pine and cassia
by fruitjuicer

pine and cassia

fruitjuicer

Summary

They say the nights on Lake Houhu will drive a man to madness.

Notes

Imported from Archive of Our Own. Original work id: 38499238.

Chapter 1

They say the nights on Lake Houhu will drive a man to madness.

Sui Zhou has met with what moves in the dark, and learned the faces worn by his each and every fear. There is nothing that lives in the twilight hours, where spidering ink shadows drape themselves over all the seas and fields of Ming, that Sui Zhou has not already shared blood and breath with. He has been to the borderlands, and he has suffered a survivor's return from them. He has made his bed and lain with madness, and he is still yet here to pray never speak a word of it.

The academics are of a more delicate make. Better suited to their Taixue, to Hanlinyuan, Wenyuange. The soft little places they go to and come from and stay in, until they are shipped off to some magisterial post or another, if they so manage to get even that far.

But then, Sui Zhou had tried to return to the contrastable peace of the Northern Capital himself, after his service, hoping for— it doesn't matter anymore. The fire had found him there, and so too had the taste of ash, graining the roof of his mouth; the smell of burning bodies burling thick in his nose; the sound of skin spitting and sleeting off bone filling out his ears. So Sui Zhou had boarded up his house, and he had come back down to the South, and that is why he is here, now, his nights spent straddled between sleeping and waking, sometimes stirred from or sent to one side or the other by screams that aren't always his own. He's made something of it, and all its ugly familiarness, that has brought him the closest feeling of home that he's ever known.

Still, there is something here with them all tonight. A ghost of old tensions roaming over the waters, through the halls, stripping the air too thin for it to be breathed with any ease. Sui Zhou does not consider himself a superstitious man, but neither is he one to blithely ignore when dread comes heralding.

It is not from a dream that he wakes, but neither is it a nightmare— only an unrestful in-between. He is pressed to earth, held to it, and then there is a hand grappling for his shoulder, rousing. Life amidst the lifeless, a wrong that sends his own grip scrambling up the bridge of its arm to seize its throat.

It chokes, and Sui Zhou follows that — the wet splutter of its spit and the gasping rattle of its breath — in, up, and through. It does not fight him, which is curious enough that Sui Zhou hesitates. But a stopped man is a stilled man, and so he cannot afford to stand with it.

"Sui-daren," it — he — hisses, writhing under his hand, and Sui Zhou hesitates again. No-one calls him that in Yansuizhen. They are not in Yansuizhen. The man he has backed into a beam in the barracks is too slight and shivery a thing to be an Oirat. And so Sui Zhou risks relaxing the squeeze of his fingers, relenting just enough that the man can gulp down a heaving breath. But he does not yet uncollar his throat.

"Who are you?" he rasps, and the figure has the temerity to huff, winded, as though indignant. Sui Zhou uses the hold he still has on him to inch him, instead, by some shuffling steps, into a splinter of moonlight. From tell of his robes, he is one of the archivists, or at least someone pretending to be. There is a sense of familiarity to him that lends credence to the former — Sui Zhou does try to remember the faces if not names of the archivists. Even if that is a feat that turns towards easiest said than ever manageably done when the time comes for the register to be reviewed.

"I'm Tang Fan," the man croaks, and Sui Zhou unhands him. He does know that name, and thinks he can put this very face to it, though his composure in passing by blurring days is starkly contrasted by his discomposure now. Some of the archivists leave more of an impression than others, and Tang Fan's is reputational for being particularly… trying.

Sui Zhou has many questions to interrogate his visit with, but none are as quick to rise on his tongue as Tang Fan's interruption is. "I need your help," he tells him breathlessly.

"With what?" Sui Zhou finds himself asking, as if impelled. It is the least pertinent thing he should be pressing — whatever it is that this Tang Fan needs help with, Sui Zhou is neither proximal nor suited to the tasking.

Tang Fan's lips thin into a grimace as he swallows thickly, treating Sui Zhou to the slow bloom of the bruise on his pale throat. He feels a twinge of guilt, though it is quickly stifled by consternation that he cares that much at all. He was not the one who snuck into a strange man's room and shook him awake in the dead of the dark. Perhaps the shock and the sting of it will serve as a lesson to him, in propriety if not caution.

"Not here," says Tang Fan, hushed. "Come with me, I'll explain it as we go."

He reaches between them to tug at the sleeve of Sui Zhou's sleep shirt, and Sui Zhou blinks at him. "Why?" he asks. Stupidly. He feels helplessly unguarded, baffled as to why he is even entertaining this, this— tryst. Perhaps he is still dreaming. It would not be his strangest.

"I trust you," says Tang Fan simply. His voice lilts at the end of it, as though he is questioning not himself for the statement but why Sui Zhou is not managing to follow it.

You do not know who I am, Sui Zhou thinks in disbelief. But then, he supposes that could be rightly untrue. Many people do know of Sui Zhou, in one iterative facet or another. And he had known of Tang Fan. Perhaps he has his own reputation that has carried between the academics, here, too.

"All right," Sui Zhou accedes. It seems to be the easiest road to travel down for now. The worst that will surely come of it is that his time will be wasted, and it is his time of all things that has the least value to him. He doubts he will sleep again before morning comes, anyway, by the grace of Tang Fan's insistence. Once daylight arrives and the rest of the Archives awakes, Sui Zhou can find someone to take him off his hands — and keep him there.

"All right? All right." Tang Fan's hand flits out between them again, long fingers giving another presumptuous tug of his sleeve. "Well?" he prods impatiently. "Are you coming?"

"May I dress first?" Sui Zhou objects, exasperation tacking his tone. Tang Fan straightens abruptly, at that, gaze swooping down him from tip to toe and back again, as though taking in his state — and its undress — for the first time.

"Well." Tang Fan swallows again, an odd expression flickering over his stiffening features. "If you must," he allows slowly, stilted.

And since indeed Sui Zhou must, he does, pulling his middle robe over himself and toeing on his boots before he deigns he's decent enough to follow Tang Fan off on his little secretive excursion, wherever it may end up being to.

End Notes

It turns out what Tang Fan needs Sui Zhou's help with is suspected forgery — and also a dead body between the stacks.

Sometime last year, I attempted to exorcise in a groupchat a pre-canon AU where Sui Zhou was a soldier stationed at the Yellow Register Archives on Lake Houhu and Tang Fan was a jiansheng who uncovered White Lotus interference. It definitely deserves a lot more love than I think I can give it, but maybe I will revisit with a continuation someday.

I took liberties with absolutely everything in order to bend them into a shape that would accommodate this particular set-up of them both still having their chance encounter in the capital pre-canon and then meeting again here. Like a week from now Sui Zhou is going to see Tang Fan all grubby with dirt, the pieces are going to fall into place, and he's going to be kicking himself all the way back to Beijing while internalising the really complicated situation in his head of whether he should tell Tang Fan they've met before or not. (Tang Fan already knows, and has already been through his whole cycle of aggrievance over the fact the handsome guard who helped him did not, apparently, consider him mutually memorable.)