the world a home, but not the road

It is pitch dark overhead when Tang Fan and Sui Zhou finally break the surface of the tunnel, which is a very unpromising sign as to the state of their situation. The trees, so thronged thick and towering that scarce few thistles of moonlight manage to thread past the canopy, do little to stem his unease’s onset. Tang Fan squints, hoping it will sharpen the splinters of light brighter, make them do more than vaguely shade the tiger trap brambles creeping up and the branches clawing down. It’s vain, but it lets him take a moment to catch his breath with air that isn’t so stale and sift through his rilling thoughts.

The sun had only just begun to wash the blue sky out to ombre red when he and Sui Zhou and Sui Zhou’s men had breached the outer gate of the Ye clan compound, still in their unofficial garb. Tang Fan had thought it their good fortune, at first, that the encounter had turned from fight to flight so swiftly and so surely. No further than the second courtyard, the path had been carved clear for their pursuit by the scattering retreat of the remnant guard, and so pursue they did. First through the rest of the sprawling siheyuan, then through a hidden door in the dead-end of the north ceremonial hall, left ajar by their quarry, and finally down a steep stairway that eventually fed them into an unnotable labyrinth. It would have been more of a novel surprise not to end up in some sort of secret dungeon as due course during an investigation, for once, really.

In any case, Tang Fan doesn’t remember going any direction other than onward and downward from there. Admittedly, though, paying attention to that had been one of the lowest of all his conflicting priorities, both during the chase and after. With the Ye clan head cornered and cuffed in their custody, it was a simple matter of retreading their steps back the way they came, no need to fuss about cardinal points and reorienting while underground.

The situation had heel-turned sharply for the worst about partway into the trek, looking back. Tang Fan still hadn’t been paying attention, of course, out of self-satisfaction with their success. He had felt neither need nor urgency to keep up in pace with the group, the thrumming ache in his thighs gradually overtaking his adrenaline-lushed giddiness. Sui Zhou had slowed after a few halls to better linger with him, and Tang Fan’s attention had leapt, rapt, to him at his side, as it almost always did on any given occasion, and he had been— he had been saying something. Complaining, maybe, about his legs, or his hunger. It was unimportant, whatever it was, just speaking empty words for the sake of having them heard. And then— the corridor was caving in on them before Tang Fan even noticed the scuffle, the shouts, the warnings of danger. It had been so sudden, so fast, so all at once, as all wrong things went when they wreaked their havoc.

He had hit the ground hard, but Sui Zhou had hit it much, much harder.

It had been a blur, after that, for seconds that took hours. Sui Zhou had dragged him up by the scruff of his cloak and shoved him ahead, and shoved, and shoved, and kept shoving, even after Tang Fan had snapped out of his stun and scrambled into a run. The collapse had cut them off from Xue Ling and all the rest of Sui Zhou’s men; its downdraft had snuffed the sconces. Tang Fan had clutched a breath in his chest in the dark of the aftermath until it burned and his head span. The coiled cord in Sui Zhou’s slow match case had still been smouldering when he uncapped it, at least, an age later — their small and sole favour. The ember’s dim glow had been better than blindness, if barely.

It had taken some minutes for Tang Fan's eyes to adjust, then more to see the blood on Sui Zhou's face, still weeping wet down his temple from somewhere beneath a matted thatch of his hair. More still to see the bruises, blooming ripe and swelling tender on the paling skin of his cheek. The slight daze in his dark eyes; the stilted stagger of his frame.

The match cord had burned through before they'd made their escape. They had followed the wisp of the breeze the rest of the way out, a hand each to the wall as an anchor, their steps slow and slight.

Tang Fan had clasped Sui Zhou's wrist with his other hand, tight, the moment the flimsy flame had flickered out. It’s safe enough to part, now; they're above ground, and more or less all right. Tang Fan keeps holding on, though, for the moments longer that he can take.

They are not in Zhoujiatai anymore. Tang Fan can tell that much from this little. Whether they've come north into the mountain, or gone south into the river plains, though — or ended up somewhere else entirely, east or west by providence — he'd need to see the stars, first, to even have a hope of a guess at it.

So much for simple and for supposed good fortune. What a day they've had, and what a night it's apparently promised them.

He turns, or Sui Zhou’s hand, coming to rest on his hip, turns him. It is hard to tell, in the dark, over the thunder of his heart still storming behind his ribs, which comes before and what follows after. It’s of no consequence, anyway, in the end — it has been a long time now since it last mattered between them who leads and who is led. Tang Fan has to let go of Sui Zhou’s wrist so he doesn’t twist the both of them into a knot, but he reaches out once he's empty-handed until the flat of his palm finds new solid ground, curls his fingers down, remoors himself. Sui Zhou’s chest is warm, solid. The beat of his heart is bounding, rushed, but steadying, for Tang Fan, all the same.

“Are you all right?” Sui Zhou asks, not for the first time in however many hours, and unlikely for the last. Weariness has dug deep and made a grave in his low voice, making it sound wretched, scraping and strained, but Tang Fan would take the relief of its repeating refrain countless times over the boding quiet of the alternative.

“Yes, yes,” Tang Fan replies, wincing at the rasp of his own voice. If he’s somewhat dismissive, well, it's only because his answer hasn’t changed yet in any of the iterations he's given it. He is all manners of things that are frustrating and fazing him, at present, but he is all right, in the sense that it is really not him out of the two of them that Sui Zhou should be concerned about.

