pitching to kneel on the horizon

[corvo]

pitching to kneel on the horizon Rating: Teen Fandom: 成化十四年 | The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty Pairing: Sui Zhou/Tang Fan Tags: T4T, Post-Canon, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort Length: 3100+ You feel it all too much. Notes: For ignatiustrout.

---

It will pass. These bouts of sullenness always do.

Tang Fan does not remember her mother much. An impression of her warmness; the harvest moon crescent of her mouth. The way the hair that escaped her bun would trail her nape, even as she chided Tang Fan for the same and would set upon her with the comb to right it. How she would tweak her nose when she cried and chide her heatlessly that You feel it all too much. Fantasies, more than recollections. She would doubt more as to the integrity of their authenticity did she not see their likenesses so often echoed in her sister.

Tang Yu had pinched her cheek, when they stood there in the doorway of Pei Huai's childhood home, secreted by the shade and the bustle of departure abound them. "You feel it all too much, mm?" she murmured, low so as not to carry. As though it was some secret, meted only in caution.

"Aiya," Tang Fan had clucked, which had earned her another pinch for its trouble.

"We're never far," Tang Yu then reminded her, with a careful rearrange of her hands to her sides; a glance over Tang Fan's shoulders. "Be safe home." And Tang Fan had been safe home, because she could never be anything but, not with Sui Zhou as escort. But she'd accepted the sentiment. Her sister has always meant her well.

Perhaps she was right, to warn. Tang Fan has always felt it all far too much. And in the heart of the Capital, beneath the eye of the Emperor, a body swung on the pendulum of favour — that bodes a most dangerous game to play.

So it will pass. These bouts of sullenness must always do. Tang Fan does not, after all, so regret the shape taken of her life that she'll risk this jeopardising of it. But she can wonder how it could have been different, can't she. So wonder she does. As her days sink back from the lapse to lull of monotony, she takes her cases at Shuntian and spends half their hearings in dazes of reverie, weighing whether midwifery somewhere provincial would relight the fire below her skin, or if inevitable familiarity would too turn it boring. At home, some nights, after they've all eaten dinner and retired to their rooms — if not for bed than at least from company — Tang Fan takes the poetry collection Ma Lin gifted her out from its wedging between her voluminous stacks, sets it on her desk, and can't bear to read it.

You must think me a fool for trying, she'd said to Sui Zhou, still holding the curt letter from Ma Yuancong informing her he was dead. Sui Zhou at least held her in enough respect to admit that yes, he did. The truth had hurt for days afterward, like a cut threading shut, but Tang Fan would have never forgiven the lie.

Sui Zhou is a good man. They are more full-fortuned than most, to have found one another. But in her dreams, sometimes, Tang Fan does push at that luck. She imagines what it would be like, to be his wife, in the way the Code would alongside Heaven recognise. But the wealth of the wakened world is ample; enough. She'll hardly go to the grave lamenting her lot as a husband.

So it passes. Is passing — by her hand and of her will if not in due course. She ponders the fictions a little less. Her heart stops feeling so much like she's impaled it on a lance face-first. She even manages some pages of a new story, rather than grinding her inkstick only to let it dry out in the well. Tang Fan wouldn't dare call the contents good, but she'll cede that they're progress. Everything at its pace.

---

The night she returns home from court under an emotive stormcloud, Tang Fan is barely through the gate, consternation primed on her tongue, when the smell of dinner wafts to her nose and all her ire promptly dissipates.

"Are we having guests?" is how she accosts Sui Zhou in the kitchen. This vicinal to the steamer, she can all the better smell the mutton; the walnuts; the prickly ash salt and mulberry leaves. It stokes her mouth to such watering that she has to slurp down her own spit in a telling swallow before she drools on herself.

"Not on my invitation," says Sui Zhou. Aside from this, he pays her very little apparent attention. But Tang Fan knows him well, and certainly better than to be fooled by that. Nevertheless, she must try, and to his benevolence, he does allow her to get as far as surreptitiously slipping her chopsticks from their case before he bats her hand away.

"You'll starve me," she complains, poutful. Tang Fan doubts it accomplishes much by way of convincing him of any grievance; even this banausic exchange is lifting from her shoulders a staggering weight. She adopts her usual chair, and sets about observing him with never-diminishing interest. "Some special occasion, then."

"I need no occasion," Sui Zhou replies. He glances over to her, out from underneath his lashes, for one missable moment — and then looks back to his hands. "We have passed the other by, these last days. I thought you would like it."

"Oh," says Tang Fan, in spite of herself quite surprised. "Well. You did think right." Then, "I thought you'd grown tired of me," she adds, for mischief's sake.

Sui Zhou's laugh looks as yanked from him as it sounds. "I remember it differently."

He remembers it rightly: it had indeed been Tang Fan of their two who griped of exhaustion in a fit of pique some weeks ago, while they were still in the countryside. Since she could not rail about Pei Huai's not-case, their woodshed lodgings, the directionless angst splintering throughout her body, she'd— well. Turned the lash of her tongue on Sui Zhou, as closest surrogate. A moment's anger, stopped at the throat before it could prevail to a lingering sorrow.

