#maybe it's just the all-consuming，gaping hole of loneliness within me

[luvsavos]

random vent(?) in the tags, feel free to ignore i just have a lot of pent up emotions to get out today apparently

[rileywrites-reylo]

Dancing

Kylo Ren x Rey

Summary: Ben Solo has always been there. He was always burnished brass, starlight eyes, and a voice like the breeze through green leaves. The shadowed man had plagued him, too.

In which the Force provides a balm for two lonely souls.

Credit to the maker of this gif.

Sometimes, when the rays of the sun beat down on golden, freckled shoulders and heated tiny hairs on a tiny neck, she found her eyes tracing the lines of a shadow that wasn’t quite right; wasn’t quite her own as it kept time with her, moving over fine grains of sand with a finesse her scrawny legs had yet to discover for themselves.

Dust laden, sand paper wind pushed at fine, wispy tendrils of hair that were still too short to pull up; teasing at shadowed ears that were too big; the lines of her profile, button nose a little too long, too harsh in contrast with the softness of youth.

When the yellow light of the moons danced overhead and the warm flickering light of the sunset imbued flames crossed over each rusted patch of the walls protecting her from the night, that shadowy figure loomed over her, hovering, encasing, engulfing her in companionship that she greedily clung to despite the dark of it; lessening the sting of the horizon of solitude as the moons tracked across the black.

She liked to pretend that the dark silhouette, that day time companion that always followed, was someone known and loved. She knew it was likely the shimmering heat gliding over the dunes playing tricks; hazy azure skies sparkling with whispers of a sun that teased and offered a quiet, yearning heart an imagined friend.

On clear nights when the winds had blown themselves out and the sands had settled, she always found herself stretched out over radiant sheets of blasted metal, skinny arms beneath a heavy head, bony ankles crossed over the other as she looked up at distant points of glowing warmth; places where she could be, where it might be. On nights where the moons were too low to brighten the sky, too low to welcome the company of her shadow, she told it; loneliness, stories while she picked at dirty, ruined hemlines of a shirt she was quickly growing out of. She sang to it, the feeling of it, that ever present darkness that held on to her even when she couldn’t find it for want of light, the songs she only half-remembered and others still that she’d half made up.

“Are the stars the same where you lie waiting?”

“Maybe one day…”

“Will you feel me, too?”

As arms and legs lengthened, the days and nights grew longer, too; stormy line of weariness and the quiet rolling in to push at the dunes of her heart, shifting each granule, altering the landscape. Rationing of her affection and trust became as important as carefully guarding water. Seediness and mal intent were woven into every interaction of Nima Outpost.

When she’d started bleeding, she’d cried herself to sleep, scolding her eyes for wasting precious fluids, for wasting time, but the fear that chilled her scalding veins as soon as she’d felt the stickiness between her legs had begged for release.  She thought immediately of another girl who traversed the scrap  heaps as she did, a few years older, and how the light in her eyes had gone, how it was like the exposed wires had snaked their way into her bones and pulled down at her soul, her smile. She remembered how the looks of others had changed around the outpost when someone had taken note of her purchasing scraps of fabric with a heavy frown on her face. She thought of how small she’d looked with bruises on her arms and a scream caught in her throat.

She’d thought of what it must be like to be a shadow.

With the red came hours of practicing with the staff she’d made; sunlight beating down on her, on it, ends of that sturdy metal glinting with hints of ‘No,’ ‘Unbroken,’ and ‘I’m sorry;’ lines of her shape-shifting daylight companion, shoulders strong, torso long and made up of words that read: ‘You are stronger than you know.’

With her staff came many sweaty nights woken from sleep with wide eyes and a heaving chest as pain blossomed in her heart and welled at her eyes for reasons she couldn’t understand; her shadow curling into her body, clinging to every crevice of her skin as she waited for the sun inside her metal cage that dripped with humming musings of terror coated in glowing green.

As years passed, her shadow loomed, it darkened, it crackled; the edges of it slowly fraying and tangling. On those particularly hot days, sun blistering, where the wind dried out her very bones and the blasting sand rubbed the freckles of her skin raw, she swore she could hear that dark thing that followed crying out in protest of the sun.

“Tearing apart,” it would sometimes whisper, sound of it like the breeze blowing through the tapestry hanging over rusted edges of holes too big to be patched.

Slowly, her companion took on a whole new form, the shape of her head now odd and too smooth, far less human than the lines she had grown used to, too big ears gone; the whole of it bigger and terrifying in the way that made tiny hairs raise and skin to pucker. Its presence weighed her down, pushing at the golden sand as she moved, and it moved, they moved.

