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.
The next quiet hum of sound out of him is more satisfied, hand sliding from Flint's back to down below Flint's waistline, grabbing for the sake of it. Too many tailored layers to detect how stirred up he might be already, but something like it suggested in the way he presses back against thigh and hip, a subtle realignment that maps them together closer, for a moment. As if they were laying down in bed, and not tilted into the panelled wall.
Likely Marcus is not counting minutes. Like it was already an awful lot to get him to care for this venture at all, and an even bigger ask that he do so now. Only one of them need be responsible. None of them, preferably.
The brief tightening of his belt gets that hitch in breathing.
Leaning back against the wall properly, then, looking at him, some amount of reading back and forth that is also appreciative of the way reddish bristle turns gold under sconce light, the finer it gets up his cheek.
The space opens a little. The clank of the buckle coming open and the leather peeled out from between its teeth bites at it. Across it, aware of being examined, Flint studies Marcus right back—clear eyed and sharp, a fleck of the sconce light in one eyes serving to turn it from green to wolfish gold. Having followed him up here through the dimly lit private passages, having casually dogged his heels by a few strides removed, there is some curling pleasure that blooms warm under face to face examination. It feels more like the underside of those questions they'd been using to scrape up the surface layer of one another with; more intimately direct than the press of his thigh or the hand squeezing his ass.
The hard line carved into Marcus' face looks especially dark in this light. He tries to decide which suits him better—it, or the neatness of the silk tie and the dark waistcoat, the tailoring of the jade coat, and comes to no satisfying conclusion in the short clutch of seconds before Flint tell him to, "Open your pants."
That's a more difficult task to accomplish with a sword in one hand.
A breath in, steadying, like some kind of internally motivated leash tug, and both of Marcus' hands withdraw from Flint. Tucking down between them, first opening up his waistcoat at the lower button before reaching for his trousers. Buttons, blindly loosened, and his own hand dipping beneath the edge of formal dark material, satiny lining within.
The indication that he's reached beyond the utility of opening his pants is more obvious for proximity, mutual study, the parting of his mouth and tension at his eyes, and then also just the nudge of his knuckles where Flint has his thigh pressed. A more indulgent handling of himself than simply arranging for Flint's participation.
"Should I begin issuing orders as well?" he asks, accent thicker in this mode of quiet conspiracy and taunt.
If, instead of simply wandering the corridor, they had instead helped themselves to one of those doors leading from off of it (a little more walking and they might have found something open; at no point had the possibility even been attempted), there would have been no light to see by in whatever room they found themselves. It would have been too dark for any examinations; too dark to parse the flicker of interest that glints in Flint's face at the suggestion.
The back of his neck is hot where Marcus' hand had been. The tight fist clench sensation low in his belly could be an answer to the brush of those same knuckles against his thigh now, and the brief press of his hand's heel where it's found itself as Marcus' hip could be instruction to stay pinned to the paneled wall and not simple reflex.
But what he actually says is, "You can try." It has a wry slant to it, as if skeptical of the efficacy. Like this is another unserious thing in the same vein as suggesting they go back the way they'd come.
Interest, a subtle moth wing beat of it fine in Flint's expression (that he is studying so well) is perhaps the only thing that separates skepticism from discouragement and into something more like the touch of Flint's palm at his hip. Small points of pressure. The whisper of silk as he works himself in small ways, the squeeze of fingers to encouraging the thickening of blood.
Borderline unnecessary, even with a few glances of wine knocked back. Kissing, the timbre of the other man's voice and the blunt surface of his thigh, the promise of more, and just this, the small gestures towards an undressing in this corridor.
He leans in, kisses him again. Like perhaps unwilling to take that bet, but it is communication, showing him something in the heat pressed there. If they were to ever kiss in public, it would not be this kiss.
"Get on your knees for me," is an order, executed against the corner of Flint's mouth.
In answer, a small quirk there under his mouth—a warm exhale that is not a laugh but sounds like the shape of one anyway. Is that all?, it asks, something impetuous in the baring of teeth. The soft scrape. They've discussed the use of the lash to keep men in order; seeing as Marcus seems unlikely to reprimand a flagrantly tardy response with any seriousness, there is every reason to suggest immediate misbehavior.
(Except that they're short time; except that he wants to, mouth smarting from the heat of that kiss.)
With a soft scuff of breathing, an upward tip of the chin, and a brief study down the length of his nose—the pressure of his thigh relents. The hand at Marcus' hip becomes a balancing point, pinning him roughly there as he concedes to direction. Here, the gentle clatter of the sword being laid low; a creak of leather; the soft scuff of fine suiting fabric not meant to meet the floor.
With the sword set aside, his hand finds Marcus' ankle. Thumb laid at some seam of the boot. Following it up, so he might sway straight backed. Both hands settling equally above Marcus' knees, fingers sprawled lazily wide. He can study Marcus from this vantage just as well.
