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Nie Mingjue was a little . . . different after the Sunshot Campaign. Nie Huaisang could see it, and it was more than just his intuition as a little brother. Nie Mingjue was more irritable, less able to handle mild stresses without it being blown into a big thing. Nie Huaisang was filled with worry, watching Nie Mingjue shoulder everything all by himself as he always did. And so, Nie Huaisang did what any good little brother would do: he started helping under false pretenses.
“Da-ge,” he pouted one day when Nie Mingjue had arbitrated a particularly vicious family inheritance case, “today was so tiring.”
He opened his arms expectantly like he did as a child, but Nie Mingjue turned away gruffly, the sleeve of his robe flapping. “What do you even have to be tired by?”
“Da-ge,” Nie Huaisang whined as he trailed behind Nie Mingjue, entirely unwilling to give up at the first sign of resistance. “Give me a hug! I need one, and I promise I’ll go do saber practice tomorrow if you just give me a hug. Please?”
It took a few more minutes for Nie Mingjue to stop brushing him off, but once Nie Huaisang stopped Nie Mingjue’s door from sliding shut behind him, the venerated warrior huffed, turned, and gathered up his ‘annoyingly soft’ brother into a hug.
Nie Mingjue’s muscles were all tense–Nie Huaisang could feel the strain of days and weeks and months and years weighing him down, like a bowstring pulled too far and about to snap. The hug was perfunctory, at first: Nie Huaisang ran one hand in light, soothing circles across one of Nie Mingjue’s shoulder blades. He didn’t mind that Nie Mingjue’s arms felt like wooden boards wrapped around him in return–instead, a deep sort of sadness weighed on his heart like an anchor, feeling in Nie Mingjue’s reaction just how long it had been since someone had given him comfort like this.
“That’s not long enough, Da-ge!” he protested as Nie Mingjue tried to pull away, just a few moments in. His soft little hands clung to Nie Mingjue’s robes, unwilling to let go yet since Nie Mingjue hadn’t relaxed yet. “I’ll go to saber practice, if you just let me hug you a little longer.”
“A little longer,” Nie Mingjue agreed, sighing.
Nie Huaisang breathed in slow, deep breaths, willing a placid comfort to infect his brother in the place of whatever horrors he’d been forced to experience during the war. He knew it didn’t work like that, but he still wanted to help however he could.
In fits and starts, Nie Mingjue began to relax. The muscles in his arms were first, suddenly weighing Nie Huaisang down and squishing them together where before they had had space between them. A pleasant, comfortable sort of warmth filled Nie Huaisang as the muscles in Nie Mingjue’s back softened, not completely, but enough that Nie Huaisang knew what he was doing was working. Then, Nie Mingjue’s chin landed heavy on Nie Huaisang’s shoulder, digging into the meat of it. Nie Huaisang took it in stride, continuing to rub gentle circles with both hands now over Nie Mingjue’s shoulders.
They must have stayed there for nearly an entire incense time, but Nie Huaisang had such intense focus on the task of giving his brother comfort that he couldn’t have said exactly how long it had been if he’d tried. When Nie Mingjue felt boneless, nearly laying half of his weight directly onto Nie Huaisang, the younger brother patted Nie Mingjue on the back, one, two, three times.
“Thank you,” he murmured, holding Nie Mingjue at arm’s length so that he could examine his handiwork. “You’re very good at hugs, Da-ge.”
Nie Mingjue blinked as though he’d been pulled out of a trance rather suddenly, his face slack for a moment before everything wrinkled up again, the gruffness and tough exterior resurfacing from beneath the calm waters of human touch. He seemed to shake himself, and then he took a step back, shooting a little frown at Nie Huaisang over his shoulder as he retreated into his room.
“Don’t forget to go to saber practice.”
The door shut, and Nie Huaisang chewed on his lip for a moment, trying to figure out how best he could help his older brother.
The next day, he went to saber practice. He didn’t like it, but he’d promised, and he’d do just about anything if it helped Nie Mingjue. And then, after he’d washed off the frankly disgusting amount of sweat worked up by that unpleasant activity, they reconvened in the dining hall for their evening meal, and Nie Huaisang watched Nie Mingjue pick at his food, going a bit green at a dish that was inspired by Qishan Wen, though the connection was very, very old.
