Hii! How are you, guys? I’m late, but alive. So this is day 12 of Beetober2021 from @bloody-bee-tea and the prompt is Frivolous. This is a sequence to the AU from Day 1 and Day 5, so if you want to read those, it would be good. Anyways, the word count is 1865 words and I hope you enjoy this!
Jiang Cheng felt Wei Wuxian's eyes at the top of his head and decided against saying anything about it. After all, it had been only three months since the cultivation world knew that he was alive and it would be asking too much for him to already be used to his presence there. Even more once his appearance was so different from what it would be if he was still a Jiang disciple.
His hair was shorter now than it had been when he died and his ears were pierced too, shining and glamorous earrings hanging from them almost every day and moment, and his robes were green now instead of purple. The braids on his hair were much more tight than they had been before and there was something different about the way that he walked. Or, at least, that was what Nie Huaisang said to him.
So, it wasn’t news that Wei Wuxian still stared at him every time they met, even if this was the tenth time they met again. After the revelation and the discussion with his father at the conference, both Wei Wuxian and Jiang Yanli had called him for a talk at Jinlin Tai and to say that the atmosphere was tense would be the understatement of the year. He let them talk as much as they wanted and when they were finally over, he said his side of the story and left, surprising himself with the fact that there were Nie disciples waiting for him at the foot of the stairs.
His siblings kept in touch after that and, slowly, their relationship started to be amended. Sometimes, it was them that came to him and others it was him that went for them, but it worked for them like that and, though there were many things still needing to be discussed, Jiang Cheng liked to think that they were getting close. Which made the fact that Wei Wuxian was staring at him like that right now very, very strange.
"When did you become so frivolous?" Wei Wuxian said and he lifted his head quickly.
"What the hell, Wei Wuxian?" He looked down at the green and elaborate robes that he was wearing. They were in the colors of the Nie with golden lines all of them and drawing trees and birds at the outer robe. The inner one was simpler and lighter in color, but it too had some embroidery that showed some flowers that he had no idea what they were. He sighed deeply because, yes, he shouldn't have let Nie Huaisang have free reign over his robes.
"You never cared about that kind of thing when we were younger! Why are you doing it now?" He said, pointing at his robes and earrings. "You are even using earrings and necklaces!" And he truly was. It was a simple necklace that he bought some months after becoming Nie Qinghua to the world and the disciples adopting him. They had dragged him out of the training field and into the city's market, showing as many things as they could before Nie Mingjue discovered that he had left and he saw it at one of the vendors.
"Wei Wuxian, please. I--" He started but he interrupted him with a lifted finger.
"No 'I died'. I know you died, but I want the real reason." His eyes were narrowed and he smiled sheepishly at him. It was a joke nowadays, that 'I died', and even the Nie disciples had picked on that. Everytime they wanted to get out of something, they would look people dead in the eye and say 'I can't do this. I died' or 'While you were playing and joking with your friends, I died studying the blade.' He didn't know if he should be proud or exasperated at that. "When did you become so frivolous?"
"Never let A-Yu hear you saying that. She will fight against you for that." He let out a sigh because yes, the girl would fight him and Mingjue would enable her and then they would cause a war. "I actually liked these before but I never felt comfortable wearing them."
"Why not?" He asked and Jiang Cheng couldn't help but look at him as if he was crazy. Because he surely remembered that every time he tried to change his appearance, his mother would scream at him, would say that no respectable heir cared more about their appearances than about their cultivation and that he should be ashamed of himself for that. Wei Wuxian was almost always there and Madam Yu never failed to blame him too, even if it was only Jiang Cheng's fault. "Oh, yeah. That." Wei Wuxian said after he only stared at him, nodding pensively. "But back then your accessories weren't so… Er, how do I say that?"
"Weren't so eye-catching? Sparkling? Fancy? Elaborate?" Jiang Cheng suggested, amused at the way that Wei Wuxian nodded almost childishly. "Yeah, that's Huaisang's fault. Those first months I was living here, he made it his personal mission to dress me up and back then it made sense because I was his cousin and everything." That and because he always cared for his appearances and really liked the robes he brought for him to approve.
"And now?" He prompted, lifting an eyebrow.
"I got used to it. I feel underdressed when it isn't something like this that I'm wearing." He shrugged, throwing his bangs back and putting his head to the side. "Any other questions?"
"What about the earrings?" Wei Wuxian said, pointing at them and he lifted his hand to touch one of them.
