His mmm of assent has the shade of a laugh in it. About fifty of them, give or take.
Free of the obligation to manage the cigarette, his hand moves absently to smooth across his knee at the place where Marcus's hand had set. Then shifts to some wrinkle in the coverlet nearby, pinching and scuffing it idly between the fingers. A vague, mundane echo of the dispersal of ash and ember, an unconscious rearranging of the environment.
"I have my suspicions we might find we dislike one another given the opportunity for closer examination."
In the smoky lamplight, watching Marcus' face and hands while sat beside him in his bare skin, it's possible that it sounds slightly funny. Less serious. It helps the impression that Flint punctuates it with a direct look and some crooked slant to his mouth amidst auburn whiskers.
It's slightly funny, less serious, but it's obligatory that there should be a small twinge beneath the surface as Marcus turns his focus back to the other man. Meeting direct look, measuring crooked slant.
He takes another pull of smoke, something heavier in his settling back against the headboard as he releases it again.
"Do you?" is frank prompt. It, too, is accompanied by something a little wry, and also the return of his spare hand, conforming palm to calf. "Maybe you're assuming you've escaped scrutiny this long."
The not unamused tightening flex in Flint's face suggests, yes, that's true. This is in fact the point from which he's operating. Then again—
A faint tilt of the head and a turning gesture of the hand up from the coverlet asks, Hasn't he?
Nevermind that Marcus' hand is pleasantly warm on him, or that he is beginning to know the tang of the particular leaf the man smokes and the scent of it lingering in the air here satisfies something low behind the ribs. That's not the point.
It's true that he could not put together a full page of concrete facts about the other man. Flint has effectively deterred with the kinds of vague answers that Marcus might normally set his claws into without further distraction, and further distraction has nearly always been present. But there is still some sense of knowing. The abstract broad shapes of a person, conveyed in what they do and say. That only so many details could alter it.
Not that Marcus is inclined to make this case, corner of his mouth twitching at wry, silent answer. He can feel confident in it on his own.
Satisfied with having established some of the truth in this fact, his hand returns to that wrinkle in the coverlet at which he might thoughtlessly worry between thumb and middle finger.
The slant of his mouth pitches fractionally deeper, but somehow less like a joke despite the glint of easy humor in his eye. Well.
"That if I answered that question honestly, you would decide to slip away now instead of staying a few hours. Which I think we've both decided we would prefer."
There's a place and time where it's possible that Marcus might reach all the way across to trap Flint's hand where it toys with bed covers, pull it into his own possession. Convey something of what he is feeling in the press and flex of thumb and fingers, or try to detect the same from the other man. That place and time may have resembled this one.
He keeps his hand, instead, where it is, an arcing rub of thumb against muscle. Scoffs, slightly, at the idea that anything short of direct order might compel Marcus out of this spot and into his armor, all the way back to his room which will smell chill and stale and so much like the Gallows.
For a moment, Flint measures him there against the backdrop of the dark headboard. Loose hair, fingers of smoke drifting idly off, the scarring on Marcus' face rendered mild now that there are fewer shadows of moving bodies influencing it and some of the color has faded from his face. Canny eye in spite of the hour and the long trek Marcus has made to get here.
"This stops being an equitable arrangement if we select to like one another," he says. Then adds— "Honestly, it hardly qualifies now. But at some point, we are going to find ourselves in the other's way and I don't think you're going to be pleased when my way wins out on the basis of the weight of that room."
He tilts his head to the closed door. To the darkened division office which lurks beyond it. Flint is not a Templar in a Circle tower. But he is a man who sits at the top of the place where Marcus has had by his own admission made some kind of life; a man makes demands of Marcus, and of Marcus' companions, and gives back remarkably little in return. Certainly, he can expect to receive very few explanations.
"My suspicions tell me that's all more forgivable if this is merely a convenience."
Slow is the release of smoke between teeth, nostrils, not so uncontrolled or emotive as a sigh but with similar depth. Marcus listens, keen eyed in return after having had a few minutes to sit here and smoke, and only difficult to read in that he only appears to be listening.
Then, he gently holds cigarette between teeth so he can use his fingers to put it out at the end, likely more than just callused fingertips extinguishing burning embers. Twists it to save the last inch or so, palms it into his hand, and then moves. An easing forwards, which could seem on his way to shifting off entirely if not for the slide of hand from calf to knee to thigh.
