[It is a familiar melody; partway through Clive's humming, Verso joins him in close harmony as he works his way through the chords and cadences, the things he'd felt when he'd heard and played it for himself for the first time, years and years and years ago, and the most recent time at the urging of the very man Clive names. The Expeditioners needed something more to listen to than wind and crickets, the rumblings of their stomachs and of the ground where nearby Nevrons trod. A slight nervousness strikes him over playing something of such importance to both men, expressions of love and grief already swirling, but that's all the more reason to push himself towards perfection.]
I can see why.
[Of course, he can't know what the song speaks to Clive, but to him, it's melancholic and hopeful, gentled by a violent world, the kind of music that would once ease him into home at the end of a long day. Already, his fingers itch for the strings; instead, they strengthen their grip on Clive's – just as content with this motion – for the rest of walk to the bedroom, letting go once they cross the threshold so he can close the door behind them.
Then it's a simple matter of finding someplace to toss the towels and preparing for bed. Verso doesn't go any further than pulling on a pair of underwear before slipping under the blankets, still seated, leaning back against the headboard. It's like this that he summons his guitar with a casual flick of his wrist, taking a moment to remind his fingers how it feels to play with a brief improvisation – mischievous and complex, like something that might play during A Midsummer Night's Dream. Once satisfied, he lets out a content hum and asks:]
Ready?
[Spoken like a question, though he doesn't really wait for an answer; the music is already starting to transition as he more tentatively tests his memory of the song for a few rounds before letting go and properly playing.]
[ Of course Verso knows the tune－ Clive can imagine Cid heckling the man to play it the moment he knew anything about Verso's aptitude for music, never missing an opportunity to tap into someone else's talent. It'd been the first song Clive's mentor had installed into his rather alarmingly functional jukebox ("the Orchestrion!", Cid's adoptive daughter had dubbed it), and, if Clive can hazard a guess, Cid must have made Verso play it to remind him of the family he'd left behind in Lumiére.
They fall onto the bed (Clive, too, follows suit in tugging on a pair of underwear), and Verso falls into his performance. The first few plucked notes walk before those clever fingers start to run; Clive, seated next to Verso with the polite amount of distance needed for the other man to play properly, watches and appreciates before he lets his eyes slowly shutter, cutting off all senses to concentrate, wholly, on the trajectory of the song.
He misses Cid. Misses the sound of his voice like rolling thunder, his static humor, his amethyst-tinged kindness. Stubborn but hopeful, like the brightening of the sky after a rainstorm. Misses that mess of an apartment turned refuge and home, the characters that would walk in and out of it. Wishes that he could have taken Verso there, into Cid's solar, and recorded songs for Cid's Orchestrion. Hopes that Cid can rest assured in the knowledge that he's found someone who completes him.
There are tears on his face before he can remember to stop them; they flow and roll without melancholy, fondness in every little dot that falls from cheek to chin and down to wrinkled bedsheets. He listens until the last note hangs, and lets out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. A puff of air, shaky. ]
probably some time after the heat death of the universe or the reaper invasion or w/e destroys earth
[Once Verso's fingers begin to move without much thought on his behalf, he loses himself to the music, swaying ever so lightly as he had with Alicia on the piano, seeking out the rhythms in the air and how the mood shifts as the song progresses. In the dim light of the room, it takes him a moment to catch how Clive's tears glisten on his cheeks, and when he does it takes him another moment to convince himself to keep playing. No matter how much he might want to catch those tears on the tips of his fingers. No matter that he'd prefer the sound of Clive giving substance to those tears than the soft song that helped call them forth. This isn't about him.
So, he plays the song through to its last note – at least as far as his memory informs him – then lets silence wash over them while Clive looses that breath, its shakiness music in its own right for how it holds a rhythm Verso won't presume to interpret. Instead, he disappears the guitar back from whence it came, then curls closer towards Clive, finally moving to brush away some of those tears.
The gesture is absent urgency and bears an abundant love, a soft admiration. That it was both Cid's song and a source of steadiness for Clive make the way the music touched him almost feel like an inevitability in hindsight, but Verso hadn't gone into this thinking he was going to make him cry, and so there's a tentativeness to this as well, no less comfortable than before. Really, it just serves to make him a little more present.]
[ It'd been difficult to cry for Cid in the years following his absence. There were those who'd known Cid for far longer, and those that deserved the tears far more than Clive did: Midadol, Gav, countless others. Now, Clive can let his emotions leak from his blue, blue eyes in the comfort of Verso's presence, and in the complete lack of judgment that follows the plaintive lingering of the song's last note.
He leans into Verso's touch. ] You. [ Obviously. Beautiful fingers strumming beautiful chords. Funny, how there doesn't ever seem to be a time when he isn't thinking about Verso in some capacity. But that's not the entirety of what's on his mind, so: ] And Cid.
[ Just as obvious, to the point where it didn't need saying. Clive goes on, his voice a warm, husky murmur. ]
...You already know that Cid was as good an inventor as he was a fighter. [ A man of many, many talents. ] Before he left for his Expedition, he made a sort of... gramophone, that could store and play music. The Orchestrion, we called it.
[ His stomach knots at the memory of Mid sitting in front of it, listening to her father's favorite songs after his departure. ]
I wish I could show it to you. And to have you record something on it. [ For keeps. A piece of Verso, everlasting. ] Cid would have liked that.
[ It's entirely possible that the man in question has already told Verso about his invention, and groused about how mister music prodigy should have dropped by and played a few pieces for Lumiere's posterity. Seems like something Cid would have playfully complained about.
Again, Clive misses him. The sentiment is self-evident, and thus, he doesn't articulate it; he just lists a little closer to Verso, and nuzzles against his hair. ]
[They make music without notes; now, they dance without music, shifting towards each other like flowers to the sun, to the light, Clive finding Verso's hair, Verso finding Clive's, stroking his knuckles along still-damp strands. Like peace. Like respite. Like salvation. Three things that Verso claims with self-surprising ease considering how long-lost he'd once considered them.
