Chapter Text
“She’s perfect,” Wei Wuxian said, tucking his finger into the baby’s tiny fist. “I didn’t know babies were so…perfect right away. Look at her! She’s got everything! A nose, a mouth, eyes, even fingernails—“
“You’ve met children before,” Jiang Cheng hissed softly at him, not wanting to wake Wen Qing, sleeping behind a screen, just a few feet away.
“They weren’t this little though,” Wei Wuxian said reverently. “You know…I really wished I could have seen Jin Ling when he was this little.”
“I know,” Jiang Cheng said, swallowing hard. Wen Qing had also known that, seen that, remembered that, apparently, so when Jiang Cheng had asked if it would all right for Wei Wuxian to come see the baby right away, instead of waiting for the hundred days ceremony with everyone else, she’d nodded, and said yes, I want him to.
“…you can pick her up,” Jiang Cheng said. “She likes to be held.” Jin Ling had also liked to be held, at that age. Jiang Cheng remembered passing him back and forth between Jiejie and Jin Zixuan and himself, like it was a game and the baby was some kind of ball, when Jin Ling was just a couple of days old. Probably all babies liked to be held. In fact, it was probably completely normal to want to be held, as a child, actually.
Wei Wuxian carefully scooped the baby up out of her cradle, supporting her round little head with one gentle hand, and her dumpling-wrapped body with his other arm. He was smiling so sweetly down at her, that something wrenched in Jiang Cheng’s chest, badly.
I wanted to see this before. Back then, I wanted this with you and me and Jiejie and A-Ling. Jiang Cheng blinked hard, over and over again, not wanting to ruin the moment that they had now, even while still longing for the moment long out of their grasp.
Wei Wuxian was too focused on the baby to see Jiang Cheng blinking back tears. Thank Heaven.
“She’s smiling at me,” Wei Wuxian whispered, mildly ecstatic.
Jiang Cheng was pretty sure babies didn’t smile at one week old—he hadn’t had Jin Ling with him all the time until Jin Ling had been just a little over three months old, so he might have missed some things—but when he came to look over Wei Wuxian’s shoulder at his sleeping daughter, she was not smiling at him, or at anything; she was making yawpy little baby faces, not even opening her eyes.
“I know, I know!” Wei Wuxian whispered, without being prompted. “I swear I saw it, though!”
“Babies this age just make faces, it doesn’t mean anything,” Jiang Cheng whispered, and felt himself getting sharp-edged. But Wei Wuxian was right here, and they’d talked a lot this past year (and talked, and talked), and so, (after all the talking they’d done) knowing he was permitted and welcomed, he hugged Wei Wuxian from behind, settling his chin over Wei Wuxian’s shoulder, both of them looking down at the baby.
“Your parents would be really happy and proud,” Wei Wuxian said softly.
“A-Niang would,” Jiang Cheng allowed.
“So would Uncle Jiang,” Wei Wuxian insisted. “I know he wasn’t always…great about showing it, but he really loved you.”
Jiang Cheng made a neutral noise. Wei Wuxian interpreted it correctly to mean back off on this one, Wei Wuxian, and stopped pushing it.
Jiang Fengmian had been perfectly good at showing people love when he actually loved them. That was precisely why it was hard for Wei Wuxian to talk about that whole aspect of their childhood. He wasn’t unaware of the way he’d been favored over Jiang Fengmian’s own son, but Jiang Cheng knew it made him feel disloyal, ungrateful, to think poorly in any way about the person who’d saved him from starvation, who’d raised him in his own household, the person who most closely connected him to his absent parents.
Jiang Cheng didn’t want to take any of that away from Wei Wuxian. He just…didn’t want to have to pretend anymore that his father had loved him, and that there had ever been anything he could have said or done or become that would have unlocked the demonstration of it. He didn’t want to think if I’d managed to get married and have a child while my father was still alive, maybe that would have changed things, maybe that would have made him look at me the way I wanted him to look at me. Jiang Cheng had performed his filial duty after all; wasn’t that enough? He didn’t have to be deluded about it.
