Tang Fan announces his sudden arrival to Sui Zhou's room with nothing more than a flurry of footsteps. Though the hour is late, Sui Zhou has only taken himself to bed as far as to sit there while he reads, and so he is well primed to look up in time to see Tang Fan through the silk screen, his clamour closely followed by a yelp as he almost trips himself in his spill over the doorsill.

Instinct has Sui Zhou up on his knees before sense can soothe him, body coiling tense, papers creasing in the clench of his fist. If there was cause for his panic, he would know it. But the nights have been good to him, of late, and it has always been peace that he's found the hardest. When he is safe for too long, he starts to wait for it to change, starts to work himself to prepare for it. Eventually, the expectation is what consumes him.

He is not there yet, though. If the Heavens' ambivalence can be thought kind, that inevitability will not be passing through him again for some time.

Tang Fan rounds around the screen, wide-eyed and bare-footed, the snare of his hair sloppily swept back from his face, cheeks flushed petal pink. The burned-low candle has washed his skin out to sullen pale, and he is shaking beneath the cloak of his coverlet, hem fist-fastened high on his neck. Sui Zhou does not know if he is more rattled from the exertion of sprinting the short jaunt between their rooms, or by the night's chill. He is only wearing his sleep clothes, the cotton so worn by age that the rub of his limbs has thinned it sheer between his thighs, under his arms.

"Sui Zhou!" he splutters out, harried breathless. He flings a hand to his knee to catch himself as he doubles over. "Sui Zhou."

"I'm here," Sui Zhou assures him. It's unneeded, and likely unheeded, given how Tang Fan is presently preoccupied with his exaggerated gulping for air. Still, Sui Zhou does it with the same fool impulsivity that always seems to dictate his course around Tang Fan, and does not think on it much further than that.

"I need you," Tang Fan says, when he's ready.

"Yes," Sui Zhou answers, absently setting down his book— somewhere, to the side of him, within his bed. He is not entirely listening, given that he could tell this much already. He is thinking ahead to what the potential particulars of this need might be, because there are only so many things that bother Tang Fan enough to bother him of an evening, and almost all of them can be divvied up into two discomforts: cold or hungry.

This is Tang Fan's simplest respect, in Sui Zhou's experience. If he is cold, there should be more blankets still in the stores, or he can light a handwarmer, if Tang Fan will be insisting on staying awake. If he is hungry, there is nothing left from dinner, but the wok has been swilled and scraped, and there should be enough staples out for Sui Zhou to do something with that will at least be satiating, if not satisfactory—

"I need your cock," Tang Fan appends quickly.

Every thought Sui Zhou is having and may ever have again is promptly cut down where they standstill. "My," he starts, only to stop just as suddenly. Nothing else springs forth to be said. He's not sure there is anything actually left.

The colour mottling Tang Fan's cheeks flares up, pink deepening into a slapped red. The hue of the light gives it a glossy limn, less like a blush and more like smudged rouge. He stiffens his back and juts out his chin, shoulders shrugging up towards his ears.

"Yes," he says, prim. And, "I know you have one."

Sui Zhou is distantly aware as to how he must look: wide-eyed and slack-jawed stupefied, his own face slowly scalding hot. He blinks pithily, swallowing to clear his throat. His tongue sticks awkwardly to the roof of his mouth when he goes to speak again, and he's dimly grateful for the further pause he has to take to wet it with enough spit to ease it back free.

"You know," Sui Zhou says slowly, "that I have one." He does not know what else to say. Perhaps if he keeps saying Tang Fan's words back to him he'll stumble upon some inspiration. Tang Fan's words might even begin to make sense when run through some more manners of repetition.

Tang Fan bristles with indignance immediately, his brows lofting as his mouth pinches. He shifts his weight from heel to heel, as though it is costing him a great deal of restraint to not outright stomp his foot, the hand not still enfastening his throw closed at his neck swinging up from his side to flap vaguely through the air between them.

