baby it's a black hole

Jiang Cheng wakes up, alive again.

It's really just like that, no in-between, drifting state: one moment he's in the deepest, most restoring sleep of his life, and the next, there's golden light hitting his eyes. He blinks them open, and takes a breath with his whole chest. Qi sings through his meridians. Jiang Cheng can feel parts of his body that were numb and heavy for days. He can hear the spiders catching insects in the grass, and see the Jade Hare in the faint moon that hangs in the morning sky above him. He's alive.

He springs to his feet, landing lightly. There's no one else around him, as he was told there would not be, so for the sheer feeling of it he jumps again, as high as he can. As soon as he lands, he runs downhill to a bent-over tree, slaps his hand against its bark and sprints back to where he woke up; he's not winded, his breath not even coming fast. On his hand, Zidian glows and purrs. Everything just feels right. It was as if his limbs were the wrong length, the last days, and his head was a candle guttering low in the holder. Now, he's a torch flame. His golden core spins inside him, restored and stronger than ever. He's alive, he's—

Alive. Unlike his parents. Unlike all his shidi and shimei. The Wen even killed the servants at Lotus Pier. They washed the main courtyard in blood.

Jiang Cheng sits down hard, his knees giving out. He has to fall back onto the ground, even, to let the memories wash over him. They leave a greyness in their wake, a fainter version of the fog that hung between him and the world until he woke up just now.

He can't bring them back, but it's good that he's alive, because now he can get revenge for them. He and Wei Wuxian will bring death down upon the Wen who murdered their sect, and they will raise Yunmeng Jiang from the ground. That's what this was all for.

Glancing over the ground where he was left to wake up, Jiang Cheng straightens his robes and hair. Then he turns to face uphill and kowtows to Baoshan Sanren, knocking his forehead on the long mountain grass three times in thanks for the boon that was reserved for his shixiong.

It takes him two days to walk to the village where he and Wei Wuxian agreed to meet up. They went over the directions again and again while they were preparing for this trip, in between rehearsing the answers the Immortal would demand of him, but Jiang Cheng is worried nonetheless that he will lose the way. If he had Sandu still, he could glide down the mountainside like a wild goose—faster than he ever has before, he suspects. Without it, he's earthbound and slow.

He only has to retrace his steps once, after following the downwards slope of the land brings him to a ragged, impassable gorge, but by late in the second day he's getting scared that he's hopelessly off course. All the mountains look the same on the horizon, every riverbend is identical to the previous one. Just when sunset is bleeding up into the western sky, and he's wondering how much longer he should walk before resting and reconsidering his path, Jiang Cheng hears the grunting of pigs and the cackle of fowl, drifting towards him on the breeze.

It has to be the right place. He can let himself run, now, so he does, his outer robes streaming behind him as he reaches the outer gate of the nameless village. The grizzled head of a villager lifts itself vaguely above the windowsill above the gate; Jiang Cheng stills his feet, runs his palms over his robe and begins to justify his presence, but the old man sees only a gentleman and waves him lazily in.

The village is tiny. It should be the work of moments to find his shixiong, but it's not.

There's no inn or restaurant here, and only one teahouse. Jiang Cheng strides in—it's hard not to stride, even after two days on foot—fully expecting to see Wei Wuxian at one of the tables in the back, leaning against the wall with a smile on his face and a cup in his hand. He's not there.

It's on his second circuit of the place that Jiang Cheng sees him, slumped against the wall of an alley leading away from the village's central square. His eyes had skated over him the first time he'd passed by; it's only by coincidence that now he lets one of his knees fall out to the side just as Jiang Cheng approaches.

"Wei Wuxian!" A gust of anger blows through his chest. "What are you doing, sitting here like a beggar? Is this what you call waiting for me?"

Wei Wuxian's eyes are slightly unfocused as he blinks up at Jiang Cheng. There's a noticeable pause before his smile spreads wide across his cheeks, but he sounds just the same as always when he says, "Aiya, Jiang Cheng, I just got tired. You kept me waiting so long!"

"Get up," Jiang Cheng huffs, holding out a hand for Wei Wuxian to pull himself up by while he looks to either side for any attention they might have drawn. "Where are you staying? I've been walking for two days without food. I hope you've found somewhere comfortable here."

His shixiong doesn't reply. When Jiang Cheng glances back, he's looking him over with soft eyes. "It worked, then?" he asks. "Jiang Cheng, you got your core back?"

He can't believe he hasn't even thanked Wei Wuxian yet! This is how much his shixiong annoys him, that he'd forget to thank him for saving his life. "Yeah," he says, surprising himself at how quiet his reply is. "It worked perfectly." He pulls Wei Wuxian into an embrace, slapping his shoulder and breaking away when he feels a dangerous little pull at his tear ducts. Wei Wuxian sways slightly after him.

"So where are we staying?" They're walking through the square, past the empty spots where vendors would stand on market days. Jiang Cheng's not hungry exactly, inedia coming more easily to him than he remembers from past attempts, but his thoughts keep circling back to a table full of food, a bed with blankets, four walls around them so he and Wei Wuxian can plan their next steps. He just needs a moment of calm to get his feet back under him.

"Oh... Jiang Cheng, I didn't want to make too much fuss, or talk too much to the people here. You know, in case they remembered me."

