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The Photo Hut - Thursday

Since Liz didn’t have a lot of paper work to finish, she thought she could get a head start on the halloween decorations and had started to bring out the boxes of decorations from last year and was spending some time decorating the displays. She was being careful with not to over do it and she wouldn’t be able to finish all the decorating by herself but she did get a lot of it done.

Once she had decorated as much as she was physically able to, Liz returned to behind the counter to continue putting the finishing touches on the photo album for Prompto - she was quite pleased with the how the album had turned out and was looking forward to being able to give it to him.

[the Photo Hut is open!]

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It had been while Prompto was in the middle of making some lunch to bring down to Liz that an incredibly unexpected phone call came in. So, in the chaos of knowing he had to go take care of that hitting right when he was practically elbows-deep in sandwich-making, he rushed through finishing up and frantically trying to at least tidy it up a bit before he all but barreled down the stairs and into the shop with a bag and a bottle and hurried over to hand them both over.

"Water," he greeted quickly, "and sandwich." And he also handed them over with a swift kiss on the top of her forehead, then hitched his thumb toward the door. "I gotta go. Gladio'sbackontheisland."

And then that whirlwind turned to exit the shop as quickly and as chaotically as it had descended upon it in the first place.

Liz found herself staring down at the bottle of water and sandwich and blinking a bit as she tried to make sense of all of that.

Did he say Gladio was back? She glanced over at the door after Prompto's departure, feeling extremely confused by what was happening.

And then it was quite a good bit later that Prompto came back in, far less of a chaotic whirlwind, much more subdued and not a slight bit shellshocked. He came into the shop, rubbing the back of his neck, shaking his head in a way that suggested he'd pretty much been shaking it in disbelief since he started heading back.

"Soooooo," he ventured cautiously, making it back to the counter and leaning on it slightly. "Good news, bad news...."

And he just sort of trailed off to let that hang there, since he still really hadn't worked out exactly where to start with all of this.

"Oh," Liz looked up at him, still trying to process what had been happening that morning and then she wasn't sure which news that she wanted to hear first, "um ...maybe start with the good news?" she tried, noticing how cautious he seemed to be with what he was about to tell her.

It wasn't necessarily caution, so much as just trying to figure it out and make sense of it himself, and the weird sort of feeling that went along with a sort of...annoyance? Frustration? Concern?...that all of this would come slingshotting back to him just as he was starting to really feel comfortable in being back, in finding his stride, in being...okay with all of it...

"Well," he ventured slowly, his foot behind him as he leaned on the counter starting to jostle a bit with nervous tension, "the good news is that Noct's sacrifice worked, and Eos was saved, and the Starscourage is gone and there's no more daemons, and they've got the sun back again and are starting to rebuild and everything....and the bad news is that portals are still blocked and we can't get a hold of anyone there still, but somehow, Gladio got sucked back here the way I was, and now he's stuck."

Laid all out like that, the good news definitely outweighed the bad news, but the bad news was enough to make him feel oddly...nervous? Worried? Confused? Like, anyone could make a pretty good argument for why it made sense that Prompto had come back; Prompto himself would be inclined to start flinging around words like Destiny and Fate and Purpose. But Gladio? What sort of Fandom nonsense bullshit were they in for now?

And what about Ignis?? The good news, at least, helped close the door on a lot of questions that he'd been having, but the bad news seemed to just want to open up a whole slew of new ones in their wake.

That was definitely a lot to process as Liz absorbed everything that Prompto was telling her.

"Oh that is a lot," she blinked a bit as she tried to decide what to focus on first, "I mean ...it's good that Eos was saved but I'm sorry that you still can't return home, you must be so worried about everyone," she was still scared that he'd return and then he'd disappear again.

She paused, biting her lip, "so it was just Gladio back? Is Ignis still on Eos?"

She knew that Goose had been missing Ignis a lot.

A lot seemed to really be understating it, didn't it? Prompto shook his head a little bit, letting out a slow breath, his eyes a bit wide as he was still processing it.

"As far as we know," he said. "Yeah. Apparently, Gladio just...stepped outside for a moment, and the next thing he knew, he was here. Outside the gym."

He did have to snort a little bit of a laugh at that, because, come on. You had to admit, even with everything, that was kind of hilarious. But the humor faded quickly and he shook his head.

"Still can't get a hold him, though," he said. "We tried Gladio's sister, too. Nothing. And of course Gladio marched straight over to Portalocity after that, demanding answers, and I'm pretty sure you can guess how well that went..."

