#oof this is the angstiest thing i've written in a while sdfgh

[stiltonbasket]

Hi hi~ 💖

I hope you're still taking prompts for the art thief au! I just wanna ask how did NMJ join in on the Lan Family's... side job? And how did he react about it?

A couple of months after their first anniversary, Nie Mingjue receives a text message from his boyfriend (though boyfriend is hardly the right word, since Mingjue already considers them engaged) canceling their next shopping date in town.

I’m sick, the message reads. Can we reschedule it for next week, A-Jue?

Nie Mingjue’s stomach sinks. He hits the call button next to Xichen’s contact, counting down the seconds as he waits for an answer; but Lan Xichen does not reply, save for another text message explaining that he was running a fever, and didn’t feel well enough to talk.

Wangji is with me, Lan Xichen says. You don’t have to worry, sweetheart.

But Nie Mingjue does worry, because Xichen was fine yesterday afternoon. They had lunch together at Mingjue’s apartment, after which Lan Xichen kissed him goodbye and drove back to work without any sign of illness, so what could have gone wrong in the last thirty-two hours?

“I wish Huaisang were here,” Mingjue grumbles to himself. His brother left the house earlier that evening, muttering something about a sale going on at the local night market; and though Nie Huaisang spends hours wasting his time and money there every month, his absence tonight means that Nie Mingjue will be moping in his tiny kitchen until dawn, with nothing to do but await Huaisang’s safe return and worry about Xichen, lying ill in bed halfway across the city with no one to look after him but Wangji.

That isn’t exactly fair, Nie Mingjue knows, because Lan Wangji is a decent caretaker. He can cook and clean better than most young men his age, and he bullied Huaisang into taking a first-aid class with him last year: so Lan Xichen is in good hands, and Nie Mingjue’s interference would be neither welcome nor wanted.

But as the hours tick by, Nie Mingjue finds himself growing restless. He wonders if Lan Xichen has enough to eat, if Wangji might end up falling ill as well, and then he begins tormenting himself in earnest. Xichen could be sick with anything from a common cold to the kind of deadly food poisoning Mingjue reads about in the news every other week, and he already knows that A-Huan is sick enough to require looking after. Wangji lives thirty kilometers west of Xichen’s neighborhood, close to his university, and Xichen would never have called his didi over so late if he could manage on his own.

At around eleven o’clock, he calls Huaisang.

The call goes straight to voicemail. His brother’s phone has been turned off.

Suddenly, Nie Mingjue can bear it no longer. For some reason, he is terrified for them both—and though finding Huaisang in the night market this late would be practically impossible, Mingjue can go to Xichen.

He rifles through his kitchen cupboards, throwing instant meals and groceries into a tote bag before opening the freezer. Huaisang boiled a pot of hangover soup two days ago, and the leftovers should be good for sickness if Xichen has something worse than a cold.

Food packed, Mingjue grabs an electric blanket—he doesn’t know if A-Huan owns an electric blanket, if he ever thought of buying one after that time he got stranded during a snowstorm and almost came down with hypothermia—and hurries out into the night before climbing into his car and backing out of the driveway towards the main road.

“Please be all right, A-Huan,” Nie Mingjue murmurs, fighting the impulse to call him again. His fiancé retires at nine o’clock precisely, even without sickness thrown into his routine, but with it...

You have reached Lan Xichen’s voicemail, says his phone, after Nie Mingjue gives in and presses the fast-dial button next to Lan Xichen’s name. Please leave your name and number, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. If this is a professional call, contact my office at Tianyun Law by phone or email to set up an appointment.

Nie Mingjue hangs up and hits Wangji’s contact icon.

The mobile customer you have tried to reach is currently unavailable, the speaker drones; unsurprisingly, Wangji never recorded a message for his voicemail inbox. Leave a message at the tone, or hang up and try again.

Mingjue’s blood runs cold. Even if they were both asleep, surely at least Wangji should have left his phone on?

As he approaches Xichen’s apartment complex, a flash of blue light sparks in his rearview mirror. Nie Mingjue freezes at the closest stop sign, trying not to panic at the sight of at least ten police cars crawling all over the neighborhood; he passed one at the last intersection, and three at the one before that, and now the neighborhood itself seems to be under surveillance.