"Wei Wuxian. Where have you been sleeping?"

"It's been so warm, I didn't really even need a bed."

He stops, spins round, grabs the older boy by the shoulders. "What is wrong with you?"

Wei Wuxian's hands creep up in between them in a supplicating gesture that irritates Jiang Cheng even more. It's halfway to full darkness, now, and the grey light makes him look sallow and tired. He tips his head to one side, pointing out the middle-aged couple staring at the two of them from across the street. They don't look away when Jiang Cheng glares at them, though he sees the wife say something quietly to her husband. This is their village, after all, and they don't know who the two young masters scuffling in the street are. Why shouldn't they watch?

He drops Wei Wuxian's robe in disgust. "In a tiny place like this, everyone will remember you no matter what you do. You should have just acted normally." For once in your life goes unsaid. Without checking Wei Wuxian is following, he marches back to the tea house.

"Of course we have a room for the honoured young masters," the tea-shop owner assures him, while his wife mutters rapid orders to the servant behind the counter. "Please, make yourselves comfortable downstairs while the accommodations are prepared."

"I want dinner, as well. Brought up to the room. And a bath."

"Ah..." The man wrings his hands. The servant leaves, presumably to clear out his own room. Hopefully he'll change the bedlinens as well.

Jiang Cheng sighs, and pulls his money pouch just out of his sleeve.

"It's really no problem if that's not possible, is it, Ji—ah, di?" Wei Wuxian says placatingly. What has got into him, to be this weirdly deferential?

"I want a bath," Jiang Cheng repeats. Scowling at his shixiong, he tells him, "Look, there's only going to be one bed, and I'm not sharing it with you unless you wash first, ge."

"Of course, of course, a bath is no problem." The owner names a price, for which they should by rights get to keep the bathtub and maybe the bed as well, and Jiang Cheng pays it. The cakes brought out to them are stale. He bites into one and then lets Wei Wuxian wolf down the rest of the dish.

In the room, which is cramped, with mismatched furniture, Wei Wuxian suddenly has energy to spare.

"Let me see you, let me feel your pulse," he demands, reaching for Jiang Cheng's hands. "You look so much better, shidi. Ah, your eyes are bright again! How do you feel? You've got no pain anywhere, right?"

"Get off me," Jiang Cheng says, no heat in his voice. It's embarrassing, this comparison with how he looked after Wen Zhuliu... after that. He doesn't want to think about being rescued, or about those lost days where he floated belly-down in forced sleep, only surfacing to see more Wens in white-and-red robes, forcing bitter medicine into his mouth.

Nonetheless, the thrill of rebirth is still running through his meridians. Not even Wei Wuxian's antics can dampen it for long. He keeps frowning and then feeling the crease in his brow unfolding by itself. Sometimes Wei Wuxian grins at him, and he realises he was smiling first. It's wrong to be happy, when so much has been destroyed, but he can't help it and he won't push it down. He's back in his body, after days of following it like a ghost, only weakly tethered to his mortal form. After the shock of fitting back inside himself, all of him feels golden, not just his core.

"I think it's stronger than it was before," he tells Wei Wuxian, while he's pressing his fingers to Jiang Cheng's acupoints. The flood of qi that runs through them drowns out the answering stream from his shixiong's body. Could it be that he's even stronger than Wei Wuxian now?

"Good, good." Wei Wuxian looks away, suddenly. "I'm glad my shifu could take care of you." After a pause, he draws in a breath and pulls back his hands. "I'm going to take a bath now. You get behind the screen, okay?"

"Hey, you smell much worse than me," Jiang Cheng says with forced levity. "I should have first turn with the bathwater!"

They wrestle a bit but it's strange, as if Wei Wuxian is holding back way more than Jiang Cheng has ever known him to. Before he knows it, Wei Wuxian is underneath him, back on the floor and shoulders leaning up against the low table that had to be moved out of the way so there was room for the tub. Jiang Cheng's got his wrists pinned against the scratched lacquer of the tabletop, and he's not even pushing against the hold.

There's a flush high on Wei Wuxian's cheeks. He's breathing harder than he should be—Jiang Cheng's weight is across his chest, but far from all of it—and suddenly, Jiang Cheng feels the urgent need to get up and away from him.

"Right, I'm going first," he says, turning his back. "You get behind the screen, if you care that much." Ridiculous: they've seen each other undressed a thousand times, what with swimming and training, and they bathed together as children. Right now, though, Jiang Cheng would prefer it—for no particular reason!—if his shixiong gave him a little privacy.

He hasn't taken all his clothes off since waking up on the mountainside and he has to admit, the inner layers smell pretty ripe. He wonders if it's worth getting them washed here. Probably it makes more sense to leave as soon as they wake in the morning.

When he hears Wei Wuxian scrambling onto the bed, the privacy screen having been pushed right up against it, Jiang Cheng pushes down his trousers and steps into the water. He could wish the water was colder, but this is all right, he's calming down from whatever weird reaction he had just then.

"Don't you want to hear what it was like?" he asks. "You haven't asked about the mountain or about Baoshan Sanren at all."

"Ah, Jiang Cheng..." Wei Wuxian coughs once, and wheezes the next couple of breaths. It was just from the wrestling, then, his heavy breathing. Jiang Cheng probably elbowed him in the chest without noticing. That's all it was.

