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I.
"Am I Cid the Outlaw or Cid the Doorman?" he grumbles.
Cid squints ruefully at the couple of threads threatening to burst over Clive's chest. Clive was in an elite unit in the Sanbrequois army. Surely he can manage with his capable, deadly hands. The force those threads alone are exerting to keep his outfit together must be more than what it takes to open the damn gates.
He tosses the apple he's been eating over his shoulder and ambles over to Clive. Martelle's apples are foul. They ripen faster than they were ever fresh, and taste like a unique blend of sour and acrid, like coating fruit in an ash tray. But they come from the hideaway, planted on free soil by free folk, and he can tolerate a temporary sourness for a sweet lasting freedom.
Cid stops next to Clive and slides a cigar between his lips as he turns his cheek toward him. They've a routine by this point. Just like forcing through the gates together. Clive cups his hand around the cigar, like holding a lily by the fringes of its petals, and calls on his fire. The cigar blooms with a bright point.
Cid takes one long and long-suffering drag on it and exhales with a sigh. It does the trick. He snuffs it out and discards it.
"All right, all right, I'm here. No need to throw a fit, that scowl's gonna set forever if you keep it on your pretty face."
He situates himself shoulder-to-shoulder with Clive and braces himself in front of the gate.
"Count of three?" Clive asks.
"Just push," Cid says, and does. "We never get the timing right anyway."
It's one thing to enlist his help. It's another when he's shouldering a majority of the effort.
"I reckon I'm doing all the heavy lifting," Cid complains. "Is the greatest Shield of Rosaria not pulling his weight?"
Clive just grunts, but he sounds pleased with their joint effort, and the gate soon gives.
It will not, Cid comes to realize, be the last time Clive calls on his services as Cid the Doorman.
II.
"Fuck, I've got a splinter," Cid says, backing off from the old wooden gate. He waves his injured hand, like cutting it through the air will dislodge the thimble by sheer force or frustration. "How'd it even get through these damn gloves? I'm gonna have a word with Blackthorne…"
He continues grumbling under his breath as he peels the glove off with his teeth.
Clive, looming next to him, takes his bare hand in his when the skin is exposed to air. "Here, let me," he says, as gruff and helpful as always.
Like he's lighting one of Cig's cigarettes, his hand glows. The tiny thimble burns, like squeezing a match out, as the wood dissipates in the faintest curl of smoke. He blows the couple specks of ash off and the hair on the back of Cid's hand shivers, a chill in the warmth, like ice smoking over flame.
Cid's hand is still heated, hottest at the fingertips, but rushing with his blood down his fingers and coursing through the lines of his palm like a spring flood on the rivers that feed into the Narrow.
"You're all good," Clive says.
Cid only realizes the air is suffocating with static when Clive coughs, and the resulting spark of static breaks the silence, opening the space between them. The air feels tight the way it does in a storm, the way his lungs feel before he inhales lightning and exhales thunder as Ramuh awakens.
"Never better," Cid says.
Like an afterthought, Clive drops his hand. Cid feels his pulse beat naked against the skin of his wrist.
He takes a moment to collect himself. He's a conceited old fool, reading novels out of signs that aren't there. Clive is the picture of oblivious innocence, having already returned to the old business at hand as he inspects the ridiculous time-worn, moss-dressed gate towering ahead of them.
"Lend me your aid again?" Clive asks.
Cid stretches his arms and cracks his knuckles under Clive's patient consideration - staring at his hands like he missed blowing off a speck of soot.
"At your service," Cid says.
Together, they lean in and push through.
III.
It even happens, Cid discovers, when they've got Gav along. Chivalrous as he is, Cid knows Clive would never ask Jill, but Gav's more dirt of the earth than salt of the earth, and he can't imagine any noble sensibilities are holding Clive back from enlisting his help.
"I told you this shortcut was a bad idea," Clive says. "Your shortcuts usually are."
They had taken a wrong turn in Cressida and stumbled onto a massive Fallen mech, which promptly shot a scorching beam of raw aether at them. The beam was wider than he was tall, and only barely missed by the grace of Clive pushing Cid out of the way.
Unfortunately, Cid's shoulder has seen better days - better years, really - and Clive is heavy.
"I'm not as spry as I used to be," Cid says, nursing his injured shoulder. "How am I the only one around here that gets a sore back?"
Clive claps a hand over his spine, patting the base where back meets neck. He leaves his hand in the general vicinity, letting it linger lightly over his shoulder like a brace. The touch tingles, the sensation electric. Cid's no stranger to a shock, but --
Gav chooses that moment to return to them, barreling over to them in that fortuitous timing way he has.
"We would've appreciated a warning about the walking Fallen ruin back there," Cid admonishes. He thinks he's got a right to be grumpy. At his age, every fall lands poorly on his joints.
"You didn't see the giant mech from a league away?" Gav says, and he looks as flabbergasted as he sounds. "It's the size of a walking building!"
"I'm the brains of this bloody operation, not the eyes," Cid says. "That's your job. You've a nose and a knack for these things."
"If I've got the nose and the eyes, I'm not leaving you with much, am I?" Gav says.
