(this is kind of sad, because the idea was a little sad to begin with. thanks to @milodrums for spurring me to write sad WOR Promnis, by sending me a link to this. thanks also to @makikoigami for hosting the writing sprint in which I drafted this.)
Quick Fic Pick 70: silver and ash
For once it’s a sound that forces him to swim up and out from the murky depths of sleep and the tangling cords of his nightmares, the low-level dread and the low-level wariness that he still can’t seem to shake off and that he’s almost accepted as the part of him that’s grown in the absence of the sun, in the absence of the stars, in the cold wash of the moon, and he opens his eyes and places his free hand over his heart. Presses the palm in over the weary too-tripping beat, the spiking pulse in his veins, and he feels that same pulse jump again in alarm when the bulb in the rust-eaten lamp next to his side of the bed sputters and throws the room into jittering shadows for only a moment.
The light that returns is a wan mockery of warm inviting gold, and he won’t ask for anything newer or better, because others need that better light, that brighter light. He can manage the semi-lit conditions of this falling-apart-at-the-seams camper for now. He can manage the spiderwebbing rays, the dust in the corners.
Soft complaining sound next to him: and Prompto reacts with all of his instincts. Hauls that wiry scarred form close. The circles he presses into the exposed skin of Ignis’s shoulder waver, and aren’t entirely perfectly shaped, and it’s still a surprise when that warmth seems to be enough, when the quiet broken notes falling from his lips seem to be enough. Some throwaway one-hit wonder that had been all the rage all those years ago, and why does he remember the tune and the words, why is there some part of his mind that won’t let the stale bubblegum-pop go? No one sings about hearts and stars and flowers any more.
Ugh, dark thoughts, he thinks, and he has to make an effort to push those away: so he presses his nose into the back of Ignis’s neck, and he draws in a deep heave of a breath. The strangely fragrant waft of -- old soil under harsh floodlights. The patient coaxing of hands stirring through small half-cracked pots, sowing little seeds, guiding the struggling plantlets. Maybe in a week or in a month or in a year Ignis will succeed, and he’ll at least be at home in the varying sharp savory wafts of green herbs, of plants that can be used to heal.
Maybe, Prompto thinks, and he clutches Ignis closer and try as he might, he can’t make himself go back to sleep just yet, and he doesn’t even know what that sound that had woken him up had been, and he opens his eyes and gets an elbow braced underneath the rest of him so he can lean up and over and -- well, at least he’s gotten over himself and learned to watch Ignis, watch over him, and make sure he gets the rest he needs.
Ignis is -- still bandaged all over, but at least he’s no longer completely helpless, not that he ever actually was in any sense of that word. Just -- hobbled, perhaps. Held back by darkness.
But Prompto remembers watching him earlier, the bright whistling arc of a staff in his hands, and the swift martial song of his movements as he played out the entire length of that weapon and used every last inch to his own advantage, and there’d been no need to worry about blindness, about accidents, now that he could move with lethal and precisely focused intent once again.
Intent like what Prompto knows lives keen and bristling in his own skin and nerves, wired straight to the guns he wears like neatly grounding weights at his hips, when he’s out hunting.
Intent, that he thinks he feels still crackling in Ignis’s own sleeping form, the hunch of him in his bones and his muscles, like lines wearing in deeper and deeper and the changes in their own bodies, constantly deprived of warmth and of sunlight --
And it’s a surprise, and it isn’t, when his eyes catch on the light-colored strands of Ignis, the wisps of untamed hair just at his ears: light enough and pale enough to be nearly bleached.
Oh.
Ignis is going gray, and it’s almost a wonder that it hasn’t happened sooner.
Sooner, what with the stress of three and four lifetimes crammed into something so much shorter. The stress, the rage, the bitter mourning tears, the sheer jagged pain. The bruises still yellowing on too-pale skin, a shocking contrast to stark purple-brown of scars born from magic and from fire.
