There is something, too, to be said for the strength of the mind's eye. The picture it conjures of Marcus there is all sharp edged in its imagined shape. He has seen what the man looks like with a cock in his mouth before—that heavy, contended quality writ broad in his features. In the dark, with only the slick sounds of his mouth, the rasp of breathing and bedclothes, it is natural to fix that image to the forefront. To think of those rough, aching noises Marcus has sometimes made between his cock and his fingers, and for the thought to hook low and hot under Marcus' touch.
"That's good, Marcus." There is a low, warm burr at the edge it. Fingers pushing back through hair, flexing across the crown of his head.
Tomorrow, he thinks. They could meet in Lowtown; there will be some hour where he might step away in the afternoon. If Marcus found the place, he could hurry to it and they could have a quick fuck in the daylight of some let room. He could watch him then; see how closely the picture in his head still trues up with reality.
The answering sound Marcus makes stands in for something like praise in return, whatever that might be. His voice, his hand, his cock. Laying back, letting him.
Marcus moves his hand off Flint's cock to smooth up across his belly, his chest, at the same time as he takes him deeper. A progressive nudging to fit him intimately in his mouth, towards his throat, as deep as he'll tolerate tonight. His fingers curl there against Flint's skin as he holds him like that for those quick few breaths before drawing back with patient slowness. Breathing, there, Flint shallow against his tongue, a slightly raspier breath out.
Lingers there, lips closing just around the crown of him, the curl of his tongue a quiet, private tease of touch that seems to feel out shape and texture and that beading hint of moisture.
The weight of the hand across his chest, the texture of fingers and palm pressing in combination with that deeper, tighter sense of Marcus' mouth— he breathes out a low, panted sound as it eases. The weight of his hand lightening, a shiver threading its way through his center in answer to the flick of tongue.
Slowly, the closing of fingers on Marcus' hair. Gets a grip on him. Rather than hitch his hip up, he makes a hitched sound. Coaxing. An encouraging press of the hand.
And in counter (or maybe in compliment), his spare hand shifting in from out of the dark. It fits across Marcus' there at his chest, covering it.
The hand under Flint's stretches, fingers flattening, like an animal being pressed into calm. Easy, to curl them back against to fit against Flint's palm.
Meanwhile, Marcus bows his head to that encouraging pressure, the sharper clutch of the hand. Lowers around Flint's cock, a long stroke of motion, slower to lift away, but not stopping, taking him back in again. Tasting and testing and teasing, beneath that gentle asking motion, turning to something more dedicated.
The arm he has folded to balance himself can shift enough for him to grip Flint's hip, otherwise refusing to move the hand Flint has covered as if it were pinned there.
He can feel his own pulse against his ribs pressing up to meet the palm of Marcus' hands. Or that is the draw of his breath, lungs swelling in answer to the more earnest shape of Marcus' mouth. The heat of his tongue. The sensation of his bending under the closed grip of his hand. There is something collaborative in this despite how settled he is across the mattress. Marcus takes him into his mouth; his wrist tenses. His fingers on both hands cinch briefly tighter, and then they do it over again.
There is sweat prickling at the base of his throat, half inspired by the slicked sounds that have come to fill the dark narrowed space. Fuck, his mouth is good; and so is the hand at his hip, and the eagerness with which Marcus has sought this out when they might have only laid next to one another. It clenches low in the belly. Rings softly in the ear.
"Close," sounds like warm, rasping praise more than it does a warning, though they could make this last longer if they wanted. He could coax Marcus' mouth up off him until that tightening sensation wound down enough to start over again. Later.
(Later, he can have Marcus sit in a chair for him and give this back to him. Lay his cheek across the crook of the man's hip and thigh and slowly stroke his cock, or suck him in intervals.)
Marcus' hand at Flint's hip tightens, a pulse of pressure. Hard to interpret it as anything other than a good, or maybe permission.
