It's more or less what he'd been intending—shifting down to his knees, using his mouth, seeing Marcus off in a half dark place like this one. So the hot flare in his belly for the parted layers of fabric, the shape of Marcus' knuckles and his half hard cock laid in his fingers, and for the hand that finds its way to his face should be a controlled burn. In an effort to see the response appropriately measured, he doesn't open his mouth under the wandering press of Marcus' thumb.
(Though that too would be possible; taking the warm shape of that digit gently between his teeth, tongue shifting in his mouth and soft skin flexing in sympathy under the fingers under his jaw.)
Instead, he makes to consider this proposal and the prickling heat at the back of his neck. Fingers wide. Thumbs tucked against the inner seam of Marcus' fastidiously cut trousers. Had it occured to him earlier that evening, somewhere during one of many conversations similar to the one he'd lately been rescued from and not the first one in which his eye had wandered and landed on the man standing over him now, that he finds something thrilling in watching him?
"Okay," he says, that curl of humor yet thick on the tongue. His hands drift, stroke down Marcus' thighs once. Then, as if having fully assessed his place, he wraps one hand round Marcus' knee. Briskly wets calloused fingertips on his tongue, and then does as he's been told.
Marcus' hand retreats, the one he was holding himself with, finding a place to be on Flint's other cheek, and then down to his neck, shoulder, as if feeling out the potential places for a grip. But also, it is handsome, the muscled line from the bend of his ear, down his throat, into the broad collar of shirt and coat, the shoulder shaping those layers. One of those places on his body that Marcus will, inevitably, find himself wishing to map with his palm, or bend to push his face into its curve for the sake of nearness he can justify with sharp bites.
And that's just any time, not even when he has Flint on his knees and behaving like he's humouring him. But this sort of situation does mean he can act on it, fingertips slipping past collar, thumb stroking.
The hand at his knee reminds him of other items he'd felt that same grip, and that's good too.
A heavier breath out into the hallway as Flint does as he's told, sharp angle of chin and jaw lifting in anticipation of wet calloused fingertips, wet tongue, as requested. The curl of his hand gripping his shirt collar.
It's tempting to fix his attention there on the angle of Marcus's chin. The softly lot underside of his jaw and the line of his throat obscured by the dark neck tie. Instead, Flint affords it only the briefest glance as he takes him in hand. By the time he leans in and presses the wet heat of his tongue to delicate skin, his focus has settled low.
The hand in his shirt collar pulls the fabric across back of his neck. He can feel it in shoulder seams.
Presented with Marcus' half hard cock, he forgets to be brisk and eager. Instead, his hand is slow and the attention of his tongue patient. Marcus is warm in the shape of his hand, and it's easy to tease at the crown of him. To pull in a moderate, lazy rhythm, and handle him in such a way that running his tongue down to the base of him could almost merely seem like good sportsmanship and not something thick with want.
That first hot stripe of Flint's tongue running down along his length is enough to evoke a soft sound, the kind that gets absorbed and lost easy in the rustles of hay-stuffed mattress, porous wooden walls. Here, it rings a little more stark, all this space for it to go. Heavy breathing, too. Someone could find them out just from his panting, as this progresses.
Familiar to past experiences, standing-kneeling-leaning configurations in illicit corners without any beds, and the necessity of silence in stolen moments. But also: he is surrounded by marble and velvet hangings, in clothes he paid for with money he earned, with a man who is a stranger to him in ways those others could never be, that godawful incestuous cloister of Circle romance, and so it's not familiar at all, actually,
and doesn't resent the game of being quiet. Anymore.
The hand that had settled at Flint's face remains, offering no direction but enjoying the fine flex and motion, following along when the other man dips in intimately. Flint bowing in has the hand at his shoulder moving to ease down the back of his neck, the subtle dips of bone and skin and shaven hair. Only his hands, moving, though his chin has tipped back down so he can watch.
Eventually he is going to want more. The fullness of Flint's mouth, the ability to thrust into something. He will want to come while Flint's swallows around him, which no one can do ironically even a little. But just as Flint is not brisk and eager, but slow and patient, Marcus sinks into those corresponding sensations, prepared to feel desperate for the change. Maybe Flint will be too.
But for a time, he makes do with the instructive drag of Marcus' breathing over him and the slide and press of fingertips. Just hands and tongue can easily be stretched to suggest the shape of what's missing. Sliding back to Marcus' head can involve the soft scuff of fine auburn hairs at the corner of his mouth dragging incidentally against the opposite side of his hand. It can be the warm pant of a nearby open mouthed breath across delicate skin while his hand faithfully works him over. When the hand from Marcus' knee to join, it can be the borderline malicious compliance of one hand moving low to fondle at his balls through the obscurity of fabric, and the other absently tapping some thoughtless rhythm with Marcus' cockhead against the waiting flat of his tongue before teasing him more directly—flicking tongue. Some slow twisting stroke.
There is a kind of heady pleasure in being in his knees and attending to him in this fashion that is both workmanlike and goading. Attentive only to the heavy shape of Marcus' cock and the gleam of his own spit there; to the not quite weight of his hand at his neck and pulled taut fabric. It would be easy to ask him for more. And it would be easy to linger here for the remaining duration of the evening coaxing him slowly along like this. This in-between point, where eventually someone will grow impatient or the necessity of avoiding discovery will see this rythmn altered—
That prickles hot under the lay of his collar and the brush of fingertips. Clutches low at him. Eventually, the desire to measure that balance is what motivates him to lift him attention to watch Marcus directly rather than studying his own work.
