While they’d assured her that, given it was her wedding, she was entitled to make the biggest asshole of herself if she damn well wanted to, she insisted that her wedding party honor her passage into married life as she went in: with boisterous applause, sloppy toasts, and maybe a little fire, if they were feeling daring.

No fire yet – that’s what you get for letting Luche stay sober – but Pelna and Nyx were at least honoring everything else on her check list. She was the bride. They were obligated by the laws of the universe to do her bidding, no matter how ridiculous and destructive that bidding might be. They’d been doing it for years. Didn’t have to be getting married for their devotion to change. They were experts at this by now.

But damn if that wine wasn’t as strong as Crowe’s favorite bourbon – if she’d been in charge of the wedding plans, it very well would have been bourbon. It was deceptive, like most things from Tenebrae. It was smooth and fruity and went down like melting chocolate. It was hard to put down. Another reason Luche, at least, should stay sober – they’d agreed on this way ahead of time, Pelna was hazy on remembering. If someone needed their stomach pumped, Luche was the driver with the most lethal accuracy for weaving in and out of Insomnian traffic. And he had an uncanny sense for where every hospital in the city seemed to be.

Even Libertus had more than they ever expected him to. He was a mess over Crowe getting married, equal parts proud and mortally distressed. That was his baby sister, standing side by side with the Princess of Tenebrae for the rest of their lives. Did this mean she would retire from the Glaive? Would she not be coming back to Galahd with them when the peace treaties were finalized and Lucis didn’t need them anymore? Would he never see her again? Would she know that fireballs were not proper etiquette for a Tenebraesian court if someone disagreed with her? Would this cause an international incident?

They had gotten more of a headache from Libertus’s frets in the weeks preceding the nuptials than they did from the wine now. There was little he could do to assure him that everything was fine, Luna was fine, and by extension, Crowe would be fine.

It wasn’t until Libertus talked to the Princess himself, fully intending on reciting a hefty mental pamphlet of fully sourced, single-spaced shovel talk that he could accept Crowe was getting married. He came away from that conversation looking like he’d just been slammed by a falling star – and maybe even a little in love himself. Most things from Tenebrae were deceptive. That went for both the wine, and the nobles.

So Libertus could drink with a clear conscience. He was a happy drunk. They all were. Their girl was getting married to the most wonderful lady in all of Eos… the most wonderful lady. Crowe was the most wonderful woman in all of Eos. They weren’t biased or anything, that was just a fact. Luna never argued.

The brides were dancing amongst the pulsing wedding party from each side. While Luna had requested the ceremony take place in Tenebrae, Crowe had negotiated a rave of an after-party. “I want to see if that stuffy court of yours knows how to dance,” she’d said. Luna’s face had lit up like a sunrise at the suggestion. So, the lights were reeling and the music was loud in the ballroom of Fenestala Manor.

“We’re dancing!” Nyx suddenly proclaimed with that last gulp of wine under his belt.

“We’ve been dancing for hours.” Hadn’t they? What was he doing all this swaying for if they hadn’t been dancing the whole time?

Nyx grabbed him by the arm and they both weaved onto the ballroom floor, shoulders bouncing off of each other and elbows linked to keep themselves from getting separated. Had to hold onto your drinking buddy, that was a safety requirement. Pelna totally used that excuse to trip into Nyx’s side and maybe slap a hand against his obnoxiously firm chest to keep from face-planting. All in the name of safety.

Ogling Nyx as he danced… maybe not quite as honorable.

Pelna had never been good at dancing – not sober, at least. He was told that he was a fantastic dancer, but only during the moments he could barely remember. Nyx, however, was a hypnotic dancer, with or without help from a royal wine choice.

He’d always been a great dancer. He never got to see it as often since they joined the Kingsglaive - there weren’t a whole lot of opportunities for celebrating when you were constantly out fighting for your life. But on holidays or vacation days or nights where all of them were feeling adventurous after a full meal at the bar, Nyx allowed himself a little bit of freedom. He had to be among friends and they had to want enough fun away from their demons for him to dare to indulge.

