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Wen Qing steps onto the veranda and stops by one of the pillars. A-Ning crouches a few steps ahead of her, fanning the brewing medicine with quick, irregular motions, and she allows herself a sigh. He would never say, but she knows he’s frustrated with her, and although she stands by what she said, she regrets snapping at him.
Well, she snapped at Wei Wuxian. That she doesn’t feel guilty about. But it was a-Ning who offered; it was his idea she shot down so harshly.
“Even motions, a-Ning,” she says, folding her skirts into her bending knees as she lowers herself into a crouch next to him. A-Ning huffs, so quietly she barely hears it, but he complies and slows his fanning to a deliberate, regular rhythm.
Neither of them says anything as Wen Qing leans forward slightly to fan the steam towards her nose, humming in approval at the almost perfect smell.
“A little more danshen,” she decides.
A-Ning mumbles a sound that might be a yes. Adds a little more danshen.
“You know why I said no, a-Ning.”
He flaps the fan one, two, three times.
“I want to help them,” he says quietly.
“Not—” She cuts herself off, exhaling the harshness before she tries again. “I understand. But I won’t let you do it at the expense of your own health.”
“I can handle a bite, Jie.”
Maybe. But that’s not her problem. “Jiang Wanyin is starving. He’s in no state to reliably exercise self-control.”
A-Ning glances at her from the corner of his eyes and doesn’t answer.
She doesn’t understand why he’s so hell-bent on this. Wei Wuxian is kind of his friend, she supposes, but Jiang Wanyin is not, at least she doesn’t think so. They don’t owe him anything.
Wen Chao took Lotus Pier. Qishan Wen did. She and a-Ning, Dafan Wen, have nothing to do with this. But no matter how many times she tells him, she doubts a-Ning shares her view.
He wouldn’t have brought them here otherwise. And he shouldn’t have. But—Wen Qing sighs, closing her eyes for a second—Jiang Wanyin, for all intents and purposes, is her patient now.
She takes a small jar from her sleeve, holding it between a thumb and two fingers. A-Ning’s eyes zero in on it immediately, happy disbelief lighting up his face.
“Jie?”
“I,” she says at length, folding up her left sleeve, “will do it. But the moment Jiang Wanyin is better, they’re gone and we don’t meddle in things that aren’t our business anymore. Understood?”
“Yes, Jie,” a-Ning says, and takes the numbing salve from her fingers to spread it on the inside of her wrist with careful attentiveness. He won and he knows it. “Will you be fine? Should I go with you?”
He closes the jar, and Wen Qing stands with a sigh. “Even if he doesn’t pace himself, I can handle more qi loss than you. And I’m taking my needles with me. Don’t worry.”
She hasn’t told Wei Wuxian and Jiang Yanli, both still brewing in the frustration of not being able to help their brother, but she’s sure a-Ning will inform them in short order. Better him dealing with their emotions than her.
They don’t have any blood on hand in the Supervisory Office. The Wen soldiers don’t settle for preserved blood anymore when there are entire towns and cities where they can freely take their pick of human civilians. Most have the common sense not to drink them all dry; blood and qi replenishes only when the body is alive. Not all of them do, though. Wen Qing distances herself from the thought with years of practice and keeps their bedroom doors lined with peach wood.
She arrives at Jiang Wanyin’s room, and takes a good look at him as she closes the door behind her and approaches the bed. With the needles still in his scalp, he’s lying unnaturally still, looking more dead than undead. There is no movement of lungs to look for; no pulse to check. His skin has a grey pallor to it, almost translucent with the near emptiness of the body it covers, and it’s a miracle he hasn’t succumbed yet.
He needs blood and the qi with it desperately, but there is no easy solution. Bringing back a human from Yiling was out of the question, even if they found someone willing; the city is brimming with Wen soldiers and they know full well that Wen Qing and Wen Ning, being from Dafan Wen, are not xixue ren. Getting caught bringing in a living blood bag for themselves would invite questions, and there is no guarantee that whoever they managed to sneak in the compound wouldn’t rat them out, anyway.
Both Wei Wuxian and Jiang Yanli would have gladly and readily volunteered instead, and in a different world that could have been the perfect solution—in a world where they were human, that is. There’s no use giving a dying xixue ren the blood of his kind.
