Kuan-hung makes it through two songs on the radio before he drifts off mid-chorus to the third. It's a deep enough sleep to hold him under for the rest of the way: it seems like all his body wants to do for him is sleep, now he’s got company that he wants to keep.

The next time he stirs, the Jeep is parked beneath the shade of some underwood, and Fu Meng-po’s got the passenger’s side door open. The hand on his shoulder that’s shaking at him gently is half-closed over the packet of rice snacks that Kuan-hung definitely remembers he was death gripping in his lap before he fell asleep.

“How did you even get those?” he mumbles out blurrily.

“Very carefully,” Fu Meng-po confesses. “You can sleep in the room, c’mon.”

Kuan-hung scrubs at his face and fumbles at his sunglasses, cramming them back on over his eyes where they’ve been knocked off-kilter by the pillow of his head to his shoulder. They take the edge off the glare of the sun, slung lower in the sky, now, for the later afternoon hour. By the time he stumbles out, teetering sleep-drunk, Fu Meng-po has his suitcase out in hand. He swerves out of the way of Kuan-hung’s reach when Kuan-hung tries to take the handle, jabs at him with the point of his elbow to muster him away, then closes and locks up the Jeep behind him.

It’s the confirmation Kuan-hung more or less didn’t need, when they head down the driveway and bypass reception entirely, that Fu Meng-po really was already settled in here at Yuchi and took a round trip to Kaohsiung to get him. The fact that he leads them both right to the doorstep of one of the wooden bungalows and pulls out a key from in his wallet cements the fact he’s already checked in. And— well. Kuan-hung still doesn’t know what to do with that, even after— Gukeng. So he’s not doing anything with it, unless it becomes too undeniable to ignore that he’s going to have to.

He does his own inspection of the place when he gets over the doorsill on Fu Meng-po’s heels; tapers off into a circular tour that mills across the open-plan floor to the cordoned off sitting area with a tea set and water bottles lined up on its low-slung table. It looks nicer than any pictures would have made it out to be, at least. That’ll be the excuse he uses to himself as to why he never managed to get around to checking like he intended. Fu Meng-po drops Kuan-hung’s suitcase on the mattress set up closest to the wall on the step-up platform, then putters off to the bathroom to give Kuan-hung what he supposes is some privacy to round back, dump out his pockets, toss off his sunglasses, and start rifling through his things.

By the time he’s fished his cosmetics and toiletries out, Fu Meng-po is coming back out and around the corner, dabbing his already dried hands on his thighs, so Kuan-hung slips past to swap out with him, giving an errant swing of his elbow just to hear Fu Meng-po’s answering snort cut off by the swing shut of the door.

Kuan-hung takes a peek at everything while he sets his own cases out on the counter, because they’re there. He’s still not surprised that Fu Meng-po’s skincare routine still seems to be a three-step ‘if he feels like it’, even after a, well, a year and a bit, because Fu Meng-po is both blessed and a bastard. Kuan-hung practically packed a one-man beautician studio, because he’s been forsaken by God and also the weather. He pauses for a moment, eyeing himself off in the vanity mirror, before he opens one of his cases to pull his toothbrush out. He uses Fu Meng-po’s toothpaste to save his own, then gives his teeth a perfunctory brush, just to get the stale taste of— of the whole day out.

Fu Meng-po is reclining on his mattress when Kuan-hung comes out, having apparently changed out of his clothes the moment he was out of appraisal purview. It’s kind of really funny and also incredible to think about, that Fu Meng-po changed out of sight, given the blinds aren’t drawn and their bungalow is more glass than wall. So Kuan-hung laughs about it. It just feels like something he needs to do before he bursts with it.

Fu Meng-po lofts his eyebrows at him, and then points at his own bottom lip, the tip of his tongue flicking out to wet it. Kuan-hung takes the hint and mirrors it, tasting mint. Fu Meng-po just points again, his smile growing more crooked, deeply amused. Kuan-hung licks more to the left, but that’s supposedly just not good enough, either, still landing short and off.

“Can you give me proper instruction?” Kuan-hung complains, huffy, after the fourth time, he thinks, or so, of the whole back-forth. His bottom lip is starting to feel swollen; his cheeks are hot.

“Can you follow it?” Fu Meng-po laughs. It is, unmistakably, a laugh. This is all on purpose. Fu Meng-po is playing with him, a turnabout of karmic retribution. Kuan-hung almost, almost turns around on his heels and beats a retreat back to the bathroom to preen in the mirror, but that would mean not going over to the bed when Fu Meng-po beckons him with a crook of his fingers.

It takes all of a second, once he kneels down into range, for Fu Meng-po to lap at the pad of his thumb and rub it on the corner of Kuan-hung’s mouth until it comes away streaked with dried flakes of toothpaste.

“That was nowhere near where you were pointing!” Kuan-hung protests. The skin of his mouth is tingling, hotly, where Fu Meng-po’s spit has smeared it damp. He gives Fu Meng-po’s arm a shove before Fu Meng-po can retreat, then flops down on his back in revenge. He wriggles up close against Fu Meng-po’s side in stilted, short bursts, letting his elbows go well out of the bounds of him and into everywhere. His heart is quickening because he’s mildly frustrated, not because he’s flustered. This is not— some first crush, or some schoolyard boy fumbling. This is his former colleague almost a decade his senior whose cock he had in his mouth a few hours ago. Whose hand was on his cock a few hours ago. Kuan-hung is completely zen about this and all of its associates.

His phone is plugged in somewhere out of reach— or, well, it’s a reach he doesn’t want to make, so. Once he’s made his way up, Kuan-hung rests his cheek on Fu Meng-po’s shoulder instead to get his fix of mindless scrolling by proxy as Fu Meng-po thumbs through various apps. Fu Meng-po doesn’t go into anything private — Kuan-hung would avert his eyes, anyway, if he did, but he’s looking but not seeing, really, for the most part. Almost dozing, with his eyes half-open, his body warm all-over, limbs a little loose even as aimless anticipation starts building in the floor of his gut.

Sometimes Fu Meng-po angles his phone a bit his way so Kuan-hung can look at something Fu Meng-po must think he’ll like, or find interesting. He doesn’t always hit the mark, but he’s never made secret that he thinks Kuan-hung’s humour is a bit young for him, at times. It’s nice, anyway, just to be thought about. It’s nice to just— be.

It’s all a little bit like Hengdian, if he lets himself start to think about it along those lines, except Kuan-hung’s running on more than four hours of sleep at the moment; hasn’t got pounds of makeup and false hair weighing his head down like a stone. It’s a little bit like after, too, the roadshows, for the mindless monotony in a hotel room away from home. Though, those had ended up lonelier, save for when they’d had the call-in interviews, the show watchalongs. Maybe it’s more accurate to say, then, that it’s a little bit like the trip to the coast Fu Meng-po took him on. Because Kuan-hung thinks he could fall asleep again, like he did then and he’s done today, and he’ll wake up and Fu Meng-po will still be there. It’ll be like no time has passed at all, just for them.

It’s nice. He sleeps again. Or naps, at least, though the distinction feels irrelevant when all of its roads lead to a lapse in consciousness. He knows he does, anyway, or must, because that’s still all that explains how he blinks awake and the room is a little darker, the sun a little lower. He’s had his mouth open on Fu Meng-po’s shoulder. For a while, feels like. His tongue’s thick in his mouth, uncomfortable, sore where it must have rested too heavily against his teeth.

Kuan-hung makes a creaky noise of complaint, blindly reaching up to rub at the spot his mouth has left with the heel of his palm. It comes away dry, which is a small silver lining, at least. He rubs at his face with his other hand, rough.

“Hungry now?” Fu Meng-po asks, like it’s only been a minute or so, like his arm probably isn’t half numb from having Kuan-hung curled up against it. Like he hasn’t probably got some terribly embarrassing picture of Kuan-hung’s open-mouthed sleeping face newly saved and secreted away in some gallery folder on his phone.

“Ugh,” Kuan-hung says. He clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, then swallows. “Yeah. I could eat.”

“The cafe’s still open, I think,” Fu Meng-po says, thumbing down his phone’s toolbar to better see the time. Kuan-hung makes a sound, caught in the cup of his palm over his mouth, and Fu Meng-po’s arm jostles him as it arches up with his laugh. “I’ve got leftovers, too.”

That sounds like it involves a lot less effort on his part, and Fu Meng-po’s, too, he supposes. Kuan-hung angles his face so he can slot his chin in on Fu Meng-po’s shoulder and butt his cheek up along the column of his throat. “What leftovers? How old?”

Fu Meng-po tilts his head, flattening Kuan-hung’s fluffed up hair with a rub of his cheek, purposefully casual. “Mapo doufu, from Mingtan. Bought for dinner last night.”

Kuan-hung curls his hand up around Fu Meng-po’s chest so he can rub at his own eyes again, humming to dispel the last clinging dregs of sleep. “How much is left?”

Fu Meng-po’s laugh knocks at him again. “All of it.”

