He thrills to the encouragement, a low curling noise catching at the roof of his mouth for the touch of fingers and the rasp audible in John's voice. It's the sort of tactile incentive that urges closer, and deeper, and more, even while draped in some patient tenor.
Moderating that impulse takes effort. Even then, there's very little that's guarded or cautious about how Flint relents to draw his mouth up and off him again. Rather the opposite is true—all this bruised want make naked in its denial, the wet slide of lips and tongue make sharper and more specific for the brief interim in which they've been held back. The shallow stroke and squeeze of fingers fills the gap, reassurance and temptation both. Flint presses closer between the two of John's knees. That undone belt buckle rasps hungrily too.
To call the pattern Flint falls into a rhythm would be disingenuous, but it isn't not that. His touch is light. He doesn't hesitate to draw up to drag in a breath, or is shy with the searching press of tongue when he goes back to him. There a kind of broad pleasure in how narrow the space between them is. In making it real and physical by sinking low enough to coax some reflexive clench out of himself. Shuddering through it.
Yes, like this. This is how we wants him—entirely and willing, in this comedically small room. There's an uncritical ease to it. Unembarrassed. Comfortable. The sound he makes around him is thick with satisfaction and unvarnished by any sense of shame.
The heel of John's boot scuffs past the crumpled fur of discard mantle, braces on stone. (A fleeting awareness of this unevenness, a disorienting echo of movement coming to nothing but the flex of one thigh.) John's thighs glance off his shoulders, pressing in and away in counterpoint to the grip of John's hand. His fingers flex tighter at Flint's nape, not enough to inhibit movement or disturb Flint's ministrations, but enough to betray a reaction, encourage him back when Flint draws away.
"Again," on the heels of that sound. John cannot ask for much else, when Flint is so thoroughly occupied otherwise.
But here too is an enduring truth: John is so completely enamoured with all parts of Flint, yes, but there is something particularly vital about what he puts voice to, what sounds he makes. John can feel the tenor of it set into his bones, run hot through his body just as sure as the work of Flint's hands and mouth have done.
There is ease to this. John has the sense of it, how Flint gives over to it, how John might give over further to him. It isn't a surprise; they have been partners for such a long time now. Self-awareness prickles only at the very edges of his thoughts, crowded further away as John's attention narrows down to the flexing muscle of Flint's shoulders, the unchecked, straightforward attention focused in on John in return. Flint is so close, wedged there on his knees. Inescapably so.
Again. It's an easy request to which to capitulate. That John asks at all might almost be unnecessary—the crowding points of contact between shoulders and knees and the dig and squeeze of fingers and the pressing shape of him against the invitation of his tongue could inspire low sounds all on their merit. It's gratifying to be this close.
But there's something tender and naked in the asking. It prickles at the nap of his neck under the light weight of John's hand. It runs warm down into the clench of his belly and then is drawn lower still by the easy stroke of Flint's own fingers over himself. He answers with a groaning rasp, some heavy exhale through the nose, and a reedier scraped pant as he draws all the way up and off him again.
There's enough spit slick to turn the slide of calloused fingers smooth—a diversion as Flint's face cants up. Kiss him, says the sway of his shoulders, and the straightening line of his back and the wanting shape of his mouth as he leans up and invades nearer to make it as simple as the rest of this.
Of course John will bend to meet him. There is no hesitation at all. John is already bowing down to meet him, even before Flint's head tips up. He resettles his palm, sliding down to the nape of Flint's neck to encourage him into John's space, hold him there, as they kiss. It is very open, slow and thorough and yes, this too is easy. John's breath is shredded, hitching into Flint's mouth at the slide of his fingers, underscored by the scrape of teeth. His opposite hand has lifted to find Flint's cheek, frame his face as a low groan of sound rattles out of him into their kiss.
Between them, there is a murmur of sound. Not a word, not properly formed, but it gives the impression of encouragement. The kind of thing which means to urge him on, permissive as John's fingers press down hard at the nape of Flint's neck. Not necessarily to lift him, dredge him from his place, but telegraph all that John wants, make clear whatever the kiss and grasping clutch of his fingers haven't already communicated.
Again for whatever heated, hitching response Flint might have for him, covetous of these small things. It is Satinalia. John is allowed a request or two.
That sound passed out of John and into his mouth is like a thing to be swallowed, taken into the body and all it's heat absorbed. Something to prompt a scraping of teeth and the bitter press of tongue. It is easy, unhurried, but no part of this kiss or the grasping of hands, or the nearness of bodies, or the demanding want motivating them could be categorized as shallow. If there were a way to arrange two bodies in order to fully reduce the delineation between them, it might be achieved with this same ravenous patience. As it is, the blatant encouragement thrills. The press of fingers at the back of his neck and cheek glow with the same persistence as that vodka in the bottom of a tin cup; yes, fill him with that sensation too.
A battered breath. A low scraping growl to suit the discarded fur mantle. A groan that aches. Flint trades those back to him, either directly into a kiss or just rough over the space between them where John's hands have anchored him.
Give him another pillow, or a thick pile carpet, or just younger knees and he might seriously consider lingering there. Things being what they are—(his appetite being what it is)—, the set of his teeth slants briefly rough, first at John's mouth and then twisting to scrape across the exposed skin of his nearest wrist. He turns further into the curve of that palm, mouth hot as he first bites at the knuckle of John's thumb and then hotter as he takes the digit in past his lips in abrupt pantomime of the more delicate stroke of fingertips.
On another night, they might have ascended the stairs. They know the merits of a bigger room, the bed situated within it. (But for fuck's sake, the bed's big enough not to put you on your knees—) But there is no reason to suggest it; John understands all the converging pieces of their present arrangement. They are where they wish to be. It matters that they are here, in John's room which has never seen a visitor in all his time occupying it. It matters that Flint is positioned so. It matters that John has sat where bidden, that he has bent to Flint so immediately.
