Archive of Our Own ^beta

"When you can see the colors of the feathers, you'll also understand how you can expand your borders to infinity."

—Lois McMaster Bujold, Borders of Infinity

Nie Huaisang doesn't do homework.

It's not his thing. Practice, drill, lines, memorization—as soon as it's boring, he's gone.

A delicate but adamant refusal to try to do stupid assignments covers all possible nuances of 'why not finish it perfectly.' Among them, artistically hidden via misdirection, is the part where he sometimes feels genuinely stupid at how his brain and hand and body simply won't focus sometimes. Anyone who knows him as supremely louche and lazy won't ever guess at how he's frustrated with his recurring inability to concentrate if he's not—if he's not doing something that's...more-than. More than what? He doesn't know. Only: if he's acting a persona, flirting with someone, stalking prey, creating art, doing something anything else that's interesting in the process of carrying out a task, then he can mostly cope with going through the motions of repetition. But for no good reason, a flat 'just do it again' feels like death every. single. time.

But. There's 'feels like death' and then there's...actually. Well. Dead-dead.

Nie Huaisang promised his brother he wouldn't die at the Qishan Wen indoctrination. That's his job. That's what he argued for, gripped his saber and swore an oath to uphold—that he was capable, that he was taking this seriously, that he was going to buy them all time before the inevitable clash of arms resumed and accelerated. That he wasn't a baby anymore.

To stay alive, Nie Huaisang has to stay invisible.

Which means he has to do his homework.

Which means he's going out the minuscule space between the hastily-added wooden bars nailed over the transom windows that run the length of the modified soldier's barracks housing the Nie. The prisoners at the indoctrination, split up roughly by sect, are housed in assorted inhospitable locations that are universally drafty and dusty. Their quarters are rigged out with half-assed security measures, and desultorily watched over. The intent has to be, not to keep them truly secure, but simply to to slow down departures enough that getting a whole group out would necessarily result in noise, summoning additional guards.

Historically, Wens rely on numbers and overwhelming force over singular excellence and flawless solidity. Rather then pursue exceptionality, they take exceptional people and force them to fit their mold. 'Good enough' always leaves gaps, which any tactician would know. Still, they understandably prefer not to waste resources on pursuing perfect security. Instead, they choose to play the odds when they are so crushingly in their favor. In doing so, they disregard all the outliers, the wriggling little nuances that don't quite fit the plan.

Meanwhile, Nie Huaisang is superlatively good at finding wiggle room, consistently outwitting and undercutting the expectations of a hidebound military mindset, while avoiding engaging with any greater demands.

So, here he is. Sneaking out under the sound cover of an utterly cliched dark and stormy night. Into the pouring rain. In his underwear.

After all, stripping down changes his silhouette and lets him squeeze into tiny spots that don't look big enough for an adult human. The part where that involves being wet and cold sucks enormous donkey balls. The part where he's selected underwear that looks good on him, tight-fitted pants and a thin shirt that ties at the waist, something he'd quite like to paint someone wearing while it's damp and clingy—that simply adds flair.

He is not pursuing fashion to the exclusion of his actual agenda, though! He's carrying the homework in question on him. Since all identifiable qiankun pouches have long since been confiscated (some of the Jin girls have hidden ones that look like perfume sachets, toiletry kits, and other frivolous items, though), Nie Huaisang instead drew an illicit waterproofing talisman using the ink and paper they've been provided with for their studies, sweating over getting every line perfect despite the inferior materials, in order to protect the packet of papers currently tied to his chest. Now, his one successful talisman glows mutedly beneath the long silk sash that he wrapped over and over around his body to help maintain his core temperature.

He tiptoes through a mud puddle, grimacing. This would be hilarious if his teeth weren't chattering. He is risking his life, against a curfew armed with swords and spears, and soaking himself to the skin in the process. All in the hopes of convincing Wei Wuxian to help him cheat on his homework once again.

The entire time he's been held prisoner by the Wens, Nie Huaisang has been unable to escape the thought that he's in a bizarre nightmare-version of those three long summers of deadly-feeling boredom in Gusu. But actually deadly. Rules that seem like an attempt to catch out everyone really are made up on the spot to get you and promptly discarded the next day out of sheer vicious humor, rather than being carved in stone. Assignments that make no sense might actually be nonsense thrown together by soldiers tasked with generating crap busywork, rather than the obscurity of arcane scholarship. Humble labor doesn't mean a little light sweeping or weeding in the garden, it means sweating while carrying and spreading manure until the guards on duty were satisfied you'd never get the smell out, even if that meant knocking your knees out from under you so you fell down into it face-first. Fainting at martial drill is just as likely to mean that they throw your body into a crevasse instead of into an infirmary. Instead of smacking knuckles in class, Wen Chao has started telling Wen Zhuliu to break fingers.

The awful, wonderful thing is about it is: Nie Huaisang is good at this.

He's cultivated the ability to pretend to comply. He's used to evading demands that he practice this or complete that while actually carving out time to happily immerse himself in the things he wants to do, whether that's tracking birds or painting fans. He's an immortal master of the vague bullshit answer, the technically not plagiarized essay, and the half-assed gesture towards practicing a stance.

He's also got allies. Wei Wuxian is just as deceitful, when he chooses to be—or needs to be. He's also so clever that his shitty memory barely impairs him. He can figure out a correct answer from first principles in the time it takes someone else to retrieve a memorized one. Moreover, he actually enjoys book-learning when a topic happens to snag his attention.

Meanwhile, Nie Huaisang finds that the only really compelling lessons are conveyed, not by dry scrolls, but by human storytellers.

Wei Wuxian makes a fantastic tutor-slash-co-conspirator for him. Sometimes he really does help Nie Huaisang learns the material. Almost always, he's willing to help Huaisang cheat on tests, provided it's in an original and creative way, just for the sake of figuring out how to do it. Their bond was forged in porn and peanuts, celebrated in wine and cemented with falling off a bed, and Nie Huaisang is counting on the eternal ties of stupid school friendship to save him now.

It's not far from the Nie building to where the Jiang cultivators are held, but far enough that Nie Huaisang is dripping profusely, nursing a stubbed toe, and regretting all of his choices by the time he gets there.

Huaisang's taps on the jammed-shut door to the barracks housing most of the Jiang start out tentative and quickly grow desperate. No, the door isn't locked from the outside. Wei Wuxian broke the stupid little exterior latch on the first day. Apparently, he did it in plain sight of a couple of frazzled exhausted guards who really just wanted to be off-duty. Since the damage report subsequently kept being buried by people who didn't want to get in trouble for not having reporting it sooner, the Wens never actually assigned anyone to fix it. No, there isn't a guard stationed here at all times, because then there wouldn't be anyone ever looking at the back of this building, or the next building over. Yes, someone will definitely come by on patrol and spot him anyway if Nie Huaisang doesn't get let in within the next kè. Yes, the fact that they usually run late makes it harder, not easier, to know just when. Yes, Nie Huaisang is panicking!

The door creaks open.

"Do you want to die?" Jiang Wanyin says rudely as he answers Nie Huaisang's frantic knocking.

Nie Huaisang lunges past him, not answering, and lands with a splash on the ground next to Wei Wuxian's bunk. Wei Wuxian is laying on the splintery bare wood of the bottom bunk, belly-down with his back exposed. The naked skin there glistens with some kind of contraband ointment thinly spread over the lashmarks and bruises he's never not wearing these days. His boots are on the floor, along with his sadly empty sword belt. One bare foot is flexed, pushing against the wooden frame of the three-tier flat bunk, keeping him from sliding to the floor as he concentrates. He holds his head and hands close to the edge of the bunk, for the sake of stealing some limited light from the indoor glare of the never-night lamps mounted all along the exterior outside of the barracks. He's got a scrap of paper the size of his thumb and is sloooowly writing on it in characters so small you'd swear they were written by ants. His tongue sticks out from behind his teeth.

Nie Huaisang grabs Wei Wuxian's skirt—dyed a rich black with a purple undertone, and covered in dried mud—where it's spilling over the mattress-less bed onto the floor. He begs, sniveling, "Wei-xiong, you've got to help me! This essay is going to kill me! I know you know this, please, please, please help me out!"

"Nie-xiong, how do you even know I know it?" Wei Wuxian answers casually. "Maybe I wasn't paying attention."

"Wei-xiong," Nie Huaisang says desperately. He lets a few big fat tears well up. He'd prefer to humiliate himself a bit, rather than admit to being observant. The truth is, though, he'd seen Wei Wuxian snap from idly studying a passing bird's flight to disassembling the instructor with his glare earlier today, when Jiang Wanyin missed a question about genealogy and was assigned a punishment lap as a consequence.

For every lap Jiang Wanyin takes, Wei Wuxian is sure to get at least three, running a gauntlet of Wen troops hitting out with whatever weapon they chose. They have been running with weights on each leg, too, as of this past week, ever since Wen Chao belatedly noticed that the top twenty young cultivators of every sect are mostly better at running and dodging than the below-average troops he has to work with are at aiming at them.

So, Nie Huaisang is positive that Wei Wuxian paid attention for the remainder of that lecture. But, Nie Huaisang doesn't necessarily want to give Wei Wuxian more detail that he has to about what, exactly, Nie Huaisang has been studying. (People. It's always people. In any given group, there are one to three actors who sway everyone else; a truism that most people have heard of. Learning how to deduce from interactions alone who they currently are and what cues they will follow is the difference between vaguely knowing what a book is, and being able to read. In every group setting, Wei Wuxian becomes one of those key actors as soon as one of his people is threatened. And that's his weakness—the inability to hide.)

"Oh all right," Wei Wuxian says, and slithers to the floor, companionably joining Nie Huaisang in his damp little puddle. He begins pawing unsorted stacks of pages and pages of notes and draft essays out from under the bottom bunk, muttering as he sifts through his legitimate written work. The margins of the low-grade paper look moth-eaten where he's worried away bits of blank paper to use for talismans, counting on incredulity at the idea that anyone could write working talismans using such poor material to let his habitual shredding and peeling pass as a nervous habit.

Eventually, Wei Wuxian finds something he deems relevant, and holds it up. He slouches, leaning back against the support column of the bunk-bed, then promptly hisses in pain and hunches forward. He squints at the paper in his hand, and rubs his nose, eyes watering.

"An Account of the Generations of the Heirs of Wen Mao, In the First and Second Era of the Sects," Wei Wuxian reads aloud, his eyes skipping ahead down the page. He coughs, glances sideways at Nie Huaisang, and converts his nose-rubbing into stroking an imaginary long beard. As he reads on, his voice grows pompous and dry with the faintest hint of a soft Gusu accent. By the time he finishes the page, he's doing a full-on Lan-xiansheng imitation, indignant upright posture and all.

Meanwhile, Jiang Wanyin has gathered up the other Jiang disciples that aren't asleep, and moved away. They're escaping Wei Wuxian's dramatics as best they can by huddling at the far end of the barracks to play an intensely competititive dice game. Absently, Nie Huisaisang notes that Jiang Wanyin has activated a light-talisman that's apparently sewn into his sleeve, and aside from being blue it appears to be fully-functional.

At the end of the page, Wei Wuxian fishes around for his ink palette. He apparently stopped taking notes and started doodling little cultivators wearing absurdly long forehead ribbons, somewhere around Wen Mao's sons' sons' wives' brothers' nephews. He retrieves his brush from behind his ear, picks out a page of what appears to be some astrological math and starts blithely writing over top of it, producing a cheat-sheet for Nie Huaisang.

Huaisang, however, doesn't actually want to study. He just wants something to turn in tomorrow.

"Wei-xiong, I bet your essay is already finished," he murmurs. "I bet it's downright poetic. Wen Chao is probably going to ejaculate out of sheer ancestral pride when he reads it."

"Oh, ew," Wei-xiong predictably says, looking revolted but intrigued, which is his default response to Huaisang's dirty jokes.

