nerdynekoproxy said: AU WHERE KEITH IS A TEACHER AND SHIRO’S ADOPTED CHILD IS ONE OF KEITHS STUDENTS (probs Pidge)
On the first day of second grade, Shiro is nervous. He’s trying to make her a sandwich for lunch, but his hands keep shaking. Pidge finishes her bowl of cereal and quietly comes up behind him, wraps her arms around his leg.
“Don’t cry.” She mumbles. “I can just buy lunch at school.”
Shiro picks her up; his eyes look a little red, but he smiles as warmly as ever. “Hey there, pidgeon. Done with breakfast already?”
“Hey there.” She repeats, pokes his forehead. “I’m gonna be fine, Uncle Shiro. You don’t need to worry about me. I’m a big kid.”
“You are, aren’t you?” Shiro says. “So you don’t need me to carry you out to the car?”
“You can still do that,” Pidge immediately says, and he laughs.
They don’t see Hunk or Lance anywhere when they get to the school, but Pidge assures Shiro that she’ll be fine. Admittedly, she’s feeling a little nervous, but Shiro doesn’t need to know that. Looking around, she feels like she’s a little shorter than the other kids, a little scrawnier – already, her mind is beginning to whisper what if they don’t like her, but she tries to shake it off.
She’ll adapt. She always has.
It’s Shiro she’s more worried about. He thinks she doesn’t notice, but she does: he holds her hand a little tighter whenever he notices the other parents looking at his white hair, his prosthetic, his scar cutting across his nose. They whisper, like he can’t see or hear them just because he’s different.
Pidge squeezes Shiro’s hand. Shiro is her hero, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t need protecting. If that’s what Pidge can do for him, just hold his hand, she will. Shiro’s been around since she was born, and now he’s all she has left. Twenty-five seems ancient to her, but Aunt Allura, during one of her visits, had said it was young in that sad, adult kind of voice. It didn’t really make sense at the time, but what Pidge does know is that Shiro’s doing his best, and that this is scary for him, and that she needs to make it okay.
“Hey,” she whispers, “We’re gonna do great.”
“Of course you are,” Shiro murmurs back.
“Both of us,” she stresses. Shiro crouches down, pulls her into a hug.
“I’m fine, baby,” he says. “I’m so excited to see my little pigeon fly. You’re going to learn so much.”
“Okay,” Pidge says, unconvinced. “Can we go for ice cream when you get me?”
“Mhm,” Shiro says. “Hunk and Lance can come too.”
“Yess!”
Pidge’s homeroom teacher is a Mr. Keith Kogane, room 3A. It’s easy to spot: there are cute animal stickers on the door with each student’s name. PIDGE is printed on an owl, right next to a cat that says ROMELLE.
And then the door opens, and Mr. Kogane steps out.
She hears Shiro’s breath catch, and tries not to giggle. She’s pretty sure that they’re thinking the same thing: Mr. Kogane looks like a Disney prince. He has long-ish black hair and blue eyes like Prince Eric, but what Pidge finds the most interesting is that he has a scar, too, on his cheek.
“Uncle Shiro,” she whispers. “You match.”
Shiro can’t even speak, his face rapidly turning tomato-red. If Pidge is calculating right, she can extort an extra scoop of ice cream later if she teases him enough.
“H-hi, um, I’m Pidge’s guardian, Shiro,” Shiro says, gently putting Pidge forward. Mr. Kogane bends down to give her a nametag and a green marker.
“Welcome to 3A, Pidge.” Mr. Kogane sounds like a prince too, with the way he speaks quietly but warmly. It reminds her of Shiro. “Why don’t you go pick out a seat and I’ll talk to Shiro for a minute?”
“Sure.” She shuffles past, but picks the desk closest to the door so she can listen in.
“Is there anything I need to know? Any allergies or anything that might’ve been left out?” Mr. Kogane asks.
“No allergies,” Shiro says, hesitates. “I know she’ll be a great student. There’s just something I want to bring up, if that’s okay.”
Pidge knows exactly what he’s about to say. She purses his lips, concentrates on drawing leaves around the PIDGE she’s written in block letters. If she focuses on lines and lines alone, she won’t have to think about the blood rushing in her ears.
“Shoot,” Mr. Kogane says.
“We moved classes last year because there was some, uh, bullying problems.” Shiro says. “I, uh, used to work with Pidge’s family, so when she lost them, I took her in, and there’s just been some – some unneeded cruelty. About me being an unfit guardian, and about her being ‘different’ or whatever. But she’s the best, really, and I don’t want her to have to deal with that again because of me.”
Shiro’s voice gets smaller and smaller as he explains. Pidge adds more leaves onto her name tag, bites her lip. She doesn’t remember her parents or brother much, even though she does miss them sometimes, but she knows Shiro thinks about them all the time. She knows the reason kids being stupid hurts him so much because he already thinks he’s doing a bad job. But it’s not true!