“What a mess,” he adds with a sigh, after a moment. That almost earns a chuckle, just bitten back in Sui Zhou’s exhale, but it wins a small smile from what Tang Fan can see of his face. “And what a bastard, that Ye Jiang! Bringing down his own tunnel to try and bury us, of all things! A disgrace to the Hui merchants and their good name.” He pauses to take a breath, then tucks his bottom lip between his teeth to nibble at it. “They should have long made it back to the yamen by now—”

—Unless something else had happened after the cave in. Tang Fan trails off, the thought of that possibility sinking through him like a knife until it hilts in the floor of his belly, leaden. The yamen is not a great distance from the Ye clan compound; a timely journey to take even on foot. What if they haven't made it out, or Ye Jiang has done something predictably pedestrian as a final failsafe, like paid off the provincial officials, or—

"Too dark, now, for a search,” Sui Zhou observes, ever reasonable and reassuring; right as always. “Nothing else we can do but wait until morning, at the earliest.”

He looks up towards the sky, then lifts his head to it, craning his neck. It turns his face in such a way that the meagre moonlight limns the blood on his skin. It’s dried dark, now, but set thick. Tang Fan watches it start to crack and flake when Sui Zhou’s jaw works around a swallow, but all he can see when any of it falls away is more red underneath. His fingers tweak against Sui Zhou’s chest as the impulse to pick and prod and pry at it itches up his wrists. He tugs his hand away instead to fist at the collar of his cloak, drawing it tighter around his shoulders.

It looks like a lot of blood, to him. Tang Fan knows, though, that if he asks Sui Zhou if he’s all right, Sui Zhou will— well. He will not lie, because Sui Zhou does not lie, but he will undoubtedly underestimate and understate any severity in his assessment. In a way Tang Fan will then vehemently — and very vocally — disagree with. It always ends up as an argument because Tang Fan makes it one, yes, but he only makes it one in the first place because Sui Zhou is wrong every time and gets utterly ox-stubborn about it.

So, he doesn’t ask. Shouting might not be the worst thing he could do in their current circumstances, but it certainly wouldn’t be the best thing he could do — they are out in the wilderness, after all. It’s quiet, but not silent. It’s the silence that means danger, close at hand. If they’re too loud, they’ll frighten away what fears them and beckon forth what won’t.

He is still planning to get his way, though. But later. He’ll be more roundabout surreptitious in how he goes about getting it. All for Sui Zhou’s sake, the fool abnegate.

Sui Zhou lowers his head, his right arm settling slack at his side, the left at an angle that lets him loosely ground his palm on the hilt of his sword. When he meets Tang Fan’s gaze, it doesn’t take much of a performance, for him, and isn’t a great deal of an exaggeration, to clutch tighter at his cloak and shiver. It’s temperate for the season, but it’s a wet sort of cold, humid from the recent rains. Tang Fan already feels sodden and tacky with sweat, and there’s grit stuck fast to his skin, needling at all these little spaces and crevices he didn’t realise it had even managed to get into. And he’s always run cold, anyway, much colder than Sui Zhou, so his discomfort isn’t particularly unordinary.

“We’ll move out further,” Sui Zhou says. "At least until there's a break in the trees. Bed down for the night." All very practical, as propositions for plans go. "Can you manage that?"

"Aiya,” Tang Fan tsks, “I'm not so fragile anymore, Guangchuan, as you well know! I can handle a little bit of walking!" Well, his legs are very sore, and he is very tired, and he is a lot of most of everything else, but he is not going to encourage Sui Zhou into shouldering him in any way whatsoever while he's in the state he’s in. Tang Fan clears his throat. Loudly. Then, "Ah, I’m so cold, though. And thirsty.”

They’re pouting complaints, not pressing ones. Far too whiny to be worrisome. Tang Fan knows his diligence in that balancing act has borne fruit when Sui Zhou’s mouth curls into a soft smile instead of a severe scowl.

"I'll build a fire," Sui Zhou promises, unlacing the ties of his cloak. "Find you water. Come on.”

Tang Fan has already shuffled a half step closer, knowing, but now he lets his fingers unlatch so that he can refasten them in the collar of Sui Zhou’s cloak once it is draped down over him. Sui Zhou draws it snug beneath his grip and brushes it down so it layers flat over Tang Fan’s own, for apparent want of a reason to have his touch linger, before he steps away and steps off. Tang Fan, without missing a beat, winds a hand out to catch Sui Zhou by the elbow and breezily falls in at his side, for his own apparent want of a reason to have his touch linger, too.

They’ve ended up north, somewhere in the mountains. Tang Fan might marvel, later, once this is all over and done with, at the ingenuity of the secret tunnel network’s design that enabled it to carve through the terrain in such an efficient and effective way. Then again, he might not. It will all come down to his mood at the time the opportunity to do so arises, and whether or not he’s feeling sour over having to sleep outdoors instead of at the inn in the room that’s been paid for.

Tang Fan would much rather be in said room in said inn, of course, than out here. But, for now, he is still closer to the side of grateful that they’re both alive and less unscathed than they could be than he is to the side of sulking that he’s not warm and full-bellied and in a proper bed sleeping.

That they’ve had some luck in the midst of their misfortune has surely helped keep his mood aloft. Once the trees had started to thin out enough that they could see the sky, Sui Zhou had taken stock of the constellations, turned them around in a half-circle, and set them off again in a direction anyone else might have assumed was an arbitrary one. Tang Fan knows better by the grace of faith and experience, and so he’s unsurprised that his exceptional Sui Zhou manages to navigate somewhere suitable for camp before his wobbly legs are in any real danger of falling off. His knees do creak in affront, though, when he tries to lower himself to the ground to catch a moment’s rest, which results in him depositing himself far more heavily onto the dirt than intended, his breath squeaking out of him.

