In truth, Tang Fan does not much at all mind playing the part of Sui Zhou's wife. He would even risk his pride as far as to claim that he is quite good at it.

He had done his simpering and scowling, of course, when it had insofar been suggested that the case in Honghe would require the delicateness of that touch. It had been the better part of a waking day of bickering before Tang Fan had then tendered his exaggeratedly reluctant agreement, but he could hardly be blamed when all the fight is more than half the fun of it. He thinks Sui Zhou knows that he enjoys it, anyway, just as he must know that Tang Fan knows that he enjoys it too.

Tang Fan has only done it so many times by now that it is no longer new, but that is scarcely enough still that it leaves it novel. It can't be leant on too frequently, lest it also acquire the reputation of suspicion that occasionally precedes the both of them together as themselves. There is an addictiveness to the efficiency of being able to be as close as he ever needs to be to Sui Zhou without any answering arisen suspicions. And there is a thrill to it, asides, in being something of what they are to one another beneath the pretence of something that they're not.

The subterfuge has been wasted in Jianshui Prefecture. The case itself has been so insultingly straightforward, to Tang Fan's ever-grating disappointment. He has solved it and at least three of its more intriguing revisions in his mind this evening alone, just to try and whittle away at the hours between him and tomorrow, when he and Sui Zhou can again do something else with themselves apart from waiting. He is trying not to get too far ahead, of course, in the however unlikely to all appearances event that he does end up humbling himself on his own hubris. But Tang Fan is… he is bored. He and Sui Zhou have already talked all the business there is to talk of over their dinner, and then moved on to other more conversational topics, making up the measure for their meandering wind back through the estate to their room. Sometime between then and since, they have fallen into a relative silence, and it has hung itself between them while they make ready to retire early to bed.

Tang Fan does not mind the quiet as much as presumption would have it, and he especially does not mind it when it's in accompaniment of Sui Zhou. It is simply that the quiet offers the widest roaming expanse for his head to start to wander through, and when his head is wandering, it is only a matter of time before he comes back across threads of thought, once-discarded, left safe for a later return to. That he picks over all manners of inclinations and observations, made in prior rushes and preoccupations, none of which he could be blamed for forsaking to a wayside in their initial heated moments of acquisition.

So, Tang Fan is watching, in the mirror, as Sui Zhou's fingers gently pull the pins free of his hair, hands coursing the river flow of it down his back, and he is thinking of the things that he now has an opportune luxury to think about. Of how he would make a good wife for Sui Zhou.

It is not as if Tang Fan has never entertained neither the wish nor the want; that he has never found himself in moments like this, and others, elsewhere, imagining it beyond its state of impermanence. It is not as if Sui Zhou has never indulged him in it; has never fucked Tang Fan full of his cock and held him there, sunk deep, spilling deeper, choking on the furen he pants into Tang Fan's neck. Such fantasies, though, are always best lived out to flourish in the unrealistic domains that can actually house their ideal.

Still— he would. He would make a good wife for Sui Zhou because Sui Zhou would make a good husband for him. But where Tang Fan would only make a good wife for Sui Zhou, Sui Zhou would make a good husband for anyone. And though they have not so much as talked about it, not since Sui Zhou's ill-fated engagement — which was too soon for what was blooming between them and as such never seen to properly — Tang Fan knows the day may come where Sui Zhou will have to take a wife, and that he will have to find the grace in him to accept it. The day may even come where it is Tang Fan that has to take a wife, and he hopes Sui Zhou will take that with more grace than he himself will, should it ever pass.

There are many things they do not talk about, some that need not be said, and some that very well should. Tang Fan can admit, with all honesty, that he is not certain which of the two this matter is. He can give Sui Zhou all he wants, and give Sui Zhou all he needs, but he cannot give him all of what he should have: what's owed fairly, if not always rightly. Perhaps he can be close enough that the consolation fills in Sui Zhou an absence so that it no longer catches, but Tang Fan cannot make it so that anyone else who looks in cannot see precisely what he's lacking.

