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Spread out on his stomach near the open balcony doors, Prompto is pleased with his choice of lounge spot. The heat of Lestallum is still stifling, especially with the Leville set so far back, but every now and then he gets a cool cross breeze that makes the growing ache in his shoulders worth it.
He’s got his elbows propped on the floor, his chin in hand, and legs sprawled out behind him. In front of him sits his laptop, disconnected from the Wi-fi, fully charged from a stint in the armory. One of his favorite rom-coms is already playing on a low volume.
Gladio claimed the only cushioned chair, his attention alternating from his book, to the movie, to his conversation with Ignis. Ignis is puttering in the kitchen, dressed down for the heat, making them all dinner. Noctis is stealing all the good water by taking an obnoxiously long shower.
It almost feels like normal. If he closes his eyes, blocks out the steady hum of the power plant and the pylons, it’s like they’re in Insomnia before everything fell, spending just a regular ol’ Saturday together.
Yeah…almost normal.
Noct comes out of the bathroom, no steam billowing behind him. It’s too hot for the kind of showers he normally likes, and he’s even dressed down in Gladio’s too big tank top and a pair of boxers. Prompto pulls another pillow from the bed, setting it next to him.
Noct throws his towel over a chair and plops down, staring at the ceiling. He glances at the subtitles on the bottom of the screen. It takes him a second to decipher what it says upside down, but when he does, he snorts, rolling his eyes. But he’s smiling fondly, so Prompto knows he chose well for their impromptu movie night.
Instead of flopping over to watch it with him, though, Noct buries his face into Prompto’s elbow and promptly falls asleep.
—
Losing weight isn’t the only thing Prompto does before he approaches Prince Noctis one more time. Their first interaction, as embarrassing as it was, just highlighted a very lacking skill in his life on so many accounts.
So, between school work and regimented meal plans and carefully thought out exercises, he sits himself in front of a computer and queues up what he thinks are the right videos. It takes a few days, before he can find the right dialects and a slang playlist, but he works at it. He borrows books from the library, but they prove less than helpful as pictures and descriptions. Videos work best, the free class once a month at the local community center is even better.
It takes time. He loses the weight, actually gains some muscle. He becomes as fluent as he can with limited practical experience. He finds a leather cuff to replace the sweatband he’s been wearing for a few years, needing the confidence boost, also knowing it’s going to look better when he does what he does. He makes his tie look deliberately casual and takes a deep breath that is not calming at all.
Prompto knows better than to touch Prince Noctis when he’s coming from behind. So, he slides in front of him a couple feet ahead, so they don’t run into each other. When the prince stops, looks up, Prompto smiles brightly, disarmingly. They make eye contact, the prince looking confused and unsure.
“Hey there, Prince Noctis,” he Signs, his smile still as bright, his hand movements sharp and excited. The prince’s eyes widen, his lips parting in surprise. “I’m P-R-O-M-P-T-O,” he fingerspells. He’d thought of using the Sign for ‘prompt,’ but then realized that maybe it seemed like he was trying to give himself a Sign Name. “Nice to meet you!”
Prince Noctis opens his mouth to say something but seems to think better of it. There’s a flicker over his expression, like wariness, then it fades into something delighted. He Signs back, slow, and precise, deliberate: “Don’t I know you?” Probably more for Prompto’s sake than anything else.
Prompto laughs awkwardly, rubbing the back of his head. Prince Noctis smiles, it’s small and soft.
Prompto loves it.
—
The headlines call a young Prince Noctis ‘born sickly.’ Premature, he’s prone to colds and an alarmingly high number of ear infections. There’d been a fear he wouldn’t live past six months. By the time he turns two, the trauma is taking its toll: his hearing is fading.
The doctors predict that he’ll lose most, if not all of his hearing by the time he’s sixteen.
By the time he turns seven, his left ear has dropped a dramatic 42 decibels below the standard hearing threshold and his right ear suffers a loss of 20 decibels. Moderate to mild hearing loss, left to right ear.
He and Ignis sit huddled on the window seat of his bedroom somedays, going over the sign language he will have to utilize fluently in six or so years. Noctis pokes and prods until Ignis caves and helps him learn other language’s version of LSL. For Noctis, Lucian Sign Language just isn’t enough.
