Work Text:
Maomao had seen many strange ailments in her time at the rear palace.
She'd treated concubines with phantom pregnancies, eunuchs with psychosomatic paralysis, and one unfortunate lady-in-waiting who had developed a rash simply because she'd learned her rival wore the same shade of lip rouge. The human body, in Maomao's professional opinion, was an absurdly suggestible vessel.
But Jinshi's current condition defied all reasonable explanation.
It began three weeks ago, on a perfectly ordinary Tuesday. Maomao had been summoned to his private quarters to deliver a batch of fever-reducing powder—a routine errand she'd performed dozens of times before. She'd knocked, entered, and found him at his desk, shuffling papers with his usual theatrical grace.
"Ah, Maomao. Right on time." He'd smiled that smile, the one that made lesser servants forget their own names. "I've been feeling rather fatigued lately. Perhaps you could take my pulse?"
She'd obliged, because refusing a superior's request was tedious and required paperwork. Her fingers had found his wrist, and...
Thump-thump-thump-thump.
Her brow had furrowed.
Thump-thump-thump-thump-THUMP.
She'd pressed harder, checking her positioning. Radial artery. Correct placement. No external factors: the room was cool, he'd been sitting still, and he hadn't consumed any stimulants in her presence.
"Your pulse is elevated," she'd said flatly.
"Is it?" His eyes had widened with mock surprise. "How peculiar."
"Averaging one hundred and twelve beats per minute. That's tachycardic. Have you been experiencing palpitations? Shortness of breath? Dizziness upon standing?"
"Only when I see-" He'd caught himself, coughed delicately. "Only when I stand too quickly, yes."
She'd nodded, already cataloging possibilities. Dehydration? No, his skin turgor was normal. Anemia? His conjunctivae were pink. Hyperthyroidism? She'd need to check for tremors and temperature sensitivity.
"Open your mouth."
"Excuse me?"
"Your mouth. Open it."
He'd complied, looking absurdly pleased about it. Maomao had leaned in, inspecting his tongue for coating, his mucous membranes for pallor, his throat for erythema. Nothing remarkable. But as she'd pulled back, she'd noticed something else: his pupils were visibly dilated. In a well-lit room. Without any medicinal intervention.
"Fascinating," she'd murmured, reaching for his chin to steady his head. "Hold still."
He'd held still. His pulse, she noted with clinical detachment, had accelerated further.
That had been the first incident.
The second occurred four days later, when she'd been summoned to his quarters again. This time under the pretense of "verifying the quality of newly arrived saffron." She'd arrived to find him lounging on a divan, one silk sleeve slipping off his shoulder in a manner that was either carelessness or deliberate provocation.
"Maomao," he'd said, his voice lower than usual. "I've been thinking about you."
"About the saffron?"
"About- yes. The saffron. And also you."
She'd approached the basket of crimson threads, lifting one to her nose. Genuine Crocus sativus. Excellent color. She'd been about to commend the supplier when Jinshi had risen from the divan and crossed to stand directly beside her. Too close. The heat radiating from his body was excessive.
"Your cheeks are flushed," she'd observed, without looking up. "And you're perspiring. Mildly, but noticeably."
"The room is warm."
"It's winter. The brazier is unlit."
He'd opened his mouth, closed it, and most damningly of all, his cheeks had flushed further. A deep, ruddy crimson that traveled down his neck and disappeared beneath his collar.
Maomao had stepped back, her diagnostic mind whirring. Flushing, diaphoresis, tachycardia, mydriasis. Combined with his reported fatigue and the episodic nature of the symptoms, she had initially suspected a pheochromocytoma, a rare adrenal tumor that caused sudden catecholamine surges.
But the pattern was wrong. The episodes occurred exclusively in her presence. More specifically, they occurred when she looked directly at him, or when she spoke his name, or when she touched him for any reason whatsoever.
A psychosomatic component, then. Conversion disorder. Or perhaps...
Her eyes had widened.
Oh.
Oh, no.
///
"I've diagnosed him," Maomao announced to the jars of dried herbs in her workroom that evening. "It's a severe autonomic nervous system dysregulation, likely triggered by prolonged occupational stress and manifesting as intermittent sympathetic overactivity."
The herbs offered no opinion.
She'd consulted every medical text in her limited library. The Compendium of Internal Medicine. The Treatise on Pulse Diagnosis. Even her father's dusty notes on rare constitutional weaknesses. None of them had a satisfactory explanation for a man whose pupils dilated the moment a particular apothecary entered the room.
But she'd pieced it together: Jinshi, for all his poise, was clearly suffering from an involuntary neurological response to certain environmental stimuli. The stimuli, unfortunately, appeared to be her. Which meant the only ethical course of treatment was...
Avoidance.
She'd begun implementing it immediately.
