Chapter Text
Ignis saw the necessity of training with people other than Gladio, he truly did. By now Gladio's movements were so etched in his mind, he could probably defend himself from him in his sleep. Plus Cor Leonis, the legendary Immortal, could hardly become his personal tutor. It was just that board rooms and banquets were infinitely more familiar to him than the crowded and noisy locker rooms of the glaives, smelling of sweat and testosterone.
His fingers were locked around the buttons of his dress shirt as if he'd been petrified. There were so many other men packed in here he could practically feel their body heat. And the rest of them certainly didn't have the same reservations about undressing. Many of them were completely naked, chatting loudly with their friends with everything hanging out as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Ignis had expected the glaives to have a more private arrangement, like the stalls in Noctis' private training area. He had been foolish in the extreme.
Was still being foolish. No one was looking. He just had to be quick swapping out his current outfit for the infinitely more practical attire that had been provided for him. He sprinted through swapping out his shirt and undershirt for the woefully tight black tank top of the Glaive's training uniform. Halfway there. Only the trousers to go. He'd barely removed them when someone slammed their hand into the locker door next to his head.
“Hey! New kid!”
Although Ignis was now only clad in his briefs and a tank top and blushing to the tips of his ears, he forced himself to turn to acknowledge the greeting. “How may I help you?”
The man was huge and bearded, built like a great bear. He was closer to Regis' age than Ignis' with streaks of white threaded through both the hair on his head and the hair on his face. The glaives were mostly refugees and came in all shapes and sizes so it wasn't unusual for the trainees to be of mixed ages. “You Tenebrian?” the man asked. “Didn't think anyone escaped from there.”
Ignis shook his head, positively stewing in the embarrassment of being addressed in his underwear. “I'm Lucian.”
“Seriously, Fortis?” Another man stepped in to drag him away. “Anything that moves!”
“I was just saying hello!”
“He's too young for you anyway.” The new man dropped into an urgent whisper but he was not being nearly as discreet as he thought. Ignis distinctly heard from the Citadel and prince's chamberlain. He tried to ignore it and took advantage of the distraction to slip into his sweatpants. Of course that left him with nothing urgent to attend to. He stared determinedly at his locker door. He could hardly mill around the rest of the room with all of this blatant nudity going on.
“Iggy!” Gladio to the rescue. He wrapped his arm around Ignis' neck in a fiercely one-sided hug and presented him to the room. “Listen up, guys. Go easy on Iggy, yeah? It's his first day.”
“Gladio, I'm sure--”
Two young men closer to his and Gladio's age than the rest scoffed loudly at him. They were twins and – Gods help him – very attractive, standing unabashedly in their underwear. They clearly hailed from somewhere other than Insomnia. Both with bright red hair and brown eyes, dappled with even more freckles than Noct's friend Prompto. Each had a slightly different constellation of them. Probably the only way their parents could distinguish between them.
“His hair's pretty light,” one of them said. “You sure he's not a Niff?”
“Nope!” Gladio said, patting his impressively developed chest. “Born and bred in the Crown City just like yours truly.”
“Does he speak?” the other twin said.
“Boy does he. Go on, Iggy. Introduce yourself.”
Gladio released him and Ignis held out his hand to the pair. “Ignis Stupeo Scientia. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
He had the distinct impression he'd failed some sort of test. They gave his hand identical scowls and neither of them shook it. He wilted, drawing his hand back to his side. What had he done wrong? Why was that wrong? He'd been perfectly polite and enunciated exactly the way he'd been taught to, hadn't he?
“Call him Iggy,” Gladio said cheerfully, as if he was part of an entirely different exchange. “Iggy, this is Castor and Pollux.”
“Why's he here? He's one of the suits, right?”
“No way! Iggy's kicked my ass more times than I can count.”
The doubt was written all over their faces but Ignis didn't have time to dwell on it. Gladio dragged him all over the changing room, introducing him to various glaives in varying states of undress. By the time they'd done a full circuit Ignis' face was so hot and flushed he was amazed his eyebrows hadn't vaporised. As if the endless parade of pecs and bulges hadn't been bad enough, they were universally unimpressed with him.
“They think you're some kinda stuffy bureaucrat,” Gladio said. “They'll come round once they see you in action.”
He was a stuffy bureaucrat and he was perfectly content to remain that way. “It's all right, Gladio. They don't need to like me.”
