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He wakes up with a piece of string on his finger. Simple, black — likely procured from the kit Ignis keeps for the sake of keeping Noct's buttons where they're supposed to be — wound around a couple of times and knotted in the middle. Not too tight, not too loose. The most nonchalant and inadmissible thing in the whole of everything else. Except.
It hadn't been there the night before.
He stares at it over breakfast. Peeks at it out of the corner of his eye as he shovels food into his mouth distractedly with his other hand, only finding himself drawn back into the thread of the conversation when he hears his name called with emphasis and his head snaps up, the line of his mouth going slack despite the fork that's stuck in the corner, and he comes dangerously close to spilling some of that aforementioned breakfast until his teeth clamp down and save him the embarrassment of drooling chewed-up eggs all over himself. "Wh— huh? What? What's up?"
"Packing up," Noct says, from behind him. The sound alone is enough to make the blond jump, start in his seat and sit up a little bit straighter; the subsequent poke to the back of his head has him waving a hand somewhere in the vicinity of where his friend's had been, missing it completely, and the line of his mouth presses into something that would equate a scowl. If there hadn't still been a fork sticking out of the corner.
"Been trying to get your attention for five minutes. Where's your head?"
"On my neck. I'm coming, I'm coming."
He spends another moment — a couple of moments — staring at the string around his finger. The offset of dark against pale; it's a stark enough contrast that it catches his attention even without the addition of how easily distracted he tends to be on any given day, and his thumb brushes over it absently as he finally picks himself up and moves to clean his dishes and retrieve his camera from the tent before it ends up lost to the deconstruction.
At the edge of the haven, Gladio shakes his head with a grin and finishes his coffee.
In the front seat of the Regalia, he's a lot more quiet than their usual long trips allow. For all there's a bit of chatter passed around among the other three, he's all but tuned them out in favor of folding both arms over the edge of the door, propping his chin as comfortably as he can manage and watching the scenery.
Replace scenery with the six-foot-six mountain of a man in the backseat and one might get an idea of what he's really looking at. All while the pad of his thumb continues to brush over the thread wound around his finger, like he would have been spinning something more substantial — a bit of metal, maybe, in the shape of a circle — and the thought itself is so fleeting that he doesn't quite catch it before it's passed him by, slipping through the tips of his fingers like grains of sand possessed of clarity.
It takes getting knocked flat on his ass by one of Noct's favorite mushy desserts while they're balls-deep in one vault or another ( he kind of hates that his friend, his prince, his future king had seen the merit in the old hag's quest in the first place, because he swears up and down and sideways that this whole thing has been nothing but trouble, and he really can't remember any time at all that he'd been able to get any sleep at a haven in one of the things just by dint of the creep factor ), and while it might merit mentioning he's pretty sure he's seeing stars by the time his eyes slit open, it doesn't change the sudden epiphany that's stolen over him like a thief in the night. Like a goblin in the dark, reaching into pockets and stealing a potion you've been saving for just this sort of occasion.
( D'you love me?
Wh— what kinda question is that? You know I do.
How much?
Enough to not ask why you're asking really weird questions all of a sudden. )
Oh.
Something in him shifts. Twists, in the middle of his chest and it feels, for the smallest, terrifying second that he can't breathe. Like there are stars and planets and suns churning behind the cage of his ribs, waiting to be born in the most agonizing stretch of time that all but stops as a breath catches in the back of his throat, and he. Coughs. More like the air he'd somehow managed to take in is pushed out of him in a solid rush, and he swears his ribs creak with it, feels it all the way to the tips of his toes that may or may not be tingling within the confines of his shoes. Wiggling them is the first act of motion he actually gets away with.
Before his eyes slit open, and complete unfocus slowly melts into bleary focus, at least enough to register that Gladio is snapping his fingers right in front of his nose, a worried sort of frown crumpling his expression into something that doesn't even look like a shadow of what it usually is. ( Smug. Mildly irritated. Itching for a good fight. Ready to bash some heads in. )
"Prompto. Hey, you with me?" He sounds as worried as he looks, and that should be an indicator of something's not okay, or something's about to not be okay, or —
The blond pulls himself up on his elbows, still squinting at the form of the other crouched next to him, shakes his head in the sort of way that leaves him thinking that might've knocked a couple of things loose in there and does he always look at me like that when I get knocked down?
( He tries to think, tries to remember, and ends up coming up short, more still of those clarity-possessed grains of sand slipping out of cupped hands, the spaces between his fingers just large enough to provide an exit. )
"Nn … nnn. I think so? Yeah."
"You took a pretty hard hit."
"Tell me something my ass doesn't already know." He laughs, but the guardsman still looks Concerned, so he bites it back and pulls himself the rest of the way up, sitting cross-legged on the stone beneath him as he waves a dismissive hand. "I'm fine. Really."
( Fine? Is that what it is? When you've got a string wrapped around your finger and he's looking at you like he might've just almost lost the important thing in the world to him?
Fine. Fine. Fine — )
Gladio pulls him up with a hand curled around his forearm, a touch that lingers with the brush of fingers over the inside of his wrist as the other takes the blond's chin between thumb and forefinger. Tips his head up just enough to judge the clarity of bright blue eyes, something that must have been satisfactory enough that he gives a simple grunt of approval and allows that hand to drop. "C'mon. Don't wanna make Iggy worry more than he already does." He turns —
( Wait —
You haven't given me a chance to say yes yet! )
But he nods, even if it's only at the other's retreating back, pausing just long enough to dust himself off before he's jogging to catch up.