Sui Zhou is out of arm’s reach, so he doesn’t come swooping in to catch him mid-slip, or anything else equal parts high contact and flustering. He spares a glance over his shoulder from where he’s crouched to the forest floor, instead, which Tang Fan still feels needling hotly at his nape even after he flaps a hand in Sui Zhou’s direction and tucks his chin to the cross of his arms, folded to rest on the table of his drawn-up knees.

He feels the backs of his thighs pull taut as his weight sinks down and stills, and he rubs his cheek against his sleeve with a huff at the not-quite-pain of it. There’s a stream closeby, a slight way down a slope from where he’s sat, waterlogged from the recent rains and the runoff from further up the ranges. Drinkable at worst, pleasant at best. But, more important than its suitability for quenching thirst: the mouth is wide enough to wade into, and it looked, at Tang Fan’s peripheral peek, more than deep enough to comfortably bathe in. He’ll feel much better with the stale sweat and grime scrubbed off him, and his poor legs will reap a benefit in the morning, too, for having the edge of their promised soreness blunted tonight with a soak.

Sui Zhou will, of course, benefit as well — once Tang Fan actually wrangles him into the water. Not a straightforward matter, by any means, but Tang Fan has the power of both a plan and maddening pertinacity on his side. Sui Zhou occasionally, sometimes, perhaps can hope to counteract one of the two. But both? He stands no chance.

Tang Fan bides as Sui Zhou returns, and bides as he sets out the wood, and bides again, just for good measure, as he strikes a spark from his match case to tinder, puts the ember to kindling, and builds the fire. Once it is blazing, Tang Fan clears his throat, then touches his fingertips to the hollow of it when he's finally holding court courtesy of Sui Zhou's audience.

"You'll have to drink from the stream," Sui Zhou answers him. Which, of course he will. That's rather a given, considering both he and Sui Zhou neglected to bring glassware with them to an arrest.

Honestly, this man. Tang Fan resists asking him how hard he hit his head, if only because it would be counterproductive to keeping Sui Zhou's guard low enough that Tang Fan can get a look at how hard he hit his head for himself.

“I cannot make it!” Tang Fan opines, mock miserable. "Guangchuan, you had me walk so far, I will not go a step further. My legs will fall away to nothing.”

“I will carry you,” says Sui Zhou, in the delicately balanced way Tang Fan finds he often does when he is being serious without entirely taking Tang Fan seriously, his mouth quirking. In the firelight Tang Fan can see Sui Zhou has, at least, tried to scrub his face free of blood. There are still scrapes of it spotting the scruff of his beard, though; swept back into the trial-loosened tresses of his hair. There’s colour to his skin, now, at least, separate to the palette comprising the tender tapestry of swollen sore bruising.

“That’s too much, too far,” Tang Fan tells him, brandishing both his hands in a dismissive waggle. “Allow me some face, Guangchuan. Stand me up. I can make it the rest of the way.”

Tang Fan holds his arms out from himself, and Sui Zhou kneels up from his crouch, stiff-backed, then makes to rise the rest of the way. It is easy, when Sui Zhou has taken the few steps separating them to stoop and slip beneath the wide arc of his reach to grasp him underneath the arms, for Tang Fan to hook his fingers in Sui Zhou’s sleeves, in turn, and let Sui Zhou’s cloak fall away as he’s drawn upright. It is easy, to disguise it as nondescript, nongermane accident.

It is less easy to drop his own cloak to pool flat at the backs of his heels, without lifting Sui Zhou’s suspicion, but Sui Zhou’s prudence matters very little now that he is in Tang Fan’s hand. Tang Fan reaches for his belt, next, and Sui Zhou, in his predicted momentary slip of sagacity, reaches for him.

"Tang Fan," Sui Zhou— warns. Yes, warns is a fitting way to put it, Tang Fan thinks: it’s terse, clipped, and somewhat alarmed. Still, though his grip on Tang Fan’s wrist is cast iron, Sui Zhou doesn’t actually halt him from going further; the cuff of his fingers instead following the swoop of Tang Fan’s hand, Sui Zhou’s arm the chain linking them together. Tang Fan checks his chopsticks to ensure their case is still shut tight, then finishes divesting his belt.

“What?” Tang Fan inquires, with an innocent school of his features. “I’m filthy. Would you have me bathe fully dressed?” He delivers a swift pat to the tensed back of Sui Zhou’s hand. “Would you dry me, then? Warm me? Hm?”

He shucks his outer robe, shrugging out of his draping sleeves with a shimmy. Sui Zhou releases him, and the fabric flutters down to pile with all the rest of Tang Fan’s cast-offs. He kicks off his boots; does away with his remaining layers and anything and everything else sequestered away within them. All with the expedience he’s always had the knack for, but has since elevated to an art form in the later years of Sui Zhou’s acquaintance, until he’s bare and bold as day. Sui Zhou looks away, mouth a pressed pressure-white thin line, as if to offer some delusion of modesty; as though he could not chart every roaming valley and plane of Tang Fan in the blindest dark by touch alone, if he had to, and has so done before.

Tang Fan reaches for Sui Zhou’s belt, next, to deny him the escape of his avoidance. That does the trick: Sui Zhou’s gaze swings back to him, slap-sharp, and he snatches up Tang Fan’s fingers mid-rustle.

