CLOSED | prompt eight | RUIN

[dondarrion]

prompt eight | R U I N dressing-room style. closed to rog.

 

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[aware]

[ He sees those tears beginning to fog her eyes and in his chest Eamonn's heart starts to beat out of rhythm, that syncopation slowly twisting him into knots of please, Grace; please, don't; I'll do anything; just don't cry.

To Grace's credit it isn't crying — not yet, anyway — but she's getting there fast (and with him help). Poised on the very cusp of weeping, every inhale threatening a sob or a catch of breath from which she'll never recover, it's either a case of fall forward or fall back and no room for error inbetween. The line Grace is walking is narrow enough as it is, barely enough room for the both of them side-by-side, but Eamonn doesn't intend to abandon her. Come hell or high water, he'll follow her. Even if that means diving headfirst into the salt sea of her tears.

Leaning his forward, his forehead comes to rest against the gentle slope of hers, the curve of his skull rocks once as he nods in silent agreement. (Please believe me; it's all I want.) Eamonn shifts and lifts a free hand to retrace the path that Grace had drawn over his heart only moments ago — one line intersecting a second. A tell-tale cross. X marks the spot. ]

Cross my heart'n hope t'die. Stick a needl' in m'eye. [ Peek pulls back far enough to offer his eyes, to show her with his gaze and his expression. D dozen dozen microexpressions all point to the same thing and that direction is love. ] T'ere isn't anyone else in the wide world f'r me, but you. I promise, Grace — s'alright. An' if it isn't right now — will be soon.

[glimpses]

[ He makes promise after promise (and she doesn't doubt a single one) but never do the words I love you pass his lips. (She, by contrast, still tells him day by day, though the task only grows more difficult — not because it becomes any less true but because she gets the feeling that each time the words go unreturned there is less for her to give. (She figures she can't ask him if it's true. Again, unquantifiable.)

Soon, too, is an unquantifiable term, one that means different amounts of time to different people, but she doesn't much have the heart to ask him to specify. Where he sees the beginnings of tears in her eyes, she sees panic in his, and (and she wonders if love really is as terrible as all that) she bites back the sentiment that threatens to bubble over, walking a tightrope for a series of instants before the line of her lips straightens out again and the flush to her cheeks begins to die back down.

Soon, he says, and she's reaching for the sun again despite knowing it'll burn. ]

I love you.

[ At this point — worn out and worn down — she doesn't particularly care what he has to say in return. It's an affirmation, more than not (cross my heart and hope to die, there isn't anyone else for me, either, not in a million years; a stupid sentiment, in a way — nobody lives that long — but the chiding voice that says so dies away in a matter of instants). ]