those who know are silent

Luck is a finite and fickle thing.

It seems as if Sui Zhou can only manage to tread water, as of late. As soon as he gets his hands around Tang Fan for safekeeping, Tang Fan slips free of him, time and time again, to stray to death’s doorstep.

Tonight— every time is too close for Sui Zhou's heart and Sui Zhou's liking, but tonight—

Tang Fan's arms are a solid weight despite their slack drape across his shoulders, and his breath is damp and warm and steady against his neck. Sui Zhou can feel his heart beating against his back, slow but sure. Tang Fan's chest had been so still under his hand. His face had been so pale.

If it weren't for the proof of the wet sting of shed tears still clinging to the corners of his eyes and the way his throat feels scraped open, Sui Zhou doesn't think he'd ever be able to bring himself to believe the sobs he heard were human, that they were his.

He can see Ding Rong's approach through the dissipating smoke and settling dirt, his purple robes and heavy skirts a bruising bloom of colour against the gloam. The relief he takes in his presence is a selfish one: there are others still in the wreckage, and Sui Zhou cannot stop to help them. A moment lingered here is a moment unspent in leaving, and a moment later for Tang Fan could be the moment that makes every difference. Sui Zhou has already weighed up the cost of the loss of everyone else that he could possibly save and found them incommensurate; Tang Fan is irreplaceable and incomparable. The terrible truth is that he is all that matters, anymore, and that there is someone else for it all to fall to instead spares Sui Zhou from having to seek absolution for graver guilts when morning breaks tomorrow.

It’s a struggle to get Tang Fan onto the horse with him, but he is inordinately glad that it is an easier task for Tang Fan’s ability to assist, however slight and somewhat, when held up against the almost actualised alternative. Sui Zhou braces his foot in the stirrup and balances their combined weights as he steps up to mount. The pace he sets to be careful makes every movement precarious, and the strain that strums down the backs of his thighs sings through the back of his head, a dull distraction. He manages; he has to. He reaches back to hook his hand beneath Tang Fan’s knee, slings both of their legs over the saddle together, and coaxes Tang Fan’s arms to slip free of his shoulders to snag around his waist instead.

Somewhere in the seconds where the saddle first takes their weight, Tang Fan faints. His body goes limp against Sui Zhou’s back; the twine of his arms around his waist loosens; he sighs out into Sui Zhou’s shoulder. Sui Zhou leans forward as far as he can, slanting Tang Fan along the slope of his spine, and holds the reins one-handed, the other curving around to palm Tang Fan’s hip, securing and stilling him as needed.

It’s not a long ride, back to the city, but what he’s carrying ensures it becomes one of the longest rides of Sui Zhou’s life. The night may as well be silent, given that Sui Zhou can’t hear it, deafened to everything but the rush of his own blood in his ears and the rattle of Tang Fan’s breath.

The house is quiet by the time they return to it, long fallen still, the lamps burned out. The moon is high and bright enough to light their way, and Tang Fan is conscious enough to keep his feet underneath him for the interludes Sui Zhou needs to put his hands to other tasks, so there are yet small miracles left in the world for either of them to experience, at least. Tang Fan is cognizant enough to speak, as well, though his voice scratches up his throat on every word in a way that makes Sui Zhou’s own mouth run dry.

He doesn’t say much, for him; fatigue clips his characteristic verbosity into short complaints, thready and tight, half-nonsense. Sui Zhou lingers even after he’s accepted Tang Fan’s assurances that he can, at least, walk as far as the gate to his room, keeping within reach until Tang Fan has dragged his feet over the threshold and made it close enough to his bed that he can catch himself if he needs to.

There’s a shake in Sui Zhou’s hands that feels distant, detached, even as it makes him fumble on every button and tie, fog-headed, as he strips down from his uniform and dresses back up in his house robes. His fingers keep snagging when he unbraids his hair to tie it up in the loose style he wears it in for around the house and to bed, but the throbs that spark along his scalp with every tug are too subdued to be sobering.

