Work Text:
Heated fingertips dance across whitened skin. They follow a trail of marble across Cid’s forearm, inching towards his elbow where the stone transitions back into flesh and blood, pulse still beating strong beneath.
Tarja said he was lucky that the curse didn’t spawn closer to his joint. Had he not given up Ramuh when he did, the appearance of Ultima forcing his hand, Cid is certain he would’ve lost his whole arm within a matter of months. His life, in a matter of years.
Now, his Eikon is gone, and the only memento he has left of it is this stilted scar.
“Does it still hurt?”
Cid tears his gaze away from the wandering fingers on his arm to a blue-eyed gaze. Partially obscured by messy strands of dark hair, eyelashes lowered gently as Clive’s hand finally finds its place beneath Cid’s elbow, curling around it to hold it like an anchor.
Sometimes Cid deludes himself into thinking he can feel it, Ramuh’s lightning dwelling in those fingers, greeting him with a touch. Other times, like now, he knows it’s wishful thinking.
“Not any more than the rest of my bones,” Cid replies airily, pulling his arm out of Clive’s grip. “But that’s a symptom of age, not the curse.”
“You’re not that old, Cid.” Clive frowns deeply at him—Cid’s not the only one for wishful thinking, it seems.
He rolls his sleeve back down. “Flattery will get you everywhere, but it’s still just that. Flattery.”
“You disagree?” Clive glances meaningfully at the corpses lying around them in the forest clearing, hornets and wolves scattered across the grass.
Cid huffs a breath, turning away from him. “Hardly the most fearsome enemies we’ve ever faced. Come on, Lostwing’s right around the corner.”
He claps Clive on the shoulder as he passes him, leading the way. Silence follows him, broken up only by Clive’s footsteps. Neither of them wants to dwell on it, but closing their eyes to reality would be more painful in the long run, once it becomes impossible to deny.
Cid can’t fight like he used to. He has tried, after losing Ramuh, to rely on his experience instead, but that can only carry one so far when faced with men decades younger than him, whose joints and bones don’t protest with every swing of their swords. Whose arms aren’t plagued by patches of unwieldy stone.
He’s not cut out for it anymore, and to pretend otherwise will only lead him to an early grave. Still, that doesn’t make it easy to accept. Not for him, and not for Clive.
When they arrive in Lostwing, they switch places as naturally as following the motions of a practiced dance, Clive approaching the townspeople while Cid lingers a step behind him.
Clive’s manner is more reserved, but also more to the point, something many people seem to appreciate when enlisting him to solve their problems. On the surface, he doesn’t appear very fond of interacting with people, but it’s plain to see he cares even for total strangers.
Cid remembers a few short years ago when he had to poke and prod Clive to take the lead. He smiles lightly at the memory of Clive’s surliness and confusion at being thrust into the role when Cid was perfectly capable of fulfilling it.
It was to prepare him for a time when Cid wouldn’t be able to accompany him anymore, not without slowing him down. He doesn’t think they’re there yet, but it’s near, and he dreads it as much as he anticipates it.
For Clive, he suspects, it’s more dread than anything else.
“Cid and his protégé,” Quinten greets them when they enter the Hanged Man, but then pauses. “Or should I say, Clive and his mentor?”
Clive’s shoulders tense subtly, though his expression doesn’t flinch. His tone is even more curt than usual when he replies. “Neither. One of the traders mentioned you’ve had a brigand problem?”
Quinten appears unaffected, though he directs a look at Cid, who merely shrugs in response.
“A few rather persistent footpads,” Quinten drawls. “Nothing you can’t handle, I’m sure.”
Cid is content to watch and listen as Clive and Quinten discuss the particulars.
That is until, at the end of it, Clive nods and says, “I’ll take care of it.” He meets Cid’s questioning look. “You stay here.”
Cid’s brows arch all the way to his hairline, and Quinten takes that as his cue to make himself scarce.
“Clive,” Cid starts, gaze flitting over Clive’s stoic expression. “Me bitching about my age was not an invitation for you to start coddling me.”
Clive blinks, frown deepening with a twitch of his brows. “I’m not coddling you.”
Cid believes him. “Then do you mean to say that I’m slowing you down?”
“That’s not—” Clive’s slightly bemused frown shifts into an outright scowl, punctuated by the way he irritably crosses his arms. “You can’t have it both ways, Cid. Either you let me start handling things on my own, or you continue to lead. Which is it?”
Cid takes a step back, eyes narrowing at him. “You’re not as subtle as you think, you know.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He shakes his head, turning away from Clive to lean against the bar, waving his hand. “Get going, then.”
There’s a beat of silence, and for a moment he thinks Clive will stay and argue, until he hears his receding footsteps. The sound hits harshly against the wood, not quite a stomp but not far from it, either.
