#the garbage edits will do

[thisgarbagepicker]

Reylo Monster Week / Day 1 / Vampires

From my grave to wander I am forc’d Still to seek The God’s long-sever’d link, Still to love the bridegroom I have lost, And the life-blood of his heart to drink. - The Bride of Corinth, Goethe

[thisgarbagepicker]

   we’ll see.

[thisgarbagepicker]

      ‘thank you.’

[thisgarbagepicker]

Reylo Monster Week / Day 3 / Angels & Demons

‘SOMETHING INSIDE ME has always been there … but now it’s awake, and I’m afraid.’

Until he was ten years old, Ben Solo was tormented by a demon that called itself Snoke — when the horror stopped seemingly without cause after years of unanswered prayer and fruitless effort, he promised himself he would devote his life to God. 

Almost two decades later, Father Ben receives an e-mail from Rey, a young student in Oxford who he has never met. She knows things about him he has never told anyone. 

She is desperate. She is terrified. She is in pain. She is being tormented by a demon, and at night it calls only Ben’s name.

[thisgarbagepicker]

Moodboard for the very toight ‘Of Yoga and Werewolves’ by @inmyownidiom 

[thisgarbagepicker]

Reylo Selkie AU

[Part Three of Three. Parts One and Two posted for Reylo Week and Reylo AU Week. This one’s a little smutty ... finally.]

Rey releases his hand when they reach her room. The bed is in the center, pushed up against the far wall, and she immediately makes for it, shedding her sweater as she goes. Her back to Ben, she unbuttons the shirt beneath it next, watching out the window as waves lap the shore, and when she’s dropped that to the floor she removes her twill trousers as well. She isn’t necessarily in a hurry to be out of her clothes, but she wants to make her intentions perfectly clear. Besides, given his activities outside, he evidently has no qualms about nudity.

Stripped to her bra and panties, she turns to face him, expecting to find he’s been following suit. Instead, he’s watching her with the strangest look of admiring fascination, and something about it only makes her more eager to have him. He said some selkies take human lovers; she assumed he was including himself in that. But now she has to wonder if he never has until tonight.

She’s getting ahead of herself—they’re not quite lovers yet. Soon, though . . .

She thinks she should say something, but they’ve talked a lot already. And what would she say? That it’s been a lovely few hours chatting on her sofa, but she wants him to fuck her now? If that hasn’t been made abundantly clear at this point, then one or both of them is about to be very embarrassed.

Ben finally moves further into the room, pauses near the foot of the bed and takes off his sweater, and as he steps out of his pants her underthings join them on the floor. She’s seen him like this before, been with him, but never outside her dreams. Not in flesh and blood. She lets herself look this time, studies the way shadows and moonlight seem to glove him, the way he looks almost unreal even now; his eyes flicking over her, chest rising and falling, cock still stiffening, fingers twitching, desperate to touch. There’s a trickle of anticipation down her spine, a slow, insistent bloom of heat in her groin, and it’s more than the air in the room that makes her shiver.

He approaches her and places a hand at her waist to trace the slight curve of her hip, like he’s about to take her hand and lead her in a dance. The other brushes over her shoulder, down her arm. His face is so close to hers, she can smell the sea in his hair and count the freckles on his cheek. It's tempting to kiss him now, but instead she lets him continue to touch her, and she takes in how he feels.

His hands are large, softer than she expected as he explores—all of his skin is softer than she expected, smooth like the stones that wash up on shore. The tips of his fingers glance over her jaw and throat, the stark bow of her clavicle; fondle at her breasts in slow deliberate strokes, first at the soft skin beneath, then thumbing over her nipples, erect and sensitive and sending another burst of flickering warmth straight to her cunt; his knuckles skip across her ribs, his palm passes over her belly, thumb dragging to circle her navel.