“Runqing!” It’s more sigh than snap, shushed by the lurch of his exhale. “You are—”

“—Yours!” Tang Fan cuts in. He slips out of Sui Zhou’s hold — it is not very firm to begin with, and falters more so with Tang Fan’s interruption. “And you are mine, and you know this and me both very well by now, Sui Guangchuan!”

He reaches for Sui Zhou's face and softly swipes his nails across his jaw, a scratch that catches in his beard and scrapes free some of the dried blood to burrow behind his blunted nails. He holds his bespoiled fingers up between them, angled towards the light in their accusation, and keeps them as steady as he is able for Sui Zhou's answering assessment.

Sui Zhou does not shrink, precisely. That would be very silly, a man like Sui Zhou shrinking. But he does sag as he breathes out, low, shoulders gathering in as he scrubs at his face with a heavy air of reluctant recalcitrance.

“A smart a man as you should see when he’s losing and spare his fight for something else,” Tang Fan concludes. He wiggles his fingers, then retracts them, thumbing at the pads of the fore and middle. “Have you ever won out against my will in all our time together?” Have you ever not given me what I’ve wanted?

“Tang Fan.”

Tang Fan folds his arms, digging his heels into the ground underfoot to try and root himself against a shiver. It is still cold and he is quite naked. “What if I slip and fall? You will be too far away to help me.”

Sui Zhou’s brow draws in. His hands twitch against their idleness where they’ve slunk back to hang at his sides.

“What if there is something in the water?” Tang Fan presses. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, tucking his hands more tightly into his armpits. “I could be menaced. Eaten!”

Sui Zhou hangs his head along his next exhale, pulls in a fresh breath, then starts unfastening his belt.

“Hurry, hurry!” Tang Fan hastens him, never one to be all that humble when laureled by victory. He shifts more exaggeratedly, impatient, though it is more, now, to try and prompt some warmth from the fire to stick to him and sink in than it is to make a point to Sui Zhou. “It’s cold! I’m cold!”

“It will be colder in the water,” Sui Zhou comments, airy-dry. His sword had already been propped up against the tree, and now his belt and outer robe have joined it. Where Tang Fan is swift with innate skill, Sui Zhou is swifter with regimented discipline. He doesn’t even need to look at his hands as he works, fingers steady as they blindly traverse ties and clasps. It’s as convenient a competency here as it has been in several other varied applications and contexts over the years.

“Yes,” Tang Fan agrees, but, “and warmer again when we are back out and by the fire and all the cleaner for it!” He does not stamp his foot. He is above stamping his foot. He is just digging his heel even deeper into the soil, that’s all. “You are still not undressed! Why are you taking so long to undress?”

Sui Zhou, dismayingly, diverges from the direction of Tang Fan’s desires by taking his hands away from the fall of his half-open inner robe. He lashes down at Tang Fan's discarded clothes, and Tang Fan manages little more than a disgruntled squawk before Sui Zhou's cloak is jammed back around his shoulders.

"There," Sui Zhou says, forcing the lapels into the scrunch of Tang Fan’s hands, “for warmth. Bring it down to the bank to dry yourself with, after.”

He rights himself in his retreat, then returns to pulling off the last few layers of his clothes. Tang Fan huffs, then tries to get more of the ends of the cloak in his hands to better bundle around himself for coverage. Not all of them can be so blessed as Sui Zhou, ample of asset and apathetic to affect.

Still, since it is all out and ripe for the viewing, anyway, Tang Fan doesn’t neglect to have his fill as Sui Zhou finally, finally bares down the remainder of the way. It serves the purpose of perusal for further yet-unseen and thus unchecked injuries, yes. But even Tang Fan wouldn't argue that it's anything but ulterior to appreciative appraisal.

Sui Zhou sees him looking, but it is not as if Tang Fan is going to any effort to make discovery difficult for him. It's no subtle secret. Tang Fan looks at Sui Zhou; Sui Zhou looks at him. Sui Zhou steps closer, and Tang Fan draws a breath and holds it as his hand fits itself flat to the span of his back, between his shoulder blades. Then, it’s sliding up, and Sui Zhou’s fingers are circling his nape, half tangled between fabric and skin, as he gives Tang Fan a jostling shake.

“Focus,” Sui Zhou reprimands. His hand lilts back lower, presses down and in, bracing. “Come on.”

His legs still ache, but with Sui Zhou so close as to be inextricable from his every sense, Tang Fan’s head is turning it over and in on itself. Muddling it with innumerable other memories that can be called similar to same for how the stay of Sui Zhou strings even the furthermost strays tightly together. Wound warm and wrapped up in the familiarity of his nearness, it would be little more than a sidestep of a trick to convince himself that the tender twinge in his limbs is the one of the well-fucked instead of well-fatigued. Even the lie in itself is promissory of the night’s would-have-been, if it had gone differently. Could even still be, if only—

—but Tang Fan is madly maundering away from the realm of his resolve in entertaining those notions, however enticing they may be. He needs to tend to Sui Zhou first, and most importantly, and in a way distinguished from the nature of the sort that’s so tempting him. There is always later, always after, so long as the now at hand is taken care of. It can be revisited, Tang Fan reminds himself sternly. These things keep for him.

The stream is not a far walk, and Sui Zhou walks it not far from him, so it seems as if it is only a step and a second or two before they are at the waterside and Tang Fan is untwining himself from Sui Zhou’s cloak. The lap of the water over his toes when he drifts close, soles sinking into the silt, makes him slip back into a jerking flinch. It’s a bludgeoning briskness, blow first before the bleed out sluggishly follows. Tang Fan drops the cloak to his ankles and— does not run, so much, straight into the stream, until he is chest-deep in waist-height water and cowering in on himself so tightly another cringe threatens to turn him concave. But he does move regrettably fast before he loses the courage to move at all.

