It's been a long night. Tethers, buckles, supports, practice, courage are all things that keep one in a saddle when inhumanly high in the air, buffeted by high winds, but overworked too is every part of him, it feels like, from the tendons through the arch of his feet that had been set so firmly into stirrups, up though to fingers stiff from grasping reins and riding horn, and the network of muscle down his back all remembers the task of keeping balance. There are few opportunities to relax, up there.
All this to say that he is kissed and still, despite himself, feels a white-hot ribbon of vigor zither through major arteries, a heart-focused clench and also lower still. He closes his eyes and softens his mouth to it.
Opens to that rasp of teeth, registering pressure and shift through the communicative clasp of that hand above his elbow, but also the subtler shift, an imposition. He finds himself, here, relenting to it, sinking slightly lower where he knees and letting his head tip back. Kisses back, too, nothing shy in the touch of his tongue, but something in the angle of the arrangement that is more like invitation than demand.
A fine line, anyway, considering his hand in a fist at Flint's shirt.
Marcus' lap around the office and the room adjacent to it had been something like taking advantage. Of the hour, of Flint having permitted him into the room to begin with, of the tenuous thing (curiosity, maybe) hooked low enough in him that Flint had humored that initiating set of fingers at his knee.
—(Humored. That's a word for it.)—
The point being that it's only fair to take advantage of this permissiveness in turn. Not to impress his tongue on him, or the bite at Marcus' mouth, or to kiss him harder through that flexing give in the angle of his face. He can pepper Marcus with rough kisses and the sharp set of teeth virtually anywhere at all. In any grimy Kirkwall side street. What seems less accessible there: to slacken slightly. To answer an obvious invitation with anything short of a keen, devouring kind of hunger. Maker forbid anything that occurs in the narrow stairwell of any cheap lodging house have the air of a clear headed decision rather than being guided cock first. Here, taking advantage could be—
The next kiss is slower, less strictly rigorous. Shallow, even, while his grip on Marcus's upper arm eases back to a touch. Less playing at some kind of tenderness, and more testing it.
It's an invitation to set a pace, even if there are more expected answers to the question. Kisses go shallower and hands gentle and it's this invitation in the first place that doesn't have Marcus rush to fill that perceived space with pressure and urgency. The satisfying clarity of hunger. Stays where and how he is, even if it is tempting to press back.
Or, rather, not so much tempting as it is instinctive. Still, it's held in check beneath that grip that turns into a touch.
The kiss breaks, as kisses do, and Marcus initiates the next. Something of a nudge back, a quiet vocalisation, but all mild compared to past moments of a wresting for control, mirrored in tenderness. The hand at Flint's thigh is remembered, reawakened by giving a minor pulse of pressure before smoothing out again, a stroke of palm around to the outer muscle. Arousal, after that first spark of contact, coming to a slower simmer; almost less pronounced, to him, than the slow wind of tension somewhere beneath his ribcage.
A small scrape of eye contact the next time its viable, something questioning in it.
Absent that touch of eye contact, his hand might have moved most naturally to— Somewhere not above Marcus' elbow, motivated by that slower and less sharp cadence being returned to him and the rove of the hand on his thigh. He might have matched that gesture with something similar. Run his hand thoughtlessly from elbow to wrist, press a thumb there at warm sinew to feel the flex of Marcus' fingers.
But the hint of eye contact, and the question in it. They want for something more considered. And they prickle directly against a thing in him that's grown frustrated, that has gone raw and therefore slightly irritable from the sting. Marcus came here. Marcus wants to stay. What about the reception of those facts could be so fucking mysterious?
Flint's hand does shift, bluntly traveling from Marcus' upper arm to his shoulder. From shoulder to neck. To lay the warm shape of his palm at Marcus's jaw, callous rough thumb angling against the patchy bristle of his unshaven cheek. Flint leaves it there even as he bows back to press a further slow, heated kiss onto him—not hurried, or without insistence.
It still feels tender, calluses and blunt handling and all, just by virtue of the shape and place of that touch, and more so at the next kiss, the slow heat of it. Marcus' brow knits as he kisses back, answering in kind, a slight levering forward of his body. Flint will feel his other hand release his shirt, just to hook bluntly at his shoulder, the spread of his fingers wide, thumb finding a place to be at the base of his neck.
There, a little urgency, if less bitey than he has been before. His fingers come around to curl over the back of Flint's neck as kiss pushes down along the opposite jaw, up under it. There had been cravings, formless, that he can find a little sated in this nearness, the experience of warmth, familiar smells and textures.
Before Flint can feel like Marcus might just unseat him, a brisk scrape of another kiss meets his mouth, hands gentling.
"Help me get out of all this," sounds like it has a please attached (unsaid) (of course) rather than his customary rudeness. Or maybe it's the same, exactly as he's always been, and some attunement has been made as to whether Marcus is interested in being demanding on purpose or it's just how his voice sounds.
Either way, he means his armor, which is beginning to feel too warm and in the way.
They've been careful about this. Barring hastily unbuckled belts, shirked trouser buttons and hungrily pulling free shirt tails from waistbands, there has been almost none of this—breaking back from a kiss and being pressed to assist with the inconvenience of layers. Very little asking (for it somehow sounds like a request even if it isn't worded like one). Just ordering or doing and very little between the two.
A short exhale, a low rumble of a sound, and he assents to do as he's been told. As he's been asked, clarifies the hand at Marcus' face for it drops an hand and exerts a mild pressure there as if he might lay him partly over the widely sprawled angle of his thigh.
Not really. But also maybe if Marcus were to fold to it, then he would coax him into leaning against his knee and the chair arm.
"Move your arm," he tells him, in no great hurry.
