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Liu Sang woke up to the noise of something falling over and the sounds of what seemed like a scuffle going on in the kitchen downstairs. There was a dull clanging sound, followed by a strange rattling, then someone was getting wrestled - judging by the grunts and the banging against the wall. He lay in bed for a while, half wondering if cranking up the noise cancellation on his new earbuds would be worth it, and then winced when there was an especially loud crash - and then someone swore loudly and banged against something wooden and solid. He was too tired for this, Liu Sang thought, cracking one eye open and sliding his arm towards his phone on the bed side table. His back felt funny even after sleeping decently for a night, and he wiggled uncomfortably to get to a position which didn't seem to stab him right in the middle of his shoulder blades. 

He looked at the phone, blearily staring at the lockscreen before the numbers made sense to him. It was a little after nine - so way too early for people to be fighting.

It had only been a year since Liu Sang had started this relationship with Wu Xie and Xiaoge, but he could already empathize with Pangzi's look of bone-deep exhaustion whenever he so much as looked at Wu Xie when he was left on his own. Even after following Wu Xie and the others through the experiences of Thunder City - and what a ride that was - Liu Sang could never really get used to the fact that the Iron Triangle's sense of normal ... wasn't exactly normal. 

Whatever Liu Sang was not expecting to happen was probably already happening - and that was only a conservative estimate. Because right after they got back from Thunder City - and Liu Sang was expecting to quietly recuperate in a hospital somewhere preferably far away from the Iron Triangle - all his plans of giving up on his work and starting afresh were thrown into a tizzy because apparently these three men were incapable of leaving him alone. One of his ears had been so badly damaged that Liu Sang had given up hoping that he would ever get his hearing back and was mostly expecting to not die as a result of the subsequent infection from the lacerations. The other ear didn't sustain a lot of physical damage, but Liu Sang had been unable to hear anything over the constant ringing and had to keep using earplugs to minimize the entry of sounds. The slightest noise in his vicinity could set off the ringing, and that in itself wasn't quite so bad as the headaches which followed.

So Liu Sang had planned to book himself a hospital once he got back to Hangzhou, after all this madness was finally over. Because they were all going their separate ways - Wu Xie, Xiaoge, and Pangzi were headed to Hangzhou, Bai Haotian and the others would be returning to Warehouse 11, and Hei Xiazi had already disappeared midway into their journey back to the city - and it was time for Liu Sang to take stock of his life and decide what he wanted to do after this. Because, strangely enough, he realized he didn't care. He didn't care that his hearing was almost gone, and that even after treatment, would probably never recover enough for him to take up jobs in the tomb raiding business or even the corporate espionage assignments that he was mostly doing before this. He had saved up enough to last him a year or more in Hangzhou if he didn't move around too much, and had taken out a lease on his apartment which would see him till the end of the next year. So Liu Sang had time, he thought, to rearrange his life to best suit him given his condition at the moment.

What he had not expected, obviously, was being kidnapped by Wu Xie the moment he set foot at the Hangzhou airport - and then his healthcare suddenly becoming everyone's business. Wu Xie had frantically called almost every doctor he knew - and damn, he knew a lot of them, something that had given Liu Sang pause, thinking of why Wu Xie even needed so many - and then made plans with a reputed doctor in Beijing who promised to oversee his treatment. Liu Sang had promptly refused, balking at the idea of travelling and also the costs that were going to start adding up once he started the treatment. But Wu Xie had in all probability seen through Liu Sang's thoughts behind the refusal, and assured him that everything would be taken care of, including the costs, since Wu Xie knew all the people involved, so all Liu Sang had to do was accept the treatment, and just rest at the hospital until he recovered.

Liu Sang had been flown out in a private aircraft owned by a certain Zhang Rishan - and Liu Sang would be a fool to not know who the man was in the tomb raiding business, even leaving aside his reputation as the owner of the prestigious Xin Yue Hotel in Beijing. Then the moment he landed in Beijing, Liu Sang had been promptly accosted by an extremely bossy woman who had introduced herself as his doctor and immediately checked him into the hospital. It had taken Liu Sang an embarrassing amount of time to put two and two together and realize that his doctor was the same woman Zhang Rishan was seeing at the moment, which was probably why the man had got involved in the process.

The next few months were a blur of tests and treatments, and endless medication and hospital food - and Liu Sang was more than happy to see Wu Xie and Xiaoge stop by at his hospital, where Wu Xie claimed to have come for a check-up of his lungs, because - Liang Wan - the doctor who was treating Liu Sang - was apparently the only one he trusted. It was all a lie - even without his hearing, Liu Sang was acutely aware of the glances in his direction, the hushed voices whenever the two of them walked into his room, the way he found Wu Xie looking at him whenever he woke up and cheerfully asking him what he wanted to eat that day - and knew without a doubt that they were here in Beijing to check on him.

And Liu Sang had let them keep up their pretence, gamely accepting the small gifts that Wu Xie brought him - books, tea, a new tablet which had all the latest webnovels downloaded for offline reading - and allowing Wu Xie and Xiaoge to move him into the VIP suite which came with an extra bed and a kitchenette, where the two men promptly settled in. The walls Liu Sang had built around himself had already been worn thin when he had offered up his hearing to help Wu Xie in Thunder City, but now, as Wu Xie and Xiaoge were tantalizingly within reach - healthy, happy, and not in immediate risk of dying - Liu Sang wasn't sure whether he could feign ignorance any longer as to what those feelings in his heart actually were. He had already been in awe of Xiaoge before this, before he even met the man - but Wu Xie was an entirely different matter altogether. At first, Liu Sang had been annoyed by the easy intimacy shared between the two men; the way that anyone looking at them could tell that there was something holding them together which wasn't just the years of shared experience, but something which was more compelling and more powerful than Liu Sang had ever witnessed in his life. It had somehow changed him, Liu Sang decided, because when Wu Xie had offered him a place to stay in Wushanju after his treatment, Liu Sang had shocked himself and actually agreed.

The fact that he was in love with both Xiaoge and Wu Xie was already clear when Liu Sang found himself taking up on Wu Xie's offer and deciding to stay at Wushanju for a while, but it had in no way prepared him for the fact that they might in turn, love him, or invite him into their lives. The months that had followed were one of the happiest in Liu Sang's life, and it wasn't just because his hearing was finally returning, but because he was finally at a place where he felt he belonged.

Which didn't mean that everything came without its fair share of troubles.

Xiaoge didn't stay at Wushanju all the time, and disappeared for weeks where Wu Xie would be, horror of horrors, left unoccupied, and then he would turn all his attention on him. He even tricked Liu Sang into believing that he was asking him out to a normal dinner when in fact, he had invited him over to Wu Erbai's, and it was a family dinner of sorts, and because of Wu Xie, Liu Sang had gone in wholly unprepared. It had been incredibly awkward to say the least, to sit with the man who had once been his employer, and have him politely ask Liu Sang about his recovery, while Wu Xie kept trying to hold his hand under the table. Liu Sang half expected to have a heart attack midway into the meal, because Wu Erbai was a very sharp man, and he always noticed everything. Later, Wu Xie had casually mentioned that it would be good for Liu Sang to be on Wu Erbai's radar, since Liu Sang could definitely benefit from someone as powerful as him backing him up. It was only later that it occurred to him, that Wu Xie had dragged him to the dinner to show Liu Sang off as someone who was theirs, so that Wu Erbai knew that Liu Sang wasn't on his own, and would treat him accordingly. 

