Chapter Text
December 27, 22:35
“I,” Ardyn was standing in the doorway to Aranea’s apartment on a Tuesday in late December, snowflakes caught in his hair and feeling more than a little bit windblown from the weather outside. She stared back at him in her pyjamas with her hair in curlers, “Need a favour.” He’d just waltzed in from the snow when she’d buzzed him in, and she looked about as pleased to see him there at half-midnight as he himself was to be in attendance.
Aranea stared at him. “Okay,” she said at last, “I’ll bite.” Ardyn solemnly held out his apartment key to her, and she took it, her confusion increasing by the second. “What?”
“I have been invited,” Ardyn drawled, sarcasm dripping from every word, “To the family holiday out at the chateau. For my birthday party, I am told, although I’d much rather spend it here, with you all, than stuck with a bunch of old spoilsports. However, I have been assured repeatedly that it will be fun and I will enjoy it and everyone wants me there.” All of which, of course, was patently untrue, but he was stuck with it, now. He waved a hand. “You know what family is like.” Aranea was staring at him with a look on her face that clearly said: no. She had no idea what family was like. “Anyway the nub and thrust is, I need someone to look after Kar for me while I’m gone, and you’re the only person I can think of he’ll willingly eat for.” Kar, at seventeen, was even more surly and ill-tempered than he had been at one.
“Why are you asking me?” Aranea managed after a moment, baffled. “Kar barely tolerates me.” Barely tolerated meant that Kar had never, at least to Ardyn’s knowledge, peed on anything she owned. “You should get Noctis to do it, Kar actually likes him.”
Ardyn pressed his hand to his forehead and sighed. “Well, I would ask him to do it, since he loves that little monster so much, but darling, he’s coming to the party.” Ardyn sighed, perhaps a touch over-dramatically. “My beloved great-nephew is perhaps the only person I want to actually be there, although I’m sure he’d love to use the excuse of catsitting to get out of it. But if I’m stuck with his father at New Years, then so is he.”
Aranea opened her mouth.
“What.”
December 31, 10:00
It wasn’t like he’d meant to not tell Aranea. After all, she had been working for him for five years, and it wasn’t exactly a state secret, or anything. Well, it sort of was. But it wasn’t the kind of state secret that nobody knew, it was just the kind of state secret that was more of a family secret than a governmental one. But when you were royalty, it was hard to tell where family shame became public shame.
So not telling Aranea hadn’t been an intentional lie, he just…found himself never mentioning it, for one reason or another. Mostly because then he would have to have a really stupid, annoying conversation about it.
The following morning, M.T. closed for inventory as Ardyn tallied up the last purchases for the holidays before they left to Family Hell, Cor reading the morning paper and enjoying his day off, Aranea leaned over the counter at work and pinned him. “Okay,” she said, tapping her ballpoint pen on the wood countertop, “So you were gonna tell me you were Royalty when, Your Highness?”
“Don’t call him that,” Cor said without looking up from his paper. “It goes to his head and then he acts like an asshole.”
“I am an asshole,” Ardyn replied, unperturbed. Cor grunted. “He’s just saying that because nobody ever takes me seriously enough to call me Your Highness. Technically I am a Prince,” he paused, sucked on his pen cap obscenely. “Well. If an illegitimate one. Although, goodness, I can’t think of the last time anyone but Cor called me that seriously. And even then, Cor only pulls out Your Highness when he’s balls deep—“
Cor stepped on his toes. Hard. Ardyn kicked him in the shin in return. Aranea looked like she’d just swallowed something really, really gross.
“This has to be a joke. How can you be a Prince and nobody knows?”
“Well, plenty of people know.” Ardyn shrugged. “I have a Wikipedia page, albeit under my maiden name. I’m just not in the line of succession, so nobody really cares all that much.” Aranea ignored him and looked at Cor.
“He’s joking, right?” Cor looked up at her, a fleck of foamy milk caught on his upper lip about which Ardyn could have written odes. That nobody would have bothered to read. “This is an elaborate, and stupid, joke. Right?”
“I would never play along with one of his jokes.” Cor held up a finger to forestall Ardyn butting in that he did regularly play along with the King’s jokes, and why would he play along with Regis and not Ardyn? “It’s not playing along if I’m on the clock, Ardyn.” He, petulantly, started deep-throating his pen. Cor, who had known him for the better part of twenty years, ignored him. “No, Ardyn is actually a Lucis Caelum. If a terrible one.”
“His hair is fucking maroon! And he’s tall! The King and Noctis are both tiny!” Aranea paused. “And Lucis Caelums go grey early.”