Weight thoroughly distributed between the wall behind him and boot heels set against waxed floor. For as many encounters they've had that have been all claws and teeth and demand on his side, or at least begin that way, control is not in itself difficult to lock down, or be locked down by.
But the strain of it still there. The moments where Marcus holds his breath, or lets it out in a controlled sigh, or some directionless tilt of his hips that slides his cock through Flint's hand or against his tongue, saliva-slick across whiskers. Boot leather creaks in the subtle readjustment of the spread of his thighs when Flint feels him through his pants. The subtle but full bodied flex chasing the twist of Flint's hand, jaw clenching.
Flint looks up to find Marcus watching him, his own focus ticked down more towards the interaction of hands, mouth, cock, but snag on eye contact when it's offered.
Easier to take measure of Flint when he is all over him. Hand to cock or patience tested under teeth or the up-close rasp of laboured breathing. The remove, here, feels more like navigating through darkness. It isn't bad. His hand conforms to the slope of Flint's jaw, stroking his thumb up under his chin. For his part, there is that slightly sleepy unfocus in study in return, out of place in meticulous grooming, pressed collar.
"Do you want more?" His other hand loosens from collar, pushing now into that tangle, the base of himself caught between thumb and fingers, joining Flint's grasp. "Say it."
is a too intimate impulse, pulse jumping toward the press of Marcus' thumb. Besides here, the chance of discovery lends a certain further flush excitement to the willing vulnerability of the arrangement. But he does think it, briefly—wanting Marcus there in a bed that isn't paid off by the hour. Wanting something that isn't casual fucking derived of convenience. They could play this game for a long time given the luxury to.
Flint wets his lips, jaw shifting faintly in Marcus' hand. His attention has that dark, sharply focused quality to it. Something buzzing warm under the skin as he considers Marcus (as his thumb works slow circles) (as he deliberates exactly how he's going to beg for it).
"Marcus," is theater and instinct both, his own arousal stirring heavily. "Let me use my mouth," is not an order; it's asking for permission.
Not unfamiliar, the subtle twinges to his expression that communicate a degree of being pleased with himself, or maybe just pleased. Satisfied. The brief tick up of an eyebrow, a ghost of a smile. None of it sharp enough to banish the way his arousal is pressed up close to his manners, presses closer at his name in Flint's mouth and the words that come after, eyes dark in the low light and tension worked at the corners of his jaw.
Later, he might reflect on some of this absurdity. There is nothing new about two people stealing off into a dark corner to fool around at the edges of something like this. He didn't have to get Flint to beg to suck him off.
But then Flint does, and his grip on himself firms, a brisk stroke to calm alighted nerves. Marcus' palm cups his jaw, a brief play at affection and praise on its way to stroking his thumb over Flint's mouth, coaxing it to part like a kiss before his palm turns, out of the way.
"Come here," he says, almost down to a whisper, rasped out of him.
That brief warmth in the hand at his face shouldn't feel so much like a reward. None of this is serious. Marcus is playing at endearment as much as he is debasement. If he were really desperate, he might have said please.
Still. He nearly chases that tender curve of palm and thumb, the rasp of it so reassuring that for a bare instant he forgets that he doesn't need to be reassured by fucking Rowntree of all people. Nevermind that with the right intonation, Come here could sound like begging too. It almost does.
One hand falls away. The other remains touching Marcus low there out of the way of the man's own hand. But the rest of this—taking Marcus' cock back onto his tongue first and allowing that to slide naturally into wrapping his lips about him without the support of a close pressed hand—denotes some wordless reliance. A lack of constraint.
The breath out of him is quiet, hot and open-mouthed, as Flint takes him into his mouth. Setting spine to wood, making himself not move, not yet, wanting too much to see what the other man does for him without Marcus laying in with more control.
Worked up plenty already, stiff and aching in Flint's jaws. His hand flattens out, ceding himself to wet hot mouth, which also has his fingers spread across Flint's knuckles. He is too in the moment to trip over that detail, to consider how they've never let their fingers tangle together, or palms meet, when he has given such study to Flint's hands, its rings and calluses.
Fingertips settling in the grooves of knuckles, anyway, thoughtless.
His other hand curls back to that place at Flint's scruff, a more dedicated grip, firm. Nothing the man could not shake off, but present while he does not.
Those hands make for two reliable anchors, bracketing but by no means discouragement. Something warm and reflexive rising up in him from their shape, too tangled with the satisfaction of taking Marcus into his mouth to parse what part exactly motivates it but there all the same. All these warm ancillary points of contact as motivating as that open mouthed exhale.
In return, there is some sense of discarding that languorous, unhurried previously pace set by tongue and hand. No less exploratory, he takes a few moments to map him there in his mouth with his tongue; to test at the saliva slick slide with a few shallow bobs; fingers twitching under Marcus' hand as he draws back, hollows about the crown, drawing completely off with a wet sound that's deafening in the corridor, and then starts over again.
