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On the day that Wei Wuxian is set to leave the Cloud Recesses, earlier than everyone else after the scandalous way he punched a sect heir, because some fallout is expected and even he knows that simply leaving is the easiest way to appease both the Jin and the Lan, Wei Wuxian is approached by Nie Huaisang.

“Wei-xiong!” Nie Huaisang calls out loudly towards Wei Wuxian, who sits morosely in the back mountain while trying to convince himself that he doesn’t mind leaving, really, not if it’s the best thing for his sect.

It’s not like he’ll learn anything drastically new, he thinks, or at least not if Old Man Lan keeps the same pace in his lessons as he has for the past couple of weeks. So what does Wei Wuxian have to stay for? Just his friends and bothering Lan Zhan and maybe some crumbs of knowledge that he’ll likely pick up during his self-study sessions at Lotus Pier sooner rather than later anyway.

If he stays, then he’s just going to continue butting heads with asses like Jin Zixuan and make things difficult for the Jiang again. Wei Wuxian doesn’t want that. He doesn’t like the way that the atmosphere among the other students has soured since he and Jin Zixuan fought. It reminds him too much of how back at home the same thing sometimes happened when Madam Yu and Sect Leader Jiang fought because of him, darkening even the sweetest summer day with a cloud of unresolved anger that formed between the two people at the head of their Sect Hierarchy and rained down stress on the Disciples below.

Nonetheless, Wei Wuxian will miss the Cloud Recesses. Or at least some parts of it.

Looking at Nie Huaisang, someone who has become somewhat of a friend to him, sinking into the grass next to him with a pout, drives it into sharp focus for Wei Wuxian.

“Shouldn’t you be in class?” he asks Nie Huaisang once he has settled down.

Nie Huaisang shakes his head wildly and exclaims, “No way! How can I sit in that boring old classroom when I just heard you are leaving today? No, Wei-xiong, there’s just no way I could just let you go!”

Wei Wuxian grins at the wailing tone in Nie Huaisang’s voice. “Ah, Nie-xiong, there’s no need to be so dramatic.”

“How can I not be? You promised to tutor me, and now you’re going to leave and I’ll fail again and my Da-ge is going to kill me or send me back again next year and I honestly don’t know what would be worse!”

Wei Wuxian reaches out and pats Nie Huaisang’s shoulder. “There are plenty of other disciples here who can tutor you. I’m not the only one who already knows most of the material. Jiang Wanyin is a lot smarter than his foul mouth lets you suspect, for example.”

“But you’re more fun, Wei-xiong!”

“Ah,” Wei Wuxian grins to himself, suddenly in a good mood because of the joke on the tip of his tongue, “If it’s fun you want, then how about Lan Zhan? He’s already studied everything that his Uncle is going to teach you for sure, and after me he is definitely the funniest guy in all of Cloud Recesses!”

Nie Huaisang lets out such a pitiful moan at even just the suggestion that he’d have to learn from Lan Zhan of all people, that it has Wei Wuxian in stitches. “Your face Nie-xiong! You should see yourself!”

“You shouldn’t joke about things like this,” Nie Huaisang pouts. “Learning from Lan Wangji is even worse than learning from Lan Qiren. He’s so strict and boring, I really don’t know how you survived your punishments with him.”

Wei Wuxian hums, thinking about how much he’d enjoyed teasing Lan Zhan during their sessions in the library. “He’s not so bad.”

“Of course you would say that.”

“Eh?”

“Never mind, never mind!” Nie Huaisang waves him off and then starts rummaging in his qiankun sleeve, “But this reminds me of why I came over here in the first place, Wei-xiong. I have something for you! I think I can convince you to stay, once you see it. You’re just the type of person to be fascinated by it!”

Once he has found what he’s looking for, a small and rather unassuming book, Nie Huaisang first cranes his head in all directions as if he wants to make sure that they remain completely unobserved, and then he thrusts it towards Wei Wuxian who finds he has no choice but to take the little book lest Nie Huaisang decide to just throw it at him.

Wei Wuxian examines it carefully. One never knew with Nie Huaisang, he sometimes unearthed the strangest sorts of books. Once, early during their friendship, a defensive ward placed on what had seemed like a thoroughly harmless treatise on fire spirits had almost burned off Wei Wuxian’s eyebrows when he tried to open it, and so Wei Wuxian learned quickly to trust nothing that Nie Huaisang brought him without making sure it was safe first.

There’s no title on it, and also no other hint toward its contents except for a small cloud motif worked into the leather of the front cover. A Lan Sect treasure, then, Wei Wuxian thinks.

It looks old. The edges of the paper are a little wavy and even ragged in some places. Wei Wuxian finds himself unbearably curious because the Lans kept even the oldest books in their library in much better condition than this little thing.

He flips it open carefully, head tilted and lips parted insuspense, and then slaps it closed again in surprise when his eyes catch a glimpse of— of—

Wei Wuxian can’t even make himself think about it.

Vividly, he flashes back to a very similar moment he’d shared with Lan Zhan in the library not that long ago and faintly realizes he might have to apologize to him for laughing at his reaction as hard as he had; turns out there really is nothing quite as surprising as being confronted with unexpected porn without any prior warning.

Unable to help himself, Wei Wuxian opens the book again. To the same page as before. His brain picks out the tiniest details almost without conscious thought: How the dragon’s scales seem to shine, glinting in sunlight. How its tail is wrapped around a pale, fleshy thigh, holding a human being immobile with its superior strength. The expression of pure bliss on the human’s face, his head thrown back in ecstasy.

The human's stomach is pushed out in a curve, away from his body, his lower belly filled to the brim with the dragon’s appendage. No, Wei Wuxian corrects his own thoughts, not an appendage — appendages...

Plural, definitely more than one.

Two penises, painted in exquisite detail so it is easy to see that one of them is a little thinner and a little darker. The thicker one has a bulge to it that almost suggests movement, as if, at any given moment, the protrusion might start to move along the shaft.

Wei Wuxian closes the book again once he notices that particular detail and clears his throat.

“This…” Wei Wuxian’s voice is raspy, and he can feel himself blushing, floundering, still retracing the afterimage of the painting that has burned itself into his retinas. “What the fuck, Nie-xiong? Where did you even get this?”

Why would the Lan Sect have something like this in their library? And marked with their sect motif, as well? Wei Wuxian certainly didn't come across anything like it in all his time there, no matter that his boredom during his various punishments had driven him to go through almost every section at least twice.

“I really can’t reveal my sources, Wei-xiong. But if you stay, there’s more where that came from.”

“You… I… What makes you think that this would make me want to stay?” What had Nie Huaisang divined about Wei Wuxian that has given him this impression?

Yes, he and Nie Huaisang had shared strange pornography before, and yes, Wei Wuxian had been very fascinated by some of the more outrageous and fantastical tomes but… the outlandish nature of them was what made it most exciting! Why fantasize about boring things like kissing and hand-holding with a shy maiden if you could imagine being ravaged by a being of legend instead? That seemed far more thrilling to Wei Wuxian most of the time and much safer because the likelihood of it ever becoming a reality was rather slim.

Nie Huaisang looks at him and raises an eyebrow. Then he smirks and says, “Wei-xiong. I might not be able to learn cultivation theory all that well, but if there’s one thing I know, then it’s people’s desires.”

Wei Wuxian is frazzled and distracted for the rest of the day, his thoughts wandering all over the place and never quite settling on anything even once his qiankun bag is packed and he stands at the gate to Cloud Recesses waiting for Jiang Fengmian take him back to Lotus Pier.

He’d slipped the book into his robes before practically running away from Nie Huaisang’s too-observant eyes and knowing grin. Now its weight is a constant and unwanted reminder of how much of himself he had laid bare to the other boy, no matter how much he tells himself that worrying about it is ridiculous.

It’s not even that Wei Wuxian thinks Nie Huaisang won’t keep the secret of his personal depravities. He’s also not afraid that Nie Huaisang will make fun of him because, after all, as the procurer of the porn in question, Nie Huaisang really cannot throw any stones there.

But… it is still uncomfortable for Wei Wuxian to have his innermost fantasies exposed and out in the open in such a way.

Early in his life, Wei Wuxian had learned quickly to keep his wants and needs close to his chest unless they were unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

If none of the other street kids knew that he was eyeing a misshapen but still edible meat bun that lay half-hidden behind a market stall where the cook had thrown it, they were unlikely to steal it away from it under Wei Wuxian’s nose.

If Wei Wuxian never let on how scared he was of Jiang Wanyin’s horrible dogs, then he would never have to find out whether family that had taken him in would choose the evil beasts over the scruffy under-fed nuisance they’d unthinkingly brought into their home.

And if he never ever tried to show how much it hurt when Madam Yu warned her daughter and son not to be overly familiar with the kid who may or may not be her husband’s bastard son, well… maybe that one hadn’t worked out so well in the long term because somehow Madam Yu had still found out and used it time and time again to show him his place. But the point is Wei Wuxian doesn’t like letting other people know what lurks inside his head.

Doubts or desires, all of the important stuff should remain hidden from the world if one didn’t want to be hurt.

Somehow Wei Wuxian forgot that during his time in Gusu. The ethereal nature of the Cloud Recesses, with its peaceful quiet and lack of openly enacted sect politics, had lulled Wei Wuxian into a sense of complacency. Maybe that’s why he’d overshared with Nie Huaisang and probably also why he’d spent so much time chasing after Lan Zhan just on the off-chance that Lan Zhan might smile at him once if only Wei Wuxian shamelessly called out his birth name often enough.

On the flight back to Lotus Pier, Wei Wuxian promises himself that he won’t forget that ever again, and when he and his sect leader land back on the docks a week later, Wei Wuxian throws himself into his work and decides to leave the whole thing behind him. He hides the little porn book under his assigned bed in the shared disciple quarters, unwilling to let one of the little Shidis find it, and then he forces himself to forget about it.

Time goes by in a blur after that. He trains, he rests, and he trains some more. War comes and brings with it nightmares and losses that are so horrific that Wei Wuxian has no time to waste on silly things like sex fantasies or random musings about heavenly creatures anymore. In fact, the encounter that he and Lan Zhan have with the false Xuanwu after the Wen Sect Indoctrination almost puts him off the whole idea of fantasizing about beasts of legend in its entirety.