Doesn't take him in really deep, they're not quite situated for that, but keeps him there, not-quite-shallow, mouth pulling him in slow, wet movements. Keen to see him over like this, while soaking up the way Flint's voice changes when he's near, the thrum of tension through open thighs, the pulse of Flint's hand tightening, releasing, tightening.
His own cock is stiff within his drawers and he isn't thinking about whether he'll consider it a nuisance in a moment or pleasantly uncomfortable, but he is, too, thinking of later. The pleasant falsehood that this is all some exchange of favours, of having lost count at some point. They want each other too much for it to have meaning.
Marcus gives a thoughtless and quiet groan around Flint's cock at some shiver of warmth passing through him, from the twinge of his hair tugged, down through his centre.
That hum of sound radiates up and through him, a liquid kind of heat. There is something in how none of this is particularly hurried that sits pleasantly against the skin. All intent and want, but stripped of any impatient jangling of nerves or then vibrant kind of urgency that puts a hungry metal taste on the tongue.
They should be, shouldn't they? Urgent, and needy, and clinging to this thing that had almost ended so unceremoniously. It is a balm, actually, to feel little need to grasp unnecessarily after Marcus in the dark. The weight is enough. The hand flat on his chest is enough. The direct heat of his mouth is—
Plenty capable. With a low note that vibrates against the shape of there fingers, he spills hot over the lay of Marcus' tongue. A clenching fist gentles.
His hands tighten as he feels Flint spasm underneath him, and feels a strong inner jerk of warmth at that hot pulse inside his mouth. He stays as is, swallowing shallow around Flint until he can hear the tone of the next breath out. Releases him, then, his own breathing that little bit shallow, rasping, mindlessly pressing a clumsy kiss intimate into the crook of hip and thigh and pelvis, eyes closed in the dark.
Unhurried. No rush to rise up and curl against him, although this is what he will surely do. He rests his head a moment against the other man's thigh instead, basking a little in that inevitably niggling feeling of neglected arousal.
That unraveling of tension sags the joint of a knee. It relaxes the angle of a wrist, and somewhere in the dark the room widens back to its original dimensions rather than some clutched close space carved out just to fit them. Fingers smooth free of their tangle in Marcus' hair, clasp roughly at the angle of his jaw. Tuck loose strands of hair back behind the curve of an ear, and then just lingers clumsily there as Flint's other hand laces fingers and weighs heavily with Marcus' at the line of his sternum.
He spends the sharpened edge of his attention on this: Marcus' hand in his, and the shape of the other man's breathing across his hip; feeling the prickle of sweat and listening to the hum winding down through his blood.
They lay like this for what feels like a long, wordless interim.
Then, a slow exhale. A low rumbling that is acknowledgement, or praise, or an invitation which vibrates against Marcus' knuckles. The hand flopped across the side of his face finds a more reliable place for Flint to set his fingers where he might coax Marcus up from his efforts.
Come here, he doesn't say, though the sentiment is in the twitching points of contact and the long settled line of flint's body in the unlit room.
It's a good and satisfying interim. Laying there, feeling his pulse thick in his throat, chest, cock, feeling it thin back out, feel blood shift and settle. The taste of bitter-salt ebbing away as he swallows again, content for his hand to be tangled with Flint's, to feel loose fingers and palm against his face.
Stirs when that changes, setting against his jaw. Pushes the folded up arm beneath himself so that he can raise back up, ignoring (or rather, forgetting) the tangle of cotton around Flint's thighs in pursuit of moving to meet him.
Lays heavily across him, bodies warm, turning his face to kiss clumsily at fingers halfway there.
A murmuring of sound, warm and satisfied, approves of the rearrangement. Hand shifting—first to encourage that lay of Marcus' kiss, and then to take him by the chin and helpfully guide him the rest of the way so that Flint might grumble a low note of affirmation directly against his mouth. A lazy arm is slung about Marcus' shoulders in loose welcome, and the kiss that materializes is content to be slow and easy.
