Marcus' fingers loosen, straighten out to meet that touch, before resetting.
And in reply, a rough, breathy acknowledgment. Noted, this warm sound says, while still relishing that feeling of being buried this way, of that hot pressure that feels earned. His grip shifts, palm bracing a little more inward, closer to the base of his neck, and there it braces as Marcus pulls out enough to make the thrust back in jolting and satisfying. It would be easy to push down, bully that hard slope back into Flint's spine.
Or rather, it will be, though for now he holds him in place. The breath leaves his lungs in a rasped sound in the moment after, and then begins again in these long strokes. Not looking to jolt him, not the same kind of hard fucking he'd enjoyed moments ago, but there is a greedy tug to Marcus' hands where they are anchored at Flint's body, a satisfying fullness to where his hips press in close each time, and an indulgence to how much he can get away with pulling back without needing his hands to reset.
Rasps and breaths and sighs are quick to thicken into less spare, more indulgent sounds. Fuck you feel good, murmured between. So good, Flint.
The ache of it is keen, a grasping kind of quality not fully eased by the slick of oil or the long, steady strokes Marcus has taken up. It's good like a pressed bruise sometimes is—like when one has noticed the discoloration of broken blood vessels and can't help but place a thumb over it. The prickle of it flutters low through his belly. Passes through him like the sensation of clenched teeth and lungs overfilling with crisp, cold air.
A held breath he only half recognizes as his own becomes a hard exhale. The set of his shoulders rolls forward, hip flexing to adjust the angle at which Marcus fills him. He allows himself to drop his head, neck lengthening under the suggestion of Marcus's hand.
It is, actually, good. That it isn't precisely what he asked for—though surely Marcus will give that to him—doesn't alter that fact, the warm shape of the praise laying pleasantly across the skin. In exchange, a worn even drag of breathing swells to, That's right, and, warm as a hand at the back of a neck, Come on, Marcus, and
"I like when you come in me," a low nipping cadence to this claim. "I like when you fuck down and let me feel it."
But he'll make it take as long as he can. To draw it out while Flint is giving him this. He smooths his hand up the slope of Flint's bent neck, regripping higher, thumb wedged up near the hinge of his jaw from behind. A panting sound agrees with Flint, that he likes those things too, and that wound tight feeling in him slowly beginning to loosen at the same time as muscles draw tense, tenser.
Marcus will give that to him. Applies pressure, pushing Flint's shoulders down. To have him buckle down to the elbows, maybe lower, maybe plant a hand flat against his face and into the covers if Flint will allow it.
The mattress dips beneath where he braces a knee against the edge of it, tangled in closer while the hand at Flint's hip guides, grasps. Powering over, bearing down, giving a grunt as he feels that angle shift. There, Marcus can have him pinned down properly, and the sense of it rushes like hot blood through him.
"I'm close," isn't quite apologetic—he's been close, Flint knows—but it is a warning.
For all that talk if being badly behaved, he lets him. Lets him bully him down to elbows, and lower, making a noise that sounds like protest even as he allows Marcus's hand to find purchase. The groan that jerks out of him for it and the rest of that bearing down weight is dense and involuntary, hot and half smothered against the coverlet. For the first time in some minutes, he thinks if his own cock trapped against the mattress, and feels a twinge of something like desire and regret. If he were hard still, he might feel their weight pressed tight across his erection. Be worked to completion that way, hardly touched.
Not today.
Today, Marcus is close and he just wants to listen to the man talk in that low way with all his constants grown thick. It's good to hear it in his voice as readily as he can feel the lighting spark of pleasure in himself where it pools into the curve forced at the small of his back.
"Good," half panted, vibrating against the restraint. Sounds like praise more than it does encouragement. And there is room, just barely, to turn his face a fraction and bite at the heel of Marcus's palm.
"Ah," interrupts the heavy breaths and longer moans, half-laughing at the unexpected graze of teeth. Jerks his hand back and resettles it at Flint's neck. Could be fun, sometime, to cover that mouth with hard fingers, or hook them in across the teeth, a fleeting kind of impulse he doesn't act on today. Close, as said.
