Work Text:
kiss you where it's sore
If Gladio hears Iggy gush about Nyx fucking Ulric one more time, he's going to scream. Or possibly do something dramatic and very likely stupid.
It's not enough, Gladio thinks bitterly, that Iggy chose that slimy, ever-grinning, ever-annoying Kingsglaive little shit as his weapons' master over him. Oh, no, to add insult to injury, Iggy has to share detailed commentary on his sessions with him, waxing poetic about this or that move, and wasn't it just amazing how good Nyx was at mastering the King's magic? Wasn't it so cool that he'd taught him this or that new move? Wasn't he sohandsome and charming and witty and perfect?
No, Gladio would like to reply, growling loudly before he shook Iggy until the stupidity-inducing fog left his head and he realized what a lame, dumb moron Nyx fucking Ulric really is.
But very few things make Iggy happy – truly happy, the kind that makes his eyes bright and pulls his mouth into a genuine smile that relaxes his entire face – and fuck Gladio and his entirely sensible and justified disdain for him, but Nyx fucking Ulric is one of those things.
Well, okay. Training with Nyx fucking Ulric makes Iggy happy, but that's almost the same thing, as far as Gladio's concerned, and it's annoying.
He shuffles his way to the training hall, dragging his feet as much as the memory of Cor's narrowed-eyed, disapproving glare will allow him to, and refuses to contemplate the masochistic nature of his presence there. He isn't Ignis' weapons' master, so it isn't like he needs to keep track of Ignis' progress, or that he even can, for that matter, considering daggers are certainly outside the scope of his skillset. They are flighty and light, and Gladio much prefers the comforting weight of a greatsword in his hands or over his shoulder, ready to fuck up someone's day in just one swing. He doesn't have the build for it, lithe and graceful – like Ignis – or shifty and squirmy – like Nyx fucking Ulric.
He has no business here, really, and there's a good chunk of stuff he should be doing instead – his father has decided this is the year Gladio will learn how to run a household, while serving the Crown to the best of his ability. So now he's the poor sod Jared has to ask for permission to do anything around the house and honestly, Gladio has never wanted more to grab a tent and go live in the depths of some nice, deserted forest where no one will ask him to balance a budget or organize dumb fancy parties. Demons every night would be preferable to the damn fancy parties.
Except, Iggy likes those, for some deranged reason Gladio cannot hope to understand, and more than that, he's good at organizing them. But Gladio is too proud, and Iggy is too overworked, for him to ask for his help with that. He'll get the hang of it, eventually. Or let Iris decide. Iris is good at the dumb fancy parties, too.
“No, no, no,” Nyx says, shaking his head as he looks over Iggy's stance. “That's terrible!” He slides his own blades into their holster and walks over to poke and prode at Iggy in ways that make Gladio's gut churn angrily. More so when Iggy winces at the reproach. “You're too stiff! You're bracing for a hit, but you're not supposed to get hit in the first place. You need to be relaxed, ready to bolt at a moment's notice, Ignis. You see an opening and you strike, and then you fall back to wait for the next one. Leave the macho standing for the morons who carry swords as big as they're tall.”
Iggy laughs at that, an embarrassed little chuckle that makes Gladio twitch irritably. What the fuck is wrong with big swords anyway? Goes to show what stupid Nyx fucking Ulric knows. Asshole.
Gladio watches for the next hour as Nyx walks Iggy through some forms, occasionally standing behind him and showing him how to move his arms and shift his weight on his feet. Iggy generally avoids letting people touch him, but he doesn't complain when Nyx fucking Ulric manhandles him about. And no, Gladio's sour disdain for him is not solely rooted in that fact, thank you very much.
Of course not.
There's tons of reasons to dislike Nyx fucking Ulric, and Gladio can totally come up with a million of them if he has to, but he doesn't want to think about him anymore than strictly necessary. So there.