That wouldn’t do.
“Da-ge, I’m going to tell the kitchens that I’ve really been craving more food inspired by Qinghe lately.” It was an assertion, not a question, but Nie Huaisang examined Nie Mingjue’s face as though it had been the latter instead of the former. When Nie Mingjue rolled his eyes in that half-frustrated, half-indulgent way, the familiarity made Nie Huaisang feel confident to continue, to push just a little further. He tried his best to make it sound like an afterthought, even though it was the entire point. “Do you want me to put in any requests for you?”
“I’m not picky like you.”
Nie Huaisang recognized the teasing jab for what it was, so he smiled and responded in a light tone as well. “I just know what I like, that's all. Do you need your didi to pick something for you, if you can’t figure it out for yourself?”
Nie Mingjue sent him an unamused look, but he still considered for a fair few moments before responding. “Braised oxtail.”
Nie Huaisang reached out and squeezed Nie Mingjue’s shoulder with a bright smile. “Okay! I get first dibs because I thought to ask first, but the day after tomorrow we can have braised oxtail!”
Seeing his older brother eat something eagerly for the first time in months made the oxtail taste so much better, somehow.
“Nie-zongzhu retired to his quarters immediately after the night hunt,” the head disciple reported when Nie Huaisang asked where his brother had gone, nearly a month after Nie Huaisang had changed their menu. “I tried to tell him that he needed to see someone about that gash in his arm, but–”
“He’s injured?” Nie Huaisang inquired, trying to keep his voice steady, but the distress must have shown on his face anyway.
The head disciple clasped Nie Huaisang on the shoulder comfortingly. “It wasn’t too bad–just a beast gone awry.”
“A–a beast?” he squeaked.
The head disciple nodded. “It’s horn only scraped against him, but I thought it would be good to see a healer as a precaution.”
Nie Huaisang’s blood ran cold.
His feet stumbled a little bit as he ran back and forth, first to the healer’s quarters where he picked up herbs and water to wash the wound with, bandages to wrap it with, then to the kitchens where he grabbed a tray of whatever he could see that he remembered Nie Mingjue having a preference for, then to his own quarters for soothing incense, and so by the time he arrived at Nie Mingjue’s quarters, he had an armful of stuff and absolutely no good excuse for any of it.
Oh, well. He’d just have to think on his feet.
He wiggled his tray around in his arms until he could get a hand free, and then he knocked. An unwelcoming little grunt was the only response he got.
“Da-ge, it’s me!” He tried to sound cheerful, like he wasn’t carrying a huge tray filled with proof of his worry. “I’m coming in!”
The angle was all wrong to get the door open, with the way the tray was balanced precariously on top of his arms, but he managed to leverage it open enough for him to squeeze through.
“What are you–” Nie Mingjue’s thick head of hair, still tangled up in braids that were messy now, rose from the bed on one side. He was still dressed in his night hunt clothes, torn at the left arm. Nie Mingjue’s gaze had that strong glint in it, almost anger but not quite.
Nie Huaisang’s heart sank with sadness once again when he saw it, and he suddenly wanted to ask for comfort for himself, but he soldiered on. This wasn’t about him.
“I heard that you came home today!” He set the tray on a table, and quickly got to work, thinking that if he could just get set up fast enough that Nie Mingjue wouldn’t send him away. “And I thought, what luck! My turtle dove just recovered from her illness, but now I have someone new to take care of!”
It was a lie, and an obvious one to Nie Huaisang, but Nie Mingjue very rarely paid any attention at all to his collection of pet birds. He hoped it would pass muster.
He adjusted the incense burner and lit the jasmine incense he’d brought along while waiting for a response, and soon a little curl of smoke rose into the air.
“I don’t need to be taken care of,” Nie Mingjue finally grunted. Nie Huaisang noticed that he was very carefully keeping the torn parts of his robes mostly out of Nie Huaisang’s sight. If he hadn’t already been privy to the information that Nie Mingjue was injured, he might have thought the man was simply tired.
