Chapter Text
Jiang Cheng was a well-known insomniac. He overworked to cope and masked his ugly, real emotions with an even uglier scowl, so it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that his sleeping schedule would be as fucked up as he is.
His sleeping quarters were more of an office than an actual bedchamber anyway, with no personal trinkets to indicate that he’d slept in this room for more than two decades at this point, apart from the tiny, unremarkable objects and creations that Jin Ling made that Jiang Cheng couldn’t throw out.
Not because he was a sentimental man for his nephew that he’d watched grow up and was extremely proud of. Of course not, that was absurd!
It was simply because Jin Ling was a clingy child who didn’t understand the concept of boundaries when it came to his uncle and constantly napped or - and - crashed into Jiang Cheng’s bed, taking up all the space in Jiang Cheng’s room by depositing all his trash and refused to leave like an annoying pest.
Jiang Cheng had rightfully been in denial in the past about why - truly, why - he felt so warm about it. Or maybe there were far too many reasons for him to actually choose one and stick with it, and choosing , especially in matters of the heart and disgusting emotions - centered around a particular person as well - had always been a sore spot his entire life.
He did what he usually would do when these situations came up; ignore or eliminate them entirely, and it hadn’t failed him yet. Or that’s what Jiang Cheng kept telling himself.
The point here, though, was that Jin Ling kept sneaking unsubtly into Jiang Cheng’s room - the same way he’d wormed into his heart - and Jiang Cheng had admittedly given up trying to chase him out of it, even after they were both officially Sect Leaders and Jin Ling had grown taller than him.
So, of course Jiang Cheng didn’t think anything was off, when he felt another, larger , body in bed with him, murmuring discontentedly.
In his half-asleep state, it didn’t really hit him that the person was behaving unlike how Jin Ling would when he dropped in unceremoniously to ‘talk about important Sect Leader business’ - which was to initiate physical contact until Jiang Cheng was uncomfortably smothered and proceeded to wake up and smack him upside the head for it.
At the moment, Jiang Cheng only spared some thoughts about what exactly caused his nephew to visit him now, amidst the worrying - which he tried his hardest to hide but inevitably gave up at the sight of his A-Jie in Jin Ling’s face, like he’d always had - before turning over and letting the rare vestiges of sleep pull him under.
Waking up the next morning to his mother’s roar was wholly unexpected.
At first, Jiang Cheng thought this was some sort of nightmare, and just kept his eyes tightly shut, bracing himself for something horrific.
Nightmares about his parents were usually along the lines of him being the one to rip their cores out of their bodies, then subsequently rip their throats out and use them as kindling to spread the fire that would raze the old Lotus Pier to the ground. Sometimes, his dreams would simply be exaggerated replays of memories of their screaming matches; the worst ones too, where in the end, Jiang Cheng would be left alone to realize that he was the one that ruined everything in between them.
But his mother’s furious and indignantly incoherent shrieking did not stop. Instead, the person beside him - Jin Ling, his mind supplied - shifted, sitting up before pausing for a moment, and consequently tumbled off the bed. Jiang Cheng’s eyes flew open in concern as he sat up as well, perturbed, before his mouth fell open and he gaped without restraint.
Because the body had not been Jin Ling.
Jiang Fengmian stared at him, confusion and horror apparent in hazel yellow eyes Jiang Cheng hadn’t seen after his sister died and the realization hit him pretty quickly, considering his tendency to be slower on the uptake than he’d liked. Oh god. He was in the past.
“YOU’VE BEEN BEDDING PRETTY LITTLE MEN BEHIND MY BACK, YOU-” Madam Yu’s scream tore through the abrupt emptiness in his head and snapped Jiang Cheng out of his trance, taking a moment to process those words and spot his mother’s form blocking the entrance to his father’s bed chambers, with three shocked teenagers standing behind her, and several gawking disciples and servants-
When I said I was the reason for ruining my parents’ relationship, this was not what I meant, Jiang Cheng thought hysterically.
The sound of Zidian sparking up was what finally got Jiang Cheng to move. He retaliated instinctually, the ring on his own finger lighting up, the smooth crop fitting into his hands securely like it had for years. From the corner of his eyes, he saw Jinzhu and Yinzhu - who had their swords unsheathed and aimed to cleave him into two from opposite sides - stumble at the sight of another Zidian.
Jiang Cheng couldn’t help the slight upturn to the corner of his lips as he countered his mother’s strike with one of his own - two loud, sharp sounds echoing through his father’s bedroom with subsequent sizzling of dying sparks.
