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“Falling in love is hard.”
Ignis fumbles the frying pan with a loud clang and swears. Noct looks up from his homework, brow wrinkled skeptically. “Um. You okay?”
“Fine, thank you, Highness,” Ignis replies with admirable calm. Noctis has an absolutely impeccable sense of timing—he would wait to say something so… provocative just as Ignis was starting to toss the onions over the heat. “Is that the topic of your literature essay?”
“Pfft, no,” Noctis sighs in disgust. “Another Dad talk.”
“Ah.” Ignis realizes his glasses have fallen askew and straightens them. He’s not going to look at Noct. He’s not. He’s going to watch these onions very carefully to make sure they brown properly. Very carefully. “His Majesty is offering you advice for a good reason, Highness. You might do well to oblige him and listen.”
“It’s all about girls, Specs!”
“And?”
“Ughhhh,” Noctis groans eloquently, abandoning his homework at the table to flop face-down on the couch. Ignis glances at him over his shoulder. That posture is terrible for his neck.
“Highness.”
“Mmffffgr.”
Ignis sighs. “Noct.”
Noct slowly slides just his head up over the arm of the sofa, dropping his chin on the pillow and looking morosely at the floor. Ignis shakes his head and adds the bell peppers to the pan. Silence reigns while he mixes in the meat, seasoning, a little extra oil so nothing sticks and burns. He turns the heat to low and leans back against the counter, hands occupied with a dish towel. Noct hasn’t moved, still listlessly looking at nothing over the side of the sofa. “What has his Majesty discussed with you?” he asks, carefully gauging the distance between them. Probably safe.
Noct sighs heavily, rolls over on the couch, and throws one arm over his face. “He asked me about school and grades and stuff. You know. And then he asked about friends, and if I had any friends who were girls, and if I liked any of them… more.” Noct grimaces. “I know why he’s doing it.”
“Oh? Why?”
Noct’s grimace fades into something softer and sadder. “He wants me to find… what Mom was for him.”
That’s astute of him, but not too surprising. People have always underestimated Noct and his ability to intuit the motivations of others. Ignis bows his head respectfully. “His Majesty loved your mother a great deal.”
“Yeah.”
“Being king is not an easy job, Highness. You know that, but what you perhaps do not yet know is that sharing the burden makes it easier to bear.”
“But you share it with me,” Noct says, and Ignis nearly chokes.
“What?”
“And Gladio and Prom,” the prince adds, and Ignis is a professional, he doesn’t need to gasp for breath to slow his racing heart, or turn away to hide a blush. He doesn’t do that. “You guys all help me out. And then there’ll be the Crownsguard, and Luna. I don’t see why I’d need anyone
else.” Noct eyes him with a suspicious look. “Can you think of anything?”
He’s Noctis’s adviser. But does this really fall under his purview? “Surely your father discussed that with you?”
“What, girls?”
“Why a spouse might be more… suited to aid you in the future.”
Noct blinks. “Uh.”
Ignis removes his glasses and rubs at the gathering headache between his eyes. This is, perhaps, more uncomfortable than he was expecting it to be. “There are a number of personal and political reasons why a spouse is expected to—encouraged to—fulfill a certain role of support for the king. In a way that is different from companions of other kinds. It’s a different kind of relationship, not least because of the… intimate… nature of—” He sighs heavily at Noct’s still skeptical expression. “Highness, I’m not sure I—”
Like a silk thread severed by a dagger, Noct’s expression drops from sassy teenage bravado into true horror. “Iggy. Stop. Don’t.”
“—am entirely qualified to explain the—”
“Iggy, no one’s more qualified but—”
“—details of heterosexual intercourse—”
“—that doesn’t mean I want to hear it—wait, what?”
Ignis trips over his own words. “What?”
Noctis is sitting bolt upright on his knees on the cushions, staring at Ignis like he just saw a meteor land in the frying pan. “What do you mean heterosexual intercourse? You mean there’s—there’s other kinds?”