He’s hard when he reaches her mound, when he slips a hand between her legs, and Rey leans into him and grasps his shoulders to pull herself up, tips her head back and presses her lips to his, a sigh catching at the back of her throat. If he’s never kissed anyone before (she will still flatter herself to think she could well be his first) she can’t tell it. Ben isn’t shy; he’s curious. He likes to see what she does when he fingers her, when he kisses her. She tightens her thighs around his hand, keeps him there, urges him to press inside her, first one finger, then another. She’s wet enough; more than enough. He could take her right now, standing, if he wanted. He wouldn’t even need the wall.

They make it to the bed, though, and he doesn’t rush exactly, but he doesn’t take it slow either. He’s as impatient as she is, that odd inhuman calm he affected before utterly gone, another skin he can simply shed. She’s half prepared for him to turn her around or flip her over and fuck her like an animal or something, rutting rough and frantic. She sort of wants him to.

But it’s not what happens. They’re face to face the whole time, and neither of them utters a word, and neither of them has to. It’s the strangest thing. Rey thinks—she knows—she could tell him what she wants. What it is that feels best about his touch or the rhythm and angle of his hips, or how much she loves the sensation of his heavy body over hers and his cock sliding snug against her cunt, or the way he almost growls when she brings her mouth to the thick slope of his shoulder and bites down. But she doesn’t, because he just seems to know the moment she forms the thought.

And she knows, too. She knows that his desire for her is far more than just physical. She knows that hers is in return. She knows there is something else happening here. In his embrace she is buoyant and weightless; she feels like air, like nothing at all, like everything at once.

Afterward they clean up as best they can and return to bed. Ben spoons up behind her, combs her hair aside with his long fingers, and rests his face against the back of her shoulder. His breath comes in warm puffs, and she feels his eyelashes whisper twice against her skin before he shuts his eyes. They still haven't spoken, not even as they stood together in her small bathroom, wiping traces of each other from their bodies and stealing a few last kisses and tastes.

She thinks about what it means to share her bed and body tonight with this beautiful, unlikely being from her dreams—perhaps nothing. But it seems to mean something. She doesn't know what it is yet, and when she falls asleep minutes later she still hasn't decided.

She wakes the next morning to her skin prickling, the hairs at the back of her neck rising. The light in the window is golden and teases a warmth outside she knows is false, and the room is chilled and blue, her bed empty but for her. Rey sinks under the blanket and scrubs the goosebumps from her body. She assumes he has gone already; it seems fitting. Eyes closed, she can imagine him slipping away as dawn arrived, reclaiming his seal skin and his true form, disappearing into the surf.

Last night feels as much like a dream as any other time she has seen him, though physical evidence proves otherwise. Her clothing is strewn across the floor; she’s naked; the sheets will need to be changed. She remembers letting him finish inside her, and the tacky traces of his spend on her thighs, and makes a note to stop at the herbalist.

Her dreams were different last night. This time she dreamed of flying, feather-boned and fleet, skimming the waves with broad white wings.

She rises and finds a clean pair of leggings and a warm flannel shirt, dresses and makes her way to the kitchen for breakfast. She’d like a shower, but she’s too hungry, and it can wait. Yet as she passes through the living room, she sees him. Ben is standing in a corner: still human, still ordinary to the eye, inspecting her bookshelf.

“Thinking of stealing anything?” she quips.

He looks at her seriously. His hair is damp. She thinks he must have gone to the water after all, then dressed and come back. “No.”

“I'm joking.” Rey enters the kitchen and puts a kettle on. He joins her as she waits and leans on the counter. She gestures at the two cups she left by the sink hours before. “I'd offer you more tea, but you didn't seem to like it much last night.”

“I’ll pass on the tea. Some food might be nice,” he tells her, eyes scanning the room. He speaks like this isn’t the first time they’ve done this. “Or . . . coffee?”

“You’re right, it would. I’m afraid today was slated as shopping day, though. I’ll need to make a trip to town—market’ll be open soon. You can come, if you don’t mind the drive.”