Nie Huaisang has probed Wei Wuxian's responses to these sorts of banter thoroughly. Once he determined that the revulsion varies by the specifics of the subjects, not by their gender, Huaisang was able to relax slightly in Wei Wuxian's presence. This despite Wei Wuxian's ingrained tendency to fall back on insults that make him sound utterly loutish. Jiang Wanyin is more standoffish, thus harder to read. But, after weeks of observation, Nie Huaisang deduced that the slightly-younger Jiang's flare-point will always be his fear of being socially humiliated. There's no real sense of threat from anyone else's, ah, personal preferences. Long after overtly befriending them, Nie Huaisang concluded that Wei Wuxian and Jiang Wanyin did indeed pass his internal test for real compatibility as friends.

That status comes with added privileges. Given that they are both quite handsome and yet have such touchy personalities, Nie Huaisang considers it a public services to have introduced the Twin Prides of Yunmeng to the joys of well-written pornography.

"Wei-xiong," Huaisang says in his most pathetic voice. He makes his chilly fingers get to work, unwrapping the soggy outer layers of silk from the almost-dry inner layers, then unveiling his pristine paper. "I can't be expected to learn this and write about it too by tomorrow, it's inhumane! You know I can never remember who is whose cousin, or how many uncles some princeling ends up with after all the marriages."

Wei Wuxian sticks out his hand, and Nie Huaisang hands over the paper. He re-arranges himself, lying down curled on his side so he can stop shivering, someone's stray hooded cloak tugged up over his still-damp shoulders. The rain falls outside like hoofbeats, a relaxing rocking rhythm. Nie Huaisang drifts a little, lulled by the sound of Wei Wuxian writing and narrating while he writes, doing Huaisang's essay for him in a none-too-bad fake of Huaisang's diffident authorial voice. Meanwhile, Nie Huaisang is vaguely trying to figure out how best to repay Wei Wuxian—but subtly, so that it looks like Nie Huaisang is ever more hopelessly in his debt. Maybe he'll have a good idea by morning.

A crash of thunder brings Nie Huaisang blinking fully awake. He sits up, shaking his hood off his hair. Wei Wuxian looks to be on the last page, and is writing left-handed, presumably to give his dominant hand a break. He's also rubbing one of his nipples, which are tightly pebbled up as if they've been teased with a feather-light touch, though presumably that's just from sitting in this uncomfortable damp cold with his torso uncovered.

Huaisang laughs, delighted by the evidence that Wei Wuxian is so casually relaxed around him. Wei Wuxian looks up, a "What?" written over his face, and then sheepishly sticks his hand in his pocket.

Flirtatious, teasing, Nie Huiasang runs his tongue over his lower lip and lifts an eyebrow. Wei-xiong, never to be outdone in displays of blatantly insincere flattery, contorts both eyebrows and exaggeratedly licks all the way around his lips while eying Nie Huaisang up and down. They both snicker.

Then Wei-xiong shoves the latest completed page of the prose genealogy of the Wen main line and septs at him, saying "Memorize some of this, okay? I'm already faking your handwriting, I can't very well fake your voice too if they call on you to recite."

Nie Huaisang sighs, and picks up the paper. Wei Wuxian goes back to talismans while Huaisang scans over 'his' essay. It's...long. In the back of his head, Huaisang is increasingly itchingly concerned that he might have missed one of the night gongs while he was dozing off, there.

As if on cue, the thunder rolls again, noise blanketing everything. A flash of purple light illuminates every crack and crevice in the walls — too near!

Someone bangs on the door. Once, twice, three times. Then a booted foot hits it hard, the flimsy interior latch bursts, and the door falls crashingly open.

The guard comes tromping in the door, booted feet stomping a splatter of mud all the way to the closest bunks. He lifts a windowpane lantern, scanning around the dim room with its mirror-concentrated beam. He draws his sword, with an unpleasant scraping sound suggestive of poor maintenance, when he sees that some of the bunks are empty. Then the beam of light falls on Huaisang and Wuxian, frozen over their illicit study-materials like a pair of rabbits startled in the bushes.

Nie Huaisang instantly flings himself at Wei Wuxian, eyes wide, grabbing him by the shoulders. Mid-motion, he finds a frozen eternity that lasts about half a second, and thinks. His mind races through fake motivations and telling details, trying to decide the why of this, pick which act he's playing and pull it around him like a robe. Is he sobbing pathetically into Wei Wuxian's shoulder, is he ripping strips of skin off of him out of childish impotent rage, is he seducing him? Huaisang goes for adolescent-idiocy-flavored making out as the most likely cover. It's plausible, it could easily get the guard to make broad assumptions without questioning the specifics of his presence. It's risky—if the guard is bigoted against cutsleeves out of disgusted conviction rather than lazy superiority, it could actually get them both killed horribly—but it's clearly the best choice available when they're already caught. Unlike other motivations for sneaking in to see someone, intimacy based on attraction can easily be arbitrary in its object, requiring no preexisting connection to motivate cravings, and needing no real reason to explain abruptly ending things either.

The part where that means that Nie Huaisang is smashing his mouth into Wei Wuxian's while frantically attempting to summon up a boner is the part he's going to have nineteen mixed emotions about later.

Right now, though, Nie Huaisang has to convincingly be horny enough to be willing to possibly die in order to get laid. Given the ice and lightning that went through his veins when he heard the noise of the guards outside, that's shockingly not-difficult.

Even though Wei Wuxian kind of smells like old sweat and rotting chilis and maybe a little as if his robes were left lying on top of something dead that had been left outside on a hot day, it's not hard for Nie Huaisang to want to push himself against him, to get through all his layers of concealment, and to melt into his skin.

Except it is. Hard. Well. Uh. Getting there, anyway.

"It's after curfew. What's going on here," the guard asks, rote and reflexive.

"This is exactly what it looks like," Jiang Wanyin says from where he's reappeared standing between the guard and his shixiong, sounding cool and unamused and unafraid. Then he tucks his hand under Huaisang's armpit, and smoothly pulls him up and away from Wei Wuxian. In one motion, Jiang Wanyin spins Nie Huaisang from lying half-draped over Wei Wuxian's lap, into standing within the curve of Jiang Wanyin's arm instead.

Then Jiang Wanyin rests his other hand in the small of Huaisang's back. He presses his hips forward and his shoulder back at the same time, bending the arc of their bodies. He dips Huaisang back and brings his face in and kisses him with absolute confidence and power and a tiny hint of beard stubble. The firm controlled pressure of his lips makes it completely inconsequential that there's no tongue action whatsoever.

Jiang Wanyin breaks the kiss and jerks his head up, staring challengingly at the guard. At the same time, he pulls sharply on Huaisang's hair, forcing Huaisang to bend back more, to show his throat and go up on tiptoe a little. He must look vulnerable, nonthreatening—held.

"Haven't you heard that Huaisang here took three years to finish off his Lan indoctrination? He was just having too much fun to go."

Jiang Wanyin's voice is sharp, condescending, snappish, judgmental. Icily superior, but with a jagged crack in his underlying confidence, filled in with sarcasm. These are all things Nie Huaisang, is used to hearing, used to ignoring, when directed at Wei Wuxian. Now, however, that biting tone is directed at him, and combined with the decisiveness that's usually typical of the Jiang sect heir when giving commands on a night-hunt. Nie Huaisang is shaken.

Next, Jiang Wanyin pushes Huaisang down with a hand on his shoulder. Nie Huaisang has a split second to figure that, wherever this is going, it's likely better that Jiang Wanyin is in charge of it than the guards. He goes cooperatively down, and lands in front of Jiang Wanyin on his knees with a thump and a flurry of skirts. He widens his eyes, and pouts, his mouth sore and bruised with kissing.

"Hey!" Wei Wuxian protests, but Jiang Wanyin must have glared at him because that's all the protest that emerges in response to having his shidi interrupt his fake-but-real make-out session to kiss his pretend-boyfriend. The next thing Huaisang hears is Wei Wuxian getting to his feet and smoothing his robes out, despite the hard-on that he's undoubtedly still sporting.

"I suppose you've never encountered this, but some of us like to consider ourselves attractive enough for casual sex," Wei Wuxian says chidingly to the guard. "In such a situation as ours, really any red-blooded man would find that a little relaxation helps with being able to...concentrate during the daytime. Since there is such a lot to learn here."

He's backing Jiang Wanyin's play. Of course he is.

Huaisang's been cast in the "target" role by virtue of being the one who had to have sneaked out to be present here. But now, he's not alone as cheap prey, yet he's also not coming off as dangerous or smart. If Jiang Cheng is playing obstacle and protector to give Huaisang more cover, enabling Wei Wuxian to sidestep seeming to be Huaisang's sole partner in crime and instead play the lunatic distraction that diverts attention altogether, then... They might just get away with this.

Jiang Wanyin snorts. "As if Huaisang would've scored your attractiveness against a chart before sleeping with you. You're not as good at hiding that ugly mole on your chin as you think, shixiong."

"Hey! I'm higher ranked on the list of handsome bachelors than you, shidi!" Wuxian shoves Jiang Cheng's shoulder, sibling mock-aggression supplying a familiar easy script. Jiang Cheng sighs exasperatedly.

As if casually, Wuxian crosses in front of Huaisang, his skirts half obscuring Huaisang from the guard as he saunters to the far wall. He sticks a hand in between the thin mat on an unoccupied bunk and the framework, and pulls it back out.

A crunching noise is followed by a puff of air that sprays bits of shell all around. Half-muffled by chewing, Wei Wuxian makes an arrogant, distracting offer to the guard. "Want some peanuts?"

The guard takes a step back. "Those are contraband," he says. "No outside food allowed unless you've earned a privilege pass. Also I'm allergic."

"Whoops, sorry, sorry," Wei Wuxian says with blatant insincerity. "Look, if I'm not gonna get laid tonight and you're not gonna have a snack, then nobody needs to be here and nothing's happening, right? Do me a favor. Walk Huaisang back where he's supposed to be without a huge fuss, and I'll get everyone a break from standing in the sun tomorrow afternoon."

"How the fuck are you gonna do that?" blurts the guard. Huaisang relaxes, because that half-incredulous, half-enthralled tone means Wei Wuxian has done it again. He's wrapped another idiot who'd swear he didn't have a cutsleeve bone in his body around his absurd charisma. Now everyone in the room, sexually attracted to him or not (Huaisang's dick gives an emphatic throb) would follow Wei Wuxian over a cliff, just to see what happens next.

"I have my methods," Wei Wuxian says with pure arrogance as intoxicating as hard baijiu. He's preposterous, and he can pull it off. His peacocking in front of Wen Chao over and over, along with his continued survival, proves his capability to blatantly manipulate someone who has the power of life and death over him. For that very reason, if the Wen army had any collective sense they'd kill him now, before he can start any deeper subversion. He's an idiot, and he's brilliant. More: he's clearly into Huaisang, and it's terrifying how into that Huaisang actually is.

Wei Wuxian sells the act completely, but Nie Huaisang doesn't think it's going to work. Nonetheless, it does.

For whatever reason—boredom, curiosity, impending nasal congestion, sudden sexuality crisis, simple human sympathy, or the mere desire to not watch one more senseless act of torture especially if it means being awake even longer in the middle of the night—the guard agrees to escort Huaisang back to his quarters.

All the way there, Huaisang is trying to brace himself to pay the price of it. But the guard unlocks the door and closes it in his face to lock back up with nothing more than a bizarrely polite and cheerful "Good night!"

So. Nie Huaisang is a slut, apparently. He's going to have to thank Jiang Wanyin for that stroke of idiot genius later, right after killing him. It's horrible. It's perfect. He's got a literal free pass, for exactly as long as people think it's funny.

All he has to do is whore himself out. Or pretend to, but the kissing is real, and he'll have to go as much further as he needs to in order to sell the act, and at that point, aside from the part where he's selling his physical actions for medium-range plausibility rather than immediate financial gain, where's the difference?