No, he can make do with just turning Marcus's face and exposing pauldron and cuirass buckles to the attention of his spare hand while the other remains warm in that space where it's lain somewhere between Marcus' neck and his face. Fingers wide, palm steady, thumb stroking softly at the lobe of his ear.
Marcus moves as asked and arranged, hand drawing back.
Sinking slightly more relaxed where he kneels and then leans. Tipping towards that hand, at first only giving access to the one that is getting at the buckles by his shoulder and soaking up the attention of the first, not wishing to interrupt it before turning his chin to brush his mouth against the undersides of fingers, palm, barely justified as a kiss.
He reflects that it is going to be disappointing if this pace they've set goes away forever, upon his leaving. That it's a game, of the kinds they have sometimes played a little, and one that wouldn't withstand repetition. But these concerns are all too complex for the moment, nor do they prevent him from leaning into it, letting it soak, and besides, he has armor to doff.
There is, then, a lean against Flint's knee. A hand curling against the other man's calf, the intricacy of a thumbed arc just felt through the leather. He, meanwhile, reaches for the buckles up around his waist, tugging those free.
It's slow—this prising up of buckles and ties, and the warmth on the back of his neck touched there by the whiskey he's swallowed down (a finger or so further than Marcus in that regard), and the gradual attribution of weight across his knee. The buzz that wanders up through his fingers via the rasp of metal and leather which wanders the length of his arm and sinks down in under behind the ribs. Feeds slowly down into his belly where it coils into a purposeful knot.
The undoing of buckles and ties is patient without being needlessly methodical. After all, they're only fastenings, and the disassembly is as straight forward as undoing line of stitches. These things are always easier to take open than they are to put in no matter the warmth of the breath against his palm, or the distant lurking thrill budding from Marcus being so pliant to the hand. There is no great need to examine any part of it.
(Though he does, as compulsive and measured as the meditative stroke of his thumb.)
When Flint has finished one side, the pauldron strips freely away to be set on the hexagonal side table with its coordinating vambrace. The careful hand at Marcus' jaw slides, fingers tucking in under the edge of the loosening breastplate as if to use it as the hand hold by which to—
Marcus uses his grip at Flint's leg as a means of levering himself more centre again. One hand pressing then to his breastplate to keep it in place while the buckles are seen to, the other now leaving off to finish undoing the fastenings at his waist on the other side. The pauldron will come free and then both elements of his cuirass can be pried loose and off.
The rest is simple, less intricate than what all goes into protecting a warrior above-waist. The wide belt over cloth wrap and leather layers, boots with guards built in.
It all feels a little raw, semi-painful in a peculiar way that is, despite itself, good. Still feeling the tickling sensation at his ear and the side of his neck even after the hand is fallen away, occupied currently with the slightly unfamiliar feeling of someone else seeing to the buckles of his armor, of feeling knuckles press to his shoulder and chest where Flint gets his fingers beneath the edge of lined metal.
Still, the vulnerable thing that winds itself tighter has more defensive layers to conceal itself. Muscle, bone, skin. Kept compressed to the point of ache somewhere between it all even as metal and leather is tugged free. He leans back on his haunches in helping remove his cuirass, aiming to land it gently by the table.
He loosens the wrap around his neck, tugging that free. His boot scrapes against the ground, and he grips the arm of the chair, on his way to finally standing.
He makes no move to interrupt Marcus' upward trajectory, though there is a slow sense that he could and wants to. He would like to wrap his hand around the wrist attached to the hand planted at the chair arm, and feel the flexion of tendons as Marcus clambers to his feet out from between his knees. Instead, holding the impulse carefully in his hand like the collected fragments of a broken cup, he waits until Marcus is upright before sitting slightly forward in the chair and following him with his hands.
There is less reason to help with the rest; none of it consists of fastenings placed awkwardly enough to make a second pair of hands particularly expeditious. In spite of this, and the not distant prickling sense of arousal that stings like cool air against a deeper cut, there is some appreciatively studious quality to how Flint uses both hands to unbuckle the heavy belt at Marcus' middle. Less about how expeditiously Marcus might stripped down. More about the rhythm of the thing. Easing fingers under layers and pulling them mindfully up.
(Testing himself to see what measure of vulnerability—and this is that. Vulnerable. More than or distinctly different from asking for Marcus' to use him in a half-lit corridor; some high feeling like irritation or nervousness, or the sound of a hurt dog's whining whistling out from under the skin—can be tolerated.)
He can manage the belt. He can't undo the wrap. But after, once the cloth is freed, he can catch up the end as the last of it comes uncoiled and fold it into a neat rectangle across his knee.
The belt is managed. Without a task, his hands wander to Flint's shoulders for the short duration that they've nothing better to do. Resting lightly, fingers mapping to muscle, and then dropping again to see to the cloth. It doesn't occur to Marcus to back up during this process, relieving the item to Flint's care once it's off.
Beneath, the tunic has fold lines and crinkles sweated into it around the tail ends. No blood stains or new tears, just sweat, some streaks of dirt barely visible in dark grey linen. The scent of earth, smoke, himself. Marcus tugs the fabric a little to loosen it off his skin, a moment spent considering what else there is to do, and Flint's position on the chair.
A hand sets down on Flint's shoulder again, and Marcus lifts opposite knee to set it against Flint's, balanced in a standing kneel. A twinge of amusement barely detectable in his expression for himself as he reaches down and back to loosen boot buckles. He toys with Flint's shirt collar with the edge of his thumb.
Will go on to repeat himself, mirrored, after the first boot is pushed off to thump against the floor.
He makes for an able enough handhold off which to balance, grunting some low note of impatience with it only once Marcus has moved on to the second boot and he's run out of work for his own hands with the cloth wrap having been neatly squared away, an end tucked judiciously into its middle to secure the fold. Not discouraging the use, exactly, just—
bridling a little against his continued occupation of the chair while Marcus' thumb wanders against his shirt collar.
