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.
The question is so broadly posed that were he inclined, John could narrow his consideration to the night's festivities: bad music, acceptable liquor, a handful of aimless conversations that serve no purpose beyond renewing the minor, amicable bonds forged between those employed in service of the same weighty work.
However—
John's fingers fold over Flint's around the dented tin. A precursor to simply taking the cup itself, surely. They have traded a cup back and forth in more public settings, with the overlap of fingers passing within a matter of moments. Presently, John uses it to run his thumb over Flint's knuckle, looking up into his face.
"On our way up, it occurred to me I might see the night repeat itself once or twice before deciding one way or another."
All this to the tune of: you know. The slow pull of a grin at the corner of John's mouth telegraphs as much, amusement set into his face as he observes Flint's expression, notes self-satisfaction there.
That light smugness converts readily into a sidelong look, all tinged with the low kind of humor that might play as affront were John not exceptionally well acquainted with the nuance. Somewhere behind his whiskers, the line of his mouth slants in the unconscious echo of that similarly expression beginning to play out on John's face.
"Reasonable."
The cup is pressed into his hand; in exchange—planned or otherwise—, Flint's other hand passes to John's shoulder, smooths the lay of the braiding at the tunic collar and his own expression back into some imitation of sobriety. His thumb comes to rest at John's neck.
"And the sort of judgement that bodes well for the utility of your present."
The smile working its way across John's face widens, flexes wider under the press of Flint's hands and the shift back to solemnity on his own face. He sips from the cup, schools that grin back into some smaller, mirroring expression. Balances the cup on one thigh as he looks up into Flint's face.
It is likely clear to him at exactly which moment curiosity filters in amidst amusement.
"Oh?"
Inviting, even when John's fingers catch hold of him by the hip for the minor pleasure of the contact.
"As it happens," has that curling quality of humor that lives low in the secret quirk at the corner of Flint's mouth. Suggestive, and unwilling to clarify lest it burn away the flint of John's interest.
Instead, he takes back the cup, sips from and then returns it before bending to dredge open the sea chest there at the end of the bed near to John's chosen perch. Getting to his knees to sort through the contents is evidently off the table, but he can rearrange the layered trays inside without being quite that low. Eventually what's produced from the depths of the trunk is—
A thick envelope with a bright blue seal, a distinct feather shape stamped into the wax. Flint passes it over without further remark.
Relieved of the cup, he is free to make a brief examination of the heavy paper and fine seal. Shake the envelope by his ear, eyes slanting up towards Flint as he does. Good humor still, mingling with real curiosity.
With no tell tale rattle produced, John breaks the seal to examine the contents.
The first page of the packet contained inside the envelope immediately reveals it's origins. That's the stamp of a Rialtan notary—some clerk of one of the bustling harbor tradehouses forced into the streets squeezed above the harbor. The page goes on to certify the validity of the documents here in, the brokering agreement, the point of contact—a particular Serah Caruso—, a brief summary of the present not insubstantial total appraisal of the Asset (as of— some date in the summer, long after Riftwatch had quit the city), and various percentages applied and allotted (this packet accounting for an extremelt reasonable ten perfect, of which three must be forwarded to the broker), and so on and so and so forth in what must be the most standard of Antivan legalese until it at last terminates in some dashing and illegible scratch of a signature.
"I made a wager," Flint says, fetching a small slip of paper from the sea chest before closing it. "With some livestock trader at one of those parties I was obliged to attend during our time in Rialto. He ordinarily does a brisk business from the port there, only his latest shipments south had been plagued by Tevinter ships in the Waking Sea"
Somewhere behind the first few pages of paperwork is a baffling sheet that resembles the chart of an aristocratic bloodline.
"The alternative landing I suggested must have served, and the Orlesian Navy has done more or less what I anticipated in chasing the Imperium's ships to the Amaranthine, as he sent that packet along a few months after. Which is fortunate," he allows. "Given that I don't have any idea how I would've made good on the wager if it'd gone in the other direction."
