Sadly, dignity was in very short supply when you were taking care of babies. Multiple babies. Well, one baby and one toddler, which was somehow worse?

Lan Xichen was pretty sure they’d figured out how to time their crying off each other.

“I would never,” Nie Mingjue said, like a liar, and then he picked up little Jingyi and – Lan Xichen simply cannot find another way to put it – shook him, in a manner not unlike testing a melon for freshness.

For some reason, this made Lan Jingyi stop crying and start making snuffling little giggles instead.

“How did you do that?” Lan Xichen asked, eyes wide.

“Do what?” Nie Mingjue tucked the baby into the crook of his arm and scooped up some food off the table, offering it to him, and Lan Jingy actually ate it. “Xichen, are you feeling all right?”

“Shhh!” Lan Xichen hissed, eyes fixed on the baby, which was neither spitting up everything nor wailing as if his heart was broken. “No unnecessary noise during meals.”

Nie Mingjue snorted in amusement. “Sure,” he said amiably, in the tone Lan Xichen had long ago learned meant ‘nice rules you’ve got there, it’d be an awful shame if someone found a loophole in them’. “This isn’t a meal, though; it’s just a snack.”

Lan Xichen eyed the still-not-crying Lan Jingyi and decided that now was not the time for a spirited debate on the virtues of discipline and fulfilling the merits rather than the word of a rule.

“Where’s monster number one gone?” Nie Mingjue asked abruptly. “He must be very good at hiding, because I looked away for a blink of an eye and he was gone.”

Lan Xichen’s eyes slowly dropped down to where a cloth-covered lump was not-so-sneakily edging towards Nie Mingjue’s foot.

Nie Mingjue was one of the foremost front line fighters of their generation, and possibly the previous one as well. His physical ability was matched only by his incredibly keen senses.

There was no way he was not aware of the lump.

“It’s a real shame, too,” Nie Mingjue continued. “I was planning on doing a test of how far you can throw children, but I think monster two here’s a bit too small to make the test worthwhile. But I guess it just wasn’t meant to be –”

You can’t throw children, Lan Xichen was about to say, except Lan Sizhui was tearing off the tablecloth and jumping up in excitement, shouting, “Here! Here! I’m here! I’m big enough! You can throw me!”

“Why does he want to be thrown,” Lan Xichen murmured, bewildered. He’d never wanted to be thrown around as a child. Had he?

In fairness, he wasn’t sure. No one had ever offered.

Apparently, though, Lan Sizhui did very much want to be thrown around, and Lan Jingyi even condescended to allow Lan Xichen to hold him while he watched.

“Higher! Higher!” Lan Sizhui shouted.

“Really? Is this high enough?” Nie Mingjue held him up at eye level.

“Higher!”

“Like this?” Above his head.

“Higher!”

“You sure?”

“Yes!”

“All right. How about –” Baxia slithered out from her place by the door, zipping over until she was right in front of Nie Mingjue, allowing him to step onto her like a stair, and then zipping upwards to about hip-height, lifting Nie Mingjue and Lan Sizhui with her. They very nearly hit a tree branch with their heads. “– this?”

Lan Sizhui shrieked with laughter.  

“It’s too early to introduce them to flying,” Lan Xichen objected, because it was. “Mingjue-xiong…”

Nie Mingjue hopped down with a laugh. “All right, one last toss,” he told Lan Sizhui. “Then you nap. Okay?”

“Okay!” Lan Sizhui, who had never once willingly succumbed to naptime in the entirety of the time that Lan Xichen had known him, promised earnestly.

Back into the pile of soft grass he went, giggling the entire time, and amazingly enough he really did fall asleep afterwards. Lan Jingyi, too, had fallen asleep at some point.

“I’ve decided that your brother needs more experience running a sect,” Lan Xichen told Nie Mingjue, who raised his eyebrows. “Starting immediately. I promise to allow you to leave when Jingyi is, oh, shall we say five years old..?”

You could reason with a five year old. 

Nie Mingjue laughed.

It was a type of laugh that suggested that he thought Lan Xichen was making a joke. This was incorrect.

“You’d be amazed at how serious I am,” Lan Xichen told him threateningly, “I’m sect leader here, this is my territory, I can have you arrested any time –” but by that point Nie Mingjue was already bundling him off to bed, too, combing out his hair and plying him with snacks and –

This was not helping his argument that Lan Xichen should be allowing him to leave rather than keep him trapped in the Cloud Recesses as a babysitter-slash-love-slave. 

Well, he wouldn’t really do that, of course. He’d let him go. Eventually.

It’d probably be good for Nie Mingjue’s stress levels, honestly.