Tang Fan locks his jaw as he turns back to the shore so as not to do more than whine, nostrils flaring, and watches with bitterly wide-eyed indignation as Sui Zhou steps in with a respectable absence of haste and little more than a roiling wince. It is an abject injustice, how bounteously blessed Sui Zhou is.

Perhaps his sulk is as clear as still water, or Sui Zhou simply sees Tang Fan best when he looks, because Sui Zhou's hands are the first thing to reach him. They glide up his ribs, grasp him beneath his arms, and draw him upright in a fluid stroke of motion. Tang Fan gasps wetly as cold water becomes cold air, and he scrambles for a handhold on Sui Zhou's chest that is stalemate matched for push away to pull near.

“Sui Zhou!” he yelps, voice peal-pitched shuddery with shock first and shame for it second.

“Get your legs beneath you,” Sui Zhou instructs, indifferent. Tang Fan splashes at him for the spite of it while he does, unfolding his hitched knees and planting his feet against the streambed. He takes a breath, which is cold in his mouth and ices over as it plunges deep into his chest, melts out damp in his lungs. He is cold-wet and cold-drying and Sui Zhou is so very warm as a crossroads. Tang Fan would crawl into him if he could.

Tang Fan takes another breath, tries to gentle his grimace, then reclaims his hands to flick water over his face. He palms a cupped handful into his mouth, feels for his guan to confirm it is still on his head out of old harsh-learned habit, then starts to gather up the fall of his half-soaked hair to spill over his shoulder. The chill is starting to blunt, but new pangs are surfacing on his skin where the dirt has been swept away and unearthed scrapes he didn't even know he'd gained. In the fuzzy edges of his vision and out from underneath the clumped fan of his eyelashes, he can see the shape of Sui Zhou moving, can hear the slosh of parting water, the downward drip of clinging rivulets.

"Let me look," Tang Fan demands, all teeth-chatter rush, as he wraps the bundle of his hair around his neck. He squeezes out the ends; twists and kneads at the body of the strands, then ducks his face into his raised arm, haphazardly rubbing his eyes dry. "I'm ready, let me look at you now."

As if Sui Zhou is stopping him; as though he ever would. Still, somehow, Sui Zhou permits him what was never impermissible, his shoulders sloping slack as his arms settle at his sides and his spine straightens. It opens his body that much more for Tang Fan to sidle closer, to take his chin in hand and turn his face over, tipping it to the light. He’s mindful of the bruising, even though it’s set high, shy of the press of his thumb into the hinge of Sui Zhou’s jaw. He feels the tense flex of it working within his hold when Sui Zhou sets his teeth together and swallows.

Tang Fan has seen Sui Zhou in worse wear, but every ill state he’s in is equally terrible, truly. It’s an ugly thing, pain. Not nearly as dignified as the stories would tell it. Tang Fan is wary of trying to clean the mat of Sui Zhou’s hair over the gash when the dried blood is, if nothing else, clotting the wound closed. But he can, at least— fill the need to do something for Sui Zhou with his hands, in some small way.

Sui Zhou is restrained small; breaths shaky tight, held in check. His gaze has fallen low, past Tang Fan's neck, and his eyes slide shut to brace for the wash of water that Tang Fan cups in his palms to pour down his temple, through his hair. They are all but pressed together. Neither of them can move a breath without touching the other, and it feels closer, more intimate for the glimpses of almost, a glance of their hips or a ghost of their chests in passing.

Tang Fan's fingers are ginger, where they stroke over Sui Zhou's cheek, but his voice is not when he speaks. "I've never known my Guangchuan to be so clumsy. You were hurt because of me, weren't you?"

He doesn't need to be any clearer than that. Sui Zhou knows what he means and what to make of it. Tang Fan watches the frown that furrows his brow; the dart of his eyes behind the lids. His breath shakes out past the gritted leash of his teeth when Tang Fan touches on the hottest part of his face, the zenithal point of swollen protrusion, the bleakest branding of bruising.

Sui Zhou does not lie. That is why his answer is not immediate; he needs to take time in the pause to find the committal truth that lands the softest blow. "I will always take the actions that mean to keep you safe," is what Sui Zhou chooses to say.

It is a soft blow. A sweet thing. It is the wrong answer to give. But there are no right ones to be found, here, not with this. Tang Fan sighs and lets the something akin to disappointment seep through it, lest an abstain leave room for his anger to take its place.

“How can I be safe when you’re hurt?" Tang Fan contends, quietly querulous. He fiddles with the strands of Sui Zhou’s hair forming an untidy frame for his features, stroking them back behind his ears.

Between the bracket of his hands, Sui Zhou straightens, casting his face back to half-shadow. He opens his eyes and submits himself to Tang Fan’s stare. "This is nothing."

Tang Fan wants to shove at him, as if he can beat into Sui Zhou's body this lesson that just won't take. The same circuitous argument. The same frustration as its undercurrent. He suspects, at times, that it is not so much that Sui Zhou values him, that he acts in these self-sacrificial ways, but that he devalues himself. Tang Fan sucks in a breath, then prods his thumb at Sui Zhou's cheekbone none-too-gently. He doesn't quite relish the way Sui Zhou cringes, hissing; he doesn't let himself delight in how Sui Zhou's cock twitches against his thigh. This isn't about that.

