#milodrums

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.”

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: