#𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐆 𝐒𝐀𝐍𝐘𝐔𝐄 & 𝐒𝐘𝐋𝐔𝐒: [红线划过深藏轮回的秘密，我花光运气。你是我赌上世界的决定] / misericordiis

[roscvcins]

@misericordiis asked : Duende -Sylus for Tangtang! - Send me a word and a character/series/pairing and I will write a drabble (accepting!)

Duende - Unusual power to attract or charm.

The question has surfaced before. Though she's been spared the hounding of concerned relatives thus far seeing as there's her unmarried brother past the age of thirty on whom to offload the heat - she's certainly still been made to consider in some capacity, now and again, with what kind of person she might end up spending the rest of her life. Tang Sanyue has always known and been able to articulate exactly what she wanted, incredibly stubborn from a young age and quite capable of persuasion at length. And so it is perhaps uncharacteristic, that she had as of yet no detailed thoughts on this particular matter - and so one day's answer varied from the next.

There isn't a type, a metric that particularly interested her - and each would-be matchmaker left confused and blindsided in its wake. Through it all she hardly stopped to concern herself, unhurried and unbothered. It isn't that she means to be blithe, or even that she finds the idea of sitting down and imagining a perfect vision of a future tedious - only that she deems setting a strict criteria to be superfluous. Such a thing can hardly ever happen as one expects anyhow.

And Sylus certainly fits this assessment, by most accounts.

It's unusual, for her. He's certainly charming - but it's generally agreed upon by those who know her that she's a sensible young woman, and a sensible young woman would've heard alarm bells in her head from the very first moment. A sensible young woman did not steal away regularly in the middle of the night with a man who proved just as bloody and dangerous as his wanted posters imply - which is to say, as a development in her quiet little life, he'd been unforeseen, entirely unpredictable even to her own open mind, the last person she might have dreamt up for herself once upon a time.

She does so like being right.

But fearlessness is something born out of capacity, after all - during their first, less than auspicious meeting, Tang Sanyue thought perhaps overly confidently that on her ground, her odds were low but not impossible should it come down to a fight. More problematic had been the patient her hands were busy with in that moment - but comically in retrospect, when she had looked up mid-suture to meet crimson eyes that night, her first and instinctive reaction hadn't been fight or flight.

Rather, it was the unusual and unfounded daring - an intuition that she's already won the gamble - that had her ordering him out if he's dead set on undoing her work, since his business is no reason to tarnish the credibility of hers. The same unfounded daring that had her casually and increasingly familiarly needling him into position every time after that he'd presented himself to her to be worked upon at the clinic. The same unfounded daring that made her open the door before she even passes the whole of it for consideration through her brain when he has no reason to be at her front step other than to see her.

Out of the blue, he appears, and out of the blue, she decides on him.

It reminds her a little of a dance, a push and pull that draws them closer, closer. It's interesting how it seems to her that she always leaps a little too fast, agrees a little too soon, like by instinct and intuition her heart was made up.

She doesn't know if there are words to describe the reasons behind it. Only that she dares to sink into natural familiarity - to present a lollipop, a promise of dinner, a gentle scolding, a rap on the wrist - and Sylus dares to play along. Only that he dares to hold out his hand for her, looking directly with the faint amusement and challenge that seems to always glimmer in his eyes - the barrier between them long crossed, left behind - and she dares to take the silent invitation.

Or maybe, fate is a funny thing. It may be as simple as that.

There are idle days when she has a lazy hour or two to think about this, secretly awake after he tucks her up for a mandatory nap after she overdoes it at her night job. She may not be able to sneak away with her warden right next to her, but she's perfectly able to squint at the window and watch the glimmers of dust caught in the slanting afternoon sun. The niggling thought unable to leave her alone before she manages to turn it inside out. She could not have imagined him, and yet he expands and fills and takes over nevertheless. He takes up the space beside her as if he had always been the secret answer she had written down and merely covered up, hidden away until the moment of the reveal. She's resistant to overanalyzing something that doesn't need fixing, but it is curious and new to her.

And, Tang Sanyue knows - her grandfather asks difficult questions. When it comes time for him to meet her family, there will be a 'why,' after a scrutinizing once over, a question she'll finally have to give a satisfactory answer for. It does not, of course, occur to her in this moment that the trajectory of her course has irrevocably shifted to become a universal timeline in which Sylus is nearing permanence as a fixture in her life and she's taking him home, nor does it occur to her that she's already dedicating her tricks to making sure it goes well, her plots tinged with protectiveness. That even she, so avidly against overthinking, has fallen into the details, jumped the gun again.

Rather, she considers continuously, seriously - is it that she likes the unpredictable? In a pathology, in life - in him? Or, is it only that she has simply decided to trust him first?

He'd been magnetic from the start, yet contrarily reassuring, a paradoxical state that made her feel safe to go beyond simply being relaxed and fall straight into living a little dangerously. Maybe she trusts him before she really knows why - but it's never been unwarranted. She supposes in a way he did the same with her, and one day she'll get curious enough to wonder if he ever thought so much about it. But it's nice, when her head is so full, to rest her cheek against his arm and actually drift off, knowing that when she wakes up, it will be to the even breaths in whose soundtrack she had dreamed.

For every moment they spent being less than ordinary, there is also this. Him patiently pulling her from her papers and half-finished energy drinks. Wrapping her back into the cocoon when she inevitably overheats and kicks off the blanket only to become cold again in the middle of the night. The way his face relaxes and softens and smooths out from its usual decisive expressiveness in the event she wakes first and steals a few unnoticed minutes to trace the shapes of his features with her gaze. The smell of eggs in the morning - or at night, or whenever. Walking to the market at sunset and piling all the fruit from her haul into his arms with a grin and then having to roll her eyes back when he flexes said arms and looks at her in the particular way that she knows to be making his point. Getting wildly distracted in the kitchen.

The way she always feels courageous - even more than usual - in his presence.

She jokes more than once while stitching him up or scolding him to keep healthier hours that she likes that he behaves so well. But really, it's that in movement and in stillness, in the day or at night, whether it's bullets and bloodstains on the carpet or the warm glow of the entryway lights and the smell of coffee - Sylus never fails to meet her.

So, maybe, the question is wrong and it isn't "why." Maybe the answer she has turned over in her mind again and again is very simple when considered on its own: he will always give her the courage to take his hand, in any context and at any time, so - how can she not, without hesitation, every time?

(It isn't so unusual after all, she decides in the end.)