Chapter Text
So they make their thing into an official thing (Wen Ning wonders if they’ll get a new Wanyin-hand-flap-gesture now) just at the turn of the new year. The celebration is lively enough to satisfy Jiang Wanyin’s adorable, awfully specific and detailed childhood dreams, yet small enough (with enough breaks) that Wen Ning is comfortable. The entire guest list consists of the Jingshi coalition (they’re never shedding the name now that Zizhen has started using it), Rong-zongzhu and Other-Qin-zongzhu’s respective wives, and the grooms’ nephews of various relatedness (so, A-Yuan and his boyfriends). It’s nice, and utterly exhausting in the warmest way.
Wen Ning and his cultivation partner sneak away early; said (official!) partner, Jingyi, and Zizhen each assure Wen Ning the party will be fine without them, and this is even expected at Yunmeng weddings (at any wedding not in the Cloud Recesses, really). Jin Ling wants no part of the sneaking, pointedly ignoring the little conference happening around him, and A-Yuan kindly relieves Jingyi of Wei Wuxian interference duty so that Jingyi can have his time with the newlyweds (which he uses to be an excellent influence).
It looks like an entire weaver’s shop of red silk has exploded in Wen Ning and Cheng-er’s bedroom. Someone even traded out all of Wanyin’s pillows with identically-sized red pillows, or went to the trouble of covering each one with a new fabric; either way it’s exactly the same dense pillow population on their marriage bed, but red. It’s not that Wen Ning wasn’t expecting perfectly normal wedding stuff to happen at what is, in fact, a wedding (his wedding!), but somehow this is the very last bit of weird his brain can tolerate on top of a delightfully weird couple of days. He clings to Cheng-er—who has picked him up again, the silly, perfect man—and wheezes with laughter.
Cheng-er collapses them onto the bed to join in the hysterics; they lay there giggling for a while.
Wen Ning eventually calms enough to check in. “You too?”
Wanyin gestures broadly at the ceiling, “Fuck, it feels like we just narrowly escaped something terrible, right?”
“Yeah. Everything is nice and nobody’s died yet and I just don’t know what to do with that when it goes on this long.”
“Seriously.” Wanyin scoffs and sits up to arrange his formal robes more neatly, “…That’s kind of fucked up, isn’t it?”
Wen Ning stays sprawled where he is, more cheerfully punch-drunk than worried about wrinkling clothes he probably won’t wear again. “Yep. I’m sorry your life has been that way too, but thank you for being kind of fucked up with me.”
Wanyin brushes a stray hair behind Wen Ning’s ear and bends to kiss his forehead. “You too, Qionglin. So…wanna try and do this again?”
“A wedding?”
“Nah, I got the one I wanted.” Cheng-er picks up Wen Ning’s hand, distractedly clutches it in his own, running a thumb along his knuckles. “I mean, do you want to try and have more days good enough to make us nervous sometime?” he asks quietly, in a kind of disbelieving ‘if this is a joke it might be safe’ way that makes Wen Ning’s stomach hurt for him. Probably for them both, at that.
That. Huh. Well, having days like this is disquieting enough, but trying for them is an outright scary thought: a good kind of scary, though. The kind of fear that comes from wanting something too much. Right at this moment it feels like life could be this easy more often than not, if they work at it together, which is probably the most welcomely weird thing of all. “I think I can muster the courage for you, Lord Husband.” Wen Ning smirks his reply, watching for the instant Wanyin’s prickles stand up.
Wen Ning’s hedgehog husband does not disappoint: Cheng-er winces in dismay and bites Wen Ning’s fingers. “NO! Seriously. I like ‘favorite asshole’ better.”
“Fair enough.” Wen Ning pinches his lips shut to keep the inevitable sneaky retort from escaping (probably something about what his disciples would think of his consort running around greeting him with ‘hey asshole’), and sits up, reaching to start taking down Cheng-er’s hair. Cheng-er makes a low, contented sound and curves his body towards Wen Ning’s touch.
