Wuxian squeezes a palmful of his hip and takes a steadying breath.
And then— from deep in his lower dantian, like zidian's tip connecting and lashing tight around an obstacle, something grabs and pulls, drawing out the discomfort until it twines between them in a living circuit of energy. Jiang Cheng collapses forward into his crossed arms with a gasp, dizzy with relief, feeling more clear-headed than he has since this whole ordeal began.
Wei Wuxian mirrors his gasp, bucking forward until he bottoms out, thighs pressing tight against Jiang Cheng's ass, and whatever got stuck in his throat dislodges to let words spill out in a flood. "What the fuck, Jiang Cheng! How were you just walking around like this?"
He's still for so long, clenching and releasing his fingers on Jiang Cheng's hip, that Jiang Cheng takes pity on him and pulls away. Wei Wuxian tries to follow, mumbling. "No no no, I'll be fine, just let me—"
Jiang Cheng rolls onto his back. This time, face to face and less muddled, Jiang Cheng feels Wei Wuxian sink in to the root, inch by inch, eyes searching his face for… something. Who knows.
If Jiang Cheng wanted to be cruel — and part of him does, part of him wants to take all of his mixed up, muddled feelings and make them someone else's to feel — he could point out that Wei Wuxian isn't great at this. His first few thrusts lack finesse and rhythm, and he makes so much noise that Jiang Cheng can't imagine he's truly enjoying himself, like he can't wait to leave this room and needs a distraction to get through this.
Surely Wei Wuxian can endure him long enough to expel the rest of the pollen from their bodies. At least Jiang Cheng finally has the clarity of mind and energy to reciprocate. If Wei Wuxian doesn't want to think, then the obvious solution is to make this so good that he doesn't have to think.
When Wei Wuxian withdraws, Jiang Cheng hooks a leg around his hip and squeezes, urging his thrusts faster, harder, with his heel setting the pace. He sets his other foot into the bedding and arches to change the angle of each thrust, pleasure building up like static beneath his skin, and a hard inward thrust hits the right angle, knocking a satisfied moan from his chest.
Wei Wuxian's breath stutters, pupils blown wide to swallow all but a hair-thin ring of grey iris. A vindictive part of Jiang Cheng is pleased to see him so affected. "Huh. There's no way you're just naturally good at this— hah, Jiang Cheng? So you must have practiced with someone? Is that who you're thinking about right now?"
Startled, Jiang Cheng looks up, blinking to clear eyes damp from pushing through overstimulation.
Wei Wuxian blinks down at him, surprised, and his movements fall out of sync.
His expression makes Jiang Cheng want to lash out and bite. Is that seriously his problem? You're a lifetime too late if you were hoping to have me first. "Think whatever you want," he mutters, scratching his nails across the fine skin of Wei Wuxian's nape to drag him down into an open-mouthed kiss. Anything to stop him from talking and making this worse than it has to be.
(The answer is no one of consequence, no one Jiang Cheng cares to think twice about, a few mundane men so far removed from the jianghu that they would never have a chance to meet again. Wei Wuxian wouldn't understand.)
The pace slows to a steady grind, with Wei Wuxian distracted by the slow glide of mouths, shy like he hasn't been about any other part of this night, and Jiang Cheng bent at an angle that makes it difficult to push back against each thrust.
Mo Xuanyu's shoulders are narrower than Jiang Cheng's, and Wei Wuxian's had been broader than Jiang Cheng in their youth. Jiang Cheng is the only constant to measure against. Mo Xuanyu could have been taller, broader, more like the Jin side of his family in stature in another life, if not for mistreatment during his growing years.
Jiang Cheng clings to those shoulders all the same, breaths punched out of him with the grinding force of each thrust as Wei Wuxian finally, finally gets his mind into it and picks up his pace.
Wei Wuxian runs his mouth again the second Jiang Cheng tips his head back into the bedding. None of it makes sense to Jiang Cheng, background noise to the slap of each thrust, to their mingled breaths. He's close, so close, pleasure building in his core, but he cracks his eyes open to glare.
It's not long before Jiang Cheng's body draws taut, and he comes over his stomach, liquid heat pooling in his navel, biting his lip against a shout that tries to tear free. Finally he goes slack, catching his breath in shallow gasps, watching Wei Wuxian chase his own release through a pleasant haze even while his nerves sing with conflicting desires, too much and more—
Wei Wuxian pulls out shortly after his thrusts begin to rabbit, stroking himself to completion across Jiang Cheng's abdomen. Somehow none of it hits the bedding, dripping to pool into the crevices where Jiang Cheng's raised thighs meet his torso.
Then he ruins it by flopping his full weight across Jiang Cheng's chest, tilting Jiang Cheng and the sticky mess onto the sheets.
"How did you even manage to walk back to the inn," Wei Wuxian complains, his body a dead weight, running hot with sweat and exertion. Jiang Cheng, in no better shape, pinches his hip, and doesn't try to bite back a grin when Wei Wuxian lets out a disgruntled hiss.
Exhausted and finally, finally clear-headed, Jiang Cheng rests his eyes. Just for a moment.
Jiang Cheng's life has never been his own. It was clear long before his eyes began to stray toward the disciples of other sects, drawn to broad shoulders and lean muscle, that what he might want was secondary to the duty that was his birthright; the looming promise that someday he must take a wife and have children to continue the Jiang clan, an expectation set from birth and written in stone with the destruction of Lotus Pier.
