Vesper Pool Party
Ignis was just coming back from an early morning swim (or what passed as "early" with their messed up sleep schedule) in the Vesper Pool, when Noct crawled out of the tent still looking groggy.
"Good morning, highness," Ignis called while snatching a towel out of the Armiger.
Noct mumbled something that only passed as a "Morning, Iggy" after years of familiarity with the prince.
"I'll get started on breakfast shortly. I was thinking that we'd use the benches and table instead of the camping chairs?"
Noct grunted in agreement and started setting up their seating arrangements, before he walked off again, presumably to get ready for the day.
Ignis had just gotten done whipping up the pancake batter and started cooking them, when the video game music he could hear coming from the tent cut off.
Prompto stumbled out and almost ran into the table that he wasn't accustomed to. "Morning," he mumbled as he righted himself.
Ignis looked over his shoulder. "Good morning, Prompto. Be a dear and set the table?"
"Sure thing." Prompto did as asked before plopping down on one of the benches, where he was shortly joined by Noctis, who returned from his morning wash.
Eventually a damp Gladio with a towel slung across his neck returned to the haven just as Ignis set the food down at the table.
"Have a nice run?" Prompto turned to Gladio over the last bites of his pancakes.
"Yeah. Jumped in the lake too, to cool off. The water's nice," Gladio said, running a hand through his still damp hair.
"Ooh! We gotta go swimming!" Prompto exclaimed, almost jumping up from the table.
Ignis walked past him to pick up his plate. "An hour from now. You just ate," he chastised him.
"Aawww..." Prompto deflated, sprawling out across the table in his despair.
Ignis prodded his side with a small smile. "Just kidding. That's a myth. Go have fun."
"Yay!"
And off Prompto and Noctis went to get dressed in their swimming shorts.
They came back out in record time and were almost gone when Ignis called after them. "Did you remember your sunscreen?"
"Nope!" Prompto bounded back into the tent and reemerged with a bottle of sunscreen in hand, already in the process of covering his arms and face. He sat down on the bench in front of Ignis and passed the bottle to him.
Ignis benignly worked the sunscreen onto Prompto's back, and Gladio did the same for Noct, before they switched places.
With all of them protected against sunburn now, Prompto was about to set off to the lake, when he stopped himself this time. “Oh! We should take the air mattresses and all that stuff!”
He pulled an air pump and several piles of limp inflatable toys and flotation devices out of the Armiger, struggled to pick them all up, reconsidered, and shoved them back in. "I'll get them when we're at the water."
Gladio turned to Ignis as the boys vanished over the bend of the hill. "I didn't even know we had those."
Ignis shook his head. "Me neither." He had retrieved their playing cards earlier and set them down on the table in front of Gladio. "Up for another round?"
"Sure thing. Now that Prompto isn't here to win all the time we might even get to play."
Ignis nodded his assent and started shuffling the cards.
"What else are they keeping from us?" Gladio pondered after a minute while Ignis was still dealing out. "They better not be hiding secret snacks from us!"
Ignis watched as Gladio reached into the Armiger and came away with a packet of chips.
Gladio gasped in mock outrage. "Those little devils!"
They were quietly picking up and putting down cards for a bit, before Gladio spoke up again.
"I still can't believe that you of all people suggested that we should take a break here. And a full day at that."
Ignis readjusted his glasses. "Well, those couple of run-ins with daemons we had the last few days were a bit much, and pushing on for too long without a break will wear down on morale, which is ultimately counterproductive to our mission."
Gladio nodded sagely. "Very reasonable. Always the tactician."
Ignis shoved his glasses up a bit again. "Also the water looked really nice and it's been too long since I last had the opportunity to go for a relaxed swim."
A grin broke out on Gladio's face. "There we have it."
Ignis scoffed at that and put down the last of his cards, winning the round. "Think of it what you will, but I'm going swimming now."
"Good idea. I think I'm completely dried off by now. Time to go back in.
There was a startling amount of inflatables scattered over the beach, that Ignis ignored for the time being, save for an air mattress he took over to the pier where Noct was fishing, to retrieve it later.
Getting into the water was the hardest task yet. He hadn’t felt it as much earlier, but now, against the heat of the mid-morning sun, the cool water felt positively freezing.
The others didn’t seem to mind.
Well, Noct wasn’t in yet.
But Prompto was floating on an air mattress of his own, limbs hanging down into the water without a care, and Gladio was walking into the deeper part with what seemed like clenched teeth and unwavering resolve. He only started swearing after coming back up from fully submerging himself. Ignis looked down into the cold water beneath the pier, regretted his life choices, took a deep breath, and jumped.