"How about I promise to stay the same amount of displeased," he says, "no matter how inconvenient this becomes."
If he believed them to be of radically opposed positions, he likely would not be here, but Flint is correct; some disagreement is inevitable. There's trace humour in his answer, a reassurance for all the wrong things, and where his hand slips down to rest on the warm span of Flint's inner thigh. As anticipated, smoke-scent is freshly acrid from its recent burning, and promises to linger well after he makes it out.
There is a sense, immediately, that Marcus has said the wrong thing. Not in some cooling temperature between them, of some sobering in the lines of Flint's face—no, there remains a lingering lamp lit kind of warmth here in the bed, dangerously near to the description of comfortable; and that slant of Flint's mouth and the set of his brow has settled back to amusement in answer to the upward slither of Marcus' hand and this easy declaration—, but there regardless. A trace sense that he is humoring the the point not because he sees any sense in it but because noting some alternative has seemed to have become irrelevant in the moment.
That is certainly a promise someone could make. Even if it weren't Rowntree, who would have grappled with a Qunari on impulse, it would still sound like bullshit.
"I hope that's not the way you haggle in the Lowtown markets, or someone is getting rich off you. Possibly multiple someones."
Maybe if he'd said some other thing, Flint might have followed Marcus' hand with his. Touched his wrist and played after his knuckles. Held his hand there, pleasantly warm against the hair prickled interior of his thigh. As it is, Flint makes no effort to dislodge the hand but leans away, back, to fetch the glinting rectangular case from where he'd discarded it. Catches Marcus' knee as he shifts back up, then passes the case over.
They've spent more time together fully dressed and speaking of work-like matters than not, even if these are the kinds of interactions that have quickly come to crowd their way into being the most notable, for Marcus. Here, in low lamp light and the the scent of smoke and sweat wreathing them and bare skin against Marcus' palm, and something like familiar teasing in Flint's words that he might otherwise not know save for these moments—
It is something nearly like rebuke, that feeling. A declination that in its essence more so than form feels more like an interaction had across a desk in that darkened room. Marcus moves his hand once it's given something to do, accepting back his case.
He opens it with an easy click of metal and replaces the cigarette butt inside.
"If you favour convenience," he says, "then it would suit me still to stay."
It could be a little like a shrug, this comment, but there is a slightly searching edge to the way he looks back towards the other man.
There, in that searching look, is the niggling feeling that it would be wisest to drive him off. Make some cruel overture now in the effort to see his point made, and be done with it. If Marcus came back after that, if he made some brisk unilateral decision and tomorrow or the next day they met again in Kirkwall and fucked around in another anonymous room regardless, maybe then he might have some confidence in the man's ability to take some indignity and discomfort on the chin for this.
But he's selfish. And he's already said he would prefer it if Marcus were to stay. So what bearing on that desire does convenience or inconvenience have, really?
Flint's hand on Marcus' knee, the thumb running absently against the edge of his kneecap. Something about prying it up and torturing a man not occuring to him in the moment, given how idle the point of contact is.
"Stay, then," he says, as if it's simple to, although James Flint does very little purposelessly.
It bears analysis why the subtle flex of a thumb against his leg is so convincing, capable of settling the start of some minor disorientation with just that alone, before Flint gives his answer. Capable of overriding errant flinching sense-memory of a wound behind old scars, too. It would be, probably, unwise to read so much into even these minor physicalities, given how much of this is physicality, but it's what occurs anyway.
Maybe Marcus will analyse it, and come to the conclusion that he should guard against the instinct. It's too much to ask he do so right now, however, and he nods.
His leg turns at the hinge of his hip into that hand, a nudge against Flint's thigh.
There is likely water left in a pitcher by the door, a cloth draped across the lip of the shaving table's basin. It would be easy to convey these things here and see it done and yes, in fact, that's what they should do, agrees the low rumble of Flint's wordless rejoinder.