The clatter of the hairpins as Sui Zhou sets them down on the dressing table is washed out by the noise in his head, but the heft of Sui Zhou's hands as they come to rest on his shoulders is loud enough to stir him. Tang Fan cannot help but stare, for a moment; at him, at them, at the picture they both make. Caught in Sui Zhou's gaze as it is reflected back to him in the bronze.

He lifts a hand from his lap and brings it up towards his face, letting it stall, there, an ask and a beckon. Sui Zhou comes as called, leaning down until Tang Fan can thread his fingers through his hair, until he can tilt his head to press his parted lips to Sui Zhou's cheek, watching the flutter of his lashes as his eyes slide shut in answer. Tang Fan's mouth is still reddened from the lip paper stain; the pink flush of his cheeks made plain now all the powders have been dabbed away.

"You are still so dressed," he murmurs. So is he, in a fashion of fact. They have only taken one another's hair down, but if Tang Fan's makeup is to count as a layer to shed, then he is presently the barer of the two of them. Barer still, if the rings from his fingers are to count as another. It won't do. Sui Zhou owes him an equal trade.

The chuff of Sui Zhou's exhale gusts his chin, almost a chuckle. There is something about his expression, though, in the space of the liminal moment where its set goes from instinctive to intentional, that— Tang Fan does not know why it captures him so. Why it reminds him so strangely and so suddenly of their time in Fujian, on a case so unlike this one. At most, Tang Fan can connect them for their both being utterly unremarkable.

But there had been that one brief encounter to it, where, through no fault or intention of their own, Sui Zhou had been mistaken for Tang Fan's— well. And Tang Fan had glimpsed Sui Zhou's face, the initial baring of his expression around something complicated, telling. Then it had evanesced, his control returning, and Tang Fan had thought it funny, this bristle of what he could only call offence. Had thought it not unlike Yunhe, when he had teased at Sui Zhou for behaving like his neglected wife, and provoked much the same consternation. Since there had been no apparent harm at the time, they had left the misconception uncorrected, and that had been the extent of his consideration.

Perhaps it is because the course of his thoughts has honed him towards a less conventional charting that he is now revisiting this correlation. There remains, always, the constant of wonder with Sui Zhou. There is never a light that Tang Fan can face him under and not find something new, or see something he didn't before know how to look at. Before Fujian, Tang Fan had only caught those turns in Sui Zhou's expression where it had made sense to conclude they were borne of irritation. He's since learned differently; been its witness and its inspiration enough to know that it comes when Sui Zhou is not expecting something to touch at where it does within the crux of man and malformation, where his pleasures have bled to pains have bled to perturbations.

"Why are you still so dressed?" Tang Fan asks him, soft-tempered, but pointed for all its placidity. He feels Sui Zhou tense against him in turn, ever-minutely, an echo of a flinch. Tang Fan turns his face away from Sui Zhou's, unthreading his fingers from Sui Zhou's hair. He sets his features to deliberated indifference, and watches, gaze hooding, as he returns his hand to his lap. Sui Zhou's mouth draws thin. Tang Fan grounds his grip in his skirt, fisting at the silk. He knows that if he relents to touch Sui Zhou while his desire is coalescing, he will not be able to stop, and it will forestall what he is still only hoping more than he is planning to do.

"I want to take you to bed," Tang Fan says. Sui Zhou sucks in a breath, hands twitching on his shoulders. Tang Fan hears the scratch of his blunt nails catch on the chang-ao's ornate gilding. "I can't have you there like this."