It occurs to him, too, how close he'd just been to losing them, the smell of Clive's petals, earthy and smoky and floral, still lingering in the air like a ghost of a threat. Later, it'll probably hit him even harder, that kick to the stomach, that skeletal hand clenched hard around his heart, but right now he clings so hard to the fantasy of more that there's no room for him to consider the nightmare of less.
And maybe it's that love-clouded state that drives what he says next, or maybe it's the simple fact that there's little of himself or of this world that Verso wouldn't offer to Clive to make things just a little bit better, to give him things that he'd otherwise be denied. Either way, he sweeps his hand down to brush his thumb across his cheek.]
You could show it to me. I have... ways of getting us into Lumiere without anyone noticing.
[Not that he's used them much, yet – he will one day, when Alicia arrives in the Canvas only to be reborn as Maelle – but he's always known the importance of the city, of its people, and so one of the first things he did once he regained his grasp on reality and parted ways from Renoir was to figure out how to return should the need arise.
Of course, Verso knows as much as anyone does what it means to return to a home that you've left for good, so he keeps his tone neutral, a question and not a statement, another unhurried possibility to place upon their hoard of nice thoughts to draw from when they have a dearth of them.]
[ All that time spent wondering if I love you would be alright to say, if the weight of those words wouldn't slant Verso's shoulders too much, and now－ now, it's all Clive can think about, the only words he has to articulate the infinite ocean of his affection. A dangerous thing, an obvious vulnerability to be exploited by unscrupulous enemies...
...of which there are likely many. He's run into one of them, at least, though Clive still hesitates to call Clea a clear enemy; a wildcard, maybe. A woman who would do most anything to see her agenda fulfilled, but has discovered that she, too, has lines she can't cross.
Things to think about later. Now, Clive nestles into this comfortable enclosure of their bodies and their safety, out of eyeshot and earshot. ]
Of course you do, [ he sigh-chuckles, about Verso knowing hidden paths that allow him to maneuver this world in ways that no one else can. To some extent, he knows he should be offended by that knowledge－ why hasn't Verso used it to the advantage of other Expeditions? for the people of Lumiere?－ but there's a mirrored understanding of the emotional toll it takes to be persona non grata. Again, Verso was tortured by the woman he fucking loved; there are some wounds that not even pragmatism can heal.
Clive pulls him closer, to emphasize that the information is received without judgment. He doesn't think he could let Verso slip away from him tonight, not for anything. ]
I won't be able to show my face to anyone in Lumiere. [ Survivor's guilt, through and through. He can't bear the thought of being the only one to go back to familiar faces, not when he hasn't earned it. ] ...But I'd like to show you the places that were important to me.
[If Clive were to ask Verso why he's never said anything to the Lumierans, he would offer the whole truth, the selfish and the selfless, the determined and the defeated. Terrified the whole time, certainly, and he'd be surprised if he could look Clive in the eye through the whole of it, but he knows he can't give meaning to any of the promises and vows and dreams and fantasies he's made if he can't commit to being honest.
Another thought to add to their ever-increasing arsenal of later. When they have time. When they have energy. When, perhaps, they have nowhere else to hide from each other. Or, at least when he doesn't.
So, when Clive pulls him close, Verso's all too happy to bury his face in the crook of his neck, warm and cosy, Clive's skin still smelling of the sandalwood oil Verso had incorporated into the soap when he washed his hair. An acknowledging hum follows, one that rises into a note of intrigue at the end.
Lumiere isn't a place Verso has ever really wanted to tour, knowing that everything that was once familiar is gone and everything that remains is home-but-not home, its own scar on the landscape, in a way, for what it speaks of Aline's incessant desperation. But the thought of walking hand-in-hand through the streets, learning about all the places that touched Clive and shaped him into the man he is – that casts Lumiere in a different light. One that he does want to see shine.]
What if I could promise you wouldn't have to?
[How, exactly, he would manage that he keeps to himself. Not to be mysterious or sneaky or anything like that, but rather so that he doesn't come across as trying to encourage him to agree. He just wants him to know what's possible.]
[ In that nebulous space of later, Clive also wants to ask about what parts of Lumière hold significance for Verso. Which parts of it are associated to what kind of memories, and whether any of those memories have anything to do with the woman that he loved.
(A topic that still seems too raw and aching to touch, but a topic that flits in and out of Clive's consciousness at times, regardless. What kind of person she was, what drew Verso to her. Whether there's anything of her that Verso can still remember fondly, or if the possibility of that has been obliterated by the weight of her death.)
Clive steps away from that rabbithole before he can slip down it; elects, instead, to focus more firmly on the question of how they can inhabit the city that neither of them truly belong in anymore. All this talk of the future, and Clive realizes that he'd never imagined one where the both of them return to that fractured city and resume a life before their respective Expeditions.
Hm, he hums, with his arm around Verso's waist and his nose buried in soft streaks of white hair. ]
Then I'd like to be the one escorting you, for a change. [ His hold tightens a fraction, protective and affectionate and covetous, all in one gesture. ] I'd... show you to Cid's apartment. His solar. Then I'd take you to my favorite bistro－ a place called "Martha's"－ and my uncle's old manor.
[ Making his past and present collide. It's hard to keep the fondness out of his voice, hard not to sound eager at the prospect of taking Verso out on what might actually pass for a proper date. ]
It would be nice, to see the man I love in the places I loved.
[Those shifts in Clive's tone convince Verso to do his best to see this promise through. Particularly the eagerness – a profoundly rare commodity on the Continent, where it's usually fed by desperation and despair when it does exist, and not something as pure and wonderful and perfectly ordinary as this.
They can have these things, he reminds himself Just for a few days here and there, just some stolen moments when the Canvas can afford them, and their despair will permit them. Maybe they will always be outliers among the others, but that doesn't make them any less human, and that humanity, in the end, is the only real weapon they wield against the Dessendres.
Being selfish like this isn't something that Verso's accustomed to. It's not something he's completely comfortable with, either, so much more used to rediscovering his humanity while in deep isolation, drunk on too much wine and lost in so many ways that he's yet to find all the pieces of himself that have scattered across this world. That still feels more like what he deserves after everything.
It isn't what Clive deserves, though. Faith is. Belief is. Effort and trust and want and need are. And Verso has love enough to provide him with all that and more.