“I haven’t got a single grey hair on my perfect head,” Ardyn lied, checking off the next thing down on his inventory list. “Have you ever seen a grey hair on my perfect head?”
“No,” Cor turned the page of his newspaper, “Because you dye it.” He glanced up, a smile playing around his thin lips as Ardyn glared at him like a look could melt the skin off of his face. “Oh, I’m sorry, was that something I wasn’t supposed to say?”
“You’re the soldier, Marshal.” Ardyn waggled his pen. “If I stab this in your eye, will you die?”
“Don’t turn this into a weird lover’s spat!” Both men looked over at Aranea. “I’ve seen his pubes!” She paused. “Not like I wanted to. But. His hair is actually that red!” Ardyn sighed.
“Well, yes, I got it from my mother. But I’m not getting any younger, you know. Some of us don’t look good as silver foxes.” He’d started going grey at the same time as Regis had, in his early thirties. Unlike some people, though, Ardyn had refused to go quietly into that good night. Honey, his hair had missed auburn big time, but he would own it every day for the rest of his life. Ardyn stood, sighed dramatically. “When royalty stands you’re supposed to stand, you know,” he said to Cor, tapping the other man on top of the head with his pen.
“That’s just the King,” Cor didn’t look up at him, but did smack him on the ass. “Go count your to-go cups so you don’t spend the entire vacation freaking out about it. I’m not going through that again.” As Cor spoke, Ardyn’s phone buzzed, and he artfully pulled it from his pocket to check his texts.
Darling Nibling [BLACK HEART]: um
ARD: What’s up ?…………...slime man
Darling Nibling [BLACK HEART]: have you + cor left yet
Darling Nibling [BLACK HEART]: I kinda
Darling Nibling [BLACK HEART]: um
ARD: Sweetheart, did u sleep through your parents leaving ?…………...slime man
Darling Nibling [BLACK HEART]: well like
Darling Nibling [BLACK HEART]: I mean sorta?
Darling Nibling [BLACK HEART]: I didnt actually dads just in like
Darling Nibling [BLACK HEART]: the shittiest mood and I didnt wanna be in the car with him driving
ARD: :-(…………...slime man
ARD: My poor Noctis !!…………...slime man
Darling Nibling [BLACK HEART]: you know the thing he does where he
Darling Nibling [BLACK HEART]: taps on the brake every .2sec
Darling Nibling [BLACK HEART]: that thing
ARD: Yes I know The Thing™ .…………...slime man
Darling Nibling [BLACK HEART]: anyway can you and cor give me a ride out?
Darling Nibling [BLACK HEART]: I can come by the apartment
ARD: Come to M.T. we’re doing stock !…………...slime man
ARD: Coffee on the house ;-).…………...slime man
ARD: Did Iris & Gladio go with the Boring Boys?…………...slime man
Darling Nibling [BLACK HEART]: yea
ARD: Their loss ;-)…………...slime man
Darling Nibling [BLACK HEART]: thanks uncle ardyn
ARD: Always !!…………...slime man
“We’re giving Noct a ride,” Ardyn told Cor off-handed, and then added to Aranea without blinking, “Fuck off.” He left the room, but as he got into the stock room, Ardyn paused as he heard Aranea drop her voice to a hushed whisper.
“If he’s the King’s uncle, how old is he?”
Ardyn sped backward so fast that when he wrenched around the corner his hair and scarves weren’t even artfully aflutter, he was just red-faced and glaring. “Well, his birthday is the first and he’s turning f—“ the other man had started to say, and he froze when he saw Ardyn looking at him like he was going to commit homicide. Cor hesitated, and then very slowly took a long sip of coffee. Smart man. “State secret. That’s classified information.”
“You just don’t want him to get angry at you!”
“You can’t ask a lady her age!” Ardyn said, and Aranea jumped, glared at him.
“You are, like, the exact fucking opposite of a lady!”
The stockroom was a mess after the holidays, as it always was. Their business was up with tourists and visiting friends and family, and Drunk Holiday Party Ardyn never put anything back where it went, so he ended up on top of one of the stock shelves, digging through dusty old paper napkins, trying to find the rest of the to-go cups. They’d had less left over than he thought. Ardyn had left the café door unlocked, since he was a lazy piece of shit. They were leaving as soon as he was done making sure what he had to order, and as Cor sat there nursing his coffee while Aranea cleaned up the signs for the new year’s menu, Ardyn banging about in the stockroom, the door opened. The bell clanged.
“We’re closed!” Shouted the stockroom. “Come back after New Year’s!”
