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."
This answer evokes a raw-feeling prickle beneath the ribcage, a lurch, as if it's a surprise to find the degree of pressure Marcus had applied to his own offer, measured by the amount of give when Flint only accepts it as an answer. An object lesson in the thing Flint is cautioning him against now, maybe.
Outwardly, it's in the sobering of that crook of near-humour, in the dropping back down of eyeline to consider their hands, and little else. Nods, at this last thing Flint says. This is reasonable. Fair. He can't say he has made up his mind either. Or really engaged in the practice of trying to.
And anyway, it's him clasping Flint's hand. There aren't, presently, decisions he can make that might compel the other man to close his fingers around his, or pull them away, save to let go himself. He doesn't, now, just keeps his clasp loose, plays at running a thumb down the line of muscle that attaches thumb to wrist before that goes still as well.
"I'll try," he says, looking back up. Certain in this half-measure. If nothing else, he wouldn't like to make Flint wholly responsible for this thing they're doing. "And you can have your evening back."
—Evokes a certain immediate sensation of discontent. It bubbles sourly up, and is bitter in the mouth where it lays heavy on the tongue. Yes, that is the direction they should move it. He'd just suggested as much. Nevermind the warm sense of Marcus' knee near his side, or the palms of his hands, or the way the light shows copper on the man's naked skin.
A small shift of fingers: his thumb moving to touch Marcus' wrist in parallel. It's a very narrow point of contact, albeit deliberate.
"You'll tell me," is a reminder. "When you tire of it."
It feels like he's said the right thing. The slight turn of Flint's hand, this reminder. Knowing that eases something in him in spite of how he would much prefer to share a bed, share a morning, and how later, when he doesn't have those things, it will feel both bitter and foolish for it. But for the moment—
He imagines it's of to both their benefits that they go, for now, their separate ways. His blood is still moving slow and glutted from everything they've done, despite these conversations. It makes him want to do things like lay back down, insist an arm around himself, ignore the edge of (actual, non-euphemistic) hunger and the way the bed is too warm. Foolish, too.
Marcus affords a pulse of a grip to Flint's hand. "Aye," he says. Adds, with a slight edge of only semi-serious challenge, "If."
He has a lot of stamina, Flint might have noticed (or remembers better repacking their things that one time in the foothills when Marcus had finally capitulated to the demands of his injury, either way).
A low hum of assent murmurs there in the base of his throat, not unamused with it in spite of the knotted shape fit in under the ribs. Aye, if.
(Marcus Rowntree is such a hard headed motherfucker.)
And though he's in no particular hurry to see Marcus immediately chased free of the bed, the apartment, the division office— "You can take the book if you care to."
is a little wry, being not the most obvious book enjoyer in the Gallows, but also: he will. And read it, and maybe only in part because he would like to have an excuse to return it, and form up an opinion of its contents, and see how that plays between them.
Having been dismissed out of Flint's office plenty of times, Marcus doesn't feel as though this is that. All the same, lingering feels counterintuitive. His hand slides up his arm, and the mattress bends under a resettling of weight.
Flint could stop him before Marcus lands a kiss on his mouth—a gentle press of one, unshy but not intending to start anything but end them for the time being, and wouldn't it be such a shame if all of this resolved into departing with business-like efficiency?—but there is some expectation that he won't.
He doesn't. With the mattress sinking under the close combination of their weight, Flint's upward angled face tilts a gentle degree to accept Marcus' mouth. No, this isn't a dismissal. It's a dog eared page in a report, something marked in order so that he might easily return to it when he's of the mind to.
Between them, his hand turns—small finger scuffing absently against the line of Marcus' naked collar bone. A brush of contact, no more, and ancillary besides. But more than the kiss (which is gentle and unshy, but patient too; more patient than it ought to be), this minor and incidental point of contact serves to act as a ground. Later, in the morning, maybe, and when he's lonely in his bed, he will run the side of his small finger absently against the coverlet.
"You're welcome," he rasps, low in the narrow space that parts them.
The minor turn of a finger against his wrist and again, here, at his chest, and the fine degree with which Flint turns his face to accept the kiss, all of these are satisfying in a way that Marcus can imagine that there's a point where they whet his appetite more than satiate. That Flint is right to think he won't subsist off of scraps, that he will want more, and maybe the frustration of its absence will have that tiring affect that Flint anticipates so plainly.
But it feels significant, here, that light, ancillary contact, its lingering when Flint speaks quietly between them.
Draws back, quits the bed. Rather than fuss with trying to get himself clean, a decision is made that he isn't so dirty that he can't get away with throwing on his clothes and washing up properly once back in his room, and makes for where he'd flicked his drawers off the edge of the bed and onto the floor. A heavy breath out, like the task of getting dressed is a weighty one.
The instantaneous regret that comes with Marcus shifting from the edge of the bed is proof positive that it's the correct course of action. Better to let the thing breathe a little to see what develops than to be too hasty about covering the gash with kisses and the indulgence of more simple, more earnest companionship. It would have been easy to say again, But stay anyway, and it would have been uncharitable to the both of them to do so.
