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Gladiolus Amicitia was born to be the king’s shield. His life had a single devoted purpose, whether he liked the prospect of it at all times or not. But having a set life purpose hardly meant he couldn’t make plans of his own around that and, for what felt like the longest time, his number one plan involved tying down Ignis Scientia in the bonds of holy matrimony because, dammit, they were amazing together, no one could understand him better, and Gladio was a romantic and he wanted nothing more than to sweep his partner off his feet in a shower of cherry blossoms and Saxham Rice and let the world know how much he loved this man.
Unfortunately, his first attempt at a proposal had gotten upstaged by Noctis getting engaged to the Oracle at the behest of the Niflheim Empire. Ignis explained over the phone that night that he couldn’t make it over to his place because he now had to sort through a host of court matters related to the treaty, including consoling the newly betrothed Noctis, and Gladio blew out the candles, made a half-assed attempt at sweeping up the rose petals, and changed the soaring love ballads to his workout playlist (there, admittedly, was some overlap).
He tried to see the upside of things as he watched his plans flutter indelicately into the trashcan. Realistically, he knew the candles and mood music shit probably wasn’t Ignis’ thing. He had gotten a little too caught up in his own idea of romance in his initial planning fervour. After a few swigs of fancy champagne from the bottle and a two-way text message pep talk from Iris, who also had reason to be put out by the breaking news, Gladio mused he now had the opportunity to fine-tune his proposal strategy to make it less about him.
He decided the night before they set out would be perfect. He could pull Ignis aside for a quiet moment that evening, faced with the momentous task before them, and talk at length about their shared responsibilities and how much each other’s support meant, how he wanted them to share a pledge of shouldering each other’s burdens, upholding each other’s goals, and affirming the bonds between them for the rest of their lives. It was definitely a more Ignis-style proposal. It should have been easy to stage. Instead the four of them spent the evening cleaning Noctis’ apartment and playing King’s Knight.
No matter, Gladio had thought. Their relationship did change a little once they set out. They no longer had much privacy, sharing the same tent, the four of them constantly working together as a team taking in the sights, dealing with the fallout of the Empire’s attack, fighting daemons, Niffs and the local wildlife. But Gladio had been sure the moment would come, whether on the golden shores of Galdin Quay, or the sultry promenade of Lestallum, or just somewhere with a little goddamn atmosphere, he could pull Ignis aside for a ‘them’ moment and make good on his planning. And every time the moment came, something else came along and cockblocked him. At this point in their journey, he had been so regularly thwarted in his attempts to propose he no longer even felt angry when it happened.
So two days ago when the ring of Ignis’ cell phone interrupted a rare moment alone as they watched the sun set from the observation deck of the Caem Lighthouse—two seconds after Gladio had decided this was the time to get down on one knee and just go for it—he didn’t even take it out on the brat, despite the fact that Noctis was literally calling from two floors down to tell them Cor had heard some intriguing rumours of an unknown Astral found in the mountains beyond Callatein’s Plunge, so they ought come down to discuss it because Noctis couldn’t be assed to come up.
Naturally, they had decided to investigate said rumours, and now they were fighting the battle of their lives against a dark energy god in bird form (why always the flying bastards?) and more MT ships than Gladio could remember seeing at once cruising in for their own go. He looked up at the massive form of Valefor the Energiaen swooping overhead, spitting out fire, lightning and beams of pure energy, and at the waves of magitek troopers coming at them from all directions, and he was pretty sure they were actually going to die.
Well, fuck, he already had the rings, stashed away though they were in one of the Regalia’s compartments.
“Hey, Iggy,” Gladio said, levelling a squad of MTs with his greatsword attack while trying to dodge incoming fireballs, “Marry me.”
“I think Gladio’s a bit touched,” Ignis said, looking to Noctis as Noctis relinquished his spear, having stabbed Ignis’ and his own into the magitek soldier underneath him.
“Just great,” said Noctis, switching out for a greatsword and warping a short distance into another infantryman.
“Hey! I’m dead serious right now,” Gladio growled out as he used his shield to fend off a claw strike from the massive Astral above them with no small amount of difficulty.
