Here, a lower thicker sound becoming a huff of breath—a laugh made all lazy across his forearm and into the worn warm surface of the pillow halfway under him. That hand remains set across the back of Marcus' neck, too loosely strung to bother with removing it and nowhere better to really fit his arm between them even if he weren't.
"I don't have any idea," Flint says, an easy rumble momentarily untroubled by the concept of time and ordering it. This is a considerable concession whether the man next to him realizes it or not. But give him a moment to think. He may be able to scrape together something to consider given a few more seconds spent idle on his belly.
The long breath out of Marcus is sympathetic to this answer. The curled hand resting lightly on Flint's back flattens out, unobtrusively feeling out swoop of bone and muscle. A kind of patting, although it could nearly feel like a means of keeping his hand occupied or of taking opportunity to feel something interesting over rather than transmitting intent. Feeling out scar tissue, following it with a fingertip.
Seven hours at a push, maybe.
Except there is a very satiated looseness in limb and spine, giving no indication of being left wanting, or being very interested in moving for the next few minutes. The hand absently left on the back of his neck is a comfortable weight of contact, satisfying the impulse to seek out more of that.
(But it might be nice to roll Flint backwards and pursue more long, lazy kisses, to tangle up together and soak up whatever's left. If Marcus craved it a little more, he might insist upon it. If he hadn't already indulged in so much, maybe. Extended gestures of intimacy without the purpose being to fuck soon after.
No, he'll lay here rather than flip Flint around where he's laying so comfortably and heavy on his belly. The impulse tucked away, expressed in the bend of knee, the turn of his hand.)
There's something stupid and boyish about this—irresponsible and lazy, this alignment of bodies in the midst of rumpled bedclothes and the casual lay of limbs and palms and cheeks against angled forearms. It feels a little like sunlight on the back of the neck. The prickle of salt air and the sway of a hammock. He allows himself to loiter in that seductively idle space for—
However long. It is not an incidental period of time in which his breathing evens and lengthens and the blurred edge quality of satisfaction is permitted to regulate and gently sharpen back in the direction of reality in which the bed is a little over warm, and the clinging of sweat and come chafes a little. And where, eventually, a more conscious working of thought finds him.
Flint breathes in and out a heavy half dozen measures. Then he draws his hand from the back of Marcus' neck and unfolds his other arm, making to lever himself partly up from the twist of the pillow. Partly over, up onto his side (facing Marcus rather than away) so he might examine the mess they've made of him and the bed.
A huffed out breath, a laugh. This is fucking absurd.
Consciousness bristles in Marcus at that first sign of Flint stirring—not that either of them were sleeping, but there had been a comfortable sort of trance-like quality to this idleness that means that when Flint's breathing changes, Marcus' awareness of it rises lazily to meet him. The equivalent of a lounging dog swiveling an ear in that direction, otherwise unmoving.
Doesn't otherwise move until Flint does, and then folds his leg back, draws his arm in. Eyeline pricking up to Flint's face as he sits up some, and then down to follow Flint's.
An echoed sound, fainter.
His legs draw across the covers as he raises up to sit. "Here," he says, but moves off, bare foot finding the ground and avoiding the strewn about boots, gaiters, pants, shirts—also absurd—in pursuit of where he last remembers Flint keeping water in the room.
There is indeed a pitcher loitering by the basin and a cloth there as well—both idly arranged (and the one half emptied) with the affect of having been thoughtlessly set aside. Flint had probably shaved his cheek there not so very many hours ago.
Meanwhile in the bed, the man himself rolls further over onto his back and props himself on both elbows where he might survey the wreck they've made of the room (or, the lithe line of Marcus' body as he crosses it). That is he going to be pleasantly stiff come morning, is a vague thought, having worked every muscle from hooking calf to curving shoulder after having spent a number of weeks in transit doing nothing at all of consequence.
"They'll be suspicions in the laundry," is a joke, and also true.
That does earn a laugh (both on account of being a joke and also true), a dryly smokey chuckle as Marcus empties the pitcher into the basin, barely above the sound of water splashing. It's warm enough in the room that he doesn't feel compelled to heat it, bare skin prickling pleasantly in the contrasting coolness from skin contact and sweat-warm sheets, so just collects the cloth and picks up the basin to draw it nearer.
He lifts his chin towards the side table, indicating Flint should make himself useful and clear a space.
