The onsetting night is yet to bring any relief from the wet heat of the day, much to Tang Fan's chagrin. Even stripped down to one of Sui Zhou's nicer inner robes and nothing else, he's miserably sticky and sodden with sweat, with his head so stuffy and his thoughts so slothen that even writing has not been able to serve him as a fruitful escape. Paper litters the floor in frustrated disarray, and his ink has long dried and cracked in the well. It is safe to say he is in quite the state, then, when Sui Zhou appears around his doorway, like a sign and his saviour.

The first thing Tang Fan notices, of course, is that Sui Zhou looks unfairly handsome, especially with his skin blushed red and his hair escaping his bun. The second is the bowl in his hand. Tang Fan is up from his sloppy drape across his bed in a scrambling instant, at that. "What do you have for me?" he asks, syrup-sweet. He thinks he may be sick if he tries to eat as he is, but anything Sui Zhou is carrying would be well worth that risk.

"Sun-daren passed by," says Sui Zhou, by way of explanation. He steps over the threshold and makes his way into his room proper, leaving the screen door open behind him in his arrival's wake. As if he hopes some of the pitiful breeze might then follow him in. "Some ice shards," he elaborates, gesturing with the bowl for emphasis, "from the cellar."

"And he insisted?" Tang Fan asks. He is so uncaring as to the actual answer, though, that he does not even give it a breath's quarter. "Good man," he says quickly, hiccuping around his absent praise as he lurches up onto his knees. "Good man, bring them here."

Sui Zhou, to his obedient credit, is knelt with him on his bed within a few moments, the bowl perched on his thigh. But then he does no more with it, even when Tang Fan allows him a generous pause to realise his mistake before he purses his lips in a disapproving pout.

"Well?" he prompts him.

There is a tug at the corner of Sui Zhou's mouth, a threat of a smile. He plucks out a jag of ice and holds it up between them, touching the flat of its point against the peak of Tang Fan's bottom lip. Tang Fan opens to it at the first tease of pressure, sighing against Sui Zhou's fingers as it slides onto his tongue. It pays a sharp reprieve, immediate, immense, before its melt mulls in his mouth. Tang Fan's gaze is inexorably dragged to the drop of water trickling down the cliff of Sui Zhou's palm, across the plain of his wrist. When he looks back up, Sui Zhou meets him, his own eyes dark with a heat that can neither be excused nor explained by the sun, the stagnant air penning its setting blaze in around them.

"Ah," says Tang Fan, pointed.

Sui Zhou's hand trails away from his face, and with it goes Tang Fan's focus. He follows the meandering line of its sweep as it lowers to settle on his sleeve, seeing himself, in its due course, as Sui Zhou sees him. How the profuseness of his sweat has tamped the tender threads of his stolen robe beneath his arms, across the swelled span of his chest. How it has sopped its white cotton sheer, unshrouding the innermost intimacies of his skin. Casting, into stark and obscene relief, everything from the dark whorls of his nipples to the downy hairs fluffing his soft belly.

Ah.

He cannot, of course, help his reaction to this knowledge, its attention; the squirming clench of his gut, the shudder that ripples through his legs. The breath that strains out of his throat, all rasp and strangle. It has been so long since they have touched and been touched, after all, with the weather wrecking both Tang Fan's tolerance of and temperament for it. And yet, it has neither trifled his need nor toned his desire, to his abject torment.

Sui Zhou is— he does not have the words for him. He carries all too many in his heart, heavy, and still their weight is not enough for the very space they take up. Tang Fan has only grown wilder for and weaker to Sui Zhou in the years since they first met, when he made a home of this house and then the very man within it. It is a love that buoys any burden. No season's turnings have managed yet to mute how all it takes is for Tang Fan to look upon Sui Zhou and his throat will fill. He doubts they ever will.

The summative pinch of Sui Zhou's fingers to his sleeve stirs him. "Could you not find your own clothes?" he asks, teasing.

