fandomhighdorms | Second floor common room- Monday morning

She laughed.

"I got him at my job at the Magic Box," she explained, though that explained nothing, really, not yet. "Foomy's a peanut butter jelly demon. Which, like, sounds totally scary but really he just burbles and sings and chirps and is smaller than my fist and was singing a lullaby to a spare button I gave it when I left my room!!!!!!!!!!!"

So... not that scary?

Maybe not so scary if Prompto had been able to even hear anything Nina had said after dropping the d-word on him, which, based on the look on his face, drained of all its color in the blink of an eye, and the fact that he nearly dropped all his puppies..

Yeah. Not catching nearly a single word after that one.

"Wait. Hold up." Prompto blinked, shook his head, tried to laugh but it only came out as a confused breath. He'd misheard her. He had to have... "Did you say daemon? That you have a pet...daemon?"

He thought there weren't any here!

There weren't supposed to be any here!

She blinked at him, confused and concerned about his reaction because... that wasn't a normal one, to a little blobby friend who sung buttons to sleep.

"Are you, like, okay???????" she asked, a bit anxiously and trying not to hover. "Like, oh my gosh, you need to sit down, you look like you're going to faint!!!!!!"

"I'm fine!" Prompto insisted, because a reaction like that didn't exactly do much to stop his heart which was now racing, his heartbeat pounding in his ears, his eyes desperately darting to the window to confirm that, yeah, okay, good. Good. It was daylight out, it was early, even, lots of daylight hours left...

He let out s slow breath, and went ahead and sat down anyway, plopping down gracelessly, setting down the puppies except one poor fluffball that was going to get clung to as he looked at Nina, brows knitted with worry.

"I'm serious, though," he said, no more act, no nothing except trying to wrangle down that sharp wretch of dread in his chest. " Did you say 'daemon'?"

And, yeah, that wasn't going to do anything to make her not want to hover over him. Especially not when he actually sat down and got serious.

Serious for real, nothing like she'd seen from him before.

Nina knelt down next to him, her eyes glued to his face.

"I said 'demon'," she said carefully, fishing out her phone. "Foomy's not here though, he's back in my room. It's safe? You're safe. Prompto, I promise there's nothing wrong."

She looked uncertain of his reception to these words.

"Did you, like, want to see pictures of Foomy???????"

Prompto had never actually seen a daemon before, and he had been perfectly fine with that, so the idea of a picturr, while he was just trying to wrap his head around the fact that Nina was telling him that she had a pet daemon...

Wide eyed, he shook his head. "It means something different here," he said, murmuring it mostly to himself. "It's different, it's got to be! I've never seen them here, no one's ever mentioned them! They're different here, then," he turned his eyes to implore her, hoping they didn't look as desperate as he felt, "right, Nina? They'd have to be. You can't have a pet daemon!"

They... they looked pretty damn desperate, and that frightened her more than anything. She hated seeing him like this, hadn't meant to do this.

"They're something different here," she said soothingly, reaching out to try and touch his arm, hoping to reassure him. "Whatever they are back home, they're not like that here."

Prompto let out another big breath. It helped, but not enough, so another one followed, then a gulp, and then another shake of his head. One more sigh, and he covered his face, because now that the fear had managed to subside a little, it was quickly being replaced with embarrassment.

"S-sorry," he managed to get out, rubbing his eyes, dragging his hand down over his mouth, trying to focus now on the turmoil roiling in his stomach. "I just ...I mean, good. Obviously, they wouldnt... I just..."

Pull it together, Prompto!

"Sorry," he said again, more confident this time, looking at Nina again. "Back home...daemons are...bad, Nina. Like, real bad. My whole city has this, like, magic barrier around it, has for centuries, just to keep them out. So...so when you said....I just...I..."

Panicked.

And you want to be Crownsguard???

"S-sorry," was all he could get out again, feeling the very deep need to go find a hole to crawl into and never, ever come out again.

She studied him seriously, her eyes sharp.

"There's nothing to be sorry for," she said firmly. "You didn't do anything wrong, Prompto. I sprung something on you that I had no idea was such a terrible, horrible thing in your world. The way you reacted was totally normal."

Nina glanced away, to give him a moment to collect himself, but at the same time, shifted a little closer, so he wouldn't think she was leaving him because he'd been a baby or whatever nonsense he was thinking.

Demons scary enough an entire city had a barrier against them? She'd be scared of those too.

"You okay?" she asked, gently.

"I'm okay," Prompto assured her, nodding, offering up a faint smile, because that's what you did. You smiled and pushed through and hoped no one noticed you gulping everything down.

And then you made a joke, lighten up the room, give everyone a laugh so they move on and forget.

"Although maybe I was wrong, I think Foomy might be too much cute--"

And you called a daemon cute, too, apparently, but, hey, whatever it takes, right?

"--for Furnado after all. At least....at first. But I guess....I am a little curious, now."

Terrified, Prompto. Terrified was the word you were looking for, but, sure, go with curious. It was Nina's pet, how bad could it really be?

Don't answer that.

Edited 2018-11-27 04:31 (UTC)

She turned her gaze back to him and... oh, Prompto, you were trying so hard, but she didn't buy it.

Only Vette really got to see her when she was serious, but like, this wasn't a game, and he was terrified and that just wasn't right.

"You know," she said, "it's okay to be scared. People are dumb about it, and say it's okay for girls to be scared sometimes, when boys have every right to be just as scared. If you don't want to see my pet, it's okay. I don't mind. You don't have to do something that makes you uncomfortable."

