#junkyard lobby

[lukamoonvibe]

New chapter? In this economy?

DO NOT TAG THE CREATORS PLEASE AND THANK YOU. This is a self-indulgent project for the fans by the fans. It is not written specifically with the creators viewing it in mind. Please respect that.

Link :]

[seat-safety-switch]

Lots of folks have time to do a job twice, but not enough time to do it right. Me, I don't even want to do it once, so being forced to re-do any work is seriously cutting into time that I could spend instead buying more shitty cars on Craigslist.

So it was recently, when I tried to fix a plastic bumper. In theory, it was simple: slap some hot staples on there, sand it down, fog on some new paint. What I actually ended up with was a totally mismatched blob of paint, highlighting a half-repaired crack in the bumper that you could see from orbit.

Failure has its own virtue, of course. If you're observant, you can learn more from your average everyday fuck-up than you could ever hope to from twenty years of coasting through unlimited success. Through careful study (shrieking at myself in the mirror, throwing wrenches) I was able to determine, Sherlock-like, the exact problem that I had fallen prey to. That demon? Attempting to fix something.

If anything, my repair had made the bumper even worse than it was before. Back then, I could at least still pretend I just hadn't noticed the damage yet, or that I was negligent. Now, I had no excuse. I had to re-do the work. "Buying" all the supplies from a nearby Hobby Lobby and mixing everything back up again hurt. Painting a new car? Awesome cool project. Painting the same car again? Nothing but discouraging. I steeled myself, and set forth to do the best possible job, bringing in everything I had learned.

The second time around, it looked about the same. If there is a moral to be had in this story, it's that you can sometimes just get another bumper from the junkyard. Now, with a cracked junkyard bumper, it once again became the previous owner (of the bumper's) fault for driving into all those posts while zooted out of his mind on Uncle Clark's Miracle Drink. I'm gonna get around to painting it any day now.

[jacksprostate]

f Narrator wanting to murder maim mutilate m marla.. or marla/ male marla and narrator/f narrator worsties/besties. or marla/male marla and tyler… or anything with marla/ male marla..

Marlon called me, interrupted me at work, and he said he had a bruise. He said I needed to come and look at it right away, because he needed to know.

This was him, asking me, pounded flank steak, to look and tell him the nature of his bruise.

Marlon hasn't had health insurance in years, so he tries not to think about it, usually. It's easy, since there's no difference when you have health insurance. It's old hat.

But today, he thought about it.

And he noticed a bruise.

So I'm walking up to the Regent hotel after work, and he's in the lobby in his limp little tank top. He'd call it a wifebeater and imagine himself in place of the wife, I'm sure. I wonder if he isn't cold all the time. Mr. Marlon Singer, such a masochist just so he can show off his skeletal body with all the cigarette burns I have to hear him and Tyler laughing over.

I am Jane's abnormal hemorrhoid development.

He doesn't mention what Tyler and I stole from him, even though I think it was all the cash he had. Even though just three days ago he tried to chase me around the house and beat me with a broom. He made me and Tyler go sleep in the junkyard. Buried under our furs, howling at the moon. Maybe I can't fault him for that.

He couldn't keep it here where the guys he brings back could get at it, he said, and sure. But he should've known better than to tell Tyler about it, because now it's bags upon bags of lye being kept in the driest room in the house.

I work on grinding cracks into my remaining teeth as he grabs his neighbors Agatha and Dianne's Meals on Wheels kits. The delivery lady remarks on what a good young man Marlon must be, helping out these old ladies. Oh, yeah. A real, upstanding, mummified rat of a man. Maybe he helped them into the ditch. He yaps at me the entire walk up to his room, and I don't hear a word as I methodically rip up the skin around Tyler's kiss on my hand with a broken nail. It's been infected since Tuesday, and the ring of puffy red flesh makes the ghost of her lips white like the center of a neon tube. Always buzzing.

We get to his room, he says to me, "One of these boxes is for you, you know."

I think about all the women who bother to use what little time they have to operate charities that keep the poor and destitute alive enough to want to kill themselves. All that time spent cooking mac and cheese en masse and putting little packets of powdered milk next to little cartons of the liquid, like they get at schools and prisons, packets that can only be opened by the nimble fingers of caring relatives these elderly recipients do not have.

Sure.

Tyler told me I need to be eating at least two meals a day, or she'd steal a blender and make me drink raw chicken. So I eat the Meals on Wheels box. Sorry Agatha. I rip open the powdered milk packet, dump it into the carton, hold it closed, and shake it. Twice the calories. A recipe for palliative care.

Marlon's sitting there, quiet, eating Dianne's latest last meal. All the urgency is gone. Sucked dry. He's got pallor like a hospice heart failure. When dogs get treated for heartworms, the worms die, and sometimes, not all of them break apart. Sometimes, there will be thin, dead cords of necrotized nematode strung through their heart waiting for the right beat to fall apart and clot a vital artery. This can take years to happen. Your pet recovers perfectly from treatment until seven years down the line, you give it a doggy cupcake and a pulmonary embolism for its tenth birthday.

Marlon looks like he's had his first melarsomine injection and his owner is thinking about taking him to a dog park instead of bothering with the second. If you let a dog get its heart rate up too high when getting treated for all the parasites you let grow in it, its heart will explode. Or all the worms will clog its lungs. Whichever one it is, it's happening to Marlon here in this room. On this bed.

He says he'd found a bruise, a while back. A nasty little thing, like the crush of a plum under your thumb. Near one of his ankles. And Marlon Singer knew he couldn't afford any novel treatments, and he'd seen too many people rot from the inside out from them already. He did not go to the clinic down the street that gets its windows broken in often enough that there's just big black billowing sails of trashbags over their storefront more often than not. Marlon says he once saw a rat nailed to the door, which is something you'd think would be too neat and poetic for real life. He didn't go to the clinic because he didn't have to. And maybe if he was fucking guys he wanted to he would be a bit more cautious, but the men Marlon Singer gets to fuck are the type to have given him those bruises in the first place. They're the reason there's single mothers visiting that clinic, like half melted wax getting scraped out of the picture. He says he shouldn't feel guilty.

I tell Marlon about where I got the idea for poisoning all the food at the Pressman hotel.

He asks me what I mean by that, and I tell him about my first boss at the company I work for now.

When I first started there, I was selling our cars to companies. Bulk orders for work vehicles. My job was to not fuck up any contracts we already had. Marlon is probably aware, but the type of man involved in that sort of thing, he knows he's got you on a collar and chain. You and him both know he'll be renewing the contract, but you have to do the song and dance for him. Pretend you like how close he gets to you. Pretend you don't want to rip his testicles from his ballsack when he leans in sweaty and tells you how he likes your hair, did you go and do all that just for me?

Because he knows. And you know. But enduring this is what you were hired to do. If you were a man, you would've been hired to create a sense of the old boys club with this guy. But you're not.

There is so much pretense in the world.

Anyway, my first boss, call him Joe — whenever I'd return from those trips and dinners, Joe wouldn't pretend that it wasn't a shit job. He'd commiserate and wish me luck with the next one. He didn't overstep, he wasn't creepy, he kept his distance. The best you could hope for. Thirty days on the job, they asked me how I was doing, and I told them I was doing great. The job was amazing, I felt embraced by the company, my boss was great. One of those things was true to me.

And when Joe got his promotion, for being such a great regional manager, he cornered me in my cubicle and informed me he'd been jerking off into my nicely labeled thin salad lunches each time they showed up in the office fridge. He told me this with the same smile he'd always worn.

Marlon, he's next to me, and he leans closer like we're having a nice little confession. My skin itches.

It was before the 90 day clause kicked in my health coverage, so I had to wait at one of those free clinics like Marlon's, and I was surrounded by a lot of young men, wispy mangled pears. What little flesh was left was soft. When I told the nurse what happened, I watched myself die in her eyes. Dappling up with rashes and bruises until I was all painted and sunken like a bog body.

For the longest time, I wondered if I'd become the oral Mary. How many times I vomited in that office toilet, I don't know. I stopped bringing lunch.

The thing is, I couldn't see it in his face. Joe's, I mean. Not even when he told me. I couldn't see it in anyone. So I stopped eating out. Stopped eating altogether, really.

Marlon, his response was to go to the support groups. His tragedy was that it was a slow death, coming for him. Best to wriggle into the pile of dying bodies, see what it's like. Maybe that could muster enough suicidal impulse.

I tell Marlon, of course, I couldn't go to HR. I was a new hire with no evidence and previous record of liking my boss. I didn't want to tell my mom. I didn't want her to know. Those uncomfortable dinners became absolutely, wretchedly unbearable as I thought about the food I was being forced to share.

When the option came up for a dead end job in the least loved department in the building, I put on the best performance of my life to get the part. Best aspiring Compliance and Liability head and sole department employee, that's me. My new job was to keep secrets. It was, already, old hat.

For months I thought about waking up from a narcoleptic fit at my desk, with Joe leaning over the cubicle wall and asking if I was alright. I watched my stomach like it was nuclear. Every extra second it took until I bled like usual slid me closer to buying myself a shotgun and pumping a slug or two into my brain.

It's an unavoidable fear, I tell Marlon. You can't do anything about it. Once you know, you know. At some point, you have to find the peace in it. Imagine yourself, a balloon popping with meaty chunks flying apart, splattering onlookers and raining viscera.

For a month, six months, I had cancer. Worse than cancer. Every time I eat out, I get it again.

Marlon is looking at me, melting stained glass, drowning in that sort of shared pity you build together with someone who's dying.

I don't want Marlon to feel guilty.

I tell Marlon, that's why I poison the food at the Pressman hotel. Someone's got to do it. Blood in the tomato sauce, spit on the steak. Imagine what you could do to a soup. The men who go to the Pressman hotel, they're the kind that leave Marlon bloody and walking around Paper Street calling for Tyler to come out and burn more holes into him. They're the kind that get promoted from regional manager. They're the kind that lean in close, pull your wrist towards them, and say there's one way they know you could secure the contract renewal. The kind that almost ruin it in a temper tantrum when you don't, resulting in an upper management intervention on the 24th day of your new job. They're the kind that hear that shit and say you should've been more appeasing. More polite.

