folded clouds above vast waters

Tang Fan will think, come later reminder, that he can be forgiven for the distraction that had left him prone to his particular predicament.

He is susceptible to long jaunts into his own self-preoccupation at the very best of times, as is needless to say, but waiting brings out the worst of his whiling. Sui Zhou has been gone for over two months, now, foraying northward on an undertaking both so delicate in its balance and secretive in its service that Tang Fan has heard nothing from him that has not been in a nondescript note ferried forward by Xue Ling. But he is due home, tonight, at last, if the roads have been good to him, and Tang Fan will be here to greet him.

What Tang Fan had intended to transpire as greeting Sui Zhou has, admittedly, shifted as the night has progressed. He had envisioned some ideal encounter, but the romantic appeal of Sui Zhou finding him in his bed, wet and open, ready for him to slide into— well. It had waxed in the clarity of some orgasms, then waned slowly in the half-hour that had followed. And then Tang Fan had set about wiping himself down before the oil and spend stuck too fast to his skin, pulled on one of Sui Zhou's robes over himself, and sat down at the desk he had made Xue Ling drag into the zhengfang not a week out from Sui Zhou's departure. Sui Zhou disliked Tang Fan picking about his study, and so the temporary rearrangement of his own room into Sui Zhou's had been his compromise.

It is so late in the night that Tang Fan would have already conceded his wait as for naught, were he keeping track and time of it — amidst as he is all the litter of his crumpled up draft pages and the jars of wine he drained to chase dinner — when Sui Zhou finally trudges in from the dark. Looking all the part played of the weary traveller carried about on the winds, he takes in the desk, and then Tang Fan, in turn, his smile and his surprise pulling softly at the edges of his drawn face.

"I have not bathed," he warns, voice a disused scratch, as Tang Fan starts to clamber to his feet to meet him.

"Never mind that," Tang Fan dismisses with a flapping hand, knocked somewhat breathless by his own hastened scramble. "Never mind that, and come here."

Sui Zhou does, as told, hands folding in against Tang Fan's hips to steady him as he stumbles through the last leg of his trip. "Sorry," he says, seemingly impelled, as Tang Fan winds them ever closer together, face falling to rest in the crook of his neck.

"Don't be," Tang Fan fusses, nuzzling in tighter, the small part of him that has been upended over the passing weeks righting itself, settling with the arrival to the familiar. The pulse in Sui Zhou's throat thrumming against his cheek, the beat of his heart where they are pressed together, his scent thick in his nose. The heft of his hands upon him, the heat of his body, radiating. This is what has been gone from his days, and he has missed it terribly. Sui Zhou could be apologising for anything— that he has been gone, that he is late in his return, that he reeks of the road. Tang Fan will hear not a word of it further.

"Have you been well?" Sui Zhou asks gently, even though he must well know the answer. One of his hands drifts from Tang Fan's hip to smooth over his side, dragging, with his touch, the silken soft slip of his underrobe up after the trail of his fingers.

"Miserably," says Tang Fan, "you know that."

"I can hope otherwise," says Sui Zhou, wry.

"Waste not the time," Tang Fan chastises. "Kiss me."

Sui Zhou does, though he takes his good time to get there. A thirsting man who would sooner see water dry on his lips than lick out and drink it. Just as his complaint has risen to his tongue does Sui Zhou finally act, tasting it and Tang Fan's gasp as one as he touches their mouths together. Chaste; dry. Tang Fan is at once appeased, and not at all embarrassed at his easiness.

"Is that all?" Tang Fan asks, lips shaping it to the corner of his mouth when they part. The smell of some bland pack ration dinner is stale on Sui Zhou's breath, which has no bearing on Tang Fan's desire to remain this close to him. "A kiss for your lonely wife, who kept your empty house?"

It is, perhaps, an exaggerated account of the facts — Tang Fan never lives a day that is to himself, in their house or out of it — but in the emotional respects it is more than accurate. He feels Sui Zhou's distance in the very expectation of his presence; the spectre of his constant. A brand and a blessing on the whole of his life.

"I've marched for days," says Sui Zhou, his wandering hand circling back to his hip. It does not cut like a refusal, though, but curls like a reminder. As though Tang Fan could forget, or would care for any point it makes.

