Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2024-07-04 01:09 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2024-07-04 01:09 pm
Entry tags:
Fanfiction: Regrets (Final Fantasy XVI, Joshua/Clive)
Here's a fic I wasn't expecting to write!
This originally started life as a tiny Clive/Joshua ficlet in response to a Final Fantasy Kiss Battle request bythreewalls, earlier in the year. The idea kept nagging at me, and eventually I sat down and expanded it into this.
Please enjoy(?) this troubling Final Fantasy XVI incest fic.
Title: Regrets
Fandom: Final Fantasy XVI
Rating: 15
Pairing: Joshua/Clive
Wordcount: 2,900
Summary: A suspicion is beginning to grow in Clive’s mind, the only thing he can think of that might make Joshua hesitate like this. “Do you want Jill?”
Warnings: Incest, reluctant consent, implied past abuse.
“Joshua!” Clive sets a hand on Joshua’s shoulder, affecting joviality to cover his nerves. “I feel we’ve barely had a chance to have a proper conversation lately.”
“I suppose Cid the Outlaw is a busy man,” Joshua says, smiling a little.
“I’ve found some time,” Clive says. “Will you come to my chambers?”
The smile fades, and Joshua looks back at him for what feels like a moment too long before he says, “Yes, of course.”
-
They start out with surface-level chatter; it’s pleasant enough, and Clive is constantly aware of what a miracle it is that he can speak with Joshua at all. But he asked his brother here with a particular question on his mind, and he suspects, from the tension in the way Joshua is holding himself, that they both know they’re not just here for casual conversation.
At last, Joshua makes an offhand reference to their time apart, and Clive forces himself to acknowledge that the moment has come.
Clive sits forward on his chair. “Why didn’t you tell me you were alive?”
There is a long silence.
“I wanted to protect you,” Joshua says. It sounds careful, as stiffly rehearsed as any of Joshua’s roles in family plays when he was a boy. “I wasn’t sure of Ultima’s power. I was afraid it would break free if it sensed you near.”
“You could have sent word,” Clive says.
“To where?” Joshua asks. “You weren’t living under your name.”
“Look me in the eye and tell me you couldn’t have found me,” Clive says. “Tell me you didn’t know where I was for a moment in all these eighteen years.”
“You were lost to me for a long time,” Joshua says. “But...” He hesitates. “But you have the truth of it. In more recent years, I might have found you.”
Clive is afraid of the answer. But it’s a question that must be asked. “Do you regret that we crossed paths again?”
“No,” Joshua says, at once. “It’s more than I could have hoped for.”
Clive closes his eyes, lets out a slow breath. It cuts him, still, the knowledge of all those years lost without Joshua at his side. But he feared, for a moment, that he might have to give up his brother again. They have time now, at least.
“Is there a reason, then?” he asks, opening his eyes. “That you never reached out to me?”
Joshua drops his gaze from Clive’s face.
“You’ve caught me in too many lies already,” Joshua says to the floor, with a small smile. “There seems little point in telling the truth when I’ve given you so little cause to believe anything I say.”
Not lies, exactly. Careful truths, Clive might call them. I wasn’t sure of Ultima’s power. You weren’t living under your name. Joshua never liked outright lying, even when he was a boy. “I’d like to think I know my brother well enough to be able to tell when he’s being genuine.”
“Ah, but do you?” Joshua asks, looking back up at him. “Perhaps that’s the trouble.”
What? “What do you mean?”
“There were thirteen years when I couldn’t have reached you,” Joshua says. “Time enough for childhood to end for both of us. I had changed, by the time I realised you still lived. I knew the same would be true of you.”
It’s strange to see how much Joshua has changed; Clive can’t deny that. It can be difficult, sometimes, to convince himself that the man before him is the same boy he once knew. But is that the reason Joshua kept his distance for so long? He can’t make sense of it. “We’re still brothers. Time can’t take that from us.”
“True,” Joshua says, “but we aren’t the children we used to be. I knew our relationship couldn’t be the same.” He pauses. “I suppose I wasn’t ready to see what it would become.”
“I still love you,” Clive says. “Never doubt that.”
Joshua gives him a half-smile. “I know. But our love is a different creature, now.”
Clive’s instinct is to deny it. But it’s true; they are no longer the people they were. Joshua may be alive, but that young boy still exists only in Clive’s memories.
“Did your fears come to pass, then?” Clive asks. “Is our relationship now not as you would wish? I can find more time for you, if you need it.”
