#i delt with all the fucking mold

[ionized-angel]

living in this house driving me insanne i want to be aloneee

[pumpkinpot]

Late night: Astarion

.

There was something about nighttime now. It was a peace Astarion wasn't familiar with. Chatter fell with the sun and the worries of the day seemed to press between the pages of an unfinished chapter, idle until morning.

The adjustment was violent to say the least. Astarion battled with himself for weeks upon integration into the party. Ink took to the sky and his mind broke into verse.

Should he loot everyone's bags for valuables? Now would be a perfect time to travel, find other camps and loot their bags or take a little bite of heavy sleepers.

Other people's willingness to trust the darkness was his best defense against their better judgement.

Here was annoyingly different. Trust was currency and you all delt generously. That didn't mean he wasn't himself, or rather the self that he had been molded into.

So he lie there on a stolen bedroll looking up at stars he'd become intimately familiar with and waited for exhaustion to take him. It would eventually take him, right?

The fire was in embers and soft breathing echoed through the shifting trees. He almost wished for someone to charge the camp. Torch in one hand, sword in the other. then at least his alertness would feel warranted.

Some time ago he memorized everyone's breathing patterns to scout who was a heavy enough sleeper to potentially drink from.

Shadowheart whimpered in her sleep and rolled around often. Halsin was an incredibly heavy sleeper, but Astarion wasn't willing to risk those bear arms catching him. Gale ground his teeth in his sleep and woke if the fire stayed out too long.

Karlach slept away from everyone and kept herself well guarded with boobytraps.

Wyll was his second choice behind Tav. He was a deep sleeper and didn't move much. Astarion intended to give him a try until seeing the knife under Wylls pillow.

It had been months since you had been generously feeding him, but Astation still kept the sleeping catalog in his mind. even now, he could locate everyone by their breaths.

Gale to the right. Shadowheart across the way, Tav-

An emptiness pressed in from the darkness. when had they gotten up, where the fuck did you go?

He squinted at your empty bedroll and then looked around. No movement caught his eye. He rolled onto his knees, throwing a bit of spirits and wood into the fire to keep Gale in his slumber.

This night was cooler than most. A welcomed surprise amongst a heatwave. Every night his week he's woken to a slab of sweat sticking his shirt to his back. Tonight it blew blissfully in the wind.

Tav was in none of the standing tents, nor the lake side, nor the storage trunks. He brought his hands up to his lips and blew between cupped fingers.

A perfect mourning dove call spread through the night. He doesn't know how or when he learned to do the imitation, but, he knew when he heard the song, it was time to venture back to the palace before sunrise.

It echoed in soft bouts of three with a break between to listen.

Ironically he'd never actually seen the bird.

That was then, now he used the song to find you when you wondered off. which was more often than he liked.

From somewhere in the thick of the trees he heard it. Soft and not as refined as his imitation, but still it was you. Wherever you'd ventured was beyond the reach of the fires light and he sighed frustrated lying before continuing.

He stepped into the sheet of increasing darkness until he was right beneath the call.

"up here," Tav whispered.

He looked around then up and to his dismay there the fuck you were, on a branch. In a tree.

"Why?" He sighed.

Tavs response must have been inaudible because none came. It was probably that insolent shrug. Astarion clamored up the lowest branch inching his way towards his squirrely companion.

"I'm too old to be climbing trees," He complained.

"I'm older than you," you retorted.

His eyes rolled. "only in human years."

"I think that should count for more where agility is concerned."

He didn't humor a response. His agility was fine. It was tested vigorously and consistently. Except not in tree climbing, which seemed to be oddly important to this particular adventurer.

A quiet disposition fell between the two. It could have been comfortable if the thin branch between Astarions legs was.

"Why aren't you asleep?" He asked, though his tone was harsher than intended.

"You've already fed on me tonight-"

"-Yes and this extra excursion could reopen your neck wound."

"did it?"

If it had, he would be able to smell it and it hadn't. "That's not the point."

"Is your drive to argue and criticize compulsive or some sick hobby?"

His mouth opened then closed. There you go again asking crypically deep questions he would think about later but needed to be witty about now. "A hobby, and I am rather good at it, so it seems or you wouldn't be deflecting-"

"Fuck Astarion I couldn't sleep."

Silence.

"Me either."

Silence. This one fell into one of those categories that could be argued wasn't silent at all. there was adjusting sighs and loud unspoken thoughts and a deafening need to not be silent.

"what was the city like at night?"

