Archive of Our Own ^beta

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The Undying, sworn to defend Rosaria’s heir, were truly accommodating.

But then, that was their sole duty when it came to him.

None blinked an eye when their Lord, their Phoenix, requested a bedroom in solitude. It was not their place. A bedroom where none could overhear. Where none could stumble upon him by accident. Where it was just him, his bedsheets, and the secrets hidden between their silky embrace. There was just him. Just her.

One day, perhaps, Joshua Rosfield would tell his Undying a certain truth. The truth of his birth. The terrible, terrible truth his mother abhorred so greatly that she fashioned a web of lies from the moment of her second child’s first breath. But that day? Was not then. It had not been that day for many years. It had not been that day since they pulled him from the rubble of Phoenix Gate, and it would not be that day for many more years.

Oh.

But this night? This night was truly special.

For despite the pains preluding what was to come? The tribulations of Ultima, caged within his mortal form?

Joshua had seen his dear brother again, for the first time in so many years. Clive. It was his visage in the younger brother’s mind that night. The stars arose. The moon shone bright through the open windows. A night breeze kissed his skin as he shed his cloak, and the curtains swayed in it, and Joshua let himself think for a moment of home.

The wing these bedchambers was in was all but abandoned by his order. The Phoenix’s Dominant was alone. Thinking only of the image of his sibling, of how he’d aged. Grown into his stocky shoulders. His broad chest. Rugged in a way that would be romantic if only it probably weren’t because of neglect and hardships that Joshua had not saved him from.

Branded.

But in the mind of his younger brother, sibling, not the son Duchess Anabella had prayed for but the son she had molded, Clive Rosfield wore no brand. His brother was no Bearer. His brother had no mark burned upon his cheek, had not been subjected to such cruelty by their mother. In his mind? Clive was free. They were free.

In his mind, Clive rushed to behold Joshua. Hale and hearty. Whole. Without the guilt he believed he rightfully carried. Clive was there to embrace him. To see him. To protect him. His First Shield. His first loved. His first.

In the mind of the Phoenix was an image of his darling brother without all of that armor.

Just a man, as he was just a boy. Perhaps they were still in Rosaria in a world where the tragedy of Phoenix Gate never happened.

In a world where Ultima never existed.

It was that image his mind grasped onto and loved on, as Joshua undressed. Left himself without a scrap of cloth. As he slipped into the grand bed he wished to share, into the silken sheets. Letting the truth of him be bared to just the Clive in his mind as he curled around a pillow in the center of the bedspread. As he let his brother hold him in his mind.

His hand traveled downward, a shifting in the shimmering silk, hidden from himself for what he desired. And he let his fingers slip between the heat of his thighs.

He thought of Clive.

He thought of his beloved brother.

He sank his fingers into the folds of his heat down there, and exhaled to the fantasy of Clive’s hand touching him. So surely large beneath those gauntlets he wore. Scarred. Calloused from a blade. Hands worthy of a First Shield, worthy of a protector, touching his Lord-Brother so intimately, Joshua imagined -

And he pressed his face into the pillow to silence his gasps as he touched himself.

Imagining Clive, pressed shoulders to hips along his back, sharing a bed with him, his Lord, for some silly and slightly shy excuse. Like to protect him. But as the night would draw late and their flames fanned hotter from the touch, his strong hands would slip around Joshua’s waist and delve between his legs and Joshua would let his brother do so with a moan.

A moan muffled into the pillow, as the Phoenix, this scion the Undying and all of Rosaria was meant to be unquestioningly loyal to and live for and die for, began rocking his hips back and forth. Rutting onto his hand. Onto the corner of the pillow.

Fingers growing wet with his yearning.

Imagining the roughness of Clive’s stubble as he chastely kissed at his nape. As he swore his oaths in their bed. As he promised himself, his heart, his body to Joshua as they laid naked together.

Only in his fantasies, could Duchess Anabella’s daughter-born have his brother in such a way. Though she’d not known her feelings as a child, she’d known she loved Clive. Only as she-he-Joshua didn’t know who they were allowed to be - grew up, did he realize his love for his brother was beyond familial.

Was the sort of love that led to dreams of them undressed and his panties soaked come morning.

Now, this time, he had real knowledge of what Clive looked like after all of these years.

And that knowledge was driving him mad as he withdrew his fingers to assault his clit with a ruthlessness born of passion. Passion as hot as the flames fanned in his soul since birth. Rubbing circles around it until he was pressing harder, faster, bucking his hips desperately into the feelings of sparks of pleasure ascending his spine. Moaning into the pillow.

“Clive,” he moaned for his brother, his one eternal love, and it was as much a prayer as anything, “Clive. Clive. Clive, Clive, Cli-ah - ! Mvvvph…”

Biting at his lip, his brother’s name echoed. Then faded into the silence of the moonlit bedchambers, and Joshua collapsed. Breathless. Curled around the pillow that he buried his face into. Pretending it was Clive’s chest, that he was safe, that he was protected.

Finding his strength in time, the Phoenix turned onto his back to stare at a ceiling that held no answers.

Feeling the silent tears slip down his cheeks, as he whispered, “Clive.”

Praying, somewhere out there, his beloved brother was safe. And would remain as such, until the day came when they could meet again and Clive could hold him.

-----

Elsewhere, lying in a bedroll after a long day of burying the dead and grieving the lost and deciding whose path he would follow as the next Cid, Clive shifted in his sleep. The image of a phoenix feather burning behind his eyelids. The heat of it flooding his veins, yet it was more a warmth. Such a soft warmth. Like a well-meaning wish.

“Josh…ua…” He whispered in his sleep as a pleased shiver breathed across the back of his neck.

And then the feeling was gone.

But he awoke with his beloved little brother on his mind, and swore that the moment he found out if his dear Joshua was truly alive or not, nothing would stop him from finding his lost family.

So he could just hold him.

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Chapter Text

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It was a lonely night in Northreach. A rare thing. Really rare, with the Veil such a well-beloved establishment there. Being lonely in Northreach was like an insult to the dear Madame Isabelle. And Joshua Rosfield so-does try not to insult ladies. Especially not ladies with her sort of reach and power in the region. But. He is a Rosfield. Whatever the case, whatever his intentions?

It was a lonely night, and Northreach was a place of hushed whispers and panicked glances like it’d been ever since Sanbreque’s Mothercrystal had been destroyed by ‘Cid’.

By Clive.

The moon was bright, the starlight slightly dimmer than the lanterns illuminating the roads while leaving the back alley in darkness, and Joshua moved along swiftly. His work in the place finished. A large, voluminous cloak hiding all of him, all that he was, all that he appeared to be as he moved silently through the edges of Northreach’s roads to try and depart without drawing the eyes of any.

Joshua had no mind to remain any longer. The Undying needed him elsewhere after this night, the moonlight was his guide, and the flames in his heart were aflutter. The wings of the Phoenix ruffled after spending so long without allowing them to stretch out, and Joshua wished for his peace away from there.

What were the chances of two fire Dominants being in Northreach in one night?

On the same dilapidated road, the same cobbled stones beneath their boots?

What were the chances of the Rosfield brothers meeting this night?

High. Very high, Joshua was suddenly breathless to realize, when he glanced up from beneath his hood to find a familiar hooded figure leaning against a building further along. Not so far. Too far, yet not far enough.

Clive.

The very first instinct Joshua had said to turn away. Turn down an alleyway and avoid this coincidental meeting. There was still too much for them both to do to become tied up in one another just yet. However.

Clive's figure looked so…neglected. How else could he describe him? His stocky shoulders were hunched, his head bowed, and when he shifted? Joshua caught a glimpse of his brother’s face beneath his hood. His weary expression. The brand burnt onto his cheek. The utter exhaustion he exuded; it was too much for the Phoenix’s Dominant to bear seeing from his dear brother.

How could he abandon him there?

So Joshua did the brazen sort of thing Clive was known for, and kept walking down that dilapidated road of Northreach. Drawing his hood down. Risking so much just to - to talk to his sibling for a minute. Just one minute would be a blessing to him. Better, if he could somehow lift Clive’s spirits from where he looked so on the verge of surrendering to something beyond them.

He hesitated before turning off of the cobbled road proper to approach the alleyway corner that Clive was leaning against.

His brother did not so much as twitch in response to Joshua's presence, and he drew himself up, trying to manipulate his voice into something soft and unrecognizable when he spoke -

When he spoke -

The Phoenix's voice wouldn’t come. Caught in his throat, was it. And there was a long, long pause between them both, before he swallowed hard and attempted to speak again. Only to be quietly cut off by Clive’s, “I’m not looking for any trouble.”

Oh, but his Clive sounded so tired. And as if he expected this stranger to lash out at him for simply, what? Being there? Existing? Maybe for being a Bearer. That was almost understandable and oh how Joshua wanted to take his own flames to burn the mark from his brother’s face, his brother who drew into himself despite Joshua being smaller, being hidden, being no threat as far as any could see and yet.

And yet, Clive was reacting like everything and everyone could be a threat, and he wanted Joshua to leave him there. Leave him be. Leave him to his misery.

How could he abide by that, his brother?

“Perhaps…you could use a little company?” Joshua offered anyways, finding his voice, for this was his big brother. His big brother he’d left in the dark about too much for want of keeping him safe, and where had that gotten Clive? Branded. Beaten. Broken. Tiredly staring at his own hands in a back alley in Northreach like he couldn’t recognize himself anymore even though his younger brother saw the same young man before him who'd been sworn in as his First Shield years ago.

The same young man whom Joshua had loved in Rosaria.

The same young man, maybe not so young anymore, who desperately needed companionship but who was sometimes too awkward to ask for it.

Finally? After a breath, and after another, Clive withdrew from the shell he’d hunched himself into against an alley wall. Reached up with a swish of his hands, his blackened-metal gauntlets, to drop his hood. Revealing his face properly. Tired for sure. A bit sallow. A few new scars. But still, Clive. Still the brother that he knew. The brother that he loved.

His hair was a mess, and Joshua sort of wanted to take a comb to it as he smiled beneath his own hood at his brother.

If only he could drop his hood too.

Joshua was confused by the considering look that then came over his brother’s face. Clive looked at him, head tilted. Almost appraisingly. He supposed it was suspicious to simply be offered company by a stranger in a cloak. At least his brother knew enough to be wary of strangers, but this was no trick.

He just wanted to make him feel better this night.

“I…may not be the gentlest partner this night. Are you sure?” Joshua blinked, wondering how rough his brother could possibly be with his words. Did he intend to insult a confidant to feel better? Clive wasn’t that sort of man, so -

The broader man turned towards him then. Advancing a step. Then another. And Joshua had to step backwards in time with him so they would not collide, and blinked as he found the already dim lights of the alley becoming darker. As he was backed into a slim alleyway between two stone buildings, into shadow and slits of moonlight, and he felt his heartbeat flutter.

Clive took an extra long stride forward to bring himself near-level with Joshua, then turned so they faced one another. One more step forward.

And a soft gasp left Joshua as his back met the wall, two palms planting themselves on either side of his head.

What little light there was to see by, let him see the flames burning in his brother’s kind eyes.

Let him see the thin line of his lips, and the way his chest was heaving like his breathing had picked up, and Joshua felt faint when one of those big, big hands moved to the inside of his hood. Not to flip the fabric away from his face, not to unveil him, but to caress his cheek as if he - a stranger in his brother’s eyes now - were worth the care of a lover. For there was no other way to describe the caress of his gauntlet’s metal along his cheekbone. Framing him in this moment.

Framing the possibility of what this would be. Could be.

Oh.

Clive believed he was offering him company.

How could he have been so foolish? They were so very near to the Veil and Madame Isabelle’s girls. Clive believed him to be one of the escorts of Northreach. Believed him to be offering him company of the intimate sort in an alleyway. Oh no. Oh - oh. Oh. He was shameful. This was like one of his fantasies come true. Clive and him pressed into a narrow space, hearts pounding, his breaths almost touching his lips. How could he - how could they - ?

Oh but his brother needed this; his arms were trembling as he held himself apart from Joshua.

He looked so desperate. So much like a burning man needing his flames controlled.

His brother, his beloved brother, how could he abandon him to this?

So when Clive took his silence as permission, when Clive dipped into him, when Clive stole his first kiss with silent permission, Joshua allowed it. Shuddered. Terrified and thrilled and ashamed. And kissing him back in return. A bit messily, maybe. Novice that he was. Hoping Clive wouldn’t notice or wouldn’t mind, and Clive’s gauntlets were gripping at his hips, and they were moving so fast, a flame between them - !

Their kiss was more passionate than either of them had probably expected, influenced by the both of them, and before Joshua realized anything else he realized he was passionately making out with his older brother in an alleyway.

Clive was pressing into him.

Promising him things he wasn’t sure how to begin to accept.

This had gone so far from Joshua’s original intentions, but he never tried to stop it.

Reaching down, hiding the trembling in his hands with how they kissed, their lips unwilling to part, Joshua fumbled with the ties to his pants. Understanding what his brother wanted. Needed. Expected, probably, now. He unlaced them clumsily. Noises escaping his throat he wasn’t even aware he was capable of making. He pulled open the front of his pants, and then stared in shock up at the dim stars he could see far above the alleyway’s walls. Their little world.

Where it was just them, these kisses, and then the feeling of metal fingers slipping inside of his tunic.

Finding his bindings with ease.

Pulling them loose with even greater ease as he was kissed into some pliant, malleable state, letting Clive do what he wanted to him. Letting him press their hips together. Letting him grind against him. Letting him yank at his breasts' bindings, his tunic stretched downward from the tugging so much so that when he arched? When he arched, one of his breasts peeked out of his shirt’s collar, pink and smooth in the slits of moonlight; beautiful.

And it occurred to him then that Clive likely thought him to be a woman.

Well, he wasn’t wrong. In a way.

The cloth he used to bind his breasts fluttered to the floor of the alleyway, and Clive squeezed them enough to make Joshua squeak against his lips before releasing them. Touch falling for a second time.

A meek noise, submission, escaped Joshua as he felt the metal of Clive’s gauntlets cold on his skin. Tracing his hips. Rubbing patterns here or there, and then dipping lower. Into the hem of his undergarments. Joshua inhaled harshly, pressing a hand over his lips to stop the sounds waiting there for release like all the rest of himself seemed to be. Never having been touched in such a way.

The gauntlet brushed over his folds surprisingly gently, tangling in the curls of hair to be found down there as Clive pulled away his hand to kiss him.

By all rights, this should’ve been wrong, yet how could it feel so fitting if it was?

The harsh, all sharp edges and scraped metal of that gauntlet dipped into his body, but Clive was so tender about it. So tender with him. He didn't treat Joshua like a whore. Didn't treat him like a pleasure he'd paid for. Kissing his neck. Never shoving his hood back. Never hurting him. He worked him loose and wet like Joshua rarely ever had the patience to do in his beds. Kissing him. Kissing him. Grinding against his hip in desperate, needy thrusts that made Joshua’s heady mind just want to help him. To relieve him.

“Please.” Was all he managed, forehead on his brother’s shoulder.

Wet and burning up with the desire for more.

“Help yourself to me,” he pleaded, feeling the metal fingers leave him, leave him clenching down for something inside of him, something to pleasure them both, Clive’s name left off that plea though it was there. It was there. In his mind, it was there and it was loud.

Lifted up all at once, he gasped. His pants were shoved downwards, out of the way. He was kissed and kissed and kissed, so deeply he felt swallowed…and then he felt something hot and hard between his legs. Felt it throb as its tip met him.

Clive’s cock.

There was no wait.

The Phoenix lost his virginity with a soft little breath of, “Ah.”

It was hot. It was so hot. Like somebody had shoveled coals inside of him, his whole body jolted, burnt with it, and he cried out desperately. Going blind for a moment to the feeling. It hurt, a bit. It couldn’t be helped. It burned. It scraped. It was hard on him for a moment, a breath he failed to catch and ended up wheezing. But Clive was kissing his jawline, messily. And…slowing. For just a moment.

For Joshua to situate himself properly on his brother’s cock, before he continued relentlessly slamming up into him like he would go mad if he didn’t.

All Joshua could really do in that situation was cling to him and take the pain and pleasure.

Until the pleasure smothered the pain.

Until he was moaning into the echoing alleyway , burying his face in his Clive's hair and smelling him, him, him - Clive. Taken by him. Taken by his brother. Being loved by it. Being ravaged by it. Falling to it, and so happily too. He was so happy. He felt the scraping of stone against his spine, knew he’d be scratched up and sore and covered in bruises come morning. Knew he might regret it.

But it was amazing, being used by his brother so Clive could feel good that night.

He was big, and it was hot, and it was good and what else should sex be?

It felt like it went on forever.

Because then there was the cool metal of Clive’s gauntlets squeezing his ass, and holding their sexes tight together, and he was drooling somewhat on his brother as they both reached their peak with strangled cries. Pleasure. So much pleasure it made him sleepy. Made him wrecked with it. He felt what they’d done gushing between them, felt it wet inside of him, and he - he -

Warmth filled him. Warmth fanned hotter than even the wings of the Phoenix, and Joshua clutched weakly at Clive's shoulders, struggling to retain his breath…when there was the clattering of something being dropped and furious and slightly drunk cursing followed from the road.

He froze.

People were coming.

They'd be seen!

Panic barely had time to set in - the panic of being the only one to know he was on his brother’s cock at the moment - before Clive must’ve felt how he froze and drawn his own conclusions. Because his gauntlets were then under his thighs. Lifting Joshua off of his manhood with such care. Helping him find his feet, and then closing his cloak around him before pulling him into his side.

And tugging him along. Further into the alleyway. Further from the drunk people on the road who might try to 'buy' Joshua too. Supporting him as he stumbled and tugged his pants up, as he felt an odd pressure from down there, from what they’d done, still dazed and euphoric from what his brother had given him.

The alleyway led outside of Northreach proper.

They went from a dank alleyway where Joshua was shivering, to the top of a grassy hill. A grassy hill that sloped down to a chocobo paddock it seemed, moonlight bright around them, and Joshua hid his face against Clive’s pauldron. Uncomfortably aware of how visible they were there.

He was led down that grassy hill. Down to the paddock that Clive opened a side gate to with a casual kick of his boot.

The Phoenix’s Dominant had just long enough to wonder for what reason his brother had brought him to the moonlit paddock, before his First Shield was repositioning him carefully in front of him above a noticeable dip in the paddock’s grasses, and leading him down to the ground. Following after him on his knees.

Joshua’s breath hitched when he realized they weren’t finished yet. Clive was hard again. Hard, and hot, and his cock rested against Joshua’s inner thigh as he was laid back in the dewy grasses tall enough to hide them, his cloak’s hood barely enough to hide him, and Clive peered down at him almost bashfully, by the Phoenix -

“Apologies, but…would you be willing - ?”

As if he could deny his dear brother anything at all.

“Of - of course.” So Joshua pushed his pants down and spread his legs a little. And a little more when the cool, scratched metal of Clive’s gauntlets ran up and down them appreciatively. Turning his head into his hood. His cloak a blanket keeping the worst of the ground's cold from seeping into him. Not that he could feel said cold with how he burned alive beneath his brother’s touch.

Those gauntlets then startled him by going for his tunic. Pushing the fabric up until it was bunched around his collarbone. Exposing his pale stomach, and his small but perky breasts to the night air, and he was reminded that his bindings had been left behind in the alleyway. Oh well. They were soft and pinked in the shades of moonlight around them, and those gauntlets of his brother’s that he dreamt of took their time squeezing them appreciatively.

Thrusting against his thigh.

Leaning in to pepper kisses across the smooth line of his collarbone as if he were a lover and not a whore, and Joshua moaned faintly.

So hot. So, so hot. His desires burned bright, and it was all that he could do to keep the Phoenix’s flames from not reaching out for Clive’s flames too. His brother. His Shield. His sworn. His love.

Mercy, please.

He melted under his brother, letting himself go to the moans that took his voice and the way his body writhed beneath a man who could be gentle with him.

The only man he trusted more than his Phoenix.

The only man permitted to slowly kiss his way down Joshua’s form, the form of a young woman as he only was for his dearest brother, until his breaths were hot on his special place. He tensed up tighter than ever before. Trembling from the force of his expectations. From the thought of Clive’s lips on his - on his - his mouth down there - oh Phoenix -

Being unable to look without revealing his face was torture, because he wanted to see. He wanted nothing more than to see Clive between his legs like this, kissing at the pliable insides of his thighs. Working his way in, in towards - towards -

Clive’s beard scruff scraped at his folds, and he jolted.

Clive chuckled, and the sound was a sharp jab to Joshua’s gut.

Clive’s mouth fell upon his pussy.

He clasped a hand over his own mouth to prevent the screams of his brother’s name, in heaven. Clive’s head between his legs truly a dream come true. He stared sight-blind up at the brightness of a moon above. Barely keeping his eyes from rolling for the sparks dancing up his spine, he arched and he arched and he arched and then Clive was gripping his thighs to hold his hips in place.