The sentiment is marginally less supported by the lingering point of contact across the shape of Marcus' knee, or the line of Flint's study which lowers briefly to regard his mouth as if aware of the slight forward cant of Marcus' shoulders. Considering the impulse to kiss him before he must think better of it. It would be somewhat counter to his argument to do so, which prickles a little scrape of irritation in him, and prompts him to draw his hand from the other man's knee. To twist over, unfolding himself from this business of sitting the wrong way around in the bed, and making to clamber to his feet.
There is indeed water yet remaining in the pitcher, lukewarm and stale from the length of the day but perfectly suitable for mopping of after themselves.
There was probably some truth to it, what Flint said of the effect honesty might have. That Marcus wants to stay more than he wishes to leave is still so, but there is some subtle sting that might not have happened at all at Flint moving away if not for that aforementioned honesty. A new ordering between actions of affection and distance that had been vaguer, before, and now feels as though it has stark edges.
But he is also tired, with actions and words leading up to this point having scrubbed back some defensive layers. This time tomorrow, maybe a thicker skin will have grown back.
Flint leaves the bed, and once his feet are on the floor, Marcus moves aside to stand. All the easier to accept the cloth he soaks in water, something familiar in the brisk and unselfconscious wiping away of mess on his stomach flicked as high as his chest, and then down between his legs.
No offered commentary or conversation, but there's a small pull to his expression at the oddly pleasant twinge through muscles inside and out that he doesn't disguise or wall off.
The lack of conversation doesn't present as an issue. Instead, Flint straightens the coverlet on the bed. Strikes the pillows—which have suffered almost no disturbance, yet demand some compulsive arrangement—into some form of order. He only watches Marcus from the corner of his eye, if that, until the light summer bedclothes have been pushed back in anticipation of warm bodies. Eventually, he will make use of the same cloth Marcus does to put himself in order.
The air is warm. The bed is too, and will be more so once they have both clambered into it. Despite that—
"I've a clean shirt if you want one for sleeping in."
Once the cloth is passed over, Marcus moves around the bed while Flint sorts himself out. Pushes a pillow out of order, some measure of undoing what Flint just did without realising, aiming to make a hospitable place for him to set his knee against the bare mattress.
The furniture creaks as he kneels up onto it properly as this offer is made.
Almost declines it on reflex, before some amount of hasty arithmetic is made. "Aye, alright," he says. Some thin barrier of decorum will make the physical contact he has every intention of bullying Flint into for at least a little while, sting or no sting, a more credible ask without sweat slick skin in more direct contact.
So the basin with its faintly dirty water is removed, and a shirt the color of dark wine once all plucked out with some delicate texture of embroidery and now gone soft at the seams and elbows is fetched. He himself steps into a clean set of drawers, and returns to the bed at least masquerading as half decent.
Coming to stand against the edge of the bed, Flint surrenders the shirt into Marcus' position. If he busies himself for a moment with the rearrangement of the side table, including the unearthing of the green bound book and setting it in the clear space aside the lamps and other loitering detritus, then it will be easy to keep half an eye on Marcus as he pulls the article on. Which should satisfy the last hook of the urge hanging on despite him having talked himself free of all its other barbs.
And it does, or mostly does, which permits him to clamber into his side of the bed without any threat of some irrational thing lingering above his head.
Marcus makes a faint noise of thanks as he accepts the shirt. Turns it in his hands to grasp after the hem which also allows for a little study. Muses that it's not a colour he owns in his wardrobe. It smells mostly of clean laundry, but something more personal in the signs of wear that means he knows a slight prickle of more abstract sensation as he pulls it on. The shirt tails offer only quasi-modesty. His cleaning himself had seen water wiped down as far as his knees, hair rendered darker on that stretch of sunless skin.
He turns his attention to Flint, a beat that allows the other man to settle before Marcus gets more properly into bed.
Catches a hand against the other man's forearm as he sinks down.
"We like touching each other," he says, direct if quiet. "I think that's safe to say."
"That's true," he says, equally direct if not exactly so quiet. Some conversational tenor in the thing, his arm shifting absently in under the shape of Marcus' hand so that his fingers might idly catch at the worn soft fabric of the shirt. It's a small thing, but a more physical overture of agreement and surely that takes precedence over a ready affirmation in this very particular case.
Flint's face has turned to follow Marcus down, eyes heavy and the impulse to study blatant. Somewhere in the back of his mind or behind the ribs, the sensation of pressing a bruise that he chalks up to being tired and not to being lonely.
