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“Stupid hunk of junk.” Gladio smacks the side of the television so hard it almost falls off its stand. He catches it as it topples and sets it back to rights, but it carries on blasting white noise in their pitifully small motel room. “This thing’s gotta be fifty fuckin’ years old.”
Ignis climbs onto the bed, a bowl of popcorn under his arm. “Indeed, so you might want to refrain from abusing it. Have you tried adjusting the antennae?”
Grumbling, Gladio nudges one of the antennae to the left, inch by inch, until the snow on the screen starts to resolve into a fuzzy image. It looks to be a horror movie—a dated one, perhaps twenty years old. A woman with enormous, bleach blonde hair wobbles down an alleyway on red stilettos, glancing anxiously over her shoulder, as a cacophony of screeching violins foretells her doom. Ignis raises an eyebrow and puts a piece of popcorn in his mouth.
“That okay?” Gladio asks.
“It will have to do.”
Gladio grins and flops down next to Ignis, propping himself up on one elbow as he stretches out, his free hand fishing in the bowl of popcorn. Conscious of Gladio’s proximity, Ignis shifts a little to give him space. The double bed they’re sharing is hardly large enough to accommodate one man, let alone two, but they had very little choice in the matter. This was the last available room in the motel. Next door, Noct and Prompto are grappling with a similar arrangement.
Gladio offered to sleep on the floor, of course, but Ignis would never allow that. The worn, beige carpet looks like it hasn’t been vacuumed in decades. No, they’ll just have to get cozy tonight, whether they like it or not. The ancient mattress dips in the middle, and chances are good they’ll wake in the morning nestled against each other or, gods forbid, spooning. Ignis only hopes Gladio will have the sense to sleep with his sweatpants on; generally, he makes do with his boxer shorts and nothing else. As it is, he’s already divested himself of his shirt.
On any other night, Ignis wouldn’t complain. But sharing such a small bed with the object of his affection, without the freedom to touch, is much less exciting in practice than it is in theory.
“What is this?” Gladio asks around a mouthful of popcorn.
Ignis shrugs. “A B-film of some sort.”
“You cool with it?”
Ignis licks melted butter off his thumb. “I daresay I’ll have to be. They don’t seem to offer any other channels.”
On the television, violins squeal. The woman screams, a piercing cry that turns to a gurgle as razor sharp claws tear her throat open. She crumples in her attacker’s arms, and like a rabid dog, he buries his head in her neck, lapping at the blood pouring from the wound.
Ignis sighs. “Vampires. Naturally.”
Gladio laughs and nudges Ignis’s foot with his own. “You tellin’ me you don’t like vampire flicks, Iggy?”
“Only because they lack originality,” Ignis says. He gestures at the television. “Observe. In the next scene, that woman is going to rise from the dead, and her boyfriend will endure a moral crisis lasting half the film’s runtime before he finally drives a stake into her heart. But only after she’s devastated the entire town with her bloodlust.”
Gladio cocks an eyebrow at him. “You seen this before?”
“Of course not. I merely know the formula. It’s predictable.”
The scene changes to a moonlit cemetery. Two teenagers stumble between the graves, laughing and clinging to each other, clearly intoxicated, and clearly asking to be murdered. At any moment now, a vampire will burst from one of the fresh graves to terrorize them. If Ignis were the betting sort, he would certainly put down gil on that. Eyes on the screen, he reaches into the bowl of popcorn, only to meet warm skin. Gladio’s hand. Ignis snatches his own back, his cheeks heating.
“Sorry,” Gladio says, grabbing a handful before nudging the bowl toward Ignis.
Just as Ignis accepts it, a cloud of bats bursts, screeching, out of a hollow tree on the television. Startled, he jumps a foot in the air, showering himself, the bedspread, and Gladio with popcorn.
Gladio laughs so hard he almost chokes on a kernel. After thumping himself a few times on the chest, he flops back against his pillow, one arm flung over his head, and gasps for air between chuckles. “Thought you said this shit was predictable.”
Face burning, Ignis picks popcorn off his pyjama top, struggling not to look at the expanse of sun-kissed skin spread out next to him. It’s hardly appropriate to lust after someone who hasn’t shown an ounce of interest in him—though, to be fair, Gladio doesn’t often talk about his preferences one way or the other. Sometimes, when he looks at Gladio, he’ll find the other man’s eyes already on him, but Gladio only smiles and winks at him before he goes back to what he was doing. At such times, Ignis will wonder if Gladio doesn’t, to some degree, return his feelings. But then he remembers the admiring remarks Gladio has made about the attractive women they’ve encountered on their travels, and it’s enough to halt such thoughts in their tracks.