“No, you’re my ride.” Aranea paused where she was scrubbing down one of the signs and turned around to see Prince Noctis standing there, looking warm in a huge puffy winter vest, his black hair sticking out at odd angles under his hat. He also looked like he’d just rolled out of bed. Ardyn, summoned by the young man, swanned out of the back room and came over, squishing his cheeks and pulling him into a hug that Noctis endured with the sort of longsuffering anguish that accompanied any young adult’s response to overzealous relatives. Holding the Prince at arms’ length, Ardyn tsked his tongue against his teeth.
“I wasn’t expecting you anytime soon. I thought you’d be in bed until after lunch!”
“Na.” Noctis yawned. “I wasn’t actually that tired. Papa can’t tell when I’m faking and he didn’t make Gladio come check. Can I have that free coffee?”
“Of course. But really Noct, you can’t just rely on your softhearted uncle to give you a ride when you fake sleeping late. Your father is going to give me an earful.” Ardyn tweaked his nose, and Noctis grunted.
Aranea, now that she knew, could see the resemblance. Creepy weird giggling? Never stood up straight for literally five seconds ever? Both fell out of the gay tree, hit every branch on the way down? Stupid hair? Yeah.
Noctis sat down in the chair Ardyn had vacated earlier as his uncle came around the counter and started making his drink. “You’ve been cadging free drinks off of me for years,” Aranea accused Noctis, who looked up at her, surprised. “For like. Four years! And I’ve always been afraid to give them to you because I figured Ardyn was gonna get pissy about it! And not once did you mention that this jackass is your uncle.” Noctis blinked.
“I thought you knew?”
“No!” Aranea yelled, anguished. “Like, nobody ever tells me anything around here! I didn’t know that was what the L.C. in Cor’s phone stood for, and I still don’t know what M.T. stands for!”
“M stands for slope,” Noctis replied. Like it was obvious. Like anyone would have any fucking clue what that meant.
“I didn’t realise it was such a big deal.” Ardyn said, somewhat dreamily. “All this time, surrounded by royalty. Bullying royalty. Occasionally lacing royalty’s coffee with laxatives as an office prank. Being mean to royalty. Maybe I should have told you sooner, so you would be nice to me.” Aranea didn’t reply, but it was unspoken: there was no way she would’ve been nice to Ardyn. He sighed, dejected. “I suppose it was too much to hope for a little bit of decent respect around here.”
Cor laughed as he turned the page of his book. Ardyn glared vaguely at the back of his head, and went to give Noctis his coffee.
“Okay. So I’m morbidly curious now.” Ardyn and Noctis looked at Aranea and gave her an identical eyebrow cock. It was a little eerie. “What the hell is happening that you’re both so worried about.” Cor turned the page of his newspaper in the pause that followed, and Ardyn pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Every year,” he explained, “For my birthday, which is New Year’s Day, the family as a whole has this ridiculous get together out at one of the chateaus in the countryside. It’s nominally supposed to be a fun and wholesome bonding experience wherein we all get together and reflect on how much we love each other.” He winced. “In reality, it’s a fucking nightmare. Every year. Something always goes wrong.”
“You always get drunk,” Cor interjected. Ardyn ignored him.
“So I haven’t gone the last few years. I’m already the black sheep of the family, they aren’t losing anything by me missing. But this year the foot got put down and I must attend and be on my best behaviour.”
“I dunno, it could be fun.” Aranea scratched her chin. “I’d love to have a get together with my family.” The expression that the two Lucis Caelums made in response was rather similar to that of a person swallowing a lemon.
“’Look at how much you’ve grown!’” Noctis imitated, sarcasm dripping from his voice. “’You’re so tall, you’ll be taller than your Father soon!’”
“’When are you going to start acting like proper Royalty? Don’t you know nobody in our family buys thrift!’” Ardyn chimed in, in an identical patronising tone.
“’Are you sure you want to go with Noctis as your chosen name? You can’t always trust decisions you made when you were a child!’”
“’I’ve heard yoga can help with depression, does it work the same for bipolar?’”
“’I don’t know why you and your father can’t just be straight!’”
Aranea stared. “Wh...what?”
“Every year!” Noctis threw his hands in the air. “It’s always the same thing! Picking at everything about us, and then a fight starts, and then everyone ends up angry and fed-up and we don’t talk about it!”
“My sister in law is a real nightmare,” Ardyn clarified. “The Queen Mother is probably my second least favourite relative. Aside from my other sister in law.” He paused. Pressed his forehead into his hands. “Please tell me Menda isn’t coming this year.”