"Glad ones," he suggests. "Good tidings, if the Commander of Riftwatch is finding some spare time for himself."
Fucking each other is good for morale, is all he's saying.
"Meanwhile, a full schedule would be worth some concern," may have a skeptical slant to it, but isn't strictly disagreement. He levers himself up. The pitcher of oil and the array of candles, and a book laid aside are reorganized on the side table to afford some room for the basin. Flint himself shifts to make similar accomodations for Marcus at the edge of the bed.
Sure. Morale. That's what it's good for.
(Nevermind the warm flare of satisfaction in his belly that sparks after the shape of Marcus' amusement.)
And maybe not the laundry staff, who have their fair amount of soiled sheets to speculate or pointedly not speculate about every other day. Marcus settles in the space made for him, and there is an empty space where the impulse to get clean and get dressed should exist. Normally some sense of modesty starts to creep back in without some form of justification for casual nakedness, and it likely will, but is slow in doing so, here.
In part, because there is also no impulse to see himself set back to order and out the door. The desire to linger. Also, it seems only fair to cede the basin to Flint in this moment.
For all that he's never made much habit of lying about naked in the aftermath of their encounters, there has never been the sense that Flint is much for the prickling guilt of propriety. Reclined there in the tangle of bed clothes, one knee having fallen idly open, he doesn't hesitate to reach after the cloth and drape past the basin's lip, or to apply the dripping cloth to his belly, and his softened cock, or down between his legs.
Anxieties over bared skin and it blasé treatment apparently isn't a habit; and why should it be? Surely a ship isn't fertile grounds for such an impulse to grow in.
"Go on," is not a question, but it is an invitation. A hip is raised in order for him to get a better reach at himself. The cloth is rinsed and wrung.
The resting of a heel against the edge of wooden bedframe, just past the sit of the mattress, raises a knee in a way that could be propriety, but barely constitutes as such. Dignity, maybe, more so than modesty. An idle sweep of a hand has, also, done something towards fixing his hair, while Flint runs wet cloth over himself.
"I could come back tonight if you want company in your bed," is straight forward. "Late enough, so I won't be sighted. And then there's the morning," and a flick of a glance has some fine barb of humour to it, "and rather than pick my boots up before the sun's risen, I could bring my things in here, pass through before your first appointment if you send the boy on an errand."
He drops his focus to the wash cloth, judging whether he wishes to use that one or find a second, decides he won't be too precious after everything, while he adds, "Spare us a little time."
Settling back into the bed linens and on the prop of his elbows, Flint gives the line of his own frame a significant look before he glances back to Marcus. "Well considered as that may be," he says, arch and dry in that lurking humor fashion. "I doubt I'll manage to be of any further use to you tonight."
They've made some considerable efforts this afternoon, and one of them is more old than not.
(Is not, any of it really, the point. He knows that.)
Marcus obliges that long look with a quicker one of his own. Amusement is sparer, this time, sunk back into barely perceptible twinges, something more narrowed once he looks back up to Flint's face. Still present, though. An 'mm' of acknowledgment.
He could say something like your bed is much nicer to sleep in, but that wouldn't be any more honest of him, would it? Even veiled in returning dry humour. He could point out that Flint could be of use to him (what a phrase) in the morning, and while it isn't beyond his scope of consideration—
"I meant only sleeping," Marcus says instead. "As far as tonight goes."
A low rumble of acknowledgement, the slow collapse of an elbow. Flint allows himself to settle slightly further back into the unevenly laid pillows, and, with a flick of his attention, to survey the water beading against his skin. To roll over and briefly chase tracing the cut of Marcus' thigh before his eyes lift and wander back to the man's face. This in a glance, little more than a moment's flickering assessment.
He isn't devoid of humor when he asks, "Will it bother you if I refuse?" though there is something low and even handed in it. Genuinely curious, made too loose jointed and limbed to scrape his guard up, maybe.
(Maybe. There are more transparent things he might have impulsively provided in answer, thought and summarily discarded.)
There is an incidental, not-deliberately mutual flicker of his focus in return, where Flint sinks back. It's a tempting kind of sight, although Marcus could not in good conscience identify what part of him is tempted, as spent as the other man.
His focus draws back up at that question, something incisive in the quick analysis he seems to make of Flint's expression. Relaxes off of that, and spends a beat of silence considering the value of a quicker question. If yes feels more true than no, or the other way around.