"What if it wasn't?" Tang Fan brings his hands down, lets them settle against Sui Zhou's chest, fingers in a loose furl, the heels digging just the barest bit into the muscle. It would have taken next to nothing for it to have gone down a graver path of no return. A deeper cut; a shift of the strike a hair’s breadth across. Tang Fan can only carry Sui Zhou so far, even when empowered by animal panic. They’ve learned this through experience. He might not have even been given the chance to try at all. "We are supposed to go home together."

The water laps up against Tang Fan's belly as Sui Zhou lifts his hands from his sides. They clasp over the backs of Tang Fan’s own, dripping damp. "We are," he says. Sui Zhou's expression can become so open, Tang Fan has come to find, but it is when it is so subtle-still that his feelings speak their loudest volumes. Sui Zhou’s remorse is that much more unbearable to witness with the knowledge it will repeat again, this repentance. Tang Fan looks down, away, to the thin tight line of his mouth instead of the narrow of his eyes, and worries his bottom lip between his teeth.

"The same chambers of intimacy and dust," Tang Fan continues on, quieter. He hasn't got any heat left for it. He's burned out, bright and brief. Only tiredness remains, bone-deep. "You promised."

“I know.” Sui Zhou’s thumbs hook beneath his fingers, but he does little more with his newmade hold than stroke his fingers more firmly over the backs of Tang Fan’s knuckles. It sparks against the snuffed out irritation in the pit of him, but doesn’t catch. Love, like pain, is an ugly thing. It is not the so-prophecised panacea as all the balladry would have it believed to be. But, well, Tang Fan has said so himself as soon as this very evening, hasn’t he? He and Sui Zhou are one another’s, and they know this and each other very well by now. If Tang Fan wanted Sui Zhou to change, truly change, deep down to the earth and rooted heart of him, it could not be said that he loved him at all in the first place.

He can want more for Sui Zhou than Sui Zhou allows himself, though. He can wish for Sui Zhou to cherish himself even a shade as much as Tang Fan does. Which is why he grinds the heels of his hands down against Sui Zhou’s chest, all the more pointedly, and purses his mouth to signal his petty displeasure.

"You know?" he rejoins. “You know, do you?” He is— he is still angry, in some low-flung part of himself that will always rage over this, but this is not that anger talking. This is talking for talking’s sake. Peeling back the barbs so they no longer prick themselves on their points, at least for tonight. Tang Fan's hands flit against the fasten of Sui Zhou's, futile, and he deigns to peer at him again properly. "Foolish man," Tang Fan barks, biteless, "and so selfish—"

Sui Zhou laughs at that, damn him, a rumbling chuff of sound that Tang Fan feels his chest span wide around as it rises outward. Sui Zhou squeezes down on his hands, tight, pre-empting Tang Fan's indignant squirm that he tries to put a breath of distance between the flush press of their bodies with, the water stirring noisily between them.

"Don't laugh!" Tang Fan huffs, his own caught smile staining his voice. "You dare laugh? Stop it, let me go, I'm furious." He tries to get his knee between them, but he does not try very hard, and so it is not very hard for Sui Zhou, in turn, to kick Tang Fan's own stance out wide at his ankles. He comes stumbling down with very little grace and an undignified splash, catching himself on Sui Zhou's thigh, now rucked up between his legs. It knocks the breath out of him, heady, that momentary frictionless slide, makes his thoughts fray soft at their hems. It stoops him low enough that he has to look up to meet Sui Zhou’s gaze, which has followed him down; makes it so he can feel Sui Zhou's cock against his belly, hot and half hard.

"Sui Zhou," he husks, heated. Sui Zhou twitches against him; his hands shift in their clasp over Tang Fan's; his chest shudders around the knife of his inhale. Tang Fan can see the red blush collaring up his throat. But he doesn't push in; doesn't take it further than here.

Tang Fan swallows, then straightens, just a bit, to take the edge off the tempting brace of Sui Zhou's thigh against him. But not all of it. He's not nearly that noble. "I'm furious," he finishes. "I'm furious for you. One of us has to be."

Sui Zhou exhales through his nose. Flexes his fingers around Tang Fan's. Carefully, wisely, says nothing. Waiting for Tang Fan to lead so he can follow.

Tang Fan sighs. He may, perhaps, rub himself a little bit deliberately up Sui Zhou's thigh as he steadies himself back upright, a shiver skimming down his spine. It would be very nice, to just— well. It is always very nice. But he feels miry, and tired, and cold, and sore, and— he would like to at least be sitting. And not nearly so wet. And by the time he achieves those, he may well have lost immediate physical interest. He might as well sleep.

These things keep, he reminds himself again, loathe as he is to do so. Especially for more pleasant locations, like beds. Back within civilisation, or at least a closer approximation to it than this. Oh well.

"Make it up to me," Tang Fan declares stridently. "You must make it up to me."

Sui Zhou's hands slide back, smoothing over his forearms, spurring a breathy laugh to fall out past Tang Fan's lips as he occupies his freed fingers with combing Sui Zhou's hair back from his neck. "Not like that," Tang Fan adds.

There is a brush of lips against his temple that cannot be mistaken for anything but a kiss, then it is gone, though Sui Zhou remains just as close as he has been. He rubs at Tang Fan's arms, slow soothing circles that make him feel as if the tension he's left ignored is seeping straight out of him.

"Perhaps like that," Tang Fan amends. He feels heavy and so light all at once, which is not a strange mix, when held aloft and down both by Sui Zhou’s hands. Giddy and greedy but glutted. “But not now. Let me think on it. Help me out of this stream before I catch cold.” He tweaks at Sui Zhou’s hair a lasting time, then pets it down as flat as it will go. “Do you feel better?”