Being in the kitchen is what finally quells the quake in his hands, makes them useful again. It’s only a moment’s reprieve, the way the tempest in his head tapers out and his focus narrows to the repetitious step-by-step of things he can navigate on his better days by blind rote, but Sui Zhou takes every advantage of it to collect himself. He places two eggs in the wok; covers them with water; puts it to boil. When the water has started to roil, he snuffs the flame.

It’s quiet. Sui Zhou strains to hear each and every sound that isn’t his, fear threading its way up his spine, drawing it taut with thrumming tension. He reminds himself that there are good quiets, ones that are not borne of something lying in wait, or of a home hollowed out. That this is a good quiet, tonight. That everyone is here, and everyone is safe.

There is cause to hurry, but Sui Zhou is calmer, now, and doesn't rush. He takes himself through the motions he needs to instead of racing after instinct in a panic, headless and frantic. Tang Fan is alive; Sui Zhou made it in time. His body won’t just slip through Sui Zhou’s fingers, now, as slick as blood and as easy as water. He was fortunate, and he was enough.

Tang Fan looks up from the circlet of his fingers around his wrist when Sui Zhou steps into his room, and Sui Zhou catches the glint of a glimpse of his glance as he turns to shutter the doors. Tang Fan’s stare is unguarded and unabashed, settling like a dead weight across the span of Sui Zhou’s shoulders only to be shaken free when Sui Zhou turns back to face him. The corner of Tang Fan’s mouth rises with his eyes as he lifts them to meet Sui Zhou’s gaze. The sight of him, stripped back to his pants, robes fanning out from beneath his crossed legs, small and slight and so very alive makes Sui Zhou’s breath feel thick in his mouth. His hair is still braided, piled and pinned to his head, and the absence of its drape only sharpens the sinuous swoop of his neck, serrates the slopes of his slim shoulders.

Sui Zhou draws up beside the bed, and Tang Fan releases his own wrist, hands flitting down to his lap in a flow that Sui Zhou can’t help but track. One palm cups the jut of his knee, the other furls around his shin, and then Tang Fan is shying back, almost as if to make space for Sui Zhou where there is already more than enough room. Sui Zhou sits; sets the box down that he’s retrieved from his room astride them both, then stacks the bowl atop it. He sees Tang Fan relax in the periphery of his focus; the way he shudders, full-body, then goes loose. His knee nudges at the box bridging the gap between them both, and he sighs out, the sound of it fringed with something sore.

“What happened?” Sui Zhou finally asks. It’s a relief, how his words feel solid as they leave his tongue and sound strong in his ears. He looks at Tang Fan for a moment too long before he looks back to his hands, the flex of his fingers as he takes one of the hardboiled eggs from the bowl and cracks through the shell with his thumbnail.

Tang Fan’s voice is not steady, but it is steadier than it was before, no longer scraping up his throat. “We found them,” he says. “They tried to escape, even though they knew, the machine, it was—” he stumbles on it, stutters, stalls. Tang Fan’s mind moves so fast that his own mouth struggles at the best of times to keep pace, and the disparity between them is far more pronounced when Tang Fan is so scattered.

Sui Zhou finishes shelling the egg and holds it out for Tang Fan to take. It’s not a surprise like it was in Yunhe when Tang Fan simply lifts it straight to his mouth and bites into it. Sui Zhou plucks the second egg out into the cup of his palm and cracks it under his nail as Tang Fan pauses to chew.

He doesn’t need to finish. Even if Sui Zhou had not seen the scene for himself, he could surmise it from the scraps that Tang Fan has managed to speak aloud. Princess Gu’an and Wang Xian are dead. The time will come soon that they will be summoned to give an account, but that time is not yet and it is not now.