But Liu Sang had always been alone, and he preferred it that way. His acquaintances never really became friends, and the long list of numbers on his phone were mostly business contacts and brokers. Before meeting the Iron Triangle, Liu Sang didn't even believe that people could be friends where there were no obvious benefits involved. Because people changed jobs, cities and homes, and they also changed the specific set of friends they had in each place they settled into. It was how the world was, what the people Liu Sang had met before had been like.

But the Iron Triangle was different. 

It wasn't like they shared habits or interests all the time - which Liu Sang was carefully learning was the key to establishing new friendships. He had found himself unexpectedly liking Wang Meng because he had noticed Liu Sang playing on his phone one day, and asked for his user ID and told him to call Wang Meng for joint commissions if he needed an extra player. That had led to quite a few rounds of gaming which had now settled into a routine of sorts where Liu Sang would ask Wang Meng to join him on his daily commissions. And the man would go out of his way to send him extra in-game rewards whenever they played at the same time. It was fairly easy to open up after that, and Liu Sang was always a little surprised when he thought back to what had started it all.

But the Iron Triangle - especially Pangzi and Wu Xie - fought all the time when they weren't travelling, and at first, Liu Sang was alarmed and had tried to intervene, only to find out that it was apparently a kind of friendly banter between them more than anything else. Xiaoge, when he stayed at Wushanju, almost always left the other two alone when they were at it - and Liu Sang slowly learned to do the same. From time to time, he got drawn into the fights - being asked to pick a side - and he would take a leaf out of Xiaoge's book and pretend that he couldn't hear them.

At other times, Liu Sang would wake up to Pangzi working in the kitchen and Xiaoge quietly sitting on the counter, helping him sharpen his knives. Liu Sang knew that Pangzi took personal pride in his knives, which he claimed were sharp enough to slit a man's throat, bone and all, and Liu Sang really didn't want to challenge him on that, so he had left the man to his bragging. Xiaoge always appeared quietly content like that, perched on the counter as he slowly cleaned off the whetstone while Pangzi admired the newly sharpened edges. 

But there was something underlying it all, something which held all of them together, which Liu Sang found fascinating, but had no words to describe what it even was. The three of them shared something between them which wasn't like any other bond Liu Sang had encountered before, and it was an exhilarating feeling just to be witness to that - and now they were allowing him to be part of that ... to get a share in their lives.

Pangzi's approval was the hardest to win among all three, but it seemed like the man had already accepted Liu Sang as one of them from the moment he had offered up his hearing to save Wu Xie. And it seemed like everyone else knew that fact other than Liu Sang. 

But being with the Iron Triangle wasn't always peaceful.

As the sounds from the kitchen continued, Liu Sang decided that he had had enough and it was time for him to find out what the hell was even happening this morning. Because it was still morning, and there was no use trying for more sleep when he was already awake.

Wu Xie was nowhere to be seen in the room, and had left Liu Sang's bed sometime very early, if the cold, rumpled sheets were any indication. Xiaoge almost never lingered in bed, so Liu Sang wasn't even surprised to see him missing. Liu Sang knew that when it came to Wu Xie, nothing was truly impossible. Maybe there was truly some kind of power grab going on downstairs. Even though he had no intention of moving at the moment, Liu Sang felt compelled to put on some clothes and go downstairs to see whether they were getting ambushed, or robbed, or whether some kind of riot had broken out while he was still sleeping. He pulled his arms through Wu Xie's dark striped robe which was lying on the bed, and hastily wrapped it around his body, almost drowning in it, since Wu Xie always seemed to buy clothes that were at least three sizes too big for him. But Liu Sang was in too much of a hurry to be uncomplimentary about Wu Xie's choices in clothes at the moment. He also grabbed a golf club from the closet on his way out, because it was always better to be prepared.

"Xiaoge! Xiaoge!" Pangzi bellowed, followed by the sound of footsteps and then his voice got muffled, as if someone had their hand around his mouth. "Mmmphhh! Mmmmphh!" Pangzi continued to struggle, and then there was a loud "Ahhh!" and then the sound of Pangzi padding across the wood floor, and coming to a stop suddenly.

"I can't believe you bit me!" Wu Xie exclaimed, complaint thick in his voice, his heart beating double time, making Liu Sang freeze mid-step on the stairs. He then quickened his pace so that he almost ran through the rest of the hallway to get to the kitchen where the sounds seemed to be coming from.

Liu Sang walked into the kitchen, his hand tightening on the handle of the golf club, while with his other hand he pulled Wu Xie's robe more tightly around his shoulders, since that was the only thing he could find at the moment. None of them had been in any sort of mood to actually look where their clothes ended up last night. Liu Sang had been in Beijing for two weeks for a follow-up on his treatment and was finally back in town, and he had wheeled his suitcase right into Wushanju, because going back to his flat which he still used from time to time, and then coming back again seemed too much of a chore at that point. He hadn't regretted it at all. Wu Xie and also Xiaoge had been very appreciative of his visit, and which was also why he had been expecting to enjoy a lie in this morning, when everything went to hell and woke him up, apparently.

"Why, Tianzhen? Didn't think that this Pang-ye could play rough too? If you gag me, will I not bite? I have a reputation out there, you know," Pangzi said, wiping his mouth aggressively and leaning against the kitchen counter. 

"You didn't have to bite that hard!" Wu Xie complained, standing on the other side of the kitchen and holding out his abused finger. "Look, it's all red and blotchy, I never knew you to be such an animal."

"Want me to kiss it and make it better?" Pangzi said, grinning, and then looked around to see Liu Sang in the doorway. "Just in time, Sangbei'er! Now you can do it!"

"What the actual fuck..." Liu Sang began, letting the golf club fall with a clatter, and both Pangzi and Wu Xie looked over at him. "...never mind, I don't need to know."

"I thought you were still sleeping," Wu Xie said, glancing over at him and smiling that smile which made Liu Sang forget what he was supposed to say next. 

"I would have been if it didn't sound like a mob fight breaking out in the kitchen," Liu Sang remarked drily, then walked over to the table to pour himself some tea which was in the giant flower patterned flask Pangzi liked to use in the mornings. "So what kind of cultural relics were involved this time?" he asked tiredly after gulping down a mouthful of tea. His stomach still felt queasy, but the tea seemed to settle it a bit.

"Cultural relics?" Wu Xie asked him innocently, and Pangzi guffawed loudly, throwing his head back and laughing so hard that he seemed in danger of falling over.

"What's so funny?" Liu Sang asked Pangzi, turning towards him and scowling. 

"Sangbei'er," Pangzi managed to say in between taking huge, shuddering breaths, "Wanna see Tianzhen's baby photos?"

"Sure," Liu Sang said, without even batting an eyelid, which only made Pangzi laugh harder.

"Look, there's been a mistake here..." Wu Xie began to say, sounding sheepish, of all things. He was wearing an oversized grey sweater which fell over his hands, making the sleeves wiggle whenever he moved his hands, which Liu Sang found annoyingly cute. But he was wearing his old man pajamas underneath, which severely offset the cuteness, in Liu Sang's opinion.

