maskormenacelogs | "I read Paradise Lost," he said,

Kylo's panic has settled into a grim and steely determination by the time he has Ronan's limp, fragile body safely cradled in the passenger seat of the BMW. Maybe there are faster ways to get him home to the Meadows. Maybe. But this doesn't feel like the kind of emergency that requires speed over care, and with something of Ronan's essence feeling like it's spilling out of his body, Kylo's not willing to risk exposing him to further metaphysical damage.

So they will drive. Or more accurately, Kylo will drive, having retrieved the keys and jammed them in the ignition.

He doesn't turn on the stereo, his attention already split between the road ahead and Ronan's slumped form as they peel away from Kanaya's apartment. Home. He just has to get them home. All his other fears can wait.

"Who the fuck said you could drive my car?"

It's the first thing Ronan says, about fifteen minutes after their departure, once the dark fog of sleep has lifted and he's found himself in the passenger seat of his sacred BMW. He wound have liked the question to come out with a little more of a threatening edge, but he only sounds vaguely annoyed.

That's the best he can muster when consciousness is tenuous and his own fear by far overpowers any other emotion, feigned or real. He doesn't actually care that Kylo's driving his car. He's afraid he'll be gone before they reach the Meadows' driveway.

Technically, he doesn't need to— his sight is far from his only sense— but Kylo looks over immediately. There's a host of unsaid things each trying to tug his face into a different expression, but his eyes are as dark and fixed and steady as always. If a little wider.

"You didn't complain at the time," he points out in a voice that feels just a little too thick for his mouth, wondering how it's possible to feel such intense relief and fear in exactly the same moment. Part of him had been afraid Ronan might not wake up at all. "I'm getting us home."

He should probably look back at the road, if only because people tend to prefer seeing him look at it— but he doesn't.

Ronan gives Kylo a withering look, but he doesn't maintain it. He can't, in the face of the vulnerability he finds staring back at him.

He'd like to say it'll be alright, that he's fine, that he just needs some rest. Unfortunately, Ronan isn't a liar. He refuses to offer reassurances in the place of guarantees. Neither of them know what's happening or how to stop it, and Kylo can feel it as much as Ronan can, the way he's scattering like ash carried on the wind.

"Maybe you should pull over," he suggests more gently. He's not sure he entirely succeeds in keeping from sounding funereal about it. The reality is, they're not going to make it, and he doesn't think Kylo wants to say his goodbyes from behind the steering wheel.

Kylo swallows, hard, his fingers curling tighter as he grips the wheel. He leans on the gas instead. A horn blares as he swerves the BMW past highway traffic in ways he is absolutely not supposed to. His jaw works on words he doesn't know how to order, eyes still locked on Ronan's face.

He is not losing Ronan.

"I'm getting us home," he repeats. "I'll find it easier from there. Whatever's caught hold of you. And--"

He deserves to lose Ronan. He'd accused Ronan of trying to punish him, once, hurling the words in his face when he'd realised that it would work, as a punishment. In a way almost nothing else would.

"And it will be easier for you," he continues, determined as his foot on the accelerator. "To find your way back, once we're there. Everything there is you. We can use it."

"Dumbshit," Ronan hisses. "You're gonna crash my fucking car before we get there." He doesn't have to be wholly conscious to know they're going way too fast, even by Lynch standards, with not even half of Kylo's attention on the road in front of them.

Something in Ronan's presence tilts. For a brief moment, he's only a memory, and not a particularly clear one. The passenger seat is empty. Kylo's been talking to himself.

Kylo stares, outwardly frozen while his insides churn and boil, his heart hurling itself against the cage of his ribs so violently it feels like they're going to shatter.

He was here, he howls in furious defiance with the only language he knows how— all of his weight, all of it pushing the BMW to breaking point. One of his hands gripping the wheel tight enough to crush it tears away to curl into a fist and slams down like a hammer.

No. No, he isn't going to crash Ronan's car, and he isn't going to give up. Ronan is there in the passenger seat. Whether he can see him or not, whether he can feel him or not. He is going to hold him there with sheer force of will, and this wretched, miserable universe is going to bend and bend and bend until it aligns itself to the truth. His truth.

It's easier, when he redirects his wild eyes to the road ahead, when he doesn't have to hold the belief against evidence.

Is it Kylo's will that keeps Ronan there or is it just his imagination?

