#-- is thinking of corey beyond what is really expected of her when they've only just met

[hersweetrevenge]

ahh another instalment of my favourite show !! man, i'm glad corey's last outing didn't scar him too badly, i feel like i've said it before, but i love the way this story waxes and wanes, after such a weird and uncomfortably tense night out, we get the lull of the comedown -- but we've also hit the point of no return, and that dark feeling of something bad on the horizon feels so well ingrained !! 💗💗 (plus we had our surprise guest star, rose !!)

You didn’t realize at the time how Corey held onto things, good, bad, and neutral, with white knuckles in his heart.

corey soaks up everything that happens, he's an emotional sponge (he's an empath lol). but you're so right, the way he hold onto anything and everything. he's learnt to be super observant, that any little detail might be important in some way later.

He was confused about why it was so different from last time

nooo !! him being confused is almost worse than him being paranoid. i love this contrast of him being genuinely vulnerable because he just doesn't know what to expect, he's so inexperienced, while also having the growing undercurrent of him being dangerous - he never stopped being dangerous - and sooner or later that's going to come to a head.

he followed the paranoia all the way down the rabbit hole, worrying that the joint was spiked, that Veronica had mixed something else with the weed, that she hated him, that he’d feel weird for the rest of his life. 

vindication !! ahh i love this so much, i just knew (that's a lie, but i had thought it lol) that he'd get it in his head that veronica did it on purpose. and i love how he voices it when he's still very much stoned because then reader doesn't even really question why he'd think that other than just general greened out paranoia. this was so, so good because every single chapter reader is getting closer to the truth, but she just doesn't see the red flags from the right angle, or just doesn't ask the right questions. if corey was ever going to slip up it'd be now.

“Will you still love me if I feel this weird forever?” He asked, like he’d already been devastated by the answer. ... “No, you wouldn’t,” he insisted with tears in his eyes... You swept your hand over his forehead, brushing his curls back. “I would.”  

would you still love me if i was a worm?

ahhh you write him anguished so well !! these moments where he is completely stripped back, so genuinely vulnerable to the point he might even seem just a little bit pathetic are everything to me !! i love the word devastate, and it says so much here, how he's wracked with pure sadness over something that hasn't even happened. i feel like this is the first time he's cried so openly in front of reader? and it's not angry or frustrated, it's almost like premature grief. it's like all of his worries about losing reader are coming out now, building into this huge thing that isn't really about the drugs at all.

the simplicity of "i would" because it's true !! no explanation or defence just "i would love you". it's straight forward, something corey would appreciate if he weren't in his current predicament.

Corey came into the room in his boxers, his skin still hot and pink

my brain must be irreparably ruined in some way, because why am i so enamoured by this? i love your wording, it's so simple and feels really tender. and it is such a vulnerable, tender little moment and we get to see it 💗

You know he’s no angel

girl, you don't know the half of it !! i'll mention it again in a few points but this idea of reader never quite guessing the right things about corey is written so well and integrated so consistently !!

(although he is, in fact, an angel)

"I had some alerts set on parts websites. I almost had it a couple times but I kept losing it. Auction ending while I was at work, shit like that. I had to fight for this one. Like, I got in a bidding fight for it." 

man, i love this so much !! it's such a mundane little thing, but thinking about him sat there in an ebay bidding war just like, soothes my soul haha you're amazing at getting these details, things i wouldn't even think about but of course he would do !!

Do you really need to ask him why he didn’t tell you his birthday? ... What could you gain from the conversation that you don’t already know? Why hurt him needlessly? 

the inner conflict here is so, so, so interesting to me !! the way reader, although i think she's right and corey doesn't particularly like his birthday, imparts this assumption onto him. it's so perfectly infuriationg because reader gets so close to getting right, and in her concern of not hurting him, tends to miss the mark by just a fraction, ending up with a conclusion that is almost right but not quite.