"What kind of mistake, Wu Xie?" Liu Sang said, turning to look at him, which made Wu Xie flash him a disingenuous smile, and that instantly put him on his guard.

"Ershu delivered something here by mistake this morning," Wu Xie told him.

"Your Ershu is a sharp man, Tianzhen," Pangzi piped up, looking like he was waiting for this exact opportunity. "He doesn't make mistakes. I'm sure if you rack your brains enough, you can figure out what you did to piss him off this time? It's quite mild, judging by the reaction, I must say. Not as extreme as the time when he froze your assets or when he kicked you out of Wushanju or packed me into a crate like a third rate funeral urn to get me out of that warehouse you made me break into."

Wu Xie groaned suddenly, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead, and messing up his hair which was already sticking up every which way. It didn't look like Wu Xie had a lot of time either, after waking up that morning and getting into whatever this was shaping up to be. It made Liu Sang feel a little bit better about being woken up like that. At least, he wasn't the only one.

"I asked him to get married," Wu Xie said mildly, and Pangzi snorted. 

"Then you're lucky he didn't send wedding gifts in the form of strippers this time," Pangzi said, leaning back against the counter.

"They were not strippers!" Wu Xie shot back at the same time that Liu Sang gulped down the rest of his tea and blurted out, "Wait, he sent what?!"

"They left their cards with me, you know? I even called the agency to ask about the services," Pangzi said, then started turning out his pant pockets, as if he was going to produce them from the depths of his trousers at any given moment. "They are very good, very professional-"

"No, stop, wait-" Wu Xie said and then groaned again. "I can explain," he said, looking at Liu Sang. 

"I'm not sure if I even want to hear your explanation," Liu Sang told Wu Xie, pointing the now empty cup at him. "You have a tendency to make things worse."

"So let Pang-ye do the the honors then!" Pangzi exclaimed cheerfully, and then moved away from the counter, where there was a large cardboard box which Liu Sang hadn't noticed before this.

"I don't know what he told you, Liu Sang, but Tianzhen is the only heir to the family right now, and his Ershu wants him to get married to a daughter of a nice, well connected family, so that the Wu family name can be passed down the ages with a nice, handsome brood of children to fight over the property," Pangzi told him, taking obvious delight in dragging out the last part, much to Wu Xie's consternation. 

Liu Sang opened his mouth to interrupt, but Pangzi held up a hand and then stepped closer, bracing his hands on his hips. 

"Now, that is obviously not the whole story," Pangzi exclaimed, with a smug smile firmly plastered on his face. "This has been going on for a while, and you can call it a cold war of sorts. Tianzhen and his Ershu are engaged in a fight to force the other to show their hand. Whoever shows it first, loses."

Liu Sang looked over from Pangzi to Wu Xie, who was helplessly looking on, as if not sure whether to interrupt or not. "I don't understand," Liu Sang said, looking at Pangzi again. "Just what is the issue here? Wu Xie getting married?"

"I'm not getting married!" Wu Xie cut in, and both Pangzi and Liu Sang rolled their eyes at him, which effectively shut him up for a while.

"So the point isn't who is getting married, the point is who gives in first," remarked Pangzi very seriously, and Liu Sang nodded, to let the man continue. "Tianzhen has had many opportunities, over the last couple of years, to engage himself to one of the daughters of the conglomerates that his Ershu has been throwing in his way. Which means, how many dates exactly?" Pangzi paused, and then looked over at Wu Xie with a wicked gleam in his eye. Liu Sang was too wrapped up in the story to notice Wu Xie's reaction, but it seemed like he was trying to catch Liu Sang's attention. Liu Sang ignored him for the time being. 

"Wu Erbai was getting suspicious by now, since some of the girls were sure to have tattled to him, right? And well, technically speaking, Tianzhen has a very specific type when it comes to women: they all want to kill him," Pangzi told him, and ... Liu Sang was beginning to see it too.

"I can see the appeal," Liu Sang confirmed.

"Hey-" Wu Xie began to say but Pangzi talked over him.

"So the point is, Wu Erbai needs a scapegoat. He actually doesn't need Tianzhen to marry, but it would solve a lot of his problems if he did, so he needs to declare to the family elders exactly what the problem is. After all, none of them are getting any younger, and the pressure must be building on him."

"So Wu Erbai wants Wu Xie to tell him why he can't get married," Liu Sang said slowly, catching on to the gist of it finally. "He just wants Wu Xie to be the one to admit it first."

"Exactly!" Pangzi exclaimed, and gave him a commendatory slap on his shoulder. Liu Sang glared back, but Pangzi didn't seem to have noticed. "Except Tianzhen can't very well say why, right?"

"I hate you," Wu Xie said without any heat.

"We love you too, Tianzhen!" Pangzi grinned back at him.

"No, seriously," Wu Xie began to say, looking at the both of them. "I have all of you - you, Xiaoge, Liu Sang, Wang Meng, Xiao Hua, Hei Yanjing - why would I need another family? Ershu can just pick any of you to be his heirs if he's so keen on it! He's just making this a case against me because he can't tell them why he won't be the one to marry! After all, he's still young!"

"And why can't he get married?" Liu Sang blurted out, morbidly curious at this point.

"Because he has the same reason as Tianzhen, obviously. He doesn't want to settle down with women. You could see that he was making a point with all those male strippers he sent over last time. Some of them were very... breathtaking." Pangzi made a gesture describing shoulders and arms, but Liu Sang wasn't looking at him, he was too busy trying to see Wu Xie's expression. "It was an open declaration of war, to see who folds first. Wu Xie was just lucky Xiaoge wasn't here when they showed up. Otherwise, it would have been game over!" Pangzi remarked triumphantly.

"Whose side are you really on, Pangzi?" Wu Xie said tiredly, and drew up a chair for himself. Pangzi walked over to the counter and picked up the cardboard box that Liu Sang had seen before, and carried it over to the table.

"No one's, apparently. Every man for himself," Pangzi muttered, looking around for something before choosing a small pen knife which he apparently kept hidden in the depths of his pockets, and used that to slice open the top of the box.

Liu Sang still wasn't sure what was happening, so he picked the seat closest to Wu Xie and sat down, hoping to ask him more on this matter.

"Does Xiaoge have something against strippers?" Liu Sang asked slowly, not knowing why it seemed like he was missing something important in the conversation. 

Pangzi snorted, then tore open some of the tape from the side of the box, and gestured towards Wu Xie. "Our Xiaoge is not that narrow minded. He might be ancient, but he still has manners. But when it comes to Wu Xie-"

"Are you actually trying to say that," Liu Sang said with difficulty, since he had never before thought he would voice this particular question aloud, "Xiaoge might be jealous of the strippers, instead? Since they were sent for Wu Xie?"

Wu Xie found Liu Sang's hand under the table and squeezed it, making his heart skip a beat from the suddenness of it. "I think what Pangzi means is that Xiaoge might have seen them as a threat, and... reacted a little."

Pangzi gave another amused snort and then stuck his entire hand inside the box now that he had it open. He seemed to be rifling through the items inside, looking for something in particular, judging by how it sounded. 

