Kylo's immediate response is a clumsy attempt to return Ronan's reassurances. He's fine, he promises he's fine with his own scattering of kisses and smooth, stroking passes of his hand over Ronan's back. He's wrapped in Ronan's arms, exactly where he wants to be. He knows Ronan isn't leaving. He's going nowhere himself.
But he has no idea how to explain what the matter is, so...
"You remember at Fanport. The imPort who had a... reaction, to my book," he begins, still pressing close as he speaks. He's not really sure how this is going to work, if it's going to work, but if he retraces his steps, perhaps Ronan might be able to catch up and find him where he is. "He gave it as a gift to his soul mate. They've been reading it together."
Though Kylo can hardly see his eyes in the dark, Ronan's gaze flicks away. That's a term he's sure Kylo doesn't believe in, and he feels pretty stupid believing in it, himself. If he ever had a soulmate (in the truest sense of the word), Ronan lost him when he lost Cabeswater. He lost all of them when he lost Cabeswater.
"Five-star review?" he guesses, returning his attention to Kylo. "I'm surprised it didn't freak him out too much to buy it."
Ronan's reaction doesn't go unnoticed. Kylo stays close, pressing a kiss to Ronan's jaw that might have been intended as some kind of encouragement.
"He had some questions," Kylo murmurs. "Which wasn't surprising. Everyone's more curious about the dark than they want anyone else to know. But he wanted..."
Kylo pauses, considering.
"He wanted to know why his soulmate had left him. It's a different man, the one he's found here. A different version."
Aren't they always a different version? Adam had believed Ronan was a forgery, an echo of the true Ronan Lynch, who never left Henrietta. And Ronan couldn't honestly argue to the contrary. Whatever he was, he'd been found lacking.
Here is the delicate part. If his pulse was racing before, it's pounding, now. He presses closer still, all but burying his face in the warm junction between Ronan's shoulder and his neck to hide fiercely sweet kisses there. Let them carry the meaning, if he fails to deliver it in words. Because his answer to that question won't make sense unless he unleashes this, first:
"He asked me if I had ever been in love."
It's a rush and release. Kylo very nearly freezes right there, in that moment just short of implied confession. He very nearly waits to feel Ronan's response, testing to be sure it can take his weight before pushing on— but it's taken him over, this tumbling heat aching to burst free from the cage of his ribs.
"Real love," he clarifies, because there's such a wide, wide gulf between the way the word seems to feel to most people and the way it seizes and twists through his core. Because love, as a word, has been used to excuse and justify so much hurt that he'd wanted nothing more to do with it. Because he had believed himself beyond its reach, incapable of giving or receiving it. Because it had rejected him, first. "The kind... where you aren't certain you truly existed before it."
For all their devotion to one another, Kylo has never put a name to it. And, knowing what he knows of Kylo's past, Ronan has never asked. Kylo doesn't have to love him. Reciprocation doesn't affect what he feels, one way or the other. He's never had the sense that Kylo's ashamed of him or disappointed with him, like Adam was, so Kylo's lack of love for him has been something Ronan could probably never change.
He exhales slowly. Their hearts beat violently in sync, both charged with anxiety. He thinks he knows what Kylo's trying to say, but he can't allow himself to hope for it.
It feels something like the trembling moment before climax, Kylo thinks, with the anticipation of it feeding back and forth between them, coiling tighter and tighter. He can feel the moment rushing up to meet the both of them, the rest of reality falling away into utter insignificance.
"I said yes," he says, wrenching that raw, defiant truth out from its hiding place in the darkness. He crushes it into Ronan's skin with a kiss that borders on violence. Breathes him in. His hold tightens. "That's what it is. What I feel for you. Love that starts life."
Ronan doesn't know what to do with the happiness Kylo has suddenly thrust upon him. His heart is full to bursting with it, his stomach fluttering like he's soaring through the air. For a moment, he wonders if he's still dreaming after all.