“Hey, don't say that. They just don't know you yet. Shoulda seen the attitude they copped with me at first for being an Amicitia. Try and loosen up a little. It'll help.”
He made it sound so easy.
Gladio grinned slyly. “Anyone hit on you yet?”
The question caught Ignis so off-guard he could only stutter out an “Excuse me?”
Gladio snort-laughed. “Remember how I told you to loosen up? I know everyone upstairs is so uptight a fart would probably get 'em exiled but things ain't like that down here. The glaives are always in each other's faces. So they fuck. A lot. And you're pretty eye-catching, you know?”
No he did not know. He made sure he was presentable certainly but that was-- this was-- he was not--
Thankfully he was spared from more on this topic by Cor screaming at them to “cover up their dicks and get moving”.
###
The drills were repetitive and exhausting. Endlessly accessing the crystal's magic in different combinations in order to counter whatever his sparring partner produced. Today his was a femaleglaive who refused to even talk to him. Gladio was absolutely hopeless with raw magic and always had been. Hence the need for training with others more adept at it. But he and his partner were making a joke of it. And contrary to what Gladio had said about them seeing him in action, every counter only seemed to infuriate this glaive more. She tried to hit him with a scorching flame that could have engulfed his entire body. Instinctively he countered with enough ice to put out the flame and drench them both in icy water.
“Alanda!” Cor roared. “Control yourself. Nice work, Scientia.”
The praise from Cor earned Ignis glares. Not just from Alanda. Cor didn't notice, too distracted by Gladio setting his trousers on fire.
“Amicitia! I told you no fire!”
###
At the end of the session, Gladio was immediately swallowed by a crowd of admiring Glaives. Ignis returned to the lockers alone to retrieve his clothing. He was still shivering so hard his teeth were starting to chatter from the icy water but the thought of sharing a shower with so many other people left him even colder. He held his clothes and the normalcy they represented to his chest and tried to dash off, accidentally bumping someone in his rush to get out of the door.
“I'm sorry--” he began, looking up into the sneering face of another glaive. Albus, he believed? There had been so many names bit there always were when he was dealing with Crown business and he tried to retain them so as not to offend.
“Look, it's the King's cockwarmer,” Albus said, to sniggers from the others.
Ignis gasped. “That is certainly not one of my duties!”
They only laughed at him.
###
It hadn't been that bad, he tried to reason with himself. They were only words. He dealt with words all the time. Those words might not be nearly as personal but there was much more at stake during the course of his usual duties. But the closer it got to his next training session with the glaives, the heavier his stomach felt. At least he was more prepared this time. He arrived already dressed in his training gear and waited outside the changing room for the session to begin.
Which gave Cor pause when he came to summon the rest of the recruits. “Everything all right, Scientia?”
“Yes, sir.”
Cor peered at him as if the lie was written on his face. “You sure about that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Uh-huh. A word of advice: avoiding them's not gonna make you fit in any better.”
Was he really that obvious?
“They're not bad. Not really, kid. But you know what it's gonna look like if you don't change with them? If you run on to your private room to shower when most of them don't have a bedroom to themselves?”
Like the truth? That he wanted peace and quiet. “No, sir.”
“Like you think you're better than them. I don't wanna see you hanging around out here again. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
Cor was so insightful in some ways. And Ignis could certainly see the truth of it. But Cor either didn't notice or didn't care about the looks some of the Glaives gave him when they thronged out of the changing room. And he was gone when someone pinched Ignis' buttock hard enough to make him yelp. The culprit was immediately lost in the crowd.
###
Ignis tried. He really did. But conversations here didn't work the way he was used to. He thought he had a handle on what was wrong with his last introduction. It was too formal. The glaive assigned to him today was at most ten years Ignis' senior with mousy brown hair and rather attractive dark brown eyes. Lots of the glaives were very attractive. He wished he could stop noticing. It only made this whole thing more awkward. He couldn't quite recall this one's exact name but this was an opportunity to find it out and perhaps make things more cordial.
“I'm Iggy,” he said. Gladio called him that and the glaives all seemed to like Gladio.
“Yeah, I know.” They were practising polearms today with long wooden sticks. Ignis ducked another of his blows. “Ignis Stupeo Scientia. How old are you, kid?”
“Seventeen.” Almost eighteen, as he kept insisting when the council were dubious about him doing anything 'at his age'.
“Child prodigy, huh?” He said it like it was an insult.