Anywhere, here is that heavy smoke smell hanging thickly about Marcus, and promising to leech into linens and shirts in some satisfactory way.
Here, there is plenty of reason and room to study, and Marcus doesn't curb it at impulse. Mainly to read Flint, to turn his hand to encourage this gentle exchange of touch up each others arms, which he is tempted to but ultimately does not turn into an entanglement of fingers. But the point here isn't to deprive himself.
Something eased in his expression indicates being satisfied with this affirmation in the form it has taken, and in general, an amount of space edged back open with his fingernails so that it doesn't feel as much like transgression all over again when he leans in and insists his mouth against Flint's.
A little, but no. Not unpleasant, that sour tang of tobacco and the balmy heat of a close breath. All things being equal, it's an easy kiss to return. And does—despite the hour, and the broad impossibility of getting his dick up again, and all this frank consideration of the fact that they do not like one another and that it would be best not to concern themselves overmuch with that fact—tickle faintly somewhere low in his belly. Prompts some pleasurable twist that doesn't answer well to being sensible and which insists on being impossible to ignore.
Yes, they do like touching each other. He likes meeting the man's eye across crowded halls and narrow taverns, and knowing that looking at each other means they want something. He likes the incidentally-on-purpose scrape of teeth between them (that is sometimes gentle, like in this moment as Flint catches Marcus' lower lip as some benign response to being kissed so). He likes opening his mouth to him. He even likes, just a little, that Marcus came here from the eyrie. And should something similar happen a second time, there will be no need to clarify any of the things they have needed to clarify tonight. They will just be able to fuck in a warm, familiar bed without having to trouble themselves with the semantics of paying for the privilege.
That all seems doable.
"You've four hours," is mumbled against Marcus' mouth. If that.
Marcus replies with a grumbled sound of acknowledgement, also against Flint's mouth and in a stubbornly firmer press of a kiss.
But in the interests of ending it rather than starting something new. He can feel the physical instinct in himself to respond to what is now the familiar sensation of kissing Flint, the beginning sparks of something that he doesn't have the energy to do more with. He could linger here and let that ember up into frustration, but he withdraws before it can properly catch.
Settles. The hand on Flint's arm shifts to lay against his chest, close without being all the way on top of the other man. His hand rotates on his wrist, and the flames in the lanterns shake, flare, extinguish, cooler shadows immediately flooding in, almost pitch blackness save for what little bit of silver struggles in through the edges of curtains from the knife-edge of the moon.
Permitted the cover silvery dark, mouth smarting from the shape of Marcus' kiss, he allows himself some reorientation of limbs. A grunt of something like apology as he twist his arm out from being trapped them and institutes it out under Marcus's pillow instead; his off hand settling across his abdomen, somehow below the dull warmth of the arm across him; a cursory twist of knees and hips until he finds a space that is comfortable beside and about another warm body.
(Academically, he knows the last time he slept so near to someone. But knowing and remembering are different things, and it's possible that he's out of practice.)
But eventually, he settles. Gives, with a heavy exhale, into the space and decides that he isn't dissatisfied with any sharp elbow or sweaty brush of skin. He can sacrifice the end of his reading for some other night, though the green bound book is there at the side table. And he can not chase after the fringe of conversation, though the desire to lingers even here in the dark.
It's late. And though Marcus will find no sympathy from him when, in a few hours from now, when Flint makes to rouse the man out of his bed—not quite pathetic or warm enough, it will seem—, on this side of things, Flint can eventually manage the courtesy of being content with the line of their bodies adjacent to one another. All these odd bits of overlapping weight and touching and not touching. The soft rasp of fabric and bed clothes. The low murmur of an exhale.
Liable to fall sleep in just about whatever position is demanded of him, at this point, Marcus is accommodating of shifting around until stillness settles, and they find themselves in something like a loose embrace, with space enough between them that the whole arrangement isn't untenably hot in this warmer season.
They could have slept back to back and there'd be a comfort in it. To share a space, and listen to the breathing of another, something that reaches far back towards a shared bedroom with a high window, and then memories of a larger chamber and a row of beds, and the ragged edges left behind when both of those things were abruptly taken away, and it's nothing he thinks of now but nevertheless informs the slackening of muscle and peaceful sink into unconsciousness that is deeply, richly more pleasurable than the kind that occurs without those sense-memories.