Sui Zhou is intimately aware of who he is, but has no interest in knowing himself as well as Tang Fan wants to know him. He does not seek when it is safest to settle. For Tang Fan, though, it is a pleasure incomparable to uncover what Sui Zhou does deny himself. He does his best to mind it, though, this thread-fine line of survivable vulnerabilities. He's all too aware of how Sui Zhou can be brought to a brink of bending to his pressure, even if it will drive him past all give and break him in a new direction. Tang Fan does not like that. He never wants that. They know their way around one another enough, for risked and felt-out experience, to be better at it than they were, but they are each so manifold, and there are some boundaries that can and may only be mapped the moment they are crossed.

So, Tang Fan will take his care with it.

Sui Zhou is slow with it; how he steps away, how he draws his hands, first, to his waist. The decoupling of haste from Sui Zhou's efficiency has always been an acknowledgement that speaks louder than any words as to its purpose. Turns it on its face to a performance for Tang Fan's audience. Tang Fan follows him through the mirror with a poor feign of disinterest; he can pretend to all the world that he is not watching, and convince them of its truth, but he cannot fool himself, and he certainly cannot lie to Sui Zhou. He wishes, now, that he had left the powder in place on his face to mask the heat taking to his cheeks.

Sui Zhou folds his clothes away carefully, all things to their rightful place. He is always so, so— careful, with everything. So concerned with the breakability of all he holds in his hands, yet so inconsiderate of his own fragility. Tang Fan watches hesitation shudder through his shoulders when he is done, the curl of his fingers around nothing, as though he does not know what there is left to be done with himself in the absence of instruction.

"Sui Zhou," Tang Fan says. Sui Zhou turns back, facing him. His cock is already half-hard, jutting from between his legs, curved to his belly. Tang Fan pushes his thighs together and bites at his lip, nostrils flaring around his punched-out exhale.

"Lay yourself out for me," he instructs next, with a voice that is still, somehow, enviously steady, if only barely. "Faced to the bed." Tang Fan is no surer of what he'll have come next; what it is he's going to do. Each thought sifts too swiftly through his fingers to be seized on. Beyond knowing that he wants to do good, to be good, he has no semblance of substantiality. He can only keep reaching out at his guesses as they come to him, and hope for the better if not best.

Tang Fan cannot see their bed from the mirror. He can only know how Sui Zhou moves upon it from the creak of its wood; the crackle of the sheets. He can only tell how plainly he is affected, already, by the pant of his breath. Tang Fan stands up from the table, setting his fingers to the first clasp on his collar, buttoned high on his throat. He does not turn to look over his shoulder, even as the temptation wears him thread-thin. He cannot look. Hearing is so much, already, for the vividity of his imagining.

He drapes the chang-ao over his chair once it is stripped, uncaring that it will crease, and starts to unlace the ties of his middle shirt. He does not draw it out, not like Sui Zhou had for him. Tang Fan does not have the patience; he does not have Sui Zhou's forbearance. Just as he touches his fingers to the zhuyao, next, where it is fastened up tight, knuckles skimming his cinched-in waist, he catches the sight of himself in the mirror, out from underneath the spill of his hair. He has bitten his mouth so red in all his fixation that he looks well-kissed, his eyes glossed dark, flush collaring his throat. When he lets his hands fall back to his thighs, sweat-damp palms flattening the layering pleats of his skirt to draw it taut across his lap, he can see the hard line of his cock, framed obscene.

Tang Fan breathes in. He feels his chest draw in with it; watches his shoulders stretch out in the mirror, shrugging back. The two points feel disconnected. It is not the obfuscation of the guise — Tang Fan knows himself, always, beneath every layer, and there is both too little and too much recognition, here. He does not feel real so much as painted, silk-screened and set to frame; a debauched and beatific provocation.

He hears Sui Zhou's breath rasp out, and Tang Fan turns his head to find him, the rest of his body following, despite his determination, heedless of his sense. He is only human. Sui Zhou is looking at him, his eyes blown dark, depthless, peering out over the rise of his arm. Tang Fan watches Sui Zhou watch him, gaze bound to Tang Fan's hands as they slide down his thighs, as they pluck up the hem of his skirt. He gathers it up into his arms, ferries it up past the rise of his hips, and holds it there, hooking his thumbs in the waist of his pants.

