luaithre: (bs401-1857)

[personal profile] luaithre 2023-07-20 12:58 am (UTC)(link)
Older than she is now currently, probably, says the slightly wryly calculating pause before his answer. "Thirty-three," Marcus provides, anyway, relaxing back in his seat. And if there is a prickle of vanity, it is as much if not more so about the long years he'd been more captive than rebel, rather than the years between he and her.

He could assist with the armor, but she has the better angle besides, and that wanting thing in him that settles his hand where it is would like her to do the task. The twinge of his most recent injury is gone, and so there is no bodily distraction from focusing instead on the comfortable weight of her, keeping him where he is. The hand at her hip rises, to fidget with the tunic.

"We'd no proper healers with us, at first," he adds. "But we'd practice with thread and needle. Simple mending."
Edited 2023-07-20 00:58 (UTC)
luaithre: (bs402-0528)

[personal profile] luaithre 2023-07-20 01:18 am (UTC)(link)
Much like when he'd had her against that wall, Marcus is compelled to turn his head, offer a kiss in the form of just brushing his lips against the pad of her thumb, and then further down to find her palm, impress a more specific version of its kind against the curve of skin, tendon, muscle. Hands that can summon raw lightning, or imbue broken things with something hopeful.

"Didn't feel simple," is just as lightly handled. Long enough years that he doesn't with any specificity recall the bite of needle and pull of thread.

He wanders a hand to the one she has rested at his chest, pressing it before he says, "Here," and then guides it slightly down, aside, where she might imagine the rippled stripe of old wound brand across his ribcage and under the cloth.
luaithre: (1)

[personal profile] luaithre 2023-07-20 02:09 am (UTC)(link)
The next time he breathes out, it comes a little heavier. Reacting, blood moving, summoned. Both the settling of her knee shifting further up as well as articulate fingers mapping out the texture of his skin through his clothes. Her attention feels as precise as the gentle set of fingertips at his jaw.

"It has its mirror," Marcus says, voice also near a murmur. "When he drew the sword back, against my arm. And there's the mark next to my knee," and the corner of his mouth lifts breathe, "from when I fell off my horse."

Not all brands of heroism, then.

His moves her hand again. There are, perhaps, more efficient ways she might find out for herself.
luaithre: (bs408-0431)

[personal profile] luaithre 2023-07-20 03:44 am (UTC)(link)
He helps, this time, sitting up and pulling his hand from hers to see to a buckle, and then navigating it off and over. Away, down.

"Aye," Marcus confirms. There is blood soaked into the dark fabric of the remains of his shirt. He has a spare in his saddlebags, somewhere, and is helpful about peeling away this layer as well. He says, as he does so, "He spooked on the road and threw me. I fell into the brush, caught something sharp in the landing. I think it's about the most painful one, of all of them."

Something about that placement, the near dislodging of bone. But of course— "Wasn't his fault," is important to add.

There are other scars. Less substantial than the one hooked up around his ribcage, the one still unseen that curves his knee. A puncture lower down, a burn stripe across the shoulder, a slash across a forearm.

"What of yours?"
luaithre: (201)

[personal profile] luaithre 2023-07-20 04:45 am (UTC)(link)
A short exhale as he's set back into the chair, something that is amused and impatient and interested all at once. The good kind of impatience, a kind of internal friction. Like the tickle of fingers, the edge of a nail, against ribboned semi-unfeeling scarring.

"Sometimes," Marcus says. Conscious of himself, the press of half-hardness against fabric, stirred enough by her proximity, gentle hands and focus. His hand finds a place at her leg again, fingers curling around the back of her thigh. "I don't regret them. There was little cause for scars like these, before."

Other sorts of hurts, certainly, ones that leave their mark; but these all feel like the result of stupidity, recklessness, bravery, and the freedom to be those things.

His grip sures up, at the back of the knee. A firmer tug that might steer her into straddling him properly.
luaithre: (bs401-1966)

[personal profile] luaithre 2023-07-20 07:14 am (UTC)(link)
A quiet grunt leaves him at the pressure, the angle of her knee, not quite getting the thing he was steering for but not to the exclusion of other things. The things she says, the points of contact of her hands. No, he is allowing this, letting her pin him between knee and hands and the hovering over of her attention.

The scar makes for an appealing path, at least. Stippled through his cheek, a natural swoop broken off around the cut of his jaw, hooked back up to his mouth. Messy in the way the injury must have been, whether a healer got to it or not. After a couple of days travel and working, the bristle on his face is less neat than usual, and grows in patchier around those faded seams. It had been nice that he had someone, at the time, willing to touch it just as Derrica is now, and say something kind.

He isn't thinking of that person, eyeline wandered to her mouth, senses attuned to other details he can breathe in, like whatever she last washed her hair with, the clinging of the day to her clothes and skin. (Smoke still clings to him, shirt or no shirt, and the scent of blood wreathes the room.)