(Somewhere, tucked inside that loose jointed sensation and the pleasant thrumming of post-orgasm working it's way through muscle and sinew, there is that tight knot behind his ribs. Yanked a little nearer now, a full sensation high in his chest. Not painful. Just pressing enough not to escape notice.)
"Good work," is a thick breath out in close space. Humor curling at the edges. Punctuated by a gentle nipping at a lower lip.
That gets a murmured, "Thanks," that matches that small curl of humour, dry and quick. Chasing that nipped touch with reinstating a close kiss, sweetly shallow without being particularly chaste. Marcus settles himself once it breaks, the line of his body sinking against Flint's, shoulders relaxed beneath the loose yoke of that arm.
It'll be too warm. It is too warm, but it's a welcome amount of too warm, open air prickling at skin that's a little damper than it was a moment ago. Still, after a second, Marcus reaches down to snag the rumpled edge of sheet, pulls it higher over them about the waist before resettling, now more alongside than on.
Lays there, silent. Still. It feels silent and still inside as well, which has not been so for the last few days.
Settling there in that half press of warm skin, cool bed linens, and the prickle of stilled air, he listens to the shape of Marcus' breathing for a long measure. Here, there is some small shifting point of contact that rasps gently as one of them exhales and the other does the reverse. And he can feel the beat of his own pulse falling. Can sense angles and weight relaxing into place, and lets it happen.
Later, he will think to twist his legs free of the cotten breeches. For the present, he has forgotten about them more or less entirely.
"You're welcome," he says, what feels like full minutes later and largely just to feel the rumble of it against Marcus' skin in the rapidly fading space between being not being asleep, and being asleep.
Marcus' reply is a rasped out sound, a retort. Be quiet, like a gentle nip without actually getting his teeth involved, perfectly still in the tangle of sheet, limbs, cooling sweat and his own arousal slowly, slowly draining out of him into a warm pool of sensation. The rum helps, loose about the ribs where he pulls in a deeper breath and lets it out in a slow and satisfied stream.
True sleep will take its time. He doesn't long for it. It's good, laying here in the dark, hazily attuned to his surroundings. When Flint frees himself of his breeches, Marcus shifts just enough to accommodate. Does his part in another tugging adjustment of sheets, settling back into this pleasant tangle that doesn't cling too tightly.
There's been no talk of when he will leave in the morning. He's wondered before if Flint only dozes lightly so that when that first shard of barely cast sunlight comes, he's best positioned to shake Marcus from his sheets in good time. Unless the man has a naturally attuned sense of pre-dawn, which is always possible. It doesn't feel as though it matters, but he thinks on it as he listens for the shift of Flint's breathing, for the sense of him drifting away.
When it comes, it's that heavy kind of sleep that suppresses all dreams to little more than half formed fragments. Memory or the whims of the subconscious are only ghosts of things sighted through thick banks of fog, too ephemeral to close fingers around and too transitory to warrant much concern. He dreams of— someone. Doing something. Somewhere. The sensation of being low on the belly of a ship, removed from both the tang of fresh salt air and the sensation of the sea's chop. Low down, into the darkness of the hold; only in his dream, that place is dry and unfetid. It is the warm, regular counter weight to the overhead sway of something larger and higher and far more delicate.
He does rouse early. There is a certain grey quality to the light coming through the slit windows, and he is naked under rucked sheets. If there is work to be done with regard to extracting a limb or two from under the weight of his companion, Flint sets about it carefully enough not to trouble him.
Slipping from the bed he washes his face and cleans his teeth. Refits all the rings on his fingers and the post in his ear. Dresses in an old shirt worn soft and stiff blackened trousers. And there is the belt, and the knife, and the glass shoved in between his belly and the leather band, and the boots donned one after another.
There is no dreaming of falling. There won't be for some months, while grey matter slow digests this solitarily unique flash of experience, deep below the surface.
