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."
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.
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.
He is on to the second sleeve, wine dark cuff hanging loose about a freckled wrist, but pauses—first, faintly, to answer the sound of that name and Marcus' encroaching across the edge of the bed with the point of his attention, gaze skipping rapidly from hip to shoulder to eye; and then stopping completely for what follows it.
Some easy, slack line in his features,invisible a moment ago, makes itself known by how it winds halfway narrowed. A quiet, startled verge-of-bristling. Unprepared for this slant of conversation and unready to defend against the fine tightening of his face over it. Balking. Just a little. Though an instant later, he has resumed unrolling the second sleeve and speaks as if no such thing had ever crossed his face—
"I don't imagine you're seriously concerned that I might be appeasing you just to keep you in my bed."
He draws the shirt' hem up and over his head, dispensing promptly with the sleeves' tangle and setting the garment aside.
Marcus' regard can also skew a little wolfish, a certain sort of opaque intensity in general, and a lack of flinch or waver in specific where he absorbs that sign of near-bristle, of slight-balking. Of having put Flint on his backfoot in a way that hedges outside of the way he normally would like to. Flickers once he gets an answer, testing the dismissiveness in it, but also the note it strikes, the truth of it.
"No," quietly agreeable, he isn't concerned with that. No, the concern is the opposite thing, that Flint would decide on something being the last time it happens; if after, it all felt like too much.
But something in Flint's answer must be enough, for the moment, because Marcus doesn't press the point. Doesn't wish to, lest it become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, judging by the way Flint's face had changed, and he does want to fuck him again besides. He lets his gaze drop from his eyes to angle of bone and muscle now exposed by discarded shirt, some willful refocusing. Scars, freckles, minor touches of ink, familiar terrain.
Draws his foot off the ground, a hand to his own waistband.
Good, he doesn't say, as it would sound too much like a nip of teeth if he did. Because he is aware, distantly, of some discomforted thing pinching at his side over the whole point. And from somewhere low but not so far away at all, a voice in his head is opening its mouth to speak and say—
Something irrelevant to the trappings of the hour. The warm linens and shed clothes, and the creak of the bed frame and Marcus shifts his weight fully back into it. If there is a sudden itch burying itself at the back of Flint's neck, then he is relatively certain it can be trusted to fade with the correct encouragement.
Drawer laces are undone with a turn of the hand. Despite the tingling impulse to leave these things where they are (at least until his cock has gone hard), he leans back against the headboard then. Hooks thumbs at the fully undone waist of both trousers and undergarments, and lifts his hip to shed those too.
(A moment ago, he might have been unselfconscious of the starkness of his own nudity. But now he is very aware of the bed clothes on his skin, and the arrangement of pillows, and something of the vulnerability in making himself so though Marcus hadn't asked and it's what he'd himself wanted.)
Low enough there among the pillows and blankets, he doesn't bother to sit back up again. Instead, Flint moves a hand to reach after Marcus' knee, making to coax him nearer.
Possibly as a result of his own question (or, rather, his question veiled as assertion, in pursuit of agreement, a fine difference), Marcus kneels out of his clothing in time to Flint stripping out of his final layer. Relieved it get it off of him finally, pants and drawers drawn together and pushed off the edge of the bed. Hard enough to show, arousal coming about in a slow and patient way that is nevertheless comparatively eager for having only been kissed, his shirt rucked up, a slight physical instinct for the sensation of another person letting down his hair. Small things that burn beneath his skin regardless.
And Flint, reaching for him. Determined to re-enter that gentle, warm space they'd cultivated, Marcus wanders a hand out to his chest as he moves in closer.
Whatever little twist of tension that had had him opening his mouth and asking something is still there, but also not unfamiliar. A more acute and conscious version of past twinges he's worked past before, is fairly confident he can be made to forget it again. Still, something a little lingering and searching in his expression as he sinks in nearer, but on his way to a kiss.
