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Clive is no stranger to the glances Prince Dion shoots in his direction as they journey to the wreckage below Origin to search for signs of Terence. He had received those looks for years: as Wyvern, and before that, as a nameless, fatherless, hopeless Branded, from the free soldiers who had decided that he was pretty enough to stick their cock into, in spite of the ink decorating his face.
Since losing Cid and taking up the man’s title, he has led a mostly celibate life, a combination of grief and survivor’s guilt and plain old responsibilities keeping him from chasing release from another warm body. He knows Cid would be rolling his eyes and cuffing him across the back of the head for denying himself the pleasure. Fucking waste of those gorgeous tits, Lord Rosfield, he can almost hear the other man say. Cid probably would have made him promise to go out and find someone the very next day after Drake’s Head, if he had known that night in the brothel would be their last.
Then again, Clive wouldn’t have let him die if he had known. He would have gladly sacrificed himself and doomed the world in the process to keep a good man like Cid breathing.
Clive rubs his fingertips together, stolen magick generating a tiny violet spark that hurts even through his gloved hand.
“Might I inquire after your thoughts, Ifrit?” Prince Dion asks. Clive’s eyes snap to the other man. The prince is light of foot despite his solid build, wielding his halberd strategically to traverse the treacherous terrain they come across as they enter the Crystalline Dominion. He is grace, and beauty, and pain.
“Clive, please, Your Highness.”
The tiny smile the dragoon allows himself—the first one Clive thinks he has ever seen on him—makes something warm and soft glow in Clive’s chest. He understands the weight on the other man’s shoulders, far too well. He himself has carried the guilt over Phoenix Gate for eighteen years, now for more years than he had been alive when his mother doomed them all to fall at the hands of Sanbreque. Even with the balm of discovering that Joshua had lived, of finally being reunited with his little brother, the shame over that night has stubbornly lingered, his most constant companion.
He knows what it is like to wish for revenge against an enemy that occupies the hollows of his own soul. An enemy that wears his own face, no matter how scarred it may become.
Clive knows that Dion will sacrifice himself in this final battle, just as he had once intended to do. The prince will die, unless he finds a reason to live.
Yet despite it all, Prince Dion is infinitely kind even with the abyss of his destiny looming ever closer. “Will you call me Dion, then, Clive?”
First names are intimate among the noble classes, reserved for family and for childhood friends and for lovers. Clive swallows past a suddenly parched throat at hearing his own name rolling off the other man’s tongue. He sounds lovely wrapped between Dion’s lips.
“If that is what you desire,” Clive inclines his head slightly, “Dion.” He luxuriates in the feel of the prince’s vowels. Dion’s eyes fall to Clive’s mouth when he says the name, and Clive can see a flicker of heat in that amber gaze. Clive imagines repeating the word like a mantra, laid out with the other man fucking into him atop satin sheets, or perhaps more blasphemously, sinking his own hands into blond hair while the prince kneels before him, in worship of the god that Ultima is trying to make him to be.
It’s a lovely fantasy, but that’s all it is. After all, they are here searching for Dion’s lover, and Clive has no right to insert himself between them whether the man is alive or dead. Dion, perhaps, feels similarly, judging by the way his eyes flicker to the ground, and his shoulders slump in a hunch that is entirely uncharacteristic for a prince.
“Did you wish to rest?” Clive offers. In Stonhyrr the prince had fought like someone who had everything to prove and nothing left to lose. Clive had known the man wasn’t truly recovered from the strain of priming over Twinside, the horror of being corrupted by Ultima, the grief and the guilt of losing his father at his own hand. But Clive had willfully ignored all of that in the hope that his people might make it through the battle. And they had—to be greeted in the end by a blackened sky and a city ripped free of its foundations, the same city where Dion had inadvertently sent his lover.
“I wish to reach our destination,” Dion says primly, hefting his lance. The length of his right forearm is wrapped in a bandage, protecting it from view where it would be exposed under his rolled up sleeves. Clive had seen the stone dotting the man’s skin while they waited for him and Joshua to wake in Tarja’s infirmary. The prince’s arm reminded him of Cid’s left—not so far gone, of course, but all the more tragic for being nearly two decades younger than Cid had been, already succumbing to the Crystal’s Curse at a time when he should have been vibrant with life.
Dion is ambidextrous. Clive wonders if this came naturally, or was borne out of necessity when the other man had realized the Curse’s intended path across his own body.
“Of course,” Clive says, instead of the million other things that yearn to burst forth from his chest.
When they set out from Lake Bennumere, Dion had donned a borrowed pair of black trousers and black shirt in an attempt at anonymity, a visual separation of himself from the prince who proudly led the Holy Order of Knights Dragoon. Clive could hardly imagine the other man being able to disguise his identity with how he carries himself and the spear at his side, but nevertheless no one spares them much more than a passing glance as they journey closer to the wreckage of Twinside. Even when they reach the outskirts of the city, where white-clad dragoons roam the streets, searching for survivors and coordinating in crucial supplies, hardly a man looks at the blond twice.
“The dragoons will have set up an infirmary,” Dion tells Clive in a low voice as they stop under the shadow of a stone building.
Clive nods. “You think—most likely he is injured?”
The look that Dion shoots him is as flat as a pristine lake. Clive suppresses a wince. Evidently, the prince thinks that most likely the knight is dead.
“The girl I charged him with finding—she was a healer, in her own way. I believe she would have brought herself to the infirmary to help, if she were able. She may know his fate.”
“Could you not ask the dragoons? Surely they have been keeping a record.”
Dion shudders visibly at that. “I am not so foolish as to assume that my presence here will continue to go unnoticed, but I do not wish to volunteer as a figurehead for guidance that I cannot provide.”
“I understand,” Clive murmurs.
Dion’s lips pitch into a frown, eyes searching Clive’s face. “Perhaps you do.”
They follow winding cobblestone streets towards a section of the city that seems more intact than the rest, where the population of refugees and soldiers becomes dense enough that they can no longer avoid crossing paths with other people. Dion keeps his head bowed, lingering in Clive’s shadow. Clive rolls his shoulders as he tries to shake off the sense of wrongness, of the prince demurring to him rather than the other way around.
The makeshift infirmary sits in a large, two-story building that takes up the majority of a city block. Clive suspects it was once a marketplace—for food, fine goods, bearers—before being repurposed to what it is now. Few pay them heed as they duck into the dimly lit rooms, illuminated by candles rather than now-dead crystals.
“Do you see her?” Clive asks under his breath. Dion is a warm weight at his side as he steps forward to survey the room. There are others here, like them, searching for lost loved ones: mothers crying out in despair when a son or daughter is nowhere to be found, and, less frequently, shouts of joy and exclaimed prayers to Greagor as others are reunited. Clive yearns to capture the other man by the hand, to extend a comfort that he knows will do little to soothe the ache of coming back to this place.
He feels Dion shake his head before the other man speaks. “No. Clive, I do not know if—“
Clive gently shushes him in a low voice, bewildered when the prince obeys him without question. “Let us try upstairs.”
The upstairs of the building houses those who are not so grievously injured, a requirement given the steep stairs that must be climbed to reach the floor. The energy here is lighter, though still respectfully subdued given its proximity to those below.
It is here that they find them, separated only by a thin fabric curtain from a room filled with men who are playing cards and conversing quietly. It is only the oddity of hearing a girl’s voice in this environment that makes Clive take notice; in any other circumstance the sound would wash over his ears and fade into the background.
“That is too much lysa root,” the girl complains, and Clive strains to listen.
“It is exactly enough, according to this recipe.” The responding voice is deep, yet somehow soft and melodic, and it seems to make all the strength deflate from Dion’s muscles at once, despite the perhaps fifty feet between him and the speaker. Clive catches the prince around the waist before he can fall to the ground, but the motion causes his elbow to glance against the door, slamming it shut behind them with a resounding bang.
The room around them goes still, men who are overly nervous grasping for a weapon no longer on their person, and others cringing away from the noise.
White fabric twitches as the smaller of the voices darts out from behind the curtain. The girl’s eyes widen as she takes them in, growing to the size of saucers when she sees the body in his grasp. “Milord!” She stops dead in her tracks, a palm to her chest.
But Clive ignores her completely when the fabric parts once more, and out steps a handsome, brown-haired knight.
Gray eyes sweep quickly across the room, probing into dark recesses to ensure there is no lurking danger before following the gaze of every other person in the room. Clive watches his brow furrow, eyes flickering to meet his own before they narrow in on the man in his arms.
The stranger’s lips part in surprise, a shuddering gasp leaving him grasping for support on the back of an unoccupied chair. He staggers forward, footfalls echoing in a room so full of bodies that they shouldn’t echo at all.
Clive resists the urge to shield the prince, reluctantly relinquishing his hold on the other man as Dion comes to himself and pulls himself upright, straightening clothes and restoring as much dignity as he can while the knight approaches.
“Di—Your Highness,” the brown-haired man says in astonished greeting, once they are mere feet away.
The lines of Dion’s back stiffens, and finally he looks up. “Terence.” The name is wet with emotion as it tumbles out of Dion’s mouth, and yet the two men pause for an awkward moment before Dion offers his arm and Terence grasps it—like they are merely brothers-at-arms rather than everything more—while the room around them watches on.
Clive pities them this world, one of propriety and duty and expectation. His noble station had been ripped away from him so long ago when the Brand was inked onto his cheek, and even though Clive still remembers how to feign at being a lord, he moves more freely without the mantle of Rosfield draped across his shoulders. If he were the man Dion was coming back to, he would have dipped the prince into a passionate kiss, consequences be damned.
“Thank Greagor you are unharmed,” Terence says, palm clapping against Dion’s shoulder. Clive’s lips twist as that, because all of them here know that visible marks are not necessary for there to be harm, and if anyone has experienced harm in the past weeks, it is most certainly Dion Lesage.
“And you, Terence,” the prince says. Their eyes meet in some unspoken conversation that Clive cannot interpret.
The knight’s eyes flick towards him once more, likely unsure whether he owes Clive his gratitude or his anger.
Dion follows the gaze. “We have much to discuss,” he says.
Terence’s eyes widen alarmingly at that, but he wisely doesn’t voice any of his thoughts in such a public space. “Kihel, are you ready?” he asks the girl.
She nods, giving a brief, unpracticed curtsy.
The men around them, though many of them must be soldiers and dragoons too, are either too shocked or too disciplined to say anything or stop their group as Clive leads them back down the stairs and out into the day. As always, the sky remains a bleak purple-gray color that gives no indication of the passing of time.
“This way,” Terence offers, setting off west of the infirmary building. A few men salute him as they pass, but for the most part their strange group remains unmolested all the way to a stone and wood building west of the infirmary.
“This was the house the Emperor gave my parents,” Terence offers. As they walk through the threshold, none of them acknowledge that a home this nicely constructed would have belonged to another, before Sanbreque’s invasion of the city. Perhaps the citizens of the Crystalline Dominion had been the lucky ones, forced out of their homes and relocated to the far outskirts of Twinside before the city was destroyed twice over.
