Stood there behind the desk's corner, his hand shifts absently at the heavy furniture's decorative carved edge. Considering, visibly, how satisfied he is with the shape of that. That it is the preferable option between those two points is given. Yet there is something sharp between the ribs that this does nothing to dislodge. It's not so fine a point to puncture, to slip past bone into the soft necessary things; but he feels it there, the equivalent of a jagged stone lodged against him. He struggles to name it as much as he does to squirm away from its edge. Eventually, the bruise will either become so tender as to make itself known or the discomfort will grow ordinary.
For lack of a more clear thing to study, he devotes his attention to the man he shares the room with.
But lacking a clear sense of how it might be changed beyond what had already been brokered between the two of them. Petrana had been transparent in her reasoning. John had not found that duplicitous, only—
There is something that rankles.
"But knowing her reasons, and perhaps having made clear my own objections, we might avoid seeing the thing repeated."
Whatever comes next, because inevitably there will be something that comes next.
John's fingers unlace, hand falling to one thigh. Does not think of the road, or what might have come in that blank stretch of time between slipping from the saddle and waking with Petrana's voice in his ear. They are far removed. The bruises will heal. Should they ride out a second time, they will choose a better route to their destination.
There is some piece of the desk's edge that he can lodge his thumb against and press until the shape of it seems likely to leave a red mark on the hard pad of his calloused thumb.
"It will prove out one way or the other whether it is or not," Flint says at last, hand slipping from the edge of the desk.
Photious is just a place on a piece of paper which might be followed. And if they were to come to some accord as to the purpose of a tool and then put said instrument into the hand of Riftwatch's minor cadre of rebel mages, whether they would choose to use it according to that agreement or in service of something more directly beneficial to themselves is impossible to know until it happens. In either case, they are reduced to feeling after shapes in the dark and hoping those things will resolve themselves into some legible form before any teeth come to bear.
It shouldn't be so easy to be made to feel so brittle, he thinks. He is too old for it, and should be so accustomed to the sensation as to be resistant to it.
It being so much less fraught to simply break in the direction that John invites him to, he doesn't hesitate to comply with the request put to him. The cabin isn't so deep that it requires more than a half handful of strides.
Because he doesn't want to think of Nascere in pieces at the bottom of the sea or any other time he has stood over John in a chair, he does set his hands to the chair arms and lean down to him. Instead, he offers a hand up. Come away from there.
The weight of all things unsaid hang heavy in the air. John knows them. (He thinks of Nascere too, recalls the aftermath spent in this cabin.) His face tips up, assessing, before he obliges.
Fingers set over Flint’s on the chair arm as he grasps the offered hand. Levers himself up with the use of both, reaching back to hook his crutch to take his weight as he comes fully upright. The sturdy cotton of his tunic hangs open, sliver of exposed skin mottled black and purple and red.
Newly freed, John lifts a hand to Flint’s cheek. Thumbs over the bristle of his beard as he says, “Let me wash off the last of the blood, then we can go to bed.”
A hot bath would do him better than cold water ported up from the stores. Maker fucking knows how long it's been in whatever cask the men cracked for it.
(Not so long; there are strict standing instructions to see the ship at least somewhat provisioned for travel, and no man cares to doom himself to drinking green water when there is fresh to be had at no great distance. Maybe. It's possible they've all gotten as lazy about the rotation as Flint has about verifying it.)
"The next time I tell you where I'm am and it's some ship in the middle of the harbor, you might consider insisting on not meeting there," is something like an apology for the inconvenience.
While John makes use of that chipped basin, Flint bolts the door. The canvas shade across the stern windows is drawn smartly down, lest someone with a spy glass be watching the shapes moving in the lantern lit squares from a distance. There is a book on the table that he'd thought to finish tonight, but Flint leaves it where it's laid and instead removes his coat and his boots and his heavy belt and all its jangling accoutrements.
"I believe Gwenaëlle was discouraged by the questions I put to her," he says while he does it. "You might see whether you could guide her round."
"Round to?" comes the prompt, as John straightens from the basin. The water is rust-tinged in his wake. Facing away, whatever minor wince of feeling comes with the discarding of blood-marked tunic is between John and the wall ahead of him. Stripped to the waist, he swabs at the blotted smear of blood that's now dried tacking along one shoulder.
Should they have met somewhere else? Perhaps. The bed in the apartment beyond the Forces office is more than serviceable. They could have had a bath brought up.
But no complaint comes in the wake of Flint's offer. They are here. The creak and groan of the ship beneath their feet provides a more welcome return than flight upon flight of stairs and the work nipping outside their doorstep.
