The shirt's fucked. There's little point to being particular about whether or not more blood should be got on it. Identifying the cleanest portion of it in this light is as much an exercise of feel as it is sight, calloused fingertips working then length of a sleeve as he studies the geography of Marcus's back. The black crusting blood and the bruising. The tail of an old scar, and the wetter, brighter blood, and the sweat crinkled hair at the nape of Marcus's neck.
With a slosh of water into the (highly relatively) pristine shirt sleeve, Flint sets his hand directly there near this last point. It's a bracing touch. Square palm and firm fingers at the curve of shoulder and neck, thumb setting promptly against a line of muscle he suspects must be work sore and pressing there. It's possible that the shock of pressing the wet shirtsleeve over the bruised gash will come less sharply then.
"I hope you don't have a favorite color," he says, the set of his hands giving every indication that he means to sit a moment like this while the dark blood loosens under the wet sleeve and the fresh eats up into the fabric. "You're going to be all of them come morning."
(They don't have much between them, he is thinking. If it becomes absolutely necessary to maintain their pace, it won't be impossible to repack their kits and the tent in such a fashion that Marcus has less to carry. Only inconvenient. And potentially the least of his concern should they finds more Venatori in the lowlands. Marcus may be able to play the range if he chooses, but someone will have to close the distance.)
Marcus is thinking backwards rather than forwards, of the strike itself, having scarcely done so since it landed. That the attacker had slithered past his notice, and he'd let his defensive magics lapse. That perhaps it would have been the better thing to create distance, focus on keeping the Commander viable for combat and rain down terror from afar. Or perhaps he just should have been quicker.
And so on.
This loop of quiet thinking is interrupted at the bracing hold, a slight twitch suggesting it hadn't been expected. Flint's thumb sets against overworked muscle and the breath out of Marcus is audibly appreciative before he can stop it, head ducking as he braces for—yes, that, the familiar sting, which he does a better job at not reacting to.
Another quiet sound at that comment. Laugh-adjacent. Water trickles out translucent, rust-pink. The blood he'd caught on his fingers is already drying. "Sounds pretty," is dry, and on a slight delay as the seconds go by.
Doing the math, now, on what to do about it. Sewing or burning, if it seems to have dug too deeply to quiet on its own with stillness. Feels a human pulse of reluctance for these prospects, but stays quiet, awaiting verdict.
The low rumble of Flint's hummed reply is just this side of cynicism, though has little to no bearing on the stiff set of his thumb pressing there into the meat of Marcus's shoulder. There's a kind of thoughtless patience in that gesture and in the clasp of the wet cloth over the gash—a certain lack of finicky reservation that might produce more delicacy and grate more. He doesn't bother to count the beats in his head. Instead, he simply is aware of the pattern of Marcus's breathing and how it rises against the palm of his hand. At some point enough of that occurs that it seems correct to release his shoulder, wipe away the loosened grit of dry blood, and actually make a real assessment of the injury.
A series of fine, stinging probes. Another press of the sleeve, subsequently drawn back to study the speed at which the blood wells back up after—
"It should take a dressing," he says, closing the shirt sleeve back over the wound. The press of his hand is firm there. "But the edges are clean. I might stitch the start if you have the needle."
Between them, they might have enough bandaging to get something around Marcus to accomplish a wrap. But for his part, he's working off kit scavenged from a Venatori who apparently hadn't felt particularly moved to do his own mending.
Marcus closes his eyes through the quiet arrangement of twinges and stings—the peeling up of the damp linen, the prickle from the exposure of air, physical inspection, the return of contact and pressure. Staying still, where any flinch or twitch is minor and beyond conscious control, confined to minute muscle contraction while his sitting posture doesn't change.
A token glance back over his shoulder as Flint speaks. A deeper draw of breath under the now warm press of the sleeve.
"Aye," he says. "Alright. Hold there, a moment."
Which is warning for leaning aside, pulling his things closer. Well, everything is close; it's a tent. And even though that's so, it feels a little like the invisible borders within this small space have become murkier. Sure to snap back into place as soon as this is done, but the scent of his own blood is sharp and Flint's voice does not normally come from just here, at his shoulder. Perhaps it wouldn't feel as notable if it wasn't for
well, everything about them.
The item he retrieves is a small pieces of folded leather, something he threw into his pack a long time ago and only now and then checked if anything needed replacing. A straight needle, a curved needle, some catgut and twine. Being no kind of surgeon, he'd accepted the item some Satinalia ago (one of Sister Sara's ever practical gestures) with polite indifference; reflects, now, that this is what it was for, more than likely, to be handed over, which he does.
