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Chapter Text

Xie Yuchen drops the job in his lap a few months after his wildly disastrous parasite hunt - you know, the one in Hei Xiazi’s own backyard, that tore up a decent swath of the local sacred grounds, so you can imagine the level of reparations Hei Xiazi has been engaging in since so he’s not iced out at the local market. Xie Yuchen calls it liaising with the locals. Hei Xiazi just calls it behaving like a normal person who is required, at times, to talk to other people, but Xie Yuchen sure loves to put a handy little CEO’s spin on every perfectly normal word. He’s got some hard-on crusade for making linguistics serve the shareholder better. Sometimes Hei Xiazi wonders how he ended up in this man’s bed for so fucking long. But then there’s the fact the TED conferences started recording their speakers eventually, didn’t they, and Xie Yuchen was invited -

 And, you know, if Hei Xiazi has fallen asleep more than once to the downloaded recording of Xie Yuchen’s talk - it’s on the fight to keep cultural artifacts within their own countries, because for all Hei Xiazi shits on his day job, sometimes Xie Yuchen has an unfortunate point behind it all - 

If sleep seems to keep welcoming him within the clipped diction of Xie Yuchen’s best Business English, still tinged with the raw underbelly of the Beijing accent Hei Xiazi has grown, well, fond of - 

Listen, all of that is his own fucking business, isn’t it? Who’s asking, anyway? 

Anyway, it means that when Xie Yuchen calls him in the middle of the night, Hei Xiazi is half-asleep, too warmed through by Xie Yuchen’s perfect little enunciations on the video, too enamoured with the experience of getting two Xie Yuchens in his vicinity at once - 

And so he finds himself being driven to the nearest town by Geya, handing his keys over to the little bastard and warning him not to bring girls over to Hei Xiazi’s house, an enterprise that makes him feel so fucking old he glares moodily out of the bus window enroute to the private airfield, because of course Xie Yuchen has chartered a fucking plane. Maybe Hei Xiazi was looking forward to being barked at in the security line, what does Xie Yuchen know? They both know a man in uniform treating him like dirt is Hei Xiazi’s kind of thing sometimes, and so on. Anyway, having missed out on the men in uniform, the indignities of passport control, and trying on twenty different colognes in Duty Free, Hei Xiazi finds himself faced with Xie Yuchen much faster than he feared: he’s sitting on the hood of a Jeep like he thinks he’s Marilyn fucking Monroe, arms folded, playing stupid little mobile games on his phone. 

Because unfortunately, Hei Xiazi’s worst demons are always, always the ones fastest to take the wheel, he immediately wolf-whistles at the sight of Xie Yuchen’s spread legs. 

“Down, boy,” Xie Yuchen says, without looking up from his phone. “If you distract me from finishing this level, I’m shoving you out of the plane.” 

“You would end up sucked out of the door too, you know that right?” Hei Xiazi replies. “You do understand air pressure, right? They still teach that in schools, don’t they?” 

“I forgot how much you talk.” 

“Aw, that’s so sweet. Hua’er, if you were hankering after a lovers’ suicide, you only had to say.”  

“Isn’t that what we tried last time?” Xie Yuchen murmurs absently, focused on the tiny pixelated fruits he’s tapping and obliterating with terrifying speed. “I mean, I suppose your new little stray was there too.” 

Oh, so they are going to talk about it in person. Hei Xiazi....hadn’t anticipated that, actually. He swallows, a bit more audibly than he’d have liked. His own words float back to him, buoyed from the unceasing past, the worst truest admission he’s ever made to Xie Yuchen: I want to be somewhere comfortable. 

Hei Xiazi has had, let’s be real now, a really, really fucking hard life. It has warped and changed and shaped his dreams into the opposite of Xie Yuchen’s. Hei Xiazi does not dream of success, of stepping on others to reach higher, of his face on magazines and people rising to their feet when he enters a room. Hei Xiazi is older now, and more tired. The world has made him tired. He wants somewhere to fish, and fix his motorcycle, and to sit and drink his beer while watching all the colours bleed out of the day. 

He wants Xie Yuchen, too, even as he doesn’t fit with the rest of it. Hei Xiazi wants to make him fit. Hei Xiazi has been trying to for fifteen years. 

He waits, in silence now, until Xie Yuchen finishes whatever he was tapping away so hard over with a flourish of little golden fruits. 

“Important, I take it?” 

“Someone challenged my spot on the leaderboard,” Xie Yuchen replies. Then, very smugly: “I think he won’t try again for a few days now. Maybe even a week.”

“Good for you, babe. Did you make him cry?”

“I try and reserve that for my favourites,” Xie Yuchen replies, and smirks at him. Holy shit. 

Hei Xiazi should be getting sick of his capacity to be stunned by this man by now. Surely. There’s got to be a point it stops escalating. Right? 

Meanwhile, Xie Yuchen brings up one knee, and jumps down from the hood of the Jeep, and you know what, it’s been a long journey and Hei Xiazi deserves it, as a treat: he reaches out, catching Xie Yuchen in mid-air by his waist, just to watch the rapid glut of emotions in Xie Yuchen’s face. It’s not unlike picking up a cat mid-hiss, every time. Then, he places Xie Yuchen down on the ground, but not without a little spin for flourish. Hei Xiazi truly is an artisan. 