"Forgiven, wasn't it?" she muses, ploying for light through the pang that besets her lungs. "So long ago, asides. Begrudging the water beneath the bridge, Guangchuan, ah," Tang Fan tuts, "you'll seethe years from your life."

Sui Zhou does not laugh, this time, but his smile is all-but hushed and so no more quiet. "It should be ready," he tells her, trailing from the topic. "Go set the table. Dong'er claimed to have eaten earlier."

He'll platter up her serve and take it to her on a tray, as he often also does with Tang Fan. None under his roof are to go without. "So precocious," Tang Fan observes. Then again, she supposes Dong'er was already of that age when they met, and has simply now grown into it with peace and time. With that thought considered and archived, she unspindles to rise, and goes about her task.

Since she is in no terrible hurry, Sui Zhou joins her in the hall just as she is on the cusp of the finishing touches. He is in no terrible hurry, either, to set down the plates and pluck from her fingers the last accoutrements, arranging them as she delegates to seating herself. There is a jar of wine on the tray, which he reaches for to pour her a cup almost as swiftly as her notice befalls it.

"Is it really no occasion?" Tang Fan probes, now duly suspicious.

"Wine should be drunk," Sui Zhou parries, level. "As I've been told."

Now who did that. "Hm." Tang Fan takes the cup she is handed between her fingers, like ritual, and sniffs it for theatre. Tart; sticky. The sort of liquor she'd be scooping the film of green ants from and drinking still-warm, too impatient. "You're being quite agreeable."

"Husbands should be agreeable," says Sui Zhou. "As I've too been told."

He takes his chopsticks and pincers over some bamboo shoots to lay on her rice, then lamb, then walnuts. The tenderest pieces, all as moist with sauce as they are with their own juices. This vigil does not falter — all throughout the meal, he is attentive to her bowl, her plate, her cup, ensuring none brush up close to empty. They do not talk much; rather, Tang Fan brunts the most of it, and all meaningless, prattled, while he listens and chimes as he deems prudent. And when Tang Fan at last feels fit to burst, full of food or fondness or both, he helps her to her feet and rites himself her escort, following close at-flank as she ambles from the hall and into the courtyard.

It is— doting, she'd call it. In the seductive way romantics write about, and women who sell body and word as service so deftly emulate. One accompanying the other, neither first nor late.

He stops short at her threshold, gathering a respectable distance between them. Chaste; intentioned. Tang Fan is soppily charmed by it, in spite of her own disappointment. "Don't become a stranger, ah?" she farewells him softly. "I could forget what you look like."

"I'll pay that greater mind," Sui Zhou answers. For one breath, intoxicating, he looks to her lips, and back to her eyes again. Tang Fan must wonder if it's real, possible, such a brevity captured by mortal notice. But then, she supposes this distinction from imagination hardly much matters.

"See that you do. Good night." The last word will be hers, until morning starts the tussle over anew. One must have joys to look forward to.

Sui Zhou does not kiss her, though she is but a step away from its reach, and he so effortlessly could. Even though she can see it mirrored on his face, the wanting. But Tang Fan thinks tonight that it might be far better than any having.

---

The knock on her door rouses her, torpid, from the page she has read now thrice-over. "Come, come," she rasps out, even though Sui Zhou is already by then pulling the screen back closed behind him. Presumptuous, but rightly.

"I saw your candle still burning," he offers as perfunctory explanation.

Tang Fan sets aside her book, off somewhere into the plumbable depths of her bed. Then, she follows the sprouting temptation to lounge, her lanked limbs sprawling with smug laze. And it drew you like a moth, a heroine might say. Or a woman with midday wits about her, not one half spirited away toward sleep. "And you could not wait to see me until morning."

"We should talk before then," is Sui Zhou's answer.

It is now that she really notices him proper, from the terse school of his features to the bundle in his hands. Ah. "I knew you were up to something," she confesses. Her heart flutters in her chest, though it is soft enough a murmur for no urge to take flight to yet possess her. "Fattening me up like stock for slaughter."

Sui Zhou's lining brow crimps briefly with contrition. "It was not my intention," he tells her. There's such a sincerity to it that she nearly herself feels guilty.

"Mah." She cringes. "All right, have it." Any seeding worry is surely only to sprout a bough of naught. It couldn't be so grave if he'd come to her like this in the night.

Sui Zhou clears his throat, eloquent, and then steps forward to hold out his oblation, balanced in both hands.

"A gift, is it?" Tang Fan remarks, playing for pithy. "I can lighten you of it." And light it is, so lighten she does — the fabric is so soft and slack between her fingers that she worries it will slip straight through them. So she rights herself and shores it in the cradle of her lap, before she sets to unbundling it with a haste she barters no pretences about. Sui Zhou's attention pricks gooseflesh across her nape all the while, his presence taut as a string humming for the pluck.

A true surprise beholds to no expectations. Yet— there is nothing between the layers, so it takes Tang Fan a moment to comprehend what it is she has been granted. "What is this?" she hears herself wobble out.

