Chapter Text
Prompto’s birthday falls on a Saturday this year, which is great, because school lets out early on Saturdays. If he moves fast, the little corner store by his house will still be open, and he can buy one of those aluminum packets of premade curry — the fancy kind you reheat on the stovetop instead of the microwave. The thought makes his chest feel warm and tight. He can’t remember the last time he actually celebrated his birthday.
He spends all day thinking about it. If Sim and Dreya remembered to send him a check this year, maybe he’ll even splurge on a treat! He can probably afford it if he runs five miles tomorrow instead of three. He’ll stretch out on the nice couch, the one that’s usually just for guests, and play King’s Knight and eat curry and it’ll be like a party, almost, just for him. He can’t wait for the last bell to ring.
Then it does, and Prompto feels stupid for getting excited in the first place. Because instead of jogging home and buying curry and a sticky bun, he spends the afternoon locked in a closet.
It’s the usual culprits: Fortis and Saeva, a couple of meatheads from a long line of Crownsguard. The two of them are always awful, but they must be having a particularly rough time at home. Normally they'd just shove him into the lockers and call him fat (or scrawny, or pathetic, or all of the above). Today, they pull out all the stops.
“Think you’re so much smarter than us, huh, Argentum?” Saeva sneers, with Fortis sniggering and egging him on. “Think your way out of this, if you’re so smart.”
Anything Prompto says will only make it worse, but he’s never been good at keeping his mouth shut. “Yeah, I don't think being smart is all that applicable—”
“Better think fast,” Fortis jeers, and shoves him into the supply closet.
Prompto doesn’t shout for help, because Saeva and Fortis would love nothing more than to hear him squeal. He just sits on the floor with his back against the door, wondering how long he should wait before it’s safe to come out.
It’s dark in the closet. Only a slender sliver of light creeps under the door, a stark yellow gash on the far wall with a gap where Prompto’s back blocks its path. He wonders idly if there’s a light switch in here. Maybe he can find it when his eyes adjust.
Has the goon squad left yet? Prompto can’t hear their voices, but it would be just like those two to choose today to learn patience. He can picture them biding their time, elbowing each other and making bets on how long it’ll take him to totally lose his shit. Prompto wants to get to the market before it closes, but more than that, he wants to deny those jerks any shred of satisfaction. So he waits another ten minutes, idle-scrolling through the albums on his phone, before pushing himself to his feet and reaching for the doorknob.
...Except there’s no doorknob.
Prompto blinks. He feels his way across the door, slow and methodical, not letting the panic drive him to frenzy. Here is the door; here, the crack between the door and its jamb; here is the hinge, and between them: nothing. Just smooth, seamless wood.
“Oh,” he says, quiet enough that the meathead militia couldn't possibly hear. “Okay. I fucked up.”
His breath quickens. His heart stutters in his chest, sharp enough that he can feel it in his wrists. He can feel his head fill with fog, turning his thoughts slow and clumsy. Is there— Is there enough air in here? Is he getting enough air? Is he going to drown?
“Of course not,” he mutters, out loud. “There’s a crack under the door. You’re just—in a room. A small room, but a room. Stop thinking so much. Just focus up.”
If he screams, the meatheads might hear and come back. Whereas if he keeps quiet, he can stay here, safe, until a janitor comes looking for some mop heads or Lysol or whatever. He won’t get his birthday curry, and he definitely won’t get a treat, but he’ll— he’ll— it’s fine. He just has to be fine.
Prompto takes stock of his inventory. He has:
- A phone charged to 32%, which would be great except that there’s no service inside school walls. (Prompto hastily flips on Energy Saver mode).
- The butt of the granola bar he didn’t finish at lunch.
- His uniform.
- Enough cleaning supplies to polish the entire Citadel twice over.
Making lists usually helps with his anxiety. This one doesn’t. None of these things will help him get out, except maybe the cleaning supplies, if he could find a corrosive enough cleaner to melt through an entire door. But he’d definitely die from inhaling the fumes long before it managed to melt through anything, so. That’s out.
If he weren’t trapped here, he'd pull out his phone and do something. Listen to something or look at something or read something. Anything to distract him from the mounting fear. But he doesn’t know how long he’s going to have to stay here. If it’s more than a few hours, he suspects that he'll need it more later.