"I can imagine that it didn't go well?" Liz said softly as she tried to picture Gladio demanding answers from Portalocity, "did he say how everyone else was though? How they've been doing?"

Edited 2022-09-29 11:53 (UTC)

"I mean," said Prompto, shrugging his shoulders a little with a faint breath that was going for a laugh, even though it came out more like a disbelieving scoff, "everyone's great. The Prophesy was fulfilled, balance has been restored..."

And after almost two weeks straight of not knowing, and speculating, and wondering, it suddenly seemed almost too good to be true. Like there was some catch he was missing. Or maybe the last decade had just made him paranoid, especially now that he was starting to finally adapt to all of this, only to have a giant six-foot-six curveball thrown at him.

"Apparently," he added softly, looking over at Liz, "they just thought I didn't make it."

Which was fair, he did just straight up disappear everything went down, but still. Harsh.

Liz hadn’t been expecting that, “oh, I’m sorry ,”she said quietly, “did …has the same amount of time passed since you’ve been here? How did Gladio react when he saw you?”

"It....it sounds like it," Prompto said, slowly, nodding a little with a frown as he just sort of...went back over everything. "Two weeks." He laughed a little mirthlessly. "To the day, even. Almost like time just..." His hands kind of danced a circle in the air in front of him. "...got back in step or something, once I was here, maybe. I don't know, this time stuff doesn't make any sense, and he was...." He breathed out a sigh. "He was surprised, I can tell you that much. But he's not happy about it, that was pretty clear, too."

Prompto almost clarified that the thing that Gladio wasn't happy about was being here, and not his reaction when he saw Prompto, but...he honestly wasn't completely sure on that one.

Liz did smile at that, “it has been two weeks hasn’t it?” she said, she couldn’t believe how quickly those two weeks had gone.

She did notice that Prompto never clarified what he meant specifically when Gladio wasn’t happy.

She bit her lip, “does….did you tell Gladio about …um…the pregnancy?”

She knew she and Gladio had had issues in the past, she wasn’t sure how he’d take the news that she was pregnant with Prompto’s child.

"Well, yeah," said Prompto, without hesitation, although his expression went a little further into a certain discomfort over the conversation that ensued after he brought up that. "Of course I did..."

He shifted, uncomfortably, where he leaned on the counter, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, only to shift it back again, and his knee started to jostle a little more nervously.

"Listen," he said, holding out his hands, as he tried to steer a little from delving too much into details at this time, and into something he also wasn't looking forward to asking, but knew he would have to eventually. "I know this is a lot to throw at you right now, but he's going to need a place to stay. Just for a little bit. Whether that means until we can get him back to Eos, or just settled somewhere else for now, I don't know, but obviously, we'll get started on it ASAP..."

Liz hadn’t factored in the possibility that Gladio would need a place to stay even though staying with them made the most sense, “oh, of course he can stay here,” she assured him, “for as long as he needs to,” she could hopefully manage him staying over and not burst into tears ever time they talked.

Ughhhh, if Gladio wound up making Liz cry again (okay, okay, to be fair, he hadn't been really been the cause of her tears that one time, but still!), that was going to put Prompto in a very awkward situation.

...more awkward than the one he was already in, even.

But he smiled, breathing out a sigh of relief. "Awesome," he said, and that definitely demanded pushing himself up over the counter a little to give her a kiss to really show his gratitude. "Thank you. We'll get it figured out, though. I'm pretty sure he'd going to probably be more eager to get out of there than any of us."

Liz was more than happy to accept that kiss and she smiled, “that’s okay,” she told him, “I mean we do have the space, so if he needs time to figure out what he’s going to do, he can take as long as he needs,”

She paused, “we should probably stock up on cup noddles in the meantime though,” she considered.

Prompto's grin broadened into a laugh. "That...is definitely one way we can win him over," he admitted. "He won't be able to complain if we're keeping him buried in Cup Noodle^{TM the whole time!"

That grin lingered on Liz a little longer, and, well, since he'd already gotten the kissing started, it was only inevitable that there would eventually be more, including the one he was leaning over to deliver this time.

"Smart."}

Despite some nervousness she was feeling, Liz started laughing as well, “it might help keep him distracted as well,” she offered, she was anxious about what Gladio’s reaction to her pregnancy had been, since she noticed that Prompto hadn’t said much about his reaction to the news.

But she would happily indulge in more kissing and keep that going as long as possible.

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The Photo Hut - Thursday

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