The C.I.C., Tuesday Afternoon - Evening [11/20].

[hashtag_chocobro]

Prompto never really thought he'd be uncomfortable going to his job where he basically got to play video games all day, and yet there they were. After this weekend, he was just so restless, like he was afraid of slipping back into that sad, lonely kid he'd been if he spent more than ten minutes in front of something that wasn't productive. So sitting behind the desk at the C.I.C. that evening was difficult. Impossible. He managed to stick in his chair for maybe ten minutes at at time, a little longer if he was updating something on his farm, but then he'd start bouncing, his hands would start drumming on the desk, and he'd have to get up. He had to move around. He went and checked on all the rooms about a billion times, started going through accessories and reorganizing them, only to organize them back to the way they were, finding spare parts and spreading them out to shift through them and maybe sometimes try to put them together, but abandoning them halfway through, and one corner of the room definitely became an impromptu gym, where he killed some time with some push-up and even tried to get all extra about it with the whole one-handed or the no-hands-clap-when-you-come-up ones. Jogging in place. Time to check on the rooms again. Wonder what Kaidan might think about maybe installing a pull-up bar in here somewhere for days like this where just sitting on his ass all day was going to drive him absolutely insane.

And the raven wasn't any help, either, no surprise there. It just sort of perched there the whole time, watching him, making him all too aware of every single minute that ticked by when he wasn't doing something he could deem productive.

Ugh! Why did his dumb stupid brain have to be like this, anyway, huh?

The C.I.C. is open!

Comments

[chirpchirpchirp]

Vette was still anxious. Twitchy. She needed to be out there throwing herself at something stupid, but she'd run through all the bolts in her blasters' power packs and now she was at loose ends until she could get her hands on more.

But hey, there were always alternatives, right?

"Okay, first off," Vette announced as she walked through the door, "I have a lifetime pass to the gun show and I demand to be entertained."

A hug. She wanted a hug.

[hashtag_chocobro]

Vette, you beautiful blue distraction, you. Prompto would have been half-tempted just to hug her simply for walking through that door just then, as he looked up relieved it wasn't just one of the rando regulars that got all pissy at him for pwning their asses every week. He grinned at her.

"You're in luck," he said. "I've been keepin' those guns nice and fired up today, too."

Sweaty. That meant those guns would be slightly sweaty from working out in a room filed with heat-making equipment. Sorry 'bout it, Vette. But he made quick work out of smoothly leaping over the desk with a faint 'hup!' (clearly, walking around it wasn't going to cut it), so that he was standing in front of her as the doors to the aforementioned gun show opened for business.

His arms. The doors were his arms. Which were also the guns. The guns for hugging.

[chirpchirpchirp]

Hey, a little sweat didn't bother her. Sure, she might make a fuss about it, but it would be all in jest. Right now she needed the hug more than she would ever admit, sweat or none, and was stepping in to the gun-doors to claim it.

She maybe just sort of stood there clinging for a few moments more than usual while she was there.

"I hate this place," she said quietly, because things said while you were hugging didn't count, dammit, and she could just lean back and put a smile on like it was nothing afterwards. "And I need a distraction. My guns are all out of ammo."

[hashtag_chocobro]

Things said while you were hugging did count for reassuring squeezes when the words being said required them, and words like that definitely required all the squeezes. And Prompto was just going to wrap his arms around Vette and let her hug it out for as much as she needed. This, he could easily stay still for.

"You wanna borrow mine?" he offered. "My...actual guns. Or heck, you get all the guns. I got lots of ammo." It helped that his guns used more conventional ammo easily found around here. "Or there's lot of shooting games, but, I mean, that's not really same. Like, at all, but..."

[chirpchirpchirp]

"Dunno," Vette admitted after a long pause. "Spent yesterday at the range and burned through all my blaster bolts, and now I haven't decided if I really want to shoot more things, or if I just want the company. Figured here I could at least have both, right? You're good company."

[hashtag_chocobro]

"Man," Prompto snorted, chuckling a little as he held Vette at arms-length so he could make sure she saw the lopsided grin on his face as he searched hers for other signs of crazy, "you really must be desperate. But I can boot up some shooters, if you want. We can team up...or PvP, maybe I'll even let you win a few. Or I've got some crops that're about to need to be harvested, if you want. Harvesting those crops and whacking those moles with spatulas can be amazingly cathartic, you know."

[chirpchirpchirp]

No crazy. Just some thinly-veiled heartache and a wry smile.

"Let's go PvP. I haven't shot at anything that'll actually shoot back in a while, could be fun." She leaned forward a little, going for teasing, now. "I'm terrible with a spatula."

Lies. She did just fine in Dr. Lecter's class.

[hashtag_chocobro]

Better than Prompto did, anyway. And he grinned at her, although her decision may have struck fear deep in his heart. She was going to completely mop the floor with him, wasn't she? But he was looking for a distraction, wasn't he? Getting royally crushed wasn't a bad one, he had to admit.

"Let's go, then," he said, nodding, before bouncing over to grab what they'd need. "I'm sure the birdbrain over there'll let us know if anyone needs any help with anything, but I mean, it's Tuesday, no one ever comes in here on Tuesday."

[chirpchirpchirp]

"I come in on Tuesdays," Vette informed him loftily as she trailed along behind him. "Maybe I'll make it a regular thing, too. Come in, kick your butt at the shooting games, glide back out of here like a victorious thranta who totally owns the place..."

She grinned a bit.

"I hope you've been working on your aim."