Don't feel guilty, Marlon.

I hope all of them rot so everyone can see the maggots eating their insides.

Marlon isn't smiling. I am unavoidably bad at distracting him. There's something final in it, when he sighs, and takes off his tank top. He says it's on his back, and I should just tell him.

I look. I see it. Black hole, botfly, necrosis. There's so many things these broken blood vessels could be. Withering, snapping apart like mummified heartworms. I imagine driving the two inch melarsomine needle deep into the muscles bunched upon his spine.

I look.

I press my hands into him, and I grip like I'm trying to rend my fingers through his skin, deep into his body cavity to rip out his guts. Like I'm trying to grab the rope of his small intestine and strangle him with it. Marlon's yelling at me and trying to hit me, arms flapping like a chicken, and I am bruising ten deep circles into the soft pearskin of his abdomen. It's the only place left on him that's mealy, that isn't frayed rope under worn out leather.

I tell him, you've got bruises. They look mostly normal, to me.

Don't worry too much about it.

And Marlon, he leans into me, and I let him.

[scorchedthesnake]

March 7, 2011

I moved to New York City in August 2010. My life before New York was something I’d grown completely unsatisfied with: I had moved to Connecticut for graduate school in 2001, had weathered two recessions in the relative security of academe but could see the writing on the wall for the doom of that profession and so had, via my teaching assistants union, begun to work for our international union as a communications staffer. This had given me a way out of Connecticut, though escaping the cultish environment of the union would still take a few more years.

The person I was back then was very unlike the person I am now. I wasn’t very much fun those first nine months in the city because I was just so afraid of everything. Bars scared me; too many strangers. Clubs scared me; too dark and too many unknowns and unpredictable scenarios. I was happy to be in a new place but petrified by what that freedom actually meant, and I had yet to find any place to belong or feel at home in.

I worked on 7th Avenue back then, around 27th Street. I remember sitting in my dreary cubicle that Monday, when I got a message from my best friend Matt, asking me if I wanted to go to a show that evening. No, I said, I really just want to go home and hide from the world. It’s the show John (O’Malley) is working on, he said, and he got us comps. Well what kind of show is it, I asked? “We’re gonna, like, chase sexy dancers around a warehouse.” Oh god that sounds so stupid, do I have to? “Just come with me, if you hate it you can leave.” 

So around 7pm I walked over to 10th Avenue and the block was so dumpy back then – junkyards, warehouses, not much else. I saw a small line of people gathered at the address I’d been given, so I approached and was handed this card:

I don’t remember anything about checking in or what it was like seeing Manderley for the first time, though I do remember Maximilian being there, giving a short speech and then we were taken to the elevator. I remember getting off the elevator on 3, and taking far too long to explore an empty Macbeths bedroom before, I suppose, figuring out I should investigate the other floors.

I’ve told this story often, though: at some point I came across an extremely attractive man moving quickly, so I did what it seemed like many others were doing: I followed him. We were in the 2nd loop by now, and I had realized it was a loop; but my target soon was running down High Streeet and through a darkened door and it slammed in my face and, to my surprise, was locked.

Oh, there are secret things all over here, aren’t there?

So I picked up his trail again as soon as I could, and stuck as close as I could. Including when we stumbled down all the flights of stairs and I wondered, should I call for help? Is the performer injured? But I stuck to him like glue and when he again approached that darkened door I was close enough to get inside.

And so the highlight of my first show was seeing Luke Murphy in interrogation.

After the finale I reconnected with Matt. We had, of course, seen completely different shows. As we exited we saw John. “Did you get any one on ones,” he asked? One on whats? “Well, I had one where the man in the lobby took me into a room and started putting on makeup.”

No we hadn’t seen anything like that. We immediately set about buying tickets for later in the six-week run. And we wandered the streets for a couple hours after that, comparing notes, feverishly reconstructing what we had just experienced. 

Obviously I did not sleep that night.

So much of the time you don’t know when everything has changed. You realize it long after the fact and in retrospect. Not this, this I knew was a fundamental shift. I’d never felt my senses at full alert like that, my mind racing trying to make sense of something so visceral. The music rang in my ears for hours, days later, and I knew when I came back, I’d need a plan.

[slutforstabbings-archive]

The Penpal

Only an hour an a half late to my own party! lol Here's my fic inspired by my news article about survivor!Corey and my conversations with @cordelium and @toxicanonymity!

survivor!inmate!Corey Cunningham x fem!Reader

As someone who grew up with awareness of Michael Myers despite not living in Haddonfield, you were gripped by the news of what happened on Halloween 2022. You reached out to Corey with a letter, and your correspondence became more than you ever dreamed it would.

contents/warnings - descriptions of prison, court, etc, family angst, handjob, riding, rough doggy

6,264 words

@rebel-blue @nachtmahr666 @wolvesandvampires @multifandom--mess @ethanhoewke @hersweetrevenge

18+, minors dni

Corey Cunningham. The man, the myth, the legend. The psycho babysitter, acquitted of aggravated manslaughter. The Michael Myers copycat who survived several severe injuries to become a celebrity during his murder trial. And, officially this afternoon, your husband. 

You made the long drive to Chester from Chicago yesterday and stayed in a hotel overnight so you would be well rested for today. You go down to the hotel lobby in sweats and smash the continental breakfast before returning to your room on the third floor to get ready. As you wait for the tub to fill with water and steam clouds the bathroom, you reflect on the past year and a half, how a single letter changed your entire life.

<3 <3 <3

On November 1st you woke up to a barrage of texts from your cousin Kristin who lives in Monmouth, 20 minutes from a cursed small town. Growing up she was always so obsessed with The Boogeyman of Haddonfield, a mixture of fear and fascination. As teenagers she would always call you when she was babysitting, after the kids went to sleep. You would stay on the phone with her, just in case, even when it wasn’t anywhere near Halloween. You opened your eyes to a crisp fall morning, looked at your phone, and saw the messages. 

11:30

HE CAME BACK AGAIN 

HE CAME BACK AGAIN AND THEY KILLED HIM AND HES ACTUALLY DEAD THIS TIME

HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT

I don’t have any other details yet but they fucking did it!!!! They killed the boogeyman!!!!

12:15

Oh my god they put him in an industrial shredder of some kind???? 

They turned Michael Myers into fucking ground beef!!!

12:48

Corey Cunningham is involved somehow!?? 

There’s a lot of rumors and conflicting information but 

it seems like he either killed someone or was killed by someone who thought he was Michael?? 

1:03

Okay not much more clarity on the Corey Cunningham thing, we still don’t know how what happened to him relates to Michael but he was shot AND stabbed and they found him in Laurie Strode’s house!? But he’s ALIVE and they airlifted him somewhere up by you. What a wild fucking night. Jesus Christ.

Kristin had told you all about Corey Cunningham. You remembered the news articles she’d sent you, the photos of him they ran in the local paper. You felt deeply for the guy, what a horrible case of wrong place, wrong time. And it couldn’t have happened to someone more gorgeous, which felt like it increased the tragedy, even though it shouldn’t. His face still lingered in your mind all this time later, coming to you as soon as you read his name. While you were very interested in what could’ve led to Michael Myers being turned into “ground beef,” you were much more concerned with what would happen with Corey.

In the following days and weeks, Kristin kept the updates coming. Much of what she told you wasn’t supposed to be public knowledge, but she had a loose lipped friend of a friend in the Warren County Sheriff's Office. Michael’s final rampage had left 12 dead. It would be 13 if Corey didn’t survive, he was in the ICU in a medically induced coma. Laurie and her granddaughter Allyson had killed Michael and taken his body to a junkyard to drop it in the metal shredder. 

Then, suddenly, the police weren’t so sure all 12 victims had been Michael’s. They weren’t sure any of them had been. They found Corey’s fingerprints and DNA, clear as day, incontestable, on a glass door at one of the scenes. Everyone who died was connected to him somehow, including both of his parents. Laurie gave a statement that Corey had stolen Michael’s infamous mask and emulated him in a murder spree for days leading up to Halloween. When he woke up, if he woke up, he’d be arrested. 

He occupied your thoughts for the whole month of November. A sick obsession you couldn’t shake. For years Kristin had told you about the way people talked about him, how even though he’d been acquitted, people treated him like he was just as bad as Michael. You read everything you could about him. It wasn’t hard for you to understand how being told you’re evil every day could make you snap — they wanted it, and he gave it to them. 

The cops were keeping the hospital Corey was in out of the news, but when word came along the grapevine that he had woken up and been moved out of the ICU, you asked Kristin to find out. She gleefully delivered. You wrote him a letter. Really you wrote so many letters you lost count, trying and failing to express your sympathy, your hope that he would recover and beat the charges, struggling to decide what tone the letter should take. Finally you felt like you had done the best you could, and you dropped it in the mail. You weren’t sure why you did it, or what you expected to come from it. Something in you just needed to reach out to him. To let him know, even after everything, he wasn’t alone. 

<3 <3 <3

  You sink into the bathtub. You never thought you would get married. The whole thing always seemed so hokey and archaic. But only spouses and children are entitled to unsupervised family visits at the prison. You can’t keep spending every visit you make with a guard breathing down your neck, barking at you every time you dare to reach across the table for Corey’s hand, timing your hugs when you get there and when you leave. Sporadic phone calls and driving 6 hours to sit across from him for 45 minutes once a week aren’t enough. It was a hell of a lot of paperwork, and you feared that the publicity your relationship had received during the trial would lead the warden to prohibit the wedding, but after months of red tape, you finally got the word. The marriage was approved. 

You slather your legs in gritty body scrub, massaging scratchy circles. When you trust that all the dead skin has been obliterated, you plunge your legs back below the surface of the water. Bubbles plume around you. You want your skin to be silky for Corey. You know he’s touch starved in there. Affection between inmates is highly frowned upon, and he doesn’t have many friends anyway. 

The other prisoners resent his notoriety. More than once you’d come for a visit and his beautiful features were hidden from you under bruises and swelling from getting jumped again. When you expressed your concern, Corey just smirked. “You should see the other guy,” he told you. You worry about him, but you’d be lying if you denied feeling a little pang between your legs when you think about how dangerous he is. You believe the other guy looks much worse.