It feels more accurate when he lands on, "I can swallow the disappointment," tinged with an echoed kind of humour, a thin guarding veneer over what is nevertheless a true thing. A world where he doesn't have to get everything he wants.
This answer seems to be the right one. Or at least, it's one that Flint finds satisfactory. He would have been disappointed by either yes, or no, but this more complicated half measure— Isn't a pleasure, exactly. But feels honest, which is a thing he can afford some regard. In any case, some veiled shadow of approval moves across his face.
This is not, however, the end of direct questions.
"And this. Does it bother you that I would see it all kept quiet?"
That Flint has sidestepped the implicit question on whether Marcus might return, at least for now—
He might get away with it for the minute, because it's a distracting thing, the broadened scope of the question. Some small recalibration happens behind Marcus' expression, unshy and unhurried about the heavy pause he allows himself to sink into.
"No," after that. He would rather avoid the flippant remark over the damn crystals, or damage to the credibility that Flint might hold in speaking to mage-aligned agendas in the offices on this floor, or an altered perception for his own station within the structure of the division, or simply the notion of opening a thing to scrutiny that he isn't certain could take it.
But that isn't exactly what Flint had asked, is it, because the question of it being quiet at all is an answered thing. So he adds, "But I would hope not to be overcautious," and a flickered look over from where his focus had wandered a bit in thought.
From where he has propped himself against the pillow, Flint regards Marcus with a measuring eye—something of a mirror in the silence in which he considers him. Untroubled by the length of this pause anymore than he had been by Marcus' (which he'd not expected to be so permissive of). Something is being calculated behind his green blue eyes going yellow in the increasing dominance of the candlelight. He thinks—
"Maybe not. Not now, anyway, as correcting course at this stage would seem to be in some respect damaging."
To whatever this is. To the agreeable if not entirely productive sort of understanding they've struck between them. He would prefer, he thinks, not to return to finding Rowntree's very presence irritating, nearly as much as he would prefer that others in the Gallows not be given to the impression that this is a thing which has made one of them exploitable.
"But I think it has been a mistake," he says. "To pretend as if I don't have an impulse toward attachment, or that it will be easy for me to dispense with this when it becomes rational to do so."
Fucking around that second time here in Kirkwall had been an error. These aren't insults, or biting; they're just facts, and stupid ones.
Judging by the twinned responses, a little twist of discomfort at the word mistake and then the odd warm churn that rises up to meet the midway of this statement, Marcus can't say with much honesty that he is in some way built differently. The flicker in his expression is too sympathetic in the moment, even if his eyeline cuts away towards some interesting fold in the sheets between them.
Opportunity, anyway, to lend some study to his own impulses. To note which they begin to circle around, or reach forwards to try to seal some perceived tear. The mix of damaging honest things and mending falsehoods. It's all very fragile, it seems, for a thing that gets handled with such grasping hands.
"You know," after a bit, "I didn't expect to see far past the rebellion. The likeliest outcome I foresaw of myself was a battlefield death, and the task was to see that it was during a winning fight over a losing one. There is a part of me that still thinks that way." This all comes fairly matter-of-fact—not lightly put, but somehow without weight. "And before that was a learned instinct to guard what could be had within the parameters of having."
Assessment, in the look back up. Maybe it's good and not silly that they're still unclothed, patched in drying sweat still, their clothes strewn about. Maybe it's a good way to have a conversation, actually, if you think about it.
All this to say— "I don't resent secrecy nearly as much as the idea of just not having the things I want for fear of, what, a future absence? One which could manifest as anything."
No, it is ridiculous. But the idea of reclaiming his clothes has yet to occur to him regardless, for the bed is very warm and he's prickled all over with sweat already. It would seem counter intuitive to add.more layers to the equation; if anything, he should be considering a bath. A few hours ago, he'd be the cleanest he'd been in weeks—scraped free of dirt and grime down to the dirt under nails. And now they've sticky sheets, and he stinks of sex, and he will have to scrub himself down all over again if he wishes to be at all presentable outside of this room.
Doing the same thing over is, he understands it, a uniquely irritating sensation.
"That's admirable," Flint says, and it couldn't be more obvious that there's some However— lingering in the wings. He is still watching him, undeterred by the roving of Marcus's flickering attention or the assessment that eventually fixes on himself.
