katabasis | [psl] dos rowdy boys

In the space between Marcus' propped hand and ear, Flint's huffing laugh strikes a low note—a soft clenches tinge of something like approval in it. Or maybe it just sounds that way, and maybe that's all that counts at present. More, it has that warmer edge to it that suggests some unserious rejoinder is waiting in the wings; Flint only has to arrange it on the tongue.

"Are you touching yourself yet?" he asks instead.

His vague focus on the slanted ceiling goes vaguer, closing his eyes as he simmers in that specific feeling Flint's question induces, like a lit ember landing somewhere low in him. Focus sharpening in immediately to the way he is, yes, touching himself, the loose press of his palm and curled fingers.

"Aye," only after half a beat of delay, and then he shifts. Pushing waistband down a little lower, even as his hand stays light, fingers finding sensitive spots to gently work, coaxing along that rush of blood, its trapping.

Quicker off the mark than if he were truly alone. Speaking of— "Will you stay?"

It's an intimate and warm thing, and in sharp contrast to the cavernously dark room of the division office as the rain sheets down beyond the bolted windows, sluicing off the face of the tower stones without ever managing to slip past the cut of the window box to beat against the glass. He is aware of a low thrill solidifying in his belly—a stitching not-quite-ache that is some mix of arousal and curiosity both.

(There is a real fascination in seeing what impulses can be coaxed out of Marcus, or uncovered; how relatively quiet he'd been in that tent.)

"If you tell me what you're thinking of."

The tone carried by an exhale is just loud enough to be heard, that specific kind of pushed out vocalising—from a squeezing hand, maybe.

"I was thinking," he says (and isn't it strange to report what he is thinking, to be asked for it so directly, instead of murmured in scraps, impulsively, against hot skin, and how that makes his own skin prickle), "about your voice. And how it's like your hands."

There've been times he's anticipated some mocking turn to something he's said or done, weighed the risk of it, but there's assurance in how—when they are like this, at least—it never does. Whatever dwindled twinge of defense he might feel for the possibility now is outweighed by knowing that there is little point to any of this if he can only think of how to guard against it, rather than answering the question.

"Guiding," he almost doesn't say, but as noted, it seems unhelpful to not say things in this moment. "Rough, hard sometimes, but good for that. Thinking," a drawn in breath, released, "what we'd do if you were here."

The push of pull of Marcus' breathing is tender against at the ear, tugging at the knot wound low in his belly—crisp edged and so specific in its isolation that it will.be difficult not to turn over in the head later. It occurs to Flint, a fleeting thought, that they've never fucked in the full dark before. And isn't that strange? And that maybe they should so he might better appreciate these narrow breathed out sounds or the simple dimensions of Marcus under his hands.

A low considered hum becomes, "I might insist on just watching if I were," while the thumb of his spare hand idly shifts across the scrollwork of the carved wood chair arm. Searching out small gaps in the design with his fingernail.

"Those let beds are usually small."

It's possible that just about any feasible suggestion might have triggered this warm pooling feeling low in his gut, the responsive pulse he feels through his cock and the hand holding it, but there's something to be said for novelty. The mm he gives is an acknowledging sound (yes, the bed is small, entirely reasonable) but not just that.

It's an easy possibility to access. The crystal does its part in conveying the rich timbre of Flint's voice through it, with only a little uncanniness that gets lost in under the thick rhythm of his own heartbeat and the blood it pushes through him.

"Would you touch yourself too?" he asks, letting the crystal down on the mattress beside him so he can put both hands to work in shucking off clothing, having already been reduced to only comfortable layers upon settling in to read. It could be interpretable to the ear, the rustle of cloth, the bend of breathing along with this next part, "Or would you wait?"

"I would wait," Flint says. And though they're pretending and he might indulge in touching himself now without anyone being the wiser, his spare hand remains curved across the chair's arm.