[hashtag_chocobro]

"Not nearly as much as I should be," Prompto admitted, which was mostly true, but he was also selling himself short, and not even intentionally. "But I think I'd like that," he couldn't help a bit of a goofy smile at it, either. Maybe one of these days, I can get you in on one of my streams of King's Knight with the guys back home. Gladio just picked it up, so it could be you and me against him and Noct. It's mostly like a dungeon crawl, so I think you'd like it."

[chirpchirpchirp]

"There is not a single thing you just said that I don't like the sound of," Vette decided. "Playing with a gang again? And hey, I haven't been on a good dungeon crawl in forever."

Sure, it wouldn't be the same, it wouldn't be in person, but it was the closest she'd have been in forever.

[hashtag_chocobro]

"I could pull something together right now, if you wanted," said Prompto, his smile managing to get even more crooked. "And then you can join in at giving Iggy crap at the end when he comes to complain about how Noct has sch--"

But he stopped himself with a laugh, shaking his head, holding out his hands as if to press pause on the whole world for a second. "But, no, you said shooting. We'll stick with shooting. At each other. I'm getting distracted."

...not that it was very hard to do that.

[chirpchirpchirp]

"Go on, get distracted," Vette, said, her own smile a little crooked. "If I could contact my gang back home, I'd probably be the same way. I think you'd get along great with Flash."

And she was pretty sure Taunt would just break the poor boy.

"Tell you what... I'll let you choose which," she decided. "I'm happy with any distraction just so long as I get to trash-talk your technique as we play."

[spectre_alenko]

Kaidan came back from his morning of Fisticuffs with Friends and decided to go through the front entrance on his way to the apartment above in an 'it puts the B in subtle' kind of way to check on Prompto.

"Hey, Prompto," he greeted when he entered the store.

[hashtag_chocobro]

"What up, boss man?" Prompto greeted back, popping his head up from where he was rummaging with something underneath the desk, something that he abandoned to actually sit down in his chair for a moment, figuring he could at least stay put for the duration of a conversation.

It was...a lofty goal, yes.

[spectre_alenko]

"Don't know, been out all morning," Kaidan said easily, "Is anything up?"

[hashtag_chocobro]

"Not really," Prompto shrugged just as easily. "Same old, same old. Pushin' games, stompin' newbs." He gave a faint smile. "Tried to do some reorganizing, but I think everything was better the way it was before, so I just switched it back, pretty much. Also, what'ya think about a pull-up bar somewhere around here? You know, for when you need to sort of take a break, stretch it out, get some blood flowing again?"

[spectre_alenko]

Kaidan tilted his head, "I mean, there's a pull-up bar and a heavy bag upstairs in the apartment. You're welcome to use them if it's slow. I could look into putting a bar down here. Might have to reinforce the doorjam."

A minor pause. "You ok?"

It was sort of an odd request, Prompto.

[hashtag_chocobro]

Was it reaaaally that odd? Who didn't walk into a room, take a good look around, and think to themselves: it's nice, but what it really needs is a good pull-up bar?

Prompto blinked a little at the question, as if a bit surprised by it, because he kind of actually was. "Yeah," he said, nodding a little, then offering a shrug. "Just thinking outloud, I guess. Spitballing ideas. It's not a big deal or anything. There's just really only so many variations on a push-up a guy can do before they want a little something different, y'know?"

Muscles to muscles, right? Kaidan should totally get what he meant.

[spectre_alenko]

Prompto, you are why burpees exist.

"So my next question is going to be how much caffeine and sugar have you had today, with a follow up of do we need to have a talk about toxic jock syndrome?" Kaidan asked calmly.

Because there was such a thing as too much exercise. He'd know. He was kind of an expert on exercise as distraction and/or self punishment.

[hashtag_chocobro]

"Ha ha ha," said Prompto. "You go talk to my friend Gladio about that first, and then see what you have to say to me. He makes me look like a cardio bunny."

....but you totally were, Prompto.

"But I get it, I get it." He held up his hands in surrender. "No pull-up bar. And I've actually eaten really clean today," he assured him; he wasn't going near junk food for a least a month. "Believe me. If I had caffeine and sugar today, you wouldn't be able to stop me bouncing right off these walls."

But he was there, sitting in a chair, through a whole conversation. Maybe with a bouncing knee, but that was really just normal.

"I don't know," he said. "Some days, just sitting around playing video games just won't cut it, I guess."

[spectre_alenko]

Kaidan simply arched an eyebrow.

"Have you checked out Atlas yet?" he asked.

[hashtag_chocobro]

"A little," said Prompto. "And oh-so-handwavily Mostly on days when it's not that nice out. The gym at the dorms is pretty good, too. I kinda prefer just jogging around the island, though; that way, I can usually get some good pictures out of it as well. Boom. Two birds, one stone."

[spectre_alenko]

"Well, it's pretty crappy out today," Kaidan said with a half-smile. He thumbed toward the door, "If you want to go hit the gym and burn off the energy, by all means. It's going to be dead in here this week anyway. Half the island's going to be dealing with the weekend hangover."

Not a literal hangover.

[hashtag_chocobro]

"If I start counting up the lines on the ceiling," Prompto said with a chuckle, "maybe I'll take you up on that offer, but I think I'm good, for now. For the moment. We'll see."

And then he paused for a moment, hesitating, considering, whether or not to address the rest of what Kaidan said. He supposed he could easily claim ignorance, pretend he didn't know anything about it, but if he started with that, he'd have to lean into it, and hard. It was one thing to hide stuff about yourself, but to straight up lie about it and keep the lie going?

He couldn't do that.

So he just didn't say anything, offering a faint smile instead. "Thanks, man."