#anyways wow this was prompted almost a whole month ago WOOPS

[pumpkinpaix]

I don’t know how into NieYao you are but I can really see NieYao working with the hand job at the Renaissance Faire one.  Alternatively, Wangxian.

prompted by @three–rings​ get ready for more shenanigans

(crossposted to ao3)

—

“Speed dating?” Nie Mingjue repeats dubiously. “At a Ren Faire?”

“It’s for a good cause,” Lan Xichen says with a laugh. “The Chinese Cultural Association is running it as a way to raise funds and awareness for local Asian diaspora resources and projects.”

“Mm,” Nie Mingjue says, unconvinced. “This is an awfully convenient scenario for you, the head of the CCA.”

Lan Xichen tips his head, all wide-eyed innocence. “And whatever do you mean by that, Mingjue?”

“This is just an elaborate con to get Wangji and that Wei kid to fuck,” he accuses.

“Mingjue!” Lan Xichen admonishes, but his eyebrow twitches, and the corner of his mouth is quirked, the way that Nie Mingjue has known since childhood belies something just a little devious.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, fine.” He rolls his eyes. “Is any of the money going towards improving the Chinese School curriculum?”

Lan Xichen winces. Nie Mingjue grimaces back.

“I’m afraid… well, I think the Chinese School needs more than just its curriculum overhauled,” Lan Xichen says delicately. “And it’s not exactly something money is going to fix.”

“It’s been bad since we were kids, and it’s going to be bad for all of our kids as well at this rate,” Nie Mingjue says with a sigh of resignation. “Rite of passage, I guess.”

“Isn’t it a rite of passage for all ABC kids?” Lan Xichen points out.

“It wouldn’t be if it were run properly, by people who understood what we actually needed!” It’s an old conversation, and a familiar one. They run along the grooves of it with a comforting, cantankerous grumbling, Lan Xichen disappointed, but placating; Nie Mingjue frustrated and heated. It’s nice, in its way.

“Whatever, fine, I’ll do it,” Nie Mingjue says. “Good cause, etc. Did you rope your new boyfriend into it as well?”

Lan Xichen positively lights up at that, and Nie Mingjue can’t help the smile that creeps onto his face. What a precious man. “Yes, I did, actually! I thought—well, I thought this might be fun way for the two of you to meet,” Lan Xichen says with another little laugh. “Low stakes, and if it turns out you hate each other, you only need to spend three minutes in each other’s company.”

“That’s true,” Nie Mingjue says. Lan Xichen—precious, but practical, as always. “All right, fine. I’ll be there, I’ll meet your new man, and I’ll even promise not to take his head off if you take me out to dinner after.”

Lan Xichen rolls his eyes fondly. “You say that like we haven’t been planning that dinner for weeks.”

“Yes, well, I’m being generous,” Nie Mingjue says with a shrug. “Don’t make me regret it.”

Nie Mingjue regrets it.

Like, not totally. Lan Xichen has gathered a rather impressive number of participants, and maybe if he were in a better mood, Nie Mingjue might actually be kind of interested in a few of them. As it is though, he’s barely had a chance to see Xichen the entire day, and he was roped into a horrible conversation with Jin Guangshan for nearly an hour when all he really wanted to do was hang out at the smithy tent and ask questions about their demonstration on Damascus steel. So it’s fine that he’s now stuck at this speed dating gimmick that is definitely, no matter what Xichen says, a very transparent setup for the most disastrous couple of their generation, but. Well. He’d have felt better about it if he knew how to forge Damascus steel. At least the weather is nice.

Lan Xichen taps a small gong on the table. “Hello, everyone,” he calls out with a smile. “Welcome to our speed dating event. As you know, all proceeds will be going to various projects supporting local Asian diaspora interests, so I’d like to start by thanking you all for your generosity.”

Nie Mingjue tunes out the rest of his speech because he’s heard it before in various iterations. Lan Xichen is good at what he does, speaks with clear, eloquent diction and a gentle demeanor. Just the sound of his voice is enough for Nie Mingjue, who spends the time eyeing the participants and trying to guess which one is Xichen’s new boyfriend. There are a few potential candidates he picks out, but Xichen has never really had a type, so to speak, so it’s actually rather challenging.

