[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.
[Prompto slaps his hand over his mouth, but the outburst's already burst out, too loud over her shaking, wounded honesty. Still watching her, how small she looks, his expression crumbles and he lets out half-breath, chest too calcified with remorse to expand fully.]
No, I didn't... that wasn't what I wanted to say. To you, when I--when.
[The words get tangled up. Tongue-tied always sounds so cute as a descriptor, no one ever talks about how much knots can hurt. He struggles with it and finally shoves out:]
No one likes me. I-I know that's not true anymore, not now, but... it was true. For a long time. And I still--I, I'm trying to explain what happened. Why I... left. [He flinches away from his own weak admission, then lowers everything, voice, head, hands. If he was too loud before, Prompto's maybe too soft now, and growing quieter.] It wasn't because I didn't want to give you the crown. I. I did. Want to. ...I was never going to give it to Ignis.
[Whatever the flowers mean, the crown was never meant for anyone but Summer. Prompto wraps one hand around the other, twists at his fingers, plucks at the fold of muscle in his palm.]
But if I gave it to you and you didn't want it, it would've been--weird, and nobody's ever wanted that from me. I'm nobody. The, the last girl I liked, I think maybe she doesn't even know my name, even after everything we've done for her. And even my parents, they adopted me and it was like they never--never really...
[His eyes are stinging and how unfair is that, when he's the one who hurt her? Ashamed, Prompto presses his lips together and then shakes his head, banishing it all, the excuses, the reasoning. He messed up. A small noise tries to escape and he muffles it, rubbing his knuckles under his nose.]
I'm sorry. I... if there's a flower that means "I'm sorry," I wish I could give it to you. For the flowers I should've given you then.
[Nothing he can do will fix this. He holds his hands low in front of him, palms up, in supplication or surrender before crystal blue light illuminates them, tinkles away, withers. Loose petals, red-yellow, fall to the floor, but in his hands, fresh and unchanged from the day he made it, is the crown. Her crown. White, violet, pink, red.
Prompto holds it close without crushing it.]
I'm a jerk. I picked them because they reminded me of you. And the way I... feel. When I'm with you. [Pink and blooming, that peony. Dandelion bright in her hands. He raises the wreath before his face like a shield so she can't see him bite down on his lip.] I should've given them to you anyway, but now I messed everything up. I'm sorry. I'm not--I've never been good, no matter how hard I try.
[Never been good enough. Never been anything but a failure. Shivering, he tries to swallow.]
Of course you're pretty. You're so pretty, and funny, and, and... and you made me like the color red again. Because it's yours. And I thought--I thought--I didn't want to mess it up and make you not like me anymore, but that was worse, and I'm so. I'm so stupid, I'm so sorry, I didn't want to hurt you...
That's the thing that gets her first, stupid as it is. He saved it, he picked it up and put it in his magic storage closet and that's right, his works different than hers, if it were hers it would've wilted the second he took it out but the magic is different, his is different, and it's as good as it'd been the day this all went off the rails.
After that, the other things start catching up. The fact that he looks the way he did the first time she saw him, crumpled in on himself in the bottom of the well like he's waiting for someone to hurt him. The way his own self-esteem is as broken as she is. The way that after a while he turns the dagger of his explanations in on himself the same way that she would've, the way they're both insisting in their own ways that they're the stupid one, the way they're both convinced that they aren't good people except that the eyes of the beholder tell a different story.
He's like her. He's like her and someday that's — someday that's going to be something, that the same rationales she uses to console him for his feelings will fit unsettlingly well against her own insecurities, and she'll have no excuse not to apply them. She needs him, and that's another way of needing him —
He reflects her, and she always has been a little too in love with mirrors.
But he looks so miserable that she's almost grateful, maybe, not because she likes to see him sad but because he gives her a way out of the way she's feeling herself by doing it. He gives her something to say in a moment when she has no idea what to say.
They're both so stupid, aren't they.]
Fuck them. Fuck anybody who's too stupid to see how much you matter.
[It's not actually anger at the girl, specifically, or even anger at his parents. It's anger at the injustice, anger on his behalf. Anger that validates his sorrow and says it's not right that this happened to you.]
...Prommy.
