But he didn't come here to soothe anyone's else's apprehensions either.
Flint's study of him flicks down to Marcus' joined hands, then scatters back up along some impulsive unplanned track. When his own hand shifts from the chipped desk's edge, it moves after the cup—a certain impression that it's ultimately headed back for the discarded pen.
"I trust you'll keep all of this in mind tomorrow with your charges," Flint says, the low chair creaking gently under his weight as his attention slides back toward the page. It isn't a dismissal, strictly, which Marcus should know. He's certainly been in the receiving end of every kind of one.
The cot squeaks on its folding parts as Marcus pushes himself up to stand.
No Aye, Commander, just sort of a noise that acknowledges this thing Flint has said. His shadow doesn't shrink on the wall where it would if he'd made for the entryway, but skews off strange in scale as he moves nearer. Contact established with a hand light at Flint's shoulder, sort of a warning for the second, which lands gently and inevitably more intimate at the curve where muscle connects shoulder to spine.
Higher than where the sword jutted out, but he doesn't really recall, and it's not his aim to pantomime some kind of physical confirmation of the absence of killing blow. It's his aim instead to squeeze over the muscle appended to sword arm, to brush his thumb against the streak of dirt at the back of Flint's neck.
The specific rub of his thumb makes the purpose clear. Missed a spot.
Unsurprising. Possibly there are also little flakes of blood mixed in with the dusky sand under his fingernails and in strange places he wouldn't think to scrub—shadows of things that won't come fully away until they've returned to the Gallows and he's soaked himself in the deepest basin he can commandeer.
But here— a faint twitch, and now that gentle inquiring cant of the temple. Not turning so far as to raise his eyes to Marcus, but laying over to such a degree that the shadow plays differently on his face and over the desk, and that the glow of the oil lamp touches pale eyelashes and the fine hairs hatching the width of Flint's cheek.
Near to that scuff of thumb, the muscle is stiff and tender. Something in his back aches, and it has very little to do with the creeping memory of the Venatori sword and everything to do with the struggle of clambering up out of the crevasse and because, against all odds, he is becoming an old man. Because it's cold in the desert. Because he occasionally wants—
He sighs out through the nose. Dips the pen in the neglected inkwell. If the line of his neck alters faintly under the span of Marcus' fingers, then it can be because he's bowing his head to the work.
Dirt removed, that touch travels down that well-mapped line of the back of Flint's neck, a gentle seeking out of muscle that feels strung through with cord, tight and overworked. Marcus presses against it, and when there is no immediate verbal objection, the working over it with his thumb that doesn't pretend at being something other than an attempt at easing the physical evidence of a long and miserable day.
Firm, but not just jostling. He imagines that ruining penmanship is more likely to see him turned away than most other things that surprisingly have yet to. Palm pressing against the wing of muscle lower down. His other hand keeps a familiar hold of shoulder, resting there.
They like to touch each other. He likes to touch Flint, and there's yet to be spoken analysis of what it means when it isn't in the service to getting off. What itch is being scratched. Here, working down tense muscle in a way he knows to be pleasing, it certainly scratches at something in himself, not wholly related to that panicky clench that was slow to release.
He'll do this for a while, disinclined to interrupt work with more chatter he hasn't an instinct for. Content to.
Through it, Flint is satisfied to scratch out the typically curt lines of what appear to be orders or a report. They include a careful summary of the findings of the shrine thus far, rendered in the banal, uncolorful language more often utilized for shipping manifests and clerking paperwork than for ancient cursed caverns touched by darkspawn and old necromatic magics. Given our assessment of the Donarks and the Venatori presence discovered here, I would strongly advise—
Perhaps passively observed across curved shoulder and bent neck, it might be a document meant for the Inquisition. A report made out to satisfy the curiosity of some ally among the Divine's forces, or perhaps something of a professional acquaintance among the Orlesian army. Whatever it is, whomever it's for, Flint makes no attempt to guard the shape of the page from Marcus.
As he reaches what appears to be the end, having made no attempt at conversation save for some low (in protesting) cringing grunt of discomfort for this press of thumb or that firm palm, he writes, The ordinary channel will do, and neglects to dash off the familiar signature. Instead, Flint draws a faintly lopsided circle in the lower left corner before setting the pen aside.
It's possible these things, where he simply sits and allowed Marcus to untangle the corded muscle in his shoulder, read as dry and without any intimacy. As apparently drab as the lines of this reporting, a secret made dull and pedestrian for its blandly painted exposure.