The first few people are pleasant enough conversation partners, but not much more. Nie Mingjue keeps himself at a polite distance from them, and he expects he won’t be seeing them again. He sits through five minutes of mutually agreed-upon silence across from Wangji. They saw each other yesterday, and neither of them are particularly good at forced small talk. He sits through a distinctly more chatty five minutes across from Wei Wuxian, who spends the whole time shooting distracted glances at Lan Wangji a few tables over, speaking softly to a young woman who seems obviously very taken with his manners.

“Hey, Wei,” Nie Mingjue says, interrupting his stream of consciousness rambling with about a minute left on the clock.

“Huh? Yeah?”

“Just fucking take Wangji and leave.” Nie Mingjue jerks his head at the exit.

“Seriously. This is painful to watch.”

Wei Wuxian looks caught out, a deer in the headlights. “What do you mean?”

Nie Mingjue leans forward, putting on his most intense expression—the one he reserves for special occasions and threatening his brother’s bullies. “I mean that Xichen might believe in gentle nudges, but I, for one, am sick of you two making sad cow eyes at each other at every fucking family event. It’s unbearable. Either tell him how you feel or get over yourself. Please. For the love of god.”

Wei Wuxian gapes at him like a fish a few times before leaning in and hissing, “Mingjue-ge!! You can’t just say shit like that!”

Nie Mingjue raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. “Don’t you want to?”

“I—!”

The gong rings.

“I’m serious, Wei,” Nie Mingjue says, standing up with a scrape of his chair. “I know neither of you want to be here. Take him before someone else pressures him into a date he doesn’t want to go on.”

“Lan Zhan would never—”

“Snag him before the change finishes,” Nie Mingjue interrupts, then whisks himself away before Wei Wuxian can protest again.

The next man he sits before is dressed in a delicate costume of pale gold and a plain black hat. “Hello,” he says, voice soft-spoken and musical.

“Hello,” Nie Mingjue says.

“Your saber is very fine,” the man says without preamble, tilting his head to get a better look. “I’ve been eyeing it since you arrived.”

Nie Mingjue opens his mouth automatically to thank him, but then notices the mischievous arch to his eyebrow, the slant to his smile. He frowns instead.

“If that was supposed to be an innuendo, it wasn’t a very good one.”

“Oh no,” the man deflects with just the right pitch of mild scandal and innocence. “Not at all! I was merely admiring the… craftsmanship. It’s hard to get a blade that large of such high quality.”

Nie Mingjue leans back, crossing his arms. He doesn’t have patience for word games. “You’re just fucking with me now.”

The man laughs. “Well, I’ve only got three minutes to make an impression.”

“And you chose ‘talk about his sword like it’s his penis’ as a tactic?”

The man hums, but doesn’t stop smiling. “Put like that, it does sound rather crass.”

“Is this what you do with all your dates?” Nie Mingjue asks.

“Oh, of course not. What sort of date would I be if I didn’t tailor my approaches?” He widens his eyes just slightly, leans in.

“What’s your name?” Nie Mingjue asks, because it’s only polite.

“What’s yours?” the man counters.

“Nie Mingjue,” he replies bluntly and without hesitation. “I’m not interested in playing.”

The man throws his head back with an elegant laugh. “I see that. Jin Guangyao, at your disposal.”

Nie Mingjjue squints. “Jin?”

“Indeed,” Jin Guangyao says with a tragic, self-deprecating little sigh. “Son of Jin Guangshan.”

“Oh god,” Nie Mingjue says before he can help himself. “Another one?”

“I know, we’re all crawling out of the woodwork, clamoring for the inheritance,” Jin Guangyao says without shame. “Zixuan has been a very good sport about it all.”

Nie Mingjue huffs out a disbelieving breath. Jin Guangshan’s bastards have all been asserting themselves in recent years, much to the chagrin of his wife. Nie Mingjue can’t really blame the woman. She’s put up with a lot.