“It’ll do,” says Kuan-hung, slanting back so Fu Meng-po has an opening to disentangle himself. He does, pocketing his phone in the same motion he gets up on his knees and half-turns so he can pinch Kuan-hung’s chin between his thumb and fingers.

“xiao Jiche,” he tuts, snorting when Kuan-hung crinkles his nose and makes a show of wrenching his face out of his grip. “Do you want it cold?”

“Cold’s okay.” Cold’s okay, but he also feels a need to prove Fu Meng-po wrong, now, a little. It’s transparent and the both of them do know it, but Fu Meng-po makes his awareness plain with the chase of his fingers to give Kuan-hung’s chin another tweak before he rises the rest of the way.

Kuan-hung sinks low, sprawls out, and props himself up just enough so that he better can watch Fu Meng-po make his way to the sitting room and crouch down behind the slatted wooden divider.

“When are you going to cook for me?” he thinks and asks at the same time, for the sake of efficiency.

“Depends,” Fu Meng-po calls back. Which, Kuan-hung supposes it does, sure. “How long are you sticking around?”

Huh. Fu Meng-po doesn’t say it like it’s anything dangerous at all, but Kuan-hung can’t help but feel— like he’s skirting a snare in the brush. “How long can I stick around?” he fires back, a little jittery with the actual heft of it, behind the casual veneer.

Fu Meng-po stands up, and there’s the crack of plastic as Kuan-hung watches the broken-up line of his arms open the container through the partition. “For about a week,” he replies.

Kuan-hung’s laugh scratches up his throat despite himself. “Okay,” he manages. “All right. Then when are you going to cook for me?”

“I’ve got work in Taitung,” Fu Meng-po answers, He pauses, briefly, and Kuan-hung watches his head dip as he sniffs at the container. “Heading down morning after next. Comes with a kitchen.”

“Guess I’ll just have to wait.” Kuan-hung sighs. "Hope it ends up worth it."

He doesn’t even bother not to smile up at Fu Meng-po, pleased, as he resurfaces back into the room proper, the half-opened container and a spoon in hand. Kuan-hung sits up enough to take it, both handed, when it’s offered out, before he promptly slumps back, using the slouch of his chest and the shelf of his knees as a shoddy table. Fu Meng-po settles in again at his side, close enough that they're only just not touching, but he feels warm and very much there. He picks his phone back up off the side table, then leaves Kuan-hung to it.

He’s maybe hungrier than he realised, but he’s definitely a little bit distracted in his own head, because it doesn’t seem like any time at all before he’s finished what’s in front of him. He feels like he blinks, once, twice, then Fu Meng-po is taking the container out of his hands and thumbing his bottom lip. That snaps him to some sort of attention with a start, for sure.

"Mess," he murmurs, his smile broadening so wide it makes his eyes crinkle.

"Who?" Kuan-hung mutters back, faintly rattled.

"You." Fu Meng-po leans back; his hand falls away. "Go shower."

It doesn’t quite click all the way into place in the first beat, but by the next Kuan-hung's got it, got what he means by it, and thankfully it’s before he can mouth off something that Fu Meng-po would more than happily take, with no hardship, as an indicator he should elaborate. Explicitly. To Kuan-hung’s outright death if not detriment.

“Oh,” Kuan-hung says instead, a little less stupidly than his alternatives. “Sure.” He pushes up onto his knees, and then past Fu Meng-po, who doesn't do much in the way of making room for him. He definitely doesn’t nearly trip over his own legs as he disentangles himself from the last of the bed. He absolutely walks, not runs, not strides, not anything more than a sensible moderate unhurried paces his way to the bathroom, pulling the door shut behind him.

The half wall-wide glass window with a full-frontal view to the forestry outside is a bit of a confronting sight, but he gets the blind down with minimal fuss in-between getting his clothes off. The shower’s an open stall filling out the gap between the head of the granite bath and the furthermost wall, easy enough to get in and out of and easier still to figure out.

Kuan-hung has the most scalding and thorough and environmentally unconscious shower he’s had since— it has to have been a while, now, at least. He brushes his teeth again, too, to get the spice out as best he can, just in case. There’s a little bit of hot water left when he’s finished, though it’s in the sense that he hastily turns it off at the tap when it starts to run lukewarm down his back. He’s completely zen as he dries off and redresses. There’s no lump in the back of his throat that could very well be his heart that he needs to try breathing around. He’s not nervous. There’s nothing to be nervous about.

Maybe they should talk about it. It feels like they should— that it’s something to talk about. It also feels like they’ve already talked about it. That they don’t need to talk about it. Kuan-hung feels ridiculously and irredeemably childish for his being at a loss on this. It would be fine, maybe, if he was simply inexperienced instead of feeling as if his experience was devalued and discredited, but. Then again, maybe not. Always something to be said of mountains and comparing heights.

When he comes back out, he heads straight for his phone, takes it off charge, and deposits himself on Fu Meng-po’s bed while Fu Meng-po swaps out with him for the shower. It makes sense for him to go for Fu Meng-po’s bed over the other one, his one, technically, since his suitcase is still tossed out on it.

The blinds have been drawn while he was in the shower. It's closed in the room, made it private. Intimate in a way that prickles the back of his neck and kicks his breath up.

Fu Meng-po doesn’t take nearly as long as he did, but it sure does feel like he took longer by the time he comes out, still towelling off his damp hair. Kuan-hung peeks up from his screen as Fu Meng-po pads over and steps up onto the platform, casual, like he hasn't been thrumming to breaking brink with anticipation. Fu Meng-po bends over to drop his towel to the floor, then runs his hand through his hair as he straightens, fluffing it out and combing it back from his face. His hair is much longer than Kuan-hung’s at the moment, which is another check on the list of things about Fu Meng-po that Kuan-hung has decided to take umbrage with at this given point in time as monumentally unfair.

The mattress sinks in at his hips as Fu Meng-po climbs into the bed to straddle over him, bracketing him in with his knees. Kuan-hung puts his phone down, fumbling it somewhere underneath his pillow, tucked away, then folds his hands loosely across his chest. He thumbs at his nails in a way that’s definitely not nervous. Nothing to be nervous about.

“All right?” Fu Meng-po asks, quiet.

“You—” So much for willing an aura of calm into actuality. Kuan-hung exhales, aiming for exasperated and falling well short at an antsy sort of raw. “Can you just come here?” He needs— he needs, and he’s going to break if he doesn’t get.

Fu Meng-po does, with a smile and without a complaint, and Kuan-hung at least gets to enjoy that thrill for all of a second or three. Then Fu Meng-po is palming his neck, the heel of his hand kneading down on the collar of his shirt in a way that digs it into the still-tender bruises on his skin and burns him all up inside-out. By the time Fu Meng-po actually draws their mouths together and takes his bottom lip between his teeth, Kuan-hung’s toes are curling, and he’s got a wild suspicion that maybe he should have been a little more careful about what he asked for. Maybe. Only maybe.

Kuan-hung kicks his legs out wide with a flail and a gasp right into Fu Meng-po’s mouth, hooks a knee over his back, contorting himself in a way that’s hot and perfect now but he’ll be belligerent at himself about later. He fists both hands in Fu Meng-po’s shirt, nails skimming his ribs.

“Fuck.” He breathes in; out. “You’ve got even more muscles, now.” It just comes out. “Are you sure you’re real?” It’s not as if he hasn’t said that already before, or as if he hasn’t remarked on it on several occasions over the course of this trip alone, but it’s a whole different flip of perspective when Fu Meng-po is actually on top of him while he's prone as part and parcel of the observation, and so he thinks it requires reiterating.

“Bit thin again,” is Fu Meng-po’s amused counter. He thumbs at Kuan-hung’s jaw, pets his throat, traces behind the shell of his ear. “All the diving. New projects, now. Haven’t had much time for the gym.”

Kuan-hung knows all about the diving. He follows Fu Meng-po’s Instagram. He can credit the fact he didn’t chafe his dick raw over any clips while he was in China to the fact he didn’t want to scroll down and start sifting around on his VPN to get to them to begin with. Looping Action Together’s IGTV between one-handed feed updates probably wouldn’t clear any bars relating to business purposes, so. Better for him — and his dick — to not attempt the vault in the first place. He’s got a vivid imagination, anyway, so it isn’t as if he’s ever needed to see Fu Meng-po in anything practically painted on to get his gears turning. So to speak.

“Learn to take a compliment, already,” he snaps, heatless, shoving at Fu Meng-po’s chest. “You’re huge. You’re huge and— you know it. You’re actually, just, baiting me on purpose.”

“Maybe,” Fu Meng-po admits, all pleased and shameless with his opaque deception.

Kuan-hung bends his knee in a way that makes the inside of his thigh burn up with a tight ache and digs his heel into the dip of Fu Meng-po’s back, relishing the little grunt Fu Meng-po makes. “Well, stop it, it’s working.” He takes a big breath that sits off-kilter in his chest. He feels hot, all over, skin pulled too tight over his bones, packed too small for the fit of his body. It’s exhilarating, and more than a little terrifying. But not like before. Before was— this is good, now. He feels good about this, all the way through, in a way that shores him up steady and sure. In a way that he feels safe from the thought that he might be ruining something on purpose because he needs to.

