Various Unfinished Works

FFXV- Ignoct

In which Someone Else Dies in Altissia
(Mild NSFW)

Ignis' eyes meet his, and Noctis leans in, eyes darting to his lips, and tilting his head how the girls who want him to kiss them do, pouting, and he shifts his hand to grab Ignis' shoulder, muscular and solid under his touch.
Their lips meet and Ignis slants their mouths together, curling his hands up in Noctis' hair, before he pulls away, his eyes skittering to the floor, "I can't, Noct, I want to," his breath on Noctis' neck makes his words into a whisper, "gods, I want to."
    "You could, Ignis. You could-" Noctis fits himself under Ignis' head, so that their eyes don't have to meet, and he can just breathe in the smell of his cologne, "I wouldn't stop you."
    Ignis shudders in his hold, and whispers, "That's the problem.I want every part of you," he gently urges Noctis to meet his eyes, and they're watery with regret, " beloved heart, you are meant to be wed to the woman you love. I do not have a place in that picture as anything but your advisor."
    Ignis kisses him once more, something chaste and hopeless that lasts a lifetime, bitter as a goodbye, and then they're nothing but advisor and prince.
   
When Noctis wakes up from a memory he remembers with a bitter taste in his mouth, it's to the hushed voices of Lunafreya, Gladiolus, Prompto, and Ravus.
The ring sits beside him on the nightstand, glaring silently, and he feels a slow ache begin to settle in his chest.
Ignis isn't here. The bed is cold, but his body is colder, sweat-soaked from the memory. It's not unexpected that he isn't in the room, exactly.

He rises from the bed, and puts the ring into his pocket. Umbra looks at him with a distant sort of almost-sadness, the best a dog can muster.
He can't tell why the ache is growing, but it is, quickly, now.
Ignis will probably know, though, he rationalizes, and distantly, feels a hand on his shoulder, but there's nothing there when he looks, like the weight of something lost.

For some reason, Ignis' voice is repeating in his head, "I'm afraid I must ask your forgiveness."  over and over, like his father's "Walk tall, my son." The words sting and he feels his body seize with the strange familiarity.

He opens the door to the conjoined living room, and the silence that awaits him is unbearable.
He frowns and moves about the kitchen, gulping down a half glass of water, and slowly enunciates, "Ignis around?"

Nobody speaks. Ravus stands up, breathes in carefully to maintain his composure, murmurs a goodbye to Lunafreya, and glares at Noctis, leaving the small complex and grabbing his coat on the way out.
    It has the smooth carelessness of a goodbye.

Somehow he feels like he missed something, and that weight is back on his shoulder, but when he flinches nothing shows, and he presses the glass between his teeth, nibbling mindlessly.

"Ignis passed away in Altissia." Lunafreya says, barely above a whisper, "In an attempt to save my life."

The he bites down on the rim of the glass he'd been resting his teeth on  and it shatters under the force of his jaw. Prompto jumps up, but Noctis waves him away as he spits the shards of it into the sink, and leans over the basin.

Blood mixes with the water as he washes it down the drain, and he covers his mouth, lets the blood slip through his parted lips and into his hand.

He can't speak, and his eyes burn with the promise of tears, but nothing happens. He feels faded, all at once.

"Oh," he manages, "I didn't. Nobody told me."

"You were asleep." Lunafreya says, cutting Gladiolus off.

"Yeah. It's fine." He says, but he doesn't really mean it.

His world feels like it's burning. He aches for Ignis, and rubs his thumb across the ring in his pocket.