"Keep your gob shut," Cid grumbles. Cheeky bastard.
Cid turns and from his angle sees Clive watching them banter with that hidden half-smile of his, the one that softens his brow and gently casts the shadows on his face into retreat. For such a hard man, he carries a soft light in him.
"Can you find us somewhere to shelter?" Clive asks Gav, still supporting Cid's aching shoulder. "We may need a sling for his shoulder until we can get back to Tarja."
"Spotted an abandoned manor on the way," Gav says, already shooting off in the direction. Cid isn't sure what direction, except that it's the opposite one, and he's perfectly fine with that.
As luck would have it, it's close, situated in the countryside between Cressida and the Greensheaves. As his luck would have it, the entrance is a firmly locked iron gate.
Cid looks curiously at Clive and waits for him to flag Gav over for a joint forced entry.
Clive does no such thing. With a grunt, he puts his considerable weight behind it and shoves, the gate creaking like the wail of a ghost breaking off with the rust. He doesn't seem to break a sweat, leaning almost casually against the open gate as he glances back expectantly at Cid. The man is so earnest it hurts.
Cid must pause a little too long. Gav shrugs and slips through first. "I'll, uh, make sure it's empty."
They all move in, Clive trailing right behind him, he sees, as he throws a squinted look over his shoulder. From a passing inspection, he doesn't recognize anything unique about this particular entranceway that leaves it perfect for the simple effort of a single individual.
How curious.
IV.
"You all right?" Cid asks.
They catch their breath in a clearing outside of the town, having liberated a Bearer and sent him with directions to Martha's refuge. Although Cid escaped relatively unscathed, Clive wasn't so lucky. He's hurt, favoring his right side, even if he won't slow down enough to admit it.
"He was going to turn his own brother in," Clive says, disgust and disdain thick in every word. 'Brother' is said so delicately, like holding the thorny stem of a rose, a curse and an exaltation in that tragic tone of his. His fists clench at his side in frozen fury.
Cid gets it. The brother in question was a late bloomer, who came into his magic after saving his elder brother's life - only for the selfsame brother to turn him over to the local authorities. Cid thinks of Otto's son, whose family summoned the constables, and the same flame in Clive echoes in him.
"We're going to tear this world down and remake it," Cid says. "A world where this doesn't have to happen. We can't undo the evil in man, but we can make a world that protects our best and weakest."
"For Joshua," Clive says.
"For Joshua," Cid agrees, "and for you, and everyone else. If we're mad enough to save the world, we're going to save all of it. I made a promise, and I'm not leaving anyone behind."
They make it to the safehouse Otto marked on the map for them. Cid takes it in as they approach more closely.
"Great Greagor's gash, another one," Cid curses. The entrance is completely blocked off, the door haphazardly boarded up with a layer of wooden planks. "There's not a single normal door in the whole of the Twins."
"We'll kick it down," Clive says, and marches up to it like he's ready to launch into just that.
Cid catches his wince and bars his way with an outstretched arm.
"You're wounded, let me," Cid says. "I've got some kick left in me."
Reluctantly, Clive holds back, his hand returning to clutch at his side beneath his ribs. He'd taken a hit there for Cid, who hadn't watched his back as he channeled and summoned his thunderstrikes.
"I tend to do most of the work, anyway," he adds. The planks splinter and crack as he strikes where the wood is weakest.
He catches his breath, feeling like he got the shit kicked out of him. Clive never appears winded when they do this together.
"Thank you," Clive says, in that quiet, sincere way he has. It tugs like a fish hook on his heartstrings.
"You have my shoulder, and I'll have your back. Dominants, Bearers - we don't have to bear things alone." Cid inspects the damage he's wrought. There's enough space to step through, and he reckons if he gets a splinter, Clive is more than willing to play physicker…
"My fair Lord," Cid says, with an exaggerated bow in front of the newly opened gap.
"My Lord Doorman," Clive says, and curse him, his eyes soften as he steps through, his shoulder brushing Cid's.
"You're getting the next one."
V.
Cid takes to teasing the truth out of Clive every chance that presents itself.
It starts when they return to the hideaway in the aftermath of liberating the betrayed brother Bearer. Cid guides Clive with a hand over his shoulder up the steps to Tarja's infirmary, Clive's cloak warm even through his gloves. Cid had been beside him enough to know he always radiated body heat.
Clive makes symbolic sounds of protest, but they're half-hearted.
"He needs rest," Tarja says.
She glances at him knowingly. Keen eyes on that one.
Cid raises his hands in a display of innocence. "I'll let you get your beauty sleep," he says to Clive, winking. "Don't stay up unless you're thinking fond thoughts of me."
He leaves with a lingering impression of the flustered flush on his face.
The next day, Cid catches Clive walking into the Fat Chocobo food hall as he's finishing his breakfast. Cid normally eats in his solar, surrounded by the eyewatering fumes of his lab and the equally eyewatering stacks of reports, so he's gratified to find that the other members of the hideaway warmly greet Clive. He's something of a wonder waiter, he hears.
Cid stands and offers his own welcome, pulling out a chair at his table. "You look like you're in less of a sorry state today."