“What do you want, anyway?” Kuan-hung teases. “Are you just going to annoy me? Is that what gets you off?”

Fu Meng-po noses at his cheek while he hums out a note, as if it’s a ponderance that requires serious thinking. He’s shaved in the shower, or sometime between it to now — Kuan-hung admittedly wasn’t paying it close enough attention to catch the change before he was rounded up close to it, face-to-face. Fu Meng-po wasn’t very scruffy to begin with — enough not to scratch him up too much, earlier, when Kuan-hung was mouthing at every inch of his jaw that he could put his lips to — but now there’s only a slight scrape of stubble that roughs at his skin when Fu Meng-po shapes an almost approximate kiss into it. His breath is warm and a little shaky, shallow. Affected. Kuan-hung is exerting a lot of effort into resolutely not looking down between them just to take a peek at how affected. He can pace himself. He’s in no rush to take it all in all at once. He’s already had Fu Meng-po’s cock in his mouth — sort-of — in as many hours; he’ll look at it in something more than through-clothes up-close abstract when he’s good and raring ready.

He’s really expecting Fu Meng-po to follow the annoyance branch of this conversational path down to its inevitably teasing conclusion, so he’s got a few nascent retorts on standby. They promptly dissipate into blank state nothingness, though, when Fu Meng-po says, low, to the shell of his ear, “Want to turn you over, get you up on your hands and knees and rim you until you come.” His breath gets harsh around it, thready, like Fu Meng-po’s already there in the thick of it in his head and he’s only just now saying it out loud to invite Kuan-hung along to the party. And— and.

“Fuck,” Kuan-hung chokes, “yeah, okay, that’s—” that’s the hottest thing he’s ever heard in his life down to the dated minute, said in the hottest voice he’s ever heard in his life. It’s something nobody else has ever really done for him, to him, whatever, before, either, maybe also because he’s never really figured out how to ask for it. He definitely can’t admit to any of this, though, not aloud, even if he doesn’t know why it’d be so bad, so he just unhooks his leg from Fu Meng-po’s back with a groan instead. He rolls over underneath him until he’s belly down, cheek pressed to the pillow, knees half-cocked towards his chest. There’s a tremble in his fingers that clutching down at the sheets only makes billow up the backs of his knuckles, his arms, his shoulders.

Fu Meng-po’s hands come up to rest on his hips, and he moves him, again, again, in gentle little increments until he’s bowed over in supplication to Fu Meng-po’s apparent satisfaction. He’s heavy against the arch of Kuan-hung’s back, hot and huge, pinning and perfect. He smooths a palm up the fan of his ribs, tugging the collar of Kuan-hung’s shirt down with the other to press a kiss to the knobbly chine of his spine.

“Tell me if it’s too much,” he says, soft and sweet, into the tender-alight skin there.

“It’s too much of nothing,” Kuan-hung snips, whiny, still clinging on to the misconception that he’s not now absolutely abased. He can’t pace himself at all. It was rather stupid of him to think otherwise. “Oh my god. Please hurry up already.”

Fu Meng-po does not hurry up. At least, he doesn’t go fast enough for Kuan-hung, who has now decided he absolutely wants it all at once, and he wants it several minutes ago, and that Fu Meng-po should have known this and adjusted accordingly already. Fu Meng-po doesn’t hold him down, not exactly, but he doesn’t need to — he’s so big and broad and everywhere, overwhelming, that anywhere Kuan-hung tries to move just brings him in closer and up tighter into the bent over brace of him bearing down across his back. Fu Meng-po rubs his hands up his sides, over his chest, and the brush of his fingers there strings a whimper out that seems to motivate Fu Meng-po enough to take a detour from his stated track plan of the proceedings.

Kuan-hung doesn’t get more of a warning than the damp press of Fu Meng-po’s mouth to his nape and the lap of his tongue before he’s snaking his hands underneath Kuan-hung’s arms. He cups the slight swells of his pectorals in a massaging squeeze of a grip, pinching his nipples between his rough fingers and the rucked cotton of his shirt.

Kuan-hung keens, kicks out, trying to buck up away from and burrow down into the sensation at the same time. He manages little of either, the flinch of his hips bringing his ass up against Fu Meng-po’s cock, hot between all the too many layers and so heavy and huge that Kuan-hung’s mouth runs dry with a frantic, helpless little moan.

Fu Meng-po rolls his thumbs over the peaking nubs, and Kuan-hung chokes around another clotted sound, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. “Oh god,” he gasps out, “oh.” He ruts up into the thick line of Fu Meng-po’s cock, nearly biting through his own tongue when he feels it nudge between his cheeks, parting him a bit. He’s big. He’s so big. He’s too big and Kuan-hung wants him inside so much.

“Don’t,” he stutters, as Fu Meng-po keeps single-mindedly playing with his chest, every twist and tweak sparking a frissioning heat to pool low and lower still. “Don’t, oh, please—”

Fu Meng-po slows to a stop, loosening his grip, but he doesn’t release him. He just leans back a bit, lets Kuan-hung breathe, tipping his face so he can tuck his chin over Kuan-hung’s shoulder.

“Too much,” Kuan-hung manages to concede after a few shuddery gulps of year. “Oh. Yeah. Um. That’s too much. I’m going to, if you keep…” he trails off, a little flustered. It’s not as if he’s particularly sensitive about being sensitive, but. Well. It’s a little embarrassing, maybe. In that same way all bodies are embarrassing, and sex is embarrassing, even when you’re not letting it be.

“Oh,” Fu Meng-po says. “Huh.” He shifts a bit against his back, tilting his face towards his ear. Then, “Have you come just from your chest before?”

Kuan-hung groans, because he can’t just— ask that. He can’t. Does Fu Meng-po want him to die? Is he killing him? “Yes,” he admits with a hiss, ripped out of him. “Yeah.” Sort of. Really— it’s a close enough thing to be a yes, and it makes him feel nauseous, upended, to say it.

Fu Meng-po makes a considering sound, then his hands drift down from Kuan-hung’s chest, dipping low over his belly. They stop where the hem of his shirt has started to ride up to his waist, and Kuan-hung has a— he has a moment where he jerks in on himself, trembling. He’s not afraid, when Fu Meng-po tugs up his shirt and pulls it off over his head, but he does ease, breathing out a faint sight of relief, when Fu Meng-po’s hands don’t start back up to his chest to rechart now bared skin.

“I could make you come again like that after I’ve eaten you out,” Fu Meng-po observes against his throat, thumbs teasing at Kuan-hung’s waistband. “You know. If you want.”

Kuan-hung shudders, squeezing his eyes shut. He bunches his shoulders, trying to cringe into himself even as he rocks back firmly against Fu Meng-po’s cock. The whole motion just nudges Fu Meng-po’s chin up with a scrape of his teeth that he then licks over while Kuan-hung whimpers plaintively and cranes into it.

“Aren’t you getting a bit ahead?” Not that Kuan-hung minds it, but he needs— he needs to take the edge off of all of it, or he’s going to end up coming before Fu Meng-po even gets his mouth on him. And that would be— hot. That would be incredibly hot, but also horrifically humiliating, and potentially unsurvivable. So he’d like to avoid it, if at all possible. “Are you actually planning to come at all?”

“That’s up to you,” Fu Meng-po murmurs breezily as he lifts himself up on his knees and pulls Kuan-hung’s sweats down over his hips and the curve of his ass, slow.

“Oh.” Kuan-hung fists at the sheets harder, clenches his jaw so he doesn’t bite down on the pillow to gag himself, and tries to steady himself through the spin of his head.

“You like that?” Fu Meng-po asks. He sounds very much like he already knows the answer.

“Yeah,” Kuan-hung tells him anyway. “Yeah, yes.” He thinks of how Fu Meng-po’s hands stalled on him back in the Jeep at Good boy, and adds in, “You knew I would.”

“Good guess,” Fu Meng-po dismisses, humble. One of his broad hands fetters Kuan-hung by the sharp jut of his hip, then he’s kneeling back and he’s got his mouth right on the dip of his lower back. Kuan-hung is so held immobile by that one point of sudden contact that he can’t do anything but moan and strain against it, caged, as Fu Meng-po sucks a sloppy, stinging bruise right over the crest of his tailbone.

“Oh, god,” Kuan-hung pants out, still praying and cursing in neck-and-neck measures to either an indifferent or indulgent higher power, he hasn’t yet settled on which. Then, “You had better,” he threatens, toothless. Fu Meng-po just chuckles, unconcerned, dragging his mouth a fraction of barely anything lower to press a soft kiss to the soft skin there.

“How do you want it?” He pushes through, gets it all out there. “My mouth again? I’ll do it better this time.”

“It was good the first time,” Fu Meng-po says, “you were good,” and, oh. “Let’s deal with you, first.” He presses another kiss another stutter of an inch lower. Kuan-hung’s throat burns with the sharp breath he sucks down.