Delving so deeply into his heat - his tongue - !

He wanted to scream. He wanted to wail his older brother’s name. He wanted to unfurl his wings and sing about their joining as the flames burned up his insides as though he were a pyre, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t. To do so was to reveal himself and he - he was a deceiver. He had to be a deceiver for them both to receive this pleasure. He wanted, but he couldn’t have.

He could roll his hips shakily down onto his brother’s clever, clever tongue, and he could let the tears slip down his cheeks as he was ravaged by pleasure.

He could be brazen enough to grab a handful of Clive’s dark hair, and tug on it as he held back his screams.

He could dare to glance down for but a second, to see Clive’s eyes closed in contentment as he made love to Joshua’s pussy with his mouth, seeming so relaxed down there, so gentle somehow, so young, and Joshua loved him -

And he reached his peak and burned alive in silence like that.

Shame on him for it felt so incredible.

Shame on him for he had no shame as he laid there, breasts heaving for breath, spent and pleasured…and with his big brother crawling up his body to reclaim his lips beneath his hood. A kiss that tasted of their shared pleasure. That tasted like the ashes of their home, and the soot staining their hands. And, like, Clive desired more.

“Can I - ?” Clive’s voice was raw and ragged as he asked, both with his words and with his cock still hard, nudging at Joshua’s soaked folds down there.

How could he ever refuse him?

Joshua was selfish, so he kissed his First Shield again as softly as if this was the last time he could, and let out a muffled gasp to the feeling of Clive tearing off his gauntlets and tossing them into the grasses, and then the feel of his bare, calloused hands under his thighs -

And then the feel of them recoupling as deeply as they could. As passionately as they could.

For as long as they never should’ve.

‘I love you, Clive,’ he was crying out in his head, time and time again, with every thrust of his brother’s hips, driving the desire home in them both. Clutching his shoulders, legs around those hips, face buried in his chest, crying out. But going unheard. Crying out like a dying Phoenix. He wanted to be heard. He wanted to. He loved his brother. He loved him so dearly. He loved him, he loved him, he loved him, he loved him.

But this was just one night in Northreach, between a tired soldier and a whore of the brothel.

I love you.

I love you.

I would burn for you, Clive.

I would.

Losing count of how many times they’d coupled, then recoupled, then recoupled, until Joshua was on his side and Clive was curled flush against his spine. His leg was thrown over his brother’s waist. There was a beard scraping at his nape, kiss marks littering his slender neck and shoulders, their clothing discarded aside from cloaks to keep away the cold, being kissed, being touched, being fucked.

Joshua’s flames eventually grew faint with his own exhaustion.

And were soothed down to a smothering, by his brother's touch.

They fell asleep together, curled around one another, in that dewy and moonlit paddock. The feathers of the Phoenix floating down around them but Clive's eyes were already shut so he never saw the evidence of how his younger brother loved him.

-----

Rays of sunlight shining through his eyelids woke Joshua. Woke him with a soft sigh. Shifting, he turned his cheek into the fabric of his hood, adjusting his hips, just to inhale breathlessly at the pang of pain it sparked somewhere below his hips. Somewhere between his legs. That finished waking him. Fast.

Finding his elbows under him, he curled upwards enough to be able to blink down at his body in sunshine. Sunshine like it was daytime. Nearly midday even, considering how bright it seemed, and he blinked several times down at himself and his slipping cloak before he saw himself.

Saw his cloak wrapped over his naked body, slowly unwrapping with every shift so he could see his skin on display.

Undressed, and touched, considering his memories.

Reaching down, he felt dazed as he rested a hand on his stomach. Remembering his brother’s hands caressing him there as they fell asleep.

Beside him was a small pile of clothes. His clothes. Folded up neatly with his belongings on top.

And then somebody cleared their throat.

He looked up to find a blonde man with a bandage over one eye standing not so far away in the paddock, politely turned away, and he stiffened for only a moment before the man said.

“Sorry 'bout that - ah, him. That is, he had business ta attend ta elsewhere, asked me ta stay ‘til you woke and were ready to go again. He leaves his apologies, he does, just…”

Joshua slowly batted his eyes at the man, a friend of Clive’s, left behind to watch over him until he woke safely and had set out on his way. Which, well. Joshua had never taken his brother to be the sort to leave his…lovers by themselves after the deed was done, but to be fair that was his own fantasies’ fault. And maybe it was better that his older brother wasn’t there to see him wake. To see under his hood.

To see him.

The Phoenix’s Dominant, who had fallen hopelessly for him.

Still, it didn’t stop the small trill of shame that curled up his spine at the knowledge that he’d had sexual relations with his brother. Without Clive’s knowledge, technically. Shame he would live with forever. The shame that he would dream continuously about this night in Northreach, he was sure. He would dream about it, and touch himself to the thought of it, and wake up with his panties wet from it.

And one day when he and Clive ‘meet’ again, he would have to pretend he’d never known the pleasures of his hands. Or his tongue. Or his cock.

His flames flared up, and Joshua hugged his body.

He wanted to wrap his wings around Clive Rosfield and never let go, because Clive was his.

Maybe one day. Maybe one day…he could do that. Maybe one day his desires would be knowingly returned. Probably not. But if nothing else, he chose for that to be his final fantasy on the matter. The Phoenix’s desires were not so easily sated. And like the Phoenix, his love for Clive was eternal.

It would be reborn when they met again. And again. And again.

Until then, he would have this one night.

Until then, his dreams would be filled with this one night, for he loved his brother.

And he would burn this world down for his touch alone.

-----

Gav was as much a gentleman as one could be...when one was asked to watch over a whore until she woke and safely walked away.

That Clive trusted him meant Joshua trusted him. Even vulnerable. Especially vulnerable. Clive wasn't the sort of man who would ever put any woman at risk of being harmed by a companion of his. Of that, his younger brother was positive.

Though that made him no less shy redressing himself under the curious glances of the man's single eye, while he did watch.

-----

Walking step in step along the road leading away from Northreach, Clive wasn’t oblivious to the way Gav kept glancing at him. Glancing away. Glancing at him. Arms up behind his head, humming, glancing at him. Glancing away. It would be weird, but it was Gav. So it was pretty normal. Clive didn’t bring it up.

Gav started swinging his arms and clearing his throat in a very obvious call for attention.

Clive’s eyebrow arched in question. 

Gav gave him a frustrated look.

He pretended he hadn’t noticed any of it and picked up his pace, calling ahead to where Torgal was bounding through the long, swaying grasses of the field barking and chasing butterflies that fluttered away into the skies in a panic. It wasn’t that Clive had no clue what his friend wanted to talk about, it was, just, private.

Or as private as a chocobo pasture in broad daylight could be.

Jill? Jill would've been able to get him to talk with one sideways glance. One little lift of her lips. She'd been present for his first crush ever as a simple fourteen-year old lad, stumbling over poetry and flowers he'd picked from the fields, and this - this wasn't a crush. But it was certainly something more than a one night fuck-and-leave. Jill would have it out of him the first second they had alone once they met again.

Gav wasn't Jill. Gav...had a hard time keeping gossip to himself, sometimes. Especially when drink was involved. So he tried to harden himself to the whining of his friend.

Tried.

“Sooooo.”

In spite of his best efforts, he winced when Gav finally drawled a single word, wary as he glanced over his shoulder at the man. He stopped. His boots scuffed the dirt of the road, then scuffed it again because it was easier to look at than remembering, well, that morning. 

That morning waking up with Gav staring down at him in disbelief because his arms were wrapped around a naked woman in the middle of that chocobo pasture in Northreach. 

Sweet Phoenix, at least she’d still had her cloak to cover her.

“I don’t want to talk about,” Clive grunted, kicking at a pebble. Moving on. Gav stumbled after him, making exaggerated noises of disbelief. Or - he hoped they were exaggerated.

“Come ooooon, Clive! Ya can’t just have me wait for a naked woman ta wake for hours ‘n not explain how ya ended up in such a situation!” 

“I can, actually.” 

“Can’t!” 

“Can.” He put a firmness into his words, there, and Gav was enough of a friend to stop, consider, and then probe regardless because that was simply Gav.

“But how did ya go from on yer way ta meet me last night ta spending that night with a lass like that?! Beautiful body on her, sure - so wasn’t she expensive?!” 

Hearing Gav compliment her body - 

“Torgal. Tackle.” Clive felt a bit satisfied when Gav immediately extended both his arms out in front of him, as if that could stop the excited pup who ‘boofed’ and slammed straight into the scout's chest. Knocking him onto his back. Half on the road and half not. Legs sticking out of the long grass as he let out a longer groan and simply laid there.

Playing dead while Torgal happily hopped off of his prey to bound over to Clive for many pets and kisses.

That whore - she was…still too fresh in Clive’s mind to talk about. The way she let him devour her, the way her voice sounded echoing in the alleyway around them, the way her hips fit under his hands. The heat of her cunt wrapped around him. The fact that he hadn’t had to pay for such a fine woman confused him. He wasn’t about to tell Gav that. It was embarrassing. It wasn’t like him.

Seeking out women of comfort wasn’t like him. At all. In a way she’d sought him out.

But accepting her offer was such a strange thing for him to do, Clive had confounded himself.

Had run away, using such silly excuses, to get Gav to watch over her until she woke. 

But she - 

She had been -

A dream come true.

How could he confess that to anyone, when it’d strictly been business? So he kept on walking, acting as if he had no concerns in the world.

But inside? Inside, Clive had desire burrowing in his stomach to nest, whispering sweet nothings about the things he could do while thinking of that sweet whore once he and Gav parted ways.

-----

Elsewhere, in the shaded forests surrounding Northreach, a Phoenix stretched its wings.

-----

There was a sweet soreness in his hips. A tenderness between his thighs. There were fingerprints imprinted on his skin, his waist, his lower back, fingernails curving around his ass - his brother was such a - such a passionate lover. A grabby, physical lover. A loud one too. A lot of things. Clive was so very many things. And he’d loved it, he had. Every moment between the first kiss of his cock in the alleyway and the freedom of the pasture.

The after of a night breeze on his skin, a kiss lingering, lips on the hollow of his throat, the curve of his shoulder. 

His seed drying, dripping down his legs.

There should’ve been more. Clive had…multiple times, had he spilled into him. Onto him. So Joshua had been startled by just how little of a mess there was. Meaning Clive had cleaned him up, at least a little, between the time he’d woken and the time he’d left and the thought of that gave Joshua’s heart wings. 

That flared and fluttered and wanted to fly free after a night like that, a night of losing his virginity. Not that he’d been one to put lots of stock into the purity, untouched culture that some folks did.

Like the Undying did. They had this idea that the Phoenix must remain pure and unbred until paired with a suitable partner.

Joshua had only gone along with them because his heart already belonged to his big brother.

Eventually, it would really strike him what had taken place. What that night in Northreach meant.

But eventually was not now. Now, was Joshua getting another day to himself, free of any overprotective attendants.

Sat in the forest, on a stone, near a stream. Listening to the water whisper on pebbles and soil, and staring at what he held so carefully in his hands. Such a dear treasure of his. A treasure that had helped him keep his sanity following the Night of Flames at Phoenix Gate. The night everything had changed. There had not been a chance for Joshua to gain back most of his belongings, after being spirited away to Tabor by the Undying.

But he’d paid a hefty amount of coin for one guilty pleasure.

A sketched portrait of his brother.

An attendant who had spent enough time in Rosalith to have seen the Phoenix’s elder brother had been hard to track down, but he’d persisted. He’d paid for it. He’d gained his treasure. Of charcoal on parchment. So simple and so fragile. So easily burned if he wasn’t careful. He stared at it now. By the stream. 

That sketch of his brother, from when Clive was fifteen years old.

For a long time, it had been the only way Joshua could even remember what his brother looked like.

For a longer time, it was the face of his fantasies because it was all he had.

Clive’s face used to be so squishy! A healthy amount of baby fat, big cheeks, dimples when he smiled. His eyelashes were just as dark and thick as they’d always been. Eyes the same too - the same eyes the younger brother had. Joshua remembered a time when he thought Clive was just so grown up. So out of his league.

Seeing him now, seeing him up close, in Northreach…that brand.

The way his jawline had sharpened. His cheeks had hollowed out. His dimples were hidden by the scruff of his beard. Clive had grown up. He ran his fingers delicately across the sketch of what his Shield had once been. Once, no longer, because Clive had grown up. He had a new face for his fantasies. New details. New lusts to leisure in.

At some point, the Phoenix’s Dominant had grown up too. Grown past the age Clive had been in the portrait he secretly treasured. Hid away. Terrified if the Undying acolytes found it, it would be burned. 

He’d been fifteen once, too. And then he was sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and on.

And Clive Rosfield had stayed eternally fifteen and boyish in his mind, until that day in Sanbreque. When the first Mothercrystal was felled. When he challenged Ultima himself for his dear brother’s heart and soul and won. For a time. For a price.

Joshua closed his fingers over his chest, over the scar it had earned him, and sighed at his treasure.

The breeze blew across the stream. Ruffled the parchment. Its edges worn and torn with age.

Clive still wore his earring. Joshua had ceased doing so a long time ago. A symbol of the House of Rosfield of Rosaria.

A broken, chipped bit of silver in the wake of the Night of Flames. 

They’d grown up.

The both of them.

And here Joshua was, seducing his brother into spending his nights passionately with him. What a far cry they’d come. There’d been another stream once, you know? So rarely was the Phoenix’s Dominant permitted outside of Rosalith. Its safety, its walls. Not without so very many guards, and even then Mother so rarely would let him out of her sight. Away from her skirt. Terrified of what might become of him in a world where his flames were coveted and he was the subject of scandalous whispers.

But then, one year, young, he was nine. The Rosfields were on Progress across Rosaria, visiting towns and villages. Hearing the woes of their people. Gaining retainers and spreading their influence by putting themselves on the same level as those they sought to rule and protect. Joshua was so sore riding for so many hours a day, but Clive hadn’t complained so he’d held himself back from mentioning it.

And then they’d arrived at their destination one day, and he’d nearly fallen over from how sore his legs were. A newborn fawn, he practically was, fumbling and not graceful at all.

Clive had noticed. Had offered him an arm so he stayed on his feet, had helped him hide it because he was more exhausted of people whispering about how weak his body was than he was exhausted of walking. It had been nice. Being arm in arm with his big brother for an entire day, even if it'd infuriated their mother.

Later that night, when he’d been laying in his bed, so sore so tired? 

Clive had crept into his room at the inn with mischief in his eyes, an offer on his lips.

Had picked Joshua straight up off of the bed, and given him a piggyback ride just outside of town. To a small stream. 

As his Shield, Clive had dutifully stood guard while Joshua gathered up his nightgown and soaked his sore legs in the chilly waters. Wiggling his toes. Relishing in the moment alone with his big brother where they were not watched, where his every word to him wouldn’t be repeated back to their mother by shifty handmaidens.

Clive had told him so gently that he needn’t hide his pains from him. Never from him.

‘I am your First Shield, Joshua. Please, let me know you all, so that I may serve you best.’ 

Naïve him had simply beamed up at his big brother and chirped.

‘Clive, you already are the best! Don’t worry about me. I can handle myself.’

…Handle himself. What a silly idea, little him. He hadn’t handled anything at Phoenix Gate, and the Undying had insisted on handling nearly everything for him following that. Only recently had he gained any autonomy at all. And he’d thought being his mother’s shameful little secret had been stifling, yet it had nothing on the Undying and how they smothered him in the name of his safety.

In the name of doing what was best for him.

He remembered how he’d shyly asked Clive to turn away. How he’d pulled the white, frilly fabric of his nightgown up higher to soak his thighs. Staring in secret at his big brother as he did so. At the way the moonlight made his pink skin glow like pearls, the form he cut in that moonlight standing guard for him. 

Protecting him, as if they weren't both just children.

He remembered thinking about what they’d be like, that night, all grown up. A Duke and his First Shield. Together leading Rosaria onwards, into a bright future, with the grace of the Phoenix behind them. 

He remembered blushing and staring at his toes wiggling in the stream waters, so happy with those thoughts. That future.

Now Joshua stared at the image of the boy Clive had been back then.

And he thought of the night prior, in Northreach, when he’d spread his legs for his big brother but Clive had thought him a bought whore.

And he closed his eyes before they could begin to burn.

He wrapped his flaming wings around himself for self-soothing and comfort, trilling quietly in his chest, rolling up the sketched portrait once he’d taken a deep breath. It was so carefully packed away into his satchel once more. 

But for a while longer, the Phoenix simply basked in the warmth of sunlight through the leaves, wings spread out, flames flickering faintly off of the undergrowth.

Toeing off his boots to slip his feet into the stream, for just a little while.

It wasn’t as cold as that night.

He wondered if his heart had grown colder then, because at times he wondered if it wouldn’t have been far more merciful for the Rosfield line to end that night in Phoenix Gate. If it wouldn’t have spared them so many things they couldn’t take back. If it couldn’t be the blessing they truly wanted from their Eikon, the Phoenix.

“Clive…you really are the best, Brother. My best.” 

-----

Torgal tipped his head to the rising moon, and howled.

Clive agreed with the hearty wolf. It was time to bed down for the night, and now that Gav had let them be to finish up his own scouting duties in Sanbreque? Clive would have the campfire to himself for the night. Himself and his mind.

And his memories of that magnificent woman who'd kept a piece of him after a single night shared between them.

~>----------<~

Chapter Text

~>-----------<~

Time passed. 

Time passed, and the fantasies were growing to no longer be enough.

And yet they were also all too much.

-----

Battles.

Brawls.

Barfights.

None were rare things for Clive Rosfield. He settled down for bed covered in splatters of blood and muck more often than he didn’t. He was sore more often than he was comfortable. His bedroll was a scrap of fabric on the hard ground more often than he had a luxury like a bed, or even a cot, or even blankets. Torgal was what kept him warm most nights.

When it was just the two of them, coming back from some mission using the name ‘Cid’, and making camp on the side of the road.

Or in the middle of nowhere.

Clive was used to it. He was entirely used to it. It was his everyday, his normal. He counted his pleasures in warm cups of mead, and a meal that wasn’t stale, and sometimes a bed. He counted his pleasures in having a day pass him by where he wasn’t cursed at for being branded.

Or worse.

Don’t ask for more. Don’t demand anything. Don’t even pray for it. It was just asking for the Eikons to take it from him; to show he cared, was to lose what he cared about. Harshly and without warning. Like his father. Like Joshua. Like Rosaria.

A single, small, downy feather from the Phoenix was all the sign he had that his brother may yet live. A voice. The warmth of flames he thought lost to him at Phoenix Gate.

Nothing more, and yet it was his everything. And he tried not to ask for pleasures, truly. Tried not to tempt the world in that way. Tried not to risk anything in that way. He did his work. What he viewed as his duty. And he gave, and he gave, and he gave, and sometimes it wore him down, but he dared not seek his pleasures in more -

Except -

Except…

There had been one night, he dared to seek more. A single, selfish night. In Northreach.

In an alleyway where he could pretend he was just another man who was allowed to want things. In a moonlit paddock where he could pretend he was a person, a person who was allowed to show his desires. To seek them. To take them. With permission. Always with permission. She had given her permission so, so eagerly. And he had lapped it up like a starved dog. Desperate for her. For any scrap she could give him -

And she gave him a feast.

Clive forced himself to stop. The campfire had flared up in response to his thoughts. There were sparks at his fingertips, and he closed his hands into fists. Control. Control, he chided himself. He must control that. All of that. That one night was like a dream, and that was what it should stay. It should stay.

Torgal was away, hunting himself dinner from the beasts of the field they were camping in. And Clive was there with only his sword and his whetstone to occupy him. That was all he should need as ‘Cid’. That was all he dared keep.

Himself, and his weapons, and Torgal for his companion, and sometimes a campfire as his only source of warmth.

The whetstone on his sword was a sound he let his mind drift to.

A good distraction.

But he thought of other sorts of heat, and it wasn’t good enough.

Huffing, he set aside the whetstone and sword and stared into the dancing flames, casting shades of embers all around him. He thought of the flames within him. He thought of what burned inside of him, longing - stretching in search of a heat he’d only known once. Her heat. How selfish was he. How foolish. He sought what he was never likely to get again. Her.

Her.

Fuck him. He knew not her name, he knew not her face, he barely knew her voice besides her moans, but he knew the feeling of her pussy. And its taste. And her incredible heat. Heat, like no other woman he’d ever had. No man either. He had been cold that night, that night in Northreach. Like never before. It had felt like the flames inside of him were dying.

Like the flames Joshua had gifted him were going out.

