rec✱gnition
Akao Rion x gn!Reader (if you squint) | 2.9k words | rated: T Tags: flashbacks, canon compliant Content Warnings: smoking, bullying, slight self-destructive tendencies, canon-typical violence, slight existential crisis, internal conflict, light angst, unreliable narrator Dedicated to Lao (@herringstrait)
Summary: A cigarette, a key in the ignition, a flicker of light, a fleeting collision. She burns like a star, untouchable, wild, leaving you stranded—awed, exiled.
You tapped your foot on the ground, a restless habit you’d developed ever since you quit all those years ago.
The streets stretched out in an unnatural quiet, yet your body buzzed with unrest. One more shift at a job that paid in monotony and pennies. You trudged down the cracked sidewalk, your pace heavy with exhaustion, one hand buried deep in your pocket.
Your fingers curled around the crumpled pack nestled there, the edges soft and worn from days of indecision. It felt lighter than it should, lighter than it had the last time you’d sworn you wouldn’t reach for it. Yet, as your grip tightened, the thought lingered: maybe tonight, the craving wouldn’t win. Or maybe it already had.
It was a reckless purchase, one you’d sworn you wouldn’t touch.
You reached for the lighter that wasn’t there, cursing the empty space. Maybe it was a sign, a reminder to hold back. But the craving didn’t care about signs. It gnawed at you, heavy and unrelenting, like it always did.
A flicker of light snagged your attention—small, red, steady. It hung high against the dense ink of the sky, almost winking at you through the haze. Your steps faltered. The North Star? The thought came unbidden, an old reflex, and for a fleeting moment, you felt a thread of something—reassurance, maybe—slip through the fog in your mind.
But it soured as quickly as it surfaced, a sharp memory from survival lessons at the JCC slicing through. The North Star, they’d taught you, was nothing but a lie wrapped in folklore. Its constancy was just another trick of time, a story to soothe the desperate. It drifted, shifting like everything else in the world, leaving fools who pinned their hopes on it to flounder in the dark.
The light moved. A steady descent cut it loose from the realm of stars and myths, drawing your gaze downward until the truth sharpened into focus. Not a star—just a lit cigarette. Its ember burned faintly between the fingers of a hooded figure perched on a ledge, their silhouette etched sharp against the night.
They moved with a casual elegance that shouldn’t have belonged to gravity, stepping off the ledge and landing soundlessly on the pavement below. The cigarette flared briefly as they took a slow drag, the glow illuminating the sharp angles of their face for just a breath before it receded into shadow.
You hesitated, caught in the liminal space between memory and reality, between the false comfort of a constant star and the pull of the present. But the craving in your chest clawed harder, dragging you forward like a leash.
Before you realized it, your fingers had already fished a cigarette from the battered pack, the motion instinctive, thoughtless. The paper felt dry and familiar against your lips, a habit so deeply ingrained it had acted before you could.
“Got a light?” The words slipped out, scattering the silence around you. Your voice carried a raw edge, cracked like the pavement beneath your feet.
The hooded figure stepped closer, the shuffle of fabric barely audible in the night’s stillness. Her hand dove into a pocket, emerging empty after a brief, frustrated search.
“Shit. Used the last match,” she muttered, her voice raspier than you remembered.
Akao Rion.
( read the rest on AO3 )
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