Somewhere, adjacent to or below this room, there may be neighbors who might have begun to consider the possibility that they'd be spared the obligation to listen to the thump of a bed and the dulcet sounds of a less than furtive illicit fuck. But apparently not. Not with that quickening pace and the sound of Marcus' gratification from it acting as its own frictive, vibrating warm and close into the palm of his hand.
He buckles into that contact, flinching reactively toward it. It's the good kind of excess. If Marcus were closer, he might kiss him for it. Instead—yes, he can be trusted to keep his knees up. And to add to that not quiet air of panting and groaning, sound rattling willingly free between Marcus' driving hip and hand in coarse exhales and the snapped growls of 'Fuck' and 'There' rather than Harder or More, as he's already getting what he might ask for.
And it is obvious when the effect starts to narrow close in, buzzing and hot, about and over him—a slow slide characterized not by the further crumpling but the opposite. The tension in his bicep under Marcus's tight grip giving and the catch of shoulders beginning to flatten. Something vulnerable not in the upward tilt of his chin and the exposure of his throat, but in the lack of pretense. That he lets himself stop looking at Marcus to open under him.
As good an encouragement as any direct order or begging might bring, watching Flint wind up taut beneath him, flinch towards him, against him. Warm all over, feeling sweat break away in cool trickles down his back, across his ribs, at his own slow clench of closing in. He only doesn't stop looking at Flint because if he did stop looking at Flint, it would be easy to buckle under, end it sooner than he wishes to.
The fingers clasping Flint's arm will probably leave some bruising, ashy grey, as if that tinge of smoke scent Marcus carries with him had pronounced itself differently.
His other hand is gentler, but not gentle. Assured at the slippery remains of oil smeared over Flint's cock and his own palm, Marcus can make a tight fist, and twist his wrist around to tug at him, muscle-memory doing a lot of work in the wringing him out but it can't be said it feels negligent, the tight ring of fingers, the press of his thumb, or the way he says, "That's it," quieter than his groans, that rasp, more on par with his panting. "That's it, Flint," again, sharp Starkhaven consonants thicker in the moment.
Easily lost in the thump of bed frame or Flint's own pulse thickly pumping in his throat, but maybe not.
Maybe not, though the hiss of encouragement is translated sluggishly in the ear. Plucks at the clench of muscle in his abdomen and warrants some answer in the form of a crackling groan and the slip of his hand moving from the base of Marcus' neck to the muscle strung between shoulder and chest. Fingertips pressing hard into the flex and pull of it which works the hand closed tight around his cock.
Easy, he wants to tell himself. Instead the hand at the top edge of the mattress has shifted—not far, just a turn of the wrist—to catch more directly at the wall. Brace there, which only serves to diminish the give previously afforded by the sway of the bed and the mattress and their bodies on it. The abrupt catch in the palm of his hand and the joint of his elbow ekes some fraction more from the friction. Wrings a degree less give under the press of bodies jostled together.
It's obvious when Flint clips past needing to be coaxed; some repeated spasm low in his belly clutches at Marcus pressing into him and shudders into his hand, terminating in a twisted catch of not quite sound. The thick pulse in his throat ceding abruptly into the buzzing pulse of release as he spills from Marcus' fist.
There's a hitch, a halt, Marcus pressing down deep and intimate as Flint shudders through finishing, indulging in that flex and pressure. The movement of his hand also interrupted at that initial patter before it continues, the kind of massaging jerk of motion that borders on too much during those bright, teetering seconds, a sweep of his palm that collects the result into his palm and makes the whole thing easier, wringing him out.
Hand stilling, and then something absurdly affectionate and out of place in the stroke of a thumb up the slicked underside of the appendage its holding. Then, moving, anchoring at Flint's shoulder, a subtle shift of Marcus over him that carefully doesn't dislodge the way they're hinged together.
If Flint gets a second to breathe between this and Marcus continuing to fuck him, it's incidental. He holds him there, as though Flint were going anywhere, and resumes that driving pace with an even more single-minded focus. The hand that had bore Flint's arm down against the mattress shifts to mirror the other, a cupped grip to his shoulder, letting him feel the even weight of him spread across the mantle of his chest.