It had choked him. Like none of his trials before except thinking he had killed his baby brother; thinking Joshua’s flames were dying inside of him had been a collar tightening around his throat. He had been useless. On the verge of falling to pieces. He didn’t know if it was time’s passage, or if something had happened to his brother after all, or if he was simply losing the Phoenix’s Blessings.

But he had been at his end, and so cold.

And then she had been there. Adorned in a cloak, face hidden from him, but voice so caring as she offered him company as if he deserved it.

Clive cursed, shifting. Snorting at himself and his stupidity…and then staring down at his cock pushing eagerly against his pants. She wouldn’t leave his mind.

Because he never wanted her to.

But this was getting ridiculous. For weeks now, he’d thought of her. Thought of her, and that one night together, and touched himself desperately like a teenager whatever spare moment he got despite telling himself he wouldn’t. He had better control than that. He wouldn’t be led around by a pussy he’d had once…no matter how - how life-changing that once had felt at the time.

Hells, even now.

Life-changing.

Clive. A weak, weak man. So foolish. So spineless. So willing to give in to the pleasures he should never be allowed to so much as look at, let alone lay his hands on. Stick his cock in. He let out a breath between his teeth. He gave in.

He leaned back on his bedroll, and in the firelight pulled his cock out.

Thinking of her. The one girl of Madame Isabelle’s who had been willing to offer him her esteemed company.

Though he had no name nor face to her, he remembered her body. How it looked bathed in pale moonlight. Its curves. Its perky, handfuls for breasts. The way she arched. The way she responded to his touch and his more. The way she peaked with him, not a pretender, not acting, not faking a moment with him - damns.

He took his cock into his hand and gave it a long, slow stroke. Thinking of that body he’d fucked in an alleyway in Northreach. And then in the paddock. And then slept beside.

Her cunt had been amazing.

Surely, surely too expensive for somebody like him, but she’d never named a price.

Before or after offering herself.

She hadn’t been frightened off by his desperation to feel some sort of heat either.

Heat like his fist now, as he continued stroking himself. Regretting he hadn’t taken his gauntlets off from the first second he’d kissed her in that alleyway, but she’d seemed to like the feel of them. Had responded so well to it.

Madame Isabelle’s girls usually didn’t kiss their clients. Hells, Madame Isabelle’s girls usually weren’t allowed to offer their services to Bearers period, let alone for anything close to free. Clive knew he was conventionally, well, handsome. Attractive. Had been told as much plenty of times, if only he weren’t branded. But that shouldn’t have been enough for the young woman to risk it.

She’d bound her breasts too. It’d been odd, but maybe she wasn’t working at the time.

Fuck, the thought of her offering him company when she wasn’t even working -

It’d been understandable; her keeping her cloak around her. Should anyone see a woman of the Veil offering herself to a Bearer such as himself, she might’ve ended up in deep trouble. Clive would never dream of causing trouble for somebody so willing to offer him their company as she had.

Still, he kept fisting his cock and thought of her fondly.

Lustfully. Her body. Her curves.

Her heat wrapped so tightly around him.

She’d neither demanded him to give her pleasure nor had seemed frightened by him. His scars. His brand.

She’d been - she’d been amazing.

As a Bearer, Clive was accustomed to being treated as an object. A possession. A thing without the capability for feelings nor needs of his own. She had treated him like a person. Like they were both just people, with needs, worthy of satisfaction. Worthy of her. Worthy of the pleasures of her heat on a cold night when he was doubting everything.

‘Please. Help yourself to me.’

Be blessed; he surely was.

Fucking up into his fist and pretending it was her pussy which hadn’t seemed to want to let him go. Her pretty and pink pussy that she’d let him worship with his mouth, on his stomach like he so-enjoyed but so rarely could indulge in.

Fuuuuuuck.

Clive wanted another night in Northreach.

Maybe he could find her again. Maybe she’d think him worthy of her precious time again. He’d pay this time. Fuck, he’d pay her a fortune for just one more chance to be treated as a person. Even if his brand would be removed soon, he wanted that. He wanted her, while he still had no right to her.

The fires inside of him flared.

He shifted forward, bracing his elbows on the ground and losing himself to the feel of his fist rather than just his fantasies. Thrusting into it hard and fast with the feeling of the flames hot in front of his face. Heady to it. Burning up inside. And still wanting more, he fucked harder and harder into his fist until his knees were scrambling to find purchase on his bedroll and his legs were shaky and he was moaning into the night’s air without shame.

Practically fucking himself into his campfire.

And he reached his peak thinking only of her, like he’d never thought of anyone before.

The lovely and kind whore of Northreach who was on a pedestal in his eyes now.

Because her heat had been the best he’d ever had, and Clive Rosfield would do absolutely anything to be able to claim it again.

-----

Come morning, Clive woke groggy and ashamed. He felt sticky, despite having cleaned himself off before falling asleep. He felt grimy. Like something dirty and undeserving. His fingertips tracing the brand soon to be removed from his face. A remnant of all of his sins. His greatest penance. 

And perhaps one he may not have even earned, if his baby brother still lived.

He laid an arm across his eyes, wondering who was he to think he was in any way deserving of a woman’s pleasures. Especially a woman such as that.

Who was he to sully her, her vessel, her lovely heat, with his cock? With his cock in his fist and her breathy voice on his mind? She'd been too fine a whore for him. She'd been so much more...than just a whore. And yet if he allowed himself to realize that truth he would lose himself in it. That truth. Her.

Damned him.

He was a ridiculous fool, was what he was. A greedy bastard no different than those soldiers who thought themselves so much better than Clive in every way just because he bore a mark on his cheek and they did not. How was he any different? Truly, what drew a line between them? What made him better? What made them worse?

With a grunt, he sat up.

And stared at his sullied hands as the morning sun beat down hot on the back of his neck.

Hands like his, hands soaked in blood and muck and tears and semen - how could he ever…hold his baby brother with such hands again? If they met, if the Phoenix graced them with even a glancing touch - no, even if he just saw Joshua again. How could he look upon him with eyes that had gazed so lustfully upon a woman’s body like that?

How could he meet his baby brother’s blue eyes, when there had been a moment, even a single second, where Joshua…had completely slipped from his thoughts? 

All because his cock was in some woman.

How could he?

“Woof!” 

A bark and a bark alone was all the warning Clive got, to get his hands up and squeak before Torgal pounced. Landing square on his shoulders with his big, floofy weight that he groaned under. The breath knocked from his lungs. He laughed, laughed on a face full of fluff, and he buried his hands in Torgal’s thick coat in the surprise of the moment, still laughing around the fluffiness.

“Torgal - I’m up! I’m up! Off boy! Off!” There was a lot of wiggling involved. Torgal barked a second time, and then shuffled off of Clive just enough.

Just enough to drag a very wet dog's tongue up his face. Panting happily at the way Ifrit’s Dominant groaned, slimy with saliva, and gave himself a shake. Wiping his face with his undershirt. Huffing.

Mind sufficiently taken off of its self-deprecating route though.

Torgal was such a good boy.

“Yes. Yes. Breakfast. Yes.” A good pat between his ears, a kiss to the tip of his nose before he bounded off for that morning hunt, and Clive just flopped back onto his bedroll, Staring up at morning-gold skies. The grasses of the field swaying around him. Her still on his mind. But also, there was a downy feather on a necklace around his neck, and Joshua came before even her.

Joshua came before everything. And everyone. 

The whole of Valisthea could never compete nor compare, to his baby brother. 

If…if Joshua would just answer him, if Joshua would just give him the chance, if Joshua - if they could just be blessed, for a moment, if his suspicions could just be confirmed the once? Clive Rosfield would do absolutely anything. Anything at all.

To be able to see his baby brother again, he’d give up all else in the all the realm.

Just for the chance.

-----

Elsewhere, in another field, at another camp come morning, a Phoenix was waking up. 

With his brother's name sweet on his lips, lips bitten so the name wouldn't escape, a shame he wasn't sure was his tight in his chest, and hiding it as ever from Jote who hovered over him like a stolas with a message.

Sometimes their bond went deeper than flames - went as deep as their embers.

Joshua watched the sunrise that morning, getting the sense that somewhere else in Valisthea...Clive was watching too.

~>-----------<~

Chapter Text

~>-----------<~

To be burnt out is to be worn down to your embers and soot.

Joshua was so very worn down.

And ‘burnt out’ was a phrase in particular that applied to Joshua. Though the flames of the Phoenix were not truly capable of burning out, always destined to reignite, always destined to be reborn. Even so, they could burn down to nothing but coals and embers. Did often. For him. All because of his weak constitution. All because of his mother’s meddling.

Other Phoenixes were not as weak as him. Other Dominants of the Phoenix of the Rosfield line were not born so sickly that the flames of their Eikon might be enough to kill them.

Well…’born’ weak.

That was his mother, Anabella’s, story. He need not push it anymore. He knew as well as she always had that his weaknesses and his sickliness were a result of her own actions.

Those potions and poisons and mixtures intended to stop him from developing as the girl he was born as.

Those potions and poisons and mixtures that affected him all these years later. Potions and poisons and mixtures that made channeling the Phoenix a painful endeavor. That had him coughing up blood and falling to the aside, relying on the Undying for so much more than most Keepers of the Flame of the Phoenix must. His blessing was that they were there.

His curse was that he needed to rely on them so often.

Tabor was silent and still, this night. This night spent back in the safety of the Undying’s headquarters. In a wing where he resided in solitude. In a bedchamber where he lay, curled up on the bed, breathless. The sheets speckled with flecks of blood. His lips red with it. The moonlight was pale, as was his complexion, and he was in privacy but…he wished he wasn’t.

Oh, it was not Jote or Cyril he wanted for company.

The wind through the desert canyon came through the windows, blew over him slowly and left shivers and goosebumps climbing his skin. The curtains billowed with it. The sound of feathers ruffling joined the sound of that wind.

Because the Phoenix’s wings were free.

Spread out, beautiful and burning softly, over the bed behind him. He laid curled tight around one of his pillows, coughing, more flecks of blood speckling white sheets - he hurt - he was burnt out -

He wanted his brother. Dearly, he wanted his Clive.

Ruffling his feathers to stir up more of a flame in his wings, Joshua felt the clog in his chest. That gunk of miasma both magic and scar tissue from his mother’s actions in the past. Between using his flames for the work of the Undying and his own pursuits, and needing to use his flames to also so constantly heal himself? He wore out so easily. So dreadfully.

He had so many nights like this.

Nights that were less about lust and more about comfort.

Which had gotten harder to fantasize about, ever since a particular night in Northreach. He coughed. More blood speckled the pillow. He wheezed and closed his eyes to the sight. His fingers working gently between his legs. Humming at the feel. The feel and the heat of his private place, touching, rubbing, dipping his fingers into himself.

And the heat was incredible, was soothing to feel as he hummed through a quiet moan, but it wasn’t…

It wasn’t the same.

As that night. That alleyway. The night and place that he’d lost his virginity. Given it up happily, really. As alike as the night’s air was, the moonlight, the memories of how he’d pleased his brother all those many weeks ago? None of it was the same. Not enough so. Because his fingers - his fingers?

Weren’t…Clive’s.

His fingers were long but they were thin, and they had far fewer scars and callouses to add texture. The bedsheets were not nearly as warm as his brother’s body. Nay, they were cold, and smooth in a way his brother wasn’t. His body slid amongst them easily when he shifted his hips and let his head fall back, when he wanted all the buckles and straps and solidness of the clothes Clive wore. The smell of him, of flames and soot and ashes.

His fingers weren’t his big brother’s cock.

They didn’t fill him the same.

Before, before, all those nights before, Joshua could tip his head back and touch himself and peak so easily because of his love for his brother and because it had all been a mere fantasy. A fantasy of what Clive may look like after all these years. A hint, a farce, a moment of daydream. And then he’d seen his First Shield again, and it had taken a more solid shape but he could still touch himself the way he always had.

Ever since he realized how much he desired his dear brother.

But now? Now that he’d had sex, now that he’d experienced the true pleasure of that, how could his lonely nights with just his fingers compare? He wanted more. He wanted the way Clive’s manhood filled him full, even for his first time. He wanted how thick it had felt. The way it had pinched. The way it had throbbed with yearning, thrusting against every bit of him it could until it could get inside of him.

And when it was inside of him, it struck places his fingers were nowhere near long enough to touch.

Places that made him arch his back.

Places that he felt for days following that night in Northreach, sore so sweetly.

Places that made him want to wrap his legs around Clive’s hips and buck. Unfurl his wings. Scream, cry, plead. Kiss. Grab onto his big brother’s shoulders and hold him tight as he was properly fucked by him. Until his legs were shaking. Until he was weeping from how good it all was. How well their flames mixed.

He wanted to shelter Clive in his wings and burn anyone who tried to steal him from this Phoenix.

And yet all he had was his fingers, that he sank into himself fast and desperate, grinding against the edge of his pillow and moaning for more. Feathers aflame and scattered all across the bed with his passions. Blood speckled the sheets. It hurt, it helped, the passion burned and he wanted to be the pyre Clive threw himself onto.

He wanted to be the flames that burned his brother alive and he wanted Clive to feel pleasure from it.

He peaked.

After, he lay there shuddering. Coughing up blood. His flames a low, emberish glow that barely illuminated anything in the pale bedroom. His wings folded around him, and he rested his cheek on the pillow speckled with his lifeblood, and he pretended it was Clive. It was his elder brother. They were safe, and they were tangled up in bed together, and they would never be separated again.

His thighs were wet with how badly he wanted that.

Even as he knew they couldn’t have that, he cried himself to sleep, too cold to be happy.

-----

Sleep’s refuge refused to take him into its comfort. Not for long. Joshua awoke with a harsh coughing fit, blood speckling his sheets all the more, and he fell when he crawled from his nest. Laid shuddering on the floor in a beam of moonlight for a long, long moment before the fit finished and he could drag himself unsteadily to his feet.

 Cursing his weakness. All familiar curses. Curses he’d known all his life.

 As he’d know his weakness all his life.

 Unfortunate, though it was, it wasn’t unusual. Rarely was his sleep not fitful. Not for so many years. Not since before Phoenix Gate, before the Night of Flames. Before, when he could still sometimes sneak into Clive’s bed or have his bed snuck into. It was an old habit of the Rosfield brothers. Started when Joshua was in his very crib, when their mother would make any excuse to keep them apart so his big brother would have to creep into his rooms just to see him as a babe.

 It had become his comfort since, and without his brother? His sleep was irregular at best and impossible to summon at worst.

 Or the worst may be the nightmares, but…

 Regardless, the Phoenix’s Dominant rose. Walking through beams of moonlight. Finding and slipping seamlessly into his nighttime robes. White and light with blood so easily seen on its fabrics. But the stains were old and new. Were nothing the Undying weren’t used to seeing on him. Like they were used to seeing him, wandering the halls and rooftops of Tabor. It was how he wore himself out to sleep once more most nights.

 This night.

 This night, he slipped from the rooms dedicated to him on silent feet. Padding through shadowy, shifting halls. Padding on, and on, and on. He wandered. A lone ember with no fire to flourish in. 

 A lone ember, all by itself when it should’ve been surrounded by like flames.

 The canyon of Tabor grew rather cold and frigid in the nights. When the skies were dark, when the buildings were darker. He was not wearing his thickest robes so Joshua wandered the halls most familiar to him. Most shadowed. Most darkened. Where few acolytes walked, and if they did they wore robes that hid themselves entirely. And if they saw him, they bowed in deep respect to the Phoenix gracing them after dark. 

 Joshua tried not to be seen, and his wandering ended where it often did.

 The chantry.

 Twas only natural. The end and the beginning and the end, again. Tabor. Temporal home of the Undying, those who worshiped the Phoenix, the Keepers of the Flame. It was only natural of them to have a chantry dedicated to their beloved Phoenix. Even if not one as grand and ornate as those dedicated to Bahamut in Sanbreque’s great cities. Where they had shining steeples and golden altars that glimmered in the sun? 

 The Undying had their humble chantry, tucked away in a canyon of dust and winds. 

 A place of shadows, lacking windows, lit by the dancing flames in its lanterns, its sconces. Its altar simply carved wood - carvings of practitioners kneeling, hands held on high for their Eikon. The most embellished bit of the chantry was its centerpiece. Its wavering heart. That which the altar looked to. That stained glass window that Joshua remembered being a small, bandaged boy and staring up at in astonishment.

 A stained glass window in shades of oranges and teals, and unforgiving scarlets.

 Depicting the Phoenix. Wings spread, flames falling like rainfall from the skies, its feathers like blades, its talons outstretched. Retribution. Valisthea’s rapture. That was what it looked like. Illuminated day or night, because behind that window was a chamber where they kept a hearth burning always. It was never without its fiery glow. It was a sight - a symbol.

 When Joshua had been a boy and first looked upon it following the Night of Flames, it had felt like a revelation. 

 Now, it felt like a false promise.

 A prophecy never fulfilled.

 A flame that had sputtered out. Yes, it burned. It burned still before his eyes, now, years later.

 But Joshua Rosfield was no longer that little boy who’d been pulled from the rubble of Phoenix Gate. No longer that child, that innocent child of before, who dreamt only of living a peaceful life alongside his big brother whom he adored. His innocence had been shed from him with the splash of his father’s blood across his face. With the sprouting of his wings. The first time he burned and was reborn from his own ashes.

 Wings unfurling out from his shoulderblades now, with a control he’d never had back then.

 He no longer sought salvation from any besides himself. The Phoenix, his Eikon, was a piece of himself as a person. The holder of his soul. A mate he could never part with. Not in life, nor death. The Phoenix was dear to him because it took his wishes into account when setting their world aflame, and sometimes listened and sometimes allowed Joshua his secrets…despite that going against the Undying’s encouragements when he was that child.

 To tell them everything, to speak as their Phoenix, to be the voice of the flames they had guarded for generations. To never keep a single secret from them, for how could they protect him if they hadn’t all his knowledge? A child falls for such pandering.

 Joshua had been a child who fell for it, for a few years. When he still saw a promise in that stained glass window.

 Now, he saw only the imperfections in the glass. A Dominant in a place of worship for its Eikon, and his skin crawled….almost. Maybe. Should he be willing to admit to it. Joshua stood before the altar full of lit, scarlet candles. Melted wax dripping like blood oozed. Joshua stood staring up at that which was the Phoenix the Undying worshiped, and he just wrapped his arms around himself. 

 Eyes fluttering shut, so he need not see.

 “You flinch from it.” 

 Indeed, he flinched. 

At the sudden, unexpected speaking up of a witness to his secret moment - always witnessing him, never seeing him, the Undying - 

 The Phoenix’s Dominant whirled around, robes billowing around his slender legs, and Keeper Cyril stood behind him in the chantry. Bearer of the Burning Quill, head of the Undying, Keeper of Keepers and Joshua’s own chronicler. Adorned in his traditional cloak of white and red. Hood up. Eyes shadowed. Hidden from the flamelight.

 Indeed, he had flinched. And Joshua cringed back all the more after.

 “Keeper Cyril.” 

 “You flinch from it,” the devotee of the Phoenix repeated, beneath his hood tilting his head, tone politely curious, “Why, Phoenix? Are the flames not stirred enough? Have your candles burnt too low? I shall fetch the altar boy - “

“No!” Extending his hand, he stilled halfway to waving the man back in realizing his mistake, but Keeper Cyril had already taken him up on the implied invitation and glided across the chantry’s floor to join him by the altar. The last thing Joshua had wanted was to have the altar boy roused from his bed in the midst of the night, but perhaps he still would’ve preferred it to - this.

 The flaming wings of the Phoenix truly shrank from the chronicler, burning low with Joshua’s sudden drop in mood. He almost folded them back into his soul, but thought of how plainly obvious that would be.

 So there he remained.

Wings bared, robed, arms wrapped protectively around his core, while his chronicler seemed abuzz in silent pleasure to have this moment in his presence. Unnerving. As always. Joshua had never really understood why his father had seemed uneasy, all those times Elwin Rosfield attempted to explain to his son the purpose of the Undying. The necessity of them and their work. A time-honored, devoted society. 

 He’d learned, and he’d learned well, since then.

 Keeper Cyril in particular had always been…

 “You hesitate, Phoenix. Why?” Vibrantly blue eyes flicked to then away from Keeper Cyril, so the man plodded onwards like that were an invitation, “I understand we have not yet found anything about the usurper, this, Ifrit. But soon. Soon, somewhere in the history of Valisthea we shall find our answers. And with those answers we shall right the existence of there being another Eikon of fire when there should only be one. We simply must have faith. And keep the flames.” 

 Gritting his teeth, Joshua barely restrained his wings from flaring up with far hotter flames at the way the chronicler spoke of Ifrit’s Dominant. Of his brother.

 “Have care, Keeper Cyril,” he spoke, through his gritted teeth, rising up to a height an inch or so above the man and making quite sure their eyes met before he spoke further, “That is of my brother, Clive Rosfield, you speak. I will not hear slander nor threat towards him. Not ever. You shall not like it if I do.” 