[It slips out subconsciously, the name she calls him in her head because right now there's no lag time between her mind and her mouth; she's living in the moment and running purely on the here and now, and she drops her cloak aside on the ground as she crosses the distance between them and takes his hands by the wrists, curling her fingers there so that he can feel her holding on.
She thinks about what he's hiding beneath the wristband. What she's hiding beneath her face.]
Tell me what you were thinking when you made it. Not what I told you they mean. What you made it mean.
[The taut, spiraling thread of his thought snaps. She's touching him, she's calling him Prommy--Prommy?--she has him by the wrists and she's so close. He blinks, eyes bright within the circle of flowers; they flicker aside, not to dodge her gaze, but to think back.]
I had... my flowers all laid out in piles. By color, in order like the rainbow. I ended up with so many blue ones, I started there, but...
[Prompto turns his face slightly to the left, like he can still see them arrayed in front of him. In her grip, his arms tremble almost imperceptibly.]
I went to look at the pink ones, and I saw the rosebud behind one of them like it was hiding, and. It reminded me of you. Something... beautiful, hiding under something else.
[Helplessly, he brings the wreath an inch down again so it blocks his eyes. He can't stop himself.]
And t-then I was thinking about you, so I looked for an iris with colors more like Jerry and put that in. And I looked at the pink one again, and I thought. I thought it looked happy.
[He chews his lip again, and the last comes out in a rush.]
When I'm with you, it feels like how that flower looks. The, the shape. And the color. I know that doesn't make any sense...
[That's...so much better than the stupid bullshit meaning some crusty old fucker attributed to peonies and roses back a couple of centuries ago.]
You're not stupid.
[Why that's the place she feels she needs to start, she isn't sure, but she knows that it is. That's what's important, before anything else.]
And you're not nobody.
[There, again. The next step, the next paving stone in the garden path.]
You're the guy who's always bringing me food because you worry about me no matter how many times I lie and tell you I'm fine. You're the guy who danced with me at some podunk town's hoedown and gave me the chance to feel normal again. You're the guy who doesn't stop to think before jumping into harm's way for me. You're — Jerry is my soul, a part of my soul, and you're the only person I've ever let touch him. You're the guy I gave my name to, and you knew what that meant, and you just...you gave it back.
[She tugs on his wrists, trying to make him lower his hands enough so that she can see his face.]
You make me feel safe, and you make me feel special. You're the best person I know. ...And if you don't give me the flowers I think I'll die.
[He makes a funny squeaking noise in his throat and lets go of the wreath immediately.]
...
[Now it's the floor that has been crowned most beautiful, over runners-up Summer and Ignis. Prompto stares at it numbly, then, faintly jittery, still uncertain what's happening, his gaze gradually comes back up.]
...I can t-try again?
[At the mechanical motion of giving it to her, which he's literally just fumbled, or at giving it to her, which he failed before, in the garden, wreathed in blue.]
[And...actually that's going to have to go on hold, because he's dropped the flowers between them but that just means they're in her way, and she nudges them aside with her foot so that she doesn't risk crushing them when she moves into his personal space and wraps her arms around him instead of holding on to his wrists.]
Please trust me, just this much, and just be you. Please trust me that it's enough.
[It takes a second, but once that second passes, so does the wail Prompto's bottled up inside since that day, like a breath held so long it turned to pain instead of air. It's like winter starting to give way--not to warmth, not yet, but to movement, soft and startling: the first quiet drip of sun-melt, a damp branch springing free of snow.
Like that, Prompto's anguish starts to thaw. After a couple tiny, false starts, he breathes out into her hair and brings his arms around her, too.]
I'll try. ...I don't know any other way to be, but--I trust you. [Blue tulips. Those are for trust.] I do. So even... if I don't understand, I can... I can trust you.
[If Prompto can't believe he's enough for her, he can believe her. She circled behind him and put her hand on his head and promised she wouldn't let him hurt her.
Young things, barely green, push up through the frost. He lifts his chin just a hair.]
It's okay...? To...
[To give her the rosebud tucked behind the peony, bracketed in irises: Can I say this, will you hear?]
To want to be the one... who thinks you're the prettiest?
[It's hard to hear her, a little bit, with the way her words are being muffled from how she's got her face pressed against his shoulder, but there's one thing that is apparent, and it's that those aren't two separate qualities she's naming. "Dumb boy" is a thing all its own, something that comes laden with affection rather than derision.]