"And not incorrect. It's only that I've done some version of this before, and you'll forgive me for coming to resent that sensation." A faint, searching flick of his attention dances from one of Marcus' features to the other, unable to settle on exactly which one to land. "The absence."
There is some minor defensive twinge to how Marcus flattens his mouth, first—being admirable is hardly the point, like maybe saying so is implicit accusation that he wishes to be seen so—but it never makes its way to spoken objection. That fixed point of assessment stays where it is.
Stays, some more, even if there is an urge to evade that hint of study he can tell is being reflected back at him (being less inclined to stare people down in certain contexts, or just certain people). That beginning of something defensive dismantles rather immediately, which is one thing that searching flick reads. A breath escapes him, not exactly a sigh, but a beat before he offers, "I'm sorry," and means it.
And stops there, an open kind of silence, intended for Flint to fill it as he likes. A hand, set against the covelet, curling in fingers, restless.
"It's done," he says, easy as the turn of a hand. There is a sunken island. The Walrus crew might be induced the discuss Captain Flint's dead woman even if they rarely evoke her of their own volition. These are not, entirely, secrets. Merely shaded, hidden by the merit of having been put up on a high shelf rather than turned constantly in the hand.
Moreover, nothing here in this room or between them—Marcus' genuine sympathies or his relaxing bristle of resistance—alters them. But their sting isn't so bad, really. Not today. So if there is a cut occuring here from having Marcus in his bed, or entertaining this conversation, then it's shallow enough not to feel.
(Something about armor, and stripping it, and only belatedly realizing the flesh under it has been divided and that there is blood.)
"I'm only saying it to lend some clarity to my handling of you. I wouldn't have you"—what was it?—"Feeling around in the dark without any sense of direction."
Flint's hand had been gentle, when he'd turned it to have Marcus back off so they might speak. This feels a little the same, and yes, different to a barrier felt out on his own. Presented to him plainly.
The urge to test its resolve is strong, but Flint doesn't seem to lack in that area. Marcus considers him, leaned back against his pillows. The rings still on his hand, for having not needed to take them off. It might be nice, sometime, if they do this without efficiently stripping each other or themselves, or not even bothering to go that far, to ease those off himself, and find a means of doing so gently.
"Would you prefer I err on the side of caution," finally, "or is this because you wish me to understand it when you do?"
Low as he is there in the pillows, only half propped on a lazy elbow while his other hand draped lazily scores his center, he is required to either lift his chin to study Marcus or to watching him from under the shadow of his brow. He has mostly defaulted to the latter, but here the angle of his face adjusts by a half degree so he might look at Marcus more directly.
Whether it's intentional or an unconscious correction is unclear; maybe he doesn't even realize he's done it, only that it feels a little more sturdy and straightforward both.
"Well, that would depend wouldn't it?" he says. "On your sense of this arrangement, and if you've grown attached to it." No, that's not what he means. He amends— "If you were to want something other than fucking out of it."
Another silence. Which is in itself telling. If it were all very simple, that would be an answer in and of itself.
Marcus shifts position, some, having sat more sidelong there at the edge of the bed. Moves a knee so as to be facing the other man, settling closer. There's Flint's hand resting on his belly, and Marcus goes and takes it, nothing tentative in it, as if they'd done it a thousand times and not none. But with respect to the latter, he doesn't tangle their fingers together, or anticipate Flint's participation.
Rather, he maps palm to knuckles, presses his thumb in around to the meat of Flint's palm. His other hand joins the tangle, closing fingers over knuckles, as if he might fidget with the rings decorating them. May, given a few more seconds of this.
"I like things that aren't fucking, as well as the fucking," he says, his gaze dropped down to the hand he's captured. "I wouldn't wish to alter that part. Sharing a bed, sometimes. Conversation, affection. Somewhere to be when there isn't anywhere else. Room for whatever it is we need or want."
Back to looking at him, a wry-ish slant to the way he isn't quite smiling. But it's sincere when he says, "I would give those things, if you wanted. I'd take them, if you offered."
He doesn't resist the shape of Marcus' hands closing about his, those incidentally work rough fingers gone briefly soft from the propensity of oil so recently rubbed into them. But there is a prickle of sensation which digs under the skin at the back of his neck which suggests to Flint that he wants to. That there is a knotted thing coiled in him that finds the clasp of hands worth a considerable degree of guilt. Of shame, even. These are unkind questions he's posing, prompted so he might cast them in a purposefully unflattering, hard light.
