Tang Fan has only grown wilder for and weaker to Sui Zhou in the years since they first met, when he made a home of this house and then the very man within it.

And this is the thing: Kuan-hung's not busy, and he's sure enough to think that they both know it without his saying so. But he gives a little rolling shrug of his shoulders, anyway, with his limited range of motion, and answers, "I'm not," because he can. And, "Can't you take care of yourself?"

Tang Fan is stuck on a scene for one of his spring books. He enlists Sui Zhou to help him with some of the logistics.

Sometimes Tang Fan does indeed forget that he is not, in fact, the only learned man under their shared roof.

He is not in his body. He is not of his body at all.

The truth is that it can be difficult, for Sui Zhou, to tell where his lines are drawn until they are broken through. His body is territory once-left, now returned-to, and Tang Fan is not ignorant to the fact that Sui Zhou has come back to make it home for his sake far more than his own.