I'm gonna walk right across this town

[blindsider]

[ It is the evening of the last day of exams, and Ignis Scientia has no choice but to party. He's earned it, really, after a year of hard work and some blisteringly challenging exams which he suspects he's done well on nonetheless. So he goes, and he has fun. There's drinks, and dancing, and then more drinks in a different bar with a different sort of dancing. His friends seem determined to visit as many different bars in one evening as they can manage, which is fine by him. The brief walks from bar to bar serve as a kind of interlude in which everyone has to take a brief break from drinking, if not actually sober up.

As the evening wears on Ignis has his first blue drink ever and his first on-fire drink ever, a process for which he is handed a plastic straw and urged to imbibe the drink through it “quick, before it catches fire too”. He loses a button from the top of his shirt, recaptures his glasses after a small woman with hair dyed the bright orange of a free-range egg yolk puts them on and walks away, eats a chicken wing handed to him by a stranger and is dragged into the women's restroom in order to participate in an animated discussion about whether one of his friends should go home with the young man who is so clearly trying to convince her to do so. And it's fun, it really is, but the more he has to drink (and the more he dances, and the more he sees his friends making out with one another or people they've collected on the way, though he's too drunk to make that connection now and will be too embarrassed to do so once sober) the more he just misses Nocts. He receives only minimal bullying about leaving early, and the cab ride to Noct's apartment building – unfortunately – is not sufficient to sober him up. The result is that he's not remotely quiet when he lets himself into Noct's home, humming to himself as he makes multiple unsuccessful attempts to unlock the front door before finally getting it open, and loud when he calls out as he cheerfully steps inside, hair fallen down from its usual vertical style and a smear of glitter rubbed over one cheekbone. ]

Evening!

Comments

[linkstrike]

[ exam week is a universal torment. and while it helps that high school exams aren't quite as brutal as the stuff they manage to cook up at university, noctis is probably only half the student ignis is on his very best day, so it all evens out.

besides, if it were just exams, that'd be one thing. but it's not, it never is. it's exams and trying to juggle everything else -- the recent fighting near the border has caused some kind of crop storage, the refugee program that the council has been working to implement has hit (yet another) snag, and gladio seizes on the opportunity to bullshit something about working on his tolerance for pressure by amping up to morning and afternoon sparring sessions. all in all, noctis feels like he's drowning; he's doing his best to stretch himself in every direction that's asked of him, but there are only so many damn hours in the day.

and worst of all, ignis is absent. sure, he still has a neat stack of reports delivered to noctis' doorstep by courier each morning, but someone else has stepped in to cover his chauffering duties and noctis hasn't actually laid eyes on him for the better part of a week. (not that he's keeping track, or anything.)

in one particular fit of desperation, he does call ignis up and flounder around something stumbling and pathetic about some of the calculus one of his teachers had stressed was particularly important for the upcoming exam, but that hadn't exactly gone... well. ignis had sounded stressed and distracted and about as tired as noctis felt, and that was enough to make the guilt settle into noctis' stomach like a stone. he'd turned down the following offer to find him a tutor (because he didn't want a tutor, he wanted ignis, and the selfish thought felt so childish that he wanted to run from it), stumbling out something about figuring it out on his own and then disconnecting the line.

(ignis still puts together a workbook of practice problems and has it delivered with the next stack of reports, and noctis is weirdly touched and awash with guilt all over again.)

but he and prompto manage to cram every bit of spare time in noctis' schedule full of study sessions, and that plus a few sleepless nights makes him feel like he has a decent handle on the material. and while he doesn't exactly read all of the reports ignis sends him, he makes an effort to skim them and highlight the important bits, and he's able to turn one of those into a passably intelligent remark at a council meeting that makes his father squeeze his shoulder afterwards in an unspoken sort of praise. so yeah, the week is a shitshow, but noctis is pretty sure he survives it with his grades and his reputation (mostly?) intact.

and after his final exam, an essay-heavy one about ancient lucian history that leaves him with a monster case of writer's cramp, all he can really think about doing is going home to his apartment to sleep. prompto does make a half-hearted effort to suggest that they celebrate, but noctis promises him a raincheck and then drags himself home for the nap he's been dreaming about all week. once he makes it through his door, he doesn't even bother undressing -- just collapses facedown in his bed with his boots still laced, out like a light before he even has time to deliberate the merits of drawing the blinds.

it doesn't matter, because the next time he wakes up, the entire room is bathed in darkness. he has a crick in his neck and his mouth is dry, but he still can't figure out what woke him up until --

he hears it again, someone fiddling at the front door of his apartment like they're trying to jimmy the lock. and he freezes for a moment, more out of confusion than any real fear. the idea of someone actually breaking into his place is too bizarre to be real; noctis is one hundred percent sure the place is heavily guarded even if he's never seen any real sign of it, and the address is kept concealed from everyone but the higher ranking members of the crownsguard. it takes a security key to even make it into the building, and then a completely separate one to even make the elevator get to his floor, so...

what the hell.

if he was more awake, he might've actually considered calling someone. but his brain is still mostly just the cobwebs of interrupted sleep, so he stumbles out into the hallway and stares dumbly at the door, fingers twitching as he attempts to decide whether or not this actually warrants summoning a weapon.

and right when he's erring on the side of yeah maybe, the door finally bursts open to admit one (1) ignis scientia into his apartment. it's actually more of a startling conclusion than if it had been... well, some kind of kidnapping squad from the empire or maybe one of those alien-zombie biker gang people from the last horror movie he and prompto watched, so... for a moment? all he can do is gape at him like a startled goldfish, trying to make his brain wrap properly around this situation. ]

Uh. [ is that glitter ] Hi?

[ this is definitely some kind of weird exam-induced stress dream. ignis is going to morph into kenny crow and start dancing and singing about the newest greasy special at the crow's nest at any second, just wait. ]