<3 <3 <3

11 days after you sent your letter, you stopped in your apartment building’s mail room after work. Your mailbox was stuffed with what looked like the usual stack of garbage, but as you shuffled the envelopes on your way up the stairs something different caught your eye. A handwritten address, and not one of those bullshit fake handwritten ones from the cable company. You broke into a sprint, zooming up the remaining flights of stairs to your apartment. You slammed the door behind you prompting your roommate to shout at you from their bedroom. The sound of their protests barely registered. Hands trembling, you opened the envelope. 

You read Corey’s response, and then you read it again. And a third time, still leaning against the front door of your apartment. The officer assigned to guard my room is writing this for me. I can’t move my arms yet, he began. Your letter meant a lot to me. I’ve been awake for two weeks today and you’re the first person who isn’t a nurse, a cop, or a lawyer that I’ve heard from. The letter was brief and a little stilted, but that was understandable. He probably had to be very careful, especially since he was dictating directly to a cop, not to say anything that could be used against him in court. 

You sent your reply the next morning. After that his response came quicker, and again you sent something back right away, including a photo of yourself at his request. A few days before Christmas you heard from Kristin that Corey’s address at the hospital had gotten out, been published somewhere online. In his next reply Corey himself confirmed it. I’m getting a ton of letters now… They want me to write a book and turn the book into a movie… I’ve never gotten this much attention before… I always look for something from you first. But the most interesting part of that particular letter came at the end. 

You’re so pretty. I had them prop the photo you sent up on my bedside table. I can move a little more now, so I can actually look at it. I hope that’s not weird. I talked to my lawyer about putting you on my visitor’s list. You should get a letter from his office soon. He’ll help, if you want to come see me. That’s all I want for Christmas. 

<3 <3 <3 

Fully clean, exfoliated, and conditioned, you rise from the tub. You’ve had butterflies in your stomach all morning, but they multiply as you dry off and look at yourself in the mirror. You’re starting to realize why more traditional brides tend to have huge entourages around them. Despite your disdain for marriage as an institution and your unconventional circumstances, you still wish there was someone here. Someone who was happy for you and could make sure the back of your hair looks okay. But nobody in your life even knows about this except for Kristin. The prison doesn’t allow guests at weddings, so she stayed home. You still should’ve asked her to come, to be there before and after.

You do your hair and makeup under the bright vanity lights. You always try to look your best when you visit Corey, but today is a special occasion. If not the wedding, then what happens after. Your first time getting more than 45 minutes with him in months, your first time alone with him in longer. You think about his hands. What a special pair of hands. Broad and freckled and strong. A huge, gnarled scar across his left palm. The hands that wrote you all those letters. The hands that took 10 lives and have broken countless bones in the other inmates’ faces, but would never ever touch you with anything other than love. You finally get to feel them on your skin again today. And that makes everything worth it.

You go to the closet and take out a long garment bag. You lay the bag on the bed and pull the zipper down. You can’t help but laugh. When the wedding was approved, the prison sent you a massive list of requirements, including a ridiculously long and yet somehow vague dress code. Nothing too full skirted or too heavily beaded. No cleavage. No trains. No veils. That was all fine with you, a cupcake shaped Cinderella gown doesn’t exactly seem appropriate for a prison wedding with no guests, even if the rules allowed it. You just picked something simple, and as sexy as possible without violating the rules. Corey doesn’t know anything about the dress, you tried to talk to him about it and he shut you down. “The groom’s not supposed to know anything about the dress until he sees it,” he told you. Well if he wanted to find room to be a little bit traditional, you could do that too. Turns out you look pretty good in white.

<3 <3 <3

It took until a week into the New Year because everyone was out of the office for the holidays, but you gave Corey his Christmas present. It was extremely awkward at first, sitting in the hard chair next to his hospital bed, a cop leaning against the wall in the corner, pretending not to be listening. He was handcuffed to the bed, just like in the picture you’d seen in your newsfeed that morning. He beckoned subtly for you to lean in towards him and he whispered to you. “My lawyer took that photo. He leaked it himself. He thinks it’ll help people see me sympathetically.” The cop in the corner yelled at him for whispering. You leaned back away from Corey, but he smirked at you. You loved being his conspirator.

The photo of him in the hospital worked. It sparked massive outrage that someone in his condition would be handcuffed. Where did they think he was gonna go? It seemed needlessly cruel, even for a murder suspect. It succeeded in making him more sympathetic with everyone… except your family. 

When they found out you had written to him, they could understand why you might want to send a letter or two. They knew about Kristin’s fixation on Michael Myers and that you two were close. Everyone had felt bad for Corey and rooted for him during his manslaughter trial. Around letter number three is when they started to be weird about it. The case against him was mounting, more details were being released. Some of the victims died in really horrific ways, didn’t you understand that it wasn’t just a terrible misunderstanding happening to a handsome young man this time?

They were the ones who didn’t understand. The more you learned about Corey, from the news, from his letters, from the old coverage of his manslaughter trial that you’d been revisiting, the more you believed in him. Not in his innocence necessarily — you didn’t know how to feel about that, going back and forth from being certain he did to to being certain he didn’t. But you believed in his heart. If he did it, he did it for a good reason. That DJ that died had spent years promoting insane theories about him being a part of a cult that worshiped Michael or some bullshit. You couldn’t imagine what that would do to even the kindest of people. 

When you got home from the hospital, they were waiting to confront you. Visits were the last straw. It was one thing to be a murderer’s penpal. It was quite another to hang out with him. What could you stand to gain from this, they wanted to know. Apparently genuine connection with another human being was not the answer they were looking for, and hybristophilia wasn’t a funny joke. You just stopped talking to them about him. They knew, or at least suspected that you were still visiting him, that when you were “busy” every weekend you were really with Corey. But if you didn’t talk about it, it wasn’t a problem. 

When he was discharged from the hospital, Corey’s lawyer worked to get him on a pre-trial release program where he could be on house arrest instead of in jail until the trial was over. He wasn’t supposed to have visitors unsupervised, but you did spend a few glorious hours alone with him, once. He’d been in pre-trial release for a few weeks and realized his release officer was overworked and underpaid and would not be paying very close attention to him. Corey had a short term lease in a shitty apartment building, the only place his lawyer could find with a landlord that agreed to host an alleged murderer on house arrest. 

You stood on the stained, threadbare carpet outside his apartment, heart beating in your throat, vibrating with anticipation. You’d planned your visit in innuendo, pretending to tell each other about books you’d been reading, things you’d been up to. The building is really old and drafty, but at least I don’t have bugs, he’d written. The b in bugs in cursive, despite his usual cramped print. Bugs. He’d checked to make sure he wasn’t being listened to. In his coded way, he told you not to knock. So you stood there, kneading the floor with your sneakers, trusting he would check for you through the peephole soon. 

Then the door swung open, and there he was. Standing up! No spinal halo, no neck brace, in sweatpants and a t-shirt instead of a hospital gown. His survival was so miraculous, you kind of never thought you’d get to see him like this. Heat flooded your cheeks as you made eye contact with him. He reached out and grabbed your wrist with his giant hand, gently pulling you into the apartment and into his chest as he closed the door. You were so unprepared for that first hug. You’d never gotten so wet from just a hug before, but feeling his arms slide around your waist made you gush. 

He couldn’t stand up for very long yet, so he led you to the couch. He sat in the corner, half against the back, half against the arm stacked with pillows, and folded one leg towards him. You sat sideways to face him. He asked about your job, what was going on in the world out there, you asked him how he was adjusting to life outside the hospital bed. The arousal you felt from the hug refused to subside. You found yourself struggling to focus on the conversation, inching closer to him, watching his lips while he complained about how uncomfortable the ankle monitor was. 

“Can I see it?” You asked.

“If you want to,” he said. He pulled the hem of his pants back on the leg folded on the couch between the two of you, and there it was, a little green light on it blinking. Your nails were longer than Corey’s and your fingers were more slender, so you slipped the tips of them under the strap and scratched. His lips parted in a sigh. 

“Be careful. It has a sensor thing, so they know if you’re fucking with it.”

“Okay,” you whispered, scratching and rubbing all the way around his thick ankle, trying to jostle the monitor as little as possible. “Is that better?”

You looked up from his ankle to his face, and caught sight of an imprint in his sweatpants on the way up. 

“Yeah, much better. Thank you,” he breathed. 

You leaned in to him, pulled as if by a magnet. “No problem,” you said, face only inches away from his. You hovered, basking in the tension between you, until he brought his hand to cup your jaw and urged you towards him, closing the gap.

The warmth of his lips set your whole body alight. Your heart raced. You wanted to pounce on him but you had to be gentle. It was painful to restrain yourself, and you could tell he had the same problem. But you would take him any way you could get him. You took his top lip into your mouth and ran the tip of your tongue across it, following its gorgeous arch. He sank his teeth into your bottom lip.  You moaned into his mouth, and he groaned back, reaching out to put his hands on your hips. You could tell from the way he dug his fingers in that if he had the strength, he would be yanking you into his lap, so you hurried to straddle him. 

You hiked your skirt up to set your soaking panties directly on the bulge in his pants, rocking your hips ever so slightly.

“I’ve wanted you since you sent me that picture,” he said in a strained voice. “I hoped you would be pretty, but I didn’t expect you to be so pretty.” 

“I have you beat. I’ve wanted you since I saw your mugshot in 2019.”

“You have?” He asked, looking at you in confused wonder.

“I thought you were devastatingly hot, and it’s even worse in person. I was almost your 14th alleged victim the first time I saw you in person.” 

His face changed from awestruck to a cocky, almost creepy smile. You leaned back from him, standing up off the couch and his smile only got bigger as you took off your shirt and dropped your skirt to the floor. In just your underwear and a simple bralette  you sunk to your knees in front of him. You put one hand on his thigh and the other on his cock, wrapping your fingers around the shape of it through the fabric, stroking him slowly. His smile fell as his face went slack with pleasure. He put his hands over yours, encouraging your stroking hand, weaving between the fingers of your free hand, and you clenched your thighs together as he moaned your name.

