#gotta go eat dinner

[thetomorrowshow]

Whumptober 22 - Bleeding Through Bandages

title: misfortune placed these worlds in us

fandom: limited life smp

welcome back to my bad boys au!! i never expected to write more of it lol now i need to name it

cw: blood and injury, implied/referenced abuse

~

A string of whispered curses is all that escapes Grian’s lips, as he clicks on the dim overhead light.

He isn’t usually the one who gets hurt on missions—usually, it’s Jimmy. Jimmy may be the best shot in all the gang, but he’s clumsier than anyone Grian’s ever known. It’s honestly fitting that the first time they met, Jimmy was bleeding to death from a bullet to the lung.

  But now Grian’s been hit, and if he doesn’t stop it from bleeding, the others will insist on calling the mission here and heading back to the manor, which cannot happen. He already had to let himself get captured—a bullet in the thigh isn’t going to stop him.

Before he does anything—thrown into this locked closet as he was—he spits out his ear piece from where he’d been hiding it in the back of his mouth. Hopefully it still functions.

Then he shimmies his trousers off and sets to taking care of the wound.

The closet they’d put him in is by no means empty—it’s a janitor’s closet, well-stocked with cleaning supplies and essentials, and Grian grabs a roll of toilet paper off the shelf and wraps it around the bullet wound.

The bullet hadn’t gone in far, buried maybe an inch deep into his flesh. If he doesn’t try to pull it out, he should be good to go in an emergency. He can clean it and remove the bullet later—for now, he just needs to staunch the bleeding.

Even wrapping it around five times doesn’t stop the blood that blooms through the paper, so he tosses the roll to the side and roots around on a shelf, digging through the cardboard box there for any sort of rag. There’s nothing there, but the box beside it has a collection of dirty rags, some kind of polish smeared on them.

Is it worse to put this on the wound, or let it bleed freely?

Screw it, it’s got toilet paper on it. Grian puts the rag atop the toilet paper, ties it around his leg. It’s almost tight enough to be a tourniquet, with how short the rag is, which maybe should help? Grian doesn’t know enough about wounds.

He doesn’t get hurt a lot, but when he does, it rarely affects him. Mumbo has always bemoaned his high pain tolerance, ever since they were in high school together and Grian could walk away from a fight without even noticing the bruises and cuts all over him.

That was how he’d gotten a place in the Bad Boys, actually. Sixteen years old, at a corrupt high school and living with an abusive roommate, Grian had fallen into gang fights too young and had eventually gotten picked up by one.

Too many kids got lost to violence like that. Grian was just one example, amid countless others. As soon as he had enough rapport in the Bad Boys, he’d helped to establish the standard that they didn’t work with anyone under eighteen. In the past five years, Jimmy has been the only exception.

Jimmy’s eighteen, now, and he’s chosen to stick with the Bad Boys in light of his recent adulthood, likely to get closer to getting his own apartment.

Everyone has a motivation for joining up—Grian’s had been protection. He’d made far too many enemies in high school, and he’s certain that his old roommate would have no qualms about killing him if he wasn’t associated with one of the most powerful gangs in the area. 

Jimmy’s reason is his sister.

The only time he talked about her was when they first met him. Grian and Joel were fleeing a successful mission, only to find Jimmy on the ground, struggling to breathe around the bullet hole in his chest. He’d mentioned his sister, how much she meant to him, how he needed to get her safe.

As far as Grian knows, he hasn’t managed it yet. Jimmy always looks like he’s carrying a bonfire in his chest, his shoulders weighed down by the logs he keeps feeding it. He’s angry and tired and frustrated, but he never talks about why he feels that way. He just spends hours shooting at practice targets and sparring and moping around the manor, a plastic flosser always jutting out from his mouth. He leaves on weekends, presumably to go home, and always comes back in a worse mood than before.

The only thing that softens the sharp edges of his personality is feeling useful—like being on a mission. That had quickly propelled him into the strike side of the gang, despite his youth. Grian and Joel, already a team, had decided to show him the ropes, and it had turned their team of two into three as they became the only people who would tolerate Jimmy.

He isn’t a bad kid. He isn’t a bad kid at all, he just doesn’t know how to keep a lid on his emotions. He probably didn’t get a lot of attention growing up, poor kid.

Grian shakes himself from his thoughts, checks his watch. Almost midnight. Joel and Jimmy should be doing the final sweep now—they’ll be able to let him out of this closet, then they can pick up any remaining valuables and head out.

It isn’t often the three of them get assigned to a stealth mission. Grian’s not bad at them, but Jimmy’s terrible at sneaking and lying, and Joel’s more suited for sniping, so they usually handle intimidation or company deals. Grian had been relieved for the change of pace—until he was spotted. Now he just has to sit in this closet, waiting for either his team to track him down or the enemy to move him somewhere more secure.