Joshua seems to hesitate.
“Not as I would wish, no,” he says, slowly.
It aches a little to hear it. Clive spreads a hand. “What can I do to help?”
“I fear speaking further might lead us to lose what we already have between us,” Joshua says. “It might be better to hold my tongue.”
“Nothing could make me abandon you,” Clive says, instantly, to cover his fear. Is there any chance it could be true? But Clive attacked Joshua as Ifrit when they were children, and yet Joshua is still willing to speak to him; what could come between them now? “Tell me.”
Joshua closes his eyes for a moment. Breathes in, breathes out. When he opens them again, he seems calmer.
“I suppose I survived long enough without you,” he says. “If you can no longer look at me, I’ll manage somehow.”
“Don’t speak like that,” Clive says. A suspicion is beginning to grow in his mind, the only thing he can think of that might make Joshua hesitate like this. “Do you want Jill?”
Joshua looks him straight in the eye. It’s a long few seconds before he speaks. “I want you.”
Clive hears the words, but he can’t make sense of them. They fall apart the moment he tries to piece their meaning together, like a mechanism missing a cog. “You—”
“I want you,” Joshua says, with the sudden confidence of someone who’s already past the moment they feared, “in the way you think I might want Jill.”
Clive stares at him. “Joshua, this is a poor joke.”
“I would spend a night with you if you’d have me,” Joshua says.
No. No, he can’t – this can’t—
Clive has to cover his mouth, look away from Joshua, the image of what spend a night means suddenly pressing and insistent in his mind.
Clive asked. Clive asked to hear this, and now it’s been heard and understood; there’s no undoing that. He’s terrified, suddenly, of the scars this will leave on their bond.
He fully understands, in this instant, why Joshua was so hesitant. Why couldn’t he have hesitated more?
“Such things are not spoken of.” Clive’s voice seems strangled, somehow; he can barely force it out of himself. He steels himself enough to look back at Joshua. “They are – they are profane; they are envisioned only by the sick in mind. Joshua—”
“So says the man working to tear down society,” Joshua says, perfectly even. “Object if you will, but at least give me your own objections; don’t hide behind the words of others.”
“Some transgressions—” Clive has to pause and swallow. “Some transgressions are written into us on a deeper level. Deeper than law, deeper than—” He can’t grasp what he’s trying to articulate. “There are things that can never be done.”
“Men transgress in many ways, and worse,” Joshua says. “We both know this.”
It near stops Clive’s breath in his chest. Does his brother know what was done to him under the empire’s care; does he suspect? Was Joshua—?
No. Phoenix Gate. He’s speaking of Phoenix Gate; he has to be.
“And we must be better than them,” Clive says.
Joshua raises his hands in a quick, conciliatory motion. “Very well. I’ll offend you no further.”
He leaves. Clive stays staring at the door for a moment, frozen, then moves quickly to bolt it. Sits down on the floor, his back against the wood.
He feels intensely aware, in this moment, of how many years lie between himself and his childhood. It’s impossible to reconcile the Joshua who was just in here, speaking of the unthinkable with calm conviction, with the timid boy he once knew.
It’s easier that way, isn’t it? If he can’t think of them as the same Joshua?
Easier to do what? Not to forget, evidently; here he is, still haunted.
He tries to hold on to that thought. That the Joshua who propositioned him is a different man: a different age, a different voice, a different attitude. An ally who came to invite Clive into his bed, and who Clive turned down, because—
Well, because he has other things to focus on, he supposes.
He needs to forget about it, he tells himself. But the next morning he catches Joshua’s eye at breakfast, and he knows in an instant that there’s no forgetting. This knowledge is living under the surface for both of them, now, like rot in the hull of a ship.
-
“Your brother was looking for you,” Charon says, offhand. “Think he’s waiting in your chambers.”
There was a time, only a month or two ago, when that knowledge wouldn’t have felt like a hand gripping Clive’s innards. But a lot has changed in the past month; the darkness of the sky is a testament to that.
“Thank you,” Clive says, trying to make the words sound easy.
He takes his time touring the hideaway, seeing whether anyone has tasks he could help with. Eventually, Mid tosses her braid back over her shoulder, folds her arms and says, “Look, don’t get me wrong, I’m always glad to have a willing pair of hands, but I’d have thought you had better things to do.”
“No ambitious projects?” Clive asks. “Perhaps you’ll be the one to save us all.”