There’s a year-long period where the thought of even just jerking off inspires nothing more than apathy and emptiness inside of him. As much as he’d like to blame his missing golden core for that one, he doesn’t think that’s quite it. He rather thinks it’s the lack of human closeness instead. Jiang Wanyin does not approach Wei Wuxian for anything else but barking orders at him anymore, the last remainder of their already brittle friendship stripped away by the deaths of the main Jiang family and the blame put on Wei Wuxian for it by Jiang Wanyin’s late mother in her last moments of life.

Maybe things might have turned out differently if Wei Wuxian told Jiang Wanyin about what he had done to restore his golden core for him, but to be honest, Wei Wuxian is afraid of what Jian Wanyin’s reaction to it might be.

He would rather suffer through this honest coldness than fake thankfulness on Jiang Wanyin’s side. Or even worse, being told that this was only right, that he’d just given what he owed the other man.

Regardless, Wei Wuxian is not the only one who seems to suffer from a sudden lack of libido from what he hears around camp. It seems like soldiers fall into one of the two extremes quite naturally; they are devoid of all desire or jump into each other’s arms at every opportunity to fuck as though there is no tomorrow. Some even solicit him for sex despite the dark reputation that he’s started to gain from his unorthodox cultivation methods. It’s strange to be shunned in daylight by most of the men but then approached for physical closeness as soon as night falls.

Wei Wuxian wants nothing to do with it.

He pushes away anybody and concentrates on one thing and one thing only. Winning the war. That’s all that matters to him from then on.

He’d known from the moment he crashed into the Burial Mounds and had to suffer through his newly coreless body struggling to reknit its bones that there’d be no post-war happiness even should he crawl out of that hell hole somewhat alive and so now he blindly throws himself into the fray every chance he gets.

Nobody tries to stop him from it.

Well, nobody except for Lan Zhan, who really is just too decent to let even a so-called heretic like Wei Wuxian get lost in the chaos of war, and, to Wei Wuxian’s unending surprise, Nie Huaisang, of all people.

Occasionally Nie Huaisang storms into the camp Wei Wuxian is stationed at, supposedly because he’s on some mission or other on behalf of Nie Mingjue, and it’s almost like a fog lifts off of Wei Wuxian’s brain. A little distraction from the war, a little lightness in the dark which has become Wei Wuxian’s constant companion.

One evening, drunk out of his mind and almost able to feel like his old self again, Wei Wuxian admits this to Nie Huaisang.

Of course, he makes a joke of it. Anything else would just be embarrassing, he thinks, but he is entirely truthful when he says, “You know, people call Lan Zhan the Lightbringer now, but it's you who is the light of my life these days, Nie-xiong! Nobody else thinks to bring me fine things like this wine and then stays to entertain me the whole night!”

Nie Huaisang’s eyes are dark, and his lips are pink from liquor when he smiles at Wei Wuxian in response. The following day his voice is just the tiniest bit sly and teasing when they stumble out of Wei Wuxian’s tent and find Lan Zhan there, a sour frown on Lan Zhan’s face as he takes in their mussed appearance and the veritable cloud of alcohol stink that surrounds them.

Nie Huaisang has to hide a grin when a hungover Wei Wuxian, confronted with Lan Wangji’s flawless appearance at five in the morning, tries to first hide from the man’s icy glare by ducking back into his tent and then seemingly forgets what he was doing, getting lost in Lan Wangji’s eyes instead. Not that Nie Huaisang doesn’t understand. A good-looking man like the Second Jade of Lan deserved appreciation after all, and of course, Nie Huaisang has already known of Wei Wuxian’s hopeless crush on Lan Wangji for years.

The hormone cloud that bloomed around Wei Wuxian whenever he ran through Cloud Recesses to bother Lan Wangji could not have been mistaken for anything but desire. Even normal humans without Nie Huaisang’s genetic particularities were surely aware of it.

Sitting at a sleeping Wei Wuxian’s bedside in those quiet Gusu nights after Nie Huaisang plied him with drink and gifted him some of the most adventurous sexual reading material he could get his hands on —mainly about cut-sleeves in the beginning and then later about things that went bump in the night, which was a truly delightful thing to discover about his friend’s fantasies—served to keep Nie Huaisang’s supernatural hunger extremely well fed.

Seldom did he have to seek out someone else to feed on their sex dreams, at least until Wei Wuxian left the Cloud Recesses early. Then, Nie Huaisang had to go back to less optimal options like some of the Lans, whose self-denial and repressed guilt left a horrific aftertaste in the back of Nie Huaisang’s mouth, even if they were, on the whole, extraordinarily horny.

“Hanguang-Jun,” Nie Huaisang greets slyly, emphasizing the man’s title just to see Wei Wuxian fumble at the reminder of his drunken confession from the night before, “What a surprise to meet you here this early in the morning. Lurking. Right in front of Wei Wuxian’s tent. One might almost accuse you of stalking poor Wei-xiong!”

Honestly, he thinks, the two of them were hopeless. Their attraction was palpable whenever they looked at each other, but neither seemed willing or able to make the first move. Instead of becoming closer Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji had settled into this strange quasi-rivalry over the course of the last year, and it has led to nothing but friction on and off the battlefield.

Tales of their recent fights about Wei Wuxian’s new cultivation style reached even Qinghe and are a big part of the reason why Nie Huaisang decided to start visiting his old friend in the first place.

It is obvious to someone with Nie Huaisang’s keen eye that something would go horribly wrong sooner rather than later without a buffer in place to temper the friction between them.

A callous word here or a thoughtless action there, and the potential for romance and desire that usually hung in the air between Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian might sour for good, buried under the weight of their unacknowledged feelings and the hurt that came along with it.

Did Lan Wangji even know of his feelings for Wei Wuxian? Nie Huaisang isn’t at all sure. The expression on Lan Wangji’s face when he bows to return Nie Huaisang’s greeting is practically soaked with the vinegar-tinged sheen of jealousy, so at least some part of him must recognize Nie Huaisang as a potential rival for Wei Wuxian’s affections.

“Wei Ying did not come to dinner yesterday,” Lan Wangji says, and his tone is delightfully bitchy.

“Ah! Were you looking for me, Lan Zhan? Ahaha, Nie-xiong and I decided to drink the evening away, and then we lost track of time and then—”

Lan Wangji interrupts Wei Ying’s babbling. “I can see that.”

“Ah? Oh, ah, yeah. Hah, I guess you can…” Wei Wuxian rubs the back of his neck bashfully and glances up at Lan Wangji occasionally from beneath lowered eyelids.

Nie Huaisang snorts at the display of foolishness from both of them and then decides to intervene before their awkward staring contest can draw out for too long. “Why don’t you join us for breakfast, Hanguang-Jun? You can ensure that Wei-xiong eats a proper meal and that the alcohol last night didn’t rob him of his last brain cell after all!”

He expects Lan Wangji to decline the invitation, but, after another very long moment of silence, Lan Wangji hums and agrees. “Very well.”

Wei Wuxian’s eyes widen. He stumbles over his own feet in surprise.  

Nie Huaisang has to pull him along toward the supply tent until he finds his footing again, but there, once Wei Wuxian finally realizes that Lan Wangji isn’t planning on starting a fight for at least as long as Nie Huaisang is close enough to mediate their conversation, a small pleased smile curls the side of his mouth upward.

By the time they’ve settled around one of the large campfires to eat their breakfast ration for the day, the smile has bloomed into a fully grown grin. His voice has regained the laughter and teasing that Nie Huaisang has missed since Wei Wuxian’s mysterious disappearance at the beginning of the war, and Nie Huaisang finds himself laughing along in turn.

Things feel much lighter this way, Nie Huaisang thinks as he watches Lan Wangji place his portions of meat and mushrooms into Wei Wuxian’s bowl. When Wei Wuxian stuffs them into his mouth without arguing about it, Lan Wangji’s posture changes and mellows, and a fierce triumphant aura crosses over his face. Nie Huaisang decides there and then that he'll have to visit as often as possible so at least whatever feelings are blossoming between Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian make it through the Sunshot Campaign unbroken.

Over the following months, Nie Huaisang visits the camps Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are stationed twice as often as his spy work for his brother calls for. While Nie Huaisang has to play the intermediary often in the beginning when their tempers flare and their personalities clash, he finds that these moments grow fewer and fewer the longer they spend time together, especially once Lan Wangji stops pretending to care about anything else but Wei Wuxian's safety.

Lan Wangji is openly suspicious of Nie Huaisang’s intentions at first, but then, after Nie Huaisang gets sick and tired of tip-toeing around Lan Wangji’s hostility for so long, Nie Huaisang finally drags him into an unoccupied tent to clear the air between them.

They are both invested in Wei Wuxian’s health and equally concerned about how quickly it seems to be declining these days, and Nie Huaisang would rather they be allies in the quest for Wei Wuxian’s betterment instead of continuing on with this silly dance of jealousy and distrust that Lan Wangji seems adamant to fall into.

“I’m worried about Wei Wuxian. Something is wrong with him and I know you can smell it as much as I can.” Nie Huaisang tells Lan Wangji, and then pointedly lets his qi flood through his meridians to burn off the magic that hides his more animalistic features from view. “Will you help me find out what it is?”

Lan Wangji’s pale eyes flare golden in response to this complete breach of etiquette on Nie Huaisang’s part. Normally a cultivator with strong enough creature inheritance to show physical signs of it would never reveal that fact to anyone outside their immediate family. Too dangerous by far, considering their kind had at times been hunted close to extinction by power-hungry men. Humans with just a touch of the heavens in their blood were far easier to break and tame and then use as weapons than actual full-blooded beasts of legend, after all.

A gust of wind cuts through previously still air.

For just a moment, Nie Huaisang spots the impression of majestic antlers on Lan Wangji’s head. Challenge issued, challenge answered. Predator to predator. Mythical creature to mythical creature.

“His dark cultivation harms his body and mind,” Lan Wangji finally confesses his worries.

“I don’t think that’s it. Or at least not the full explanation. Qi deviation and Yin energy build-up don’t normally come on this rapidly.”

“He also does not care for his health. Doesn’t eat unless prodded. Doesn’t sleep unless he has no choice.”

“Nightmares?”

“Yes. Every night. Wei Ying usually wanders the camp after only a few hours of rest.”

“Ah,” Nie Nuaisang says knowingly and enjoys the view of the usually so stone-faced Lan Wangji shifting through several expressions of embarrassment once he realizes what he has just let slip. “So you really are lurking outside of his tent at night.”

A hint of redness rises on the edges of Lan Wangji’s face. It darkens into a deeper color at the tips of his ears.