 Losing the battle of restraint to keep his wings from flaring, flare they did. Bright and untamed and angry. Their brightness reflecting in the keeper’s grey eyes. Wide and reverent eyes.

 Always a discomfort to see.

 “Yes, Phoenix,” Keeper Cyril rasped, clasping his hands before him and staring only at the flaring feathers of his wings, the way the flames leapt and twirled and danced across them to a birdsong only one of them could hear, “Forgive me. I will reflect on my folly.” 

 Choosing to read that reverential apology as an end to this unpleasant conversation, Joshua also chose to leave the chantry.

 Walking away, walking away - 

A palm swept across one of his wings. 

One, broad brush. A desperate touch. Worth anything. Everything.

 Joshua’s wings immediately snapped as close to his body as was possible while he whirled around and hissed at Keeper Cyril, flames behind his teeth, behind his eyes, a squawk in his throat, and he was snapping, “Do not touch my wings without my consent, Keeper Cyril.” 

 The hooded keeper shrank back, bowing, murmuring apology upon apology.

 But it was the looseness of Keeper Cyril’s shoulders beneath his cloak, and the breathlessness of his voice, that told the Dominant he held no remorse.

 Feathers itching, fettered, ruffled - the Phoenix wasted no more time and could confess to all but fleeing the chantry. Ducking in and out of shadowy halls to get back to his personal, private wing of rooms.

A private wing of rooms with locks on each and every door between him and Tabor’s chantry. Locks Joshua made use of. One by one by one. Each and every door. Slowing only when he’d stumbled into his bedchambers, moonlit, and had slammed and locked that door as well. The key clattered to the floor. 

 Much the same, he did. Clattering to the floor with the click of the lock echoing around him, Joshua Rosfield found himself curled up. Leaning against the base of his bed. Knees to his chest, wings a cocoon of warmth surrounding him. A reminder. A reminder. Always a reminder, and always his greatest comfort as well, so ironic and so painful and so magnificent.

 Twas he, the Phoenix.

 Fallen.
 
 Touch? Being touched? Joshua dare not mind, not unless the touch was cruel or callous. It was not being touched that caused such a visceral reaction in the Phoenix’s Dominant. Twas his wings. The flaming wings of the Eikon of fire. A symbol, a sigil, a sign to rally to. They looked so big, so brilliant, aflame and away from anything worldly like Eikons oft were. But they were so delicate.

 So sensitive.

 So vulnerable.

 The feathers could molt; from instinct and from stress. Pain. They may have fire flickering in their spines, but they often weren’t hot enough to burn unless Joshua willed them to be. They were soft. Aetheric, but soft. They were of flesh and ethereal bones, magic and mysticism and Eikonic. They could be pierced through by an arrow as much as any piece of him. They could be cut, they could be yanked on. They had nerves. Could feel things, they - 

 They were like…if Joshua opened his ribcage wide before a person, and let them watch his heart beat.

 Without any of the protection that his skin and sinew and muscles and bones and other organs may well count as. 

 His wings were a private, precious piece of himself. More precious than he’d considered his own virginity; gifted to his brother as it was. Precious enough that he rarely let his wings free when in the company of any. Clive had been an exception. An exception made when his darling brother was already asleep and they were in the afterglow of a wonderful night spent together in Northreach.

 His wings - touching his wings in such a way, it was no different than if Keeper Cyril had groped him. A misunderstanding or not, done in awe and reverence or not, that didn’t…make it okay.

 It made him feel more uneasy.

 Unsafe.

 With the Undying, over recent years, maybe, actually, he’d been…feeling that more and more and more.

 Joshua pressed his face into his knees, breathing in and out and in and out and each breath was shaky, trembling with his lips. Eyes almost burning. The moonlight felt cold. His wings barely felt warm. He barely felt safe having them out, cocooning him, as he did. How had his nighttime walk turned to this? To him, a ball of anxieties on the floor in his rooms? To him, curling his toes around the hem of his robe so he was as wrapped up as could be? 

 To him, closing his eyes to strange, violated tears, wishing with all his exposed heart that Clive were there.

 Clive would’ve protected him.

 Clive would’ve kept them all away from him.
 
 Clive would’ve taken Keeper Cyril’s hands for overstepping in such a way, he was sure. He was sure. His big brother wouldn’t have let that stand for a single second. Would’ve swung his blade, let it flash in the dance of the chantry’s flames, would’ve barely grunted at all at the effort it took to take the chronicler’s hands; no effort whatsoever. 

 And…and Clive would’ve waited not another second to shield him. To cloak him. To escort him back to his rooms, to safety, where they would stay together. Where he would comfort Joshua so sweetly. So earnestly. 

 The blood on his blade a promise, that the younger Rosfield wished to accept.

 A tiny, muffled cough, and there was blood on his robe after all this night.

 There were also tears, salty on his lips like the salty caramel chocolates Uncle Byron used to give him and his brother.

 And Joshua kept his wings between himself and the rest of Valisthea, for the rest of that evening, willing only to open them for a single person. The one single person who would never be seen in Tabor. The one single person who would never be seen with him, should the Undying have their way. 

 He wept.

 Until morning came, he wept.

 Until morning came, the Phoenix shed its tears.

-----

 When eventually Joshua fell into an uneasy sleep, furled up at the very end of his big bed, outside of his nest, with his thumb between his lips and as uneasy as he could be? The dreams he dreamt were blasphemous.

 Him upon his own altar.

 And Clive kneeling for him, worshiping him, as his most devoted. As his beloved brother only ever was...

-----

Elsewhere, far away, in his bed in the second hideaway? Clive came to consciousness as hard as a man starved for sex, groaning and fucking into his fist before he was fully awake. Before he could get anything else done. Thinking of a whore from Northreach. Desperate for her again.

Always waking up with this pleased tingling up his spine, a low flame burning in his gut.

Always giving in to those desires, because to not do so was to go mad.

But this time, he was left feeling strangely cold after his fires of desire had been satisfied.

~>-----------<~

Chapter Text

~>-----------<~

A long night, it had been.

An exhausting night, in truth. Although the duties he performed were so, so very necessary? Joshua could confess that they left him drained more often than not. Weary down to his bones’ ivory was he. His feet felt more like objects he was being forced to drag along behind him than his own limbs, attached to him. A part of him.

Dalimil was still, in that strange way the desert tended to be after dark, by the time Joshua stumbled into its gates. Like an hourglass. Whose golden sands had simply stopped.

The Man of the Rock who kept watch at the gate waved him in without trouble, muttering behind him curses about bluthering drunks getting lost on the sand dunes at night. Joshua dare not correct their assumptions. He kept his hood drawn down over his face, and his rapier - The Burning Thorn - tucked away out of sight.

This was neither the first time he’d had to spend the night in Dalimil’s inn or the first time he was mistaken for a fool drunk stumbling home after a night of drinking.

In some ways he did get drunk - drunk on his own blood he had to choke down doing his duties.

Thank the Phoenix this night’s duty had been relatively simple, in a sense. There were ruins in the sandy dunes of the Velkroy Desert. Ruins dated to be centuries and centuries old. Ruins with murals depicting the Eikons Valisthea’s people worshiped so dearly, much like Phoenix Gate for Rosaria.

Unfortunately, Joshua had found neither any new history to add to the Undying’s records, nor any mentions or even hints at Ultima’s existence.

So it had been a very, very arduous journey through the dunes, that led to him spending the day in a humid, musty underground ruin where sand was constantly threatening to suffocate him in its embrace. Not to mention the critters that had called the dredges home. Joshua had used a bit too much magic clearing them out so he could work.

Hence, him staggering into the inn like a drunk seeking to get drunker long after all other patrons had been politely and not so politely requested to leave.

For a moment, it seemed as if the server girl intended to ask him to leave too, clutching her broom like a weapon and looking as exhausted as he felt.

Joshua silenced her by simply dropping several coins on the table closest to the door, their clinking loud in the continued stillness of Dalimil.

“I need only a room for the remainder of the night, if you’d please.”

Some of the unease shifted from her face to the way she reached out to check his coin was good. Once she did so? She nodded, and stuffed said coin in her apron, before leading him along with a quiet, “This way then, if you will sir.”

The moon and starlight was brilliant; bright even through the slitted windows of the inn. The weaves that made up shutters. Also so pale and so clear a blue in the desert. The lanterns commonplace in Dalimil lit their way when the natural light could not reach them, and the Phoenix was led upstairs. Up to the doors that were their staying rooms.

“Lucky you,” she said softly, offering him the small, brass key to the room she stopped them in front of, “Last one we had available. Your coin will cover tonight’s remainder and tomorrow’s too, if you’ve a mind to stay that long.”

“We shall have to see. Thank you.” Business concluded, he got a polite nod and then she was gone.

So Joshua entered the inn room his coin had bought him for two evenings. A modest thing; most inn rooms were unless you were in a capital city. Did he mind? Not in the least of the least. All the Phoenix’s Dominant cared about was that there was a bed, and a door fitted with something of a lock. A lock he made use of, so that he could finally drop his sand-dusted hood from his face.

Drop the whole cloak, actually, from his shoulders. So it fluttered to the floor.

There was a limp in his step now that he bothered not to hide, heading for that bed he so needed. Propping his rapier on it, Joshua all but collapsed onto the lumpy mattress. Groaning near-silently to himself at the utter relief of simply getting off of his feet for the first time that day.

There were grains of sand in his boots when he hunched over to yank them off.

Lots of grains.

Small mounds of sand formed under them when he tipped them over to shake them out. A source of his discomfort was solved. What fortune that it was such an easy fix. The fact that he’d twisted his ankle evading spitting scorpions? Less so. Joshua sighed, a bit more huffily than he ought, and yanked his scarf from his neck. Shifting back. Back. Back, on the lumpy mattress.

Until his back was pressed to the wall behind it. Giving him something solid to lean against, to let his head roll against, to feel, to feel supported by, even if just for a moment.

Something hard, something solid, something that was unflinching when faced with him as he was. How pitiful. How truly pitiable Joshua had become - for his first thought was I wish it were Clive I were to lean against like this, in full trust.

Full trust his brother bore without comprehending how utter it was.

Without even knowing Joshua lived.

Shameful was another thing he was, wasn’t? His hands had gone for the journal he kept tucked safely away from sand’s erosion in his belt all day long, all night long too…and yet? Once it was spread open in his hands and he had grabbed his charcoal pencil to begin recording his ventures into the Velkroy Desert’s ruins, he felt so abruptly - so - so exasperated.

With a true huff now, Joshua dropped his journal and pencil to the side on the mattress, letting his head fall back to thump the wall.

It would not leave him be. He could not escape it.

Memories of his dear brother.

Memories of other things, they shared.

Throwing himself headlong into workloads and duties had kept him distracted, for some time, but that time was running out now. Joshua would wear himself down, and down, and down until there was blood speckling every single one of his pillows, and now whenever his work was done? All he could think about was how badly he wanted to reunite with Clive.

His First Shield was meant to be his sanctuary, and still he sought that promise of sanctuary. Years and years later. Nearly fourteen years hence of receiving Clive’s vow to him in Rosalith. And still, still, he could never bear to release his brother from the expectations of it. How selfish was he. How craven. How dare he - how dare he long for what they’d shared that night in Northreach whilst Clive was unaware.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Joshua shifted guilty against the wall of sandy stones.

As usual, feeling guilty led to thinking about that which made him most guilty, which led to the younger Rosfield brother aroused because he was such a wretched man.

But.

But, there were the embers of arousal starting to ignite between his legs. It was a soft warmth. It was enough to make him lift and drop his hips, and grab a fistful of his shirt’s fabric, and be frustrated with himself…but it wasn’t enough to satisfy.

It never was.

“I am depraved,” he whispered to the shallow shafts of moonlight that made it through the shutters of this inn’s room, swallowing when the heat of the phoenix naturally fanned those embers hotter, “I have no right. How dare I? Brother, if you knew…if you knew.”

Fingers twitching with the fistful of fabric he’d grabbed, he thought of his brother’s fingers. So often hidden beneath those dark gauntlets of his. So cool to the touch and so edged when fingering him open.

He swallowed, hard, and struggled to find it within his weary self to deny this. This small, small pleasure he had all to himself. The guilt, the shame; it had been easier to bear before he’d unknowingly lured his big brother into having sex with him for the first time. Now every night of self-pleasure was a terrible game of would he be deplorable enough to cave this night or the next? Or the next? Or the next?

An utterly pointless question, because he always caved eventually.

On this night, he caved when he felt a sudden, unexpected tug. In the base of his gut. A very, very familiar sensation that brought him to gasping. To arching in a perfect crescent against the wall behind him. Startled. Because it was late, and so rarely did Clive call on his Blessing of the Phoenix in the dim hours before dawn.

Yes, whenever his brother drew on the blessing he’d bestowed upon him the day he’d become his First Shield, Joshua felt it tug at the Phoenix’s feathers themselves.

Felt the tug in his gut, a faint warmth flooding his chest, and it was enough to drive him over the edge this night.

Too ashamed to even look as he did so, Joshua reached down to unlace his pants. He closed his pale blue eyes instead. He tipped his head back. He refused to fall into the pitfalls of a foolish dialogue with himself over this; his guiltiest pleasure. He was a healthy young man. With needs he saw met himself.

Clive…just so happened to be the solution to those needs, and he used his brother thoroughly.

Lifting his hips, bracing his shoulders against the wall, the blonde young man pulled his pants down the curve of his bottom. Biting at his lip. Already on the verge of moaning when his panties went with them, and his pussy met the lumps of the mattress. The night was warm. The light was dim. The textures of the inn’s bed were something, so Joshua surrendered entirely to this harmless little fantasy of his -

Delving his fingers between his thighs, he touched himself with a breathy sigh of pure, pure contentment that only the thought of Clive could bring him.

And Clive again used the Phoenix’s Blessing as he did so.

And his body flared up hotter. Hotter. Hotter.

…

Unaware that right on the other side of that very wall he was melting against as he touched himself, Clive was stroking his cock too.

That's right. That very night in Dalimil, at that very inn, both Rosfield brothers had bought themselves rooms that shared a wall.

And Clive, to his shame, had called upon the Blessing the Phoenix he bore to warm himself when lust crept into his bed with him. A bed with the same lumpy mattress his brother sat on. He sat on it too. On the other side of the wall, he sat mirroring Joshua and neither was the wiser.

The flames of his little brother; his dearest sanctuary, and he was calling upon the embers of the Phoenix to warm his palm as he stroked himself. Imagining a whore from Northreach kept him company that night. His shame - his shame.

The downy feather of the Phoenix burned almost uncomfortably hot on his chest, he hissed, but still he stroked himself.

Still he used his brother's flames to not feel so utterly alone in a moment of desperation.

And each time he gathered embers in his palm to pleasure himself, Joshua felt it.

If only that lone wall lay not between them, they would be pressed back to back as the flames of fantasy and pleasures fanned. But that was not how they met this night. They met not at all, and yet they were so intertwined in touching themselves. Joshua slid his fingers deeper and deeper into his pussy, yearning. For something bigger. Something thicker.

For his brother’s -

For the heat of it. The way it throbbed. The way it filled him so flawlessly they were as if fit to one another. One not meant to be without the other. That night - that night in Northreach, it may have been Joshua’s first and sole experience but it was unbridled ecstasy driving him to a madness he sought again. He still wanted it. Still. He was so helpless.

So shameless about it, in the way he forgot his shame to plant his heels in the twisted sheets and grind down onto his long fingers. Wishing they were longer.

Long enough to even graze the sweet spot inside of him that Clive had been the only one to kiss with his cock thus far.

He…she…Joshua melted to the almost-there feel of his fingers, ‘Ah - ah - ah - ah-ing,’ in the stillness of the inn’s room.

Rubbing his thumb’s pad against his clit in a ruthless, desperate search for relief, for the height of pleasure. Reaching up with his other hand - he clawed at the wall he braced his arching body against. Sand got under his nails. He struggled to keep his voice low. He grabbed at his own chest, disappointed when he remembered his breasts were bound and a shirt kept them hidden.

Thinking about when they fit so perky and pink in Clive’s hands. Gauntlets. The metal such a contrast to anything Joshua had ever felt touch him there.

That was his dear brother; a contrast.

And everything he’d ever wanted, all at once.

As he ruthlessly touched himself to the thought - the dream - of Clive having him again in senseless desire, he continued to feel the tug of his brother making use of his flames all the while. Driving him further and further into a haze of pleasure that stole away his sense. Left him just a horny younger brother wishing to be used by his big brother.

Clive stroked his cock more too, his knees half-bent and head fallen back, groaning to the feel of the heat he was finally wrapped in once more. Remembering the woman without a face or name or even proper voice that he’d fucked in Northreach. And her incredible, indescribable pussy with a heat he could never seem to match -

Without using literal fire magic. It was driving him senseless.

So much -

It was so much -

More -

He wanted more -

The pleasure was illuminating -

He was burning alive -

The -

The -

Flames.

“Clive!”

“Joshua!”

As both brothers of the Rosfield line peaked, so too did the smothering flames of their pleasures. Joshua arched and cried out the name he was screeching inside like a Phoenix falling and giving its final death wail, the wings of the Phoenix summoned in his heaven to flare up against the wall behind him in a wreath of claim that he had over his First Shield -

And on the opposite side of the sandy stone wall, Clive also arched, also cried out although the name on his lips he hadn’t meant to say in any way, and his gifted wings too were summoned in his heaven of heat to flare up against the wall in a wreath of ownership that was his little brother’s to claim over him.

The two sets of the Phoenix’s wings mirrored each other without flaw or asymmetry.

Brothers, of the same flaming feathers.

Of the same sooty nest. With the same ashes and blood on their hands.

The same desires too, wet on their fingers, as they drifted down from their heights together, apart.

Both with a hand held tight, tight, over their lips. Shaking from exertion. Thighs trembling as they sat still as statues in the shafts of moonlight and the fading glow of their disappearing wings. Joshua held that hand there due to mortification; calling his brother’s name so loudly in a public inn’s room. Shame on him.

Clive, however, held a hand over his lips for another reason. Shock.

And horror.

Because he’d called his baby brother’s name when he spilled into his fist. He’d been so distracted by the heat of that downy feather, of Joshua’s flames, he’d - sweet Phoenix. He’d…he’d -

Disgust coiled low in his gut.

Satisfaction coiled low in Joshua’s gut.

Clive lowered his hand. Letting it shake. Staring at it…then reached for the last bit of Joshua he had left to hold onto when he was cold. The Phoenix down feather, on a cord he kept around his neck at all times. The very same down he’d been warmed by. The very same down he’d called to as he pleased himself - how - how…he was unforgivable. He was a defiler. Oh, Joshua, he was sorry -

All thoughts of that night in Northreach were forgotten, in favor of Clive tucking himself back into his undergarments and crawling off of the bed on unsteady feet.

Heaving a bit. Feeling well and truly sickened by what he’d done as he stood, and staggered for where he’d laid out his dismantled armor for the night. Armor he assembled. With a blade he reached for. Feeling dizzy in his disgusted haze. Clive left the inn room with his sword drawn, lacing up his pants, disappearing out into the dunes of the night. Needing to slash at something to expend this energy before he - before -

That? That had been nothing more than a mistake. He’d called the wrong name. He’d had no name at all to call, and he’d filled in the blank with the name always, always being called out by his soul.

For fourteen years now he’d been begging for a response of some sort. Any sort. And he’d called out for Joshua on reflex. That was all. That was all, and yet he’d defiled his baby brother’s memory doing so.

Joshua, forgive him.

Joshua was falling sideways onto his lumpy mattress for the night, hands back between his thighs to touch more gently this time, softening the afterglow, the burning coals. Moaning into his tunic as he thought more of his beloved brother.

Feeling more of Clive calling on the Phoenix’s flames as his brother fought whatever he came across out on the dunes.

And flying high on it.

Falling into sleep’s embrace, in time. Satisfied as much as he could be without the full feel of what he’d gotten that one magical night in Northreach beneath the moon.

-----

By morning, Clive came back to Dalimil’s inn to gather his belongings and continue his work as the new Cid. Too sickened to eat a breakfast. Too weak-willed to so much as catch a glimpse of the Phoenix down feather he kept around his neck as a reminder of what he was fighting for, what he was forever searching for, praying for - now a reminder of his defilement of his innocent baby brother.

While the one he fought for, the one he sought, the one he prayed for? Lay, sleeping through the morning, on a lumpy mattress upstairs as Clive left the inn. Wearing nothing more than his shirt, and dreaming about the way Clive had called his name in wanton desire that he’d not heard through the wall.

It was a warm day.

The embers refused to die out, as they were fed with every encounter.

~>-----------<~

Chapter Text

~>-----------<~

In ruins, were they. 

In ruins, they would meet again.