"Isn't it better not to know?" he continues. "I can't go there myself, after all. What's the point in asking what it was like there, when it won't do me any good? And besides!" His voice perks up, as if he's just remembered something. "You were blindfolded the whole time. What would you even have to tell me?"

Jiang Cheng grunts and dips his head underwater.

When he comes back up, Wei Wuxian is asking anxiously, "You did keep the blindfold on the entire time, right? Shidi?"

"Yeah, I did. Don't worry. They let me back down again, didn't they?"

"Right. Of course."

There's a pink line running across his belly, midway between his navel and the thatch of his pubic hair. It's already lighter than the livid mark of the discipline whip on his chest. He runs the tip of one finger gingerly along it; the scar is supple, neither raised nor sore. Still, he flinches away from the touch.

Once he's finished in the bath, he dries himself off and they shuffle awkwardly around the room. It's a relief to pull on clean clothing, even if the undergarments were borrowed from Wen Ning. Qishan silk is no rougher than Yunmeng silk, but the cut is different; the fabric falls around him in a way that's uncomfortable for being unfamiliar. Jiang Cheng is going to be a lot more organised about what he keeps in his qiankun pouch from now on, he's sworn to himself. He lies back on the bed listening to the splash of water and the little huffs Wei Wuxian makes as he moves around.

The servant removes the bath, once they're both clean, and pulls the table back into position. The room doesn't feel any less claustrophobic for it. Wei Wuxian sidles between the candelabrum and the screen to sit down and Jiang Cheng watches his progress with a scowl, just waiting for the hem of his robe to catch and pull the whole arrangement down.

They eat in silence to begin with. Jiang Cheng's started to feel the days of walking in his thighs, the muscles twitching as they realise they're going to get enough of a break now to fully relax. Wei Wuxian looks almost too tired to eat, as if that would ever stop him.

"What's wrong, Jiang Cheng?" he asks suddenly, looking up from his bowl.

Jiang Cheng just meets his gaze, not even lifting an arm to convey, Where do you want me to start?

"You've been... staring at me, this whole evening, shidi," Wei Wuxian adds, more slowly. The colour in his cheeks didn't fade after the bath, and now, with the food and candles, the room's got stuffy and he's even pinker than before. It should look healthy but it only highlights the shadows under his eyes, so deep they look like grooves in the skin.

"No, I haven't," he says automatically, and shoves a meatball in his mouth.

"Okay, then, you haven't." Wei Wuxian leans an elbow on the table and slumps forward over his bowl, resting his head on the hand that still grasps his oily chopsticks. His eyes slide shut. The expression slips from his face. "I'm just resting, shidi," he murmurs, just as Jiang Cheng's about to grab him by the shoulder and shake.

Still reaching towards him, Jiang Cheng hangs there awkwardly for a moment before transforming the gesture into a clap on the shoulder. "If you're that tired, get into bed. I'm not dragging you to Meishan covered in chilli sauce and shallots."

"Sure. Sure, okay."

He doesn't move until Jiang Cheng stands, pushes his hands into Wei Wuxian's armpits and heaves him up against his own chest. Unbalanced, they lurch backwards and almost do crash into the candelabrum.

"Wei Wuxian!" he growls into his shixiong's ear, pushing his head forwards so he can see his face: yes, Wei Wuxian still has his eyes shut. "This is not the time to play around!"

This close, he can see how his eyelids flutter as they open, Wei Wuxian's long eyelashes brushing against his cheeks. His feet are on the floor, but his whole weight is sagged against Jiang Cheng's chest. The pulse in his throat is hectic, though he's done nothing more than sit and eat. It hits Jiang Cheng like something that was in front of him the whole time and only now comes into focus, like an optical illusion resolving itself. Something is very wrong with Wei Wuxian.

With exquisite clarity, he sees his mother's body being lifted up from the courtyard at Lotus Pier by a Wen disciple, so that another Wen can tie a rope to suspend her from the eaves. Her head had dropped backwards over her shoulder in a motion no living body would ever make.

He'd thrown up, then, held upright between the two faceless Wens who were marching him towards Wen Chao. Here and now, he pushes the bile and his dinner back down to his stomach with a conscious effort. Wei Wuxian makes a grunt of protest. Jiang Cheng relaxes the muscles of his arms that had convulsively squeezed him, too hard, and walks him painstakingly to the bed.

"Get in and sleep," he says. "I'm not undressing you."

He goes back into the main part of the room and sits there until the servant whose room they're usurping comes to clear away the dishes. Then he goes back to the bed, where Wei Wuxian has collapsed crossways over the blanket. Of course he has to undress him. Of course he has to peel the covers out from underneath him, as Wei Wuxian curls into himself and makes sleepy, unhelpful noises, and then roll him over towards the wall so that there's room for Jiang Cheng to get onto the bed as well.

The bed is probably comfortable enough for its usual occupant, a slight man with stooped shoulders. Both Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian, however, are tall and athletic. The sheets rustle as they shift against one another, trying to find a way to lie comfortably and not on top of each other.