Behind them, the plane gleams, in a glossy colour Xie Yuchen has primly informed Hei Xiazi more than once is eggshell, and Hei Xiazi nods because he can’t be fucked starting a fight over the colour spectrum. He’s fucking blind, so he thinks he deserves a pass, thank you very fucking much.   

“Did you only bring that one sad little bag?” Xie Yuchen says, the way he always seems compelled to, assessing the stained khaki of the mountaineering backpack Hei Xiazi has on. There’s a little handful of charms hanging from one of the loops: one is from Geya, a horrible, tacky little plastic fidget toy of a thing. The other is an amulet of reconciliation, golden lettering with a prayer for penitence stamped on one side. The statement of forgiveness is on the reverse. While Xie Yuchen had simply wired an enormous amount of funds to the village elders and called it a day after his little sojourn to Hei Xiazi’s new home, Hei Xiazi had been required to undergo a series of purification rituals, apologising to the land that - 

They’d run into issues there, hadn’t they? Figuring out how to refer to Xie Yuchen. Hei Xiazi hadn’t known how to correct them, at least not in the Vietnamese he was still learning, so he’d knelt there in the council building, head down, and let Geya work it out as his advocate. 

Anyway, the point is that Xie Yuchen had slept well somewhere in Beijing while Hei Xiazi was out kneeling in the moonlight to show remorse for the damage Xie Yuchen’s merry band had haphazardly done, because these days, Hei Xiazi is exhausted by being an outcast everywhere. He’s too old to be cheerfully run out of town. The only reason he hasn’t bitched at Xie Yuchen for it more fully is that, you know, Xie Yuchen had nearly died, like, three times, which is three times too far fucking many, and to say it’s shaken Hei Xiazi up is an understatement. He’s pretty certain he’ll bounce back, though. The nightmares of peeling back that morgue’s thin, waxed cotton sheet all over again, only this time to see Xie Yuchen’s face - 

Xie Yuchen mangled, shot, half his face missing; Xie Yuchen blue and bloated as if still in the water; Xie Yuchen broken by a fall, limbs wrenched askew; because there are so many ways for someone even as strong as Xie Yuchen to die, and Hei Xiazi is intimately familiar with each and every one - 

Listen. They’ll stop eventually, you know? The nightmares. Hei Xiazi is sure of it. He just has to ignore them until they do. He’s just hoping they won’t happen on this job. Xie Yuchen is the kind of man to pry. Hei Xiazi is getting soft in his old age. He’s afraid if Xie Yuchen does, Hei Xiazi might break and tell him, and then the whole come-back-to-Beijing song and dance will start again, and Hei Xiazi is sick to death and back of that shtick. Look where it’s gotten them so far. 

“Xiazi,” Xie Yuchen says now, snapping Hei Xiazi back into his own body, because it’s oddly soft. His eyes are wide, mouth pursed. “Xiazi, they’ve said we can board now. Twice.” 

Fuck’s sake, he doesn’t need Xie Yuchen thinking he’s losing his hearing too.  

“Oh, so I take it we have a new hole in the ozone to thank you for?” Hei Xiazi drawls instead of answering, and Xie Yuchen sighs, but at least the annoyance relaxes the worry out of his face. 

Hei Xiazi hates it when he makes that face, on account of how it’s illogical, and Xie Yuchen is the most logical man he knows. It’s illogical since it’s pointless to worry about Hei Xiazi. He always comes back, doesn’t he? 

“Just get on the plane, Xiazi,” Xie Yuchen says now, rolling his eyes but - there it is! The start of a smile. Very small, just at the corners of his lips. He starts up the boarding stairs without looking back, too soon for Hei Xiazi to fully appreciate it. 

And you know what, Hei Xiazi’ll take it. He’s been starving before. He knows you can’t turn your nose up at scraps. Not if you want to survive. 

So, Hei Xiazi pauses. He weighs his options. He pretends there are options; that there are choices; that Hei Xiazi is a person capable of the choice that is turning tail and running far, far away. He’s tried so often, you know? He’s tried for fifteen fucking years. And look where it’s gotten them so far. 

He gets on the plane. 

Chapter Text

Because Xie Yuchen is Xie Yuchen, the little plane is almost absurd in its luxury. Understated visually, of course; Xie Yuchen tends towards viewing aesthetic vulgarity as a moral failing. It is but a single drop in the lake of Xie Yuchen’s arbitrarily assigned sins-of-others, alongside mixing designer logos, douyin dance groups filming in the street, and laughing too long in a restaurant.  The only reason “talking in public” never figures, Hei Xiazi has decided, is because Xie Yuchen would have to exist among other people long enough to recognise the experience. Truly, hell is other people. 

“Didn’t want to risk being contaminated by the masses, I see,” Hei Xiazi drawls, because really, what’s the point of a bit you can’t beat to death - and then a little more? 

