hi im making a ficrecs list on my side blog, is it okay if i put your work (enchanted to meet you) and tag you? thanks babe
ohmy! helloooo of course. please that's an honour. i m touched! thankyou for liking my fic enough to recommend it and also wow thankyou for asking. this is new haha <33
Summary: In which Noctis tries to bake a cake for Ignis's birthday at one in the morning and Ignis unwittingly ruins the surprise by waking up.
Day Two of @ignoctweek! Yaaasss~ Prompt was Noctis cooks!
Read on AO3
“Oh, damn.”
He grabbed the oven mitt, wrenching the pan from the oven as it billowed smoke through the kitchen. How hard could this be?? He dropped it into the sink and turned the water on full blast. At this rate, he was going to have Monica and Dustin and Talcott awake, let alone–
“Noct…?”
Oh damn.
Ignis shuffled up next to him, bleary-eyed beneath his glasses but looking at him far too keenly for it. He hadn’t even heard him come down the stairs. The glasses got shoved up the bridge of his nose, a hand running through his limp hair, as he looked on at the burnt mess in the sink. “What are you doing…?”
“Um, just, uh–”
Noct looked at him, wanting to be annoyed that he’d woken up while also wanting to smile because he was up. Normally it would probably be the smiling thing, but… this wasn’t normal. This was meant to be a special occasion.
“Trying to cook? Or… bake?” Ignis asked, squinting at the blackened substance in the pan.
He relented. With a sigh. “Bake,” he muttered. “‘s not going so well.”
“Ah.” Ignis paused, and then the inevitable question came. “It’s past one, why now?” He didn’t stop there. “If there was something you wanted, I could have made it for you earlier.”
Noct shook his head. Get him to spill all his secrets in one go, huh. He was tired and frustrated and would have rathered leave this to the care of someone like Monica, but that defeated the purpose. He’d wanted to do it himself.
Contrary to their– and his own– jokes about his cooking, he wasn’t incompetent. He had done well enough on his own. He just couldn’t whip up all the fancy stuff that Ignis did, and… it was biting him in the ass, now. “I didn’t want it earlier.”
“I gathered.” Iggy turned away to yawn into his hand. “You should go back to bed, Noct. We can handle whatever you’d like in the morning, together.”
“No,” he interrupted. “I’ll try again.” He shoved away from the counter to make another detour back to the fridge. Two eggs, and milk, and at least he hadn’t been able to ruin the cream… you didn’t have to add anything to that, all you had to do was whip it and be done, if he ever got that far.
Iggy was watching him. Probably biding his time so that he could–
Yep, there was his hand, resting on the top of the refrigerator door. “Noct,” he said slowly, and Noctis didn’t rise from rummaging through the fridge. “Is this about more than… what it seems like?”
“What does it seem like?”
“I’m not sure.”
“It’s your birthday, Specs.” Full on resigned exasperation. There was no chance Ignis would leave him without an explanation, and there was no way he was going to surprise him now.
Although… in the dull over-the-stove light in the small kitchen, Ignis might have looked a little surprised just then. Half asleep, hair swept across his forehead, glasses sliding down his nose again as his eyes flickered to the discarded pan in the sink. “… Oh. Were you–”
“Cake.” He nudged the fridge closed behind him. “The chiffon cake you like, except it really hasn’t been going right.”
“Noct… you didn’t have to.”
“I wanted to.”
“At one in the morning?”
“I wanted to surprise you.”
“Well, you’ve certainly accomplished that.”
He was sure he didn’t mean it condescendingly, but it still felt that way. It didn’t even sound sarcastic, so why did he have to brace his hands against the countertop and try not to snap? Oh right. It was one in the morning and he was a failure.
A hand brushed against his. He looked up, and forced himself to smile at Ignis. It wasn’t a hard as his irritation might have led him to believe. Ignis was, well, cute when he was half asleep. When his guard was down, when Noctis could curl into him and bury his fingers into his hair and fall asleep without Ignis complaining about the drool on his shirt. (He never did complain about that.) It wasn’t an Ignis he got to see often, really. Ignis was the last one to go to bed and the first one awake in the morning, and Noctis liked to sleep. Once or twice, he had planned on getting up earlier or staying up later, but once he sprawled out on a mattress or crawled into the tent, it was all over.
“Thank you.” Ignis pressed a kiss to his cheek.
Noct tried not to pout. “I haven’t done anything…”
“It’s the thought that counts.”
“That’s such a cheap saying.”
“And yet, it’s still true.” Ignis took his face in his hands. “Alright?”
“Why’re you asking me, it’s your birthday,” Noctis murmured, and leaned in to kiss him.
Sleepy and sleep-deprived, and they melted into each other more than usual, Ignis’s hands on Noctis’s face and Noct sliding his arms around Ignis’s waist. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. So what if he had burned the cake? He’d give it another go, just as soon as Ignis pulled back. And if he didn’t want to stop kissing him… well, it was his birthday. He could stay there all day and Noct wouldn’t complain. Not a single time.
“I’ll help,” Ignis murmured. He pressed a kiss to Noct’s forehead and then pulled back.
“No,” Noctis said quickly. “I don’t want you to– it’s your birthday, take it easy.”
“I don’t mind.” Ignis shrugged. “I like it.”
“You don’t like cooking.”
“I like spending time with you.” A quirked smile. Head tilted, eyes closed. The kind of thing that made Noct feel like he was turning into a puddle of goo. “How’s that?”
“… Good.” The prince beamed. “Let me do the heavy lifting, though.”
“Oh, yes.” Ignis rolled his eyes fondly before turning to look for another pan. “I’ll let you lift the cake from the oven, even.”
Noct might have shoved his shoulder, and he might have laughed a little too hard when Iggy shot him an amused look over the rim of his glasses.
Prompto and Gladio found them on the sofa, asleep. The lapels of Ignis’s pajamas had flour dusted on them and there was a band-aid on one of Noct’s fingers. Glasses were pushed up on the top of Ignis’s head and Noct still had an arm around his shoulders. They looked happy. And a little uncomfortable, on the sofa like that, and tired, and well, not very photogenic but Prompto snapped a photo, anyway.
They decided to let them sleep.
(But only for awhile. There was cake downstairs, and it kind of looked amazing.)
Look at all this tea, yoshi! What a great way to start 2018! This should keep us going for a while! And they’re all so unusual too! Ehehe, but there’s lots of fruit teas, yoshi! Karakakoo! Don’t mind if I do~
Hmm?
Do mango and pomegranate go well with green tea? Awawawa! I don’t know, I never thought about it before, yoshi... It must be ok, otherwise they wouldn’t make it, right? Hmm... I’ll make sure to test them all and report back! Leave it to me, yoshi!
Minder! When you’re in class you’re supposed to take notes, yoshi! Not draw all over your notebook! How is that supposed to help you study later, yoshi?!
Hmph!
Well I hope you have a good memory, yoshi! Because I wasn’t there to help you! Awawawawa! Minder, please pay more attention in class, yoshi!