He is still impatient, but holding Sui Zhou like this, having him like this— it's inspiration enough to stay his rush, stall his hand. He slows it; lets Sui Zhou see his fill of the bulge of his cock, swollen thick, straining against the seam. Shows him where he is so wet, already, that the cotton has soaked sheer, baring the flushed pink of his tip, before he eases his pants down his legs and steps out of them, skirt fluttering back into place. He clenches his teeth to push down on the shiver that ripples up the backs of his knees as the silk traces over his shaft. He has to look away for a beat, a breath, because Sui Zhou's gaze is— it becomes so heavy. Not burdensome, never, but— his longing is— there is so much of it, for him, and Tang Fan can't always find, in the precise seconds that pass, space enough in his body for it all to fit.

But it passes, as it always does; the beat, the breath, the brimming. Tang Fan opens his eyes again, and sees that Sui Zhou has closed his own, his brow creased with concentration, the line of his shoulders trembling.

"Press your legs together," Tang Fan tells him, thankful that it is this he trips over and not his feet as he starts to cross the remainder of their distance, bridging the room. "Tighter," he adds, before Sui Zhou has moved, and, "yes, like that," after he has.

Sui Zhou holds himself so still as Tang Fan kneels over him; takes the settle of his weight over his thighs like nothing, with nothing. Tang Fan plucks up the hem of his skirt and tucks it between his teeth, freeing his hands to be put to far better uses. Sui Zhou jerks beneath him, once, hips stuttering, as Tang Fan parts him and presses the pad of his thumb to his hole, circling a tease of dry pressure before he presses in against the rim. He fists at his cock; slicks it with a long, slow pull, the wet slide of his hand deafening in his ears. He watches Sui Zhou's breath rapidly quicken into short, sharp pulls that shallow the span of his back. The pant of his own breath is muffled damp in his skirt, drowned out.

Sui Zhou could take him like this. Sui Zhou has certainly taken him with less. Tang Fan leans himself forward, just enough, just so, until he can rub the tip of his cock against Sui Zhou's hole, pushing it in, a counterpoint to his thumb. It must be what— what Sui Zhou expects at once to be given, what he prepares himself to get; his fingers claw down into the sheets as he pushes back into the space made for him between the cradle of Tang Fan's thighs. Tang Fan presses in more, a shiver, a barely-nothing, seeing more than feeling as Sui Zhou starts to open to it, as he takes him in.

But there is— this is not it. Tang Fan moves his hands; curving one to Sui Zhou's waist, leveraging the other on his shoulder. Then, he sinks his weight into both, using them to drag Sui Zhou down into himself as he bows forward, thrusting his cock between the tight press of his thighs.

A strangled whine tears out of Sui Zhou's throat, pitched high around his surprise, as the tip of his cock snubs up behind his balls. Tang Fan tongues the hem of his skirt from his mouth with a grunt, and lets the fan of it fall free to shroud over Sui Zhou's bare skin, a delusional modesty. He can only hold himself so steady, even with Sui Zhou shouldering the best of his weight. With every needful breath and helpless shifting shudder, the embroidered silk trails between them, like a wave making shore, weathering where their lines entwine to inseparable.

Sui Zhou is so— he feels so small, somehow, like this. Tang Fan barely spills out across the broad breadth of him, and yet it is as though the very fit of Tang Fan to his back does not hold Sui Zhou down so much as in. Sui Zhou is shaking so much, so terribly, that Tang Fan can feel the threat of every tremor to unearth him sink through to his very sinew. And yet, even as he holds his breath in his chest for one moment, then the next, he is surer, still, that Sui Zhou would bring him back to root if it did so come to it.