The last page is a simple stock print etching of a horse, marked here and there by a pen to indicate various identifying patterns.
"Although if I'm being honest, I don't know the first thing about race horses and I doubt you do either. But what I suspect is that you might enjoy the challenge of contriving to own more than ten percent of its profits. Or figuring out how to sell your part back for more than it's worth."
He doesn't shrug. Flint does however pass over that second, much folded piece of paper. This one looks to have originated from his own desk before being locked away in the chest.
"And if that fails, knowledge of the shipping route's schedule is likely worth something if sold to the right hunters."
And that business, he's quite certain, John knows plenty of.
"I trust you'll use that discretion of yours to its best advantage."
Some years ago, when John had two legs and eyes fixed on gold-minted prospects for his future, he had sat low in front of James Flint and spoken frankly about what it might mean. The prize they sought. What even a reduced share would mean. (Freedom.)
As removed from that as they are, as severed and bound up in other matters as they have become, John still holds some similar consideration. Perhaps even more urgently now than he did then. (What place they make together after this will require coin too. And so much hinges on it now, knowing—) He no longer entertains the same hopes now as then, but the necessity of coin, the security and insulation it can bring to a venture, that has been illustrated time and again. Walking in and out of Hightown estates, he has been made very aware of the ways one might wield their wealth, become more familiar than he'd ever hoped to be.
There is an etching of a horse among the papers in his hand. A folded piece of paper with familiar notations. (Does John still remember the Urca's schedule, the tight scrawl of it fed into a fire and reproduced on borrowed paper later on?) Small things, promising profit, and insurance upon seeing it materialized one way or another.
It is given to him as a small thing, a diversion and challenge. Amusements John recognizes, only what looms larger within these pieces is what catches him, unexpectedly, high in the chest and renders him quiet for a long moment.
John swallows, gaze lifting from the papers as he folds them back together with the schedule contained within.
"This horse has a more exacting family tree than most I meet with in Hightown," is a minor stall, creating some space for John to test his own composure. He is still reaching for Flint as he speaks, drawing him back now that there is nothing else to be fetched.
It's a long measure of quiet, and more—unanticipated. Rather than give into the impulse of closely studying John for its duration, Flint instead opts to slide his attention over to the open sea chest and take some accounting of the miscellany kept there in the topmost tray: an old razor whose casing has gone tarnished from age or the salt air or of a life at sea or both, a boar bristle brush, a comb. A deck of faded playing cards secured with a loop of intricately braided twine. A pocket book. And below it, a collection of shirts and one reliable coat all which he rarely wears now but is rigorous about keeping ready in case they should ever find themselves in need of a quick exit.
It's only once the crinkle and motion of paper suggests that John had reached some conclusion that his eyeline flicks back. Flint doesn't resist being drawn back, in that sense or any other.
"I'm led to believe Antiva takes the whole sport too seriously."
What a wrench it is, not being able to simply get to his feet in this moment. To calculate the movement involved in maneuvering the crutch, propelling himself upward rather than simply standing.
"All the more benefit to us, and this..." a beat, while John glances down and chuckles. There is some quiet, raw quality to his voice, regardless of having to settle upon finishing: "Empress Epicharis the second."
His fingers wind through Flint's. Thumb passing briefly over the gleam of a ring here, the fabric wound around his palms, on the way to lacing more securely together. Having netted him satisfactorily, John tacks on an inadequate, "Thank you."
What will John make of this? It is hard to say now, when his attention is so firmly elsewhere. He will see to it that they receive some benefit, but that it was given in the first place—
"Come here," he asks, with only half a mind to reach for the crutch anyway, if need be.
There's little requirement for any of that; this is the latest in a string of very achievable requests John has put to him this evening. Flint steps nearer without a second thought, hand secured and heavy shoulders already rounding in down toward him. The sea chest, it seems, doesn't need to be closed just yet.
"You're welcome."
It doesn't sound inadequate. He means it. But for good measure, and because he senses it's necessary, he bends further to extract a kiss from him.
