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Cid slept alone.
In the Hideaway, it came to be expected. The solar was his private space, open to others for conversation and planning with him during the day, but he spent his nights there on his own. He tended to take lovers on his travels rather than from among his people, and would make a point to return to his own lodgings once their fun was over if he wished to have anything resembling a restful night's sleep.
So when he startled awake in the darkness of his room, feeling a weight across his body and the tickle of breath against the nape of his neck, it was with the absolute surety that something in his life had shifted.
His motion seemed to disturb the body curled around him, making it shift slightly. The muscled arm wrapped heavily over his waist tightened, a hand spreading out low on Cid's belly, pulling him back against a chest still rising and falling in the rhythmic pattern of sleep. Heat was radiating out under the covers, wrapping around Cid, making him sweat. Even without turning, Cid found that he recognized the scent that clung to the sheets, leather and exertion and the slightest edge of smoke.
"Clive," he murmured aloud to the quiet room. There was a part of him that didn't want to wake the boy, that wanted to allow him what sleep he could get, but if Clive was finding his way to Cid's room in the middle of the night, chances were it wasn't for as pleasant a reason as wanting to hold him.
Clive's face pressing to the back of Cid's neck as he mumbled something indistinct in reply seemed prepared to disprove that theory.
Cid sighed, finally rolling out of Clive's grasp to face him. Clive clung stubbornly, and when Cid had levered himself around to prop up on an arm and look down at him, Clive's arm flopped heavily back down over his hips as if satisfied with the new position.
Heat flared off of him. "Greagor's ghost, lad," Cid said, "you're burning up." He pressed a hand to Clive's forehead. Clive nuzzled against it like an overaffectionate couerl. It was only then that Cid realized where the light was coming from that allowed him to see Clive at all. A dim glow radiated from the boy himself, curling out from the edges of his hair, which shone like thin flames.
Cid caught his breath. "Clive?" he asked again, looking at the boy closely as he brushed one of the glowing strands of hair back from his cheek. It felt like it was scalding his fingers, but when he lifted them, they were unmarked.
Clive's eyes fluttered open slowly, reluctantly, and Cid saw they were deep embers, smoldering in the low light.
"There you are," he said. Clive blinked at him impassively. Cid gestured around the room. "Not that I don't appreciate a bedwarming from time to time, but you're not where you were when you went to sleep."
Clive looked at him steadily for another moment as if waiting to see if Cid was done talking, before he lowered his head back down to the pillow and was asleep in seconds, the arm around Cid's waist pulling him insistently closer.
Cid sighed deeply. He could try again, shake the lad awake, try to remove him from the bed, but it was late, and he wasn't certain that he was even strong enough to shift him bodily from the room without bringing Ramuh into the equation. Anyhow, if the hollows of exhaustion that usually showed beneath Clive's eyes were any indication, he could probably use a good night's sleep in a bed more comfortable than the cot he had been assigned.
So Cid lay back down, turning his back to the sleeping Clive and letting their bodies fit together easily and comfortably. Clive buried his face in Cid's neck again, letting out a pleased huff of breath.
Cid lay in his arms, expecting to spend the night staring sleeplessly at the wall, but somehow his exhaustion settled over him, and the last thought he had before sleep took him was that Clive seemed to be purring.
"Oh!"
He woke in the morning to a jolt of motion and Clive's alarmed voice.
"Oh no."
Cid rolled over sluggishly, opening his eyes to find Clive sitting up, blinking down at him, bewildered. His eyes, unlike the burning embers of the night before, were wide and blue and unguarded.
"Good morning, sunshine," Cid said.
"I…" Clive said, seemingly at a loss. "Cid… " He scrambled from the bed as if Cid were the one who might catch fire at any moment. "I'm so sorry, I'm…" he looked down, eyes going even wider at finding himself in nothing but his smallclothes.
Cid sat up, stretching. He felt unexpectedly well rested, the sheets around him still pleasantly warm with Clive's residual heat. "Is sleepwalking something you do often, or should I feel special that you chose to seek out my company in the night?"
Clive's face flushed. "I…" he rubbed a hand sleepily over his stubble, looking bewildered. "I'm not sure," he admitted. "I think I would have been told if I did when I was a soldier, but…" he gave a helpless shrug. "I'm sorry, I'll - " he gestured for the door.