"Marcus," he says after these minutes where the only conversation has been between the page and the scratching pen nib, or possibly his muscle and Marcus' pressing fingers. "You would be wise to get some rest."
There's a glance over for the text being written, but he doesn't lean enough to try to catch more than just a few scant half-sentences. Noting, more, progress down the page. The position of his hand. The circle in he corner.
Flint speaks, and Marcus moves his hand, leaving off those back muscles to travel further down, across the span of ribs. He can feel the impulse a little like that those strange time fluxes of the rocky crevasse, can vividly imagine letting his fingers curl against the fabric to draw shirt tails out from waistband. Some insistent part of him that wants, in spite of the hour, the day and tomorrow, where they are.
Wise. Not quite intimately tilted enough for Flint to feel as well as hear the heavier exhale that follows.
"Aye, I would be. I set up a tent and everything."
He doesn't fit here. The cot is not very accommodating, looking at it. There is a desk for work and the non-zero chance of interruption. The night has compressed down into narrow, dark hours that are swift to flow past. But still, he feels bodily resistant to simply making for the entryway, beer and apology delivered, and lingers. Hands gentling.
Tomorrow will be long and dark, the desert sun reduced to distant and rarely glimpsed stripes above the head. It will be cold, and dangerous, and there is every likelihood that the day following will be much the same. And after those long hours spent trudging through what more or less qualifies as underground, he will have more of this—questions to manage, the next twenty four hours of watch rota and Maker knows what to scratch together, paper, a narrow desk, a narrower bunk.
From the Gallows' central tower, he might have guessed that despite the glum lack of sunlight and the ground firmed up underfoot, that this might nearly serve to satisfy the itch that sometimes scratches at the base of his skull. Instead, the similarity of the work strikes just near enough to what he likes to prompt a kind of homesickness. A low knot in the belly, its tangle loosely cinched and no less easily undone despite the slack in its cabling. Or maybe that's the lopsided sense of the sword left in him.
Anyway, yes. It's time for Marcus to go.
He turns his face to tell him so. And here is the hand light at his shoulder, so Flint's chin and cheek sets quietly across the backs of Marcus' fingers. Body warm touch of the metal in his ear at a wind-chafed wrist, intimate and tired.
He turns his hand subtle at the wrist, just enough to convey something like a touch being returned, reciprocated. Then turns around completely to conform palm to cheek, fingers loosely curled up under jawline.
His other hand finds its way back up to shoulder, then over it, fanning high on Flint's chest. Gentle pressure applied. If Flint capitulates to it, he'll find the ability to lean back and rest against Marcus standing sturdy. If he doesn't, it doesn't cease this lingering, not right away, as thumb feels out half an inch of territory on Flint's cheek.
"I imagine when all of this is over," he says, "and I'll have found myself to've survived it, and the Chantry has finally decided not to trouble itself with corralling its children or writing execution orders," this part, more wry, "I'll have to decide where it is I go after. There was a time where I wouldn't have been at all fussed about where that was, so long as it wasn't the Circles."
He taps a light, thoughtful beat against Flint's chest. "The Anderfels, though."
He does—capitulate. Sinking back, he makes for a heavy shape there in the loosely arranged bracket of Marcus' hands. Cheek willing to defer to the curve of fingers and palm; the wide span of his shoulders a softly blunted square against where Marcus has posted up behind him. It is selfish to do, he thinks. But surely no more so than Marcus' appearance here with the cup of ale as an excuse and his firm commitment to having his guilt assuaged by the act of acknowledging it.
(And who would begrudge him the warmth of that hand and the sturdy support at his back? Except maybe for himself, and only then at his most uncharitable when he is assigning opinions to people who would think him cruel and foolish for doing so.)
Flint makes a low noise, the shape of his summoned scoff murmuring against the gentle press of fingertips under his jaw. A hum that chases the hand on his chest.
"Is that what you've gleaned from all this? An affection for darkspawn and sand."
Marcus' hand flattens where it rests against Flint's chest, the other maintaining its idle fidget, similar to rubbing the velvety corner of an ear of a resting hound, light and obtrusive. If it occurs to him that in his attempt to offer something to Flint for any perceived or true responsibility for the trauma inflicted this day, if he'd have simply handed off the ale and then taken up this post—
Well, it is easy to project meaning onto silent things. In the tipping back of Flint's weight against his middle, the vibration of vocalisations under his fingers.