Harsh breathing, and a small vocalisation on each one out, head bending on neck.
Whether because it's inconvenient to struggle against a pinned shoulder to keep it there or because the raked through sensation of orgasm has loosened the joint of his elbow too far to bother, his arm falls away. Fingers make to tangle in the worn thin coverlet as Marcus' weight redistributes, though he's not quite fumbled his grip tight before the clipping thump of the bed resumes hot in the ear and the low more than a pant, not quite a groans come catching back out of him. Loose enough through the lines of him that he makes it easy to be fucked down into, taut sinews and muscle worked into pliable, accommodating angles for diving against even as the sensation of it all strikes too hot and too tender.
Pinned there, his chin sways down to rest heavy on his chest. The lamp on the table is low enough that even given their crumpled close forms, he can clearly watch how Marcus works against him. Parse the sheen of sweat and the lick of come on his belly, the heavy hang of the other man's head. All of it overly sharp to the eye, the hot air thick in the middle of them, and the shared ache of noise between them both crisp against the skin and indistinct.
After, were he to think of it, he will have trouble sorting which noises belonged to who. Which is absurd, because only one of them seems likely to throatily rasp out anything like "Fuck, Marcus," or "You're almost there. Just come in me."
Is not quiet; is thick, but perfectly legible in the humid room.
The sound of echoed breaths and moans from beneath him, and then legible words snagging hooks into him, have him lift his head again. Eye contact fleeting, eyes shutting, focus in the pull at his brow at the feeling of arousal narrowing, burning into something else. The rough sounds out of him gain a little more lift, a little more helplessness in the way they're dragged out from his chest.
Flint is right, he's almost there, and it's an exercise in indulging dragging it out until he can't, which doesn't take so very long. Fingers tighten, muscle lashing to bone, the twitch and spasm both visible and not and certainly felt, and the silent hitch in his throat that follows the groan shuddered from him. It's lazy, the last few strokes of motion, finishing, but he looks at Flint then, hands slipping from shoulders to balances against and clutch loosely at the covelet.
Maybe the polite thing to do would be for Marcus to extend his arms, reverse back, free Flint of their tangle and the oppressive presence of him above him.
He doesn't do that. Stays inside him as one elbow bends and the other buckles, having worked harder. Manages not to completely fall on top of Flint, a controlled lowering that is no less heavy once there. Head still lifted, though, and the landing of an imprecise kiss is fainter, first more nuzzle against whiskers than anything else as he catches his breath.
Those last few sounds hook up under his ribs, something in the upward crack of them wrenching at his guts. It doesn't figure high on the list of immediate sensations, just one of a half dozen sharper hotter things as Marcus spills into him. As he crumples. As the weight collapses by degrees and then sloughs fully down. But in the slowly sprawling aftermath, as the rough cant of their breathing saws along similar tracks and the ache that's ground itself into the joints of his hips from the high, close press of knees and thighs makes itself apparent—
He becomes slowly more aware of it, that tight fist of feeling behind his ribs and the useless way it shivers in answer to the clumsy shape of Marcus's mouth the longer the distance between them remains compressed past the point of identification. He turns, reflexive, toward the heavy drag of Marcus' breathing. That's not a kiss either, not really. Just a bump of nose and jaw, breathing fed thick into the place where it promises to mingle most directly with Marcus'.
But sloppier, and less thoughtful still is the shape of his hand having untangled from the coverlet to gracelessly conform to Marcus's side. Scuffing fingers. The aimlessly reassuring set of a thumb. When Flint opens his mouth to impose the slow probe of his tongue, it is more automatic than the slip of his knees and the aching sound he rasps out as the extremity of the angle slips toward easing.
Heart racing slower, from gallop to canter to a more sluggish clip. Content to rest in this in-between space until he feels Flint's mouth press closer and more intent against his own, opens to it, and there is a quiet insensible sound out of Marcus because he is not quite done making them either, although nearly. The last comes when he shifts his hips in accommodation to the settling of Flint's legs, the slickly shared feeling of decoupling.
Kisses Flint again when he resettles, and it is warm and wet in a characteristic way but also gentle and lazy and feels new for that, as does Flint's hand on his side, and this particular level of sodden contentment that he'd shucked off with some efficiency the last time. You're bleeding on me.