He is aware of the heat of it on the back of his neck, and a hungry ache low in his belly, and a sharp, unornamented want behind the ribs.
They're not checked easily. Not even by the face of that not-quite-humor in Marcus' face or his own casual posture. Or by the comedy of their nakedness, plain in the rearrangement of the other man's position in relation to him. Or by the seductive warmth of the bed, or by the equally enticing sweetness of this offering.
"Then, yes. I think you should consider exercising some caution given how I'm likely to practice some measure of it," he says. That would only be—
Fair isn't the right word and equitable would be a joke.
"My point is that I've not made up my mind on any of it. But I think it's better you know that than not."
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"I don't have any idea," Flint says, an easy rumble momentarily untroubled by the concept of time and ordering it. This is a considerable concession whether the man next to him realizes it or not. But give him a moment to think. He may be able to scrape together something to consider given a few more seconds spent idle on his belly.
Make it eight or so hours.
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Seven hours at a push, maybe.
Except there is a very satiated looseness in limb and spine, giving no indication of being left wanting, or being very interested in moving for the next few minutes. The hand absently left on the back of his neck is a comfortable weight of contact, satisfying the impulse to seek out more of that.
(But it might be nice to roll Flint backwards and pursue more long, lazy kisses, to tangle up together and soak up whatever's left. If Marcus craved it a little more, he might insist upon it. If he hadn't already indulged in so much, maybe. Extended gestures of intimacy without the purpose being to fuck soon after.
No, he'll lay here rather than flip Flint around where he's laying so comfortably and heavy on his belly. The impulse tucked away, expressed in the bend of knee, the turn of his hand.)
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However long. It is not an incidental period of time in which his breathing evens and lengthens and the blurred edge quality of satisfaction is permitted to regulate and gently sharpen back in the direction of reality in which the bed is a little over warm, and the clinging of sweat and come chafes a little. And where, eventually, a more conscious working of thought finds him.
Flint breathes in and out a heavy half dozen measures. Then he draws his hand from the back of Marcus' neck and unfolds his other arm, making to lever himself partly up from the twist of the pillow. Partly over, up onto his side (facing Marcus rather than away) so he might examine the mess they've made of him and the bed.
A huffed out breath, a laugh. This is fucking absurd.
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Doesn't otherwise move until Flint does, and then folds his leg back, draws his arm in. Eyeline pricking up to Flint's face as he sits up some, and then down to follow Flint's.
An echoed sound, fainter.
His legs draw across the covers as he raises up to sit. "Here," he says, but moves off, bare foot finding the ground and avoiding the strewn about boots, gaiters, pants, shirts—also absurd—in pursuit of where he last remembers Flint keeping water in the room.
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Meanwhile in the bed, the man himself rolls further over onto his back and props himself on both elbows where he might survey the wreck they've made of the room (or, the lithe line of Marcus' body as he crosses it). That is he going to be pleasantly stiff come morning, is a vague thought, having worked every muscle from hooking calf to curving shoulder after having spent a number of weeks in transit doing nothing at all of consequence.
"They'll be suspicions in the laundry," is a joke, and also true.
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He lifts his chin towards the side table, indicating Flint should make himself useful and clear a space.
"Glad ones," he suggests. "Good tidings, if the Commander of Riftwatch is finding some spare time for himself."
Fucking each other is good for morale, is all he's saying.
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Sure. Morale. That's what it's good for.
(Nevermind the warm flare of satisfaction in his belly that sparks after the shape of Marcus' amusement.)
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And maybe not the laundry staff, who have their fair amount of soiled sheets to speculate or pointedly not speculate about every other day. Marcus settles in the space made for him, and there is an empty space where the impulse to get clean and get dressed should exist. Normally some sense of modesty starts to creep back in without some form of justification for casual nakedness, and it likely will, but is slow in doing so, here.
In part, because there is also no impulse to see himself set back to order and out the door. The desire to linger. Also, it seems only fair to cede the basin to Flint in this moment.
"I had a thought for logistics."
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Anxieties over bared skin and it blasé treatment apparently isn't a habit; and why should it be? Surely a ship isn't fertile grounds for such an impulse to grow in.
"Go on," is not a question, but it is an invitation. A hip is raised in order for him to get a better reach at himself. The cloth is rinsed and wrung.