Meng Yao would figuratively kill him for this. Meng Yao would indirectly needle him about his foolishness by making him uncomfortable for somehow offending Meng Yao with his actions. Wrapped up in the subtle social punishment would be a still-subtler lesson, a bare breath of a deniable hint that Nie Huaisang needs to pay attention, that once unscrupulous powerful people see a whore they will never see anything else. Meng Yao, Nie Huaisang extrapolates wildly, would obliquely caution him that being identified as a sexual object and an object of violence is less than half a step away from being subjected to both at once. Meng Yao would have him surrounded by just, so many humorless Nie guards, right now. Meng Yao would have 'accidentally' boiled his tea and served it to him pointedly oversteeped, with a bland smile, while subjecting him to some excruciating historic parable about one little lie getting way out of hand. Meng Yao would have already saved him, somehow, wrapped him up in a carpet and had him smuggled out of here over someone's shoulders, while taking his place.

Meng Yao would probably have spider wife'd his way into assassinating Wen Chao by now, if he'd been here with—instead of—Nie Huaisang.

Meng Yao isn't here. Isn't going to be, ever again.

It's all on Nie Huaisang. If he's going to be the slutty laughingstock of Evil Summer Camp, he's going to be the best at it.

(So, naturally, he starts by almost screwing everything up. But that's a different story.)

The next night, it's Wei-xiong breaking into Huaisang's quarters. Huaisang is busy drilling his fifth cousin and Nie Zonghui's third cousin (those are two different people, but it's admittedly hard to keep track) on memorizing the contours of a terrain map traced out in dust on the floor.

Then Wei Wuxian's paperman slides in under the door, waves a cheeky hello, and leaps up to dismantle the door hinges.

Which are still on the inside of the door, with the prisoners, because, as previously established, the Wens are sloppy to the point of stupidity. (Except—Huaisang keeps having to remind himself of this—it's not fatally stupid for them as long as they can still kill you. Because they have swords—and talisman paper, and water flasks, and portable rations, and socks for their boots, and and and—and of course you don't.) As a result, maybe the dungeon cells where they keep threatening to put people are secure, but the rest of this camp-turned-campus definitely isn't.

Paperman-Wuxian lets actual-Wuxian in, staring blankly and shuffling like an animated corpse with his divided concentration. He—big him—extends a hand palm first, then he—little him—hops up into his own hand. (Nie Huaisang needs to draw porn of this. It's too bad the paperman talismans are two-dimensional.) He apparently goes to sleep—the paperman, not the human—and then actual-Wuxian blinks twice and opens his eyes, alert. Wei Wuxian tucks his inanimate paperman self into his sleeve, then whips his fingers back out with a different slip of paper in them. Nonchalantly, he throws out a sparkly little talisman that somehow makes all the hinges of the door pins levitate and then drop smoothly back into place.

Nie Huaisang hates to admit it, even to himself, but sometimes Wei Wuxian actually is almost as cool as he wants people to think he is. Huaisang is never going to say it out loud, though. Wuxian's arrogance, unlike his stunted tact and struggling situational awareness, needs no fertilizing.

"Came to make sure you finished your homework, after all that fuss and bother last night," Wei Wuxian says. He blinks innocently. "A good shifu looks out for his students, right?"

"Oh, I've been practicing," Huaisang says meaningfully. They lock eyes.

"Kitchen," Nie Huaisang says, and jerks his head towards the sectioned-off area at the end of the barracks.

The aforementioned kitchen isn't very exciting, and it's notably ill-equipped. There's a huge empty hearth with a tiny opening, wall hooks stripped of knives, faded outlines where pots used to hang, one huge three-footed iron cauldron with a rusted hole in its side. It also boasts an assortment of various people's picked-over traveling mess kits, minus all the usefully sized sharp things, laid out on a broken plank in place of a table. Since the hostages aren't usually permitted to light cooking fires, only to take bowls of gruel from communal vats, the kitchen has been deprived of purpose aside from the occasional mashing-up of some foraged greens or stolen fruit. Therefore, it's been pressed into use as the default semi-private space for this building.

That little bit of pseudo-privacy is very much needed, given there's twenty Nie, plus forty-odd cultivators from closely affiliated sects, all crammed into one narrow barracks meant for a squad of less than half that number. The Jiangs are in a larger barracks but there's also twice as many people in there. Some of them have ancestral blood feuds and because they definitely can't duel under the circumstances they have to pretend that they can't see each other all the time. All in all, Nie Huaisang will take the current arrangement, and the unspoken agreement that goes with it. Unless it sounds like someone's getting seriously hurt, what happens in the kitchen area is considered invisible and inaudible from elsewhere, despite the lack of amenities extending to a lack of any interior doors.

As soon as Wei Wuxian follows Nie Huaisang into the (even stuffier and more humid than usual somehow) little set-aside space, Wuxian rolls his neck and cracks his shoulders. Then he finds a pillar to lounge against so he can slouch and still be taller than normal people. He's grinning, the cheerful let's-see-what-happens expression that he usually wears while walking into a situation that most people would find a bit intimidating.

Nie Huaisang falls to his knees. Wei Wuxian follows him down to kneeling, and they face off. They look intensely at each other, both breathing a little deeper than usual, neither one quite ready yet to make the first unambiguous move.

"I am so far behind in my new elective," Huaisang says, staring at Wuxian's mouth. "At least I did all the reading ahead of time! Practical exam is whenever. I wanna find out whether I like deep-throating a dick."

"Hell yes," Wei Wuxian says. He lunges forward into a kiss.

So that's going well. Maybe a week in, a belated panic-thought crosses Huaisang's mind and he spends about half of the next day walking on pins and needles because he's expecting Lan Wangji to possibly murder him. Then the other man silently dumps the contents of his full manure bucket into Huaisang's almost empty one and walks away, leaving Huaisang to spread it on Wangji's share of garden rows. At that point, Huaisang figures out that he's going to be allowed to survive successfully crushing on Wangji's crush but he's going to pay for it with curated petty bitch annoyances into the next eternity. Death might be the better option here, is what he's saying.

So of course Nie Huaisang and Lan Wangji, as two of the best calligraphers available, are assigned together to Wen Qing as aides when she decides to undertake a large project with lots of writing. Namely, she's going to reinventory and refresh the total contents of the fortress's pharmacopeia. Being stuck here with no duties except being on call to fuss over the small injuries sustained by Wen Chao and his immediate household, while forbidden to go help the locals, must really be chafing her. Either that or she really hates dust, spiders, and old labels with illegible handwriting. It could be both.

It is. So. Boring. Nie Huaisang has nothing to do except write whatever Wen Qing tells him to write, and he's splitting that job with Lan Wangji. Worse, she can't tell him what to write any faster than she can perform tests to be certain that she's correctly identified each dubious container's actual contents and their current level of potency. If Nie Huaisang tries to copy down notes about the medications and drugs available, he'll surely be stopped and disciplined, and they'll be tossed out of this job. Right now neither Nie Huaisang's constitution nor Lan Wangji's leg can handle an abrupt return to fieldwork under the punishing sun, without the breaks provided by chunks of time spent in relative inactivity, indoors, rummaging and sitting and writing. If Nie Huaisang tries to doodle and starts drawing flowers, he'll still get in trouble for wasting paper. Worse, someone might even think to look for codes in his artwork and then he'll really be in trouble. Worst of all, he'd be admitting he isn't any better than Wei Wuxian.

Dear heavens he needs a pet bird or something to concentrate on looking after. That's an all-day distraction, not just at playtime, what with figuring out what to feed your favorite, and when, and how best to take care of them, and if they need to be released. Humans, being largely self-releasing, are a lot more manageable as companions. Thus, they're sadly less distracting, but almost equally rewarding nonetheless. Except for when they also happen to be stuck, as in, stuck with an assignment and stuck indoors doing it and actually for-real no-kidding stuck being a prisoner of war with a makework job so boring that it requires the brains of a rock! Picture-perfect Second Jade Lan Wangji looks like a solid stone statue, sitting at his writing desk with absolutely impeccable posture, like he hadn't been literally dragged here (the camp in general, not here-here) while wearing shackles on a fractured leg. Huaisang can't fuss over him, the man absolutely repels affectionate gestures. No wonder Lan Wangji is magnetically attractive to Wei Wuxian, who has never met a friend he can't provoke by being a little too handsy. The irresistable annoyance and the immovable blockhead. Nie Huaisang stirs the end of his brush around and around and around and around in his ink.

Unless Nie Huaisang really concentrates, Wen Qing's perfectly pleasant voice is turning into something blurry and crackly and backgroundish, like a low fire on the hearth. When he does force himself to concentrate, he swears he can feel his earwax melting from sheer boredom. Never mind that Wen Qing said yesterday that that's medically implausible.

Who knew that having an amazing opportunity for an inside look at a high-ranking enemy working in a crucial department would be the dullest imaginable form of torture? Nie Huaisang already added "don't give your prisoners copies of your requisition forms" and "don't piss off your doctor" to his mental list of things not to do if he's ever forced to be in charge of a military encampment. Now he adds "Don't give clever people time to get bored."

Nie Huaisang doesn't have the faintest clue how he's going to do it but if nothing interesting happens first he swears by his ancestors' sabers that by tomorrow he will find a way to set a stone-floored stone-walled interior room on fire.

A click of glassware on a tabletop. A silence.

"My uncle would be interested to know that," Wen Qing says distantly.

Huaisang feels the hairs go up along the back of his spine. Reflexive, atavistic, a reaction like that of a mouse that's spotted the silent flight of an enormous owl. His gaze snaps to the slender, unsmiling woman in red.

Wen Qing's hand trembles slightly as she adjusts a glass flask under a distilling apparatus.

Oh shit. Did he said that out loud?

"Why—whichever—whatever do you mean?" Huaisang burbles, summoning up a sunny smile to cover his sudden lack of winning words.

"I'm assuming it was a figure of speech," Wen Qing says, resolutely not looking at him. "There's nothing to be concerned about in the uneducated using colorful language. This evening, in addition to your other assignments, you should make ten copies of the words of Wen Mao regarding the folly of grandiloquence, from the third chapter of Victories."

She moves over to wash her hands in a basin. First she wipes away some weird liquid that's actively changing color from blue to brown off of her waxed canvas work gloves. Then she lets water run into the basin from a little barrel-shaped cask with a spigot, and washes up with the gloves still on, holding her hands up at an odd angle so the wash-water never touches her skin or her sleeves.

Wen Qing closes the spigot with a squeak, calmly strips the gloves off, turns around, and braces her hands whiteknuckled on the edge of the worktable. She stares over Nie Huaisang's head. He's frozen, lips set into what has turned out to be a rather sickly grin. Over at the other corner desk, Lan Wangji's posture and expression haven't changed in the slightest, but his brush has stopped moving.

"For those who have yet to memorize them, I'll give a brief paraphrase. In short, poets, like dancing girls, reveal what seems like truth by moving aside artificial veils that they themselves added. But leadership requires directness, honest like a blade. Therefore, a leader should neither threaten nor appease. To extend one's speech unnecessarily shows weakness unbefitting a cultivator. If, in response to righteous action, any other threatens to give a foul return, they should receive the harshest of punishments."

Nie Huaisang has stopped breathing. He knows Wen Qing doesn't dislike him; she won't go out of her way to do him harm. He knows she does dislike Wen Chao; she won't willingly give him more than the bare minimum of cooperation. But he also knows that when it comes to priorities, Wen Qing puts nothing above her brother. As long as they play along, she'll extend her wing to give the hostages a little shelter, while she can. But pose a threat, and then out come the talons.

Lan Wangji looks blank-faced for a bare moment, with a look in his eyes like a baby rabbit that's seen a hawk's shadow pass overhead. Then his chin dips and his jaw clenches.

