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Your biggest regret is that you didn't get to know Nie Huaisang until after you left Jintintai.
You think that's your biggest regret. Today, at least. You know better than to put too much stock in your emotions at any given moment.
Though you did know him before you were sent away— Or, at least, you were acquainted with him. You knew as much of him as anyone did, as much of him as he let anybody see. And then you were sent back to your mother's home, and he came to find you, and showed you so much more.
"Sect Leader Nie greets Mo-gongzi," he murmurs, complete with a formal bow— As if he isn't sneaking into your courtyard in the dead of night, as usual.
You almost snap at him, but manage to cut yourself off before you say something you'll regret. You're annoyed, but you're annoyed because you've missed him, and you don't want to be stupid and ruin things the moment he arrives.
So you settle for a sulky, "Mo-gongzi doesn't greet Nie-zongzhu at all, A-Sang, get over here—"
And you don't wait for him to be cooperative, because that's never a good idea with Nie Huaisang, you place his arms firmly around your waist yourself, bury your face in the crook of his neck, and hold him as tightly as you can.
"Mo-gongzi will stain my collar," he says mildly, though he doesn't push you away at all, and runs one hand down your spine.
"I won't," you mumble against his chest. "I'm not wearing rouge. Because you promised you were coming."
Nie Huaisang laughs, quietly enough that you only feel it because you're pressed so close against him. "So I did. A-Xuan is very considerate."
There. You finally let yourself relax the rest of the way and slump into him. He's not braced, and staggers back a half step before he catches your weight. You stay like that for longer than you should, long enough that you start worrying you'll annoy him, and finally, reluctantly, force yourself to stand up.
He doesn't step away at all, only gives you a quick appraising look and tugs your collar a little straighter.
"Not a good month?" he asks.
You can't quite keep the bitterness from your face or voice. "Is it ever?" But you cut yourself off before you can go on like that, and shake your head. "Winter is always difficult. My cousin gets… bored."
Nie Huaisang frowns in that little offended way he has that always, always looks ever so slightly childish, and you feel your chest going warm.
Then, still frowning, he glances away from you, off across the estate towards the main courtyard, and you say, “Don’t—”
He sighs, but turns back to you. “Because he wouldn’t know why it was happening to him?”
“Whatever you’re thinking of, he’s much too stupid to put the pieces together.” You can feel the cold again, now that you’re not in Nie Huaisang’s arms. You settle for reaching out and taking his hand in yours. And he’ll probably take out his frustration on me, you don’t say. But after a moment, you do add, “Besides, soon it won’t… matter.”
His fingers tighten around yours. He sighs again, but he doesn’t argue. “You’ll catch ill, standing around outside in this weather,” he says, and tugs you across the courtyard towards your room.
You manage, just barely, not to say something about how soon it won’t matter if you catch ill either, and let him pull you along. You wouldn’t be wrong, but Nie Huaisang tends to find those jokes much less funny than you do.
These nights happen much too rarely for you to risk ruining it with that sort of argument, so it isn’t difficult to keep it to yourself. Nie Huaisang tries to visit you when the moon is full, so there’s less need for lights that might catch the servants’ attention in the middle of the night. But sometimes there are too many visitors at the Mo Estate to risk sneaking in, and him being caught in a place like this, at a time like this— It would jeopardize everything the two of you hope to accomplish. Or he sometimes has duties of his own as a sect leader that keep him away. Like last month. In the privacy of your own heart, that’s a reason for a missed visit that’s much, much harder for you to accept.
Still, still. There are only so many visits that the two of you have left, and you can’t stand the idea of wasting this one.
Once the door shuts behind you, you toy with the idea of playing up the chill and sighing over the cold, in hopes of either borrowing his outer robe or getting him to hold you again, because either way, you’ll get to wrap yourself up in the feeling of him, and take the memory of that sensation with you into the coming month. Or, of course, you could simply ask him directly, but you shy away from the idea of how it will feel if he tells you no, or tells you to wait.
But before you can properly begin, he pulls a qiankun bag from his sleeve and presents it with a bow, like it’s a formal gift, though you can see a little smile dancing across his lips that undermines any gravitas in the gesture.
“Sect Leader Nie thanks Mo-gongzi for the gracious—”
“A-Sang, stop,” you laugh. “What is this?”
“This is a qiankun bag,” he says, with perfect seriousness.