"I don't know if I'd spurn it in the face of capture and execution," he explains, "but it would be a hard decision."
This is a joke. It's difficult to tell from his tone.
He doesn't laugh, but there is something like humor in the length of his exhale and the faintly flexing shift of his shoulders. Some alteration in the line of muscle that passes through his face under the motion of Marcus' thumb.
"Some time ago, I'd judged it as not so far removed from the southern Chantry's reach as might be preferable. But that was years ago." Lifetimes, even. And maybe Rivain would refuse a second incursion given the violent fall of its Circle. Certainly, an argument might be made—
"But at least the weather is preferable to almost anywhere," at least. Hot and humid and reassuringly rich against the skin.
said after a thoughtful beat. His hand drops that slight distance to come to rest against the side of Flint's neck, fingers curled in to lightly rest knuckles there, one finger offering a light rub of contact.
Even in fantasy, it's a difficult imagining. But he offers, "Depends on if I were on my own or if I weren't. There's more than just me that would try somewhere like that." Somewhere that is ostensibly freer in their opinions of difference, although Marcus has yet to get a sense from the likes of Derrica if such hospitality is limited within those born of the place, or outsiders.
He asks, "And you've your Antivan vineyard, I suppose?"
Is it reassuring to hear someone say, I don't know? Maybe it can be partly so, relief and vexing all in combination. He's never hated Rutyer as much as when the man expressed having some real plan for the future. Meanwhile, it prickles at something raw for Marcus to say the opposite. Though only distantly or in some shape that's too unwieldily to manage a full examination in a narrow space like this one, and so the displeasure and sense of consolation middle together into some tint that is unremarkable in too intimate a space.
(Marcus' hand is very warm, and he can feel his breathing in the gentle movement against the back of his shoulders.)
"Ah, the vineyard." There's some curving shape to it that suggests some rueful, bleakly humorous slant to Flint's mouth in the harsh shadow of his whiskers. "I have some doubts."
"Maybe tomorrow once we've levered this stupid temple out of Venatori hands for good," Marcus says, "you'll feel differently about it."
And Research could consider finding nicer and more temperate locations for them to excavate and murder for. But here, he has summoned back the subject of tomorrow awaiting them, and then shrinking hours that separate this moment from that. He could trick himself into the comfort of this arrangement as being comparable to being in bed, Flint's back to his chest while they speak of
(not nothing, he isn't speaking just to fill a silence, but out of some errant desire to share something of himself in exchange of Flint's, even if that something is the vague notion of a country and no clear image of what he does once he makes it there)
anything but then he can feel his feet begin to ache in his boots and his back start to protest the slouch required not to brush his head on the canvas, and so. Wisdom it is, his hands shifting now to Flint's shoulders, a squeeze to signal, "I should see to that rest."
A lingering beat there under the shape of Marcus' hands. Then, with a low hum of assent, Flint shifts the distribution of his weight forward. There. Agreed. Done. That was decided some minutes ago, and there has been no change in opinion.
"Shake out your bedroll before you lay down in it," is just sound advice.
Flint leans forwards, and Marcus' hands instinctively follow for a beat before withdrawing.
His reply is exhale-adjacent, only heard by virtue of the close confines of the tent, smothering out the rest of the campsite. Another beat, and then a scuff of boots and the sound of the flap being pushed aside. Chill night air, briefly, presses against Flint's now warmed back, and then he is left to conclude his evening and his tankard of ale.
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no subject
Flint's study of him flicks down to Marcus' joined hands, then scatters back up along some impulsive unplanned track. When his own hand shifts from the chipped desk's edge, it moves after the cup—a certain impression that it's ultimately headed back for the discarded pen.
"I trust you'll keep all of this in mind tomorrow with your charges," Flint says, the low chair creaking gently under his weight as his attention slides back toward the page. It isn't a dismissal, strictly, which Marcus should know. He's certainly been in the receiving end of every kind of one.
no subject
No Aye, Commander, just sort of a noise that acknowledges this thing Flint has said. His shadow doesn't shrink on the wall where it would if he'd made for the entryway, but skews off strange in scale as he moves nearer. Contact established with a hand light at Flint's shoulder, sort of a warning for the second, which lands gently and inevitably more intimate at the curve where muscle connects shoulder to spine.
