This could easily be my favorite chapter I've written...like ever.

Chapter 2

Puns and Dogs

"You dork get off of me!" Evie laughed as she limped to the kitchen with a 3 year old latched at her ankle. She was babysitting her nephew on her day off from classes and boy did she love little kids. She wriggled free and gasped at her nephew Lucas. "I'm free!" She teased. He just gave out his usual evil cackle and started waddling towards her.

That's what her day consisted of. Running around the house with a cute bumbling toddler trying to grab onto her. She wished her homework was as cute as Lucas. The dog however wasn't cute. He managed to chew up 3 more of Lucas' toys and nearly tore a hole in her sweater when he got too excited and started jumping on her.

Evie rounded the corner (the kitchen was essentially in a box with two doorways at adjacent walls) and scooped up her nephew. They laughed and Lucas wrapped his tiny legs around Evie. "Are you crazy?" She asked, poking his belly.

He giggled and pushed her hand away with a cheeky "Yeeeaah!"

She loved kids but they were so draining. She had no idea how her sister does it. The exhaustion didn't settle in until she finally got off from nephew-duty a few hours later. "Sorry I got home so late. It was really busy at the office," her sister, Brielle, sighed as she took off her shoes at the front door. Lucas was conked out on the couch, snoring softly.

"Oh it's no problem. Busy day?" Evie picked at the shedded dog hairs off her sweater and jeans. She had put the dog in his kennel a few minutes ago.

"We had a few complaints. The new intern can't organize for shit so we had to reorganize everything." Her sister let out a tired groan and fished out money for Evie from her bag. "Thanks for your help." She said and handed her the money.

"Happy to help," Evie took the money and went over to her backpack that was sitting at the dinner table, which had the remnants of reheated pizza littered on one of the placements, and filed the money in her wallet. "Let me know when you need help again. I'm usually free on Saturdays."

"I will. Definitely."

Evie hid her yawn and slung her bag over her shoulder. "Alright then. See you later." She gave her sister a hug and left her apartment. Brielle lived in the heart of Insomnia, so campus wasn't that far away. It kinda sucked because Evie really wanted to hail a cab, but she didn't like the idea of paying for a car ride covering a couple blocks.

She always liked the city though. The hustle and bustle, the crowds, the cars, and the massive cranes that sat atop unfinished skyscrapers. Each new building tried to be better than the last. You could say that she was biased considering the fact that she lived in the Crown City all her life.

Evie emerged from the elevator, pulling out her phone to check the time. She still had enough time to run to the café and grab something to pep herself up! She pushed on the glass doors and continued her small walk to the café without any thought.

The café was running to a crawl when it came to customers. Most of the tables were wiped clean while two others were being taken. She yawned again. Coffee. I need coffee.

When it was her turn she ordered what she needed and waited behind some other guy for her drink. She let her eyes wander from her phone for half a second when she saw a familiar spiked hairstyle. It took a while for her to process the fact that both of them were staring at each other.

"Oh hey!" Prompto exclaimed, turning to fully face her. "It's nice to see you again!"

Was he standing in front of me all this time? Evie did her best to drop her resting tired bitch face and threw him the best smile she could muster. "Yeah! So...what are you getting?"

"Just a smoothie." He shrugged and had his hands in his back pockets. "Did I uh...put my number in wrong in your phone? If you tried to text me I didn't get anything."

Her mind went blank for a second. Well damn. Now she felt like the worst person in the world. It had been two days since she met him and within those 48 hours she completely forgot the existence of his contact in her phone. "Oh my god I'm sorry!" She exclaimed, "I'm really bad at texting…I forgot you only gave me your number." She said pathetically.

The look of worry that was in his eyes quickly vanished with a nod of understanding and relief. "That's good to hear," he laughed and scratched the back of his head, "I thought you didn't like me or something. I wanted to text you about that one picture too but I couldn't."