“Yes,” Sui Zhou answers. Tang Fan is already turning around within his hands before they fall away. Path freed, he starts striding to the shore in much the same way he left it — quick as can be. Sui Zhou is closer on his heels, this time, and maybe that’s what cuts into the cold he expects, solders it from water to breeze. He stops when his feet meet fabric, takes a gasp, then starts swiping at the water still clinging to his skin, flinging all the droplets he can gather towards the ground. He just needs to be dry enough to get into his clothes without soaking them; damp at most will be done away with fast by the fire.

“My back,” Tang Fan manages over his shoulder, half-turned, bowed in on himself as he pats at his knees, then between the creases of his thighs. “Will you— oh." Sui Zhou's palms rough up the ridges of his spine, startling him. He asked for them, of course, but expecting them is another matter entirely. It’s indulgently inefficient, the almost methodical meander of Sui Zhou’s hands. His fingers trace the delicate chines of his winged shoulder blades, then thread into Tang Fan’s hair, still looped around his throat, to unsnarl it.

Tang Fan likes when Sui Zhou takes, and takes, without being asked or told to allow himself it. He stands back upright all for the greater gain and purpose of sinking into Sui Zhou as Sui Zhou combs out his hair, callouses catching on his nape whenever his fingers snare in a ravel of strands. He shivers; Sui Zhou’s hands curl against his shoulders, then ease them down where they’ve hitched up tight, tied through with anticipatory tension.

"I'm dry," he croaks. Oh, yes. Oh, dear. Sui Zhou presses a kiss to his hair, soft as a secret and sly as a daylight theft. Then he releases him, and has already retreated into putting his back to Tang Fan by the time Tang Fan turns around to chase after him.

“I have thought on it,” Tang Fan says, while he brushes away at Sui Zhou’s back. It is broader than his own, and littered with bruises he needs to be mindful of. Keeping his mouth preoccupied with these words, too, saves the others from welling up: aiya, sigui and zhuofu. “How you can make it up to me.”

Sui Zhou makes a sound, almost a hum; most of it stays in his chest, the breath it takes pushing his back up firmly into Tang Fan’s mapping hands. Tang Fan, suitably prompted to continue, takes his hands away and starts off back towards the fire, knowing Sui Zhou will pick up his cloak and follow closely after.

“We’ll spend another night here.” Tang Fan states his demands, of course, as if Sui Zhou has already acceded to them. There is no reason to phrase them as questions or possibilities. He crouches down, finds his socks and pants within the heap of his clothes, then starts trying to balance himself as he toes them back on. “Not here, of course, but the inn.”

He chances a glance up at Sui Zhou through the forward fall of his hair as he pulls on his boots, and finds him past half-dressed already, eyes set on his own hands. “Send Xue Ling and the others on ahead with Ye Jiang and the rest.” He watches Sui Zhou nod to himself, and doesn’t even consider trying to hinder his own smile.

“I want to eat at that restaurant on the water.” Nod. “You know the one, with the hot dry noodles.” Another nod. “Oh, and the stalls. Take me to the stalls.” Yet another nod.

Tang Fan bites his lip, then straightens, trying to surreptitiously shrug his inner robe over his shoulders, fingers toying with the ties. “And claim all the merits for this case when we are back,” he finishes, keeping his voice to its same casual, complacent cadence. “I will consider us even.”

“The emperor knows you’re here,” Sui Zhou answers, gaze flitting up from where he’s tethering his belt to shoot Tang Fan a look.

Tang Fan throws his hands down at his sides with a huff, causing his half tied inner robe to billow back open across his chest. “Well!” Sui Zhou looks away again, unmoved by his petulance. “Well, that doesn’t mean I deserve credit! Not on presence alone.”

“It does,” says Sui Zhou, “and you do.”

It does, and he does. Damn. Tang Fan pouts. “It’s my third year as governor,” he whines. He will have to submit his prefecture evaluation to the central government soon. The emperor could easily use it as grounds to move his post elsewhere, be it for good or bad performance. It does not particularly matter, in the end. It isn’t as if Tang Fan thought he would get to hold his position at Shuntian for the extent of the allowed time, but— three years have gone by so quickly, and he— he likes what they have, now. His work is insignificant, yes, not like Sui Zhou’s with the Embroidered Guard, but it is a contribution, and it has its freedoms, and he has become unaccustomed to and undesirous of change.

Sui Zhou, now put back together and entirely decent, complete with both of their cloaks spun over his shoulders, spares a moment to stoke the fire and feed into it new wood before he closes their gap and takes the ends of Tang Fan’s inner robe in hand. “It can’t be faced before it comes,” Sui Zhou advises. So reasonable, again, his Sui Zhou, as always. He ties Tang Fan’s robe together for him, his head bent low, as if in prayer, gaze transfixed on the work of his own hands as they smooth the fabric down against his chest, the dip of his belly. It sticks, somewhat, to his still-dampened skin. “When it does, we will face it together.”

“Must you be reasonable?” Tang Fan gripes, narrowing his eyes at Sui Zhou as Sui Zhou slouches down to gather up Tang Fan’s middle robe. His shoulders jerk, as if he’s tamping down on a laugh, and his mouth is curled crooked when he turns back. Tang Fan holds his arms out, but offers no further assistance to Sui Zhou in dressing him in this next layer.

“We needn’t return directly to the capital,” Sui Zhou notes, apparently apropos of nothing. Tang Fan makes a querying sound, at that, and rustles the wrists of his cuffed sleeves to right them. Sui Zhou's hands slide across his sides and down to the small of his back, layering his middle robe around his midriff before he fastens it together. "Wuhan is not far a detour."