"It is not as if I went— rifling through your things!" Tang Fan retorts, voice teetering towards shrill. Sui Zhou had accused him of no such thing, but it seems as if that is to matter little if Tang Fan is feeling guilty of it enough to protest his innocence. "I was looking for the bookkeeping from the Zheng case, and your study is— I don't like how you keep things! I've told you this, your archiving is, it's, it's nonsense—"

"—Tang Fan," Sui Zhou cuts in gruffly. He wants little more than to sink in on himself until there is none of him left at all, but if he does not seize on the slim opportunity to stop Tang Fan here, Tang Fan will careen off into a velocitous tangent with Sui Zhou as his captive audience. And then Sui Zhou will have nothing left to do with himself in that captivity but listen, thinking all the while about how long ago the Zheng case was and how far away he keeps any scrap of documentation from his cock. Tang Fan could not have found it if he had not been seeking out something he knew he was not meant to look at.

"What a place to keep it," Tang Fan mutters, brow furrowing. He purses his lips into a plush pout. "Who would keep such a thing there." But he quietens, after that, and Sui Zhou wisely does not lower himself to taking the tempting bait of arguing back. A moment's hesitation in frustration will spare him from a hundred days of defending quarters no man should reasonably have to defend.

Sui Zhou considers all present circumstances and his choices in words before he speaks next. "Why?" he asks. It is precariously open-ended, but it is the most pertinent question.

Tang Fan fidgets, then flits forward a few paces, the trail of his blanket licking up the backs of his heels. "I am— there is a scene— I am stuck," is the surmise he leads with. He does not wait for Sui Zhou's invitation before he imposes the rest of the way, scurrying over to bundle himself onto Sui Zhou's bed. His blanket spills loose around his shoulders as he draws his spindly legs up towards himself, the wrap of his arms around his shins gathering them in close to all the rest of him. He sets his chin down on the shelf of his knees, tilting his head to peer up at Sui Zhou from underneath his hooding lashes.

"I see," says Sui Zhou. Which he does, more or less.

Tang Fan barely takes so much as a breath before he starts filling him in on the rest. "Three times now, I have rewritten this part," he gripes, nose scrunching up. "The first draft, I thought it done! Then Shu-laoshi returned it unread. He said it was not realistic!"

"Right," says Sui Zhou, to give proof that he is indeed still paying his dues in attention. Realism is a known soreness, its subject oft-treaded. Sui Zhou frankly does not understand its importance to Tang Fan in a genre where men are gifted beast's cocks and fuck their way through the provinces with them, but he has lost that discussion to an argument enough times now to know better than to game for it again.

Tang Fan rubs his cheek idly against the knob of his knee, toes curling against the lip of the bed. His pant legs, already too short on him, have ridden up high, baring his delicate ankles; the soft supple slopes of his calves. He is no longer shivering, which tells Sui Zhou that his room must be as warm as he himself is feeling.

"I only need to see how it would look," Tang Fan says slowly. "How it would— how everything would… sit." His voice flutters around it as his breath shallows on its intake. He is blushing to the throat, now, the smattering of dusted red dipping beneath his low collar. Proof that he is still yet of an awareness that he should feel— something, about what he is asking of him. Not shame, or embarrassment, but… there, between the bounds of either.

"Not inside," Sui Zhou clarifies, mouth running dry.

It is not that he thinks— he must draw that line. He has always had that line here. He does not know why, and he does not need to: not all things that exist must be interrogated for any explanation beyond their surface are or is. But this is the first time, throughout the chart and course of this arrangement, that the need has bared itself so plainly to him for Tang Fan to know unquestioningly that the line is there.

Tang Fan's eyes go very, very wide. "No, no!" he stammers, jerking upright from his slump over his lap. "You wouldn't— I don't—" His brows knit together as he stops himself short, mouth ajar, fluster colouring his expression. "Huang-guniang is a chaste woman," he eventually finishes. "A proper lady." Then, "Well, presently. Still. For now."

Sui Zhou does not indulge his immediate inclination to press it further. Being aware of which ever-flexible definition of chaste Tang Fan is using for his maiden love interest this time will not change what he needs to do and how he needs to do it.

"Yes," he accedes. "All right."

"Really?" Tang Fan blinks at him, disbelieving, as he slowly finishes unravelling himself the stalled remainder of the way. His feet dip back to the floor as his hands find the bed, palms bracing flat against it. The apparent sincerity of his surprise leaves Sui Zhou feeling stripped naked. It is not as if Sui Zhou's will does not cave in around any brush of a touch of Tang Fan's want against it. Is it only him who has noticed that?

Sui Zhou stands up from the bed. "Over the clothes," he says, looking away. Looking ahead. "Is that enough?"

"Yes," says Tang Fan, somewhat faint. "Yes, that is— I know enough about how the rest looks, Sui Zhou, I will manage."