Prompto has to bite hard at the inside of his cheek so he doesn’t burst into tears, so he doesn’t wake Ignis, so he doesn’t give in to the thorns and the weights around his heart. The hollowing howling agony that refuses to dull, that’s anchored firmly into the hollow spaces between his ribs.
And still that flaring bright pain doesn’t let him stay silent: so he presses his mouth to Ignis’s temple instead, and mutters small apologies as soon as he feels the tears come streaking and splashing down, damp and gathering in the short strands of hair, the vivid burn-lines.
“Prompto,” and the single word is clogged with all the world, all the emotions that he can now feel, jagging in Ignis’s heartbeat that he feels out with his other hand.
“Sorry sorry sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. Not for that.”
And it’s his turn to be turned around, to be held: the entire breadth of Ignis pressed against his back, the bellows of him expanding and contracting in forceful breaths.
Prompto sobs, only a little, only enough to be heard and hushed and pulled closer, and he clutches desperately at the hand over his heart, until he can force himself to let go of his tears.
“Will you tell me?”
It’s a small thing, it’s such a stupid detail, and yet he says it out loud, because he can’t not say it. Because Ignis is asking him to say it out loud, and he gave up hiding secrets from Ignis -- from any of the others -- a long time ago.
So he says, small and clear and still fearful anyway, “You’re going gray.”
Still, silent, broken only by a startled breath.
And: “Am I?”
Prompto grabs that hand of Ignis’s in both of his own. “Yeah.”
Shaky laugh, unexpected, the exact opposite of the words that follow. “I thought I’d already gotten started on that.”
“This’s new. I think.”
“I believe you, Prompto. I just don’t believe -- myself.”
There’re too many layers in those words, and the layers make Prompto ache and make him wince, and he turns around and he covers Ignis’s temples with the palms of his hands, so he can pull him down, so he can kiss him.
Soft whispers against his lips, against his teeth. Ignis’s head falling back, opening up, baring himself, and Prompto redoubles his efforts and lets Ignis tug him closer, lets Ignis sift careful calloused fingers into his hair.
“And you,” he hears Ignis ask, gasping for breath, clothes pushed partly away, flat on his back.
Prompto shifts on him where he’s straddling those narrow hips, those muscle-corded thighs, and shakes his head. “I -- probably. Scratch that. They’ve gotta be there. I just can’t find them.”
“Then we can match.”
He laughs, a little, and he hears the edge in the sound and knows it for what it is, and he can say, “Yeah. Yeah we can.”
(I was asked to continue with this astronaut AU and I got caught on the idea of how a musician/photographer could have met a software engineer who happens to do a lot of work on a space station, and this was the result, and thanks to @stopmopingstarthoping for asking for this.)
Quick Fic Pick 72: can you see me, major?
The bed looks awful good, Prompto thinks, the bed looks awful good and so do the threadbare blankets, so do the squashed-flat pillows, but -- every step he takes causes him to shed an awful amount of glitter onto the cold tiled floors and he curses the cheap beer and the hangover that’s already creeping in around the edges of the back of his mind, and he forces himself to head into the tiny bathroom.
He maybe curses the piano he’d been stuck with -- something fatally wrong with the pedals -- he’d had to improvise and go without any of the usual three and as a result his ears are still ringing, because the little bar had already been too loud and then his songs had been discordant, harsh, stripped bare of sostenuto and of legato, and he’s never never never doing anything like that ever again -- worst comes to worst, he’ll improvise on an electronic keyboard.
Anything but that jangling shit sound that’s still maybe sawing at his nerves even after he washes his hair three times, even after the water goes lukewarm and he leaves a trail of swirling spiraling sparkling muck on the shower drain.
Maybe he should have taken the sleeping tablets that Iris had tried to press on him. Maybe he should have smuggled Holly’s pot into the venue. Sleeping’s the farthest thing from his mind, here in this lonely shoebox of a motel room, a hundred miles from home and he can’t just make a beeline for his actual own quarters because he still has shit to do in the morning.
Shit like -- he groans, and lays out his only “get in front of the cameras and smile” outfit out on the bare shelves of the tall thin closet. Black button-down shirt, neon-green tie, undershirt, boxers, red-striped socks.