There's something straightforward and methodical in it, for all that it's not unmessy. With his hands settled, the latter having found its way wordlessly to the top of Marcus's boot where a thumb has insinuating itself intently between leather and calf, he is untroubled by the prospect of using chin and cheek to guide Marcus' back to his mouth when necessary. The tenor of the thing is deliberate. He's going to have Marcus fuck his mouth, and is making himself ready for it.
For a time, Marcus stays where he is in his subtle tilt back into the wall, hands settled. Watching the pull at Flint's mouth from each motion, the flex inwards of cheek on the withdraw. It's almost an easy thing to stay silent, but the heavy, slow tenor of his breathing fills the corridor, or it feels like it does, underscored by those little intimate sounds of Flint's mouth when his cock slips free of it and is gathered back in.
The anchoring hand at his neck stays put, thumb absently stroking along hairline. If they had more time—
Well, they don't.
A shift, finally. Maybe felt at the hand at Marcus' calf, the flex of muscle there tightening boot leather, or the nudge of his cock half-buried in mouth. Axis of his balance settling more solidly centre on two feet, back only touching the wall rather than leaning heavily back against it.
It's the touch to Flint's hand he sacrifices, bringing his palm back to the man's jaw. Both hands solidifying their grasp, stilling him, and there is almost no transition or moment of pause between that and the way Marcus tilts his hips, sliding cock along tongue, filling Flint's mouth. Withdrawing, barely letting the blunt end of himself past Flint's lips before pushing back in again.
The potential for climax feels both like internal disassembly as well as a clutch of tension. Marcus' hands are very sure, his posture upright, his cock firm in its intrusion. His breath trembles inside of him.
Despite himself (or maybe not even that; maybe it's fine to be honest about the thrill that comes from Marcus' shifting center of gravity), he shifts faintly in answer to that second hand. There is an impulse to jostle closer or to tip his face slightly up—a fleeting touch of anticipation that hardly has time to spark, manifesting in the briefest upward flick of attention, before Marcus makes good on the intention of confidently bracketing hands.
In those cheaply bought Lowtown rooms, Flint has made no habit of being especially quiet. What purpose is there in practicing discretion there? If he were to buy one of those rooms for some utility other than fucking, it might be prudent to intermittently bang the bed against the wall to cover any more important conversation. But he'd been nearly quiet in that backcountry tent where the close quarters and the unfamiliarity company and the blind wilderness about them with the lingering possibility of Venatori in it had restrained any vocalizations to a low, panting register. He's that version of quiet here too. Breathing in pinched intervals—volume dictated by circumstance.
What clarifies itself there between the set of Marcus' hands and under the press of his cock is a certain relaxing of tension. Some heretofore tautly posed quality made invisible by its regularity now starkly illuminated by its easing. The sharp gleam of Flint's eye muddling from the heat. His hand slipping from the base of Marcus to instead touch his thigh and feel the muscle working. The angle of his chin suggestively pliant.
There is a kind of imagined familiarity to be found in a half lit corridor, lamp light pearling on the waxed floors and burnishing the rich dark paneling of the wall. To be having found himself frustrated at some (naval) (magisterial) function and purposefully escaped it in favor of more pleasant company. That he is fifteen years removed from the thing he only thinks he remembers (if asked, he would balk at any parallel being drawn) makes little difference to diminish the heady, sluggish sensation aroused by it.
In a hastily pitched tent or a rented room, he can rationalize away virtually any craving to relax into the framework of intimacy he might be struck by. He has practice. He's been fucking strangers in places like those for a long time.
He might have anticipated grabbing hands. Perhaps not even to pin him or lever back control, but some firm quiet demand at his knee or hip. The lay of Flint's hand on his thigh feels gentle and specific and attentive, instead, as does that little hooked grip at the edge of his boot, all matching the easy pliancy of jaw, mouth, the slope of shoulder and the lack of sharp edge Marcus is used to seeing strung through expression.
As if maybe, despite all demands of place and time, Flint may be content to kneel before him and let Marcus use his mouth as long as he likes, at whichever pace he prefers.
True or not, the impression is arresting. Steady hands maintain as he fucks across his tongue and lips in deeper, shorter, quicker thrusts, the wet sound of it quiet beneath his breathing, which matches his pace. Small vocalisations escaping, just every now and then, little marks of heightened pleasure, of overwinding tension, and clamped down again, muffled. The hand at Flint's neck beginning to grip in that subtle way that becomes less an anchor for Flint and more for himself.
"Flint," is half-whispered, the instinctively desperate intonation of it out of place (or not) in open corridor, and feels louder than it is for its naked desire.
Not long after that. Marcus braces against it, the pleasure that twists low and deep through him as he spills into Flint's mouth, jaw clamped closed and breath held as hands grasp harder. The fire in its sconce flickering, despite the absence of a draft, as if measure of control means response has to be expressed elsewhere, shivered through the invisible veil that binds all things.
The impression must be partly true. True enough to hold for the duration that Marcus does use his mouth, at least. Otherwise that hand at Marcus' thigh would have turned grasping, or Flint might have made to break the anchoring shape of the hands about him and check the pace of the thing. Dictate the arrangement more to his liking instead of just relenting to the press of Marcus' cock, content to keep up with his tongue and the involuntary catch in him that winces pleasantly under the sharper rhythm Marcus eventually gives into.
The crooked sound of his name burns hot under the skin, and the tight hand on the back of his neck an appealing weight. It's good—this sense of utility prickling warm through the length of him to pool low in his belly, a clenched sensation in his own cock. The precursor to the glaring satisfaction the comes with Marcus, and swallowing roughly around him.
