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Jiang Cheng hates dinners at the Lans. He doesn’t know how he always gets roped into these things, because apart from being Wei Wuxian’s brother, he has nothing to do with them.
Wei Wuxian is the one who snatched himself a Lan, so he should be the only one who has to attend these things. Jiang Yanli certainly never has to go, and Jiang Cheng doesn’t understand why the same isn’t true for him.
He’s tired of Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji acting like every minute of every day is their goddamn honeymoon, tired of Nie Mingjue and Meng Yao glaring daggers at him for reasons Jiang Cheng doesn’t understand, and he’s especially tired of Lan Qiren scrutinizing his every motion and word.
The only person who makes these dinners even the tiniest bit bearable is Lan Xichen, and Jiang Cheng refuses to think about why that might be.
There is no way Lan Xichen could ever be interested in someone like him, not with successful and beautiful people Like Meng Yao and Nie Mingjue present, and statistically it’s very unlikely that two Jiang family members should manage to snatch up a Lan.
So, no. Not thinking about that.
Instead, Jiang Cheng tries to figure out why the hell Meng Yao and Nie Mingjue keep glaring at him.
Both have a very different feel to them; Nie Mingjue’s glares seem to be more a warning than anything else, while Jiang Cheng gets the impression that he should drop dead from Meng Yao’s glare.
He refuses to, of course, but it only seems to enrage Meng Yao further.
“Hey,” Jiang Cheng lowly says to Wei Wuxian, when he catches him without Lan Wangji for a change. “Do you know what’s up with Meng Yao? He seems ready to kill me.”
“Who isn’t?” Wei Wuxian jokes, but he gets serious a second later. “I noticed that, too, actually. I don’t know. I asked Lan Zhan but he doesn’t seem to know either. But he thinks you should be on the look-out for Meng Yao, Lan Zhan doesn’t trust him at all.”
“Reassuring,” Jiang Cheng mutters and turns his eyes back to Meng Yao, who is already watching him. “He’s going to murder me,” Jiang Cheng goes on and Wei Wuxian pats his shoulder.
“If that happens, you can at least be reassured that Lan Xichen will be inconsolable,” Wei Wuxian tells him with a wink and before Jiang Cheng can do anything more than take a surprised breath, Wei Wuxian bounds over to Lan Wangji.
Immediately Jiang Cheng becomes overly aware of eyes on him, and he busies himself with getting something to drink.
“You seem troubled,” Lan Xichen suddenly says from besides Jiang Cheng, and he only jumps slightly in surprise. “Is everything alright?”
“Everything is good,” Jiang Cheng replies with a small smile, unwilling to explain to Lan Xichen that his friends leave him unsettled. “How are you doing?” he asks, because for all that Lan Xichen is the only reason he even comes to these things, Jiang Cheng didn’t have a lot of chances to speak with him yet.
“I’m doing very well,” Lan Xichen tells him with a huge smile and Jiang Cheng’s stomach swoops, like it always does when Lan Xichen seems this happy.
It’s a problem.
“Great,” Jiang Cheng says and they turn around to go to the table, when someone slams into Jiang Cheng and spills their red wine all over his shirt.
“Fuck,” Jiang Cheng breathes out, as the unpleasant feeling of wet and cold clothes sticking to his chest spreads out and he glares at Meng Yao.
“Oh, gods,” Meng Yao says. “I’m terribly sorry about this,” he goes on, but Jiang Cheng can see the calculating glint in his eyes, and he just knows that this wasn’t an accident. “It seems like you should go home, you’d catch a cold with a shirt this wet.”
“It seems like it,” Jiang Cheng presses out, but he relaxes when Lan Xichen presses a warm hand to the small of his back.
“You can take one of my shirts,” Lan Xichen tells him and swiftly leads Jiang Cheng away from the dining room and deeper into the house.
“You don’t have to,” Jiang Cheng tries, because really, at this point he is more than ready to just go home, manners be damned.
“I want to,” Lan Xichen reassures him. “It’s no hardship. And besides,” he tacks on as he leads Jiang Cheng into his own bedroom, “dinners without you are always terribly boring.”
Lan Xichen isn’t looking at Jiang Cheng as he says it, for which Jiang Cheng is glad, because he flushes bright red at that.
He watches Lan Xichen go through his wardrobe, and he’s still deciding if it’s worth it to tell him not to bother, when Lan Xichen already offers him a soft looking sweater.
“This should work,” Lan Xichen gently says and Jiang Cheng can’t say no to him so he takes the offered piece of clothing.
“Can I change somewhere? I should probably also clean up, at least a little bit,” Jiang Cheng says as he tries to unstick his shirt from his chest and Lan Xichen gets oddly flustered.
“Oh, yeah, of course, the bathroom is just through there,” he tells him, pointing to a door and Jiang Cheng quickly walks into it.
He takes off his shirt, cleans his chest as best as he can, and then slides on Lan Xichen’s sweater.
It’s slightly too big on him—the collar a little loose, the sleeves a little bit too long—but it’s warm and comfy, and Jiang Cheng refuses to admit that he smelled the fabric.
He imagines this must be what it feels like to get a hug from Lan Xichen.
Jiang Cheng shakes his head at that thought--how much more stupid can he get--and leaves the bathroom.
Lan Xichen is waiting for him, and his eyes seem to catch on the sleeves of the sweater, because he blinks a few times and doesn’t move at all.
“It’s a little bit big,” Jiang Cheng admits, playing with the hem of the sweater, and his voice seems to shake Lan Xichen out of whatever stupor he found himself in.
“It looks good on you,” Lan Xichen admits, and then promptly turns around. “We should probably get back to dinner now.”
Jiang Cheng stares after him when he practically flees his own bedroom, and he wonders just how long it will take him to get that compliment out of his head.
