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eleanorfenyxwrites · 10 months

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Outta Time

So @littlesmartart and I discovered that we both love Orville Peck, and I decided it might be nice to write Western Cowboy shit that isn't the Brokeback Mountain AU so here's this 😂 Inspired by Orville Peck's song 'Outta Time' from the album Bronco (Jess came up with the plot, I wrote it, and she's drawn art to go along with it for the visual that's directly inspired by the song [and that was all I had in mind for this before she came up with the plot lol]!)

--//--

It was, perhaps, foolishness on Meng Yao’s part to think that Huaisang was telling him nothing but the unvarnished truth when he’d invited him to head out West with him for a luxury vacation, set to last the entirety of their summer break.

“It’ll be like one of those fancy retreats silly rich people go on!” he’d insisted (as if he isn’t mind-bogglingly ridiculous and wealthier than Meng Yao could ever hope of being [considering he’s only just recently been forced to accept he’ll never see a single iota of his father’s support, emotionally or financially]). “Trust me!”

Mistake number 1 had been saying, “Alright A-Sang, I trust you.”

Mistake number 2 : being a man of his word.

Within a month of receiving Huaisang’s invitation, summer arrives with rolling peals of thunder heralding oppressive humidity and swarms of mosquitos. Meng Yao, a man of his word as stated, dutifully packs most of his belongings into a suitcase that weighs far less than the upper limit of the airline’s luggage weight restriction and navigates the pair of them through the airport with minimal stress, mainly thanks to not allowing Huaisang to be in charge of anything at all.

He chats with Huaisang on and off throughout their flight to keep himself distracted from the fact that he’s leaving behind everything he’s ever known to spend three months in the middle of bumfuck nowhere at his only friend’s brother's ranch, which Huaisang had only told him the full truth about yesterday, after it was already far too late to gracefully back out. Meng Yao’s promised luxury vacation destination is apparently in actuality a cattle ranch that Huaisang’s brother apparently runs mostly to keep himself in shape and avoid the stress of city life that had given him a heart attack at the ripe old age of 27 a few years back. (It is, by far, the weirdest ‘so I have this older brother’ story that Meng Yao has ever heard.)

“So this brother of yours –” Meng Yao finally caves and asks about an hour before final descent.

“Uh-huh?”

“He just…up and left New York. For Montana?”

“Yep,” Huaisang pops the ‘p’ and flicks to the next page in his magazine, unbothered, “After his heart attack he said he wanted to see some mountains and get some actual fresh air if he was just going to die soon anyway, it really dramatic and maudlin, which he never is, I was so proud. Only it turns out it was exactly what he needed to not die, so after a while he decided he would just stay out there for good. He bought the house and the land and some horses to give himself something to do besides stare at the sky all day, and then he was still kind of bored so he bought some cattle.”

Naturally. As one does.

“And now he’s…a cattle rancher. From New York City.”

Huaisang laughs and finally looks up from his magazine to smile at Meng Yao like ‘oh you sweet little thing’ in the way Meng Yao kind of hates, but Huaisang does it to everyone so he can’t really take too much offense.

“Yes, Yaoyao, you’ll understand when you meet him! Da-ge’s never really been a city guy, not like us. It suits him much better to be out here, especially since his best friend moved out here to help him out. Xichen-ge treats it like a meditation retreat but with a lot more mucking out stalls. He says even that part’s therapeutic, but I’m just going to take his word on that one, ‘cause ew.”

“Uh-huh.”

Huaisang leaves him to consider just what the hell he’s gotten himself into for the rest of the flight, and then they’re navigating their way (ridiculously easily) through the rinky-dink airport hardly bigger than a parking garage, the sky beyond the terminal windows blue blue blue where it stretches on forever in every direction.

“Da-ge!”

Meng Yao barely manages to snag Huaisang’s duffel when his friend flings it off his shoulder to go sprinting across the 3-carousel baggage claim, the fastest Meng Yao has ever seen him move. It’s a distinct relief that Meng Yao can use juggling their bags as an excuse to approach at a much more respectable pace; he needs the extra time to truly digest what he’s seeing.

Huaisang, as a former-model-turned-fasion-designer who happily calls himself a fruit at every opportunity, is one of the daintiest men Meng Yao has ever met. He’d even go so far as to call him a dandy, if pressed, and fully supports his friend’s decision to call himself every ‘emasculating’ label under the sun with obvious relish. He can’t deny that at least some of his confusion as to his best friend’s mysterious older brother’s chosen lifestyle stemmed from picturing someone like Huaisang, if perhaps a little taller.

He’s not confused anymore.

The man who catches Huaisang midair and swings him in a circle before setting him back on his feet would never be asked to grace the runways of New York — not because he isn’t beautiful enough to make Meng Yao’s fingers twitch for his camera to capture the way the sun cuts across his weather-tanned face, but because no one has ever heard of a fashion model who was roughly 6’7” and perhaps 300 pounds of solid, clearly functional muscle.

Huaisang’s brother towers over everyone else in the building that Meng Yao can see (and he can see most of them, re: rinky-dink airport in the middle of bumfuck Montana), and when he looks over the heads of the few people between Meng Yao and the exit their eyes lock instantly.

“A-Sang, be nicer to your friend,” Meng Yao can hear from here, a bass rumble that Does Things to his chest. “Go get your bag, don’t make your guest carry your shit or he’ll think I never taught you decent manners. Go on.”

Huaisang flutters back over and takes his bag with an unapologetic grin. Meng Yao finishes taking the ten-odd steps necessary for the brother to stick his hand out with a wry little smirk and say, “Hey, I’m Mingjue.”

“Meng Yao,” he replies and slides his hand into Mingjue’s dry, work-calloused palm.

“Welcome to big sky country, A-Yao,” Mingjue replies with a widening smile, a flash of straight white teeth and a dimple hiding under his mustache, and Meng Yao regrets to say that he’s thoroughly fucked.

–//–

The land unfolds around them as they drive down straight roads at an almost leisurely pace through miles and miles of…nothing.

Not nothing, Meng Yao supposes, but long gone are the corridors of towering skyscrapers, the lingering miasma of so many people living together in tight quarters, everyone building up up up to stack ever-more people into the same few square miles. Meng Yao understands, suddenly, why Mingjue had come here and stayed. He doesn’t think he has it in him to eschew all the conveniences of New York City for the open country, but someone like Mingjue seems like the type to appreciate having the space to…expand. To be bigger than life and have the room to do it in. He certainly feels larger than life at the moment as he details for Huaisang all the comings and goings on the ranch since he’d last visited, as he talks about the horses and his cattle and the monsoon rains they’d apparently only just missed that had finally turned everything summer-green.

Meng Yao sits on the bench seat of Mingjue’s beat up old pickup truck and watches the sparse scattering of fluffy white clouds drift over more sky than he’s ever seen in his life and he gets it.

He hasn’t gotten nearly enough of his fill of marveling (subtly) over the view by the time they pull off the road onto a dirt road that Huaisang tells him is actually Mingjue’s driveway, but he contents himself with the knowledge that they’re here for three months, he’ll have plenty of time to appreciate the view later. They rattle over a few metal grates Mingjue explains are cattle guards to keep the animals from escaping the ranch should they manage to break out of their pastures, and Meng Yao isn’t a child so he doesn’t exclaim about how fucking huge the cattle are some distance away from the road where they’re grazing (but he certainly rethinks his half-baked desire to see them up close anytime soon).

“Home sweet home,” Mingjue announces when they reach the end of the lane after another mile or two and opens his door with a creak. Meng Yao leans forward to look up at the house through his lashes and must not be able to control his expression as much as he’d prefer as Huaisang chuckles at him a little, nudging him in the side with his pointy little elbow.

“Told you it was nice,” he chirps and slides across the seat to get out on the driver’s side. “Da-ge be careful!” he trills, his nervous fretting muffled as he scurries around to the bed of the truck. Meng Yao doesn’t pay attention to their bickering or the scuffle of hard-soled boots on dirt, though his attention is snagged at least a bit by the sound of Mingjue laughing at whatever he’s just done to make Huaisang whine at him.

The house is beautiful, is the thing. Somehow he hadn’t thought that it would be, perhaps owing to how many times he’s listened to Huaisang complain about his brother’s lack of taste for anything even remotely fashionable. He should really stop assuming things about Mingjue, he supposes, considering he’s currently scored 0 for 2, and he hates to lose.

He gets out of the car, finally, to better appreciate white-washed wood paneling just beginning to show hints of weathering, blue shutters clearly freshly painted the same shade of the sky overhead with the front door painted to match. There are rocking chairs on the wraparound porch, clearly well-loved if the flattened, sun-faded cushions on them are anything to judge by, positioned to face west. He has a sudden mental image of Mingjue sitting out here in the evenings to watch the sunset over the mountains looming in the distance and has to shake himself all over once (discreetly) to keep from sticking himself in the chair next to him in this little pastoral fantasy. That’s just making it weird.

