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It’s been three years, eight months, and eleven days since they lost him. It’s a Tuesday. Prompto is out for the day with an elderly woman he’d met last week who was working to repair her childhood camera, and Gladiolus was set to return in a few days from a hunt he’d accepted on his own. Their accommodations lacked a familiar clamor of husky speech and bright laughter without them. Ignis was not particularly noisy on his own, he never had been, but now when all he had to rely on was touch and sound, he’d become accustomed to silence. If he couldn’t hear, he wouldn’t be able to conjure an accurate mental image of his surroundings, and that meant he was vulnerable.
The silence was the only reason he knew something was wrong. He’s in the shower with his head under the stream when he hears a thump. It sounds as though it comes from a distance, but it isn’t quite the same as the noise he typically picks up on from the patrons next door. It sounds less like the thump of footsteps and more like that born of force.
Ignis lifts his head from the water. His breathing halts as his ears hone in on his environment, and for a while, there is nothing more. The silence lasts long enough that he’s mostly satisfied it was the neighbors, but then he hears it: a click.
For half a second, Ignis yearns to call for his lovers. Surely it must be Prompto returning early, or Gladio coming back because he’d changed his mind about going alone. They’d forgotten to announce themselves despite doing it for years. Perhaps it was Noct, spat out by the Crystal and unknowing that he must narrate his location lest the paranoia seize him.
In the next half second, he reminds himself he is no fool. This is no neighbor, nor his beloveds.
He has no time to react. The shower door rattles in its track as it’s wrenched open, and in the next moment, a hand closes around his lips. Ignis’ hands fly up to defend himself, but he’s unable to conjure his daggers. All he has are his fists.
Without much effort at all, he is subdued. There are two sets of arms holding him, and at least one pair of feet in front, which means he’s dealing with far too many men to take out on his own, naked and unarmed. He has no choice but to yield when they bully him down the hall and out the door.
The air rushes out of him in a huff as he’s thrown. His shoulder collides with something padded, and then there’s the whirr of an engine. The vehicle jolts, he’s rocked in the backseat while it lurches into motion, and then his arms are yanked behind him and restrained. His cheek is smashed into the cushion, and he grits his teeth as he shifts; the barrel of a gun pressed to his temple stills him at once.
He is never given clothes. He’s tossed into a cold room with a hard floor when they finish their journey and abandoned, and Ignis sits with his back against the wall as he ponders his situation. Who could have taken him? What do they want? Where have they gone?
What will his lovers do when they discover his absence?
It cannot be more than a few hours before his first visitor arrives. It is a tall man with a gruff voice and calloused fingers, and his breath smells of smoke. When he leans in to speak to him, he grips his chin and tilts up his head, and Ignis shuts his eyes reflexively. His heartbeat is too loud to make out the rest of the sound in the room, and he cannot quiet it no matter how valiantly he attempts it.
“Finally,” the man purrs, his hand drifting to card through the back of Ignis’ hair. It sends a scattering of goosepimples across his flesh, and he fails to contain his responding shudder. “I’m going to enjoy this.”
It is difficult to keep track of the time. There is no light in the room, and if there is a window, it is too difficult to perceive the moon’s waning with the persistent darkness outside. It is silent most of the time, save for his own body’s functions, and the only sounds his pricked ears can make out are the thudding of footsteps outside before they bring him food.
He’s spent five meals scanning the walls with his fingertips. The pads are raw from the wall’s texture, and the only thing he’s discovered is a locked door and a wobbly screw. It’s in a wood panel near the back left corner, one pace from the wall and seven slats up. Ignis can just barely fit his nail beneath it to twist, and it’s sunken tightly.
Seven meals pass, then nine. Ignis chokes on his tongue as knuckles crack against his cheekbone, and his head flies to the side. His skull is throbbing, and the taste of blood stings his tastebuds as his ears ring. Someone laughs, and clothing rustles. The back of a hand meets his other cheek, and he loses his breath.
Eleven meals. The man with the gruff voice comes to see him again. He drones a tale Ignis cannot keep track of despite his best efforts to pick apart the pieces, but from what he can comprehend, this man is a longtime enemy of the Crown. He speaks with scorn and an edge of insanity, but his hands are gentle and he murmurs to him so softly as his fingers rake through his hair. Ignis shuts his eyes and breathes through his nose. The stench of smoke persists.
