photophobic | [IC CONTACT]

okay so
1) your poetry is great. like. unironically, i was expecting so much worse
2) what the hell is that cover made out of. i couldnt look at it directly without my soul leaving my body

[ This text shouldn't be so awkward and yet it really, really feels it. Midnighter's asleep (or pretending very well, at least) and so here's Apollo, staring uselessly at his phone, typing and deleting and retyping what feels like the stupidest text he's ever written. He doesn't even know why this is weird. He's met Elton John, for Christ's sake! Kylo Ren, imPort poet extraordinaire, should be easier to talk to, right? ]

Hi, this is Apollo. We met at FanPort last month. I bought your book (giftwrapped). Remember me?

[ Out of no where, Kylo gets a text. It's a set of coordinates to a beach on the North Carolina coast, and a time. 2:35 am.

There's nothing else - no explanation, no greeting.

He doesn't think he needs it. ]

kylooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

[ What's good ol' Kylo Ren up to these days? Haru decides to shoot him a text as she's faced with a number of beets that she knows Futaba is not going to eat. She can only get Goro and Yusuke to eat so many of them... ]

Hello, Kylo!
You like beets, don't you?

In terms of real life time, Ronan's not absent all that long. A few minutes. Maybe a half hour. Honestly, he doesn't expect his absence to be noticed any more than on those nights that require a trip to the kitchen for an extra shot of booze. He's just gone for a little while.

And now he's back, not sliding into bed so much as returning to existence there, in the spot he usually occupies. Nude as he was when he left it. There's no physical evidence of what he's done, but his body is still humming with the pleasure granted to him by Murphy's imagination. It's a bit rare, someone (who isn't Kylo) fantasizing about pleasuring Ronan, rather than being serviced by him. Though he didn't wander off to drain a bottle of whiskey tonight, he feels drunk.

[ At 3 AM. ]

hey

\

m-s-o•-h
u-a-i-m
a-m-b-h
r-t•
r-t•-b-b-p-l-s-s•
h-r-e-,-t-d-d•
o-e-c-h
h-l•-n

Reread page 13 last night. I think that's our favorite one so far.

Wondering which poem you would recommend for, let's say, dealing with the collapsing arterial wall of the multiverse?

Thank you for your time today. And for being willing to go back to that place again. I’ll do what I can to make this information worth it.

I want you to remember: I’m the one who asked for this, the one who asked you to go back and remember that point of contact. I’m going to hold this for your now, so if she comes looking, she can turn that eye on me, not you. You can keep your Ronan away from her. Just like you promised.

I don’t take any of this lightly, and I’ll do all I can to make it count.

Edited (Lol belatedly noticing missing words. Good job, me!) 2019-11-07 18:02 (UTC)

What did you want?

[ She's making rounds to ensure her friends are alright and honestly, it feels a little strange to be asking Kylo of all people given the strength and might he's proven over and over, but... well, it's Haru. ]

Hey. Are you and your friends alright after everything that has happened?

ren i need ur help

With little time left before Atropos comes to devour them all, desperate plans are being made. No one gives Noah the details or discusses them in front of him, but they don't have to. He hears things anyway. Conflicted feelings. Sacrifice.

Survival at a monstrous cost.

It's because of those plans that he comes to Kylo now—a trick of the light, the shape of a boy, shadows blending with hollow eyes. And then he's just Noah standing in the doorway. Small and human and scared.

"I know."

Do you have any assessment on the outcome you’d feel comfortable sharing? [A slight pause, then—] Or, I suppose what I’m really asking is how are you all fairing over in the dream farm?

so did u lads surviv the apoc? just need to no if i gotta roll out the death march n wear black or whatevs

[kavinsky/kylo ren, no prompt]

Before the Fates and Jeopardy, Kavinsky just fucked around in Ronan's head. Kylo Ren knew about it, obviously. Allowed these little trysts, shuttered away in the translucent privacy of his lover's mind.

But he is not all that surprised when Kavinsky turns up one night in his own thoughts.

It's very stupid, actually. A series of facetious sex fantasies, extremely on-brand. The first night, Kavinsky is some type of sex worker and Kylo finds himself in medias res, holding out a handful of bills to this skinny thing in skinnier jeans, hips cocked at a smutty shimmy that is nothing like how Kavinsky moves in real life. The second time, Kavinsky looks up at him, totally naked, from an operating table and it's Ronan's voice small, tiny in the sterile air, complaining that he is trapped. On Kavinsky's narrow chest, Kylo Ren can recognize his own writing in marker: CUT HERE TO RELEASE. In one big hand, Kylo is holding a scalpel.

Once, Kavinsky is a girl. Fingers inside herself already, dress half-open in the front and punctuated with extremely tiny nipples.

Kylo Ren understands that Kavinsky means to upset him at least half the time, and probably does not know his own intentions the other half. He burns the money in the first dream. In the second, he brings his face very close to Kavinsky's shit-eating grin and tells him: Ronan is sleeping beside me and he would like to dream with you. The third, he ignores Kavinsky entirely, and eventually, she closes her dress and turns on the TV, complaining fiercely that Kylo Ren does not know how to have fun, and that these breasts were modeled after someone that even he, as a gay man, deeply appreciated, so fuck you, Kylo Ren!