“She is.” Noctis looked as miserable as Ardyn as he said it.
“Fuck me.”
ARD: Your mother is coming ?…………...slime man
[CROWN][MIDDLE FINGER]: Yes
ARD: Noctis mentioned the other one .…………...slime man
ARD: She Who Must Not Be Named !!…………...slime man
[CROWN][MIDDLE FINGER: Sylva invited her, not me
[CROWN][MIDDLE FINGER: So don’t go blaming me.
[CROWN][MIDDLE FINGER: She and Aulea are both coming
ARD: If I die at the end of this party, I am going to haunt the shit out of you !…………...slime man
[CROWN][MIDDLE FINGER]: Thanks.
14:00
When they arrived at the chateau, Cor leaned in the backseat and gently shook Noctis awake. “Get up, Your Highness,” the Marshal said, as Noctis snuffled and rolled his face into the upholstery of Ardyn’s atrocious car, mashing his face into the leather. “We’re here.”
“Can we like, be not here?”
“As I told Ardyn: no.” Noctis groaned and rolled out of the car, grabbed his overnight bag, and slouched in after the Marshal, who locked up Ardyn’s shitty convertible. Said man was absolutely nowhere in sight—he’d probably legged it to somewhere—as they climbed up the circle drive, frost-rimed gravel crunching underfoot. About halfway up, the front door to the chateau burst open, revealing Iris.
“Hi Marshal!” She waved. Cor waved back. “Noct, there you are! You guys took for-e-ver!”
“Yeah,” he called back to his sister, “Because Uncle Ardyn and Cor don't speed!”
“Don’t let Dad hear you say that!” Technically, as Regis had pointed out on more than one occasion, since he made the laws about speed limits, he couldn’t speed. (Technically, as Clarus had pointed out on every single occasion that the former had been brought up, the Council ratified his decisions, and while Clarus did have the right to veto or make unanimous calls in urgent situations when none of the rest of the Council was present, he had never, not once, approved any sort of speed limit lifting on the part of the Royal family.) “Where’s Uncle Ardyn?”
Noctis shrugged. "Dunno." Cor pointed over his shoulder.
“Seeing the chocobos.”
The chateau had been built two hundred years before, by some King about whom Noctis was supposed to know a ton but didn’t, and currently it was stuffed fit to bursting with literally every member of his extended family. Cousins, aunts and uncles, far-removed relatives by marriage, and the closer ones too—his parents, his siblings, both his grandmothers and his one living grandfather, his uncle and Cor—and then family friends, too. Cid and Weskham always came, Ignis and his parents, Sylva Nox Fleuret (with Ravus, but no Luna, in tow), Aulea his godsmother, and Menda, Sylva and Aulea’s best friend. And Ardyn’s sister-in-law.
Which meant, the moment Noctis opened the door, he was almost bowled over by three cousins under the age of ten, and walked smack-dab into his grandmother.
“Oh!” Collina cooed, her blue eyes bright behind her thick glasses as she turned around, pulling Iris and Noctis both over, one in either arm. She was a small, chubby woman in her late eighties, and she was nice enough while sober. It was when she got drunk that she became a problem. “It’s my beautiful granddaughters! Look how much you’ve both grown!”
Noctis closed his eyes.
She smelled like Schnapps already.
It was gonna be a long, long night.
17:40
By dinnertime, one window had been broken, three children had burst into tears, Ignis had been badly singed by a kitchen accident, and Ardyn had still not appeared out of the chocobo stable.
“I’m telling you,” Menda Izunia was the same age as Noctis’ parents, her bob-cut mousy brown hair mostly grey, wearing a pair of denim overalls and a turtleneck and steel-toed combat boots. Her lipstick was approximately the colour of spilled blood. “He’s too scared to come in here with me here. Probably thinks I’ll kill him.”
“Well, to be fair, you did promise to get revenge last time you saw him.” Sylva laughed when she said it. “Really Menda, you don’t have to be so mean to him!”
“But it’s funny!”
Regis, at the head of the table, had his head in his hands, and Noctis didn’t want to go anywhere near the mess that was his drunk grandmother. As they were sitting there, the whole family crammed in at three separate tables to eat, Clarus came over and flopped down into the chair next to his younger son, threw an arm around Noct’s shoulders.
“You having fun yet?”
“No.” He was twenty-one, but Noctis didn’t even consider for half a second not hiding in his father’s shoulder. That was what parents were for, right? “Can I stop coming next year?”
