Work Text:
There's shouting in the house.
Hei Xiazi sits next to the outdoor fire pit and rakes the coals with a stick. He doesn't need to go in there until someone starts throwing things, and that's only because they have very limited dishes that they can't afford to break in fits of anger.
The yelling progresses, the thin walls of their strange, tiny concrete house hardly doing anything to muffle the sound. It sounds like they're arguing about the efficacy of Wu Xie's current plan—which is bad—for the millionth time. Hei Xiazi has already weighed in on that, and had given up after his opinion had been dismissed for a third time.
Wang Meng has not yet come to the same conclusion, which is why Hei Xiazi is hardly surprised when he crashes out of the house, slamming the door behind him.
"We're not speaking!" he shouts, jabbing a finger at the house as though Hei Xiazi had any kind of confusion as to who he could possibly be referring to.
He gives Wang Meng an OK-sign with his fingers and watches him stomp off into the forest. He'll probably come back with more water and pretend like he had gone to be useful instead of going to have some privacy for expressing his frustrations about Wu Xie.
Speaking of which, Wu Xie himself has now emerged from the hut, a rare occasion. He looks just as shitty as he had when Hei Xiazi had gone outside—hair greasy and sticking up in every direction, the darkest eye bags Hei Xiazi has ever seen on a person, and a complexion reminiscent of spoiled milk. He isn't wearing shoes.
"Where'd he go?" he demands, spinning in a wobbly circle as though that will help him locate Wang Meng and not just get dizzy.
"Went to the river," Hei Xiazi explains.
Wu Xie frowns and runs a hand through his hair, which does not help with the dishevelment. "Why?"
"Probably because you were yelling at him," Hei Xiazi says, unfolding himself from the fire pit, which has not been lit for several hours—he'll need to restart it again, and was mostly just poking at it for something to do.
Wu Xie's frown deepens. "I wasn't yelling."
"The surgery took your sense of smell, not your hearing," Hei Xiazi points out. "And I could hear both of you. Definitely yelling."
Wu Xie huffs, his hands on his hips. "He's overreacting."
"Doubtful."
The look that Wu Xie gives him could rot fruit. "Stay out of it."
"Too late," Hei Xiazi says. "You brought me here, so now I'm part of it."
"Only to show me how to read the pheromones!" Wu Xie exclaims. "You didn't have to stay!"
"You'd have killed each other by now," Hei Xiazi points out. "Besides, neither of you can hunt. Or fish. Or do field medicine."
"We'd figure it out," Wu Xie mutters. Now that the object of his ire is no longer physically present, he's starting to look drained again, like the standing and walking outside and shouting had taken up any energy he had.
"Let me know when you do," Hei Xiazi says.
Wang Meng chooses that moment to come back from the forest. When he sees Wu Xie, his mouth drops open and his eyebrows crawl together. "Why are you outside?!"
"I'm allowed!" Wu Xie yells back.
"I'm killing him," Wang Meng announces to Hei Xiazi. "To death."
"Sure," Hei Xiazi says, "Go ahead."
"Hey," Wu Xie says, but whatever his protest is going to be is lost in the flurry of Wang Meng pushing him back inside the house, where there's several loud clattering noises and then silence.
Hei Xiazi looks up at the sky and prays for patience and also a million yuan. Then he follows them inside the house.
It's only a house by the barest definition; it's more like a room with a sink, which is in the far right corner and only works half the time, which is why they have to keep collecting water from the river and boiling it. The left side of the room is taken up by a full-sized bed, which they only have one of, and Wu Xie's desk and the fuckass blackboard he made them drag all the way into the forest. There's also a couch, which is where one of them sleeps—typically Hei Xiazi—while the other two take the bed. Maybe Hei Xiazi will get the bed tonight since Wang Meng and Wu Xie are fighting, but that's unlikely.
At the moment, Wang Meng has gotten Wu Xie to at least sit down on the couch, where he's wrapped himself up in their thickest wool blanket and is glaring angrily at his notes. Wang Meng is busy collecting the empty dishes scattered around the room and dumping them in the sink.
"We don't even have that many dishes," he complains under his breath, "And here you are, just leaving them out, not washing them, not giving them to me to wash. Ridiculous, ungrateful—"
"I can hear you," Wu Xie says.
"I don't give a shit," Wang Meng fires back, dumping all of the dishes in the sink and going back outside, letting the door shut behind him with more force than is probably necessary.
Wu Xie's mouth presses into a flat, unhappy little line. "I don't understand him."
