It's possible that a more socially dextrous intervention might have freed him without prompting the bristle that plays out now in the posture of one of the Nevarran merchants. But there's something to be said for a lack of pretense. It makes it easy to feign at urgency.
(And who knows. Maybe it is urgent; maybe loitering there under the peace of his own company a few yards off, Marcus Rowntree had suddenly been struck by a premonition of some desperate emergency. Let's not pretend that stranger things haven't occurred.)
Flint's "Excuse me," may be curt enough to count as a slap in the face. Is, on the surface, significantly more cutting that the actual insult: "You remember the Ambassador. I would encourage you to put the request to his assistant."
And then he's turning from them, addressing Marcus with a brisk, "Captain," and already making in whatever direction seems most obvious. It all appears very official.
Matching an unhurried but officious sort of pace is, in itself, a nice change of something from the mincing-meandering-waltzing tempo of the evening entire, in all of its aspects. It's also cutting a path at an angle of the chamber that promises extraction entirely, if they're to head for the marble archway over there.
After a few moments, Marcus says, voice pitched quiet, "I might have asked you to dance instead," is unlikely, "but I've already established myself as not knowing how."
A sidelong look passes in Marcus' direction. The thinning press of Flint's mouth is strictly not entertained. He is not amused to be pulled away. It is not a relief. Is what everyone should take from their businesslike stalk in the direction of the archway. Nevermind the faint pinching about the eyes that might suggest otherwise. Almost no one is close enough to parse that particular tell.
"I'm not sure a request to dance would've been sufficient to beat back wolves."
A sound, first, acquiesce, but then Marcus adds, "I'd have been very insistent."
Make it a demand, maybe, or pulled him physically from that misshapen circle, two-handed. It is only a joke, delivered so dry as to not even sound like one, because he would not, not really, not even probably dance with him in the first place, but also: they are making good time to where the chambers empties out into roomy corridor that is not immediately empty but, in turn, veins out into more corridors, more chambers, and the music and chatter shrinks to less.
Flint's low grunt is skeptical; presumably, calling Marcus' fiction into doubt plays into the joke rather than digging it up by the root.
Here, passing into the antechamber, there is a fine heavy pedestal on which a huge bouquet is situated. Flint isn't the first person to ditch a glass there, but he does so without considerable pause. For there are two women lingering at the other side of the bouquet—one in a mask and the colors of the Orlesians navy—who had looked up at their appearance in the expansive doorway. The naval officer, her hand on the patterned edge of the pedestal, has begun to move about its circumference in their direction—
So Flint veers purposefully off toward a set of stairs with the clear intention of taking to one of those more clandestine corridors. Sorry, Marcus. Hope you didn't intend this rescue to involve simply circling the ballroom for a new angle on the canapes.
"I trust you haven't spent the entire evening dodging your obligations to mingle."
Marcus' footsteps resonate clear against marble floor, in time if not in rhythm with Flint's—no shuffled hesitation or confusion, no hooked glance backwards for the sharp turn of their journey.
Music dimming further, the veil of a room full of murmuring conversation lifting away so that their footsteps, the slither of silk and scabbard, their voices are all pronounced more stark in the quiet as they ascend the stairs. A sound for this remark, half-scoff, is not the sort he makes when standing in Flint's office and being asked if he's completed whatever task he'd been assigned.
"No," he assures, anyway. "Your lady companion back there came to be well informed of the falsehoods and truths of every rumour of the rebellion she'd heard, and me informed of the failings of education in Marcher Circles. Said in support of their falling."
"Really?" is more beat of surprise than it is a legitimate question. The faint turning of his head to glance back the way they'd come betrays a flicker of actual interest. Apparently whatever conversation he'd had with her had been a different kind, and this added dimension— The brief hum he makes has the sound of some mental earmark being made.
His hand has fallen to the hilt of his sword to be certain it doesn't come to interfere with climbing the stairs. A motion so practiced that it's become automatic.
