Chapter Text
Noctis rubs at the grit in his eyes. He hasn't slept well. He never does before these royal functions.
"Fifteen minutes, Noct," says Ignis, composed and graceful as a coeurl, his green eyes blank behind the shield of his glasses. He hasn't asked how Noctis is feeling this morning because today it is, if not forbidden, at least taboo.
One doesn't ask the Prince how he feels on the morning he's about to commit his first rape.
Noct shovels more of yesterday's curry into his mouth and chews, mechanical and methodical. He's going to need a lot of fuel in his body for the next few days. Once he's been locked in the Crystal's chamber there's no coming out until he's made an omega of his chosen alpha victim, which everyone tells him won't be a problem once the Crystal's magic takes hold in his blood.
It is a roaring deep of intoxicating power, it is a font of destruction and creation, it is alive and alien and makes of the Lucii tools to its primal urges. It will use him even as he uses it, and together they will learn harmony through their first great atrocity.
The priests call it 'a sacrifice to the Astrals', and 'a proof in blood of an alpha's right to rule as King.' The political dissidents call it 'ritualized rape.' Noct's dad calls it 'a tragic necessity.' Ignis and Gladio don't say anything about it at all, forbidden from tainting Noctis with their personal opinions.
Noctis likes the word they use in anonymous chat boards, on porn sites, in bathroom graffiti: Bitching.
~
There's protesters out in front of the Citadel, so Ignis drives past and around to bring Noctis in through the side gate usually used for Glaive deployment. He does it without explanation and without asking, seeing a need and answering it before Noctis can even register that it was there.
Ignis is nineteen and he's tall and he's beautiful and his alpha scent is smoke and juniper, rich and steady. He's polished, like marble, like a fine steel dagger. He's everything Noctis could ever need in an adviser and he's nothing like the earnest, gawky boy of their childhood. He might as well be driving Noctis to high school as to a divinely mandated violation. And when they glide into their regular parking space in the underground lot, he gets out of the car first, scans for threats, then opens Noctis' door and bows.
"We've made good time. You have half an hour before the ceremony to take care of anything you might need, Your Highness," he says, and in his impersonal tone Noctis hears the ticking of a fine Altissan clock, Specs completely subsumed by his 'professional' persona. Noctis grits his teeth and resists getting back in the car, slamming the doors, locking himself in and away from that stifling measure-and-cut of his time.
"Whatever," he grunts, and deliberately slouches his way toward the elevators just to see Ignis' mask crack at the corner of the mouth, where he can't stop the curl of a frown from settling.
"Noct . . . " The victory of getting Specs to drop the title is lost when he easily catches up to Noctis without so much as changing pace, his long legs carrying him forward and eating up Noctis' meagre head start, but of course Specs doesn't overtake him. He stays at exactly one step behind and to the right, a good adviser, a perfect servant, and anyone who sees them would be amazed to find out that Specs is an alpha with how good he is at this game but they don't know him. Not like Noctis does.
". . . did you want some time alone? Or perhaps to speak with your father before the ceremony?" offers Specs, making nice the way he always does when Noct blows up. Sincere, of course. He's always so fucking sincere these days, secure behind his glass walls of politeness and duty, ready to offer whatever Noctis demands.
A few years back they used to fight all the time.
A few years back, Specs was someone whose voice would still break, who would stumble because of legs gotten too long, who would go head to head with Noctis in a battle of wills and demand Noctis meet ridiculous expectations: acing all the classes and getting into all the political drama and filling out all the paperwork and parading himself picture-perfect for all the cameras, the people, the whole fucking world.
And then they had one last fight and Specs stopped.
Which, good, right? Noctis won.
Except.
Except.
"How about ditching this whole thing? Get some pizza, go fishing," says Noctis now. He doesn't mean it. He's just prodding at the splinter to test if it's still there.
Ignis bows his head. "I'm sorry, Your Highness. I'm afraid that the demands of duty make that impossible."
Yup. There it is.
~
Beta musk scents every corner of the Citadel. Sticky with anxiety, too-sweet with lust, it swirls around Noctis as he strides down the black halls, his worn combat boots heavy on the marble floor. The Citadel's lower levels are usually open to the public but not today. Today the halls are empty except for a tripled guard of Glaive, all of them betas, the alphas conspicuously absent.
