Huaisang has found himself in a situation.

The Cloud Recesses are mild this time of year. He’s waiting for Wei Wuxian outside the library pavilion in a rare scrap of peace, slouched against the outer wall. The latticed windows offer him a view inside that he chooses not to take, preferring to track the dance of swaying branches.

None of this is of any importance to the situation – the situation being that there are two of him, seated side-by-side. He chooses, for the benefit of his sanity, that this is an older Huaisang, because he doubts he could dispatch something malicious on his own. Regardless, he’s on high alert, bristling slightly, preparing to scream.

Huaisang-ge observes his own face in profile, intent on the shifting, tensing muscles of his jaw. His expression is something neighboring calculating, laid bare when faced with another version of himself. There are thumbprint bruises under his eyes, and he’s haggard when compared to the well-fed youthfulness of Huaisang-di.

“Don’t scream,” he says at last, shrugging off the head-shaker as easily as he would an outer layer.

“I-I’ll do it. Wei-gongzi is right inside, you know.”

“I know.”

They sit two abreast for the length of time it takes a leaf to spiral its idle way down the length of its trunk.

“How did you get inside the Cloud Recesses?” Hauisang-di asks, remembering his facilities. What flows downriver must snag on the rocks, no matter how swift the current. Hauisang’s experience in the Orchid Room is no different. From his lessons and personal experience thusly: there are wards on the Cloud Recesses, and a rugged path up to the walls. The Heavens themselves couldn’t be better warded against evil.

“I woke up next to you on this bench.”

Huaisang-di can’t bring himself to turn his head. “Now really,” he snips as though he isn’t shaking. “No kidding? I’m not stupid, you know.”

“You should remember it. I wasn’t there, and then I was.”

“Well, I wasn’t really looking. I have better things to be doing.”

“You’re playing truant outside of the Library Pavilion,” Huaisang-ge says, measured. “You’re imagining Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji dual cultivating, and you’re not looking into the window because it would spoil your fantasy.”

Huaisang-di flushes a violent red from his ears to what disappears into the neck of his robes.

“You’ve been thinking of taking off your shoes and walking in the stream, but you never will because you’re afraid of being caught. The water will be colder than you think because it’s sourced from the cold springs. You’d rather be painting fans, but you’re afraid to stay in one place for too long. You love your games, especially when nobody realizes you’re playing them, and nobody will ever know unless you want them to.

“You can’t deny it,” says Huaisang-ge, delivering the finishing blow. “I am you.”

They steal away to Huaisang-di’s quarters, empty in the afternoon. His Emperor’s Smile is stashed alongside the pornography under the floorboards. It’s very likely that Huaisang-ge knows this, but he’s polite enough not to exercise any sort of proper authority while Huaisang-di busies himself making room for Hauisang-ge to sit. All available surfaces are buried under sleeves and hems and ink sets and fans. Huaisang-di is as untidy as he is unmotivated.

He can’t bring himself to look directly at his strange counterpart. From glances out of the corners of his eyes, Hauisang-ge is familiar, but distorted. His reflexive smile is dim, his skin wan. It would be impossible to notice the changes day-by-day, but Hauisang-di imagines looking up and catching sight of his reflection in a mirror across the room, blanching in stark shock. He takes care of his appearance as diligently as a young master should, so it’s as good of an answer as any to a question he never had: he’s unsuccessful at cultivating immortality, and the years take their toll. Da-ge must have backed off, must have lost faith in him. It’s a sour taste on his tongue, one that doesn’t settle well. He swallows it away and gestures for Hauisang-ge to sit, and immediately regrets it.

“It’s no use trying to cultivate a golden core,” Hauisang-ge sits, hides his hands away in his sleeves. “Let yourself be useless. Indulge in fine things and be vain.”

“Is that what you did?” Huaisang-di asks, taking the rare chance to be bold and flippant. “Is that why Da-ge let you let yourself go? You can’t be me, I’d never let myself turn into this.”

Huaisang-ge’s smile is uncanny. The sunlight drops away, undercut by a whispery breeze. A strand of dark hair blows across his cheek, and Hauisang-di finally looks. His mirror’s eyes are dark, endless, and sad. It’s impossible to tell his age, because nothing is extricable from the sadness suffusing his features. It’s horrible – cloying and horrible.

Huaisang-di ignores it.

“You really did stop trying, didn’t you? I may be lazy, but at least I try!”

“You only try because you’re scared of what will happen if you don’t.”

“Why did you come back here?”

Huaisang-ge pauses. It’s obvious, to Huaisang-di, that he’s chewing the inside of his cheek to a bloody pulp, a habit he dropped before he lost his last milk tooth.

“I woke up here,” he says, stubborn to a fault.

“There must be a reason.”

“There probably is.”

Huaisang-di bristles. “I’m not stupid,” he insists again. “You must know why you’re here.”

In lieu of an answer, Huaisang-ge says, “Wei-gongzi will be looking for you. You should leave before he finds me here. I’ll be here after dinner.”

And Huaisang-di goes.

His mind wanders all through dinner and sword forms with Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng. He thinks about Da-ge and begins composing a letter in his head that expertly avoids the subject at hand. He laughs in all the right places, eyes crinkling while his mouth remains a fixed line behind his fan. Jiang Cheng tackles Wei Wuxian. They both go flying into the stream. The water is cold through his robes, and the sun begins to set. There’s a secret in his room.

They’re back before hai time, piling into the dormitory and filling the halls with their clamor. The lights are pitched down low, easy to extinguish in the event of supervision.

“I should go to sleep earlier tonight,” says Huaisang, pressing his heels together outside of his door. Wei Wuxian supplies him with a lie, an easy smile, and a glint of clever eyes.