“I can tell that she loves you,” Mr. Kogane says softly. “So I think you’re doing just fine. But I understand, I’ll keep an eye out. I want my classroom to be a safe space for everyone.”
“Thank you,” Shiro murmurs. Pidge can see his head hanging low; she jumps out of her seat, and runs to throw her arms around him.
She doesn’t need to say anything. He knows.
Mr. Kogane – who asks them to call him Keith – turns out to be kind of cool. He’s even younger than Shiro, just twenty-three, and spends some talking about some time talking about himself.
“I was in the foster home system for a while,” he says, and Pidge’s head jerks up in surprise. “And if there’s one thing I learned from that, it’s to be kind. That means so, so much. People are gonna be different from you, and that’s okay. Be kind. Learn from them. We’re all here to grow together.”
He’s pacing around the room as he talks, gesturing with his hands, but Pidge swears that he winks at her.
The end of the day comes before she even realizes it. It was fun, something she’s pretty excited to report to Shiro. None of the kids thought she was freaky or weird. Romelle likes computer games too, and they might play together sometime. She had lunch with Lance and Hunk, and they tell her about third grade, and that second grade is fun, especially with Keith. Lance says that he can be a little strict sometimes, but Hunk is over the moon about him.
Pidge is optimistic.
When Shiro comes to pick her up, a giddy Hunk and Lance at his feet already, Pidge takes her time coming over. She wants him to talk to Keith first, calm down a little bit. Shiro’s turned into a tomato again – Keith’s put his hand on Shiro’s shoulder.
Uncle Shiro is hopeless, she thinks with a grin. But who wouldn’t be against Disney prince magic?
You know, every time you send me one of these I feel the overpowering urge to turn it into a drabble. So, once again my darling KP, here’s some Ignoct smut inspired by your amazing prompt ❤
BHE Ignoct, ~1500 words, NSFW (first time, awkward sex, two dumb boys in love)
~
Noct knows he shouldn’t be nervous, but he is. Tonight’s special, no matter how ordinary it may have started off, and even though it’s his apartment and his sofa and his Iggy, he can’t seem to keep his heart from pounding.
Probably because the Ignis sitting beside him, with one leg tucked under his weight and green eyes electric behind his lenses, isn’t quite the same Ignis he’s always been. Just like his shirt is new, and the cologne he’s taken to wearing recently is subtle yet alluring, Iggy too has changed. Noct isn’t entirely sure when he first started to notice, but once it hit him, he’d fallen hard. Fallen for his best friend, who was also his mentor, and now suddenly…something even more.
“Noct? Are you alright?”
That voice is so familiar, yet laced with a depth Noctis can’t quite fathom. He blinks, and swallows. “Yeah. ‘Course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Ignis’ green eyes seem to swirl with light as he leans forward. Places a warm hand on Noct’s own where they sit mere inches apart, facing each other. “You seem tense. May I ask why you’ve really invited me over this evening?”
I have a soft spot for all kinds of love confessions – the sweet and tender ones, the hilarious ones, the ones that involve little nudges from friends, in short: all beautiful possibilities our favourite ship offers. And it seems that many that come to my mind won’t leave until they’re written down … which is why I decided to put them together in a collection of one shots! And I finally managed to finish another one!!
***
Dís drew back a little to study his face. Her eyes narrowed while she did so, but suddenly she showed him a broad smile. “Your eyes look like amber indeed!”, she exclaimed while beaming at him.
“Oh, ahem …” Bilbo stammered, not really knowing how to respond. It almost sounded as if somebody had talked with her about the colour of his eyes – which was absolute nonsense! Who would tell her such an absurd thing about him?
“ . . . . . Fanart for a fanfic by @rsasai’s “There’s a Noctis in my Pocket”, image inspired by Chapter Nine (In the Still of the Night). Ignoct is good for the soul, definite recommended!（⌒▽⌒ゞ
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“What are they talking about?” asks Bifur, when his cousin Bofur sits down beside him that night. He points over to where Mister Baggins and the King are in deep conversation by the fire.
“Ah, nothing much,” replies Bofur in speech. “You know what they’re like.”
“Does the hobbit know?”
This time Bofur answers with his hands. “Know what?”
“That the King is in love with him,” says Bifur. It’s been clear to all of them for weeks now, and yet nothing seems to have happened yet.
“He must do! Sure he’s as bad,” signs Bofur, laughing. “You see him listening to Thorin sometimes and his eyes glaze over, like all he can think about is getting his ankles pinned by his ears and buggered ‘till he sings.”
The hobbit has noticed their conversation and, as usual, is watching the Iglishmêk signs with fascination. Suddenly his face turns bright scarlet, and it occurs to Bifur that the signs, though secret, are not always terribly subtle.