The angle of his knee and hip shifts, sympathetic to the rasp of clothing sounds from a considerable distance off, but he neglects to shift his palm into the widened space and grope himself through his trousers. It will be better (isn't really a thought so much as an instinct) if he's patient. And the shape of sound across the crystal is thin enough that he doesn't care for the distraction of his own palm shifting across fabric.

(How far is Marcus bothering to undress? How is he laid out in that allegedly narrow bed? Where are his hands now?)

"Are you going to use your fingers on yourself?"

There is probably a practical reason for complete undress. No sense sweating into what few clothes he has out here. No sense making a mess of things he can't leave in this room. But by the time the last of it has slid off the edge of the mattress, the indulgence of it prickles over his skin after these past few days of close quarters, of hasty dressing, half-hearted cleaning.

Flint would wait, which means he will wait. The certainty of this prickles through him. Good, he doesn't say. His hands are on either side. He lays back, as Flint asks that.

Turns a knee out, as if bodily thinking it over. A hand, slipping down further between the crook of thigh and abdomen, not yet doing this thing suggested. Collects the crystal in his other hand. "I could," he says, and if there's any trace of amusement in his tone, it's overshadowed by that husky texture that's gripped it, murmuring in intimate spaces despite the actual distance at play.

Curling his fingers. "Do you want me to?" feels a little like negotiating.

Does he?

The low hum that slides from the crystal in answer is considering, and tinged with the affirmation that yes, Flint does want him to. Or, at the very least, that the image is compelling. But what is actually said, rumbling hum clarifying into lower instruction, is, "Not when I'm not there."

Planting an idea and then shortening the leash on it being something of a habitual practice.

It's familiar, enough that the sound of acknowledgment for it that Marcus makes conveys some amusement—prick—and also agreement. No, not when Flint is not really here. Familiar, too, is that sense of something in the future, of an unfulfilled want. A tug of restriction.

"Alright," he says. Hand shifting, a looser hold that has him draw in a breath. "Then I won't."

Then, after a hesitation, the closing of which has the sense of biting down on something, he adds, "Tell me what to do."

Flint's breath out through the nose is heavy, warm. It has the illusion of closeness in it by merit of how closely he has his own crystal propped near to his cheek; it sounds a little like he's weighing a short list of possibilities, the back of his neck prickling from the satisfaction of being obeyed. From the winking ember of challenge in Marcus' timbre.

"Slowly to start," he instructs him. "I want you to tell me something you want while you do it."

After a breath of time passes, Marcus shifts. Reaches for the sidetable with the lamp and its guttering flame inside. There, the small copper-lipped clay pot with a scant amount of oil left in it, but enough. No need to be particularly graceful, alone in a room, with the short run of oil onto himself.

That second thing, turned over in his mind as he does so. As he curls his hand around himself and signals this, a semi-conscious action, with the heavier breath out of him. Slowly, to start.

"Something I want," he repeats. "Now?" Slowly, a stroke of his hand. 'Gently' is different, and so the squeeze around at the base is firm. It alters his voice, just slightly, when he says, "Or when I get back, and I can get you in a room?"

"Either," he says, and realizes that his interest in which it will be is so sharp that it stings high in the chest. Or maybe that's just the expected kind of restlessness from Marcus' breath in the ear, contrasted with all the empty space about him and his spare hand wrapped gently around the carved wood of the chair arm.

First and foremost, though, he wants Marcus to talk. It's easier to discern the shape of his hand in the slant of his breathing when he does. To picture how he must be arranged on the bed, and the flexing line of sinew and muscle up through the forearm. Fragmented ideas of Marcus' shoulder and the muscle that joins it to neck. The stubble speckled underside of his jaw.

(They shouldn't concern themselves overmuch with this being untenable; they're too eager for one another. It hasn't been a week since Marcus left his bed, and already he wants more of him enough to play this stupid game.)

The breath out of him next is shaped more by the quick spread of a smile than what his hand is doing. Sharp, brief. "I want your hands on me," Marcus says. It's distinct, the awareness of the lack of this, which is (conversely) somehow good in this moment.