But he knows that he isn't. His arms squeeze Kylo in answer. There's a heat behind his eyes that threatens tears. He's here in the real world, lying beside the one who's not only his master but also the man who loves him.
"I love you," Ronan whispers, breathless with gratitude, as if Kylo has just handed him a priceless treasure. He's too stunned to find any other words. The truth is, the life that's blossomed from this love is a life they're now sharing. There is no Ronan, anymore, without Kylo. And if Kylo has spent any time at all reading Ronan's heart, he already knows that.
Those are all the words they need, aren't they? Not that Kylo needs them at all, swept up in the wild exhilaration of being the source and the recipient of all the sudden, surging joy Ronan struggles to contain. He kisses his shoulder again, hard. Chases the first with another. And when that isn't enough, he twists and abandons his tightly coiling hold just long enough to take Ronan's face in his hands.
They can't see in the dark, but it doesn't matter. His lips graze lightly over the sweetness of Ronan's sharp mouth made soft.
No, there's no doubt, here. No lies, no obligation, no performance. This is what they've tumbled into, flowing around and between them, a different kind of creation. A remaking, with a new, undeniable truth set right at the core: they are loved.
"I love loving you," Kylo murmurs, rich with reflected gratitude for everything they become together. He kisses him like he no longer knows which one of them is the gift the other didn't realise they'd been aching for.
All this time, Ronan had prepared himself for the likelihood that Kylo would never feel anything deeper than favor for him, that he was ultimately just a possession that Kylo enjoyed too much to give up. Sometimes he thought that was his own fault, for being less than a person - a shoddy approximation or, as he'd once described himself, nothing more than a magic power with a personality. And if it wasn't his fault, then it was simply Kylo's nature, and Ronan had no choice but to accept that. Kylo couldn't love him if he refused to believe in love and Ronan couldn't change that.
He shuts his eyes as Kylo meets his lips, tears of relief finally spilling over. He hadn't realized how alone he'd felt in loving Kylo without any hope the feeling would be returned. For all their dreams and their nights together and the life they made here, Ronan was ultimately by himself as long as Kylo denied him.
Love isn't a guarantee that Kylo will stay. But it is a promise that he's here right now, exactly where Ronan is, and they're sharing this. They're together in this.
A hitched breath threatens to crack into either sobbing or laughter, and then it's neither, because Ronan kisses Kylo again. By the time he breaks away, he's steadier. "I love being loved by you," he tells Kylo. It's the rarest gift he's ever been given.
If he didn't have his senses threaded right through Ronan's, Kylo might be alarmed by the sudden appearance of tears. He might be concerned that he'd said something wrong, too much or not enough. But there's no room for misunderstanding when he's wrapped around Ronan like this, when every last part of him is focused on nothing else. Ronan's relief is so intense, so powerful that Kylo struggles for a moment with the sense that he should have said this sooner. It hadn't been any less true a week ago, a month, six— he can't remember how far back this feeling stretches— but all of that could have been time that Ronan knew. And that's what he wants. That's what he wants to plant inside him, that knowledge. Of everyone, everything in the universe, he is the one, singular being Kylo dares to love.
(A long time ago, when they were just beginning, Kylo had reached up and plucked a star out of a sky they had built together and pressed it, firmly, into Ronan's palm. He'd guided Ronan's fingers to curl around it, to be certain he had it hidden safe and secure in his hand. Hold it for me, he'd said. He just hadn't known, then, what it was made of.)
Kylo's lips pull into a curve, tugged by the fierce currents of emotion running though them both. Smoothly, he eases Ronan onto his back, rolling with him and leaning in over him as a warm, protective shield.
Love, Kylo knows, is no promise of safety from hurt. They both know it is frequently the opposite. But the kind of love he wants to surround Ronan with is the kind that promises to share in it, all of it, without shying away. He kisses Ronan's tear-streaked cheeks— one, then the other.
