#Fully from March 2020 I'm killin' it

[executeness]

In which NHS and WWX use their arranged marriage as an excuse for insincere, dramatic courting and everyone else suffers

Starring: @aethersea as hummingbird, @words-writ-in-starlight as Gabriel, and myself as Errant, the bitch in blue

The images are all screenshots from a Skype chat. Transcript below the cut. I’m sorry, I know it’s more accessible without the cut, but I don’t have it in me to put a 2.4K word post on ppl’s dashes.

Note: Found this in my drafts and went why? haven’t I posted this yet? Oh right I was going to Tag It Properly with accents or w/e but uhhhhhh... fuck it!

Errant: NHS and WWX engagement of convenience

hummingbird: now that would be a fun fic

Errant: They're bros, just bros engaged to be married

hummingbird: they're also the two people in this whole show most likely to spend every single night getting drunk and causing merry chaos through every city of every street

hummingbird: it would be the most chaotic marriage in a very long time

Errant: Probably a marriage arranged when they were pretty young and the adults involved still had some illusions about them getting more responsible with age

Gabriel: God, NHS and WWX are engaged and they put on this HUGE performance of swooning into each other's arms every time something goes slightly awry and NHS one time sees a snake and flings himself at WWX like a kid hurling themself at their parent's neck, and everyone is like "well at least this will keep them both Out Of The Way" while LWJ just absolutely drowns in envy.

Errant: And then NHS and WWX are actually in the same room for any significant length of time and the adults are left calculating whether there's any polite respectable way to bow out of the marriage arrangement just to, y'know, keep the buildings of the cultivation world standing

Gabriel: They got tipsy and made out one night in the spirit of experimentation and then they kind of frowned at each other and simultaneously went "well" and decided they would just have nice quiet affairs.  NHS is gay and WWX is bi but like.  It's just.  It's weird.  

hummingbird: as they get older they sometimes contemplate the merit of loud, flamboyant affairs, just for the drama. they have fun scripting some of the fights they'll have about it

Gabriel: WWX uses the engagement as an excuse to call NMJ "da-ge" just like NHS does and on the one hand this is a great marriage, like, politically, it's going to do great things for QingheNie, and it's nice that he's going to marry NHS (Not A Competent Cultivator) to the rising genius of the cultivation world, and it's great that NMJ has a brother to marry off so that he, personally, can focus on the more important issue of not dying of qi deviation any time soon, but also.

ALSO.

This Wei kid is going to drive him fucking insane before they're even married.

Errant: They would be RIDICULOUS if they were engaged and meanwhile the peacock would kill something for Yanli to even draw a little closer to him when startled? To smile at him sometimes and put her hand on his arm? Where are the snakes when JZX wants his fiance to leap into his arms (he ends up leaping behind her anyway)? H o w are NHS and WWX doing this

Gabriel: On the one hand JZX would peel his skin off and jump in vinegar before he ever asked Wei Fucking Wuxian for advice but also hEY WHAT'S YOUR SECRET

Gabriel: (Someday, eventually, LWJ and WWX get married, and NHS shows up to the wedding with the biggest most expensive wagon of gifts he could get his hands on and tells everyone who will listen about how lucky LWJ is and honestly it's a weird vibe, compared to pretty nearly everyone else at this wedding who is only barely convinced that the Yiling Patriarch didn't enchant LWJ into this.)

hummingbird: YES

hummingbird: nhs plays the tragic bereaved ex with absolutely no actual rancor and approximately three dramatic swoons per hour, and this while everyone else is standing around having awkward polite chit chat over canapes

Gabriel: LWJ has come around to NHS with the slow and confused progress of going from "you're going to get to marry the love of my life and I hate your fucking guts on principle but also I'm aware of how unfair that is so I will reserve myself to quiet glares from the sidelines" to "you were one of very few people to maintain even a neutral stance on the love of my life and you seem genuinely sorry he's dead so I guess we're alone in that camp and I should at least consider you an ally" to "you brought the love of my life back to me, and then hit him with a clue-by-four and made him come propose to me and then brought us a large collection of porn for a wedding gift?????" with VERY little in between those three states.