The press of his hand follows, his attention for the lower edge of the linen and what does or doesn't prickle past it in accordance with the pull of muscle and skin, the flex of the ribcage. There is something in it the whole arrangement that has sat wrong to his eye, though he hasn't yet puzzled out the exact motivation behind that prickling certainty. Something about—
He takes the folded leather packet, grunting 'Hold that steady,' as a means of surrendering the improvised compress in favor of picking through the little surgeon's kit unfolded across the crook of his knee. The lapse into quiet hangs heavier on this side of the tent than it had on the other; primed for the appearance of some bristled hackle, maybe. If he stabs Rowntree the wrong way with the needle and it elicits a complaint, there will be some impulse to repeat it.
—How surprisingly pale he is, he thinks once he has successfully threaded the hooked needle. That's what it is. Not from any particular shock of the gash, just unfreckled in a way that is easy to overlook under any more ordinary circumstances.
A touch at Marcus's elbow, firm too. "Here," callused fingers asserting the appropriate angle. "No higher."
A breath in sounds like it might carry complaint when its let out again, but doesn't. Marcus positions his arm as moved, then grips onto it with his other hand in an effort to keep it still. Knows some shift in biochemistry, heart beating a little firmer than before and nerves prickling down the back of his neck, all informed by the knowledge of what he's bracing for, which is not a small amount of pain.
The wind outside buffets the tent, sends a spray of water from a nearby tree striking the canvas outside. The lantern swings. The world is very dark and empty and wild around this little flimsy hut. This all feels so stupid.
Maybe he'd be more primed to hackle if not for steady hands, the kindness of practicality (or the other way around). That the other man is now holding something very sharp, and Marcus is concentrating on giving him free and ready access to injury. Still.
He doesn't quite think, in so many words, of how counter this feels to the habit of being on guard with James Flint, of shielding vulnerability, but a little beneath the surface—
There’s a joke in there somewhere that’s likely too obscure for present company to find funny. Something about maritime mending being broadly applied to skin and canvas both, or maybe the frequency with which sailors find themselves in need of repairs. But he says it in some matter of fact fashion that suggests—
Sure, maybe he does make a practice of it.
This, before Flint shifts up onto a knee and unhooks the lantern from its fixed point above them. It’s set in it close near Marcus’s hip. Better to have the light from under his hand and take advantage of the ground being more reliably stationary that the flapping tent canvas.
And then, having settled in behind him, there is no more delaying the thing. The wet linen is drawn away and set aside. The hand that replaces it is more subtle—balancing fingertips encouraging that first involuntary flinch be for that touch rather than the needle’s prick.
“Next time you find yourself cut off and wandering Marches backcountry, you might consider arranging to be with Derrica instead.” Is a joke, not a delay.
(But if it were, the hesitation to actually use the sharp gleaming needle would be a natural thing. And it would be obscured by the angle of their bodies and camouflaged by some shifting of the patient lay of Flint’s spare hand. It would be mastered in part by the blood that wells up out of the gash in a ribbon made wet and gleaming by the light.
Using the syllables of a pre-constructed question as his countdown rather than steeeling himself in any other fashion,) he asks, “Where’s the other scar from?”
There's still sort of a joke in there, and if nothing else, a sense of perspective. Like this is less favour and more perfunctory maintenance. Like he is, himself, equipment that was dinged in the course of work, that requires mending to continue to perform duties like rabbit catching and Venatori murder and carrying items. A split second musing that doesn't churn up resentment so much as take the sting out of needing any of this.
More stings to come. The instinctive flinch under Flint's hand is more like the twitch of horse flank from a bothering insect, almost isolated to that one spot. A breath in, and out at the comment on Derrica, something rueful in the sound of it.
Here, he might tell Flint to just get on with it. But then he does.
The sound out of Marcus sounds like it escapes tense muscle and up until now tightly controlled breathing, a short groan, chin tipping up. Thinks fast after what scar Flint means out of the desire for distraction, decides he must mean the one who is about to get its twin.
"Starkhaven," momentarily breathless, until he breathes, speaks again. "The first time."
Assuringly distant, then. It's been years.
"Ours wasn't peaceful, leaving. Me and a few others went to block a hall while the younger apprentices were being collected. We met resistance there. Learned fast, how to do it, having a frontline, and others in the back, away from the Silencing." A breath in, funneled out through his nose. Nearly meditative. "So there was one I tangled with. Knight-Lieutenant Renley. Got his sword up under my staff, caught my arm on withdraw. Ate through the last of a Barrier spell, I think."
Finishes there, question asked and answered, determining how far along that got them from where he can feel Flint's fingers through the oddly numbing radius of hurt.
Very little blood wells up to meet the needle or mark the passage of the catgut thread slithering after it. They are some stitches in already and already there is the sense of the cut being discouraged. Nevermind the fingerprints he's left on the surrounding skin.
"Bad luck for the Knight-Lieutenant." He isn't finished. The set of his fingers would imply he isn't close either, but what he says almost as an afterthought—some low rumbled aside—is, "Nearly there."