Challenge accepted, that look says.

Meticulously, Lan Wangji cleans his brush and puts it away. Then he rises and walks, nay stalks over to grab Nie Huaisang by the sleeve.

"When it comes to those who make careless promises, seeking attention, the Lan Clan of Gusu have their own methods of discipline," he says coolly. His fingertips dig hard into Nie Huaisang's wrist. "Such matters are private," he adds.

Then Lan Wangji drags Nie Huaisang into the adjoining storeroom and slams the door behind them.

No sooner does the door latch behind them than Lan Wangji lets go of Nie Huaisang, with the alacrity of someone who has mistakenly picked up red-hot metal. Thus abruptly manhandled and released mid-motion, Nie Huaisang is flung to the floor like a sack of potatoes.

Nie Huaisang blinks up at Lan Wangji, who seems to have run out of words completely. He has frozen in place with his hand still outflung and one foot firmly blocking the door.

Nie Huaisang breathes. Then he breathes again, when the first time doesn't actually work. He does it again a few more times after that for good measure.

Okay. Lan Wangji is freaking out, obviously. Okay. Lan Wangji is a man with a multitude of issues. Nie Huaisang gave up trying to keep track of all of them years ago. Instead, when forced into social situations together, he's relied on the fact that he was going to mildly to moderately irritate Lan Wangji with some near-imperceptible sound or scent or slight, no matter what he did. Predicting this enabled him to manage situations in Wangji's presence, soaring right along the reliable stone-face as if buoyed on a thermal air-current. Additionally, with their older brothers around to serve as intermediaries, Huaisang was able to hold reasonably high confidence that Wangji would once again cease to hold his general insufferableness against him after he'd been correctly punished. But of course those parameters have changed.

Nie Huaisang has, in fact, committed his own worst habit: getting lazy.

Nie Huaisang had implicitly relied on the Second Jade to run interference for him and contain his escapades. That is precisely what he had done when they were adolescents forced into proximity despite having incompatiable interests, one desperate to go find the sounds of nature out in the forest, the other only comfortable when walled in by music and books.

Instead it looks like Nie Huaisang might have to—ugh—take responsibility. He needs to get them both to safer ground, back down the metaphorical cliff of this high-stake situation. He needs to get them out of here, while also safely cradling and containing the panicky reactions that both of their on-edge bodies are trying to have, as if he's carrying a couple of hissing, wriggling, taloned fledgling eaglets. Good thing that the hunting skills he'd practiced as a poorly supervised kid included falconry.

Okay. He can do this. Back to basics: if you can't not get on someone's nerves, decide how you're going to do it.

"Two lines, both in character! I'm impressed, Ji-gege," Nie Huaisang mocks gently.

Lan Wangji clenches his unfairly sculpted jaw, and clenches his still-outstretched hand on the edge of his sleeve, and clenches the door-frame behind him with his other hand, splintering the wood slightly. The reflexive "Don't call me Ji-gege," is clearly locked right behind his teeth, but out of panic or overwhelm or clashing priorities, he seems to have Silenced himself with no need of a spell to achieve it.

Huaisang props himself up on one elbow, hissing in exaggerated soreness, and touches his forehead with the other hand. As if casually, he adds, "You know what they think we're doing in here, right?"

"Do not engage in acts of promiscuity," Lan Wangji says. A whole chunk of doorframe comes off in his hand. His other hand goes to his forehead ribbon, clutching the ends and then—oh that's adorable!—bringing them up to his mouth to nibble.

"So, what, no sex at all? No sex unless you're married?"

"...with one's spouse or spouse-to-be."

"Are you married, Ji-gege? Did some maiden in Caiyi steal your heart?" Nie Huaisang mocks affectionately. "No? Betrothed, then?"

Lan Wangji stares blankly at the opposite wall. Dried herbs, folded bandages, and inksticks have never been so fascinating before in history. His face is slowly turning dark red from the top down, beginning with his ears.

"....No." Lan Wangji says eventually, with mulish reluctance.

"And here I thought I saw Wei-xiong stringing daisy-chains with your forehead ribbon in the bunny-meadow," Nie Huaisang needles. "Or was it using it to wipe the sweat from his face after running laps?"

(It had been both. Neither of them is subtle.)

"You!" Lan Wangji starts forward, then thinks better of it. He crosses his hands defensively over his chest, and turns himself to face the front wall of the storage room, staring blankly at bare wood like an obedient small child told to think about what he's done.

"Everyone who knows you knows that you like Wei-xiong, Wangji-ge," Nie Huaisang says more gently. "You aren't hiding anything, at this point."

Lan Wangji sniffs.

Softer still, Huaisang adds, "Xichen approves of it, even."

Lan Wangji lets out a hitching sob.

Okay, yeah, "potentially dead brother" is definitely floating near the top of Wangji's stew of issues. Best to steer sideways of that. Especially since Huaisang has no real reassurance to offer in that regard.

"I don't think he's indifferent, Wangji-ge," Nie Huaisang says as gently as he can manage. "I think he's young."

At that, Lan Wangji looks up indignantly, craning his head around over his shoulder to glare at Huaisang where he's sitting on the floor with his back towards a dusty shelf of mysterious murky jugs. In the thin light coming around the doorframe, Wangji's eyes gleam faintly pink at the edges, like an albino rabbit.

"Sang-di is younger than Wei Wuxian!" Lan Wangji protests.

"Ah, but I'm old in the ways of the human heart and related appendages," Huaisang says airily, fanning himself with one hand. "Look, if he's yet to figure out he can be a real man and still romantically like men, he has to grow into it. There's no telling people who or what to like. I can promise you that he's not indifferent to masculine charms altogether! But one can see your whole heart is in it. If he's not spoken, I can see how you'd not wish to speak. And if he's made you no promises, you can't be breaking any. But that doesn't mean it's hopeless."

Lan Wangji's frown twitches down harder.

"Won't...push him into anything."

Aha. That's where the manhandling came from. Lan Wangji very badly wants to manhandle Wei Wuxian, and is resolutely stopping himself from doing it. Bullseye.

"You know, with most shy creatures, pushing is the opposite of what you want," Nie Huaisang says reasonably. "You need to lure them in, instead."

Lan Wangji looks sideways, unspeaking.

His opinion of his own attractiveness is summed up in that silence. Clearly, Lan Wangji regards the adulation heaped on him as similar to what goes to an elaborate theatrical puppet, and the person underneath the clothing and behind the sword-arm as negligible. Tian ah, this poor idiot. Huaisang should've tackled him into the spring grass years ago and saved Wangji and Wuxian both seasons of pent-up repression.

Unable to offer any better mercy, at this late date, Nie Huaisang simply lets the silence in the stuffy storeroom stretch out awhile.

"Ji-gege," Nie Huaisang says at length, affectionately mocking his most aggravating old acquaintance with all the tenderness in his heart. "We don't necessarily have to do anything in particular, to get back out of here with my little story intact. But we do have to decide, sooner or later. I can mess up my hair and clothes, and tell you how to muss yours, and we can kick the wall a few times for good measure. Then walk out of here and take whatever punishment Wen Qing assigns to slackers and call it good. Or..." He lets the pause linger, artfully.

Lan Wangji lifts one eyebrow. He's come out of his little shoulder-hunched wall-bonking posture, unfolding upwards to standing like a gawky water bird so he can look down his nose at Huaisang. Now he's slouched sideways on his hip, leaning back against the wall to take the weight off of his still half-healed leg. The tearstains have dried on his cheeks. His much-mentioned forehead ribbon is crooked. His mouth has a sarcastic, world-weary twist to it, but also a tiny upward tug at one corner.

Lan Wangji never been quite as attractive to Nie Huaisang as he is now, when his posture and expression effectively say, "I know you're bullshitting me, but that's all right, keep going."

"Or," Huaisang swallows, "I can show you that I really do like you. And if Wei Wuxian ends up being jealous, then that's his problem to solve."

Lan Wangji blinks a few times, absorbing this. Then he makes a little 'come here' motion with his hands.

Huaisang, of course, goes.

Lan Wangji wraps him up in strong arms, at a slightly awkward angle, and squashes Huaisang against his chest. And then he squeezes. Nie Huiasang's back pops. He lets out a flattened grunt that's almost more of a peep. Tears spring to his eyes—from the pressure, naturally.

"Sang-di," Wangji says in his unfairly smooth, deep voice, his breath tickling the side of Huaisang's neck. "Do you not know that I care for you, already?"

Huaisang has to hit Wangji in the shoulder with his fist several times, before he's allowed enough breathing room to speak.

"Unfair," Huaisang squeaks. "Unfair. You've been an absolute asshole the entire time I've known you, what the hell do you mean you like me?"

Lan Wangji tilts his head to the side. "I have not been an absolute asshole. Nie Huaisang does not deserve that. Few would."

Brrrr. What the hell is with this guy, that he can make an admission of assholery sound both intimidating and intimidatingly attractive? Did someone design him as the protagonist of a harem novel, and end up casting him in a cutsleeve romance by cosmic mistake?

"Oh, fuck you," Nie Huaisang says, and kisses him lightly. It's the kind of kiss that can be either hello or goodbye.

When Nie Huaisang pulls back and looks at Lan Wangji, Lan Wangji's eyes are wide with startlement. He inhales, his nostrils flaring. His head tips back. He swallows.

Then Lan Wangji very slowly lets himself slide down the wall, silk rustling against wood. He lands on the floor, sitting, with a light thump.

Nie Huaisang is left standing, one hand on the wall for balance. Now he's looking down at the top of Lan Wangji's head, where an elaborate braided knot has temporarily taken the place of his usual elaborate guan.

His internal narrative has, at this point, essentially lost coherence. Lan Wangji is just too inscrutable for him.

So he gives up, and therefore sits down. Straddling Lan Wangji's thighs.

In the process, he discovers that Lan Wangji apparently has one hell of a boner.

Lan Wangji's hands come up, and grab Nie Huaisang around the hips. His ears look red enough to be painful. His eyes are a bit swollen. He's got a smear of dust from the wall on his cheek.

"If Nie Huaisang prefers," Lan Wangji says carefully, "We can, indeed, just walk out."

But hangs in the air between them, unspoken.

"Sleeping with one person at a time can't really be promiscuous," Huaisang says instead, offering them both utterly implausible deniability.

Then he grinds down onto the warm, solid erection currently trying to rip its way out of the confines of Lan Wangji's clothing and undergarments.

Lan Wangji's hands tighten on his hips. Nie Huaisang wriggles hard to make those big warm hands slide around on his waist, so he can get some freedom of movement back. The motion of course translates into rubbing himself pretty directly on Lan Wangji. Huaisang's cock is definitely perking up too, his whole body taking an—ahem—elevated interest.

Lan Wangji makes an odd noise that sounds very much like he's just swallowed a small frog. One hand shifts to the small of Nie Huaisang's back. He rubs circles there, soothingly. His eyes have gone half-lidded, like a sleepy cat.

With a triumphant hip-waggle, Huaisang adjusts his angle. Now he is able to get some really good friction going, sliding back and forth along the length of Lan Wangji's cock caught between their bodies. He's not quite able to rub off on him directly at the same time, sadly. As with anatomical drawings, anatomical action absolutely requires careful practice with a variety of angles to achieve the perfect effect, Huaisang realizes.

Still, there's more than enough happening in the correct general area to keep him interested. It's hot, it's metaphorically and literally getting really hot in this damn closet. Wen Qing is going to kill them (not literally) (hopefully not literally) when they come back out. Huaisang moves faster.

After that, it barely takes any effort at all to accomplish the desired result. Lan Wangji takes a shuddering breath, eyes rolling back. He squeezes hard enough to leave fingertip bruises in Nie Huaisan's hips and shoulder. Right underneath his ass, Nie Huaisang can actually feel Lan Wangji's dick jumping, the pleasurable shock of his orgasm seemingly throbbing right through both of them as if they're connected nerve to nerve.