Dion’s gaze sweeps around, at the cold, empty rooms they enter. “Terence,” he says despairingly. Clive’s heart breaks for them.
The knight holds up a hand. “They are fine,” he reassures quickly. “My sister Marianne lives only a few blocks north with her husband and babe. I brought them to stay with her. Kihel lives with them, too, when we have not stayed too late helping with the injured.”
Dion bows his head. “Thank Greagor. Everything that happened that night—I do not know how I can ever atone.”
Clive has never told the prince about the memories he witnessed when Bahamut’s power passed into him. It has never felt appropriate to speak of. He wishes to reassure, to tell the prince that he was not himself that night, as Bahamut, but that will be little comfort against the knowledge that it was Dion’s own halberd that struck true in the center of his father’s chest. Absolution cannot come from Clive, so he keeps his mouth shut and wonders whether Dion has told Terence the truth.
But it’s the girl—Kihel—that steps forward and slips a small hand into Dion’s. “Milord, there has already been so much grief. If blame is to be wrought, it is to the one who destroyed the Crystal and doomed the city when it rose.”
Clive swallows with an audible click, turning his head away from the others. Cid had warned him that the world would not forgive the person responsible for destroying mothercrystals and setting the starving land free once more. He has seen the evidence time and time again, yet out of this tiny mouth, the truth is especially devastating.
“Then that blame rests solely on Ultima,” Dion says, watching Clive carefully.
Terence has his eyes narrowed as he regards Clive once more. “Is this who I think it is, Dion?”
“Clive has shown me a great kindness by escorting me here.”
The use of the first name does not go unnoticed. If Terence had Torgal’s fur, Clive thinks his hackles would be standing on end. “I should…leave you to catch up,” he offers, a white flag.
“You do not have to—“ “Yes, that would be best.” Dion and Terence speak at once. The prince shoots his lover an exasperated, yet fond, look. “Fine,” Dion says.
“I will also go,” Kihel says, looking between the blond and the brunet. “Marianne said she would show me how to do plaits.”
Clive smiles slightly at her perceptiveness. “Might I escort you, my lady?” He glances up, watching Terence for permission.
The knight sizes him up, for an uncomfortably long moment that takes him back to a time when he was nothing more than property. Finally, Terence gives a sharp jerk of his head. “Let no harm come to her.”
“Of course.”
Clive would think the girl overly trusting as she follows him outside once more, but as she starts speaking he realizes he has vastly underestimated her. “The hurts that you carry, they are not ones I can heal.”
He makes a small sound in the back of his throat. Broken, he thinks. “No, I suppose not everything can be cured with a potion or salve.” No other words are shared between them that night, and yet Clive can’t help but feel a flicker of gratitude for this young girl who saved the prince’s life, and along with the knight, has perhaps saved the man’s soul. Clive resolves, then and there, that he will do everything in his power to ensure that Dion escapes intact from their confrontation with Ultima.
They part ways once they are a few houses down from Kihel’s, Clive having neither the energy nor the charisma to explain to Terence’s family what he, a stranger, is doing escorting the girl when the knight should be with her instead. She spares him a small smile and a wave as she darts away, and it doesn’t occur to Clive to ask her not to speak of Dion’s presence here. He supposes it’s not for him to decide.
The people who live in the ruins around Twinside are far too busy trying to rebuild their lives to be suspicious of the stranger in their midst. He helps a woman carrying a basket full of heavy washing and holds a plank steady while nails are hammered in so that a broken window can be protected from the elements. The tasks make him restless, though. When he had first been branded, those years on the front lines, he had counted his kills like the other men did by scratching tiny lines on his armor, tallying up how many times he had escaped death at the expense of another. At some point after he joined the Bastards, he had lost track one day and never started counting again.
By now Clive’s hands are positively drenched in blood, enough bodies to fill the blighted lake around the Hideaway. Some days it seems like the only time he feels anything even approximating pleasure is when he is wielding his body and magicks for killing.
He takes a deep breath, feeling the march of borrowed time. If they succeed at Origin, there will be no place left for an assassin in the new, remade world.
Clive slips through the door and enters the front room, mouth open to call out in greeting when he hears it: the sounds of enthusiastic fucking coming from one of the rooms upstairs, so loud that he has no idea how he missed it when he opened the door, so loud that he hopes there is no one living in the neighboring houses. Heat rises to his cheeks as he glances back at the entryway, intending to take another walk—a long walk—and give the men their privacy.
“You are mine, Dion Lesage. Your mouth is mine, your cock is mine, and when I fill you with my seed, there is no part of you that does not belong to me.” Terence’s words are punctuated by the slapping of skin and the creaking of wood. Clive’s mouth begins to water as he imagines the prince bent over, perhaps over the foot of a bed or a desk, the knight railing him from behind.
Dion’s response—“yes, yours”—devolves into a loud, garbled moan. His wails stay like that, sounds not quite fully formed, as if Terence has hooked his fingers into the other man’s mouth, stuffing him from both ends as the rhythmic pounding of flesh continues. Clive adjusts his rapidly filling cock in his trousers, and wonders if he will ever be able to think of anything but this moment when he touches himself in the future.
Suddenly, the thumping pauses, and Clive forces himself to go even more still. Founder, have they—did they hear him?
In the silence, Dion makes a high pitched whine that Clive is certain the prince could never make outside of the bedroom. “Terence, please—“ he gasps, the words still muffled.
There’s a soft creak from overhead, then silence again. “Do you want him?” Terence asks, in such a low whisper that Clive wouldn’t have heard it, had he not had Garuda’s gift allowing sound to travel to him on the winds.
“Want you,” Dion groans.
There’s a sound of a hand slapping flesh, and Clive feels himself blush as he pictures a pink handprint forming over the prince’s buttocks. The imagery is shockingly intimate, and the urge to give the men back their privacy wells up once more.
Only—the house is now far too quiet to escape unnoticed. Clive presses the heel of his hand against himself and bites back a sympathetic whimper when he hears the sound of Terence slapping the prince once more, and the answering groan.
The creak comes again, slowly, and Clive imagines the man feeding his cock infinitesimally slowly into his lover. Dion makes a gagging sound, then a loud cough. “More,” he orders hoarsely, unobstructed by whatever object—Terence’s fingers, or perhaps something else—was previously filling his mouth. He lets out a loud, messy moan, and Clive’s imagination goes wild.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if it were his cock stuffing your greedy throat, instead of these?” The prince keens as the wood upstairs creaks once more.
Clive’s hands are sweating in his gloves, anxious with the sudden desire to rip them off and stick two inside himself, to rub mercilessly against his prostate.
“Do. You. Want. Him?” the knight repeats, louder now.
“Onl’ nee’ you,” Dion gets out.
The next slap resonates through the house, as does Dion’s answering wail.
“I will tie a ring around you and leave you like that,” Terence threatens. “Leave you here for anyone to find your loose, wet hole.” There’s the sound of Terence spitting, and it’s so filthy and primal that for a moment Clive simply aches, picturing the scene above him—Dion’s arse, stretched and clenching around Terence’s thick cock, saliva running down his crease and tickling at his sac.
Dion moans in delight, and Clive forces himself to unwrap his hand from the leather encasing his prick. He can’t come in his father’s trousers. Not again.
“Only you don’t want just anyone—do you, my Prince. I saw the way you looked at him. Everyone in that infirmary thought you belonged to him—to a fucking outlaw,” Terence growls.
Clive’s mouth goes dry, an inferno like Ifrit’s hellfire prickling his skin.
“What do you think he’d give?” the knight asks thoughtfully after a few more thrusts, like he’s a scholar in a library rather than a man fucking the most powerful person on Storm. “If all you need is a cock, I could auction you off to any rich man in Valisthea.”
The words are punctuated by the most obscene sound yet, a squelch that Clive knows from experience is the other man pulling out completely before thrusting back in. He feels his own arse clench in sympathy. Dion lets out a low hum of pleasure.
“So, tell me the truth,” the knight purrs. For a moment, all he can hear is heavy breathing before another squelch echoes through the house. “Do you want him?”
“By the Light, yes!” Dion spits out, as prickly as a caged dragonet. There’s a loud slam, the sound of a fist hitting wood. “Now fuck me!”
Terence laughs breathlessly. “Yes, Your Highness.” The sound of skin against skin start up again, faster now, with the occasional screeching of wood against stone as a piece of furniture—it’s a table, Clive's mind decides, picturing the prince’s pale torso stretched out over the top of it—moves minusculely forward with each of the knight’s thrusts. “I will let you have his cock, you insatiable thing, but you will never forget who you belong to.”
Hoarse screams of ecstasy rend the air, and finally Clive darts out the house, shutting the door as quietly as his shaking hands can manage.
He does not know where he walks, only that the sky has long since turned to night by the time he reenters the house. Dion sits at the kitchen table, dressed in white linen either borrowed from the knight or stored by Terence for him. He is leaning slightly off his arse, subtly enough that Clive wouldn’t notice, if he hadn’t known to look.
Terence is tending some stew or other over the fire, and the corner of his mouth lifts into a slight smirk when he sees Clive. “Did you get lost?” the knight asks. He looks like the coeurl that got the chocobo. Clive can’t help but wonder how long they had kept going after he left.
“Just clearing my head,” Clive says. He had ducked into the first alley that he found and painted the stone walls with his spend after only three quick pulls of his fist.
The knight hums absently, turning back to the stove. “There’s wine, if you want.” He gestures with his head over to the sideboard, where Clive finds an open bottle and a clean goblet. He glances up, seeing two more already set out on the table. Dion fiddles with the stem of his as Clive walks over.
“May I fill you up?” Clive offers.
The prince’s cheeks, already flush from drink and the heat of the fire, darken even further. Clive feels his own face flame at his choice of words, but luckily the other man doesn’t look up to notice. From behind him, Terence chuckles quietly to himself.
Clive tops up both goblets and pours generously into his own, emptying the bottle. There are two more unopened ones on top of the cabinet, and he wouldn’t be surprised if a house like this held dozens more in the basement, so he doesn’t bother with the social niceties of leaving the last bit in the bottle for his host.
“Oh!” he says in surprise when he takes a sip. He has gotten used to the bitter cast-offs, just like Cid. But this tastes like it was harvested in Orabelle a decade ago, as fine a wine as he had ever tasted at the arm of his father and Lord Murdoch.
“The swill you drink at the Hideaway is atrocious,” Dion intones with a smirk. “Your healer gave me some once—tried to pass it off as medicine. I think she was trying to poison me to keep me from leaving in the night.”
“Didn’t work, then.”
The prince meets his eyes, brows raised in amusement. It’s incredible, the weight that has been lifted from his shoulders at finding his partner and the girl safe—though Clive suspects that one wrong word or thought will bring back the burden of all the rest still heavy on his head. He casts his eyes to the right, taking in the knight out of the corner of his eye. Perhaps Terence knows how to distract so thoroughly as to make a man forget he is suicidal.