“Plenty of projects,” Mid says. “But that sky’s looking like it’s going to fall on us, and someone’ll need to stop it if I’m going to see any of them through. You’d better get a move on.”
Blunt as her father. There’s been little cause for smiling lately, but Clive somehow manages to find a smile in himself. “I suppose so.”
It’s foolish to be afraid of his brother, he tells himself, with all they’re facing. He should return to his chambers and prepare. Whatever Joshua wants—
Whatever Joshua wants, he’ll listen to Clive’s wishes. There’s no undoing that terrible conversation, the times Clive has caught Joshua looking at him, which means there’s no clearing Clive’s mind; there’s no returning to those too-brief days when they could speak easily. But he can be sure of that much, at least.
-
No Joshua in his chambers, at first glance, and Clive allows himself a moment of relief. He’ll seek Joshua out, tell him he heard he was looking for him, and they can have a conversation in public. Somewhere safer.
His eye falls on the door to his balcony. It’s open.
It’s so tempting to tell himself he hasn’t noticed. He came here looking for Joshua; Joshua was absent; he left. It’s a believable story.
He steels himself and walks out onto the balcony.
Joshua is there, of course, leaning on the wooden rail. Looking out at the scenery beyond the hideaway: the water, the mountains, that damned oppressive sky.
He’s showing no sign that he knows Clive is there, but he must have noticed his approach. It’s a relief, in a way, not to be acknowledged: to have a little longer to prepare for their interaction. Clive takes a moment to study his profile, the red of his clothes a constant reminder of their origins.
“There’s much talk of the world ending,” Joshua says at last, his eyes still on the dulled sky.
Clive laughs, very quietly.
Joshua turns to face him at last. “You don’t believe it?”
He had been so relieved to hear talk of the apocalypse, rather than anything else. It had struck him how absurd a reaction that was; that’s why he laughed.
He can’t say that, of course. “It’s difficult to know what to believe.”
“If we’re to challenge Ultima,” Joshua says, “the world might be ending for us, whether it carries on or not.”
Clive shakes his head. “I won’t pretend it’s not dangerous, but we need to believe in a future. We need to plan for it.”
“I am planning for the future,” Joshua says. “I want a future where I can die without regrets.”
It chokes off anything Clive could have said in response.
“Perhaps we should take this conversation to your chambers,” Joshua says, his tone darkening a little at the edges.
No, Clive wants to say. We should stay out here, where we can be seen, where it’s safe. But Joshua is walking towards him, and Clive’s feet are responding almost without his input, backing him into the room.
“I will give everything I have to keep you alive,” Clive says, fervent. It’s no mere excuse; he means it, he means it intensely. “Don’t think of your death. I’ll see you through this, no matter what it takes.”
Joshua’s expression softens as he closes the door behind them. “And you still wonder why I want you.”
Clive feels like a cornered animal. It’s strange, to love someone so much, to want to protect them, and at the same time to be so afraid of them. He tries again to call on that comforting illusion: the pretence that this man who desires him and the boy from his past are different creatures, that they share nothing but a name. “I know what you want. I thought I made my answer clear.”
Joshua shakes his head. “You never gave me your answer. You spoke about right and wrong. You never told me what you wanted.”
It goes without saying, doesn’t it? What he wants—
What he wants—
What he wants is to protect Joshua. And Joshua has said he wants to die without regrets.
Clive’s breath catches in his chest. He came here afraid of more uncomfortable conversations, unwanted thoughts. It never occurred to him, not until this instant, to be afraid of what he might do.
Joshua’s regret would be to die without being touched. If Clive touches Joshua, he’ll regret it for the rest of his life; he knows this with perfect certainty. They cannot both die without regrets.
But it’s always been Clive’s task to look after Joshua, to sacrifice for him, and he can’t abandon that duty now.
He takes his first step towards Joshua, rather than away. An unsteady movement; his legs are shaking, the knowledge of his decision unwinding through him in chaotic ribbons of heat and fear.
Another step. Joshua glances down at Clive’s feet, up at his face, and the sudden open hope in his expression is almost painful. Clive stops dead.
“Just the one night,” Clive says, his mouth dry as Dhalmekia.
Joshua nods. “That’s all I want.”
It’s Joshua who closes that final short distance between them. Clive braces himself, not sure what to expect, but Joshua only takes Clive’s wrist in both his hands, begins to unbuckle his gauntlet.
