Who told you so, dilly dilly, Who told you so? โTwas my own heart, dilly dilly, That told me so.
ouch is one of the most intimate, romantic ways to be close to someone else. The Town knows this very well -- the Town wants everyone to be as close as possible.
Perhaps that's why this bonding is so...aggressive.
Because you're in for quite the shock on this otherwise peaceful day when you brush against the next person on your path.
Maybe you're going out of your way to touch people. Maybe you've got a terrible urge to just see what's lurking in someone's heart. Maybe you trip over a conveniently placed rock -- whatever the cause, you're getting an up close and personal look into someone else's heart.
Welcome to Awash's eighteenth event log, everyone! Further information on this event can be found here at the OOC post. You are welcome to make your own logs and posts for this event!
If there are any questions, please ask them here. Thank you!
[That's a lot of scent to be coming from just one flower. Still, she reaches in gingerly for it, intent on drawing it out to examine it with the card as well.
This pink flower wouldn't happen to be a peony, would it?]
[Indeed it is! And there's a rosebud tucked in so closely with it, they come out together without any extra effort. Their stems are actually twined together, so that makes sense.
The card is a placard, face-down, and Prompto starts when he sees it and raises a hand before freezing.]
[Well, well. Now there's a flower she recognizes, and she's careful with them when she draws them out because she's starting to see what the purpose behind this chest really is. It's not just a gun show; the guns are probably even incidental, covering over the precious things hidden at the bottom behind a thick layer of defense in the way Prompto best knows how.
And — well. The flowers make sense, for that, if they're representative of this fragile thing between them (twisted up between them like flower stems). But, then, what about the card?
She's already reaching for it when he pipes up, and it makes her pause.]
...What?
[The truth is, she wouldn't stop for anyone else. Anyone else, she'd keep rummaging, because that's the kind of person she is. But for Prompto, she'll stop. She couldn't do anything less.]
[He wavers, mouth open, and the room tilts back just an inch further, creating another moment of that anxious, almost uncontrolled sensation before he closes his eyes and settles himself--and the room.]
You... should. I think you should. I guess I've been wanting you to know about it.
[As he speaks, the lid of the toy chest shivers, like it might snap itself shut, but Prompto braces it open with one arm and reaches in with the other to place the card gently, directly in her hand.]
Then I'm not saying it out loud. It'll be just between you and me for sure.
[Why does she have a bad feeling about this, all of a sudden? Maybe it's because this particular placard seems familiar somehow. Maybe it's because even Prompto's own heart seems to have its reservations about this.
But what else is there to do, except keep moving forward? She's here to help Prompto get out of this, and they're not going to get anywhere if she hesitates. That's how dungeon crawls always go.]
[Her own name doesn't even look like her name anymore.
Kind of coincidental, because her own body doesn't even feel like her body anymore, either. Not when all of a sudden it's like she's outside of it, somehow, like she's watching herself sitting there holding her own name on a card, and something is terrified and something else is screaming and something beyond that is frozen, and it's all acutely aware of Prompto crouched there at her side. I've been wanting you to know about it..
Not his secret. Not his secret, buried in this chest.
Hers.]
Moran.
[It's a whisper, soft and strangled. A name she never thought she'd make her lips form, ever again.]
Easy to — to pick on. Moron Moran. I never heard the end of it.
[Even as he tries--too little, too late--to protest, the card takes up her full name as it's given, the grey, scrawling fill-ins evaporating as dark #AA333 red stencils itself in, more official-looking and noble.]
Summer Moran
[--it now reads, clear and uncluttered. Prompto breathes out audibly, expression complicated. Wincing and fulfilled both.
And then the silver etching returns, this time around the edges of the card, curling into vines and points and the suggestion of leaves, until roses bud in the corners, again Summer's rich, deep red.
The room doesn't waver, but Prompto's gaze does, dropping and skittering away like something discarded. Like tossing a gun, like putting his hands up, like showing his bare throat and belly, except he doesn't look at her.]
...So no one else can find it. Even if they got in here somehow, they'd... never get it from me.
[He'd use every arm in his arsenal first. Every bullet he can pull from the Armiger. Every defense this child's bedroom can offer, weak locks and sloped, dangerous floor and all. He threads his hands together in his lap.]
You could--you could destroy it if you want. Maybe that'd work, if you did it in here?
[It's like magic, watching the card shift and change. Something important, magic, silver lines that blossom into red roses at the borders of her name (her name) that she holds in her hand, that he'd kept at the bottom of a toy chest beneath a mountain of guns because they'd never get it from me.
He knows her name. He's known her name.
And yet he still called her Ace. He still treated her the way she wanted to be treated. He never used it against her, never danced around the suggestion of it. He knew, and he did nothing.
