katabasis | [psl] dos rowdy boys

The pause after continues that assessment, before Marcus makes a short sound of agreement. Certainly. May as well.

A prickly mood doesn't discourage his own under-skin itch. Heightens it for a moment, absorbs the pleasant discomfort of that little pulse of arousal that he might normally relieve by pressing himself to the person who inspired it as opposed to standing still where he is. Then, gathers his shirt fabric to tug free of his waistband, and pulls it over his head, off his arms.

There is some new bruising across a bicep, speckly, having won it during some sparring the previous day, struck hard enough for the light padding he'd worn to have only absorbed some of it. A reminder to be quicker is what he would like to think, as opposed to acknowledging the decade of age between he and his opponent at the time. His hands move to his belt as he looks back over at Flint.

"How long do you have?"

"Long enough."

More than, really. If not for the promises of this attic room, he might have ordinarily taken this window of time to race back to the Gallows and bite off a few minutes of sleep (or to catch up on the paperwork Matthias has been piling higher and higher on his desk).

The impulse to be intractable, however—

Case in point: Flint has made no motion to see to his own clothes. Stood there that step inside the doorway, he instead has set his elbow against the pommel of the sword at his hip and hooked his other wrist across the shelf of his forearm. Is watching Marcus, expectant.

Marcus loosens the buckle as he considers that answer and Flint posted there, unmoving, before sliding the belt out entire from its loops. This is folded over, tossed to where he'd set his shirt. Strange how thoughtless the process of getting undressed is right until you find yourself the centre of someone's observation.

Decides to remove his hair tie next, stuffing it into a pocket before he opens his trousers. Stirrings of excitement—from waiting, anticipating, to now, bare skin and Flint watching him—aren't enough to have advanced an erection very far, and so that feels strange too in this context, when pulling down both layers.

Kicked aside a little less patiently, moving in a step closer—to the door with the man at it, rather than the bed without.

"There," he says, voice dry, focus sharper.

There.

It isn't until Marcus has stripped fully naked that it occurs to him that the prickle of fascination that scratches up the nape of his neck is due, at least in some measure, to the fact that he is seeing him in daylight. That they've only been here a moment—too short a time for anyone to be insensibly flush, or for his attentions to be tangled too fully in the desire to put his hands on Marcus, or even to be aroused beyond what is possible from thoughts entertained while crossing Lowtown—serves to paint him with sharper clarity. He is free to look at him, observing the slope of a shoulder, the speckle of bruising, the fine muscle across hip and through thigh.

His attention flicks up. Catches at Marcus', eye contact dagger point sharp.

"Come here," he tells him.

Open observation isn't quite a substitute for a pressure of a hand or wandering fingers—but not so far removed from it. As if the prickling over of nerves, of the playing of cooler air against skin stripped free of warmer layers has at least the same texture and intent of being touched, the same study being made. A small frisson of self-consciousness that has the same hackly quality of being told what to do.

Holds that look and then moves closer. Might have rationalised, at one time or another, that he was already on his way over there. Bare feet quieter on wooden flooring, senses keen and attuned to Flint in front of him, in his dark layers, calluses on palms, a waiting expanse of skin to be looked at too, eventually.

Marcus eases out a deeper exhale, and he reaches out to put his hands on Flint's waist. The press of fingers, as if making his own evaluation.

Somewhere in that last half step of distance there is an faint swaying forward. It is not a matching step to close distance, only a shifting of weight so that Marcus' hands find their way to Flint's waist a fraction more promptly than they might otherwise.

In his boots, and with Marcus bare footed, the minor discrepancy of their height is made even if not nudged very slightly in the opposite direction. This close, he doesn't have to tilt his face up that bare half degree to look at him.

He also doesn't have to touch him, though the press of fingers through his clothes tacitly suggests otherwise. Instead, his wrist shifts across the plane of his forearm. One hand moves across the other, twisting rings from his fingers in slow succession. There is a pocket in his coat they will be safe in, once he has successfully shed them.

"And you?" Here is the square ring with the fine black gem chip in its center; here is brassy ring stamped with a knotted scroll. "How long can you stay?"

"I've taken a night shift."

Patience, impatience, a building friction. Marcus watches this removal of rings between them, before changing track, lightening that grasp on Flint's waist, removing it. Circling a hand around a wrist for where a ring remains on the other set of fingers, and brushing a thumb over it before finding a grasp.

"So it's a matter of how much I wish to sleep, prior," he explains, as he gently twists the ring about to work it past the knuckle, flicking a look up to meet Flint's eye. "Or how well." And he will follow suit, to drop the ring into Flint's pocket.

