when the road unwinds
by fruitjuicer

when the road unwinds

fruitjuicer

Summary

How can he want for something he does not have when its lack leaves no absence?

Notes

Imported from Archive of Our Own. Original work id: 31453181.

Chapter 1

Tang Fan makes it what he thinks is a rather praiseworthy distance before his legs finally wobble out from underneath him, depositing him on the side of the road with a heavy, unceremonious flop. By the time he throws up his head to sound off his alarm, Sui Zhou, never too far to be found, is already walking back his few paces of gained ground.

Tang Fan sucks in a deep breath as Sui Zhou draws up to a stop before him. Then, "This entire trip is cursed," he complains.

Sui Zhou's lips press together thinly as he folds his arms across his chest, a faint furrow forming on his brow.

"The date was inauspicious for travel!" Tang Fan continues, perhaps somewhat high-pitched as well as high-strung. Now he's stopped moving, his thighs are throbbing, sting-hot, and he digs his fists in against them over the skirts of his robes with a pout. It doesn't do much in the way of helping, but it does make him feel a little better. "Ill omens. Very unseasonable weather. Li-daren graciously offered to host us another day." In his very nice estate, no less. "I said we should stay. Did I not say we should stay? Now look at what has happened." He flourishes one of his fists sharply, gesturing broadly at their surroundings.

Sui Zhou, who has heard Tang Fan's very same I told you so diatribe in its many flexible iterations no less than six times now, already, ever since the carriage broke down, unfolds his arms only to plant his palms on his hips. It's an adoption of the familiar posture he takes when he's positively brimming with exasperation and faced with a lack of outlets to express it. He opens his mouth, then closes it, eyes widening as he clamps his jaw and exhales sharply through his nose. He's learned better than to try and debate with Tang Fan from the last series of failures, it seems. Which is good, because Tang Fan is right, and should be listened to far more often than he ever is, and there is no use in arguing about it.

"We're here now," Sui Zhou says, with a not insignificant tinge of a sigh to his voice, and holds out his hand to him.

Tang Fan glares at Sui Zhou's proffered hand as if he's been smacked with it, before he relents a bit. It's not Sui Zhou's fault that they're on a schedule, or that the recent rainfall in the mountains has swept down to sodden the roads in the foothills. Even if Sui Zhou had not ushered them out and back onto the road mid-breakfast, negligible hours of winter sun would have made little difference to the terrain, and taking the road less travelled meant they were likely the first through not on foot since the rains. They were probably the last of the sort, at that, for many more days to come.

Well, fine. It might behove Tang Fan to be a little more thankful that they were more fortunate than they could have been. A sharp knock to the side of the head and a lingering twinge in the neck was the brightest side of scathed, all things considered. Tang Fan reels back his indignance and even softens his frown into a smile, because he has the grace to be decorous.

He certainly isn't looking forward to the inevitable account to the Court of the Imperial Stables, though.

Sui Zhou crooks his fingers in front of Tang Fan's face. "Up," he prompts.

"I can't walk anymore," Tang Fan protests, pitiful. "My legs are too sore."

Sui Zhou's eyes slide shut, slow, for a long blink, his shoulders sagging as his head sways with a slight shake. He takes a breath in the pause before he reaches for the ties of his bamboo hat around his neck with one hand, the other settling on his own knee as he stoops down into a crouch.

Tang Fan hisses flinchingly when Sui Zhou sets the hat down on his head. "Ow!" he whines, face scrunching against the resurging throb reverberating behind his eyes.

"Bear it," says Sui Zhou. His tone is unsympathetic, but the prod and pry of his fingertips as they flit a stroke across his hair are gentle, so Tang Fan can forgive him the transgression of the former for the tenderness of the latter. He fusses Sui Zhou's hand away and sets about threading his ponytail up and out from underneath where it has been crushed flat.

Sui Zhou puts his fussed-away hand to the strap of his pack and slides it free. "Put this on," he instructs, simply enough, when he hands it over.

"I know what to do with it," Tang Fan retorts, and does. It's hefty enough to be unbalancing, with the haft digging down deep into the meat of his shoulder as it settles into place. Tang Fan grimaces to make his displeasure at the fact blatantly known, but it goes, for the most part, unrespected and unheeded as Sui Zhou turns over to face his back to him.

"Hold on to me," he tells him next, arms shrugging out from against his sides in emphasis.