It wasn't a simple answer. He couldn't say there were nights he didn't even see the sky or that he scorned the warm pavement when he was out, because it got to be kissed by the sun. He couldn't say that for a few years into his spawn life he relished taking souls off the street because how dare they slink into his territory. into his hell when they had mornings.

It was different now, but only slightly. Night pressed you for answers to questions you didn't want to think about. There was nowhere to hide because it, itself was what you would hide in.

That's why people congregated under lamp posts and kept candles forward. Night wasn't cruel. She was- "Honest. After a certain hour the only ones left were the ones who were hurt enough to not look at the hour."

A break, a breath and a hushed smile. "Do you have the time?"

The corners of his lip tipped up. "No."

Now the night was as it should be. Now the silence could take hold of those who belonged in it. This was his peace.

[ntzsche9]

I started something so similar to this prompt that would never have otherwise seen the light of day! But they're brother-wanderers, and the peril was already delt with. Based on a location from Fallout 4, with two of my OCs from Bad Blood.

Lafayette felt uneasy. The smell of explosives, blood and burning wood still hung in the air, but Luvell had tossed down his rifle and his pack and was scrambling in and out of the piles of books pouring from overturned shelves like a mole rat.

Downtown Boston was never quiet, but the sound of all the explosives and gunfire was sure to draw someone to what remained of the super mutant camp outside the Library. There were plenty of mutie camps around, and they could be summoning a whole family of them to avenge their cousins. Lafayette kept his own rifle at a low ready, pacing the musty halls and carefully listening for anything coming from the floor below. 

The building was strange, and massive, kind of like a museum but much more open. Infinitely more boring. There weren’t displays of oddly dressed mannequins or robots offering tours of their run-down facilities. Only the occasional poster with some cheesy quip about the power and joys of reading. And books. Rooms and rooms with rows and rows of fucking massive bookshelves crammed with books so old many had molded together. Lafayette didn't understand how there was enough shit in the world, even the old world, to write this many books about it all. Most were torn up, swollen from decades of rain seeping through the cracks in the vaulted ceiling above, but there were still so many legible books that even if his quick-reading brother started now, he would die of old age before he could finish them all.

He lost Luvell for a while, but eventually found him again in a cavern of tilted bookcases, sitting cross-legged on the floor and surrounded by multiple stacks of books he had organized in some bizarre order. Luvell had grown solemn in his late teens, pensive and closed off, but when he looked up at Lafayette with a massive grin, all Lafayette saw was the enthusiastic little kid he used to be.

“Look at this!” he said, launching into a rambling lecture about underground power grids and fission energy. Lafayette didn’t have the first clue what the fuck he was talking about, but he smiled down at him anyway, just happy to see him so lit up. That alone was worth all the fuckery it took to get in here.

“And these are for you!” Luvell added, pushing a stack with his foot toward him. The books and magazines were noticeably smaller than some of the books stacked in the other piles, but the tower reached his knee nonetheless.

“Bro we are not lugging this all the way home.”

“If we could drag Dad across the Commonwealth on a modified wheelbarrow, we can bring home a few books," he snapped. Lafayette looked sharply up at him, but his shock quickly subsided into laughter. Luvell wasn’t even joking, side-eyeing Lafayette with a calculative look, which made it that much funnier. “We gotta at least bring home the best ones,” he muttered.

“We’ll bring home the best ones,” Lafayette assured him.

“And stash all the other ones for the next few trips.”

“Next few trips!?”

“Yes! Absolutely! We gotta keep coming back to make sure this place is clear. I’ve been thinking about setting up another mine course when we leave, but I don’t want anyone who actually wants to read the books getting hurt.”

“Luvie this place has sat here for two hundred years, practically untouched." That was just an assumption. They had both seen the withered remains of the library's last guests, but it seemed to have been a very long time ago. "No one gives a shit like you do. It’ll be fine.”

“Ugh, you just don’t get it,” Luvell sighed. He picked up the first book in the pile and dropped it into Lafayette’s lap none too gently. 

….

Lafayette gave up waiting for him. He set up their bedrolls in the atrium, where very few of the glass panes remained, affording them a great view of the clear, starry sky above. The day had been exhausting, and his nerves were still raw, but Lafayette managed to fall asleep for a few hours before he heard Luvell come down the stairs. 

He groaned at the massive pile of books he set down beside his bedroll. "There is no fuckin’ way we can bring all this home. Where would we even put them? Most the houses in Sanctuary Hills leak worse than this place and it's still fucked most of them up."