“You want the grand tour or you wanna settle in?” Mingjue asks; Meng Yao doesn’t jump to find himself standing next to his host he hadn’t heard approaching, but he does feel suddenly…shy in a way he’s definitely not used to. He tilts his head enough to squint up at Mingjue, the sun too bright in his eyes, and finds to his dismay that he’s still just as handsome as he’d been an hour ago.

“I want you to give him the tour!” Huaisang calls from where he’s petting a horse (an actual horse, but are they supposed to be that tall??) that’s come up to the fence at the other end of the front yard, such as it is, to duck down and nose at Huaisang like an old friend.

“I don’t care what you want, you little brat,” Mingjue calls back. “And don’t you dare give that beast whatever candy you’ve got in your pockets, do you know how long it took to train him out of biting people who didn’t give him any after you left?!”

Meng Yao hides a smile behind his hand and finds himself mostly glad that there’s someone else around now to be the recipient of Huaisang’s incessant whining when he’s really putting on a performance. He clears his throat a little and schools his expression back towards pleasant neutrality when Mingjue looks down at him again, clearly unwilling to entertain his brother’s antics a moment longer than necessary.

“I think I’d like to settle in first,” he allows himself to say, and is perhaps mildly startled when Mingjue doesn’t question it, when he simply nods and lets Meng Yao be that tiny bit selfish.

“Come on in then, your room’s upstairs.”

Meng Yao follows Mingjue inside out of the sun and finds himself surrounded by an eclectic mix of antiques and modern minimalism; framed photos and bric-a-brac piled up in out-of-the-way corners of sleek monochrome shelves hemmed in on every side by enormous, dense furniture of the sort that reminds him of a time at least half a century ago, if not longer. The result is antiquated in a charming way with enough touches of modernity that he doesn’t think Mingjue is necessarily out of touch, just pragmatic about his home. If something old will still do, why replace it? It’s a mentality Meng Yao can appreciate, and he finds himself smiling a little again as he trails behind Mingjue up the stairs and down the short hallway to the room in the back corner.

“Here you go,” Mingjue says and slings both Meng Yao’s and Huaisang’s bags off his shoulder, which is precisely when Meng Yao realizes he’d been carrying their luggage in one hand like it weighs nothing. He notices it, allows himself two seconds to admire it, and promptly tucks that little tidbit away for future consideration. Later.

“I’ll be around, just holler if you need anything. I’m sure A-Sang will be in to bother you once he’s finished saying hi to the herd, I’ll let you enjoy the quiet while you’ve got it.”

“Thanks, Mingjue,” Meng Yao says with a smile, and it might be a moment of wishful thinking, or just his imagination, but he swears he sees Mingjue’s gaze drop to his mouth for a beat too long before the man nods and retreats. Meng Yao has no way to know if the flush on the back of Mingjue’s neck is from the sun or, maybe, something else.

–//–

Huaisang does come inside eventually, and though he has his own unpacking to do Meng Yao isn’t surprised at all when his friend comes to his room first to flop onto his bed and promptly make himself at home to start bugging him.

(He wouldn’t want or expect anything different.)

As Meng Yao hangs up shirts and trousers with far more care than they probably need, Huaisang regales him with stories from other trips to the ranch and a quick run-down of the personalities of the horses Mingjue keeps, both his own and some he boards for others who can’t keep their own animals for whatever reason. Meng Yao makes enough leading, noncommittal noises to keep his friend chattering as he settles in, though the chatter becomes decidedly less pleasant as far as background noise goes when Huaisang starts talking about getting Meng Yao to socialize.

Within moments it’s clear he already has a plan on how to do so, because of course he does, and of course it’s some stranger’s houseparty where Meng Yao will know absolutely no one at all.

“Absolutely not, Huaisang,” he says tartly, but of course Huaisang only takes that as an invitation to persuade him.

“This isn’t like parties back home, A-Yao, I promise!” he wheedles. Meng Yao just goes on unpacking his meager belongings into the antique dresser in the corner of his room that holds a window overlooking the equipment-littered space between the back porch and the horse barn, and he very pointedly does not rise to Huaisang’s bait. He’s still not immune to his best friend’s cajoling and they both know it, but he feels the need to deny him a little longer for the sake of his pride, if nothing else.

“Nothing here is like home, Huaisang, your argument is invalid,” he replies blithely and debates the merit of hanging his undershirts in the too-big closet with the rest of his clothes, rather than folding them up into a too-big drawer where they’ll just look sad on their own.

“Okay point taken, but seriously! You’ll have a nice time, it’ll be chill, I swear. Xichen-ge is coming, and he never goes anywhere things will get out of hand!”

A party tempting enough to interest Huaisang is typically guaranteed to be anything but ‘chill’, he doesn’t point out, but…well. Meng Yao had just said it himself — nothing here so far is like what they’ve come from, maybe Huaisang’s different here too. Maybe a party’s really not such a bad idea. And if it is, Mingjue, having already overheard Huaisang mentioning the party on his way past Meng Yao’s room with a load of clean laundry in his arms, has already made it very clear that he’s happy to either loan them his truck for the night or else drive them himself. Considering Meng Yao has no interest in drinking so much he wouldn’t be able to drive (because he, unlike his best friend, is a very functional city gay who can drive, thank you very much) it’s a guaranteed exit strategy, should he feel the need to escape.

Meng Yao ignores Huaisang’s pleading eyes for a few moments longer simply for the fun of it as he slides his undershirts onto clattering plastic hangers, and only smiles once his back is turned as Huaisang shouts his delight when Meng Yao sighs, “Well…I guess I’ve got nowhere better to go.”

–//–

This time, Huaisang did tell him the unvarnished truth.

It’s clear from the moment they pull up in the warm violet twilight that this party is nothing like the ones they frequent back home. It’s in someone’s actual house, for one, which he supposes isn’t too strange when not being hosted in a city made entirely of apartments and highrises, but the house itself is in the middle of a giant patch of…nothing. It’s just a house on a dirt lot full of pickup trucks in various stages of rusting, with lights strung everywhere possible on the wraparound porch (except that it’s not really a porch so much as it is a prefabricated metal roof over part of the patch of dirt and sparse grass ‘yard’). He’s pretty sure he even sees a barn lit up the same way some few hundred feet behind the house, but he can’t get a good look at it from here and decides to put it out of his mind.

“Let me know if you end up needing the truck,” Mingjue says over the sound of twanging guitar coming from someone’s massive speakers as they hop down (well he steps down out of the truck like he’s just crossing a threshold; Meng Yao and Huaisang are too vertically challenged to get down out of the thing without at least a little hop). “I’m gonna head in to grab a beer, you two want anything?”

“We’re good, da-ge!” Huaisang chirps, already eyeing up a cluster of guys all dressed nearly identically in tight jeans and threadbare flannels with the sleeves cut off and the resulting gaping holes fraying artlessly, with the main differentiating factor between them being if they’re wearing cowboy hats or baseball caps. Meng Yao glances between his options — Huaisang’s all-too-familiar thirsting over extremely lackluster men who don’t deserve him and Mingjue’s retreating figure carving a path through the crowd — and decides to take his chances with the latter, though he hangs back a little to give Mingjue space.

The house, when he steps inside, at least smells pretty much like what he’s used to at parties. Too many competing colognes and perfumes, the sticky sweetness of alcohol, and the haze of cigarette smoke are almost comforting like this, even as he promptly gets lost amongst the sprawling, dimly-lit rooms crowded with strangers nursing beers or chatting (read: feeling) each other up in dim corners. He finds a staircase in the middle of the house and uses it to orient himself as he wanders in several clockwise circles until he’s mapped out the living room, the den, the kitchen where he snags a beer from the 6’5” cowboy (he’s assuming he’s a cowboy based on the hat and the whole ‘house party on a farm in Montana’ thing) standing at the keg, the door to the back ‘porch’ that’s about as porch-like as the one out front, and an overcrowded room that seems to serve no purpose but to be a place to play beer pong.

He’s just circled his way back to the front door near the stairs once again when he finds his path blocked by someone turned away from him; someone broad and tall and wearing pale blue, which just seems like a mistake when any moment could end in spilled beer and flustered mopping up with a crumpled handful of napkins, perhaps even the removal of said shirt to get it in the upstairs bathroom sink to soak out the stain before it sets —

Alright so it’s been a while and a man has needs, especially when surrounded by ridiculously tall beefcakes on every side. Sue him.

Rather than spilling his shitty beer on this guy to see if he can get him to take his shirt off, Meng Yao clears his throat and taps the guy on his waist once, just the lightest touch of two fingers to body-warmed cotton, and the guy turns smoothly, an apology already on his lips.

“Oh, excuse me,” he says, hardly audible over the music jangling from the beer pong room. Meng Yao tilts his head back a bit — and then a bit more — to meet the guy’s gaze and he’s startled to find he’s also Asian. It takes him roughly three seconds to put two-and-two together when the guy smiles at him like he knows him and ducks down to talk a little closer. Meng Yao makes a conscious decision to stay very still to let him do it.

