#mewriting

[showersofstardust]

Remember that someone's behavior or lack of interaction is someone communicating too

If they don't engage,

If they avoid,

If they ignore,

If they deflect,

If they don't notice or acknowledge you

If they don't respect you,

If they don't apologize,

If they don't show interest,

If they don't listen,

If they make up excuses,

If they lie,

If they're always too busy,

If they take advantage...

This is them communicating. Honor yourself and find people who want you as much as you want them.

If they wanted to, they would. If they knew better, they'd do better.

[omokers]

first lines meme :3

tagged by @whetstonefires

Rules:  Share the first line of your last ten published works or as many as you are able to, and see if there are any patterns

Going through my AO3. Unfortunately, I'm not a very prolific writer (yet!) and most of my writing has been focused on two works; the translated works I can't count, and anything before 2021 I don't want to look at. I'm going to be looking at the first line of each chapter instead. I'm also going to be including the first lines of the newest chapters I'm working on.

1. cathexis; CoD körangi priests AU. A priest returns to the church he was raised in, only to discover a sinister plot at large involving ritualistic murders and mysterious baby disappearances. He joins forces with a man who introduces himself as a Vatican exorcist to solve these mysteries.

“Horangi hyeong.” A small hand tugged at the edge of Horangi’s cassock. “Hyeong-aaaaa.” 

“—margin of between 8 and 10%. Despite this, Bell Motors has experienced a rise of 1.8%, while unprecedented losses of 9.6% have been recorded overnight for competitor K&W Mobility—”

“Okay, this is going to be the last one!” Horangi exclaimed, out of breath.

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

(WIP) “We can’t always choose what’s best,” Father Jerome mused. “Sometimes it’s enough to choose the better option.”

2. rays crepuscular (as the sun makes its grave); DSMP vampires/hunters AU. A young vampire hunter deserts his ranks for his best friend, who has been turned into a vampire; they must now escape a city full of powers they can't fight before they are caught up in plots far beyond them.

His best friend lies dying in his arms.

Each tick of the shitty, off-time hotel clock lies in the space between them, every moment stretching and snapping like a rubber band pulled between the thumbs of a bored child in class.

The alleyway that leads to the small abandoned square where its dry, cracked fountain greets him.

I want to tell you a story. It’s about how, a very long time ago, the first vampire came to be.

And a cheer for absolutely fucked up sleep schedules, Tommy thinks distantly, as the incessant ringing of the twin bell alarm clock they’d been provided with in the hotel room reaches through the arms of sweet, sweet slumber and so rudely rattles him.

(WIP) From this day onwards, to the best of my knowledge and abilities, I swear to fulfill this covenant until my last dying breath:

To be honest, I don't think I've been writing enough to be able to derive any kind of meaningful rule from how I open these things. I think I've adopted different styles for each of my more recent works, if only because most of the second one listed here was written before the first.

It may be an unconscious choice on my end, beginning with the tense of each work and including several stylistic differences between the two. But, also, it could just be that my writing style has been evolving over the months I've spent "seriously writing" (or, at the very least, trying to write consistently instead of once a year when inspiration strikes).

Super clearly, with the more recent work I've been writing I've been beginning every single chapter with a line of dialogue. It puts the reader right into the middle of a scene without explaining where this is or what's going on. It does, however, serve to establish or foreshadow some things.

Meanwhile, with the older work. I've begun each chapter with some kind of explanation in most cases? It's a description in the three cases that isn't just someone talking. In the last (unpublished) chapter, the first line after the mantra that the character is chanting is another descriptive line about what the narrative character is doing.

I think I could stand to make the first lines of each chapter shorter and less convoluted in some cases. But then again, the first sentence of a full work as opposed to a chapter within it benefits the work when it's more effective in whatever way you want it to be effective in. Short and concise to be a hook, long and rambling if that serves another purpose. There's so much for me to learn still about writing, but I stand by the belief that anything, if used skillfully enough in writing, can serve a purpose.

Tagging @redactedcrow, @scifimagpie, and... stopping there because I don't have any more writing-prolific mutuals on tumblr. Don't feel pressured to do this. At all.

[paddlescuddlesbubblesgurgles]

Why?

I’ve done it. It’s over. 

I let out a deep breath that turns into a burp. My belly lets out a gurgle. 