And the fact that this is for him, that he has been nettled and goaded by that sober centre in Flint's voice, sharpness in his glances back, that the other man is somewhere different than himself, not as stupid with arousal as he feels and maybe less likely to tolerate it, enjoy it. This, understood at some instinctive level, and so he braces a shoulder instead and only reprimands the biting with the growl edging his near-laugh, a hard clasp.
Satisfied before satiation. A surging sense of that, fucking down into him, the enthusiastic thump of the bedframe that's now begun to clip the wall as Marcus bears more of his weight down onto it, onto Flint. Breathing high and tight, slowly coming to obsess over the slick-friction he is rubbing his cock through, coaxing himself along, while other details come in bright and vivid—where sweat is still yet to dry at the centre of Flint's back, where his freckled skin dimples beneath the set of Marcus' fingers, the shape of the edge of his brow, and down lower, the compression of soft flesh when Marcus' hips meet him, the sight of his own cock nestled in between.
Flint likes it when he comes in him, and so Marcus does that, burying in and fingers digging as he does so, a quick breath in and a shuddered groan out. Another on the next breath, more relieved, lower and guttural. A hard tremor down the leg still set with a foot to the floor, and then a few last strokes of movement, chasing the last of it with a few panting sighs. When his fingers loosen, it takes effort.
Even like this, overly aware of the semantics of the thing—the knocking of the bed frame, and the chafing of his trousers where they're folded back across the tops of his boots, and the hard dig of fingers—, he is aware of that heavy wanting quality lodged under the skin. Laced between ribs. Cinched tight around the vital pieces of him and clenching briefly tighter and closer as Marcus buried himself. Less for the heat, the press and the spill of orgasm, and more for those shuddered out sounds. If they were a thing he could set his teeth against, he would. Surely they would taste sweet.
As it is, they melt over him. Linger hot in the ear, and flow through to the thing thing lives warm and high behind the ribs. That knot, which refuses to come unwound no matter his efforts to disassemble it.
Flint doesn't heft his shoulders or lift his cheek from the worn thin coverlet (the bed linens, it occurs to him, smell vaguely of tobacco smoke). Instead, he just untangles an arm, crooks an elbow, and lazily claps his hand down overtop of the one Marcus has applied to his neck.
That hand has gentled by the time Flint has reached for it, gripped it. It doesn't take too much strain, in this configuration, for Marcus to lower himself and follow impulse, to press a kiss across the spread of the other man's knuckles.
Finally, that foot leaves the floor, and they've made it properly to bed. Marcus is close, hips angled to stay buried for the moment, coming to lay against him and fold Flint in, off his knees, down onto his side. Cinches an arm across his torso and presses his chest in tight against the other man's back, giving a satisfied grumble of sound. Sooner over later, Marcus knows, they will disentangle, they will not sleep here, they will not entertain the possibility of some kind of third round.
But this seems to be a good afternoon to get what one wants, and he wants this for a minute, face pressed close at an angle at the back of Flint's neck as he calms down, heart slowing.
It's the right direction to collapse in. For the moment, it is difficult to imagine what it would feel like to be fully apart from one another. Surely they've been touching one another for hours, give or take that spare moment required for Marcus to fetch the little brass oil pot. This drawing close, one expanse of bare sweating skin against the other, makes more sense than slipping free of each other would. Just like they are not, really, so interwoven that it would be impossible to make sense of his limbs, but for the moment it seems unimportant to be concerned with whose knee and heel overlaps whose thigh and calf, or how he is going to escape from the tangle of his trousers and boots in anything like a timely fashion.
Instead: A low grunt of acknowledgement, half for the simple pleasure of Marcus's voice rumbling there against his neck and back as it is for the this assessment. Yes. It was good.
"Wanting something looks good on you," he says, a hand shifting heavily to set loose jointed fingers at the joint of Marcus's elbow. Skimming idly to his wrist.
A breath pulls in, is let go of in a spread of warmth across the skin.
"Giving it to me looks good on you," a counter, and therefore innately playful for it, but Marcus presses the sentiment into place with a nudge of his chin. Hand turning at the wrist as if to receive Flint's, should it wander that far, but otherwise—
He should feel content. Bodily he does, wanting for nothing. And then that sense of hunger, of wanting, that Flint has in the past warned him against, and so when affection builds through the chest, between the bones, it burns. He can lay here and simmer in it, and it isn't unpleasant, especially given the intimate press of bodies, of sore muscles and more acute aches, easily twinged with even minute adjustments.