That look playing in the shadows of Marcus' face seems starkly laid, snagging at Flint's attention because some instinct has come sharply round to be on the lookout for it. Still, he kisses lift his chin slightly to meet Marcus' trajectory. Reaches after him with his spare hand as well, and half submits to and half draws him into that kiss he'd come leaning in after.
He kisses him briefly, not without warmth though he's very aware of the press of lips and the scuff of his own whiskers. Warm skin under hands and how plainly naked they both are. Give it a moment, he thinks, and the prickling nerve endings sense of this will slant reliably low and thick.
So "I'm sorry," is an abrupt interruption any way it's cut.
Flint draws back (down), some flex of the wrist transfiguring reaching into bracing so as to forbid Marcus from following should be be urged to. Finding Marcus' eye in the narrow space, and painfully aware of having his own wits being annoyingly about him. Probably they both would find a leaking cock and a little irrationality more preferable than the grinding little point hooked in the back of his attention, both dragging its heels and refusing to be shaken.
If spoken word wasn't enough, the adjustment of Flint's hand is more than. Marcus doesn't reel back or anything, but does stop, does rise up a little to lend Flint room.
His hand rests laxly high on Flint's chest, half-laying up on his other elbow. Conscious, in a sudden rush, of the arrangement of their bodies, about as sensitive to it as he'd been that first time when Flint had laid his his finger above blood-soaked bandaging, at least physiologically. The nearness of his semi-hard cock to warm skin, the nudge of his knee to leg, and the stillness of his hand near collarbone.
Brightly clear, the quick study he makes again of Flint's expression, even while he says, "It is," quietly, into this narrow space. A hesitation, deciding there's some other question there remaining, and offers, "And I want it to be what you want."
This. Whether he means the activities themselves or something else, the broader shape of the thing, the unravelling of its continuation. Hopefully Flint responds swiftly, before that cracks open any further.
Instead, a narrowing angle in his face draws closer still. Something tender (in the bruising sense), finding itself the subject of active examination, instinctively wants for shielding and Marcus' hand across his chest is warm, and it seems heavier than it is.
For all the foolishness involved in climbing back staircases to rented rooms, and dalliances in darkened corridors, and the generally intentional irresponsibility, he has understood this to quietly be a carefully managed thing. Predicated on what is meant to be simple and honest and just a little strict, objectively more dangerous to Marcus than it is anything else whether the man cares to acknowledge it or not.
(But maybe he is attempting to appease him to keep him in his bed; ostensibly wanting a thing halfway while glutting himself. The equivalent of offering to fuck Marcus and his cock yet so sluggish that it's a good thing he'd not taken him up on it. It's possible something humiliating lurks here, waiting for him to raise his arm far enough for it to come in under and bite into him.)
—So, no. If he has a reply, it's not immediately produced.
Regret is setting in, more like rust than frost, somewhere beneath the ribcage. For saying anything or the way he said it or when it was said and in relation to other things being said. There are times when Marcus would greatly like to be a little less stupid than he is conscious of being and now is one of them, as Flint is quiet and shuttering. They could just be kissing instead and it'd be good.
Rare to find a silence that he actively wants to fill, also, and that he doesn't is more of a comment on being uncertain what to supply it with than an instinct for reticence. A restless, shallow breath leaves him, gaze dipping down to the lay of his hand on Flint's chest.
Fingers flexing, stretching, the slight tickle of blunt nails.
"I don't tend to want things by halves," finally. "I think we're alike in that way." He looks back towards him, where blue-green eyes with their mingled hues have muddied some in the lower light. "I wanted to make certain."
He would like to fuck him again, would like Flint's mouth on him; the thought is enough to make his cock twitch. And he would also like coax Flint along as far as he'd like, as gentle and slow as they were a moment ago and to whatever conclusion arises naturally, and he would also like to lay here and read that stupid book if it was more fitting while his restlessness gave up on itself.