☥
This night feels like a dream: some warm mirage Wen Ning keeps even from himself until he’s too unconscious to shrink his wants away small enough they don’t hurt. He’s sitting here, touching the man he’s loved long before it made sense, knowing he loves Wen Ning in return; more than that, he’s been carefully dressed by his family to be here, his safe and happy nephew and his nephew’s lover-who-is-also-a-very-nice-boy-now-actually, and the room is so extravagantly reddened in every possible detail down to the candles and door handles that he just knows Wei Wuxian and Lan Jingyi had worked on it together, probably Jin Ling too, before he went out with his JiuJiu: it’s all an unmistakable reminder that he and Wanyin were surrounded less than a shi ago by people who love them, who like them and want them to be happy together (and nobody was screaming!).
Wanyin looks stunning in his wedding silks, his usual sharp, diamond-cut beauty only accentuated by his outfit, but somehow softened and made inviting the instant they find themselves alone: relaxed with his new spouse after a long day, almost purring under Wen Ning’s fingers as he teases out complicated pins, braids, and an extra-fancy looking guan. The math feels off. Everything here adds up to a surreal level of ‘good,’ a kind of peace that Wen Ning has never experienced without a price paid in striving, pain, and fear. He’s doing his best not to look over his shoulder and wait on whatever the world will extract from him for something this nice.
But Wen Ning could take it as reality, he thinks, accept it as one of those beautiful bright spots life is sometimes kind enough to offer the very patient, if not for the heating of Cheng-er’s skin and the quickening of his heart where they touch. The way Wen Ning’s cultivation is being drawn to his lover’s body in a steady, magnetic pull, just like it does when they’re aroused. The way it feels just like Cheng-er wants him.
Which, of course, is silly! Cheng-er likes the sex they have; Wen Ning trusts his partner enough to believe him when he tells him something! But that’s sex. Cheng-er likes sex because it’s a fun thing to work on together, or sometimes an outlet, often a nice thing he does for Wen Ning, or communication: a need for comfort, intimacy, closeness, that sort of thing. At the end of the day, the way Cheng-er engages with sex is about their connection; he wants sex with Wen Ning, he doesn’t want Wen Ning. Not like that.
Which is why when Wanyin moves behind Wen Ning to return the hair-undressing favor, then gently brushes aside Wen Ning’s loosened hair to kiss his neck, Wen Ning reluctantly drags himself away. “You don’t have to—” he starts.
“Qionglin, gege, I want to.”
This is disorienting. Wen Ning is pretty sure he would have noticed if Cheng-er was emotionally keyed-up in any of the usual ways they prefer to address naked, and he’d rather not be an obligation. Especially on their wedding night.
“You’ve already done so much for me today.” Wen Ning protests, fighting every single romantic and libidinous impulse left in him to do so.
The air changes, Wen Ning’s sense of Wanyin roaring like a just-fed fire, taking up all of the space in the room. It’s surprising, then, with the sheer volume of emotion sparking to life between them, that Wanyin’s voice comes out mostly calm and a little bit careful: thought-out. “Uhm. Not to be a dick, but my interest in getting you naked is definitely for me. Pretty much always.”
Cheng-er pulls Wen Ning back into his lap as he makes his point, impatiently burying his face in Wen Ning’s neck without moving the hair this time. His soft lips and the answering spark under them make Wen Ning shudder.
The realization that comes to Wen Ning with them makes him gasp.
Wen Ning tilts his head to offer more of himself to Cheng-er before making sure he has the right end of the stick. Obvious as this should have been to him, getting it wrong would be worse. “because being with me feels good?”
“Mhm,” Wanyin is busily pulling Wen Ning’s collars wider, “You realize you have never once put your hands on me out of anything but care? In our entire history. Who the fuck does that?”
Wen Ning wants to see Cheng-er; they’re so close his breath prickles warm along the dip of Wen Ning’s clavicle, but he’s tucked too neatly behind him to watch easily.
Cheng-er slips one of Wen Ning’s shoulders free and takes a moment to appreciate the newly bared skin with his mouth. “I can— that kind of trust— it…well whatever it is it really works for me. I want you touching me all the time. I need your hands on me. Fuck, Qionglin, just because I don’t need your qi doesn’t mean I don’t need you.”
His words catch Wen Ning sweetly by the throat, choking off moving, breathing, feeling anything but them. “Oh. Wow.”
