#quick fic pick

Blink, breath, and he’s fairly sure he’s somewhere on the road to being -- aware, at least, of the world around him and the shift of the wind that soughs in through the open windows. The faint faint scent of rain-clouds on the move, and the must of the night-blooming flowers that hang in thick clusters from the neighbors’ walls and roof, and the hint of salt on the daybreak that means -- he’d better get his meditation in, now, while the sun hasn’t even so much as thrown up its first veils of dawn, along the eastern horizon.

Now, before he has to divide his attention between the things he puts up with, and the things he wants to be present for, in the moment of their happening, in the moment of their unfolding.

Which is why he’s grateful, in his quiet way, when he slows down as he approaches the door near his own, open and spilling out shrouds of muted golden light, and the oversized shadows of five-pointed stars.

Slows down enough to hear a yawn, and a familiar chewing noise and then --

“Book? Boco book?”

Quick Fic Pick 106: to remember you by

Prompto can't sleep the night before the anniversary of the Dawn. (He hates that it's capitalized. Letters and case can't really describe the meaning of the date, not to him, but for everyone else it's a red date on a calendar and that's it.)

He tosses and turns for hours and then -- every year, he thinks, every year, even when he tries to drown the memories in drink and in worse things -- he gives up, throws his vest on -- yes, it's still the same skull-and-patch-and-plaid thing -- sends a text message to Gladio, a voice message to Ignis. (They're -- no longer in Insomnia, for reasons; Prompto has been the last to leave the city, entirely reluctant to leave, even though he can't actually stay and he's been telling himself to go for *years*.)

The message is the same thing every year, anyway. It's no longer as important as the ritual of actually getting it out and sending it. It always says, "Good morning Insomnia. Good morning Citadel. Good morning Crownsguard. Good morning Noctis."

As he gets on his motorbike and travels into Insomnia, the responses arrive. Gladio's changes every year; this one says: "Tell him to catch us some fish." Ignis's is the same every year. "Tell him the truth." 

 No one stops him when he gets to the ruins of the Citadel. (No one has rebuilt it and no one will dare, not when it's the one thing all three of them had agreed on. Noct is buried in there, and it will not be repaired, and the Astrals' idiocy will never be papered over.)

The Citadel is most of the way to overgrown, and the spaces that led to the throne room are shattered roof and half-standing walls. Wildflowers and grass in what used to be the corners. The real miracle is the presence of flowers where the throne had been: a single stand of sylleblossoms, the only one outside the borders of Accordo; and, growing up the ruined girders and stone pillars, the twining vines and huge pale-blue flowers that everyone has learned to call kingsheart.

Kingsheart will grow nowhere else but this one single place in all of Eos. Prompto knows that, because Gladio tried, because Ignis tried, and neither of them are in Lucis. Prompto tried too, and still only has the bare trellis in his garden to show for his efforts.

Camera out. He takes a picture of this year's flowers, and picks one single kingsheart flower to take away with him. The sylleblossoms he collects carefully, from the blown-down stalks, the wind-picked stems, and he bundles them together into a neat bunch.

He stands before what used to be the throne for a long time. Doesn't talk. Doesn't need to. There's a photograph in his pocket and it rustles when he takes it out, and tucks it into the bunch of flowers. Every year, he prints out a photo of Noctis and leaves it here.

The first time he'd done this, he had cried when he'd laid the flowers and the photo behind, because Noctis had been smiling so brightly and so unaffected, sitting on a dock with his bare feet dangling into river waters.

That was years ago. Now he's gotten to another one of the photos that makes him cry: Noctis, on that last night, hands gone still on the little kitchen shelf, where he had been peeling apples and then stopped and looked up into the shadowed sky.

He doesn't know how he'd had the presence of mind to take the photograph, but there it is. There is Noct, weary, kingly, just a man and also just a boy, in the suit that had fit and not quite been right.