His knuckle is still stinging as he pushes his thumb down over Flint's tongue.
He hasn't gone far, remains bracketed by John's thighs and hands. The unsteady pull of John's breathing is impossible to hide, even if he were so inclined. His boot knocks along Flint's calf, unconsciously seeking further purchase to wind them more securely together.
"Look at you," is unsteady too, composure fraying by degrees under Flint's ministrations. But for all the shallow rasp of these words, they are so colored by affection, with wanting, want so deep and made so plain as John hooks him closer by mouth and jaw. None of it is tempered in this moment. John's breath is shallow, obvious when he puts his teeth to the bristle of Flint's jaw.
The note of his laugh is garbled under the pressing thumb, but the spark of wolfish self-satisfaction rings briefly hot and clear in Flint's face. There's a canny self awareness in that gleam. Good. Look at him; yes, he knows there's something almost comedic about this play of rough teeth and insisting on having his mouth on some part of him. The lines in his face are sly and glinting, and notable for how suddenly they crack into ragged darkening pieces as John dredges him back with a fish hooked thumb and digging fingers and set teeth.
Somewhere against the pressing edge of John's boot, Flint's calf jumps as he jerks involuntarily into the clench of his own fingers. The edge of a heavy belt buckle clips against some part of the bed's framework and he gives, gone malleable with a heady stab of arousal. He's still rasping and open mouthed under the press of John's thumb once the instant hum of blood has faded with some vulnerable sound widely panted.
This low, rough-edged and obvious care is a thick and clinging—simultaneously the thing he'd been eager to offer up and the exact reward he'd wanted to find while there on his knees. To be both vulnerable and demanding in his affections, and be matched in it. To know the sound of John's breathing sharp and fleeting at the cheek and hear his own breathing inside the narrow confines of the little room skirting after it in parallel. So he drags teeth from thumb joint to fingertip, intending to be as purposefully goading with it as with the renewed vigor in his touch.
Does it matter that they are knit so close that John cannot observe the moment Flint comes apart? It doesn't, though there is a moment's twinge of covetous loss regardless.
John can feel the way that release ripples through Flint's body. He has it here, under the hook of his thumb: the hot gasp of breath, the sound that follows after. John would have closed it up in his palm, if he could.
(John's boot presses down harder against Flint's calf as he gasps a breath. A spark of awareness lights at the flex of his thigh, the disorientating absence of purchase and fleeting burn of embarrassment over the involuntary movement.)
"Again," is a low murmur, teeth catching at Flint's earlobe. John's body is winding taut, but there is nothing to brace himself with, nothing to hold fast to apart from Flint himself. His opposite hand is pressing bruises into the curve of Flint's neck, the flex of muscle there where the bend of his shoulder begins as his thumb presses just so, a little further after that damp rasp of breath as he continues, "I want to give you this again, I want to see you—"
It's incidental, shades of what John had been so clear about: Flint might make of this what he wishes. John has given himself up in other respects, given over all these vital points in parts and pieces into Flint's hands long before now, but even so, he would look at this again. Flint requires long study, hours and hours devoted to the prospect.
Again, suggests a start and an end to this. Here, this thing that they've become so practiced at having unspooled in all directions. What point is there in reinforcing a nonexistent joint seam? But the reassurance of the impulse is hot in his ear and the points of fingertip pressure pinching. Flint's hand moves to touch John low, to arrest him with a squeeze of fingers as his tongue rebels against comparable treatment.
He twists by the degree necessary to slip John's thumb out from between his teeth in favor of pressing a gravelly kiss at the bristle of a cheek. To nose closer, his tenor heated and rumbling there at the skin: "I have you," he says, throaty and declarative as a wolf sinking its teeth in.
It's a fact, not a request, and is punctuated first with a catch of those very teeth at John's mouth and then a more tender shape of lips and tongue. The slope of muscle between neck and shoulder slants under that clenched hand. He's keen to bend to him again.
This too they have traded. John has said it himself, reassurance and confirmation both, in that first, narrow room in which their places had reversed.
The incongruity of hearing it put to himself—
Yes, it is true. John may be a man comprised of fragments, something shattered and severed rebuilt into something whole without a backwards glance towards what has been left in shards behind him. But what is left of him, yes, that has long been given over. He feels that point hook low in his belly, high in his chest, dual points tugging taut as the words settle.
It is a relief to kiss him, damp thumb at Flint's cheek as John's hands frame his face once more. It is a relief to press the ragged sounds drawn out of them to Flint's mouth as his knee graze Flint's sides. (Again too, the unbalanced feeling of wanting to brace both heels upon the floor and managing one, toe of his boot at Flint's knee.) The telegraphed bow of Flint's shoulders will be attended to in due time; John will release him once more, he knows, but for just a moment more, he sinks all attention into this kiss, Flint's mouth beneath his, the broad bulk of his body caught between his knees.
It's a full, tempering thing. He can feel the knot in his belly unwinding under the shape of that kiss and the catch of the breathing that feeds it. It doesn't undo the prickle small hairs and the flush at the back of his neck aroused by that hooking thumb, or render him insensate to the tender collection of points left in his neck or jaw. These are arguably two separate pieces. The rough bite of teeth and nails and being compelled; this slower and more mutual giving over. But overlapped so tightly together and even under the closeness of this examination, they don't seem remotely like separate instincts.
He understands it. He understands the catch of fingers and this more quiet desperation of the mouth and how they all can translate into endearment. How obvious they are. They're his own impulses.
It takes some moments for the tenor of that thick kiss to alter. The shape of his mouth slants. His smile presses in against the scruff of John's beard and lip, and when he works past the hitch of breathing tangled between them to say, "Don't make me beg," there's a cant of low gravelled humor in it.