She had stopped singing to it and instead took to whispering.

She swore to never speak to it again when its darkness had spread so far and so violently that the inky black of the backs of eyelids had turned into an abyss, a swirling vortex of something that pulled and tugged on every fiber of her being, darkness like a glove reaching into her chest and ripping her from beneath the surface of nightmarish dreams full of screaming and fire.

The whole of the horizon had been made of thick, acrid smoke that prickled at her neck and fingers, sent her heart into a frenzy. She found that her shadow was no longer at her feet, but in the sky, teasing her from within the ashes carried on the wind.

“It’s you,” she’d whispered, embers on her breath and the night in her eyes.

“What girl?” It had echoed, voice made up of the same fraying edges and less than human form.

Suddenly, that monstrous friend was no longer just a shadow she thought had been part of a cruel trick the Jakku sun had been playing, but a fully formed  being when it split from her toes to manifest from the trees as this menacing, blackened soul; breathing, asking, breaking as that same gloved hand from her dreams reached out, hovering; the lines of it solid, but still unraveled as fingers bled into thick arms and a dusky chest. She’d found herself frozen, incapable of understanding, but at the same time, everything abruptly making sense to her amidst the shimmering green of the forest encasing two shadowed souls meeting for the first time under a different sun.

“Scavenger,” he, and she now knew it to be so, had spat at her; her whole being confused. He was a scavenger, too, had always been; just as she. They had scaled the same dunes and climbed through the same discarded relics together, picking at things that were still good but unwanted.

How could he so easily forget the songs, the stories and all of those star-kissed wishes?

Had her whispers fallen on deaf ears? Had there been too many nights where moons had been too low and the light too fleeting?

“I feel it, too,” and a part of her ached for golden sand and skinny arms.

When he’d pushed and she’d pushed, she’d seen it: a too small, too skinny, sun-kissed shadow walking alongside another that had been made up of moonlight.

Reds and blues had swirled and danced wickedly across the flurries that traced the outlines of that threadbare, bleeding man. Terrifying; consuming. When the hills and valleys of his strange, familiar face; lines of that long nose, freckles and moles on cheeks in the same constellation groups as the ones that mapped her shoulders ran purple, her heart pounding in her chest, she was suddenly not so sure if she had always been afraid of her shadow or was only now that after all this time, it, he, had a face and a name.

Kylo Ren.

Ben Solo.

She decides on both.

She strikes it down; that shadow, that man, and rips that bruised darkness in two, leaving the lines of him gaping; dying; cratered moon of a man having fallen out of her orbit. Or at least, she allows herself to believe it, he, has; the ferocity of that glowing blade shearing that thread of gravity, of something, that had sewn his shadow to her, and hers to his, a long time ago, ripping at her flesh in time with his; blue blending with the red spilling from him to make this ugly cauterized purple stamp on her soul.

As she climbs into the light of a new day, she does it with a thready pulse pushing at her fingertips that nudges its way up her arm to lap at her hollowed chest.

When he appears again; her shadowed man, it’s in a dream. In sleep, he’s made of burnished brass and wears this quietly crooked smile that disarms the fury prickling behind her eyes in an instant. His shoulders aren’t mountains and his eyes aren’t made of the same vicious, loamy waves that pound away at cliff sides on Ahch-to, but of the night sky instead. When he speaks, it’s with a softness that so vastly contrasts with the man she knows that when she wakes, it’s with a furrowed brow and question marks in her heart as “It is you,” plays itself over and over again in that tone of bewildered reverence murmured from cashmere dreamscape lips.

It’s when a set of pale fingers, looming and huge in a different way, reach out to her for a fourth time, on different terms, where darkness hides in the subtle shadows cast over his knuckles and those ears, lips, and nose, where his hand and dark eyes are alight with sunset imbued flames, that she realizes Ben has always been there. He was always burnished brass, starlight eyes, and a voice like the breeze through green leaves. The shadowed man had plagued him, too; had attached its self to his shoulders with needlepoint claws and had wrapped its threads around his chest, knotting at his heart, cutting at his soul. He’d been there in the shape of her shadow and the notes of her voice when the cords in a too-tight, too-dry throat rasped for water that her dark companion had always had, could have been, but could never share.

