Chapter Text
It’s not as if Jiang Fengmian expects Wei Ying to agree, and so he isn’t really surprised when the other sputters and denies it after he asks for a match between the son he should have had and the son he ended up with.
“No, of course not- I, Jiang-shushu, you know Jiang Cheng doesn’t - He sees me like a brother! Besides, can you imagine Jiang Cheng of all people giving up on being the next sect leader? He lives for this.”
And it’s true. Despite the fact that her son was born a mere omega, destined at best to be an equal to the poor soul who would marry him and become Sect Leader of Yunmeng Jiang, Yu Ziyuan had seen it fit to raise her son the same way she had been raised. Jiang Cheng had been brought up believing himself an equal to the betas and even alphas around him, and while even Jiang Fengmian can not dispute the fact that he did seem to work hard on his cultivation and what little sect administrative affairs Yu Ziyuan cajoled Jiang Fengmian into guiding him with, at the end of the day there had never been an omega sect leader in the world. Jiang Fengmian is personally of the opinion that letting Jiang Cheng have as much freedom as Yu Ziyuan did was a mistake - he had somehow gotten it into his head that he could prove that he was worthy of being the heir if he just tried hard enough. It isn’t that Jiang Fengmian doesn’t appreciate his tenacity - he just knows better than to encourage it.
Besides, it isn’t as if being born an alpha or a beta would have freed him from a marriage of convenience. Jiang Fengmian is an alpha, after all, and he had still found himself married to a woman he has no interest in. And Jiang Fengmian isn’t the heartless father his wife makes him out to be. He really isn’t. He’s only considering the best not just for the Yunmeng Jiang Sect but also for Jiang Cheng. Not only is Wei Ying a powerful cultivator even at his age, he is also well-liked and knows Jiang Cheng well. For some unfathomable reason, he seems to like Jiang Cheng well enough. He can be a little childish at times, but that’s only fair for someone who had gone through as much as he had. If anything, it’s Wei Ying who’s being done an injustice here.
He had expected Wei Ying to shut him down, expected having to persuade him until he comes around. And yet -
Even as Wei Ying stutters through his excuses, his face is flushed and he’s averting his eyes. Jiang Fengmian knows Wei Ying well, has made it his mission to see all of his needs are seen to without him ever having to speak of them out loud, and -
Huh. Now it all makes sense. Wei Ying’s frankly baffling way of not getting upset at Jiang Cheng’s sharp responses and frequent reprimands. In fact, seeming to even derive some sort of pleasure out of teasing the other. Jiang Cheng is, for all his flaws, very beautiful. Wei Ying is after all very young, and spends a great deal of time in the proximity of a young, unmated, attractive omega. It shouldn’t surprise Jiang Fengmian that he’s attracted to Jiang Cheng on some level.
But then, why is Wei Ying so adamant in denying it? Surely he must see that this is the best Jiang Cheng could possibly hope for, abrasive and brash as he is. So unlike an omega. Just like his mother. There really is nothing of Jiang Fengmian in him.
It must be, then, the prospect of being tied for life to someone like Jiang Cheng. Honestly, Jiang Fengmian can sympathize with that. Life with her son can hardly be more appetizing than life with Yu Ziyuan herself.
“A-Ying,” he says, sincere as he always is when Wei Ying’s happiness is on the line, “I can understand your hesitation. You are free, of course, to take lovers.”
He regrets his words when Wei Ying’s eyes snap back to him, wide and almost accusatory.
“Jiang-shushu,” he cries, sounding scandalised, “Would you have ever done that?”
Jiang Fengmian stays silent. The only woman he would have considered taking as a lover is no longer here, and had never belonged to him in the first place. Perhaps Wei Ying realises that, too, because he looks as if he’s regretting his choice of words.
In the end, he can’t persuade Wei Ying.
