hashtag_chocobro | Room 221; Tuesday Evening [05/07].

Ahhh. Poor, sweet, obvlivious Prompto. It had been quite a journey, but, through the weekend, through finding out Vette and Sidon were fine and seemed actually weirdly cool with him, talking to Yang about it, snuggling a million puppies, distracting himself with the newbie picnic, squeezing in a ridiculous amount of training, and maybe even getting a taste of normalcy with classes yesterday, he was....actually starting to feel a little fine about everything again.

For better or for worse. Especially since he'd yet to realize that there was at least one person out there a little less forgiving than everyone else. But she couldn't avoid him forever. Especially when he didn't even know it would be wise to avoid her. But Prompto had a mission, he had a plan, and he couldn't execute this plan to the fullest capacity without Nina's help.

So that evening, there was a complicated knock being played out on the door of room 221 in the familiar cadence of a certain chocobo song, followed by an all-too-familiar whine of a name that was sure to be the exact things she'd want to hear right now.

"Niiiiiiinnnnaaaaa! Nina, it's Prompto! Knock three times if it's just you in there. Knock four times if it's you and Vette. And if this is actually Vette and not Nina, never mind, this is something super top secret that doesn't involve you so just forget about it."

There. He figured that would get the door opened no matter who was in at the moment.

Well, unless they were both out at that time. In which case he'd just be talking to a door, but whatevs.

[[ for she of the modded door who is not blue. As in the color blue. I make no assumptions about state of mood or disposition! And if they get to it (LOL), the fact that Prompto came to Nina for help is fine for broadcast, but if the details could be NFB, I'd greatly appreciate it! ]]

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Prompto tried to look back at Nina when she look at him, but he had to turn his head away after not very long, sighing as he folded his arms defensively in front of himself. "I'm not trying to get rid of you," he said. "I'm just trying to help you. Because eventually, it's going to stop being so much about the 'yeah, you're right, you should be mad and disappointed' and it'll be just a whole bunch of 'I told you so''s."

He shrugged, even with his arms still folded. "I don't know where you seem to be getting this idea that I'm somehow this person you seem to think I am. Especially you. You're, like, the one person at this whole school I've even been remotely honest about it with. I'm just a big, stupid nobody, trying to be someone, and I'm really bad at it. But I guess I'm a whole lot better at pretending then I give myself credit for, huh? Even when I tell somebody as much, they still, somehow, believe me. Or..." He sighed. "Maybe you just want me to be that person, but I'm just...not, Nina. Okay?"

One day, one day, she'd figure out a way to get his boyos to hear any of this and let them squint at him. But all the ways she'd thought of so far were rather… too unethical for her to use for something like this.

"I did think I wanted you to be someone," Nina said, which was kind of an ugly thing to admit right there, wasn't it? "Like, you're handsome, you're sweet, and you're training to be a knight. Which means you're good, and you want to be strong, and protect others. Basically everything I wanted. But you're not just those things. You're awfully stupid sometimes. You're careless. You're lazy in the details and always flying by the seat of your pants. You punish yourself for things no one else cares about and beat yourself up over things long after everyone else has forgotten them. You spend way too much time playing video games. You worry about food. You worry about being good enough. You're lonely and sad. You make mistakes and mess up and break things."

He wasn't much like the knight she'd always wanted at all.

"But you're you. And I like that you a lot more than I don't like that you."

Proympto was geared up to launch into a protest right from the get-go on that (seriously, Nina, did you need glasses now, too?), but any argument he had faltered with a faintly strangled sound the moment she started getting into the other stuff. All of which was resoundingly true, and he was pretty sure he could come up with a few things she'd managed to forget, there, too.

And he didn't know what to say, because how could anyone go down the list and read him for filth like that and still follow it up with...with that?

"Well," he said, figuring he should at least say something, even though all he could think of wasn't really much, "maybe you shouldn't. And then you wouldn't be so angry or disappointed or...sad."

Edited 2019-05-07 21:16 (UTC)

Despite herself, Nina huffed something that was... well, pretty close to a giggle.

She let go of his shirt to bop herself, lightly, on the head.

"Well," Nina said, "I guess I'm pretty stupid too."

"You're not, though," said Prompto, the expression on his face a pained, defeated one, as he tried to grapple with figuring out if she was just doing what she did...what they did...to ignore the heaviness and the complexity and the difficulty, by covering it up with that sheen of happy-go-lucky teasing and bullshit.

But at the same time...if she really didn't see it, if she had it all laid out in front of her like that....

"Well," he amended, with a chuff of a laugh, the ghost of a smirk, "maybe a little."

So whether she meant it sincerely or meant it merely as a tactic, Prompto figured it really didn't matter anymore. He sort of knew what he had to do now.

Nina shifted, dropping her hands, to study him, that huff of air, that expression.

"I am," she said, even though it wasn't something she liked about herself. Though in this case, Nina was willing to be stupid. Nay, in this case, at this point, she was going to embrace it. "I'm too stupid to stop caring about you. So you're just going to have to deal. Even when you're being stupid or careless or a total jerk. Even when you make mistakes or you're sad and you don't want to talk to anybody. Even when I'm mad at you. Even when you think everyone should stay away and leave you alone because you're worthless, you're garbage, you're no good at all. First, you're wrong."

So, so wrong.

"Second, I'm still going to be too stupid to stop caring."

So he was just going to have to cope.

Not wrong, but okay. If he was wrong, he was pretty sure they wouldn't even be having this discussion right now. A discussion he was honestly exhausted of and just wanted to get out of but wasn't exactly sure how to get out of it at the point.

It didn't help that he just didn't know what to say that wouldn't only just spur things on or make them worse.

"Yeah," he finally settled on, rubbing the back of his neck, "that is pretty dumb."

"Yes," she said haughtily, since it seemed wrong to be annoyed with him for agreeing she was stupid when she'd just listed a whole bunch of ways that she was stupid but, well, there it was.

Nina never pretended to be consistent here.

"Now that that's settled," because if it wasn't settled she was just going to hit him with her bookbelt or her diary or possibly toss Foomy at him, "you're still stupid and if you do something like what you and Norman did ever again I'm going to have to beat you up."

That was not a particularly idle threat, either, since sure, Prompto was good with guns. Nina was better at basically every other method of combat no matter that he was older and bigger than her.

"And," she added, in a burst of inspiration, "if you do it again, I'll tell on you like the very worst of bratty little sisters."

Prompto leveled a look at Nina, and felt, for a moment, that it was a real shame he didn't dare make a comment just then about how she kind of already was the very worst of bratty little sisters.

He may have thought he was the absolute worst and everything, but he still had some sense of self-preservation.

"Well, it's not going to matter," he said, "because it's not going to happen again. Not like that. Not ever."

Good boy, Prompto. Good boy and good call.

"Good," Nina said vehemently, then, in one motion, collapsed back on her bed. "Now, like, tell me about this kitten and what all supplies you want to get for Vette??????????????????"

She was still grumpy with him but it was a grumpy that was just going to have to be allowed to fizzle out with time. The worst of it, the ugly, twisting parts, had been satisfied.

Room 221; Tuesday Evening [05/07].

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