Nie Huaisang whimpers and shoves himself closer, nudging towards Lan Wangji's rock solid abs. There's a long agonizing moment of not quite enough friction, and then he comes too.

As it turns out, Wen Qing doesn't kill them because she's been called away to attend to Wang Lingjiao's latest bee-sting. However, Wen Ning, left behind to finish up as usual, absolutely looks like he might faint when Nie Huaisang and Lan Wangji re-emerge.

When Huaisang coolly asks where to find a few soft washcloths for cleaning up, Wen Ning upgrades that startled expression to one that looks half-dead of sheer embarrassment. He helpfully hands Huaisang an entire stack of fresh linens.

A few days later, after he spends a lengthy period patiently roosting on a very particular perch, Nie Huaisang hears someone clambering up to join him on the roof of the Jiang prisoner barracks. He puts on his most seductive smile.

But, to Huaisang's surprise and mild alarm, it's not Wei Wuxian arriving to meet him here, as pre-arranged at their last encounter. Instead, it's Jiang Wanyin, who is presumably just able to make it out through the one window that they've now enlarged with concealed cuts in the wall, that is hoisting himself up over the gutter.

Tentatively, Nie Huaisang waves. Jiang Wanyin dodges behind the slope of the roof. Then he monkeys his way over to conversational range with one hand gripping the ridgeline. He arrives like a thundercloud.

"Go away," Jiang Wanyin says in a low voice, glaring at Nie Huiasang. "He's not coming tonight. He's going to invent a noise-replacing talisman, and then we can all stop shushing each other every two sentences."

"Sssshhhhh," Nie Huaisang says, alarmed. He can make out a guard walking down the greenway between two nearby buildings, his lantern bobbing as he steps over stray sticks and rocks.

"I didn't ask for an illustration of the principle," Jiang Wanyon says spikily. "I asked for you to leave. Wei Wuxian's too busy to come fuck you." His volume is going up.

"SSSSSSSHHHHHHH," Huaisang whisper-yells.

"Now fuck off," Jiang Wanyin says, not especially quietly. With that said, he lowers himself over the edge of the roof, his tightly-clinging hands and the very top of his guan the only visible parts of him.

"No come back," Huaisang agonizes. Any moment now the guard is going to turn the corner and walk right into Jiang Wanyin's legs.

A huff. Then Jiang Wanyin flips himself back up, controls his descent with one arm, and silently lands in a crouch back on the side of the roof, robes swirling and settling gracefully around him.

"That's such a pretty move," Nie Huaisang says in a teeny-tiny voice, so focused on controlling his volume that he's utterly thoughtless regarding the content, and then he claps a hand over his mouth.

Jiang Wanyin says absolutely nothing, inhibited by the guard now audibly tromping past, but Nie Huaisang can actually hear little jaw-gritting noises and practically feel the caterpillar eyebrows from all the way over here.

The guard starts whistling, practically in Huaisang's ear. Nie Huaisang tries to flatten himself against the roof-tiles.

The guard's steps halt. Huaisang sweats. Then there's fumbling sounds, and then a patter of water. Evidently he's paused to take a piss. Right on the side of the barracks that people are currently living in, oh lovely.

With the equivalent auditory cover of a small waterfall, from his position presumably equally flattened-out but on the far side of the roof, Jiang Wanyin says in an incredibly low, deadly voice, "Do not fuck with me, Huaisang. Do not fuck around. And do not ever fuck my shixiong on this roof. Or I will kill you."

We'd have to be really athletic to go all the way here on the roof, Nie Huaisang muses.

The guard on patrol ambles by under the eaves, only half the building's width away and a little bit down. Then he's past them, and moving further away with every step.

Jiang Wanyin pops back over the peak of the roof, jaw clamped shut. In lieu of speaking, he approximates doing something personally offensive with his hands. Huaisang nods earnestly.

Next, Jiang Wanyin tries flapping his hands at Nie Huaisang like he's shooing away chickens, in his effort to gesturally evict Huaisang from his perch.

Intrigued, Nie Huaisang scooches closer.

Jiang Wanyin mimes doing something really rude below his waistband, but he freezes mid-gesture, and then he hits himself in the forehead.

"What are you doing?" Huaisang asks out of pure fascination, speaking just barely out loud.

Jiang Wanyin sits down perched on the roof-tree, legs braced, his shoulders up around his ears with his larger-than-life frustration. He rapidly scoots sideways as well, moving in to hiss his hostility directly at Nie Huaisang's inner ear.

"I'm not going to. Do that. With. With you."

"What?" asks Nie Huaisang, befuddled. The guard is far enough away now that he puts half a breath of actual sound behind the word.

"That," Jiang Wanyin says. With the moon still waxing and not yet at peak, Nie Huaisang can't make out much more than the curve of a cheekbone. He nonetheless imagines that Jiang Wanyin is turning steadily more and more purple. "I'm just not interested in—in sex," Jiang Wanyin whispers vehemently. "I mean—In sex with you, okay? For me, not for you, I'm not, not prejudiced, it's not that. I'm not a—a prude, all right, I read all the books you loaned me and that book Wei Wuxian got ripped up, and yeah sure it's hot as long as I have some privacy to think about it, but, actually, actually I'm just—not—interested!"

"Oh. Okay," Nie Huaisang says, subdued.

Then he reaches his hand out. "I didn't come here to make out with your shixiong, Jiang Cheng," Huaisang says quietly. "I have an update to share, and I can share it just as well with you. You're the highest ranked Jiang here, after all. But what's more important, I think, well I hope...is that we're friends."

Jiang Wanyin—Jiang Cheng—takes Nie Huaisang's hand, there in the starry dark, on the slippery slope of a steeply-pitched roof that they can just about manage to not fall off of. He squeezes it sharply. Huaisang, in return, holds on tight.

Nie Huaisang re-encounters Wen Ning by literally running into him. Their heads collide with a sharp smack as they both dash into the same dark corner out of view of the closest patrol. It takes a few moments of reckless forearm-grabbing and voiceless mouthed whispers and confused squinting under torchlight, but they negotiate a temporary truce. They are equally desperate not to be spotted by anyone present in an official capacity. As it turns out, they are both surreptitiously en route to the cells that hold assorted yaoguai and, currently, one Wei Wuxian.

Their truce holds long enough for the two of them to get to Wei Wuxian. There, once again communicating entirely via elbow shoves and eyebrows, they take turns handing him things. Wen Ning delivers medication. How sweetly optimistic that is! At least it comes with the bonus of tranquilizing the horrible undead dog-thing that looks like it was never alive in the first place. Nie Huaisang supplies a concealed weapon in the form of a loop of wire. Pragmatically, it's useful for self-defense of several kinds, including the kind you don't come back from. In the hopes that that won't be necessary, Nie Huaisang adds on a side of awkwardly making out through the bars, getting skin contact long enough to pass some healthy qi. Afterwards, Nie Huaisang and Wen Ning sneak away, moving in synch because of course they've both memorized the same damn guard schedule.

Without prior discussion, they both pause at the last clump of concealing trees before they'd have to go in different directions. Nie Huaisang needs to head down to the prisoner barracks. Meanwhile, Wen Ning needs to go up to return to the inner fortress.

Huaisang wriggles deeper into the bushes, semi-successfully avoiding thorns, and ponders how, exactly, Wen Ning is going to do be able to that. Can he climb straight up stone walls? Did he shoot a grappling arrow up there? With what bow? ...But it's definitely got to involve some kind of climbing. All the gates are locked and guarded at this time of night. Furthermore, when they were confusedly groping each other in the passageway while deciding not to attempt to commit murder, Nie Huaisang obtained compelling personal evidence that despite Wen NIng's reputation of fragility his arm muscles are huge.

Nie Huaisang reins in his racing thoughts, and inhale deeply to settle himself. He fixes his gaze on the clump of leaf-shadows that he's pretty sure exist directly between his eyes and Wen Ning's nose. Wriggling one hand out into the open, he points emphatically upwards, gesticulating to a mossy crook within a dead trunk of one of the pines. If they can get up there without crashing back down, they'll be in a spot that's fully concealed on all sides but still has enough indirect light from exterior torches and from the moon to be able to at least make out each other's faces. If either of them falls or makes a loud noise, though, it's game over.

(And wouldn't it be really interesting to see whether, in that case, they both got caught, or if the one captured first would extend their unspoken alliance far enough to cover the unnoticed party's escape? No. Nonono. Bad idea. Huaisang throws mental tranquilizer darts at his imagination, currently taking the form of an ill-behaved dog-thing.)

After a lot of move-and-freeze that reminds Huaisang of learning to copy a lizard, they both settle into the spot he'd indicated. It's a fern-draped, squishy-bottomed, rotten-wood-smelling space three men's height off the ground. Nie Huaisang had determined earlier that it was really quite spacious for one in here, but now he's learning that it's downright cozy for two people. Nie Huiasang can't help breathing on Wen Ning. Also he's definitely noticing that Wen Ning washes his clothing with something that has notes of ginger and clove.

Okay, focus. Time to negotiate. Wheeeeeeeee.

Nie Huaisang reminds himself that he's not the actual traitor in this equation. That gives him leverage of a sort. His side, which can be approximated as consisting of all the prisoners in the camp, will likely lie for him. Wen Ning's more powerful allies are just as likely to condemn him as save him.

Furthermore, Nie Huaisang's the one with an established cover story. Wen Ning is just the semi-competent archer and not-very-interesting assistant healer, the guy who fades into the background at every cultivation conference...oh. Oh shit.

Nie Huaisang is going to have to up his game. There's not much point in choosing your battlefield to favor yourself, if you are only the second best player around at your activity of choice.

(What is Meng Yao up to these days, anyway?)

"I will fucking blow you if you don't give the game away," Nie Huaisang says to Wen Ning, with the serene self-confidence of someone hovering above a lake full of monsters, saberless, buoyed on the intoxicating high of having given exactly two successful blowjobs ever.

"Nn-nn-no," Wen Ning says. He turns red, blotchily. "I don't—I'm not—that's unfair when you're a p-prisoner."

How is he alive?

That's some Mingjue-grade moralizing, there, and Wen Ning doesn't have a giant fuck-off saber.

True, he's got a habit of keeping a low profile, clearly. But actually being naive and kind is the worst poison pill Nie Huasiang can think of for a survival strategy of projecting innocent idealism.

"Is it still unfair if you blow me first?" Nie Huaisang counters, quietly curious to see how Wen Ning takes to the temptation to rationalize doing what he wants to do anyway.

Nie Huaisang gets his answer with both of their trousers around their ankles, their robes still on, sticky come on both of their faces, his fingers pushing and twisting deep inside Wen Ning's body while his newest sexual partner is gasping his way towards his third orgasm.

Yes. This is a little bit unfair. To Wen Ning.

By befriending Wei Wuxian, then bedding Nie Huaisang, Wen Ning has given Huaisang better access than he would have if handed a list of every codeword and countersign currently in use in the fortress. Wen Ning might not tell Huaisang any secrets directly, sure. However, he will tell Huaisang if he's about to make a fatal mistake because of incomplete information. More, this is ongoing access. Anyone Wen Ning lets get to him to this extent, he won't let go of easily. His actions in taking medicine to Wei Wuxian make that obvious.

As further evidence, Huaisang considers Wen Ning's sweetly pleading eyes, so affected by affection, and his strong hands, so revealingly shy and clumsy.

In sum, Huaisang has realized that there is a veritable new avenue of cultivation open to him, a way to gain wisdom unmatched by ordinary people. He needs to come up with a catchy name for it—not that he's going to breathe a word of that particular quest in Wei Wuxian's vicinity. At the moment, in Huaisang's head, his path is called sleeping around and then actually paying attention during sex.