“Show me your back,” Sui Zhou says. Tang Fan makes a committal sound around his last mouthful, pressing the back of his hand to his lips to shield his swallow. Then, he starts to shuffle, and the exhalation that follows is all heave and hiss, tearing out past his teeth with the same fervour it rips through Sui Zhou’s composure. Sui Zhou kneels up and reaches out, reflexive, catching Tang Fan by the hip as he crumples in on himself. It’s unneeded; Tang Fan’s expression has already softened by the time Sui Zhou’s palm scrapes up his thigh, the pain felt little more than a swift comeuppance dealt for becoming enveloped by his own eagerness.

Tang Fan leans into it, anyway, leans into him, and Sui Zhou has no choice left then but to take his weight and commit to the aftermath. He’s already made it halfway, so Sui Zhou follows through with the rest, gently guiding him to settle between the splay of his thighs, hips bracketed by his knees. A shudder snakes up Tang Fan’s bare back as Sui Zhou’s hands trace his sides, from the slope of his waist to the flare of his ribs, and the ripple of it pulls his skin taut over the ridges of his spine. The bruises he’s earned have already bloomed, ripened and tender. Sui Zhou can chart by sight every sequential point of impact from the florid flourishes of colour; could succumb to picturing it vividly if he dared to close his eyes for longer than a beat. Tang Fan’s left shoulder blade, where the purpling is at its darkest, would have hit the ground first, then taken the brunt of the second blow when he bounced.

Tang Fan is blessed to have surfaced from it all so unscathed, only bruised instead of bleeding, or broken, or both. Sui Zhou presses the egg to the crest of Tang Fan’s shoulder blade, rolls it as gingerly as he can along the skin, and takes a steadying breath when Tang Fan groans.

“Ah, be gentle,” he gasps out. It’s breathy, insistent, and startlingly reminiscent of— heat pierces through the pit of his gut, his chest vicing viciously as the memory of Tang Fan in his lap surfaces, unbidden. The line between pleasure and pain blurs, wire-thin, and Sui Zhou has to claw himself out from underneath the bleed-over before it subsumes him.

“I am,” Sui Zhou grits out, when he's tucked that recollection back away and he can trust himself again enough with that much. It’s as true now as it was then: he is gentle with Tang Fan; he always is. As best as he can be and as much as he is capable of. But handling someone with care to the extent of every limit and possibility is one thing, a half made whole only when that care is worthy, worthwhile, enough.

Tang Fan's answering hum is faint, contemplative. Sui Zhou gives himself back over to his task, and does his best not to dwell on the rest.

Tang Fan’s perusal, left unchallenged, soon cuts into Sui Zhou’s skin and starts to pry down. Digging deep and deeper still, enduring every disruptive throb and pang wrought and wrung out as Sui Zhou tends to his tapestry of bruises. Sui Zhou knows well enough that there’s no way to stop it once it starts, when Tang Fan has narrowed down the line of Sui Zhou at his battered back until he’s no longer flesh and blood but a puzzle in want and need of solving. There’s a dogmatic finality to Tang Fan’s singular focus when it’s made dagger-keen by his emery interest; captivating to witness, and absolutely horrifying to be subjected to.

“There,” Sui Zhou says, quiet, when it is done. He sets the egg back in the bowl, then wipes his hands clean on his thighs, watching out from underneath his eyelashes as Tang Fan stretches, his breath shaking out of him as a shiver chases the movement up the curve of his back. Then, he’s reaching behind himself, the backs of his knuckles skimming the small of his spine, fingers furling, and Sui Zhou sees the mistake before he even meets Tang Fan’s hand with his own to make it.

Tang Fan’s clasp on his wrist is too clumsy to chain him, too frail to keep him, but Sui Zhou bends to it, leaning into where he’s led. Tang Fan turns over, stilted-slow and struck stiff by each stab of pain that strums across his skin, taking his time in moments that defy countability until he’s facing Sui Zhou properly, pooling into the space left vacant between the splay of his lap with a sigh that sinks through him like a stone.