“Might you be Meng Yao?” he asks and Meng Yao can only nod dumbly. “Mingjue sent me to find you, would you like to come sit with us? Da-ge’s great for commandeering the couch at these things.”

Sitting down sounds great, Meng Yao thinks, especially when the crowd shifts enough for him to catch sight of the ratty old sofa in the living room to find Mingjue currently occupying it alone, manspread more than far enough to make it clear that no one else is sitting on that couch unless he invites them (and he doesn’t look like he’s in a particularly inviting mood).

“Are you sure?” Meng Yao asks, wary, but the man (who must be Mingjue’s best friend, Xichen) just smiles at him again and tips his head in that direction, gesturing vaguely with one of his bottles of beer as if for emphasis.

“Of course! Come on, you’ve had a long day of traveling and I wanted to apologize for not being able to meet you at the house this afternoon. Just sit with us for a while, we’ll introduce you around later if you want us to.”

Meng Yao finds it a pretty tough proposition to say no to so he just nods again and gestures with his own beer (in a stereotypical red Solo cup he’d been amused to receive) for Xichen to lead the way. It isn’t so far that Meng Yao worries about losing him in the crowd, really, but he doesn’t let that stop him from hooking an index finger through the center back belt loop on Xichen’s skin-tight jeans, ‘just in case’. Xichen simply smiles at him over his shoulder as they pass through the nearly-black front hallway and into the scarcely-brighter living room, red Christmas lights around the ceiling and the overhead bulb in the kitchen through the other doorway the only lighting for the entire room.

“Hey, there you are,” Mingjue says as they approach, and though he swings one knee closer to straight in front of himself to manspread a little less he leaves his arm slung casually along the top of the back cushions, reaching up with his free hand to snag the beer Xichen had brought for him and taking a swig of it as Xichen joins him.

On the opposite end of the couch.

Meng Yao hides behind a sip of his own flat beer quickly warming to room temperature as he contemplates the small (small) space between them and, between one disappointing sip and the next, decides he’s feeling reckless enough after a long day of new things and the freedom of traveling so many miles from home that he’s just going to go for it, and fuck the consequences.

Xichen slings his arm over the rest of the back of the couch, fingertips brushing lightly against Mingjue’s elbow where they overlap. Meng Yao sits down right in between them, settles in, and pointedly ignores the way the tired old couch springs squeak in protest of their combined weight and how he seems to pull the other two in like a magnet. It’s like gravity, centers of balance shifting and leaning inwards into his orbit, the pair of them bracketing him on either side, parentheses made of denim and muscle and smiling mouths that he pretends not to notice creeping closer as they keep finding excuses to lean in closer over the course of the next few minutes, not at all subtle. They drift in, in, in to talk to him over the music until they’re both practically kissing him on the cheeks just to be heard as they chat about nothing much at all.

Meng Yao finishes his beer and lets Xichen take the empty cup from him to set aside, and when he leans back in even closer than a moment before, Meng Yao offers him a coy little smile of the sort that’s weakened tougher men than Xichen seems to be and drops his newly-freed hand on his knee, mirroring the caress on Mingjue’s knee with his free hand on the other side.

It would be more than accurate to say that Xichen melts like butter — melts so obviously, in fact, that Mingjue laughs at him, hides it in Meng Yao’s shoulder, and seems to need no further excuse to just set up camp there so he can start nuzzling the tip of his nose into the crook of Meng Yao’s neck until he’s shivering pleasantly and feeling very much like the cat that got the cream.

Huaisang was right — this has never happened to him in New York, but he’s perfectly happy that it’s happening to him now.

–//–

Nie Huaisang isn’t the type to say ‘I told you so’ in so many words, mostly because he doesn’t actually say what he’s really thinking in the first place.

But if he were the type, he’d be saying it right now to anyone who would listen as he sips at a beer some jumped-up bull rider pressed into his hand with enough flustered used-to-be-definitely-absolutely-straight-but-now-he’s-confused flirting that Huaisang had given him an extra kiss or three to apologize for giving him a little sexuality crisis.

Maybe it’s weird for him to be so pleased to see his brother and his brother’s live-in-something tag teaming Huaisang’s own best friend, but, well. Meng Yao works way too hard for very little in return, and Huaisang thinks he deserves nice things. He’s certainly not immune to the ample charms of his brother’s farmer/rancher neighbors at least for a hazy summer, and he’d known that Meng Yao wouldn’t be able to resist either no matter how many fuck-off-I’m-totally-independent vibes he gives off when they’re back home.

Naturally if Meng Yao weren’t interested in sex Huaisang would leave him alone about it, but since he’s not he’d known perfectly well that there would be no resisting not one but two handsome men who could throw him over their shoulders as easily as they do bales of hay or sheep that need shearing. So, to that effect — the scene in front of him. Huaisang watches just long enough to see Xichen turn Meng Yao’s face to his with a gentle finger under his chin to coax him in for a kiss where they’re snuggled up all three together on the couch and then makes his escape to find his own fun for the night.

It’s already looking like it’s going to be quite the summer, and Huaisang basks in the pleasure of a plan well-executed with no one the wiser.

#the untamed fanfic #3zun #Modern AU #Orville Peck Cinematic Universe #officially the name of this universe (because there will definitely be more) lol #3zun but make them cattle ranchers because why not #Nie Mingjue #Meng Yao #Lan Xichen #Nie Huaisang

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allthelittlecreepycrawlies · 9 days

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Day seven - Snow

Set in the Huli-Jing-Meng Yao forcibly adopted into the Nie household! Au

During a particularly hard winter Meng Yao is worried Huaisang might not make it. Humans are so frail sometimes.

(from this verse.)

"Yao-ge?"

His little master's voice was so weak, a human's ear wouldn't have caught it. But Meng Yao's ear flicked in the direction of the sleeping nest, then he opened his eyes and slipped down off the desk, shedding his fur and fangs as he crossed to the bundle of blankets and furs. "What can I get you, Sangsang?"

"'s'too heavy," Nie Huaisang wheezed, pushing weakly at the pile covering him. "Can't breathe."

Meng Yao frowned a little, then looked around the room. If he fed the censers first and used his own fur and warmth to compensate for the loss of some of the bedding, it was usually enough... But this year's snowstorms had been the worst he'd ever seen, and Huaisang's health had plummeted accordingly.

He didn't want his little master getting even sicker because he'd made a mistake in judgment.

At the same time, he didn't want his little master suffocating either.

Deciding that removing just a few blankets couldn't hurt as long as he didn't let Huaisang get chilled, he carefully folded them back off the other boy until he seemed to be breathing a little bit easier, then shifted back to his furred shape and slipped under the covers with him.

Nie Huaisang rolled onto his side to better cuddle him. "Thank you," his little master murmured, rubbing his cheek against the top of his head.

Meng Yao made a soothing, rumbly little whine as he nuzzled back, always happy for the affection even if his now-thicker winter coat made the bedding nest a little too warm for his tastes, but as Huaisang dozed off, his mood dipped. In the position they were in, his hear was partially pressed against his little master's chest, and the painful-sounding rasp deep in the human's chest every time he breathed in disturbed him.

Growing up not knowing what he was, he'd just thought he'd been exceptionally lucky not to ever get sick despite their living conditions. Especially not this sick.

Since learning the truth, since coming to the sect, he'd been thinking a lot more about human fragility and resilience.

About just how terrible an illness his mother must've had, for it to slowly but surely fell her, when his little master could come so close to death every winter and yet recover... almost as surely as the blooms of spring.

About whether his little master might be more like her than anyone was aware, and one year, he just... wouldn't recover.

His ears laying back in worry, Meng Yao snuggled even closer to Nie Huaisang, tucking himself into every bit of space until they were practically melded together. He drew on what little spiritual power he knew how to access to give extra heat to Huaisang, and was rewarded with another sleepy nuzzle that eased a little bit of his anxiety and strengthened his resolve.

Sickness had stolen his mother.

He wouldn't let it have his little master too.

#mdzs #sangyao #sangyao week #nie huaisang #jin guangyao #fanfic

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robininthelabyrinth · 2 years

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I'm sorry but you have planted the seeds: WRH is NMJs biological father

“I didn’t tell you to touch him,” Wen Ruohan said, his voice deceptively calm the way it was when he was really angry, and Meng Yao cowered instinctively, wondering what mistake he could have made.

He’d worked so hard for his position in the Nightless City – putting aside abandoning everything he had before, which wasn’t so much a choice as a necessity, it had been a time and a half figuring out how to get into Wen Ruohan’s good graces, working his way up, earning the trust of the mad tyrant that ruled half the world…luckily Meng Yao had always a skill for figuring out what people wanted, especially men in power, and giving it to them, and through that skill he had made it very far.

Wen Ruohan, he’d figured out pretty quickly, wanted Nie Mingjue.