The effect is both funny and endearing, something that until quite recently, Nie Huaisang had not expected to ever think about the Second Jade of Lan.

He has to admit; it kind of throws him for a loop. No matter how often their brothers tried pushing them together so they’d built their own friendship when they were barely old enough to go on long drawn out trips into foreign territories, Nie Huaisang had always considered Lan Wangji’s taciturn manner and fervent adherence to the Lan Sect rules a deal breaker in that regard. But lurking outside the quarters of another Sect’s disciple after dark certainly broke several of said rules, and so did probably the fact that Lan Wangji still was so close to Wei Wuxian at all, what with what his Elders must think about Wei Wuxian’s newly forged cultivation path.

The Lans, whether they inherited the draconic features of their ancestors or not, are not exactly known for diverging from orthodoxy easily. Their founder had left the heavens for his mortal love and then returned there after she was gone, leaving behind a bunch of halfling dragon children and a strict set of eighty-eight rules for them to follow and, for whatever reason, follow them they did. They even expanded them over time simply because they so very much liked their order and rules.

A bit of rebellion looked good on Lan Wangji, though, Nie Huaisang thinks. And though Lan Wangji seems embarrassed by his actions, Nie Huaisang is glad to learn of them. He’d thought he might have to convince the other man to stand guard at night so that Nie Huaisang could sneak into Wei Wuxian’s dreams uninterrupted to learn the truth of whatever horrific thing had happened to Wei Wuxian in the time he was missing. It turns out though, that appealing to Lan Wangji’s worry for the other man makes him a willing participant. He takes his place outside of Wei Wuxian’s tent without much prodding that evening while Nie Huaisang slips inside.

Nie Huaisang finds Wei Wuxian asleep on his bedroll, his face drawn into a tight grimace, curled in on himself as though he is in pain.

No sounds escape him even though he turns and twists in his sleep. Only when Nie Huaisang draws closer does he understand why: Silencing Talismans. One painted directly across the knot of Wei Wuxian's throat so that no matter how his nightmares make him scream, nobody will be able to hear him, and another four on all corners of the thin mattress, most likely as a failsafe in case he rubs the first one off his skin in his sleep.

Nie Huaisang frowns.

All of this seems thoroughly unhealthy. Totally Wei Wuxian’s style, of course, because Wei Wuxian does have extreme self-sacrificing tendencies, but it's unhealthy nonetheless. A part of Nie Huaisang wants to reach out, wipe away the blood-formed characters from Wei Wuxian’s skin and then shake him awake to tell him he’ll listen to whatever haunts Wei Wuxian's dreams.

But Nie Huaisang knows that Wei Wuxian would sidestep the issue. He’s too used to keeping secrets at his own expense and would likely draw up his fake laugh simply to wave Nie Huaisang’s concerns off.

So no, Nie Huaisang thinks. Best stick to his original plan.

He bends over his friend’s sleeping form and hovers over him for a long moment while he coaxes his creature inheritance to the surface. It usually comes eagerly when he prepares for a feeding, but right now all his instincts are firing off warnings because, no, Wei Wuxian’s nightmares are not going to be nourishing at all, and no, they won’t taste good either.

Maybe Nie Huaisang has spoiled himself, he muses, by sticking to his preferred diet of wet dreams and erotic fantasies since he first hit puberty instead of the traditional diet of bad dreams and nightmares that most of his ancestors favored. Wet dreams not tainted by wartime horrors have been harder and harder to find the longer the war goes on, and neither normal dreams nor nightmares truly hit the spot for him anymore.

Thankfully, Nie Huaisang isn’t actually planning to eat this dream at all. Instead, he plans to walk through it, to let it play out without opening his metaphysical jaws and swallowing it up, to hopefully figure out what makes Wei Wuxian suffer enough in his sleep that he thinks silencing himself is necessary.

Dreams cannot lie to a dream walker, so venturing into dream space is the easiest way for Nie Huaisang to get the answers he craves.

Nie Huaisang leans forward until he is close enough to Wei Wuxian to feel the heat of his breath against his lips. Then he expands his senses. He opens his mind and inhales. Sour terror and sweet sleepiness combine at the back of his nose, and then suddenly—he’s falling.

Down and down and down he goes. Through the hazy edges of Wei Wuxian’s sleeping mind until tangible images start to form in Wei Wuxian's thoughts. Everything is too fast and blurry for a while until he hits the ground of the place that Wei Wuxian dreams about.

It is dark. Dark everywhere. Stormy skies and ash covered ground and a hundred thousand voices screaming from every direction. Half-rotted hands are reaching for him, undead bodies begging for release, ghosts offering their power in exchange for revenge, and in the midst of it all lies Wei Wuxian.

Wei Wuxian lies curled on the ground in a position that very much mirrors the one that Nie Huaisang found his body in up in the real world

The only difference is there are no silencing talismans here. Nie Huaisang can hear every scream and every sob. Wei Wuxian’s voice is louder than everyone else’s. “Please,” he begs, “Please, I don’t want to die.”

After Wei Wuxian first disappeared without a trace, the rumor about Wen Chao dropping him into the Burial Mounds spread like wildfire through the just recently allied Sects. Once he had reappeared, alive albeit looking thin and armed with his new kind of dark cultivation, the sect leaders had declared that story Wen Clan propaganda. There’s no way for anyone to survive that, people had said.

Faced with Wei Wuxian’s nightmares, Nie Huaisang has no choice but to acknowledge the truth now. This could be no other place but the Burial Mounds for oppressive darkness like this simply didn't exist elsewhere in the entire Jianghu. So Wei Wuxian had gone into the Burial Mounds and he hadn't come out unchanged. This must be the root cause of all his issues.

Carefully Nie Huaisang nudges things along, painfully aware that even if he knelt down to try and soothe Wei Wuxian’s crying, it would make no difference to this memory-turned-dream. While changing dreams was in Nie Huaisang’s skillset, just like creating them outright was, doing so now was going to help neither the past Wei Wuxian who already lived this nor himself.

With grave eyes, he watches dream Wei Wuxian slowly catch his bearing over a period of what feels like years to Nie Huaisang but was probably just a few days in real life. Dreams were funny that way. Time never passed quite as it should there, especially if one dreams of things that had happened for real.

A few times, Wei Wuxian comes so close to death that even with the knowledge that this is just a memory turned into a dream, Nie Huaisang worries that he might just lose Wei Wuxian to starvation or the vengeful dead that call the Burial Mounds their home. But Wei Wuxian makes it through. Once he regains enough strength to crawl into a nearby cave for shelter, Wei Wuxian takes off his robe and shirt to bandage his wounds. It is then that Nie Huaisang gets the final clue he needs to put everything together.

In the middle of Wei Wuxian's stomach, a bright red line cuts right over his lower dantian. What is obviously a surgical cut oozes faintly even though it has been sewed up professionally. Its edges are inflamed and swollen. A bit of pus dribbles out of a stitch when Wei Wuxian accidentally is too rough while trying to clean the wound.

Only after watching Wei Wuxian draw healing talismans onto his own skin with his own blood, no qi energy in sight, does Nie Huaisang finally understand what he is looking at. The shock is enough to loosen his hold on Wei Wuxian’s dream. He wakes up with a gasp.

To the surprise of almost everybody, himself very much included, Wei Wuxian actually survives the war. He mostly credits Nie Huaisang for it.

He never finds out what exactly happened to change things between Lan Zhan and Nie Huaisang, but between one day and the next they go from cautious animosity to as thick as thieves. They then decide to team up on Wei Wuxian whenever they think he’s being an idiot or not careful enough with his health.

Lan Zhan even drops all pretenses and unapologetically stares down his own sect leader when questioned as to why he shadows Wei Wuxian so closely on and off the battlefield.

“Wei Ying is essential to the war effort,” he tells Lan Xichen with an even voice that day. “But I will not have him undefended while he does what he can to help us win. Is it not bad enough he has to endanger his own health to help us? Does he not deserve at least some measure of courtesy for that?”

Personally, Wei Wuxian could have done with a little less courtesy if that’s what Lan Zhan called following him everywhere, force feeding him giant portions of meat and playing all manner of Lan Sect spiritual songs until Wei Wuxian was drowsy and sleepy hours before even the Lan started their curfew. It all felt a bit too much like being coddled to Wei Wuxian, and he doesn’t really know how to handle something like that. A part of him wants to sink into it and ask for more of this gentle handling, while the other, bigger part constantly reminds Wei Wuxian that he’s taking up too much of Lan Zhan’s valuable time.

When he complains to Nie Huaisang about it, the other man laughs at him and tells him to suck it up. “I know you secretly like it, so what use is complaining?” he says, and then, “If you want to do something nice for him in return, tell Lan Wangji there’s no need to lurk outside your tent at night when he could just as well join you inside for sleep.”

So, in the end, that’s what Wei Wuxian does, although he feels weirdly fluttery in his stomach when he extends the invitation to Lan Zhan and refuses to look too deeply at what that sensation might mean.

For the rest of the war, he never sleeps alone. Either just Lan Zhan rolls out his bedroll inside his tent or they are joined by Nie Huaisang when he stops by. After a lot of convincing from both of them, Wei Wuxian even stops putting up silencing talismans before he goes to sleep so that the moment when he makes some sort of fearful noise, one of them can wake him up.

It might not be the most conventional system, but it works for them.

When the war ends, Wei Wuxian finds himself guiltily mourning that fact.

He gets one last week of Lan Zhan’s company after the later renamed Jin Guangyao cuts off Wen Ruohan’s head, but sadly, for most of it, Wei Wuxian is unconscious. He is only hazily aware of Lan Zhan’s presence from the guqin notes that make their way into his dreams and never gets to say goodbye to either him or Nie Huaisang.

When he regains consciousness, Wei Wuxian is halfway back to Lotus Pier. The wagon he’s been put in to transport him back rattles his bones and makes him very aware of how hollow he feels, both in spirit and body.

He should be happy that they won, Wei Wuxian thinks, but instead, he wishes things were different, that the war was still ongoing and that he could simply jump off this wagon and put up his tent somewhere and wait until Lan Zhan and maybe Nie Huaisang joined him for the evening.

But that's just wishful thinking. Wei Wuxian has to go back to the disciple barracks of Lotus Pier.

Once he's well enough again, he spends a whole day throwing out the belongings of the low-ranking Wen Sect cultivators who had made their home there during Lotus Pier’s occupation. Red wall hangings, red bed sheets, and red robes; all in all, it looks as though Nightless City’s volcano spit its cursed red-hot lava all over the place.