He believes Flint's aside more than his sense of where his fingers are, the location of the next pierce and tug. It feels tight and sore but he has felt it before when stitches are more misaligned, pulled too closely, and trusts these ones will ease.
Thinking of that, that first time he'd used magic to hurt someone. It had been easy. Bad luck, to be born to the wrong decade, and assigned to the wrong Circle, and to strike out at the wrong mage.
Maybe. Marcus hadn't felt like a very proficient warrior, in the moment.
"Bad luck we hadn't very many healers in our ranks," he says. His voice is quiet gravel, half mumbled where his chin has found a place to rest against the raised fold of his elbow. "Or sailors."
He can do jokes too. Even, or especially, under duress.
His answering sniff has some slanted, humored edge to it—a dry reflexive not really a laugh that flakes easily off him. Hold that thought until after you see what's been done to you, Marcus, being the very generalized sentiment.
"Or seamstresses."
This is an ugly patch job. Someone back in the Riftwatch infirmary or the laundry may have strong words for the Commander should they have the opportunity to observe his handiwork. That there will be some days before there's any risk of either is—
What it is, mostly.
It takes both hands to whip a knot into the catgut. His belt knife to clip its tail.
"Keep your arm there." A blunter instruction. In short order, the needle has been hooked back into it's leather case and the waterskin is uncapped again. The shirt returns, bundled below the gash to catch the excess water as the pinched red line is flushed clear.
"The end won't take a stitch. But the air may do you some good if it starts to go off."
Responding remark adjacent to how handsome that patch of him still is or is not is mostly met with a heavier exhale, not particularly pointed. He won't himself get the opportunity to make his full and fair assessment until they are somewhere with a mirror, just the hint of where Flint's stitching progresses around his torso.
Follows instruction, even as tension releases itself in his muscles, a deliberately stretch at the neck to loosen more of it from where it's gathered along his spine, shoulders.
He makes a sound at that, grunting agreement or comprehension. Here, he can glance to Flint. Had mostly kept his focus rigidly forward throughout, and so the other man had been the quiet rumble of his voice, touches, limited data. There's a quick study made, now, as he says,
A serious attentiveness, not very different from the way he'd deliberately seen to calculations on that bit of scrap paper. For a moment as he works the cap back onto the water skin and moves the re-wetted shirt back into place across the gash, hand firm, the closeness of the space isn't at all strange. The tent is small. They have been making their way along in one another's company for some time. This—the scuff of hands and the splash of water and careful invasion into that purposefully maintained arm's length separation—is all very practically minded.
And then his attention flicks up, catches Marcus's eye, and the compression of that space instantly thickens under direct observation. No, actually. There is something notably transgressive against the bristling norm in having shifted over by these degrees and these more plain points of contact, and he is as aware of it as he is the stripe of grit on the back of Marcus's neck that must be from where the edge of his collar sits and has ground the atmospheric dust kicked up by the landslide into the skin.
"You're welcome." Has the burr of a challenge in it. So this is irregular. So what? Did he really expect him to sit and pretend like it was none of his business while just a fraction removed as Marcus dripped blood? Don't be absurd.
A rasp of wind pulls sharply at the tent canvas. But having been removed to the dirt, the cast of the lantern light remains very steady.
But does it matter? Later, Flint will run the edge of a thumbnail beneath the other to dislodge what could either be dirt or Marcus' blood, dried to rust. Particles, molecular mingling, made all the closer from the oppressive damp of the air. Fingerprints left behind and rinsed away. Marcus, for a moment, looks
not amused, exactly. Registering challenge, considering it. Considering Flint, a frank kind of appraisal made at closer proximity than normal.
"Don't move," then, a directive and request, and he raises his hands. They are rough where expected, skin more leathery where movement of mage staff grinds against the meat of his palms, the edge near a knuckle. He makes a small elegant maneuver that is more practiced than natural or innate, and traces of magic wrap around the ends of fingers. His opposite hand reaches back.
At the edge of Flint's hand, knuckles, there's a prickle of cold where Marcus only barely avoids touching him, instead placing his fingertips on the edge of wet fabric. Cold again, spreading beneath Flint's palm and by extension the wound he is administering as it frosts through damp fabric. Chilling and thereby soothing aggravated skin, and maybe it won't swell and pull against thread.
Marcus had lowered his focus in concentration, but picks it back up again.
The linen turns crisp under the palm. Nevermind Marcus's direction. There appears to be little in the way of an instinctive urge to flinch back from the working of magic; its point is to serve, after all. The pressure of his hand and the focused point of his attention both hold steady.
(The compress should stay thus for a short while. Then they will have to find something to bind Marcus's side up with and so be done with it.)
Somewhere in that murky space between them, Flint's spare hand tucks the unused thread back into the leather packet and folds it closed. He says, "I imagine it all came more naturally the next time you met a Templar."