"So you would leave me waiting another night? The day next?" Tang Fan accuses. When he leans away to take in Sui Zhou's face, the care he has taken to set his jaw and thin his mouth does not carry to his eyes, black with heat, glinting in the candlelight.

"No," says Sui Zhou, "I would not."

Tang Fan drifts his hand between them with purpose, pointed, feeling the flex in Sui Zhou's jugular when he swallows. "Have you forgotten that you're mine to do with as I like?" he murmurs, working down Sui Zhou's collar to press the pad of his fingertip into the notch of his clavicle. A prodding pressure, somewhere tender; discomfort flickers over Sui Zhou's features, his nostrils flaring around his stuttered exhale. Tang Fan can already feel sweat beading at his nape, the heady stagger of his heartbeat.

"No," says Sui Zhou, "I have not," thick rumble catching, now, between the consonants. He swallows again, and Tang Fan feels as he sees the taut, hampered struggle of it.

"When I so like it?" Tang Fan prompts.

"Yes." Again, again, Sui Zhou swallows. His mouth must be so dry. "When you so like it," he repeats.

"Good," Tang Fan praises, and so relents. He smoothes his hand back up to cradle Sui Zhou's jaw, granting him a dismissive pat on his cheek. "How good. Go on, then." He steps back, the ripple of Sui Zhou's robes around his ankles doing little to hide the anticipation wobbling his legs. "Your cock is where you left it."

That allows for something in the encroach of Sui Zhou's blatant arousal to blunt, though not abate. The noise from his throat is abortive, but then, "And where would that be?" he asks, amusement laid plain.

"Don't tease," Tang Fan huffs, just as foolish with fondness. He'll let him have his face, of course. Sui Zhou's easy compliance is a joy only for the spine and snark with which he feels comfortable testing Tang Fan's command. "How short is your memory?" He reaches for the ties at his waist, watching Sui Zhou's gaze track the trail of his touch.

"How long was our parting?" is Sui Zhou's retort as he weaves through Tang Fan's rearrange of his room to his dresser. Just where he left it, indeed. And a better place for it to be now kept, rather than some drawer deep in his study, its fetching through yet another door and requisite more time wasted. Proof of the persuasion in Tang Fan's complaints, fruited in this capitulation to his impatience.

Not that it lacks benefits for its concessor. Tang Fan had seized on this convenience the very dayrise Sui Zhou left, in fact, belting the harness around his clothed hips and sinking onto his cock to warm it until threatened exhaustion bled into the risk of lateness. All for little ask of Sui Zhou to be more than close and gentle.

Tang Fan snorts in lieu of trying to turn a phrase for any of his most sincere sentiments, felt, unfathomable, in this moment. He unwraps himself from Sui Zhou's robe, letting it slink to his ankles, slow, for the periphery of Sui Zhou's audience. Then, he toes free of its coil and takes himself at stride to the bed, dropping himself onto it at a languid sprawl. Beyond the half-drawn curtain, he can hear the scrape of the wooden drawers; the rummage of Sui Zhou's hands through clutter of less import. "Let me see you," Tang Fan says, propping his head up on his hand, his hip cocked for enticement.

Sui Zhou does. He is naked for Tang Fan when he circles back around the bed, harness belted snug in place, bronze cock slotted into its ring at his groin. The lazy toy of his fingers over his tip belies the very efficiency with which he stripped; how his shaft is already greased, the palm that cradles it glistening.

Tang Fan takes him in. He is allowed this; both the indulgence and his indiscretion with it. Sui Zhou, on appraisal, is as much the same as he is changed, if only more momentarily than anything set; an unamounting progress. He's been leaned and weathered by his journey, dark hair thick and unkempt across the span of his chest, down his shallowed belly, between his tautened legs. The skin of his face and hands are sunned, the lines around his eyes and mouth furrowed. The weapon of his body, all worn in the service of its dutiful overuse. But he will be seen to. Sui Zhou knows his limits, and when greater needs necessitate their taxing — Tang Fan is but a well he can draw and mend from when they are so exceeded.