The voice beside him chides, "Easy. Jesus." Ronan doesn't often direct his anger at Kylo, but wrecking the BMW will incur a wrath previously undiscovered. That is, of course, assuming Ronan can remain real enough to direct anything at anyone.

Reaching across the center console, he lays his hand on Kylo's thigh. Steady pressure, convincing tangibility. Can he keep on believing in Ronan long enough to put him in a proper grave?

Kylo exhales in a long shudder. He doesn't look over— but he does begin to ease off the gas. He does force his grip to relax, slowly. Steadily. The world outside the windows continues to whip past far too quickly, but the BMW no longer seems on the verge of tearing itself apart to obey Kylo's commands.

"You want to stay here," he says, tightly. "With me."

He's not sure who needs the reminder of that promise. Ronan. Himself. Reality.

"Say it."

"I wanna stay with you," Ronan affirms.

For all the good that wanting can ever do.

"So don't get us killed."

His hand remains on Kylo's leg, but the pressure eases. He can't hold on much longer - to Kylo, to this form, to himself in general. He's stretched thin, like the ley line was the summer it had been awakened, only it isn't dreaming that's draining the life from him. It's... existence. His own damn self. He cast himself out like a net and caught something too big to hold and now there's no reeling him back in.

"Do you have any idea," Kylo begins, cutting off in tight-lipped concentration as he threads the racing BMW through the narrowing gap between the rumbling bulk of a semi and a car traveling at a far more sensible speed that hadn't quite finished overtaking it, "...how many hours I have spent piloting vehicles far more complex than this one, navigating obstacles in three dimensional space, while also being fired on."

The road ahead is clear, at least for a little while. He dares to glance across, briefly, willing the Meadows closer.

"I'm not going to get us killed. We are going home. And once I have found you something you can hold onto, once I have given you the energy you need, I have no doubt you can make me regret daring to touch your car."

We're not in a dream, Ronan wants to tell him. You can't just make something happen because you say it will.

No. That's not entirely true, is it?

Ronan opens his mouth, an idea springing to mind, but it's interrupted by a sudden wave of disorientation. He slips out of his body and it slumps forward without a consciousness to maintain it, his head narrowing avoiding a collision against the dashboard as the seatbelt snaps taut across his chest.

It's a sickening lurch that has Kylo's senses screaming warning, but ultimately, Ronan's still there. Enough of him, anyway. Kylo pours himself into the drive, counting the rapidly dwindling miles between them and their destination, glancing over— but Ronan doesn't wake.

He doesn't stir as the BMW swings through the last few turns, or jolt upright as they draw close enough that Kylo can feel the familiar, beckoning hum of all that existence somehow resonating on Ronan's frequency. It feels like he should, somehow— that the love and care and breath of life that he poured from himself into his creations should know that Ronan needs it back— but Ronan doesn't appear to receive such a gift.

They pull up to the farmhouse. Kylo kills the engine and slumps back in the drivers' seat, slamming the back of his head into the headrest with useless, helpless frustration.

Now what? He doesn't know how to anchor Ronan any more firmly to himself. He doesn't know how to supply him with what he needs— he doesn't even know what he needs. But whatever it is isn't simply here in the midst of all Ronan's works, and once Kylo accepts that, he decides on the next target. He'll take Ronan to his room, the isolated hermitage up the narrow staircase, the room that is most like Ronan.

He wrenches the car door open and stalks around the nose of the BMW to the passenger side, keeping his eyes steadily on Ronan as if doing so will prevent him from winking out of existence before Kylo can take him in his arms.

Strangely, in his sleep, Ronan seems more solid and present than he'd been while they were speaking in the car. There's no question about whether this is a boy or a wish. He's obviously a boy, heavy and awkward in Kylo's arms, too gangly to make a proper damsel-in-distress.

His eyelashes flutter once at all the movement, but he doesn't wake.

That takes about an hour after Kylo's laid him to rest in bed. Ronan inhales sharply as he stirs, blinking his eyes open in bewilderment at another sudden change of scenery. He'd been sleeping the sleep of the dead. It had been very dark and very nothing. The timeless kind of sleep.

"Kylo?"

Once carried to the bedroom and laid down carefully, Kylo tries reaching the Ronan beneath the surface, but only once. A cold, static blankness that feels almost hostile is all that waits for him there, nothing more than a disquieting sense of vacancy. There's nothing to reach. Ronan's energy seems engaged elsewhere.