"I think you do, actually," Hei Xiazi says. When did he become the emotionally competent one in the relationship?
Wu Xie sighs and deflates, pulling the edges of the blanket tighter around himself. "It's important."
"Sure," Hei Xiazi says, "To you."
"To all of us!" Wu Xie exclaims. "If I can't get the information we need from the snakes, then the Wang family might as well have already won. We're never going to be able to catch them without it, we'll never be able to get—"
Hei Xiazi already knows how that sentence is supposed to end. "We'd find a way."
"We don't have time," Wu Xie says, as though that will get Hei Xiazi on his side.
"Look," Hei Xiazi tells him, "I already said I would help you with this. Even if I think it's a bad idea, which it is, you're right. It's the fastest way to get the information we need without your Sanshu or Zhang Qishan himself telling us."
"Exactly," Wu Xie says, like he's mulling the argument over again.
"But," Hei Xiazi says, "This isn't Wang Meng's fight."
"I know," Wu Xie says. "I tried to keep him from coming, remember?"
Hei Xiazi does, because it had taken nearly three days of non-stop convincing for Wang Meng to agree to let Hei Xiazi and Wu Xie go off on their own, on the condition that they tell him where they were leaving from and when so he could make sure to see them off. Instead, he had arrived with his own luggage and refused to get out of the car until Wu Xie had given up and allowed him to come. It's one of the few times Hei Xiazi has ever seen Wu Xie speechless.
"You did," Hei Xiazi says, "But he came anyway. So don't run him off."
"I'm not trying to upset anyone!" Wu Xie shouts, then seems to realize that his volume and tone might not be appropriate for the conversation at hand. "I'm not."
"You'll figure it out," Hei Xiazi says. "What were you fighting about anyway?"
"Food, mostly," Wu Xie says sourly. "He thinks I'm not eating enough, but I am, and we don't have that much food available anyway. We should ration more so that Wang Meng doesn't have to drive to town, and you don't have to spend all day fishing."
"What else am I gonna do?" Hei Xiazi asks, which is a genuine question.
"Regardless," Wu Xie says, "I can measure my own hunger levels. I'll eat when I need to." He seems to realize that he's being a little ridiculous, because he groans and slumps out of the blanket, putting his head in his hands. "I just fuck things up."
"Yeah," Hei Xiazi says, because it's true, and he's not really in the mood to spare anyone's feelings. Besides, it gets Wu Xie to glare at him, which is a much more productive emotion.
"Get out of here," he mutters, flapping his hands at Hei Xiazi, already looking for his pen so he can work again.
Hei Xiazi salutes him and escapes.
He doesn't end up getting the bed that night, which is unsurprising; Wang Meng and Wu Xie make up, or at least have stopped shouting at each other, by dinnertime. It hardly matters, anyway, because he's jolted awake at two in the morning when someone throws up into the sink.
The advantage of needing darkness to see is that it is incredibly difficult for people to hide from Hei Xiazi, but Wu Xie isn't exactly hiding. He's crunched miserably over the tiny, rusted metal basin, heaving.
Hei Xiazi does a quick scan of the room to make sure that nothing has gotten in—unlikely, but possible—and then hisses when Wang Meng also wakes up and switches on the light. Wu Xie moans at the sink and throws up again.
"Shit!" Wang Meng says, rushing to Wu Xie's side to keep him upright. Wu Xie tries to bat him away, but has to stop in favor of vomiting.
Wang Meng strokes short, frantic lines on Wu Xie's shoulders. "Shh, shh, it's okay. You're okay, you're fine."
Wu Xie seems to be too ill to contradict him, even though he's clearly not fine. Hei Xiazi wanders over to the desk and finds the culprit.
"Three?" he asks incredulously.
Wang Meng goes stock-still, one palm still flat on Wu Xie's back as he tries to help him through the episode. He slowly turns his head to look at Hei Xiazi.
"What do you mean, 'three?'" he asks.
"Xiao San-ye," Hei Xiazi says, marching over to Wu Xie, who is spitting into the sink, hopefully finished emptying his stomach for now. He grabs him by the back of the collar and yanks him up. Wu Xie stumbles on his feet, Hei Xiazi the only thing keeping him upright, and tries futilely to hide the blood that's pouring from his nose, soaking down his face and into his shirt collar.
Wang Meng exclaims in horror and grabs the hem of his own shirt, hiking it up his torso and pressing the cloth under Wu Xie's nose. Wu Xie gags again, probably because he's swallowing blood and snake venom at the same time.