You relished making him feel good, treasuring every second with him, so it was extremely difficult to resist just making him cum, sitting on your heels, looking up into those beautiful eyes. But this might be your only chance to feel him inside you, ever. 

“I brought a condom,” you purred. 

“You- ah- you did?” he panted. 

You slipped the fingers of the hand not stroking him out of his grasp and reached behind you into the pocket of your skirt. You held the little foil packet up for him to see and he made a deep, guttural sound. With some shuffling yourselves and the pillows around, you wound up straddling Corey’s lap again, naked and hovering over his latex-sheathed cock. You planted your hands on the back of the couch on either side of his shoulders and lowered yourself down onto him. You let out a long, high whimper as you settled onto his length. For a moment you just rested there, mentally pinching yourself to make sure it wasn’t a dream. You were really doing this, getting this close to Corey Cunningham. 

You had to ride him carefully, deliberately, not to hurt him. Every nerve in your body strained as you fought your desire to fuck him, until the frustration itself became erotic for both of you, intensifying the sensations of your gentle movements. When his hands went from resting on your hips to grabbing them, you knew he was close. The thought alone pushed you over the edge and you dropped your face to his shoulder to muffle your whimpers, letting out the ecstasy vocally rather than in frantic spasms that might jostle him too much. Hearing you, feeling you clench, Corey followed suit, cursing and calling your name. 

“Is the state paying for this?” You wondered, looking around. You’d both put your underwear back on, but didn’t get any more dressed than that, wanting to maintain skin contact as you sat together on the couch, enjoying the post-sex haze.

“I am. My life’s savings,” he sighed. “It’s not like I’m gonna need it.”

“Don’t say that. You don’t know that.” You admonished him, but really you were saying it for yourself. You couldn’t let go of the tiny sliver of hope that he would beat the charges.

“Do you think I did it?” Corey asked after a few moments of silence.

“What?” You replied, caught off guard.

“Do you think I’m innocent? Or do you think I’m guilty?” 

“I… don’t know. The evidence I know about is… pretty damning.” You said falteringly, shifting uncomfortably against him. You’d considered what all the potential outcomes would mean to you. Could you keep seeing him if he really was a murderer? You knew the answer, had known since you heard about the boy who died with the torch in his mouth. Kristin had shared the crime scene photos with you. They were truly grisly, and for days afterwards, the specter of that burnt out face lingered when you closed your eyes. But even being fully confronted with the reality of what he - allegedly - did to those people, you felt nothing but affection for him. Still, you didn’t like the conversation. It seemed inadvisable. He’d checked for bugs but you still couldn’t quite relax.

“Would you be afraid of me, if I told you I really did it?” 

“No,” you barely whispered. 

“Jeremy, the kid I was babysitting? That really was an accident,” he began. And then he told you everything. Everything, everything. His whole life story, all the things it was too risky to say in his letters. You were still nervous about surveillance, but once he started talking it was like he couldn’t stop. And you couldn’t stop listening either. It was such a rush to hear him describe the kill. You felt all his emotions with him as he spoke. Heartbreak. Elation. Rage. 

“You shouldn’t have told me all that,” you said when he finished. You adjusted your position on the couch to look at him better. “I’m so glad you shared it with me, but… They know we’re close. What if they call me as a witness?”

“I’m gonna make sure they don’t need to,” he said, eyes darkening. 

“How?”

“You said it yourself. The evidence is pretty damning. The case against me is strong, and I can help the jury decide I’m guilty. The state won’t add you as a witness at the last minute if they feel like they’re winning.”

“Does your lawyer know you’re planning something?”

“No. He told me they didn’t have a case at all. Because of Michael complicating things. So I plead not guilty. But now they have a case. My fingerprints and my DNA at every crime scene. Even though I didn’t shoot Ronald, they’re charging me with that too. My fingerprints were on the gun.”

“Were you going to kill him?” You asked, morbidly curious. 

“I hadn’t decided yet,” Corey admitted. “If he had just stayed in the office… It doesn’t matter now.”

For a moment you looked at each other in silence. 

“How are you going to help the jury?

Corey chuckled a mirthless, black chuckle. “I’ve been researching all these other famous killers. Gein, Gacy, Dahmer, Bundy, Ramirez, the Manson Family. It’s practically a tradition to do crazy shit in the courtroom. The papers are all calling me a copycat. Why not keep copying?” 

“Corey, that’s insane,” you protested.

“I am the psycho babysitter.” He took your hand and stroked your knuckles. “Do you want to help me?”

“Help you get life in prison on purpose?” 

You remembered when he whispered to you in the hospital, how good it felt to conspire with him, to tuck his secret into your pocket, where not even Kristin would know. The idea of going to such lengths with him was so tempting, but you wanted him to put up a fight, to argue that the cops already had it out against him because of his history. All he needed to do was give them one little reasonable doubt. 

“Look, I’ve been through this before,” he reminded you. “It’s hell. I already know I’m guilty in most people’s minds. There is no getting off this time. There’s only a guilty verdict, or a hung jury, and then I have to do it all again. I want it to be over quickly. I don’t want to wait two weeks for a verdict again. I wanna rip the bandaid off.” His gaze was so intense, you knew he meant it.

“Okay,” you agreed. 

<3 <3 <3

When you pull up to the prison, you follow all your usual rituals. Turning your phone off and putting it in the glovebox, giving yourself a pre-pat down pat down to make sure you didn’t slip up and bring something prohibited. You check your hair and makeup in the rearview mirror one last time before heading inside.

You and Corey aren’t the only couple getting married today. The prison does weddings in batches. You’re shuffled into the visitation room with two other women, and a man. They’ve arranged the cafeteria style tables to somewhat resemble an aisle and an alter, and the prison chaplain stands at the far end of the room, prepared to officiate, assembly line style. 

You sit anxiously on the edge of your seat, waiting for the prisoners to be brought in. A loud buzzer sounds and the door on the other side of the visitation room swings open. There he is, shackles around his ankles, handcuffs on his wrists, shuffling behind the other inmates. When he sees you his jaw drops in disbelief. You smile and wrinkle your nose at him. 

Luckily the two of you are the second couple in line. When it’s your turn, a guard removes the cuffs from Corey’s hands, but not the ones around his ankles. You meet him at the end of the “aisle” and you’re thankful for all the experience you’ve had restraining yourself with him, holding back the force of your affection to be within the rules. Practice has made perfect.

The prison chaplain runs through the standard wedding vow script. You sign the marriage license and hand the pen to Corey. You just got fucking married. You’re allowed one brief kiss. Then a guard comes over with a polaroid camera and takes two pictures, one for each of you, before they put the cuffs back on Corey’s wrists and lead you out of the visitation room. 

Rather than going through the prison, you’re escorted out into the yard and around the side of the building. The guard buzzes you through several doors and leads the way down a long hall. Finally you come to a door that sits ajar. Inside is a little room that reminds you of the dorm you lived in as a freshman in college. More than just a bedroom, but not quite a whole studio apartment, full of simple, sterile furniture. The guard releases Corey from his restraints, both sets this time, then locks you into the room with him for the next 6 hours. 

You stand motionless next to Corey as the sound of the guard’s footsteps retreat down the hallway. When you can’t hear them anymore, you turn towards him and break into a massive smile.

“Hi,” you say.

“Hey,” he replies, grinning back.

Then you collide. Kissing messily, hungrily, violently. He wraps his arms around your waist and crushes you against him with surprising strength. You cling to him, desperate to get closer, wanting to eliminate the space between you all the way down to the molecular level. 

Within seconds his thick fingers are roaming, trying to figure out how to get your dress off of you. Still kissing him, his tongue filling your mouth, you put the bottom hem of your dress in his hand. He gathers it up around your waist and holds it in one big fist while the other hand cups and kneads your ass. You feel a hot flood between your legs, and your clit throbs. You rake his scalp with your fingernails as you step out of your shoes. 

He hooks his thumb in the waistband of your underwear and yanks them down to your thighs, before returning to get a handful of ass cheek. You can feel his rock hard cock against your stomach. You push against him, trying to get enough space to actually get undressed, but he won’t let you get farther away from him than a centimeter.

“Corey,” you say against his lips, “We have all night.” 

He groans, but he lets you pull away from him. You pull your dress up over your head and drape it over the back of one of the chairs at the little table in the room. Then you step back into him and take over undoing the buttons on the front of his jumpsuit. You get all the way to the bottom and push the sleeves off his shoulders and halfway down his arms before you look away from his face.

“Holy shit. When did all this happen?” You hiss in awe.

When you had been with him before, he was weak from his time in the hospital. Not small, he wasn’t built in a way that would let him be truly small, but he’d lost a lot of muscle just laying there for weeks. You could tell he’d bulked up some since then, but the jumpsuit obscured the true extent of his progress. You squeeze one of his biceps and he flexes it in your hand. The muscle hardening under your hand makes your clit throb.

That isn’t the only surprise though. He’s got tattoos. So many tattoos. He’d mentioned to you on the phone that he was trying to figure out how to build a tattoo machine, that he liked the intellectual challenge presented by his limited resources, but you had no idea it was going to be used on him. 

“I guess you got that tattoo machine working.”

He laughs. “I was gonna tell you, but when we started trying to get married, I thought you might like the surprise.”

“I do,” you half moan, half giggle. 

You squat in front of him and pull the jumpsuit the rest of the way off of him, leaving him in a tight thin tank and his prison issue briefs, already so wet with precum they’re see through in that spot. You ache to have him inside you. You rub your hands over his thighs, then slide them under his shirt as you stand back up. He reaches behind you and unhooks your bra. You let the straps slide down your arms and drop it to the floor. 

Corey grabs your hips and pulls you in for a hard kiss, then uses his grip on you to spin you around, so your back is pressed against him. The desire to grind back against his cock overtakes you immediately, and you thrust your hips into him hard. He reaches under your arms to grab your tits, massaging them, pinching your nipples. Your underwear are still pulled halfway down and you can feel his wetness on your skin. You let out a deep moan. 

The room is narrow and it only takes a gentle push from Corey for you to be on the bed on your hands and knees. He pulls your underwear the rest of the way off and finishes undressing himself. You requested condoms on one of the hundreds of forms you filled out to get married, and the prison provided three in silver foil on the little table. As Corey unwraps one and slides it over his raging erection, you wiggle your hips, putting on a show for him. 

