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Jiang Cheng sighs (innerly), feels a throbbing pain starting to build in his temple.
He’d thought his cousin to be shameless to kiss the second Jade of Lan in the middle of the ceremony hall, but this - what he is seeing now - is the paragon of stupidity. A stupidity the Lan Clan will have his cousin’s head for, for sure, and his on top most probably.
As if called forth by an invisible force only there to make his life a huge pain, Jiang Cheng spots no one else but Lan Qiren stepping on the path he is also on, the Headmaster’s eyes zeroing in on the same scene he had encountered seconds ago.
He watches in a mixture between frozen, creeping horror and a voice telling him to stay the fuck away - or even better: run. Run away. Far away. Never to be seen with his cousin ever again - how Lan Qiren decisively walks to the pavilion across the garden, where Wei Wuxian is lying on the bench, his head propped on Hanguang-jun’s thigh, definitely deeply asleep. Hanguang-jun, in his sky-blue robe, is sitting ramrod straight, a book in hand, apparently very much ignoring the man using him as a pillow.
“Wangji.”
Jiang Cheng winces innerly at the tone he wouldn’t want to be at the receiving end of. He watches how Hanguang-jun’s head slowly turns from the book to the current Headmaster of the cultivation world. The second Jade’s expression is - he can’t describe it otherwise - expressionless. The Ice everyone talks about. There is not a word in acknowledgment - the muteness everyone is naming within the same breath with the second Jade’s coldness.
“Conduct yourself.” Lan Qiren says in a tone making Jiang Cheng instinctively straighten his posture.
“Rule three hundred forty-five.” Hanguang-jun answers, coldly, his eyes narrowed in a way running a shiver down Jiang Cheng’s back. He’s not entirely sure how the second Jade looks when he fights - he’d rather not find out either - but the small gesture alone is enough for him to feel the need to back off.
Lan Qiren harrumphs, turns on his heel, and vanishes seconds later into a building to the right.
Jiang Cheng has no idea what rule three hundred forty-five might possibly be, especially not with more than four thousand rules the Lan Sect - for a reason beyond him - still carries. He’s not sure if they follow it. No one knows. But everyone in the cultivation world knows about every Lan member knowing every one of the rules. It is as far as anyone understands the Lan Sect. A mysterious little folk high up here on a spell-guarded mountain.
He’s somehow convinced Wei Wuxian knows exceptionally more about the Lan Sect, what with him apparently growing up under Sect Leader Lan Yi’s care - An information he still struggles to believe.
He’s caught off guard when Hanguang-jun’s eyes suddenly dart to him, pinning him down, silently - but intensely - telling him to leave or he is made to leave.
It is a feat, he thinks annoyingly, how this man is able to convey a full sentence without saying a word nor changing even a fracture of his expression.
He scowls back, crosses his arms in front of his chest, only then turns and retraces the path he came from. Never in his life he will admit he had shown defeat. It was, if asked, his own decision to leave. It was. He is, in fact, entirely sure it had been his decision alone.
After a fruitless stroll through several gardens, he is back at the ceremony hall where a few groups are still lingering inside, occasionally filling their empty plates with sweets and desserts the main hall doesn’t offer for lunch.
An hour is left until the conference resumes, enough time to exchange words with other sect members or friends one hasn’t seen in a while. It is what most do, with a select few sitting or standing in the various gardens outside the main compound to discuss political topics. His own father is somewhere out there - he’d last seen him with Sect Leader Madam Jin - definitely to discuss very dry topics Jiang Cheng doesn’t want to think about.
He scans the hall, finds who he was looking for almost in an instant. His feet carry him on autopilot to the one table in the corner where Huaisang is pouring himself a cup of what is definitely not tea, and where definitely a rule exists forbidding such drinks within the walls of the Cloud Recesses.
“You are scowling yourself to death one day, my friend.” Huaisang says the moment he arrives at the table, lifts his cup in silent cheers, downs it in one go.
“What’s rule three hundred forty-five?” he asks without preamble.
Huaisang looks at him with wide, innocent eyes, “I don’t know. Why are you asking me?”
He feels his scowl deepening, “Don’t play this card on me. I know you know, and you know that I know that you know. So? What’s this rule about?”
“Why the sudden interest?”
“Just answer my fucking question.”
“What did Wei-xiong do?”
“How do you know it’s about him?” he asks, suspicion rising inside him.
“Lucky guess.”
“I’ll give you a lucky guess if you don’t answer my question.”
Huaisang looks at him for two long seconds with an expression written in his eyes sending an equal shiver down his back like Hanguang-jun’s earlier.
