Kuan-hung's phone wakes him up. In the disorienting dark, as he squints to stave off the bright blare of his lit-up screen as he fumbles his hand around it, he thinks it can't have been more than a few minutes since he put his head down and closed his eyes. Once he blinks through the blur and the swim of his vision settles, though, he can see the time and tell it's been a while. Just enough that he feels tireder for having slept.

It's so early, still, that there's not even a hint of sun. And it's Fu Meng-po calling him on WeChat, so of course he picks up and puts him straight onto speaker.

"Good morning," Fu Meng-po says. His rich voice is held down low by the hour, scratchy with sleep. Kuan-hung is too raw and sleep-drunk himself to suffocate the shiver that wracks his spine; to stop the whine that leaves his mouth. Fu Meng-po's answering laugh is so warm, so soft. "You're in bed already?"

"I'm old," Kuan-hung croaks, faux-cross. He manages to slap a hand limply over his eyes, and scrubs it down his face as he shuffles closer to his phone where he's dropped it back flat on the bed, curling in on himself, knees to chest.

"Do you want me to hang up?" Fu Meng-po asks good-naturedly, his breath gusting out in a gentle huff when Kuan-hung grumbles back incoherently in answer.

"No," Kuan-hung complains, once he's found his words and unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth. "No, no, you've already— I'm awake, don't. Bother."

"All right," Fu Meng-po says, just as gentle as before. Kuan-hung takes a breath, then another, slow, pulling them deep down into his chest, trying to get them to hold. Fu Meng-po doesn't continue from there, though.

"What did you call about?" Kuan-hung asks at last, rousing the silence before it can settle in and go still.

"Just called," Fu Meng-po replies. There's the sound of something in the background of him, like silver clinking glass. The percussion of casual domesticity, pitched tall by the cusping morning. "Saying hello. Happy new year."

Kuan-hung giggles despite himself. The sound stumbles off into a yawn that he catches behind the cup of his palm, pressing it back into his mouth. "Hello," he mumbles, muffled. "Happy new year. You could have put that in a message. Did you miss me that much?" It's a telling thing for him to ask, maybe. But the telling things are meant to be told with Fu Meng-po.

A kettle whistles through the speaker. There's a rustle, then it grows muted, as if Fu Meng-po is walking away from it to take its edge off for him. Kuan-hung is immediately and irrationally jealous: he'd do three questionably unspeakable things bare minimum for a coffee at this very moment. He could get up to make one, yes, sure, but he feels so heavy, and Fu Meng-po's voice and the almost of his presence is just another added weight pinning him beneath his blankets.

"Maybe I did." Fu Meng-po hums to himself for a beat, then, "It's been a while since I heard it. Last year."

"Oh— hang up. Get out," Kuan-hung grouses, ripping his hand away from his mouth to slap it down on the bed. Fu Meng-po just laughs at him again, apparently content with this easy, insignificant little victory.

"I'll go, I'll go," Fu Meng-po jests, voice starting to carry away to follow the joke.

"Don't go," Kuan-hung says. "Stay."

It feels too honest, somehow. Too desperate. Kuan-hung's too thinned out by the hour, exposed in the liminal space between his dream and now that's still folding closed, scarring over. He rubs his cheek against his pillow, ducking his head down lower, as if he can creep closer to Fu Meng-po's voice. As if there's a body nearby to press himself into, if he just reaches far enough for it.

"You're very cute when you're like this," Fu Meng-po remarks, warm with a soft kind of heat. All tease, more than a little promissory; a careful handling of Kuan-hung's present vulnerability where it's been laid out for him.

Kuan-hung feels a rung of tension unravel in his chest to drip down, a lazy honey-thick, into the floor of his belly. He wants what Fu Meng-po's tone is telling him he might have for him, if he takes it. But he's tired, too. The sun will be up in a few hours, or so, and Kuan-hung will have to be up with it. He's got a flight. He's got filming. Nothing really stops at a standstill.

"I'm cute," Kuan-hung repeats back. His voice creaks up his throat and cracks on his tongue. He swallows to wet his mouth and tries again. "I'm always cute."