He expects it, and makes no attempt to hide the fact he looks for it—a wind up of tension, a withdraw, a more subtle frosting over than the kind under the Commander's hand. It isn't there.
Which doesn't have to mean much. Flint is a man of Tevinter. Flint is Flint.
But it'd have meant something, flinching.
A flicker in focus, momentary introspection—recalling half-mumbled scar story, apparently listened to—but keyed into the present. "Mm," is agreement, first, gravel. "It had to."
Subtle movement, then. A careful rearrangement, a shifted leg, and now they are looking at each other more forward on than a moment ago, something a little like an answer to implicit challenge from a moment ago, of the irregularity. There is also an irregularity of being touched, so, and keeping his hands to himself.
It isn't a tender impulse. There is still a trace of moisture down the back of his neck where his skin had prickled from the effort of not simply shuddering through that whole procedure.
That small shift. The squared heel of his palm following it, some downward twitch of the chin that narrows the accessibly broad angles of his face by degrees. But so long as they are facing one another more directly—
With his spare hand, Flint offers the little folded surgery kit back to him.
The kit is taken, turned over in his hand. A thin trickle of cold run-off releases from the frosted fabric, where the clasp of body heat on either side begins to melt it, although the magic mostly holds it fast, for now. Almost an eyebrow raise, from Marcus, for that answer.
Characteristic pause, thinking over Flint's statement, testing its truthfulness. He sets the kit aside, nearer his things.
"More than learning how to scrap better, or even use magic like that," he says, finally, "it all came more naturally because it was like the fight belonged to me now." Focus returned, gracelessly prying, but earnest rather than calculated. A conscious avoidance of that habit, also, to speak of 'us' and 'we'. No, just himself, here. "Having been denied it for so long."
There'd been struggle, resistance, maneuvering, but none of that is what he means.
If there is a familiar note in it, he isn't particularly surprised by it. There is a reason he is here in the South, still trudging away at this work even after the thing that has brought them to Riftwatch the begin with had slipped between the fingers. The scrap left behind begs to be made solid again, and there is opportunity through Kirkwall to see that accomplished. There are like minds there, he has reasoned. If aligned, there might be some possibility to give that thing some power again.
But it's one thing to hold that similarity in the head and another to have it laid out in so personal and plain and fashion, and all just because he asks. It's an odd blessing to be rendered by a Venatori blade.
"Given the mage alliance under the Inquisition's banner, the recall of the Order, the war, the work here," he says. There is something keen in the quality of his attention, but not impatient. The rasp of a whetstone on steel. "Does it feel as if you're being kept from it again?"
Prompted by the cold cloth or by the impulsive urge to solidify this little thread of apparent sincerity, his shifts his hand absently. Moves his thumb from frosted linen to warmer skin.
Having less than diplomatic tendencies doesn't make a person unaware of the time and place to try and say the right thing, in the manner it should be said in. A sort of anti-instinct, felt like a thorn beneath the skin that gets uncomfortably brushed against, and felt more keenly amongst those in Riftwatch than he has since the Circles themselves. Certainly, across from Flint, at his desk.
Knows it here, a momentary twinge, quieting as Marcus thinks. Then, the press of subtle contact aside from the linen.
"Yes," he says instead, giving up whatever obvious qualifications he might have included.
A breath in, deeper, a subtle way of feeling the pressure of Flint's hand. There's a difference between needing to haul back from the urge to commit violences against a perceived enemy during a ceasefire, and whatever it is he spent years doing alongside them prior to the rebellion, but it can chafe in a similar way.
But he came to Riftwatch for a reason. He knows Flint did too. There's enough that's been said, enough on public record, or collected as scraps from elusive conversations with the likes of Silver, for Marcus to know that much. Can imagine that Flint had meant it, when he had likewise said he can imagine.
He asks, "Is that shameful?" but it's a little wry, too. Corypheus, after all, is not unimportant, and Flint manages his wages in the task of fighting his forces.
His hand has also found a place to rest there, at the edge of Flint's knee, which in the scheme of subtle exchange thus far is—less.
There has been no flinch back from that chilling touching of magic. No muscle and sinew tension translated to Marcus's ribs through the lay of his palm and no real break in the rythmn of his study. But the hand that finds the edge of his knee pulls the eye. Here, in the closed atmosphere of the tent with the wind tugging intermittently at the canvas and the lantern placed so near to them, that small point of contact casts such a long shadow.
It's a brief acknowledgement, no more than a flicking glance, but even that barely there acknowledgement instantly reduces the space into something more malleable. More flexible. The difference between the limitations of something consciously divided being tested and something actively slipping beyond the margins.
When his attention slants back up—
"I would hope not," is dry, and not without some whiff of superiority, and not entirely self-serious either. "If none of us are thinking of what our tomorrow looks like, then there would seem to be very little point in making all this effort now."