He danced like he fought daemons in the field. His movements were as sharp as his blades, cutting into the crowd like he’d always been a part of it, like he belonged there. He picked up the beat of the music, no matter if he knew the song or not, like it had been paused in his head the whole time, and he was just then clicking play.

Pelna envied him his adaptability. Whether they were fighting or dancing, Nyx always knew how to act, what to do, how to be for any given situation. He was all fierce, sinuous movements, the passion of a whole nation thrumming through his veins. He was always fire and spite, always sure and wild. He bled around dancers like they were ghosts, always having a place to put his feet, pivoting on his heels like a spinning top to avoid collision. And with a devil-may-care smile at all the little victories of motion.

It wasn’t even the alcohol talking when Pelna let himself think he was beautiful. He’d always thought that, was just never brave enough to say it out loud. He was beautiful like tempered steel was beautiful, deadly and artful in its lethality. He was as powerful as the prowling beasts in the forests that used to scare Pelna as a child back home. Thrilling and terrifying, something he wanted to see, but knew he should never touch lest it lash out at him. Nyx was something that couldn’t be controlled, a force of nature in every movement. He’d admired him and coveted him and denied him because he knew if he got too close, he wouldn’t know what to do with his hands to keep them from getting burned.

But sometimes Nyx would look at him – just him – with those eyes like a whiplash storm, and Pelna couldn’t resist the danger. He couldn’t push away the idea that maybe he was more than just caught up in Nyx’s storm. Nyx could find him amidst all the raging winds of his own soul, pick him out from the sheets of rain in his eyes, and draw him in to be a part of it, not a victim of it. Sometimes, Pelna would chance a step closer to that storm.

And this time, the one time where they were both too drunk to be afraid, he was the one that reached out to Nyx. Nyx was always coaxing him closer, tempting him with flashbang glances, crowding him beneath his arm and the sweat of their combat, slamming his hands against him with the adrenaline and the blood and the fire of the wastelands to make him feel alive. For once, Pelna felt daring enough to be the one to touch first.

For once, he had no inhibitions about shimmying closer in the already close quarters of the dance floor. For once, he didn’t care if his hands got burned when they fell against Nyx’s hips. He wanted to feel the burn. He wanted to feel what it was like to have all that fire beneath one mass of hard, scarred skin.

Nyx obliged him, rolling his hips beneath his hands and coiling his arms around him to keep them both balanced in the chaos of the storm. Pelna could smell the wine, smell the sweat, smell the persistent smoke of the King’s power always on Nyx’s skin. He was so close that he could smell spice, familiar and homey from Nyx’s kitchen. He could smell his aftershave, could even feel the scratchy hairs on his chin against his face.

He hadn’t meant to get this close. Closer, but not this close. Not close enough to see the craggy lines of his chapped lips. Not close enough to see the tattoos nicked beneath his eyes. Not close enough to see into the eyes of the storm, to try and wonder what the hooded lids meant when they were enveloped over him.

Of all the people he could have, of all the people strong enough to withstand his storm, why would he lean down and kiss him?

Why were they still moving, why was Nyx’s hand on his hip to keep him close as they kept gyrating to the music? Why wasn’t he getting burned? He could feel his heat in all of his own body, felt the solid expanse of his chest pressed to his, felt like he should be crushed by it, but never was.

Nyx’s hand was in his hair, messy movements tangling through already messy curls. He tasted his tongue in his mouth, far too sure for how drunk he knew they both were. Pelna’s own arms linked around his neck, pulling through the braids in his hair in sweet, self-indulgent gratification.

He’d gotten too close. He knew that this was too much. But damnit if he didn’t care. No one noticed. No one cared. He didn’t care. He knew that he should. He knew that they should be sober for this, that they might forget it happened at all when they were nursing a mutual hangover tomorrow morning. But for now, just for one limitless moment, he wanted to feel this. He wanted to burn, too.

“I’m really drunk,” Nyx gasped, a broken sound that Pelna brazenly felt proud of.

“Hi, Really Drunk. I’m Drunker.”

That made Nyx laugh and kiss him more. It was stupid – they were stupid – but what else were wedding parties for but being stupid so the intended didn’t have to be? And they were fulfilling Crowe’s wishes, too.