They'll return to it. But John will trade the bracing slap of cold water for a night removed from all aspects of that work, perilous bedding and all.
"Lending herself as an asset to what you and Bastien would accomplish. The two of you might see to pamphletting, but she could pass your words off for her own into places those won't reach. It might do her some good," he adds, examining the mottled skin of John's back in the lamplight as he himself shucks down to breeches and shirt. "To see there's more to it than simply putting her thoughts to paper and hoping that they travel past some Markham lord."
Nevermind Gwenaëlle Baudin's earlier, evidently accidental, success at stumbling into the role of propagandist. If she currently has no view to steer her pen with, then a capable hand might find use for it until she acquires the correct sense for it.
The roll of the Walrus is presently easy. Though it's possible that in a few hours the weather will turn and the harbor will go choppy and they will find themselves sawn back and forth between anchor chains. Best to have John nearest the bulkhead then; if one of them is to be knocked out of the bed, Flint can afford to suffer a bruise or two.
The blood comes off in patches, eventually scrubbed free. A tender splotch of a bruise remains, stark against pale skin. John wrings the cloth out before draping it over the edge of the basin. Turns back to Flint, damp and tired and smiling at the idea being put forth.
"I think Gwenaëlle won't be led anywhere she doesn't choose to go," is not news. But that being said, "I'll speak to her. I've meant to speak to Bastien, regardless. The Grand Enchanter shouldn't disappear into the mud of the battlefield."
And doing so will require Bastien's printing press, an assurance that he'll be amenable to assisting.
John Silver has a talent for these things—convincing people that they're all moving in the same direction; how to avoid being buried on a battlefield. And were he less battered, it might be tempting to study him there for some measure.
"Come to bed," Flint says instead, folding the heavy linen trousers away with his coat. "I'll douse the light."
Even now, after years of partnership, there is something quietly gratifying in the unquestioning way Flint trades on John's talents.
Come to bed, even when the bed in question is spartan at best and John is growing more aware of all his bruises as the sting of Howell's salve settles into a dull burn, is such an appealing invitation. John lets those words settle between them. (It is a heady thing, to find himself so consistently welcome.) If he flicks a glance to the window, where he had once spent long weeks convalescing, it is only to measure the distance they have covered.
"Alright," is a foregone conclusion, though John stalls at the chair once more.
A mistake, getting up without having removed his boot. He is obliged to sit again, bending to undo dusty laces before continuing onward.
He is content to linger there near to the swaying light, barefoot on the carpet battered thin by the sea air and the damp and being trod all over. With the shade drawn down and the door bolted shut, with the weight of night and the motion of the skeleton watch on deck reduced to bare minimum, it could be simple to imagine themselves hove to in some other place. There, where the easy weather will stick for longer than an hour and there's little reason to hurry to bed down in an effort to snatch a few minutes of sleep before the sea begins to run again.
Eventually, he finds himself in a dark room tentatively climbing into the slung bunk after John. It's a careful thing for the sake of the eye bolts and the narrowness of the space, for John's thorough peppering of bruises.
They have shared far more comfortable beds, it is true. But tonight, after the absurd wretch of circumstance seeing John and Petrana so delayed, this tenuous, narrow bed that insists on close proximity is not such a hardship to endure. They fit themselves together. There is no space at all between them, no place to divert from the warmth of skin and the rhythm of breath rising and falling in tandem.
“I missed you,” John says again into the darkness between them, low and fond and warm over this truth.
Maybe there will a reassessment of this statement in an hour when he has knocked John enough times in his bruised parts with an elbow or an inconvenient shoulder to warrant it. But he doubts it; the shape of that statement in the dark is too developed to be dislodged with a poorly placed knee. Entirely dislodged, anyway.
He makes to jostle a degree closer, the threat of the bunk's edge very present at his back and the warmth on the opposite side like the heat from a low fire. And in the glancing dark, this close, I missed you sounds like something that isn't so very different.
“You know it,” John repeats, voice warming with amusement.
But there is some satisfaction in that. In finding this sentiment so recognized, when John has come up short in expressing those weightier matters of their partnership more often than not.
Carefully, he lifts a hand between them to set fingers back to the nape of Flint’s neck, palm over the thud of pulse there, thumb at his jaw. Even with so little light to see by, John has some sense of the expression Flint might be wearing at this moment.
“Next time I must fetch a Chantry Mother from some spit of a village, we might contrive to ride out together.”
"We might consider avoiding Chantry Mothers all together, first. As something of a general point of order," he says, humming under the warm shape of John's scrubbed clean hand.