The bed fits him exactly: it is as long as he is and as wide as he is, and he curls himself up into a miserable ball of blanket and pillows, and he goes to charge his phone and he has to look, he has to look, because he can’t breathe and he misses his room and all the other things that live in that room. The ginger cat that belongs to the family next door, that spends most of its nights sleeping on top of his baby grand piano. The safe that contains his hoard of film cartridges for his analog SLR camera. The equally secured crate with its multiple lock-holes for his digital cameras.
All he has for this trip is the usual, which is his smartphone, which is now exactly two years, eight months, and three days out of date but it’s still got the single best camera he’s ever encountered in this kind of thing and so he’s gonna hold on until the thing breaks itself into little bits and pieces of shattered glass and circuit boards.
Fortunately the image he needs to look at is -- freely available online, freely remixable.
Impossible to find a comfortable spot in this bed so he just flops back onto the pillow and swipes to the image, the first file in the camera roll on this device.
The image is labeled “sand dunes” on the ’net, and he’s long since given up on complaining that it just doesn’t do any justice to the actual view, and he feasts his eyes, and thinks about letting go of the day and of the night and of all of the aggravations in his life.
Calm and dynamic all at once: looking straight down from the Eos Space Station, the image shows off the dusty-golden sands of the Leide deserts, and the single rarity of Lake Hammerhead, still and huge and the perfect reflection of the blue skies in that region. Cloud formations in the image cast shadows onto the sands and onto the lake’s shores, and in the lower-right corner, still mostly clear when he swipes to zoom in, are the hundreds upon hundreds of specks of captured movement: the migration of a massive herd of coeurls.
Every time he looks at the image he finds new details: a statue casting a strange shadow, a particularly elegant curve of dune, new and different phantom shapes in the cloud formations.
Every time he looks at the image he finds himself being able to take a deep clean breath: it must be the colors and the lighting, or it could be the idea of that oddly suspended serenity that he finds in the tension between the clouds and the coeurls and the shapes in the sand.
He takes that breath, and the words fall almost gently into his mind, the line fully formed and he swipes to one of the note-taking apps and locates one of his documents.
Maybe this is the line that completes a stanza, or this is the line that begins the chorus -- the idea blows softly away and he lets himself focus on the one thing, the important thing, which is -- capturing the line.
Sailing shadows in a summer-spark sky
He numbers that line, following all the others he’s already drafted, and he hums quietly to himself and the memory of the image allows him to stay calm, and veer away from the usual stresses of creating something new and something he’s never heard before.
And then, just because he can, he switches to a different document in the app, and reviews the story behind the image of Leide, taken from space: the name of the photographer. How the scene had been captured in the first place. Nothing more or less than a complete accident, a calibration of image sensors, a mistake.
It’s a damn pretty mistake, Prompto thinks, and he falls asleep and dreams of stars sparkling embedded in those desert-stretch ripples -- stars that are still winking in the dawn a few hours later, when he’s woken up and asked to get dressed and this is the last time he’s participating in one of those early-morning news-magazine shows.
He can’t quite smile, when he’s ushered into the green rooms and he crosses his arms atop the nearest horizontal surface, puts his head down, thinks of coeurls on the run and closes his eyes --
“This seat taken?”
He shakes his head.
“I’ll -- leave you to it then.”
Some impulse makes him shake his head a little, and groan, and mutter, “Sorry. I swear I’m not usually rude like this. Not enough sleep.”
“Ah. Well,” and is there something familiar about that voice? But his head is so heavy, and the climate control in the room keeps his sleeves cool and comfortable. “Been a while since I pulled the good kind of all-nighter.”
“There’s no such thing,” Prompto says, and he sighs and keeps his eyes closed when he straightens up. He only turns his head in the direction of the other voice. “And I’m telling you that as someone who has to do all-nighters all the fucking time.”
“So what are you doing up so early?”
“Beats me,” he says. “Not like I’m even supposed to be singing, they want me to talk about the other thing,” and he raises his hands, pretends to hold up a camera, pretends to click the shutter button.