But also, more present, it's nice to catch his palm against bare, warm skin, the faint tickle of fingertips curling before soothing it, resting in place. The smell of bedclothes that is unique to Flint, and beneath the slowly fading invasion of smoke, that of parchment, leather, lantern oil. Nudging a knee forward and letting the press of it against thigh create a sharply warm point of contact, the bristle of hair and drying water and sweat.
Come the morning, or pre-morning, Marcus will certainly make a play for pity, but not for long. By the time he finishes dressing by the window and wordlessly moves off to collect his armor, he exits the quarters immediately after, accidentally leaving behind a vambrace on the chest at the foot of the bed.
But here and now, there is an instinct to press much closer, to map their chests together and tuck a thigh between legs, to breathe in against the other man's neck and demand to be grasped at. The heaviness of sleep, like an anchor plunged into water, rescues them both from whatever that might entail.
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Free of the obligation to manage the cigarette, his hand moves absently to smooth across his knee at the place where Marcus's hand had set. Then shifts to some wrinkle in the coverlet nearby, pinching and scuffing it idly between the fingers. A vague, mundane echo of the dispersal of ash and ember, an unconscious rearranging of the environment.
"I have my suspicions we might find we dislike one another given the opportunity for closer examination."
In the smoky lamplight, watching Marcus' face and hands while sat beside him in his bare skin, it's possible that it sounds slightly funny. Less serious. It helps the impression that Flint punctuates it with a direct look and some crooked slant to his mouth amidst auburn whiskers.
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He takes another pull of smoke, something heavier in his settling back against the headboard as he releases it again.
"Do you?" is frank prompt. It, too, is accompanied by something a little wry, and also the return of his spare hand, conforming palm to calf. "Maybe you're assuming you've escaped scrutiny this long."
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A faint tilt of the head and a turning gesture of the hand up from the coverlet asks, Hasn't he?
Nevermind that Marcus' hand is pleasantly warm on him, or that he is beginning to know the tang of the particular leaf the man smokes and the scent of it lingering in the air here satisfies something low behind the ribs. That's not the point.
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Not that Marcus is inclined to make this case, corner of his mouth twitching at wry, silent answer. He can feel confident in it on his own.
"What else do your suspicions say?"
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The slant of his mouth pitches fractionally deeper, but somehow less like a joke despite the glint of easy humor in his eye. Well.
"That if I answered that question honestly, you would decide to slip away now instead of staying a few hours. Which I think we've both decided we would prefer."
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He keeps his hand, instead, where it is, an arcing rub of thumb against muscle. Scoffs, slightly, at the idea that anything short of direct order might compel Marcus out of this spot and into his armor, all the way back to his room which will smell chill and stale and so much like the Gallows.
"But now I'm curious," he says, after a beat.
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For a moment, Flint measures him there against the backdrop of the dark headboard. Loose hair, fingers of smoke drifting idly off, the scarring on Marcus' face rendered mild now that there are fewer shadows of moving bodies influencing it and some of the color has faded from his face. Canny eye in spite of the hour and the long trek Marcus has made to get here.
"This stops being an equitable arrangement if we select to like one another," he says. Then adds— "Honestly, it hardly qualifies now. But at some point, we are going to find ourselves in the other's way and I don't think you're going to be pleased when my way wins out on the basis of the weight of that room."
He tilts his head to the closed door. To the darkened division office which lurks beyond it. Flint is not a Templar in a Circle tower. But he is a man who sits at the top of the place where Marcus has had by his own admission made some kind of life; a man makes demands of Marcus, and of Marcus' companions, and gives back remarkably little in return. Certainly, he can expect to receive very few explanations.
"My suspicions tell me that's all more forgivable if this is merely a convenience."
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Then, he gently holds cigarette between teeth so he can use his fingers to put it out at the end, likely more than just callused fingertips extinguishing burning embers. Twists it to save the last inch or so, palms it into his hand, and then moves. An easing forwards, which could seem on his way to shifting off entirely if not for the slide of hand from calf to knee to thigh.