(That hand has come up from below the edge of the bed. It lays thoughtlessly over John's thigh, thumb and fingers and broad square palm. The next time he makes to brace, it will be against Flint's knee and the sturdy curve between his thumb and forefinger.)
The lay of his palm is such a simple thing. Were it set over John's opposite thigh, it would prompt very little reaction; the warmth of it against the tension of muscle is a welcome thing, by any calculation.
Still, laid as it is over John's thigh, above the abrupt severing of limb below his knee, it prompts a hitch. A minor snag, a rope catching on the way to being drawn taut. It fractures the thick exhale of laughter given in response to Flint's appeal, breaking it into a rough, lower thing on the back end than it had begun.
His hands remain as they are, framing Flint's face, observing the flush and good humor and desires written across his expression.
"Not tonight," reflects back the very same pitch of humor, even as John holds the request tightly to himself. The desire there is like closing his hand over a coal; it sears.
Under Flint's palm, the muscle of John's thigh flexes. (A mirror of John's hand, falling from Flint's face to grip his arm, not forbidding but tempering that touch.) A minor, restless movement, a shift further, as if more room is needed. As if he need any more invitation than he already has, when John's fingers find the nape of his neck once again.
In the narrowness of that room, Flint's laugh has some low curling quality to it—easy and unselfconscious, the scud of breath warm there as his smile crinkles briefly wider.
(The press of his fingers across John's thigh moderates by a spare half degree in response to the grip on his arm—automatic and undeterred both.)
"That's generous," is rasped in that narrow space opened between them. It carries that same air of humor and a more sonorous blood heavy note as Flint lingers momentarily upright. That roguishness should spark so naturally in his kohl smeared face is nearly parodic given his professional occupation, but surely it's in no way incongruous with this place between John's knees, or the pleasant threat in Not tonight, or the hand at the back of his neck. He wants these things. Of course he should be smug about having made off with them.
Then, this last flash of teeth drawn amiably back, he makes good on the promise of that slanting shoulder and guiding hand. This too is a relief. The satisfied sound Flint makes first at the crown of him and then lower in pursuit of more is like the groaning of a line under tension. How gratifying it is to do what one is meant to.
Generosity is not in John's nature. He knows this. (As he knows his tendency towards artful words, towards evasion and duplicity.) But it is so easy to be generous when it is the two of them, closed up together in some private space. In all these moments contained within quiet rooms, lit by dim candles, shadows drawing them closer together, where the delineation between them blurs down to nothingness, it is such a simple thing to give over to him.
This has become part of John's nature too. All that happens once the door closes is that the impulse is stripped of any pretense, any veil that might mask the nature of their partnership and the depths contained within in.
John's fingers tighten at his nape; encourage him lower, weight the pressure of fingers with the possibility of being held there. The fur mantle is rucked back under John's heel as he leans forward, just a fraction, just enough that he might see more clearly. Is the hitching quality in his breath due to this, to the hand at his thigh? It is hard to separate; the two reactions have become tangled too, and John isn't equipped to unravel them just now.
"James," is a low, frayed thing too, but colored through with intention. Intimate, here as John's fingers press bruises into Flint's nape. "Show me."
It rings and reflects back to I want to see. Is it ever possible to look his fill? Is there a way to have enough of the sound Flint makes, feel the way that groaning satisfaction hooks into his own belly and spills warm across John's skin?
No. John knows this answer already, understands the impossibility of it because the way John wants Flint, the quality of the want between them, is such a broad, endless thing. It is only ever satisfied momentarily.
What is obvious here under observation and the motivating weight of John's hand is the same thing that's clear outside this closed door and all the others: he isn't unreadable, only so profusely demonstrative that it becomes difficult to parse without some common language. John doesn't need to ask him for that. He's been doing it by coming to this room, and lying on his narrow bed, and in guarding and camouflaging the exact nature of this partnership, and in sharing cups, and with biting sedition into ears, and with a hand steadying John by the elbow over uneven ground. He does everything for show. He does nothing for show. Looking anywhere else risks missing something.
The answer comes naturally. A brief angling of the face as if he might pass a fleeting glance back up draws the line of Flint's brow and nose and fingers out of the candlelight. The distinction of that line wavers only in accordance with the shallow stroke of the hand, the slow rhythm of mouth and tongue, and the fitful drag of opportunistic breathing.
Here, says the press of his thumb on the inside of John's thigh and the sharp glint of an eye from out of black paint. The light shapes of his fingers dissolve back into the shadow between them as he sinks lower. Like this, says the intensely narrowed sound and the untenable catching of his throat, a modest retreat, and the wanting ache as he takes him again does for himself what John's hand on the back of his neck has yet to. He can hold himself here. Let him do this.
Some other night, perhaps. Some other night John might hold him there, encourage Flint downwards. The possibility is there, caught and stored somewhere far off. A potential. Something wanted but not asked for, something John doesn't consider now because—
Because it matters more that Flint puts himself here, that he is so clear as to where he wishes to be. John's hand is incidental beyond the clasp of his fingers, tightening as a raw groan of sound falls out of his mouth.
"James," is just a rasp of a word, a fragment of a sentence that never forms. John's fingers fold over Flint's, thumb running over his knuckles before catching there. It is a minor thing to brace himself with, as he draws a ragged breath. (The impulse to draw his hand up and away from where it's been set sparks but finds no purchase, with John so completely occupied otherwise.) He cedes his grip on Flint's nape to touch his face, fingers at his temple, the hinge of his jaw, as John struggles through shallow breaths.
"Please," follows after, all of John's muscles drawn taut under the application of Flint's mouth, the pressure of his thumb and fingers over his thigh. His boot leaves the floor only to hook around Flint's leg, cinch him uselessly closer. Please as an offering, giving over as his fingers stray back to Flint's shoulder, back to the bare skin beneath the slip of his tunic.