A low rumbling Mm of acknowledgment for this, Marcus' rota schedule and the treatment of the ring both. The latter is light enough to be weightless once it's been transferred to his pocket, but he is sharply aware of its presence. Or rather, its lack on his finger, and the residual murmur of heat that prickles after the work of Marcus' hands all the same.

"How did you come by that?"

He nods to the mottled bruise.

From Flint's coat pocket, his hand can travel around up high on his side, his back, a light smoothing over fabric that is held and suspense as Flint asks that question. Marcus glances, lifting at the elbow to check the bruise's progress.

"Sparring," he says. "Told them not to be too easy on me."

A necessary sort of stipulation, when returning from a period of recovery and not so many days from the injury itself. At least, it is to him. Now, Marcus winds his arms around Flint and pulls himself in close, the pressing of his own naked form against Flint's clothed one too tempting to hold in reserve for much longer.

Aware, in a way that seems to spark along his spine and itch under the skin, how Flint has neglected to touch him yet. This is one way to stop himself from forcing the other man to do so. Or asking. It's a little of both.

He makes room for it—shifting his hands out of the way, laying the pommel of his sword over so it doesn't catch cool and discouraging at Marcus' hip.

Close in like this, it is tempting to kiss him. For it would be easy to do. He only needs to turn his face and go looking for it in order to catch at Marcus' mouth. Instead, a hand shifts up to catch the man by the cheek and chin, and to turn his face by that necessary degree while bracing with calloused thumb and the heel of his hand to forestall any actual kiss from materializing.

Warming in his layers against the long line of Marcus' naked body, Flint maintains that glint of eye contact. Asks, "Did you win?"

The next breath out of Marcus comes as a warmer pant before he can help it, tension taut at the edges of his expression. The deep, warm shiver that drains directly downwards. The hand at Flint's back clutches his coat in quiet demand. Does not bully him any more than that, even when a latent instinct demands he do so, leverage back the advantage. It's held in check as much by the calloused thumb braced at his chin than any amount of willpower.

Flicks eye contact back into place when he feels it from Flint, and the corner of his mouth turns up, a hint of teeth. "Sure," would be a no.

A certain flexing of the brow and a twitch at the corner of Flint's mouth suggests some flickering amusement—oh, sure—, but that is the extent of his humor. It fails to materialize further into a laugh, or a breath related to one, and the press of his thumb remains certain there at Marcus' chin. He is not, honestly, terribly interested in relenting that point just yet. Hardly moments through the door, and he finds he is loathe to squander the leverage that's fallen so instantly to hand.

(But soon, certainly. The desire to kiss him has been rattling around in the back of his head for some hours since the possibility of this room seemed likely to become a reality, and he isn't so stubborn as to restrict himself entirely from a carefully meditated decision. It is only a matter of timing.

It wouldn't be unpleasant to apply teeth to skin either.)

"Do you want a rematch, or for me to be gentle with you?"

His own desire is growing claws. Something about the alien sense of rougher outer layers against his bare skin, and belt and buckle, the edge of a boot near his ankle. The very real hunger to shake loose Flint's hand and press him to the door, and the very real ache of warmth when he doesn't. Following that, the sense of his own stiffening, which will become more apparent between them, and sooner, than whatever may be happening for Flint beneath lacing and layers.

So it's a relief to be asked how it is he would prefer to be fucked, and to feel his own certainty in one answer over the other. The knowledge, too, that afterwards, he's sure Flint can be corralled into gentleness.

And if there is some equal desire for rough treatment matched only by what must come after, he can pick through that tangle once properly sated.

"As long as you don't go easy either," and that edge of a smile hasn't faded yet, "I'll take the match."

Earns a brisk and biting kiss as a reward, pressed there at Marcus' mouth between thumb and forefinger. It's brief. Sharp. Cut short in favor of a hot breath gusting very close. Good, he doesn't say before muscling in.

He presses. Shoulder and hip, the heel of his hand—an abrupt flexing of checked energies well suited to driving. Not to the bed. He has little interest in it, and it's four paces too far removed besides. But here is the chair, more easily reached and equally satisfying a prospect to the hot pulse that runs through him at the taste of Marcus' mouth.

This brief, sharp kiss gets a grunt of encouragement, and an initial pressing forward to chase down more of it, the opportunity to answer it properly, by the time Flint is muscling in. The hand Marcus has in a fist at Flint's coat tightens for balance as he's moved backwards, and then reorients, finds a place to brace his palm at his bicep.

Doesn't try to drive him right back, but offers that resistance. Something for them both to press against as he's walked backwards, to keep them close. Behind him, wooden chair legs jar against the floor as its arm is knocked behind him, a short scrape, sharper over the sounds of breathing.