Quick Fic Pick 78: the price we’ll pay for the dawn

“I’ll be fine,” he says, and he turns away from the frown that is still and already knotting on Ignis’s brow. “Everyone else needs the things we’ve still got. I’ll be fine. I’m still walking.”

“It’s the still that worries me. You know that,” and Prompto can hear far too many edges in those words. Edges like: worry and fear and calculation. The tallies, the ongoing logistics. How much Prompto’s managed to salvage and bring in this time, against how much -- and what exactly -- Prompto’s going to need this time.

Need, in terms of patching up: and gone are the days of easy healing. Not even Ignis can fix his scars now. 

One and two and three more, to add to the collection that he’s been making on himself, since Zegnautus Keep. 

He thumbs thoughtfully at the savage slashed-in sunken line running down his left temple, down almost onto his cheek, and he takes his leave of Ignis, and he’s not sorry, that there’s one thing he never turned in -- one thing he has no plans of turning in.

So he’s a hypocrite. He’s only human. 

In the shelter of the little room he’s claimed for himself, somewhere on the still-ragged outskirts of Lestallum, he throws the windows open wide to admit the light-polluted darkness -- murky brown shadows skittering away in the wan gray glow from the fitful spotlights -- and he faces himself in the mirror, and -- 

Okay. It does look bad.

He’s grateful Ignis probably never got a chance to see exactly what’s been done to him this time. Bruises still mottling his jawline from the last series of sorties. The long claw-scratches on his face are narrow, but deep, and he regrets even speaking, earlier, because now there’s a little too much blood pooling and caught in the ragged neckline of his ragged shirt and -- the thing’s not much good for anything else other than scraps, really, and he hates having to put something newer on, because, again, everyone else needs clothes and he’s far from the only person combing the wild darkness. 

The hunters, the last of the Glaives, the ragtag group forming around Gladio. Ignis and Aranea and Cindy, each serving their specific functions in the slow coalescing of humanity, the slow trickling gathering of people in the last cities of light. 

And there’s him. Just one person. Just one Prompto.

Shake in his hands as he patches himself up. The one thing he’d kept for himself, in secret. These bandages, at least, smell new: and that’s a strange thing to be caught on, he thinks. The smell of never-used cotton and linen and loose-woven gauze, quickly overtaken by the copper and hot rust of dried and drying blood. Water, tasting like iron, that he drinks straight from the drip in the tap and then he has to wash off the blood matting in his hair. 

Patching up his own hands is another matter: he’s had to go back to using actual bullets, and he’s still careless from time to time, still catches burns from the flight of spent casings, the heat of the magazine after it’s been ejected. His burned hands. His burned fingertips.

It’s done, somehow, eventually. He gets it done: gets himself all patched up and then he can feel all the strength leave him on a ragged breath, that he barely hears because he’s toppling into his makeshift bed and -- 

Tired. He’s so tired.

And still he sleeps and wakes himself up shivering, with a name on his lips. The ghost-sensation of missing warmth, missing life, the missing heartbeat he’d once held tight against his own: the counterpoint of a pulse beating with his own.

(and in honor of @ignyxweek and my best @stopmopingstarthoping, here’s the first one.)

(writing inspiration: here. the song is called “araw-gabi”, which translates roughly to “day and night”.)

Quick Fic Pick 98: threw away ten thousand songs

The last drops of rain slide a chilly path down the back of his neck and it’s all he can do to fight off the sheer prey-animal fear that rolls sickening down his spine -- he hates the feeling of having to look over his shoulder even in these places, in these corridors, all these rooms of stone and fortified glass and -- out beyond them, shivering on the edges of the city -- blue-light protection.

Best not to think about the source of that protection, either, or he’ll find himself having to fight off the dry-heaves as well, and just as he’s ducking into a quiet alcove, just as he’s reaching to turn off one bank of distant overhead lights so he has more shadows to hide in -- he hears it. Tentative, in the whistle of night-scented wind along the cold floors. In the draft and the lingering scents of the last of the autumn blooms, the bracing sea-breezes -- 

He would gladly fill up his lungs with that brine-scented breeze, but he’s drawn to the piano, to the rising music: and it starts out almost gentle, almost tentative, almost drowned out in these dark cavernous halls.