Warmth, however, isn't his forte. As lovely as it is to lay like this in Clive's arms and absorb his body heat, Verso still has to reach down to pull the blanket up, better covering them both. Maybe their hair is still too damp for this, he thinks as he pulls back a bit to lay forehead-to-forehead with Clive, but with their plans to stay here – and with only Joshua to see them – he can't think of a reason to care. Not when he's this relaxed, nearly comfortable enough to forget what awaits him on the other side of wakefulness.]
All right, it's a date. [Said with his own lilt of eagerness, his own swell of fondness.] I'll wear a suit and everything. Especially if you're taking me out to dinner.
[ They settle, calm and limp-limbed in a way they haven't been allowed to be since... well, they met, really. It's been a demanding, grueling journey of discovery and strife, even ignoring the constant Nevron threat looming behind every corner; it will be an even more demanding, grueling journey after this, but Clive will savor what he has for now.
Which is why he doesn't ask how in the world Verso could manage maneuvering them through Lumière without anyone recognizing him. It'd break the immersion of the moment. He also doesn't ask if Verso has ever been in Lumière while Clive occupied it, because that, too, would put a splinter in this gauzy dream of an uncomplicated dinner in that city of grief.
Instead, Clive leans in for a soft kiss. Just a brief brush, featherlight. Verso has yet to accuse Clive of adoring him a little too much, and thus the fire continues to burn a little hotter, a little brighter with each passing day, each passing minute. A slow boil. Verso should be more careful, perhaps, about stoking this particular flame. ]
Martha's isn't exactly a suit-and-tie establishment. But I won't say no to seeing you in a three-piece. [ A soft laugh, as he rakes his hand up Verso's back, making gentle friction to keep bare skin warm. Affection coats everything he does; he'd like it to be the thing Verso falls asleep to, the last thing Verso thinks of before drifting off into his troubled sleep. That he's loved, cherished. ]
I'll fantasize about it as politely as I can manage.
[Ah. There's a double challenge in what Clive says, an invitation to tease that carries through even in the tenderness of that laugh and fire-crackling tingle of his hands on Verso's back. He lets out his own chuckle, all mischief and trouble, almost affronted by the idea of polite fantasy, though of course that's not the case at all. But Clive has left him an opening, and he is weak, so very weak, to them. So...]
All right, then no tie and a half-buttoned shirt.
[Two birds, one stone. His own hand snakes its way between their bodies, fingers dancing Clive's chest in an approximation of one half of a V, all the way up to his collarbone before flattening out so he can slide his palm down and across, over his heart, a gentled touch absent intent despite what preceded it.
If there is danger to encouraging Clive's affections, Verso hasn't picked up on it at all. Just like with Ifrit. With decades worth of awful frames of reference for how love is supposed to be, he can't help but absorb everything that Clive offers to him, each reminder and every revelation, all the little things and the big things that stitch him back together.]
I'll save the full regalia just for you. You'll be the first to see it since...
[Since Julie, before the Fracture, when life still had its luxuries and he delighted in impressing her the same way he does with Clive. Instead of saying that, though, he digs a bit deeper for the context of the occasion. Not a simple date nor a special event, not a dinner with his family, but...]
[ They're near-naked in bed together, but the fantasy of being half-clothed is just as tantalizing as the bare map of skin currently laid out in front of him in all its glory. Clive warms to the feeling of that hand tracing over his chest, his heart, and imagines the deep cut of an open shirt framing Verso's lovely collarbone, the trim slope of his waist where the same shirt tucks into dark pants.
God, he's so attractive. More attractive is that Verso knows it, and flaunts it with that confident mischief. It makes Clive want to chase and chase.
He traces the line and dip of Verso's hip; follows the waistband of his underwear and feels along Verso's tailbone, then up his spine. Is it unsettling, that he can't seem to get enough? That he doesn't know how to stop loving Verso? Will it be his undoing? ]
You must have had half of Lumière in love with you.
[ Speaking of unhinged adoration. This talented, utterly stunning man, wrapped in a three-piece and making magic on stage. He must have been a fucking vision― perfection poised in front of a piano. ]
Tell me what it felt like, when you were on stage.
[ Did he play for someone? The woman he loved? His family? Did he feel like he was playing for himself and himself only, wrapped in his passion for music and existing solely within it and nowhere else? ]
[A gentle shiver as Clive continues touching him, one that finds Verso's shoulders rising, one that has him letting out a long and somewhat shuddered breath before he ends up scoffing a little at the notion of being some kind of light in Lumiere. As confident as Verso is in certain surface matters, he'd always been a little unsure of how people actually felt about him, whether they were looking to him or to what he represented and if they were wearing their own masks when they'd meet his eyes and smile. He was never alone if he hadn't wanted to be, at least, and it was easy enough for him to surround himself with people, drinks in hand and song in the air, but there were always doubts.
Or so it feels now, anyway. Maybe he had felt more broadly accepted, if not admired, back then, and the way people had turned on him after the Fracture – and the feel of his lover's blade penetrating his heart – has coloured his perception of how people saw him. Add to that the way Expeditioners seem to view him just off centre, human in shape and concept but different in essence, and he often feels more like an intriguing oddity than man with any meaningfully endearing qualities.
Fortunately, it's an observation Clive makes in passing before offering a topic Verso's far more comfortable in addressing. He closes his eyes as he summons forth the memory of performance, one finger tapping against Clive's chest like a metronome as he slips deeper and deeper into one of his past lives.]
Vulnerable. [He starts off with, his voice low and rumbling, almost like a purr.] There I'd be, centre stage, about to let the beauty of the notes bring my heart to the edge of breaking in front of hundreds of people. I wanted them to feel what I was feeling so deeply that I'd end up intimidating myself. But once I started playing, I just... I felt at peace. I mean, my heart was still pounding in my chest, but I knew I was right where I belonged.
[And what a feeling that was, finding himself and learning how it feels to truly have a place in the world, carved out by his own ambitions, fostered into something more by the passion in his own heart. It's little wonder that it's stuck with him.]
[ And that, Clive supposes, is the beauty of art. The opposite of swordplay, which is what Clive has dedicated his entire life to. Instead of steeling and shielding, Verso's music is about externalizing and extolling－ when Verso hovers his hands above ivory keys, he's getting ready to bare his soul in ways Clive can't even imagine.