It makes Wei Wuxian itch for days and days afterward.

He blames this invasion of his privacy for the fact that he can’t make himself settle back into his pre-war life at Lotus Pier, but even as he does so, Wei Wuxian knows it’s a lie.

The other surviving older Jiang Sect disciples, few in number that they are, do not have the same problem. And the more it becomes clear that Wei Wuxian is struggling with things, the more they look at him warily.

In his defense, he doesn’t have anything to take his mind off of things. No way to pull himself out of the funk that has settled over him. When Wei Wuxian tries to play his dizi to calm himself down, both the disciples and the servants scatter away from him, his wartime reputation enough to sow the seed of fear if only a single note of shrill music is heard from his direction.

When he tries to help the carpenters with their rebuilding efforts, it soon becomes clear that his skinny and qi-less body is not strong enough for it anymore. And when he tries to pick up a sword to teach the newly inducted disciples their first sword forms—well, the less said about that disaster the better. To call what followed a panic attack would be somewhat of an understatement. Wei Wuxian is pretty sure he’d been catatonic for at least a day afterward, not that he remembers it very well.

His sect leader tells him to stay away from the disciples after that and to make himself scarce if at all possible. When the invitation comes for a group hunt at Pheonix Mountain a few months later, it is made abundantly clear to Wei Wuxian that he is not to attend.

Whispers about him are at an all-time high, Jiang Wanyin says, and the Sect cannot weather any sort of aspersions cast onto its cultivation practices right now.

“You’re already enough trouble without adding more fuel onto the fire,” are Jiang Wanyin’s exact words, and the worst thing is Wei Wuxian can’t even fault him for them.

So all that’s left to do for Wei Wuxian to pass his days is to self-medicate. In the absence of meaningful human interaction, alcohol becomes his best friend.

There’s a nice pavilion down by the waterfront, left largely untouched by the invasion of Lotus Pier. Wei Wuxian spends more time there than he does in his own room after a while, staring at the lakes below through gauzy curtains and reminiscing about how it felt to have a purpose in life while he empties liquor jar after liquor jar.

A few times, he calls up a dead spirit or two, simply to have someone to drink with, but it turns out cultivating the ghostly path while black-out drunk is a bad idea, and so the first time one of the ghosts goes on a rampage through the marketplace, Wei Wuxian swears off of the practice altogether and commits himself to being lonely instead.

He idly drinks and daydreams about what he might write to Lan Zhan and Nie Huaisang if he ever found the strength of mind to return their letters, and then he drinks some more. At least with this much alcohol in his body, he has no problems falling asleep at night. Even if he does have nightmares, he does not remember them afterward, and he thinks that's a blessing.

His days become a single unending blur until one day the monotony is broken by an unexpected voice calling up to him from the street below.

“Wei-xiong! Wei-xiong! Are you there?” Nobody but Nie Huaisang has called him that for years, so Wei Wuxian is not all that surprised when only a few moments later said man storms through the bejeweled curtain of the pavilion’s entryway. However, what does surprise Wei Wuxian is the person who follows behind Nie Huaisang.

He only catches a glimpse of the figure before his brain grinds to a halt. The white robes and the guqin strapped to his back leave no doubt about it—Lan Zhan, Lan Wangji, the second Jade of Lan, has come to Lotus Pier. With no discernible reason for it to be found, Wei Wuxian’s alcohol-dulled mind struggles to make sense of the sight.

“Lan Zhan?” He asks dumbly.

“Mhn.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Wei Ying invited me.”

Wei Wuxian thinks he’d remember that, and he shakes his head. He has sent no letters to Gusu, guiltily hiding the last three letters he received from Lan Zhan under his mattress unopened so he wouldn’t have to look at them and feel bad for not being able to answer any of the ones that came before. “What? No, I didn’t.”

“During the lectures. Wei Ying said he wanted to pick lotus seed pods and water chestnuts with me if I came to Yunmeng.”

The fact that Lan Zhan remembers the exact phrasing Wei Wuxian used literal years ago when he invited him to Lotus Pier mostly in jest, takes the wind out of Wei Wuxian’s sails.

He finds himself first railroaded into giving both Lan Zhan and Nie Huaisang a tour of the piers, and then Lan Zhan rents them a boat and rows them out into the middle of the largest lake. There, he sets down the oars, and they drift for a while, aimlessly bandied about by the waves and the wind.

It’s unbearably lovely, Wei Wuxian thinks. There certainly could not be a better way to spend a leisurely day.

The midday sun is high in the sky and the scent of lotus blooms sweetens the air. For some reason, Wei Wuxian feels caught between laughing like a maniac and crying his heart out. He wants nothing so much as to ask Nie Huaisang and Lan Zhan to stay the night, or a few more days, or even a whole month, but he cannot make his mouth form the words to do so. In the face of the already overwhelming joy that just this surprise visit has made him feel, it seems greedy to ask for more.

He can’t help voicing one question, though. “Shouldn’t you both be at Phoenix Mountain?”

Nie Huaisang nods from where he is sprawled halfway across Lan Zhan’s shins. His toe digs into Wei Wuxian’s side, just underneath his ribs. Wei Wuxian cherishes the thought that it might leave a bruise that will serve as a reminder that the two of them had really come to visit him.

“Yes,” Nie Huaisang says. “But you weren’t there, so we came here instead.”

It's almost too simple an answer, but there’s no doubt that Nie Huaisang speaks the truth. His tone is too even for anything else, and his eyes are too serious. When Wei Wuxian looks at Lan Zhan, he can see the same sentiment echoed there.

Warmth blossoms inside Wei Wuxian’s chest. “Well, it’s nice to see you.”

And it is. Really nice, in fact. Even nicer when come evening Lan Zhan and Nie Huaisang follow him to his room in the disciple dorms and show no sign of planning to mount their swords to go back to Lanling. As if in unspoken agreement, all three of them cram into Wei Wuxian’s bed.

It's not at all similar to how sleeping in the same tent with them had been. By all rights, it is far too narrow to keep any sort of appropriate distance from each other but neither Nie Huaisang nor Lan Zhan seem to realize that there are three unoccupied beds in the room that they could use, and Wei Wuxian, for one, is happy for it.

Wei Wuxian wonders at first if Lan Zhan might not mind the closeness, but apparently, he has grown close enough to both Wei Wuxian and Nie Huaisang that he is completely unfazed.

That night, for whatever reason, Wei Wuxian’s usual cadre of nightmares gives way to a different kind of dream. Shadowy images of flesh against flesh, of teeth against skin, of hands and mouths and claws pulling on him, devouring him and holding him tightly.

In Wei Wuxian's defense, he hasn’t had any sort of erotic dream in so long that he almost forgot the possibility existed at all, and so he’s panicking just the slightest bit when he wakes up the next morning still caught in the buzzing after image of his sex dream.

His cock is hard. It presses up into the heat of the forearm that Lan Zhan has slung over his side.

Before Wei Wuxian can extricate himself from his thoroughly embarrassing position—his face buried in Nie Huaisang’s armpit and his entire back pressed against Lan Zhan’s entire front—Lan Zhan’s arm tightens.

Wei Wuxian's heart thunders in his chest. He feigns sleep, hoping that Lan Zhan will not freak out. Luckily, all Lan Zhan does is move his arm higher and then move his hold from Wei Wuxian’s chest to his waist instead. Then he hums under his breath in a way that Wei Wuxian has never heard from him. It almost sounds like the way a cat would purr to show contentment, just far deeper. Wei Wuxian can feel the rumble of it through Lan Wangji’s chest and the soothing sensation drives him back into the arms of sleep.

After Wei Ying slowly slips back into sleep Lan Wangji leaves him curled into Nie Huaisang’s side to wash and get them breakfast from some of the early-rising vendors in the market of Lotus Pier.

When he returns, it is to see Nie Huaisang carding his hands through a sleeping Wei Ying’s hair, methodically and meditatively.

“We should talk to him today,” Nie Huaisang murmurs. “It’s the right thing to do.”

Some curiosity rises in Lan Wangji when he takes note of the flush in Nie Huaisang’s cheeks. He’s only seen him look like this during the war, whenever Nie Huaisang and Wei Ying spent their nights getting drunk, but he and Nie Huaisang decided to keep Wei Ying away from alcohol for the time being, and so this leaves only one explanation.

Lan Wangji wonders absentmindedly how Wei Ying’s desirous dreams tasted to Nie Huaisang while he sets out the food on a low table. Spicy, maybe, like the Yunmeng dishes Wei Ying so loves. Or maybe sweet, because every time Lan Wangji imagines kissing Wei Ying, it makes him think of things like snow pears.

“Mnh. We probably should have talked to him before you started feeding on his dreams.”

“I— It’s not like I did it on purpose! You try sleeping next to that and not having at least a little taste.”

“I did.” Lan Wangji feels slightly smug about it too. He’s wanted to have Wei Ying in his arms for such a long time now that actually having it happen seemed a bit dreamlike now that it's the next day. “And I showed far more restraint than you did.”

Before Nie Huaisang can spit out whatever comeback he might have for that, Wei Ying starts waking up. A confused little noise comes from him, and he rubs his whole face against Nie Huaisang’s chest before suddenly sitting up straight in the bed.

Lan Wangji has to suppress a smile. Wei Ying’s hair sticks up from his head in many directions and his still sleep-dazed eyes dart around the room in surprise.

“Nie Huaisang!” He exclaims, apparently somewhat disturbed to find out that what he’d thought to be a cushion had not, in fact, been a cushion at all.

“Wei Wuxian,” Nie Huaisang answers with a grin.

“Good morning,” Lan Wangji interrupts their stare-off. “Come and eat.”

After Wei Ying has scarfed down his own weight in spicy side dishes and then gone off to dress, Lan Wangji asks him to take them back to his little pavilion close to the water. There, he surreptitiously cleans up the jars of alcohol and then makes sure to serve tea, not because he thinks that any of them are genuinely thirsty but because Wei Ying does best with something in his hands when he has to mull something over, be it his flute or an ink brush or a teacup. Lan Wangji wants Wei Ying to be comfortable during the discussion they need to have.

When all of that is done, however, and he’s faced with Wei Ying’s curious gaze and Nie Huaisang general Nie Huaisang-ness, Lan Wangji falters.

Thankfully, Nie Huaisang takes pity on him.

“Wei-xiong,” he starts. “There’s something we wanted to talk to you about.”

Wei Ying curls his hands around the cup and nods. “I gathered as much, yes.”