It'll be the same everywhere in the Citadel as every eligible alpha is right now filing into place in the Throne Room; row upon row of them in their black on black with silver formal wear, Glaives and nobles and functionaries and servants and politicians and whoever else the priests have decided deserve to suffer the cocktail of boredom and fear this ceremony is serving up.
Even now all those alpha are likely waiting with their faces blank and their shoulders straight, all silent as the priests read the holy script that outlines the Astrals' demands. A half hour of being told that Noctis has a right to do as he pleases, to take by force if need be, and that anyone who wished to defy him needs to be ready to have Royal blood on their hands and the doom of the Gods upon their soul.
Noctis is pretty sure most of those alpha would be more than happy to gut him now and worry about the Astrals later if it means they won't be tied down and used until they break, the pieces reassembled to make a new thing of sex and need and submission. He's also sure that not a single one of them could put up any kind of fight. Not against the training Gladio's put him through. Not against his Royal magic.
Not against the bitter rage that has coiled in Noct's soul, waiting, hungry and feral for the chance to strip another down to the impotent pawn Noct has been since birth.
'It's an ugly act, Noctis, and it shows us the ugliest sides of ourselves,' his dad had said. 'Such is sacrifice.'
At least he gets to be a monster in comfortable clothing. This is one ceremony where Noct doesn't have to dress himself up like a department mannequin since, really, what's the point? He'll be fighting and then fucking, and both those are easier in the comfortable fatigues he likes to bum around in on weekends.
He's quite the contrast to Ignis' tailored suit, Specs having made himself glamorous with tight slacks and a jacket that brings out his broad shoulders. It also helps hide how slender he is under the layers of cotton and silk, the black leather gloves giving his long fingers extra heft as well, the leather shoes giving his footsteps crisp authoritative clicks. It's a facade Specs puts in place every day now, and Noct half-suspects Specs cements on that pleasantly blank expression with the same gel he uses to spike his hair.
Noct leads them both through a security checkpoint, waving haphazardly at the guards on duty, his attention on Specs. He prods again. "The bench is set up, right?"
"The Altar has been assembled and cleaned, yes."
Noctis' fingers twitch, the urge to keep picking at this making his bones itchy, his skin too tight. "I'm gonna go see it."
Specs says nothing.
Guess I lose again, thinks Noctis, and stuffs his hands into his pockets.
~
Bitching is something every alpha thinks about but doesn't ever talk about. Not outside of porn, anyway, or maybe threats. Maybe. Because nothing starts a dom fight faster, nothing gets the primal rage up and the blood hot and the violence nasty, the way the threat of fucking another alpha into submission does.
Of course it's not actually as easy as porn makes it seem. Bitching someone —and it can be done to alpha or beta— takes time, usually several months, and many partners to trigger the gradual shifting of hormones and internal organs. You gotta trick the body into believing there's a 'social need' or something like that, and even with all the right cues it doesn't always work because . . . reasons?
Noctis isn't up on the exact details. Mostly because they don't matter for a Lucis Caelum.
The Astrals wanted it to be very clear who was in charge of the Crystal and so for the Lucis Caelums, Kings among kings and Alphas to alphas, the porn is real. Noctis can do by himself in a few days what it would take dozens of alpha to do in months, and with guaranteed success. No other bloodline on Eos can do that, so this rite of passage has always doubled as a kind of unofficial legitimacy test.
It's always been a very official threat, though, and when it comes time to selecting a victim more than a few Lucii have chosen to 'make examples' of captured enemies, political dissidents, even the occasional Council member getting a little too insolent.
But that's the whole point, right? Prove we're in charge. Prove we've got the final say.
Noctis walks to the 'Altar' along a slow, wandering path that carries him from the discreet side door by which he entered, past the enormous double doors that lead to the Throne Room, and then alongside the arc of the Crystal's podium. His hands still shoved deep into his pockets, his shoulders slouched, he deliberately scuffs his boots on the polished floor, trying to leave human marks in this room filled with the awful blue light of the Crystal.