"Orlesian naval officers," he says by way of explanation, dropping his tone by the required degree so as not to have this remark carry back out over the balustrade. He is occasionally not unconversational in those aforementioned instances of Marcus being stood in his office and put to some manner of interrogation; but something in the cant of his head makes this more informal. "Aren't typically the type. Any naval officer for that matter. But Orlesians. I would imagine most of them have spent the past five years flogging their pressed men to keep them orderly."
Marcus is, in turn, not altogether unconversational back in the Gallows, in more conventional settings. Arguably more conversational in any setting, since some relaxing of guard has occurred, or the relaxing of whatever quality it is that moves him to speak only what feels most necessary and true around those he is less sure about. Not that Flint escapes moments of lapsed conversation, short answers, direct questions.
Only that it is not strictly the rule. Certainly easier to do differently in humid, low-lit rented rooms or, here, wandering up the curved staircase dressed in elegant things, up onto the landing, increasingly further from the din. Marcus does not glance back but keeps his attention forwards, some amount of soaking in the finery of this new corner.
"Does it work to have a hundred men and women unhappy with the circumstances they've been forced to abide by out of poor luck, removed from the the world, and suddenly obliged to serve the interests of some woman on a chair by order of a handful of people in uniform willing to use any method of control they might be able to come by if necessary, in part because they believe they will be in significant personal danger if they don't?"
Here, on the upper landing with its plush carpet runner and heavy tapestries and purposefully half lit chandelier meant to discourage roaming by the guests, Flint sets a particularly expectant look on Marcus. I don't know, Noted Rebel Mage. You tell me.
"The trick would seem to be in determining the correct measurement."
It is around removed from the world that Marcus grasps this rhetoric and its direction, which doesn't invite protest so much as acceptance of the point. Generously. He wanders further from the balustrade, catching expectant look past his shoulder with a wry tip of his head, on his way to contemplating the half-lit chandelier.
Fwoomf, and the space dims a little more as a row of candles go out in elegant formation, no gust of wind to banish them, simply shrinking and dying and leaving behind a trace of smoke from each wick.
"You'd hope the flogger tires of it eventually, but then I imagine there's always someone else waiting, eager to take up the whip."
Arms fold, roaming resumed. Do Orlesian naval officers believe it the Maker's will, that they drive their charges so? That all are designated into their positions through the circumstances of their birth? Marked? Potentially so. Riftwatch is rife with such analogies and debates, or at least, nips at the edges of their shape.
The dimming light above them briefly draws the eye, but no remark. Given a moment's pause at the balustrade to study the lit square of the chamber below, the pedestal with its bouquet of flowers and discarded dishware, and the smattering of conversations, he makes to roam after Marcus. There are doorways on this landing, but presumably the more interesting ones are locked. The corridor branching from off the landing makes for a more appealing prospect.
"That would depend on the ship's Articles. They've some variation between them. Though I've never heard of a pirate's ship that employs the lash." Presumably no man or woman who has defaulted to the account from more legitimate maritime careers cares much to subject themselves to the pain and indignity of a flogging.
In the quarter light here, Marcus' jade coat across the back of his shoulders is rendered a murkier emerald.
"Generally speaking, the code is formed with the founding of the crew. Anyone who signs onto the ship is really signing it. Most punishment consists of being cut free, or fined. Executed, should the infraction either insult or endanger the rest of the men. From there—" a cant of the head substitutes for a shrug. "Majority vote, usually."
Newly thickened shadows gives the illusion of some privacy, although Marcus is idly listening out for the presence of other people, and has yet to pick up on anything. The business-like march that had carried them out of the festivities has slowed, but he sets a course for that corridor, hearing and sensing Flint picking up the trail as he speaks.
And he is listening, imagining, in the way that is his custom for lives beyond the kind he's led.
"It's all more organised than I'd have imagined," he confesses. Their footsteps have dulled too, on the strip of carpeting that veins through the corridor. "But it would have to be, on a ship."
If only ships didn't pitch and toss so, otherwise he might think it appealing.
"Myself and some others, after the Inquisition swept everyone else under its banner," he says, "we took to harassing roads in Ferelden. Formed rules around it. That if we could frighten them into compliance, before doing harm, we would. We wouldn't kill their horses, but damage the vehicle. All would be shared evenly."
