Work Text:
(1)
The knock at the door is quiet even in the silence of night, its rapping a rhythm that Clive holds dear to his heart. A secret knock that he and his brother and Jill devised so the three of them would always know if it was one of the others calling.
"Come in," Clive whispers, and the door slides open silently on well-oiled hinges to reveal his little brother, dressed in nightclothes with his fiery blond hair tousled in a way his nursemaids would never normally allow.
"I can't sleep," Joshua says quietly once he's closed the door behind him. "Will you read to me, Clive?"
If their mother catches Joshua in here, it will be Clive who is punished for it. In the interest of self-preservation, his smartest move would be to get up out of bed and escort the young heir to the throne back to his chambers.
But Clive's never been one to worry too much about his own well-being. He's also never been very good at saying no to his brother.
The older boy shifts closer to the edge of his bed to make room, then turns down the blanket beside him in a silent answer. Joshua's eyes light up, and the little boy is quick to accept the invitation, scrambling up onto the mattress and curling into his brother's side for a quick hug before leaning across him to inspect the ever-present stack of books that sits by Clive's bedside.
"Can we read this one?" Joshua asks, selecting a volume wrapped in red leather.
Clive guesses that his brother chose it based on the colour, and he silently thanks the Founder that the book has an innocuous title.
In the past year or so, Clive has started sneaking into the areas of Rosalith's library reserved for adults and selecting his reading material from the forbidden shelves meant for grown men. Many of the books he reads now contain violence far beyond anything he's yet witnessed, and language that might even make some of the full-fledged Shields blush. Nudity is common and the romances don't stop at gentle kisses or hand-holding.
The volume held in his brother's innocent little fingers just happens to be one of the most detailed he's come across yet.
"Are you sure you wouldn't prefer this one?" Clive asks, trying to act casual as he picks up a slim volume with a grey cover. "It's about a prince who befriends a dragon, and the two join forces to do battle against a great evil that threatens their entire realm."
Joshua's eyes go wide with excitement. "Really? How does he become friends with a dragon?"
Clive grins at the little boy tucked in beside him, his own excitement not entirely feigned. "Shall we start reading and find out?"
-
(2)
"Is that your boner poking into me, Wyvern?"
"It's not," Clive answers, thankful that it's the truth. There was a time when lying in such close proximity to two other men would definitely have set something in him aflame, but the necessity of sharing body heat to fight off the winter cold has long since rendered him immune. It's been a long time since he last had the luxury of sleeping with a blanket.
"Well, what is it, then?" The words are followed by Biast's hands, the both of them groping around in Clive's clothes as they search for the object offending him.
The unexpected contact of cold armour against bare skin makes Clive jump. "What the fuck, Biast?" he asks, but no sooner are the words out of his mouth than the other man's hands are retreating with their prize, turning the rectangular object from side-to-side as he inspects it in the dim light of their fire.
"Is this a book, Wyvern? Where the hell'd you even get one?"
"From our last mark in the Republic," Clive mutters, strangely embarrassed to admit to the theft, though it's hardly the first time he's stolen something from someone he was sent to kill. A book feels far more frivolous and forbidden than the food and supplies he'd usually take, but with shelves of leather-bound novels within easy reach in the dead man's quarters, Clive hadn't been able to help himself.
"Why'd you steal something like this?" Biast asks in honest confusion as he flips through the pages. "Don't see any pictures. Can you even read?"
"Of course he can read," Aevis answers before Clive can say anything, his footsteps crunching in the snow as he appears on the edge of their firelight and rejoins their conversation. He slides into the small space between Clive and Tiamat, his body a chilled line along Clive's left side after his patrol of the perimeter. "Our Wyvern here used to be a Lord."
"How could I forget?" Biast asks with a cackle. "Wouldn't that've been a sight to see? Little Lord Branded running rampant in Rosaria! Bet you had servants to feed you and servants to clothe you and servants to wipe your ass back then, didn't you, Wyvern? I bet you even had servants to look after your servants!"
"Shut it, Biast." Tiamat's timely intervention is the closest thing to sympathy Clive will ever get from any of his comrades, and he has to resist the urge to thank the man for even that small courtesy.
Unconcerned by their sergeant's scolding, Biast hands the book back to Clive. "Gonna read it for us?"
"What?" Clive asks, voice blank in his surprise.
"You heard me," Biast says, settling back down against Clive's right side. "Can't have you holding out on our share of the take."
"It has been an age since I last heard a tale I didn't already know," Aevis adds by way of agreement.