It was reasonable. The enemy general, the indefatigable opponent, the moral center of the Wen sect’s opposition for over a decade, the King of Heijan, the murderer of Wen Xu – of course Wen Ruohan would hunger to have Nie Mingjue at his feet. No wonder he would want to hear all the things about him, so as to better savor his eventual defeat. No wonder…

It had seemed obvious.

It was clearly wrong.

“Forgive me,” Meng Yao pleaded. “Sect Leader –”

Wen Ruohan had already forgotten him, and instead went over to where Nie Mingjue was still being forced to kneel.

“Look what he’s done to you,” he – cooed. There was no other way to describe it. “Mingjue, my Mingjue…it’s always deceit, isn’t it? I told you, long ago. Talent and virtue are no match for betrayal…”

“You would know,” Nie Mingjue said, his voice grim; he sounded as he would much rather limit his language to nothing but Wen-dog or fuck you, but that for some reason he felt he couldn’t. “No one exceeds you in that respect.”

“I was betrayed first,” Wen Ruohan said, unperturbed. “But no matter. One day, you’ll understand.”

“I don’t think I will.”

“Oh, you will, you will. You’ll understand that everything I’ve done has been to your benefit, in the end.”

Meng Yao felt his eyebrows rising. Everything Wen Ruohan had done – to Nie Mingjue’s benefit?

Even Nie Mingjue looked shaken by that.

“My Mingjue,” Wen Ruohan said, squatting down next to him and reaching out a hand to cup his cheek. “How long are you going to keep up this ridiculous temper tantrum..? Look at Meng Yao, who you adored so much – I kept him just for you, because I know how much you liked him.”

He’d…what?

“Anyway, Meng Yao’s got the right idea in his head. He doesn’t cling onto his maternal name – he’d drop it in heartbeat if his father granted him his recognition and his surname...you’ve already done enough, Mingjue.” Wen Ruohan smiled, bright with insanity. “You’re already proven yourself to be my most talented son. Isn’t it time to come home?”

#mdzs #wen ruohan #nie mingjue #jin guangyao #meng yao #my fic #my fics #alt headcanons

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rosethornewrites · 1 month

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NR, E, & M reading since 3/24

Finished

Not Rated:

WZL is Meng Yao's dad, by nirejseki

Prompt: Au where Wen Zhuiliu is Meng yao’s dad instead of JG. Meng Yao is raised in the wen sect, as his son also the idea of the golden-core-snatcher thing being hereditary or not would be fun to explore. It’s be the ultimate dagger-up-the-sleeve move. Meng Yao joins Wen Qing and Ning to study at the Lans sect.

NHS tries to fix things post-Sunshot, by nirejseki

Can you do one where Huisang is upset about the loss of his best friends? After the cloud recesses and the training camp he looked forward to seeing Wei Wuxian and JC again and now they don’t even like each other and WW is so cold now. Maybe they deserve a forced vacation?

Who gave Lan-xiansheng alcohol?!, by HeloSoph (🔒, 6 chapters)

Lan-xiansheng is drunk and certain facts are revealed.

Apparently, Lan-xiansheng is the reason behind the 'alcohol is prohibited in Cloud Recesses' rule...

'Well, you learn something new every day.' Nie Huaisang thinks.

Explicit:

Light the Lantern, Touch the Light, by Sirendipity (🔒)

Rogue cultivator Wei Wuxian is tasked to investigate the haunting of a brothel, where he is tricked into servitude by the cunning madam. Lan Wangji, under the effects of a dangerous curse, enlists the aid of Mo Xuanyu - a prostitute he has yet to learn is dead.

When the two meet, is it coincidence? Or is a conniving force bent on pushing them together?

the sexy casefic one that no one - not even the author - expected to actually contain sex.

Grabbing At Clouds, by Bvbyphoenix (🔒)

Wei Wuxian has been dealing with a recent flair up of intrusive thoughts, and after a very rough night of sleep, Lan WangJi decides to dedicate a day to pampering him and keeping his mind distracted.

Some of that distraction comes in the form of domming him into not thinking so hard.

Mature:

Reclamation, by CordialCoroner (CordialCrow)

After her death at the hands of the Jin, Wen Qing's spirit lingers.

you need to stop seeing right through me, by lanzhandweiying

Wei Wuxian took a step forward, wanting to move away but strong hands held him by the waist and swiftly turned his thin frame around, making him face Lan Zhan’s perfect face.

The two were so close now, bodies touching each other, not even a sliver of space between them.

‘’Lan Zhan’’ Wei Wuxian breathed out.

‘’Wei Ying’’ Lan Zhan whispered back looking at him with an expression he had never wore before.

or a different turn in the forest conversation in episode 25.

Unfinished

Not Rated:

The Trial, by H_Belle

Canon divergence - Cloud Recesses did not burn and the Sunshot Campaign has not yet started.

Amidst the rising tensions in the cultivation world, the Wen Sect announces a special event planned for the next Discussion Conference - a trial of wit, skill and spirit, meant for the sect heirs only. For some reason, Wei Wuxian is asked to assist.

And what was this trial supposed to be, exactly?

To Recall and To Long for, by scallion_pancakes

Its Wei Wuxian's wedding day.

The Jiang family or at least what is left of it should be overjoyed. Yet, Jiang Cheng finds himself looking at his sister shrink further And further into herself.

He had to have a conversation with Lan Wangji.

Explicit:

hold out your hands, by Aminias

Oh no, this is bad. How could he have forgotten Wei Ying's considerate nature? Lan Zhan wants to marry him; technically this isn't their first meeting so Xichen will have to allow it. The characters for Wei Ying's name are written across his cup and Lan Zhan files that information away. It will be important to get the proper spelling of Wei Ying's name right later, he wants no mistakes when they go to the courthouse.

Lan Zhan hasn't seen Wei Ying since he gave him his first gay awakening. Now five years later with Wei Ying in front of him he handles it with as much chill as you might assume.

Heart of the Beast, by WaitForTheSnitch

“Wei Ying?” Nie Mingjue prompted him gently. “Where are your parents?”

“They went on a night hunt,” Wei Ying said, a bit evasively.

“Your parents are cultivators?” Da-ge asked in surprise. “Did they leave you here while they hunted? When did they go on their night hunt?”

“Four summers ago,” Wei Ying said a bit uncomfortable.

“Four summers ago,” Nie Mingjue repeated. “What are your parents’ names?”

“My mama is Cangse Sanren and my baba is Wei Changze,” Wei Ying told him, and recognition registered in Nie Mingjue’s eyes.

“Wei Ying,” Nie Mingjue said, sounding a bit regretful, “Your parents aren’t coming back.”

Or, Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang run into Wei Ying while in Yiling and decide to bring him home. And it changes everything.

Mature:

But This Time, I Have You, by Lotus_Seed

Lan Wangji follows Wei Wuxian at the siege. They both die and get sent back to the past. This time, Wei Wuxian isn't alone.

Together, they work things out.

To Ride A Stygian Tiger, by Madyamisam

Wei Wuxian changes fate and is wounded while saving Jin Zixuan at the Qiongqi bridge and a great mystery starts to unravel many hidden secrets never known before. While trying to deal with his own increasing madness, seeing threats everywhere in past, present and future, he sets an impossible task to save everyone he ever cared about with his very life and soul.

#the untamed #mo dao zu shi #mdzs #cql #chen qing ling #untamed fanfiction

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huasahyo · 1 year

Text

I have read Qiang Jin Jiu and honestly think I'll never recover

(Spoilers ahead!)

Oh god, where to start this? Maybe I should start with the very begging: I didn't understood shit. I just saw a kid being tortured and lots of information. When I felt it was too much, I went after the translated map and OMG that was so helpful! Bless the translators for that. After looking carefully at the map, things started to make sense.

As the story went, before the end of book one I was not very familiar with all the characters. I kept mistaking Hai Liangyi for Hua Siqian lol. But during my reading I started to take some notes and was never confused again. The thing is, this book has A LOT of characters and some of them are introduced early but only become major players later (Yao Wenyu, Hua Xiangyi...)

Even though this huge ensemble would make characters easy to forget, this doesn't happen. The author managed to create likeable and rememberable characters pretty easily??? I fell in love with many of them at first read, even if they didn't show up a lot. And there were characters that got me completely off guard, I wasn't expecting them to be so cool and relevant, BUT THEY WERE (Fei Sheng, Kong Liu)! And the antagonists were also brilliant, I love a good story where everyone has a point and no one is actually evil: People from Biansha had their truths and in a war there are no right sides, Xue Xiuzhuo wanted the best for Dazhou (even though I can't forgive what the did to my baby Yuanzhuo), and Li Jianting??? WHAT A LEGEND! Also, Feng Quan plot twist left me speechless, what an interesting character. Every character was very human (in the good and bad way), everyone had their own goals and beliefs. I actually might do a second post screaming about every character because I have a lot to say about them. (hello hasen my love)

The Plot??? Perfectly done. AND WELL EXPLAINED! I was always a little afraid of reading novels with a lot of politics, but I really dug this one. The problems with grains, provisions, registry, army and BRO THERE WAS EVEN SOME AGRARIAN REFORM SHIT

The way this author write the MOST well written battles I have read, without using any magic... it's just... I never thought I would be so enthusiastic about cannons, rocks and GRAINS.

