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A phenomenon called souls in bloom. Everyone had a flower bud (or flower stem, in some cases) somewhere on their body, and when they interact with their soulmate, the bud blooms into identical flowers. Countless historians believe it a blessing from Titan and Shiva, a hybrid mixture of their magic that touch the humans they are so fond of.
Of course, not everyone saw it as a blessing. Prompto’s own parents refused to discuss their soulmates—you see, they weren’t a soulmate pair—and while Prompto was an oblivious child, he wasn’t an idiot. Blackened stems curled around his mothers’ throat, a tell that her soulmate had died, and his father covered his own marks with a tattoo sleeve.
But Prompto never asked, and his parents never explained. So when he noticed that he shared the same stem structure with Prince Noctis (and boy, did that bring about a Revelation to his eight-year-old self), Prompto said and did nothing. He strove toward a healthier diet, his desire funneled through Lady Lunafreya’s kind and supportive words, and vowed that, even if they weren’t soulmates, Prompto was going to be the best fucking friend Prince Noctis ever had.
As the years passed, though, Prompto kind of, sort of, forgot about the entire soulmate thing. Sure, every time he looked at his reflection, he took note of the flower stems and buds that curved across the side of his face—swept over his cheekbones, nestled around his temples, into a perfect C—but he assumed he’d never meet the own destined for him in high school.
Those only happened in YA Novels and romance movies. Why would Prompto be any different?
In hindsight, Prompto should have expected it.
Then again, he’d always been good at ignoring his problems until he physically couldn’t. See Case 43: When Prompto assumed he could live off of pop-tarts and sparse apple slices because his parents forgot to send him food money, and it worked, for a few days, before he had begun to lose weight so fast that his homeroom teacher all-but marched him to the ER one day.
(It was . . . okay, while Prompto would like to say that it wasn’t that bad, uh, according to his therapist (and, you know, his new caretakers), it was. But. Whatever.
Anyway.)
Since he attended the same schools as Prince Noctis—same elementary, same middle, and now, same high school—he, and everyone else in the world, was almost painfully aware of the startling similarities of their soul marks. Enough well-meaning classmates had cornered him during breaks between classes or lunch or recess (and, on one memorable occasion, the grocery store) to discuss said similarities and OMG Prompto, you have to talk to him, you have to!
(On another note: there were a few articles—some of them tabloids, some of them official newspapers—that discussed Noctis’ hypothetical soulmate. And for some gods-awful reason, somehow, they manage, without fail, to bring Prompto up.
Every. Single. Time.
The first time he saw a magazine cover titled IS THIS MYSTERIOUS CLASSMATE PRINCE NOCTIS’ FUTURE HUSBAND? With a candid of Prompto walking out of a grocery store, in his own little world, at the ripe age of fucking twelve, he hadn’t left his house for the following week.
The school called, but he didn’t answer. Cor Leonis interrupted his self-imposed exile—which was another story Prompto wasn’t going to touch right now.)
But, soulmate or not, Prompto wanted to talk to the prince on his own terms, on his own comfort. When he had been younger, and overweight, and dangerously insecure and timid, Prompto knew he wouldn’t have been able to handle the idea of a royal soulmate—hell, Prompto’s quite positive he might not be able to handle it now—but he’s grown a few inches, gained some muscle (and, you know, a healthy weight), and he has actual hobbies that don’t consist of sleeping until noon.
He’s ready.
(Ha. Ha. Ha.)
Prompto wanted to greet the prince at the schools’ entrance, but he’d gotten lost—the new school buildings were confusing, okay, it’s not Prompto’s fault he ended up where the juniors normally chilled before school—and just barely made it to homeroom.
Homeroom that he shared with Noctis.
Prompto’s poor heart won’t make it through the day. He’s calling it now. He’s setting down twenty crowns (okay, maybe, like, five). He’s—
“—o Argentum?”
Prompto raised his hand. “H-Here.”
The homeroom teacher gave him a supportive smile and nod and checked him off. She went to the next name, and Prompto listened with his heartbeat nestled by his ears, waiting, listening, aching—
“Noctis Lucis Caelum?”
