songfic prompt that no one asked for? for any combination of Ronan/Adam/Kavinsky I guess: " I know you - I walked with you once upon a dream; I know you - the gleam in your eye is so familiar a gleam; and I know it's true that visions are seldom all they seem; but if I know you, I know what you'll do - you'll love me at once, the way you did once upon a dream."
(I’ve never written a songfic before so i had no idea what i was doing but i did my best - thanks for the ask!!)
It was the strangest andsaddest thing Kavinsky had ever seen. Ronan had brought the scholarship boy tohis substance party. The dusty interloper didn’t fit in like Ronan did but,then again, no one had ever fit in at his parties quite like Ronan Lynch did.That didn’t stop Ronan from staring at Adam like he held the answers to all thequestions of the universe.
The worst part – theunforgiveable part – was that Kavinsky was beginning to agree. He’d neverinteracted with Adam beyond the occasional exchanging of glares, but recently,he’d become a common sight in Kavinsky’s dreams. Whether it was Ronan’sobsession rubbing off on Kavinsky or something else entirely, Kavinsky couldn’ttell. The thought of Adam Parrish being significant alongside Ronan was onething, the idea that he could be important independently was terrifying.
But, whenever Kavinskyfeared something, he embraced it. He would rather be a reckless fool than acoward, so he walked towards where Ronan and Adam were sitting. With a knowinglook on his face, Kavinsky sidled up to the pair and let his words fallsmoothly from his lips. “Look what the cat dragged in. Dick’s second favoritepet.” Adam’s response, a blunt“Kavinsky”, didn’t disappoint. Kavinsky could have predicted that exactresponse. In fact, he had before, in his dreams.
He was filled with a sense ofperverse pride; being able to forge someone he didn’t know was more than skill,it was pure magic. Maybe Parrish was simply easily understood, nothing morethan trailer trash, but it didn’t feel that way. The feeling of pride soon gaveway to an unnerving feeling. He’d only met dream-Adam but Kavinsky felt like heknew real Adam Parrish.
I know you - I walked with you once upon adream
Ronan was immediatelyperturbed by Kavinsky’s expression. More accurately, he was disturbed that itwas directed at Adam. Kavinsky frequently leered at him but now he went almostunnoticed. The intense coil of anger Ronan felt at this simple exchange wasprobably unwarranted. And he couldn’t react in anger without giving away morethan he was willing.
A disproportionatereaction on Ronan’s end would result in, at best, Ronan looking possessive ofAdam and, at worst, possessive of Kavinsky. Neither of them were necessarily false butRonan didn’t want to parse out the web of emotions that had formed seeing Kavinskyand Adam interact.
He never agreed to havefeelings for either of them; having feelings for the both of them wasunimaginable. Apparently, Kavinsky was reaching the same conclusion. Wherebefore Ronan saw his lecherous grin, akin to the look a predator gives itsprey, he now saw what could only be described as fear.
Ronan had never seen thelook on his face before but he recognized it nonetheless. He must have beenwearing the same expression. It was an expression borne from the overwhelming,crushing, realization that the potential, beautiful, tangible future from yourdreams was never going to be realized. Sometimes, Ronan thought, it was worseto wake up from a good dream than a nightmare.
I know you - the gleam in your eye is sofamiliar a gleam
Adam was equally wary ofthe look in Kavinsky’s eyes but for a different reason. He may have been amagician, but he couldn’t walk among dreams the way Ronan and Kavinsky did. Thecomplex expressions that flited over both Ronan and Kavinsky’s faces spoke moreof their shared dreaming than anything else had so far. Usually, Adam had nodesire to be a dreamer, but he didn’t much enjoy being left out.
He may not have knownKavinsky, but he was beginning to know Ronan and they were more alike thanthey’d admit. Or maybe they’d admit it freely; Adam wasn’t fluent in theirlanguage just yet. Even so, he could tell that they were exchanging chargedmessages, and for some inexplicable reason, they included Adam. He should havebeen disgusted by the very idea of Kavinsky’s attention, and on some level, hewas.