Eventually, "I've not been that way before with anyone," quietly.
His hand has wandered, a roaming shape that has shifted briefly into Marcus's—a thumb pressing idly into the center of the ready palm, passing over knuckles, and absently working non-existent tensions from the length of his fingers—before drifting away again. Skimming back along the length of his forearm, scuffing through comparatively fine arm hair, only for his grip to solidify there at Marcus's elbow. It's an unconsciously cataloging brand of touch. Marks various bends and the lax line of heretofore corded muscle, and how far his thumb and forefinger fit around the circumference of a forearm.
Then, this. If his hand hasn't already more or less stilled, it might here.
Joined as they are, and loathe to separate or to insinuate any real space between the presently flush points of bodies, there can hardly be any turning to look at Marcus directly. But the impulse is there, face tilting vaguely in that direction like a dog's ear pricking toward sound.
Thumb and forefinger tighten briefly at Marcus's forearm, then gentle—a kind of silent acknowledgement of this admission. Thinking, abruptly, of that apartment off the division office and that thing Marcus had said. You would tell me if I were being too selfish with you, had sounded very like expectation to his ear. Not a little filament crack on a careful surface. Not the question he might have pressed to Marcus.
Maybe he can turn after all. Not to face him obviously, but that quarter twist that wedges a shoulder closer.
That shoulder is met with a kiss brushed against the curve of it, Marcus lifting his head enough to do so. The arm folded clumsily beneath him now engaged, bent, pushing him up enough to meet Flint by that quarter twist, but keeping himself tucked in close. His other hand turning, resting against Flint's chest, where he'd begun to idly pattern out circles with his fingertips.
"No," he says. Something like a crooked smile in his tone when he adds, "More than I might've asked for, maybe." Almost certainly. Another nudge to the shoulder, less specific, murmuring there against warm skin, "But I wanted it all."
A penchant for rough hands and sharp directives and rules aside, something to it like a firm grasp working loose locked muscle. Of a thing made vulnerable and treated kindly. Difficult, though, to transmit the sentiment to words. The sensory muddle of it all, in this hazy aftermath, makes him feel like if he were to apply teeth to skin and bite down, it'd imprint the idea better than he could explain.
Doesn't, obviously. Keeps a firm hold of Flint, keeps attuned to some shift in tone or sentiment, in case it requires correction.
The silence Flint lapses into isn't the satisfied kind; rather, there is something in the continued slant of his profile and the shape of his hand steady at Marcus's elbow that suggests the turning of some mechanism. That he is observing and examining this statement, testing it against some invisible thing.
It's only a moment though, really. Maybe two. Absorbing the heat of him, the close press, the ache of overworked sinew, the flat of Marcus's palm, the part where they are still joined together. Then his hand shifts from elbow back to wrist, thumb circling absently against the edge of bone in the joint.
Marcus finds himself alert to that momentary silence, as opposed to the natural breathing space in a lazy conversation. But then it seems like it ends when Flint's hand wanders again. Marcus breathes out slow as the cuff of Flint's palm finds his wrist, this little point of attention under the gentle press of his thumb.
It's unexpected, the thing he says. Between all the wry you're welcomes, the frank exchanges and negotiations, demands. It is not as though they have never exchanged sincerities, but all the same—
Marcus turns his hand to collect Flint's, lacing their fingers together. At the same time, a press of his thigh to the back of Flint's heralds the next careful shift that allows them to disengage from one another. Stays close, as if to mitigate the usual sober horizon and self-awareness of mess, discomfort, twinges.
Not still, though. The arm folded over Flint draws him further onto his back, insists on it. It's so they can look at each other when Marcus says, "'Flint' isn't your real name," rather than mumbling it against his back. The subtle twinge of a smile, glint of canine between words. Only wolfish in that even predators aren't too proud not to calculate the worth and likelihood of stealing some last scrap of something. "Is James?"
There is that low ache in him for the parting, somehow made more prevalent by the delayed separation. But it's easily set aside; for there is that knot grown behind his ribs. Lying flat on his back under the rasp of Marcus's attention, he can feel it pressing up against the bone. Not painful just—
Present. A tight shape compared to admissions like ready bodies hungrily bent and murmured things said against still heated skin.
