#potentiaest

“Hey, hope you don’t mind having us again this week,” Prompto said with more cheer than was usual in his signature over-enthusiastic way. “Gladio asked us to stop by. Said you’d be waiting for him, and he felt bad cancelling. Said you’d probably feed us if we came fast enough!” A circumspect pause, and Prompto spoke again, this time less certainly. “Is that okay?”

Ignis frowned, but tried not to look too displeased. He did, of course, adore the company of Noctis and Prompto, and enjoyed having them over for dinner as often as they liked to come, but this had been the night of the week dedicated to Gladio’s company, wherein the Sword and Shield might have a moment to focalize on their tasks, their progresses, their hindrances, the Prince, and whatever else they might worry over in their offices.

Nevermind that Ignis had spent all week researching a recipe he was sure Gladio would enjoy, if only to impress him a little. It was perhaps vanity, on his part, to relish in Gladio’s epicurean delight in his cooking. Noctis was not particularly vocal for the few foods he did enjoy of Ignis’s making, and Prompto was so enthusiastically grateful for everything he got to eat that wasn’t some convenience store prepack that it was difficult to gain any satisfaction from his praise. But his disturbing admiration for Cup Noodles notwithstanding, Gladio did boast a surprisingly refined palate and an appreciation for his cooking that was as thoughtful as it was touchingly genuine.

But that was all a moot point in light of the fact Gladio did not come. No call, no text, not so much as a ‘by your leave,’ and Ignis was more disappointed (and a little hurt), than he was angry. “Naturally,” Ignis answered belatedly, adjusting his glasses (needlessly, it was a force of habit), and joining them in the dining room, where he finished dinner arrangements.

Dinner went by as easily as ever, though the lack of Gladio’s presence was a little too obvious for his liking. No dark bass laughing low at Prompto’s stories, no warm hand at his back when he cleared the dishes, preceding an assurance murmured too close to his ear that he’ll ‘take care of it.’ It nagged at him enough that he interrupted a particularly lively story of Prompto’s, as he rinsed the plates in the kitchen sink. “Did Gladio make mention of why he couldn’t come?” he asked, the strain evident in the inquisitive lilt in his voice. “It’s unlike him, not to give me notice.”

Though Ignis could not see the, he was sure Prompto and Noctis were currently exchanging conspiratorially nervous looks in the tense silence that followed. “He sounded like he was in a rush,” Noctis said at last, and Ignis was sure that it was a tactical move on their part, to mollify Ignis’ perceived hurt with the unquestionable edict of the prince. “Didn’t really say.”

It worked, at least. Ignis only nodded, bowed his head, and finished doing the stack of dishes in a contemplative, brooding silence.

Gladio’s fingertips toyed long the spines of his LP covers with a deliberation whose circumspection was a pointless formality. He would choose the same record to begin the night as he’d chosen every Friday night for as long he could remember: a copy of his favorite Andrews Sisters album, something buoyant and lively to brighten the empty apartment as well as the neighboring ones on each side that would no doubt be subjected to his particularly spirited taste in music.

He pulled the vellum sleeve out from the jacket, handling the worn record carefully by the edges of the disc before setting it within the electronic Victrola replica. Gladio had only just lowered the needle when he heard the sharp rap on his door, and went to answer it.

Ignis stood in the hallway, in his ubiquitously crisp suit, no glasses, his walking stick already folded under his arm. Gladio had balked at the sight of him, if only because it was so unexpected to see him there. “What are you doing here?” Gladio asked in a soft wonderment, quickly realizing it might have come off as accusatory.

“Is it an inconvenient time?” Ignis asked, before Gladio could amend himself.

“No, god, no, never an inconvenient time,” he assured him, fumbling stupidly for a response in his surprise. “Come in.”

Ignis had crossed the threshold himself, but allowed the hand at the small of his back guide him through Gladio’s apartment, to the living room that smelled of pumpkin spice and fresh coffee. “I was afraid I might have caught you unawares, perhaps,” he explained, taking a seat on Gladio’s sofa. “You might have had company.”