“You’re sure?” Joshua asks, speaking down to their hands.
There’s a beauty to Joshua; there’s no denying that. Clive needs to focus on details like that, and not—
“Are you sure?” Clive asks. It isn’t an answer, he knows. And yet, in a way, it is.
Joshua kisses Clive’s knuckles and looks up at him, his eyes dark in a way Clive’s never seen on him before. “Always.”
It’s enough. That’s enough. A favour, a favour to someone who only happens to share Joshua’s name, and Clive has to close his eyes for a moment against the twisting in his abdomen.
When he opens them again, the red of Joshua’s clothes jars him. He reaches out without thinking to unwind Joshua’s scarf, and the fact that he’s undressing Joshua hits him in the action, spreads heat down his body like hellfire.
“My brother Joshua was dead to me for so long,” Clive says. It feels important, suddenly, to say it aloud. “It feels like the man I’ve met in adulthood is someone else.” He hesitates. “Someone important. I don’t mean to say I don’t care for you. But not the same person.”
“Whatever makes this easier for you, Clive,” Joshua says, gently.
A different person; a second Joshua. An ally, but not kin. Sometimes, when he’s trying to ease the torment of knowing Joshua’s desires, Clive can almost believe it.
But then something will strike him. A laugh, a cough, the way the light catches Joshua’s hair: something will strip away all the years since Phoenix Gate, and suddenly it’s as if they’re back in Rosaria, two brothers young and unsuspecting.
“We don’t know how much time we have left together,” Joshua says. He’s so close, close enough to feel dangerous, and Clive has to close his eyes again and rein Ifrit in. “Let’s not waste it with shame.”
A friend, Clive tells himself, as Joshua kisses him. An ally. But not my brother. And, when that doesn’t work, A stranger. Someone I’ve met in a tavern. We’ll spend the night together, and then we’ll go our separate ways.
He brings his hands up to touch Joshua’s hair, almost without thought, and it’s Joshua, unmistakably, painfully. His hair was always so distinctive.
There’s no going back. They’ve stepped off a cliff together; they’re already falling. Does he think he can stop this here and they’ll both just forget it happened?
He tightens his grip on Joshua’s hair and kisses him harder.
This originally started life as a tiny Clive/Joshua ficlet in response to a Final Fantasy Kiss Battle request by
threewalls, earlier in the year. The idea kept nagging at me, and eventually I sat down and expanded it into this.Please enjoy(?) this troubling Final Fantasy XVI incest fic.
Title: Regrets
Fandom: Final Fantasy XVI
Rating: 15
Pairing: Joshua/Clive
Wordcount: 2,900
Summary: A suspicion is beginning to grow in Clive’s mind, the only thing he can think of that might make Joshua hesitate like this. “Do you want Jill?”
Warnings: Incest, reluctant consent, implied past abuse.
“Joshua!” Clive sets a hand on Joshua’s shoulder, affecting joviality to cover his nerves. “I feel we’ve barely had a chance to have a proper conversation lately.”
“I suppose Cid the Outlaw is a busy man,” Joshua says, smiling a little.
“I’ve found some time,” Clive says. “Will you come to my chambers?”
The smile fades, and Joshua looks back at him for what feels like a moment too long before he says, “Yes, of course.”
They start out with surface-level chatter; it’s pleasant enough, and Clive is constantly aware of what a miracle it is that he can speak with Joshua at all. But he asked his brother here with a particular question on his mind, and he suspects, from the tension in the way Joshua is holding himself, that they both know they’re not just here for casual conversation.
At last, Joshua makes an offhand reference to their time apart, and Clive forces himself to acknowledge that the moment has come.
Clive sits forward on his chair. “Why didn’t you tell me you were alive?”
There is a long silence.
“I wanted to protect you,” Joshua says. It sounds careful, as stiffly rehearsed as any of Joshua’s roles in family plays when he was a boy. “I wasn’t sure of Ultima’s power. I was afraid it would break free if it sensed you near.”
“You could have sent word,” Clive says.
“To where?” Joshua asks. “You weren’t living under your name.”
“Look me in the eye and tell me you couldn’t have found me,” Clive says. “Tell me you didn’t know where I was for a moment in all these eighteen years.”
“You were lost to me for a long time,” Joshua says. “But...” He hesitates. “But you have the truth of it. In more recent years, I might have found you.”