“If we have to come, so do you. Your grandmother would be heartbroken if you didn’t.” Noctis groaned. “Did you see that your cousin Cicer brought this fantastic homemade hummus?” Noct groaned louder this time. “Seriously. It actually makes that shit edible.”
“Don’t let Dad hear you,” Noct warned. Their fridge at home in the Citadel was like, three quarters health food and Gladio had to keep his cup noodles hidden in his bedroom. Ever since his pregnancy with Iris, Regis had been on increasingly intense health food kicks. They apparently made his pain easier to manage. Noctis just thought that they made his life hell, and meant he had to go to Prompto’s place to have a bagel. “Hummus is good for you, Papa. Chickpeas are an essential source of proteins and nutrients. You can put it on almost anything! Why, I think we should try substituting them to make savoury baked goods!”
“Eugh,” Clarus muttered. Noct giggled.
And then, in the middle of the conversations, the door into the main part of the house from the dining room banged open, revealing—
“And here I’d hoped that you had finally frozen to death,” Regis said. Ardyn was standing there, looking artfully windblown, his cheeks chapped rosy pink from the ocean breeze off of the coast. He’d lost his winter coat and was just standing there in the most atrocious thing that Noctis had probably ever seen his great-uncle in, which was definitely not what he had been wearing earlier on the drive. Then, he’d been in a fairly sensible grey chenille turtleneck, a set of pink lace scarves (three—one powder pink, one magenta, and one peach) and a pair of worn but comfortable looking skinny jeans. Now—
Ardyn was wearing a pair of lime-green spandex bike shorts, maroon flip-flops, and the upper half of a perfectly tailored tuxedo. The jacket looked like it was crushed velvet. He was wearing an opera scarf.
It was rainbow. Noctis hadn’t even known such a thing existed
He had what looked like an entire collection of butterfly barrettes in his hair. He had also dialed his makeup up to eleven, his lips painted a green that matched his shorts but did seventeen kinds of the exact opposite of match his hair, his eyelids covered in gold glitter. His nails were also green. The combined effort was somehow both perfect, and also horrendous, at the same time.
“Aww,” Ardyn sighed, leaning dramatically against the doorframe. Several of Noctis’ younger cousins giggled. Cid made a pained noise. “You almost make it sound like you might miss me!” Cor, a few seats down, had his face in his hands and had slid halfway under the table. Which was the usual reaction to Ardyn existing.
Collina made a horrible strangled noise, and Noct looked over to see his grandmother pale and anguished, clutching her pearls. “Those are not appropriate clothes!” The Queen mother managed at last. “Ardyn, go get changed at once! What your brother would say I will never know—“
“You look like you crawled into a dumpster, and wore what you found there!” Menda cackled, and Ardyn walked past her to the open seat at the far end of the table next to the King. As he passed her, he grabbed her cup off of the table and splashed the entire contents of the wineglass onto her face.
“Bite me, Menda.”
18:30
“No, Mother,” Regis said, patiently, as he kicked his uncle under the table, Ardyn stepping surprisingly hard on his toes in return despite wearing sandals, “As I said, it’s up to Noctis if he wants to start in politics. I’m in perfectly good health, I don’t expect him to have to take the throne for some years yet.”
“Well,” his mother had gotten very drunk very early, and had launched into her yearly tirade about making sure Noctis was ready to take the throne if Regis died suddenly and inexplicably, “That was what your father said, and you remember what happened!” Regis sighed.
“Mother, Father had type four, I have type three. It’s a lot less serious in terms of fatal side effects.” Mors’ heart had ruptured when he’d been only fifty-seven. According to every specialist Regis had seen, he had absolutely nothing to worry about. “He isn’t ready,” the King continued. “He’s not even ready for a relationship. He’s just gotten his CFS under control, I don’t want to push him into something he’s not ready for—“
“You can’t call her sleeping through everything a disorder!” Collina snapped, rocking dangerously on her chair. Regis ground his teeth. Next to Collina, Clarus’ mother Brevis put a hand on the Queen Mother’s shoulder to stabilise her. “I don’t know why it’s so hard for your daughter—“
“Son,” Regis corrected, for the third time in the last ten minutes. “And CFS is a pretty serious illness. Combined with his depression, it's been very hard for him to be active, Mother—“
“Really, Collina,” Ardyn might have been a raging asshole the size of the fucking moon, but he was good for one thing if nothing else: being the most hated person at any gathering. And taking the heat. “We’re all very lucky that Noctis doing so well despite his health. You remember what I was like at his age, don’t you?” Ardyn sighed dramatically. “At least he’s not actively dying, he’s certainly doing better than I was.”