Jiang Cheng pulls his hands up onto his chest to make more space for Wei Wuxian's arms, but he's too tense like that to sleep. He rolls onto his side, facing into the room and away from his shixiong, and finds himself so close to the edge that his knees hang over the edge when he pulls them up towards his chest. Behind him, Wei Wuxian has expanded to take up the rest of the bed. He shoves backwards once, with some success; the second attempt is met with a squawk and a fresh round of coughing.

"Have mercy, Jiang Cheng, you're pushing me into the wall!"

"Well, I'm halfway off the bed," he retorts.

There's no answer. Jiang Cheng straightens his legs and focuses on keeping himself balanced in position, at least half a cun between his back and the warmth radiating from his shixiong's body. Wei Wuxian, meanwhile, fidgets and wriggles and tugs at the blanket until Jiang Cheng finds himself clinging to his corner of it with a tight fist.

"Will you stop that?" he hisses. "You take all the space, you take all the covers, and you keep kicking me!"

"Sorry," comes the mumbled reply. "Funny how I couldn't stay awake over dinner, and now I can't fall asleep, huh?"

The bed frame creaks and the woven ropes underneath them jounce as he thrashes about. Jiang Cheng is about to yell at him when he stops, having unwound the blanket from around his body, and tips it onto Jiang Cheng in a heap.

"Take the whole thing, then I won't steal it again."

"Don't be stupid—"

"How could I face Jiang shushu otherwise," Wei Wuxian continues, pushing his face down into the pillow so Jiang Cheng has to strain to hear him, "if I had to tell him I let his only son freeze?" He breaks off into a yawn, before finishing in an oddly contented tone, "Night, again. Sleep well."

"Oh, come on." Jiang Cheng bites back a shout of frustration. Shaking out the blanket, he rolls up against Wei Wuxian's back and tugs it across both their bodies. He has to hook his foot into the bottom corner to fling it over Wei Wuxian's legs, and that works but means he ends up with his own leg thrown over them too.

He freezes. Before he can work out how to free himself, he hears Wei Wuxian make the softest little noise in his throat, a sound of warm satisfaction, and feels the body next to him get looser and heavier: his shixiong has relaxed, for the first time since they got into bed together.

Well, if this is what it takes to stop him moving all night, Jiang Cheng can put up with it. He lets go of the blanket and tucks his arm against his own side. It's not comfortable. That's why, when Wei Wuxian whines and reaches back for his hand, he lets him take it and pull it to his chest, folding it into his own hands.

Like this, there's plenty of room for both of them. It's warm, and there's something oddly comforting about the solidity of another person against him, both leaning into one another. He remembers falling asleep with his head in a-jie's lap on summer evenings after dinner, when she would retreat to the pavilion at the end of one of the piers to catch the cool breezes off the water. With a-jie twisting Jiang-purple ribbons into decorative knots above him, and Wei Wuxian babbling about their day and all his latest ideas for inventions, showing off for her attention, Jiang Cheng would slide into a quiet half-sleep that felt like the gateway into another world.

Tonight, though, the slide doesn't take him anywhere. The edge has come off his wakefulness, but no matter how long he lies here, that's all that happens. When he blinks, his eyelids aren't even stiff, let alone sealed with sleep.

He thinks Wei Wuxian is asleep. It's hard to tell with his heartbeat still galloping away. He holds him close, trying to be steady, trying to be reassuring, while he chews on his own lip and feels the crease forming between his brows. What else can have gone wrong now? If they can get to Meishan, the healers there can surely fix him up. A-jie will make soup. It'll be all right.

Wei Wuxian's shivering builds up so slowly that Jiang Cheng doesn't even register it until his shixiong's teeth are chattering. He should wake him up, he thinks hazily. Tuck the blanket more tightly around him, rub his hands, re-kindle the fire. Unfortunately, something else has been building up over the same time, where Jiang Cheng's body is flush against Wei Wuxian's. The heat had blended into the warmth between them, the reassuring pressure, but now he can't mistake it for anything else. This is even worse than when they wrestled before dinner.

His cock stiffens more at that thought. It protests at the angle it's being held at, between his thigh and Wei Wuxian's behind, and Jiang Cheng unconsciously shifts to let it move to a more comfortable angle.

Wei Wuxian wakes up.

At first, he rolls backwards in his sleep, automatically following, and then his head lifts smartly from the pillow. There's a moment of held breath. He squeezes the hand still clutched to his chest.

"... Jiang Cheng?" he whispers. "Is that you?"

Face flaming, Jiang Cheng manages to say, "Mn." He tries to pull away, but Wei Wuxian is wriggling around in his arms, rolling to face him and then throwing an arm around his waist. They're so close, he can hear the breath grazing Wei Wuxian's lips.

"I dreamed you were dead," he's murmuring, pushing the hand that's not on Jiang Cheng's lower back up between them to—touch his face? What? "I thought you were dead, I thought they'd killed you."

"I'm not dead." Parts of him are very much alive. Wei Wuxian has not acknowledged the erection still brushing his leg, but he must have noticed it. Why won't he let him go, instead of hugging him closer?

"And it worked? You got your core back?" His fingers grope downwards from Jiang Cheng's cheek and chin, presumably searching for his pulse or acupoints. The rest of Wei Wuxian's arm is trapped underneath his body and he whines as he tries to move it without letting go of Jiang Cheng.