“Oh, please,” he begs, and that’s a whole new dam to break that he’s only now tripped over because the water’s flooding out at ankle-height. He’s been begging before now but not like this. This is begging that opens him up with it and lays him out on display for perusal, for persecution. “Please, please— fuck.” He swallows. “I could ride you? I could ride you.” He would like that. He would like just about anything, right now, he thinks. Could take just about that much, too.

Fu Meng-po’s breath stutters out, a hot lash against Kuan-hung’s damp skin. “You look,” he starts. Stops. Takes another breath that slams all the breath out of Kuan-hung in turn. “You’ll be tight,” Fu Meng-po finishes, low.

Kuan-hung bucks against the damning pin of his hand with a wheeze. “I’m— yeah, tight,” he rasps, raw. Wrecked, a little bit impossibly more, by hearing that out of Fu Meng-po’s mouth with the kind of confidence Kuan-hung has wanted to hand over to him since shortly after they first met. The confidence he hasn’t gotten around to giving up, yet, and didn’t think he would for a while longer even after this— this rapid reorient of their relationship as of a few hours ago.

Fu Meng-po’s got an idea of him that speaks close to the grain in ways that are humiliating and horrifying and right. “Yeah,” Kuan-hung goes again, “I’m always— and you’re so big.” He wishes he would shut up; he wants to get this out like it’s something physical thorning in through his skin. “Oh, fuck, I want— please tell me, you brought more than just—”

Fu Meng-po’s chin traces down the dip of his back as he tips his head up, the pad of his thumb kneading at Kuan-hung’s hipbone. “Hey,” he gentles. The sound is soft, slow; soothing, like his other hand when he draws it up between them to rub along Kuan-hung’s flank. “Shh, c’mon. Slow down. Take a moment.”

Kuan-hung chuffs a clipped laugh as he turns his face into his arm, pressing his forehead into the hinge of his elbow. The blindfold of his bicep against his eyes makes him feel a bit more substantial where he's otherwise suspended weightless between Fu Meng-po's hands.

Slow down; take a moment. What an absolutely hysterical joke of a thing to say to him. Fu Meng-po should add comedian to his ever-expanding list of talents and proficiencies if he hasn't already.

He takes a breath and takes his time. The seconds flatten back out; the minutes refix together. He doesn't feel any— calmer, for all it's calming to just be. To expand and contract between the coiled urgency that has whittled him fine and the roam of Fu Meng-po's hand along his side. But he listens to their breaths in off-beat tandem while he relaxes into the feeling of the warmth washing down his thighs and the weight of his head where he's set it down on his arm, and he feels less and less like he's about to break out of the boundaries of his own body at any premature moment.

Kuan-hung lifts his head, turns it back over, cheek scraping over the sheet as he strains to see Fu Meng-po over his shoulder. He tilts his hip up against the hold of his hand, making an impatient sound when Fu Meng-po presses him back down, in place.

"I've got it," Fu Meng-po says. Kuan-hung can only see a third of his smile but he can hear the rest of it in his voice, pleased and promiseful. "I've got you."

Kuan-hung kicks back at him, spurring, and lets his head drop back to the bed with an unwound groan when Fu Meng-po bows low again, slips out from underneath his line of sight. His chuckle is pressed into Kuan-hung's hip, fed between the fan of his thumb and forefinger. He kisses at the jut of bone; tongues at it wetly when Kuan-hung hitches up with a hiccuped gasp. The hand idling against the flare of his ribcage starts to trail down his side, stroking the plains of bared skin until it brushes up against the bunched waist of his part-shucked sweats and briefs, pooled mid-thigh.

“Open your legs wider for me.”

He does, all unsteady wobble and watery legs. The approving sound Fu Meng-po doesn’t seem to realise he’s made makes the burn skinning his knees worthwhile.

“There.” A breath. “Now bring your hands down here,” Fu Meng-po’s voice lilts, just for a fraying beat, as if he’s going to illustrate here with something more tangibly substantial, but the touch Kuan-hung ends up bracing for doesn’t come. “Hold yourself open for me.”

Kuan-hung bites down on his bottom lip, but it fails to stop his whimper from slipping out and on through. He does that, too, slow, shaking; makes an aborted reach between the wide spread of his thighs before he changes his mind, changes course, pulls back to readjust so his hands are skimming down his sides instead. He tries not to burn up into ash with shame or sob out when he finally, finally, finally— he digs his fingers in until they dimple his skin, and he feels his hole twitch as his cock drips wet onto the sheets.

Fu Meng-po kneels back, shifts lower, down and down and down farther still, until Kuan-hung can only perceive and place him by touch and sound, blurs of colour and movement in his periphery when he cranes and contorts his neck, folding his shoulders in against the slip of his frame. It’s all so muddled loud: the crackle of the sheets; the creak of the platform beneath the mattress; the rattling heave of his own breath. A storm that sweeps through his head and washes every thought out in the downpour until he’s clean, refined into narrow, pure spun glass sense. Fu Meng-po’s hands slide up the backs of his legs to grip him, thumbs curling into his thighs underneath the curve of his ass. Kuan-hung feels the sound that falls flat out of his mouth snap down the middle; hears it only after, delayed, underwater.

Fu Meng-po says something, but the words are somewhere too far away, leaving only the gentling cadence muted under the burbling brook of his own blood rushing in his ears. Kuan-hung moans again, voice pitching up vice-tight. His hands start to slip as he shakes apart, and he refastens his grip roughly, digging in, the strain plucking burn-hot down the two-stone bow arch of his spine.

It’s an effort that is nearly all but entirely wasted when Fu Meng-po presses a kiss to where the fold of his palm meets the furl of his fingers, tender, obscene. His lips trace each of his fingers; he mouths damply over every knuckle, and it’s so, so slow. Slow and still not nearly enough to make up a forewarning for when Fu Meng-po moves and then the rest of everything else moves with him; when he breathes out there against his hole and follows it with his tongue, teasing at the rim.

Kuan-hung almost jackknifes up and off the bed, a garbled, choking noise half snared in the back of his mouth. He gets as far as an abortive jerk of his hips before he meets the tether of Fu Meng-po's hands, curled around his thighs so snugly they almost wrap the whole way around, or feel like they do, at least, and that's— that's not something he can hold onto in his head. Fu Meng-po tugs him back into the space he never quite left and pins him in place, spread wide and held down for him.

It's slick, and wet, and unrelenting, and it splinters between sound and sensation, discordant and sequential. Kuan-hung tries to nose under the sheets, tries to cringe and cower in hiding from it, cheeks scalding shame-hot. He can't get his bearings. He can't reach. He can't do anything but sink back into Fu Meng-po's face between his legs and claw down on his handholds holding him open until his nails bite in through skin. Just has to sob silent and slack-mouthed against the sheets and take it as Fu Meng-po licks at him again, then again, then again, clenching around nothing, yet, at all when he presses the broad flat of his tongue over him.

It is— he feels so open and so full just from what the probing pressure of Fu Meng-po’s tongue stroking over his hole is promising, and it’s making him too hot and too wound up knotted taut, his stomach flipping over itself and his throat lacing up. His eyes hurt; his face is wet. He’s a mess, he knows it, and that’s the worst part of it, that he has to be aware of Fu Meng-po’s ruining of him at his apparent idle leisure. How he’s leaving him bereft of everything but just enough sense to grasp how mortifyingly needy he is, debased desperate. His fingers slip against his skin, smearing sweat, and he whimpers, pleading and apologetic, when Fu Meng-po tips his head back and pulls away.

“Hey,” he murmurs. He sounds hoarse himself, hungry, barely held in his own check. It makes Kuan-hung feel so helpless and so powerful, in turns of dizzying and dangerous. “Just let go if it’s too much.”

It’s too much, so he does, dropping his arms to the bed with a grunt. He feels a static numbness bloom behind his knuckles that vines up the backs of his arms, a shock of an almost-cold to the blaze burn inferno of his skin.

“That’s it,” Fu Meng-po praises, all crushed velvet and deep rumble and actual audio porn, and Kuan-hung sucks in a sharp breath that lances like ice through his lungs, then spits out an incoherent curse. It’s unfair, it’s unfair that Fu Meng-po looks like that and sounds like that and if he was a decent man he’d give some of his everything back up to the rest of them.

“Please,” is what Kuan-hung chokes out on his next attempt to wrap his head and his tongue around the fine art of using his words. Fu Meng-po hums as he presses a kiss against the curve of his ass, just above the knead of his thumb. He chases it with a nip of his teeth, breath gusting out in a satisfied huff when Kuan-hung writhes, fucking his hips down into nothing, held up and held fast by Fu Meng-po’s hands.

“Good,” he murmurs. He flexes his hands on Kuan-hung’s thighs, adjusts his grip, and then he’s got his thumbs dragging up between his cheeks, spreading him back out again. “You’re doing well. Being so good.”

“Oh—” Kuan-hung snarls, face scrunching up in— in not pain, not pain, but he’s aching without hurting, all burled up in on himself, mouth dry and temples throbbing. Fu Meng-po's mouth traces up the inner back of his thigh, then he sets his teeth in, hard enough to throb when he bites down and sucks a bruise right over the skin, then another, until he's trailed a strip of marks that has Kuan-hung's nerves singing a stinging symphony.

