Shen Qingqiu stops thinking about Laertes, satisfied that he's conveyed the important thing¹ and letting himself sink back into sensation. He squirms in Sagramore's lap, his hands tugging and messing with Sagramore's curls, urging him on. He's never been touched like this. It feels like a thousand years since anyone touched him at all, though he knows hazily that that isn't quite true--people touched each other, here at the Mansion, more than they did at Qing Jing, and even there--but. Not like this. No one has touched him like this, in any body, and no one has touched any body of his like this. Certainly no one had drawn Shen Jiu close like this. Certainly no one had pressed a hot mouth to his skin just for the pleasure of it. It brings them closer aligned, he thinks, the newness of it; if earlier he had felt abstracted from his body, he's entirely within in now, maybe more than he's ever been, entirely unselfconscious, almost unable to see himself from the outside.

¹ The message being: Sagramore is loved.