But the police pay no attention to Nie Mingjue as he passes by, and five minutes later, he lets himself into the gated complex and hurries up the stairs to Lan Xichen’s third-floor apartment. Xichen gave him a set of spare keys, which Nie Mingjue never anticipated he might have to use without his A-Huan’s permission; but now, here he is, sliding them into the doorknob and letting himself in without a sound.

Inside, the apartment is pitch-black. Nie Mingjue frowns, groping for the light switch: but before he can find it, someone crashes into the little foyer and shines a floodlight into his face.

He cries out in alarm, throwing up his arms to shield his eyes from the glare. But then the floodlight dims, and the ceiling lights come on, revealing a slight figure dressed from head to toe in black.

Nie Mingjue drops his bag.

“Huaisang?” he says hoarsely. His brother is pale and wide-eyed, looking strangely shaken at the sight of him; and then, almost immediately, Nie Mingjue remembers that Huaisang said he was going to be at the night market, not here with Lan Xichen.

At that moment, something breaks in Lan Xichen’s kitchen. Nie Mingjue picks up his bag and pushes past his brother, so terrified of what he might find that he can scarcely breathe: but the sight that greets him in the kitchen is completely bizarre, as if it were something out of a film, instead of real life.

Lan Xichen is sitting at the kitchen island with Wangji beside him, in the same way they usually do when Nie Mingjue eats with them. Wangji is in front of Xichen and slightly to his right, holding a steel bowl filled with wads of bloodstained cloth, and Lan Xichen’s attention is fixed on a gaping wound in the jade-white flesh of his own side.

“What’s going on here?” Nie Mingjue croaks, watching as his boyfriend threads a long, curved needle and draws it through his skin, tying a double knot beside the gash before cutting the piece of suture thread and holding out his hand for another one. “A-Huan, what have you done to yourself?”

He looks on in horror as Lan Xichen finishes stitching up the wound (deftly, easily, as if he had done it a hundred times before) and bandages it, all without a sound of pain or a word to Nie Mingjue. But the job is done before Mingjue can count to fifty, and then the two of them are facing each other: one bewildered, in Nie Mingjue’s case, and the other resigned.

“Have you eaten?” Nie Mingjue asks numbly. He can think of nothing else to say—in fact, he can hardly think at all with Lan Xichen looking at him in mingled agony and shame, as if he had done something wrong here. He hadn’t, of course he hadn’t, because his A-Huan is a lawyer with five bitter enemies for every year he’s been practicing, and no matter what Xichen got tangled up in this time, he couldn’t possibly have shot himself—

“No, I didn’t,” Lan Xichen sighs. “It was either a policewoman or a security guard, I think.”

“What--”

“It was the security guard,” Huaisang mutters, folding his arms across his chest. “The policewoman missed. The security tend to be better marksmen than the cops, in our experience.”

Nie Mingjue closes his eyes.

“Will somebody tell me what’s going on here? Xichen?”

Lan Xichen nods shakily and pulls on a tattered shirt, as if the thin cotton might  offer him some form of protection from the conversation ahead. Lan Wangji gets rid of the bloody gauze and the suturing kit, losing his thuggish black clothes on the way, and Huaisang vanishes up the stairs before coming back in a pair of jeans and a soft white sweater.

“We’ll eat first,” Nie Mingjue says gruffly, suddenly desperate to postpone this bizarre confession for as long as he can. “You look dead on your feet, and I don’t want anyone passing out before I’ve heard everything. All right?”

All three of them nod, each one looking guiltier than the next. Nie Mingjue can hardly stand to meet their eyes, so he boils the frozen hangover soup and steams a pot of rice to go with it, scooping the richest portion into Lan Xichen’s bowl before carrying the dinner tray to the table.

“Hurry up and eat,” he orders. “Don’t say a word before those bowls are empty.”

They eat without speaking, silent but for the clicking of their chopsticks; and then, after the last spoonfuls of rice and soup disappear, Nie Mingjue pads off to the living room with Xichen and Huaisang trailing behind him. Lan Wangji brings up the rear, looking like a ghost in his bloodstained clothes, and goes straight to Nie Mingjue’s favorite armchair: leaving him and Xichen without the option to sit close to each other, unless they share the worn loveseat tucked against the back wall.

That is out of the question for obvious reasons, so Huaisang claims the loveseat for himself, and Mingjue and Xichen end up in a pair of easy chairs on opposite sides of the room.

“Well, I’m listening,” Nie Mingjue says at last. “Now talk.”