He tries lying beside Ronan at first, holding him, watching him sleep— but he can't bear the stillness. The helpless feeling of doing nothing works on his mind until he has to get up, pacing the floor in restless patrol. He can't leave, either.
Irritable and trapped, he swipes at Ronan's things, scattering useless treasures, shattering a lamp— there's so much of him, always too much of him that he can never control and Ronan can have it, if he will just wake and tell Kylo how--

He's so wrapped in his anxious fury by the time Ronan stirs that he might have missed it, if not for the voice. He turns instantly, and a second later is sat on the edge of the bed beside him.

"I'm here," he promises. "I told you I would get us home."

"You didn't mention you'd be trashing my shit."

Though Ronan isn't at all surprised to wake up to the wreckage.

"Is the BMW still in one piece, at least?"

He's ribbing. Stalling. In a minute or two, they're going to have to talk about what's happening. They should have pulled over and done it before. The next time he blacks out, he might not wake up, and then they won't have said any of the important things.

"You knew what I was before you let me in," Kylo reminds him without apology, though the intended humour also fails to materialise— too close to truth. He reaches out to slide his fingers through Ronan's hair where he lets it grow longer, tender and gentle in the way Ronan allowed him to become.

"I think I left the doors open," he muses, as if the state of the BMW really is the crux of the matter. The illusion is broken only by the very slightest tremor in his voice. "The lights will all be on. I might have drained the battery."

"Don't worry about it," Ronan replies. "There's no battery."

Well, there is. But it appears to be running out whether or not the lights are on. Ronan sighs, tilting his face toward Kylo. He's never been great at this, at breaking bad news or saying goodbye or any of it. And every other time he's faced death, it came for him too fast to get a word in.

He reaches for Kylo's other hand. "Okay, listen. If this is what I think it is, I won't really be gone. I'll just be stopped. I'm just going to sleep."

Kylo swallows, surrendering his hand. Ronan's fingers slip into the gaps between his as if that's what those spaces were built for, as if all this time he was only ever half of the mechanism.
Of course he'd been turning and turning, wasting himself without gaining traction before Ronan found him. He'd been missing the matching teeth to bite into his, the connection that made sense of the relentless, endless push that lived inside him and made it work.

He shakes his head, but he doesn't have an argument to make. He doesn't have anything.

Ronan would like to say it'll be okay. That Kylo will be just fine without him. But they both know that's not true. In fact, Ronan's not sure those words are ever true, in any case, about anyone. No one comes out alright after losing half of themselves.

He pulls Kylo's hand to his heart and gives it a light squeeze. "It took my mom three days before the sleep got her for good," Ronan says. "After I found out she was a dream, I always wondered what that was like. If she knew what was happening to her. I'm not sure it's just the energy that does it, you know? I think it's when you figure out that you're not real. When you really start to feel it. I knew she was good at pretending, but... God, I don't know how she could feel this and keep believing she was human. Even for three days."

As he's talking, Ronan himself isn't sure whether he ever had a life of his own or whether the whole story of him has just been invented here, in this moment. There's something he was getting at, though. Ronan looks into Kylo's eyes, focusing. "Do what you have to do, okay?" he insists. "Whatever shitty forbidden mind tricks you're not normally supposed to do to people. You've got my permission to make me stay with you."

Kylo had never asked Ronan about his mother. Other than the bits and pieces Ronan offered without prompting and the shapes of things since vanished he brushed up against while touching his mind, Kylo had never pressed Ronan to share anything from his life before it included him, not directly— always so much more focused on the present. The future. The parts of Ronan he felt welcome to, invited to, the things he knew Ronan wanted him to have.

It hadn't really occurred to him that Ronan would be willing to let him into his past.

Maybe Ronan had taken that to mean it was a part of him Kylo didn't want, part of the mess and complication best left untouched— just as he hadn't understood that Kylo wanted to stay with him until he told him so. Maybe, through his reticence, he'd let Ronan believe himself rejected.

It's too late to try and tell him otherwise. There's too much fighting to be what he says next, too many aches and needs writhing and twisting and clawing at each other as they scramble for words to crush into his mouth— and he doesn't want to speak, anyway. If Ronan truly is burning himself up with every second, if the time they have left before Ronan falls into empty sleep is a limited resource, Kylo doesn't want to spend any more of it than necessary on the sound of his own voice.

His eyes are wet.

"You are real," he insists. "And I can give you energy if you'll take it from me. Ronan, please."

