It starts, as some things yet still do between them, with a quarrel.

Or, rather— it starts with a discussion, animated more by volume and intensity than any true heat. A roughshod pull-over thing of pretence waiting out for more.

The fire of it has been embering for more than an hour, now, ever since Tang Fan swanned back into the siheyuan at chu geng with a head full of ideas and a belly full of wine. Sui Zhou had set himself at once to swilling the wok while Tang Fan had spilled his way into the kitchen on his heels, the first order of his business to cook something to sop up the slosh of liquor in him. Now, the clack of his knife to the board and the sizzle-spit of hot oil is a pleasant percussion to tandem Tang Fan's chatter. His topics are as airy as Sui Zhou's contributions to them are aimless. Spice and garnish to flavour something more toothsome.

Their home had been quiet, in the intervening hours since Sui Zhou returned from the Northern Administrative Court. Dong'er had declared to them both over breakfast that she would be spending her afternoon with Yu-guniang, and the hour is late enough, now, that Sui Zhou is not expecting to see her return any sooner than morning. Tang Fan had returned at some point of the day only to leave again; Sui Zhou had seen the evidence of his stop in the aftermath, after its fact. But it had been a good quiet; one that did not leave Sui Zhou lonely and make his head so loud. One that did not hold him captive to a guarded waiting, walled up with foreboded expectation.

It had been nice. But it is nicer, now, for having Tang Fan here. Sui Zhou's home and his life are meant to be filled to overflowing with such noise as this kind of company brings. Even if such a noise is quietened, for now, because Tang Fan is biding for time to keep something from him.

Sui Zhou knows Tang Fan well, by now, from years of acclimation. What Tang Fan has yet to address about his day says more than anything he's actually apprised Sui Zhou of. But he'll not be rushed if it is not of his own accord, so Sui Zhou plates up his meal for him and then starts to meander through the clean-up. He hums in all the right places as Tang Fan complains about the disputes that dragged out his day, of all the places his cases had him running off to. When Tang Fan praises his cooking, Sui Zhou accepts it with humile grace. When Tang Fan folds his arms on the bench and pillows his face there to better watch Sui Zhou intently, Sui Zhou pretends as if he is a man who has not noticed he is marked and out on display.

"I read some of Guo-laoshi's new work tonight," says Tang Fan. "Do you remember Guo-laoshi? I'm sure I've talked about him before."

"I am familiar with your Guo-laoshi's work," says Sui Zhou. The sound of Tang Fan's splutter is satisfying enough, even without looking up to see the face he makes around it.

"Yes," Tang Fan mutters primly. "Well." He does not immediately continue. Sui Zhou is content to let him sit with it.

It is not yet clear what Tang Fan will want of him from this, anyway, though the field of potential is, at least, limited to only a few possibilities. It is something of a game they still play, now and again, where Tang Fan will broach trying certain things, with Sui Zhou, but only under covers of experimentation, on bases of investigation. As though they are only exercises, nobly undertaken for the sake of literature. It is not a fraught arrangement, anymore, like it was once before. But it is not the only intended destination Tang Fan has for these conversations, or the sole stop on any road that might visit through a multitude of places. Sometimes—

"You don't like it." It's not quite accusatory, but close enough, leaning adjacent.

—And sometimes it is this. Sui Zhou leans over to take Tang Fan's bowl so that he can stack it with the rest to wash. "I don't find it to be realistic," says Sui Zhou, deliberate.

Tang Fan's scowl is audible in the scoff he makes as its accompaniment. Sui Zhou watches the blur of him right itself up from the bench out of the corner of his eye. "It is not about the, the— feasibility!" Tang Fan predictably fires back. "It is about passion." His sleeve snaps about in Sui Zhou's periphery as he flaps a hand through the air. Sui Zhou starts to scrape the scrap vegetable cuttings off the board and into the feed for the goat. "You have no understanding of the genre, or, or appreciation of the erotic," he declares.

Sometimes Tang Fan does indeed forget that he is not, in fact, the only learned man under their shared roof. But, more often than not, it is simply a matter of it better suiting him to make a point out of ignoring that Sui Zhou's roots are grounded in scholarship, too. Of pretending that the award of Sui Zhou's military officership was not as contingent on his ability to shoot a man at tens of paces on both foot and horseback as it was his ability to compose a baguwen on Confucian thought.

It stands to be the case, then, between them that Tang Fan can be as typically right as he is occasionally wrong. Often, though, any biteless bickering circles the head not of Tang Fan's drive to be provably correct, but his desire to provoke Sui Zhou into challenging otherwise. Any affirmation he gets is secondary to the reward that is the argument itself.

This is a subject that Tang Fan does not disagree with Sui Zhou on just out of the principle of having the disagreement, however, or for the baiting of Sui Zhou into giving him what he wants in the way that he wants it given. He does think Sui Zhou is wrong. And he is entitled to that opinion, as he is the heat with which he defends it.

So: Sui Zhou sets away his knife, faces Tang Fan, and, with all the understanding and intention to cause what will be wrought, says, "What is erotic about ridiculous, exaggerated distensions?" He gestures to his stomach for punctuative emphasis. He imagines it will only further his point.

Tang Fan, mouth ajar, is already a flustered pink at his cheeks and neck. Sui Zhou would swear an oath on that he can see him rapidly ripening to a bright red, until his mottled blush is practically glowing on his skin in the dim light. Under Sui Zhou's observation, Tang Fan remembers his mouth long enough to close it, his expression twisting into a sulking contrivance of indignant embarrassment. Or whatever it is Tang Fan feels that is only supposedly embarrassment, given it lacks the incumbent shame most men would say is intrinsic to the experience.

"It's not—!" Tang Fan starts, only to stop. His mouth crimps into a narrow frown, brow furrowing. "Guo-laoshi's depictions are… evocative," is his more measured response. It is not the word Sui Zhou would have chosen for them. "But the essence of the appeal to intimacy is there," Tang Fan argues.

"And what is that appeal?" Sui Zhou asks him seriously.

"It's, it's about," Tang Fan stammers, then, "if you don't understand it, it would take too long to try and explain it to you."

That does not answer Sui Zhou's question, but it does tell him as much as he needs to know. Perhaps Tang Fan can't explain it himself, or he is caught up close enough to the way he sounds to have scruples about what he says.

