katabasis | [psl] dos rowdy boys

That gets a rumbled sound out of Marcus, holding the book closed and glancing at its cover as if to remember what it is he's been reading.

"It isn't bad," he says, of what is probably a much beloved classic, some sharp little political drama not entirely steeped in over-moral sentiment. "Once you get into it." He may talk Flint into lending it to him, something he can thumb through on one of these longer shifts he's assigned himself to make up for being down a couple men, but for the moment—

Well, Flint is a tempting target. Slack-limbed and warm from sleep in a way that even a humid Kirkwall summer doesn't make less appealing (and it would be all over, if it was midwinter). The book is set on the other man's belly to look at himself on the way to Marcus sitting up. Flint will feel his inner knee caught in a gentle but assertive grip.

Seeing about the boots, first. Lessons learned.

Slowly—

His knee giving, hiking high to permit the unbuckling of the heavy leather gaiters and the undoing of boot laces. Meanwhile, Flint fetching the book from his middle in an effort to familiarize himself with the title. Its contents.

"Ah," he says. No, not bad. Once you get into it.

Heavy eyelids, heavy (pale) eyelashes. Clean shaven cheek, crisply edged even in this candle light. That this is what he'd wanted an hour, two, ago makes little difference. The sensation of it prickles against the skin, albeit in slow motion.

"I've some sympathy for Claudette."

Who is, all things being even, young and wants desperately for a solid dicking. Not that the author in question renders it in such sparse terms.

(It's fine. He can read between the lines.)

Marcus had slept well, when he'd stayed here some weeks back. The deep and satisfied sleep of someone who'd been travelling for hours and then having enjoyed a solid dicking himself and also had been a little too unconcerned with committing to a pre-dawn morning call. It is undecided, now, if he intends to stay the night again.

It would be nice, wouldn't it? And less conspicuous than stealthing out into the common foyer late in the evening, even if he spent some time putting himself to rights first. The thought sits idle at the very edges of his consciousness, more interested in tugging Flint's boot free, in tumbling it and gaiter off the edge of the mattress, a thump where the heavier heel strikes the floor.

"The heiress?" he queries. An ambivalent sound, as he settles that leg against him, a hand scuffing over raised knee. "I'll borrow it from you. Come back with an opinion."

Reaches for the next set of buckles, sitting comfortable on the mattress, settled in close. Unhurried, now that he's here.

(He should. Stay the night. It would be a wasteful not to make use of these hours available to them.)

—Is something he thinks, impulsively, but doesn't say. Instead, he supplies his second boot and is untroubled by the surrender.

"The heiress," he confirms. Marcus is pleasantly close. Pleasantly immediate. Pleasantly warm despite the heaviness of the air. Adds, though it isn't required, "You'll see."

The second gaiter is unbuckled. The second boot is stripped free. Afterwards, he is just a handful of buttons, already partially undone. In the close press of the candlelight, Flint considers him. And asks:

"Do you want me, or do you want to fuck me?" A plain question. It seems important to litigate this directly.

Edited 2023-06-04 06:18 (UTC)

Having liberated Flint of that second boot, he rests a hand lower down, just above the ankle. Parts of Flint he doesn't normally get to just idly touch, even when they're scrabbling for purchase at one another, and it's nice to run his palm up along the curve of muscle and bone before Flint has that question put at him so directly.

Inevitable, the stir of interest, a stupid pulse of physical response that doesn't offer Marcus any specific insight to himself.

"Well, I don't think there'll be any having me over a chair tonight," slyly, warmly, self-satisfiedly for having fucked Flint so properly he fell asleep in his paperwork—was not Marcus' pervasive interpretation for having Flint slide comfortably into sleep in his presence while it was happening, but makes for a convenient bit of a parry now.

And anyway, they're in bed, and he has no interest in leaving it. A slight reconfiguration of position, only holding off for a reply as he gets a steadying hand on a thigh.

As far as counter moves go, it's a deft verbal flourish. Serves to thin that straightforward sensibility made thick from only recently having shed the heavy mantle of sleep, and pulls at the corner of his mouth behind red whiskers. To Marcus' point, there had been some specific reference to the 'next time,' and while it might be perfectly acceptable to ease that specificity and understand it as little more than the kind of rhetoric that comes from an unrelieved cock and fingers pressing into him, there is something to be said about the power of a guarantee. Marcus Rowntree can be difficult man to catch wrong footed, and he can imagine no better way to ensure that he be restless when next he attends to that office.