The cloth wrap is transferred from lap to table. It's laid over the book for want of its own free space, crowded out now by the various discarded segments of field worn armor. His hand, wandering to Marcus' propped knee. Knuckles brushing and lingering, not quite benign, while the second boot is shucked.
"Take the rest off in the other room," he tells him. "I've some things to put away here."
Followed by a push at Flint's shoulder, a levering back so that Marcus can duck down to kiss him. Not quite a casual parting gesture, not with his knee braced where it is and the pressure of a hand at Flint's shoulder, but closer to that end of the spectrum as far as the meanings and intentions of kisses.
Flint is relieved of it at the same time as Marcus backs off, pared down, a less bulky figure than how he'd begun. Socked feet on the ground carry a lot less resonance than boots, which Marcus does pick up on his way for the other room. Sets them by the door outside, for ease of finding later, before disappearing back inside private quarters.
And in a different disposition than before. Less compelled to touch things and look at things and leave an impression like his other vambrace which he'd set down on the trunk lid. Hand over hand, he takes off his tunic, and goes to drape it over the chair by the window. Undoes his hair, pocketing the leather tie while the other hand makes some effort at reordering the lay of it from where atmospheric damp and sweat have dictated, as he listens out for whatever Flint is doing, for his return.
Socks, then. As far as the rest of goes, there isn't much left, slowing down some but not stopping by the time he's undoing the fastenings of his pants.
What Flint is doing consists, after a moment, of hauling himself up out of the chair and gathering the cups from the side table—a clinking of glass—, and rifling through some papers on the division officer's long work table. There are pages there that warrant restoring to a locking drawer in his desk if he's to have company. The cups may be left on what constitutes as the sideboard. The lamp on the mantle needs extinguishing. He needs a moment to order himself.
When Flint reappears in the doorway, he has brought the little palm light with him. In his spare hand, the green book, and behind his shoulder a brief glimpse of the black darkness into which the office has been plunged before he shuts the door with the heel of his boot. And now, at once, they are on the other side of a door which has always been closed and whose state seems most natural in that position.
A glancing look to Marcus, with his undone hair and his shirt draped across the chair and buttons being unbuttoned, and then he moves round to the other side of the bed to deposit the book and the palm light beside its smokier cousin. When his attention returns across the width of the heavy bed—
It's less glancing. Somewhere under the bed is a boot jack, and Flint kicks it free without looking away. Hooks a heel deftly into it and begins working his boot free.
"Should I expect to have to wrestle for the right to put my cock in you?"
Thump. The boot topples off and over. He swaps to the other shoe.
Edited (Fusses with a single stupid line of dialogue) 2023-04-25 02:21 (UTC)
A glance, a partial pivot, hands pausing their task as Marcus tracks Flint across the room. The rest of the Gallows has been choked off from them, now, by a span of lightlessness and some closed doors. Nerves raw enough that the sound of wood settling into its frame prickles heat across skin, in the same way that a less-than-glancing look across the bed does too.
Marcus opens his trousers, pushes them down, steps out. The absence of frantic hungry pace means he can go layer by layer, smallclothes still in place as he folds the article lengthwise, drapes it over his shirt.
Now he moves to crest the other edge of the bed, nudging the mattress with a knee as if flirting with getting on it. Probably, in this past while that they've been, to one another, that man they are fucking, there have been enough instances that Flint (unlike most) can attest that Marcus is capable of smiling, sort of, and it is always like this: a replacement for a laugh, and thus brief, crooked, a showing of teeth, mostly gone again by the time he speaks to the thing that encouraged it.
"You'd win too easily," which is probably a reference to the long evening that led him here, but also something in line with these small capitulations he's been making already.
He tugs at a tie, loosens himself of this last layer, nudged aside. It's been a minute since he's been afforded the privacy of simply this much, travel and field work being as it is, where an undressing is done with practicality in mind, no lingering in in-between states. Sleeping with your boots on. The breath out of him is for that much, never mind the subject at hand, and now he kneels onto the mattress edge, a hand skimming down over himself.
"And I want that, besides," to be clear, refocusing in his look across at Flint. Easy to play at somehow doing someone else a favour, or some kind of settling for what he might be too tired to do instead. No, there is a want, there, formless though it'd been until he could find himself at Flint's door, or between his feet.
Crooked, barely there smile. The naked line of Marcus' body and the shadow of his loose hair. The shape of his hand as he palms himself over. These aren't unfamiliar things, but they're usually things observed from a too close vantage or influenced by the sluggish haze of recent orgasm. All glimpsed detail, no broad impressions. None of them painted in this murky light, in the room that's his more than any place in the South is.
Flint pulls free of his second boot, leaving its heel stuck in the U-shaped jaws of the boot jack.
"Then keep touching yourself," comes across as mild instruction. Not a demand, but not irrational given how much work he has to do to catch up with Marcus' present state.
His attention diverts by degrees and in parts, some series of glancing flicks back in Marcus' direction keeping him posted there at the peripheral of Flint's focus even as he makes to unclasp his belt and moves away from the bed rather than toward it. Hooks the belt thoughtlessly on the end of the nearby dressing screen.
Instruction, mild as it is, has a way of encouraging the thing it is asking for. A deep warm twinge of feeling, and Marcus closing his hand firmer in response to twitch and pulse. Settles there in his kneeling on the bed, silent assent.
His own assigned task means there's no need to break up his focus, and so he does not, a scrape of eye contact breaking off to track, instead, hands bending the leather of a belt, the slide of it from its loops. And all they do next.
