The Apartment Above the Photo Hut - Thursday Morning

[flamesburned]

After everything that had happened, Liz didn’t like the idea of leaving Prompto to head downstairs to work that morning, so instead of heading down to work as she normally did on a Thursday, she decided to stay upstairs and leave the paperwork that she had to do for another day.

So she got Noctra fed and changed and settled for the morning and then she went about making breakfast in case Prompto felt up to eating breakfast. She hadn’t had to cook a lot of food, since she still had plenty of lunch and dinner meals ready thanks to Ignis and Nell, so she decided to try making something light for breakfast and see how it went.

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[hashtag_chocobro]

Well....Prompto was up, eventually. That was sort of a start, and he emerged from the bedroom looking as sullen and pale as you'd expect a man who'd basically spent a week in and out of very little sleep and terrible nightmares, not being able to stomach and food or even rouse himself much except for very dogged attempts to at least spend time with his daughter, even though every single time he did, he came away from it just crying his eyes out.

But he was up, and he came out clinging to his phone after spending about the last hour on it, while Liz was up and about doing...whatever. Things he should probably be doing, too, and he was trying, but it was just so hard to be motivated for anything when at every single turn...

His stomach made a rumbling sound as he went into the kitchen, and he hated that he couldn't tell if it was that he was hungry or that the smell of food was still just making him sick.

"Hey," he said quietly, and then lifted his phone as if that explained the next part, although, it sort of did, he'd been on the phone with Gladio, "I'm heading into class."

For a man who had barely left his bedroom all week, that actually was a pretty big statement right there.

[flamesburned]

Liz watched Prompto worriedly, noticing how pale he looked but she knew that even just being out of bed and going to class was a big step for him after the last week.

“Do you want something to eat before you go?” she asked gently, “I made porridge if you would like some?”

[hashtag_chocobro]

"I..." Prompto started, wince a little, a deep frown of consternation on his face. He knew he should eat something, but the idea of that something being porridge just... "I don't know. That....that seems like..."

The consistency of it alone was making him think that it was just going to come right back up and be about the same as it was when it went down.

"...like a lot."

It would be good for him, he knew that, too; a real stick to your ribs kind of breakfast, but that, in and of itself, was part of the problem.

"Do we have any juice?" he wondered.

Still not food. But something. He felt he could maybe manage some juice.

[flamesburned]

“We do have juice,” Liz assured him as she went to the fridge to the juice out and then got out a couple of glasses, she poured a small glass to see how that would go and carefully handed it over to Prompto, “would you like me to leave you some porridge in case you would like some later when you’re back from class?” she asked him gently.

"Or I could make something else, if there was something else that you would like to try and eat?" she tried.

[hashtag_chocobro]

Wildly, when Liz handed him the glass, Prompto thought about asking for a straw, which he could only assume was some sort of attempt to revert back to the more simple times of childhood, but even that wasn't encouraging, things hadn't been much better back then, too. And then he thought it could even be one of those twisty, loopy silly straws, but instead of being a thought that made him laugh at the absurdity of it, it just made his eyes fill up with tears again.

God dammit, he thought, as he lifted up the glass to his mouth to take a very small sip, finding the sweetness of it already too cloying, but he swallowed it down anyway, made himself take another sip. He was such a goddamn mess right now...

He shook his head a little. "No, don't worry about it," he said. "We still have all those meals from Iggy and Nell, right? You don't need to go and do extra."

She'd already been picking up his slack for the last few weeks now, the last thing he wanted was to add more work for her...

[flamesburned]

Liz watched Prompto drink some of the orange juice, she was relieved to see him drink some of it, even though she still worried as she nodded, “we do still have those meals, I think we’re going to be alright for meals for a little while,” she said softly, “but I don’t mind making you something else, if there’s something you’d like to try and eat?” she offered gently.

[hashtag_chocobro]

Prompto just lightly shook his head. "It's fine," he said. "Maybe we'll just see how I feel after class."

He was pretty sure he was just going to want to crawl back into bed and curl up again, though. Maybe actually sleep for more than a few hours uninterrupted for a change...