"One in Wycome," John answers. "The other in Antiva City."
Which perhaps they can now visit without being riddled with crossbow bolts. John's fingers pass over a raised scar, slide further along freckled skin as he continues speaking.
"I assume after the last I'll be obliged to confer with the other investors and the trainer to decide whether we'd like to arrange for further opportunities."
An inkling derived solely from the florid flattery tacked onto the end of the last letter.
"There's a chance they'll attempt to buy me out," is heavy with sly amusement. His percentage is small, and even without having met those holding the rest of the shares in this beast, John suspects his entry into the equation is unwelcome.
The low hum between them sounds skeptical of the other stakeholders' chances. Having some experience in attempting to shake John Silver free of a business endeavor, he understands it to be more difficult than it appears on paper.
"I doubt anyone expects you to make an appearance at either. Were you to surprise them by doing so—I suppose you might encourage them in whatever direction you prefer them to move in."
If he cares to keep investing in the animal, find a reliable second among the consortium. If he doesn't— well, it's easy to seem disreputable enough to make a small percentage worthwhile to buy even at an exorbitant multiplier.
"It's a useful tool to move among the gentry," is an absent consideration. The slow draw of his fingers over skin has taken on an aimless, meditative quality. Here, he tracks over a familiar scar. Here, he maps the bend of elbow. Here, his fingers stray upwards once more over the flex of bicep.
"And I can think of ways we might employ the profit," John continues. "Broadsides will be all well and good, but word of mouth might be better for carrying word of the Grand Enchanter."
Wycome first, perhaps. The Marches, and then southwards, as far as his coin might stretch. If he can expand his take, and the horse proves adept on the track—
John can make something of that, and maybe have some left to set aside.
Is not something he says, content enough to lay quietly under the shape of wandering fingers and the feel just the barest edge of bristly mustache rough near to the corner of his mouth. It's too dark and they're too close to see anything by, by the meandering touch and this thoughtful tenor is informative all on its own. He doesn't need to see him to recognize him.
Meanwhile, Flint's hand remains quiet there at John's side—content to settle on the simple premise that he must have found a patch of real estate free of tender bruising. There's little need to go pursuing other points of contact at the risk of jabbing somewhere sensitive.
"It doesn't forbid it," is relayed with some humor, the impression of a smile in its wake.
An absence of instruction which may as well be permission, because John wants—
"Come with me."
There are a dozen flippant reasons why: how likely are they to be set upon by Crows, how likely is it Imperial soldiers set upon him on the road, how likely is it that the race may be disrupted by the same, and on and on and on.
They are good reasons. They run alongside the singular, foremost motivation: John has had his fill of traveling without Flint, for the moment.
There are better companions he might have for that work. Flint can think of a half dozen without stretching his imagination whatsoever. Some of their names even come right up to his fingertips, ready to be plucked forward. He should take someone used to dancing the dance with nobility and the very rich. Or he should take a mage as his bodyguard and to make reality of what southern mages now look like. Or he should have a Rifter along as a distractingly novel conversation piece.
"All right," he says rather than offering them. "Though I know fuck all about horses, so you won't have much more out of me than a pretty face."
In the morning, it will occur to him: why limit themselves? Why not bring along as many members of Riftwatch as possible, and set them to mingling?
But having secured the only traveling partner desired, John is content to let further considerations drop.
"All to my benefit," John murmurs. "As I'm inclined to keep the rest of you for myself."
There is no space at all between them. John's fingers settle back over Flint's jaw. Were they afforded any surplus of space, John may have set his hands differently. Recalls that first night in bed, how he had cinched his arms tight across Flint's chest. Here, as the slung-bed sways slightly under their weight and the gentle roll of the ship itself, that same impulse is distilled down to the splay of fingers and how they fit to Flint's neck to keep him there as their foreheads meet.
"Easy," is a gentle reminder, low and close. No need to press so near as to jostle the crusted over cut and all the bruising trimmed out around it. Though he doesn't fight the lay of fingers or the alignment of their persons there in the swaying bunk.
The kiss, when it comes, is patient in light of all this delay. Not brief, but not insistent. Slow. Fingers shifting absently to curl after the bent angle of John's elbow.
"Is your front or your back less bruised?" Clumsy against the shape of John's mouth.