The conflicts in Zhongbo could be all repetitive, but they weren't at all. Each prefecture that Lanzhou took back had a interesting story.

The war with Biansha was also brilliantly written. The way Amu'er was attacking Dazhou from the inside out and the scorpions with those hammers??? My man was a genius. Sadly, he could never have predicted Bai Cha and her son.

Talking about that, the family relationships are a great point in this. Seeing flashbacks about Lanzhou, Ji Mu, Ji Gang and Hua Pinging made me CRY! They were so happy... And seeing Xiao Chiye with his brother and HIS DAD LIKE... Xiao Fangxu and Ji Gang best daddies. Fei Sheng and Yin Chang too, what a beautiful chapter the one that they talk after Fei Sheng has a fight with Qiao Tianya.

Talking about Qiao Tianya, it was refreshing to see a novel with more LGBT characters. The secondary pairings were great, they didn't steal the spotlight from cezhou, but were very enjoyable (even though THAT happened between Songyu). I just wished we could have seen more Qihua moments and OH GOD KONG LIU AND LUO MU??? That got me truly off guard, wasn't expecting at all. Also, I found really interesting how Lanzhou basically got a LGBT parade following him at the end, that was truly the gayest empire ever. I have so many headcanons here, let me scream them: Xue Xiuzhuo is AroAce, Li Jianting is a non-binary legend and Huo Lingyun a Bi King. Also, Fei Sheng is not straight. Said it.

The little animals in this??? I WAS TERRIFIED WHEN LANG TAO XUE JIN FELL IN THAT HOLE YALL I THOUGHT HE WAS GONNA DIE. But luckily he didn't. Meng, Hunu, Feng Shuang Ta Yi were all the cutest, I need more novels with cats.

THE CHILDREN - Ding Tao, Li Xiong, Xiao Xun and Jiran. They served chaos, humor and cuteness. I really liked whenever they showed up.

THE LADIESSS - If you have read my other posts you know I love some powerful women. This story did not disappoint me in that sense. Hua Hewei had some despicable acts, but she really got everyone on her hands despite never leaving the inner palace, good for her. Hua Xiangyi is a way better version of her aunt, my girl was smart and cared for the people, an amazing woman. QI ZHUYINNN owns my life, I really adored the fact that she was a badass and that she never hated the fact she was born a girl, slay. Bai Cha was really out there helping women that were sold and their children, that is some real sorority there. Lu Yizhi was so kind, loved seeing her interactions with Lanzhou. Li Jianting was everything, her story was one of the saddest and yet she was doing her best to become a ruler. Duo Er'lan was amazingly brave, even more than Hasen, mad respect for her.

And last, but definitely not least, there is cezhou. I have no words to explain how much I adored these two. The way both of them got their own development and had their own private goals and went after them, so good. They are so well written that I wanna scream. The chapters that are focused on Lanzhou's feelings are not big in number, even when he is the main character, his feelings are shown in discreet ways (the handkerchief!) and most of the time we don't know what he is plotting or thinking. But when we take a peek at what's going inside of his heart, it's... astonishing. And I love seeing how he actually cared for the side characters, even though he doesn't show a lot.

And Ce'an kind of caught me off guard, I thought he was going to be a totally different character but he went and delivered

Xiao Chiye was a perfect fit for Lanzhou and Lanzhou was a perfect fit for Xiao Chiye: they were both in similar situations where only them could understand each other's suffering, and after they leave Qudu we see how much of a match made in heaven they are (not just romantically, but strategically).

THE SEXUAL TENSION AT THE BEGINNING YALL... They were scheming/fighting and flirting at the same time. Iconic.

Read this, you won't regret it!

By the way, I started reading the story in December and finished by March, but I completely forgot to post this! College has been frying my brain these days.

Hopefully I will resume my Sha Po Lang reading and come back here to tell my opinions on the book. (Not sure when though.)

See ya!

#qiang jin jiu #qjj #将进酒 #qjj spoilers #danmei #danmei recs #nana rambles about novels #bl novel #book review #novel review #novel recommendation

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whumpbby · 7 months

Note

Since i'm dropping some of my takes here on your ask box let me tell you my most controversial one. I fuck with Jiang Cheng more than i do Lan Xichen, like, i don't hate the guy, but his "bad choices" have a body count on the hundreds thanks to him neatly handing Jin Guangyao a solid backing in the form of sworn brotherhood with two main sect leaders and i don't care what anyone says Nie Huaisang was a 100% right to include him on his revenge. I love him as a character, i want him happy, but he's a bad politician (I also think that Xue Yang would kinda be his type but that's less of my views on his character and more my thoughts when i was delirious on a headache a few weeks ago)

I love to see other people's takes:)

I agree here to a degree.

I have... conflictung feelings about LXC. Because I like him a lot - he's a type of a character archetype I actually adore. The stoic, good, kind person that will also kick ass.

But he is not a great politician - partly due to his uncompromising kindness and partly due to being raised in Lan sect and knowing how his mother's situation played out.

My issues with the Lan are numerous and the hypocrisy is the main one. For all the rules stuffed into their heads, there doesn't seem to be much space left for actually wanting to be a good person. Hence Lan Xichen and Lan Sizhui are so interesting to me - they are the outliers. In general, the sects are focused on themselves, and to a degree that's to be expected, you want your people happy and fed first and foremost. But the Lan have this fame of being righteous and wise - but when you actually meet the Lan and see them act, that illusion kinda goes away. Lan Wangji picks fights with teenagers and wilfully destroys other people's property. Lan Jingyi "decorum I don't know her" is on that list too. Lan Qiren doesn't stick to his own rules. His brother was a rapist and that's somehow okay. It's all about visuals with them. Following the letter of the rules and not the spirit.

And then there's the fate of LXC's mother.

The woman imprisoned for a crime no one knows the reason of, that has spent her life paying and paying for it. Like, how horrific it had to be for Xichen to get old enough to start asking questions and finally realise what was happening? That he and his brother were a result of what was basically rape. (Sect Leader couldn't leave seclusion to, you know, run the sect but could do it to fuck? Okay then). That there wasn't a fair trial - just one mistake and a horrific lifetime of paying for it.

And I think as much as Wangji is scared of becoming his father (trapping the person he loves because he's ineffective at communication), Lan Xichen is scared of becoming the sect elders - of judging someone too harshly for one mistake.

Meng Yao is kind, helpful, gentle and wise - just like LXC's mother. That NMJ judges him so harshly for something he might have done without considering the reasons rings a bell with LXC. He's all about giving people second chances, chances to explain themselves and so on, because what if he makes a mistake and someone ends up like his mother? He is downright predisposed to falling for JGY's lies, just as Wangji is predisposed to be a doormat of a husband.

That's how I see it.

And yeah, his decision to swear the brotherhood comes form a position of immense privilege of not having to think too much - the fact he didn't even consider how it would shift the political powers either means he didn't care to consider anything but his current crush, or that there was a political play there (in maybe trying to limit the scope of Jin hegemony as the one sect standing that took almost no damage, which is what I think would convince NMJ to agree, because he's actually a decent politician when not deviating) that purposefully excluded Yunmeng Jiang and threw smaller sects to the wolves. Either way, not a good showing. Out of everyone, you'd expect Zewu-Jun to be caring for this stuff? (Can you even wonder why Yunmeng Jiang became known for being dangerous to mess with? What other choice did they have to secure their place at the table? JC doesn't have to be nice to anyone of them - no one was in his corner when he needed help, it's a wonder he even talks to these people and his sect being the last one standing undamaged at the end is poetic justice 👌)

Nie Huaisang was 100% right to include Lan Xichen in his plan. Even if not as a straight up revenge - then out of anger at the wilful blindness the man kept exhibiting. Because if Huaisang caught on that something wasn't kosher - how could it be that Lan Xichen didn't?

#lan xichen #mdzs #i like a big brother type #I'm not gonna lie

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mostlikelytofangirl · 7 months

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Hi, since you are the person to go to for ruoyao matters I just wanted to say that while wrh seemed sad at the betrayal in the manhua, meng yao looked worried and sad too in the live action

OMG hi there anon!!

Ahaha idk if I deserve to be the ruoyao person around here, unless you count how insistent I am in pushing my agenda on y'all ^^;

But I'm so very surprised and thrilled to see ppl approaching me to talk about the ship and WRH with me, I firmly believe both deserve more attention given all the potential for fun exploration there is :D

Anyways, thank you for adding to the beatings my feels are taking today, I'm honestly having a blast TuT.