“I know you don’t!” Nie Huaisang chirped happily, as if he didn’t know anything at all. “But I need to take care of someone. Come on, now, Da-ge. Come sit over here with me.”
Nie Mingjue was quiet for a long few minutes more, and Nie Huaisang was sweating the entire time. He’d probably pushed it a little too far, this time, especially when Nie Mingjue was under such stress. The significance of a horned beast being the only one that could break through his older brother’s normally iron defense was not lost on him, not at all, but he would have to pretend not to know. If he couldn’t pass this off as something other than worry, he knew his brother would send him away.
“I’ll give you ten minutes to do whatever it is you want,” Nie Mingjue huffed at last, pulling himself out of his bed as though he were pulling his own teeth out instead. “And then you’ll leave me alone for the rest of the night.”
Nie Huaisang nodded eagerly even though he didn’t want to agree. He was fairly certain that if he could get started though, he would be able to wheedle Nie Mingjue into accepting more care. “Come sit over here, then. The ten minutes don’t start until you’re sitting down.”
Nie Mingjue rolled his eyes at that one, but he obediently sat across the table from Nie Huaisang, frowning at the tray of things he’d brought. “What’s all this?”
“I didn’t know if you’d eaten, or if there were any injuries or anything from your night hunt.” Nie Huaisang shrugged in the most lackadaisical manner he could manage. “And medicine was on my mind, because of my bird, you know?”
Nie Mingjue gave him a look that turned suspicious after a moment, and Nie Huaisang wished that in all of his panic he would have thought to bring a fan to hide his face with. Instead, he just shoved the utensils he’d brought at his brother’s chest, face turning a little flushed under the scrutiny.
“Just eat! Oh,” he said in a tone of surprise as he made an obvious once-over of the injured arm, “I can clean out your arm while you eat! It will be so nice for me to finally feel useful for once.”
Nie Mingjue’s face twitched, but when Nie Huaisang held out a hand, he stretched out his hand in return and deposited it in Nie Huaisang’s. It felt heavier than usual, as if Nie Mingjue couldn’t even hold it up.
And he was still trying to deal with it on his own.
Nie Huaisang cleared away the torn part of his sleeve, bunching it up around Nie Mingjue’s elbow, and inclined his head toward the larger man when he hadn’t made any move to eat. “Go on, eat! I won’t be happy until at least half of it is gone.”
Nie Mingjue took a bite, and, satisfied in that part of his efforts, Nie Huaisang turned his attention back to the nearly feverish arm clasped in his own.
The wound itself wasn’t all that terrible–it was clean, as far as gashes went, and there weren’t too many jagged edges. It looked as though the tusk had barely pierced through the skin into the muscle below, which was a relief. What it represented was a greater threat to Nie Mingjue than the physical wound.
Nie Huaisang washed it out carefully, probably more carefully than he strictly needed to. The cool, soapy water did its job quickly, though Nie Huaisang was less than fond of the goosebumps it raised along the top of Nie Mingjue’s forearm. He finished washing and patted the area dry with a clean cloth as soon as he could, and as he did he could feel some of the tension fall out of the muscles in Nie Mingjue’s shoulder through the way his arm dropped even further. Nie Huaisang almost struggled to keep holding it up, but he didn’t dare complain about it. Throughout it all, Nie Mingjue didn’t complain either, the only sounds coming from him the normal ones associated with eating.
Once he’d rubbed the area with herbs and tied off the bandages according to the healer’s specifications, Nie Huaisang sat back to check on Nie Mingjue’s progress.
He’d expected for Nie Mingjue to have a harder time eating with only one hand than he had. The bread he’d brought was entirely gone, as were almost all of the meat dishes. The vegetables, on the other hand–Nie Huaisang brought the back of his hand up against his lips to cover his smile. Even as much as he’d changed through the years, Nie Mingjue never changed in his preferences.
Nie Mingjue’s face was already a little more slack than it had been when Nie Huaisang had entered, the tension from holding up their entire world leaking away a little in the presence of food and care. It was good, Nie Huaisang felt. He liked doing this for his brother.