Errant: WWX gives NHS a booklet and gets a dramatic public kiss. JZX assumes it is poetry. It is not poetry. He does not discover this until after gifting Yanli a small booklet of poetry (it is, at best, endearingly bad). He swipes the booklet WWX gave NHS for "inspiration" and not only gets an eyefull of gay porn with no warning whatsoever, but ALSO gets caught by WWX, who goes into dramatics about JZX only liking men and leading on perfect angelic Yanli

Errant: Also NHS and WWX bicker gleefully over who gets to have affairs with whom

Gabriel: "I think Mianmian seems like a gentle lover," NHS muses, three jars of wine in.  "I want her on my list."

"You don't even LIKE women!"

"So????  Mianmian seems great!  I would buy her nice hairpins and we could go dancing!"

hummingbird: wwx decides he wants someone on his list from each sect and they start fighting over mianmian, The Only Sensible Person In The Jin Sect

Errant: I ENDORSE THIS MESSAGE

Errant: EVEN BETTER

hummingbird: mianmian does not hear about this, but jzx does and is conflicted over whether he has to challenge wwx to a duel now

hummingbird: conflicted bc he WANTS to, but he always wants to so he can't tell if this is a reasonable response or not

Errant: ... NHS seems too twink for WWX to call er-gege loudly and in public but I mean. Would that really stop him.

Gabriel: They meet XXC and Song Lan and after they're gone, NHS leans over to WWX and whispers quietly, "So, since he's your shishu, I get dibs on Xiao-daozhang, right?"

"He's a priest, A-Sang!"

"What's your point?"

Gabriel: Counterargument, they BOTH call each other gege and it's making everyone around them insane.

WWX, pouting dramatically: "Nie er-gege, buy me lunch?"

NHS, flinging himself into WWX's arms: "Of course, Wei gege, what's your pleasure?"

JC, so red he could feasibly be mistaken for a lantern: "GREAT NEWS! I'M GOING TO KILL BOTH OF YOU!"

Errant: OH. GOLD STAR TO THE SECT LEADERS FOR MATCHMAKING THE BIGGEST PAIR OF PILLOW PRINCESSES IN THAT GENERATION

Gabriel: I MEAN? PRETTY MUCH?

hummingbird: nhs is constantly buying wwx ridiculous gifts and no one can tell if wwx actually likes having seventeen near-identical lavishly embroidered kimonos in different colors (that he rarely wears, largely bc he doesn't want to get them dirty while training) or if this is some weird elaborate game of chicken they have going

Errant: NHS tries to imply that he'll have an affair with JC if WWX isn't careful. WWX basically falls over laughing and goes YOU'RE WELCOME TO TRY IT DEAR

hummingbird: for like a week nhs takes that as a dare and puts in a valiant effort

hummingbird: wwx spends that week following nhs around and crying out in anguish and woe whenever nhs flirts with jc, dramatically concealing his definitely-not-grinning face behind one of the twenty-three painted fans nhs has given him to date

hummingbird: this is partly so he can watch his brother get increasingly furious and partly so he can step in and rescue nhs when jc inevitably actually loses it

Errant: Obviously the adults have shit gaydar (the boys were just convenient) but who's going to look at them and see right through them like Wow. That's not even slightly going to work as an actual romantic/ sexual relationship

hummingbird: shijie has known from like day 2

hummingbird: jc still has not noticed

hummingbird: he gets deeply offended whenever nhs flirts with other people

hummingbird: lxc, in his position as resident owner of the lan braincell, notices, but doesn't really know how to have a conversation about it with his brother

Gabriel: He resorts to just wingmanning WWX hard and assuming that eventually either LWJ will admit his feelings or WWX will notice his

Gabriel: It. Does not quite work out.

hummingbird: he keeps arranging for wwx and lwj to be placed in the same groups for training groups, only then whenever they get back nhs and wwx run dramatically into each other's arms

Gabriel: NHS takes a while to notice that the only person more viciously angry when he flirts with other people than JC is LWJ but hey listen he wants his fiance to have the best! Maybe if he flirts even harder with everyone under the sun, someday LWJ will be so outraged that he's driven to defend WWX's honor! Wouldn't that be romantic?