No way he’s letting it go, when it calls to him, when it sets the hooks of sweet powerful melodies into his skin, into his heart, and he takes off almost at a run, trusting his battle-honed senses to send him not into the the raging heart of the fight, but into something far gentler, far far quieter, and even as he runs the notes falter and almost trail off, and then rise again --

Open door, and one single shaft of wavering light, that he crosses in his headlong rush.

When he hears the voice, the startlingly tuneful words in the voice that he knows as a refined accent, calling out strategy and tactics or otherwise swearing up a strangely profane song -- he stops dead, whirls, doubles back.

And Nyx Ulric fetches up in that deserted chamber, wide-eyed on the threshold, eyes straining to pick out the lit candles. The graceful shadowed bulk of the piano, the graceful broad shoulders of the man at the piano, singing, his voice filling in between the notes, as the music is caught between wistful and steadfast.

> The riotfeathers vs crackshot band!AU is now all on AO3, all in one place for easy access and catch-up -- which I mention because I wrote another scene for the AU and it’s all posted too. previously on tumblr here, now to continue on AO3 here. (art of crackshot Noct and Prom here by @haircutboys!)

> I wrote a nyxcor thing for @wrathoscribbles for the prompt “regrets” here. it’s not that angsty, not really, but it does need the musical accompaniment because it’s me, so here’s the Moonlight Sonata.

> I also wrote an agegap Promptis bit here, because it was Smuturday and because of @izuumii‘s art here. 

Quick Fic Pick 101: embers, ashes

Click, nearly jammed up into his side so he almost misses it for the heaviness of his lingering breath, the heaviness of the dream that won’t let him go -- he’s been dreaming of those black carpets again, those gilded columns rising into a ceiling that’s mostly shadows -- and a fluttering spark, a flash of yellow and blue dancing flames, and he turns his head and can’t find it in himself to frown, though normally he’d complain, at the rough cylinder of brownish-white paper precariously caught in the pinch of Nyx Ulric’s mouth.

He sighs, and that’s all he’s got the heart to do, really, even as Nyx succeeds in touching the wavering shivering flame to the tip of the cigarette and -- inhales, and the room fills with burning and the oddly fragrant ash of tobacco and whatever other leaf might be in the damned thing, his damned vice, that’s left its stains on his fingertips.

“Ignis,” he hears Nyx say.

He holds up a hand. “You might as well -- do that,” he mutters in the ragged quiet of the near-morning. “Without me complaining. I don’t have the heart to do that right now.”

And -- bless him -- Nyx mutters something that he doesn’t quite catch, and -- doesn’t really pull away.

All he does is shift himself around, and then shift Ignis around -- Ignis himself goes and moves, easily, lets himself be moved -- and he ends up cradled in the languid spread of Nyx’s legs, his back braced against the breadth of Nyx’s bare chest, and Ignis permits himself a sigh, and turns his head a little. Nyx’s skin warm against his cheek, and the bruised jut of collar bone, from last night’s spar.

The hand that Nyx isn’t using to deal with his cigarette lands low on Ignis’s belly, and if he didn’t know any better he’d think that Nyx might be feeling possessive. Movement of Nyx’s thumb in tight small circles, both a jolt and a balm to his unsettled mind. 

The morning’s well and truly begun in its golden haze by the time he reaches for Nyx’s wrist and -- the hand that’s got the cigarette. 

Quick Fic Pick 94: ice blue eyes

The joke died a lingering, adrenaline-rush death in the shadow of a Niflheim drop-ship bearing down on them, slow and rumbling and they were fixed in its sights if the shooting was anything to go by -- but that was all right, Noctis thought, that was okay.