So now, as she walks alongside his dark, brooding figure; aura brassy, not-so distant points of light in the night of his eyes, his own twin and hers bleeding together in a menagerie of grey lines and curves, she feels a spark of fondness; a tickle of something from hot, burning days past where big ears bled into the shape of hers to blend with strong jaw; where his long wispy hairs crashed into the waves of hers like all souls eventually do in the cosmos.

Please, let me know what you guys think!

[davekatweek]

DaveKatWeek Day 6- Fluff Day- "A Slice of Key Lime Karkat Pie Please!"

@davekatweek

http://archiveofourown.org/users/Miriage/pseuds/Miriage

When you first met him, you hated him.

This “hate” though only lasted a few seconds and was only spurred because he had, just like you, seen the last slice of key lime pie in the display case and decided that he needed it. Needed to consume it. Needed to have the sour of citrus and softness of cream hit his tongue. Needed something to remind him that the world was as bright and magical as the lime-d cream was. He needed a dessert encased in sugar and eggs that would bring up memories of past summers. He needed a sweet treat that would, for a moment, transport its consumer (who’s heart had been forced to become a frozen ghost of itself due to the hellhole that was called “college”) to a more tropical, relaxing (emphasis on the word “RELAX-FUCK-ING”) paradise.

            And he had just snatched that something from under your very nose.

He seems pleased with himself and why wouldn’t he? In his small world he had just won the prize of the day. The coveted slice of pie. The piece of celebration. The dream child of sour and sweet. The-

You’re cut off from your mental train of thought when he, not seeing you, turns too quickly and one hundred percent, completely by accident, spills his ice-cold coffee,

All. Over. You.

A look of confusion that was on his face fades as quickly as it appeared as he realized that “Shit an angry looking midget with the eyes of a murderer was standing behind me the whole time and I just dumped coffee on their ass!”

At least that’s what you assume (and slightly hope) is what is going through their mind.

“Oh shit.” he mutters. Then, slightly louder and more panicked he says it again….

            And again…and again

By what feels like the twentieth “Oh shit,” (it was actually only the fifth but it wasn’t like you were counting) you put him out of his misery.

And by “put him out” you just give him your best stink eye (you hope he could see it past his shitty shades) and ask if he would please move aside so you could order and leave (with what little dignity you had left.) He visibly gulps (his Adam’s apple moving) and steps aside, muttering what sounds like a “Sorry” to you.

            You’re tempted to say something like “If you’re so sorry then why don’t you give me your fucking piece of pie so the life I’m currently living isn’t so fucking terrible?” but you don’t. 

(And no, it’s not because you lack courage to talk to strangers. It’s because you don’t have time for guys like him.)

(Even if guys like him were kind of, sort of, maybe…. cute….)

(…. ish…)

You hate being cliché. It was just…not your style.

Yes, you knew people who could cliché the hell out of every situation. A soft touch here, an eye bat there, and witty pick up line not gotten from one of those “Dummy’s Guide” books over there. Quite frankly you admired them for putting themselves out there.

But for you? Clichés weren’t your forte. Clichés were like giving into the nature of a romantic novella. Clichés were designed for people who, out of a lonely desperation, would pull whatever they could from within themselves on any poor soul who happened to pass by. Clichés were for people who would force a fake persona on themselves in high hopes of not being lonely and dying of said loneliness at the tender age of forty.

Yet here you are, playing the trope of the word “cliché” to a “T” as you stare at the guy you just kamikaze-d with coffee.

There’s a long, silent, awkward pause as you, eyes unmoving, continue to watch a mix of black coffee (hey at least it wasn’t hot cocoa today) and cinnamon slowly stain itself on said guy’s shirt (and face) and you think you can hear the barista (fucking John Egbert from the Land of Shitty Laughs and Ghosts) trying to keep in a laugh as the short, angered, tired looking guy in front of you gives you a “Fucking really?” look. So you open your mouth to apologize,

            Only for about twenty million mega-fucking fails of “Oh shits!” to tumble out of your gaping speaking hole you call your jaws.

The guy only looks at you, then at his stained shirt, then back at you, then at the slice of key lime pie in your hands. Then back at you again. 

            “If you can please move so I could make my order,” he says, his voice raspy, “I would really…really fucking appreciate it.”

You could only nod dumbly and finally cough out a “Sorry” in response.

The next time you see him, you’re half hoping he doesn’t recognize you.

In your opinion, you have a “boring, generic, unnoticeable” face with messy dark hair and the reason why you quote-unquote that statement is because you’re pretty sure that every book ever written has used that statement and the last thing you want is to make yourself a character from a bad romantic comedy.

