OCD – Wandering Jotun / Ignis-Sassentia

I’ve seen a lot of fics and drabbles about Prompto’s anxiety, but I feel like he’s not the only one who deals with some neuroatypical issues. So, some headcanons about all of the bros’ bad brains and how they deal with it, with hints of OT4. (This got really, really long; fair warning.)

Noctis

Definitely struggles with depression
Occasional existential crises about who he is beyond being the Prince of Lucis, since that took priority during most of his childhood and the development of his sense of self
Generally handles his issues by sleeping until he feels better
Noct seriously hates admitting he’s depressed or talking about it
Sometimes he asks Gladio for extra training to distract himself, when he has more energy than normal
Gladio always knows exactly why Noct’s asking and tries to sit him down for a talk instead
Noctis glares until Gladio gives in
On very rare occasions, when things are especially bad, he’ll just sit beside Ignis and rest his head on Ignis’ shoulder with his eyes closed
Ignis always knows what this means and will sit perfectly still until Noct decides he can move again, then makes a point of cooking one of Noct’s favorites for dinner
Not nearly as good at hiding it as he thinks he is and it takes the other bros a while to realize that babying him and doting on him does more harm than good
Which leads to a couple of awkward moments in high school, when Noct runs off to some secret hiding place in Insomnia to just get away from his friends suffocating him and everyone freaks out
Prompto was the one who found him first and just crawled into the bushes to sit with him in silence for a while, though it took all his self-control not to freak out when Noct started crying
They wound up hiding out together and talking about their various issues for hours, until it started raining and they slunk back to Noct’s apartment
Where Ignis and Gladio were frantically organizing a search party with half the Crownsguard and a handful of Glaives because Noct had never disappeared so completely and for so long before
Noct sheepishly apologized and was swept up into a huge hug with Ignis and Gladio squeezing him half to death
He slept a full twenty-four hours after that

Prompto

Generalized anxiety is his unfortunate jam
He’s anxious about everything all the time but has learned to cope with it by being unbelievably optimistic in the hopes that someday he’ll believe his own cheer
Also struggles with self-harming tendencies, but not necessarily the super-obvious ones
For example, he doesn’t cut or anything, but will sometimes scratch gently at his wrist, and often uses food as a subtle punishment for himself when things get particularly bad
Ignis is the first one to notice that Prompto often either denies himself food or gorges on stuff he doesn’t normally like
When he tries to gently probe for information, Prompto initially tries to brush it off
But he finally admits to it when Ignis catches him trying to feed green curry to his chocobo after a couple of particularly awful battles
After that, Ignis makes a point of sitting down with him and talking any time he notices Prompto attempting to punish himself
Physical contact helps ground and calm him most of the time, and once he trusts the boys, he’ll hold hands or snuggle up as often as possible, especially when something’s piquing his anxiety

Ignis

Ignis is the master of hiding his own anxieties and mental issues, for better or worse
He’s the type to completely bury everything he sees as problematic or inconvenient under his duties and responsibilities and literally working himself so hard he has no room to dwell on them
Seriously, this man puts everyone else’s wellbeing so much higher than his own, he’ll literally be cuddling Prompto and cooking Noct’s favorite foods and reading aloud to Gladio all while trying to stave off his own panic attack
Of course, when the bad brain hits, it hits hard
He has a mix mild generalized anxiety, OCD, and hyper-responsibility, so he takes everything personally even when it’s not his fault
So when things go wrong, he winds up secretly freaking out and beating himself up for a long time and doesn’t really know how to talk about it with the others because he feels like he should be able to handle it on his own
He winds up chewing his nails and cuticles all to shit as both a part of the OCD and as a shitty coping mechanism, which he hides and tries to stop by wearing gloves
It doesn’t always work and he’s ruined several pairs of good gloves by unconsciously chewing or picking at them when he’s freaking out
Gladio’s the only one who saw Ignis’ issues before they became a near-constant presence after Altissia, and he always tries to help Iggy calm down however he can
Cooking generally helps, but when he spirals, Ignis’ hands tend to shake and he can’t hold steady enough to make the pretty knife cuts he prides himself on, which only makes things worse
When it gets that bad, Gladio will come up behind him, gently hold his hands to keep them from shaking as he cooks, and kiss Ignis’ throat and cheeks over and over until he can breathe easier
Ignis is also a master of silently crying himself to sleep when the world gets too much
He just really can’t stand the thought of burdening anyone else with his own issues

Gladiolus

Gladio’s the kind of guy who staunchly denies he has a problem until someone shoves it in his face with undeniable proof
He has some anger management/emotional repression issues to begin with and develops PTSD after Insomnia falls, which only gets worse as the roadtrip goes on, between all the crap these poor boys deal with and Gladio refusing to talk about it
Oh, and don’t forget those pesky low self-esteem issues he denies exist even though he was taught that his life meant nothing next to Noct since he was a kid (why do you think he’s so gung ho about that massive ego and flirting with everyone and generally showing off?)
He’s not quite as bad about trying to take the whole world onto his shoulders as Ignis is, but he does still have tendencies toward self-blame for things that aren’t his fault, especially in regards to Noct’s safety and Iris’ life
Which is part of the reason he gets PTSD after the fall of Insomnia–blaming himself for not protecting both Noct and his sister, the loss of his father, and losing everything all at the same time
Gladio’s issues generally come out in anger, frustration, and physical lashing out
He feels absolutely awful afterward, but in the moment, he just can’t control himself because he never learned how to deal with intense emotions properly
Maybe surprisingly, Noctis is the one who first puts the pieces together and forces Gladio to sit down and talk about it
The talk doesn’t really go well and Gladio winds up punching a boulder until his knuckles are bloody and crying in front of his prince
Once Gladio slumped to his knees and starts sobbing, Noct scooted closer and just wrapped an arm around him and they sat in silence for a while until Gladio could start stringing words together and awkwardly trying to work through his feelings
It helped a little, but Gladio was still uncomfortable actually talking about it, especially with his prince
So Noct talks discreetly with Ignis and convinces him to try and help Gladio find some better coping methods
They try some things on the downlow, pretending everything is pretty much okay to keep Noct and Prompto from getting concerned, and eventually hit on Ignis reading aloud to him and giving him something else to focus on
After some trial and error, they realize that poetry from the Lucian Romanticism phase seem to work the best and Ignis started stocking up on poetry books everywhere he can find them
Eventually, Noct and Prompto catch on, but keep pretending not to know to avoid upsetting Gladio–with the exception of helping Ignis track down books, and they both memorize a few to mutter to Gladio at choice moments, catching him by surprise

Bonus: all the boys together

These boys are all so close, their issues can accidentally exacerbate each other just as much as they can help
There have been several times when one of them goes off (generally Prompto or Gladio) and the others all spiral, trying to help or keep it together
The absolute worst time was when Ignis hit rock bottom and couldn’t stop chewing on his hands and completely freaking out
None of the others knew what to do, so they wound up kind of awkwardly piling in the tent around Ignis and holding his hands so he couldn’t chew his nails and Gladio read all the poetry books and Prompto cuddled everyone and Noct kept almost dozing off and they were all an absolute wreck
But they made it through together and were all super careful around each other for like a week afterward