Things Flint does not do: ignore it, or shift his knee to remove that near-weightless rest, or query Marcus on what he thinks he's doing, what he thinks this is. There is the sense of searching for it, in the next look between them.
"Mm. Rainy," Marcus says. On the subject of tomorrow.
His hand shifts. Thumb finding that sensitive dip against bony cap, following that line of muscle by an inch, an inch and a half, still light but assertive, still minor as far as contact goes, but he isn't unaware of the lack of pretense. Has he thought it through, the pros and cons of such a gesture when there is nowhere either of them can safely go, should it strike a wrong nerve?
Perhaps. But it's unguarded, his appraisal, plain and open. It wouldn't be so bad, to retreat back to their corners, speak of other kinds of tomorrow.
It sparks a hot bite of frustration and amusement. Both things flash freely in the lines of his face—a wrinkle in the cheek that pulls at his whiskers; a certain furrowing of the brow; this fucking guy—, and both pull taut under the intentional set of Marcus's thumb.
For a man who has managed very tidily to relegate his place in this to prompting questions and the almost entirely practical set of fingers, the answer that surfaces in Flint's face is transparent and bluntly intimate. Careful. There is a real appetite here. It's possible there is some great spread of teeth presently being held in check.
(If Flint is at all surprised by the sudden sharp pang of that hunger, then he is practiced with pretending otherwise.)
"And me made responsible for carrying both our packs, apparently."
In that first silent twinge of reaction, Marcus mirrors it with his more subtle nearly-smile, a self-satisfied curve at the corner of his mouth that slips past his own defenses. Slow to leave.
And its fading has little to do with what is read in Flint's expression. Nothing very reticent about his own intrigue, sharp in clear eyes, nothing all deferential in the way he breaks eye contact when his focus seems to trace a more intimate line down the slope of Flint's cheek, the warm bristle and whisker around his mouth, which says that next thing,
gaining a scoff out of Marcus, quiet in the intimate space they've found themselves in. "We'll see," muttered, focus flicked back up.
Flint's exhale is a heavy, bullish snort. When his spare hand at last moves, it's to catch broadly at Marcus's shoulder and hold him there while he—
Peels the damp ball of a shirtsleeve away from the wound. The blood has reduced itself to a slow ooze. Everything gleams pink from the bite of the wet cold or from the residual smear of blood. Satisfied (no, he isn't), he sets the shirt entirely aside and leans out to dredge his stolen kit closer. It reduces the points of contact between them to Marcus's hand and whatever more incidental alignments naturally occur from being sat so close together. He needs both hands to go rummaging through the unfamiliar bag.
All things being even, Marcus will need something to keep pressure on his side lest he undo all this work.
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With a slosh of water into the (highly relatively) pristine shirt sleeve, Flint sets his hand directly there near this last point. It's a bracing touch. Square palm and firm fingers at the curve of shoulder and neck, thumb setting promptly against a line of muscle he suspects must be work sore and pressing there. It's possible that the shock of pressing the wet shirtsleeve over the bruised gash will come less sharply then.
"I hope you don't have a favorite color," he says, the set of his hands giving every indication that he means to sit a moment like this while the dark blood loosens under the wet sleeve and the fresh eats up into the fabric. "You're going to be all of them come morning."
(They don't have much between them, he is thinking. If it becomes absolutely necessary to maintain their pace, it won't be impossible to repack their kits and the tent in such a fashion that Marcus has less to carry. Only inconvenient. And potentially the least of his concern should they finds more Venatori in the lowlands. Marcus may be able to play the range if he chooses, but someone will have to close the distance.)
no subject
And so on.
This loop of quiet thinking is interrupted at the bracing hold, a slight twitch suggesting it hadn't been expected. Flint's thumb sets against overworked muscle and the breath out of Marcus is audibly appreciative before he can stop it, head ducking as he braces for—yes, that, the familiar sting, which he does a better job at not reacting to.
Another quiet sound at that comment. Laugh-adjacent. Water trickles out translucent, rust-pink. The blood he'd caught on his fingers is already drying. "Sounds pretty," is dry, and on a slight delay as the seconds go by.
Doing the math, now, on what to do about it. Sewing or burning, if it seems to have dug too deeply to quiet on its own with stillness. Feels a human pulse of reluctance for these prospects, but stays quiet, awaiting verdict.
no subject
A series of fine, stinging probes. Another press of the sleeve, subsequently drawn back to study the speed at which the blood wells back up after—
"It should take a dressing," he says, closing the shirt sleeve back over the wound. The press of his hand is firm there. "But the edges are clean. I might stitch the start if you have the needle."
Between them, they might have enough bandaging to get something around Marcus to accomplish a wrap. But for his part, he's working off kit scavenged from a Venatori who apparently hadn't felt particularly moved to do his own mending.
no subject
A token glance back over his shoulder as Flint speaks. A deeper draw of breath under the now warm press of the sleeve.