Sui Zhou lets his hand fall away, sets it down just shy of the slope of his knee, and swallows. “Better?” he asks, because it’s easy, safe. Tang Fan nods. “I’ll go start dinner, then.” Sui Zhou's escape is already half-made, with his thoughts turned loose to the kitchen, to what he’ll need and where they are and how he’ll start. Tang Fan had wanted mince noodles; Sui Zhou can do that. Tang Fan’s pulse had felt thready against his fingers, the kick of it frantic beneath the pale skin of his thin wrist; Sui Zhou will make something to help nourish his yin, too, then. Two dishes should do to tide Tang Fan over until morning.

He moves to take his body to join the rest of him, but Tang Fan’s hand stops him, pulls him back together and brings him down with a start. The heft of the heat in his gaze when Sui Zhou looks up to meet his eyes is enough to pin him in place.

“Wait,” Tang Fan murmurs. “Sui Zhou, don’t go.”

He twines their fingers together, tentative. Sui Zhou sinks back down, helpless, and stays.

Tang Fan’s smile is a confirmation, undeniable, that he’s found the answer he’s sought out for the question he’s stripped Sui Zhou down to. There are few things Sui Zhou wants more in the world than to not have to hear it, but Tang Fan is one of them, and so he’d remain even if it was his choice to make. It’s not freeing, that realisation. With it comes only dread, laddering up his chest to lodge in the back of his throat. He swallows down on the knot of it thickly, but it’s stuck fast, speared deep, and it holds out.

“Thank you,” Tang Fan says, with a soft and ruinous honesty.

“It’s nothing,” Sui Zhou tells him, far too quickly to be believed. It’s hardly a lie, for all it’s utterly untrue. It is nothing, all wound up in everything, but it’s meaningless, it doesn’t matter. As long as Tang Fan is here, Sui Zhou will take care of him however much he’s allowed and however long he is able. The only one that needs to be grateful for it is him.

Tang Fan’s mouth twists. “Sui Guangchuan,” he chastises, harsh. It’s almost unduly severe, even as a response to the most ungenerous of considerations for everything that has come before it, and he seems to realise it all too late, his expression flinching around it as he squeezes Sui Zhou’s hand. His features even out, though the knit of his brow remains, as does the tightness framing his mouth.

“Guangchuan,” Tang Fan tries again. It’s still a beratement, but a kinder one, now, for its blunted edge.

His gaze dips to Sui Zhou’s lap, settling on the span of their hands across his thigh, joined together by the sunken steeple of their fingers. “Let yourself be thanked, so I can thank you,” he finishes, more fond than frustrated, but firm all the same.

Sui Zhou’s fingers flex beneath his affixed attention, and he sees Tang Fan’s mouth twitch around a smile, barely stifled, as he tips his head back up to face him. “Fine,” Sui Zhou replies, rough, in the hope that it will satisfy Tang Fan enough to be swift about concluding whatever circuitous point he’s aiming to make.

It must, because Tang Fan kisses him. It’s a fleeting thing, unremarkable but unmistakable; their lips brush, and then Sui Zhou feels the press of Tang Fan’s smile against his mouth, barely-there for one breath then gone again before the next.

“Guangchuan,” Tang Fan whispers. He’s not gone far, his retreat still leaving him close enough that his breath grazes Sui Zhou’s chin when he exhales. Sui Zhou can only stare at him, wide-eyed, shocked still and breathless, distantly aware of the shift of their hands in his lap as Tang Fan tips them up to press their palms together. “My Guangchuan.”

“Yes,” Sui Zhou rasps back, undone. He can’t bring himself to say anything else, not when every rubbed red raw nerve is alight again beneath his skin, splitting the wound of him wide open. He thought— he wasn’t sure he could ever have this again. The assurance that he still can is too much, tonight, for him to be able to shoulder it without shattering. So, of course it stands to reason that it comes to bear down on him now, when he is at his most brittle. Tang Fan is a revelation that must be reckoned with whenever he wills it, and he has a touch for timing himself to the heels of each visiting sufferance and every violent storm.

“You saved me again.” Tang Fan’s hand curves around the column of Sui Zhou’s throat; the flat of his thumb traces his jaw. “You always do.” And, “You always will.”