After a few moments, Nie Mingjue seemed to stir once again, his gaze flickering to Nie Huaisang and once more just a little bit of that whip-cord tension returned to his frame as he prepared to speak.
“Is that it?”
Nie Huaisang took a moment to parse out the emotion in Nie Mingjue’s voice. Was that disappointment he heard?
Nie Huaisang looked again at the snarled mess of hair adorning Nie Mingjue’s head, and he shook his head with a smile. “Of course not! You underestimate how much care my birds require when they’re sick; I couldn’t possibly be fulfilled by just this much. When you’re done eating, I want to comb your hair too.”
“Alright, didi.” There was no snark in his voice, not even the huff Nie Huaisang had expected that conveyed that Nie Mingjue was simply indulging him. He just sounded . . . tired. “I think I’ve eaten all I’m going to today.”
Nie Huaisang had the greatest brother’s intuition in the world–he very skillfully did not point out that Nie Mingjue hadn’t eaten nearly enough vegetables. Instead, he stood and practically fluttered over toward Nie Mingjue’s vanity, gaze scouring it for the object he sought. “Da-ge, where’s your comb? Ah! Found it, nevermind.” He nudged a cushion in front of the vanity, focusing once more on getting his brother into the next activity before he could think to refuse. “Sit over here–have I ever told you how important preening is for songbirds?”
“No, you haven’t,” Nie Mingjue said as he sat. He said it in a tone that conveyed neither interest nor disinterest, and so Nie Huaisang launched into a very detailed explanation as he knelt and began to work on his brother’s coarse hair.
His nimble fingers sought the braids first, undoing them one by one until all of the layers of status Nie Mingjue was shackled by fell away. The braids signifying his sect leader status, his unmarried status, his age, his spot in their birth order, the battles he’d won and lost–all of them met their end, one by one, until it was just Nie Mingjue. Just his older brother, a man who tried to shoulder the world instead of giving part of his burden to someone else.
It made Nie Huaisang so sad, so much so that his fingers almost felt numb at the edges, clogged by excess feelings. But he kept going, and injected his own voice with cheer he didn’t quite feel. This wasn’t about him; it was about Nie Mingjue. He needed to take care of his brother.
Nie Huaisang tackled the snarls next, using the wooden comb that Nie Mingjue favored for some gods-forsaken reason. He made a mental note to buy a better one the next time he ventured out into Qinghe. When all was said and done, he ran his fingers over his brother’s scalp a few extra times to soothe away any lingering hurts from the snarls, and then braided up Nie Mingjue’s hair into a much simpler design for sleeping. Only then did he hazard a glance into the mirror, a glance at his brother’s face.
Tears dripped from the center of Nie Mingjue’s eye directly into the man’s lap, and Nie Huaisang’s fingers stiffened for only a moment before he continued carding them through his brother’s hair, feeling out for any more tangles even though he knew there weren’t any. His face showed no other indication that he was upset–no frowns, no wrinkled eyebrows, nothing. Just tears, falling into his upturned hands and wetting the bandages Nie Huaisang had wound around his left forearm.
“Da-ge,” Nie Huaisang said when words on the plumage of his birds failed him. Almost all words failed him, honestly. Several thoughts flashed through him all at once. He wanted to apologize, for not being there for Nie Mingjue. He wanted to express sympathy, for the things that he would never experience that Nie Mingjue already had. He wanted to tell Nie Mingjue that he didn’t have to do everything alone all the time.
But instead, he wrapped an arm around Nie Mingjue’s shoulders and ran a hand over his hair, pressing up against him and conveying warmth as much as their positioning allowed. Nie Mingjue grabbed onto the arm around his shoulders, but he didn’t throw it off or deny himself comfort. Nie Huaisang squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed, pressing his thin fingers as hard as he could to give Nie Mingjue at least some semblance of comfort.
“You’re okay,” Nie Huaisang whispered, long after the incense had burned out.
Nie Mingjue squeezed his arm in answer.
“I’m here. You can rely on me.”