It doesn't work.
Finally he comes to stand before the Altar. Tips his head back and looks into the heart of the Crystal, into the heart of Eos, and sees in it . . . nothing. Only that cold, cold light. It makes his body feel just as cold, makes his heart trip over itself to beat in time with the magic oozing forth in slow, throbbing pulses. It fills his mind with wordless song.
Drunk on magic, he can almost believe what he's standing in front of really is an Altar, a holy place of sacrifice and rebirth, and not just gilded pornography: a sex bench done up in the Royal black and silver.
It's pretty typical of its kind, a padded set of platforms to let you fuck someone face down. Even the straps, heavy leather reinforced with steel, and the big, ostentatious padlocks dangling from the buckles, aren't anything special. It's only the framework that's out of line, enormous wrought iron, heavy and unforgiving, that's been engraved with the Royal scrollwork, with the Skulls of the Ancestors, with prayers to the Astrals.
He's seen a few good fakes of it on the pay-per-view porn sites, but even the best mock-ups fail to catch the particular ethereal shimmer of the Crystal's light catching in the dips and whorls of the metal so that the blood of Eos flows through metal veins, pools in the sockets of the skulls and breathes life into them, bleeds down through the runnels to finally coagulate in the crest of Lucis engraved in the black marble of the floor.
Haloed by the Crystal, the entire display glitters like one of the ice sculptures in the Glacian's Festival; the steel turned to molten silver, locks turned to glittering blue diamonds.
Wonder what it's like to find it pretty.
He glances over his shoulder to Ignis, whose eyes are hidden behind the sapphire glaze on his spectacles, whose cheekbones and jaw are traced by cerulean fire, whose lips are frosted, the deep bow seeming blade-sharp with its gilt of magic flame.
Oh. Yeah, okay.
He has to clear his throat before he can talk past the ozone-tang of the Crystal's power. "How much time I got left?"
"About six minutes," says Ignis, quickly consulting his phone.
Noctis watches the Crystal's power coil in sinuous tendrils over the broad span of Ignis' shoulders, soaking into the fine black weave of his suit, twining up his neck to lick into the shells of his ears, weaving into his hair. Noctis says, "Okay."
He licks his lips. "Okay. I'm ready."
~
When the enormous ceremonial doors to the Crystal chamber swing open Noctis is treated to an expansive view of the Throne Room below, the ranks of Citadel alphas in black uniforms, in row after row after row after row across black flooring, the only clear space the wide semi-circle before the Throne's podium where he is expected to drag his chosen victim and present them to the mob.
The stink of them, scores of nervous alphas musking in an effort to make themselves seem aggressive, dangerous, not a target - it rises up from them in a fug, hits Noctis and-
-and means nothing to him. It's just a smell. Earth and iron and sweat.
He stares down at those alphas, their faces upturned to see him standing on the landing high above the Throne, framed by the great arch of the doorway and backed by the roiling mass of blue flame that spills out from the Crystal behind him. Most of their faces are blank, but he can see the tightness around the eyes, a narrow pinch to the mouths. And, when he takes his first step down the curving staircase toward them, a flinch goes through the crowd like a wave in black water.
Down and down he comes. His boots clunk on the marble. Ignis' shoes make perfect echoing clicks because as always he's Noctis' tall shadow, and with them both come the fires of the Crystal, lingering at their heels as if reluctant to let go.
At floor level Noctis glances to the iron-masked priests of Bahamut standing guard against the walls, betas all and in heavy black robes, with swords drawn and hungry for the blood of any coward who would flee. At his father, stern and unmoving on the Throne itself, as black-and-silver as the walls of the Citadel in his pinstriped suit, the glinting tines of the Crown, the coiling brace around his knee.
Regis raises his hand in greeting. "My son." A slow sweep of the arm toward the display. "I present to you your birthright." His hand drops, and he leans back into the embrace of the Throne. Casual. Relaxed. Confident as he commands, "Take whatever you desire."
And until now Noctis has never been invited to do that. He could have done so on his own, of course. Overpowered whomever he liked, taken whatever he liked. But the chains of duty and decency, compassion and self-control kept him safely bound, kept him human instead of monster.
But now?