Underneath it all, the two of them both sound so earnest in their desire to have the story read to them that there's no resisting the request. "All right," Clive agrees, opening the book to the first page, but finding the firelight too dim to read by. Jostling Biast until he can get his right arm free enough to raise it, Clive sends a lantern of Phoenix fire to hover in the air above them, the flicker of green and orange flame a painful reminder of the last person he read aloud to, back in the days before everything fell apart. Before his mother betrayed them and his father was killed. Before Rosaria fell and Joshua-
"Get on with it already. We don't have all night," Biast prompts loudly, and the sound of his voice startles Clive out of his thoughts before they can spiral and take him too far into the past. The man on his right's done it on purpose, Clive expects, and it's another small thing he can be grateful for.
Clearing his throat, he turns his attention back to the bound parchment in front of him and starts at the beginning. For the first thirty pages or so, he speaks without interruption, all three of his companions silent as they listen with rapt interest. Even Clive finds himself falling into the rhythm of the story and the movements of the characters as he recites them out loud. He gets so involved in the events that are unfolding that it almost comes as a surprise when he reaches a scene that causes him to stutter to a stop.
"The fuck, Wyvern?" Biast says after barely a moment of silence, cramming his elbow into Clive's chest in reprimand. "Keep going! He just convinced her to take off her clothes, for fuck's sake! You can't stop right when it's getting to the good bit."
If he could, Clive would shove the book into the other man's hands and tell him to learn how to read it himself, since he's so eager. But even after all the hardships he's endured, Clive still doesn't care to be cruel. He's the only one here who's had the benefit of an education. The only one of the four of them who ever will. If the others are going to hear the story, it's going to have to be from him.
"Aren't you curious to know what happens next?" Aevis asks in his calm and almost gentle way.
Clive is curious, but he can feel the heat rising in his face as his eyes jump ahead of their own volition. The book is far more detailed than anything he ever found on his father's shelves back in Rosaria, and far more graphic than anything he's managed to experience himself in the years since then. He doesn't know if he can do this.
"Do I have to make it an order, Wyvern?" Tiamat's voice comes from somewhere behind Aevis, exasperated in a manner he usually reserves for Biast's antics.
Clive swallows, knowing he's been beat. Like any Branded, his days of choosing what he does and doesn't want to do are long behind him. "No, Sergeant," he says, turning his eyes back to the page and stammering his way through the next several paragraphs in a strained and self-conscious voice that he barely recognizes as his own.
It gets easier after that first explicit scene, and Clive reads long into the night without any further hesitation. He reads until the sky turns grey and his voice becomes hoarse, still speaking out loud long after all three of his companions have fallen into sleep, Tiamat's arm draped across the man between them and his hand resting against Clive's chest, Aevis' legs tangled with his below the knee, Biast's head resting on his shoulder.
Clive reads until he reaches the end of the story, and only when it's done does he close the book and put out the lantern.
-
(3)
"What's that you're reading?"
"I don't know; it's one of yours." Using his thumb to hold his page, Clive flips the book closed to look at the cover. "Under the Dhalmekian Sun."
"That's a good one," Cid says as he joins Clive on the bed, hair still damp from the baths. "Turn to page one eighty-six."
Clive opens the book again, examining the number on the page his thumb is holding. "I'm not that far yet."
"It's not a book you read for its intricate plotline, lad," Cid says with amusement in his voice. "There's no harm in skipping ahead to the good bit."
Rolling his eyes, Clive does as he's been bade and turns to the page number specified. After skimming through the first few paragraphs, he can feel his eyes widen as heat pulses through him. Clive had thought he was immune to this sort of thing. After that first snowy night reading to the Bastards, Biast had developed a penchant for hunting down the raunchiest novels in existence and whining until Clive agreed to read them. Years of reciting graphic pornography for three avid listeners has long since dulled the ability of words alone to cause his body to react.
But this is different.
Two men instead of a man and a woman like most of the tales he read to the Bastards, and where the stories Biast used to acquire were always uncomfortably crude, this is almost eloquent, the words flowing in and around each other in a heated dance that pulls Clive in along with them. Helpless, he falls into the scene, his fingers quick to turn to the next the page when he reaches the end of the first, unwilling or unable to pause as he takes it all in.
"No fair reading it only to yourself." Cid's voice startles him, and Clive realizes he's become so involved in the book in front of him that he hadn't noticed the other man crawling up the bed so he could speak the admonishment right against Clive's ear.
"Sorry," he says, tearing his eyes away from the page and moving to close the cover. Cid stops him, sliding a hand between the pages and keeping the book from shutting completely.