Flint pushes himself up from the pillows, moving to sit. Bending a knee, the sole of his foot hooked gently at his calf, he allows himself to sit there with a roached backed and curving shoulders. To press his fingers absently at his hairline, nails working gently through the freshly sheared bristle, and to watch Marcus collect his things.
For a moment, anyway. Then Flint shifts, stretching to reach the far side table so he might collect Marcus' leather ledger from it, and the book taken from the shelf here in this room, and bundle them together.
It's a quiet but unhurried process. There's a rare sense that he should speak to temper the silence that is currently marked by the sounds of fabric sliding over skin, his own breathing, but its easily crushed. He has his pants drawn up by the time he glances after Flint. Does them up.
Recalling a sense-memory, Flint's fingers neatly tucking into the fold of pocket. From it, Marcus fishes out the leather tie that was stowed away. They likely haven't garnered the suspicion required for someone to make note of the less-than-neat order in which he parts and binds his hair using his fingers, ducking a little to check the process in the mirror as he goes. Not between here and his room, anyway. Good enough.
There'd have been a period of time where he'd have enjoyed this. Of fucking around, of pulling clothing over sweat or worse, of the vaguely adolescent stupidity of lazily gathering back some respectability by the time he is moving at a casual (smug) clip out from the Forces division office. He doesn't not enjoy it now, exactly, but reflects: they'd sort of skipped that part, that specific sort of carelessness here. Where it wouldn't have been informed by something refused.
Was it his doing, coming to Flint so late that time, more or less asking for something they hadn't done yet? Flint's, for not turning him out of his bed after?
Where the fuck is his shirt— there it is. Collects it up with a breathed out sound. His belt is in the other room. They are bad at this.
By the time Marcus has his shirt, Flint has turned his attention toward his own scattered clothing—he has hooked his own shirt up, though has only insinuated his arms through the sleeves and not yet drawn it fully back on. Sluggish, unhurried. This reality of making themselves decent feels as stupid as staying stripped down and naked might.
Rather than continue his own paltry efforts to redress, he considers Marcus'. The shirt and the belt (which is in the other room, on the table still where it has been coiled amidst the papers), and the not quite right lay of his hair, and the expanse of bare skin diminishing with each passing second.
A different impulse abruptly rises in him. But this one is more easily quashed. He instead pulls the worn soft shirt in over his head, then makes to clamber from the bed feeling like twice his ordinary weight. The least he can do is show Marcus to the door (and guarantee that it's been bolted shut again behind him).
Buttoning his collar recalls Flint's hand reaching for it first. Can you stay? It's difficult not to put his mind to the task of assessment, of evaluating things said and done in search of error, not so unlike an imperfect fight—of measuring the depth of a bruise and thinking of the actions that led to its forming. To balance that against the circumstances that informed it, bigger than only he, or temper this niggling feeling of regret against the certainty they're being reasonable.
It is likewise impossible to do so with any effectiveness while he's busying himself with getting his boots on, and so firmly stops thinking about much of anything except the wind of a bootlace or clasp of a buckle.
It's also a little deliberate that there is no lingering glances to Flint, but Marcus is certainly not ignoring him. Keyed into the sounds of fabric shuffling, of his gathering the books together, the sigh of the mattress when he leaves the bed. Marcus leaves the bedroom with the expectation he'll be followed out. There, his coat draped over the chair, but first he makes for the belt, crossing the room to collect it as he tucks his shirt into his waistband.
The rings, after that. He pockets them with the absent thought that he ought to have washed his hands, (and maybe this careful order of getting himself respectable enough to leave is not as carefully ordered as he's made it out to be. Something like a hasty retreat, actually, in its unhurried structures), before going to collect the coat.
"Were you intending to convey to the division about the fortifications work tomorrow?" is something he only sort of cares to know.
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no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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?"
no subject
"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.
no subject
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 subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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?"
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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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Outwardly, it's in the sobering of that crook of near-humour, in the dropping back down of eyeline to consider their hands, and little else. Nods, at this last thing Flint says. This is reasonable. Fair. He can't say he has made up his mind either. Or really engaged in the practice of trying to.
And anyway, it's him clasping Flint's hand. There aren't, presently, decisions he can make that might compel the other man to close his fingers around his, or pull them away, save to let go himself. He doesn't, now, just keeps his clasp loose, plays at running a thumb down the line of muscle that attaches thumb to wrist before that goes still as well.
"I'll try," he says, looking back up. Certain in this half-measure. If nothing else, he wouldn't like to make Flint wholly responsible for this thing they're doing. "And you can have your evening back."
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A small shift of fingers: his thumb moving to touch Marcus' wrist in parallel. It's a very narrow point of contact, albeit deliberate.
"You'll tell me," is a reminder. "When you tire of it."
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He imagines it's of to both their benefits that they go, for now, their separate ways. His blood is still moving slow and glutted from everything they've done, despite these conversations. It makes him want to do things like lay back down, insist an arm around himself, ignore the edge of (actual, non-euphemistic) hunger and the way the bed is too warm. Foolish, too.