He looks back at him. Raises an idle hand and puts his thumb to the line of Marcus's mouth. Presses further, setting the pad of his thumb to the dull point of that wolf smile canine before it backs off. Hooks briefly at Marcus's cheek and then falls lazily away.
His mouth parts a little to that press, like he might well get distracted by it if Flint lingered there any longer. It does not, scuffs gentle against his face in a way he dimly (and not unpleasantly) remembers in the context of blood and ash and a night sky.
A small satisfied sound. Good. It wouldn't do to murmur it against pressed mouths or sigh it out at some point, compressed in Starkhaven vowels distinct from the broader way it might sit in someone else's mouth, and have it bear no further meaning than the alternative. Marcus' hand has found a resting place at the base of his neck, studies him there for a moment before fingers scuff over the bristly edge of his jaw.
Leans down that short distance to press a kiss against the other man's mouth. After all the stinging bites and scrapes, it's comparatively soft.
There is an impulse to set his teeth to that lower lip, though even he recognizes it for what it is—a deflective habit moreso than real desire. The tenderness, meanwhile, satisfies something in him that remains aching and hungry even here in this moment, desirous for gentle and more affectionate shapes.
The point being—
Sure. It's a fine enough kiss. Brief, half chaste even. All things considered, it asks for very little. And when it breaks, he says, "But I like when you call me Flint."
It is, Marcus thinks, the first of several kisses, where they can lay here and do that for a bit for as long as either of them will tolerate it. That the conversation is not done is not a surprise, but the content of it—
A slight tilt, to say it isn't expected. Marcus stays close there, comfortable in his lean, studying Flint's expression in quick, half-focused flickers. "You do," is a prompt. Not doubtful, particularly. He likes it, after all, when Flint calls him Rowntree (but there is something else to it, a more intimate name like a hand seeking out some sensitive thing, and he isn't sure he ever heard 'Marcus' in Flint's mouth until that one night in a tent).
Hand still there, the edge of his thumb laying some whiskers straight.
A low affirmative hum answers him, something tightening and then giving in fine points of flexion under the surface of Flint's face. It's as if he is examining his own reply as much as he is Marcus's attention on him; as if this is information he is working through aloud in this moment rather than something carefully considered and arranged in the head before it's ever given voice.
Flint isn't his real name, no. But then, maybe it is. It sounds real enough in Marcus's mouth—something that suits better than merely pretending it is just a thing he has pulled about the shoulders like a mantle.
His hand, lazy at Marcus's bicep, shifts. Thumb gently pressing and unpressing, setting and resetting. He says, "It's not often been used like you use it. It is particular to this."
It's a nice thought. Flattering. The gentle movement of that hand and application of pressure under thumb is soothing along his arm, and the minute shifts of Flint's expression have that finely subtle quality of being impulsive rather than carefully arranged.
And maybe it's not only true, but the only truth. Maybe it isn't a kind of trade, to replace one wanted thing with another prospect of potentially equal value. That Marcus is determining this in the brief silence that settles is not masked at all, though not outwardly querying so much as inwardly deciding. Then, his focus skims aside, and catches across Flint's shoulder as his hand shifts back down, resting flat on the chest.
"It suits you," is true, anyway. Broken off and sharp between the teeth. Fingertips finding the edges of familiar scarring, before covering it under palm in a gentle slide of contact.
The sound he makes is low, a hum up against the set of a palm. Maybe it does, the thing having set firmly about him. Surely if someone tried to peel it away now, it would take such a considerable measure of him along with it that whatever was left wouldn't be recognizable either. The thought sends a flicker of temper flushing through him, though it finds so little purchase in an overworked and satisfied body that it just sparks and dies, an ember of which he is barely cognizant.
Instead his hand moves up, fingers absently twisting bits of Marcus's loose dark hair between thumb and forefinger. Attention flicking about the man's face, set close enough that the natural impulse is to look at him in pieces.
A small turn of the finger wraps a portion of hair about it. He gives it the softest tug, curling finger gentle behind Marcus's ear, saying, "I used to wear my hair very like this."