“Here,” said Noctis.
A wave of quiet whispers and excitement rose in the air. Prompto rolled his eyes. It happened every year, every new class they had together since middle school, until people calmed down and remembered that, hey, he might be the prince, but he was still a gods-damned human being. Noctis coughed a little, the edges of his lips quirked.
He’d seen Prompto’s eye-roll.
Oops.
Their homeroom teacher—what was her name again? —got points from Prompto. She hadn’t even batted an eyelash at Noctis’ presence (after all, it was technically old news that the Prince attended public school), simply sent him a smile, marked him down, and continued down the line.
Prompto found it a little ironic that it took him a good ten minutes to realize he was seated right next to Noctis.
You know, the kid he’s been trying to befriend once he got all slim and snazzy.
To ease his nerves, Prompto doodled a little on his class schedule—oh, that’s her name; Dr. Farrol—until Dr. Farrol cleared her throat to gain everyone’s attention once she finished rollcall.
“Now, I know everyone’s a bit frazzled and nervous right now,” she said with a bright beam, and dread curled deep in Prompto’s stomach because fuck, he knows where this is headed, before she clapped her hands twice. “We’re going to be doing a little ice breaker!”
Half the glass groaned as if they’d been skewered by a coeurls’ electric whiskers. Prompto would’ve joined them, but he really, really didn’t want to seem like even more of a fool to Noctis. Dr. Farrol rolled her eyes, exaggeratedly, but she kept her kind smile on her face.
“Yeah, yeah, I know, the horror,” she joked. “Now—it’s really going to be a simple ten-minute exercise before I’ll start handing out the standard first-day paperwork and the like—I want you to talk with the person next you. For example, Mr. Argentum will interact with Mr. Caelum for this exercise. Ms. Yeagre will interact with Ms. Enna. It doesn’t have to be any complicated sort of conversation—just a simple greeting and introduction, if you share any classes this year, if you’re excited . . . y’all get the gist . . . okay, in three, you’ll turn and maybe make a new friend!”
“Or soulmate,” called someone from the back.
Dr. Farrol laughed. “Yes, or you’ll meet your soulmate.”
Prompto wanted to head to the nurses’ office. Fake a stomachache. Fake something. He steeled himself; exhaled and inhaled.
You got this, Prompto. He hyped himself up. Just start with a simple, hey there, I’m Prom—
“And go!”
Noise threatened to swallow the room whole. Almost on autopilot, Prompto turned at the same time Noctis did, and they shared that awkward smile reserved for these sorts of occasions: first-day ice breakers. Oh joy.
“Morning—.”
“Uh, good morning—.”
They both stopped and stared at one another, before Noctis cracked a smile and Prompto giggled in a manner that totally displayed his nerves.
“Let’s try that again, huh?” Prompto said with a smile. “I’m, uh, Prompto, but you probably already knew that, um, what are . . ..”
He trailed off.
Noctis inhaled sharply.
Tulips—red, spotted with black—bloomed across the stemmed curve that mirrored Prompto’s. It didn’t happen fast, like in the movies, but it didn’t happen so slow a snail would’ve surpassed it in a test of speed. Just right, Prompto thought as his eyes tracked the unfurling petals and color. Noctis’ eyes did the same, eyes blown wide with wonder, with amazement, with hope.
“Holy shit,” whispered Noctis.
Prompto would have said the same, except he had no voice to speak of.
Noctis reached out a split second later, as if to brush against the flowers blooming over Prompto’s face but stopped; hesitation clear in the lines of his shoulder, of his fingers. Prompto almost wanted to tell him that yes, please, touch me all you want, but belatedly remembered that, uh, they were currently in homeroom. At school. In a public space.
It was then that Prompto became aware of the literal pin-drop silence of the classroom. Goosebumps dotted his arms. His stomach rolled into a pretzel by his feet as he noticed all the eyes on them, in the front corner of the rows. Even Dr. Farrol blinked at them in amazement.
It’s not every day you personally witness a soul bloom, after all.