He speaks, a slow process of liberating the trappings that tend to prevent him from rambling in the way that would be of benefit here. The slow slide of his own hand is a good encouragement. His other, holding the crystal idly, thoughtlessly working the chain attached to it between his fingers. "Hard, because of what I'm doing to you. Because you want more of it, or something else that I'm refusing you.

"Or," a small, vocal push of a breath, "you just want to touch me as much as I want to touch you, in that moment."

Either is a lot like both, as far as he is concerned, and he adds, "And I want you to tell me what you're thinking too."

The point of this—asking him to put these things into concrete form—is meant to stand in place of his hands. Something in the suggestive quality of Don't think about what isn't happening should serve to render the fantasy especially appealing, and sharpens the edges of what is. That the effect should travel both ways—

A small turn of the hand, ring band scraping a gentle rythmn across the hard wood of the chair arm makes for a sufficiently tactile distraction from the twinge at home low in his belly. The tightening sense of arousal. The impulse to loosen his belt.

"Now?" Flint asks, some thick curl of wolfish humor nipping at fingertips. "Or am I meant to tell you when you get back, and get me into a room?"

A rough sound answers that.

"Now," has a likewise nipping quality, playing at chastising. It would be just like Flint to delay that answer. Evade it entirely. Has the effect, here, of a sharpening of focus, but not so much that Marcus stops touching himself, the slow and deliberate strokes across oil-slick skin, thickening out under fingers, warming.

The low grumble of his chuckle has the close quality of a sound murmured into a cupped palm (because it is, the crystal's edges laid against his cheek and his fingers curled casually at the corner of his mouth). Brief, curved. And inaudible across the crystal: that absent, rhythmic scuff of metal against wood.

"I'm thinking," he says, "That it's going to take some effort not to touch myself once you've finished. But seeing as I'd prefer your hands to mine, I'll try to be patient."

(He's going to wait. It's going to be a long stretch of days while Marcus circles back in the direction of the Gallows and by the time Marcus makes his landing on the fortress island, he'll be all appetite—)

But in the meantime:

"You sound good," sounds like praise. "You can be a rougher now if you care to be."

The next rasp of sound is less incidental that the rest. Approving, first, but only audible from the way it feels good, this information, a sharp spark in the duller ache of warm hand, of empty room.

(Flint sounds so close. It's enough to prickle at the nerves, to bypass the intellectual knowledge that they are four days ride apart and have him wish he could turn his head, seek the familiar texture of warm whiskers and soft mouth under his own. Bad whiskey, nipping teeth. There is something to how he can't that probably resembles the way this all will sharpen Flint's appetite over the next week.)

A second sound like it, for what sounds like is praise, and is permission. He does, and does, signalled with the warm exhale that leaves him, the start of more consistent heavier breathing. Something that implies a slight shift in movement, position.

"You sound good too," is simply true. A thread of amusement, subtle. This normally takes longer.

And there'll come a point where coherent thought gets a little more difficult to grasp. Before that happens—

"Now I'm thinking about you," laced with that slant of shorter breath, impulsive. "In your office, I think. In that chair. You're hard, listening to me. If I were there, I'd touch you. Kiss you while I felt you over." Another rasp of sound. "I like you impatient."

"You're good at making me impatient," is half impulsive reply and half defined by the catch of humor in it—gentle self deprecation like a soft set of teeth to skin, while the small hairs at the back of his neck bristle under the influence of the catch and pull of Marcus' breathing. Yes, in the office. Yes, in that chair. Yes, he is not unaffected, and it's easy to imagine Marcus leaning in heavily over him and to fall prey to a certain eagerness to be cast in his shadow.

"That crossing back from the Anderfels. I spent it half hard while thinking of getting back to the Gallows and having you. I kept remembering you here in this room between my knees while I was sat in this chair," doesn't feel like a confession even if it is. Marcus leaning across his thigh while he stripped him of his armor. Undoing the shell and slipping his fingers into the vulnerable space between plate and skin where all sharp points love to be.

"If I were there," he says. "I'd be too impatient to keep with only watching you. If you look as good as you sound right now, I'd need to touch you."