Sui Zhou's thighs twitch around his cock, just as the burn in his lungs has started to billow past his ribs, and all at once the seconds begin again, ravelling anew. Tang Fan's sigh stutters sharply out of him, chest sagging into Sui Zhou's shoulder blades as he turns his face to the crook of his neck. He takes his breath again as he noses through his hair, nuzzling in until he can touch his lips to skin and shade, there, the suggestion of the kiss that he'll soon commit to shape. But not yet.

"I know," Tang Fan whispers first, importantly, instead; gentling, with all the tone of the apology he won't say, lest it make a dishonest man of him. He pets a clumsy soothe against Sui Zhou's hip, thumb stroking at the small of his spine. "But if I give you more than this, it could— it could take."

The sound that Sui Zhou makes— the sound— Tang Fan scrabbles to brace his palms flat to the bed, groaning into Sui Zhou's hair. "You like that," he gasps out, urgent, unthinking. "You would like it to take."

Sui Zhou gives one animal thrash beneath him, barely leashed in check, before he fights himself back down to held steady, rightfully placed. Tang Fan had not thought— how could he have ever possibly thought? It had simply come out, unbidden, from some carrel in his head. He lifts himself up on his already aching arms, kicking out at the sheets snaring his ankles as he fucks back down, the brunt of his weight bowing into it. There is no rhythm; Tang Fan can barely hold himself up, let alone hold anything else. His head has emptied itself out of the irrelevant and irreverent, leaving only this, the tight heat sheathing his cock, the heaving whimpers that every snap of his hips shove free of Sui Zhou's mouth.

"I should have known," Tang Fan says. He is— he has always been the vocal one of the two of them. The one who cannot stop speaking once he starts, who will say every word as impelled and be left to dwell on them in flustered shame when his sense inevitably returns. "That you— that you would want this." He does not know how, and he does not need to. All that matters is that the moment he says it, Sui Zhou ruts himself into the sheets, the circle of his hips rough, hungry. The drag of it must chafe his cock, trapped as it is between the two ungiving points of the bed and his body; he chokes, clotted, and buries his face all the more tightly into the crook of his arm, thrown over his head. As though that will hope to contain him; will veil the way his features crumple in, contorting as if around pain, the whites of his teeth bared to the meat of his bicep.

Tang Fan knows better than to stop in the face of it: Sui Zhou is not hurting, here; he is only suffering.

Every blunt slide of his cock between Sui Zhou's legs is resistless, now; slick filth-wet, sweet-easy. Tang Fan feels fevered, edging mad; his mouth has run so dry he fears his tongue will crack through. He cannot see through the mess of his hair, the sting of his sweat in his eyes where it is dripping from his brow, catching in the fan of his lashes. He is going to die, Sui Zhou is going to kill him, and all he can do is fall into it, arms giving out, grunt lashing Sui Zhou's throat as he burrows his face there.

"Sorry," he husks, hoarse, "sorry." The fastenings of the zhuyao are digging into his sternum, his belly; the knotted burls of the lacings into the soft swells of his chest. The drag of the fabric has rubbed over the peaks of his nipples so much that they feel pinched raw. The skirt has rucked up between them, the hem bunched at the waist, cinching tight. He can only imagine how it all must be needling into Sui Zhou's skin, too, undoubtedly leaving marks for Tang Fan to see when he rises again; branded indentations, laddering the sinuous slope of Sui Zhou's spine. The thought of it— Tang Fan pushes himself down, burying himself into the very last inch he didn't know was left between their bodies for him to take. And then more— further— shuddering as Sui Zhou's moan rattles through his ribcage, the noise of it grieved, bitten-off. So loud. Sui Zhou is so loud. And he cannot— he cannot seem to stop, the dam of himself broken open, flooding out.

"I'll do it for you," Tang Fan promises, mouth to the base of his pulse. When he closes his eyes, he can feel its staccato in his temples, skipping between the rabbit-kick beat of his own. "Is that what you want?"

