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It wasn’t as if Joshua didn’t know that Clive was attractive. They had grown up together, after all. He’d seen the looks people gave his brother. How even the stoic Jill sometimes stuttered and blushed when Clive turned all his intense focus her way. But it was one thing to know on a detached, intellectual level and it was another entirely to understand , viscerally. To feel a hot jolt of want when his brother pressed him into a tight hug. To shiver when Clive’s rough cadence brushed against his ear, to feel a burning sense of mine when he stood at his brother’s back and guarded his blind side.
“I just got him back,” he bemoaned into the solid woodgrain of the table he had pressed his forehead against. “It’s such a shame I’ll never be able to look him in the eyes again.”
“I think, perhaps, that my lord exaggerates,” Jote murmured in a respectful tone that still managed to convey mild exasperation.
“Jote, please.” His ears were still ringing faintly in the wake of the sheer anxiety of forcing himself to tell her what had been eating at him since the Phoenix had brought his brother back from the brink of death. His entire face felt hot and his stomach felt knotted, although that was pretty much the constant state of his stomach these days.
He felt a little better for having confessed his unseemingly feelings out loud to someone. Although he somehow also felt worse, if only because speaking them into the world made them feel more real, and forced the shame that churned beneath the surface of his skin into the light. Jote’s quiet acceptance made it easier, but Joshua couldn’t help but feel that this shouldn’t be easy. This was something that should be scorned and ridiculed and forced back into the shadows where it belonged.
“Here’s a thought,” Gav said as he plopped down into the seat across from Joshua, startling Joshua upright with a yelp. “Say these things to him , and not to loyal attendants too polite to tell you to get your head out of your arse.” He offered Jote a friendly grin and bounced the baby in his arms.
“Excuse me,” Joshua managed when he found his voice again. “This is a private conversation.”
Gav shrugged. “Maybe don’t have your private conversations in an open concept tavern.”
Joshua glanced around the Tub and Crown. He and Jote were in a more secluded corner, but he ceded the point with an acknowledging sheepishness.
“Anyway, I’m meant to know things. Spymaster and all.” He tapped his own head with his forefinger. “And I know that Clive’s been crazy about you for the entire time I’ve known him. Well, the entire time I’ve known him enough to know what he cares about, anyway.”
“I’m his brother,” Joshua said. “And his…his duty.” This was said quieter, a hurt he usually kept close to his chest. Clive’s sense of self worth was tied so thoroughly to Joshua’s wellbeing that Joshua was often worried he mistook Clive’s devotion for affection. He knew his brother loved him, but how much of that had been beaten into him with the lash of their mother’s tongue. Her implied and sometimes explicitly stated, “Your life is worth nothing if you cannot protect him.”
“Duty is not mutually exclusive to love,” Jote said, her hands pointedly neutral around her mug of ale, her gaze direct.
Joshua pressed his lips together in an unhappy line to keep his response behind his teeth. He had always been very aware of power imbalances around him due to the station of his birth and his manifestation of the Phoenix, and had done his best to correct where possible or at least not overstep where he could not make immediate changes. Releasing Jote from her position had been one such act. But was it truly selfless? When he’d done it only when he was sure Clive would take her place? Had his whole sense of morality been skewed by selfishness this whole time?
Clive cannot want this, this tangle of need and wretched tenderness in Joshua’s chest. Clive had Jill and a chance at life. Joshua should want that for him, did want that for him. For a chance at happiness, free of the heavy burden of the First Shield and no longer hurtling toward an oncoming apocalypse.
“Oi,” Gav said, knocking his toe into Joshua’s shin. “Before you fall into despair, maybe talk to him about it?”
Joshua should absolutely not talk to Clive about it. It was one thing for Jote–and now Gav–to know. They had immunity from the situation insofar as it didn’t involve them directly, but it was another thing to spread this poison to his brother, who still looked like walking wounded, haunted and hollow, far too often for Joshua’s liking. Who still sometimes acted as if serving as Joshua’s protector was one of the few tethers keeping him in the world.
It was getting better every day, Joshua forced himself to acknowledge through the ever-present guilt. Joshua was the reason Clive yet walked among the living, and Joshua hadn’t been able to tell, at least at the beginning, if Clive was grateful for it. Perhaps death had been a kind place. A restful place. Joshua could only hope that was true, considering how many had died for him. But then it meant that Joshua’s own selfishness was the reason his brother could no longer enjoy his well-earned rest. The least Joshua could do was leave Clive alone to find his happiness and peace where he could among the living.
He put his head back on the table and made a neutral noise when Gav tapped his leg again. The baby’s restless burble felt like an accusation.
“No one will think less of you for it,” Gav said, “if that’s what’s worrying you.”
That was only one small part of it, but it still surprised him to hear Gav say it, the part of him that was always aware of what people would consider proper even more so than right was unconvinced. (His mother’s influence, he was sure, no matter how much he tried to deny she was still a part of him.) “Whyever not?”
“I’m not saying it’ll be universally accepted everywhere. But you’re safe here. We’ve all seen too much loss not grip tight any happiness we can find. With both hands.” Gav must punctuate this with a jiggle of the infant in his arms because there was another murmur of discontent to underscore this declaration.
It was a kind sentiment. Probably kinder than Joshua deserved, given that what he’d apparently latched onto as happiness was sure to destroy the peace that his brother had managed to find.
There was a low swell of voices by the elevator, and Joshua turned his head as the click-click-click of Torgal’s claws precluded the goodest boy himself, and behind him, Clive and Jill, returning from one of their careful excursions north, assessing developments in the Blight after the fall of Ultima.
Clive’s eyes scanned the room like someone used to finding monsters in the high grass. Joshua felt himself straighten instinctively when that laser focus fell on him–and there, what Joshua realized he was waiting for, the lightening of Clive’s eyes, the softening of his expression, changing his brother’s familiar face from gruffly handsome to beautiful. Joshua’s breath hitched and his entire body flushed, made even worse when he realized that his own gaze had dropped to Clive’s mouth. What was wrong with him? Even barring the obvious, he had been trained to have better control than this.
But he had a memory , now, his brother’s shoulders hardened stone under his hands, Joshua’s waning magic flaring to life inside him as he bent over Clive’s still form.
He turned hastily to look at Jote, who was taking a pointed sip of her drink, and then to Gav, whose look was far too knowing, for all he was trying to keep neutral. He could feel Clive’s approach like the spinning orbit of a star, something in the center of Joshua’s chest catching fire in response. Joshua was surprised he didn’t spontaneously combust when Clive stopped beside him, hand resting on the back of Joshua’s chair. Joshua could smell him this close–dusty roads and leather, the smoldering remnants of hearth and home . Joshua inhaled and could feel something settle inside of him, curling up, content at his brother’s feet.
“Everything alright?” Clive asked, and though he addressed the table, he was looking at Joshua when the younger man raised his eyes.
Joshua found himself smiling back helplessly, despite his current worry and trepidation. He could not imagine a universe wherein his soul would not call to his brother’s, and there, in the curve of Clive’s quiet smile, he could make himself believe that all the shadows that continued to plague their lives would eventually be conquered. He would make sure of it. That would have to be enough.