Now it's time for him to be a Prince.
Whatever that means.
He does his best to straighten his spine. He lifts his head and meets the gaze of the alpha nearest to him, a sharp-faced blond with his hair braided like a Galahadian. He sees the flinch, sees the guy tense his shoulders and lock his jaw and narrow his eyes, fighting to keep Noct's gaze and it's nothing but show.
All of this is nothing but show.
Noctis snorts and lets his gaze skip away from the blond, down the line of alphas, tries to imagine himself even considering them as his choice. Would he have wanted to chose based on face? On body? Someone pretty, or someone handsome? Or someone carved with scars and skin gone to brown leather like the woman at the far end of this line?
He's got his own show to put on, so he follows his fancy, walking slowly down this first line. He's followed by Ignis and an invisible wash of relief, the chalky-sweet scent of it wafting from those he's passed, a subtle sagging in their postures as the tension, as the fear leaves them.
Nuh uh. Not yet.
He wants them all guessing till the end.
So he pauses. Turns just enough to look back down the line and he lifts his eyebrows, meeting each of the alpha's gazes and asking silently if they dare. The sudden second confrontation reinforces that he's still looking, that he's still choosing, that he might still come back for them, and he doesn't turn away until he's met and matched each of them, wound them tight and straightened their spines and made them all realize he has seen them. Marked them. Remembers them.
He looks past this line to the ones behind it, too, picking out alphas he hasn't inspected yet, searching out any hint of challenge, any hint of defiance, and as he watches expressions wash clean of the last traces of personality, bodies fall into parade rest, and the heavy musk of alpha turns to the sweet-salt of pacifying pheromones which sticks in his throat like old candy.
It's his first time.
Might as well savour it.
So he pulls back his lips and licks his teeth to better catch it, makes sure to let his tongue linger on his alpha fangs. It's only once he feels a shudder move through the crowd that he returns, slow and deliberate, to his inspection, and he's got the dubious pleasure of seeing the alphas ahead of him suck in air through flared nostrils, or swallow back any sound, or clench their hands into white-knuckled knots.
Their show is a different kind now, but Noctis' remains the same: casual and careless and capricious. He winds up taking the same kind of meandering path as he did in the Crystal chamber, a long slalom that drifts him close to those black-clad bodies and then far, that carries him around between the rows and to brush up against someone's back before swerving to lean in close and peer into another's down-turned face.
Third row, fourth row, fifth row and he wonders, which one of them is the 'concerned alpha insider' who told the Sleepless Star that they worried 'Prince Noctis doesn't seem to have the dominance necessary for an alpha of his position.'
He snaps his teeth at that imagined asshole, flint and steel that spark with magic, that light true fear in the eyes of the alphas before him. They don't know him. They don't know anything about him. All they know is the three-piece Prince that Noctis puts on at Court functions, and still they felt ready to judge him.
It's my turn. To walk between them and look at nothing but surface and judge each and every one of them. He wants to ask them, Is this what you wanted from me? This hunger that's gonna eat its way out of my guts to eat everyone else? Is this what you want ruling you? Your friends? Your family? The whole damn city? Is this what you want holding the heart of our Star?
Tenth, eleventh. By now he's pretty sure he's picked out Gladio in with the other beta in the masked ranks of priests, and what is he thinking? He's always been ready to challenge Noct, push him hard to be the alpha, to 'stand your ground!' and 'don't roll over, rule!' like it'll fix the cascading failure that's Noctis' future. Is he liking this version of Noctis? Is he enjoying watching the Citadel alphas cringe, maybe feeling a naughty, vicarious thrill?
Is he going to still feel that way by the end of this fucking . . . fuckery?
Noctis plays with the idea, tries to imagine the fallout to come. It burns time as he wanders, but not enough. By the twenty second row he's trying to match names to the alphas as he goes, to remember where he might have seen them, met then, because he's running out of ways to distract himself from the growing itch between his shoulder blades that twinges with every sharp click of Ignis' shoes. Is he following Noct's curving progress or is he walking a straight line? Did he follow Noct's gaze, see the alphas crumble in its wake, or have his eyes stayed on Noctis himself?