“Seriously, though, how did you do that?” he asked, his head on Nie Mingjue’s lap. “They didn’t cry once.”

“I’m good with kids,” Nie Mingjue said, his fingers digging into Lan Xichen’s scalp in just the right way. “Now can you explain to me how exactly you ended up with them? Two, no less?”

Lan Xichen groaned and covered his eyes with a hand. “Sizhui’s Wangji’s,” he explained. “Not biologically, but he’s put his name down in the family register under his own. But, you know…”

“I know.”

Lan Xichen appreciated that he didn’t need to go into it. The doctors had estimated that Lan Wangji would regain full mobility within three years, so that was the period the elders had mandated for his so-called ‘seclusion’, but with Lan Wangji being locked away like that – even with visitors, even though he was trying his hardest to care for the child from where he was – meant that someone had to care for the child’s day-to-day life until his brother was ready to resume the role.

“Jingyi is a cousin, I think,” he continued. “His parents are dead, and uncle accepted guardianship for him…I think he’s going to adopt him, actually.”

“Then why is he with you?”

“I volunteered.”

“Xichen, I say this with a full heart of affection and tremendous respect for your capabilities,” Nie Mingjue said. “But why in the world would you go and do a stupid thing like that?”

Lan Xichen sighed. The worst part was, he couldn’t even argue that it wasn’t stupid – he was, quite obviously, terrible with children.

“Uncle’s still injured from the war,” he admitted. In fact, his injury was probably even older than the war, dating as far back as the burning of the Cloud Recesses – his uncle had never been much of a fighter, his impressive cultivation strength stemming almost entirely from gentler arts like music and learning and meditation, but when his home and his family and his students were at risk, he’d fought, while Lan Xichen ran. Not just fought; he’d kept fighting long past the point that his body allowed. It only made sense for the bill to need to be paid. “He had a recurrence of an old complaint, not long ago; he started coughing up blood. The doctors insisted that he try to avoid anything that might cause him  stress.”

“Stress. Like, say, a rowdy infant?”

“Exactly like a rowdy infant,” Lan Xichen agreed, glad that Nie Mingjue did not mention that what had happened with Lan Wangji was also likely a source of stress. At least the two of them had slowly started to repair their relationship recently – the heartbreak would kill their uncle sooner than anything else, and Lan Xichen might be weak, but he really couldn’t tolerate the idea of suffering any more loss.

And also, if Lan Wangji could see his way to forgiving their uncle, he might one day agree to forgive Lan Xichen, too.

“I see. So you ended up with the little one, too.”

“Yes. And they hate me.” Nie Mingjue coughed a little. “No, don’t deny it. They clearly hate me. They always cry and spit and yell -”

“They’re children, Xichen,” Nie Mingjue said. “Traumatized children. They do that.”

Lan Xichen didn’t need to open his eyes to know that Nie Mingjue was frowning in memory of pain long past. Lan Xichen remembered, with painful clarity, how young Nie Huaisang had been when Lao Nie had died, how badly he had taken it.

There’d been a lot of crying and vomiting and yelling there as well.

“You’re good with kids,” Lan Xichen said instead of commenting, trading delicacy for delicacy; he would not touch Nie Mingjue’s still-bleeding wounds just as Nie Mingjue avoided his own. “Very good.”

“Well, I like to think so, anyway.”

They remained in blissful, comfortable silence for a while.

“How would it have even worked?” Lan Xichen finally asked. His eyes were still closed, Nie Mingjue’s fingers running through his hair; he never wanted to move again.

“Hmm?”

“If you knocked me up before you went to war. I mean, they’re not even the same age.”

“Well, one of them’s from the affair, obviously.”

“I’m sorry, am I cheating on you now?” Lan Xichen opened an eye and pinned Nie Mingjue with a fierce look that instructed his lover to reconsider.

“Of course not,” Nie Mingjue said, mock-solemnly. His eyes were dancing. “You were so distraught after receiving incorrect news of my untimely demise that you conducted a ghost marriage with my spirit, and then went and had a child to continue my name.”

“…they’re both surnamed Lan.”

“So what? Are you saying I’m not good enough to marry into your sect, is that it?”

Lan Xichen’s cheeks were hurting from trying not to laugh. “I wouldn’t dream of implying such a thing.”

“There you go, then.”

“Can I ask why I felt the need to have a child to continue your name if I had one already?”

“…well, fuck,” Nie Mingjue said. “I’ve got nothing.”

brighteyedjill

replied to your post

“sometimes”

*in Monty Python voice* I'm not dead yet

RIGHT

walburgablack

replied to your post

“sometimes”

oh ffs, forty is maaaaybe middle-aged?

