Gladio woke up first, which was the first indication that something was wrong.
Gladio stared at the canvas tent above him in the darkness. To his left, Noct was snoring away, and Prompto was a pile of gold fluff poking out of the sleeping bag just beyond. Ignis was nothing but a dark shadow lying at the other end of the tent.
Gladio wasn't a heavy sleeper by any means, but he never woke up first. Ignis always had his alarm set at some ungodly hour, and Ignis was always already awake by the time it went off -- so he really did it just to torture them, Noct had concluded -- but Ignis wasn't up, and the alarm hadn't gone off, and he couldn't hear any monsters outside, and the Imperial airfleet didn't seem to have found them in the middle of the night, so what was Gladio doing awake?
Gladio tried to figure it out and couldn't. His head was pounding with the effort of it. He frowned.
Other than restlessness brought on by stress or adrenaline, the last time he'd been unable to sleep through to morning had been years ago, when he'd been seventeen, and he'd spent three nights up because Iris had the flu and he was up with her bathroom at all hours while the poor girl had miserably puked her guts out. And then when she got better, he still couldn't sleep properly, and it hadn't really bothered him until someone threw him through the mats and into the next room at the Crownsguard training hall half a week later, and Cor had been so alarmed that he'd sent him to the infirmary, where the doctors had explained with utmost patience that...
Fuck.
Gladio pressed a hand to his forehead.
Okay, so maybe he was warm. That's all a fever was, right? Being warm never stopped him from doing his job. Hell, he was warm all the time, that's why he hadn't bothered packing a sweater on this trip (or more than one shirt, really). It'd be fine.
He rolled over and went back to sleep.
- IGNIS -
Ignis woke up wanting to set his own face on fire.
He woke when his alarm went off, which was, he reflected dimly, alarming in its own right. He never woke up with his alarm. He always set it slightly later, for a pleasant gradual awakening. This morning, his awakening was not pleasant.
He sat up. Everybody else was still asleep, which was to be expected; Prompto was starting to twitch, but still buried inside his sleeping bag, and Noct was, of course, dead asleep. Gladio at the other end of the tent had an arm thrown over his eyes.
Ignis rubbed his temples, and then his throat. It felt like he'd swallowed a swarm of killer bees. His skin was tight, his muscles stiff.
With all that had been going on lately, it wasn't entirely unexpected. Frankly, he was shocked none of them had come down with any significant illnesses thus far. It was about time. He just hadn't expected it to be him.
He considered his options. They had been hoping to take on a couple hunts today to fund the acquisition of supplies for the next leg of their travels. This was Imperial-occupied territory, so they didn't have the time to linger for very long, if they hoped to remain undiscovered. Due to their lack of resources, and their hopes of staying unnoticed as they went, they had taken to camping rather than staying in outpost motels -- which meant that everybody had to pull their weight.
Noct provided the magic, and occasionally the fish. Gladio took point on the hunts, and Prompto provided support. Ignis provided the strategy. And he liaised with their outpost contacts. And he organized and stocked their supplies, and he kept up with the news. He mended their gear, and he prepared their meals... and he drove on most days. And honestly, he kept the other three from killing themselves on a daily basis.
So, his options were: to push through, or to let this whole journey fall apart, the last hope of Lucis to be found dead in a ditch by the side of the road a couple weeks after he left his bride-to-be stranded at the altar.
Ignis sighed and picked up his glasses.
- PROMPTO -
Prompto had been awake the entire night.
He'd felt the tickle in the back of his throat around dinnertime last night. Oh, no, he'd thought. He recognized that tickle.
If he'd been at home, he'd have gone to the store right then, bought a jar of honey, a bag of ginger, a box of tea, a tub of ice cream and a few litres of soda, ordered three boxes of takeout, put an entire pot of noodle soup on the stove, crammed himself into a corner of the couch and curled up under a blanket for like. Three days. The best cure. The only cure. The Prompto cure.
But here they were in the middle of nowhere, not a gil to their names, no roof and no hot shower, not even any extra socks, and Prompto felt the panic settling in.
It settled in his stomach during dinner along with the excellent curry Ignis had made them, and it sat there throughout the evening, and it stayed there when he'd yawned and gotten into his sleeping bag and zipped himself up cheerfully, and it churned there throughout the next six hours, as he'd huddled in a ball between a snoring Noct and Ignis, pretending to sleep and trying his utmost not to cough.
He was mortified. He was a Crownsguard! He was Noct's Crownsguard! Crownsguards didn't get sick! They got bravely felled in heated battle, or sacrificed to protect King and country, or maimed and left to linger on the brink of death until their weeping comrades brought them before the King to be saved at the last moment with tears and magic. Or something. They didn't get brought down by the common cold.