Hopefully his team arrives first.

Grian rubs his earpiece off on his shirt, tucks it into his ear. He’s only had to stick it in his mouth once before, and it had luckily still functioned that time. He can only hope he’s had the same luck.

“Hello?” he whispers, tapping twice on it to activate the mic. “Red to Green and Yellow. Do you copy?”

“We copy,” Joel crackles back immediately. “Thought you were gonna stay silent.”

“Yeah, well. Got myself into a bit of a sticky situation. Check any closets down the fourth hall, yeah?”

“Why, did you leave something?”

“Yeah. Me.”

Jimmy unmutes just to laugh at him.

“I’m flipping you off so hard right now,” Grian says, not actually flipping anyone off. He pulls his trousers back up over his bandaged leg, buttons them. “Yeah, they grabbed me and locked me in here. They thought I was leftover from the recon mission, though, and not the start of a new patrol.”

“So the cover isn’t blown?” Joel asks.

“Nope. They’re even less on their guard, actually.”

“Cool. I’m actually heading down that hall right now. Yellow’s on the second floor, still.”

“Almost done, here,” Jimmy announces. “I’ll be back down soon.”

Grian stuffs the roll of toilet paper into his pocket and stands up, shaking out his feet. It definitely hurts to put weight on his injured leg, but he can walk it off.

The lock clicks and the door swings open just as he’s reaching up for the pull switch on the lightbulb. Joel grins at him, eyes sparkling with mirth behind his lowered sunglasses.

“Little bird locked in a cage?” he asks innocently. Grian shoves him, follows him out. He grabs Joel’s gun from the holster and clips it into his own (where his gun was confiscated from him upon being shoved into that closet).

“Hey!” “Use your spare.”

Jimmy joins them in the stairwell at the end of the hallway, and together they go down the flight of stairs. The rub of his jeans against his leg chafes his injury, but Grian just grits his teeth and rolls with it. They’re almost done, anyway. Just a quick check of the ground floor, then off to the van.

Most of the lights in the building are off, but some reason, there’s one flickering light at the bottom of the stairwell. Grian glares at it, then moves forward to take point—but Joel stops him, grabbing his sleeve and turning him around.

“What’s this?” Joel gestures to his leg.

“It’s nothing,” Grian says easily, shifting to try and hide his leg. Did it bleed through his jeans already? Maybe it’s worse than he thought. . . .

“You’re bleeding, you idiot, did you get hurt?”

“It’s barely a scratch. Come on, we’re—”

Too late. Joel unbuttons Grian’s jeans (Jimmy wolf-whistles obnoxiously), tugs them down just enough to see the dirty rag—now soaked with blood.

“Did you get stabbed?” Joel asks, dumbfounded. “Why are you walking on it?”

“It’s fine,” Grian says. “We can finish the mission, don’t worry about it—”

“You need to get back to the manor, there probably isn’t anything down here—”

Grian casts his eyes around, looking for any sort of way to distract Joel—

Jimmy’s looking on, chewing on one of those constant flossers, and seemingly without his notice, there’s blood trickling down his arm. Perfect.

“Timmy’s bleeding, too,” Grian says, nodding toward him, and Joel immediately drops Grian’s leg to turn toward Jimmy. Grian uses that opportunity to pull his trousers back up.

“What? You too? Am I surrounded by self-sacrificing morons—?”

“What?” Jimmy glances down at his arm. His eyes widen for a fraction of a second, then he hides it behind his back. “No. No, I’m not.”

Joel glares at him. “Mate, I just saw it. You’re bleeding.”

“I—” Jimmy glances around, something almost panicked seeping into his expression. “I—yeah, but it isn’t from this. It’s just—it’s just a little cut, don’t worry about it.”

Joel isn’t having any of that. He tugs Jimmy’s jean jacket off, rolls up his shirt sleeve.

Just above Jimmy’s elbow is a white bandage, wrapped around the bicep. Even in the flickering light, it’s clearly soaked through with blood, some of it seeping out around and dripping down his arm.

“What? When did this happen?” Joel asks, confused. Grian wants to know the same thing—Jimmy didn’t report running into any trouble. Was he just carrying bandages on him?

“It’s from yesterday, I’m fine,” Jimmy says. He looks like he wants to talk about it as much as he wants to eat a lemon. He looks like a tiger trying to sleep that keeps getting poked. He looks like he wants to bite Joel’s head off.

“Sorry, but I’m gonna need more information than that.”

“I fell, okay?” says Jimmy. He rolls his shirt sleeve back down, slapping Joel’s hands away. “I tripped, tried to catch myself on a wall, and caught my arm on a door hinge. It isn’t deep. Let’s keep going.”

It worked as a distraction, apparently, because Joel just shakes his head and mutters something about needing to be careful, before leading the way into the basement. But, for all it got him, Grian just feels like something’s squirming in the depths of his stomach.

