Only when Flint plucks at the covelet does Marcus move, heaving a sigh as he vacates that warm spot they've made in partial awareness for how he does not particularly want to find his bare skin touching this specific exposed mattress in this specific venue. The floorboards creak under bare feet, and he does move, first, to separate his clothing from Flint's, shaking out his tunic, draping it over the edge of the bed frame.
"Find a seat at a gambling table, maybe," because he doesn't have work to do, which is the kind of thing he can arrange when not on assignment. Moving towards the basin. "Win back my two bit."
His hands, first, dunking them into water in pragmatic fashion, fingers flicking. A scooping hand distributing water down across belly and groin, a careless spatter of wet on the wooden floor.
"There's money to be won at the Jackdaw if you're any good at keeping track of cards and can stay sober longer than the merchantman who wash up there this hour." They'd probably take Rowntree and his Starkhaven consonants for granted, too. No sailor takes any landsman very seriously as first blush.
As far as hot tips go, he wagers that's more or less worth the copper near the jar of lamp oil.
He makes brisk work of cleaning himself up—workmanlike, neither coy or embarrassed about about mopping up across his belly or between the legs. Clothes are sorted. His coat his shaken out, and the contents of the pocket verified to be only marginally crumpled. His belt is untwisted and buckled back on. It only then, jamming his belt knife back between it and his side, that Flint's attention falls to the activity of Marcus' hand.
"Where'd you come by that?"
The silver ring, common black stone. Its tck against a metal tankard. Its warm metal bite at the skin. Marcus hadn't worn any rings in the mountains.
He's in the process of tucking his tunic into his waistband when he thinks to search the ground, turning a half circle in scanning the floorboards before finding what he is looking for. The sliver of leather cord that Flint had tugged loose, and he's untangling it out of its half-knot, considering his prospects at the Jackdaw with warmer interest than the prospect of retiring early, and thinking around the space that exists in between where he offers to accompany Flint's remaining errands.
Turns his hand to glance at the ring, stone cut into a masculine square, set into heavy silver with some texture of design worked into the surface.
"Looted it," he admits, though it doesn't sound like admission. He is, anyway, talking to a whole pirate. "And learned it was near worthless when I took it to sell."
Or a merchant was attempting to con him, commonness of stone aside, but his tone lacks guile on the topic.
His hm is low and rumbling, a vague sound of acknowledgement—
"Tourmaline. It's a disappointing stone more often than not," sounds vaguely approving regardless. If nothing else, it's a good shap.
The belt knife is hooked into place; his hand with its own smattering of rings comes away from it on favor of fishing through a sleeve on his cost. In short order, Flint once more looks the part of Whole Pirate instead of merely being one.
Gathering hair back into place, the muscle memory rake of fingers to sit it the way he prefers, Marcus ties it off with practiced efficiency. Less neatly than if he had a comb and a mirror and an inclination to be fussier about his appearance than he does currently, sweat half-dry beneath his clothing and still a little aware of where Flint's grip had, at various points, set the future ghosts of yellow bruises.
"Do you have a story for each one of yours," he asks, during, a tip of his chin down at Flint's hand, "or did you come by them all at once?"
A mild teasing, some small brushing against a more familiar register and rhythm than they would have indulged in before the mountains, or even after the mountains.
"I looted them," has a frank cut of shitheelery in it; the equivalent of a nip of teeth at a tender lip. Behind his whiskers, Flint's mouth slants in the direction of smug. "Some are worth money."
The last buckle on a gaiter is done up. The edge of the missed coverlet is flipped back to be certain nothing has strayed out of sight under the bed. And then there is no more benefit for the room, air thick and muggy even before the sweat of their exertions, to yield. It's possible that at this hour, the land breeze will finally be washing down through Kirkwall and carrying with something cool or at least the stir of the air with it as it hurries to meet the sea.
Might as well quit this place to take advantage of what little relief might be found from the heat while walking.
The sound Marcus makes to that is dismissive, where a neat bite back of a rejoinder would go if he were quicker towards a turn of phrase.
A couple of copper left on the bedside table, and their business, such as it is, is concluded.