“Rules three hundred to four hundred are about marital duties.” Huaisang answers eventually, then turns his eyes back to the cup he is about to refill. “You might do better to not pry into your cousin’s life unless he gives you permission to do so.”
“Marital duties?” he repeats, the scene from earlier making ever less sense to him, “What the fuck?” something clicks in his mind he can’t believe could possibly be true, “You’re telling me my cousin is married to a Lan? What the fuck? Are you fucking crazy?”
“I never said such a thing, nor implied it.” Huaisang downs another cup, looks at him over the rim, “Whatever you thought about is your imagination. Not mine.”
“You’re not helpful.” He bites.
“Never said I am.” Huaisang shrugs, sets down the cup, nods at something at Jiang Cheng’s back, “If you’re so invested in Wei-xiong’s life, why don’t you ask him yourself?”
He turns, and sure thing, there is his cousin, making a beeline for the fruit tarts, looking like all the world as if - minutes ago - he hadn’t been sleeping so deep a fierce corpse couldn’t have woken him.
Less than a minute later, Wei Wuxian bumps his shoulder playfully into Huaisang’s while setting down the plate on the table, “Unbelievable boring, huh?” he says, “You happen to have a cup left of that tea of yours?”
“Tell me.” Huaisang answers, a playful smile playing around his lips while he fills a second cup with the suspicious liquid from the teapot, “If it gets ever more boring than the first half was, I am not sure how to stay awake.”
“Pff, yeah.” Wei Wuxian agrees, downs the cup in one go, “If I hear a teatrise on economics one more time, I’ll consider setting off some spell fireworks outside just to get a briefer.”
“You have some with you?” Huaisang asks, hopefully.
Wei Wuxian just grins in response, which makes Huaisang grin in response.
“Are you fucking crazy?” Jiang Cheng hisses.
Wei Wuxian blinks at him, innocuously, “I didn’t say I do it. I know how to behave.”
He snorts, “Ah yeah? Do you now? You behaving includes using the second Jade as a pillow? Is that what you think acting properly means?”
Wei Wuxian blinks at him again, then shrugs, smiles, “Don’t know what you are talking about.” then bites into one of the fruit tarts.
Irritation starts to flare in him. He’d be entirely not invested in the topic if his own head wouldn’t be in any sort of danger. But it clearly is, and clearly, he won’t settle on a topic costing him something he definitely don’t want to part with. “Rule three hundred forty-five.” he spits out, just to see the reaction. When he gets none, he adds, “I had been searching for you after you hadn’t appeared in the main hall for lunch. And guess what I found? You. Sleeping. On. Hanguang-jun.”
“I was napping.”
“What?”
“I wasn’t sleeping. I was napping. It’s a difference.”
“What the fuck? This isn’t about it.”
“About what it is then?”
“You being shameless with the second Jade!” he hisses, tries his utter best to keep his voice down. There is no need to draw any more attention than his cousin already had drawn.
“If I would be shameless with Hanguang-jun, you’d know. I promise you that, Jiang Cheng.” Wei Wuxian answers with a smile that is clearly meant to induce infuriation.
He grinds his teeth against the rioting irritation running through him, “What the fuck, Wei Wuxian?” he says through gritted teeth, “You are getting us into trouble.”
“I don’t.” Wei Wuxian answers, “Trust me, you’re not in more trouble than normally. What I do doesn’t reflect on you, just because the two of us arrived here together.” He takes the refilled cup from Huaisang, downs it in one flourish movement, then says, “Reminds me that I wanted to tell you something. You don’t have to wait for me once the conference is over. I’ll stay the night in the Cloud Recesses.”
“You… what?” he asks unbelievingly, “Why?”
“Why not?” Wei Wuxian shrugs, “It’s a beautiful place. Much to see, and besides—“ he tetters out when a Lan disciple bows next to him, interrupting him with a polite, “Master Wei, I am sorry to disturb you. You got summoned.”
“Did I?” Wei Wuxian answers, smiles, “Well then, show me the way.”
The disciple bows again at the same time his cousin claps Huaisang on the shoulder with an expression boding ill before he turns to him, says, “I see you, Jiang Cheng.”
A second later his cousin has turned - along the filled plate in hand - trailing behind the white-robed disciple.
By the end of the day, he is still none the wiser what rule three hundred forty-five is exactly about. Nor has he gotten a chance to talk to his cousin again, who had slipped into the conference hall barely a minute before it started, and left the same moment it ended.