It turns out that being given tacit permission to wander around anywhere, as long as you look underdressed and disheveled, is really handy for passing messages and coordinating attempts to take advantage of security loopholes. First, Huaisang gets Nie Zonghui's third cousin out. Then he gets his other third cousin in, bearing dispatches from da-ge, along with a strictly limited supply of unawakened but blooded and blessed daggers from the Nie saber forge. Nie Huaisang distributes these double-edged favors with extreme caution, trading boons and calling in debts where necessary to make sure they all go to reliable people who won't draw steel unprovoked; but he does get them handed out quickly, thus making sure that the question of Huaisang arming himself never arises.

After that, it's time to go for something challenging.

Among the numerous tasks routinely assigned to the prisoners—tasks that are turned into trials by being assigned at seeming random but always without adequate clothing, supplies, or weapons—one unfavorite is going out as part of one of the 'foraging parties.' These little detachments, acting in support of the oversize military presence quartered here, are supposed to scan the vicinity for signs of yao, collect late taxes-in-kind from desperately-indebted farmsteads, and also gather game and other gleanings from the countryside. Forcing the hostages to take point on these hostility-inducing activities is supposed to make them despised by the locals if they succeed. Or else, if they fail to collect much, they will be blamed, on their return, for all the other hostages going hungry.

As psychological plays go, it's not bad in theory. It would be much more effective, however, if anyone actually enforced that the foragers must prioritize their many tasks as Wen Chao would wish.

Instead, lack of proper oversight works its usual magic. Early on, a few of the parties that happened to go out with the best hunters (mostly Nie and Jiang) rather than highest-level cultivators among the hostages focused almost entirely on taking game, not acting as revenue agents. They actually killed some of the yao they were just supposed to spot, scout and log, to boot. These impressive results ended up essentially converting the Wen troops on the same gig to would-be apprentice foresters, rather than the hostages allowing themselves to become junior thugs. Huaisang didn't anticipate this outcome, but he instantly understands it once he catches up on the gossip.

It's a matter of simple shared self-interest, and therefore reasonably trustworthy as motivations go. Rather than bullying the local peasantry, the hostage cultivators and their guards would all prefer a superior option if offered one. Say, organizing a coordinated sweep to take an entire herd of deer or sounder of pigs. 'Fewer fights and insults' plus 'more meat for less work' makes it really tempting for supervisors who are after all quite low-level troops to listen to their supervisees. That is, the hostages, who are drawn from the ranking juniors of every sect, many of them well-trained and highly-talented cultivators. When they suggest taking a tactical approach, they can deliver results. Who is going to argue with success?

Thus, Wen Chao's psychological weapon turns in his hand. Whoops.

Now, Huaisang wants to make this accidental success systematic.

Nie Huaisang spreads the word, under the guise of surreptitiously expanding his collection of contraband makeup, sex toys, and porn. Inside of a week he knows which lieutenants are in charge of scheduling, and how to bribe them. Subsequently, the regular rota of foraging parties becomes a weapon for the hostages, with their most persuasive people spread out thinly to sow dissent among all of the Wen's least experienced platoons.

There's a fallback position as well, of course. Once the lieutenant that they pin the scheduling sabotage on (and not all the ones who actually each made 'harmless' little tweaks that they think they just got away with) is exposed and executed, Wen Chao reacts. Since he is reacting rather than thinking, Wen Chao naturally orders 'do the opposite of that thing that was a problem' and lets someone else fill in the details. Therefore, the least-valuable of the most-disruptive hostages are all assigned together to one excursion, along with an experienced detachment of Wen soldiers, so as to force them into properly atrocious behavior.

Of course, that's the foraging patrol that da-ge ambushes.

Once they arrange to let that Nie-led foraging party escape, rumor and riot erupt. The chaos results in multiple escape attempts by junior disciples of minor sects that weren't informed of the initial ploy. Some of those are successful, too. Even better, they take a fair number of deserters or seeming-deserters out, as well. Wen Chao can't actually tell how many of his men left, and neither can he determine how many were furtively slain when they attempted to prevent others from leaving.

It's insane. Huaisang spends a good bit of the first day expecting to be beheaded any minute. People scream at each other while giving contradictory orders. On the Wen side, one lucky-unlucky captain is promoted, demoted, arrested for treason, and promoted again within two shichen. Wen Chao tries to throttle his mistress after a rumor that she was not only involved but cheating on him goes around, and is only stopped by an unfortunately competent Wen Zhuliu giving her an alibi. When Wen Chao seemingly gets wildly drunk on the second afternoon, to the point where he falls off of his high seat, for a moment Nie Huaisang thinks the hostages might actually take the camp—but, no. Fucking Wen Zhuliu.

In the end, the Wens only take a few days to admit reality before they reassign sleeping quarters for their diminished number of hostages, with an increased guard. Two out of those three nights are spent standing up in ranks by blazing torchlight on a punishment parade. They get one unintended night off in between, occasioned by Wen Chao 'falling asleep' mid-afternoon without explicitly giving the order to keep everyone sleep-deprived indefinitely. If only their swords weren't needed elsewhere, Nie Huaisang muses, it would almost be worth keeping a selection of cultivators here purely to aggravate Wen Chao. It could work as a psychological operation aimed at devastating his command of his own troops.

On the unlucky fourth night, Huaisang gets shoved in with Lan Wangji. The perimeter with the hostages has been reduced, the buildings in use for their keeping consolidated, and the patrols theoretically tripled--but security is still fairly ineffectual, especially since Wen Chao hasn't actually been allocated any more people in Wen uniform, so it's all shortened perimeters and overlapping extra shifts that nobody wants to be doing. Given the givens, the two cultivators end up rudely stuffed into an otherwise empty shed that still smells of rotten straw and unhappy donkey.

With a pang, Huaisang realizes they're now, both, the only one of their respective sects left here. Not all of those people escaped, either. Unhappily, Huaisang revises his opinion of the relative costs and benefits of this sojourn accordingly. Meanwhile, he feels carefully up and down his bruised legs to make sure he hasn't gotten any fractures from his latest conversation with his so-courteous hosts.

Reassured by his finding, and inwardly debating the merits of throwing a really magnificent tantrum for this limited audience, Huaisang limps his way over to Lan Wangji's pallet in the twilit semi-dark. Ironically, they now have better bedding then they had had in the barracks.

Lan Wangji is breathing with a whistle. Looks like they've broken his nose again. There's a faint trembling blue glow around him. He has to use real effort, even with his magnificent core, to get his powerful qi working against the effects of the regularly-renewed suppression talismans. But if he concentrates, Wangji presumably can direct enough vital force towards injured tissues to accelerate their healing. (Huaisang can't, and he's not bitter about it, and he's never bringing it up.)

"Hey, Ji-gege," Huaisang says, with unanticipated but unsurprising hoarseness. His throat hurts, after all, his temporarily husky voice not a put-on effect but a transient impairment that he's effortfully acquired. It takes a toll, begging and pleading "I don't know" to endless demands that he confess where his sect-mates have gone, while being constantly interrupted. It's hard to concentrate while he's being grudgingly walloped in various uninventive locations. Honestly, he really doesn't know at this point! Da-ge could have arranged for his flying strike force to meet the escapees anywhere along their route and absconded with them from there! Huaisang couldn't have known where the fugitives were even one shi after they'd left!

Manfully, Nie Huaisang quiets the well-practiced hysteria of his rehearsed excuses, pushing the weeping whiner back down when that role tries surging towards the surface from the depths of his mind. Instead he musters a weak smile for his comrade. Friend? Boyfriend? Does having ill-advised sex in out-of-the-way corners constitute a boyfriend relationship?

"Huaisang," Lan Wangji says, and rolls his head sideways, smiling an awful smile. "Good work."

How dare he.

Then Lan Wangji closes his eyes.

For a horrible moment Huaisang thinks he's dead. Then, mercifully, Wangji starts snoring.

He doesn't stop.

He doesn't wake up even when Huaisang throws a truly epic shit-fit, either.

By dawn, Huaisang's almost ready to kill Lan Wangji himself.

Wen Chao swans off for a few days "vacation" after the stress of "investigating" the escaped prisoners' conspiracy. He leaves orders for his senior subordinate to keep everyone "on task," but no curriculum and no intelligence objectives either. The remaining hostages all end up doing non-stop weeding in fields that are probably getting more trampling than benefit out of their labor at this point. Their ongoing "indoctrination" consists of half-hearted instructions to continue memorizing the Quintessence of Wen Mao in the evening.

On the evening that Nie Huaisang is allowed his once-a-week non-rain-related chance at a cold water bath, someone successfully walks up behind him outside the bathhouse at dusk. The fireflies are coming out and by all appearances Huaisang hasn't a care in the world. He's humming a popular tune (he can't sing the words, he's changed the lyrics to a list of known fortifications that are currently undermanned while the Wens make a push to add new supervisory offices) while combing out his hair with lukewarm rice water. His hair is in horrible condition, but that abruptly descends to the bottom of his list of priorities when a hand grabs him by the elbow.

Huaisang squeaks, spins the opposite direction, tosses his head to get his loose hair out of the way while he breaks the grapple, and simultaneously stabs out throatwards with the comb in his hand. His eyes land on his assailant, and he stops himself just short of actually impaling the guy's larynx. Once you injure someone, after all, there are many fewer options than if you're merely in position to maybe-maybe-not be about to hurt them. (Meng Yao really should have known that and Huaisang is highly suspicious that there's more than the obvious to what actually went down that day in Qinghe.)

Belatedly, Huaisang processes that he's not being assaulted further. This isn't necessarily an attempt to take advantage of him for being strikingly handsome, musically gifted, and dressed only in—once again—a soggy shirt and thin linen pants. In fact, the other man looks dumbfounded.

It's Peanut Allergy Guard.

"You're not allowed to do that," the guard says, staring stupidly at the thin, blunt piece of wood with which he's been not-exactly-menaced. "Threatening a representative of Wen Sect is grounds for execution."

Huaisang sighs wearily. Time for nursery lessons.

"Everything is grounds for execution," Huaisang explains gently. "It's not about rules, or laws, or the Quintessence. It's about power. They'll kill us when we're not useful as hostages, and they'll keep most of us alive until then. It's really just that simple."

The guard looks at the ground. He has pimples. He's shorter than Huaisang, and slight-boned in the way that speaks to childhood malnutrition.

"The cause of Wen Sect is righteous leadership for all," he mumbles, defeated.

"Oh, I don't suppose, I suppose I think something else, a bit," Huaisang disagrees mildly. He puts his comb away in the pocket of his sadly saggy drawstring pants.

"How do you do it?" Peanut Allergy Guy asks, looking up at Huaisang through what Huaisang belatedly notices are rather pretty eyelashes. "How are you—you're, you have to be here—and you have three boyfriends! And you aren't scared or anything!"

Huaisang chokes. For a heartbeat, everything flashes into brilliant red rage behind his eyes. For the first time in months, he hears his link to his saber singing, a cry from the heart that if only this wrongness can be erased, washed clean with blood, things will be better.

Not afraid? Not afraid??? Huaisang has never been anything but afraid! Worse, the more he bears up under that crushing, inexorable, unspeakable weight—the better he hides it—the more he's forced to learn about new things to be afraid of!

"I don't know," Huaisang says. His mouth curves into a cruel smile. "Why do you ask? Is there someone you're trying to get up the courage to confess to?"

It would serve this moron, this yapping Wen-dog, this worm right to give him the worst advice possible. Huaisang could whisper in his ear, feed him stories, spin him around and make him believe he's capable of bedazzling others with false confidence. Huaisang could so easily set him up to become the architect of his own downfall—

—but he's just a kid in the wrong uniform. His ancestors were probably conquered by Wen troops exactly like him. As quickly as it arrived, Huaisang's anger drains away like emptying a bathtub, and he's merely very tired.

"N-no," the kid stammers, and looks at his feet, which means yes.

