Third Floor Common Room; Monday Morning [05/10].

[howareyanow]

If anything particularly different was going on outside right now, Wayne didn't know about it yet and he'd mostly convinced himself that he didn't care, because it was probably weird and he was just better off going about his day as normally as he could.

And that included the traditional Monday morning breakfast. This would be his third week in a row; he felt that made it an official tradition, and he had no intention of fucking with tradition. Since Vette missed it last week, crepes were back on the menu, with all the fixins, as well as the eggs and sausage and bacon and all that other good stuff as one might expect out of a nice breakfast like this.

Sure, there'd been that brunch yesterday and all, but who ever really got sick of breakfast food in the morning, anyway? Not anyone Wayne would likeleh want to know, that was for sure.

[[ he is a creature of habit, through and through. Open! Breakfast is seeerved! ]]

Comments

[chirpchirpchirp]

"Save the world from Prompto's old guy face! Save him from a future of driving buses!"

Sure, girls.

[bookbeltof_love]

Nina burst out laughing.

"Oh my gosh, do you think it's, like, part of the bus driver uniform??????????????"

[chirpchirpchirp]

"If you have a good beard, get off the bus!"

girls.

[bookbeltof_love]

But were they wrong?

"If your beard is good, you're over-qualified for the bus!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

[chirpchirpchirp]

"Why are you even taking this bus anyway?"

Excuse Vette. She needed to just beak down in a fit of giggles, now.

[bookbeltof_love]

There was no excusing Vette, especially not when Nina took one look at her, and also burst into giggles.

They were terrible, terrible girls.

[chirpchirpchirp]

Vette giggled until her sides hurt, and then, as she sobered up, she looked at Nina thoughtfully.

Tentatively.

"So... are we good?"

[bookbeltof_love]

It was pretty tempting to play dumb, but it was hard when Vette looked at her like that.

"We were never not good," Nina admitted slowly. "I just... needed time to think?????"

[chirpchirpchirp]

Vette's head tilted a little to the side.

"So... you don't hate me?"

Look, she'd had precisely nothing to work with when Nina had started flat-out avoiding her, and so made the assumption that made the most sense in her head.

[bookbeltof_love]

... What.

"... What?!?!?!??!" Nina yelped. "Vette, I could never!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

[chirpchirpchirp]

"Well, I didn't know," Vette flailed. "I got a cat and then you just... disappeared? What was I supposed to think?!"

[bookbeltof_love]

"Not thaaaaaaaaaaaat!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Nina protested. "Like, if I was mad at you, I would say!!!!!!!!!!!"

[chirpchirpchirp]

Vette frowned at Nina in silence for a few moments.

"... Maybe... next time... could you say when you're not mad at me too, please?"

[bookbeltof_love]

Nina fidgeted under that look and that silence, feeling really kind of awful about both.

"I didn't mean to worry you," she offered. "And, like, I hope... I really hope there isn't a next time, but if there is, I'll tell you?"

[chirpchirpchirp]

"Thank you," Vette murmured. "I didn't know what to think, Nina. Only that you didn't want to see me anymore. Usually when people do that, they don't come back again."

[bookbeltof_love]

"No, that wasn't--I didn't mean it that way," Nina said, looking distressed. "Like, I was upset and I just... I needed to think."

She'd still not made up her mind about all of it, but...

"I'm always going to come back."

[chirpchirpchirp]

"Think about... me?"

Vette looked confused. Still a little worried. But mostly just confused, now. She blew out a soft breath.

"I couldn't have known that."

[bookbeltof_love]

"I know," Nina said, a bit helplessly. "And I didn't think about how it would look either. I just... yeah, there was a lot to think about. Some of it about you. Some of it about... everyone else too. And some about me."

[chirpchirpchirp]

Vette looked down at her toes for a few more moments, hand reaching to scratch behind Dozy's ear.

"Well... did you figure any of it out?"

[bookbeltof_love]

Nina had to consider that.

"I don't know," she admitted, finally. "I guess I'm, like, really bad at this???????"

[chirpchirpchirp]

Vette made a soft huffing sound at that, carefully selected a berry from her plate, and then lobbed it gently at Nina's head.

"I'll say," she declared. "Pull it together, we have to make sure Prompto doesn't grow up to become a bus driver, you know."

[bookbeltof_love]

"Rude!!!!!!!!!!" Nina protested as she had to fish that berry out of her curls. "Oh my gosh, Vette, we do have to stop that, but..........."

She tried to figure out a way to put it.

"I just.......... it made me so mad, that everyone was so thoughtlessly put into danger. And then you died. And I wasn't even here to help. And then you were back and you just... wanted it to be right, but when Prompto gave you Miss Dozy, I couldn't... it wasn't right, to me, so I had to......... I didn't want to make you worried."

But then Nina had failed at that too.

[chirpchirpchirp]

Vette bit her lip.

"I wasn't dead, you know," she said, firmly. "I was sick, maybe. Not completely myself, no, but not dead. I wouldn't be here if I was dead. That's not how dead works."

... May she never realize what her weekend's absence was about.

"You know he doesn't think for a second that Miss Dozy makes up for anything, right?" She offered that a lot more softly. "He's going to be kicking his own butt over it forever, but this was..." She glanced at the kitten. "I don't know what it was. It wasn't meant to make everything okay, though. He just knew I was already looking, and I think he wanted to make it easier for me to do."

[bookbeltof_love]

"I think... I think I know that now," Nina said, though it was all twisted up in a lot more things, like how she was so terribly disappointed in him and now how she was anxious and terrified for his futures--could she prevent the future where he was sick like that?--and how, like, she loved him but she wasn't sure she loved him as a guy now or... what...

"But, Vette, all I could see... I kept just looking at your bed and I couldn't stop thinking about how awful it'd be, if you were never around again to be there. If it stayed empty...."

[chirpchirpchirp]

"If it stayed empty, it'd be empty," Vette replied simply. "And that'd suck. I'd be off somewhere... I don't know, eating people or something right now, like some kind of super cute rakghoul, and that'd be that."

She shrugged a little, looking down at her toes.

"And that happens, sometimes, you know? I keep thinking about all the what-ifs, too. What if I didn't get better? Would I ever get home? Would I ever care again? But I have to take it on good faith that Prompto is kicking his own butt over this. That he learned his lesson. That there were people who knew how to undo it, and that they did. That's... kind of amazing, you know? That people cared enough to actually set it right."

Even if it was probably more for the sake of other people than for her. She could be grateful she'd been cured by association.