katabasis | [psl] dos rowdy boys

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—

"Done this often?"

“Make and mend is regular ship’s business.”

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.

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,

"Thank you."

What's readily observed is:

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.

Maybe. Not likely.

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."

Pain is usually instructive.

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.

"Do you want to know about all that?" is curious.

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.

"If you believe it matters."

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.

Rainy.

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.

Man alive. What a smug bastard he is.

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.

The shirtsleeve is peeled away, and Marcus reacts to the sensation of that with a tic of tension at his jaw, a pause in breathing. Gaze tipping up towards canvas over Flint's head as the other man breaks to move onto the next thing, stealing a deeper breath for himself under the sound of items rustling.

He lifts his elbow, a brief attempt to look at his injury for himself, but seeing more than the swooping tail end of it would take more twisting than he has inclination to attempt.

His hand is still where it is. Shifts in the natural course of movement, a warm sit of palm against the side of Flint's thigh. More than (over)confident projections as to his own viability when they finally move on from their campsite, there is also the impulse to chase impulse, interrupt the progression of medical administration by following Flint into that movement, a demand for a different kind of attention.

But he does not actually want to bleed everywhere, freshly stitched wound now singing through his nerves with the absence of pressure and ice. Its welcome is still murky, uncertain. So he sits, watches, a certain element of hemmed-in impatience in that stillness, assssment.

There's not much to the contents of the pack and he's already made himself familiar by unpacking and repacking it, so unearthing the bandage and the dead man's handkerchief doesn't require more than perfunctory rummaging. When Flint sways back, there is a muscle in his thigh that flexes under the points of Marcus's hand, but his attention doesn't return to it.

Instead, the handkerchief is folded. His belt knife is fetched up again, and so is the shirt, and with a pop of the blade and a subsequent jerking the fabric at the bottom of the long hem splits along its weft. Presumably he won't miss the bottom two inches of the shirt that's already in desperate need of boiling and mending. This too is folded, and joined behind the handkerchief to make a thick pad.

This part he absolutely has done before.

(The bandaging? Or allowing Marcus to put his hand on him while weighing on the man's patience?)

Both, maybe, given the expectant look Flint fixes him with once these pieces are assembled.

"Mind your elbow."

The sound of tearing fabric is loud and sharp in the small tent. Marcus has enough self-possession not to let objection express itself too clearly in his face, having at least in part made peace with a decent shirt ruined anyway.

Momentarily distracting, though.

So when Flint returns focus, Marcus' hand hasn't done much else, a comfortable conforming against the slope of muscle without progressing past it. Nothing interrupted, then, to lift it away, arms out further from his sides to help along the process.

A process he's not unfamiliar with either, a hand slipping down and across to help hold bandaging into place where it's tied. He could probably do this part himself, if not as adeptly.

So his palm returns to apply firm, unapologetic pressure over the handiwork of the stitching. The subsequent task of pinning the bandage end and passing the roll around Marcus is just fiddly enough to require some measure of actual intention for at least the first rounds. Nevermind the scuff of bloodied fingers, or the residual sheen of sweat, or the pin sharp awareness of the space on his thigh that had briefly entertained being touched.

It's methodical. The bandage is wrapped, the end is secured. He finds Marcus's shoulder, his thumb digs. It is obvious when it becomes a blatant invasion of space rather than operating under the pretense of workmanlike diligence.

"Are we finished here?"

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