It starts, as all things do, because of Tang Fan.

Perhaps saying that it starts here is unwise, if not unfair, when the truth lies in that it started long before. Now, tonight, it is more of an escalation than anything else. A slow build finally coming into its head. The sentiment, however, remains the same: it intensifies, just as it began, and just as all things do, now, because of Tang Fan.

Sui Zhou is learning, at a pace that all at once feels too rapid and too sedate, that Tang Fan is less a man and more a force. A gale and a reckoning that can only be endured; bided in the hope that it will abate before you’re spent and rent through. Either the winds change, or your bend becomes your break.

He wonders if Tang Fan knows the power he wields and the control he holds. He’s almost sure he mustn’t, or, if he does, that he does not understand it: how his gentleness resounds through Sui Zhou with such violence. If he did— if he did, would he not be more careful? Would he not exert it more sparingly?

Tang Fan barges in, all flurried fury and looking every part the disgruntled wife, stripped down to his inner clothes and face still dusted with powder. His mouth, rouge-red, is as stark as a bruise on his face, and the sight of it sings through Sui Zhou like a slap. It shouldn’t; he’s seen Tang Fan enough like this, now, all made up and hair free of its braids and topknot, sweeping down his face. It does; he’s never seen Tang Fan like this before, as though he’s Sui-furen, storming out of his boudoir to air another grievance to his husband that has occurred to him mid-undress.

That’s the heavy thought that catches him unawares. The silver in his hands, dead men’s tithes that are as still and cold as their beds and their bodies, feels so much lighter when held up in contrast. So much easier to look at than Tang Fan, whose blaze of white-hot indignation is doused in a breath when he’s told what Sui Zhou has managed to tell himself has his attention wholly captive.

It’s easier still not to look at Tang Fan as he speaks, even when Tang Fan draws down, slow, all cinders and ash and a considerate expression Sui Zhou barely survives his glance at. There are but two paces between them, and Sui Zhou watches out from underneath his lashes, after he falls quiet, as Tang Fan rises slowly and takes them to draw up at his side. Sui Zhou can withstand the pat against his shoulder, but not the way Tang Fan’s fingers tighten, after, kneading into the muscle, that—

The pressure sinks through him, hits the floor of something deep down and almost indefinable, and that makes him look at Tang Fan. It’s only for a second; it’s a second too much. Tang Fan’s hand drops away, and the rest of him slips out from underneath the edges of his periphery a moment later. It’s only when his steps stop short close by and he hears the sound of Tang Fan pulling the doors shut that Sui Zhou even realises that he’s been read.

“Sui Zhou,” Tang Fan calls, murmur-soft and whisper-quiet. “Guangchuan.”

Sui Zhou looks up, at that. He always does; he’s helpless to do anything but.

Tang Fan meets his gaze, inscrutable, and holds it. Then, he starts to lift his arms, gradual, and Sui Zhou follows the lean line of them as Tang Fan takes his hair in hand. His fingers shake as he starts to unravel the rest of his hair; it’s a subtle shiver, easily missed, but it’s all Sui Zhou sees. He’s always conscious of hands, now, and how swiftly they can snap towards a weapon.

The only weapon Tang Fan has to get his hand around tonight is his own body, and the only place for it to slide home is between Sui Zhou’s ribs, the point of it notching his heart. It’s a realisation that flows over him in waves, cold dread and hot anticipation, intertwined and inescapable.

Tang Fan’s palms swoop down his freed hair, smoothing the wavy strands back into place. He doesn’t release Sui Zhou’s gaze, even when his brow furrows, something shy and unnerved creeping around the fringes of his features. “Guangchuan,” he repeats, impossibly quieter. His voice cracks around it; Sui Zhou watches him swallow, sees how his eyelashes flutter and his tongue laves at his bottom lip as if to ground him back to earth.

“You’re so kind,” he continues, taking a step. Careful, coaxing, as though Sui Zhou is some spooked game— it would be laughable if it weren’t so right. Sui Zhou is utterly terrified. He thought he and fear were old bedmates by now, but no, even it has a new face for him, turned up towards the candlelight for his unwitting and unprepared perusal. He could never have imagined there existed a fear that could make him feel warm, a fear that could pet its hand so tenderly across his soft underbelly and actually serve to gentle him, even as his breath stops and he shakes apart beneath it.