I flirt with you and I monopolize all of your time and I make up excuses to touch you and I hang all over you and I kiss you and you, you have to ask if it's okay. Like I haven't been wanting you to say that since the day I met you, almost.
[She breathes in slowly, holding on to him tighter than before.]
I'm scared, too. Just like you are. We're both so dumb.
[Her fingers curl, lightly, into the fabric of his shirt, and pull on it just enough to make it bunch.]
But right here like this is where I know I want to be. Is...this where you want to be, too?
[He's quiet, aware of her breath, her mouth against his shirt, her fingers' grip in the fabric. Right here, like this. Is this where he wants to be?
His fingers find her hair, smooth carefully, slowly, down the plane of her back. Prompto's always been the smallest, but here?]
I feel... like there are more important things than being safe, here. Like I can see them, when I look at you.
[It's not that she makes him feel big and strong. It's just... the fact that he's not, it doesn't matter so much. Prompto forgets what he's not, and when he does, he can suddenly be more than he isn't. He gulps and skims his hands down her arms until they cup her elbows.]
I, um. I thought you didn't remember kissing me. Or that you didn't like it, because you didn't say anything about it after, so... I tried not to think about it.
[Carefully, moving as gently as he can so as not to break her hold but slip down through it, Prompto kneels to retrieve the flowers from where she pushed them aside, one hand still on her arm. Connection; I'll be right back. That's what he'd meant with the dandelion, something like this.
He looks up, flowers in hand, on one knee.]
I'm really dumb. I'm way dumber than you, don't pretend like I'm not, Flora. Let me make it up to you. Please. I--I want to be with you. Where you are.
I didn't say anything about it because I was...afraid you'd ask me why, and I wouldn't know what to say.
[She senses, though, that to absolve him of the need of making it up to her is the wrong answer to choose. He doesn't, of course. He doesn't need to make anything up to her, but the point is that he feels like he does, and somehow she knows that forgiving him unconditionally without letting him serve a penance will just leave him feeling worse instead of better. He needs to do; afterwards he needs to be able to look at this and know what he did. Otherwise, he won't know why it happened, and he'll have to ask himself forever without ever finding an answer.]
...But. Yeah. Okay...okay. You can make it up to me. I'm...that's okay with me.
[All the noise in his head that's been blocking so many of her word starts to quiet and flicker low, like a fire going out. He takes another moment down there to take stock of himself, of both of them; the wreath is cool and pliant between his hand, the floor hard under his knee, her fingers real in his the way only things that are alive can be, solid and flexible and capable of surprise.
As he rises, Prompto wonders if he feels the same in her hand. If he's so unexpected to her, too. He reaches up and settles the crown on her brow, where it belongs.
It feels like the first time his feet have landed solidly on earth in days, when he looks at her. Like something's not going to scatter him with a blow. He's here, with her, where she wants him to be; he can hardly believe it, but he trusts her, and so he doesn't have to. He knows it.]
I think you're the most beautiful.
[His voice is soft and shy, still, but he doesn't stammer. He adjusts the leaves and petals carefully so he can see her eyes.]
And I want... to do things... that are special, only for you. Like. Like calling me Quicksilver, only... more. All the time. That's okay?
[For once, though, it's not a statement she delivers with effortless authority, the way that she does many of the things she says. It's not the voice of someone who once led five boys and herself through calamity after disaster, making snap decisions not because she thought she was fit to lead but because she thought she was right and there was simply no one else to do it. It's a voice that makes no assumptions, that doesn't demand to be recognized. It's a voice that comes as soft and shy as his is, but that slides underneath the gravity of his like a card being shuffled into a deck, like a lieutenant falling into place at its captain's side.
The knots of tension that have twisted her stomach ever since that day at the flower-sharking are finally starting to ease. It finally makes her feel like she can eat again. It makes her feel like she can breathe again.]
Y'know, you said...that you thought, that if you found out my name, it would mean we couldn't be friends anymore.
[Her weight shifts forward, a little more onto the balls of her feet, nudging her into being just a little bit taller from how she's putting more of her weight onto her toes as she gravitates toward him.]