He smells to him like cold water and fatty cheap soap; like sweat and metal and dirt and horses; and there is something faintly sweet like decay in the fibers of the bunk's thin mattress and its oft unused linens. In the drawn close space that doesn't exist between them, Flint's rough knuckles brush at the tender skin of his hip. The curl of his wrist is gentle.
The mark on John's face makes ceding to the request a more daunting prospect than it ought to be for fear of bumping foreheads or exacerbating the sting of Howell's poultice. Regardless, he is easily coaxed—shifting the degrees necessary so breath out warm near the whiskery corner of John's mouth. To not kiss him, but to lay close enough that it all but counts while the curve of his wrist and his hand attached to it slide carefully round. Drape loosely there at John's side for lack of space between his back and the ship's bulkhead.
It's easy to do, though the slung bunk creaks against its assembly with their every movement.
"Don't fall asleep like this," he tells him, low sounds in a room stripped even of moonlight.
As one of them will have to roll over so they can fit more closely flush unless he doesn't mind being thrown from the bed during the first slap of the tide across the Walrus' beam. But also, hidden away in the shape of this good advice: But not directly; don't roll over to sleep just yet.
For all complaints regarding the bedding they have grown accustomed to, all claims of discomfort and how intolerable the condition may be, John finds little complaint in their present arrangement.
This closeness, even punctuated by the creak and rasp of chain from hooks above, sates the anxious itch that John had carried all the way back to Kirkwall. It is quieted into nothingness by the drape of Flint’s arm, the slip of his fingers and the quality of his voice urging a kind of caution.
“Help keep me awake then,” is an answering murmur against Flint’s mouth. Not a kiss there either, not yet, just the brush of lips and exchange of breath. The shift of fingertips at the bend of Flint’s neck following along in its wake, urging him impossibly, uselessly closer.
"The men have already given you the best gossip." Crowding in round him while he'd sat for Howell, eager to please. "Though there has been rumor that the March has begun to gather its hems to move again."
The scuff of his fingers is light and easy. A thumb shifts quietly across ribs or as against the strict muscle that goes to wrap up behind John's shoulder. There is no closer, really, to achieve.
"I'd offer to speculate on Beatrix's strategy, but I'm not certain that qualifies as helpful in this case."
“No,” John agrees. “We might leave that for morning.”
For once, the work will wait. It is easier to set it aside while they are at sea, the Walrus granting them some measure of distance from the demands of the Gallows.
Flint has grown practiced at setting a hand to the tight-wound muscles in John’s body. The trip of his fingers across bruised ribs then higher, prompts an exhale, some further loosening of tension in his body in response. (There a moments, this one among them, where John is aware of the vulnerability in it, in the way Flint has learned to put a hand to these aches, marked out their location so completely that he needs no direction or prompting.)
“What else can you offer me?” comes with the impression of a smile, the further flex of fingers and light press of John’s thumb over the line of his throat.
"I've a book of Iron Age clergical verse on the table there." But that too, he suspects, may be duller fare than required.
(He's no more immune to the thing that had dragged every man left on this ship into these quarters a few minutes ago than those men were. That he can simply drive off anyone else hungry for John's attention doesn't detract from the effect; if anything, it threatens to turn him into something of a jealous miser.)
"Tell me how your horse is faring," he says, warm and quiet under the pressing thumb. "It's nearly spring." And isn't that when horses start running? Or do they go in autumn and he's already missed asking after it? He has no fucking idea.
More immediately, John thinks of the horse Petrana had stolen. How is it faring, stabled alongside the ragtag assembly of Riftwatch mounts?
Here, he does set a soft kiss to Flint's mouth before saying, "Ah, my horse," with some measure of humor.
"There's been a race," according to the last letter, flowery language praising a promising first showing. "And there will be at least four more before the summer, more if those outcomes are promising."
His fingers traces nonsense patterns across Flint's shoulder, draw back up along the bend of shoulder into neck, up to his jaw and then back down.
"I was extended an invitation to the last two. I assume they imagine those to be the best of the lot."
How a race can be better than another, John doesn't know. But he knows that the last two were held up to him specifically.
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"I am."
Is this an easier topic than the thought that there is a second blood sacrifice being prepared somewhere in the north?
"She assumed our support, and acted as if it would be certain upon her return. To my mind, that's better than her assuming our opposition."
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For lack of a more clear thing to study, he devotes his attention to the man he shares the room with.
"And that satisfies you?"
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But lacking a clear sense of how it might be changed beyond what had already been brokered between the two of them. Petrana had been transparent in her reasoning. John had not found that duplicitous, only—
There is something that rankles.