Sui Zhou makes his way across the all too brief distance to his study, and folds open one of the screen doors only enough that he can slip inside. The candlelight does not carry itself far after him, but Sui Zhou does not need it to find his way. The dark affords him an illusive privacy; he can pretend that Tang Fan cannot still follow the shadow of his every movement through the screen, cannot guess as to where he is and what he is doing by the sounds that are made. The presumption that his gaze is there pursuing him pricks at Sui Zhou's nape all the same, rushing him to fumbling.

He could simply explain it, whatever it is that Tang Fan has convinced himself is missing, the tie that will bind the scene together, but. That has not ever been the way of this since it so started itself. Tang Fan trusts his word, yes, but in this of all things is where he will not take Sui Zhou at it. He must see how muscles will play out beneath skin when a body is bared and spread out open; he must feel how one's hips will ache when their legs are folded to their chest and held there; he must know that stubble will rub one's chin raw if their mouth is kissed into until their lips are wet and stinging sore.

Whenever Sui Zhou has thought to ask him if there is not anyone else he can go to for this, out of all the other people Sui Zhou knows he knows — the ones who he exchanges answer poems with by courier, the ones he drinks with until he cannot stand for himself when he finally comes home, the ones that file to their door at any and all hours and bid him on out to places where Sui Zhou is not privy to know or to follow — something in the ugly snarl that rooted low in his belly when he was born and has only rotted since calcifies to the point Sui Zhou's throat closes in around it, and he does not speak of it at all.

Everything is as he left it. Sui Zhou does not think he would have known the drawer had been opened without Tang Fan incriminating himself first. But then, even if he would have, if left solely to his own devices, it would have been a long time before he noticed it at all to begin with. It had been a long time since he last had… cause, before. Then Tang Fan had swept into his life, his home, taking up his space and his place there, and that had been that.

He does consider showing Tang Fan, for the fleet of the moment that his fingers trace the leather harness, mapping its shape to take it in hand and out of the dark, what next follows on from this part. It is not from shame or reservation that he discards it. Sui Zhou has stood before others, bare as born, and watched them watch him as he has laced latches and buckled them taut. He has had their hands on him; fingers laddering between straps and skin, fists testing the give of his cock once slotted into the ring, long slow pulls from root up shaft to tip. But that was then, and that was that, and this is— this. This is now. What need has Tang Fan to see for himself how these points are bridged? If he wants to picture it for any sake or sense of completion, he is certainly sufficiently imaginative.

Sui Zhou does not need to see his hands, not really. The motions are rote-familiar. The body is good at remembering. The bleed of the light through the screen is more than enough for him to catch himself on the missteps; to right his course when he strays. The harness rucks his pants, rides the seam high between the crux of his legs, but the cotton is summer-loose, soft. Thin. Ignorable. He takes his shaft in hand and strokes himself; swift, perfunctory. It is a rough touch, enough to leave him sure that everything will hold in place. The sweat wetting his palm slicks his grip, makes the slide of skin over bronze supple.

He does not know what to expect when he emerges, but perhaps he should have been able to. What it is that he gets is not entirely unanticipated: Tang Fan's gaze levels on him in an instant, his eyes wide, blown dark. His soft mouth parts slowly around a sharp inhalation as he looks down Sui Zhou, and then up again. The piercing narrow of his attention lances through him, leaving him feeling opened up, laid out. He's shrugged away his blanket and shoved it to the foot of Sui Zhou's bed. Without it to hide him, Sui Zhou can see how the whip slip of Tang Fan's frame is trembling.

"Where?" he tries to ask, but it catches. Sui Zhou takes a breath, swallowing it down until it sticks behind his ribs. Then, he clears his throat, and starts again. "Where is he?"

Tang Fan startles. "What?" His voice is so quiet, almost as if Sui Zhou is dreaming it.

It would not be the first time Sui Zhou has ever dreamed of him, but it might be the strangest, if it was so the case. Tang Fan is here, though, and he is real. They both are. Sui Zhou can be sure of that, if little else. He has been awake for long enough to ground; when sleep finds him, as it does, it will unearth and upend him, and come morning he will plant himself anew again.

"Your…" It occurs to him, then, that if Tang Fan has told him anything about this character, Sui Zhou either did not hear it, or he no longer remembers it. He stalls, the seconds stilting. "Tell me what you need," he tries instead.