"Good," he says, low, almost affectionately amused if not for the strength of the vow underpinning it. "Because I am reliably informed you don't stop, when it's real."
Ronan's smile is in his voice, even when it's trembling with fragility: "The rumors are true. I'm gonna love you forever." If death itself couldn't stop him, what can?
Sprawled supine now, he hooks his arms loosely behind Kylo's neck so that they never get too far from each other. He's still crying, but that's okay. It's been a long time since his tears were inspired by joy, and even if Kylo had confessed six months ago, he would have cried all the same.
Kylo loves him. The true kind of love, the kind that's eternal. His entire being is buzzing with the certainty of it. His heart hurts in the sweetest way. His long legs hug either side of Kylo's body and Ronan wants to fold himself up into him - except then they couldn't hold each other.
"Can you feel it?" he asks. The glow of his adoration. He can't believe the room is still dark when he's so radiant with it.
"I feel it," Kylo assures him, pressing his wild urge to laugh into a kiss. Can he feel it? The warmth radiating out from the core of Ronan's being, the bright, bursting light he can only bear because it is his, all for him, all of it, fearlessly pouring out as a beacon to guide him home? He feels certain it could reach him anywhere, wherever he was— and right now, with his whole self wrapped around it and bathed in it, it might as well be the only thing in existence.
"You," he says, barely able to tear himself away from showing his devotion to Ronan's lips, his cheek, his jaw, the throbbing reminder of lifeblood pulsing under the tender stretch of skin just behind it long enough to murmur in his ear, "Ronan... you are all I can feel."
And he loves it. He basks in it, reflecting back the overflow every way his clumsy, infant heart knows how, long having come to the end of words. He chases Ronan's pulse down the column of his throat, as far as he can trace the path without pulling too far away from the warm loop of his arms.
As far as Ronan's concerned, this clumsy affection is perfect. The irrefutable truth of Kylo's love soaks into his skin with each kiss. And to him, it doesn't feel like moonlight. This is Kylo's own fire, burning bright as the sun. Ronan didn't grant him the ability to love for the first time. He only gave Kylo a place to put that love, a vessel that wouldn't neglect or abuse it.
Head lolling back, he bares his throat to Kylo's mouth, dragging fingers through his hair to encourage this claiming. Let Kylo remind himself that every inch of this body belongs to him. Fresh tears spill from his eyes and he breathes another near-laugh.
Please, he starts to pray to God for this to last, for this to be the greatest love he'll ever know. But it's not a prayer for God's ear, is it? He changes course midway and prays to Kylo instead, Keep me and don't let me go.
Yes, the last time he'd begged that, the world nearly ended. But if it ever comes to that again, maybe the world should end for them.
He hardly needs the encouragement, though he responds eagerly— Ronan is due this and every other possible demonstration of his love he can invent. He's overdue. Kylo had never meant to deprive Ronan of anything with his failure to recognise and give name to his feelings— but he's determined, now. He will never, ever leave Ronan in enough doubt to imagine himself unloved. Ever again.
But he's momentarily distracted from his adoration of Ronan's skin by a prayer turned in his direction, a plea that reminds him how they got here— Apollo's soulmate who had abandoned him.
He nuzzles into the warmth of Ronan's neck, his answer a low, rumbling promise:
"I am never letting you go, Ronan. Even if loving you destroys me. Even if it costs me everything else. Do you understand? You've become a part of me. You're a part of me I'm not willing to exist without."
He doesn't want to imagine that loving him could ever destroy Kylo, though Ronan knows so many others that came before were destroyed by their love for him. He wants to be the thing that makes Kylo stronger, not weaker, and if he fails at that, is he worth loving any longer?
No. He knows the answer is no, and the right thing would be to say it. But he can't.