"I know what to do with you!" Tang Fan snaps, and does that, too. Sui Zhou gives an exerting grunt as Tang Fan's legs slot across his sides and squeeze down; another when his arms scrabble to lace around his neck. "I am not heavy," Tang Fan complains. The indignant chastisement promptly tapers off into a very sharp yip as he is lifted without so much as a hello, prior warning.

Sui Zhou, owing again to his present wisdom, does not comment on it. After a few steps, Tang Fan feels suitably situated enough in his new perch to ease the vice of his thighs. Sui Zhou's next breath chuffs out of him, stuttered. Tang Fan loosens the noose of his arms around Sui Zhou's neck, too.

"I hope we come across someone soon," he says. Stranger optimisms have come to pass, anyway. Sui Zhou's answering hum is clipped short by his apparent focus. When Tang Fan presses his cheek to Sui Zhou's hair, it is sun-warm and sweat-damp. He lets his body slacken into a lazy drape, braced flush to Sui Zhou's burden-sloped back, and angles his head to tilt the wide brim of his hat until it is better shading Sui Zhou's eyes from the too-bright glare high overhead.

They do not come across anyone, either soon or at all.

Tang Fan supposes it was a shade of too much to hope for, that they might stumble upon a farmer or somesuch who would fortuitously have field or hut spare for them to bed down for the night in. The best they manage is a small cave, chipped into the rising cliff-face and all but missable to the eye on an approaching angle. The sun has settled well into its descent, by now's hour, and the biting chill burling on the air sees to any desire in Tang Fan to contest the choice to stop, either for complaint or contrariness' sake.

The rattling throb behind his eyes has receded so far back that it barely crests the shore of his awareness, at least, but Tang Fan's legs have stiffened numb from their brief enough disuse, and very nearly sway out from underneath him when Sui Zhou sets his feet back to ground. He grips Sui Zhou's robe at the back to steady himself, fingers curling into the crease-pressed fabric, bleeding warmth from the now-parted pin of their bodies. The sweat trailing his spine is drying cool, and Tang Fan can't help his shiver.

Sui Zhou turns to him, slow, paced out gradual enough that Tang Fan has time to steel himself to let go. He opens his mouth, but does not speak, brow furrowing minutely beneath the weight of his own silence. Then, he reaches for Tang Fan's throat, fingers tugging the ties of the hat loose. Tang Fan lets him, feigning an understated ignorance as Sui Zhou strokes his hair, checking him for any yet-clinging hurts. His heart skips in his chest, the beat enough to catch his breath to aching.

"I'll set camp," Sui Zhou tells him unnecessarily. His hand smooths Tang Fan's ponytail down again before Tang Fan can think to reach up and right it, then falls away to hang at his side.

"I'll warm the bed," Tang Fan decrees with similar redundancy. It earns him a smile, at least, however brief a one it ends up being.

The mouth of the cave is hardly wide enough for a man to go through single-file, but it opens up wide enough for two and then some at the gut. Tang Fan hurries himself to the furthest back wall, already pulling the pack off over his shoulder, glad to be rid of it. He pulls out their bedroll, the blankets, their packed cloaks, and sets them all out to the domestic percussion of Sui Zhou puttering about somewhere behind him. In and out and around the cave, by the judge of his footsteps, collecting wood for a fire. There are leftovers in the pack that they can heat. Tang Fan pays no mind to them, busied with kicking off his boots and taking off his guan so he can bundle himself into the bed with great haste and singular determination.

"Are you hungry?" Sui Zhou asks him. He does not look up, even when Tang Fan makes a show of it, all the noise it takes to turn over on his back and lean up and peer out and over at him.

"Not yet," says Tang Fan, with a bit of a huff. He does not look away. Then, "Come to bed."

"Not yet," Sui Zhou repeats back. Tang Fan can see enough of his face to catch how his expression softens, though, just so, mouth curling, fond-touched.

Tang Fan almost pushes it, but settles for watching him for a while, instead, quietening. He is not sure for how long, only that it is too much so: in the empty idleness there is only room for warmth to build, want to grow. Sui Zhou lights the fire. Stokes it high. Stays kneeling, all too far away.

It is difficult, for him, to watch Sui Zhou and not feel— to not feel. It had been difficult, before, too, but it is worse, now, for the knowing. He does not see why he should be denied what is his, now it is all his to have.