"I didn't mean you should stop. I meant you should read it out loud."
Heat runs all the way through him again at the thought of what he's being asked. It's one thing to read aloud from the books Biast used to bring him, but quite another to recite something like this. "Cid, I..." he trails off as Cid leans back, green eyes full of fondness and mischief and a desire that Clive's still not used to seeing from him. "All right," he concedes, giving in without the other man actually needing to make any argument.
Even after he's agreed, it still takes Clive quite a bit longer before he can tear his eyes away from Cid and to the book in front of him, flipping back to the first part of the scene. Years spent reading aloud have given him some skill, and though the words are more than enough to make him flush, his voice still speaks them smoothly and without pause.
Beside him, Cid lays quietly on his side, breath tickling against Clive's throat and an arm thrown across Clive's chest. In a movement that's almost absent-minded, his hand begins to move over the loose undershirt Clive's wearing, tracing along seams and the edges of repairs where holes have been stitched closed time and time again. While Cid barely seems to notice he's doing it, Clive finds the movement extremely distracting. The two of them found their way into bed together awhile ago now, but Clive's relative inexperience with this sort of thing after years as a Branded still leaves him overly sensitive and far too easy to excite.
It doesn't help matters that the book is doing enough all on its own without Cid helping it along. The scene he's reading continues on, one page and then a second followed by a third, and all of them imbued with words of heat and longing beyond anything Clive's ever read before.
Drifting down, Cid's fingers trail their way along the hem of Clive's shirt, pausing briefly before his hand slips under it to slide back up with the same slow and seemingly aimless motion. Tracing along muscle instead of seams and scars instead of stitches. Lightly, his hand pulls the fabric up as far as it can go without disturbing Clive's arms and the book held between them.
Clive pauses, his eyes drifting beneath the page to follow the movement of the hand on his bare chest. "Cid..."
"Keep reading," the man murmurs, leaning closer to nuzzle the words into Clive's neck.
"I can't concentrate while you're doing that."
For a moment, he can feel an answering grin pressed against his throat, then the warmth beside him disappears as Cid shifts away, repositioning himself with a knee on either side of Clive's hips. "I think you might be holding out on me, lad," he says with a shrewd look in his eye, and there's a challenge in the words Clive already knows he won't back down from. Cid's always been a little too good at riling him up.
From his new vantage point, Cid watches Clive expectantly as he sits motionless on the younger man's thighs and waits. "Keep reading," he says again.
Clive lifts the book in front of his face, purposefully using it to block out the temptation hovering above him. With determination, he picks up where he left off.
Cid doesn't wait long to reward his obedience, and Clive's barely found his rhythm again when he feels the first touch of Cid's mouth against his chest. He tries to ignore it, but concentrating on the book he's reading doesn't help his situation any. The scene never seems to end, somehow escalating further over each height it manages to reach, and Cid, of course, refuses to go easy on him. They haven't been together like this long, but already the man's figured out much of what makes Clive tick. He knows where and how to touch in order to best make Clive squirm, and when teeth scrape against him none-too-lightly, Cid's hands are already in place, ready to hold Clive down when he tries to arch up.
The teasing is maddening, and Clive only makes it through a handful of paragraphs before he drops the open book to his collarbone. It's too much to focus on. Too much to keep forcing words out through his growing breathlessness.
Barely a moment after Clive stutters to a helpless stop, Cid's mouth leaves him as the man shifts back up the bed to breathe against his ear. "I said, keep reading."
Clive can't help the sound he makes, frustrated and wanting and irritated all at once. Cid sits back to watch him with glittering eyes, and Clive forces himself to lift the book again. It takes a moment to find his place, and when he speaks his voice is strained as he stumbles over simple sentences in a way he hasn't since that first snowy night he read out loud to his comrades.
Satisfied, Cid slides back down his body, mouth leaving a trail of marks as it works its way ever lower. One of Cid's hands leaves Clive's hip, trailing inwards so clever fingers can start picking at laces, and Clive barely makes it through three sentences before he surrenders. He shuts the book and tosses it aside, the volume sliding across the blanket to slip off the bed and thump onto the floor. Clive doesn't pay it any mind as he reaches for the man above him.
Some things are better than books.
-
(+1)
It's one of those nights.
The nights that seem never-ending and darker than all the rest. When the lap of water outside his room is no longer relaxing, instead serving only as a reminder that Clive isn't where he wants to be. That Rosalith stands empty, and the first Hideaway is destroyed. That the few people he's met in his life with the ability to turn any place into home have almost all been lost. When sleep is elusive and all of his worst memories and mistakes are the only things that await him when he dares to close his eyes. Phoenix Gate. The Nysa Defile. Drake's Head.