Because Kylo's a part of him, now, too. Some days, they're not separate for a single moment. He inhabits Kylo's body almost as often as he remains in his own, and even when they're apart, he can feel Kylo in his mind, wrapped around his thoughts like a vise. What would he be without his master, anymore? As good as a corpse.
Shame creeps up his chest as he confesses in a whisper, "I don't wanna ruin you. But I don't wanna go anywhere without you. Not Heaven or Hell or anywhere else. Not again."
Kylo's lips pull into a curve. Ronan doesn't get it, does he? He hasn't grasped it. But far from being frustrated by the misunderstanding, Kylo finds himself warmed by the prospect of gifting Ronan another moment of rediscovery, if he can just find the words.
He draws himself up Ronan's throat, slow, lavishing him with praise in the form of kisses. Yes, he feels that heat of shame. How could he not? But if Ronan will surrender it to him, Kylo won't rest until he can show him how it was glory all along. He rewards Ronan's lips for letting the words out, then lifts his head to seek Ronan's eyes in the dark.
"You don't know what you are," Kylo murmurs, pausing to resettle his weight and propping himself up above him on an elbow. His other hand slides indulgently through Ronan's hair. "Do you. You don't see what you are to me, what you give to me. You can't ruin me, Ronan. Not if you choose to stay at my side."
He leans in, kissing him softly, and murmurs:
"You are my strength. And I will fight your Heaven. Your Hell. I will fight it all to keep you with me."
This shouldn't be what he wants. But if God loved him half as much as Kylo Ren does, maybe he'd be strong enough to resist the temptation.
God doesn't love Ronan Lynch. He has been silent for as long as Ronan has listened for Him, abandoning him with his questions and his loneliness. If God isn't his creator, nor his guide, nor his peer... would Heaven even want Ronan? What could he even find there, if not love or answers?
Ronan savors the kiss, grateful beyond words, and when it breaks, his breath trembles. Though God has never heard Ronan before, all this whispered heresy is terrifying. It's such an awful comfort, too. He doesn't doubt that Kylo would - that he could - fight Heaven and Hell for him. This isn't a promise spoken metaphor or poetry. Kylo will surrender him to nothing in the universe.
"That's what I want," he confirms, his voice hushed. "Keep me. I'll always choose you."
Had he ever felt as strong as this before he'd found Ronan? Laying here with their bodies pressed together so close he can feel Ronan's heartbeat almost as clearly as his own he coils himself around him, surrounding and shielding— and in turn, Ronan wraps him in his arms and the incredible warmth of faith.
He can't think of a time. No-one else has ever believed in him as Ronan does.
"That's all I need," Kylo says, a strong hand cradling the side of Ronan's face. "If you can choose this, if you can keep choosing this, you, with me— you make me unstoppable. Do you understand? Ronan, I want... I want you to swear it to me. That you'll never try to leave me because you think it best for me to be without you. Can you promise me."
Ronan never takes a promise lightly, and this one isn't any different. He holds his breath, biting back the affirmation that wants to spill immediately from his lips, because the thing he wants so much to give isn't always the thing he's capable of giving.
Can he promise? If he ever finds himself in that position, will he be able to choose ruin for the man he loves? He may be Kylo's greatest strength now, but if he ever becomes the greatest threat to him, can he stay? Which of these terrible options would be the worst crime against his beloved?
But the measure here isn't the universal right-or-wrong. This is Kylo's wish, and Ronan in a position to grant it, and all of it depending on their faith in one another: Kylo's faith that Ronan will stay and Ronan's faith that Kylo needs him above all.
"I promise," Ronan swears, leaning in to Kylo's touch. "I believe in us."
Kylo doesn't realise he's caught in the moment the meaning of those words falls into place until the burn in his chest reminds him to breathe— a shuddering tear between his ribs. He'd felt sure Ronan would say yes. He hadn't known he would say that.