-----

It was a ruined place.

An old keep in the Sanbreque hills. Owned by an older family, that had fallen with Sanbreque’s Mothercrystal. A family old enough to carry with its name, history. As most old families did. As the Rosfields did. A family old enough to be marked down by the Undying as ‘of interest’, and so when Joshua happened to be passing through Sanbreque?

The Phoenix’s Dominant made it a point to pay that old keep a visit.

Like preliminary reports had said; the keep was in ruins. It had obviously been ransacked months and months before. Part of the estate was burned. Part of it was crumbling from disrepair. More than part of it was already overgrown due to the stubborn Sanbreque undergrowth. Joshua had to slip silently between trees and bushes to even get onto the keep’s road.

And then he had to slip even more silently into one of the upper windows after climbing up there using loose stones in the outer wall.

Because there was a small encampment of bandits in the overgrown courtyard of the keep.

Lovely.

Did he feel up to dealing with the truants? Not particularly. Enough of his magic had been used of late that Joshua wasn’t at his best, and thought the risk too great of becoming worse off all because he decided to play the hero.

He was there to take a glean at the former family’s library and maybe cellar - or whatever of both that survived the ransackings and burning at least.

The soot smeared on the stones told a story Joshua knew better than most.

Silent as a mouse, he kept his hood up and slipped from abandoned hall to abandoned hall, never heard and never noticed and never making a peep. As ever somewhat enjoying the sneaky side of his work.

It reminded him of playing hide and seek with Clive, when they were children.

He always won.

Sadly, the library had precious few volumes that had survived the smoke and flames of months before, and even fewer that had survived the weather which could now enter the ruined keep through holes in the walls and ceilings.

He found a few books that spoke of the Eikons, of the Mothercrystals, but nothing new.

The cellar held even less for him. It was dark. And cold. And full of cobwebs Joshua wove around carefully, but it did not hold any secrets in its cradle.

In eventual defeat, the Phoenix had to sigh and leave. The cellar. The lower floors. Those halls somewhat less damaged than the rest; thinking about Rosalith. About his home. His own castle, its keep, its halls full of memories that he’d not seen in fourteen years.

Did it too lay in ruin?

Did he and Clive yet have somewhere to return to, one day, together…or no?

If you asked Joshua if he had a wish? A private wish? A secret and selfish wish that would benefit none but himself?

Why, he might just have to say…that he wished he and his brother could return home. To a Rosalith that would still welcome them. To halls that still held the memories of them as boys, running around. Playing. Their laughter echoing as their guards chased them. Clive doing silly things just to make him laugh, and Jill teaching him how to stitch just because he wanted to rebel against Mother’s demands that he never do womanly work, and Father always taking him in-hand happily.

Happy. They were. They had been.

His wish would be to go back to that, someway. Somehow.

Nostalgia. It did Joshua no good, no good at all, when all it did was drag his mind from the duties that really mattered. He shook himself out, and tugged his hood down lower as he made for the same window he’d entered through to leave the ruined keep. He’d have to tell Cyril this family held no secrets of interest to the Undying.

Leaning out of that window, he would’ve started to climb down...

But a branch snapped.

So he went still. A cloaked figure pressing close to the edge of the window, searching for the source of that sound.

Joshua was ready to simply slink back into the depths of the keep to wait out whatever confrontation was yet to come. It would hardly benefit him to get involved if a rival bandit group was coming to start trouble with those already camping in the courtyard.

But even in the afternoon din of light under the shadows of trees, Joshua recognized Torgal’s fur.

Stalking through the bushes along the wall below.

He held his breath. It couldn’t be. Again?

Coincidence, karma, destiny? Whatever in the Eikons it was, Joshua gasped quietly when Clive followed Torgal’s pawsteps. Jill too. But Clive.

He clutched the stones of the wrecked window tight, too tight, and stared down at his brother passing just below. Because Clive’s hood was down. And as he looked around, never noticing he was being watched, Joshua noticed Clive no longer had the brand of a Bearer.

There was a white bandage instead stretching from under his left eye down his neck.

There were speckles of blood, red on the white, like it was still a fresh…surgery?

The Undying had noted that ‘Cid’ had started unbranding the Bearers who came to him years and years ago. Joshua had read the reports on it. They said to watch out for mangled faces, or terrible facial scars in general. They said few survive the procedure. That it was a great risk to undertake it. A risk Cid’s people took because they could operate better without their brands - and what horror it was that they were nothing more than normal people, the same as everyone else, the moment that brand they’d had since young was taken off of their faces.

But the fact that Clive had undergone a surgery that could’ve killed him and Joshua hadn’t an inkling before now -

It hit him so hard in the chest, he wheezed. He reached for his heart and he clutched the fabric over it, staring down at Clive as he motioned for Jill and Torgal to go ahead, still looking around. Alert. Wary.

Hurt.

Warmth stirred in Joshua’s chest, like prodded coals. The desire to heal. To mend. To nurture.

To undo what had been done to his First Shield.

But he could not act on that desire. Not now. All the younger Rosfield sibling could do was watch. Stare, really. At every detail of his brother down there in the ruins. Absorbing it all like he’d rather go blind should he miss a thing. The way his hair had gotten longer since that night in Northreach. The way his stubble was thicker. The way his nose looked like it’d been broken, then healed, then rebroken maybe since then too. The way his armor fit even more tightly around his chest and legs like he’d gained muscle in these last months.

Yearning coiled itself around Joshua’s loins, squeezed, and he in turn squeezed the stones tight that he clung to.

Too tightly.

His gasp was silent, a breath he couldn’t catch, when those loose stones crumbled beneath his hand and suddenly several were falling.

Clattering to the ground far below, where Clive was.

By the time the older brother had looked up, had gotten his hand on his blade and prepared for an attack, the windowsill was empty. It was wrecked. Like something had been launched into the wall and half-caved it in, but there was nobody there who could’ve sent those rocks cascading down from Clive’s point of view.

And yet, his heart sang to him to search anyways.

Sang like birdsong. Like phoenixsong.

"Josh...ua?"

Joshua lay on the floor in the debris and pebbles and ruin, breathless as he realized Clive had nearly seen him. In broad daylight. Clive was there. Clive had called his name. Clive could still find him if he stayed where he was.

Clive could find him if he just stayed where he was?

Joshua smothered the childish part of himself that begged he stay put. Stay laying there. Wait for his big brother to come. Wait to be taken and claimed again. He could have his wings around Clive once more, if only he waited.

Instead, the brother with golden hair rose and hurried away from the window. Intending to go. Intending to hole up somewhere in the keep until Clive had finished whatever business had brought him to the middle of nowhere in Sanbreque’s wildlife. It was all that he could do. It was all that he could think of doing -

Until the sound of flames sent swirling by winds reached his ears.

And the loud footsteps of somebody running, and more flames caught up by the winds, and more running, and -

Clive was coming.

Those flames could never be mistaken for another’s.

So Joshua hadn’t the time to flee or hide.

He had only the time to duck around the corner of that hall, and press himself against the crumbling wall there, and hold his breath.

As there was the sound of metal braces for boots scraping against stone as Clive came to a skidding halt.

In the hall he’d just been standing in.

Right. There.

Just right there, around the corner.

Clive had heard him. Had seen the stones he felled. Had he sensed that the Phoenix he’d sworn his oaths to was nearby? Was that why he’d been so sure it was Joshua? Why he'd called his name? Had he let up too much on the bond they shared as a Dominant and one of his Sworn?

A few steps apart. They were only a few steps apart. One, two, three, maybe four or five. Joshua could hear Clive’s boots as they scuffed the floor, turning around. And around. And around. Searching for the eyes that had been on him. Searching for the Phoenix, whose heart this devoted brother could never mistake for another.

“Joshua?” Clive called for him, so, so hopeful.

And Joshua slowly clasped a hand over his own mouth, so he would not call back like this heart of the Phoenix beg he do.

“Joshua?!” Clive called for him more loudly, and the begging became louder too.

The hope was dying slowly in his brother’s voice. A slow, painful death that stabbed the younger Rosfield sibling in his gut and left him to bleed out there. Hand over his mouth. Trembling from the force of the knowledge that his brother was right there. Right there. Just turn the corner, all he had to do was turn the corner, that was all, and he could be in Clive’s arms again.

Such a small thing.

Such a bad thing.

Such a temptation.

He was shaking with it.

If only…if only he could. If only he wasn’t himself, if only he wasn’t the Phoenix, if only Clive wasn’t Ifrit, if only Clive wasn’t Cid even. If only they were just themselves. If only they were just boys, again, brothers proud of Rosaria and eager to grow up together. To lead together. If only they weren’t ruins, like the ruins they now stood in. Ruins that Joshua hid in for the sake of something utterly ridiculous like duty.

If only they were just themselves. Then…Joshua would run to Clive.

Then, Joshua would give up everything for his dear brother. His flames, his health, the whole of Valisthea.

All of that was wrapped up in his bloody heart, which he would hand to Clive with a smile if only he could step around the damned corner.

Silence. Loud in the keep's ruins, in that ruined hall, and it followed those calls that had no answer. And Joshua shut his eyes tight. Hand still just as tightly clasped over his mouth. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting for anything at all to happen. Heartbeat louder than a drum in his ears. But still, that drumming beat was never going to be louder than the sound of Clive’s boots sliding through pebbles and debris.

A step. Just a step.

A step closer.

Towards the corner.

And another step. And another. And another. Accompanied by the faint whispers of armor off of armor, a cloak rustling. A soft breath slightly louder than the last, a rush of final hope -

And Joshua was so close. So close to surrendering. So close to giving in like a frail, foolish Phoenix. So close to turning that corner to meet his beloved brother again face to face for the first time in fourteen years. Phoenix - oh sweet Phoenix - he wanted that. He wanted that more than anything in the world. He wanted to hold, to be held, to fall apart, to be safe, to be the protector, to be the shield of his shield where it would be safe for them both to finally weep -

He wanted to be with Clive again. Like when they were children. He wanted -

The blonde brother was about to -

He lowered his hand, and he shifted towards the crumbling stones of that one, single corner, and he inhaled. To speak.

“Clive!”

Jill called loudly for Clive from somewhere down in the overgrown courtyard, and Joshua was soundly stopped right there, in his tracks, and reminded of who he was. Where he was. What madness he’d been about to commit in the name of his own selfish desires.

He clasped his hand back over his mouth in a defeat that stung his eyes.

And less than five strides from Joshua, his older brother shook himself out. Turned away.

Silence, again. For a long, long moment. Where Joshua simply stood there. Leaning heavily against the wall. Staring down at the toes of his boots so steadfastly that they started to blur. His eyes started to burn a little. Right there. His heart, his love, was right there. Around the corner. And again he was denying them both in the name of Valisthea. He was beginning to hate himself a little bit.

Then, Clive let out a laugh that sounded so self-deprecating it was like a thorn embedded in Joshua’s heart.

“Maybe I truly am going mad.”

He really, really, really did hate himself; making his sweet brother say such a thing. Just standing there in the silent dimness of the corridor as Clive answered Jill’s call.

As Clive walked away from him.

By the Eikons, he’d never intended to cause Clive to think he was going mad. His brother was sound of mind! But of course, if he kept believing that Joshua was alive after he himself had witnessed his ‘death’, if nobody else at all spoke that same truth, if he was faced with nothing more than feelings and moments he witnessed alone, why wouldn’t Clive begin to doubt his sanity?

Ifrit’s Dominant was already gone by the time Joshua summoned the strength to step around that one, single corner without crumbling like its stones already were.

Clive was long gone.

There was the sound of some clash taking place down in the courtyard’s overgrowth below. Probably those pesky bandits Joshua had skirted around to sneak in. The song of blade meeting blade, of Torgal’s snarls, of whistling flames. Clive’s flames. Flames Joshua had gifted him, as he felt his brother tug on the Blessing of the Phoenix, warm and intimately held inside of his chest.

When he coughed, he caught most of the blood in his glove, and drooped against the wall to wait out this clash.

Debating truly, truly, if he was doing the right thing.

-----

“That cloak is hardly more than scraps now, Clive. Just leave it,” Jill encouraged him with a laugh, running her hand through Torgal’s fur as the two of them bounded on ahead of Clive already, the fighting at an end and the day growing too late to still be out and about, “I know Otto gave you a brand new one from the last supply run! Stop being so stingy and accept something new, silly.”

Grunting, Clive stared at the holes torn in his cloak. It was old. Definitely. And it was really just something he’d picked up from a random market stall one day. But it was his. And being a Bearer with no belongings had really taught him to treasure when he was allowed to have something.

Maybe it wasn’t in the best of states, but it still did its job…so could he really just toss it?

“Come on, Clive!” Jill called for him to follow with another laugh and a wave, Torgal barked, and Clive looked a final time over his shoulder.

At the ruins that had held another ghost of his brother.

Another, atop all of the others. He sighed. He rested a hand on the necklace beneath his shirt. The downy feather that was his hope and his manacle.

He untied his cloak, carefully folded it, and set it on the ground.

Then he went too. Praying that the next time…it wouldn’t be a ghost.

-----

As he was walking away, the toe of his boot nudged something.

Glancing down, Joshua’s eyes widened to find a cloak folded up there on the ground.

Not just any cloak. Clive’s cloak. He’d know. Because just like when they were kids, there was the Rosfield family's sigil stitched inside of the collar. It had been a habit Clive picked up from the other Shields of Rosaria. The cloak was ratty and tattered, with burnt edges and cuts and it was quite frankly obvious why it’d been left behind.

But Joshua still knelt.

And he still picked up that ruined cloak with reverent hands.

And he still pressed his nose into the collar to kiss that little embroidered sigil of their family’s.

If the Phoenix carried that cloak in his own pack all the way back to Tabor, who else’s business was that? And if he spirited it away to his bedroom, why did it matter? And if he pulled it free in the night, to wrap around a pillow of his, to snuggle into and bury his face in and breathe in the fading musk of his brother - ash and embers and chocobo greens?

Was there truly any harm in that?

“I am so sorry, Clive,” Joshua whispered into the fabric that had held his big brother when he could not, smearing himself in its soot, and closing his eyes as he pretended it truly was his darling Shield he was speaking to, “but we cannot meet. Not yet. There is still too much left to be done. Have patience, Brother. Please.”

A ruined cloak became one of his prized possessions.

And Joshua embroidered a sigil into the hem of his own scarf in kind, soon enough.

Giving him something to press his lips to when he was missing his brother.

-----

An addendum. The nest of the Phoenix; a precious thing. A treasure, of sorts. To the Undying it was something great and mystical. Something out of scriptures. There, where the Phoenix rested its wings, there where it slumbered, and there where it festered its flames. There. Just there. There, they guarded it. And there, they were not permitted to go.

Such a precious thing. A treasure. Such an untouchable refuge. Always destined to burn up when each Dominant of the Phoenix breathed their last, so nothing was ever scavenged by the Undying.

To the Phoenix, however, the Dominant - to Joshua? 

His nest was a safe space. A hope chest. A cradle. It was bloodied and it was raw and it was so very dear to him because he’d added to it for years with the hope of showing it to Clive one day. It was a part of the bed called his own in Tabor, but it was also the whole part that mattered of that bed. Not for its silk sheets or blankets or its feather-down pillows - 

For there was a cloak with an embroidered collar flattened into its floor, that he could press his face into when he was missing his brother beloved. 

For there were other clothes woven into the twistings of fabric. None Clive’s, but bought to fit his brother regardless in a lie that made Joshua feel closer to his First Shield. Shards of stained glass the same blue as his brother's eyes. Pebbles from a riverbed a shiny black like his brother's hair. A ring or a necklace or a specific scrap of fabric that resembled something he'd seen his Shield wear once upon a time.

It had cotton balls that smelled of the scents his father used to dab on his wrists, and dried petals from wildflowers that grew only in Rosaria’s fields, and a few gowns he’d seen and thought Jill might’ve loved to twirl around in if they were still children.

It was Rosaria, and it was Rosalith.

And it was family, and it was childhood.

And it was what remained when all of those other things had been burned to soot and ashes. 

Joshua was what remained.

In his nest of lies and memories, just because it made him feel less like a failure of a Rosfield and of a Dominant. 

And there was a tattered cloak he could press his face into, nuzzling, warbling, wishing Clive was there to whistle back at him like when they were young. 

That was all that he had, really.

All that he had was his nest of failures.

-----

It was the strangest of strange things, but some mornings? Clive Rosfield awoke feeling as if his sheets had twisted around him in a taunting reminder of - of Joshua. Of his baby brother, and the small nest his baby brother had had in his bedchambers in Rosalith. A nest that was meant to grow and mature as he did, that had remained ever the same size meant for a child, that Clive used to struggle to fit into and he remembered...remembered Joshua huffing when he realized that. Remembered his sweet baby brother so determined to expand his nest before he needed to so they could nest together in it.

Clive had spent so many years forcing himself not to think about Joshua, so as not to fall apart, that just the reminder of such times? 

Sent him spiraling. Fists gripping at his sheets, clenching his eyes tight, trying not to cry as he pleaded on the Phoenix's mercy to allow him to pretend for a while longer that he was still worthy of being invited into Joshua's nest and he'd just overslept. That was all. They'd have to wake eventually, but for now...what harm was this fantasy?

What harm was a nest full of memories, built from memory? 

Clive always, always, unfortunately, had to wake up eventually. A fantasy that had to end.

But he'd do so with his eyes still clenched tight, trying to imagine what Joshua's nest might've looked like if he were allowed to grow up in those bedchambers of their childhood. Hand clutching the lone feather that hung around his neck. Wanting nothing more than to be welcomed back into it. One day. Perhaps, maybe, if he were blessed, one day.

And if the failure of a First Shield sometimes, secretly, left behind little belongings and trinkets and clothes he'd outgrown so he could pretend he'd given them to his baby brother instead throughout the years? Then what harm was it really?

~>-----------<~

Chapter Text

~>-----------<~

This one of its, has two forms.

There being two doesn't make either any less than the other.

It had not been its Dominant's choice. It had been a choice taken from its Dominant from their very first breath. An insecure woman, a history of being pushed aside for a reason she found uncontrollable - twas not an excuse. Twas a reason, and not a right one. She had looked at her babe, in their birthbed, bloody in her arms, and she had decided she knew best. So she called the babe her son. And so she told its father. And so she told their people.

And so she had the midwife meet a terrible fate, and so her handmaidens disappeared one by one, and so the secret was kept. Carefully. Kept better, with every vial of poison she poured down the babe's throat as it grew. Stilting it. Clipping its feathers before they'd come in. The Phoenix had watched. The Phoenix had laid its claim early, thinking it would get the mother to stop.

She had not stopped. Its claiming had merely encouraged her efforts.

So the Phoenix sought to mend its Dominant.

It gave this one of its, two forms...

-----

For many reasons, had Joshua Rosfield gone to Phoenix Gate. And many times, at that. For duty, for research, for remembering. Impassively and impassionately. In love, in grief, in memoriam. With tears with silence with screams he couldn't let out. Phoenix Gate was a part of Rosaria's history. A significant part. For the Phoenix was significant.

To Rosaria, it was a historical site razed during that night of terrible, terrible flames.

That night that Rosaria lost itself. Lost itself, its heirs, its freedom and pride and honor and Phoenix.

To Joshua, Phoenix Gate was where he'd died. And then risen from the ashes of his own flames. His brother's ardent flames. Though he hadn't known it was Clive then, even then, even so his brother's passions had reached him with his heartbroken screams.

As the Phoenix was brutally murdered by Ifrit.

To Joshua, Phoenix Gate was his grave. The soul scorched. A mass burial, a pyre that claimed most of the countryside. Including his father. Including the boy he once was. His mother's son. Including Clive and the fate he failed to save his dear big brother from. Phoenix Gate was their history.

Phoenix Gate was where the younger Rosfield brother most often felt the Phoenix's presence. They were as one. And yet, somewhere deep within his own ashes, his darling Phoenix was also its own entity. A creature of flaming feathers all its own. Who sometimes sang its vessel to sleep with its chirps and phoenixsong.

Phoenix Gate was also where Joshua had one day, on his twentieth birthday, accepted who he was.

Who he had been.

Who he could've been, and who he will be.

Phoenix did not often offer its vessels boons. Its existence was boon enough, typically. Its grace, its heat, its healing. But its vessel this generation of a generation was…more…damaged than many of its past incarnations. Its vessel longed for another's fire even as they claimed the Phoenix's were enough aloud.

Their heart, though. May be silent for many but its screaming, its singing, was oftentimes all the Eikon was capable of hearing whenever Ifrit's lingered near. Closeby. Flame called to flame and together they were fanned. And it was endearingly frustrating.

Mortals, and their silly indecision.

So Phoenix offered its vessel a boon, one day. When they resided in one of its old, burned nests.