The gentle tug stirs something similar to what a gentle squeeze about the forearm and wrist had, the light setting of fingers into shoulder. A rewriting, where nerve endings still prickle after and remember harsher treatment and harder hands, and the mildness that follows could nearly be maddening if he wasn't so sated, laying here. A finger curling about a piece in contrast to a driving fist.
It had felt good and this feels good, and Marcus is letting out a quiet and contented breath as Flint says that. Amusement is quick to crinkle about the eyes (or something simpler, pleased), and he lifts his head a little more, making room for imagining. Auburn. Kept neatly, he's sure.
A long time ago, he doesn't say. It doesn't feel so remote as all that.
"When I was in the service. It was longer than yours is now, as was the fashion in Minanter for naval men. And then shorter, for a time after." He uncurls his finger, setting it in a line low across Marcus's cheek. To here, it suggests. These are pointlessly casual touches, almost more tender for the appearance of thoughtlessness. Marcus's stubble rasps under the finger.
A wrinkle at the corner of Flint's mouth, formed there out of the red bristle of beard, precedes, "Too fucking hot off Seheron for queues."
(And only cunts wore their hair according to Imperium fashions in a place more or less made by spitting at it. But mostly the first point.)
A rumbled sound of amused understanding, and Marcus' hand has crept back up some. Skirting fingers along the edge of not-quite-hidden jawline, gently capturing a bit of bristle between thumb and curled knuckle, slipping free almost immediately. The faint tipping into the touch to his own face, otherwise leaving it alone.
"I used to wear mine down more," he says, maintaining that quiet, close tone of conversation. "Before. Then cut it all short for a time, after. And there was the beard."
His hand finds a place at the side of Flint's neck, comfortably settled. Another glancing over, the shifting of focus between details—the shape of that crooked smile beneath beard and where hard bone informs expression, and eyes greener for the natural light in the room.
It's easy to say, "I like this." This version of him. Maybe it's his.
"That's lucky," he says, the line of his forefinger easy against Marcus's check. As it seems he is unlikely to ever grow his hair long again, it would be a shame if the man didn't much care for its present arrangement.
With an easy turning, his finger pivots from Marcus's unscarred cheek to the other. Sets there quietly, a soft tracing of the line cut into his face by a Templar's tower shield. Had he tried wearing the beard been after that, or before? His fingertip slips down, following scar to jawline to the soft flesh under it. Pressing softly until the skin dimples, a gentle shadow against the callous of his thumb.
He might suggest that Flint receive his compliments a little more graciously, but then, where would be the fun in that. The mostly-mock exasperation writ into a tugging away of his eyeline is interrupted by that soft tracing, and realigns his focus once that path ends just under his jaw, and presses.
Regards him there across this short distance, and there is as little as Marcus might read between them as Flint might detect with his fingers set so.
"Aye," after not so long of a delay, one that manages not to sound like hesitance. "We do."
You know, if it's up to him. And there is no tension to him, not in the comfortable line of where their bodies are still touching or the sweep of his thumb against Flint's breastbone, or the study being made of him, the slant of humour that hadn't been completely ironed out by roving fingers. But there, beneath, a quiet pulse of that thing he feels like heat beneath the surface, up high in his chest.
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And in reply, a rough, breathy acknowledgment. Noted, this warm sound says, while still relishing that feeling of being buried this way, of that hot pressure that feels earned. His grip shifts, palm bracing a little more inward, closer to the base of his neck, and there it braces as Marcus pulls out enough to make the thrust back in jolting and satisfying. It would be easy to push down, bully that hard slope back into Flint's spine.
Or rather, it will be, though for now he holds him in place. The breath leaves his lungs in a rasped sound in the moment after, and then begins again in these long strokes. Not looking to jolt him, not the same kind of hard fucking he'd enjoyed moments ago, but there is a greedy tug to Marcus' hands where they are anchored at Flint's body, a satisfying fullness to where his hips press in close each time, and an indulgence to how much he can get away with pulling back without needing his hands to reset.
Rasps and breaths and sighs are quick to thicken into less spare, more indulgent sounds. Fuck you feel good, murmured between. So good, Flint.