Quinten reappears from wherever he’d been to give them privacy, doing him the favor of pretending not to have heard any of it. Or, more likely, he actually doesn’t give a damn, which suits Cid just fine.
“Gonna make us sleep on the floor again?” Cid asks.
“That depends, are you a paying customer?”
Cid sighs, then forks over the gil.
He waits while Quinten counts, jaw forcefully clenched shut. He’s not going to do it. He’s going to sit here, wait for Clive to return, then talk it out.
About five seconds pass before he gives in and asks Quinten, “Where did you say those footpads were, again?”
It’s a good thing Cid decided not to listen to Clive.
When he arrives at the road Quinten said was plagued by bandits, mere footpads are not the only enemies he sees.
Clive is surrounded on every side by a dozen brigands, with one particularly huge bastard swinging a gigantic axe around. All Clive can do is dodge and weave between enemies, trying to wear down the hulking ringleader while trying to avoid a dagger in his back.
It also doesn’t help that he seems to be fighting angry.
He’s getting sloppy. Expending more energy than he needs to, flames dancing across the clearing as a flash of the Phoenix’s wings appear, spinning around him in a fiery cyclone to take out his weaker opponents. Dividing his attention nearly costs him—Cid sees the axe coming before Clive does.
“On your left!” he shouts as he cuts down one of the men surrounding Clive, getting started on thinning the herd.
Clive doesn’t waste time glancing back at him, instead quickly stepping back to instinctively avoid the coming blow, but not fast enough.
The edge of the axe clips his bicep with enough force to tear off the armor piece covering it, a thin spray of blood splattering across the grass. Clive doesn’t so much as stagger—which is the only reason Cid’s heart doesn’t drop straight through his stomach—enduring the hit to reply with a wild, almost reckless swing of his own.
His blade cuts clean across his enemy’s throat, the axe slipping out of his hand as he clutches at his neck. He’s halfway to falling over when Clive turns to the next opponent.
Reassured, but worried for another reason now, Cid turns towards the nearest men surrounding him. Between the two of them, they make short work of the remaining bandits.
As soon as the last one falls, felled by Clive, he turns to Cid with a look so angry it kills whatever witty remark Cid was preparing to make.
“I told you to stay behind,” Clive says, hand still clenched around his blade.
“And I elected to ignore it,” Cid replies simply as he moves closer, wiping the blood from his sword before sheathing it, heedless of Clive’s obvious agitation. “Good thing I did, you clearly needed the help.”
He motions to the wound on Clive’s arm, now freely bleeding. Clive doesn’t even glance at it, glare fixated on Cid.
“You couldn’t even trust me to handle this on my own?”
Cid frowns at him. “Trust you? This had nothing to do with trust.”
“Clearly,” Clive mutters, turning away to wipe his own sword clean and returning it to its place on his back. “I just don’t understand why you keep pushing me to take over for you when you can’t seem to let it go.”
“When I can’t let it go?” Cid steps in front of him, the movement seeming to startle Clive, and Cid takes hold of his shoulder to keep him from flinching back, catching his gaze to look him in the eye. “You got so upset at a mere remark of me getting older that you stormed off to take it out on a few common thieves. With this as the result.”
He flicks at the armor piece right below the wound on Clive’s arm, and Clive averts his gaze, hands balling at his sides. In the brief silence, Cid reaches down to Clive’s belt and plucks one of the health potions from its loops, seeing as how Clive is determined to ignore his own injuries.
Holding it out between them, he waits until Clive takes it from him, uncorking the vial and quickly knocking the drink back. Cid’s eyes are drawn to the way his Adam’s apple bobs in his throat with the swallow, and his gaze lingers there far longer than it should.
Vial emptied, Clive returns it to his belt, licking his lower lip to catch some leftover tonic, and now Cid is the one swallowing.
“I only—” Clive struggles to find the words, eyes flicking up to meet Cid’s with frustration and uncertainty. “Why do you act like…”
“Act like what?”
Cid waits patiently for Clive to speak, watching as determination forms on his face, working up his courage until he finally says:
“Like you’re preparing to leave me behind?”
Back in Lostwing, Cid meant it when he said Clive wasn’t being subtle. The sudden insistence on handling things on his own, putting distance between them, was a poorly-disguised way to protect himself from getting hurt. He just didn’t expect Clive to admit to it.
Cid sighs, the exhale half a laugh as he runs his fingers over his hair. “Is that what you think? That I’ll leave you? Retire somewhere to the countryside and go on my merry way?”
A flicker of embarrassment crosses Clive’s face, though it’s quickly replaced by a scowl. “What else am I supposed to think? You never explained anything to me! You just started telling me to take over for you without telling me why.”
Cid blinks. “I thought it was obvious.”
Clive gives him an incredulous look.