I'm not the most devoted to CQL's canon tbh, but you know what? I totally see it. Unlike donghua, CQL MY was definitely not looking triumphant or even relieved that it was all over. I understood his reaction initially as shock at what he had done --that he was even able to do it with how inhumanly powerful WRH was. But now that you have made this parallel... I think an argument can be made that MY was hit with the real possibility of having made a mistake

So if we incorporate this to the frankencanon I mostly work with, it would be pretty possible that MY made a last minute decision in a dire moment, but only after it was done he realized that maybe he didn't want it end like this, not after having experienced how it was like to be fully embraced in a sect that couldn't have cared less about his heritage.

Now he has to start over again for like, the third time in a place where not even his heritage is enough.

#replies #mdzs #meng yao #jin guangyao #today has been the destroy me emotionally and I'm thriving!#also tbh it's such a compliment to be thought of as the person to go for ruoyao lol #yes pls!#this is literally all I want #just to be fed in my delusion!#so thank anon for bringing forth the ever so lovely MY regrets killing WRH

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nuggetbucketsuckit · 2 months

Text

this is it i’m starting a series of rants about the same moon shines series so far i have this:

xichen i love u and ur back breaking gigantic heart but that’s risky as fuck please

loving mother madam yu i am here for it yes please

jiang fengmian and wei changze were in love i’m gonna cry

the parallel of past/future wangxian and them hhhhhh

so now the impression i’m getting is they were all in an poly relationship

hands down the best fix it fic ever

wen ning is fucking adorable

the author deserves the world

happy family. a-yuan emits pure joy. amen.

every time meng yao makes an appearance i just go =_= i’m watching u hoe

tears (sad)

hurt/COMFORT

tears (hhhh)

madam yu and jiang cheng are apologising for mistakes they made in a future that they technically didn’t participate in and i have a lot of feelings about it

like on one hand i’m thinking yes wei ying deserves this confrontation because he did go through that hurt

but on the other hand i’m thinking U GUYS TECHNICALLY WERENT THE ONES WHO COMMITED THOSE ACTS THOOO

it’s the way they feel so much guilt that his hurt was caused by them even tho they technically didn’t do it

i’m not saying it’s wrong i just have a lot of feelings about it and it hurts 😭

scratch everything i just said that shit was absolutely necessary for wei ying and i’m glad it happened

ya okay this meng yao is all g he never got to have the resentment he could’ve had. xue yang however 👀

jiang cheng loves his brother and i’m once again crying

wei wuxian is loved. fiercely.

a-yuan might be 3 but he knows what he’s doing and he gets what he wants.

he altered reality, gave up his happy life with a husband and child, saved hundreds of people, because he loved his brother and didn’t want any of that happiness because jiang cheng was miserable. i am: not okay

HE DID ALL THAT EVEN THO HE GENUINELY BELIEVED JIANG CHENG HATED HIM AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

#the same moon shines series #mdzs #and time is but a paper moon by sami #spoilers #i guess #but at the same time #go read it #fic rec #idk if u can tell but these are all very inconsistent thoughts #as i am a very inconsistent person

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mmmmmgoodbye · 1 year

Text

both yue qingyuan and lan xichen are such,,,,, sad characters

like. yqy, of his own volition, didn’t talk to shen jiu about why he “didn’t come back.” he didn’t even try to fix their relationship in a meaningful way, by at least attempting to talk it out, because of what, a guilt complex? I mean, yikes, but that’s kind of your fault.

and then. and then! shen jiu dies, and yqy never finds out. he contents himself with this facsimile of the man he near crippled his cultivation for, and never finds out that all of shen qingqiu’s debatable happiness isn’t shen jiu’s. to confess his mistakes to someone who doesn’t have any personal lot in the matter—that’s really terrible. that’s private stuff.

and then we’ve got lan xichen. one of his sworn brothers kills the other (unless 3zun, which would make it so much worse). to make matters worse, he trusts the killer pretty much above all else, and then it turns out he’s been lead by the nose the whole time? the breach of trust! the heartbreak of it! lan xichen owes meng yao a life debt, yes? for sheltering him after cloud recesses burns. he’s so confident in meng yao’s character; it was proved to him in the very beginning. afaik, lan xichen was the only one meng yao never really moved against. but lan xichen is also devoted to lan wangji, and his sect, and nie mingjue, and it’s just… so sad, really. I don’t think lan xichen ever truly recovers from the betrayal of it.

and then he just… secludes himself. indefinitely. forever? who knows. he ruminates on his failure of nmj and lwj, on his blindness to jgy’s true face, on the years he lived in jgy’s friendship (or more. they could’ve been fucking. who’s to say? maybe they were in love). there’s no closure for him. it’s all happened, everything’s been done. he can’t change it. you can’t… you can’t come back from that, not without help. he isolates himself. it’s heartbreaking.

conclusion: therapy. lots of therapy. so much therapy. for both of them.

#UGH I have so many FEELINGS about them BOTH #yqy cares so much for shen jiu #even if it’s out of guilt as well.#and then lan xichen #his story is heartbreaking. he’s really been lied to his whole life. how much of jgy was a front? all of it? he’ll never know.#I don’t think either of them ever get true closure. it’s sad #svsss #mdzs #yue qingyuan #lan xichen

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jaimebluesq · 2 years

Note

For the prompt thing, I really like all your Nie sect headcanons! Do you have any more--perhaps focused on Huaisang & Mingjue and their brotherly bond?

Thank you for the ask/prompt! :D

I think for quite a while after their parents died, the relationship between Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang was in a really difficult place because a) NMJ now had to run their sect, and b) NMJ now had a 9-yr old brother who needed a parental figure, and he was the only one left despite only being 15. It was a huge balancing act and he made a lot of mistakes, made even worse by the fact that NHS began acting out. This is one of the initial reasons why NHS began fighting back against saber training – before then, he looked up to his big brother and wanted to be just like him (even though physically it just wasn't going to be in the cards), but after NMJ became sect leader, NHS only ever saw him at meals and whenever he got into trouble... so he got into trouble more often, and every time he ran away when it was time to train his saber, NMJ would go and find him and bring him back, and he'd see his brother again.

As NHS grew up, running away from practice became less and less acceptable. What NMJ could tolerate from a 9 year old was different from what he could tolerate from a 12 year old, and yet they were still stuck in that cycle of NMJ getting busy, NHS instinctively needing his brother's attention, NHS acts out, NMJ fetches him and gets angry, goes back to work, and rinse/repeat. Something had to change or else they would come to a head which would negatively affect their relationship.

It's funny that the very thing that saved them was the very thing that made them so different. NMJ is a very straightforward man, you always know where you stand with him, and he just doesn't have much patience for political games. Oh, he does his best to play them because he HAS to, but he doesn't like it, and isn't as good at it as he knows he should be. NHS, on the other hand, will put on a smile for you one moment and plot to sneak hot peppers in your supper the next just because you insulted one of his birds. What ended up happening was that NHS had really gotten into trouble and NMJ didn't feel like he could let his brother go unsupervised, so NMJ was forcing him to remain at his side when he was meeting with officials in the Great Hall. Mid-way through one merchant's account of why they weren't able to fulfill Qinghe Nie's order for more materials for their saber blacksmiths, NHS tugged at his brother's sleeve and whispered “He's lying, Da-ge.” NMJ called for a short recess and talked with NHS in private, asking him why he thought that. It was a mix of NHS' instinctive ability to read people and rumours he'd heard from the kitchen staff that were contrary to what the merchant had been saying. When they went back to the Main Hall, NMJ confronted the merchant who folded eventually, admitting they “may have exaggerated the difficulty a little bit”.

After that, NHS spent more time with NMJ when he was meeting people – at first it started with just little tugs and whispers to let NMJ know NHS thought something was off, and over the years, they developed a whole vocabulary of looks and gestures so that NHS could communicate things to NMJ without anyone else being any the wiser. They kept it a secret between the two of them because NHS began to feel confident enough to let NMJ know when he suspected something of one of NMJ's advisors, captains, or disciples.

The only person to ever find out about this unique facet to their relationship was Meng Yao.

#nie huaisang #nie mingjue #nie bro feels #nie sect stuff #nie bros best bros

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eleanorfenyxwrites · 10 months

Text

Orville Peck Cinematic Universe AU Series - MASTERPOST

First fic on AO3: Outta Time

Read it on tumblr: X

Summary:

Mistake number 1 had been saying, “Alright A-Sang, I trust you.”

Mistake number 2 : being a man of his word.

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Second fic on AO3: Roses Are Falling

Read it on tumblr: X

Summary:

Meng Yao has been in Montana for about a week when Xichen and Mingjue make a gentlemanly sort of request.

#the untamed fanfic #3zun #modern AU #masterpost

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allthelittlecreepycrawlies · 8 days

Note

For the SangYao week - War

After a particularly long torture session Meng Yao tries to recall some nice memories to stop thinking about what happened, what he did and what will happen if he is found out, his mind wandering to Qinghe, beginning to lull him in - until the face in his mind and the face of the badly disguised kitchen boy suddenly overlaps.

cw for torture descriptions. they don't get super graphic, but still enough to be gross. it didn't quite line up with your request either, sorry? i couldn't resist the idea of them crossing paths and neither realizing it.