He doesn’t keep up with the gossip and is only vaguely familiar with the situation. As far as he knows, this man is maybe the third? fourth? of Jin Guangshan’s illegitimate children to make their appearance. Nie Mingjue wracks his brains, not very hard. There was that Mo kid maybe last year, and the entire scandal involving the Qin girl a year or two before that, but he can’t place any others.

“You’ve got his name,” Nie Mingjue remarks.

“Oh yes, he decided to grace me with recognition,” Jin Guangyao says. “Much good that it’ll do me. He’s currently trying to bribe me off with an allowance, hoping I won’t make any more trouble for him. My birth name is Meng.”

“Is that how you paid for that costume of yours?” Nie Mingjue asks, not without humor. This bastard’s got balls, he’ll admit. The cloth has a lovely weft to it and a flattering cut. He can smell how much it costs.

Jin Guangyao laughs again, ducking his head and averting his eyes, and then quite suddenly, Nie Mingjue recognizes him.

“Oh fuck, it’s you,” he curses. He’s seen those eyelashes before, those eyes glancing up through them, glinting with a dangerous, daring edge.

“Excuse me?” Jin Guangyao asks, blinking.

“It’s—it’s you, the—last year,” Nie Mingjue splutters, very articulately. “Behind the—the smithy tent. On the last night. After—”

The memory is a bit of a blur for Nie Mingjue—he’d been drunk on several glasses of wine, shared swigs of baijiu with his brother, and a singular horn of mead that someone had passed him halfway through the after-hours revelry, but he remembers an unfamiliar young man in Nie colors stumbling against him, face obscured by the chiaroscuro of night and firelight, remembers the slender frame of him in his arms, and the wet heat of his lips around his cock in the cool darkness.

Nie Mingjue remembers the elegance with which he sunk to his knees, the way his moans vibrated against him, and his expression when he glanced up—there had been quite a bit of kissing too, Nie Mingjue thinks. Before and after. And then the young man had pulled away and vanished with a cutting smile, leaving Nie Mingjue breathless and a little stunned in his wake.

“Ah,” Jin Guangyao says, and everything about him is familiar now that Nie Mingjue knows what to look for—that smile, for one. Jin Guangyao props his head up on his elbow and gives him that smile, the one that cuts. “Now, which one were you?”

“Which one?” Nie Mingjue demands. “How many people did you go down on at the Ren Faire last year?”

Jin Guangyao shrugs. “I admit I’m not sure. The party was long, and there was quite a lot of alcohol, if memory serves. And the space behind the smithy tent is very convenient.” His eyes crinkle sweetly. “Why, do you think you were prodigious enough for me to remember? I might, if we go for round two this year. I admit I wasn’t ah, exactly looking at faces. You understand.”

Nie Mingjue feels his face color. “That’s not—” He doesn’t like feeling off-balance, doesn’t like  conversations that aren’t forthright, doesn’t like any of this, but he does, heavens help him, very much like the idea of fucking Jin Guangyao’s mouth again.

“Not… what? Not what you want?” Jin Guangyao asks smoothly before Nie Mingjue can continue to flounder. “Was my performance not to your liking?” His voice is embellished with a hint of wounded disappointment, which Nie Mingjue finds extremely suspect.

“No, it was—” Nie Mingjue can feel his flush darkening as his tongue slips. —excellent, he stops himself from saying. It would appear the man’s tongue is talented in more ways than one.

Nie Minjue wants to hit him, he’s so infuriated.

The gong rings.

Jin Guangyao stands, all smiles once more, and reaches over to stroke Nie Mingjue’s cheek. “It was very nice to meet you properly this time, Mingjue. Perhaps you’ll give me another chance to prove myself later.” He winks, so quickly Nie Mingjue isn’t sure he saw it at all, and then sweeps himself to a new partner.

Nie Mingjue is distracted and irritable for the rest of the event, which is hardly fair to his remaining dates, but he’s agitated and angry and it’s not like he really cared about making connections—he barely remembers to try and figure out who Xichen’s mystery boyfriend is—there’s a nice man with a pleasant personality and a lovely smile that he vaguely wonders about, but the whole time he’s conversing and making nice, he’s thinking about how much he wants to throttle Jin Guangyao. And maybe other things.

It’s very difficult to focus.