Clive has a lot of nights like this, nowadays.
There was a time not so long ago when he knew what to do when he found his way into this state. When he could hunt down Cid and with barely a glance the man would know what he needed. Would've weaseled his way out of whatever he was in the middle of to drag Clive up to his solar and smother him in closeness and comfort and quiet words until the darkness blanketing the world once more managed to brighten.
But Cid isn't here now, and he won't be ever again. There's no one left that Clive is willing to burden with his grief. Lost to him is the little brother he could count on for a smile when he was upset. Dead are the comrades who were rough around the edges, but somehow always knew when and how to pull him out of his own mind. All of them gone, just the same as the man whose bed he could crawl into when he the rest of the world became too much.
A full year the people of the Hideaway have had to come to terms with the loss of their home, their friends, and the man who brought them all together, but Clive knows better than most that time can only dull pain, never cure it. Jill has already been through more than enough. Gav and Otto have their own share of sadness and loss to carry. Tarja has traded her healer's robes for leather armour, a precaution she feels the need to take even when safe at home in their new Hideaway.
Clive can't go to any of them. As their leader - as 'Cid the Outlaw' - it's his job to help carry their burdens, not pile his own on top of them.
People aren't the only place one can look to for comfort, of course, but Clive's never been able to find peace in alcohol or other vices. Work could provide a distraction, Clive's certain, but just looking at the small stack of missives and reports Otto's left sitting on the edge of his desk adds to the swimming nausea in his gut and the headache already building behind his eyes.
During his days in the army, training was one surefire way to exhaust himself into sleep, and finding his way down to the training ground they've built by the dock does hold some small promise of relief from his own mind. But even knowing that, Clive still sits at his desk with his head in his hands, unable to convince himself to stand and put the idea into action.
Time has lost all meaning, and he doesn't know how long he's been sitting still in his seat when a knock comes at his door. It's not a sound he recognizes as belonging to one of his frequent visitors, but a quiet rapping of some late night visitor unsure of their welcome. They shouldn't be unsure. He's the Hideaway's leader now, and all should feel comfortable to visit at any hour. Clive forces himself to straighten. To pull his face into something neutral, at least, even if he's not currently capable of a smile.
The door creaks open on unoiled hinges when he calls for the person at the door to enter, and the head that pokes its way around the wooden frame doesn't stand much taller than the handle, a long, blonde braid swinging in and out of sight like a pendulum as the young girl moves.
"I- er- I saw you still had the candles lit," Mid says, more tentative than the rambunctious preteen usually ever is, "And I couldn't sleep. So I figured, since the light was still on, maybe you couldn't sleep neither and could use some company? 'Cause if you can't sleep and I can't sleep, but everyone else is asleep, then it seems like maybe it'd make sense if the two of us were to spend our time stuck awake together?"
Her rambling, roundabout route to her question rolls to a slow stop on a hopeful smile, and it's painful how much she reminds him of Cid. An adopted child, Mid doesn't look anything at all like her father - not in the way Clive still sees nothing but the features he shares with Joshua when he dares to look in a mirror - but her speech and mannerisms are so similar that sometimes it hurts to hear her speak or watch her move.
Clive pushes the thought away. It isn't fair to her for him to think like that.
"Come in," he says, and hopes he's managed to make the words sound welcoming.
Mid wastes no time once she has permission, letting his door fall closed behind her as she steps further into the room. Her eyes gaze about with an avid interest that reminds Clive of the first time he stepped into Cid's solar, and he realizes with a start that the young girl's never come to visit him here before. The two of them have spent enough time together to have become quite close, so the thought is surprising until he casts his own eyes across the room and takes in just how much of what he keeps is actually salvage pulled from the destruction of Cid's. It'd be no wonder if she's actively avoided coming in here all this time.
It was surprising to Clive when he first learned that Cid had a daughter. The man's carefree façade and easy going attitude didn't lend themselves easily to Clive's idea of what parents were like - imposing figures of authority for children to idolize and strive to impress. It only took one conversation with Cid himself about Mid for Clive to realize that he was hopelessly mistaken: Cid was perfectly suited to fatherhood. It was clear in the way he spoke about his little girl, face lit up with fondness and pride. Even as he complained about her disobedience and misbehaviour, the love he had for her was always clear behind his words. So many of his dreams for a better world Clive eventually learned were not only wrapped up in his altruistic desire to help others, but also in his knowledge that the future would one day belong to his daughter.
