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The dinner party—which was to say, Gladio wanted a simple dinner with friends and family but Ignis being Ignis decided to turn it into a party—was a success. There had been plenty of food and drinks that went around, and everyone Gladio wanted to see had turned up, even the ones who couldn’t promise that they could make it. As for the gifts he got, they were great things to add to the house or the soup kitchen which he and Ignis still managed from the days of Darkness.
In his younger days, Gladio’s parties usually went on all night and lasted into the morning. Now that he was older, though, and happily settling into a domestic life, he couldnʼt be more relieved to be showing the last of his guests out at 9 in the evening.
“Thanks for coming,” he said to them, crossing arms with Noctis and Prompto one more time before he waved them off to the Regalia, where Cor was waiting to drive them to the Citadel. He stood by the gate until the royal car turned into the corner and disappeared from sight.
By the time he had made his way back up the house, the living room had all been cleared up and Ignis was coming in from the dining hall with a bottle of wine and three empty glasses. Gladio eyed them suspiciously even as he was locking up for the night.
“We expecting someone else?” he asked, tossing the keys to Ignis after he’d put the stuff down onto the glass table.
Ignis snatched it off the air easily. “It’s a surprise,” was all he said, putting the keys down next to the bottle so he could have his hands free by the time Gladio had joined him in the carpet. Their arms found their way around each other like clockwork—Gladio taking him by his tapered waist and Ignis choosing to settle for his shoulders and the back of his neck.
“So?” Ignis asked, canting his head a little sideways, a subtle smirk coming up briefly from his lips. “I told you to leave your birthday to me, did I not?”
“And I did,” Gladio crooned back, lifting a brow. “Even though I remember telling you to keep it simple, Mr. Amicitia.”
“Simple is for the inelegant, Mr. Scientia,” Ignis sighed. With deliberate movements, he tapped the sharp tip of Gladioʼs nose, which brought out a tickled smile from his husband. “Besides, this is the first time we get to celebrate your birthday as husband and husband. And what sort of husband would I be if I didn’t pull out all the stops for my husband?”
Gladio laughed in soft little gasps, putting their foreheads together. “Feels so good having a fully functional kitchen, eh, Scientia?” With a boyish grin, Ignis nodded. “Well, I’m glad my birthday could be of service to you.”
“Mm, I’m sure,” Ignis murmured. “Those poor guests of yours barely got to taste any of the chickatrice I roasted.”
“Hey, whose birthday is it, anyway?” Gladio snickered, inviting the same noise from his husband. “Seriously, though, the dinner was great. Thanks, Ignis, I loved every minute of it.”
Ignis smiled proudly. “My pleasure.”
“Time to wind down and celebrate on our own?” Gladio nodded to the bottle waiting to be opened.
Ignis started to nod but stopped suddenly, eyes as green as the fresh leaves of spring in their garden coming alight. “Not quite yet,” he told him, raising a finger between their noses. “I have one last birthday surprise for you.”
“Oh, c’mon,” Gladio said with a soft laugh in his chest, for no other reason than he didnʼt know what else to say. He swore, Ignis had been planning this whole thing out even as they were putting together his birthday just two months back. In the absence of an embrace, Ignis stitched their fingers together while he pulled out his phone from the back of his slacks, swiped at it briefly, then dropped it into an empty glass.
Then he reclaimed his space in front of his husband and started to sway him even before the first plucks of the guitar resounded from the glass booster. “Do you still remember how to dance, husband?”
“The way we’ve never danced in five, six years?” Gladio quipped, though his feet started to move on their own even without his thinking about it. Clumsily, at first, then more bravely when he started to remember the pressure on his toes and his heels. Given, it was just…artful waddling. Which had earned him a slap on his shoulder the last time he made that joke on his then-fiancé. He shifted his arm more comfortably around Ignis until his fingers had settled into each other, pushing his ring deeper into his knuckle. He tried to guess the familiar chords. “Is this our wedding song?” His eyes narrowed subtly.
Ignis shook his head, looking at him. “Even better,” he answered quietly.
Gladio waited it out, then, still moving hypnotically with his spouse. Caught between losing himself in his verdant gaze and keeping his mind on the song, which strangely felt intimate enough for him to know when the words began. That went: “You…are…the one that I loathe. A lump in my throat—”
“A bit too much to swallow” Gladio stared widely at Ignis’ crescent eyes, a little stunned that the words he sang matched the next lyrics.