The scrape in John's voice burns at the back of his neck, taking up the place those fingers have abandoned. No forcing hands. No begging. Not tonight. But how adjacent to that they are (Please, he says), secured and sharpened by the self-restraint and craving required to brush close to the shadow of those impulses. How distant the rasping of the shirt collar across invading fingers is to the ear. The physical sensation of that same hand is immediate though, as is the pressure on the back of his leg and the flex of muscle under his palm—jumbled together and crowding in tight like they might prompt the same involuntary catch and clench.
Obviously he can't stay this way. What he can do is make up some broken, irregular rhythm. To pull nearly off him, breath shallow and hitching as his hand makes up for the withdrawal, and start over again.
The same cast of light that turns the fibers of the black shirt to a dull pitch and illuminates the bend of John's wrist above the collar's edge paints a triangle on Flint's cheek between intersecting shadows. That triangle stretches and constricts in answer to the sway of a shoulder and that heated slide. Eventually it narrows to a glowing scratch.
That is the feeling, after having been wound so taut. It feels like a kind of shattering to have the tension and thudding pulse in his body spill over. His fingers, linked clumsily with Flint's over his own thigh, tighten hard over his hand. There is little else to brace himself with, sat as he is. Nothing to hold fast to but Flint himself as he shudders through the fever-break of sensation.
The sound he makes then is more impression than cohesive word. A name, repeated for a third time, shaped in the raw exhaled gasp. (James, a third time, rung out like a bell between them.) John's fingers catching at Flint's shoulder, over the familiar topography of scars and freckles and sun-spackled skin, holding fast because there is no closer to be had.
A fleeting thought: all John has in this room is his own narrow bed, hardly better than what the Walrus had once afforded them.
He bows over by degrees, chest heaving. Flushed warm and loose-limbed, his hand slips from beneath Flint's tunic to thumb along his jaw, steadying and encouraging all at once.
That tightening clutch of fingers and knees and the heel of a boot and the shredded sound of familiar syllables holds him there. There are pins and needles in his knees and calves. A sensation like a closed fist lies low in his belly. It rises and falls tightly in time with that undoing, all that tensed sinew, the pulse across his tongue and the heat he can't taste but does feel. Maybe, between his hands and his mouth, it's possible that he's the one doing the pinning. For a brief moment, it feels that way—like he could bear down with both hands and demand linger there despite the taut squeeze native to all these points of contact.
And then John's hand finds his jaw and that domineering sensation drains out him. Flint relents. He draws from him with a groaning heave and the sting of watering eyes. A previously entirely occupied hand staggers over to grip at John's heretofore unattended thigh, and he presses his face into that waiting palm with a kind of buzzing relief.
For a time (maybe as reduced as seconds), he just breathes there raw and rasping across the slice of wrist that shows beneath John's shirt cuff.
John makes a low ragged sound at this realignment, the brief separation and reclamation of space. His thumb picks up a slow stroke along Flint's cheek, in time with the rhythm of Flint's breathing. Doesn't cede his grip on Flint's opposite hand, give up the clumsy link of his thumb over Flint's fingers while they breathe together.
Remaining upright feels miraculous when his body feels near boneless, but there is nothing so necessary as remaining here, wound close.
"You," is so weighted with affection, thick and stripped down to the barest parts of the thing, this fond, intimate thing John knows to be rooted within his own body. You near to the tone a man might take when considering the miraculous. (You traded to a man who should by all logic be dead but instead rides up a muddy trail on a sulky horse in the aftermath of a battle turned to chaos.) John's thumb strokes along Flint's cheekbone, swipes at the corner of his bruised-red mouth, then back again.
John's breath comes in shallow, uneven rasps still. Sweat prickles, flushed heat simmering in his body. Any kind of movement feels tenuous, as if his balance hinges entirely upon their present arrangement. They might sit here quietly for some time, John's thumb at Flint's mouth and at his cheek, their hands linked over one thigh, before finally, John finds the presence of mind to say, "Let me take you to bed."
Whichever one he might prefer: this narrow bed close at hand or the larger one, separated from them by several flights of stairs.
His first pass at an answer is a low rumbling hum. Canted over into the shape of that palm, sagged near to resting his temple at the knee of John's whole leg while the man reassembles himself, he isn't slow to tip his face the degree further necessary to look at him. It's an easy thing to do—arguably the most practiced and natural reflex in the evening. When was the last time James Flint came into a room and didn't first scan to pick John Silver out of it? Looking at him now from here at his knee as John sways and normalizes his breathing sparks some clear pleasure in him—both self-satisfied and so warm with affection.
It isn't You like the reverence in the Chant. It's There you are like a devotion one can sometimes have for these touchable, naturally occurring wonders. The fleck of salt spray off water, and the overworked muscle in John's thigh, and the light that plays in the dark gleam of his beard, and the looping sinews of a loose rope end make tidy with a decorative knot.
"All right." A telltale burr lives rough at the edge of those syllables. Flint turns, kisses John's palm, and dredges his face up. "I've a Satinalia present still to give you anyway. Pass me the cloth from your wash basin."
There are several flights of stairs in their immediate future. But first, cleaning up the floor, and the clink of a rebuckled belt, and peeling himself up off his knees with an entirely different kind of aching groan. He only at last fully divests from John to accomplish this last part. The hand that has lingered there in it's spanning of John's left thigh while the other worked moves from his leg to the edge of the bed off which Flint may lever himself up with.
It's a wrench to separate. John tempers it with a kiss, fingers caught in the fabric of Flint's tunic to draw him down once he's straightened fully. He is not obliged to bend; John is aware of how long he spent on his knees. But a warm, easy kiss given up to him eases the parting, the pull back into their own spheres, reorienting themselves fully, before climbing the necessary flights of stairs.
The door is pulled shut tightly behind them, closing off John's space once more.
Given the late hour, the night's uninterrupted festivities, they meet no one on the stairs. There is no delays born out of passing conversation, or the kind of creeping foolishness one sometimes bears witness to when navigating the Gallows halls.