“Hello,” Iggy says, once his session is over and he's done waving his irritating mentor off. He walks up to Gladio with a little smile, “still delighting in my suffering, I see.”
“See, I was gonna buy you lunch,” Gladio replies, grinning easily now that Nyx fucking Ulric has vacated the premises, “but not if you're gonna go throwing baseless accusations like that.”
It's true, after all. He doesn't enjoy Iggy's suffering. But the sight of sweat-drenched Iggy in loose training gear, as opposed to his usually impeccable suits? With his hair wet and loose around his face and a faint little flush still on his skin? Fuck yeah, Gladio enjoys that. A lot.
Not that he'd tell Iggy that.
That'd be weird.
“You'll have to elaborate on what lunch would entitle,” Iggy replies, lips pulled into an easy smirk as his eyebrows arch tauntingly. “I mean, I need to figure out if it's in my best interests to apologize or not.”
Gladio makes to kick him, rolling his eyes.
“Ass,” he says, deadpan, “and for your information, lunch entitles those tiny crab dumplings you love so much.”
Iggy mock-gasps in shock.
“Oh, well,” he replies, “in that case, I am terribly sorry for the misunderstanding, Gladio. I'll endeavor not to point out the obvious in the future.”
Gladio rolls his eyes, fond despite it all.
“Let's just go, already.”
When Gladio was sixteen, he'd been allowed to formally join the Crownsguard. He hadn't expected any preferential treatment, just because of who his father was, and he hadn't gotten it. He'd spent a year bonding with his squad, sharing meals and showers and rooms, and being drilled into the dirt by Cor and his glares until he could double march on his sleep. By the time he'd graduated and moved up the ranks, most people knew he'd earned it because it was expected of him, though to this day, there are still the little shits that like to whisper about birthrights and undeserved privileges when they see him. Gladio still enjoys punching those little weasels when he finds them, even if it usually ends up with Cor looking at him like Gladio's face is causing ulcers to spontaneously form in his gut.
Gladio likes Cor a great deal, and not just because he's the coolest living legend he's ever met.
But more importantly, when Gladio was sixteen, he spent a year without seeing Iggy at all. It wasn't like they didn't speak, of course: Gladio was not completely cutoff from the world, and there were free hours in his day where he could lay on his bed and stare at his phone until it wentping, announcing Iggy's latest reply. But still, they hadn't seen each other, for a whole year, after spending nearly a decade attached at the hip. And then Gladio had graduated and realized, the moment he laid eyes on his best friend, that all he really wanted at that moment was to kiss Iggy until they both ran out of air. It had been a little disconcerting, at the time. By now, after a year of getting himself boyfriends and girlfriends to fool around with and try to scratch the itch away, Gladio is more or less resigned to the fact he's doomed to be in love with his best friend forever.
Sex is fun and everything, but Iggy, man. Iggy is the real deal. Iggy is worth anything, even putting up with Nyx fucking Ulric and his annoyingly smug smirks.
“Here's the thing,” Nyx says, arms folded as he looks at Gladio in the eye – Gladio is rather happy with his latest growth spur, to be honest, he's got two inches on Nyx fucking Ulric now, and they taste like sweet, sweet victory whenever he remembers it. “You're not as subtle as you think you are.”
“What?” Gladio asks, eyes narrowed.
Nyx gives him an amused look. It takes every year of training, every memory of Cor's glare, every promise of disappointment from his father, to keep Gladio from punching him right in his smug, hateful mouth.
“Just because Ignis is an idiot doesn't mean I am, Gladio,” Nyx says, deadpan. “I know you're the type to be perfectly happy wallowing about this, but do me a solid and just... don't.”
Gladio glowers a little.
“The hell is that supposed to mean?”
Nyx looks exasperated. At him! The absolute asshole. Gladio begins to stew again, as he suddenly remembers every individual thing he hates about Nyx fucking Ulric.