"Nie Mingjue." He answered simply because it had been Mingjue that bought and gave them to him two days ago. They were made of an elaborate golden chain that was long enough to reach his shoulders and had a green gem at the end of it. It had been a spontaneous present, according to him, something he had seen at the market and thought of him. "They were a present."
"Those ones? A present?" He said, face carefully blank as he pointed at them. "Cool." He nodded, before pointing over his shoulders. "I have to get going, I have a compromise now, but later I'll come back."
"Okay. Until later." Jiang Cheng looked up to him, nodding as his brother smiled and went away. He knew that this was very uncharacteristic for his brother and that there was something wrong with or that he didn't like in the conversation, but they weren't like they were before yet and he didn't want to overstep. So he let him go without further explanations and went on with his own day. There were so many things he needed to do that if he didn't start right away, he was never going to finish.
He tried to not think much about what Wei Wuxian had said and let that get to him. By far, he had done an impressive job of avoiding it and was still doing, but every second that passed the same thought kept appearing in front of his mind. 'When did I become so frivolous?' Every time it appeared, it was pushed to the end of his mind, but sometimes he let it linger for a moment too long and answers would appear, one after the other, one worse than the other.
At the end of the day, his head was exploding in pain and all he wanted to do was lay down and sleep until the next morning, but he still had to go to dinner and if he skipped it, Nie Huaisang would descend on him like a hawk. Wei Wuxian hadn't come back after that hour and Jiang Cheng tried to not think too much about it, after all, it wasn't his fault that the asshole had probably forgotten about coming back and was drinking somewhere. He was heading back to the dining hall when a scream came behind him.
"Nie-guwen!" Nue Daiyu and Nie Li called out, waving at him smiling happily, but with his head hurting like that, it only served for him to wince.
"What?" Jiang Cheng snapped, furrowing his eyebrows and turning to them in time to see the flinching too. "Sorry, it's just that --"
"Wei-gongzi talked to you too, right?" Nie Daiyu said, furrowing her forehead and looking at him.
"Yeah. How do you know that?" He asked, fully turning to them and seeing Nie Li pointing to the corridor they came from.
"Because he is talking with Nie-zongzhu right now and we heard screams." The kid said, overly happy at the fact and Jiang Cheng only smiled at him. He was one of the youngest of that generation, but, like his name suggested, he was powerful and had potential. "Daiyu-shijie heard something along the lines of 'pervert' and 'proposal'."
"And you didn't go in to interrupt him?" He turned to her and she only shrugged, clearly angry at the fact. "Why didn't you?"
"Because Nie-zongzhu told me not to. He said that he would deal with him alone and that there was no need for us to worry." She said, crossing her arms and pouting.
"Obviously, Daiyu-shijie decides to stay a little bit more and, after some minutes, Wei-gongzi started screaming about how Nie-zongzhu was a pervert and he better propose to someone before Yunmeng Jiang descended on him like death itself." Nie Li added and he lifted his eyebrows at him because what the hell?
"What the fuck?" He whispered and ignored the way that their eyebrows lifted at the cuss, trying to remember why Wei Wuxian would do that to Nie Mingjue. Was he drunk? Probably, but he still didn't think it was that. He never drank when he was serious about something and he seemed serious about that compromise of his earlier.
"Didi!" Wei Wuxian's voice reached the corridor before he did and he snapped his head up to see him sliding in and running to him. "Don't you worry 'bout a thing, Didi. Gege is going to make sure that everything is done properly!" He exclaimed, grabbing both his arms and shaking him a little before kissing both his cheeks and running away. "You'll see, everything is going to be done properly!" He screamed one more time before disappearing in the corridors.
"What the hell is he on?" Jiang Cheng said and Nie Li shrugged beside him while Nie Daiyu scowled at his brother.
"Filial piety." Nie Mingjue said and the three of them turned around to stare at him. "C'mon, let's get to dinner before I get any other threat to my life and intimate parts." He pushed them ahead slightly and started walking.
"What?!" He looked up to him, eyes wide, while Nie Li stared at them shocked and Nie Daiyu narrowed her eyes and said.
"I'm going to kill him."
"No need. And, apparently, I've done a lot of things wrong, I am a pervert and he's going to make sure that everything is right." He shrugged and Jiang Cheng turned to the corridor where Wei Wuxian had disappeared and felt his eyebrows furrowing. And all of that because of a pair of earrings?
