Noctis Lucis Caelum (veggiehater) wrote in valloic, @ 2021-04-15 20:38:00 |
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Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log, ~player: meghan, ₴ inactive: gladio amicitia, ₴ inactive: noctis lucis caelum (2) |
“Dad,” Noct said. The word felt ripped from his throat.
The ghost of his father had no face, just his armor and his sword, but Noct knew him by the set of his shoulders. The way he stood tall. Even with his cane, Regis had kept his noble bearing. Death didn’t take that from him either.
Regis turned away from Noct to stare at the throne. The weight at his back grew stronger, pushing him forward. Dread climbed up into his throat. He choked on air and tried fruitlessly to break away, to run. He wasn’t ready. It wasn’t time.
Gladio appeared off to the side, glowering and handsome. Noct called his name but it had no effect. Ignis stepped up beside Gladio, more stoic but no less striking. He didn’t react to Noct shouting his name either. Prompto ran up to join them and Noct called out fruitlessly all over again. They were all in their royal uniforms and they stared at the throne as if waiting for something.
The kings at his back gave Noct one great shove and he woke up shouting not yet into the inky darkness of Gladio’s room. Sweat beads dotted his shirtless torso and made the ends of his hair damp at the back of his neck. He covered his face with a shaking hand and cursed under his breath.
Getting back to a normal sleep routine had taken some time, and Gladio knew better than to to write it off as coincidence that it only really started to get better as he and Noctis started spending their nights together. Even beyond the change in their relationship there was a comfort there in having him that close. Much like it had been on their road trip, knowing the people he cared the most about were near and safe. Within arms reach should anything go awry.
But that didn't make him a deep sleeper by any stretch of the imagination. So he was easily roused when Noctis called out and the sudden shift of Noctis under the arm Gladio had slung over him.
He jolted awake, already on high alert which he tried to quell by reminding himself where they were. Vallo. His apartment. The sun would rise in the morning and - probably - nothing was barreling down at them. "Hey…" he said softly a moment later. "Noct," he pulled Noctis in closer and pressed his lips to a bare shoulder. "I got you," he said quietly. Not yet, he had yelled not yet hadn't he?
Gladio kept his face pressed into Noct's shoulder, arms around him tight. "Bad dream?" he asked gently, the offer to listen if Noctis wanted to talk. "Did you say not yet?"
Noct felt a burst of embarrassment and shame as Gladio woke up. He hadn’t had a bad dream in a while, not since they’d started sharing a bed at least. There was no safer place to be really, besides in a tent surrounded by the three people closest to him. He preferred a bed to the hard ground, even if his back did hurt from all the tension the dream had left behind.
“I--I think so,” he mumbled, turning to curl into the comforting weight of Gladio’s body. His shaking hadn’t let up yet. “Sorry. Gods, do you think Iggy heard?” That thought was quickly going to lead to another thought about what else Ignis might hear across the hall. Noct preempted that fresh wave of embarrassment with a groan as he tucked his face into Gladio’s neck. This part wasn’t so bad. He could get used to this part. “Quick,” he deadpanned, barely audible, “smother me with a pillow.”
Gladio's hand ran up and down Noct's back slowly, trying to ease the tension and shaking he could feel under his fingers. He was unbothered by having been woken, only worried about the why of it. Though for all Noctis had been through, Gladio was surprised it didn't happen more often. Something he was glad for though, that Noctis usually managed to sleep undisturbed.
He laughed softly though when Noctis' train of thought clearly went to the place of Ignis hearing them in other ways. "Not my fault you're loud," he teased and pressed a kiss to the top of Noct's head before carding his hand through his hair.
Gently he detangled himself from Noctis a little so that he could pull back enough to look at him. He kept a hand on Noct's back, still drawing idle little patterns and lines, fingers moving over skin and scar tissue.
"Do you want to talk about it?" He asked softly, an offer he wouldn't be upset if it was refused.
Noct’s face heated to boiling at Gladio’s joke. “Uh, excuse me. It’s definitely a little your fault that I’m loud.”
He whined petulantly when his hiding place was slowly taken away from him. Not that he didn’t appreciate the moonlit view of Gladio’s attractive face, but still. Falling back asleep in Gladio’s arms without even a second of vulnerability and only one joke about his sex habits would’ve been ideal.
