[She hesitates a minute, pushing up and off of the wall that she's leaning against, and then slowly reaches up to the clasp at her throat and unfastens it with deft but halting movements of her fingers. When she shrugs out of her cloak, she lets the folds of it cascade over her forearms in inky-black waves, rolling and tucking it until it's vaguely bundled into something almost pillowesque.
It might just be the first time in Chroma that she's gone without it. But it's an impulse with its roots in that thing she'd blurted before, I thought you didn't want to look at me; maybe it's just that if he's going to avert his eyes from her, she doesn't want it to be because of her cloak. She needs to know it's because of something else.
Also, it gives her something to hug. There's that, too.
She's wearing a basic, ordinary T-shirt underneath, one that clings and betrays just how relatively thin she really is, when she doesn't hide it.
She's also wearing his pants, the ones she never gave back.]
[Just like that, she's just a girl. Not a witch, not an adventurer, just a girl in a T-shirt and his roomy cargo pants. A kid like he could've been a year ago, when the Wall still stood and he barely dared dream of joining the Crownsguard, of being important to Noct like that. Like she must've been once, too, when she was learning how to drive.
His eyes start at her feet, then go up, past the long belt on his pants that hangs even longer off her hips, past that thin, thin T-shirt, up to her face once more.
She showed it to him, once. What it looks like underneath the magic. 'i thought it was because you don't think i'm pretty.']
It doesn't feel that way.
[He looks down at his hands. Then back up, tracing a line between her eyes.]
Like mooching. It... I've. Never been useful to anyone before. I mean--no one needs me. But I like to help. [He shuts his eyes, brows drawn, biting his lip.] I'm not saying this right at all, I keep messing it up. Do you like chowder?
[He's reluctant to answer, but eventually, his head jerks in a nod and immediately hangs down again, ashamed.]
But that's bad, right? 'Cause then it's like... like I'm hanging out with you to make me feel good, but it's not that, I'm here because I like you. Y-you know? You could have ten million gil and own the city and I'd still like you, because you're... you're you.
[Maybe Ignis was right, maybe Noct needs him and that's what drew Prompto to his side in the first place, knowing he could do something for someone, it didn't matter who. But that's not why he stayed. That's not why he's still with Ignis and Gladio, they never needed him, they just... like him. And he likes them all so much.
Here, now: he likes her so much.
Blinking quickly, he takes a hot bowl of potato chowder out of the Armiger. Swallowing, he sets it on the table and steps back, holding his elbows, because he doesn't have a cloak to hug.]
I don't want you to feel like...
[Like he felt his whole life, before a girl captive in another country wrote him a letter. Dear Prompto, she'd said, and it was almost like the first time he'd ever heard his name.]
[It's so strange, to stand here and listen to this, knowing the secrets she knows. It's so strange to listen to him apologizing for wanting to be needed, when she knows full well that one of her flaws is the complementary sin. Jason wanted to be needed, too. Jason always wanted to be a hero, to live out his delusions of grandeur, and she remembers how she'd played up the defenseless act early on just because it meant he would protect her, not for her sake but for the sake of having a damsel to save.]
...You ever heard of symbiosis? Ninth grade biology class. Two different organisms interact and there's all these different — like with parasites, it's good for one while also being bad for the other. Then there's another one, good for one but indifferent to the other. And then there's good for both. There's this fish that lives in the tentacles of a sea anemone, and the fish keeps away the other fish that would eat the anemone, and the anemone keeps away the things that want to eat the fish.
[She's babbling, maybe, but she's coming around to a point.]
I don't think...that it has to be mutually exclusive. And I think...you can like that I need you without liking me because I need you.
[And then she goes quiet a minute, with words caught in the back of her throat, before finally she manages to get them to dislodge and shake free.]
And I don't have anyone but I don't want just anyone — I want you.
[All the while she's talking about science class and parasites he's wincing, looking more and more crestfallen, and he's just about to look down--maybe permanently--when she says the thing that changes everything.
Instead of falling, his eyes pop back up, wide and blue as irises.
Like, want, need--they've all been one thing he's recognized by the lack in his life, the ache for it. But because of the shift here, the way Summer moves it from need, from something even she describes as impersonal and biological if not bad, to want, something in what Prompto hears shifts, too. Refracts. Something he understood as all one color hits a prism and, suddenly, there's so much to see.
Want is different from need.Want is different from like.Want is... it's specific. And it's active. And it's selfish, and it's nothing anyone's ever said to him, average to mediocre, forgettable, one of millions copied without the intention of becoming even 'just anyone.'
And she wants him.