—Are muddled, on the margin of sleep thoughts which occur to him in flecks and pieces as his thigh shifts gently into the firm curve of Marcus' palm.

"No," he admits, though it seems liable to inspire more smug satisfaction in the man. "That does seem unlikely."

It may, re the smug satisfaction. There is a subtle broadening of that starting smile in Marcus, a glint of tooth and a more assertive sliding up of hand on thigh that could all read as such. But also something of an answer, a mirrored thing read from likewise subtle expression in Flint.

Moves up, the mattress dipping with a load-bearing hand, his other coming to settle high up on ribcage. If that banter on the table had served to sear some desire in Marcus, liable to twinge at him until he sees a delivery on promises made, he is at least for now comfortable setting it aside. Replaced with a different kind of restlessness he is working to keep in check.

He would like to imagine the amount of dog-earring on those reports means it was mutual.

"I would fuck you again," he says. Where it's more comfortable, he doesn't say. Where Flint doesn't have to compress it all down into harsh hissed curses, conscious of the bolted door, the hour. And the luxury and greediness of a thing had twice, the possibility of it, shaping the way he'd occasionally broken his focus off the page while letting Flint sleep.

He'd settled his gaze on Flint's mouth since that small press of a smile, and accordingly drags his focus back up to his eyes. "Would that be excessive?"

The casually opening angle of his thigh, knee still partially bent in service of having his boot pulled free and easily swayed a few degrees further open, is amenable to the touching. Unhurried, but not unresponsive. Something low in his belly twinging pleasantly from the implication of those hands on him, or from the intent behind them, or maybe from that rare glint of teeth.

(Or, even, something lower and secretly more self satisfied—the innate pleasure of being wanted; that Marcus should be hungry enough for being inside him to pursue it a second time in as many hours.)

The slant of Flint's mouth widens by a similar degree in keeping with the turn of his knee, a flicker of amusement that isn't entirely unconscious of having found these designs flattering. An upward tilt of the chin, eyelids heavy. Whatever dregs of sleep might have been clinging at the edges of him rapidly evaporated.

"Little bit, yeah," has a tenor of a laugh in its shape, and in the spark in the eye from the shadow of pale eyelashes. It's not an argument against.

The sound out of Marcus echoes this agreeably, warm and quiet and breathy, sighed out of him. Sinks some ways down, as if taking that chin tilt upwards as a sign or a cue, or maybe not, maybe it's just what he wishes to do in the moment, coaxing Flint into a kiss where he lays on the bed. It's gentle without being all the way chaste, and therefore coaxing.

The shape of his hand presses against that opened thigh, likewise coaxing in the way it settles up close enough along the in-seam that there's no mistaking its intent, but not quite close enough despite the suggestive way Marcus rubs against the fabric with his thumb in an idle arc.

There is, also, the memory of hands on him while Flint had him from behind, and there is appeal there too—not just whose cock goes where, but that feeling and grasping, the slippery transitions of control and guidance and assurance. His hand squeezes, gently, some small rough sound pressed between a kiss that deepens slightly.

Maybe the tilted chin was an invitation, the expression of some coaxing impulse of his own not unlike the easy angle of his hip and thigh designed to encourage the play of Marcus' hand. Or maybe the kiss is just agreeable. He answers with some amiable softness, a play at the kind of tenderness that comes out of familiarity. In spite of the interesting lay of thumb at his inseam, the deepening quality of the kiss, and even that low sound he readily takes into his mouth and swallows—

It's difficult to feel like he ought to be in a hurry about it. Instead, his hand rises to catch under the shape of Marcus' jaw, fingers bent warm and about at the column of his neck. Quietly wrapping there, thumb a providing a gentle pressure against the bristle of stubble and the soft skin just shy of Marcus' ear. Incentivizing him to stay here in this narrow, warm space, and to kiss him a little more in that slow, unslackening way.

The noise Flint makes when the kiss breaks is a soft scuff of an exhale, comfortable and warm. For Marcus tastes appealingly bitter, tinge of tobacco and rum mingling on his breath.

