getting a headache again because someone on twitter said (paraphrased) “my theory about lestappen so far is that max understands charles’s frustrations, and max knows charles is a better driver than his car allows him to be capable of. he is a special driver like me. that’s why we walk together”
and? the sheer poetry of someone knowing you deeply, intimately… yes, possible through the science, the data of race stats or car performance or analytics, but through all of it, it also amounts to them saying this:
I see you, I know you, you are my shadow. We push each other, and it is the closest thing to completion I might find on the track because you are my equal. This is a dance with only us in it. So take my hand.
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Alright but hear me out (hello btw how are you ?) kayn heartsteel have canonically been kicked out of his previous band ; imagine fem!reader (successful idol herself or civilian) comforting him and trying to help him push through it and get back on his feet to continue his music !
✖ Pre Heartsteel!Kayn Being Kicked Out ✖
✖ Word Count: 1.3k
✖ Tags: Established R/S, Idol!Reader
✖ A/N: You were a performer too and met him at a gig before either of you got famous! You two live together in this one, you’re a solo idol that practices at home so you can spend your days with him. These are headcanons! Whee!
----
- It wrecked him. You two got together while he was in his old band, so it was an important memory to you both. As a solo artist, you understood the intricacies of being in the public eye but still, being kicked out? That was rough…something you personally could never experience. You did your best to comfort him.
- The first few days was the worst. Kayn was the perfect definition of bi-polar. Either his Rhaast ego was full blown, wild, and uninhibited. Man straight up was about to do crimes and was only stopped by you begging him not to make things worse for himself. (You caught him with a bag full of spray paint about to go wreck his old studio.) Or he was the trained Idol, Kayn. Rhaast entirely held back, the perfect definition of an average idol, obedient and reserved. Joining you in your dance and vocal practices in your home studio.
- Don’t even talk about the things he tweeted during that era, you had to run into his room and tell him to delete them minutes after posting. It was a bad time. If you were to ask Kayn now about those old tweets? He was on the very fence of, cocky pride on how he was a “badass” that “didn’t follow rules back then” or just overwhelming embarrassment for being young and dumb.
- There was a lot of work to be done over those first few days, you got the help of your own PR guys to try and get Kayn’s media presence looking better. You yourself doing your best to give him advice on performing, it wasn’t even that he was a bad artist, it was just…he had some strong ideals and just didn’t work well with his old band. It took months honestly but as always, drama died down and Kayn slowly got to live his life again.
- The saddest part of all this drama was that because you were an idol too it was hard to bring him out to comfort him. Paparazzi were hounding you both, media wanting to know what went down with Kayn and if you were seen beside him…gods who knew what the media would say about your career. You two barely left your house because you just couldn’t.
- So, all you could do was your best. Dragging him to game with you on the PC, buying new consoles to try new games with him (murdering things in game really helped him unsurprisingly), watching movies together at home (feel good films that actually make him cry), getting him to do weird shit like painting your shared room (you have a messy signature of his by the door), crocheting weird little animals (he made Rhaast!), hells you managed to get him to read a book (banned in various nations). It was…different. But it helped keep his mind off doing anything that would ruin his career more while satisfying his need to just be a creative.
- On one of those uneventful days, Kayn ordered a nice little delivery package and excitedly ran into your room. Holding the plastic bag up proud.
“ Y/N. I’m going to change my image. Entirely. Can you help me. Like…Right. Fucking. Now.”
You stare at him in confusion until he walked up to your table, and pulled 7 boxes of bleach and dye, dumping them on your table.
“ I’m going to go hot pink.”
You laugh, but oblige anyway. If it would cheer him up then you would spend the day helping him out.
- There was a lot of angry snuggling on boring evenings. Kayn would lie in bed in your arms ranting about his ideals, how he was meant for bigger, greater things, things no one else in the industry or his old band could comprehend. And you would hug him tight, supporting him as he complained, listening, agreeing where you can, giving him bigger and better ideals of grandeur. The both of you knew it wasn’t anything serious, but it really did help lighten his mood.
