WHERE: Vallo City WHEN: August 30th, 2022, 11:30 PM WHAT: Noctis can't fall asleep after the birthday festivities and Prompto finally gets on even footing with his guys.
WARNINGS: N/A STATUS: Complete
There were some nights where it took longer for Prompto to fall asleep and some nights where he was out as soon as his head hit the pillow. He was just thankful that tonight it was because it was Noct's birthday and, despite the activities of that day and evening, the birthday boy was still awake. Prom always enjoyed getting quiet moments alone with any of the guys, but it felt especially nice that night because he was getting to see Noct grow another year older without the burden of destiny weighing him down.
"Whatcha doing out here?" He asked, as he padded out to the back porch to join Noct on the porch swing in a ridiculously oversized shirt. From the looks of it, it might have been the one Gladio had gone to bed in. "All that cake keeping you up?" Prompto had been freshening up in the bathroom and by the time he had come back out, Iggy and Gladio were knocked out and Noct had disappeared. Which might have sent him into a panic when he had first arrived, but he was getting used to it as he settled into their relationship.
Noct didn’t often have trouble sleeping. Some nightmare nights came with the territory of who he was, but so did a perpetual need for a nap. So when an aimlessly sleepless night hit, it surprised him. Especially after a day that had been soothing in a way he hadn’t realized he needed so badly. The loss of his family and then Prompto being haunted by home had left its mark and he hadn’t especially been looking forward to his birthday. But the guys had done what they did best; they’d made him feel loved. They made him feel lucky. They couldn’t control what Vallo decided to do, but every moment spent here was a blessing.
Or maybe a less god-oriented word. The gods had never been particularly kind to Noctis.
“Hm?” He blinked up at Prompto, instinctively shifting his position to allow his boyfriend room to sit next to him. “Oh, uh.” He looked out over the lake behind the cabin and sighed, draping a leg over Prompto’s knees. “I don’t know. Today was good. I think my brain didn’t want it to end?”
Prompto knew all about how it sucked when a good time ended. The memory of their more carefree days came to mind, before destiny and the gods got their claws into Noctis.
Putting a warm hand on the leg that had found its home on his lap, he gave it a fond squeeze. "I get it. It's a great day when Iggy wears that speedo, no one with eyes would want that to end." It was said teasingly, knowing he was giving Noct an out if anything heavier was weighing on his mind and he wasn't ready to talk about it. "But if it's more than that, I have two big ears willing to listen."
Noct smiled crookedly at Prompto. He looked sleepier than he felt, now that he had the comfort of Prompto close by. The reminder of Ignis in a speedo didn't hurt. Neither did the atmosphere. The water was dark and the moon painted it with gentle light. Noct wasn't looking at that though. He was propping his arm across the back of the swing and leaning his cheek against it to stare at Prompto.
"Your ears aren't big, dork," he murmured, reaching up to trail his fingertip along the edge of one of Prompto's ears for emphasis. "But I appreciate the offer. I…I don't know if it's anything I can put into words? I'm sure I'm just anxious about the next kick in the teeth. And…Astrals, you guys today just…" Noctis shrugged, looking shy. "I just love you guys. I want so many more of these days. And…and other things. A life here, with you."
It wasn't the first time and it wouldn't be the last that Prompto thought, how did I get so lucky to be here? It happened with all the guys, whenever they had quiet moments to themselves. When there wasn't the busy distraction of work, their new wards, or the animals tugging them away, in the quiet like now, Prompto's breath still got caught whenever he was able to look so freely on Noctis like this. Soft, vulnerable, and theirs to be with.
Shivering at Noctis' touch, he was turning into melted putty. "You're going to get them," he said firmly, turning his head into the other man's fingers. "You have us and you won't be getting rid of us, so you can stop worrying about that." As if they had control over it, but they've fought worse odds before. Prompto was confident here. "So a life with us and more of these days, mark them checked off. Because that's happening. What else do you want? We'll make that happen too because we love you just as much."
Noct enjoyed Prompto’s conviction. It helped to hear the words, even if they only had as much power as any placebo could. Talking about the future helped more. And made Noct’s face heat up. He dropped his eyes away bashfully and toyed with Prompto’s fingers.
“Uh. Well.” He’d made a promise not to rush this. But he wasn’t into the habit of lying to Prompto either. So he squinted back up at him with a nervous pinch to his face. “I mean I’d like to marry you someday. All of you.” It was something he could never have at home, whether he’d lived or not, and so it held a shining place in his mind’s eye as the ultimate proof that he could have what he wanted here. He could be happy here and the gods couldn’t do anything about it. “Maybe adopt a few kids? And a couple hundred cats?” Noct smothered a laugh behind his awkward but genuine smile. “You know. The usual white picket fence stuff.”