Touching himself is, first, almost vague in its handling, his spare hand finding a place against his abdomen, fingers tucking towards where his thigh joins it. His other hand sures up, soon enough, fingers seeking out those specifically sensitive points, palm squeezing. He'd been already stirred up by the time Flint had entered the room, a slow thickening out of arousal under gentle hands at his face, undoing buckles, the texture of trouser fabric under his palm, warm from the thigh beneath it.
Left to his own devices, he might have gone over there. Helped Flint out of his things, both for a desire to touch as well as the common instinct to assist in dictating the pace of something. Doing as suggested, instead, giving up control of that too, left with his own hands, the sight of what he wants some feet away. Conversationally speaking—
Marcus can go whole ferry rides with one other colleague without feeling compelled to strike up conversation. It is silent, here, and the only thing on his end to break it is a heavier draw in his breathing.
The lapse into quiet suits more than conversation would have anyway, an intent quality about it that prickles at back of his warm neck as Flint roves to the shaving table with its dry basin and mostly stowed kit. He's in no rush to sort through the miscellany there for the bottle of mild oil made for cleaning and sharpening razors. Instead, with Marcus's attention on him like a warm, close pant of an exhale, he takes a few moments to work the rings from his fingers. Stows them at the bottom of the basin where he will easily encounter them come morning.
Only then does he make some paltry rearrangement of the items in the table, locate the bottle in question, and pivot back toward the bed. A step in that direction is close enough to underhand the stoppered bottle into bed with Marcus.
Touch yourself, he'd said. The significant look he splits between Marcus and the bottle implies the suggestion that the definition of that be somewhat expanded while he peels out of his stockings. Pulls his shirt hem free of his waistband, and over his head, and is mindful about seeing the article neatly folded once he's of it.
There's a small span of time where the only sounds in the room are that of rings being set down, the clinking of items being pushed around by fingers in no rush at all, and the slowly thickening quality of Marcus' breathing.
Maybe less this last thing. Maybe that's just him, aware of himself, the flow of blood beneath his skin, the specificity of his focus hazing out to a more broad spread across Flint's turned back, but still forward motivated. Sharpening when Flint steps nearer, meeting his eyes, casting down towards his hands, barely enough time to draw conclusions about the item he's collected before it lands on the covers.
His hand stills, and the look he tips back has a sharpness to it, not quite able to make it something more amused than heated. A pause that considers this addendum.
Maintains that look over turned shoulder as he reaches to collect the bottle, and then down at his task. Spilling enough to coat his fingers, a penny-sized more filling his palm, some of which is palmed over his cock, but only a little. The re-stoppered bottle is negligently pressed back to the covers as Marcus leans forward, distributing some weight onto hand, arm kept straight. Sinking a little lower with the spread of his legs as he reaches between them.
The panting exhale is, he is more certain, audible to the both of them.
It sounds like a hot, grasping hand feels. Were he less capable of patience when he decides to be, the low rasp of Marcus breathing out might drive him to the bedside. Instead, he pauses a moment to watch him outright, studying the lay of muscle across shoulder and the sinew in the supporting arm. The angle of Marcus' face, and the point of his attention, and the untouched sway of his cock.
Once the folded shirt has been laid aside across the high arch of the dressing screen, Flint's hand wanders to grasp at himself through the heavy waxed linen of his trousers. Half self satisfying, half illustrative for Marcus' benefit. If he pulls the fabric taut under his palm, the shape of his arousal—interested since before Marcus dropped to his knees, thickening further as he'd leaned across his knee—is plainly displayed.
Soon, very soon, he is going to strip out of the rest of his clothes and gravitate to the bed. When he arrives there, he will have had to have sorted what he wants from the jumble of impulses crowding hot and insistent up from behind his ribs as he watches the flex through Marcus' forearm.
Somewhere in there, he lifts his head enough to register the set of Flint's look on him, but only for a moment. Marcus' focus instead sinks down to the spread of Flint's hand on himself, the visible shadow and shape of a hard or hardening cock beneath the fabric. It does appear to be of benefit, gaze lingering there in a clear deriving of pleasure and want, the angle of his hips shifting a little to eke something from the press of his wrist beside his cock.
It isn't really all about what his own hand is doing to himself. It's this, a controlled sinking down from braced hand to elbow to help the angle, the pressure the positioning puts in hips, back, the press of internal organs giving an edge to his breathing. Flint's regard like a hand on him. The absence of pretense, displayed like this. All of these feeding into the thing that aches and grips at him.
But it's also a little about what his own hand is doing, the utility of slicking himself over, and now followed by a small, breathy sound out of him as he breaches himself, necessarily shallow.
He might have expected himself to complain, demand Flint get his kit the rest of the way off and come over here, but in the moment, there's no instinct to do so. Impatience its own stimulus. The belief that Flint will, anyway, just as he needs him to.
He holds himself there for a few moments, observation keen enough to cut while he works himself slowly over. Not really in time with anything, rythmn as of yet something of a foreign concept in this, but sympathetic to the heavy shape of Marcus' breathing and the lines his body have bent toward. He looks good in that arrangement—thrillingly exposed, clearly eager despite this apparent willingness to allow these checks of instruction and distance. Given the luxury of a little more time—
(Why is it always more? How hungry he is to lay down with Marcus and stay there for longer than is remotely rational)
—and no threat of shorting the man sleep, he might revel a little longer in the role of goading voyeur if it meant the opportunity to study more of those shifting adjustments. To listen to the soft slant of Marcus' breathing. As it is, somewhere in there, Flint unbuttons and shirks his trousers. Folds those too despite the want nipping at the back of his neck, and pretends at patience when it comes to unlacing his drawers.