You make a rude noise and open it, since he’s going to be that way about things. What you pull out of the bag is a plain, unremarkable-looking white inner robe, virtually indistinguishable from the other clothing you own, except that you can feel that the cotton is of high enough quality that it wouldn’t have been out of place in Jinlintai. It’s thickly padded too, and you can just imagine how warm it will be—
“I thought that silk might draw unwanted attention,” Nie Huaisang says, a bit regretfully.
You let yourself sniffle, just once, before you pull yourself back under control. “It would have, don’t worry,” you reassure him. You might have gotten away with it, but it only would have taken one servant looking at you a bit too closely, and then it would have been taken away and you would have been beaten for stealing, even if they never figured out where you were supposed to have stolen it from.
“Go on, there’s more.”
“More?”
Nie Huaisang smiles. “I wasn’t able to come last month, after all.”
What else could there be? You lay the robe down on your bed and reach into the qiankun bag again.
You withdraw a brown cotton quilt. It’s unpatterned, and looks threadbare and tattered, but when you prod at the worn spots, you can see that it’s all superficial, and beneath the supposed damage, the quilt is whole and intact.
“A-Sang.”
He’s already ahead of you. He reaches for the brown cotton quilt that’s currently sitting on your bed, the one that’s only yours because it was judged to be too worn to give to a servant. He starts rolling it up, then plucks the qiankun bag from your fingers to stash it away himself.
“They can’t suspect you of stealing if you still only have the one blanket, don’t you think?
You clutch the quilt, letting your fingers sink into it. Helplessly, you say, “A-Sang, I won’t even be here to use it for much longer.”
He freezes for a moment, not looking at you, though his expression doesn’t change. “Still,” is all he says, before he goes back to packing away your old blanket.
You set out the quilt on your bed yourself. It gives you the opportunity to blink hard a few times, centering yourself again. You run your fingers over the quilt a few more times, smoothing it out. Behind you, you can hear Nie Huaisang moving, and you can smell food, but you don’t feel quite able to face him yet, so you also take the time to remove your outer clothing and redress yourself in your new robe.
It doesn’t smell like him, like a borrowed robe would have. But it’s from him, and it will keep being from him even after he leaves.
When you turn back around, Nie Huaisang has covered your table with plates of food, and is just laying out a heating talisman for a pot of tea. You settle in at his side and lean into his shoulder, watching him work. You wish you could go to sleep like this, resting against him. You wish that just once, you could go to sleep and wake up with him still here in the morning.
Instead you wait until he sets the tea aside to steep, and then, reluctantly, sit up.
The food is mostly small snacks and desserts, things that travel easily in a qiankun bag. You nibble a piece of long xu tang, and wait for your appetite to return. You know you’re hungry, you just have to let yourself calm down a little before you feel like eating again.
Before you can get to that point, Nie Huaisang abruptly says, “You could come back to Qinghe with me.”
You freeze. “Why?”
“Why?” He pauses. You can practically feel him smiling, and it makes you want to scream. “Perhaps I’ve been too subtle in our conversations, but A-Xuan—”
“Stop that!” He wants you to laugh along with him, and you won’t, but shouting isn’t the way to win an argument with Nie Huaisang, and you don’t want to have a fight right now, you don’t.
You aren’t saying anything else until you’re sure you can keep your voice level. To his credit, Nie Huaisang doesn’t break the silence himself.
Finally, you say, “If I go to Qinghe, who will resurrect Wei Wuxian?”
Nie Huaisang shifts a little, leaning towards you. You want it and don’t want it. You’re pulling the long xu tang in your hands to pieces, but you can’t stop yourself.
After a moment, he says, “I can find someone else.”
“Someone else? Someone else who knows demonic cultivation? Someone else who doesn’t care what happens to them? Someone else with a personal connection to my— to Jin Guangyao?”
“Perhaps,” he coaxes. “Or perhaps we don’t need Wei Wuxian at all. We could do it without him.”
He’s lying, but that’s not the point. “And Nie Mingjue?”
There. He freezes.
“I thought so,” you say, more bitterly than you mean to. You throw the remains of the long xu tang across your room, and immediately regret it. But you don’t want to let yourself say anything else right now, and all you can do is bury your face in your hands.
“Mo Xuanyu,” he says, faintly exasperated. “I would like to know that you are alive and safe. Is that so terrible?”
“Not without you. It doesn’t count if it’s without you.”