“No-one would have thought of them,” Tang Fan says, stepping again, and again, until, at last, he’s at Sui Zhou’s side. Sui Zhou sits back instinctually, and sucks in a breath, jagged-tight, as Tang Fan turns on his heel and swings his leg over his thighs, the rest of him sliding down to straddle him, water-easy. Sui Zhou’s already made room for Tang Fan in his home, in his life— what more of an ask is it, then, to make room for him in his lap?

“No-one would have thought to do this for them.” The heels of Tang Fan’s palms brace on the slopes of his shoulders, before they drag up the incline, bringing his arms into a languid sling behind Sui Zhou’s back. The casualness of it is betrayed by the way Sui Zhou can see, this close, the quiver that’s wracking his bottom lip, skin shiny-wet from the worry of his tongue. “Only you. You’re so good, Guangchuan.”

Sui Zhou finds something to do with his hands, to busy his mind away from the red blur of his thoughts and the way the honey-thick bleed of Tang Fan’s heat seeping through his thighs is stirring his cock. One of them finds Tang Fan’s back, wards it from the jut of the table’s edge; the other finds his hip as both a counterpoint and a countermeasure. That’s what he all but begs himself to believe, anyway, as his thumb begins to circle against the hem of Tang Fan’s inner shirt where it’s rucked up his belly.

“I’m not,” he grits out. He’s not. He wants it to be an argument; it sounds like a confession. If he was as good as Tang Fan says, none of them would be dead. He should have saved them; maybe he would have had a better chance of being able to, if he’d only— if he’d only—

If only he’d been so many things, and done so many more. That was the sordid story of his life, wasn’t it? He doesn’t need to say it aloud. The sad furl of Tang Fan’s rouged mouth as he watches him tells Sui Zhou he’s as good as heard his thoughts for how they must be playing out behind his eyes. That’s terrifying, too; how Tang Fan can just peer into him and pull out whatever inmost thing of Sui Zhou’s he wants to, when he so wills it.

“You did all you could,” Tang Fan objects, all sweet and all wrong and while it might be what he deserves, it’s nothing like what he needs, right now, if ever. “No-one can carry every burden on their own. Not even you.”

And that’s the crux to bear, isn’t it? If Sui Zhou does not take this weight with him, who else will take it up? Who else would ever bother to care? They’d join the nameless and unremembered; more unclaimed bodies to fill unmarked graves.

“It’s the least I can do.” That held true while they lived and it holds true now they’re dead. It’s the least, and it’s not necessarily enough. He knows that. He knows what he is capable of and what lies out of reach. He—

Tang Fan’s hands cup his cheeks, and Sui Zhou startles, blinking. He doesn’t know just when he slipped away, down into himself, or how long he’s been there, submerged in his own thoughts while he stared at Tang Fan without seeing him.

“You’re sleeping so badly,” Tang Fan whispers. The pad of his thumb, brush calloused, traces the sallow, sunken skin beneath his eye. It’s clumsy, fumbling; he’s trembling in Sui Zhou’s lap, all over, even as a boldness begins to rise from the pit of him, skyward, to settle over the surface of his skin. When Tang Fan puts himself into something, he leaves nothing behind to spare. “You’ve been through so much.”

Every vicissitude and every sufferance and every imposition of Tang Fan, Sui Zhou has bent to. Bent, and bent, and bent, and— he breaks. Tonight, foretold and finally and at long last, he breaks. Tang Fan’s gasp against his mouth is hot and damp and audacious, as though it’s a shock that Sui Zhou’s clasping his nape and tugging him across that last once nigh-uncrossable inch of distance into a kiss.

It’s too hasty and too rough and far too perfect. Tang Fan’s hips jerk against the fetter of Sui Zhou’s palm in a way that drags their cocks together in one stutter-scrape that sends a streak of searing heat scorching up his spine. A match strike to tinder that billows into a blaze when Tang Fan whimpers, breathy and stunned.