It's beautiful. It makes sense. Verso, the strongest man that Clive has ever known, who holds the experience of breaking his heart in witness of others sacred. Who revels in vulnerability, where Clive had been taught to eschew it. Among all the color and chaos of this world, Verso is light.
Clive's palm moves up, and cradles the nape of Verso's neck. His thumb slips behind an ear, and massages gently in time to his heartbeat. ]
A space to do something you love. Unapologetically.
[ And to be heard and seen exactly the way Verso wished. Of course that would be empowering; of course that would mean everything. The Dessendres paint, but music is something entirely different－ a form of expression completely unbeholden to the expectations or rules set by discerning parents. Even without the context of the mirrored lives, Verso must have found respite in the fact that the piano, the melodies, the stories he wove with his hands, were his.
The thought of it makes Clive's chest feel tight. It makes Clive renew his resolve to fight and fight and fight for a future that will allow Verso to feel, and not just to suffer. To allow himself the depth of his emotions without the guilt of having them.
Oh, Clive would do anything for Verso. He'll even become a monster, if he must. Anything, anything. ]
Your music is a gift. I've never heard anything like it, which is a testament to who you are and what you're capable of. [ Another kiss, this time to Verso's forehead. ] ...So keep it safe for me.
[Another fraught concept: preserving parts of himself for someone else. For decades this has, of course, meant living beyond reason, an eternal punishment for having died the first time. Never again, each breath he exhales speaks into the world,m and never again each breath he inhales affirms with brutal regularity.
But like so many other things, it feels different with Clive, who wants him to live so that he can die fulfilled; who wants him to build a legacy of happiness, whether he deserves to or not, and to have an impact beyond death. That still feels like something he'll end up disappointing Clive on in the end, no matter their promises, but maybe his family will prove him wrong. Maybe he can turn death into something that happens on its own terms rather than as something to pursue.
Either way, he can't do it alone.]
If I'm going to do that, then... I'll need to keep you safe first.
[He'll need to feel like he isn't just something precious to sacrifice and be sacrificed for, he'll need to know – really know in ways that not even the worst of him can question – that he is capable of doing more than existing. Pulling away just a bit, just enough to properly look at Clive and manoeuvrer a hand to his cheek, knuckle running along it, the back of his fingertip tickled by his scruff.]
You're my gift. The best I've been given. And it excites me every day to know that I've barely started unwrapping everything that makes you who you are.
[I'd give up music if that's what it took to keep loving you he doesn't say. It's true in ways that scare him a little, and it's the kind of truth he suspects that Clive wouldn't want to hear, anyway. So:]
Because my heart breaks over your beauty, too, and I want to see how bright you can burn, mon feu. Tu brilles deja plus fort que le soleil.
[He could bask in his warmth forever. Not that that's up for debate with how he shift even closer, one leg lifting to wrap around Clive's.]
[ A gift. In the wake of that statement, there's a flicker of genuine incomprehension－ a flutter of surprise that speaks to a momentary inability to associate that word with Clive's own self. Because he's nothing like Verso at all, really: not an artist, not a talent, not a person with skills that flourish in these moments of peace. Often, Clive had believed that the only purpose he could serve was on a far-flung battlefield on the Continent; that belief is less strong now, with Verso at his side and with Verso's words slowly percolating through the worst of his self-loathing, but it still looms in the distance, an Ifrit-shaped shadow stretching behind him.
(What if violence is all he's good for? What if this love, too, turns violent? Grows teeth and horns? Hurts Verso in the process?)
He hesitates after he's given such beautiful, open-hearted grace. Truly, he thinks there's nothing very beautiful about him at all. But if that's what those halo eyes see in him, who is Clive to argue?
He smiles, tentative but steady, and tips so that the expanse of his discolored, raised scar brushes along those careful fingertips. Remnants of his disgraceful past, offered for scrutiny and touch. Clive trusts Verso completely. ]
Pour toi. Seulement pour toi. My love, lit by your starlight.
[ For it to burn and burn and burn. ] You make me a better man.
[A bold statement considering how Verso's only known Clive for a fraction of a fraction of his life, but everything he's seen from Clive, all the anger and the vengeance, all the despair and the grief, all the love and firelight and hope and the soft ambitions, make it impossible for Verso to think that he's made any part of Clive better. Even thinking that he's brought it out of him is a bit outside of Verso's reach, though that owes more to the way he views himself than to his impressions of Clive and what they have and what that means for themselves and each other.
It takes a strong spirit to not succumb to all the things that Clive has endured; it takes a good heart to be given worst after worst after worst and still live in pursuit of better for everyone else. And they way that he had responded at first – that lack of either agreement or argument, a heartbreaking moment in its own right, a swell of love and light – on served to solidify Verso's stance.
With the tilt of Clive's face and the trust it implies, Verso shifts to tracing the outline of his scar, all the way down to where it dips past his throat. A wound that's literally shaped him in certain senses. One that Verso wishes he hadn't suffered, but one that he does genuinely find beautiful in its own right, all the same, a symbol of strength, a demonstration of the power of true strength.
For Clive to have survived all that he has and still be one of the single most breathtaking people Verso's ever met, in heart and in body and in essence, well, that drives Verso to say something else bold, too.]
[ The man that he was, and the man that he always will be. Clive's stomach knots a bit at that insinuation, though the light in Verso's eyes keeps him from balking outright; he reminds himself that Verso has, in fact, seen him in various states of lowness, and that his impulse to push back is a result of his own hangups and has nothing to do with Verso's assessment.
More important is how grounding the touch against his face and his pulse feels. Anabella has made sure that her unwanted son wears the sin of his existence on his skin, but Clive has the freedom, now, to recontextualize it. He can think about it as a mirrored mark, a scar for a scar: the cousin to the black fissure that bisects Verso's eye.
Survivors, the both of them. Imperfect and struggling. There's beauty in that, too. ]
...I don't want to betray that belief.
[ His hand touches at his own chest, above his own heart, where his heart beats and pulses crimson. ]
Even if I was painted to be a monster－ even if my greed and hunger grow by the day.