Prompto.exe stopped working for a long moment. It wasn’t so much as him glitching as it was him hearing those words and feeling a sense of joy that he couldn’t appropriately describe. If he had to, he could say the 🤗 emoji covered it very well. But he was so afraid that he would say something dumb like ‘let’s go wake up the guys and get it done then,’ that he slammed his mouth shut and froze.
Then he took a breath and attacked Noct. With his mouth, of course, but still. They went from sitting there peacefully to Prompto scrambling over to press his face to Noct’s and get something resembling a kiss out of him, though it was more of a smashing of mouths together and Prompto mumbling, “I need a proper proposal first.”
The blond hadn’t been joking when he said he was in this for the long haul, when they started to first date.
Noct had time to huff out a little laugh in his relief but very little to actually take a breath before his air was getting stolen. He didn't particularly mind, of course. It felt like he could've floated away on the buoyant feeling in his chest, so he held tight to Prompto and kissed back as best as he could while breathless and giddy.
"Oh, I mean, yeah," he said in a fumbled response to the request. "Obviously." He was smiling pretty stupidly now, which made kissing almost as difficult as just gleefully mashing their faces together. Pressing his hands to the sides of Prompto's face, Noct pulled back to meet his eyes. "You gotta propose to me too," he joked with a straight face. "And Specs, and Gladio. Which is why I said someday because wow, we have got a looot of proposals to plan between the four of us."
With his face being lovingly squeezed, it was difficult to grin as widely as he wanted to. But it was worth it for the happiness he could see in Noctis' eyes. It was easy to get lost in them when he knew he was feeling just as happy about Noct.
His face became contemplative, as he considered proposal options. "Wait. What if we pick a date and just send them an evite to get married? It'll get everyone on the same page real quick." Because he has no doubt that if he went into the bedroom and woke up the guys to demand they marry them right now, they would do it in a heartbeat. But he was only joking because he really did want to do this right.
And a part of him wanted to be wooed too. Maybe it would help the feeling that sometimes he was still playing catch up in their relationship. Though Ignis had really stepped it up with the physical affection after their talk the other night and that had done a lot to ease Prompto's ever present mess of hang ups.
Snorting, Noctis hugged Prompto closer and nuzzled into his throat. "Iggy would lose his mind. And I don't want to have to pin it down to a day. We'll make it special and us when we're all ready and the time is right." He sounded calmer now, like just talking about this particular future was a balm to his anxiety. And it was. It was possible Vallo would snatch away everything one day. But until then, he was going to look forward to his future with the men he loved. And he wasn't going to let worry ruin the wait.
At least not tonight.
"So. What do you want?" Noct tucked some of Prompto's wild hair behind his ear. His expression was soft and curious."From the future? Besides an emailed invitation to your wedding."
Arching his head away a bit so he could fully see Noctis' face, Prompto pursed his lips as he gave it a think. Jokingly, he said, "It could be a text message too. I'm very low maintenance, you just have to promise there will be food there and you guys. In that order." He grinned wide, his smile absolutely toothy.
It was nice, talking about the future like it was an inevitable instead of just a possibility. "I really don't know what I want from the future, other than spending it with you guys. I'm still getting used to waking up and not having to fight for our lives every day, you know?" Prompto's arms, which had wrapped around the other man earlier in his scramble to kiss him stupid, tightened a bit.
"I'd like to travel more? Take more time for ourselves like this? Until it starts feeling like it's not going to get snatched away." He huffed out a laugh. "Maybe a kid? Though I don't know if I'm cut out for that." Memories of a lonely childhood and hardly any affection from his appointed guardians came screeching into his mind.
The blond knew that it would be different if they did take the plunge in that direction, but fears rarely disappeared when faced with logic. "You want a kid?" He recalled how good the guys had been with Lucy, before, and smiled softly at remembering how good Noctis had been at getting her to laugh, how softly Ignis looked at her, and how ridiculously tiny she looked in Gladio's hands.
Noctis snickered and shook his head. He was going to have to send a text now, when the time came, just to finish this joke. But for now, he focused on Prompto thinking out what he'd like to do with the future. Maybe a little too intensely, but that was kind of how his face worked most of the time.
"Maybe we'll figure out how to travel further here some day. Find other cities. Take the boat." That was a nice thought. Exploring with the guys. The mention of a kid was even better. He wished Prompto had gotten to meet Vivi. That glimpse at a potential future had eased a lot of parenting anxieties for Noct. He took Prompto's hands and lifted them to his mouth to kiss them. "You don't give yourself enough credit. You're kind and warm and good with people. Why wouldn't you be cut out for a kid?"
"I don't know what it's like to have a good parent-child relationship," Prompto admitted, pillowing his head on Noctis' chest and looking out over the water. "When I was taken in…I mean, they were great. Made sure I had food, clothes, and a place to sleep. I never needed anything. But I don't know what it was like to be wanted." Loved.