And then—
“Oh my gods,” some girl in the back of the classroom slammed her palms on her desk, repeatedly, in unbridled excitement; her previous shock wholly abandoned. “OH MY GODS.”
Homeroom erupted in noise. Prompto sort of, kind of, wanted to leap out the window, never mind that they were on the third fucking floor. Oracle take the wheel, Prompto doesn’t know if he can handle so much attention, positive or otherwise.
(the days after that ER trip (and, you know, his short self-exile) were more than enough to last him a lifetime, thank you very fucking much.)
Dr. Farrol clapped her hands in a very annoying melody and said, her voice rising clear above the chaos of pubescent teenagers in the face of something interesting, “Alright, everyone, it’s time to calm down. I know, it’s exciting, but let us remember that school is in session. Now, everyone, please right yourselves—I’m going to be handing out some important paperwork that your parents or guardians will need to have signed by Friday.”
It was with great reluctance that Noctis faced the front of the room, but Prompto was well-aware that . . . well, fuck, that his soulmate . . . sneaked glances at him every once in a while. Which was, like, every five seconds. Prompto may or may not have counted the time intervals between his own glances.
Dr. Farrol talked as she passed out the many, many handouts and paperwork. Most of it were release forms and other typical first-day things that needed legal signatures from Adults, but interspersed were flyers for club activities, a schedule for different sport tryouts that happened in Fall, a few school events—was that a mini Chocobo carnival? Sign me the fuck up! —and a few things on the school itself, like the emergency protocols, and what to do if there’s a fire, and a here are your guidance counselors’ kind of thing.
When Dr. Farrol discussed the schools’ motto and integrity, and other rules they now had to abide by, Prompto just zoned out. He made it look like he paid attention but, in reality, he thought about what he’d make for dinner and what ingredients he’d have to buy. Therefore, when the bell rang, he nearly jumped out of his skin.
Noctis looked at him in concern. “You okay?”
“Yup,” said Prompto, his heart almost bleeding out of his eyeballs. “I just – surprised, you know? Um . . . so.”
“So,” Noctis echoed.
They shared a glance and laughed.
“What’s your second period?” Noctis asked as he watched Prompto pack up his belongings. Half the class hadn’t even left yet, preoccupied with watching their newly prescribed Noctis-And-Prompto show. “I have, uh . . . home economics? With Dr . . . Lewis?”
“Huh.” Prompto stared down at his schedule. “Looks like we’ve got the same class.”
Noctis smiled at that. Prompto did his best not to stare for too long.
(But. Damn. Prompto had never seen anyone so beautiful before in his life.)
Anyway.
It hit him during fourth period. AP Chemistry, because Prompto tested out of regular biology and regular Chemistry like the absolute nerd that he was, where he was the only freshman in the room. Other students craned their necks and looked over their printed syllabi to stare at him, either wondering why someone so itty bitty was in the class or if that really was the prince’s soulmate settled in the back of the room like a cryptid.
Prompto ignored it all as he completed a lab with the classmate beside him. His soulmate was a prince. The crown prince. Didn’t this, technically, make Prompto royalty as well?
He almost dropped the glass vial. Prompto almost broke his nose trying to put on his uniform tie, how could anyone look at him and think, ah, yes, this child here is clearly royal material? The Astrals, apparently.
His lab partner poked him. “You okay, kid?”
“Uh huh,” Prompto replied. It resembled a frogs’ croak. “Just peachy . . . sorry, I’m – I’m a little nervous.”
“No doubt, no doubt,” his lab partner (what was his name again?) nodded. “First day always gets freshie’s in a tizzy. You’ll figure things out in no time, dude.”
Prompto exhaled. “Thanks.”
Their teacher—Mr. Marcus—walked them through a standard lab report. “I will expect more complex and detailed responses the farther into the semester we get, but for the first few weeks, you can scribble in a few sentences,” he explained over the soft roar of whispering, excited students. “I just want you to get a feel for it.”
Prompto and his lab partner—Beau, scribbled on the corner of their shared paper—finished the mini lab and the report with a few minutes to spare before the bell rang for A Lunch.
“What lunch d’ya got?” Beau asked.