Your giggle makes him laugh harder. His wide, dimpled smile floods you with affection.

i've said it once, i'll say it a million more times; i love when corey laughs. laughing with corey would fix me, actually. i can absolutely see him laughing more just because someone else is, and that way he's kind of stilted about it until he's certain on the situation.

Not long after you go inside, the sky turns a menacing gray, any trace of the sun blotted out... just as fat raindrops start to splash against the windows.

yes !! foretell that bad omen !! we love some prophetic weather. the way it closes in and cuts reader and corey of from the world, into their own bubble away from everyone. i love how encapsulated it makes the rest of the scene, braving the storm together and knowing the other person will still be there, right next to you, on the other side.

also, "fat raindrops" will forever be the best kind of rain and it evokes something in me, a weird sort of joy, anytime anyone describes that type of rain 💧 your wording of this whole sorm actually is so wonderful, i can feel it rolling in.

You turn off all the lights in favor of a hoard of candles and the glow of the TV. Corey lays on the couch and you tangle yourself in his legs

domestic bliss 💗 you're the expert in writing these moment of intimacy that are so... normal. normal and familiar and romantic because literally what else is there !! what more do we need ?! one of my favourite things is the blueish tv glow, ethereal and grounding at the same time, and this is literally the perfect scene.

The impression that Veronica is a severe threat, well beyond the level of any other person in his life. The impression that she’s more dangerous ... The impression that Veronica could, would, and will destroy everything he's worked so hard for. It's only a matter of when. 

i am so madly, deeply obsessed with how you write this from corey's perspective !! the tone is amazing !! the way, at least in his mind, he paint veronica as the villain, after everything he's done. how no matter what he did, he really, really, really wants to just have a happy (or at least uneventful life) and veronica is going to ruin it. veronica is the threat, she's dangerous; your word choice has me in a headlock seriously !! we feel for corey, we know veronica would have every right to turn him in if she ever found out the truth, but we really, really don't want her to.

the countdown has accelerated now

i love this !! it feels like a really good parallel to ends canon, the way everything went down because he hit terminal velocity and couldn't stop it even if he wanted to (he didn't). only this time feels more real, and he's desperate to slow the clock, spend as much time with you as possible before it all goes bad. stop the clock if he can and be with you forever and ever.

In the dark he pulls you closer, wishing desperately that there was a way to have you all to himself. 

classic corey moment. corey who is well-meaning and caring, but possessive and ravenous at the same time. how his experiences and relationships have shaped him into someone who's emotionally unstable, someone who will do anything just not have to let go of the person (and it only ever can be one person, right?) he loves. how really it's kind of sad how he'd been made to feel that anyone he loves is always on the precipice of leaving him.

i love this image though, the darkness around them, the way he pulls you in closer. the way he would pull you both into the shadows forever if it meant he could keep you. only he knows he can't and he wouldn't, but he so badly wants to.

Stupid, lovesick bastard. 

our stupid, lovesick bastard 💗 as torturous and desperate and all-consuming as his love is, sometimes he's just some guy who is in love. he's sappy and sentimental and oh so sweet on you. it's the moment of realisation that this is his forever, and if it isn't he's going to feel the heartbreak.

It’s been so long since he’s done it, it takes him a minute to realize — this is what making a new friend feels like.

stop, stop, please !! 😭 i am obsessed with the switch in his thinking, from rose being an asset to rose being maybe his friend? the way he's never had a lot of friends, and how he's had to reduce interpersonal relationships to the barest minimum ("safe to know" or "not safe to know"), so when he actually is making a friend he's surprised how nice it feels, to just be cool with someone.

That’s the guy that killed that kid! ... How convenient to have a violent mob descend on him at a bonfire. All they’ll need to do is find a stake. 

thinking about how many times he's heard that, when people whispered behind his back in grocery stores or yelled at him across the street. he's been "the guy that killed that kid" for so long. and now he's gone so long not hearing it, he'd started to think that maybe he isn't just "the guy that killed that kid", he desperately doesn't want to be that anymore (and maybe he's ignoring all the far, far worse things he's done since then, but none of that matters as much as that first one). but he knows it's something he can't get away from, no matter how far he goes, someone will know.