I don't...I don't think we're just friends anymore.
[The corner of her lip catches beneath her teeth, just for a moment.]
So maybe...if you still don't want the real one, then. Will you pick one for me that's just for us? That's just...yours?
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no subject
a whole potato?
(kidding)
no subject
[There's a pause, and then:]
(つ❀^◡^)つ☆ヾ(>ω<○)
be there soon, ok?
no subject
i'll be there when you get there i think
no subject
[He knocks when he arrives, like he needs to be invited in to enter.]
Flor?
no subject
[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.
no subject
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?
no subject
[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.
no subject
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?
no subject
[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?
no subject
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.
no subject
...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.
no subject
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?]
no subject
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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[Prompto slaps his hand over his mouth, but the outburst's already burst out, too loud over her shaking, wounded honesty. Still watching her, how small she looks, his expression crumbles and he lets out half-breath, chest too calcified with remorse to expand fully.]
No, I didn't... that wasn't what I wanted to say. To you, when I--when.
[The words get tangled up. Tongue-tied always sounds so cute as a descriptor, no one ever talks about how much knots can hurt. He struggles with it and finally shoves out:]
No one likes me. I-I know that's not true anymore, not now, but... it was true. For a long time. And I still--I, I'm trying to explain what happened. Why I... left. [He flinches away from his own weak admission, then lowers everything, voice, head, hands. If he was too loud before, Prompto's maybe too soft now, and growing quieter.] It wasn't because I didn't want to give you the crown. I. I did. Want to. ...I was never going to give it to Ignis.
[Whatever the flowers mean, the crown was never meant for anyone but Summer. Prompto wraps one hand around the other, twists at his fingers, plucks at the fold of muscle in his palm.]
But if I gave it to you and you didn't want it, it would've been--weird, and nobody's ever wanted that from me. I'm nobody. The, the last girl I liked, I think maybe she doesn't even know my name, even after everything we've done for her. And even my parents, they adopted me and it was like they never--never really...
[His eyes are stinging and how unfair is that, when he's the one who hurt her? Ashamed, Prompto presses his lips together and then shakes his head, banishing it all, the excuses, the reasoning. He messed up. A small noise tries to escape and he muffles it, rubbing his knuckles under his nose.]
I'm sorry. I... if there's a flower that means "I'm sorry," I wish I could give it to you. For the flowers I should've given you then.
[Nothing he can do will fix this. He holds his hands low in front of him, palms up, in supplication or surrender before crystal blue light illuminates them, tinkles away, withers. Loose petals, red-yellow, fall to the floor, but in his hands, fresh and unchanged from the day he made it, is the crown. Her crown. White, violet, pink, red.
Prompto holds it close without crushing it.]
I'm a jerk. I picked them because they reminded me of you. And the way I... feel. When I'm with you. [Pink and blooming, that peony. Dandelion bright in her hands. He raises the wreath before his face like a shield so she can't see him bite down on his lip.] I should've given them to you anyway, but now I messed everything up. I'm sorry. I'm not--I've never been good, no matter how hard I try.
[Never been good enough. Never been anything but a failure. Shivering, he tries to swallow.]
Of course you're pretty. You're so pretty, and funny, and, and... and you made me like the color red again. Because it's yours. And I thought--I thought--I didn't want to mess it up and make you not like me anymore, but that was worse, and I'm so. I'm so stupid, I'm so sorry, I didn't want to hurt you...
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That's the thing that gets her first, stupid as it is. He saved it, he picked it up and put it in his magic storage closet and that's right, his works different than hers, if it were hers it would've wilted the second he took it out but the magic is different, his is different, and it's as good as it'd been the day this all went off the rails.
After that, the other things start catching up. The fact that he looks the way he did the first time she saw him, crumpled in on himself in the bottom of the well like he's waiting for someone to hurt him. The way his own self-esteem is as broken as she is. The way that after a while he turns the dagger of his explanations in on himself the same way that she would've, the way they're both insisting in their own ways that they're the stupid one, the way they're both convinced that they aren't good people except that the eyes of the beholder tell a different story.
He's like her. He's like her and someday that's — someday that's going to be something, that the same rationales she uses to console him for his feelings will fit unsettlingly well against her own insecurities, and she'll have no excuse not to apply them. She needs him, and that's another way of needing him —
He reflects her, and she always has been a little too in love with mirrors.