A question given due consideration, though the answer will inevitably be incomplete. John's study had been very brief, assisted by the chip of mirror over the basin and the muted glow of the lantern. The smudged bruises are marked out more by the sense of them, what ache rises when he shifts on the bunk or inhales deeply. In the morning, they'll have deepened further in color, softened at the edges, making a lurid patchwork across his skin.
"My back," is the product of some moment's passing consideration. If he is thinking of how he might have fallen from his horse, where blows might have fallen after that—
It is hard to know for certain without extricating both of them from the bed to check. Content with the kiss, with Flint's fingers at his arm, the brush of their mouths against each other as they spoke, John is unwilling to cede ground to do so.
"Then turn, and I'll try not to put my knee anywhere you're already black and blue."
It's not so late that readying for sleep is an urgent thing; but he hasn't been scraping along back roads or sleeping rough while thoroughly battered. Nevermind that the irregular quality of sleep to be had in Kirkwall or her surrounding holdings turns any length of time spent quiet and still into courting a cat nap. The sway of the Walrus shifting against her anchor does little to diminish the effect.
Don't fall asleep like this, Flint had cautioned, and the recollection of it twitches a smile across John's face. He doesn't yet turn; when he shifts, it is only so that he might kiss Flint again, a slower, more lingering thing. Unhurried. Breaking to remark—
"It was clever to arrange for us to spend the night here. It makes the mattress in that tower seem a luxury."
Recall this hard, unwieldy bunk when they next complain about the lumps in the mattress.
"Mind your balance," follows, a word of caution as John begins the careful, laborious process of levering himself from one side to the other.
His grunt of assent may well answer both these points. The shape of his hand slips free, moving to catch at the weight-stiff chain and loitering there as John reorients himself in the narrow space. Only once he's nearly settled again does Flint lever himself to an elbow, hooking the edge of the blanket up into reach with some clever movement of foot and heel before he shifts closer—aligning himself very flush to the long line of John's back.
"You could do with a trim," is an easy remark, the punctuation to a hand gathering away the fistful of dark curls in an effort not to lay on them.
When he settles, it's with an arm drawn round him. With the close press of his thigh and the back of John's neck warm from the nearness of his own breath.
"Wycome," is prompting and lazy. "The city has a strong mercantile trade council. So long as we're in the city, there might be some deal to be brokered with the trading houses who have grown tired of being preyed on by Tevinter aligned pirates."
is something he can say against John's ear, and between idly kissing him there behind it.
Rarely does John sleep on his right side, where he is made aware of his leg and it's abrupt end. So settled, with Flint fit so closely in alongside him, John walls away the flicker of unsettled discomfort. Hooks his ankle over Flint's as his fingers find Flint's wrist, slide down to lace their hands loosely together.
The heat of Flint's mouth is good. Stalls the lazy rejoinder (Tell me when you've a set of shears prepared.) for a long moment, turning the proposition over in his mind.
"We might send some of the men ahead," John murmurs, thumb running over Flint's knuckles. There are few unbruised places along his torso to set a palm, but the minor twinge of pain elicited by any ensuing pressure is easily outweighed. "I'd like to know who's lost the most, before we sat down to make an propositions."
The murmuring hum he makes in reply is some kind of agreement. Sure. Simple reconnaissance. Or they might simply pick their target and sabotage them directly so as to force a break in a direction that suits them. Either, or.
"Yseult may have a man in Wycome already," he says after some moments. "I'll ask whether anything of merit has crossed her desk."
This, punctuated by the hook of his smallest finger across John's rather than pressing with the flat of his palm.
Laid as they are, drawn so close together, John is aware of how their breathing rises and falls in time. The way Flint's words become a nearly tangible thing, felt on the skin at the nape of his neck and bend of his shoulder.
"Invite her," is not necessarily a joke, despite the tenor of humor in it. "Perhaps if she brings Rivain and the four of us travel together we can avoid incident on the road."
Or in combination, the four of them might bring down an entire section of the Imperial army onto their heads. It is hard to say how their luck might shake out.
His snort is really more a close, exhale of humor across bare skin. Why exactly the concept of traveling with Yseult and Rivain strikes him as funny or miserable or some combination of the two, he couldn't say. Only that it does. He'd spent some number of weeks trudging through Free Marchers back country alongside the woman, yet the concept of being shut up inside a carriage with her between Darras and John seems somehow innately ominous. Someone would talk too much. Or too little. To say nothing of the catastrophe that might occur should some trouble find them.