Prompto bows his head and swings the back of his skull against the door, hard enough to hurt. Thud.
“Ow,” he says quietly. It helps, but not a lot.
“Okay,” he says, out loud. It helps to hear someone talk, even if it’s just himself. “Okay, so maybe everyone’s already gone home. What happens then?”
He considers the question. He’d have to sleep here, probably. It’s not ideal. The closet is so small that even with his back against the door, he has to bend his knees to avoid putting his foot through a shelf. And because it’s so dark, he can’t even know if he’s really alone in here at all, or if there are spiders nesting in the corners, house centipedes squirming along the floor, those horrible wing-y guys that are all legs and eyes and mandibles and—
Prompto grabs for his phone so wildly that he nearly drops it; flicks the flashlight on with trembling fingers. As far as he can tell, there are no spiders, and no centipedes or wing-y guys either. There’s just him, an empty mop bucket, and a metric shit-ton of Clorox.
“Just—chill out,” he tells himself harshly. “Chill out. You won't get out of here by—so—just—chill out, okay?” He takes a jagged breath, lets it out. “Worst case scenario, you spend the night here, and you’re already in the right place when school starts tomor-”
The realization goes through him like a sledgehammer. School doesn’t start tomorrow. Tomorrow is Sunday, is their day off. No one is coming. There's no one to let him out.
###
A half hour later, Prompto schedules in a quick, restrained cry.
An hour later, he tells himself not to eat the granola bar, that he’s going to need it more later.
Two hours later, he eats the granola bar.
Four hours later, he pencils in a followup cry, this one a bit less restrained now that he’s sure he’s alone in an abandoned schoolhouse. He knows he’s being stupid—he doesn’t have any water; he definitely can’t afford to lose fluids on something as indulgent and pointless as crying. Still, when he’s finished, he does feel a little better. Or less bad, anyway. Once he’s cried his tear ducts dry, it leaves him pleasantly numb. Tired and tingly and kind of far away, like he’s watching himself from ten feet overhead. Maybe he should make time to cry more often. (If he survives).
“See, isn’t that nice?” he asks himself, only the normal amount hysterical. “What a great learning experience this is turning out to be!” Then he laughs, because it’s... funny, sort of. In the right light. Or it will be later, probably. Right now, it’s not that funny.
###
Prompto didn’t mean to fall asleep. He doesn’t even realize that he did until he finds himself waking up, which can only happen if you weren’t awake before.
He wakes up because he hears someone running.
His hackles go up in an instant. Is it Saeva and Fortis, here to finish the job? No one else knows he’s in here, and the footsteps don’t sound like a teacher’s: they’re too light, too furtive, as though the person making them is trying to be sneaky. And they're getting closer.
Prompto weighs the risks of “getting caught at school after hours” against “dying of thirst in a supply closet” and comes to a pretty easy conclusion. As the footsteps close in, Prompto opens his mouth to call out—
—and then the door whips open, blinding him with a dazzle of light, and a black-and-blue blur hurtles toward him.
Unfortunately, the blur wasn't expecting to find another person hunched just inside the threshold. At that speed, there’s no way to slow down. They trip over Prompto’s shoulder and momentum carries them forward, sending them clattering face-first into the shelves of Clorox.
“Oh Six,” Prompto says, reaching out in abject horror. “Holy shit, are you—?”
...and the door clicks shut behind him.
“No!” Prompto starts to shout, but the unidentified stumbler has already twisted around to clamp one hand around Prompto’s wrist.
“Shhh,” he hisses.
Prompto can't argue with such obvious desperation. In a whisper, he asks, “What are you—”
“Please,” the stranger breathes. His grip on Prompto's wrist tightens, not painfully. “Please be quiet.”
Prompto opens his mouth to press the guy, then closes it. Whatever this kid is hiding from, it scares him enough that he’d lock himself in a closet without even stopping to ask any questions about the weird little guy who apparently already lives there. And besides, he said please. He didn’t shove Prompto against the wall; didn't clamp a hand over mouth and nose to cut off the flow of breath. He didn’t even phrase it like an order. He asked Prompto to be quiet.
Prompto shrugs and stays quiet. After a moment, the grip on his wrist loosens. The stranger gives him one last quick squeeze (in thanks?) before pulling away, back into the dark.