The fist of Sui Zhou’s hand in his hair is the only thing that stops him tearing his bottom lip open on Sui Zhou’s teeth when he tries to throw his head back and into the sweet arch of his spine. He whines his protest around Sui Zhou’s tongue as it presses past his teeth, as though Sui Zhou’s denying him anything, could ever possibly withhold pleasure from him, as if it’s stopping the greedy rut of his hips as he crudely chases more friction, any and all sensation.

“Are you comforting me?” Sui Zhou puts his teeth to Tang Fan’s chin as he pants it out, trying not to snarl around every word as they’re all but ripped out of him. “Is that it?”

He pushes his hand down harder against Tang Fan’s hip, the hook of his fingers bruising, and Tang Fan struggles against it, thighs flexing against Sui Zhou’s lap. He keeps one hand cupped on Sui Zhou’s cheek for purchase, even though it forces his arm into an awkward crush against his chest, his wrist bent far back enough to sting; the other slides up to tangle in Sui Zhou’s hair. He tugs it free and reaches back behind him, blind, setting the pins down on the table with a clatter that rings out over their ragged breaths, filling out the room.

“Do you feel comforted?” There’s an edge of mirth to it that Sui Zhou punishes with a bite, sharp enough to ache but not to leave a mark that Tang Fan can carry with him over into the morning. It’s worth it for the way it wrings out a hiss from his slack-parted mouth, his nails scratching Sui Zhou’s cheek. “Ah, Guangchuan, be gentle with me.”

Sui Zhou tips his chin and kisses over the red mar left by his teeth, gentler, as wanted and as asked. When he allows just a fraction of give in the pin of his hand at Tang Fan’s hip, Tang Fan tries to take it and more, jerking forward with a hoarse moan. He’s not going to encourage the line of thought he’s wrapped around their necks like a noose, he’s decided, but since when has Tang Fan ever needed his encouragement? Once he’s set his mind and his heart to something, each separate and yet one and the same when it comes to him and only him, nothing could ever dream of bringing him to heel.

“Be gentle,” Tang Fan insists, heaving out a shuddery breath as he drags the swell of his bottom lip, kiss-swollen and teeth-bruised, up the scratchy stubble dusting Sui Zhou’s chin. As if Sui Zhou could ever possibly be gentler, when he already beholds Tang Fan like he’s spun glass; white jade; a priceless treasure. “I’m just a lowly sixth rank official, you know. I don’t have any experience with this. You have to be gentle.”

Sui Zhou doesn’t have to do anything, and yet, he has to do everything. All at once and precisely and only how Tang Fan asks for it; there is no other choice but to yield to him. Still— it catches. It catches in his head, the implication, and it’s dizzying in a way that makes his blood run cold under his too-hot skin. He can feel sweat beading up behind his knees; can feel it in Tang Fan’s clammy palm, cupping his face. He’s not shaking, anymore. Only Sui Zhou is. Only Sui Zhou seems to be the one left, here, with something to lose at stake.

He knows how Tang Fan’s body feels as a dead weight braced against his chest. He knows how his hand feels when he’s fit it around Tang Fan’s neck. How is he going to live beneath the burden of knowing how Tang Fan feels like this, too, if he gets a taste of it and then that’s it? One bite of the half-eaten peach before it’s pulled free from his maw, right after he’s sunk his teeth into it, just as he’s felt the juice spill over his tongue and down his chin? He’s lived through all the loss any one man can take; it’s the game and it’s the wait, now, to see just what it will be that finally shatters him.

“Is that what this is?” he asks, because he’s a fool and because it’s foregone. He almost can’t meet Tang Fan’s eyes when Tang Fan leans back to give them the room to regard one another properly, but he does, because he should. Because Tang Fan will ask it of him, anyway, if he doesn’t. Why not go with the flow, why not give in and give it over now instead of struggling to keep his head above the water?

Tang Fan’s dark eyes are glittering in the dim light with tears still yet unshed, hanging on by a thread. Though he neither truly looks nor seems upset, something toothy and raw rears up inside Sui Zhou, anyway, urgent with a need to protect and covet. “Sui Guangchuan,” he sighs, exasperated but so frighteningly fond, “how can you know me so well in one moment, and have no idea at all in the next?”