A shrug. "It worked, mostly. But it was temporary. They don't speak of bandits the way they do pirates."
"Propriety having a grip on highway robbery," is not a scoff, but maybe is cousin to one. But after, he allows—"The arrangement only functions if the men and women enacting it see no value in settling for less."
It's a dangerous world out there; no one becomes a pirate or a roadside thief for that matter unless they would in some fashion chafe under the alternative. Presumably, some of Marcus' collaborators had grown tired of the uncertainty and found their way to the shadow of the Inquisition's banner after all.
(After all— he may have chosen a different direction, but Rowntree had still wandered himself.)
"That's a tricky balance too," he says as they pass into the corridor. In less obvious ways than the working of the cat across a bared back, maybe. But tenuous regardless.
Balance is the word, as is tricky. Here, in this corridor, you can maybe hear some music and life if you hold your breath and listen for a long moment, but otherwise, quietness suffuses gentler shadows, which is,
different, too, from rowdy corners of Lowtown or even the rain sweeping off trees on a patch of hillside in Free Marcher wilderness, because of course these are the easy comparisons Marcus might make when their conversation strikes a certain tone. The thumbnail edge prying at the corner of something personal, only half-papered over.
"It was easy sport," he supplies. "When we could get it."
The tone is that of explanation. Why manners might be called for.
That is personal, no half-papered over about it. But it doesn't sound to have had much effect on Flint's stride, his trailing after Marcus by two or maybe three steps. The blunted shape of his boots on the thick carpet runner have a sort of steady regularity made more clear by the cling of shadow that stretches between the corridor's mouth and the glow of some vague light originating from beyond the corner turn forward of them.
"To capitulate to being ruled by someone else just because they claimed that was the natural order of things."
Sounds simple when it's arranged that way, and most at home in this side passage leading away from the edge of a too fine gathering populated with too fine people toward Maker only knows what.
There is a quiet immediately after that. It's not calculated, on Marcus' part, but does sort of act like the space where elaboration would go. Its absence earns a glance backwards.
Flint knows something of his story. That he was in a Circle, two Circles, and likely neither were comfortable. That he among others tore down its walls. That he fought in a war and is still committed to it. All highly personal, with fine sketches of detail like a matching set of scars written more vividly into that general story. It is not everything, but it is something.
More than this, this abstraction. A philosophical misalignment, fully formed.
"Same," marks it too, that remote suggestion of dry humour, before Marcus moves more assertively for that corner. He's not sure where that goes, but it will be beyond the view of the landing back there.
He paints a very sure figure in the dark against that low glow—a squared shoulder, a limn of absent light touching at Marcus' brow and earlobe. If Flint recognizes that unfilled margin of space, if Marcus' reply illuminates it, it does very little to dissuade his step.
He doesn't hurry, but there is something purposeful in it. Ever so faintly like pursuit. When they round the corner, stepping off the plush carpet running into the plain waxed floor, and discover the light is nothing more than a fixed sconce and the hallway beyond it even darker than the one they just turned from—
He has shortened the distance by then. Not three paces or two, but less than an arm's length so he might reach out and catch at the tail of Marcus' fine jade coat like a boy might flirt with a girl's skirt hem.
Marcus had slowed, coming around the corner. Eye drawn first to the sconce, then flickered out wider towards the shadowy end of the hallway, blackness sinking into the impresses of doorways, arches, the folds of curtains.
Caught, then, a tug he feels at the waist, the seaming up to his shoulder. Looks, turns.
More alluring, here, the shadows beneath the fold of Flint's coat, the layers of black. Tempting to immediately slip his hands into them, but first his palm wanders to the hilt of ceremonial blade, turning it aside to instead draw himself in closer. The other snags light on a fold of fabric.
There are places they should be and people they should be in conversation with. If not Marcus, then certainly Flint should be. That he is here in some barely lit corridor far removed from his obligations instead—
Maybe it doesn't broker him any leeway for a good answer made very plain and general with its lack of ornament. But maybe it does. Certainly the hand that strays directly to Marcus' silk necktie, drawing its end from the lay of the man's waistcoat should.