All he knew aboutKavinsky came from Ronan’s rare and undecipherable comments and Gansey’s, morefrequent, disparaging remarks. Gansey had once said Kavinsky was unredeemable,worthless. He rarely said anything as outwardly condemning, so Adam took it toheart, but not in the way Gansey had intended. Before those comments Adam had aview of Gansey as having a saintly level of forgiveness and acceptance. It wasone of the things Adam had appreciated the most about his friend.
Unfortunately,afterwards Adam knew that Gansey’s judgement-free appearance was, at leastsomewhat superficial. This made Adam even more paranoid that he was constantlybeing judged and found wanting. Ironically, Gansey’s comments pushed Adam toreserving judgement on Kavinsky. The small amount of discomfort he felt at theidea of Kavinsky was wiped away by incredibly-human look Adam imagined he sawpass over Kavinsky’s face.
and I know it’s true that visions are seldomall they seem;
There was nothingKavinsky liked more than being one step ahead, and nothing he liked less thanbeing caught off guard. He would have expected that having learned about AdamParrish in his dreams would have left him powerful, but instead he was filledwith an unwelcome sense of vulnerability. Kavinsky may not have had completecontrol over his dreams, but he prided himself in always being able todistinguish between dream and reality. His impromptu meeting with Adam andRonan was challenging that.
Originally, Kavinsky hadbeen pleased at how accurately he had predicted Parrish’s behavior, but now hewas overwhelmed. He was a lot of things, but he wasn’t psychic. That left twopossibilities. Either he had dreamed Adam or Ronan had. The first wasimpossible and the second extremely unlikely. The silence that had descended onthe trio served as a reinforcement of Kavinsky’s unease. He was faltering, andit was showing.
He was about to saysomething, anything, to regain balance but stopped short. He was struck by athird possibility. Kavinsky was a firm believer in nothing. It wasn’t that helacked belief, rather that he believed there was no point. He didn’t believe ina cosmic purpose or karmic retribution. Furthermore, he believed that those whobelieved in those things were naïve idiots, unaware of the absence of justice.That made the third possibility, not impossible, but irreconcilable with hisworld.
There was no way thathis least unpleasant dreams were premonitions of a possible reality. In hisdreams involving Adam and Ronan, shameful as they were, he was happy. They werehappy together. And in no lifetime – in no imaginable universe – did JosephKavinsky get a happily ever after. Fairytales were for children.
but if I know you, I know what you’ll do -you’ll love me at once,
Kavinsky’suncharacteristic silence was not lost on Ronan. Had Kavinsky been wearing histrademark sunglasses, Ronan would not have been able to piece together thereason behind the silence. As it was, Kavinsky had chucked them into a burningcar earlier in the evening in a show of dramatics. That meant that Ronan sawthe confusion and calculation that colored Kavinsky’s face as he stood insilence.
It was probably unwiseto jump to conclusions, but Ronan valued his intuition. He’d recently beenhaving dreams about Kavinsky and Adam. Separately, they were nothing to writehome about. However, they increasingly been about KavinskyAndAdam. Unusuallynon-abstract visions of unnervingly mundane interactions. The look on Kavinsky’sface made Ronan think they’d been sharing in the dreams.
That, in and of itself,was unusual. Maybe when they attempted, in person, they could manage a vaguedream-based collaboration. They hadn’t attempted it, but he felt on a baserlevel that it was possible. While he knew it was possible, he’d never imaginedthat it would have occurred unintentionally. Especially with dreams as soft asthe ones he’d been having lately. He knew Kavinsky, and the Kavinsky he knewhad no softness to him.
But there wasn’t anotherexplanation for the strange dreams and Kavinsky’s even stranger reaction toseeing Adam. All of it was nonplussing, leaving Ronan bereft of words.The most surprising reaction of all, however, was Adam’s. There was absolutelyno way Adam had shared in their dreaming, yet he didn’t seem as put off byKavinsky’s presence as Ronan would have predicted. Instead he looked defensiveand closed-off but, more than anything, interested. He hadn’t written Kavinskyoff. It was almost like he was unconsciously mirroring dream-Adam and theirdream-meetings.
the way you did once upon a dream
Adam had never been moredaring and idiotic than when he’d been with Ronan. He’d also never been morefree. It may have been that same, infectious, idiocy but he felt that Kavinsky wasa similar force. There was a magnetism about him. Simultaneously repulsing anddrawing Adam in. It was stupid; Kavinsky had done absolutely nothing to convinceAdam that he was anything more than the rumors. But, then again, he’d neverdone anything to Adam that validated the rumors either. And Adam knew that thehalls of Aglionby held many rumors about him as well; all untrue.