The woman in front room doesn't look up at all at the sound of bootfalls, Marcus moving first down the stairs with characteristic heel-first heaviness, especially noisy on the wooden surfaces. Outside, the air is a relief, if only because it is moving around, even in this little cutthroat alley that first must move through. Maybe at the end of it, there is some obligate shuffle around a parting word they're meant to be partaking in.
That Marcus turns out of the alley and makes for the general direction of the Jackdaw without so much as a glance could be a deliberate avoidance of just that, if he'd thought of it at all.
There, at the end of the alley in the cooler touch of night air, Flint makes a similar turn as if by stepping out across the threshold of the lodging house has served to shelve any thought save for one related to the packet in his coat pocket or the business which awaits him down in various dockside public houses. There is no parting word, and he doesn't consider its absence much less think to mind it.
If, given a dozen strides, Flint so much as spares a glance back across his shoulder in the direction Rowntree had struck out in, then it's more or less entirely by happenstance. In short order, the night swallows both of them, and it will be some hours before freshening bruises make themselves known. In the intervening hours, they may be perfectly unaffected men.
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no subject
"Find a seat at a gambling table, maybe," because he doesn't have work to do, which is the kind of thing he can arrange when not on assignment. Moving towards the basin. "Win back my two bit."
His hands, first, dunking them into water in pragmatic fashion, fingers flicking. A scooping hand distributing water down across belly and groin, a careless spatter of wet on the wooden floor.
no subject
As far as hot tips go, he wagers that's more or less worth the copper near the jar of lamp oil.
He makes brisk work of cleaning himself up—workmanlike, neither coy or embarrassed about about mopping up across his belly or between the legs. Clothes are sorted. His coat his shaken out, and the contents of the pocket verified to be only marginally crumpled. His belt is untwisted and buckled back on. It only then, jamming his belt knife back between it and his side, that Flint's attention falls to the activity of Marcus' hand.
"Where'd you come by that?"
The silver ring, common black stone. Its tck against a metal tankard. Its warm metal bite at the skin. Marcus hadn't worn any rings in the mountains.
no subject
Turns his hand to glance at the ring, stone cut into a masculine square, set into heavy silver with some texture of design worked into the surface.
"Looted it," he admits, though it doesn't sound like admission. He is, anyway, talking to a whole pirate. "And learned it was near worthless when I took it to sell."
Or a merchant was attempting to con him, commonness of stone aside, but his tone lacks guile on the topic.
no subject
"Tourmaline. It's a disappointing stone more often than not," sounds vaguely approving regardless. If nothing else, it's a good shap.
The belt knife is hooked into place; his hand with its own smattering of rings comes away from it on favor of fishing through a sleeve on his cost. In short order, Flint once more looks the part of Whole Pirate instead of merely being one.
no subject
"Do you have a story for each one of yours," he asks, during, a tip of his chin down at Flint's hand, "or did you come by them all at once?"
A mild teasing, some small brushing against a more familiar register and rhythm than they would have indulged in before the mountains, or even after the mountains.
no subject
The last buckle on a gaiter is done up. The edge of the missed coverlet is flipped back to be certain nothing has strayed out of sight under the bed. And then there is no more benefit for the room, air thick and muggy even before the sweat of their exertions, to yield. It's possible that at this hour, the land breeze will finally be washing down through Kirkwall and carrying with something cool or at least the stir of the air with it as it hurries to meet the sea.
Might as well quit this place to take advantage of what little relief might be found from the heat while walking.
no subject
A couple of copper left on the bedside table, and their business, such as it is, is concluded.
The woman in front room doesn't look up at all at the sound of bootfalls, Marcus moving first down the stairs with characteristic heel-first heaviness, especially noisy on the wooden surfaces. Outside, the air is a relief, if only because it is moving around, even in this little cutthroat alley that first must move through. Maybe at the end of it, there is some obligate shuffle around a parting word they're meant to be partaking in.
That Marcus turns out of the alley and makes for the general direction of the Jackdaw without so much as a glance could be a deliberate avoidance of just that, if he'd thought of it at all.
🎀
If, given a dozen strides, Flint so much as spares a glance back across his shoulder in the direction Rowntree had struck out in, then it's more or less entirely by happenstance. In short order, the night swallows both of them, and it will be some hours before freshening bruises make themselves known. In the intervening hours, they may be perfectly unaffected men.