"Okay," Huaisang says kindly. In the back of his mind, he carefully blots out the tentative emotional connections he's made to how very young this guard looks, how naive he is. He adjusts his smile to be reassuring instead of intimidating.

"Tell Gege," Huaisang coaxes, "and I'll help you stalk your pretty bird."

The ensuing conversation is very long. Nie Huaisang gets the guard's assigned rotations and the makeup of his squad and the psychology of his lieutenant out of him. He also gets a lengthy and overly flattering description of the guy's crush, apparently an agemate from the same village who is not in the same squad but the next squad over. The crush frankly sounds like an asshole. Bullies who let overly-eager, clever, helpful people tag around after them are not new to Huaisang, so he concentrates on noting what is unfamiliar.

Huaisang learns that the lowest-ranked guards don't get lessons in how to cultivate or how to read. Training like that is reserved for those who have survived a year as spear-fodder, and at that, they have to sign away their right to go home when their conscription is up in order to be promoted up one rank and have even the possibility of someday being accepted as lowest-rank outer disciples.

In fact, the job that esteemed master scholar Wen Chao is supposedly doing with all of the gently-born hostages generally appears just three ranks from the bottom of the military pyramid: someone semi-literate drilling illiterate underlings in call and response of passages from the Quintessance. Wen Chao probably never had to do any of that in his life. Wen Chao presumably had the advantage of tutors who expected him to think about his lessons, rather than just recite. But also, clearly, he has suffered from the disadvantages of being untouchably privileged by never meeting anyone who could convince him that he wanted to think for himself. Thus deprived, it's no wonder he's convinced himself that he is a genius orator. It's no different than the young guard convicing himself that his oafish acquaintance might eventually become genuinely fond of him. The only evidence required is wishful thinking.

It's sad, is what it is. This is Wen Ruohan's grand vision? This is his universal enlightenment? Everyone bowing and scraping for a toenail-paring of his privilege, forever? It's not just oppressive—it's unimaginative. Only someone who is deeply insecure in his accomplishments wants to eradicate competition.

War comes with making hard choices. One of them is knowing which casualties to accept.

Nie Huaisang has risked himself—and Wei Wuxian, and Lan Wangji, and Wen Ning, and others—repeatedly. That's not the same thing as signing a death sentence.

But sooner or later, everything ends.

Sooner or later, Nie Huaisang muses, everyone experiences betrayal.

Word comes down that all the remaining hostages are to be mobilized for a massive night-hunt.

The timeline to make certain things happen compresses abruptly. There's no more chances to slowly sway opinions. No more opportunities to invent new little tricks and ploys to obfuscate his objectives and postpone the reckoning. No more options, Nie Huaisang thinks.

So Nie Huaisang cries at Wei Wuxian, confessing his fears. He upsets them both badly. He send Wei Wuxian running to his shidi for reassurance, needing to get and give a promise that his Sect loyalty at least would never put his honorable nature and his horrible creativity at odds.

Then Nie Huaisang confesses that he has upset Wei Wuxian to Lan Wangji. Conflicted, Lan Wangji is driven to distract them both. He lets Huaisang artfully tie his wrists behind his back before they have sex and then he falls asleep in that position.

With two of his three lovers emotionally and practically compromised, Nie Huaisang sneaks out one more time. He climbs in the route to the upper fortress that Wen Ning showed him. It's harder than he expected, more strenuous. He ends up panting and huffing and scraping his wrist. His movements are unaccountably slow. Huaisang makes it into Wen Ning's quarters a bare few moments before the archer and apprentice healer is due back from assisting his sister the doctor. But there should still be time.

He cuts a bootlace almost through, just underneath the eyelet where it won't be seen at a glance. He adds a bit of beeswax to the inside of a scabbard, slowing the draw. He uses a tiny, tiny paintbrush to apply a weak acid, one that won't dissolve anything outright but only make fibers more brittle, along each of the coils of bowstring waiting in the arrow-case beside Wen Ning's unstrung warbow.

Still, all of that could be justified. Could fall under the heading of preventing, rather than precipitating, a conflict of loyalties. Could melt away under the excuse of 'but I don't want to have to fight you.'

But then—then Huaisang removes a very specific set of herbs from Wen Ning's traveling medical case. One is a compound that is meant to be applied as a paste to the inside of the mouth, entering the bloodstream as fast as possible, to counteract abrupt inflammation of the airways. All of them, to Huaisang's limited knowledge, have no legitimate purpose but to save lives.

Of course, that's when Wen Ning catches him. The torchlight behind him, as he opens the door, illuminate the white and red swoops of his uniform, enlivening the stylized flames. His silent presence casts a shadow as dark as Huaisang's guilt.

Then Wen Ning crosses the room and kneels beside Huaisang. At a glance, he assesses the incriminating selection of little glass jars and thick twists of waxed paper Huaisang has already removed. Ten or so items are sitting out for him, ready for him to stuff into his sleeve once he finishes swapping in the near-look-alike substitutes foraged out of random weeds. Real, precious, potent medicines, which he'd been in the process of replacing with placebos that might as well be poisons. Not anything so as overt as taking all of the real medications, either. Just a substitution of the specific ones that Huaisang needs to ensure won't work in one particular scenario.

As nearly as Huaisang can judge, such an action, undermining Wen Ning's ability to treat life-threatening conditions with confidence, is tantamount to shattering a saber.

Nie Huaisang says nothing. In such a circumstance, perhaps there truly is nothing to say.

Wen Ning reaches into the leather case that holds his traveling pharmacopeia. He removes one of the larger jars, turning it back and forth in his hand so that the straw-yellow liquid inside catches the indirect light.

"If y-you want to be certain I c-can't cure that condition, you'd b-better take this too," he says softly. "S-stimulating the heart can be helpful to clear ob-obstructions of the lungs and throat. It's w-we-one of the s-strongest s-substances in here, so be c-careful if you use it for a-anything."

He sets the jar down with a definite click. Then he turns his head, and looks Huaisang dead in the eye. "M-matters of the heart are always a d-danger."

Nie Huaisang nods, eyes stinging. With hands that tremble, he puts all the stolen medicines into his sleeve.

Wen Ning rises, and walks across the room to stand staring at the wall, hands folded behind his back. Nie Huaisang scrambles back out over the windowsill, sabotage accomplished. Questions boil in his brain, foremost among them "WHY?!"

Oh, one answer is obvious, if trivial.

Wen Ning can truthfully say that he neither saw Nie Huaisang arrive, nor saw him go.

Nie Huaisang has harder questions to ask himself, this evening.

Tomorrow, everyone is going to be dragged along on Wen Chao's lunatic chase after a legendary monster.

They need to break into the armory and get their swords back first.

Huaisang does not sleep well, that night.

Nie Huaisang has run the scenarios through on his mental map-table, over and over again. They need to be relatively certain that they succeed in getting one messenger with a powerful core off to each of the four great sects. Covering contingencies to a certain depth means that they will actually need at least six people. So, Huaisang has to get six or more of the fastest and strongest hostages re-equipped with their swords.

One will be Wangji, of course. However, Wangji's still-damaged leg could become an issue on a high-speed endurance flight to Cloud Recesses. So, pair their lone Jade with one of the Twin Prides, and have them match speeds in a race that's about mutual defense, not competition. If possible, better to have that role go to Wei Wuxian, and not Jiang Wanyin.

Meanwhile, send Wanyin to Jinlintai, hoping that Madam Jin, as the sworn sister of Wanyin's mother and the possibly-ex-possibly-not-mother-in-law-to-be of Wanyin's sister, looks kindly on him. Send Jin Zixuan himself too, so as to guarantee goodwill if and when he arrives; but don't expect him to set speed records en route.

At the moment, Nie Mingjue is as close as can be, harrying the borders of Wen-occupied territory with mundane weapons and the barest of deniability, champing at the bit to reveal his sect's strength. So, choose someone second-rank for that mission, since he's the nearest. Huaisang has an ordered list of possibilities, based on which weapons turn out to be easiest to take once they get their hands on the essential ones—Bichen, Sandu, Suibian, and unfortunately Suihua. Really, he's hoping for one of the Jin maidens, so demure and so much faster and tougher than anyone wants to admit. Maybe Mianmian.

Yunmeng is actually furthest from this outpost, so be brutally practical and send someone second-rank to Jiang Fengmian, too. Best to leave both Wuxian and Wanyin thinking one of them will go until as close as possible to time. Then, at the last moment, substitute one of their strongest shidi. Ask him to attempt the impossible by getting there and back with help in under a week.

They don't actually need Nie Huiasang, in person, in order to set metaphorical flame to a beacon and rally the Great Sects to righteously retrieve all their ill-treated hostages. To be brutally honest, having Nie Huaisang stay here would probably help guarantee that Nie Mingjue advances as fast as possible. But, his best people will not leave Huaisang behind. Oh the inconveniences of actual personal attachments, when one has elevated oneself to the abstracted heights of clouds, masterminding a war that almost nobody knows has started yet! When he comes down a bit Huaisang knows he's going to be terrified, and at that point it'll be nice to be obligated to flee. If they're dashing for the border, he can't ride along as pure deadweight either. So, add one saber to six swords as essential acquisitions.

Up to half of those swords can perhaps be substituted. It depends on whether there are lesser spiritual weapons available that will accept a hand other than their true wielders', as no saber ever will. Crucially, the two Jiangs claim that they can swap blades if needed and still wield them full-force, so similar are their cores. So, Huaisang reminds himself, if they have to switch out assignments and share swords they can. But, he worries, the more he has to split and recombine his forces to cover all routes, the slower the overall mission will become. Therefore, the fewer hostages they can even hope to retrieve unharmed before Wen Chao finally wises up and orders mass executions.

It is as true now as it was in the beginning that a lone escapee, even an armed one, will probably be hunted down by a pack of Wen-dogs before they can gain enough distance for even the most superlative speed and stamina to matter. If they simultaneously launch from the edge of a night-hunt and go in every direction, though, they can cover each others' escape, like a covey of pigeons explosively fluttering away from a predator. It may even be possible for their best flyers to play wounded-mother-bird and limp along just out of attack range until far afield, using their superior weaponry and transportation to divert attention from escapees on the ground. But all that requires first getting the requisite number of messengers re-armed undetected, so they can escape mid-movement. During a major excursion, Wen Chao will already be logistically overextended by his own incompetence, rather than snugly secure in a defensible keep.

A smash-and-grab wouldn't be good enough; they'd simply be caught and disarmed again. In fact, the whole plan would have been impossible, until they re-established communication with Nie Mingjue. Then, crucially, they were able to smuggle in plausible substitutes, inert training weapons with the appearance of spiritual swords. The tactical use of deception is essential.

Once they do make the swap, they'll be on an indeterminate countdown to certain exposure. Still, they will also need all of them to be in position before making their move: that is, sent out on the same night-hunt.

Nie Huaisang had anticipated a long, dreadful wait for a plausible opening, full of uneasy calculations of which partial successes are worth attempting under which circumstances.

That is not the case. Like a cursed wish granted by a mó demon, Nie Huaisang has been given precisely what he requires in a way that makes him not want it. The last thing a chronic cheater wants to do, after all, is gamble with fair dice. He's tried to avoid that, he's stacked the odds, he's staked everything he has down to his own flesh and blood and seed, just to put himself on the level with an unworthy opponent given every advantage. Poor blindfolded Wen Chao, who doesn't even know what game he's playing, but has blundered back into potentially regaining the upper hand by doing something so stupid it leaves his skilled opposition reeling.

Huaisang almost fainted when Wen Chao made his proclamation that he intends to find, rouse, fight, and kill the Xuanwu of Slaughter. A delusory attempt at regaining reputation. A mass night hunt for the history books. An impossible prey. A chance.

So now, here they are. They'll take home everything or nothing. They're out of time.

In the morning, the camp is bustling. All the hostages are denied breakfast, and put to work packing things up for the massive Mount Muxi hunt.