"Not dressed like that, you won't," Cid said, making a concerted effort to keep his eyes on Clive's face rather than trailing down the expanse of skin left bare for him to see. "Here." He clambered out of bed to dig through a trunk and throw a set of clothes that were too big for him toward Clive. Clive caught them easily. "They'll be a bit tight, but they'll get you back to your own clothes with nobody the wiser." Cid grinned. "Not that I'd mind getting a reputation for having pretty young things coming and going from my bed in all states of undress, but…"
"No," Clive agreed vaguely, fumbling the clothes as he pulled them on. "Best not to make people talk."
Cid valiantly did not inspect too closely the way the borrowed trousers clung to his thighs. "Go on, then," he said.
Clive turned, but hesitated with his hand on the door handle. "Cid…" he expected another apology, but instead what Clive offered was an exhausted sounding, "Thank you."
Cid bit back the response that rose in him, an unexpected anytime. "Hope you slept well," he said instead. He stretched, muscles feeling loose and nimble after the night of being pressed to Clive's warmth. "Apparently I did." Clive mumbled something indistinct and disappeared.
Cid certainly didn't find himself waiting for it to happen again.
He didn't crawl into his bed at night and discover that he was clutching at the pillow beneath his face, imagining it was Clive's warm chest. He never woke flustered and aroused, body straining for a muscled thigh to rock against. He didn't watch Clive in the evenings around the Hideaway, seeing the dark circles under his eyes growing deeper, wondering if perhaps this might be the night…
Instead, weeks later, he returned late from a scouting mission with Gav to find his bed already occupied.
He didn't notice until he was already mostly out of his clothes, tossing his coat across the back of a chair and leaving his shirt and trousers discarded on the ground on the way to the bed. He was stumbling face first toward the pillow and caught himself only narrowly before spearing an eye on one of the wicked horns that curved up from it.
"What in the…" he growled, nearly doubling back for one of the swords he'd dropped unceremoniously on the desk, but as he looked closer, the shadowed form curled before him began to resolve itself into a familiar one.
Clive's hair once again gave off that faint glow, and this time the glow was echoed in the curved horns that sprouted from his brow, the tail draping carelessly off the edge of the bed. He was fully unconscious, his sleep undisturbed even by Cid's stumbling entrance, faint snores escaping his lips on each rasping exhale.
He looked wrecked, like this was the first good sleep he had gotten in weeks.
"Oh, baby boy," Cid murmured almost involuntarily, settling at the edge of the bed and brushing Clive's hair back. His fingers tingled against the flushed skin of his forehead. "You've worn yourself out, haven't you?"
Clive shifted at the touch, curling closer. His hand reached for Cid, revealing fingers ending in fiercely pointed claws. They closed on Cid's wrist and tugged hard, trying to drag him down into the bed beside Clive.
"Whoa, there," Cid cautioned, closing a hand over Clive's. "Someone's going to have to teach you to keep the pointy parts to yourself." The words came out a little breathless, the tips of Clive's fingers piercing in a way that made Cid want to squirm in their grip, to make his claws scratch into him, to feel them touching him all over, leaving marks against his skin…
"Clive."
He interrupted his own thoughts, the name echoing harshly in the quiet of the room. Clive made a low protesting noise, not letting his grip fall from Cid's wrist. He curled tighter into himself, as if resisting the notion of consciousness. Cid shifted in his grip, gently trying to twist his hand free, and that was what finally made Clive's eyes snap open, glowing with the heat of an inferno.
"Cid." His voice was a deep, unfamiliar rasp.
"It appears you've gotten yourself some new accessories," Cid said, keeping his voice deceptively mild, his free hand reaching to trace the curve of one of Clive's horns. He half expected him to jerk away, but instead, Clive's eyelashes fluttered, neck stretching to tilt his head toward the touch, seeming to luxuriate in it.
"Mm," he agreed in a low rumble. Cid felt a warmth sliding across his bare waist, and looked down to find Clive's tail curling around him, beginning to tug with as much insistence as his hand had.
He didn't want to resist. He knew he should. He should stand up, tuck Clive into his bed, and go find somewhere else to pass out for the night, have a conversation about this in the morning. Clive was semi-priming in his sleep, in Cid's bed, and the appropriate reaction to that was not to curl up with him for a nice cuddle.
And yet…
"C'mere." Clive's voice was slurred with sleep, fingers and tail insistent as he drew Cid to him, and Cid found that his own exhaustion was so great that the thought of pulling away from him was unbearable. Instead, he kicked off his trousers and swung his legs up onto the bed, settling in beside Clive and drawing a deep, rumbling sound of approval from him.