It is here that Sui Zhou, lush with assurance as to his meaningless victory, makes the tactical error he will later realise is his undoing: "It would not be comfortable," he says, with confidence he does not have empirical backing for, "were it even possible." Discomfort is not such a terrible thing — there are indeed times and places where it can be quite pleasurable, and Sui Zhou is well-acquainted with many of them — but he can't imagine that being penetrated by something so large that it can actually be seen protruding under the skin could qualify. Would qualify.

The show of unsurety is his mistake. Tang Fan peers at him sharply, picking up on the whiff of weakness like an onlooker to bloodsport. "You don't know," Tang Fan says. Accuses, really, given that the next thing he adds is, "To be so convinced when you can't rightly be sure, aren't you being unreasonable?"

That Sui Zhou digs his heels in when he has the terrain advantage and would be better served by disengaging is also his mistake. "You can infer being struck hurts without experiencing it for yourself," he argues back. "It's the same."

"Try it with me," says Tang Fan. There is a flinty edge to the steel of his stare. Sui Zhou has to glance away for a beat, the flat of his palm scrubbing over the bench, brushing away imagined mess. Tang Fan does not wait for him to look back up before he continues his offensive. "If we cannot make it happen, then I will accept that I am wrong. But! But," he presses, "you must go about it properly. You can't take proof from half measures."

Sui Zhou clears his throat, then looks back up to meet Tang Fan's eyes, hoping his face at least does not look as hot as it is starting to feel. He is glad for his high walls and modest neighbours. "How would you have me, then?" he asks, thinking it best to be direct with it.

"Well, you are too," it is Tang Fan's turn to gesture at Sui Zhou's stomach, now, to punctuate a point, "so it will have to be me. I am very delicate. It will be easier to—" He swallows. "See."

"Like one of your Guo-laoshi's maidens," says Sui Zhou. He means to be teasing, but it comes out as distractedly faint. He has heard every imaginable filth spoken, in boudoirs and on battlefields and everywhere else in Ming that lay between them. The words themselves — be they sly innuendo or explicit profanity — are not the surprise, nor is the intent that presses up behind them. It is Tang Fan. It has always been Tang Fan who his face is too thin around, Tang Fan who too easily shakes him.

Tang Fan sniffs as he shifts in his seat. "Well," he says, rubbing at his cheek, "I would not have— yes. I suppose so."

Sui Zhou straightens, dusting his hands across his apron. "Go, then," he dismisses. "I will finish in here, and then come to you."

Tang Fan does not have to scramble to his feet with such haste that he nearly trips himself over, but he does, nearly kicking his chair out as he shoves himself free of the bench with a flurry of clatters and rippling fabric. "My room," he says, taking a twisting half-step back on his heels to disentangle his legs and his skirts. "Don't keep me waiting for too long! I'll grow cold, I'll, I'll waste away to nothing!"

Sui Zhou thinks there is little risk of that, but Tang Fan has torn off into the courtyard before he can think to dissuade him of the thought. No matter; Tang Fan would persist in thinking it anyway, regardless of any persuasion to the contrary. Sui Zhou does not need the time he takes before he follows — he folded most of it into busywork to occupy him during their chatter, and then their bickering — but he takes it anyway. Then, he unties his apron, the rope rucking his long sleeves, sets them all away, and steps out.

The night has grown darker since Tang Fan came home, as more of the capital has shuffled off to sleep. Sui Zhou is not sure if it has grown colder, as well, or if it is simply the warmth of the kitchen leaving him that is so brisk, chilling. The lanterns in the courtyard are doused; Sui Zhou had not tasked himself with lighting them when the sun was first setting, earlier. Had seen no need to. But Tang Fan has lit a candle in his room, now, and the light of it is spilling out through the screen of his door, splashing wide across the cobblestone. Sui Zhou lets that guide him, however much he does not need it to.

Sui Zhou barely has a foot in over the threshold when Tang Fan starts clicking his tongue at him. "Hurry in and close the door," he chides, complaintive, from somewhere off to Sui Zhou's side. "You're dragging in all of the cold with you."

Sui Zhou does not hide the huff of his breath; he thinks even Tang Fan would agree he's earned that much in the way of an outburst. He ferries himself inside the last of the way, quickly draws the door closed again behind him, and turns to look for Tang Fan. It does not take long, given there is not far in his room to go, and he has gone far less than that. Sui Zhou finds him sitting on the edge of his bed, bundled up in his bedding, and not a chi further.

If the strewn detritus of his clothes around his floor is any indication, then the glimpse of his legs dangling out from under the coverlet is every confirmation that Tang Fan is naked. He meets Sui Zhou's gaze, and then promptly starts to disentangle himself, shrugging the blankets back from his shoulders and kicking them free of his lap. If there were any doubts that he might not be in an entirely immodest state of affairs left to chase away, then this would run them all screaming out.

"Are you going to fuck me dressed?" Tang Fan asks, reaching up to flick his hair back from his shoulders. Sui Zhou sets his hands to the ties of his outer robes at his waist, rolling his eyes half as much to match Tang Fan's callowness as to tear his gaze away from the curve of his body as his back arches.

For a split second, as he is toeing out of his boots, Sui Zhou does spare a thought towards picking up after himself as he undresses, before concluding that the effort would not be appreciated. And so, every layer drips from his hands as it comes away from his body, pools to the floor, and stays there. He does not have to look up to know he is being watched when Tang Fan's gaze lands so heavily on his skin, on each and every part of him as he bares it.

It does not take long before Sui Zhou is naked, but he was stripped down well before then. His hands hang at his sides as he looks up, falling to attention.

Tang Fan is leant back against his hands in lazy repose, still watching him, completely unabashed about it. "You don't need to get your cock for me," he says, when Sui Zhou finds his stare. "I have it here." And so he does — Sui Zhou can see the straps of the leather harness striping his thighs, the bronze pillar balanced in his lap. It must have been somewhere in or around his bed; Sui Zhou did not hear him move much or far between now and then. There is something about the brashness of it, how brazenly Tang Fan has put it on... display, almost, that makes Sui Zhou's face burn.

He steps over his piled clothes and towards the bed, and Tang Fan straightens up to meet his approach, stroking the flats of his palms up Sui Zhou's thighs once he's drawn close. "Let me get you ready for me," he says, voice pitched into something low, a raspy coquetry that burls in the back of Sui Zhou's throat, makes arousal pulse hot through his blood and pour down into his belly.

"If it suits you," Sui Zhou says, wry. It's a miracle, perhaps spent with unwise prematurity, that he manages to sound convincing.