Time passes—ten minutes, maybe—and then Prompto hears the guy sigh.
“Astrals,” the newcomer mutters. “What a night.”
Prompto’s eyes have begun to readjust, at least enough to make out the silhouette of his new roommate. He’s pretty sure the guy’s wearing his school uniform, so... maybe it’s a classmate of his? That's sort of a comforting thought. But it still doesn’t explain why he’s sneaking around school in the middle of the night.
Before he can ask any questions, the new guy starts talking. "So, uh. You come here often?"
Prompto can’t help it: he snorts. He knows he has an ugly laugh. As soon as it slips out, he claps a hand over his mouth as though to shove it back down his windpipe, but New Guy doesn’t make fun of him. Across the murky dark, Prompto can make out the ghost of a smile.
“Yeah,” Prompto shoots back, matching the other boy’s deadpan. “I live here, actually.”
“Seriously?” the guy asks, incredulous. “Are you—”
Prompto’s already laughing again, harder than before. In the dark, he can see the guy’s head tilt.
“You are fucking with me,” New Guy says, voice bright. It’s not a question, but Prompto answers anyway.
“Yeah, you got me. Shocking as it may be, I do not, in fact, live in this supply closet.”
Now it’s the new guy’s turn to snort. “I’m disappointed,” he admits. “Thought we had our own class cryptid.”
“How do you know we don’t? It’s dark in here. Maybe I’ve got six arms or something, and you just can’t see them.”
New Guy laughs again. Prompto can feel warmth bloom from his chest.
“So,” Prompto adds, impulsive, before he can lose his nerve. “What brings you to my supply closet?”
“Oh, so now it’s your supply closet?”
“I think we can both agree that I got here first,” Prompto points out. When the other kid laughs again, he thinks his chest might burst with pride.
“Yeah,” New Guy concedes. “Can’t argue with that.”
A pause stretches between them. As always, Prompto breaks first.
“...So are you gonna tell me what you’re hiding from, or what?”
“Are you?” New Guy shoots back.
“That’s different,” Prompto answers easily. “I’m not in here by choice.”
New Guy goes quiet, which immediately makes Prompto worry that he’s said too much. Now that New Guy knows he’s at the bottom of the food chain, maybe he’ll stop laughing at his jokes.
Instead, the stranger clears his throat. “Sorry,” he mutters. “That sucks.”
“It’s whatever,” Prompto says quickly.
“No, it’s— I don’t know. Sounds like it fucking sucks. Sorry. I get it. Well, I don’t get it exactly, but I kinda get it.”
Prompto doesn’t know what to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything.
After a moment, the newcomer straightens up. “Wait. If you don't want to be here, why are you still here? Why haven’t you left?”
“There’s no handle.”
Even in the half-light, he can see the guy’s jaw drop. “There’s what?”
“There’s no handle on this side of the door."
“Then why didn’t you make a break for it when I opened it???”
“You—”
It takes a second for Prompto to realize how stupid he must look. Because that’s exactly what he should have done, isn’t it? He’s been trapped here for hours already, and yet when the universe conspired to give him an exit, he spat on it. He reached for the stranger instead of the open door.
“...you fell,” he says quietly, at last. “I didn’t— I was worried you were hurt. I wasn’t thinking, I guess.” Then, as though it might exonerate him: “I was asleep.”
To his surprise, the guy snorts again. “I’m slow to wake up too. If you threw a ball at me first thing in the morning, I’d lift my hand to catch it halfway through breakfast.”
Prompto snickers at the mental image.
“Hey,” New Guy says. “What’s your name? I can’t just keep thinking of you as the closet cryptid.”
“Uhh, can’t you?” Prompto demands. “You sure? I think that's the coolest nickname I’ve ever landed.” He doesn’t mention that his nicknames are usually a good deal less kind. Instead he adds, “But you can call me Prompto, I guess. If you have to.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” the guy drawls. “And hey, Prompto. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Is it?” Prompto can’t help asking. “Is it really? This is the sort of time you think is nice?”
The light filtering under the door flashes off of white teeth. “Weirdly, actually, yeah.”
“No accounting for taste,” Prompto sniffs. “Anyone ever tell you you’re kinda fucked up?”
New Guy sputters. “Would you believe, no?”
“No.” Then, basking in the light of his new companion’s wheezing laugh: “So what do I call you?”