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"I could come back tonight if you want company in your bed," is straight forward. "Late enough, so I won't be sighted. And then there's the morning," and a flick of a glance has some fine barb of humour to it, "and rather than pick my boots up before the sun's risen, I could bring my things in here, pass through before your first appointment if you send the boy on an errand."
He drops his focus to the wash cloth, judging whether he wishes to use that one or find a second, decides he won't be too precious after everything, while he adds, "Spare us a little time."
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Settling back into the bed linens and on the prop of his elbows, Flint gives the line of his own frame a significant look before he glances back to Marcus. "Well considered as that may be," he says, arch and dry in that lurking humor fashion. "I doubt I'll manage to be of any further use to you tonight."
They've made some considerable efforts this afternoon, and one of them is more old than not.
(Is not, any of it really, the point. He knows that.)
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He could say something like your bed is much nicer to sleep in, but that wouldn't be any more honest of him, would it? Even veiled in returning dry humour. He could point out that Flint could be of use to him (what a phrase) in the morning, and while it isn't beyond his scope of consideration—
"I meant only sleeping," Marcus says instead. "As far as tonight goes."
A flex of a shrug, quiet permission to deny him.
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A low rumble of acknowledgement, the slow collapse of an elbow. Flint allows himself to settle slightly further back into the unevenly laid pillows, and, with a flick of his attention, to survey the water beading against his skin. To roll over and briefly chase tracing the cut of Marcus' thigh before his eyes lift and wander back to the man's face. This in a glance, little more than a moment's flickering assessment.
He isn't devoid of humor when he asks, "Will it bother you if I refuse?" though there is something low and even handed in it. Genuinely curious, made too loose jointed and limbed to scrape his guard up, maybe.
(Maybe. There are more transparent things he might have impulsively provided in answer, thought and summarily discarded.)
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His focus draws back up at that question, something incisive in the quick analysis he seems to make of Flint's expression. Relaxes off of that, and spends a beat of silence considering the value of a quicker question. If yes feels more true than no, or the other way around.
It feels more accurate when he lands on, "I can swallow the disappointment," tinged with an echoed kind of humour, a thin guarding veneer over what is nevertheless a true thing. A world where he doesn't have to get everything he wants.
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This is not, however, the end of direct questions.
"And this. Does it bother you that I would see it all kept quiet?"
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He might get away with it for the minute, because it's a distracting thing, the broadened scope of the question. Some small recalibration happens behind Marcus' expression, unshy and unhurried about the heavy pause he allows himself to sink into.
"No," after that. He would rather avoid the flippant remark over the damn crystals, or damage to the credibility that Flint might hold in speaking to mage-aligned agendas in the offices on this floor, or an altered perception for his own station within the structure of the division, or simply the notion of opening a thing to scrutiny that he isn't certain could take it.
But that isn't exactly what Flint had asked, is it, because the question of it being quiet at all is an answered thing. So he adds, "But I would hope not to be overcautious," and a flickered look over from where his focus had wandered a bit in thought.
"Would you conduct this differently?"
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"Maybe not. Not now, anyway, as correcting course at this stage would seem to be in some respect damaging."
To whatever this is. To the agreeable if not entirely productive sort of understanding they've struck between them. He would prefer, he thinks, not to return to finding Rowntree's very presence irritating, nearly as much as he would prefer that others in the Gallows not be given to the impression that this is a thing which has made one of them exploitable.
"But I think it has been a mistake," he says. "To pretend as if I don't have an impulse toward attachment, or that it will be easy for me to dispense with this when it becomes rational to do so."
Fucking around that second time here in Kirkwall had been an error. These aren't insults, or biting; they're just facts, and stupid ones.
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Opportunity, anyway, to lend some study to his own impulses. To note which they begin to circle around, or reach forwards to try to seal some perceived tear. The mix of damaging honest things and mending falsehoods. It's all very fragile, it seems, for a thing that gets handled with such grasping hands.
"You know," after a bit, "I didn't expect to see far past the rebellion. The likeliest outcome I foresaw of myself was a battlefield death, and the task was to see that it was during a winning fight over a losing one. There is a part of me that still thinks that way." This all comes fairly matter-of-fact—not lightly put, but somehow without weight. "And before that was a learned instinct to guard what could be had within the parameters of having."