But he looks so miserable that she's almost grateful, maybe, not because she likes to see him sad but because he gives her a way out of the way she's feeling herself by doing it. He gives her something to say in a moment when she has no idea what to say.
They're both so stupid, aren't they.]
Fuck them. Fuck anybody who's too stupid to see how much you matter.
[It's not actually anger at the girl, specifically, or even anger at his parents. It's anger at the injustice, anger on his behalf. Anger that validates his sorrow and says it's not right that this happened to you.]
...Prommy.
[It slips out subconsciously, the name she calls him in her head because right now there's no lag time between her mind and her mouth; she's living in the moment and running purely on the here and now, and she drops her cloak aside on the ground as she crosses the distance between them and takes his hands by the wrists, curling her fingers there so that he can feel her holding on.
She thinks about what he's hiding beneath the wristband. What she's hiding beneath her face.]
Tell me what you were thinking when you made it. Not what I told you they mean. What you made it mean.
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I had... my flowers all laid out in piles. By color, in order like the rainbow. I ended up with so many blue ones, I started there, but...
[Prompto turns his face slightly to the left, like he can still see them arrayed in front of him. In her grip, his arms tremble almost imperceptibly.]
I went to look at the pink ones, and I saw the rosebud behind one of them like it was hiding, and. It reminded me of you. Something... beautiful, hiding under something else.
[Helplessly, he brings the wreath an inch down again so it blocks his eyes. He can't stop himself.]
And t-then I was thinking about you, so I looked for an iris with colors more like Jerry and put that in. And I looked at the pink one again, and I thought. I thought it looked happy.
[He chews his lip again, and the last comes out in a rush.]
When I'm with you, it feels like how that flower looks. The, the shape. And the color. I know that doesn't make any sense...
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You're not stupid.
[Why that's the place she feels she needs to start, she isn't sure, but she knows that it is. That's what's important, before anything else.]
And you're not nobody.
[There, again. The next step, the next paving stone in the garden path.]
You're the guy who's always bringing me food because you worry about me no matter how many times I lie and tell you I'm fine. You're the guy who danced with me at some podunk town's hoedown and gave me the chance to feel normal again. You're the guy who doesn't stop to think before jumping into harm's way for me. You're — Jerry is my soul, a part of my soul, and you're the only person I've ever let touch him. You're the guy I gave my name to, and you knew what that meant, and you just...you gave it back.
[She tugs on his wrists, trying to make him lower his hands enough so that she can see his face.]
You make me feel safe, and you make me feel special. You're the best person I know. ...And if you don't give me the flowers I think I'll die.
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[He makes a funny squeaking noise in his throat and lets go of the wreath immediately.]
...
[Now it's the floor that has been crowned most beautiful, over runners-up Summer and Ignis. Prompto stares at it numbly, then, faintly jittery, still uncertain what's happening, his gaze gradually comes back up.]
...I can t-try again?
[At the mechanical motion of giving it to her, which he's literally just fumbled, or at giving it to her, which he failed before, in the garden, wreathed in blue.]
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[And...actually that's going to have to go on hold, because he's dropped the flowers between them but that just means they're in her way, and she nudges them aside with her foot so that she doesn't risk crushing them when she moves into his personal space and wraps her arms around him instead of holding on to his wrists.]
Please trust me, just this much, and just be you. Please trust me that it's enough.
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Like that, Prompto's anguish starts to thaw. After a couple tiny, false starts, he breathes out into her hair and brings his arms around her, too.]
I'll try. ...I don't know any other way to be, but--I trust you. [Blue tulips. Those are for trust.] I do. So even... if I don't understand, I can... I can trust you.
[If Prompto can't believe he's enough for her, he can believe her. She circled behind him and put her hand on his head and promised she wouldn't let him hurt her.
Young things, barely green, push up through the frost. He lifts his chin just a hair.]
It's okay...? To...
[To give her the rosebud tucked behind the peony, bracketed in irises: Can I say this, will you hear?]
To want to be the one... who thinks you're the prettiest?