Clean Again

Chapter 12: THORNS read on AO3 | previous chapter | tumblr chapter index make sure to check AO3 for this fic's playlist and other extras! Corey comes down... general warnings for this fic - angst, fluff, eventual smut (MDNI), canon-typical violence, canon-typical gore contents/warnings for this chapter - oops! all angst 3,397 words @rebel-blue @heartrot666 @wolvesandvampires @cordelium @toxicanonymity @multifandom--mess @hersweetrevenge @futurewife @yllcm @ethanhoewke dm me or reply to this post to be added to the tag list 💕

Your car will never be a show car. While it's in impressively good shape for its age, and people often express surprise about its condition, there has been no blobject renaissance. Cute cars from the era of soft shapes are firmly out. Nobody is desperately searching for a PT Cruiser. But you love your little jelly bean to death, and for years it’s been a thorn in your side that the first thing you did at 16 upon being given full control is switch the radio out. 

You just had to have a CD player and an aux port for your iPod, the cassette converter thingy wasn’t good enough for you. The aftermarket radio wound up looking dumb, the design severely clashing with the rest of the car’s knobs and gauges, and the CD player skipped at every tiny pothole and rock you drove over. It’s exceedingly low priority – you’ve been dealing with it so long that most days you don’t even notice, and in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter much at all – but for a while you've been set on reinstalling the factory radio someday.

You told Corey this early on, just in passing. You had no reason to think that he had internalized it. You didn’t realize at the time how Corey held onto things, good, bad, and neutral, with white knuckles in his heart. So, unbeknownst to you, he’s been looking for the right radio ever since. Now you sit in the backseat watching him disconnect the aftermarket radio’s wiring harness, half of your dashboard piled up in the driver's seat. You still haven't talked to him about the birthday thing. 

The drive home Wednesday night was quiet, just the road noise and the local college radio station turned low. Corey slumped against the passenger window with glazed eyes. When you glanced over at him, it seemed like he was barely there. You cursed yourself for thinking he could handle the hotbox, feeling bad because you knew it probably made his anxiety worse instead of better, and annoyed because you needed to talk to him about this birthday bullshit, but he was already going to be bummed out from the comedown. How hard would it have been for you to suggest snuffing out the joint as soon as you started to notice Corey getting wobbly? Of course not passing it to him wasn’t enough when the entire car was one swirling cloud. 

When you got home he was even clingier than normal, stalking you through your apartment with hunched shoulders until you sat on the couch and patted your thighs, beckoning him to come lay his head in your lap. 

That was when the floodgates opened. He must've been even worse off than you had thought, he didn't seem to have come down much at all yet. He was confused about why it was so different from last time, and reassurances that it was normal did nothing to quell his building panic. Despite your best effort to get him to resist, he followed the paranoia all the way down the rabbit hole, worrying that the joint was spiked, that Veronica had mixed something else with the weed, that she hated him, that he’d feel weird for the rest of his life. 

“Will you still love me if I feel this weird forever?” He asked, like he’d already been devastated by the answer.

“You’re not going to feel weird forever, Corey.” 

“But would you love me if I did?”

“I’d love you no matter what.” 

“No, you wouldn’t,” he insisted with tears in his eyes.

Like the night you watched The Lobster, you suddenly felt like you weren't really talking about him being stoned forever. Self-inflicted, you thought, and your annoyance settled into guilt.  

You swept your hand over his forehead, brushing his curls back. “I would.”  

You finally convinced him that he'd feel better if he took a shower. When he got out, you were lying in bed on your back, staring up at the ceiling. How had you let yourself make it this far without knowing his birthday? How could you miss such a big gap in your basic knowledge of him? And the date had come and gone since you met him! Did he say something and you just forgot? Are you a terrible girlfriend? 

Corey came into the room in his boxers, his skin still hot and pink, his hair towel dried. He curled up next to you with his head on your chest, and before you could say anything to him at all, he was asleep.