But he asks, "What is it you want?" without being sure exactly what it is they're speaking to, but also: he hadn't asked.
Something inexplicable bristles in him like hackles at the back of a dog's neck. An irrational frustration—how has he been unclear, exactly—which requires a hard check before it spills free of him. He blinks it back. Mentally fits a lid in tight over top of it, and instead studies Marcus down the length of his nose from where he has his chin resting against his chest. Pale eye wrought a different color by candlelight, that fleeting sense of restlessness and unease showing somewhere in it.
Meanwhile, his own hands have gone quiet though by no means have they withdrawn.
"If I didn't want you," he says at once. "I wouldn't have brought you up here, much less into this room. And I certainly wouldn't have you touching me in that one."
True.
But also, bluntly: "I said you would grow tired of me."
More or less. No, he doesn't expect Marcus will be satisfied with pieces of things.
Odd, the competing, prickling sensations inspired by this first thing. First, the sweep of warmth for something spoken out loud, and done so more generally than, say, how Flint might want his cock or his hands, a hard surface and a firm pounding, even though he had every intention to peel certain things out of context (It's all I've thought of) and admire them later. That, and a flush of something he might describe as guilt, for his own uncertainty, after they've made it this far, after what Flint had given him today.
And also, maybe, his own minor hackle. Is it not, after all, ordinary, to want certainty? After navigating invisible boundaries, no matter how well they tend to give when pushed. After subsisting off the sound of his name and a heavy breath in place of I want you too.
These competing near-tactile feelings don't have a chance to resolve before Flint says this next thing, and they scatter.
"No," Marcus says, after a beat. "I'm not."
Flint's hands haven't left him. If they had, he might not slide his hand up, palm warm up at the bend of Flint's neck. "I haven't. Not nearly."
Stupid—to find that it wrenches something in him. That there should be something that blooms warm in his chest, and that it should be painfully off center enough to ache there against his ribs. Here is a warm hand, and Marcus made at least halfway eager to fuck him, and despite them a stinging bite of something like disappointment. That grating sense of missing a thing that's presently perfectly within reach—under his hands, even.
That irritation turns to nip inward, some flex of pain in him and in his face for it. A briefly lowering brow and tightening mouth. The momentary impulse to set his jaw against it, and a more troubling reluctance to set his fingers about the thing and simply pry it free.
"Not today," Flint says, the even scrape of it humming under the shape of Marcus' palm. He hasn't looked away from him and there is something plain in his tenor as if what he's saying is just well reasoned fact and not a flinch. "But it will happen. It already is happening. Tell me I'm wrong, but this very conversation would seem to be evidence of some dissatisfaction."
The hand at Flint's throat doesn't remove itself, but does sort of open up, turn at the wrist, a gesture that's at a loss before it resettles.
But with a lack of a quick verbal reply, there's no choice but to consider it. Whether that in the asking Flint to caution him against some instinct in him, it's acted as a veil instead, obscuring but not hiding. Marcus' intent focus lowers, a furl of protest at his brow as he tries to match the things Flint is saying to the fretful tangle occurring beneath the surface.
(He should sit up. They should be dressed. He's not sure it helps his case to be like this, holding onto Flint like driftwood—)
"I know there are boundaries," finally, hand gentle where it lays. Not negligent or forgotten, either, palm shaped to the column of throat, fingertips set where hair textures scalp behind the ear. Not moving, just warm. "In theory, there are. It's a little like moving through darkness, finding them, or finding where they aren't. I asked what I asked because I don't want to give you cause to bring them in closer."
Back to Flint's eye, instead of where his gaze had wandered lower. "I'm trying to not be too reckless with you. It's all reckless enough as it is."
Dissatisfaction. It feels like an inverted way of naming it, that ache, but not wrong for it.