He sounds so sure of it, just as he's sounded so sure of every other impossible ask he's ever made of him. Tang Fan is looking at him — hasn't stopped looking at him once, really, in some way, since Sui Zhou stepped over the threshold and into his room — but he's looking at him, now, with a wonder so holy it's encroaching on worship. As though Sui Zhou has shot down a sun for him instead of something else infinitely less incredible. Sui Zhou doesn't know what he's done to deserve that conviction, and so it's difficult to accept that he's justly earned it.

If the line between pain and pleasure is wire-thin, then the line between sleeping and waking is even thinner. The Tang Fan that he dreams of, all dark and jagged angles, who blames Sui Zhou for staining the life of anyone stupid enough to stray too close to his side while he bleeds out bleeds over and into the Tang Fan that is here, now, real and so very much alive. This Tang Fan, who seems to think it inconceivable that Sui Zhou is anything but infallible where and when it truly matters. One is fake; the other is a fool.

And yet. And yet, but still— Sui Zhou will keep climbing up to chase after every exceptional expectation, in spite of knowing that he’ll never be able to compare to the man he is in Tang Fan’s estimation. Tang Fan sees the glint of good in everyone and spins it into gold, after all: why would Sui Zhou be any exception?

The silence that has set in feels as if it has dragged out for hours; that the lamp still burns means it has been at most mere minutes. The light lines Tang Fan’s shoulders, hems them with a blur, hues them with a warm amber. The shade that it casts over his chest, in turn, only serves to bolden the blush smudging his skin.

Sui Zhou’s fingers feel stiff in their snare with Tang Fan’s, their hands still settled together in his lap. The palm cupping his neck is clammy with sweat. One of them moves, then the other; it doesn’t matter who is first and who follows when they meet in the middle to press their mouths together. Tang Fan’s lips are chapped-dry and taste like yolk, and it should be unpleasant, but it’s him, and so it’s anything but. Between one kiss and the next, Sui Zhou reaches between them, blind, and Tang Fan pants out, a hot burst of breath and sound, when the flat of Sui Zhou’s hand scuffs up his sternum.

Tang Fan’s skin is fever-warm against his hand, the beat of his heart steady underneath the fan of his fingers. When the nights have been at their thinnest and his forbearance at its most threadbare, Sui Zhou has imagined this, and all the paths and places it could go as need built, slow, until it started to burn. Tang Fan had told him that he would not turn him away, and though Sui Zhou had believed him, it had not made him brave. Not at first, not all at once, not faced with such risk. But there had been promise to start, and progress in subsequence. Every kiss they’d shared since, taken and given, had been a step forward, towards the possibility of something more.

And then— and then.

Tang Fan’s return after their separation had felt like a second beginning, and Sui Zhou had gladly counted his blessings, content with being allowed even that much, after everything. Not everyone was so fortunate enough in life to be given such a gift.

They part, reluctant and breathless. There’s sweat beading up on Tang Fan’s temples; saliva slicking the swell of his bottom lip, swollen red, kiss-bitten. The sight of it stokes the warmth simmering low in his belly; makes something unlatch and unfurl behind his ribs. Tang Fan’s robes, rucked and rumpled under the tangle of their legs, must be creased now beyond salvaging, and he can already hear the complaint Tang Fan will lodge with him tomorrow for his apparent hand in it.

“Can you stay?” Tang Fan asks, quiet. His smile has softened, subduing beneath his delayed exhaustion as it creeps past his battered endurance to finally settle and sink in.

Sui Zhou closes his eyes. Breathes in, slow, and out, steady. He wants. He wants to, so much. He can’t, not yet. He shakes his head.

“Oh,” he hears Tang Fan say. “Yes, right, your nightmares.” He opens his eyes to be met with the sight of Tang Fan tilting his face to bring their lips together again. It’s only a peck, brief and chaste, and then Tang Fan is leaning back, mouth pursing in thought. “Mm. I trust you, I do, but all right.” His palm drifts from Sui Zhou’s neck as he bobs his head, then he starts to unthread their fingers, untangling the join of their hands against Sui Zhou’s thigh. “We’ll talk about them again later. Another night.”

