the heart is a bird of irony
by fruitjuicer

the heart is a bird of irony

fruitjuicer

Summary

Sui Zhou has been working surveillance on the case for three days when Tang Fan knocks on his passenger’s side window.

Notes

The Suitang Modern AU where they're Chinese-Australian diaspora living in Sydney, reupped for my favourite Wabbu 💕

Title is from the poem home is a strange place by Ouyang Yu. See end notes for content advisories.

Imported from Archive of Our Own. Original work id: 33546448.

Chapter 1

Sui Zhou has been working surveillance on the case for three days when Tang Fan knocks on his passenger’s side window.

Even if he was optimistic, with the hope that comes with it that would lead him blind and bright-eyed into thinking the situation is salvageable, one look at Tang Fan’s stormy scowl through the privacy tinting would’ve dashed it all dead on the rocks. It’s impossible not to make out his fury, in exacting detail, given how he’s stooped down so close that the tip of his nose is barely a hair off squeaking along the glass.

Since Sui Zhou is not much of an optimistic man, by trade or by nature, he’d already written off the job as a wash the moment he saw Tang Fan beelining towards him across the carpark with purpose. Now he’s well into his mental draft of the notice of agreement termination to immediate effect that he’ll have to write up when he leans over the armrest console and winds the window down to get this confrontation over and done with.

Whatever desire for a fight that Tang Fan has clearly geared himself up to start seems to dissipate, though, the moment he gets a proper look at him. His mouth parts a little around his surprise, his raised eyebrows peeking out over the frame of his oversized sunglasses. He’s quick to bounce back from whatever it is about Sui Zhou that has thrown him off, in any case, only pausing for some split seconds before he pulls the handle of his takeout bag up to the crook of his elbow, folds his arms across the sill, and promptly sticks his head inside the car.

“Hi,” he says, tapping his smartphone against the flat of his forearm idly, pinky finger clipping the cuff of his garish pastel pineapple print short-sleeved button-up. Tied in with the leopard print frames, the deliberately distressed straight-leg jeans with the hems so far removed from his knobbly ankles that they only cross paths when he’s taking them on or off, and the low-top floral print sneakers, his appearance totals as a complete affront to the eyes that nonetheless blends him into the bohemian backdrop bustle of Newtown.

Tang Fan clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, then, before Sui Zhou can reply, cuts in with an added, “What’s your CAPI number?”

Saying that it’s the last thing Sui Zhou expects to hear implies there was even the slimmest chance that he expected to hear it in the first place. It’s probably the lowest stakes blindside he could possibly be hit with, all considered, but thrown for a loop is thrown for a loop. It takes him a beat to finish his turn at being surprised; Tang Fan just cocks his head to the side all the while. His chin starts to dip towards his clavicle when his glance apparently flits, briefly, to his phone, which he turns over in his hand and unlocks expectantly.

Sui Zhou tells him his number, and Tang Fan nods along as he slides his thumb along his screen, taking it down one-handed.

"Do you have your licence on you?" he adds next. His voice is breezy, tone pitching up on the tail-end to denote the question. It's also unconvincingly casual. Over-workshopped but under-rehearsed.

It's an interesting question for the intent Sui Zhou suspects is behind it. Tang Fan has already caught him, but this is taking the offensive, a telegraphed swing at trying to catch him out.

Sui Zhou does have his licence on him, of course, so it’s a swing and a miss. He straightens up so he can fish his wallet out of the pocket of his jeans, watching out of the corner of his eye while Tang Fan loosens the fold of his arms. He gets his spare hand around his phone and starts tapping away with both thumbs, the rest of his fingers steepling in an aimless cradle against the back of the chunky sky blue blocktone hardcase.

Sui Zhou pulls out his card and leans back over, propping himself up on his elbow as he holds it out just far enough that it's in the range where it can be easily seen but not so easily touched.

Tang Fan flails a hand towards his sunglasses, scrabbling to push them up to sit on his head. He squints at Sui Zhou's licence, then at Sui Zhou. The brown of his eyes is so dark that it bleeds black, even with the sunlight filtering in from high overhead. The bridge of his nose is striped pink from where his sunglasses have been rubbing at his skin.

"Thanks," he chirps, once he's had his fill of inspecting it, and Sui Zhou takes the invitation to put it away and tuck his wallet back into his jeans.

"You're well informed," Sui Zhou observes lightly. He might as well join the conversation. They're mutually captive audiences for one another at the moment, anyway, and there's only so much room left for this encounter to grow any weirder.