"It suits me," says Tang Fan, and then he is pulling at him, gathering him in to stand him between his spread knees how he wants him precisely. Sui Zhou's tasking is to be malleable; Tang Fan has done this for him so many times, now, that his direction is no longer required and his input is only as requested.

Tang Fan is quick with it. He does not even complain once about the clasps as he buckles them, which is one of his favourite fussings when he wants to distract or dawdle. Finally, as he fits Sui Zhou's cock into the ring and tests its give, he presses in to brush a kiss over Sui Zhou's abdomen. It tucks the bronze in against the column of his throat, snubbing up tightly under the jut of his jaw. Sui Zhou can feel the thin tremoring thread of Tang Fan's swallow as it bobs against it.

"I've prepared myself," Tang Fan tells him, lips hot on his skin. Sui Zhou has to clench his hands at his sides so that he does not grab for Tang Fan, for his soft hair or his tender throat, as his body so wants to do, at that, breath punching out.

"Have you," Sui Zhou says, rumpled rough with discomposure. Tang Fan's smile broadens until Sui Zhou can see the peek of his teeth behind the pink of his lip, his cheek dimpling.

"Mm." He kisses him again, chuckling as Sui Zhou twitches against his lips, nudging his aim off-point. "I had to do something while you kept me waiting," he says, raspy, affecting a sultry little pout. He tilts his chin and noses in to nuzzle his cheek against Sui Zhou's shaft, fingers stepping a torturous trail up his thighs, cresting over his hips. "I could wet you with my mouth," Tang Fan offers, touching his lips to the bronze, open-mouthed. Sui Zhou digs his heels in with a bitten back grunt, stifling the urge to push his cock between them, to trace the edged-out space there and fill it.

Sui Zhou knows how that would play out down either of the only two paths it could take. Tang Fan is a creature of hunger and urgency, a clamour to immediate if fickle gratification. There have been many times that Sui Zhou has been dragged under his flow and spurred to rushing, swept off to distraction.

It is not that this is not and can not be enjoyable, but Tang Fan has impressed on him more than once, tonight, already, a grave concern that he will be wasted, and so, "No need," Sui Zhou says.

"Oh?" Tang Fan quirks a brow at him, wry, even as he pulls himself back on the bed to make room for Sui Zhou to kneel in between his thighs, unasked. "Aren't you eager," he says, sweeping his hands up Sui Zhou's arms to tug at his biceps, a prod for him to meet him faster. He does not give Sui Zhou the room to ready himself, trying to clamber into his lap before there is even a lap to take him, Sui Zhou's cock nudging against the inside of his thigh, over his mound, up his soft belly.

"Tang Fan," Sui Zhou admonishes, his exasperation heatless. Which of us is eager? he thinks. He hooks his hands under Tang Fan's knees and pulls his legs out wider, ignoring the ineffectual thrash of his kicking.

"Beast!" he squawks, hiccuping with laughter. Sui Zhou pushes past his false resistance and takes on the balance of his weight, folding him back. "You're so rough with me," Tang Fan fusses, pawing at him as he crowds in between his thighs. "Your poor xiao jiaoqi."

Sui Zhou lets him go, and Tang Fan spills back into all the space between them that's left, legs winding around his hips, Sui Zhou's cock nestling into the crease of his hip. He reaches down between them, the cumbrous, perfect tangle of their bodies, and presses the heel of his palm against Tang Fan's cunt. Tang Fan gasps at him, bucking into his hand. He is so— he is so small, when Sui Zhou touches him like this. It is easy for him to forget just how small Tang Fan is, how there is so much of him Sui Zhou can hold and yet not manage to fill his hands with. He strokes down his cleft, tracing a finger over Tang Fan's hole, smeared slick with oil, and Tang Fan gasps again, the breath of it tighter, now, fraying thin.

Sui Zhou presses in, just the tip, and Tang Fan makes a breathy, cringing sound, even as his hips rock forward to take Sui Zhou in further, seating him to the knuckle. "Aiya, did I not say I was ready for you?" he gripes, unconvincing, knees flinching in around Sui Zhou's waist. "Sui Zhou—"

More squirming than that will threaten to unseat him, and so Sui Zhou draws back. "Let me," he says, though this, too, is heatless. Tang Fan is not truly stopping him to start with. His permission was already extended, so his resistance is a shallow show, surface littered with perfunctory complaints to give it a lie of substance. Still, Tang Fan sighs his put-upon acquiescence at him as he settles back in Sui Zhou's lap, arms sprawling over Sui Zhou's shoulders, the splayed whorl of his dark hair hanging a heavy frame around his face.

"Well," Tang Fan says loftily, "go on, then," and so Sui Zhou spits into his hand and fits it back between Tang Fan's legs. "Sui Zhou!" he exclaims, delightedly scandalised. "There is oil, how, how dirty."

"It is not at hand," says Sui Zhou quickly, wiping his fingers through his spit to wet them. If he is quick, he does not have to quite hear himself speak, or feel the weight of the words before they leave him. "And you wanted to be filled." He is stumbling rapidly towards insensible, but that is hardly enough to stop him. "You wanted me to fill you. My xiao jiaoqi."

"A-ah." Tang Fan's hands shake, fingers slipping over Sui Zhou's shoulders, skating his back. He bites his lip, breath whistling in between his teeth. "I, so I did," he says, unsteadied. "I do. You— you can, then," he permits. "If you really can't wait."

Sui Zhou can, and he cannot, and Tang Fan could, but he will not, and so Sui Zhou turns over his hand at the wrist and fucks his spit-wet fingers into Tang Fan without even the wait of a warning. He is tight around him, and he goes even tighter as Sui Zhou sinks in, and in, and in. His hole is so sloppy with oil that the slide stays slippery in spite of the friction of his tensing; the wet squelch as he hilts to the webbing is too loud in Sui Zhou's ears, drowning, an obscenity. Tang Fan always takes him well, easily, like it's something that's meant to be. He lets his thumb circle Tang Fan's rim where he is stretched slack around him, kneads up over his perineum, and Tang Fan pants out damply against his cheek, bowing in closer, trembling all-over like a plucked string.

When this was still all so new between them, it took too little of Tang Fan's wanting to sink Sui Zhou like a stone, heavy as he was with his own desire. When they coupled without the charade, it was instead with the desperation of the afraid; that they would run out of time, that they would never find the words they wanted and they needed to say.