"We already talked about this. Yes, it worked."

"Okay. Okay, good, it was all worth it, then." He relaxes for a moment, still shivering slightly. Then he shakes, a sudden tremor that sweeps through his whole body from head to foot. "Ugh, it's so cold here."

Jiang Cheng just groans. His eyes crossed when he felt Wei Wuxian jerking against his cock, and he can feel them slowly uncrossing.

Very carefully, he slides his hand across Wei Wuxian's upper arm and onto his back, where he rubs up and down. He's doing his honest best to warm him up without drawing him closer—which, he realises, he wants to do. He wants very strongly to pull him in so close that they touch all the way down the line of their bodies.

His shixiong is taller than him. He has to shuffle his body down the bed to be able to tuck his face under Jiang Cheng's chin and press it against his chest. "Freezing," he mutters into the fabric there.

"It's not cold at all," Jiang Cheng snaps. "If anything, it's too hot."

Oh, shit.

He feels blindly for the first bit of naked skin he can find on Wei Wuxian's body: the back of his neck. Underneath the damp, tangled hair, it's sweaty and blazing hot.

"You have a fever," he says. This, at last, is enough to make him break out of Wei Wuxian's sleepy embrace and sit up. He traces a fire talisman in midair and flicks it towards the candles with a pulse of spiritual energy. The flames leap up, six cun tall, before they subside. "What have you been doing to yourself?" he asks, brushing hair out of Wei Wuxian's face. "Sleeping in ditches? Were you even eating in the last days?"

There's no response but a pout. Wei Wuxian's hands come up to bat at his own, so weakly Jiang Cheng doesn't even need to resist them. Distantly, it occurs to him that he's still hard. He wipes Wei Wuxian's forehead with his own sleeve; it's easier than getting out of bed to get another cloth and trying to hide it. Then he grabs one of those hands and presses two fingers to the wrist, ready to pass in some spiritual energy.

"Wait!" It's Wei Wuxian's turn to attempt to pull away. Panic flashes in his eyes. Well, too bad. Jiang Cheng is the stronger one, now—certainly while Wei Wuxian is sick, and perhaps even after that. His grip tightens mercilessly. He closes his eyes to direct his qi where it's needed.

It feels so wrong, the room lurches around him. Instead of the satisfaction he usually feels when controlling the flow of his own qi, joining its stream to another's meridians like a tributary rushing into a river, there's a scraping repulsion followed by attraction, too strong, painful in its own way. Jiang Cheng's qi rushes into his shixiong's body and then springs away from it again, swinging back and forth like a compass needle brought too close to a lodestone.

"You—what—" It takes a few breaths before he can even look at him again. Wei Wuxian's hand fell down onto his chest when he dropped it like a hot coal, and it lies there unmoving. His eyelids have slid shut again. Jiang Cheng can see his front teeth between his parted lips. "What have you done to your—"

He wrenches back the bedcover and shoves his hand at Wei Wuxian's lower dantian. Even through his shirt and trousers, he can feel the gaping absence of the golden core that should be spinning there. It's a freezing knot in the heat haze of Wei Wuxian's body.

While Jiang Cheng is paralysed with horror, staring at his own hand on the borrowed Wen silk that Wei Wuxian is wearing too, Wei Wuxian curls back up on his side. He grits his teeth, but a hiss of discomfort escapes anyway.

"'M still cold, shidi," he mumbles. "Come back down here. Please? Just to warm me up?"

He can't think of anything else to do but obey. Sliding down into the bed, he tucks the blanket around Wei Wuxian's shoulders and then wraps his arms around his waist. Their faces are so close he can't really focus on Wei Wuxian's, just one feature at a time. It makes it easier, somehow.

"What happened?" Jiang Cheng whispers. "Did the Wen catch you? Was it at the supervisory office?"

"No, no." His brows are drawn together. There's a pain line at the corner of his lips. "They're safe, Wen Qing and Wen Ning... don't worry."

"Worry about them? Isn't it more likely that they gave us up?" He wants to shake him, but there's no leverage in this position. "Then where was it? Did they follow us to Baoshan Sanren's mountain? They can't find out where she is!"

A chill grasps his back, as though every single pore is filled with ice. Forget the Wen. Baoshan Sanren is an immortal; she and her disciples can surely defend themselves.

Baoshan Sanren restored Jiang Cheng's core because she thought he was Wei Wuxian. He had one chance to go back to her mountain, in his whole life, and he gave it to Jiang Cheng. Now that his golden core has been destroyed too, how can they possibly get it back?

He tightens his arms until they're cheek to burning cheek, his face buried between Wei Wuxian's and the pillow, and the knots holding their shirts closed dig into his stomach. "We'll go back together," he says fiercely, hardly knowing what he's promising. "We'll go back and beg her to heal you too. I'll tell her it was all my idea, I'll tell her that I tricked you, that I stole your inheritance. She can punish me if she wants to, but she has to help you."

"Don't worry," Wei Wuxian is saying above him, "don't worry, Jiang Cheng, it's all right."