The turn of the sword puts a faint line of pressure at his hip where its belt is turned towards it edge. Flint applies a similar easy tension at his own handhold, fingers having found the base of whatever knot Marcus has cinched the tie with.
"Do you want me to thank you for the rescue or don't you?" is something of a hypothetical question. In the dark and with his grip sure, Flint invades Marcus' space the half measure further necessary to find his mouth with his.
Something winds hot and tense low in Marcus' chest, a grip that had been settling since sensing the more intent pace of Flint following behind him, clutching tighter at the fine tension around the silk circling his neck. It is, yes, a familiar sense of want, anticipatory and warm. And something else.
Being reached for, the slide of fabric out his waistcoat, the familiarity of Flint's chin tipping up with the certainty Marcus would lean in (and he does), and the nettling quality of the thing he chooses to say. He breathes out, slow, as their mouths touch. He reaches past the edge of Flint's coat to lay palm against his side, the shallow brush of a kiss deepening at the soft behest of his tongue.
"Well," he says, in between, "I was beginning to think you ungrateful."
Feels a little like a scolding. Prickles up the back of his neck like the warm shape of a familiar hand. Tugs so briefly at his lower lip and somewhere between the ribs as well.
The soft press and pull of fingertips at Marcus' silk tie and encouraging slant of the shoulder. A faintly jostling half step. The slow catch of the mouth. These things are good for herding a man toward the darkly panelled wall with.
"Would you rather I tell you a story about the Imperium's navy?" The alternative being actively implied by the fingertips that have found their way to Marcus' belt buckle. Could not an interrogation happen some other time, they suggest.
Not quite a dance of the kind that Marcus had been excusing himself from, but something in its motions; the tip of a shoulder leading him into this, a step back and around until the wall is behind him. Marcus' hand easing around to the small of Flint's back, even, encouraging a closeness just as he feels his belt being touched.
Would you rather, and he says, "No," warm and certain and against the corner of Flint's mouth.
He trusts there will be opportunity at a later date.
His other hand finds its way to Flint's throat, fingers fanned along the back of his neck as he ushers, is ushered, into another kiss, firmer than the last.
There is a warm, pleasant flush that runs through him for it—that answer, but more the hand which has slid about him and the closeness it asks for. The fingers wrapped at the back of his neck to satisfy that prophetic prickle. It is, maybe, slightly egotistical of him to take pleasure in being indulged like this. This is a foolish thing they're doing. Getting away with even this relatively small measure feels a little like nicking something out from under the nose of its rightful owner.
Kissing him, he leaves off from Marcus' dark silken necktie. Instead, a hand falls to that not quite ceremonial sword so as to disconnect the scabbard strap's hook. To pull the arrangement free from his belt with a soft rasp of leather snaking out from under leather. A minor click of metal.
"We could make our way back to the party," is not a real suggestion there, warm against Marcus' mouth between the thick press of a kiss. The sword will need to be laid on the floor, but presumably there will be other reason to get that close to the floor in the immediate future. No need to hurry to mind the blade.
There is a small vocal affect on the next exhale that could serve as answer. Fucker, it suggests. He has not been touched so much: his mouth, yes, the kisses pressed between them, but his necktie, his belt, his coat. The desire for more delivered in the press of his hands, tugging Flint closer to properly be pressed between him and the wall, if he can manage it.
"No," is not the most correct kind of word to apply to this non-proposition, veers playful in its application anyway. No, they could not. No, don't.
It's also flattering, knowing the way they both have business out there, but Flint's of a more vital kind. Instead, Marcus has lured him here, and instead, Flint is giving him attention of a more highly valued nature than the idle stretch of time trapped on a hill, or fuck-around o'clock in Lowtown, off hours. A thing he didn't quite know he wanted until he has it, here, Flint taking off his sword.