Prompto glanced down at his schedule. “Um. A Lunch, it looks like.”
Beau nodded. “If you don’t make your lunch, just go for the taco truck outside. Trust me, you do not want the schools’ meat options. Save your stomach lining while you can.”
Prompto laughed a little. “Thanks for the advice.”
While they waited for Mr. Marcus to walk around for the lab reports, Beau glanced at him. “Say . . . there’ve been some rumors . . . are you, like, the prince’s soulmate?”
The pair of girls before them twitched, clearly eavesdropping, and Prompto nodded. “Yup.”
Beau’s eyes widened. “Shit—did it really happen during homeroom?”
“Yeah, it did,” Prompto said and smiled a little at the memory. He hadn’t even noticed he touched his soul mark softly until one of the girls made a soft cooing noise. “Not gonna lie, it’s kinda trippy.”
“No doubt,” laughed Beau. “Shit, looks like my lab partners’ the future, like, uh . . . King-husband?”
“It’s King-Consort, dummy,” said the girl, but she smiled at Beau. Prompto them noticed they shared the same bloomed mark that curled over their noses; a bundle of peonies, he noted. “Also . . . I’ve got B Lunch. You, Beau?”
Beau pouted. “C.”
She crinkled her nose. “There’s, like, gonna be no food left.”
In a dramatic manner, Beau collapsed against the table. “I know. I’m going to, like, starve, Madeline.”
Madeline rolled her eyes.
Before much else could be said, the bell rang and signaled either the start of a new class or the start of lunch. Prompto packed up slowly while Mr. Marcus reminded them about the lab forms their parents needed to sign.
“Let’s get them all by next Monday,” he called.
Prompto waved goodbye to both Beau and Madeline before he slipped out of class. He only walked a few more feet past his classroom before Noctis fell into step beside him. So familiar and comfortable, Prompto almost forgot that, technically, this was their first meeting (sort of).
“A Lunch?” Noctis asked.
It took Prompto a moment. “Oh! Yeah.”
“Nice.”
They headed toward the cafeteria. Almost everyone they bypassed did a double-take at the matching soul bloom on their faces. Noctis paid it little mind, so Prompto did his best to ignore the goggled stares and whispers that trailed after their feet.
“Don’t worry,” Noctis murmured after a moment. “It’ll die down when something else happens.”
Prompto swallowed. How’d he know? “I hope so,” he replied. “Maybe someone’ll get, like, arrested?”
Noctis snorted.
There were two parts to the schools’ cafeteria—the inside, airconditioned part with the sprawling lunch line and circular tables; and the outside, which hosted an opened quad of benches, metal tables, and aesthetically placed trees and flowerbeds.
Noctis made a beeline for a spot beneath a tree in a corner of the quad. It was only natural that Prompto followed.
It was only when they settled down that Noctis froze and said, “Wait, shit, do you need to, like, buy lunch inside?”
Prompto blinked but shook his head. “No, no I’m good—I brought food.”
A sandwich but, hey, it counted.
They ate in comfortable silence while other classmates, both old and new, tried to look like they weren’t blatantly staring at the newly made soulmate pair.
Prompto finished his sandwich quickly and blinked when Noctis offered him some of his food. “You sure? Uh, that looks . . . nice.”
Nice? Prompto would have slapped himself. It looks like it was made from a professional chef!
Noctis curled a hand behind his neck and smiled, a little sheepish, a little nervous. “Yeah, my, uh, advisor made it for me—but I’m sure. Anything that’s mine is yours too, Prom.”
His stomach fluttered with warmth, with an unfurling emotion he couldn’t dare name. “Well, if you say so,” Prompto said and hesitantly reached for one of the carrots.
Noctis had an odd gleam in his eyes at that. “You like vegetables?” He asked, almost too casual.
“. . . Yeah?”
“Sweet,” said Noctis. “I don’t, and it drives everyone mad.”
Prompto snickered. “Let me guess, your master plan is for me to eat your veggies and for your poor advisor to think you’re actually liking them?”