"Tang Fan—" he thinks he hears Sui Zhou gasp. It is difficult to distinguish any one note from the rest in the discord; all fineness swept out by the swell. Closing his eyes has only emboldened the cacophony, and turned the surge of his blood in his ears torrential.

"Sui Zhou," he pants. "Sui Zhou." He can barely even hear himself; would doubt he'd spoken at all if he could not feel his lips shaping it to Sui Zhou's neck. The profane slide of their skin together is staggering him senseless. Sui Zhou's thighs are so wet around his cock, smeared slick with sweat and precome, and Tang Fan is so wound tight with it that he's on the verge of shattering apart.

"When we are back in the capital," he says, "we can— I'll keep you in bed. Day to night." He opens his eyes again, blinking, unseeing, through the blur until he can make out enough of Sui Zhou through the daze; the sable splay of his hair, the strong line of his jaw, the slap-red swell of his plush mouth. "When I am too soft to stay inside you, I'll give you my fingers instead, I'll— I'll fuck my spend back into you, hold it there, so none of it wastes—" his voice snaps off into a whine as Sui Zhou sobs out sharply, squirming on his cock. He hilts himself, stilling the roll of his hips, hands flitting at the sheets until the pads of his fingers meet the swoop of Sui Zhou's waist, the fan of his ribs.

Sui Zhou makes a soft, wrecked sound, wrung-out. Tang Fan pets at what he can reach of him, pressing fluttery kisses to his nape in a soothing hush while he swallows the deepest breaths he can scavenge. Every tense and flex of Sui Zhou's hips works him back on Tang Fan's cock, the trembling knead of his thighs a threat to send him over at any ungiven moment.

"You'll ruin me. I'll— I'll break," Tang Fan croaks. "But you'll be so good for me. I'll keep you so full." He's damned himself for saying it. He wants to be inside Sui Zhou so badly that it's rending, an ache. He wants to give him every word of his assurances. He doesn't think he'll be able to make it that far if he dares to try for it.

There is no doubt, this time, that Sui Zhou says his name, though he does not make it heard. His lips shape it, but the sound does not carry out past where he's pressed it to his skin.

"Sui Guangchuan, you have to lift your head," Tang Fan begs. "How am I to know what to do with you if I can't hear you?"

Sui Zhou obliges and obeys, craning his neck so sharply one might well think it was the fist of Tang Fan's grip in his hair pulling him up to surface. His mouth falls slack around nothing, the pink of his tongue darting against the backs of his teeth, eyes a wide-black frantic. Tang Fan watches the line of his throat work as he struggles to swallow.

"Please," he manages, finally, at last. "Please."

"Yes," Tang Fan says, "yes, I have you— I'll hold you properly, you won't fall."

He fumbles his grip on Sui Zhou's waist, fingers sliding underneath his hip, spurring him up. There is no space to go, no room to make; the angle he bends his arm to is unforgiving, the bones in his wrist creaking as he fits his hand into the cramped crush between Sui Zhou and the bed. Tang Fan scrapes his nails through the coarser hairs thatching Sui Zhou's quivering belly, scrabbling, and Sui Zhou whines out, cock jumping against his wrist. Tang Fan cups his palm over the head, rubbing, clumsy, as he feels Sui Zhou suck in a breath under the heel of his hand and spill messily over his fingers.

"Oh—" Tang Fan stutters out, dizzy, as Sui Zhou tenses viciously, coiling rigid. "You're— you've gone so tight." He breathes in, but it doesn't take, the knot of it snagging in the back of his throat. He pushes his mouth to Sui Zhou's nape, nose crushing into his hair. "You're— you're going to make me—" Tang Fan sets his teeth in to gag himself, sucking roughly as he comes, shoved in deep between the fucked sloppy vice of Sui Zhou's thighs.