If Noctis doubles back, what scent will he catch? Still Ignis' smoke and juniper, or will it be soured with suspicion? Be edged with the metallic tang of fear?
Noctis has worked his way to the very back lines, and he's still trying to decide which he'd prefer: to crack through Ignis' sleek shell and get to the softness inside he's been hiding, or to keep Specs clueless till the end and finally get one over on him before Noctis forever ruins what's between them.
~
Noctis walks back to throne, and never mind the ordered phalanx before him, he's going right through the middle of the room to get there.
The power of the Crystal always lies coiled around his bones. Now he lets it rise to rattle in his ribcage, to seep into his blood, into his heart and his lungs until he is breathing out whorls of power in dragon-smoke, feels it sparking on his bared canines, feels its fingers in his hair forcing his head up high and proud so it can see out his eyes.
Translucent blue power blossoms from him a vortex of spectral fingers, corpse-cold and too-knowing against the backs of the alphas ranked before him, tracing down spines and poking under collars. Bodies shiver. Convulse. Step away, a receding tide before Noctis' advance.
So his path is straight and true while the alphas about him lose what little poise they had left. They wash up in clumps around the room, as close to their jailer-priests as they dare. The soldiers huddle with filing clerks and jumble up with nobles, all made equal before the might of the Lucis Caelum.
Except Ignis.
Ignis, who strides behind Noctis without falter even now.
He's gotta know, Noctis tells himself.
But can even Ignis march to his doom so calmly? No. No, he doesn't know. He can't.
Not and walk so steadily. Not and stay so close. He's inside the corona of Noctis' power, with the tendrils of blue magic plucking at his cuff links, braiding into the hair at the nape of his neck, slipping into his pockets, into the open collar of his shirt to kiss the dip at the base of his throat and Noctis can feel every moment of it, every steady breath of magic-tainted air Ignis brings into his body that lets Noctis feel him from the inside for the very. first. time.
He is warm and fragile within. He has hollows, spaces. He is a vessel ready to be filled.
Noctis matches his steps to the beat of Ignis' heart, feels the surge of power with every beat, feels the thrumming connection between them strengthen. They're a machine, a pair of gears that interlock and move the world and isn't this enough? Even if Ignis wears steel and glass for a face isn't this enough?
But when Noctis stops before the Throne, Ignis' heartbeat doesn't stop with him.
Noctis' shoulders sag under the sudden weight of exhaustion, and bitterness tugs a frown across his face. Why can't Ignis just submit, and save them both from this? He's so clever, so all-knowing, so fucking perfect, and yet here he is. With Noctis.
You should have left. Hiding just makes it worse. You should have left, Specs!
Resentment is what gets the words out of Noct's mouth: "I've chosen."
Habit is what lets him reach back blindly and unerringly grab Ignis by the wrist.
Training is what he uses to pull Ignis into a perfect shoulder throw, up and over in a wide arc to smash to the black floor but even like this it is Ignis, and he twists out of Noctis' grip to land in a low crouch with his teeth barred and his hands full of steel and magic.
When he looks up at Noctis, his eyes are very green in the light of the magic, and full of questions. The sleek lines of his brows have crumpled inward, his lips are parted around words that die before they are voiced because Ignis sees the truth in Noctis' face and his eyes go very wide, rimmed all around in white, the inky pupils dilating until all the green is devoured by darkness.
Same here, Specs.
The hunger that was loosed by Crystal and Crown has crawled out Noctis' guts, used his ribs as a ladder to his heart and swallowed it whole. It beats at the walls of his chest in parody of a pulse. It howls in the vault of his skull in place of his thoughts. He is eclipse by it, by himself, by this truth he has kept hidden since puberty remade Ignis into a work of art and Citadel training locked him in the glass case of punctilious, polished servitude:
That Ignis is his. All of him. And it isn't for Ignis to decide what Noctis gets to see.
I'll smash that mask you pretend is a face! Noctis rips his sword from the Armiger with claws of magic, levelling the blade at his prey. And while I'm at it, I'll smash the rest of it, too. All the lies, all the walls, all this fake shit you use to hide from me!
"I'm gonna break you, Specs," he says.
It's the only warning he gives.