Chapter Text
Gladiolus Amicitia walked down the side streets of Insomnia, carrying a gangly, drunken, wriggling twenty year-old man-child in his arms.
This is what happens, he decided, when you have a tendency to fall for small, hyperactive blondes with no tolerance for alcohol. You go out with your friends, you have a drink, maybe two, and then you watch as the guy you’ve been quietly eyeing for months downs six shots at once and falls off the table in the middle of a song titled “Fever” at 3am. And because Gladio had the urge to take care of his friends pretty much etched into his genes, it fell to him to take Prompto home.
“Your arms are enormous,” Prompto said, his voice muffled against Gladio’s chest. He swiped a hand on his right bicep for emphasis, but couldn’t quite keep his grip. “Did you know, Gladio?” The look he gave him was almost brimming with tears, urgent with the need to communicate this pivotal fact. “Did you know how big your arms are?”
“Sure, Prompto,” Gladio said. He repositioned his grip on the blonde, making sure his legs didn’t slip out of his hold.
“Good,” Prompto whispered, staring into his eyes. “You should be proud of them.”
Gladio had nothing to say to that. He stopped at the gate to a small first floor apartment with a tiny, handwritten placard over the mailbox: Argentum. Prompto lived here? The whole building could probably fit in Gladio’s kitchen. He navigated around the gate and stopped at the door. No keypad, no DNA recognition software. Just an ordinary lock.
“Prom, do you have your keys on you?”
“Yes!” Prompto flopped out of Gladio’s arms, dropping to his hands and knees on the front path. “Oh. Ohhh, my dude. Something is wrong with my legs.”
Gladio sighed and bent down to lift Prompto up around the shoulders. “The keys, Prompto.”
“They’re in my pocket.”
There was a long silence. Prompto stared into Gladio’s eyes with the singular focus of a laser.
“Are you going to get them?” Gladio asked.
“I want to kiss your face,” said Prompto.
“O-kay.” Gladio sighed and slid his hand into Prompto’s pocket, coming back with a folded bill and a house key. He opened the front door with one hand, and gently heaved Prompto across the threshold.
The house was very… dark. It had a strange, musty smell, too, as though the doors and windows were never left open for very long. Technically, Gladio had done the bare minimum that any friend would do in this situation—see Prompto home and drop him off at the foyer. Except Prompto was, at this point in time, slowly collapsing onto the floor as he tried and failed to remove his boots with one hand.
Gladio stepped into the apartment and shut the door behind him.
“My boots are misbehaving,” Prompto said, laughing as he fell face-first onto the wooden floor. “I have been. I have been de-feeted.”
Gladio sighed and crouched on his ankles. He quickly removed Prompto’s boots, all the while very aware that his friend was yet again fixing him with that hyper-focused stare.
“I told you about your arms,” Prompto said, suddenly. Gladio nodded. “I bet. I bet that’s not the only thing that’s… bigger than normal. If you know what I…” Prompto trailed off, his face pressed to the floor.
Really, Gladio thought, as Prompto writhed in hysterical laughter at the foot of the door. Something about attraction must drive a person out of their ability to reason. Because he shouldn’t find anything remotely appealing about the disheveled, sweaty, giggling mess on the floor—except... Even when Prompto was making terrible puns and pushing his face to the ground, Gladio couldn’t help but feel… fond.
“This is bad,” he said, under his breath.
Prompto jumped up at that. “No,” he said, grabbing Gladio’s leg in both hands. “Don’t say that. You are very good. You are a. A very good Gladio.” He patted his thighs like one would a pet. “The best Gladio.”
“Thanks, Prompto. Next time I’m feeling down, I’ll remember you said that.”
Prompto beamed.
Getting his friend to bed proved to be a feat and a half. Prompto squirmed. He lunged for the walls. He lunged for Gladio. Sometimes, he lunged for Gladio and ended up on the wall anyways. And about halfway down the hall towards the bedroom, Gladio became suddenly, painfully aware that Prompto's gaze was becoming a bit too... heated... for comfort.
“Are you taking me to bed?” Prompto whispered, grasping at his jacket with fumbling hands. Gladio gently pushed them away.
“Not like that, Prompto.”
“No,” Prompto agreed. “Never take me to bed like that.” Gladio felt a weight drop in his stomach for all of one moment before his friend followed up with that intense stare and a throaty gasp of, “You. Should take me to bed. And fucking wreck me.”
Gladio made a strangled noise in the back of his throat.
“I’m serious,” Prompto said. “Just. Into the bed. On the floor. All night fucking. I know,” he said, with all the certainty of too many shots and a dose of confidence, “that you. Have the best. Cock. I’ve never seen.”
“Not tonight,” Gladio managed to say.
“Tomorrow, then.” Prompto fell back against the bedroom door. “Wreck me tomorrow.”
“Okay, Prompto.” Gladio had to think about this. No, no, he didn’t have to think about this. He didn’t have to think about any of this. He definitely didn’t have to think about Prompto.
“Home, sweet, home,” Gladio said, in a desperate bid to drown out his own self-destructing brain. He grabbed Prompto by the shirt to keep him from falling over, and opened the bedroom door.
By the time he managed to deposit Prompto on the bed, the blonde was practically begging.
“I promise,” he said. “I can take it. I can take all of it.”
“I’m sure you can,” Gladio said, retreating to the door.
“I don’t have a gag reflex,” Prompto said, cheerfully, when Gladio came back a minute later with water.
“That’s very nice, Prom.”
Gladio pushed the glass of water into his friend’s unresisting hands.
“I’m naturally talented,” Prompto said, lifting the glass and missing his mouth entirely.
“And I have an amazing ass,” he pointed out, as Gladio helped him take off the water-drenched shirt. “Noct says so, and he’s the prince, so he should know. You should take a look. Here, Gladio, take a look at my—”
“Maybe tomorrow, Prom,” Gladio said. He turned out the light and escaped into the blissful safety of the hallway. Then he closed the bedroom door behind him, slid to the floor, covered his face with his hands, and wished to all the Six that the earth would open up beneath him and swallow him whole.