“This is difficult to explain, so I’d like you to hear us out. When a part of you wants to jump up and deny everything, keep sitting instead and listen to what else we have to say.”

Wei Ying nods. “Alright. I’ll listen.”

“Good. Well, okay. Then here it is," Nie Huaisang pauses. "We know about your Golden Core.”

Wei Ying goes pale and then red-faced and then pale again. His hands shake strongly enough that some tea spills over his fingers and onto the tabletop below. He hisses a soft curse, sets down the cup with a loud clink, and then his whole body tenses. His previously lax posture straightens up and it’s clear to Lan Wangji that Nie Huaisang had been right. A part of Wei Ying does want to run from this discussion.

Lan Wangji takes Wei Ying’s hand in his own and carefully dries it off. He is relieved when there’s no sign of burns, the skin only somewhat reddened from the hot liquid. Selfishly, Lan Wangji keeps holding Wei Ying’s hand once he is done with that and then says, “There’s no need to worry. This won’t change things. We’ve known for a long time now.”

Wei Ying is silent, the way he promised. His face is full of dismay, though.

Lan Wangji rubs his thumb over Wei Ying’s palm in what he hopes is a soothing manner and nods for Nie Huaisang to continue.

“Right. We’ve known for months and months. And Lan Wangji is right. It does not change anything. But there’s more. Something that I’m not sure how you’ll react to.” Nie Huaisang reaches for the fan in his sleeve and starts fanning himself. “My mother’s father was a mengmo.”

Wei Ying’s mouth forms the words, and he frowns, uncomprehending. “Mengmo?”

Nie Huaisang nods. He runs his hand through the tea spilled on the table and draws the character out carefully in the liquid. First meng for dream, and then mo, for the bear-like creature with a trunk for a nose and the ability to eat iron.

Lan Wangji had not actually known that Nie Huaisang’s creature inheritance only lay back two generations. It makes sense, though, he thinks, with how strong his powers are. Lan Wangji’s dragon blood is so diluted at this point that only a few physical aspects are left, no matter how much he sometimes wishes it was different. There have been many times in his life where Lan Wangji could have used the ability to control water or wind with only a flick of his wrist, a startling amount of them to do with Wei Ying in danger.

“That’s how I figured it out. I went into your dreams, no… Or your nightmares, rather, and I watched as you dreamt of what happened to you before you came back from the Burial Mounds to join the war.”

“Why?”

“Because I was worried about you. And so was Lan Wangji, and we both knew that you would never talk about it.”

Wei Ying tugs his hand away from Lan Wangji’s grip and grits his teeth angrily at them. “Of course, I wouldn’t. I didn’t want you to know. I wanted nobody to know.”

Lan Wangji nods and bows his head in shame. He hadn’t argued when Nie Huaisang had first proposed his plan, and even been glad to let the other man bear the biggest brunt of responsibility for it, but of course he'd known that Wei Ying would not like to be exposed in such a way. It had seemed worth it at the time, and if Lan Wangji is entirely honest with himself, he still thinks it was a necessary evil. “This Wangji apologizes for his selfishness.”

“But you’re not sorry?”

“No.”

Wei Ying laughs bitterly at that and throws a glare first at Lan Wangji and then at Nie Huaisang. “Fine. I get it, you wanted to know all my secrets and so you found a way to get them. Why bring it up now, though? The war is finished. You don’t need to run after the poor simple mortal anymore to protect him from harm.”

Nie Huaisang shrugs. “Because that’s not everything. There’s more.”

“Go on, then. Is there some other secret you spirited out from under my nose?”

“A secret, yes. Just not one of yours.” Nie Huaisang looks at Lan Wangji for a long moment, asking for permission. Lan Wangji nods and braces himself for having his own secret out in the open. “Lan Wangji has dragon ancestry.”

Wei Ying snorts. “Sure, and I’m secretly a Xuanwu. You’re fucking with me, right?”

“No.” Lan Wangji shakes his head and then lets the magic he uses to hide his antlers slip away.

The way Wei Ying’s eyes go wide in wonder is gratifying. A part of Lan Wangji was scared that Wei Ying might react with at least some suspicion or even fear, but there’s none in Wei Ying’s expression that Lan Wangji can see. Almost as if in a daze, Wei Ying reaches out a hand. Lan Wangji cannot suppress a gasp when Wei Ying’s soft fingertips run along the place where his antlers grow out of his head. No one has touched them since the day his mother died, and until just now Lan Wangji had no idea how sensitive they were.

“Oh… So you’re not fucking with me.”

“I would not do that. Wanted to tell Wei Ying before, but I didn’t know how.”

“Ah, yeah, I can see how that might be difficult,” Wei Ying shakes his head. “Is that all then? No more reveals that threaten to turn everything I know on its head?”

“Just one more thing,” Nie Huaisang adds. “I’ve been researching your condition since the war ended, and I think I’ve found a way to restore your golden core. Or at least allow you to form a new one.”

“What?”

“There are no full-blooded dragons outside the heavenly realm anymore because they were hunted to extinction. Mostly because they were useful in war, but also because their scales and eggs have healing properties.”

“So you want me to eat some of Lan Zhan’s eggs and scales, and you think that will fix me somehow?”

“No, Wei-xiong. As I said, Lan Wangji isn’t full-blooded. What little healing power his body has won’t be enough to lessen the scarring in your meridians and build new pathways for your qi if you just snack on them. What I want is for you to have sex with him, and for him to fuck an egg into you because I hope your body will absorb enough of its energy to heal itself. Oh, and I want to watch him do it. But that’s just for fun. It has nothing to do with the plan itself.”

Wei Ying gapes at Nie Huaisang, looking completely flabbergasted.

Lan Wangji can relate to him very well at this moment because his reaction hadn’t been all that dissimilar to Wei Ying’s when Nie Huaisang first approached him with this crazy idea of his. That anybody could spill so much filth in so dry a manner had blown Lan Wangji’s mind then, and it still does so now.

He can feel the heat of embarrassment rise along his neck until it reaches his ears, and

when Wei Ying turns to look at him incredulously, Lan Wangji refuses to meet his eyes for fear that the blush might overtake the rest of him as well.

Shrilly, Wei Ying exclaims, “And you’re okay with this, Lan Zhan?”

“Yes.”

The truth is Lan Wangji is more than okay with it. As embarrassing as it is to have Nie Huaisang put the whole thing out there, Lan Wangji has dreamt for years now about touching Wei Ying in whichever way he would allow himself to be touched.

At first, he yearned to just kiss him and hold him, all things considered, very innocently.

Then Nie Huaisang gave him a stack of books as a gift before they parted after the war. In them were so many things that a man could do with another man intimately that Lan Wangji had found his desires shifting into new directions by the possibilities now introduced to him.

“What Lan Wangji means to say is that he likes you. In all ways. Including this one.” Nie Huaisang gracelessly airs everything that Lan Wangji cannot make himself say out loud, and Lan Wangji has to clench his hands tightly to keep from ducking his head and hiding his burning face behind a curtain of his hair. “Even if the possibility of rebuilding your golden core through a pregnancy didn’t exist, he would like to take you to bed and keep you as his and have you bear his dragon spawn, I’m sure.”

Never in his entire life has Lan Wangji felt so acutely put on the spot. His desires are precariously out in the open, and he cannot make himself look at Wei Ying just in case what he finds on his face is not acceptance but rejection. Still, what keeps him from saying even more now that Wei Ying already knows this much?

“Not just like. I love Wei Ying. I have loved Wei Ying and will love Wei Ying. If you stay as you are, that will not change. If you do not wish to try Nie Huaisang’s idea to cure you, that will not change. It will not change even if you never want to see me again, now that you are aware of how I feel.”

“Lan Zhan…” Wei Ying starts and then stops. “I—“

“You don’t have to decide now. Just think about it. We’ll be here for a few more days, and if you still don’t know by then, you can always call on us later. I will wait for as long as you need.”

Wei Ying nods. His eyes are thoughtful and disbelieving. He chews on his lips and picks up his tea, which by now is surely cold and bitter.

“I really need a drink,” he mutters, but then makes a show of downing the tea instead, not even turning in the direction where Lan Wangji had stacked his stash of alcohol earlier.

Wei Wuxian has never felt so out of his element. The creature inheritance reveal alone, he could have dealt with quite easily. Even the fact that not only Nie Huaisang was partly magic but that Lan Zhan also was apparently descended from dragons did not throw him for a loop. It’s the other thing that weighs on him heavily.

Lan Zhan likes him. In that way. All the ways, or at least that’s how Nie Huaisang phrased it.

What an unexpected thing to learn, Wei Wuxian thinks. He hasn’t really thought about love in terms that applied to himself for a very long time. After the Burial Mounds, something as sweet as that had seemed out of reach for him. But here it is, in the form of Lan Zhan, who so earnestly professed to love Wei Wuxian that even if Wei Wuxian wanted to doubt it, he could find no reason to do so.

That evening, Wei Wuxian shows Nie Huaisang and Lan Zhan to a set of guest rooms on the other side of Lotus Pier, claiming to need time to think. But all he really does is aimlessly stare at the wall for a long time and then go to sleep, hoping to shut off his brain in its entirety for the night.

It doesn’t work.

The moon is still high in the sky when he startles awake, with a half-formed dream about a strange fullness in his belly taking the place of where once his golden core sat still curling lazily around the edges of his sleepy mind. His cock is hard, yet again, and the hot pulse of desire thrums in his veins so much so that he is overwhelmed by it.

For the first time in probably years, Wei Wuxian takes himself in hand and masturbates. Unbidden, his thoughts wander toward Lan Zhan. Would Lan Zhan's hand on his cock feel the same as his own? Or would the size difference be very noticeable? Would he be quiet and breathless, or would he whisper soft things into Wei Wuxian’s ear while he drove him into the arms of an orgasm?

It doesn’t take long for Wei Wuxian to spill himself, and after, while he's still trying to catch his breath, he can’t help but think that maybe, just maybe he should take Lan Zhan up on his offer.

Not because he thinks the whole egg thing will work to restore his golden core, but because it would feel quite nice to be that close to someone who loves him.

And as far as the egg goes, would it not be like having a part of Lan Zhan inside of him at all

times to remind him that he is not alone? Wei Wuxian suddenly finds himself craving that closeness, that proof of their union. He has to curl into a small ball around his stomach to help ease the feeling of emptiness that suddenly overtakes him.

