#lascivus

He tears his gaze away from Gladio, trying to stave off the anxiety attack he knows is coming on by the pressure building in his chest, like he’s on the verge of suffocating. When he next takes a breath, it’s a gasp this time and when he exhales, it sounds like a sob as Gladio just stares at him. Gods , he can’t take this. Why can’t he just turn him down already?!

All Prompto wants to do is push aside the awkward atmosphere, go back to what they were doing before, but the watery laugh that slips unbidden from his lips only serves to worsen things.

What joins the flood of anxiety is guilt as he watches Gladio’s eyebrows knit together in what can only be called confusion.

Why was he always so stupid ? Why did he think someone like Gladio would want to do something like date him , of all people, when they bothspent every waking moment with two amazing guys like Noctis and Ignis?

“N-Nevermind, forget it.”

He swivels around on his heel, tries to escape as fast as his feet will take him, making a mental note that stargazing—no matter how romantic it seemed—was a terrible time to blurt out a confession. Sure, it was really nice to stand shoulder to shoulder with him, fingers barely brushing, just close enough to hold his hand if he wanted to, but whatever fire Prompto had felt from those brief touches clearly wasn’t mutual.

And gods, why would it be? Gladio was so out of his league.

But he’s barely turned around, barely taken a step before a hand clamps down on his wrist, preventing him from walking away from what was no doubt turning out to be the worst mistake of Prompto’s life.

Prompto takes a deep, shuddering breath, blinking away the tears that sit at the edges of his eyes, born from the boundless anxiety that threatens to consume him. The worst possibilities are highlighted in his mind, reminding him that maybe Gladio will think it’s gross , thinking of him like that. Maybe he’ll want to have as little contact with him as possible now and who could blame him? Who the hell would wanna share a bed with a guy that’s been harboring a crush on them for literal years ?

“Say it again.” Oh gods , did Gladio really want him to embarrass himself twice in the same conversation? Really ?

That’s impossible , though, because the minute Prompto opens his mouth to speak, it’s not words that come out. What comes out of his mouth is a pathetic whine that verges on a sob, like he’s about to crack and break beneath a weight that he himself has created. Astrals , why couldn’t he have just let him go? Why couldn’t Gladio just let him leave? Why couldn’t he give him the chance to at least try and pretend that he hadn’t ruined a perfectly good friendship by being an idiot?

Better yet, why had he let himself think for even a split second that maybe these feeling were mutual? How could he delude himself like that?

“Woah, hey,” Gladiolus says, though it does nothing to keep his anxiety from spilling over the dam. It does precious little to dissuade the feeling of being boxed in , like invisible walls were closing in on him more with every second. Oh gods , before long he was gonna be a Prompto Pancake …!

“Prompto, I need you to calm down.”

Gods, he only wishes that he could because just one more breath and it feels as though he’s left the eye of the storm and fallen head first into the worst of it. He’s hyperventilating now, breath coming out short and harsh because the pressure in his chest demands more oxygen than his lungs have capacity for.

“I— I just—”

“Hey, I’m not mad,” he says as Prompto finally turns back to look at him, expecting anger and finding none, just as Gladio promises. The grip on his wrist loosens and part of Prompto wants to run the hell away, to hide at Noct’s side and hope he’s willing to let him stay there until this blows over.

And it will. It will pass, won’t it?

“I-I just—” he tries again, but he’s blubbering now and by the gods is it hard to be anxious and embarrassed at the same time in front of such a strong man, who probably thinks the worst of him for acting like a little kid confessing to a grown man. “I thought—”

“You thought I liked you?”

There it is. He doesn’t even need to say it now, the rejection is so obvious it strengthens his desire to escape , but what’s the point ? Gladio’s already standing there, staring at him, unfortunately aware of the fact that Prompto is on the verge of tears, too overwhelmed by his own stupidityto do much more than try to avoid them falling.

He doesn’t trust himself to speak again with hiccuping two words into it like he has the last two times he tried, instead nodding his misery. Why can’t Ramuh just strike him down and get it over with? That’s where this was heading, wasn’t it?

“Well, I do.”

“Wh— What?”

Prompto can’t believe his ears. Surely he heard him wrong or this is part of some kind of cruel joke that would be totally out of character for Gladio, but then again, maybe he just doesn’t know Gladio all that well, since he’s Noct’s friend and they never really hung out together until—

“I do like you,” Gladio says, making it a little hard to argue this time, though Prompto spends the next few seconds trying to convince himself that he must be thinking platonically or something. The bro kind of like that Prompto definitely isn’t talking about, but he can brush this off if that’s what Gladio’s thinking, right? Oh, thank the Astrals for showing him this hint of mercy. He’d never ask for anything again—

“You’ve got a nice ass.”