Hard to say in what direction the twinge of frustration that rises in him moves. Just that it is there, oily on the surface of everything else. Something to be accounted for as he submits to the hand curved close about his neck, its gentle pressure of fingers, and to Marcus' examination and the arrangement of his weight as it lays not really over but not really beside him either. As he weighs up his own reply, determined to be even handed.
This rationale Marcus has provided is neither particularly unfair or unhonest, however much it might rankle at a vulnerable piece of him prone to bristling. There is a difference between this and indictment, even if it feels very much like the latter. And much as he might bite back, sink his teeth in over it— then where would they be? Not on their way to fucking again tonight, at the very least.
So: checking himself. Fingers pressing like a reflex where his hands remain laid on Marcus' bare skin.
"My intention isn't to be difficult," he says in that same direct way. "But we are being careless." Reckless. Fucking behind the thin barrier of a bolted door and kissing slow and soft and unhurried here in this bed are, in some sense, on equal footing in that respect.
"I don't know that any close examination can practically be done without having the extent of that carelessness brought into the light alongside the rest of it."
Once, they shared a bed and pointed out each others scars and asked for the story that produced them. Since, there hasn't been complete reticence around the terrain underneath the skin, but there's a lot to be desired. The way Marcus looks at Flint now in that close space seems to search for it, would like to get fingernails beneath the seam of that direct and factual tone of voice and crack it open.
But the severity of it ebbs. The arm of the hand holding Flint's throat unfolds, some, a more generous splay of weight across Flint's chest.
"Alright," he says. Alright, forget examination. "Then let me," and another stop, before some internal shiver of hackles discards the notion of needing permission. "I'll keep coming back." His thumb swoops down the edge of Flint's jaw. "And looking for you across alehouses and stealing into your tent and oversleeping here in the morning. I'll wonder if a summons is to file a late report or because you want me to touch you and try for the latter as long as the door's locked."
All murmured rather seriously, but there is some fleck of amusement, or trying to evoke the same. "Until you tell me to stop in no uncertain terms, and even then, you might need to do it twice." His fingers press. "Agreed?"
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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?"
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"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.)
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(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.
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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."
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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.
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"Cocksucker isn't ordinarily meant as flattery, Rowntree."
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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.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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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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Some easy, slack line in his features,invisible a moment ago, makes itself known by how it winds halfway narrowed. A quiet, startled verge-of-bristling. Unprepared for this slant of conversation and unready to defend against the fine tightening of his face over it. Balking. Just a little. Though an instant later, he has resumed unrolling the second sleeve and speaks as if no such thing had ever crossed his face—
"I don't imagine you're seriously concerned that I might be appeasing you just to keep you in my bed."
He draws the shirt' hem up and over his head, dispensing promptly with the sleeves' tangle and setting the garment aside.
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"No," quietly agreeable, he isn't concerned with that. No, the concern is the opposite thing, that Flint would decide on something being the last time it happens; if after, it all felt like too much.
But something in Flint's answer must be enough, for the moment, because Marcus doesn't press the point. Doesn't wish to, lest it become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, judging by the way Flint's face had changed, and he does want to fuck him again besides. He lets his gaze drop from his eyes to angle of bone and muscle now exposed by discarded shirt, some willful refocusing. Scars, freckles, minor touches of ink, familiar terrain.
Draws his foot off the ground, a hand to his own waistband.
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Something irrelevant to the trappings of the hour. The warm linens and shed clothes, and the creak of the bed frame and Marcus shifts his weight fully back into it. If there is a sudden itch burying itself at the back of Flint's neck, then he is relatively certain it can be trusted to fade with the correct encouragement.
Drawer laces are undone with a turn of the hand. Despite the tingling impulse to leave these things where they are (at least until his cock has gone hard), he leans back against the headboard then. Hooks thumbs at the fully undone waist of both trousers and undergarments, and lifts his hip to shed those too.