It wasn’t like it mattered. Love and duty had nothing to do with one another. Jiang Cheng’s filial obligations to his parents existed whether or not they’d loved him.
And Jiang Fengmian was long dead, and that meant Jiang Cheng never had to worry whether he was going to look at his granddaughter with the same disinterest he had with his son. He’d never have to watch his father turn down the chance to hold his granddaughter, vaguely waving away the offer as he turned his attention to Wei Wuxian or to Jiejie. Or—not worse, but certainly more bittersweet—to actually see him show interest in his granddaughter, after all, as he never had in his son; for Jiang Cheng to see his daughter doted on by her grandfather, and have it confirmed yet again that whatever was wrong between them was wrong with Jiang Cheng and just Jiang Cheng; to be shown that the fault lay wholly within him.
My brother loves me, Jiang Cheng reminded himself, leaning his weight on Wei Wuxian’s back, secure in the knowledge that it was welcomed, and would be held. My sister loved me. My mother loved me. Jin Ling loves me and Wen Qing loves me. I am not unlovable, just because my father couldn’t love me.
Maybe someday he’d believe that enough that he wouldn’t need to make a list. Maybe someday he would just…feel that way. All the time. But for now, the list would do.
***
“So, what is this little girl going to be called, hmm?” Wei Wuxian asked, as Wen Qing came in, fresh from feeding the baby.
“Jiang Fu,” Wen Qing said, depositing said little girl into Jiang Cheng’s arms for burping, and settling herself carefully into her seat. Since Jiang Cheng’s arms were now occupied, Wei Wuxian stood and helped adjust her cushions, and she smiled quickly but sincerely in gratitude. “As in, ‘good fortune’.”
“I like that,” Wei Wuxian announced, like he got a vote, which he didn’t. “Simple and old-school. I assume that was you, and not Jiang Cheng? By the way, my offer to choose her courtesy name for you still stands.”
“Still no thanks! And for the moment, we’re calling her Shu-er,” Wen Qing said. “A-Cheng did come up with that one. He said she looked like a little yam, the first time he held her.”
“A-Qing,” Jiang Cheng protested, patting the baby’s back gently but steadily. “He doesn’t need to know that!”
“Sometimes, A-Cheng calls her Shu Ying,” Wen Qing added. “I don’t call her that at all. That’s all him.”
Wei Wuxian’s brows drew together, and he hazarded, “Baby Yam?,” correctly guessing the characters.
Jiang Cheng, betrayed by his own wife, turned his back on the table, and lifted his infant daughter to his face, ignoring his terrible family in favor of whispering at Shu Ying that she was the cutest and most darling baby that had ever been born, and that there was nothing wrong with being nicknamed Baby Sweet Potato when you were exactly the size of one and just as sweet, nothing at all, and that her A-Die was very very good at naming things.
“You named your baby after me,” Wei Wuxian said, absolutely delighted, crawling out of his chair to sit on the floor at Jiang Cheng’s feet, where he couldn’t ignore him. “You named your baby after me!”
“Shut up! She’s an actual baby; it’s not weird that sometimes I call her a baby! And it’s just her milk name anyway!”
“You named your baby after me, A-Cheng!” If Jiang Cheng hadn’t been actually holding Shu Ying in his arms, he was pretty sure Wei Wuxian would have dragged him out of his chair to play-wrestle him like he had when they were children. Thump him thoroughly, until they were both exhausted from laughing, and all of Jiang Cheng’s fervid, anxious touch-hunger would be sated for another day.
Things were different now, of course. Things could never be the same as they were when they were children. But things were also better now than they had been a year ago (or five years ago, fifteen years ago, twenty years ago…). Things were better than they’d been even just nine months ago. And even though Jiang Cheng knew things might not always be exactly as good as they were in this moment, he was trying to take a cue from Wei Wuxian, and just…enjoy what he had now, while he had it.
Live with what he had, in the moments that he had it.