Heeyy, so for the first ever prompt I request from you, I will like to ask anything related to Nie Huaisang in the Soulmate AU (preferably not sad stuff, but you can make me cry and I will say thank you, so I will be happy with whatever you decide to write ♡)
take some sad and happy nhs!
A year after his brother’s death, Nie Huaisang has more or less recovered from the grief of being without him.
He will never be his old self again, certainly; losing his da-ge saw to that, and if it hadn’t, then realizing that Jin Guangyao had murdered him would probably have finished the job. But Nie Huaisang can govern his sect, and hold himself together in public (except when he cries on purposes at conferences, so he doesn’t qi deviate at the sight of all the golden robes in Jin-zongzhu’s court) which is why no one suspects that he knows the truth about his da-ge’s passing, even Lan Xichen.
Not that Nie Huaisang would tell him, even if Xichen did suspect. Not this soon after Da-ge, anyway.
“I know you don’t like Jin Guangyao,” he murmurs, resting his cheek against Lan Jingyi’s fluffy little head. “You and me, we know the truth, don’t we?”
Somewhere in the distance, Lan Yuan trips over a rabbit and bursts into laughter as he tumbles into the soft grass--and barely a second later, baby A-Yi lets out a burbling chuckle of his own.
Huaisang isn’t vain enough to believe that his nephew was laughing at him, so he looks around and tickle’s the child’s cheek with his pointer finger to see if that might make him laugh again. A-Yi smiles, showing off two tiny teeth and a small pink tongue, but he doesn’t laugh; at least not until another loud giggle echoes from the spot where A-Yuan is assembling a rabbit council and crowning himself their emperor, making Jingyi squeal with delight and kick his chubby feet against Nie Huaisang’s chest.
“Oh,” Huaisang breathes, trying not to cry. A-Yuan does not notice, since his rabbit councilmen are staging a rebellion and trying to scatter towards their burrows, so Nie Huaisang covers Jingyi’s ears and turns his back to Lan Yuan--and every time A-Yuan laughs, Lan Jingyi laughs a tiny baby laugh of his own.
Zhiyin, Nie Huaisang realizes, as his little nephew starts whining in distress after too long spent out of A-Yuan’s field of view. Oh, A-Yi.
Lan Xichen is delighted with the news, and for the next several weeks, he and Lan Wangji and Nie Huaisang nearly weep with happiness every time the two cousins reflect each others’ laughter in concert, like a beam of light bouncing endlessly between two identical mirrors.
“They even look like each other,” Lan Qiren hums one day, seemingly unaware that Nie Huaisang is sitting close by and helping Lan Yuan comb his hair. “A-Yi, stand by your tang-ge, hm? Don’t let anyone separate you, ever.”
Unbidden, Nie Huaisang’s thoughts return to Jin Guangyao and then to his brother, who was forced to cast away his mingding zhiren and an unborn, unknown child of his blood in an attempt to protect them both--and then to Huaisang’s brother-in-law in all but name, who knelt before the gates to Nie Mingjue’s private quarters and begged his sworn zhiji to let him in after the fateful qi deviation that resulted in A-Yi’s birth.
They had both wept, slumped on either side of the gates while Nie Mingjue forced himself to remain away from his beloved and Lan Xichen cried out A-Jue, my zhiyin, come back to me, and then da-ge died without ever learning that he would have become father to a beautiful son only six months later.
Don’t worry, Lan-xiansheng, Huaisang thinks grimly. There will be no more separation, no matter what else that man’s father asks of him, and I’m going to drive him to ruin if it is the last thing I do.