The chair creaks. With her leaning and balanced so, he can't claim a kiss without some more determined rearrangement, or pulling her down to meet him. The hand at her thigh skims back up to her waist, fabric of her tunic pulling a little taut as he forms a fist around it.
luaithre: (bs401-1816)

[personal profile] luaithre 2023-07-20 07:50 am (UTC)(link)
It's nearly visible, the relenting. A thing he can give her, a for now somehow clear in these subtle shifts. The way his posture stiffened now undoes itself as Marcus settles those minute ways back, and his hand relaxes from that fist, settling flatter on her waist. Letting his thumb rub small circles where he can feel soft skin beneath fabric.

It is nice to be looked at and touched. Lets the arm near that scar relax, the mirrored marking he'd mentioned a cleaner, fainter slice up the inside of bicep. Dark hair and distinctly sunless skin, as if seven or eight years of freedom still hasn't seen fit to layer in warmer tones, freckles. The thigh that isn't pinned tips aside, and he doesn't mind that the line of his hard cock is more clearly visible, by now, against the seam of grey fabric.

"And then I get to look at you," Marcus says.
luaithre: (bs401-1868)

[personal profile] luaithre 2023-07-20 08:22 am (UTC)(link)
Marcus breathes out at this first thing; nods. Yes, he had been anticipating this, the promise of a room to themselves, the time to spend enjoying it. How he had felt that keen edge of hunger, back in the estate, of baring her right there, and he has practice in checking those more selfish impulses, of riding out the impulse for more when already given so much, without strangling them completely.

Another longer breath out as her warm fingers tuck into the fabric of his waistband. Anticipating. His gaze has dropped that far, only rises back up on a delay at her question.

"Yes," he says. "When I let myself."

There has been some measure of restraint. It's a wonder he allowed himself to deviate enough outside of it for her to even notice, let alone act upon.

"Did you?"
luaithre: (#13636412)

[personal profile] luaithre 2023-07-20 11:25 pm (UTC)(link)
Marcus doesn't know the word, either, that should fit in that space of a pause, but he thinks he knows its shape. Something about what is or is not proper, maybe, or about border-crossings, the delicate definitions that they had defined and redefined. There is no room, here, between the press of her elbow to his chest and the play of her hand, for him to know guilt about it.

His hand guides up the curve of her side, not reseating the fabric or pulling it free, just feeling. Maybe following a path he'd imagined touching before, in fleeting fragments of want and impulse. Things that are better formed, now. Beyond that, he remains still, patient.

"Tell me," he says. Something a little less sober and serious to the question in the following scrape of eye contact. It is an indulgence, to ask. "That once."
luaithre: (bs402-0528)

[personal profile] luaithre 2023-07-21 12:33 am (UTC)(link)
Marcus lifts his chin a little as if anticipating a kiss, even as his focus is interested in her answer. His hand, warm, encouraging that closing of distance, of intimacy, as if on the verge of simply pulling her against him. His other hand lifts where he'd draped it, a gentle skimming of palm to her shoulder, her throat, fingers brushing into hairline.

Not directing, in this moment, but responding in ways where he is otherwise keeping still.

"I might have felt the same that day," he says. "And moments like it. But it was just as often simple things, at a distance. Seeing you at the stables, or tending to someone on the field. I'd feel an impulse to go over, for no good reason."
luaithre: (bs401-1857)

[personal profile] luaithre 2023-07-21 02:18 am (UTC)(link)
That's nice, the feeling of her fingers tugging loose the cord that keeps his hair neatly together. After a long day, there will be a kink pressed into wave, but easily relaxed. Marcus slips his hand further back to Derrica's own more complex arrangement, feeling out the ties that keep her braiding together with patient and careful fingers.

Something to focus on while his impatience simmers closer to the surface, rubs raw in him. At the mix of discomfort and pleasure for the bracing of her knee into his thigh. At his bodily awareness for her nearness.

"I should have," he says, on the topic of stopping instead of passing by.
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[personal profile] luaithre 2023-07-21 03:36 am (UTC)(link)
His hand goes into her only barely undone hair, and his arm wraps around high on her waist. Something like a hungry bite in the way he responds, a closing embrace that helps fit them together here on the chair, though his mouth is gentler, as hers meets it. The flush of his body against hers earning a growled groan of want. Chair creaking.

She pulls back, just enough to speak. Words, the brush of her fingers, her leverage all stay him for the moment.

An acknowledging sound. The arm around her waist loosens, just enough that he can tug the fabric out from her waistband, can slip his hand up to feel up along her spine without obstruction. The chair creaks again in time for him pressing his mouth back against hers, something more like demand in the firmness of it.

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