god, fuck, it should be illegal to not be able to fall asleep until four something in the morning and then already be awake again at eight something in the morning, like body we have nowhere to be today and I'm so fucking tired, can you not? I need to work on fic today dammit!
ugh. maybe my morning glass of sweet tea (I'm a us southerner, it's normal, shut up >_>) and rambling about my fic will help. thus... this post. that at the very least you have to scroll past if not read if you followed this blog.
not been doing well lately because there is Something™ still wrong with my head and my charity seems to have fucked off to nowhere instead of helping me get appointments for a scan, so I haven't worked on aftermath fic as much as I want, but one thing I have done is made the very fun, very self-indulgent decision to add in a headcanon I have had for years and yet have never before let leave my head. other than a brief mention to the bestie once, I don't think I've ever talked about it with anyone until recently, and I've definitely never thrown it in a fic before.
that's it, that's my headcanon. lmao. in my head, he keeps it a secret, for multiple reasons, most of which he doesn't understand or think about, but yeah, it's always felt like a headcanon based more on ~ * ~ v i b e s ~ * ~ than any major basis in canon, other than that one mention of him scribbling on that painting in the citadel. but then I was watching a video of someone running around with ignis before the stargazing event in episode duscae, and he and ignis kept getting these little snippets of dialogue, and two of them have to do with him drawing as a kid, and like, yeah, okay, it's just him being a menance with it but it's still art, and there's also a mention of him trying to do some photography as a kid so like. clearly there's a bit of a creative streak buried somewhere in him XD listen let me have my validation okay.
anyways, after watching that, I couldn't stop thinking about it, and then I started thinking about adding that headcanon to my fic, and I couldn't let the idea go, so I finally decided (with help) to go for it. originally I was gonna make him just draw a bit during therapy appointments as a distraction while talking, and not make it a whole big thing, but it was like, "well if I make him do that it's gonna need some kind of mention to build up to it and not feel like it's out of nowhere, right?" so I decided I'd need to add a scene early on where he tries to draw and fails cos he's not in the right headspace, and then maybe some references to that occasionally or thoughts about trying to draw and deciding against it, etc., and then I had to figure out what he tried to draw and fail and was brainstorming with the bestie and kept coming up with all these little headcanon details and hhhh long story short it's now a Whole Big Thing™ whoops.
I already wrote the scene where he tries to draw. took me two days because writing is harder than it used to be. there is like... backstory. because I can't just do things easily. sharing it here because I fucking want to 🥰
After a minute of digging, he manages to unearth what he's looking for, and drags it out, putting it in his lap. The weight of it is a familiar, comforting one, and he opens his sketchpad with a sudden lump in his throat, flipping through the pages slowly, looking back at his old drawings.
It's a hobby he's kept since he was little, but where he used to openly colour and scribble and make childish drawings, after his coma his art had changed, and, without understanding why, he'd started hiding it. They hadn't seemed like fun, goofy drawings anymore. They'd felt like—and it sounds so stupid to think, his cheeks blushing hotly when he does—pieces of himself. The hurting, messed up, angry pieces of himself that he didn't want his dad or Ignis to see.
Not that he could have put that into words back then, and he's still not sure he has all the words for it now, he just... knows that it helps. He can still remember staying up late at night in his room at Fenestela Manor in Tenebrae, hours after he was supposed to be asleep, trying hard to ignore his useless legs while he drew picture after picture in a spiral notebook he'd gotten from Luna. His lines had been heavy and dark, his movements with the pencil aggressive, and more than once he'd snapped it in half and had to replace it, but it had felt like the only safe place where he could let all those feelings out.
That notebook is gone now, left behind in Tenebrae, abandoned during the invasion and probably destroyed by ransacking soldiers, a thought that still leaves him with a pang of sorrow. He doesn't remember a lot of that time, but he remembers his art. It had been—he still doesn't know what to call it. He's certain what he'd experienced during his coma had been more than a dream. The little fox that had appeared to him... Carbuncle had never explained to him what he was, and when he'd woke to find the little figurine beside his bed he might have dismissed it as his brain somehow registering it despite the coma, but then he'd gone to Tenebrae and Luna had shown him the Cosmogony, and nestled in between a painting of Gentiana and Umbra and Pryna, there had been a winged little fennec fox that looked exactly like Carbuncle.