“Do you really think I’d just up and leave like that?” Cid pauses—he does have a nasty habit of it, admittedly. Benedikta never got so much as a farewell note, but Cid has learned from his mistakes. “The hideaway is my whole life.”
For a rare moment, he hesitates, but Clive is looking at him with eyes softened in vulnerability, all but pleading for reassurance—damn him, but he’s weak to it.
“And so are you.” Cid lifts a hand, fingers carefully fitting around the gap of armor on Clive’s arm. The wound is healed over, no longer bleeding, smooth skin beneath his gloved fingertips. “You’ve become part of it, part of me. I couldn't leave either of you behind even if I wanted to.”
He inches closer, leaning in just a little, and catches the exact moment Clive stops breathing. Eyes wide, the blacks of his pupils going even wider, flicking down to Cid’s lips.
Clive has never been subtle, about anything. Doesn’t have a single secretive bone in his body, his heart always on his sleeve, but this is the first time he has let Cid get close enough to feel its pulse, and Clive is leaning ever closer, as if hypnotized.
“I can’t lead from the front forever,” Cid continues, maintaining the sliver of distance between them, because for all his talk he’s more cautious than he lets on. Would rather hang back than push, even when the signs couldn’t be more obvious. “I chose you for this because I know you have the strength to carry on for the both of us. But that doesn’t mean that I’ll abandon you. I’ll still be by your side, for however long you need me to—”
Clive closes the distance.
Cid feels fingers grasp at the strings of his shirt, a tug that pulls him near enough for their noses to touch. All it takes is the tilt of Clive’s head, and their lips slot together like a key clicking into place within the lock it belongs to.
Fuck, Cid thinks, the last coherent thought in his head before his self-restraint completely crumbles, and he wraps his arms around Clive’s lower back to pull him even closer.
It’s just about the only thing he can do, because Clive seems determined to devour him. Cid feels a gloved hand curl possessively around the back of his neck as Clive nips at his lower lip, coaxing a groan from the back of Cid’s throat that Clive swallows up greedily. Clive's stubble rubs against Cid's in a way that almost stings, but somehow, that only makes it better.
However long this has been building up inside of Clive—about five years, Cid would guess—it’s all erupting out of him now, sweeping Cid away with it. When he feels Clive’s other hand around his hip, fingers digging in insistently, Cid parts his lips between kisses to suck in a breath and Clive gives him only a moment before claiming his mouth again.
The man is utterly unrelenting and completely insatiable. Cid thinks he’ll probably end up happily suffocating while Clive’s tongue slips into his mouth, hand on Cid’s nape holding him in place.
Maybe Cid is just going crazy, now, driven to insanity by the dizzying intensity of Clive’s kisses, but he swears he feels a spark shudder down his spine from where Clive’s hand holds his nape, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. The heat of their mingling breaths grows red-hot, each kiss somehow hungrier than the last, until even Clive can’t stand the lack of air anymore and they have to part.
Clive doesn’t pull back from him, though. Just enough for a small gap between their mouths, but he shifts to press his forehead against Cid’s, the two of them catching each other’s breaths.
“Always,” Clive speaks against his lips, voice rough.
Cid’s mind is still blank. “Hmm?”
Clive tilts his head a little, purposefully brushing the side of his nose against Cid’s in nothing but pure affection. “I’ll always need you by my side.”
Cid takes a breath, chest squeezing with a throb.
“Are you sure about this, Clive?” he asks, because he has to be certain Clive knows what he’s getting himself into before he makes the leap. “About me?”
Clive pulls back enough to look him in the eyes now, and there’s no trace of doubt on his face. Only the slightest of smiles, punctuated by the fondness in his eyes.
“You’re the only thing I’ve ever been sure about.”
Cid thinks his heart might give out. “Then so am I.”
He takes a moment to look around them. The ground is still littered with bodies—Cid snorts, shaking his head.
“We could’ve picked a better place for this.”
Clive follows his gaze, as if having completely forgotten about the mess they made earlier, then winces. “Sorry. I probably should’ve waited until we returned.”
“Speaking of which,” Cid says as he bends down, picking up the piece of armor that was torn from Clive’s arm earlier, “I got us a room.”
“With beds?” Clive asks, taking the armor piece from him, and Cid smirks at the intensity in his gaze.
“Getting ideas already?”
Clive considers him for a moment, eyes traveling down and up Cid’s body, a challenging look in his eyes when they meet Cid’s again. His voice is low in his throat: “What if I was?”
“Shit.” Cid rubs the back of his neck, still feeling the lingering heat of Clive’s hand, the remnant of a spark on his skin. “You’re going to kill me long before age does, at this rate.”
Clive gives him a sly little smile as he starts the walk back to Lostwing. He takes the lead.
“Coming?”
Heart feeling too big for his chest, Cid follows.