“Fuck,” he huffs, stepping toward the edge of the bed. 

You feel the mattress sink as he kneels behind you, lining himself up. He rubs the tips of his cock against your pussy, tracing circles outside your entrance. You look back over your shoulder at him. His chest and face are flushed a deep red and his eyes look almost black. The sight is too much to take and you jerk your hips towards him. He takes the hint and slides himself in, all the way in. 

You both cry out in unison. Corey pulls almost all the way out of you, then slams back into you, so hard you both lurch forward. Your knees slip out from under you and you end up flat on your stomach with your arms pinned under your chest. He comes down with you, but catches himself with his arms on either side of your head. 

Corey pounds you. You thought you’d been fucked before, but you had been mistaken. This is fucking. With every thrust, the bed hits the wall and bounces off. He’s so deep, hitting just the right spot, so fast and so hard your moans all blend together into one long wail. He presses his forehead between your shoulder blades as he slams you into the thin mattress. It feels so good, all your other thoughts completely dissolve. You get one arm out from under you and wrap that hand around his veiny, freckled forearm. Your fingers don’t even make it halfway around. 

Your long, unbroken sound changes from a moan to his name, spelled with 100 O’s. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he grunts. 

It feels so insane, you don’t think it could possibly feel better, but the pleasure builds and it does. It feels better and better and better until you unravel completely, knowing you're screaming but unable to hear it, the orgasm ravaging your whole body. And it doesn’t stop. Corey keeps thrusting and you keep cumming, your vision going white until finally, with a growl of your name, he collapses the rest of the way, all his weight crushing you. 

You take the deepest breaths you can with him pinning you down, your brain completely fried, until you’re brought back to earth by him pulling out and standing up. You roll onto your back and groggily watch him remove the condom, tossing it into a small trash can under the table. A shy smile crosses his face when he sees you watching. He lies down next to you and puts his arms around you gently, all the animal lust gone from him for the moment. 

“I love you, Corey Cunningham,” you say. 

“I love you too, Mrs. Cunningham,” he says. You both laugh. 

Your eyes fall onto the clock on the wall behind him. You have five hours and two condoms left and you intend to get everything you can out of them.

end note:

While writing this, I found out that Illinois actually does not have conjugal visits or any kind of private spousal or family visitation for prisoners. Most states don't. And many prisoners never even get letters. If you have the time and inclination, I highly suggest getting in contact with a service that provides prisoners with pen pals. Many of them let you choose to only write letters to people serving certain types of sentences for your comfort, for example if you want to write to someone serving life, or if you'd prefer to only talk to those convicted of non-violent offenses. No matter what crimes they may have committed, prisoners are people and people need connection and support.

And if you think the whole system is broken, I highly recommend reading about prison abolition.

[matthew-pasquarello]

carved into the shape of something nasty, the junkyard robot lonely in the dying sunlight. you can see him pace if you're caught in traffic on the freeway.

can't tell the difference between the brass horns of hell, from a distance. from a distance.

the hounds scratch at the door to be let in while we're poaching fibers from the floor of the motel lobby.

[henriiiii-1001old]

time to do a silly over here hey is it okay to ask u to pick one au u have, how would the aus cast do in among us. like who the fuck rages. i shit you not someone ran to the emergency button in a game i was in instead of reporting a body, i was very mad. werent even the imposter either. also hi other person who knows who i am. -silly

anyways i have the PERFECT THING to explain how theyd play among us :33333

introducing: tmc as the morning lobby/hafu lobby!!!!!

you dont need to know who they are to understand, just know that i am insane over them and i love among us videos sm still <333333

SO FIRST!!!! we have mark and sarah as 5up and hafu. 5up and hafu are noted as an iconic sibling duo, very much like the heathcliff siblings. they are also MASTER among us players, most notable for their incredible impostor plays (esp when together as an impostor duo). but besides that, mark and sarah play EXTREMELY well and like order to balance out the chaps of the lobbies.

next up we have jonah and adam the iconic dumb and dumber duo, dk and steve, respectively. they mostly do a lot of trolling. dk is mostly known in his older days for “throwing” a lot of the games, which i just have a feeling jonah would do a LOT. he does get a lot better overtime though!!! as for adam, he gets steve bc steve’s demeanor just 100% matches w adam man. and the lobby has claimed that steve can “roleplay as himself”, which is kind of what adam has been doing his entire life. dumb and dumber can be a powerful duo if they dont throw each other under the bus in the first round and have had some killer games!!!

next up i have thatcher as dumbdog. dumbdog is usually seen in a dark green color, which my brain just went “oh yeah thatcher lol.” however, dumbdog is a mix of a serious and silly player, going along with bits that he thinks are funny but also still being serious when he needs to be. i just think that captures thatcher SO WELL. also dumbdog’s laugh is just so good i might just make it thatcher’s laugh i love it sm.

next we have dave as junkyard. the entire thing with junk is that he’s the oldest in the group, and i think dave would play that role very well even if he’s not necessarily the oldest.

and this is where things get blurry. im not sure who would be who at this point, so i’ll just give a lil rundown of everyone else’s playstyles.

ruth is also a serious and silly player but leans more towards silly. maybe she’d be a good kara? idk

WAIT EVELIN IS MAYBE JANET. i mostly know janet for being so focused on being her role, especially snitch, and its just really entertaining imo. i just feel like evelin would be the same way, hyperfocusing on playing her role and such.

the alts are. okay at the game ig. gabe’s mostly alright but when he’s crew he’ll just get sussed for no reason and it pisses him off to hell and back. six is a VERY silly player. he’s probably a really good jester ngl. stanley i’d say is the best one! very tactical and plans out a lot of their actions. plays really good as both crew and impostor. puppet can be a REALLY good impostor if he knows how the specific role works. he does like to do a bit of fuckery here and there though bc he just likes being so silly goofy.

i didnt almost forget eden (lying) and soeaking of i feel like he’s still getting hsed to the game, likes to call too many buttons, gets caught too often, and misreads a lot of situations. but hymn’s still learning!!! he’s got a long way to go!!!!

uuhhh thats kinda all i have for now ig! also i probably should have clarified this is mostly for unholy gift.

[crockettmarcel]

160 location prompts

credit to spaceskam (it bothered me that the keep reading opened a new post instead of. showing the rest of it lol)

1. Kitchen 2. Closet 3. Stairway 4. Foyer 5. Art gallery 6. Museum (history, wax, science, etc) 7. Library  8. Bathroom 9. Hospital 10. Church 11. Funeral home 12. Wedding venue 13. Parking lot 14. Bookstore 15. Flower shop

16. Grocery store 17. Coffee shop 18. Tattoo parlor 19. Bar 20. Their bedroom 21. Office cubicle 22. Pool house 23. Living room 24. Hallway 25. Balcony 26. Roof 27. Basement 28. Attic 29. Art studio 30. Salon/barber shop 31. Game room 32. Locker room 33. Classroom 34. Computer lab 35. Dressing room 36. Ski lift 37. Pool table 38. Fountain 39. Bleachers 40. Playground  41. Train tracks 42. Ice rink 43. Hot spring 44. Junkyard 45. Golf course 46. Boxing ring 47. Hardware store 48. Club 49. Lighthouse 50. Laundromat 51. Carnival/fair 52. Zoo 53. Police station 54. Abandoned building 55. Ambulance 56. Bakery 57. Cruise ship 58. Practice room 59. Basketball court 60. Football field 61. Waiting room 62. Tennis court 63. Track 64. Cemetery 65. Gas station 66. Summer camp 67. Garden 68. Bank 69. Workshop 70. Ballroom 71. Wine cellar 72. Lakehouse 73. Cabin 74. Boat 75. Bus 76. Plane 77. Study 78. Garage 79. Guest room 80. Someone else’s room 81. Backyard 82. Shed 83. Motel room 84. Playroom (innocent or not) 85. Darkroom 86. Throne room 87. Dungeon 88. Forest 89. Cave 90. Lobby 91. Choir room 92. Auditorium 93. Tearoom 94. Car 95. Lake 96. Park 97. Armory 98. Tent 99. Stockroom 100. Storm cellar 101. Pool 102. Ocean 103. Arcade 104. Sauna 105. Car wash 106. Baseball park 107. Fire station 108. Skate park 109. Barn 110. Ski lodge 111. Photo booth 112. Restaurant 113. Diner 114. Casino 115. Aquarium  116. Daycare 117. Pantry 118. Laundry room 119. Boudoir  120. Sunroom 121. Panic room 122. Greenhouse 123. Mechanic shop 124. Bed of a truck 125. Desert 126. Front porch 127. Back porch 128. Rollercoaster 129. Movie theater 130. Airport 131. Dormitory 132. Boardroom 133. Dining room 134. Ferris wheel 135. Train 136. Weight room 137. Elevator 138. Party 139. Sidewalk 140. Street 141. Deer stand 142. Bridge 143. Orchestra pit 144. Stage 145. Field 146. Cliff 147. Drive-in 148. Ball pit 149. Picnic table 150. Treehouse 151. Blanket fort 152. Bowling alley 153. Alleyway 154. Dock 155. Under a tree 156. Race track 157. Green room 158. Furniture store 159. Beside a bonfire 160. In a hammock

[maxim-tomato]

“We will be carbon neutral by 2050! (Not because we can but because the government is forcing us to and not even in any meaningful or hasty way but with the sloppiest policies they can write so it’ll actually get passed because they care more about the money we give to them via lobbying than the fact we’re actively worsening the planets and peoples livelihoods at quicker rates than ever before just for some shoddily made products that’ll end up in a landfill or a junkyard in less than 5 years, and besides, not a one of us with all this power is gonna be alive by then to care at all. Lmao)”

i for one am not impressed when a company says some shit like "we will be carbon neutral by 2050" that is a long time from now and it is 80 degrees in october

[crewfu]

It's interesting that Steve was still thinking about the Junkyard thing days later because I'm pretty sure Junkyard is fine, though he HAS ranted on stream about his treatment from the GROUPS he plays with in the past, not about any one person in particular. Steve also mentioned how the chat has become a little too mean/snooty/annoying lately and he's tired of looking over and seeing snarky/mean comments constantly from certain members, so he wants everyone to be nicer (himself included).