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A held breath he only half recognizes as his own becomes a hard exhale. The set of his shoulders rolls forward, hip flexing to adjust the angle at which Marcus fills him. He allows himself to drop his head, neck lengthening under the suggestion of Marcus's hand.
It is, actually, good. That it isn't precisely what he asked for—though surely Marcus will give that to him—doesn't alter that fact, the warm shape of the praise laying pleasantly across the skin. In exchange, a worn even drag of breathing swells to, That's right, and, warm as a hand at the back of a neck, Come on, Marcus, and
"I like when you come in me," a low nipping cadence to this claim. "I like when you fuck down and let me feel it."
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But he'll make it take as long as he can. To draw it out while Flint is giving him this. He smooths his hand up the slope of Flint's bent neck, regripping higher, thumb wedged up near the hinge of his jaw from behind. A panting sound agrees with Flint, that he likes those things too, and that wound tight feeling in him slowly beginning to loosen at the same time as muscles draw tense, tenser.
Marcus will give that to him. Applies pressure, pushing Flint's shoulders down. To have him buckle down to the elbows, maybe lower, maybe plant a hand flat against his face and into the covers if Flint will allow it.
The mattress dips beneath where he braces a knee against the edge of it, tangled in closer while the hand at Flint's hip guides, grasps. Powering over, bearing down, giving a grunt as he feels that angle shift. There, Marcus can have him pinned down properly, and the sense of it rushes like hot blood through him.
"I'm close," isn't quite apologetic—he's been close, Flint knows—but it is a warning.
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Not today.
Today, Marcus is close and he just wants to listen to the man talk in that low way with all his constants grown thick. It's good to hear it in his voice as readily as he can feel the lighting spark of pleasure in himself where it pools into the curve forced at the small of his back.
"Good," half panted, vibrating against the restraint. Sounds like praise more than it does encouragement. And there is room, just barely, to turn his face a fraction and bite at the heel of Marcus's palm.
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And the fact that this is for him, that he has been nettled and goaded by that sober centre in Flint's voice, sharpness in his glances back, that the other man is somewhere different than himself, not as stupid with arousal as he feels and maybe less likely to tolerate it, enjoy it. This, understood at some instinctive level, and so he braces a shoulder instead and only reprimands the biting with the growl edging his near-laugh, a hard clasp.
Satisfied before satiation. A surging sense of that, fucking down into him, the enthusiastic thump of the bedframe that's now begun to clip the wall as Marcus bears more of his weight down onto it, onto Flint. Breathing high and tight, slowly coming to obsess over the slick-friction he is rubbing his cock through, coaxing himself along, while other details come in bright and vivid—where sweat is still yet to dry at the centre of Flint's back, where his freckled skin dimples beneath the set of Marcus' fingers, the shape of the edge of his brow, and down lower, the compression of soft flesh when Marcus' hips meet him, the sight of his own cock nestled in between.
Flint likes it when he comes in him, and so Marcus does that, burying in and fingers digging as he does so, a quick breath in and a shuddered groan out. Another on the next breath, more relieved, lower and guttural. A hard tremor down the leg still set with a foot to the floor, and then a few last strokes of movement, chasing the last of it with a few panting sighs. When his fingers loosen, it takes effort.
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As it is, they melt over him. Linger hot in the ear, and flow through to the thing thing lives warm and high behind the ribs. That knot, which refuses to come unwound no matter his efforts to disassemble it.
Flint doesn't heft his shoulders or lift his cheek from the worn thin coverlet (the bed linens, it occurs to him, smell vaguely of tobacco smoke). Instead, he just untangles an arm, crooks an elbow, and lazily claps his hand down overtop of the one Marcus has applied to his neck.
Good, says the pulsing grip of fingers.
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Finally, that foot leaves the floor, and they've made it properly to bed. Marcus is close, hips angled to stay buried for the moment, coming to lay against him and fold Flint in, off his knees, down onto his side. Cinches an arm across his torso and presses his chest in tight against the other man's back, giving a satisfied grumble of sound. Sooner over later, Marcus knows, they will disentangle, they will not sleep here, they will not entertain the possibility of some kind of third round.
But this seems to be a good afternoon to get what one wants, and he wants this for a minute, face pressed close at an angle at the back of Flint's neck as he calms down, heart slowing.
