fandomtownies | Fern-ado Animal Shelter; Thursday [05/16].

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Fern-ado Animal Shelter; Thursday [05/16].

"I'm here, I'm here, I'm here!"

Prompto came skittering into the shelter that day a bit late, fully ready to launch into an excuse that placed the blame firmly on being chased down by some real gnarly looking dino-dudes, complete with heroic antics and near-escapes, because that made for a much better excuse than the real reason he'd been late, which was that he had completely forgotten that he and Sidon had switched shifts this semester, and didn't remember until he was about half-way finished with harvesting his crops on his adorable kitty farm game and constructing a super cute new outfit for his avatar.

But the vet didn't even ask; the vet didn't even seem to care, and while a part of Prompto knew he should be grateful for that, he mostly just felt bummed out because it was a really good story he'd made up.

Oh, well. Maybe he'd just tell the...er....puppies? They were still totally cute and all, but Prompto was definitely not going to be puppy piling today, no offense, bros. He'll happily just leave all the hairless pets to Vette.

Fern-ado is open!

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Vette (and Dozy) were absolutely skipping out on work today.

It was nothing personal to Hera, really, except that when Vette had arrived at the scrapyard for her shift, the bitey bits looked significantly more formidable than their usual, and she'd noped right back outta there pretty much immediately.

Besides, she had other things she needed to do today. Like slip in here with her naked cat draped across her shoulders... pause... blink around for a moment in confusion. Step back outside and look at the sign. Squint at it for a minute. And then head back in again once she was sure she was in the right place.

"Hey, Prompto!"

"Hey, Vette," and Vette's weird little goblin cat. He grinned a little, both to see her and little Miss Dozy, even though now he had a little stab of worry that something was wrong, and that's why she was here, or maybe she hated her and wanted to return her, but she certainly didn't look like she hated her...

"And, yeaaaaah," he chuckled a little at her double-take. "Guess the place kind of changed with the island this time, including all the animals and a good deal of the supplies, but if we forgot anything, we...miiiight still have something? Oh! Unless you're confused because you were just expecting Sidon. But we switched; he's on Fridays now, made more sense with our class schedules, y'know? So if you were looking for him, I've got bad news for you."

Was...was he babbling? He was kind of babbling. He shouldn't be babbling, he babbled when he was nervous, but why should he be nervous? It wasn't like it was his first time really seeing her...talking to her after finding out she wasn't, you know, dead and stuff.

"Nope, I'm seeing only good news here," Vette replied, giving Prompto a little grin. Really, buddy. Really, it was fine. She was even coming in to steal a hug, because pbbth, she did what she wanted, that was why. "I came to talk to you about Dozy."

And also in part to avoid being eaten by scrap in a junkyard. But mostly about Dozy.

And the day Prompto wouldn't allow a stealth hug would be a day he'd clearly have been replaced by a secret evil clone, because, seriously.

And the same could probably be said about fretting, too, actually, because while that seemed to have settled his case of the babbles nicely, he still couldn't help being a little worried, mostly about dumb and obvious things.

"Everything's okay, though, right?" he asked. "There's nothing, like, wrong or anything, is there?"

"Mostly everything is fine," Vette promised. "The issues I have are with people who are being jerks, so nobody standing here right now."

And that was a mighty squish, that hug right there.

"I want to thank you for her," she said, a little more quietly. "For Dozy. Sidon said she was all your idea, right?"

"Who's being jerks?" asked Prompto, frowning, partly because he couldn't imagine anyone wanting to be a jerk to Vette and partly because he naturally felt inclined to shake them down just for being a jerk to Vette. Seriously.

"And, I mean," he shrugged, face going pink, eyes drifting down a little and his hand gesturing a bit futilely, "you're welcome. But, come on, it's wasn't hardly my idea at all, it was pretty much your own, when you came in the other week, after..." He trailed off, shifted uncomfortably, and resolved to actually say it, chancing a glance up at her like a sad, chastised puppy, "everything."

"Doesn't matter," Vette mumbled. "Clearly I did something to deserve... whatever, it's fine." She waved a hand around a little, wrinkled her nose, and just kind of looked frustrated with the world at large for a moment before sighing and reaching up to scratch Dozy behind the ear, instead. "But... you know... I mean, I didn't even entirely know how much I needed her until I had her."

She scuffed a toe into the dirt for a moment.

"I got a full night's sleep last night," she said, after a moment's pause. "I mean. Because I had a cat on me and she was purring and she didn't move until after I was asleep and when she noticed I was awake again she came back and... I haven't... I mean. Even since before? Sleep's..."

Please hold while Vette gropes around for the ability to admit to not being okay, ever.

"Sleep's hard. Sleep's a hard thing."

"Oh, man...Vette..."

She couldn't have possibly have said something like 'sleep's a hard thing' and not expect to be pulled into another hug right then, could she? Well, if she didn't, then, incoming, unexpected but totally should have been expected hug, a little tentative at first, but one he was there, he made sure to make it A HUG.