"You are," Fu Meng-po agrees. He sounds further away again, and Kuan-hung helplessly makes another nonsensically plaintive sound at that realisation. "You're always cute," Fu Meng-po adds, after a moment, back close, where he's supposed to be. "But you're being very cute right now."

"Ugh," Kuan-hung grumbles. "You're so— laodao, laodao." He squeezes his eyes shut, tight, then blinks them back wide open. The blur stings, just the slightest bit, making him tear up. "xiao Meng. Mengmeng."

"Hm?"

Kuan-hung curls his fingers, and lingers in the feeling of his nails scratching down the sheets, somewhere near his phone; stalls on how the grip of his other hand hooks into the collar of his shirt. "Is that really all?"

"I've got more," Fu Meng-po tells him. "Did you have fun?"

He had fun. "I had fun," Kuan-hung says. "It was good." It was a lot, but it was a lot of good, especially just seeing almost everyone in one place again. The sort of full day that passed in a blur and caught him out later on a delay. He'd smiled his way blind through twenty-something hours before it had come crashing down around him, all at once. He'd typed out his reply to Fu Meng-po's comment on his Instagram almost doubled over in on his own lap sometime during the drive back from the venue. He's not entirely certain on the specifics as to how he made it back to his room, got into his bed, only that he did, and he's dressed appropriately for a restful occasion.

"It looked fun." Fu Meng-po's voice grates, and he pauses to clear his throat, blunting it back smoother, softer. "You looked good."

"Drink your coffee," Kuan-hung mumbles at him, taking pity. He closes his eyes again for a long moment, sagging into his own sighing exhale. He scratches at the hollow of his throat and swallows against the answering prickle of a sting. "You watched already?"

Fu Meng-po takes a sip of his coffee, as directed, though at least he has the good manners not to rub it in. "I saw a little," he admits.

"You looked good too," Kuan-hung admits, in turn, just to keep it fair. He unfolds his arm from its tuck between his angled chest and the bed to drape it out in front of him, eyes flicking down to stare at the backs of his own knuckles idly. A tired ache ripples through his muscles; recedes only to resurge again when he stretches his other arm above his head. "In your post. Very thoughtful."

"Thoughtful?"

"Handsome," Kuan-hung rambles on, eyes sliding shut again. "Thinking handsome thoughts."

"Handsome thoughts?" Fu Meng-po's laugh is very loud, sunny, for the brief moment before he catches himself.

"Mhm." Kuan-hung doesn't elaborate further. He's explained himself perfectly. He leaves his eyes closed for a long moment, regathering himself back up slowly, carefully. When he cracks open an eye again, his room is limned in a lighter hue of blue, as though he's shifted between one twilight and the next, further along to dawn. "Hm?"

"Hey," comes Fu Meng-po's voice over the speaker, after a beat, and the cold that's running through Kuan-hung whips back into warm so quickly it rattles him dazed. "Good morning."

"Ugh," Kuan-hung rasps weakly, and Fu Meng-po doesn't catch his laugh, this time, when it comes boldly tearing out of him. "Oh. You're still here?"

"You weren't gone long," Fu Meng-po says. He sounds bright awake, now, in steady counterpoint. "Should put your phone on charge, though."

"Yeah," Kuan-hung agrees absently. He reaches around for his phone one-handed while he tries to unblind himself from the fog of his nap with the other. "Yeah, hold on, just. Don't go anywhere," he tells him stupidly, gritting his teeth in afterthought.

"I'm not," Fu Meng-po answers him, sweet. "I won't."

Kuan-hung clamps his jaw down tighter to stall out the exasperated grunt trying to work its way out. He doesn't quite manage it, the sound clawing out all choked up wet, tongue-tangled. It gets him another laugh, hard-earned but easy-won. "Good, wait, I'll be right—" He fumbles his phone, nearly flings it clean off the bed with a swivel of his wrist when he sees how long the call has been running for, and makes the executive decision to cut his narration short there.

Fu Meng-po is, thankfully, very quietly patient for him. Unobtrusively undisruptive the whole while it takes Kuan-hung to get himself up into some semblance of a kneel, to shuffle across his bed to bring the bedside table into range, and to curse his way through getting his charger plugged in and his AirPods in his ears.