But with every season's change, Tang Fan stayed, and Sui Zhou remained. They are as different now for the years they've seen as they are the same. They have taken tea and bowed together; to the sky, their chosen loved and trusted few, each other. They live as husband and wife, as friend and confidant, as everything between earth and heaven that men can be to one another. They have found the words that have wound their journey to this home in destination, and they have the time to find more, yet, still, to lead them off wherever they might roam next.

Sui Zhou can hold his head above all the water, now. He has become something sturdier, dammed endurant to the flood and the fury. And though he does still wade out after Tang Fan to follow him down beneath the waves, it is just as often that he will pull Tang Fan back up to break the surface. That he will keep him there to catch his breath with him. It is a good thing, for Tang Fan, to be reminded that the well of his patience is never as empty as he thinks it is, that there are further depths there to tap and draw on.

Sui Zhou does not indulge more than a teased taste of past-needed with the slow stroke and stretch of his fingers; only until Tang Fan is eased loose of his tension, his breath coming fast, shallowed in his chest. His cunt was wet with need before Sui Zhou even touched him; it's swollen, now, sore. Dripping a mess of slick down his legs, between his cleft, smearing into the drying oil, Sui Zhou's spit, their sweat. Hot to the touch when Sui Zhou pulls out, the backs of his fingers brushing his folds. Sui Zhou presses in, parts them until he feels the pads of his fingers snub over Tang Fan's hole. Sui Zhou swallows the hush that rises in his throat when Tang Fan whines at him, his hips hitching, and curls his fingers, tight, over where Tang Fan is soft and soaked and open for him, too, where he fits.

"Are you." Tang Fan twitches against him, throat clicking around the grate of another whine as Sui Zhou takes the bead of his clit between his fingers, pushing back the hood. "Ah— are you?" Sui Zhou pauses for a moment, with it, with him, and at what Tang Fan perhaps takes as his hesitation, he adds, "It would be all right, if you did. For— for seeing. It would not get in the way."

Sui Zhou does not want to spook him, make him shy of the tender soothe of his rambling, and so he lets Tang Fan piece his way through his sentiment. There are silences, at times, with Sui Zhou, that Tang Fan scrambles to fill, to make them gentle. This is not one of them. It is not one of anything at all, but it is— Sui Zhou does not mind it. He is glad for what is meant by it.

But Tang Fan has asked him a question, in that, as well, and he has not yet answered it. "I would not want to waste your work," Sui Zhou says, a careful tread into playfulness. Tang Fan had said there could be no half measures, and so to have both would be— would only be thorough. He does not venture it, though. Not now; not yet.

"Then hurry," says Tang Fan, soft but prodding, breath hitching as Sui Zhou starts rubbing his clit between his fingers in slow, stroked circles. It's a betrayal of his lack of haste, this lingering, but Tang Fan's shivery sighs are sweet enough to make it worth the risk of a moment, two. Just enough to not become greedy with it.

"Hold on to me," Sui Zhou tells him. He reaches to palm at the small of his back, strokes his other hand up to cradle his neck, and Tang Fan winds his arms ever-tighter around him, muffling a cut-off sound of surprise into Sui Zhou's throat as he is tipped back into the bed. It's ungraceful; Tang Fan does not hinder him, but nor does he help him, either, and he is a lanky, leaden thing when he wants to be. And he very much wants to be, if Sui Zhou can tell by the way his laugh peals out against his chin when Sui Zhou fumbles him and drops the both of them into the bed.

Sui Zhou could kiss him, he realises with a divining wonder. They have been close enough for it before, but they are far closer now. It is Tang Fan that kisses him first, crossing that breath of distance to nudge their mouths together. Sui Zhou palms at the flare of his ribs, the narrow of his waist, the crest of his hip, each touch purposeful, as intended as the scrape of his teeth over the swell of Tang Fan's bottom lip. Tang Fan's tongue slips into his mouth, and his soft moan follows it through as the curve of Sui Zhou's hand presses back over his cunt.

"Where are you?" Tang Fan mumbles at him. Sui Zhou ruts his fingers along his slit slowly, wetting them in his slick, and Tang Fan nips at his lips to muffle his whine.

"I'm here." Sui Zhou tries to turn his face away, to look at what he is doing, so that he might finally, actually hurry, and Tang Fan nips at him again, punitive. "Tang Fan," he mutters into his teeth, entreating. "I can't see you."

"You don't need to," Tang Fan dismisses swiftly, "you don't need to see me." But he relents and relinquishes Sui Zhou after another kiss, though he chases him for one more, for good measure, before Sui Zhou has leant too far back out of his reach.

Sui Zhou ducks his head to spit in his palm again, pulse throbbing in his temples as Tang Fan makes a thick, pleased little sound low in his chest. He tugs his shaft through his fist to slick it, grip stuttering as Tang Fan folds his knees back towards his chest. He bears back in, Tang Fan's heels clipping his shoulders, and angles the head of his cock to Tang Fan's rim, watching the soft give of it around his tip as he pushes down, but not yet in.

"Yes," Tang Fan gasps, and then, "wait, wait, no— stop!" Sui Zhou has not begun, but he stops, and he steadies, and he waits, just as he's been directed. "Not like this," Tang Fan says. The bracket of his legs falls back open around Sui Zhou with a grunt, feet sliding from his shoulders and then across the bed as he wriggles up onto his elbows. "Let me have you on your back instead," he decides. "It will be— you will go deeper, if I. Yes."

"Yes," Sui Zhou agrees, or repeats, or— says, anyway. Tang Fan sits up, and Sui Zhou follows that pull and its push down onto his back. He threads his legs between Tang Fan's knees, and Tang Fan brings himself up to fence his hips, his thighs, hovering over his lap.

"Do you need," Sui Zhou starts, reaching between them to curl his hands around Tang Fan's hips, an offer, a bracing.

"Stay," Tang Fan says, choppy. "Stay, I have it." He reaches behind himself, twisting, and Sui Zhou feels the jab of his fingers as they skim along the bronze, the reverb of his grip as it flexes around the shaft. He can't quite line himself into his first thrust, hissing out as Sui Zhou's cock drags up his cleft.

"Easy," Sui Zhou lets out in a rush.

"I have it," Tang Fan insists. And so he does; the next of his thrusts catches, takes, and Tang Fan moans behind the tight press of his lips as Sui Zhou's cock starts to sink in, opening him up wider than the stretch of either of their fingers.

"Slowly," he cautious him. It comes just in time for Tang Fan not to heed it; he slams himself down into Sui Zhou's lap with a sudden enough shock of force that it can only be deliberate. Sui Zhou bucks up reflexively, and Tang Fan creaks out a yelp in retort, teeth rattling.