Higher than where the sword jutted out, but he doesn't really recall, and it's not his aim to pantomime some kind of physical confirmation of the absence of killing blow. It's his aim instead to squeeze over the muscle appended to sword arm, to brush his thumb against the streak of dirt at the back of Flint's neck.
The specific rub of his thumb makes the purpose clear. Missed a spot.
no subject
But here— a faint twitch, and now that gentle inquiring cant of the temple. Not turning so far as to raise his eyes to Marcus, but laying over to such a degree that the shadow plays differently on his face and over the desk, and that the glow of the oil lamp touches pale eyelashes and the fine hairs hatching the width of Flint's cheek.
Near to that scuff of thumb, the muscle is stiff and tender. Something in his back aches, and it has very little to do with the creeping memory of the Venatori sword and everything to do with the struggle of clambering up out of the crevasse and because, against all odds, he is becoming an old man. Because it's cold in the desert. Because he occasionally wants—
He sighs out through the nose. Dips the pen in the neglected inkwell. If the line of his neck alters faintly under the span of Marcus' fingers, then it can be because he's bowing his head to the work.
no subject
Firm, but not just jostling. He imagines that ruining penmanship is more likely to see him turned away than most other things that surprisingly have yet to. Palm pressing against the wing of muscle lower down. His other hand keeps a familiar hold of shoulder, resting there.
They like to touch each other. He likes to touch Flint, and there's yet to be spoken analysis of what it means when it isn't in the service to getting off. What itch is being scratched. Here, working down tense muscle in a way he knows to be pleasing, it certainly scratches at something in himself, not wholly related to that panicky clench that was slow to release.
He'll do this for a while, disinclined to interrupt work with more chatter he hasn't an instinct for. Content to.
no subject
Perhaps passively observed across curved shoulder and bent neck, it might be a document meant for the Inquisition. A report made out to satisfy the curiosity of some ally among the Divine's forces, or perhaps something of a professional acquaintance among the Orlesian army. Whatever it is, whomever it's for, Flint makes no attempt to guard the shape of the page from Marcus.
As he reaches what appears to be the end, having made no attempt at conversation save for some low (in protesting) cringing grunt of discomfort for this press of thumb or that firm palm, he writes, The ordinary channel will do, and neglects to dash off the familiar signature. Instead, Flint draws a faintly lopsided circle in the lower left corner before setting the pen aside.
It's possible these things, where he simply sits and allowed Marcus to untangle the corded muscle in his shoulder, read as dry and without any intimacy. As apparently drab as the lines of this reporting, a secret made dull and pedestrian for its blandly painted exposure.
"Marcus," he says after these minutes where the only conversation has been between the page and the scratching pen nib, or possibly his muscle and Marcus' pressing fingers. "You would be wise to get some rest."
no subject
Flint speaks, and Marcus moves his hand, leaving off those back muscles to travel further down, across the span of ribs. He can feel the impulse a little like that those strange time fluxes of the rocky crevasse, can vividly imagine letting his fingers curl against the fabric to draw shirt tails out from waistband. Some insistent part of him that wants, in spite of the hour, the day and tomorrow, where they are.
Wise. Not quite intimately tilted enough for Flint to feel as well as hear the heavier exhale that follows.
"Aye, I would be. I set up a tent and everything."
He doesn't fit here. The cot is not very accommodating, looking at it. There is a desk for work and the non-zero chance of interruption. The night has compressed down into narrow, dark hours that are swift to flow past. But still, he feels bodily resistant to simply making for the entryway, beer and apology delivered, and lingers. Hands gentling.
no subject
From the Gallows' central tower, he might have guessed that despite the glum lack of sunlight and the ground firmed up underfoot, that this might nearly serve to satisfy the itch that sometimes scratches at the base of his skull. Instead, the similarity of the work strikes just near enough to what he likes to prompt a kind of homesickness. A low knot in the belly, its tangle loosely cinched and no less easily undone despite the slack in its cabling. Or maybe that's the lopsided sense of the sword left in him.
Anyway, yes. It's time for Marcus to go.
He turns his face to tell him so. And here is the hand light at his shoulder, so Flint's chin and cheek sets quietly across the backs of Marcus' fingers. Body warm touch of the metal in his ear at a wind-chafed wrist, intimate and tired.
no subject
His other hand finds its way back up to shoulder, then over it, fanning high on Flint's chest. Gentle pressure applied. If Flint capitulates to it, he'll find the ability to lean back and rest against Marcus standing sturdy. If he doesn't, it doesn't cease this lingering, not right away, as thumb feels out half an inch of territory on Flint's cheek.
