[When Verso had asked to learn more about Clive, he had simply intended to fill in some of the smaller gaps in their understandings of each other. The little things that might not have shaped them but that have added more colour to their existences, giving them a sheen that their circumstances can't tarnish. Maybe they'd share some stories about what their lives were like when they could still claim some degree of normalcy.
It was a silly notion. They're both anything but ordinary. Their lives have been anything but ordinary.
Even so, he wasn't expecting Clive to reach out and take hold of his heart with the same shocking ease as before. He wasn't expecting his eyes to fall shut and his breath to fall short and his words to cease existing. It's all right, he wants to say. The Paintress is mad with grief. I'm not who you think I am, he wants to argue. He's stolen away too many lives to have the right to his own life, never mind his own happiness. I'm not really enough, he knows to keep to himself. Clive doesn't deserve to have to try and lift him up from those dredges, and Verso can't bear the thought of putting him through that effort.
There's no place for me in Lumiere anymore, he settles on as a final thought, but even that ends up being too difficult for him to express.]
Flatterer.
[So he hides away instead. It's a weak mask, though, so thick with emotion that it cracks beneath its own weight. Stubbornly, he tries to maintain it anyway, reaching to place his own hand atop Clive's against his jaw.]
Now I'm going to have to start trying to live up to all that.
[He doesn't think that he can. But someday, he wants to be able to hear those same words in that same voice and be able to believe them. Someday, he wants to actually deserve them.]
Edited ("i'm not who you think you are..." thanks brain, appreciate it) 2025-09-16 02:48 (UTC)
[ Oh, he didn't mean to do that. To make Verso shutter away, to cocoon himself in self-deprecation, to mistake Clive's conviction as expectation. He thinks of Joshua and his small hands balled into fists whenever their mother crowed at him about staying inside, about not consorting with the so-called orphans and ill-conceived children in their neighborhood; god, the weight of it. Like Joshua, Verso needn't be anything but himself, but Clive is aware of how comical that would sound coming from a man who just had a full-on mental swordfight with his literal inner demon.
So, instead: something lighter. Which is what this exercise was supposed to be about, with all apologies owed to Verso. Clive shakes his head at the assertion about Verso having to do anything, and shifts sideways on his bedroll to press his lips to the crown of Verso's head. ]
I like you as you are. [ Just in case he hasn't made this abundantly clear. Clive is crazy for Verso, and there's no shame in admitting it.
That said, he adds: ] Similarities to a Petank and all.
[ Teasing. Verso is hardly a skittish little thing who balks at the mere possibility of an encounter, but he's quick and full of tricks and is prone to changing the rules of the game. Of all the Nevrons they've had to deal with, Clive thinks the Petanks are unusually endearing.
And, with that, he pinches the bridge of Verso's very nicely-shaped nose. Honk. ]
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flamebrand) wrote2024-09-08 02:07 pm
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It was a silly notion. They're both anything but ordinary. Their lives have been anything but ordinary.
Even so, he wasn't expecting Clive to reach out and take hold of his heart with the same shocking ease as before. He wasn't expecting his eyes to fall shut and his breath to fall short and his words to cease existing. It's all right, he wants to say. The Paintress is mad with grief. I'm not who you think I am, he wants to argue. He's stolen away too many lives to have the right to his own life, never mind his own happiness. I'm not really enough, he knows to keep to himself. Clive doesn't deserve to have to try and lift him up from those dredges, and Verso can't bear the thought of putting him through that effort.
There's no place for me in Lumiere anymore, he settles on as a final thought, but even that ends up being too difficult for him to express.]
Flatterer.
[So he hides away instead. It's a weak mask, though, so thick with emotion that it cracks beneath its own weight. Stubbornly, he tries to maintain it anyway, reaching to place his own hand atop Clive's against his jaw.]
Now I'm going to have to start trying to live up to all that.
[He doesn't think that he can. But someday, he wants to be able to hear those same words in that same voice and be able to believe them. Someday, he wants to actually deserve them.]
no subject
So, instead: something lighter. Which is what this exercise was supposed to be about, with all apologies owed to Verso. Clive shakes his head at the assertion about Verso having to do anything, and shifts sideways on his bedroll to press his lips to the crown of Verso's head. ]
I like you as you are. [ Just in case he hasn't made this abundantly clear. Clive is crazy for Verso, and there's no shame in admitting it.
That said, he adds: ] Similarities to a Petank and all.
[ Teasing. Verso is hardly a skittish little thing who balks at the mere possibility of an encounter, but he's quick and full of tricks and is prone to changing the rules of the game. Of all the Nevrons they've had to deal with, Clive thinks the Petanks are unusually endearing.
And, with that, he pinches the bridge of Verso's very nicely-shaped nose. Honk. ]