Another gorging come and gone. A party sized fast food order completely inside my fat, burgeoning, hefty gut. 

All that remains outside are wrappers, a few empty bags, and an empty cup. 

I lean back in my chair. It creaks slightly. I’m so full I can barely keep my eyes open, my body devoting all my energy to digesting my oversized meal. I let out a long, breathy sigh. 

The buttons on my shirt are straining and it has ridden up. It’s my favorite shirt. Soon I’ll grow out of it. It bothers me. But I cannot stop giving my stomach what it needs. 

I let my shirt just roll up the rest of the way. My full, satiated belly softly plops out in my lap. There isn’t really any space for anything else. My stomach easily covers about half of my gigantic thighs. I rub my huge, sensitive, engorged gut. Involuntary moans escape me. My smooth skin is soft and warm, my squishy fat presses in with my hands as I firmly push and precede over the swollen, fleshy orb in my lap. 

I’m so tuckered out. My whole evening. My valuable and limited free time…gone. Just like the 1000s of calories of food, my needy, heavy, inflated gut has consumed that entirely too. I have no choice now but to sleep off this multi person gathering sized meal. I can’t remain conscious much longer. 

I must get up. It’s so difficult. My belly weighs me down. It all sloshes inside me as I stand. I’m so fatigued, and downright sluggish from the new contents of my stomach. My breathing is labored and short. I’m simply out of breath. 

I waddle out of my dining room. My heavy steps are slow, I can’t manage anything fast. I feel dazed, so encumbered, so overladen with delicious food. My belly doesn’t jiggle as much in this state. It’s so solidly filled. 

I stop to inspect the damage I’ve dealt in the bathroom mirror. My shirt is draped over my torso like a tent now. 4Xs don’t fit like they used to. I slide it off. My belly is taunt up top. My stretch marks more pronounced. Soft, squishy flab hangs off of me and sags low. My deep overhang shocks me as usual when I turn to the side. I am so wide, and even wider like this. I scoop my prize up in my arms, lifting it. This pushes out another burp. It’s a relief taking the pressure off my back for a moment, achey from lugging this enormous thing around all the time. 

Thoughts dance through my mind as I hold up my bloated stomach. 

Why do I do this? I eat so much food constantly. Entire evenings, hours on end devoted to consuming it all and digesting it and cradling this fat, overfed gut. 

I drop my heavy belly on the counter. A loud, meaty plop echoes off the walls. It has been sagging slightly into the sink. I use both hands to manhandle my squishy, overstuffed pride. Pure ecstasy. My bellybutton gaped more fully open. My thick, blubbery side rolls squished against the edge of the sink. My gut has become a solid, fleshy sack of pleasure. A bulging, globular trophy of unrestrained gluttony and hedonist overindulgence. It’s simply covered in decadent fat. My whole body is overladen with lard. 

Why? Because my belly always gets what it wants. It’s pampered. Spoiled. It needs to be filled until it no longer can be. I must oblige. I have no choice. It is a command. I must obey. 

Why? Because it feels so fucking good. 

This is why.

[whumping-in-the-dark]

"Say it. Say it or I'm shutting the door and it won't open again until you're dead out there."

[nkhrdstyvskrrtskrrt]

📎 YOSANO AKIKO ANALYSIS

UNDERSTANDING & ANALYZING BUNGOU STRAY DOGS YOSANO THROUGH THE LENSES OF THE REAL YOSANO AKIKO'S LIFE

WC. 4,000

DISCLAIMER: I am no historian or literary expert I am just obsessed and mentally unwell, if u cannot tell, teehee <333 If this will ignite any hate or hostility (not this post’s intention), please set your sights elsewhere and just scroll. I made this because I love her character and BSD in general to a bone-shattering degree. I hope you have as much fun as I did while researching and writing this, enjoy!! (also English is not my first language forgive me for any grammatical errors ty)

There might be a part two for this, but for now, this is all my tiny brain could offer >:))

IMPORTANT NOTE: There will be a lot of omitted, summarized information that has been subjectively extracted or abridged. This is not a complete, rich historical account but research done to make connections and parallels to better understand and theorize about BSD Yosano’s character. I did not finish reading the entire biography, which is why this is only the first section of a bigger whole.