And that’s the thing. being middle-aged isn’t a thing that people understand anymore. It’s seen as this thing to dread, and then gets mushed into the same thing as being geriatric. So in our society, being past your mid-thirties (...ish) is basically the same as being retired which is some unspecified brief span of waiting for death. Like, we can’t even imagine being middle-aged. You’re young, and then you’re In Denial, and then you’re dead.

Which ties into this from the tags on @rionsanura‘s reblog of the post-- 

#but i also think that part of the conception that jaskier was waiting around to die#was centered on the fact that he himself didn't realize he wasn't old?#cause he was vain#and used to life as a Beautiful Youth?#perhaps not#perhaps it's the author's ignorance

So like---------- in many societies, being middle-aged is something you ASPIRE to??? I’d imagine on the Continent it would be too. you’ve survived youth! You’ve lived long enough to marry, and maybe get some kids! You have a career! You’ve had time to amass some kind of wealth or stability!! In our society this is stuff we aspire to too, but we do so while also wanting, somehow, to cling to this illusion of youth as well. You want to settle down but you don’t want to LOOK TOO SETTLED, you don’t want to look too prosperous, you want that Youth Energy and Being In Touch or whatever-- it’s all weird and self-contradicting. 

Like! In real life being middle-aged often means something of an end to awkwardness (ok at least an easing of it, i will die still awkward but i shove my foot wholesale into my mouth MUCH less often now through sheer dint of practice), maybe you’ve figured out what fashions suit you so you wear those instead of chasing trends, you’ve finally got a handle on just what it is that upsets your tummy so you eat things that actually nourish you more consistently, yeah you get hangovers more easily and you can’t bounce back from all-nighters like you used to and you just can’t wear ridiculous high heels anymore without paying for it but like, your skin is probably way better, you finally figured out how to get your hair to do that thing you want it to, mostly you’ve figured out how to pay your bills and you know you’re good at some stuff and probably have managed to get paid for them, you’ve probably gotten therapy at some point so you’re not just a bleeding wound of all the wrongs done you in your childhood all the time-- I’m not saying I have my shit together exactly, but shit, guys, I cry a fuckton less than I did even ten years ago, and my cheekbones have come into their own thank you very much.  Sure your body starts to betray you, but I had sciatica at 22 and tendonitis at 27, generally my body is about as well-behaved as it ever was from a daily maintenance perspective. And I just have seen enough shit that I get fazed a lot less often and know what to do a lot more often and that is just nice, y’all, there’s so much less drama and so much less fear all the time. (I mean. *gestures broadly around* not so much at the moment, but like. at least I know who I am.)

like, Jaskier in his forties, in my stories at least, is just settling into a prestigious career, he’s got a back catalogue that’s got him some fame at this point, he’s got a handle on his own appetites and mostly can control his self-destructive impulses, mostly, and in general life is good! But there’s no real awareness in our society about that, that like, life gets good once you’ve got the hang of it, which necessarily also means you are Older. Sheesh. 

allmyfansquees

replied to your post

“sometimes”

This is like an INCREDIBLE Untamed fic I read last week which was utterly exquisite... except that it had an 8-month-old baby talk in complete sentences. Short ones. But... complete sentences. WT actual F?

Ha oh man. 

It’s not like, a huge dealbreaker, but it’s like yeah okay this person did not think to type into a search bar “when baby start talk” or like. “basic child developmental timeline”. And I guess there’s no way to easily google “what’s it like to be 45″ (although I would argue that since most societies have an established age of retirement you could probably start there???) 

I get it, folks, I get that it’s hard to have characters’ ages line up with timelines and things, and if you need a character to Do A Thing For Plot it can be tricky to make that work out. But like. Make that a two-year-old, friend. And make Jaskier sixty, and this fic is perfect. 

I would wager it is definitely down to a) not having thought about it that much, b) he’s forty in canon! (never mind that he is also still out on the road in canon), c) not understanding the life expectancy of 50 does not equal dying of old age at 50 fallacy and definitely, definitely, d) not having thought about it all that much. 

I’m not really getting my panties in a bunch about this, I just felt like a kind of rant. Like, I’m not mad, and I’m not going to say anything to the author, because the author doesn’t really deserve to be like, Called Out about it, and if you think you know what fic it is please don’t like point this out to the author. Just... if you are  the author, or have written a fic like it where Jaskier is 40 and retired, please... please, IDK, pay a little more attention to the world? and think about where you’re gonna be at 40 and realize that retirement age isn’t under 60 basically anywhere in the world?? and like, think about why you don’t appear to have any older friends or relatives and what’s that about???