He considers asking Jiang Cheng to go to Wei Ying instead. Considers explaining to him how Wei Ying will like him, even if it’s a shallow attraction only, rather than merely tolerate him for the sake of the sect leader position a marriage to him will bring with it. Considers pointing out that Wei Ying has always treated Jiang Cheng the same despite his secondary gender, and that he will at the very least respect his boundaries when it comes to intimacy.
But then he realises he doesn’t have the words. What can he say to the man who is bound to him by blood but is little better than a stranger? He knows Yu Ziyuan would have sneered at such an attempt. Or rather, he thinks she would have. She agreed to their marriage, after all. He’s struck by the fact that they have spent decades by each other’s side, and yet she is as much a stranger to him as their son.
In the end, it doesn’t matter. This is for the best. And it’s his duty as a sect leader and a father to see to it that this match is made.
It’s not easy to switch out Jiang Cheng’s heat suppressants for an elixir similar enough to it to be mistaken but with an aphrodisiac effect instead. Jiang Fengmian doesn’t think the effect is needed at all, with how hard first proper heats without suppressant drugs hit omegas, but the added insurance is always nice.
It’s much easier to keep Jiang Cheng by his side at nearly all times. He claims that it’s about time his son learns more about the less glamorous duties of a sect leader, and the eager gleam in Jiang Cheng’s eyes when he says it is almost enough to make uneasy stirrings of something like guilt make itself known.
Yu Ziyuan looks suspicious, but doesn’t protest. It’s what she’s always wanted, Jiang Fengmian guesses, and so she stays quiet for once.
For the following days, Jiang Cheng glues himself to Jiang Fengmian’s side. It’s almost pitiful, the way the younger man follows him around like a duckling. It’s also… a little endearing, perhaps. For the first time in his life, Jiang Fengmian finds himself looking at his son and seeing not a perfect replica of his wife, but Jiang Cheng himself. He works hard, with an earnestness not found in his words.
Perhaps he should have tried a little harder, instead of thinking Jiang Cheng would be just like the woman who ruined his life based solely on his appearance. Certainly there’s consideration hidden in how his cup of tea is always refilled before Jiang Fengmian can even notice it has run out, how he always finds there’s ink in the inkstone whenever his hands reach to grind some more, how when he’s too caught up in the paperwork to take note of the time there’s always a meal outside his door. At the same time, it only reinforces in his mind the fact that Jiang Cheng is not as unsuited to his station as an omega as he had first thought.
Wei Ying will be good for him, after all they do enjoy each other’s company. Everything else can come after, over decades spent together. Jiang Fengmian steadfastly ignores the fact that he’s spent decades with his own wife and the years haven’t eased their relationship at all. Their situation is vastly different - they hadn’t known each other before being forced to sit through a marriage interview by their respective elders, she had already loved someone by that point, their natures were much too contrasting to come to an understanding. There are endless excuses there, but in the end none of it really matters.
Wei Ying isn't him, and Jiang Cheng isn't his mother - he wishes he had noticed it earlier. Would that have made this a little easier? Or would it only have made what he has to inevitably do even harder?
It's a bright summer morning when Jiang Cheng stops in the middle of looking over some paperwork related to a requested joint night hunt by Gusu Lan. Jiang Fengmian is too absorbed in his own work to notice anything amiss until he hears the punched out "Damn" from Jiang Cheng.
Jiang Cheng's eyes are wide and there's a flush rising high on his cheeks. Beads of sweat gather at his brow as he blinks, starts to apologize for the profanity and then unceremoniously bends in half. A scent that's faintly reminiscent of the wet earth after a rainstorm permeates the air, though Jiang Fengmian is well aware scents are perceived differently by different people. Jiang Cheng's breath starts quickening, short gasps of pain and discomfort alike being stifled by him biting down on his lips till they bleed. Fengmian wouldn't say he watches the scene dispassionately, but he approaches the entire thing with the steadfast reminder that what he's doing is for the best for all parties involved, and that keeps any concern from overwhelming his calm.
