Chapter Text
Prompto is flipping through pictures trying to pick which to delete when Gladio calls him over. He’s in the middle of taking down the tent.
“Take a look,” he says, and Prompto does. There’s a rip in the tent (probably caused by him and Noctis goofing around, if he’s being honest). It’s small but it’s noticeable.
“Should I grab the patch kit?”
“Nah, we used it up already. I figured you could, you know. Do the thing.”
“Oh.”
“Will it work on this?”
Truthfully, Prompto’s not sure. He’s used to doing it by accident. But he shrugs.
“Yeah, it should.”
“Great.” Gladio just sits there watching him expectantly. So he tugs the tear back together and focuses and wills it to be untorn, and for a long moment it seems like he’s doing a fat load of nothing. Then light sears the back of his eyelids, and Gladio gives a low whistle.
“Damn. That must never get old,” he says. Prompto laughs and shakes out his numb fingers. Gladio returns his attention to the tent.
xXx
“Ignis!”
Prompto hears the shout before he sees, and his shot is lined up so he takes it before turning back to look for Noctis and the source of his shout. He sees blood first, oozing out from between the fingers Ignis has clamped to his arm.
“Gladio, potion!” Noctis calls, and Ignis is sinking to his knees, he’s not falling but he’s doing a sort of controlled have-to-sit-down-immediately. Prompto fires off six shots at the courel approaching. That makes two left but they’re well across the clearing with Gladio, and he’s roaring and swinging his sword with no apparent issue.
Prompto crosses to Ignis and Noct rounds on him.
“Are we out?”
“If you’re out and Gladio’s out. Then yeah,” Prompto says. Ignis winces.
“It won’t be a problem. We should finish the hunt and--”
Prompto doesn’t think. He puts a hand on Ignis’ hand, where the blood is still leaking from between his fingers. He thinks fleetingly that maybe it won’t work if he can’t see it but Ignis hisses in pain and it’s like something in him snaps and spills over. He has to shut his eyes as the light flares hot beneath his hand. Ignis gasps softly.
Prompto blinks hard.
“Prompto,” Ignis says softly.
“Sorry! Sorry, did that hurt?” Prompto wrenches his hand away. But as he does, Ignis removes his too. The shirt is ruined, that’s for sure. And there’s blood on everything, but Prompto can see clean, unblemished skin.
“Wow. Just like a potion,” Noctis breathes, and his whole face is lit up in a smile. Prompto feels warmth flood his cheeks and spill down his shoulders towards his chest.
But by the time they are loading into the Regalia to head back for camp, his arm is aching like an electric shock ran up it. He peeks under the bandana almost curiously--it feels so much like the skin is torn. But there’s nothing. Empty skin, just like Ignis.
Two hours later, in the tent, he checks again. And this time there are stark black veins running up his arm starting at his fingertips (which look like they got slammed in a door). He steals Gladio’s jacket and the sleeves slip down long past his hands.
Ignis’ dinner tastes like ash, but he eats it anyways. And when they go to bed he lies awake feeling his pulse pound in his right hand. If he listens hard enough though, he can hear Ignis sigh in his sleep, and Gladio is snoring, like he does, and Noctis is the echoing void of silence he can be relied on to be when sleeping.
And if he wasn’t there they’d have had to turn in the hunt without stopping for rest, Ignis would be exhausted and Noctis and Gladio would have to clean blood from the Regalia’s seats. He clenches his hand into a fist and just breathes hard as the pain rides up his arm.
xXx
“Aw, shit.” Noctis reaches down to grab the two pieces of the mug. Then his expression brightens. “Hey, Prom.”
Prompto slouches a little lower in his chair. He already knows what’s coming, and no amount of squirming is going to prevent it.
“You want me to do the thing?”
“Yeah!”
“Do we even need that mug? Like, we have three now, what’s the big deal? One of us can use a bowl or something.”
“A bowl?” Gladio looks up from poking the fire, one eyebrow raised.
“Ignis barely even uses mugs! I’ve never seen him drink water.”
“I assure you that’s not true,” Ignis says.
“Dude, what’s the big deal?”