Clive is afraid of the answer. But it’s a question that must be asked. “Do you regret that we crossed paths again?”
“No,” Joshua says, at once. “It’s more than I could have hoped for.”
Clive closes his eyes, lets out a slow breath. It cuts him, still, the knowledge of all those years lost without Joshua at his side. But he feared, for a moment, that he might have to give up his brother again. They have time now, at least.
“Is there a reason, then?” he asks, opening his eyes. “That you never reached out to me?”
Joshua drops his gaze from Clive’s face.
“You’ve caught me in too many lies already,” Joshua says to the floor, with a small smile. “There seems little point in telling the truth when I’ve given you so little cause to believe anything I say.”
Not lies, exactly. Careful truths, Clive might call them. I wasn’t sure of Ultima’s power. You weren’t living under your name. Joshua never liked outright lying, even when he was a boy. “I’d like to think I know my brother well enough to be able to tell when he’s being genuine.”
“Ah, but do you?” Joshua asks, looking back up at him. “Perhaps that’s the trouble.”
What? “What do you mean?”
“There were thirteen years when I couldn’t have reached you,” Joshua says. “Time enough for childhood to end for both of us. I had changed, by the time I realised you still lived. I knew the same would be true of you.”
It’s strange to see how much Joshua has changed; Clive can’t deny that. It can be difficult, sometimes, to convince himself that the man before him is the same boy he once knew. But is that the reason Joshua kept his distance for so long? He can’t make sense of it. “We’re still brothers. Time can’t take that from us.”
“True,” Joshua says, “but we aren’t the children we used to be. I knew our relationship couldn’t be the same.” He pauses. “I suppose I wasn’t ready to see what it would become.”
“I still love you,” Clive says. “Never doubt that.”
Joshua gives him a half-smile. “I know. But our love is a different creature, now.”
Clive’s instinct is to deny it. But it’s true; they are no longer the people they were. Joshua may be alive, but that young boy still exists only in Clive’s memories.
“Did your fears come to pass, then?” Clive asks. “Is our relationship now not as you would wish? I can find more time for you, if you need it.”
Joshua seems to hesitate.
“Not as I would wish, no,” he says, slowly.
It aches a little to hear it. Clive spreads a hand. “What can I do to help?”
“I fear speaking further might lead us to lose what we already have between us,” Joshua says. “It might be better to hold my tongue.”
“Nothing could make me abandon you,” Clive says, instantly, to cover his fear. Is there any chance it could be true? But Clive attacked Joshua as Ifrit when they were children, and yet Joshua is still willing to speak to him; what could come between them now? “Tell me.”
Joshua closes his eyes for a moment. Breathes in, breathes out. When he opens them again, he seems calmer.
“I suppose I survived long enough without you,” he says. “If you can no longer look at me, I’ll manage somehow.”
“Don’t speak like that,” Clive says. A suspicion is beginning to grow in his mind, the only thing he can think of that might make Joshua hesitate like this. “Do you want Jill?”
Joshua looks him straight in the eye. It’s a long few seconds before he speaks. “I want you.”
Clive hears the words, but he can’t make sense of them. They fall apart the moment he tries to piece their meaning together, like a mechanism missing a cog. “You—”
“I want you,” Joshua says, with the sudden confidence of someone who’s already past the moment they feared, “in the way you think I might want Jill.”
Clive stares at him. “Joshua, this is a poor joke.”
“I would spend a night with you if you’d have me,” Joshua says.
No. No, he can’t – this can’t—
Clive has to cover his mouth, look away from Joshua, the image of what spend a night means suddenly pressing and insistent in his mind.
Clive asked. Clive asked to hear this, and now it’s been heard and understood; there’s no undoing that. He’s terrified, suddenly, of the scars this will leave on their bond.
He fully understands, in this instant, why Joshua was so hesitant. Why couldn’t he have hesitated more?
“Such things are not spoken of.” Clive’s voice seems strangled, somehow; he can barely force it out of himself. He steels himself enough to look back at Joshua. “They are – they are profane; they are envisioned only by the sick in mind. Joshua—”
“So says the man working to tear down society,” Joshua says, perfectly even. “Object if you will, but at least give me your own objections; don’t hide behind the words of others.”
“Some transgressions—” Clive has to pause and swallow. “Some transgressions are written into us on a deeper level. Deeper than law, deeper than—” He can’t grasp what he’s trying to articulate. “There are things that can never be done.”