Even in the dark, he can see sharp movement: the guy’s chin jerking up, snapping toward him. He gives Prompto a long, considering look, then shrugs. “What do you think?”
“...What is this, a trick?”
“Yeah,” the guy deadpans. “I’m tricking you into giving me a dumb nickname so I can get mad and push you into a smaller, even more cluttered sub-closet.”
Prompto knows he’s kidding, but the words still make him tighten up a little. Somehow, impossibly, the guy notices. A moment later, a hand alights on his wrist. Prompto twitches away reflexively but the touch is gentle, and a moment later it’s gone.
“Sorry,” New Guy says. “Stupid joke. I don’t know why I said it.”
“It’s fine,” Prompto tells him hastily, waving it away. Then, to save face, “But if you don’t learn the error of your ways, I might have to name you Cletus.”
The guy chokes on a laugh. “How about I give you a codename? Like, for instance, you could call me… Noctis.”
Prompto blinks. “What, like the prince?”
“Yeah,” New Guy says. There’s an edge to his voice that Prompto can’t quite make sense of. “Why? You think he’ll mind?”
“Oh, definitely," Prompto snorts. "I’m sure he’ll come crashing through our closet any minute now to file a complaint.”
The guy, codename Noctis, huffs a laugh. “Aw. So now it’s our closet?”
“Hey, I’m a generous guy.”
###
“So how long have you been here, anyway?” the guy asks, after a comfortable silence. Prompto lifts a shoulder, and then realizes that ‘Noctis’ probably can’t see him.
“I dunno,” he says diffidently. “Since school let out, I guess.”
“Seriously? Have you had anything to eat?”
“Not really,” Prompto shrugs. “It’s cool, though. I’ve got a slow metabolism. Could probably use the diet anyways.”
“I’m not sure not eating counts as a diet,” Noctis mutters.
“What about intermittent fasting? Isn’t that a thing?”
“You’re thinking of 'starving.'”
Pfft. “Anyway,” Prompto says, “it’s not like I’m doing it on purpose.” At least for today.
“Move over," Noctis says shortly
“Wh-What? I mean, um... s-sorry, am I... in your way?”
“I gotta get something out of my bag,” Noctis explains. “But I don’t wanna drop it on your knees.”
“Oh, sure.”
Prompto tucks his knees to his chest and listens to the gentle rustle and crinkle of his new friend—no, that’s too presumptuous—his new companion digging through a backpack. After a moment, a greasy, savory scent fills the space. Prompto's mouth floods with spit.
“You packed a lunch, huh?” he starts to ask the guy, and then feels something cold and faintly damp poke his cheek. “Pffw,” he sputters, jerking away. “Dude!! What are you—”
“Sorry,” Noctis says immediately, though he doesn’t sound very sorry — Prompto can hear a smile in his voice. “You seemed like you were gonna refuse, so I thought I’d take the choice out of your hands.”
“Refuse…?” Prompto thinks fast, tries to put it all together. “Dude!! Are you trying to give me your lunch?”
“Yeah."
“Whuh— buh— Noooct!” Prompto wails. The combination of the savory scent and his churning hunger make it come out kind of reedy and frantic. “You can’t!!”
“Is that a nickname?” the guy asks, audibly amused. “Did you just give the Prince of Lucis a nickname?”
“I won’t tell if you don’t,” Prompto quips. “Look, dude, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but there’s no school tomorrow. We might have to spend two days in here, and this time tomorrow when you’re going feral with hunger, I’m not gonna be the guy who ate your lunch.”
"See, this is what I was trying to avoid,” Noct sighs.
“Did you even eat anything today?”
“I ate!” Noct insists. “My— uh, friend always packs me an extra lunch in case I have to go straight from school to... soccer practice.”
“You play soccer?” Prompto asks, momentarily distracted.
“Would I say so if I didn’t?”
“I don’t know,” Prompto says. “I don’t know you! Maybe you’re a compulsive liar. Maybe you hate soccer. I don’t even know your real name!”
“I told you, it’s—”
“Yeah, yeah, Noctis Lucis Caelum, I got it.”
The guy seems to find that enormously funny.
“Well, I’ll tell you this much,” 'Noct' says at last. “There is no chance we’re spending two days in here.”