Like you think you're better than them. “No! Not at all.” He was so desperate to protest that the blow to his temple caught him off-guard. It sprawled him onto his back. He raised his own training lance to defend from the next blow, then sprang up with a hands-free kick-up. He wasn't a prodigy. He'd worked hard, learning gymnastics and defence from the moment he could walk so that he could protect Noct. That was the entire reason he was here in the first place. The glaive rained blows on him, chasing him from one side of the hall to the other with each successive block.
He'd only been trying to make conversation!
“HEY!” Gladio blocked the next one with enough force to snap the glaive's training lance in half. “Going a little hard there, ain't ya?”
Ignis winced. He wished Gladio hadn't done that. He had been doing a perfectly good job of defending himself.
“Thought you were meant to be the prince's shield,” the glaive hissed.
“I'll be a fist in your fucking face if you try a stunt like that again.”
“Amicitia!” Oh, now Cor noticed. “What are you up to now? Voxio? You're supposed to be fighting the empire, not each other.
“And you're supposed to be keeping an eye on things!” Gladio said. He was making a spectacle. Absolutely everyone's eyes were on them.
“My office, Amicitia. Now. You too, Voxio.”
“I was only training!” Voxio protested.
“Like hell you were. Both of you get to my office before I jam half of that broken sword up each of your asses-- You listening to me, Amicitia?”
“Iggy?”
Ignis blinked something out of his eye. It took feeling with his fingers to realise it was blood.
“Go get a potion, Scientia. Then medical.”
“I feel fine!” He knew what leaving early would look like. Like preferential treatment. And he was sure he was fine. He didn't feel concussed. It was only a cut for goodness' sake.
“None of that was a suggestion, you three,” Cor said. “Get to it.”
###
Ignis had rarely noticed the glaives before. Now they seemed to be everywhere; whispering, glaring, and generally making him feel conspicuous. Most of them were content to keep their distance from him but Voxio cornered him on one of the corridors, delaying him en route to pick up Noct.
“You got me and Gladio into trouble,” he said.
They got themselves into trouble. Really it was the sheer inaccuracy of the statement that was the most galling. He hadn't provoked Voxio and he hadn't asked for Gladio's assistance. But that would hardly be a diplomatic response so Ignis presented his most neutral face. “I apologise for your inconvenience.”
“Listen, you little shit. I don't care whose dick you're sucking--”
“I'm not!” That was the second accusation of that ilk in a matter of days. Where in the world were they getting that impression? He was underage, for goodness' sake. King Regis would never do such a thing.
“Course not. You're just some pretty little orphan the rich folk keep around out of charity. It's not like I care about who's bending you over. But I do care about you batting your eyelashes at Cor so he does whatever you want.”
“You attacked me. We were supposed to be practising forms.”
“And you've got Gladio wrapped around your little finger.”
It was like they were having two different conversations. “I didn't ask Gladio to protect me, nor do I need him to.”
“He jumped right in there, though. You must have an ass like Ifrit himself.”
Now Gladio too? Was there anyone he wasn't sleeping with according to these baseless rumours? “What do you want from me?”
Apparently even Voxio himself didn't know. The question stumped him for a few seconds. “I want you to stop pissing me off!”
How was he supposed to do that? His very existence seemed to piss Voxio off. “Excuse me. I have duties to attend to.”
Voxio grabbed the front of Ignis' shirt as he tried to move away. “Oh no you don't.”
“I don't want to fight you.” He sincerely didn't. How would it look if surveillance caught him brawling in the halls like a common thug? And the possibility of one of the members of the High Council walking in on such a scene didn't bear thinking about. No, he should be able to de-escalate the situation. “Voxio. It was never my intention to inconvenience you, nor did I want you to be punished.”
“Suck my dick, Scientia.”
But the grip on his shirt loosened by a fraction. “Please,” Ignis said. “There's no need for all of this unpleasantness. I don't understand what I did to warrant this kind of hostility.” A bit too much sincerity slipped into that. His voice wobbled.
“Shit.” Voxio finally released him. “Kid. I'm... these Lucians really aren't fucking you?”
“No! Of course not.”
“You any idea what it's like outside the Wall? Where the Niffs don't even think it's worth annexing?”
Some. But that was knowledge gleaned from figures and graphs, from reported troupe movements, a spreading black presence on a printed map. Not the reality of fleeing for his life. “No.”