Dinner after that is interesting, to say the least.
Nie Mingjue is still throwing him glances, but they lost a lot of their force and he even smiled at Jiang Cheng once. Lan Qiren seems strangely pleased and exchanges more than the bare minimum of pleasantries with Jiang Cheng. Meng Yao on the other hand seems to only be more angry than before and his glares only gained in intensity, if such a thing is even possible.
Lan Xichen himself is constantly at Jiang Cheng’s side and Jiang Cheng catches him throwing him secret glances more than once.
It makes Jiang Cheng nervous, causes him to play with the sleeves of the sweater, but that only seems to make it worse.
Jiang Cheng doesn’t know what to feel about any of it, so he excuses himself halfway through dinner to go to the bathroom.
He spends all of his time there trying to calm himself down, reminding himself that it doesn’t mean anything, and breathing in Lan Xichen’s scent that’s clinging to the sweater.
When he finally leaves the bathroom, only a little bit more stable than when he went into it, Nie Mingjue is waiting for him.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Jiang Cheng mumbles out, and steps to the side, but Nie Mingjue doesn’t make a move to enter the bathroom.
“Listen,” he starts, and dread already settles in Jiang Cheng’s stomach. “I know you’re worried about Meng Yao but he won’t hurt you,” Nie Mingjue says and while the statement in itself is confusing enough, Jiang Cheng also doesn’t believe him.
Which must be obvious on his face, because Nie Mingjue winces.
“Okay, he won’t hurt you seriously. For all that he is petty and jealous, he couldn’t hurt Xichen like that.”
“I—have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jiang Cheng admits with a frown, because why should it be his problem that Meng Yao is jealous?
“You’re wearing Xichen’s favourite sweater,” Nie Mingjue tells him, and Jiang Cheng flushes at that.
“He gave it to me,” he defensively says and Nie Mingjue nods.
“Yeah, he did. When a fully equipped guest room is right over there,” he says and points towards a door at the end of the hall. “Clothes and all included.”
Jiang Cheng blinks at that revelation and when he turns back towards Nie Mingjue he finds that the other man has already gone back to the dining room.
Jiang Cheng can’t help himself; he goes to the guest room and opens the closet, only to find shirts and sweaters in all sizes and colours.
There really isn’t a single reason Lan Xichen should have offered him his own.
Jiang Cheng must have spent more time here than he thought, because Lan Xichen shows up after a while.
“Hey,” he awkwardly says and Jiang Cheng whirls around.
“There are clothes here,” he says, and Lan Xichen grimaces. “There is no reason at all for you to offer me your own clothes,” he goes on and Lan Xichen has the decency to flush at that.
“I know, I’m sorry,” he mumbles and Jiang Cheng narrows his eyes at him.
“Did you put Meng Yao up to this?” Jiang Cheng demands to know and now Lan Xichen goes frantic.
“No! I mean, he did it because of me, but I didn’t put him up to that!”
“Explain,” Jiang Cheng orders him, because he’s getting all kinds of mixed signals here, and he doesn’t know how to handle any of them.
He needs Lan Xichen to clarify this.
“Meng Yao spilled his wine on you because he’s jealous,” Lan Xichen admits.
“Of what?”
“He confessed to me a few weeks back,” Lan Xichen says and Jiang Cheng doesn’t like the sinking feeling in his stomach at all.
“And?”
“And I told him I’m in love with someone else,” Lan Xichen goes on.
Jiang Cheng wants to ask what the hell any of that has to do with him, but before he finds his voice, Lan Xichen goes on.
“I told him I’m in love with you,” Lan Xichen admits, and he looks down at his feet, so he doesn’t see how wide Jiang Cheng’s eyes go at that.. “He didn’t take that very well, to be honest, and he hoped you would just leave tonight after he spilled the wine on you. It was on purpose.”
“And instead you gave me your favourite sweater,” Jiang Cheng weakly says and Lan Xichen’s head snaps up.
“How do you know that?”
“Nie Mingjue,” Jiang Cheng gives back and suddenly it clicks for him. “He’s been trying to give me the shovel talk through glares,” Jiang Cheng says and smacks his forehead. “That’s why his glares felt a lot more friendly than Meng Yao’s did.”
“I’m so sorry they are behaving like that,” Lan Xichen says and Jiang Cheng takes a deep breath.
There will be enough time to focus on Meng Yao’s and Nie Mingjue’s behaviour later—and Lan Qiren, too, Jiang Cheng guesses—but right now, only one thing is important.
“You’re in love with me,” Jiang Cheng says, a little bit dazed by the whole thing, and his heart beats faster when Lan Xichen blushes at that.
“Yes.”
“And you gave me your favourite sweater,” Jiang Cheng goes on.
“Yes,” Lan Xichen repeats, and then shuffles his feet in the most adorable way imaginable. “I’m sorry, I just--you look good in my clothes,” Lan Xichen admits, voice so low Jiang Cheng almost doesn’t hear him, but he does and it’s enough to make him smile.
“I like wearing your clothes,” he admits and raises the collar to take a deep breath. “It still smells like you,” he goes on and it seems to be enough to jolt Lan Xichen out of his shyness, because his head snaps up and he takes one long look at Jiang Cheng, before he marches forward, frames Jiang Cheng’s face with his hands and pulls him in for a kiss.
Jiang Cheng is frozen for a second, because this is quite unexpected, but he’s nothing if not quick on his feet, and so it’s not long before he slings his arms around Lan Xichen’s neck and leans fully into the kiss.
Jiang Cheng isn’t sure if he’ll ever get over the embarrassment of Lan Wangji clearing his throat at the door, ordering them back to the table, but Meng Yao’s face when he and Lan Xichen show back up in the dining room holding hands more than makes up for that.