She doesn’t know why she invited him. Most likely, he has to get back to wherever it is he disappeared to last time. Strangely, it never seems to be the sea. He’s always leaving it behind. The realization makes her sad for him, and it occurs to her that she must always have known this—there’s only one reason a selkie would spend this much time on land. Has his skin been stolen?

“Or I could just go down to the water and swallow up a few fat fish,” he says as his even, serious gaze drifts to the kitchen window that looks out on the sea.

Rey’s eyebrows scrunch together and she stares over her shoulder at him with a look of bemusement.

“I’m joking.” He echoes her words and flippant tone of a few minutes before, and he smiles—not the dry, unfitting curves of his mouth she remembers from last night, but a wide open grin that sparks in his eyes. She likes it very much. “The coffee out there is shit. I’ll come with you. I’d like that.”

She chuckles and nods as if she agrees that yes, ocean coffee is shit. She wishes the water in the kettle would hurry up and boil. Suddenly it feels as if this day holds much promise. So many things could happen. She wants to start the work of finding out what they are, and where they may lead.

[thisgarbagepicker]

reylo au week // day 6 // crossover

.his dark materials.

Self-taught aëronaut and trader Rey thinks herself nothing special. She’s a good businesswoman and longs to explore the world someday, and with a constant companion in her bat-formed dæmon Melas, she is rarely lonely. The Magisterium certainly has no reason to be interested in her—until it’s discovered that she is perhaps the only person left alive able to interpret the alethiometer, an instrument of divination that stands to entirely undermine the Magisterium’s legitimacy. Enter Kylo Ren, a devoted acolyte of the Society of Ren, tasked with tracking down and eliminating Rey before she realizes the extent of her power. But Kylo has a secret—he’s been hiding his own abilities since childhood, and Rey is not alone.

Drugged. I’ve been drugged.

These are Rey’s first thoughts as she comes to. Her eyes flutter open to take in her surroundings. She’s seated in wooden chair, bound to it by her wrists and ankles, the knots of rope that secure her made with practiced hands. The room is empty and stark. A faint smell of pine hangs in the air. There’s a table nearby—she sees the small lump of tawny fur that is her dæmon, the physical manifestation of her innermost self, stirring atop it. Her heart quickens.

“Melas?” she whispers, eager to rouse him. Perhaps he can bite the ropes away and free her. They can escape. Whatever has happened . . .

A whisper of wings alerts Rey to another presence, and a moment later a large bird has landed on the table beside Melas, talons sinking easily into the wood. A barn owl, but the colors are wrong—ash and mahogany and russet rather than the cream and white she has seen in books. It leans over the bat and she draws in a breath to shout and shoo it away, but then it only nudges him gently, preening him a little with its beak. The gesture is personal and almost tender, and despite everything Rey relaxes minutely.

It turns its face to Rey and speaks in a quiet, feminine voice. “We don’t wish to hurt you.”

“Hold your tongue, Delora,” comes a warning from behind, in a corner of the room Rey cannot see. There’s a man in here with them.

Melas starts, hisses at the owl and flies to Rey, nestling under her hair against her neck, making soothing sounds into her ear. The man moves around to face them, his stride a prowl. He’s tall and broad, but that’s all she can tell—he’s dressed in black, a heavy cowled garment like a cassock over trousers and boots, and his head is hidden beneath a dark, nearly featureless mask. She recognizes it: the uniform of the Society of Ren, and this man is their leader.

Kylo Ren stops before Rey, crouches as if considering her, and the owl regards her with the same intent. Her dæmon trembles against her neck, but outrage overrides any fear they both feel.

She spits at Kylo and bares her teeth. “Let me go. I have nothing you or your masked thugs want.”

He makes a sound like a chuckle. “Ah, but I know you do, little heretic.”

