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It was a warm day in Lanling. Stuffy. The kind of weather that made Nie Mingjue wish he was back home in the Unclean Realm. There, at least, he would be able to train with his saber, take his mind off of how unbearably stifling the humid air felt against his skin.
Unfortunately, he and his spouses were obligated to attend the day’s events — considering they were Lanling Jin’s heir and his marital partners. The only saving grace of the day was the brilliant vantage point their current seating gave them, enabling them to spy on their younger siblings without them noticing. As such, he had a front row seat to watching his brother make an absolute fool of himself trying to talk to Jin Zixuan’s youngest brother.
He heard Wen Qing draw in a sharp breath beside him, clearly having spotted the spectacle herself. Out of the corner of his eye he could see her trying desperately not to laugh.
“I don’t know why he insists on trying to woo him,” he whispered to her conspiratorially, “I thought everybody knew that Mo Xuanyu is already infatuated with him and Jiang Wanyin both. The man tries to be subtle, but…”
“He’s what?!”
As if summoned by the mere mention of his youngest brother’s name, Jin Zixuan was soon half-sprawled across Mingjue’s lap, trying to get a better view of the crowd below. Fortunately, Nie Mingjue had long ago learned how to tune out the man’s overprotective spiels — he’d heard enough of such yelling when Lan Xichen and Luo Qingyang had first started courting Jin Guangyao. It mattered not to Jin Zixuan that his brothers were both grown adults, he insisted that they would always be too young for romance — even though A-Yao was born on the exact same day as him. Apparently the few hours between them made all the difference.
Leaning back to make eye contact with Jiang Yanli, his fellow evening person, he made a show of pretending to have been bored to death. Unable to hide her amusement, she instead turned her attention to their husband, dragging the morning man back into his seat with a simple tug at the back of his robes. Nie Mingjue tuned that conversation out too, when it turned into a scolding hidden behind consolatory words. Jiang Yanli had quite a way with words, he had been on the receiving end of one of her hidden lectures once before, and he never wanted to repeat that experience again. It made him shudder just to think of it.
He admitted it was probably necessary, though…
Wen Qing sighed beside him, bringing his attention back to her. “Still, I wish A-Ning would take initiative like your brother… watching him pine over—“ she gestured vaguely, pulling a face as she tried and failed to find the word she was looking for, “—whatever those two have going on is just… it’d put my mind at ease, y’know?”
Ah yes. Those two.
Referring to none other than Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, it wasn’t hard to see why people would have a hard time putting their mess of a relationship into words. It was like the world’s most aggravating ‘will-they-won’t-they’, headed by the two most oblivious idiots this side of the Jianghu. So oblivious that they could make several excruciatingly humiliating advances towards each other, even worse than the one his fool of a brother had made earlier, and still come out of it with both thinking that the other wasn’t interested. Honestly, if it weren’t for Jiang Yanli being part of his sedoretu, he would gladly never think about those two ever again. It gave Nie Mingjue a migraine to just imagine their… thing; lord knew what Wen Qing’s younger brother saw in that mess that made him want in.
“Maybe they could teach each other,” he suggested offhandedly, passing Wen Qing a cold drink he’d managed to grab from a passing waiter.
“Maybe. But then we’d be out of entertainment at these bullshit events, so maybe not.”
He threw his head back in laughter, not caring for the glares he received from the Jin Clan’s elders.
As the day dragged on, he watched his brother embarrass himself three more times; listened to Jin Zixuan complain about his and Yanli’s brothers ‘defiling’ his own on at least five separate occasions; and managed to just barely refrain from punching his father-in-law in the face two whole times. Honestly, he deserved a medal for the amount of restraint he’d shown — listening to that man mouth off about his little brother, then move on to lambast his own youngest son in the middle of a public speech — someone else’s speech, to be specific — because apparently courting a sect leader and a sect heir wasn’t good enough for him— well, it’d be enough to make anybody want to get in a good hit. He was fairly sure A-Xuan had broken his hand from how tightly he’d ended up gripping it to help restrain his own anger.
It wasn’t all bad news though. If Yanli was to be believed, their asshole Father-in-Law’s speech might’ve been the final push needed for the youngest of their families to get their shit together. A shame for their prospects in getting good entertainment at future events, but he was happy for his brother.
…He would be trying his best not to imagine the headache-inducing amounts of red and gold that would surely be finding their way into the Unclean realm in the following weeks.