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It started as an honest mistake. It had been a long couple days with only a few power naps in the Regalia, more hunts than Noct wanted to count, and Ignis informing them that thanks to the amount of restoratives they had gone through on that last hunt, they still didn't have enough money for a hotel room. They were returning back to the tipster after another grueling hunt to hopefully get enough money to splurge on a caravan if nothing else, but he was starting to doubt it, because Gladio had really used up their supply of antidotes, and Ignis liked to be prepared. So they were jogging back to the Regalia when he decided he wanted to take a look at the new dagger they had picked up from that last den. He needed to see if it was worth keeping or if he could just try to sell that for the hotel money instead. As a result, he really wasn't looking where he was going when he pulled it out and nearly ran into Prompto with the blade extended first.
“Not the time for horseplay,” Prompto told him as he sidestepped out of the way. He froze where he was and quickly put the dagger away, hoping they wouldn't hold it against him. He couldn't believe he was so dead tired that he had nearly run his best friend through with a dagger. Why had he been running with weapons anyway?
“My hand slipped,” he offered sheepishly as a way of apology because they had to realize that he would never intentionally try to hurt any of them. Right? Except Prompto was still looking at him like he had been been betrayed in the worst possible way, and the other two were looking at him like he had nearly killed Prompto or something. At worst he would have been slightly wounded, but he didn't think he had been running fast enough to actually drive it into Prompto.
“Your… hand slipped?” Gladio asked him with a raised eyebrow. He never thought he would live to see the day that Gladio would take Prompto's side, but here they were. Maybe it was just because he had tried to nearly kill one of them and it wasn't like this was the first time this had happened. It was almost like somebody else was taking control of him momentarily or something. Like he would ever do anything to hurt any of his friends. “How does your hand just accidentally almost slip a knife into Prompto's side?”
“Yeah!” Prompto agreed defensively, folding his arms his chest. “And why can't your hand slip around Gladio instead of me?”
“Easy there, champ.”
“Perhaps you should let me drive for a bit, Noct,” Ignis said, and he couldn't believe he was turning against him too. The other two, he could almost understand, but not Ignis too. This was turning out to be the worst mistake he had ever made. “We wouldn't want your hand to slip on the wheel and plunge us all to our fiery deaths.”
“Do you really think that would happen?” Prompto asked wide-eyed.
“If he almost stabbed you, its hard to say.”
He hadn't been allowed to drive that night, but at least Ignis seemed to have taken the hint and allowed them to stay in a hotel. He wouldn't spring for two rooms though, but after all that time spent in the tent and in the Regalia, even sharing the bed with Ignis seemed like he had a king sized bed all to himself. After that night, he figured it was over and he would never have to hear about it again.
For a while, things did go back to normal. Gladio stopped watching him so intently whenever he was running, especially when he was any where near Prompto. Ignis eventually relented and let him drive again, although he could still see him putting on the imaginary break in the backseat. And Prompto said nothing about the incident, almost like he wanted to forget that it had ever happened. He should have known better than to believe it was over. It would never be over with those three.
Prompto was the first one to let him know that they weren't done with the whole hand slipped incident. Noct caught him taking a very unflattering picture of him being slapped in the face by a fish tail before the fish he had caught dove back into the lake. “Did you really just take a picture of that?” he asked. Posterity did not need to see him like that. There was absolutely no reason why Prompto had to take a picture of him at such an embarrassing moment.
“My hand slipped,” Prompto told him with a smirk over the camera before turning to show the picture to Gladio. Just like that, he knew this was going to be a thing now. They were never going to let him live it down.
The next night, there were green leafy vegetables in his dinner that were near impossible to pick out. When he made his complaints to Ignis, he was simply told that his hand slipped. They were getting impossible to live with. Prompto sent one of the more embarrassing photos to Luna. His hand slipped. Ignis was doing laundry and somehow managed to get a stain on Noct's casual shirt. His hand slipped. At least Gladio didn't seem inclined to stoop to their level. Or, he hadn't said anything, although maybe he was waiting for the right moment. Or maybe he thought the other two were being childish. Whatever the reason might have been, he figured as long as Gladio wasn't in on it, he could survive this. Eventually, they would get bored with this game and move on to something else.
He would just have to bear with it for a few more days. About two weeks after the first hand slip incident, there wasn't enough time to make it back to a rest station so they were forced to camp. The rain had started shortly after dinner, so they had all crammed into the tent together, which made things rather uncomfortable. Instead of prolonging his agony and waiting for someone to accidentally kick him and tell him 'my foot slipped,' he suggested that they all go to bed early. There wasn't much else for them to be doing anyway, and this way they could get an early start in the morning and hopefully make it back to civilization by tomorrow evening.
He was just starting to drift off to sleep when he heard the incriminating sounds of fabric rustling. Maybe they were just trying to get more comfortable, and he scrunched his eyes further shut as if that could somehow block out the noise. Beside him he could Ignis was already fast asleep. The noises started to subside a little bit, but then he heard Prompto release a breathy moan. He never had been very good at keeping quiet about anything. They had all been cooped up together for too long, and he should have known that Gladio and Prompto might try something if they thought every one else was asleep.
“Quit it,” he growled over at them, because he wasn't really in the mood to be dealing with this tonight, especially after Prompto had been torturing him for the past two weeks. He needed to put a stop to this now, before they got too involved in each other and no longer cared about what he had to say about the matter.
“Sorry, Noct,” Prompto called back, but he could tell from the cheeky way he said it that he wasn't in the least bit sorry.
He rolled over so his back was towards them and pulled the sleeping bag tighter around him. He was just about to drift off to sleep again when Prompto whimpered.
“I said quit it,” he yelled over at them, probably waking Ignis up in the process. There was silence from the other two for a long pause, and he thought perhaps they had been chastised enough that they would actually leave off at least long enough for him to fall asleep if nothing else.
“Sorry, my hand slipped,” Gladio said gruffly which made Prompto snort from where he was curled up against him.
Six damn them all.