Chapter Text
"Fairy, Fairy, come here- Oh, shit!" a loud thud, like something falling hard.
"Language!" Jiang Cheng shouted as he prepared a simple dinner.
Over time, it had become easier despite not being able to see; after all, his taste buds were still intact. Timers, along with bump dots to distinguish ingredients, were very helpful. As long as he wasn't cooking banquets, he had no problems.
(He had cried a lot when he realised that making his sister's soup was practically impossible in those early years while he was still adapting, but in the end he had managed to make an acceptable replica. Although it would never be the same again)
His nephew seemed to have taken the talk seriously, as he had apparently decided to wear something to cover his eyes. Part of him felt a mischievous joy at seeing the teenager struggle so much, and on the other hand, he felt a lump in his throat when he saw that the boy was really trying hard.
"Jiujiu, how do you do it?" he complained "I keep bumping into everything!"
"I know the house by heart, A-Ling. I'm more surprised that you don't, considering you've lived here forever," he said sarcastically as he set the food on the table and sat down "Come here, let's eat. We'll start with the doctor's recommendations today."
Shaky footsteps approached, accompanied by the sound of furniture being knocked over and quiet curses. Finally, he heard his nephew sit down across from him.
"Where are the chopsticks?" he asked as Jiang Cheng heard his hands slap the table.
"To your right. And be careful, you might knock them over..." a small cry interrupted him "Causing them to fly off the table. A-Ling, really," he couldn't help but let out a tired sigh.
"This is hard!" he grumbled. It seemed he had finally found them, because through the vibrations of the table he could feel him searching for the plate with the food. A brief silence "...Did this happen to you too?"
"...The first times," Jiang Cheng confessed. His nephew was making an effort, and he would be no less "The worst part was not knowing whether they had fallen near me or not. If you're not sure where things are, it's best to carefully drag your hand along the table until you touch something."
From the sound of the tablecloth, it seemed that the teenager had followed his advice. His plates were always deep ones, minimising the risk of food falling off the plate, and from the sound of Jin Lin stirring his food, it seemed it was useful.
"Don't play with your dinner," he finally snapped. An awkward silence.
"...I don't know if I'm catching anything," his nephew admitted quietly.
That stopped Jiang Cheng for a moment. After a few seconds of doing nothing, he tapped his chopsticks on the plate of food, making a noise.
"...Draw a mental map," he said as he ran his chopsticks over the plate, making a slight noise "Calculate the distance and divide the plate into sections. Haven't you ever noticed that I always divide the food on the plates?"
"...Yeah, you do that," the boy's voice was surprised as Jiang Cheng listened to him follow his advice.
"Don't worry about touching the food if you need to, A-Ling," a sardonic smile spread across his face "It's not like I'll see you doing it."
A small chuckle. You better don't say that Jiang Cheng has no sense of humour.
"The vegetables are always together at the edge of the plate," he heard him murmur as he listened to the sound of chopsticks scraping against the plate. After a few seconds, Jin Ling exclaimed enthusiastically "I did it!"
"Good," Jiang Cheng couldn't help but smile, genuinely this time "You know the weight of the chopsticks, kid. If it doesn't change, you haven't picked anything up."
"...Thank you, Jiujiu," he murmured.
Jiang Cheng cleared his throat, uncomfortable. Ugh, emotions. They both continued eating in a much lighter atmosphere, with Jiang Cheng finishing long before his nephew. It seemed he had gotten the hang of it, but he was still going slowly.
As he washed his plate, he heard him sigh and put his chopsticks down on the table, so Jiang Cheng assumed he had finally finished eating.
"This is complicated," the teenager admitted quietly.
"And I've been doing it every day for thirteen years," Jiang Cheng's voice was soft, which was unusual for him "Seriously, A-Ling, why did you do that today?"
Silence. All that could be heard was Fairy's little paws as she walked around the kitchen.
"...People are cruel," he finally said "I hated it when other kids made fun of me at school for having a blind uncle. It bothered me even more than when they made fun of me for having dead parents."
"A-Ling..."
"I thought," a watery voice. Oh shit, was he crying? "that if no one stopped talking cruelly, then I would shout over them so you wouldn't hear them. But I just became another cruel voice."
A sob. With quick steps, Jiang Cheng approached the child he had raised and, in a rare act for him, gave him a hug. Jin Ling froze before practically collapsing as he cried.
"You don't need to yell at the world," Jiang Cheng murmured with a lump in his throat "I understand why you did what you did, but the thing is, you didn't trust me."
His mother had never trusted his abilities, always reminding him that Wei Wuxian was better than him at everything; his father didn't trust him to be a different person from his mother, which made him distant (that therapy session left him in a bad way for a whole week); even his sister, may she rest in peace, didn't trust him to control his temper.
But none of that compared to the pain he felt when he saw that the child he had raised did not trust him to handle a world where he had gone from stumbling to walking confidently in thirteen years. But at the same time, nothing compared to the love he felt for this boy, barely a teenager, who was making a great effort to understand him. He touched the cloth covering Jin Ling's eyes before removing it with a sharp movement.
"Trust your uncle, will you? I can manage. And even if the world is cruel, never stop seeing it, because eyes are a greater blessing than we think."
The arms around him tightened. "...Okay, jiujiu."