She tilted her head slightly.

"After all," Nina said, "we're friends. So saying no to something won't change that."

You don't have to do something that makes you uncomfortable.

Prompto almost laughed at that, half sardonic, half nerves, because his whole life had been doing things that made him feel uncomfortable. It was only just recently that he'd finally decide to just run with it and hope to keep up.

"Yeah, I know," he said, that smile managing to find its crookedness, even though it was still a little soft on the edges. "But...I do. Really. Especially if you say Foomy's different, I won't know unless I meet...him?, right? Just, you know, probably not at work."

Now he did laugh, just a little,one more notch on his crooked grin as he leaned in to dramatically whisper, "If the cats saw me like this, I'd never hear the end of it."

Her eyes narrowed slightly, as if she heard the things he wasn't saying. And, sure, she had no mind reading powers, but--well, between Vette and him, Nina was going to have her work cut out for her, dealing with two low self-esteem idiots.

Still...

"I guess the cats are pretty important," she said, though her expression was still serious. "But I mean it, Prompto. Only if you want to."

And this one here was a low self-esteem idiot who now felt the need to prove himself more and more with each concession she made.

"And I mean it, too," Prompto said, firmly now, meeting that serious expression on Nina's face with one that almost bordered on defiant, though it was more in defiance of himself that it was toward her. "I want to."

There was a slight pause, though, a crack still there that he couldn't quite cover up.

"Eventually."

And Nina didn't want to push him too hard, wanted to give him a break, but she also wanted to challenge that defiance, see how far it ran.

"How about a picture, then?" she suggested. "You don't have to meet Foomy or go anywhere near him. It's just a picture."

It was a compromise that didn't leave her satisfied at all but she wasn't going to drag him to her room to shove him at Foomy. That would be cruel.

See, and the eventually worked nicely as a opportunity to just avoid it forever in the future, and even though it was just a picture, the mere suggestion of it just got Prompto's palms all sweaty again, but it's not like he could turn back on it now.

"Yeah," he said, shrugging a little; it was just a picture, "sure. Let's see him."

Which, he figured, would be good. Because he could either be totally proven right that it was terrifying and crazy that Nina had a daemon for a pet, or it would prove that she was right, and it wasn't terrifying at all, because it was completely different, and in no way related to the daemons at home. Either way, it would be good to know.

Eventually was code word for never and Nina hadn't been going to let him get away with that.

She gauged his sincerity for another moment—and, well, it wasn't like Foomy was the sort of thing nightmares were made out of, especially given that Prompto adored cute things, so Nina dug out her phone again.

"Okay," she said, sliding through her pictures, "one picture of Foomy then, coming up."

And she offered him her phone.

Foomy was small, pink with a brown swirl (of peanut butter) through him and a totally unfairly cute face. In the picture, Foomy also happened to have a thimble on his head and looked a bit confused about that, but happily so.

Prompto looked at the phone for a second as if half expecting it to bite him, but he took it from Nina and tilted it toward him.

And blinked. Blinked again and tilted his head, and then Prompto brought the phone closer, narrowing his eyes, wondering if Foomy might be behind the adorable little pink thing.

"That's Foomy?" he asked, almost incredulously.

Holy smokes, just kill him now. There wasn't a hole that existed that was deep enough to bury his shame now.

Edited 2018-11-27 18:53 (UTC)

Er. Well. Yes, a bit.

"That's Foomy," Nina agreed, her voice fond. "He was singing a button to sleep when I wandered in here."

Because that was a thing peanut butter jelly demons did.

"Yeah." Just how red was his face just now, he wondered? Had it reached ketchup stage yet? Was there something more red than ketchup stage? That's probably where it was right now. "Daemons are waaaay different here than back home, or else my entire life had been a lie."

He even tried to think about this little tiny drop of cute being a ruthless, insatiable killer that would tear a person limb from limb without a second thought, and just...couldn't. It didn't even have arms to rip other arms off. And he highly doubted it had the kind of teeth that could gnaw into you and bite your head clean off, either.

She couldn't help but smile, just a little, and nudged him companionably.

"I mean, like, your entire life has probably not been a lie," since that sort of thing didn't tend to happen outside of the cheesy romances she read, "but look on the bright side: now you can claim you've met a demon and survived!!!!!!!"

Well. 'Met' in the very loosest of terms.

But Nina was pretty sure he'd be willing to physically meet Foomy now that he'd seen him in a picture.

Prompto swayed himself a little more than would be natural at that nudge, breathing out a faint laugh, trying to imagine pulling off that story with Gladio. "Yeah," he said, "I can't wait to tell 'em all about how it nearly smothered me to death with cute, but, somehow, somehow, I pulled through victorious in the end."

How? How was that thing called a daemon? This place made no sense, but, in this case, he was feeling pretty willing to just take it.

"And I'm glad you did," she said, before adding, in a more earnest voice, "but, like, are you okay?"

Did she need to go find a nurse? She could do that.

"I am," Prompto assured her, and, this time, it probably was far more convincing, because it was easily far more true. "Perfectly okay. I promise."

Incredibly embarrassed and probably unable to look at her again without wanting to just die from it, sure, but still easily in the margins of okay.

Well, it was better than the terror she'd inspired in him earlier. Nina would take it.

"Okay," she said, because she had to trust him, at least a little. "And I'm sorry. I didn't even think that saying something like that might mean something different in other worlds."

And she probably should have, come to think of it.

"Maybe next time, I'll just show Foomy off and tell people what he is after."

Second floor common room- Monday morning

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