With his emotions rolling through the Force, with the strength of his desperation, it might not even need a conscious decision for his words to gather a command behind them. It hadn't done when he was a child.

"Take what you need to stay."

What he needs to stay.

What does it mean to stay, for the Greywaren? For something that's both inside the mind and outside of it. For something created from the union of magic and material to create material from magic. It is real. It is not. It is here. It is everywhere. It is now and tomorrow and a thousand years ago, never was and always been.

Ronan drags Kylo's hand to his lips, laying a kiss to his palm, and he reaches. He splinters into the forked lightning of Kylo's familiar veins, crackles in the ionic current between neurons, gathers up the volatile rush of the Force that's perpetually at Kylo's command. Inside him. Inside all. Through it, Ronan can feel the web he's cast out, but it stops feeling stretched to the point of snapping. It grows, like Cabeswater's branches and roots grew from the pulse of the ley line.

Stay, which means be here, and means remain. His mother came to life again the moment he brought her into Cabeswater. Dreams without a dreamer only survive in dreams, but he must not go into the dream. He must bring the dream here. This is how the Greywaren honors the command.

Ronan's grip loosens, dropping Kylo's hand, and his arm slips down, useless. His eyes remain fixed on Kylo's, only now they look past him. Ronan's presence floods everything and there is no longer any question about whether he's in danger of blinking out of existence. The body, however, is just one vessel. Kylo can keep it.

The Greywaren is all things.

It only takes a breath. Less than a breath. Ronan's eyes are on his, his lips pressed to his skin, and he feels it, the overload shock as Ronan reaches through him, through beyond him, spreading through his senses into the infinite...

Kylo gasps, sharp. His nerves spark, unable to carry the most basic information just long enough that he doesn't feel the moment Ronan's hand falls away. He doesn't see the instant Ronan's eyes lose their ownership of the life hiding behind them.

But then it's done.

Ronan doesn't leave Kylo— he surrounds him, having bled out of the confines of his body and into the Force— but he leaves Kylo staring at the sightless shape of the parts of him that could speak and fight and laugh, the parts that could love him.

Kylo doesn't move. For a long moment that feels like eternity and could just as well be nothing more than a heartbeat, he can't. It would be foolishness to pull his body close and hold it in his arms— there's no more of Ronan within it than there is in anything else, now. But sentiment was always his weakness, and Ronan is warm and still as he rests against him, submitting without complaint to being pulled and dragged until his head falls heavy onto the violently shuddering rise and fall of Kylo's chest.

Ronan is simply dreaming as he often does, if Kylo chooses to believe it, if he leans into the sense of his presence made boundless. At any moment he might draw together, condense and wake. All he needs is for Kylo to hold open the way back.

Kylo doesn't know how long he lies there with Ronan's motionless weight on his chest before he falls asleep. He doesn't have anything to measure the experience against.

But he is dreaming, now. He knows it, because Ronan's sleeping form has taken on a softer, more peaceful aspect, and the way they're lying together is far more like it would be if Ronan had dragged himself up onto Kylo's chest and sprawled out there, warm and content. His hand is idly running over Ronan's back, lightly enough to let him wander his dreams in peace while also providing a gentle reminder of what waits beyond them.

He's always enjoyed watching Ronan sleep— mostly because he likes to watch him wake. It's a little different, if he's brought something back, but the gift Ronan reliably brings Kylo is this: the moment he becomes aware he isn't alone.
They've both been so alone. But not any more. Kylo could wait to see that realisation dawn in reflection again forever, if necessary.

As always, the moment of waking is subtle. Though Ronan has brought nothing with him, he doesn't move immediately. There's only the slightest shift in the rhythm of his breathing, a tension then release in the muscles of his back. He hums contentedly with the discovery that he's draped over Kylo's chest. Finally, he lifts his head and turns his face up to meet Kylo's eyes. He knows that Kylo watches him. He likes it.

He doesn't quite like the misery he finds written in the drawn lines of Kylo's expression. "Shit," he hisses softly, reaching up to graze his knuckles along Kylo's jaw. "I freaked you out. How long has it been?"

What is there to say to that? Kylo doesn't know. But his eyes slide shut briefly at the touch of Ronan's hand, his own lifting to catch it. He presses a kiss to Ronan's knuckles.

"I'm not certain," he settles on eventually. "Hours. I fell asleep."

More kisses pressed to his fingers, more indulging in the very slightest movements— this Ronan doesn't need to be posed, and Kylo intends to remind himself exactly how that feels. How even when he's holding him, there's that tension. Choice. When Ronan surrenders any part of himself, it's never passive.