“Nah,” Gladio replied dismissively, and Ignis heard his retreating steps as he stepped into the kitchen area. “What company’s more important than yours, anyways?”

“I wasn’t sure,” Ignis answered, a dubiousness lingering ominously in his words, in spite of the swell of warmth in his chest at the offhanded way Gladio always seemed to reassure him. “Whatever company prevents you from attending a weekly visit, without even a call afterwards explaining yourself. A girl, maybe. A date?”

Gladio laughed a little too loud, a little too awkwardly. “No, ah … no.”

The implication hurt a little. Gladio had made little secret of his more than platonic admiration for Ignis, though the latter preferred to keep things professional between them. Gladio had always respected that, to the best he could, but even Noctis made the occasional comment from time to time. That he was a little too concerned about Ignis. That he was a little too invested. That a blind man could figure out Gladio was stupid over him, and seeing as how that was exactly Ignis’s affliction, he should probably cool it on that note. (He never did.)

Barring any real answer or any desire to complicate things further with an explanation as to why that was so patently incorrect, Gladio changed the subject. “It’s good you stopped by, though,” Gladio asserted brightly. “Actually, before I forget, I’ve been meaning to get this back to you.”

In the black credenza off to the side, Gladio retrieved a fabric-bound notebook, its corners rounded and worn with age, but nevertheless in very good shape. “Here. You probably don’t even remember lending it to me. I think I’ve probably had it ….. Five years now? At least? You definitely gave it to me after Crownsguard.”

Ignis accepted the notebook with an expression of confusion mixed with consternation. His hand passed over the cover, noting the fine weave of the binding, the gold lettering in the faceplate that denoted it his: Ignis. “Is this what I think it is?”

“Your sketch book, yeah,” Gladio replied, sounding a little proud. “I found it sandwiched between some old novels I’d dug up last week. It was funny. I had some weird hair up my ass to re-read that series I was crazy about when we were in high school. You remember? That one about the military company caught in the immolation of Ishgard? Man, I was obsessed. Had half the books memorized. Anyways, while I was perusing, I found—” He gestured. “This.”

A pleased grin fought hard not to curl at the corners of Ignis’s mouth as he worried the worn point of the lower corner with his thumb. “Why in the world would you keep this?”

Gladio paused, but only for a moment. “Because it’s yours,” he said naturally.

Ignis ignored that, the casual devastation, in spite of a blush that colored the tips of his ears. “I was rubbish at it. Not that I had any leisure to improve myself.”

“Now you’re just being hard on yourself,” Gladio chastised him lightly, and Ignis could feel the displacement of his weight as he took a seat beside him on the couch. “I know you’re deflecting because you’re modest like that. But you had a lot of natural talent, actually. A real eye for proportions. And for color, too. You had this way of making everything look … I dunno, graceful. Like every curve was delicate. Like you drew it with so much care, but it still managed to look effortless. If that makes sense. A purposeful beauty. At least, that’s what I got from it. I don’t know a lot about art. Only what I like and don’t like.” He paused, frowned. “I’m probably not explaining myself well.”

There it was, that assessment that always felt like a compliment. But compliments were sometimes hollow, and superficially meant. Never the way Gladio delivered them. “No, no, I know what you mean,” Ignis said softly, a little bashful over the litany of praises. “I just never knew you appreciated them so much.”

“You know which one of your drawings was my favorite?” Gladio asked amiably.

Ignis knew immediately. “The gladiolus.”

“Yeah,” he laughed, ducking his head and hiding a grin that Ignis could hear in the resonance of his voice. “Makes me sound conceited, doesn’t it? Like you drew that for me. But it is. My favorite, I mean.”

“But I did draw it for you,” was Ignis’s matter of fact response.