Mages, of course, go about this whole thing differently. Dreams. That his own sleeping mind is as inky-black as the dark room he'd been so content in when he was barely awake is, on some level, a deliberate thing. Warm, sightless but textured, and refusing to stray very far from where he was when he fell asleep.
Marcus' limbs are stubbornly heavy, and too unconscious to protest or cling as Flint carefully escapes them. Only once the mattress shifts with the changing of weight and pressure, the sheets pull along with him as he moves, turning his back, settling back in. Slowly, senses stir, until he finds that he is cognizant to his surroundings, his own slack weight in a relatively comfortable bed, and that he is listening to the sounds of rustling, the gentle scuff of a boot heel set against the floor as leather is tugged, laces managed.
Probably alerts Flint to his presence with the thick drawing in of breath, held through a stretch of spine and legs as he shifts to his back. Murmurs something that is probably Trade.
There is a chair near the window, inconvenient to the apartment's door and therefore rarely used save from the purpose of reading books by the dying dregs of daylight, or like this—sitting here, half bent as he tightens various laces. Here, the sound from the bed's occupant draws him short. Prompts a pause. The soft rasping work of his hands quiets.
His attention fixes there on the bed. And then, he slowly resumes tugging tight and tying the laces of first one boot and then the other. When he rises, it's with a creak of furniture joints.
There is a coat laid across the chair back. Flint draws it free, and shrugs into it.
By the time Flint is on his feet and negotiating arms into coat sleeves, Marcus is preoccupied with rubbing thumb and forefinger into his eyesockets. His other arm loosely splayed across the broad space Flint had been laying, and draws in feel out the edge of the sheets he is still half-under as he slowly, lazily, makes his way to the surface.
Enough to evaluate Flint through the close press of eyelashes. Dressed. Then, assess the quality of light at the window. Early.
Another murmur. This one manages some crisper edges to the words as he says, "Morning," which also has enough tone to it to make it a greeting rather than just an observation.
It's an attractive picture: Marcus Rowntree all long lines in his bed, half under a sheet slightly twisted sheet with his hair loose across the pillow, and only something like three parts awake. If he is being square with himself, and this morning he is, it's the sort of thing that makes him want to clamber back into bed.
Instead he adjusts the lay of his shirt collar under that of the coat.
"Morning."
Checks his pockets. Lays a hand briefly at his belt buckle. The unconscious rituals of a man who is preparing to walk out the door.
There's evaluation in the flicker of a look over Flint, trying to judge if it's by accident that Marcus should wake to find him close to out the door, or there's some design in it. It's a neutral sort of arithmetic, while he shifts a little to lean against pillows and backboard.
Grunts at this news. There's the fleeting and completely senseless impulse to calculate whether he could get to a similar state of readiness as the other man in time to accompany him, but it dismantles itself under the barest pressure of sense.
Says, "I don't," from his sprawl, voice sleep-rough and creaky.
He moves then, tracking around the bed to the side table. There is a stack of papers there he should pocket to bring with him. Saying as he goes, "Matthias has work outside Kirkwall and won't be in the office, but one of the servants will tidy near ten."
Here are those papers, extracted from under a slim book. He folds them in half with a crinkling rasp.
The corner of Marcus' mouth hooks upwards that small degree, and he stays unmoving as Flint tracks around he bed, up until he has his papers.
At which point, he pulls himself nearer, nothing about the action implying he intends to leave the mattress but nearer all the same. He doesn't fuss with the sheets, still dressed in cotton drawers that he doesn't feel too brazen as he pulls in closer.
"Alright," he says. Noted. Settling there on this side of the mattress, "And when are you next free of your obligations?"
Not too brazen, no, though Flint's attention slides in his direction anyway as he tucks the folded papers into an interior coat pocket. Good question, says some slant of his brow and the faint pulling at the corner of his mouth behind freshly trimmed auburn whiskers.