Clive certainly wouldn’t mind being on the receiving end of such magic.
“Do you want a bath?” Terence asks, strolling over to take a sip of his own wine. He stands behind Dion’s chair, toying absently with a lock of the other man’s hair as Dion leans a shoulder against the knight’s hip. It feels like a privilege to be allowed to observe this simple display of affection between the other two. Jealousy blooms, ugly and shameful in Clive’s chest. “We don’t have hot water, but I expect it will still be welcome after so many days of travel,” Terence adds. He studies Clive with interest, and Clive can’t help but wonder if the other man might want him clean for another reason tonight.
He holds out an open palm and conjures fire, the warm, colorful glow of his Phoenix blessing. “You should have told me. I could have repaid your generosity.”
Despite all his expectations to the contrary, after dinner he is shown a room and bade goodnight. Clive watches as the door across the hall shuts behind Dion and Terence, and he lies awake with a half-hard cock for an hour more, expecting a knock from either of the men at any moment. When nothing comes, and the house remains still and silent, he gives into the urge to touch himself for the second time that day, spilling a disappointing orgasm across his belly. He traces a finger through the sticky mess and wonders whether Ultima has finally cracked his mind and stuffed it full of lewd thoughts.
In the morning, Clive conjures a mixture of ice and fire in the washtub and leaves steaming hot water for the other men to bathe in before he slips out the front door, weaving through city streets that become more and more damaged the closer he moves towards the place that was once the epicenter of Twinside.
The residents of the city give the area a wide berth, of course, but he finds a high enough perch of rubble where he can stand and take in the gaping maw of the earth below, where blackness goes on so long that no end can be seen.
The fervent joy he had felt in this place—being reunited with Joshua, cradling his brother’s lanky, willowy frame in his arms—is drowned out by the sadness that eats away at the land. Thus is the nature of happiness for him as well: a fleeting construct, tiny points of light like in the stars overhead, no longer visible thanks to the unnatural clouds that blanket Valisthea. Despair and guilt are permanent fixtures, but above all else there is duty. Clive sighs, running a hand through his hair.
He is so very, very tired. He knows that they are waiting to ensure that Joshua and Dion are able to recover as much strength as possible before they take flight, but not for the first time he wishes that he could fly there himself and be done with this once and for all.
“You know, you are far broodier than your brother made you out to be.”
Clive turns to watch the prince gracefully make his way to his side. “Perhaps he was trying not to scare you off from our cause.”
Dion’s laugh is short, cut off by the sight of the chasm below them as he ascends the final step next to Clive. His face, so handsome in a smile, falls into a raw misery that is still handsome in its own tragic way.
“I conquered this land for my—for my father after Drake’s Head collapsed. I didn’t know until afterwards that he had planned the invasion months earlier. Initially it was supposed to be a thousand unit charge, but after we lost to Odin…” the prince pauses, massaging some real or phantom pain in his right arm—“I think that was the first time I realized that in his mind, no one was beyond expendable.”
“What happened?”
“The people of the Crystalline Dominion looked up, saw my wings blotting out the sun, and surrendered immediately. I remained primed for nearly three days while the peace negotiations took place so that they could not forget who they would meet if they chose to defend themselves. Sambreque gave no quarter. It might have been genocide—my father kept speaking about how expensive it was to feed so many mouths—but the Cardinals voted for relocation. My father still listened to them back then—at least a little.
“And I…I told myself it was all worth it, because our people could never survive without a mothercrystal.” Dion shakes his head, shame coloring his face. “I am such a fool.”
Clive takes a half step closer, leaning into the prince in a gesture of comfort that feels both insufficient and damning all at once. He holds his breath, releasing it with a sigh when Dion presses back.
“Before he died, my mother would sometimes mock me for always following my father’s orders to the last. I could never understand it—he was my father, and the Archduke—who else should I have obeyed?” Clive says.
He feels the creeping, hesitant touch of a hand against his lower back, and he barrels on, lest the prince gets spooked.
“It took a long time for me to understand that my father had let me down as much as my mother had—perhaps more. He was our country’s leader, and if anyone could have put a halt to my mother’s treatment, it should have been him. Instead I was allowed to believe that my only worth could be found in laying down my life for Joshua.” Clive does not bother adding how persistent that belief remains, how hollow he feels when he thinks about his brother imprisoning a sliver of Ultima in his own chest to save Clive’s life, how many times he has contemplated forcing Joshua to give up the Phoenix so that Clive may heal his brother and keep him far away from the battle to come.
“You are worth so much more than what your parents made you,” Dion says fiercely.
Clive turns, slowly, and Dion keeps his hand where it is, looped around Clive’s back in a heartbreakingly tender embrace. “So are you,” he murmurs.
The prince’s throat bobs as he swallows. They are of height, and Clive stares into amber eyes before he allows his gaze to dip, pointedly, to the prince’s mouth, then back up.
Dion licks his lips.
Living as a Branded had taught Clive that nothing—not kindness, nor pleasure, nor life itself—would be given, but could only be taken—and if it wasn’t taken by him, then it would be taken by someone else. When he was with the Bastards in camp barracks and Tiamat would lead them to the front of the breakfast line, cutting in front of hundreds of other bearers, Clive would eat his fill, sparing no thought for those who would go without. When he was on the battlefield, he killed without remorse, because every day he was alive was another day closer to seeking revenge on his brother’s murderer. When it happened that he was fucked by a soldier who preferred the feel of oil, Clive would adjust his hips to send pressure against his prostate and wrap a hand around himself, forcing an orgasm so quickly it left him gasping, out of fear that the other would put a stop to his pleasure.
When Cid had fucked him for the first time, Clive had nearly snarled in frustration when the other man batted his hand away from his cock with a smooth let me, lad, jerking him off with firm pulls that had Clive close to weeping through his orgasm in the end.
“I like you greedy,” Cid had said once, brushing a thumb over one of Clive’s nipples to watch his spent cock twitch helplessly.
“You do?” He had felt small like that, sandwiched in Cid’s bed between a nest of blankets and the older man, even though he was pretty sure he could overpower the other if they wanted to test their strength.
“Mm,” Cid had hummed in affirmation. “Makes me feel like less of a lecher for defiling Rosaria’s First Shield.”
“You hardly defiled me, Cid,” Clive had protested, because he certainly knew what defiling felt like.
Cid had adopted a pouting, hurt tone. “You wound me, Lord Rosfield.” His hand crept lower, carding through the thatch of hair at his groin and then lower still, circling his puffy hole, dragging through the come still leaking out, in such a confident move that it made Clive gasp. “Not even a little defiled? I’ll have to fix that.”
The memory makes something fierce surge in his chest. Clive is greedy, and he has spent far too much of his life having to go without.
He leans in, slotting his lips firmly against Dion’s.
It’s clumsy in a way that the books and plays he used to read never seemed to indicate would happen, and yet how nearly all of Clive’s first kisses have gone. This one especially so because Dion is frozen, unmoving. Shock, Clive’s brain supplies, before he feels the prince’s arm uncurl from behind his back and press firmly against his chest, pushing him away. Clive refuses to step back, though, so the prince does it for him, putting three paces between them.
“Dion?” Clive asks. He certainly has not read this so completely, utterly, wrong, except that the prince’s body language is indicating exactly that.
“I am sorry,” Dion gasps, eyes troubled. Clive barely manages to hide his flinch. Dion stares at him for another long moment before shaking his head and turning away, practically sprinting back to Terence’s home, back to his lover’s embrace.
Clive’s face burns, watching his retreating form. Rejection—sexual rejection, that is—is an unusual feeling for him, but is easily filed away alongside more familiar ones, like shame and unworthiness.
He stays there, on that precipice overlooking the depths of earth until his stomach growls, reminding him of the passage of time even if he can’t appreciate it with how the skies blot out the sun overhead. There is no chance that he will return to the house today. He doesn’t think he could bear watching—or Metia forbid, hearing—the happiness that the two men have found at being reunited once more. He does not know what madness could have possessed him to think he could steal even a fraction of such a pure, all-consuming love.
Clive occupies his day with violence, oddly grateful that the reality of the world as it stands meant that he left the house that morning in full armor, sword strapped to his back. The ruins of Twinside are thankfully not threatened by aetherstorms, but he and Dion had come across groups of Akashic beasts on their journey towards the city, and he accurately guesses that more can be found to the north. It is strange, fighting alone after so long with Torgal at his side, but he had ordered the wolf to stay at the Hideaway, protecting his brother, and Jill, and everyone else who has impossibly decided to trust him to keep them safe.
Afterwards he comes across a pub, because even devastated cities need a steady supply of alcohol—perhaps need it most of all. He parts with far too many gil for an overpriced flagon of ale, the innkeeper astutely recognizing that Clive can afford more than most of the people around him. He doesn’t argue, though, and finds his next drink accompanied by a plate of steaming meat and vegetables.
“Someone saw a warrior dressed in red kill the akashic encroaching on the north wall,” the woman says in explanation when he glances up from the meal he didn’t order.
“And you assume it was me?” he asks. He pulls the plate close regardless.
“In my experience, people don’t bother carrying weapons that big unless they can use them,” she says, looking pointedly down at where his great sword rests against the bar top. She leans over, pressing her arms beneath the swell of her breasts. He watches them wobble, teetering on the cusp of spilling out of the low collar of her dress. “I’m sure you’re good at handling other things, too.” The velvety rasp of her voice reminds him, for a moment, of Isabelle, and he takes half a moment to wonder exactly how many professions this woman actually has. Another patron calls her over from the other end of the bar, and she spares Clive one more calculating, intrigued look before she goes.
He doesn’t fuck women often, but not because he is entirely uninterested. It is nice, sometimes, to feel soft curves and slick wet heat that doesn’t come from a vial, and he likes using his mouth no matter the sex of his partner. But he will never be romantically interested in a woman, and most that he meets are not interested in one without the other.
He can afford to pay for it, though. Clive works methodically through his meal until his plate is scraped clean (yet another relic of his life as a Branded, the years of going to sleep hungry), debating whether to take her up on the offer. It seems foolish to forego pleasure so close to the end, after all.
Even though this is perhaps not the encounter he had been hoping for, he warms to the idea by the time his second ale is finished. He pushes the tankard across the bar, waiting for the woman to notice, idly wondering whether she has a room upstairs. A hysterical idea crosses his mind, of bringing a courtesan back to the house where Terence and Dion had given him a room, of having them listen to his exploits.
“Rosfield,” a voice cuts through his reverie. Clive’s back stiffens, and he has his fingers curled around the hilt of his sword by the time he meets the newcomer’s gray eyes—Sir Terence, as though conjured into existence by the power of Clive’s obsessive thoughts.