However, if you desire to dig deeper about her in an unabridged manner please kindly refer to the source I will list below. One last thing, please don’t hesitate to add your own thoughts, I am encouraging you to do so, I will appreciate it so much actually!

My primary source;; Janine Beichman - Embracing the Firebird_ Yosano Akiko and the Birth of the Female Voice in Modern Japanese Poetry-University of Hawaii Press (2002). [pdf can be downloaded for free @/libgen]

Allow me to initiate this observation with a passage directly extracted from her biography (the one named above): 

“Yosano’s father Òtori Sòshichi (1847–1903), was the second-generation owner of the Surugaya, a well-known confectioner that specialized in yòkan (sweet bean paste) and sweet dumplings.”

With this passage in mind, I’d like to remind you of this scene in the manga that hinted at BSD Yosano’s circumstances and background prior to being selected as Mori’s assistant at the fortress. In this panel, she mentioned that she was tending to a candy store before getting drafted. 

Now, drawing from the passage we read regarding the real Yosano Akiko and applying this to BSD Yosano—it’s not far-fetched to assume that the candy shop she was tending to was run and owned by her family. Normally, we could say that familial separation, especially at such an early stage of childhood would be quite hard on the child. However, if we consider the following facts from the real Yosano Akiko’s childhood and parallel it to BSD Yosano again, we could conclude that the separation wasn’t as difficult nor emotional for her when Mori selected her, because she was called in this book an ‘infant exile.’

Starting from the very birth of the real Yosano, her father was severely appalled by her because she was a girl. Moreover, he deserted their home for a week without even looking at his daughter’s face. Her mother became distressed because of the week-long absence of her father, (fainted, even) and couldn’t breastfeed her properly, resulting in the infant Yosano being sent to a maternal aunt accompanied by a wet nurse.

Two years later, due to convenience rather than the will to come back, Yosano returned to her familial house because her aunt had a new baby of her own to look after and raise. Though at this time, a new baby was born, too, at the Otoris. And this baby grew up to be the brother to whom the adult Yosano dedicated her poem ‘Thou Shalt Not Die.’ 

Since the arrival of this baby boy, Yosano’s existence has become easier to tolerate—see this actual snapshot from the passage I am referencing:

‘ while at the Òtori home a baby boy had finally arrived, making it easier to tolerate the unwelcome girl.’

As if to rub in the author’s title for the real Yosano Akiko (infant exile) even their servants and relatives had a distaste for her and her personality, viewing her as the ‘difficult’ child in the family. Here’s another direct quote from the biography book:

‘The relatives chimed in disapprovingly: “‘The younger brother is better behaved; his older sister is a little much.’ From the apprentices to the little uncle on my mother’s side all predicted better things for my younger brother than for me. Having to listen to all that didn’t feel very good.” Even the servants rubbed it in.’

Additionally, Yosano Akiko herself wrote that she never knew the warmth of a mother or father’s lap and that her parents had an inherent antipathy towards her that was not inflicted on her siblings. She wrote, that other women are troubled concerning their in-laws, and how to operate as human beings alongside them but this same worry is her very reality in her own family’s household—blood and flesh—she served her parents as if they were her in-laws and endured hardships by their hand and in their name. Here’s a snippet from the biography:

‘“Other women become brides and struggle to manage a household, but for me it was the reverse: from the time I was a young girl I served my parents as if they were my in-laws, and endured emotional and physical hardships.”’

Another possible factor that enriched an equal sentiment of apathy within Yosano was despite the extremely young age of three she was coerced into attending school—which, as made clear in the biography, was something she disliked. What gave her parents this idea? Well, her father was quite the ardent enthusiast of the science of producing superior human beings. With this belief in mind, it’s no surprise that when he mistook the large forehead of the young Yosano as a sign of intelligence, he sent her to study immediately. 

But Yosano was too young, too passionate, and excited still to engage in play with other children, to have fun with her friends because she was hardly above infancy, only three years old. Despite the awareness of the adults around her that she’s not of school age yet, she was shamed for her disagreement—as said to her by one of her maids: “See what a good girl Miss Takenaka is. Aren’t you ashamed of skipping school?” 

Are you seeing a parallel? BSD Yosano, although just 11 years old, was chosen by Mori to be the core of his immortal regiment plan, because similar to the real Yosano’s situation somebody (her father) saw something urgent and, perhaps special or advantageous in her which is why she was pushed into studying—in BSD Yosano’s case Mori saw this potential within her and incorporated her into his plans, and drafted her from what seems to be her family’s candy shop.