“You guessed correctly,” said Noctis in a very prim accent that vaguely reminded Prompto of his mother’s Tenebraen relatives.
Prompto laughed and ate a few more of Noctis’ carrots.
Before A Lunch ended, Noctis looked at him and said, “I know everything’s, well, been overwhelming for you—but . . . for your safety, I’m going to have to, like, uh . . . tell the Citadel.”
Prompto swallowed around a dry tongue. Or tried to, at least. “O-oh, I see—um, are you gonna, like, tell everyone?”
Noctis made a face for a split second. “Well, no—just my advisor, Ignis, that is, and my shield, uh, Gladio—and, you know, my dad.”
“The King?” Prompto squeaked and almost did smack himself. Of course, it was the king, Prompto. Did he brain himself that morning?
Noctis chuckled. The sight made Prompto’s breath catch in his throat. It hadn’t even been a day, and Prompto was so gone he didn’t even know where he was anymore.
“Yeah,” Noctis said. “The King—but, and don’t tell anyone, but my dad’s just a big nerd.”
Prompto nearly choked. Noctis only laughed.
In a surprising twist of fate (read: the guidance counselors’ office), Prompto shared two more classes with Noctis: Algebra I and Language Arts. His last class, a photography elective, was spent alone, with majority of his classmates failing to pretend they were not gossiping about him as if he weren’t there.
Overall, though, it was a good first day. Besides, you know, the stares and the gossip, and the impending future of being the subject of talk show discussions and magazine covers.
Prompto shoved it out of his mind. Let’s think about Chocobos for a change.
Ah, Chocobos.
Why couldn’t Prompto been born as a Chocobo?
When the final bell rang, Prompto packed his belongings and begun a fight with his locker. By the gods , if the decades-old lock didn’t accept his combination, Prompto was honestly going to cry.
He was going to cry right in the middle of the hallway, and then be known as that freshie who had a mental breakdown in the hallway on the first day of school, that just so happened to be the freshie that shared a soul bloom with the fucking prince—
“ Breathe , that’s it, just in and out,” came Noctis’ low, soothing voice. “In. Out. In. Out.”
The distant rumble of students rushing to go home or after school activities became nonexistent to Prompto’s ears. Slowly—how long had he stood there? How long had Noctis stood there? —Prompto regained his escaped breath as the vice grip of his anxiety loosened.
“Sorry,” Prompto whispered. He kept his gaze fixed on the lock. “Um. That was probably w—?”
“It wasn’t,” Noctis interrupted, a ruthless sort of gentle. “Come on, let’s open this bad boy.”
Prompto, despite his tumultuous emotions duking it out inside him, cracked a smile. He redid his combination in slow, careful movements before he gave it a tug and it clicked open.
He exhaled. “That was . . ..”
“Anticlimactic?” offered Noctis.
“Just a bit.”
As Prompto dumped some of his textbooks and materials inside—he had no homework except for the permission slips and forms, and a practice sheet for AP Human Geography, and he was not going to lug everything on the bus, no sir—Noctis leaned against the locker and watched him.
“Are you okay?” Noctis asked after a moment, quiet and soft and warm. Prompto wanted to cry. No one really cared —He stopped that thought before it continued. Those were dangerous statements when he wasn’t alone.
“Just — a little overwhelmed,” he said with an uneasy smile. He zipped up his bag and secured his locker. “First day nerves and all.”
Noctis nodded, but it was easy for Prompto to see that Noctis knew it wasn’t so simple. “You have everything you need? Specs wants to take us out for ice cream to celebrate.”
Prompto gave an owlish blink. “Specs? Wait , ice cream? I . . .?”
“Yeah. Specs.” Noctis nodded and then gave Prompto an amused look before he said, teasingly, “What? You truly thought I would let my soulmate take the bus?”
A light blush crawled over the bridge of Prompto’s nose. It darkened when Noctis entwined their hands.
“Come on,” Noctis said as he pulled Prompto forward, smile kind and so, so warm. The smile many people sighed about when they felt lonely and touch-starved. “Specs gets nervous whenever I’m late.”
Prompto followed.
It was only natural, after all.