It wasn’t easy, sparingjudgement of the likes of Joseph Kavinsky, but Adam tried. An unfortunate sideeffect of this was that Kavinsky’s magnetism became less repulsive. Adam stoodin the fragile silence and wished that Kavinsky would say something. He knewthat if he opened his mouth he’d be able to walk away. Kavinsky’s insults wouldinevitably break whatever spell had been cast over Adam. However, Kavinsky wasa contradictory creature; he never did what people wanted or expected him todo.
Instead of speaking heturned on his heels and headed back to the center of the party. He resumed hisusual revelries and virtually ignored Adam and Ronan for the remainder of thenight. Adam looked at Ronan, an equally contradictory being, and saw himlooking at Kavinsky. Ronan’s unease shouldn’t have comforted Adam, but it did.It felt nice, knowing that Ronan and Kavinsky were equally unbalanced by whatshould have been an exceedingly forgettable interaction.
Had they been lessaffected, Adam could have convinced himself that he’d imagined everything. Hecould have moved on, forgotten Kavinsky altogether. But now he was stuck. Hestood by the BMW, exchanging stolen glances with Ronan and Kavinsky. Standingin a twilight-zone esq present, envisioning an even less understandable future,Adam Parrish felt more and less knowable than ever.
I generally try to keep my blog discourse free, so I’m putting it under the cut so that people who are tired of all the discourse/stressed from it can breathe, but I’m going to try and make it logical/rational and non-hostile, so give it a read? [It’s long so you can scroll down to the tldr to see if it interests you] (Kavinsky positive btw)
Let’s start by explaining my bias. There isn’t much source material to work with so I have headcannoned him excessively and probably projected my own issues on him, in doing this I may have made him more redeemable than the source text. But that’s the question isn’t it? Is Joseph Kavinsky a irredeemable character?
I don’t want to excuse/justify Kavinsky’s actions (they were manipulative and abusive, point blank) but, at the same time, I’m not sure we should write him off completely. It’s true that that was probably the intent he was written with, so that may be the go to response, but think for a second. Is he truly irredeemable? Call to mind all his actions and try to separate the narrative given by Gansey and Ronan’s biased pov. Judge him solely based on his actions, keeping in mind that we only saw a select few dramatic ones and, with those in mind, decide whether he could ever be redeemed.
However, before making a decision remember that Kavinsky is from the same book that gave an assassin (the one that killed Ronan’s father, nonetheless) a redemption arc. If the gray man, an murderous adult, could be redeemed doesn’t it seem plausible that Kavinsky, an abused (his father probably didn’t try to kill him out of nowhere, so abuse is a logical conclusion [unsure whether physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, but that’s for later.]) self-hating, and possibly mentally ill (but that may just be one of my projections) teenager is worthy of the same redemption?
Going back to the bracketed comments on his abuse; my headcannon is that Kavinsky’s perverse look at sexuality and sexual behavior/consent is due to childhood sexual abuse. I hold this view because, often, that particular type of abuse can create long-lasting, debilitatingly unhealthy, views of sex. Additionally, this would explain Kavinsky’s comment on consent (he said something along the lines of ‘sometimes you just have to take it’). This excerpt is popularly construed as being directed towards Ronan but I find it makes more sense when viewed as a sub-textual elaboration of Kavinsky’s own experiences and internalized schemas of the world. Now, I have thought for a bit on this and I think this abuse would explain many of his skewed views and actions (explain – not excuse). It’s important to note that people react differently to trauma and, while the usual perception is of the reserved, silent, victim, this is not universally true. Often times the victims become ‘trouble makers’ (i.e. elementary school students) and are antisocial (not asocial, but antisocial) because they weren’t afforded the proper childhood development tools and end up acting out as a defense mechanism. This seems to be a less socially acceptable symptom of abuse (somewhat understandably, because it directly/negatively affects more people than the reserved type) but they are equivalent in cause, if not result.
