Fandom Island and Town

Sure, Prompto said he might try to help out with some of those end-of-the-month reports that seemed to never end for Liz, but he had a photography gig that weekend and had gotten really excited taking all these shots of the wedding he was hired for (curse his hopelessly romantic heart!), and so he had a lot of pictures he needed to sort through and touch up to send to the newlyweds that was taking all of his time and attention.

It didn't help that he did tend to get hyperfocused on stuff like this, and would definitely be feeling it later tonight when he realized that spending hours on end hunched over a computer pointing and clicking through a camera roll was going to cause havoc on his back.

And worst of all, he wouldn't even be able to use that to convince Gladio to let him off of training, either! Life was so unfair.

The Photo Hut is open!

With Liz still not feeling her best, on and off, since they got back from Barbados, Prompto went down to the store that day with the determination to do as much work as possible so that she didn't have to worry about it. Invoices and ordering? Check! Budget report? Tedious and terrible and wishing he could just send it to Iggy to do for him instead, but check! He was going to organize the shelves and put out some new stock and change up some of the sample photos in the display frames, because why not? He was also going to think of a new display for the window and maybe organize some of the drawers behind the counter...

Really, though, all of this was just to keep him distracted on doing something that wasn't googling things on his phone and getting flaily over something possibly being wrong...

The Photo Hut is open!

You could tell Prompto was working on something really hard at the Photo Hut that day with the way he was leaning forward, eyes intent on the computer, with his tongue sort of sticking out of his mouth as he concentrated. A lot of it was moving the mouse around to adjust this, and fix that, no that didn't work, delete it, try again, maybe search for a couple of different pictures, now what sort of font? Ohgods, why do all these words look wrong now that he'd been looking at them with various fonts, come on, he'd made posters before, why was he having trouble getting this one to be what he wanted?

Well, because it was important. The planning had started to put together the Big Second Annual PuppyBowl Birthday Extravaganza!! for Noctra, and he really wanted to make sure the flyers were all it needed to be and more!

It was kind of cool, he realized, that two of his most favorite days in the entire multiverse, the Puppybowl and Noctra's birthday, were close enough to each other that he could merge them, and he really hoped that it would be a good long while before Noctra "grew out of it" and wanted to do something different. But the way he saw it? If he had the choice between matching his birthday between the two big holidays near/on it? He'd...

Well, okay, he was a hopeless romantic, so it would actually be a hard choice for him, but come on! Puppies playing football! That was the best birthday association a person could have, right?

Right!

Either way, he had a poster to design, and he was going to design the heck out of it!

The Photo Hut is open!

Prompto had Noctra with him in the shop that day, because someone had gotten her first Big Girl camera for Christmas that year! Sort of. Obviously, it was a simplified model and pretty small for tiny hands and extremely durable, but the point was that it did take real pictures, unlike all of her little plush and plastic cameras she'd collected in her short life so far. And Prompto had promised her that once they were back home and settled, they would go through her digital reel to pick out the best pictures and get started on her first album of shots.

So they were both at the computer and Noctra was on his lap, and they were scrolling through a lot of exactly the sort of photographs you'd expect a not-even-yet-two-year-old toddler to take: random blurs of this or that and mostly fingers and floor and ceilings with the occasionally lucky shot that you could actually discern something from. She seemed to be the best with this with the cats, who seemed to actually sit still just because it meant that Noctra was too busy trying to take their picture to bother them too much.

Occasionally, Noctra would let out a delighted squeal of recognition at something, pointing at the screen and declaring what it was, although most of the time, Prompto had to just sort of squint at it and then shrug and take her word for it. Because, sure, yeah, why not? That big random blur of red probably was Hellboy, who was he to question her artistic vision?

(He would politely be ignoring that fact that he initially thought most of the ones of him were somehow shots of chocobo butts. From the mouths of babes, right??)

The Photo Hut is open!

Prompto was pretty locked in and focused on his work at the Photo Hut that day, having gotten some last-minute jobs from a handful of people who seemed to realize all too late that it was almost Christmas and that they'd forgotten to get their holiday photos out. Like, he knew that he was pretty terrible at time management, but, man! He couldn't help shaking his head a little as he worked on edits and uploads and emails while finishing up, because this felt like cutting it pretty close even by his standards!

Still, he liked the urgency of last-minute jobs. It helped him keep focused and on task when he had a ticking clock over his head. And he also had some nice hot chocolate with peppermint in it, and nothing too weird or distracting seemed to be happening on the island, so, overall, he was hoping on having a nice productive day!

Plus, one of his clients had just wanted a bunch of Christmas photos of their pets, and so you just know which job had been his favorite one last week!

The Photo Hut is open!

Prompto was pretty excited, because he'd had a pretty good idea for something that might push holiday sales for the shop, and that was bringing in some good photobooks that could make some nice gifts! Fancy coffee-table style books featuring various photographers or specific themes, that you could tailor to that person that's a little hard to shop for but definitely has a thing for flowers or nature or the stars! And a bunch of them had arrived that morning, and so he was setting to the task of getting them out and displayed nicely, especially in the window with a sign advertising the idea a little bit.
Of course, the unfortunate thing about this plan was that Prompto loved a good photobook, and so the going was slow, because he kept getting distracted, and the one that caught his eye especially was one about the American West and cowboys, which sucked him in effectively and had him flipping through it with a distant smile and a little bit of a blush splashed across his cheeks.

Erm, no reason.

The Photo Hut is open!

Prompto really loved his job and his work here at the Photo Hut. He loved looking at new merch and making cool new displays. His favorite was the rare occasion they got a customer, especially one that needed advice, and he could spend a good portion of time just babbling to them about the options and helping them narrow in on what they were looking for. He also liked the downtime where he could work on his own photography portfolio, managing his emails and booking gigs for the weekends or the days he knew he'd have time to hit up the mainland for a nice job.

But today? Today, there had been a nice cozy fireplace in the living room, and he wanted nothing more than to be curled up in front of it with Liz and Noctra and Rain, especially since Noctra was already missing those ponies from yesterday and could use the extra comforting, maybe with some cocoa and those blankets and...

Another sigh escaped him as he looked around the fireplace-less shop (although not without its own holiday cheer and decoration) and then looked up at the ceiling toward the apartment above, and sighed again. Well, maybe if things stayed too quiet, he'd close up early and go enjoy that, but for now, he was just going to keep at it as best he could and hope that the wait just made the pay-off all the more cozy and sweet.

The Photo Hut is open!