He knows her name, and for an instant her wild thoughts turn to a shy boy in a different bedroom than this one, reading a story, watching a world end, with everything hinging on giving a little girl a name. Because names have power, names are everything. Names matter more than anything else.
And he kept hers safe for her.]
...I.
[And yet she's still scared. She knows what she wants to ask him, knows what she wants to hear him do. But she can't make herself do it, not yet.]
You tried to fill it in yourself. The parts you didn't know?
[He starts to stand, but then he remembers what he promised her, what he promised everyone he loves--no more running. He returns to a miserable squat instead, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes, biting his lip between halting words.]
I just--I saw it for a second, at the feast, a-and then you gave me hints, and I remembered that weird question you asked me one time, about what season I thought it was? And... I tried once, too, to sorta sneak it into conversation so you'd hear me say your name again...
[He stops himself by moving one hand over his mouth, glancing to the side as if someone could be listening in. Still, there's no access to Prompto's heart-world. The windows are still covered over, and there's still no door to be seen.
Better safe than sorry, though. When no threat comes, he breathes out.]
[What it comes down to is, does she trust him, or not? Once she would've killed him instantly, the second he showed her he knew this. Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead. Once, she would've been so scared, so reactionary, that one glimpse of her name on that card and she would've called fire to her fingertips to burn the world around her to the ground.
But she's not afraid like she used to be. And the reason she's not is trembling right in front of her, like he's afraid he's betrayed her.
(And this is his heart. In his heart, he's afraid of what this means to her, what it means he's done to her.)
That's the realization, maybe, that leads her to what comes next.]
...Yeah. I did, I tricked you into — I noticed when you did it on purpose, too. But I thought it was just a coincidence.
[Slowly, carefully, she cups her hands together like she's holding a baby bird; when she snaps her fingers, it's a sound that's cradled there in her empty palms, not an animal.
It's a familiar sound, or should be. It's the sound of Prompto's own voice.
Summer.]
I kept it. The sound of your voice. Saying...
[She hesitates. Swallows. Picks up the card, and this time she doesn't shove it crumpled into his hands like she did at the festival. This time she offers it to him. An offer.]
You said I was safe in here. That nothing can hurt me, here. And I believe that, so — will you say it?
[At the sound of his own voice, he goes still and watches her. Just watches her, eyes wide, hand still over his mouth, as she opens like the rosebud he compared her to, comes out from where she hides.
Summer offers him her name. She shows him the gaping chink in the armor she's wrenched together of her own self, and gives him permission to--no. Asks him to reach through and touch that part of her she buried alive to keep safe.
A flower at the bottom of a treasure chest. His hand falls away from his face and joins the other, rising before him, to take the card from her.]
Okay.
[The light shifts again, but not to highlight anything for her. It highlights her. It gathers around her, a soft, full-body halo; now Summer must be the most important thing in the room.
Prompto's voice stays soft, and his eyes stay on her.]
[That's...weirdly beatific, somehow, the lightglow that descends around her; it leaves her looking at her hands, spreading her fingers to take in the way the light haloes her outline like a shadow puppet in reverse. But all that interest quickly goes by the wayside as Prompto speaks, and her eyes are just barely wider than usual as she watches his mouth shape the words she knows are coming, but isn't quite ready for anyway.
Summer. Summer Moran. That's you.
It is. And all of a sudden, it's like a treasure chest of her own has cracked open, the lid unhinging to release something that she, too, has kept buried all this time — a memory of her own, cargo pants and oversize sweatshirts, linoleum tile steps up a few floors in the dorm, cafeteria tables and paved sidewalks and the bright spring sky overhead, flags in the quad, jet trails like clouds across the blue, the buttery-soft-sleek touch of Nick's leather jacket and paper cups of soft-serve ice cream —
— Nick of time. Summertime. You're such a moron, Moran. Don't be such a bummer, Summer.
Her name.
Her.
It's not her name he's been keeping at the bottom of that chest. It's her.]
I know.
[She does, and it's breathless, the recognition leaving her in a rush that's damp with the promise of elated tears, like something lodged deep in her chest has finally come free and now all that's left is catharsis.]
You're a heck of a guy, Prompto Argentum.
[She looks down again, looking at the drape of her ink-black cloak where it's spread across her shoulders, her forearms — and discovers, oddly enough, that when she's illuminated like this, that ever-present glamor of don't-look-at-me has been nullified, and there's absolutely nothing inhibiting the eye from lingering on her at all.]
[Given the way Prompto's looking at her, adoring, heart-aching proud, grateful, and unsurprised at all to see her glowing, maybe this is just how Summer looks to him all the time. Maybe, for him, she's always the most important thing in the room.
This time, he keeps the card instead of pressing it back into her hands. This time, he holds it flat to his chest, like he can discard the metaphor and be the protective container on his own.