Eighteen meals. His whole body aches, and every inhale sends shooting pain through his ribs. At least one of them is broken, although he suspects there are at minimum three, and his skin is covered in bruises. The smell of dried blood clings to the inside of his nostrils, and his limbs feel heavy and weak. The tips of his fingers are sliced open from repeatedly twisting at that screw, and there are microscopic metal shavings embedded in them from when it’d snapped in half, still sunken into the wall. Useless.
Movement sounds from outside the door, but it is different this time. There is no clack as they set down the tray before unlocking the handle, but instead the whisper of clothing and the metallic turn of a key. Ignis lifts his head, and he trains his gaze ahead as if he can see what lies before him.
The hand that falls to his shoulder is unexpected. The grip that pushes his legs apart is even more of a shock, and Ignis’ gasp cuts through his own eardrums sharply. He’s too weak to push the man off of him, and he dares not try when a fist strikes his battered ribcage, robbing him of all the breath in his lungs.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” It is the man with the gruff voice. His touch drifts lower, and Ignis hisses and throws his head back against the floor as his fingers curl around his flaccid length. His pulse is thundering, and he can feel the humidity of his breath as he pants into his ear. “Please don’t make me.”
It is agonizing when he pushes inside. Ignis bites down on his tongue as his body cleaves in two, but he refuses to make a sound for this man as he fucks him into the floor. His hips move in violent smacks, and Ignis keeps his eyes shut and breathes as evenly as he can manage. The movement jerks his body against the ground, and he plants his hands on the floor and braces himself. It is over in just a few minutes.
He is left in the center of the room, crumpled on the hard ground. By the time his next meal arrives, the cum and blood have dried and begun flaking off of his inner thighs.
Twenty meals pass, or is it twenty one? It’s become difficult to keep track of. His thoughts have become sluggish, and he is too weak to spend much time awake. The man has visited twice more, sputtering nonsense Ignis cannot follow, and ravaged him. His body is a vessel for nothing more than pain.
He loses count. Panic is but a memory, Ignis has grown used to the metallic hiss of his zipper and the dry scratch of his hand over his cock before it shoves inside him, and he’s lost all hope of regaining his strength to attempt to brawl with his captors. How pathetic it is to survive all this time and lose his life at the hands of someone so miniscule, someone so removed from their battles.
Would his lovers ever know of his fate? Would they think he’d abandoned them? Would Noct return to find him vanished, or would Ignis meet him in death? Was he gone already?
His rescue is a quiet thing. There is a thump outside the door, heavier than usual, and then the metallic clink of a key twisting in the lock. The door swings open, and cool air rushes in.
“Iggy!” It’s Prompto’s voice. He’s barely audible, but Ignis suspects that’s due to the way he’s sobbing as he throws himself into his lap. His body jerks, and he hisses with pain. Prompto flinches away, and he grits his teeth as his hands fly over his frame.
Gladio meets them back at the motel less than a day later. His hunt had taken far longer than he’d anticipated it would, and he’d barely won the battle on his own. He’d regretted accepting it by himself, especially when his phone died, but he’d called Prompto triumphantly to declare his return and was informed of the news. He was two days’ drive away, and he could only make it a little over thirty hours before he was too exhausted to continue without sleep. He’d made it back as soon as he could.
Ignis can hear the hushed sound of their voices in the hall outside. Prompto is crying, and Gladio is too, judging by the rumbly sniffles he can barely pick up on. It hurts too badly to roll over, so he simply turns his head the opposite way. It’s a private conversation. He mustn't intrude.
The bed creaks as Gladio lowers his weight onto it. Ignis does not respond when he asks if he’s awake, and a heavy sigh rushes out of his chest. His hand hovers at his back, close enough that Ignis can sense its presence, but it does not make contact. The springs groan as he rises, and the door clicks shut behind him. It does not lock.
Twin footsteps recede down the hall, and Ignis exhales. The stillness of the room envelops him once more, and he lies in the dark as he takes it in. The sheets are soft against his bare arm, and the weight of the blanket atop his frame is comforting in the way it might be for a child afraid of the dark. A false sense of security.
Gladio and Prompto are too far to be heard. The neighbors have not made a peep for hours, and when Ignis closes his eyes and lets his body slump, silence wraps around him.
In his slumber, he meets Noctis, who graces him with his kiss and a gentle brush of fingers over his temple. Ignis sees him clear as day, weary and aged, but flushed with life. Neither of them utter a word.