He sighed and traced the edge of Gladio’s jaw with his fingers. At least he’d stopped shaking.
“It was the throne room. Dad and the kings were there. And you, and Ignis and Prompto.” He shrugged weakly, not meeting Gladio’s eyes. "Guess I haven't been feeling guilty enough with Ignis here now."
"You're right," he agreed after a moment, a sly grin. "And I'm not even a little sorry," he added. And why would be. Noctis was hot as hell and he had absolutely no complaints that Noct tended to get a bit loud in bed.
Gladio reached for the hand that traced his jaw, pressed a kiss to the middle of Noct's palm and let it go. He knew better than to ask why guilt was on Noctis' brain. They were products of their upbringings. Duty before anything and he himself felt the tug of it more often than he wanted to. That he was shirking responsibility, that he was enjoying his break from their world too much while others weren't lucky enough to have it. Even if his duty was Noctis and Noct was there, it was still hard to shake the feelings of guilt.
He could only imagine how much more that raged inside Noct's head. And he wouldn't insult Noctis by saying there was nothing there to feel guilty about. Gladio knew they could be here the rest of their lives and they'd probably always carry that guilt.
"It's hard," he admitted. "Turning that off. Spending all this time living like we're just regular people without all of the responsibilities we had at home." He paused, glanced down for a moment, his hand still splayed across Noct's back, and then back up. "It always hits me at the weirdest times, sometimes when I'm having a shower and realizing my to do list for the day is nothing much more than harassing you and taking the dog for a walk." He knew he couldn't magically take away Noct's guilt, even if he wanted, but he could make sure Noctis knew he wasn't alone in it.
"Is there something in particular that's weighing on your mind?"
Noct rolled onto his back – not because anything Gladio was saying didn’t sit right but because it did. It was precisely how he felt put into the simple, comforting language of someone who’d grown up with his future spelled out for him much the same way Noct had.
“Yeah,” he mumbled. It was a lame response so he tried again. “I…guess with the anniversary of…everything coming up, it’s heavier on the mind. What I should be doing. The people that are counting on me.” He frowned and rubbed a hand roughly over his face. “I was almost ready, before. And now…” He looked at Gladio out of the corner of his eye, letting his gaze linger. “I would still do what needed to be done. I'm just realizing how much harder it would be.”
It had been a fairly common occurrence over the years for Gladio's dad to tell him to smarten up about shit. That Noctis was Important. Little things dropped over the years that Gladio had mostly chalked up to just being part of the whole family business. And then words like Chosen started coming up and suddenly Noctis was forging covenants with gods, the world was turned upside down, and everything Gladio had ever thought and assumed about the world and their lives, their futures, was completely gone. Replaced with the sinking sensation that this particular story may not have the happiest of endings.
And as he watched the struggle clear on Noctis' face he couldn't help but wonder if this was why any talks of keeping certain boundaries in place between himself and Noctis that he'd had with his father had always come off as so… final somehow. That the worry hadn't been what was proper and what everyone would think. But rather the worry that this sort of entanglement would be detrimental when it came down to Noctis or the world.
"Yeah, I know," he said quietly and swallowed hard. Whatever peace, even in the vaguest sense, he might have made with it all back home was gone now.
Gladio propped himself up on an elbow and looked over at Noct. He knew there was no easy answer to all of this. Nothing about what was being asked of Noctis was fair, or easy, that no one could ever possibly be truly ready or okay with it. That even he himself felt pulled in two conflicting directions.
Between knowing he'd let the world burn to the ground if it gave Noctis more time, them more time - and knowing that as much as it would go against everything Gladio was born and raised to do that maybe in the end the best way he could serve Noctis would be to respect that Noctis would want to do what was asked of him. To respect that Noctis would put his people above himself.
He wasn't sure if he would ever be ready for that decision. But he knew one thing for sure.
Gladio reached for Noct's hand and threaded their fingers together. He took a moment to bring their joined hands up and brushed his lips against Noct's knuckles lightly.
