#clutching my heart

ninemoons42-lestallumhaven:

wildixia:

[WIP] ✨✨✨ My love affair for Gladio with majestic hair continues

Writing! Writing! Kicking off my rest days with something for my friend :) 
Sort of a self-imposed writing challenge, too, because I only have 30min to write this thing, to this BGM.

Quick Fic Pick 48: soothing a shield

He’d wake up and be surprised, he thinks, the thoughts still groggy and sleep-torn around the edges, if this had been any other day in any other life – and that would be a poor life indeed, if it didn’t have the quiet steady presence of Ignis Scientia in it.

As it is, Gladio can’t feel any kind of chagrin for waking up and not noticing the arrival of that presence in his rooms, in his bed – can’t feel anything but admiration, and that fierce abiding other thing that he can’t name but that roosts in his chest like splendor, like unfurled wings, like looking directly at the surface of the sun, as he leans up into the clever nimble knowing fingers scraping so very gently over his scalp. Tangling so very softly into his hair. 

He sighs, and gets a quiet chuckle in response. “I haven’t woken you, have I?”

“No, no,” he laughs back. “Pay no attention to me. Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

“You do realize that for me to do this,” swift tug on a bare handful of strands, “I have to pay attention to you? So you’re asking me to do the impossible. I cannot ignore you. And I don’t want to stop touching you.”

“Gods and Astrals, Ignis,” he mutters, and if he weren’t already lying down, he thinks he’d be floored by the sheer depths of intensity in Ignis’s words. “Okay. So. I’ll shut up and you can do whatever you want to me.”

“Do be careful with what you offer; I might find myself in a shameless mood and decide that I wanted everything.”

“You know you’ve already got everything I’ve got that I can give you.”

He opens his eyes, when he’s done speaking, and he feels the pound of his heart in his chest – he sees the skitter of swallowing, in Ignis’s throat, almost as if in response.

He’d say it over and over again just to get that reaction again and again.

What he gets is something entirely wordless, something that tears him very thoroughly and sweetly to pieces, and then rebuilds him, puts him back together with the emotion that shivers in Ignis’s voice: “What I can give you of myself, you’ve had and you’ve held all this time.”

Grateful doesn’t even begin to cover what he feels, that clogs in his own throat and won’t come out in any kind of words: all he can do is reach out to Ignis’ shoulder. Is pull him down into a kiss, and he keeps his eyes open as he does, so he can appreciate the beauty of him, the graceful curve of him in his pinstriped shirt and his starched collar and the dents worn into his temples by his ever-present eyeglasses.

All too soon, however, Ignis pulls away with an amused tsk. “I was trying to do something here, you know.”

“Other than – wake me up?” He hopes he looks suitably – predatory, when he grins with all his teeth and all his heart.

“Oh, go on,” is the soft laugh he gets in return, and again those hands are moving in his hair, and this time he figures out the careful sifting and separating and parting movements. Gathering, plaiting, and he wishes every strand of hair were a new live-sparking nerve, so he can feel Ignis, so he can get lost in the movements of him.

Ignis hums, very quietly, as he works.

He almost expects to fall back asleep, soothed and petted and cared for as he is – and he does sort of drop into calm, like plunging into warm water, like floating in a sweetly whispering sea, the voices of the waves and the lilting rhythm of Ignis’s hum, of Ignis’s hands.

And all too soon Ignis kisses him on his forehead and says, “All done,” and he has to sit up and – that lets him face the mirror just aslant of the foot of the bed, and there’s enough of him and of Ignis visible to see – the smile that isn’t quite a smile, the hands smoothing those gloves back on.

The braids in his own hair, precisely placed and perfectly woven, that don’t tug on his scalp at all even when he turns his head from side to side. 

Where Ignis has found the dark-green elastic bands securing each neat plait, Gladio has no idea – green that’s almost black. 

He points them out to Ignis, who coughs. Spark of mischief and something sharper in his eyes. “You don’t want to wear that color?”

“I absolutely fucking do.”

And he reaches out in his own turn to Ignis’s hair, still impeccably styled. “I don’t know what you could wear that’s mine, though. If you wanted to do something like that.”

“Then kiss me: I’ll wear the impression of you all day long.”

“Not subtle at all,” he laughs, and does exactly as he’s told.

*GASP* What a lovely surprise!! So wonderful and beautiful, I just love the idea of Ignis being the one to braid his hair *sobs* Such a loving moment that is so perfectly them and gives me so many feels

“Then kiss me: I’ll wear the impression of you all day long.” Excuse me while I go cry.