“Yeah, but only because I asked you, didn’t I?” Gladio pointed out. “You were drawing flowers for everyone. Some pretty thing for Noctis— what was it? Forget me nots? Wisteria or something for the king, something else for the butler, even … I know I walked in on a few maids bent over your shoulder looking. I got a little jealous and asked you to draw something for me.”

“You asked me to draw my favorite,” Ignis reminded him gently. “So I did.”

“Ah.” And Gladio was dumbstruck, for the second time. But it was a comfortable silence between them. Something sweet and charged, with an energy that felt soft and frenetic under the skin, prickling at the hairs at the backs of their necks, like hackles raised in anticipation of something. “I noticed it was the only one you’d colored in that book. You usually watercolor them don’t you?”

“Mm,” was Ignis’s wordless confirmation. “And that wasn’t a coincidence, either.” He didn’t need to see the stupefaction in Gladio’s face to know he wore it.  

The clock struck a metronomic clip in the pregnant pause between them. Ignis waited for Gladio to speak, and in light of his inelection (or inability) to do so, Ignis changed the subject. “You never told me why you didn’t come.”

“Oh!” Gladio laughed, a note of relief in the high, breathlessness of his laugh. “I got a new tattoo. A slot opened up with my artist, and I took it. Would have had to wait another six months if I didn’t.”

“Is that all?” Ignis chuckled, amused. “You could have told me. I would have understood that. The whole affair felt so hush-hush, I was convinced it was some clandestine thing I wasn’t meant to know about.”

“Well,” Gladio said, and Ignis could feel the shift in the cushions as he leaned in, the closing proximity of his voice, the marine notes of his cologne wafting stronger as he did. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“Oh?” Ignis swallowed hard, sure he was about to hear something momentous, and not quite sure he was prepared for it. “Why?”

“It was kinda special for me,” Gladio replied, a little vaguely, but not without an enigmatic brightness to his tone. “Speaking of which. Now that I’ve got you here, would you mind if I beg a favor of you?”

“Me?”

Ignis felt Gladio’s weight shift, a low groan emanate from his chest as he reached for something behind them. “Remember when I got my crow piece? I was miserable, itching all over. You were the only one who I trusted to put the ointment on my back for me. I don’t know what it was about you. You had this way of rubbing in the lotion just hard enough so it felt like relief, but never so hard it hurt or irritated. Like some Midas touch for tattoo scars. I was kinda hoping you might be willing to recapitulate that horror with me. If you wanted to.”

Ignis laughed lightly, as one might do to an indulgent child. “Of course. Hand me the cream. Where did you get them? What location, I mean.”

Gladio shifted closer, their knees brushing lightly, and Ignis moved his legs reflexively out of the way. “My forearms,” Gladio replied, holding his arms out for the taking. “Wrist to just below my elbow. They twist around, just a warning.”

The ointment in his hands, Ignis started at the base of his thick wrists, where what appeared to be a stem of some sort began within a bed of sharp, blade-like leaves. His fingertips followed the ridges of the scar, up the stalk, carefully noting the bursts of sequential blooms following the twine of the stalk. “A gladiolus,” Ignis murmured, his brows drawn in an expression of consternation.

“Yeah,” Gladio affirmed, through a nervous, breathless laugh. “Your gladiolus.”

Ignis’ flinched at the attribution, a shiver of ineludible and unprecedented thrill at the thought.  Instinctively, he knew exactly Gladio’s meaning: the flower, and not his name. But still, the unintentional implication of Gladio belonging to him was strange, sitting amorphic and anomalous on his skin like new-worn sweater, unfamiliar but not unpleasant. But that prickling of pleasure was ushered from the forefront of his mind as his fingers traced and retraced the wounded skin, half in wonder, half in a desperate measure to commit them to memory, to map their remembrance as accurately as he could with assiduous fingers that ached to know every nuance of his scars. In a week, they would be gone, with not even cicatrices to mark their ghosts. Ignis understood implicitly that this was an ephemeral moment, meant to be understood in this rare sliver of time, shared with him with a singular purpose that did not elude him, no matter how adamantly he wanted to avoid it.