"What do you mean, 'three?'" he asks again, wrapping one arm around Wu Xie's back for support as he continues to try and stem the blood flow.
Hei Xiazi is angrier than he has been in a long time. "Are you fucking stupid?"
Wu Xie gurgles underneath Wang Meng's hand.
"Couch," Wang Meng decides. "We shouldn't be standing." He manages to keep Wu Xie upright for the short journey to the sofa, where Wu Xie plunks down and tips over onto his side, moaning. He squeezes his eyes shut.
Wang Meng looks down at his ruined t-shirt and sighs. "One second." He starts looking around for clean towels or something, which they have very few of.
Hei Xiazi leans down so that his mouth is right next to Wu Xie's ear. "Are you going to tell him, or am I?"
Wu Xie makes some sort of sound that might be words, but probably isn't, and then rolls off the couch onto the floor, catching himself on his hands and knees before his face takes the brunt of the blow. He shoves himself into a sitting position, legs sprawling outwards and his head lolling.
"I—" he mutters in answer to Hei Xiazi's question, but doesn't get any further before he chokes on the blood in his mouth.
"What?" Wang Meng says, coming back to the three of them. He's procured a washcloth from somewhere, and something that looks to be another one of his shirts, along with a bowl. He kneels down next to Wu Xie and places one hand on the back of his head, the other pressing the washcloth to Wu Xie's nose and tilting his face downward. "Stay like that until the bleeding stops."
"He—" Hei Xiazi starts when Wu Xie doesn't say anything.
"Until the bleeding stops," Wang Meng repeats, glaring up at Hei Xiazi with such ferocity that he physically takes a step back, until he realizes that Wang Meng is about as much of a threat to him as a shibi is to Zhang Qiling.
"Fine," he says, folding his arms so that he can keep glaring a hole into the top of Wu Xie's ridiculous head.
Wang Meng is satisfied, and goes back to talking to Wu Xie in a low voice. He still has a hand on the back of his head, and is stroking Wu Xie's gross, greasy hair. Hei Xiazi doesn't even think that he knows he's doing it.
Wu Xie snorts and coughs and hacks, and Wang Meng grabs the bowl so he can spit into it. It's all phlegm and blood, extremely unappealing.
Wang Meng frowns at it. "It's probably just from the nose bleed, but we'll keep an eye on it, in case you've done damage to your esophagus or lungs or stomach."
"He probably fucking has," Hei Xiazi snaps. He's had enough of this fucking situation, stuck in a stupid semi-threesome, playing house with Wang Meng and Wu Xie. He could be helping Xiao Hua and Xiuxiu right now—they're having a tough enough time trying to get out from under the Jiumen's thumb and avoid the Wangs. He could be helping Wang Zhi retrieve the map from Gutongjing. Fuck, he could even be helping Zhang Rishan do whatever he's doing in his weird restaurant. And instead, he's trying to keep a man alive who really wants to die.
Wang Meng closes his eyes at the comment, trying to retain some semblance of calm to get through the situation, to make sure Wu Xie is still functional, to defuse whatever bomb Hei Xiazi has in him, but Hei Xiazi isn't letting that happen.
"Tell. Him."
"Oh my god," Wang Meng says, "Fucking… fine. Tell me what?"
Wu Xie looks desperately at Hei Xiazi, as though that will help.
"He took three," Hei Xiazi says. "Three fucking doses. While we were sleeping."
Wang Meng's mouth falls open. He looks from Hei Xiazi to Wu Xie in horror, then back again.
"You're… sure?"
Hei Xiazi shoves his fist forward, uncurling his fingers to reveal the three empty syringes that he had collected from Wu Xie's desk.
Wang Meng takes stock of the little vials in Hei Xiazi's hand.
"Laoban," he whispers, "You… what?"
Wu Xie coughs, trying to clear his throat. His voice is thick from the congestion in his head. "Lights."
"What?" Wang Meng asks.
"Lights," Wu Xie croaks. "Off. Please."
Ah, right, the headaches. Hei Xiazi has half a mind to keep the lights on, to let Wu Xie suffer from his own stupidity, but he remembers how light feels when your head is trying to split itself open, how inescapable and overwhelming it is, so he finds kindness somewhere deep within himself and turns off the lights, plunging the room into darkness again, soft moonlight coming through the window. Wu Xie's breathing immediately eases, just a little, and Hei Xiazi can see in the dark just fine, so it's really only Wang Meng who will have to deal with it.