Yep. That’s about what Wen Ning thought he understood (which is great!), but sexier (which is even better!). The difference between ‘My lover really, actually, truly likes and wants sex too, because I feel as good to him as he does to me,’ and ‘My lover never wants me to stop touching him and sex is a way to touch we are both enthusiastic about” is small and hard to word out, but Wen Ning feels the distinction easily on an instinctual, sub-lingual level. The former comforts Wen Ning; it’s a revelation all on its own that his touch can bring anything but pain, even if sometimes that pain is for healing. It goes further than that though—he can also give pleasure! Wen Ning is not a parasite, because he gives as well as takes. The latter builds on the comfort from that realization and makes it into a searing thing, heating his skin, buzzing along his meridians.
Cheng-er wants him, and that makes Wen Ning feel, well, kind of sexy. Cheng-er doesn't want in the precise way Wen Ning wants his partner, with the staring at his mouth and all that, but it’s still desire and it’s still about him, and that’s an indescribable gift. Wen Ning doesn’t know what to do with feeling desirable, with feeling like someone with something to physically offer a lover. It feels like he’s coming apart at the seams, too full of love, need, and a sort of power that feels similar yet entirely opposed to the unnatural ability to rend a person limb from limb with his bare hands.
Wanyin snorts at Wen Ning’s admittedly not very articulate response to some very good words, and keeps working on his quest to untie Wen Ning’s clothes. Wen Ning shakes him off so he can finish the job himself, returning to straddle Cheng-er’s lap in only his cinnabar red trousers, crushing their mouths together.
It’s a possessive kiss, a need-filled sucking, biting thing of mutual claiming. They belong wholly to each other. Wen Ning belongs to Cheng-er, gives every part of himself he has to give to this beautiful man for the simple fact that he wants to, because he is needed. Wanted. Loved. Because Cheng-er is just as much his in a way that is fully theirs to give and take: It’s not a thing of control, or what they can do to one another’s bodies—anyone can impose on their bodies if they pry hard enough—it’s a sort of trust, a claim without ownership, permission to leave a mark on one another’s humanity.
Right now, Wen Ning needs to touch Cheng-er everywhere he wants to be touched. He fumbles with his partner’s clothes, pulling at ties hastily in the overwhelming urgency to reach skin. It feels like forever, but in reality it probably isn’t the work of more than a heartbeat to get Cheng-er’s robes open and trousers shoved down to his thighs, his body looking for all the world like a delicacy showcased in an elaborate red wrapper.
Not that Wen Ning spends more than a moment simply looking. Now that it’s clicked, now that he knows beyond doubt that Cheng-er is far from indifferent to his touch, Wen Ning wants nothing more than to give: to light up every nerve of Cheng-er’s with unbearable pleasure until he can’t contain it one shuddering breath longer, to watch him fall entirely apart and know that he did that.
Is that what Cheng-er normally feels like, watching Wen Ning come alive under his attention? No wonder he struts around afterwards like a very smug sex god. Well, now it’s Wen Ning’s turn for an ego boost. Hopefully. Maybe. He has a plan, at least!
Wen Ning rolls Cheng-er prone to finish getting his robes off, then pushes the troublesome fabric off of the bed entirely. He straddles his partner and begins to knead his shoulders, kissing along his spine, which Wanyin rewards with a low groan, unconsciously rolling his hips under Wen Ning’s seat.
“I think I need to touch you too,” Wen Ning admits, “I want to feel every part of you.”
“Mmmf,” is most of the response he gets out of his new husband, which Wen Ning takes to mean rolling his palms along under Cheng-er’s scapulae is on the right track. He repeats the movement, harder, noticing a little pull against the soft skin of Cheng-er’s back, and decides to fetch a bath oil. Bridal chamber sheets aren’t meant to last the night anyway, right? Wen Ning kisses the little pink drag-spot he had left under Wanyin’s shoulder apologetically and fetches a nice lotus-perfumed oil from their toiletries, shedding his trousers along the way. He reasons more skin contact won’t hurt.
Settling back in place on Cheng-er’s strong gluteus, Wen Ning is sure that the oil was an excellent call. His hands glide so easily over Wanyin’s heated skin now—he can feel every knot and striation hiding under it. With his touch rendered frictionless like this, it’s easier to pick out which stiffness is old scarring and which is a new tension, which spots need kissing and kind words, and which need warmth and pressure from Wen Ning’s careful hands.
