eat as though starving
by fruitjuicer

eat as though starving

fruitjuicer

Summary

The fever breaks that morning, spurring Tang Fan from the bridge between death and dreaming.

Notes

Imported from Archive of Our Own. Original work id: 41463681.

Chapter 1

The fever breaks that morning, spurring Tang Fan from the bridge between death and dreaming. And when he is taken back into waking, Sui Zhou is there for his finding. For there is nowhere else he could ever be; nowhere else he could stand to see out this waiting.

"Guangchuan," he croaks out, breaking the fast of his voice's disuse, and Sui Zhou is to his side at once, kneeling, taking between his own the hand that reaches to and for him.

"Runqing," he answers. This comfort is the only pertinence. All else can wait its turn.

Tang Fan swallows thickly, his thin neck craning to ease away from the struggle of it. His eyelashes flutter sharply over the drift of his dark eyes, their gaze still yet unseeing. "I dreamed you," he whispers, words cracking. "I dreamed you here."

If he did, those dreams must have been good. Tang Fan did not toss once, in all the hours of Sui Zhou's vigils. Laid still as the dead. Now he has risen, he holds himself around his soreness, ginger, as though he's still bleeding freely. His lips are split; his skin paling. Sui Zhou will take it. He will always take this; the fear and the restlessness, the scarred surviving. Better that than mourning. Anything else but absence.

"Come closer," Tang Fan bids him, still in his rasp, wavering and unearthly. Even though their hands are joined; their breaths shared in. In spite of there being no distance left between them in want of crossing.

There are so many things Tang Fan needs, now he is lucid: water to ease his throat, food to settle his belly. The change of his bandages; the gentle wash of staled sweat from his skin. But Sui Zhou will grant him what he wants, first. There is time for them and that.

Tang Fan will not let him slip out from beneath where the tips of his fingers can roam. The cost of that indulgence is his pained hiss when Sui Zhou's knee jars against his side, unable to open himself wide enough to climb over him without their touching. Sui Zhou hesitates, braced overhead in a makeshift supplication, because of course he does. How could he not?

"You haven't hurt me," Tang Fan assures him, quiet. His hand finds Sui Zhou's face, scrubbing over his flushed skin, the wreck of his unkempt beard on his jaw and chin. "You could never hurt me."

Sui Zhou must doubt that, in however small a way, for his own sake. But he cannot argue with Tang Fan's sureness to that contrary, least of all from its root in the unsaid, the semantics and their sentiments. "I'm sorry," he says nonetheless. And then he begins to move again, distracting Tang Fan's boding chastisement.

Tang Fan does not suffocate the hitches in his breath, his lashed whines and twinging sighs. And so, when Sui Zhou finally settles in flush against his side, he knows the shape of the trial it's taken, the weight of every ache endured. Tang Fan does not turn to him, full-body, as he would in health, but he makes the effort to ensure they are faced, cheek rested to his pillow. There is some return to keenness in his regard, focus to the black amidst the sallow whites of his eyes. His lashes flutter when Sui Zhou palms his neck, mouth parting with a dry click when his fingers unravel the spidering mat of his dark hair to brush it back behind his ear. His scent is stark enough to taste, this close, sickly and sour. Proof of life. Testament to fight.

They will quarrel, later. They must. They are owed that: Sui Zhou speaking to his peace on Tang Fan's carelessness, guising his own fear. Tang Fan countering that all men are helpless to chance and consequence, no matter their diligence. That it is all a past at their backs, and should be left where it lies. And they will both be right, together, as they always are. But that will be then. This is for now.