Sui Zhou is watching him, too. Having his fill, as Tang Fan has his. A picture painted upon the canvas of the real, a feast and a vision of Tang Fan that he himself can only taste and glimpse. But Tang Fan does not have to wonder as to his impression, with Sui Zhou, like he might a mirror or a whisper. He does not have to worry he has measured up short and wanting in some unstated estimation.

He is unsurprised when he at last lifts his chin and finds Sui Zhou's gaze already there to meet. The quirked loft of his brow could be asking a nervous question, in another place and time — Is this to your liking? — but Sui Zhou's disposition is warmed, duly confident.

"You still do," is Tang Fan's decree. The consideration in his chosen words, the deliberateness with which he moves, from the slight part of his thighs to the flex of his feet in the sheets, body half-turning onto its back, already, presupposing what will follow— it pierces the aura of attempted casualness. But this, too, is fantasy, to all at once be undaunted by magnitude and undone by minutiae. The eroticism of mystique in complement with the intimacy of mastery.

"Good," says Sui Zhou. His hand moves over his cock, just slightly; a thoughtless flutter in his fingers, a twist of his wrist. Enough to whet Tang Fan's attention keen.

Tang Fan moves, too, though with greater pith to his own provocation. He walks his fingers down where his waist slopes into his spine, reaching behind himself, slow for the sake of Sui Zhou's audience. He presses between his cleft, then traces a fingertip over his hole. He leaves no secret as to what he is doing, not with the way his shoulder rocks with the stroke, hips hitching with his shudder.

"I am still open enough for you," says Tang Fan, his breath stuttering. It is worth the embarrassment to sound so winded when it earns the satisfaction of seeing the slack part of Sui Zhou's reddening mouth, the dart of his tongue over his bottom lip. "Ah, having to keep myself, so—" He stalls, touch turning coarse, his shallowing breath falling into tune with Sui Zhou's. Their one-note heartbeats, filling the room. "Just so you'll have as warm a wife as a bed to come home to. The things I do…"

"This undeserving husband squanders his good fortune," says Sui Zhou, with adequate contrition. Still just as well trained as when Tang Fan last tried him.

"Repent, then." Tang Fan settles flat onto his back with a sigh. "Come here. Console me."

Sui Zhou does not need to be told to hurry— or, rather, he is in a rush enough of his own accord that Tang Fan finds himself joined in the bed before he can spare another thought to it. Sui Zhou's strong arms bracket his head as his cock snubs up his mound, matting the hair there with whatever salve he's slicked himself with to ease his way. Tang Fan throws his arms around his neck, giving an inelegant buck of his hips until he manages to squirm his way into Sui Zhou's lap.

"Anywhere," Tang Fan instructs, half-distracted by the wrangling of his own legs to hem Sui Zhou more closely in. "You can— ah, anywhere. I'll take you."

Sui Zhou arches, his breath gusting out against Tang Fan's lips as their noses bump together. At the meeting of their bodies, Tang Fan feels every fumble of his angling, the nudge and grind of his shaft as it drags down his slit, then lower still, until its flared head is teasing at his rim. Yes, he thinks, or There, some assent he need not speak when Sui Zhou is already acting on it, catching his mouth in a kiss that is all glancing teeth and wet spit as he starts to sink in and in and in to him.

"Oh," Tang Fan's murmur strains out between the crush of their mouths. "Oh, there you are. Where am I to put you all, mm?"

Sui Zhou's groan is thick, clotted. His cock is such a big thing, and he does like when Tang Fan wields that over him as though it is a fault to be criticised. Not that Tang Fan does not find occasion to toy with him as though it is small, too — just as often asking if Sui Zhou has begun to enter him even as he is being split open. Still, if he had to pick a vice, it would be the derision of Sui Zhou for the embarrassing fate of having such an obscenely worthless tool, too large to fuck.

Tang Fan turns his head, dragging his kiss-swollen lips over the blade of Sui Zhou's jaw. "Ah," he pants, "you did miss me, didn't you." Sui Zhou's pace stutters, hips driving up, and, "Oh— there," Tang Fan spurs him on, face dipping to his neck. "That's good."