“Men transgress in many ways, and worse,” Joshua says. “We both know this.”
It near stops Clive’s breath in his chest. Does his brother know what was done to him under the empire’s care; does he suspect? Was Joshua—?
No. Phoenix Gate. He’s speaking of Phoenix Gate; he has to be.
“And we must be better than them,” Clive says.
Joshua raises his hands in a quick, conciliatory motion. “Very well. I’ll offend you no further.”
He leaves. Clive stays staring at the door for a moment, frozen, then moves quickly to bolt it. Sits down on the floor, his back against the wood.
He feels intensely aware, in this moment, of how many years lie between himself and his childhood. It’s impossible to reconcile the Joshua who was just in here, speaking of the unthinkable with calm conviction, with the timid boy he once knew.
It’s easier that way, isn’t it? If he can’t think of them as the same Joshua?
Easier to do what? Not to forget, evidently; here he is, still haunted.
He tries to hold on to that thought. That the Joshua who propositioned him is a different man: a different age, a different voice, a different attitude. An ally who came to invite Clive into his bed, and who Clive turned down, because—
Well, because he has other things to focus on, he supposes.
He needs to forget about it, he tells himself. But the next morning he catches Joshua’s eye at breakfast, and he knows in an instant that there’s no forgetting. This knowledge is living under the surface for both of them, now, like rot in the hull of a ship.
“Your brother was looking for you,” Charon says, offhand. “Think he’s waiting in your chambers.”
There was a time, only a month or two ago, when that knowledge wouldn’t have felt like a hand gripping Clive’s innards. But a lot has changed in the past month; the darkness of the sky is a testament to that.
“Thank you,” Clive says, trying to make the words sound easy.
He takes his time touring the hideaway, seeing whether anyone has tasks he could help with. Eventually, Mid tosses her braid back over her shoulder, folds her arms and says, “Look, don’t get me wrong, I’m always glad to have a willing pair of hands, but I’d have thought you had better things to do.”
“No ambitious projects?” Clive asks. “Perhaps you’ll be the one to save us all.”
“Plenty of projects,” Mid says. “But that sky’s looking like it’s going to fall on us, and someone’ll need to stop it if I’m going to see any of them through. You’d better get a move on.”
Blunt as her father. There’s been little cause for smiling lately, but Clive somehow manages to find a smile in himself. “I suppose so.”
It’s foolish to be afraid of his brother, he tells himself, with all they’re facing. He should return to his chambers and prepare. Whatever Joshua wants—
Whatever Joshua wants, he’ll listen to Clive’s wishes. There’s no undoing that terrible conversation, the times Clive has caught Joshua looking at him, which means there’s no clearing Clive’s mind; there’s no returning to those too-brief days when they could speak easily. But he can be sure of that much, at least.
No Joshua in his chambers, at first glance, and Clive allows himself a moment of relief. He’ll seek Joshua out, tell him he heard he was looking for him, and they can have a conversation in public. Somewhere safer.
His eye falls on the door to his balcony. It’s open.
It’s so tempting to tell himself he hasn’t noticed. He came here looking for Joshua; Joshua was absent; he left. It’s a believable story.
He steels himself and walks out onto the balcony.
Joshua is there, of course, leaning on the wooden rail. Looking out at the scenery beyond the hideaway: the water, the mountains, that damned oppressive sky.
He’s showing no sign that he knows Clive is there, but he must have noticed his approach. It’s a relief, in a way, not to be acknowledged: to have a little longer to prepare for their interaction. Clive takes a moment to study his profile, the red of his clothes a constant reminder of their origins.
“There’s much talk of the world ending,” Joshua says at last, his eyes still on the dulled sky.
Clive laughs, very quietly.
Joshua turns to face him at last. “You don’t believe it?”
He had been so relieved to hear talk of the apocalypse, rather than anything else. It had struck him how absurd a reaction that was; that’s why he laughed.
He can’t say that, of course. “It’s difficult to know what to believe.”
“If we’re to challenge Ultima,” Joshua says, “the world might be ending for us, whether it carries on or not.”
Clive shakes his head. “I won’t pretend it’s not dangerous, but we need to believe in a future. We need to plan for it.”
“I am planning for the future,” Joshua says. “I want a future where I can die without regrets.”
It chokes off anything Clive could have said in response.
“Perhaps we should take this conversation to your chambers,” Joshua says, his tone darkening a little at the edges.