“I will not be bribed, Sui-daren. I am an honest official.” He will absolutely be bribed. It is so rare that they get the chance to be in the south together.

“It’s no bribe. It relates to a case.”

Tang Fan cocks his head. “And we must visit the markets, then, while we are there.”

“As a matter of course,” says Sui Zhou, kneeling down. He glances up to keep his eyes on Tang Fan until the sound of something falling free of Tang Fan’s outermost robe draws his attention. They both look as one at the small paper bag, cursorily crumpled in on itself.

“Oh,” says Tang Fan, brows raising. “I thought I had finished those. Wait, is there anything still there? Come, pass it up to me.”

Sui Zhou presses the bag into his hands as he rises, drawing Tang Fan’s outer robe around his shoulders. Tang Fan clicks his tongue to himself as he rustles the bag open, pausing his nosing task only long enough twice over to let Sui Zhou slip his arms through his sleeves one after the other. There is still something in the bag, to his luck: half of a laobing folded over itself that he must have meant at some point to save for later only to forget about. Once food has left his immediate purview, it is presumably because he has eaten all of it, but there come times where he surprises himself with the gift of his own foresight, like now.

The brush of Sui Zhou's hands over his throat startles him, and Tang Fan snaps to attention, eyes darting up. Sui Zhou continues to thread his hair out from where it is bundled into his collar and pressed between his robes and skin, then straightens it out against his back. Tang Fan clears his throat, flustered, as an unaffected Sui Zhou retrieves his belt for him and holds it out.

“You’ve already come so far,” Tang Fan remarks, performing his best impression of an innocent man. He holds the paper bag in both hands. “And my hands, you see, I couldn’t possibly…”

Sui Zhou breathes out, all fond exasperation, and parts his lips around something that he doesn’t speak to sound as he winds Tang Fan’s belt around his waist.

“Impossible,” Tang Fan says for him, flushed warm and pleased, as he pries the bag back open and tears off a piece of the laobing at the crease of the fold. “Your zhuojing.”

“My zhuojing,” Sui Zhou agrees. He looks down between them, ensuring Tang Fan’s chopsticks and jade yaopei are settled securely over his skirts with a trailing pet of his fingers. When he looks back up, he is met with the pushy press of Tang Fan’s fingers to his lips, a strip of the laobing pinched between them.

"Eat, eat," Tang Fan tells him. “You were hurt. You need to eat.” He nudges it forward again until Sui Zhou relents and opens his mouth. He takes it from Tang Fan’s fingers quickly, the glance of his lips against his fingertips damp and the graze of his breath hot. Tang Fan watches him chew it perfunctorily as he tears off a strip for himself and tucks it past his teeth. It’s not as nice as he thought it would be, even when gone hungry. Sui Zhou’s cooking has spoiled him for anything and everything else.

“More,” Tang Fan says, mouth still half full, as he tears off another more generous strip. Sui Zhou jerks, stalling in his step back, before he plucks the proffered piece from Tang Fan’s grip — with his fingers, this time — and eats it.

“Enough,” he interjects, mid-chew, when Tang Fan sets about tearing off another bit.

Tang Fan pays him no heed whatsoever. “One more,” he needles, holding it out. “Just this one more. You bled so much, Guangchuan, be good for me and take it."

He doesn't mean it like it sounds, of course, but, well. The words are already out of his mouth and past taking back, and they get Sui Zhou to nearly rip the laobing out of his hands in his rush to appease, so it does work out, in the end. Tang Fan's cheeks feel rosy warm from more than the glow of the fire as he tails Sui Zhou across his few retreating steps and sinks down alongside him, back braced to the trunk of the tree sheltering them, the brunt of the bark blunted by the cloaks that Sui Zhou fans out from himself to bundle them both under.

Sui Zhou lowers his knees at the first knock of Tang Fan's thigh against his own, and Tang Fan hitches his leg over into Sui Zhou's cross-legged lap with a shuddering sigh. His hands soon follow to bunch between the odd tangle of their limbs and his cheek coming to rest on Sui Zhou's shoulder. It's a rather compromising position for them both, but Sui Zhou has had to upend Tang Fan from his lap in worse states of distress and disarray in past face-offs with danger. At least if they're ambushed tonight while intertwined, they'll be dressed for the occasion.

One of Sui Zhou’s hands finds his own and cradles them in a close clasp to better warm Tang Fan’s fingers; the other begins to knead at his calf, then up his thigh, firm enough that the pleasure of the touch peaks and smudges into pain.

Tang Fan breathes out, slow; his mouth hangs ajar around a delayed yawn. “Wake me,” he mumbles, tired-thick, into Sui Zhou’s shoulder. “Let me rest a moment. Then wake me. I will watch for you.”

“I’ll wake you,” Sui Zhou says, and Tang Fan hums, eyes sinking shut.

It is not Sui Zhou that wakes him, though, who must not have been able to bear to, in the end, but the morning itself, which has never held such qualms. Tang Fan’s rousers are the clinging scent of woodsmoke; the trill of birdsong; the nip of the dawn breeze; the blare of bright sunlight through his eyelids. Sui Zhou, still against his side, his face nuzzled into the crown of Tang Fan’s hair, starts to stir from sleep only in the seconds Tang Fan’s sprawling stretch spills him all the more into Sui Zhou’s lap.

And, well. It is hardly a promise broken, barely a lie. How could he be cross, either way, in any case or at any circumstance that leads to his beginning a new day as luckily as this?