Another Mixed Concept And Scene Snippet Post From Twitter. This One I Actually Hammered Out A Quick Ending

Another mixed concept and scene snippet post from twitter. This one I actually hammered out a quick ending to!

Nie Huaisang is the insecure one of the relationship for a change. 

Even though they’ve been together from the end of lectures all the way through the Sunshot Campaign, even though Jiang Cheng always turns them down, even though Jiang Cheng chased off the matchmakers, there's always someone drawn in by Jiang Cheng’s pretty face or the allure of the Jiang-furen. 

And, eventually, Jiang Cheng will have to find himself a wife. 

An actual wife. 

Nie Huaisang can handle dealing with merchants and accounts and stuff like that, he’d even force himself to do it for the rest of his life if he has to, but there's so much more that would be expected of a wife and even if he were to learn it all, the etiquette and everything, he's still not a woman. He can’t give Jiang Cheng heirs of his own bloodline, and he knows how important that is.

So even though he does his best to help out with rebuilding the Pier, Nie Huaisang makes himself scarce if there's even a hint of flirting because if this is going to be the one that Jiang Cheng reciprocates, he doesn't want to be there to see it.

He even stays through the fallout and the first siege, only for a new problem to pop up as the dust settles.

On top of everything else, Jin Ling can’t stand him. Even at that age where babies are upset about everything, it's clear Nie Huaisang is his least favorite adult, even though Nie Huaisang is doing his best, and is actually doing things correctly 95% of the time.

It's absolutely crushing. It's worse than the flirting, worse than the proposal letters, because he knows more than anything, Jiang Cheng needs a partner who can do right by his nephew.

As Jin Ling howls angrily in his arms, only to immediately quiet as soon as someone else takes him, Nie Huaisang finally starts contemplating throwing in the towel and letting Jiang Cheng find someone who actually deserves to be by his side. 

And eventually… he does give up and break things off. 

Not wanting to leave Jiang Cheng feeling like he's in the wrong, he explains everything before he quietly goes back to Qinghe.

Unbeknownst to him, Jiang Cheng takes this as a challenge. 

Nie Huaisang left because people wanted him to marry better? Fine! He finally accepts the matchmakers' attempts to set him up, and then purposely bombs the dates. When rumors start getting out, he pays the matchmakers to support them.

He can't do anything about the fact that Jin Ling doesn't like Nie Huaisang, and that guts him, because his nephew comes first. But Jin Ling's a baby, surely his opinion will change as he grows? 

Right?

He can make this work. He will make this work.

It's been a year and a half since he and Nie Huaisang have seen each other in person, but they've been tentatively exchanging letters. 

When Jiang Cheng arrives at the conference in Qinghe, he takes the first day to gather his nerves. On the second day, he thinks he's ready.

And then the screaming panic erupts in the courtyard.

---

From there, it goes as canon did. Nie Huaisang grows distant as he sinks into grief and revenge and Jiang Cheng throws himself into running the sect and raising Jin Ling. 

(Neither of them ever tells Jin Ling about their history together, so he grows up having never known they were even an item, just that Nie Huaisang is that weird annoying guy who's always pestering shushu. Ironic that he ends up remaining completely disdainful of Nie Huaisang his whole childhood, but for totally different reasons.)

It's painful and bewildering to see the way Nie Huaisang acts around Lan Xichen and Jin Guangyao, because Nie Huaisang wasn't that clingy with him even when they were lovers.

(Once the final confrontation at the temple concludes, Jiang Cheng realizes that Nie Huaisang might have been shielding him from All Of That, but he's still kind of hurt and confused.)

Something forces them to talk: Jin Ling eventually does find out about their backstory.

Not the actual backstory, of course, but during a 'friendly' night hunt, Wei Wuxian offhandedly muses about the fact that Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang aren't together anymore.

Wait, when were they ever together???? 

"Oh, it ended before you were even old enough to remember?" Wei Wuxian asks. "Though I guess that's not surprising, since you were only three when Chifeng-zun died."

"It was probably because even they couldn't stand each other for long," Lan Jingyi says, earning a swat from Ouyang Zizhen.

But Wei Wuxian just grins and says "Yeah, that's probable, too," or something like that. Jin Ling doesn't really hear it clearly because he's already mad and stewing in his own thoughts.

His jiujiu-! With that guy-!

And he's going to get to the bottom of this. Since his jiujiu never said anything about Nie-zongzhu all those years, good or bad, he knows he won't get any information that way, and even though he grew up seeing Nie-zongzhu as a silly harmless annoyance, recent discussions mean he doesn't feel comfortable going to the Unclean Realms either.

Time to start asking the Jiang sect’s second-in-command some questions. 

---

Jin Ling doesn’t get much, but he gets enough that he knows he’s going to have to press Nie-zongzhu for the full story. 

So he sucks up his nerve and heads to the Unclean Realms.

He’s received with little fanfare, but when Nie Huaisang offers tea, he can tell by the smell that it’s his jiujiu’s favorite, and he can’t help but wonder which of them loved it first.