(A moment ago, he might have been unselfconscious of the starkness of his own nudity. But now he is very aware of the bed clothes on his skin, and the arrangement of pillows, and something of the vulnerability in making himself so though Marcus hadn't asked and it's what he'd himself wanted.)
Low enough there among the pillows and blankets, he doesn't bother to sit back up again. Instead, Flint moves a hand to reach after Marcus' knee, making to coax him nearer.
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And Flint, reaching for him. Determined to re-enter that gentle, warm space they'd cultivated, Marcus wanders a hand out to his chest as he moves in closer.
Whatever little twist of tension that had had him opening his mouth and asking something is still there, but also not unfamiliar. A more acute and conscious version of past twinges he's worked past before, is fairly confident he can be made to forget it again. Still, something a little lingering and searching in his expression as he sinks in nearer, but on his way to a kiss.
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He kisses him briefly, not without warmth though he's very aware of the press of lips and the scuff of his own whiskers. Warm skin under hands and how plainly naked they both are. Give it a moment, he thinks, and the prickling nerve endings sense of this will slant reliably low and thick.
So "I'm sorry," is an abrupt interruption any way it's cut.
Flint draws back (down), some flex of the wrist transfiguring reaching into bracing so as to forbid Marcus from following should be be urged to. Finding Marcus' eye in the narrow space, and painfully aware of having his own wits being annoyingly about him. Probably they both would find a leaking cock and a little irrationality more preferable than the grinding little point hooked in the back of his attention, both dragging its heels and refusing to be shaken.
"Is this not what you want?"
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His hand rests laxly high on Flint's chest, half-laying up on his other elbow. Conscious, in a sudden rush, of the arrangement of their bodies, about as sensitive to it as he'd been that first time when Flint had laid his his finger above blood-soaked bandaging, at least physiologically. The nearness of his semi-hard cock to warm skin, the nudge of his knee to leg, and the stillness of his hand near collarbone.
Brightly clear, the quick study he makes again of Flint's expression, even while he says, "It is," quietly, into this narrow space. A hesitation, deciding there's some other question there remaining, and offers, "And I want it to be what you want."
This. Whether he means the activities themselves or something else, the broader shape of the thing, the unravelling of its continuation. Hopefully Flint responds swiftly, before that cracks open any further.
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For all the foolishness involved in climbing back staircases to rented rooms, and dalliances in darkened corridors, and the generally intentional irresponsibility, he has understood this to quietly be a carefully managed thing. Predicated on what is meant to be simple and honest and just a little strict, objectively more dangerous to Marcus than it is anything else whether the man cares to acknowledge it or not.
(But maybe he is attempting to appease him to keep him in his bed; ostensibly wanting a thing halfway while glutting himself. The equivalent of offering to fuck Marcus and his cock yet so sluggish that it's a good thing he'd not taken him up on it. It's possible something humiliating lurks here, waiting for him to raise his arm far enough for it to come in under and bite into him.)
—So, no. If he has a reply, it's not immediately produced.
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Rare to find a silence that he actively wants to fill, also, and that he doesn't is more of a comment on being uncertain what to supply it with than an instinct for reticence. A restless, shallow breath leaves him, gaze dipping down to the lay of his hand on Flint's chest.
Fingers flexing, stretching, the slight tickle of blunt nails.
"I don't tend to want things by halves," finally. "I think we're alike in that way." He looks back towards him, where blue-green eyes with their mingled hues have muddied some in the lower light. "I wanted to make certain."
He would like to fuck him again, would like Flint's mouth on him; the thought is enough to make his cock twitch. And he would also like coax Flint along as far as he'd like, as gentle and slow as they were a moment ago and to whatever conclusion arises naturally, and he would also like to lay here and read that stupid book if it was more fitting while his restlessness gave up on itself.
But he asks, "What is it you want?" without being sure exactly what it is they're speaking to, but also: he hadn't asked.
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Meanwhile, his own hands have gone quiet though by no means have they withdrawn.