There is no real thing Marcus can do to force Flint to kneel between his feet, even in play; no real reprimand for insolence beyond, maybe, yet another bite to tender lip, the threat of it in the small fraction of distance between them. Just as there is nothing stopping Flint from, previously, twisting his way out of Marcus' hands, or Marcus ignoring goading words or direct command both.
Marcus absorbs this tardiness, the sound that is not quite a laugh, the study down the length of Flint's nose, bright eyed and focused and knowing that Flint's knees will bend because it is what Flint wants to do.
None of that prevents the rush of heat he feels when it occurs, the clatter and the articulation of a thumb pressing into the leather seam at his ankle.
It feels like a split second to himself, gaze skirting over the other side of the corridor as his hands move, gripping himself more specifically to bring his cock out of its layers, half-hard. Is it more revealing, this exposure in this corridor, than it would be to be kneeling down in front it? Not a thought he lands on towards an answer, looking back down as he leans in place, a hand palming gently over that warm textural gold of Flint's cheek he'd been admiring.
"Just your hands, first," he says, quiet, thumb finding some path down the slope of Flint's cheek to the corner of his mouth, fingers up under jaw as he addresses him. "Your tongue."
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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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Likely Marcus is not counting minutes. Like it was already an awful lot to get him to care for this venture at all, and an even bigger ask that he do so now. Only one of them need be responsible. None of them, preferably.
The brief tightening of his belt gets that hitch in breathing.
Leaning back against the wall properly, then, looking at him, some amount of reading back and forth that is also appreciative of the way reddish bristle turns gold under sconce light, the finer it gets up his cheek.
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The hard line carved into Marcus' face looks especially dark in this light. He tries to decide which suits him better—it, or the neatness of the silk tie and the dark waistcoat, the tailoring of the jade coat, and comes to no satisfying conclusion in the short clutch of seconds before Flint tell him to, "Open your pants."
That's a more difficult task to accomplish with a sword in one hand.
no subject
The indication that he's reached beyond the utility of opening his pants is more obvious for proximity, mutual study, the parting of his mouth and tension at his eyes, and then also just the nudge of his knuckles where Flint has his thigh pressed. A more indulgent handling of himself than simply arranging for Flint's participation.
"Should I begin issuing orders as well?" he asks, accent thicker in this mode of quiet conspiracy and taunt.
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The back of his neck is hot where Marcus' hand had been. The tight fist clench sensation low in his belly could be an answer to the brush of those same knuckles against his thigh now, and the brief press of his hand's heel where it's found itself as Marcus' hip could be instruction to stay pinned to the paneled wall and not simple reflex.
But what he actually says is, "You can try." It has a wry slant to it, as if skeptical of the efficacy. Like this is another unserious thing in the same vein as suggesting they go back the way they'd come.
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Borderline unnecessary, even with a few glances of wine knocked back. Kissing, the timbre of the other man's voice and the blunt surface of his thigh, the promise of more, and just this, the small gestures towards an undressing in this corridor.
He leans in, kisses him again. Like perhaps unwilling to take that bet, but it is communication, showing him something in the heat pressed there. If they were to ever kiss in public, it would not be this kiss.
"Get on your knees for me," is an order, executed against the corner of Flint's mouth.
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(Except that they're short time; except that he wants to, mouth smarting from the heat of that kiss.)
With a soft scuff of breathing, an upward tip of the chin, and a brief study down the length of his nose—the pressure of his thigh relents. The hand at Marcus' hip becomes a balancing point, pinning him roughly there as he concedes to direction. Here, the gentle clatter of the sword being laid low; a creak of leather; the soft scuff of fine suiting fabric not meant to meet the floor.
With the sword set aside, his hand finds Marcus' ankle. Thumb laid at some seam of the boot. Following it up, so he might sway straight backed. Both hands settling equally above Marcus' knees, fingers sprawled lazily wide. He can study Marcus from this vantage just as well.
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Marcus absorbs this tardiness, the sound that is not quite a laugh, the study down the length of Flint's nose, bright eyed and focused and knowing that Flint's knees will bend because it is what Flint wants to do.
None of that prevents the rush of heat he feels when it occurs, the clatter and the articulation of a thumb pressing into the leather seam at his ankle.
It feels like a split second to himself, gaze skirting over the other side of the corridor as his hands move, gripping himself more specifically to bring his cock out of its layers, half-hard. Is it more revealing, this exposure in this corridor, than it would be to be kneeling down in front it? Not a thought he lands on towards an answer, looking back down as he leans in place, a hand palming gently over that warm textural gold of Flint's cheek he'd been admiring.
"Just your hands, first," he says, quiet, thumb finding some path down the slope of Flint's cheek to the corner of his mouth, fingers up under jaw as he addresses him. "Your tongue."
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