"And this wouldn't even be the first time," Pangzi murmured, then looked up. "After all, the first time we met you was at the South Sea King's Tomb, and Wu Erbai had personally recommended you to us, and what was the first thing you did after getting into our tent? You stripped for us," Pangzi told him matter-of-factly, while Wu Xie snorted out a laugh and then had the gall to look surprised when Liu Sang glared at him.

"For the record," Liu Sang said with as much dignity as he could muster at that point, "I was in a hurry, and had rushed in there from the last job, leaving me with no time to-"

"We get it, we get it!" Wu Xie remarked and squeezed his hand again. "Pangzi is only joking."

"I'm just saying, that what are the chances? Wu Erbai hiring young, pretty men and making them strip in front of you?" Pangzi responded with a shit-stirring smile that instantly set Liu Sang's blood boiling.

"Now didn't you want to know about Xiaoge finding out about the strippers?" Wu Xie said immediately, giving Liu Sang no time to react before he gripped Liu Sang's hand and started idly tracing patterns across his wrist. Liu Sang knew Wu Xie was doing it on purpose, but he still couldn't stop himself from shivering at the contact.

"Did you tell him?" Liu Sang asked him, still annoyed but he couldn't help wanting to know what Xiaoge's reaction had been.

"Are you crazy?" Wu Xie said with a little laugh, which also sent Pangzi into a snort of laughter. "It was a stroke of luck that he wasn't present at the time. Otherwise, things might have... escalated," Wu Xie said, chuckling. 

"Say what you want, but if Xiaoge threw a temper tantrum in front of Wu Erbai's men? It would have been tantamount to waving a white flag right in front of his nose!" Pangzi remarked. "A-ha!" And Pangzi pulled out a large folder-looking-thing from the box and then pushed it aside. "This one is even better than the last!"

Liu Sang sat up in his seat, trying to see what Pangzi was seeing, when the man spread out the binding of the folder and Liu Sang saw photos spill out. Many, many photos. Mostly of babies, but some of them had adults looking on or holding onto the children as they stared at the camera. He hunched forward, trying to look at them better. One of the photos he immediately recognized as being taken at Wushanju, judging by the sign on top of the front gate. It was painted a different color, but still clearly recognizable. 

There was a boy in a tailored jacket and shorts, standing next to a man who looked very familiar but Liu Sang couldn't really place him. It was an old photo, so the grain had started showing through, making the faces a bit blurry. 

"Guess who that is?" Pangzi piped up over his shoulder.

"The kid or the man?" Liu Sang asked him.

"Okay, the kid first. Remind you of anyone?" Pangzi hinted, looking at Wu Xie and waggling his brows.

"That's Wu Xie?!" Liu Sang exclaimed, and then picked up the photo. "He looks so... round here, I couldn't recognize him at all! But I can see his eyes now, yes, that's definitely him. Damn."

Beside him, Wu Xie made a pained sound. "Must you be so merciless? Aren't you supposed to be on my side, at least? Pangzi seems to have forsaken me completely."

"Shh," Liu Sang waving his complaints aside. "I'm starting to see things a lot more clearly now." Then he looked up at Pangzi. "Who's the person with Wu Xie?"

"Wu Sanxing," Pangzi said softly, and Liu Sang was sure he was missing something again. Wu Xie also seemed to have gone entirely silent, which was always cause for concern. 

"So this is your Sanshu?" Liu Sang asked Wu Xie carefully. 

"Yes," Wu Xie responded with a sigh in his voice. "At least at this point, I think that's him."

"You think...?" Liu Sang began to ask and then Pangzi intervened.

"Wu Sanxing wasn't always who we thought him to be, let's leave it at that. That's kind of a long story which Tianzhen will tell you later when he's in the mood," Pangzi told him.

Liu Sang looked at Wu Xie's face and decided against asking him anything more. He had heard about the third uncle of the Wu family, and a lot of conflicting reports, at that. All he knew that Wu Xie clearly looked up to him, no matter what had gone down between them. He filed it away as something to ask Wu Xie later.

"Who's this girl you're holding hands with?" he asked, picking up a photo at random, which showed two kids - the boy was clearly Wu Xie - and he was holding a girl's hand who looked incredibly pretty even as a kid. She was wearing a Beijing-style qipao, which was clearly tailored, but left a little loose, as was the case for children. 

Pangzi made a sound like he was choking on something and Liu Sang turned to look at him in alarm. "What?" he demanded.

"That's... not a girl," Pangzi responded slowly, still looking like he was holding everything in so that he could say that. "That's-"

"-Xiao Hua," Wu Xie completed for him. "One of the only gatherings he ever attended as a kid, and he decided to turn up as a girl, and a real pretty one too."

"Xiao Hua? You mean Xie Yuchen?" Liu Sang echoed dumbly, not knowing why he felt a need to point it out at this moment. 

"Yes, even you can't tell, right?" Wu Xie remarked in a delighted tone of voice.

"It's harder to tell from a photo," Liu Sang conceded. He looked at the girl's face very carefully, and still couldn't really see the resemblance. Her hair was cut to fall right into her eyes - his eyes, as Liu Sang corrected himself - and apart from the mouth, almost everything was pretty much unrecognizable.

"You really couldn't tell even in person!" Wu Xie exclaimed, and Pangzi sniggered.

"Ask him how he knows," Pangzi remarked, clearly egging Liu Sang on. And Liu Sang could now smell a good story from miles away; that was exactly how living with the Iron Triangle had changed him. Liu Sang always knew that Pangzi was a horrible gossip - he had walked into Pangzi gossiping about him at their very first meeting after all, but apparently, Wu Xie was worse when it came to stories about other people, because he simply couldn't shut up once he started. 

Judging by Pangzi's response now, he was only waiting to goad Wu Xie into speaking.

"Wu Xie... what did you do?" Liu Sang asked him very patiently, turning to look at him. 

Wu Xie looked embarrassed all of a sudden, which deepened Liu Sang's suspicions even more, and then he ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up at an odd angle. "Oh, I kissed him," Wu Xie remarked, his voice perfectly level, not betraying anything of what he might have felt. 

"What was I even expecting," Liu Sang muttered under his breath, but Wu Xie caught on to it nonetheless. 

"You're making me out to be some kind of-," and Liu Sang watched Wu Xie struggle to find words, and rested his chin on his hands, enjoying his discomfort.

"-a slut," Pangzi finished for him, and Wu Xie choked on his words. 

"Pangzi!!!" Wu Xie complained, but Pangzi only smirked at him. "Anyway, it had context! It wasn't like I was going around kissing guys at these annual family gatherings!" Wu Xie remarked, looking a little frazzled by now. 

"Not just guys, apparently," Liu Sang mumbled, still not over that fact. "Guys dressed up as beautiful girls."

"Xiao Hua is practically family! This is just slander at this point! And it was just that once!" Wu Xie protested hotly.

"We all know Wu Xie has a thing for beautiful men," Pangzi remarked sagely, combing through more of the photos on the table. It made Liu Sang flush, when the implication hit him. Because Xiaoge was beautiful. Everyone and their mother would agree on that fact. But by extension, Pangzi had included him too, which even after all this time, took him a little by suprise. "Who knew it went so far back?" Pangzi murmured distractedly.

