...
The day Prompto meticulously chooses flowers from the florist—Freesia, Chrysanthemum, the darling Buttercup—he delivers them to the abandoned wharf by his lonesome; he brings them to Noctis, as delicate as they are, wrapped in green tissue paper and knotted together with red ribbon. The bouquets fall out of his arms and onto the wood of the dock; Noctis stirs beneath, swirling a whirlpool for himself.
Casually, he says, "Hey."
"I'd thought you'd like these," Prompto murmurs, barely audible over the crash of the ocean. "You wanted to see flowers, right?"
Then he's on his knees, unraveling the Chrysanthemums. He dangles one below the dock like mistletoe. Noctis snatches it from his grip and ephemerally sloshes underwater, black tail almost invisible. Petals follow his trail and benignly bump in the waves. Prompto picks up a single Freesia; he calls for Noctis as he resurfaces, as the water ripples.
"Sit with me."
Noctis beams, mermaid white teeth flashing. He grunts as he pulls himself out of the water and onto the dock. He's wet and shining, sea scales glistening from the ocean and sun; his whole body compresses with breath from the exchange of gills to lungs. He wheezes and sighs, eyes flickering from bouquet to flower. Noctis presses all of his coldness and dampness into Prompto's side, whispering into his ear, "You thought of me." He shifts unfathomably closer, so Prompto shudders, so Noctis's nose brushes the freckles on his cheek, "Thank you, Prom."
It's the way he's been lately, so oddly intimate—he coddles Prompto now, with mermaid kisses and enduringly soft touches. Noctis's slippery nose dips to the sensitivity of Prompto's throat; the Freesia Prompto held slaps across Noctis's cheek out of instinct. Prompto flutters, his heart and his lashes. He must be blushing, red as the thorny roses he refused to buy—all out of concern for Noctis's safety. But he hates being treated like a child, like Prompto's pet fish. Prompto has an apology on the tip of his tongue, but Noctis speaks before he can muster the courage.
"Flowers are different than I'd thought they'd be."
"Yeah? How?"
Noctis shrugs like he's bored out of his mind, but the blue of his eyes is ample and active. He likes. "I can keep this one?" He twirls the same wet Chrysanthemum between his thumb and index finger, smile revealing too sharp teeth.
Prompto gestures to the bouquets, "They're all yours. I bought them for you."
A moment passes before Noctis's primal merman instincts appear; he has an expression of innocence and bliss before it melts into one of brutality. Noctis tears the flowers apart, stem from stem. The tissue paper takes flight with the breeze lapping through Noctis's damp hair; he gnaws away the ribbons and their tiny bows. He takes an unscathed flower into his hand, a Ranunculus—a Buttercup. He cups its bloom, veiling his nose in its scent.
"Flowers smell nice, I guess."
Prompto laughs at Noctis's attempts to stay cool. He nods, "They're really beautiful."
Noctis hums, tucks the buttercup in Prompto's tresses, "So they fit you. Beautiful things should be together."
Prompto blushes and wonders if Ignis has been teaching Noctis about the necessities of charm and charisma. Noctis smiles at the sight of sprawling pink; he tentatively touches the warmth of Prompto's expression with freezing merman fingers. He lingers and lingers until it's too much, until Prompto feels his breath over his lips, until he's pinching Noctis's arm.
"So what's the point?" Noctis asks in his ascending tone, his uninterested tone. Prompto can tell by the way he has his hands placid in his lap, by the way he has averted his eyes—Noctis is a little displeased at his resistance. "What do humans do with flowers?"
"We give them to the people we like," Prompto says and Noctis is suddenly smirking, sliding his tail against the blonde's knee because he must like him. Prompto sighs, playfully pushing at Noctis's shoulder, "Or, we put them in our houses. Just to look pretty."
"Mm, houses," Noctis stresses the word like he's in deep thought. "Where you humans live," Noctis says, a frown twitching at his lips, tail undulating in a manner that disturbs the water below the dock.
He says, "Prom, I've been thinking," and he's serious. Prompto waits patiently because Noctis isn't so good with seriousness; he's not apt in communication and feelings. "I thought that I should see your place—maybe, I could go home with you."