"Their hems may need taking in," Sui Zhou notes; a non-answer.

Tang Fan thumbs the collar of the chang-ao with trembling aimlessness. It doesn't look much different from her old Hanlinyuan wear; she pays less attention to the fashions than even a man in her position should. "But what," she pushes.

Sui Zhou swallows thickly, then exhales through his nose. "I was thinner, when I left Yansuizhen," he levies instead. "Medicine not for injury was harder, there, to come by. I bought these on the journey back."

"You considered running," Tang Fan reveals for him, direct.

"Living a different life," is how Sui Zhou frames it.

"That of a woman." Tang Fan has long known this about Sui Zhou, of course, though it has been years since they've spoken any words that even allude to such. It had been Tang Fan's fault, anyway, and her mouth's, for how she'd blurted before her head could even catch up, that night when she'd first lodged under his roof, in the bath. Don't run away— I'm like you. The same. But hadn't that been a lie? A mad scramble for something she had little earnest claim to.

She'd said something truly stupid, once, to Pei Huai, of tinctures that could change the body, real as the literature that deployed them. When their acquaintance was still as new as the scrapes and bruises from where the explosion had cocooned her in debris from the restaurant, and she was pickling in wine and survivor's self-pity. As she did more than not, to pass the nights when the smell of cooked flesh was still so vivid she was tasting it in the back of her mouth. Pei Huai had offered his knowledge, his access, in his roundabout way, astutely vague enough that they could each instead feign all their ignorances in the sobered morning. She pretends still she's forgotten about it. That she doesn't turn over that night she came to him in Cui-mama's guise and he mistook her for one of his little patient-mistresses, the thrill it sang in her synapses once the furore had all subsided.

"Yes," Sui Zhou says. Less cagey, now, on her ear; cautioned. Simpler to confirm some things than it is to confess them. "An abbey, perhaps. Or anything. Anywhere."

"Yet you came back," she asks, though she needs no answer. The make of them is nice. Not too rich or full, like the noble ladies — and whoever might splurge the tael to mimic their aesthetic — flutter about the streets in.

"I chose this," Sui Zhou tells her. "It was not so difficult a decision."

Tang Fan looks at him then. Her eyes feel sore with a wet, bridging sting; she does not even want to pretend it is sweat or tiredness anymore. It is so easy for you, she wants to accuse. But that is as unkind as it is untrue. This life is easy for neither of them, though it has at least been eased by togetherness. For her, anyway; she hopes for him as well. He could have taken up another life as some mere man, like that Jia Kui tried to. Apprenticed in some kitchen, or toiled some allotment squabbled over by three different clans the balance enough of entrenched and undisruptive to be beyond concerning the government. Life catches you, is the lesson taught by example there, but the meantime years are good. Yet he had returned to Beijing as Sui Zhou. And—

"I have made my choices as well," she returns to him. And he must understand it, the heft and carry of the unsaid, if he has spent on this even a sliver of the contemplation she suspects he has. The flinch that encroaches something unreadable upon his corralled expression verifies it. She has chosen this life, for her sister, her peers who died with their dreams unfulfilled, and, yes, for fear, too. She has made peace with her cowardice. It is not weakness to know what you can and cannot stand to lose.

Sui Zhou regards her for a drawn breath. Then— "If I am one of them," he counters far-too-gently, "I would have my say in them as well. Though the decisions will always remain yours."

Damn him. "What is your say, then?" Tang Fan interrogates, inconsolable.

Sui Zhou's sympathy is too plain, bordering unbearable. "I would live with you as a husband does a wife," is his say, then. "However that might look."

The brightest minds in Ming would not be able to agree on which is heavier, here, now: Sui Zhou and his sublimation, or the weave and broider lain upon her lap. "I don't know," she tells him honestly. She thinks this is more than fair, and that he has no choice but to accept it, asides. She came to her conclusions within a lifetime; they cannot be rerouted over a night.

"There is time." Because of course he would say that. And he would be right. What else do they have but time? What else have they ever promised.

"Take them back for now. I don't— where would I put them?" She thrusts them out as though they're blooding her hands, laughing around her own flailing tongue, hysterical. He'd hidden them well, and better than she can. They are safest loaned back.

So he takes them back, careful. And this is as much a second bid goodnight that she gets. Tang Fan longs for a kiss again, aching at the turn of his back, and yet rejects it with equal vehemence. If she were to call out, and he to touch her, she may well cry. That would be balm for neither of them.

This dedication of hers to solemnitude lasts as long as it takes for the dark to settle, once she's blown out her candle and burrowed beneath her blankets. Then she is up on her legs, pacing barefoot to the master wing, where she slips inside with no courteous preamble, like a raved haunting. There she tugs at his covers, testing, and clambers into his bed in the very same heartbeat she confirms he is still awake; waiting for her. He wraps her in his strong arms with nary a word, and she rests her cheek on his soft breast with a shallow sigh, ear pressed to the staccato of his fool-tender heart.

---