The moment yawns out white, airless. Tang Fan opens his eyes to the pitch black of Sui Zhou's hair; feels the distant click of his jaw as it eases open. The copper tang sticking tacky to the roof of his mouth tells him he's broken skin; when he tips his head back, the pooled spit on Sui Zhou's nape is streaked pink, blood beading up, bruise already mottling dark. It will leave a mark that will tease at the high collar of Sui Zhou's robes for days.

By the time Tang Fan has pieced himself back enough to find his hands within the strewn-out rest of him, Sui Zhou's breath is evening, encroaching gentled. Tang Fan does not feel as if he is breathing at all. He pushes himself from the bed, stumbling his way into a kneel, weight sat back heavy over the crooks of Sui Zhou's knees, the trail of his skirt following after him. His head spins in on itself, and Tang Fan's hands fall out to his sides, catching him in his sway, eyes sliding shut. He feels Sui Zhou's legs fall open underneath him, spilling into the new space between his knees.

When he can brave opening his eyes again, it is to stare down at Sui Zhou, at the spread of his legs, at— at his own come, striping Sui Zhou's skin. He does not— Tang Fan does not think, nor does he even think to think. He is almost not of his own body, but a bystander to it, watching himself as he raises his hand to run a finger through the mess. Sui Zhou flinches up underneath him with a sigh, thighs flexing. Tang Fan trails his finger higher, then higher, higher still, until it has slid between his cleft, the tip brushing against his hole.

"Tang Fan," Sui Zhou rasps, strained quiet. But it is not stop, it is not anything else at all. Only his name, left to hang there, for him alone to decide what to do with it.

Tang Fan thrusts in, breath leaving him in a rush as he opens Sui Zhou slowly on his finger, each knuckle catching on his rim, as he— as he pushes his come inside of him. The skin of his cheeks feels pulled too tightly over his skull, slapped hot. He thinks he is starting to remember how to feel embarrassment. It does not stop him from curling his finger when it has sunk to the webbing, from parting Sui Zhou with his thumb to stroke bluntly against his hole where Sui Zhou is squeezing tightly around him.

"Enough," Sui Zhou gasps. "Enough. It's enough." Tang Fan does not know how long it has been, how long he has stood having the pressure of Tang Fan inside him, stroking; enduring the threat of being stretched out wider.

Tang Fan drags his finger back out. Some of his come follows, strung between his knuckle and— and Sui Zhou. Tang Fan snaps it with a flick, then wipes his hand on his knee. He does not know what quite to say, now his head is clearer, or how to explain what it was that had so overcome him. So he does not discredit either by trying, choosing instead to crawl off Sui Zhou and flop down limply at his side with a wordless groan, legs unfolding, arms gathering to his chest. He feels the foolish urge to shy in when Sui Zhou turns to face him, to slink away when Sui Zhou rises up onto his elbow, peering over him.

"Are you satisfied?" Sui Zhou asks him. It is said in his short way; harshened by the fucked-rough grate of his voice. Tang Fan knows where to look between his lines, though, and what to take from there as meant.

He swallows to clear his own throat. "Yes," he says. "I think— yes." Then it strikes him, a sudden foolishness, and, "No," he objects. "I'm— you've not kissed me."

"I've not kissed you," Sui Zhou repeats back to him.

Tang Fan pouts. "I am unkissed," he proclaims, plaintive. "I am not—" He quietens as Sui Zhou reaches between them, the broad flat of his palm stroking up his chest to cradle his throat, unhurried. The moment Sui Zhou starts to lean down to him, Tang Fan has to close his eyes to better his chances of surviving it; the curl of Sui Zhou's breath on his chin; the scratch of his moustache; the warm press of their mouths together when he finally takes Tang Fan's pouting bottom lip between his own.

"Wait," Tang Fan says against him, though he has barely begun, when he is nowhere near finished. He folds a hand over the back of Sui Zhou's neck to cage him in, mindful all too late of the bruise he's bitten there. Sui Zhou hisses, muted, lost somewhere between the slide of their mouths. "Wait, wait." Sui Zhou does wait, but Tang Fan does not, nipping at his top lip even as he continues to try and speak. "You have not kissed me enough."