He's slow to take advantage of the softening grip on him. Does, then, make some low rough sound, muffled by circumstance, as he tilts back and lets Marcus slip free from his mouth. Sagging faintly to sit back on his heels in deference to the rough interaction of his knees against the floor, he doesn't quite make to shake the hand at his neck. Instead, breathing heavy, tips his cheek and scuffs the bristle of beard and the spit slick edge of his mouth at the inside of Marcus' wrist. Breathing heavy, attention chasing sluggishly up to reacquaint himself with his face.
The feeling of himself slipping loose from Flint's mouth has a grounding quality to it, having let his eyes sink shut as he catches his breath.
Marcus looks back down, now, hand turning when he feels that nudge to his wrist. The sweep of his thumb has utility in that it reorders the lay of red bristle low on Flint's cheek, but it would require some amount of bad faith to interpret it without any affection at all. There is, in fact, the somewhat absurd urge (for its lack of practicality, timing, circumstance, perhaps a more general appropriateness for what is a simple transaction in the dark) to fold right down and tangle up with Flint.
For his part, the heavy-hooded look to his expression is by now familiar, the absent parting of his mouth. A flush through his face making scar tissue stand out, a new sheen where light touches his cheek and brow.
His other hand comes around to gather his cock, pushing it back into his pants, heedless of mess and dampness. Drops his touch from cheek to jacket lapel, hand clutching fabric in a tug. Up, come here, where he can make to kiss him.
Something in the brush of Marcus' thumb sparks something sharper back into his eye. Clears some of the fog; paints his own satisfaction in sharper detail. It's not a reflexive trap shutting of returning guardedness. Just that, all else aside, there is a stubborn, egotistical kind of pleasure to be had from observing that heaviness in the other man's expression. How soft his mouth has gone. The rise and fall of his chest and the color high in his face. Even, slightly, the unspoken valuation communicated by the shape of his hand and that stroke of that thumb before those fall away.
The tug at his coat strips whatever inebriating sensation remains from the thrill of cocksucking. With a heavy exhale that is more labored than otherwise, he gets a stiff knee up. Slips his thumb from the lip of Marcus's boot, finds some handhold in the molding of the paneled wall behind it and fumbles his way up to his feet.
The ceremonial sword is left behind. The hand required to catch it on the way up is either engaged in scraping himself off the floor or intent on passing between Marcus' jacket and waistcoat on the way up, slithering into that body warm space and conforming to his side. Partly for Flint to steady himself. Partly not.
He follows Marcus's hand otherwise, content to be drawn up and in.
Marcus' other arm catches around Flint's torso on the way up, reflexively offering some stability in the ascent while his other hand, less helpfully, keeps a grip on his coat. Kisses him, too, before he is completely steady, a hungry and even appreciative rake of teeth and tongue. Neither shy nor hesitant about where Flint's mouth has been, and greedily soaking up bodily contact through their respective layers.
But lazy, too, no urgent rush into it despite the insistence. Pulling him in and close so they can be heavy against one another. The sconce light stable.
Kiss breaks just as Marcus unwinds his arm just as he can tuck his hand between them. A sliver of eye contact as he seeks out the shape of Flint's cock through his pants, equal parts measuring for himself how much Flint enjoyed those last few minutes, untouched below the shoulders, as well as testing. Thumb pressing, encouraging, mouth an inch away from mouth.
The cinch close of that arm and the unhurried, sharp kiss—his free hand has already risen to settle at Marcus' shoulder before this adjustment occurs. His grip flexes absently there as that hand slides between them, the low drag of breathing thickening in that narrow measure.
He is more than half hard, and reactive to the touch. His thumb presses in lieu of some encouraging angling of the hip. And then, despite the prompting of all these parts, the hand at Marcus' ribs slips. Wandering to his elbow. Catches after his forearm and finds some arresting grip on Marcus' wrist.
The kiss he presses to that too-close mouth is less open, slower still. It comes with the more assertive press of his weight, broadly effective at discouraging the hand between them. Closer was better, suggests the hand that passes from Marcus' shoulder to his lay at his neck, thumb at the warm strip of bare skin above the edge of that dark silk tie. He'll have that instead.
It is somewhere between instinct and play that there is a subtle twist of resistance up from wrist to elbow, hand discouraged aside in the press of bodies. Fingers flex, relax, relenting in the circle of Flint's grip upon being kissed again. Slower, shallower.
The markers of winding down. He makes a small rough sound of protest for this concept, registering his complaint against Flint's mouth, felt under the thumb resting up under his jaw which tilts to accommodate both it and the kiss being shared. The hand he has hooked at Flint's coat coming to rest an arm around him in a comfortable hold around the waist.
Closer, then. It doesn't take too long before the intimate press of them seeks out, again, the feeling of Flint's more than half hard cock, as if it's personally aggravating to know of its existence and to do nothing for it. The edge of a bite on gentle, shallow kiss.
Prompts a low scolding hum and the easy press of his thumb at Marcus' jaw; maybe there's a bite back of sarcasm to the way the stroke of his thumb there is near to the same motion that Marcus had practiced only a few moments ago. Or maybe he just wants to do it, a secretly gentle little placating touch. Or maybe it's both. Regardless his grip on Marcus' wrist softens, but doesn't peel away.