"Oh," Tang Fan says. He blinks up at him; once, then again, chin lofting absently. "Yes, right. Here, come here." He holds out a hand, fingers crooking in a beckon, hurrying. "Come back to bed."

So Sui Zhou does. He feels— lumbering, as he kneels on the duvet and turns over onto his back, limbs drawn up overclose to himself; too big for his own bed, for the body he is in. He lays his legs out flat, pushed together. Soldier straight; rigor rigid. His weight slides back into his elbows, half-cocked, and he stills within that in-between, unsure. Tang Fan has not given him explicit direction, and it is not implicit, in omission, how he wants him. He can look at Tang Fan, raised up as he is like this, but Sui Zhou does not know if that is even wanted. Allowed.

He watches as Tang Fan slowly unthreads his limbs from the gathered in knot of himself, as he reaches out, the circuitous swoop of his gaze trailing from his thighs to— not quite Sui Zhou's eyes, but short of them, demurred. He does not flinch as Tang Fan's hand falls to his knee to steady himself, but the shock of his touch and the settle of his weight reverbs through Sui Zhou's leg, shudders up his spine.

Only to look, Tang Fan had said, and though there has always been tactility in his observation— "Is this enough?" Sui Zhou asks.

Tang Fan's attention does not perk up from where it has pooled in Sui Zhou's lap, on the jut of his cock. "I don't— no," he stutters, feathery. He pauses, licking out at his lips nervously. "I don't quite… I need to." Tang Fan manages to look up at him, if only for the moment it takes for their eyes to meet. Then he looks away, his attention jerking back to Sui Zhou's lap. It's such a quick, sharp tear of motion, as though he's been caught in the act of doing something untoward.

"Can I?" he finally asks, or perhaps he does not even ask at all. Perhaps Sui Zhou only hears it in seeing how Tang Fan's mouth parts around something; how his shoulder jerks as he starts to slide his hand from Sui Zhou's knee, only to stop when his palm meets with the flexed taut muscle of Sui Zhou's thigh and he remembers himself.

"Yes," Sui Zhou answers. And, "Yes," he repeats, louder, if frailer for its spurring. It is enough. Tang Fan startles, then shivers; an ebb to flow that Sui Zhou feels drift through him from the compress of Tang Fan's palm, plucking at the strings of tension threaded too-tightly through him.

"I won't be, I won't be rushed," Tang Fan mumbles, grousing, even as he snaps forward, racing to wrap his hand around Sui Zhou's shaft. His grip is too rough, too— much. Sui Zhou can't feel the claw of Tang Fan's fingers or the swivelling pivot of his wrist as he gives the bronze a dry pump, but he can see it; can feel the yank of the harness on his hips, the ride of the straps up his thighs. Even then, Sui Zhou's chafed hiss is more for the imagination of heat, the pretension of pressure. For the transposition of what he knows Tang Fan's touch to feel like when he puts it to Sui Zhou elsewhere, across his clothes and against his bared skin.

Tang Fan's fingers twitch back open around him, fist slacking. "Did I— was it hurting?" he asks. His voice is so soft, twinging with a twine of something— fragile, through it.

"No," Sui Zhou tells him, his surety of it swifter than the snag of reservation, the strangeness of Tang Fan's falter. Tang Fan curls his hand, but the flex of his hold is little more than a pebble kicked into the belly of a river, now; a tremoring ripple swallowed by the trend of the water's wind to the lake.

"Oh," says Tang Fan, succinct. He strokes Sui Zhou again, the slide of it clumsy, staggered. His mouth crimps with a frown, brow furrowing. "It's so dry," he adds, the remark stilting just as awkwardly as his hand.

"Gentle," says Sui Zhou, feeling quite stupid for speaking such a simplicity aloud. And, "It would be different," he tries to explain, because this is, after all, a lesson. At least to some fashion of extent. But Tang Fan's trepidity— it catches. Again, it catches, trips, and in its fall it rakes down Sui Zhou's chest, tearing his breath out to follow it.

"Do you," Sui Zhou starts, hoarse, "have you not—" and he knows, all at once, both the mistake and the wisdom of it, their equal measure, as Tang Fan begins to bristle before he has even so much as finished.

"Of course I have not," Tang Fan snaps. For all its bluster, though, it's far more brittle than it is ired. "Why would I need to," he stammers, breath hitching, "how is that important?"

