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.
When Flint surfaces in the adjacent office, he has found his drawers and resumed the upright posture of someone who has made a decision and has decided it's a rational one. Nevermind the undone sleeve cuffs, or the long shirt tails; he isn't really so rumpled as all that, and the leather ledger and novel under one arm lend a certain businesslike air (or at least an organized one) where rightly there should be none. Or nearly none. Or—
Though, the question seems to catch him off guard. As if he has forgotten the ostensible motivation for Marcus to be in this room to begin with.
"I'll make the relevant parties aware," is the obvious, easy answer. Meanwhile, the ledger and book are shuffled out from under his arm, transfered into both hands and held at some angle that invites passing over custody.
What little remains of the light here is dusky and greying, and mostly too dark to make out finite details by the farther one ranges from the windows. Here, the pair of them are more shadow than they're not.
"If not personally, then I'll see that Matthias passed word and keeps you informed. I've some other work to see to now that we're back in Kirkwall."
Sliding arms into sleeves, resitting his coat on his shoulders, there is nothing to say that Marcus hadn't just endured either an agonisingly extensive work meeting or just an ordinary one should no one in particular be watching Flint's door and otherwise could not speak to who's gone in and out of it and when. Still, even with his offhanded query just now, Marcus isn't interested in engaging in needless pretense.
He accepts the books and doesn't immediately set off on a trajectory for the door, for instance, laying a hand down on the novel balanced on the ledger. The shadows wash out fine detail, and with his back turned for the thick-glassed windows, Flint's expression is rendered in pools of darkness and vague slants of dusky light. Tries to discern something from that much.
Arranges the books beneath an arm. "Alright," he says.
Freed of any responsibility, Flint's hands falling to his sides. Turn. Catch an unbuttoned cuff unthinkingly between a thumb and forefinger where he might absently work the fabric between the two. An inability to stand entirely still under observation, and to do nothing with either hand.
Or because he is aware of an itch beneath the skin that comes from the unsatisfied urgency to snake his hand out and catch Marcus' by the wrist. Were he not committed to this, he might indulge in it. But they are being unselfish, him in particular, and it wouldn't do to make a mess of it when they've been so plain tonight.
"Go on," he says, though with a sway of the shoulder it's Flint who first makes for the door. "Before I change my mind and we find ourselves renegotiating all of this in another four hours.
It's not so serious as all this prickling in the air suggests. Crack a joke. Send a long look in Marcus' direction and then set to drawing back the bolt.
It's a good joke—or rather, well-applied. Not in the sense that it makes him laugh or anything, but 'good' as in it smooths a few ruffled feathers in an ego-wards direction. Good, that going separate ways in this moment should be a little like a mutual disentanglement. Marcus turns as Flint moves passed him, then follows that path after a faint breath of acknowledgment.
Have it your way. This time, there's no lingering, no implicit sense of waiting for something else. Go on, and Marcus goes, a measure of wry humour in the flicked glance that meets that longer look.
"Good night," muttered, as he catches the edge of the door to lever it open and himself out of the office. The scuff of footfalls project an image of a direct and unhesitating route for the stairwell.
There's no sense in lingering there in the doorway. So the door is closed after him, and the bolt is thrown. Done. Nominally speaking, let it not be discarded that this is the longest they've spent in one another's company without some work or disaster to necessitate it. There's little need to feel the thing has in any way been only half way satisfactory, or that anyone has been short changed by driving Marcus from the room rather than inviting him back into it.
Crossing back through that dim room, Flint is familiar enough with all the furniture in it that he doesn't need to mind his shins. Returning to the apartment awash in the low glow of candlelight, the air over warm and half his clothes still scattered and the bed clothes twisted, he—
Draws shut that door as well, which is not rare, and bolts it too, which is.
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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?"
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.
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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."
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
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).
no subject
(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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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).
no subject
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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Though, the question seems to catch him off guard. As if he has forgotten the ostensible motivation for Marcus to be in this room to begin with.
"I'll make the relevant parties aware," is the obvious, easy answer. Meanwhile, the ledger and book are shuffled out from under his arm, transfered into both hands and held at some angle that invites passing over custody.
What little remains of the light here is dusky and greying, and mostly too dark to make out finite details by the farther one ranges from the windows. Here, the pair of them are more shadow than they're not.
"If not personally, then I'll see that Matthias passed word and keeps you informed. I've some other work to see to now that we're back in Kirkwall."
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He accepts the books and doesn't immediately set off on a trajectory for the door, for instance, laying a hand down on the novel balanced on the ledger. The shadows wash out fine detail, and with his back turned for the thick-glassed windows, Flint's expression is rendered in pools of darkness and vague slants of dusky light. Tries to discern something from that much.
Arranges the books beneath an arm. "Alright," he says.
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Or because he is aware of an itch beneath the skin that comes from the unsatisfied urgency to snake his hand out and catch Marcus' by the wrist. Were he not committed to this, he might indulge in it. But they are being unselfish, him in particular, and it wouldn't do to make a mess of it when they've been so plain tonight.
"Go on," he says, though with a sway of the shoulder it's Flint who first makes for the door. "Before I change my mind and we find ourselves renegotiating all of this in another four hours.
It's not so serious as all this prickling in the air suggests. Crack a joke. Send a long look in Marcus' direction and then set to drawing back the bolt.
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Have it your way. This time, there's no lingering, no implicit sense of waiting for something else. Go on, and Marcus goes, a measure of wry humour in the flicked glance that meets that longer look.
"Good night," muttered, as he catches the edge of the door to lever it open and himself out of the office. The scuff of footfalls project an image of a direct and unhesitating route for the stairwell.
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Crossing back through that dim room, Flint is familiar enough with all the furniture in it that he doesn't need to mind his shins. Returning to the apartment awash in the low glow of candlelight, the air over warm and half his clothes still scattered and the bed clothes twisted, he—
Draws shut that door as well, which is not rare, and bolts it too, which is.