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.
It's not necessary that Marcus hang back, at least on the level of physiology, but he wants to, and nods along at this directive as he retrieves the case from an internal pocket. Creates heat between pinched fingers, lighting the end, the subtle smell of burning paper and leaf a parting gesture as Flint goes.
Marcus isn't long, slotting back into the crowd and minimally entertaining whatever conversation finds him. No further rescue attempts, and if there are any moments where his attention snares on the familiar set of black coat over familiar shoulders, the bare slope of the back of a neck or the glint of sword guard, it's brief enough to escape Flint's attention. Probably anyone else's.
He drinks too much as the night wears on. There will be no entertaining making good on promises of Later, but he is at least a little certain that Flint is equally finished for the evening. So there's that.
Not so drunk that he can't get himself out of fine clothes without rumpling them to hell, nor to escape the thought, not for the first time while sinking into sleep, how pointlessly stupid it is that he find himself sleeping alone.
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no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
"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.
no subject
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."
no subject
"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.
no subject
Marcus isn't long, slotting back into the crowd and minimally entertaining whatever conversation finds him. No further rescue attempts, and if there are any moments where his attention snares on the familiar set of black coat over familiar shoulders, the bare slope of the back of a neck or the glint of sword guard, it's brief enough to escape Flint's attention. Probably anyone else's.
He drinks too much as the night wears on. There will be no entertaining making good on promises of Later, but he is at least a little certain that Flint is equally finished for the evening. So there's that.
Not so drunk that he can't get himself out of fine clothes without rumpling them to hell, nor to escape the thought, not for the first time while sinking into sleep, how pointlessly stupid it is that he find himself sleeping alone.