A fire has been stoked in the room beyond the office. John, still flushed warm and loose from the night's celebration, lingers for a moment in the doorway of the Forces apartment before crossing in further and letting the latch fall into place behind him. Observes Flint devesting himself of John's offering, the books stowed away as John shucks his own wool coat and suggests, "We might take the moment to relieve you of your costuming."
Not so much the fur, but the dark smears of kohl about his eyes, whatever still lingers at this hour.
"Hm?" Turns to 'ah' as Flint straightens from the bedside table's low shelf, a fleeting brush of fingers at the outside corner of one eye coming away just grey enough to confirm there's some work to be done on that front.
Indeed, he looks like something of a scoundrel there in the spotty glass of his shaving kit: dark shirt, darker coat, the thready fur, bandaged palms and smudged black eyes that suggest fighting more than they do the evening's foolishness and subsequent debauchery.
"It does lack something without the mask."
This room has stayed warmer than the drafty office past it by merit of having half the space and a lower ceiling, but the water left in wash basin's accompanying pitcher by some industrious Gallows servant keen to avoid early morning work after a late night boozing has gone brutally cold. Flint opts to relocate the pitcher to the hearthstone where the turned over fire may blunt some of the cutting edge rather than directly splashing it anywhere near his face.
(Real beds. Laundered clothes. Warm wash water. Vodka purposefully derived from fungi rather than inevitably. The luxuries of living on land.)
An answering hum; yes, the effect doesn't quite come off as intended without the crowning item. Seeing it's absence, John can only assume it's been left on to wash out to sea along with the dwindling ice rink.
Rather than dwell upon the location of costume articles, John occupies the foot of the bed. Considers his boot, and the likelihood of chilled stone floors at this hour, whether he will need to get to his feet once more, and stalls the effort in favor of watching Flint at the hearth.
"It creates a different effect," is true, though John is thinking of the vanguard plunging over the side into the water, how the paint smeared and blurred but always remained by the time they'd returned. "But I imagine neither impression will stand up in the morning."
They might have brought the bottle, John only now considers. It is late and they don't necessarily need the libation, but—
"Did you get what you wished of it?"
Of course, John could assume the answer on his own. The night's work had seemed successful, and Flint seemed sated, satisfied with the outcome. John inevitably turns it over in his mind, considering the echoing pulls of warmth in his body as if marking where new hooks and links between them have been revealed to him through it all.
Occasionally, it's beneficial to be seen by the crew partaking in their same activities. It produces the illusion of a certain measure of informal leeway, and paints Riftwatch's Commander is a marginally less grim light. Riftwatch is small. Its people are prone to talking. If it makes him less easy to resent to be seen with an ounce of holiday spirit, swinging Yseult around the dance floor and trading novelty gifts, then there are worse investments be might have made that evening.
(Abby, sitting beside him at the bonfire to make her apologies. It's certainly possible she would have found the opportunity to do so even if he'd spent the evening in this room with a book and a bottle. But giving her the opportunity to do so outside of that dour office, him with his face painted and the absurd mask propped casually on the top of his head—)
"We'll see."
The fur is drawn free. He strips out of it and the coat, and drapes both over the back of the chair near the fire. There is a casual ease in this—the levering off of his boots, and unclasping of various buckles, the cup he finds in the mantle piece and fills from the pitcher before it's had time to warm. He drinks it down, the cold a pleasant sting, then refills it and pads over the John there at the foot of the bed to offer him the cup.
"Did you?"
Pay no mind to the sly gleam in his eye that punctuates the question. Smug bastard, that Captain Flint. And it's not what he asking, really.
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Moderating that impulse takes effort. Even then, there's very little that's guarded or cautious about how Flint relents to draw his mouth up and off him again. Rather the opposite is true—all this bruised want make naked in its denial, the wet slide of lips and tongue make sharper and more specific for the brief interim in which they've been held back. The shallow stroke and squeeze of fingers fills the gap, reassurance and temptation both. Flint presses closer between the two of John's knees. That undone belt buckle rasps hungrily too.
To call the pattern Flint falls into a rhythm would be disingenuous, but it isn't not that. His touch is light. He doesn't hesitate to draw up to drag in a breath, or is shy with the searching press of tongue when he goes back to him. There a kind of broad pleasure in how narrow the space between them is. In making it real and physical by sinking low enough to coax some reflexive clench out of himself. Shuddering through it.
Yes, like this. This is how we wants him—entirely and willing, in this comedically small room. There's an uncritical ease to it. Unembarrassed. Comfortable. The sound he makes around him is thick with satisfaction and unvarnished by any sense of shame.
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"Again," on the heels of that sound. John cannot ask for much else, when Flint is so thoroughly occupied otherwise.
But here too is an enduring truth: John is so completely enamoured with all parts of Flint, yes, but there is something particularly vital about what he puts voice to, what sounds he makes. John can feel the tenor of it set into his bones, run hot through his body just as sure as the work of Flint's hands and mouth have done.
There is ease to this. John has the sense of it, how Flint gives over to it, how John might give over further to him. It isn't a surprise; they have been partners for such a long time now. Self-awareness prickles only at the very edges of his thoughts, crowded further away as John's attention narrows down to the flexing muscle of Flint's shoulders, the unchecked, straightforward attention focused in on John in return. Flint is so close, wedged there on his knees. Inescapably so.
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But there's something tender and naked in the asking. It prickles at the nap of his neck under the light weight of John's hand. It runs warm down into the clench of his belly and then is drawn lower still by the easy stroke of Flint's own fingers over himself. He answers with a groaning rasp, some heavy exhale through the nose, and a reedier scraped pant as he draws all the way up and off him again.