As necessary as laying aside these papers where they might be spared any unnecessary crinkling before John can stow them safely in his own chest. (There is his shared office, more Petrana's than his own, and there is the Walrus, neither suitable for storing anything of value.) The possibility stays John's hand, when he might have reached up to set fingers to Flint's jaw.
A second kiss follows the first, stolen before Flint can straighten. Culminates in, "Come to bed," said against his mouth.
For no other reason perhaps than bending to meet him won't be comfortable in the long term, and Flint need not sacrifice his back along with his knees.
If he didn't have a cup in his off hand, be might make up for the restraint. Set his thumb along John's cheek, wrap fingers back back into the heavy curl of dark hair. Instead, he hums low in passing agreement against the bristle at the corner of John's mouth and does in fact straighten again.
"Let me see to my face."
The water in the pitcher will have warmed by now. The fireplace screen should be moved into place. And if he were feeling particularly industrious, he might hang his coat and put his boots somewhere other than where he's left them scattered before the hearth, though that last point seems unlikely.
"Make yourself comfortable," he says. A squeeze press of fingers signals his untangling of their hands and subsequent withdrawal.
And the water has gone warm. And the screen is easily shifted, the patterns punched into the thin metal pitching strange shadows about the room like the sinuous shapes of light through dense and distant foliage.
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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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However—
John's fingers fold over Flint's around the dented tin. A precursor to simply taking the cup itself, surely. They have traded a cup back and forth in more public settings, with the overlap of fingers passing within a matter of moments. Presently, John uses it to run his thumb over Flint's knuckle, looking up into his face.
"On our way up, it occurred to me I might see the night repeat itself once or twice before deciding one way or another."
All this to the tune of: you know. The slow pull of a grin at the corner of John's mouth telegraphs as much, amusement set into his face as he observes Flint's expression, notes self-satisfaction there.
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"Reasonable."
The cup is pressed into his hand; in exchange—planned or otherwise—, Flint's other hand passes to John's shoulder, smooths the lay of the braiding at the tunic collar and his own expression back into some imitation of sobriety. His thumb comes to rest at John's neck.
"And the sort of judgement that bodes well for the utility of your present."
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The smile working its way across John's face widens, flexes wider under the press of Flint's hands and the shift back to solemnity on his own face. He sips from the cup, schools that grin back into some smaller, mirroring expression. Balances the cup on one thigh as he looks up into Flint's face.
It is likely clear to him at exactly which moment curiosity filters in amidst amusement.
"Oh?"
Inviting, even when John's fingers catch hold of him by the hip for the minor pleasure of the contact.
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"As it happens," has that curling quality of humor that lives low in the secret quirk at the corner of Flint's mouth. Suggestive, and unwilling to clarify lest it burn away the flint of John's interest.
Instead, he takes back the cup, sips from and then returns it before bending to dredge open the sea chest there at the end of the bed near to John's chosen perch. Getting to his knees to sort through the contents is evidently off the table, but he can rearrange the layered trays inside without being quite that low. Eventually what's produced from the depths of the trunk is—
A thick envelope with a bright blue seal, a distinct feather shape stamped into the wax. Flint passes it over without further remark.
(He thinks he's funny.)
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Not an envelope, certainly.
Relieved of the cup, he is free to make a brief examination of the heavy paper and fine seal. Shake the envelope by his ear, eyes slanting up towards Flint as he does. Good humor still, mingling with real curiosity.
With no tell tale rattle produced, John breaks the seal to examine the contents.
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"I made a wager," Flint says, fetching a small slip of paper from the sea chest before closing it. "With some livestock trader at one of those parties I was obliged to attend during our time in Rialto. He ordinarily does a brisk business from the port there, only his latest shipments south had been plagued by Tevinter ships in the Waking Sea"
Somewhere behind the first few pages of paperwork is a baffling sheet that resembles the chart of an aristocratic bloodline.
"The alternative landing I suggested must have served, and the Orlesian Navy has done more or less what I anticipated in chasing the Imperium's ships to the Amaranthine, as he sent that packet along a few months after. Which is fortunate," he allows. "Given that I don't have any idea how I would've made good on the wager if it'd gone in the other direction."
