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“It’ll be done in the morning,” Cor tells them, dry and deadpan as he always is, before he leaves them with a wry: “and that will be that.”
Prompto accompanies Cor to the front door and downstairs to open the parking lot’s door and let him out, while Nyx stays upstairs, sitting on the couch and staring at the ceiling as he tries to come to terms with the reality that this… this life of his, for the past four years, it’s coming to an end.
It has to, obviously. After all, they got married for a reason but those reasons… don’t really apply anymore. Prompto is not going to get deported into a country he’s never even been to since he was two, and Nyx’s bills will not skyrocket over his sister’s treatments overnight. Which is a good thing, really, their problems are also the problems of a lot of people and they don’t have them anymore, neither do dozens even hundreds other strangers out there in the world.
And that’s good.
That’s good.
And of course Cor had to tell Prompto. And Nyx, too, but mostly Prompto. Because… because Prompto had a right to know that he didn’t have to stay married to him. They could… they were free. They could be. If they wanted to. Which there was no reason not to want to be free of each other. Clearly. Obviously.
“So that was a thing,” Prompto says, closing the door and standing awkwardly on the doorway into their tiny living room, arms folded over his middle, leaning on the doorway. “That happened.”
Nyx stares up at him for a long moment, like he’s trying to memorize every detail and make sure nothing is forgotten.
And then he says:
“I guess I need to start researching how to do this painlessly,” because he’s an idiot with a ball of thorns caught in his throat, and making light of the situation is just what he does. Every time. “But hey, we don’t have kids, so there’s no alimony. That’s good right?”
Prompto looks at him like he went out and personally kicked his favorite baby chocobos with the steeltoed boots of his uniform. Nyx bounces off the couch, hands raised placatingly, reaching out and then stopping those crucial two inches from actually grabbing Prompto and holding him close because…
Because.
“You’re right,” Prompto says, looking small and frail in ways that he only ever does when he’s talking about his parents, in ways that make Nyx feel sick to realize he’s caused. “We don’t have to stay married anymore, so we can…”
“I don’t want you to go,” Nyx blurts out, which is not what he’d meant to say in the first place but… but the look on Prompto’s face. “I don’t want us to break up.”
And now Prompto’s staring at him and his lungs are full of lead and all he can think is the same thing Cor’s been telling him for four years and he’s been unable to do: just tell him how you feel, you fucking idiot.
“But we can’t really break up if we’ve never been a thing in the first place, and if you want to go, of course you can, I’ll sign anything and I’ll be your friend after, I promise, I just…” He’s told Cor this a thousand times. It’s not that he doesn’t want to tell Prompto how he feels. It’s that he doesn’t know how he feels. Nothing… nothing he says ever does it any justice but now he’s got no other choice and words are infinitely hard and stuck stubborn against the roof of his mouth. “I need you to know that I don’t want you to go.”
Prompto stares up at him, blue eyes purplish from up close and all Nyx wants is to lean in and kiss him, hard and long and lazy, like they kissed in New Years and then pretended didn’t matter, even though that kissed mattered as much as Selena walking for the first time in years. But he can’t. He won’t. It’s not about what he wants, it’s about what Prompto wants.
Prompto is young and talented and sweet and kind, and just all around the sort of person who’ll succeed in life purely because their personality makes people turn to them like sunflowers in a field. Prompto deserves better. Prompto deserves whatever he wants, even if what he wants isn’t Nyx. Specially if what he wants isn’t Nyx.
“Why?” Prompto asks him, still with the haunted, hurt look that Nyx would pay anything not to see ever again.
And even though the words were too small to explain or hope to encompass every tiny, beautiful thing that Prompto did that instantly made life worth living for even at it’s worst, all Nyx said was:
“…because I love you.”