“Nothing. Fine, gimme the mug.” He maneuvers it back into one piece on his lap, because his right hand is still sort of fucked. But as he’s laying his left down on it he realizes that if neither of his hands function properly he’ll be worse than useless in battle. So he presses his right hand to the broken mug, thankful for the dark, and wills it whole again.
In a second, his night vision is fried and the mug is fixed; not even the hint of a seam where it was split in two.
Prompto’s broken fingers before. It feels like this.
“Noctis, will you at least try with the rest of your meal?”
“I ate all my meal.”
“He means the veggies, genius,” Gladio laughs. Noctis wrinkles up his nose and Prompto wants to laugh, but in the next second he can’t take it, it feels like there is scar tissue waxing and waning in his guts, and he stands up so quick that the folding chair almost goes over behind him.
“Prom?” he hears Noctis say.
“Gottapee,” he manages to get out, and takes off for the trees as quickly as possible. When he knows he’s out of sight and hopefully out of earshot, he dry heaves into the dirt a few times. Nothing’s going to come up, he can already tell. His hand feels like a lump of melted plastic and he knows it was stupid, stupid, stupid, why wouldn’t he just say something, but there’s poison in him, he can see it and feel it and if Gladio and Ignis and Noctis see it they’ll know that he’s filthy inside. That there’s something ugly at the core of him.
When he returns to camp Ignis is making tea, and the warmth of the cup brings some feeling back into his hand. It’s not so bad. He can tell it’s receding already, and by the morning it’ll be gone or half-gone at least.
xXx
“Ahhh, beds for humans, thank literally every Astral,” Prompto sighs, burying his face in one of the pillows. Gladio snorts.
“What’s the tent designed for, aliens?”
“ Yes ,” Prompto counters.
“It was designed for muscle-bound freaks who love sleeping on the floor,” Noctis calls from beside Prompto, and they both crack up.
“Ah,” Ignis says, and he says it in a tone that means he’s not happy.
“What’s the issue?” Gladio asks. Prompto pushes himself up on his elbows.
“It seems the kettle isn’t working. I had hoped to make some tea.”
“So call down to the front desk,” Noctis mumbles.
“Dude, it’s like three am,” Prompto says.
“Prompto, would you be so kind?” Ignis asks. Prompto blinks. He’s holding out the kettle.
“Ah. Can’t we just wait until morning?”
“What, no, I want tea. Gladio too, right?” Noctis sits up now. Prompto rubs the back of his neck, trying not to make a face.
“Well, yeah but…”
“Is there a problem?” Ignis asks. He’s still holding out the kettle.
“It just makes me kind of tired is all.”
“Tired?” Gladio snorts. “We’re all tired. Tired is what you signed up for.”
“I mean, I don’t like making potions every night but I still do it,” Noctis says. Prompto grabs the kettle out of Ignis’ hands. What was he even thinking? And what, the wiring is probably messed up, that’s nothing to fix. He wills it back into working order, and nothing happens. He feels fine. Ignis makes the tea. They all go to bed.
He wakes up in the dark, in the bowels of the night, drenched in sweat. His chest is locked up so tight it feels like someone is sitting on it, like a current is running through his body strong enough to paralyze him. But seconds, then minutes tick by, and the pain fades away into nothing. In the bathroom he flips on the light and tugs down his shirt collar and there are black veins like a lightning-strike scar but he can tell they’re half-receded already.
xXx
It wasn’t a hard fight, it was just long. The killer wasps kept coming and Prompto kept lining up shots and he hit every single one, because duh , and Gladio is off roaring in the background barreling into stuff.
He doesn’t see Noctis take the hit, he just hears it. He aims, fires the perfect shot and as he is watching bug guts grace the sky he hears Noctis cry out. Turns back in time to see him cleave the killer wasp in two. But then he staggers backwards, gripping his abdomen.
Prompto scans the scene quickly. Stay calm, stay cool, Cor’s voice echoes in his head. Gladio is finishing the last wasp on the other side of the clearing, and Ignis has seen; he’s hurrying over. Prompto needs to finish up fast. He steps between Noctis and last two wasps, takes a steadying breath. Don’t fucking miss , he thinks. But he thinks that every time, and he never misses.
Insect guts splatter in the dry dirt. Prompto gets to Noct’s side about a second after Ignis.
“How you doing buddy?” he doesn’t know where to put his hands. Ignis does, seemingly, he’s checking the wound, he has a potion at the ready.