"Sui Zhou," Tang Fan speaks up again, at last. His voice is a little rough from the lapse, and it rings in his ears, through the gap parting them. He swallows to clear his throat, then, "I'm cold," he whines. "Your wife is cold."

Sui Zhou finally, blessedly finally, stands up from the fire. Tang Fan watches him, out from underneath his lashes and over the hilly bundle of blankets and cloaks, as he dusts his hands down his legs and closes the few steps of space between them before toeing off his boots at the threshold of their bedroll. Anticipation is a welcome warmth where its petals start to unfurl low in his belly, blunting the bite of the chill from the rush of air that floods in between the layers as Sui Zhou lifts them. The rest is balmed over by the bleed of Sui Zhou's heat against his back as he presses in, flush, with all the swift skill of the well-practised.

Tang Fan tries to curl the little hitching gasp that fills his mouth into a hum on his tongue, to moderate success. He doesn't want to give up the ghost of the game quite yet, after all. Hiding the pleased crook of his smile has to be conceded as a lost cause, though, when Sui Zhou's hand scrapes over his throat, fingers leading him by the jaw until his chin is tipped to the arch of his shoulder.

"So forward," Tang Fan chastises, breathy, all mock scandal on his lips and very real desire coalescing in his chest. Blithe as daylight, behaving as if Sui Zhou has simply crawled into their makeshift bed and braced himself along the slope of Tang Fan's spine of his own accord, and not to conclude another leg of Tang Fan's perpetuous campaign of utterly incessant wheedling.

Sui Zhou meets his gaze from where it's roaming out to draw his attention, and Tang Fan does lose the moan he's been holding on to for safekeeping, hand flailing back over his own hip to clutch clumsily at Sui Zhou's thigh. He flinches at the heavy drag of Tang Fan's arm down his side, and Tang Fan stiffens still.

"You're hurt?" he accuses more than he asks.

"Some bruising," Sui Zhou dismisses. He at least sounds sure of it. Perhaps he checked when Tang Fan wasn't looking, or was not able to look. His eyes can hardly dart around corners, and Sui Zhou has had opportunities enough since they made camp to part his clothes and appraise bared skin beyond Tang Fan's notice. It would be a very Sui Zhou thing to do.

Sui Zhou had fallen, too, though not as hard as he could have. They both really were quite fortunate. Men have died for lesser tumbles than the ones they took, as Tang Fan knows well: he's seen enough of their bodies, after, and pieced back together enough of the moments preceding their ends.

"I will be gentle with you," Tang Fan promises, and it comes away in the wash of his hushed whisper as too stern, too sincere. Too true. Even what he lets follow cannot hope to irreverence it. "But you must be gentle with me."

Sui Zhou neither protests his demands, nor contests that he has already acquiesced to them, long before this thing between them first made smoke and took aflame. He is still cupping Tang Fan's jaw, cradling him close enough to be kissed. Tang Fan crosses the last of that distance for him, laughing, rustled out and clumsy, as Sui Zhou's moustache brushes the bow of his top lip. It's off-beat, decentred, a little too wet and all open-mouthed. It's perfect.

"Did you never keep anyone warm at the borders?" Tang Fan pants against Sui Zhou's lips, teasing, when the minutes have unwound and Sui Zhou has kissed him breathless in all that time but done naught else with it. Gentle is but one thing; gradual another. There is only so much patience that Tang Fan can be rightly expected to muster.

Sui Zhou's fingers tighten on his jaw, enough to bloom into a sting of a shiver that ripples down Tang Fan's back with a gasp. His other hand finds Tang Fan's hip, but does no more, even when Tang Fan pushes up into the pin of it and nips his contempt into the corner of Sui Zhou's mouth.

"None that ran so cold," Sui Zhou says at last. His voice rumbles up from his chest, deep-pitched, unspooling the span of it along Tang Fan's back. His thumb circles the jut of Tang Fan's hip, slow. Tang Fan lets his eyes flutter closed as he pulls in a breath. There are far too many clothes between them. It is long now dire, and he is becoming desperate.

"Do I have to teach you, past here?" Tang Fan complains to him. Sui Zhou could open him up from rib to belly and all that would spill out of him is grievances, but, well. Some of them are fair, at least.

Sui Zhou's smile grows crooked. "Yes," he says, rising all too easily to the bait of it, utterly unhastened. The heft of his hand holding Tang Fan down is maddening. The brush of his breath on Tang Fan's kiss-bruised lips burns him up all over and straight down through.