Tang Fan snorts, even as his mouth crooks into a self-satisfied smile. "Well, you know," he starts, flippantly vague, gaze lowering from Sui Zhou's again to skim over his screen, "follow me once, shame on you, follow me twice… Oh, general you, that is! I mean, I know you're new."

There is only so much of a picture you can piece together of a person, as perceived by surveillance and prescribed by public record. Limited perspective; fragmented context. Sui Zhou knows about Tang Fan through glimpses into his habitual day-to-day in motion, from sifting through his social media, from pulling up records and reports in public and pseudo-private databases. None of those people bear a perfect resemblance to the Tang Fan that's in front of him now, whole and real, fleshed out to actualised. None of that information gave him any indication that this isn't the first time Tang Fan has had a tail.

There wasn’t even a hint of it to be found between the lines, he knows, because he knows what to look for and he went looking for it. Read the R v Zheng [2017] NSWSC sentence on AustLII, then the Zheng v R [2018] NSWCCA principle judgement. Filled out the non-party application to access court files for permission to inspect the trial transcript and copies of relevant tendered evidence at the registry. The only things he’d left well enough alone were the Coronial Inquests for the two associated in-custody deaths. They’d both been reported as mandatory to the State Coroner when they’d happened, and nothing in either finding posed any relevance to his job at hand.

All that thoroughness and he’d still missed the forest for the trees, in the end. Looked for the wrong things in the right places. Sui Zhou can feel a headache building behind his eyes, agitation flint to the slow burn fire. He breathes out through his nose, slow, and takes the hit to his composure to scrub a hand over his face. That would have been pertinent information for his client to let him know. They certainly wouldn't have progressed past prospective client had Sui Zhou been made aware of them shopping their case around town beforehand.

He never gets the wool pulled over him like this when he keeps his head down and sticks to commercial stream jobs, but, well. He can’t lay the blame all in one place. He’d taken the name of vested interest behind both the client and their referral at standing face value when he’d had every opportunity at his disposal to be more discerning. It’s a joint fault for effort.

"How many?" Sui Zhou asks, as much for curiosity as for closure's sake. Maybe it's not the worst-case scenario he’s thinking it is. He hadn't been asked to give over anything that was red flag blatant: no personal address, no place of employment, nothing someone with an internet connection and a functional understanding of search engines couldn’t dig up for themselves. Just follow the supposed money Tang Fan clearly doesn’t actually have; see if it’s funding unscrupulous habits or changing hands with questionable associates.

Tang Fan takes his bottom lip between his teeth, his brow knitting together as he seems to consider it. "Depends on how you count it, I guess?" is the answer he picks, punctuated with a small shrug. He flashes his phone screen towards Sui Zhou, who recognises the telltale blue on the site banner and doesn’t need to be able to read the white font print to know it’s the SLED public agent register landing page. “Looks like you check out, Sui Zhou.”

“Looks like I check out,” Sui Zhou repeats back. It’s usually about seven click-throughs to that database on a good day, so either Tang Fan is just that fast, or he’s got the damn thing bookmarked. The latter bodes very poorly for Sui Zhou’s headache. “How would you count it?”

“Master licensees,” Tang Fan replies decisively, not missing a beat. “So, that makes you number three? Oh, the last one, though, they were determined! Class three, big agency, I went through five different investigators before Dora—” Tang Fan catches himself with a sheepish pinch of his mouth and clears his throat. “Anyway, they finally gave up around… six months ago, I want to say? Must be good money.”

There's a nervous excitability hemming Tang Fan in as he relates it: his fingers start drumming together, energised; the volume of his voice kicks up a notch; his smile broadens, bares his teeth. Like he's telling Sui Zhou what he thinks is a very funny personal anecdote and not alluding blithely to the fact that he's been on the receiving end of a campaign of aggravated harassment. Might not hit the reasonable person qualifier to hold up in court, but they have to know what sort of affect being doggedly followed can have on a person with Tang Fan’s recent history profile. Sui Zhou had managed to pick up on it practically at the outset, as an outsider, and had adjusted accordingly. Surveilling someone with a high probability of being hypervigilant at best and paranoid at worst isn’t exactly the ideal; it calls for a particularly painstaking attention to detail.

Sui Zhou has to force his jaw to unclench. There's a hot, nauseating knot of emotion looping around itself in his gut that he's not keen to further assess at this given moment. "Right," he grits out shortly. "Sorry to have bothered you." It's laughable, but he's in need of something to say, and what even is there? Tang Fan is just some kid who lucked out on a raw deal and now seems to be caught up in the middle of interpersonal politicking within a family he doesn’t even have any relation to.