Something in the midst of this kicks a renewed flood of heat through him. Maybe the notion of Flint half-hard and wanting him, or simply possessing some of his focus when not directly in front of him. Of some new light cast on a memory, remembering the stern slant of shadows across Flint's face, unimpressed angles that gentled, finally, finally.

Not wholly conscious, the groan out of him, not specifically intended to prove that he might well be as good to look at and touch as he is to hear.

Shifted off his back, partways, a hip against the mattress, some ability to meet the stroke of his hand with the push of his hips, although not quite yet. Other arm bent, hand flat and pinning the chain of the sending crystal to the rough cover of the mattress. Sweat, just now, prickling across the shoulders.

"Remember going to you then," sound like it's unravelling at the edges, accent thickening out as it as a tendency to do, "not knowing what I was asking for, not really. But you always seem to. It's always what I want." He could mean the fucking. He could mean the bed he slept in. The thing Flint asked first, not second.

And maybe that's meant to be sexier, but it's what falls from him regardless, as the hand flat on the chain curls into covers. A growl of a word, unformed.

The rough edge of that sound is a hot breath against the skin, and a turning hand moves to grip after the chair arm. An impulsive squeeze, some chisel worked edge pressing a hard line up under the pad of his thumb. Somewhere, four days away, Flint's rumble of approval is distinct in a small let room near Marcus' closing fingers.

"Isn't it possible that I just want what you want?"

To touch him all over; to listen to the hard rasp of his breathing, and to run his hands over the flexible, unguarded parts of him. To have Marcus come to his rooms in the dead of night looking to be touched and wanting Flint to be the one to do it. To linger at the margins of something like gentleness—not tentative, just intentional. It is easy to imagine those circumstances reversed; they've more or less already played that out.

"When you come back, I want you to come find me. I'll put my hands on you then if that's what you still want."

In the midst of blood pushing thick through veins, there's a small curl of amusement. That may well be so, and would explain a few things, and how fortunate.

And as for the rest—

"I do," murmured, panted out. "I will. I'll do that."

And they'll both be wanting each other the whole time it takes him to get there, he's sure. But at least for right now, this is something, and it isn't simply a quick form of cheap relief, not with the way Flint's voice seems to pair with his own hand, seems to run down his back.

"Fuck, Flint, I'm close."

"I can tell," is true. Though it's only once he's said it that Flint consciously notes having recognized the thickening shape of Marcus' voice. Something in the way the man's tongue handles the edges of words that has already been rubbing at him, as at home against his cheek as Marcus pressing a panting and open mouthed kiss would be there.

It breeds a terrible impulse in him to be coaxing and needy both. Mercifully (nevermind that it doesn't feel so in the moment), he's short the necessary friction to get completely ridiculous. So, instead—

"It would be my hand on you, were I there. I'd want you to fuck into my fingers and come undone on them. I like having you on me."

There's a yes edged into breath, broadly affirming, agreeing. Not quite yearning, no room for that, and it's enough that Marcus does fuck his hand some, muscles pulling taut across the body, heel digging.

Yes, as in it would be, and yes, he would, and yes, he likes that too. Has liked it since he had it, imposing himself, welcomed.

"Flint," and, "I need," tumble out of him, before resolving into, "Can I come," in place of seeking out the affirming twitch and encouragement of work rough fingers that don't belong to him.

He could say no. He could ask him to hold off. Just a few moments longer. More—he could tell him now to stop touching himself at all, and deny him entirely the relief of spilling over. It wouldn't be impossible, he senses, to talk him down from the buzzing edge of it. If he instructed him to, Marcus would comply.

The certainty of that thought is sweet and biting as cheap liquor on the tongue, sufficiently satisfying in the short term to relegate the urgency to something considered rather than acted on. Besides, if he were to make Marcus stop, he would want to actually watch him squirm and rather than just knowing about it. Nevermind that it would be cruel to deny him at this distance where there's so little he might do to make up for it.

He won't even make him say please.

"Go on. I want to hear it."

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