It is any wonder that none of the other lodgers have come spilling out of their rooms to investigate the racket they are making. Tang Fan is neither a quiet nor graceful man at the best of times, after all, and the wine has made him as boisterous as the dark is making him clumsy. Sui Zhou, himself, is more into his cups than he ought to be, out on the road as they are, but Tang Fan had poured for him over dinner, insisting as he went that it would be a shame to leave it to waste. He had known where accepting the yield of Tang Fan's generosity would lead them, by way of destination if not the steps themselves taken.

And so now he is here, both of his hands set to Tang Fan's waist, steadying his sway up the stairs. His touch is, perhaps, roaming more than proper, if not prudent, the knead of his thumbs circling slowly across the small of Tang Fan's spine as his fingers pet over his belt, but, well. To any onlooker, their entanglement would appear to be that of two officials who have enjoyed the inn's fares to an overindulgence; who are making more headway on waking the town than they are putting themselves down to bed. To think less would be blind, but to assume more would be foolish. Sui Zhou is not as bold under this cover of dark as he is in the comfort of their home, but he is not shying from his roam of Tang Fan's back and belly. He is not self-conscious of the way Tang Fan is squirming, or of how his incessant, delighted giggling is serving to goad him on further, to push his fingers beneath his belt, to find the slits in his skirts and part them wider over his thighs as they stumble on together.

They suffer a moment's disorientation when they reach the landing, coming unanchored from the vague sense as to the location of their room. Tang Fan twists and twirls in Sui Zhou's hold, hushing Sui Zhou's silent presence as though even that is too loud for him to think through.

"No, hush, you, let me through," Tang Fan squabbles, when he tries to set them off in a direction that Sui Zhou suspects is the wrong one and stops him from getting more than a step in. He does turn them around, though, and they manage to find the remainder of their way without further incident.

Tang Fan is daylight loud as he throws open the screen and scrambles in, toeing off his boots in-flight, Sui Zhou close on his heels. "It is so hot," he declares, sighing, flapping a hand towards his flushed face in an ineffectual fan. He continues to pout and huff and scuff about as Sui Zhou circles the room, putting things to their proper places, ensuring others have remained, his feet lead heavy in his boots, slowing his pace.

"Sui Zhou," he exclaims at last, the steady incline of his vocal protest reaching its peak. Sui Zhou, stooped over their copper washbasin, finishes splashing his face with some of the tepid water before he turns his head to find Tang Fan's gaze. "Undress me," Tang Fan demands of him, chin raised.

"Am I your butler?" Sui Zhou asks dryly. He cannot keep the laughter from his voice, though he has no want, anyway, for trying. There is a loudness to this unbridling that makes him feel incursive to his own body, almost, set on a path he cannot turn from, marched at a pace he can neither slow nor stop. There is no room in him left to quiet the shout of his joy, all this fondness.

Perhaps this would concern him, elsewhere and elsewhen. But here and now has Tang Fan, who simply says, "Of course," his smile lopsided, eyes sparkling. "My servant," he calls him. And then, "My Sui Zhou," he adds, quieter, hushing his name as though it is due the sort of reverence that tasks a soul to ache.

It is so— ah. Sui Zhou is in love with him. There is nothing else to or for it.

When Tang Fan lifts his arms from his sides and holds them aloft, the hang of them almost meditative, Sui Zhou is there, already, to step between them. He smoothes his touch over Tang Fan's sleeves; curves a hand to the column of his throat as he curls the fingers of the other beneath his lapel. He takes his own worship from this, from the flutter of Tang Fan's pulse against his palm, the way his breath hitches as Sui Zhou unbuttons his outermost robe, pushes it open wide across his chest. From the slow, sobering strip of Tang Fan's every layer until he is at last bared and beheld before him, trembling beneath the very weight of being witnessed.