"I've an hour or two in the afternoon, but I don't mean to return here." Wasted effort, catching the ferry to and from. Beyond that—
"Otherwise, I can't say. Scouts suggest we've Venatori lingering in the Vinmark foothills. I might go take a look and see what can be done about digging them out. But I trust you've plenty to do."
Surely there are duties that Marcus has mentally assigned himself even if he hasn't yet quite made the changes on paper.
Talk of news from scouts and Venatori and foothills patter off of his own barely-awake fog, some twinge of complaint at the brow that is more directed at his attempt to focus than the man speaking to him directly. Almost against his will, Marcus recalls some communications that had crossed his desk with the city guard alongside some sideways comment about a missed shift or two.
Generally opaque, Flint probably has enough context to interpret the emergence of these thoughts in the subtle changes to Marcus' expression as he rests his head back against the board.
"If I manage my desk before you see about them, I wouldn't mind hunting something." You know, if Flint is offering.
A flicking glance sums Marcus up there against the bed's heavy headboard, the sheet across his thighs. It's a measuring look—the sort of consideration given over to a man recently out of a sick bed more than it is anything else.
The coat is twitched closed to lay flat across his shoulder.
"Let me know when you've done that." Is not a yes, is not a no.
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"That's good, Marcus." There is a low, warm burr at the edge it. Fingers pushing back through hair, flexing across the crown of his head.
Tomorrow, he thinks. They could meet in Lowtown; there will be some hour where he might step away in the afternoon. If Marcus found the place, he could hurry to it and they could have a quick fuck in the daylight of some let room. He could watch him then; see how closely the picture in his head still trues up with reality.
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Marcus moves his hand off Flint's cock to smooth up across his belly, his chest, at the same time as he takes him deeper. A progressive nudging to fit him intimately in his mouth, towards his throat, as deep as he'll tolerate tonight. His fingers curl there against Flint's skin as he holds him like that for those quick few breaths before drawing back with patient slowness. Breathing, there, Flint shallow against his tongue, a slightly raspier breath out.
Lingers there, lips closing just around the crown of him, the curl of his tongue a quiet, private tease of touch that seems to feel out shape and texture and that beading hint of moisture.
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Slowly, the closing of fingers on Marcus' hair. Gets a grip on him. Rather than hitch his hip up, he makes a hitched sound. Coaxing. An encouraging press of the hand.
And in counter (or maybe in compliment), his spare hand shifting in from out of the dark. It fits across Marcus' there at his chest, covering it.
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Meanwhile, Marcus bows his head to that encouraging pressure, the sharper clutch of the hand. Lowers around Flint's cock, a long stroke of motion, slower to lift away, but not stopping, taking him back in again. Tasting and testing and teasing, beneath that gentle asking motion, turning to something more dedicated.
The arm he has folded to balance himself can shift enough for him to grip Flint's hip, otherwise refusing to move the hand Flint has covered as if it were pinned there.
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There is sweat prickling at the base of his throat, half inspired by the slicked sounds that have come to fill the dark narrowed space. Fuck, his mouth is good; and so is the hand at his hip, and the eagerness with which Marcus has sought this out when they might have only laid next to one another. It clenches low in the belly. Rings softly in the ear.
"Close," sounds like warm, rasping praise more than it does a warning, though they could make this last longer if they wanted. He could coax Marcus' mouth up off him until that tightening sensation wound down enough to start over again. Later.
(Later, he can have Marcus sit in a chair for him and give this back to him. Lay his cheek across the crook of the man's hip and thigh and slowly stroke his cock, or suck him in intervals.)
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Doesn't take him in really deep, they're not quite situated for that, but keeps him there, not-quite-shallow, mouth pulling him in slow, wet movements. Keen to see him over like this, while soaking up the way Flint's voice changes when he's near, the thrum of tension through open thighs, the pulse of Flint's hand tightening, releasing, tightening.