Holy shit.

It’s such a stupid thing to say out of the blue that Prompto can’t hold back a wobbly laugh, shaking his body and sending a few strays tears leaking down his cheeks.

“Dude, serious— seriously?”

He catches on a word, has to repeat it and finish it proper, but a weak smile is spreading across his face for what seems like the first time in an age. His anxiety shuffles to the side in favor a sharp spike of immeasurable glee , stifled only by the constant, niggling doubt that this can’t possibly be real.

Was Gladio being serious right now? Did he actually like him?

Him ? Of all people?

“Thought, uh… Thought you were into girls.”

This time, Gladio laughs and Prompto takes notice of the way his hand eases from his wrist to hold Prompto’s hand , like he’d wanted so desperately when they were staring up at the sky. It’s gentle and grounding, helping to pull Prompto back down to earth instead of floating up in the air with the irrational illusions he’d been cooking up of a Gladio that would be quicker to make fun of his feelings than to ever return them.

“Could say the same about you with the way you get around Cindy.”

Prompto can’t help but smile and this time, when he speaks, he voices comes out clearer.

“You jealous, big guy?”

“Hell yeah, I am.”

It should be impossible how Prompto’s smile widens, yet nothing could match the way he feels right now. The intense, infallible happiness that comes with his affections being returned for the first time in his life. Somebody actually liked him of all people. Gladiolus Amicitia, of all people, liked the mess of a person that he was.

“Guess I don’t need to be anymore, huh?”

It’s Gladio who smiles, this time, as Prompto lets loose something akin to a giggle.

Lunafreya couldn’t even imagine the way his face would fall. She couldn’t bring herself to think about how much easier it would become in less than a minute for him to bring his own life to an unfitting end.

It only made her further despise her loss of power. It frustrated her to think that fighting Leviathan had siphoned that last bit of strength from her bones and barely left her alive. Were she still the Oracle she had once been, she might be able to venture into the dark and help them.

Instead, this task was left to another. Going after Gladio and Prompto was the job of a strong, capable woman she scarcely knew, but deeply respected even after the short time Lunafreya had spent here in the safety of Hammerhead. Mere days after the sun had disappeared beneath the horizon for the last time, Miss Cindy had become something of a leader here amidst the seasoned hunters and refuges that managed to make it there before the lights in Galdin Quay went out.

It feels impossible to approach her, no matter how kind she’s been. Though she’d taken her in, given her a bed to sleep in and clothes to wear, Lunafreya’s had little to offer in return for her hospitality. What little strength she’d had prior to the battle with Leviathan had fled right alongside her powers.

No longer could she commune with the gods or call forth their will to heal her people. Apart from pretty words, she was useless—or at least she felt that way, no matter who tried to convince her of her worth in these trying times.

“Miss Cindy,” she finally says after a long moment of excruciating silence. She can only watch the woman prepare for departure for so long before the fear eating away at her finally takes hold and she’s forced to speak.

As soon as the words are out of her mouth, Miss Cindy Aurum turns to address her. Soft green eyes meet her own and suddenly, she is awash with a sense of tranquility she hasn’t known in weeks and she wants to cling—hopelessly, desperately—to the woman before her and the hope she instills in her that Prompto and Gladio alike are alive, wherever they might be now.

“Need somethin’, Lady Lunafreya?”

The garage is empty, save for them and the car Miss Cindy’s been working tirelessly on for the last few hours. The lighting is dim enough to conserve some amount of power, but bright enough that it still staves off the daemons that lurk now in every dark corner of the world.

Alone as they might be, in a room so quiet that a pin dropping would be audible, Lunafreya finds herself choking on every ounce of anxiety pooling in her stomach. She’s dizzy with the fear of asking Miss Cindy for something so selfish, so beyond the realm of what she would dare consider acceptable.

Never once had Lunafreya considered her own needs anything more than secondary, if even that. She needed to be there for her people, more than she ever thought she would need even a brief moment of comfort from a woman who was little more than a stranger.

But today was different. Today, she was not the Oracle she once was. The powers that had been loaned to her by the Astrals had been revoked and she had been robbed of her ability to give even momentary peace to her people.

“Please, don’t walk out that door,” she says after a moment of silence that leaves her heart pounding in her chest. Her words spark an unfamiliar light in Cindy’s eyes that overwhelms Luna with a sense of guilt that might never be quelled.

Gone is Cindy’s brilliant smile, replaced by the same frown she wore when someone came to her with grave news. The loss of Cindy’s keeps Lunafreya from finding her own more so than usual. So heavy is her heart with the loss that came with the deaths of so many that little keeps her spirits up, save for the optimism of people such as Cindy.