“Is he proposing? I think he’s proposing!” Prompto said as he tried to find better cover to shoot from.
Ignis buried his spear in the chest of an imperial swordsman before leveraging it to perform a back handspring toward Gladio’s general direction. He started to speak, then suddenly let fly a dagger in the direction of a not-quite-dead-yet scrap pile, unsummoning it once it had done its job.
Sexy as hell, Gladio thought.
Back to business, Ignis turned to face him. “Is this really the time, Gladio?”
“Well, you know me.” Gladio gave him a winning smile before getting engaged by another attacker. “I did wanna be romantic,” he said, fending off a slash from a magitek axeman. “But every time I’ve tried asking something attacks, someone dies,” he continued, punctuating his words with blows upon the stream of troopers before them, “the kids interrupt, the car breaks down, a crater collapses, chaos ensues, and frankly,” he jumped out of the way of a fireball, his boots feeling a bit singed, “I doubt we’re getting out of this fight alive.”
“Not with that attitude, we aren’t,” Noctis grunted, before summoning his spear and launching into an aerial battle with the Astral while the rest of the party covered the ground fight.
“So let’s just do it,” Gladio said, dodging the blows of an imperial assassin and landing his own series of strikes on the bastard as quickly as he could manage, until it was a twitching heap on the ground. As Ignis wrested his spear from the eye-socket of a robotic corpse, Gladio met his partner’s gaze across the battlefield and tried to put every ounce of sincerity he could spare into the look. “Whaddaya say? Let me die an honest man?”
“I’m not sure that’s possible,” said Ignis, adjusting his glasses.
Prompto’s traitorous laugh could be heard from behind the bush he was trying to use as cover. There was hardly time to notice though, for as Ignis spoke, the Energiaen had opened its beak and spat out a beam of pure elemental power that tore open a crevice in the ground and would have split Ignis in half had Gladio not jumped to force him out of harm’s way, pushing him down to the ground a few paces back. The position was rather intimate, overlooking the circumstances.
“C’mon, Iggy,” Gladio said, ignoring the chaos around them to look deeply into the eyes of the man he loved with everything he had, “When it comes to this whole love and protect until death do us part thing, I know who I’ve chosen. You?”
Ignis met his gaze for a moment, before looking off to the distance, “Noct!”
“Ouch, babe,” said Gladio. Not that it was unexpected, but ouch.
Ignis pushed his hand against Gladio’s chest to move out of their vulnerable and borderline inappropriate position. What followed mended the wound quite quickly.
“We humbly request your services as officiant over this extremely ill-advised ceremony.”
“What!? No way. Ask blondie,” Noctis said as he returned to the ground.
In the meantime they scrambled to their feet and Gladio looked at his partner—covered in dirt and soot, glasses slightly cracked from a glancing blow, all business and cool intelligence, and yet somehow, underneath all that, a loving warmth that didn’t easily reveal itself—like he was falling for him all over again.
“As the highest authority in the vicinity and indeed, this land, if I may remind you, this one falls to you,” Ignis said.
“Right. Well, fuck,” Noctis said as he warped into an MT who had him in their laser sights. “How’s this even go?”
“Dude, you’re supposed to be getting married and you don’t know how this goes?” said Prompto, stumbling as he landed a few good shots and some not so great ones on the squad in front of him.
Distracted, Noctis turned to make his retort, only to be knocked down as a bullet glanced his shoulder. Within seconds Ignis was standing to his right performing emergency first aid to get him back on his feet as quickly as possible, while Gladio moved to his left, a human shield against the oncoming troopers. Noctis took a moment, while he recovered, to really look at them.
“Hey, brat, you gonna marry us before we all die or not?” Gladio said, slicing the head off a battery soldier in one blow.
Noctis bristled at that, but looking between his advisor and his shield, standing before him on the battlefield as they had all his life really, ready to take on anything to ensure he could one day stand before his people and be the kind of king his father was, a worthy king of Lucis, he figured he probably did owe them at least this much.