"To my house?"
Noctis artlessly nods and Prompto thinks of his creaking floorboards back at home, the kinds that could leave splinters in soft merman flesh. He thinks of the nonexistent decorative flowers Noctis must be imagining of now, as his eyes gloss over with that unknown something, that mysterious merman emotion. He thinks of chipped paint and rusty nails and isolation and desolation—and what is the difference exactly?
A lump manifests in Prompto's throat, even as he swoons over the thought of having Noctis splash in his brass tub. He doesn't know what to say; he forgets how to speak. He only knows how to touch Noctis's hand, the one that's feigning contact over his thigh; he squeezes like one would squeeze a sponge. Prompto realigns his feelings to Noctis's strange human expression, how his lips tug into a smile for him. His palm is plagued with flexion creases, dripping saltwater, and uncharacteristic tenderness.
Prompto wants to say, "What is this with you, Noct?"
But his grasp slips from Noctis's hand; Prompto's intention is to let his touch fall over the seaweed coiling around his forearm, to his elbow, to ascend to his shoulder—but Noctis entwines their fingers instead, almost harshly.
He says, "I want to be with you."
Amid the sweet stroke of lips against his cheek and the vehement squeeze of his waist, Prompto sighs like a dream. Noctis consumes him with his body, holding him cold and close, plopping his tail on the blonde's lap. He lets Prompto's digits glide along his dark fish scales without complaint. The ocean cries and Prompto thinks of everlasting togetherness: holding hands and bumping foreheads. He thinks of mermaid forever, the way Noctis had loathed the concept months before. It's so much more than a mere human's forever; Prompto can't possibly fathom. He thinks he hears Noctis murmur perpetual secrets between soft kisses upon his crown, and Prompto thinks that forever, mermaid or not, is a problem.
...
Before the flowers, before Noctis nips at their petals with sharp teeth, before he plucks at each bloom with his fingers and teases, "He loves me, he loves me not…" Prompto brought him food from the Crow's Nest in a brown paper bag. Mermen have this inane and insatiable appetite for burgers and fries and grease. Prompto ordered the same thing for him: a plain burger, no tomato, no lettuce, no onion. He would buy him a large fry and milkshake. Back then, it was harmless; Noctis would circle the dock, swishing his shimmer tail and say, "I want some of your shake, Prom." He'd say, bratty-like, "Gimme."
Down below, he's a prince—a big deal. It's evident from his black tail; those scales are reserved for the line of Lucis. Noctis could've wished for a feast of seafood delicacies and his servants would prepare them. But he was sick of fish, sick of servants, and sick of oceanic royalty. All he wanted was Prompto's strawberry milkshake; all he wanted was peace. It was so simple then, before the flowers. It may have been a little cute too, how Noctis would catch food in his mouth when Prompto would toss it to him, how his jaw would clack shut—but he hated being treated like Prompto's pet fish.
It's something he reminds him of all the time, especially when he got weary of being fed like some seal. He smacked Prompto's foot with his tail fins, muttering, "I can't do this anymore. Not with you."
Noctis curtly yanked his body out of the water indignantly, panting and pouting. The muscles in his arms strained. His belly slapped against the wood and his tail lashed. He didn't want any help; he swatted at Prompto's hands until he was fully seated on the dock, dripping and gasping, "From now on, I'll eat up here." A smirk tugged at his lips, his chest bulged, pride gleamed in his eyes—and Prompto had laughed into the ocean cool of his shoulder.
"I'm impressed, Noct."
He had scoffed, slung a wet arm around Prompto without hesitance, and asked for a few of his fries. They slurped strawberry flavored shake through the same straw, fed each other fries, and ate from the same plain burger—platonically. Somehow, Prompto was Noctis's best friend, even though Noctis fucking despised humans in a somewhat unhealthy and bottled up way. The feeling was mutual, even if Noctis frequently clamped on Prompto's wrist and bit hard enough to draw blood. He'd always bring Noctis human junk food and eventually, he'd bring him flowers.