But eventually, divested of his last stitch, there is no further pretense with which to keep himself so far away. Naked, he roves in to the bed. Bumps the mattress with his thighs and shifts a knee up to set himself just there at the edge of the mattress. A foot still planted on the carpet. A soft pop from some joint of the furniture from his halfway applied weight. Not quite clambering in to meet Marcus, but touching his hard cock with an intermittent hand as he makes to rescue that bottle from out of the blankets.
"Come here," he tells him. "Come give me your mouth."
Marcus' spare hand digs fingers into the covers as Flint sets about folding his pants, setting it aside, patiently unlacing his drawers. Has drawn his other hand back, some, palming over between his legs to soothe the ache nested there at the base of his cock, anticipatory sharpness in the way his focus roves over exposed skin, naked thighs and the angle of bone at hip, Flint's hand touching himself. The creak of furniture of additional weight, an odd thrill.
Come here, he had told Flint once prying from him some form of obedience, to verbalise a kind of begging for the privilege of pleasuring him. The echo of these things is not perfect but does create something of a continuity, a trade, some slow cycle of revenge and gratification at the same time. He is not being made to state the things he wants (only freely expressing it in so many words, after Flint had, consciously or no, made it easy to do so), but show it.
Feels that as keenly as the weight of his own erection as he makes to move that bit closer on all fours. Eager to touch, to enact upon, a glance up that is cursory in its intent as he reaches out to brace a hand at Flint's hip.
Marcus' mouth finds a place to be, first, at the soft skin beside the base of Flint's cock, an open mouthed kiss that feels a little like there is pleasure in tasting, in being intimately close to his body in the press of it. Backs up to collect blunt cockhead into his mouth after grazing up the length of it.
There is a pretense of control in all of it. Not exerting it—not controlling—, only in possession of the thing. The bolted division office door. His bristled assessment. The plain question he'd put to Marcus, and the broad square of his hand at the man's jaw. The certain unbuckling of armor. The low tang of whiskey in the mouth. The hand that, now, finds the crown of Marcus' head, and the shift up of Flint's knee so as to almost kneel there across the edge of the bed, the crook of hip and flexed thigh a ready support for any grasping hand. Mostly: the low rumble of approval that answers the wet heat of Marcus' mouth.
The slow half press of hip and the curl of fingers into a loose fist about Marcus' hair is more suggestion than anything. Coaxing. Not demanding anything of him, but offering. If Marcus wants something other than then that immediate indolent fucking, he might easily draw short. Pull back. Dictate the depth and rhythm on his own. Past that initial tangle of fingers in his hair, Flint makes no effort to hold him to it.
Instead, his hand moves grasping and exploratory to feel over the planes of shoulders and back. The bottle is opened and fingers made slick and soft. It is not impossible, if he presses close into the hot shape of Marcus' mouth, to reach down the length of him to run oiled fingers across where they both want his cock to be.
For a moment, Marcus stays where he is, a shallow application of his mouth on Flint, the curl of his tongue and the probing temptation of something deeper in the subtle sink forward playing a little at coaxing something more out of the other man. Tasting the beginning of bitter-salt barely there at the tip. The feeling of fingers loosely tangled in his hair and the light flexing forwards. Removes his mouth entirely, but only for as long as it takes to catch his breath, wet his lips.
Flint's hand finds his back, its peeking scars, and musculature that both seems out of place on a mage but matches the use of heavy polearm-like focus and the kinds of tasks Flint knows him capable of, labour and battle both. More direct, hands on skin, than written report, spoken order. There is a slight shift through the line of his body that communicates pleasure for this contact, the adjustment of a knee against covers.
An answering rumbled sound in the moment before Marcus ushers Flint's cock back into his mouth, and this time deeper. A firmer stroke, at first reveling in the slick absence of friction of cock across tongue, and then following suggestion, a deeper sinking in, nudging towards fitting him more snugly towards the start of his throat, breath held.
Fingers gripping tighter, where palm comes to rest on that angled thigh.
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no subject
All this to say that he is kissed and still, despite himself, feels a white-hot ribbon of vigor zither through major arteries, a heart-focused clench and also lower still. He closes his eyes and softens his mouth to it.
Opens to that rasp of teeth, registering pressure and shift through the communicative clasp of that hand above his elbow, but also the subtler shift, an imposition. He finds himself, here, relenting to it, sinking slightly lower where he knees and letting his head tip back. Kisses back, too, nothing shy in the touch of his tongue, but something in the angle of the arrangement that is more like invitation than demand.
A fine line, anyway, considering his hand in a fist at Flint's shirt.
no subject
—(Humored. That's a word for it.)—
The point being that it's only fair to take advantage of this permissiveness in turn. Not to impress his tongue on him, or the bite at Marcus' mouth, or to kiss him harder through that flexing give in the angle of his face. He can pepper Marcus with rough kisses and the sharp set of teeth virtually anywhere at all. In any grimy Kirkwall side street. What seems less accessible there: to slacken slightly. To answer an obvious invitation with anything short of a keen, devouring kind of hunger. Maker forbid anything that occurs in the narrow stairwell of any cheap lodging house have the air of a clear headed decision rather than being guided cock first. Here, taking advantage could be—
The next kiss is slower, less strictly rigorous. Shallow, even, while his grip on Marcus's upper arm eases back to a touch. Less playing at some kind of tenderness, and more testing it.
no subject
Or, rather, not so much tempting as it is instinctive. Still, it's held in check beneath that grip that turns into a touch.
The kiss breaks, as kisses do, and Marcus initiates the next. Something of a nudge back, a quiet vocalisation, but all mild compared to past moments of a wresting for control, mirrored in tenderness. The hand at Flint's thigh is remembered, reawakened by giving a minor pulse of pressure before smoothing out again, a stroke of palm around to the outer muscle. Arousal, after that first spark of contact, coming to a slower simmer; almost less pronounced, to him, than the slow wind of tension somewhere beneath his ribcage.