"Oh!" Tang Fan chokes out. "You're so deep. Ah— ah." It cuts short any apology that Sui Zhou means to give, scatters it on the four winds. Tang Fan's mouth hangs open as he splutters around his own breath, his swallow clotted, wet. The spit welled up at the corners of his lips is starting to spill over, trickling down his chin. The urge to reach up and wipe his face itches through Sui Zhou's fingers.

"Can you stand it?" Sui Zhou manages to ask. Even as he speaks, he feels tension coiling through his shoulders, his arms, pooling in his grip where it is bracing to take Tang Fan's weight upon himself, into it.

"Wait!" Tang Fan strains out, wispy, so Sui Zhou waits. And he waits. And, "I, I think, if I..." he trails off, his trembling thighs flexing against Sui Zhou's sides.

"I have you," Sui Zhou promises, hands anchored to Tang Fan's hips. His own voice grates around it, rough in his dry mouth. He swallows, steeling himself. It is taking so much from him just to keep as still as he is.

"I know." Tang Fan clings to Sui Zhou's forearms, scratching through the hairs there as he claws down, leaving pale lines over his skin in his wake. "I— I know that, of course I know that."

He does not look to be in pain, but he does not look to be in pleasure, either, or anything that could promise it. It is in Sui Zhou's nature and his instinct to right it, but Tang Fan has not told him that he wants to stop, and Sui Zhou cannot decide that for him.

"I am going to move," Tang Fan finally starts again, the words heaving out of him, clipped. "I am going to— stay just like that, Sui Zhou."

"I have you," Sui Zhou repeats stupidly. There is a tremor thick in his hands, now, and he is not sure if it is his or if it is Tang Fan's.

"Yes," Tang Fan babbles, thready, "yes, you do, sweet thing. Just, just be good, now. Be good for me."

Sui Zhou shudders, at that, and squeezes down on his hips tightly to stop himself from— he does not know what. Tang Fan utters something back, too soft and clotted to spin sense from, and then he is grunting as he lifts himself half to his knees. His eyes flutter as he sucks in a breath, then another, tongue tracing the bow of his upper lip with a nervous flick, before they fall shut in concentration. Then, he tilts himself back, and sinks down again just as he is, angled into the recline. The long line of his body tautens with twilled tension as he retakes him, mounting with each inch by incremental inch. Sui Zhou is so still. He stays so still for him, even when Tang Fan's pace stutters into a stall, even when his breath punches out and his nails break through Sui Zhou's skin.

"Be, be still," Tang Fan reminds him, shaky. His grip eases. Sui Zhou feels the sing of the sting across his forearms as his nails unlatch, and then he feels nothing, because he is holding himself still for Tang Fan as he reseats in his lap, hilting Sui Zhou's cock deep inside him. Sui Zhou feels the snapped release of the tension in Tang Fan's frame underneath his palms, charts the loose ripple of it as his hands slide from his hips to clasp over his thighs. His gaze roves over him, frenetic, taking a clement check of the clenched shutter of his face, the red staining his throat, the sweat beading down his sternum, the, the—

"Tang Fan," he chokes out.

Tang Fan blinks his eyes open again, slow, chin dipping to his collarbone as he finds Sui Zhou's stare, follows it down to look between them. Sui Zhou can make out the shape of Tang Fan's mouth falling open in his periphery; can hear the rattle of his desperate whimper thrown somewhere distant.

"You can—" Tang Fan splutters, hands flailing against him, as though he can gather more of Sui Zhou into his grip, impossibly, to reground him. "You can see how, how it feels, your cock—"

Sui Zhou cannot help himself — he fucks up into Tang Fan with a mindless, feral jerk. His hips slam against Tang Fan's ass with a filthy slap, and Sui Zhou feels a churning hot shame roil down his nape at the sound. He can see the head of his cock move inside Tang Fan's belly with him, and a groan spills out of his mouth as he watches it shove up, out. He can see how it feels.

Tang Fan gurgles as he fits a shaky hand over his belly, palming at Sui Zhou's cock, and Sui Zhou forces himself back down flat to the bed with a hiss. "Sorry," he says, or he tries to say, at least. It doesn't sound like much, and feels like less. Tang Fan did not— Sui Zhou should have more control than this. He needs to have more control than this.

Tang Fan makes another gurgling sound, more throaty, now, wretched, his other hand pawing at Sui Zhou's arm. Sui Zhou feels his jaw creak from the grit of his teeth around the effort it takes to swallow his trembling into something small, allowed. Tang Fan gulps down a breath, and then, "Again," he croaks, the word clotted wet, sob-thick. "Sui Zhou," he heaves, "don't stop, why have you stopped, move—"

Sui Zhou rocks up again, obedient, hard enough that Tang Fan bounces on his cock with a yelped moan. His fingers squeeze down tightly before the shove of Sui Zhou's cock forces them back open, splays the fan of them wide over his belly, and he— comes. Sui Zhou, dazed, can only hold on, Tang Fan's thighs dimpling under the ladder of his fingers as his mouth opens around, around nothing, around the shape of the sob that can't scrape out of his throat, spend soaking the sweat-matted thatch of wiry hair trailing Sui Zhou's skin from his groin to his navel.

"Oh," Tang Fan manages to whine, the cut-off tenor bordering a wail, something full and tried. His fingers scrape down across his belly— across the shape of Sui Zhou still in his belly. "Oh, you have to, Sui Zhou," he babbles, frantic, "it's too much, you have to get out. Gently!" he protests, even though Sui Zhou has not yet touched him again, differently; has not even so much as moved again save to breathe. "Be gentle," Tang Fan pleads, "be slow."

Sui Zhou is. He is, he always, always is, with Tang Fan, even when it is too much, when it is not what Tang Fan wants from him. Still, he smoothes his palms up Tang Fan's thighs, and he takes his hips in his hands so softly, so sweetly. He lets him catch his breath around it, then, at last, he lifts him so slowly, rises him up on his knees, ginger around every incremental gasp and huff that Tang Fan makes, the way his face crumples. Sui Zhou has to lift himself to lift Tang Fan, but he does not even notice it, really, the movement of his own body, the feel of himself within it, so oriented he is to Tang Fan's axis. Finally, he feels the resistance of Tang Fan's weight fall away from his lap, ease from the leather strapping his thighs; sees the head of his cock slide free from between his legs.