He reaches up and unclasps the mask, pulling it away as he rises to place it heavily on the table beside his owl dæmon. Rey can’t help staring at him. When she thinks of the Magisterium and its cadre of officials and votaries, she imagines old men, dusty, wizened, creased like ancient parchment. Her captor is shockingly young, with a long, striking face and probing eyes. His mouth looks soft and sensitive until it twists into a knowing smirk. “I’ve waited a very long time for this day.”

Rey’s breath is shaky, and Melas’ tiny claws dig into her flesh in warning not to say anything rash. She thinks of the dreams that have come and gone her whole life, of owl’s wings and masked pursuers, long-fingered hands entwining with hers, cities in the sky surrounded by flares of colorful light. She remembers what she saw last night when she read the alethiometer, as ever half unaware of what she was doing but certain she knew the meaning of each symbol its needle landed on.

The hourglass—change is coming soon; prepare. The angel—a messenger, but bearing rebellion against the established order of things. The alpha and omega—finality, inevitability, the arrival at last of all that was meant to be, all that she was meant to be.

From a hidden pocket of his garment Kylo draws out what she dreads seeing: the heavy golden disc of the alethiometer, no doubt found as he searched her bag. She should have hidden it better.

“It’s heresy to possess one of these. They aren’t meant to exist at all. In the past, people spent lifetimes studying their ways and rarely achieved even a fraction of your facility.” His sly smile is gone. “So who are you? Some secret prodigy the scholars and dissenters have hidden away?”

She remains silent, willing herself not to blink as she glares back into his eyes. Kylo is unbothered, but looks away from her to inspect the instrument he holds in his open palm. His expression softens, as if he has suddenly forgotten he is not alone in the room, and when he speaks again his voice has lost its edge as well. “The infant—you’re alone. Abandoned; but not helpless. Not anymore. Hm, and the anchor . . . you’re bound by something you wait for—you hope. But you fear, too, that what you hope for will never come . . . ”

His mouth turns down, as if the third symbol the needle indicates has displeased him in what it reveals, or rattled him. The owl alights to his shoulder, clacks her beak, and speaks in an undertone something that sounds like “Ben.”

“You can read it?” Rey stammers, a flush of alarm creeping over her cheeks. He’s said it himself—to even possess an alethiometer is criminal. To read it, to even claim the ability, is a form of dissent punishable by excommunication, incarceration, perhaps even death.

Kylo comes out of his trance and meets her eyes, pockets the alethiometer and draws nearer to her. “The Magisterium wants you out of the picture, and we both know what that means.”

Melas has crept out from under her hair and is bristling. Rey nods, wincing as the ropes chafe her wrists. “And is that not what you want as well? They’d do the same to you, if they knew.”

“They won’t. Not if you disappear first.” He seems to see straight into her. “I think you’re meant for something great. We both are. And when I let you escape, I want you to take me with you.”

“You want to have this discussion?” Rey says, surprised by the ease with which she considers this turn. “I’m more conversational when I’m not tied to a chair.”

He looks at her sharply then crosses behind her, and she feels him working at the ropes that bind her feet as the owl keeps a watchful eye on the proceedings. Kylo appears utterly unconcerned that Rey might fight back, kick him, punch him, bite him and flee into the night the moment he releases her. She still has half a mind to do so. If she could consult the alethiometer now, what would it advise?

Change is coming soon. Prepare. A messenger, bearing rebellion against the established order of things. Finality. Inevitability. The arrival at last of all that was meant to be. All that she was meant to be.

[thisgarbagepicker]

reylo au week // day 5 // steampunk/cyberpunk dieselpunk

For Rey, life in the underbelly of sky-bound Supremacy City is a daily fight, but it’s still better than trying to eke out an existence in the toxic, war-ravaged deserts below. When she stumbles across an abandoned mech bearing a map to the rumored verdant paradise beyond the wastelands, she finds herself the target of those who would use the map for less noble purposes—including the Supreme Leader’s top enforcer, Ben Solo, an aviator with mysterious ties to the city’s history and an agenda all his own.