Sui Zhou is in no need of the direction. He has not forgotten how they best move together, how Tang Fan most likes him in any one ephermeral moment. Tang Fan crowds himself in lower, cramped against his body, so that he can nuzzle in under Sui Zhou's arm and lick at the wiry hair, there.

"Tang Fan," Sui Zhou heaves out, hips slamming forward so hard that Tang Fan feels it up to the roof of his mouth.

"Did you think of me?" he demands. It could be too much — he could be too much, at least like this, so all at once after a torporific yawn of nothing. But he has had nowhere to put it, these past months. Now it must all come out.

"Every night," Sui Zhou gasps.

"And did you please yourself? Palm your little cock to all the ways I am so— so good to you?"

"Runqing." Sui Zhou's eyes fall shut. The triumph that surges through Tang Fan at that is practically vindictive in its immensity. "Yes," he admits. "I did. Yes."

"Filthy thing," Tang Fan husks. "Shameless, like a rutting dog." Sui Zhou grunts, wincing, as if he's braved a blow. Tang Fan feels lush on it, fog-headed and invincible. "I should forbid it from now on," he tells him, savouring another of Sui Zhou's vulnerable little noises, the cringe in his hips where their bodies are fitted together. "Perhaps you would be more eager to fulfil your marital duties if you weren't— ah, fucking your own hand the moment you've bedded down out on some road with your men."

"Please." Sui Zhou bares his teeth around the beg, brow knotting. "I wouldn't," he promises, breathy. "I would wait."

"Ah, you would," says Tang Fan, his agreeable hum hiccupping out of him as Sui Zhou's next artless thrust jars him. "Yes, yes, you would be good."

Sui Zhou is being so blessedly rough with him, so forward. It is as if he is truly pent up with his own need from the stretch of their separation. All his conditioned control wavering, now, under this reacquaint with Tang Fan's intensity. It burns their encounter bright, like a tale; as though they are lovers coming together in illicit trysting, passion whetting a hunger that yet feels insatiable. Light before the earthquake.

"Harder," Tang Fan urges, nipping at him, all the li and li of skin he can reach. His voice is growing hoarse, thinning. "Let me feel you." As if Sui Zhou isn't all he can feel; the sheer whelm of his bulk, the unrelent of his breach. "Take what you want."

Sui Zhou is; he does. And the pressure of it is— full, in a way that almost wants to be uncomfortable. Tang Fan cannot quite place it, yet, within either his body or his known experience. Each time the thread seems under his fingers, Sui Zhou moves within him in a way that is, just— perfect, and Tang Fan's head is again blissfully emptied.

Tang Fan has not denied himself any satisfactions, over the lonelier nights. He has his own toys, for when his fingers aren't enough to appease his appetite, but, much like him, they are dainty things, thin as they are long. Crafted much like the cock he had made just to fuck Sui Zhou on: with a mind more towards art than application. Sui Zhou's own cock is practical to a point of perfectionism; just fat and long enough to be thought prideful. Perhaps Tang Fan has simply grown more unaccustomed to Sui Zhou's girth than he thought.

A little pride of his own; hubris waiting for a fall. And it comes, like a portent: the heel of Sui Zhou's hand kneads down on his bladder, suddenly, within the clamouring scrum of their bodies, and Tang Fan flinches up against— against the fullness, queasy and sore. Chillingly, he feels a tension unknot, eased in his gut as it curls up his nape, and a gout of piss squirts down between his legs, tacky and overwarm.

Oh. Oh— "Oh," Tang Fan blurts, breath caught, seizing, somewhere between his chest and his throat. "You can't, wait—!"

Sui Zhou does not wait. Tang Fan's urgency has been lost, surely, in the heat of the moment, if not his voice itself. So often he tells Sui Zhou one thing and means entirely the other, goading what will give and follow. There is no time to think, to realise confusion, let alone correct it. In the clarity of a later recollection, he'll realise little difference may have been made, no matter the way taken.

In the present seconds, though, it plays out like an altercation: over in a flurry of panicked motions, whip-quick violence unrestrained yet by any shackles of forthcoming consequence. Sui Zhou strokes the very shape of himself in Tang Fan's belly, and Tang Fan comes with a wail, whole-body clenching around the sweet, humiliating relief of feeling his bladder start to empty in pursuit of his quivering orgasm. Little more than a trickling pulse, at first, but then comes the stream, gushing over the catchment of their thighs, the overfill dripping down Sui Zhou's lap to soak into the sheets.