His own cock is stiff within his drawers and he isn't thinking about whether he'll consider it a nuisance in a moment or pleasantly uncomfortable, but he is, too, thinking of later. The pleasant falsehood that this is all some exchange of favours, of having lost count at some point. They want each other too much for it to have meaning.
Marcus gives a thoughtless and quiet groan around Flint's cock at some shiver of warmth passing through him, from the twinge of his hair tugged, down through his centre.
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They should be, shouldn't they? Urgent, and needy, and clinging to this thing that had almost ended so unceremoniously. It is a balm, actually, to feel little need to grasp unnecessarily after Marcus in the dark. The weight is enough. The hand flat on his chest is enough. The direct heat of his mouth is—
Plenty capable. With a low note that vibrates against the shape of there fingers, he spills hot over the lay of Marcus' tongue. A clenching fist gentles.
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Unhurried. No rush to rise up and curl against him, although this is what he will surely do. He rests his head a moment against the other man's thigh instead, basking a little in that inevitably niggling feeling of neglected arousal.
Turns his hand, grasping after Flint's properly.
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He spends the sharpened edge of his attention on this: Marcus' hand in his, and the shape of the other man's breathing across his hip; feeling the prickle of sweat and listening to the hum winding down through his blood.
They lay like this for what feels like a long, wordless interim.
Then, a slow exhale. A low rumbling that is acknowledgement, or praise, or an invitation which vibrates against Marcus' knuckles. The hand flopped across the side of his face finds a more reliable place for Flint to set his fingers where he might coax Marcus up from his efforts.
Come here, he doesn't say, though the sentiment is in the twitching points of contact and the long settled line of flint's body in the unlit room.
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Stirs when that changes, setting against his jaw. Pushes the folded up arm beneath himself so that he can raise back up, ignoring (or rather, forgetting) the tangle of cotton around Flint's thighs in pursuit of moving to meet him.
Lays heavily across him, bodies warm, turning his face to kiss clumsily at fingers halfway there.
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(Somewhere, tucked inside that loose jointed sensation and the pleasant thrumming of post-orgasm working it's way through muscle and sinew, there is that tight knot behind his ribs. Yanked a little nearer now, a full sensation high in his chest. Not painful. Just pressing enough not to escape notice.)
"Good work," is a thick breath out in close space. Humor curling at the edges. Punctuated by a gentle nipping at a lower lip.
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It'll be too warm. It is too warm, but it's a welcome amount of too warm, open air prickling at skin that's a little damper than it was a moment ago. Still, after a second, Marcus reaches down to snag the rumpled edge of sheet, pulls it higher over them about the waist before resettling, now more alongside than on.
Lays there, silent. Still. It feels silent and still inside as well, which has not been so for the last few days.
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Later, he will think to twist his legs free of the cotten breeches. For the present, he has forgotten about them more or less entirely.
"You're welcome," he says, what feels like full minutes later and largely just to feel the rumble of it against Marcus' skin in the rapidly fading space between being not being asleep, and being asleep.
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True sleep will take its time. He doesn't long for it. It's good, laying here in the dark, hazily attuned to his surroundings. When Flint frees himself of his breeches, Marcus shifts just enough to accommodate. Does his part in another tugging adjustment of sheets, settling back into this pleasant tangle that doesn't cling too tightly.
There's been no talk of when he will leave in the morning. He's wondered before if Flint only dozes lightly so that when that first shard of barely cast sunlight comes, he's best positioned to shake Marcus from his sheets in good time. Unless the man has a naturally attuned sense of pre-dawn, which is always possible. It doesn't feel as though it matters, but he thinks on it as he listens for the shift of Flint's breathing, for the sense of him drifting away.
Regardless, he won't take long to follow.
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He does rouse early. There is a certain grey quality to the light coming through the slit windows, and he is naked under rucked sheets. If there is work to be done with regard to extracting a limb or two from under the weight of his companion, Flint sets about it carefully enough not to trouble him.