Errant: Does he start flirting with LWJ or?

hummingbird: nhs has planned out like eighteen different dramatic fights with lwj over his fiance, trying to figure out the exact right nuance of bowing out with grace and yet still fighting hard enough to show to everyone everywhere that wwx is a catch and lwj is lucky to have him

Errant: WOULD BE GREAT TO SEE HOW LWJ HANDLES ACTUALLY UNWANTED FLIRTING

Gabriel: NHS flirts with LWJ one (1) time, and it's the only time he ever sees WWX actually bothered by it.  It's so jarring to see WWX's sun-bright smile flicker into something mildly pinched and frustrated that NHS drops the act immediately and asks if he's feeling unwell.

hummingbird: yes good

Errant: Okay but: who catches them in an extremely compromising position, maybe in their underrobes, b/c Nie Huaisang was trying to draw a porn position and couldn't figure out whether something was anatomically possible

Gabriel: Oh obviously it's LWJ.  This is the this-universe version of him finding JC, WWX, and NHS drunk and roughhousing, right?

hummingbird: absolutely

hummingbird: he tells Nobody

hummingbird: his brother is worried about him for like a WEEK afterwards, thinks maybe he's caught a cold or something and won't admit it

Gabriel: It's not--it's not against the rules.  It's disgraceful, to be sure, and a clear sign that NHS is not good enough for even such a rampant delinquent as Wei Ying, that he would seduce someone before they were even married, but they're engaged and it's not against the rules and he doesn't understand why he keeps seeing this flash of NHS yanking his hands off WWX's hips like he's been burned and the rumpled half-slipped collar of WWX's undershirt, showing a collarbone and a shoulder and the muscle of his chest and--

hummingbird: omg he goes straight to 'nhs is the real bad influence here'

Gabriel: LWJ is spending time in the cold spring for a different reason than healing, when LXC blithely sends WWX to find him.  He hasn't been able to fucking concentrate on meditating since he saw--this is ridiculous, and offensive to his sensibilities, and a clear indicator that something is wrong with his golden core, so therefore: cold spring.

Errant: First line of defense: sword Second line: Cold spring Third line: panic

hummingbird: wen qing is also one of the people who notices very quickly that this is never going to hold water as a real relationship. she's too busy to really get involved in any of this nonsense, but somehow no matter how many times she explains to wen ning that they're not dating and none of their fights are real, he still ends up roped into their ridiculous break-ups and their even more ridiculous dramatic reconciliations

Gabriel: Wen Ning, sweet kind boy that he is, has been convinced three separate times that they are really genuinely having a permanent falling out, and even if they're not going to get together together he still wants them to be friends, okay, jiejie????

hummingbird: "every goddamn time" wen qing mutters to herself as she finds wen ning once again carrying notes between wwx and nhs in the dead of night. everyone is supposed to be asleep. she was out doing recon for her secret wen tasks, and her baby brother was supposed to be asleep, but instead he's out here catching his death of cold as he runs messages back and forth for these two MORONS

hummingbird: "but jiejie they're not speaking to each other! this is the only way I've gotten them to talk in three days!"

Errant: Consider: NHS has a moment of deviousness and convinces LWJ to spar with WWX so NHS can do "figure studies"

Errant: WWX is under strict instructions to make the positions as compromising as possible

hummingbird: absolutely devastating for all involved

Errant: They're sparring, they're sparring, they're sparring... HOLD THAT POSE. LWJ is basically pinning WWX to a flat surface (vertical or horizontal) they're both breathing hard and the tiniest bit sweaty and at first WWX is joking and laughing (maybe flirting! In front of his betrothed! Shameless!) But then there's one where he's just staring into LWJ's eyes and LWJ completely loses the plot

Gabriel: NHS's sketches of it are uh.  Not Suitable For Public Viewing.

hummingbird: honestly he's not sure he should even show wwx

Gabriel: He and WWX have this in common, the being a good artist, and in this AU LWJ definitely hears NHS offhandedly mention that he wants to get WWX to paint one of his fans, have you seen how lovely his painted flowers are, Lan-xiong?  And then maybe Huaisang could paint it with watercolors!  WWX prefers black and white, anyway, wouldn't that look lovely?  And LWJ can't even begin to define the rush of bitterness that almost blinds him, he just cuts a frigid glare at NHS and sweeps away before he can see the satisfied smirk that spreads over NHS's lips behind him.

hummingbird: oh nice

hummingbird: hmm. how much goading can lwj withstand before he just up and leaves? gets himself an assignment chasing monsters somewhere just so he won't have to look at huaisang's stupid face anymore

Gabriel: Well, after the whole cold pond cave debacle, LWJ can't leave, because he's been given a task, he has to carry the Yin Iron, and WWX is trailing after him (NHS told him to go) and when NHS joins them he can't get rid of him because he's the bane of LWJ's existence but also he is the brother of a sect leader and he could go crying to his brother and make Lan Xichen's life very hard.