He relaxes fractionally with a sigh, but does not release the sword from his grip. The other bar patrons don’t seem to notice the confrontation, or are too intent on their own drinks to spare them any attention. Clearly the city is far enough away from Rosaria—separated by both distance and time since the fall of the duchy—that the name Rosfield matters naught to people here.
“Come with me,” Terence says, voice brokering no argument. He has neither his weapon nor his armor, while Clive possesses the power of seven Eikons, even without the sword in his hand.
Still, something about the man’s tone, his no-nonsense expression, makes Clive want to obey, despite being several years older than the knight. He isn’t entirely sure whether that was something trained into him by his father and Lord Murdoch, or by his mother, or by the Imperial Army.
Behind him, he can hear one of the other bar patrons negotiating with the barmaid over the same services she had offered Clive, and he tries not to wince when they settle on a price. So much for that.
He looks up at the brunet, quickly assessing the way Terence carries himself, the energy he keeps buried within himself, held tight like a griffin ready to strike. If Clive has insulted Dion by kissing him, then Sanbrequois law dictates that the prince may demand whatever payment he finds fitting—and if Clive refuses to pay, then Dion may challenge, or may send a champion in his stead to fight to the death, that Greagor herself may judge the worthiness of the claim.
Sanbreque, of course, barely exists as a country anymore—none do, not in a world teetering so precipitously on the brink of extinction—and so her laws should hold little power.
Except—Clive knows that he overstepped, that he hasn’t been able to forget the feel of the prince’s unmoving mouth against his own all day.
He shoves himself to his feet, slipping his sword onto his back in a well practiced move. Terence watches with raised brows, obviously expecting Clive to put up more resistance, and remains silent as they weave through the packed tables around the bar.
“Dion has spoken highly of you,” the knight says when they emerge into the quiet streets. The light in the sky is fading, the only indication that somewhere, sunset is rapidly approaching, even if none in Valisthea can appreciate such a thing. Clive’s heart aches as he realizes that in the best possible outcome of their mission to Origin, he will never see another sunset.
“I am sure he exaggerates,” he offers, slipping fluidly into the banal, meaningless conversation of the noble class, where it is not just normal but expected to circle around an intended topic for minutes—hours, even, in some delicate cases—before finally getting to the point.
It’s surprising, then, when Terence grabs him by the shoulders and shoves him bodily against the stone foundation of a house that should be home to a family, yet is clearly quite empty, like so many others around them. “I’m sure he does,” the knight murmurs.
Standing as close as they are, Clive can’t quite push away the frisson of irritation at the confirmation that the knight stands at least two or three inches taller than him—taller than Joshua, certainly.
“Do you want to fuck him?” Terence asks, gray eyes stormy.
Clive feels his eyes bulge at the question. It’s not something he would have considered before they began their journey to Twinwide, but after his extended interaction with the prince, coupled with the lewd sounds he heard—the answer is obvious. There’s no point in lying, as Dion surely told Terence immediately about what transpired between them this morning.
He meets the knight’s gaze steadily. “Yes.”
Terence’s lips twitch in a satisfied smile. A memory from yesterday, hearing your loose, wet hole out of this man’s mouth, shoves its way to the forefront of his mind, making him shiver slightly. How can someone who looks so proper possess such a filthy, enticing tongue?
Clive can’t help but stare at those same pink lips as they sound out the words: “You don’t deserve him.”
A breath punches out of his gut. Clive has lived on undeserved, stolen moments since he was fifteen and failed to die as intended at Phoenix Gate. “I know.” He can’t help but wonder whether what he had heard was in fact an accident, or had been planned all along. A tease, a mockery, a joke—fire licks his veins, outrage threatening to spill out and consume all.
The knight’s smile, almost as smug and arrogant as it was last night, falters slightly at the words, at Clive’s immediate acceptance of an incontrovertible truth. Perhaps he is thinking of the character, the outlaw that casually kills Dominants and topples Mothercrystals and destroys countries, and how at odds he is with the man Clive is in reality.
Clive glances away, biting the inside of his lip. “I’m sorry for kissing him.”
A long, long silence follows his words. He glances up. “I beg your pardon?” Terence looks gobsmacked, and it would be laughable, except—
Why hadn’t Dion said something to his lover, with how uncomfortable Clive had clearly made him? “He didn’t tell you?”
Terence shakes his head, brow furrowing as he looks away, then back at Clive. “All he said was that he had ruined everything with you and that he needed my help to set things right.”
“He—“ Clive starts, then pauses. “That doesn’t make sense. I offended him.”
The knight scoffs. “Anyone with eyes can see he desires you.”
Clive watches him carefully, anticipating a jealous rage that never comes. He studies the other man from beneath his fringe. “You—you approve?” he asks in wonder.
Terence snorts humorlessly. “Let me be clear. I do not like you. You and your brother almost killed him, and then you let him go to wander the world half dead. If Kihel hadn’t found him—“ The man takes a deep, steadying breath. Clive doesn’t bother defending himself, protesting that he hadn’t even been there, because it would have been very hard indeed for the prince to leave the Hideaway without a single person noticing—and maybe at the time Clive had inwardly believed they were better off without the crown prince of Sanbreque, even if Joshua had sworn up and down he could be trusted. “You could never understand the burden he carries,” Terence continues. “I will do anything to see him happy—even if that means you.”
The knight steps closer, and their breaths mingle in the shared space between them. The wall at Clive’s back reminds him there is no place to go, and for a hot, flustered moment he wonders if the other man is going to kiss him.
Terence enunciates slowly. “I would burn the world for him.”
Clive has just a moment—vast yet too small all at once—to revel in his shock as he realizes Terence is indeed about to kiss him, before the knight dips his head. His confused protest dies in the back of his throat at the firm press of lips against his own, demanding and warm even against his own heated skin. Terence quickly draws closer, caging him in against the uneven stone, and Clive’s hands clench uselessly at his sides, unsure what is happening.
The swipe of a tongue against the seam of his mouth has him parting his lips obediently. His senses fill with the heady scent of the knight—woodsy, and something crisp—and the taste of him—the sweet, slightly sharp sting of alcohol, a suggestion of what has helped make Terence act so boldly with Clive, a veritable stranger—one that he doesn’t even care for.
“Wait,” Clive gasps, finally finding a use for one of his hands, setting his palm against a muscled chest that is as firm as his own. Terence leans back but doesn’t go far, irritation coloring his face. “You said you didn’t like me.”
Terence’s lips twitch, smile a little mocking. “I don’t need to like you to fuck you.” Clive swallows at the obscenity, and the other man’s smile grows. “You’re certainly pretty enough, and Dion would never dare touch you without my permission. So—” he pauses for dramatic effect, eyes studying Clive’s— “what is it that you want, Lord Rosfield?”
What he wants—he wants a world that isn’t drowning in aether, for his loved ones to have never died, to find a way through Origin that doesn’t kill them all in the process—or at least, not two of them.
And yes, he wants Dion. And…after listening to their lovemaking last night—he wants Terence, too. He will take what he can get, whatever he can get.
Clive’s fingers curl in the fabric of the knight’s shirt, tilting his face up to bring their mouths together once more, feeling that he would do anything to pass this unspoken test. The kiss quickly gets out of hand, tongues tangling for long, heated moments, wherein time stretches and warps into something unfathomable, like something only known to the gods.
When they break apart, Terence has a hand wrapped around his neck, and Clive swallows, feeling his throat constrict beneath the other man’s palm.
“Can you follow orders?” Terence murmurs quietly against his skin, tongue flitting out to trace along the thick, ropy scar adorning his cheek. His fingers tighten infinitesimally against Clive’s neck, like a promise and a warning all at once.
Clive’s head spins at the absurdity of the question—thirteen years branded, he’d have been dead if he couldn’t obey every single word that had been said to him—but the hand still wrapped around him keeps him grounded, the fire in his veins docile for now.
He nods.
“I hope you don’t expect me to be nice to you.”
“I don’t need you to be nice,” Clive lies.
The knight shoves their lips together again, tongue exploring Clive’s mouth as though he is still property that may be owned. His scalp tingles where Terence has buried his other hand into thick hair, mind floating pleasantly, vacantly, an object built for only one purpose. His own hands rest hesitantly at the other man’s hips, the temptation to bring them even closer warring with the certainty that everything that happens from now on is entirely in the other man’s control. Clive’s breath comes in harsh gasps as they part, Terence’s perfect teeth taking one final nip of his lower lip and making it throb in time with his racing, giddy heart.
Terence may not like Clive, but Clive is quickly learning how desperately he wishes to please the other man. “Can I—may I suck you?” he asks, dizzy with the thought of being so publicly claimed.
Terence hits him lightly on his scarred cheek—not quite a slap, but a hint of the violence he is capable of, a demonstration of how restrained he is choosing to be.
“Is that what you like, getting your throat fucked in dirty alleys?”
Clive tries—and mostly fails—to bite back a groan. Gray eyes glitter with amusement—the knight knows exactly what his mouth is doing for Clive.
“Patience, Rosfield.” One of Terence’s large hands pushes him backwards, to a distance like that of two men having a normal, innocent conversation, if it were not for the obscene tenting of Clive’s leather trousers. The other man looks completely unruffled, the bastard. “His Highness is waiting.” Clive presses his eyes shut, his cock twitching in anticipation, like he is still fifteen and about to be touched by one of the other Shields in the barracks for the very first time.
During their walk back to the house, Terence entertains himself by telling Clive exactly what he is going to do when they get inside. “Quiet,” Clive hisses when a woman across the street looks at them like she can hear every scandalous word—impossible unless she possesses his own powers.
“Oh you’ll definitely pay for that,” Terence comments mildly, like they’re discussing the weather. Another shiver runs down Clive’s spine.
They burst through the front door with a loud clatter, and Clive only remembers his disastrous interaction with the prince this morning when Dion lifts his gaze from the book he had set out across the table. The prince’s nostrils flare and his mouth parts slightly as he looks up at them. Clive wonders if he can scent the air like other dragons—and if so, what his arousal smells like to the other man.
“Clive,” Dion says, pushing his chair back from the table to stand up.
“Stay,” Terence orders. They both freeze, Imperial Highness and Lord Marquess obeying without question. The knight slaps a lazy palm against Clive’s chest, shoving him back to wait against the door as he stalks to his prince.
Terence, of course, possesses no magic of his own, and yet Clive finds himself helplessly in place for all that the monster inside him—not Ifrit, but just his darkest, most desperate self—yearns to act, to move forward and stake a claim while he watches Terence move forward like a magnet to Dion’s true North. There is nothing shy about the way they show affection in front of him, nothing like the awkwardness of the infirmary. Terence leans over his lover and practically plunders Dion’s mouth in a hard kiss, the way they should have greeted each other yesterday.
“Anything, anything my darling,” Clive hears the knight say, a promise that seems utterly impossible in a world such as theirs. Dion practically sags, like a puppet with his strings cut, when Terence pulls him to his feet.