Instead, that gentle, shallow kiss breaks slowly and he draws the fraction back necessary to catch at some sliver of eye contact. A rough burr in the back of his throat from the press of Marcus' cock—
"Leave off." Evidently he's finished with being ordered about, but not yet quite done with giving them himself. "Make it up to me after."
This time, a little sharpness and clarity has returned to Marcus' expression, meeting that close blur of eye contact as if to doubt that Flint will deny him,
followed by Flint denying him, but the latter half of it gets a response, some semi-laugh on the exhale that has no parry to it. Acceptance. He leans back against the wall, wrist turning in that softened grasp around it before judging it a thing he can slip free from. And does, hand raised to push back between them, but this time at his chest, palm turned in.
Nudging the tail of his necktie back into his waistcoat, while the arm he has bracketed around Flint's waist withdraws a little, hand laying somewhere at his side. Easier escape.
"Then you'd best mind your dance card," he says, a thick-accented murmur in the space between them that is still intimate.
In reply—a low snort, some mark of humor splashing across his face, and the flexing further backward out of that tangled up space. Not so far as to fully disengage from the press of bodies, but turning subtly in that direction as Flint's hands move to Marcus' shoulders. He gives the rumpled, slightly mislaid lapels of the jade colored coat a tug to set them more squarely back into place.
"I'll take it under advisement."
A brief glance between them to the lowest undone buttons of Marcus' waistcoat, but these apparently are beyond the bounds of Flint's current generosity. Instead of addressing them, he leans back in. Finds Marcus' mouth, and applies a last kiss there—a warm breath, an easy scrape of teeth—before sliding free of the hand at his side and drawing his own away.
Marcus will have to do his own buttons. Flint has a sword to fetch up off the ground and lash back to his hip.
There is no expectation for buttons being done to feel a loss for their neglect, and might have done a small roughhouse shove if Flint'd attempted it, because he's kissed instead. Receptive, as if anticipating it.
Marcus hadn't read so much into the gentle thumbing at his jaw, some awareness of the way they both might play at affection and tenderness alongside everything else, whether because it feels nice to do or because it's a joke. Certainly humour in the reordering of his coat. The kiss, though, the quick and thoughtless scrape of it across his mouth, neither as tender as they've ever been nor certainly as firm, but,
well, something in it feels like a finger catching a bruise and pressing, somewhere deeper set in his chest. Leaving behind a warm, twinging impression. Flint moves away and Marcus steps out from the space he's been occupying to give the other man better room to collect his sword, hands going down to do up buttons, pants and waistcoat both.
"I'm going to smoke," is his stated intention, some reflexive freeing them of the obligation to linger together down the hallway. And, because he is also declaring his intention to further shirk his duties, he adds, "And then I'll be good."
"All right," he says, yoinking the sword from the floor with a soft rattle of metal in its sheath. It's strap is turned about, the edge of his cost flicked back, and the buckle fed back in under the width of his belt.
"See that you're not long, or someone will start to wonder if there's some actual matter to concern themselves with. Half that room is made up of Cumberland merchants and they're already prone to spooking at shadows."
(Probably, it doesn't help that Riftwatch sent their notorious pirate captain to deal with them. The half of the room that hasn't been chasing his heels all evening has been glaring at him from across the hall. But that's Diplomacy's problem, not his.)
The buckle of the sword clips into place with a snap of soft metal. The coat tail is set to rights. Nevermind that he may need a few minutes to himself before he's really fit to go wandering back down to the hall. If he walks briskly enough back along the corridor and starts working through the semantics of cornering that Orlesians naval officer for a second more interesting conversation, the issues of his trouser fit and the warm, purposefully unsatisfied thing living behind his ribs will resolve themselves.
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(Though that too would be possible; taking the warm shape of that digit gently between his teeth, tongue shifting in his mouth and soft skin flexing in sympathy under the fingers under his jaw.)
Instead, he makes to consider this proposal and the prickling heat at the back of his neck. Fingers wide. Thumbs tucked against the inner seam of Marcus' fastidiously cut trousers. Had it occured to him earlier that evening, somewhere during one of many conversations similar to the one he'd lately been rescued from and not the first one in which his eye had wandered and landed on the man standing over him now, that he finds something thrilling in watching him?
"Okay," he says, that curl of humor yet thick on the tongue. His hands drift, stroke down Marcus' thighs once. Then, as if having fully assessed his place, he wraps one hand round Marcus' knee. Briskly wets calloused fingertips on his tongue, and then does as he's been told.
no subject
And that's just any time, not even when he has Flint on his knees and behaving like he's humouring him. But this sort of situation does mean he can act on it, fingertips slipping past collar, thumb stroking.
The hand at his knee reminds him of other items he'd felt that same grip, and that's good too.
A heavier breath out into the hallway as Flint does as he's told, sharp angle of chin and jaw lifting in anticipation of wet calloused fingertips, wet tongue, as requested. The curl of his hand gripping his shirt collar.
no subject
The hand in his shirt collar pulls the fabric across back of his neck. He can feel it in shoulder seams.
