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?"
"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.
"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.
Encouragement, permission, whatever it is, is nearly enough to trigger the thing. The sound out of him is close, quiet, growled and grateful.
Not long, though. Some heavily weighted seconds of heightened breath, carrying quiet vocalisation that he half-consciously makes more pronounced for Flint's benefit, or at least, treating it like giving himself permission to let himself make them, to push past an instinct for silence. Then, the familiar clench, a flood of heat pulled out of him.
Through the crystal, it sounds like a hitch in sound and breathing, and then release, a punched out groan too open to be gritted out, that distinct blend of impact and relief. Tapers, rougher edge returning through gritted teeth, coarse through the throat, something predatorily satiated in its timbre.
And then the simplicity and silliness of the whole thing sets back in. He is alone in this room, on this cheap bed, having fucked nothing but his own palm, and will have to clean himself up, all of this just has the next breath out sound more amused than anything else.
It's an indulgence to shift the blue crystal nearer to his ear so he might listen to the break and hitch and the scrape of Marcus' groaning in as granular detail as is possible. Close enough that he can almost feel the texture of it warm against the skin, thick in the blood; that he can imagine the slick heat of Marcus' climax and the expanding shape of his ribs as he breathes in.
And out, wolfish first. And then less untethered, the sound of giving muscle and gentling tension and something more sensible moving to fill the space.
In the division office at the top of the Gallows tower, Flint unwinds his fingers from the chair arm before he slides the crystal back to his cheek. Half hard, obviously; half wound, the knot in his belly thick.
Still, there's something easy (if rough; not without humor) in the slant of his voice, and maybe Marcus can hear the tug at the corner of his mouth when he asks, "All right?"
Breathy, still, quiet, shaped a little with a half-cocked smile. "I'm good." Very good, the implication.
Now it would be that hazy period of time where he, where they, can get away with finishing kisses, lingering hands. Insisting himself against Flint, curling over him, trying not to be too conscious of the degrees by which they touch each other, or do not.
Shifting, but not by much. A slightly less sprawled position on the bed, picking the crystal back up. "You might like to try that sometime," is all texture, decidedly bedroom, as if they were laying together. Just the crystal, resting in hand and nearer his mouth.
His answering "Mm," is a throaty rasp, fingers turning to absently trace across the edge of the chair's arm. Here, higher up on it where the wood cedes to upholstery and padding, is a loose stitch in want of picking. It's a wonder he didn't find it earlier.
"I'll keep it in mind." These intervals of not being conveniently to hand for one another being something of a frequent occurrence. If he were to cup the crystal close enough and be very mindful of how far any sound carries, it's possible they might employ a similar practice should they ever find themselves in a Riftwatch encampment restless and needy for a fuck.
(He might like that, despite an ordinary skepticism when it comes to any reliance on the crystals—something teasing in the possibility of playing this game with considerably less than four days' riding stretched out between them.)
But no protest, just a hum of a sound after, and an, "Alright," and some lazily drawn breath suggesting a comfortable shift in position. "Just don't expect I'll be all finished with it by the time I'm back, then." It's a long book. Marcus should probably not try to get any of it done in the saddle.
"It should, yes." But maybe he'll avoid adjusting his belt for the next few pages anyway, lest the minor friction from the shift of troiser fabric and the weight about his midsection prove distracting.
(The thread comes loose, and is twisted between the fingers.)
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"Slowly to start," he instructs him. "I want you to tell me something you want while you do it."
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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?"
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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.)
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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."
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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?"
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"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.
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"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."
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(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."
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"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."
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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.
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"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."
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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."
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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."
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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.
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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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Not long, though. Some heavily weighted seconds of heightened breath, carrying quiet vocalisation that he half-consciously makes more pronounced for Flint's benefit, or at least, treating it like giving himself permission to let himself make them, to push past an instinct for silence. Then, the familiar clench, a flood of heat pulled out of him.
Through the crystal, it sounds like a hitch in sound and breathing, and then release, a punched out groan too open to be gritted out, that distinct blend of impact and relief. Tapers, rougher edge returning through gritted teeth, coarse through the throat, something predatorily satiated in its timbre.
And then the simplicity and silliness of the whole thing sets back in. He is alone in this room, on this cheap bed, having fucked nothing but his own palm, and will have to clean himself up, all of this just has the next breath out sound more amused than anything else.
Maybe crystals aren't so bad.
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And out, wolfish first. And then less untethered, the sound of giving muscle and gentling tension and something more sensible moving to fill the space.
In the division office at the top of the Gallows tower, Flint unwinds his fingers from the chair arm before he slides the crystal back to his cheek. Half hard, obviously; half wound, the knot in his belly thick.
Still, there's something easy (if rough; not without humor) in the slant of his voice, and maybe Marcus can hear the tug at the corner of his mouth when he asks, "All right?"
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Breathy, still, quiet, shaped a little with a half-cocked smile. "I'm good." Very good, the implication.
Now it would be that hazy period of time where he, where they, can get away with finishing kisses, lingering hands. Insisting himself against Flint, curling over him, trying not to be too conscious of the degrees by which they touch each other, or do not.
Shifting, but not by much. A slightly less sprawled position on the bed, picking the crystal back up. "You might like to try that sometime," is all texture, decidedly bedroom, as if they were laying together. Just the crystal, resting in hand and nearer his mouth.
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"I'll keep it in mind." These intervals of not being conveniently to hand for one another being something of a frequent occurrence. If he were to cup the crystal close enough and be very mindful of how far any sound carries, it's possible they might employ a similar practice should they ever find themselves in a Riftwatch encampment restless and needy for a fuck.
(He might like that, despite an ordinary skepticism when it comes to any reliance on the crystals—something teasing in the possibility of playing this game with considerably less than four days' riding stretched out between them.)
"And you should stop skipping pages in my book."
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But no protest, just a hum of a sound after, and an, "Alright," and some lazily drawn breath suggesting a comfortable shift in position. "Just don't expect I'll be all finished with it by the time I'm back, then." It's a long book. Marcus should probably not try to get any of it done in the saddle.
"What were you doing, before my messaging?"
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Which is true. More or less.
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He can do this all day.
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"Field correspondence."
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Dry, nipping, "That'll help." Unless someone else is also using official channels of communication for illicit entertainment.
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"It should, yes." But maybe he'll avoid adjusting his belt for the next few pages anyway, lest the minor friction from the shift of troiser fabric and the weight about his midsection prove distracting.
(The thread comes loose, and is twisted between the fingers.)
"I take it you ride out first thing."
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