Love—the way it is between Dion and Terence—has never been an option for him. He was supposed to have it with Jill, but he just…he can’t. He might have come close, once, with Cid, but there had always been something—vengeance, guilt, the mission—that kept one or both of them from truly relaxing enough to explore what love could mean.
Dion and Terence grew up together, have known a love that sprouted before romance was a concept, a love that grew and evolved as they did, becoming the men they are today. There are no such thing as soulmates in Valisthea, a concept that exists only in the tales they read, but Clive suspects it is people like the two of them about whom the myths were written.
So then, his place, here, is a mystery. An afterthought, a side character, someone entirely forgettable alongside these two.
And yet, he burns, the fire inside him appalled and lonely at being ignored.
Clive shuts his eyes and tries to breathe while he listens to the sounds around him, to the smacking and soft moans of two men whose love seems fated. Jealousy and arousal and sorrow converge beneath his breast in a confusing mix, which makes Ifrit snarl and rage. He is struck once more with the sensation of being a trespasser, just as he had last night, and the urge to just…leave.
To leave these men to their lives and their love, however long or short it may be, and venture alone to Origin for the final battle.
His last.
Only—
He feels a brief, chaste press of a kiss against his lips, so fleeting that he might have imagined it, had his vision not been filled with rich amber when his eyes fluttered open. Dion flushes under the scrutiny, spots of pink high on his cheeks and across his nose. “I’m sorry,” the prince says.
Clive says nothing. He can’t. He simply glances over at Terence, who nods in permission and approval all at once.
Kissing Dion is…familiar and new all at once. He suspects the two men were each other's firsts, and no matter whether they have done this, inviting a third, before or not, it is quite clear that they were the ones who taught each other to kiss. It’s not a bad thing—they’ve certainly learned what feels good—and it’s kind of sweet, making Clive smile a little as he licks his lip where it throbs from Dion’s teeth against the exact same spot where Terence bit him.
He keeps his hands on Dion’s waist while Terence grabs the prince from behind to suck pink marks into the skin of his neck, watching intently as the knight flicks Dion’s shirt open to display more of him to lick at and bruise.
Dion’s body jerks when Terence reaches a sensitive spot above his collarbone, sending his groin into full contact with Clive’s cock and making them both moan. Clive feels like he’s been hard for days, erection hardly flagging on the walk here thanks to Terence’s filthy mouth. Clive steps close, figuring the knight will stop him if he’s not allowed and thinking, for one wild moment, that he would dare the other man to just try and stop him.
Dion’s prick twitches against his own, hard and getting harder under the attention, the blush on his skin traveling all the way down to his sternum where his shirt is still being held together by three stubborn clasps. Clive wants to trace that color all the way down, to suck the prince’s nipples and lick his abdomen and get his mouth around his length, and press his tongue even lower still.
The prince sees the thoughts flit across Clive’s face—the hunger, the desire, and lets out a sharp whine that almost sends Clive crashing to his knees, damn the consequences.
“We need to clean up,” Terence says against Dion’s skin, hand going up to tweak a nipple through the fabric of his shirt.
“What?” Clive asks dumbly. He’s so hard he thinks he could come just from getting his trousers undone.
“I’m not going to stick my cock into someone who smells like minotaur,” the knight sneers, but it’s soft, teasing, inviting Clive in rather than shutting him out.
“I haven’t—oh,” Dion says in surprise, eyes intrigued as he looks at Clive.
They bathe. Clive being the one who does, in fact, probably have akashic minotaur blood somewhere on him, goes first, feeling nervous and twitchy as he scrubs down, cleaning every part of himself—every part—as quickly as he can, working to get out of the bath before the other two can change their minds about him.
And then it’s Terence and Dion together in the bath that he drained and filled and heated for them once more, and Clive tries not to seethe at the unfairness as he imagines everything from the knight washing the prince’s hair to the vigorous fucking he heard yesterday, knowing that he has no right to any of it and burning up with want all the same.
The anxiety has his hard-on flagging and leaves him sorely tempted to open another of the good bottles of wine while he waits. He doesn’t, though. Whatever he gets tonight, what he hopes happens—he wants to remember it, to play it back in full detail when the days are at their darkest.
“Come upstairs,” Dion says, eyes roving over Clive’s skin where he hasn’t bothered with an undershirt. The prince’s gaze is more clinical than lustful, and Clive is reminded that this man is commander to hundreds of dragoons. He knows Dion is seeing the scars—doubled after his encounters with Barnabas—and the lack of stone on his skin despite how recklessly Clive uses aether.
Clive’s gaze slides to the ever-present bandage around the man’s forearm, but Dion won’t meet his eyes, subtly turning his body into Terence’s to keep his arm out of view.
“It's a reminder,” Cid had said once, grimacing as he flexed his arm. “Makes people uncomfortable, knowing that Dominants aren’t that far off from bearers.”
“Perhaps they should be reminded,” Clive had retorted, drawing Cid’s arm to his lips and pressing kisses to every inch of stone he could find.
“You know I can’t feel that, lad.”
Clive had shrugged. “But I can.”
What would it take, for Dion to grant Clive permission to see every part of him, the unfettered access that Terence is privilege to? Clive is not sure that there are enough days ahead for such trust to be won. The battles must be chosen carefully.
Upstairs, they turn to the room that Dion and Terence share. The space is massive, the bed generously sized, plenty of room for three grown men. Surrounding it there are plush rugs scattered across the space, as well as a couch and a couple chairs around a hearth, banked low, just a few embers keeping the fire from going out. Clive’s eyes are drawn to a desk along one wall, the contents of which are still pushed to one corner, several papers scattered around. If he examined beneath it, he thinks he would be able to see small marks from the wood being shoved across the floor.
The three men look at each other in a brief, awkward standoff, and Clive thinks that maybe he should have opened the wine after all. He watches Terence run a hand down Dion’s spine, both of them dressed down in loose linen shirts that seem far easier access than the dragoon uniforms. The knight dips his head to whisper in Dion’s ear, and Clive wouldn’t be able to help but overhear even if he wanted to give them their privacy. “Get on the bed. Don’t touch yourself.” He presses a kiss to Dion’s lips and pushes the other man towards the bed before the kiss can get out of hand.
Clive stands still as the knight approaches him, waiting as the other man circles him slowly—like he is a soldier on inspection or a Branded to be bought. Terence stops in front, grabbing a wrist to pull Clive close and angling their bodies so that Dion can see everything.
Dion’s sharp inhale when Terence presses his mouth to Clive’s is infernally loud in this space. Clive wants to jerk back, to look at the expression on his face and see if it mirrors what his own had been, watching, knowing what the other two were sharing without him. But the knight has a hand on his neck, keeping him in place as he positively owns Clive’s mouth, licking into him, keeping their heads tilted so that the prince has the best vantage.
Always, always for Dion.
Terence trails kisses and nips along Clive’s jaw, nosing along to his neck, where he takes a long breath through his nose.
“No more minotaur,” the knight murmurs.
A strangled laugh rips itself out of Clive. He grabs the other man by the bicep when that same wicked tongue licks along the shell of his ear, flicking against the metal of his cuff.
“You’ve been exceptionally patient, Rosfield,” Terence says. The praise makes Clive weak in the knees, except—
“Clive,” he corrects softly. The knight pulls back to look at him, gray eyes studying him. “Please,” Clive whispers. Terence steps back, and Clive’s heart falls in his chest.
“On your knees,” the knight orders. Clive closes his eyes, barely registering pain as he thuds to the ground. “Whose cock do you want first?”
His eyes fly open, astonished that Terence is still addressing him. His mouth waters as he looks between the brunet and the blond, words tumbling out without thinking. “I—both. I need—“
“Yes,” Dion gasps from the bed, hands clenched white in the sheets.
Terence tsks, muttering “greedy” under his breath as he sets about unlacing his trousers. There’s a creak of the bed, and he shoots the prince a withering look. “Wait your turn, Your Highness. A mouth like his isn’t going anywhere.”
Clive licks his lips, attention focused solely on the knight’s groin, at the hint of dark hair he can see trailing from navel to his trousers and lower still. He wants the privilege of undressing the other man, enjoys the process of unwrapping a lover like a gift, but he hasn’t earned it. He moans quietly when Terence pulls out his cock. It’s perfect: hard and thick, and just a shade or two darker than the knight’s skin. Terence pumps himself lazily, and Clive’s mouth falls open in anticipation.
“Greagor, he’s gagging for it, isn’t he?” the knight asks, squeezing a drop of precome onto his fingers and pressing them between Clive’s parted lips. Clive swirls his tongue around the digits, tasting just the hint of the other man, desperate for more.
“Please,” he implores, voice muffled. The bed creaks again, and he glances up to see Dion leaning forward, enraptured by the scene, his own prick tenting his trousers. Clive feels heat rise to his face at the scrutiny, but his spine straightens, something inside him preening at the attention.
Terence pulls his fingers out of Clive’s mouth and wraps them at the base of his dick. With his other hand he grips the back of Clive’s head and guides him closer, feeding him his cock, inch by glorious inch. It hits the back of his throat before he bottoms out, and Clive works to swallow him down, tears springing to his eyes and drool filling his mouth while he suppresses his unpracticed gag reflex. At last he finds home, his lips tickling the curls at the base of Terence’s perfect cock.
“Oh, you were made for this, weren’t you?” Terence coos wickedly, petting his hair and wiping a tear from Clive’s cheek. “Taking me so well, like a good fucking whore.”
Clive moans. Dion does too.
Clive likes blow jobs, likes to take his time and explore, likes to feel his partner fall apart and know it’s because of him. But Terence doesn’t let him, instead renewing the grip on the back of Clive’s head to keep him still while he pistons his hips forward, practically punishing him with his cock while all Clive can do is try to catch his breath in between thrusts. His chin is slick with saliva, he can feel it running down his neck where Terence’s length bulges his skin tight, and he doesn’t want to imagine how wrecked his voice will be after this is over.
He blinks his eyes open as Terence’s movements slow, vision honing in on the strange look on the other man’s face. He seems flustered, but Clive can’t decipher why.
The look slides off the knight’s face as quickly as it came. He slips out of Clive’s mouth, his length bobbing obscenely in Clive’s field of vision. Clive wipes the back of his arm against his face, catching the stray threads of moisture before they can dry down. “I think Dion has been patient enough, don’t you?” Terence asks.
Clive’s gaze slips to the side, where he takes in the prince’s fingers, nearly white with tension where they clutch at the fabric of his trousers, barely restraining from touching himself. He nods.
His knees pop when he stands, perks of being thirty-three. Dion’s eyes, pupils dilated with lust, follow his approach until Clive kneels on the bed beside him. Their lips come together, Clive leaning over the other man and drawing a muffled groan out of him as he pulls him upwards and then onto his back, blanketing him with his own body completely. The press of Dion against him is magical, save for the fabric still separating their two bodies. Clive is tempted to burn their clothes away, though he is not sure he has the self control right now to perform such a maneuver without hurting the other man.