As fate has it, though, no one ever gets to learn what his hearing will actually be when he turns sixteen.
—
A year later, when Noctis is eight, his hearing hadn’t changed except a few decibels lost in his right ear. He’s pretty okay with that. It’s such a gradual thing, and he’s young, he doesn’t notice it as a real, actual problem yet.
Sure, his right ear works better than the other. If anyone talks to him on his left, he’s more likely to not hear them. With both ears, everything is just a little too quiet. He hates it, it’s annoying to strain all the time to hear the teachers. But it seems mostly okay to him, and his dad is working on finding a solution. So, yeah.
But then a daemon attacks his car in the caravan. They’re barely outside the Wall, still on the Cavaugh continent. This shouldn’t be possible, the route to the little firefly paradise had been vetted and swept for a full three weeks before this trip.
When he wakes up, his head hurts. His back hurts. He can’t feel his toes or his feet or any part of his legs all the way up to his hips. His dad is at his side, both hands clasped around one of his. The ceiling is white and light grey, with blues and purples so unlike the black and white and gold of home.
Noctis smiles and whispers, “Dad.” Regis jerks, clutching his fingers tighter, but Noct frowns. He feels the word in his throat. He felt it. But he didn’t hear it, not even a little.
He tries again. Says ‘dad.’ Says ‘where are we?’ Says ‘what happened?’ When he can’t hear any of that, he goes for just plain “Regis,” foolishly hoping it’d be the magic word.
He barely notices the way his tears pool into the pillow under him, or the stuttering way his chest moves up and down. His chest is tight, there’s no air. His vision tunnels, black spots appear at the edges. His dad is talking, expression full of worry and fear, but…but—
Noctis can’t hear any of it.
—
He can read lips well enough. It comes in handy, sometimes. Accents make it harder, but he’s got his hearing aids.
After the attack outside the Wall and the invasion of Tenebrae, there was a time the doctors and his dad thought he’d gone fully into profound hearing loss, if not completely deaf, more than 81 decibels below the hearing threshold. But with physical therapy and time, it turned out that it was more like moderate to severe. An additional 22 decibels of loss to his left ear, and then an additional of 30 decibels to his right ear.
Trauma is one hell of a thing.
Regis pulls some strings and by the time he’s ten, he has a Receiver-in-Canal hearing aid in both ears. Noctis had out right refused Cochlear implants, and the king hadn’t wanted to push. The RIC aids are sleek, black and silver, and some of the best RICs ever made. Easily ten times the marketed value of normal RICs.
Noctis refuses to wear them until they’re brought down to a price even below other RICs, making them affordable for the general public.
Still, with hearing aids, there’s only so much he can hear. He relies on them, lip riding and LSL to get around. Sometimes a notebook if he doesn’t really feel like it, having mastered quick but legible handwriting.
He can talk. He knows what words sound like, how they’re formed, isn’t too bad of a judge on how loud he’s talking based on the vibrations. He learned how to speak just like any other child during the first eight years of his life. But he knows his vocabulary of heard words is limited and his pronunciation is...odd on too many words.
He can talk, but Noctis just prefers…not to.
—
A lot of people get frustrated with him. Especially when he goes from a relatively bouncy, fun-loving child who can mostly hear to a sullen, traumatized kid who can’t hear worth shit without his RICs. It takes effort not to get visibly frustrated back.
His dad doesn’t know this, but Noctis is fully aware of what the council thinks of him. He’s fully aware they’re planning on pushing the king into remarrying and having another child, one who could be the Crown Prince and heir. They think Noctis should be shipped away quietly to a home along the border of the Wall or maybe in Leide, even further away.
Regis puts his foot down before anyone can actually voice their opinions in an official meeting, lets a few councilmen go. But the damage is done. Noctis is a quiet kid, but now he retreats into his head even more. Not even Ignis can coax him from under the dark cloud hovering over him.
The very little talking he’d been doing since the accident turns into constant silence.
—
Gladio picks up LSL rather quickly. Quicker than any of them, tackling the subject with a determined single mindedness. In fact, he ends up teaching Noct a few casual words and phrases that just sort of fell to the wayside after he got hurt.