It only feels worse to stand here knowing she is the cause of yet another to lose their smile. Already she bore the weight of so many other failures, yet she still chose to add this on top of so many others.

“If you don’t come back… I…”

Her words are lost to her fear, to the anxious rumblings in her heart that was already screaming for the perceived loss of men like Gladio and Prompto, whom she might never lay eyes on again.

But Cindy doesn’t shy away from her because of this. Nothing about her pessimism shocks her like it does so many others. Here, there is no pressure to uphold a false image of hope that Lunafreya can’t bring herself to believe most days.

“Your Highness, ya ain’t gotta worry about little old me,” Cindy says with a laugh so brilliant that it seizes that stress from her soul and slays it. “Just cause those boys can’t take the heat, don’t mean I can’t.”

Luna knows that she should agree, that nothing leading up to this point had ever given her the impression that Cindy couldn’t fare better than most beyond the boundary of the outpost. But she couldn’t help the cold, icy grip of fear taking hold of her. Every day, it’s grasp was strengthened and terror in her heart only grew.

People were dying left and right, disappearing into the night sky and becoming daemons themselves. Luna’s concerns couldn’t be so easily assuaged and Cindy is too kind to leave her to war with these feelings on her own, much like how she couldn’t leave Prompto and Gladio out there to do the same.

Cindy reaches into her back pocket a moment later, giving her little in way of words of comfort and instead handing her the item in question.

“Here,” she says, as if her intentions are clear, though Luna feels only confusion in their wake.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t understand.”

What lays across both her palms is a wrench of all things, old and clearly well taken care of, much like the rest of Cindy’s equipment. Still, she finds it odd to be handed such an important tool that Cindy would surely need.

“You’ll hold onto her for me, won’t ya? That beauty is my good luck charm and I’m gonna be comin’ back for her.”

She says it as though it ought to quell the worst of her fears and perhaps it does. It’s a physical representation of a promise that Lunafreya is not accustomed to, but she finds herself somehow calmed by the idea that, if nothing else, Cindy would be returning for this tool too important to her trade to leave behind otherwise.

“I’ll need it to give those two boys a good smackin’ around for worrying ya when we get back,” Cindy says with a confidence that even Lunafreya is tempted to believe. For the first time since Prompto was presumed missing and Gladio elected to go looking for him, Luna felt there was no well-intended lie amidst the promise being made.

“Please,” Luna starts, feeling like anyone but herself in these few moments, when her heart ached with the fear of losing not one nor two, but all three of them in one fell swoop. It didn’t much matter how desperately she wanted to look strong, for she knows her world is on the verge of collapsing beneath her feet with so many deaths and disappearances fresh on her mind.

She can’t take even one more, much less three.

Lady Lunafreya and Noct had shared something with far more permanence than the thin sheets of paper that they’d been limited to. He remembered a time when the distance between him and his best friend hadn’t been much thicker than that paper, but these days, he couldn’t be so sure.

The announcement had created a rift between them, awkward because of Prompto’s feelings and Noct’s lack of them. He doesn’t love her, not like he does, and it’s jealousy that drives home the idea that Noct deserves her even less than he does.

And, oh, the sealing kiss that marks the progression of the ceremony has his stomach lurching. Suddenly, he doesn’t care about what people say, what the press will pick up on, what kind of rumors will circulate in the tabloids.

He can’t wait to hear them spew lies at the three of them for being part of some fucked up love triangle that works to exclude him for being a commoner.

He’s not been there long, leaning onto the railing of the balcony that overlooks the city they all called home—that Luna would be calling home now, too. What was worse was how Prompto had always known. Deep down, he’d known that the day she called this city her home, it wouldn’t be because of him, because of a pleb.

Prompto was never meant to have her.

He wasn’t meant to have her and knowing that the high heels clicking against the tiled floors belong to her brings him no amount of comfort in a moment like this, when he’s warring with his love for her and his love for his best friend.

“Shouldn’t you be with him?” Prompto asks, only sparing a moment to cast a glance at her to prove to himself that it was her. It’s gross, he knows, to stand here with a desire still to wrap her up in his arms and be the reason she wore that white dress.

But he was no Prince and never would be. Astrals knew he’d always be better suited as her guard than her husband.

“We saw you leave,” she says slowly, though he doesn’t dare turn his head to catch sight of her. He doesn’t dare do more than dream up the look on her face and hope it’s not half as sad as she sounds. “We wanted to make sure you were alright.”

Yet Noctis was nowhere in sight and it was obvious why. He’d just married the woman that had plagued Prompto’s dreams for years. No longer could he even fantasize about something he’d never be able to have without feeling like he was some kind of home-wrecking monster.