He is somewhat aware that this reaction is strange. What normal man genuinely wishes to experience something like that? But then, he thinks, his desires and fantasies have never been exactly ordinary. In a way, it’s fortunate that even in his younger years, he had such a fascination for the more out-there things in Nie Huaisang’s porn collection.

Almost as though fate had given him the tools to find happiness in as strange a situation as this. Or maybe his subconscious whispers, as though Nie Huaisang had somehow known even back then where Wei Wuxian’s path would lead.

This thought makes him climb out of bed.

Maybe it’s inevitable, he thinks.

Maybe this was meant to be.

Wei Wuxian slips out of bed and crosses the warm night dressed only in his thin inner robe. Anticipation thrums in his veins, a strange kind of hunger, and by the time he knocks on the guest quarter doors, he is already half hard again.

It’s Nie Huaisang who slides the doors open. His lips twitch when he sees the state that Wei Wuxian is in.

“Come in,” he says. “I will wake Lan Wangji.”

Wei Wuxian nods and enters. He shuts the doors behind him and then paces the small entryway connecting both the guest rooms until Lan Wangji suddenly appears in front of him and takes him by the hand.

“Wei Ying,” he says.

“Lan Zhan. I— I couldn’t sleep. I dreamt of you, and I thought… No. I needed to come and tell you that I do want it. I want to try it. Not because it might heal me, but because I want to be close to you.”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan repeats. “Let’s sleep. You seem frenzied. There will still be time for this come morning.”

Wei Wuxian shakes his head no. He searches Lan Zhan’s eyes and finds desire there to match his own. Lan Zhan wants it as well, Wei Wuxian can tell. So in a somewhat calculated attempt at seduction, he leans forward to press his lips against Lan Zhan’s.

It’s already better than it was in his dreams. Soft lips move against his own, and then a hand threads into his hair to pull him impossibly closer to Lan Zhan. It’s all Wei Wuxian can do to hold on. He whimpers, groans, and loops his arms around Lan Zhan as tightly as he can, just so his knees don’t give out under him.

“Come on,” Nie Huaisang says. “There’s a bed right there. You don’t want to do this out here, do you?

Wei Wuxian gasps into the kiss when the second set of hands is suddenly on him, all soft pressure against his upper back, a distinct contrast to how Lan Zhan’s hands are clutching him so tightly that Wei Wuxian is sure that they will leave fingertip-shaped bruises on his skin.

They follow Nie Huaisang’s guiding touches until they fall into the bed, Wei Wuxian flat on his back and Lan Zhan towering on his knees over him. They kiss and kiss and kiss until Wei Wuxian is dizzy from it. Lan Zhan growls again, in that strange purring way Wei Wuxian has already taken note of before, and that’s what finally makes Wei Wuxian pull back enough to look at Lan Zhan.

“You’re purring,” he whispers, letting his hands roam over Lan Zhan’s chest to feel the vibrations better.

Lan Zhan’s eyes are burning into his. Whatever magic he usually uses to keep their unnatural brightness under check has fallen away, and Wei Wuxian can see now that they are split vertically. Dragon’s eyes. Unmistakably inhuman.

“Pretty sure it means he likes what you’re doing,” Nie Huaisang says, climbing into the far corner of the bed and settling against the thick pillow in a lazy lotus pose. He puts several jars and bags down next to his knees and then grins, continuing, “It’s instinctual. I doubt he can control it.”

Lan Zhan’s head is again crowned with those majestic antlers that he’s already shown Wei Wuxian before. This time, when Wei Wuxian carefully caresses the soft downy felt covering them, Lan Zhan visibly shudders and closes his eyes. He nudges the antlers closer to Wei Wuxian’s fingers in a silent request for more.

Fascinated, Wei Wuxian scratches along their lengths. From the top of the antlers to where they meet Lan Zhan’s skin and then back up again. He brushes away the hair near their roots and can’t help but smile at the soft groan the touch inspires in Lan Zhan.

“It’s a shame that you have to hide these,” he whispers. “They look good on you.”

A soft, intense expression comes over Lan Zhan’s face, and he answers, “I will not hide. Not if Wei Ying wishes to look at them.”

“Hmm,” Wei Ying hums and leans in for another quick kiss. “I kind of like knowing this part of you that nobody else knows.”

Lan Zhan is the one who deepens the kiss yet again, but this time there’s less hunger to it, less of an all-consuming need. Instead of a devouring almost-bite, Lan Zhan’s lips move against Wei Wuxian’s in a teasing manner now, soft, challenging, and sweet.

With no perceptible hesitation to his movements, Lan Zhan finds the loosely tied belt of the thin robe Wei Wuxian wore to bed and tugs it open, leaving Wei Wuxian’s whole body exposed to the warm night around them. Before Wei Wuxian can even consider that he’s the only one naked, Lan Zhan’s broad hands are roving along his skin and disrupt any thoughts that might want to form in Wei Wuxian’s head.

Lan Zhan’s hands are so big that they span almost the entire width of Wei Wuxian’s muscled chest. They invariably find all of his most sensitive spots, touching as much skin as possible.

Wei Wuxian keens helplessly when Lan Zhan’s thumb brushes over the edge of his nipple and then again when Lan Zhan does nothing to follow it up except stroke downward and to the side, following the lines of Wei Wuxian’s body from armpit to waist, digging into his flesh hard enough that a strange mix of pleasure and discomfort alights Wei Wuxian's nerves.

“I want to—“ he gasps out and hooks his own hand into the fabric at Lan Zhan’s throat. “Can I?”

Lan Zhan hums in answer but does nothing at all to help Wei Wuxian divest him of his clothes, instead only bending down to press little bites into the skin above Wei Wuxian’s navel. Wei Wuxian pushes into it until Lan Zhan reaches the skin next to the scar that crosses his lower stomach, where Lan Zhan pauses, laving the raised tissue there carefully with his tongue. The sensation is weird; somehow, Wei Wuxian can’t deal with it. All he can do is throw back his head and blink up blindly at the ceiling above him while he squirms helplessly, not even able to form words to tell Lan Zhan to back off from there.

His rescue comes from Nie Huaisang, who first slides his hand in between Lan Zhan’s mouth and the scar, and murmurs, “I think that’s too much.”

Lan Zhan sits up worriedly and asks, “Wei Ying?”

“Ah, Lan Zhan…” Wei Wuxian shivers. “It’s okay. Just… a little sensitive. Can you— Can you come up here and kiss me more instead? I liked that. I, I like it a lot.”

“Yeah, Lan Wangji. I think that’s a good idea. You two keep kissing, and I’ll help Wei-xiong take off this truly ridiculous amount of layers you’re wearing.”

Wei Wuxian finds that taking off Lan Zhan’s clothes goes far easier with a second set of hands helping him. It doesn’t take all that long until Lan Zhan is bare except for his forehead ribbon and a newly hesitant expression on his face that Wei Wuxian doesn’t quite know how to interpret.

“What’s wrong?”

Lan Zhan swallows. Hard. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t. You can’t. I’m not that breakable.”

“Almost did, just now.”

Wei Wuxian smiles softly and reaches up a hand to touch Lan Zhan’s cheek. He strokes his thumb over the worried downturn that has settled across Lan Zhan’s lips and sighs. “I wasn’t hurt. Just overwhelmed a bit. Just like you were, right? All of this is new, and right now it’s difficult to think of anything except kissing more of you, be it your lips or skin or this silly frown on your face.” Wei Wuxian then shrugs a little and tilts his head to the side in the direction of Nie Huaisang, who has gone back to reclining against the pillows next to them with an indulgent smile on his face. “But Huaisang is here to pull us out if things get too much, right?”

Nie Huaisang’s eyes are dark and heavy with something far more primal than just sexual desire. Genuine hunger, Wei Wuxian suddenly remembers, for what Nie Huaisang feeds on is primarily sexual energy. So he’s probably not the best person to keep a cool head in a situation like theirs, but Wei Wuxian isn’t all that worried about it anyway. Mostly he just wants to reassure Lan Zhan so Lan Zhan will stop looking so afraid of hurting him.

“Sure,” Nie Huaisang says. “But you’ll be fine, either way. Lan Wangji knows how to be safe. I’ve given him a lot of teaching materials on the matter.” He throws a pointed look at the little pots he’s lined up next to himself and then raises an eyebrow while smirking at Lan Zhan as if he’s challenging him to something.

Wei Wuxian doesn’t quite understand the meaning of any of it, but it seems to be enough to finally make the worry bleed out of Lan Zhan’s eyes. So, Wei Wuxian thinks, he’ll take it. In fact, he’ll take anything that makes Lan Zhan growl under his breath like this and then jump him again, overtaken by a fierce need to reconnect their lips together after so long apart.

This time they’re both naked, the opened robes pooling off of Lan Zhan’s back now with the sudden movement, and the slide of skin on skin is glorious. Lan Zhan’s bare thighs slide in between Wei Wuxian’s own, and one of them puts pressure on his previously woefully neglected erection. Wei Wuxian shudders at the sensation and groans out loud, only for the noise to be swallowed up by Lan Zhan’s mouth.

Then suddenly, they’re moving.

Lan Zhan rolls them over until Wei Wuxian ends up straddling Lan Zhan’s hips with his legs spread wide to accommodate Lan Zhan’s body beneath. Then he lets his broad hands wander from Wei Wuxian’s shoulders down to his wrists only to pull him forward, telling him to brace his hands on Lan Zhan’s chest.

“Hm?” Wei Wuxian does as he’s told, even though he doesn’t understand why until Nie Huaisang suddenly moves behind him.

There’s the pop of a lid, the sudden smell of something vaguely herb-scented in the air, and then Nie Huaisang’s hands are on his skin, leaving a trail of oil from his lower back to his ass cheeks where they linger for a while, massaging the muscle and waiting for Wei Wuxian’s reaction.

Wei Wuxian doesn’t tense up quite as much as Nie Huaisang has expected, but it’s very noticeable to Nie Huaisang that Wei Wuxian isn't really thinking about where exactly Nie Huaisang is going with his actions.

Nie Huaisang expected that much, at least. For all that Wei Wuxian was a big flirt even back when they were teenagers, he’s a virgin who has spent a lot of time dreaming about fucking monsters without ever considering the logistics of it. As far as Nie Huaisang can tell, Wei Wuxian hasn’t even noticed that Lan Wangji is exceptionally well-endowed, not only in the size department but also simply in the amount of genitalia his body spouts.