"Still there?"

"Still here," Fu Meng-po confirms.

Kuan-hung sighs out in one long, loud drag, then flops himself back down onto bed, keeping his hands clasped loosely over his ears until he's sprawled out and settled in. "Okay," he adds, once he's done getting as comfortable as he's going to get and at no heightened risk of losing an earbud into the cavernous abyss of his tossed sheets. "What were we talking about?"

Fu Meng-po hums to himself, as if he needs to consider it. "You," is his answer.

"No," Kuan-hung objects through a yawn, scrunching up his nose. "We were finished talking about me. We should talk about you." He stretches his legs out until they shake sore; curls his toes in his sheets. Lets the airy heat that's breezing down his limbs find its way between his thighs to pool there, tempted along by the sound of Fu Meng-po's voice pressed so close into his ears. He's still tired, now, but it's a different shade of it, a throb that winds him up around it instead of a pang that lays him out.

"There's not a lot to talk about," Fu Meng-po says, his obvious smile around the humble downplay obnoxiously brightening his tone.

"There is," Kuan-hung argues, pausing to press a whine into his arm when he stretches again and a shudder ricochets back through him, heady. "There's— cool guys always have so much to talk about."

"Do they, now?"

"They do," Kuan-hung says. They really do. Kuan-hung thumbs at his collarbone through the thin cotton of his shirt, fingers fanning out over his pectoral. "All that cool guy stuff they do."

Fu Meng-po is quiet for a beat, then two, save for the soft pull of his breath. Kuan-hung listens to him move about, somewhere and somehow, and tries to paint a mental picture of it with the fragments of sound. The click of a door; the creak of a floorboard. The crackle of fabric.

"I see," Fu Meng-po says, all filler. Kuan-hung thinks he might be sitting down, now, either again or at last, wherever he is. "You talk to a lot of cool guys last night?"

"About their cool guy stuff, yeah." He thumbs at himself again, almost detachedly, and swallows. He'd talked to a lot of people; some known, some only known of, some even less than that. But those marathoned niceties in retrospective review aren't really what he wants to pay his attention to, right now, when he's got Fu Meng-po right here, front and centre. "Lot of cool guys in Hainan right now. Not as cool as you, though."

He can imagine the face Fu Meng-po is pulling at him from the way his breath chuffs out: brows drawn in, mouth crooked up, eyes crinkling. It's not as nice as seeing it for himself, but absence draws it up close. "What do you want? Huh?"

"You called me," Kuan-hung reminds him. He wants a lot of things, be it right now, or at any given time. Under the half-drawn curtain of sleep, though, edged into the not-place of pre-dawn, he can't get his hands around any one of them, in particular, to turn over and say aloud. "I don't know," he says instead, putting his back into making it whine out, petulant. "I don't know that."

It's an easy-come answer. Fu Meng-po might have almost promised something before, but it feels a world away, now, too far gone. He's not sure if it's still on offer. If it would be all right to even ask, anyway. It wouldn't be the first opportunity that's missed him by in as many days, for as fewer reasons. It's just how it is.

Maybe Fu Meng-po hears the little hitch of his breath when the roam of his hand overreaches and the tip of his finger traces his nipple through his shirt. Or maybe he just knows him well enough. He takes Kuan-hung's noncommittal nothing into his stride, and meets it midway, no beat missed. "Do you want me to take care of you?" he asks.

"Yeah," Kuan-hung answers. It's a bit too quick to be anything but confessional, relieved. "Sure. Okay."

"Okay," Fu Meng-po says, and then, "not yet." Kuan-hung hasn't even moved, but he flinches just like he's been caught, gasping.

"I wasn't," he protests. Promises. He lets his hands fall to the bed like that will prove it, as if Fu Meng-po can see him.

"Yeah?" Fu Meng-po's voice is getting hoarser, his breaths short and tight. Kuan-hung wishes he could hear more of him over his own pulse. He wants to be able to tell everything he's doing to Fu Meng-po, if he's touching himself. "What do you want? What are you thinking about."

