Tang Fan so rarely takes visitors who mean to be entertained by only his company. So, when one does come to call while the night is cusping from young, even though politer notice is foregone, Sui Zhou obliges it. There is no hardship.

He clears the table of dinner; finds the wine Tang Fan is fluttering around after to ameliorate his tarry in the kitchen. He slows in his chores and preoccupies Dong'er with enough bickering and busywork to keep her away from her Tang da-ge's room and its barred door. And slowly, slowly, inexorable, she and the whole capital around their little home settle in for sleep, leaving the hour to creep into a crawl.

If Sui Zhou strayed close, if he strained to listen past the scuff of his own boots to the ground and the lap of the breeze through the courtyards, he might hear any sound there is to have held by Tang Fan's walls. But he does not. There are lights to douse; small tasks that speak to his house's life that he can set to their sisyphean rights.

At san geng, Lu-daren emerges. Sui Zhou shortly joins him in escort, as any mannered host would. Conversation is lacking for the walk, by Sui Zhou's accord, but their parting at the gate is warm. Sui Zhou has always found the magistrate pleasant enough, as far as an opinion formed, but he has little attention that he wishes to spare him tonight. Gladly, there is an apparent mutuality in that understanding — Sui Zhou is not kept in any pleasantries for long.

He takes his time back to the innermost courtyard, allowing for some causal anticipation to build, as it will and does. It's a lazy heat stirring in his belly; a shiver tightening around his throat; tiredness shrugging its way from his frame like a shed cloak. Tang Fan's door has been left pushed open, a brace just wide enough for a man to slip his way through. Sui Zhou's breath catches at this threshold, for but a moment, the old making itself new again to coddle his heart as it stumbles.

Then, "Do you mean to make me catch cold?" Tang Fan calls, only loud enough to be heard, and Sui Zhou, unhesitantly dutiful, crosses over.

He looks to Tang Fan first, as he does in any room he enters. While Tang Fan's eyes do not meet his own, Sui Zhou does find himself in the regard of his attention. He's done little to compose himself where he's lounged on his bed, save pulling a loosed robe over his shoulders to semble modesty. An exerted sweat damps his temples, its vinous blush mulling his cheeks; his throat; lower still.

Sui Zhou expected nothing less. Few things remain hidden between them, after all, for their years together, and none of them are secrets kept. "I'll draw the bath," he says.

"There's no such need." Tang Fan laughs at him softly, humoured. "Come here," he beckons, "the basin will do."

Sui Zhou toes off his boots, then turns to Tang Fan's desk, where the copper basin sits as it usually does — ledged ever-precariously astride scattered papers, a damp cloth hung over its lip. No number of clumsy mishaps have yet convinced Tang Fan to choose a better place for it, and Sui Zhou has long resigned himself to the fate of fielding occasional complaints about sopping drafts. The surface of the water is streaked, filmy; still suitingly warm to the test of his fingers. Sui Zhou hefts it into his hands, careful, and halts his steps so as not to have the water splash out over his feet and onto the floor.

The arch of Tang Fan's brow is impatient; the drawn bow of his mouth fond. "Where has your hurry gone?" he chides, playful.

"The same distant place as yours," Sui Zhou answers. He lowers the basin to the floor beside Tang Fan's bed, then kneels to follow it, the motions easy; long-practised.

"Don't tease," says Tang Fan. "There was much for us to talk about." He neither belabours nor elaborates this point, however, instead finding more pertinent purpose in delicately poising his hand between them. Sui Zhou obediently takes it at the wrist, without wait or need for prompting, while he reaches unseeingly to wring the cloth of straggling water.

Tang Fan's hands are each clean, but Sui Zhou takes his time with them as one would prayer, gently stroking over each of his long fingers, from the pearls of his knuckles to the pink scales of his nails. The silence that roosts between them to lay its roots is not a disquieting one; anything but.

Over the years and across the provinces, they have explored together every li of what there is to offer in this between them. Sui Zhou has joined uncounted beds to feel the arch of Tang Fan's body against his and another's, to be himself ensconced by pleasure. He has taken witness of Tang Fan laying with others and fucked into the furl of his palm to the ways worship makes his body fall open. He still does, on occasion; both or either. But it is this that serves best to their satisfactions — speaking not at all on these trysts, when Tang Fan has them, but indolently indulging their illicit after.

Tang Fan's gaze on him is a pointed thing; heady as the beat of a crop to the back, as promissory as the rustle of a sleeve in the swing. Sui Zhou's tongue feels fat in his mouth with foretaste, throat clicking when he tries to swallow to whet the heat of his hunger. Tang Fan laughs at the sound of it; again when Sui Zhou's shiver juts the brush of the cloth over his cheek, lashes fluttering.

"What does it take, Daren," Tang Fan rasps, haught, "to tempt a man such as you between my legs? Must I beg?"

"Less than that," Sui Zhou assuages, rising to stand.

"An honest man to a price," Tang Fan observes, smug with a victor's satisfaction. "Or an easy one." He so often tends to speak like one of the protagonists of a torrid spring book when he's nerved with vulnerable want. Sui Zhou adores him. "Show me, then," Tang Fan tells him.

So Sui Zhou does. It takes nothing — they have moved together like this such innumerable times that Sui Zhou could close his eyes and give in to the instinct of his body utterly blind. Tang Fan arches up onto his hands and knees, making his room for him between his thighs. His cock is soft, spent; his hole left soft and open from use, wet with spend. Sui Zhou parts him all the wider with his hands just to spur his startled gasp, then strokes the cloth gently across his cleft.

"Be gentle with me," he's cautioned pithily.

Sui Zhou is, will be, knows nothing else. "Bear down," he tells him, touch pressing in tight, the pad of his thumb circling his perineum.

"I don't," Tang Fan starts, and stops, and then, "I don't have more to give you," he says, trembling.

"You do," Sui Zhou reminds him. He always does; always will. By now, he's long since learned it.

"Brute," Tang Fan complains. But Sui Zhou hears the pluck of his nails raking at the sheets, sees the ripple and tense of his thighs as his hole twitches. When he drips, Sui Zhou is there to follow the strand of it with his cloth-clad fingers until there is nowhere else for them to sink but in, in, in. Tang Fan tightens up so strictly around the bluntness and the breach, burning as if to keep him, breath panting free.

"What do you need of me?" Sui Zhou asks him now, at last, only for the want of hearing it. Already he is leaning over to cover him, led in by the way Tang Fan cranes to fit them apiece as they belong, head turning to catch his lips in a clumsy kiss.

"A moment," is all it is, spoken in twine with their breath, their heartbeats. "Ah— a moment." Of course he can have it.