He does press. Shifting obliging closer at the behest of those hands. The toe of a dark boot insinuating itself between the plant of Marcus' feet, his knee and thigh following to fit flush—taking casual advantage of that small measure of height difference between them to cinch in.
No? he might ask. Is Marcus certain? Because maybe if they consulted the Mortalitasi independent of her idiot collaborators, it's entirely possible that they might come to some more compelling arrangement.
But practically speaking, however much he might be compelled to think otherwise (fuck that hall, and fuck those people in it, and fuck this whole gathering), they've only so many minutes available to them here. And now that he's had that sound of exasperation for himself, he can be satisfied with the drag of breathing between them.
There's not much room between them for his hand to work, but unbuckling a belt isn't actually all that difficult to accomplish one handed when one is willing to tighten it slightly past the point of comfort to pop the buckle's tongue free.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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(And who knows. Maybe it is urgent; maybe loitering there under the peace of his own company a few yards off, Marcus Rowntree had suddenly been struck by a premonition of some desperate emergency. Let's not pretend that stranger things haven't occurred.)
Flint's "Excuse me," may be curt enough to count as a slap in the face. Is, on the surface, significantly more cutting that the actual insult: "You remember the Ambassador. I would encourage you to put the request to his assistant."
And then he's turning from them, addressing Marcus with a brisk, "Captain," and already making in whatever direction seems most obvious. It all appears very official.
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After a few moments, Marcus says, voice pitched quiet, "I might have asked you to dance instead," is unlikely, "but I've already established myself as not knowing how."
So. No emergency.
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"I'm not sure a request to dance would've been sufficient to beat back wolves."
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Make it a demand, maybe, or pulled him physically from that misshapen circle, two-handed. It is only a joke, delivered so dry as to not even sound like one, because he would not, not really, not even probably dance with him in the first place, but also: they are making good time to where the chambers empties out into roomy corridor that is not immediately empty but, in turn, veins out into more corridors, more chambers, and the music and chatter shrinks to less.
So it doesn't matter.
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Here, passing into the antechamber, there is a fine heavy pedestal on which a huge bouquet is situated. Flint isn't the first person to ditch a glass there, but he does so without considerable pause. For there are two women lingering at the other side of the bouquet—one in a mask and the colors of the Orlesians navy—who had looked up at their appearance in the expansive doorway. The naval officer, her hand on the patterned edge of the pedestal, has begun to move about its circumference in their direction—
So Flint veers purposefully off toward a set of stairs with the clear intention of taking to one of those more clandestine corridors. Sorry, Marcus. Hope you didn't intend this rescue to involve simply circling the ballroom for a new angle on the canapes.
"I trust you haven't spent the entire evening dodging your obligations to mingle."
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Music dimming further, the veil of a room full of murmuring conversation lifting away so that their footsteps, the slither of silk and scabbard, their voices are all pronounced more stark in the quiet as they ascend the stairs. A sound for this remark, half-scoff, is not the sort he makes when standing in Flint's office and being asked if he's completed whatever task he'd been assigned.
"No," he assures, anyway. "Your lady companion back there came to be well informed of the falsehoods and truths of every rumour of the rebellion she'd heard, and me informed of the failings of education in Marcher Circles. Said in support of their falling."
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His hand has fallen to the hilt of his sword to be certain it doesn't come to interfere with climbing the stairs. A motion so practiced that it's become automatic.
"Orlesian naval officers," he says by way of explanation, dropping his tone by the required degree so as not to have this remark carry back out over the balustrade. He is occasionally not unconversational in those aforementioned instances of Marcus being stood in his office and put to some manner of interrogation; but something in the cant of his head makes this more informal. "Aren't typically the type. Any naval officer for that matter. But Orlesians. I would imagine most of them have spent the past five years flogging their pressed men to keep them orderly."
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Only that it is not strictly the rule. Certainly easier to do differently in humid, low-lit rented rooms or, here, wandering up the curved staircase dressed in elegant things, up onto the landing, increasingly further from the din. Marcus does not glance back but keeps his attention forwards, some amount of soaking in the finery of this new corner.
"Does that work?" he asks.
