The prompt votes for Hilow Week 2022 will be closing this Saturday, May 21st! If you haven't voted yet, be sure to fill out the form as soon as you can! Check our bio for the link!
i am very bad at prompts but can i sell you my 1 (one) soul for a hilow plz i love u
love u 2!!!!
Say What You Mean
Hilow. Canonverse.
1387 words.
Buy me a ko-fi!
Marlowe has never seen the point in keeping the truth from others. The only time he’s ever felt that it was okay to do so was only if one was waiting to reveal it at an appropriate moment. Otherwise, he always makes sure to speak his mind. How else can change happen if he always bites his tongue and refuses to say anything? It’s why he constantly speaks up whenever he sees his peers or superiors take advantage of their position in the Military Police, harassing civilians to bend to their whims because they have more power and authority or even avoiding their duties entirely and pushing them down to the newer recruits because they don’t know any better. Oftentimes, his words go unheard, but he believes it’s better than keeping his mouth shut.
This policy of his also goes for more mundane topics – telling people honestly how they look if they ask him, informing people how their cooking tastes even if the dish is terrible, and telling people his honest opinion of how they’ve changed if they haven’t seen each other in a while. It is, of course, only something he does if they ask him for his thoughts in the first place because he realizes it’s annoying to push his unwanted opinions on others. He also tries to word them as best he can – not sugarcoating anything but not being unnecessarily cruel either. All he ever does is give them the simple truth because that’s what he figures that’s what people deserve even if it’s not really what they want.
He does wonder if his words ever hurt others. He’s that they do whenever he sees people wince when he tells them their food is too salty or that they look a little plumper, but they usually thank him for his constructive criticism and go about their way. If it’s a negative comment, he tries to phrase it gently and he thinks he’s gotten the hang of it by now. It’s far more troublesome than stating his positive observations, but he figures it’s only courteous.
If it’s a more neutral comment or something positive, he just states it rather plainly, never exaggerating or singing praises or downplaying his thoughts either. It’s much easier than dancing around people the way he has to do when critiquing friends, but somehow he’s managed to offend Hitch with his words anyway.
“All I said,” he tells Annie, who he had met on the way back to his room, “is that she’s a little too dressed up for a walk in the city. If she’s only going back to her folk’s home at Stohess, isn’t it more practical to wear something simpler?”
Although Annie had never really listened to his problems in depth before – the most she ever really does is remain in the same space as him and not walk out before he finishes talking – but she seems even more distracted now than she usually is. She glances impatiently around the hall as if finding a place to sneak by him, but she finally sighs and mutters, “What is it with the boys here never being able to talk to girls.”
“What do you mean?” Marlowe asks, a little bit offended. While he’s certainly not a ladies’ man, he can talk to women just as well as any other guy.
“Look, Marlowe,” Annie says with another sigh. She shifts the folders she holds from one arm to the other and gives him a tired look. “Usually when someone is dressed up a little differently than they normally are, they like people to comment on it.”
“I did!” Marlowe says, not understanding her at all. “I told her she should bring a jacket at least if she was going to be late.”
“Not like that. Ugh, it’s like talking to a child,” Annie says exasperatedly. She presses her fingers to her temple and takes a deep breath. After she finally exhales, she looks at Marlowe and says to him slowly, “Marlowe, sometimes…you need to be honest and just…say what you mean. How did she look? And don’t you dare say cold.”
Her words continue to baffle him. What does she mean how did Hitch look? Hitch looked like how she normally did but in a dress and with more noticeable makeup. Was he supposed to tell her that? But she would know just as much when she looked in the mirror, so saying it out loud would be pointless.
“Like…aesthetically,” Annie says, but this must not be the word either because Annie frowns. “No…just…how did looking at her make you feel? What did you think?”
How did it make him feel? Confused, mostly. He doesn’t understand how anyone can wear such flimsy material and be comfortable, but Hitch made it look so natural on her as it clung on her curvy frame at all the right places and the wide skirt seemed to float against her willowy legs. He’s not sure how she gets her hair to frame her face in the way, always falling neatly even though she often complains about how curls are difficult to maintain. What puzzles him the most are her painted lips and reddened cheeks, things that he never really understands on anyone because he thinks it’s unnecessary and cumbersome to apply makeup, but new color on her lips made them look even softer and more pillowy than they usually did and the color on her cheeks highlighted her delicate bone structure and the color of her eyes somehow. To him, it seemed like she had taken far too much work to get ready just to go out, doing all sorts of unnecessary and messy things, and somehow…
He thought she looked beautiful.
Flushing, he realizes that he’s unintentionally been keeping a truth from her, one he hadn’t even known about until now.
“Thanks, Annie!” he says to a startled Annie, who had been trying to sneak past him while he was zoned out.
“Uh, yeah, sure,” Annie says as Marlow squeezes past her.
He knows what he has to do. He has to find Hitch and tell her what he’s thinking now even though he has no idea where she is. It’s better than waiting for her though, he thinks, because he has no idea how long she’ll be out. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t know where she is right now anyway. He’ll manage to find her in the end.
He devises a plan to find her – going where he had last seen her, tracing her steps to her house using the small details she had given him in various conversations, and asking strangers if they had seen her – but it’s useless in the end because he bumps into her just as she begins to enter their dorms.
“Marlowe?” she says, frazzled. It’s the first time he’s seen her hair out of place, but it’s only because he was the one to knock into her and mess it up in the first place. She’s quick to fix it, easily putting it back in its place so that it frames her face perfectly, before asking, “What are you doing?”
“I just came to tell you,” Marlowe says, breathing a little hard from sprinting down the stairs, “that you look beautiful tonight. I’m sorry if my words were rude earlier…I just wasn’t able to say it before because I was so surprised when I saw you. I’m not used to seeing you in…clothes like this.”
He thought she would be flattered, but she’s only staring at him in silence. “Did you…run out here just to tell me that?” she asks with a furrowed brow. When he nods, her cheeks begin to turn a darker pink and she reaches for the back of her head to touch a curl. Turning away from him, she mumbles, “You’re so weird…it’s not as if I dressed up for you anyway.”
He doesn’t think that she’s telling the truth, and he’s not sure why she’s lying to him now. It would be easier for him if she would just say what she means too, he thinks as he watches her push past him as she mutters something about having to wash off and get ready for the night, but he thinks this dishonest side of her is cute too somehow.
Now that #HilowWeek2022 has come to a close, we'd appreciate it if you could take a moment to fill out a short survey. This will help the mod team plan for next year's event! 💚💜
https://t.co/ubfRkZQBZ8
We had a blast hosting Hilow Week, but we want to know what YOU thought of it! Let us know what you liked, didn't like, and want to see impr