"If I didn't want you," he says at once. "I wouldn't have brought you up here, much less into this room. And I certainly wouldn't have you touching me in that one."
True.
But also, bluntly: "I said you would grow tired of me."
More or less. No, he doesn't expect Marcus will be satisfied with pieces of things.
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And also, maybe, his own minor hackle. Is it not, after all, ordinary, to want certainty? After navigating invisible boundaries, no matter how well they tend to give when pushed. After subsisting off the sound of his name and a heavy breath in place of I want you too.
These competing near-tactile feelings don't have a chance to resolve before Flint says this next thing, and they scatter.
"No," Marcus says, after a beat. "I'm not."
Flint's hands haven't left him. If they had, he might not slide his hand up, palm warm up at the bend of Flint's neck. "I haven't. Not nearly."
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That irritation turns to nip inward, some flex of pain in him and in his face for it. A briefly lowering brow and tightening mouth. The momentary impulse to set his jaw against it, and a more troubling reluctance to set his fingers about the thing and simply pry it free.
"Not today," Flint says, the even scrape of it humming under the shape of Marcus' palm. He hasn't looked away from him and there is something plain in his tenor as if what he's saying is just well reasoned fact and not a flinch. "But it will happen. It already is happening. Tell me I'm wrong, but this very conversation would seem to be evidence of some dissatisfaction."
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But with a lack of a quick verbal reply, there's no choice but to consider it. Whether that in the asking Flint to caution him against some instinct in him, it's acted as a veil instead, obscuring but not hiding. Marcus' intent focus lowers, a furl of protest at his brow as he tries to match the things Flint is saying to the fretful tangle occurring beneath the surface.
(He should sit up. They should be dressed. He's not sure it helps his case to be like this, holding onto Flint like driftwood—)
"I know there are boundaries," finally, hand gentle where it lays. Not negligent or forgotten, either, palm shaped to the column of throat, fingertips set where hair textures scalp behind the ear. Not moving, just warm. "In theory, there are. It's a little like moving through darkness, finding them, or finding where they aren't. I asked what I asked because I don't want to give you cause to bring them in closer."
Back to Flint's eye, instead of where his gaze had wandered lower. "I'm trying to not be too reckless with you. It's all reckless enough as it is."
Dissatisfaction. It feels like an inverted way of naming it, that ache, but not wrong for it.
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This rationale Marcus has provided is neither particularly unfair or unhonest, however much it might rankle at a vulnerable piece of him prone to bristling. There is a difference between this and indictment, even if it feels very much like the latter. And much as he might bite back, sink his teeth in over it— then where would they be? Not on their way to fucking again tonight, at the very least.
So: checking himself. Fingers pressing like a reflex where his hands remain laid on Marcus' bare skin.
"My intention isn't to be difficult," he says in that same direct way. "But we are being careless." Reckless. Fucking behind the thin barrier of a bolted door and kissing slow and soft and unhurried here in this bed are, in some sense, on equal footing in that respect.
"I don't know that any close examination can practically be done without having the extent of that carelessness brought into the light alongside the rest of it."
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But the severity of it ebbs. The arm of the hand holding Flint's throat unfolds, some, a more generous splay of weight across Flint's chest.
"Alright," he says. Alright, forget examination. "Then let me," and another stop, before some internal shiver of hackles discards the notion of needing permission. "I'll keep coming back." His thumb swoops down the edge of Flint's jaw. "And looking for you across alehouses and stealing into your tent and oversleeping here in the morning. I'll wonder if a summons is to file a late report or because you want me to touch you and try for the latter as long as the door's locked."
All murmured rather seriously, but there is some fleck of amusement, or trying to evoke the same. "Until you tell me to stop in no uncertain terms, and even then, you might need to do it twice." His fingers press. "Agreed?"
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how can this truly be the gay pirate show if i can't have icons for this scenario
dear jon steinberg—
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