He immediately started shivering, all his muscles clenching to keep him warm.
The water was shallow enough for him to stand, but he still started dog paddling to warm himself up.
“How’s the water?” Noct asked nonchalantly, not looking away from the bobber.
“Just peachy,” Ignis managed between chattering teeth. “Do you want to join us, Noct?”
“Nah, I’m good out here,” Noct replied while casting another line.
“Suit yourself.” Ignis pulled his air mattress into the water and climbed onto it, mimicking Prompto’s pos-
A splash made him look up, over to where Gladio had just pulled Prompto into the water.
-mimicking Prompto’s previous position of lying on his back, his limbs hanging into the water. He employed a very lazy backstroke to propel himself away from the pier, carefully avoiding Noct’s bobber, as he enjoyed the sun warming him up in opposition to the water keeping him at a comfortable level. He closed his eyes, letting the wind and waves push him where they may, comfortable in his ability to swim if something went wrong, and in the voices of his friends close enough for him to know he wasn’t drifting too far.
Ignis felt the lower end of the air mattress dip, and when he looked up Noct had managed to get halfway onto the empty part between Ignis’ spread legs with minimal jostling.
He sat up as much as he could without falling into the water, and shuffled back a bit to give Noct more space. "Oh? Finally decided to join us?"
Noct pouted up at him. "Gladio and Prompto are splashing around too much. It's startling all the fish away."
Ignis ruffled Noct’s hair. “I’m sure they’re very sorry about that.”
“I’m very sure they’re not.”
Ignis laughed at the indignation in the prince’s voice. “You might be right about that.” He caught the mischievous glint in Noct’s eyes just a second too late. “Noct,” he managed, but that was all he got out before Noct slipped down, pulling the air mattress with him and unceremoniously dumping Ignis into the water.
Ignis came back up, sputtering and shaking the water from his face and hair like a wet dog. “Oh, now you’ve done it,” he growled ominously, but Noct was already swimming out of reach, over to where Gladio and Prompto were throwing a ball around.
Ignis quickly got his justice, as Prompto, unaware of Noct, threw himself backwards to catch the beach ball and accidentally delivered a broadside of water into the prince’s face.
“Sorry, Noct!” Prompto apologized when he saw his friend drenched behind him.
Noct had just stopped wiping the water out of his eyes when Ignis caught up with him and dunked his head under water for good measure.
Prompto’s eyes grew wide, but Ignis let up quickly with the reassurance of “He had it coming.”
Noct shook himself and gave Ignis a seething look, but seemed to concede that he had brought it on himself.
They both joined in on Gladio’s and Prompto’s game for a bit, before going back onto land to get a snack and reapply their sunscreen.
Afterwards Ignis returned to lazing on the air mattress, only lying halfway across it on his stomach to proof his craft against being sunk by Noct.
Ignis must have dozed off, because he was startled awake when something bumped into the air mattress that his torso was still draped over. The something turned out to be Noct, who had backed into him, while snorkeling for shiny rocks in the shallow part of the lake.
But Noct was the only one he could see and it was generally suspiciously quiet. “Where are Prompto and Gladio?”
Noct shook a bit of water off himself and took the snorkel out of his mouth. “Prompto challenged Gladio to swim across the lake. Well, he challenged me too, but I didn’t wanna. They left, hmm, maybe ten minutes ago?” Noct straightened up and tried to make himself as tall as he could while swimming. “Yeah, I can still see them. Looks like they’re a quarter of the way to the other side.”
Ignis pushed himself off the float, his eyebrows drawing together in a frown. "They're not gonna make it, are they?"
"Eh, they're tough." And that was Noct's final statement before getting ready to snorkel again.
Ignis wasn't convinced. The boys had already expended a lot of energy roughhousing earlier, and he was entirely unconvinced that they would manage to get all the way to the other side, and much less back again.
Getting stuck on the other side, utterly exhausted and with the sun setting soon, was not an ideal situation.
But they were too far already. Ignis couldn't catch up with them (not that that would do anyone much good), and there was nothing he could do. In the face of a lack of any other options he swam back to shore, sitting in the sand and keeping a watchful eye on the two specks he could make out in the water, not knowing what he should do if they were in trouble, but needing to see they weren't actively drowning just yet.