“It means,” Nyx says, closing his eyes as if to gather patience, “you great dumb twit,” Gladio hunches somewhat, as Nyx seems to swell in size, without moving a muscle. “Go pick up some flowers, take him somewhere nice and then kiss that boy already.”
Gladio punches him. It's automatic, no thought required. Nyx goes down like a sack of bricks, sprawled at his feet with a vaguely confused expression on his face. Gladio can hear the ghost of Cor's best You-Have-Disappointed-Me lecture as he realizes he just punched a high ranking member of the Kingsglaive clear off his feet. Nyx doesn't seem mad, at least. Gladio is, despite it all, irritated about that.
“The hell was that for?” Nyx asks, blinking a little as if to try to comprehend why he's suddenly sitting on his ass.
“Because,” Gladio snaps back, well aware his face is flaming. “You're talking shit.”
“I'm not!” Nyx snorts, rolling his eyes as he pulls himself upright, standing up as he rubs his jaw absently. Gladio hopes, vindictively, that the bruise lasts. “I'm just tired of trying to train Ignis when he's too busy being distracted by your mooning. Either kiss the boy and figure out stuff, or stop being distracting. We're playing with knives here, someone's bound to lose an eye at this rate, and I'd rather it weren't me.”
“I'm not distracting!” Gladio replies, baring his teeth angrily, even though the flush refused to leave his face. Stupid Nyx fucking Ulric and his stupid complaints about stupid things that were totally not true. “I mean, I am. I can be. Totally. But Iggy doesn't think so.”
“Iggy,” Nyx says, and everything inside Gladio twitches violently at the sound of the nickname in his voice, “walked into a wall, Gladio.” There's a small pause. “You were there. You laughed. I mean, I laughed too, because it was pretty damn funny, but if he's walking into walls, who's to say next time he's not going to walk into a blade?”
Gladio clenches his fists, over and over again, trying to come with the right answer, or decide to give up and face Cor's wrath by punching Nyx again.
“You're an asshole,” is all Gladio has to offer.
Nyx, because he's Nyx fucking Ulric, has the gall to laugh.
“You and me both, pal,” Nyx muses, smirking – it'd be a smile in anyone's face, but of course it couldn't be, not on Nyx fucking Ulric's face. He sobers up right quick, though. “But seriously. Kiss the boy already. Stop doing your... weird parade of forlon longing all over my training room, man. It's awkward.”
Gladio huffs, folding his arms over his chest and shifting his weight from one foot to the other. At least that way he won't punch Nyx again. Even though he wants to. Like, a lot. Almost as much as he kinda wants to take his advice and go kiss Iggy. But now there's this layer of awkward, uncomfortable stuff all over that idea, because Nyx fucking Ulric had to get involved. Gladio ducks his head a little, licking his lips.
“So you really think he'd be into that?” He asks gruffily, trying his best to not sound half as hopeful as he kind of feels.
Nyx stares.
“I'm sorry, did you miss the part where he walked into a freaking wall?”
Gladio doesn't buy flowers.
Mostly because Iggy is allergic – and goes to show what Nyx fucking Ulric knows, the prat. But he does buy a tray of tiny, delicate pastries from Iggy's favorite bakery, a carton of Ebony, a carton of beer and two big servings of Iggy's favorite sweet and sour chicken from a downtown hole-in-the-wall dive that Gladio spent two hours trying to find on his own. He figures, if it all goes well, they can celebrate. If it goes to shit, he can at least bribe forgiveness and maybe Iggy won't hate him forever over this mess. Gathering aplomb, Gladio balances the bags as best he can, before giving up and ringing the bell to Iggy's apartment with his forehead. He hopes he doesn't have the imprint of the botton still visible by the time Iggy opens the door, but the thought evaporates when Iggy sees him and offers a small smile.
“Gladio,” he says, voice light and friendly, “hello.”
“Hi,” Gladio replies, shrugging. “I brought dinner.”