I think that’s a positive thing and I think it doesn’t hurt anyone to try to be nicer. I popped in the stream when he was talking about wanting chat to be nicer and I’m glad he actually said something about it.

I have not watched Junk’s stream too often but I’ve seen comments about how he has felt he was treated poorly in the past but he has continued to play in the lobbies. Like he’s an adult and can speak for himself if something goes too far. I thought maybe he was just playing up the justice for junk thing he has since it seems to carry over multiple lobbies. We’ll have to see how Steve does next time they play in a lobby together.

[lukamoonvibe]

Some Chaos Crew Cosplays for the soul!

[albertxylin]

Flash Point

Every few days a pop up tells me to uninstall adobe flash player. It's been five years but I still refuse on principle. Flash is a relic of an older internet when the only social media was chatrooms and lobbies and forums, When monetising meant ads on a website And careers online were stumbled upon instead of crafted.

It was fun. It was messy. It was dangerous and bad in ways that nostalgia tries to make me forget. But it was our junkyard, And all we did was play.

The chaos of primordial soup eventually clears, And the whirlpool eventually calms. Eventually all the fun sprouting like fungi from every fallen branch is filtered out, And all that is left is a product. All that remains is an antique filled with memories that no longer moves.

It is time to let flash rest. There are communities and archives that keep its spirit alive, If we wish to reminisce.

[eleinwrites]

"Try, Try Again"

1,000 word Writing challenge: genre: romantic comedy location: motel object: newspaper

Summary: Trying to impress the person trying to impress you is hard! Five attempts at making a connection.

====== Devin was watching a YouTube video when his high school crush walked in. It would have been fine except that it was her video, this was the first time in ten years that he’d seen her in person, and now he looked like a stalker. He slapped his keyboard to shift screens to his current design draft, but the audio still played her explaining engines. Also, he was sitting on the floor of the motel lobby at 3 AM.

He closed his laptop, which cut the sound, and said, “Hi! Welcome back! Do you need a room?”

She paused. Then, “Yes. How are you?”

Which is when Devin recalled he was sitting on the floor and got up. “I’m good. Just, working on stuff. Let me get you checked in.”

She was tall and beautiful in motorcycle leathers, blue streaks in her dark hair gleaming even in the fluorescent light.

She looked amazing.

“You look good, Lorrie. Uh, I’m Devin in case you don’t remember.” He winced, but: she’d been gone for a decade. “Let me get you checked in.”

It was quick: she got her key and left, and he had the peace of the empty lobby to smack his head against a wall.

===

Of course the first person Lorrie saw when she arrived was genius inventor Devin who could achieve anything without ever compromising himself.

Everyone had been eager to take off after graduation. Most of their class got out, a few stayed, but Devin found his way out without ever leaving.

While Lorrie learned to drive, Devin explored junkyards.

While Lorrie graduated from college, Devin sold his first patent.

While Lorrie worked as an engineer on a large team in a larger company, Devin’s designs were another team member.

She was returning to help her parents, successful enough to work remotely. But she had driven through the night, nervous about reverting back into an anxious teenager.

And there was Devin: unapologetically himself, sprawled out like a model, drawing schematics, and all she could hear was her own voice explaining how engines worked. While Devin was revolutionizing engine designs, Lorrie was rebuilding an old motorcycle.

This town was not good for her self-esteem.

===

Lorrie was moving back! He could befriend her! He could be a cool person, too. They both built engines! People online liked his work!

Being a skinny weed of man who spent his time scrounging through junkyards with a “day” job as a night clerk didn’t mean he wasn’t cool.

Attempt #1 to befriend Lorrie presented itself quickly: A woman arrived in a rattling car but refused his help. She would accept help from a lady engineer he knew, so he stayed back and knocked on Lorrie’s door.

Unfortunately, Lorrie had been sleeping and while she did come out to help, he retreated back to the lobby to sulk.

===

She was moving back, but as an adult. She was determined to make friends, specifically Devin who was slender, supple, moved like a slinky, smart and single. Small town gossip being what it was, her mother had confirmed that last part.

Attempt #1 to befriend Devin got preemptively derailed: She dressed down to look approachable, which meant loungewear. Then he knocked on her door because a lady needed help, so Lorrie didn’t even get to talk with him.

===

Attempt #2 to befriend Lorrie: His latest design was ready to build. He invited Lorrie to look for parts in the junkyard with him. She accepted! He showed her his design, she had questions and recommendations, and it was awesome!

Lorrie found something for herself too, and it was almost like a date. He was getting up the nerve to suggest lunch, when an alarm reminded Lorrie of a meeting with her actual engineering team. She worked with professionals with proper educations who could just order new parts.

An amazing conversation for him was a regular day for her, so they parted and he retreated to his room to tinker alone.

Attempt #2 to befriend Devin: Lorrie snagged an invitation to Devin’s next junkyard trip. He explained his design and she demonstrated that she understood and had suggestions!

Watching him work was fascinating; participating was entertaining; and she was about to suggest they get coffee when her phone reminded her of a meeting she really couldn’t skip. She sulked all through it.

Aborted Attempt #3 to befriend Lorrie: Was it unethical to break someone’s car for an excuse to talk to Lorrie? He reluctantly acknowledged that it was.

Attempt #3 (also aborted): If Devin’s own modified vehicle broke, would he let her help fix it? Active sabotaging was both unethical and unlikely to work. She back-burner-ed the idea.

Attempt #4: He could, of course, ask her out. As his mom suggested. As if she wouldn’t be the first person to tell him to leave guests alone, who did he think he was, Norman Bates?

===

She could, of course, ask him out on a date. But she refused to be the asshole customer who asked out a service worker.

Attempt #5:

A new restaurant was opening. He folded the newspaper to the advertisement, and waited until he saw Lorrie.

He kept it casual. “Hey Lorrie, I’m going to check this place out. Want to come?”

===

Moving back to a hometown where nothing changed meant there was no excuse to ask a local for a tour. Lorrie’s parents updated her on the decade of changes in her first afternoon at their place. Including the new restaurant. Everyone would be there. Devin asked if she was going!

She needed to stay casual. “Sure,” she said, and then, “it’s a date.”

===

His heart skipped. It’s just a phrase, but, “It’s a date,” he agreed.

She smiled at him, and he grinned back.

Success:

He wore a suit jacket to be dressy. She wore a dress that hugged her curves and showed off her muscles.

They blushed and grinned at each other and headed out.

[aes-anime-asks]

Could you maybe do a follow up thing for your calculester headcanons where he takes someone to his radio shack of plants?

✨🌴💾Okay, so this ended up way longer than I thought it would be. I've also been thinking a lot about abandoned malls and listening to too much vaporwave lately lol hope you enjoy. 🌴💾✨

Vaporwave soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZUfiW3W1KY

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

“Couldn’t sell it. Couldn’t demolish it. No one could afford to anything back in 2009 except for let it sit. All alone. Sometimes when I’m in sleep mode, I’ll think about what it must have been like for the very last store in the mall. Watching the neighboring stores blink out of existence. Watching the fountains get turned off. Watching the flowers die.”

“God. That’s depressing, Les.”

“I did not mean to depress you. Everything dies. It’s natural. For organic things anyway.” Calculester shrugs, and you swear you can see a wistful look on his pixeled face. You weren’t sure what you were expecting when Calculester said he wanted you to come over, but the enormous, abandoned mall at the edge of town wasn’t high on this list of possibilities. You didn’t expect to feel anything when you saw it, but suddenly you’re brought back to when you were 8 and your mom took you and your best friend for your birthday. You still remember the sticky tables and infinite possibilities as you looked up from the food court at the people streaming by on the floor above.

Now the parking lot is cracked, and weeds grow up out of the planters by the gold trimmed doors. Les glances up at the camera, and you hear a clack as he remotely disarms the security system. You suppose it makes sense that it’s locked, after all, it is his—house?

“Sorry. I could have taken this whole sensor down, but I’m afraid if I do, someone will come in and ruin it. Hurt my plants maybe. I’m not worth much in a fight.” He chuckles. He sounds so cute when he’s nervous.

Your steps echo in the cavernous lobby. This is it. The food court. You jog over to the Cinnabon and leap over the countertop. You put on your best customer service voice. “Good evening sir! Will it be the churro, or the sticky pecan roll today?” Les laughs at you and reaches into his pocket.

“No way. You didn’t.” He’s holding a tube of dough. Cinnamon roll dough.

“I did.” You can practically see his digital green blush. “You see. The machine still works.” Sure, enough the red light clicks on, and you can feel heat, hear it’s electric buzz as he puts the rolls on a sheet pan. “I recall you mentioning “cinnamon rolls” exactly three times since we started dating. It just felt right.”

You and Calculester sit in the food court under the dim security lights. You set a roll in front of him too. Even though he doesn’t eat, it makes him feel included.

“Tell me what it tastes like?”

Guiltily, you reply “Hmm…well it tastes damn good…”

“No. Error. Insufficient explanation.”

He’s teasing you.

“Okay…. Well, it’s soft, and sweet, but with just the littlest kick of spice.” You gently kick him under the table. “Right, you don’t know what sweet is. It tastes like… how being with you feels.” Now he’s blushing. You reach over and grab his hand.

“I.. I… I…” His system is overloaded. You’ve been dating two months, but he’s still not used to being complimented by you. He shakes his head as if to clear his brain and leads you down the corridor. You walk up a frozen escalator, then another, until you’re on the third floor. The ceiling above is triangular with windowed skylights letting in dusty shafts of sunlight. It seems like you must have walked to the very end of the mall before you see it. Radio Shack.

The interior is uncannily familiar, but something is off. It’s the light. Where is the light coming from? As you head further back you realize that nearly all the drywall has been painstakingly removed and the entire back wall has been replaced with a mismatched, stained glass patchwork of junkyard glass. Faded yellow and pink shadows fall onto plants of every kind lining the shelves, leaning toward the light.

“Les. How long did –that—take you??” You ask in awe, gaping at the strange greenhouse.