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Here, on the upper landing with its plush carpet runner and heavy tapestries and purposefully half lit chandelier meant to discourage roaming by the guests, Flint sets a particularly expectant look on Marcus. I don't know, Noted Rebel Mage. You tell me.
"The trick would seem to be in determining the correct measurement."
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Fwoomf, and the space dims a little more as a row of candles go out in elegant formation, no gust of wind to banish them, simply shrinking and dying and leaving behind a trace of smoke from each wick.
"You'd hope the flogger tires of it eventually, but then I imagine there's always someone else waiting, eager to take up the whip."
Arms fold, roaming resumed. Do Orlesian naval officers believe it the Maker's will, that they drive their charges so? That all are designated into their positions through the circumstances of their birth? Marked? Potentially so. Riftwatch is rife with such analogies and debates, or at least, nips at the edges of their shape.
"How does a pirate ship comport itself?"
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"That would depend on the ship's Articles. They've some variation between them. Though I've never heard of a pirate's ship that employs the lash." Presumably no man or woman who has defaulted to the account from more legitimate maritime careers cares much to subject themselves to the pain and indignity of a flogging.
In the quarter light here, Marcus' jade coat across the back of his shoulders is rendered a murkier emerald.
"Generally speaking, the code is formed with the founding of the crew. Anyone who signs onto the ship is really signing it. Most punishment consists of being cut free, or fined. Executed, should the infraction either insult or endanger the rest of the men. From there—" a cant of the head substitutes for a shrug. "Majority vote, usually."
More or less.
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And he is listening, imagining, in the way that is his custom for lives beyond the kind he's led.
"It's all more organised than I'd have imagined," he confesses. Their footsteps have dulled too, on the strip of carpeting that veins through the corridor. "But it would have to be, on a ship."
If only ships didn't pitch and toss so, otherwise he might think it appealing.
"Myself and some others, after the Inquisition swept everyone else under its banner," he says, "we took to harassing roads in Ferelden. Formed rules around it. That if we could frighten them into compliance, before doing harm, we would. We wouldn't kill their horses, but damage the vehicle. All would be shared evenly."
A shrug. "It worked, mostly. But it was temporary. They don't speak of bandits the way they do pirates."
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It's a dangerous world out there; no one becomes a pirate or a roadside thief for that matter unless they would in some fashion chafe under the alternative. Presumably, some of Marcus' collaborators had grown tired of the uncertainty and found their way to the shadow of the Inquisition's banner after all.
(After all— he may have chosen a different direction, but Rowntree had still wandered himself.)
"That's a tricky balance too," he says as they pass into the corridor. In less obvious ways than the working of the cat across a bared back, maybe. But tenuous regardless.
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Balance is the word, as is tricky. Here, in this corridor, you can maybe hear some music and life if you hold your breath and listen for a long moment, but otherwise, quietness suffuses gentler shadows, which is,
different, too, from rowdy corners of Lowtown or even the rain sweeping off trees on a patch of hillside in Free Marcher wilderness, because of course these are the easy comparisons Marcus might make when their conversation strikes a certain tone. The thumbnail edge prying at the corner of something personal, only half-papered over.
"It was easy sport," he supplies. "When we could get it."
The tone is that of explanation. Why manners might be called for.
"And what was less?" The alternative. "For you."
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"To capitulate to being ruled by someone else just because they claimed that was the natural order of things."
Sounds simple when it's arranged that way, and most at home in this side passage leading away from the edge of a too fine gathering populated with too fine people toward Maker only knows what.
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Flint knows something of his story. That he was in a Circle, two Circles, and likely neither were comfortable. That he among others tore down its walls. That he fought in a war and is still committed to it. All highly personal, with fine sketches of detail like a matching set of scars written more vividly into that general story. It is not everything, but it is something.
More than this, this abstraction. A philosophical misalignment, fully formed.
"Same," marks it too, that remote suggestion of dry humour, before Marcus moves more assertively for that corner. He's not sure where that goes, but it will be beyond the view of the landing back there.