"Good," Tang Fan slurs, fuzzy, "that's, yes, there." He is still holding his belly, palm cupped around the— the absence of Sui Zhou's cock, now. Sui Zhou tries not to stare at the tremor of Tang Fan's fingers as he gathers him back up close and helps him onto his back, breath coming fast, harsh through his nose. Tang Fan is loose under his hands, pliant as Sui Zhou lays him out, as he sweeps his arms to his sides and unfolds his legs from their tuck to his chest. Sui Zhou can see the flutter of his hole around nothing, the twitch as the backs of his thighs tense at the touch of Sui Zhou's hand to his knee. He is still— open, a little, rim slack from the breadth of Sui Zhou's breach, a sore, well-fucked pink. Glistening wet with oil and sweat and his slick. If Sui Zhou had— but then Tang Fan's long legs petal together and drift down against the sheets, hiding him away, and the rest of that thought is gone before Sui Zhou can hold it and have it.

"Are you hurt?" Sui Zhou asks him softly.

Tang Fan makes a grumbling little sound, nudging out at Sui Zhou with his foot. "Do I look it?" he asks back. The reedy scratch of his voice sabotages his composure; he purses his lips as he struggles through a swallow. "I am not so delicate as that," he resumes. "I only need a moment, to, to— so let me have it."

So Sui Zhou does. The lapse is not yet lulling the heat that has pooled in the pit of his gut, the spooled tension that has knotted through his every plucked nerve. But it draws him up close to the crossroads he is used to stopping at, in these traversals. Though he burns just as any other man, Sui Zhou's pleasure is found in the giving of it to Tang Fan. He does not always take it in the having of it for himself. Sometimes it is because he cannot stand the touch he would need to bring him over, and sometimes it is because any release is nonpareil to the restraint of the refrain.

Sometimes it is not left to be his choice, but Tang Fan's, and Sui Zhou's preference is deferrent. This is still— rarer, though, of any occasion. It is not from any lack of desire on his part, and he does not think it would be lacking on Tang Fan's, either, if they were to— if Sui Zhou was to ask. Properly. If he spoke it into an existence of purpose instead of merely hoping for its occasional chanced conclusion. But he cannot be clear with Tang Fan if he is himself uncertain, and so there lies his reservation.

Sui Zhou has long understood the specificity of his want, and before that, he has known its shape, the cast of its shade over his life. It had not mattered to him how disparate what he had sought had been from what he had gotten, how what was often thought synonymous with service could push up too far on places inside of him that hollowed beneath that scrutiny. Good could always be taken from what was given, as could gladness for being able to get anything at all. It was not made for or meant to be held onto for longer than its moments.

This, this— what he has, with Tang Fan, is made to be kept, and things cannot endure if they are uncared for. Sui Zhou knows this to be true of him, too, just as he knows that his disregard does not alone manifest in the taking of risk, in the placing of his body before blows. There have been times, still, and already, where Tang Fan has crossed a line in him that has— has not gone well, for either of them. Sui Zhou trusts him, but he does not entirely trust himself with him, not yet. Not to be able to ask for it, for this, as more; for the hurt and humiliation on its turns, for the use and the neglect. For the whole potential he's seen in the way Tang Fan can cut him down so small, and yet leave him fuller for it, because it comes from a place of— a place that is good. Somewhere that has not forgotten warmth or forgone fondness.

Sui Zhou is not denying himself anything, anymore, at least not as he once did. Like all else, though, it is a procession of progress; a slow but steady-gaited thing. He need not overreach for something when there is certainty in its eventuality. When he has the time to wait for it.

It can only have been minutes, at their most, but the croak of Tang Fan's voice as he hums, deliberate, rouses Sui Zhou from his narrow fade of focus. It is almost as if he was on the verge of sleeping, or something yawning out towards it, for how heavily he feels its drape, suddenly, as he shrugs it off. "What could you be thinking about," Tang Fan muses at him. Then, "Ah. Is it how much you're wanting?"

Sui Zhou shudders, blinking the blur from his eyes, slow. He watches the line of Tang Fan's throat as he swallows; the dart of his tongue over his bottom lip. "Do you want?" Tang Fan asks, his voice still rasped to a strain-sweet whisper. He is flushed such a pretty pink from his cheeks to his chest, limbs soft and loose with well-worked exertion. He looks almost painted where he lays, aspread the spilling sheets, limned in warm candlelight. Like brushwork over paper, or delicately brocaded kesi. Almost too beautiful to be thought real. Almost certainly not meant for mortal eyes to see.

Yes Sui Zhou thinks. But that is not the totality of the answer to the question that Tang Fan is truly asking him, and so he does not speak it. He knows he can have everything, all that Tang Fan has to give, he need only reach out and take it. It is so much. It is so much for Sui Zhou to hold in hours like this. It is simple to ignore the way his body burns up when it is only him lit by the flames; it is impossible when Tang Fan invokes his desire's name.

Tang Fan's eyes hood, heavying his gaze with the heat of his appraisal. "You do," he says. "I know you do." He takes a deep breath; Sui Zhou sees the way his mouth crooks around a self-satisfied smile as he glances down to his chest to watch the way it rises, falls. "I can see it," Tang Fan tells him. "You are so— It is so plain. On your face." He stretches out, the supple lines of his body shivering with their slow unravelling. He fits the arch of his foot to Sui Zhou's knee, then drags it up to stand on his thigh.

Sui Zhou's mouth is dry, his throat tight. Tang Fan curls his toes in against him as he shifts, his sigh coloured by impatience. "Everyone can tell, you know," he says. "You must know." Sui Zhou's face burns hotter, naked shame drawing his skin too thin over muscle, sinew, bone. There is no room left for him in his own body with Tang Fan's attention filling it. "I think you like it, that they can."

He has never quite thought about it before. "Runqing," he husks. It's rubbed raw, frayed thin. It is somewhat of an asking in and of itself. He does not know what for.

"All right," Tang Fan gentles. He slides his foot from Sui Zhou's thigh and sits his weight up on his elbows, serpentine. "All right, I'm ready for you. Come, come up here, my Guangchuan," he beckons, "you should be where I can reach you."

Sui Zhou feels too eager in spite of Tang Fan's coaxing, clumsy in the way he— he crawls up Tang Fan's body. How quickly desperation lays him out as starved and foolish when Tang Fan is satiated enough to no longer commandeer it. Tang Fan does not hide his amusement, if it could be called that, but it is not scathing, at least not in a way that does not feel good, how it scours down Sui Zhou's spine. He tries to settle into a straddle over Tang Fan's hips, and Tang Fan tuts at him.

