#ghost!hux

In which Kylo Ren finds a not a lady in a lake, but a man in a river.  Art by: Knight-wren Story by: arkaniis   It’s quiet in the Irish countryside. Definitely not like his teenhood in Boston, where he could hear the cars on the road outside his bedroom window, and not like France, where he was always within earshot of people either fighting or fucking. Here, there’s nothing but the sound of the river behind him and distant animal noises deep inside the forest in front of him. Kylo stares into the misty dark between the trees, looking for movement or eye-shine or… anything, really. He feels like he’s being watched, and his feelings usually aren’t wrong. It’s disconcerting, but he refuses to let it set him on edge. He’s only got to camp here for the night, and this time tomorrow he’ll be in some quaint village that time forgot, hunting down his next job. If he’s lucky, and people are generous, he can afford a bus ticket to Belfast and he won’t have to do this again in a week. He zips his fly up, and the noise almost covers up the tiny sound of something small splashing into the water behind him.  Almost. He’s not alone. He freezes where he is, his sleep-deprived mind suddenly racing a thousand miles a second – what does he know about Irish wildlife? Bears? Wolves? Suddenly he can’t remember a single fucking thing from that stupid pocket guide to Ireland that Rey sent him, which he promptly shoved to the bottom of his backpack after he realized it was marketed towards tourists. He’s pretty sure there’s no chapter on ‘things that might eat hitchhikers in the wilderness’ anyways. Okay. He can handle this. He’s handled worse, much worse, with nothing but a word. No sudden movements. Behind him, there’s another small splash followed by the sound of movement through water for only a second. He swallows hard, and slowly – agonizingly slowly – turns his body to face the river and the source of the noise. It’s not a wolf. It’s not a bear. It’s not even a normal thing, like a fox or a badger coming for a late-night drink. It’s a man. A beautiful, very naked man, with pale skin and long, long red hair sticking to his skin in unruly tangles – his hair is longer than Kylo has ever seen on a person, and that’s including his mom and his cousin. The stranger is bent over in the water, his hands buried in the riverbed mud, slowly shifting as if he’s searching for something. Kylo watches him straighten and withdraw a smooth black pebble from the water, stare at it intently for a breathless, silent few moments, before he suddenly lets it drop back into the water – another soft ‘plip’ – and returns to his search. This is the being who was watching him piss minutes ago, Kylo is sure of it. Being, not human – Kylo is equally sure of that. Whoever or whatever he is, he wasn’t there when Kylo crawled out of his tent. That means he either entered the river while Kylo had his back turned – not possible, he would have heard anyone else approaching – or he came up out of it. He could be one of a multitude of fae, he certainly has the ethereal beauty down. Could just as likely be a Kelpie, or whatever the Irish call them. He stands and watches a minute more, waiting for the man to start wailing or whinnying so Kylo knows which, but whatever he is he seems content to ignore his company entirely. Rude. Fed up with waiting, Kylo steps forward. “Hey. Riverdance.”

ghost!Hux is back yay ! And it’s not sad this time, ahah