"I'll catch cold, now," says Tang Fan, plaintive. He touches Sui Zhou, with that, tracing a meandering finger over the embroidered dragon embellishing his uniform. A deliberate and direct undertaking unlike the way their hands glanced as Sui Zhou undressed him, the unwitting arch of his body towards Sui Zhou's as he returned to within his reach. "That won't do, Sui Zhou," he tells him with grave sincerity.

Sui Zhou lets his gaze fall lower, to the plush pink pout of Tang Fan's mouth and the creeping bloom of his blush down his throat, and then lower, still, to his chest, heaving softly around the shallowed pulls of his breaths. His nipples are hard, dark against his moonlight-paled skin, but when Sui Zhou fits his palm against his breast, fanning his fingers over the swell and crest, he finds Tang Fan warm to his touch, as though the rush of his blood after his bounding heart has chased out the chill on the night's air.

Tang Fan shudders, his sigh staggering. Sui Zhou feels the moment's tension flinch through his wrist, the instinctual urge in him to rescind any taking still ill-remaining, even now, for all this time. But his desire is no monster, here, only a mirror; no different from Tang Fan's where it peers back, always, at him. As wanted as it is bidden. The visitations of his sinewed obsequity always pass just as they come, and so they need not be welcomed in, anymore, between them.

"What will do?" Sui Zhou's voice is rough with it, cracked like a field left barren by drought. He swallows to wet his mouth, then, "What would you have me do?" he asks again, clearer. He knows this answer, already, but that is another matter entirely to being told it.

"Come to bed," says Tang Fan, as rough as him, as lucid, his gaze peering, prying. "Make me warm again."

Sui Zhou circles his thumb over Tang Fan's breast, drinking in the stutter of his breath, the slight arch of his back. "Is that all?" he brings himself to prompt. It is not convincing in either its authority or its affect, but Tang Fan seems indulged by it, anyway.

"Do I ask so much of you that you think there still waits more?" Tang Fan prods him in the sternum, chiding. "Will even that break your back to do?"

"No," says Sui Zhou. "Never." It's teasing, but there is honesty in the grain of it. No ask is too great, too grave, so long as it is of Sui Zhou to give.

"Well," says Tang Fan, and then he huffs, as if that is the sum of it — hot air and a shyness laid bare by the seed of sincere conviction. His cheeks are still red; his breaths have drawn reedy. If Sui Zhou were to slide a hand between Tang Fan's legs in this very moment, or the next, he is certain his fingers would come away damp with more than just his sweat. He does not. He waits, instead, until Tang Fan is recomposed enough to finish his thought. "Undress for me," he directs.

So Sui Zhou does. Tang Fan drifts out from underneath his touch, his passing as delicate as smoke wisping on the spring breeze, and Sui Zhou puts his hands to the clasps of his collar, his belt. He does not make a show of it, in quite so many movements, but neither does he rush through. Tang Fan is not hurrying him; indeed, he's contented himself to watch from the bed, settled on his side in indolent repose, fingers drifting idly over his belly.

"Let me look at you," is what Tang Fan tells him next. And even though no sight of Sui Zhou remains unseen by him, he turns himself over, unhesitant, to Tang Fan's perusal. Takes in, too, of his own turn, the trail of Tang Fan's gaze over him; the way his mouth falls open around his breath as he holds it.

"Good," Tang Fan murmurs. "Aren't you good." It is the simplest praise; the sweetest pleasure. Sui Zhou would do anything for it. He has, almost. "Come here," Tang Fan beckons, and that is nothing, at all, in the scope and scheme of what he could demand. Of course Sui Zhou yields it.

He has not brought his cock with him for this trip — it is never such a consideration, for Sui Zhou, though on their longer cases together Tang Fan will make his complaints heard about that. Its absence has never left him ill-equipped, and he is, as always, willing to redemonstrate this as and when incited. Tang Fan's attention on him is palpable, now, anticipation a roaming hand that comes to rest between his shoulder blades as Sui Zhou pauses to pick through the clutter on their table. The jarred salve he is looking for is not far from where the morning left it, once Tang Fan had slathered his dry knuckles and insisted on seeing to Sui Zhou's callouses. He fits it to the cup of his palm, then moves onward.