So, Kavinsky’s delinquency, distrust/hatred of authority, reckless (self-harming/endangering) behavior, fear/hatred of the world, and self-hatred (a lot of that comes from a deep, strong, internalized homophobia which probably comes from his father [if abuse theory is correct] and society [he is Bulgarian and, typically, Bulgarian views on homosexuality are very negative, at least according to 2011 statistics on public surveys done in Bulgaria] could be explained by his backstory. But we aren’t provided his backstory and therefore it’s easy to view him as a one-dimensional character who is ‘evil’ for no reason.
It is true that he is meant to be the antagonist, but if we view characters as more than 2-dimensional arc-types we have to acknowledge that his actions are more complex than simply ‘evil’. Now, this doesn’t excuse his actions, but remembering this does help put everything in perspective. At the base of everything he is a scared/hurt teen.
Someone may bring up the fact that Ronan and Adam suffered their own traumas but are overall less violent/malicious (that itself is sort of debatable, but moving on) to claim that Kavinsky ultimately had no explanation/mitigating circumstances for his actions. To this I say; Ronan and Adam’s situations are sufficiently different (not worse or better, but definitely different) and, besides, they had a support group. Now, one could say that Kavinsky had a support group in the dream pack, but the little characterization they were given (which was even less developed than Kavinsky’s) showed little evidence of caring/nurturing. Thus, the dream pack dynamics are largely up to fandom creation, but if you believe Kavinsky is irredeemable then you probably think the same of the dream pack, in which case Kavinsky would be without a support group. Which would be another factor to consider when judging him.
Admittedly many deviations from the source text need to be made to view Kavinsky as favorably as I do and make my ships healthy, but they aren’t unreasonable deviations. What I mean is that, had Kavinsky lived then I like to think he could have gotten help in the form of a more loving environment, therapy, or rehab (or all of the above to be honest). I like to think that he could learn to love himself. And I think that if he learned to love himself he could still be true to character (snarky delinquent) without being abusive (he would let out frustration and excess energy in socially unacceptable but not abusive ways – i.e breaking dishes, burning cars, etc.). This isn’t really a deviation (the deviation is in the fact that he was killed off before this could happen). The main deviation comes into play when considering shipping Kavinsky healthily with Ronan. The biggest jump would be figuring out how Ronan would be able to forgive Kavinsky for his actions. It is possible that he wouldn’t (especially for the brother thing) but it’s also possible he would see some of himself in Kavinsky and be able to understand/come to terms with the fact that he changed. I think that would be hard to manage writing but I think, done correctly, it’s plausible.
So, while I try to not ship abusive relationships, I don’t think Kavinsky ships are inherently abusive. Given a redemption arc, he could keep his characterization while removing the abusive aspects. The rest is then up to how it’s written.
tldr; Kavinsky was an abused, lost, suicidal teen. This doesn’t excuse his actions but I think he could easily be given a redemption arc (especially considering the fact that a literal assassin was given one). I think Kavinsky was mentally ill and, had he lived, he could have gotten help. And, had he gotten help he could have gone on to have successful, healthy, relationships.
Tldr;tldr; most Kavinsky fans/shippers don’t endorse/support the abusive aspects. They simply understand him charitably and see him as a redeemable character. Most often they don’t ship him in abusive relationships; they let his redeemable qualities come to the forefront before shipping him. So please, think about all of this before judging the shippers, and putting out hate (it’s especially hard to handle when I project myself onto him, but that’s my issue, lol). You don’t have to love the ship, or even like it, but it isn’t innately abusive like most people seem to believe.
If you read this all you deserve a metal/gold star. I hope it was intelligible and inoffensive. Feel free to come message me, but if you have critiques please be gentle (I am fragile, but open to discussion). Really, I wrote this because the Kavinsky hate was weighing on my conscience and made me reflect on whether liking him was problematic or not, and (obviously) I think not, but maybe that’s my bias.
Anyway, hmu to talk about this writing or just about K in general (I need more Kavinsky loving friends).
Me and Louise @luckylouise are talking about Noah and Ronan deciding to make DIY gifts for their boyfriends and girlfriend and I’m in pain and I need to write it.
