#cheermione

Wei Wuxian can’t see the expression that crosses Nie Huaisang’s face at that, but Jiang Cheng can. He sets his brush down with a clack and scowls at his brother.

‘How’d you get your hair in such a state, anyway? I thought you were going fishing, not rolling in a bush.’

‘Riverbanks can have bushes,’ Wei Wuxian protests, and by the time the two of them are done bickering about that, Nie Huaisang no longer looks sad.

The hairstyle he’s giving Wei Wuxian has braids and twists and is far neater and far fancier than anything that terror needs in his hair. Nie Huaisang picks through the box Wei Wuxian keeps his hair ornaments in and selects what turns out to be the most elaborate one, the one that has never before made it onto Wei Wuxian’s head.

‘It’s a waste of time having your hair looking that good just to sit around here,’ Jiang Cheng complains. ‘What, do you think a pretty maiden’s going to turn up to gaze at you admiringly?’

Before he’s finished the sentence, he sees he’s given his brother an idea. It’s in the light that sparks in his eyes, in the way his body, never truly still, seems to vibrate.

‘Who needs a pretty maiden?’ he asks. ‘Lan Zhan will think my hair is pretty!’

And he’s gone with a call of thanks to Nie Huaisang over his shoulder, leaving Jiang Cheng with a headache to go with his part-written essay. Well, and Nie Huaisang.

‘Did you get this one done yet?’ Jiang Cheng asks, though even if his friend has completed the assignment already, there’s little point in expecting a useful pointer. ‘I don’t think Wei Wuxian’s even started.’

Nie Huaisang rises from the bed he’s been sitting on and drops down at the table, opposite Jiang Cheng. He wrinkles his nose at the essay.

‘I wrote that one last year already. It’s so boring to have to write it again.’

‘Well, if you’re staying, you can be bored and get writing. I need to concentrate, and I was meant to have the room to myself this afternoon. Unless you want to go after that idiot?’

Nie Huaisang’s shudder has to be exaggerated.

‘No thank-you,’ he says, eyeing Jiang Cheng’s spare brush dubiously, as though it’s not up to his standards, before sighing and reaching for it. ‘I’d rather write this stupid essay than risk making Lan Wangji angry.’

‘I wish Wei Wuxian thought the same way,’ Jiang Cheng grouses, even as he nudges the ink closer to the middle of the table. ‘I swear, one of these days he’s going to end up with a sword through his side.’

Nie Huaisang snickers, but agrees.

That afternoon so many years ago flashes through Jiang Cheng’s mind as he stares at Wei Wuxian now, standing in the middle of a courtyard in the Unclean Realm and drenched in…something.

‘Is that mud?’ he demands. ‘Tell me that’s mud. Did you fall in a river? What’s that in your hair?’

‘Um. So, here’s the thing…’ Wei Wuxian starts, and stops again when a glob of the substance slips from the hair plastered to the side of his face and drops heavily onto the ground.

‘There is a tooth in that,’ Jiang Cheng points out.

For several wonderful moments, the irritation he feels is the old, familiar exasperation at his brother. Only Wei Wuxian could get himself in this state with under two hours to go to the opening banquet of a cultivation conference, the first one to which Wei Wuxian has been invited since returning from the dead.

Dead. Right. The awful mix of rage and guilt and grief rushes in and Jiang Cheng remembers this is also only the second time he’s seen Wei Wuxian since that damn temple where that bastard Jin almost got them all killed.

The second, because a few months later Wei Wuxian passed through Yunmeng and Jiang Cheng ran across him whilst on his way back from a nighthunt. Wei Wuxian looked like he wanted to bolt, but instead they exchanged a few stilted words, before it became too much and Jiang Cheng took to his sword to get home. He didn’t ask Wei Wuxian to come with him. If he’d wanted to visit Lotus Pier, he wouldn’t have been sneaking through Yunmeng.

It’s painfully obvious he’s only in front of Jiang Cheng now because of his appalling sense of direction. He arrived with his precious Hanguang-Jun’s name on his lips, clearly expecting the man to greet him.

‘You don’t even care about embarrassing Hanguang-Jun?’ he snaps. ‘You’ll truly cause insult to Qinghe Nie by turning up like that when you’re here with Gusu Lan? Why does he put up with you?’

‘Ah, Jiang Cheng,’ Wei Wuxian says, rubbing at the back of his neck and moving some of the sludge around. That much is obvious from the way some of it is pushed to the sides of his neck, where it moves slowly down towards the neck of his robes. ‘I’m not here with Gusu Lan. Lan Zhan just agreed it would be less trouble for everyone if I stayed in his room, that’s all.’

‘And you don’t think your appearance is going to reflect on him? On his sect?’

He sees Wei Wuxian absorb that hit and sees the realisation in his brother’s eyes that he doesn’t have to stand there and take more. Wei Wuxian said it himself: leave it all in the past. They aren’t what they were to each other. And Wei Wuxian has a new family now.

‘Your Hanguang-Jun will love helping get all that out of your hair.’ He knows he sounds sullen, bitter. ‘You’d better hurry.’

Wei Wuxian turns and takes to steps away before he stops and looks back. He looks wary.

‘Lan Zhan is in a meeting with some sect leader or other,’ he says. ‘And Sizhui and Jingyi aren’t here. I don’t think anyone will be sorting my hair out for me.’

Jiang Cheng almost tells him to go and ask Nie Huaisang, then, since he did it that time at the Cloud Recesses. But he resents the idea of Sect Leader Nie being closer with Wei Wuxian than Jiang Cheng is. And no matter what they are or are not to each other, the cultivation world will always connect Wei Wuxian with Yunmeng Jiang. If he arrives at the banquet with slime in his hair, and he will if left to himself, it will reflect badly on Jiang Cheng, as well.

‘I have to do everything,’ he grumbles, but it’s easier than he expected it to be, getting Wei Wuxian to follow him back into the rooms set aside for Sect Leader Jiang.

Nie Huaisang put Wei Wuxian’s hair into something like a fancy Nie style that time, despite the fact Wei Wuxian was still of Yunmeng Jiang. Well, this time, Jiang Cheng will put his…will put Wei Wuxian’s hair in an even fancier Jiang style.

And these days, he isn’t scared of Lan Wangji in the slightest. Hasn’t been for years. Jiang Cheng will march Wei Wuxian up to that icy, dismissive Jade and demand he acknowledges that Jiang Cheng’s done a better job on his ex-brother’s hair than any Nie ever managed.

Wei Wuxian can spend the banquet looking like he’s still Jiang Cheng’s brother. Whether he likes it or not.