“Ah. That’s a little different from singing, isn’t it?”
He snorts. “A little and a lot.”
“Just so.”
Before he can make up his mind to open his eyes, there’s a rustle of movement on his other side, and a voice saying, “No, no, don’t open, you need a lot of concealer right now.”
Prompto groans in agreement. “Please. I’d do it myself if I had steadier hands.”
“Let me work.”
By the time the makeup is misted and set, he’s alone in the green room, and he only has the ghost of that almost-known voice to go by, and he doesn’t even have a face to match that voice to.
So it’s a real shock when he’s joined on one of the couch-sets by --
“Have you met?” the segment host chirps. “You know, common interests and all?”
And Ignis Scientia, sitting next to him, smiles in a small precise way, and shakes his head. “Hardly. But I’m happy to be here, and I hope to learn something from Mr Argentum.”
“Not sure I have anything to teach you when it comes to looking at things,” he blurts out, and the words fall in a puddle between them, completely reckless.
“I am not worried about my eyes; I am worried about everything else,” and Ignis fucking Scientia performs the exact same gesture of holding up a nonexistent camera, of taking a photograph -- only he’s looking straight at Prompto when he does it -- looking at him, and smiling, and Prompto takes a deep breath, and attempts to smile back.
“Oh, interesting,” the host says, and Prompto knows he’s beet-red for the entire time he’s on the air with the exact same Ignis Scientia who’d accidentally taken the photograph that’s been his obsession for some time now.
And he can still feel the heat lingering in his forehead and his throat when he says, safely off the couch-set, “What exactly is stopping you from taking pictures anyway? Are you that busy, in space?”
“I’m afraid I am; and I’m afraid I get stuck looking at code anyway, so.” Even a shrug is elegant, on him, and Prompto would curse him if he hadn’t been drinking in the prettiness of him, if he hadn’t been itching to take a picture of him.
And all he’s got is his smartphone and he raises it helplessly between them, and Ignis Scientia only nods, small calm measured movement, and Prompto’s hand is shaking but the image he takes comes out startlingly vivid and clear.
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly look like that.”
“You actually do,” Prompto says.
“I’d like a copy, if you don’t mind -- let me give you my number. I think I’ll still be using this one for a few more days.”
“Or I could work on this a little and then send it to you afterwards,” he says, scrambling for his footing in a familiar topic.
“I would like that. It was lovely to meet you. Mr Argentum.”
“Prompto,” he says, holding his hand out at last. “You don’t have to be so damn formal, and no one calls me that anyway.”
“Then please call me Ignis, and will you please email me -- your work?”
“Yeah.”
(He does a little better, once he’s done jittering, and the email he sends has the processed portrait as an attachment, and the following lines:
(Sailing shadows in a summer-spark sky -- catch the clouds and the contrails in careful hands like yours)
(I don’t know how a conversation about Johan Akan on Twitter turned into inspiration for Promnis, but *hearts* to my always indulgent friends @johanirae and @milodrums for letting me get away with this!)
(It goes without saying: that’s NOT a real Instagram account :D)
Ignis Scientia (House Scientia. I serve at the pleasure of the King of Lucis, and that of the Crown Prince.)
[photograph: three fountain pens in green trimmed in gold. one pen is uncapped, and its nib is pointed toward a trailing line of blue-violet ink. the line seems to be part of a signature or of an interrupted sentence.]
[photograph: three cans of Ebony, one celadon-colored soup bowl, one pair of steel chopsticks and one steel spoon]
[photograph: the towers of the Citadel against a rain-gray sky]
[photograph: two daggers resting on a piece of cream-colored cloth, next to a dark gray whetstone]
[photograph: blurry outline of a person wearing black, seeming to spar with the blurry outline of a person who is wearing fatigue trousers and boots, but no shirt]
[photograph: a bouquet of sylleblossoms and a leatherbound book, the title blurred out]
[photograph: on a desk next to a leather-and-felt tray and a neat line of fountain pens, a square of paper that's actually a photograph. The photograph within the photograph depicts a chocobo, head tilted at an acute and inquisitive angle. In the lower corner of the photograph is the face of a blond boy with freckles and blue-violet eyes and a brilliant smile.]