He'd let Noctis inhale the aroma of grilled beef from cradle of his hand too, if he was so inclined, so infatuated. He'd let him nibble at the blue veins lining the back of his palm and he'd let him kiss his knuckles, scavenging for bits and pieces of food left behind. Prompto had done that before, dipping his hands under the dock.
But when Noctis crawled out of the ocean, he was so impatient, so eager for everything—his senses went into overdrive. A single drop of sweat on Prompto's nape had him resolutely nosing around the blonde's blushing neck, nuzzling and groaning against the collar of his shirt, "I couldn't really smell you until now, but you smell so good Prom."
"Um, thanks?"
The slightest shift in wind had him reeling; Noctis said that he knew the earth smelled unusual, but there were so many scents he could detect from the docks. He could predict a rainstorm, precisely when it would start pouring, if there'd be lightning and thunder. He could sniff out the direction of a fire, a gas station, a barbeque. But it was the pungent stench of grease that really drove him wild.
It was all over Prompto's hands, complemented by occasional specks of condiments. Noctis was enthralled. He grabbed his wrist, pointed at each smear of mayonnaise and mustard. He had sniffed around them and asked curtly, "What's this one?"
"Ketchup."
Noctis hummed, innocuously, "I can try, yeah?"
Suddenly, Noctis bared his knifelike teeth; they eased near Prompto's fragile human flesh. Sometimes, they slipped and cut, but Prompto let him suck on his thumb despite of the danger. He let him lick ketchup from the pads of his fingers, let that rough feel swarm his prints. Noctis had this kind of cat tongue, pink and barbed.
It was as strange as his cold-blooded skin that never partial to color—he considered the human blush a wonder. And Prompto could remember—he had smoldered crimson. His freckles were prominent pinpricks of brown and his cheeks were lukewarm in the same way that made Noctis marvel. He had shamelessly gawked as his tongue slipped over Prompto's salty middle finger, as he pursed his lips around Prompto's mustard stained ring finger and pinky.
When he had finally stopped, when he let his dim smile rest aside the caress of Prompto's palm, he had vaguely mentioned the red of Prompto's burning cheeks, like it was the prettiest thing. Red was so foreign to the ocean; to Noctis, red was only known as the color of fresh blood misting through the waves or the rush beneath his human friend's discomfited skin—never ketchup. So it was okay—with him, everything made perfect sense. Even when Noctis eyed a single smudge of ketchup, leaned in, and pressed his mermaid slick lips against the corner Prompto's mouth, it was fine.
"Ketchup is good," Noctis said, "I didn't want to waste it, you know?"
Prompto's smile was wobbly, unstable, teetering on the peripheries of self-destruction. "I had ketchup on my face?"
"Uh-huh," Noctis grinned. "You're such a messy eater Prom."
"Like you're any better!"
Noctis trapped Prompto within his damp arms, flapped his sparkling tail at the currents underneath the dock. He chuckled, "Yeah, but I'm a merman. That gives me an excuse."
Prompto huffed. He crossed his arms over his chest and turned away, denying Noctis his attention. The way he groaned—it was more of a wheeze. Prompto could feel his gills flare.
"Come on. Look at me, Prom."
He didn't. Noctis nudged Prompto's chin back toward him anyway. He smirked before running his bristling tongue against a smattering of Prompto's freckles; "Mayonnaise," he said, which could've been a lie; his voice was laced in an unknown something, what Prompto liked to call the merman emotion. Then Noctis murmured, in a more candid tone, "All this human food makes me have lavish dreams."
He used that word specifically: lavish.
Prompto joked, feeling Noctis's breath tickle his nape, "You sleep?"
"Of course. I used to have reoccurring dreams about drowning you and eating your brain. Then your heart, but that didn't last long. And now, I dream about socks and pants and you saying 'Noct, you have fucking legs' over and over."
Currently, Prompto has a firm belief that the problem started there—when Noctis dreamed of human legs and polka dot socks, when he was honest and daydream soft, touching and longing but never too much and never enough. Forever started then, between burgers and fries.
...
Um, yeah…? Tell me how you feel?