"How about I promise to stay the same amount of displeased," he says, "no matter how inconvenient this becomes."
If he believed them to be of radically opposed positions, he likely would not be here, but Flint is correct; some disagreement is inevitable. There's trace humour in his answer, a reassurance for all the wrong things, and where his hand slips down to rest on the warm span of Flint's inner thigh. As anticipated, smoke-scent is freshly acrid from its recent burning, and promises to linger well after he makes it out.
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That is certainly a promise someone could make. Even if it weren't Rowntree, who would have grappled with a Qunari on impulse, it would still sound like bullshit.
"I hope that's not the way you haggle in the Lowtown markets, or someone is getting rich off you. Possibly multiple someones."
Maybe if he'd said some other thing, Flint might have followed Marcus' hand with his. Touched his wrist and played after his knuckles. Held his hand there, pleasantly warm against the hair prickled interior of his thigh. As it is, Flint makes no effort to dislodge the hand but leans away, back, to fetch the glinting rectangular case from where he'd discarded it. Catches Marcus' knee as he shifts back up, then passes the case over.
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It is something nearly like rebuke, that feeling. A declination that in its essence more so than form feels more like an interaction had across a desk in that darkened room. Marcus moves his hand once it's given something to do, accepting back his case.
He opens it with an easy click of metal and replaces the cigarette butt inside.
"If you favour convenience," he says, "then it would suit me still to stay."
It could be a little like a shrug, this comment, but there is a slightly searching edge to the way he looks back towards the other man.
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But he's selfish. And he's already said he would prefer it if Marcus were to stay. So what bearing on that desire does convenience or inconvenience have, really?
Flint's hand on Marcus' knee, the thumb running absently against the edge of his kneecap. Something about prying it up and torturing a man not occuring to him in the moment, given how idle the point of contact is.
"Stay, then," he says, as if it's simple to, although James Flint does very little purposelessly.
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Maybe Marcus will analyse it, and come to the conclusion that he should guard against the instinct. It's too much to ask he do so right now, however, and he nods.
His leg turns at the hinge of his hip into that hand, a nudge against Flint's thigh.
"Then we should clean up."
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The sentiment is marginally less supported by the lingering point of contact across the shape of Marcus' knee, or the line of Flint's study which lowers briefly to regard his mouth as if aware of the slight forward cant of Marcus' shoulders. Considering the impulse to kiss him before he must think better of it. It would be somewhat counter to his argument to do so, which prickles a little scrape of irritation in him, and prompts him to draw his hand from the other man's knee. To twist over, unfolding himself from this business of sitting the wrong way around in the bed, and making to clamber to his feet.
There is indeed water yet remaining in the pitcher, lukewarm and stale from the length of the day but perfectly suitable for mopping of after themselves.
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But he is also tired, with actions and words leading up to this point having scrubbed back some defensive layers. This time tomorrow, maybe a thicker skin will have grown back.
Flint leaves the bed, and once his feet are on the floor, Marcus moves aside to stand. All the easier to accept the cloth he soaks in water, something familiar in the brisk and unselfconscious wiping away of mess on his stomach flicked as high as his chest, and then down between his legs.
No offered commentary or conversation, but there's a small pull to his expression at the oddly pleasant twinge through muscles inside and out that he doesn't disguise or wall off.
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The air is warm. The bed is too, and will be more so once they have both clambered into it. Despite that—
"I've a clean shirt if you want one for sleeping in."
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The furniture creaks as he kneels up onto it properly as this offer is made.
Almost declines it on reflex, before some amount of hasty arithmetic is made. "Aye, alright," he says. Some thin barrier of decorum will make the physical contact he has every intention of bullying Flint into for at least a little while, sting or no sting, a more credible ask without sweat slick skin in more direct contact.
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Coming to stand against the edge of the bed, Flint surrenders the shirt into Marcus' position. If he busies himself for a moment with the rearrangement of the side table, including the unearthing of the green bound book and setting it in the clear space aside the lamps and other loitering detritus, then it will be easy to keep half an eye on Marcus as he pulls the article on. Which should satisfy the last hook of the urge hanging on despite him having talked himself free of all its other barbs.
And it does, or mostly does, which permits him to clamber into his side of the bed without any threat of some irrational thing lingering above his head.