"Ignis?"
Careful tone in the one word, in his name, in the very short question. Careful like asking for permission, even when the speaker has been explicitly told again and again that he doesn't need to. Careful like being gentle, like an endearing insistence on respect.
He looks up from scrolling through his feed and the comments: What the hell, so old-fashioned, a photo of a photo XD and Ah come on, did you have to post me getting my ass kicked?
And the boy who's appeared next to him is so much more interesting, windblown and sun-burnished and sweating after his run: the morning light falls adoringly onto wiry shoulders, onto long lean legs. Knobby knees and hair sticking up every which way, it's true, and the too-dark flush on those freckle-stippled cheeks, and Ignis sighs, and reaches into the cooler in the front seat of his car, and hands over a full bottle of water. Drop-drop-drop of condensation on the ridges of the bottle, onto the boy's hands as he cracks the sealed cap open and pours the entire contents of the bottle into his mouth in one swallow.
"Thanks."
"Think nothing of it. Where are the others?"
"I have no idea?" Prompto laughs, a little. Hooks his thumb over his shoulder. "I just went past them, you know? They were going easy. I think they were. I like running full-tilt, you know? Gets the blood moving. Gets me awake anyway."
"If only that worked on the others," Ignis mutters, only a little amused -- and then he sets the thought of Noctis and Gladio running aside, just a little away from the focus of his mind and his thoughts, and he's moved by a sudden impulse and he smiles.
Raises the phone in his hand between himself and Prompto. "I don't often find myself in this position, so -- may I?"
Blink, blink, sun falling into lovely blue-violet eyes. "I don't look my best. I mean, at least let me fix my face?"
Too late: Ignis takes the photo as soon as Prompto laughs, that sweet sound and its shadow of self-deprecation, and he catches the image of freckles alight, of Prompto in full flower like he's leaning into the warmth of the morning.
And he smiles, too, and shows the portrait to Prompto: "Do I pass muster?"
"That is not me, that is so not me," and Prompto laughs some more, but now he sounds honestly surprised and honestly happy. "That guy in your photo, he's really pretty, you know?"
"Good, I'm glad you say so: I do believe I've achieved my objective."
Pause. Breath. "What?"
"I wanted you to see yourself as I do you," he says, and with a tilt of the phone that's now open to Instagram, he asks for permission. "May I?"
Stuck-out tongue. "Depends on the caption."
"Hmm." So Ignis thinks, and types, and he doesn't filter the shot in any way. Just posts it, and the caption in which he's tagged Prompto says:
The sun loves him as I do.
Prompto is fumbling for his phone, and is pulling up his own Instagram, and he's wide-eyed as he says the caption softly to himself, and -- "Seriously?"
"Have you ever known me to -- to make jest of you?"
"You laugh when I do something weird."
"I meant to laugh with you, beloved. I would never be so crass as to laugh at you."
"I -- you -- "
Ignis smiles, and stows his phone in his pocket.
He's surprised and he's not, when Prompto catches at him with sweaty hands, still cool from the lingering moisture of the water bottle that's now on the ground -- and Prompto's lips are cool, too, when he moves in for a kiss.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Fandom: Final Fantasy XV
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Prompto Argentum/Ignis Scientia
Characters: Ignis Scientia, Prompto Argentum
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Astronauts, International Space Station, Eos Space Station, Space Stations, Space Exploration, Planetary Observation, Astronaut Ignis Scientia, Photographer Prompto Argentum, Musician Prompto Argentum, Inspired by Music, Prompt Fic, References to David Bowie, Romantic Fluff, Fluff and Feels, Inspired by Real Events
Summary: Ignis Scientia, of the Eos Space Station, is coming up on the end of his long year in space, and there are people back down on the planet that he loves, the planet where he was born, who miss him and who are waiting to welcome him back. (At the top of that list is Prompto Argentum.)