It throws him off guard enough that rather than the snippy confrontation he had been planning on the way over, the first question out of his mouth is “Do you regret any of it?”

Nie Huaisang tilts his head, expression uncomfortably probing. Jin Ling braces himself for the usual deflections and protestations of ignorance, but whatever Nie Huaisang sees makes him simply sigh instead. “Your shenshen. I never predicted she would react the way she did. I thought she would go home to her parents.”

“What about the cu- Mo Xuanyu? Did you make him do it?”

“No. It was his idea to begin with, actually. But there was a possibility, however small, that I could have stopped him, and I never tried.”

Jin Ling is… not sure exactly how he feels about the answers he’s been given. But he does believe them. So he closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, lets it out… and without any of the irritation he’d been carrying with him on the way, asks the question that has really sparked this visit.

“Did you break up with jiujiu because of me?”

Nie Huaisang chokes on his tea. “Where did you hear that from?” he wheezes after getting the coughing under control.

“Not any one person in particular. I heard you’d been together from shijiu, and started putting the pieces together after talking to some others,” Jin Ling only partially lies, not wanting to put his jiujiu’s second in any possible line of fire. “Did you?”

Nie Huaisang rubs between his eyes, and it looks like he won’t answer at first. “It wasn’t your fault,” he finally says. “There were over a dozen different issues that probably would have sunk us eventually. We’d been keeping the relationship quiet during the rebuilding, so there were potential wives being tossed in his path constantly, none of which I could measure up to.”

“He would have picked you anyway,” Jin Ling says, eyes narrowed. “So tell me the real reason.”

“I did. Choosing me would have only put more stress on him, especially since-”

“Since what?”

“Since nothing.”

“So it did have something to do with me.”

“Jin-zongzhu-”

“Tell me,” Jin Ling insists, practically leaning over the table.

Nie Huaisang scrubs his face with his hands. “Fine. Fine. I hated seeing how miserable he was having to split time between us because you screamed yourself blue if someone tried to hand you to me. I wasn’t going to make him choose, and I wasn’t going to make him feel guilty when he inevitably chose you. It was better for both of you to just take myself out of the running.”

Jin Ling sits back down and processes this, remembering all the times he’d heard his jiujiu absolutely shut down a dinner date with anyone. How he always changed the subject when Jin Ling brought up the question of why he hadn't married yet.

He must have been missing Nie Huaisang the whole time, and it’s clear just from watching Nie Huaisang during this discussion that he’d been hurting too. And yet they’d never breathed a word about it around him because they didn’t want him thinking he’d ruined things for them.

“Okay,” he says finally. “I’m summoning jiujiu here and we’re discussing this in full.”

“What?”

—

Things finally seem to be going well. With Jin Ling's blessing, Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang are tentatively mending the bond between them.

And then a night hunt goes horribly wrong, with Jiang Cheng taking a blow that would have killed his nephew and once-shixiong. Much to everyone's surprise, including his own, he ascends.

As a god of devotion.

He laughs until he realizes the other gods are serious, and then he's bewildered and angry because why him?

Worst of all, he can't leave the heavens without permission for literal years because he has to 'settle in' first, which just seems like a lot of bureaucratic bullshit to him.

—

Of course he goes to Jin Ling first, who's now fully-grown and well-established, but still greets him with tears and a fierce hug like a kid. After they've spent almost the whole day catching up, Jin Ling suddenly gets very quiet and serious. "You might want to go see Huaisang next. Before it's too late."

Jiang Cheng stiffens. "I was already planning on it, but what the hell do you mean 'too late'?"

"He's... really not been doing well since you ascended. I think the only things still keeping him alive at this point are his promise to his brother and the fact that the disciples insist on taking care of him even though he abdicated."

Jiang Cheng feels sick, because he knows.

He knows why.

He thanks Jin Ling and, in a blink, he's at the Unclean Realms. Ignoring the stunned reactions, he turns to the man he recognizes as having been the head disciple the last time he visited and is likely the sect leader now. "Where is he?"

He's guided to a set of rooms deep in the side of the mountain, where the only light is from torches and lanterns and candles. When he enters the door indicated for him, the sight inside makes his stomach drop.

Nie Huaisang is sleeping on a bed of furs and soft pillows, an array Jiang Cheng can't identify stitched over the chest of carefully arranged robes. Despite the fact that his face is still smooth and unlined, there are silver streaks among the braids in his hair. He's far too thin and just... looks ill. 

Kneeling beside the low bed, Jiang Cheng reaches out to touch his cheek, his hair, something, but his presence rouses his former lover before he can make contact.

Nie Huaisang blinks at him, then smiles, but his gaze isn't focusing right. "Ah, Cheng-er, look at you," he murmurs, barely audible. "Always knew you were too good for a monster like me."

—

Nie Huaisang only lives long enough to complete the purification ritual.

Jiang Cheng decides to remain on earth, waiting. He passes the time by occasionally checking in with the sect, or with Jin Ling, or even with Wei Wuxian, the shock of his ascension having forced them to have some very weighty conversations.

It takes another fifty years, but eventually he crosses paths with a young man who has familiar green eyes and an even more familiar infectious laugh.