When the gong rings out for the last time, Nie Mingjue can’t throw himself out the seat fast enough. Lan Xichen collects everyone’s scorecards (Nie Mingjue’s had a total of one number on it, unsurprisingly), and gives another small speech thanking everyone for their participation and encouraging them to enjoy the rest of what the Faire has to offer. Matchlists are expected to be sent out tomorrow evening at the latest. There’s polite clapping before general dispersal. It doesn’t escape Nie Mingjue’s attention that neither Wei Wuxian nor Lan Wangji are among the crowd. He hopes they’re not sharing blowjobs behind the smithy tent.

Nie Mingjue stalks towards Lan Xichen as the final dregs of the participants trickle out, fully intent on venting his frustration to Lan Xichen’s willing ear, only to see that the subject of his ire is, in fact, already standing beside Lan Xichen. Standing very close beside Lan Xichen.

Nie Mingjue stops dead.

“Mingjue!” Lan Xichen calls, waving him over.

“Him?” Nie Mingjue accuses. The temptation to draw Baxia and point it for extra effect is unreal. He restrains himself, but only just.

Lan Xichen laughs. “I see A’Yao made an impression.”

Jin Guangyao smiles at Lan Xichen, and—the fuck, it’s totally different than the way he smiles at Nie Mingjue! It’s soft and genuine and smitten and overwhelmed all at once, like he can’t believe he’s lucky enough to have this—and it’s not like Nie Mingjue doesn’t agree, because that is, in fact, the only acceptable way to think about Lan Xichen, but then Jin Guangyao turns that smile towards him and it goes all sharp and clever around the edges, and it sets his blood boiling.

“So you’re Mingjue,” Jin Guangyao says. “I thought you must be.”

“I introduced myself,” Nie Mingjue snaps. “It doesn’t take a genius.”

“Oh dear, I really riled you up, didn’t I?” Jin Guangyao laughs. “Forgive me. I couldn’t help it. You just seemed like you’d be a fun tease, and I was right.”

“Your new boyfriend is this little snake?” Nie Mingjue demands.

“Snake?” Lan Xichen repeats, surprised. “A’Yao, what did you do?”

“It was my fault,” Jin Guangyao says with sheepish contrition. “He seemed like such an honorable man, so I pushed a little.”

It isn’t actually Jin Guangyao’s fault—not really. Nie Mingjue was the one caught out unawares by a memory, but Jin Guangyao is really selling this performance to Xichen—to what end, Nie Mingjue couldn’t say. Nie Mingjue wants to drag him away and shove him up against a wall, bite at his lips. He wants him away from Xichen, but not for jealousy. It’s something else.

“I see you still matched with me, though,” Jin Guangyao says, leaning over Lan Xichen’s shoulder to peer at the scorecards.

“A’Yao,” Lan Xichen chastises, moving his arm to cover them. “Don’t pry.”

“Sorry,” Jin Guangyao says, stepping back immediately, and Nie Mingjue can almost believe him. “Old habits.”

“Well, the secret’s already out,” Lan Xichen says with a small huff of chuckle. “I still have to put the rest of these into spreadsheets and crossreference them, so why don’t the two of you go participate in the Faire for a little while? Since you matched and all.”

“I think that would be lovely,” Jin Guangyao says before Nie Mingjue can protest. He smiles beatifically. “We could get… something to eat.” His tongue darts out between his lips.

“I’m having dinner with Xichen,” Nie Mingjue growls.

Jin Guangyao’s smile only grows more wicked. “Just a quickie, then.”

—

* jgy is 100% lying about not remembering nmj because he’s a little shit. he DID give more than one blowjob behind the smithy tent, but just one, and it was lxc :D

* didn’t get around to this, but jgs is definitely the chair of the chinese school and also the reason why it’s so terrible bc it’s hating jgs hours all the time in this house

* all of these characters are part of some larger xianxia RP group that have a presence at the ren faire, and the sects exist kind of nominally as like…. factions?? or something??? vaguely split along the original families that decided to start participating—so meng yao was wearing nie colors, but nmj didn’t recognize him bc he was a new recruit or whatever. don’t ask me. I don’t know what goes on at a ren faire. i’ve been to woefully few in my life :(

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