"Aye," he says. "Alright. Hold there, a moment."
Which is warning for leaning aside, pulling his things closer. Well, everything is close; it's a tent. And even though that's so, it feels a little like the invisible borders within this small space have become murkier. Sure to snap back into place as soon as this is done, but the scent of his own blood is sharp and Flint's voice does not normally come from just here, at his shoulder. Perhaps it wouldn't feel as notable if it wasn't for
well, everything about them.
The item he retrieves is a small pieces of folded leather, something he threw into his pack a long time ago and only now and then checked if anything needed replacing. A straight needle, a curved needle, some catgut and twine. Being no kind of surgeon, he'd accepted the item some Satinalia ago (one of Sister Sara's ever practical gestures) with polite indifference; reflects, now, that this is what it was for, more than likely, to be handed over, which he does.
no subject
He takes the folded leather packet, grunting 'Hold that steady,' as a means of surrendering the improvised compress in favor of picking through the little surgeon's kit unfolded across the crook of his knee. The lapse into quiet hangs heavier on this side of the tent than it had on the other; primed for the appearance of some bristled hackle, maybe. If he stabs Rowntree the wrong way with the needle and it elicits a complaint, there will be some impulse to repeat it.
—How surprisingly pale he is, he thinks once he has successfully threaded the hooked needle. That's what it is. Not from any particular shock of the gash, just unfreckled in a way that is easy to overlook under any more ordinary circumstances.
A touch at Marcus's elbow, firm too. "Here," callused fingers asserting the appropriate angle. "No higher."
no subject
The wind outside buffets the tent, sends a spray of water from a nearby tree striking the canvas outside. The lantern swings. The world is very dark and empty and wild around this little flimsy hut. This all feels so stupid.
Maybe he'd be more primed to hackle if not for steady hands, the kindness of practicality (or the other way around). That the other man is now holding something very sharp, and Marcus is concentrating on giving him free and ready access to injury. Still.
He doesn't quite think, in so many words, of how counter this feels to the habit of being on guard with James Flint, of shielding vulnerability, but a little beneath the surface—
"Done this often?"
no subject
There’s a joke in there somewhere that’s likely too obscure for present company to find funny. Something about maritime mending being broadly applied to skin and canvas both, or maybe the frequency with which sailors find themselves in need of repairs. But he says it in some matter of fact fashion that suggests—
Sure, maybe he does make a practice of it.
This, before Flint shifts up onto a knee and unhooks the lantern from its fixed point above them. It’s set in it close near Marcus’s hip. Better to have the light from under his hand and take advantage of the ground being more reliably stationary that the flapping tent canvas.
And then, having settled in behind him, there is no more delaying the thing. The wet linen is drawn away and set aside. The hand that replaces it is more subtle—balancing fingertips encouraging that first involuntary flinch be for that touch rather than the needle’s prick.
“Next time you find yourself cut off and wandering Marches backcountry, you might consider arranging to be with Derrica instead.” Is a joke, not a delay.
(But if it were, the hesitation to actually use the sharp gleaming needle would be a natural thing. And it would be obscured by the angle of their bodies and camouflaged by some shifting of the patient lay of Flint’s spare hand. It would be mastered in part by the blood that wells up out of the gash in a ribbon made wet and gleaming by the light.
Using the syllables of a pre-constructed question as his countdown rather than steeeling himself in any other fashion,) he asks, “Where’s the other scar from?”
From. The needle bites.
no subject
More stings to come. The instinctive flinch under Flint's hand is more like the twitch of horse flank from a bothering insect, almost isolated to that one spot. A breath in, and out at the comment on Derrica, something rueful in the sound of it.
Here, he might tell Flint to just get on with it. But then he does.
The sound out of Marcus sounds like it escapes tense muscle and up until now tightly controlled breathing, a short groan, chin tipping up. Thinks fast after what scar Flint means out of the desire for distraction, decides he must mean the one who is about to get its twin.
"Starkhaven," momentarily breathless, until he breathes, speaks again. "The first time."
Assuringly distant, then. It's been years.
"Ours wasn't peaceful, leaving. Me and a few others went to block a hall while the younger apprentices were being collected. We met resistance there. Learned fast, how to do it, having a frontline, and others in the back, away from the Silencing." A breath in, funneled out through his nose. Nearly meditative. "So there was one I tangled with. Knight-Lieutenant Renley. Got his sword up under my staff, caught my arm on withdraw. Ate through the last of a Barrier spell, I think."
Finishes there, question asked and answered, determining how far along that got them from where he can feel Flint's fingers through the oddly numbing radius of hurt.
no subject
"Bad luck for the Knight-Lieutenant." He isn't finished. The set of his fingers would imply he isn't close either, but what he says almost as an afterthought—some low rumbled aside—is, "Nearly there."