But Wen Qing and her brother are human. And a-Ning, curse his self-sacrificial kindness and generosity, offered to let Jiang Wanyin drink from him.
“Absolutely not,” she snapped when she finally found her words, but by that point, there were grateful tears in Jiang Yanli’s eyes and Wei Wuxian had worked himself into a proper frenzy of excitement. He rounded on Wen Qing with eyes that, for a heartbeat, flashed a blinding, brilliant grey.
“Do you want him to die?”
She had her own brother to worry about. “Find a different solution,” she said, and grabbing a-Ning by the arm, she stormed out.
Wei Wuxian is probably still in the library, trying to do just that, but his endeavors have become moot the moment Wen Qing decided to take out the salve. Now, she sits down on the bed next to Jiang Wanyin’s motionless body and wonders why the hell she’s even doing this. The xixue ren of Nightless City send her hungry, chilling looks day in and day out, but she is Wen Ruohan’s personal attendant and they all know better than to try anything with her or her brother. She’s never been drunk from in her life.
And here she is anyway.
She folds down the covers to expose Jiang Wanyin’s white-clothed torso, and putting the back of two fingers against his sternum, she smooths down a path to his lower dantian to gauge his qi. She barely feels anything at all.
Zhibing jiuren, she hears the echo of her mother’s instruction. It’s only the words she remembers; the voice she long since can’t recall anymore. Cure the sickness to save the patient.
This is probably not what she meant. Wen Qing lifts her hand, and probing her left wrist with a clinical sort of detachment, she determines it to be sufficiently numb. Steels herself, and takes the acupuncture needles from Jiang Wanyin’s scalp.
He comes to with difficulty. His death-smooth face crumples in a frown, eyes moving beneath closed lids; his fingers twitch, half there claws catching on the bedding. When his head twitches ever so slightly to the side and he opens his eyes, his gaze is, unnervingly, already on her.
“How do you feel?”
Jiang Wanyin’s pupils are so dilated that his eyes almost appear to be their natural dark colour—his rich purple irises ring them like wire. He opens his chapped lips, but closes them when he can’t form a reply, and whether that’s because her words didn’t truly register or it’s just speech that he’s having trouble with, Wen Qing has no way of knowing for sure.
She barely lifts her numbed wrist when his eyes turn to it with frightening speed and accuracy.
“You need to eat,” she says, and properly offers her arm.
He grabs her forearm with one hand, crushes her fingers together with the other, and hauls himself up with a sudden strength he didn’t have a second ago. Wen Qing’s breath catches in her throat with a flinch, a reaction that must seem belated to him, and he bends over her wrist with such a sharp arch to his spine that it cannot be comfortable. She expects the descent of piercing teeth.
It doesn’t come. She opens her eyes—when did she even close them?—and sees him still hovering there, panting breaths he doesn’t need against her dampening wrist. He swallows loudly enough to hear.
“What’re,” he rasps, trembling with the effort not to move, “what’re you doing?”
“Saving your life.” His grip tightens around Wen Qing’s arm and hand, a claw digging into the inside of her elbow. She doesn’t understand why he’s hesitating—she’s surprised he can at all—but he needs to eat and she’s already resolved to do this. Taking a shot in the dark, she summons her silver needles from her qiankun sleeve. Lifts them next to her other hand where he can see them from the corner of his eyes. “I have my needles with me. If you go too far, I’ll put you under.”
His head sways down but he still doesn’t bite. His eyes are glassy and glued to her needles.
“Are—”
“Eat,” she snaps, and with a desperate noise in the back of his throat, he obeys.
The numbing salve is strong, now that it had sufficient time to take effect—Wen Qing feels the pressure of the bite, but no pain. Her skin tingles with the unfelt, half-imagined sensation of his lips on her wrist as he latches on to the fresh wound, and Wen Qing observes with clinical professionalism.
He’s displayed enough self-control that she thinks her needles might not be necessary, although with the state he is in now, he won’t recover fully even if he drank her dry. She runs a short calculation and estimates that she will need to come back at least three more times if she lets him drink about half the loss she can walk off with minimal side effects. That seems like a good middle ground for improving his condition while not straining herself too much either.