"You sure you don't want me to go punch anyone in the face for you?" he offered while still in THE HUG, murmuring into her shoulder a little. "Because I'll do it. I will! I've been working on my hand-to-hand a lot since it happened, so I might even actually hurt them a little, too."

.... Oh, that was a quality hug right there. Excuse Vette for kind of just leaning right into that and pressing her face into Prompto's shoulder, please?

And following that up with a muffled, "Please don't? Nobody needs punching, I'm just being stupid anyway. I just... I mean. I wanted to thank you for the cat. That's all. I needed her, she's this little bundle of 'not alone,' and..."

Oh, space, there were feelings choking at her there, and that wouldn't do. So she clammed right up rather than voicing another word, because if she started to cry she'd basically have to steal a ship and go live on the moon, wouldn't she? Probably. Probably that.

"You're not being stupid," Prompto insisted, even though he didn't know the details or anything, but he had a hard time imagining any situation where that would be even remotely true, and he gave her another squeeze before moving back a little, hands on her shoulders still (being careful of the cat, of course) as he looked at her, sincerely, honestly, openly. Maybe a little hopefully that he could do even a little bit to make her feel better.

"Do you wanna....I don't know...talk about it, or anything? It can help to talk about it, too, you know, and I'm, like, all ears, Vette, seriously. Whatever you need, I'm your guy."

Not that he was desperate to make things up to her or anything.

"Well," he amended with a soft laugh, a crooked smirk, and preparing himself for an incoming smack, "not whatever you need. You've already got a boyfriend for that other stuff."

"And Sidon's a great kisser," Vette agreed, trying a smile on for size that fell maybe a tiny bit short. No smack was incoming. Not right then. She looked down toward her toes for a few moments, struggling to pick apart words. "I'm bad at that, you know? Talking? It's nothing personal. It's I get going and it's too much or not enough and nobody really wants to hear it anyway, ugly things live in my head, Prompto. Like, really ugly things. Kind of always have, and nobody gets to hear them until I can't hold them in anymore, you know? Until they sit there and fester and boil over because if they don't, I..."

...

She curled in on herself slightly, one lek moving to make certain Dozy wasn't going to tumble forward off her shoulder or anything.

"I don't know what I did," she said, quietly.

"Hey," Prompto said softly back, tilting his head a little as he looked at her with a faint, encouraging sort of smile that she probably wasn't going to see since those toes of her were so interesting right now. "Like you said, they're just being jerks. You can't help jerks. But...you know...the best way to get better at something is to practice, right? So maybe you just need to practice talking about things more. And it's not good, either, keeping all those ugly things inside your head all the time..."

And he should know, he had plenty of those himself.

That he also kept firmly there in his head, but, obviously, that was different.

"Yeah, maybe," Vette sighed. "It's not really something I..." She tapered off at that, and then made a frustrated sound. "I mean, I want to. I think I want to? I wouldn't even know where to start? Nobody needs my tragic backstory, trust me."

"I mean," Prompto offered a faint smirk, "you probably dont need it, either, then, right? But, hey, if you need to let any of that out, I'm here, right? You can even start wherever, I dont mind. If you need to. Or want to. Or I dont know, Miss Dozy's probably a better listener, anyway."

There was a slight, uncertain lause.

"And....cuter?"

No, he could not say that with confidence.

Vette actually managed to duck her head that tiny bit more, lifting one hand to her mouth as she bit back a little laugh at that.

"She's more prickly, but she means it with love," she offered. And then blew out a little breath. Steeled herself, and ventured, "I messed up big time back there, you know. I mean... A lot of people did. It wasn't just you, you know that, right?"

And now it was Prompto's turn to be terribly interested in his ties, looking down, rubbing the back of his neck. "Y-yeah," he murmured, "yeah, I...I guess. I mean," there was Norman, too, "sure, maybe, but maybe you wouldn't have messed up if I hadn't. Chain reaction sort of thing."

Vette shook her head a little.

"We're all better than that," she said, quietly. "We're all just people, you know? And sometimes people mess up. They mean well or they think they're invincible or they just miscalculated something along the way and the galaxy turned out to be bigger than they thought it was. But... you know what? I bet you won't make the same mistake twice."

She reached out and nudged him lightly against the shoulder.

"Know what that makes you?"

"Confused," said Prompto, laughing a little as he leaned back into the nudge way more than the force necessitated, and reached out as if to do the same to her, it just ended up scratching the top of Miss Dozy's head, "because I thought we were making you feel better, Princess, not me."

Can't deflect a deflector, Vette.

Weirdly enough, this wasn't actually deflecting. Vette smiled wryly.

"I'm getting there, Gunshow, I promise. I just have to circle around it a little, first." She leaned her head back a moment, considering the ceiling. Or... the ferns that were kind of blocking her view of the ceiling? Maybe the ceiling was ferns.

She was now overthinking ceilings.

