Sui Zhou stirs to the harried paw of hands on his blanket, and to Tang Fan's hoarse voice hissing his name with rapid fervour. Again, then again, and again,

again, again, again—

It takes him a moment to convince himself that the Tang Fan knelt at his bed is not the will of another dream, overlayered. That would not be so strange an occurrence for Sui Zhou, least of all of late. Tang Fan comes to him in the night in his many iterations; most do not remain beyond morning, if they ever live to stay that long at all.

Just as it is apt for Sui Zhou to invite him, he has grown adept at telling what it is that he is inviting. This Tang Fan is real, tonight, and so Sui Zhou goes with him all the way into waking.

"What do you need?" he asks before he even has his elbows beneath him, voice still as thick with sleep as his body holds heavy. It takes some moments to blink the curtaining fog from his eyes; more to then focus his gaze in the settled dark.

"You must not become angry with me for asking," is how Tang Fan starts. Sui Zhou is alert at once, thrust to an anxious cusp as though he's been doused.

"And you can refuse me," Tang Fan continues, unimpeded, rambling. "And I will— that will be the end of it, I'll not speak of it again."

"Tang Fan," Sui Zhou interrupts, stumbling. "Tang Fan." You can ask for anything, he does not say, even in weakness, not because it would be a lie but because he is too scared, still, always, of how true it is. "Tell me what you need," is what he manages.

"I need you to bind me down," is his too-quick answer. "And— and menace me. While I cannot fight you away."

"I—" Sui Zhou starts, only to then stop again.

"Sorry," Tang Fan is already saying, frazzled, before Sui Zhou is even given his fair chance to breathe, react, understand. His fingers fumble through his hair as he combs it free of his face, the whole line of his frame alive with desperate, nervous tension. "The— even just the binding," he compromises. "That may be enough."

Sui Zhou has to shift his weight; arch to abate the ache stiffening in his spine. He lowers his gaze from Tang Fan's face as he does, demurring as if he is courting something wounded, flighty. "Is that," he starts to say, stupidly unthinking, before he manages to again stop himself. All too late. It is not his question to ask. It is not his knowledge to know.

"No," says Tang Fan quickly, "no, he never—" because of course Tang Fan knows what he meant, in all implication. Sui Zhou is a fool; it was a cruel ask that should have never come as far as a consideration checked in his head. "He only ever threatened," Tang Fan yet clarifies, painstaking. "And not even so directly." And then, "I have heard worse," he admits, "and, and certainly— feared it, more, than I, than, here." He takes a breath; Sui Zhou feels as captive as he is captivated by it. "But I— I cannot stop thinking about it. It will not leave my head. And I think if I— if I can only… give it some form, I can. I can be done with it."

It is here that Sui Zhou realises just how Tang Fan is stilling, his shoulders squared, hands fisted at his sides. Like he, too, is circling something cagey, frightened. Sui Zhou must stop himself, again, from speaking; must move his thoughts from what he can't do, for to say that he can't to this would be all too telling. "I will not be cruel," is what he can settle on, careful, yet firm. "I will not denigrate you."

"Yes, yes, of course," Tang Fan says, flippant in the way he becomes when he is not entirely listening, but is instead acting more on what he would have liked to have heard. "That is, that is good. That is all right." He takes a reflective pause, if but for barely a second. "I only ask," he adds, "that you don't treat me… kindly."

It is a scholar's semanticism, but Sui Zhou believes he grasps at least the shape of its sentiment. "All right," he agrees.

"Tonight?" Tang Fan presses at once, casting wide and stretching thin for yet more ground. "Would you… now?"

"Tang Fan." It is feeble, directionless protest.

"Sui Zhou," Tang Fan rejoins. "I promise, I promise you I am ready, I, but I will— I will wait. I can wait."

He cannot. They both know that. "Will you sleep," Sui Zhou entreats. "After."

Tang Fan's mouth crooks around a face-splitting smile. "Sui Zhou," he titters, "Sui Zhou, I, is that all you— yes." He releases the short breath he takes, the lean line of him relaxing with it. Smalling as if in retreat. "I will… I will try. This will help, with that trying."

"All right," Sui Zhou reconcedes. What else can he do with and for Tang Fan but this? He'll not further interrogate the whys of it.

Tang Fan encroaches, and so Sui Zhou rises, as if in some mockable tandem. He unthreads himself from the bedding that Tang Fan's hands then smooth over, his body sinking in to follow. Sui Zhou sees the dart of his tongue over the soft pink swell of his bottom lip as he finds the embering warmth from Sui Zhou's body, now departed.