[ He's expressed a bit of that latter point already; still benign, but more forward than he's ever been with anyone, anything. Mine, mine, mine. Perhaps this is far less alarming than Clive thinks though (he has no frame of reference for 'normal', after all), and so he eases a bit, and smooths his palm down to the small of Verso's back again.
No shot he's going to dampen the nice mood. He adds: ] I'll have to remind myself to be a 'good boy'.
[Verso laughs, presses a soft kiss to Clive's lips, lips never unfurling from their smile. That's another thing, he thinks – how being called good means something to Clive, at least on some level. Easily, he could have taken everything that's been done to him as cause enough to commit himself to an existence fed by indignation and an acceptance of the worst. But he doesn't. He hasn't. And that says close to everything. As far as Verso's concerned, anyway.
There's much he wants to say about greed and hunger and those ifs Clive speaks, but they're of the same mind. Curled up and warm in bed, smelling of sandalwood and bergamot, bodies relaxed from both the bath and the brinks they'd tumbled each other over in its waters, earlier urgencies abated by Clive's reunion with Joshua, the peace they're awash in is bright and guiding as the stars, inviting and homey as crackling flames, rare as the future.]
I won't let you forget.
[A confident promise. Verso can't imagine a scenario where he leaves Clive to whatever might consume him, whether from the inside or the outside. In truth, Ifrit himself could emerge to snuff the life out of Verso and he would still return to Clive's side insistent that he's a good man and certain that he's speaking in absolute honesty. Which is perhaps extreme in its own right, a demonstration of his acclimation towards pain and suffering, but he's so far removed from what it's like to exist on any other terms that he can't conceive of a depth of physical pain that would change his mind.
But that's neither here nor there, either. Besides, Verso has his own request to make, a fear greater than anything Ifrit could instill in him, though he speaks it with a light tone, almost humorous.]
[ Forgetting himself. Clive thinks to the conversation they'd had in warm water, the way Verso'd shrugged after Clive's request to keep his heart whole even if Clive perished somewhere out there. His brush with near-death has reframed some of his beliefs about how Verso has stayed intact for decades and decades of isolation; Verso's refusal to promise has given Clive more of an idea of what might happen to that intactness if he fumbles.
As always, he can't bear even the thought of it. So he sets his misgivings aside regarding the muchness of his own being, and loops Verso into a tighter embrace, covering him with arms and blankets almost as if to hide him from the rest of the world and its prying eyes, its poor intentions. Close and tucked and safe. ]
A deal.
[ Though they don't have anything to swear on but this, their bodies pressed together and their chroma mingling. Clive flares scarlet for a few dwindling seconds, letting harmless flame flicker around the both of them like the last embers on cooling coal.
Verso is far too precious to lose even a fraction of a sliver of him. Keeping him insulated, Clive huddles and breathes, so comfortable that it's likely he'll remain a dead weight against the other man until his brother comes to wake him (embarrassingly) in the morning. It's fine. Joshua knows, and more importantly, is alive. Right now, Clive is the most fortunate man in any part of the Canvas. Continent or Cityside. ]
...Now rest, unless you'd like me to moon over you a bit longer.
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flamebrand) wrote2024-09-08 02:07 pm
rubs hands together with such gusto the friction sets the sadmen aflame (again) (sorry, ben starrs)
I can see why.
[Of course, he can't know what the song speaks to Clive, but to him, it's melancholic and hopeful, gentled by a violent world, the kind of music that would once ease him into home at the end of a long day. Already, his fingers itch for the strings; instead, they strengthen their grip on Clive's – just as content with this motion – for the rest of walk to the bedroom, letting go once they cross the threshold so he can close the door behind them.
Then it's a simple matter of finding someplace to toss the towels and preparing for bed. Verso doesn't go any further than pulling on a pair of underwear before slipping under the blankets, still seated, leaning back against the headboard. It's like this that he summons his guitar with a casual flick of his wrist, taking a moment to remind his fingers how it feels to play with a brief improvisation – mischievous and complex, like something that might play during A Midsummer Night's Dream. Once satisfied, he lets out a content hum and asks:]
Ready?
[Spoken like a question, though he doesn't really wait for an answer; the music is already starting to transition as he more tentatively tests his memory of the song for a few rounds before letting go and properly playing.]
WHEN WILL VERSO BE FREE!!!!!!!!!!
They fall onto the bed (Clive, too, follows suit in tugging on a pair of underwear), and Verso falls into his performance. The first few plucked notes walk before those clever fingers start to run; Clive, seated next to Verso with the polite amount of distance needed for the other man to play properly, watches and appreciates before he lets his eyes slowly shutter, cutting off all senses to concentrate, wholly, on the trajectory of the song.
He misses Cid. Misses the sound of his voice like rolling thunder, his static humor, his amethyst-tinged kindness. Stubborn but hopeful, like the brightening of the sky after a rainstorm. Misses that mess of an apartment turned refuge and home, the characters that would walk in and out of it. Wishes that he could have taken Verso there, into Cid's solar, and recorded songs for Cid's Orchestrion. Hopes that Cid can rest assured in the knowledge that he's found someone who completes him.
There are tears on his face before he can remember to stop them; they flow and roll without melancholy, fondness in every little dot that falls from cheek to chin and down to wrinkled bedsheets. He listens until the last note hangs, and lets out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. A puff of air, shaky. ]
probably some time after the heat death of the universe or the reaper invasion or w/e destroys earth
So, he plays the song through to its last note – at least as far as his memory informs him – then lets silence wash over them while Clive looses that breath, its shakiness music in its own right for how it holds a rhythm Verso won't presume to interpret. Instead, he disappears the guitar back from whence it came, then curls closer towards Clive, finally moving to brush away some of those tears.
The gesture is absent urgency and bears an abundant love, a soft admiration. That it was both Cid's song and a source of steadiness for Clive make the way the music touched him almost feel like an inevitability in hindsight, but Verso hadn't gone into this thinking he was going to make him cry, and so there's a tentativeness to this as well, no less comfortable than before. Really, it just serves to make him a little more present.]
What are you thinking about?