"But how can we rebuild the Jiang Sect otherwise?" he asks, and then, without any warning sign or transition, he's crying: sobbing, really, great ugly heaves of air and cataracts of tears that run between his face and the rough horsehair pillow. He can feel his nose start to run, too. The bed is shaking and Wei Wuxian is tensing up as if he's in pain, and he's crying into Wei Wuxian's shirt and all over his hair and it's not right, Wei Wuxian isn't the one who should be comforting him, but he just can't stop.

"It's all right, it's okay, shidi."

"We were supposed to be the Twin Heroes of Yunmeng," he says shakily, once his breathing is steady enough. "I hate them. The Wen took my golden core and then I took—I took your—"

Wei Wuxian starts. He makes a painful sound in his throat and Jiang Cheng feels his jaw moving against his own cheek, as though he's trying to say something but the words won't come out.

Jiang Cheng rubs his back again, in big, slow circles. The angle is better, now that they're this close. "I know," he says. "I took your only chance to meet your mother's shifu. I'm going to make it up to you somehow, all right? We'll find a-jie, we'll take back Lotus Pier, and we'll wipe out the Wen Sect forever."

"Jiang Cheng, ah..." Wei Wuxian pulls back his head so that he can rest his forehead against Jiang Cheng's. The stuffy air in the room feels chilled on his hot face, his salt-swollen eyelids. "Let's not talk about it any more tonight, okay?"

"How..." A last wave of tears rises in his eyes; he blinks them out, past caring how it looks. He doesn't want to talk about any of this, but there's no other choice that he can see. It's all standing around this borrowed bed, gazing down on him: his shixiong's golden core, his mother's dead body, the way Wen Chao leered when Wen Zhuliu stepped towards him in front of his father's throne. A-jie waiting for him and Wei Wuxian in Meishan, not knowing if they're alive. The rough stoneware rim of the cup Baoshan Sanren tipped to his mouth, and the unspeakable relief he felt when the world dissolved after he drank from it.

There's movement he can't quite follow, with his eyes shut, and then something soft against his browbone. Wei Wuxian has pressed his lips there. They retreat, but not far.

It's a brotherly kiss. It's a comfort, like you'd give to a child, and Jiang Cheng should rankle at that but right now he doesn't have the strength.

To return the gesture, he'd have to pull himself up the bed, lever himself over his shixiong and lean in again. Why not? he thinks. After all, the two of them have been scrabbling to be on top of one another as long as Wei Wuxian has been part of the Jiang Sect. They'd make eye contact, most likely. And then they'd settle back into place and pretend to sleep until sunrise.

Wei Wuxian's throat is open in front of him, cast into the wobbling candlelight shadows by Jiang Cheng's shoulder. He moves in slowly until his lips meet the taut skin under his jaw and linger there, next to Wei Wuxian's pulse.

Wei Wuxian sighs. It sounds like a positive sigh. At any rate, he's not recoiling. Experimentally, Jiang Cheng mouths at his neck, tasting the salt of sweat and the faint sourness of fever. He draws his lips along Wei Wuxian's jawline, not moving with any particular purpose besides getting his mouth on more of him.

When he gets to his chin, he pauses, uncertain of the next step, until Wei Wuxian bends his head forward and brings their mouths together. He's so warm—it shouldn't be a surprise—and his lips are soft but muscular against Jiang Cheng's. What are they doing? He's never done this before, with anyone. For all his shixiong's flirting, he'd be surprised if he had much experience either.

It doesn't matter. As long as he keeps his eyes closed, Jiang Cheng tells himself, Wei Wuxian's mouth on his own will stay sealed off from the rest of his life. There won't be anything to compare it to, or any rules it might break. He can just stay in this dark bubble, one hand under his shixiong's waist, the other flat between his shoulderblades, holding him here with Jiang Cheng. He won't have to admit to himself how long he's wanted this.

Then Wei Wuxian's mouth opens, his tongue slides out to lap against Jiang Cheng's lips, and every meridian in his body lights up with gold.

He's aware of making—some kind of noise. He gasps, and Wei Wuxian's tongue slips inside his mouth. Whole new worlds open up before him. Jiang Cheng licks back, their tongues sliding smoothly against one another like fish brushing against his toes in deep lake waters. This is like that, in a way. Jiang Cheng is swimming in sensation, suspended in the darkness, his legs tangled up with Wei Wuxian's beneath the blanket's surface.

All those times they swam together, laughing with the joy of competition, and he schooled his gaze away from Wei Wuxian's shoulders and thighs and everything that was barely hidden by his soaked-through trousers. Timing how long he looked at his shixiong; not allowing himself to look back until he'd counted six tree branches or six lotus flowers, so that it would seem natural. All right, he can own up to it: Jiang Cheng has wanted his shixiong since before he knew what wanting meant.

Wei Wuxian's hand lands lightly on his hair and sweeps down his jaw, then along his neck until it reaches the hem of his undershirt. He shivers, not breaking from the kiss. With the gentlest of touches, Wei Wuxian keeps stroking him. The slow sweeps of his hand make a rhythm that rocks both of them, guiding the press and retreat of their tongues, the working of their lips, as they fall deeper into one another. Jiang Cheng slides his hand down until he can slip it under Wei Wuxian's shirt and clutch at his naked back. The muscles are as firm under his fingers as he always knew they would be.