“I don’t know what we did wrong,” Collina complained. Regis, his head pressed into his hand as he stared over the table and the chaos, noticed Iris sliding out of the room along with Noctis, and couldn’t find it in him to chastise them. Aulea and Menda were both tipsy and Sylva kept having to coax them down off of the table. All of the children had long since managed to escape their parental captors. Clarus’ parents were in a very involved conversation with Cor and Cid about motorcycles, and his cousin Gaius was telling a very animated rendition of some story. Ignis was poring over a recipe book with the cook and Weskham, and Gladio was flirting a little awkwardly with one of Regis’ third cousins, and he didn’t have the heart to tell his son that she was a lesbian. “Two generations in a row! I don’t know why you can’t just be a normal couple.” Collina sniffed, and reached out to cup her son’s cheek.
There was such a look of anguish on her face. “You were such a beautiful little girl. I don’t know where I went wrong! You would have been such a nice Queen! And you and Clarus would have been the cutest couple. Or if you had to insist on being a boy, you could have married Aulea? I mean, I don’t know what this insistence about being a gay man is all about! You’re really just straight anyway! It isn’t like Clarus is getting anything different than he would have if you’d never ruined your body and had your breasts—“
Regis closed his eyes. “Mother,” he growled, his voice cracking. This was trying. He was being tried. And found wanting. He would not start a fight with his aged mother at the dining room table.
Ardyn cleared his throat. Clapped him on the shoulder.
“I’ll go get something to drink.”
19:00
Somewhere in the time Cor had been discussing the finer workings of his motorcycle with Altus and Cid, Ardyn and the King had somehow escaped to the kitchen and between them drunk three bottles of wine.
“I don’t understand,” Clarus said, as Regis threw back the rest of his glass. The King was sitting on top of one of the counters, and had loosened his tie, and lost both his shoes. “You haven’t had more than one glass of wine in three years!” Ardyn, who was sprawled on the floor and had moved on from wine to what looked like champagne, raised a flute.
“In his defence,” Ardyn said, completely serious, wiping a lipstick stain off of the rim of the champagne flute, as Cor sighed next to Clarus, “Collina is far more palatable while drunk. If she was my mother, I’d disown myself.”
“If I have to have one more conversation about my mother about why you and I couldn’t just be married like a normal heterosexual couple, I’m abdicating the throne and running away to live in a hole in the ground for the rest of my life.”
“I was talking to Altus and Cid for twenty minutes,” Cor whispered, strangled. Ardyn splayed his legs and winked at the Marshal. “Twenty minutes I stopped paying attention! How did they manage this?”
“There’s still plenty of time before midnight,” Clarus said. He watched as his husband reached up onto the shelf behind him with the liquor and pulled out some kind of flavoured vodka, held it at arms length, and then broke the seal. “They might sober up.”
That was a false hope.
20:17
“Happy Birthday!” The assorted family cried, as Ardyn blew out the candles on his cake and then stood there, looking bitter and morose.
“I’m old,” he said, to nobody in particular, flopping bonelessly into the chair and glaring at his cake. Someone (Menda) had insisted on putting on all fifty three candles on his cake and making him blow all of them out. “I am old, and miserable, and I’ll be alone forever.”
“I asked you to marry me again last week,” Cor muttered, slicing the cake. “You said no.” He set a slice of cake before Ardyn. “Happy birthday, Ardyn.” The Marshal leaned over and kissed him, and somewhere, Noctis made a gagging noise.
“Gross,” said the Prince. “That’s gross. That’s disgusting.”
For the birthday-cum-holiday presents were passed around, and everyone opened them. Amongst other things, Regis got a cookbook called Fifty-Five Unique Ways To Use Quinoa, Iris got a new phone and immediately scurried off to start transferring the data from her old one, Noctis got a brand new fishing tackle box from Cor, Cor (who was wearing a maroon v-neck with black piping) got three more of the exact same shirt from three different people, who all looked awkwardly chagrined, and Ardyn got a horrendous pink sweater with I am a luxury few can afford written on it. It was vintage. It was terrible.
“This,” Ardyn said, holding it at arms length before he pulled it on over his suitcoat, “Is the best thing anyone has ever given me.”
20:39
Ardyn left and came back without his tux but with three different camisoles on instead, and still had the ugly sweater. Regis, at some point, lost his coat and waistcoat. The kids got chivvied off to bed. Noct, Iris, Gladio, and Ignis ran off to do something stupid and teenagery, which was no worse than what the adults were doing.