            (Not that there was anything wrong with romantic comedies, it was just that you liked talking about them while you watched them and you liked pointing out how many times they used a clichéd romance trope. And no, that’s not the reason why Kanaya no longer invites you to watch movies with her.)

But to him, he was probably looking for your “boring, generic, unnoticeable” face because it’s not a minute after you sat down (equipped with a math textbook, a coffee, and a blank stare) that he comes over, holding a slice of that coveted key lime pie in his hand that was definitely not on the display case when you had bought your coffee. You grit your teeth in frustration because damn bastard must’ve bought it before you entered the café. (You make a mental note to get here before two o’clock from now on rather than after.)

“Hi.” he says and you have to commend him for his sudden surge in bravery because, in contrast to the “coffee shower” bumbling mess he was, he’s now standing, almost confidently, in front of you with a slice of pie. (You would never have the courage to do that if you were in his position so…. props to him.)

You’re tempted to say something like “Here to shower me in bean juice again?” but you hold your tongue and just nod at him, acknowledging his presence. He takes this as a sign to continue.

“I bought you a pie to….y’know…make up for last time.” he says.

His words are sharp at the end, like he’s rushing to get them out but his tongue got stuck on the roof of his mouth, and they have a little southern twang to them that you didn’t notice before. (And no, his voice was not fucking “endearing” shut up conscience.) He looks at you, as if waiting for a response or some words of “No you didn’t need to do that! I already fucking forgot about how I was shivering and gross and covered in a cup of java!” When you give him none (you kinda continue staring at him with wide fucking eyes) he just places the pie quickly on your table, gives you a half of a smile, then scuttles away.

           (Like a squirrel you note.)

You shake your head at his antics when he’s gone…but you did eat his free pie because hey- free food is free food.

Jane can only shake her head as you scuttle to sit right behind the counter (after you ran out the front door of the café and reentered through the back door of the café.)

“Well?” you ask. “How is it? What’s going on? What’s the scene out there captain?”

Jane just smiles.

“Well invisible man that no one sees except for me, it seems that the couple near the window are having a “hate date” because they look like they want to strangle each other, the couple near the bathroom are trying to con money out of bathroom goers, and the lonely man behind the counter is hiding from the only person who is actually studying in this café rather than enjoying themselves.”

You roll your eyes at Jane (even though she can’t see them). “You’re seriously going to make me beg Crocker?” you ask desperately. “Please don’t make me beg. The last time I was begging on my knees it was because I was trying to Victoria Justice-it-up in pre-algebra for an extra two bonus points back in eighth grade.” 

Jane, like the loveable, wonderful, marvelous, only sometimes-sadist she can be, has the audacity to fucking laugh at your pain. “He’s eating the pie if that’s what your wondering about Dave.” she says.

(You can’t help but feel a grin spread across your face when she confirms this.)

 When he sees you again, you’re struggling to pay for your order.

“I have another dollar somewhere.” You say as you struggle with the pockets of your backpacks. The cashier/barista, a glasses wearing kid from your biology class (or was it art class? Fuck, you couldn’t remember), was patiently waiting but you could feel your cheeks become redder because fuck it you can’t find that dollar. From where you’re standing, you know people can see the redness from your cheeks spreading through to your ears as you keep checking and rechecking every possible spot you had on you for any money at all because this is just getting embarrassing and-

The cashier looks past you and smiles at something, or someone, behind you. “Hey Dave what’s up?”

You’re too busy still looking for cash to pay attention to the conversation flying above your head. You’re too busy doing a shuffle-crab dance to pay attention to it at all and you’re too busy mentally debating to look in your fucking shoes for the lost dollar (because Gamzee liked putting weird things in other weird things okay?) However, all thoughts of “busy-ness” fly from your mind when a hand slides a twenty to cashier dude.

“I’ll take a lemon meringue and whatever this guy’s buying John.”

You stop struggling with yourself and look up to (surprise, surprise) Shades McCoffee Spiller’s face. He grins down at you while “John” makes a gagging noise from behind the counter (“Too much gay Dave! Too much! Abort! Abort!”)

(You’re face does not feel like a lava when John says this.)

            “Long time no see shorty.” Shades teases in that not-endearing southern twang of his. “Miss me?”

In response (because your heart did not fucking skip a beat shut up conscience!), you step on Shades’ foot (hard).

(You couldn’t help but feel a bit proud of yourself as you did so.)

“Shut up, it wasn’t even that funny!”

John and Jane, like the little shits they are, giggle when you go to pick up yours and cutie-with-a-temper’s drinks.