There's enough spit slick to turn the slide of calloused fingers smooth—a diversion as Flint's face cants up. Kiss him, says the sway of his shoulders, and the straightening line of his back and the wanting shape of his mouth as he leans up and invades nearer to make it as simple as the rest of this.
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Of course John will bend to meet him. There is no hesitation at all. John is already bowing down to meet him, even before Flint's head tips up. He resettles his palm, sliding down to the nape of Flint's neck to encourage him into John's space, hold him there, as they kiss. It is very open, slow and thorough and yes, this too is easy. John's breath is shredded, hitching into Flint's mouth at the slide of his fingers, underscored by the scrape of teeth. His opposite hand has lifted to find Flint's cheek, frame his face as a low groan of sound rattles out of him into their kiss.
Between them, there is a murmur of sound. Not a word, not properly formed, but it gives the impression of encouragement. The kind of thing which means to urge him on, permissive as John's fingers press down hard at the nape of Flint's neck. Not necessarily to lift him, dredge him from his place, but telegraph all that John wants, make clear whatever the kiss and grasping clutch of his fingers haven't already communicated.
Again for whatever heated, hitching response Flint might have for him, covetous of these small things. It is Satinalia. John is allowed a request or two.
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A battered breath. A low scraping growl to suit the discarded fur mantle. A groan that aches. Flint trades those back to him, either directly into a kiss or just rough over the space between them where John's hands have anchored him.
Give him another pillow, or a thick pile carpet, or just younger knees and he might seriously consider lingering there. Things being what they are—(his appetite being what it is)—, the set of his teeth slants briefly rough, first at John's mouth and then twisting to scrape across the exposed skin of his nearest wrist. He turns further into the curve of that palm, mouth hot as he first bites at the knuckle of John's thumb and then hotter as he takes the digit in past his lips in abrupt pantomime of the more delicate stroke of fingertips.
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His knuckle is still stinging as he pushes his thumb down over Flint's tongue.
He hasn't gone far, remains bracketed by John's thighs and hands. The unsteady pull of John's breathing is impossible to hide, even if he were so inclined. His boot knocks along Flint's calf, unconsciously seeking further purchase to wind them more securely together.
"Look at you," is unsteady too, composure fraying by degrees under Flint's ministrations. But for all the shallow rasp of these words, they are so colored by affection, with wanting, want so deep and made so plain as John hooks him closer by mouth and jaw. None of it is tempered in this moment. John's breath is shallow, obvious when he puts his teeth to the bristle of Flint's jaw.
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Somewhere against the pressing edge of John's boot, Flint's calf jumps as he jerks involuntarily into the clench of his own fingers. The edge of a heavy belt buckle clips against some part of the bed's framework and he gives, gone malleable with a heady stab of arousal. He's still rasping and open mouthed under the press of John's thumb once the instant hum of blood has faded with some vulnerable sound widely panted.
This low, rough-edged and obvious care is a thick and clinging—simultaneously the thing he'd been eager to offer up and the exact reward he'd wanted to find while there on his knees. To be both vulnerable and demanding in his affections, and be matched in it. To know the sound of John's breathing sharp and fleeting at the cheek and hear his own breathing inside the narrow confines of the little room skirting after it in parallel. So he drags teeth from thumb joint to fingertip, intending to be as purposefully goading with it as with the renewed vigor in his touch.
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John can feel the way that release ripples through Flint's body. He has it here, under the hook of his thumb: the hot gasp of breath, the sound that follows after. John would have closed it up in his palm, if he could.
(John's boot presses down harder against Flint's calf as he gasps a breath. A spark of awareness lights at the flex of his thigh, the disorientating absence of purchase and fleeting burn of embarrassment over the involuntary movement.)
"Again," is a low murmur, teeth catching at Flint's earlobe. John's body is winding taut, but there is nothing to brace himself with, nothing to hold fast to apart from Flint himself. His opposite hand is pressing bruises into the curve of Flint's neck, the flex of muscle there where the bend of his shoulder begins as his thumb presses just so, a little further after that damp rasp of breath as he continues, "I want to give you this again, I want to see you—"
It's incidental, shades of what John had been so clear about: Flint might make of this what he wishes. John has given himself up in other respects, given over all these vital points in parts and pieces into Flint's hands long before now, but even so, he would look at this again. Flint requires long study, hours and hours devoted to the prospect.
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He twists by the degree necessary to slip John's thumb out from between his teeth in favor of pressing a gravelly kiss at the bristle of a cheek. To nose closer, his tenor heated and rumbling there at the skin: "I have you," he says, throaty and declarative as a wolf sinking its teeth in.
It's a fact, not a request, and is punctuated first with a catch of those very teeth at John's mouth and then a more tender shape of lips and tongue. The slope of muscle between neck and shoulder slants under that clenched hand. He's keen to bend to him again.
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The incongruity of hearing it put to himself—
Yes, it is true. John may be a man comprised of fragments, something shattered and severed rebuilt into something whole without a backwards glance towards what has been left in shards behind him. But what is left of him, yes, that has long been given over. He feels that point hook low in his belly, high in his chest, dual points tugging taut as the words settle.
It is a relief to kiss him, damp thumb at Flint's cheek as John's hands frame his face once more. It is a relief to press the ragged sounds drawn out of them to Flint's mouth as his knee graze Flint's sides. (Again too, the unbalanced feeling of wanting to brace both heels upon the floor and managing one, toe of his boot at Flint's knee.) The telegraphed bow of Flint's shoulders will be attended to in due time; John will release him once more, he knows, but for just a moment more, he sinks all attention into this kiss, Flint's mouth beneath his, the broad bulk of his body caught between his knees.
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He understands it. He understands the catch of fingers and this more quiet desperation of the mouth and how they all can translate into endearment. How obvious they are. They're his own impulses.
It takes some moments for the tenor of that thick kiss to alter. The shape of his mouth slants. His smile presses in against the scruff of John's beard and lip, and when he works past the hitch of breathing tangled between them to say, "Don't make me beg," there's a cant of low gravelled humor in it.