He gathered Cid into his arms as if he belonged there, tail lashing around his waist, holding him close. Every part of him was warm, humming with a soft energy that seemed to wrap around Cid, engulfing him, making him want more, want to press his lips to Clive's overheated skin, feel the scrape of those claws against him, hear more of those deep sounds of pleasure he let out at each touch Cid allowed himself to take from him.
Clive, as if sensing this, clutched Cid close to him with his claws, digging them in, causing pure points of pain and pleasure to spark levin up Cid's spine.
"Clive…" he said warningly. He rolled to face him, which only brought his rapidly swelling cock into contact with Clive's muscular thigh. Cid groaned, pressing his face to Clive's shoulder for a brief, blissful moment, trying to gather his wits through the haze of arousal surging through him. He had a sudden image of sinking his teeth into the skin against his lips, scorching himself on the fire roiling beneath its surface, finding out what kind of sound the sting might draw from Clive's throat.
It took all of his strength to still, to hold himself steady in Clive's grasp until his body felt a little less frantic, his breathing evening out.
"Come now, lad," he said finally, roughly. His hands closed around Clive's wrists, forcing the clawed hands to still. Clive was stronger than he was, especially in this form, and Cid was sure that he could break the hold easily. He didn't. Instead, he went pliant in Cid's grasp, burning gaze holding his.
"You need to sleep," Cid told him. Clive's brow furrowed beneath the horns as if he wanted to object, but whatever he intended to say was interrupted by a tremendous yawn, leaving him blinking and bewildered in its wake. Cid chuckled fondly. "Proving my point," he said. He loosened his grip on Clive's wrists, and when Clive returned his hands to Cid's body, they were still fierce and possessive, but less insistent. He pulled Cid close and closed his eyes, most of the tension draining from him in one deep, heaving sigh.
"Sweet dreams," Cid murmured against his chest, and he thought he felt Clive press a lazy kiss to the top of his head.
He was asleep in moments. Cid, predictably, was not.
Pretty as you are, he remembered saying, you're not my type.
It had been more or less true, at the time. The broken boy who had hung from the chains of his gaol had been anything but the kind of spitfire he tended to invite into his bed.
This Clive, though - fierce and demanding, with claws that threatened to tear into his skin, teeth that would leave marks that he would be feeling for days, hips that Cid knew would roll in the smoothest, most sinuous of motions as he fucked…or was fucked…
Greagor's tits, Cid was a mess.
He would stay there for only a few minutes, he resolved. Long enough to be sure that Clive wouldn't wake when he pulled himself away. Instead, he fell into a fitful sleep, Clive purring blissfully against him.
He woke in the morning to a resentful grumble of, "Oh, not again."
This time, instead of alarm, Cid woke to Clive's blue eyes regarding him with a kind of weary resignation. The horns and tail had faded away, as had the glow at the edges of his hair, and when he raised a hand to rub sleepily at his eyes, Cid could see that his fingers were free of claws.
"I expect," Cid said dryly, "if you weren't aware that you sleepwalk, it seems unlikely you'd know that you also semi-prime in your sleep."
"I what?" Clive bolted upright, the sheet falling away from him to bare his chest as he darted a glance around him, looking for scorch marks.
"Don't worry, it hasn't been enough to do any damage," Cid assured him, also sitting up and leaning back against the wall. "But I did get home last night to find you here with an impressive set of horns and a rather affectionate tail."
Clive flushed deeply. "No," he said weakly.
"Oh, yes." Cid grinned at him.
Clive pulled up the sheet to check that the tail didn't remain, drawing a deep chuckle from Cid. Clive glared at him. "It isn't funny," he said, sounding genuinely distressed. "I could have hurt you." He dropped his eyes to Cid's bare chest, looking over him with sudden concern. "I didn't, did I?"
Not nearly as much as I wanted you to, Cid didn't reply.
"You didn't," he assured Clive instead.
Clive nodded seriously, eyes already on the door, hands reaching distractedly for the clothes Cid had discarded by the bed the night before. "Jill and I have been discussing it," he said as he unthinkingly pulled Cid's clothes onto himself. "I need to find out what's happening to me, once and for all." He looked down, suddenly flustered and sheepish as he realized that the shirt was going to need to hang loose and open around his shoulders, framing his chest in a way that made Cid want to bury his face in it. The trousers were in an even more precarious state, straining as he laced them. He forged on gamely with what he was saying. "Once she's well enough for it, we'll be traveling to Rosaria."