Tang Fan makes a soft sound the moment Sui Zhou has encroached near enough to catch it, a breathy hitch that stokes the heat still building low in his belly. It will burn through him all too soon, if he is not careful. Tang Fan knows this, surely, or he would not be so unshy in how he fans its flame, so generous with the space he makes for Sui Zhou to kneel between his legs.

"How would you have me?" Sui Zhou murmurs, hoarse. He cannot settle on a place to rest his attention, gaze flitting between the curve of Tang Fan's jaw, the bow of his lip. The lean line of his neck, the dip of his clavicle. The hills of his breasts and the valley of his belly, each shifting with his every quickened breath.

Tang Fan is just as restless, hungry without direction, eyes glancing between his mouth, the span of his shoulders, the curve of his bicep. "Do you still need to be told?" he teases, reaching up between them to path his finger across the pattering pulse in Sui Zhou's throat. "I thought I had you taught."

"No," Sui Zhou assures him. He does not. He sets the salve down on the bed somewhere he hopes he will find it again, unseeing, lid thumbed off. Then, he lets his hands fall to Tang Fan; first, the ridges of his knees, then down, ambling, to his soft thighs. He can feel the flex and tremble of muscle beneath his fingers when Tang Fan's hips twitch to him, seeking. Tang Fan snatches him up by the nape just as his thoughts begin to splinter, an anchoring.

"Sui Zhou," he murmurs, pitched so low that Sui Zhou must follow him in, until their lips are all but brushing, to best hear it. "I need you," he's reminded. Tang Fan's nails prick at the soft hairs that have come loose from his braid, spurring a sharp shudder down Sui Zhou's spine that must delight him, for the smile he feels against his mouth. "Fill me."

Sui Zhou has to separate them, to slick his fingers with the salve, but the distance gives as much as it takes. Like this, knelt back on his heels, Sui Zhou can see everything in better entireties: the red-blooded anticipation mottling Tang Fan's pale skin, the wide, glinting dark of his eyes as his gaze follows Sui Zhou's hand between his legs. His gasp is as wet as his cunt when Sui Zhou parts his folds around his thumb, as sweet as the shiver that rides the jut of his hip up into the fetter of his palm.

Tang Fan takes him easily, even without the preamble, resistless to the thrust of Sui Zhou's finger as it teases into his twitching hole. The second, too, sinks into him with little more than a quivering sigh to show for it, Tang Fan's body opening with a struggled-for, steady sureness to the stretch of Sui Zhou's breach. Sui Zhou cannot help but stare down at his hand, at the intrusion of him into Tang Fan, the contrast of them both. Tang Fan is so much, and yet he becomes so small, here, a world that fits impossibly within Sui Zhou's grasp.

"I can take more," Tang Fan dares him, out from above, lofting over Sui Zhou's obscene focus. "I can take all of you." Like a hound on the scent of his moment's hesitation, closing in. "Would you deny me that?"

"I would not," Sui Zhou promises. "I will not." His fingers recede to the shallows of Tang Fan's hole, the tip of the third stroking clumsily over his rim. Much of the salve has been smeared from his skin, but with Tang Fan hunting for give in his grip, he does not trust either of them to be gracious in opportunity. So, he lowers his head, and spits into his hand, relishing the wisp of Tang Fan's whimper, startled free.

They have what still lingers of the wine to thank for how well Tang Fan takes the next thick increment. It is a drier shove; a wider spread. There is a finiteness to the slowness of Sui Zhou's pace, his proffered gentleness. But he can abate it, at least, he thinks, this brusque bluntness of being opened. He lets his hand move down from Tang Fan's hip, fingers curling loosely against the wiry hairs of his mound as his thumb strokes the hood back from the pearl of his clit.