Marcus moves, but not far. An adjustment of getting a leg on the other side of Flint's, a distribution of his weight partially onto the mattress hip first, but still half on top. Not enough to dislodge that hand unless Flint lets it be dislodged. For his part, he rests the sole of his foot against an ankle.
"What's in the envelope?" in a voice still rough at the edges.
In an hour, he's going to be stiff and tender in places he hasn't been stiff and tender in for some time. Already that ache in his hips doesn't go away even after Marcus had slid free of him and the reshuffle of bodies has allowed all the joints in his legs to loosen. Though the pressure—Marcus's body weight half splayed across him—helps with the more immediate cringe of stiffness from over flexed sinew, to say nothing of the fact that the throb of sensation is a little like the bruise bitten in under his clavicle. Not unwelcome.
Flint's hand is still on Marcus' side, more lax now that the slant and gravity allows for simply resting there instead of requiring a more active effort. He is content for the moment to just be heavy and wring out, and to have Marcus in the same state on top of him.
The low rumble of an answer doesn't hold any real shape at first. Just an automatic sound that yes, he's heard the question, preceding the actual summoning of an answer—
"Ask me something else."
(Is arguably more diplomatic than None of your business. Chalk it up to post-coital bliss.)
A slight scoff in return for that, felt low at Flint's neck. Jeez. This close, if they wish to do more than simply lay in a state of pretending at sleep, such as talk, Marcus has to duck his chin, sinking a little more on the mattress.
The drape of his arm over Flint's torso coils in, hand finding a place to be, high on his chest. The brush of fingertips against fresh bruising is too light to aggravate it beyond a faint tickle of contact. There is the urge to draw his hand down and trail his fingers through the by now smeared speckles of fluid lower down, not quite backed off from the kinds of instincts that draw him in while ensnared in stupid arousal, greedy want.
Instead, his hand goes upwards. There is a deeper scar at Flint's shoulder that he traces instead, parcelled in with his question, "Where did this one come from?"
When Flint had asked him something similar, it had been to distract him. This is sort of like that.
As if the scuff of fingers there at his shoulder has reminded him of his other limbs, Flint's hand comes unhooked from the head of the bed and the angle of his elbow draws sluggishly down. The reddish mark of applied pressure has already more or less faded, smuggled in among freckles and some natural undertone of the skin.
"A crossbow shot from another Nascere man," he says after a moment.
If Marcus does mean to distract him—from the overlap of bodies, the casual sling of limbs, the fact that he should presently be looking to shake free in order to clean himself up before the loose jointed satisfaction of not doing that and instead loitering here in the heat of the bed and the closeness of bare skin cements itself into a semi-permanent state—, then this is the best mark to question. It requires some consideration, given how it would be impolitic to tell a man whose day he regularly controls that he came by the scar during a mutiny.
(Almost as impolitic, say, as having said man put his cock in him.)
"He'd an interest in taking possession of my ship. I disagreed." Illustrative. "The other half is on the other side," is radically moreso for a throw away remark and a vague twitch of the shoulder in question. The disagreement had apparently occurred at close enough rang that the bolt had been happy to punch all the way through him.
Marcus lifts his head at this opener to get a better look at what kind of mark such a thorough crossbow strike leaves behind. Lowers back down.
His fingers flatten out, the shift from the light brush of the tips of them to the warm settling. It is barely conscious, this playing at conversation, the excuses to touch, where it is just as easily a point of curiousity, a touch that doesn't need an excuse anyway. Of course, having his first question rejected and finding a new one does, to some extent, tell on them both.
This is all still a matter of convenience. No sense in pushing it beyond those boundaries.
"I knew someone who said that marks like that are a sign of good luck," he says. "Given you've still your arm and your life, he might have a point." The last word, punctuated with the idle tap of fingertip to skin.
And maybe insensitive to whatever potential delicacy may be attached to the thing. But Marcus had fought in a war, and has probably seen children he all but raised killed for it. Even lacking that—death is a very ordinary. Under the warm flat of Marcus' palm, it hardly occurs to him not to treat the subject with some degree of flippancy.