Cid nodded. "I hope you find what you're looking for there." Clive sighed deeply, not looking hopeful at the prospect.
Cid didn't quite contrive to be at Martha's Rest to see them off - he was legitimately in the area seeing to business - but he couldn't deny the relief that coursed through him as he caught sight of Clive and Jill preparing their chocobos for the journey. He clapped a firm hand to Clive's shoulder, wishing him well, and appreciated the steely determination in Jill's eyes as she swore to take care of him.
Clive returned from his travels not a new man, but the same man with new purpose. Cid all but glowed with pride at the way Clive met his eyes steadily as he discussed his eikon. He stood before Cid looking unconscionably beautiful in a new outfit, and he pledged his cause not only to Cid's idea of a future, but to something even more improbable.
A place where people can live on their own terms.
It was a grand notion - a seemingly impossible one - but Clive was an impossible man, Dominant of Ifrit, an eikon who should not exist, and he seemed to have a way of making the impossible occur all around him.
It was a long time after his return to Phoenix Gate before he appeared in Cid's room again, long enough that Cid had begun to believe that whatever had been bringing him to his door had disappeared into the aether along with his uncertainty.
Instead, it was late one evening and Cid was still sitting up reading by candlelight when the door to the solar burst open, Clive rushing in and slamming it closed behind him, panting as if he'd run halfway across the continent, sharp horns curving up from his burning hair, tail snapping behind him.
"So," Cid said evenly, setting his book aside. "It appears your little journey didn't cure you of this after all."
Clive leaned back against the door, holding it shut as if he expected an army to come charging in after him.
"Come now," Cid said in a low voice, holding out a hand. "You're safe here." Clive's eyes burned. His claws scraped into the door before relaxing marginally as his frantic eyes found Cid. Slowly, he pried them out of the grooves he had scratched there and he stepped forward, tail swishing in agitation behind him.
"I know," he said gruffly. It was the most coherent he'd ever been in this form, the only time he'd truly responded to anything Cid had said. Before Cid could think of anything else to say, Clive was crossing the room in a few long strides and crawling onto the bed, burying his face into Cid's chest.
"There, now, lad," Cid said, dropping a hand to Clive's hair and raking his fingers through it as Clive all but collapsed onto his lap. "I've got you."
Clive let out a growl low in his throat, deep and resonant. It echoed through Cid, settling directly in his cock. He shivered and willed his body not to react, focusing on the heat of Clive's glowing hair curling through his fingers, the raggedness of his breath, anything but the sweet pressure of Clive's body sprawled over his legs.
Cid wasn't sure how long they stayed like that, Clive spread across his lap, his tail thumping against the sheets, claws digging into Cid's back hard enough that he knew he was going to find marks in the morning. He thought perhaps they would fall asleep there, but Clive felt restless against him in a way he never had in this form before. After some time, he began nuzzling his face against Cid's belly where he lay, his stubble rasping pleasantly against the soft skin and hair there. Cid caught one of his horns to keep it from poking him, and Clive let out a low groan of satisfaction, tilting his head to make the horn slide through Cid's fingers in an undeniably lewd motion.
"Clive…"
There was no response beyond Clive pushing himself up until his teeth could close against the join of Cid's shoulder and neck, drawing a ragged groan from him. His fingers went tight around the horn, trying to hold him still, but Clive was relentless, a forked tongue stretching out from between pointed teeth to lick across his skin, tasting him, soothing the spot he'd marked.
Cid managed to extract himself just enough to look him in the eyes, finding him more eikon than man, his skin scaled and burning, eyes lit like a coal in a hearth.
"Ifrit," he said quietly.
The eikon's eyes widened in an expression so painfully similar to Clive's that Cid would have laughed if he had been allowed a single moment to breathe after uttering the name. Instead, Ifrit pounced.
He tackled Cid back against the pillows, holding him down with his body, his claws digging into Cid's skin and tearing a helpless moan from his lips as he rutted against him. There was a part of Cid that wanted nothing more than to sprawl out beneath the eikon and let him take everything he wanted from him, to luxuriate in the sting of his claws, the strength of his grip, the relentless heat that threatened to overwhelm him. His hips bucked up involuntarily, pressing his own bulge against the promising hardness in Clive's pants, drawing a sound from him that was near a roar.