22:45
“So anyway,” Menda explained, her boots up on top of some priceless vintage furniture, while Adryn drunkenly mixed up some kind of monster in one of those water coolers that were meant for fancy parties but tonight was just going to get everyone blitzed, Weskham handing him random bottles after peering at them intently “Like, he grabbed my boob, and you should’ve seen the look on his face when I pulled the switchblade!”
“Knives are illegal to carry within Insomnia if they’re over four inches,” Regis pointed out. He had tipped backwards into Clarus’ lap and lost just one of his socks. He was flushed, hazy, and kept staring at his husband like he was the greatest thing to ever happen to him. “I’ll have you arrested.”
Aulea laughed so hard at that comment, hiccuping, that she fell over sideways and into Sylva’s lap.
23:38
“Um,” Ravus said, leaning into the large drawing room that currently contained pretty much the entirety of the above-twenty five population, including the grandparents who were planing an extremely heated game of bridge, while the rest of them just kind of sat there and talked. There was snow in Ravus’ hair, down his shirt collar, and what looked like a dirty boot print marked on his cheek. “Iris is stuck on the roof.”
Cor, very tiredly, removed Ardyn from his lap and disentangled Aulea’s arms from around his neck, waking the woman up. Ardyn swore at him roundly as he dumped the older man on his ass off of the couch.
“I’ll go get her.”
23:58
“So,” Iris said, eyeing Gladio’s red solo cup of worryingly unmarked alcohol, “Who is gonna kiss me for New Year’s?” Clarus shook his head at his daughter as she sneaked her hand over to try and steal Gladio’s cup. “I kissed Gladys last year.”
“You’re too old for me to kiss you,” Gladio replied, holding his cup out of her reach. “Kiss Noct.”
“Ew,” Noctis said, looped an arm with Ignis. "Besides, I'm kissing Specs." The other young man's high cheekbones flushed. Ardyn came over and threw an arm around Iris’ shoulder, squeezed his niece as Clarus got the volume up on the tv so that they could watch the ball drop.
“Don’t worry, darling,” Ardyn said, drinking. “Midnight is a whole minute long. I’m pretty sure I can kiss everyone in that time; I am a slut after all.” Cor choked on his drink, and had to get pounded on the back by Altus, spitting whatever mix of vodka, mixer, lemon juice, tonic water, and probably tequila Ardyn had somehow made palatable through the introduction of more fruit juice than anyone wanted to consider. “What?” Ardyn asked, almost overbalancing sideways as he looked back at his boyfriend. “Are you going to deny it?”
“I’m not kissing you,” Regis replied. “Not for love or money!”
00:27
Regis, laughing, flopped into Clarus’ lap with a boneless grace that somehow let him do it without spilling a single drop of the glass of champagne he was holding. Smiling at his husband, the King spoke into the general hubbub, loud enough above his usual volume that it carried, “Did you know, I think we might have a leak somewhere in this old roof?” Clarus, consternated, looked around worriedly.
“Why do you say that? I hadn’t noticed.”
Regis, without blinking, grabbed Clarus’ hand and put it on his crotch. Noctis, across the room, made this anguished little mortified noise in the back of his throat and most of the family turned to stare, always on the lookout for That Good Drama™. In the hush, the King said, completely calmly, “Because, Clarus, I seem to be all wet.”
Clarus was, approximately, the colour of Ardyn’s hair.
“Okay,” he choked at last, voice reedy and stressed, as he peeled the King’s drink out of his hand and set it on the side table, hefting the other man off of his lap and into a bridal hold. For his efforts the Consort got a disgruntled squawk from the King. “You’ve had enough. I’m taking you to bed.”
“Gross!” Iris shouted, even as Noctis was moaning in pain. “Gross, that’s gross! I’m grossed out! I will never recover! That was disgusting!”
“That’s how you happened!” Regis shouted over Clarus’ shoulder as he was removed from the room, pointing at his daughter. “A happy accident!”
“I,” Noctis said to the room at large, horrified, “Hate my parents.”
01:19
“I don’t see what all the fuss is about,” Ardyn moaned, unhappily, from where he was dumped over Cor’s shoulder like a particularly pink sack of potatoes, his drink dangling from his boneless fingers. “I’m not that drunk.”
“That’s a funny joke,” replied the Marshal. “That’s a really funny joke.” Ardyn sighed, dejected. “No.”
“You are no fun in the slightest, Marshal!”
03:45
Cor woke up first when his pillow shifted out from under him, and blinked blearily at Ardyn swaying across their room to the bathroom, and figured the man was just going to take a well-earned piss after drinking half the contents of the family liquor cabinet. He dozed, unconcerned, and then woke a second time when the lights flicked on and Ardyn’s fairly considerable weight impacted the mattress, bouncing him up in the air.