“So I see,” Iggy muses, stepping back to let him in. He arches an eyebrow when he gets a good look of Gladio's offerings. “Are we celebrating something?”
It's rhetorical, of course, because if there was anything to celebrate, Iggy would know. Iggy keeps charts of his charts, and despairs at Gladio's poorly kept agenda at every chance he gets. Gladio shuffles to the small kitchen pushed into a corner of the apartment, unloading everything carefully onto the counter.
“Maybe?” He answers, his back to Iggy for a few more precious seconds so he can build up his nerve again. “I mean, no. Not exactly. Fuck, can I start over?”
Iggy leans on the counter watching him fumble about with an amused tilt to his lips. He's enjoying him being flustered of course, because Iggy is kind of a dick, and if Gladio weren't just hopelessly in love with him, he'd find it really fucking irritating.
“By all means,” Iggy says, letting him fuss with putting the food into plates – Iggy does not tolerate eating out of carton boxes under his roof, and Gladio knows it well enough – while he opens two beers and puts the rest and the Ebony in the fridge. “Though if it's any consolation, I've no clue what you mean to start.”
Gladio sighs, twice, and then turns around, moving to place the plates on the small breakfast isle.
“Say,” Gladio begins, inordinately proud of himself, because he's not fidgeting. All those boyfriends and girlfriends he got, before, they were never this hard. He just... walked up and asked if they wanted to date, and they said yes, and that was it. But none of them were Iggy, Gladio supposes. “We're friends, right?”
“As far as I was aware, yes,” Iggy replies, passing along a beer, which Gladio takes a swing of and then puts down with a frown. “Unless you rather we weren't?”
“What, no!” Gladio laughs. It's awkward. Awkward, awkward, awkward. He kind of wants to cringe, but manages not to at the last second. “Of course not. It's just. I know I screw up, a lot. Get real hotheaded and open my mouth before thinking. And just. Yeah.”
“I'm well aware of your tendency to lick your own toes on a weekly basis,” Iggy replies, frowning slightly. “I must confess I find it endearing, provided I'm not the one tasked with the cleanup of your little outbursts.”
“Yeah, that,” Gladio snorts. “So I was wondering, you know, if you think there's anything I could do for you to hate me. I mean, if you want to give me a warning, before I commit to this.”
“Gladio.”
“Because, I really like being your friend,” Gladio goes on, shrugging at the sudden intense look he's being subjected to. “You're my best friend, Iggy. I kinda want us to keep being best friends until we invariably kill ourselves protecting our moron of a Prince.”
Iggy snorted.
“I assure you, however morbid, vaguely trechearous and yet wholehearted the sentiment, it is also very much mutual.”
Gladio squints a little.
“You sure?”
Iggy laughs, shaking his head.
“Gladio, I did not hate you after what you did to my poor budget reports last year,” he says, pushing the glasses up his nose. “It's safe to assume I won't hate you for anything else to decide to do.”
Gladio nods.
“Okay,” he says, licking his lips. “Okay.”
Then he leans in and presses his mouth against Iggy's, just a tiny peck, really. Iggy takes a sharp breath, but he doesn't pull away. There's a moment of silence, as Gladio leans back, watching Iggy's face carefully.
“What about Claudia?” He asks, voice steady and eyes sharp.
Gladio shrugs.
“She's hot. She's fun.” He swallows hard, trying to smile jokingly. “She also thinks Verchel is pretentious and called Midnight Roar a sappy, cliched mess.”
Iggy arches an eyebrow.
“Verchel's prose is bruised, rather than merely purple,” he points out, an opinion he's shared more than once, despite Gladio's sincere protests to the contrary. “And Midnight makes you weep like a child, because you love every sappy, cliched word of it.”
“Yeah,” Gladio shrugs again, harder this time. “But you don't laugh at me about it.” Iggy opens his mouth to argue, and Gladio huffs. “Well, okay, you do, because you're a dick, but you don't mean it. Not too much.”