"Higher," he spurs, "closer," so Sui Zhou kneels up and shuffles further, until he is stopped over Tang Fan's belly by a hand to his hip. "There," Tang Fan says, and, "Ah," he sighs, when Sui Zhou lowers himself down again, knees slipping wide, thighs trembling with the stretch. "Aren't you something," he notes, like Sui Zhou is novel, like he's new. His thumb circles Sui Zhou's hip, his other hand smoothing down his flank. Sui Zhou shivers; burns; gasps out, raw, when Tang Fan trails his fingers from his side to his belly, then dips them down, low, touch meandering between his legs.

"Still so hard," Tang Fan croons as he wraps his hand around Sui Zhou's cock. There is a dark note to his sympathy that one could mistake for insincerity, if they did not know him better. Sui Zhou knows him better. Knows that Tang Fan's sharpness stings to soothe him. Tang Fan strokes his shaft in a long, slow pull, grip slippery on the bronze, and Sui Zhou fucks into his fist with a strangled groan, knees slipping out even wider. He barely manages to catch the bear of his own weight as he grinds his cunt down against Tang Fan's flat belly, feeling his slick smear between his thighs, leaking wetly into the soft hair smattering Tang Fan's navel.

"Tang Fan," he gasps weakly. His hips rut forward again, stuttering after the tug of Tang Fan's hand as he works over his cock. It is not a gentle thing — each jerk reverbs up to Tang Fan's shoulder, rough enough for Sui Zhou to feel it through the harness, in the tautening bite of the leather into his skin.

"So close," Tang Fan says to himself, almost as if he isn't even listening. As though Sui Zhou is beneath some notice, secondary to his attention. A cock to fuck himself with; no more, perhaps even less. Sui Zhou burns bright with it, the whelm of being an insignificance that yet subsumes everything else. Of being wanted so wholly in his every itineration that he is taken tenderly apart to nothing. "You're so close, aren't you?"

"Yes," Sui Zhou answers, because he has been asked a question. "Yes." He is. He is.

Tang Fan's thumb teases over the divot of his cock's slit, the circle of it smearing oil across the flared head. It is not an extravagant thing, Sui Zhou's cock, or engraved to any great detail, but Tang Fan toys with it like he can feel the throb of Sui Zhou's pulse in his palm all the same. "I know," he says, raspy. He has to swallow to sweeten it; Sui Zhou watches the bob of his delicate throat, hazy. "I know you are," Tang Fan continues, clearer. "You must be so sore with it. From waiting."

Sui Zhou tries to push into Tang Fan's hand again, and Tang Fan meets him at the impasse, taking him by the hip. His hold is not strong, but it is securing. It stops him still. Sui Zhou shudders against its mooring with a moan, knocked loose of his chest. He wants, he wants, he'll wait, he'll do whatever it takes. Patience, for him, is no less vital, less virtuous.

Tang Fan traces the rise of his hip with a throaty sigh, nail scratching at where Sui Zhou's skin thins tight over the ridging bone. "You were too good," Tang Fan tells him, a backhand of praise. He runs Sui Zhou's cock through his hand again, and Sui Zhou gives a tentative circle of his hips, pressing down into Tang Fan's belly instead of chasing his grip. Tang Fan does not chastise him, so it must be— it must be all right. He must be allowed it. Tang Fan would not overlook it otherwise.

"Weren't you so good?" Tang Fan asks, and Sui Zhou manages a breathless, hefted out ah in answer, hands fisting in the sheets where they have shored up in the valleys of Tang Fan's sides. His head hangs low, eyes following Tang Fan's hand blurrily, all but unseeing. If it's not enough, Tang Fan doesn't call him to task for it. "So big, filled me up so much. You made me come so quickly, I couldn't—" Tang Fan's hand stutters with his voice, thumb skidding over the head of his cock. Sui Zhou feels his teeth creak in his jaw as he grits them down on his whine. "I couldn't take it," he manages to finish, after a beat of a moment too long. The stroke of his hand steadies.

Sui Zhou can't breathe through the fire stoked in his chest, the drought of his mouth. His head has been emptied out by the thrum and throb of his pulse in his temples, his throat, his thighs. Perhaps it is for the best that Tang Fan is his own audience as much as Sui Zhou, given that Sui Zhou is struggling to refine himself back within the bounds of his body enough to properly hear him. His focus is splintering as the heat building up his spine and breaking his every nerve is pitching to fevered, is scattering between the fetter of Tang Fan's hand on his hip and the flit of his hand over his cock. He feels Tang Fan's belly suck in beneath his cunt as he swallows a shaky breath, the feather-drag of it too much over his clit. Everything in Sui Zhou is flinching to pull him away from the friction, the pressure, but he can't— stop. He can't stop pushing into it, the clipped snap of his hips harshing as his pace stumbles, rhythm fracturing.

"You filled me up so much," Tang Fan's voice fades in, as if drifting to him from another room. "Didn't you see? If only you'd— ah." He shudders, the force of it jarring him, full-body; his teeth clack as his grip claws in on Sui Zhou, wringing a whine from his throat as his nails break skin. "If only you'd come," Tang Fan rasps, "you would have, you would have filled me up so much more, wouldn't you? I, I could have felt it under my hand, I could have seen your cock spilling inside me—"

Sui Zhou comes.

It is— it stuns like a blow, for how suddenly it sets itself upon him. He has the mind yet, still, if barely, to catch the stagger of his weight as he sags forward, back bowing, body folding in around it, Tang Fan, himself. A deafening thunder roars through his ears, as though his head has sounded the drums for the change of watch. He can't think for the noise; for the course of his blood, sap-thick in his veins. For the imagining of how it would look, fucking Tang Fan full of his cock and his come and holding him down to keep it there. Pulling out to see how it would cling to his tip, how it would thread between their bodies. Watching it slowly drip from his hole. If he did. If he could.

"That's it," Tang Fan murmurs. The chime of his voice drapes across Sui Zhou's back from overhead, wraps warm around his throat. Suffocating and safeguarding all at once. His hand keeps moving over Sui Zhou's cock, frantic, as Sui Zhou's spend slicks his belly, like, like he is— "Keep going," he presses, "keep going, waizi, give me everything."

"Neiren," Sui Zhou gasps. "Tang Fan."