Why bother to want anything that doesn't lead toward that end? It would be a waste of time to think about things that will never come to pass.
But still Jiang Cheng thought about it, weak-willed and helpless not to consider the shape of what could be, in a different life. When mom was away in Meishan, and dad was in meetings with the elders, and duty stayed behind on the pier; when they swam for hours and sunned themselves dry in the bottom of a sampan, down to their inner pants, while the boat drifted in lazy circles with the current; when the sun was so bright behind Jiang Cheng's closed eyes that it became all he could see, and when he opened his eyes there was Wei Ying, glowing and unreal and so close they could touch, snoring in his sleep and sunkissed—
Wanting was never in question. Unlike Wei Wuxian, however, reaching out and grasping what he wants has never been an option.
Jiang Cheng doesn't trust quiet, especially not around Wei Wuxian, so at least there's one constant thread connecting their youth and now. When he cracks open his eyes to catch Wei Wuxian doing whatever it is he doesn't want to be caught doing, Wei Wuxian is studying his scars, hands fidgeting with the stained bedding.
The scars clearly still bother Wei Wuxian. It must feel strange for him, in a body that bears someone else's history: no sunburst Wen brand, no evidence of the transfer surgery, none of the hundred little marks that predated Wei Wuxian's formation of a golden core and his difficult years surviving on the streets of Yiling.
(Nothing about that day is pleasant to think about, but Jiang Cheng would do it again in a heartbeat, even now, all of these years and heartbreaks later. Not that it matters now. But it had mattered, once.)
"Don't you have kids to mind?" His voice comes out wrecked; he doesn't remember being loud.
Wei Wuxian shrugs, with a nonchalant smile that immediately puts Jiang Cheng on edge. Fine. If the cagey fucker doesn't want to explain why he's night hunting here, of all places, then Jiang Cheng doesn't need to know.
Wei Wuxian sets his jaw and explains, against Jiang Cheng's expectations. "They're the ones in charge. It's got nothing to do with me, really, we just happened to meet here. Don't worry, Jiang Cheng, I'm sure A-Yuan made sure your juniors got to bed. Aiya, he's growing into a man to be proud of, more mature every time I see him."
Been a while? Don't you see them daily in Cloud Recesses? Maybe Wei Wuxian just returned from wandering. Hanguang-jun seems to be everywhere but Cloud Recesses, if the rumours are trustworthy, and where else would Wei Wuxian be but at his side, pursuing chaos? Who knows. Jiang Cheng lost the right to ask a long time ago.
The sentiment is apparently not mutual. "Don't think I forgot. You've done this before, yeah? So who was it?"
"None of your business," Jiang Cheng mutters. He would love to roll onto his other side and away but that would take energy he doesn't have.
Jiang Cheng's business is evidently still Wei Wuxian's business, though, because he doesn't drop the subject. "Huaisang? En, you didn't seem particularly close… Another sect leader? Maybe it was Xichen-ge."
He actually doesn't want to hear Wei Wuxian's next guess, because the coy expression Wei Wuxian shoots him from the corner of his eyes is so familiar that Jiang Cheng is preemptively pissed off about whatever he's about to say. "Does it matter?"
Jiang Cheng isn't sure he remembers Wei Wuxian's original face. Not really. Another thing lost to time; another detail to leave in the past, along with the scant centimeter of height Wei Wuxian used to crow about. He's shorter than Jiang Cheng now, no longer slightly older and smug about a handful of days.
It would be easier if he was a complete stranger. If Jiang Cheng could mourn another person and lay him to rest. If there weren't little reminders, persisting across years of hate and guilt and blame, a brand new skin, the revelation of everything that had been sacrificed and how they'd failed each other. But the expression is so Wei Wuxian that it makes his chest ache.
Wei Wuxian clicks his mouth shut. "I guess it doesn't. Just curious."
Now that he can think, Jiang Cheng can no longer avoid the fact that Wei Wuxian came to his room knowing exactly what he was walking into; chose to draw away some of the effect, putting himself in pain to ease Jiang Cheng's. Far from the actions of someone who wants nothing more to do with him. His words and actions don't line up with someone motivated by duty and nothing else.
Jiang Cheng wishes he could sleep, stop thinking, but he can feel Wei Wuxian's restlessness, his fidgeting, even when he closes his eyes.
"I meant it," Wei Wuxian says eventually, still wiggling out of his own skin, but his voice is quiet and reflective in a way that's unfamiliar. "I meant what I said. I miss you. I want--"
Jiang Cheng cracks open one eye. Confusion must be clear on his face.
Wei Wuxian flops dramatically onto his back. "Jiang Cheng. So cruel! I poured my heart out and you have nothing to say?"
"When?"
"What do you mean, when? When I was stroking your di—"
Gods and ghosts and everything in between. Two lifetimes and Wei Wuxian was still the same shameless asshole at heart. "Don't fucking say it! I didn't hear shit."
Wei Wuxian flops dramatically onto the bed and groans.
Jiang Cheng might regret it tomorrow. Maybe he'll wake up alone. Maybe tonight was a fever dream.
Still. Given the chance, maybe Jiang Cheng will take it. Just this once. Even if it's only for one night.
"Tell me again in the morning," Jiang Cheng offers.