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Nie Mingjue doesn’t know what he expected when he first took Jiang Cheng in but it certainly wasn’t to be cornered by Jiang Yanli of all people.
“Listen,” she says and fixes him with a glare that actually makes Nie Mingjue straighten up more than he already is.
“I’m listening,” he says seriously and wishes that Nie Huaisang would be subjected to this as well.
He was the one who first raised the idea that they should take in Jiang Cheng after all. He should get this version of the shovel talk as well.
“If you hurt my brother, I’ll know,” she tells him and he nods, because he doesn’t doubt it for a moment.
It’s the curse of the elder siblings to always know when the younger ones are hurt.
“I promise to take good care of him,” Nie Mingjue vows and he thinks they are already on a good way.
Jiang Cheng’s birthday was a success and he seems more comfortable in their home with every day that passes.
Nie Mingjue knows that they have to make up for years and years of a shitty family life, but they are damn well going to try.
They managed to make Mo Xuanyu feel like family, and he was near suicidal by the time he got to them, so they should be able to do the same for Jiang Cheng.
Nie Mingjue startles slightly when Wei Wuxian suddenly appears behind Jiang Yanli, only nodding along but not actually saying anything, and it’s more disconcerting than Nie Mingjue wants to admit.
“If he calls us because he’s unhappy here, you’re going to regret it,” Jiang Yanli says, and while Nie Mingjue would normally laugh at a threat like that—because really, what is Jiang Yanli ever going to do to him—he nods.
This is a serious threat and Nie Mingjue has no doubt that she will channel immeasurable amounts of strength simply to kill him if he should hurt Jiang Cheng. Wei Wuxian is probably going to hold her flower, if Nie Mingjue were to steal from Nie Huaisang’s meme talk, cheering her on and not otherwise lifting a finger.
It’s good to see that Jiang Cheng has his siblings standing up for him like that.
“I will make sure that he never has reason to call you out of grief,” Nie Mingjue tells her and Jiang Yanli’s face softens, just the slightest bit.
“Good. And if you should ever see him bake, you’re going to call me immediately,” she then says, even more serious than she was before and Nie Mingjue frowns. “And I mean immediately. If you stumble upon him in the middle of the night baking then you’re going to call me that very same instant.”
Wei Wuxian nods behind her, just as intense as his sister and even though it’s a mystery to Nie Mingjue why Jiang Cheng baking should be cause enough to call them no matter the time, he nods again.
If they want him to call, then he will, especially if it holds some significance for Jiang Cheng to bake.
“Do I dare ask why?” Nie Mingjue wants to know and Jiang Yanli gives him a very sweet smile, that already tells him the answer.
“No,” she still says and Nie Mingjue sighs.
Fine then. He’ll just wait and see what’s going to happen.
~*~*~
A lot is going to happen, it turns out. First and most notable, Nie Mingjue thinks, is the fact that for the very first time it’s Jiang Cheng who drags Nie Huaisang into the room.
It’s making Nie Mingjue anxious because so far Jiang Cheng has never willingly used the room—he has always been dragged off by Nie Huaisang and came back out crying more often than not—and so Nie Mingjue paces in front of the closed door for the entire time they are in there.
“You need to relax,” Mo Xuanyu suddenly says from his side and Nie Mingjue almost startles.
He didn’t notice him there.
“I know, I know,” Nie Mingjue absentmindedly says, keeping his eyes on the still closed door, at least right until Mo Xuanyu steps in front of him and pulls his face down so he’s looking at Mo Xuanyu instead.
“Mingjue,” he says and Nie Mingjue sags where he stands.
“I know,” he says again, much softer this time, but he can’t help but to worry.
“He’s doing fine,” Mo Xuanyu tells him and then simply throws himself at Nie Mingjue, who catches him easily, because Mo Xuanyu has been with them for long enough for Nie Mingjue to expect this.
“Is he?” Nie Mingjue asks and Mo Xuanyu slaps his back.
“I know you’re stupid, but you’re not actually that stupid. Of course he’s doing fine. This is a good sign. It’s him expressing his emotions, and that’s always good. Remember the first time I used the room?” Mo Xuanyu asks him and Nie Mingjue tightens his arms around Mo Xuanyu at the memory.
“Yes,” he says, because he does.