"It makes you better at this than me," she said, a moment later. "Because if there's one thing I do really, really well? It's get caught."

Again. And again. And again.

"Maybe," Prompto said, after a moment to tilt his head and consider that and where exactly she might be going with it, "but the fact that you're here now means you're just as good at getting out of it as you are getting caught..."

Which felt like a weird thing to say when he mostly wanted to just suggest maybe not getting caught so much.

"Sure, but this time it was just a fluke," Vette pointed out, shrugging. "I got lucky. I get lucky a lot, too. First time it really mattered in my life? I got lucky. There's not always going to be a dashing hero or ten willing to go slaughter total jerks to save the day. I'm not always going to get rescued because other stuff needed to get fixed."

She glanced back down at him.

"You're gonna take this, and you're gonna beat yourself up with it, because people you cared about got hurt, and that's how you are. You'll do better. And if the past... my whole life... is any indication, I'm going to just keep throwing myself into the stupid stuff, because when everyone else decides they've had enough and they clear out, stupid's what I've still got left."

"...if we were all stuck with what our lives have been up to this point," Prompto said after snort of a breath, "just kill me now, seriously, because I dont plan on ever going back to that. And there's so much more to you then stupid, Vette. I mean, dont get me wrong, it's definitely a big part," he smirked a little, in a desperate hope that she recognized the joke for what it was, "but you're also pretty smart for a stupid person, you're fierce as hell, you're adorable AND scary, you could kick my ass in a second, you care about your friends, you've always been there when I've needed you...even sometimes when I didnt even know I needed it. And that's just off the top of my head."

Edited 2019-05-18 00:16 (UTC)

"Well, you're right about how I could totally kick your butt," Vette decided, grinning. It faltered a few moments later. "You know... you guys are all I have, right? My friends here? Before you it was the gang back on Nar Shaddaa, before them it was actual pirates, before that..."

She shrugged a little.

"Nothing, really, for a long time before that."

She fell into an awkward silence for a few seconds before she ventured, "but this is still new. I mean... totally new. This 'friend who sees the damage and knows how to fix it,' thing. I mean, you maybe don't even know where the damage came from but you knew what to do."

She reached a hand up and gave Miss Dozy a little scratch under the chin.

"And the cat you got me is way cooler than the one I gave you. Now I have to figure out how to one-up this, you know. Make a whole thing out of it..."

"Please don't," Prompto said, immediately, a little desperately, with a laugh that was much too late to cover that desperation. "I mean it. You don't owe me anything, Vette, seriously. And I didnt even do anything, like, miraculous or anything. You literally came in here talking about getting a cat...I just bear you to it, that's all."

"But you even got me the right cat," Vette replied, a little desperately. "Do you get that? It's not just that you got me a cat. You made sure it was her. That it was the one that counted."

Oh no. Emotions were happening again, somewhere right where throat met chest, and why did that always mean breathing got a little complicated anyway? She huffed out a soft noise to try to mask that fact, and then inhaled again and wrapped her arms around herself.

"You made sure I wasn't going to be alone."

"But I didnt even--!"

He was going to say that he didnt even pick out the cat, that had been Siodn, but even if he didnt then imagine she'd point out that he'd known to go to Sidon, it was clearly just upsetting her, and so he stopped himself, threw up his hands a little, and sighed almost in resignation.

He hadn't even got the cat so she wouldn't be alone. He just the cat so she would be happy. How could she think she'd be alone? With Nina and Sidon and himself, just to start with....

"Vette, it's not like I did anything special. I just did wjatvfriends do. I did it to make up for a terrible mistake that I can never take back, but I can at least try to make better. And...."

According to some people, it wasn't even close to good enough, either. He sucked in another breath, decided it was better to just leave it there.

Edited 2019-05-18 00:56 (UTC)

"I was sick for a few days, Prompto," Vette said quietly. "That's all. Just sick. And then I got better. And the getting there was pretty much the worst in both directions and now I've got this little friend who rides around on my shoulder and doesn't care when I say something stupid, she's just happy I'm warm."

Which really maybe shouldn't have been as much of a concern here in humid jungle land, but hey, fine, Vette would take it.

"And she won't ever stop being happy I'm warm, you know? Because that's just how she is. She makes sense. That makes up for a lot, because it isn't like anything else ever does."

"Well..." Prompto said after a moment of wondering how this got all twisted up in the first place, "good. I'm glad. That was, you know, kind of the whole point."

Vette was quiet for a few more moments, just kind of nodding, trying to sort out her own thoughts, too.

"... Told you I was no good at this," she offered, smiling wryly as her own thoughts meandered in a similar direction. "You can't say you weren't warned."

"You don't need to," Prompto said, returning that grin with one of his own. "I'm not very good at stuff like this either. We're both pretty terrible, really. Totally the worst."

"Totally," Vette agreed with a soft laugh. "But we both knew that already too, right? Maybe that's why we're stuck with one another."

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Fern-ado Animal Shelter; Thursday [05/16].

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