He dreaded the morning. What Ignis and Gladio got up, and they saw Prompto with his sniffling, runny nose and watery red-rimmed eyes, and realized that they'd made a mistake? What if they dropped him off at the next outpost with a gentle, sorry, kid, you couldn't cut it? Prompto liked to think Noct would stop them from leaving him on a mountainside to die, like in that book about the roaming people that led their old and weak into the wilderness to live out the rest of their days in solitude when they began to slow down the tribe, but Prompto had been taking an awful lot of photos of Noct falling off his chocobo recently.
It was clear, Prompto thought grimly. There was only one thing he could do.
When Ignis' alarm went off, Prompto exhaled, stretched with an exaggerated yawn like he hadn't been stewing in worry instead of fast asleep for the last twelve hours or so, popped out of his sleeping bag brightly, and knocked the lump that was Noct on the shoulder.
"Rise and shine, buddy!"
- NOCT -
Noct groaned.
He couldn't tell whether everything hurt because the weather was just shitty, because of the wyvern hunt they'd been on yesterday, because of that huge-ass fish he'd spent all afternoon trying to pull out of the nearby lake, because he'd fallen asleep funny in the car on their way back, or because Prompto insisted on being this fucking chipper at five in the morning and Noct's muscles were protesting out of sheer spite.
Or maybe it was because he was sick with something. Whatever.
"C'mon, dude, sun's waiting!"
For a minute, Noct considered pulling the I'm sick card.
Prompto would hover helplessly, he knew, and then suggest like twelve ideas for making Noct feel better that would undoubtedly just make him feel worse. Gladio would probably think he was faking it to get a few more hours of sleep, which was unfair, because he hadn't done that for at least a week now, and then once it became clear that Noct wasn't faking it, Gladio would act all guilty and fuck off to kill about a thousand monsters to get gil for a stay in town and probably get his ass kicked by a behemoth out in the valley by himself.
Ignis would try to feed him vegetables.
Noct shuddered.
"Noct?"
Realizing he couldn't put it off any longer, Noct resigned himself to his fate, and did what any healthy, hale, well-rested twenty-year-old king would do upon being roused on a shining new day.
He groaned, hid his head in his sleeping bag, and stuck his middle finger up in the air.
FILL 1/?: gen chocobros, ridiculous sickfic
---
- GLADIO -
Gladio woke up first, which was the first indication that something was wrong.
Gladio stared at the canvas tent above him in the darkness. To his left, Noct was snoring away, and Prompto was a pile of gold fluff poking out of the sleeping bag just beyond. Ignis was nothing but a dark shadow lying at the other end of the tent.
Gladio wasn't a heavy sleeper by any means, but he never woke up first. Ignis always had his alarm set at some ungodly hour, and Ignis was always already awake by the time it went off -- so he really did it just to torture them, Noct had concluded -- but Ignis wasn't up, and the alarm hadn't gone off, and he couldn't hear any monsters outside, and the Imperial airfleet didn't seem to have found them in the middle of the night, so what was Gladio doing awake?
Gladio tried to figure it out and couldn't. His head was pounding with the effort of it. He frowned.
Other than restlessness brought on by stress or adrenaline, the last time he'd been unable to sleep through to morning had been years ago, when he'd been seventeen, and he'd spent three nights up because Iris had the flu and he was up with her bathroom at all hours while the poor girl had miserably puked her guts out. And then when she got better, he still couldn't sleep properly, and it hadn't really bothered him until someone threw him through the mats and into the next room at the Crownsguard training hall half a week later, and Cor had been so alarmed that he'd sent him to the infirmary, where the doctors had explained with utmost patience that...
Fuck.
Gladio pressed a hand to his forehead.
Okay, so maybe he was warm. That's all a fever was, right? Being warm never stopped him from doing his job. Hell, he was warm all the time, that's why he hadn't bothered packing a sweater on this trip (or more than one shirt, really). It'd be fine.
He rolled over and went back to sleep.
- IGNIS -
Ignis woke up wanting to set his own face on fire.
He woke when his alarm went off, which was, he reflected dimly, alarming in its own right. He never woke up with his alarm. He always set it slightly later, for a pleasant gradual awakening. This morning, his awakening was not pleasant.
He sat up. Everybody else was still asleep, which was to be expected; Prompto was starting to twitch, but still buried inside his sleeping bag, and Noct was, of course, dead asleep. Gladio at the other end of the tent had an arm thrown over his eyes.
Ignis rubbed his temples, and then his throat. It felt like he'd swallowed a swarm of killer bees. His skin was tight, his muscles stiff.