“Off,” he rasps instead, leaning back and pulling Dion until he can drag the shirt up over his head. His mind is reeling with the expanse revealed, dark rosy nipples and nearly hairless skin, lean muscles making the other man look almost slight compared to the two of them. Clive dips his head, sucking and licking at one nipple while rolling the other between his thumb and forefinger.
He travels the path that he imagined when the other man was standing in front of him, Terence pressing bruises into his skin that Clive can already see forming, territorial red and purple blotches dotting his collarbones and chest. Dion laughs breathlessly when Clive dips his tongue into his navel, and then Clive focuses his attention on his own actions so that he doesn’t have to watch the bittersweet exchange between the other two men as the bed dips once more under Terence’s weight. Dion’s trousers are undone with quick, nimble fingers, and Clive yanks them down over his hips and off completely, before taking off his own.
Dion is so, so beautiful, and Clive would find himself extolling the value of noble breeding had the prince’s true parentage not been such a poorly kept secret. Dion’s legs move pliantly as Clive hooks a hand under one thigh and spreads the other man wide, a feast for the taking. He lifts the prince one-handed, slipping a pillow under his hips for a better angle. Dion’s cock is leaking precum steadily onto his belly. “Gonna fuck you,” Clive whispers, watching his cock twitch in interest, a string of fluid connecting the glans to the skin of his abdomen. Clive gives into temptation, swiping the liquid up on his tongue before suckling briefly at Dion’s prick. The prince thrashes, his moan swallowed up by Terence’s lips. Clive bobs his head, desperate for more of those same, needy sounds, and is rewarded in turn.
The real prize, though, a few minutes later, is the blinding burst of light that erupts out of Dion’s skin when Clive spreads the swell of Dion’s cheeks and swipes his tongue along the pucker of his arsehole.
“Oh, oh fuck,” Dion yelps, and Clive grins, pressing his eyes shut against the afterimage on his lids. Clive licks him, like he’s one of those sweets Clive used to claim he didn’t enjoy, then sucks his quivering rim with the swell of his lips, and then, when Dion finally keens “Clive” into Terence’s mouth like a prayer, does he press the tip of his tongue into the other man, sinking deeper and deeper as the muscle alternately relaxes and tightens to draw him in.
Clive is drooling once more, spit running in rivulets down the prince’s crease, and he swipes the liquid up with his index finger, meeting his tongue and breaching Dion all the way to the base of his knuckle when he next presses inside.
“More,” the prince demands immediately, sounding as spoiled as any royal ought to. Clive looks up, meeting Terence’s eyes for a brief, amused glance.
“Impatient,” the knight chides his lover.
The second finger goes as easily as the first, and Clive takes half a second to wonder whether the other men already fucked today. Probably, he thinks, scissoring his fingers apart and plunging his tongue in as far as it will go, slurping loudly at Dion’s rim as he pulls back. He keeps his fingers lodged firmly in the other man, wiping his other hand against his chin again when he comes up for air. Terence tosses him a cloth, which Clive catches with a grateful nod.
The knight has Dion’s head nearly in his lap, and the prince is making an eager effort to suck his cock despite the poor angle and his own pleasure crowding his mind.
“Do you have oil?” Clive asks. His voice is still just as ruined as he predicted. He pulls his fingers out despite Dion’s whine of disappointment, massaging the other man’s perineum apologetically.
Terence looks down. “He doesn’t need it.” Dion nods vigorously in agreement, at least as much as he can with the head of Terence’s prick between his lips.
Clive swallows drily. “Still,” he insists.
In the Imperial Army, Brandeds had never needed oil, and he was so grateful when he got it that it became inextricably linked with good sex in his mind.
The vial that is tossed to him has no color or smell, and he watches the oil slide down his fingers to his hand, dripping in fat drops from his wrist to the sheets below the prince’s arse.
The other two men both watch as he fingers Dion open again, two fingers quickly leading to four that have the prince squirming on the bed, his cock so hard it looks painful. Clive watches, mesmerized, the stretch of his hole as he separates his fingers and starts pulling them out of the other man. With more time, he wonders if he might be able to fit his entire hand.
He glances up, at Terence’s broader palm where it threads into the blond’s silky hair. He wonders if Dion has taken his.
Dion is positively dripping with sweat by now, and at some point Terence had finally shucked his own clothes off, flinging them into some forgotten corner of the room. Out of the corner of his eye Clive gets glimpses of the other man’s frame, broad shoulders and powerful, sinewy muscles, a thin fuzz of hair on his chest mirroring the patch leading down to his cock, which Dion is still making an impressive effort to try to suck.
Cive curls his clean hand around the prince’s hip, urging him to roll over. Terence catches on immediately. “Come on, love. This is what you’ve always wanted.” Clive shivers. He knows, probably, that the prince’s fantasy has nothing to do with him—how could it, when they only met a few months ago? And yet he can’t help but imagine, wonder what it would be like to actually be the missing piece to their puzzle.
Dion moves where they want him, his knees under him with Clive in between, and his face nuzzling close to Terence’s groin. Terence strokes a calming hand along the prince’s back, and Clive glances up from slicking his cock just in time to see Dion look up at his lover with a shy, excited smile on his lips that Terence mirrors for him.
The sound that wrenches out of Dion when Clive slides into him gets cut off by the knight’s cock passing between his lips. They find a rhythm quickly, Clive doing his best not to jostle the other man and choke him.
Terence looks down, adoration making his face light up. “Oh, darling, you look so lovely like that, taking us so well,” he marvels, cupping Dion’s jaw carefully where he slips between the prince’s lips. “Is it good for you? Does it feel good, getting filled up from both ends?”
Dion whines, hand clenching helplessly at Terence’s thigh. Clive shudders, mind reacting to the praise even though it’s not directed towards him. He works his hips, tilting until he finds the angle that has Dion tightening around him and practically sobbing around Terence’s prick.
Gods, he wishes he could capture this moment so that he can rewatch it, over and over, from every possible angle.
“You wanted to come like this, didn’t you?” Terence asks Dion sweetly. “Trapped between us, not even a hand to bring you off.” Dion moans, hole fluttering around Clive as he pulls out almost all the way, before slamming back in against his prostate. Dion’s cries and muffled swears rise in pitch, knees widening even further to put his own prick in better contact with the sheets, rutting the fabric with each of Clive’s thrusts.
“I’m getting close,” Clive hisses. He can’t remember a time when he wasn’t so desperate to come.
“Not before him,” Terence says breathlessly. He, too, is finally starting to look like he’s falling apart, hand clasped weakly in the prince’s hair and moving in small thrusts as Dion loses the ability to coordinate his mouth much more than to keep it open and his teeth away.
“Fire and flames,” Clive swears, working to hold back his impending orgasm, practically grinding his cock against Dion’s prostate. Suddenly, the prince goes completely still, and Clive keeps up the punishing pressure.
Dion goes taught as a bowstring then, arching off Terence’s cock. The knight quickly takes himself in hand, jerking himself quickly while his eyes stare wide at the prince’s debauched face.
“F—fuck, oh Greagor, fuck, right there—” Dion comes with a yell, hips twitching senselessly as he buries his face into the mattress, hands grabbing the sheets and nearly ripping them apart with fingers that—just for a split second—go slightly iridescent, forming into the talons of his semi-prime form. Clive fucks him through it, practically shouting at the impossibly tight clenching around him. He throws one last desperate look at Terence, at the knight’s hand flying over his thick cock, and knows he will be coming whether he has permission or not. But the knight nods at him, panting open mouthed, and Clive just—explodes. He grips Dion’s hips hard enough to leave bruises and buries himself deep in the other man, rolling his hips for what feels like minutes as he comes in long, shuddering pulses, coating the prince’s walls and filling him up.
Clive gasps, lifting his head in time to watch Terence come messily into the prince’s mouth, painting his tongue but also his cheek and chin.
Harsh breaths fill the room. Clive sags, trembling arms keeping him from collapsing all of his weight onto the prince. Not that Dion couldn’t take it—though he’s thinner than Clive, his body is a coil of raw power, barely containing his Eikon within.
He pulls out carefully, watching as Dion’s arsehole twitches, clenching shut as if Clive had never even been there—save for the glisten around his swollen, pink rim—and falls back to lean against the post at the foot of the bed. Terence is wiping his thumb against the remnants of his spend on Dion’s face, feeding them into the other man’s eager, wanton mouth. Even though he literally just came, the sight of the two of them, of such easy, casual depravity, has Clive’s cock twitching in interest.
Dion flops over onto his back, yanking his knight down into a lazy kiss. They’re both smiling when they part, edges gone soft from orgasm. Terence presses his lips to the prince’s temple. Clive shudders at the injustice of it all.
Dion looks over at him, where he’s huddled at the foot of the bed like a dog who knows he’s not supposed to be on the furniture, but can’t help itself, desperate to be close to his masters. “Thank you,” the prince says, like a favor has been done.
Dismissal feels imminent; Clive can see it in the way the other two glance at each other. It’ll be posed as tiredness, or the need for a bath, but Clive knows that if he leaves this room they’ll be no more than strangers once more.
The prince shifts, sliding his knee up so his foot rests flat on the bed, and Clive looks down at his cock, soft and delectable against his thigh, and the tell-tale streak of white coating his skin, running out of him—Clive running out of him.
Clive’s mind buzzes, feeling like he can barely contain everything inside himself, and any words the other men were about to say get lost when he lowers himself to his belly and grasps the backs of the prince’s thighs, spreading him apart once more. He ignores the gasp of surprise above him. There it is, again—a glob of spend leaks out of the prince’s arse and sluggishly drips down his cleft, his stretched out rim unable to keep it in no matter how hard he might clench.
Clive lowers his mouth to that perfect hole once more, slurping loudly in what might be the most obscene noise yet. The oil is flavorless, but underneath it he can taste the bitter-salty tang of himself and the thrilling, forbidden musk of the prince here, drawn out by exertion and sweat.
His tongue slips inside easily, and Dion’s choked off “oh” is music to his ears. Inside, the taste is more of himself, more of Dion, more of them. He strokes his tongue along the prince’s warm, silky walls, as far as he can go, which isn’t nearly far enough. He wants to bury himself inside, so deep that the only thing Dion can think of will be him.
Clive has his nose shoved so tightly against the other man that he can hardly breathe. But it doesn’t matter—what use is air when one might subsist on this?
“Oh, you’re rather good at that,” he hears Dion say, sounding bewilderingly proper for someone who now has his arms hooked around his own thighs to grant Clive better access to his arsehole. Clive snorts, and then has to pull himself back a little, lest he actually pass out from lack of breath.
He looks up. The prince’s cock is standing at renewed attention, already glistening at the tip. Clive gives him a lick, closing his eyes at the way the flavor explodes delightfully over his tongue, melding with the others.