“Phoenix?” Joshua asked, paused, reached up to fist the fabric covering his chest and his bindings as he felt a tug. Odd. Like his soul had just been prodded by a flaming stick, “What is it?”

Phoenix rarely let itself be known in such a way. Was far more comfortable to leave Joshua's body to himself. Herself. Themself. The ancient stonework of Phoenix Gate shimmered. The glow of his and his ancestors' flames running through the place’s foundations. Its veins. And Joshua felt the tug again.

And again.

And again.

Very odd. Long had Joshua learned what it felt like when his dear brother was tugging at his soul with his actions. Reaching for the Phoenix's Blessing. This wasn’t that. This was the Phoenix. And he was embedded deep in his own history, in Phoenix Gate, surveying ancient script on walls and their murals and exploring atriums of flame. He stood in the centerlude. A grand, circular room of unknown origin. Waiting.

Hand fisted into his shirt as his Eikon chirruped in his ear.

<You are unsure of yourself.>

“Hm? I know my role, Phoenix. I will fulfill it.”

<It is not your role you are unsure of, but your body.>

“Ah,” a warmth brought by embarrassment rushed up to Joshua’s cheeks, and he brushed aside the memories of the night before. A bedroll and a campfire and the way he arched and moaned his brother’s name, thinking about how Clive might think him a brother and yet also a woman if only they'd the chance -

<Your body. It is mundane. It is redundant. It is yours to design and raise from your ashes.>

Coals were poked and prodded in his soul, set aflame again, and Joshua felt power that was purely the Phoenix’s flow through him as the veins of Phoenix Gate glowed brighter beneath his boots.

<Do you desire to see what you might have been, unaltered?>

A sphere of flame. Another and another. They started as sparks floating in the space surrounding Joshua, then gained brothers and sisters and combined into swirling hearts of fire. Circling his body. Casting dancing shadows across his clothes as he stood there. Surprised by this turn of events.

Was the Phoenix offering him…a chance to see himself, as a woman? The woman he might’ve been, had his mother not interfered for the sake of her own horrid pride?

Unaltered.

Him?

Or…her?

Another sphere of flame. And another. And he followed their trails of embers as they slowly circled him. Granting him ample time to think about this offer. Their oranges blended with scarlets, with a teal that matched his own wings' feathers. And he stared at the way the air distorted from their heat.

Feeling nothing besides comfortable so close to the Phoenix’s gifted flames.

Who would he be, if he hadn’t spent his childhood being shunned and secreted away and poisoned by so many concoctions, to prevent his hormones from maturing him into a woman? If his mother hadn’t had her shame, her greed, her pride that she held dearer than her own babes.

Who would this Rosfield child be?

“Please.”

In the end, he found he wanted to know.

<As you please.>

In the end, the Phoenix was fond of this vessel, so it agreed to their request.

The spheres stopped in their circling. Floated there, for a moment. A breath that Joshua inhaled to taste the sparks scalding on his tongue, the heartbeat that got stuck in his ribcage. And then their flames draped over him.

And it was so hot, he felt what it was like to be burnt for once.

It didn’t hurt. It was pure heaven.

The embers took him. Like a thousand fireflies landing on his skin. He closed his eyes to the tingling feeling of the burning, he - she - ah.

A thousand fireflies fell away from him, fading as embers do when not tended to, and Joshua opened his eyes.

Her eyes. Still as blue as a sky above the seas of Rosaria.

Oh, sweet Phoenix. Those eyes fluttered. She stood still where she had been a moment ago. Sparks and embers dancing against her skin. Skin glowing from a source of flame far, far more brilliant than them.

The Phoenix. Right there.

The Eikon was there. Her Eikon. Before her. A great, graceful bird filling up the whole of that grand room of Phoenix Gate. Staring down at its vessel with fiery eyes. Head tilted curiously. Feathers aflame and licking the stone and ancient veins of the just as ancient structure.

And Joshua was so small, so fragile by comparison, staring up at the Phoenix.

And yet, she was -

Lowering her eyes, she found herself. Herself. Undressed. Bare and graced by only flames on her skin. And she was speechless. Startled by just how…similar she was to herself. Himself? To her body of before. Nothing in her color, her height nor her shape had really changed. Her breasts unbound. Her scars the same.

She shifted. Hair brushed the back of her thighs. So she reached back and found herself astounded by the sheer length of golden hair that rippled in the flamelight. It was so soft, so silky when she tugged it around her shoulder to stare at it.

Joshua ran a hand down the front of his body, learning a few new curves he hadn’t had before and slightly softer features here or there.

But in the end, her hand settled over her stomach.

She stared for a second.

“Oh,” she whispered, a punched-out breath.

 A breath she’d never catch again as her eyes pinched with emotion.

“It doesn’t hurt.”

Joshua wasn't used to that. Living without the aching scars of his mother's poisons.

The Phoenix watched, ever-silent. Its vessel exploring its body with tentative touches. Turning around. And around. Followed by the embers that allowed this.

<Is this form more appealing to you?>

Blue-blue eyes slowly made their way up to the Phoenix. Stared. They held each other’s gazes for a moment.

And with a sigh, Joshua dropped his explorative hands to his sides. Neither sad nor disappointed. Just…satisfied. Yes. Satisfied.

“No. No, it is not, Phoenix.”

Was there some wrongful measure to his ‘natural’ form? No. Not at all. It was as right as it could be. It felt so ingrained in him. A what-if that should’ve been, would’ve been, had the woman who had birthed him accepted him as he was. Accepted that she could have a daughter who was not worthless.

Nor cursed to a life as miserable as she saw hers to be.

It was just that, in the end, it changed nothing, did it? Joshua was still himself.

Whatever body he was in, he was still Clive's brother.

Before, the youngest Rosfield had had plenty of times where he felt he was a woman. And right now? Even in a more natural and unaltered version of his womanly self, he felt he was a man at the moment. Sometimes he was both and sometimes he was neither. But it felt the same as he did now. So it changed nothing. He was himself, whatever form he took.

Joshua Rosfield.

“I am who I am,” he always had been. A few curves, a softer voice, and longer hair? Wouldn’t change that, “I have always been this. And my mother’s actions change nothing of that for me. Maybe I wouldn’t have taken to a male identity in another life like that, where she did not force me to fulfill her fantasies of having a son she could be proud of…but it is not a scourge in this life.”

It was not wrong. Not to him.

It was simply who he was, as he was.

<Very well.>

And the Phoenix, the Eikon, was not a creature of pettiness nor probing. Joshua had always been grateful for such a character. Eikons-forbid he be the vessel of one who did not so easily go along his lusting for his own big brother.

Flaming fireflies started landing on Joshua’s undressed form, and so he closed his eyes.

When he opened them, his body was as it had been before.

The body Joshua had called his own for twenty years. His body. Forged by his mother’s poisons and equally poisonous love. He was born a girl. He was denied that due to Annabella’s pride. He was a she, a him, a they. Joshua Rosfield was whatever he wanted to be, in a body that bore his scars and his stories and his brother’s love like a badge of honor.

Joshua was what he preferred to be.

He, she, they - whatever the Phoenix’s vessel wished to be in the moment. And he wasn’t required to be anything else.

<Should you change your mind, the change is yours as well.>

“Thank you, Phoenix,” he said, genuinely. Hands raising in thanks to the Eikon that had healed him and his damaged body time and time and time and time and time and time again. The Phoenix responded. Great and towering and dwarfing Joshua in every way - the flaming bird that took up so much of the grand space they were in bowed down.

Down, far enough for its beak to tap the stone of the ground.

Far enough for Joshua to reach out and touch that beak, solid as bone. Place his hands on it and lean in and press his cheek to its soft, thrumming heat.

Exhaling embers and ered relief.

“You have given me what I never had as a child.”

He sighed.

“A choice.”

~>----------<~

Chapter Text

~>-------------<~

In the year or so since Drake’s Head had been destroyed by his brother, Oriflamme had lost a lot of its shining luster. The capital of an empire once. The heart of dragoons and faith in Bahamut’s Dominant. It was now far more run-down. Ragged. Worn at the edges and fraying. It had more districts that were all but slums, and more unsavory types walking its streets after its more influential citizens had fled to find themselves roosts closer to other Mothercrystals.

Joshua was always saddened to see the change, but in his heart of hearts, of flame, he knew it necessary.

The world needed to learn to live without the magic of the Mothercrystals.

They needed a world with no gods, where they all stood on the same footing, to live and to thrive.

And to no longer hold one person’s life as so great over another’s, all because of a brand on their face in a land where the soil itself was turning to ashes.

He turned his head away from yet another dispute. Tugged his hood down further to shadow his face. Voices grew angry and loud as whatever deal those folks had been negotiating fell through and hands went for weapons. Trade was practically robbery ever since Oriflamme lost access to its best merchants and suppliers. Tensions were thick enough to feel stifling while the Phoenix moved like a shadow through the crowds, cast in shades of gold and violet.

Twilight was upon Oriflamme, and he was meant to meet Jote at the inn sooner rather than later.

There was no good news for him to bring to her, sadly. The search of the Undying’s was a long and rarely worthwhile one. Sanbreque may have libraries as old as the empire itself, but in Oriflamme many of those libraries had lost their best volumes to looters and to revolts since the Mothercrystal was destroyed.

Had any of them carried knowledge of Ultima or Ifrit, they would never know.

Another sidestreet, another dispute, a knife being drawn, a throat being slit and folks running away to the song of horrified gasps and scared cries - that was simply what Oriflamme was nowadays.

Joshua grabbed a small child who bumped into his legs, crying out for his mother, and carried him to the woman likewise calling back.

They ran. Together. And he faded again into twilit shadows.

Ah, in truth. Probably the only reason that mother hadn’t drawn her own hip dagger on the stranger holding her child was that he…she seemed less threatening than a man doing so. Mhm. Joshua had found that sneaking through the fallen capital's estates was far, far easier when he took on a less shady form. A form that fit better. Even if, at the moment, he felt he was a man.

The Phoenix had crafted him a body born of what he might’ve been, so that he could do his duty this day.

When the Eikon had offered him such a boon, years ago, at Phoenix Gate? Joshua highly doubted it had predicted the boon being used for spy operations and infiltration. Sneaking around - sometimes a woman's form was far more useful than a man's. Sometimes, like today, Joshua blended better as an invisible maid and servant than he would as a cloaked stranger. And even if he had a female body regardless, his unaltered form was far more natural. And thus? Far more invisible.

Especially when he dressed in simple dresses and a simple cloak.

The Phoenix’s Dominant disappeared entirely into the background then.

So he made his way through Oriflamme with ease, unbothered and invisible, cloaked in the simpleness of just being a commoner, a woman, doing as she does.

There were shouts. There was the sound of items and maybe a man's face or two hitting the cobbled stones of the streets. Blue-blue eyes shifted to find the source and did. Another disagreement, it seemed.

A stalwart one too.

One had to work hard to get that many goons angry beyond reason. They seemed to take up the whole of the street's market. Wearing bits and pieces of armor, weapons rusty, teeth in terrible condition - some drunk enough to be slurring their words despite it not even being dark yet and ah. Joshua thought. ‘Bandits in the capital, is it?’

Such crowds had gotten bolder ever since a majority of the empire’s guardsmen had abandoned Oriflamme like their lords had. But robbing a market like this? Unless they were there to sell stolen goods. Far more likely.

Joshua was fully prepared to tug his hood down and disappear again, wanting no part in a bandit dispute. He was.

He would’ve.

Had he not then heard a very, very, very achingly familiar voice speak out.

“I said let him go. Or shall I make you?”

Clive’s voice.

He’d be damned to not recognize the voice he dreamt of night after night after night, filled with a longing so bright it was a star in his mind. The star of his fantasies. His big brother. Who was here. In Oriflamme. Who was there. Standing before a rather stupid number of bandits with his hands on his hips and looking positively handsome and foolish at the same time. Glaring at a bandit who had his fist around the collar of -

Ah. That was the man who’d been there the morning after in Northreach. Gav, was it? A close ally of 'Cid'. He looked quite embarrassed, eyes flicking between Clive and the bandit shaking him by the collar, chuckling a nervous and high-pitched thing.

As if Joshua could leave now.

“'Make us'? Hear that men? Pretty thing with bedroom eyes wants to make us?” Bandit baddy number one sneered, and. Ah.

Joshua was quite mad quite suddenly. They were leering at his dear brother.

There was itching along his spine where his wings wished to be freed. To burn those bastards to crispy, sooty cocoons for such looks. Such thoughts that were clearly behind their beady, black eyes. His heart was always aflame but now those flames flared for furious reasons, and Joshua had to suck in a sharp breath to not reveal himself right then and there.

This was no place to let Clive find out about him.

But he also wasn’t about to let a single one of those bastards get even into sword's-reach of his First Shield. As he was protected, he yearned to protect.

And as he loved, he would burn alive those who insulted his love.

His lovely brother.

Joshua silently stepped twice, thrice to the side. Glaring hard at the pyramid of barrels that ended up in front of him as he heard weapons hiss with rusted metal being drawn from loops and sheaths. He heard Clive grunt. Felt the beginnings of him reaching for the Phoenix’s Blessing warm and tugging in his chest.

And then he slammed his shoulder into the pyramid of barrels with a grunt of his own.

The frayed ropes keeping them in place snapped. A quick and simple and efficient solution.

Not nearly as satisfying and burning them all alive to hear their screams, but it would do.

And there was a shout as more than twenty barrels began to roll and rumble and bounce towards the dispute just down the street. Joshua was still scowling and still furious, and kicked a few more of the barrels down the street to work through it. Satisfaction pulsing through him instead when he saw Clive deftly step to the side.

Saw several of the bandits get thwacked rather hard by their barrel opponents.

And saw Clive’s friend, Gav, break free of the fist gripping his collar to sprint down a random street to flee. Making a motion back to Clive that must’ve been some sort of sign because his brother nodded as if it meant something to him.

The younger Rosfield brother was feeling rather proud of his interference.

And then a rough hand grabbed his wrist - yanking him around to face a rather rowdy and tall brute with just as bad of teeth and a drunken glaze to his eyes.

“Proud of ya self, ya little whore?” Spittle flew from how hard he spat that question, and panic flared up inside of Joshua then. Not because he couldn’t burn the man alive should he wish to, no, he could, but because doing so, when Clive was - ?

The meaty fingers of the brute dug into his wrist so hard his bones creaked, and he let out a short cry reflexively.

“Ya - “

Squelch.

That bruising grip fell from Joshua's wrist, leaving him blinking at the sudden freedom and the sudden red splattering across the man's jaw. Chin. The red spilling from his throat, as his knees crumpled and he fell like a weighted sack of rocks would to the bottom of some river.

A figure stood behind the fallen man, faced twisted in disgust and righteous anger. And concern.

Clive’s figure. Clive's face.

Clive, who had just saved Joshua by slitting the brute’s throat with his blade.

“Come on.”

Clive’s grip was so much gentler around his wrist, when he took it to the tune of drunken roars and staggering footsteps behind them. Bandits rushing after them, screaming obscenities and knocking over everything and everyone in their paths, and Joshua was so startled he could do nothing except follow his brother. His brother who was touching him again. His brother who was trying to protect him.

Joshua followed his beloved brother. He always would.

Running, gasping, stumbling through a street or two still chased and still at risk.

“Dammit - !“ He heard Clive hiss beneath his breath as they ran, but he never let go of Joshua, even if he was probably slowing them down.

The blonde was considering just pulling free and letting his brother run on without him when they shifted directions so suddenly he was left lost.

He was yanked into a door. And that door was shut.

And suddenly they were inside some random building in Oriflamme together. Catching their breaths.

Leaning more heavily on Clive than maybe he ought or need to, Joshua savored the moment before he straightened up and took in their surroundings properly.

Ah. Ah. Scratch those thoughts of earlier, it wasn’t a random building whatsoever. Clive had yanked them both into a brothel. Given away by the indecent murals on the walls, by the men and women lazing about on cushions in various states of undress, and the very energetic and encouraging moans coming from upstairs behind curtained doorways. Sweet Phoenix.

Sweet, sweet Phoenix.

Eyes glanced at them. Then glanced away. Likely thinking them a pair that were simply too excited to wait - ah. Joshua…really wanted to curl up into a ball and laugh somewhat hysterically. Why was it that here was another sexual coincidence between him and his big brother?

That night in Northreach had been coincidental enough. What was this? Why was this - ?

Shouted obscenities out on the street were muffled with them indoors, but they were still there, and Joshua broke out of his frozen state.

Grabbed his brother’s hand, who was pressed close to the door as if to listen, and yanked him deeper into the establishment of undressed, excited people. There was a more elderly woman at what might be considered the entrance desk who raised an eyebrow at him - her - and Joshua blindly grabbed coins from his coinpurse that clattered across the desk as he dragged Clive up a set of stairs.

His brother was sputtering a bit, but not resisting.

So he dragged him into the first set of rooms that a nearby worker waved to. The curtains settling back into place over the doorway a moment later.

Unfortunately it wasn’t a very secure room. None of the brothel’s were, he’d imagine. It was a brothel. There was a balcony open to the streetside below, and a love-making seat, and ornate tapestries pinned to most of the walls. All beaded and beautifully bright, with pots full of various flowers collected in each corner of the room.

All meant to illicit one emotion from those in the room.

Passion.

“I am flattered,” and Clive had started speaking up, stuttering, no doubt a blush on his cheeks and sweet Phoenix his brother was adorable, “truly, miss, but I am not - “

Joshua faced him, still a bit breathless, and drank in the sight of Clive before him as if he were in Dhalmekia’s deserts rather than Sanbreque’s forestlands. Clive was his oasis. And he was right in front of him. And he’d…recovered, since he’d last caught a glimpse of him out in a random, ruined keep weeks ago. There was no longer a bandage covering his cheek. Just a rather fresh-looking scar that took the place of his former brand as a Bearer. That freed him.

That Joshua sort of wanted to kiss softly.

He looked well.

And rather flushed.

And slightly confused as he stared at Joshua in return, brows furrowing. Clive, Clive, Clive.

“Sorry…but have we met before, miss?” Clive asked him with a cocked head and cocked hip and looking so sweet and so confused and that question? That question sparked panic in Joshua like nothing else could've in that moment. Alone. In a brothel with his brother in the form of a woman. So many reasons, for so many reasons.

Heart a throbbing pulsing in his throat, Joshua stuttered out the very first thing that came to mind for why his brother might know him but not know him.

"Northreach." If he was going to lie, he might as well keep all of his lies in one basket to sift through later - why did he think there was going to be a later - and the way Clive's expression shifted rapidly into this startled but also awed sort of look a second later baffled him and he was damned for this, "We - you may not remember me, sir, but a couple of months ago, in Northreach - "

He needed to remember he was a whore in Clive's eyes, like he'd been that night, and he needed to keep to that to cling to whatever relationship they could possibly have one day, when they did meet again. As themselves. And -

"You were one of Madame Isabelle's girls," the man who was to be his Shield, his first, his everything interjected into his thoughts, sounding...happy? As if...he remembered that lonely night that ended with the two of them tangled up in the chocobo pasture? Clive remembered a random whore he'd shared a single night? Clive remembered that night? "What are you doing in Oriflamme, miss? The city is dangerous these days."

He remembered?

"How is your wrist?" So much concern in his brother's eyes, "I am sorry for grabbing it so roughly earlier. The situation wasn't the best. Do you need an ointment for it?"

Joshua could've answered more, lied more, would've.

But then?

The brothel’s door slammed open and shut. And open again. And shut again. It was muffled through the floor, but there. Noise like multiple people were stumbling in, snarling and shouting.

They’d been followed.

It was a racket, and that racket from downstairs just grew louder, and suddenly there was the sound of those unsavory folks stumbling about.

Still, those bandit brutes were searching for them. Were they going room to room now? Dragging out anybody who wasn’t in the middle of, ah, business of the brothel’s sort? Wordlessly Joshua scolded himself for not bringing his blade and leaving it at the inn with Jote. Starting to back away from the door - backing straight into Clive’s arms.

Clive, who turned them to place himself between Joshua and the door.

“Stay back. I can handle them,” he said gruffly, an arm held protectively in front of the young woman - man - he didn’t realize he’d sworn oaths to.

And even if Joshua knew his brother to be a very, very skilled soldier?

He couldn’t forgive the idea of his brother being hurt to protect him so needlessly, when Joshua would have to pretend he didn’t have the same skills.

So he tugged on Clive’s dark cloak to get him to turn and look at him.

“We should blend in,” he said softly before he could convince himself that he was wretched for even considering this, nodding to the, well, the whole of the brothel surrounding them and the sounds coming from other rooms on the second floor. Groans and moans and cries of desire. Of sweaty pleasure. Heat. So much heat. It was in the air with the flowery scents of the room.

Clive’s eyebrows went up, and he looked…

Honestly aroused. And the Phoenix’s Dominant wasn’t far behind when he watched his brother look him up and down slowly.