Ronan accepts every affectionate brush of Kylo's lips, happy to indulge him. Whatever it takes to bring him enough comfort to dispel the fear of the past few hours. He climbs Kylo's body, closing the distance between their mouths, and the warm kiss that he lays there insists on the solid reality of this moment. Everything is alright now.

"I'm right here," he whispers when the kiss breaks, only to be followed immediately by another. His other hand pushes through Kylo's hair, brushing it back, soothing.

He is right here. He'll always be right here. Kylo draws his arms around Ronan's body, trapping him close and refusing to let him go— he's never been good at accepting comfort, or even knowing how he might be comforted. He doesn't know how Ronan could lay his fears to rest, and so...

But he doesn't want to think about how the Ronan in his arms might only be as much of him as he knows how to imagine. He kisses him instead.

"I know," he assures him, blinking just a little too rapidly when Ronan pulls back just far enough to watch his face. "I should have known. You're here. Of course you're here."

Kylo's doubt ripples through the dream, regardless. Ronan wavers, a quiet rush of panic rising up within him as he stares into Kylo's eyes and tries to see himself in them, tries to find the image of what he's supposed to be. If this isn't right, then what does right look like?

"Aren't I?" he asks, small and uncertain. He turns away from Kylo, craning to look over his shoulder, like he expect to find another Ronan Lynch lying dead beside them. If he's not the real one, then something awful has happened.

"You're here," Kylo reminds himself, thinking of Ronan's lingering presence even as his body had fallen still. He remembers what Ronan had said: I won't really be gone, I'm just going to sleep. This isn't just a dream of Ronan. This is Ronan as a dream of himself.

Isn't it?

"I told you I would get you home, and I did," he says, trying to recapture Ronan's attention. There's nothing Ronan needs to be afraid of. Kylo has him, safely tethered to himself. They can fix this together. "You aren't about to disappear. Do you remember?"

Ronan's eyes return to Kylo, though he's not wholly reassured. The one thing he does know, however, is that he'll be alright as long as Kylo's with him. Kylo would never let anything bad happen to him.

"I passed out," he answers slowly, as if he's searching the memory for any details he may have missed. "I passed out a few times, in the car, then I woke up here. I was losing energy so you told me to use yours, and then I went to sleep and..."

Fresh dread rises up within him, though the prospect of dreaming shouldn't be so terrifying. He's dreamt with Kylo a hundred times. But this might be the first time he hasn't realized it.

"Are we still dreaming?"

Kylo's gaze is dark and steady. His hands are firm. But there's no disguising his uncertainty about everything other than his promise that he will keep Ronan with him. Whatever else, that much is solid.

"I don't know if you're dreaming," he says, truthfully. "I don't know. But wherever you are, I'm with you. I won't let you go. You know I won't."

"Fuck," Ronan mutters under his breath.

The trouble with being a dream is that dreams have no insight into their own nature, no ability to differentiate between fiction and reality. As long as he's here, he's Ronan Lynch. As true a Ronan Lynch as he knows how to be. But if he isn't the Ronan Lynch, he'll cease to exist the moment Kylo wakes. Unless, of course, Kylo brings him back to the waking world along with him.

It's not something Ronan intends to beg for. If he's not the real one, there's no point to him. Kylo wants his Ronan, and either he is or he isn't.

He sighs, "It doesn't really matter." And it doesn't. He'll always be true here. "Whatever happens, I'm always with you. If you can't find me out there, you'll find me here."

"You're..."

He presses his lips together, watching Ronan's face. A struggle plays out behind his eyes— he doesn't know what to do or say, having no better idea of what's happened than his dream would. If he asks a question he doesn't know the answer to, and Ronan finds part of himself missing when he tries to supply it--

"I need you to help me," he says, quiet, likely a confession alarming enough by itself. "Ronan, I—"

He swallows, releasing his hold long enough to seek Ronan's hand with his own, tangling their fingers together. He doesn't know how to explain the low, lingering horror, the idea that all of this might be his fault, that he's responsible, that he's scattered Ronan throughout the infinite connections of the Force and cost him his personhood in the process.
He doesn't know if he should.

"I don't know what I've done."

Kylo doesn't have to explain anything. Ronan understands enough. As their fingers entwine, he tucks his face against Kylo's neck and lays reassuring kisses to his jaw. "You tried to help me," he says, before the guilt can settle in too deeply. "You did the best you could."