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He leans into Verso's touch. ] You. [ Obviously. Beautiful fingers strumming beautiful chords. Funny, how there doesn't ever seem to be a time when he isn't thinking about Verso in some capacity. But that's not the entirety of what's on his mind, so: ] And Cid.
[ Just as obvious, to the point where it didn't need saying. Clive goes on, his voice a warm, husky murmur. ]
...You already know that Cid was as good an inventor as he was a fighter. [ A man of many, many talents. ] Before he left for his Expedition, he made a sort of... gramophone, that could store and play music. The Orchestrion, we called it.
[ His stomach knots at the memory of Mid sitting in front of it, listening to her father's favorite songs after his departure. ]
I wish I could show it to you. And to have you record something on it. [ For keeps. A piece of Verso, everlasting. ] Cid would have liked that.
[ It's entirely possible that the man in question has already told Verso about his invention, and groused about how mister music prodigy should have dropped by and played a few pieces for Lumiere's posterity. Seems like something Cid would have playfully complained about.
Again, Clive misses him. The sentiment is self-evident, and thus, he doesn't articulate it; he just lists a little closer to Verso, and nuzzles against his hair. ]
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It occurs to him, too, how close he'd just been to losing them, the smell of Clive's petals, earthy and smoky and floral, still lingering in the air like a ghost of a threat. Later, it'll probably hit him even harder, that kick to the stomach, that skeletal hand clenched hard around his heart, but right now he clings so hard to the fantasy of more that there's no room for him to consider the nightmare of less.
And maybe it's that love-clouded state that drives what he says next, or maybe it's the simple fact that there's little of himself or of this world that Verso wouldn't offer to Clive to make things just a little bit better, to give him things that he'd otherwise be denied. Either way, he sweeps his hand down to brush his thumb across his cheek.]
You could show it to me. I have... ways of getting us into Lumiere without anyone noticing.
[Not that he's used them much, yet – he will one day, when Alicia arrives in the Canvas only to be reborn as Maelle – but he's always known the importance of the city, of its people, and so one of the first things he did once he regained his grasp on reality and parted ways from Renoir was to figure out how to return should the need arise.
Of course, Verso knows as much as anyone does what it means to return to a home that you've left for good, so he keeps his tone neutral, a question and not a statement, another unhurried possibility to place upon their hoard of nice thoughts to draw from when they have a dearth of them.]
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...of which there are likely many. He's run into one of them, at least, though Clive still hesitates to call Clea a clear enemy; a wildcard, maybe. A woman who would do most anything to see her agenda fulfilled, but has discovered that she, too, has lines she can't cross.
Things to think about later. Now, Clive nestles into this comfortable enclosure of their bodies and their safety, out of eyeshot and earshot. ]
Of course you do, [ he sigh-chuckles, about Verso knowing hidden paths that allow him to maneuver this world in ways that no one else can. To some extent, he knows he should be offended by that knowledge－ why hasn't Verso used it to the advantage of other Expeditions? for the people of Lumiere?－ but there's a mirrored understanding of the emotional toll it takes to be persona non grata. Again, Verso was tortured by the woman he fucking loved; there are some wounds that not even pragmatism can heal.
Clive pulls him closer, to emphasize that the information is received without judgment. He doesn't think he could let Verso slip away from him tonight, not for anything. ]
I won't be able to show my face to anyone in Lumiere. [ Survivor's guilt, through and through. He can't bear the thought of being the only one to go back to familiar faces, not when he hasn't earned it. ] ...But I'd like to show you the places that were important to me.
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Another thought to add to their ever-increasing arsenal of later. When they have time. When they have energy. When, perhaps, they have nowhere else to hide from each other. Or, at least when he doesn't.
So, when Clive pulls him close, Verso's all too happy to bury his face in the crook of his neck, warm and cosy, Clive's skin still smelling of the sandalwood oil Verso had incorporated into the soap when he washed his hair. An acknowledging hum follows, one that rises into a note of intrigue at the end.
Lumiere isn't a place Verso has ever really wanted to tour, knowing that everything that was once familiar is gone and everything that remains is home-but-not home, its own scar on the landscape, in a way, for what it speaks of Aline's incessant desperation. But the thought of walking hand-in-hand through the streets, learning about all the places that touched Clive and shaped him into the man he is – that casts Lumiere in a different light. One that he does want to see shine.]
What if I could promise you wouldn't have to?
[How, exactly, he would manage that he keeps to himself. Not to be mysterious or sneaky or anything like that, but rather so that he doesn't come across as trying to encourage him to agree. He just wants him to know what's possible.]
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(A topic that still seems too raw and aching to touch, but a topic that flits in and out of Clive's consciousness at times, regardless. What kind of person she was, what drew Verso to her. Whether there's anything of her that Verso can still remember fondly, or if the possibility of that has been obliterated by the weight of her death.)
Clive steps away from that rabbithole before he can slip down it; elects, instead, to focus more firmly on the question of how they can inhabit the city that neither of them truly belong in anymore. All this talk of the future, and Clive realizes that he'd never imagined one where the both of them return to that fractured city and resume a life before their respective Expeditions.
Hm, he hums, with his arm around Verso's waist and his nose buried in soft streaks of white hair. ]
Then I'd like to be the one escorting you, for a change. [ His hold tightens a fraction, protective and affectionate and covetous, all in one gesture. ] I'd... show you to Cid's apartment. His solar. Then I'd take you to my favorite bistro－ a place called "Martha's"－ and my uncle's old manor.
[ Making his past and present collide. It's hard to keep the fondness out of his voice, hard not to sound eager at the prospect of taking Verso out on what might actually pass for a proper date. ]
It would be nice, to see the man I love in the places I loved.
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They can have these things, he reminds himself Just for a few days here and there, just some stolen moments when the Canvas can afford them, and their despair will permit them. Maybe they will always be outliers among the others, but that doesn't make them any less human, and that humanity, in the end, is the only real weapon they wield against the Dessendres.
Being selfish like this isn't something that Verso's accustomed to. It's not something he's completely comfortable with, either, so much more used to rediscovering his humanity while in deep isolation, drunk on too much wine and lost in so many ways that he's yet to find all the pieces of himself that have scattered across this world. That still feels more like what he deserves after everything.