But, sure. Why not.
The kiss he presses behind John's ear is warm and reflexive, halfway to simply settling into the space afforded him.
Land travel tends to attract trouble, when it's either of them doing it.
John weighs this against the shifting state of the Marches, how that might shift travel by sea, and perhaps require them to move by coach and horseback more than they have been thus far.
The second kiss eases away that angle of consideration. John's fingers turn in Flint's, coaxing his hand flat along the expanse of bruised ribs. Traces his fingertips along knuckles as he prompts in a murmur, "Remind me, what were we meant to be speaking of instead?"
An exhale of breath, not quite a laugh but colored with a kind of fond amusement.
No, Flint is not good company in the way John makes it his business to be. But it is not a lie when John replies, “Of course.”
His fingers tracing fine scarring at the back of Flint’s palm, encouraging his hand to lay flat against John’s skin.
There is a difference between good company in the way John fashions himself for the world and good company in what they are to each other, the pleasure of time spent quietly together behind a closed door. The former is likely more appreciated in a crowd of nobility frequenting a horse race, but the latter—
“I have, while delayed on the road, given some consideration to all the attributes we might recommend you by.”
His hand is amenable to being encouraged, settling flat where its offered.
"Go on."
That's warm at skin, not laughing now but certainly made of some warmer timbre. Yes, sometimes he's very lonely in this place. But not in this moment; nevermind the things waiting outside the cabin's door for them.
The slung bunk itself is narrow, precariously so. The ordeal of repositioning only moments ago prohibits John's first impulse to turn over again, so he might deliver his opinions more directly.
But he must content himself with the all-encompassing warmth of Flint draped across his back and his mouth at his neck and the obliging splay of fingers where John has arranged them. It is not nothing, even if it is not the whole of what John would have.
He has grown very attached to the study of Flint's face, the expressions that play across it so clearly. Delivering any measure of conversation to the side of the Walrus' cabin makes a man all the more aware of what he is missing.
"Exempting my appreciation of more tangible attributes," comes as John's fingers draw lightly over Flint's wrist, slide down again over the back of his hand, lightly over his knuckles and back again. "I would say first that I've always enjoyed your sense of humor, however ignored it may be otherwise."
By design or otherwise, Flint is not exactly known for being funny.
"Well," he says, the edge of the syllable at the shell of John's ear curling with the familiar tell tell tenor of having a crack prepared to make him regret saying so. "That's because you're a shit. I'm not sure it qualifies for other people."
But sure. Attractive and witty. Let's go with it for the time being.
"I cannot account for the poor taste of other people."
Except that John does. What else is his work in Hightown, long visits in parlors too opulent to admit him in any other capacity but as an oddity from the island off the coast with stories enough to pass the time?
But this moment is not about how they bend themselves into shapes most pleasing to those on the each respective shoreline.
"Listen to me," affection, colored by a laugh held at the back of his mouth, the shudder of reaction to the proximity of Flint's mouth. "If you are not content being only a man of fine humor, consider that there is some attraction in being a man of considerable intelligence."
Here, a more true thing split open: all that is fascinating and frustrating about this man can be traced back to this trait. What does John love more than someone as sharp as him, who sees the world through a different lens because of it? Who John must strive to keep up with, rather than outstrip at every turn?
That prompts a lower, more placated hum of acknowledgement. Yes, well. There is technically that. Though were he the type to demure over this point—
But he isn't, so he doesn't. Anyway, there is that warm slant to John's timbre bounced back at him by the cabin bulkhead; it would be petty to argue with that when this has all been a something of a joke to begin with.
"I could bring myself to settle for those two," he says, after some moment of faux consideration.
It's just as well, in a way, because all things John finds most attractive continue to spin off this simple fact: Flint's mind and all the ways in which it fires have had John hooked in one form or another since the earliest days of their acquaintance.
"Well, if you find yourself content..."
A trailing statement, quieting as John's fingers lace back through Flint's, draw them closer, up to the center of his chest. They are satisfactorily close, but the impulse for more is still there, rising lazily to the surface and indulged without any reason to abstain.
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Which perhaps they can now visit without being riddled with crossbow bolts. John's fingers pass over a raised scar, slide further along freckled skin as he continues speaking.
"I assume after the last I'll be obliged to confer with the other investors and the trainer to decide whether we'd like to arrange for further opportunities."