This was meant for him.

“What’s this little notch here?” Ignis asked, the pad of his thumb worrying at a peculiar outcropping by a petal that seemed too angular to belong.

“Dunno,” Gladio answered truthfully. “It looked like a mistake or something. Like something you’d erased, so I’m not quite sure.”

“And you kept it in?”

Gladio shrugged. “Yeah, why not?”

“It’s a flaw, Gladio, meant to be erased,” Ignis admonished him, with all the pithiness one embodies when spouting aphorisms.

“I thought it gave it character,” he explained, in that simplistic way of his. “Perfection’s for the gods, Iggy. Even masterpieces have flaws. Beethoven’s Ninth. The Sistine Chapel. Even—”

Gladio’s diatribe trailed off as he lifted his hand to brush the backs of his knuckles against the evened scarring at Ignis’s temple.

“Don’t,” Ignis warned weakly, grasping Gladio’s thick wrist in two hands and pushing it down.

“Sorry,” Gladio whispered, letting his hand fall away. “I didn’t mean … sorry, I just got caught up— …. I thought we—”

“Why did you make them curl around?” Ignis asked abruptly, changing the subject with a curtness that dared defiance. It was a question asked hurriedly, in a firm desperation to forget the lingering sweetness he’d left between them. Ignis’s voice sounded brittle in his mind, a little broken, but without sharpness. “Gladiolus grow straight, don’t they? Like blades.”

“Oh, yeah,” Gladio replied, sounding a little bashful. Unsure of himself. “I read somewhere that ancient druids tattooed snakes to their forearms, both as an affirmation of their faith and for talismanic purposes. The snakes were hallowed, believed to keep harm from the wearers who merited them. I kinda liked the idea, adapted it for myself. Like goodwill written in my skin.”

“And you chose my flowers,” Ignis said in summation, a question phrased as a statement.

“Yeah,” Gladio replied softly. “There’s a … it’s a law of sympathetic magic. Called the law of contagion. It says that effigies or likenesses of things imitative of a person carries their spirit. I liked that. Like I carried you with me, like a credo. Not like I have some weird, superstitious idea you’d keep me from harm. But I like the remembrancer. Like a reminder of what I fight for, and whom. Because what’s a Shield without a Sword? We were meant to—”

And without another thought to the logic of reservation, Ignis surged forward to connect their lips in a heedless kiss. So heedless it was instantly regretted, and Ignis broke away with a frown. And just as the apology formed on his lips—

“Hey,” Gladio said softly. “You kissed me.”

Was it an idiotic observation of the obvious? Was he mocking him? Ignis couldn’t tell. “Yes. I did,” he said, his tone a little clipped in defensive confusion. “Astute of you.”

There was a moment of contemplative silence in which Ignis wondered if Gladio took it badly. “Can I kiss you?” Gladio asked at last, and Ignis’ eyes flickered in an agitated perplexion, wishing he could see the honest amber he remembered in his mind’s eye, the circumspect softness he always loved about him.

Ignis nodded, and Gladio’s broad hand cupped his cheek, the heel of his hand couching just under his sharp jaw, tilting his head up to better meet the quiet, tentative kiss Gladio laid upon them. It would be dramatic, to say Ignis melted into the kiss like some Harlequin romance novel heroine, but it was precisely how he’d felt when he folded against him, Gladio’s arm hooking around him to hold him close, to anchor him to his chest and never let him go. He wanted to sink into his marred skin, to live holy and adored there, sanctified in Gladio’s regard, until he remembered he already did.

Ignis broke from the kiss, reaching to unwind the heavy arm from around his waist, to press a kiss to his scarred palm. “I never took you as a romantic,” he murmured wistfully.