"A-Cheng, don't be afraid." He says, kneeling by his son keeled over on the floor, "It's just a heat. Let's get you somewhere private."
Jiang Cheng looks conflicted, as he should. He knows exactly how unlikely a heat is for him while on suppressants, and yet he still grabs his father's hand unquestioningly and with only the briefest moment of hesitation. Such gullibility does not suit a Jiang, Fengmian notes to himself. Perhaps they can work on that after.
But for now, it works in his favour. He brings Jiang Cheng to a room in his own wing, far from his wife’s chambers. When Jiang Cheng hesitates at the door, looking up at him with wide eyes, he simply smiles at him and nudges him through the door. Jiang Cheng stumbles in and nearly flops onto the bed, uncaring of his dignity. Not that Jiang Fengmian can blame him - the air is saturated with the earthy scent of Jiang Cheng’s heat pheromones. It’s unnaturally fast, and for a second he worries if the dosage was too strong.
“Rest.” He says, because he can’t find any other words. There’s - all the necessities in the bedside table, and water and dry food in the cupboard in the corner. But he knows if he says this now Jiang Cheng might start doubting him. He may be many things, but he’s not a monster. He refuses to have to resort to binding Jiang Cheng to the bed if he struggles.
With that, he retreats, shutting and locking the door behind him. There are very few servants permitted to come and go in this wing as they please, and all of them are loyal to him. Still, they have also seen Jiang Cheng grow up. If he fails now, getting another chance will be so much harder.
Usually, Wei Ying would be hard to find, but he has been assigning the other to oversee the Junior disciples for a while now. He finds him there, and Wei Ying follows him just as easily as Jiang Cheng had. His loyalty has always been a quality Jiang Fengmian admires.
It’s so, so easy to direct him towards the room he’s left Jiang Cheng in. Neither of them are fools, so Jiang Fengmian has taken the time to slap scent-blocking and silencing talismans on the corners of the door after Jiang Cheng was already locked in, tucked out of the way where they’ll be much harder to notice even for Wei Ying. If it was someone else taking him there, Wei Wuxian might have been more alert to his surroundings. It isn’t anyone else, though. It’s the man he’s come to regard as a second father, a man who had taken him in and given him a second chance at life.
So there’s no hesitation in Wei Ying’s steps as he steps in. His eyes haven’t finished adjusting to the darkness within when his nose is assaulted by a wave of heat scent, almost smothering Jiang Cheng’s own natural scent. By the time he’s whirled around, the door has already shut behind him. He screams and throws himself against the door, still not quite processing what just happened. But it doesn’t give no matter how many times he slams his shoulder against it, and he slides down the length of the door, curling in on himself and burying his face in his arms in a futile attempt to try and not smell the cocktail of pheromones hanging heavy in the room like an executioner’s axe about to fall on his neck.
He knows, he knows Jiang Cheng doesn’t and has never felt the same way he does. And even if, by any chance, Jiang Cheng was amenable to bonding with him instead of another unknown alpha, there’s no way he can do this to Jiang Cheng without hearing that from the man himself first. There has been no indication whatsoever of the omega’s interest in him - of course he knows they’re each other’s closest friends, of course he loves Jiang Cheng more than his very being, but the fact remains that Jiang Cheng himself probably sees him as family, just as shijie does.
The scent is getting to his head, as it was designed to. What sort of a god would play such a cruel trick on them? He remembers being fifteen and watching Jiang Cheng collapse in the middle of the training, sending half the training disciples into a daze and Wei Wuxian himself in his very first rut. He remembers dinner the next week, fraught with more tension than usual until Wei Wuxian cracked a whispered joke at shijie and she giggled. Madame Yu had snapped at them both, and Jiang-shushu had intervened not with his usual platitude that Wei Wuxian was nearly family, but rather that Wei Wuxian would be a part of the family soon enough. Madame Yu’s face had gone white, and she had put her chopsticks down with a clang, sweeping the dishes off her table with a resounding clatter as she shouted at Jiang-shushu for daring to imply her son wasn’t good enough to be a sect heir anymore. Horrified, Wei Wuxian and shijie had both immediately looked to Jiang Cheng who was staring at his parents with a face paler than his mother’s.