She furrowed her brows. "What? No! You were fun to talk with. It wasn't like I was going to trash your number or anything."

"Your drink is ready!" One of the workers called out from behind the counter. She had, what Evie assumed was, Prompto's smoothie and Evie's coffee. They both thanked her and the exhausted college student took a sip too fast and choked on the hot liquid. He peered at her curiously from his smoothie.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah," she coughed, "drank too fast." She wrinkled her nose at the taste. It almost tasted burnt but she didn't feel like bothering the poor workers to brew her another cup since they were about to close. "Oh before I forget," she tapped on Prompto's contact and shot him a quick text. He reacted to his phone buzzing in his pocket and took it out. "Here. Now you can occasionally remind me to text you every now and then."

"Pfft, you don't have to worry about me spamming you. Not for the first few hours at least." He threw her a half smile and held out his phone. "Now, smile!"

Evie was too caught off guard to crack out a facial expression. Thankfully her mouth (no doubt was set in a frown) was covered by her coffee cup. Prompto grinned at his screen and showed the picture to Evie as if he was holding a trophy. "Good?" It was a picture of her, eyes wide in shock, bottom half of her face was blocked by her drink. "Don't worry it's just gonna be your profile pic." He explained. "Here, you do the same!" Within seconds Evie got the alert on her phone and she rolled her eyes at the picture. Of course he had a good selfie. His goofy grin from the picture matched the one in real life. Not to mention his hair was basically perfect compared to her tangled mess.

"But how come you have the better selfie?" She squinted at him, but he just kept on grinning. He hummed to himself and took a sip of his drink.

Eventually they got kicked out of the café. They stood under one of the lamp posts with a conveniently placed bench. It wasn't too cold out yet, but the warm autumn air was going to get replaced soon with bitter winter.

Evie picked up another stray dog hair from her pant leg. "Have you had a dog before?" She inquired, flicking off the hair. She remembered that Prompto had an affinity towards animals if she weren't mistaken.

"Ahh, kinda? There was this dog that was hurt in front of my house. I felt bad for the little guy so I took him in, but it turned out he already had an owner." He was lounging back on the bench, arm resting on the back of it.

"So you found the owner then?"

"More like the dog ran away to its owner. I was so freaked out, but I got a letter from the owner thanking me for taking care of her dog." He paused as he thought fondly of the memory. "Turns out it was Lady Lunafreya's dog."

Evie nodded, shocked yet impressed. How come this guy knew all the important people? "Wow. Well that story tops all my adventures." She muttered the last part.

"Adventures? Like what?"

"I can't even call them adventures. I'm pretty boring."

"Nah," his disbelief at that was evident and tilted his chin, "c'mon. There's gotta be something." He probed. "What did you do today?"

"I babysat my nephew. They have a dog and I think I'll have to run my clothes through the laundry twice. Told you, I'm not that exciting."

"That sounds like fun."

She sniffed. "Says the guy who rode chocobos and traveled everywhere in the kingdom of Lucis."

"But you work for the paper! I bet you have some juicy stories and you're just not telling me." He defended with a pout. A pout. She had half a mind to sneak a snapshot of that but she decided against it.

"I'm a section editor for a college newspaper, not some tabloid. Our newspaper is as dry as my humor." She paused. "Or lack thereof."

Prompto snorted and reeled his head back trying to hold back a laugh. Evie couldn't help but smile at his reaction.

"I swear I'm not this funny." She added.

"You gotta give yourself more credit. You should write jokes for the paper!"

"Something tells me you'd be better at that than I would. Considering the fact that within the first few minutes of talking you come out with a pun straight off the bat."

He pursed his lips put up his hand in acceptance. "A conversation needs a pun in it every now and then."

Their conversation didn't drag on as long as it did the last time since Evie was feeling the fatigue setting in, so she figured that she should make it to her dorm before she officially collapsed. They went on their separate ways and upon arrival at her dorm her friend, Lyra, looked up from her desk.