An inkling derived solely from the florid flattery tacked onto the end of the last letter.
"There's a chance they'll attempt to buy me out," is heavy with sly amusement. His percentage is small, and even without having met those holding the rest of the shares in this beast, John suspects his entry into the equation is unwelcome.
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"I doubt anyone expects you to make an appearance at either. Were you to surprise them by doing so—I suppose you might encourage them in whatever direction you prefer them to move in."
If he cares to keep investing in the animal, find a reliable second among the consortium. If he doesn't— well, it's easy to seem disreputable enough to make a small percentage worthwhile to buy even at an exorbitant multiplier.
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"And I can think of ways we might employ the profit," John continues. "Broadsides will be all well and good, but word of mouth might be better for carrying word of the Grand Enchanter."
Wycome first, perhaps. The Marches, and then southwards, as far as his coin might stretch. If he can expand his take, and the horse proves adept on the track—
John can make something of that, and maybe have some left to set aside.
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Is not something he says, content enough to lay quietly under the shape of wandering fingers and the feel just the barest edge of bristly mustache rough near to the corner of his mouth. It's too dark and they're too close to see anything by, by the meandering touch and this thoughtful tenor is informative all on its own. He doesn't need to see him to recognize him.
Meanwhile, Flint's hand remains quiet there at John's side—content to settle on the simple premise that he must have found a patch of real estate free of tender bruising. There's little need to go pursuing other points of contact at the risk of jabbing somewhere sensitive.
"Does your invitation allow for company?"
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An absence of instruction which may as well be permission, because John wants—
"Come with me."
There are a dozen flippant reasons why: how likely are they to be set upon by Crows, how likely is it Imperial soldiers set upon him on the road, how likely is it that the race may be disrupted by the same, and on and on and on.
They are good reasons. They run alongside the singular, foremost motivation: John has had his fill of traveling without Flint, for the moment.
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"All right," he says rather than offering them. "Though I know fuck all about horses, so you won't have much more out of me than a pretty face."
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But having secured the only traveling partner desired, John is content to let further considerations drop.
"All to my benefit," John murmurs. "As I'm inclined to keep the rest of you for myself."
There is no space at all between them. John's fingers settle back over Flint's jaw. Were they afforded any surplus of space, John may have set his hands differently. Recalls that first night in bed, how he had cinched his arms tight across Flint's chest. Here, as the slung-bed sways slightly under their weight and the gentle roll of the ship itself, that same impulse is distilled down to the splay of fingers and how they fit to Flint's neck to keep him there as their foreheads meet.
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The kiss, when it comes, is patient in light of all this delay. Not brief, but not insistent. Slow. Fingers shifting absently to curl after the bent angle of John's elbow.
"Is your front or your back less bruised?" Clumsy against the shape of John's mouth.
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"My back," is the product of some moment's passing consideration. If he is thinking of how he might have fallen from his horse, where blows might have fallen after that—
It is hard to know for certain without extricating both of them from the bed to check. Content with the kiss, with Flint's fingers at his arm, the brush of their mouths against each other as they spoke, John is unwilling to cede ground to do so.
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It's not so late that readying for sleep is an urgent thing; but he hasn't been scraping along back roads or sleeping rough while thoroughly battered. Nevermind that the irregular quality of sleep to be had in Kirkwall or her surrounding holdings turns any length of time spent quiet and still into courting a cat nap. The sway of the Walrus shifting against her anchor does little to diminish the effect.
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"It was clever to arrange for us to spend the night here. It makes the mattress in that tower seem a luxury."
Recall this hard, unwieldy bunk when they next complain about the lumps in the mattress.
"Mind your balance," follows, a word of caution as John begins the careful, laborious process of levering himself from one side to the other.
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"You could do with a trim," is an easy remark, the punctuation to a hand gathering away the fistful of dark curls in an effort not to lay on them.
When he settles, it's with an arm drawn round him. With the close press of his thigh and the back of John's neck warm from the nearness of his own breath.
"Wycome," is prompting and lazy. "The city has a strong mercantile trade council. So long as we're in the city, there might be some deal to be brokered with the trading houses who have grown tired of being preyed on by Tevinter aligned pirates."
is something he can say against John's ear, and between idly kissing him there behind it.
