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Ignis unlocks the door to Noctis’ apartment at zero six hundred sharp, an aluminum thermos of ebony in his other hand. He bolts the door behind him and surveys the apartment. It is not filthy, but it looks lived in and disorganized. The coffee table is scattered with cups and a large bowl and magazines. The couch blanket is draping to the floor. The entire contents of the pantry seem to have been emptied over the island counter. The mess is manageable; the whole place could probably use a vacuum.
It’s a warm Saturday morning, so Ignis does not expect Noctis to be out of bed for several hours, definitely no earlier than zero nine hundred. Summer break is fast approaching and Ignis knows Noctis is going to take advantage of every moment he is not forced to the Citadel for his royal duties.
Ignis toes off his shoes at the mat and freezes. There in the disorganized row of shoes is a pair of large, heavy leather boots. Ignis narrows his eyes, mind fluttering through all possible scenarios before lifting his gaze to the vacant couch then sweeping over the apartment again. There is a leather bound book on the floor peeking out from under the couch blanket. He takes a step into the apartment and sees a large duffle bag on a stool at the counter. And yet, the couch is empty, messy but seemingly not slept on.
Ignis cuts his eyes to the shut bedroom door, knowing that Noctis is not alone in there. This is new. He sets down his ebony on the cluttered counter.
He doesn’t knock on the door, knowing there is a possibility that he would find something that the other men are not eager for him to see. Still, it’s odd that Gladio did not rise the moment he heard Ignis walk in the door.
Ignis sets to work. At least someone can do as they have been sworn to do. He starts first with opening the balcony door and all the windows, letting the fresh late spring air wash into the stale apartment. The sound of birds and bustling ten stories below fill the room, keeping Ignis company as he shakes out and refolds the couch blanket, and puts the coffee table back in order.
He pauses. A sound has filtered in from behind the bedroom door. He straightens his posture and busies himself returning the remotes back to the television table, waiting for Gladio to emerge. But it does not happen. Instead a second sound, no more identifiable than the first through the wooden door.
Then the bed creaks, and Ignis sets to work putting the pantry back together. Noctis or Gladio or both pulled down every item that wouldn’t require prep to consume and left it upon the counter. Still, Gladio has not left the bedroom. Ignis had assumed, benignly, that Gladio spent the night after driving Noctis home from some late night bender in the city, but usually when Ignis comes over in the morning he finds Gladio asleep on the couch.
Ignis tosses empty wrappers in the garbage bin and then he spots the open bottle of scotch next to the fridge, put back in place along the tile wall as though it hadn’t been touched, but the lid is removed and the counter below it is matte with dried liquid. A night cap, or perhaps they never left the apartment last night. Ignis warily regards the door, small pieces of a puzzle he is uncharacteristically hesitant to solve sliding into place. The moment Ignis spotted Gladio’s items in the apartment, he knew this was a distant possibility. Instead, he had initially thought Gladio stayed with Noctis when he had a nightmare, a sure sign that their bond was growing stronger, a development that he knew Noctis would be pleased with for more than one reason.
Ignis spends a large percentage of every day with Noctis, has practically raised him since childhood, he knows him top to bottom. Noctis is never terribly eager to talk to him, but Ignis can read a change in Noctis before Noctis even notices something is different in himself, and he can usually surmise what it is with only a few clues.
Once, sitting in the car on a drive back from Noctis’ combat training, Noctis stared at his phone, a new message screen open with no recipient typed in and no message other than an aimless "I." unsent. Ignis cut glances to him until Noctis threw up his hands in frustration. “I asked Gladio if he wanted to go to a bar with me and he thought I was asking him to chaperone a date. He laughed at me.”
Ignis frowned. “Did you correct him?”
“Yes! Fuck. No, I didn’t. But he obviously didn’t want to go with me. He thought it was funny. I don’t know why I asked.” His voice turned to a mumble, phone tight in his grip.
“Because you want his companionship.”
Noctis started, looking at Ignis with wide eyes.
“His friendship, I mean. But now your intent is becoming more clear.”
Noctis groaned and slid down in his seat. “I don’t know why I talk to you. You see right through me when I don’t want you to, and, to be clear, I never want you to.”