He thinks that he might die. That he is dying. At least, until—

"Is that all?" Sui Zhou rasps, rough.

"Oh." Tang Fan's gasp creaks out of him as he trembles. There is a wet sting pricking at his eyes. "I don't— I don't know," he whispers. He doesn't. He is still so full; of Sui Zhou, of shame, both brimming hot in the back of his throat. There is no room to take stock of anything else.

He can hear Sui Zhou's swallow, thick in his own throat; how it cuts through the build of the tension in the room. "All right," he says then, soft. His hand presses down on Tang Fan's belly again, hard, fitting around the shape of his own cock, there, while the other pushes between his legs.

"Wait," Tang Fan scrambles, "I, I am—"

"I know," says Sui Zhou steadily. But he hesitates, nonetheless. The wait that expends is long enough that Tang Fan can catch his breath.

Tang Fan does not know what to think. He doubts in his power to think it, even if he did. But Sui Zhou is waiting for an answer, and Tang Fan thinks he can give him that much on instinct.

"You can't… help yourself," he says. A tentative question, spun as both observation and permission. Sui Zhou's thick fingers stroke over his folds, parting them; his answer.

Tang Fan has to close his eyes. It is all too much— Sui Zhou is too much. If he can only have a little less of him, just for a moment, he might become endurable. But blindness softens one blow, only to harden each and all of the others. This very churn in the crush, though, bares and boldens some of his quietened courages.

"You like this?" Tang Fan hears himself gasp. Rapture has made his voice sound strange to his own ear, foreign. "Oh, Guangchuan, you like this— ah!"

"Yes," Sui Zhou growls, as rough in his confession as he has become with his hands, his hips. Tang Fan can no longer grasp where he's falling, strewn between the lines of being used by and of use to, their near-inextricable intermingling. He claws at Sui Zhou's back for mooring, mindless of the bite of his nails, the break of them through skin. Sweat is as warm and wet as blood; spills the same. Tang Fan is not confident he could tell their difference.

"Ah!" Tang Fan's next breath is sharp, flinching. Sui Zhou's hand is moving again over his belly, stroking at the shape of his cock there, where he knows as much as he feels it opening Tang Fan up; filling him out. "Gently," he whines. "Gently, so quickly…"

Sui Zhou grunts, and does not slow. Not even a moment's consideration, a thought to reservation. He is driven; unrelenting. He must know Tang Fan does not mean it, but— it is intoxicating, in its own right, to imagine he does not care regardless. Every thrust of his cock squelches in his hole as their wet thighs slap together, peel apart. All Tang Fan can smell now is his own piss, frothy and acrid, full enough to be— tasted, almost, like bile and burn from the back of his throat. He is accustomed to bodies; grown indifferent to their indignities. This is so foul he's dizzy with it, cunt twitching around every bruising beat to Sui Zhou's rhythm.

"You have to let me get used to you again," he beseeches, weak, fucked loose as he is and blissed to submission. He has never been so dirty, so powerful, and it is terrifying in its excitement, just as any miracle when witnessed. Tang Fan cannot comprehend what he is feeling within the bounds of his experience. He needs— he needs—

"You don't want that," Sui Zhou grits out. "You don't need it." The words themselves stand as assertion, mere statement, but the desperation with which he speaks them turns them commanding. A fact that will be of his making. He cants his hips, knocking Tang Fan's knees back wide as he bears down, hilts. Tang Fan's gaze whips between them, tear-frayed and bleary; he swears he can see the head of Sui Zhou's cock bulging between his splayed fingers.

"Oh," Tang Fan hiccups, faint.

"See how you fit me," Sui Zhou keeps rambling ruinously, run ragged. "How well you take this. You— you always have." The heel of his palm digs down on his belly, in, and Tang Fan comes to the untender grind of his calloused thumb against his clit. It breaks him open around it; bares up only a river supped dry. He is aware only in shards, darting from the beat of his drumming heart to the damp heat of Sui Zhou's mouth as he sucks his lip between his teeth. He shakes through it all, and is held; hoarded. Then it is gone, with all the haste and violence with which it came, leaving a gorged satedness in its wake.