“You’d like to think that, wouldn’t you?” Prompto sighs. “That’s how I was at first, too. Denial.” He gestures with both hands, all showy, overwrought melancholy. “It is but the first step on the journey to—”
“—eating my sandwich?”
“The exact opposite of that, actually.”
The guy, 'Noctis,' sighs. “Can we compromise? Split it?”
Prompto considers it. He’s never smelled anything half so fragrant: meaty and greasy and rich, with floral notes of rosemary and thyme. It’s intoxicating enough to erode his resolve. “...Yeah, okay. But I dibs the smaller half.”
“Knew I’d wear you down,” the guy says smugly.
Prompto sticks his tongue out. “Yeah, I’m sure all those years ruling over Lucis really prepared you to peer pressure a stranger into eating your dinner.”
‘Noctis’ seems to get a kick out of that one.
###
“So you want me to kill those guys for you?” codename Noct asks, once Prompto’s swallowed every crumb of the literal best sandwich that he’s ever put in his mouth.
“Huh? Which guys?”
“You know,” Noct says. “The fuckheads who put you in here.”
“Oh, those guys.” Prompto shifts uncomfortably. “Kinda,” he admits at last, “but… no. That sounds like a supervillain origin story.”
“For me or for them?”
“I guess both?”
Noct snorts. “What’s their deal, anyway? Why are they messing with you?”
“I dunno,” Prompto says, squirming a little. He hates talking about this stuff. “Nothing interesting. They’re big, I’m small; they’re tough, I’m not. And they’re legacy Crownsguard. You know how those guys are.”
“...Pretend like I don’t.”
“You know,” Prompto says again. “The whole, the people who chase power shouldn't have it thing. They just wanna feel like a big man. Or maybe they just think it’s funny, I don’t know, I’m not a therapist. Maybe they found out it’s my birthday, and—”
“It’s your birthday!?” 'Noct' gasps.
“Oh. Yeah.”
“Happy birthday.”
Noct sounds so earnest, Prompto can't help but laugh. “Gee, thanks, your royal highness.”
“Please,” the kid says. “To my friends, it’s just Noct.”
High as he is off of good food and good company and the utter absurdity of the situation, his new friend’s playacting is enough to set him off again. Prompto leans back in his seat and outright cackles.
###
An hour later, Prompto starts to shiver. The goon squad took his blazer before they pushed him in here, and he’s starting to suspect that the school shuts off the heaters overnight. He’s proud of how hard he’s worked, getting fit and everything, but it also means that he doesn’t have enough body fat to stay warm when it’s any colder than 70 degrees out.
He tries to keep it quiet, but when his teeth clack together, he can see the other guy stir.
“Are you cold?” Noctis asks.
“I guess,” Prompto shrugs, as though his teeth weren’t audibly chattering. “I, uh. Don’t have my blazer.”
To his relief, Noct doesn’t ask why. The only reply Prompto gets is more of that rustling. . . and then a bundle of fabric is thrust toward him.
“What?” Prompto sputters, pushing it away. “C’mon, dude, I can’t take the food out of your mouth and the clothes off your back! I'm a friendly school cryptid, not a—a freaking daemon.”
“But I’m not cold,” Noct points out reasonably. “And you are.”
“There’s no chance, dude.” Filling his stomach strengthened Prompto's resolve; he feels ready to fight to the death for the right to not steal this guy’s jacket.
As though sensing his conviction, his partner in captivity sighs. "Okay, okay. Then what about this?”
There’s more rustling, and then Prompto feels something warm and solid slide in beside him. An arm, pressing up against his.
“Uh,” he mumbles, but codename Noctis is already leaning away.
“Sorry,” Noct says, “that was weird. I just meant— This way you don’t have to take my jacket, but you still—”
“No, totally,” Prompto assures him, a little too fast. “We’re gonna be here all night, it only makes sense to, uh, pool resources. Body heat! The gift that keeps on giving.”
“Right.” This time, the smile is back in Noct's voice. “It’s only practical.”
###
“Hey, Noct?” Prompto says quietly, a few minutes later. “Are you asleep?”
He wasn’t really being serious when he asked, but when he glances over, it becomes apparent that the other boy is, in fact, asleep. In the dingy dark of the closet, all Prompto can see of his face is the shadow of his bangs and the outline of his knees, leaning against Prompto’s own.