Fine, then, if that is how it is to be. Tang Fan started this game; he can end it. "Strip me," Tang Fan demands, eyes snapping back open to fix on Sui Zhou's.

Sui Zhou breathes out, slow. "Is that all?" he asks. The rough rasp of his voice and the tight curl of his fingers as his thumb dips into the high-rising slit of Tang Fan's outer robe are an averment of his affectedness. The softening of his expression and the hooding of his gaze are an affirmation of his affections.

"To start," Tang Fan tells him. It is not a beg, however much it strains to be in the hearing. He tugs at Sui Zhou's side; mindful, even in his scrabble, of where Sui Zhou is sore. "Manage this much," he adds, "and then there may be more."

Sui Zhou crosses to kiss him, this time, pressing his plush groan into Tang Fan's waiting mouth. Tang Fan feels him shift under the flat of his palm as his hips roll, riding him up tightly against his ass. He is soft, but Tang Fan is past stirring, cock swollen thick where it is pinned flush to the crease where his thigh meets his hip. The way Sui Zhou sways himself into Tang Fan is hungrier, if only; his breath quickening, chest shallowing where it scrapes his shoulder blades. Tang Fan moans, somewhere, faint and half-found between the loud sounds of their meeting lips; the obscene slick-wet slide of Sui Zhou's tongue past his teeth when his fingers tighten on his jaw again, working it open wider, making way.

"Sui Zhou," Tang Fan pants, when he can find the space and the breath between their mouths to make room for his voice. Sui Zhou mouths at his stinging bottom lip; teases it with a scrape of his teeth, and Tang Fan nearly falls blind into the sweet lull of their kissing all over again. But for all it is good and tempting, Sui Zhou's hands have still gone nowhere near towards where they're meant to be, what they're to be used for. It is not enough.

"Do you need to be shown, too?" he continues, though the cut of his chagrin is dulled by how his voice cracks mid-stride. Sui Zhou tilts back, just shy of enough that Tang Fan can see the shape of him better through the loose-spill fall of his hair and the fan of his lashes.

"Tang Fan," Sui Zhou says. The smile is gone from his parted lips; his eyes wide and dark. His fingers twitch around their handholds, the pads skimming his jaw; scuffing his hip.

He is waiting, Tang Fan knows him well enough to realise; wanting. It's a pause that could be thought foolish when he's already been given more than enough instruction, pressed between the pages of their play. But Tang Fan understands this, too: sometimes Sui Zhou needs to be pushed. That he wants most to be told.

Tang Fan finds Sui Zhou's grip on his hip and fits his hand over it, threading their fingers together. It's an awkward angle, one that pulls his side so taut he feels as if he's straining to split open at the seam, but he won't need to hold it overlong. "Put your cock between my legs, Haizitaba," he commands. "Fuck your pretty wife warm."

Sui Zhou bows his head to Tang Fan's shoulder, grip twisting at his side to stave the worst of a wracking shudder. His other hand falls free of Tang Fan's jaw, fingers threading in the sable satin sprawl of his hair. Tang Fan tips his chin up so that he can rest his cheek in Sui Zhou's palm as Sui Zhou loosens his belt and parts his skirts. It's proficient; perfunctory; as prompted and so promised. A new chill pearls up his thighs as they are bared, and Tang Fan's shiver rocks him up, jars his jaw back into the furl of Sui Zhou's fingers. He mouths at them, impelled, lips parting around the hiss of his gasp as Sui Zhou's blunt nails catch on the rise of his hip.

Sui Zhou's other hand traces back up his side, his ribs, and Tang Fan draws the fingers resting on his lips in to settle heavy on his tongue, the hollow of his cheeks as he laps at them drowning the sound of his moan as Sui Zhou spits into his palm. The shove of it back between his legs jars him up again, harsh, and Tang Fan gags wetly around Sui Zhou's fingers as they dip too deep before they crook, knuckles rubbing against his soft palate.

Tang Fan closes his eyes and breathes out, a reedy whine tangling with Sui Zhou's hand over his mouth as Sui Zhou wipes his spit between his thighs and grips himself. The first slide doesn't breach; Tang Fan arches himself, just a bit more, cocking his knee as he spreads his legs, and the next makes it. He pushes his thighs back together, presses down, and Sui Zhou's groan wrenches out of him, shattering, hips jerking sharply.