Goes to anchor a grip at the back of Flint's neck, a second go at pressing his mouth to the other man's, past the press of fingers, a wanting sound half-growled there.

It raises the small hairs on the back of the neck, that noise. Tugs roughly at the quality of his breathing, and demands to be indulged in the shape of a rough kiss. So he allows it. Kisses or is kissed with an insistent fierceness, the hand at Marcus' chin moving all at once from restraining to requiring. Here, it says. Give me your mouth like this.

And a boot toe insinuating between the brace of feet, knee and thigh following. Pressing close to the shape of him, keen to ride up against the stirring form of Marcus' cock and all that naked skin.

How does he want him? Close, and hungry, and biting at tender skin. Goading enough that it will be easy to leave the dark ghosts of restraining hands on a wrist or a thigh.

There is a clear pleasure in kissing and being kissed, a stream of breath through the nose, lips parting, fingertips digging a firmer line at Flint's neck. Answering that implicit demand in the way Flint's hand lays by giving, pliant and hot, and then tasting, and then biting, the slide of a tongue giving way to a stinging nip to Flint's mouth, one that's felt a moment or two after teeth release him.

But also, right before: his thighs parting to allow Flint's to press up against him. Marcus breathes in sharp as his cock touches linen, leather, the warm muscle beneath. It hasn't taken long for flesh to thicken and stiffen, where a fuck over the crystals only half counts as far as attention paid goes. The reality of Flint's body against him, strong and solid and familiar,

well, it's what he's wanted. All week, all morning.

The other hand wrangled in Flint's coat lets go and dips underneath it, up around the back of his ribs, some bid for further intimacy, a threat to shirt fabric to come free of the waistband. That's about when Marcus bites him, and pants out a breath that isn't very apologetic at all against his jaw in another half-kiss.

The sting is clarifying. It strips back headier muggy impulses that might be broadly satisfied by any kind of contact or encouraging slant of weight at all. By any kiss, or press of tongue, or hot breath, or grasp of fingers at shirt fabric. Instead, it demands the kind of specificity that comes from a hand snagging at Marcus' hip, and fingers straying from chin and jaw into the other man's unbound hair.

The latter makes for an obvious point of leverage. His fingers tangling there by the fistful, and giving a firm checking yank designed to lever up the angle of Marcus' chin and expose the line of his neck. Stop biting, you shit, isn't a particularly convincing sentiment when the hard nip of teeth comes with a thrill of arousal twitching warm in the nonexistent space between them, or when Flint retaliates in kind at the soft skin to be found under Marcus' jaw.

But if there is something combative to teeth and tongue, then there is a collaborative slant to the cinching in of his other hand. It works in sympathy to the close circle of Marcus' arm to keep them pressed flush, and encouraging the urging of his knee.

All of it makes very little use of the daylight.

It's a shock, the sharpness of that yank, even when he can sense it coming with the certain way Flint gets his fingers tangled, firms up his grip. The breath he draws in is a gasp, and then teeth catch at the exposed underside of his jaw, it's let out again in a rush of growled out breath that is both reactive as well as satisfied, the muscles that had tensed defensively across shoulders and neck all relaxing under hard hands, warm mouth, blunt teeth.

There's been nothing enjoyable about the process of healing, the culmination of injury. Here, where senses muddled together and something that should be unpleasant is made good, that makes sense. But there is also a pleasing contrast to this from the gentle handling and coddling of healers, concern and care, soft bedsheets, hazy half-dozing. The brightness of teeth and a hot breath searing across his neck.

And beneath that, the sudden clenching of basic pleasure. The circle of his arm around Flint pulsing tighter. Giving in a little, enough to angle his hips to more deliberately press his hardening cock against raised thigh and hip.

"Are we waltzing or fucking?" is perhaps not so convincing when all of that is taken into consideration, the eager line of his body or the stiff shape of his cock, the satisfaction nestled in his tone. Still, a differently biting quality, the digging of his fingers against the nape of Flint's neck.

A hot gust of breath answers, some abrupt note of humor lingering at its edge. But rather than smile—or maker forbid, laugh—he nips at Marcus' earlobe. Sets his teeth and lingers warm and close against the angle of the man's neck until the impulse to laugh is burned off by the close press of bodies. It doesn't take but a few seconds. And when it has gone, his grip on Marcus' hip has relented in favor of insinuating between them to squeeze at the swollen line of his cock in that narrow space across his thigh. That he is just there, undressed and ready to be touched, is a fine pointed thrill.

It's brief, though. And then his fingers are unraveling from Marcus' hair and abandoning the stiff length of his cock in favor of shoulders. Flint half twists, restless in the close hold. Pushes with the heels of both hands, goading, to the effect of—

"Turn round," has a low snap of a demand.