And he hadn't known that was the real reassurance he was looking for until he heard it voiced and felt it pressed into his palm with the warmth of Ronan's cheek. For all his declarations of strength and the way he's framed the scene with himself as Ronan's guardian and keeper, Kylo's grateful for the low light hiding the way his face doesn't know how to twist in the stunned silence.
"Us," he agrees in a bursting rush, already knowing there's nothing he could say that could contain everything it needs to. But isn't us enough? He's never had one before. He isn't certain anyone has ever had an us like the two of them become.
He isn't certain he should be so desperate to prove it either— having found out that words were something Ronan was missing all this time, it's easy to imagine that relying on the physical now would be some kind of failing— but he can't make himself stop. He has to kiss Ronan. Touch him. Be inside him.
"Ronan," he urges hungrily as he presses closer still, already imagining the loop of his arms drawing tight as a noose.
Ronan has heard the words he needed to hear. Apparently, so has Kylo. There's no failure now in putting words aside and resuming the conversation in their native language of raw physicality. Their bodies belong together. Ronan hardly knows who he is anymore without Kylo's touch to ground him or Kylo's will to shape him. His limbs fold around Kylo and draw him in, capturing him. A lissome spring trap.
Their mouths find each other. Ronan drags his lips over Kylo's and parts them to seek out his tongue. His breath shudders with a heat he himself can barely contain. No, he wants to be the thing that Kylo can't resist. He wants Kylo to possess him in every way that pleases him. He wants Kylo to hunt him again and again as long as they live.
Whispering into his kisses, Ronan answers, "Do it." Not that he believes Kylo needs to wait for his permission. He wants Kylo to hear it, though, as easily as he can feel it. "Don't hold back. I want you always."
A low groan spills from Kylo's mouth as he lets his lips part, welcoming the invasion— the reminder. As much as he aches to drive himself deep into the wild heat of Ronan's body until their edges melt into irrelevance, he longs for this, too— Ronan, coiling around and winding through him. Ronan claiming all the hollowed out places inside him as his own and taking residence there, delighting in the singular privilege of being the one and only creature in all of creation Kylo chooses to give himself to.
He loves to sink into the ever-tightening trap of Ronan's arms, just as he loves to feel Ronan moving inside him. Tongues and fingers twist and tangle. Blood thumps hot, heavy, each heartbeat acquiring a juddering echo where their bodies crush together. Sliding and dragging against his, Ronan's skin is intoxicating. Kylo's hips shift and roll with a smooth promise of power, breaking into a long shudder as Ronan voices the desire he can feel throbbing through the both of them— because it isn't permission he's waiting for. They both know there's nothing but Kylo's rapidly dwindling willpower between them and the way their bodies know to prove connection to each other. He's holding back because he wants Ronan to feel the very moment his control fails. He wants every gasped breath and fiercely possessive kiss to serve as testament to a truth he never wants Ronan to forget.
He is wanted. So very, very powerfully wanted.
"Always," Kylo echoes, the struggle thick in his throat. His hand tears away and pushes between their bodies. "I always. Always want to give you what you want, what you need—"
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But he has no idea how to explain what the matter is, so...
"You remember at Fanport. The imPort who had a... reaction, to my book," he begins, still pressing close as he speaks. He's not really sure how this is going to work, if it's going to work, but if he retraces his steps, perhaps Ronan might be able to catch up and find him where he is. "He gave it as a gift to his soul mate. They've been reading it together."
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"Five-star review?" he guesses, returning his attention to Kylo. "I'm surprised it didn't freak him out too much to buy it."
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"He had some questions," Kylo murmurs. "Which wasn't surprising. Everyone's more curious about the dark than they want anyone else to know. But he wanted..."
Kylo pauses, considering.
"He wanted to know why his soulmate had left him. It's a different man, the one he's found here. A different version."
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"What'd you say?"
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Because his answer to that question won't make sense unless he unleashes this, first:
"He asked me if I had ever been in love."