"Oh, no bother!" Tang Fan replies hastily, flapping a hand at him. "You've been great, actually." And before Sui Zhou can process the utter inanity of that, Tang Fan ducks back out of the window, straightens up— and tries to open the door. His shoulder jerks with the recoil of his unsuccessful yank on the handle, brow crumpling into a consternated frown. "Are you going to unlock the car?"

"What?" Sui Zhou blurts out, dumbfounded.

Tang Fan raises an eyebrow, mouth pursing. "Are you," he repeats slowly, "going to unlock the car?" Sounds it all out, as if he's actually said something sensical and Sui Zhou has simply misheard him the first time around.

“Come on, Sui Zhou!” Tang Fan whines — actually whines — when Sui Zhou hasn’t managed a response in the thirty-odd seconds that is apparently Tang Fan’s grace period for such things. Judging by the janky way he slumps, Sui Zhou thinks he’s even gone as far as giving a petulant little stamp of his foot for flavour. “I have been walking all day! My legs hurt. It’s off-pay week, I don’t have any money to put on my Opal card. Isn’t giving me a lift the least you could do?”

The least he could— incredible. Not a single line of Tang Fan’s reasoning is hinged to sense. And yet, Sui Zhou still leans over, anyway, and pulls up the pin to unlock the door. He doesn't think much further on the why of it on his part, or how Tang Fan could have just reached back through the window and pulled up the pin to unlock it himself. He’s not even fully settled back into his seat when Tang Fan, beaming sunnily and blindingly pleased, throws open the door and clambers into the car in a mess of lean limbs.

“Finally, thank you,” Tang Fan rattles off, folding himself up so he’s sitting cross-legged, the sprawl of his knees spilling out onto both the door and console armrests. He plops his takeout into his lap, buckles his seatbelt, and tosses an appraising look around the interior. “Wow, you’ve really kept it all manual, huh.”

Sui Zhou decides the best course of action for him is not to try to reply to that. He unhooks his aviators from the collar of his t-shirt instead, slides them back on, and fastens his seatbelt. The moment he turns the key in the ignition and it clicks over the first notch, the radio crackles back to life with a blare of monotonous voices, and Tang Fan actually scoffs at it.

“Oh no,” he despairs with a disapproving pout, “let’s just, fix that—” and then he’s cradling his food with one arm as he wriggles forward and leans over to fiddle with the tuner. Something that very much puts him half into Sui Zhou’s lap because the radio is mounted in the driver’s side dash. Sui Zhou just— stays very still, at a loss, while Tang Fan dials up the frequencies. He narrates the — excruciating, for all it can’t last longer than half a minute — process with short lilting hums until he finally flips the channel to Triple M on 104.9. He then sits back up with a grunt, the sound of INXS caught mid-track apparently meeting his sky-high standards for the next few minutes of city drive listening.

“What?” Tang Fan boggles at him, oblivious. “You know my address, right?”

Sui Zhou really, grossly underestimated the upper limit for the day's weirdness, as it turns out. This has gone beyond his capacity for comprehension. This weirdness is off contending uncontested in a league completely of its own making.

“I’ve got it,” he says, since he does, and it’s the easiest thing to deal with out of everything Tang Fan has lobbed at him in as many seconds. He finishes starting the car, puts it into reverse, and slings his arm around the back of Tang Fan's seat to brace himself as he turns to look over his shoulder.

"Do you mind if I eat in your car?" Tang Fan asks, voice muffled by the telltale rustling of plastic. Sui Zhou glances back over to him just in time to pair the squeaking clack of a lid being cracked to the visual of Tang Fan fishing two lotus root chips out to shove wholesale into his mouth.

So, no money for the bus, but money enough for practically his bodyweight soaking wet in tapas from Shinmachi. Fuck’s sake, this kid. Sui Zhou feels a sound bubble up in his throat; he bites it back and swallows it down only because it's too close for him to tell whether it's a scream or a laugh, shakes his head vainly, then turns back around.

He's under the distinct impression that he's being taken for a ride, now. He has to be. He just isn't sure on what level that it's a deliberate run-around on Tang Fan's part, or the reason behind why. Maybe there is no real reason at all to begin with, and Tang Fan is simply going along with some sort of flow, any which way it so goes.

Sui Zhou is certain that he's going to go straight home after this, though. He's had enough of today. He can do the work that won't wait until tomorrow on his phone.

He can count on both hands just how many times the stream of Tang Fan's voice stops over the course of the trip — an ostensibly short drive that blows out when he hits every red light down King Street — and most of all those instances are not to take a not-much-needed breath but to facilitate further snacking.