"I swear, Pangzi, I'll climb this table and wring your neck!" Wu Xie exclaimed, almost jumping out of his seat, but Liu Sang grabbed hold of his shoulder to pull him back.

"Why are you going to wring Pangzi's neck?" Xiaoge said softly, shocking everyone present, but Liu Sang the most. He had been so preoccupied with what was going on that he had completely missed picking up on Xiaoge's presence. 

"Xiaoge!" Pangzi exclaimed, getting off of the table at once, and walking towards Xiaoge at the door, who was standing there holding two bags of what looked like food and beer in them.

Liu Sang turned around immediately, suddenly very conscious of the state he was in - he had hardly been trying to dress for breakfast here - and tucked his hair behind his ears, inadvertently exposing all the darkening marks on his neck from the last night. He gulped a little when he realized that the gesture hadn't gone unnoticed - Xiaoge's eyes resting on his neck for a brief moment - making Liu Sang's cheeks heat up from the scrutiny.

Xiaoge was wearing a dark jacket without a hood this morning, which was only zipped up halfway, and Liu Sang could see the dark neckline of the shirt underneath, which appeared a little damp. There was sweat beading on his collarbones and throat - Xiaoge must have walked quite a bit to get the food - and the long strands of hair in front were practically plastered to his forehead. Xiaoge noticed Liu Sang looking, and gave an imperceptible nod, which made Liu Sang flush even more for some reason, and he averted his eyes.

Pangzi had somehow managed to get the food bags out of Xiaoge's hands and then wrap himself around him, and Liu Sang was still shocked at the fact that Xiaoge actually let him, when Liu Sang knew that anyone else trying that would have lost a limb or two by now.

"Xiaoge, Xiaoge," Pangzi murmured plaintively, then rested his head on Xiaoge's shoulder, craning to look at Wu Xie and Liu Sang from that position, lips curved up in a wicked smile, where only they could see. "You have no idea how I've missed you," he said, and then smiled widely. "If you hadn't come in, Wu Xie really would have wrung my neck by now! You know how he gets in the mornings?"

Wu Xie made a sharp, indrawn sound, too offended to even speak.

"I do," Xiaoge said, so low that probably no one else could hear him, but Wu Xie apparently could.

"Xiaoge!" Wu Xie cried out, getting up from his seat and slamming his hand on the table. "Now that is just unfair! Why is everyone against me this morning?"

Xiaoge's lips curved up slightly at the corners, and Liu Sang could tell that he was very amused by the display. But Pangzi apparently hadn't had enough.

"Xiaoge, you know I care for you, right? I look out for you, I make sure you get to know everything," Pangzi told him, craning his neck to look at Xiaoge as he spoke.

Xiaoge nodded, and still made no move to extricate himself from Pangzi's hold.

"You see, Wu Erbai sent us some things to look over, and I was doing exactly that when Tianzhen pounced on me and very nearly strangled me in the kitchen, which was also when Sangbei'er woke up and decided to join us."

Xiaoge nodded again, then finally seemed to push Pangzi off of his shoulder, moving back a little so that Pangzi was left unmoored and flailing for a second. Pangzi muttered some uncharitable things under his breath and then straightened up, looking back at Wu Xie who, Liu Sang was sure, had steam pouring out of his ears by now.

"What kind of things?" Xiaoge asked softly, making Liu Sang look at him again. 

Pangzi brightened up, and shot Wu Xie a smug look, then turned towards Xiaoge. "Photos from Tianzhen's childhood, since the photo albums were shifted back to Wu Erbai's place during Wushanju's renovation. I didn't think we'd see them again, but Wu Erbai has been very kind and has delivered the albums to us."

"Fuck you, Pangzi," Wu Xie muttered under his breath.

"See, Xiaoge? See how he is this morning?" Pangzi remarked, motioning towards Wu Xie. 

"I'd like to see them," Xiaoge told him, and Liu Sang heard the way Wu Xie sucked in a breath at that. 

"Fine! Fine! Since everyone seems to be on my case today, why not add more humiliation and go through all of them over tea?" Wu Xie remarked and then stormed off towards the table, pulling up a chair with unnecessary force and sitting down. "Come on, get to it already! And bring whatever Xiaoge brought with you, Pangzi," he instructed. 

Pangzi huffed a laugh and went back to the bags, leaving Liu Sang to smile shyly at Xiaoge as he bumped into him on his way to the table.

"...so this is the point where Tianzhen passed out completely, and we were afraid that we would have to rush him back to a hospital, when we noticed the eggs..." Pangzi said, while taking a bite out of the xiaolongbao and wincing when some of the hot soup spurted out. He reached for a napkin across the table to dab his chin and then proceeded to stuff the rest of the dumpling right inside his mouth. "Fuck, Xiaoge, these are amazing! Where did you get them from?" He said once he had swallowed it, and reached for some more from the plate.

Xiaoge was sitting on Liu Sang's side, and Liu Sang saw how the man pretended not to have heard Pangzi's question and then pick up another dumpling with his chopsticks. 

"Right," Pangzi remarked wistfully after a while. "There's no way I can get you to spill your secrets now, can I?"

"Xiaoge never tells us," Wu Xie added in, conspiratorially. "He just disappears in the mornings and comes back with these mountains of delicious food, and never breathes a word of where they are from. For all we know, he's going on secret dates with people and packing up all the food."

Xiaoge leaned forward on the table, looking at Wu Xie with a slightly amused expression before pushing the plate towards him.

"The eggs," Liu Sang prompted, still intrigued by what Pangzi had been telling him before. "What eggs? What did they have to do with Wu Xie passing out?"

On his other side, Wu Xie let out a long-suffering sigh. "Can we maybe not do this over food? It kind of takes away the appetite," Wu Xie said weakly.

"So," Pangzi began at the same time that Liu Sang turned to look at Wu Xie with a raised eyebrow. 

"I've seen you eat without washing your hands where any manner of thing could be found on it - corpse dust, ancient dirt, bug larvae and dried blood, just to mention a few. I didn't think you had such a queasy stomach," Liu Sang told him. 

"That's completely different! It was an exigency, not like we had a lot of choices underground!" Wu Xie protested and leaned forward on the table, helping himself to the silken tofu soup until Pangzi batted his hand away, and started spooning it up into his bowl instead.

"It's too much effort to wipe your hands before you eat?" Liu Sang responded, still incredulous about the time he had seen Wu Xie pick up his dry ration bar from the tomb floor where he had dropped it, and then pick it up and start eating it after dusting it once on his trousers. Which were probably even grimier than the floor at that point. "Or see where your food has been before you put it in your mouth?"

"Wastes time," Xiaoge murmured beside him, and Liu Sang whipped around to look at the man.

"What?" Liu Sang blurted out, shocked by this turn of events. He... always thought Xiaoge was a particular person, since even when he ate, he did it gracefully and slowly, unlike the way Pangzi or Wu Xie wolfed down food when it was available. "Next you'll be telling me you can eat things raw and won't die," he muttered. 

"Won't die," Xiaoge responded quietly, and Pangzi sniggered into his soup. 

"That's actually scientifically proven, you know?" Wu Xie told him, nudging Liu Sang towards him. "Our bodies can absolutely digest raw meat, well, maybe not vegetables because we can't digest cellulose unlike cows, for instance," Wu Xie remarked thoughtfully. "It would just take us longer, which is why we cook food first, to break the protein down into compounds which our bodies can actually digest. But technically speaking, it's possible."