“Well, it sucks. And most of us aren't Lucians by choice, you know? The set-up you've got here is weird as shit. Some kid saying he's gonna be the prince's Shield and some other kid being a-- what looked like the prince's slave. And Cor the Immortal on the fucking battlefield since he was fifteen. The only reason the Niffs don't use child soldiers is cause they've got those fucking magiteks.”
“None of us are child soldiers.”
“Yeah, yeah. And the sun shines out of King Regis' asshole, right?”
“He's a great man and a great ruler.”
“They said that about Aldercapt once too.”
They were nothing alike. “If you really believed all of that, then I was a victim too. Why were you so angry at me?”
“Cause I'm dumb.” Voxio patted his pockets and produced a carton of cigarettes. “You want one?”
“No, I do not. And there's no smoking in here.” Ignis hesitated. He didn't like to be tardy but Noctis was always late himself. “The next time someone implies that King Regis is... is...”
“Fucking you?”
Ignis flushed. “You will correct them, yes?”
“Yeah, yeah kid. Didn't you have some kinda duty to attend to?”
###
It was naïve to expect things to change with just one person but knowing where the anger came from made it easier to deal with at least. Ignis took Cor's advice. He changed with the glaives. He did his best to converse with them. They were not very receptive but they no longer tried to flout the rules that Cor imposed. He still couldn't quite bring himself to use the communal shower but surely they could tell he was trying. It was rote now. Change quickly. Train with the glaives. Gather his things and escape to shower in private. There was no reason why this session should be any different.
“Gladio reckons the kid's a virgin.”
It was a stage whisper. One he was obviously meant to hear. He stared at his locker door, face burning. Surely not. They must be talking about someone else. Gladio wouldn't talk about him in such a manner.
“Explains a lot. He didn't know where to look when Pollux was swinging his dick around last week. Kid blushes more than he talks.”
“Kinda cute. Someone should show him around a dick.”
“I'd throw him a fuck.”
“You'd fuck your own ass if you could reach.”
“You saying you wouldn't? Kid's obviously thirsty for it.”
“Sounds like you're the one who's thirsty.”
They hadn't mentioned his name. It could be anyone. Gladio had warned him that the glaive's locker room conversations could be crude. And if some of the remarks hit a little too close to home then that was just coincidence.
“Hey, remember what Gladio said? Be nice. He doesn't get out much.”
“I'd be real nice.”
“Dude, fucking the prince's advisor's probably like high treason or something.”
Ignis fled the locker room. All through training all he think of was Gladio says he's a virgin and Gladio says he doesn't get out much. He botched several of the drills because there was simply no room in his head for anything else. It got to the point that Cor made him run extra laps.
When he was finished, he didn't bother to collect his clothes. Instead he caught up with Gladio who took one look at his face and excused himself from his horde of admiring glaives.
“Iggy? What's wrong?”
“What were you thinking, discussing my sex live with strangers?” Ignis kept his voice level and quiet with great effort. The glaives had chosen to linger and eavesdrop and the last thing he needed was for them to overhear.
“What? Oh. Oh shit, Iggy. It wasn't like that.”
“What was it like?”
“Not-- I didn't-- Look, some of the guys-- It's just guy talk, you know?”
“No, I don't.”
Gladio looked longingly at his group of friends and then back at Ignis. “About who they'd fu-- Who they've slept with. Who's got the best ass. What they'd like to do to who. Stuff like that.”
Oh, that stuff. Yes, what perfectly reasonable stuff that was to discuss. Gladio was supposed to be better than this! “And?”
“And someone brought you up and it got a bit-- I swear, Iggy. I told them to shut it.”
“It appears you told them a lot of things.”
Gladio squirmed. “What? What do you mean?”
“That I'm a virgin. Does that ring any bells?”
The guilt was written all over Gladio's face. Ignis turned to leave because the prince's adviser fist-fighting the prince's shield was a scene no one needed to see. “Wait!” Gladio said, clinging to his arm. “I was trying to stick up for you.”
“Excellent job!”
“No. Wait, Iggy, please. They were saying all kinds of stuff about you. I just wanted them to know it wasn't true.”
All kinds of stuff? Ignis snatched his arm away. “Wonderful friends you have there.”
Gladio rejoined the Glaives as Ignis stormed away.
“Trouble with the missus?” one of them teased.
“Shut the fuck up,” Gladio said.