It isn't what Clive deserves, though. Faith is. Belief is. Effort and trust and want and need are. And Verso has love enough to provide him with all that and more.
Warmth, however, isn't his forte. As lovely as it is to lay like this in Clive's arms and absorb his body heat, Verso still has to reach down to pull the blanket up, better covering them both. Maybe their hair is still too damp for this, he thinks as he pulls back a bit to lay forehead-to-forehead with Clive, but with their plans to stay here – and with only Joshua to see them – he can't think of a reason to care. Not when he's this relaxed, nearly comfortable enough to forget what awaits him on the other side of wakefulness.]
All right, it's a date. [Said with his own lilt of eagerness, his own swell of fondness.] I'll wear a suit and everything. Especially if you're taking me out to dinner.
[Real food!!!!!!!!!]
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Which is why he doesn't ask how in the world Verso could manage maneuvering them through Lumière without anyone recognizing him. It'd break the immersion of the moment. He also doesn't ask if Verso has ever been in Lumière while Clive occupied it, because that, too, would put a splinter in this gauzy dream of an uncomplicated dinner in that city of grief.
Instead, Clive leans in for a soft kiss. Just a brief brush, featherlight. Verso has yet to accuse Clive of adoring him a little too much, and thus the fire continues to burn a little hotter, a little brighter with each passing day, each passing minute. A slow boil. Verso should be more careful, perhaps, about stoking this particular flame. ]
Martha's isn't exactly a suit-and-tie establishment. But I won't say no to seeing you in a three-piece. [ A soft laugh, as he rakes his hand up Verso's back, making gentle friction to keep bare skin warm. Affection coats everything he does; he'd like it to be the thing Verso falls asleep to, the last thing Verso thinks of before drifting off into his troubled sleep. That he's loved, cherished. ]
I'll fantasize about it as politely as I can manage.
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All right, then no tie and a half-buttoned shirt.
[Two birds, one stone. His own hand snakes its way between their bodies, fingers dancing Clive's chest in an approximation of one half of a V, all the way up to his collarbone before flattening out so he can slide his palm down and across, over his heart, a gentled touch absent intent despite what preceded it.
If there is danger to encouraging Clive's affections, Verso hasn't picked up on it at all. Just like with Ifrit. With decades worth of awful frames of reference for how love is supposed to be, he can't help but absorb everything that Clive offers to him, each reminder and every revelation, all the little things and the big things that stitch him back together.]
I'll save the full regalia just for you. You'll be the first to see it since...
[Since Julie, before the Fracture, when life still had its luxuries and he delighted in impressing her the same way he does with Clive. Instead of saying that, though, he digs a bit deeper for the context of the occasion. Not a simple date nor a special event, not a dinner with his family, but...]
The last time I played at the operahouse.
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God, he's so attractive. More attractive is that Verso knows it, and flaunts it with that confident mischief. It makes Clive want to chase and chase.
He traces the line and dip of Verso's hip; follows the waistband of his underwear and feels along Verso's tailbone, then up his spine. Is it unsettling, that he can't seem to get enough? That he doesn't know how to stop loving Verso? Will it be his undoing? ]
You must have had half of Lumière in love with you.
[ Speaking of unhinged adoration. This talented, utterly stunning man, wrapped in a three-piece and making magic on stage. He must have been a fucking vision― perfection poised in front of a piano. ]
Tell me what it felt like, when you were on stage.
[ Did he play for someone? The woman he loved? His family? Did he feel like he was playing for himself and himself only, wrapped in his passion for music and existing solely within it and nowhere else? ]
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Or so it feels now, anyway. Maybe he had felt more broadly accepted, if not admired, back then, and the way people had turned on him after the Fracture – and the feel of his lover's blade penetrating his heart – has coloured his perception of how people saw him. Add to that the way Expeditioners seem to view him just off centre, human in shape and concept but different in essence, and he often feels more like an intriguing oddity than man with any meaningfully endearing qualities.
Fortunately, it's an observation Clive makes in passing before offering a topic Verso's far more comfortable in addressing. He closes his eyes as he summons forth the memory of performance, one finger tapping against Clive's chest like a metronome as he slips deeper and deeper into one of his past lives.]
Vulnerable. [He starts off with, his voice low and rumbling, almost like a purr.] There I'd be, centre stage, about to let the beauty of the notes bring my heart to the edge of breaking in front of hundreds of people. I wanted them to feel what I was feeling so deeply that I'd end up intimidating myself. But once I started playing, I just... I felt at peace. I mean, my heart was still pounding in my chest, but I knew I was right where I belonged.
[And what a feeling that was, finding himself and learning how it feels to truly have a place in the world, carved out by his own ambitions, fostered into something more by the passion in his own heart. It's little wonder that it's stuck with him.]
Nothing's made me feel more empowered.
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It's beautiful. It makes sense. Verso, the strongest man that Clive has ever known, who holds the experience of breaking his heart in witness of others sacred. Who revels in vulnerability, where Clive had been taught to eschew it. Among all the color and chaos of this world, Verso is light.
Clive's palm moves up, and cradles the nape of Verso's neck. His thumb slips behind an ear, and massages gently in time to his heartbeat. ]
A space to do something you love. Unapologetically.
[ And to be heard and seen exactly the way Verso wished. Of course that would be empowering; of course that would mean everything. The Dessendres paint, but music is something entirely different－ a form of expression completely unbeholden to the expectations or rules set by discerning parents. Even without the context of the mirrored lives, Verso must have found respite in the fact that the piano, the melodies, the stories he wove with his hands, were his.
The thought of it makes Clive's chest feel tight. It makes Clive renew his resolve to fight and fight and fight for a future that will allow Verso to feel, and not just to suffer. To allow himself the depth of his emotions without the guilt of having them.
Oh, Clive would do anything for Verso. He'll even become a monster, if he must. Anything, anything. ]
Your music is a gift. I've never heard anything like it, which is a testament to who you are and what you're capable of. [ Another kiss, this time to Verso's forehead. ] ...So keep it safe for me.