(That hand has come up from below the edge of the bed. It lays thoughtlessly over John's thigh, thumb and fingers and broad square palm. The next time he makes to brace, it will be against Flint's knee and the sturdy curve between his thumb and forefinger.)
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Still, laid as it is over John's thigh, above the abrupt severing of limb below his knee, it prompts a hitch. A minor snag, a rope catching on the way to being drawn taut. It fractures the thick exhale of laughter given in response to Flint's appeal, breaking it into a rough, lower thing on the back end than it had begun.
His hands remain as they are, framing Flint's face, observing the flush and good humor and desires written across his expression.
"Not tonight," reflects back the very same pitch of humor, even as John holds the request tightly to himself. The desire there is like closing his hand over a coal; it sears.
Under Flint's palm, the muscle of John's thigh flexes. (A mirror of John's hand, falling from Flint's face to grip his arm, not forbidding but tempering that touch.) A minor, restless movement, a shift further, as if more room is needed. As if he need any more invitation than he already has, when John's fingers find the nape of his neck once again.
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(The press of his fingers across John's thigh moderates by a spare half degree in response to the grip on his arm—automatic and undeterred both.)
"That's generous," is rasped in that narrow space opened between them. It carries that same air of humor and a more sonorous blood heavy note as Flint lingers momentarily upright. That roguishness should spark so naturally in his kohl smeared face is nearly parodic given his professional occupation, but surely it's in no way incongruous with this place between John's knees, or the pleasant threat in Not tonight, or the hand at the back of his neck. He wants these things. Of course he should be smug about having made off with them.
Then, this last flash of teeth drawn amiably back, he makes good on the promise of that slanting shoulder and guiding hand. This too is a relief. The satisfied sound Flint makes first at the crown of him and then lower in pursuit of more is like the groaning of a line under tension. How gratifying it is to do what one is meant to.
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This has become part of John's nature too. All that happens once the door closes is that the impulse is stripped of any pretense, any veil that might mask the nature of their partnership and the depths contained within in.
John's fingers tighten at his nape; encourage him lower, weight the pressure of fingers with the possibility of being held there. The fur mantle is rucked back under John's heel as he leans forward, just a fraction, just enough that he might see more clearly. Is the hitching quality in his breath due to this, to the hand at his thigh? It is hard to separate; the two reactions have become tangled too, and John isn't equipped to unravel them just now.
"James," is a low, frayed thing too, but colored through with intention. Intimate, here as John's fingers press bruises into Flint's nape. "Show me."
It rings and reflects back to I want to see. Is it ever possible to look his fill? Is there a way to have enough of the sound Flint makes, feel the way that groaning satisfaction hooks into his own belly and spills warm across John's skin?
No. John knows this answer already, understands the impossibility of it because the way John wants Flint, the quality of the want between them, is such a broad, endless thing. It is only ever satisfied momentarily.
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The answer comes naturally. A brief angling of the face as if he might pass a fleeting glance back up draws the line of Flint's brow and nose and fingers out of the candlelight. The distinction of that line wavers only in accordance with the shallow stroke of the hand, the slow rhythm of mouth and tongue, and the fitful drag of opportunistic breathing.
Here, says the press of his thumb on the inside of John's thigh and the sharp glint of an eye from out of black paint. The light shapes of his fingers dissolve back into the shadow between them as he sinks lower. Like this, says the intensely narrowed sound and the untenable catching of his throat, a modest retreat, and the wanting ache as he takes him again does for himself what John's hand on the back of his neck has yet to. He can hold himself here. Let him do this.
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Because it matters more that Flint puts himself here, that he is so clear as to where he wishes to be. John's hand is incidental beyond the clasp of his fingers, tightening as a raw groan of sound falls out of his mouth.
"James," is just a rasp of a word, a fragment of a sentence that never forms. John's fingers fold over Flint's, thumb running over his knuckles before catching there. It is a minor thing to brace himself with, as he draws a ragged breath. (The impulse to draw his hand up and away from where it's been set sparks but finds no purchase, with John so completely occupied otherwise.) He cedes his grip on Flint's nape to touch his face, fingers at his temple, the hinge of his jaw, as John struggles through shallow breaths.
"Please," follows after, all of John's muscles drawn taut under the application of Flint's mouth, the pressure of his thumb and fingers over his thigh. His boot leaves the floor only to hook around Flint's leg, cinch him uselessly closer. Please as an offering, giving over as his fingers stray back to Flint's shoulder, back to the bare skin beneath the slip of his tunic.
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Obviously he can't stay this way. What he can do is make up some broken, irregular rhythm. To pull nearly off him, breath shallow and hitching as his hand makes up for the withdrawal, and start over again.
The same cast of light that turns the fibers of the black shirt to a dull pitch and illuminates the bend of John's wrist above the collar's edge paints a triangle on Flint's cheek between intersecting shadows. That triangle stretches and constricts in answer to the sway of a shoulder and that heated slide. Eventually it narrows to a glowing scratch.
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That is the feeling, after having been wound so taut. It feels like a kind of shattering to have the tension and thudding pulse in his body spill over. His fingers, linked clumsily with Flint's over his own thigh, tighten hard over his hand. There is little else to brace himself with, sat as he is. Nothing to hold fast to but Flint himself as he shudders through the fever-break of sensation.
The sound he makes then is more impression than cohesive word. A name, repeated for a third time, shaped in the raw exhaled gasp. (James, a third time, rung out like a bell between them.) John's fingers catching at Flint's shoulder, over the familiar topography of scars and freckles and sun-spackled skin, holding fast because there is no closer to be had.
A fleeting thought: all John has in this room is his own narrow bed, hardly better than what the Walrus had once afforded them.