Sui Zhou huffs out a surprised breath in lieu of being able to dredge up an answer, and Tang Fan clicks his tongue at him, hand slipping down his face so he can thumb at Sui Zhou’s lip. When he bends his hand outward, away from Sui Zhou’s face, fingers still tracing his jaw, Sui Zhou’s eyes flick down to track the motion. He can’t stop the hitch of his hips at the swoop of red rouge smeared across the pad of Tang Fan’s thumb, the blot of bright colour on the pale canvas of his skin illicit, obscene. He did that. All the men pawing at Tang Fan and all the day’s events didn’t get his rouge to smudge, but Sui Zhou did, as if it was meant for him all along.

“I’m here,” Tang Fan elaborates, as though that’s explanation enough for everything. “Do I have to be blunt with you? Will you understand if I say that I—”

Sui Zhou clasps his hand over Tang Fan’s mouth, all-too-gentle, and Tang Fan’s breath is hot against the cup of his palm as he exhales in a rush. He doesn’t need to say it; perhaps it is what Sui Zhou needs to hear, but it’s certainly nothing he can cope with, not now and not yet.

“I understand,” he says. He understands enough; the rest will come in due time. Tang Fan’s eyebrows raise, and the pout of his lips against Sui Zhou’s hand is so like a kiss that it can’t be mistaken for anything but. Sui Zhou takes a breath to steel himself, then another, before letting his hand turn over, trace back, slip down. It comes to rest around Tang Fan’s slim throat, grip a touch looser and a world gentler than the last time he wrapped his fingers around it.

Tang Fan’s hand tilts back to palm Sui Zhou’s cheek, the other emerging from the tangle between their bodies to flatten against the span of his chest, fingers splaying in a languid, indulged sprawl. “Show me,” he insists, leaning in, mouth crooked with the heft of his broadening smile.

“Tang Runqing.” Tang Fan’s shiver sweeps over him like a wave, flowing through and ebbing back; his laugh is all breath when it brushes Sui Zhou’s mouth and his nails catch on Sui Zhou’s outer shirt as he snatches up a fistful of it at the lapel.

“No,” Tang Fan murmurs, “show me properly.” Even as he demands it, Tang Fan denies Sui Zhou an opportunity to capitulate. His patience, thin as the rest of him, has run out, and he makes the fact known by taking Sui Zhou’s mouth in a kiss for himself. Sui Zhou falls into line and meets him in the middle ground of it, trading his groan at the hungry press of Tang Fan’s lips for Tang Fan’s whine when Sui Zhou kneads his jaw to tempt his teeth to part for his tongue.

Sui Zhou relents on his grip on Tang Fan’s hip, and that’s all it takes for Tang Fan to try and crawl into him, the kiss made sloppy by the whetstone of his desperation and the clumsy clack of their teeth. He tries to— Sui Zhou tries to something, but Tang Fan’s hand stops it and all the rest of him when it drags down his chest and then dips lower still, fitting around the bulge of Sui Zhou’s cock. He tears his face away to groan, brow furrowing, breath jagged, and Tang Fan’s laugh is so delighted Sui Zhou thinks he might die from it, die like this, when they’ve just barely started.

He’s hard enough that it’s a miracle that he doesn’t come just from Tang Fan’s thin fingers trying to furl fully around his shaft through layers of fabric. It’s another, Heaven-sent, when he doesn’t after he tips his chin down to look at it, look at them, Tang Fan’s hand on the lewd bulge, precome spotting the fabric, the whole scene framed by the splay of Tang Fan’s slim thighs.

“Guangchuan,” Tang Fan breathes, eyes alight with heat. He’s all flushed filth, cheeks pink, mouth bruised and rouge-rubbed, chin streaked with spit. Sui Zhou wants to kiss him again, and he does, because he can, taking Tang Fan’s bottom lip between his teeth and his raw gasp right off his tongue. Tang Fan’s fingers flex around his cock, then clutch down with a muffled moan when Sui Zhou hooks his fingers in his waistband. He tugs it down just far enough to free Tang Fan’s cock, pinning it up against his belly in the same sweep of motion his hand leaves Tang Fan’s throat to unlace the ties of his inner shirt.