"Where do you want to be?" Sui Zhou asks him, as much out of necessity as for distraction. "What do you have in mind?" The picture Tang Fan paints in his bed at this late hour, lain out on his side and looking up at Sui Zhou with such an irreconcilable ease— it is as though Sui Zhou has simply slipped the snare of his embrace in some fit of sleeplessness. It is all too full a thing. There is no room inside of him that can be spared for it.

"I do not know. I did not really… ah, picture it, as far as this." Tang Fan's laugh is a haunting thing. Breathless and giddy, as if they truly both are— as if this is again something else entirely between them. Sui Zhou wishes it was. He has never before felt so hopefully convinced as to its impossibility.

But this is what he has— no anything but nor lesser torment. And he is suffering no delusion as to his complicity in it; the unreticence of his submission. So, "Lay down," Sui Zhou says, "with your face to the bed." He reaches out to touch a hand to Tang Fan's nape, punctuating, and must stifle the flinch in his fingers when Tang Fan's answering shiver feeds back up through them. "Lift your hips, until your knees come beneath you, then reach for your ankles." Detached instruction comes easily to him. He barely even has to hear it.

Tang Fan does as he's told, down to the very specificity of movement; more obedient, surely, than he's ever actually been. Gasping out, soft, as he is stretched so slowly to straining. There is no way that Sui Zhou can put him that will not pull at the tenderness of his back, where flesh is still yet raw and weeping; reknitting like a pruned vine clambering a window's lattices. But he can heed it, and— it is healing well, at least. Sui Zhou has checked. As much as could and able while keeping distance; conscious of and holding in rein his own immensity. Aware that the boundlessness of his concern might only serve to make Tang Fan feel recaged.

There is nothing here, really, to bind him with. Sui Zhou could leave his bed to find it, but he suspects this would shatter what Tang Fan is building in his head. Make real what he is avoiding in his head; actualise Sui Zhou to him as more than abstract object. So he reaches for the ties of his shirt, and pushes through his moment's hesitation, when Tang Fan whines out in recognition, to begin undoing it.

The cotton is misfitted for this application, but it twists from its shape and set in his hands like a man's head would from his neck. Once sufficiently malformed to cord, Sui Zhou reaches to one of Tang Fan's wrists, and secures it to his ankle. The pads of his fingers taste over the skittering pulse beneath his skin, the jump that ricochets down his arm at the jerk of his shoulder, instinctual. It will be enough to hobble him, at least for this purpose.

"Is that too much?" he asks then, next, because it matters.

"No," says Tang Fan, as expected. But then, "It's, it's only—" He sucks in a breath. "I did say, about treating me kindly…" he remarks, trailing. Rueful, perhaps, or wry.

"We have not started," Sui Zhou says. He does not stop himself to think of how Tang Fan apparently considers this to be kindness. Sui Zhou would not even so much as dare to call it gentle. It is simply— courtesy, in the most punctual, perfunctory of senses. Civility at its very basest.

"Ah. We haven't," Tang Fan agrees slowly. Considering it. "Do not be furious with me for this," he ventures next. Still so conscious of Sui Zhou's perceived and presumed feelings in a way that can only hurt him abjectly. "But I did— I have… prepared. So that you can, if that is how far you wish to go, you do not have to…"

His tremor punctuates it, the shame he must feel in speaking it aloud. An admittance to desire and intent in the way even the sinking of his oil-slick fingers into his hole may have kept him separate from. Sui Zhou can imagine it. He must not allow himself to.

"Is that what you want?" Sui Zhou asks tightly. He feels so full of the awareness of his hand on Tang Fan's throat — the rigidity of his locked-loose grip, the shake rattling in his fingers — that he cannot possibly take anything else.

Tang Fan's breath leaves him in a rush, punched out through Sui Zhou's steepled palm. "Yes," he whispers, hoarse. "Yes. Please."

Sui Zhou thinks, surely, this is portent itself, heralding. A Heavens' trial sent to test him. Destined to failure. He is no more damned from here than he was when Tang Fan first crept into his room with purpose, the inevitable end to what of Sui Zhou's infected infatuation saw him let Tang Fan into his house those years ago; his life; the rest. Now Sui Zhou's very bane has poisoned Tang Fan's blood to brack, too, as intended.

Sui Zhou pushes his skirts aside. The sound Tang Fan makes, as he rips at his trousers until the seam tears— it is not so much noise as it is an absence of it. Even bent like this, as they are, Sui Zhou cannot miss the minutiae of Tang Fan's expression; eyes flown wide, mouth held open, throat working frantic. Frozen on the cusp of something agonised.

Sui Zhou is so hard. He is so hard, he cannot remember the last time his cock even— no. No, he remembers. He remembers: Tang Fan's throat under his hand, Tang Fan's stilled chest, Tang Fan's blood weeping wet through his palmed compress. Dream, real, intangible, indistinguishable— arraying instances, all blurred. Strung together and paired whole by the hurt that sickens Sui Zhou so much he stirs. Tang Fan is scared helpless beneath him and that's the tinder that has finally lit the fire in the hollow pit of his gut, roused his stagnant blood to roil. Of course. Of course.