Jimmy’s lying.

He won’t meet Grian’s eyes, he would barely even look at Joel. His temper, usually subdued on a mission, had flared briefly, and his hands are still clenched into fists.

He’s lying.

He didn’t fall onto a door hinge.

He probably got into a fight.

You’re supposed to report if you get into any fights with rival gangs, but most people don’t do that. Sometimes it’s embarrassment, sometimes it’s out of fear of punishment, sometimes it’s because they don’t want to be stopped from retaliating.

With Jimmy, it’s probably the latter.

So when they get back to the van, and Joel’s driving them to the manor, Grian speaks up.

“Tim, who’d you get in a fight with?”

Grian sees him stiffen in the front seat. Usually, Grian sits there, but Joel had banished him to the back in order to put his leg up.

“I—I didn’t.”

He’s definitely lying.

“Sure, and I totally didn’t get shot in the leg.”

“Wait, you got shot?” Joel demands. “I thought—geez, Grian, you should have told me, I thought it was just a stab wound or something—”

“Timmy—”

“I didn’t get in a fight,” Jimmy says hotly, turning to look out the window. “I swore I wouldn’t, remember?”

“Yeah, well, that injury wasn’t caused by a door hinge,” Grian scoffs. “People don’t fall onto door hinges, what kind of excuse is that?”

“You weren’t there! And I said—I tripped, and—”

“Sure. You just tripped badly enough that—”

“Grian?” Joel interrupts, a note of warning in his voice. “Shut up.”

The surprise of the command is enough to cause Grian to fall silent. Jimmy keeps looking out the window, uncharacteristically quiet.

No one speaks for the rest of the ride. Grian gets settled into medical and Jimmy disappears, likely for his usual bed (or, perhaps, for the gym, where he can beat on the punching bag until he’s too exhausted to be angry).

“What was that about?” Grian asks, once he and Joel are alone (and he’s hooked up to some IV fluids, his leg properly stitched up).

Joel rubs a hand across his face. “Jimmy’s definitely lying,” he says. “But . . . I don’t think he fought anyone, either. Jimmy would tell us if he got in a fight, wouldn’t he?”

“I mean, maybe. You never know with Tim.”

“Look, Grian—” Joel sits down next to him. There’s something oddly solemn in his face, something that gives Grian pause. “I—I had a friend in high school,” Joel starts. Grian restrains the snarky comment that rises to his lips.

“His name was Oli. Every time I saw him, he had a new bruise. And every time, he made up some excuse—that he walked into a door, or tripped down his front steps, or . . . or tripped, and fell onto a door hinge. Things like that, you know? It was like that every day. Until CPS got called on his family, and I never saw him again.”

The letters CPS sink deep into Grian’s mind. He gapes. Joel shifts uncomfortably.

“He still lives at home, doesn’t he?” Joel says. “He’s just a kid. And whenever he ever mentions his sister, it’s about getting an apartment so he can get her safe. I just—”

“You—you think his parents . . . what, hit him?” Grian asks, cringing.

An awkward sadness weighs down Joel’s shoulders as he shrugs. “I think . . . I think it’s possible. Really, really possible.”

That isn’t rare. In this profession, it’s not a surprise to hear of child abuse.

But . . . Jimmy?

How could anyone hurt Jimmy?

It . . . it adds up, if he thinks about it. It adds up, because isn’t Jimmy always coming in after the weekend with new bruises? Isn’t he always grumbling about clumsiness and accidents? Hasn’t Grian confronted him several times about getting into fights, and each time Jimmy had just argued with him until they both stormed out of the room?

Grian feels sick just to think of it. If Jimmy’s not safe at home, how bad had it been to incite him to seek out gang protection?

“If you’re right—and I’m not saying you are—we should help him with that apartment,” Grian says. Joel nods his agreement.

“Yeah. And soon.”

[telekitnetic-art]

Custom formline commissions are now open!!!

I was hoping to wait until I had an established new job to post this but the job hunt is still gonna be going for a week at least, so I'm opening these now!! All prices are in CAD, and I'll be accepting 3 slots to begin with!! If you want to see more examples of my formline art check out my portfolio website! You can also check the tag #telekitnetic art on here!!

Check below for more details; shares/reblogs are appreciated!

Details to keep in mind:

Consider your character's design and my style before you submit an enquiry! Some details like overly complicated designs, clothing, etc. may not translate well to formline! When it comes to animals and animalistic characters, the formline will keep the main animal the design is meant to be based on in mind (Ie, semi-canine designs may lean towards traditional canine shapes, etc.)

Because of this, I recommend sending an enquiry only if your character leans towards the animalistic or anthropomorphic side. No NSFW/R18 enquiries.