“What on earth are you two saying about me?” he splutters, and Thorin twists around to glare at them.
“Oh, nothing about you at all!” says Bofur cheerily, in speech, repeating the gesture. “Just a wee discussion about mining. Getting deep into a seam, you know.”
Mister Baggins looks mollified, but Thorin’s face is like thunder. Bifur sighs. His cousin is a reprobate who will get himself banished one day.
Fingertips trace idle patterns over his skin, the touch warm even despite his own heat. Ignis opens his eyes to watch the way Noct’s hand drags back and forth across his collarbone, and he finds his lips curling at the corners.
Noct tilts his head where it rests just over Ignis’s heart, glancing up at him. His ministrations don’t cease, and the corners of his own mouth twitch up in response. “What?”
Ignis shakes his head, and he lifts a hand to tangle it with the one on his chest. He feels the steady pulse of his own heartbeat against his palm and marvels at how he can feel it in time with Noct’s own.
“There’s that look again,” Noct says, and Ignis blinks when he leans up enough to nudge their noses together. There’s a playful gleam in his eye when he leans back. “Penny for your thoughts?”
A fond huff escapes him, and Ignis finds himself lost in the endless blue of Noct’s gaze. Like looking at the horizon, where the sky and ocean meet, and being unable to tell where one ends and the other begins, if they are even separate at all.
He has not felt this whole and complete in all of his existence, the millennia upon millennia that he has roamed this star, and it never ceases to amaze him how he’s fallen for a single, unassuming mortal who is anything but.
“A god’s existence is a lonely one,” Ignis finally murmurs, “apathetic at best, full of rage and retribution at worst. Happiness, joy, love—we know them not. It is no life, not truly.” He brings Noct’s hand to his lips, leaves soft kisses over the knuckles, breath ghosting over pale skin. Noct shudders against him, and Ignis meets his eyes again.
Oh, how he loves those eyes.
“You’ve shown me what love can feel like,” he admits, and he is overwhelmed suddenly, his chest full of adoration and joy and contentment for the man in his arms. He feels fit to burst, so full of these emotions, and his heart skips a beat—truly, what sensations he’s come to know!—as Noct’s face flushes a bright red and he bites his lip, trying to contain a smile.
“That was really cheesy,” he says, a laugh bursting out of him, and Ignis feels only joy that he is the cause of that sound. Noct leans forward and bumps their noses together again, though this time he stays close, mouth hovering but a breath from Ignis’s own. “But i like that about you.”
Ignis tastes a storm in the air, and he feels electric as Noct presses forward. He lets himself be devoured, his fire mastered by the will of a mortal, and he knows he’s never known such submission, such contentment.
Gladio puts his head in his hands. “Ignis isn’t even a character, Noct.”
Noct frowns, squinting down at their figures while gently rolling his dice between his palms. “Okay. Well. I seduce Ignis’s character.”
“His name is Ifrit,” Ignis supplies helpfully.
“Great. Ifrit. Let me do it.”
With a long-suffering sigh, Gladio waves his hand towards Noct. “Fine. Roll for it. That’s a charisma check.”
Prompto grimaces as he looks over Noct’s shoulder. “Aw, buddy, roll high. Your charisma is shit.”
Admirably, Noct manages to flip Prompto off while still shaking his die with both hands. “I’m charismatic as fuck,” he says, and he lets the die skid across the table. It skips around, falling first on a 2, then an 18, and then hovers dangerously close to a 3. And then, miraculously, it rolls a final time, and the gold print 20 shines up from the middle of the table.
With a whoop, Prompto pumps his fist in the air. “Yes! Critical seduction!”
Noct grins at Ignis from across the table, stretching out his foot to tap at the side of his calf. To his credit, Ignis only blushes a little bit.
Gladio blinks. He looks like he’s aged about five years. “Well. Okay. You fucking win, then.”
Prompto slams his hands on the table. “What?” he cries. “But I wanted to fight! I have all these spells! Let me fight the final boss!”
“Ignis was the final boss,” Gladio groans, and he puts his head in his hands.
“Ifrit,” Ignis reminds him, smiling benignly down at his character sheet.
Gladio sinks down in his chair. “I’m never DMing for you guys ever again.”
“You’ve said that eighty times already,” the prisoner beside him near-sobs in frustration. “Please stop. I get it.”
Keith heaves a long, world-weary sigh, and continues plucking at the small plants growing through the cracks of their damp cell. He’s been in here for a grand total of maybe three hours, and it’s more the boredom getting to him than anything.
Keith drew the short straw when it came to being bait for the jailbreak they’re about to follow through with on a Galran prison block on an isolated planet. It’s not a taxing job; the Galra general that runs this planet seems to have stumbled upon the job and hasn’t quite figured out how to leave yet. But Keith had to get captured, had to get knocked around and bait the guards long enough for Pidge and Shiro to sneak in.