Nie Huaisang sighs heavily. “That isn’t—”
“I don’t care!” Your voice is rising. You can generally get away with plenty of erratic behavior, but if someone happens to catch Nie Huasang here, everything both of you are planning will be ruined. It’s a physical ache in your chest not to shout, but you do your best to stay quiet. “I’m not going to follow you home to Qinghe, just so you can turn around and— and leave me.”
He sighs again. “I wish you wouldn’t talk about it that way.”
“I don’t care.” You pick up another piece of long xu tang, even if you don’t feel quite able to eat it yet.
You feel Nie Huaisang shift, and you tense, but he only leans forward, reaching for the teapot and cups. Mildly, he says, “If you’re not happy about that, how do you think I feel?”
“That’s different,” you inform him. You can’t help smiling a little— This is more comfortable territory. “You’ll just be following me a little later.”
He makes a remarkably skeptical noise, but doesn’t say anything else.
“Second thoughts?” you ask with mock horror. “Or is this just envy? If you wanted to leave first, you should have planned this better.”
He serves you your tea with a flat unimpressed look, and sneaks a sly pinch to your waist that makes you yelp and tip over sideways.
“Begging Mo-gongzi to forgive this one’s inexcusable clumsiness,” he murmurs. But still, he’s smiling at you again, and isn’t asking you to stay behind while he sacrifices himself to resurrect his brother, so you let yourself smile back at him.
The rest of the night is… easier. The tea Nie Huaisang brings you is nicer than anything your family lets you have, and it’s always nice when you can eat enough to feel full. And once you’re done eating, he’s happy to let you lay in his lap and tell you all about how winter has been in Qinghe, or to cradle your face in his hands and slowly kiss you and kiss you, until you’re left dizzy and breathless.
Like always, the hours of uninterrupted time together seem to last for an eternity, while also seeming to pass before they’ve even begun. But once the sky outside begins to lighten, you have to let him go.
He loads what’s left of the food into a qiankun bag, while you walk through your room, making sure that nothing is left behind that will look suspicious. Your new quilt doesn’t look out of place, even when you get close and study it. Too soon, neither of you has any reason left to delay his departure.
But as you’re bracing yourself to say goodbye, he reaches into his sleeve and pulls out one last present. You’re confused until he opens the jar, but—
“Rouge?”
He smiles. “After A-Xuan was so considerate in leaving off his makeup for my sake, how could I leave him looking anything less than presentable?”
You try to look serious, but your lips twitch. “Nie-zongzhu is too kind, considering he packed his present long before he saw my face.”
Nie Huaisang also withdraws a makeup brush. “May I?”
You— waver. There are already servants at work in the estate. Nie Huaisang moves more quickly than people generally expect him to, but if the wrong person sees him, the risk— But you want this.
So you kneel, look up at him, and let him paint your face for you.
You don’t speak. All you do is watch him work. He sets the rouge on the table and steadies your chin with one hand, while he paints with the other. His face is perfectly smooth and relaxed, and his eyes are perfectly focused on you. You don’t even care how you look after he’s done, you wish you could watch him do this every day for the rest of your life.
Eventually, he says, “In two months, I think. Things should be ready then.”
You shiver, and his hand pauses for a moment as you force yourself to hold still. But you can’t stop yourself from grinning. “That soon?”
He makes a wordless noise of agreement.
The more you think about it, the more satisfied you are. You’re ready. You’ve been ready. And it means that you and Nie Huaisang will get to see each other at least once more before the end.
“I’ll be nearby,” he adds unprompted. “I’ll find a reason to pass through the town. In case you need me.”
“A-Sang—” You have to blink hard, but you refuse to cry now, not while he’s in the middle of painting your face for you. You take a deep, steadying breath. “Do you know when you…?”
He smiles faintly down at you. “No more than half a year, I hope. But who knows, perhaps Wei Wuxian will exceed all expectations.”
It’s a thought to carry with you into the next lonely month. But by now, he really does need to leave. You can hear servants passing by outside your courtyard, and the occasional quiet murmur of voices. You whisper your goodbyes to each other, and you steal one last kiss from him before he slips over your wall and away from the estate.
Next month. At the very least, you’ll have next month. A single month is no time at all. You’ll get to see him again before you know it.
Still, when you go back into your room and find that he’s slipped two additional jars of rouge and a pristine new makeup brush into your things, you really do begin crying with how much you already miss him.