"That was good," murmured.
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Instead: A low grunt of acknowledgement, half for the simple pleasure of Marcus's voice rumbling there against his neck and back as it is for the this assessment. Yes. It was good.
"Wanting something looks good on you," he says, a hand shifting heavily to set loose jointed fingers at the joint of Marcus's elbow. Skimming idly to his wrist.
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"Giving it to me looks good on you," a counter, and therefore innately playful for it, but Marcus presses the sentiment into place with a nudge of his chin. Hand turning at the wrist as if to receive Flint's, should it wander that far, but otherwise—
He should feel content. Bodily he does, wanting for nothing. And then that sense of hunger, of wanting, that Flint has in the past warned him against, and so when affection builds through the chest, between the bones, it burns. He can lay here and simmer in it, and it isn't unpleasant, especially given the intimate press of bodies, of sore muscles and more acute aches, easily twinged with even minute adjustments.
Eventually, "I've not been that way before with anyone," quietly.
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Then, this. If his hand hasn't already more or less stilled, it might here.
Joined as they are, and loathe to separate or to insinuate any real space between the presently flush points of bodies, there can hardly be any turning to look at Marcus directly. But the impulse is there, face tilting vaguely in that direction like a dog's ear pricking toward sound.
Thumb and forefinger tighten briefly at Marcus's forearm, then gentle—a kind of silent acknowledgement of this admission. Thinking, abruptly, of that apartment off the division office and that thing Marcus had said. You would tell me if I were being too selfish with you, had sounded very like expectation to his ear. Not a little filament crack on a careful surface. Not the question he might have pressed to Marcus.
Maybe he can turn after all. Not to face him obviously, but that quarter twist that wedges a shoulder closer.
"Is it more than you wanted?"
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"No," he says. Something like a crooked smile in his tone when he adds, "More than I might've asked for, maybe." Almost certainly. Another nudge to the shoulder, less specific, murmuring there against warm skin, "But I wanted it all."
A penchant for rough hands and sharp directives and rules aside, something to it like a firm grasp working loose locked muscle. Of a thing made vulnerable and treated kindly. Difficult, though, to transmit the sentiment to words. The sensory muddle of it all, in this hazy aftermath, makes him feel like if he were to apply teeth to skin and bite down, it'd imprint the idea better than he could explain.
Doesn't, obviously. Keeps a firm hold of Flint, keeps attuned to some shift in tone or sentiment, in case it requires correction.
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It's only a moment though, really. Maybe two. Absorbing the heat of him, the close press, the ache of overworked sinew, the flat of Marcus's palm, the part where they are still joined together. Then his hand shifts from elbow back to wrist, thumb circling absently against the edge of bone in the joint.
"Thank you for trusting me with it."
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It's unexpected, the thing he says. Between all the wry you're welcomes, the frank exchanges and negotiations, demands. It is not as though they have never exchanged sincerities, but all the same—
Marcus turns his hand to collect Flint's, lacing their fingers together. At the same time, a press of his thigh to the back of Flint's heralds the next careful shift that allows them to disengage from one another. Stays close, as if to mitigate the usual sober horizon and self-awareness of mess, discomfort, twinges.
Not still, though. The arm folded over Flint draws him further onto his back, insists on it. It's so they can look at each other when Marcus says, "'Flint' isn't your real name," rather than mumbling it against his back. The subtle twinge of a smile, glint of canine between words. Only wolfish in that even predators aren't too proud not to calculate the worth and likelihood of stealing some last scrap of something. "Is James?"
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Present. A tight shape compared to admissions like ready bodies hungrily bent and murmured things said against still heated skin.
He looks back at him. Raises an idle hand and puts his thumb to the line of Marcus's mouth. Presses further, setting the pad of his thumb to the dull point of that wolf smile canine before it backs off. Hooks briefly at Marcus's cheek and then falls lazily away.
"It is."
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A small satisfied sound. Good. It wouldn't do to murmur it against pressed mouths or sigh it out at some point, compressed in Starkhaven vowels distinct from the broader way it might sit in someone else's mouth, and have it bear no further meaning than the alternative. Marcus' hand has found a resting place at the base of his neck, studies him there for a moment before fingers scuff over the bristly edge of his jaw.
