#and around through thanalan back to cathedral

[keeperprinceling]

THEY’RE LOOSE!

Moogle Mount parade circuit

@yvainearadia

@manawalls

@alannah-corvaine

@sphynxies

ruruki ruki (you have tumblr maybe?)

[furymint]

FFXIV Write: Prompt #25

wc: 1,252 | follows this scene

Nolanel shoved the cathedral door open and held it with his shoulder. The end of his lance skid against the floor. He leaned his weight into it and hauled himself inside. His breath fogged a moment, then faded in the vestibule's warmth.

Josseloux approached from the eastern hall. The windows stained his white cassock an array of colors. He rose a hand to welcome Nolanel, gave his too-perfect smile, and surveyed the rest of the room. Three other people lingered in the hall: a Scholasticate student, a mother, and her young son. No danger, surely.

Still, Nolanel's grip around his lance tightened. Free spots gaped in the weapon holster on the wall behind him. They both glanced to it. By an ungiven look and an unspoken agreement, they ignored it. Nolanel stepped forward, using his lance to support himself, and offered his hand.

Josseloux offered his arm.

Nolanel turned toward the hallway.

Lowering his head in a nod and a smirk, Josseloux folded his hands behind him and moved to walk alongside the scuffling soldier.

"I must thank you for meeting with me," Nolanel said, glancing over before he returned to watching his feet.

"Of course. If it were my decision, my time would ever be in your service, Ser Feran. Today it is so."

"Yes. I am relieved I may see you afore I leave."

"I as well." Josseloux refused to allow Nolanel any segway which would turn responsibility of the conversation onto him.

"Elliot's got us here until the morrow. Morning service, then back to Thanalan."

"Yes, I've heard from him."

Nolanel sighed, almost in a laugh. "You hate to make things easy for me sometimes, don't you?" They approached the lift, so he took the opportunity to lean against the cool wall. Severity pricked at him. He'd not been the best patient lately.

Josseloux grinned and side-eyed him as he pressed the button for the elevator. "You don't do well making things easy for yourself," he quipped, waving a hand towards Nolanel's lance.

Nolanel set his weight into his weapon to stand from the frozen stone. "Do you know what I'm here for?"

Josseloux stepped into the lift. "Ser Feran, assumptions are dangerous to be spoken and disastrous to be acted on."

He said nothing more as he led Nolanel through the hall. Marble inlays rested above intricate wood carvings of rounded sigils and framing arcs. Against the dim neutrals and patterns, Josseloux's shoes taunted red with each assured step he took. He was always human. Holy, yes--but never angelic, never god-like. Although his composure lasted him through dismissing his door barrier and inviting Nolanel to sit, it was not by his own wish. He desired to talk--but not where others heard, not where interruption was inevitable.

Leaving Nolanel to settle, he vanished into the kitchen. A silver teapot, polished into a mirror, rested with a matching ensemble of cups and dishes atop a glass platter. One of the cups had been filled in advance. As if it mattered, Josseloux asked, "Would you like tea?"

From the yellow rim of the couch, Nolanel's head drooped and vanished in the shame of refusal. "Oh, no please. Thank you Father."

Josseloux returned with the platter, handed the filled cup to the frowning Nolanel, and poured tea for himself on the opposite couch.

Nolanel despairingly rose the drink to his lips. Then his tension fled--it was hot chocolate. He thanked Josseloux in a murmur, cleared his throat, and fixed his hands around his teacup. "I wished to entreat you. I--"

He clamped his mouth shut. Josseloux had not moved; nothing had moved. The heavy curtains above the priest's head remained transfixed. The clear sky beyond the glazed window did not shift. Nothing changed but Nolanel's confidence, which abandoned him with the twinge that erupted in his ankle. He hissed an apology. "I've chosen the least viable and convincing time to ask this of you, but I cannot tolerate myself much longer in silence. You know of my love for your son. His for me has been a spectacle since I met him five years ago."

Nolanel looked up with a simper, expecting Josseloux's usual neutrality, and met a smile. Heat rushed to his face. Feeling a fool, knowing he was one, and ultimately not caring if that's what love made him, Nolanel stuttered back into his appeal.

"And the truth is--Captain Brucemont--he--he told me some of the uppers don't like him. Elliot hates the fighting and he hates that I'm in it. And I'm sorry for that. I make him worry. I've put more targets on his back. It's taken me so long just to admit that I love him but I do. They told me to make my choice between being the jingoist they want and--and so on, or him. It's not a choice. It's not even a desire. In his words, we are the sums of our souls, not our wants--and I would deny my very life if I were not to love him, as much as I can, until the moment I die and thereafter."

Doubt returned to him partway through. He untangled his hands from the cup and drew his fingers over his mouth as he spoke. Nausea sickened him less than the way his thoughts split: this was right, this was right, this made him weak.

He resolved, then, to be weak.

"And I will. And in that spirit,  I wish to marry him. I may spend the rest of my life proving myself worthy of him, but I am willing to do so. I would do anything. He is half my soul and all my life. My heart is his. I can't deny any of it. Not any longer."

Nolanel bowed his head as tears blurred his sight and shook his voice. His hands trembled over his eyes. "I do love him, that's all."

"That's everything." Josseloux reached for him over the table, but Nolanel did not acknowledge him except, perhaps, to cough over a sob.

"There's just so much wrong right now," Nolanel said, "And I'm so sorry there's so little I can do but complicate matters with this--"

Josseloux knelt beside Nolanel and brushed his arm to stop him. "There's naught complicated about it. I'm honored to accept you, Nolanel. I have for a long time."

"Oh, gods." Nolanel set the teacup to the table afore he could drop it. He let his hand be seized by Josseloux, and paused crying to start in shock.

Josseloux stood, removed something from his pocket, and pressed it into Nolanel's palm. Wrapping Nolanel's fingers around it, and waiting for him to calm to release him, he said, "I want you to have this. Take it as a reminder. I hope it may be a strength as well. You are family, Nolanel, and I never want you to forget that."

"Heavens' sake." Nolanel withdrew and opened his hand to a familiar gold ring set with an emerald and plated with a hydrangea. Terror ripped him from reason. "This isn't my goal--the name--"

"I know. Focus only on your happiness with Elliot now--but do spare some consideration for your health, too."

Nolanel trembled as he gasped, "You knew."

"I truly didn't. I supposed."

"Just--don't tell Elliot."

"You have my word, blessing, and love."

Nolanel swallowed his reflex to say that was more than he could have asked for. Some part of him still screamed that he was deceiving them, that these too-kind people were destroying themselves for him, and that this whim of his would send him to ruin--but his hands clenched in denial, and he felt the new weight of Josseloux's ring, and by the Fury he would have another.