Cid had plans, Clive knows, to introduce the two of them when next Mid returned home from school after their mission to Drake's Head. He had been so certain that the two of them were going to get along well, and Clive doesn't think he was wrong. Circumstances have made things difficult, of course, but Mid has slotted herself into Clive's life with the same ease that her father once did. Their relationship is different from any other Clive has ever had, and he sometimes catches himself wondering if the girl might've become something like a step-daughter to him, if the life he and Cid had slowly begun building together hadn't ended in the worst possible way.
"Is this one dirty?" Mid asks, and Clive pulls himself up out of his thoughts to see she has one of the books from his bedside table in her hand. The small stack's been there for weeks, but he hasn't started on any of them yet. There was a time not so long ago when losing himself in a well-written story might've been a cure for his sleeplessness, but he gets no joy out of reading anymore. There are too many memories lurking between the pages.
"It's nothing provocative," he tells her without needing to check which volume it is in her hand. On the rare occasion that Clive does try to read for pleasure nowadays, he makes certain that the books never contain anything sexual or even romantic. Not anymore. Not when every scene describing any sort of intimacy is a stark reminder of the man he's lost and the life they almost had together that now sits painfully out of reach.
"My dad used to like dirty books," Mid says, as if following his train of thought. "Was like picking through a swamp full o' morbols trying to read anything in his room."
Clive can't help a small laugh, almost painful as it moves through his chest. "I know."
They both go quiet, each lost in their own thoughts. The frown that's come over Mid's face gives Clive the feeling that she hadn't meant to bring up her father and the words just slipped out. Like she'd forgotten for a moment that he's been gone for the last twelve months and now that she remembers the pain of it is washing over her once again. Clive is the adult here. He's the one who should be offering some sort of comfort, but he doesn't know what to say. He lost his own father amidst of a sea of other tragedies, and there were no condolences to be had amongst the Imperials. Even if he did know the right words to say, he isn't certain he could speak them through his own lingering grief. Not tonight, at least.
As always, Mid almost seems to appreciate the silence that's fallen between them. He's noticed she likes to avoid talking about Cid and the loss of the first Hideaway as much as she can, preferring to bury her pain deep so she can analyze and process it on her own time. It worried him, in the beginning, and it still does, sometimes. But even if she never chooses to share her grief with him out loud, the least he can do is ensure she doesn't have to endure it alone.
Eventually, the young girl recovers with the resilience of the very young, hopping up on his bed and opening the volume she's chosen in her lap. The book may not be dirty, but it certainly isn't meant for children and its contents are far above the reading level of the average twelve year-old. As Mid begins to read aloud without hesitation, Clive marvels as he always does at her brilliance. At the way the difficulty of the words doesn't so much as cause her to pause as she makes her way through several pages before she encounters any issue.
"How the hell d'you say this? It's more'n half vowels." Mid raises her eyes from the book to look at him with expectation in her eyes, and obligingly Clive rises from his seat at his desk to head over to her.
She shuffles to the side to make room for him on the bed the way Clive used to do for Joshua when they were small. Once he's seated, she leans into his side with her head on his shoulder the way Biast often would after he'd convinced his comrade to read to him.
Clive pushes both ghosts from his mind and concentrates on the girl in front of him and the book she's holding out. "Raucous," he says, reading the word near her hovering finger. "It means loud and disorderly."
"Raucous," Mid repeats as she commits the word to memory. "Midadol threw a raucous party, and at that party, Gav was a raucous drunk."
Clive can't help the smile that creeps up onto his face in response to her example. "Exactly."
Mid pulls the book back into her own lap, shifting around and under Clive's arm until she's found a comfortable position beside him. She picks up where she left off, and it doesn't take long for the both of them to become swept up into the story, leaving the real world behind for a tale of fiction and fantasy in a way Clive hasn't been able to since the day the Mothercrystal fell.
They make it just over a third of the way through the book before Mid's words become interrupted by intermittent yawns and finally trail off completely as she slips into sleep. Hands gentle, Clive takes the book from her lap, marking their place with a scrap of parchment in case she wants to come back to it later before setting aside on the table. A nudge to Ifrit puts out all the candles in the room at once, and Clive shifts until he can lay back against the pillows and stare up at the shifting patterns of the watery moonlight reflected on the ceiling.
Mid's breath comes soft and even where she's curled up beside him, the sound of it barely audible over the quiet lap of the lake outside. Tentatively, Clive lifts a hand to run his fingers through the hair at the top of her head and, for the first time in a year, he feels somewhat at peace.