No, Clive wants to say. We should stay out here, where we can be seen, where it’s safe. But Joshua is walking towards him, and Clive’s feet are responding almost without his input, backing him into the room.
“I will give everything I have to keep you alive,” Clive says, fervent. It’s no mere excuse; he means it, he means it intensely. “Don’t think of your death. I’ll see you through this, no matter what it takes.”
Joshua’s expression softens as he closes the door behind them. “And you still wonder why I want you.”
Clive feels like a cornered animal. It’s strange, to love someone so much, to want to protect them, and at the same time to be so afraid of them. He tries again to call on that comforting illusion: the pretence that this man who desires him and the boy from his past are different creatures, that they share nothing but a name. “I know what you want. I thought I made my answer clear.”
Joshua shakes his head. “You never gave me your answer. You spoke about right and wrong. You never told me what you wanted.”
It goes without saying, doesn’t it? What he wants—
What he wants—
What he wants is to protect Joshua. And Joshua has said he wants to die without regrets.
Clive’s breath catches in his chest. He came here afraid of more uncomfortable conversations, unwanted thoughts. It never occurred to him, not until this instant, to be afraid of what he might do.
Joshua’s regret would be to die without being touched. If Clive touches Joshua, he’ll regret it for the rest of his life; he knows this with perfect certainty. They cannot both die without regrets.
But it’s always been Clive’s task to look after Joshua, to sacrifice for him, and he can’t abandon that duty now.
He takes his first step towards Joshua, rather than away. An unsteady movement; his legs are shaking, the knowledge of his decision unwinding through him in chaotic ribbons of heat and fear.
Another step. Joshua glances down at Clive’s feet, up at his face, and the sudden open hope in his expression is almost painful. Clive stops dead.
“Just the one night,” Clive says, his mouth dry as Dhalmekia.
Joshua nods. “That’s all I want.”
It’s Joshua who closes that final short distance between them. Clive braces himself, not sure what to expect, but Joshua only takes Clive’s wrist in both his hands, begins to unbuckle his gauntlet.
“You’re sure?” Joshua asks, speaking down to their hands.
There’s a beauty to Joshua; there’s no denying that. Clive needs to focus on details like that, and not—
“Are you sure?” Clive asks. It isn’t an answer, he knows. And yet, in a way, it is.
Joshua kisses Clive’s knuckles and looks up at him, his eyes dark in a way Clive’s never seen on him before. “Always.”
It’s enough. That’s enough. A favour, a favour to someone who only happens to share Joshua’s name, and Clive has to close his eyes for a moment against the twisting in his abdomen.
When he opens them again, the red of Joshua’s clothes jars him. He reaches out without thinking to unwind Joshua’s scarf, and the fact that he’s undressing Joshua hits him in the action, spreads heat down his body like hellfire.
“My brother Joshua was dead to me for so long,” Clive says. It feels important, suddenly, to say it aloud. “It feels like the man I’ve met in adulthood is someone else.” He hesitates. “Someone important. I don’t mean to say I don’t care for you. But not the same person.”
“Whatever makes this easier for you, Clive,” Joshua says, gently.
A different person; a second Joshua. An ally, but not kin. Sometimes, when he’s trying to ease the torment of knowing Joshua’s desires, Clive can almost believe it.
But then something will strike him. A laugh, a cough, the way the light catches Joshua’s hair: something will strip away all the years since Phoenix Gate, and suddenly it’s as if they’re back in Rosaria, two brothers young and unsuspecting.
“We don’t know how much time we have left together,” Joshua says. He’s so close, close enough to feel dangerous, and Clive has to close his eyes again and rein Ifrit in. “Let’s not waste it with shame.”
A friend, Clive tells himself, as Joshua kisses him. An ally. But not my brother. And, when that doesn’t work, A stranger. Someone I’ve met in a tavern. We’ll spend the night together, and then we’ll go our separate ways.
He brings his hands up to touch Joshua’s hair, almost without thought, and it’s Joshua, unmistakably, painfully. His hair was always so distinctive.
There’s no going back. They’ve stepped off a cliff together; they’re already falling. Does he think he can stop this here and they’ll both just forget it happened?
He tightens his grip on Joshua’s hair and kisses him harder.
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Ooh, love this! And the complexities of how Clive reacts, and the fact that he doesn't know whether Joshua knows about what he's been through. If Joshua did know, what would that mean? It's all so sinister and yet they do care for each other.
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