A small scrape of eye contact the next time its viable, something questioning in it.
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But the hint of eye contact, and the question in it. They want for something more considered. And they prickle directly against a thing in him that's grown frustrated, that has gone raw and therefore slightly irritable from the sting. Marcus came here. Marcus wants to stay. What about the reception of those facts could be so fucking mysterious?
Flint's hand does shift, bluntly traveling from Marcus' upper arm to his shoulder. From shoulder to neck. To lay the warm shape of his palm at Marcus's jaw, callous rough thumb angling against the patchy bristle of his unshaven cheek. Flint leaves it there even as he bows back to press a further slow, heated kiss onto him—not hurried, or without insistence.
further heterosexual icon terrorism
There, a little urgency, if less bitey than he has been before. His fingers come around to curl over the back of Flint's neck as kiss pushes down along the opposite jaw, up under it. There had been cravings, formless, that he can find a little sated in this nearness, the experience of warmth, familiar smells and textures.
Before Flint can feel like Marcus might just unseat him, a brisk scrape of another kiss meets his mouth, hands gentling.
"Help me get out of all this," sounds like it has a please attached (unsaid) (of course) rather than his customary rudeness. Or maybe it's the same, exactly as he's always been, and some attunement has been made as to whether Marcus is interested in being demanding on purpose or it's just how his voice sounds.
Either way, he means his armor, which is beginning to feel too warm and in the way.
the AUDACITY
A short exhale, a low rumble of a sound, and he assents to do as he's been told. As he's been asked, clarifies the hand at Marcus' face for it drops an hand and exerts a mild pressure there as if he might lay him partly over the widely sprawled angle of his thigh.
Not really. But also maybe if Marcus were to fold to it, then he would coax him into leaning against his knee and the chair arm.
"Move your arm," he tells him, in no great hurry.
No, he can make do with just turning Marcus's face and exposing pauldron and cuirass buckles to the attention of his spare hand while the other remains warm in that space where it's lain somewhere between Marcus' neck and his face. Fingers wide, palm steady, thumb stroking softly at the lobe of his ear.
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Sinking slightly more relaxed where he kneels and then leans. Tipping towards that hand, at first only giving access to the one that is getting at the buckles by his shoulder and soaking up the attention of the first, not wishing to interrupt it before turning his chin to brush his mouth against the undersides of fingers, palm, barely justified as a kiss.
He reflects that it is going to be disappointing if this pace they've set goes away forever, upon his leaving. That it's a game, of the kinds they have sometimes played a little, and one that wouldn't withstand repetition. But these concerns are all too complex for the moment, nor do they prevent him from leaning into it, letting it soak, and besides, he has armor to doff.
There is, then, a lean against Flint's knee. A hand curling against the other man's calf, the intricacy of a thumbed arc just felt through the leather. He, meanwhile, reaches for the buckles up around his waist, tugging those free.
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The undoing of buckles and ties is patient without being needlessly methodical. After all, they're only fastenings, and the disassembly is as straight forward as undoing line of stitches. These things are always easier to take open than they are to put in no matter the warmth of the breath against his palm, or the distant lurking thrill budding from Marcus being so pliant to the hand. There is no great need to examine any part of it.
(Though he does, as compulsive and measured as the meditative stroke of his thumb.)
When Flint has finished one side, the pauldron strips freely away to be set on the hexagonal side table with its coordinating vambrace. The careful hand at Marcus' jaw slides, fingers tucking in under the edge of the loosening breastplate as if to use it as the hand hold by which to—
"Shift over. I'll have the other side done."
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The rest is simple, less intricate than what all goes into protecting a warrior above-waist. The wide belt over cloth wrap and leather layers, boots with guards built in.
It all feels a little raw, semi-painful in a peculiar way that is, despite itself, good. Still feeling the tickling sensation at his ear and the side of his neck even after the hand is fallen away, occupied currently with the slightly unfamiliar feeling of someone else seeing to the buckles of his armor, of feeling knuckles press to his shoulder and chest where Flint gets his fingers beneath the edge of lined metal.
Still, the vulnerable thing that winds itself tighter has more defensive layers to conceal itself. Muscle, bone, skin. Kept compressed to the point of ache somewhere between it all even as metal and leather is tugged free. He leans back on his haunches in helping remove his cuirass, aiming to land it gently by the table.
He loosens the wrap around his neck, tugging that free. His boot scrapes against the ground, and he grips the arm of the chair, on his way to finally standing.
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There is less reason to help with the rest; none of it consists of fastenings placed awkwardly enough to make a second pair of hands particularly expeditious. In spite of this, and the not distant prickling sense of arousal that stings like cool air against a deeper cut, there is some appreciatively studious quality to how Flint uses both hands to unbuckle the heavy belt at Marcus' middle. Less about how expeditiously Marcus might stripped down. More about the rhythm of the thing. Easing fingers under layers and pulling them mindfully up.
(Testing himself to see what measure of vulnerability—and this is that. Vulnerable. More than or distinctly different from asking for Marcus' to use him in a half-lit corridor; some high feeling like irritation or nervousness, or the sound of a hurt dog's whining whistling out from under the skin—can be tolerated.)
He can manage the belt. He can't undo the wrap. But after, once the cloth is freed, he can catch up the end as the last of it comes uncoiled and fold it into a neat rectangle across his knee.
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Beneath, the tunic has fold lines and crinkles sweated into it around the tail ends. No blood stains or new tears, just sweat, some streaks of dirt barely visible in dark grey linen. The scent of earth, smoke, himself. Marcus tugs the fabric a little to loosen it off his skin, a moment spent considering what else there is to do, and Flint's position on the chair.