The tug of Wanyin’s qi strengthens; Wen Ning’s skin prickles teasingly everywhere they touch, and it’s good. By the time Wen Ning moves down to work on Cheng-er’s thighs, Cheng-er has been making appreciative noises for a while, and Wen Ning has been doing his best to concentrate on pulling more of them from his lover instead of the increasingly urgent prospect of stopping the sounds with his mouth. He was managing that just fine, but he’s still not strong enough to argue when Cheng-er decides to roll to face him.
Cheng-er is still between Wen Ning’s thighs. His cock is hard and right there and Wen Ning wants more than anything to be good for Cheng-er and take his time, to follow his plans and touch every cun of him before they worry about coming, but he wants to touch Wanyin’s cock almost as much. Especially when he could adjust his seat the littlest bit and rest his own eager softness on it.
Cheng-er makes the decision for him, sitting up and dragging Wen Ning close to kiss the plans right out of him.
“That felt amazing,” he murmurs into Wen Ning’s mouth, pushing his tongue back into him, tasting him, grinding his length slowly up where it is trapped between them. Against Wen Ning’s low belly. Against Wen Ning’s cock.
“Good,” he pants when Cheng-er finally needs to breathe, “I can do the front, too, if you want...”
Truth be told, after prolonged exposure to a beautifully dressed, then naked and shiny (and UNDER HIM) Cheng-er, Wen Ning is quickly losing the will to continue a perfectly chaste massage; adding friction on his desperately invested cock to the deal may well have broken his ability to follow through entirely. But Wen Ning is stubborn when he wants to give, so he is going to fucking try.
“Nope. I want a different kind of touch now, Qionglin-ge.”
…listening to what the person you’re giving to wants is probably advisable though. And very good. Just, the best idea.
It’s incredibly confusing, and heady, and wonderful, how often the right thing to do, the thing Cheng-er wants, and the thing that feels best are all the same thing when they are together. Sometimes pain and sacrifice are not needed at all. Sometimes some things are just good.
Wen Ning’s essential self is not a burden nor a drain nor a compromise, not a thing, and certainly not a thing made to inflict pain without thought. Wen Ning surrenders to it, accepts the terrifying notion that he is beautiful and wanted, that the things he wants are good, that the things he does and will do to Cheng-er are good; that Wen Ning himself is, at the most basic level, good.
He listens to Cheng-er, kissing him slow and grateful until he’s gasping for breath. Wen Ning finds he can trust himself here too, with this man he cherishes, so he allows himself to follow his instincts to touch, cupping Cheng-er’s cheek, running his thumb along his kiss-slick lips. They’re soft and warm, just a little wind-chapped, and achingly familiar. It’s so nice to live in a world where he knows exactly what Jiang Wanyin’s lips feel like on his hands, his lips, his body.
Wanyin presses his face into Wen Ning’s palm, eyes fluttering closed. Wen Ning kisses him again, harder this time, reaching with body and qi, tangling one hand in his hair, clutching his ass with the other, and losing his very self in Cheng-er’s heat; when he squeezes, Cheng-er makes a little hitching sound into his mouth. He tastes like joy and laughter, safety and sunlight, like everything the half-dead boy he stitched together and carried from Lotus Pier had every right to be and Wen Ning loves him and loves him and loves him.
Every. Single. Part. He loves the Cheng-er that is grabbing his wrists and dragging Wen Ning’s oil-slippery hands down his body, perfectly wanton, gorgeous, confident. He loves Jiang Wanyin, the competent caregiver who threatens to break legs when he’s worried, who always worries but works so hard to control it. He loves Jiang-zongzhu, scrabbling with bleeding hands to build safety and comfort for his people and protect it. The fretting, the temper, even the horrible choices that hurt Wen Ning the most are there, and Wen Ning may not like them some days, but he loves those too because they are Wanyin.