Liu Sang groaned and turned his face away. "I'm not talking to you," he said and Pangzi snorted, then picked up another dumpling and unexpectedly placed it in Liu Sang's bowl. 

When Liu Sang looked up in surprise, Pangzi just gave him a wide grin in response. "Someone else also has to suffer Tianzhen the way I do," he said by way of explanation. 

When the food was almost gone, Pangzi reached for the beer cans that Xiaoge had brought, and Wu Xie made a small squawk of protest. "Isn't it too early for that?"

"Too early for what, Tianzhen?" Pangzi replied, already hooking his finger inside the tab of the can. Then he wrenched it up and out with a sharp pop, and slid the can over to Wu Xie. "It's for you. I thought you might need it."

Liu Sang saw why a second later, because Pangzi got up from the table and pulled out the folder with Wu Xie's photos again, and hastily cleared away some of the dishes with his other hand to make room for it.

"So how do you want to do this, Xiaoge?" Pangzi said, and Liu Sang saw Xiaoge put away his chopsticks and push his bowl aside to lean forward slightly on the table. "We can go chronologically, or we can go event wise, which would actually be more fun, in my opinion."

Wu Xie slowly pulled the beer can towards himself and took a sip. "There is nothing interesting in there, I swear," he said slowly after wiping his mouth. "It's just a couple of old photos which were sitting around in the family archives."

"We'll see about that," Pangzi remarked, while sorting the photos out on the table. "After all, we got Xiao Hua's dressed up photos from this."

"Xiao Hua?" Xiaoge asked, and Liu Sang half turned towards the man, intending to explain what it was, when Wu Xie interjected.

"It's nothing! Just some old photos of family events, you must know how they get?"

Xiaoge shook his head, and Liu Sang could feel the way Wu Xie stiffened at the response.

"Shit," Wu Xie said and looked down for a moment. Liu Sang realized what he was thinking a beat later, when it occurred to him that all of them had been through very different experiences. Liu Sang, for one, had no idea what Wu Xie meant, either. He had not seen a hair of either his father or stepmother ever since he ran away from home, and even in all the time he spent with them, family events were something which honestly never came up.

Wu Xie cradled his beer can thoughtfully before responding. "I know you don't remember anything about your family, Xiaoge, and I'm not sure whether it would be better to remember that," Wu Xie said, his voice hardening as he spoke, shocking Liu Sang. "Sometimes my mouth just runs away with me, I'm sorry," he said, looking steadily at Xiaoge.

Xiaoge just nodded, and Liu Sang could see a look being exchanged between them, which, for a moment made him feel like a complete stranger sitting between the two of them. He looked away, not knowing why he felt something clench inside his chest, but it did. Xiaoge leaned into Liu Sang's side a moment later, making him turn towards Xiaoge. Without saying anything to him, Xiaoge picked up another dumpling and placed it into his bowl, and then placed some of the scallions from the soup on top as garnish. Liu Sang could feel his ears warm up, but he couldn't really protest. 

"I remember... some things," Xiaoge said after a while, making Wu Xie look up suddenly.

"You do?" he asked Xiaoge, who nodded.

"I remember a house," Xiaoge said slowly, as if he was trying his best to remember as he spoke. "I don't think I've seen that house in recent years, but I'm sure I saw it somewhere. Whenever I think of that house, I feel like I should go back to it ... that there was something for me there."

Wu Xie had almost stopped breathing, because Liu Sang could hear him holding his breath.

"Do you remember what it looked like? Any details that you can tell us about?"

Xiaoge shook his head. "It looked like the house in Banai. Maybe that was why I chose it."

Liu Sang could tell that it was news to Wu Xie, and he stared off into space for a while before finally making eye contact with Pangzi. "You have a house in Banai too, right, Pangzi?"

Pangzi leaned forward, idly sorting through the photos on the table and then smiled. "I do. It's the one I helped A-Gui rebuild, but his brother's son lives there now. I sometimes hear from him, and he tells me about the place, how it's changing, how the young people are all moving to the cities and leaving the village in droves. He wanted to set up an internet cafe at Banai, and I helped him out with that."

Liu Sang had heard from Wu Xie about what happened in Banai, so he looked up at Pangzi, unconsciously focusing on the sound of his breathing to tell whether the man was fine. From what he knew, Pangzi had lost someone there, someone who he wanted to get married to, and it had hit him pretty badly. He heard Pangzi breathe shallowly for a while as he leafed through the photos from the folder.

Wu Xie followed his gaze and looked down at the photos. He picked up one from the table and then gave a weak smile. "It's not like I'm trying to play down what I lived through, and I know I had a comfortable childhood," he said and took a small sip of the beer. "But I'm grateful for them, too. All these memories. If I could, I would share them with all of you," he said suddenly, and Liu Sang felt a strange flutter inside his chest at the way Wu Xie spoke.

"I appreciate the sentiment, Tianzhen, but I think having to work my way through my teens is still better than being told exactly what to do with my life, and at the same time, being kept in the dark about the most important thing about my family," Pangzi said unexpectedly. 

Wu Xie blinked, a look of surprise on his face before his jaw tightened again. "Shit," he said again, and chugged a good half of his beer, not looking up at either of them. Liu Sang figured that Wu Xie had only latched onto the first part of what Pangzi said, where he had mentioned working through his teenage years, because Liu Sang couldn't see what else could have prompted that reaction. Liu Sang caught himself looking at Wu Xie for a while, wondering why he was feeling upset at the way Wu Xie clenched his jaw and kept looking down, idly drumming on the table with his fingers. 

"Whoa, whoa, Tianzhen, slow down!" Pangzi exclaimed, trying to scramble forward and grab the can from Wu Xie when he suddenly tilted it up again.

"I'm fine," Wu Xie mumbled, but Liu Sang could already see the flush on his face, whether from the food or the alcohol, he couldn't tell. "It's just beer," he remarked sheepishly, and Pangzi smiled at him.

"You're a goddamn lightweight, I think I know that by now," Pangzi remarked, sitting down once again. "I've had to carry your sorry ass back to your place many, many times. Remember the time when you started drinking with Xiao Bai? God, the two of you were absolutely soaked in alcohol by the time I got there. It was only thanks to me that your dignity was intact on the way back."

Xiaoge turned a little to look at Wu Xie, and he flushed even more. "Pangzi is making things out to be much worse than they actually were," Wu Xie said. "I'm not a kid, I can hold my drink. Besides, it was Xiao Bai," he said, as if that explained anything. "You've seen me drink so many times, when have I ever been a lightweight?"

Xiaoge didn't roll his eyes, but Liu Sang could almost feel it from the man as he glanced at Wu Xie and then at Pangzi in quick succession. "You don't remember anything after you drink," he told Wu Xie, looking back at him.

Wu Xie made an offended squawk. "That's very obviously a lie! I remember everything perfectly, right down to the number of side dishes we've ordered." Liu Sang automatically looked over at Pangzi for confirmation.

"Right," Pangzi muttered. "Do you even remember the bar where you got dead drunk with Xiao Bai, then? Or remember how you got back to your place? Or whether you had any clothes missing?"