“But I can’t seem to spew you out,” his husband replied, caressing his scarred cheek with his hand.
“Ignis, you found it!”
“Finally,” Ignis laughed. “I had thought it lost in the annals of history myself until I found some old CDs being auctioned online.” He shifted his arms over Gladioʼs neck to hold him more comfortably. “Imagine my joy. I had to ask for Promptoʼs help to digitize it, so that we never lose it anymore.”
“Our first song,” Gladio sighed, tipping their foreheads together again. “Figures if there’s anyone here who would find it, it would be the hunter who uncovered Adagium’s origins.”
“You’re welcome, my love.” Ignis smiled, his fingers playing lightly with the tips of Gladioʼs half-ponytail.
It was the perfect way to end his birthday, Gladio thought. After a dinner full of friends and family from the past and the present, his husband, the man he had loved for nearly half of his life, would take him by the hand and dance him to the tune of their shared past, which was gentle and soothing and uplifting all at once.
Enough to bring a little tear to his eyes. Ignis laughed, wiping it away. “‘cause you taste like wine on my tongue,” he sang to him softly, cupping him by his jaw and his cheek. “Donʼt know if you’re good for me.”
“Yeah, I’m wasted the moment you’re gone,” Gladio replied, stroking a little at the errant lock that had escaped his pompadour. “Donʼt know if you’re good for me. You’re too—”
“—good,” Ignis joined him. “You’re too good—”
“—for me,” Gladio finished, his smile growing slowly wider into a beam.
They laughed, Ignis tossing his head back though they’re feet were never distracted from the little movements they made.
“I canʼt believe we still remember this song!” Gladio cried.
“Oh, please, I overplayed it,” Ignis sighed, combing his thick dark locks over his shoulder, seemingly fascinated by them. “Remember? The day after we were stranded by the rain in the snack store, I came back and asked the proprietor for the radio station they were tuned into. And then I spent the entire night, waiting for the blasted song to come on,” they both laughed again, “that I completely disregarded my homework!”
“Yeah and I gave you mine so that you wouldn’t lose your passing streak,” Gladio added, shifting his arms around him again. “And I remember thinking: if this guy doesnʼt see how serious I am with him that I’m willing to squander my future,” Ignis erupted again in glee, “I dunno what else I’ll do. That was the moment you fell in love with me, right?”
Ignis shook his head. “I donʼt know the moment I fell in love with you. I only knew that when we heard this song…” He looked into his eyes. “Our song…and you kept looking at me as if you wanted to sing it entirely to me yourself, I had already fallen for you. I still feel sorry I couldn’t remember.”
“Hey, you think I can remember when I started to like ya?” Gladio poked his nose softly with his. “I just did, okay? Remember, I said I thought you looked cute. And then the rest is history and I’ve never looked at anyone ever again.”
“You’re right,” Ignis said, nodding slightly as he felt the line of his lower lip softly with his thumb. “You’re right. What only matters now is that whatever happened in the past, it brought us here, in this moment, together.”
Dancing, swaying to guitars and pianos and lingering memories of their school days, when everything had felt temporary and desperate all at the same time. Gladio could still remember how oppressive that afternoon had been despite the heavy rain of the changing seasons. And then add to that the words that were clogged in his chest and trapped in his eyes as he begged for Ignis to look at him even just for one second. To tell him how he felt about him, that he always, always found his way back to him no matter how much he tried to stay away.
And now here he was in his arms, shifting closer so that they were chest to chest, and Ignis could lay his cheek onto his shoulder, humming the rising crescendo of the song that was theirs.
“Youʼre too good to me,” he sighed with the melody. “Youʼre so good, oh…”
“Youʼre too good to me,” Gladio echoed, pressing his lips to Ignisʼ hair. He couldnʼt believe where he was that night—in his house, and at home in his husbandʼs, heady warmth. To think he would one day be close enough to taste it, after all those years of yearning for it…
“‘cause you taste like wine on my tongue,” Gladio whispered to Ignis as the song faded out. Ignis lifted his head to smile at him.
Their lips found their way home to each other, sending a honey-like thrill down Gladioʼs skin while their tongues reunited fondly between them. They pulled each other closer, and when they parted, it was only for the joy of kissing each other again. Of steeping themselves in their blissful glow.
Ignis sang out a happy exhale at the end of their kiss. “Happy birthday, my love.” He brushed idly at the corner of his lips. “May you have many more yet to come.”
Gladio smirked softly at him. “And may they all be with you in my arms.”