He takes himself in hand. It barely steadies; the head of his cock snubs over the frayed seam before it pushes in and catches hot on his rim, lingering in spite of intention. But Sui Zhou need not prolong it beyond that— and doesn't. He fucks into Tang Fan without gentleness, and Tang Fan's body opens to him like any other bend to pressure; break to force. He makes but one sharp sound, just as Sui Zhou borders on drawing to hilt, and Sui Zhou almost stops. Only almost.

It is too dry and precise and driving to be mistakable for anything but a taking. Crude, inconsiderate. Yet Tang Fan has not said stop, and so Sui Zhou does not have to contend with more than this immediate, narrow tasking. He need not field confrontation with what stop, here, could even mean, and how he himself would meet with it.

It is difficult not to look at Tang Fan, but all too easy not to see him. Sui Zhou's body moves more than he moves it. Artless short pistoning; rote and repetition. There is the scuff of limbs over sheets, the slip and slap of sweaty skin. Scratching nails and clacking teeth, the click of tongues around haggled swallows. The twitching vice of Tang Fan's body around him is as pleasurable as anyone else hot and tight and neglectably willing. The defeaning soar of Sui Zhou's blood through his head is dazing him.

Tang Fan's breaths grow sticky, first, then wet. Finally, the ages crest, and they limp into hiccuped little sobs. But even these all become part of this rhythm, jarred out of him with every bludgeoning thrust only to bleed out and blur. Then. Then—

"Stop," Tang Fan's plead crawls out of him, feebled but shrilling, "stop, I'm—" and Sui Zhou comes, pushed deep and wrung gasping. Tang Fan arches with a realised wail, his freed hand twisting uselessly in the sheets that have been rent from the bed overhead, caught fast between his animal bolt for freedom and Sui Zhou's controlled grip at his hips, keeping him in.

There is no reason for it. He heard him, and he can't— they must each know it. Sui Zhou kneels down, half-soft cock slipping free, and the moment there is that space between their bodies, Tang Fan throws himself over onto his back. He kicks his knees to his chest, fingers twisting at his bound ankle, and Sui Zhou does not— he does nothing.

"Sui Zhou," Tang Fan chokes out, "Sui Zhou," and if there is more to it, Sui Zhou does not hear him. His head feels submerged underwater — all breath snuffed from his lungs, heavying his limbs. Nerves numbing with drowsy suffocation. His hands move to Tang Fan's ankle, and between each of their listless tugging, the shirt finally slackens enough that Tang Fan can twist his wrist free. Releveraged, he lunges upright, coltish, and Sui Zhou— Sui Zhou. He does not know what he should do, he does not know what will come. His body defers to reflex, bracing for a deserved blow. He is at least good at that. The thing that he has pulled around himself to make it through horror only to deliver it is good at that.

Nothing so mighty nor justified follows. Tang Fan has more awful choices available to him, and so he seems fit to make them, instead. He brings his freed hands between them, allowing them to fall to rest at Sui Zhou's hips. There, his flitting fingers curl in the waist of his trousers, and draw them up again, returning to him some now-undeserved dignity. Sui Zhou feels as if his heart has clambered up the ladder of his ribs, and now his throat is trying to close around it.

Something within him snaps with it all, giving way. "I'm sorry," he says, "that I frightened you." Distant to himself; severed and stilting. He is so deeply sorry for more than that, but at least admitting what he has is surmountable. To try and list how and what for in all the rest would be in defiance of man's limits.

He can't bring himself to lift his gaze to Tang Fan's face, even if he could hope to see it clearly. But he doesn't need to — he knows every shade of his vision enough to picture the fix of his features from his punched-out breath, the judder of his fingers. He must be— Sui Zhou feels hysterical, prowling around his urge to see to him, as if that remains permitted.

"I'm frightened for you," Tang Fan berates, choked up around something unreadable, immense. He swallows, and his hold on Sui Zhou smoothes out, but stays. "Oh, Sui Zhou," he laments, temper melting from pricking ice to tepid water. It strikes out at Sui Zhou like a slap, for its gentling. "You foolish man," Tang Fan persists, "you— frustration. Why did you ever agree if you could not…? Why do you always give me everything, even when you, you do not have it?"

It is acute; cutting. Begetting understanding in a way that Sui Zhou has not wanted to be known. He does not answer. He has no answer — at least not one that Tang Fan can have, not even for the sake of comfort or closure. And so they simply sit together for a time as they are, gathered close and reluctant to part, in their terrible and tender quiet.