He bows over by degrees, chest heaving. Flushed warm and loose-limbed, his hand slips from beneath Flint's tunic to thumb along his jaw, steadying and encouraging all at once.
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And then John's hand finds his jaw and that domineering sensation drains out him. Flint relents. He draws from him with a groaning heave and the sting of watering eyes. A previously entirely occupied hand staggers over to grip at John's heretofore unattended thigh, and he presses his face into that waiting palm with a kind of buzzing relief.
For a time (maybe as reduced as seconds), he just breathes there raw and rasping across the slice of wrist that shows beneath John's shirt cuff.
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Remaining upright feels miraculous when his body feels near boneless, but there is nothing so necessary as remaining here, wound close.
"You," is so weighted with affection, thick and stripped down to the barest parts of the thing, this fond, intimate thing John knows to be rooted within his own body. You near to the tone a man might take when considering the miraculous. (You traded to a man who should by all logic be dead but instead rides up a muddy trail on a sulky horse in the aftermath of a battle turned to chaos.) John's thumb strokes along Flint's cheekbone, swipes at the corner of his bruised-red mouth, then back again.
John's breath comes in shallow, uneven rasps still. Sweat prickles, flushed heat simmering in his body. Any kind of movement feels tenuous, as if his balance hinges entirely upon their present arrangement. They might sit here quietly for some time, John's thumb at Flint's mouth and at his cheek, their hands linked over one thigh, before finally, John finds the presence of mind to say, "Let me take you to bed."
Whichever one he might prefer: this narrow bed close at hand or the larger one, separated from them by several flights of stairs.
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It isn't You like the reverence in the Chant. It's There you are like a devotion one can sometimes have for these touchable, naturally occurring wonders. The fleck of salt spray off water, and the overworked muscle in John's thigh, and the light that plays in the dark gleam of his beard, and the looping sinews of a loose rope end make tidy with a decorative knot.
"All right." A telltale burr lives rough at the edge of those syllables. Flint turns, kisses John's palm, and dredges his face up. "I've a Satinalia present still to give you anyway. Pass me the cloth from your wash basin."
There are several flights of stairs in their immediate future. But first, cleaning up the floor, and the clink of a rebuckled belt, and peeling himself up off his knees with an entirely different kind of aching groan. He only at last fully divests from John to accomplish this last part. The hand that has lingered there in it's spanning of John's left thigh while the other worked moves from his leg to the edge of the bed off which Flint may lever himself up with.
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The door is pulled shut tightly behind them, closing off John's space once more.
Given the late hour, the night's uninterrupted festivities, they meet no one on the stairs. There is no delays born out of passing conversation, or the kind of creeping foolishness one sometimes bears witness to when navigating the Gallows halls.
A fire has been stoked in the room beyond the office. John, still flushed warm and loose from the night's celebration, lingers for a moment in the doorway of the Forces apartment before crossing in further and letting the latch fall into place behind him. Observes Flint devesting himself of John's offering, the books stowed away as John shucks his own wool coat and suggests, "We might take the moment to relieve you of your costuming."
Not so much the fur, but the dark smears of kohl about his eyes, whatever still lingers at this hour.
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Indeed, he looks like something of a scoundrel there in the spotty glass of his shaving kit: dark shirt, darker coat, the thready fur, bandaged palms and smudged black eyes that suggest fighting more than they do the evening's foolishness and subsequent debauchery.
"It does lack something without the mask."
This room has stayed warmer than the drafty office past it by merit of having half the space and a lower ceiling, but the water left in wash basin's accompanying pitcher by some industrious Gallows servant keen to avoid early morning work after a late night boozing has gone brutally cold. Flint opts to relocate the pitcher to the hearthstone where the turned over fire may blunt some of the cutting edge rather than directly splashing it anywhere near his face.
(Real beds. Laundered clothes. Warm wash water. Vodka purposefully derived from fungi rather than inevitably. The luxuries of living on land.)
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Rather than dwell upon the location of costume articles, John occupies the foot of the bed. Considers his boot, and the likelihood of chilled stone floors at this hour, whether he will need to get to his feet once more, and stalls the effort in favor of watching Flint at the hearth.
"It creates a different effect," is true, though John is thinking of the vanguard plunging over the side into the water, how the paint smeared and blurred but always remained by the time they'd returned. "But I imagine neither impression will stand up in the morning."
They might have brought the bottle, John only now considers. It is late and they don't necessarily need the libation, but—
"Did you get what you wished of it?"
Of course, John could assume the answer on his own. The night's work had seemed successful, and Flint seemed sated, satisfied with the outcome. John inevitably turns it over in his mind, considering the echoing pulls of warmth in his body as if marking where new hooks and links between them have been revealed to him through it all.
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Occasionally, it's beneficial to be seen by the crew partaking in their same activities. It produces the illusion of a certain measure of informal leeway, and paints Riftwatch's Commander is a marginally less grim light. Riftwatch is small. Its people are prone to talking. If it makes him less easy to resent to be seen with an ounce of holiday spirit, swinging Yseult around the dance floor and trading novelty gifts, then there are worse investments be might have made that evening.
(Abby, sitting beside him at the bonfire to make her apologies. It's certainly possible she would have found the opportunity to do so even if he'd spent the evening in this room with a book and a bottle. But giving her the opportunity to do so outside of that dour office, him with his face painted and the absurd mask propped casually on the top of his head—)
"We'll see."
The fur is drawn free. He strips out of it and the coat, and drapes both over the back of the chair near the fire. There is a casual ease in this—the levering off of his boots, and unclasping of various buckles, the cup he finds in the mantle piece and fills from the pitcher before it's had time to warm. He drinks it down, the cold a pleasant sting, then refills it and pads over the John there at the foot of the bed to offer him the cup.
"Did you?"
Pay no mind to the sly gleam in his eye that punctuates the question. Smug bastard, that Captain Flint. And it's not what he asking, really.
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