It's a rush and release. Kylo very nearly freezes right there, in that moment just short of implied confession. He very nearly waits to feel Ronan's response, testing to be sure it can take his weight before pushing on— but it's taken him over, this tumbling heat aching to burst free from the cage of his ribs.
"Real love," he clarifies, because there's such a wide, wide gulf between the way the word seems to feel to most people and the way it seizes and twists through his core. Because love, as a word, has been used to excuse and justify so much hurt that he'd wanted nothing more to do with it. Because he had believed himself beyond its reach, incapable of giving or receiving it. Because it had rejected him, first. "The kind... where you aren't certain you truly existed before it."
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For all their devotion to one another, Kylo has never put a name to it. And, knowing what he knows of Kylo's past, Ronan has never asked. Kylo doesn't have to love him. Reciprocation doesn't affect what he feels, one way or the other. He's never had the sense that Kylo's ashamed of him or disappointed with him, like Adam was, so Kylo's lack of love for him has been something Ronan could probably never change.
He exhales slowly. Their hearts beat violently in sync, both charged with anxiety. He thinks he knows what Kylo's trying to say, but he can't allow himself to hope for it.
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"I said yes," he says, wrenching that raw, defiant truth out from its hiding place in the darkness. He crushes it into Ronan's skin with a kiss that borders on violence. Breathes him in. His hold tightens. "That's what it is. What I feel for you. Love that starts life."
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But he knows that he isn't. His arms squeeze Kylo in answer. There's a heat behind his eyes that threatens tears. He's here in the real world, lying beside the one who's not only his master but also the man who loves him.
"I love you," Ronan whispers, breathless with gratitude, as if Kylo has just handed him a priceless treasure. He's too stunned to find any other words. The truth is, the life that's blossomed from this love is a life they're now sharing. There is no Ronan, anymore, without Kylo. And if Kylo has spent any time at all reading Ronan's heart, he already knows that.
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They can't see in the dark, but it doesn't matter. His lips graze lightly over the sweetness of Ronan's sharp mouth made soft.
No, there's no doubt, here. No lies, no obligation, no performance. This is what they've tumbled into, flowing around and between them, a different kind of creation. A remaking, with a new, undeniable truth set right at the core: they are loved.
"I love loving you," Kylo murmurs, rich with reflected gratitude for everything they become together. He kisses him like he no longer knows which one of them is the gift the other didn't realise they'd been aching for.
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He shuts his eyes as Kylo meets his lips, tears of relief finally spilling over. He hadn't realized how alone he'd felt in loving Kylo without any hope the feeling would be returned. For all their dreams and their nights together and the life they made here, Ronan was ultimately by himself as long as Kylo denied him.
Love isn't a guarantee that Kylo will stay. But it is a promise that he's here right now, exactly where Ronan is, and they're sharing this. They're together in this.
A hitched breath threatens to crack into either sobbing or laughter, and then it's neither, because Ronan kisses Kylo again. By the time he breaks away, he's steadier. "I love being loved by you," he tells Kylo. It's the rarest gift he's ever been given.
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But there's no room for misunderstanding when he's wrapped around Ronan like this, when every last part of him is focused on nothing else. Ronan's relief is so intense, so powerful that Kylo struggles for a moment with the sense that he should have said this sooner. It hadn't been any less true a week ago, a month, six— he can't remember how far back this feeling stretches— but all of that could have been time that Ronan knew. And that's what he wants. That's what he wants to plant inside him, that knowledge. Of everyone, everything in the universe, he is the one, singular being Kylo dares to love.
(A long time ago, when they were just beginning, Kylo had reached up and plucked a star out of a sky they had built together and pressed it, firmly, into Ronan's palm. He'd guided Ronan's fingers to curl around it, to be certain he had it hidden safe and secure in his hand. Hold it for me, he'd said. He just hadn't known, then, what it was made of.)