"Ifrit," he groaned finally, pressing his forehead to a scaled shoulder, the words halting and hitched with desire. "Clive." He closed his hands on the man's burning hips, holding him still, willing his body not to arch up against him. Ifrit lifted his head enough to look down at him with eyes sparking with a need that matched his own. "I think," he said slowly, carefully, "I know why you're here." An unfamiliarly wicked smile crossed Clive's face, drawing a chuckle from Cid. "Aside from the obvious," he said, gently pushing Ifrit up so that he was kneeling over him instead of pressed against every part of his body. Ifrit could have resisted easily, but he seemed drawn to Cid's direction, allowing him to reposition him as if he wanted nothing more than to do as Cid wished of him. "I think," he said, "you're protecting Clive, bringing him to me when he wakes scared and confused." Ifrit looked down at him impassively, but Cid forged on.
"I think," he continued, lifting a hand to brush it through Ifrit's hair and curl his fingers up to brush over one of his horns, "you trust me." At that, Ifrit ducked his head, a rumbling purr beginning in his chest as he arched into Cid's touch. "And I think," Cid said, "you're a part of Clive, but not all of him. I would like to see all of Clive right now. Would you let me do that?"
Ifrit's brow drew down reflexively, frowning, and there was a brief moment when Cid thought he might fight him, might pin him to the sheets and flare into an inferno right there atop him. Instead, as Cid watched, the deep embers of his eyes slowly faded back into a familiar blue, the furrow in his brow gradually melting from suspicious to perplexed.
"Cid?" Clive asked. His eyes traveled down Cid's face to his own hands, pressed to Cid's chest and still curved in dark claws. Cid didn't allow enough time for his confusion to fully turn into mortification. Instead, he cupped Clive's cheek tenderly with a hand.
"Hi there, darling," he said easily.
Clive swallowed tightly, caught off guard by Cid's comfort with their situation, Clive straddling his lap, dark horns and a tail sprouting from his forehead and spine, both of them hard in their pants. He opened his mouth, but instead of saying anything, he seemed to be thinking hard, so Cid lay quiet for a long moment, letting him process. "I remember," he said finally, voice rough. "I've been having nightmares, and Ifrit…" He flushed. "He's been bringing me to the safest place he knows."
Cid rubbed his thumb against Clive's burning cheek, rasping across his stubble. "Glad to be of aid," he murmured.
Clive chuckled, still looking embarrassed, but he leaned into the touch the way Ifrit had, as if hungry for Cid's hands on him. When he dropped his eyes to Cid again, there was the tiniest hint of a playful gleam in his eye, something Cid would have missed entirely earlier in their acquaintance. "And you," he said, "if I'm remembering correctly, seem to be quite taken with - " his tail crept up Cid's side, drawing an involuntary shiver from him " - all of this."
It was Cid's turn to flush, remembering how shameless he had been in Ifrit's grasp. "I won't deny I have a bit of a taste for…what you have on offer," he allowed.
Clive pressed a claw to his sternum, dragging it slowly down his chest, eyes hungry as he watched a thin line mark itself into Cid's skin. Cid's breath began to heave in and out of him raggedly as he let his hand fall from Clive's face, fingers instead clutching into the sheets beside him.
He looked Clive over. He'd expected the eikon's features to begin to fade as awareness returned, but instead only the glow had receded from them. The horns still stood proudly up from his head, his fingers still curled into sharp claws, and at his side…
Cid lifted his hand from the sheets to catch Clive's tail in his fingers, and this time it was Clive's breath that caught helplessly, eyelashes fluttering, lips parting in a sigh with just the slightest edge of a moan to it. "Is it within your control?" Cid asked. "Looking like this?"
Clive tilted his head, considering, and in answer, the horns began to recede, diminishing until they disappeared entirely into Clive's hair. He lifted his hands to look at them, the fingers slowly returning to normal before regrowing the claws, flourishing them at Cid. "It appears to be," he replied, sounding faintly dazed. A complicated smile curved at his lips. "It seems," he said, "that Ifrit and I are coming to something of an understanding." He lay his clawed hand on Cid's chest, looking down at him seriously. "You asked to see all of me," he said. "For better or worse, that includes him."
"Good," Cid said gruffly. Clive's eyebrow cocked, making him continue, "Not simply for selfish reasons, although I won't deny that I have those as well. But I've been there, lad. Struggling to incorporate a being of immense power into your understanding of what you are. It takes time, and I'm proud of you."
