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“How long can you hold these babies out?” Gladio asks, leaning over the back of Noct’s couch two minutes after Prompto sits down on it.
The answer, it turns out, is not that long.
Prompto can hold his arms out for a few minutes, no problem, even though gravity aches after a bit. His wings, though? Mere seconds pass before they shudder from the effort and the non-existent muscles give out.
“Hm,” Gladio says like he’s just read the price tag on a piece of camping equipment and found it to be suspiciously cheap. “Do that again.”
“Again?” Prompto whines. His wings already feel like his legs did when he first started jogging--tired and liable to fall off, like, soon.
Noctis pauses the movie that he’s been pretending to watch since Prompto arrived, gushed about his way more comfortable harness, took it off and then sat down. He makes a pile of throw pillows behind Prompto, letting their feathers brush in the process, oily blue on dusty white.
“You can rest them on these,” he says, patting Prompto’s wings until they go from lying limp across the couch and the floor to splaying awkwardly over the pillows. It feels a little better, all soft and elevated. “Go on, try again.”
Prompto stretches his wings out behind him again. They start shaking almost immediately. Why is he causing himself pain when they’re supposed to be watching movies?
“Nah, nah,” Gladio says, shaking his head. “Like this--you mind?”
His hands go for Prompto’s wings. For all their huge size and strength, his fingers are gentle, barely there. He presses only as hard as he needs to make Prompto’s bones straighten out fully, and then he retreats until Prompto can only feel him there when his wings droop enough. Which they do, because the shaking only gets worse and more painful.
“I mind that it hurts,” Prompto replies sullenly, struggling to keep up the stretch.
There’s Noct’s hand, then, pressing down on his feathers. “Rest them again.”
Prompto obeys gladly and pouts at him and Gladio. “I thought we were watching movies.”
“We will,” Noctis assures him as he comes around to sit in front of Prompto. With his wings unbound, too, it’s less that they’re sitting next to each other and more like they’re kneeling before each other so that their wings aren’t squished or hanging off anything. “I’ve got a movie on right now, dude.”
“You paused it.”
“I’ll unpause it in a minute. Just--one more time?
“Why?”
Prompto doesn’t see the point. His wings look a little better than they used to and they already feel way better since he got the new harness. The idea of holding the secret is much more tolerable now than it ever was. He’s not sure how what they want him to do fits in.
Gladio snorts like the answer is obvious. “Because look at them--nothing but feather and bone. This’ll be good for you.”
“So you’re the wing expert now?” Prompto asks, mostly to maintain his brand because, honestly, he’s a little thrown off by Gladio’s tone. There’s a little bit of hardness in it, the kind that only gets there when he’s planning to serve Noct his ass and then some on the training mats.
Hearing it now, while his fingers are still little more than a breath of air on Prompto’s wings is… unexpected and strange.
“Well, look at his wings,” Gladio answers with a cocky little nod toward Noctis. “Laziest pain in the ass I know, and his are doing just fine. So, yeah.”
“Hey,” Noctis grumbles. His wings shift a little behind him, feathers sleeking and fluffing up again. He returns his attention to Prompto, and he does it with a faint wrinkle between his brows. “Don’t your wings hurt?”
“Yes.”
Noctis rolls his eyes. “I meant in general. Didn’t having them in so tight… that had to feel, uh, bad.”
Yeah, it had. Prompto had been fine with it, too. Except then Ignis had handed him a thing made out of supple leather and super soft fabric and Prompto had tried it on and then died because it felt so much nicer than the thing his parents had come up with. His wings couldn’t cry in relief because they were still bound up, so Prompto handled that bit himself. Bandages don’t have shit on Ignis’ handiwork, duh.
“You need some muscle on these bones,” Gladio says gruffly. “And I don’t mean that just because I’m me. Hell, I’m surprised these things are even in the condition to regain anything. So, yeah, stretch them out again and quit worrying about them getting bigger or whatever it is you’re thinking about.”
Noct nods quickly. “Yeah, Prom; my wings are bigger and you didn’t know about them, right? It’s fine. Just give it another go.”
Prompto opens his mouth for one last protest, but it dies in his lungs--because they’re right, aren’t they? Noct’s been keeping the same secret forever, with bigger, stronger wings, and nobody knows. It’s just them.
Them and a harness Ignis made and Gladio’s steady grip and Noct’s practiced expression of indifference that still isn’t enough to hide his concern.
Prompto pouts dramatically as he rolls his shoulders back and stretches his wings out behind him again. It hurts, again, no surprise there, but Gladio’s hands are still there, just barely holding him in place until his wings can’t stand it anymore.
“Should bring you to the Citadel the next time we do this,” Gladio muses as Prompto relaxes. He backs off for good, then, finally leaving Prompto alone. Which would be fine except for everything he just said.
“Um--why?” Prompto asks nervously. Why do they want to bring him there?
“My dad had one of the old training halls converted,” Noct explains, completely nonchalant. “I use it to do stuff with my wings, but as far as anyone else is concerned, it’s still locked up.”
“Stuff,” Prompto repeats slowly.
Noctis nods and slides off the couch. He circles around to poke at Prompto’s wings a little, then shifts them around so that he can sit down and unpause the movie again.
“Yeah,” he says, eyes trained on the television. “I’m the only one who gets any use out if it, so you should come, too.”
Prompto is still stuck on the stuff bit.
“Stuff like…” he trails off, waiting for Noct to finish. He doesn’t dare finish himself, and Noct apparently isn't inclined to say anything, either. He just sits there with a faint little smile on his face.
“Stuff like more stretches,” Gladio fills in instead, voice booming threateningly from the kitchen. “Because you’re not doing anything else until you can get through one for real--and if you try anyway, then I’m gonna kick your ass, and then Iggy’s gonna have to dig you up and kick your ass again.”
And that--
--that says it all, doesn’t it?
Prompto feels a jolt run down his spine--partly because when Gladio talks like that, it’s straight up intimidating and always will be, and partly because there’s only so much that can be implied by stuff in an old abandoned training hall. He turns hastily, wings snapping back against his shoulders as he hunkers down next to Noct on the couch. They probably look funny as they huddle up, all squished together, wings and all, but Prompto can’t bring himself to care. The thought, the sheer possibility--
A dream of his came true, once. He figured that was it, the gods tossed him a bone and called it a day for the rest of eternity.
But he’ll gladly be proven wrong again.