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Thinking of that, that first time he'd used magic to hurt someone. It had been easy. Bad luck, to be born to the wrong decade, and assigned to the wrong Circle, and to strike out at the wrong mage.
Maybe. Marcus hadn't felt like a very proficient warrior, in the moment.
"Bad luck we hadn't very many healers in our ranks," he says. His voice is quiet gravel, half mumbled where his chin has found a place to rest against the raised fold of his elbow. "Or sailors."
He can do jokes too. Even, or especially, under duress.
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"Or seamstresses."
This is an ugly patch job. Someone back in the Riftwatch infirmary or the laundry may have strong words for the Commander should they have the opportunity to observe his handiwork. That there will be some days before there's any risk of either is—
What it is, mostly.
It takes both hands to whip a knot into the catgut. His belt knife to clip its tail.
"Keep your arm there." A blunter instruction. In short order, the needle has been hooked back into it's leather case and the waterskin is uncapped again. The shirt returns, bundled below the gash to catch the excess water as the pinched red line is flushed clear.
"The end won't take a stitch. But the air may do you some good if it starts to go off."
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Follows instruction, even as tension releases itself in his muscles, a deliberately stretch at the neck to loosen more of it from where it's gathered along his spine, shoulders.
He makes a sound at that, grunting agreement or comprehension. Here, he can glance to Flint. Had mostly kept his focus rigidly forward throughout, and so the other man had been the quiet rumble of his voice, touches, limited data. There's a quick study made, now, as he says,
"Thank you."
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A serious attentiveness, not very different from the way he'd deliberately seen to calculations on that bit of scrap paper. For a moment as he works the cap back onto the water skin and moves the re-wetted shirt back into place across the gash, hand firm, the closeness of the space isn't at all strange. The tent is small. They have been making their way along in one another's company for some time. This—the scuff of hands and the splash of water and careful invasion into that purposefully maintained arm's length separation—is all very practically minded.
And then his attention flicks up, catches Marcus's eye, and the compression of that space instantly thickens under direct observation. No, actually. There is something notably transgressive against the bristling norm in having shifted over by these degrees and these more plain points of contact, and he is as aware of it as he is the stripe of grit on the back of Marcus's neck that must be from where the edge of his collar sits and has ground the atmospheric dust kicked up by the landslide into the skin.
"You're welcome." Has the burr of a challenge in it. So this is irregular. So what? Did he really expect him to sit and pretend like it was none of his business while just a fraction removed as Marcus dripped blood? Don't be absurd.
A rasp of wind pulls sharply at the tent canvas. But having been removed to the dirt, the cast of the lantern light remains very steady.
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But does it matter? Later, Flint will run the edge of a thumbnail beneath the other to dislodge what could either be dirt or Marcus' blood, dried to rust. Particles, molecular mingling, made all the closer from the oppressive damp of the air. Fingerprints left behind and rinsed away. Marcus, for a moment, looks
not amused, exactly. Registering challenge, considering it. Considering Flint, a frank kind of appraisal made at closer proximity than normal.
"Don't move," then, a directive and request, and he raises his hands. They are rough where expected, skin more leathery where movement of mage staff grinds against the meat of his palms, the edge near a knuckle. He makes a small elegant maneuver that is more practiced than natural or innate, and traces of magic wrap around the ends of fingers. His opposite hand reaches back.
At the edge of Flint's hand, knuckles, there's a prickle of cold where Marcus only barely avoids touching him, instead placing his fingertips on the edge of wet fabric. Cold again, spreading beneath Flint's palm and by extension the wound he is administering as it frosts through damp fabric. Chilling and thereby soothing aggravated skin, and maybe it won't swell and pull against thread.
Marcus had lowered his focus in concentration, but picks it back up again.
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(The compress should stay thus for a short while. Then they will have to find something to bind Marcus's side up with and so be done with it.)
Somewhere in that murky space between them, Flint's spare hand tucks the unused thread back into the leather packet and folds it closed. He says, "I imagine it all came more naturally the next time you met a Templar."
Pain is usually instructive.
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Which doesn't have to mean much. Flint is a man of Tevinter. Flint is Flint.
But it'd have meant something, flinching.
A flicker in focus, momentary introspection—recalling half-mumbled scar story, apparently listened to—but keyed into the present. "Mm," is agreement, first, gravel. "It had to."
Subtle movement, then. A careful rearrangement, a shifted leg, and now they are looking at each other more forward on than a moment ago, something a little like an answer to implicit challenge from a moment ago, of the irregularity. There is also an irregularity of being touched, so, and keeping his hands to himself.
It isn't a tender impulse. There is still a trace of moisture down the back of his neck where his skin had prickled from the effort of not simply shuddering through that whole procedure.
"Do you want to know about all that?" is curious.
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With his spare hand, Flint offers the little folded surgery kit back to him.