“Guangchuan!” Tang Fan whines, biting down on his bottom lip too slow to catch the shrill, sweet peal of it. He rocks forward, shaft snubbing against his own hand and Sui Zhou’s clothed cock, and his shirt falls open wider from its spill down his sloped shoulders.

“Shh, I’ve got you,” Sui Zhou stumbles out. He’s barely got a hold of himself, but he’ll always have one on Tang Fan. He thinks Tang Fan might always have one on him, too, in turn, and that’s— Tang Fan’s breath slams out of him, as if struck free by Sui Zhou’s voice, his eyes squeezing shut, fingers twitching blindly around Sui Zhou’s cock as it pulses against his hand.

“Please,” Tang Fan gasps, choked up. Sui Zhou watches how his whole chest seizes around it, and sways in, head bent, to press his lips to his sternum, catching the stuttering shudder beneath his mouth as Tang Fan sucks in a greedy breath.

“Got you,” Sui Zhou reassures him, punctuating it with his teeth and balming it with a lap of his tongue. Tang Fan’s blush paints its way down to his navel, a beautiful little watercolour of mottled pink on pale canvas that matches the flushed tip of his cock, lean and long like the rest of him, foreskin pulled back and precome dripping onto his belly.

“Not that,” he complains, squirming, palm kneading Sui Zhou’s cock with a needy insistence. There’s enough room for him between Sui Zhou’s chest and the table only by the grace of his stature and his apparent desire to have every inch of himself pinned to Sui Zhou, but the thought whips through him that he could take what they have now and make it so much better. It’d be effortless; it’d be nothing at all: he could lift Tang Fan up and lay him out on the table, the borrowed dress and the silver all shoved out of reach and left out of mind. Could throw Tang Fan’s ankles over his shoulders and fuck him down into the wood until he comes around Sui Zhou’s cock. Even just the glimpse of the vision of it, the fantasy, is enough to tear a grunt out of him, enough to make him rut up into Tang Fan’s hand.

He hasn’t got the patience for it, tonight, to open Tang Fan up properly and take him apart like he deserves. He could find it, he knows, if it was what Tang Fan wanted. He doesn’t think Tang Fan has the patience for it, though, either, if the way he’s writhing in his lap is any tell beyond its consolation.

Still— “Take me out,” Sui Zhou begs. No matter the command levying his tone, he’s always begging and he’s always going to be begging when it comes to Tang Fan. “Take what you want, Runqing.”

The graceless way that Tang Fan rushes to pull his cock free once he's gotten confirmation that it's something he can do is nothing like what Sui Zhou's seen or felt before. It’s always been a rush, with the soldiers he’s slept with, to get it done before there’s a change in the air, before the chance is lost. Tang Fan doesn’t rush like he could run out of time at any moment, but because he’s desperate with a want to start, a want to take and to have everything Sui Zhou has for him.

The cool night air on his cock almost hurts for how much of a shock it is, disparate and discrete, but Tang Fan fists him in his delicate hand, elbow tucked awkwardly against the fan of his ribs, and gives him a tentative stroke that steals away a rough moan, hard-won.

“Guangchuan.” Tang Fan’s breath tears through his teeth when Sui Zhou answers him with another kiss against his bare chest, rougher, sucking a mark into the skin that will sting and stay. A reminder that Sui Zhou was here, a proof that he was allowed this. “Oh—”

Sui Zhou’s hand is so big and broad against Tang Fan’s, all but swallowing it when he cups the backs of Tang Fan’s knuckles. He feels the tremor in the tight circle of Tang Fan’s fingers as he drags his hand up his cock, guides his thumb to swipe over his leaking tip, showing him how he likes it and setting a clipped pace he can keep up with. He gets Tang Fan’s cock in his own hand, too, before he can be asked or told, and is rewarded with the raw, ruined little gasp that reverberates through Tang Fan’s chest as it sounds out into the night.