------------

His whole life has been a process of separating his external senses from his stomach little by little, but it still disturbs him the first time he doesn't get even a little bit nauseous at the smell of burning human flesh or the sight of skin and fat and muscle bubbling under acid.

In fact, it is that lack of instantaneous reaction that ends up making him feel ill, some still innocent part of his brain rebelling at how low he has sunk and twisting his stomach into knots as it screams at him for being a monster.

The screams mixing with those of the prisoner decidedly do not help in this regard, and he is immensely relieved when Wen Ruohan finally grows bored and puts the man out of his misery.

"A useful little tool," his sect leader says, admiring the brush with specially-enhanced bristles that let it withstand the acid long enough to sear intricate lines into a restrained body. "Pity his pain tolerance was too weak to give us any equally useful information before he was overwhelmed."

Meng Yao bows low, the motion smooth and perfect despite his discomfort. "I will test different blends of the ingredients," he says as he straightens back up, voice even despite the way the back of his throat has closed up.

Wen Ruohan smiles at him. "Diligent as ever. I always look forward to trying out the fruits of your progress, Yao-er."

And then his sect leader is gone, and soldiers arrive to remove the corpse.

And then they are gone, and he is alone, now free to pick up the brush without anyone to see his hands are trembling.

He had been living a very different life when he had originally thought of such a thing, and his inspiration had been nothing like what it had ended up being used for.

In his mind's eye, he watched Nie Huaisang carefully hold a hot needle in a leather-gloved hand and scorch lines into wood, biting his tongue in concentration the same way he frequently did while painting.

"I'm not nearly as good with this as I am with a brush," his former young master had said, wrinkling his nose at this or that mistake. "It would be a lot easier if I was. Do you think Da-ge will still like his gift?"

Shaking off the memory, he carefully cleans and wraps the brush, then goes to dispose of the acid that hadn't met with approval-

"Yao-ge, here! You have to try the way they roast duck at this stall!"

He shudders and hurries to finish, almost fleeing the room.

He barely stops at the desk in his workshop to leave the brush as a reminder to start working on new batches of the acid later, then goes and curls up on the bed he'd had put in for the times he was too busy to go back and forth to his regular quarters.

Even with almost everything in the Nightless City, and the "interrogation" area of the prison especially, being powered by fire, the room feels cold.

"Aa, you need more blankets," chides the back of his mind. "Let's go get you some!"

He squeezes his eyes shut, but sleep never comes, and after a long while of trying, he gives up and rolls to his feet with a huff of irritation.

"That's no good, you'll end up passing out on your paperwork if you don't get some rest."

"Hush," he mutters to no one, and is immediately glad that there was no one.

Last thing he needs is for anyone to hear him talking to himself. There are too many who are all too eager to get someone else in trouble if it might save themselves-

"Including you," growls a different voice in his head, one he wants even less to be hearing.

Fuck.

He doesn't want to eat, not with the smell of the acid burns still lingering in his nose, but he makes his way to the kitchen that feeds the prisoners and guards anyway. If nothing else, he can at least grab some juice or wine or water or something to use for a sleeping draught. He'll even use vinegar at this point.

Heading inside, he bumps into a servant coming out one of the side doors, who mumbles a quick apology before fleeing, never looking up from the tray they were carrying.

As he closes the door behind him, he hears them collide with a guard, followed by another apology and the sound of an annoyed grunt and a dismissive shove.

The cooking of the bland congee the prisoners get doesn't bother him, but the smell of the meat for the guards makes his stomach threaten to knot up again. He barely takes enough time to make sure the small jar he takes is something palatable, then returns to his room.

---

He wakes curled up on the bed in his workroom the next morning, groggy enough that it takes him awhile to actually get up, but glad to have spent a night blessedly free of everything but darkness and silence.

And since his sect leader wanted him to perfect the acid before using it on a prisoner again, and there is to be a war strategy meeting that afternoon that he'll have to take notes for, it means he has at least one day where he won't have to be assisting in the torture chambers.

Then, just as he has started the fires under the small pots he'll be putting the test batches in, a runner comes to tell him there's been an escape from the cells.

When he finds out which prisoner, the shock makes him start laughing.

"Yao-ge, I trust you, so I'll show you something cool. Watch this!"

#mdzs #sangyao #sangyao week #nie huaisang #jin guangyao #fanfic

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robininthelabyrinth · 2 years

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Tricks of the Trade - ao3 - chapter 3

- 3 -

Life was hard.

Jin Guangyao, as he was now called, had staked everything on a single throw and won – won the name he had always been due, only he found that he’d lost everything else in the process.

He had thought his expectations were reasonable, but the Jin sect was even more unwelcoming than he’d anticipated, his father’s face full of smiles turning immediately to scowls the moment they were alone – he was furious at having been, to his mind, forced to accept Jin Guangyao in order to make up for his sect’s lack of valor during the war; he viewed the entire thing, and Jin Guangyao personally, as an embarrassing loss of face. It was made extremely clear that Jin Guangyao would be barely tolerated, expected to work himself to the bone in service of his sect and his father without any thanks or appreciation, and beyond that he was also expected to be grateful to be granted the opportunity to do it as his filial duties. He was not permitted to speak with Jin Zixuan, who seemed vaguely apologetic but also not inclined to oppose his witch of a mother, and Madame Jin herself seemed to view Jin Guangyao as a personal offense – she had already started to make his life miserable in a thousand little ways, and the more his father failed to rebuke her, the bolder she grew.

Even the name itself was an insult: Jin Guangyao, not Ziyao. They couldn’t have said any more clearly, or more publicly, that they wanted to make sure the bastard didn’t get any ideas about being in the line of succession…

He was well and truly trapped, too. Where before he might have had other options, now he had none – after what had happened with the Jin sect captain and later in the Nightless City, the first a deplorable mistake and the second a deplorable necessity, Nie Mingjue, who in truth Meng Yao greatly respected, now seemed to thoroughly detest him, and there did not seem to be prospects of improvement even though they’d sworn brotherhood. Naturally, everyone else Jin Guangyao had been familiar with in the Nie sect followed their sect leader’s lead; only Nie Huaisang was friendly despite everything, but being with him was more like child-minding, all indulging and coaxing, than anything else, with neither benefit nor friendship coming from it.

Lan Xichen, at least, had taken Jin Guangyao’s side, but he’d done so with such fervent defenses that it was more than a little uncomfortable – back before, Jin Guangyao had of course played the victim for him on purpose in order to get his support, but in the time since then it appeared that Lan Xichen had all but put him on a pedestal, his praises overweening and unrealistic; being with him felt like walking on eggshells, each move needing to be carefully considered lest it be the one to break the illusion once and for all. Who knew what might tip the balance and end up sending Lan Xichen over to Nie Mingjue’s side, leaving Jin Guangyao without anyone at all…?

Lan Qiren…

Jin Guangyao didn’t know what Lan Qiren thought. He hadn’t met with him since his desertion from the Nie sect, though the older man had certainly kept him warm in his dreams, and he’d been afraid to go to meet with him after. Only now, now that he’d been officially recognized, did he finally give in to Lan Xichen’s entreaties for him to visit. It was only now, now that he had something to show for himself, did he dare to make his way to the Cloud Recesses, Jin money in hand to invest in his sworn brother’s sect to aid in their rebuilding – he’d had to do some arguing for it, the subtle sort that made his father think it’d actually been his idea all along to agree to fund the Lan sect’s rebuilding in order to drive them into his debt, though of course Jin Guangyao had made no such requirements when he’d actually told Lan Xichen about the plan.

He let his sworn brother show him around, went here and there with him, and only at the end, when Lan Xichen apologetically indicated that he needed to return to his duties and wouldn’t be able to show him around any longer, did he very offhandedly mention that he would be happy for the opportunity to go pay his respects to Lan Xichen’s uncle, who had always been kind to him.

Lan Qiren was waiting for him.

“You may pour tea,” Lan Qiren told him, and Jin Guangyao did, sneaking glances to try to evaluate what Lan Qiren was thinking. It was impossible to tell – he was the same as ever, straight-backed and stern-faced, firmly in that part of life where there were few physical changes to begin with and even fewer for a powerful cultivator, and his expression was frustratingly neutral. He did not seem angry at him, even though Jin Guangyao had disappeared on him just as he’d disappeared on everyone else…Jin Guangyao wondered what Lan Xichen had told his uncle about him.

He wondered if Nie Mingjue had said something about him.

"Are you well?” Lan Qiren asked.

“Of course,” Jin Guangyao said, tucking his hands away and smiling.