"Bad luck for the man with the crossbow, in any case."
A small tilt of the face in Marcus' direction. Were the room darker, this motion might serve to cloak the line of Flint's attention entirely. But the lamplight is warm, and the shadows only wading depth. His study is heavy. More firm than the hand idle across Marcus' side is despite being half lidded.
There's nothing very offended in the rough little exhale of agreement at this first part. Aye, knew. In its way, the point still stands, to the detriment of past purveyors of wisdom and reassurance, and mutineers, although Marcus hasn't asked if this Nascere man had been a friend, first, before he was an enemy.
The question is only just forming when Flint asks his, drawing Marcus' focus up from the hazy nothing he'd been looking at while talking, thinking. It is the sort of question so rarely asked that it feels a little like if he'd pushed his fingers firmer against that bruise, and again, there is nothing very offended in the meandering conclusion of wondering if his question had, inadvertently, felt the same way.
Still. No ripple of defense from him, just a brief study back before he answers.
"I didn't catch their name," which he could always leave it at, if he wanted. "A Templar with a tower shield. I remember them standing over someone, and me, striking them with rock and flame. It was enchanted, the shield, and it repelled it back towards me, I'm told."
And then the wisdom, the reassurance. Out of order, in the telling. Messy, like that day.
Or maybe he is just curious, and has spent the last measure of time in strict study of the man's face. Noting to scar because he is staring at it, and because it takes on a deeper pitch when Marcus is sweating and a flush of exertion has worked up into the face.
(But, maybe: a little tender to the touch, too. That veering point of conversation Marcus had suffered in the hot, cramped tavern before this when Flint had decided to be done discussing something.)
Said knee raises a little, in the midst of the incidental tangle he's arranged them into. Thinks, first, of the wrap of Flint's hand around in, inviting him into bed before he'd put it into words. Marcus draws in a breath, a little like ah, yes, the knee, and a trace flicker of humour gives him away.
"Fell off a horse."
He'd wondered if Flint does anything purposelessly, to the conclusion that the answer is 'no', but it does not profoundly change the way he engages in return. Perhaps that will be a mistake. For now, Marcus glances down the length of them both. Turning his thigh to illustrate the jagged few inches. "If you ever want to make a grown man beg for his life, get something sharp just under there." Reaching, indicating where the scar curves to kneecap.
Hand laying down on Flint's chest again, leg folding back down. "Do you miss it?"
comes with a look rising from Marcus' knee to his face. Something in the skeptical flex of an eyebrow or the nearness of the air made briefly more flexible by the trace humor Marcus has breathed into it suggests, 'Isn't that what we just did?'
It's an idle thing to draw his hand from Marcus' side and allow his hand to settle across his own middle instead. Unremarkable, a simple settling in the overworked cords of his shoulders (except for how Flint does nothing purposelessly). Flat there, the rings on his fingers glow dull in the lamplight.
He makes no effort to unmoor himself further. Not just yet.
"Considerably." Nevermind that the ship he'd come in often still lurks at anchor in the harbor. There is no denying that he has become so removed from its functioning so as to be rendered entirely inessential. "Though I might feel differently were the Gallows halfway less like they are."
A real question, slow on the back of Flint's answer as if anticipating elaboration, and still quiet, tired in a prolonged post-coital way without yet threatening to sink into unconsciousness.
And if Flint has withdrawn in some small way, Marcus doesn't appear to have noticed enough to even feign not noticing. In another second or several, perhaps, comfortable in laying against a warm body, the small room diminished further to small bed, back turned to the rest of the evening laying ahead of them.
"It means," he says, drawing some definition out from behind his ribs. Warm as he is, it takes a moment to put the thing into some logical order. "That the Gallows is all in service to this war. It isn't a place for living in."
It is not what he imagined quitting the sea for.
(Nevermind that he can picture other men, in other chairs, in other forts, who he would prefer to be little like who nonetheless rankled under a yoke similar in appearance.)
His response is understated, first, a quiet vocalisation on a breath out. Agreeable understanding. No, the Gallows is not, and how strange it had been to, for that second time, step onto its docks while it cast the same shadows as it had the first. But it isn't the connotation that Flint means and it is an easy thing to quiet steer back from that path, and consider another.