Whatever's going on is the result of a unique collision of events. Kylo's actions are only part of that. The blame could just as easily be laid on Cassandra or Kanaya or Atropos or Ronan himself.

"You don't have to solve it, you know. It was never your problem, and even if you feel like it's your job to fix it, maybe it's not something anyone can fix. I was trying to tell you, in the car..." Well, it's difficult to recall what exactly he was trying to say, with the way he was fading. Nevertheless: "Maybe you should just be with me. While I'm here. Hold onto me and talk to me until it's time to go. Like it's any other fucking day."

Life could be this.

Days spent never quite alone, the hum of Ronan's presence woven into the very fabric of reality, a reminder of the Greywaren's promise. It would stay with him, surrounding and enveloping him, ready and willing to answer his desires, and in his dreams? He could speak with Ronan again. He could touch him, care for him, laugh with him. They could go anywhere, do anything, be anything...

but Ronan would never choose him. Ever again.

Kylo swallows, holding Ronan's hand tightly. His thumb runs a soft caress. He can't let that happen.
And so he thinks, and thinks, turning what he knows of the problem over in his mind.

"You need it to let go," he attempts eventually. He has not done the best he could. Not yet. Not for a long while yet.

"Everything else, that isn't me. That's what you said, when I asked you what happens when you... become it. The dream. You said there was some part of you left, and that the dreamer controls it. Do you remember? You said the dreamer controls how much of you remains."

"Yeah," Ronan answers with some reluctance. He does a reasonable job of keeping the fear from rising to his voice, quiet but not tremulous. It used to be that dreaming with someone else felt safer. Even under their control, there was some part of Ronan that remained separate from the dreamer and aware of himself, despite a lack of ability to do anything about it.

That separation is missing now. If this really is a dream, then every choice Ronan makes ultimately isn't his choice at all. It's a chilling thing to realize, but just when Ronan thinks he might begin to panic over it, he hits a mental wall. He does nothing, though he wants to be screaming.

Then he doesn't want to be screaming, either. He brushes another kiss to Kylo's throat.

He's distressing him with these questions— and he only realises when the reaction ramps towards panic and stops short, the strangely strangled sensation unusual enough to cut through his own determined focus on solving the problem.
Solving the problem.

How could he have missed the obvious?

He hadn't really considered that Ronan's suggestion that he stop trying to fix everything and just hold him could be anything more than an attempt to soothe him. But maybe, Kylo realises too late, it had been a request.

He leaves his questions aside, turning his attention solely onto the Ronan lying here with him. He's not a problem to be solved. He's as much of Ronan as Kylo allows him to be.

Kylo rolls him onto his back, leaning in over him— and before Ronan can let loose a word, he dips low to kiss him.

Ronan can't fully express his gratitude when Kylo lays him down and returns his affection. It's true: Solving the problem will mean dispelling this fantasy of Ronan Lynch, and this Ronan loves Kylo as much as any other, and he doesn't want to be forsaken, and he doesn't want to end. He wants to be here and to be right. He wants to be the boy that Kylo adores, the one he's mourning.

He can tell he's not right, because Kylo can tell. But he accepts Kylo's kiss and returns it fervently, clinging to him just as tightly as Kylo had been holding onto him a moment ago. For dear life.

Ronan has never fully appreciated the knowledge of his own nonexistence. To be a thing that persists only in echoes, to be already gone and made only from memory. This must be how Noah felt. No wonder he preferred to fade away rather than see his living self resurrected.

It isn't the first time he's kissed Ronan like this— the deep, claiming certainty as he cradles the side of his face belongs to the kind of kiss that might be an apology, if Kylo Ren were the kind of creature to offer them. An assurance. He hadn't meant to make Ronan feel unwanted— any of Ronan.

He presses softer kisses to Ronan's jaw, to the pulse point just below his ear as his hand slips into his hair. He remembers how Ronan moves under his mouth with such clarity, the way the rough stubble gives way to the smooth strain of muscle, the way his pulse flutters against his lips. He lets out a soft sigh as he nuzzles close.

He adores so many things about Ronan and being with Ronan— and the desperation of his grip as he clings to Kylo feels so much like choice as to be all but indistinguishable from the original.

"I read Paradise Lost," he said,

Following Ronan's collapse after the divination attempt...

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DREAMING WHILE YOU SLEEP

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