He sat there for another good forty minutes, pulling a blanket out of the Armiger rather than leaving to get one of the towels they'd set out, before he saw the shapes of his friends get close to the other shore.
The air was getting cold at this point, the edges of the sky turning orange with the setting of the sun.
Ignis waded back into the water, over to where Noct was still happily snorkeling. He pulled the prince up by the shoulder and waited until he pulled off his snorkeling gear.
"I need to drive to the other side and pick Gladio and Prompto up. Fire up the barbecue while I'm away, will you? Those two need to get some food in them after their little stunt."
Noct gave him a nod. "Sure thing. It's getting cold anyway."
Ignis made his way to the car, leaving his blanket where it was, only stopping long enough to throw some towels into the backseat, before he was off.
The regalia sounded like it wasn't quite agreeing with the rough terrain around the lake, but there was no other option.
He'd finally rounder the lake after an agonizingly slow ten minutes, and got there just in time to see Gladio pull Prompto's limp body out of the water.
Ignis was out of the car and kneeling by their side in an instant, helping to drag an unconscious (and now why was he unconscious?!) Prompto onto land.
"What happened?!" He couldn't help the accusatory tone.
Gladio remained amazingly and infuriatingly calm. "He kept insisting he was fine to go all the way, but he ran out of energy in the last three minutes. Swallowed a bit of water before I got to him. Help me with that, Iggy." He shifted Prompto's dead weight - oh gods, don't think of it like that - around, rolling him onto his stomach and lifting his abdomen, so that the water could run out of his mouth.
Ignis couldn't do much more than offer his knee to rest Prompto's hips on, and run a hand over the clammy skin of Prompto's back, while the boy's instincts took over and his body started hacking up water.
After he was done, Ignis and Gladio shared a worried glance and dragged Prompto upright and over to the car. They could deal with any further repercussions at the campsite. Right now it was more pressing to leave before the daemons started spawning.
Ignis drove them back, while Gladio was in the backseat with Prompto, first wrapping up Prompto's shivering body in dry towels and then his own.
Prompto woke up six minutes into the drive. Ignis would have missed it if he hadn't heard a mumbled "Huh?"
Ignis stayed focused on the road but couldn't help the occasional glance at the backseat through the rearview mirror.
"Hey. You okay?" He heard Gladio ask softly.
"Kinda?" Prompto said in a raspy voice, followed by a cough. "What happened?"
Ignis watch Gladio rub a hand across Prompto's shoulders in a soothing gesture. "You almost drowned."
"Oh?" Ignis felt pangs of sympathy pain in his throat at listening to Prompto's voice. "In that case I feel surprisingly fine."
He saw Gladio hesitate for a moment before pulling Prompto into his side and resting his chin on top of his head.
They returned to the haven to a lit campfire, a fired up barbecue, and a set table.
Ignis went to find Noct where he was standing next to the table, seemingly pondering a piece of meat. He clapped a hand the prince's shoulder. "Thank you, Noct."
"Oh. Sure. I wanted to get a headstart on cooking too, but uh… I didn't really know where to start…"
"That's quite alright." He ran a hand over Noct's back. "I'll take it from here. You might want to check on Prompto."
Ignis distracted himself with cooking. Seasoning the meat that Noct had prepared, and cooking it to perfection, so he didn't have to think about what could have happened, what had almost happened.
So, it didn't quite work, but an attempt was made.
When he returned to the table with a plate of food, it was to find the boys settled in. Prompto was sitting on one bench next to Noct, with his head heavily resting on Noct's shoulder, and looking dead to the world. Gladio was alone on the other bench, looking exhausted, but still regaling Noct with tales of their adventures across the lake.
Ignis set the plate down in the middle of the table, and took his place next to Gladio.
Noct, and Prompto, who apparently hadn't really been asleep, immediately jumped on the food, but Gladio paused for a moment.
He shifted closer to Ignis and reached out to touch his back. "Hey, thank you for picking us up."
"Of course." Because, well, of course. What else could he have done?
"No… I mean that."
"As do I." He slung his arm around Gladio's shoulder and did his best to give him a hug without getting up.
He heard the shutter of a camera just before he pulled away. "Ah, feeling better already, I see."
Prompto looked sheepish for all of five seconds, before he got distracted by the barbecue sauce he now had to wipe off his camera.
“Today was fun!” Prompto exclaimed after their meal.
“Disregarding for a moment that you almost drowned,” Ignis said, and Prompto turned away with a fake cough. “It was indeed fun. And if certain people could contain themselves next time, we might even do this again.”