Presented with Marcus' half hard cock, he forgets to be brisk and eager. Instead, his hand is slow and the attention of his tongue patient. Marcus is warm in the shape of his hand, and it's easy to tease at the crown of him. To pull in a moderate, lazy rhythm, and handle him in such a way that running his tongue down to the base of him could almost merely seem like good sportsmanship and not something thick with want.
no subject
Familiar to past experiences, standing-kneeling-leaning configurations in illicit corners without any beds, and the necessity of silence in stolen moments. But also: he is surrounded by marble and velvet hangings, in clothes he paid for with money he earned, with a man who is a stranger to him in ways those others could never be, that godawful incestuous cloister of Circle romance, and so it's not familiar at all, actually,
and doesn't resent the game of being quiet. Anymore.
The hand that had settled at Flint's face remains, offering no direction but enjoying the fine flex and motion, following along when the other man dips in intimately. Flint bowing in has the hand at his shoulder moving to ease down the back of his neck, the subtle dips of bone and skin and shaven hair. Only his hands, moving, though his chin has tipped back down so he can watch.
Eventually he is going to want more. The fullness of Flint's mouth, the ability to thrust into something. He will want to come while Flint's swallows around him, which no one can do ironically even a little. But just as Flint is not brisk and eager, but slow and patient, Marcus sinks into those corresponding sensations, prepared to feel desperate for the change. Maybe Flint will be too.
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There is a kind of heady pleasure in being in his knees and attending to him in this fashion that is both workmanlike and goading. Attentive only to the heavy shape of Marcus' cock and the gleam of his own spit there; to the not quite weight of his hand at his neck and pulled taut fabric. It would be easy to ask him for more. And it would be easy to linger here for the remaining duration of the evening coaxing him slowly along like this. This in-between point, where eventually someone will grow impatient or the necessity of avoiding discovery will see this rythmn altered—
That prickles hot under the lay of his collar and the brush of fingertips. Clutches low at him. Eventually, the desire to measure that balance is what motivates him to lift him attention to watch Marcus directly rather than studying his own work.
no subject
But the strain of it still there. The moments where Marcus holds his breath, or lets it out in a controlled sigh, or some directionless tilt of his hips that slides his cock through Flint's hand or against his tongue, saliva-slick across whiskers. Boot leather creaks in the subtle readjustment of the spread of his thighs when Flint feels him through his pants. The subtle but full bodied flex chasing the twist of Flint's hand, jaw clenching.
Flint looks up to find Marcus watching him, his own focus ticked down more towards the interaction of hands, mouth, cock, but snag on eye contact when it's offered.
Easier to take measure of Flint when he is all over him. Hand to cock or patience tested under teeth or the up-close rasp of laboured breathing. The remove, here, feels more like navigating through darkness. It isn't bad. His hand conforms to the slope of Flint's jaw, stroking his thumb up under his chin. For his part, there is that slightly sleepy unfocus in study in return, out of place in meticulous grooming, pressed collar.
"Do you want more?" His other hand loosens from collar, pushing now into that tangle, the base of himself caught between thumb and fingers, joining Flint's grasp. "Say it."
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is a too intimate impulse, pulse jumping toward the press of Marcus' thumb. Besides here, the chance of discovery lends a certain further flush excitement to the willing vulnerability of the arrangement. But he does think it, briefly—wanting Marcus there in a bed that isn't paid off by the hour. Wanting something that isn't casual fucking derived of convenience. They could play this game for a long time given the luxury to.
Flint wets his lips, jaw shifting faintly in Marcus' hand. His attention has that dark, sharply focused quality to it. Something buzzing warm under the skin as he considers Marcus (as his thumb works slow circles) (as he deliberates exactly how he's going to beg for it).
"Marcus," is theater and instinct both, his own arousal stirring heavily. "Let me use my mouth," is not an order; it's asking for permission.
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Later, he might reflect on some of this absurdity. There is nothing new about two people stealing off into a dark corner to fool around at the edges of something like this. He didn't have to get Flint to beg to suck him off.
But then Flint does, and his grip on himself firms, a brisk stroke to calm alighted nerves. Marcus' palm cups his jaw, a brief play at affection and praise on its way to stroking his thumb over Flint's mouth, coaxing it to part like a kiss before his palm turns, out of the way.
"Come here," he says, almost down to a whisper, rasped out of him.
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Still. He nearly chases that tender curve of palm and thumb, the rasp of it so reassuring that for a bare instant he forgets that he doesn't need to be reassured by fucking Rowntree of all people. Nevermind that with the right intonation, Come here could sound like begging too. It almost does.
One hand falls away. The other remains touching Marcus low there out of the way of the man's own hand. But the rest of this—taking Marcus' cock back onto his tongue first and allowing that to slide naturally into wrapping his lips about him without the support of a close pressed hand—denotes some wordless reliance. A lack of constraint.
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Worked up plenty already, stiff and aching in Flint's jaws. His hand flattens out, ceding himself to wet hot mouth, which also has his fingers spread across Flint's knuckles. He is too in the moment to trip over that detail, to consider how they've never let their fingers tangle together, or palms meet, when he has given such study to Flint's hands, its rings and calluses.
Fingertips settling in the grooves of knuckles, anyway, thoughtless.
His other hand curls back to that place at Flint's scruff, a more dedicated grip, firm. Nothing the man could not shake off, but present while he does not.
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In return, there is some sense of discarding that languorous, unhurried previously pace set by tongue and hand. No less exploratory, he takes a few moments to map him there in his mouth with his tongue; to test at the saliva slick slide with a few shallow bobs; fingers twitching under Marcus' hand as he draws back, hollows about the crown, drawing completely off with a wet sound that's deafening in the corridor, and then starts over again.