"But we do live there," Marcus says, after a moment. "In spite of it."
In small ways. You can, in small ways, make a home out of anywhere.
Flint's answer to this is some low hum—more acknowledgement than either affirmation or skepticism. He tilts his face back to its natural upright position. The ceiling above them has a crack in it, and the general view of the plaster around it isn't so interesting as to keep him from letting his eyes shut. Just for a short while, he doesn't tell himself so much as he simply expects it.
"My point was that the Gallows is hardly retiring to a house on a rich Antivan vineyard," he says. The bed is warm. "It's entirely possible that if I'd traded up instead of across in circumstance, there'd be no reason think of the sea at all."
Sure. That sounds like it could be a true thing someone who made his fortune through theft at the end of a sword's point might say.
The quiet mh out of him at further clarification doesn't sound unconvinced. Ponders that, this supposed house on a rich Antivan vineyard, the sort of thing that wouldn't have occurred but certainly sounds compelling, and it doesn't entirely negate the possibility of something simpler, nested in it.
So, sure.
And Flint asks his question, and in the midst of it, Marcus adjusts. The roll of his body is not quick, not really aimed towards some specific next movement, just settling on his back. Foot leaving off where it had rested against ankle, hand coiled back from Flint's chest, but there maintains the line of contact, thigh, shoulder.
"If we're speaking of trade," as opposed to a means to nudge him off the prior topic only, "I don't know the value my place would have been there. I was there when it was a rebellion, and left when it ceased to be. I wouldn't miss seven years as a foot soldier of the Chantry."
He considers not saying a thing, before, "Riftwatch has been the better home." He rides griffons and sees much of the world and gets to walk around a city when duties permit and there are people who are good, mixed in the people who are intolerable. He had told Flint he misses his war, too, and apparently these two impulses can co-exist.
In a minute or two, Flint decides as Marcus shifts fully off of him, he will sit up and extract himself from the warmth bed with its crinkling straw packed mattress and see whether there's any water in the pitcher by the door that he might use for cleaning himself up with. He'll only lay here with his eyes closed, listening to Marcus's thick consonants, a few moments longer.
(Maybe Marcus is speaking to the very thing that dissatisfies him; Riftwatch may be faintly divorced from the Chantry and in the least respectable trade city on the Waking Sea, but it still postures at an air of legitimacy. That, the expectation of what civilized places do for civilized people, rankles against the skin. Moreso, from that sixth floor division office. All this courting favor of rich fucks abroad, and playing by the rules that the Divine would prefer them too, and—)
In the close, over warm atmosphere of the room, these irritations hardly rise past a simmer.
"You might send word of your endorsement back to your fellows still with the Inquisition and see whether you might sway anyone else to divest of the Divine's banner," has the timbre of an idle remark, unserious in the sense that it seems highly unnecessary. Surely everyone with the Inquisition knows full well of the Gallows and what might be expected of them there.
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He buckles into that contact, flinching reactively toward it. It's the good kind of excess. If Marcus were closer, he might kiss him for it. Instead—yes, he can be trusted to keep his knees up. And to add to that not quiet air of panting and groaning, sound rattling willingly free between Marcus' driving hip and hand in coarse exhales and the snapped growls of 'Fuck' and 'There' rather than Harder or More, as he's already getting what he might ask for.
And it is obvious when the effect starts to narrow close in, buzzing and hot, about and over him—a slow slide characterized not by the further crumpling but the opposite. The tension in his bicep under Marcus's tight grip giving and the catch of shoulders beginning to flatten. Something vulnerable not in the upward tilt of his chin and the exposure of his throat, but in the lack of pretense. That he lets himself stop looking at Marcus to open under him.
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The fingers clasping Flint's arm will probably leave some bruising, ashy grey, as if that tinge of smoke scent Marcus carries with him had pronounced itself differently.
His other hand is gentler, but not gentle. Assured at the slippery remains of oil smeared over Flint's cock and his own palm, Marcus can make a tight fist, and twist his wrist around to tug at him, muscle-memory doing a lot of work in the wringing him out but it can't be said it feels negligent, the tight ring of fingers, the press of his thumb, or the way he says, "That's it," quieter than his groans, that rasp, more on par with his panting. "That's it, Flint," again, sharp Starkhaven consonants thicker in the moment.