Speaking of which, Wang Meng is apparently dealing with the revelation that Wu Xie might be the stupidest person alive rather well. At the very least, he hasn't started shouting.
"Why," he says finally, "Would you take three doses? At once?"
Wu Xie seems slightly more coherent now that he isn't fighting the onslaught of the overhead lights, but his voice is still clogged with fluid, so it's another few moments of coughing up gunk and spitting it into the bowl before he can answer.
"I thought," he managed, "That it might work."
"To do what?" Wang Meng exclaims.
"To be done faster," Wu Xie mutters. "Get the information. Be done."
Wang Meng tilts his head back, face towards the ceiling. "You fucking know what happens when you take more than one dose! Why the hell would you do that? You could have died, laoban, do you realize that?"
Wu Xie doesn't say anything, which means that the thought had crossed his mind and he hadn't found it unacceptable.
Wang Meng must realize this too, because he shakes his head, standing up and bumping over to the nightstand next to the bed; his face illuminates in the light of his cell phone, which he switches on.
"That's it," he mutters, mostly to himself. "I can't do this anymore."
"Who?" Wu Xie asks, squinting into the dim light from the phone. "What?"
"I'm calling Pangzi," Wang Meng says definitively. "He should be the one to deal with you, not me."
"No," Wu Xie moans, his head rolling back, "No, no, no, no."
"You're sick, laoban!" Wang Meng shouts. "You don't know what you're talking about! I'm calling Pangzi."
"No!" Wu Xie exclaims. "He'll make me stop."
"Maybe you should stop!" Wang Meng exclaims. The beam of light from his phone swings wildly as he gestures.
"I can't," Wu Xie says. "This is the only way."
"No the fuck it isn't," Wang Meng groans. "It's just your way."
"My way," Wu Xie grunts, hauling himself off the floor by using the couch for purchase; it's only slightly effective, "Has gotten us this far, hasn't it?"
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Wang Meng says, fully exasperated. "Sure, if by 'this far' you mean sitting in a one-room prison to watch you poison yourself! That's farther than I ever wanted to go!"
"I told you not to come," Wu Xie growls. "I said to stay behind, but you just wouldn't listen, what happened to you listening to me—"
"I'm not going to listen to you fucking die!" Wang Meng shouts. He's gripping his phone so hard that Hei Xiazi is surprised he hasn't cracked the screen. "I don't give a shit about the Wang family, or the Jiumen, or fucking Zhang Qiling. I don't care! The only thing I care about is making sure you're fine, and you won't even let me have that, after everything I've done, done for you—"
"I didn't ask you to!" Wu Xie yells.
It's the wrong thing to say, and Hei Xiazi knows that immediately. Wu Xie seems to as well, if the look of shock he has on his face is anything to go by.
Wang Meng's face goes blank. His mouth turns flat.
He says, very quietly, "I know."
Wu Xie looks horribly guilty. He struggles to pull himself to a standing position, leaning heavily on the arm of the couch.
Wang Meng sits down on the edge of the bed. He's already crying, silently, possibly lulled into a false sense of security in the dark, forgetting that Hei Xiazi can see him. Wu Xie seems to know regardless, because he somehow manages to make the several stumbling steps over to the bed and clumsily sit down, a little too close to Wang Meng. Wang Meng just lets Wu Xie's arrival rock him over so that he's lying on his side with his legs still over the side of the bed, taking shuddering breaths that seem to echo around the room.
"Ah," Wu Xie says, as softly as he can manage, "Hey. Xiao Wang. I'm sorry." With difficulty, he leverages himself up so that he's halfway lying on top of Wang Meng, fingers feather-light on his cheeks. "I'm sorry."
"Did you even find anything?" Wang Meng whispers.
"No," Wu Xie murmurs, stroking his thumb under Wang Meng's eye, "Nothing important. I'll tell you later."
Wang Meng sniffles, sighs, his breath shuddering with it. He sucks in several small gasps of air, which don't quite catch, and something like a sob.
Hei Xiazi's stomach is still pit and bitterness. He lets himself out of the house, into the yard, where everything is still and quiet and accompanied by the soft croaking of frogs. He goes to the pickup truck, opens the door, and finds his phone in the cupholder, where he's left it so that he wouldn't be tempted. He takes it out and goes to sit underneath the window, where he can still hear Wang Meng and Wu Xie murmuring things inside, soft apologies.
He dials and waits for the line to connect.
It doesn't. It goes to voicemail.
Hei Xiazi swallows. "Hey, Hua-er," he says anyway. "Miss you."