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Ignis was tying his bow tie. What else? He'd put him in the vestments the way they must teach in chamberlain school, and did his best to brush out his hair and powder his face, and now he was fixing the elaborate knot around his neck.
Noct had squirmed when he'd done up the top buttons of the shirt, and had to fight not to rip the tie right off as soon as Ignis stepped back to make sure he'd done the sides even. Which, of course, he had. He shifted, then put a finger in his collar, in case it was really as tight as it felt, but it could fit his finger easily, so it was just him, again.
"As handsome as I've seen you," Ignis said, and maybe that was just what people say on one's wedding day, but in that moment Noct wanted to be sick. Ignis might as well pull out one of the ceremonial daggers he wore. If he knew Ignis -- and he still wanted to think he did -- they were as sharp as the blades he carried into battle.
"Are you alright?" Ignis finally, finally stopped to ask.
"No," Noct said, sitting down. So what if his trousers needed to be steamed again when he got up? Ignis would do that too, just like he forced breakfast into him, and put together all the raiments Noct never wore if he could help it, and kept moving and pushing Noct forward when he couldn't convince himself the day was finally here.
"Your stomach again?" Ignis was already moving again around him. Couldn't he ever stand still? "I could prepare some tea."
"No," Noct said plainly.
"Your jacket is ready there," he continued, and Noct looked at it with disgust where it hung, perfectly pressed, on a steaming rack. In case it got wrinkled by looking at it, he guessed. Noct wished that were possible, to buy himself a few more minutes. "From my view, you are ready."
"You should go." Noct crossed his arms. Now his shirt would need to be steamed again too.
Ignis didn't leave. He stood next to Noct, and squeezed his shoulder, minding the gods-damned shirt.
"What can I do?"
"You already did everything." He waved a hand around the dressing room Ignis had put together, and that didn't even account for the guest list and the dinner seating and everything else Ignis didn't have to do but did to make sure this all happened.
"Clearly not, if you aren't feeling well."
"Don't know what you mean. Happiest day of my life." There was no way he could make that sound like anything but the lie it was. "But you already knew that."
"Let me help. I'm here for you, Noct." A plea, maybe. Guilt? A little late for that.
"Here to dress me up like my father and pawn me off on someone else for the rest of my life?" Noctis snapped. That wasn't fair. Ignis had a job to do the same way Noct did, and he wasn't even being a brat about it, because he was Ignis's duty, and now that was almost over, and at least one of them accepted that. "Sorry. I don't --"
"What do you want to do?"
The question took Noct by surprise, and he just sat there, shaking his head when no words came to mind except a sarcastic, "Burn down the hall. Might buy me a few weeks."
"I'm serious," he said sharply, and Noct couldn't help but look up. "I came here today for you. I know this is... difficult. I've done what I thought I must." He stood in front of Noct, imposing, but somehow gentle. "I want to see you happy. If this isn't it, I will find a way."
"I know. This is my duty, too." Maybe he thought he'd be more mature when this day came. Maybe he thought he could slip out of it, and keep Ignis forever. Sure, Ignis was officially going with him as part of the court, but he knew how it went. They'd go from seeing each other all day, to every other day, to once a week, to the formal diplomatic functions in which someone in Ignis's position spoke to the King from across the room. The royal chamberlain would be with him until his death, but Iggy wouldn't. Not after this.
Ignis spoke, and it threw Noct from his own head. "So do you need encouragement, or a lecture? Do you need me to take you by the arm and give you away myself?" There was bitterness in his voice, so bare that Noct didn't know how he could possibly have kept it inside if he felt it all day, while he played dress-up like it was normal. If he -- if he felt like Noct did, and knew in his heart how big a mistake this was...
"No," Noct murmured. "I don't want you to do that."
"To solace you then? That you are good enough, that anyone would be lucky to have you as a husband? You would hear it tonight in my toast, regardless."
That voice was gentler, and Noct bit his lip. Trapped at his own wedding feast, while Ignis said what might as well be the public declarations of love he'd imagined hearing in the daydreams he never talked about, and Noct could only sit there and pretend his eyes were watering for his new consort and not the man he was leaving in every sense that mattered.
"Or do you want to leave?" Ignis said, in the same tone he took when he was trying to sound neutral. "Nothing is official yet. I can find a car and we could be across the continent by nightfall."
"That'd break the treaty," Noct protested, as if he could hide the split second of hope he felt. Like the person who knew him best in this world -- and maybe even wanted to keep him -- wouldn't see it.
"Yes. And thousands may die."
That should've been the end. Noct felt it deep in his gut. That should've been the moral lesson that he needed reminding of to break him out of his selfishness. It wouldn't have been the first time Ignis did that. But he didn’t say it like a lesson. He said it like it was a fact, like the sky was blue, and that they dressed in black.
Right. Okay. "So you want me to go through with it."
"I didn't say that." Noct looked up at him, and stared at the gaze he found. Ignis wasn't scary, not to Noct, but it was scary what he saw there. Would he really let Noct run, drive him away himself, and condemn Lucis to almost certain war?
Ignis was the first to look away. "I can't make this decision for you."
"I don't..." He wanted to say that he didn't know, or that he needed more time. But that wasn't true, was it, Noct? Berating himself came more easily. "You shouldn't say that. You swore an oath to Lucis."
Ignis didn't deny it, but what he said was, "My loyalty has always been to you." And something in the way it rolled off his tongue like he'd practiced it, like he'd weighed this out and decided years ago, made a part of Noct want to jump out the window right now, even more than when he'd been put in the tie -- which now, he reached up and loosened, and just tried to breathe.
"No choice you make will change that." Noct looked back up at Ignis, the man who had killed for him, who would either bury his feelings and give him away or doom the treaty for him as soon as Noct said the word. Who would face execution for treason if he took Noct away and they were caught. His eyes burned bright, and as much as Noct needed Ignis -- how could he have been so self-centered, not to think that Ignis needed him that way too? Was this their chance? He stood, mind racing.
But Ignis embraced him, and it stole the breath Noct was just beginning to get back. "Tell me what you need, and I will see it through," he said, "today, and every other." Noct stared over his shoulder, gripping the back of Ignis's shirt, with the weight of the promise and of possibility between them.