“Ah, Nie-gongzi, greedy, greedy Nie-gongzi – keeping new reading material all for yourself?”

“Shh,” Huaisang hushes theatrically. He simpers, leaning in as if in secret council. “I’m checking for quality, you know. I’d feel so terrible for supplying Wei-gongzi with anything less than the best!”

“Leave him alone, you have enough to read,” Jiang Cheng chides. He turns, eyes narrowed at Huaisang. “You’re enabling him.” And that’s that. Wei Wuxian is dragged off by the wrist, smiling apologetically, someone yells for them to settle down, and the hall is empty. Huaisang clenches and unclenches his jaw. He closes his eyes. The afterimage of a lantern lingers.

“Something terrible happens,” Hauisang-di says to Huaisang-ge, who is right where he left him.

Something terrible happens.

Many terrible things happen.

Huaisang-ge’s eyes are dead. He’s given up. He’s nothing but the rage he never learned how to foster, his ill-fitting inheritance. That, more than anything, cements Huaisang-ge as Huaisang-ge. Huaisang-di doubts anyone else would see what he sees in his own eyes – not even Da-ge. Especially not Da-ge, all high hopes and willful ignorance.

He surprises himself before he can think. He’s looping his arms around Hauisang-ge’s shoulders, clinging the way he always has and always will. His face is buried in his own neck, and he smells like himself beneath some sort of floral soap – fear-sweat and exhaustion. Hauisang’s heard that mortals sweat their youth out through their pores until they’re twisted and dry as shoe-leather.

Hauisang-ge is cautious, his hands hovering over Hauisang-di’s back. His fingers never get long like Er-ge’s, nor do they become stout and calloused like Da-ge’s, and Huaisang-di pulls away before his hands can find rest. He doesn’t get far. Huaisang-ge takes him by the wrist, draws him back. His fingers are cold, he holds Huaisang-di’s hand to his heartbeat, skipping, unsteady, but strong.

“There are always things to be happy about, too,” Huaisang-di says quietly, surprising even himself. “Like the springtime, and new books, and good friends, and good wine.”

Cold fingers go slack. Huaisang-ge hides his face.

“Lie down, there’s enough room for you in here. I don’t know how you got here, but you can go in the morning, right?”

“I’ll try.”

“You’re too old to wallow,” Huaisang-di fusses, getting comfortable in his ruffled feathers, a puffed-out mother hen at all of seventeen years. “And too ugly not to sleep. Getting to bed on time would do a number on those eyebags.”

Huaisang-ge huffs out the suggestion of a laugh. “And you’re planning to sleep with me?”

“Well,” Huaisang-di stumbles, just a bit. “We’re the same person. I don’t see any reason not to.”

So they settle, two abreast, at once parallel and intersecting, and Huaisang-di edges closer on instinct. He’s shared a bed with Da-ge before, all warm decadence, a rare treat from such an industrious brother. Huaisang-ge is different from him and different from Da-ge – similarly shaped, but stretched lanky, some variety of long-legged that never grew into himself. Huaisang-di sighs out his tension, breathes it back in. It’s hard to sleep next to Huaisang-ge. He itches with everything he doesn’t want to know but aches to ask.

“Are you asleep?” He whispers, the only question he’ll allow.

“No.”

They don’t speak. The wind sweeps down the mountainside, as low and sustained as the sky’s exhale.

“You’re not actually ugly,” says Huaisang-di. “I think you’re very beautiful, just also a bit tired. Is that vain?”

“Yes.”

“Well then I’m vain. I bet you have plenty of suitors. I bet Da-ge married you off to some greasy old man for the dowry and then he went and died on you, but you found out he was destitute after you were widowed and you had to move back in with Da-ge to spend three years of your life mourning a husband you never cared for. Am I right?”

Huaisang-ge snorts. “No.”

“Hm. Well, is Wei-gongzi still beautiful too?”

“He dies beautiful, and then he comes back thirteen years later in a different body,” Huaisang-ge pauses for dramatic effect. “A very beautiful body that he uses to chase after Lan Wangji.”

“Well now I know you’re lying to me,” Huaisang-di sighs. “That’s alright, I’ll marry gross-gege for Da-ge. It’s fine if it’s for Da-ge.”

“That’s good, that’s good. You won’t need a golden core, see? Didn’t I tell you?”

“Yes,” Huaisang-di yawns, turning into Huaisang-ge’s flank. “You told me.”

He fits just right against his own clavicle. Huaisang-ge laces their fingers together. His hands are warmer, and with their wrists arranged just right, Huaisang-di can feel his heartbeat.

Huaisang doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he wakes up alone, sprawled in the middle of his bed. His room is all the same – his robes are strewn every which way, his fans are drying in a row on the windowsill, a brush dried blotting its ink onto the floor.

He scrambles up only when he realizes that the ink is leaking down in the crevice between the floorboards – between two specific floorboards. He pries them up, nearly losing a fingernail in the process, all for the pride and joy of his collection. It’s a thin, unobtrusive volume detailing the high-stakes erotic adventures of a wayward young master who betrayed his sect in favor of earthly temptations, and it’s gone.

“I take it back, I hope you’re never happy again,” Huaisang says aloud, tipping his head back just to whine.

– But he can’t stay mad for long. He has a letter to write and an order to place. There’s a specialty shop in Qinghe that should have what he’s now looking to replace. It’s a gentle day, perfect for wasting with Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng, so long as they’re back in time for Wei Wuxian’s punishment. Huaisang’s heart skips just once. He doesn’t linger on it. He smooths the floorboards back down, plucks a fan off the sill, and begins the slow process of forgetting.