Sun and Black Holes
By: Strange and Intoxicating -rsa-
Author Notes: For Promptio Week!
Sun and Black Holes
In the morning light, Prompto's hair sparkles like the sun.
Gladio isn't sure of what time it is or when the sun will fully break across the horizon, but he can see the first rays against Prompto's golden blonde hair. It reminds him of times when things were better than good but not perfect. Life isn't meant to be perfect, not for him.
But Prompto... Prompto is something special. He is like the morning, the feeling of the wind breaking against his cheek as the sun rises to bring the dawn. It's the way everything seems to still, just for that one moment, as if the Gods have blessed Eos with a second of time where there is no war and there is no sadness. There is something so beautiful in it that Gladio has to remind himself that it can never last.
Beautiful things like the morning cresting against the night sky never live for long.
It is what has Gladio tied up in a thousand knots, all of them wearing Prompto's easy-going smile. Gladio knows, he does, that there is more that meets the eye with the other man, but it's sometimes so hard to remember that when he's sleeping.
He wonders if Prompto knows exactly what it feels like for Gladio to have his feet curled up against Prompto, how it feels to have that strong heartbeat thrumming against his chest. Some nights, when the howling of daemons seems to shatter the stillness of the night air, Gladio wraps his arms around Prompto as he feigns sleep. He wonders if Prompto knows that he is awake and that despite his bravado...
Inside, in the tent where he is hidden from prying eyes, Gladio can be as scared as he needs to be.
And in the morning, when he wakes to find Prompto's hair pressed against his shoulder blade, his fingers in Gladio's hair, his lips so close they could almost touch in a whisper of a kiss...
Gladio thanks the daemons of the night, the ones that beat against the haven's runes in their fits of agony. These imperfections are what allows him to get closer and closer to Prompto...
He just wishes he could dare to do it. Their noses are almost touching and Gladio can make out the smattering of freckles across the bridge of Prompto's nose. They're like sunbursts. Gladio knows that Prompto hates his fair complexion, that he bitches about it whenever he has the chance. His face burns if he so much as forgets to put on sunblock for five minutes and his pale skin is always seems to call to the local insects.
He's only twenty, but Gladio can already see the man Prompto will be. It's in those freckles, in his hair. He's got something in him that calls for greatness, that promises something more.
Gladio wants to see that. He wants to be around when Prompto stops hiding under the clouds and starts walking on top of them.
Looking outside the small opening of the tent, Gladio knows that he's only got a few more minutes before Ignis is awake. Prompto will wake up after him, then it'll be Noctis when they have to forcefully pull his ass out of bed.
But before then, in these few minutes of solace, Gladio will bathe in the radiating warmth from Prompto's sunshine.
In the moonlight, Gladio's hair is a black hole.
Some people... some people are afraid of the darkness. Prompto knows he is... Small spaces without light and without hope. There's something terrifying lurking in what can't be seen. But the more time that he spends outside of Insomnia the more he understands that not all darkness is bad.
It's the comfort of a warm summer night. It's the feeling of skin pressed against his back and of fingers gently touching his hair. He wonders if Gladio would ever do this to him when they were both awake, but Prompto isn't stupid. He knows that Gladio has so many worries, so many duties, so many things he must do that he doesn't have a chance to ever think about what he wants to do.
Prompto... he gets it. He really does. They're all on this journey together, fighting against Niflheim and trying their best to get Noctis safely to Altissia. What happens after that, Prompto doesn't know. But what he does know for sure is that he wants things to be good. He wants things to be better.
The others probably think he is whiny, that he can't fight worth a damn and that he's always getting himself into trouble. Wasn't it just the other day that he tripped over himself and Ignis had to waste a potion on him just so that he could walk normally again? And they're right. They're completely right. Prompto knows this.
But when they're in the tent with only the warmth of the flickering fire to bring them comfort, Prompto is glad that he sleeps next to Gladio.
Gladio's not a black hole in the typical sense people think of black holes. So many think that black holes are the absence of anything, but they're wrong. They're completely wrong.
Black holes are everything. They're light and dark and all the planets. They're so strong, so steadfast, so unbending that light itself bends for it. They take everything to become more than something.
That's Gladio. That's everything Gladio is and everything Prompto wants to be. They have been sleeping next to each other for long enough that Prompto wonders sometimes if Gladio is aware of what he means to Prompto, but every time he tries to bring it up he loses the courage. What a typical Prompto thing—forgetting his words, being afraid that he'll be rejected.
Because Gladio swallows that light and shines nothing but pitch black. It's fascinating to look at him with only the dying embers of the campfire to help. Prompto can see it in his dark hair, in the tattoos across his skin like kisses of black holes.
There's something about the way he sleeps, the way he grabs hold of Prompto in the darkness. Prompto can't help it when his heart beats harder and faster and by the Six, it takes everything in him not to turn around and do something he thinks they'll both regret come morning.
But in the darkness, with Gladio's arms around him, Prompto is at peace.
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