For a moment, Flint is still in the face of this invitation. His is a steady, heavy hand, and his inspection of Marcus's face has a certain unflinching quality. It's as if he's measuring something—not the man opposite him, but the effect of his own place here in the tent. Judging if he has been heard. Watching for some brittle edge. What I know, I do means, and whether there isn't some cruelty to demanding to be given this leeway and then moving into it the moment Marcus offers the space.
Only that when he moves, the trajectory is inevitable. He could no more peel his wrist free and refuse him than he could traipse back to his own tent without getting rained on. Marcus asks and he eventually answers. It's a pattern they're working themselves into.
In the narrow tent, Flint shifts in across the bend of Marcus's knee. Clumsy. A little too big for the space. He stinks of rain and wet leather and shoe polish. Despite the stolid shape of his presence at the foot of the bedroll, by the time he gets as far as kissing Marcus there's something crooked and relieved in the shape of his mouth. Please do, actually, give him this. He walked across the camp not certain he'd get it.
Marcus meets him a little halfway, leaning in. The space is awkward and cramped. He is used to it, used to operating under these conditions even with the occasional indulgence of a bedroom. Doesn't mind it. Breathes in deeper as they share the space, taking in this array of scents, welcoming them as readily as the kiss itself.
He closes his hand around a fold of wet coat, holding them both to it. He gives him a slow and shallow kiss, sweet for it, while rain patters and a finger of flame twitches on its wick.
Stays near, when it breaks. Keeps his fist closed.
"Most times," he says, after a couple of breaths, "I think you're the only one here who does understand."
Like he does, anyway. The depth of the thing. What changes are required. What it all might cost.
The huff of his breath in that narrow space is half scoff, half sigh—the lingering ghost of some frustration lodged in place long before this evening. His hand, having found it's way to Marcus's shoulder and neck by reflex, shifts to set his thumb behind the ear. Pressing absently, a pulse of contact that's whatever the opposite of a flinch is.
"Everyone knows its going to be an ugly business. They only imagine they haven't come to it yet."
At it's face, it's a fundamentally absurd thing to say from the inside of a war. But Marcus had said it once. That this is a life. Those have a strange way of making everything seem less desperate.
Case in point: some crack in the blunt force of him becomes a wrinkle ground in at the corner of Flint's mouth. Humorless, maybe, but a point of flexion in his assembled sharp face. He gives Marcus the smallest shake by the thumb pressed behind his ear, the fingers wrapped in over the worn soft collar of his shirt.
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Only that when he moves, the trajectory is inevitable. He could no more peel his wrist free and refuse him than he could traipse back to his own tent without getting rained on. Marcus asks and he eventually answers. It's a pattern they're working themselves into.
In the narrow tent, Flint shifts in across the bend of Marcus's knee. Clumsy. A little too big for the space. He stinks of rain and wet leather and shoe polish. Despite the stolid shape of his presence at the foot of the bedroll, by the time he gets as far as kissing Marcus there's something crooked and relieved in the shape of his mouth. Please do, actually, give him this. He walked across the camp not certain he'd get it.
no subject
He closes his hand around a fold of wet coat, holding them both to it. He gives him a slow and shallow kiss, sweet for it, while rain patters and a finger of flame twitches on its wick.
Stays near, when it breaks. Keeps his fist closed.
"Most times," he says, after a couple of breaths, "I think you're the only one here who does understand."
Like he does, anyway. The depth of the thing. What changes are required. What it all might cost.
no subject
"Everyone knows its going to be an ugly business. They only imagine they haven't come to it yet."
At it's face, it's a fundamentally absurd thing to say from the inside of a war. But Marcus had said it once. That this is a life. Those have a strange way of making everything seem less desperate.
Case in point: some crack in the blunt force of him becomes a wrinkle ground in at the corner of Flint's mouth. Humorless, maybe, but a point of flexion in his assembled sharp face. He gives Marcus the smallest shake by the thumb pressed behind his ear, the fingers wrapped in over the worn soft collar of his shirt.
"It's an opportunity, Marcus."