There's something straightforward and methodical in it, for all that it's not unmessy. With his hands settled, the latter having found its way wordlessly to the top of Marcus's boot where a thumb has insinuating itself intently between leather and calf, he is untroubled by the prospect of using chin and cheek to guide Marcus' back to his mouth when necessary. The tenor of the thing is deliberate. He's going to have Marcus fuck his mouth, and is making himself ready for it.
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The anchoring hand at his neck stays put, thumb absently stroking along hairline. If they had more time—
Well, they don't.
A shift, finally. Maybe felt at the hand at Marcus' calf, the flex of muscle there tightening boot leather, or the nudge of his cock half-buried in mouth. Axis of his balance settling more solidly centre on two feet, back only touching the wall rather than leaning heavily back against it.
It's the touch to Flint's hand he sacrifices, bringing his palm back to the man's jaw. Both hands solidifying their grasp, stilling him, and there is almost no transition or moment of pause between that and the way Marcus tilts his hips, sliding cock along tongue, filling Flint's mouth. Withdrawing, barely letting the blunt end of himself past Flint's lips before pushing back in again.
The potential for climax feels both like internal disassembly as well as a clutch of tension. Marcus' hands are very sure, his posture upright, his cock firm in its intrusion. His breath trembles inside of him.
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In those cheaply bought Lowtown rooms, Flint has made no habit of being especially quiet. What purpose is there in practicing discretion there? If he were to buy one of those rooms for some utility other than fucking, it might be prudent to intermittently bang the bed against the wall to cover any more important conversation. But he'd been nearly quiet in that backcountry tent where the close quarters and the unfamiliarity company and the blind wilderness about them with the lingering possibility of Venatori in it had restrained any vocalizations to a low, panting register. He's that version of quiet here too. Breathing in pinched intervals—volume dictated by circumstance.
What clarifies itself there between the set of Marcus' hands and under the press of his cock is a certain relaxing of tension. Some heretofore tautly posed quality made invisible by its regularity now starkly illuminated by its easing. The sharp gleam of Flint's eye muddling from the heat. His hand slipping from the base of Marcus to instead touch his thigh and feel the muscle working. The angle of his chin suggestively pliant.
There is a kind of imagined familiarity to be found in a half lit corridor, lamp light pearling on the waxed floors and burnishing the rich dark paneling of the wall. To be having found himself frustrated at some (naval) (magisterial) function and purposefully escaped it in favor of more pleasant company. That he is fifteen years removed from the thing he only thinks he remembers (if asked, he would balk at any parallel being drawn) makes little difference to diminish the heady, sluggish sensation aroused by it.
In a hastily pitched tent or a rented room, he can rationalize away virtually any craving to relax into the framework of intimacy he might be struck by. He has practice. He's been fucking strangers in places like those for a long time.
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As if maybe, despite all demands of place and time, Flint may be content to kneel before him and let Marcus use his mouth as long as he likes, at whichever pace he prefers.
True or not, the impression is arresting. Steady hands maintain as he fucks across his tongue and lips in deeper, shorter, quicker thrusts, the wet sound of it quiet beneath his breathing, which matches his pace. Small vocalisations escaping, just every now and then, little marks of heightened pleasure, of overwinding tension, and clamped down again, muffled. The hand at Flint's neck beginning to grip in that subtle way that becomes less an anchor for Flint and more for himself.
"Flint," is half-whispered, the instinctively desperate intonation of it out of place (or not) in open corridor, and feels louder than it is for its naked desire.
Not long after that. Marcus braces against it, the pleasure that twists low and deep through him as he spills into Flint's mouth, jaw clamped closed and breath held as hands grasp harder. The fire in its sconce flickering, despite the absence of a draft, as if measure of control means response has to be expressed elsewhere, shivered through the invisible veil that binds all things.
Breathing out, hands gentling.
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The crooked sound of his name burns hot under the skin, and the tight hand on the back of his neck an appealing weight. It's good—this sense of utility prickling warm through the length of him to pool low in his belly, a clenched sensation in his own cock. The precursor to the glaring satisfaction the comes with Marcus, and swallowing roughly around him.
He's slow to take advantage of the softening grip on him. Does, then, make some low rough sound, muffled by circumstance, as he tilts back and lets Marcus slip free from his mouth. Sagging faintly to sit back on his heels in deference to the rough interaction of his knees against the floor, he doesn't quite make to shake the hand at his neck. Instead, breathing heavy, tips his cheek and scuffs the bristle of beard and the spit slick edge of his mouth at the inside of Marcus' wrist. Breathing heavy, attention chasing sluggishly up to reacquaint himself with his face.
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Marcus looks back down, now, hand turning when he feels that nudge to his wrist. The sweep of his thumb has utility in that it reorders the lay of red bristle low on Flint's cheek, but it would require some amount of bad faith to interpret it without any affection at all. There is, in fact, the somewhat absurd urge (for its lack of practicality, timing, circumstance, perhaps a more general appropriateness for what is a simple transaction in the dark) to fold right down and tangle up with Flint.
For his part, the heavy-hooded look to his expression is by now familiar, the absent parting of his mouth. A flush through his face making scar tissue stand out, a new sheen where light touches his cheek and brow.