“Ah, ah, please," he whimpers, "don’t tease, don’t make me—” He doesn’t know what comes next, what’s supposed to or what even should, head scattering between beg and come.

Fu Meng-po doesn’t make him beg, at least, which is nice, maybe, save for how he goes about it in the worst bastard way. He laps at his rim without warning, fingers tracing his thighs. He’s almost, he thinks he’s almost— but he can’t get himself over that edge, just feels his arousal building and building up from somewhere bottomless, never breaking the surface. Kuan-hung whines pitifully, strung out and up, toes curling around air, hands twitching down somewhere at his sides. Once, again, ceaseless, fever-pitched, and then Fu Meng-po’s finally sliding a hand between his legs, palm cupping his balls, rough fingers scraping up the underside of his shaft. He pins Kuan-hung’s cock to his belly, and Kuan-hung strangles himself on his own sob as he comes, spilling messily up his chest and onto the bed and all over Fu Meng-po’s hand.

Fu Meng-po lifts his head and says something that lilts all soft and sweet and fond but doesn’t stick in Kuan-hung’s head, and it just keeps going on and on and on, Fu Meng-po’s hand rubbing his cock gently, working him through the waves until it ebbs and flows away. He’s left drained, stripped down and used up and relieved of some too-heavy weight he didn’t even know he was holding in the first place until he dropped it here at Fu Meng-po’s inclination.

Fu Meng-po kneels back up and bears back down over him, and Kuan-hung feels his arm winding in underneath to brace over his chest, palm smoothing up to curve against his shoulder. There’s something about that, of all of it, after everything, that just— lets him let himself go. Catch and releases that last secret shadow of an inch. Kuan-hung’s legs tremble out from beneath him, knees slipping along the sheets, and then Fu Meng-po is helping him kick the rest of the way out of his clothes, rolling him over, gathering him up against his chest.

The still clothed bulge of Fu Meng-po’s cock nudges up the crease of his ass when Fu Meng-po pulls him closer, blunt and thick and burning hot, but he does nothing more than slot their hips together, the bar of his arm across Kuan-hung’s chest bracing him steady. Kuan-hung can feel how rigid Fu Meng-po is along the line of his back, the way his hips keep trying to hitch up for friction, to push into tight heat. Fu Meng-po’s heartbeat thuds through his back, and his hands pet at his belly, his chest, his hip, dabbing at the come still streaking his skin with a handful of the sheet. He’s doing anything but rushing him, but that just makes Kuan-hung feel all the more rushed, all the more aware and narrow-knifed down to how Fu Meng-po’s still clothed. To how the cotton of his shirt and sweats are sticking tacky to Kuan-hung’s sweat-damp skin, how Fu Meng-po’s still hard, how he’s still waiting.

“Oh,” Kuan-hung croaks, after he’s collected enough of himself back in together beneath his skin, shaping him into something more resembling coherently human. “Fuck. Huh.” His voice cracks around it, and he swallows to wet his mouth and ease his throat.

Fu Meng-po presses a kiss behind his ear, cheek scuffing at his hair. “That good?”

“Oh yeah.” Kuan-hung gets one of his hands up and flops it over Fu Meng-po’s where it’s dipped from his shoulder to fold loosely over his pectoral. “Guess I can fly back now I’ve come like that.”

The breathy gust of Fu Meng-po’s laugh against the shell of his ear tickles, and Kuan-hung squirms with a grumble, nose scrunching. “Glad to be of service,” he says.

“Five stars,” Kuan-hung chimes, mock-recitative, “would come again.” He still feels a bit spread thin, raw-nerved, his breath sifting heavy in his chest. Like he’s taking in more cloud than air. But excitement is edging at his fringes, eagerness picking at his hems. Kuan-hung flails a hand back and smacks blindly at Fu Meng-po, catching his flank. “Your turn?”

“Here,” Fu Meng-po directs, but then he just palms down Kuan-hung’s side before Kuan-hung asks what and where, sliding his arm behind his knees and folding them up towards his chest. Kuan-hung breathes out in a rush, then laughs, stunned dizzy and burning a bit warm. It’s hot, how Fu Meng-po just moves him around like he’s nothing, but he’s still too early into his rebound from his last orgasm for it to do much for him yet. It’s going to do a lot for him, though, later, he’s very, very sure.

“Here?” Kuan-hung repeats, drawling it out in a playful little prod. He wiggles his toes and Fu Meng-po pivots his wrist to scratch at his calf, mussing the downy hairs. Kuan-hung kicks out against the bar of his arm again limply and finds no new give in it, but then, he didn’t really expect to, anyway. He certainly didn’t want to, especially.

“Perfect,” Fu Meng-po teases him back, “good job,” and it is absolutely not Kuan-hung’s fault that those words said in that configuration with that voice pressed that close to his ear derail him from getting another swipe in.

So he doesn’t reply, instead, short of a little scratch of sound, a shadow of a whine, as he feels Fu Meng-po’s other hand slide down, down, until it has sunk in between their bodies, a stopgap separating their hips. The backs of his knuckles keep nudging at him, sliding against him, drags of pressure and pangs of heat as Fu Meng-po paws at his sweats, his briefs, easing everything down just as far enough as it all apparently needs to go. Kuan-hung feels his grip shift again in the way the tension runs up his arm as Fu Meng-po fists his cock, then the blunt prod of the head as it starts to push in between his legs.

“Oh,” Kuan-hung heaves out. He freezes up. “Wait, wait, I’m, I’m not—” and, and, look. He doesn’t even know why he says it, why it’s the first thing he whiplash bails into as he coils all up and starts fraying in cottony white-out panic. It makes no sense. Fu Meng-po’s not going to hurt him, isn’t going to fuck into him before he’s actually stretched open wet and ready and sure for it, he doesn’t think that. Why would he think that? But the first scrambled instinct that jars into him apparently has enough resemblance through the face-blind to fear, so he latches on firm to scared, then feels awful in the comedown for it. Rattled stupid; worse, when Fu Meng-po just pets his knee, his thigh, anywhere his hand can reach, stilling the slide of his cock and the slot of his hips. Shushes him as he kisses at his hair, in no apparent hurt or hurry.

“Just your thighs.” He rolls his hips gently, lets Kuan-hung feel, slow, how it rocks him against his ass, how it fucks his cock between the plush press of his legs, snubs his tip up behind his balls. “Like that. That’s all. All right?”

“Yeah— yeah.” Kuan-hung nods with it, chest unlatching. He lets his eyes fall shut, tonguing at the sore, hot swell of his bottom lip. Fu Meng-po eases his legs down, soothing the arch of Kuan-hung’s spine to sink him, slack, onto the breach of his cock as he feeds it into the tight tuck of his thighs. It feels— it feels— filling, full, all pent up around empty nothing and eventual promise.

He doesn’t trust his voice with what he says next, to be petulant and not stinging, but, “You promised,” Kuan-hung protests. It sounds all right, once it’s out. Not too sharp, doesn’t cut open his mouth.

Maybe it doesn’t matter, though, anyway, with Fu Meng-po, because he seems to take it as well as everything else as it’s meant even if Kuan-hung can’t manage to get it to him the right way. “I did,” Fu Meng-po agrees. Kuan-hung feels his other hand scuff up his hip, wind back between his rucked up knees to palm flat against his navel. His thumb traces the divot of his bellybutton as he shifts his hips, slight, with a shallow thrust. “I will,” he adds.

“When?” It’s punched out of him in a slam of a breath, all high and winched tight, when Fu Meng-po thrusts harder between his thighs, the drag of his cock rough, just dry enough to make the tender skin feel— feel hot, like he’s been pinched.

Fu Meng-po nuzzles down into the crook of his shoulder. He mouths at the join of his neck; scrapes his cheek against his throat. His laugh is really soft, damp, a little sweet. Muffled, somehow, despite being the closest thing to Kuan-hung next to the press of them together, the sound folding into his skin, threading into his trembling pulse. Kuan-hung feels his own cock twitch against his thigh; he shudders, squirms.

“Let me take my time with you,” Fu Meng-po says. It’s a little chastising, beneath the thick way his voice is tangling around itself. His smile is crooked, pleased. Kuan-hung feels his lips curl back to an almost-bare of his teeth as he starts to trail kisses after his words, delayed.

“How— how much time are you thinking of taking?” Fu Meng-po can take all the time there is in the world, but he needs to hurry up as well. Kuan-hung kneads at the sheets and the pillow and the air in reach blindly, writhing against Fu Meng-po’s grip as he ruts between his legs sharply, swift, smarting like a smack, a punishment without the deterrent. “Oh!”

“There’s no rush.” Fu Meng-po’s chuckle is all huffed, hitching breath. He strokes low on Kuan-hung’s belly, as if it’s for amends, in advance, for the bruising slam of his hips that he follows it up with. Kuan-hung groans, biting at his mouth weakly as he kicks his legs, crossing his ankles over. He tries to squeeze down more on Fu Meng-po’s cock as it works between his clamped thighs, tries to make the sleeve-vice tighter, the slide better. It’s starting to get slippery, now, all slick wet with sweat and precome.