With all that had been going on lately, it wasn't entirely unexpected. Frankly, he was shocked none of them had come down with any significant illnesses thus far. It was about time. He just hadn't expected it to be him.
He considered his options. They had been hoping to take on a couple hunts today to fund the acquisition of supplies for the next leg of their travels. This was Imperial-occupied territory, so they didn't have the time to linger for very long, if they hoped to remain undiscovered. Due to their lack of resources, and their hopes of staying unnoticed as they went, they had taken to camping rather than staying in outpost motels -- which meant that everybody had to pull their weight.
Noct provided the magic, and occasionally the fish. Gladio took point on the hunts, and Prompto provided support. Ignis provided the strategy. And he liaised with their outpost contacts. And he organized and stocked their supplies, and he kept up with the news. He mended their gear, and he prepared their meals... and he drove on most days. And honestly, he kept the other three from killing themselves on a daily basis.
So, his options were: to push through, or to let this whole journey fall apart, the last hope of Lucis to be found dead in a ditch by the side of the road a couple weeks after he left his bride-to-be stranded at the altar.
Ignis sighed and picked up his glasses.
- PROMPTO -
Prompto had been awake the entire night.
He'd felt the tickle in the back of his throat around dinnertime last night. Oh, no, he'd thought. He recognized that tickle.
If he'd been at home, he'd have gone to the store right then, bought a jar of honey, a bag of ginger, a box of tea, a tub of ice cream and a few litres of soda, ordered three boxes of takeout, put an entire pot of noodle soup on the stove, crammed himself into a corner of the couch and curled up under a blanket for like. Three days. The best cure. The only cure. The Prompto cure.
But here they were in the middle of nowhere, not a gil to their names, no roof and no hot shower, not even any extra socks, and Prompto felt the panic settling in.
It settled in his stomach during dinner along with the excellent curry Ignis had made them, and it sat there throughout the evening, and it stayed there when he'd yawned and gotten into his sleeping bag and zipped himself up cheerfully, and it churned there throughout the next six hours, as he'd huddled in a ball between a snoring Noct and Ignis, pretending to sleep and trying his utmost not to cough.
He was mortified. He was a Crownsguard! He was Noct's Crownsguard! Crownsguards didn't get sick! They got bravely felled in heated battle, or sacrificed to protect King and country, or maimed and left to linger on the brink of death until their weeping comrades brought them before the King to be saved at the last moment with tears and magic. Or something. They didn't get brought down by the common cold.
He dreaded the morning. What Ignis and Gladio got up, and they saw Prompto with his sniffling, runny nose and watery red-rimmed eyes, and realized that they'd made a mistake? What if they dropped him off at the next outpost with a gentle, sorry, kid, you couldn't cut it? Prompto liked to think Noct would stop them from leaving him on a mountainside to die, like in that book about the roaming people that led their old and weak into the wilderness to live out the rest of their days in solitude when they began to slow down the tribe, but Prompto had been taking an awful lot of photos of Noct falling off his chocobo recently.
It was clear, Prompto thought grimly. There was only one thing he could do.
When Ignis' alarm went off, Prompto exhaled, stretched with an exaggerated yawn like he hadn't been stewing in worry instead of fast asleep for the last twelve hours or so, popped out of his sleeping bag brightly, and knocked the lump that was Noct on the shoulder.
"Rise and shine, buddy!"
- NOCT -
Noct groaned.
He couldn't tell whether everything hurt because the weather was just shitty, because of the wyvern hunt they'd been on yesterday, because of that huge-ass fish he'd spent all afternoon trying to pull out of the nearby lake, because he'd fallen asleep funny in the car on their way back, or because Prompto insisted on being this fucking chipper at five in the morning and Noct's muscles were protesting out of sheer spite.
Or maybe it was because he was sick with something. Whatever.
"C'mon, dude, sun's waiting!"
For a minute, Noct considered pulling the I'm sick card.
Prompto would hover helplessly, he knew, and then suggest like twelve ideas for making Noct feel better that would undoubtedly just make him feel worse. Gladio would probably think he was faking it to get a few more hours of sleep, which was unfair, because he hadn't done that for at least a week now, and then once it became clear that Noct wasn't faking it, Gladio would act all guilty and fuck off to kill about a thousand monsters to get gil for a stay in town and probably get his ass kicked by a behemoth out in the valley by himself.
Ignis would try to feed him vegetables.
Noct shuddered.
"Noct?"
Realizing he couldn't put it off any longer, Noct resigned himself to his fate, and did what any healthy, hale, well-rested twenty-year-old king would do upon being roused on a shining new day.
He groaned, hid his head in his sleeping bag, and stuck his middle finger up in the air.
"Fuck off."