Assessment, in the look back up. Maybe it's good and not silly that they're still unclothed, patched in drying sweat still, their clothes strewn about. Maybe it's a good way to have a conversation, actually, if you think about it.
All this to say— "I don't resent secrecy nearly as much as the idea of just not having the things I want for fear of, what, a future absence? One which could manifest as anything."
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Doing the same thing over is, he understands it, a uniquely irritating sensation.
"That's admirable," Flint says, and it couldn't be more obvious that there's some However— lingering in the wings. He is still watching him, undeterred by the roving of Marcus's flickering attention or the assessment that eventually fixes on himself.
"And not incorrect. It's only that I've done some version of this before, and you'll forgive me for coming to resent that sensation." A faint, searching flick of his attention dances from one of Marcus' features to the other, unable to settle on exactly which one to land. "The absence."
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Stays, some more, even if there is an urge to evade that hint of study he can tell is being reflected back at him (being less inclined to stare people down in certain contexts, or just certain people). That beginning of something defensive dismantles rather immediately, which is one thing that searching flick reads. A breath escapes him, not exactly a sigh, but a beat before he offers, "I'm sorry," and means it.
And stops there, an open kind of silence, intended for Flint to fill it as he likes. A hand, set against the covelet, curling in fingers, restless.
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Moreover, nothing here in this room or between them—Marcus' genuine sympathies or his relaxing bristle of resistance—alters them. But their sting isn't so bad, really. Not today. So if there is a cut occuring here from having Marcus in his bed, or entertaining this conversation, then it's shallow enough not to feel.
(Something about armor, and stripping it, and only belatedly realizing the flesh under it has been divided and that there is blood.)
"I'm only saying it to lend some clarity to my handling of you. I wouldn't have you"—what was it?—"Feeling around in the dark without any sense of direction."
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Flint's hand had been gentle, when he'd turned it to have Marcus back off so they might speak. This feels a little the same, and yes, different to a barrier felt out on his own. Presented to him plainly.
The urge to test its resolve is strong, but Flint doesn't seem to lack in that area. Marcus considers him, leaned back against his pillows. The rings still on his hand, for having not needed to take them off. It might be nice, sometime, if they do this without efficiently stripping each other or themselves, or not even bothering to go that far, to ease those off himself, and find a means of doing so gently.
"Would you prefer I err on the side of caution," finally, "or is this because you wish me to understand it when you do?"
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Whether it's intentional or an unconscious correction is unclear; maybe he doesn't even realize he's done it, only that it feels a little more sturdy and straightforward both.
"Well, that would depend wouldn't it?" he says. "On your sense of this arrangement, and if you've grown attached to it." No, that's not what he means. He amends— "If you were to want something other than fucking out of it."
James Flint, evasive until he isn't.
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Marcus shifts position, some, having sat more sidelong there at the edge of the bed. Moves a knee so as to be facing the other man, settling closer. There's Flint's hand resting on his belly, and Marcus goes and takes it, nothing tentative in it, as if they'd done it a thousand times and not none. But with respect to the latter, he doesn't tangle their fingers together, or anticipate Flint's participation.
Rather, he maps palm to knuckles, presses his thumb in around to the meat of Flint's palm. His other hand joins the tangle, closing fingers over knuckles, as if he might fidget with the rings decorating them. May, given a few more seconds of this.
"I like things that aren't fucking, as well as the fucking," he says, his gaze dropped down to the hand he's captured. "I wouldn't wish to alter that part. Sharing a bed, sometimes. Conversation, affection. Somewhere to be when there isn't anywhere else. Room for whatever it is we need or want."
Back to looking at him, a wry-ish slant to the way he isn't quite smiling. But it's sincere when he says, "I would give those things, if you wanted. I'd take them, if you offered."
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He is aware of the heat of it on the back of his neck, and a hungry ache low in his belly, and a sharp, unornamented want behind the ribs.
They're not checked easily. Not even by the face of that not-quite-humor in Marcus' face or his own casual posture. Or by the comedy of their nakedness, plain in the rearrangement of the other man's position in relation to him. Or by the seductive warmth of the bed, or by the equally enticing sweetness of this offering.
"Then, yes. I think you should consider exercising some caution given how I'm likely to practice some measure of it," he says. That would only be—
Fair isn't the right word and equitable would be a joke.
"My point is that I've not made up my mind on any of it. But I think it's better you know that than not."
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