Kuan-hung's face is so hot he can feel the skin pulling taut over his cheekbones, like it's about to crack, crumble. Fu Meng-po hasn't even started yet, but the shape of the very suggestion, the promise of something, has him like this already. "I don't know," he mumbles. It's both the truth and a lie. His head is awash with fantasies, full and idle, but plucking any one of them out to share is what seems insurmountable.

Fu Meng-po's push is gentle; incremental. "What are you being shy for?" he teases, soft. Kuan-hung can hear the provocation that's slipped in beneath it, though. Like warning has ever stopped him from rising, stubborn, to a given occasion.

"I'm not," Kuan-hung says, as quick and contrary as surely expected. He flexes his fingers, lets his nails scratch over the sheets. It's a distraction and a grounding; he's hard enough that his cock is straining against his sweats, sensitive skin chafing hot over the fleece seam. "You just want me to tell you what to do," he accuses. "Said you'd take care of me, but I'm doing all the work."

"All of it, huh?" There's laughter in Fu Meng-po's voice again. Though that, again, is imprecise— it never left so much as it receded, rearmed with a new edge. "All right," he says. "I'll work. I'll work for it."

"Good," Kuan-hung says. It's the last stand for his cockiness, and he knows it— can feel the leash slipping his fingers. But that's good. That's okay.

"Tell you what I'd do to you, then," Fu Meng-po says, "if I was there. Yeah?" He's affected an imperfect indifference, now, to his cadence, that makes Kuan-hung feel stripped.

"Yeah." Kuan-hung rolls onto his belly, his sucked-in breath hiccuping back out as his dick rubs over the mattress. "Oh— okay." He's not going to last.

There's a lot he could say. Kuan-hung is expecting— fast, immediate. So when Fu Meng-po says, "I'd kiss you," low, that's confronting in another way entirely. Kuan-hung chokes on his own noise, all whiny and spit-thick; tucks his face into his arm and mouths at his sleeve, trying to muffle it.

"Hey," Fu Meng-po murmurs, chiding. "Don't hide from me." Of course he knows — nothing about Kuan-hung is unobvious, even when he's unseen. "Wanna hear you," he coaxes. "Can't tell it's good if you're quiet, can I?"

He can. He always can. But Kuan-hung doesn't argue that, just turns his face back out, obedient. His hands are restless around all their trembling; he can't find anywhere he wants to shore his grip. His nerves are lit and shivering; every nudge and brush to his skin leaving him sore, wanting. "Just that…?" he presses, breathy.

"There's more," Fu Meng-po assures him. He's a little too quick with it to play off the interlude as something idle instead of an interruption. But that's good, too— the discomposure makes their distance feel bridged, at least to somewhere all-but-touching. "I'd hold your face, lick into your pretty mouth." His breath scrapes on the exhale, taut. "Kneel in close between your legs, get them up around my hips."

He can't just— say that, like that. But that's not what Kuan-hung tells him. "Are you going to fuck me?" he blurts out instead.

If Kuan-hung wasn't so attuned to him, intimately, already, and straining it, he might have missed the way Fu Meng-po's breath stops short. But he doesn't; the very quiet of it is what makes it so loud. "When I'm ready," he says, after a moment. Steadying. "When you're ready."

Kuan-hung wants to know what that will take, hear every moving part broken down in Fu Meng-po's voice to its minutiae. He trusts the journey blind, and that makes it harder, in honesty, to demand the destination. Still, there is room between those two points to— push. So, "Tell me," Kuan-hung begs. "How you'd fuck me."

Fu Meng-po's groan is sharp, bracing. "I'd be good for you," he tells him, "take my time." It asks a new question more than it answers his, but he doesn't give Kuan-hung the chance to wait with it. "Kiss down your neck, all over your little tits."

Kuan-hung tries to follow the map of his mouth with his hands, fumbling, rushing to keep pace. The best he can manage is the skim of his fingertips over his ribs as he arches his chest, rubbing the peaks of his nipples against his shirt, the bed. Sweat is beading hot on his nape, under his arms, behind his knees. He can't stop moving his hips, rough little snaps and hitches, like— like Fu Meng-po is fucking into him. Kuan-hung tries to make a sound, spurring, but he can't get his tongue around enough of it.