Tang Fan looks down to his hand almost helplessly, eyes tracking the lazy half-circle of Sui Zhou's thumb, his toes curling. "The make of your uniform is nicer than anything of mine," he answers primly. It is any wonder his voice does not waver for how dry his mouth has become, how much wetter he feels between his thighs with the drip of his slick from his cunt. "Would you keep the finer things of this life from even your own husband?"

"I would not," says Sui Zhou easily, as if it is simply no admission at all. He releases Tang Fan, and, perhaps portending disaster, moves the bowl from its balance on his leg to the firmer ground of the bed. "You could find a place at the Southern Administrative Court," he suggests, still toying at a mirthful levity, "if my uniform is that much to your liking."

Such a thing hardly bears addressing. Sui Zhou knows well enough that Tang Fan's appreciation of the feiyufu hinges on his wearing of it; it is a thoroughly explored topic between them, often revisited. "Too small a pond, the Jinyiwei," Tang Fan muses instead. "For a man of my talents."

Sui Zhou's hum is, wisely, merely a committal one. There is a slowness to the way he reaches into the bowl next that speaks of deliberation, mind paid to audience. Tang Fan does not know if he holds the next piece of ice to his lips with greater pressure, or if it is simply him meeting Sui Zhou's touch harder — though he would own the latter as more likely — but when he parts them to take it on his tongue, the tips of Sui Zhou's fingers follow, dipping past his teeth.

He should be ashamed of the sound he makes, this whimpery, wounded little thing, and perhaps he would be were there anyone else in earshot of hearing it. But the house stands empty, save for them, and the city all but follows, the murmuring brook of its bustle washed out by the throb of his pulse through his temples. And Sui Zhou's hands— Tang Fan has had to watch them at work with blade and brush and everything else but him these past weeks. He is ill-suited to endure such cruelties.

Sui Zhou draws back, and Tang Fan swallows, though the mouthful does very little to parch his throat. "And you?" he murmurs, pitched low, trailing off into whisper. Inviting, he hopes, in mirror of the nature of its intent.

Sui Zhou's exhale is slow, staggered. He reaches between them, and his fingers slip through the sweat sheeting Tang Fan's skin before they fetter around his thigh. Tang Fan hears the slick smack of his skin as he shifts and unsticks, and he shivers, some apology for it barely checked on his tongue. Sui Zhou's palm is hot on him, but Tang Fan imagines even the touch of the sun's surface would be a cool relief compared to the molten creep of his blood, the churn of his arousal. His head feels so full of smoke he can almost taste the ash of his every thought, snuffed out.

The way they move, the how of it, is all irrelevant to Tang Fan, his chronology of the moment. All that matters is the inevitability of the way they find one another in it, how they fit. All Tang Fan needs to know is that he has unfurled his legs between these two irrespective points, and now Sui Zhou's solid weight is straddling him at the knee, pinning the sprawl of him wide as he bears over him and brings their faces together. His lips are cool, damp with the shard of ice he must have tucked behind his teeth, the one he does not press in over Tang Fan's tongue even when he teases it sweetly into his mouth. Instead, he recedes, and Tang Fan whines softly for the loss of him.

"Sui Zhou," he complains, aggrieved, clutching for his back. He feels Sui Zhou's robes unpeel from between his shoulder blades in his grip, and Sui Zhou pants out, lips scraping across his jaw.

"Sorry." Sui Zhou does not sound it. Nor does he act it, for that matter, nosing into Tang Fan's neck to press a kiss there. The lash of his breath to his skin is as thick as his scent in Tang Fan's nose, salted and staling. The drape of his robes is trapping them both in the radial heat from his bulk, but Tang Fan does not have the patience to strip him, even if he could find the time. It would be better if Sui Zhou was kept bare at all hours, used and perused at Tang Fan's leisure. Perhaps he should ship Dong'er off to his sister's and make a try of it, at least until the ravenous thing rearing up inside him sates.

But, well. For now, Tang Fan has this, and while he would not have it any other way, he does wish the way he has it would show a little more haste in its going.