But the next one is kind of interesting and Kylo Ren is intrigued despite himself. Here, the world is before spacecraft or even cars. Kylo Ren is a master of his art, and he is forging a sword.
Metal is dug from the heart of a mountain that rose on the edge of an ancient sea, where the priests say that a meteorite died for its conception, smashing into the armor of the world. The luminous ore is brought to him on horseback, in the wagons of travelers who accept a set of perfectly-balanced knives in trade. Kylo Ren sets about making this sword.

It's tough work with an unfamiliar, foreign substance. Smelting, refining. Annealing to check, coming back days again to watch it glow on the coals. Tricky, intelligent; the science of it particular, fickle with him, requiring patience, but he can feel his mastery grow. The sword will be perfect. It will save nations whose legacies will live in song; it will destroy the ones that go then forgotten. Legends will remember him by the name etched into the edge. Then comes the day he must quench the blade.

He quenches it in the trough for his horse, but it shatters.

So Kylo Ren forges it anew. He quenches it then, in the aquamarine surf of the mother sea, with the blessing of a priest. But it only shatters again. Leaves its fragments strewn in the sand, awaiting collection.

His horse was faithful and strong, a powerful creature that knew his mind nearly as well as he knew it himself. He thrusts it into the hot red blood of her faithful body. But even then, again, the blade shatters.

The blood of a wolf does him no better. Leaves a smoking pelt, snow running crimson. A broken piece in his grip.

Finally, he forges the blade anew and his husband comes to him: the beautiful one, black hair and broad shoulders, and a smile after which the god-killing weapon was inspired. He bares his pale chest, behind which beats the heart that burns hottest. Kylo Ren knows that this will be the one, and he shuts it down because-- what the fuck. He storms down to the priest, whose hood frames a gaunt little face with a carnivorous grin, and anachronistic tattoos.

"Jesus Christ, Kylo Ren," says the priest. "Why do you need so much foreplay?" Obligingly, he shrugs off his ribs, exposing his own heart.

Kylo Ren flings the glowing blade onto the ground. "I would prefer," he says, levelly, "that we be ourselves, Joseph."

"Hmm," Kavinsky answers, eyes widening. Narrowing again, thoughtful. "No longer possible."

"Why not?" Kylo asks, as the dream politely excuses itself and begins to fade to white.

"Thought you woulda noticed by now, Ren," Kavinsky says, impudently. "But to be fair, I didn't catch it until it was too fucking late, either. Want to take a closer look?" and Kylo does. He can see that something has gone missing. A clean cut. A sterilized regret, unfinished, because Kavinsky gave away the flesh that made such a scar possible; an accident, impulsive, poorly-planned. In the edges of awakening, Kylo Ren sifts through the energy, but it falls through his hands like a made-up weapon. He awakens with the suspicion that the mistake had something to do with Ronan.

ya boy flushed his phone down the toilet again or whatever before i could tell him so but

i'm just sayin
i didn't save this fuckin marble just so that he could spend a little less time brooding to gaga on it.
what the fuck, man

have u been hearing any weird shit
like weirder than usual?

[ Here's a very merry christmas present addressed to kylo (and ronan) from apollo... it's an obnoxiously black jigsaw puzzle. Good luck and godspeed, don't break anything over it. ]

[Three package arrives at the meadows. One is addressed to Kylo Ren and contains a scratch-card poster and something else. The card simply reads Kylo Ren, take your time. - S.S

One package is addressed to Ronan, and the other is addressed to everyone. Enjoy!]

[under the tree on the harmonfaces' christmas morning, there is a gift for kylo ren. it is not as incredibly tiny as the one was for ronan himself, but it is still smaller than the accompanying card which is unsigned.

inside the small grey box, there is an egg. it is alive and growing, though it certainly does not have to be.

the force tells kylo immediately that the little thing is pulling against it. in absence of ronan's finesse, the greywaren's gift for real creation, this thing pulls from its surroundings and the one who it was meant for. gifted only with heat and enough energy to grow, it knows to form wing bones and round blind eyes, to hatch into a baby raven, to match the creature that sits on ronan's shoulder; to be wild and free and to make its own choices as an animal in the world.

but every stray thought or intent that kylo might cast its way has the potential to change it. replace wings with venomous fangs, or hollow bones with a spiny insectoid carapace, or even a tortoiseshell, perhaps a long, scaly tail. it will only ever be an animal, but the simplest things in the meadows have in themselves unlimited potential.

it will also be delicious if fried. the card proposes a really nice recipe.]

[ What Kylo is looking at is a photo that Rey has snapped, of the orchid he'd sent her.

Hanging in the window of her room; casting a shadow on the ground in the weak light of the day. The picture might almost be instagrammable with the flower and knick-knacks sitting on the sill, if not a pile of objects (a pair of boots, her quarterstaff and various parts and pieces she's been using to rebuild the lightsaber) she'd tossed into one corner of her room and her unmade bed. Both are highly visible in opposite frames of the picture.. ]

Its flourishing.

murph says ure gone so i hav 2 check if u r really gone
dont get mad its important

[ a string of texts, all within an hour or so: ]

Went to the Meadows but you're not there. Nobody's there. Did you get back alright? Call me when you get this.

Tried Ronan's phone. He has a brother?

If you're not here then I fucking hope you're not there.

Please call me if you get this.

8/15-ish

3am text

backdated to two weeks after the death star