—
Two weeks later, unsuspectedly, a new window opens itself for Jiang Cheng to get a step closer to solving the mystery his cousin still presents.
It’s a Monday morning, windy and rainy just like the weekend had been. Not only in Gusu, but apparently also in Yiling, if his weather app is to be trusted.
The only reason he had looked up the weather in Yiling was Wei Wuxian’s rather gloomy expression Friday night, before he had set out to take the train he usually boards on Saturdays. His cousin had said something about a nighthunt, about sloppy hills, mud, and, ‘Where’s the fun nighthunting in pouring rain? Nowhere, I tell you, Jiang Cheng. The woods in Yiling become all dark, as if the light is sucked out of them.’
Jiang Cheng had never nighthunted in Yiling - it is after all the Sanren Sects grounds. No one dares to step on it - but had heard of events alarming even him. Probably the whole cultivation world. Another reason no one is stupid enough to try nighthunting in or around Yiling.
He’d been worried, somewhere deep in his heart, about his cousin, whose usually high-spirited whenever he’s about to go into the field - the way he calls it. A gloomy Wei Wuxian and a nighthunt simply didn’t fit together.
He’d been - to some degree, he thinks - right to worry, when he had noticed the very big, very dark purpled bruise peeking out of Wei Wuxian’s shirt on Sunday evening when his cousin returned home.
‘It’s fine, Jiang Cheng.’ Wei Wuxian had said with what should have been a reassuring smile, ‘Don’t worry, the tree that had collided with me doesn’t spot a scratch.’
It was the first and last he had heard from his cousin before Wei Wuxian had crashed on his bed, definitely asleep within his next three breaths.
Now, Monday morning, his cousin’s door is still open, his cousin still asleep in the clothes he came back in yesterday, the blanket rumpled, half falling off the bed.
Jiang Cheng wouldn’t have checked in on him if a nasty voice in his head - sounding a lot like his sister - telling him to see if his cousin needs something, even as unlikely as it may be. It is, after all, way past the time Wei Wuxian is usually off to work.
He’s just about to pour a cup of coffee into his cousin’s mug when he hears the unmistakeable sound of his security code being entered into his front door - correctly on top - and Hanguang-jun striding into his apartment a second later as if he owns the place.
“Hey!” he barks out, gets entirely ignored by the second Jade who decisively strides towards his cousin’s bedroom, enters without a word.
“Hey! You can’t just walk into my apartment—“ he barks out, stomping after Hanguang-jun, halts in the middle of the sentence - and the middle of the hall - when he sees the second Jade’s hand gently pressing down on what is definitely a sweaty forehead of his cousin.
“Lan Zhan.” Wei Wuxian slurs, his eyes flutter open for a brief moment, close again almost immediately, “Why are you here?”
Jiang Cheng has to strain his ears to hear the question at all. He has half a second to wonder how his cousin had been able to identify it is Hanguang-jun’s hand, and why he dares to address him with his birth name, when he hears - what should have been impossible - the second Jade talking. Gently. Not coldly, not icyily, not aloof, but gently.
“You are ill.” Hanguang-jun says, “You didn’t pick up your phone earlier when I called.”
“I’m not ill.” Wei Wuxian mumbles, then coughs, then starts to shake full body.
“You should have stayed with me.” Hanguang-jun says, while he draws Wei Wuxian up and against his body, wraps one arm around his shoulder, slides one arm beneath his knees, lifts him princess carry out of the bed.
“I’m not ill.” Wei Wuxian mumbles again, “I’m fine. You’re a worrywart.”
Hanguang-jun hums - Jiang Cheng is no expert, but even he can tell the hum was judgemental - then says, “I will take you home.”
“You are not taking him anywhere.” Jiang Cheng can’t help but to (fiercely) intervene, receives an icy glare in response, “He’s my cousin. He stays here. You have no right to take him anywhere just because you think you are better than us.”
The icy glare turns glacial. “He is my husband.” Hanguang-jun says with a finality freezing air, “I am taking him home where he belongs.”
A blink later, the place where Hanguang-jun had been standing with Wei Wuxian in his arms is empty. Devoid of any trace of both of them.
Jiang Cheng blinks into room, twice, thrice, unbelieving of what just had happened.
Teleportation is an art no cultivator masters nowadays anymore. There are tales of old, a scant few, of sages having had control over the ability. However, there are no manuals, no texts about how to do what, where to direct ones spiritual energy to, to achieve a transportation to a place in mind.
It takes him full three seconds until the words land he had just heard.
“Husband!?”
He cries outraged into the empty room.