There is no rhythm to it, Sui Zhou's rutting— it is clumsy and at animalistic behest, his cock still staying mostly soft, even as it rubs between his legs. Tang Fan fucks himself down on it as best he can from within the cage of their bodies, the restraints of the angle, swallowing rough around Sui Zhou's fingers as they unfurl, again, beneath the coax of his tongue, to reach for his throat.

"Tang Fan." Sui Zhou's voice is so strung tight, wound around the edge of ruined. He sounds so good. He always sounds so good, but the best sound on him is always unravelment.

Tang Fan lifts his head, letting Sui Zhou's thick fingers slide free of his mouth. A strand of spit trails from his bottom lip to Sui Zhou's knuckles, and he licks out at it, almost absent, possessed, snapping it. Sui Zhou's shuddery flinch nudges the tips of his fingers back against Tang Fan's lips, the callous-rough pads catching on the spit-slick skin.

"Tang Fan," Sui Zhou rasps again. "Runqing—"

Tang Fan turns his head, twisting to look, to crane his body into the coiled configuration that will give him the glimpses of everything he wants: the sight of Sui Zhou in his gaze, the brace of him at his body, the snub of his cock as he thrusts, clumsily, between the vice-tight sleeve of Tang Fan's thighs. He's close. All but there. Tang Fan can see it in the way it's hemming his face, features all pinched up around his need, can feel it in the hungry, bruising snap of his hips. He's so close, so almost, that he need only—

"Guangchuan, make your mess of me already," Tang Fan husks at him, all scratched up raw, his own damp-hot breath curling back against his stinging mouth. That's it; that's what it takes. Sui Zhou shudders with a wrecked-out grunt, thrusts shallowing erratic, and does. Tang Fan moans his own satisfaction, just to let it be known; how much it riles him just to feel Sui Zhou's half-soft cock pulsing in the press of his legs, how his spend sloppily spills over his skin.

"Good," he's babbling, mindless, clenching his thighs tighter, riding Sui Zhou through every twitch and throb, "good, you're so good for me, aren't you? Doing as you're told." He grapples for his hip, his thigh, too rough, having forgotten to be gentle, and Sui Zhou groans out low, slap shock-hot. He bares the grit of his teeth to Tang Fan's nape, breath flaring out harsh on his exhale as he slides free.

He does not take long, whenever he can— take, at all, and never— thoroughly. Tang Fan had thought it— had thought it a lot of things, once, as he does when anything outlies the defines of his categorical determinations, his experiences and estimations. But the answer had been simpler than his head, for a time, had allowed him to admit: the make and mould of Sui Zhou needs less of his understanding than it does his acceptance.

Sui Zhou has never once left him without, anyway. Tang Fan suspects Sui Zhou is truly incapable of it; that he pours the being of his love whole into anyone who should feel so blessed to welcome it. For the fewest things he cannot give, they've found their iterations of compensations: Sui Zhou opening him up on his fingers and tongue; fucking him full with his fist; working him to whimpering with pillared jade toys and on polished bronze cocks— and more yet to come, surely, as Tang Fan dreams of and devises them. How can he want for something he does not have when its lack leaves no absence?

There is a scarcity of patience and preparation both for any of that, here, tonight, but that's all right. Tang Fan has no want for more when Sui Zhou is need enough.

Sui Zhou noses at the shell of his ear, breath hot through the tangle of his hair, and then his fingers are tracing the underside of his cock, mapping it from root to tip, smearing his precome, and Tang Fan realises very suddenly that Sui Zhou has moved out from beneath and around him, reshifting; that he has been speaking. That Tang Fan has gone somewhere too deep into the thicket of his head and now he's being led back out from it.

"What do you need?" Sui Zhou murmurs against him, with an untroubled air of again behind it.

"Just you," Tang Fan gasps, still a little staggered, head light. He rocks his hips, pushing himself into Sui Zhou's loose hand, as best as he can manage it. "Just— here. This."

Sui Zhou closes his hand around him properly and strokes him once; a dry, tight slide, for all Tang Fan is so wet for him. Tang Fan's breath hisses out of him, tapering sweetly. "Brute," he protests without heat. "You promised me." Sui Zhou did no such thing, and yet he did, didn't he, by the very way of being here. "Please."