Afterwards, he had tried to tell Jiang Cheng Madame Yu was reading things into Jiang-shushu’s words, but even shijie had remained conspicuously silent despite his pleading glances. Jiang Cheng had said nothing at all, not even a word of complaint had burst from his lips like it usually did during Wei Wuxian’s cajoling. He’d decided, then and there, that it was a cruel and useless hierarchy. They had no need for it. In the future, Jiang Cheng would be the sect leader of Yunmeng Jiang, omega or not, and Wei Wuxian would be his right hand man glaring anyone who dared slight Jiang Cheng into submission. Not that Jiang Cheng needed help with that, but it would be nice. For them to always have each other’s back, together no matter what fate threw at them.
And yet, here he is, eyes watering with the effort to not go farther into the room following that delectable scent. Even if it didn’t belong to Jiang Cheng, he wouldn’t have. It’s a fucked up thing - heats, forcing both omegas and alphas out of their senses. He’s heard stories, and none of them pretty. It’s not right to any omega, and especially not when it was Jiang Cheng there, panting and squirming so loudly Wei Wuxian can hear him from all the way across the room.
He’s taken so much from Jiang Cheng already - his dogs, his father - he can’t take even more. Not this. Anything but this.
“Wei Wuxian?” Jiang Cheng whispers from the bed. Ever since they got their courtesy names, he has never once called Wei Wuxian by anything else. Sometimes, Wei Wuxian wishes he would have called him A-Ying again, like when they were children and before Madame Yu heard him call Jiang Cheng A-Cheng and made them both kneel for hours on the frozen winter ground.
But Jiang Cheng has never once asked him to start calling him Jiang Wanyin.
It’s so fucked up that this is what Wei Wuxian focuses on as he makes his way to the bed. Jiang Cheng is calling for him, asking him to help - how can he ever deny? The same way he knows Jiang Cheng won’t deny him no matter how ridiculous he calls Wei Wuxian’s plans and pranks, the same way he knows Jiang Cheng will invariably take the punishment quietly despite vehemently refusing to go along with it till the last moment.
“Jiang Cheng,” he calls, using every ounce of his willpower to stop before he leaps into the bed and devours the other like his gut is telling him to do, “Jiang Cheng, please. Please.”
He trails off. He doesn’t know what he’s asking for. Is he asking for Jiang Cheng to tell him to stop? Is he asking for Jiang Cheng to ask him properly? Maybe what he’s asking for isn’t something Jiang Cheng, with his heat-addled mind, can’t provide at all.
The gauzy curtains surrounding the bed stir, Jiang Cheng’s flushed face peeking out. He’s crying, and Wei Wuxian’s own cheeks are wet. He doesn’t know much about heat, but he does know how much it hurts. He’d scoured the library for books relating to omegas and heats after his own rut was over and Jiang Cheng still didn’t appear from his own heat. What he’d read had only solidified the twisted nature of heats in his mind.
“Please.” Jiang Cheng says, in a trembling voice Wei Wuxian hopes never ever to hear from him again, “Please, please, Wei Wuxian, please. Help me.”
Like a puppet with it’s strings cut, Wei Wuxian falls onto Jiang Cheng, capturing his plump, bitten-red lips with his own. Jiang Cheng lets out a sound midway between a squeak and a growl and pulls him in, arms coming up to grab onto his waist and shoulder. He falls back, pulling Wei Wuxian down on top of himself.
It’s everything Wei Wuxian has ever wanted, but it’s also everything Wei Wuxian can never have.
He makes a last-ditch attempt to pull away, trying to remind Jiang Cheng this isn’t what he wants, but Jiang Cheng holds onto him with surprising strength and Wei Wuxian…
Wei Wuxian can’t let go.