“Ow,” Noctis croaks. The stinger has him speared through the gut. It’s definitely more than the potion can heal. Ignis is turning away to say something to Gladio and Noctis groans, reaches down and tears the stinger out.
Prompto had “wait, don’t” on his tongue but never even got the first word out. Blood is leaching into Noctis’ shirt at an alarming rate and Ignis turns back in horror and crushes the potion over his chest. Through the tear they see the injury half heal together. It’s not enough.
“Prompto,” Ignis says, but Prompto is already pressing a hand to Noct’s neck, bare skin to skin, and this is easy because Noctis bleeding out is impossible, no part of him will allow it to be. Magic burns his nerve endings on the way down his arm, and the light is blinding even through his eyelids.
“Wow, Prom,” Noct croaks. Prompto breaks into a grin. Gladio’s made it over but it’s fine, Ignis is helping Noctis sit up, checking the injury, but Prompto knows it’s gone. He rocks back on his heels and then drops out of the crouch so he’s sitting on his butt.
“Please try to be more careful. I don’t know what I would have done if Prompto didn’t get to you in time,” Ignis says, pinching the bridge of his nose as he stands. He offers Noctis a hand but Noctis pops to his feet without it.
The pain is starting to roll in like a tide; Prompto can feel it lapping at him. Gladio lays a hand on his shoulder, and he blinks. When did Ignis and Noctis get halfway to the car?
“You coming or what?” Gladio asks, and Prompto nods. Gladio offers a hand and he takes it, but when he’s up on his feet Gladio doesn’t let go. Prompto blinks at his hand, locked in Gladio’s gentle but unbreakable grip.
“Uh, need something big guy?”
“Your nose is bleeding,” Gladio says, and Prompto swipes at it. It’s not bleeding, exactly. The substance on his fingers is tar black and smells faintly rotten.
“Oh, huh,” Prompto just says. If there are ever gears turning in his head, it feels like they’re coming to a sticky halt.
“Guys, hurry up, I’m starving!” Noct calls, and Gladio turns. Prompto takes a step to follow him. And then the poison rises up and chokes him. He gags hard, claps a hand over his mouth but a second later he’s vomiting black tar into the dirt. His vision desaturates. Sound falls out of the world.
“Gladio,” he manages to get out, and then he blacks out.
xXx
He wakes up in the Regalia. At first, all he sees is sky rushing overhead, and he doesn’t know what’s happening.
“Hey, he’s waking up,” he hears above him, and realizes he’s lying in the back, his head propped on Gladio’s lap.
“Wha’s goin’ on?” he manages to get out. There’s a clawing feeling in his chest--pain that could build into nausea. He feels like a wrung out dishcloth. He feels like mucus after it’s been spat into the sink. Noctis twists around and leans over the seat to peer at him. His face is hard, thick with some emotion Prompto doesn’t entirely recognize.
“Did you know that would happen?”
“Noctis,” Ignis says. His tone is low, a little warning.
“Does this happen every time?” Noctis asks.
“Not--I think it has to do with how damaged the thing is.”
“And you’ve always known? Why didn’t you ever say anything?” He’s angry. What’s he gotta be mad about? Everything is fine, he should be healed and they finished the hunt and they’re going back to the hotel. Prompto almost feels indignant; if he could summon the energy he might even be mad.
“I dunno. It didn’t seem relevant.” He sneaks a look up at Gladio’s face, but Gladio has his eyes fixed below Prompto’s face, somewhere around his hip.
“Uh--” is all Prompto gets out before Gladio reaches down with two fingers and tugs Prompto’s shirt up. Noctis’ mouth snaps shut. It looks like all the blood drains out of his face. Prompto already knows what he’s going to see but he still winces. Black veins spin out from his abdomen--centered at the place where Noct got hit.
The sun is too hot. The car is too hot, his skin is too small, and he feels like in the next second he’ll break, like something inside or outside him with have to give in.
“Would someone care to fill me in?” Ignis says, in what has to be his dryest tone ever.
“Doesn’t look good is all.”
“It’ll be gone in a day or two,” Prompto reassures them. Gladio snorts.
“You want to explain this then?” He picks up one of Prom’s hands and shows Noctis. The nail beds are still black.