"Greedy," Sui Zhou says, hushing, but Tang Fan can hardly protest when what follows is the knead of Sui Zhou's thumb against the hinge of his jaw, then the slide of his tongue between his teeth when Tang Fan parts them slack around a gasp.

Tang Fan is kissed so thoroughly that he suspects he is being spited, whining out pitifully as Sui Zhou sucks on his tongue, the hand at his throat stroking down to knead over the swell of his pectoral. At the pinch of his nipple between Sui Zhou's fingers, Tang Fan finally relents, scrabbling to tug at Sui Zhou's hair to beg reprieve.

"Stop," he pants, "stop. I am kissed." Sui Zhou does, at once, as always; Tang Fan does not. He arches himself after Sui Zhou as he leans back, kissing underneath his chin, along his throat. He twists and cranes until he can no longer follow, not without getting his hands under himself, his knees. It is a step too far for him to take, as well-used as he is. Tang Fan falls back flat with a sigh, blinking the blear from his eyes as Sui Zhou towers overhead.

"I don't think I can move my legs," Tang Fan admits. His mouth feels rubbed raw, his tongue thick. He has been very properly kissed indeed. "You've ruined my, my…" He lets what is left of his voice trail away, following the drift of his hand as he gestures to the line of himself, sprawled loose, fucked-out. He does not really need to say it, anyway. It is not as if Sui Zhou cannot tell, plain as day.

Sui Zhou kneels himself up. "I have you," he says. It is not as if he really needs to say this, himself. Tang Fan knows he does. It's no hardship: he likes to hear it, and he thinks there are times where Sui Zhou needs the surety of having it heard.

Tang Fan rolls onto his side, following Sui Zhou only as far as necessary for watching's sake, cheek pillowing on his arm. There is always so much to meet the eye, with Sui Zhou, and Tang Fan pays it a perfunctory glance as due before the narrow of his gaze is drawn down his legs. When Sui Zhou turns on his heel, hip sinking into the pivot, it bares a shadowed sliver of his innermost thigh to the lamplight, unravelling the wet glisten of slow-dripping come that the drag of Tang Fan's finger must have missed. Tang Fan draws the drape of his other arm over himself, hand smoothing down between his legs. He curls his fingers around his softened cock, pushing down into the heel of his palm as a shivery heat trickles through his hips, sap-thick, lazy. The sweat on his skin is starting to dry, a cool balm to the still-hot skin of his neck, his chest; the spend that has wet his cock and his thighs to stick.

His skirt will need to be peeled from him in places, but this prospect is not bothering him terribly enough yet. Tang Fan pushes into his hand more firmly, fingers fanning, and feels a stirring twitch in his shaft, the sensation still too sharp, a pang. He'll not get hard again, not yet, and he does not— he does not want to. It simply feels good, to touch at himself faintly, the pressure filling out the not-quite hollow that release carves out between pleasure and pain. It feels satisfying, to watch Sui Zhou, in a way that is not unlike how he feels, at times, when he is beholding a finished draft, or a painted fan set out to dry. Appreciative; accomplished; powerful.

Tang Fan does not make any move to hide himself — the curve of his hand, the soft hitch of his hips — when Sui Zhou faces back to him, washcloth in hand. There is no need to. There is no— letting himself be seen, just as he sees Sui Zhou. It is Sui Zhou's to have and to keep, alongside all the rest of everything.

"You are wrecked," Tang Fan tells him. Sui Zhou's mouth curls around a small smile, as though he's well aware that he makes a far better sight in his state than Tang Fan does in his own, and for more than just decency. "Hurry back to me. I need to be— I am still too dressed."

Sui Zhou, as always and ever, does not leave him waiting.