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He turns his attention to Flint, a beat that allows the other man to settle before Marcus gets more properly into bed.
Catches a hand against the other man's forearm as he sinks down.
"We like touching each other," he says, direct if quiet. "I think that's safe to say."
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Flint's face has turned to follow Marcus down, eyes heavy and the impulse to study blatant. Somewhere in the back of his mind or behind the ribs, the sensation of pressing a bruise that he chalks up to being tired and not to being lonely.
Anywhere, here is that heavy smoke smell hanging thickly about Marcus, and promising to leech into linens and shirts in some satisfactory way.
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Something eased in his expression indicates being satisfied with this affirmation in the form it has taken, and in general, an amount of space edged back open with his fingernails so that it doesn't feel as much like transgression all over again when he leans in and insists his mouth against Flint's.
Maybe a little bit, but not unpleasantly.
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Yes, they do like touching each other. He likes meeting the man's eye across crowded halls and narrow taverns, and knowing that looking at each other means they want something. He likes the incidentally-on-purpose scrape of teeth between them (that is sometimes gentle, like in this moment as Flint catches Marcus' lower lip as some benign response to being kissed so). He likes opening his mouth to him. He even likes, just a little, that Marcus came here from the eyrie. And should something similar happen a second time, there will be no need to clarify any of the things they have needed to clarify tonight. They will just be able to fuck in a warm, familiar bed without having to trouble themselves with the semantics of paying for the privilege.
That all seems doable.
"You've four hours," is mumbled against Marcus' mouth. If that.
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But in the interests of ending it rather than starting something new. He can feel the physical instinct in himself to respond to what is now the familiar sensation of kissing Flint, the beginning sparks of something that he doesn't have the energy to do more with. He could linger here and let that ember up into frustration, but he withdraws before it can properly catch.
Settles. The hand on Flint's arm shifts to lay against his chest, close without being all the way on top of the other man. His hand rotates on his wrist, and the flames in the lanterns shake, flare, extinguish, cooler shadows immediately flooding in, almost pitch blackness save for what little bit of silver struggles in through the edges of curtains from the knife-edge of the moon.
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(Academically, he knows the last time he slept so near to someone. But knowing and remembering are different things, and it's possible that he's out of practice.)
But eventually, he settles. Gives, with a heavy exhale, into the space and decides that he isn't dissatisfied with any sharp elbow or sweaty brush of skin. He can sacrifice the end of his reading for some other night, though the green bound book is there at the side table. And he can not chase after the fringe of conversation, though the desire to lingers even here in the dark.
It's late. And though Marcus will find no sympathy from him when, in a few hours from now, when Flint makes to rouse the man out of his bed—not quite pathetic or warm enough, it will seem—, on this side of things, Flint can eventually manage the courtesy of being content with the line of their bodies adjacent to one another. All these odd bits of overlapping weight and touching and not touching. The soft rasp of fabric and bed clothes. The low murmur of an exhale.
no subject
They could have slept back to back and there'd be a comfort in it. To share a space, and listen to the breathing of another, something that reaches far back towards a shared bedroom with a high window, and then memories of a larger chamber and a row of beds, and the ragged edges left behind when both of those things were abruptly taken away, and it's nothing he thinks of now but nevertheless informs the slackening of muscle and peaceful sink into unconsciousness that is deeply, richly more pleasurable than the kind that occurs without those sense-memories.
But also, more present, it's nice to catch his palm against bare, warm skin, the faint tickle of fingertips curling before soothing it, resting in place. The smell of bedclothes that is unique to Flint, and beneath the slowly fading invasion of smoke, that of parchment, leather, lantern oil. Nudging a knee forward and letting the press of it against thigh create a sharply warm point of contact, the bristle of hair and drying water and sweat.
Come the morning, or pre-morning, Marcus will certainly make a play for pity, but not for long. By the time he finishes dressing by the window and wordlessly moves off to collect his armor, he exits the quarters immediately after, accidentally leaving behind a vambrace on the chest at the foot of the bed.
But here and now, there is an instinct to press much closer, to map their chests together and tuck a thigh between legs, to breathe in against the other man's neck and demand to be grasped at. The heaviness of sleep, like an anchor plunged into water, rescues them both from whatever that might entail.