“Ow,” Prompto says quietly. Gladio’s mouth is pressed in a thin line. Prompto opens his mouth to say, well, something but there isn’t anything to say when he gets there. The clouds roll by overhead. No one speaks for a while.
“Say something next time,” Gladio says, breaking the spell. Prompto feels hot behind his eyes. He feels his throat aching and that itch right before tears well up.
“Okay.”
Gladio rests a hand on his chest. The other one he lays on Prompto’s forehead.
“You’re hot,” he says.
“Thanks.”
“No, I mean sweaty.”
“Sorry.”
“How do you feel?”
“Bad.”
“Okay.” Gladio runs his fingers in Prompto’s hair for a moment. He’s messing up the gel. It’s probably messed up anyways.
“Get some rest, okay?” he hears Noctis say. “Please.” He didn’t need to ask. Prompto’s already slipping out of consciousness.
xXx
Noctis clicks his screen on. Empty. Off. Gladio sighs through his nose.
“You want to say something?” Noctis asks. And Gladio is going what has to be under the speed limit. “Can we go any faster?”
“No, I’m already pushing it.”
“Urgh. I don’t see why I had to come anyways.”
“Because your pacing was pissing everyone off, and Prompto wasn’t going to rest with you there.”
Welp. That’s enough to shut him up. The anger was a nice little loop where he could pin the horrible nervous energy coiled in his stomach on Gladio’s driving or the temperature, or some little thing Ignis said. But if Gladio was going to just tear the band-aid off, which of course he was, because he doesn’t subscribe to the concept of band-aids, well, then he has to start thinking about it again. And he doesn’t want to, even a little bit.
“Every time,” he says. He sees Gladio’s fingers tighten on the wheel, so imperceptibly he probably thinks Noctis didn’t notice.
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t he say anything?”
“What am I, a mind-reader?”
“I dunno. Since we apparently have a track record of hiding shit. Maybe you got some sort of super powers I don’t know about.”
Gladio snorts.
“I don’t have any secrets. Open book.”
“That’s what I thought Prompto was,” Noctis says, and he can hear the whining inflection in his own voice, and it pisses him off to no end, but he can’t keep it out, not now anyways.
“So you thought wrong. Would he still be your friend if he had a few skeletons in his closet?”
“Yes.”
Gladio waves a hand like he’s just won some argument.
“There you go.”
“What do you mean, ‘there you go?’ I’m fucking worried. What if he--I’m--” He gives up on that sentence, fumes for a second, and starts a new one. “Can we hurry up?”
“We’re hurrying, okay? Quick supply run, we’ll be back before you know it.”
In his lap, lying face up, Noctis’ phone finally pings, a reply to the text he fired off to Ignis five minutes after they left.
NOCTIS: How’s he doing?
SPECS: About the same as when you left. He’s asleep.
“What’d Iggy say?” Gladio asks, after a few moments riding in silence. Noctis narrows his eyes at him. Then he folds his arms.
“You’re worried too. And here you are acting all high-and-mighty because I’m freaking out.”
“No shit I’m worried. Prompto’s my friend. Stop being an asshole. What’d Iggy say?”
“Nothing really.” Noctis flips his phone over and over in his hand. “Said he’s sleeping.”
“That’s good probably.”
“Yeah.” Noctis flips his phone over again, empty black case, empty black screen. He thinks about what magic feels like, that sizzling almost-burn, hot like an electric spark but flowing through him like water. Magic feels amazing, good enough to get addicted to and exhausting when he overuses it.
What must it feel like for Prompto? What went through his head while he was stealing away all of Noctis’ mistake?
He grits his teeth. They roar past a speed limit sign. Noctis takes a glance at the speedometer. They really are pushing it.
When they get back to the room Prompto is still asleep. Noctis plants himself in the chair beside his bed and refuses to move. Ignis bustles around the room doing tasks that Noct suspects are not strictly necessary or helpful, and Gladio buries his face in a book he is not reading. Noctis can tell because he hasn’t turned a page for ten minutes.
Ignis leans past Noctis and presses a hand to Prompto’s forehead. His mouth remains the thin, flat line it has been each time he’s done this.