“You call me a dick,” Iggy snorts, tilting his head to the side, as if sizing him up. “And then what? Expect me to kiss you back and entertain you for the next three months, until you get bored and moved onto the next one?”
Gladio doesn't expect the flare of hurt at the words, breath catching in his throat. But, and he notices, Iggy isn't mad. Not yet. He's testing the waters, doing that thing he always does, where he throws the first punch to see what happens, before he commits to a course of action. Gladio licks his lips.
“If you kiss me back,” he says, inordinately proud of himself, because his voice doesn't crack even once, “I'm kinda hoping there'll never be a next one.” He licks his lips. “Or we can forget I ever did anything, and just go back to... you know. Us. Just like always.”
Iggy is still looking at him with that little dip between his eyebrows, green eyes sharp enough Gladio entertains the wholly ridiculous thought that he must be taking classes from Cor in that regard.
“Clauda, Lucas, and all the others,” Iggy says, and it somehow makes it sound like there were a lot more of them, than Gladio rationally knows there are. It makes him want to squirm. “Did you tell them there wouldn't be a next one after them, too?”
“No,” Gladio replies, giving into the urge to rub his thumb over his knuckles, a little nervous tic he likes to think is better than fullblown fidgeting with his shirt until he wears a hole into the hem.
Iggy's frown deepens.
“Why?”
Gladio lets out a soft, self-deprecating laugh, raising his hands in defeat.
“Because they weren't you,” he admits, managing, at least, not to squirm under the scrutiny. “They were in for the fun, and so was I. And it was fun, alright, but it wasn't... it wasn't something that'd last.”
“But I am?”
Gladio wishes he knew how to read Iggy's tone, but it's entirely foreign to him, and thought terrifies him a little.
“I'd like you to be,” he replies, forcing himself to keep his eyes locked with Iggy, rather than give into temptation and stare at his mouth. “If you want to.”
“This,” Iggy says after another near eternal silence that makes Gladio feel like ants are crawling under his skin, reaching to slide his glasses off his face, “is quite possibly the worst idea you've ever had.”
But then, before Gladio can insist they can just pretend he never said anything at all, Iggy's hands are reaching out for his face and pulling him down so he can kiss him, and it is definitely not a peck. Gladio melts, shoulders sagging all at once, as his hands fall on Iggy's hips.
“I suppose,” he says, as they break apart and Gladio leans in to rest his forehead on his shoulder, all but purring in delight, “that we do have something to celebrate now.” But his fingers are wound into Gladio's hair, scratching at his scalp absently, and it's quite possibly the best feeling in the whole wide word. “I must leave it on the record, however, that I will not clean this mess up, when it invariably blows up in our faces.”
“Deal,” Gladio snorts, unable to keep the edge of giddiness of his voice, more so when Iggy smiles at him.
Iggy pushes him gently towards their quickly cooling dinner.
“Then let's celebrate.” His lips twitch into a smirk. “I'd rather not let good effort go to waste.”
Dinner is delicious, and Gladio is sure the fact Iggy lets him steal two more kisses while they eat is the reason why.
“Cupcakes.”
Nyx fucking Ulric is still an asshole and Gladio hates him. Always and forever. Gladio glares as the man stares at the box in his hands, like he's expecting it to spontaneously burst into flame.
“If you don't want them,” he snarls, “give them back.”
“No!” Nyx steps back, clutching the box a little tighter. “That's cool. It's just.” He blinks. “You brought me cupcakes.”
Gladio shrugs gruffly.
“Iggy said you like them.”
Nyx smirks at him. Gladio clenches his fists, remembering dreamily the feeling of that arrogant, stupid face under them.
“Thanks,” Nyx says, “all worked out good, I hope?”
“Fuck right off,” Gladio snaps back, face flushed, and then he turns on his heel and stomps away, Nyx fucking Ulric's laughter ringing in his ears.
Asshole .