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[It's hard to hear her, a little bit, with the way her words are being muffled from how she's got her face pressed against his shoulder, but there's one thing that is apparent, and it's that those aren't two separate qualities she's naming. "Dumb boy" is a thing all its own, something that comes laden with affection rather than derision.]
I flirt with you and I monopolize all of your time and I make up excuses to touch you and I hang all over you and I kiss you and you, you have to ask if it's okay. Like I haven't been wanting you to say that since the day I met you, almost.
[She breathes in slowly, holding on to him tighter than before.]
I'm scared, too. Just like you are. We're both so dumb.
[Her fingers curl, lightly, into the fabric of his shirt, and pull on it just enough to make it bunch.]
But right here like this is where I know I want to be. Is...this where you want to be, too?
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His fingers find her hair, smooth carefully, slowly, down the plane of her back. Prompto's always been the smallest, but here?]
I feel... like there are more important things than being safe, here. Like I can see them, when I look at you.
[It's not that she makes him feel big and strong. It's just... the fact that he's not, it doesn't matter so much. Prompto forgets what he's not, and when he does, he can suddenly be more than he isn't. He gulps and skims his hands down her arms until they cup her elbows.]
I, um. I thought you didn't remember kissing me. Or that you didn't like it, because you didn't say anything about it after, so... I tried not to think about it.
[Carefully, moving as gently as he can so as not to break her hold but slip down through it, Prompto kneels to retrieve the flowers from where she pushed them aside, one hand still on her arm. Connection; I'll be right back. That's what he'd meant with the dandelion, something like this.
He looks up, flowers in hand, on one knee.]
I'm really dumb. I'm way dumber than you, don't pretend like I'm not, Flora. Let me make it up to you. Please. I--I want to be with you. Where you are.
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[She senses, though, that to absolve him of the need of making it up to her is the wrong answer to choose. He doesn't, of course. He doesn't need to make anything up to her, but the point is that he feels like he does, and somehow she knows that forgiving him unconditionally without letting him serve a penance will just leave him feeling worse instead of better. He needs to do; afterwards he needs to be able to look at this and know what he did. Otherwise, he won't know why it happened, and he'll have to ask himself forever without ever finding an answer.]
...But. Yeah. Okay...okay. You can make it up to me. I'm...that's okay with me.
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Okay.
[All the noise in his head that's been blocking so many of her word starts to quiet and flicker low, like a fire going out. He takes another moment down there to take stock of himself, of both of them; the wreath is cool and pliant between his hand, the floor hard under his knee, her fingers real in his the way only things that are alive can be, solid and flexible and capable of surprise.
As he rises, Prompto wonders if he feels the same in her hand. If he's so unexpected to her, too. He reaches up and settles the crown on her brow, where it belongs.
It feels like the first time his feet have landed solidly on earth in days, when he looks at her. Like something's not going to scatter him with a blow. He's here, with her, where she wants him to be; he can hardly believe it, but he trusts her, and so he doesn't have to. He knows it.]
I think you're the most beautiful.
[His voice is soft and shy, still, but he doesn't stammer. He adjusts the leaves and petals carefully so he can see her eyes.]
And I want... to do things... that are special, only for you. Like. Like calling me Quicksilver, only... more. All the time. That's okay?
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[For once, though, it's not a statement she delivers with effortless authority, the way that she does many of the things she says. It's not the voice of someone who once led five boys and herself through calamity after disaster, making snap decisions not because she thought she was fit to lead but because she thought she was right and there was simply no one else to do it. It's a voice that makes no assumptions, that doesn't demand to be recognized. It's a voice that comes as soft and shy as his is, but that slides underneath the gravity of his like a card being shuffled into a deck, like a lieutenant falling into place at its captain's side.
The knots of tension that have twisted her stomach ever since that day at the flower-sharking are finally starting to ease. It finally makes her feel like she can eat again. It makes her feel like she can breathe again.]
Y'know, you said...that you thought, that if you found out my name, it would mean we couldn't be friends anymore.
[Her weight shifts forward, a little more onto the balls of her feet, nudging her into being just a little bit taller from how she's putting more of her weight onto her toes as she gravitates toward him.]
I don't...I don't think we're just friends anymore.
[The corner of her lip catches beneath her teeth, just for a moment.]
So maybe...if you still don't want the real one, then. Will you pick one for me that's just for us? That's just...yours?
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