Easily lost in the thump of bed frame or Flint's own pulse thickly pumping in his throat, but maybe not.
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Easy, he wants to tell himself. Instead the hand at the top edge of the mattress has shifted—not far, just a turn of the wrist—to catch more directly at the wall. Brace there, which only serves to diminish the give previously afforded by the sway of the bed and the mattress and their bodies on it. The abrupt catch in the palm of his hand and the joint of his elbow ekes some fraction more from the friction. Wrings a degree less give under the press of bodies jostled together.
It's obvious when Flint clips past needing to be coaxed; some repeated spasm low in his belly clutches at Marcus pressing into him and shudders into his hand, terminating in a twisted catch of not quite sound. The thick pulse in his throat ceding abruptly into the buzzing pulse of release as he spills from Marcus' fist.
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Hand stilling, and then something absurdly affectionate and out of place in the stroke of a thumb up the slicked underside of the appendage its holding. Then, moving, anchoring at Flint's shoulder, a subtle shift of Marcus over him that carefully doesn't dislodge the way they're hinged together.
If Flint gets a second to breathe between this and Marcus continuing to fuck him, it's incidental. He holds him there, as though Flint were going anywhere, and resumes that driving pace with an even more single-minded focus. The hand that had bore Flint's arm down against the mattress shifts to mirror the other, a cupped grip to his shoulder, letting him feel the even weight of him spread across the mantle of his chest.
Harsh breathing, and a small vocalisation on each one out, head bending on neck.
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Pinned there, his chin sways down to rest heavy on his chest. The lamp on the table is low enough that even given their crumpled close forms, he can clearly watch how Marcus works against him. Parse the sheen of sweat and the lick of come on his belly, the heavy hang of the other man's head. All of it overly sharp to the eye, the hot air thick in the middle of them, and the shared ache of noise between them both crisp against the skin and indistinct.
After, were he to think of it, he will have trouble sorting which noises belonged to who. Which is absurd, because only one of them seems likely to throatily rasp out anything like "Fuck, Marcus," or "You're almost there. Just come in me."
Is not quiet; is thick, but perfectly legible in the humid room.
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Flint is right, he's almost there, and it's an exercise in indulging dragging it out until he can't, which doesn't take so very long. Fingers tighten, muscle lashing to bone, the twitch and spasm both visible and not and certainly felt, and the silent hitch in his throat that follows the groan shuddered from him. It's lazy, the last few strokes of motion, finishing, but he looks at Flint then, hands slipping from shoulders to balances against and clutch loosely at the covelet.
Maybe the polite thing to do would be for Marcus to extend his arms, reverse back, free Flint of their tangle and the oppressive presence of him above him.
He doesn't do that. Stays inside him as one elbow bends and the other buckles, having worked harder. Manages not to completely fall on top of Flint, a controlled lowering that is no less heavy once there. Head still lifted, though, and the landing of an imprecise kiss is fainter, first more nuzzle against whiskers than anything else as he catches his breath.
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He becomes slowly more aware of it, that tight fist of feeling behind his ribs and the useless way it shivers in answer to the clumsy shape of Marcus's mouth the longer the distance between them remains compressed past the point of identification. He turns, reflexive, toward the heavy drag of Marcus' breathing. That's not a kiss either, not really. Just a bump of nose and jaw, breathing fed thick into the place where it promises to mingle most directly with Marcus'.
But sloppier, and less thoughtful still is the shape of his hand having untangled from the coverlet to gracelessly conform to Marcus's side. Scuffing fingers. The aimlessly reassuring set of a thumb. When Flint opens his mouth to impose the slow probe of his tongue, it is more automatic than the slip of his knees and the aching sound he rasps out as the extremity of the angle slips toward easing.
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Kisses Flint again when he resettles, and it is warm and wet in a characteristic way but also gentle and lazy and feels new for that, as does Flint's hand on his side, and this particular level of sodden contentment that he'd shucked off with some efficiency the last time. You're bleeding on me.