He feels filthy again, again, like he’s never going to quite manage to be cleaned up, not after this, not from what Fu Meng-po’s done to him; is doing to him; will do to him soon enough.

“There’s every, every rush,” Kuan-hung pushes, hoarse. He’s getting hard. He’s getting hard, and he feels cold-hot whiplashed all over, caressed by a breeze and set aflare. Fu Meng-po’s just holding him in place and fucking between his legs and he’s so easy for it, feeling good and used and wanted, enough. It’s too much. It’s been seen without so much as being looked at, just known. It’s indescribable. There’s no way to hide from it.

“Hm,” he replies, noncommittal, breath jagging where it roughs over Kuan-hung’s throat. He teases at the tendon with his teeth, then licks over the reddening mar.

“It’s my holiday,” Kuan-hung complains— begs, really, for all practicalities it’s begging, his voice a sob-wet whine. “My kidnapping, whatever we’re calling it— oh, oh—” Fu Meng-po’s hips flex as he kicks down against the bed, bracing himself sloppily along the mattress, gathering Kuan-hung just that much closer, flush to his chest. He pins him down tighter on his cock as he hilts it, and there’s so much— or just not enough of Kuan-hung, or both, that Fu Meng-po’s cock spills over his thighs, out, past and through.

“Needy thing,” Fu Meng-po grates out. His breath is shallowing, running ragged. Kuan-hung feels how his jaw works around his swallow before he tips his face back the inch its left to nip at Kuan-hung’s neck, growling. “Is that all you want? To be filled up and fucked?”

And he’s— it’s funny, it will be funny to him, later, if and when he thinks back on it, but he’s not expecting it. He’s not expecting this, this break, almost, the one that he’s actually courted, tempted, provoked. Or— he wanted it, but he didn’t know it was going to be this, that— Kuan-hung rips one of his hands up to clamp down on his mouth, gagging his moan as Fu Meng-po thrusts against him, the shove of his cock blunt-brutal and breaching.

Distantly, he realises his eyes have slammed shut, but more distantly he can feel, muddied and muted underneath the slap of Fu Meng-po’s hips against him, the slippery slick-wet slide of his cock. Fu Meng-po’s hand grazes up his belly, his sternum, and then his fingers are wrapping around Kuan-hung’s wrist so he can wrench his hand back away from his mouth and pin it to the bed. He tightens his hold beneath Kuan-hung’s knees, rears up, getting his weight hefted in a way that cages Kuan-hung to the bed harder, a way that holds him too fast. He can’t fight his other arm up, can’t catch the sounds spilling out of his mouth as Fu Meng-po bears down rough on him, thighfucks him harder.

“Let me hear you,” Fu Meng-po grits out, as if there’s still a choice or a chance that he could not, that Kuan-hung might stop, “let me— open your eyes, let me see you.”

Kuan-hung does, obedient, and it’s all hazy, fogged-up stricken and unravelling. He turns his head, mouth slack around a sob that’s scalding his thighs and snatched up in the back of his throat, silenced. Fu Meng-po, the outline of him, the imprint, the presence, he is— flushed and sweaty and edging around animal, eyes blown black with arousal. His cock is pulsing thick where it’s sheathing between Kuan-hung’s legs, leakily messily, close. Still, there is— there is something wholly gentle about him as he hisses out, choked, “Look down, look at yourself.”

Kuan-hung’s head sags forward, chin tucking to his chest. He feels his moan scratch around his mouth, but all that gets out past his teeth is a gasp. It’s— looking is. Feeling, feeling narrows him down, but seeing flays him even thinner, to razorwire, gets him a glint off snapping entirely. He can see his cock, swollen dark, snubbed up into the crease of his hip; he can see Fu Meng-po’s, too, the flared head slipping out from between the press of his legs when Fu Meng-po sinks deep, dripping from the slit to smear Kuan-hung’s skin slick, the pearling white painting a pretty picture that’s all gut-knotting obscene.

“So small,” Fu Meng-po rumbles, awed. His hips stutter; Kuan-hung feels it in the glide between his legs, sees it in the jab of Fu Meng-po’s tip as it rubs up into him, angled. “So tight on my tongue, even after you’d come.”

Kuan-hung bucks in his grip, wild, writhing all over, and finds Fu Meng-po’s hand on his wrist gives at the resistance, letting him slide free. He doesn’t get far, his own hand falling back to the sheets, fingers folding around nothing in search of purchase.

“Thought you would be.” Fu Meng-po stutters when he pants out, like he’s been slapped. Kuan-hung watches through the tear-blur of his eyes and the fan of his eyelashes as the hand that released his wrist crawls down between his legs to wrap around his cock. The circle of Fu Meng-po’s fingers is painful. Perfect. “Thinking about you now,” Fu Meng-po grunts it in against his ear. Keeps going, and going, like he won’t stop as much as he can’t. “How tight you’ll be on my fingers when I open you up— how you’ll look on my cock, your face, when you’re filled—”

“Please—” Kuan-hung doesn’t even sound like, like anything, just an echo of a cry of a former once was, too full up to be anything but emptied out, “please, please— oh—!”

“Come.” Fu Meng-po grinds up, buries in, holding him down tight. “Come, I’ve got you—” He jerks him, swipes the pad of his thumb over his slit, and Kuan-hung comes with a wail he feels his jaw creak wide around but doesn’t get to hear, all the sound swallowed out of the room and slammed free of his head. Fu Meng-po curls in tight, bows his forehead to Kuan-hung’s neck, and it’s only after several shaky seconds, when sound and sensation starts to trickle back in to reintegrate with his surrounds, that Kuan-hung even realises that Fu Meng-po has come, too. He’s spilled between his thighs and over onto the mattress, his hips still twitching in little half-circle thrusts as he comes down and cools off, softening cock still nestled within the plush press of Kuan-hung’s messy fucked red thighs.

Fu Meng-po takes a gasping breath against his shoulder, then another. Winded, ragged, like he’s been kick-struck stunned. Then he’s unfurling, stiff, gradual, releasing Kuan-hung’s legs and his cock to slump over onto his back. Kuan-hung feels like how he thinks an overplucked harp might feel if it could feel as he tumbles out limply, grimacing. Everywhere on and at and around him is wet or drying stuck. He feels amazing. But he also feels disgusting, and the latter is cutting a bit too deeply into the former for him to let it keep standing.

“Shit.” Fu Meng-po breathes out. Kuan-hung can hear him rummaging and rustling around behind him, staggered, the mattress sagging out from underneath his side. He musters up the dregs of absolutely nothing he has left to give and hauls himself over onto his other side, groaning, just to catch the end eyeful of Fu Meng-po shucking his sweats and briefs. Kuan-hung’s not particularly subtle about his staring, either, as Fu Meng-po fumbles for the collar of his shirt to tug it off over his head. There is a lot to look at. If he wasn’t supposed to look at it then it wouldn’t be all out on show for him to see, now, would it?

Kuan-hung tries to stretch his legs out, which is a mistake for both the retaliatory cramp that bites down into the meat of his thigh and how the motion makes a cooling puddle of sheet slop over his skin.

“Oh,” he whines, reedy, face collapsing in on itself like crumpled paper. “I’m sticky. I’m sticking. Fu Meng-po, don’t fall asleep. Get up. Help.”

Fu Meng-po shakes his head, the slight sway of it disbelieving, then throws his arm over his eyes. It does nothing to conceal the smiling, self-satisfied way his mouth curls up. “I’m out,” he declares. “Decommissioning myself. Too old for service. You’re on your own Maomao-xiong.”

Oh, no. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t? He might, actually. “No!” Kuan-hung yelps, trying to bat at Fu Meng-po’s elbow with as little disruption to his— entire mess, situation, as possible. "Gege. Da shuai ge. Paul!"

He could maybe manage to get up and escape from his predicament, but it is a matter of principle that he doesn't. Fu Meng-po needs to take responsibility. It wouldn't do well to encourage him to develop bad habits.

"I'm broken," Kuan-hung presses. "You broke me. You have to help me." Fu Meng-po remains coldly indifferent to his terrible plight. Kuan-hung goes to put his shoulder into smacking at him again, but overextends; the sheet squelches under his hip.

Oh. “Oh.” Oh god. “Oh god.” He’s never having sex again. “I’m never having sex again.”

Fu Meng-po’s body shakes with his leashed laughter, livening in contrast to the way his own has frozen prone, mortified. He tilts the visor of his arm up from his face to look at him.

“Come here,” he mutters, all warm, reaching over with his other hand to get a passably good grip around Kuan-hung’s bicep. Fu Meng-po gives him a tug, hefting his weight to upturn into his chest, and Kuan-hung comes free of the bedding with some utterly unutterably unpleasant peeling sounds that will possibly haunt him, later, when he’s reconciled and compartmentalised the trauma of being covered in rapidly cooling come. Porn really failed him on this one.

“Oh, shit,” Fu Meng-po blurts out, “you are in a bad way, aren’t you?” Then he does laugh, cringing back to dodge the arc of Kuan-hung’s knee.

