[ 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.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
flamebrand) wrote2024-09-08 02:07 pm
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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? ]
no subject
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.
no subject
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". ]
no subject
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.]
no subject
(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.
no subject
[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.
no subject
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'.
no subject
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?
no subject
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. ]