Marcus moves, but not far. An adjustment of getting a leg on the other side of Flint's, a distribution of his weight partially onto the mattress hip first, but still half on top. Not enough to dislodge that hand unless Flint lets it be dislodged. For his part, he rests the sole of his foot against an ankle.
"What's in the envelope?" in a voice still rough at the edges.
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Flint's hand is still on Marcus' side, more lax now that the slant and gravity allows for simply resting there instead of requiring a more active effort. He is content for the moment to just be heavy and wring out, and to have Marcus in the same state on top of him.
The low rumble of an answer doesn't hold any real shape at first. Just an automatic sound that yes, he's heard the question, preceding the actual summoning of an answer—
"Ask me something else."
(Is arguably more diplomatic than None of your business. Chalk it up to post-coital bliss.)
wow a horny icon that finally feels appropriate
The drape of his arm over Flint's torso coils in, hand finding a place to be, high on his chest. The brush of fingertips against fresh bruising is too light to aggravate it beyond a faint tickle of contact. There is the urge to draw his hand down and trail his fingers through the by now smeared speckles of fluid lower down, not quite backed off from the kinds of instincts that draw him in while ensnared in stupid arousal, greedy want.
Instead, his hand goes upwards. There is a deeper scar at Flint's shoulder that he traces instead, parcelled in with his question, "Where did this one come from?"
When Flint had asked him something similar, it had been to distract him. This is sort of like that.
thanks @ whoever directed that episode
"A crossbow shot from another Nascere man," he says after a moment.
If Marcus does mean to distract him—from the overlap of bodies, the casual sling of limbs, the fact that he should presently be looking to shake free in order to clean himself up before the loose jointed satisfaction of not doing that and instead loitering here in the heat of the bed and the closeness of bare skin cements itself into a semi-permanent state—, then this is the best mark to question. It requires some consideration, given how it would be impolitic to tell a man whose day he regularly controls that he came by the scar during a mutiny.
(Almost as impolitic, say, as having said man put his cock in him.)
"He'd an interest in taking possession of my ship. I disagreed." Illustrative. "The other half is on the other side," is radically moreso for a throw away remark and a vague twitch of the shoulder in question. The disagreement had apparently occurred at close enough rang that the bolt had been happy to punch all the way through him.
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His fingers flatten out, the shift from the light brush of the tips of them to the warm settling. It is barely conscious, this playing at conversation, the excuses to touch, where it is just as easily a point of curiousity, a touch that doesn't need an excuse anyway. Of course, having his first question rejected and finding a new one does, to some extent, tell on them both.
This is all still a matter of convenience. No sense in pushing it beyond those boundaries.
"I knew someone who said that marks like that are a sign of good luck," he says. "Given you've still your arm and your life, he might have a point." The last word, punctuated with the idle tap of fingertip to skin.
no subject
And maybe insensitive to whatever potential delicacy may be attached to the thing. But Marcus had fought in a war, and has probably seen children he all but raised killed for it. Even lacking that—death is a very ordinary. Under the warm flat of Marcus' palm, it hardly occurs to him not to treat the subject with some degree of flippancy.
"Bad luck for the man with the crossbow, in any case."
A small tilt of the face in Marcus' direction. Were the room darker, this motion might serve to cloak the line of Flint's attention entirely. But the lamplight is warm, and the shadows only wading depth. His study is heavy. More firm than the hand idle across Marcus' side is despite being half lidded.
"Who split your face?"
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The question is only just forming when Flint asks his, drawing Marcus' focus up from the hazy nothing he'd been looking at while talking, thinking. It is the sort of question so rarely asked that it feels a little like if he'd pushed his fingers firmer against that bruise, and again, there is nothing very offended in the meandering conclusion of wondering if his question had, inadvertently, felt the same way.
Still. No ripple of defense from him, just a brief study back before he answers.
"I didn't catch their name," which he could always leave it at, if he wanted. "A Templar with a tower shield. I remember them standing over someone, and me, striking them with rock and flame. It was enchanted, the shield, and it repelled it back towards me, I'm told."
And then the wisdom, the reassurance. Out of order, in the telling. Messy, like that day.