Sui Zhou wants to get him in hand, wants to lift him off his legs, to set him back on his feet and send him away, to his room, to anywhere else but here. He knows it is an irrational impulse. They have touched before; in not such prurience as this, yes, but it was no less intimate. Sex itself is not a sacred thing. His reverence does not elevate this to religion.

"It's not," Sui Zhou answers. And that is not a lie, at least not as anyone else would tell it.

"Oh," says Tang Fan, just as succinctly as before. He swallows, then licks out at his bottom lip, eyes darting to the curve of his hand cradling Sui Zhou's shaft. "I know he would leak," he says, then, and Sui Zhou is drawn into watching the way the slide of his hand punctuates it. It is smoother, now, for the sweat that has gathered on his palm. "Here," Tang Fan notes, circling his thumb beneath the head, gently enough that it could almost be as if he was teasing at the foreskin, pulled back.

Sui Zhou shudders in spite of himself. He hopes that he isn't obvious. He wants for Tang Fan to notice. Whichever might convince him to stop. Whatever will encourage him to keep going. "Yes," he says. Somehow, it comes out steadily enough.

"He would have to get so wet," Tang Fan observes lightly, "for it to be the only thing easing the way."

He traces the tip of his forefinger over the divot of the slit in the bronze. His very try at idleness betrays the effort of the deliberation behind it. It is so— compensatory. It is clear that Tang Fan has decided he has something to prove, here, between them, and Sui Zhou does not know what to do with that, nor can he think of how to dissuade him. This is not what this is for, but they are not yet too far gone. Tang Fan cannot go in this new direction if Sui Zhou does not follow. He will circle back if he turns around and finds himself alone.

He can take what control there is to have in this situation, however laughable. And so: "It doesn't have to be," says Sui Zhou tightly. "If it is too dry. Have them use salve, or oil."

Tang Fan looks back up at him, crinkling his nose as though he finds Sui Zhou's very suggestion distasteful. "This is an impassioned tryst, Sui Zhou!" he scoffs. "They did not pack for it as if it was a trip."

It is not as though Sui Zhou could know this, however much Tang Fan must think otherwise. For all he presumes that everything that is obvious to him has been explained, that the interiors of his own mind are windowed and not walled. Sui Zhou has no picture of the scene that is set beyond that the man is on his back, and the maiden's hand is upon his cock. Though even this line is blurred, too, by the uncertainty of where Tang Fan ends and this act of his begins. Still, it is almost an absurd relief, to be the object of his annoyance for something so inconsequential, easily rectifiable. It disposes Tang Fan to a different distraction, and detracts from Sui Zhou's own dissolution.

Sui Zhou takes a moment to consider his continued approach. The time can be spared, he thinks, without Tang Fan coming to miss it, if he's quick. He has read enough spring books to have some ideas. Never Tang Fan's — Wang Zhi had thought it pertinently amusing enough to ensure Sui Zhou was apprised, at least, of some, but he's not read at length. And certainly none of the ones Tang Fan has written since their acquaintance, even before they came into this particularly peculiar collaboration.

For all they can be adventurous, they rarely seem to be exploratory of a pleasure that is not partisan, where the maiden's enjoyment is her own and not an extension of the hero's. Even having her hand on him like this would have her wet — if that was what was wanted. And she could— he can't bring himself to finish the thought as he has it, let alone offer it.

Instead, "Her mouth, then," Sui Zhou says, raspy. "On him." It feels irreproachably safer, to suggest this. Irrevocably treacherous.

The breath Tang Fan takes is jagged, lancing. "She can't do that," he answers, the red of his blush deepening, as though his blood is simply lush with wine and not hot with this charged unease. "She is— a proper woman." But it's a distracted babbling, this explanation, distanced from his deliberation.

Sui Zhou takes a breath of his own, sorely needed. It does not ease the way his chest is compressing upon itself, or loosen the dry vice around his throat. "All right," he says, and waits.

Tang Fan tears his gaze away again, letting it fall back to the circle of his hand, the twitching toy of his fingers along Sui Zhou's cock. "But I," he starts slowly, "she could…"

When he leans forward, the curtain of his hair falls over his face, fanning his cheek. Sui Zhou is drawn to the trembling furl of Tang Fan's fingers as he reaches to brush it all back behind his ear, the way his thumb curls beneath the jut of his jaw, lingering against his throat.