“I’ll be okay,” he says, though the future tense of his words said nothing for today. Eventually, this would be an old wound, scarred over and long-healed, but today was not that day.

Gods, how he wished today was that day.

A hand touches his back, curling dainty fingers over his shoulder and it’s against his better judgment that he reaches up to lay his hand over hers. It’s despicable how jealous he is, but only made worse by how desperate he is to have her and hold her that he’s willing to engage her in such simple intimacies.

“You don’t gotta worry about me, Your Majesty.”

It’s so small, so subtle that anyone not aware of their relationship would find little wrong with the sentence, save for his informal phrasing. But to the woman he’s no longer accustomed to his formalities, he can feel how deep it strikes her by the way her grip falters.

The guilt will eat him alive before Noct can kill him for hurting her.

“To you, Prompto, I will always be Luna,” she says, her voice soft with a sadness rare to her, yet that seemed to be the only thing he heard from her the minute she stepped foot in Insomnia. He knows this is no easier for her; he knows that she’s struggling just as much as he is. So knowing this, he chances glancing back at her.

It’s a risk, looking back at blue eyes that he’s seen so many times in pictures and so few times outside of them and he hated how beautiful she looked. He hated the feeling of wanting to tell her as much, wanting to complicate things further.

Struggling to choke back all of his ugly feelings, to reign them in before he can give in to the demand that he mourn a love he never had, he offers her a sad smile.

“I dunno if I can do that.”

Cruel is the world that has put her between two wonderful men, that has given her a love she can’t easily ignore in favor of her duty as the new Queen of Lucis. Treacherous is the heart that yearns for what’s been forbidden, for who the Astrals have locked away just out of her short reach.

Prompto pushes her away and part of her wishes he had physically done so, believes it might have hurt less if he had, that it might have been easier to bear than the ache in her chest that leaves her struggling to take her next breath.

It’s worse for him, she tells herself, trying to will her selfish emotions away because surely, she isn’t the one that deserves to be upset. It’s Prompto who’s forced to watch her marry Noctis, his best friend. It’s he who must wear a smile and pretend that staring up at the both of them isn’t tearing him apart.

But no matter how good Prompto is at hiding his feelings, Luna knows him too well to buy into such lies.

And Noctis knows better, as well.

“Hey,” Noctis greets her as she returns, but her eyes settle on the attendants of their wedding and refuse to meet Noct’s. Lunafreya Nox Fleuret is clinging desperately to the last shred of stability she has and Gods, she knows that it’ll slip from her grasp the minute she finds his gaze.

The last thing she wants is to turn this “love triangle” into a public incident and put Prompto’s face on the front of every tabloid that wants to slander his name as much as her own.

But Noctis doesn’t need her to look at him, does he? Her silence alone signifies that Prompto’s response had been far from desirable and neither of them could blame him for it. Neither of them could blame him for the suffering that lived in his eyes, thrived in his heart.

He meant too much to the both of them for that.

“He's not taking it well,” he says and she knows it's not a question nor is she a stranger to the lack of surprise in his voice.

“How could he be?”

Luna was hard-pressed to say that either of them had even the slightest notion that he would. He was entitled to every pulse of anger, every aching moment that came with a marriage no easier for them than it was for him.

“You should be with him,” Noctis finally says, pulling her attention away from the party continuing to unfold in front of them. This time, she finds his eyes and her own well up with the same tears she had feared would surface.

“But I can’t be.”

“You should go to him,” he says, as if she hadn’t breathed out a single word, as if her worries will irrelevant.

“People will talk.”

“Let them.”

It’s such a simple solution—too simple, she wants to say, because Astrals know that people can be nasty no matter the circumstances. They’ll tear into the three of them at every opportunity until they’re satisfied with the damage done.

“Go,” Noct says, but this time, it’s not a simple request. It’s a command this time, spoken like the king that he now is as her heart flutters helplessly. Can Noctis truly be pushing for this? Does he truly mean to take as many blows in the name of their love as they do? “At least you two can be happy.”

His words are jarring and her eyes go wide when she hears them. She can come only to one conclusion when she sees his blue eyes, full to the brim with the same agonizing need that she knows. No matter how deep her desire goes, Noctis’s lies so much deeper because she knows as well as he that his will never come to fruition outside of his dreams.

“You love him,” she says, eyes wide as she watches a sad smile spread across his face.

“Just go, Luna,” he repeats, this time the words less a command and more a plea that doesn’t fail to reach her ears. She’s precious little time, far fewer words and even less opportunities to put things back together as best she can.

She has to find her beloved, has to rekindle things between them both.