This time, he raises his hand to touch her face, light and gentle fingers along her jaw, under her ear. The photographer's fingers, not the gunner's.]
Really, I'm not, girl. I'm just normal.
[The soft curve of his hand slides to cup her face, her chin. Unthinking, he says it again, just to say it. Just to feel it in his mouth the way he couldn't, all these months since the banquet.]
Summer.
[Summer. Summer. Heat and sun and thunderstorms, dragging himself out of bed late for syrupy morning runs, light kissing his sticky skin and promising freckles across the back of his neck, red hair and scars and a wry voice calling him Quicksilver.
Prompto's not sure where the card's gone when his other hand comes up to complete the cradle around her face, because his heart's too full of her in this moment for any other clever visual inventions.]
I think it's pretty normal to be in love with you. [His voice is hushed, his eyes smiling and overfull.] Like I am.
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ouch is one of the most intimate, romantic ways to be close to someone else. The Town knows this very well -- the Town wants everyone to be as close as possible.
no subject
[That's a lot of scent to be coming from just one flower. Still, she reaches in gingerly for it, intent on drawing it out to examine it with the card as well.
This pink flower wouldn't happen to be a peony, would it?]
no subject
[Indeed it is! And there's a rosebud tucked in so closely with it, they come out together without any extra effort. Their stems are actually twined together, so that makes sense.
The card is a placard, face-down, and Prompto starts when he sees it and raises a hand before freezing.]
Oh--um.
[Welp.]
no subject
And — well. The flowers make sense, for that, if they're representative of this fragile thing between them (twisted up between them like flower stems). But, then, what about the card?
She's already reaching for it when he pipes up, and it makes her pause.]
...What?
[The truth is, she wouldn't stop for anyone else. Anyone else, she'd keep rummaging, because that's the kind of person she is. But for Prompto, she'll stop. She couldn't do anything less.]
Should I...you know. Not touch that one?
no subject
You... should. I think you should. I guess I've been wanting you to know about it.
[As he speaks, the lid of the toy chest shivers, like it might snap itself shut, but Prompto braces it open with one arm and reaches in with the other to place the card gently, directly in her hand.]
Then I'm not saying it out loud. It'll be just between you and me for sure.
no subject
[Why does she have a bad feeling about this, all of a sudden? Maybe it's because this particular placard seems familiar somehow. Maybe it's because even Prompto's own heart seems to have its reservations about this.
But what else is there to do, except keep moving forward? She's here to help Prompto get out of this, and they're not going to get anywhere if she hesitates. That's how dungeon crawls always go.]
...okay.
[And slowly, she turns the card over.]
no subject
[That's what it says.]
no subject
Kind of coincidental, because her own body doesn't even feel like her body anymore, either. Not when all of a sudden it's like she's outside of it, somehow, like she's watching herself sitting there holding her own name on a card, and something is terrified and something else is screaming and something beyond that is frozen, and it's all acutely aware of Prompto crouched there at her side. I've been wanting you to know about it..
Not his secret. Not his secret, buried in this chest.
Hers.]
Moran.
[It's a whisper, soft and strangled. A name she never thought she'd make her lips form, ever again.]
Easy to — to pick on. Moron Moran. I never heard the end of it.
[he knows he knows he knows he knows]
Why was it under all the guns...?
no subject
[Even as he tries--too little, too late--to protest, the card takes up her full name as it's given, the grey, scrawling fill-ins evaporating as dark #AA333 red stencils itself in, more official-looking and noble.]
Summer Moran
[--it now reads, clear and uncluttered. Prompto breathes out audibly, expression complicated. Wincing and fulfilled both.
And then the silver etching returns, this time around the edges of the card, curling into vines and points and the suggestion of leaves, until roses bud in the corners, again Summer's rich, deep red.
The room doesn't waver, but Prompto's gaze does, dropping and skittering away like something discarded. Like tossing a gun, like putting his hands up, like showing his bare throat and belly, except he doesn't look at her.]
...So no one else can find it. Even if they got in here somehow, they'd... never get it from me.
[He'd use every arm in his arsenal first. Every bullet he can pull from the Armiger. Every defense this child's bedroom can offer, weak locks and sloped, dangerous floor and all. He threads his hands together in his lap.]
You could--you could destroy it if you want. Maybe that'd work, if you did it in here?
[It won't. But he doesn't know that.]
no subject
He knows her name. He's known her name.
And yet he still called her Ace. He still treated her the way she wanted to be treated. He never used it against her, never danced around the suggestion of it. He knew, and he did nothing.
He knows her name, and for an instant her wild thoughts turn to a shy boy in a different bedroom than this one, reading a story, watching a world end, with everything hinging on giving a little girl a name. Because names have power, names are everything. Names matter more than anything else.
And he kept hers safe for her.]
...I.