And then Tang Fan spits on his cock.

Sui Zhou hears himself; the terrible, throaty sound that shock tears out through the grit of his teeth. The shame that burns up under his skin is not punishment enough to spare him the control to stop the way his hips jerk, pushing his shaft through the sleeve of Tang Fan's grip.

"Ah." Tang Fan breathes out, slow. The gust of it strums down the thread of his spit still tying his bottom lip to the tip of Sui Zhou's cock, but it is the lave of his tongue that snaps it free. "There," he murmurs. His eyes are wide and glassy when he looks back up, as midnight black as the inked brushstrokes of his lashes. "Like that?"

"Yes," Sui Zhou croaks, strained. The struggle not to push up again is shuddering low in his hips, striping down the backs of his thighs. Tang Fan's hand is unmoving over his cock; not even his thumb twitches to smear the trickle of his spit around the slope of the bronze. For need alone to see him do something, Sui Zhou speaks up, no steadier for the wait. "Is this enough?"

Tang Fan cringes. "Is it." He starts, and stalls, then stops again, looking away. Elsewhere. Anywhere but Sui Zhou will suit him, apparently. "I— no," is what he seems to settle on, however unconvincingly. "Not yet."

"Then what." Sui Zhou's mouth is too dry; his words stick to his palate, catch in the crags of his teeth. "Then what else?" His question echoes in the too-wide space its parameters have left for it to be answered, and so he tries again to refine it to some direction. "What is left between them to do?"

"I think," says Tang Fan, and then, "to touch him. Have him touch her. Like this." His hand shifts on Sui Zhou's cock, barely an inch of a stroke, to elaborate. As if it could ever be possible that Sui Zhou could not know what he refers to. But perhaps it is simply that Tang Fan feels compelled to do it, feels a comparable futility about a need to fill these seconds with something. "And then..." His brow furrows as he rambles, as though he can hear what little of an explanation he is providing, but is powerless to change the course of his tongue around it.

There is no answer he can give, even by abstaining, that will be— that will mean anything. The road they have gone down is not one that paves way for retreating. There is no choice left but to trek it. Onward, outward, through.

"And then?" Sui Zhou prompts, breathless.

Tang Fan takes the breath that has left him. "And then. I," he stutters, nerved. And then, "Can I?" he asks again. Sui Zhou has lost count of his asks, just as he has lost count of his own. Surely, though, it must be the most Tang Fan has ever asked of him in a night. He thinks it must even be the most that Tang Fan has ever asked of him in his life.

Sui Zhou trusts himself to talk as far as Tang Fan seems to, in turn. And so, for want of a better word, he merely nods. The lines he has drawn have already been spoken, and Sui Zhou must trust that they will not cross them.

He does not expect what follows, for all its impossibility, but he is prepared for it, for all its inevitability. Tang Fan's hand slips from his cock, dips into the pool of his lap, thumb curving hot against the inside of his thigh. Then, his hand is sliding up; a hesitant, incremental inching, smoothing over his hip, stroking his waist. When his touch is not waylaid, the rest of his body follows after it, emboldened, and then Tang Fan is straddling his waist, settling in over— against his cock.

Tang Fan meets it too heavily, the swing of his limbs and his heft made ungainly by his haste. The bronze pushes up hard between his legs, ungiving, and Tang Fan makes a stunned, sore little noise, pushed-out. He reels forward, as if he is about to fall, and Sui Zhou's hands find his hips unthinkingly, steadying him in place.

"Oh," Tang Fan gasps, and Sui Zhou tenses. He should have— he didn't think. Tang Fan's hands catch out at his own, fastening over his wrists. "Ah. It's so…"

It would not be like this, Sui Zhou thinks to explain, when Tang Fan falls silent, his own thought unfinished. There would be so much more give to him, pressed beneath her weight. Unlike Tang Fan, she would be able to settle against her lover comfortably, properly— skin to skin, the wet heat of her cunt pinning his cock to the flat of his belly. But Sui Zhou cannot bring himself to explain it. He cannot bargain with himself to do anything.