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(But, maybe: a little tender to the touch, too. That veering point of conversation Marcus had suffered in the hot, cramped tavern before this when Flint had decided to be done discussing something.)
"And the knee?"
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"Fell off a horse."
He'd wondered if Flint does anything purposelessly, to the conclusion that the answer is 'no', but it does not profoundly change the way he engages in return. Perhaps that will be a mistake. For now, Marcus glances down the length of them both. Turning his thigh to illustrate the jagged few inches. "If you ever want to make a grown man beg for his life, get something sharp just under there." Reaching, indicating where the scar curves to kneecap.
Hand laying down on Flint's chest again, leg folding back down. "Do you miss it?"
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comes with a look rising from Marcus' knee to his face. Something in the skeptical flex of an eyebrow or the nearness of the air made briefly more flexible by the trace humor Marcus has breathed into it suggests, 'Isn't that what we just did?'
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"Having a ship and all that went with it," he presses, patiently. "In place of a stone tower on a rock."
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It's an idle thing to draw his hand from Marcus' side and allow his hand to settle across his own middle instead. Unremarkable, a simple settling in the overworked cords of his shoulders (except for how Flint does nothing purposelessly). Flat there, the rings on his fingers glow dull in the lamplight.
He makes no effort to unmoor himself further. Not just yet.
"Considerably." Nevermind that the ship he'd come in often still lurks at anchor in the harbor. There is no denying that he has become so removed from its functioning so as to be rendered entirely inessential. "Though I might feel differently were the Gallows halfway less like they are."
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A real question, slow on the back of Flint's answer as if anticipating elaboration, and still quiet, tired in a prolonged post-coital way without yet threatening to sink into unconsciousness.
And if Flint has withdrawn in some small way, Marcus doesn't appear to have noticed enough to even feign not noticing. In another second or several, perhaps, comfortable in laying against a warm body, the small room diminished further to small bed, back turned to the rest of the evening laying ahead of them.
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It is not what he imagined quitting the sea for.
(Nevermind that he can picture other men, in other chairs, in other forts, who he would prefer to be little like who nonetheless rankled under a yoke similar in appearance.)
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"But we do live there," Marcus says, after a moment. "In spite of it."
In small ways. You can, in small ways, make a home out of anywhere.
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"My point was that the Gallows is hardly retiring to a house on a rich Antivan vineyard," he says. The bed is warm. "It's entirely possible that if I'd traded up instead of across in circumstance, there'd be no reason think of the sea at all."
Sure. That sounds like it could be a true thing someone who made his fortune through theft at the end of a sword's point might say.
"Do you miss your place with Fiona's contingent?"
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So, sure.
And Flint asks his question, and in the midst of it, Marcus adjusts. The roll of his body is not quick, not really aimed towards some specific next movement, just settling on his back. Foot leaving off where it had rested against ankle, hand coiled back from Flint's chest, but there maintains the line of contact, thigh, shoulder.
"If we're speaking of trade," as opposed to a means to nudge him off the prior topic only, "I don't know the value my place would have been there. I was there when it was a rebellion, and left when it ceased to be. I wouldn't miss seven years as a foot soldier of the Chantry."
He considers not saying a thing, before, "Riftwatch has been the better home." He rides griffons and sees much of the world and gets to walk around a city when duties permit and there are people who are good, mixed in the people who are intolerable. He had told Flint he misses his war, too, and apparently these two impulses can co-exist.
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(Maybe Marcus is speaking to the very thing that dissatisfies him; Riftwatch may be faintly divorced from the Chantry and in the least respectable trade city on the Waking Sea, but it still postures at an air of legitimacy. That, the expectation of what civilized places do for civilized people, rankles against the skin. Moreso, from that sixth floor division office. All this courting favor of rich fucks abroad, and playing by the rules that the Divine would prefer them too, and—)
In the close, over warm atmosphere of the room, these irritations hardly rise past a simmer.
"You might send word of your endorsement back to your fellows still with the Inquisition and see whether you might sway anyone else to divest of the Divine's banner," has the timbre of an idle remark, unserious in the sense that it seems highly unnecessary. Surely everyone with the Inquisition knows full well of the Gallows and what might be expected of them there.
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