Messengers of the gods, Luna had said, and he knows from the reactions of his dad and the other adults around him when he woke that his coma had been serious. They hadn't been sure he would wake up. His family has had long associations with the gods just the same as Luna's has, so it hadn't been surprising to him that the Carbuncle charm his dad had gifted him would be a connection to a Messenger that would be willing to help him.
But the dreams that hadn't been just dreams had stuck with him, and those late night hours spent drawing by lamplight had mostly been him trying to put those remembered scenes to paper, to make them exist somewhere outside his mind even as he'd poured all his mess of emotions into them. They'd been childish drawings, and not good, but they'd been his first attempts at serious art, and they'd meant something to him.
After the invasion and the loss of that notebook, though, he'd given up on trying to draw the fragments of his coma dreams, but there'd been plenty of notebooks at home for him to use, and he'd found himself still compelled to at least draw Carbuncle. The little fox had been—and still is—a source of comfort to him, of safety, and he'd found himself drawing Carbuncle any time he felt bad. And it had felt easier somehow, in ways he still can't explain, to put his emotions onto Carbuncle in his art rather than trying to draw depictions of himself feeling sad or scared or lonely. Eventually it wasn't the only thing he drew, but he still has multiple notebooks full of sketches and drawings featuring his guardian friend.
Those notebooks are tucked away now in his room at the Citadel, hidden safely where the maids can't find them, but he's had this sketchpad since shortly after he moved into his apartment, bought with his own money, and it's over half-full by now—he's had a lot of struggles he'd felt the need to put to paper. And sometimes he has still liked to draw just for fun.
He doesn't know if he's any good yet. He's been drawing for ten years now, eight of them serious, and he likes to think he's decent, but he's self-taught and never had any sort of formal lessons, so there's probably all sorts of things he's getting wrong. But most of the time it doesn't matter. He just wants the feelings out of him, and his art serves that purpose.
so yeah. noct draws. and I mean look. one of the tags for this fic is gonna be "self-indulgent as fuck" and it's fanfic, I can do what I want 🥰 but why would you hate this??? it's a solid headcanon, right up there with "noct deserves a cat (2k18)"
(because he fucking does, and yes, he has a cat in this fic too <3333 her name is Benji.)
anyways, that's where I'm at. I stopped in the middle of rewriting chapter 48 for this fucking headcanon lmao. mainly because I got to the part in his therapy appointment where he has to find something new to use to distract himself while talking because he doesn't trust himself to use the new (glued down with industrial strength glue) zen garden his therapist got after he accidentally destroyed the old one while angry. and I redid her room for the rewrite ages ago because she works with kids and teens and an adult office didn't make sense so now she's got a play area that includes art supplies and it was like, "hmm. I could make him draw..." and NOW HERE WE ARE.
I am trying to go through the rest of the prior chapters to find more places to add references to his art/him drawing so it feels natural and not like I just suddenly decided halfway through the fic to make him an artist and threw in a random scene early on (even if that's exactly what I did, shhh, don't fucking judge me, I'll judge you back 👀 this is sleep deprivation talking btw, not fayth), and MAYBE IF I COULD STOP GETTING DISTRACTED BY REREADING MY OWN FIC I'd be done with it by now but gjklsdjgksl well, soon, hopefully. I really need to get back to 48. I need to step it up and get through the rewrite and starting writing new stuff so I can fucking finish this thing and post it before I die. but I'm also gonna have to go to the outline and add in all the new stuff related to drawing that I've come up with, cos like I said, it's now a Whole Big Thing™... really don't know why I keep doing this to myself, why do I keep making this fic bigger and bigger, why do I keep thinking of things to go back and add to stuff I've already written, brain can we please just be fucking normal about this fic for once???
anyways, tea is gone and I've had an egg-free breakfast wrap I made myself during meal prep cooking week, so time to buckle down and shut up and go look for places to add in more mentions of artist!noct.
ps. sometimes he doodles fish and he draws them in a style prompto would describe as cute horror, if he knew that noct drew and had seen the doodles
