"I'm going to go get him. It's my job, as the Masozi Babysitter."

"Why doesn't Wei Ying have a babysitter?"

Good question.

"I'm sure you can appoint yourself his babysitter if you want to."

"Maybe I will."

"Fuck you."

"Personally, I'm glad that I'm so far from being a failchild that I not only don't have a babysitter myself but am a babysitter to others. My parents would be proud."

"We're not at graduation yet."

"There's no need to ruin a guy's day."

"Uh, guys, we need to go get Masozi."

"Oh, no, how was a-Ying the one that remembered that we needed to do something? Are you possessed by a ghost? Are you a mimic in human shape?"

"Fuck off! I can too remember things."

Nie Huaisang doesn't dignify this with an answer. "Wei Ying, Lan Wangji, come with me."

Masozi's door is closed. He does not immediately answer a knock or a yell. 

"Masozi! Open the door!"

"Do you think he went somewhere?"

"He can't have, not after the chewing out he got at lunch. --Masozi!"

There is, eventually, some sort of answering mumble but not one that's comprehensible through the closed door. Which remains closed. 

(It's not barricaded with the desk, though; Masozi was not at all in the mood to move furniture around earlier. It's actually not even locked.) 

"I'm coming inside to check on you," Nie Huaisang announces, and does so.

This is kind humiliating, actually, or at least it would be if Masozi were tracking the outside world much at all instead of curling up in a ball and holding as still as he can and vying by sheer force of will not to throw up again. He feels terrible and it keeps on going and to make matters worse, at one point he didn't react in time to reach the void wall and managed to puke on his bed. Which is why he's now lying backwards and diagonally on it. And also mostly naked, again, because Sophie's beautiful clothes did not deserve this, and he managed to stash them safely in the corner. 

He would try to see who's just come into his room but that would require moving, which, nope. 

Ooh, pretty naked boy.

Who is definitely super sick! Holy shit they have got to clean that up.

"I'll get Wen Qing."

"Wei Ying can you deal with this-- I have a sensitive stomach, it'll just make the problem worse--"

"Yeah, sure." He sits by Masozi. "Hey, Zaizai, you okay?"

Does he have to answer questions by talking now. This is incredibly unfair. 

"...Not really. Stomach - really hurts." And so does most of his body, at this point, and he's gross and clammy with sweat all over, and his head is pounding and he's agonizingly thirsty. Specifying that would take too many words though. 

"Okay. Wen Qing's going to be here soon, I need you to answer some questions for me, okay?"

He starts checking Masozi's body for injury.

"Mmm." 

He's not visibly injured, just damp and sweaty and miserable-looking. 

"What things are bothering you?"

Wei Wuxian takes his pulse.

His pulse is very fast, but fairly strong and easy to feel. 

Masozi feels like it is quite self-evident what’s bothering him but apparently it’s important that he answer stupid questions using words even though this sucks. 

“Feel sick.”

"You gotta tell me what kind of sick, Zaizai, or we won't be able to make you feel better."

Okay, he's supposed to look at skin color... Masozi looks basically normal? He has no idea what kinds of skin colors are concerning for black people. 

“Keep throwing it up. My body hurts.”

"Okay. What's the last thing you ate?"

How's his skin temperature?

“Lunch?” Masozi says uncertainly. Please please please do not ask him to provide an itemized list, he doesn’t remember and also doesn’t want to think about anything in that entire genre.

His skin feels maybe a bit warmer than it should, but mostly he’s just soaked in sweat.

Wei Ying seems to consider this good enough. "Okay. Is this-- a recurring thing? Does it happen to you a lot?"

His pupils don't seem excessively dilated.

“No!” He’s eaten things that turned out to, in hindsight, not be edible, but he’s not sure if he’s ever been this ill from it before. 

"Okay. You're doing great. One last question and then I'll leave you alone. Can you tell me what you did when this got started?"

This is a very confusing as a question to answer, since from Masozi’s perspective he mostly stopped doing things. 

“I - put my new clothes over there? So they wouldn’t get ruined.” Oh no where is his notebook of Mandarin, he can’t remember, if he ruined his notes he’s going to be so frustrated. “I…tried to sleep?”

"No, before. When did you start feeling sick?"

"What's the problem?"