Marcus affords a pulse of a grip to Flint's hand. "Aye," he says. Adds, with a slight edge of only semi-serious challenge, "If."
He has a lot of stamina, Flint might have noticed (or remembers better repacking their things that one time in the foothills when Marcus had finally capitulated to the demands of his injury, either way).
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(Marcus Rowntree is such a hard headed motherfucker.)
And though he's in no particular hurry to see Marcus immediately chased free of the bed, the apartment, the division office— "You can take the book if you care to."
A consolation prize.
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is a little wry, being not the most obvious book enjoyer in the Gallows, but also: he will. And read it, and maybe only in part because he would like to have an excuse to return it, and form up an opinion of its contents, and see how that plays between them.
Having been dismissed out of Flint's office plenty of times, Marcus doesn't feel as though this is that. All the same, lingering feels counterintuitive. His hand slides up his arm, and the mattress bends under a resettling of weight.
Flint could stop him before Marcus lands a kiss on his mouth—a gentle press of one, unshy but not intending to start anything but end them for the time being, and wouldn't it be such a shame if all of this resolved into departing with business-like efficiency?—but there is some expectation that he won't.
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Between them, his hand turns—small finger scuffing absently against the line of Marcus' naked collar bone. A brush of contact, no more, and ancillary besides. But more than the kiss (which is gentle and unshy, but patient too; more patient than it ought to be), this minor and incidental point of contact serves to act as a ground. Later, in the morning, maybe, and when he's lonely in his bed, he will run the side of his small finger absently against the coverlet.
"You're welcome," he rasps, low in the narrow space that parts them.
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But it feels significant, here, that light, ancillary contact, its lingering when Flint speaks quietly between them.
Draws back, quits the bed. Rather than fuss with trying to get himself clean, a decision is made that he isn't so dirty that he can't get away with throwing on his clothes and washing up properly once back in his room, and makes for where he'd flicked his drawers off the edge of the bed and onto the floor. A heavy breath out, like the task of getting dressed is a weighty one.
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Flint pushes himself up from the pillows, moving to sit. Bending a knee, the sole of his foot hooked gently at his calf, he allows himself to sit there with a roached backed and curving shoulders. To press his fingers absently at his hairline, nails working gently through the freshly sheared bristle, and to watch Marcus collect his things.
For a moment, anyway. Then Flint shifts, stretching to reach the far side table so he might collect Marcus' leather ledger from it, and the book taken from the shelf here in this room, and bundle them together.
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Recalling a sense-memory, Flint's fingers neatly tucking into the fold of pocket. From it, Marcus fishes out the leather tie that was stowed away. They likely haven't garnered the suspicion required for someone to make note of the less-than-neat order in which he parts and binds his hair using his fingers, ducking a little to check the process in the mirror as he goes. Not between here and his room, anyway. Good enough.
There'd have been a period of time where he'd have enjoyed this. Of fucking around, of pulling clothing over sweat or worse, of the vaguely adolescent stupidity of lazily gathering back some respectability by the time he is moving at a casual (smug) clip out from the Forces division office. He doesn't not enjoy it now, exactly, but reflects: they'd sort of skipped that part, that specific sort of carelessness here. Where it wouldn't have been informed by something refused.
Was it his doing, coming to Flint so late that time, more or less asking for something they hadn't done yet? Flint's, for not turning him out of his bed after?
Where the fuck is his shirt— there it is. Collects it up with a breathed out sound. His belt is in the other room. They are bad at this.
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Rather than continue his own paltry efforts to redress, he considers Marcus'. The shirt and the belt (which is in the other room, on the table still where it has been coiled amidst the papers), and the not quite right lay of his hair, and the expanse of bare skin diminishing with each passing second.
A different impulse abruptly rises in him. But this one is more easily quashed. He instead pulls the worn soft shirt in over his head, then makes to clamber from the bed feeling like twice his ordinary weight. The least he can do is show Marcus to the door (and guarantee that it's been bolted shut again behind him).
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It is likewise impossible to do so with any effectiveness while he's busying himself with getting his boots on, and so firmly stops thinking about much of anything except the wind of a bootlace or clasp of a buckle.
It's also a little deliberate that there is no lingering glances to Flint, but Marcus is certainly not ignoring him. Keyed into the sounds of fabric shuffling, of his gathering the books together, the sigh of the mattress when he leaves the bed. Marcus leaves the bedroom with the expectation he'll be followed out. There, his coat draped over the chair, but first he makes for the belt, crossing the room to collect it as he tucks his shirt into his waistband.
The rings, after that. He pockets them with the absent thought that he ought to have washed his hands, (and maybe this careful order of getting himself respectable enough to leave is not as carefully ordered as he's made it out to be. Something like a hasty retreat, actually, in its unhurried structures), before going to collect the coat.
"Were you intending to convey to the division about the fortifications work tomorrow?" is something he only sort of cares to know.
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