[ It's not so much of a nightmare than it's a cacophony of reverberated notes of sound, clipped strikes against his chest. Nothing that would make sense with the rise of dawn, nothing worth sharing. They were more akin to phantoms, pieces of them, meaningless without stepping back to see the whole of them, by gluing them together: the hallucinated fall of familiar buildings, curdles of smoke rising from beyond city walls, screams of an army of airships making their descent, cries of a home lost, a home from which he'd been too far to reach. Water, and the feeling of drowning. The weight of a mantle made of black fabric and coronation. The words: walk tall.
He wakes with no sound. No gasp, no whimper. He wakes with nothing to decorate the moment but a heavy shudder and leaden lungs. A face that feels raw and scraped when he turns it into the mattress with an exhale that sounds suspiciously like shit.
Noct turns to his left. To his right. The blanket is a mess of braids tied around his legs by the time that he makes the decision to sit up, yet another hurdle to crinkle his nose and kick aside. It hits the ground of the motel with a light thump when he does, made possible by its bundled weight. He steps over it. He doesn't kick it again like he kind of wants to, because he's supposed to a King, wasn't he, and Kings, they didn't kick their blankets off their bed.
They didn't wake in the middle of ass o'clock at night. They didn't entertain and follow through with the idea to pad over to the only other bed in their borrowed room. They didn't look down at the broad expanse of their Shield's back, set their jaws, and get to work.
By which he means throwing aside a small crevice into the blanket draped over said Shield's sleeping form to crawl right into the orbit of this human furnace, to wrench free of his reservations (if for the moment, just for the moment) and press himself close against the Gladio's spine. A small (medium-sized, excuse) remora tucked against a-- an orca, or something. Shut up, the metaphor sounds better in his head.
And if Gladio finds it easy to rouse against the rustle, well. He can't see Noct's face, and. And he's just here to sleep, alright? Nothing weird about that, not when his bed isn't comfortable enough, the room is too cold, his blanket is itchy. Something-something, this is fine. This is fine.
So is the arm that he sneaks onto Gladio's waist. The shaky, steadying breath that he huffs into the space between Gladio's shoulder blades. That was all fine. ]
❰ gladio's his highness's shield, through and through. that means there are certain things he can sleep through - snoring, hushed laughing, any one of the three men he shares a tent with getting up to step out to piss or rustling around in their stuff - and things that he can't. yelling, voices he doesn't recognize. anything that, to his unconscious mind, sounds like a struggle.
and touch. most of the time, it only wakes him for a fraction of a second. they're in the tent, someone rolled into him for warmth or just by accident, so he lets out a wordless grumble and drifts back to sleep. but this time's different. this time there's a good six feet of space 'til the nearest body, and a wall between them and the other two. enough distance that he should barely even be able to hear the prince breathe, and yet here his highness is instead, pressing tight into the expanse of his back.
gladio drifts back to consciousness with a faint grunt, one hand slipping back to feel for what exactly is curled against him (it's human-shaped, he's located a hip), but the answer's pretty much immediately evident in the way the lump seems to have commandeered at least half of his blankets. noct.
fortunately, sleepy gladio doesn't tend to ask a lot of questions, sluggishly assessing the situation to see whether he's in the clear to just go the hell back to sleep.
he's not. noct's got no pillow.
another vague effort sound, and he's shifting to roll onto his back without disrupting the arm around his waist. gladio's own arm lifts up to hover just above noctis's head. ❱
Lift, ❰ he says, quiet and a little hoarse from sleep. if noct does indeed lift his head out of the way, gladio slides his arm down and around the prince's back so he can at least set his head on something, even if that something is gladio's shoulder.
as harsh as he can be sometimes, he's his highness's shield, and if that means shielding him from the cold or whatever the hell's inside his head when he wakes in the night, gladio's going to do it. ❱
[ Sleepy Gladio is quite a nice Gladio to curl into, warm and solid. A sound presence, a steady heartbeat. Against which he can rest his forehead, comfortable in his confidence that this wouldn't fade no matter how many times he closed his eyes and reopened them. Better yet is the absence of questions, for they would be questions to which he'd have little answers, as wispy and miserable as the aftertaste of his dreams felt on his tongue.
Noct stiffens at the hand that lands on his hip regardless, out of surprise than any inclinations at shrugging it off. He relaxes in increments, a small grin twisting at his face at the sluggish pull of Gladio's movements. At how much softer Gladio appears in his half-awake (half-asleep) state. The decision to tuck himself into any and all space that Gladio tries to assume between them with his lazy roll is an easy one to make.
Just as easy is the one that has Noct sighing at the low rumble of lift, as if laying his head against Gladio's shoulder is some great favour to be owed. But they get it done, and for the first little while, Noct seems settled. Comfortably settled. For the first little while, everything is kind of, actually, perfect.
Until it's not. Until his neck starts to feel odd with his head resting high on Gladio's shoulder. Not when he decides he's not comfortable enough to sleep like this, which leaves a certain question up for consideration: what was more annoying than a wiggling, squirming Noct on a mission to fit them into a bed that was technically built for one?