"He's poisoned, I think, or maybe induction flu. He's stable and oriented. He's been throwing up and his stomach hurts. He says the last thing he ate was lunch and this doesn't happen to him often."

Mandarin: "Right. Lan Wangji, get the sheets from your bed and tell Zhang Zifeng to do the laundry." English: "Masozi, I'm going to do a spell for the nausea."

Oh wow that’s an amazing idea, he really wants her to do that spell, maybe then he’ll be able to properly have thoughts. 

…Oh right and someone was asking him a thing. Wei Wuxian. Question. 

“I - was just studying? I - felt kind of bad - after lunch, then I - kept feeling worse…”

She says a rapid poem in Arabic, thinking that Masozi is in no way paying enough attention to accidentally pick up Arabic.

The spell doesn't completely knock out the nausea, and it doesn't do anything about the part where his entire gut is tied into agonizing knots of cramps, or where all his joints and muscles feel achy and his throat really hurts and his head is pounding dully. But it's a significant improvement. 

He experiments with turning his head, notes that this seems allowed, and tries half-rolling toward Wen Qing so he can see what's going on. This does not result in throwing up, like it did the last three or four times he tried to shift position. 

"Am I maybe going to die?" he asks Wen Qing, plaintively. 

"No. What are your symptoms? Besides the nausea."

He will do his best to describe everything for her. "At first I just felt - kind of bad but not specific? And I was tired and wanted to lie down and it was hard to study. And then I started getting awful cramps in my belly, and I tried drinking more water to see if it'd help but it really didn't. And - then I think my whole body hurting was just getting worse and worse, at the start it was just my stomach." He shivers. "- What time is it now?" 

"Dinnertime. --So it could be induction flu or it could be poisoning. Have you eaten anything from the vending machine in the past two days?"

"...Yeah. Had - something at lunch? 'Cause I'm - supposed to be eating more..." 

Masozi feels like the current outcome is KIND OF THE OPPOSITE OF THE GOAL THERE.

Another quick burst of Arabic. "It's the stomach poisoning but the spell doesn't say if it's the food poisoning or the malicious poisoning. --Nie Huaisang, my room, charcoal."

"But--"

"Now."

Masozi didn't particularly follow that exchange. He's thinking that he's cold and feels terrible and wishes that Lan Xichen could hug him and this would result in less feeling terrible. It probably wouldn't, though, and also he's not exactly in a huggable state right now. 

"...Can I have water?" he eventually thinks to ask. "I'm thirsty." 

"Wei Wuxian. Water. --Do you have any idea of anything you might have swallowed during shop?"

"I...drank water? I don't think I ate anything on purpose." 

Lan Wangji comes in with his sheets.

"Can you stand up? I want you to have fresh sheets."

Masozi's enthusiasm for trying to stand up is well below zero, but he's willing to make the attempt. Well. Starting with just sitting up, at which point he's very lightheaded, and puts his head down on his knees again. "- Don't know if I can. I can - lie on the floor?" 

She helps him to the floor.

He strips the sheets without any apparent emotion about this task. "Bucket?"

"I'm hoping to keep him on the anti-nausea spell but it'll be good for after dinner."

He leaves to take the sheets to the minion who does laundry and to find a bucket of some kind.

"So we don't know what you took, if it's poisoning, which makes the treatment harder. I'm going to give you the charcoal, it tastes awful but it's a good broad-spectrum anti-poison potion. If it's food poisoning it should clear up on its own in a day or so. Drink plenty of the water."

"Mmmkay." He is now very stuck on the floor and is maybe just going to stay there until Wen Qing volunteers to put in the effort required to change this situation. "Where's Lan Xichen?" he adds, tentatively, after a moment. "Can he - I want..." Actually make this is an unreasonable thing to ask for and he shouldn't? He trails off. 

"You're going to need someone to watch you to see if you get worse and make sure you have water, I don't see any reason why Lan Xichen can't be that person."

"But - curfew, how long...?" He is apparently bad at keeping track of time, right now. 

"You'll be alone overnight but someone-- Lan Xichen, if you like-- will come sit with you the first thing in the morning."

"Okay." It's the first week of school; he probably won't be eaten by a mal in the middle of the night, and if Lan Xichen is worried about it he can figure out extra wards. 

He closes his eyes and drifts, still too generally uncomfortable to actually manage sleep, but a lot less miserable than before. 

