He's not sure if he's supposed to fix his robes and be House-Jiang-submissive presentable, or if he's supposed to not fix his robes because that was sort of punishment adjacent and he wasn't given permission. 'Not' is easier to correct if he's wrong; he goes for that one. Sits down obediently. (…Attempts to remember to keep not touching his flute.)
(It's not going to occur to him to read anything into Jiang Cheng not looking at him, but he can tell Jiang Cheng still doesn't look happy. And hasn't gone back to 'fed up with him'. Might be thinking about not having shown ‘appropriate dom behavior’, or maybe that one will take longer tonight.)
...What even helps doms feeling insecure? What helps doms-who-are-your-sibling feeling insecure; why are all the examples he’s thinking of romances, that’s not useful to him at all. What helps specifically his brother feeling insecure. In his experience beating him makes Jiang Cheng feel better, but apparently he doesn’t want to right now, and Wei Wuxian is pretty sure misbehaving is not supposed to be how you get doms to feel secure about you.
He could get out his ID card but probably Jiang Cheng is not feeling insecure about the government knowing Wei Wuxian belongs to him.
In lieu of currently better ideas, he watches Jiang Cheng drink his tea so he can get the timing right on the refill, like a real attentive attendant submissive. Which Jiang Cheng may or may not notice at all, and is more likely to notice if he didn’t manage it, and he knows he wouldn’t be able to keep it up, but. He’s learned anything from all his lessons, he can keep himself paying attention for one teapot.
(He’s learned anything from all his lessons, and he knows perfectly well that he’s an absolutely terrible candidate for attendant submissive. His notes aren’t fit for anyone except him, he misses cues even when he’s trying not to miss them, he’s more likely to forget things than to be able to remind a dom about them, and the only way he can kneel still for any length of time is if he’s had a whipping in about the previous two hours. And if he has to be quiet while important doms talk for long enough eventually he will do not that and a whipping in the last two hours will seem really fun by comparison.
Obviously Jiang Cheng uses the household subject submissives and this is a much better idea for everyone. That’s not what ‘be at my side’ means, that wouldn’t even make sense. Neither of them will have fun if Jiang Cheng decides to order him to do it. Why is he thinking about this!)
Wei Wuxian is also thinking about hugs. Those being a pretty obvious idea for what he’s looking for. He mostly only tries hugging his brother after he’s been really severely punished, but that does kind of imply he has standing permission? It’s pretty hard to hug someone over a table, but he’s a bit worried that if he waits something else will happen in between.
He succeeds in getting the tea refill right. (This means he hasn’t really been able to drink more of his own tea, but that’s fine. He already had some anyway.) He puts down the teapot and attempts to edge around the table and recreate asking-for-a-hug nonverbals while sitting down. (He hasn’t actually been really severely punished, so there are some missing elements, but it should be pretty clear what he’s doing.)