"Wait." Tang Fan clutches at him tighter, the cuffs of his fingers biting at Sui Zhou's bones, the thick pulse of his blood in his veins. Sui Zhou can't breathe for the hammer of his heart filling out the back of his throat, his tongue fat in his dry mouth, stuck fast behind his teeth. He is in no state to get away, if that is what Tang Fan is fearing. "Just— wait, a moment, I…"

Tang Fan squirms, weight shifting from knee to knee, his thighs spreading wider. Sui Zhou feels the grind of Tang Fan's cunt across his cock in how it digs the ring of the harness down into his groin, leather creaking over metal. Tang Fan's nostrils flare around the shallowed pant of his breath, his lips pursing against a grimace. A flash of something inscrutable flares across the blown black of his eyes, and then he moves again, the circle of his hips slow, purposed.

"Tang Fan," Sui Zhou chokes. He claws down on him helplessly, his fingers all but meeting across the small of his spine.

"Wait," Tang Fan husks, the edge of it forceful. Focused. He rocks down, teeth scraping over the swell of his bottom lip as his plush mouth pouts around a stuttery whine.

"Tang Fan," he tries again. It could barely be called a protest; laughable, then, to think it could ever persuade him. That it could even raise itself up from beneath his notice. He can feel each deliberate drag of Tang Fan's cunt over his length in its rippling resound through his hips, his spine. A heady fog has filled out his head, periled pleasure stuporing his every other sense.

Surely this has been more than enough. Tang Fan must have what he needs by now to tell his story however it is that he wants it told. But— "Sui Zhou," he stresses, frustration colouring the caution, even though Sui Zhou has made no renewed efforts to do anything but stay where he is.

Sui Zhou blinks against the blur that has bled over his sight, eyes stinging from the strain of unfocus, the sweat that has dripped from his brow to clump his lashes. Tang Fan moves again, again, unerring, pushing the bulk of his every progress into a backstep. When he can again see Tang Fan's face, he is unable to look at it. So his gaze falls lower, from the spit-wet red of his mouth to the well-worked flush rashing his neck, the rumpled part of his collar to where sweat has stuck his shirt to his sternum. Even dry, the weave is rubbed thin enough from long nights of wear that Sui Zhou can see the shape and shade of everything beneath it; the blossoms of his blush blotting the slight swells of his breasts, the dark peaks of his nipples.

Tang Fan's next thrust jars through him, rough, jolting loose the groan that has gathered in Sui Zhou's throat. His vision swims, and his head swings to follow it, led low to the cage of Tang Fan's thighs around him, their choke-tight clench as he anchors his rutting.

Sui Zhou's breath catches, tellingly, then stops entirely. Tang Fan is— he is so wet, the white cotton of his pants soaked sheer. Sui Zhou can see everything that he is not and was never supposed to: the dark thatch of hair between his legs, the way his folds are pushed apart by his cock as Tang Fan rubs against it, trying for friction. The soft pink of his cunt, the flushed nub of his clit. He knows his grip on Tang Fan has turned bruising, that it must be hurting, can feel the jump of Tang Fan's belly under his thumbs, but he can't— he has to—

"Wait!" Tang Fan begs, frantic. He scrabbles to keep ahold of him, nails teething through the skin of his wrists. "Wait, ah, Sui Zhou, Sui Zhou—"

Sui Zhou can't, he can't— and then Tang Fan is coming with a strangled cry, the bough of his body breaking around it. The violent sway and throw of his weight, the show of his undoing— it all bears down into Sui Zhou, submerging. Tang Fan shoves at his wrists, forcing Sui Zhou's hands back from his hips until they hit the bed, laid out astride his shoulders, palms upturned.

Sui Zhou pulls in a breath, gasping, chest heaving around the hollow it can't hope to fill, and Tang Fan follows it in, through. He pushes their mouths together in a clumsy crush, his whine whipping between the biting clack of their teeth, the punch of Sui Zhou's exhale. To say it is a kiss is— perhaps that is Tang Fan's intent, in this moment, but it is not the outcome of the stinging, starved thing scraping sharply over Sui Zhou's lips. It is more as though Tang Fan is trying to gag himself, all of his helpless noise, and Sui Zhou is the closest thing he has to silence himself with.

Sui Zhou tips his chin up to meet him, because there is nowhere else for him to go, or where he would rather be, the interchange inextricable. If and for nothing else, Tang Fan starts to slow beneath the counter of Sui Zhou's carefulness, his concession, tilting his face with a breathy little sigh. All at once, with that, the kiss slides— softer. Sweeter. Into what is unmistakably a kiss, now. Tang Fan is kissing him, and Sui Zhou is kissing him back.