Ignis smirked. “It’s my duty, Your Highness.”
Noctis glared at him from low in his seat. “Do not tell Gladio I like him. Royal command.”
A rarity.
“As you wish, Your Highness.”
From then, Noctis was a little more relaxed around him when it came to Gladio. Ignis could see the edges of affection and frustration that would seep in. They didn’t talk about it, just a stray comment here or there that was enough for Ignis to know that Noctis harbored feelings for his bodyguard, something he has caught only quick glimpses, unconfirmed of over the past few years. Ignis didn’t know Gladio well enough to pinpoint how he might feel in return.
And now, well, Ignis’ face is hot. The sounds from the bedroom are strung closer together and are much more distinguishable. He’d never heard Noctis moan before, but he is sure he will never forget the sound.
Ignis stares at the door, unseeing for once. It is merely painted wood harboring a secret that has spilled out unbeknownst. He hears a grunt that is unquestionably Gladio’s, having witnessed he and Noctis training many times to know exactly what he sounds like on the mat. The grunt breaks into a gasp and the bed frame creaks once, twice, and then picks up a slow rhythm that lets Ignis finally wrench his gaze away in embarrassment.
There are several paths Ignis could take in this situation:
1. Slip out the door and return after giving them ample private time,
2. Knock on the door and announce his presence,
3. Or continue doing his job and let them react as they wish.
In the end, he chooses the final option. After all, he has a duty to fulfill and a job to do, and while Saturday is a blessed day of reprieve for him—no tutors, no training, no duties at the Citadel unless summoned—he needs to make sure the prince and his quarters are well-kept before enjoying his day. Noctis and Gladio and their increasingly loud sex are not going to keep him from missing his morning yoga class.
Ignis turns on the faucet and begins to wash the dishes, his ears pricked for a change in sounds from beyond the bedroom door. The running water and the clattering of porcelain on silver is loud, despite how careful he is, but there is no sign of pause.
If they are not going to stop for him, he is not going to stop for them. Ignis ignores the sounds and continues his business, now moving onto cleaning out aged vegetables from the refrigerator that he had purchased for Noctis in a fit of optimism. The fridge is full of half-eaten leftovers barely sealed in their Styrofoam containers, each smelling riper than the one before. Honestly, Ignis does not know how someone managing Noctis’ life could find him and his habits attractive.
Ignis is further disrespected by Noctis shifting from wordless moaning to his Shield’s name. Over and over. And over. If perhaps there was a shred of hopeful light in Ignis that he had miscalculated or misunderstood, it is smothered by the repeated chorus of, “Gladio, Gladio, please, Gladio.”
Ignis is avoiding sweeping near the door as he drags the broom across the shiny hardwood floors, but still he hears Gladio’s gruff voice, dripping honey sweet with affection, “That’s it, Noct. Just like that.”
Frowning, Ignis checks his wristwatch. It is nearly an hour passed the time Ignis arrives at Noctis’ every Saturday. He cannot believe the two of them are so negligent like this. When it was just Noctis’ lovesick frustration, he had not worried about distraction. Noctis is bound to have fleeting love interests, resolved or unresolved, and with Gladio, Ignis had—somewhat cruelly—assumed that Gladio would never be interested, or at the very least, would value his duty over any bodily desires for his charge. Ignis is not disappointed, exactly, as he can recognize the open vulnerability in Noctis’ voice. He didn’t expect he would first hear it through a door listening to his prince fuck, but this morning has been strange, the script of his interactions with Noctis being torn up as he sweeps dirt into the dust pan, a chorus of moans and names filling the apartment.
He cannot honestly claim that he tried to prevent it, but the quiet heat of arousal stirs low in his belly as he bustles about the kitchen, wiping down surfaces and trying to ignore the quickening squeak of the bedframe, small ahs puffed right from Noctis’ throat to Ignis’ ears. Ignis has had sex, but it didn’t sound like this, didn’t sound easy and passionate and fulfilling. Ignis does not remember feeling as loose as Noctis sounds.
Their song grows louder and Ignis decides he has done enough voyeuring. He is half hard in his slacks and disinterested in spying to full arousal. He wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway. He switches on the vacuum.