Someone giggled.
“When I wake up,” Ardyn said, slinging a leg over Cor’s hip, grinding down into the crack of his ass, “Yeah I know I’m gonna be, I’m gonna be the man who wakes up next to you.” Cor made a pained noise as Ardyn leaned both hands into his back and someone started playing the song proper on tinny phone speakers to accompany his boyfriend's drunken rendition that could only in the loosest terms be considered 'singing'. “When I go out,” Ardyn continued, getting louder, “Yeah I know I’m gonna be, I’m gonna be the man who goes along with you!”
“Ardyn,” Cor growled into the mouthful of pillow he had, as Ardyn continued to sing, bouncing on top of him, and it wasn’t even remotely sexy. Someone, whoever his accomplice was, was giggling very hard in the background, “Fuck off,”
“But,” Ardyn cleared his throat and then at the top of his fucking lungs began to wail, “I would walk five-hundred miles and I would walk five-hundred more,” the disembodied giggling had increased in volume to disembodied wheezing, “Just to be the man who walked a thousand miles to fall down at your door!” Ardyn was practically bouncing Cor up off of the sheets now, and every verse he got louder until Cor was a) wide fucking awake and b) really fucking furious, and he finally shoved the older man off of his back and rolled over, blinking blearily.
Ardyn was in his pyjamas still, his hair done up in a net for the night, looking not in the slightest bit chagrined. Regis was standing at the end of the bed, filming, one of Clarus’ shirts sliding down off his slender shoulders. He was wearing moogle slippers. “What?” Cor snarled, blinking at both the Lucis Caelums. He hated Lucis Caelums. He hated all of them.
Ardyn leaned forward, grabbed him by the back of his neck, and kissed him like they were in a fucking porno. His mouth tasted freshly of alcohol, and Cor groaned angrily into his lips as Ardyn leaned back and slapped him, waking him up the rest of the way.
“We’re out of cereal.”
Cor slowly hunched over and put his face in his hands as both men broke down into hysterics.
08:15
Cor and Clarus met on the way down to breakfast, and looked at one another blearily in the chateau hallway. “Do you know where they went?” Clarus asked, at last. He sounded raw. There were about fifteen hickeys on his collarbones. “Because last I saw of them, Ardyn was giving Regis a piggyback out of our bedroom and they were giggling and had a bottle of absinthe.”
Cor, very slowly, closed his eyes. That explained. A lot.
“Cereal,” was all he said. Clarus sombrely clapped him on the shoulder, and together, they started to descend the stairs before the door to the bathroom down the hall slammed open.
“Papa!” Iris wailed, Clarus stopping mid-stride and reversing direction. “Help!” Clarus took the half-flight of stairs in one stride, Cor following in his wake as they jogged down the hall. Iris was wrapped in only a fluffy pink bath towel, her dark hair mussed and her grey eyes sleepy as she pointed into the bathroom. “I don’t know what to do with them.” Clarus pushed past her, Cor just behind the older man’s shoulder, and they came to a halt, staring at the mess before them.
Regis and Ardyn were together in the tub. Ardyn was still fully dressed in his pyjamas. Regis was in absolutely nothing at all. The empty bottle of absinthe was next to the tub on the ground, and they were both seemingly, nominally conscious. There was an empty pizza box, two empty boxes of cereal, and what looked like an entire pint of ice cream, now empty as well. Clarus very, very slowly sighed and scrubbed a hand over the back of his head, fingers scraping quietly through his buzzed hair. "I," he murmured at last, "Don't want to know. I don't even want to begin to know."
“Ardyn,” Cor found himself asking, his boyfriend grunting and rolling sideways to look up at him. They were both completely soaked, and covered in glitter. Cor didn’t even know where they had gotten glitter, “What. What are you two doing?”
“I,” Ardyn slurred in response, “Am washing myself. And my clothes.” He tried to vaguely gesture at himself, but it was aborted and he just dropped his arm halfway through. “We spilled the absinthe on me.”
Clarus put his face in his hands.
“I am remembering,” he said to nobody in particular, “Why we stopped letting them do things together.”
[SPIDER][GUN]: this just in
[SPIDER][GUN]: I hate your fucking cat
[SPIDER][GUN]: attachment: pisslord.jpg
[SPIDER][GUN]: I turned my back on him for TWO SECONDS to scoop his litter
[SPIDER][GUN]: and he peed in my shoes!
ARD: cute…………...slime man
[SPIDER][GUN]: die.