“Oh,” Prompto murmurs, and lets him rest.
As the minutes pass, Noct’s head slips lower, sinking until it comes to rest on Prompto’s shoulder. Prompto’s pretty sure that he would usually mind — he’s never liked people getting in his space — but somehow, for some reason, he just… doesn’t. He’s not as cold with Noct’s arm on his, and with Noct’s cheek warm against his shoulder.
Noct’s cheek, huh? Now that he thinks about it, it’s pretty fucking weird that this kid wants Prompto to call him Noct. Prompto’s getting used to it, but he really probably shouldn’t. Obviously there’s no one around to hear him now, but by day, throwing the prince’s name around like this might be treason, or, like, blasphemy or something. Especially since Prince Noctis actually does go to their school. Prompto’s admittedly kinda smitten with his mysterious new friend, but he’s not about to go to jail for it.
“You’re gonna have to tell me your real name eventually,” he murmurs, but ‘Noct’ doesn’t stir. The beginnings of a smile ticks at the corner of Prompto’s mouth.
“I can’t believe you can sleep in a place like this,” he tells the guy quietly.
And then he falls asleep.
###
He’s still sleeping when the door swings open behind him, sending the two of them spilling backward in a puddle of sleep-slack limbs. The little space is filled with blinding blue light, and Prompto finds himself staring down the blade of two elaborately uniformed, heavily armed Crownsguard.
Still glued to Prompto’s shoulder, codename Noct’s eyes flick open. He blinks sleepily up at their assailants.
“Oh,” he says vaguely, “hey, guys. What took you so long?”
Both of the armored goons start talking at once.
“—the hell, Noct,” the big guy is roaring, “what the hell were you thinking, pulling something like this? You could have—”
“—completely reckless,” the guy in glasses snaps, “demonstrating a distinct lack of common sense, not to mention utter disregard for your station—”
“You know,” Noct says blearily, rubbing sleep from his eyes, “I’m stuck in here because of regard for my station, actually. To prevent a scandal and stuff.”
“Wait,” Prompto says, blinking dizzily. His eyes won’t focus after all that time spent in the dark. “They call you Noct too?”
Big Guy and Glasses whirl to stare at him.
“Your highness,” Glasses says, with distaste. “Would you care to introduce us to your… associate?”
“Sure,” Noct says tiredly, (while in the background, Prompto is going “wait, your high— wait, like the actual Noctis—??”). “Prompto, this is Ignis, Gladio. Guys, this is Prompto.”
“It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” Glasses tells him, with frigid courtesy.
Prompto, whose brain isn’t processing information very well but is pretty sure that isn’t true, manages a faint “Nuh uh.”
The big guy snorts. “Glad to see you were having so much fun,” he growls at the literal Noctis, Crown Prince of Lucis, whose cheek is still pink where it pressed against Prompto’s famously-unfamous shoulder. “While we searched the entire city for your royal ass. But the date’s over, princess,” hauling Noct to his feet with a hand as large as a hock of ham. “It’s time to face the music.”
“Wait,” Noct says.
Both furious soldiers round on him. “What could possibly justify further delay?” the glasses one snaps.
“It’s Prompto’s birthday,” Noct says.
Prompto’s jaw drops. “No, no, no,” he starts to say, but no one is listening to him.
“Is this a friend of yours?” Ignis demands.
The big guy’s forehead crinkles. “I thought you didn’t have any—”
“We just met,” Noct cuts in. His attendants give him matching incredulous stares.
“You really don’t have to do anything, dude,” Prompto is babbling in the background. “I mean — your royal, um, highness — it’s already been, like, the best birthday I’ve had in years—”
The prince gapes at him.
“Okay,” Noct says. “Putting aside how sad that is — I would have freaked out in there if not for you, dude. The least I can do is take you to dinner.”
“Bet you say that to all the girls,” says Prompto, whose mouth goes on autopilot when his brain is on standby. The shaved gorilla looming behind Noct snorts. “I mean—”
“I know what you mean,” Noct tells him, smirking a little, and Prompto realizes that this is the first time he’s seen the prince up close. His eyes are the exact blue-grey of thunderheads before a storm. It makes Prompto kinda lightheaded, looking at him.