One thing I’d like to emphasize again is that in this drafting of BSD Yosano, the fact that she agreed or at the very least went along with Mori even if it meant being separated from her family, is because she (if we parallel it once again to the poet Yosano) was never really seen as important or someone capable in her family, they did not have faith in what she can do or her future, they did not have confidence in her character. Regarding this sentiment here are two excerpts from the biography: 

‘The restrictions themselves (which were not uncommon then, at least in Sakai) did not hurt as much as the misjudgment of her character and what she might do were she free: “It goes without saying that in a house with many employees, and particularly in a morally lax city like Sakai, a daughter had to be strictly supervised. But there was no need to go that far with a woman who took as many pains to protect herself as I did. I thought the lack of understanding of my feelings that my parents’ attitude showed was outrageous and when alone I often wept over it.”’

And: 

‘Like her parents, the teacher hurt her pride by assuming that she was less intellectually and morally advanced than she actually was, but politeness kept her from objecting. 

And as stated by the creature in Frankenstein (see how I always find a way to mention it haha): “And tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me?” 

Why should she nurture deep affection for her family—relatives and servants too, even her teacher—when they will not reciprocate even a pittance of the same love and care? Or even respect. Take a look at this paragraph from the document:

‘But the results of this parental coldness were not entirely negative. Just as 

ignorance of her ancestry liberated Akiko from the weight of family tradition, 

so multiple caretakers and the lack of parental affection weakened her sense of 

filial obligation. 

‘What gave her the strength to defy her family’s expectations 

and flee to Tokyo in her early twenties? Surely, the intensity of her love for 

Yosano Tekkan and her own literary ambition were most important; but would 

a more cherished daughter have been able to make the break so decisively? The 

seeds of the later revolt were planted in the infant exile.’

For this very reason, I conclude that if anything, being drafted by Mori was, in the 11-year-old Yosano’s eyes, an opportunity to prove her competence and worth and realize her goal—saving people’s lives (although in this, she has been failed). As a matter of fact there is a compelling possibility that this conviction to save lives was another element of the real Yosano’s personality and beliefs. It has been written in the biography that Yosano Akiko’s father was a fan of stories of heroism, stories that involved the act of protecting and saving, and what makes this relevant is that he also loved sharing these stories with his children.

From a young age, her mind was fed with these noble stories, and children are impressionable. That said, the young Yosano Akiko inherently possessed a special empathy and protectiveness over life, in support of this let us read through another snippet from a passage;

‘One summer when Akiko was around eight she was sitting up there in the evening cool with her siblings and some cousins, when one of the older children remarked, “A night when the moon and the stars are close means fire.” When the others had left, Akiko gazed up at the vastness of the sky. Feeling sorry for the children in any house that might burn and worried that the fire might reach her own house, “I tried to think of some way to increase the distance between the little star and the moon.”’

As additional support, kindly read this excerpt as well:

‘In the morning, Akiko’s parents returned from her sister’s house. As their own manager politely expressed his relief that the Takemura home was unharmed, Akiko thought sadly to herself, “I wouldn’t mind having the Take-muras’ storehouse burn down if only the Gusei girl had not turned into a charred corpse.”’

And the last addition to further highlight this:

‘So much in this story of the great Sakai fire is typical of Akiko’s view of the society in which she grew up. She shows us all the negatives of the situation: People turned out in force either because they wanted to keep the fire from spreading to their own houses or because they enjoyed a good disaster as long as it was someone else’s. Even her own family thought it natural to rejoice that their daughter’s storehouse had been spared rather than grieve for the dead Gusei girl.’

The young poet Yosano Akiko, even compared to the adults in her environment bore within her a deeper reverence for life, the actions of the adults and their selfish concerns did not amuse her, she thought very negatively of them. The grief and pity she felt for the single casualty, the girl, meant that the loss of life be it a loss of what people consider an insignificant person, mattered to her. For her, every death is worth grieving. And should never be a source of entertainment or material for gossip (the villagers made festivals and dances inspired by the incident). Taking all this into account, it’s not much of a shock that BSD Yosano was so driven to save lives, why it mattered to her so strongly, why, she was also so severely devastated about what her ability has been used for. 