“Going to put on a show for us?” Terence asks. His voice is deeper than usual, gravelly in the wake of orgasm. He shifts the pillows, stacking them behind his back, before pulling Dion in between the vee of his legs, arranging the prince so that his back is resting against his broad chest. Clive follows them up the bed, grimacing slightly when his knee drags through the wet spot of Dion’s first orgasm. He hopes they have a change of sheets. Not that—not that it’ll matter, probably, for him, when he’s dismissed to the cold, empty bed across the hall.
“Maybe I will,” Clive retorts brattily, even though he’s five years older than both of them. Terence’s mouth lifts at the corner, and Clive’s heart thrills with the tiny victory.
The knight brushes a hand down Dion’s chest, down his abdomen, all three of them watching the motion as he wraps his fingers around Dion’s cock in a loose fist, confident with it like it’s his own. Which, Clive supposes, in a way it is. Terence strokes and pulls, languidly toying with the prince. Dion throws his head back on a moan, resting it against the knight’s shoulder. Clive leans up, sucking a mark into the base of the other man’s throat. When he opens his eyes, lips still planted firmly against Dion’s skin, Terence is watching him, eyes narrowed like Clive is a mystery that he is still trying to figure out.
Clive has no answers for him. He pulls off Dion’s skin with a pop, knowing without looking that the skin is already darkening into a bruise—and then looking anyway for good measure. It will be hidden beneath the other man’s shirt in polite company, but it’ll still be there, a tiny claim that will take days to fade.
Dion looks up at him, face flushed, lips parted. Clive kisses him, wondering if the prince can taste Clive—taste himself—on his tongue. Dion moans and his hips jerk, and a weep of precum runs over Terence’s knuckles. The two of them are mesmerizing like that.
“Suck him,” Terence orders. Clive wonders how Dion does it, goes out into the field and commands legions of dragoons when he has someone who possesses this much natural authority at his side.
The answer is obvious. “Suck me,” Dion agrees, with all the authority of someone who is comfortable with his own power, who chooses to relinquish it for his lover.
Clive feels the flicker of a smile playing at his lips. These men are a formidable combination. “Anything you wish, Dion,” he says.
He drags his tongue over Terence’s hand, poking it teasingly in between the other man’s fingers. He can barely feel the velvety texture of Dion’s cock like this, but the hint of him is alluring all the same. He takes a small nibble of Terence’s finger, before the knight unwraps his hand to hold it steady against Clive’s scalp—not forcing, but a solid weight.
Dion’s cock is as delicious as the rest of him. Clive takes his time, bobbing up and down, swirling his tongue around the head, practically making a feast of the other man as if to show Terence everything he missed by choosing to fuck Clive’s throat instead.
The knight’s large hand moves to fondle Dion’s balls, occasionally bumping against Clive’s chin as he sucks Dion down, long delectable minutes punctuated by harsh breaths and Terence’s whispered, dirty words.
Dion’s hips start moving, his moans growing louder. “Are you going to come for me, darling?” Terence murmurs into the prince’s ear. His other hand is wrapped around Dion’s chest, hand braced right over the other man’s heart, like he’s guarding him from the worst. Clive suckles at the prince’s cock, sucking loud as he pulls off with an obnoxious pop.
He draws back, circling his hand around Dion’s cock and jerking him steadily to not interrupt the rhythm. Dion’s brow is creased, tongue darting out to wet his lower lip, his entire self focused on his impending orgasm. Terence’s fingers slip lower, rubbing around his rim and dipping into him, easily finding the sensitive spot inside because these two have had years of practice in getting everything just right.
“A—ahhh,” Dion moans. Terence’s wrist is turned at an angle that looks like it should be painful, but his expression is serene as he watches the prince.
“Come, my love,” Terence implores, nipping Dion’s earlobe. Dion arches back and shudders, pumping copious amounts of spend between Clive’s fingers and onto his own belly.
“Fuck,” Clive whispers in awe, pulling at the princes cock for one last time. He barely notices the rustling of the sheets, of Dion being dragged upwards and his back being placed against the pillows, until the warm body behind him becomes too much to ignore.
“Arms and knees, Rosfield,” Terence murmurs in his ear. The knight guides him with a possessive grip on his arse, halfway up the bed and close to the pool of spunk cooling on the prince’s belly.
He wants to taste Dion like this, too.
But before he has a chance to dip his head, Terence’s fingers dip through the prince’s come, slicking them up like the fluid is something else entirely.
And then Clive tries to ignore the natural flinch of his body as Terence shoves two come-covered fingers unceremoniously into him. Clive is no stranger to pain during sex—there were several years, when he was Branded, where he tried to convince himself he enjoyed it, a desperate scrabble at regaining control, at least in his own mind—but he hasn't been taken in five years, not since Cid. His sharp grunt is almost masked against his forearm, but the gray-eyed knight is more observant than Clive realized.
“Did that hurt?” the man asks, fingers stilling where they rest, deep inside of him. Clive clenches around the digits, not entirely intentional. He feels Terence’s warm breath puffing against the arch of his spine, the ghost of a kiss that is not meant for him.
“You can keep going,” Clive replies, willing himself to relax. He shuts his eyes. The Phoenix flame will heal anything that these two men might do to him, anyway.
A hand grips him by the hair, yanking him back. Dion levers himself up on a hand to see the two of them better. “That wasn’t the question,” Terence admonishes sternly.
Clive huffs a laugh, which toes a fine line between sweet and bitter. “You won’t break me.”
“I do not wish to break you, Clive Rosfield,” Terence hisses, teeth dragging against the ropey scar on his cheek. The fingers slip free of his arse, and Clive clenches uselessly against the emptiness inside him. Terence holds the same hand out in front of Dion’s face. “Get me wet, my prince.”
Clive can’t see Terence behind him, but he moans softly as he watches Dion’s eyes darken and his pink lips part, taking fingers as eagerly as he does a cock. The prince gags himself luxuriously, like he is enjoying each and every moment—Clive doesn’t know if he is, but after what he heard from the two men the other night, he’s inclined to believe the act. Dion bobs up and down, leaving four fingers dripping with his own saliva when at last he pulls away from Terence’s hand.
Terence’s breath hitches. “I love you,” the knight whispers reverently as his spit-slick hand grips the other man’s jaw. Clive tries to make himself small as the two above him and below him come together for a kiss, listens to the wet smacking of lips and the faint hitches of breath, tries not to burn with jealousy—he’s already here, what more can he expect?
When a finger breaches his hole again, Clive is ready, breathing into the intrusion like he has a dislocated joint being set. “Relax,” the brunet scolds, “you’re too tight.” Terence pumps into him slowly, fingers twisting as Clive gets used to the intrusion, one, quickly followed by two and then three. It’s still faster than it probably ought to be, but far slower than Clive has ever thought he deserved. The fingers crook experimentally against his walls, and Clive moans loudly, dropping his belly even lower to the bed in invitation, presenting himself like a beast in heat.
Dion chuckles above him, and Clive slits his eyes open when the prince cards fingers into the hair above his ear, catching a knot and soothing it with a low, apologetic sound.
“Oil?” Clive slurs into Dion’s hand.
“Do you think you’ve earned it?” the prince teases with a smirk.
Clive blinks slowly up at the other man. He’ll take whatever he can get, whatever these men deign to give him. He isn’t sure what emotion washes over his face, but Dion’s expression grows suddenly serious.
“Yes, of course. Terence?” His voice is at once authoritative, imbued with the power of who he is: crown prince, Dominant, commander. It’s terribly arousing.
The knight responds by crooking his fingers once more against Clive’s prostate before letting them slip out. Clive bites his lip, eyes fluttering closed.
“Just let us have you,” Dion says quietly, digging his fingers into his scalp. Clive moans, picturing the briefest hint of talons he saw when the other man came. His own semi-prime form is spiky even without the fire dripping from his skin—made for keeping people away rather than drawing them close. He thinks the prince probably looks magnificent when the aether washes over him. He wouldn’t mind being one of the possessions that the dragon hoards.
The oil makes the rest of the prep go easily, Terence stretching him until he’s pretty certain that he can take the knight’s cock without any pain. Terence’s fingers leave him again, but then Clive feels the blunt pressure of him, pressing in, in, in. The fit is still almost too tight with how thick he is, but the burn is a fuse of pleasure rushing up his spine as the knight somehow finds his prostate on the first thrust, like magic, if magic could be used for good.
“Fuck, Dion, he’s so hot here,” Terence marvels. “Like embers around my cock.” Trust the knight to still be so composed as to be spitting out metaphors, while Clive’s already been reduced to an animal state, mouth only capable of grunts and groans and one embarrassing, soft mewl that he will never admit to uttering. His scarred cheek rubs against the bedsheets with each of Terence’s thrusts, and he has to shut his eyes against the awed look on Dion’s face as the prince watches them. A hand strokes his face from temple to chin, and Clive has to choke back a sob, struggling to breathe normally against the burn in his throat, so different from the one in his arse. How fortunate he is, to experience such agonizing pleasure before the end.
Orgasm comes slowly, in cresting waves washing over him, Terence’s hands hot on his hips, his beautiful cock splitting him open, and Dion’s hand buried in Clive’s shaggy hair like he’s some sort of pet.
Clive is blissfully warm, surrounded by these two men, blanketed by desire.
After is a fragile truce, a temporary invitation to linger in the others’ bed. Clive finds himself boxed in by two bodies, heat cocooning him on either side.
“This is an interesting scar,” Terence observes. He has his head propped up on his fist, finger tracing the lines across Clive’s left cheek.
Clive wishes he could feign ignorance to the unasked question, but both men are watching him now, Dion with far more curiosity than the knight. He supposes the prince had noticed how many at the Hideaway bore the same mark.
He could lie, but he’s never been a good liar.
Clive lays back on the pillows, staring overhead. “A Branded can only be freed by death. But we found another way.”
Terence sucks a sharp breath in through his nose.
“But you’re not a Bearer,” Dion says, sounding genuinely bewildered.
“My mother—and the Imperial Army—were not too concerned with the technicality after Phoenix Gate,” Clive says hollowly. He can see the two men exchange a look above him, but he closes his eyes against it. Pity—that’s something he’s never required.
“I’m sorry,” the knight whispers. They all know what the Army does to its Brandeds. Dion kisses him gently, kisses the scar, and settles in to sleep with his arm around Clive’s waist even though it isn’t nighttime yet.
Clive’s thigh is in the wet spot. He falls asleep anyway, barely waking long enough to notice the brunet rearranging their limbs and pressing a kiss to his forehead, the kind of kiss a loved child gets.
When he wakes, the sky outside is fully dark, instead of the anemic, dusty mauve of daytime. At some point he turned over in his sleep, limbs clinging to Dion like some sort of ooze. His mind feels settled, clearer than it has in weeks.
Downstairs, Terence holds a steaming cup of tea out, hip cocked against the counter while he stares out across at the small yard overlooked by a large window. It’s unusual, Clive realizes, to have a kitchen on the main floor of a house like this. He wonders how the Sanbrequois nobles dealt with it after seizing the homes in the Crystalline Dominion, discovering that they would have to share the same air as their slaves.