The screaming whir of the vacuum cleaner drowns out any other sound he might otherwise hear. He keeps the bedroom door in his peripheral in case Gladio or Noctis come running out in shock, but as he continues to vacuum, nothing changes to his deafened ears. Ignis is typically thorough, but he works even more carefully today, keeping the machine running as long as possible as he reaches it under cabinets and into corners.
Ignis can recall now, now that he has the answer to slot into place behind his floating observations, Noctis smiling, just barely, to himself as he climbed into the car beside Ignis after sparring practice. He can remember, most clearly, Noctis fussing with his hair as he walked up to the gymnasium and Gladio greeting with a fond smirk, barefoot and glowing. He can remember just Wednesday night, Noctis chewing on his lip while he fret over his phone when he was supposed to be doing his schoolwork. He had not registered those as signs that something had bloomed between them, or that something was ripe to bloom, just assumed they were more signs from Noctis of his frustration and one-sided turmoil, which Ignis had grown used to catching unguarded glimpses of.
After a reasonable time, and then some, Ignis switches the vacuum off, and the apartment is plunged into silence. Pure silence. Ignis puts the machine away and busies himself at the counter, trying not to strain to hear something he thinks he must be missing. But no sounds come for several impossible long seconds.
Finally, a whine. “Ignis.”
He draws out the second i, as he tends to do when he wants something.
“Yes, Your Highness,” He responds, voice almost even.
“Start a pot of coffee, will you?”
Ignis sighs. “Yes, of course.”
Doing as he is requested, Ignis prepares a pot, pulling down the cream and sugar for Noct’s mug. There is some rustling from behind the door, but still it does not open. Ignis sets the finished cups on the counter, black for Gladio, milky almond for Noctis.
“Coffee is ready.”
There is a long pause. “Just leave it on the counter. I’m…indecent.”
“Need I remind you that you have lunch with your father today at noon? You’ll have to compose yourself at some point.”
He can hear mumbled bickering before the door finally, finally creaks open and Noctis steps out, draped in Gladiolus’ favorite sweatshirt and Ignis can see immediately that Noctis needs to cancel lunch with his father, the evidence bruising his neck in a mosaic of dark purple patches. Even more elicit are the bruises all over his inner thighs, which Noctis did not bother to cover up below the long hem of the sweatshirt. The sight of him makes Ignis feel like he has stepped into someone else’s life, taken off guard by how frank Noctis is being with him this morning.
Not enough evidence has been gathered to determine whether or not this bold change in Noctis is a positive one. For now, on Ignis’ end, it’s annoying.
Ignis sighs, closing his eyes behind his glasses. “And where is your bodyguard, though I’m hesitant to call him that.”
Gladio emerges a moment later in a revealing tank top with an uneven sheepish grin, the left side of his face still stiff and pink from the knife blade a few weeks prior. Ignis turns sharply on heel to face away from the coloring of bite marks all over Gladio’s define collar and thick biceps amid the sharp inky black of his unfinished tattoo. He picks up their mugs of coffee and hands them to the pair, finding that doing his job keeps him from the embarrassment gnawing at the back on his neck.
“Any particular reason you chose to be loudly intimate while I was here this morning?”
Gladio has the humility to look embarrassed. “Sorta forgot you were coming. I was distracted. Didn’t hear you until we were already, uh, in the middle.”
“Indeed. And despite that, you didn’t stop.”
They don’t apologize.
Ignis frowns and looks them both over. Their faces are both pink and shiny, their hair ruffled and in need of a washing, it’s apparent they didn’t sleep much last night, and the sight of the two of them standing side by side half naked and bruised and unconcerned with hiding themselves makes Ignis sigh in resignation.
“Clearly, you’ve both decided I’m going to be the keeper of your secret. A little warning would have been appreciated.”
He picks up his thermos and puts his shoes back on. He levels them with a look, his hand on the doorknob.
“I’m taking this as day off, I expect you will not contact me,” Ignis lets a minor threat settle into the otherwise casual statement. “Please do be ready for the treaty planning tomorrow morning. I’ll be by at six hundred sharp with a bottle of concealer, try not to exacerbate the problem.”
Ignis shuts the door behind him with a sharp click. Yoga practice will be therapeutic. He has a lot to think about.