"All right. Back on the bed," she says.

But the floor is a perfectly fine place to be flopped fine, he will accept Wen Qing's help to drag himself back onto the bed, and then burrow under his blanket and wish he had a second blanket or, better yet, snuggles from Lan Xichen. At which point he has to remind himself that almost certainly Lan Xichen is not going to want to snuggle him when he's sick, he probably smells terrible again. 

"Fortunately it's not the induction flu so we don't have to keep you quarantined."

"Water! You have no idea how much nonsense I had to get through to get this--"

Wei Wuxian is also a fairly comforting person to have there, even if he's not Lan Xichen.

Masozi tries to sit up without unblanketing any part of himself below the chin. "Why, is something else happening?" 

"Boston is full of idiots and that's all I have to say about it. Drink, I went through hell for this."

Whatever, probably it's not an emergency that Masozi needs to worry about right now, then? He accepts the water and sips it carefully; his stomach gurgles uneasily about this but he's not exactly nauseated and the sip of water stays down.

He tries to find a more comfortable half-propped-up position where he doesn't have to support himself, but this is hard to figure out when he only has one somewhat sad and deflated pillow. 

"I have obtained the charcoal!"

"Excellent. Go get Masozi some the pillows. --Masozi, you have to drink this entire potion. I'm so sorry, it tastes disgusting, but if you were poisoned it will keep you alive." 

"Okay." 

He will try to drink all of the disgusting potion! It's incredibly disgusting! Despite the anti-nausea spell, it keeps making him gag, and he's uncomfortably aware that his stomach has contents again, and does not exactly approve of this right now. 

Eventually he's drunk all of the horrible potion! Unfortunately he gets to continue to taste the horribleness every time he burps! 

....Does he, in addition to drinking it, also have to not throw it up again. Is there a minimum time limit he has to manage to keep it down or something. 

"Do you think you can keep it down or should I go for the heavier-duty anti-nausea spell?"

"Maybe? I - I don't know -" He tries to reach the water jug again, maybe getting some of the horrible taste out of his mouth will help. "S'just - a lot of potion." 

"It's up to you-- the other anti-nausea spell will last longer and you definitely won't throw up the potion, which is good because the longer it's in your system the more time it has to soak up the potion, but it tends to make people... loopy."

Masozi considers this. "...You're helping guard me from mals, right. So s'probably okay if I'm out of it? I - I would like to feel less bad. Hard to think anyway." 

"I can also give you a pain relief spell for the aches-- the pain is still there but it makes you care less. --Actually, if he's coming to sit with you, Lan Xichen should do it, it's in-affinity for him."

"Right. I will go fetch Lan Xichen."

Lan Wangji arrives with a bucket.

Masozi probably doesn't need the bucket if Wen Qing is going to cast the stronger spell, but it's reassuring to have nearby just because the horrible potion will make such a disgusting mess if he does throw up again. 

He will try to get as comfortable as he can with Wei Wuxian's delivery of additional pillows, and wait for Lan Xichen to arrive. 

"The stronger spell, yes or no?"

"- Yes. Please." 

Arabic!

....Wow. That's really weird. On the one hand, he feels...almost fine? Certainly a lot closer to actually comfortable. On the other hand, everything is suddenly...sort of pink? And objects have gauzy halos around them. And his hands feel weirdly like balloons, which might float away in the breeze, not that the Scholomance has breezes. Also it takes him three tries to get the water jug to his mouth, because his vision seems to be weirdly offset by about an inch. 

He can swallow a normal sized sip of water without it feeling unpleasant, though! Which reminds him that he's still very thirsty and it's tempting to gulp the rest, but he probably shouldn't push it too far. 

"My presence was requested?"

"Yes. Watch him, make sure he doesn't get worse, get him refills of water. He's on the heavy-duty anti-nausea spell now. Do your homework."

"I will do my homework."

"Good. It would be embarrassing if we lost our leader because you got eaten by History of South India."

Masozi has his eyes closed, but he finds himself relaxing significantly the moment he hears Lan Xichen's voice. This helps a bit with the aches just by itself. 

He opens his eyes and tries to make them focus. Lan Xichen's face looks funny, all surrounded by halos. Masozi...should probably say something, to thank him for being willing to come? ...Words are hard and moving his lips feels a bit like trying to manipulate two unenthusiastic earthworms. 