"I don't want it rough," he says.

There's some unravelling occurring, settling in, against and over. A line of contact between their bodies, a nudging in of Marcus' knee under Flint's raised one. Caught, but not compelled to do more than what they're already doing, these slow and gentle tasting kisses. Rum, there, sharp on the tip of Flint's tongue, indistinguishable from when they might share a nip of whiskey or a helping of ale—

But characteristic nonetheless, as is the quiet, rough sound from Flint as the kiss breaks. This close, it's the soft push of breath from Marcus that denotes some amusement. Amusement for the callback, anyway, rather than the request itself.

No, the request itself is quick to get its claws in Marcus, a not-unpleasant tangle of wanting something in a rush that demands to be enjoyed liesurely. The hand at Flint's thigh eases upwards, the curve of his palm skimming over up towards that juncture, the press of it more exploratory and coaxing than anything else. Translates as agreement just as well as the affirmative 'mm' that comes with a pressing, resumed kiss.

He also, apparently, doesn't want it rough. And it feels like permission granted for the plays at tenderness they manage to sneak into the margins of this thing they do.

This slow, deliberate exploration is possibly a strange thing to want given how readily they've transitioned from not touching one another, lying a foot apart, to touching and kissing and feeling. The willingness suggests a kind of hunger eager to be satiated that should be at odds with this leisurely shape they make together. But maybe just the touching and nearness does something to satisfy. Certainly that low sound of agreement that Marcus makes does, hooking on and pulling pleasantly at the ribs—a more felt pulse of want inspired by it than by the hand wandering higher between his legs.

(But also, that too.)

It's good, this slowly bending shape. Feels at once lightly permissive and exceedingly close, like this is a thing that might just as easily be rolled over into with even less prearrangement. They like touching each other, they've agreed. And what is this if not that: slow, pressing kisses and the gentle sound of thickening breathing; his spare hand shifting up to find and lazily explore up under the hem of Marcus' shirt.

There's no real sense of rhythm in it, as easy to kiss him gently as it is to part his lips and invite him deeper with tongue and the guiding press of a thumb at the angle of Marcus' jaw. Then to undo that and content himself with shallower kisses and idle scuffs of contact, the scrape of stubble and the specter of nearby weight.

When his hand slips back out from Marcus' hem, it's not aborted impulse but rather so Flint can use both hands to unpick the cord keeping his hair while continuing to kiss him. Can, once freed, tidy the tie into a neat coil and reach between them in order to slip it faithfully inside Marcus' pocket.

A subtle shift down the line of his body indicates just that little bit of restlessness and pleasure both for Flint's hand slipping up under the loose fall of shirt hem. In the tip of his head to accept that deeper kiss, bowing under the subtle press of thumb at his jaw. Then both touches retreat, only for arms to curl around him.

Marcus responds with a slight adjustment, where he is laying beside Flint and leaning against him, now he shifts in just that little bit closer, a leg negotiating its way over one of Flint's, but still keeping most of his weight on the bed. Easier to go about touching each other when he isn't already bearing down completely.

The minor relief of his hair being undone is pleasant, and the feeling of Flint securing the tie—also pleasant, but less a physical prickle of it, something a little tender and familiar beneath the ribcage. A subtle smile pressed into the shallow kisses, followed by a slightly more insistent one.

His hand moves. Relocates, by a few inches. The loosening of waistband, where he undoes the one button keeping Flint's trousers closed.

A minor twinge of anticipation curling low in the belly replies Some gentle scrape of teeth, the most mild catch and release of Marcus' lower lip emphasizes it as Flint's arm settles about Marcus' shoulders. Fingers lazy at some seaming on the back of his shirt, and his spare hand returns to roving—from trouser pocket to hip, to previously disturbed shirt hem which he draws up (as permitted by the lay of weight and the interference of the shirt being partially pinned) rather than slide under.

That this whetting of appetite hasn't yet quite translated into motivating his cock to rouse is unsurprising, he decides. It will be a matter of coaxing and encouragement, and in the interim he's perfectly content to touch him, and to be touched, and to trade these uneven kisses. He will answer to Marcus' hand.

Then, a not quite tenor shift. A low cautionary rumble against Marcus' mouth that becomes: "I've just realized we've made a mistake."