Huaisang cannot arrange for all of the people he needs to talk to to be assigned to the same place at the same time. However, he can dawdle and dilly-dally and delay, holding up the squad that has him as an extra pair of cheerfully useless hands, until he sees the patterns.

Than he can sneak off to the side, drop a few words in the right ears, and arrange for others to hasten or slow their activities, too. He can engineer a coincidence that puts one or two key hostages from each Great Sect in the same stableyard at the same time. He even gets the overlap to occur right around lunch, when most of their guards go officially or unofficially off-duty for a bit.

As he ducks into the shadows of a tack-room that's being steadily stripped of reins and saddles and blankets as they load wagons, Nie Huaisang muses on the difference between initiating a mass movement of people, which largely resembles kicking an anthill, and arranging intersecting paths for a secretive few hidden in the overall bustle, which is more like laying out trails of food to guide the ants.

As if on cue, his stomach rumbles. He reminds himself that it's a good thing that, after missing breakfast, he's now about to miss lunch. That's where most of the guards went, after all.

Huaisang isn't capable of miracles. He can't manage to have the hostages completely unsupervised.

But he's done his best to cut the casualties-to-be to a minimum.

They have to manage stealing back their swords today.

Ever since acquiring his first little bit of blackmail leverage (who just takes a prisoner at their word on where they're supposed to sleep? people who are going to get in trouble, that's who) Nie Huaisang has systematically worked to ensure that the most sympathetic or most lackadaisical guards were the ones that were assigned to, nay entrusted with, his core cadre. It's been hugely beneficial overall, but now he's really going to test the metal of his creation.

True, Huaisang predicted that there had to be a night-hunt coming up, well before he learned that this time it was going to be everyone going. So he'd planned ahead, expecting a parting, in order to enable them to first engage in a last-minute council of war.

But now, to pull off their heist, too, they need—well a lot of things, but first and foremost, they need the time they haven't got. A more expansive window of opportunity, to undertake this untamed excursion. A true blind spot in the Wen's collective supervision, which no amount of merely looking sideways will provide.

So, throughout the morning, Huaisang frantically threw himself into activating all of his diversions, his pre-planned distractions. He released the crazed chickens he 'discovered' fleeing from an 'inexplicable' fox-cub in the henhouse. He saw his favorite pigeons released to wing homewards. As a particular triumph, Huaisang bluffed his way into being admitted to the outer fortress as a menial, whereabouts he swept one specific floor, then thumped the end of his broom into the ceiling in one exact spot, jostling the dresser on the floor above until he heard some of Wang Lingjiao's jewelry rattling down into a crack in the wall.

Then Nie Huaisang sneaked back out, swapping jobs and attitudes as he goes from task to task, leaving chaos in his wake, and gradually slipping back towards landing in any within-bounds duty area where he can plausibly claim to have been all along. At the upper stables, he removed all the nametags from the hooks holding Wen Chao's officer's horses' ceremonial bridles. Leaving the fortress for the camp, he closed a door that really should have been closed already, precisely when all of the people who are supposed to have keys and probably forgot them are on the wrong side. Near where the low-ranked troops are billeted and just outside the fenced-off zone with the prisoners, Huaisang sprinkled crystallized honey into the cloth of some folded tents, waiting to be loaded up on wagons but unwisely piled on the bare ground where insects can get into them. Before he's back 'under guard', Nie Huaisang even engaged in a little light nonfatal poisoning, ensuring that the privies will be well-looked-after.

Thus, he worked his way back to where his friends are going to be, having arranged to intersect their trajectories while shedding sources of interference.

Now, he has eyes on two of the people he needs to talk to, with the critical time-slot coming up. In the vicinity there are still ten or twelve Wen soldiers—three, and eight—four, no five of them now, and an equal number of the opposition, but be careful, that one is a cultivator—and now he's leaving too—

Then, temporarily, they're down to one guard.

Well, one guard and Wen Ning. But first Wei Wuxian puts a slightly-too-friendly hand on Wen Ning's upper arm, and then Wuxian props his chin on Wen Ning's shoulder to chatters in his ear. Meanwhile Lan Wangji is glaring daggers at them and hoisting very large hay-bales with unnecessary flexes of his upper arms. There's bits of straw sticking to Wangji's forehead ribbon. So, one way or another, Wen Ning is out of the picture as an adversary.

Someone just handed a bowl of sad cold soup over to the last non-hostage soldier-type person who can't get out of working through the hottest part of the day. He sits down on a fence-post, bowl in one hand, and gesticulates helplessly with the other as his squadmate leaves. Huaisang, currently skulking behind a pile of saddles, narrows his eyes.

The lone guard who's been left by himself to work while others supposedly on duty shirk, and extend their lunch breaks to the absolute limit of what they can get away with, and draw straws over purloined sweets and preferred shifts with the participation of their equally slackard sub-officers—the poor bastard currently stuck with all of them to supervise, like a da-jie tasked with minding every last one of her cousins under the age of five—is—well. Huaisang knew this might be the way it went down.

It's Peanut Allergy Guy.

Nie Huaisang fluffs his hair and shakes out the tiny braids at his temples. He takes a deep breath, stands up to his full height, and glides across the muddy stableyard. He moves as slow as a sensual dream, steps swaying, homemade bamboo fan fluttering. He passes close by the guard, wafting a breath of stolen cologne.

While the guard isn't looking at his lunch, Nie Huaisang sprinkles a handful of dust into his sad little bowl of noodle soup.

Nie Huaisang makes it across the stableyard and over to the entrance of a tackroom. The guard's head turns to follow him like a puppet on a string. As if on stage, Nie Huaisang goes up on tiptoe as he nears a group of his friends. Suggestively, he drags a hand across Wei Wuxian's chest. With his most devil-may-care attitude, Huisang simultaneously presses a kiss to Jiang Cheng's cheek. Out of all his closest co-conspirators, Wanyin can be relied on not to break character, not to fall into temptation and turn a performance a little too real, and as a bonus Huaisang gets to annoy and fluster him. Jiang Cheng turns purple, a vein throbbing at his temple. Wei Wuxian cackles.

Behind him, there's a sad little *glck!* noise. And then there's a great deal of thrashing on the ground. And then there's silence.

Now we have to hide a body, as well as retrieve those swords, Nie Huaisang thinks, very calm and cool.

He's so calm. He's so in control, he doesn't move a single step. He stands stock still instead, stuck in place, shaking his head from side to side, faster and faster, denying something he can't even explain. He knows he needs to be quiet but he wants, very, very, very badly to scream.

Nie Huaisang thinks perhaps his eyes might be bleeding because he can't see properly. Everything is blurry. Surely this is what a qi deviation feels like, this utter eggshell fragility to the texture of reality, this earthshattering realization that the world is something you can break—

"Oh mother. Oh sweet—oh fuck. I fucking killed him," Nie Huaisang says, hyperventilating.

He thinks this is the kind of thing that means something? He thinks he's having an emotion about this. He has been proceeding on the assumption that everything was fine and cool and not worth worrying about. He has carried on serenely blowing his way past all of his previous carefully-drawn boundaries because a life and death situation doesn't really leave a lot of room for worrying about the finer points of reigning in an impulsive personality. It's been totally cool and fine and intellectually stimulating and not upsetting at all to sleep with a bunch of people and spy on a bunch more and smuggle out information and arrange for a giant FUCK YOU to Wen Chao.

It was fun, or he convinced himself it was fun. He was enjoying himself. He was, it wasn't out of obligation, he'd felt sexy and smart and so clever, so certain that nobody had ever been as stupidly easy to maneuver as Wen Chao, moving people around like stones on a board—

Only now he's remembering the stones of the Stone Castles, and all the dead bodies when the Wen broke into Bujing Shi. He's recalling thinking first that he was going to die and then that Meng Yao was going to be executed and then that da-ge was going to qi deviate. He's seeing again the first dead body he ever saw, a hand he'd always seen gesturing with a brush or a comb or a fan now relaxed and empty, on the floor right next to a still-made bed inside a place that was supposed to be safe. An intimate room once soft and secure never the same again, after the settling of that slow drift of down feathers, falling from a ripped-open cushion to scatter across the floor.

Da-ge isn't here, da-ge isn't going to scruff him and stop him from running straight at the monster—

Lan Wangji slaps him.

"Oh fuck you," Nie Huaisang says, indignantly. He glares at Lan Wangji, and pulls a fan from his belt to rap him on the wrist. Wangji needs to get out of the habit of not clarifying the affection behind his aggressive gestures. They're old enought to use their words, Huaisang thinks.

For a moment, that reminder of everything else they're old enough to do—to take responsibility for—looms at the edge of Huaisang's mental vision. Lurking, like the poor sad corpse that he's going to have to see just as soon as he turns his head.

Then—thankfully!—Huaisang's attention is dragged back to the perpetual Wangji-and-Wuxian argument comedy opera.

"Slapping people doesn't actually work when they're hysterical," Wei Wuxian announces. "You need to distract them, not distress them further. Lan Zhan, you should try putting fresh chili peppers under his nose!"

A bark of laughter from the corner announces Jiang Wanyin's presence. Huaisang looks over, and sure enough Jiang Wanyin is listening. The Jiang heir paces quietly along the perimeter of the straw-strewn, half-emptied tackroom. He glances cautiously out each open doorway to the stableyard as he sneaks past, moving gracefully but always with one hand hovering near his tightly-wrapped belt. Huaisang can't see it, obviously, but he knows that earlier Jiang Wanyin stole himself a newly-sharpened leather-cutting knife, scabbarded it with a scrap of saddlecloth and tied it in place with a spare hair-ribbon and hid it with one of Wei Wuxian's experimental talismans. Wanyin is determindely not getting in the middle of things, but he's there and he's on guard for them all.

Any moment now, I'm going to have to remind us all that we need to get moving, Huaisang thinks.

Huaisang's mouth opens, then closes again soundlessly. He must look like one of the fancy koi fish in the fountains at Jinlintai. Putting one of them (alive!) in Jin Zixuan's bed during a visit when he was ten years old was an absolute triumph. He's pretty sure that even though they're all in on the plan, Jin Zixuan still hasn't forgiven him for that. Maybe once they get Suihua back—but that means they have to clear out of here, which means picking up the corpse—

"He's allowed to be hysterical for one incense stick," Mianmian says calmly. "I've got the doors."

Huaisng takes a very deep breath. He is not going to be hysterical. He isn't, he is not—

Wen Ning smiles at him sadly. Then he puts a sympathetic hand on Huaisang's shoulder.

That does it. Nie Huaisang bursts into tears. Explosively. It's not pretty. There's snot and spittle involved. He's come so far, and yet, there's so much further to go—he doesn't know how they're going to get through this, or if they're going to get through this. He doesn't know whether he's grieving so hard for one Wen guard, or for the last of his childhood. He doesn't know.

The people huddled nearest him close in protectively, Suddenly, there's one two three sets of arms wrapped around, squishing him as hard as he's ever been held in his life. More—beyond these dear ones, there are their beloved people, backing them up—and their connections, too, each trusting in turn. Huaisang lets himself sag, weeping, and he doesn't fall—Nie supported all at once by Lan and Jiang and Jin and Wen, and oh.

Oh, this is why Wen Ruohan wants to kill them all. Or else: convince them that they're worthless, and defenseless, and isolated, and then send them back home corrupted to sow that toxic doubt. This is why they were all split into seperate barracks by sect. This is why it matters that Nie Huaisang snuck through all their defenses, and Wei Wuxian turned them back on themselves until they were chasing their own tails, and Lan Wangji endured defying them despite the costs, and Wen Ning found a way out of that arrogant ideology even from inside the beating heart of the Wen regime.

This—not the trickery, but the truth upholding it—holding each other and being held, building one another the shelter they've been denied with their words and their bodies—this is what will bring the tyrant down.