(White Day fics! I’m posting all four of them now, and then there’ll be a sort of index post at the end. Enjoy the fluff and the sugar overload!)
(Fic 04 is for @ milodrums, who didn’t specify a pairing, but provided the prompt “feeding chocolate”.)
Quick Fic Pick 33: the taste of affection
“You’ve got to help me eat some of this,” Noctis says as soon as he steps in. “I mean, there’s having lots of chocolate, which I like, but this is going way beyond having lots of chocolate, and that’s not, that’s not right.”
“Shall I send them over to some of those organizations you do volunteer work with?” he asks, already tapping out a draft email.
Steps, coming closer, and he looks over to where Prompto is almost stepping into his personal space, hands behind his back, winning smile and freckled flush. “But don’t send chocolates to the pet shelters,” he’s saying. “Chocolates smell good to dogs and cats. And they probably shouldn’t be eating chocolates.”
He nods. “My thanks for the reminder. I’ll see to it that the people running the shelters receive some of the candy, and they will know not to share with their wards.”
That smile brightens, somehow, and Ignis coughs quietly and looks back at his phone.
Distraction: Prompto is a distraction.
And it’s a distraction that works all too well, Ignis realizes after he’s finished sending off all the emails: because that’s when he notices that there’s something in his pocket, and he had certainly not been carrying anything else into Noctis’s quarters.
He excuses himself and steps into the corridor, and hits a speed-dial number without looking, followed by the speakerphone function.
Ringing on the other end as he steps into the elevator, and he’s alone, so he takes out the thing that’s been slipped into his pocket.
Small box in clear plastic, and inside there’s a stylized chocobo-shape, large head and small body, wrapped in green foil.
“Hello, Prompto speaking,” says the voice on the line, when the phone call connects.
“You meant to, to give me a gift and not stay to see me open it,” he chides, very gently.
“Ah, come on, Ignis, I didn’t mean to run,” is the laughing response. “I just thought, you’re a really private guy, you keep to yourself a lot. Something we have in common, yeah? And sometimes I feel a little odd when I eat and there’re people who might be watching me. Just puts me off sometimes. Thought you’d be okay with me leaving you to enjoy the treat by yourself.”
“That only means that I will not have the opportunity to thank you immediately on receipt.”
More laughter. “And it’s not like I’m not going to see you tomorrow, or the day after, so is that a thing we should worry about?”
“Still.” He heads into the garage and the signal turns choppy, and he hangs up, and sends a text message instead. Where are you right now?
Park near my place, why?
I will be right there.
He stops at a flower shop and buys an arrangement of sunflowers and red lilies, and the person behind the counter beams and ties the whole thing up with green ribbons at his request.
He finds Prompto leaning against the swings, when he makes it to the park.
“Heya,” and a wiggle of gloved fingers. “Please tell me you at least tried the chocolate. I’m not like you, okay, king of the kitchen, but I’m not useless either – but I haven’t been making chocolates for long.”
Ignis retrieves the chocobo-shaped chocolate and unwraps it, and holds it out to Prompto. “Which part should I try first? You have made this a little larger than bite-sized.”
“Yeah, that was the smallest mold I had. Um, I guess let’s put it out of its misery, you should eat the head first?” And Prompto breaks the chocolate into a handful of neat pieces.
Chocolate-stains on his fingertips, and Ignis smiles and catches his wrist gently in his hand. “You have already gotten your hands dirty for my sake. May I ask you to, ah, keep doing so?”
Grin, sweet and sharp and bright. “Oh, is that how you want to play it? Okay.”
When Prompto holds the chocobo-head up to him, he leans close and eats the whole thing in one careful bite.
Dark chocolate and a faint hint of rum on his tongue, melting into bittersweet richness.
Gonna cheat a bit and extend Chinese to also include my parent’s dialect of Hakka :D My favorite word is Lin An, means evening, but literally translates as close to darkness :D Think it’s a a so much more poetic way of describing evening :D