"I imagine when all of this is over," he says, "and I'll have found myself to've survived it, and the Chantry has finally decided not to trouble itself with corralling its children or writing execution orders," this part, more wry, "I'll have to decide where it is I go after. There was a time where I wouldn't have been at all fussed about where that was, so long as it wasn't the Circles."
He taps a light, thoughtful beat against Flint's chest. "The Anderfels, though."
no subject
(And who would begrudge him the warmth of that hand and the sturdy support at his back? Except maybe for himself, and only then at his most uncharitable when he is assigning opinions to people who would think him cruel and foolish for doing so.)
Flint makes a low noise, the shape of his summoned scoff murmuring against the gentle press of fingertips under his jaw. A hum that chases the hand on his chest.
"Is that what you've gleaned from all this? An affection for darkspawn and sand."
no subject
Marcus' hand flattens where it rests against Flint's chest, the other maintaining its idle fidget, similar to rubbing the velvety corner of an ear of a resting hound, light and obtrusive. If it occurs to him that in his attempt to offer something to Flint for any perceived or true responsibility for the trauma inflicted this day, if he'd have simply handed off the ale and then taken up this post—
Well, it is easy to project meaning onto silent things. In the tipping back of Flint's weight against his middle, the vibration of vocalisations under his fingers.
"I don't know if I'd spurn it in the face of capture and execution," he explains, "but it would be a hard decision."
This is a joke. It's difficult to tell from his tone.
"Rivain," he adds. "I'd like Rivain."
no subject
"Some time ago, I'd judged it as not so far removed from the southern Chantry's reach as might be preferable. But that was years ago." Lifetimes, even. And maybe Rivain would refuse a second incursion given the violent fall of its Circle. Certainly, an argument might be made—
"But at least the weather is preferable to almost anywhere," at least. Hot and humid and reassuringly rich against the skin.
"What will you do there?"
no subject
said after a thoughtful beat. His hand drops that slight distance to come to rest against the side of Flint's neck, fingers curled in to lightly rest knuckles there, one finger offering a light rub of contact.
Even in fantasy, it's a difficult imagining. But he offers, "Depends on if I were on my own or if I weren't. There's more than just me that would try somewhere like that." Somewhere that is ostensibly freer in their opinions of difference, although Marcus has yet to get a sense from the likes of Derrica if such hospitality is limited within those born of the place, or outsiders.
He asks, "And you've your Antivan vineyard, I suppose?"
no subject
(Marcus' hand is very warm, and he can feel his breathing in the gentle movement against the back of his shoulders.)
"Ah, the vineyard." There's some curving shape to it that suggests some rueful, bleakly humorous slant to Flint's mouth in the harsh shadow of his whiskers. "I have some doubts."
Shocking news, he knows.
no subject
"Maybe tomorrow once we've levered this stupid temple out of Venatori hands for good," Marcus says, "you'll feel differently about it."
And Research could consider finding nicer and more temperate locations for them to excavate and murder for. But here, he has summoned back the subject of tomorrow awaiting them, and then shrinking hours that separate this moment from that. He could trick himself into the comfort of this arrangement as being comparable to being in bed, Flint's back to his chest while they speak of
(not nothing, he isn't speaking just to fill a silence, but out of some errant desire to share something of himself in exchange of Flint's, even if that something is the vague notion of a country and no clear image of what he does once he makes it there)
anything but then he can feel his feet begin to ache in his boots and his back start to protest the slouch required not to brush his head on the canvas, and so. Wisdom it is, his hands shifting now to Flint's shoulders, a squeeze to signal, "I should see to that rest."
no subject
A lingering beat there under the shape of Marcus' hands. Then, with a low hum of assent, Flint shifts the distribution of his weight forward. There. Agreed. Done. That was decided some minutes ago, and there has been no change in opinion.
"Shake out your bedroll before you lay down in it," is just sound advice.
no subject
His reply is exhale-adjacent, only heard by virtue of the close confines of the tent, smothering out the rest of the campsite. Another beat, and then a scuff of boots and the sound of the flap being pushed aside. Chill night air, briefly, presses against Flint's now warmed back, and then he is left to conclude his evening and his tankard of ale.