[ "Take care of yourself". ]
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But like so many other things, it feels different with Clive, who wants him to live so that he can die fulfilled; who wants him to build a legacy of happiness, whether he deserves to or not, and to have an impact beyond death. That still feels like something he'll end up disappointing Clive on in the end, no matter their promises, but maybe his family will prove him wrong. Maybe he can turn death into something that happens on its own terms rather than as something to pursue.
Either way, he can't do it alone.]
If I'm going to do that, then... I'll need to keep you safe first.
[He'll need to feel like he isn't just something precious to sacrifice and be sacrificed for, he'll need to know – really know in ways that not even the worst of him can question – that he is capable of doing more than existing. Pulling away just a bit, just enough to properly look at Clive and manoeuvrer a hand to his cheek, knuckle running along it, the back of his fingertip tickled by his scruff.]
You're my gift. The best I've been given. And it excites me every day to know that I've barely started unwrapping everything that makes you who you are.
[I'd give up music if that's what it took to keep loving you he doesn't say. It's true in ways that scare him a little, and it's the kind of truth he suspects that Clive wouldn't want to hear, anyway. So:]
Because my heart breaks over your beauty, too, and I want to see how bright you can burn, mon feu. Tu brilles deja plus fort que le soleil.
[He could bask in his warmth forever. Not that that's up for debate with how he shift even closer, one leg lifting to wrap around Clive's.]
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(What if violence is all he's good for? What if this love, too, turns violent? Grows teeth and horns? Hurts Verso in the process?)
He hesitates after he's given such beautiful, open-hearted grace. Truly, he thinks there's nothing very beautiful about him at all. But if that's what those halo eyes see in him, who is Clive to argue?
He smiles, tentative but steady, and tips so that the expanse of his discolored, raised scar brushes along those careful fingertips. Remnants of his disgraceful past, offered for scrutiny and touch. Clive trusts Verso completely. ]
Pour toi. Seulement pour toi. My love, lit by your starlight.
[ For it to burn and burn and burn. ] You make me a better man.
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[A bold statement considering how Verso's only known Clive for a fraction of a fraction of his life, but everything he's seen from Clive, all the anger and the vengeance, all the despair and the grief, all the love and firelight and hope and the soft ambitions, make it impossible for Verso to think that he's made any part of Clive better. Even thinking that he's brought it out of him is a bit outside of Verso's reach, though that owes more to the way he views himself than to his impressions of Clive and what they have and what that means for themselves and each other.
It takes a strong spirit to not succumb to all the things that Clive has endured; it takes a good heart to be given worst after worst after worst and still live in pursuit of better for everyone else. And they way that he had responded at first – that lack of either agreement or argument, a heartbreaking moment in its own right, a swell of love and light – on served to solidify Verso's stance.
With the tilt of Clive's face and the trust it implies, Verso shifts to tracing the outline of his scar, all the way down to where it dips past his throat. A wound that's literally shaped him in certain senses. One that Verso wishes he hadn't suffered, but one that he does genuinely find beautiful in its own right, all the same, a symbol of strength, a demonstration of the power of true strength.
For Clive to have survived all that he has and still be one of the single most breathtaking people Verso's ever met, in heart and in body and in essence, well, that drives Verso to say something else bold, too.]
And I believe you always will be.
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More important is how grounding the touch against his face and his pulse feels. Anabella has made sure that her unwanted son wears the sin of his existence on his skin, but Clive has the freedom, now, to recontextualize it. He can think about it as a mirrored mark, a scar for a scar: the cousin to the black fissure that bisects Verso's eye.
Survivors, the both of them. Imperfect and struggling. There's beauty in that, too. ]
...I don't want to betray that belief.
[ His hand touches at his own chest, above his own heart, where his heart beats and pulses crimson. ]
Even if I was painted to be a monster－ even if my greed and hunger grow by the day.
[ He's expressed a bit of that latter point already; still benign, but more forward than he's ever been with anyone, anything. Mine, mine, mine. Perhaps this is far less alarming than Clive thinks though (he has no frame of reference for 'normal', after all), and so he eases a bit, and smooths his palm down to the small of Verso's back again.
No shot he's going to dampen the nice mood. He adds: ] I'll have to remind myself to be a 'good boy'.
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There's much he wants to say about greed and hunger and those ifs Clive speaks, but they're of the same mind. Curled up and warm in bed, smelling of sandalwood and bergamot, bodies relaxed from both the bath and the brinks they'd tumbled each other over in its waters, earlier urgencies abated by Clive's reunion with Joshua, the peace they're awash in is bright and guiding as the stars, inviting and homey as crackling flames, rare as the future.]
I won't let you forget.
[A confident promise. Verso can't imagine a scenario where he leaves Clive to whatever might consume him, whether from the inside or the outside. In truth, Ifrit himself could emerge to snuff the life out of Verso and he would still return to Clive's side insistent that he's a good man and certain that he's speaking in absolute honesty. Which is perhaps extreme in its own right, a demonstration of his acclimation towards pain and suffering, but he's so far removed from what it's like to exist on any other terms that he can't conceive of a depth of physical pain that would change his mind.
But that's neither here nor there, either. Besides, Verso has his own request to make, a fear greater than anything Ifrit could instill in him, though he speaks it with a light tone, almost humorous.]
If you don't let me forget myself, either. Deal?
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As always, he can't bear even the thought of it. So he sets his misgivings aside regarding the muchness of his own being, and loops Verso into a tighter embrace, covering him with arms and blankets almost as if to hide him from the rest of the world and its prying eyes, its poor intentions. Close and tucked and safe. ]
A deal.
[ Though they don't have anything to swear on but this, their bodies pressed together and their chroma mingling. Clive flares scarlet for a few dwindling seconds, letting harmless flame flicker around the both of them like the last embers on cooling coal.
Verso is far too precious to lose even a fraction of a sliver of him. Keeping him insulated, Clive huddles and breathes, so comfortable that it's likely he'll remain a dead weight against the other man until his brother comes to wake him (embarrassingly) in the morning. It's fine. Joshua knows, and more importantly, is alive. Right now, Clive is the most fortunate man in any part of the Canvas. Continent or Cityside. ]
...Now rest, unless you'd like me to moon over you a bit longer.
[ Which, like. He could. Easily. ]