hiii 😌 [nervous] a snippet from smth im working on under the cut bc 👉👈 im tryna get comfortable writing again
(aka it was me trying to get into huaisangs head......i place this post canon <3)
Nie Huaisang can’t help but feel that it’s genetic sometimes—anger. It’s something that wraps around his bones like a slip, deep and consuming; taunting. It’s silly, he knows. The Nie Family wasn’t prone to anger since birth: how could he forget his da-ge from the years they had together before Huaisang’s older brother had had to take up the family mantle himself at an age that was younger than Huaisang himself when he’d had to.
(The year he’d reached his own twenty-sixth year had felt like an empty, choking force. Each year since had not, indeed, been easier.)
Yet it was his companion, his bedfellow, for a decade. It was as easy to grab and wield in his weaker moments as it was to take his favourite fan in hand and play the fool; as easy as it had been to refuse it for almost as long as it held him. Now it was getting as hard to put down as it was the ’Head-Shaker’ act.
Except, he feared, the anger seemed to be what his new normal was. He no longer could fall into his old haunts, hobbies, and habits without a weight settling on him, the side effect of them being apart of his play. Painting fans no longer calmed him: instead reminding him of Nie Mingjue’s insistence that they were a dalliance he couldn’t afford, reminding him of Jin Guangyao’s spoiling.
(Occasionally he ached for his brother to be able to see him now, but he also knew that from the outside looking in, his carefully strung together image would only anger the Chifeng-Zun…but surely his da-ge would be able to see through him immediately? He always knew when they were children.)
He still never picked up the sabre in any serious manner. His own blade stayed something that was kept at over twenty zhang away from him at all times, but it didn’t seem to matter. Sometimes he still found himself seeing red, waking up with resentment nipping at his heels in a way that made him feel like he’d gone through the years of sabre training again in one night. Those moments, seeing an earlier dawn than even the GusuLan, Huaisang would find himself in his personal library, losing himself in the research he’d originally started for his brother.
In those moments, he knew Nie Mingjue’s fear of leaving more than ever like a cage around his lungs.