Slipping from the bed he washes his face and cleans his teeth. Refits all the rings on his fingers and the post in his ear. Dresses in an old shirt worn soft and stiff blackened trousers. And there is the belt, and the knife, and the glass shoved in between his belly and the leather band, and the boots donned one after another.
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Mages, of course, go about this whole thing differently. Dreams. That his own sleeping mind is as inky-black as the dark room he'd been so content in when he was barely awake is, on some level, a deliberate thing. Warm, sightless but textured, and refusing to stray very far from where he was when he fell asleep.
Marcus' limbs are stubbornly heavy, and too unconscious to protest or cling as Flint carefully escapes them. Only once the mattress shifts with the changing of weight and pressure, the sheets pull along with him as he moves, turning his back, settling back in. Slowly, senses stir, until he finds that he is cognizant to his surroundings, his own slack weight in a relatively comfortable bed, and that he is listening to the sounds of rustling, the gentle scuff of a boot heel set against the floor as leather is tugged, laces managed.
Probably alerts Flint to his presence with the thick drawing in of breath, held through a stretch of spine and legs as he shifts to his back. Murmurs something that is probably Trade.
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His attention fixes there on the bed. And then, he slowly resumes tugging tight and tying the laces of first one boot and then the other. When he rises, it's with a creak of furniture joints.
There is a coat laid across the chair back. Flint draws it free, and shrugs into it.
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Enough to evaluate Flint through the close press of eyelashes. Dressed. Then, assess the quality of light at the window. Early.
Another murmur. This one manages some crisper edges to the words as he says, "Morning," which also has enough tone to it to make it a greeting rather than just an observation.
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Instead he adjusts the lay of his shirt collar under that of the coat.
"Morning."
Checks his pockets. Lays a hand briefly at his belt buckle. The unconscious rituals of a man who is preparing to walk out the door.
"I have an appointment in Kirkwall," he says.
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Grunts at this news. There's the fleeting and completely senseless impulse to calculate whether he could get to a similar state of readiness as the other man in time to accompany him, but it dismantles itself under the barest pressure of sense.
Says, "I don't," from his sprawl, voice sleep-rough and creaky.
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He moves then, tracking around the bed to the side table. There is a stack of papers there he should pocket to bring with him. Saying as he goes, "Matthias has work outside Kirkwall and won't be in the office, but one of the servants will tidy near ten."
Here are those papers, extracted from under a slim book. He folds them in half with a crinkling rasp.
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At which point, he pulls himself nearer, nothing about the action implying he intends to leave the mattress but nearer all the same. He doesn't fuss with the sheets, still dressed in cotton drawers that he doesn't feel too brazen as he pulls in closer.
"Alright," he says. Noted. Settling there on this side of the mattress, "And when are you next free of your obligations?"
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"I've an hour or two in the afternoon, but I don't mean to return here." Wasted effort, catching the ferry to and from. Beyond that—
"Otherwise, I can't say. Scouts suggest we've Venatori lingering in the Vinmark foothills. I might go take a look and see what can be done about digging them out. But I trust you've plenty to do."
Surely there are duties that Marcus has mentally assigned himself even if he hasn't yet quite made the changes on paper.
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Talk of news from scouts and Venatori and foothills patter off of his own barely-awake fog, some twinge of complaint at the brow that is more directed at his attempt to focus than the man speaking to him directly. Almost against his will, Marcus recalls some communications that had crossed his desk with the city guard alongside some sideways comment about a missed shift or two.
Generally opaque, Flint probably has enough context to interpret the emergence of these thoughts in the subtle changes to Marcus' expression as he rests his head back against the board.
"If I manage my desk before you see about them, I wouldn't mind hunting something." You know, if Flint is offering.
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A flicking glance sums Marcus up there against the bed's heavy headboard, the sheet across his thighs. It's a measuring look—the sort of consideration given over to a man recently out of a sick bed more than it is anything else.
The coat is twitched closed to lay flat across his shoulder.
"Let me know when you've done that." Is not a yes, is not a no.
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