Clive ducked his head a little at the praise. Clearly meaning to deflect, he shifted his eyes to Cid, their blue depths dark and fathomless. "Selfish reasons?" he repeated.
Cid chuckled low in his throat, tracing his fingers over the apparently sensitive scales of Clive's tail to draw a shiver from him. "I suspect I haven't been alone in enjoying the nights we've spent together," he said.
"You haven't," Clive agreed quietly.
"And perhaps," Cid continued, beginning to tease his touch up and down the tail as if he was stroking Clive's cock, "I haven't been the only one intrigued by the thought of them becoming something more."
Cid was not sure that Clive's reaction could have been stronger if he had taken him in hand. His hips rolled against Cid's, head tilting back to expose the long column of his throat as if begging for Cid's lips and teeth against it. "Cid," he breathed out, "please."
Cid chuckled darkly, tracing the line of the tail toward where it joined Clive's back, until his fingers found the place where scales met impossibly soft skin. Clive sagged forward, forehead pressing to Cid's shoulder, body trembling with need. "There, lad," Cid soothed, pressing his hand wide and firm against the small of Clive's back, dragging him closer to roll his hips up and meet the hardness in Clive's pants with his own.
When Clive lifted his head from Cid's shoulder, his eyes were wild - not with the mindless fervor of Ifrit's power, but with his own desire. The kiss that he claimed from Cid's lips was frantic, hands clutching at him to hold him close as if certain that Cid might disappear from beneath him at any moment. Cid, who had no intention of doing any such thing, held Clive firmly around the waist and kissed him back, luxuriating in the weight of him on his lap, the heat that radiated off him in waves.
They were both already bare from the waist up, so Cid allowed himself to appreciate the expanses of skin available to him, sweeping his hands up Clive's firmly muscled back, drifting them downward to his sides and feeling the ticklish shiver that ran through him. Finally - finally - feeling his way up his impressive abs to his chest. It was heaving with breath beneath his touch, Clive's nipples firm and alert as Cid circled his thumbs around them.
Clive let out a ragged moan, pulling back from Cid's lips to look down with dazed eyes, watching as Cid's fingers tweaked and pinched at his sensitive skin. His lips were parted, wet from Cid's mouth, hitched gasps spilling from them as Cid teased, watching him intently to see which touches earned him the most delicious reactions.
"Greagor's tits, lad," he murmured finally. "You'd think you'd never had someone feel you up before."
Clive let out a weak laugh, eyes darting from Cid's hands to his face. "It's not exactly the kind of luxury a branded soldier has the time to indulge in," he pointed out dryly. "A hand down the pants or a quick and messy suck against a wall was the most that I could really hope for."
"Oh, Clive," Cid said, and he could see the very beginnings of indignation flaring in Clive's eyes at what he interpreted as pity before Cid closed his hands around his waist and bodily flipped them over, all but throwing Clive back against the bed. "I'm going to take you apart," he growled as he went to work on Clive's pants.
Clive let out a tiny startled noise as his back hit the mattress, but his hips lifted easily for Cid's hands, eyes watching hungrily as Cid kicked off his own trousers as well. He crawled back up Clive's body predatorily and claimed his lips again, this time in a fierce, biting, possessive kiss. Clive's hands lifted to clutch at his back, the claws digging in sharply enough to draw a gasp from his lips, and Clive stilled beneath him.
"Too much?" he asked against Cid's lips.
"Oh, I'll tell you when something's too much, darling," Cid promised. "Until then, you do anything to me that you like."
Clive let out a low rumbling sound of approval and sunk his claws back into him, Cid's hips jolting instinctively down to rut his cock against Clive, seeking any friction he could get, grinding uselessly against his lower belly. Most of his attention, however, was focused on getting his mouth on Clive, trailing kisses down his throat, biting there and enjoying the way he could feel the sound of Clive's pleasure through his skin. He worked his way down Clive's body tantalizingly slowly, hands busy as well, touching him all over as his lips passed over his collarbone, his sternum. Clive's tail wrapped hard around his thigh, squeezing him tight, Clive's entire body begging him for more.
He licked a wide stripe over one of Clive's nipples, feeling him stiffen, and lifted his eyes to Clive's face to enjoy his reaction as he closed his lips around it and sucked hard. He was not disappointed, Clive's mouth dropping open in a helpless groan, his eyes going first wide and then fluttering closed at the sensation.