When summons came, she sent a subordinate. When he appeared in the garden, she vanished behind a hedge. When he left small gifts at her door: a book, a hairpin, an unusually large turnip. She accepted them with written thanks and did not visit to express her gratitude in person.
It worked. For ten glorious days, she observed no further episodes. His pulse presumably returned to normal. His cheeks returned to their usual aristocratic pallor. The palace continued turning, and Maomao continued grinding herbs, and everything was fine.
Until tonight.
"Maomao."
She froze mid-pestle.
The voice came from the doorway of her workroom, rich and low and unmistakably annoyed. She turned slowly to find Jinshi leaning against the frame, arms crossed, expression hovering somewhere between wounded and wrathful.
"You've been avoiding me," he said.
"Impossible. I've been conducting important pharmacological research."
"For ten days."
"The research is very important."
He pushed off from the doorframe and strode toward her. Maomao noted, with grim satisfaction, that his pupils were already dilating. Another episode. Her diagnosis was confirmed.
"Your pulse is elevated," she said, because she was a professional and professionals stated objective facts.
"My pulse is always elevated around you," he snapped. "That's what I've been trying to tell you!"
"A chronic condition, then. Likely progressive. We should consider a comprehensive treatment protocol-!"
"Maomao." He stopped directly in front of her, close enough that she could smell his perfume. Sandalwood. Expensive. The odor was pleasant; it did not, contrary to his own assertions, affect her pulse in any measurable way. "I am not sick."
"Denial is a common symptom of-"
"I am in love with you."
The words hung in the air between them. Maomao blinked. She processed. She filed the statement into her mental catalog, cross-referenced it with his previous symptoms, and arrived at a conclusion.
"I see," she said slowly. "The sympathetic overactivity has caused a delusional component. That's more serious than I initially assessed. We'll need to start with a cooling sedative blend-"
"I am not delusional."
"-and we should limit your exposure to triggering stimuli. That includes me. I'll transfer my duties to-"
"Maomao." He grabbed her shoulders gently, but firmly enough to stop her retreat. "Look at me."
She looked. His eyes were dark and intense, the pupils wide enough to swallow the gold flecks. His cheeks were flushed. His breathing was shallow. Classic sympathetic surge.
"Your pupils are dilated," she informed him.
"Because I'm looking at you."
"Rapid pupil dilation in response to light is concerning. It suggests-"
"It's not in response to light, Maomao. It's in response to you. Your eyes. Your voice. The way you wrinkle your nose when you're thinking too hard. The way you mutter to your herbs as if they can hear you."
She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"That's... medically improbable."
"Medicine doesn't explain everything."
"It explains most things."
"Not this." His grip on her shoulders tightened infinitesimally. "Not how I feel when you walk into a room. Not how I notice every tiny thing about you, from the calluses on your fingers to the way you tilt your head when you're skeptical. Not how I've been trying to tell you for months, in every way I know how, and you keep diagnosing me with nervous disorders."
Maomao considered this.
It was true that his symptoms were atypical. The episodic nature, the stimulus-specific triggers, the complete remission during her absence, all of it pointed toward a psychological etiology. But love was not, strictly speaking, a psychological disorder. Love was a neurochemical phenomenon, certainly, but it was not listed in any diagnostic manual she'd ever read.
Unless one counted the Classic of Emotional Maladies, which her father had dismissed as "sentimental nonsense."
"Maomao." His voice had softened. "Do you believe me?"
She thought about it. Really thought about it. She thought about the gifts, the summons, the way he always found excuses to stand too close. She thought about his pulse, racing beneath her fingertips, and his pupils, blown wide every time she met his gaze. She thought about the flush that crept up his neck when she touched him, even casually, even accidentally.
It was, she admitted, a remarkably consistent set of symptoms.
"Your hypothesis is not entirely without merit," she conceded.
His face lit up like sunrise.
"But," she continued, holding up a finger, "I will require additional data to confirm. A single anecdotal account is insufficient for a definitive diagnosis."
"Additional data," he repeated slowly.
"Prolonged observation. Controlled exposure trials. Replicable results." She tilted her head. "You'll need to make yourself available for... testing."
The smile that spread across his face was deeply, profoundly dangerous.
"Whatever you require," he breathed. "I am entirely at your disposal."
Maomao nodded, already reaching for her notebook. She'd need to document baseline vitals. Establish exclusion criteria. Rule out confounding variables like caffeine and sleep deprivation.
It would take months. Maybe years.
But she was nothing if not thorough.
"One more thing," she added, not looking up from her notes.
"Yes?"
"Your current presentation suggests you're about to kiss me. I should warn you that this will skew the data."
Jinshi laughed, a bright, helpless sound that sent fresh color rushing to his cheeks.
"Then we'll just have to run the experiment again," he said, and leaned in.
Maomao made a mental note: Variable introduced. Re-test required. Frequency: as often as necessary.
For science, of course.