Clive takes the cup, taking a sip of tea that would be too scalding for anyone who didn’t have a fire Eikon churning through their veins.
“He means to die,” Terence says quietly.
Clive swallows. “Yes. Though I think less now than before.”
They are the wrong words for comfort, of course. But Clive has always been an atrocious liar.
The knight turns stormy gray eyes on him. “I will do everything in my power to prevent it,” Clive adds.
Terence closes his mouth against the anguish he clearly had loaded up, and stares at him, brow furrowed in confusion. “You…you would, wouldn’t you. Even to your own detriment. Why?” he asks.
“What do you care?” Clive retorts into his mug.
“You are…important,” the knight grits out.
Clive smirks into his tea, joining Terence at the window. The view outside the kitchen is especially unremarkable at night, a few feet of dirt and a stone wall separating the property from its neighbors. It was probably better with a garden, before the changed aether made it difficult for plant life to grow. “The world will need people like Dion after Ultima is defeated. Leaders who can help the world heal. It’s going to be…difficult, for a while. Perhaps longer than our generation to see that there is hope. Dion will help people face that future.
“And besides,” Clive pauses, takes a steadying sip of his drink. “You already thought you lost him once.” He watches Terence close his eyes, bracing his hand on the counter as he relives some memory.
“I can see why Dion likes you,” the knight says.
“I can see why he loves you.” He feels the heat bloom across his face before he even finishes the sentence. It’s too raw. Too honest. He wishes he could find a pit somewhere to bury himself.
Terence’s smile is shyer than anything Clive thought he would ever see on the other man. It makes the stress on his face slip away, turning him into the person he might have been when he and Dion first fell in love. He’s gorgeous. “I assumed the worst of you,” Terence says. “But I’d…like the chance to get to know you,” he adds slowly, like he’s only coming to the realization as he speaks the words. “After this is over.”
“Yes, well…” Clive trails off. If he’s honest with himself, he’s desperate for the chance himself. Only…he’s afraid that if he doesn’t go into this battle ready to die because he wants so badly to succeed, none of them will come out of it alive. “After,” he agrees, not meeting the knight’s eyes. He clenches his arse, relishing the dull throb inside him.
Cive is distracted through dinner, mind racing with thoughts of the future, but neither man calls him out on it. Tomorrow they will begin the journey back to the Hideaway.
And this time next week, it will all be over, whatever that means. He stares into his stew, eyes burning.
After dinner, Clive climbs the stairs behind the other men, throat sinking into his stomach. He’ll just shut his eyes so he doesn’t have to see their door close in his face—
“Are you coming?” Dion asks, hand outstretched. Clive looks up, at the two of them. The knight is a solid presence behind the prince, his expression open, curious.
Clive stares at the hand.
“Come on,” Terence says.
Dion’s grip is warm in his, as he tugs Clive close and shuts the door behind the three of them.
Clive watches as Dion takes a sprinting start and leaps off the platform that houses the Hideaway’s lift. There’s a flash of light across the lake below, and then the flap of wings and a screech that sounds almost joyous as he takes a lap around the lake. Dion had said his will would be stronger, had made it sound like a given that he would retain control over his mind when he primed, but maybe there had been that little sliver of doubt niggling the back of his mind, a doubt which had not been wholly dismissed by Terence returning to his side.
“Dramatic,” Terence mutters sourly, and Clive would grin at him if it weren’t for the anxiety and unease swirling in his belly. Joshua snorts a laugh, though, and it’s his brother’s ability to maintain his good humor despite the near-constant pain he is in now thanks to the piece of Ultima in his chest that makes Clive think that…perhaps, just maybe, after all the sacrifices that have been made, after all the heartache and misery—Clive thinks that maybe, they are due a win.
“Keep him safe,” the knight adds.
There’s a beat, where they look at each other, and Clive is reminded of the awkward moment in the infirmary, when Dion and Terence saw each other again for the first time. He thinks about how certain he was that he would have shown his affection if he were in the others’ shoes.
Now, surrounded by scores of people who are looking to him for salvation—people like Jill, and his uncle, and his baby brother—Clive wonders if maybe he thought too highly of his own boldness.
Terence smirks, like he can read Clive’s mind. And then he steps forward, and with lips that are still spit-slick from making out with Dion before the prince took flight, he kisses Clive hard, right on the mouth. Clive feels his face flame, but still his hand comes up to clench at the other man’s chest, like a lifeline to a better fate.
“Keep yourself safe, Clive,” Terence whispers against his temple, when they break apart. Clive nods, swallowing. He can’t speak past the burn in his throat.
The knight turns, nodding at Joshua who looks utterly dumbstruck. Joshua opens his mouth, then closes it at the dark look on Clive’s face. Then he opens it again. “We will have words, Brother.”
Clive rolls his eyes, mouths “After” and grabs his brother’s arm before he can talk himself out of what they are about to do.
Together, they look towards the end of the platform, and then at each other. Resolved. At peace.
They run, boots pounding in synchrony on the wooden boards.
And then, they fly.
Epilogue
Pain is his first conscious thought, his mind swirling up out of the depths of blackness.
The second, is that if he’s dead he shouldn’t be feeling anything at all.
His brain, sludging forward at approximately the pace of cold treacle, takes several minutes to make the obvious conclusion. From somewhere in the distance, he hears the strange sound of a baby crying.
Clive’s eyes snap open on a gasp.
He blinks quickly, and wooden walls and ceiling come into view above his head. The air has the sharp scent of astringent and potions. An infirmary. More accurately, the Hideaway’s infirmary.
“Clive,” he hears. The voice is music to his ears.
He turns his head, slowly, carefully, to take in his brother’s lanky form on the bed next to him. Joshua looks more boyish than Clive ever remembers seeing him, long legs tucked up with his arms around his knees. His skin is flushed with color. He’s not bleeding out from the wound on his chest, on the floor of the chamber in Origin.
He’s so…alive.
“How—?” Clive croaks, eyes flooding with moisture.
Joshua stands to cross the distance between their two beds, bending down to kneel on the floor next to Clive’s. His movements are a little bit reminiscent of a baby chocobo, learning how to walk on too-long limbs for the first time. His lips are startlingly free from the ever-present red stain of blood.
“You brought me back,” Joshua says in a hush. His aquamarine eyes sparkle as he smiles.
Clive remembers dispelling aether in a rush, remembers thinking the worst before Ultima came crashing down on him once more.
Clive remembers fighting to his last, because Dion had fallen and Joshua was still and lifeless, and it was hard to imagine anything left in the world worth staying alive for.
Gods. How can he face Terence now? He blinks, feeling the tears spill over.
“But how am I…” He trails off, ashamed.
Joshua shrugs, tossing his head to get the hair out of his eyes. “It was the Phoenix, I believe. I found myself on the shore, somehow, with Origin overhead as you waged your final battle with Ultima. Completely restored—“ at this, he presses a palm against his heart— “as if nothing malicious had ever happened. It was after I healed the prince that the aether ripped through the world, and you fell.
“You were turning to stone before my eyes. But the firebird wouldn’t stand for it. His final act.”
Clive can’t make sense of his brother’s words. “What—“ The question gets caught in his throat. He stares up at Joshua like his baby brother might hold all the answers in the world.
Joshua’s expression turns mournful. “The aether burnt out before I could finish. The Curse—it’s still here, in your arm, your wrist.”
Clive glances down, flexes his left hand. The speckle of stone dotting his forearm is ludicrously small, nothing like what Cid bore, which doesn’t explain the agony, like needles being shoved into his skin, when he bends his wrist. Like fire.
“Try not to move. Your muscles will learn to accommodate—Tarja says it’s unprecedented to experience this degree of lithification at once, but it will get better, I swear. Jote is already helping prepare one of her disgusting tinctures to test on you.”
Who cares about such an inconsequential injury? He would have sacrificed the entire arm, his whole life, for the people he loved. He thought he had sacrificed it all. The raw burn in his throat grows stronger. “Dion—?” He can’t finish the sentence.
“Tarja released him yesterday,” Joshua says, doing an abysmally poor job at masking his sly glance. “You have found yourself interesting company, Brother. That knight of his practically threatened to gut Rodrigue when he refused entry to see you.”
“Oh Founder,” Clive murmurs. “I thought—I was certain…” He pushes himself upwards, ignoring Joshua’s exasperated “Clive!” as he forces his body to move. He is panting by the time he is seated.
Joshua stands, crossing his arms, looking away to give Clive a modicum of privacy while he wipes his eyes. The relief is palpable. So why can’t he stop crying?
Clive touches his hand to his chest. There’s a hollowness there, an absence where there had once been fire, and light, and levin, and all the others. It is nothing like the empty chasm of crystal fetters, but there’s a sense of loss there, all the same. He supposes he will have to learn to live with it.
“You did it, Clive,” Joshua says softly. His eyes are bright with his own tears.
“I didn’t think I’d…”
Joshua’s lips turn into a frown. “Yes, well, I suppose fate saw fit to ignore the stupid ideas of my idiotic brother.”
The visitors and well-wishers are plentiful—Gav, and Otto, and Jill, and Uncle Byron—and none of them are Dion or Terence. He learns about Edda’s baby, and Mid using her ship to find them on the shore, and Jote does in fact make him drink something that looks and tastes like morbol slime. Torgal refuses to leave his bed once the wolf discovers him awake, tail thumping a happy rhythm that shakes the mattress a little with each motion.
Clive tires quickly, and Tarja sends everyone out with a few sharp words. His eyes slip shut to the sounds of celebration down below.
None of them need him, not anymore. But wasn’t that the whole point?
If his first waking was a cold, sharp agony, his second is a crackling, roaring inferno.
Clive whimpers, feeling the sweat drenching his neck, his back. His arm feels like it’s been thrust into the whitest point of a fire.
“Shh,” a low voice hums. A cool cloth wipes at his forehead. Clive’s right hand opens, grasping for anything, and it’s caught by a warm grip.
Another hand catches his left, and Clive releases a low moan. “Don’t hurt him,” a voice to his right says.
“I know what I’m doing,” the other says. “I’ve been doing this for you for years.”
His brain whites out—Light—for a moment when strong fingers begin massaging the skin of his arm, the sensation so strange that he can hardly put words to it. He had braced himself for pain, but all there is is a loving, tender heat.
He opens his eyes. Dion sits on his right, perched on a rickety stool. His smile is tremulous when Clive’s gaze comes to rest on him, but he draws Clive’s knuckles to his lips to plant a kiss on them. His arms are bare, unbandaged. Stone stands out starkly on his right arm, a match to Clive's left.
Clive inhales shakily at the pressure on his other wrist, looking to his left to see Terence massaging some sort of balm into his stone skin. The knight’s expression is gentle, holding him like he is something to be treasured.
“You’ve done so well, sweetheart,” Terence says, brushing a stray tear from Clive’s cheek. “Now let us take care of you.”