Kylo's lips pull into a curve, tugged by the fierce currents of emotion running though them both. Smoothly, he eases Ronan onto his back, rolling with him and leaning in over him as a warm, protective shield.
Love, Kylo knows, is no promise of safety from hurt. They both know it is frequently the opposite. But the kind of love he wants to surround Ronan with is the kind that promises to share in it, all of it, without shying away. He kisses Ronan's tear-streaked cheeks— one, then the other.
"Good," he says, low, almost affectionately amused if not for the strength of the vow underpinning it. "Because I am reliably informed you don't stop, when it's real."
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Sprawled supine now, he hooks his arms loosely behind Kylo's neck so that they never get too far from each other. He's still crying, but that's okay. It's been a long time since his tears were inspired by joy, and even if Kylo had confessed six months ago, he would have cried all the same.
Kylo loves him. The true kind of love, the kind that's eternal. His entire being is buzzing with the certainty of it. His heart hurts in the sweetest way. His long legs hug either side of Kylo's body and Ronan wants to fold himself up into him - except then they couldn't hold each other.
"Can you feel it?" he asks. The glow of his adoration. He can't believe the room is still dark when he's so radiant with it.
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"You," he says, barely able to tear himself away from showing his devotion to Ronan's lips, his cheek, his jaw, the throbbing reminder of lifeblood pulsing under the tender stretch of skin just behind it long enough to murmur in his ear, "Ronan... you are all I can feel."
And he loves it. He basks in it, reflecting back the overflow every way his clumsy, infant heart knows how, long having come to the end of words. He chases Ronan's pulse down the column of his throat, as far as he can trace the path without pulling too far away from the warm loop of his arms.
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Head lolling back, he bares his throat to Kylo's mouth, dragging fingers through his hair to encourage this claiming. Let Kylo remind himself that every inch of this body belongs to him. Fresh tears spill from his eyes and he breathes another near-laugh.
Please, he starts to pray to God for this to last, for this to be the greatest love he'll ever know. But it's not a prayer for God's ear, is it? He changes course midway and prays to Kylo instead, Keep me and don't let me go.
Yes, the last time he'd begged that, the world nearly ended. But if it ever comes to that again, maybe the world should end for them.
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But he's momentarily distracted from his adoration of Ronan's skin by a prayer turned in his direction, a plea that reminds him how they got here— Apollo's soulmate who had abandoned him.
He nuzzles into the warmth of Ronan's neck, his answer a low, rumbling promise:
"I am never letting you go, Ronan. Even if loving you destroys me. Even if it costs me everything else. Do you understand? You've become a part of me. You're a part of me I'm not willing to exist without."
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No. He knows the answer is no, and the right thing would be to say it. But he can't.
Because Kylo's a part of him, now, too. Some days, they're not separate for a single moment. He inhabits Kylo's body almost as often as he remains in his own, and even when they're apart, he can feel Kylo in his mind, wrapped around his thoughts like a vise. What would he be without his master, anymore? As good as a corpse.
Shame creeps up his chest as he confesses in a whisper, "I don't wanna ruin you. But I don't wanna go anywhere without you. Not Heaven or Hell or anywhere else. Not again."
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He draws himself up Ronan's throat, slow, lavishing him with praise in the form of kisses. Yes, he feels that heat of shame. How could he not? But if Ronan will surrender it to him, Kylo won't rest until he can show him how it was glory all along. He rewards Ronan's lips for letting the words out, then lifts his head to seek Ronan's eyes in the dark.
"You don't know what you are," Kylo murmurs, pausing to resettle his weight and propping himself up above him on an elbow. His other hand slides indulgently through Ronan's hair. "Do you. You don't see what you are to me, what you give to me. You can't ruin me, Ronan. Not if you choose to stay at my side."
He leans in, kissing him softly, and murmurs:
"You are my strength. And I will fight your Heaven. Your Hell. I will fight it all to keep you with me."