At the sense of his shirt being pulled up, Marcus shifts around a little to help it along, letting it slide free between them in stops and starts. Doesn't go about getting rid of it, though, content enough for that amount of skin to be exposed to the warm room, to the play of Flint's hand. Preferring to stay settled and kissing as they are, at least for now.

The subtle curl of his leg over Flint's, a gentle and idle and ultimately pointless kind of capturing that nevertheless pleases him to do, ankle hooked against calf. His hand, folding back fabric to dip fingers past it between the two layers. Just because they've set a slower tempo doesn't mean their handling need be entirely chaste. The gentle way he closes his hand over Flint's clothed cock certainly is not, but doesn't expect more than to just hold, familiar and a little possessive for it.

This, just after or during Flint announces this thing, Marcus lifting his head enough to manage a blurry amount of eye contact down the end of his nose. "Mm?"

He has to turn his face to look at him rather than simply some patch of Marcus' cheek, a little better. Chin to chest, and between the two of them they might manage a rough approximation of study even in this pressed close arrangement.

"Unless you also thought to fetch in the oil pot while cleaning up my mess," Flint explains even while his hands wander—playing up Marcus' ribs, calloused palm painting a warm dragging stripe; his third and fourth finger idly insinuating into the warm space between Marcus' shirt collar and neck to scrape his fingernails softly at just barely hidden skin.

(This is, actually, excessive. Wildly indulgent. Greedy beyond the point of what might be excused as impulse. The next time they see one another, they really will have to rough. Otherwise, more even than that heavy table serving as a casual reminder to being had over it, he will go to bed and think of lying here under the hook of Marcus' ankle and the pretense of his weight. The hand about his cock. This sense of looking at each other and being too close to parse anything more than a pale blue eye and some fragment of the scar on Marcus' cheek. The line of his brow, and his mouth more felt than seen.)

The quiet, warm sound he makes doesn't bode well for how constructively Marcus spent his time. Indeed, Flint's mess has merely been relocated than tidied anyway.

(That might work. There's a world where Marcus asks for it rough when he has no faith that the other person will have inclination to be tender to him after, but part of him thinks Flint will. That whatever satisfyingly hard treatment he encourages out of Flint will herald in gentler handling, long kisses and warm bed, and if you were to hold a crossbow to him in an attempt to make him admit that this other unspoken thing ghosted his banter, it might be a near thing.)

"You should keep some by the bed," he suggests, head raised that bit more, fingers idly fondling in much the same way as Flint's hands do against his neck and back. "That would make everything more convenient."

Does not offer to fetch it in. Yet. Flint was right to call it a mistake, when the idea of leaving this little tangle is distinctly unappealing. It might vanish, by the time he comes back.

A low murmuring noise thickens into, "Apparently," without considerable evidence of having done an abundance of (over-)examination of the concept in that split second before it'd come humming up and out of him.

It's possible Marcus is right. Maybe he should keep some by the bed. Maybe they should stop looting lantern jars for it. Maybe this lazy agreement is partially motivated by the hand feeling him up, or maybe it's due to warm bed and how, with very little force applied to the back of Marcus' neck, he can be encouraged back in range to receive a pressing, unhurried kiss. And that, after, he's able to draw back again, relatively secure in the certainly that this meager allotment of space won't deter the possibility of extorting other kisses out of him in the future.

"You should go find it," he tells him, arm loosely circled and failing to unwind in a way that might be sufficiently motivating on its own. "Otherwise I might be tempted to use my mouth on you, and we'll be trapped here without."

"Mm?"

Is amused, querying, Marcus not moving in that direction even a little. If Flint had hoped to chase him out of the room (the unmoving drape of his arm is not convincing), then he's chosen a poor motivator. The kiss Marcus reinitiates is more particular, deeper and insistent, kicked up a notch from the lazy exchanges they were enjoying before. Considering the heat and welcome of that mouth.

Mellows out after a few moments, lingers. "I think I should go get it," he murmurs, "and then you can use your mouth on me anyway. I've distinct memory've how hard that gets you."

To say nothing of himself, but isn't that a given.