            “You yelped Dave! You actually yelped like a fucking animal when he stepped on you!” John cackles, forcing you to relive your not-so-wonderful past self’s life (from ten minutes ago.) You roll your eyes and reach over to grab the drinks from John’s hands. “Laugh it up weirdos.” you say. “Guess who’s bonding with angry dude now? And guess who just found out angry dude is as single as a doubled spaced essay due on Monday morning?” 

John just continues to mother-fucking smirk. “Don’t you mean, for now Dave?” he jokingly corrects.

You flick the whip cream on the top of your hot cocoa into his stupid face.

You like to consider yourself above romance.

That is not to say you do not believe in love, but in the times when you’re by yourself and your books (cough, all the time COUGH), surrounded by smiling, happy couples, you can’t help but think to yourself that this, this solitary situation you have, is fine.

But you also can’t help but wonder sometimes how others could do the romantic-do so easily. How others could do the “pick-up and date” so fucking easily. It doesn’t necessarily make you jealous, but it does make you feel a bit…uncomfortable.

(Okay, maybe you were a bit jealous.)

All these thoughts, these thoughts that just float and stumble around in your brain, come to a crashing, burning, diving, stop when Shades dude (also know as Dave) asks for your number.

You’ve only began talking, really talking, to him today (for maybe the past two hours, shut up conscience) yet there he was, right in front of you, with a bright red fucking face and an empty pie plate, asking for your number.

“I…uh…um…” tumbles from your lips as the words “No,” refuses to make an appearance and the mental thoughts of “Being single is fine” disintegrate into a mess of “Oh my god I’m being asked out by Shades McShades Dave Strider” begins to plague your brain.

And Dave just keeps staring at you.

“I mean, you don’t need to give me your number if you don’t want to.” he quickly says. “Just say ‘No way Joseph my bro-seph’ and I’ll be out of your hair faster than gum attacked by peanut butter. Did you know peanut butter gets the gum out of your hair? Never tried it before because with hair like this why would I get gum in it? That’s stupid. And dumb. And stupid. Wait, I already said that. Please just reject me now before I talk more. Seriously say the magic words and abracadabra I’m gone like a Pokémon Abra.” 

There’s a laugh from behind the counter as cashier/barista dude leans over to say, in a sing-songy voice, that Dave won’t be gone because he “Loooooves that angry guy who eats key lime pie.”

Dave’s face becomes a new, never-before -seen, shade of red.

“Shut up Egderp I’m trying to do something here!” he yells back, but his voice cracks in a way that only makes John laugh more. Dave groans and buries his face in his hands. “Kill me. Kill me now Karkat. You see my big chem textbook over there? Just smack me with it and send me to a land of words and shame.”

You could only laugh at his antics.

“So…Angry dude gave you his number.”

“Yup. And his name is Karkat John. K-a-r-k-a-t, Karkat.”

“Whatever. But angry dude hid his number in your chemistry textbook.”

“Yup. ” 

“Which is why your reading every page of it now like it’s the bible.”

“Yes John yes. Why is this so fucking hard to understand?”

John sighs and tells you that you are a sad, desperate, pathetic man in love. You just give him the middle finger and continue looking for Karkat’s number in the pages mystery that was chem.

(You find it under the chemical make up for salt, which was, ironically, in the introduction part of the textbook that no one read. But hey, at least now you knew the chemical make up for ice cream that never melted.)

Dave is…weird in a way you never imagined.

He talked too much about nothing yet everything in a way that was both endearing and maddeningly annoying, he acted stupid sometimes even though he was hella fucking smart (he helped you more than once on some late night math problems at Jane’s café), he sang badly but could rap like a god (one time he fucking winked at you when he rapped that he had a thing for a man who “Spoke fire, was a movie crier, and wore black like a nun in choir.”), he had bad tastes in movies but then again, so did you,

And he was, for some reason, fixated on you in a way that you never thought someone could ever possibly be.

 “What did I ever do to deserve such a cutie like you?” he mumbled one night as he rested his chin on your head. Dave was fucking cuddling you as the two of you watched another contestant get “Chopped” from the competition. “Seriously did I make a deal with a god in my past life or am I just that fucking lucky?” he asks before kissing the top of your head. “You’re too good to me Karks.”

You smile, even though you know he can’t see it, and pull Dave’s arms tighter around your body. “That’s what I was thinking.” you say quietly, hopping that he can’t hear you.

(But of course, like the exasperating fucktard he is, you know that he mother-fucking does.)