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The heat of Flint's mouth is good. Stalls the lazy rejoinder (Tell me when you've a set of shears prepared.) for a long moment, turning the proposition over in his mind.
"We might send some of the men ahead," John murmurs, thumb running over Flint's knuckles. There are few unbruised places along his torso to set a palm, but the minor twinge of pain elicited by any ensuing pressure is easily outweighed. "I'd like to know who's lost the most, before we sat down to make an propositions."
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"Yseult may have a man in Wycome already," he says after some moments. "I'll ask whether anything of merit has crossed her desk."
This, punctuated by the hook of his smallest finger across John's rather than pressing with the flat of his palm.
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"Invite her," is not necessarily a joke, despite the tenor of humor in it. "Perhaps if she brings Rivain and the four of us travel together we can avoid incident on the road."
Or in combination, the four of them might bring down an entire section of the Imperial army onto their heads. It is hard to say how their luck might shake out.
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But, sure. Why not.
The kiss he presses behind John's ear is warm and reflexive, halfway to simply settling into the space afforded him.
"We're not meant to be discussing strategy."
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John weighs this against the shifting state of the Marches, how that might shift travel by sea, and perhaps require them to move by coach and horseback more than they have been thus far.
The second kiss eases away that angle of consideration. John's fingers turn in Flint's, coaxing his hand flat along the expanse of bruised ribs. Traces his fingertips along knuckles as he prompts in a murmur, "Remind me, what were we meant to be speaking of instead?"
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"You were saying what good company I am," is its own particular sort of joke. No he isn't.
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No, Flint is not good company in the way John makes it his business to be. But it is not a lie when John replies, “Of course.”
His fingers tracing fine scarring at the back of Flint’s palm, encouraging his hand to lay flat against John’s skin.
There is a difference between good company in the way John fashions himself for the world and good company in what they are to each other, the pleasure of time spent quietly together behind a closed door. The former is likely more appreciated in a crowd of nobility frequenting a horse race, but the latter—
“I have, while delayed on the road, given some consideration to all the attributes we might recommend you by.”
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"Go on."
That's warm at skin, not laughing now but certainly made of some warmer timbre. Yes, sometimes he's very lonely in this place. But not in this moment; nevermind the things waiting outside the cabin's door for them.
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But he must content himself with the all-encompassing warmth of Flint draped across his back and his mouth at his neck and the obliging splay of fingers where John has arranged them. It is not nothing, even if it is not the whole of what John would have.
He has grown very attached to the study of Flint's face, the expressions that play across it so clearly. Delivering any measure of conversation to the side of the Walrus' cabin makes a man all the more aware of what he is missing.
"Exempting my appreciation of more tangible attributes," comes as John's fingers draw lightly over Flint's wrist, slide down again over the back of his hand, lightly over his knuckles and back again. "I would say first that I've always enjoyed your sense of humor, however ignored it may be otherwise."
By design or otherwise, Flint is not exactly known for being funny.
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But sure. Attractive and witty. Let's go with it for the time being.
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Except that John does. What else is his work in Hightown, long visits in parlors too opulent to admit him in any other capacity but as an oddity from the island off the coast with stories enough to pass the time?
But this moment is not about how they bend themselves into shapes most pleasing to those on the each respective shoreline.
"Listen to me," affection, colored by a laugh held at the back of his mouth, the shudder of reaction to the proximity of Flint's mouth. "If you are not content being only a man of fine humor, consider that there is some attraction in being a man of considerable intelligence."
Here, a more true thing split open: all that is fascinating and frustrating about this man can be traced back to this trait. What does John love more than someone as sharp as him, who sees the world through a different lens because of it? Who John must strive to keep up with, rather than outstrip at every turn?
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But he isn't, so he doesn't. Anyway, there is that warm slant to John's timbre bounced back at him by the cabin bulkhead; it would be petty to argue with that when this has all been a something of a joke to begin with.
"I could bring myself to settle for those two," he says, after some moment of faux consideration.
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It's just as well, in a way, because all things John finds most attractive continue to spin off this simple fact: Flint's mind and all the ways in which it fires have had John hooked in one form or another since the earliest days of their acquaintance.
"Well, if you find yourself content..."
A trailing statement, quieting as John's fingers lace back through Flint's, draw them closer, up to the center of his chest. They are satisfactorily close, but the impulse for more is still there, rising lazily to the surface and indulged without any reason to abstain.
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