“ I’ll really set the stage on fire next time just watch me.”
“ I’ll bring the gasoline then.”
“ For real! I will fucking bring fireworks and shit too. It’ll be sick as hell! Never seen before! I’ll wreck the stage!!!! Livestream that shit!!!”
Such evenings would end with the both of you laughing. It was nice to see him happier again in those small moments. Sometimes you could even see a sneak of a soft smile creeping onto his face, his appreciation for you playing along and not stopping him.
- It took about a week before you felt it was right to get him to pick his guitar back up. Convincing him that the best way to get over the bad memories was to form new ones, the two of you sitting down to write a song. He really went HARD with the lyrics, it was a damn god rap at that but it was honestly a diss track at his old band and shall stay hidden in the files of your computer forever. You do secretly listen to it sometimes, it was raw as fuck, personally it helped YOU when you were angry and frustrated. Not that you would admit to him. It would only stroke his ego more.
- He only admitted it once. Once when you two were soaking in a hot bath together. Only Once did he tell you how much your support meant to him. Nice smells and colors from a bath bomb floating around you two. It was a slow morning, a few weeks after getting kicked out, right before he joined Heartsteel. You sat there, back against his chest as he rests his head on your shoulder. Relaxing in the tub. It was peaceful silence before he spoke up.
“ Y/N…I’m going to join a new band.”
You actually had to pause and turn to stare at him. Shocked. Asking him if he was sure, if he was ready, if he was comfortable to be performing with people again. You held his face, asking once more if this is what he wanted to do in his career, if he was going to give up on going solo like you. His hand rose to hold yours against his face as he spoke.
“ Yeah, I talked to them a lot the past week and…they genuinely accept me and all my crazy ideas. They love Rhaast for who he is and I think I can work with this. I’m sure about this.”
He laughs, putting your arm down as his hands wrap around you in a tight hug. Kayn moving his face down to your neck as he gives you a soft kiss, gentle, barely there as he whispers, not looking at you.
“ I have to thank you for this by the way. For letting me Be Rhaast. For telling me time and time again to just be the Rockstar that I was meant to be. That my unique brand of rock was fine. I’ll remember this forever. Every time you see Rhaast on stage it’ll be thanks to you. Remember that.”
And that was it. He never really showed his vulnerability about his old band ever again. The next day he joined Heartsteel, and it was great for him. Your own heart feeling warm and fuzzy seeing him laugh and have fun with new bandmates. And when you stand in the audience, seeing Rhaast rap some sick bars, you can’t help but smile. He was Your Rockstar.
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Obsessed with the POV choice in Imperial Radch as well, both because Leckie does some really wild stuff with how expansive the strict first-person is able to become due to the worldbuilding and who her narrator is, and because it's SO entangled with the central thematic concepts of identity. In the first book flashbacks when the narrator is still a warship, "I" can encompass so many things, and sometimes explicitly refers to different facets in the narration--is "I" Justice of Toren, or One Esk, or a specific segment, or Breq narrating from twenty years in the future? "I" isn't simple, isn't unified, and while this is most literal and obvious with Breq/One Esk/Justice of Toren and Anaander Mianaai's split factions it's true constantly throughout the work at every level of scope. Individual characters struggle with internal conflicts and hit their breaking points--what is it that makes someone decide they have to disobey orders and make a stand or they won't be themself anymore? How do you know who you are if you've been forcibly changed (Tisarwat) or if the world you knew has moved on and become unrecognizable (Seivarden)? How does a character on a colonized world navigate the split identity that comes from the pressure to assimilate to the dominant culture? And then there's the Radch writ large, all the Radchaai so deeply invested in the idea that there is only one true concept of Radchaai society, of civilization, but of course there isn't! It changes based on location and over time, and Breq muses that the Radchaai empire would be largely unrecognizable to the isolated sphere of the Radch itself. In these books, even if you aren't the last remnant of a destroyed spaceship and its legion of bodies, "I" is such a complicated concept and the narrative never lets you forget it.
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