The last page is a simple stock print etching of a horse, marked here and there by a pen to indicate various identifying patterns.
"Although if I'm being honest, I don't know the first thing about race horses and I doubt you do either. But what I suspect is that you might enjoy the challenge of contriving to own more than ten percent of its profits. Or figuring out how to sell your part back for more than it's worth."
He doesn't shrug. Flint does however pass over that second, much folded piece of paper. This one looks to have originated from his own desk before being locked away in the chest.
"And if that fails, knowledge of the shipping route's schedule is likely worth something if sold to the right hunters."
And that business, he's quite certain, John knows plenty of.
"I trust you'll use that discretion of yours to its best advantage."
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As removed from that as they are, as severed and bound up in other matters as they have become, John still holds some similar consideration. Perhaps even more urgently now than he did then. (What place they make together after this will require coin too. And so much hinges on it now, knowing—) He no longer entertains the same hopes now as then, but the necessity of coin, the security and insulation it can bring to a venture, that has been illustrated time and again. Walking in and out of Hightown estates, he has been made very aware of the ways one might wield their wealth, become more familiar than he'd ever hoped to be.
There is an etching of a horse among the papers in his hand. A folded piece of paper with familiar notations. (Does John still remember the Urca's schedule, the tight scrawl of it fed into a fire and reproduced on borrowed paper later on?) Small things, promising profit, and insurance upon seeing it materialized one way or another.
It is given to him as a small thing, a diversion and challenge. Amusements John recognizes, only what looms larger within these pieces is what catches him, unexpectedly, high in the chest and renders him quiet for a long moment.
John swallows, gaze lifting from the papers as he folds them back together with the schedule contained within.
"This horse has a more exacting family tree than most I meet with in Hightown," is a minor stall, creating some space for John to test his own composure. He is still reaching for Flint as he speaks, drawing him back now that there is nothing else to be fetched.
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It's only once the crinkle and motion of paper suggests that John had reached some conclusion that his eyeline flicks back. Flint doesn't resist being drawn back, in that sense or any other.
"I'm led to believe Antiva takes the whole sport too seriously."
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"All the more benefit to us, and this..." a beat, while John glances down and chuckles. There is some quiet, raw quality to his voice, regardless of having to settle upon finishing: "Empress Epicharis the second."
His fingers wind through Flint's. Thumb passing briefly over the gleam of a ring here, the fabric wound around his palms, on the way to lacing more securely together. Having netted him satisfactorily, John tacks on an inadequate, "Thank you."
What will John make of this? It is hard to say now, when his attention is so firmly elsewhere. He will see to it that they receive some benefit, but that it was given in the first place—
"Come here," he asks, with only half a mind to reach for the crutch anyway, if need be.
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"You're welcome."
It doesn't sound inadequate. He means it. But for good measure, and because he senses it's necessary, he bends further to extract a kiss from him.
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As necessary as laying aside these papers where they might be spared any unnecessary crinkling before John can stow them safely in his own chest. (There is his shared office, more Petrana's than his own, and there is the Walrus, neither suitable for storing anything of value.) The possibility stays John's hand, when he might have reached up to set fingers to Flint's jaw.
A second kiss follows the first, stolen before Flint can straighten. Culminates in, "Come to bed," said against his mouth.
For no other reason perhaps than bending to meet him won't be comfortable in the long term, and Flint need not sacrifice his back along with his knees.
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"Let me see to my face."
The water in the pitcher will have warmed by now. The fireplace screen should be moved into place. And if he were feeling particularly industrious, he might hang his coat and put his boots somewhere other than where he's left them scattered before the hearth, though that last point seems unlikely.
"Make yourself comfortable," he says. A squeeze press of fingers signals his untangling of their hands and subsequent withdrawal.
And the water has gone warm. And the screen is easily shifted, the patterns punched into the thin metal pitching strange shadows about the room like the sinuous shapes of light through dense and distant foliage.