The drop-ship was in his sights too: and he wound up, called on the splintering-fire edges of the magic that lived in his blood. Spear in his hand and it was easy, so thoughtless, to coil and twist and -- throw, the entire elegant length of it a weapon and a projectile in its own right and he warped after it -- tasted the magic in its lightnings on his tongue -- caught up to it and slashed through the gun emplacements on the port side of the ship.

Shift, over to the starboard side, the chattering guns already gone silent and smoking and he winged a salute in the general ice-spark direction of Ignis, before letting himself fly and fall back down to the ground and --

"Incoming!"

He didn't think for this one, either: just threw himself flat to the ground as Gladio raised a massive shield over him, and they both peered around the edge and -- Noctis was only the first to find his words.

"Since when could those things move?"

"I don't know. I need to get you out of here, we need to run -- we need a better battlefield, those MTs are gonna herd us -- "

Tactical gimlet eye, that was Gladio right now, and a grimace of anger and Noctis couldn't tell him to get a hold of himself. They were still and only a few weeks out from the screaming mourning headlines, the implications of those headlines, the silver ribbon tied on around Noctis's own wrist as a symbol with many meanings.

King-presumptive. Orphan. The sky-towering grief that still slowed his breaths, if not his steps because those had been irrevocably drilled into him, and he could -- had -- perform them in his sleep, in a haze of pain.

And just before he could fall headlong into that tearful abyss once again, there was a distorted shout off to the left -- he thought he still recognized the voice and he yelled, and magicked up a knife to throw, and -- he tore off after it, heedless of its destination, which was --

A pack of MTs, that Prompto was awkwardly fending off with a too-close, too-tight grip on a familiar star-shaped weapon and Noctis shot him a fierce mirthless grin. Plucked the Star of the Rogue out of his friend's hand. "I got this."

"Big fucking thing over there," Prompto said, flushed, no longer smiling. "You deal with these guys, I'll take that one."

"How much distance do you need?" And that question fell out of his mouth so naturally, so plainly, like they'd been in a long war -- and sometimes he saw something in Prompto that felt exactly like that blankness, that old cold weariness he had seen in -- soldiers. In Cor, in Clarus, and even in his own father.

That shadow thinned out Prompto's lips and drained all the flush from his cheeks. His freckles, too: so he was pallid and grim and deathly-faced in the here and now, his eyes colder than winter's heart, and the lines in his face gathering around his calculating squint.

He looked like he was -- not really there, not even to Noctis as he cut through the thicket of armor and blank eerie masks.

"This is enough, I just need to -- be not disturbed."

Even his voice was like ice, like jagged silver, and Noctis fought the urge to shiver.

This was Prompto, the right shape of him in the world, only -- darker than shadows and the rifle he summoned from the Armiger.

"As long as you need," Noctis heard himself say, caught and pinned on the sly downturn of Prompto's mouth, the easy line of his shoulders, the way his feet and knees and hips were braced into a slight crouch.

And Noctis summoned a different shield to go with a shorter sword, and he watched Prompto, watched all around, warped the short distance to take out an incoming MT and then -- back to his friend, who was breathing calm and steady as he sighted in and --

There wasn't even any triumph on Prompto's face when he took down the mech with one shot: just the blink, blink to clear the fumes and then he was looking around, scanning, and Noctis wondered, briefly, what was going through his mind.

imagine Gladio pummeling Noct into the mats in practice, then reassuring him after with a kiss: they're both sweaty anyway, he doesn't care. but when he mutters, "you did a great job," you bet he means it.

imagine Noct stopping Ignis from drinking that extra extra can of Ebony with a kiss to the top of the head. then he says, "go, get out of here, I got this" -- where "this" might be a meeting or a sheaf of reports or something.

imagine Noct and Prom exchanging top-of-head kisses while studying for exams; maybe the work is way too hard but neither of them are even thinking of quitting.

imagine Prom out exercising, running circles around Gladio + sassing him to bits but the final punch line is -- you guessed it, kiss to the top of the big guy's head!

imagine Prompto finding Ignis weighed down with a bunch of groceries or reports, so before he offers to help: one, top-of-head kiss; two, funny face.