“Oh,” Tang Fan heaves out, wrecked, “Guangchuan, my Guangchuan, you’re going to make me come.”

Sui Zhou knows he is. Tang Fan is so wet for him already, precome making the glide of Sui Zhou’s hand as he strokes his cock so slick and so easy and so right. Tang Fan’s going to make him come, too, fast enough that he’d be embarrassed by it were he not already so consumed by feeling so good.

“Come,” he manages, hoarse, threading their fingers together around his cock in counterpoint to the squeeze of his other hand as Tang Fan fucks up into his fist. “Then come.”

Tang Fan does, spilling over their hands with a sound Sui Zhou will keep with him for the rest of his life, if only so he can struggle to describe it. It sends him over, throws him off the cliff’s edge, and he hits the ground with such force that it’s still ringing in his head when Tang Fan’s lips press to his own, a chaste caress that hauls him back into himself, up onto his feet.

“Runqing.” It’s a strained proclamation that becomes a scraping protest when he feels the hem of Tang Fan’s shirt swipe over the head of his cock before Tang Fan feeds it through their fingers, mopping the mess of their spend from their skin.

“Guangchuan,” is Tang Fan’s simple, succinct reply. It’s so warm, fuck-drunk and pleased. Sui Zhou is never going to be able to free his mind from the memory of how his tongue curls around his name like this.

Something within him feels— unlatched. Lighter. But it has made his body heavy in trade, and it feels like a fight, almost, to get his hands up and over to rest on Tang Fan’s hips, a steadying brace for the both of them.

Tang Fan’s smile is— Sui Zhou stashes it away for safekeeping, knowing he’s going to spend the rest of his life trying to describe it too. It holds even as he rucks his sleeve up into his palm and brings it to his mouth, wetting it with spit. “Look at you,” he whispers, tone tender, tinged with lingering heat. He brings his dampened sleeve up to Sui Zhou’s face and Sui Zhou holds still for him as he starts to dab his mouth.

“You’ll have to sleep,” Tang Fan tells him, eyelids hooding. “No-one else can see you like this.”

Sui Zhou hisses as he bears his hands down on Tang Fan’s hips hard enough that the force in it blows out into bruising. Tang Fan barely flinches, his tongue flicking over his abraded bottom lip absently as he narrows his focus to the pinch of his fingers and Sui Zhou’s marked up mouth.

“All right,” Sui Zhou concedes tightly, trying to leave it at just that despite the fact they both know it's anything but.

Tang Fan needs a hand getting his legs back underneath him, and it’s one that Sui Zhou still has strength left enough in him to give. He’s not sure whose hands linger on whose wrists more, longest, or even who lets go first. It seems to happen all at once in both points; they catch one another in one breath, they release one another in the next.

“Guangchuan.” Tang Fan touches his hand to Sui Zhou’s shoulder again, and Sui Zhou looks up, circling them back to how this new burgeoning thing between them began to bloom in the first place. “You know, you…”

He trails off, slow. Sui Zhou takes a risk that isn’t truly a risk at all, not with Tang Fan, and lifts his hand to cover Tang Fan’s, thumb circling absently against the backs of his fingers.

Tang Fan’s laugh is all breath and something unreadable but no less sweet for all Sui Zhou can’t find in his sift through of it. “If you ever need, or want— you can come to me, you know. I won’t turn you away.”

It’s a dangerous promise for Tang Fan to make. Sui Zhou’s neither a just enough nor a strong enough man to object to him making it. All he does is nod, stiff, and let his hand fall away when Tang Fan tests at the give of his grip.

It feels like hours after Tang Fan’s left that Sui Zhou rises to stand. He doesn’t check the candle as he blows it out to confirm just how much time has passed. When he falls into bed, it’s not a dead sleep that rises up to meet him, but it’s a better sleep he’s had in weeks. The dreadful dream that’s taken to haunting him is dulled at its most jagged edges by the peace Tang Fan has handed him, the calm he’s managed to carry across the threshold between waking and wasting.

For now, it’s enough; for now, he doesn’t need anything else but this.