Fu Meng-po doesn't hesitate, even with Kuan-hung's incoherent noninput. "I'd get my hands under your knees," he says next, all roughed and raw, "fold them back so I can see your pussy, get my mouth on it." His words keep catching, tripping over themselves, like he's trying to speak all of them free before his voice rasps out.

"O-oh," Kuan-hung gasps. He wrests a hand up to his mouth, lets his breath lash shallowly over the backs of his knuckles. "You're not going to touch my— my…?" Even trying to think it makes his head spin, and he has to close his eyes against their pricking wet sting.

"Not yet," Fu Meng-po soothes. "I'll get there, I always do, I take care of you." Kuan-hung can't even feel relief that Fu Meng-po is showing him levity, a sweet touch when he's been handed such a ripened opportunity to be mean. It's washed out by the shame spitting into his fingers, licking over them, knowing that Fu Meng-po can hear and tell everything.

"I'd get you to spread yourself for me," he says next. Kuan-hung jerks his hand down behind him with a grunt, fights it in beneath his waistband. "Tease your tight little hole open nice and slow on my tongue."

"Gege," Kuan-hung croaks, tinny. He's so dirty, panting frothy gutter filth right into his ear— but then, Kuan-hung's the one with his spit-damp fingers stroking clumsily over his rim, acting on every beat.

"Yeah," Fu Meng-po answers. A little absent, hazy. But not inattentive. Never that. "You like that. Always so— so sensitive, xiao Maomi."

"I'm going to come," Kuan-hung warns, frantic, choking. He pushes down on his hole, feels it twitch and cling around his fingertip, hips flinching him down hard against the bed. So soon, already — he can't help himself. He can't stop a thing.

"That's it," Fu Meng-po urges, something animal and hungry rearing through his tone. "You can, I want to feel it, hear you. Don't hold it."

Kuan-hung can't; wouldn't, given any chance or choice in it. He ruts into his sheets, once, twice, again, again, knees kicking out blindly, thighs spread and toes curled to trembling. It climbs and claws and drags and then his breath is slamming free of his chest with a rattling whine as he comes, still in his sweats, all over himself.

"Beautiful. You're beautiful," he hears Fu Meng-po murmur over the din. Kuan-hung isn't sure if he's meant to; if Fu Meng-po can even hear himself. Not that it will stop him from drawing it close to himself, slipping it through some crease between his ribs to keep.

It takes him a moment to breathe in, deep enough to reach and stick; to return and resettle in himself. As the ring in his ears starts to drift away, faintening, it leaves a sharp and unpleasant awareness of the sweat sheening his skin, his come tacking the lap of his sweats to his dick. Kuan-hung crinkles his nose, then flails to wriggle out of them, kicking out artlessly. The cold air is a shock to his bared skin, scraping a shiver out of him. Over the huff and hiccup of his own breath, he can hear Fu Meng-po's evening out, slow. Filling back in. Deliberate.

Oh. "Aren't you…?" Kuan-hung's voice cracks, then trails.

"Ran out of time," Fu Meng-po says, soft. And, "It's all right," he preempts.

"Okay," is all Kuan-hung can say at first. He's still vulnerable enough that he can't unbare the throat of his disappointment. He wanted— he wanted. "I owe you," he tries to recover.

"Sure." Fu Meng-po's voice is tender, light. The grace and stride of someone who already knew this exact outcome was the only way it could play out. "Yeah. I'll collect."

Kuan-hung's throat clicks when he swallows, thick. "I'll let you go then," he says. "I guess."

"Busy man," Fu Meng-po agrees, easy. "Talk soon, yeah?"

"Mn," Kuan-hung promises. "Bai bai la." It takes him a few moments to get his phone in hand, and when he looks at his screen, the call is still ticking away, leaving it to him to hang up. So much for busy man.

Kuan-hung doesn't doubt that he'll get to make up for it, sooner or later. It's finding the time that's uncertain, let alone the place. But, well, that's unchanging, isn't it, no matter what life you lead. That's the compromise you make. He's got this, with Fu Meng-po, trialled and erred and felt out, and it is what it is just as they've made it — perfect and lacking. And it's enough. It's enough to always want but accept what's sating.