“Wei-xiong,” he murmurs, pressing up close to Wei Wuxian’s back and looking over his shoulder down at Lan Wangji. “You’ve been well distracted by all the kissing and the loving touches bestowed upon you by Lan Wangji, have you not?” He hugs one of his arms around Wei Wuxian’s middle, pulls him back and a little bit up off of Lan Wangji’s body. Then Nie Huaisang continues, “Because I bet you haven’t taken in the sight of him in full, yet.”

Wei Wuxian follows the suggestion of Nie Huaisang’s words and looks down at Lan Wangji’s naked body. Then he gasps and shivers bodily. “Oh wow.”

His voice holds wondrous surprise.

Lan Wangji has only grown more beautiful with age. His shoulders were strong and broad even when they were teenagers, but now the rest of his body has caught up with them. The war has evened out the top-heavy results of the Lan Sect's handstand practices that Lan Wangji practiced in his youth. Muscle is now also packed onto his lower torso and his legs, leading to a very well-shaped human body overall. And in the middle of this body, dripping down onto his well-defined abs, are two penises.

It’s almost shocking even to Nie Huaisang, who has known about them for years.

They stand up proudly, flushed dark from blood. One a bit thinner and one thick enough to be intimidating to even the most well-practiced bottom. Nie Huaisang feels almost jealous of Wei Wuxian for a split second because by the gods, being split apart by this monstrous cock must feel amazing.

“One for fucking an egg into you,” Nie Huaisang says, “And one to fertilize it. Right?”

Lan Wangji’s pupils are blown wide when he nods in response to Nie Huaisang's question because Wei Wuxian can’t be expected to keep his curiosity under control. So, of course, he immediately reaches out to trail his fingers over the flushed skin of Lan Wangji's cocks.

Lan Wangji shivers when Wei Wuxian curls his full hand around the thinner cock to give it an experimental stroke. Wetness pearls at the heads of both cocks in response. The thicker one jumps when Lan Wangji helplessly fucks his hips up into the air in an attempt to get more of Wei Wuxian’s teasing touch, and then when Wei Wuxian is spooked by the movement instead, Lan Wangji groans out a strangled, “Wei Ying!”

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian responds hoarsely. “I… You… I don’t think this will fit?”

Nie Huaisang grins and pats Wei Wuxian’s side before sliding his hand back onto his ass.

“Don’t worry, Wei-xiong, we’ll make them fit. I just have to open you up carefully and then, once I’m done, you’ll be aching for him to slide inside and fill you up.” He ghosts a slicked-up thumb between the cheeks of Wei Wuxian’s ass and lets it rest against the tight furl of Wei Wuxian’s asshole.

Instinctively Wei Wuxian drops his head between his shoulders and huffs out a startled breath. Lan Wangji takes the chance to pull him down further and starts kissing him again.

Nie Huaisang takes his time stretching Wei Wuxian open and does his best to be thorough in his ministrations. The lubrication Nie Huaisang chose is laced with herbs that function as a numbing agent, which means they’ll have to be careful with the final penetration. Wei Wuxian won’t be able to rely on his pain sensors to tell if the sensitive skin of his rim starts tearing.

But that’s why Nie Huaisang is doing the prep work, after all. He’s the one with experience here, and he shudders to think of how many horrific mistakes Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji might have made if they’d gotten together in a heated moment on their own, without any of his interventions.

Would there have been any lubrication at all? Or would Lan Wangji have pounced on Wei Wuxian, his self-control finally in tatters after years of relentless teasing from Wei Wuxian’s side, leaving Wei Wuxian ravaged and covered in bite marks and bruises and maybe even blood because neither of them knew what they were doing?

He shakes his head wryly at the thought because that situation actually featured heavily in Wei Wuxian’s teenage sex fantasies. Wei Wuxian just hadn’t realized yet that he wanted Lan Wangji to be the person to take him apart in such a way. Plus, he lacked any understanding of what a situation like that might do to his body in real life without any safety precautions.

Maybe things would have been alright, though, Nie Huaisang thinks, because Wei Wuxian does take to bottoming quite easily. Even with four fingers stretched wide inside his rectum, Wei Wuxian has not shown any sign of discomfort yet. He only shifts backward and forward, letting Nie Huaisang's fingers in deeper every time he moves. Almost as if he’s caught on the precipice of asking for more but something—be it hesitance or Lan Wangji’s hungry lips on his own—is keeping him from voicing his demands. Wei Wuxian's cock hangs heavy and neglected between his thighs, not as wet as Lan Wangji’s two cocks have already gotten, but swollen and hard in a way that speaks of a desperate need to cum.

Nie Huaisang curiously presses his index finger forward and curls it in the direction of Wei Wuxian’s navel and watches a string of precum dribble from Wei Wuxian’s cock head.

With a sharp cry, Wei Wuxian breaks away from Lan Wangji’s kisses. His body pushes back helplessly, and Nie Huaisang smirks as he plasters himself across Wei Wuxian’s back to force him back into stillness. “What do you think, Wei-xiong? Are you ready for more? Just imagine how it will feel to have Lan Wangji settled deep inside you. He’ll constantly rub against this lovely spot until you lose any ability to even think straight.”

“Hngh, Nie-xiong, please,” Wei Wuxian whines, caught in Nie Huaisang’s grip, unable to move. “I— Ah! I’m ready! So ready!”

“Hmm,” Nie Huaisang murmurs and then puts his hand on Lan Wangji’s leg underneath them to get his attention. “Lan Wangji? Are you ready?”

Lan Wangji stares up blindly at Wei Wuxian’s pleading form, appearing so enraptured by the look on Wei Wuxian’s face that it takes him a moment to respond. But when he does, his eyes focus on Nie Huaisang’s face, and he hums decisively. “Ready.”

There's no hesitation in Lan Wangji's bearing at all.

Of course, there isn't. They’d discussed the specifics before even coming to Lotus Pier because Nie Huaisang wanted nothing left up to chance or poor planning. They both know that there is too much riding on this.

Lan Wangji believes himself incapable of doing much more than concentrating on forming his qi into the egg-shaped form necessary for their planned impregnation. He’d then have to hold on to his secondary orgasm for dear life until the energy was successfully implanted inside of Wei Wuxian’s body, ideally situated to affect his lower meridian, and so the plan calls for Nie Huaisang to do most of the decision making.

It might have made more sense to wait for a bit longer after letting Wei Wuxian know the possibility even existed, just so they could get Wei Wuxian up to speed with the cultivation theory at least, but after witnessing the furious whispers going around the masses at Phoenix Mountain after it became clear that Wei Wuxian was a no-show, Lan Wangji and Nie Huaisang had decided that speed was of the essence. People couldn't point at Wei Wuxian as a potential scapegoat for everything evil, something that seemed to be happening more and more since the end of the Sunshot Campaign, if he at least made a public show of going back to traditional cultivation again.

 Or at least, that's what Nie Huaisang hopes.

Besides that, the memory of Wei Wuxian in the worst condition they'd ever seen him in still stuck with them. After the big final confrontation, Wei Wuxian had collapsed and for a while it wasn't certain at all if he'd ever wake up again.

This is part of the reason why Lan Wangji is so adamant about treating Wei Wuxian carefully, for now, even if his nature tended to lean toward possessive roughness normally.

Once, early during their coordinated effort to bring Wei Wuxian safely through the dangers of war, Lan Wangji confessed his fears of becoming like his father to Nie Huaisang.

“Sometimes I think about dragging him back to the Cloud Recesses and never letting him go,” Lan Wangji had said then. “It would keep him safe. I know it would. But I’m certain it would also kill him in the end. Wei Ying is not made for a life like that, where he can’t come and go as he pleases. And I cannot be the one to force him into it.”

The same sentiment is written all over Lan Wangji’s face now.

When Nie Huaisang carefully guides Wei Wuxian to kneel up in a better position to control the glide of Lan Wangji’s cock into his body, Lan Wangji clenches his hands at his sides, digs them into the sheets in a death grip and refuses to let them return to their previous position on Wei Wuxian’s hips. He's most likely afraid that he'll lose all self-control once he gets the first taste of how it feels to be inside Wei Wuxian's body. Maybe he even fears that he'll react instinctively; pull Wei Wuxian down too fast or fuck into him too roughly.

Nie Huaisang pats Lan Wangji’s thigh again, both to tell him to steel himself, and as an acknowledgement that he both sees and appreciates the way that Lan Wangji struggles against his instincts, even if Wei Wuxian is too out of it with nerves and anticipation to notice the show of restraint for himself. Then he helps Wei Wuxian sink down. For now, only on the thicker of the two cocks that Lan Wangji sports.

Wei Wuxian’s thighs start trembling pretty much immediately. He throws back his head with a loud groan of surprise once the cockhead has popped through his outer ring of muscle. “Oh!” he mutters, “Ah, I don’t–”

Nie Huaisang slides his hands back up Wei Wuxian’s leg to support him and stop his descent. They’re not even halfway down the shaft but to be entirely honest, Nie Huaisang doesn’t blame Wei Wuxian for struggling with it.

“Really, Lan Wangji. You just had to be an overachiever in all things, didn't you?”

Wei Wuxian laughs a bit breathless and his voice much higher than usual due to the strain he’s putting on himself. “Lan Zhan is just good at everything. It’s a curse, really.”

Lan Wangji stays silent, but at least the clenched expression on his face has relaxed back into its everyday stone-like nothingness. He draws in several long breaths as though he’s trying to meditate and it’s so in character for Lan Wangji that Nie Huaisang can’t help the fondness it inspires inside of him.

Deciding that Wei Wuxian is steady enough for now, at least, Nie Huaisang fumbles around his vicinity for the pot of lubrication he set down somewhere. A bit more of it should do well to ease the way, he thinks, and then maybe Wei Wuxian will be able to take the rest before Lan Wangji passes out from holding his breath for too long.

He slicks up first his fingers and then the lower part of Lan Wangji’s thick shaft, inspiring a desperate growl out of the man that even his breathing exercises can’t suppress. When Nie Huaisang follows it up with a caress to the so-far neglected second penis, the growl turns into a whine instead. A steady amount of precum drips from it, and so Nie Huaisang carefully decides to have mercy on the other man before he completely loses control of this precious fluid they need to fertilize the egg once it is inside of Wei Wuxian.

Once he is sure that Lan Wangji is no longer in danger of spilling himself early, Nie Huaisang gently eases a finger into Wei Wuxian’s already stretched hole and sets to stretching him even further.