“Still hot?” Noctis whispers. Ignis merely nods and returns to the room’s small kitchenette, where he is probably polishing something useless that belongs to the hotel.
“Were you just watching me sleep?” a ruined voice croaks. Noctis feels his heart drop into his stomach.
“Prom!”
Prompto has one eye cracked open. He looks like shit. Bone white and with the beginnings of another tar-black nosebleed (he had an epic one while they were getting him up to the room).
“Haha. Who knew the prince is such a creep--he stops suddenly, puts a hand over his mouth and takes a sharp breath in through his nose.
“Prom?”
“Gonna puke.”
“Specs!” Noctis cries, but Ignis has already crossed the room and is thrusting a plastic trash can into Prompto’s hands. Noctis tries not to wince listening to him first just retching, and then actually puking. When he’s done he slumps against the bucket and just stays there like that for a moment, his head rested on one arm. There’s black snot leaking out his nose, and his eyes are full of those tears that spark instantly from vomiting. He’s looking at Noctis.
“You were mad.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re still mad?”
“I don’t know.” But suddenly he is mad, and he doesn’t know what to do about it. “Why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you tell me?” He can’t imagine an answer he would like, but he wants one anyways. Prompto doesn’t give it to him. Instead, his eyes well up with sudden tears.
And then Gladio is there, towering over them both like the big meaty tree that he is. He sits down on the side of the bed. He takes the trash can and puts it on the floor. And Prompto is trembling now, or maybe he was shaking before and Noctis couldn’t tell.
“Come on. Don’t cry, you’re gonna feel worse. You’re already dehydrated,” Gladio says. He puts an arm around Prompto’s shoulders, and Noct has never felt more useless, but now Prompto is just sobbing harder, he’s crying like he can’t stop, and Gladio wraps him up in his arms, holds him to his chest and looks at Ignis and Noctis like he doesn’t know what to do now.
Noctis wants to warp through the floor into the room below, but he doesn’t, obviously. In a few minutes Prompto is cried out. Gladio is rubbing a hand up and down his back, but in a moment Prom pushes and he lets go.
“I’m sorry,” he wheezes miserably.
“It’s okay. You’re alive, Noctis is alive. You did good, kid. I mean, I’d prefer I didn’t have to see you almost dead ever again, but hell, you’re a crownsguard no matter how you slice it.”
“It really fucking hurts,” Prompto finally says.
“I know.”
“You need to drink something,” Ignis says. His tone indicates he is not asking.
“Astrals forbid we defy Iggy,” Gladio says, and like that the tension begins to bleed out of the room. Prompto gives an almost laugh.
He’s awake for maybe ten more minutes and then he conks out again. At some later hour, after Gladio and Ignis have turned the lights off and gone to sleep, he crawls into the bed beside Prompto, but he doesn’t sleep. For once, sleep isn’t coming.
xXx
When Prompto wakes up again it’s dark in the room, and Noctis is lying inches from his face. At first he thinks he’s asleep, but after a second Noct cracks one eye open, scoots a little closer and presses a kiss under Prompto’s eye, where the skin is puffy from crying. In the dark he looks inhuman, more god than man.
“Why didn’t you say?” Noctis whispers, breaking the spell.
“I didn’t want you to know. This power is like some ugly curse and I thought you’d be disgusted.” Prompto says all this so quick and so rote that Noctis wonders how many times he’s thought about it.
“I thought I was going to lose you,” Noctis whispers. He’s holding the bottom of Prompto’s sleeve, he realizes. “You can’t die. I need you with me. Cursed or uncursed or whatever way you are.”
“Okay,” Prompto says.
“I’m serious.”
“I’ll do anything for you.” Those words clog in his throat, but he still says them. Noctis’ expression takes on an almost pained element.
“Okay. But don’t,” Noctis says.
“Okay.”
“If you two have energy to sustain whisper conversations Prompto needs to drink something,” Ignis calls from across the room. Noctis cracks up. It hurts to laugh but Prompto laughs anyways. It hurts to live, lots of the time but he’s always doing that. Everything has a cost , as his mother would say.
Prompto takes the lesson and turns it over and then he discards it, because it may be true but it is not necessarily good, and when you hunt with the future King, and you may be blessed or cursed with magic, you may bend the tenets and the rules that govern, and you may even break them, if the gods allow.