Proof of how settled Sui Zhou has become in this stillness is the shock with which he stirs from it; the apparent suddenness of its disruption. How it cuts, to the neck, like a yawn stifled. Tang Fan's hiss bodes no warning for what then follows it: the stumble in his stolid straddle over Sui Zhou's legs, the slap of his stuttered hips to his ass. Sui Zhou feels Tang Fan's cock shift within the sheathe of his thighs, how the bronze unsticks from his sweaty skin and rides up tight against his cunt. The slippery press ruts the stiff shaft ruts along his slit, parting his slick folds around its easy breach. The flared head of it snubs over his swollen clit, rough, and Sui Zhou chokes out a sore, strained sound, hole twitching around nothing but the tease, empty. Then Tang Fan flinches, sluggish, and the pressure recedes from that throbbing inch, leaving only stoked heat to slosh thick in the pit of Sui Zhou's belly.

At once he is surfaced. Bared up, anew, to the very simplicity of his body; all its aged wounds, its cramped aching. He cannot help his shudder, nor his spluttered gasp as it jars him between the points of his pinned presentation; the bed against his face, the pillow canting his hips, the kang table set snug over his waist. The lip of it crowds close, by intent, just shy of the small of his back, and so even that slivering movement scrapes him to the wood, sending something scattering across its surface.

Tang Fan's answering sigh is pointed. "Ah, be good," he tells him, disappointment voiced all too late for deterring. There is a rustle of papers over rasping fabric, then the clatter of something, perhaps his brush being returned to its well. It is difficult for Sui Zhou to determine what and which of any particulars when all of them are faintened beneath the wet pant of his breath, the pulse surging in his temples. "You were doing well," Tang Fan remarks as he resettles, requiring no such loudness, himself, to be heard. Beneath the pitying strings some genuine apology, at least, though it does not blunt the greedy sting of his chastisement.

"Sorry," Sui Zhou roughs out, only to renege on its sentiment with a startled whine when Tang Fan spreads his knees wider.

"Aiya," Tang Fan tuts. "How am I to work, put through this?" Already, before Sui Zhou can make further amends, Tang Fan is lifting away the table, twisting at the waist to set it away elsewhere on the bed. This moves his cock between Sui Zhou's legs again, harder, but Sui Zhou is able to set his teeth to his bottom lip to stifle his grunt; a small blessing.

He does not know how long he had been good, before the terms of that good changed. It feels as if it has been an eternity; some nothingness, gone nowhere. Sui Zhou cannot see where the moon has drifted, nor how low the candles have burned, leaving only the waypoint of Tang Fan's patience and its very human limit.

"Did you not promise?" says Tang Fan. "That you could be trusted? That you would wait for me?" There is a breathless edge to it, as though he has been harried across some great distance. His movements are similarly staggered, when he so makes them, stabbed and clumsy. As rousing as they are riling.

Apology would be an unneeded thing, elsewhere, when there is no fault with him for finding. Here, though, remorse and repentance serve a reimagined purpose. Only when he is small, narrowed down to a sinew of usefulness and put to an eroticism of service, is Sui Zhou then made entirely whole.

And so, "What would you have me do?" Sui Zhou asks him. It's a fair thing, he thinks; a predated choreography of an engagement's changing with a rule's required reorienting.

"Does it matter?" Tang Fan bites back, quick to accusation. Sui Zhou feels the teeter of his heft across his thighs; the dig of his cock into tendered skin, the slap of his sleeve to his waist as he gestures to the space between them. "Have you not just proven that any ask is too much of you?" For all it starts with a spark, the words soften in his mouth, losing their surety when spoken. As though Tang Fan has tasted their cut on his tongue and found copper in their wounding.

It is a hurt, but it is one Sui Zhou asked for — a want he put into words and left in Tang Fan's hands to make what he willed of it. For all his severity, he has not overstepped from unkindness into cruelty. But Sui Zhou does not know how to tell him that without drawing sharp heed to its soft underbelly. "Please," though, has rarely scared Tang Fan away from anything. Nor has, "Let me."

He can hear Tang Fan thinking, rapid-fire; can imagine the flit and fix of his delicate features around every consideration that makes its way through to him. Then, "Finish it," Tang Fan says, with none of the burgeoning tentativeness. He leans back into his heels, the straps of his harness needling into Sui Zhou's skin as his knees draw back in tight around his sides. "Ah, it really is no use, isn't it?" he observes, airy. "Without your own satisfaction, you're simply not amenable. It's greedy." He sighs. "I shouldn't indulge you in it. But what else am I to do?"