They also had to work on tactics for during battle. Someone with Noct’s disability isn’t known for being on the battle field and the history books of the few from hundreds of years ago have more fable-like stories than fighting techniques. If he can’t reliably hear Gladio shouting at him in the thick of things, or Ignis coming up with a plan, or (eventually) Prompto yelling ‘fire in the hole!’ when he has a flask in hand, then there’s a problem.
They both get frustrated, stubborn to a fault. Immoveable object verses unstoppable force. There’s a few times over the years they nearly come to blows about it.
It takes time, to develop something useful. Time that Noctis gets impatient about. And when Noct gets impatient, Gladio does too.
Ignis eventually joins them, if only to keep things calm. He gets frustrated too, but he’s level headed enough to take some wind out of their sails. In fact, with Ignis on board, the idea of whistling at different levels comes into play much earlier than it would’ve without him.
—
It takes a long string of hanging out at cafés and arcades—Noct hasn’t laughed this much in years—and a passed background check before he finally invites Prompto to his apartment. The fact that Ignis and Gladio hadn’t protested even with the clean background check means they actually like him and think he’s not trying to cozy up to the Crown.
Noctis never thought so, but he’s glad for the confirmation.
Prompto flops on the couch first, then crawls off to rummage through Noctis’ movie collection. Noct throws his bag into the bedroom and goes to grab sodas from he fridge. There’s a plate of cookies on the counter, Ignis’ neat cursive informing him of the ingredients and practically demanding he have fun (as a reward for the last two weeks of long nights and demanding work he’s spent spear-heading a refugee community center). He smiles, feeling warmth blossoming in his chest.
He walks back into the living room, cookies and sodas in hand, to find Prompto sprawled lazily on the couch, some action movie playing. Noctis sets his not-so ill-gotten goods on the coffee table and tries to find the best way to ask Prompto to turn on the subtitles.
The problem with DVDs, is that the subtitles can’t be permanently set up, not like digital downloads. He’s gotten a lot of annoyed looks and painful jabs from classmates whenever they watch movies in school, and he has to ask for subtitles.
People find them distracting. He needs them to be able to even watch a movie.
It’s awkward and embarrassing, having to ask.
But when he turns to the television, he blinks in surprise. Apparently, when he looked before it was just bad timing. Because the subtitles are already up. Prompto did it without needing to be asked. It’s probably a small thing to Prompto. To Noct, though, it’s the switch that slips Prompto to close friend to best friend.
If Noctis leans a bit heavier against his friend than normal as they sit curled over each other. Well, no one really has to know.
—
All Ignis can do is silently hand Noct the newspaper. Silently, because Noctis doesn’t have his hearing aids in. Silently, because Noctis isn’t looking at him.
He’s not looking at any of them. His eyes are focused on the paper, flickering over the front page as he takes it. His grip is tight, crumpling the paper beyond saving. A noise starts in his chest, breaks through like a choking sob. There’s a softly voiced “no” from somewhere deep and it sounds like it hurts.
Insomnia has fallen. King Regis is dead. The Crystal is gone. The city is occupied.
So many words.
Despite the voice he had seconds before, Noct can only mouth fuzzy ‘no’s’ in rapid fire. Ignis is shamefully relieved he doesn’t have to hear the crack in his voice again. Prompto collapses on a bed, hands clasped over his mouth, eyes wide. Gladio slams a fist against the wall.
“We have to go back,” Noctis Signs viciously, letting the newspaper flutter to the ground.
“We can’t,” Ignis says. He Signs along for clarity. Noctis zeroes in on his hands, like he can’t risk looking at Ignis’ face. “It’s too dangerous.”
Noctis sneers, dark and dangerous. “Screw dangerous. That’s our home.” His Signing is sharp, cutting through the air with a sort of finality. “Our family. We have to go back.”
“Noct—.”
“Ignis,” Noctis says, actually speaks. His voice is horrible, crackling and rough from disuse.
That stops him cold. He can’t make any kind of argument past that. Not with Prompto curled in on himself, tears in his eyes. Not with Gladio standing at the windows, looking out at sea, his head bowed. Not with Noctis in front of him, eyes wet with tears, his hands shaking so much he can barely get the words out.
“Please,” he asks, his fingers wobbly. “Please.”
Ignis gives in.