Sui Zhou curls his fingers against Tang Fan’s knee, then draws back, clasping his hands together and setting them down in his lap. He wants to put words to his appreciation of Tang Fan’s trust; he wants to apologise for it not being enough. He almost wants to run, the hysterical, aimless impulse coiling behind the crooks of his knees, tight. Only Tang Fan could addle him so much that he’s at ease and set adrift all at once.

“Are you hungry?” Sui Zhou asks. It’s heavy in his mouth, hoarse off his tongue. “I can make you something.” It's inadequate, avoidant. It's the only thing in his head that he can get a grip around.

Tang Fan shakes his head slowly in reply, and the lax languidness of it tells Sui Zhou that he's satisfied enough for now to let the matter lie. His chin droops slightly as he slants forward, his eyes slipping shut. He sucks in a breath, snorts it out through his nose, then swivels his attention back to Sui Zhou with a start, gaze alight with the last embers of his energy. “So tired, I’m too tired to eat, now.” His smile curls crookedly. “You’ll have to make it up to me tomorrow.”

“All right,” Sui Zhou says, and makes to stand. That’s more than easy enough. He would have done that without being asked, anyway: the sight of the thinning slip of Tang Fan, all jutting bones and jagged angles, is more than enough to prompt Sui Zhou into trying to feed him back up.

“Guangchuan,” Tang Fan whines petulantly, punctuating it with a pout. “I’m serious! If you don’t, I really will waste away, look.”

He doesn’t look. “You won’t.” Sui Zhou will make sure of it. He picks up the box, left unused and unopened, in the end, and adjusts the bowl so it's recentred on the lid. He’s been taken back to familiar territory, now, feet planting down on well-trodden ground. It’s good. He knows how to navigate this, with Tang Fan; he doesn’t have to think about where he’s stepping before he sets out. “Don’t fall asleep like that. Get dressed, clear your bed.”

Retreat, regroup, reassess. He’ll let this and them rest, and see if it rises again with the sun tomorrow. If what they had once and tested again tonight will be allowed to resume on clear heads and further observation.

Sui Zhou will survive if it does not.

“Sui Zhou,” Tang Fan calls out to him, when he’s opened the door and half stepped out of it, making him stop, straddling the gap between here and elsewhere. “Sui Zhou, Sui Zhou, wait.” He keeps calling as though Sui Zhou didn’t turn at the first consonant, obedient, consumed.

“We will talk about it,” Tang Fan tells him, with all the single-minded, blind determination Sui Zhou’s ever seen and heard him turn on every wrong he’s set himself to righting. “We will! Don’t think you can run, this time.”

“Good night,” Sui Zhou replies, and goes.

By the time Sui Zhou steps back out of the kitchen, the lamp in Tang Fan’s room has been extinguished, leaving the courtyard to be limned only in moonlight. It’s quiet, again. The heft of it no longer chokes him. He makes it to his bed through the wan daze of the bone-deep weary, and, back flat to the wood, he thinks of Tang Fan’s bruises and the ache that the still settle of his blood and the pressure of the press to his skin must make thrum through him.

Sui Zhou thinks, too, of the dream he’ll have tonight, when he finally goes under, falls to rest. The worst one, that he screams himself awake from to escape, some nights, if he’s lucky. He doesn’t think of how it ends, though: he’ll be held hostage again to that soon enough.

He thinks about how it starts — how he stirs, sucks in a breath, weighed down to earth by the bodies of his brothers-in-arms. Sui Zhou thinks of how he feels, in those seconds: safe. How it’s only in standing, shaking them off, that he becomes unguarded and unmoored.

Sui Zhou thinks of how terrible it is, that such a thing brings such calm, offers such shelter. Then, at last, he thinks, maybe— perhaps.