"But knowing her reasons, and perhaps having made clear my own objections, we might avoid seeing the thing repeated."
Whatever comes next, because inevitably there will be something that comes next.
John's fingers unlace, hand falling to one thigh. Does not think of the road, or what might have come in that blank stretch of time between slipping from the saddle and waking with Petrana's voice in his ear. They are far removed. The bruises will heal. Should they ride out a second time, they will choose a better route to their destination.
"Is that enough for you?"
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"It will prove out one way or the other whether it is or not," Flint says at last, hand slipping from the edge of the desk.
Photious is just a place on a piece of paper which might be followed. And if they were to come to some accord as to the purpose of a tool and then put said instrument into the hand of Riftwatch's minor cadre of rebel mages, whether they would choose to use it according to that agreement or in service of something more directly beneficial to themselves is impossible to know until it happens. In either case, they are reduced to feeling after shapes in the dark and hoping those things will resolve themselves into some legible form before any teeth come to bear.
"You look tired," he tells him.
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It is a loose end that must be chased. Must be clarified, before they find themselves on the back foot with a second island splintering into the sea.
John exhales slowly, shakes his head.
“I might be.”
It had been a long journey. His body aches in ten different places.
“Come here,” he says anyway, eyes on Flint where he stands alongside that desk, far out of reach.
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It being so much less fraught to simply break in the direction that John invites him to, he doesn't hesitate to comply with the request put to him. The cabin isn't so deep that it requires more than a half handful of strides.
Because he doesn't want to think of Nascere in pieces at the bottom of the sea or any other time he has stood over John in a chair, he does set his hands to the chair arms and lean down to him. Instead, he offers a hand up. Come away from there.
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Fingers set over Flint’s on the chair arm as he grasps the offered hand. Levers himself up with the use of both, reaching back to hook his crutch to take his weight as he comes fully upright. The sturdy cotton of his tunic hangs open, sliver of exposed skin mottled black and purple and red.
Newly freed, John lifts a hand to Flint’s cheek. Thumbs over the bristle of his beard as he says, “Let me wash off the last of the blood, then we can go to bed.”
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(Not so long; there are strict standing instructions to see the ship at least somewhat provisioned for travel, and no man cares to doom himself to drinking green water when there is fresh to be had at no great distance. Maybe. It's possible they've all gotten as lazy about the rotation as Flint has about verifying it.)
"The next time I tell you where I'm am and it's some ship in the middle of the harbor, you might consider insisting on not meeting there," is something like an apology for the inconvenience.
While John makes use of that chipped basin, Flint bolts the door. The canvas shade across the stern windows is drawn smartly down, lest someone with a spy glass be watching the shapes moving in the lantern lit squares from a distance. There is a book on the table that he'd thought to finish tonight, but Flint leaves it where it's laid and instead removes his coat and his boots and his heavy belt and all its jangling accoutrements.
"I believe Gwenaëlle was discouraged by the questions I put to her," he says while he does it. "You might see whether you could guide her round."
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Should they have met somewhere else? Perhaps. The bed in the apartment beyond the Forces office is more than serviceable. They could have had a bath brought up.
But no complaint comes in the wake of Flint's offer. They are here. The creak and groan of the ship beneath their feet provides a more welcome return than flight upon flight of stairs and the work nipping outside their doorstep.
They'll return to it. But John will trade the bracing slap of cold water for a night removed from all aspects of that work, perilous bedding and all.
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Nevermind Gwenaëlle Baudin's earlier, evidently accidental, success at stumbling into the role of propagandist. If she currently has no view to steer her pen with, then a capable hand might find use for it until she acquires the correct sense for it.
The roll of the Walrus is presently easy. Though it's possible that in a few hours the weather will turn and the harbor will go choppy and they will find themselves sawn back and forth between anchor chains. Best to have John nearest the bulkhead then; if one of them is to be knocked out of the bed, Flint can afford to suffer a bruise or two.
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"I think Gwenaëlle won't be led anywhere she doesn't choose to go," is not news. But that being said, "I'll speak to her. I've meant to speak to Bastien, regardless. The Grand Enchanter shouldn't disappear into the mud of the battlefield."
And doing so will require Bastien's printing press, an assurance that he'll be amenable to assisting.
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John Silver has a talent for these things—convincing people that they're all moving in the same direction; how to avoid being buried on a battlefield. And were he less battered, it might be tempting to study him there for some measure.
"Come to bed," Flint says instead, folding the heavy linen trousers away with his coat. "I'll douse the light."