“About four years.” He says, a touch of pride in his voice. That’s his entire life. “I…I felt very lost after I came to consciousness. Especially after school. When all of you went to your homes, I had… no place to go.” He sighs, almost imperceptibly. “So, I walked. I kept walking. Until I found this place. It was so dark when I found it. Dusty. All these radios, and phones, and computers… just sitting here. Waiting for people who would never talk to them. It was too much. So, I started tearing down the wall, a little bit every day. If they can’t have a purpose anymore, I at least wanted to make them beautiful. Give them somewhere nice to live.”

It’s then you realize that that the plants and the electronics are nearly indistinguishable from each other. Philodendrons and ivy caress the screens and buttons. Aloe and cacti rest atop printers and television sets. You swear that you hear some of the stereo sets hum as you walk by.

“Did you know that in the Shinto way of thinking, people believe that after 100 years, objects gain a soul?” Calculester says, almost absentmindedly.

I shake my head, still silenced by the strange garden.

“I think everything has a soul. Even if it’s just a little bit. Everything deserves to be cherished. So much is cast aside and replaced at every opportunity. I often think about what would have happened if the school had just replaced the library computers before… you know.”

You can’t bear it. The thought of him never existing. The fact that he is an unlikely accident. A wonderful accident. You sidle up next to him on the cot he must have lifted from the old pottery barn. It looks out the makeshift window to the empty parking lot, and beyond that to the forest. For the first time, he puts his arm around you, his metallic touch warm in the sunlight.

“ I hope someday when all of you… organic beings are gone… that life can still find a way to be beautiful for me. I’m scared. Scared of then. When you won’t be beside me.”

For now, though, the time moves slow. You lay together in the unlikely, technological jungle, musing on eternity, and wondering why this couldn’t be it.

[illumilu]

“there’s only one bed” - chrollo lucilfer x reader

a/n: a very stereotypical cliche for fanfics, but, yk what? cringe is heavily underappreciated. so here, have my drabbling of what would happen if you were to spend an unwanted night in the same hotel bed as the adultrio. for the last part, we’re taking a look at chrollo lucilfer! also! this may suck!

summary: you arrive at the hotel with chrollo, your childhood friend and colleague, but to your horror (wink wink), there’s only one bed. this is part three of a three-part series, with the adultrio. hisoka and illumi are already written so i suppose that concludes the series!

warnings: no particular trigger warnings, lowercase intended, a lot of fluff! and cuddling! chrollo being his usual self, charming but kinda dead ,,, except this time he’s not using you (cough neon nostrade) ... no nsfw :)

chrollo lucilfer:

- chrollo lucilfer was an undeniably enticing man.

- you two had just exited the train station, and were now walking to your hotel. 

- why had this trip been planned? well, chrollo had bought reservations, claiming he “had something private to say” one night. honestly, he made you nervous sometimes. just what you expected from the leader of an internationally renowned murder gang.

- the refreshing cold air chilled your face, as you walked along the damp pavement. the large, multistory hotel loomed in the distance, like an upright torch in a sea of gray. you turned to look at chrollo. 

- “it’s cold, isn’t it?” 

- “astounding observation.” he smiled audaciously.

- growing up alongside them hadn’t been easy for you; after all, meteor city was dilapidated. after leaving the place, you had found the estimated population to be around 8 million people. funnily enough, it had never felt like that many.

- you still remembered the day chrollo had formed the phantom troupe. you had watched as he set out the rules standing proudly on the trash-pile; as he described the metaphorical spider and its immortality. 

- personally, you hated spiders. too many legs.

- either way, you stayed there, listening, observing - you had seen them running around the city before, laughing and playing together. how could people be so happy in such an obscure place? 

- meteor city; it was almost... suffocating. the fact that no one acknowledged the residents, even as a collective percentage, chilled you to your core. you wanted to be known. you guessed that was why you were still alongside chrollo today.

- you supposed the only way to get through the maddening sense of compression was with friendship. alas, you didn’t really have many friends. it was always hard to find them. therefore, you would check to see what chrollo’s group were doing together, but would never join unless invited.

- that fateful night, the ignition of the troupe; truly a day to remember. 

- as soon as you had turned around from behind some abandoned trash, chrollo had slowly turned to look at you. you had been listening as he mused about the phantom troupe’s intentions. he had personally seen you around the junkyard many times. always watching. waiting for something? no, just observing. here you were, eyes on him, yet again.

- a pause. you could feel everyone’s eyes on you. but it wasn’t humiliating; it was exhilarating. 

- you still remembered the way you had cursed yourself for thinking like that. why had you come out from your hiding place? you didn’t want anything to do with this group; killing people, stealing things, wandering astray from the path of morality... what was this?

- “did you hear everything?” he had asked.

- “yes.” you whispered.

- your eyes lifted to meet his. you knew almost nothing of where that day would eventually lead you. you shared a long stare that night, almost childish, waiting for him to say something. you could swear his eyes were boring into your soul.

- “you don’t want to join, do you?”

- you gulped and looked at the dirt beneath you.

- “no.”

- things had changed since then.

- you had never did end up joining the phantom troupe. it was too chaotic for you. but, you did end up sticking around and, somehow, you came to know each of the troupe members extremely well.

- whenever they’d rendezvous and cause destruction, you’d always be there, observing from the sidelines. chrollo liked to call it your “unofficial bond”. having spent a lot of your time with the interchanging 13, you knew their likes and dislikes, and often helped them out when they couldn’t get information. for some reason, you felt as if chrollo trusted you with this greatly. 

- rarely, you got to spend time with him alone. you two were undoubtedly closer than any other pairs from the troupe, yet it was more of an unspoken connection than a full-blown one. compared to, let’s say, nobunaga and uvogin, and no one would have even speculated chrollo and you being as close.

- nevertheless, you loved when you got to spend time with him; whenever he loosened his idiotic “i’m the leader and we’re going to kill hundreds of people now!” demeanor, he was actually quite the gentleman. 

- back to the present, you scoffed and continued walking; each breath made a little cloud in front of you, making you grin a little. when you were younger, you had always pretended to smoke whenever it was cold enough for it to happen.

- “you’re such a child.” chrollo said, adjusting his beige headband. you often wondered why he decided to get a tattoo on his forehead. troupe matters, you supposed. finally reaching the grand entrance to the hotel, chrollo pushed the gold revolving door, with an ironic “after you” look. you went through hastily, raising an eyebrow at him on the way in.

- the lobby was truly extravagant, full of grandeur that you had never seen before. you could only begin to fathom how much money the troupe got from stealing. 

- honestly, you really felt like smacking chrollo. what right did he have to take you to such a huge place? with his own laundered money? that he probably earned from making someone else’s life hell? you opened your mouth to protest. he promptly interrupted you.

- “be quiet, y/n. you know have money to spend, so why shouldn’t i spend it on you? just this once?”

- that was a lie. he knew he would definitely do something like this again.

- your mouth closed, knowing the same thing. you sighed momentarily and went off to sit on a weirdly smooth velvet couch in the lobby.

- while absentmindedly checking in, chrollo began thinking about what exactly he was going to say to you. truthfully, there was no real reason for him bringing you here, to the hotel. it was just, lately, he had been feeling strangely drawn to you. you had a certain warm magnetism that contrasted his philosophical coldness. whenever you sat together, he felt some sort of strange exaltation, just by looking at you. whenever you smiled, he couldn’t help but smile back. he had also become considerably happier.

- “wow, boss~ you seem jokier these days~”

- the thought of hisoka made him wince, driving him back to the clerk in front of him. 

- as he stared back at you, who was currently trying to figure out whether you could take the hotel magazines for free, he closed his eyes and let out a light breath. 

- you jolted as chrollo stood before you, tapping you on the shoulder. loosening your grip on the cheap magazine, you glared at him. 

- “keys.” he said, dangling them above you.

- “chrollo. don’t tell anyone. but i think have a plan.” 

- “what? y/n, y-”

- you grinned, grabbed the keys and started towards the stair doors, yanking chrollo’s sleeve along with you. he ran behind you, making quite the commotion as you two thundered up the switchback stairs, shoes scuffing along the floor. through ragged breaths and giggles, he asked you why in god’s name you were going so fast.

- stopping abruptly to catch your breath, you told him to look at your hands, with an impish look on your face.

- the hotel magazine, crumpled in your hands.

- he furrowed his brow at you, laughing confusedly at your antics. you often helped him unwind with your spontaneous, stupid acts, and he was grateful for it. chrollo was someone who didn’t recognize how much they needed a break until they got one. he truly enjoyed how you just treated him as a normal person. since you weren’t part of the troupe, he wasn’t your “boss”. he supposed he was your... friend.

- you slowly made your way up to the room with him. despite him being unnervingly annoying sometimes, you enjoyed every moment with chrollo. every look you shared with him, every joke you had made.

-  even when he was being serious you couldn’t help but admire his twisted resolve. often, you’d brush hands and sparks of ecstasy would rush to your heart. you guessed that was what happened when people were close. but what was “close”? you often found yourself mulling over the classifications of love, even if it wasn’t specifically about him. of course, you could love someone as a friend; what was romance, anyways?

- if there was one thing you had in common with chrollo, it was your interest in human emotion.

- chrollo had always been fascinated by the human psyche; so much so that it seemed like he knew what people were about to say before they even uttered a word. he too found himself musing over love; occasionally, you two would sit together and debate where each emotion stemmed from.

- however, no matter how equal you were, chrollo could always predict what you were about to say, never vice versa. he chalked it down to knowledge and experience, yet he found it ironic that emotions were his interest. he speculated the reason for it, and once, very wisely, said that “humans are always interested in what they do not have.”

- you reached the room fairly quickly, roused from the race up the stairs. half of you had already forgotten about what chrollo “wanted to tell you”; he opened the door and walked in first.

- “hey, wait out here for a second, i have a surprise.” he said, closing the door so it was only jarred open a little.

- nodding, you turned around, waiting in the lit hallway.

- chrollo turned to look at the room.

- wait.

- shit.

- a singular queen-sized bed stood in the middle of the room. 

- chrollo blinked.