Mo Xuanyu dragged him into the room and he had started with begging him to not kick him out for this, and only when Nie Mingjue had told him that would never happen did Mo Xuanyu yell at him for a good five minutes about how stupid Nie Mingjue was being by trusting Jin Guangshan even the slightest bit, and be it just in a work-relationship.
When he had been done, Mo Xuanyu broke down crying—mostly out of relief to get it all off his chest—but the sight had still hurt Nie Mingjue.
“It was a good moment,” Mo Xuanyu reminds him and Nie Mingjue shrugs.
“Doesn’t make it easier to see you cry,” he admits, because he hates when any of the others cry.
Nie Huaisang mostly learned to wield his tears like a weapon, but there are times when they are real and that’s always bad for Nie Mingjue’s own feelings. Mo Xuanyu mostly doesn’t cry at all anymore, deciding to smile his hurt away, but that, too, is painful to watch.
At the moment it’s mostly Jiang Cheng who cries though, and it makes the other three weepy too, because he cries at the most normal things like a hug or the reassurance that he’s loved.
That’s very hard to take for Nie Mingjue.
“It’s why I stopped,” Mo Xuanyu says and pulls away.
“Seeing you smile when you’re hurt isn’t that much easier, Xuanyu,” Nie Mingjue tells him and flicks his forehead and he’s not at all surprised when Mo Xuanyu’s eyes go a little bit misty.
“I’m working on it,” he promises and Nie Mingjue knows that he is.
They all are still working on all of their issues, after all.
It’s in that moment when the door to the room flies open and Jiang Cheng stalks off, tears streaming down his face and a very stunned Nie Huaisang coming out after him.
“You good?” Nie Mingjue asks, even though he itches to go after Jiang Cheng to see if there is anything he can to do soothe him.
“He is louder than you are, da-ge,” Nie Huaisang says with something akin to wonder in his voice and Nie Mingjue frowns.
“Is that good or bad?” he wants to know, and watches fondly as Mo Xuanyu bounds over to Nie Huaisang to pull him into a hug as well.
Except this one is accompanied by kisses Nie Mingjue most definitely does not want to see.
“Good, I think,” Nie Huaisang finally says when he extracted himself from Mo Xuanyu and Nie Mingjue rolls his eyes, not that anyone sees, because they go right back to kissing.
“Alright, then,” Nie Mingjue grumbles and goes after Jiang Cheng, because clearly Nie Huaisang is being well taken care of.
He finds Jiang Cheng in the kitchen, where he’s pulling out all the ingredients he’d need to bake, and there are still tears streaming down his face.
Nie Mingjue still has Jiang Yanli’s words in his ear, so he immediately reaches for his phone and dials her number without taking his eyes off Jiang Cheng.
“Nie Mingjue,” she sweetly greets him but Nie Mingjue is too worried what this means to greet her properly.
“He’s baking,” he says and there’s a surprised gasp at the other end of the line.
“He’s what?” Jiang Yanli asks, and her voice sounds shaky and Nie Mingjue wants to know what this is all about this very instant, because if he needs to go in there and soothe Jiang Cheng then he’d rather do it sooner than later.
“He’s getting out all the ingredients he needs and he’s baking something.”
There’s a shuddering breath from her and then she bursts into tears, much to Nie Mingjue’s horror.
“Yanli?” he carefully asks, wondering how they could have fucked this up so badly but then she laughs.
“Thank you so much for giving this back to my brother,” she says through her tears and Nie Mingjue frowns.
“I don’t understand,” he admits and she takes a moment to calm herself down before she explains.
“He loves baking, and he has quite the talent, too,” she starts and now Nie Mingjue is even more confused, because if he loves this then shouldn’t this be a good thing? “Our parents, they—they didn’t approve,” she says and her voice goes dark. “It’s only for girls in their eyes, and it holds no real merit, isn’t something useful for the company or whatever they told him and they forbid him from doing it. He hasn’t baked anything in years. He used to do it when he was happy, when everything was so right in the world for him that he wanted to capture it with something you could taste, but I haven’t seen him do it in too long.” There’s a pause before she whispers “I think the last time was when he was fourteen.”
“Oh,” Nie Mingjue says and he looks at the situation with different eyes now.