"If you believe it matters."
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Characteristic pause, thinking over Flint's statement, testing its truthfulness. He sets the kit aside, nearer his things.
"More than learning how to scrap better, or even use magic like that," he says, finally, "it all came more naturally because it was like the fight belonged to me now." Focus returned, gracelessly prying, but earnest rather than calculated. A conscious avoidance of that habit, also, to speak of 'us' and 'we'. No, just himself, here. "Having been denied it for so long."
There'd been struggle, resistance, maneuvering, but none of that is what he means.
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But it's one thing to hold that similarity in the head and another to have it laid out in so personal and plain and fashion, and all just because he asks. It's an odd blessing to be rendered by a Venatori blade.
"Given the mage alliance under the Inquisition's banner, the recall of the Order, the war, the work here," he says. There is something keen in the quality of his attention, but not impatient. The rasp of a whetstone on steel. "Does it feel as if you're being kept from it again?"
Prompted by the cold cloth or by the impulsive urge to solidify this little thread of apparent sincerity, his shifts his hand absently. Moves his thumb from frosted linen to warmer skin.
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Knows it here, a momentary twinge, quieting as Marcus thinks. Then, the press of subtle contact aside from the linen.
"Yes," he says instead, giving up whatever obvious qualifications he might have included.
A breath in, deeper, a subtle way of feeling the pressure of Flint's hand. There's a difference between needing to haul back from the urge to commit violences against a perceived enemy during a ceasefire, and whatever it is he spent years doing alongside them prior to the rebellion, but it can chafe in a similar way.
But he came to Riftwatch for a reason. He knows Flint did too. There's enough that's been said, enough on public record, or collected as scraps from elusive conversations with the likes of Silver, for Marcus to know that much. Can imagine that Flint had meant it, when he had likewise said he can imagine.
He asks, "Is that shameful?" but it's a little wry, too. Corypheus, after all, is not unimportant, and Flint manages his wages in the task of fighting his forces.
His hand has also found a place to rest there, at the edge of Flint's knee, which in the scheme of subtle exchange thus far is—less.
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It's a brief acknowledgement, no more than a flicking glance, but even that barely there acknowledgement instantly reduces the space into something more malleable. More flexible. The difference between the limitations of something consciously divided being tested and something actively slipping beyond the margins.
When his attention slants back up—
"I would hope not," is dry, and not without some whiff of superiority, and not entirely self-serious either. "If none of us are thinking of what our tomorrow looks like, then there would seem to be very little point in making all this effort now."
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"Mm. Rainy," Marcus says. On the subject of tomorrow.
His hand shifts. Thumb finding that sensitive dip against bony cap, following that line of muscle by an inch, an inch and a half, still light but assertive, still minor as far as contact goes, but he isn't unaware of the lack of pretense. Has he thought it through, the pros and cons of such a gesture when there is nowhere either of them can safely go, should it strike a wrong nerve?
Perhaps. But it's unguarded, his appraisal, plain and open. It wouldn't be so bad, to retreat back to their corners, speak of other kinds of tomorrow.
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It sparks a hot bite of frustration and amusement. Both things flash freely in the lines of his face—a wrinkle in the cheek that pulls at his whiskers; a certain furrowing of the brow; this fucking guy—, and both pull taut under the intentional set of Marcus's thumb.
For a man who has managed very tidily to relegate his place in this to prompting questions and the almost entirely practical set of fingers, the answer that surfaces in Flint's face is transparent and bluntly intimate. Careful. There is a real appetite here. It's possible there is some great spread of teeth presently being held in check.
(If Flint is at all surprised by the sudden sharp pang of that hunger, then he is practiced with pretending otherwise.)
"And me made responsible for carrying both our packs, apparently."
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And its fading has little to do with what is read in Flint's expression. Nothing very reticent about his own intrigue, sharp in clear eyes, nothing all deferential in the way he breaks eye contact when his focus seems to trace a more intimate line down the slope of Flint's cheek, the warm bristle and whisker around his mouth, which says that next thing,
gaining a scoff out of Marcus, quiet in the intimate space they've found themselves in. "We'll see," muttered, focus flicked back up.
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Flint's exhale is a heavy, bullish snort. When his spare hand at last moves, it's to catch broadly at Marcus's shoulder and hold him there while he—
Peels the damp ball of a shirtsleeve away from the wound. The blood has reduced itself to a slow ooze. Everything gleams pink from the bite of the wet cold or from the residual smear of blood. Satisfied (no, he isn't), he sets the shirt entirely aside and leans out to dredge his stolen kit closer. It reduces the points of contact between them to Marcus's hand and whatever more incidental alignments naturally occur from being sat so close together. He needs both hands to go rummaging through the unfamiliar bag.
All things being even, Marcus will need something to keep pressure on his side lest he undo all this work.
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