When Flint's hand finds his cock, squeezes, it's almost a little counterintuitive that pleasure could be expressed in Marcus being quiet. The rasped-edged quality of his breathing and grunts of encouragement and complaint suddenly lifting in favour of a slower, quieter breath in, an even breath out. Marcus' hands—at the back of Flint's neck, tangled up in his shirt enough to have pulled the tail of it loose beneath his coat—both clenching as if to rein the impulse to react otherwise.

Then his hair is released and he can look at Flint again. Tempting to hunt out another kiss, demonstrate either a lesson learned or ignored, eyes bright with intent.

Instead, his shoulders are pushed and he broadens the gap between them, and there's a moment where he can consider the proposition. A flicking glance over, as if to ask if the prick in front of him truly intends to fuck him with his clothes on, and then his hands relent. Lingering a little to enjoy those points of contact before Marcus surrenders them, and turns around.

There is that long tenuous moment with his hands braced that he considers what he will do if Marcus disobeys. Give him another urging and biting kiss, maybe. Or, find a further fistful of the man's hair and see whether he might bend to being forced over. That he ultimately requires no further convincing, skeptical glances not withstanding, spurs a jolt of satisfaction to course low into his belly where it clenches, hot and tight, at the very base of him.

Some days ago, weeks ago, he made specific promises about touching Marcus. He has been thinking on it since—that he would like to put his hands over him in the interests of finding the places Marcus like to be touched, and the hand holds to which he relents to being pressed down and fucked under.

No, he is not going to fuck him with his clothes on. He is going to crowd back into Marcus's space in them though, pressing in against the long line of his back. He's hot now, plenty stiff inside the restriction of his trousers, and the close set of bodies is sparking and relief both. Flint breathes heavy at the back of Marcus' neck as he coils one arm in around his chest. Given a moment to inelegantly lick wet saliva into a palm, his other arm cinches close round after in order to reclaim his grip on Marcus' cock.

There's a late shiver across his shoulders, crossways then down, where he's anticipating something. A grasping hand, another directive. The close pressing in of Flint's body is both unexpected and fiercely welcome. Fabric, metal, and that warm line of his erection. Not the first time in as many minutes that he's known that discomforting twist that aches low in him for this imbalance, the contrast of cooler air where he's exposed, the close warmth where he isn't.

Marcus, first, closes his eyes at that new sense of warm slickness as Flint closes his hand around him. His hand lands high on the other man's wrist, the other reaching back to find a hold of his coat. Looks down, then, at the configuration they make, or at least what he can see of it—dark fabric and pale skin, the more flushed colour of his cock between Flint's fingers in broad daylight.

It's fine. He can be difficult later. For now, there is a satisfied breath out for the sensation of being gripped, held, and a demand in the closing of his own fingers.

It feels good to have Marcus here like this, set in the rough circle of his arms with the width of his shoulders a sturdy line against him. He is warm, and smells faintly of the morning's work, and the grasp of fingers closing about the wrist is—

Encouraging. Here is the reverse of that pretend version of what they might have done in a slanting Anderfels camp tent. Daylight instead of the press of lamplight. Marcus close before him rather than behind, naked skin warm against his cheek and under his fingers. Fanning his hand wide across Marcus' chest, he tightens his other fingers. A squeeze, a stroke—slowly and then less so, as his off hand shifts from Marcus' chest to his neck.

It's a driving touch, equal parts restless and expectant and pinning. Likes the proxy feel of it: his cock pressed close and Marcus thick in the fingers; and how easy it is to kiss the bare slope of his neck and shoulder; the pulse in his jugular pressed in under fingertips.

Those points of contact feel at work with one another. Stroking, pressing, and his pulse between both. Marcus lifts his chin, a small jerk of motion that does more exposing than protecting. In Flint's hand, his cock twitches eagerly after the last quicker pull of slick palm. In Flint's hand, the rough grunt out of Marcus is felt as light reverberation.

A fine flexing up through the hip, with his heel lifting off the ground as tension pulls up through that leg, is a kind of stalled impulse to push against Flint's hand. And again. Marcus doesn't lean right back into the other man, because he is stopping himself from doing so—but there's an amount of balancing felt in a tug where Marcus has a grasp on his coat, low and behind.

The next throttled sound from him is restless complaint, as if the lack of flesh to sink his teeth into or knead and squeeze with his fingers (or, otherwise, kiss with warm mouth like the touches against his own shoulder, or mumble against a similar expanse, that feels good) is a problem. The deliberate driving forwards of arousal. How much long enough is going to mean.

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