"Cid," he moaned out, one of his hands coming up and sinking his claws into Cid's short hair, holding him close.
Cid let a faint zap of levin spark across his tongue, and Clive's hips arched up off the bed, a broken sob spilling from him.
"I - " he gasped. "I need…" His hands clutched hard into Cid, leaving marks.
"I wonder," Cid said conversationally, pausing to give another hard suck to the other nipple, making Clive writhe beneath him, "if I could bring you off just from this, without ever touching that pretty cock of yours?" Clive flung an arm over his face, overcome, cheeks flaming, breath panting out of him as if he'd been running for his life. Cid chuckled, taking pity on him and beginning to kiss his way down his body again. "A question for another time, I think," he said. "Tonight, I have other plans for you."
He gave Clive's body a chance to relax a bit beneath him as he kissed luxuriously over his hipbones, down the dips of his thighs, some of the tension draining out of his muscles even as his cock still stood hard and flushed, dripping untouched onto his stomach.
Clive had practically melted beneath him by the time he reached his cock, and he took his time to admire it, thick and beautiful, twitching with need as Cid's breath brushed over it.
"I thought," he heard Clive say gruffly, and looked up to find him propped up on his arms, watching him in return, "that you had plans for me."
"Oh, I do, love," Cid replied, and closed his mouth around him.
He could feel the bed shake as Clive collapsed back onto it, his hips jerking as they tried valiantly not to thrust up into the slick heat that welcomed him. Cid pinned him to the bed to hold him still, delighting in the thick stretch of Clive in his mouth, the taste of him, the heat of him. He felt like he could stay there forever, making Clive let out sweet helpless noises as he sucked him, feeling the grasp of his claws on Cid's skin, feeling his tail lashing with need.
Instead, as Clive's hips began to arch more insistently against his grasp, starting to buck in earnest, Cid drew off of him with a lewd sound, making Clive cry out hoarsely in frustration.
"Please," he all but sobbed. "Cid, please, I need - " he rolled his head to the side, face muffled into the pillow, his words devolving into incoherent begging.
Cid chuckled, loosening his grip on Clive's hips, patting one of them gently. "I know what you need, love," he promised. "Come on. Up." Clive let out a quiet noise of protest, but he let Cid draw him upward until he was kneeling. "There's a good lad," Cid assured him, circling his body and pressing a kiss to his shoulder as he reached for the table beside the bed. "I've got you," he promised, and the moan Clive let out as Cid's slick fingers began to press against his hole might have been the sweetest sound he had ever heard.
He worked him open patiently, at first pressed to his back, kissing his neck, Clive's tail lashing around him, holding him close. Eventually, as Cid fucked two fingers into him, his own cock throbbing with how desperately he wanted to sink it into Clive's heat, he felt Clive fold down onto the bed. He buried his face in his arms and planted his knees in the blankets, arching his back up to present his ass to Cid like the most beautiful gift he had ever been given.
"Sweetheart," Cid growled, "You are going to be the end of me." He leaned down to press a biting kiss to the swell of one of Clive's cheeks, leaving a mark there as he added another finger.
In this position, Clive fucked back onto his hand hungrily, impatiently, his cock hanging thick and needy beneath him, clawed fingers tearing into the sheets. "Cid," he finally snarled, peering back at him with burning eyes, "I swear on everything I have ever loved, if you do not stop fucking teasing me..."
Cid smirked at him. "Threatening me?" he asked. "Now?" He curled his fingers perfectly inside of Clive to make him clench with need around him. Clive clamped his lips shut stubbornly, but a tiny whimper escaped him regardless.
Fortunately for him, Cid was nearing his own breaking point. His own desperation to sink inside Clive led him to draw his fingers from him, finding that they were shaking as he reached to slick himself. Even that quick touch of his fingers would have been enough to set him off if he had allowed it, with Clive spread out there before him. Instead, wanting even more to see Clive fall apart for him, he steadied himself carefully, braced a hand against Clive's back, pressing into him.
The heat was incandescent. It made him want to allow levin to crackle all along his body, to match Clive's flames with his own power, to combine with him into something indescribably powerful.
"Oh," Clive said in a small voice, nearly swallowed up in the intensity of their bodies' need. He dropped his head down, thrust his hips back toward Cid to take more of him in greedily. "Is it always like this?" he asked breathlessly. "Between Dominants?"