"Pangzi!" Wu Xie exclaimed. "I... I would never...! I remember everything! It was a bar right off of the street, I even remember I stopped to..."

"Stopped to what?" Pangzi challenged. "You don't remember a thing. You only remember what I told you afterwards."

Wu Xie visibly deflated at that, then ran his hand through his hair. "It was... just that one time?" he said unconvincingly.

"That's what you say every time, Wu Xie!" Liu Sang remarked, and ignored Wu Xie's wounded expression, instead leaning over to see the photos. That's what they were supposed to be looking at, after all.

"Xiaoge, you have to see this!" Pangzi said suddenly, picking up a photo and then sliding it towards Xiaoge across the table. Liu Sang saw Xiaoge pick it up and he peered over Xiaoge's shoulders to see what it was.

"That's Tianzhen when he was a snot-nosed kid, and here he's with Xiaoman-ge," Pangzi proclaimed, sounding pleased. 

Liu Sang saw Wu Xie, a tiny figure beside a fierce looking German Shepherd who was sitting on his back paws and was still a head taller than Wu Xie who was leaning on the dog's side, all but hanging onto his fur. 

"It's a good dog," Xiaoge murmured. "Well trained."

"Well, my family trained dogs after all, for several generations too," Wu Xie told him, leaning in to look and practically plastering himself against Liu Sang's side. 

"He looks oddly calm for a German Shepherd of his size," Liu Sang said, trying to tamp down on the way his body had already started reacting to Wu Xie's proximity. "He's letting you hold him like a plushie, and he's twice your size here," Liu Sang offered as explanation when Wu Xie looked up at him.

"He was calm with people he was familiar with. But I've heard stories of Xiaoman-ge tearing intruders apart. A lot of it was probably embellished by the elders, but it's only after Xiaoman-ge left that I started noticing birds and squirrels and cats around Wushanju. He was probably scaring away every living creature within a five-mile radius," Wu Xie said, with a bemused look on his face.

Pangzi snorted, then pulled a beer towards himself. "Sounds like someone else we know," he remarked enigmatically and then opened his can with unnecessary force, making some of the drink spill across his hand. Liu Sang saw Pangzi curse and then lick off the drink from his fingers so that it didn't drip onto the photos on the table.

It was probably his imagination, but it looked like Xiaoge had a decidedly pleased air to him as he squared his shoulders and then reached for the photo folder. He carefully spread out some of the photos, arranging them in a circle, and then stared at the one at the bottom, holding it down with his thumb.

"Oh," Liu Sang blurted out when he saw what Xiaoge was looking at. "Can you imagine that's Wu Xie? He's completely unrecognizable here. He's wearing shorts, and I can't believe no one got blinded by his legs at the event," he said, almost choking on the last bit because it got him every single time. Wu Xie was just unfairly pale - an entirely new shade of pale that looked like something which had never seen the light of the sun. And Wu Xie as a child was so pale that it seemed like he had been bleached off of the photos. It earned him a jab in his ribs from Wu Xie, but it was worth it.

"And this," Liu Sang said, pointing at the girl standing next to Wu Xie, "is Xie Yuchen dressed in girl's clothing. Can you tell that it is him? I had no freaking idea!"

Xiaoge made a thoughtful hum, and stared at the photo some more. There was another girl in that photo, that Liu Sang could see, and she was dressed beautifully too, and was wearing a ribbon in her hair. 

"But Tianzhen had a very good idea, didn't he?" Pangzi remarked, grinning from ear to ear. 

Liu Sang heard the unmistakable sound of Wu Xie trying to kick at Pangzi's foot under the table, but he missed, judging by the way Wu Xie hissed and hit one of the table legs instead, and let out a quiet curse.

"Damn you, Pangzi, as if you were any better! I was only a kid back then, but you had no such excuse!" Wu Xie exclaimed, sounding riled up now. He was also trying to get a better view of the photo Xiaoge was looking at, and in the process, effectively squishing Liu Sang between him and Xiaoge. He still craned his neck to look back at Pangzi who was openly sniggering. "You were the one who got taken in by him the time we were at the Xin Yue Hotel! You even danced with him thinking that it was Xiuxiu! And shamelessly felt him up saying that you never forgot a woman and how she looks! Shame on you too, Pangzi!"

Liu Sang started laughing midway into Wu Xie's tirade, making him fall right onto Xiaoge's shoulders as he tried to brace himself. Xiaoge shouldered his weight without even the slighest give, staying solid and unmoving as a rock, and kept looking at the photo as if the jostling made no impact on him at all. Pangzi was sputtering, and opening and closing his mouth like a clockwork device, and staring at Wu Xie with undisguised shock in his eyes.

"Tianzhen, how could you wrong me like that?" Pangzi responded. "Me, feeling up the Xie leader inside the Xin Yue Hotel? What do you take me for? And how much did you have to drink on that day?"

Wu Xie shot him a matching look of offense and then looked pointedly at Xiaoge. "Xiaoge, you were there too! You remember Pangzi being absolutely smitten with Xiao Hua while he was disguised as Xiuxiu, don't you?"

Liu Sang had finally stopped laughing and was wiping his eyes on a corner of Wu Xie's sleeve. "I had no idea that Xie Yuchen had so many skills. He really is a man of many talents," he said, laughter still threading his words.

"It's not that difficult," Xiaoge offered in response, and even Pangzi stopped and stared at him. 

"What?" Pangzi remarked after a while. "Whatever do you mean, Xiaoge? I thought it was witchcraft at first."

Xiaoge honest to god frowned at the comment, and Liu Sang pushed Wu Xie back so that he could finally sit up in his seat. 

"It's a simple bone constriction technique," Xiaoge said, in what was decidedly a grumpy tone of voice. Liu Sang had rarely heard Xiaoge use this tone in conversations. "And with a properly designed skin mask and wig, there should be no problem."

"No problem, eh?" Pangzi remarked slowly, something lighting up behind his eyes. "Remember what I told you that one time, Tianzhen? That you would go home with a lady and she would pull off her mask and it would be Xiaoge you're in bed with? Not that it would have stopped you," he said, chuckling.

Wu Xie cupped his face with both hands, and even Liu Sang could see the flush making its way up his  nose and temples. "Shut up, Pangzi," he grumbled. 

"I didn't think you had any shame at all, Tianzhen," Pangzi told him, glancing over at Liu Sang and smiling widely. "Sangbei'er came back after staying at the hospital for two long weeks, and tell me, did you even let the kid sleep a wink last night?"

"The kid is right here," Liu Sang said acidly. "And I slept plenty in those weeks, Liang Wan made sure of that," he remarked, seeing Wu Xie momentarily light up, like it was some kind of an achievement that he had been bragging about.

"You didn't even let him finish his meal in peace," Pangzi continued, and Liu Sang saw the exact moment Wu Xie realized that he was being ragged on, and opened his mouth to protest.

"We ate dessert back in our room!" Wu Xie responded, making Pangzi glare back at him.

"Are you sure you didn't have him as dessert, Tianzhen?"

Wu Xie squawked in protest, and Liu Sang didn't even have to look around to tell that Wu Xie was trying his best to convey his outrage to Pangzi by trying to step on his foot, but so far, he hadn't managed to have any luck with that. Pangzi kept dodging Wu Xie's foot and Wu Xie kept up a spirited attempt to try to step on it nonetheless, and Liu Sang kept getting jostled in the process instead, with how close Wu Xie was sitting beside him.