“Mm,” Lan Qiren said, still neutral. They were silent for a few moments, Jin Guangyao waiting politely for Lan Qiren to start the conversation if he so wished and Lan Qiren remaining quiet. Jin Guangyao hated the tension and awkwardness of it – there hadn’t been any of that in the past. When he’d been Meng Yao, they’d spoken of so many things, free-flowing despite the difference in their statuses; why was it so different now that he was Jin Guangyao? He had not changed, other than getting what he had always deserved – why did people insist on acting as though there was?? Did Lan Qiren, like Nie Mingjue, think that the new name, the name that should always have been his, came with the stink and taint of corruption, a reminder of all the foul things he had done to win it…

“I don’t mean to overstep my boundaries.”

Jin Guangyao blinked at him, surprised by the suddenness of Lan Qiren’s statement.

“However, you should know that I have always held you in high regard,” Lan Qiren continued. “On the basis of that, I hope you can excuse my rudeness if I ask again – are you well?”

The question was more than mere small talk, then. Jin Guangyao supposed he wasn’t really surprised; it would be more of a surprise if Lan Qiren, who did not always understand the subtleties of human interaction, actually did engage in pointless small talk. Naturally his words were purposeful.

It was just that Jin Guangyao couldn’t quite figure out what that purpose was.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” he asked, cautious, and Lan Qiren raised his eyebrows.

“Because there has been a war,” he said dryly. “Because people have died or been injured, often in terrible ways, and all those that survived are scarred with loss. Because those scars might come not only from what has been done to them but from what they themselves have been forced to do. Because Wen Ruohan was never an especially good master of men, and he only grew crueler in his insanity; because being beside a person like that is harmful in itself, even putting aside anything else. Because your father hates change and the past most of all, and judges everyone by his own merits – or lack thereof. Because most people in the cultivation world are small-minded, petty and jealous, and will do anything they can to tear down those that they know, however much they deny it, are better than them. Because the fact that being recognized means that you should have a proper foundation, a family to back you and support you, does not mean that you do. Because a war does not simply end when the swords are put down…are you well, Jin Guangyao?”

He said the new name in exactly the same tone as he had once said Meng Yao.

Jin Guangyao swallowed.

As usual, Lan Qiren’s words were sharper than his not-inconsiderable sword, and aimed directly at the weak points exposed by Jin Guangyao’s own thoughts – the things he dwelled on late at night, his lingering resentments, those questions he put to himself without any satisfactory answer.

“Have you heard about my conduct during the war?” he asked instead of answering. “In detail, rather than in rumor?”

If he hadn’t, Jin Guangyao would have to tell him – and he didn’t want to. He didn’t have to relive those moments, and he didn’t want to have to twist them, either, glossing over the difficulties and struggles he’d endured, minimizing the atrocities he committed in order to solidify his position with Wen Ruohan, to use his agile and silver tongue to make sure all his actions were retrospectively painted in the best possible light…

“I have heard,” Lan Qiren said.

That wasn’t necessarily better. Who had he heard it from? From Lan Xichen, who would shade everything so far in Jin Guangyao’s favor that he needed not even speak a single sentence in his own defense? From Nie Mingjue, whose lack of trust meant that he saw everything Jin Guangyao did as suspicious, self-interested, and even deliberately cruel, the way Jin Guangyao could be but was not always? From some other third party, perhaps, who had a more balanced view – from the Lan sect’s spies, from its soldiers, from the ever-cold Lan Wangji…

“What do you think about it, then?”

Would he excuse Jin Guangyao? Would he condemn him?

Which one did Jin Guangyao even want?

Lan Qiren drank his tea, frowning thoughtfully.

“I think,” he said slowly, “that that is a question for you.”

Jin Guangyao blinked. “I don’t understand.”

Lan Qiren put down the teacup. “Let me ask it of you, then. Did you do the best you could? You are incredibly intelligent, as you well know; your grasp of logistics and management are second to none, and your insight into your fellow cultivators is startling in its clarity. You have a solid grasp of both strategy and tactics, and you think quickly enough to be able to both create and implement plans on the fly – you may be forced to the brink by circumstance, but you are cunning enough to usually find a way out, and to choose as to how you wish to do it. If you wish to be cruel, you will generally find a way; if you wish to be kind, you will find a way there, too. You, and you yourself, know better than anyone else whether I should be pleased or disappointed in you.”

Jin Guangyao didn’t know what to do with that.

“If you look me full in the face and tell me that you did everything that you could – that you only did the evil that you had no choice but to do, that you made every effort to reduce the harm you were doing and increase the good, that there were no instances where you were smart enough to think of a way to do better but chose, for whatever reason, not to – then I will believe you. Under such circumstances, no matter what you have done, I will not absolve you, for there will be nothing to be absolved; those who have no reason for shame need no forgiveness. But if you cannot say that, if you yourself can think of times where you failed to do your utmost, then you should be punished.”

“Punished?”

Lan Qiren nodded. “You know that this is the way of my sect,” he said. “We have our rules, and the rules say, Maintain your own discipline. The purpose of the rules is to help us do so. Those who violate the rules, as we all do at some time in our lives, are punished for that breach; when punishment is imposed, both the individual and the community learn. We learn that the behavior is condemned, that it is vital not to repeat it, that we must do better in the future. Even if you act wrongly in the dark, when no one knows and no one will ever discover, then you have still acted wrongly; it is only through the imposition of justice, of punishment commensurate with the deed, that there is a way to move forward. For if you do not pay for your wrongdoing, then it will remain with you always, dragging you down as if an anchor.”

Jin Guangyao had never thought of it that way before.

He wasn’t sure he necessarily agreed with that stance, either. If no one knew, then no one knew, right? No matter what he did, he could just tuck it away in his memory, somewhere seldom visited, and there would be no ghosts at his heels, no regrets, nothing.

Still, there was some appeal to the worldview Lan Qiren proposed. The idea that punishment would mean it would be over, once and for all, a signal that he had wronged in the past but that he had repented and would do better in the future; the notion that he could cleanse himself of guilt using something so fleeting as physical discomfort...

Lan sect punishments were mostly corporeal, weren’t they? Guest disciples and children might be set to writing copies, but for serious infractions – and in a war, everything you did was serious – it was punishment through pain. Those stiff stern faces like carven woodblocks, each one kneeling voluntarily to receive the punishment they deserved for their actions from those they trusted to mete it out fairly…

Jin Guangyao swallowed again, his throat suddenly dry.

“Would you do it?” he blurted out, barely aware of what he was saying. “Will you punish me?”

Lan Qiren blinked. “Me? Me personally?”

Jin Guangyao nodded – atypically for him, he hadn’t even thought about it before asking, but now that the idea was out there in the world, he had never wanted something more. He wanted Lan Qiren to hurt him the way he sometimes felt he deserved to be hurt for what he had done, for all those times when he thought to himself that he should have been able to find a better solution, that he was smart enough to have come up with some way out that didn’t end the way it did. For the times he did make the wrong choice, like murdering the Jin sect commander and ruining his relationship with Nie Mingjue; for the cruelties he inflicted at Wen Ruohan’s side, for the pleasure he had taken in them. All those mistakes, all those regrets…he wanted Lan Qiren to wipe the slate clean for him. He wanted catharsis.

He wanted release.

He wanted Lan Qiren to beat him, and then he wanted Lan Qiren to care for him. He wanted the other man’s hands upon him, gentle in the aftermath, rubbing salve into reddened flesh; he wanted to hear the other man praise him for how well he’d taken it, how well he’d done, how well he’d served.

“You know my position,” he said quickly, rapidly inventing a dozen arguments to explain why this course of action was not only acceptable but logical, reasonable, desirable. “My father is already wary enough of me; I can’t do anything that will embarrass him, anything that might lose face for the sect. Lanling Jin is not a safe place for punishment…anyway, I trust you. You will do it well – you know how much to inflict, and how to manage it, what needs to be done before and after. Who better that you? Who else could it be but you..? I don’t have a family, not really. I don’t have anyone else.”

Lan Qiren was staring at him, clearly surprised; his eyes were wide and round, then narrowed contemplatively as he thought it over. Jin Guangyao didn’t rush him, knowing Lan Qiren was not intentionally being rude in failing to respond immediately, but rather was genuinely considering his request from all angles. It was a sign of Lan Qiren’s regard that he would think first, answer later; if he cared less, he would have answered faster, but it would have almost certainly have been a refusal.

It didn’t make the wait any less agonizing.

“…very well,” Lan Qiren said after a long while. For some reason, he looked as if he’d made a more profound decision than simply agreeing to Jin Guangyao’s request. “Come with me.”

The pain was considerable, as Jin Guangyao had expected, but the feeling of Lan Qiren’s arms wrapped around him as he helped him to stand once more when it was done – the look of approval on his face, the expression of pride, of satisfaction – made it all worthwhile. For that feeling, Jin Guangyao would endure a thousand such punishments, and never once complain.

This was, Jin Guangyao thought to himself, getting a little out of control.

#mdzs #jin guangyao #meng yao #lan qiren #my fic #my fics #tricks of the trade #whether JGY is capable of remorse is an open question #even/especially for him #but ooooh boy is he definitely kinky

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