Noct is fifteen, but he can’t be that sheltered. “After a fashion.”
“… How do you know about diff—”
“I’m not discussing my private affairs with you, Noct.”
“Holy shit you’ve had—”
“Language, Highness,” Ignis begs. The hand pinching his brows has now completely covered his eyes.
“I don’t need the sex talk from you, I got that from Dad too,” Noct says casually, as if he were remarking on the weather, “I know what goes where and why and I probably know some stuff even you don’t know—”
“Undoubtedly,” Ignis agrees, still hiding behind his palm.
“But—I mean—it’s just…” A pause. “I hear the others, at school. I know—you don’t have to have a, a wife, just to have sex with someone. And I don’t know, but, I mean…” His voice falls into a hushed, quiet range. “That’s not the same thing as falling in love. And Dad married Mom because he loved her, but you maybe don’t have to do the marrying part either? When you’re really in love with somebody. Or you do? I mean I’m not gonna marry somebody right now, so does that mean I have to— be with —somebody? Or maybe I just can’t fall in love like normal people.” Noct let out an aggrieved groan. “It just sucks is what I’m saying.”
Oh, gods. Ignis reaches out blindly and turns off the stovetop. Clearly this is going to be an important discussion, and if he can’t avoid any other disasters tonight, at the very least he will save dinner from burning. Then he dons his glasses again. “All right, Noct,” he says slowly, untying his apron and draping it over a dining chair, “I truly think your father is the better man for this—” He doesn’t say anything further. The look on Noct’s face is enough. Ignis drops down onto the couch with several healthy inches between his hips and Noct’s legs—which the prince immediately bridges, sitting cross-legged with his toes just brushing the fabric of Ignis’s trousers. Maddening boy.
Ignis considers how to begin, and wonders at Noct’s initial question. “Are you trying to fall in love, Noct?”
He seems taken aback by this question. Noct starts fiddling with the hem of his sweatpants, looking down. “I mean. Isn’t everybody?”
Ignis smiles. “Many do, yes. But why do you want to?”
Sullen silence. Awkward fidgeting. “I dunno.”
“Because I hate to tell you, it doesn’t work that way.”
“Oh. It doesn’t?”
“It doesn’t,” Ignis confirms. “Just because you want it to happen, or his Majesty wants it to, or the council, or someone who might love you and want you to respond positively to their advances—”
Noct snorts. “Advances.”
“Regardless, love is, as I understand it, utterly spontaneous. And frequently inconvenient. It happens when it happens, when you find someone, or more than one someone, who—sparks an interest. In more than just sex.” He pauses, wanting to tread carefully. “One day you will have to marry, in order to continue the line of your family and ensure the safety of Lucis. I suspect that your father has such a keen interest in where your affections may lie now because, in time, others may not allow you the luxury of preference. They will require you to turn your attention to duty, rather than your personal inclination. If someone strikes your fancy now, you may have a better chance of keeping them with you even when it comes time for you to wear the crown. And when you do wear the crown, you should have a companion with whom you can be selfish; with whom you are considered and cared for as a person, before a king.”
Noct twists the hem of his pants between his fingers. Ignis gently lays his hand over Noct’s. “As for sex, all I have to say is your classmates are hardly educated on the subject, and probably not very tactful about it either. It’s not the same thing as love, you’re right. But it is—shall we say—usually included.”
“So what’s all this stuff about The One?” Noct’s hand has gone very still beneath his own. Ignis lets his eyes settle there, a possibly less nerve-wracking sight than trying to interpret Noct’s expression right now; he absently notes the differences in the length of their bones, the position of calluses, the creases in their skin.
“A romantic notion carelessly introduced by some lovelorn soul long ago and never properly put to rest, in my opinion.”
“So then… there isn’t a wrong one.”