"I will be good," Sui Zhou claims, impelled, in the very same breath he thinks it. "I will be good for you."

"Show me," Tang Fan demands. In it, Sui Zhou hears the catch of his breath, then his easing swallow. Or he believes he does, anyway, in how he feels Tang Fan's body rock between its two points, hold and release. He is always so much, with his every movement. None of him knows restraint, nor wills to learn it. As such, he is slow, too, to recompose. "Show me your good, then," he reiterates, leaving no room for refusal. Not that Sui Zhou would ever fill it, were it there to house him.

The reminder of his body brings with it clarity as to its closeness to this very precipice, too, the hungry smoulder of his pleasure. The pressure he needs to push over is there, in the steady press of Tang Fan's cock between his legs, within taking. But Sui Zhou must reach for it, and know the humiliation of being seen as needful.

He tries to speak, and finds his mouth dry, his tongue stuck behind his teeth. His swallow does not parch his throat, but it does ease some few words free. "Can I?" It's not enough, he knows it is not enough, but—

"Fine," is what Tang Fan interjects with. "Whatever you need to do." And, "Be quick about it." Disdainful, as though it — he — is an imposition. How good. How perfect.

Sui Zhou anchors his hands, flat, to the bed, leveraging the arch of his hips, and Tang Fan— laughs, a mocking peal that rebounds through the tableau of their bodies, stunning them in equal measures. Sui Zhou's sweaty grip slips in the sheets, and he bears down, hard, on Tang Fan's cock, choking on his spit.

"Oh," Tang Fan pants out. "Oh, Sui Zhou— rutting your little cock into our bed like that," he rasps, "like a, like a— will you come like that?"

He will, he will, and he does not even need to say it. Tang Fan takes the presumption and makes it proclamation, hissing, "How dirty," dark with some disgust, dredged up. And then he leans back, dragging his cock away, and Sui Zhou does come, shocked, spluttering around the absence. The stream of everything else all but washes out, submerged in the torrential kick of his heart against his ribs, the bone-deep drum downing out all sound in his ears. Alight and shuddering with its blow, he does not even feel a promissory sting to his scalp when Tang Fan's fingers twist in his hair, then tug.

"Wait, wait," Tang Fan must call out, voice tight around some throated fullness. "It's all right," he comforts, "be still, a moment longer, be still." He clambers up, cock snubbing along the cleft of Sui Zhou's ass, and Sui Zhou lets out the breath he must have been holding when the new closeness slackens the leash of Tang Fan's grasp. It is not comfortable, between the bony spindle of Tang Fan's legs and the bruising lack of give where the bronze shaft and leather straps have dug in, but it is— it is— Sui Zhou breathes back in.

"Did you?" is what he first manages to bring himself to say. Tang Fan's scowl is audible as he punishes it with a wordless grumble, untangling his fingers from his hair.

"Why would you—?" Tang Fan cuts himself off with a huff, frustration falling flat. He kneels up, and Sui Zhou shivers at the loss, toes curling. With his breath evening, and blood slowing, he can hear with telling ease how Tang Fan is struggling with his harness, blunt nails scratching over the clasps.

"Let me," Sui Zhou offers

Tang Fan swears above him, raspy, then repeats it again with more fervor when Sui Zhou starts to turn over between his legs. "Wait," he complains. Sui Zhou does not wait, sitting up in spite of his protestations to find him. "I am— I am to take care of you," Tang Fan argues, head bent to his task, fingers fumbling on a buckle. "That was what we agreed, I am—"

Sui Zhou does not know how else to answer this franticness but to push his own hands in beneath Tang Fan's to interrupt their frenetic futility, knuckles rucking his draping sleeves. He does not fight them away, but nor does he leave room for Tang Fan to repel his incursion. "Let me," he repeats firmly. This is care, he thinks. He does not say it. He does not need to — knows he does not need to, not when he can see how Tang Fan's tension starts to melt away.

"You don't listen," is Tang Fan's newest complaint. "You don't listen at all." But its retort comes ruined by the soft relief in his voice, the uncomplicated fondness. It makes Sui Zhou's heart feel too full to keep in his chest. Tang Fan closes his hands over Sui Zhou's, properly, then, fingers squeezing tightly, and he does not interfere with his work beyond that anymore.