"Hey girl. Did your sister get home late?" She asked. Her maroon hair was up in a towel. Evie downed the rest of her coffee and tossed it in the nearby trashcan and missed. She sighed and shuffled to the cup to properly dispose it.

"She did but I got off around 6."

"Then what were you doing for four hours?"

"I was...talking with someone." She said as she put down her back and flopped onto her bed unceremoniously

Lyra turned in her seat, head tilted with curiosity. "Oooh?" Her voice squeaked with intrigue. "Do I know them?" Lyra knew her friend well enough to know that Evie wasn't the type of person to chat hours on end (excluding herself of course).

"Maybe?" Evie rolled onto her back and fished out her phone. She let out a yawn. Bigger this time. "I met him at the café before."

Lyra immediately scooted up to her faster than she could breathe. "'Him'? You saw him before?! Why didn't you tell me? What's his name?"

"You know too much."

"I only met him one other time! And that was two days ago." She explained.

"Well he must be pretty decent enough for you to talk with for four hours."

"He gave me his number the first day."

Her roommate slumped back in her chair, flabbergasted. "Woman, why don't you tell me these things?!"

"Well it's not like I'm gonna just bring it up out of nowhere!"

Her friend put her arms on her thighs, hunched over. "Do you at least have a picture of him?"

"Yes."

"Well," she held out her hand, "let me see!" Evie rolled her eyes heavenward and opened her phone, showing Lyra Prompto's selfie that was five-times better than what she could ever muster. Lyra blinked. "Damn E! He's really cute! His freckles are killing me―"

"Happy now?"

"Tell me his name!"

Evie's plan of going to bed as soon as possible was halted abruptly as the interrogation continued. Evie purposefully avoided telling her the story that she completely forgot Prompto was in her phone and didn't officially text him until days later (Lyra would never let that go) and tried her best to endure the incessant squealing and smiling from her friend. Obviously she was happy for her to meet someone new, but mixed with the exhaustion that was taking a toll on her body Evie really wasn't in the mood for Lyra's poking and prodding.

Evie finally got ready for bed and climbed under the sheets. Now on her stomach she picked up her phone from her bed and curiously went to her chat with Prompto. Maybe she should text him? To make up for accidentally ignoring him? Ahh, it was late, maybe he wasn't even up now. Lyra's investigation went well into midnight, and now her friend was taking a late night shower so the room's lights were turned off except for the lamp on Evie's nightstand.

'I should add something new to my story list: my friend was nonstop interrogating me about talking with you. The plot thickens'

She reached over to plug in her charger and then her screen lit up. Sure enough it was Prompto.

'Omg was she keeping you up? Sorry bout that I knew you were tired :c and hey your list will only get better ;)'

Evie was about to respond but Prompto beat her to it.

'Would you like a pun?'

She rolled her eyes.

'Sure'

His response was immediate like he already typed out his reply and his thumb was just hovering over the send button.

'Ok ok― what kind of dog doesn't bark? A HUSH PUPPY'

Evie suppressed a groan.

'Oh my god...do you have a collection of jokes in your phone or something'

'I meeeaaaaan, I can send you the whole album if you want~'

'Please no. I need to go to bed'

'NO WAIT I HAVE ONE MORE'

'Goodnight prompto'

Evie had turned her phone on silent and set it on the nightstand before he could supply her with the motherload of puns. Regardless of how cheesy it was, she still smiled. Evie got herself comfortable and closed her eyes, welcoming the sleep she needed.

Prompto could be my spirit animal I freaking love this. I hope you'll take some time to review! (maybe give me a few more puns?) I'll be back with another one!Oh yeah! Feel free to check out my tumblr, it's the same as my name here. I occasionally post FFXV stuff! And thank you for the previous reviews/favorites/follows! I believe I'm going to be doing one update per week so keep an eye out for the next chapter.

-Jen