"Tang— Tang Fan," Sui Zhou pants against his mouth. Tang Fan makes a soft sound back in answer, pushing the wordless shape of it past the seam of Sui Zhou's lips. He can feel Tang Fan moving against him again, languid rolls of his hips edging his cunt along the hard line of Sui Zhou's cock, tucked up tight between his legs. Perhaps he never stopped. There is neither hunger nor urgency to it, anymore, regardless. It is as though it has fallen away from his attention entirely, almost; a posed distraction to the way he keeps kissing into Sui Zhou's mouth, licking behind his teeth. He slides his hands from Sui Zhou's wrists, and then their fingers are tangling, threading together. Tang Fan does not push his body into it, into him, not any more than is consequential to the holding itself, to being held.

Sui Zhou is so desperately wet that he's soaked through his lap, down his thighs. He is dripping in an aching ebb down onto the bed, and he feels so sore with it, so swollen hot with his need to come that it is as if he is once more untouched, again untried. He wants to push into Tang Fan, to see the shutter of his face and hear the shudder of his breath as he is fucked open and filled up. He needs— he needs for this to stop.

He tears himself away, turning his face, tight, to the pillow. Tang Fan's exhale slaps against the corner of his mouth, the curve of his cheek. He presses a damp kiss to the skin beneath his lips, the tip of his tongue tasting the salt of his sweat, and then another, trailing Sui Zhou's shiver. Sui Zhou squeezes his eyes shut; sets his jaw tight; wills himself to still, stagnate.

A gingerness seeds in the second kiss Tang Fan presses to his cheek, then flowers in the next, the petals of his lips trembling around the stutter of his breath. There is something to his weight that remains against Sui Zhou even when he feels him lean away, like a shadow, a scarring. The clasp of their hands unroots, unwinds. Sui Zhou opens his eyes again, slow, and tries not to suffocate on how his very acquiescence has seen him take advantage of what he shouldn't— that wasn't his to have.

"Did you get what you needed?" He does not meet Tang Fan's eyes as he asks. Sui Zhou is a brave man, but there is no courage without cowardice.

Tang Fan regards him for a long drag of a moment. "Did I get…?" he murmurs, trailing. Dazed, almost.

"What you needed," Sui Zhou forces himself to finish for him.

Something strange flutters across his features — the parts of them, anyway, that Sui Zhou can bear to look at. The soft part of his kissed pink mouth around the pull of his inhale; the mottled blush on his cheeks. Without a glimpse of his eyes, it remains unreadable, but to meet them hardly holds any promises that it will become telling. Then, his expression falls back into something— settled. Stony, but set.

"Yes," Tang Fan says, stiff. "Yes. I did. Yes."

"Good," Sui Zhou says. And, thankfully, Tang Fan needs no further prompting than that. He starts to disentangle himself from Sui Zhou at once, lurching up from the bed.

"I have to write," he rambles, coming alive again in a flutter. "I have to. I'm going to." Sui Zhou looks to him, and his eyes flick away, gaze trading off to roam over nothing, his hands flitting between a fuss with his collar and a tweaking of the ties of his shirt. "Yes," he adds, and then, "Good night."

With that, Tang Fan lunges to snatch up his blanket, and promptly darts from the room as if something truly frightful is on his heels, giving chase.

Sui Zhou watches him go. There is nothing left to him but to watch him go, until all trace of him has disappeared like a dream stirred from in the night. It could almost be as if he was never there at all, so long as Sui Zhou stays still with it, strays no further. But that is not to be so. When he touches his fingers to his shaft, so idle a gesture as to be insensible, the pads of them come away wet; sticky with Tang Fan's slick, his spend. The mark of his presence. The shape of Sui Zhou's imposement.

When the time he wiles away in returning all of his things to their proper places still does not change the ache within him to an abate, Sui Zhou takes a kneel before his bed. Like penance, he slides the flat of his palm between his spread legs. Like prosecution, he ruts his clit against the heel of his hand until he's rubbed red and raw, his pleasure wrung out and spent like a debt. And then he does it again, and again, and again, until all that's left within and without him is the hurting. And if he must shakingly set his teeth to his sleeve as he drips into the cradle of his fingers against his cunt, lest something leave his mouth, unbidden, in a moment of weakness, then, well. So be it. It is as it always is. No different.