His exhale, heavy from the demand of that kiss, borders on a laugh. And in the narrow too close space between them, the smile that finds Flint's face is sharper and more crooked than the half dozen that have come before it. A whiskery wolf's grin, clear self-satisfaction pretending poorly at being self-deprecation.

"Cocksucker isn't ordinarily meant as flattery, Rowntree."

It still isn't regular enough for Marcus to hear his first name in Flint's mouth for him to have gotten used to it, for it not to tug at him in a way that doesn't have everything to do with the tone of voice that might be carrying it. The reappearance of his last, here, still manages to spark something off the edges, in this context, the statement preceding it.

A sting to it, but not bad; like a bite, or an errant fingernail digging somewhere tender.

"I think I flatter you plenty," a nipping counter, and with press of his hip that emphasises his own burgeoning arousal happening in the tight space between them. Having waited in a room heavy in silence, soft breathing, and anticipation, he's a little quicker off the mark, blood thickening out from light hands pulling at his shirt, the inviting warmth of Flint's mouth.

Flint does laugh then, an actual low canting huff of it rolling warm near Marcus' cheek. It's a warm sound, brief but not abbreviated or checked.

Maker, what a prick he is.

"Go on then," he says, slipping fingers from under shirt collars and allowing his arm to slacken to the point that shrugging him off is distinctly unchallenging in all aspects save for the one in which it requires a baseline willingness to extract oneself despite the warmth of the bed and their mutual nearness and Marcus' hand insinuated between his trousers and his drawers.

"When you come back, I'll give you my mouth."

That laugh is pleasant to hear, both for its tone and nearness and for having evoked it and done so purposefully, and maybe eventually he will lose that inner reflex to be suspicious of it, even then. An instinct that well predates Flint and whatever talent he has for hidden barbs. It's just a twinge, one that sharpens Marcus' hazy focus on Flint's face to read what can be read—

Lets out a breath, draws his hand out of Flint's pants, leans into to scrape a kiss over his mouth, brisk but without bite. Reverses, backs up into a kneel, catching the fall of his own shirt hem and instead pulling it off and over. Tosses it at Flint, aiming for the chest, and climbs out of bed.

Out and into the office, which is a strange place to find himself shirtless and alone, even now. The changed flow of blood, his arousal feeling that touch bit heavier than it did before despite the absence of warm hands. Flint might detect the pause of bare feet on floor before they start again, fading, as Marcus fetches the oil a second time.

Laid out on the heavy work table, the first iteration of this errand had been closely observed. Hungry and impatient, too keen to actually mark anything but the distance. Here though, he makes himself useful (nevermind the scrape of his attention after the baring of skin, fleeting from Marcus' collar bone to waist; from shoulder to the small of his back as he turns). The discarded shirt is plucked off himself and tossed nearer to the foot of the bed. He strips free of his socks and jettisons those farther.

When Marcus returns, he will find Flint sat up and arranging the pillows against the headboard from where they've inevitably sagged with one hand, and undoing the second of the buttons on the trouser cuff below his knee. Something easy and lacking theatrics in the drawn up angle of his knee and this occupation of setting the bed to rights before they go about undoing it together.

His attention rising to catch Marcus on the threshold— "Draw that shut, would you," he asks of the door, not ignoring the flex of heat that sparks through him at the sight of the oil pot in Marcus' possession (and Marcus, naked to the waist, the shape of his cock not invisible). Merely working through it.

The button undone. He makes to unroll his shirtsleeves.

The door closes behind Marcus, a brief pause on his way in. Considers the sight of Flint there on the bed—maybe less obvious for its appeal than naked skin, but compelling nonetheless for its ordinariness. For the way he has found he likes watching Flint simply do things, for watching his hands moving sure over riding tack or paperwork or, here, the sleeve of his shirt. No need to examine that any further.

He roams in towards Flint's side to set the pitcher down on the table there, moving a few things to make room for it.

Once done— "Flint."

The mattress bowing a little under a knee as Marcus makes to get onto it, partially, sitting with one foot still on the floor. His expression doesn't give too much away, save that maybe in the spare few seconds of crossing a room, there's been room for critical thinking. An early, preemptive scanning of his features in the slow shift of light between what remains in the sky outside and the candles.

"You would tell me," he says, "if I were being selfish with you. Too much," a qualifier. Maybe a little selfishness is desired. A little excess.

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