Leans down that short distance to press a kiss against the other man's mouth. After all the stinging bites and scrapes, it's comparatively soft.
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The point being—
Sure. It's a fine enough kiss. Brief, half chaste even. All things considered, it asks for very little. And when it breaks, he says, "But I like when you call me Flint."
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A slight tilt, to say it isn't expected. Marcus stays close there, comfortable in his lean, studying Flint's expression in quick, half-focused flickers. "You do," is a prompt. Not doubtful, particularly. He likes it, after all, when Flint calls him Rowntree (but there is something else to it, a more intimate name like a hand seeking out some sensitive thing, and he isn't sure he ever heard 'Marcus' in Flint's mouth until that one night in a tent).
Hand still there, the edge of his thumb laying some whiskers straight.
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Flint isn't his real name, no. But then, maybe it is. It sounds real enough in Marcus's mouth—something that suits better than merely pretending it is just a thing he has pulled about the shoulders like a mantle.
His hand, lazy at Marcus's bicep, shifts. Thumb gently pressing and unpressing, setting and resetting. He says, "It's not often been used like you use it. It is particular to this."
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And maybe it's not only true, but the only truth. Maybe it isn't a kind of trade, to replace one wanted thing with another prospect of potentially equal value. That Marcus is determining this in the brief silence that settles is not masked at all, though not outwardly querying so much as inwardly deciding. Then, his focus skims aside, and catches across Flint's shoulder as his hand shifts back down, resting flat on the chest.
"It suits you," is true, anyway. Broken off and sharp between the teeth. Fingertips finding the edges of familiar scarring, before covering it under palm in a gentle slide of contact.
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Instead his hand moves up, fingers absently twisting bits of Marcus's loose dark hair between thumb and forefinger. Attention flicking about the man's face, set close enough that the natural impulse is to look at him in pieces.
A small turn of the finger wraps a portion of hair about it. He gives it the softest tug, curling finger gentle behind Marcus's ear, saying, "I used to wear my hair very like this."
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It had felt good and this feels good, and Marcus is letting out a quiet and contented breath as Flint says that. Amusement is quick to crinkle about the eyes (or something simpler, pleased), and he lifts his head a little more, making room for imagining. Auburn. Kept neatly, he's sure.
"When was that?"
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"When I was in the service. It was longer than yours is now, as was the fashion in Minanter for naval men. And then shorter, for a time after." He uncurls his finger, setting it in a line low across Marcus's cheek. To here, it suggests. These are pointlessly casual touches, almost more tender for the appearance of thoughtlessness. Marcus's stubble rasps under the finger.
A wrinkle at the corner of Flint's mouth, formed there out of the red bristle of beard, precedes, "Too fucking hot off Seheron for queues."
(And only cunts wore their hair according to Imperium fashions in a place more or less made by spitting at it. But mostly the first point.)
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"I used to wear mine down more," he says, maintaining that quiet, close tone of conversation. "Before. Then cut it all short for a time, after. And there was the beard."
His hand finds a place at the side of Flint's neck, comfortably settled. Another glancing over, the shifting of focus between details—the shape of that crooked smile beneath beard and where hard bone informs expression, and eyes greener for the natural light in the room.
It's easy to say, "I like this." This version of him. Maybe it's his.
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With an easy turning, his finger pivots from Marcus's unscarred cheek to the other. Sets there quietly, a soft tracing of the line cut into his face by a Templar's tower shield. Had he tried wearing the beard been after that, or before? His fingertip slips down, following scar to jawline to the soft flesh under it. Pressing softly until the skin dimples, a gentle shadow against the callous of his thumb.
"Do we like one another now?"
(It's not Satinalia yet.)
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Regards him there across this short distance, and there is as little as Marcus might read between them as Flint might detect with his fingers set so.
"Aye," after not so long of a delay, one that manages not to sound like hesitance. "We do."
You know, if it's up to him. And there is no tension to him, not in the comfortable line of where their bodies are still touching or the sweep of his thumb against Flint's breastbone, or the study being made of him, the slant of humour that hadn't been completely ironed out by roving fingers. But there, beneath, a quiet pulse of that thing he feels like heat beneath the surface, up high in his chest.
Marcus asks, "Does that sound true?"
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