“Fine,” he grumbled, summoning his gun to make quick work of one of the snipers targeting Gladio. He raised his voice a bit and began, “Dearly beloved—although I’m not sure that’s what you guys are to me—”
“Shut up. You love our asses,” said Gladio, crushing an MT beneath his shield.
“Love your own asses and keep me out of it,” said Noctis, unloading a few more rounds before switching to ice magic, freezing an entire ship of MTs that had just deployed. “We are gathered here today to, I don’t know—see?”
“Witness, I think!” shouted Prompto.
“Witless, the lot of you,” Ignis said, under his breath.
“Go easy on ‘em, Iggy,” said Gladio.
“‘Kay,” Noctis said, switching to his ancestor’s bow and aiming for the giant bird thing making their lives unnecessarily miserable right now. “Witness the, the—,” he let the arrow fly, braced for the kickback, and decided this so wasn’t worth the effort. “Whatever, they’re getting hitched and that’s the point.”
“You’re making this so romantic, Noct,” said Prompto. He only had a moment before he was knocked flat by a missile and Ignis was hurrying to his side to help him recover.
“You could stop sharing your thoughts, Prompto, if you want me to finish before we die,” said Noctis, eyeing up the MA-X Cuirass the missile had come from.
“How likely is that, ya think?” Prompto asked nervously as he and Ignis rejoined the fray.
“I have pretty low hopes we’ll make it through the next hour,” said Gladio, ramming his shield into a rifleman.
“And here I’d high hopes of a wedding night,” said Ignis, finishing the stunned MT off with precise knife-work.
Gladio stared at him for a beat before shouting, “Change in plans. Noct, we’re getting this thing’s favour and then getting out of here alive.”
“Can you not?” said Noctis, his voice strained. To be fair he was currently single-handedly taking out an armoured vehicle and everyone manning it in a veritable warp storm.
“Uhh, guys, reminder we all share the same tent,” said Prompto, concerned.
“Well,” Gladio said, reaching out to cup Ignis’ cheek with his free hand, “I can think of worse things than making love to you under the stars all night.”
“This matrimony business not worthy of at least a bed?” asked Ignis.
“Stop! It’s like listening to your parents, ugh,” said Noctis, regrouping with them again, barely dodging a blow from the village-sized bird god above them. “I don’t know what comes next. Ignis, instructions!”
“The ‘do you’ part, if you please, Noct,” Ignis said, turning to face the prince. Gladio reached out, grabbing Ignis by the forearm and pulling in close so that there was hardly any space between them. It wasn’t a traditional stance for vow-taking in Lucis, but it left their right arms free should they need to engage in battle at a moment’s notice, which was pressingly likely.
Gladio failed to catch Noctis rolling his eyes.
“Right. Do you, Ignis eat-your-vegetables Scientia, take this,” Noctis said, hamstringing a pair of MTs clunkily wobbling nearby, “ugly—”
“HEY!”
Noctis ignored Gladio’s protest and continued both his physical and verbal assault, “—behemoth to be your husband, until death very shortly departs you?”
“Interspecies marriage is not legal in Lucis at this time, Noct,” said Ignis.
“You mean I can’t marry a chocobo?” asked Prompto.
“Not sure you’re different species,” said Noctis, patting him on the shoulder sympathetically before trading off his sword for Prompto’s gun as they launched a joint attack on a magitek assassin. Finishing it off with some effort, Noctis looked over his shoulder and called out, “I’m not saying it again, by the way.”
Ignis looked back to Gladio and squeezed his hand against his forearm. “Qualms about exactly who or what I’m marrying aside,” he said, arresting green eyes staring deeply into Gladio’s own, “Yes, I do.”
The sure, deep drawl of his voice as he spoke the words lit a wildfire in Gladio and in that moment he regretted exactly nothing about all the times he had tried and failed to propose, if it meant they led to this moment. A moment which a raging Astral had to interrupt with another energy beam, but whatever, they dodged and the goddamn Astrals and the Niffs and whoever else wanted a piece of them could do what they liked, he wasn’t ever letting go of Ignis Scientia.