It's only when his hips jerk forward on their own, jolting against Wei Wuxian's hip in a burst of pleasure, that he realises the two of them have been rolling against each other with their whole bodies. Wei Wuxian's legs are tense around his, and the hot pressure he feels against his belly is him—is his hardness, his excitement. His attraction to Jiang Cheng.

"Ohh, shidi," Wei Wuxian breathes, bucking up against him in turn. His fingers slip lower, down Jiang Cheng's chest. Despite the layer of silk in between them, he grazes one nipple as if aiming directly for it and Jiang Cheng shudders.

At the waistband of Jiang Cheng's trousers, the fingers hesitate, hooked in just far enough that their nails brush the soft skin underneath. "Let me?" Wei Wuxian asks, rocking his hips forward. "Let shixiong take care of you."

"Yes," he gasps, and pushes their mouths back together so that the groan he makes, when Wei Wuxian runs his fingertips through the fine trail of hair that leads to the base of his cock, is sealed up in between them. Wei Wuxian doesn't linger on the new scar across his belly, if he even notices it, and he's grateful for that.

When he wraps his hand around his cock, then draws it slowly up to the the tip and down again, the foreskin rolling up over the head and then all the way back, Jiang Cheng's entire body goes taut. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he notes that he's going to feel the aftereffects of this in the morning, from his jaw to the soles of his feet. All the rest of his attention, though, is focussed on Wei Wuxian's grip and the sparking thrill it leaves in its wake.

It's nothing like touching himself. He didn't know what to expect, but it wasn't this.

Wei Wuxian's hand speeds up. Jiang Cheng's breathing hastens, and his shixiong's is almost as fast, almost as rough. They pant into each other's mouths. Little oh, oh sounds are being pulled out of him with every stroke and he's powerless to hold them in. When he comes, he bends nearly double: teeth chattering, belly spasming, face covered in sweat and slammed against Wei Wuxian's shoulder.

"There you are," Wei Wuxian is saying when he comes back to himself enough to take it in. He's holding him with one arm around his shoulders, now. Jiang Cheng suspects he wiped his hand off on the inside of his trousers, which would be logical but still irritates him.

"Jiang Cheng, ah, Jiang Cheng," he continues. "That was—you looked so, so—"

It's unlike his shixiong to be lost for words. "What did I look like?" he demands, sharper than he intends to.

"Beautiful."

He looks up and meets his eyes. Wei Wuxian is gazing at him with simple wonder on his face. It's too much to take in, but there's nowhere else to look, so instead he kisses him again. Slower this time, more lips than tongue. Sensations are returning as though he's sinking back into the world. The stickiness of his own cooling release is unpleasant, but that's something to deal with later, not a priority right now.

"Can I—?" he asks eventually. He can still feel his shixiong's erection between their bodies and he longs to get a hand on it, to see Wei Wuxian's face go vacant with the same pleasure he gave him. He moves his hand down Wei Wuxian's back until he feels the muscle of his ass, drawing him in as close as possible.

When he tries to touch the front of his body, however, Wei Wuxian sucks in a sharp breath. "No, no," he whispers. "Not—like that."

"You don't want it?" What has he done wrong?

A quiet puff of laughter. "Trust me, I do." He wriggles around, rearranging them so that he's halfway underneath Jiang Cheng, his cock lined up along his thigh. "Can you just... hold me, like this, shidi?"

In this position, he can see his face more clearly. Jiang Cheng wraps his arms around him and watches the tension there, the almost pleading expression of his closed eyes as he pushes his hips up towards him. When Jiang Cheng thrusts down to meet him on his next motion, his eyes fly open. "Yes, yes please."

They build up a rhythm, clinging to one another like drowning men, the whole bed creaking around them like a jetty in a storm. Wei Wuxian's open mouth is hot against his neck, though he's too far gone to kiss or do anything but gulp for air. Jiang Cheng has the sudden, absurd conviction that a spear has hit him, or an arrow. Something has pierced right through him and into Wei Wuxian's body, connecting them where they're pressed together, and they'll only feel the pain of it if they separate.

Wei Wuxian comes with a stuttered, "Jiang Cheng!" and what Jiang Cheng would take for a grunt of agony if he didn't know it was orgasm.

Afterwards, he lies back, breathing through his mouth, staring upwards with unfocussed eyes. His face looks pale in the weak light, and drops of sweat stand out on it.

Jiang Cheng rolls off him. "Are you all right?"

The answer comes automatically: "Of course. I'm fine." Then he rolls his head to the side so he can meet Jiang Cheng's eyes, and says in a different tone, "I wasn't sure if I'd still be able to—do that. Thank you."

"No need for thanks," he replies stiffly. Drowsiness is creeping up on him in the wake of exertion. "We should get some sleep," he starts to say, but Wei Wuxian is already softly snoring.

He extinguishes the candles and pulls his shixiong onto his side and into Jiang Cheng's embrace. The darkness is full of things to be scared of, he knows, things to grieve and to rage against, but he refuses to recall them. He's going to sleep.

Right on the brink of it, one last thought occurs to him.

Jiang Cheng has wanted his shixiong for years, since they were boys just beginning to turn into men. Through all this time, he kept it a secret—from himself, as much as he could, and from the rest of the world—never daring to make an approach that was certain to be rejected. Tonight, though, he couldn't keep his eyes off him, far less his hands. Wei Wuxian was tired, sick, in pain... and irresistible.