Considering him. Again. This time far, far more openly than the last time.

There was no taking it back this time. In Northreach, Joshua had had the thinnest of excuses that they miscommunicated. That Clive had misunderstood his offer of comfort to be one of offering sex, and had acted on it before he could correct it. He’d had something of an excuse to cling to and pretend he hadn’t taken advantage.

He hadn’t that now. He was outright offering his older brother sex to escape a dangerous situation. For reasons split into parts.

One part survival instinct, every other part selfishness.

Here was another perfectly unacceptable excuse to know Clive’s touch. To take advantage.

A shrug, and his cloak slipped from his shoulders. Fell to the floor in a mound of fabric. Revealing Joshua himself - herself - fully to her - his - First Shield. Her savior, her protector, her sweet, sweet big brother. He saw her to be a woman and nothing but a woman thanks to the Phoenix’s boon. Gowned in a dress, with her long hair pinned up and her similarities to the boy Clive knew as Joshua narrowed down to simply hair and eye color.

And, well, it wasn’t her hair nor her eyes that Clive’s eyes were drifting towards.

“Are you sure?” He asked in that low, raspy way he had in Northreach that one night, in that way that Joshua now knew was his older brother asking to stick his cock in somebody and he wondered in how many brothels he’d sounded such a way already -

“Yes.” Please. His pleading wasn’t verbalized, but Joshua was embarrassed by just how breathy and obvious it was even when it was unspoken, “This shan’t even be our first time together. It’s fine, isn’t it?”

The way Clive swallowed so hard his throat clicked said it was more than just fine by him.

Clive stepped closer. And closer. And again, in a mimic of Northreach, backed his baby brother up against a wall that was smoothed down. Probably by plenty of use. Because what else would pairs be doing in a brothel up against the wall besides using it as a solid surface? As they seemed about to do.

The blue coloring of his brother’s eyes, that blue that matched his own, was rapidly being overtaken by the black of his pupils.

They…weren’t just doing this because of the bandits. Neither of them.

The way he gasped when his spine met the wall, shaped to it, wasn’t in any way appropriate. It was as needy as a whore needed to be for a good client. A very good client. With a very good cock. And even if Clive wasn’t a client, he definitely had that second requirement nailed down.

Joshua would know. His thighs were already trembling, just remembering the way he’d fucked him in Northreach months ago.

Months of being satisfied only by his own touch. Months of thinking about how he might, somehow, impossibly, be blessed to know Clive’s sex again.

How blessed was he.

Hesitation wasn’t a thing that suited Clive. Wasn’t a thing he practiced either, since the second Joshua was against the wall his gauntlets - the same that had fingered him open in that alleyway - were tucking up under his dress’ skirt in a perfectly indecent way. And Joshua wasn’t faking his moan at all when the metal ran up the inside of his thigh. Ran across his belly button in a tease that left his stomach tensing and untensing.

Slid back down to cup his pussy through his panties with barely a breath of that hesitation that didn’t suit his sibling.

Both of them were eager for this, Joshua realized, when Clive wasted not even a full minute cupping him, teasing him through the thin fabric of panties he knew would be ruined soon enough, rolling his clit under the thumb of his gauntlet -

He just grabbed his panties by their lacy trim and shoved them down.

Down, around Joshua’s ankles.

To heft him up against the wall and sit him on his hips - hips so sinful Clive really, really should’ve been the one in a dress right about then, Joshua would pay -

Raised voices. Panicked shouts. The brothel had its own hired guards meant to protect the workers, and it sounded like they were handling the drunkards who had come in search of the Rosfield brothers. Brothers who were now tangled up together like siblings shouldn’t be. Not unless it was a case of retaining the bloodline. That wasn’t so strange. Their mother and father had been first cousins, Clive - Clive was his big brother.

So big.

Strange, it was, being as tall of Clive. But his brother beat him out with his broad shoulders and further honed muscles. Even at the same height, he made Joshua feel so small. He could and had lifted his little brother like he weighed less than a chocobo saddle. Hiking him up against the wall, hiking up his dress' skirt, groaning just as eagerly and without restraint as they kissed and kissed and kissed.

Clive’s mouth. Clive’s mouth. Such a clever thing.

He remembered how it felt kissing his pussy and Joshua’s noises truly weren’t faked. And weren’t even for the purpose of fitting in with the brothel workers anymore either.

His brother knew what he was doing. Knew how to use that mouth and those big, worn hands of his.

It startled the blonde; how swiftly Clive yanked his gauntlets off. Let the dark metal disappear. Dropped to the floor. Loud but not nearly as loud as them as he got his bare hands on Joshua. Oh. Oh, sweet Phoenix. Oh. His fingers. They felt so good. So good. They filled Joshua far more than his own fingers did when he touched himself.

They were thick, and rough, with callouses and scars, and they were Clive’s.

The fingers he wrapped around the hilt of his sword when he helped people. The fingers he wrapped around his cock when he masturbated. Touching Joshua. Fucking into him fast and recklessly with a desperation that downright flattered his baby brother.

The fabric of his dress was all bunched up around his hips, and he kept gasping around Clive’s tongue that seemed to truly love dancing with his own, and he felt dizzy from the thick scent of flowers in the brothel’s room and the musk of his brother.

Ash and embers and chocobo greens.

Just like the tattered cloak Joshua had carefully woven into his nest back in Tabor.

The racket of raised voices and arguing without the room had quieted, bit by bit, and largely the Phoenix’s Dominant had forgotten just why he was currently being fucked by his brother’s fingers in a brothel. He was too high on the heat of it all to care. His heart was a rapid, drowning sound in his ears, and in his stomach was a ball of flame burning him with pleasure he didn’t need to hold back with.

Clive’s thumb rubbed over his clit, and he made sure his brother knew how he appreciated that by bucking, crying out, throat bared as he broke their kiss to throw his head back against the wall.

Trembling from how eager he was.

More, he was begging, aloud or in his heart he knew not but he was begging. More. More.

A choked gasp escaped him when Clive adjusted how he sat on his hips. When Clive got an arm under him, for a minute leaving him empty of his fingers, and using his spare hand to grab the front of his dress instead.

Clive tore open the front of his dress with a growl more suited to Torgal than to him.

And Joshua hiccupped from the force of it, his breasts in full view. A beautiful view, it seemed his brother thought, since he immediately dove in with an approving sort of noise.

“I apologize - about the dress - torn - “

As if that mattered.

Clive was holding him up by one arm against the brothel wall and was smothering himself in Joshua’s chest as he palmed at his breasts with the other hand. As if a torn dress mattered at all at that moment. But his First Shield still had his manners.

It was pure, burning heaven.

And there was the heavy thump of less-than pleased footsteps storming up the stairs to the second floor where they were. Where only a thin curtain kept them unseen.

Joshua’s mind cleared for the briefest of moments at that, hearing the sound of palms being roughly slapped against doorways, of questions being thrown into the other pleasure rooms -

And immediately lost all of that clear-mindedness because Clive pressed the head of his cock against his folds down there and rutted. Rubbing it up and down his pussy, his clit, along the inside of his thighs.

Joshua didn’t care if they were caught anymore.

He just wound his arms around his brother’s head and buried his face in his night-black hair and begged.

“Please. Take me.”

The less-than pleased footsteps headed their way.

A palm slapped their doorframe.

And Clive thrust himself all the way into his baby brother in sheer, desperate lust that had Joshua screaming out in pleasure.

So big.

So thick.

So hot.

Nothing was stopping Clive now. Nothing in all the world would or could. Not life nor death nor Mothercrystal nor Akashic nor Eikon - he slammed his hips into Joshua’s so hard he thought his pelvic bones would break without the Phoenix’s healing and he kept screaming in pleasure for every thrust.

Joshua was fairly sure Clive tore more of his dress somewhere in the haze of heated pleasure, but how was he to know? All he knew was that his brother smelled like Rosaria, and the brothel smelled strongly of flowers and sex, and if he wrapped his legs any tighter around Clive’s hips he would cut off the blood circulation to something important.

Actually, he was holding onto his wings and powers so thinly that he might accidentally boil his brother’s blood.

He forgot about everything that wasn’t Clive’s cock kissing so deep inside of him he was probably fucking his soul.

Everything that wasn’t being kissed by his big brother, held by him, loved by him so well he wanted to burn the world down and scrape together a nest for them from the ashes. A nest in which they would only do this all day long, every day, forever and ever and ever and ever -

The first time they reached their peaks together, Clive filled him so full, stretched him so well, slammed so deep inside of him he saw sparks fly and dark spots dance in his vision. They kissed. They paused. They spared a second to catch their breaths. They’d forgotten about how or why they ended up in a brothel, but that hardly mattered.

Oh, it went on. And on. And on.

Clive spilled in him over and over and over.

Kissed him senseless.

And fucked him like they were trying to make a baby.

Clive threw his cloak somewhere, lost his outer shirt somewhere too. Became as disheveled as his younger brother, in time.

And each time Joshua’s whole body shuddered through another orgasm, reached a higher and higher peak, Clive was right there inside of him doing the same. Driven mad in his desires like fire, eyes practically as black as coal, staring at Joshua in want. Nothing but want. Wanting appreciation. Wanting lust. Wanting more.

Joshua wanted those eyes made into a portrait to hang over his bed - Phoenix have mercy.

Bedroom eyes…suited Clive. Forgive him, more.

More.

More.

So breathless, panting like an exhausted chocobo, Joshua slumped onto his brother and Shield. Running his hand up through his hair as he did so. Sighing at the pleased, strangled noise it prompted from Clive. He kept running his hands through his hair. Kept catching his breath. Drawing his nails down Clive’s spine at the same time, through his shirt, earning himself more incredibly pleased noises that made him preen.

Clive started mouthing sluggishly at his cheek, his jaw, the hollow of his neck, the juncture just between his jaw and ear. Sweet Phoenix above, Clive was going to kill him with pleasure.

That mouth of his. If they had time, perhaps - ?

There was a knock at the doorframe.

Both of them stiffened. Joshua wound himself moreso around his brother, making do with his arms and legs when he hadn’t his wings to shield him at the moment.

But it was a sugary sweet voice that spoke then, a lady’s, one of the brothel’s, “Pardon me, but your allotted time is nearly up. Would you like to extend your stay through the night, sir, ma’am?”

Dazed, so dazed, legs still shaking, head still overheating - Joshua finally noticed the balcony…the open balcony, which had not hidden their sounds at all from the street below, was no longer golden with the shades of twilight. It wasn’t even dark and shadowy with the shades of dusk. It was dark. Purely dark. The dark of night. How - how long had they - ?

No wonder he was feeling as though he wouldn’t be able to walk for a week.

Clive pressed a featherlight kiss to his collarbone, however, and he didn’t mind at all.

“Yes,” and then his brother, his beloved brother and lover was answering the woman, voice raw and husky from the hour or two or three or more they’d just spent completely lost in the pleasures to be found in one another, “please, an extension. Through the night. I’ll pay.”

The whole night?

As in, the whole night?

Shame on Joshua for feeling his heart flutter in excitement at the idea, for the way he had to kiss the crown of his dear brother’s head and nuzzle into his dark hair, chirping, pleased.

"Is that okay with you?" Clive breathed against the soft flesh of his neck, already so marked by him, as if he weren't just an object to be used in his blue-blue eyes. His eyes, their father's eyes.

"Yes. Yes, ple-ase."

Shame on him, but he felt none of it. He only felt happy. Happy to be in Clive’s arms. Happy to have his fantasies so fulfilled. Happy to be left so satisfied by his brother’s cock. The only cock he’d ever had. And the way he treated him well, so tender, so gentle and so energetic all at once with Joshua. Even if he believed the blonde woman in his arms to be a whore, he treated Joshua like a courtesan of the high courts at least. Like a pricey, classy whore.

Consequences were a thing for future Joshua to think about and mourn.

Right then, all Joshua could possibly think about was the fact that Clive was hard. Again. And that his wetted cock was slowly being thrust against his thigh, again and again and again, waiting for the brothel worker to step away.

What was the harm? Talking himself into this - well, it was a bit late to do so. When they’d already done so much. He was literally dripping from his brother’s seed, covered in marks from his lips, and shaking from exertion. His dress was torn at the seams, and his whole body was throbbing - made of ash or not - with his pulse and how badly he wanted a whole night shared with Clive.

This time, there was no cloak.

This time there was just him. In his unaltered form. Simply the woman he would’ve been had their mother accepted she’d borne a daughter as her second child rather than a son.

And Clive saw him only as that woman. A woman he shared incredible sexual compatibility with. A woman he’d been blessed to run into twice. A whore who wanted him so badly she’d forgo payment.

Clive saw her and saw her curves, her lips, her bright blue eyes and long, long golden hair that he could press kisses to each strand of as they watched each other. As they waited. Caught their breaths.

Did…his big brother see the similarities that ‘woman’ shared with the Joshua he’d known as a child?

Or had Clive forgotten?

Consequences.

Are for a future Joshua.

“Please enjoy your night!” The brothel’s woman returned to tell them through the curtains, tone cheery, and not a second later Clive had slammed his cock home inside of Joshua.

They fell into each other for the whole night.

Sibling flames longing to become one.

-----

In the light of a new morning in Oriflamme, the thick aroma of flowers was what Joshua awoke to. Laying nude on a chair long enough to be considered a bed. Nuzzling into the cushions. Into the cloak left to be his pillow that he bunched under his arms. A blanket loosely draped over him.

A new cloak for his nest, and a note next to his head.

…

No Clive.

Of course.

Joshua had no way of knowing. Of how reluctant Clive had been to leave. Of how he’d hovered for hours in the earliest hours of the morning. Sat there, staring at his sleeping face, conflicted by the realization of just how similar this woman he lusted for was to the baby brother he’d lost. He had no way to remember the way Clive had brushed his hair from his cheek. Or the kisses he’d pressed so lightly to his cheeks, his eyelids, his lips as he slept.

Joshua had no way to know. That his brother had drawn his hands across his body to touch him in every way that he could. Engraving every curve, every dip, every dimple into his mind’s fantasies.

No way of knowing the way his fingertips had flinched when they found scars. Assuming them to be from far darker sources than mere battle. Because why would a whore bear so many scars?

No way of remembering the way he’d covered his sleeping form in his bigger, stronger body honed to protect and kissed him slowly in the first rays of light of that morning.

Leaving, and leaving coins on the brothel’s desk too, ensuring Joshua would not be forced to leave until he was right and ready.

And leaving a small note as well, for the woman so hot she could match the flames of Ifrit.

The only one who ever had.

She was so special to him, for that. It was…an intimacy that he shared with no other.

A perfect compatibility.

Joshua Rosfield had no way of knowing, no way at all.

All he had was a note, and the most beautiful of aches in his body from being loved by his dear, dear brother.

‘Apologies, but when you wake I will be gone. I do not want to wake you. I want you to be able to rest, so I have paid for the brothel’s room up to the evening’s hour. I…do not know what to write. I do not know your name. I do not know you.

But I feel as if I should.

And I know I want to.

That night in Northreach I have never forgotten. I think of you every time I please myself, and I know now I will think of last night when I do so again. I pray that does not disgust you. I pray I pleased you, in some small way. You are a magnificent woman. I want you to know that.

And if I shall be blessed to meet you again, maybe you might be willing to tell me your name. Next time.’

Creases formed on the paper from how Joshua clung to it, how he clutched it to his chest in the end, emotional over it.

Clive’s handwriting had improved from the scratchy, messy hand he used to write in, hadn’t it?

Oh, Brother. If they shall be blessed to meet again, if he were ever to find out the identity of the blonde woman he had had twice now in his passions, what would he say? If they meet again. If…

It was morning.

And Joshua had never been more tired, than when he thought of how endlessly he would forever love Clive Rosfield.

-----

Following that night in Oriflamme?

Clive Rosfield was ashamed.

So very ashamed.

There were excuses to be made. Decent excuses. Excuses he had made, to himself, because Phoenix strike him down - never could he tell another of these thoughts he’d entertained. Once? Once was an accident. Once was a stupid, stupid accident brought by too much drink or too much grief or too much of everything. Twice was an inclination.

Three times was inexcusable.

That first night in Northreach, she’d been a nameless and faceless yet so very kind woman of the Veil. Offering a Bearer her attentions and company at risk to herself. She’d been a dream come true. With the best pussy he’d ever had, the most warm of bodies, in every way a type he would love to admire with his eyes, his lips, his heart - if things were different.

It’d been one night, a night of dreams come true, but it’d been little more than that and a fantasy after.

That second night when things started to…change, for Clive, had been a lonely night in Dalimil. Where his mattress was too cold for a desert inn’s, too much, all too much.

And the flames that had been an affectionate gift from his baby brother had - had confused him. He’d only been confused, is all, when he shouted the name of his own child-brother as he pleased himself.

He’d been lost and fearful and driven to it by too long on the road, too long being unsure, too long with the downy feather of the Phoenix around his neck on a cord.

Three times -

Three times, and damn him, that third night had been better than the first when he’d had her faceless and cloaked in Northreach’s alleys. Northreach’s pastures. Better than the second and every other night of masturbation and self-pleasure that stretched between that night months ago and this night in Oriflamme months later. So much better in so many ways - never mind Gav accidentally stirring up trouble with those boarish men, never mind the fact that they’d had to run for their lives.

She had been brave enough to try and help him, and then bold enough to offer herself to him again in the aftermath in a brothel full of the moans of other clientele.

She still had never offered Clive her name, but she was magnificent. The Rosfield man knew that now. She was brave, and sharply witted, and the way her eyes danced - like the shades of a sky over sea. The way she seemed nervous but so needy for him, the way she’d remembered him from that night all those months ago when she must’ve had many lovers between then and now.

She was tall, as tall as him if not a centimeter taller or two. She was sweet with her voice, rich like honey, her body and its curves seeming to have only grown more liviscious than when they’d bedded in Northreach -

And they hadn’t even had each other in a bed as of yet. They’d had each other against walls and on the floors, but never in a bed.

She had hair as golden as pure threads of real woven gold, and her eyes, those blue eyes that belonged above the seas of his home, they reminded him of his father’s -

They…

Sweet Phoenix, what was he doing?

Clive sat near another campfire, another lonely night on some roadside with Torgal whining worriedly for him as he took another swig of another flask of bitter alcohol, staring into the flames and feeling so bitterly ashamed.

She reminded him of Joshua.

Forgive him.

Somebody, please.

He’d not seen it when they’d first bared themselves in sex, all those months ago in Northreach. She’d remained cloaked. Protecting her identity as somebody - a whore, so wonderful a woman - offering her personal comforts to a lowly Bearer. He’d left before morning to better protect her. Left only Gav to watch over her until she woke. And she’d never left his mind for a single night since, to the point that far too many people had picked up on his distraction.

Jill kept teasing him, trying to encourage him to find her again when they did supply runs in Northreach.

He had looked. He hadn’t found her again. He’d begun to believe he dreamt her up.

Clive Rosfield was already going mad enough to see and sense the ghost of his brother wheresoever he walked, what was imagining a woman for his pleasure compared to that? But the Phoenix down feather - that was real. Jill saw it too. Helped him make the beaded necklace it had become. And Gav had seen that woman the morning after in Northreach. And this time -

Another swig. Another worldly sigh. Crinkled eyes so tired - what was he doing?

Clive had had plenty of pussy and cock in his life. Consensually and not. Men, women, otherwise. Folks called him handsome. Before he’d had his brand removed, many had taken it as consent, and many times he’d learned to simply go along with it so he had more than a fair swing at sexual experiences.

But it had never slid so flawlessly into place as it had with her.

Her heat impressed Ifrit. Her passions flattered Clive.

Their compatibility was downright sinful; left them forsaken when they couldn’t satisfy it.

Mercy. What was he to do? Because this Shield and this Rosfield brother had had her again. A woman who impressed upon him everything. A woman who was like…if he had spent his whole life unaware that somebody had split him in two as a babe, and here - here was that other half he’d never known was missing until she was in his arms again.

She had asked him no questions about his now missing brand. She had remembered him.

She had thrown herself at him, and he had caught her and fallen with her happily.

She had been an escape.

An escape who bore such striking a resemblance to his little brother. To Joshua. When she’d shrugged off her simple cloak, he’d seen that resemblance in the shade of her golden hair, the blue of her eyes that seemed to have been taken from the sky itself. He’d seen it in the shape of her nose maybe. The thickness of her lashes. The soft edge to her jaw, the sharper edge of her collarbone, the way she smiled, the way she looked him in the eyes as if she saw them as equals, as sworn, as -

Family.

As he fucked her like a wild beast in heat.

While thinking she looked so similar to Joshua, to his sweetheart of a baby brother whom still stayed lost somewhere out there, he’d done that.

He’d kept doing that. Such indecent things to her body. Slamming into her like that would get her to stay where his brother hadn’t.