She thought it would be quicker, a desperate hurry to take as much of her blood as he possibly can, but Jiang Wanyin drinks slowly, and as her gaze catches on his long eyelashes and the fuzzy shadows they cast high on his cheekbones, she thinks, a little faraway, that that makes sense. Sudden blood loss produces side effects much quicker than something… slow and gradual. Does he do it consciously? Or maybe it’s natural. She wouldn’t know; she’s never interrogated xixue ren about their eating habits before.
Her whole arm is tingling pleasantly, and there’s a faint, “Mmm,” noise that she doesn’t register as her own until Jiang Wanyin lifts his head to look at her, mouth slightly open and lips smeared with blood, pupils blown and glazed over. He straightens from his painful-looking arch, and Wen Qing just watches absently, eyes lidded, as he sways forward.
For a dizzying moment, she wants him to kiss her.
Jiang Wanyin’s gaze doesn’t so much as flit to her lips and his hands fall away from her arm, but her sudden wave of disappointment is gone as quick as it came when he reaches for her waist instead to pull her in closer. Everything feels like molasses. Her head falls back with the motion, too heavy to hold up.
There’s a spot of glittering sunlight on the ceiling.
Jiang Wanyin’s teeth sink into her neck.
She moans softly and he lets out a heady whine in return, and she’s gone. Her unbitten arm finds its way up his muscular back as he leans in and in and in as he drinks, arching her so far back that she would fall over if it wasn’t for his arm around her waist. She buries her fingers in his hair and makes another noise, or he does, or they both do, lost in a feedback loop of sensations.
Wen Qing’s eyes are half open, but she doesn’t see anything. She aches, she wants to touch, and her nails scratch against Jiang Wanyin’s scalp, making him groan into her neck when she tries to close her thighs (when did they fall so open?) to alleviate some of the pressure. The spot of sunlight on the ceiling swims in her hazy vision.
She’s lightheaded with pleasure.
She’s… lightheaded. That should… she feels like that should mean something. Jiang Wanyin’s claws dig into her waist as she almost unconsciously shifts her hips to grind against the bed, humming deeply.
Jiang Wanyin’s moan is lost in his swallow.
Jiang Wanyin. Swallow. Blood. Lightheaded.
Fuck.
How long has it been? She’s dizzy but she feels fine. More than fine. It feels so good and Jiang Wanyin’s other hand finds her inner thigh and she bites her lip around a whine and—
No, no, she needs to concentrate. Her body is screaming at her not to make it stop, but she takes a hold of herself and tries to pull Jiang Wanyin’s head away by her grip on his hair. Her first attempt is so weak he barely notices it, so she tries again, yanking harder.
His lips leave her neck, and his high, gasped moan springs forth unobstructed. She feels him startle at the sound, and for a moment that seems to last forever, they stay there, motionless, as Jiang Wanyin breathes heavily against her throbbing neck and comes back to himself.
Wen Qing swallows and resists the urge to pull his hair to hear that sound again.
“Fuck,” he curses into her neck, and that does things to her, too. “Fuck, sorry.” He pulls away, her fingers still tangled in his hair, but then he seems to remember something and leans back in, licking a broad stripe up her neck. She manages, just barely, to bite back her voice before anything escapes her throat.
Saliva to help close the wound. She knows that.
He sits back fully and his face—which has a healthy flush to it now, the grey pallor almost nowhere to be seen—spasms in an emotion she can’t name when they both realise that her fingers are still in his hair. Her brain replays that high gasp as she weakly extracts her hand and lets it fall on the bed, next to her thigh. The same thigh he’s still holding from the inner side.
He jerks his hand away as though he’s been burned and the faint flush on his face darkens into a deep, hot crimson. So he has enough blood to do that, Wen Qing observes. That’s good.
“How are,” she starts, and clears her throat. Fuck, her voice is shot. “How are you feeling?”
He tears his gaze from her eyes, looks at her neck, looks down at the lightly oozing punctures on her wrist.
“I’m fine,” he says, at length. His eyes find hers again. “...Are you?”
“Mhm,” Wen Qing hums wordlessly, and with some difficulty, she pushes herself to her feet. She does feel fine, apart from the dizziness, and with that being her only symptom, she clearly didn’t lose enough blood to be cause for worry. It’s strange, with how long it seemed to last, but Jiang Wanyin drank slowly, she supposes, and she’s slightly more resilient against things like this anyway, being from Dafan Wen. “Never better.”