The way Gladio walks around half-dressed doesn’t make it easy to douse the flame of his desire, either. As Ignis drops a handful of popcorn back in the bowl, he allows himself a glance. He looks at the band of Gladio’s sweatpants, riding so low on his hips that Ignis can see a suggestion of dark hair. He looks at the washboard definition of his abdominals, and the firm, smooth meat of his chest. Not for the first time, he longs to touch, to run his hands over Gladio and acquaint himself with the varied terrain of his skin.
Swallowing hard, he raises his eyes and finds Gladio watching him, his arm tucked behind his head.
“What’s wrong?” Gladio asks.
“Nothing,” Ignis says. He brushes popcorn off his pyjama pants and tosses a few more kernels into the bowl, averting his gaze. “I’ll just get a broom to clean this up.”
“I’ll help.”
Gladio rises and pulls the duvet off the bed, shaking popcorn onto the carpet. Retrieving a broom from the closet, Ignis sweeps it up as best he can and deposits the contents of the dustpan into the waste bin in the bathroom. He takes a moment to cool down over the sink, splashing water on his face. Astrals help him, he’s only been in this room with Gladio for half an hour and he’s already in a state. There’s a flush on his cheeks, and his pupils are wider than they have any right to be in the light reflecting back at him off the mirror.
Breathing deep, he towels off his face and returns to the bedroom. The duvet is still in a heap on the floor, but Gladio is back on the bed, lounging with one leg bent as he watches the film. When he sees Ignis in the doorway, he smiles and pats the sheet next to him.
“C’mon. You’re gonna miss the end of the movie.”
“And what a tragedy that would be,” Ignis says dryly as he sits cross-legged beside Gladio.
The scene on the television cuts from the graveyard to a dimly-lit bedroom, where a college age woman straddles a man on a bed. They’re kissing, his hands full of her bare breasts. Ignis flushes like a pubescent teen who’s just discovered a stash of erotic magazines wedged between the tomes of his father’s encyclopedia collection. He keeps his eyes fixed on the screen, acutely aware of Gladio’s body sprawled beside him on the bed. The desire to touch him—to slide a palm up his smooth chest, to cup his cheek and kiss him—is almost too much to withstand. Watching a pair of actors simulate a sex act isn’t helping matters.
Gladio, however, doesn’t seem affected. And why should he? Unless he can read minds, Gladio has no way of knowing Ignis wants to do to him what the characters in the film are doing to each other. Still, it’s hard to believe Gladio can’t hear the pounding of his heart. It’s deafening in his own ears.
He clears his throat and tries to focus on the film. The characters are so preoccupied with each other that they don’t notice the vampire perched outside the window, gazing in at them with her unnatural yellow eyes. Dirt smudges her pale cheeks and cakes in her tangled, disheveled hair. She grins, displaying a row of sharp, blood-encrusted teeth, and drags her nails down the pane of glass.
“This is absurd,” he says, perhaps a touch too loud, placing a hand on his cheek so Gladio won’t notice how red he’s gone. “How is it possible they haven’t noticed her?”
Gladio grins at him. “You’ve never been too busy fucking someone to pay attention to the world around you, Iggy?”
Somehow, his face goes hotter. He’s no virgin, but he wishes the vampire would just crawl through the window, slaughter the protagonist and his paramour in their bed, and put them all out of their misery already.
“Are you saying you wouldn’t notice a creature of the night clawing at your window like a famished voretooth?” Ignis retorts.
Gladio shrugs, shifting to prop himself up on his elbow against the pillows. Ignis resolutely does not look at the way his bicep flexes under the skin. “Dunno. Depends who I’ve got in my lap,” Gladio says.
“Well, I do wish they’d get on with the killing,” Ignis says, folding his arms over his chest. “This is a horror film, isn’t it?”
Gladio’s grinning at him again, a tad wolfishly. “This scene making you uncomfortable, Iggy?”
“No,” Ignis says, just as the window shatters in the film and the vampire crawls through it. The pair on the bed scream and scramble away, keeping the furniture between them and her as she rises from her crouch. She grins that horrible grin at them, and they stumble for the bedroom door, ripping it open, only to be confronted by a second vampire—a male, his chin dripping with blood. His sudden appearance, and the screeching violins that accompany it, make Ignis start again.
Gladio laughs. “Awfully jumpy tonight, aren’t you?”
