Lan Zhan looked too old, sometimes, staring into the blinding sun of dawn. He looked like he had gone somewhere Wei Wuxian couldn’t follow, beyond the scope of the horizon. Resentful energy swirled black and terrible at that thought, and Wei Wuxian laughed it to shattering pieces. Lan Zhan had stayed, but that didn’t mean he would forever.

Saving people, hunting things: the family business. Modern AU: the Nies are hit by a demon's death curse, which is NOT fuck or die - it's fuck AND die, a kind of reverse cultivation curse that's usually directed against cultivation partners, destroying their golden cores little by little every time they fuck. NOT a clever curse to use against brothers! ...except that the curse comes with a chaser: its targets share blisteringly horny sex dreams every night, as a way of encouraging them to go ahead and give in to the whole fuck-and-die schtick. Awkward. So it makes sense to search for a cure to the curse, right? Especially since the cure might actually help stabilise Mingjue's golden core. Obviously they have no intention of actually boning once they've got rid of the whole fuck-and-die curse... (...for the life of me I can't remember who suggested a Fuck AND Die trope on Twitter many weeks ago - evidently it has been living rent free in the back of my head ever since, though, and so here we have some Niecest.)