It feels like a rain cloud following you around. It's only been a couple days, but the window is closing, the problem edging closer and closer to being something you have to just let go. And you've considered letting it go. You're not mad at him, he doesn't seem to even realize you didn't know, and now you do know. The weak, sad version of you that stayed with Orin so long, that took forever to break things off with Hurley, certainly would have left it alone. But that feels like a regression. There just hasn't been a good time to bring it up yet. 

And now isn't a good time either. You've established a precedent, beginning all those weeks ago when he came to fix your sewing machine – you let him work in silence. If either of you speaks, it's always him who initiates, explaining what he’s doing, asking you to reposition the flashlight, giving you instructions for a task that requires more delicate fingers than his. It must be more than 100 degrees in the car, but the sweat that beads your forehead isn’t from the heat.

In front of you, Corey’s already securing the radio cage back into the dash, wordlessly reaching between the seats for you to hand him the screws one by one. The humidity turns his hair into a frizzy halo all around his head. You know he’s no angel, but his presence in your life feels like such a blessing, and while you might not be angry, the conversation will still be a confrontation. You’re terrified of pushing him away, scaring him off, like taking a step too quickly towards a backyard deer you want to eat out of your hand. If you’re not careful he’ll startle, bolting back into the woods, and you’ll be left standing there alone with a handful of wasted oats. He snaps the last piece of your dashboard into place, then rotates to look at you.

“Moment of truth,” he says. “Keys?”

You hand him your keys and he cranks the engine. Blue-green digits appear on the display. He clicks the radio’s power button and the speakers hum lowly with static. He spins the knob back and forth and the volume rises and falls. He presses a few of the other buttons, making sure the functions of all the rainbow wires he twisted together are present and accounted for, then he sets your clock and station presets for you.

"All good," he announces. 

"Yay!" You exclaim. "It's so nice to have her back to her original glory. I can't wait to start buying tapes from work. Thank you so much, Corey." You lean forward over the center console to give him a gentle, lingering kiss.

"No problem." He clears his throat.

"How did you find it anyway?" 

"I had some alerts set on parts websites. I almost had it a couple times but I kept losing it. Auction ending while I was at work, shit like that. I had to fight for this one. Like, I got in a bidding fight for it." 

You sense an opening. It’s not a good one, but you take it before you can change your mind. “I guess Madame Veronica was right,” you say. 

“What do you mean?” Corey asks.

“The shit she said about Aries. They like a challenge and fight for their loved ones or whatever.” 

He just looks at you and shakes his head no.

“Do you remember that conversation at all?” You ask. “You were pretty far gone.”

“It’s all fuzzy. She complimented Dad’s ring. I got a sandwich. The bathroom was really clean.” He shrugs.

Fuck, you think, somehow both disappointed and relieved. If he doesn’t remember then maybe… Maybe it actually would be okay to just let it go. Maybe it isn’t regression. The old you avoided conflict for your own sake, because you didn’t want to make yourself feel bad. But this isn’t that. This is a conflict you want to avoid for Corey’s sake. Do you really need to ask him why he didn’t tell you his birthday? The only people who don’t get excited about their birthday are people who were never celebrated enough, and people who wish they were never born in the first place. The implication makes your heart ache. What could you gain from the conversation that you don’t already know? Why hurt him needlessly? 

“Yeah. I’m so sorry about that. When you have a higher tolerance you don’t realize how much it can fuck somebody else up if they don’t have a tolerance at all. You don’t remember what happened when we got home either?” 

He shakes his head again. That settles it. If he doesn’t know how badly he spiraled, his overall impression of the night is probably pretty good, right? Why soil what little he remembers with a question that will feel like an accusation, no matter how much you insist it’s not? 

“Well, what happened?” 

“I got you to take a shower to sober up, but you didn’t sober up at all, you just rolled straight out of the shower and into bed. Out like a light.” 