Wen Ning tips back, taking Cheng-er with him, to lean against the crimson pillow pile, his partner busily sucking Wen Ning’s neck in a way that makes him moan even if it won’t mark. Cheng-er had found the oil bottle at some point; he pours some, messy, into his hands, and spends a moment re-positioning Wen Ning’s cock so he can grip them both. Wen Ning arches into the contact; he can feel Cheng-er’s need through his skin, powerful, radiant, drawing Wen Ning to soothe it, to take some of that luminous Wanyin-ness into his center and give back part of himself. He can feel himself answer with need of his own, meeting Cheng-er in every place he calls. Wen Ning briefly touches where Wanyin is stroking them together, collecting oil and precome both, basking in the velvety weight of Cheng-er’s cock in his hand, feeling it twitch both in his palm and against his length. Wanyin is muttering into his neck, occasionally words Wen Ning can make out, “Fuck,” and “Love,” and “Yes,” but also “Gege,” and “Qionglin”: he’s calling Wen Ning here, too.
Wen Ning opens his legs wider, making space, and slides his hand further down Cheng-er’s shivering body, cupping his balls, rubbing hard behind them a few times at Cheng-er’s prostate just to hear his voice grow strained. When Cheng-er remembers enough to still his hips, no longer thrusting into his hand, but relying fully upon the cadence of his arm, Wen Ning presses a finger into him. He quickly finds where touch will bring Cheng-er pleasure and commits himself to caressing his love from the inside. Soon enough, Cheng-er has given over to sensation entirely; Wen Ning can feel the instant it happens, in every place they connect: his mind goes quiet, the sounds he makes no longer contain even the barest semblance of words, he is clinging to Wen Ning with his free hand, pressing gasping, open-mouthed kisses onto every part of Wen Ning he can reach, his hips are stuttering needily against Wen Ning’s fingers then into his own fist in quick jerks. He knows nothing in this moment but Wen Ning and pleasure.
He is the most beautiful thing Wen Ning could ever imagine.
When he comes, Wen Ning makes sure he can hold himself back, feeding every joyful impulse completely back into Wanyin rather than partaking in it himself; he wants to see this more than he wants to feel it, he wants this one thing burned into his mind forever, where he can always recall what it looks like for everything to be so, so, achingly, wholly good.
Wen Ning cradles Cheng-er there, in the aftermath, holding him against his chest with one hand still inside him, Wanyin’s hand still curled around their cocks, covered in his spend. Even here, in the midst of so much yang energy, more aroused than he thinks he’s ever been, Wen Ning is very good at holding still. He does that now with his husband in his arms, waiting patiently for Cheng-er to come down, only moving to breathe with him, to tell him how perfect he is, how devotedly he loves him.
The first thing Cheng-er does upon returning to himself is kiss Wen Ning, deep and relaxed, infuriatingly unhurried in the face of how keyed-up Wen Ning is, but sweet, impressing on Wen Ning just a touch of his afterglow. Wen Ning finally withdraws from his lover’s body, easing movement and freeing both hands to better hold him, to take in the warm, contented hum thrumming along Wanyin’s skin.
The second thing Cheng-er does, still kissing Wen Ning, grinning against his mouth, is take Wen Ning’s cock in his seed-soaked hand. Wen Ning’s every nerve ending lights up in Cheng-er’s loose grip; his hips buck and he screams, a sound as loud and sudden as the sensation pulsing through him, hardening so fast he sees spots (and forgets to wonder how that works without blood). Wen Ning clings to Cheng-er, depends on him entirely while the only command he can put to his own body is to feel.
Cheng-er turns them, wrapping his arms around Wen Ning, clutching his length between his oil-slick thighs. It’s tight and hot and Wanyin is kissing and murmuring encouragement in his ear and oh, there’s still some connection between them—Wen Ning can feel the way Cheng-er’s thighs are working to clamp down on him as if they were his own, can feel just how twitchingly, achingly hard he is against the well-formed muscles and soft skin there.
He thinks it lasts longer than his last erection, but it still doesn’t feel like very much time at all before his release. Wanyin catches his every sound with his mouth and strokes his spine lovingly while he shakes apart.
This is better. This is so much better than anything Wen Ning has ever dared imagine, asleep or awake, alive or dead.
Everything is okay. Everything is beautiful and right.
Nothing hurts.
☥
One rainy spring afternoon following his and Wanyin’s official thing-ness ceremony, for the first time in his existence, Wen Ning meets a new person without awkwardness. It does feel different! He knew it! And now he knows!