Liu Sang sighed, feeling like he could really do with a drink, no matter how early it was in the day, because he was not having this conversation while he was sober. He looked around and finally noticed the beer cans in front of both Wu Xie and Pangzi and none at all for him. "So I don't get drinks? Not even Xiaoge?" he said, glancing at the man beside him, and seeing that he, too, had been similarly neglected. "He was the one who bought them, after all," Liu Sang remarked, feeling indignant on Xiaoge's behalf.

"Kids shouldn't drink," Pangzi said placidly, and Liu Sang sat up so fast that the crockery clinked on the table. 

"Fuck you, Pangzi," Liu Sang said and scowled at him. "What about Xiaoge, then?" he remarked, pointing at Xiaoge. "Doesn't he qualify?"

"Senior citizens shouldn't drink, either," Pangzi retorted. "Besides, he doesn't drink. He refuses every single time we try to drag him somewhere for drinking."

"Not at all?" Liu Sang asked, a little surprised since somehow it wasn't something he had actively noticed about Xiaoge, and he usually noticed most things about the man. Ever since Liu Sang met Xiaoge at the South Sea King's tomb expedition, Liu Sang had spent most of his waking moments wondering what the man behind the legend was like - whether he liked the same things as Wu Xie or Pangzi did, or whether he had his own set of closely guarded likes which no one from the outside ever got to know about. And he had noticed Xiaoge sitting with a drink at their table when they went out together, so it was baffling to learn that Xiaoge never drank from it. 

"I don't like the taste," Xiaoge explained slowly. "It burns. And alcohol doesn't get me drunk."

"Because of your blood?" Liu Sang remarked, remembering what Wu Xie had told him about it.

"That's my guess, anyway," Wu Xie said, turning towards Liu Sang. "We don't know for sure, since we haven't really tested him for it, and it's better that way, I think. The less people know about Xiaoge's blood, the better. I had once asked Zhang Rishan about this, and he told me that alcohol could get him drunk, but also that its effects didn't stay long in his system. So it definitely has something to do with Zhang physiology."

"When he was your age, Sangbei'er, Tianzhen was doing everything in his power to get Xiaoge drunk, and Xiaoge just wouldn't, and after many attempts, Tianzhen somehow weaseled that fact out of him," Pangzi said, and Wu Xie hissed at him.

Liu Sang started giggling, because that was definitely something he hadn't expected to hear. 

"I wasn't trying to get him drunk!" Wu Xie protested.

"What about the time you were running behind Xiaoge trying to feed him that red ginseng soup?" Pangzi countered, looking over at Xiaoge for confirmation, but as far as Liu Sang could see, Xiaoge probably had as much reaction to it as to the tea he was drinking. 

"That was for his amnesia! Ginseng is good for boosting cognitive function, and in his case, we had to try everything that had some potential to work!" Wu Xie remarked, which only made Pangzi look more amused. 

"And that was all? You had no other motive behind it?"

"Pangzi!" Wu Xie exclaimed, but Liu Sang noticed that he was getting redder and redder in the face with every comment Pangzi made, making him suspect that there was something more to it, after all.

"I have no idea what else was going on in that head of yours at that point, and seriously, I don't need to know. Some things, I'm better off not knowing about you, Tianzhen," Pangzi responded. Then he pulled out the last folder from the box and laid it out on the table. "Holy shit, Tianzhen," he said slowly, his eyebrows shooting up as he stared at the photos on the table. "You really did piss off your Ershu for good this time!"

Wu Xie took one look at the photos Pangzi was staring at and was immediately out of his seat, clambering over the table to grab the photos from him. Liu Sang always knew that Wu Xie was exaggerating when he claimed to be an old man - well, he was older definitely, but not old - and that his reflexes were nothing like they used to be. Pangzi, too, grumbled and complained about all the aches making themselves felt whenever he tried standing up or sitting down after too long. It was all Wu Xie's fault, Pangzi claimed. It was his fault for dragging Pangzi all over the world through tombs which he wouldn't even let Pangzi touch. All he wanted, Pangzi had told Liu Sang, was to collect some keepsakes from them. Keepsakes which would have paid handsomely for a lot of the resulting aches, he had added, and well, it did make some sense, Liu Sang supposed. 

However, when Wu Xie tried reaching for the photos, all he could do was clutch at thin air because Pangzi was somehow quicker, and he'd collected the photos in a pile and slid them across the table in anticipation of Wu Xie's move, making the man grunt in frustration. "Pangzi!" Wu Xie whined, still sprawled halfway across the table.

"You're not the only one who gets to play dirty, Tianzhen!" Pangzi remarked, then looked over at Xiaoge. "Xiaoge, want to know what I'm looking at? These are the... mmmmphh!" Pangzi's words were cut off by Wu Xie wrapping his hand around Pangzi's mouth, and the man flailed in his seat, trying to get Wu Xie off of him.

Liu Sang sighed, struck with an acute sense of deja vu, and looked at Xiaoge for support.

"This was exactly how I woke up this morning," Liu Sang said to Xiaoge, who nodded in response. "I thought we were getting robbed, but instead it was just... this," he said, motioning towards the continuing struggle on the other side of the table.

Pangzi had now pulled off Wu Xie's hand from his mouth and was leaning over the table to get the photos out of Wu Xie's reach and stuff them back into the folder. He wasn't exactly successful since Wu Xie swatted the folder out of Pangzi's grip, causing him to lose his hold over some of the photos, which Wu Xie immediately pounced on, trying to crawl over and sit on them to avoid them from being seen. Which was when Pangzi sensed trouble and thus scooped up the remaining few photos and made a tactical retreat - jumping far away from the table, and in the process pushing his chair back with a loud grating sound that got onto every single one of Liu Sang's nerves.

"How do you always put up up with this?" Liu Sang complained, because, well, now he had someone to complain to. 

Xiaoge shrugged, and poured himself more tea which, Liu Sang thought, must be getting lukewarm by this point. 

Liu Sang stared at the cup and then back at Wu Xie who had now climbed down the other side of the table and was trying his level best to snatch the photos from Pangzi who was stuffing them under his... shirt, of all things. Liu Sang doubted that it would deter Wu Xie from making a grab for them anyway. The man really had no shame at all when it came to things he wanted. 

"Want to go upstairs?" Xiaoge said unexpectedly, fixing his dark eyes on Liu Sang's face. 

Liu Sang gulped, the implications not lost on him. "Sure," he remarked, looking back at Xiaoge, whose gaze was now fixed on Liu Sang's lips. "Let's get out of here," Liu Sang said, sounding breathier than he intended.

He noticed Wu Xie looking at them as they left the kitchen, but he didn't stop pawing at Pangzi, who was laughing hysterically and clutching at his stomach, doubling over from how hard he was laughing. And Wu Xie, the bastard, still found a way under Pangzi's shirt and was fishing out the rest of the photos, if his excited shouts were anything to go by.

Liu Sang sighed, knowing exactly where it was going. His stay at Wushanju was never going to be peaceful, was it? 

But Liu Sang really wouldn't have it any other way.