Ignis looks up abruptly. “Loving someone isn’t wrong, Noctis. It can be difficult, or painful, or frustrating. But it is never wrong.” Noct’s eyes slide away. “If you are worried about making a mistake, keep in mind that no one really knows the answer to your questions. We’re all asking them. The best you can do is try not to hurt anyone, including yourself. Don’t fear others’ disappointment so much that you wall away your heart.”
That gets a fraction of a smile. “You sound like a poet.”
Deadpan, Ignis replies, “I quill never pen another sonnet, I vow.”
He can see the struggle Noct makes to keep his face still, but the smile cracks through, then turns into a reluctant chuckle. “I hate you so much.”
Ignis pats Noct’s hand and rises to return to the stove. It hasn’t been off so long that the dinner is beyond recovery. He lights the pilot and stirs the contents of the pan, wondering if Noct even has the ingredients to make a side salad. Unlikely, at best—
“So what you’re saying is, I’m probably going to fall in love with someone that I think is interesting, that I’m attracted to, and that I feel like a person with instead of a prince. And it should probably be now, and with someone I’ve known for a long time, so that everybody’s okay with it.”
The breath freezes in his lungs. “It sounds to me like you just described Lady Lunafreya.”
“Maybe…” He can hear Noct shifting on the cushions, sliding closer. “Maybe somebody else.”
Ignis does not fidget. He keeps his hands loose around the spoon and his shoulders straight because he has a responsibility to this boy: a sworn duty to be there for him and provide him with what he needs. Until you are replaced, a voice whispers in his head, but that is no more relevant than chocobo feathers. Noctis needs him as his dependable and level-headed friend and adviser, and that is what he will be.
“So what about those different kinds of interco—”
“No, Noct.”
“I’m just saying.”
Ah. The sulking is back, he can hear it. Ignis looks over his shoulder and examines Noct’s thinned lips, his eyes squinting down at the unravelling hems of his pants (he’ll have to mend those when Noct goes to bed), his furrowed brow. The lines of tension there in his face give Ignis a pang in his heart that he will never admit to anyone.
Noct sinks deeper into the sofa. “Does it have to be a girl?” he whispers, and the pang changes to a clamoring thunder in Ignis’s chest. Ignis turns away with his back to Noct once more. His mouth opens and closes soundlessly once before words are sliding out, buoyed by hope:
“… Historically, it has been a long time since this country last refused to acknowledge variations on a traditionally accepted marriage.”
“Specs, you’re gonna have to translate that.”
“It doesn’t have to be a girl, Noct.”
“Oh.”
Slowly the sound of cooking meat rises in the air. Ignis can barely hear Noct’s whisper over the popping and sizzling: “Maybe I do get it. Ignis?”
Ignis makes the mistake of looking back at Noctis. The prince’s head is tilted back against the couch and tipped toward Ignis, the length of his neck exposed, his hair falling in his eyes as he locks gazes with Ignis. His eyes are sad and dark, half-lidded, his mouth turned down in a thoughtful pout. He looks sad and lonely and wise and beautiful and for just a second Ignis wants to run from the stove, leap onto the couch, to catch Noct close to him in a warm embrace and soothe the shadows from his expression, to say that he doesn’t have to wonder about whether or not he’ll find someone to—
He locks his knees and does not move.
“Noct?” he asks, his voice barely recognizable with how normal it sounds. He knows his expression is bland, neutral, unassuming, because he funnels every single bit of his focus into keeping it that way.
Noct’s lonely expression turns crestfallen, and Ignis does not move. Not an inch. “Falling in love is really hard,” the prince whispers under the white noise of the stove. Then he blinks, curls up and turns away, huddling into the sofa cushions.
Ignis watches him wordlessly, the curve of his back, the wings of his shoulder blades visible beneath the thin fabric of his shirt, the mop of hair. He wishes.
“Yes,” he says softly. “Falling in love is very hard, Highness.”
It’s the hardest thing he’s ever done.