Clive confirms it by wincing only slightly as he drops into the seat next to him.
"I've been worse," he says.
Cid settles his hands over the wide set of Clive's shoulders. He leans down, close enough that he's a breath from the earring in his left ear. "Kenneth makes a mean scrambled chocobo omelette."
His shoulders shiver under his touch, and Cid feels him lean back, his hair brushing the side of Cid's cheek and jaw.
"Water." Clive coughs and flags down Kenneth. "I'll have water, if you don't mind."
"Ta-ra, then," Cid says, and gives him a final clap and squeeze on the shoulders.
He leaves with a smirk on his face and a spring in his step.
It all comes to a head on their next outing, when Clive's apparent magnetism for Morbols rears its ugly, noxious head.
"I'm always up for a spot of mischief and misconduct," Cid says, "but this is beyond. This is mayhem."
"This was your shortcut," Clive yells, running alongside him.
"Aye, it was,' Cid admits, catching his breath, "but you followed it."
"Of course I did." Clive sounds a touch affronted, even winded as he is. "There's fencing up ahead. We can lose it outside the marshland."
Cid chances a look behind them, but the Morbol is nowhere to be seen. The marsh shakes with the sounds of rumbling and squelching, and Cid knows the tentacled tree monstrosity is worming its way beneath their feet. They need to get to dry land, and fast, before the thing resurfaces.
"It's too high to scale," Cid says, and it is; it's easily a head or two taller than him, and the wood does not look as weak as the ones they usually break through.
The Morbol chooses the moment of that realization to make its reappearance. The ground erupts, sending ripples of swampy muck and mud spraying into the air, as it screeches. Cid turns and sees it unleash a cloud of acrid gas the color of tar.
"Hold on," Clive says, and with only that as warning, he wraps an arm around him and pulls Cid tight into his side. Cid stumbles as he's nearly lifted off his feet, and then -- "Fuck!" -- he is.
In a shower of bright motes of flame, the ground shifts under his feet and the air blurs in a blink as Clive moves them with the blessing of the Phoenix.
Of course, they don't make it past the fencing. No, they barrel right into the fence.
Clive turns, angled so that he takes the brunt of the impact, and they crash, burning, tendrils and sparks of flame still surrounding Clive and Cid.
They roll onto the grass of the field, Clive panting above him, his solid weight around him, his body heat bearing down on him.
"Are you all right?" Clive asks.
Cid feels dazed. In the shared breath of their shared space, the air is like ozone, like smoke, like wildfire in a thunderstorm. The kind of suffocation that feels like breathing.
Clive abruptly stands, extracting himself, a touch of red on his cheeks that could be blamed on exertion. He offers Cid a hand up that he takes.
Behind Clive, the outline of the hole they punched through the fence smolders, scattered, smoking pieces of wood lying in the aftermath.
Cid clears his throat. "Maybe we should try knocking next time," he says.
VI.
Clive finds the door to his room in the hideaway ajar. He's come to associate the hideaway with home, but he still goes on guard, driven by reflex, driven by a fear of the shadows without and within him, honed sleeping half-awake behind enemy lines and reliving his own nightmares.
He lets out a sigh of relief at the sight of Cid, but the relief quickly returns as tension as he realizes the man is lounging on his bed.
"Can I … help you with something?" Clive asks.
"Reckon I'd help you out with the door," Cid says. He looks satisfied, a man on the verge of vindication, as he brings an unlit cigar to his mouth. More than comfortable - he looks good, as at home in Clive's bed as in his own solar. "What on account of your history of struggle with entranceways and all."
Clive's mouth falls open as he feels the heat rush to his cheeks.
Cid beckons and he follows. The cigar between his lips twitches, waiting to catch aflame with Clive's borrowed heat. Borrowed from the Phoenix and ready for rebirth. Life could come from death; joy from sorrow; light from darkness.
Cid stays reclined as Clive approaches him. Clive tilts his chin back, the stubble coarse and coursing under his fingertips, and with his thumb, lights the cigar with a soft tap. His thumb brushes Cid's bottom lip as it slides to rest on his chin.
Cid takes a drag, catching Clive's eye. Like his hand belongs to Cid, he draws the cigar free of his lips, his exhale of smoke chasing the escape of his lingering touch.
"You're not much of an actor," Cid says. "You don't need help with any of these damn doors, do you?"
It doesn't feel like judgment. It feels like understanding.
"What do you mean?" Clive replies, his gaze indirect. "I haven't lied to you."
"I'm not accusing you as such," Cid says. "The worst lies are the truths we don't say aloud."
And doesn't Clive know that?
"What do you want me to say?" Clive asks.
That he treasures the knowledge that Cid is ever ready to stand by his side? That Cid has his back, and that he may, perhaps, have his heart?
If he's worth helping, he's worth saving. If he's worth saving, it's worth living.
Blue eyes meet green, and for a moment, the world is more than ash and smoke.
"What do you want?" Cid returns.
Clive knows this is another kind of door.
"You," he says, opening it.
Cid grins.
"Are you gonna make me open any more doors?"
Clive kicks the door shut behind him.
"No, not anytime soon."