And still leaving first, come morning. Because it would hurt too greatly to bring himself to leave when she had woken.

Frankly, it’d been mortifying for the former soldier. How defensive he’d felt of her when he knew not her name or more than how hot her pussy was and how she bowed to him every single time he laid his hands on her. How he’d growled when leaving that brothel, when men cast curious looks back at the room they’d fucked in, tilted their heads this way and that trying to see around the curtain shielding her, whispering, aroused -

They’d listened. To them fucking, they’d listened, and they wanted her too.

And Clive wanted to tear their fucking throats out and throw their entrails onto pyres for it.

And he had doubled back to leave a note as a result. Had paid one of the brothel workers twice over to stand guard until she’d safely left the brothel later.

Clive Rosfield was ashamed.

Because even as he’d been having sex with the sweet whore, somewhere in the burning depths of his heart…

It had been Joshua’s name that he was screaming.

-----

Long, long ago had Clive been steered clear of foolish acts like drinking until he passed out, especially when on the road. Especially when he knew he was too much of a lightweight. Especially when he had so many nightmares that the drink could bring about. Foolish, his father had always called those who drank and drank until they weren’t sure when they blacked out and when they woke up rightly.

Clive was a fool that night.

And his flask was empty come morning.

And he was jolting awake, sick crawling up his throat, because in his dreams he’d had legs thrown over his shoulders again and the scream of his name echoing in the air.

The wings of the Phoenix flared out around him.

And the face of his lover had been the face of his baby brother.

Joshua had been screaming his name too.

Torgal whined worriedly, a good guard pup watching over Clive as he knelt there, in the dirt, getting sick all over the ground. Ill to his core.

Aroused between his legs.

With the warmth of the Phoenix’s Blessing hot where it rested in and on his chest. His shame. His greatest shame. He was mad. He was unforgivable.

How could he ever protect Joshua when he wanted so terribly to have him…like a lover, in his delusions? How could he become this? How twisted had he grown. How depraved. Brother. Joshua. He was so sorry.

Shame on Clive Rosfield.

Another weight for him to carry on his shoulders with all the rest.

~>-----------<~

Chapter Text

~>-----------<~

Ordinarily Joshua’s encounters with Clive, few though they’d been until now - they’d all been coincidental. Being in the right place at the right time. Because there was no such thing as the wrong place at the wrong time so long as he was with his beloved brother. Even if those places were alleyways and chocobo paddocks and abandoned keeps and brothel pleasure rooms.

Even if those places and times involved him naked and Clive naked and their sexes pressed together.

That was the ordinary of the last several months.

Today they strayed. Or rather, Joshua strayed.

Because Joshua knew precisely where Clive was. And Joshua was a silent shadow to his big brother’s operations today. Was it dangerous? Surely so. Was it foolish? If he wasn’t aware that it was, then he would be the fool. It hadn’t been intentional. He’d hardly set out intending to join Clive on his ‘Cid’ business. Keeping their two organizations, Cid’s people and the Undying, separate was the best strategy and had been the best strategy for years now.

But today? Today the Phoenix’s Dominant stumbled straight onto one of his operations, as said.

And the worry that clutched his heart at the sight of Clive fitting himself for a fight led to him following. In the shadows. At a distance. But still, he was there, and he was perhaps a little bit the fool. Ditching his attendant for the day would bring questions later, but he’d find answers. After. After ensuring his darling, daring Shield was safe come nightfall.

There was a caravan they were shadowing. Following one of Sanbreque’s roads headed away from Oriflamme. And it wasn’t hard to assume why, why this caravan was his people’s target. Joshua had seen the faces in those wagons. Faces branded. Bearers.

His brother had the biggest heart of them all, and Joshua worried.

If he didn’t, who else would?

They followed from the trees lining the road as the wagons rumbled on and on and on, the afternoon transitioning to a twilight of gold, and Joshua was just slightly further back in the trees.

Shadowing the blackened cloak of Clive.

The Phoenix trilled in him, through him, just seeing his love’s broad back and easy movements. Movements full of a confidence that filled Joshua’s heart with pride. Clive had always had the potential to be the best of the best Rosfield Shields. Seeing how he’d grown into it, something akin to up close, really set that pride he felt aflame to burn hot and heavy in his chest.

He could watch his brother forever. And ever and ever and ever.

He used hand signals to communicate to his operatives. Every so often, his eyes would shift sideways or backwards. Deeper into the scattered trees of this thickening forest. Towards Joshua. He would pause, and the younger Rosfield sibling would press himself flush to a tree trunk, holding his breath.

Wondering if Clive could somehow feel him. His presence. His heartbeat.

The flaming pride he felt for him.

The last time the Phoenix had seen his sibling flame, it had been in an Oriflamme brothel.

He stole every glimpse he could, like a starving man would take crumbs. Clive’s scarred cheek was healed all but fully now. Beneath the hood of his cloak, he kept catching snatches of the brightest of blue eyes - eyes that matched his own. His brother moved through shadows like he belonged in them, like Joshua had also learned to move, and once?

Once, they had been the heirs of the Rosfield family. They had walked tall in sunlight, heads held high before a hundred eyes.

Now they stalked the shadows as unsuspecting flames, waiting for their chance to burn all that stood in their path to find each other again.

The longer they followed the caravan, the greater the struggle for Joshua to not simply…be too slow, avoiding Clive’s glances around. Get caught. Be seen. Be found, be held, be loved. It was the greatest temptation. More than drink or drug; the idea of being by Clive’s side fully once again.

It was harder to resist every time, especially with that low curling in his core, remembering how he could make him feel when they were both stripped and nude and free of all their restraints.

Lovers, brothers.

Burnish embers that stayed ignited by relying on one another.

The afternoon died its slow, golden death with the sun lowering over the horizon, and the caravan’s shadows reached a portion of the forested road that was surrounded by hills. Higher ridges. The perfect spot for an ambush, in Joshua’s strategic opinion. An opinion seemingly shared, as Clive’s hand signals grew in number. He, meanwhile, drew back further.

He had no place in this upcoming scuffle unless his Shield needed a shield of his own.

He knew. He knew that well; Clive had been trained to fight from the moment he was capable of wielding a weapon. To fight in the name of what he was to protect. And what he was to protect had been Joshua, but he’d taken up a new crusade since. In defense of Bearers. In defense of those who had no defense. He had become hope, and his fighting had grown to surpass even other Dominants.

Clive fought for those who could not fight, and as much as his wings beat to protect his big brother, Joshua could not fight his fights for him.

He could only stand by in the shadows as they reached that part of the road where the hills and ridges loomed over the caravan’s wagons.

And watch as Clive prepared himself, then went running.

Leapt.

And landed atop the roof of one of the caravan’s wagons with such a heavy thud of his boots that every eye swiveled around to stare at him. How audacious. A distraction.

“Hello there.”

His brother made for a handsome distraction, if he might say so himself.

Men and mounts alike balked at his appearance, and panic was quite efficiently sown as Clive tore his cloak off to toss it to the road below and let lightning crackle in the palms of his hands. In threat. The cry went up.

“Cid!”

“It’s Cid!”

“Cid’s here - defend the wagons!”

Cid’s people descended.

Whilst Joshua slunk through the shadows still, watching the raid unfold swing by swing of a blade. Shouts twined with the clashing of metal on metal, weapons on armor, weapons on weapons, and it was a song Joshua recognized well at his age. He let it wash over him. Headed for a higher point. A ridge, that looked down over the road.

Standing there, it was possible to see the whole fight.

It was easy to see the caravan hadn’t been prepared for this attack. Its guards were most like mercenaries. Hired swords who couldn’t swing them half as well as he could keep them on their hips without tripping. They were left scrambling, shouting, panicking when faced with an actual Dominant. Cowed by the lightning strikes that shocked their numbers, and running straight into the blades of Cid’s people when they tried to flee.

The Bearers in the wagons screamed, pounding on wood, panicking as well.

Helped, rather than felled, for they were Clive’s target clearly.

Joshua relaxed minute by minute, seeing that they had it handled after all from his vantage point.

Focused, he did, on his Shield. On his Shield with his grace. With his strength. With his Eikons. He wielded the wind and he wielded lightning as though they were his own. But more often than either of them he would wield the blessing that his oath to the Phoenix had given him, and those flames were ethereal in the gold of twilight. Those flames, those wings that matched to Joshua’s, that flared and swept away his enemies.

A weapon Joshua had gifted his brother out of love.

A weapon Clive preferred to all others. Filling his baby brother’s chest with warmth, unknowingly, as the fight continued.

All was well, and then their onlooker noticed a familiar face. In a familiar position. Gav. Pinned by a soldier. Gav, who he owed a favor or two or three to for watching over his sibling. Gav, who Clive noticed pinned and shouted for, panic in his voice, so Joshua reacted. For his big brother. Another of Clive’s people got pinned. And another. The panic grew.

The Phoenix screeched, and flames filled the twilit skies above the road.

There wasn’t the time to consider consequences; the Phoenix’s flaming spears descended. Whistled down, and those lives that had been at risk were saved. Spears of flame striking down several of the mercenary guards in a single wave, and it meant - he meant - well.

But it also meant Clive stumbling backwards as though he’d been struck.

Gav failed to notice, swirling into another fight he would win, shouting something at Clive. Probably a thank you or an, ‘I didn’t know ya could do that!’

Because he couldn’t. Clive knew that. Clive did. His brother had always excelled in the physicals of a fight, not the incorporeal, not magic. That was where the younger Rosfield had had the potential to surpass him. Joshua saw his mouth move. Saying something to nobody, and everybody, and saying nothing at all but it was everything to him.

Probably a murmur along the lines of, ‘That wasn’t me.’

When Clive’s hand grasped at his chest, fisting his tunic, fisting that spot over his heart where Joshua’s downy feather was on a cord around his neck - Joshua’s heart skipped several beats. The wings of the Phoenix, his wings, the wings he’d gifted his dear brother in love flared out around him and scalded the guards who tried to run at him while he was distracted. Forcing them to cower lest they burn.

And that, those wings, were warm and unspooling like a dropped yarn ball in Joshua’s chest, making him gasp.

Making him keen.

Making him hesitate there, in plain view, cloaked but unhidden.

It was his mistake. Of course, of course, Clive’s eyes went skyward. He saw them go skyward. Go skyward and find the cloaked figure on the ridge, who had brought down the Phoenix’s flames as only one person besides himself could. Joshua flinched back. Realizing his mistake. Too late to do anything about it.

He receded into the treeline, but even then he heard it. The way Clive screamed -

“WAIT!!!”

The last view he had over the ridge of the mayhem that had become that caravan, was his brother sprinting into the forest in a rush. Headed for him.

Leaving behind all else in wake of the hope that he might’ve just seen his baby brother again, after searching for him for so very long. The sounds of the fight rose above the trees. Clashed in his ears. Like his heart, pounding so loudly it deafened all else as he clutched at his chest and tried to figure out what he was to do.

To reveal himself, or not?

To let this be the end of their unintentional game of cat and mouse, or prolong it?

Run. He could run. He could flee into the twisting, growing shadows of the forest as the sun set. He could disappear as he knew how to do. Nothing but another ghost his brother wished was real. No harm done. No more than he’d already caused. But - but he thought of Clive. Of Clive doubting his sanity, of Clive thinking he was seeing things, as he already believed he was.

He thought of Clive trying to convince himself he wasn’t crazy, and his boots refused to so much as scuff the leaves around him.

Refused to move a single step in any direction.

“...shua! Jo-shua! Joshua!” His name. Called again, and again and again and again by his brother sprinting through the forest’s trees trying to reach him in time this time. This time.

This time, how could he run?

This time, how could he hide?

This time, how could he not give in to what he wanted more than anything in Valisthea?

“Joshua!!!” His big brother was calling his name, begging it, pleading it like it was a prayer and they were kneeling in some chantry - like Clive was the one kneeling and Joshua was the one laid on the altar that he prayed to. He couldn’t move. How could he leave his love again to a fate like not finding him?

Hadn’t they stayed separate long enough? Hadn’t they yearned for long enough? Couldn’t this be enough?

“Joshua!” Footsteps, thundering towards him, probably pounding the ground hard enough to hurt -

He couldn’t. He couldn’t.

“Joshua!!!” Crashing through branches, through bushes and tripping over roots and stumbling over rocks and heading straight for him, and he couldn’t.

Not to his brother. Not to Clive.

He loved him too much. He loved him more than Valisthea. He loved him enough to finally part his lips and yell back.

“Clive!!!”

Finally, finally he called his big brother’s name, finally he found the willpower to step forward, towards him, towards those thundering footsteps, finally, finally, finally -

…

A hand clamped down over his mouth before he could call Clive’s name a second time.

He was dragged backwards.

Joshua twisted, trying to break free of that sudden hand over his mouth. Sudden arms pinning his to his sides. Trying to stop them from lifting him off his feet, struggling against them dragging him back, back, back into the shadowy forest. He screamed but it was muffled by that hand - he tried to bite them but they were careful not to let him. He tried. He tried. He did not succeed.

And it was only the colors of their robes that stilled his flames from burning them alive for this impudence.

Even then, that barely spared them. Because behind him all he could hear was Clive screaming.

“Joshua! JOSHUA!!! I heard you, where are you, JOSHUA?!?”

They had dared to make a liar out of the Phoenix.

“JOSHUA, I HEARD YOU, PLEASE! Please!!! Please, I beg of you - ”

Though they did not go far, they went far enough. Far enough to be long-hidden on the twisting shadows of the forest. Far enough for the chaos of that caravan fight to be a distant, dulled sound. Far enough that when Joshua was delicately set back on his feet and released -

The slap he gave his captor was loud but not overheard.

Faronis, a member of his Undying, let his head snap to the side without challenge. The mark on his cheek blossoming red even in the shadowy undergrowth where Clive would now not find him, and it felt like Joshua’s heart was breaking all over again after that so he couldn’t bring himself to care about the red. Or the way his own palm was stinging painfully.

Why? Finally, he’d finally given in, he’d finally been about to see Clive again as himself, and -

Why?

Why?

“What gave you the right to manhandle me in such a way? To take me from there?” All of his Rosfield grace was in tatters in that moment, and he didn’t care for how he was hissing at his attendant, but the man simply stared back at him. Unapologetic. And it made Joshua burn with an anger that was very dangerous for both of their healths.

“Forgive me, Lord Margrace, but that was Ifrit’s Dominant.”

The very obvious answer was only more dangerous.

“I am well aware of who that was,” that was his big brother, that was his Shield, that was his Clive, his beloved, his twin flame - how dare anyone steal him from him, “It was my intention to meet with him, so give me a better answer.”

An emotion flitted through Acolyte Faronis’ eyes. Finally. Some fear. The Undying were not used to their Phoenix behaving in such a disgracing manner. Without calm. Without his usual grace. Without his composure. Without that, he was an unknown, with an Eikon at his whim’s wishes.

Undying or not, nobody who stole him from Clive was innocent in Joshua’s eyes.

“Lord Margrace, that was Ifrit’s Dominant,” he repeated, stressing, watching as Joshua started pacing back and forth in an attempt to distract himself from his fast-beating, hurting heart, because Clive - Clive had been right there, Clive had heard him, and right now he swore he could feel the faint pulses of panic-shock-hope-no-no-no from his brother across their bond, “You know how dangerous he is. You do not know how he will react in your presence. When last you met, the Night of Flames, he nearly murdered you, Your Grace. You cannot - “

“That was not when last we met!” Joshua snapped, before he remembered his other meetings with his older brother were all secrets, before he remembered how he’d had to talk the Undying down from sending assassins after Clive following that night, before he thought of him, and Clive, in Oriflamme in a brothel with his dress torn open and his legs around his waist and a scream of pleasure dying in his throat.

Faronis went very still, staring at him, but whatever shock he might have felt was narrowing down to suspicion.

Of course it was. The Undying had been founded to serve and protect the Phoenix of the Rosfield line.

The Eikon of fire.

A title which Ifrit challenged in every way, when he mysteriously appeared during the Night of Flames.

They knew nothing about Ifrit, or about why a second Eikon of fire had appeared from the black of that night. And in the fourteen years hence they’d found nothing to answer their questions regarding him. He was such a dangerous variable in the eyes of the Undying, and it had taken so much of a younger Joshua’s strength to convince them to leave Clive be when he was suspected to be the unknown Dominant.

Having it confirmed since then that that was the case, it had been just as much an effort to prevent them from going after Clive.

And bearing the fact that the Undying wanted him to stay separate from his brother.

If they knew, if they suspected the two of them had been meeting in secret, it may put his darling brother in danger.

“He was unaware it was me,” he said bluntly, fingernails digging into his palms because - because he’d thought he’d been about to hug Clive, and now -

“Then all the more reason for being unsure of how he would react recognizing you, Your Grace! For all you know, Ifrit may immediately force a Prime and bear his flames down on the countryside just to attempt your murder again!”

The Phoenix’s Dominant highly doubted that.

The cock of Ifrit’s Dominant had pounded away inside of him for hours and not for a single second of them had Joshua felt he was endangered or that his brother held any bloodlust for him. Just…lust.

Joshua very much did not appreciate all of these reminders of the Night of Flames though. Phoenix Gate as a whole held…very few kind and non-bloodsoaked memories for him.

So he straightened up and gave a noncommittal hum.

To which Acolyte Faronis stressed, “Your Grace!” In a very distressed tone.

The Phoenix though, their precious Phoenix, did not listen. Since they refused to listen to him. Since they scorned him like this, since they quite literally tore him from the promise of being embraced by his brother beloved, the Undying were watched by withering flames. Joshua wouldn’t be able to forgive this until his heart stopped its hurting from the harm of a broken sort of hope.

Which wouldn’t be any time soon.

He stalked away in the shadows where they’d rather his fire remain.

And he forced himself not to look back, even as the echo of Clive screaming his name followed him through the forest.

He did not call back again.

He could not bear the hurt of losing that again.

Blood speckled his lips, and Joshua Rosfield could only wish it had been a kiss from Clive that warmed them instead.

-----

“Jill - Jill, I swear, I saw him. I heard him. Gav was there! He saw!”

“I, uh, definitely saw the flames, Clive. But I wasn’t looking for who’d used ‘em to watch my back, because, I assumed it was you!”

Clive let out a whine, wilting, ashen-pale and still shaking, and Jill curled a hand supportingly over his bicep. Always, always willing to believe him, even when everybody else stared at him like they saw him going mad at any given moment, “I’m sure you did see him, Clive. You can sense him best. I do not know why he’s keeping away from us, but you know as well as I that it must be for a good reason.”

This son of the Rosfield family couldn’t help but wonder if that was true. If that could be true.

A good enough reason to break their hearts apart time and time again?

What reason could that be?

For a year now, they’d hoped. They’d prayed. And they’d gained nothing. Nothing but a single, soft feather that pulsed with the heat of dying embers.

And a glimpse or two or three that bordered on delusions.

But Joshua had been there. Had been…watching over Clive. He knew it. He knew it. He had to know it, because otherwise he truly was losing his mind. His baby brother had come to protect him and his people and that meant something. Did it not? Was it not that? What was it, if not the affection of the Phoenix, its Dominant, his brother?

It…did not change how worn down the older brother had grown in his searching.

‘Joshua, please. I cannot bear this much longer. I am breaking.’

-----

Firstly, when they returned to Tabor days and days later, Joshua did not hold back in the least in making it clear that nobody - nobody - was to target his big brother. He would bear the Undying’s disappointment with his typical grace. But he would not forgive with his typical mercy.

Secondly, Joshua sealed himself away in his private wing of rooms to spread his wings.

And shove a pillow between his legs to rut against, gasps sweet on his lips as his clit caught on the pillow’s edge with every shift forwards and back, forwards and back, wings aflame and flaring and falling and searching for the one he wished to shield in their flames. It was easy to close his eyes. To imagine Clive beneath him. Lending him his thigh or Eikons forbid his face to rut on.

It was easier still to slip into a place where he hadn’t had his heart broken when his pussy was pulsing, clenching, waiting for his big brother’s cock.

It was almost easy to pretend the oversized shirt he’d purchased once specifically because it seemed to be Clive’s size - was his sibling’s, was lent to him, was something Clive would enjoy seeing him wear while he rode him in his nest.

Tears soaking the pillow, his slick soaking it as well, hugging it tight as he surrendered to the fantasy of what had been stolen from him yet again.

He fell asleep before he remembered ever reaching his orgasm with sore thighs and wet cheeks.

In his dreams, he pretended his wings were his brother’s. That they were really, finally, together again.

And when he awoke, his thighs burned, but the Phoenix was used to burning by now.

-----

Clive woke up in the Hideaway, thrusting his hips into his sheets and moaning his baby brother’s name. Moans that faded as the fog over his mind cleared, and he realized what he’d done.

Again.

Clive couldn’t take much more of this.

~>----------<~