Getting thrown into a cell hadn’t been part of the plan, but had been accounted for, so Keith’s not worried about not breaking free. He’s under strict orders by the team collectively that he’s not exactly needed, so if he gets caught, he can chill out for a moment.
If anything, his escape will serve as a measuring stick for whether they’ve gotten everyone out or not. He wonders if Shiro will be dramatic about rescuing Keith; he kind of hopes he will, hopes he’ll swoop in like a knight in dirt-stained armour. Keith thinks that he’ll give Shiro an exaggerated, wet kiss as a thank you, just to embarrass him.
“You told me I looked like I need to open up,” Keith accuses his cellmate. They look like a Yupper, but talk with the smooth rich accent of an Altean.
“I said you looked like you needed to be opened up,” The prisoner groans, burying their head in four of their hands. “I was trying to threaten you.”
“Oh,” Keith blinks, and then shrugs. “Don’t.”
The prisoner gives him an incredulous look, and Keith raises an eyebrow. He shifts a little, and pulls out the hilt of his mother’s knife from his boot. The guard’s hadn’t been able to find it, too distracted by the fight he had put up while they tried to search him. The prisoner’s eyes catch the purple gem in the middle, and their eyes widen.
“Alright,” They say quietly, and turn so that they’re facing the cell door instead of Keith. “Okay. Tell me more about this Shiro.”
Oh, my friend ❤ Thank you for sharing this little bit of pure Promptio. I hope you don’t mind a little drabble in exchange? :3
~
It’s after midnight when Gladio’s truck pulls into the garage. He kills the engine quick, not wanting the noise to wake the neighbors, and drops the keys into his jacket pocket. Snags his duffel back out of the passenger seat and groans at the weight of it on his already sagging shoulders. He’s tired, he’s old, he’s overworked. But at least he’s finally made it home.
And home means a lot of things. It means there’s a couple bottles of cold beer in the fridge. It means a hot shower and an oversized towel to wrap around his waist. It means those fuzzy behemoth-themed slippers Prom got him for their anniversary last year (he secretly loves how soft they are on the heels of his feet). It means comfort.
But most important of all, home means Prompto. Sweet, freckled Prompto, the light of his life and the most lovable pain in his neck. Gladio finds him already in bed when he cracks open the door, still dressed and wearing his glasses. His phone is on the pillow next to him – screen blinking in the middle of some game – and soft light is pouring out across the carpet from the bedside lamp. The scene is, in a word, heartwarming.
Gladio smiles. Creeps in as quietly as he can, intending to switch off the light so his husband can sleep in peace. But something unexpected catches his eye. It’s Prompto’s shirt – or, well, the shirt he’s currently swimming in, in any case. Black, worn, with the straps sliding down his thin shoulders and an unmistakable silver logo embroidered on the front. Crownsguard. It’s Gladio’s favorite tank top. He could have sworn he tossed it in the hamper that morning, but….
“Mm. Gladdy…?” A shift on the mattress. The sheets pull back as Prompto stirs, his bright blue eyes opening just enough to peek up at his husband above him. “What time is it?”
“Almost one,” he answers, and his tone is tinged with apology. “There was some trouble at the station, had to pull an extra shift. At least they gave me the rest of the weekend off for it.”
A sleepy smile. Prompto, yawning, rolls onto his back and lets Gladio slip off his glasses for him. “That means you can sleep in late.”
“It does.”
“With me.”
“With you.” Pink lips are so inviting in that moment. Prompto blushes, tells him to at least let him brush his teeth first, but Gladio isn’t in the mood to wait. His jacket comes off, followed by his belt, his uniform, his socks. Until he’s stripped down to his boxers (also behemoth-themed, they match the slippers) and climbing into bed next to the love of his life.
“Gladdy, you’re all sweaty,” the blond laughs, not actually minding as his own arms find their way around broad shoulders.
“Yeah, well. I thought you liked the way I smell.” As he speaks, he tugs at the strap of the stolen shirt, and watches as several emotions flash across his husband’s face. Embarrassment, a sheepish smile, and finally – to Gladio’s delight – a grin that could rival his own for downright mischief.
“You want it back? You’re gonna have to take it from me.”
Ooh, temping. But it’s late, and as much as he would love to see Prompto squirming in various states of undressed beneath him right now, he’s also liable to fall asleep in the middle of the good stuff. So, placing a kiss right in the center of those perfect lips, he promises to make up for it first thing in the morning.
Prompto, understanding, settles for cuddling him down under the sheets.
The lamp is switched off. Prom’s phone joins Gladio’s on the nightstand, and two heads sink as one into the heavenly soft pillows. And as his husband’s steady breathing gradually coaxes his eyes closed, Gladio can’t help but smile.
In Prompto’s arms, he’s home. And home is exactly where he loves to be.
serenbach86 