Gladio watched the press of Ignis’ lips with a fascination too earnest to try hiding. “Curse of the Amicitia men,” Gladio quipped lamely, his throat gone dry with the claimant need to kiss him again. But he stopped himself, cognizant of the impetuousness of the moment, not wanting to make or say anything sudden that might send Ignis to beat a hasty retreat. “We’re all sensitive-like, I guess, to balance out being inveterate hard-asses.”

Ignis laughed bemusedly by the joke, pressing his cheek into the palm of Gladio’s hand. “Should I get one, too? A tattoo, I mean. Of my own.”

Gladio grinned up at him somewhat dubiously, an amatory inattention in the way he gazed up at him, as lovestruck as a boy. “Sure, why not? I can help you pick one out. Something classy. I can, um—” He swallowed hard. “I could help you figure out where to …”

“Why don’t you do one better?” Ignis asked, lowering Gladio’s hand, letting it fall away as his own hands now smoothed over the broad bow of his shoulders, his fingers interlacing just at the nape of his thick neck. The slightest pull and Gladio followed, letting Ignis guide him closer. Ignis’ lips parted to breathe softly along the line of his jaw. “Mark me yourself.”

The invitation had hardly left his lips and Gladio was upon him, his kisses claimant with the desperation of one who knew that every moment measured by a heart’s beat was precious and never promised. In a second, he could change his mind, remember the hesitation he’d espoused when Gladio had first confessed his feelings, an admission rendered inert as Ignis had laid a hand on his heart and solemnly intoned a simple and unelucidated “Don’t.”

But there was no hesitation in the way their lips met, like two halves always meant to be a whole, or the pass of his slender fingers through the thick of Gladio’s dark hair. And still Gladio pulled back, his forehead pressed to Ignis’s temple as he panted against his jaw. “Are you sure?” he asked, his fingers clamping over Ignis’s in a silent plea not to let go. “I want to be sure you’re sure.”

Ignis pressed a kiss to the point of his jaw, just below his ear. “As sure as you are,” he replied, and Gladio let out a strangled sigh like relief, his kisses renewing their ardent offensive.

“I’m going to love you too much,” Gladio sighed into the hollow of his throat, his lips tracing a line of kisses along the jut of his collarbone, over the lithe fabric of his shirt. “I know I will.”

Ignis’s head tipped back to bear his neck to him in silent invitation. “You’ll love me surely and honestly,” Ignis predicted, his voice soft with the tender earnestness of his assurance. “As surely as the conviction that spurred you to wear your heart … quite literally on your sleeves. I know you too well to doubt that you mean things with no less than your full heart. And I want you to know that I welcome this … progression … with no less certainty than you.” His arms encircled his shoulders, pulling him yet closer, until their chests abutted, two heartbeats hammering a syncopated rhythm that soon fell in step with each other in a symbiosis that felt as natural as breathing. “I’ll love you, too. Wait for me until then.”

Gladio said nothing, only nodded his understanding, his teeth sinking into the breadth of Ignis’s shoulder, as he marked the first of a constellation he’d leave that night. “Don’t promise what you don’t have control over,” he implored, half dizzy at the familiar fraicheur of citron and vetiver that scented Ignis’s skin. “This is enough. For the rest of my life, this much would be enough. We’ll take it slow. We’ll take our time. I’m not asking for anything more than that.”

“Very well,” Ignis agreed, with something like relief spreading through his chest, like a weight freed. “I’ll agree to that much. But there’s a prescience in my bones I can’t deny. I’m going to fall in love with you. There’s no helping that. You’ve left me little choice, you see. And I no longer have the will or desire to deny that.”

He felt Gladio limpen, all of a sudden accosted with the full weight of him nearly crushing him whole, but only for a moment until he remembered himself. “Then I’ll look forward to watching you fall,” he laughed, falling back upon the opposite arm of the sofa and pulling ignis atop him. For safety’s sake.

“As I have,” Ignis rejoined, his lips sucking a mark into the soft flesh beneath the hard line of his jaw. “There. We’re even now.”