"So how do I show a kid I want them too." It sounded pathetic, so Prompto laughed a bit and said, "Sorry. This is bringing the mood down. We can talk about it later, yeah?"
"Prompto." Noctis was stubbornly unwilling to let Prompto bury the subject. It was Noctis's birthday so he felt it was his - bratty - right to dig in his heels and keep talking this out. "My dad was so busy running a country, I barely got to see him most of the time. Iggy practically raised himself. And Gladio's family raised him to die for the crown." He hugged his arms around Prompto and pressed their foreheads together so Prompto couldn't escape.
"None of us had the perfect parental example and all of our families were complicated, but we still found each other? We still made our own family, together." He knocked their heads together, smirking gently. "Don't you think the guys will be good dads? Just picture it. Specs teaching Viv--a little kid how to cook. Gladio reading to them. You taking them out to take pictures of dogs…."
He hated it when his inner doubts became verbal. A part of him felt like he was burdening others with his feelings, so he tried to keep them under wraps. But with the guys…they had a way of getting him to open up. But Prompto supposed that came with being in their atmosphere. Even when they had been just friends, they had a way of getting him to keep from bottling it all up.
It was hard, though, to keep having these doubts when Noctis was painting such a beautiful picture. He could see it vividly in his mind's eye, as Noctis turned into an octopus around him. Except…"Viv?"
"Ah…" Noct looked sheepish, pulling back to rub at the back of his neck. "So there was this thing that happened where people showed up from a possible future here? Like Lucy showed up, as a teenager. And…and Vivi. She was an adult. Who…said she was ours."
He glanced up at Prompto through his eyelashes, not quite nervous, but waiting to see how that information landed. Hearing about it secondhand would probably not have the same believability as hearing it directly from Vivi, but this was the best he could do. "You weren't here yet but she said, you were eventually. And I hung onto that until you showed. Just like she said you would."
Letting his hold on Noctis go, he considered the man, head tilted to one side and giving him an appraising look. Then he scrunched up his face and punched Noct in the shoulder. Not hard enough to hurt, but to definitely feel it for a few minutes.
"We have a kid together and you're telling me now?!" He attacked Noctis again, this time going for his pockets so he could find the other man's phone. "I want to see pictures because if you didn't take any pictures of her, I'm going to be so mad."
Relief burst out of Noctis in a startled laugh as he fought off Prompto’s attack and dug out his phone himself. “Look, we were trying to let you catch up in your own time!”
He didn’t really need an excuse to pull up the couple of pictures of Vivi he had. Picking the one of her with young Gladio and young Ignis was just a bonus for his own personal amusement. “The guys were teenagers for a few days too,” he snorted. “We played a parent trap on them because they were being all stiff and awkward.” They were younger than Vivi in the picture, but everyone was smiling because he’d taken it when they weren’t expecting it. Even Ignis looked more at ease than he had that whole week.
Noct handed over the phone and sighed, happily. “She was really cool. If any version of us really does raise her…I think we did a pretty good job.”
The guys had always gotten a little sparse when it came to information about the future, always tactfully changing the subject or going off on a harmless tangent. Until then, he hadn’t realized how well they managed to keep this from him, as he considered their past conversations. “Is she the only one we have?” Prompto said, not taking his eyes off how happy everyone looked in those pictures as he flipped through the gallery.
He settled back in next to Noct, as he went through each picture and laughed at how young their boyfriends looked. “Tell me everything I missed. Seriously. I can’t catch up if I don’t know what I’m trying to catch up to.” Any interest he had in sleep had disappeared. Prompto was settling in for some stories now.
“You’re absolutely right,” Noct admitted quietly. “I didn’t…I didn’t really think about it like that.” He was watching Prompto look through the phone, his gaze thoughtful and soft. It was very late, but he only considered his options for a brief second before he pulled on all his strength and pushed to his feet with Prompto held up at his waist. All of Gladio’s weight-training over the years were finally paying off.
That didn’t mean it was easy.
“Let’s go back to bed. We can wake up the guys and tell you about Vivi,” he said, sounding like he was straining just a little bit as he carried Prompto back towards the cabin. That didn't stop him from grinning mischievously. “And how teenage Ignis kissed teenage Gladio and then ran away.”
Oh, the blond thought, eyes wide as he was lifted. He scrambled a bit to get a better grip on Noctis, settling on wrapping his arms and legs around him. Prompto was going to have to thank Gladio later for this because this was nice.
He got back to the program pretty quick though, at the mention of waking the other guys and finally getting on the same page with them. He pressed a kiss to Noctis’ forehead, trusting him to not drop him. “Yeah, I’d like that, birthday boy. Take us to our guys and tell me what I have to look forward to.”