Silence fell as everyone grew even more appalled at the new turn of events.
Jiang Cheng took a deep breath. “Mother,” he turned to look at a practically paralyzed Jiang Fengmian on the floor before addressing him as well, “Father,”
Turning his gaze to his flabbergasted audience, Jiang Cheng cursed his terrible luck and added, “I am from the future, and definitely not fucking my father.”
→
Meanwhile on the other side of the fucking continent, Jin Ling woke up to lecherous moaning.
→
Nie Huaisang was uncomfortably okay with nightmares, to the point of very heavy concern.
He’d always known he didn’t fit in these times and the position he was born into, terribly failing at the duties and responsibility mandated of him. It only made sense that the Second Young Master of Qinghe, now Sect Leader Nie, would be strange and unusual about everything else.
Normal people avoided bad memories and nightmares, consequently avoiding sleep, but not Nie Huaisang. He’d wake up screaming and flailing and choking on tears and resentful energy but he never failed to actually go to sleep.
Nie Huaisang was not good at dealing with problems he didn’t understand. He was not good at dealing with problems, period, without employing a truly unnecessary scheme that took too long anyway.
So when faced with a problem, he dealt with it how he’d seen others deal with them; bulldoze through them at full strength and shatter them. Nie Huaisang had been the firm believer that that only made things worse but-
- it worked.
Sure, the downsides of willingly facing nightmares daily was that he’d end up being more afraid - more paranoid if that was even possible - body always braced for any tense confrontation, physical or mental, his veins containing more adrenaline than blood at this rate. Nightmares were painful, but so was Nie Huaisang’s entire life so far.
The upsides to this truly overshadowed their cons - allowing him to briefly live in a world where everything was right, even if for a moment, before it all inevitably went to shit. He’d catalog how that would happen, marking it down as a possibility to consider every time it was his turn to move a piece on the chessboard.
A form of escape, others would say, but hadn’t that been one of Nie Huaisang’s most infamous habits and qualities? Hadn't he been known to skillfully remove himself from a situation he didn't want to be in, even with underhanded methods? It wasn’t like he’d ever cared about right or normal, anyway. Especially not after all he’d done to enact his revenge.
It had been weeks, months after his victory, and his satisfaction - warring with guilt, of course - felt like rotten blood coagulating over his insides. His life had just been another one of those days spent - wasted - gathering information idly, figuring out what the fuck he was supposed to now that his life’s purpose was finally achieved and then retire to a bed that would be achingly cold and large.
The old cycle would repeat; Nie Huaisang would look forward to what brand new horror his mind would conjure up and then he’d watch it play out with someone’s heart beating pathetically in blood-stained hands - Jin Guangyao’s, Er-ge’s, Da-ge’s, his father’s , his own - and a sad smile when everything in him wanted to snarl and weep and rage. He’d wake up, curled up into a cold ball of nothing but flesh and bones, mind painfully empty.
Nie Huaisang woke up the next day expecting nothing different.
Nie Huaisang woke up with his Da-ge grumbling into the nape of his neck about how he was too old for this, large arms wrapped around his waist, pulling his thin body against a muscled chest, deliciously warm for the first time in a long, long fucking while.
He blinked, before turning his face into the warm sheets that smelled like his brother, hiding a bitter smile. Nie Huaisang’s brain was indeed creative at finding ways to torment him now that the fear of failure was long gone with his triumph, his imagination enormously vivid to make this so irrevocably real.
That was okay. He burrowed deeper into his brother’s arms, whose grip only tightened sleepily like it always had, and savored the feeling of safety before it was ripped away from him.
To his confusion, sleep claimed him a moment later, and Nie Huaisang didn’t fight it.
→
Lan Xichen was drunk. He swayed through the lightheadedness, the freeing absence of his self-preservation and rationality, and the blissful feeling of being unburdened.
All falsehoods, of course, and temporary. Nothing in his life had ever been anything but a responsibility, dragging along with it the customary dread that Lan Xichen had long since learned to greet like an old friend. He used to have real, breathing friends, once. Now they were all dead-
Lan Xichen loved being drunk, he’d found out. It had inadvertently caused him to get better at acknowledging the hard things he’d turned a blind eye over in the past, forcing himself to suffocate on every bitter pill no matter how much misery it caused him - he deserved it - and so, it was easy to admit that he’d probably leave this seclusion a barely recovering alcoholic. If he ever left seclusion, that was. The part of him - getting smaller by every drop he gulped down - that clung to the past and the rules and naive things like hope, was ashamed.