“And whose fault is that? Huh?” Kuan-hung mopes.

Fu Meng-po’s smile softens, losing its teeth, as though he’s actually contrite. He rolls Kuan-hung closer to him, knee danger apparently be damned, and pulls his shirt down from where he’d shoved it behind his head, between the wall and his pillow. He wraps his hand in through the sleeve before he starts to dab it tenderly over Kuan-hung’s belly. Kuan-hung huffs, and might, maybe, nuzzle into Fu Meng-po’s chest with a pout. Fu Meng-po’s skin is warm and clammy, and Kuan-hung can feel the hairs on his chest scratching lightly at his cheek whenever he breathes or strokes out with his hand.

“It was a group effort,” Fu Meng-po replies. His hand dips lower, brushing over Kuan-hung’s cock. He makes a crooning sound in answer to Kuan-hung’s discomforted grumble. “Look at you. You’re going to need the shower again.”

“There’s no hot water,” Kuan-hung grumps, churlish. They should have perhaps better orchestrated this entire set-up to cut down on their shower time.

He feels the purr of Fu Meng-po’s chuckle through his chest. “And whose fault is that?”

“Group effort,” Kuan-hung quips back, “and you were in there last, so. There.”

“Fair,” Fu Meng-po concedes, breezy and amused. Which, in effect, is winning, because it denies Kuan-hung the opportunity to have a very stylish last word. But he’ll let it slide, just this once. He has to let Fu Meng-po win sometimes.

Fu Meng-po finishes wiping him over wherever he can reach, tosses his sullied shirt off behind him to somewhere on the platform, then stretches back out flat with a sprawling yawn that butts his chest up against Kuan-hung’s jaw. His free arm goes back over his eyes; the other shifts around where it’s slung behind Kuan-hung so he can palm high at his arm, fingers petting idly at the bony ridge where his clavicle juts out like a shelf to the cliff of his shoulder’s slope.

“Can’t stay here,” Fu Meng-po tells him, voice all low and heavy. “Ten minutes, then up. I’ll change out the sheets.”

Kuan-hung snorts against his chest; it whistles, nasally, and Fu Meng-po squirms with a chuckle. His eyes feel heavier almost out of spite, exhaustion setting in faster to be contrary. Fu Meng-po sighs out, then clears his throat. His fingers keep stroking at Kuan-hung’s shoulder, his collarbone, up to the hinge of his neck. Which isn’t that strange, really: Fu Meng-po is a fiddler. He fiddles. They both are, and both do. They fiddled all the time during filming; with set pieces, with props, with their phones, with their own and even one another’s costumes. Everyone usually pings Kuan-hung as the one that will tweak things and put them between his teeth, and rightly. It’s probably because he’s just kinesis manifest with a body tacked on in afterthought and a matching smile full of mischief. Fu Meng-po’s the dark horse that catches others out, Kuan-hung included. He settles still, and he’s got strong features, so it all makes him look serious. He’s older and distinguished with experience.

Kuan-hung gets his elbow beneath him; rears up, wobbly, off Fu Meng-po’s chest. He peers down at him and watches his face as he draws his arm back from over his eyes so he can look at Kuan-hung, too, out from underneath the shade of it.

He’s not sure where his line of thought is leading him, he just— he thinks he knows that he doesn’t want to think it, right now. At the moment, maybe. More or less. So he shuffles forward a little instead, cocking his head, and adjusts his weight so he can jab a slim finger against Fu Meng-po’s pectoral without losing his balance.

“Shower with me.” He definitely states it with all the authority of at least a demand-adjacent, but his voice cracks down the middle of it like it’s a request. It can hardly be called his fault that he’s still weak-throated, given that he’s only just left the right side of screamed hoarse.

At the questioning raise of Fu Meng-po’s brows, Kuan-hung scrunches up his nose, mock-scandalised. “Ugh, not like that, Selang, pi zai yang—”

“—I didn’t say anything!” Fu Meng-po barks out in defence of himself, laughing.

“You thought it!” Kuan-hung counters, jabbing at him again. It serves really only to reprimand him as his finger bends back a bit from the force of meeting muscle with no give. “You thought it, you—” Okay, all right. He could have phrased it better. And now he’s thinking about it, but, wow, he’s going to concede to a very resounding not now. He’s not too proud. He also might die if he comes again any sooner than post an eight-hour break and one meal intake minimum. “Whatever, stay here then, I’m going to do my face.”

Kuan-hung kneels up the rest of the way, tipping back, and Fu Meng-po rises to sit with him, catching him by the elbow. He was only fronting at being mad of course, but the sudden upend in postures has him second-guessing himself. He feels a bit hot in the face; put on the spot somewhere specificity pending.

He demurs, chin dipping so he can peek up at Fu Meng-po out from under his lashes. “What?”

Fu Meng-po’s shoulders jerk with his chuckle as he slants back, sinking his weight into the flat of his palm, propping him up on the mattress. He shakes his head, then lets go of Kuan-hung’s arm to cup his cheek instead, tweaking at the shell of his ear, feather-light.

“Meng meng da,” he teases, eyes crinkling.

Kuan-hung scowls, pouty, in the precise way he realises all too late just proves Fu Meng-po completely right. Then he opens his mouth to mime biting down into the meat of Fu Meng-po’s palm.

Fu Meng-po flails back, exaggerated, as though he’s really been chomped on. His enduring smile undercuts any believability to his apparent wounding. “I’ll shower,” he says quickly. “I’ll shower with you. Save water.”

Getting the rest of the way out of the bed is the heart of the struggle, but once Kuan-hung gets his feet underneath him and rises up the last leg of distance, Fu Meng-po tails along after, and it’s not much more of a feat to make his way to the bathroom. He’ll have to run the bath at least once before he leaves, he thinks to himself, glancing it over with more attentiveness than his initial assessment while Fu Meng-po starts running the water, hand held under the fall to test the temperature. It’s narrow and deep, with a step on the opposite side of the tap that shallows one end of it. He and Fu Meng-po could both fit in it. It wouldn’t necessarily be easy, but it’d be doable, and he’s definitely not mapping those logistics just for the sake of fucking in it. But, well, that’s an idea, too, to keep with the shower one for later.

The shower, when they get in, is a tighter fit for the two of them, with how tall they are coupled with how broad Fu Meng-po is. It’s not uncomfortable, though. It doesn’t even require any real acts of contortionism: once or twice, Fu Meng-po, just. Moves him. A little bit. In a way that puts his back up to the stone and wood slat wall or the glass pane divider, but it’s never more than a second of his hands stroking up Kuan-hung’s sides, never more than a step and a half in any which way.

He can’t remember the last time he showered with anyone that wasn’t in some sort of dorm or otherwise public— or private but necessitated by time scarcity. It’s not really what Kuan-hung thinks he might have been expecting, with Fu Meng-po. Fu Meng-po is just there, a presence, like there is no question that he would be as opposed to elsewhere. Maybe he’s just too fucked out to find all the close proximity and casual body contact while naked particularly exciting. It’s— nice, though. It’s the uneventfulness that makes it novel.

“Can you,” he says, once, pointing at himself. Fu Meng-po makes a committal sound, lathers his hands, and turns him around, helping scrub soap across the spot on his back Kuan-hung usually has to twist to reach in a way that feels right without a brush. Then, without so much as a prompt, he helps hold the detachable showerhead above him so he can bow forward and rinse the suds from his hair. The water is running lukewarm again, but it’s the lesser sufferance than staying half scoured, so he bears it while he waves a hand at Fu Meng-po to indicate he needs him pressed back against the wall so he can better get in between his own legs.

There’s a moment, when he straightens, and Fu Meng-po is just — looking at him, in a not especially discernable way, but when their eyes meet Fu Meng-po simply presses his thumb into one of the innumerable bruises he’s left littering Kuan-hung’s chest. Kuan-hung— yelps, and slaps out at him with the flannel, reflexive, earning a rejoining yelp in turn.

“Can you, just,” Kuan-hung snaps, without irritation or anything, really. Speaking for speaking’s sake while water runoff drips into his mouth. Fu Meng-po puts his hands up, beseeching, then slips around him to get out first. Kuan-hung stays in, sticks around, and doesn’t really watch, all that much, out of the corner of his eyes and in the reflection of the glass pane and the vanity mirror, as Fu Meng-po wipes himself down then leaves, ambling out with only the towel he’s drying his hair with for modesty.

Once the water has run cold, Kuan-hung gives up the ghost of his hesitation and steps out, shaking off his shiver. He dabs himself dry, wraps his towel around his waist, and tucks it in on itself to hold tight. Then, he gets out the two travel cases he keeps stocked with all the tinctures and hope-and-a-prayers he needs to keep the odds of his skin remaining presentable in his favour. He sets them down, and starts the arduous near-nightly ritual of reverse-tetrising them out onto the vanity. His thoughts catch on Fu Meng-po in the shower with him. His thoughts catch on how easily Fu Meng-po made his way around him, effortless with practice. They’ve moved and been like that for most if not all but the first beat of their acquaintance; that’s not strange. They’re easy. He’s grateful. Fu Meng-po is experienced, and Kuan-hung likes that about him. Fu Meng-po understands the desire for an autonomous existence, to want to be small but significant, to do no harm, to remain unchanged. These are things he— wants. But not as much as he, just, wants to stop thinking, right now.