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He doesn't hurry, but there is something purposeful in it. Ever so faintly like pursuit. When they round the corner, stepping off the plush carpet running into the plain waxed floor, and discover the light is nothing more than a fixed sconce and the hallway beyond it even darker than the one they just turned from—
He has shortened the distance by then. Not three paces or two, but less than an arm's length so he might reach out and catch at the tail of Marcus' fine jade coat like a boy might flirt with a girl's skirt hem.
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Caught, then, a tug he feels at the waist, the seaming up to his shoulder. Looks, turns.
More alluring, here, the shadows beneath the fold of Flint's coat, the layers of black. Tempting to immediately slip his hands into them, but first his palm wanders to the hilt of ceremonial blade, turning it aside to instead draw himself in closer. The other snags light on a fold of fabric.
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Maybe it doesn't broker him any leeway for a good answer made very plain and general with its lack of ornament. But maybe it does. Certainly the hand that strays directly to Marcus' silk necktie, drawing its end from the lay of the man's waistcoat should.
The turn of the sword puts a faint line of pressure at his hip where its belt is turned towards it edge. Flint applies a similar easy tension at his own handhold, fingers having found the base of whatever knot Marcus has cinched the tie with.
"Do you want me to thank you for the rescue or don't you?" is something of a hypothetical question. In the dark and with his grip sure, Flint invades Marcus' space the half measure further necessary to find his mouth with his.
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Being reached for, the slide of fabric out his waistcoat, the familiarity of Flint's chin tipping up with the certainty Marcus would lean in (and he does), and the nettling quality of the thing he chooses to say. He breathes out, slow, as their mouths touch. He reaches past the edge of Flint's coat to lay palm against his side, the shallow brush of a kiss deepening at the soft behest of his tongue.
"Well," he says, in between, "I was beginning to think you ungrateful."
The gentle sting of teeth against bottom lip.
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The soft press and pull of fingertips at Marcus' silk tie and encouraging slant of the shoulder. A faintly jostling half step. The slow catch of the mouth. These things are good for herding a man toward the darkly panelled wall with.
"Would you rather I tell you a story about the Imperium's navy?" The alternative being actively implied by the fingertips that have found their way to Marcus' belt buckle. Could not an interrogation happen some other time, they suggest.
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Would you rather, and he says, "No," warm and certain and against the corner of Flint's mouth.
He trusts there will be opportunity at a later date.
His other hand finds its way to Flint's throat, fingers fanned along the back of his neck as he ushers, is ushered, into another kiss, firmer than the last.
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Kissing him, he leaves off from Marcus' dark silken necktie. Instead, a hand falls to that not quite ceremonial sword so as to disconnect the scabbard strap's hook. To pull the arrangement free from his belt with a soft rasp of leather snaking out from under leather. A minor click of metal.
"We could make our way back to the party," is not a real suggestion there, warm against Marcus' mouth between the thick press of a kiss. The sword will need to be laid on the floor, but presumably there will be other reason to get that close to the floor in the immediate future. No need to hurry to mind the blade.
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"No," is not the most correct kind of word to apply to this non-proposition, veers playful in its application anyway. No, they could not. No, don't.
It's also flattering, knowing the way they both have business out there, but Flint's of a more vital kind. Instead, Marcus has lured him here, and instead, Flint is giving him attention of a more highly valued nature than the idle stretch of time trapped on a hill, or fuck-around o'clock in Lowtown, off hours. A thing he didn't quite know he wanted until he has it, here, Flint taking off his sword.
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No? he might ask. Is Marcus certain? Because maybe if they consulted the Mortalitasi independent of her idiot collaborators, it's entirely possible that they might come to some more compelling arrangement.
But practically speaking, however much he might be compelled to think otherwise (fuck that hall, and fuck those people in it, and fuck this whole gathering), they've only so many minutes available to them here. And now that he's had that sound of exasperation for himself, he can be satisfied with the drag of breathing between them.
There's not much room between them for his hand to work, but unbuckling a belt isn't actually all that difficult to accomplish one handed when one is willing to tighten it slightly past the point of comfort to pop the buckle's tongue free.
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