"I love you, Noct," he said as he let their joined hands fall to Noctis' chest. "Whatever happens, wherever we might end up," and gods it was probably bad how much he hoped the where remained somewhere they could avoid duties and prophecies and all that was wrapped up in that for as long as they wanted. "I got your back. I'll always have your back - whatever you need from me, it's yours." He paused briefly. "I'm yours." He gave Noct a little smile at that, his gaze warm despite the serious undercurrent to the conversation.
"And I know you have - a lot - weighing on you, that being here doesn't magically make all that go away or make it something you're not going to think about. You're too good of a person to forget who you are, where you're from, and your people back there. I hate that you have to carry all of this around, but I'm proud that you're the kind of person who does," which was a weird sort of dichotomy he supposed.
"But I'll always be here to listen, okay? I can't say I have all the answers or anything even close, but I'll listen and talk through whatever you want or need to talk through, anytime."
Noct wasn’t sure he’d ever heard Gladio string so many words together at once, let alone heavy hitting emotional ones. He was stunned silent, eyes wide in the dark room. When his heart stopped being seized by wordless, riotous feeling, he surged forward, plastering himself to Gladio with octopus arms and an ear pressed to Gladio’s heart.
“I love you too.” He said it with his eyes clamped shut because the feeling felt too big and dangerous to let it just roam freely through the room. “I don’t….I don’t know how to deal with a lot of things or what to say half the time, but that...that’s easy. That’s like warping. Scary at first but as easy as breathing if I just shut off my brain and do what comes naturally.”
He kept their hands linked together at one hip and squeezed. “I’m here for you too, okay? No matter what.” He leaned to Gladio’s side to stare up at him, smirking crookedly. “If you ever want to string a bunch of words together again and this wasn’t like a once in a lifetime thing that is…”
Gladio wrapped an arm around Noctis when he surged forward. The returned I love you in the dark of the room felt warm and grounding. Even if, like Noctis, he grappled with the bigness of it. The sort of all encompassing feeling of letting it out into the world - even if the world in this case was just this quiet moment between the two of them. And he'd always loved Noctis, but this was that and so much more.
"I'm sure we can find a few other things that would fall into the shut off your brain and do what comes naturally designation," he added, the smirk clear in his words. Maybe it was a bit cheeky given the declarations of feelings and all - but neither of them did well with serious feelings for long. But there was something to be said about showing feelings being just as valid as talking about them, and Gladio liked to think they did pretty good in that aspect of it.
He let his free hand card through Noct's hair when he looked up, offering a smirk back in return. "I'll see if I can make it a every twenty years or so thing - just for you," he said lightly. Though he'd definitely try for better than that.
"I know you're here for me, Noct, and I appreciate it," he said. He knew Noctis struggled with the roles they all had and did not want to be just a monarch and his retinue, and even if they had long been carving out something different for themselves from that, he knew Noctis might still always struggle with it. "I wouldn't have handled all this - Vallo - near as well without you," he added, a warm smile at that. Or hundreds of other things that had come before their relocation.
“Wow, once every twenty years,” Noct smiled, his cheeks ramping back up to scorching hot with the innuendo that came before. “I’ll mark my calendar.” A dark part of his brain immediately thought I hope we get even half that time but he didn’t say it out loud. He felt a little raw and exposed as it was, and he didn’t want to step on this nice moment with his pessimism and selfish desire to stay right here for a full lifetime.
“I should wake you up in the middle of the night more often,” he joked. “You’re all soft and squishy.” Noct stroked a hand up Gladio’s chest to curl his fingers around the back of his neck and pull him closer. “Why don’t you remind me about some of those other ways to shut off my brain? I’ll try to be quiet this time.”
"Maybe you just make me a sap?" he countered with a smile. But Gladio didn't mind. It was rare to get a chance, or outlet, to be 'softy and squishy' as Noct had put it, had become even rarer in a world gone dark and all the complications of that. It was nice to be able to give into it more here, that he could with Noctis was one hell of an added bonus.
Gladio wrapped an arm around Noct and easily shifted them so that Noct was laying back on the bed again, Gladio above him. He took a moment to kiss Noct, unhurried but still tinged with want. "Hopefully not too quiet?" he asked, and yes that was a bit of a challenge in his tone, as he started to trail a line of kisses down the side of Noctis' neck.