“I wish we could make an actual settlement here,” he sighed, sitting down beside him. He rubbed his eyes, just as exhausted as Lafayette.

“You could,” Lafayette offered, tone changing at the look on his younger brother’s face. “People have set up in places like this. If it weren’t for all the radiation in town, that museum in Covington would have been converted into something.”

“Build real defenses in the front." Luvell continued, staring thoughtfully up through the few fogged panes of the atrium ceiling, where a waxing moon glowed cheerfully down on them. "A whole bunch of turrets around the place. Like Covenant. But also we’d have some gardens, here and outside. Maybe even livestock, though we would have to be more of a trade hub than a fully self-sufficient town.”

“There’s a whole bunch of offices that families could convert into homes. Who would you let it?”

“I mean, anyone who wanted to learn something. Maybe even teach folks to read. There’s a kid's section with tons of easy books.”

“Bunch of brainiacs, then. Might as well run a big-ass school.”

“Sure, but not just that. We would be able to barter with information. Lafayette, I don’t think you realize how much is here. How important this all is. People can learn new trades from the books here. They can learn computer systems and robotics, or chemistry and the best ways to make new medicine, learn about what resources are just laying around in the Commonwealth still and how we could best use them. Seriously, so many problems can be solved if people just understood things better and could learn better ways to handle them.”

“What would you call your town?”

“It’s not my town.”

“Yes it is. The intercom you hacked outside said you're the mayor. Mayor Luvell Daveriel Schneider. Your dads are gonna be so fuckin' proud.”

Luvell laughed, shaking his head as he thought for a moment. "Maybe Copeland? Like the subway station? No, no, it should just be called 'the Library'."

"Fuck, you are boring."

"You got a suggestion?"

"The Boston Public Mold-brary, the Rotting City of All-the-Knowledge."

"See, this is why you're never in charge of naming things"

….

He had been tiredly staring at the shadows, losing a battle with sleep, when he swore he could hear voices from downstairs. He was instantly awake, turning toward the open doors and straining to hear anything while hoping he was just tired.

No. Voices. They had company.

“Wake up,” he whispered, gently slapping Luvell in the cheeks and forehead before placing a finger over his mouth. Luvell slapped him back, then carefully sat up.

Writing promt

In a decaying, post-apocalyptic world, a lone wanderer stumbles upon a hidden library that holds the key to humanity's forgotten history, but accessing its knowledge comes at a perilous price.

[alotofnerdythings]

Okay real quick. Fuck capitalism and corporate greed and all that. But I’d also like to say that this feels like a v big America problem. Not sure if these are all from America but I can Guarantee that it ain’t Australia.

So I live in Australia. I work at an Australian maccas doing the overnight shift, from around 8pm to 6am, one of those ones on the highway which people stop at on long road trips. I’ve worked at 3 so far, all in the same area and all owned by the same guy. And let me just tell you those places are fucking clean as fuck.

3/4ish years I’ve worked there and in all that time we have had a small mice problem because we’re right next to horse paddocks so we get a few field mice everyonce in a while, which was delt with in a week, exterminates were called, mice were tracked back to any holes they’d made in the store and blocked and poisoned.

We’re also one of those new stores like. I joined the same year it was built so only 4 years old maybe 5 at the oldest. So we do have updated ice cream machines. But every night from around 2amish to about 5 or 6am the ice cream machines go in to heat treat. So the liquid is basically boiled in the machine to kill any bacteria. It’s also emptied out once a week and cleaned to avoid the liquid curdling.

Same thing with the frappe machine. It’s on an automatic timer thing which demands it be taken apart and cleaned. Every time in locks us out we are required to take it apart. It won’t start working till we do.

I think the grossest thing we’ve had is all the fucking bugs in summer, but we get the exterminator come in a few times a month to kill them all. Oh and maybe when we forgot to clean the drains and it got a little clogged up with mold. A bunch of boiling water and bleach cleared that up.

So like, this isn’t a product of the fast food service. Fast food restaurants ain’t just gross by nature. They gross because corporate cuts corners. I ain’t sure what roster systems are like In other countries but we have three overnighters and we ain’t that busy a night store. We have a manager and kitchen and a front counter. And we clean the fuck out of that store nightly.

mcdonalds to their workers: remember we can replace you with robots and it would be just as efficient so do not to beg for more scraps.

mcdonalds three seconds later: ice cream machine broken, sorry.