It was easier, too, to ignore its inner voice - that sounded too much like his Uncle - chiding and reprimanding his conduct harshly.
He was broken, and he’d always been good at fixing things, but there was no mirror around for him to place all his broken shards together correctly; vanity was prohibited in Cloud Recesses, after all.
Lan Xichen didn’t know where the alcohol even came from, really just finding an almost endless supply of jars stored under floorboards, conspicuously placed inside shelves and under beds, when he’d grown bored of reflecting and took apart the cottage he’d locked himself into to give his hands something to do.
His self-control didn’t last long in the face of temptation - because he had to reach clarity, in the end, no matter how he got there, right? - and his younger self would be sobbing at the audacity of it all. It took him less than a week to wonder, what’s the worst that could happen , and maybe that’s where it all went wrong.
Lan Xichen was floating in a limbo, feeling not even the texture of the wood through his single underrobe, and he could’ve cackled in glee, if it weren’t so much work and probably break him out of the trance.
He tried keeping track of the days, but lost count pretty early on. Now it could’ve been months, years, since everything in his life went crumbling, his world turned upside down, but Lan Xichen found he wasn’t as concerned about it as he should be.
No one would disturb him - especially since he'd refused to allow even his uncle and brother in after he'd gotten a taste of finally being free of his self control, and decided to shield his family from a side of him that must truly be pathetic - and that's all that mattered-
Lan Xichen blinked. His vision was hazy but he could hear robes rustling somewhere in the spacious room.
He hadn't moved, so it couldn't be him. And his family would be too preoccupied - his brother with a husband he could finally be with after their long separation and his uncle with the ever-lasting disappointment he'd expressed when Lan Xichen went into seclusion - anyway to actually go against Lan Xichen's request to be left alone. The both of them were too inflexible with the rules to even consider it.
Maybe Wei Wuxian had influenced Wangji into overlooking them? After taking a moment to hysterically reflect on how coherent his thoughts were - he really should've finished the jar of wine before smashing it and staining the floor unnecessarily, such a waste - Lan Xichen didn't know if he considered that to be a good or a bad thing.
The soft swish of robes grew closer and his heart jumped, something like dread spiking through his body, so he concluded it must be a bad thing. Perhaps an emergency he needed to deal with, like another war. Good to know his cultivator skills and honed body weren't dampened by his alcoholic habits.
Instinctively pushing down the unwillingness to interact with people , Lan Xichen lifted his face off the floor.
Expecting his cheek to painfully peel away from the wood, with the remains of his disgusting sweat and wine clinging to his jaw and temple, Lan Xichen gingerly shifted. Interestingly though, there was no resistance. His face didn't even hurt.
What?
Even the floor felt less like a floor and more like one of those punishingly firm beds that some of the more uptight Lan members used-
"Who are you?" A raspy, hoarse voice broke the silence.
Lan Xichen's eyes shot open, and the disgruntled groan at the sunlight blinding him and adding to what assumed was a hangover, echoed throughout his secluded cottage.
He could hear the tell-tale signs of a person close enough to touch him; the slow breathing, the gentle slither of cloth against cloth, and a presence that Lan Xichen could pick up even through his unseemly state.
He risked a peek, squinting hard enough to send another flash of pain through the centre of his head.
An older man with unshaven facial hair and wearing his face frowned down upon him.
For a second, Lan Xichen thought his mind, under the effects of the alcohol, had conjured up an image of what he would end up as in the future, if he continued his current life choices, like a twisted form of self-defense.
He judgmentally made a note to maintain hygiene in the rare mornings he was sober, because facial hair really did not suit him-
"..Xichen?" The man said hesitantly, the characters sounding foreign on his tongue. Only one other man had ever said his name like that before.
So that was a yes on hallucinations, then. Great, he'd passed the line - that he'd more or less stamped on, instead of toe-ing lightly like he'd told himself in the beginning - into insanity. Lan Xichen would have to avoid drinking now, he thought with an unpleasant twist to his mouth. The only way he could do that was simply never getting up. Dying of dehydration surely isn't that bad of a death, is it?
Rolling his eyes - something Lan Xichen, secretly, always took pleasure in doing - he turned onto his side, snuggling deeper into the bed he didn't know how he dragged himself into and ignored his increasingly confused father without a hint of regret.