"Sorry fr'being - needing help..." he manages. "S'inconvenient for you?" 

"It's all right. I do my homework here. It's as good as anywhere else."

Masozi smiles tiredly at him. "It's nice. That you're here." He's currently giving off a very different impression from the one he did earlier today in his new clothes; scrunched up under his blanket against the pile of pillows, with his eyes not quite focusing, he looks very small and young and vulnerable. 

Lan Xichen rearranges the blanket to tuck him in more snugly and does not kiss his forehead. Behold his restraint.

Masozi fails to notice that Lan Xichen is restraining himself from anything, and drinks some more water. It's annoying how he needs to take his arm out from under the blanket to do that, he's cold. 

"You can do the pain spell?" he says after a little bit of silence. 

"Does Wen Qing tell you about that? Of course." Japanese!

"Thank you." It helps, a lot, but it also seems to stack with the weirder effects of the nausea spell. He feels a bit like he's floating in warm water. 

...He would like to put his head on Lan Xichen's shoulder, he decides. Is Lan Xichen close by enough for him to just do this or does he have to ask. 

Lan Xichen is still standing, due to the perhaps naive hope that he'll actually be able to do his homework.

"Can you sit with me?" Masozi asks plaintively. "You could do your homework there." 

"Okay," he says, and does not kiss the sad fragile person asking for him to help him. He just gets close enough for Masozi to hug him if he wants to.

Masozi tries to wiggle into a position where he can lean on Lan Xichen instead of on his pillows, and can still reach his water, but where he's not too much in the way of homework-doing. He's not sure if he succeeds at this, but he'll try to be quiet and unobtrusive and un-distracting from homework. 

Awwww.

He's a little bit distracting but not more so than doing homework with Meng Yao.

Masozi is trying not to be distracting and so he makes it an entire five minutes before he interrupts. 

"Were you mad at me? At lunch?" 

"No, I'm worried at lunch. I don't want you to die."

"Oh. I...don't want to die either. Yanli said I shouldn't trust Wei Wuxian on whether something's safe or not so I'll - be more careful." 

"It's my fault. Normally everyone who's my responsibility knows what other people in Shanghai enclave are like, so I don't think."

"Don't think it's your fault. If I'd been - paying attention - I'd've thought, Wei Wuxian forgot his room number, so he's not careful... Just didn't think." 

Masozi has in general been training himself to ask fewer questions when they might annoy people, but the spell side effects are making that much harder. 

"- Thought you might've been mad about the clothes. Seemed like you didn't want to talk to me." 

"I-- explain myself later when you're not on so much mind control? I'm glad about clothes."

"Oh. Okay. ...Should stop distracting you. Sorry."

Masozi snuggles up closer and lapses into silence again. He remembers to drink some more water, eventually, but then his eyelids are feeling very heavy, and he has wards on his room and Lan Xichen is right there and so he's safe and doesn't need to fight to stay awake. 

Awwwwwwwww.

...it is very important to be trustworthy and trustworthy people do not kiss other people's foreheads while they're asleep and then lie to them about it even if they're right there.

Masozi, if he had any way of knowing about this train of thought, would have some confusion about this definition of trustworthiness. He doesn't, though. 

It turns out that he occasionally makes cute noises in his sleep. 

Oh no that's so good.

Masozi's day is going like a thousand times better now that he's pretty sure he isn't actually going to die, and has spells to make him feel better, and water, and also snuggles from Lan Xichen! 

He wakes up after a while and finishes drinking his jug of water and then asks sleepily if he should practice Mandarin so he doesn't get behind. 

"Right now you rest so you get better. I sing?"

"I'd like that. If you're done your homework." He looks sort of blankly at his now-empty water jug. "...Can you get me more water first?" 

"Yes." He does so.

The last time Masozi was sick, he had to stay up all night anyway, keeping mals off his mother and sister, occasionally casting his two-hour ward over both of them and then trying to rest for a little while, with the only upside being that concentrating while feeling awful was helpful for generating mana. This is so much better! It's nice enough that he almost doesn't mind being sick, when it means that he gets snuggles and singing for an entire evening even though this is not, strictly, necessary for Lan Xichen to keep him safe from mals or make sure he's drinking water. 

He thinks Lan Xichen is very good, and drowsily tells him so.