Wei Wuxian shivers with the assault on his oversensitive nerve endings down there and loses control over his legs for long enough to sink even further onto Lan Wangji’s cock. Both he and Lan Wangji groan in unison.

Lan Wangji is sure that he will die if Wei Ying doesn't move anytime soon. Either that, or he's going to lose his mind.

He can't let that happen because if he does, then what little control he still has over the slowly churning ball of qi he's managed to gather at the base of his ovipositor will slip and not only will their general plan fail, but much more importantly he won't ever get to see Wei Ying swollen with his offspring. Won't ever see what a little Lan would look like if he or she was in equal parts made up of both him and Wei Ying's very essences. Won't ever know what Wei Ying sounds like when he sings Yunmeng folk songs to their little one.

While Lan Wangji understands that the urgency he feels to breed Wei Ying is irrational, now that the instinct has awoken inside of him, he finds it hard to resist.

Thankfully, Wei Ying starts moving carefully up and down before any of that can come to pass. Shakily at first, but then faster and faster as he gets a grip on what rhythm works best for him. On every second or so down stroke, Wei Ying grinds forward and back slowly and deeply, moaning and shuddering. Lan Wangji sees white spots before his eyes when Wei Ying's asshole tightens vice-like around his cock whenever the angle is just right to hit his pleasure spot.

Because Nie Huaisang is truly evil, he doesn't allow Lan Wangji long enough to get used to the heavenly sensation of being one with Wei Ying's body. Instead, almost as soon as Wei Ying has loosened up a little and the glide of Lan Wangji's ovipositor has become easier, Nie Huaisang is there with more of his nimble fingers and more lubrication to stretch Wei Ying open further yet again.

Wei Ying is already slick enough that every push of Lan Wangji’s cock inside his body is followed by a lewd squelch. Their coupling comes with a cacophony of noises that, if asked before he’d known the pleasure of flesh, Lan Wangji would have called very much unappealing, but which now, faced with Wei Ying’s sex-flushed form shivering apart on top of him, Lan Wangji can’t help but adore. This bodily union between him and Wei Ying is precious in all its ways, from the way that Lan Wangji's muscles ache because he's been holding himself as still as possible to how their sweat coats their bodies and makes the air smell musky with the scent of sex.

“Here we go, Wei-xiong,” Nie Huaisang murmurs. “All ready to be filled up by Lan Wangji.”

Wei Ying shudders when Nie Huaisang removes his fingers from his hole and then pushes on his shoulder to lean him forward a little further.

This leads to Lan Wangji being able to feel Wei Ying’s shocked exhale against his face when, on the next upthrust, Nie Huaisang carefully maneuvers Lan Wangji’s second cock into position and with the next downward movement by Wei Ying the cockhead presses up directly against Wei Ying’s hole.

The sensation of having a part of himself buried inside Wei Ying suddenly doubles and threatens to undo Lan Wangji. His brain struggles to keep up. His eyes are burning. Wether from sweat or rapturous tears, Lan Wangji cannot tell.

His heart seems to stop in his chest for a moment until he manages to catch his breath again, and by then, only one thing is on his mind: getting even closer to Wei Ying.

He catches Nie Huaisang’s gaze across Wei Ying’s shoulder and frantically tries to convey that it has to happen now. There’s no way for Lan Wangji to hold on to his orgasm for much longer. Lan Wangji's gathered stored-up qi will dissipate, and his chance to knock Wei Wuxian up will have been wasted, at least for now.

Nie Huaisang smirks at him knowingly, but thankfully he nods.

Yes. Lan Wangji thinks. Finally. “Wei Ying. I can’t hold on anymore. Are you ready? Are you still alright with this?”

Wei Ying has fallen into a full-on frenzy, mindlessly chasing his orgasm by rocking down on the two cocks buried inside him. His mouth is slack and open, whining softly, while his hips shake on Lan Wangji’s lap.

He still manages a faint, “Yeah,” while almost shaking apart under the relentless slide against his most sensitive spots.

“Oh, I think Wei-xiong is absolutely ready, Lan Wangji,” Nie Huaisang teases and loosely covers Wei Wuxian’s swollen erection with his hand to give him something to rub up against. Then he nods decisively at Lan Wangji, who takes it as a sign to go ahead.

Carefully, Lan Wangji untethers the energy gathered at the base of his ovipositor and shapes it into an egg in the exact manner that the books from the secret part of the library described to him after he went looking for something that might help out Wei Ying’s Golden Core predicament. Then he pushes the egg forward, up his shaft, and in the direction of the deep, fucked-open wetness that awaits it inside of Wei Ying’s body.

It is overwhelmingly strange to have his cock stretched open in such a way. Good, yes. But with an edge of painful overstimulation to it that sends Lan Wangji into a feedback loop of pain-pleasure-pain and drown him in its orgasmic glory.

It’s worth it, just for the knowledge that soon this energy that has been formed from Lan Wangji’s body will settle itself into Wei Ying’s flesh instead, to be absorbed by the walls of his lower intestine and then reformed as soon as it reaches the place once occupied by Wei Ying’s golden core. In theory, Wei Ying’s empty lower meridian should serve as a kind of incubator to hold the egg and then let it develop further throughout several months of continuous dual cultivation.

In living memory, this exact theory has never actually been attempted before, Lan Wangji found out during his research. Especially not in a cut-sleeve coupling. Whichever unnamed Lan ancestor had written down his theories on dragon eggs and golden cores had thought a womb would be necessary to receive the egg, no matter that cultivation was strangely unpredictable when it came to reproductive issues.

Lan Wangji isn’t worried about that, however. He believes in Wei Ying’s ability to do the impossible, to keep the energy alive for at least as long as is necessary for it to take a hold in his body.

Once there is life at stake, Wei Ying will do anything in his power to protect it and keep it alive. Even more so if it is his flesh and blood as this egg of theirs will be once it hatches.

Wei Ying often told Nie Huaisang and Lan Wangji how much he wished he knew more about his blood family during their late night talks. Tucked away in their tent, conversations like this full of hopes and dreams and regrets of their life outside of the war happened often and the topic returned to this quite regularly. How he wished he had a claim on another person the way that the Jiangs had a claim on each other, Wei Ying would whisper into the night.

Something that was not so easily broken by outside influence and changing circumstances as his relationship to his foster family had been.

Lan Wangji very much wishes to give all of that to Wei Ying. A place to call home. A person to belong to who would belong to him in return. A purpose in life.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji breathes into the space between their lips after the egg has slid into place and his secondary cock has started to spill its fertilizing liquid over the rapidly hardening sphere made from Lan Wangji's qi. “Wei Ying, won’t you come with me after this?”

All Wei Ying answers with is a sharp wine when Nie Huaisang engulfs Wei Ying’s cock with his playful fingers to push him over the edge as well.

He comes with a shout and then crumples on top of Lan Wangji, his chest rising and falling too quickly to be able to answer Lan Wangji.

In the aftermath of his orgasm, however, Lan Wangji cannot keep control of the sudden flood of his words that wants to escape him. “We don’t have to go to Cloud Recesses. We can go anywhere you want instead–Gusu, or Qinghe, or Yunmeng. Or even further away than that! It doesn’t matter. If you want to wander, we’ll wander. We can get a donkey, just like you've talked about. Or a horse, if you’d rather have that. But I want to keep you close. I want to be a family. I want to be yours the way that our child will be yours once it is born.”

Nie Huaisang stretches out beside them and softly pats Lan Wangji’s hip. “Maybe wait with the hard questions until Wei-xiong can think again, hm?”

Lan Wangji sighs but nods. Nie Huaisang is right of course. There’s plenty of time for new plans to be hatched now. New roads for the future to be mapped out. The dragon egg might take or it might not, but either way, Lan Wangji refuses to let go of Wei Ying from now on. Or at least not until Wei Ying ever tells him to.

From the way that Wei Ying curls into his side with a trusting and comfortable sigh, that luckily seems unlikely at best.

Lan Wangji cards a hand through Wei Ying’s messy hair and then leans down to brush a soft kiss against his forehead before twisting their bodies around so he can spoon his beloved from behind. In that position, it is easy to see how flushed and elated Nie Huaisang is, something that he now knows to be a tell-tale sign that the other man has just fed his supernatural desires with their combined sexual energies.

“You know,” he says, suddenly inspired to acknowledge everything that lies between them, from gratefulness to genuine friendship to the kind of love that is only a shade different from how Lan Wangji feels for Wei Ying. “the invitation includes you, too.”

“What? The wandering? Or domestically settling down somewhere? I don’t think so, Lan Wangji. I’m pretty sure my Da-ge would kill me if I ran away with you two.”

“Can’t kill you if you’re far enough away,” Wei Ying mumbles, a hazy lilt to his words. His eyes are mostly closed, but he still lifts his head in the vague direction he probably assumes Nie Huaisang is in. “Lan Zhan is right. There’s always a place for you with us if you want.”

“Ah, Wei-xiong,” Nie Huaisang answers. “That’s very sweet, but to be honest, I’m fine living vicariously through you two and your epic romance. You have to promise me something, though.”

“Anything. Just say the word.”

“Swing by the Unclean Realm occasionally if you do decide to travel. And if you settle in Gusu instead, be sure to invite me over there instead. We can look around the library and see what kind of fantastic filth the Lans are hiding in their basement. Good drink, good porn, good companionship. You know, like old times.”

Wei Ying grins at that. “Of course! You promised me once that you had so much interesting porn stashed away in the Cloud Recesses that it would be worth staying for even after I punched Jin Zixuan in the face!”

Lan Wangji frowns. “Obscenity is forbidden in the Cloud Recesses.”

There is no porn anywhere in the library. He would know, because surveying all the tomes that survived the Wen's fire was the task set to him by his Uncle after he'd returned to Gusu after the war, dejected because he hadn't been allowed to stay by Wei Ying's side to play for him until Wei Ying woke from his coma.

He decides to let the matter go, for now, however, when all Wei Ying and Nie Huaisang do in response is sharing a grin and dissolving into laughter.  

What does he care about any porn that may or may not have existed in the library at any given time if he instead could concentrate on making Wei Ying laugh like this more often?

Lan Wangji settles down into the sheets and pulls both Wei Ying and Nie Huaisang close to himself, reveling in their comfortable warmth.

In fact, he thinks, if it made Wei Ying want to stay with him, Lan Wangji would fill a whole section of the library with spring books. He'd just have to make sure nobody had access to it besides them. And that his Uncle never found out. But all of that hassle would be worth it, if only Wei Ying stayed in the Cloud Recesses of his own will.