He can't even ask for what, can't narrow down what she wants him for, symbiote or friend or something else entirely. Nobody ever liked him or needed him. I want you is a revelation.
And it's her. The canyon that stood between them in that silence of hers, she crossed it. For him. To tell him that, when she's been so hurt, so afraid...
She put blue tulips in his hair and he left her there.]
Did. You want the flowers, too? The crown I made, did... do you still want it?
[His mouth is realizing things before his head, running away from him the way he ran from her, and shock and the fluttering beginning of understanding gives way to guilt in the tightening of his eyes.]
Did I really make you think I didn't want to look at you?
[The first person ever to want him enough to tell him, and he turned into one more thing that hurt her?]
[She sees it in his eyes, that moment when something changes. She doesn't know what it was, not with confidence enough to make an actual guess at it, but she knows something has changed. And admittedly, this is...more than a little nervewracking for her, because she's done impossible things and won unprecedented victories and stayed alive, somehow, through it all, but right now this is demanding a sort of vulnerability from her that has never been easy. Confessing feelings has never been easy because there's always so much to lose, and she's so resigned to losing everything already, as it is.]
I felt like you were just one more good thing that the universe decided I wasn't allowed to have for too long.
[It's so honest it actually hurts, twisting up with pangs of acid in her knotty stomach.]
I'd gotten so used to the world fucking me over that I just...stopped hoping for anything. Like I didn't even...bother to try to enjoy things, even good things, because when you get invested in something like that, it just means somebody's got a new way to hurt you. You get your hopes up, you put all your hope in something and then it just...someone takes it away. Something ruins it. For a while I would just ruin anything good I ever had myself, because then at least someone else couldn't take it away from me. I'd already taken it away from myself.
[She reaches up, rubbing at her face, where her scars are hidden still beneath her illusion.]
But then you came along and you made me happy. Every time you were around I'd get so happy and then every time you left I'd wind up counting the minutes until it wasn't weird if I went and found you again. You're the best thing that's happened to me in...so long...
[The breath she drags in wobbles, trembling as the pitch of her voice goes high and tight.]
I just thought I'd gotten it wrong. Read a signal wrong or something. I thought I was stupid for thinking I might get to have something I wanted. Pushed it too far and wrecked it. I felt like...like you did this cute thing and I was like, haha, so you think I'm pretty, and you were like well hold up, now, nobody said that.
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yeah?
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1/3
[Hey, funny how the P key's so close to Enter, right?]
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[He's a human disaster. They're both human disasters.]
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i'm gonna do this because it's easier over text and then i'm accountable
i know this sounds stupid but don't let me leave without telling you about randy and the fucking monkeys
ok?
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?
i mean ok i guess? randy and the monkeys. i can do that.
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don't let me get out of it, it'll make sense
meet you where?
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or i can go somewhere closer to you, it's ok.
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i feel safe there
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a whole potato?
(kidding)
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[There's a pause, and then:]
(つ❀^◡^)つ☆ヾ(>ω<○)
be there soon, ok?
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i'll be there when you get there i think
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[He knocks when he arrives, like he needs to be invited in to enter.]
Flor?
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[Well, that's confirmation that she made good on her word and beat him there, isn't it.]
I'm just freeloading, c'mon in.
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It's not, actually? I left the one I was supposed to live in to stay with Noct and Ignis. So I'm freeloading, too.
[He taps the toe of his boot slowly behind him.]
...You hungry?
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[She hesitates a minute, pushing up and off of the wall that she's leaning against, and then slowly reaches up to the clasp at her throat and unfastens it with deft but halting movements of her fingers. When she shrugs out of her cloak, she lets the folds of it cascade over her forearms in inky-black waves, rolling and tucking it until it's vaguely bundled into something almost pillowesque.
It might just be the first time in Chroma that she's gone without it. But it's an impulse with its roots in that thing she'd blurted before, I thought you didn't want to look at me; maybe it's just that if he's going to avert his eyes from her, she doesn't want it to be because of her cloak. She needs to know it's because of something else.
Also, it gives her something to hug. There's that, too.
She's wearing a basic, ordinary T-shirt underneath, one that clings and betrays just how relatively thin she really is, when she doesn't hide it.
She's also wearing his pants, the ones she never gave back.]
I shouldn't mooch off of you as much as I do.
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His eyes start at her feet, then go up, past the long belt on his pants that hangs even longer off her hips, past that thin, thin T-shirt, up to her face once more.
She showed it to him, once. What it looks like underneath the magic. 'i thought it was because you don't think i'm pretty.']
It doesn't feel that way.
[He looks down at his hands. Then back up, tracing a line between her eyes.]