What kind of person does it make Jiang Cheng, if seeing his shixiong diminished like this is what it takes to tip him over into acting on his attraction? Is he so insecure that he needs a partner he knows he can overpower?

He hides his face between Wei Wuxian's shoulderblades and hopes he won't remember his dreams.

Jiang Cheng wakes up sore and filthy. His head aches; the unfamiliar sleeping position has left him with stiff muscles in one side of his neck, and the less said about the state of his underclothes, the better. Even worse, the bed is empty apart from him.

He panics for a moment—did he drive Wei Wuxian off? Has he ruined everything, or what little was left after the sack of Lotus Pier, with his stupid intemperance? When he lurches out of the bed, however, he sees a sheet of paper left for him on the little table. The surface around it is stained with splashes of water and ink, erasing any doubt that the author of the note was his shixiong.

Didi, I woke up early and couldn't get back to sleep. Maybe I am turning into a Lan after all! You get breakfast and come find me.

Why bother addressing him as didi if he was going to break their cover in the very next line by referring to one of the Five Great Sects? He's even left one of his ridiculous smiling cartoons on the corner of the page. Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes and burns the paper to ash, managing not to send too much spiritual energy through it. He's getting the hang of his restored, more powerful core. Things are going to be all right.

With no need to worry about Wei Wuxian, he takes his time washing in the bowl of water that was left for them the night before, and piecing together a mostly-decent outfit from the clothing he has with him. He checks how much money is left in his pouch: it's less than he's comfortable with, but if they can get to a river and travel to Meishan by boat, it should be enough to last them the journey. Trust Wei Wuxian to just demand he buy them both breakfast.

At the door, he glances back at the room. The bedcovers are a mess, and his mouth dries up at the memory of the night before. Is it too greedy, to hope that they can lie together like that again? He's going to find a way to fix Wei Wuxian's golden core, as well, and then there will be nothing between them.

The teahouse was quiet, the night before, but that was nothing to the icy silence downstairs this morning. When Jiang Cheng steps into the main room, it feels more threatening than the cave of the Xuanwu had at first. From their places at the edge of the room, the heads of the owner and his wife turn towards the sound of his footsteps, and their narrowed eyes fix on his face. The servant looks up, briefly, too. Then he goes back to his work, gathering up chunks of wood from the destruction that's been visited on the room.

"Good morning," Jiang Cheng says, at last. His voice is hoarse. "I'm travelling onwards, now. Have my honoured hosts seen my brother today? He left before me."

The owner's wife's expression turns calculating, as he expected. "I couldn't say if we've seen the young master's brother or not," she says carefully. "The morning has been eventful. A group of cultivators from the Wen Sect came, looking for a fugitive. A criminal, so they said, from the Jiang Sect. Unfortunately for us, it was in our establishment that they caught him."

"I see." Jiang Cheng takes a deep breath, willing his eyes to stay dry and his hands steady. Picking his way through the mess towards them, he gropes for his money pouch. "A fire in the city gate is also a disaster for the fish in the moat, isn't that what they say? Still, my brother and I enjoyed your hospitality greatly."

There is nowhere discreet to set down the silver pieces he wrestles out of the bag with his numb fingers. The teahouse owner obligingly holds out his palm for Jiang Cheng to tip them into. He wishes with all his heart that he wasn't wearing Zidian, or that she wasn't so recognisable.

He manages to keep himself under control until he's outdoors, at least. The village square is visible from the teahouse's threshold, its stalls set up now that it's daylight, and he dashes over to it, head turning wildly in search of a flash of black and red. There's nothing to be seen. Wei Wuxian isn't haggling with a farmer or huddled in the alleyway where they'd met up last night. Jiang Cheng knows where he must be, but he doesn't want to believe it.

With three meat buns in his hand, bought from a young woman who served him without speaking a single word, he approaches a gaggle of seven- or eight-year-old children playing at pick-up-pebbles in a dusty corner. "Hey," he says, forcing away the thought that these kids are the same age as his sixth shidi. "I heard something exciting happened this morning. Did any of you see it?"

They exchange glances until the tallest, a little girl, speaks up. "We saw four gentry-men catch a bad man," she reports. "They had swords and they could fly on them, and they took him into the clouds. Are those for us? I want the biggest one."

"Which direction did they take him?" he presses her.

Again, the children look at one another. "We're not supposed to speak to you," says one of the boys. "I want a bun, too, but you have to give it to us quick before my mum gets here."

"Which way? Tell me!" Jiang Cheng repeats, but a woman is shouting at the children from behind him and without answering, the tall girl pulls the meat buns from his hands and darts away.

"Up!" says the smallest child, pointing towards the sky before she follows her friends, away down the street and round a corner. This is no help whatsoever.

Brushing the dust of the street from his robes, he straightens up and turns to nod politely to the woman who drove the children away. Then he leaves this nameless village. At the gate, he asks the old man which road will take him to Yunmeng; once he's out of sight, he turns in the opposite direction.

He's going to run all the way to Meishan. He's going to find a-jie and popo and they're going to lead the Meishan Yu against the Wen. He's going to rebuild his sect, he's going to fix it all, and he's going to bring Wei Wuxian back to his place at his side, no matter what happens.