There's a haven not too far ahead ( surprise, surprise ), and they set up camp like they always do, going through the motions of laying out all the equipment Ignis will need to prepare their meal, setting up chairs and getting the fire going, Gladio pitching the tent with the sort of ease that boasts innumerable times before this one that he's gone through the same routine. Prompto watches him, out of the corner of his eye like he's been peeking at that damned string all day — afternoon? night? he's still swearing up and down that time ceases to exist in these things — and it isn't until Ignis informs them that dinner's ready that he pulls himself out of his trance. Distractedly retrieves his plate and plops himself next to where the older has folded himself up in a chair with a book in one hand and a fork in the other. His plate balances on a thigh, and he would wonder how he pulls it off if not for the sheer size of it. ( Thigh, that is. The plate's normal-looking.
… Focus, kid. )
He picks at his food for a couple of minutes, picking up a few grains of rice on his fork and chewing them with equal distraction, because it almost looks like Gladio has absolutely no idea he's plopped himself down. The nerve of this guy, tying a string around my finger in the middle of the night — somehow managing not to wake me up, by the way, which is weird, because next to Noct I'm the lightest sleeper in the whole of Eos, even if that isn't saying much, it still counts— not saying a damn thing to me all day and now he's sitting here, with his stupid book, and his stupid plate, and his stupid fork.
He huffs. "You could've just asked, y'know. Like a normal person. Instead of tying a string around my finger while I was sleeping. How'd you do that, anyway?"
The sound of a page turning, and of a fork being set down on a plate on a thigh. "And give you the chance to think about it? Say no?"
Prompto's ears turn pink at the very tips. "You don't know what I was gonna say!"
"What were you gonna say?" There's a laugh in the tone of his voice, and finally, amber eyes are visible above the top of his book. Just enough to peer at him, brows raised, entirely too amused and too smug with the way the younger finds himself so flustered, mouth pressed into the much more formidable line of a scowl now that there isn't a fork in the corner of it, and he hates it. Hates him, with his smugness and his smirk that he knows is hiding behind that damned book, those stupidly pretty eyes that never quite manage not to see right through him no matter how valiantly he tries to bullshit, to call his bluff before he's even laid all of his cards on the table. Called a royal flush when all he has are a pair of twos and a mess of other numbered cards.
"Not … no."
Not no. That's a yes in its own, right? By law of opposites — or is it negatives? — or however that junk works? That's how it works. He's convinced. There's no other way it could work. Not no means yes and if Gladio doesn't say something soon, he's also convinced he's going to pop, right there, just spontaneously combust in a mess of gross insides that are now considered outsides and a few stands of blond hair. Maybe a shoe. Maybe his bandana.
Yet again, he comes out of his own thoughts not slowly, but all at once, jarred by the presence of movement in his periphery as the other moves; first to set aside his book, carefully closed with the page marked and placed well away from the threat of the fire, and second to remove the barely-touched plate from his thigh, dismissing it with a little less care as he leans forward in his chair and kisses him. Lightly, compared to the blunt scrape of teeth over his bottom lip that bring muffled, strained sounds of want from the back of Prompto's throat. Lightly, like a promise, the press of lips against lips like an oath that only the two of them can hear.
He lingers just long enough to see a shiver work its way down the length of the blond's spine, pulls away to bump their noses affectionately, one hand curled around the side of his neck with his thumb resting just above the beat of his pulse. Maybe just to feel it beat, how it quickens.
It isn't until he's already sitting back in his chair and reaching for his book that he notices that he's grinning like a damned fiend. "Good."
Good, he says. Like that's some kind of answer all on its own, like one word, one syllable is enough to make up for the assumption that he'd already had his mind made up, even when it had taken him half the day to get a clue in the first place, like one freaking word is good enough acceptance that there doesn't need to be anything else said about it.
Prompto's eyes narrow, just a little bit, as he stares at the cover of the other's book opening back up. He notices a dark bit of string wound a couple of times around the same finger as his own, not too tight, not too loose, knotted in the middle.
The tips of his ears turn several shades of pink all at once.
He sits there for a moment longer, picking at his food but not really paying attention to the grains of rice making treks across the tynes of his fork. "Sooo … who's gonna give me away?"
"Iris."
"You answered that waaayyy too fast, dude. How long have you been thinking about this?"
"You do realize you just made yourself the bride, don't you?"
"I did not!"
Gladio peers again over the top of his book, only one brow raised this time, and Prompto huffs. Again. Opts not to say a damned thing else and instead pushes himself up and to his feet, heedlessly knocking the older's book aside to make room for himself in his lap, settles curled like a cat with his head pressed snugly beneath his chin. Ear pressed to his chest just above the steady beat of his heart.
"I'm not wearing a dress."
"But you've totally got the legs for it —"
An elbow jabs into the side of his ribs, and he laughs, full-bodied and genuinely amused as ink-lined arms settle around a much smaller form. As his chin rests on top of a blond head, and he sighs, so much more content than he thinks he might have ever been before.
"Okay, okay. No dress. What about the garter?"
"Gladio!"