[And yet she's still scared. She knows what she wants to ask him, knows what she wants to hear him do. But she can't make herself do it, not yet.]
You tried to fill it in yourself. The parts you didn't know?
no subject
[He starts to stand, but then he remembers what he promised her, what he promised everyone he loves--no more running. He returns to a miserable squat instead, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes, biting his lip between halting words.]
I just--I saw it for a second, at the feast, a-and then you gave me hints, and I remembered that weird question you asked me one time, about what season I thought it was? And... I tried once, too, to sorta sneak it into conversation so you'd hear me say your name again...
[He stops himself by moving one hand over his mouth, glancing to the side as if someone could be listening in. Still, there's no access to Prompto's heart-world. The windows are still covered over, and there's still no door to be seen.
Better safe than sorry, though. When no threat comes, he breathes out.]
I just. Couldn't help wondering.
no subject
But she's not afraid like she used to be. And the reason she's not is trembling right in front of her, like he's afraid he's betrayed her.
(And this is his heart. In his heart, he's afraid of what this means to her, what it means he's done to her.)
That's the realization, maybe, that leads her to what comes next.]
...Yeah. I did, I tricked you into — I noticed when you did it on purpose, too. But I thought it was just a coincidence.
[Slowly, carefully, she cups her hands together like she's holding a baby bird; when she snaps her fingers, it's a sound that's cradled there in her empty palms, not an animal.
It's a familiar sound, or should be. It's the sound of Prompto's own voice.
Summer.]
I kept it. The sound of your voice. Saying...
[She hesitates. Swallows. Picks up the card, and this time she doesn't shove it crumpled into his hands like she did at the festival. This time she offers it to him. An offer.]
You said I was safe in here. That nothing can hurt me, here. And I believe that, so — will you say it?
no subject
Summer offers him her name. She shows him the gaping chink in the armor she's wrenched together of her own self, and gives him permission to--no. Asks him to reach through and touch that part of her she buried alive to keep safe.
A flower at the bottom of a treasure chest. His hand falls away from his face and joins the other, rising before him, to take the card from her.]
Okay.
[The light shifts again, but not to highlight anything for her. It highlights her. It gathers around her, a soft, full-body halo; now Summer must be the most important thing in the room.
Prompto's voice stays soft, and his eyes stay on her.]
Summer. Summer Moran. That's you.
[Despite everything, it's still you.
What was the first thing she ever said to him, bearing her own red light in her hands instead of his starshine glow?]
I'm not going to hurt you, Summer.
no subject
Summer. Summer Moran. That's you.
It is. And all of a sudden, it's like a treasure chest of her own has cracked open, the lid unhinging to release something that she, too, has kept buried all this time — a memory of her own, cargo pants and oversize sweatshirts, linoleum tile steps up a few floors in the dorm, cafeteria tables and paved sidewalks and the bright spring sky overhead, flags in the quad, jet trails like clouds across the blue, the buttery-soft-sleek touch of Nick's leather jacket and paper cups of soft-serve ice cream —
(Hey, Summertime, Summertime, Sum-Sum-Summertime!)
— Nick of time. Summertime. You're such a moron, Moran. Don't be such a bummer, Summer.
Her name.
Her.
It's not her name he's been keeping at the bottom of that chest. It's her.]
I know.
[She does, and it's breathless, the recognition leaving her in a rush that's damp with the promise of elated tears, like something lodged deep in her chest has finally come free and now all that's left is catharsis.]
You're a heck of a guy, Prompto Argentum.
[She looks down again, looking at the drape of her ink-black cloak where it's spread across her shoulders, her forearms — and discovers, oddly enough, that when she's illuminated like this, that ever-present glamor of don't-look-at-me has been nullified, and there's absolutely nothing inhibiting the eye from lingering on her at all.]
no subject
This time, he keeps the card instead of pressing it back into her hands. This time, he holds it flat to his chest, like he can discard the metaphor and be the protective container on his own.
This time, he raises his hand to touch her face, light and gentle fingers along her jaw, under her ear. The photographer's fingers, not the gunner's.]
Really, I'm not, girl. I'm just normal.
[The soft curve of his hand slides to cup her face, her chin. Unthinking, he says it again, just to say it. Just to feel it in his mouth the way he couldn't, all these months since the banquet.]
Summer.
[Summer. Summer. Heat and sun and thunderstorms, dragging himself out of bed late for syrupy morning runs, light kissing his sticky skin and promising freckles across the back of his neck, red hair and scars and a wry voice calling him Quicksilver.
Prompto's not sure where the card's gone when his other hand comes up to complete the cradle around her face, because his heart's too full of her in this moment for any other clever visual inventions.]
I think it's pretty normal to be in love with you. [His voice is hushed, his eyes smiling and overfull.] Like I am.