Sui Zhou pulls from him, slow. Tang Fan feels it in the inching absence, in how he twinges and pangs, his body trying shamelessly to swallow him back in. His eyes have closed again, his lashes clumped with the tears that have finally spilled down his cheeks. He feels Sui Zhou cup his neck, then the brush of his fingers as they scale the climb of his jaw.

"Are you hurt?" he asks, voice choke-tight, touch just as breathlessly urgent.

It takes Tang Fan a moment to find his voice; another to use it. "No, you beast," he croaks, reaching one hand between them to pet clumsily at his chest, the other batting him away at his elbow. "Good man," he babbles, giddy. Honest. "Sweet thing. Let me breathe, waizi." He can't help his laughing, frail as it is. He is so… this has all been so… well.

Sui Zhou seems appeased enough by it to heed him. He presses another of his long now-countless kisses to his lips, his hands roaming down Tang Fan's arms one last parting time. Then, Tang Fan finds the duvet pulled up around him; hears the scuff of Sui Zhou's feet to the floor as he draws away, leaving reach.

Tang Fan stretches out on the bed, sucking in a grounding breath, then— "Wait!" He lurches, half-up, as if to follow Sui Zhou to his feet, pulse skipping in his temples. "Did you… from that?" He can't believe such an important thing— no, he can. He is not proud of that.

Sui Zhou finds his gaze, but looks from it again before he parts his lips to speak. "Yes."

"Oh." Tang Fan breathes out. In; out. He lets himself slide back from his elbows, resettling into his recline on the pillow as his hands flit to his lap. Smoothing at the duvet Sui Zhou has leafed there, as if this will make him modest again. "So you did," he acknowledges aloud. "You did like it." Turning it over in his head; on his tongue. He knows he will have to put it down, raise it up again when he is better capable. But he finds himself reluctant to leave its glow.

Sui Zhou does not answer. But he hardly needs to, does he. And he has his cock to busy himself with, at that, so the absence of one bodes for no awkwardness between them.

"You are in need of that bath, now," Tang Fan remarks lightly, after what he thinks is a respectable wait. His voice is steadier now, more his than his undoing's. His glance flicks between Sui Zhou's bowed face and his fingers, unhurriedly unbuckling the harness from his hips.

"I imagine so," says Sui Zhou. Tang Fan sees the corner of his mouth curve around a smile, though it is such a subtle thing that it could just so easily be a trick of the burned-down light.

"As am I." Tang Fan's grimacing sigh is not entirely exaggerated for its affect; for all the excitement of the moment, the rush of the embarrassment, the stun of the sensation— this lingering aftermath is leaving some things to be desired.

Sui Zhou twists his cock free of the ring, then sets it and the harness both down on his bedside table. Something tepid stirs in Tang Fan's gut to see it so… on display, now, all given. "Then join me," says Sui Zhou, apparently unfazed.

"Was it in question?" Tang Fan asks him, snapping his gaze up to his face. "You have a responsibility."

Sui Zhou seems to agree, for he promptly gathers the eloping bedding up around Tang Fan and lifts him into his arms. Tang Fan squirms in the bind of his own making, sounding off a yelp that he is sure the whole sleeping city hears. It feels as if he does not even get a breath to compose himself before Sui Zhou is pushing open the door and bundling them both off into the courtyard, the night's air a cold shock to his wet skin.

"At least cover yourself!" Tang Fan squabbles, teeth chattering. Between him and the soiled linens, Sui Zhou is decent at all the most pertinent places. But still. It is entirely and only the principle of the thing that sees Tang Fan draw the ends from his lap to hold them around Sui Zhou's waist.

"Thank you," says Sui Zhou, so sappily sincere that it is worse than if he'd simply teased him. Must Tang Fan be as deeply adored as he so adores him?

"Who is here to see?" Tang Fan supposes he can concede, thumb circling the small of Sui Zhou's spine. If someone were to scale their walls for a peek, so be it — Tang Fan would at least admire their temerity before he pushed them back over into the street.