It helps that the person in question is an entirely new person, like new to personhood, only a few weeks old. Jiefeng-shushu’s latest daughter stares up at Wen Ning from where she was unceremoniously deposited in his arms with big eyes and bigger cheeks. She looks just like a tiny Jiefeng, which is somehow cute instead of unsettling—it makes her look…friendly.
Wen Ning smiles at her and quietly introduces himself, letting the constant stream of chatter aimed mostly at Wanyin wash over him, her father’s burbling voice doubtless soothing them both. The child responds by gripping an escaped lock of Wen Ning’s hair in her little fist and refusing to let go, just like A-Yuan. Wen Ning doesn’t mind; baby-proof hair is one of the upsides of his condition he knew about even in the burial mounds.
Cheng-er is holding her twin, mostly listening attentively to Jiefeng-shushu’s long list of reasons his wife is amazing, but rocking the little one unconsciously, occasionally cooing and sniffing her milk-and-new-life scented head and a part of Wen Ning he never knew he possessed sits up and yearns.
Oh no.
Qin-sanshi-guniang yawns, and Wen Ning had forgotten babies even do that but it looks like they do and it’s so cute it makes his heart want to fall into his stomach and burrow its way out to safety.
When Wen Ning looks up, Wanyin meets his eyes, openly staring, and Jiefeng is beaming at both of them in turns.
“That’s the exact look Furen gave me when we were courting and she said she wanted so many children. Turns out she was serious about that!” the sect leader chortles.
That drops Wen Ning face first into an icy river. Crap. They need to talk. Yes, Wen Ning has quite recently realized he very much wants to raise a child with Cheng-er. Eventually. But not thirty. Where would they even find thirty loose children? Jiefeng-shushu has to be wrong, Cheng-er would never do that to them, it can’t be the exact same look…
A squeak escapes him. The infant in his arms whines and pulls his hair harder. Jiefeng and Wanyin laugh good-naturedly at the look on Wen Ning’s face and, yeah, they’ll talk; everything will be fine. He can trust that more every day.
☥
Finding a place at Lotus Pier, living and not-quite living, his husband’s spouse but not his wife, is the final shove Wen Ning needs towards understanding something important. He’s not sure if it’s about himself or life or their world, but he is positive the notion is important: nothing ever stops changing, not even the dead.
Finding something to live for, hopefully for joy, is not a problem Wen Ning can solve and have settled; it’s a constant balancing act. He wants so many things, and needs many of them to feel worthy of the air he sometimes breathes: Wen Ning wants to honor and remember his past and to build a future healed from past hurts and burdens. He wants to raise Sizhui, set him up for a good life with all of the affection and guidance a kid could want, and give him the space he needs to become his own adult. He wants to be friends with Wei Wuxian and still have the space to be furious about things the demonic cultivator has done to himself and people he loves. He wants to fit in with the cultivation world he grew up in, but not replicate it. A good existence is not in compromise, not in making himself and his needs smaller until he takes up only the space left between other’s wants and trying to be happy like that. It’s in constantly adapting to shifts in the world that will tip him woefully in one direction or another. And he can do that! Wen Ning is pretty smart and a good listener and all around a good guy. Now that he gets it, he could navigate his existence pretty well!
But it’s so much easier with a counterbalance. Wanyin is Wen Ning’s and he’s grateful for him every day. He feels where Wen Ning thinks, is fast where Wen Ning is measured. Where Wanyin’s desires turn into painful striving, Wen Ning is there to talk him down, and when Wen Ning’s habit of clinging to contentment drives him to resignation, Cheng-er is right there next to him, getting them moving. Autonomy and belonging, acceptance and growth: everything Wen Ning has ever struggled with seems now to come in pairs, and if he has ever tried sacrificing one at the altar of the other, he could bet good money that Wanyin has mirrored him. They were both working it out themselves when Wen Ning fell for Cheng-er, but building a solid life does go faster with twice the experience. Wen Ning can imagine life without Jiang Wanyin, but why would he ever want to?
There’s still a lot about Wen Ning’s existence he doesn’t know and never asked for, but love is easy and invited. Every day, he and Cheng-er wake up together and learn a little more about the rest.