That makes Jiang Wanyin flush again. Interesting. Her eyes track it as it goes down—jaw, neck, collarbones—and she finds herself staring at way more exposed skin than she expected. His loose shirt has opened almost fully, the right side having slipped halfway to his elbow, and he doesn’t notice her looking because he’s turned his eyes away, but almost absently, though clearly embarrassed, he tugs the shirt back over his shoulder. Wen Qing ruthlessly tramples down her disappointment before it can take too solid a form.
“Stay in bed,” she continues. “I don’t care that you’re feeling so much better all of a sudden; it’s just relative, and you’ll crash soon. Bedrest. Am I clear?”
The flush has subsided, and he shoots her an affronted look. Opens his mouth.
“Am I clear?” she repeats before he can say anything.
“...Yes.”
“Good,” she says without really meaning to, and she’s too busy staggering to the door and leaving to notice whatever his face might be doing in response to that.
Outside, she’s almost bowled over by the fresh air, clearing her head and pronouncing how hot her face and neck feel. Fuck, she leans back against the closed door. She didn’t think she would be so… affected by this. She knows, intellectually speaking, of the soothing and sometimes even arousing effects of a xixue ren’s bite, but she assumed that being someone from Dafan Wen, she would be immune. At least that’s what she heard from family members; her clan is not xixue ren, but they are descended from them, and immunity or different reactions to certain things are an expectation. She idly wonders whether it’s their existing emotions that can be amplified instead of anything being instilled in them, but then she remembers Jiang Wanyin’s hand on her inner thigh, remembers her whine, remembers how desperately she wanted him to reach just a little higher—
She stops wondering.
“Wen Qing!”
She snaps her head towards the voice, and she’s welcomed by the unwelcome sight of a rapidly approaching Wei Wuxian.
“Thank you,” he says with devastating sincerity when he gets close enough. “Wen Ning told us everything. Did you do it already? Is he awake? Or are you just going in? Can I—” He stops short, leaning down slightly and peering into her eyes. “Are you okay? You look a little…”
Wen Qing feels her mortification grow as Wei Wuxian sniffs the air slightly and his eyes snap unerringly to her still bloody wrist, then to the closing bite mark on the side of her neck. He takes in her flushed face and, presumably, her dilated pupils. The silence stretches.
Wen Qing clears her throat and hopes to the gods her voice will come out normal. “Yes, he’s awake.”
Wei Wuxian’s face floods with relief and joy, the shadows that adorned it for days evaporating with just those three words. Then he looks back down at her wrist again, and at her neck—the neck where she would not have been bitten if this went as she originally planned—and she really wishes he wouldn’t make the connections he’s making.
“Did you…” he starts asking with a shit-eating grin on his face, fangs glinting sharply, but then his face spasms and he cuts the question short. Good; if he’d finished that sentence with anything approaching enjoy yourself, Wen Qing would have had to stab him to death with her silver needles. “Actually, don’t tell me, I do not want to know. Shocking, right? Anyway, next time marry my little brother before fucking him, that’d be greatly appreciated—”
Wen Qing’s face catches on fire.
“Wei Wuxian!” she rounds on him, sharp, and her voice rings out together with Jiang Wanyin’s mortified screech from inside the room.
Wei Wuxian just laughs, already winding up Jiang Wanyin into a sputtering sort of rage as he enters while Wen Qing seriously contemplates the merits of skinning him alive—something, she has a suspicion, Jiang Wanyin is also very tempted to do.
Wei Wuxian’s hide is saved by the arrival of his sister, and Wen Qing doesn’t trust the pleasant, clueless little smile on her face one bit. She’s arrived way too soon and Wei Wuxian’s been way too loud for her not to have heard everything. Wen Qing still feels red as a lobster and she is not dealing with this.
She turns on her heel after a parting nod, but before she can leave, Jiang Yanli calls after her. “Wen-guniang.”
Wen Qing turns back around and meets her eyes. She’s half-expecting a shovel talk, even though that’s not the kind of person Jiang Yanli seems to be in Wen Qing’s—admittedly limited—experience, but Jiang Yanli just shifts her grip on the tray she is holding and bows, shallow but sincere, above it.
“Thank you. We are in your debt.”