Jiang Cheng is still crying, but now that Nie Mingjue knows what he’s looking for he sees that Jiang Cheng is relaxed, his shoulders loose and a lightness to his steps that wasn’t there before.
“Thank you, Mingjue, thank you for giving me back my brother, I mean it,” Jiang Yanli says and her praise makes Nie Mingjue uncomfortable.
“Don’t thank me,” he says gruffly but he can’t deny that he is touched by her words.
But mostly he’s touched because apparently Jiang Cheng is finally happy again.
“I’ll talk to you later, okay?” he says suddenly itching with the need to hang up and go into the kitchen to talk to Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli laughs as if she knows exactly what’s happening.
“Tell him I love him,” she says and then simply hangs up.
“Jiang Cheng?” Nie Mingjue carefully asks when he steps into the kitchen and Jiang Cheng gives him a huge smile, even though there are still tears on his cheek. “What’s going on?” Nie Mingjue wants to know and Jiang Cheng looks at the ingredients like he’s doubting Nie Mingjue’s intellect.
“I’m baking,” he says and Nie Mingjue sighs.
“I can see that. I meant the whole thing,” he says and makes a vague gesture with his hand, hoping to encompass everything about Jiang Cheng right now.
At Jiang Cheng’s confused frown he elaborates. “I just talked to your sister. She said you’re happy? I fail to see how you storming out of the room crying equates to you being happy, if I’m honest,” Nie Mingjue says and Jiang Cheng laughs before he motions for Nie Mingjue to come closer, so he can work more easily and without having to turn around all the time.
“This was the first time I used the room,” Jiang Cheng says. “The first time I decided to go in there.”
“I know.”
“I—in my old home, arguments were not to be held,” he says and Nie Mingjue goes very warm when Jiang Cheng refers to the Jiang residence as his old home.
It means he accepted that this is his new home.
“My parents yelled at each other and they berated us, but we weren’t actually allowed to talk back. And whenever one of us did, they took something away from us. Mostly their attention, but sometimes they would tell us how disappointed they are in us, or how bad we are behaving, how they can’t love us if we’re being like this. Sometimes they would take things we liked; certain books or our laptop or whatever else we held dear.”
Nie Mingjue has to fight the urge to go over to the Jiang residence and yell at them a whole lot. How dare they.
“Well, I say us, but mostly it was me,” Jiang Cheng says with a self-deprecating smile. “So whenever I said something to them, I always knew that it would have consequences. Their love for me was always conditional, I knew that, even though I chose to ignore that most of the time. I always hoped, you know,” Jiang Cheng mutters as he mixes the ingredients together.
“But today I went into the room with Nie Huaisang and I yelled at him for at least three minutes and we had a very bad fight, if I’m being honest. But throughout it all I knew that no matter what I said, we’d come out of the room and I’d still have his love and a home. I knew that it wouldn’t change anything if I yelled at him. I know it wouldn’t change anything if I yelled at you or Xuanyu either, and I haven’t felt like that in a long time,” Jiang Cheng whispers and Nie Mingjue can’t help himself, he simply has to reach over and pull him into a hug.
“Love is not conditional, Wanyin,” Nie Mingjue roughly tells him, fighting his own tears. “We will always love you, no matter what you do and you will always have a home here.”
“I know,” Jiang Cheng says, full on sobbing in Nie Mingjue’s shoulder now. “It’s why I’m baking. Because I know and because I’m home.”
“That you are,” Nie Mingjue agrees, and it’s a long time before Jiang Cheng goes back to baking.
When the muffins are in the oven, the smell draws Nie Huaisang and Mo Xuanyu out of their room and the first thing Nie Huaisang does when he sees Jiang Cheng is to hug him as well, furiously muttering something that makes Jiang Cheng blush and smile and Nie Mingjue hopes to always see him this happy from now on.
When the muffins are finally done it’s chaos in the kitchen, because everyone wants to be the first one to taste them and Nie Mingjue easily admits that he’s very proud that he wins, mostly because it makes Jiang Cheng laugh again.
The muffins are the most delicious thing Nie Mingjue has ever tasted and when they finally all settle around the kitchen table, various drinks in front of them, it certainly does feel like family and home.
Nie Mingjue is looking forward to making Jiang Cheng bake a lot more often in the future.