Xie Yuchen sighs and crosses past the pale leather of the sofa-style seating, reaching into a small fridge to retrieve a bottle of water, then another. 

“You know,” Xie Yuchen replies, “I always find it so interesting how willing people are to sponge off the results of my labours when it comes down to it. For all their complaining.” 

“Are you calling me a hypocrite?” Hei Xiazi places one hand over his heart, faux-wounded, slinging his bag up into the sleek overhead locker and throwing himself onto the sofa. “Hua’er, how could you ever -”

“No,” Xie Yuchen interrupts him to say, “I’m calling you a champagne socialist,” and throws him the bottle of water. 

The reality of life, love, and too many years with the worst man Hei Xiazi has ever unleashed on incompetent hotel management is this; Xie Yuchen knows the exact insult that will land with a sure and certain sting. It’s very, very attractive. Hei Xiazi catches the bottle of water without looking away from him. 

“Hey, listen. I don’t have the money for champagne without you, Hua’er. You’re my winning lottery ticket.” 

“How romantic.” Xie Yuchen unscrews the cap of his own water bottle, eyeing Hei Xiazi’s sprawl across the sofa with a raised eyebrow. “A champagne socialist without the budget to back it up, then. Is that it?” 

“I’ll have you know I have buying power when it’s not Beijing prices,” Hei Xiazi says, as Xie Yuchen reaches into the gift basket placed out on the small sideboard above the fridge. His water bottle is already abandoned beside it, even before he even takes a sip. The odds he forgets it entirely is all too high. The bolt of fondness at this knowledge could’ve taken Hei Xiazi out at the knees, if he was fool enough to keep standing when they were about to be launched thousands of feet into the air. 

Then, because, despite his pretences, Xie Yuchen was raised with a rigid hold on social etiquette - all the better to ignore it, Hei Xiazi fears - Xie Yuchen briefly reads the small gift note attached to it. He permits himself a brief smug smile, and then rips it in half. 

“Someone begging for clemency?” 

“No,” Xie Yuchen replies. “Not this time. The rental company I hired this -” A dismissive gesture at the gleaming chrome interior. “- from are grateful for my continued patronage.” 

“As are we all. Are you going to come sit down?” Hei Xiazi watches as Xie Yuchen lifts out a book of sudoku puzzles. “Aw, babe, that’s cute. They really did their research on you, huh.” 

“Hm. Perhaps.”

“Nah, come off it. They like-like you. They want you to like them back so bad.” Hei Xiazi leans back, just in time for the jolt of movement as the plane begins to glide into action, maneuvering itself around the airfield. He covers for himself manfully, he feels, doesn’t even drop the bottle of water: maybe reaches for the seatbelt discreetly disguised in the body of the sofa’s seating a bit too fast, but what of it? It’s nothing. It’s fine. “You really should come sit down, Hua’er,” he adds, in what is a nothing-fine-normal tone of voice. 

“I have a minute still until we’re on the runway proper,” Xie Yuchen says, preoccupied with picking through the basket. “And I asked the pilot not to interrupt us unless the plane is on fire. Which it is not.”

“Yeah, I think we have different concepts of time-keeping. A minute’s not even -” 

“A minute is plenty of time.”  

He doesn’t even look at Hei Xiazi as he says it. He has his back turned. Hei Xiazi could kill him now, and Xie Yuchen might not see it coming, so certain is he of everything: of his place in the world, of his ability to defy it all, insulted in only the way men like he can be.  

The fastest Hei Xiazi has ever seen someone die was in ten seconds, on account of their head being taken clean off next to him, so he’d beg to disagree, actually, as it so fucking happens. Hei Xiazi has a perfectly normal, rational, even meticulous understanding of time, in a bone-deep, soul-deep, nonstop way that Xie Yuchen, with his calendars and reminders and schedules, cannot ever fucking dream of. Xie Yuchen thinks time is something to master; Hei Xiazi knows that time is only something you can ever harness, by which he means you hold the fuck on and pray. There is a breath - inhale, exhale - Hei Xiazi standing in the aftermath of a disaster, an airfield turned to silt and flame, bodies of crawling survivors outflung like upturned crops - Hei Xiazi running towards the crash site as though in a dream, calculating as he passes, ten choices of cannot and can and can and cannot in the litany of who can be saved - 

Under their bodies, the body of the plane rumbles, as it slowly but surely gains speed, of the strange insane kind that was impossible when Hei Xiazi was born, and Hei Xiazi is fine and normal and fine, he’s so fine, he’s always fucking fine, death is just a thing that happens until it happens to someone you love and death is just a thing that happens until you’re standing in the morgue or standing on the precipice or holding him holding him holding him - 

And Hei Xiazi has been immortal so long he’s sick of it and all he’d kept thinking, Xie Yuchen dying by degrees and in arm’s reach and still beyond salvation, was how he’d always thought when they came down to it, that they’d have more time -  

“Sit the fuck down, Xiao Hua,” he says now, and he doesn’t say it. It’s a snarl, in a voice that sounds not entirely his, and entirely too like his all the same, and Xie Yuchen - 

Xie Yuchen flinches. 

Fuck.