“And do you, Gladiolus Amicitia, asshole who is making me conduct a wedding while fighting a fucking Astral, take this man to, ugh,” Noctis said, jumping back a foot as a fireball came flying at him. “—do you take, goddamnit!” he yelled, ducking a rocket launched at him from a newly deployed MA-X unit, “just, do you take this man, yes or no?”
“Hell yeah, I do take this man,” said Gladio enthusiastically.
Noctis’ groan could probably be heard from Burbost.
“You walked into that one, buddy,” Prompto shouted as Noctis flew off to destroy the contraption that was giving him so much grief.
Warping back before it exploded on top of him, Noctis tried to deliver the final lines. “Okay, this needs to be over. By the powers of the Lucis Caelum line and the Six—”
“Doesn’t this guy mean there’s, like, seven?” said Prompto, and after a beat, “Is it a she?”
“—and any number of Astrals that may or may not exist, personally hoping for less, not more,” Noctis grumbled, fumbling to find a magic element that would work against the Energiaen. “I declare you entered in—whatever—you may, fuck these goddamn bastards!” he yelled as he messed up the aim of the magic attack trying to dodge a bullet spray.
“I think I’ll pass,” said Ignis.
Noctis grit his teeth and continued, “Ugh, you may—shit!” The Energiaen had renewed its attack and he struggled to parry a massive blow from above.
“Didn’t know we needed royal permission for that,” Gladio said.
Ignis threw in his two cents. “Royal permission aside, I’m not certain anything that’s been said is actually binding, or indicative that a marriage has occurred, for that matter.”
“Maybe we should have asked Prompto. Might have gotten to the good part by now,” Gladio said, grinning as he nuzzled his nose against Ignis’ gently, ready to just go for it, before Ignis abruptly let go of him and spun away to sink his knives into an MT’s kneecaps. Gladio delivered a well-aimed kick and the whole thing collapsed like a hunk of junk.
“Look, you’re married. I said so. Kiss and then help me fight this thing, please,” Noctis begged.
“Binding enough, I should think,” said Ignis with a tilt of his head, unsummoning his daggers as Gladio reached out for him.
Neither of them needed further prompting as Gladio captured Ignis in his arms and dipped him down into an adrenaline-fuelled, outrageously reckless, deeply passionate, long-awaited, hell of a wedding kiss.
“Prompto, you’re up!” said Noctis, trying to hold down the fort and give them a moment, despite the fact things were literally going up in flames around them.
“Okay!” said Prompto, whipping out his camera.
Gladio was almost willing to forget in that moment that this kiss could very well be their last if the four of them couldn’t pull their act together, but luckily the man in his arms was generally unwilling to forget anything ever, and pulled away despite Gladio’s efforts to chase his lips with a fond but chastising look upon his face.
“Wonderful as it would be to continue, we had better return to the fray,” said Ignis.
“Seriously?” said Noctis, as he tried to beat the fire out of his jacket.
“I’ll show you the photos later if we make it out of here,” Prompto said, switching the camera out for his pistols.
“So what’s the plan?” Gladio asked. He was fresh out, having finally, finally, made good on his previous one.
Ignis scanned the battlefield quickly before issuing instructions. “Prompto and I will create and maintain a distraction here. Noct, you need to get behind the Energiaen and attack from its blindside. Gladio will keep the MTs off you. Get it flustered and then unleash your armiger.”
Prompto shot Ignis a look of despair, while Noctis warped off into the distance.
Gladio moved in close, brushing his lips against Ignis’ ear to murmur, “Can’t wait to hear what your orders’ll be tonight,” before running after the prince.
“Look who finally decided to lift a finger to help,” Noctis said as he caught up, staring up at the agitated Astral.
“Thought I should probably listen to my husband,” Gladio said. “And Noct?”
Noctis looked at him with a scowl.
“Thanks.”
“Just don’t make me do it again,” Noctis said, avoiding meeting his eyes.
“Get us through this or we’re doing it over in the afterlife,” Gladio said, meaning every word.
Noctis looked up, his eyes flashing purple. “This thing is going down.”