A hand sets down on Flint's shoulder again, and Marcus lifts opposite knee to set it against Flint's, balanced in a standing kneel. A twinge of amusement barely detectable in his expression for himself as he reaches down and back to loosen boot buckles. He toys with Flint's shirt collar with the edge of his thumb.
Will go on to repeat himself, mirrored, after the first boot is pushed off to thump against the floor.
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bridling a little against his continued occupation of the chair while Marcus' thumb wanders against his shirt collar.
The cloth wrap is transferred from lap to table. It's laid over the book for want of its own free space, crowded out now by the various discarded segments of field worn armor. His hand, wandering to Marcus' propped knee. Knuckles brushing and lingering, not quite benign, while the second boot is shucked.
"Take the rest off in the other room," he tells him. "I've some things to put away here."
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Followed by a push at Flint's shoulder, a levering back so that Marcus can duck down to kiss him. Not quite a casual parting gesture, not with his knee braced where it is and the pressure of a hand at Flint's shoulder, but closer to that end of the spectrum as far as the meanings and intentions of kisses.
Flint is relieved of it at the same time as Marcus backs off, pared down, a less bulky figure than how he'd begun. Socked feet on the ground carry a lot less resonance than boots, which Marcus does pick up on his way for the other room. Sets them by the door outside, for ease of finding later, before disappearing back inside private quarters.
And in a different disposition than before. Less compelled to touch things and look at things and leave an impression like his other vambrace which he'd set down on the trunk lid. Hand over hand, he takes off his tunic, and goes to drape it over the chair by the window. Undoes his hair, pocketing the leather tie while the other hand makes some effort at reordering the lay of it from where atmospheric damp and sweat have dictated, as he listens out for whatever Flint is doing, for his return.
Socks, then. As far as the rest of goes, there isn't much left, slowing down some but not stopping by the time he's undoing the fastenings of his pants.
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When Flint reappears in the doorway, he has brought the little palm light with him. In his spare hand, the green book, and behind his shoulder a brief glimpse of the black darkness into which the office has been plunged before he shuts the door with the heel of his boot. And now, at once, they are on the other side of a door which has always been closed and whose state seems most natural in that position.
A glancing look to Marcus, with his undone hair and his shirt draped across the chair and buttons being unbuttoned, and then he moves round to the other side of the bed to deposit the book and the palm light beside its smokier cousin. When his attention returns across the width of the heavy bed—
It's less glancing. Somewhere under the bed is a boot jack, and Flint kicks it free without looking away. Hooks a heel deftly into it and begins working his boot free.
"Should I expect to have to wrestle for the right to put my cock in you?"
Thump. The boot topples off and over. He swaps to the other shoe.
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Marcus opens his trousers, pushes them down, steps out. The absence of frantic hungry pace means he can go layer by layer, smallclothes still in place as he folds the article lengthwise, drapes it over his shirt.
Now he moves to crest the other edge of the bed, nudging the mattress with a knee as if flirting with getting on it. Probably, in this past while that they've been, to one another, that man they are fucking, there have been enough instances that Flint (unlike most) can attest that Marcus is capable of smiling, sort of, and it is always like this: a replacement for a laugh, and thus brief, crooked, a showing of teeth, mostly gone again by the time he speaks to the thing that encouraged it.
"You'd win too easily," which is probably a reference to the long evening that led him here, but also something in line with these small capitulations he's been making already.
He tugs at a tie, loosens himself of this last layer, nudged aside. It's been a minute since he's been afforded the privacy of simply this much, travel and field work being as it is, where an undressing is done with practicality in mind, no lingering in in-between states. Sleeping with your boots on. The breath out of him is for that much, never mind the subject at hand, and now he kneels onto the mattress edge, a hand skimming down over himself.
"And I want that, besides," to be clear, refocusing in his look across at Flint. Easy to play at somehow doing someone else a favour, or some kind of settling for what he might be too tired to do instead. No, there is a want, there, formless though it'd been until he could find himself at Flint's door, or between his feet.
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Flint pulls free of his second boot, leaving its heel stuck in the U-shaped jaws of the boot jack.
"Then keep touching yourself," comes across as mild instruction. Not a demand, but not irrational given how much work he has to do to catch up with Marcus' present state.
His attention diverts by degrees and in parts, some series of glancing flicks back in Marcus' direction keeping him posted there at the peripheral of Flint's focus even as he makes to unclasp his belt and moves away from the bed rather than toward it. Hooks the belt thoughtlessly on the end of the nearby dressing screen.
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His own assigned task means there's no need to break up his focus, and so he does not, a scrape of eye contact breaking off to track, instead, hands bending the leather of a belt, the slide of it from its loops. And all they do next.
Touching himself is, first, almost vague in its handling, his spare hand finding a place against his abdomen, fingers tucking towards where his thigh joins it. His other hand sures up, soon enough, fingers seeking out those specifically sensitive points, palm squeezing. He'd been already stirred up by the time Flint had entered the room, a slow thickening out of arousal under gentle hands at his face, undoing buckles, the texture of trouser fabric under his palm, warm from the thigh beneath it.
Left to his own devices, he might have gone over there. Helped Flint out of his things, both for a desire to touch as well as the common instinct to assist in dictating the pace of something. Doing as suggested, instead, giving up control of that too, left with his own hands, the sight of what he wants some feet away. Conversationally speaking—
Marcus can go whole ferry rides with one other colleague without feeling compelled to strike up conversation. It is silent, here, and the only thing on his end to break it is a heavier draw in his breathing.