"You're not finished," Tang Fan pants out. It's ragged, animal, wrung-out. "You're not done." His hand slips from Sui Zhou's hip to grapple him by the thigh. "I, can I? Can I put my hand to you, Sui Zhou? Will you let me touch you?"

"Please," Sui Zhou begs. It's too quick, the promissory plead of it, for his caution to catch up with it. Tang Fan did not say how he would touch him, and the how of it is what they should both be holding in mind before it is done. Tang Fan is not always at his most conscientious when he is rushing, and Sui Zhou does not trust he would have an answer for what will brush him wrongly until he experiences it in its moment.

Tang Fan fists the base of Sui Zhou's cock hard enough to— it would hurt, if it could hurt. If it could feel like something more real and centred than a raw chafe striping his thighs, than whatever imagined sensation his head can find sense in from the impersonal sounds of metal and leather. Sui Zhou hisses through his teeth, the white-hot slap of shame quickly chased out by the chill that lances up his spine as Tang Fan fits his other hand roughly between Sui Zhou's legs. His fingers part Sui Zhou's folds, pressing in over his hole, and Sui Zhou's breath ices over in his chest as it, as he— but Tang Fan does not push any further than that.

He starts stripping Sui Zhou's cock back through the tight sleeve of his fist as he grinds the heel of his palm up into his clit. It's cramped, the way he has to hold himself, has to fold his arms to his body just to touch Sui Zhou like this. Every motion is short, sharp, slamming. Sui Zhou whines at the rough scrape of Tang Fan's hand over his clit, the calloused heel, the scrabble of his fingers as they spread him open even wider only to hold him like that, so empty it pangs. It hurts, in the almost way of pain that comes from too much of anything else.

"So wet," Tang Fan breathes. "You're so— it's like you're still coming."

Sui Zhou whimpers. It's unmanning, the wet, throaty click of it, the way it makes shame scour hot down the back of his neck, between his shoulder blades. Tang Fan laughs, or something that is close to it, a could-be laugh. Sui Zhou burns a little hotter, brighter. It's good. He is close, he is so close, every stroke and grind of Tang Fan's hand driving him closer, the sight of him beneath him closer still.

Tang Fan is starting to unravel, mouth bitten back red and eyes blown dark, hair damp at his temples, mussed over his forehead. Wrecked by his very wrecking of Sui Zhou. "Come on," he urges, "is this not enough?"

It is. It is, he simply, he only just— "I," Sui Zhou tries. He fails for any more than that.

"Sui Zhou," Tang Fan complains, whiny, "you're going to break my hand," and Sui Zhou chokes up and comes like that, dripping into the cup of Tang Fan's palm. Everything feels muted, swept over with smog, soft and indistinct. He feels distanced from his body, from its ache and its heat, the muddle and mess. Floating above the anchor of the drumming that has returned to his ears that drowns out his head.

Sui Zhou falls forward, and though he has sense enough still to catch himself on his hands, Tang Fan is what he finds first, his laugh gusting out across Sui Zhou's chin as Tang Fan takes his weight. He must have squirmed out from beneath the brace of Sui Zhou's thighs.

"So heavy," he says, and then he is kissing the apology from Sui Zhou's mouth before Sui Zhou can speak it, hands cradling Sui Zhou's face, fingers combing back through the sweat-through tangle of his hair. His lips are chapped, spit damp; they taste as red as they looked, on Sui Zhou's tongue, when Tang Fan coaxes it between his own teeth. Sui Zhou's breath is already quickened thin, but Tang Fan keeps it slow, and so slows Sui Zhou back into it, gentles the race in his pulse and resettles the animal thing that has been disturbed within the cage of his chest.

Tang Fan keeps kissing him even as his hands slip from Sui Zhou's face, tracing over his every contour before collecting, lazily, in his lap. Sui Zhou barely feels him pull his cock from the ring, the worry of his fingers at the buckles, not over the slide of Tang Fan's mouth on his, the soft lap of his breath when he sighs out. They must kiss like that for a time; Sui Zhou feels so heavy with it when he startles, sluggish, at the touch of Tang Fan's hands to his shoulders and the press of his weight that follows.

"Ah, ah," Tang Fan hushes him, his smile warm where the curl of it brushes over Sui Zhou's lips. "Where are you going, hm, what do you think won't keep?" he asks, and then he pushes again. It is nothing, the strength behind it, but Sui Zhou lets himself go with it until his back meets the bed and Tang Fan meets him, their legs tangling together, skin sticking where they are both tacky with come and oil and all the rest.

It can't be said to be comfortable, for the clammy heat of their bodies, for the heft of Tang Fan's weight where it sets against him, off-centre to the sprawl of his own, but. It calms something in Sui Zhou that he did not know was still left to its rile, the coarse humanness of it. He can feel the pull of sleep blurring the night's edges; to even be able to have that, here, as something he must push back against— it is such a small thing, and too grand a gift to be taken lightly.

It's quiet, for a while, beyond the settling noise of Tang Fan's breaths, the shift and slide of their bodies together, the rasp of the sheets. Then, "You liked it," says Tang Fan. Though the words are certain ones, half-muffled as they are into Sui Zhou's chest, Sui Zhou can hear the hesitancy behind them. He thinks of Tang Fan's fluster, earlier, his eagerness, his haste, all things Sui Zhou took to be signs of his drive to uncover evidence, to prove Sui Zhou wrong and himself right.

Perhaps Sui Zhou has been exactly as ignorant as Tang Fan does take him for, at times. Has fallen prey to the bait of his argument as much as he has his misdirection. Sui Zhou knows Tang Fan well, by now, after all, so he knows that Tang Fan is himself good at hiding things; that he is not always forthcoming with his desires. That his unilaterality can be obfuscated by ulteriority. And that this, sometimes, results in him taking Sui Zhou's responses and his reactions as his answers to questions Sui Zhou did not know he was asking; questions Sui Zhou would answer differently if he knew they were the ones being asked.

"Yes," says Sui Zhou, "I liked it." He did. It is a simple enough thing to say. He cannot see Tang Fan's face, not properly, not out from underneath the fall of his hair, the pillow of his cheek against him, but he can feel the way he— eases. How whatever else was still yet unsettled in him finds its place.

Tang Fan's hum reverberates through Sui Zhou's ribs, the sound honey-thick, rich. Contentedly smug. Sui Zhou lets his hand drift to settle across Tang Fan's nape, thumb tracing the thrum of his pulse, fingers dipping through his hair. There will be more words that they will have to put to this later. For now, though, they and all the world beyond them can wait.