"Yes." The word resonated with thunder. "No," he continued. "It's…" he held Clive's hip in a hand, let himself fuck into him steadily, deep, feeling him ripple with sensation around him at each thrust. "It's always different, but if you mean the way you can feel your power…"
Clive let out a low growl, and Cid could see scales spreading up his back from where his tail met his body, the horns starting to curve once again out of his hair, which was glowing brightly in the dim room. He let his own body hum with an electric resonance, matching Clive's intensity.
"Use it," Cid told him. Clive flared with heat beneath him, and Cid wrapped a hand around the base of his tail, holding him steady as he pounded into him. "Feel it."
His tail lashed, body rolling back against each thrust of Cid's cock. Cid felt drunk with the power of holding this magnificent being beneath him, making him writhe in pleasure, wrenching increasingly desperate sounds from his lips.
He let Clive's tail go and reached forward, wrapping a hand around one of his horns to hold his head up, folding down over Clive's back to say low beside his ear, "Come for me, Clive."
Clive shuddered beneath him, body wracked with pleasure. Cid expected him to reach for himself, but instead he curled his claws into the bed and fucked back onto Cid's cock greedily until his body was tensing, tight heat pulsing around Cid, clenching down on him in helpless waves that seemed to go on endlessly as he spilled untouched across the bed.
Cid muffled a stream of curses into Clive's skin. He was already on the edge, shaking with the restraint it had taken to fuck Clive so thoroughly, and if the clutch of his pleasure hadn't driven him over, the whimpery little sigh that escaped Clive's lips at the end of the deep moan he let out would have destroyed him. Cid pulled from him, pressing the head of his cock to the unbearable soft heat of his hole, feeling it still twitching with sensation against him as Cid came all over it and the base of Clive's tail.
Clive's trembling body collapsed into the bed, legs splaying out on either side of Cid, the glow of his hair slowly darkening. Cid stayed kneeling between his legs, resting there and luxuriating in the afterglow, a hand rubbing slow patterns across Clive's back as his tail and horns and claws gradually receded, until he looked just like any other human man, fucked out and sated against the sheets.
Cid eventually stirred to clean them both, damp cloth gentle against Clive's skin, half expecting him to already be falling asleep. Instead, Clive curled onto his side, alert eyes following Cid as he climbed back into bed, some of the familiar tension starting to seep back into his form.
Cid gave him an easy smile. "Better than a quick hand down the pants?" he offered, trying to put him at ease, and Clive rewarded him with a low chuckle.
"I suppose," he allowed. Cid raised an eyebrow at him, and Clive didn't quite smile as he added, "I may need more to compare it to." Cid could see the corners of his eyes crinkling in the faintest hint of amusement.
"Anytime you like, darling," Cid promised. Now that they were no longer exerting themselves in passion, he could see the faint flush that the endearment brought to Clive's cheeks. He leaned in to press a soft kiss to the pink skin there on the unmarked side. "And that goes for anything else you want from me. You don't have to wait for that big flaming brute of yours to drag you to my bed."
Clive didn't quite leer - Cid wasn't sure he was capable of it - but he looked at Cid with deep intensity. "Anything I want?"
Cid grinned. "Try me, sweetheart."
The look that Clive leveled at him made him shiver with a rush of anticipation. "That," he said in a low voice, "is a challenge I will gladly take." For a moment, Cid thought he was going to end up needing to plead for temporary mercy on account of his tired old bones, but instead, Clive flopped heavily down into the pillow with a satisfied sigh. "But for now," he said, "what I want is to sleep for at least three days straight."
"Tired you out, have I?" Cid asked smugly.
"You needn't look so pleased with yourself," Clive said, peering at Cid out of the corner of his eye, but when Cid settled down beside him and moved to pull him closer, Clive curled into the space beneath his arm as if made to fit there. He let out a deep sigh of contentment, stubble pleasantly scraping the skin and hair of Cid's chest.
"I'll go," he said, sleepy tone belying the words, "if you'd like the bed to yourself."
Cid opened his mouth, prepared to give his usual fondly dismissive response, sending Clive back to his own bed sated and satisfied, leaving him here alone to sleep.
"No," he heard himself say instead. He pulled Clive tight against him, pressing a kiss to his dark hair. Somehow, it seemed, the nights of Clive - Ifrit - pressing to him and surrounding him with warmth and contact - and above all a limitless trust - had left their mark on him. He could suddenly think of nothing he would like more than to drift off asleep here with Clive in his arms.
"No, Clive," he found himself saying in a voice already rough with sleep. "Stay."