Corey chuckles and it makes you giggle. Your giggle makes him laugh harder. His wide, dimpled smile floods you with affection. You crane over the center console to kiss him again, turning his laughter into a buzzing sound inside his face. The commercial block on the radio ends and the station identifies itself over the sparkling acoustic guitar of a late 90’s bubblegum pop hit. The song is cheesy, but the sentiment resonates. Would you love him, no matter what? I would.

You kiss him until the song ends. His face is damp and shiny when you pull away. 

“Let’s go inside,” you say. “It’s way too fucking hot out here.” 

Not long after you go inside, the sky turns a menacing gray, any trace of the sun blotted out. You hear distant thunder like a giant’s stomach rumbling, just as fat raindrops start to splash against the windows. You turn off all the lights in favor of a hoard of candles and the glow of the TV. Corey lays on the couch and you tangle yourself in his legs, settling in to play Smash Bros until your thumbs go numb. You’re extremely impressed with how good he’s gotten, and how quickly, but you’re far too competitive to allow the student to surpass the master, his every skill increase prompting one for you too. Almost every match goes into sudden death. When you can’t take another tie, you blow out all the candles and drag him off to bed.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Corey wasn’t completely honest with you about what he remembers from Wednesday night. He didn’t quite lie, but he left something out, more of an impression than a memory. The impression that Veronica is a severe threat, well beyond the level of any other person in his life. 

The impression that she’s more dangerous than Phil and Joanna, who don’t understand the internet and have helped him enough to be implicated should anything happen, more dangerous than his boss Will, who only pays half of his employees the way the government requires him to and would have to answer for all the taxes he and Corey haven’t paid. The impression that she’s more dangerous than even you, the person most sure of the good inside him, but with the most information to damn him, and the best chance of convincing a DA that he manipulated you into protecting him, blinding you with gifts and acts of service. The impression that Veronica could, would, and will destroy everything he's worked so hard for. It's only a matter of when. 

That timer has been ticking since the first fateful day at the library, but the countdown has accelerated now, and will only keep getting faster, without the gravity of a looming first meeting weighing it down. He felt pressured to say yes to Veronica's joint without the reasonable protest of pot being illegal, and he senses he'll feel pressured to say yes to more and more social outings without the reasonable protest of not liking new people. But she's not new anymore, you'll say, batting your pretty puppy eyes. And Corey will have no choice but to follow you to his own undoing. 

In the dark he pulls you closer, wishing desperately that there was a way to have you all to himself. 

Corey’s intuition that meeting Veronica had broken the barrier between your time with him and the rest of your social calendar proves true two weeks later. He’s in the kitchen, cleaning up the dinner dishes when he hears you answer a phone call. He freezes in place, fork resting against the half-scraped plate he holds over the trash can.

“No, I’m not busy… Right now? Yeah I can… Yeah, he’s here… Okay, I’ll offer those suggestions, haha… Alright, see you in 15. Love you!” 

He’s still standing hunched over the garbage, paused mid-scrape when you come into the kitchen. 

“Are you okay?” You ask, noticing his unnatural posture.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he says, resuming his task and trying not to panic. “Who were you talking to?”

“Rose. She needs some pants hemmed and she wanted to know if she could bring them by tonight. I told her it was okay, she said she understands if you just wanna stay in a different room while she’s here. I have to mark where the hem should be while she’s wearing the pants, but that should only take like 10 minutes.” 

Corey puts the dishes in the sink, very careful not to set them down with too much force, despite the fact that he wants to shatter them on the ground. “That’s fine,” he says.

“Are you sure? I can call her back and tell her to come a different time, or I can run over to her house instead and you can stay here, or sit in the car?”

He weighs his options. There was something you said once. Veronica is a pill, but Rose’s name suits her well. Which means that the consequences of refusing to meet or engage with her are probably minimal, that he can put off the inevitable for a day when he’s more prepared. That is, unless it gets back to Veronica that he avoided Rose. She would certainly think that reflected badly on him. And Rose allegedly being a sweetheart also means she could be an asset, a second sympathetic voice in chorus with yours. Veronica hearing that he agreed to meet her, having her vouch for him… This could be the one time meeting a new person is a good idea. If he never has to be in a position like this again, it would be too fucking soon. 