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God doesn't love Ronan Lynch. He has been silent for as long as Ronan has listened for Him, abandoning him with his questions and his loneliness. If God isn't his creator, nor his guide, nor his peer... would Heaven even want Ronan? What could he even find there, if not love or answers?
Ronan savors the kiss, grateful beyond words, and when it breaks, his breath trembles. Though God has never heard Ronan before, all this whispered heresy is terrifying. It's such an awful comfort, too. He doesn't doubt that Kylo would - that he could - fight Heaven and Hell for him. This isn't a promise spoken metaphor or poetry. Kylo will surrender him to nothing in the universe.
"That's what I want," he confirms, his voice hushed. "Keep me. I'll always choose you."
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He can't think of a time. No-one else has ever believed in him as Ronan does.
"That's all I need," Kylo says, a strong hand cradling the side of Ronan's face. "If you can choose this, if you can keep choosing this, you, with me— you make me unstoppable. Do you understand? Ronan, I want... I want you to swear it to me. That you'll never try to leave me because you think it best for me to be without you. Can you promise me."
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Can he promise? If he ever finds himself in that position, will he be able to choose ruin for the man he loves? He may be Kylo's greatest strength now, but if he ever becomes the greatest threat to him, can he stay? Which of these terrible options would be the worst crime against his beloved?
But the measure here isn't the universal right-or-wrong. This is Kylo's wish, and Ronan in a position to grant it, and all of it depending on their faith in one another: Kylo's faith that Ronan will stay and Ronan's faith that Kylo needs him above all.
"I promise," Ronan swears, leaning in to Kylo's touch. "I believe in us."
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And he hadn't known that was the real reassurance he was looking for until he heard it voiced and felt it pressed into his palm with the warmth of Ronan's cheek. For all his declarations of strength and the way he's framed the scene with himself as Ronan's guardian and keeper, Kylo's grateful for the low light hiding the way his face doesn't know how to twist in the stunned silence.
"Us," he agrees in a bursting rush, already knowing there's nothing he could say that could contain everything it needs to. But isn't us enough? He's never had one before. He isn't certain anyone has ever had an us like the two of them become.
He isn't certain he should be so desperate to prove it either— having found out that words were something Ronan was missing all this time, it's easy to imagine that relying on the physical now would be some kind of failing— but he can't make himself stop. He has to kiss Ronan. Touch him. Be inside him.
"Ronan," he urges hungrily as he presses closer still, already imagining the loop of his arms drawing tight as a noose.
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Their mouths find each other. Ronan drags his lips over Kylo's and parts them to seek out his tongue. His breath shudders with a heat he himself can barely contain. No, he wants to be the thing that Kylo can't resist. He wants Kylo to possess him in every way that pleases him. He wants Kylo to hunt him again and again as long as they live.
Whispering into his kisses, Ronan answers, "Do it." Not that he believes Kylo needs to wait for his permission. He wants Kylo to hear it, though, as easily as he can feel it. "Don't hold back. I want you always."
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He loves to sink into the ever-tightening trap of Ronan's arms, just as he loves to feel Ronan moving inside him. Tongues and fingers twist and tangle. Blood thumps hot, heavy, each heartbeat acquiring a juddering echo where their bodies crush together. Sliding and dragging against his, Ronan's skin is intoxicating. Kylo's hips shift and roll with a smooth promise of power, breaking into a long shudder as Ronan voices the desire he can feel throbbing through the both of them— because it isn't permission he's waiting for. They both know there's nothing but Kylo's rapidly dwindling willpower between them and the way their bodies know to prove connection to each other. He's holding back because he wants Ronan to feel the very moment his control fails. He wants every gasped breath and fiercely possessive kiss to serve as testament to a truth he never wants Ronan to forget.
He is wanted. So very, very powerfully wanted.
"Always," Kylo echoes, the struggle thick in his throat. His hand tears away and pushes between their bodies. "I always. Always want to give you what you want, what you need—"