Because that sure is a cold nose that Noct presses into Gladio's neck. Knobbly knees that he presses, pushes, against the muscle of Gladio's thigh in an attempt at nudging him over to the other edge of the bed. ]
Hey. [ Another nudge. A poke to the side with a finger. ] Move over a little.
totally okay if you don't want to continue but school's finally out and i'm back to psl stuff again
❰ it's a tribute to gladio's ability to fall asleep on a dime that he's already long since crashed again by the time noctis starts to squirm. but then there's that touch again, and it surfaces him for a second time with a thoughtless 'mn' for the nose on his neck, a grunt for those knobbly knees. and the pushing doesn't let up, so his scowl sets in just in time for noct to break the silence in words. ❱
S'my goddamn bed - ❰ gravelly, plaintive, and slurred with sleep - and really, it's just posturing anyway. a second or so later, his body tenses as he works up the effort to move, then he's reclaiming his arm from underneath noctis to roll bodily onto his stomach on the far edge of the bed in a motion vaguely reminiscent of a displaced boulder.
both arms slide up under the pillow before he recalls the reason he offered noct his shoulder in the first place and he shoves the pillow over toward the squirmy interloper, settling his head on his folded arms instead. ❱
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retrace2017-02-26 09:20 pm
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He wakes with no sound. No gasp, no whimper. He wakes with nothing to decorate the moment but a heavy shudder and leaden lungs. A face that feels raw and scraped when he turns it into the mattress with an exhale that sounds suspiciously like shit.
Noct turns to his left. To his right. The blanket is a mess of braids tied around his legs by the time that he makes the decision to sit up, yet another hurdle to crinkle his nose and kick aside. It hits the ground of the motel with a light thump when he does, made possible by its bundled weight. He steps over it. He doesn't kick it again like he kind of wants to, because he's supposed to a King, wasn't he, and Kings, they didn't kick their blankets off their bed.
They didn't wake in the middle of ass o'clock at night. They didn't entertain and follow through with the idea to pad over to the only other bed in their borrowed room. They didn't look down at the broad expanse of their Shield's back, set their jaws, and get to work.
By which he means throwing aside a small crevice into the blanket draped over said Shield's sleeping form to crawl right into the orbit of this human furnace, to wrench free of his reservations (if for the moment, just for the moment) and press himself close against the Gladio's spine. A small (medium-sized, excuse) remora tucked against a-- an orca, or something. Shut up, the metaphor sounds better in his head.
And if Gladio finds it easy to rouse against the rustle, well. He can't see Noct's face, and. And he's just here to sleep, alright? Nothing weird about that, not when his bed isn't comfortable enough, the room is too cold, his blanket is itchy. Something-something, this is fine. This is fine.
So is the arm that he sneaks onto Gladio's waist. The shaky, steadying breath that he huffs into the space between Gladio's shoulder blades. That was all fine. ]
no subject
and touch. most of the time, it only wakes him for a fraction of a second. they're in the tent, someone rolled into him for warmth or just by accident, so he lets out a wordless grumble and drifts back to sleep. but this time's different. this time there's a good six feet of space 'til the nearest body, and a wall between them and the other two. enough distance that he should barely even be able to hear the prince breathe, and yet here his highness is instead, pressing tight into the expanse of his back.
gladio drifts back to consciousness with a faint grunt, one hand slipping back to feel for what exactly is curled against him (it's human-shaped, he's located a hip), but the answer's pretty much immediately evident in the way the lump seems to have commandeered at least half of his blankets. noct.
fortunately, sleepy gladio doesn't tend to ask a lot of questions, sluggishly assessing the situation to see whether he's in the clear to just go the hell back to sleep.
he's not. noct's got no pillow.
another vague effort sound, and he's shifting to roll onto his back without disrupting the arm around his waist. gladio's own arm lifts up to hover just above noctis's head. ❱
Lift, ❰ he says, quiet and a little hoarse from sleep. if noct does indeed lift his head out of the way, gladio slides his arm down and around the prince's back so he can at least set his head on something, even if that something is gladio's shoulder.
as harsh as he can be sometimes, he's his highness's shield, and if that means shielding him from the cold or whatever the hell's inside his head when he wakes in the night, gladio's going to do it. ❱
no subject
Noct stiffens at the hand that lands on his hip regardless, out of surprise than any inclinations at shrugging it off. He relaxes in increments, a small grin twisting at his face at the sluggish pull of Gladio's movements. At how much softer Gladio appears in his half-awake (half-asleep) state. The decision to tuck himself into any and all space that Gladio tries to assume between them with his lazy roll is an easy one to make.
Just as easy is the one that has Noct sighing at the low rumble of lift, as if laying his head against Gladio's shoulder is some great favour to be owed. But they get it done, and for the first little while, Noct seems settled. Comfortably settled. For the first little while, everything is kind of, actually, perfect.
Until it's not. Until his neck starts to feel odd with his head resting high on Gladio's shoulder. Not when he decides he's not comfortable enough to sleep like this, which leaves a certain question up for consideration: what was more annoying than a wiggling, squirming Noct on a mission to fit them into a bed that was technically built for one?
Because that sure is a cold nose that Noct presses into Gladio's neck. Knobbly knees that he presses, pushes, against the muscle of Gladio's thigh in an attempt at nudging him over to the other edge of the bed. ]
Hey. [ Another nudge. A poke to the side with a finger. ] Move over a little.
totally okay if you don't want to continue but school's finally out and i'm back to psl stuff again
S'my goddamn bed - ❰ gravelly, plaintive, and slurred with sleep - and really, it's just posturing anyway. a second or so later, his body tenses as he works up the effort to move, then he's reclaiming his arm from underneath noctis to roll bodily onto his stomach on the far edge of the bed in a motion vaguely reminiscent of a displaced boulder.
both arms slide up under the pillow before he recalls the reason he offered noct his shoulder in the first place and he shoves the pillow over toward the squirmy interloper, settling his head on his folded arms instead. ❱