“It’s fine,” he affirms.

You come around the island to wrap your arms around him, smooching him all over his face. “Thank you, baby,” you murmur in his ear between kisses. 

Baby. The word dissolves his bones, turning him into a puddle at your feet. It’s only the second time you’ve ever called him that, and this time it isn’t mocking like it was when he struggled to hit the bong. This time you mean it. God, he is so fucked. No matter what happens from now on, he’s doomed, he’s damned, he’s absolutely, completely, irreparably fucked. But being torn apart by police dogs, giving the existing bullet hole in his window 1000 new friends in a shootout that he’s destined to lose, even life without parole would be worth it to hear you call him baby.  Stupid, lovesick bastard. 

When Rose arrives, Corey is sitting at the dining room table. 

“Hi, Corey! How are you tonight?” She asks like they're old friends. Her arms are loaded with fabric.

“Uh…Okay, and you?” He responds, caught off guard by just how different she already seems from Veronica. 

“I’m great! I’m so stoked for these pants to finally be the right length. Our girl over here is like a wizard, my clothes always come out so good when she fixes them.”

“Oh, stop,” you say, coming into the room with the step stool from the kitchen. 

"No, she's right. You always do a good job," he agrees. 

Rose goes down the hall to the bathroom, changes into one of the pairs of pants, and comes out to stand on the step stool. The three of you chat while you orbit around her feet with a pin cushion on your wrist, then she hops down to repeat the process. Corey’s shocked to find he enjoys the conversation. Even as it drains him to have his facade of normality tested like this, Rose is a soothing presence and he finds a sort of ease. It’s been so long since he’s done it, it takes him a minute to realize — this is what making a new friend feels like. Of course, any sense of calm Corey feels can only ever be short lived.

"Are you joining us for the bonfire, Corey?" Rose looks over her shoulder to address him as you pin the final pair of pants.

“What bonfire?” he asks. 

“We haven’t talked about it yet,” you say.

“Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to spring it on you." She looks between you, apologetic frown on her face.

“No, don’t worry about it.”

“What bonfire?” Corey asks again. 

“The annual Plymouth Records Summer Solstice bonfire,” you explain. “The store is closed that day and we all have a big party at the owner Gordon’s parents’ house. Is it his parents or maybe his aunt and uncle..?”  

“I think it’s his uncle,” Rose says.

“Right, it’s Gordon’s uncle’s house and it’s a big mansion on a bunch of acres in the middle of nowhere, and like, everybody in the scene comes and we just celebrate the longest day of the year.”

“It’s always a great time. This year Drew’s renting a smoker and everyone else is bringing meat and veggies for it! Who doesn’t love barbecue?”

Corey does love barbecue, but there is no food on Earth delicious enough to make him excited for a party in a mansion with all of your coworkers and God knows who else. He can see it now, one person stumbling up to him, insisting they know each other from somewhere. Another overhearing and joining in the guessing game. He does look awfully familiar. Everyone in the whole house studying his face and whispering suggestions into each other’s ears until a blood curdling scream cuts through all the noise and 100 fingers point at him. That’s the guy that killed that kid! He didn’t just kill a kid, he killed his own mother! How convenient to have a violent mob descend on him at a bonfire. All they’ll need to do is find a stake. 

Rose leaves to change again. 

“I’m sorry, Corey,” you say. “I didn’t want to present it to you like that.”

“Can we talk about it later?” 

“Of course.”

A door down the hallway opens. Rose returns in the outfit she came in, and hands you the pants you’d pinned, folded into a neat stack. The vibe is awkward now. She doesn’t stick around.

“Well, y’all have a good night. It was nice to meet you, Corey.”  

“You too,” he says. 

And it was. It’s not her fault wanted killers and backyard parties don’t mix. He just hopes that he was right about the protection being in her good graces might afford him. Clearly, he’s going to need it. She waves as she slips out the door. You close it behind her and flip the deadbolt lock into place for the night.