Sui Zhou releases him, reaching lower, the blunt brunt of his hand pushing between Tang Fan's plush spend-spoiled thighs. He swipes the flat of his palm over his skin, wetting his hand, then grips his cock again, fingers circling with an obscene squelch of wet sound. His next stroke is slicked easy and shudder-smooth, and Tang Fan gasps with the arc of his body as he squirms up into it, toes curling.

He's close, but he wants to be closer, wants to have this go quickly, before the filth of his use truly starts to set in on him. Sui Zhou is stripping his cock with the rush-handed proficiency that he likes, that he needs, but it's not— quite—

Tang Fan worries his lip between his teeth, his breath punched out as he fumbles a hand down into his lap. He pushes past where their hands tangle, turning his face to mouth, blind, at the fan of his hair trapped under his cheek, when his fingers curve past his balls. Tears prick at the corners of his eyes as he cups himself, kneading down, pushing his hand up tight between the crux of his legs. It's too much, at once and at all, and he whimpers out, half gagged by his hair.

Sui Zhou's pace barely stutters, but Tang Fan feels him move impossibly closer, out from behind his daze, beyond the strange distance his peaking pleasure is setting him apart from all the rest of his body, this place. He's too broad for the lines of his own borders; but just narrow enough, still, to be caught in the clutch of Sui Zhou's, kept checked by his hands, his mouth, the beat of his heart, his breath.

"I am," Tang Fan croaks, tongue so thick with urgency it's sticking behind his teeth, "I am—"

"I know," Sui Zhou whispers, coarse and near and far and everywhere. His grip goes so tight Tang Fan chokes on it. "I know."

It hits him at once, too much of a brute-force to brace against, a bear-down of a breaking. Tang Fan shudders with a wrung-out whimper and comes and comes and comes, drawing up tight to fall spent-loose. His eyes close for him as his hand slips slack out from within the cradle of his lap. He manages to tuck his face to the bedroll with the last of whatever is left in him to give, in need of a moment to reprieve. He is not sure how long that moment lasts, only that Sui Zhou is there in steady constant, the line of him at his back firm, his hand stroking his cock through it. It drags and drags and then it unfolds wide, laid bare, and Tang Fan sucks in a breath that scarcely sticks its swallow.

"Tang Fan," Sui Zhou's whisper grazes his too-hot nape. Tang Fan makes a strangled noise in acknowledgement. Sui Zhou knows better than to expect more from him.

Sui Zhou lets him go just before it starts to truly hurt, that touch of him, the pressure of his grip around his sensitive, softening cock. He draws his hand away to turn him over at the hip, and Tang Fan goes with the flow of it onto his back, tension unwinding into a heady, fuck-drunk satisfaction. Their covers have lifted again, with Sui Zhou, but if the air is cold, Tang Fan can't feel it. He's too sweaty; sticky; fever-warm. They are another day from a proper bath, at best. He will regret this, in some shape or shade or another, for the state of that, but it will come for him later.

Tang Fan takes another breath, deeper, then two, before he blinks, blearily, up at the bow of Sui Zhou overhead. He parts his knees wider around him with a sigh at the first shivery brush of Sui Zhou's hand back between his thighs as he cleans and rights him.

"Will you eat, now?" he hears Sui Zhou ask, if barely. It's quiet from his mouth; quieter in his ears. Tang Fan has to open his eyes again, finding they have drifted shut between one breath and the next; lulled by the rhythmic stroke of Sui Zhou's hand, the ghost of fabric being drawn up his legs, set over his belly. The fire at Sui Zhou's back casts his face into shadow, but even that cannot serrate the lines of the fond softness his features have fallen to.

Tang Fan feels so full, just to look at him. He is bursting back to empty, overflowed. Sometimes he truly does wonder how his heart takes it; but then, he imagines it is much the same wonder for Sui Zhou, too. Something that would not be survivable, endured in the sharing.

"Of course," is how Tang Fan replies, because to say anything else in this moment would be to say too much, even for them as they are. And then, "You've starved me," he whines, maudlin. "I'm wasting."

Despite his sincere severity, however, Tang Fan draws Sui Zhou down into a kiss that lingers, and gives him more than a time in trying to unwrap himself from the wind of his arms around his neck. The fire needs stoking back from its low burn by the time they part, and that does then delay the meal enough for the threat of Tang Fan's starvation to be cusping on acutely actualised. But, as in all things, the cost of the wait is more than worth it for the cause of its while.