“Highness,” Glasses says impatiently, “I can appreciate your gratitude toward your — ah — companion in captivity, but if we should delay any further, your father will convoke a formal search, and you will find yourself mired in the very crisis of image you sought to avoid.”
“Crisis of… Wait, so you weren’t hiding from — assassins or something?” Prompto asks, dumbfounded. “You just didn’t want to get caught?”
Noctis shoots him a guilty look. Behind him, Glasses massages his temples.
“Thank you for your service,” he says stiffly, to Prompto this time. “The crown appreciates your discretion. If arrangements need be made to, ah, ensure that discretion—”
I’m not gonna tell anyone,” Prompto assures him. “You don’t have to like, bribe me—”
Then he remembers that he probably shouldn’t interrupt a direct subordinate of the actual King of Lucis and claps his mouth shut. To his relief, Glasses just gives him an approving nod.
“As it should be. Well, if that is all, we will be on our—”
“Can we give him a ride home at least?” Noct asks, sounding irritable and a little bit petulant. “It’s late. He doesn’t even have his jacket.”
“If he failed to dress appropriately for the weather, I hardly see how that’s— oh, yes, all right, fine,” Glasses huffs. “I can see that you won’t be listening to reason. But this is an entirely inappropriate allocation of sovereign resources, and furthermore—”
While Glasses berates the future king of Lucis, the human-bear hybrid sidles up to Prompto.
“They’ll be at it for a while,” he rumbles, in a voice so deep Prompto can feel it vibrate in his spine. “C’mon, they’ll follow if we start walking.”
“Oh,” Prompto tells him dumbly. “Uh. Good.”
So that’s how Prompto gets escorted home in a limousine by the Crown Prince of Lucis.
###
“Sorry I can’t stay,” Noct says regretfully, as Prompto hops out.
“Are you kidding me? I’m sorry I—” disrespected the crown, stole a royal sandwich, insulted the Crownsguard and oh astrals, I called him fucked up, didn’t I?? There are so many things to be sorry about that Prompto’s mind kinda glitches out and he’s left with his mouth hanging open, speechless.
A furtive grin flickers over Noct’s face.
“I’m probably gonna be grounded for the next six years,” he says quietly, “but, uh. I’ll see you around?”
“See you around,” Prompto echoes helplessly. In the background, he can see the big guy crack up. Then the reflective window slides between them and the car peels out and the prince is gone.
Prompto staggers up to Sim and Dreya’s condo, feeling more tired than he’s ever felt in his entire life. He falls face-first onto the couch with the intention of lying there, unmoving, until sunrise.
Ten minutes later, his doorbell rings.
His heart twists in his chest.
Don’t be dumb, he tells himself, getting up. He already said he’s grounded. Getting your hopes up isn’t just stupid, it’s pointless. It’s not gonna be Noct.
It’s not Noct. It’s a delivery girl, holding out a paper bag and wearing an expression of utmost bemusement.
“I just got the weirdest order,” she confides in him. “Tipped like a king, so I can hardly complain, but — the guy on the phone said I could call him Noctis. Can you believe that?”
“You know,” Prompto tells her, with feeling, “I really can.”
There’s a cake in the bag. Prompto’s not sure how Noct pulled it off, since they parted ways maybe ten minutes ago, but it’s even customized. Happy Birthday Promto, it says, which for reasons unknown to him, makes Prompto laugh like a maniac. And under that text, of all things, is a phone number, scrawled in swirling, cherry-red frosting. Prompto stares at it for several minutes before tapping it into his phone.
“hey,” he writes. “if the king asks, i didn't even touch the sandwich.”
Almost immediately afterwards, the screen lights up.
“ur secrets safe with me,” says Noctis Lucis Caelum, Crown Prince of Lucis. And then, just a few seconds after that: “sorry i couldnt come over. see u monday?”
Prompto takes a minute to consider the insanity that is his life before he taps out a reply.
“sure,” he types. “lets do the 1st floor pantry next time — better legroom.”
“ill bring sandwiches,” Noct zings back.
Prompto snickers and flings himself down on the bed. It’s 11:34 — still his birthday, technically, though not for long. He’s home alone on his birthday again, just like always. But for the first time in a long time, Prompto finds himself feeling… kinda optimistic.
Stuffed full of steak and cake and a swooping, fluttering, giddy sort of buoyancy, Prompto plugs in his phone and calls it a night.