This, Sui Zhou knows: the grief that whets a body so keen that it draws blood in the handling.

He does not need to be told where a hand outstretched can lead when it is taken. And here, with Wuyun, with this loss that bridges them just as the life once had, he does not have to explain why he reaches. Bodies turn to other bodies, left plunged into dark. The comfort is not when they find one another — the blunt pleasure of a wet mouth, a dry hand — but that there is anyone there to meet them at all.

This, Sui Zhou knows: the need that blooms from the gardenbed of a once-man, hollowed out.

Use seeds the body to soil. Routed pain wholes the shape of a man's malignant maladaption where directionless ache leaves him drifting. You pretend not to miss what you deny yourself, and Sui Zhou has been pretending for so long that he is not made for this: to kneel, to serve. To be held down and kept hurt. To not have to worry about getting his hands around the people he wants but will break; to not worry about hands finding him already unmade.

This, Sui Zhou knows: the ties of understanding that bind long after its knots have failed.

Tang Fan comes home. He comes home, and what this is ends, put to rest with the same perfunctory withholdment with which it began.

Bruises fade. Memories wash out. But this, he will carry with him, turning it over in his head and his hands until it is worn smooth: the moment that he was looked into, past the drawn veil of his every sum and sin, by someone unexpected. The moment he was seen and found to be not monster but wantingly human.