Tang Fan's moan is gratifying. "More," he slurs, so Sui Zhou gives him that, too, slipping two fingers into his dripping cunt with a filthy, frothy squelch. Need pangs deep between his own legs, throbbing, but it is easily ignorable in the face of higher purpose.

For a while that feels yawned, heavy, there is only this: the unrhythmic piston of Sui Zhou's fingers, his hands cramped together, shoulders threaded in. Tang Fan's hiccupped whines, their intermingling breaths. Then, "More," Tang Fan bids him again, strained.

By the time Sui Zhou surfaces from the spell he has been lulled under, he has already pushed his last finger into him, and Tang Fan has taken it with no small irreverence, his hiss searing.

"Again," he croaks out sharply, before Sui Zhou can guess within his pause. When Sui Zhou's gaze snaps up to his face, Tang Fan's is there to meet it, severe and wilding. Urgent.

There is a charge on the air, now, lightning in a storm. This is the furthest they have ever gone, and the curtain has been drawn from the precipice they are both standing on. The truth is that Sui Zhou does not want to stop here; the danger is that Tang Fan is the check and the balancing.

Sui Zhou knows his timidity is not what Tang Fan is looking for. He has never wanted Sui Zhou's cowardice, however well he parades it as tenderness. There is a part of him that wants to be broken, and it is with Sui Zhou he entrusts the breaking.

"I won't bear it if you stop," Tang Fan warns him. It is toothless, without heat; he is unspooling rapidly just from this, half-apart at his seams. "You must finish. You must— please, Sui Zhou," he begs, watery. "I want this from you." It's rambling, desperate. "I know what it will take."

Sui Zhou does not think he has the words to answer, in spite of the inspiration. But they have never been what he's spoken his truths with. Tang Fan's breath yelps out of him as the flared rise of Sui Zhou's thumb breaches him, and then follows the rest of his hand, in, and in, and in. He furls his fingers, fitting them to his palm as Tang Fan claws at the bed, the whole of him gripped around some shout, torn out absent its sound.

He cannot describe it. He thinks if he was to be shown it written, lurid treatises on the way a lover's body opens up on a hand, he would deny them, decry them as lacking. There is nothing for it but to be felt, known but not understood.

It is so— it is all so— Sui Zhou does not know what to do. He does not know what he can, and he is dizzy with this, all the violence and the virtue of Tang Fan's discomfort, its inextricability from his fulfilment. He cannot retreat, of that he can be certain. If he tried, if he did— this is where Tang Fan would finally fight him.

They are terrible seconds, the ones he waits, cast adrift while Tang Fan gathers the rends of himself together.

"I'm so full of you." Tang Fan's awed gasping is ragged when it comes, raw. Almost unintelligible for its emotion. "Oh."

"What do you need?" Sui Zhou rasps, voice ringing hollow in his ears. He holds his fist still within the tight hot cling of Tang Fan's body, soaking every clenching shudder and twitch of him around the pulse in his wrist. The strain of the subdual sprawls up his arm, slow as dregea, until its sweet ache has swallowed his shoulder. He thinks he may just choke on it before it even puts its hand to his throat.

Tang Fan can only whine for him in answer, his face turned in against the sheets, pretty features wrenched in a suffering pleasure. It's a wretchedly wounded sound, wet desperation, thick in his mouth, fire to Sui Zhou's blood. To shallow the thrust of his thick fingers inside Tang Fan's cunt and to slow the stroke of his thumb over his swollen clit takes a control, from Sui Zhou, that unnerves the unanimal in him. But he must relent here, too, in hope of helping to ease Tang Fan's words back loose. He needs Tang Fan to tell him what to do.

He does not know if there is even room left in Tang Fan for that now, in truth. He is so full— long past it, for how he has kept taking, and taking, and taking, rising Sui Zhou up with him to the occasion of giving. But if it is there, then he must give it its chance to be found. Sui Zhou knows patience; has been shaped to it. To wait for Tang Fan is no hardship.