“I wasn’t expecting that,” Ignis says. “Don’t vampires need to be invited in?”
“This is a B-movie, remember? Guess the director decided to play by different rules.”
Carnage ensues. Together, the vampires tear the young couple limb from limb and drain their blood, painting their faces, their clothes, and the adjacent furniture in gore. Despite himself, Ignis shudders. Between their yellow eyes and the thick clots of blood clinging to their cheeks, the vampires look too much like the creatures they’ve encountered on the highway at night. This could be their fate someday, if they aren’t careful.
“You’re not scared, are you, Iggy?” Gladio asks.
Ignis lets out a breath that’s something between a sigh and a huff. “Of course not. It’s just a film. None of it is real.”
“You sure?” Gladio grins, leaning a little closer to him, until their shoulders are touching on the pillow and Ignis catches the scent of his shampoo. “You seem a little on edge.”
“I assure you, Gladio, I—”
The next thing he knows, strong arms clasp around him from behind, wrestling him affectionately into the sheets. Ignis’s breath rushes out of him. Of all the places he thought this evening would take them, this certainly never crossed his mind.
Gladio is holding him.
Gladio, the man who makes his stomach somersault whenever he’s near. The man he’s wanted for more years than he can count on one hand.
“Ahhh, the perfect victim,” Gladio teases, right in his ear. It sends a shiver down Ignis’s spine. “So fresh. So tasty!”
Ignis squawks, undignified, as Gladio pushes his face into Ignis’s neck and lets out a mock snarl, his head shaking like a dog with a rabbit in its jaws. Like the vampires in the film. The bristles of his beard tickle Ignis’s skin, and he squirms, laughing, but Gladio won’t let him go. Those arms just lock tighter around him. That face just nuzzles deeper into his throat.
Not that Ignis minds. Gladio’s chest is so firm and warm against his back, his embrace almost comforting. He smells like vanilla and cinnamon and clean sweat. He’s laughing, too, convulsing with it, his breath ghosting over Ignis’s skin.
It would be nice to remain like this all night, certainly.
But Gladio pulls back, rolling Ignis with him. They meet each other’s eyes, both breathing hard, their smiles fading. What began as a bit of playful roughhousing, a bit of teasing between friends, suddenly seems so much more significant than that. Ignis is still in the circle of Gladio’s arms, their faces so close that Ignis could kiss him if he lifted his head an inch or two off the pillow. And, oh, he wants to. He wants to tangle his hands in that thick, dark hair and taste all of Gladio.
Gladio’s gaze moves to his mouth, lingering there for a moment before it returns to look Ignis in the eye. “Can I…?”
Ignis nods, not trusting himself to speak, and Gladio bends to press his lips to Ignis’s own. It isn’t the most graceful kiss. But then, first kisses are rarely coordinated, are they? Their teeth knock together, and then their noses, and Gladio pauses to chuckle against Ignis’s mouth before he tries again. Ignis closes his eyes when one gentle hand comes up to cup his face, tilting his head to take the kiss deeper, to give Gladio control. And when Gladio’s tongue finally slips into his mouth, he makes a small sound of pleasure, clutching at the bare skin of Gladio’s shoulder.
A loud crash comes from the television set, but the film is long forgotten. All that matters right now is the mouth moving against his own, and the solid heat of Gladio’s body in his arms. All that matters is the hand that’s found its way under his pyjama top.
They pull apart, panting, with a wet sound.
“You wanna finish watching this movie?” Gladio asks, cocking a thumb over his shoulder.
Cautiously, Ignis places a hand on Gladio’s chest, just over the head of the eagle. “Not at all. I can think of several things I’d rather be doing. If that’s all right with you…?”
Gladio grins down at him. “I was hoping you’d say that.” He kisses the tip of Ignis’s nose before claiming his lips again, his tongue teasing Ignis with a promise of more. “Just give me a minute to turn this thing off.”
Dazed, Ignis admires Gladio’s rear end in his sweatpants as he crosses the room to twist the knob on the television to the OFF position. The screen flickers and goes dark, cutting off the film’s denouement, just as the protagonist is about to plunge a stake into the heart of the villain as she slumbers. Ignis smirks. Predictable.
Though he couldn’t have predicted that a B-film would catalyze the heat between them. How could he, when he didn’t even know Gladio felt it, too?
“Okay,” Gladio says, returning to the bed to settle in Ignis’s arms, between his spread legs. His hand slides up Ignis’s side, under his shirt, pulling him close. Ignis feels his heartbeat quicken. Tonight, at least, Gladio is his. “Where were we?”