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Come to bed, even when the bed in question is spartan at best and John is growing more aware of all his bruises as the sting of Howell's salve settles into a dull burn, is such an appealing invitation. John lets those words settle between them. (It is a heady thing, to find himself so consistently welcome.) If he flicks a glance to the window, where he had once spent long weeks convalescing, it is only to measure the distance they have covered.
"Alright," is a foregone conclusion, though John stalls at the chair once more.
A mistake, getting up without having removed his boot. He is obliged to sit again, bending to undo dusty laces before continuing onward.
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Eventually, he finds himself in a dark room tentatively climbing into the slung bunk after John. It's a careful thing for the sake of the eye bolts and the narrowness of the space, for John's thorough peppering of bruises.
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“I missed you,” John says again into the darkness between them, low and fond and warm over this truth.
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He makes to jostle a degree closer, the threat of the bunk's edge very present at his back and the warmth on the opposite side like the heat from a low fire. And in the glancing dark, this close, I missed you sounds like something that isn't so very different.
"I know it."
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But there is some satisfaction in that. In finding this sentiment so recognized, when John has come up short in expressing those weightier matters of their partnership more often than not.
Carefully, he lifts a hand between them to set fingers back to the nape of Flint’s neck, palm over the thud of pulse there, thumb at his jaw. Even with so little light to see by, John has some sense of the expression Flint might be wearing at this moment.
“Next time I must fetch a Chantry Mother from some spit of a village, we might contrive to ride out together.”
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He smells to him like cold water and fatty cheap soap; like sweat and metal and dirt and horses; and there is something faintly sweet like decay in the fibers of the bunk's thin mattress and its oft unused linens. In the drawn close space that doesn't exist between them, Flint's rough knuckles brush at the tender skin of his hip. The curl of his wrist is gentle.
"But for any other errand."
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And then, more quietly: “Come here,” as a repetition and a request together, with the silent coaxing flex of fingers at Flint’s nape.
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It's easy to do, though the slung bunk creaks against its assembly with their every movement.
"Don't fall asleep like this," he tells him, low sounds in a room stripped even of moonlight.
As one of them will have to roll over so they can fit more closely flush unless he doesn't mind being thrown from the bed during the first slap of the tide across the Walrus' beam. But also, hidden away in the shape of this good advice: But not directly; don't roll over to sleep just yet.
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This closeness, even punctuated by the creak and rasp of chain from hooks above, sates the anxious itch that John had carried all the way back to Kirkwall. It is quieted into nothingness by the drape of Flint’s arm, the slip of his fingers and the quality of his voice urging a kind of caution.
“Help keep me awake then,” is an answering murmur against Flint’s mouth. Not a kiss there either, not yet, just the brush of lips and exchange of breath. The shift of fingertips at the bend of Flint’s neck following along in its wake, urging him impossibly, uselessly closer.
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The scuff of his fingers is light and easy. A thumb shifts quietly across ribs or as against the strict muscle that goes to wrap up behind John's shoulder. There is no closer, really, to achieve.
"I'd offer to speculate on Beatrix's strategy, but I'm not certain that qualifies as helpful in this case."
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For once, the work will wait. It is easier to set it aside while they are at sea, the Walrus granting them some measure of distance from the demands of the Gallows.
Flint has grown practiced at setting a hand to the tight-wound muscles in John’s body. The trip of his fingers across bruised ribs then higher, prompts an exhale, some further loosening of tension in his body in response. (There a moments, this one among them, where John is aware of the vulnerability in it, in the way Flint has learned to put a hand to these aches, marked out their location so completely that he needs no direction or prompting.)
“What else can you offer me?” comes with the impression of a smile, the further flex of fingers and light press of John’s thumb over the line of his throat.
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(He's no more immune to the thing that had dragged every man left on this ship into these quarters a few minutes ago than those men were. That he can simply drive off anyone else hungry for John's attention doesn't detract from the effect; if anything, it threatens to turn him into something of a jealous miser.)
"Tell me how your horse is faring," he says, warm and quiet under the pressing thumb. "It's nearly spring." And isn't that when horses start running? Or do they go in autumn and he's already missed asking after it? He has no fucking idea.
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Here, he does set a soft kiss to Flint's mouth before saying, "Ah, my horse," with some measure of humor.
"There's been a race," according to the last letter, flowery language praising a promising first showing. "And there will be at least four more before the summer, more if those outcomes are promising."
His fingers traces nonsense patterns across Flint's shoulder, draw back up along the bend of shoulder into neck, up to his jaw and then back down.
"I was extended an invitation to the last two. I assume they imagine those to be the best of the lot."
How a race can be better than another, John doesn't know. But he knows that the last two were held up to him specifically.
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