Property is typically one of the first things Sui Zhou looks into for gauging potential discrepancies in personal finances, so he knows Tang Fan is the lone lessee of one of the innumerable terrace houses still standing in the suburb from the late 1800s. A narrow two-level thing on an even narrower one-lane street that’s on the lower end of the area’s obscene pricepoints and a shade past obnoxious to get to. Not technically out of Tang Fan’s means, with his as-known legitimate income streams, but the on-paper heavy hitter purportedly contributing most to his being broke every second week. It's a two bedroom place, but he doesn't split the lease, at least not in writing or from Sui Zhou's observation, so he doesn't halve the burden.

In practice, Sui Zhou thinks the Afterpay habit is the worst offender, anyway, given that it actually pinged for vendor-run checks on his credit history. An uncommon enough occurrence even in commercial cases not from the source itself that it was actually novel, for Sui Zhou, to come across there of all the most unexpected places. Tang Fan’s apparent subsistence on anything he himself doesn’t have to make is a close second — Sui Zhou wonders if it's as much convenience for Tang Fan as it might be from not knowing how to cook to start with.

Well, it doesn't matter. He’s not positioned to give Tang Fan either financial or culinary advice. They aren't his problems. They're not even Tang Fan's problems, given how he seems to find no problems in either of them.

Tang Fan, in no apparent hurry to depart from Sui Zhou’s car, gets in one last parting shot as he’s wrangling his legs back out from underneath him and trying to round back up in-hand all of the possessions he’s managed to scatter in record time. “Are you coming in?”

"Do you—" Sui Zhou fists at the steering wheel, his knee. Has to stop himself, viciously, bodily, from saying the rest of something terribly stupid. From getting out Do you always do this? He is not positioned to give Tang Fan welfare advice, either. Or any advice whatsoever. It is not his business if Tang Fan makes a habit of getting into cars with strangers and then inviting them into his house. Tang Fan certainly doesn't need one of those said strangers to take care of him, no matter how concerning Sui Zhou is increasingly finding it and this all to be. Or not-quite concerning, but— something, along the lines of it, close enough to count.

Perhaps it's all just an adrift panic at being so far off-shore, head barely above water in the sea of the completely unfamiliar. Perhaps he's just thinking all too much into it.

"No," Sui Zhou says instead. No is safe; no is a full stop sentence.

"Suit yourself," Tang Fan replies, unfussed, unbuckling himself. He swings open the door and all but spills out onto the footpath, stumbling up the gutter as it slaps back shut behind him. He hasn't bothered to wind up his window.

Tang Fan piles the handles of his bag and his phone into one hand, gives Sui Zhou a wave, and farewells him with a polite, smiling, "Nice meeting you, Sui Zhou," already half-turned to leave.

Thankfully, the snap diversion of Tang Fan's attention spares Sui Zhou from having to clumsily mete out a civil reply. He would certainly agree that this was a meeting; he's baffled by what must constitute for Tang Fan's metrics for pleasant that he would call it a nice one.

It's not not-nice, necessarily, though, just— strange. Incomprehensible.

Sui Zhou watches Tang Fan go. It’s not much of a hardship or a trial in waiting — there is not far for Tang Fan to go to. Three springing strides and he’s already up over the stone slab step and at his door, hand wrenching into his thigh pocket to prise out his keys; a few seconds more and he’s flipped the deadlock latch and trundled over the threshold, not a glance back to spare. So quick to witness that it’s far more an act of providence than a product of purpose.

It’s a skipping track that keeps scratching in his head throughout the entire drive back to Haymarket that Sui Zhou tries not to pick at. Leaves it as a flinch of disruption in the din, an off-note in the percussion of every other sensory input. A throb of an ache yawning between his temples. He can get the written notice sent out today; he can start on the end report tomorrow. He will not look into why it all might have come to him. It will scab over, as things do, when they are left alone.

Later, after, when Sui Zhou opens his passenger’s side door to wind up the window and sees Tang Fan’s wallet poking out from half-under the seat, he will curse, mentally, and swear, audibly. Eventually, he might see the amusement in it, the willfulness of ignorance that all but guaranteed peripety. In the immediate moment, though, and for the proceeding twenty-four hours, he will, for the most part, find it maddening.

End Notes

* The first case in the show has been reworked here to fit the change in setting. While the fic itself doesn't go into explicit detail about it, it does touch around the legal proceedings after-the-fact, and has an off-hand mention of coronial inquests resultant from deaths while in lawful custody.

* There's a reference to stalking and harassment within the context of a client engaging a private investigator to intimidate/cause distress to a third party that can be presumed vulnerable due to being a victim of violent crime.