Payment is to be made via Square, Stripe, or Interac E-Transfer. Due to issues I've seen happen to other artists using PayPal, I'm hesitant to use that service for commissions of this price amount. If PayPal is the only possible service that you can use, please let me know in your enquiry and I can make an exception.

Estimated turnaround for this commission type is 3 weeks to a month and a half depending on the size and complexity. This may change depending on my job search, and I will update commissioners personally if the commission timeline changes!

Also important clarification: these custom designs are not intended to be tattoo designs, please don't send an enquiry with the intent of using them as such!

These are not first come first serve; I'll wait about a day before getting in touch with commissioners.

Be sure to check out my full terms of service here as well!! It includes a graph for a public look at my queue and progress!!

Feel free to DM me if you have any questions or want clarification on something, but please only submit enquiries and commission requests to my email address (jazzjosart@gmail.com)!! EDIT: I forgot discord is also a thing so if you want to send an enquiry via discord, my username is TeleKitnetic and my number is 3556!

[jounosparticles]

jouno finding out tetchou put off saving the world to find him and tetchou expects him to get mad but instead he starts crying because he didn’t know he meant so much to another person.

[neverendingford]

skyglow:

(alternative title: photo dump of a midnight desert run)

[popcornoncemore]

Not only does Jehan Prouvaire dress in a bold way that isn't quite taste-adjacent, they also change outfits seemingly magically.

You see them in the morning wearing one thing, at the meeting they are wearing something else. You turn your back on them at a gathering and their elaborately awful outfit has changed to something equally as horrific but the polar opposite of what they had on before

[lazybakerart]

house inviting wilson to watch The L Word with him is one of the gayer things he's done.

[wild-moss-art]

Coco’s duvet day!! They’re watching hotel transylvania (:

[rosicheeks]

Anyone have any easy (cheap) dinners when you feel like shit and don’t want to do anything?

[jeonghanurl]

I empathize with people who have had enough of offgun but I cannot relate, gmmtv can throw whatever shit at me and as long as it's offgun I will eat it up

[skyward-floored]

I finished another IAU thing but I don’t have time to upload it before I have to do a bunch of things tonight. drat.

[pigeon-wizard]

so i don't know how many people have nebula on here or have watched Jacob Geller's new video on Exit 8 on there, but i have some thoughts!

(btw this might be a bit anxiety inducing, so like maybe skip over this if your feeling a bit shaky already. have a good day :3)

In the video he brings up Gang-Stalking and Paranoid Schizophrenia and as far as i know i would say they are fair was to interpret it, i haven't had any experiences with either, but while I was watching it i was just thinking "huh, this is just like my experience with OCD!"

No matter how normal the place, no matter how safe it is in an objective sense, it's still scary somehow. hell, the scariest places i've ever been in are extremely normal places, just a little darker then usual or a bit too quiet. as a safeguard you develop patterns, in Exit 8 it can be check the floor, check the man, then the doors and the lights, if the posters are normal you continue and if anything is off, you run. in my life it's been very similar in a sense, is the bedroom door closed? what about the closet door? you don't want the monsters from there to get you so better check them, and so on and so forth. its not even anything in specific half the time, it's just 'a monster' or 'a threat'.

the thing is that your just running in circles like a headless chicken, it's like your safeguards are the only thing letting you get to the 8th and final exit. and often it doesn't help to know this, you can know its all bullshit and still be scared. for years before i got actually diagnosed i was just in a loop of knowing that no monster was there and i was as safe as can be, and still scared, still repeating my compulsions. unless you put in the hard work (and it can be excruciatingly hard) to put a stop to your compulsions.

it's honestly a surreal experience but it's much better when you find a way out of it. its not Exit 8 all the time, and when you actually get to relax it's so nice.

[satsumadraws]

Fate (ty @bi-medusa for the idea!! <3)

[gardensnakie]

How’s life? No pressure question ofc, but if you want to share please feel free to do so with this ask :3

Eh, it doesn't feel all that great right now. I'm tired and hungry a lot, but I just have to get a routine together. My sleep has been wonky, I've been waking up too early, but I feel fine then but it also feels like I can't rest completely- I have dreamless nights mostly. And I also just get annoyed a lot, but it feels better being around people I like.

[isa-ah]

on the one hand i want to try for a second wind to stay up and get really into something but on the other hand im sleepy and im pretty sure my husband went to bed without me so i honestly might as well

[worldofgoo]

unsure if i will draw this weekend... you know what i guess ill try to at least, i always get worried when i have a lot of things to do but i have to remember that i always have frequent downtime in between stuff i make myself do

[evilmagician430]

every morning i get ready for school and by the time im sitting in class im like fuckkkk i wish i was at home sewing custom clothes and doing beaded embroidery and then i eventually get some stuff done that day but it's not enough so by the time i get home im like fuckkkk i gotta do homework now and then when im done im too tired to make anything with my hands and tools and i go straight to bed. endless cycle of misery