So, "Do something," he urges. And then, "If you touch me, I will—" he adds, clipped, because it seems more pertinent than it does pathetic to give Sui Zhou that warning. He cannot hope to hide it; all Sui Zhou need do is press his hand between his legs and Tang Fan's body will be his greatest betrayer.

"Tang Fan," Sui Zhou groans out. Tang Fan can feel the ripple of his shudder as it runs him through, how it rocks the heady heft of him down against his thigh. His hand scrabbles for Tang Fan's waist, seeking shore, thumb curling in beneath the high slit of his robe.

"Please," Tang Fan begs. He squirms, trying to flex the lean line of his leg up tighter against Sui Zhou's cunt, to give him something rough and raw and real to feel through his trousers, the tangle of his skirts.

It must be enough. Sui Zhou bows his head with a choked sound, all clotted wet, and crushes his mouth clumsily to the hill of his breast. His back shifts under Tang Fan's fist, and then his hand is pushing in hard between Tang Fan's legs, thick fingers parting his throbbing folds beneath the cotton. Tang Fan is given no pause to contend with it, all its sudden overeagerness and the squelch of his slick — when Sui Zhou's thumb finds his clit, the coarse caress of it is cut with a chill, and Tang Fan comes against his palm with a startled yelp.

"Sui Zhou." He can't hold the note of scandal in his voice for long enough to finish his name before he breaks off into fluttery laughter. The wave of his orgasm washes over him languidly, the crest of it blunt, brief. Like a summer shower, abating the edge of an ache as it passes, but offering no real absolution. But it is all right; Sui Zhou is here, and he is holding him.

Tang Fan tilts his head, presses his cheek to Sui Zhou's hair, and arches his back until he feels the nudge of Sui Zhou's chin down his breast, the rasp of his beard over his nipple. He ruts against the brace of his hand over his cunt with lazy circles of his hips, riding the last of his pleasure through, and stops only when his caught breath begins to shallow again, need building anew.

Sui Zhou whines against his breast, so cramped and quiet that Tang Fan almost does not hear it in spite of their closeness, the way the world has narrowed down around them. Tang Fan leans up and lets him rise, a fondness blooming behind his ribs as Sui Zhou meets his eyes, blearily dazed.

"There you are," Tang Fan says. Sui Zhou's hips stutter forward before he catches himself, hands bracing flat against the bed, as if— "Ah, ah, take it," Tang Fan commands breathlessly, punctuating it with a spurring tug of his robes. "Take it from me, Guangchuan. But hurry."

Emboldened by the permission, Sui Zhou grinds down again, his eyes falling shut. Tang Fan lets him have this, this shy, grounding privacy. He does not need Sui Zhou's gaze on him when he has all the rest of him. It takes the barest chase of friction before he comes, face breaking open beautifully around the rush of the fall, thighs clamping down around him.

"Good," Tang Fan sighs, petting at Sui Zhou's back, his palm smoothing out creases and soothing over shakes. "Aren't you good. What a mess you're making." He feels dizzy with the heat again, tacky with filth, but he would sooner suffer worser still than he would ever rush Sui Zhou. These moments of vulnerability are some of his life's most precious allowances, and he treasures them dearly.

Still, he cannot say he is unglad that Sui Zhou is quick to steel himself and kneel up, easing the snarl of them apart. Tang Fan pays a glance to the bowl on the bed as Sui Zhou's knee bumps it, and supposes he is not surprised to find the rest of the ice has melted. Ah, well. He can't lament it as a waste, all given.

"I will draw the bath," Sui Zhou tells him, before Tang Fan has even thought to consider prompting it. He makes to stand, and Tang Fan feels a flare of smugness when he sees the wobble in his legs, stumbling his footing. He did that. And a bath together provides far more agreeable terrain for him to do more, if Sui Zhou is amenable.

Dinner will almost certainly be late, of course, if such is the case, but they will simply have to be forgiven for it.