Kuan-hung leans out around the countertop, and calls out loudly, “Can you bring me my phone? It was under the pillow.” The sudden spike of his own volume sometimes banishes; the switch flip of his attention changing tracks to a new direction. It works, somewhat, maybe. There’s some shuffling, some steps, and then Fu Meng-po is back in his eye line, holding his phone out to him through the doorway. He sets it down as prompted when Kuan-hung points vaguely.

Fu Meng-po smiles at him, he smiles back, and his thoughts catch on it again. He hates this, more than a bit: when he is happy and he knows it but something has decided to tell him What if?

What if what, he thinks back at it and himself, pettily, as he unlocks his screen. He taps his way to YouTube to thumb through his subscriptions, scrolling until he finds a video that looks interesting enough to be preferable over white noise quiet and the unpredictable percussion of Fu Meng-po moving around in the bungalow. Something with a runtime long enough to set his routine to.

Knowing what he’s doing in his own head doesn’t stop him from doing it. It’d be nice if it did, but nothing like this is ever that easy. So, he just— he dabs oil out into his palm and slicks up his fingers. He thinks what if what to a lot more things as he starts massaging his cheeks upwards, watching himself in the mirror. Really. Not everyone can be so blessed to have sulking over near misses and long time comings alongside crises of faith in persona and overdue calls to their parents be the most of their problems.

He ends up distracted by the video; takes double-time to finish his routine and pack everything back up. His thoughts have stopped catching, by then, at least, as more or less expected. He feels refreshed and spent. Lighter. Like he could sleep for a year. A little bit settled back into the shape of the idea he has of his own skin, how everything is supposed to sit on and around him.

The bed has been remade when Kuan-hung comes back out of the bathroom, complete with a duvet that Fu Meng-po is reclining on in much the same way as he was the bare-bones bed before. During the first round of, well. When they and this all started here. He looks up from his phone, then starts to get up, reaching for his charger to plug it back in and set it down while Kuan-hung digs through his suitcase for something he can sleep in that isn’t in too dire a need of a wash yet.

There’s two beds, yeah, but with the second one made up pristine save for his suitcase tossed on top, it all just feels like a pretence. Glorified surface room storage. A choice if Kuan-hung wants it, but not a choice anyone would choose if they had it offered up to them. It seems to be the common theme of this trip: choices that aren’t choices at all, because the choice has already been made long before it has actually been chosen.

“I’ve got an alarm set,” Fu Meng-po calls over.

Kuan-hung makes a scoffing sound, preemptively aggrieved. He wrangles his arms in through the sleeve of the shirt he’s picked out, then toes into his briefs, half-glancing and one-handed, while he turns off his own alarms for the morning. He’s leaving it in Fu Meng-po’s hands now. It’s not like he has to be keeping to any schedule, though; it’s not as if Fu Meng-po’s set one past his own, outside of some loose parameters. Fu Meng-po has places to be, so they’ll get to them, but it’s almost as if his timeline has sidestepped into the lane of when good and ready. Taitung, day after next. Then, who knows? Not Kuan-hung. He’s all right with that. Better than all right, if he’s honest.

With nothing left to it, Kuan-hung makes his way over to the bed. Fu Meng-po holds out one of the water bottles he’s swiped from the table to him, swaps it out for Kuan-hung’s phone and puts it on charge while he takes a drink.

“Roll over,” Kuan-hung says, a bit choked up clotted wet for coming out all too quickly. He gesticulates; recaps the bottle; hands it back. “I’m big spoon.”

“Are you, now?” Fu Meng-po asks, amused. He rolls over onto his side — towards him, so they’re face-to-face as Kuan-hung kneels down onto the mattress and starts bundling himself in under the blankets.

“I’m taller,” Kuan-hung answers, explaining, perfectly, he thinks, his preference, for the night if not necessarily overarching. He is also absolutely taller, even if the difference is literally splitting hairs.

“Hm,” is Fu Meng-po’s reply. Kept neutral, though the hood of his eyes and the smile tugging at his mouth hints at a sway of bias.

They’re close, Kuan-hung realises. Which is a rather stupid realisation to have, because it makes sense, and he watched himself move into the position that made it so. They’re in bed together, facing one another, and the bed’s not all that luxuriously large, and they’re both all long limbs even if the span of them differentiates, so of course they’re close. Fu Meng-po crooks his arm, slides it underneath his pillow, and sets his head back down on it. He breathes out, slow. Kuan-hung feels his own breath skip, quickening.

They’re close, and in bed, and facing each other, so the anticipation that coils up his back to nest between the wings of his shoulder blades is not a surprise. The way Fu Meng-po reaches across the sliver of space left between them to cup his cheek is to be expected. Kuan-hung presses against his palm; leans over, lets himself be led in, and in, and in. Fu Meng-po’s lips are warm and soft. He kisses him gently, close-mouthed and utterly unrushed. It was gentle, before, too, but this is ginger with time-taking, with the savour of every sweet second of it.

Kuan-hung lets his eyes fall shut, the curtain of something contenting closing around him, draping heavy. Fu Meng-po thumbs the blade of his cheekbone; kisses at the corner of his mouth; sucks on his bottom lip. Kuan-hung curls his toes in the sheets below; claws them between his fingers above. When he pants out, damp-hot and shuddery, Fu Meng-po presses in, and in, tighter, licking in behind his teeth, over his tongue. The slide is slick, wet, but the pace is still unhurried, unhungry. Fu Meng-po’s hand tips, his fingers fanning broadly, mapping the hinge of Kuan-hung’s jaw, the dip beneath to his neck. The knead of his palm keeps his mouth parted, keeps him pliant, open and easy for Fu Meng-po to suck on his tongue, to swallow the little moans Kuan-hung can’t help himself from making.

Fu Meng-po pulls back after a moment, letting him take a breath. He snaps the string of saliva strung between their lips with his tongue, then thumbs over Kuan-hung’s mouth to wipe it dry where it’s flecked back onto the skin. Kuan-hung arches into his hand, kisses the rough pad of his thumb, laps at it. There’s a chill settling in low within his chest again; a tightness to his throat and a heat in his belly. But Fu Meng-po doesn’t press back on and in; just leaves that heat to simmer out with a small smile on his face that Kuan-hung likes the look of but can’t get a full read on.

The anticipation unthreads from his back; bottoms out, fizzles flat. Kuan-hung goes lax again, lulled by Fu Meng-po’s hand cradling his face, the meandering brush of his fingers. He means to ask what Fu Meng-po wants, but— he’s glad he doesn’t manage it. Glad that his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth when the thought crosses his mind and nothing ends up coming out. It sounds accusatory even in his head. It’d doubtlessly come off worse after its ground over the whetstone of his tongue to become sharpened serrated.

So, he hums instead, sleep-softened, eyes fluttering shut. He only means to for a moment. A minute. Maybe two.

Two minutes becomes three, four, more, and he falls asleep like that. He must fall asleep like that. He keeps falling asleep like that.

When Kuan-hung blinks his eyes back open, blurry and a bit sore, the light has been switched off. Fu Meng-po is no longer touching him. He doesn’t know how late it is, or early; he doesn’t want to check his phone in case it wakes him up all the way.

Kuan-hung reaches out, tentative, and his hand soon finds the swoop of Fu Meng-po’s back, where he’s turned over in their bed. He feels his way across the gap until he’s pressed to the warm line of him, noses at the spill of Fu Meng-po’s hair, then tucks his face to his shoulder, snuffling tiredly. He feels Fu Meng-po shift against him, his breath kicking up.

"Sorry," Kuan-hung mumbles, when Fu Meng-po makes a croaky, quizzical sound.

"S'all right." Fu Meng-po's voice is all slurred honey-thick with sleep, raspy deep. It makes a pleasant shiver bead up Kuan-hung's nape. "What're you sorry for, huh?"

Kuan-hung huffs out, shaky. I don't know, he thinks. Does he need to be sorry for any reason more than that he's— tired, that he keeps sleeping the day away? That he just is?

"C'mere," Fu Meng-po rumbles, reaching back behind himself to palm at Kuan-hung's hip. Kuan-hung's already as close as he can slide in without crawling on up inside Fu Meng-po entirely, but the fumbling tug of Fu Meng-po's fingers makes him feel like he's been brought an impossible inch further in, tucked deep and intimate.

"I am," Kuan-hung whispers. Fu Meng-po does little more than shift with the steady rise-fall of his breath, soft inhales pushing the span of his back wide against Kuan-hung’s chest. He gingerly slings an arm around Fu Meng-po’s waist, then hoists his leg up over his hip.

He falls back asleep like that, and doesn’t stir until morning, when the alarm from Fu Meng-po’s phone starts to blare through his ears and his awareness cuts in at the damp spot of drool that’s stuck Fu Meng-po’s shirt to his chin.