Tang Fan gurgles at him, his incoherence teary, now, as his body winds even more tightly around where he is swallowing Sui Zhou in. Sui Zhou does not temper the moan it wrings from him, nor does he smooth the rough of his hush.

"Tang Fan," he urges, when he's found the breath for it, stilling his fingers in his cunt, now, save the tremors he cannot fight. "Tang Fan."

"I hear," Tang Fan croaks. "I'm here— oh. Oh."

The harried shape of Tang Fan's name in his mouth is so familiar, now, that it has swung wide back to foreign. Still, he repeats it like he would the sacred, and Tang Fan's shivers rise to meet the incantation, the fog in his eyes fading.

"I hear," Tang Fan repeats. He offers no further word, only the scramble of his hand between their bodies. Sui Zhou cannot so much as breathe, is given no chance but to concede to Tang Fan's whipcrack whim as he fits his hand over his own belly. Sui Zhou swears he can feel it, the very flex of Tang Fan's fingers around his fist as he pushes down, and then he is coming so hard he jerks, full-body, knees jackknifed to his chest, a zither string plucked to snapping. He squirts over Sui Zhou's hand, down his wrists, his wracking pleasure heralded by a wail loud enough to wake a city.

He is so tight, and wet, and beautiful. Sui Zhou is drowning in him. It's indescribable. It's perfect.

"I have you," he must say, in a distant voice. "I have you." He does not even have himself, but in his hold on Tang Fan he is at least certain. He must be. It is his shoreline; his safety.

"It's too much," Tang Fan chokes, clotted, still shaking, and shaking, and shaking. "Sui Zhou, it's too much—"

It is. But it so rarely isn't, and he knew it would be; that is half of why he even begged for it. "Bear it," Sui Zhou coaxes. "Bear it for me." He stumbles over it, the all but insurmountability of the very ask. For him— it feels illicit to entertain, unconscionable.

Tang Fan meets it, gives his answer in the soft, slight arch of his back, the silken way his legs fall back open. Sui Zhou sees the brush of his hand down his belly, follows the wave of its motion to draw his fingers from Tang Fan's cunt.

"Ah," Tang Fan gasps. "Ah, good. Yes. That's good." Sui Zhou shivers underneath the warm caress of his praise.

To take his fist from him is a more delicate thing, due more time and care. Sui Zhou gives it that, and then he gives it more. The drag of his hand is as slow and gradual in its affordance for his tentativeness as it is his transfixture on the way Tang Fan's hole, fucked sore and pink, clings to him in inches. As though he has little intention of letting him go; the release of Sui Zhou's breach from his body coming only with reluctance, some heed to limits. When the last ridge of his knuckles slips free of him, Tang Fan gasps, and Sui Zhou's chest is flooded with a whelm of emptiness.

"What do you need?" Tang Fan asks in a breathless rattle, after what must be— time. No surer than that. Sui Zhou almost does not hear it, over the thundering of his pulse and his breath in his head. "Sui Zhou," he rouses, "quickly, tell me—"

"I do not," says Sui Zhou hoarsely, just as quickly as he's been bidden. He is so close to it that he can taste its gasp in his mouth. It would be nothing to fall. Tang Fan could bring him over that knife's edge in a moment, with a levied touch, and yet— and yet.

"Oh," says Tang Fan slowly. Not considering; already knowing.

He takes a breath, tart and cold in his mouth. Then, "Let me take care of you," Sui Zhou says. Begs, truly. He wants to take this with him— have its cut press beneath his skin, carry its lash and its mark on his sinew. Its unsettled roil in his blood, the sting of its heat. But he does not know how else to ask for this. He does not think he can.

"Ah," says Tang Fan. "All right." And that is all it is; there is no judgement, no implication. Then, "Please," he whispers, inviting, the hood of his lashes pinning him under his gaze. "You should."

So Sui Zhou does just that.