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Only then does he make some paltry rearrangement of the items in the table, locate the bottle in question, and pivot back toward the bed. A step in that direction is close enough to underhand the stoppered bottle into bed with Marcus.
Touch yourself, he'd said. The significant look he splits between Marcus and the bottle implies the suggestion that the definition of that be somewhat expanded while he peels out of his stockings. Pulls his shirt hem free of his waistband, and over his head, and is mindful about seeing the article neatly folded once he's of it.
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Maybe less this last thing. Maybe that's just him, aware of himself, the flow of blood beneath his skin, the specificity of his focus hazing out to a more broad spread across Flint's turned back, but still forward motivated. Sharpening when Flint steps nearer, meeting his eyes, casting down towards his hands, barely enough time to draw conclusions about the item he's collected before it lands on the covers.
His hand stills, and the look he tips back has a sharpness to it, not quite able to make it something more amused than heated. A pause that considers this addendum.
Maintains that look over turned shoulder as he reaches to collect the bottle, and then down at his task. Spilling enough to coat his fingers, a penny-sized more filling his palm, some of which is palmed over his cock, but only a little. The re-stoppered bottle is negligently pressed back to the covers as Marcus leans forward, distributing some weight onto hand, arm kept straight. Sinking a little lower with the spread of his legs as he reaches between them.
The panting exhale is, he is more certain, audible to the both of them.
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Once the folded shirt has been laid aside across the high arch of the dressing screen, Flint's hand wanders to grasp at himself through the heavy waxed linen of his trousers. Half self satisfying, half illustrative for Marcus' benefit. If he pulls the fabric taut under his palm, the shape of his arousal—interested since before Marcus dropped to his knees, thickening further as he'd leaned across his knee—is plainly displayed.
Soon, very soon, he is going to strip out of the rest of his clothes and gravitate to the bed. When he arrives there, he will have had to have sorted what he wants from the jumble of impulses crowding hot and insistent up from behind his ribs as he watches the flex through Marcus' forearm.
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It isn't really all about what his own hand is doing to himself. It's this, a controlled sinking down from braced hand to elbow to help the angle, the pressure the positioning puts in hips, back, the press of internal organs giving an edge to his breathing. Flint's regard like a hand on him. The absence of pretense, displayed like this. All of these feeding into the thing that aches and grips at him.
But it's also a little about what his own hand is doing, the utility of slicking himself over, and now followed by a small, breathy sound out of him as he breaches himself, necessarily shallow.
He might have expected himself to complain, demand Flint get his kit the rest of the way off and come over here, but in the moment, there's no instinct to do so. Impatience its own stimulus. The belief that Flint will, anyway, just as he needs him to.
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(Why is it always more? How hungry he is to lay down with Marcus and stay there for longer than is remotely rational)
—and no threat of shorting the man sleep, he might revel a little longer in the role of goading voyeur if it meant the opportunity to study more of those shifting adjustments. To listen to the soft slant of Marcus' breathing. As it is, somewhere in there, Flint unbuttons and shirks his trousers. Folds those too despite the want nipping at the back of his neck, and pretends at patience when it comes to unlacing his drawers.
But eventually, divested of his last stitch, there is no further pretense with which to keep himself so far away. Naked, he roves in to the bed. Bumps the mattress with his thighs and shifts a knee up to set himself just there at the edge of the mattress. A foot still planted on the carpet. A soft pop from some joint of the furniture from his halfway applied weight. Not quite clambering in to meet Marcus, but touching his hard cock with an intermittent hand as he makes to rescue that bottle from out of the blankets.
"Come here," he tells him. "Come give me your mouth."
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Come here, he had told Flint once prying from him some form of obedience, to verbalise a kind of begging for the privilege of pleasuring him. The echo of these things is not perfect but does create something of a continuity, a trade, some slow cycle of revenge and gratification at the same time. He is not being made to state the things he wants (only freely expressing it in so many words, after Flint had, consciously or no, made it easy to do so), but show it.
Feels that as keenly as the weight of his own erection as he makes to move that bit closer on all fours. Eager to touch, to enact upon, a glance up that is cursory in its intent as he reaches out to brace a hand at Flint's hip.
Marcus' mouth finds a place to be, first, at the soft skin beside the base of Flint's cock, an open mouthed kiss that feels a little like there is pleasure in tasting, in being intimately close to his body in the press of it. Backs up to collect blunt cockhead into his mouth after grazing up the length of it.
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The slow half press of hip and the curl of fingers into a loose fist about Marcus' hair is more suggestion than anything. Coaxing. Not demanding anything of him, but offering. If Marcus wants something other than then that immediate indolent fucking, he might easily draw short. Pull back. Dictate the depth and rhythm on his own. Past that initial tangle of fingers in his hair, Flint makes no effort to hold him to it.
Instead, his hand moves grasping and exploratory to feel over the planes of shoulders and back. The bottle is opened and fingers made slick and soft. It is not impossible, if he presses close into the hot shape of Marcus' mouth, to reach down the length of him to run oiled fingers across where they both want his cock to be.
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Flint's hand finds his back, its peeking scars, and musculature that both seems out of place on a mage but matches the use of heavy polearm-like focus and the kinds of tasks Flint knows him capable of, labour and battle both. More direct, hands on skin, than written report, spoken order. There is a slight shift through the line of his body that communicates pleasure for this contact, the adjustment of a knee against covers.
An answering rumbled sound in the moment before Marcus ushers Flint's cock back into his mouth, and this time deeper. A firmer stroke, at first reveling in the slick absence of friction of cock across tongue, and then following suggestion, a deeper sinking in, nudging towards fitting him more snugly towards the start of his throat, breath held.
Fingers gripping tighter, where palm comes to rest on that angled thigh.
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me, seeing my 800 typos: womp
we'll fix it in post
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