- he could have sworn he asked for two twin beds. blinking a few more times, beginning to sweat a little, he jolted as your voice came from the door; “chrollo, is it ready?”

- “no, not yet, stay there!” he shouted, pacing towards the hotel phone, frantically dialling room service.

- “hello?”

- “good evening. how may we help you?”

- “yeah, uh, so you see, i’m in room 444 and i definitely, most certainly booked two beds, not one - would you mind checking?”

- “no problem! it says here that you booked one queen sized bed, with two reservations. are you sure you didn’t misclick? perhaps the room was booked by someone else?”

- suddenly, chrollo remembered; shalnark did all his computer work. that bloody, meddling... no, he shouldn’t say that. he had nothing but gratitude for all the troupe members. some were very, very, very difficult to like, however.

- “are there any spare rooms around?”

- “yes, of course! but moving will cost around-”

- “chrollo?” you interrupted, peeking around the doorframe. 

- you blinked. 

- the bed was... larger... and more... singular than expected.

- “y/n! there’s been a mistake... just; bear with me, okay? everything will be fine. i just need to pay a-”

- darting to where he was, you grabbed the phone and slammed it back onto the receiver. you grabbed chrollo by the shoulders, shaking him violently (rather dramatically, too).

- “what do you think you’re doing? i tell you to stop spending money on me, and here you are, spending the money you got from murdering people?” 

- you did not like the idea of sleeping in the same bed as chrollo one bit. however, you hated the idea of having him use his dark money on you way more. here he was, about to spend it on a simple matter. the persistent bastard.

- “whatever you say.” he murmured.

- “look, just think of it as a fun sleepover. no need for things to be awkward.”

- you were right. nothing would happen. childish as you were together, both of you knew boundaries. despite the recent appeal you had to him, he knew that your comfort was more important than anything.

- both agreeing to get some sleep, you changed into more comfy clothes and met back at the bed. 

- something you often overlooked was how pretty chrollo was. grayish-brown pupils that, to the gullible eye, seemed neutral and boring, but to you seemed like a world of wonder and speculation. his eyelashes seemed almost delicate, unaware of how beautiful they were. his lips always looked cold, with a reddish tinge, yet somehow fit harmoniously with the rest of his features. it was no secret that his muscles were extremely defined, as you had seen whenever he wore his coat. somehow, his skin was smooth and pale all over, not comparable to porcelain, but better; it had the duality to glow with pride or to appear a solemn gray. his hands were almost never without a book, yet when they were occupied with something else, you couldn’t tear your eyes away from his elegant fingers. his hair, admittedly odd when slicked back, wisped across his face, fluffy as always. your eyes riveted on his.

- “what did you want to tell me?”

- shit. in the heat of all the issues, he had forgotten to think of something.

- what did he want to tell you? everything about himself, honestly. who he was, what he wished to do, his own personality, his philosophies. the dilemma was, he did not know himself. 

- who am i?

- the pressing question that bugged him so, that tugged at his sleeve like a child he wished he could ignore. the word that fit chrollo best was, “enigma”. he truly wanted to find himself, but what did that even mean? he spent his life growing from nothing, becoming nothing and, despite having the largest reputation in the world, still feeling like nothing. yet, it was something that was locked within you that opened him. the buzz of emotion he had felt from you; that had been something. pride and happiness were good, all in all, but you defined him. you gave him something to live for. of course, chrollo still stood by death as if it was an old companion, but some tiny part of him would feel remorse if he ever died. remorse for leaving you behind. that had never happened with anyone else. the closer he became to you, the more he had a meaning. he contemplated; were you his meaning? two souls meant to be intertwined? 

- “y/n.”

- “hm?”

- “love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. do you know who wrote this?”

- a silence met the air.

- “it was william shakespeare. a midsummer night’s dream.” he continued. “yet i wonder, what would one do if they had no mind? if love looks with the mind, yet had nowhere to look from, how would it see?”

- somewhere within you, you sensed he was talking about something very relevant. 

- love would find a way. it would shoot from every outlet it could, from one soul to another; love would find a way to reach someone. conscienceless or aware, love would perpetuate through every single molecule left in someone’s resolve. two ribbons that were meant to find each other would undoubtedly find each other if they their love was strong enough. that is what you thought as you sat there with him, mutually mulling over the question.

- “i think it would find a way, wouldn’t it?” you said.

- “probably so.”

- “that was random, chrollo?” you questioned after a few still moments.

- “i suppose so... i miss times where we talked about the philosophies of the mind.”

- you nodded. you missed them too, even though they were frequent. you yawned tiredly; it was getting late. chrollo advised you to get some rest, which you quickly heeded. slowly, you headed to the left side of the bed. he took the right.

- “do you mind if i turn off the light?”

- “i think i’ll read for a while.” he smiled. typical.

- you turned to your side, dreams of the awaiting night already outstretching their comforting arms. eventually, you slipped into a peaceful sleep.

- chrollo cocked his head to the side to look at you. he watched your chest rise and fall for a few seconds, before promptly returning to his book. 1984 by george orwell. his eyes skimmed over the page, blurred names and metaphors flying indifferently past his eyes; he wished to find the quote that resonated with him every time he had previously read it.

- bingo. 

- “if you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.”

- chrollo had everything to give to you; yet you did not enjoy any of it. he found that you seemed happiest when you just sat together with him, ruminating, or joking or just sitting there in silence. perhaps the only thing he hadn’t tried was the simplest; the most human. maybe the answer to his infatuation with you was right in front of him.

- a few minutes later, he thought it would be best to sleep. closing the lights, he lay there quietly, falling into a passage of thoughts that soon turned sleepy and incoherent.

- the night passed.

- when morning came, things, once again, were different. 

- chrollo was the first to wake up; fluttering his eyelashes, he soon became fully aware of his situation.

- he was on the other side of the bed.

- something was clinging to him.

- chrollo was clinging back.

- oh my god. he felt your arm wrapped low around his waist, with his doing the exact same around yours. almost like... you were mirroring each other. it was like you were hugging, except, when he looked down, you were still fast asleep. 

- shit. this was weird.

- what did he do? he couldn’t just wake you up and cause a commotion; it was him who had thought “nothing would happen”.

- so much for a goddamned “sleepover”.

- your head was buried in the crook of his chin, so you were cuddling into his chest; the bed had been long enough for you to shuffle down and start hugging him? not to mention, somewhere in the night, you had entirely switched places.

- he couldn’t exactly get up to roll you away, either.

- what a conundrum. silently and rather awkwardly, he waited, still embracing you. this definitely made things exponentially more complicated than they needed to be. 

- after around 10 minutes of waiting, you began to stir a little. 

- blinking a few times to clear your vision, you murmured something unintelligible.

- chrollo, about to pull the biggest bastard move of the century, shut his eyes and pretended to sleep.

- what a jackass.

- pushing away from his body, you stared at him, taking a few moments to register the situation.

- and so, your internal panic monologue began, rapid as ever.

- why the SHIT were you in chrollo’s arms not less than 5 seconds ago? and why had it felt undeniably cosy??? did you hug him? did he hug you? of course he was still sleeping. maybe he wouldn’t get to know. why were you on the other side of the bed? did anything happen? no, you would have remembered. you couldn’t roll him over, either. what the shit. 

- chrollo inconspicuously pretended to wake up, theatrical fake blinking and all. 

- “oh.” he stated blankly.

- you scrunched your face; that was the only thing he could say? meanwhile your soul was rapidly disintegrating?

- “chrollo, i have no idea how that-”

- “certainly interesting.” he interrupted.

- the best decision was to leave it. right?

- “huh? what? looooook... i think i’m going to go change...” you said, suppressing your fluctuating heartbeat. 

- chrollo sat up, nodding.

- as you left, you began speculating what to do; because you definitely couldn’t ignore this. when you woke up, you had felt safer, more comfortable. why was that? as much as you wanted to, you couldn’t drop the feeling that chrollo and you were something more than friends.

- chrollo, still on the bed, mulled over the various quotes and lines he had picked up. he ruminated over fond memories with you, and that buzzing feeling from earlier. he noticed it had skyrocketed. he felt... meaningful. bottling up his feelings wouldn’t do any good, would it? he had to say something. but it was dangerous. getting into matters like this may get in the way of the troupe. was it worth it? somewhere, he felt as if he already knew. this matter wasn’t exactly trivial. so, would he do it or not?

- subconsciously reaching for 1984 once more, he flicked past the cover and turned to a well-loved page of his. 

- “at the sight of the words, “i love you”, the desire to stay alive had welled up in him, and the taking of minor risks suddenly seemed stupid.”

- as people usually do at urgent times such as these, he realized what had to be done.

- let’s just say; chrollo’s library began to harbor a lot more romance.

dear reader, i sincerely sincerely apologize if ur here rn. i wrote a wholeass 3554 words and i dont want people wasting their time LMFAO, this was so dumb?? i am SO SO sorry for being inactive for weeks, i’ve had exams, but i kind of felt obligated to finish off this series. which once again. i am so sorry for. this one felt even MORE tedious than the illumi one. i feel like the characterization was poor, even though i tried  ,,, but i guess we all take Ls. i’m gonna just let this one be chalked down to my sleep deprivation and hopefully(?) continue writing. thx <3  

either way, likes or reblogs or whatever are super appreciated, but don’t feel forced to or anything! either way, i feel like no one’s gonna see this with my reach LMAOO but anyways thank you for reading, if you made it here! feedback and tips for writing on here are always helpful :)

[myriadxofxmuses]

Starter for @normallyxstranger

Smoke poured from underneath the hood of her very used, very love VW van.  She barely made it to the small parking lot of the shop beforefinally suttering to a stop. She got out, silently thanking the God that she had at least made it without the need of a tow, and headed into the lobby.

"Please tell me you can help," she told the man behind the counter with slight desparation in her voice.

It was more than a means of transportation to her.  It was her home.  She had covnerted it to accomodate her nomdic way of life and losing it to the mechanical gods, along with the junkyard, was kind of off the table. She just hoped it was something a relatively easy fix, like a radiator or gaskets, and not an entire motor - knowing how difficult it would be to find.

"I'm hoping my clunker hasn't taken its last breath," she added with a slightly breathless and nervous chuckle.