Like mooching. It... I've. Never been useful to anyone before. I mean--no one needs me. But I like to help. [He shuts his eyes, brows drawn, biting his lip.] I'm not saying this right at all, I keep messing it up. Do you like chowder?
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[She hugs the mess of her cloak a little closer to her chest, squeezing at it like a stuffed animal, burying her chin in a nest of the folds.]
...I like chowder. Do you —
[She seems to trip over that thought, and has to regroup to try it again.]
Do you like that I need you?
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But that's bad, right? 'Cause then it's like... like I'm hanging out with you to make me feel good, but it's not that, I'm here because I like you. Y-you know? You could have ten million gil and own the city and I'd still like you, because you're... you're you.
[Maybe Ignis was right, maybe Noct needs him and that's what drew Prompto to his side in the first place, knowing he could do something for someone, it didn't matter who. But that's not why he stayed. That's not why he's still with Ignis and Gladio, they never needed him, they just... like him. And he likes them all so much.
Here, now: he likes her so much.
Blinking quickly, he takes a hot bowl of potato chowder out of the Armiger. Swallowing, he sets it on the table and steps back, holding his elbows, because he doesn't have a cloak to hug.]
I don't want you to feel like...
[Like he felt his whole life, before a girl captive in another country wrote him a letter. Dear Prompto, she'd said, and it was almost like the first time he'd ever heard his name.]
Like I don't care who you are.
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...You ever heard of symbiosis? Ninth grade biology class. Two different organisms interact and there's all these different — like with parasites, it's good for one while also being bad for the other. Then there's another one, good for one but indifferent to the other. And then there's good for both. There's this fish that lives in the tentacles of a sea anemone, and the fish keeps away the other fish that would eat the anemone, and the anemone keeps away the things that want to eat the fish.
[She's babbling, maybe, but she's coming around to a point.]
I don't think...that it has to be mutually exclusive. And I think...you can like that I need you without liking me because I need you.
[And then she goes quiet a minute, with words caught in the back of her throat, before finally she manages to get them to dislodge and shake free.]
And I don't have anyone but I don't want just anyone — I want you.
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Instead of falling, his eyes pop back up, wide and blue as irises.
Like, want, need--they've all been one thing he's recognized by the lack in his life, the ache for it. But because of the shift here, the way Summer moves it from need, from something even she describes as impersonal and biological if not bad, to want, something in what Prompto hears shifts, too. Refracts. Something he understood as all one color hits a prism and, suddenly, there's so much to see.
Want is different from need. Want is different from like. Want is... it's specific. And it's active. And it's selfish, and it's nothing anyone's ever said to him, average to mediocre, forgettable, one of millions copied without the intention of becoming even 'just anyone.'
And she wants him.
He can't even ask for what, can't narrow down what she wants him for, symbiote or friend or something else entirely. Nobody ever liked him or needed him. I want you is a revelation.
And it's her. The canyon that stood between them in that silence of hers, she crossed it. For him. To tell him that, when she's been so hurt, so afraid...
She put blue tulips in his hair and he left her there.]
Did. You want the flowers, too? The crown I made, did... do you still want it?
[His mouth is realizing things before his head, running away from him the way he ran from her, and shock and the fluttering beginning of understanding gives way to guilt in the tightening of his eyes.]
Did I really make you think I didn't want to look at you?
[The first person ever to want him enough to tell him, and he turned into one more thing that hurt her?]
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I felt like you were just one more good thing that the universe decided I wasn't allowed to have for too long.
[It's so honest it actually hurts, twisting up with pangs of acid in her knotty stomach.]
I'd gotten so used to the world fucking me over that I just...stopped hoping for anything. Like I didn't even...bother to try to enjoy things, even good things, because when you get invested in something like that, it just means somebody's got a new way to hurt you. You get your hopes up, you put all your hope in something and then it just...someone takes it away. Something ruins it. For a while I would just ruin anything good I ever had myself, because then at least someone else couldn't take it away from me. I'd already taken it away from myself.
[She reaches up, rubbing at her face, where her scars are hidden still beneath her illusion.]
But then you came along and you made me happy. Every time you were around I'd get so happy and then every time you left I'd wind up counting the minutes until it wasn't weird if I went and found you again. You're the best thing that's happened to me in...so long...
[The breath she drags in wobbles, trembling as the pitch of her voice goes high and tight.]
I just thought I'd gotten it wrong. Read a signal wrong or something. I thought I was stupid for thinking I might get to have something I wanted. Pushed it too far and wrecked it. I felt like...like you did this cute thing and I was like, haha, so you think I'm pretty, and you were like well hold up, now, nobody said that.
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