His other hand comes around to gather his cock, pushing it back into his pants, heedless of mess and dampness. Drops his touch from cheek to jacket lapel, hand clutching fabric in a tug. Up, come here, where he can make to kiss him.
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The tug at his coat strips whatever inebriating sensation remains from the thrill of cocksucking. With a heavy exhale that is more labored than otherwise, he gets a stiff knee up. Slips his thumb from the lip of Marcus's boot, finds some handhold in the molding of the paneled wall behind it and fumbles his way up to his feet.
The ceremonial sword is left behind. The hand required to catch it on the way up is either engaged in scraping himself off the floor or intent on passing between Marcus' jacket and waistcoat on the way up, slithering into that body warm space and conforming to his side. Partly for Flint to steady himself. Partly not.
He follows Marcus's hand otherwise, content to be drawn up and in.
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But lazy, too, no urgent rush into it despite the insistence. Pulling him in and close so they can be heavy against one another. The sconce light stable.
Kiss breaks just as Marcus unwinds his arm just as he can tuck his hand between them. A sliver of eye contact as he seeks out the shape of Flint's cock through his pants, equal parts measuring for himself how much Flint enjoyed those last few minutes, untouched below the shoulders, as well as testing. Thumb pressing, encouraging, mouth an inch away from mouth.
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He is more than half hard, and reactive to the touch. His thumb presses in lieu of some encouraging angling of the hip. And then, despite the prompting of all these parts, the hand at Marcus' ribs slips. Wandering to his elbow. Catches after his forearm and finds some arresting grip on Marcus' wrist.
The kiss he presses to that too-close mouth is less open, slower still. It comes with the more assertive press of his weight, broadly effective at discouraging the hand between them. Closer was better, suggests the hand that passes from Marcus' shoulder to his lay at his neck, thumb at the warm strip of bare skin above the edge of that dark silk tie. He'll have that instead.
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The markers of winding down. He makes a small rough sound of protest for this concept, registering his complaint against Flint's mouth, felt under the thumb resting up under his jaw which tilts to accommodate both it and the kiss being shared. The hand he has hooked at Flint's coat coming to rest an arm around him in a comfortable hold around the waist.
Closer, then. It doesn't take too long before the intimate press of them seeks out, again, the feeling of Flint's more than half hard cock, as if it's personally aggravating to know of its existence and to do nothing for it. The edge of a bite on gentle, shallow kiss.
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Instead, that gentle, shallow kiss breaks slowly and he draws the fraction back necessary to catch at some sliver of eye contact. A rough burr in the back of his throat from the press of Marcus' cock—
"Leave off." Evidently he's finished with being ordered about, but not yet quite done with giving them himself. "Make it up to me after."
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followed by Flint denying him, but the latter half of it gets a response, some semi-laugh on the exhale that has no parry to it. Acceptance. He leans back against the wall, wrist turning in that softened grasp around it before judging it a thing he can slip free from. And does, hand raised to push back between them, but this time at his chest, palm turned in.
Nudging the tail of his necktie back into his waistcoat, while the arm he has bracketed around Flint's waist withdraws a little, hand laying somewhere at his side. Easier escape.
"Then you'd best mind your dance card," he says, a thick-accented murmur in the space between them that is still intimate.
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"I'll take it under advisement."
A brief glance between them to the lowest undone buttons of Marcus' waistcoat, but these apparently are beyond the bounds of Flint's current generosity. Instead of addressing them, he leans back in. Finds Marcus' mouth, and applies a last kiss there—a warm breath, an easy scrape of teeth—before sliding free of the hand at his side and drawing his own away.
Marcus will have to do his own buttons. Flint has a sword to fetch up off the ground and lash back to his hip.
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Marcus hadn't read so much into the gentle thumbing at his jaw, some awareness of the way they both might play at affection and tenderness alongside everything else, whether because it feels nice to do or because it's a joke. Certainly humour in the reordering of his coat. The kiss, though, the quick and thoughtless scrape of it across his mouth, neither as tender as they've ever been nor certainly as firm, but,
well, something in it feels like a finger catching a bruise and pressing, somewhere deeper set in his chest. Leaving behind a warm, twinging impression. Flint moves away and Marcus steps out from the space he's been occupying to give the other man better room to collect his sword, hands going down to do up buttons, pants and waistcoat both.
"I'm going to smoke," is his stated intention, some reflexive freeing them of the obligation to linger together down the hallway. And, because he is also declaring his intention to further shirk his duties, he adds, "And then I'll be good."
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"See that you're not long, or someone will start to wonder if there's some actual matter to concern themselves with. Half that room is made up of Cumberland merchants and they're already prone to spooking at shadows."
(Probably, it doesn't help that Riftwatch sent their notorious pirate captain to deal with them. The half of the room that hasn't been chasing his heels all evening has been glaring at him from across the hall. But that's Diplomacy's problem, not his.)
The buckle of the sword clips into place with a snap of soft metal. The coat tail is set to rights. Nevermind that he may need a few minutes to himself before he's really fit to go wandering back down to the hall. If he walks briskly enough back along the corridor and starts working through the semantics of cornering that Orlesians naval officer for a second more interesting conversation, the issues of his trouser fit and the warm, purposefully unsatisfied thing living behind his ribs will resolve themselves.
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