A brief interlude before further digging into the real poet’s early history, I’d like to draw more emphasis on the previous points made—specifically how she’d rather have the storehouse burn (despite having a mother who’s from a lineage of merchants, and Yosano running the candy shop business as well) if it meant seeing a girl she didn’t know too deeply, live—leaping to the future, the poet’s adulthood, for a moment, to affirm further BSD Yosano’s principles regarding the preciousness of life above all else.

In her most, as called in one article, ‘inflammatory’ poem which is ‘Thou Shalt Not Die’ I want us to focus on this particular line in the poem:

For you, what does it matter if Port Arthur Fortress falls or not?

The poet Yosano Akiko was so adamant in stopping her brother, Port Arthur be damned, because it was common knowledge at that time, false or not, that serving the military was volunteering for your own death—there were rumors of the Japanese soldiers being sent to suicide missions—and for what cause, even? Well, that’s not the right question to ask, let’s correct it to what 11-year-old BSD Yosano expressed in her refusal against Mori’s command to continue healing: Should any cause matter over human life? 

Remember, she disagreed when he (Tachihara’s brother) told her that her ability could change the world. She hoped only to save those she could reach. She was aware, of her limits, of the consequences, and that she could not and should not aim for such causes.

Alright, now that we can clearly see how the real Yosano Akiko’s qualities reflect onto BSD Yosano. Back to the early past.

As young as eight, Yosano Akiko tended and shouldered a huge portion of their business’s management, because, as said in the biography her mother was “sickly” while her father was “irresponsible” so she felt that she had to shoulder their responsibilities, here’s a direct quote: ‘ So Akiko felt that she “absolutely had to” stay home and help her parents, managing both the store and the household.’

But because of this, she earned a position of authority in the household, (additionally, by the age of eighteen, she has salvaged the losses from her father’s stock investments.) analogous to—as she stated herself—how a servant acting on behalf of the master can carve out his or her own sphere of autonomy. 

Our Yosano, if we again, try to see her in the real author’s light, must have been reminded of the corner she was driven into in her younger years. Reminded, of how the adults around her could so easily burden her with duties disproportionate to her age and how powerless she was after all amidst all of it.

This time though, she had hope; hope that she could start anew and could finally leave behind a life riddled with mistrust, and belittling, that she could choose for herself what she would labor for and dedicate her efforts to.

That—in the absence of her hometown and the people she grew with, the absence too, of admiration and belonging would change. 

For a brief moment, it did. 

The soldiers adored her, praised her as an angel, and treated her as someone capable—one made her good coffee, drew her a portrait, and Tachihara’s brother even created a present for her with his ability. She was needed not as some fallback for responsibilities nobody wanted. She was necessary, in a way she approved of. She was not a better-than-nothing exile anymore.

Furthermore, quiet acceptance didn't shackle her speech and response to the adults surrounding her in the fortress. The author, Yosano Akiko during her time running the business, often had to put on a polite face and way of speaking to the customers and called out herself when she seemed childish; moreover, she had to endure the incredulity of the prominent figures in her life, and deal with its damages internally. Take this excerpt, for example:

‘Like her parents, the teacher hurt her pride by assuming that she was less intellectually and morally advanced than she actually was, but politeness kept her from objecting. Among her friends, Akiko could be open about her ambition and her pride, but with adults, she apparently felt she had to choose between a pained silence and outward disrespect, and the latter was impossible for her.’

Meanwhile, in the fortress, she could allow herself to be less restrictive with how she interacts with them. 

Even with Mori, her superior, she let go of the hesitation to speak her mind. It’s no surprise then, that by the end of it, her spirit was broken.

This opportunity for change—to make a change, meant the entire world to her. At last, she was able to help in the way that matters to her and appeals to her heart, she did not choose to be there because there were no other options. She was there for a purpose she believed in. Her service was met with gratitude, they accepted her presence, not simply tolerated it.

Until things went south. 

And it did in ways that reignited the severity of an existing fear within our Yosano. How, and why is this the case? 

The poet, until about fifteen years old, nurtured within her as she wrote, an ‘irrational anxiety about death,’ which ‘shaped her inner life.’ As if to fuel her unease, rumors circulated in Sakai (her hometown) about a certain family’s daughter who died bathed in blood after suffering for three days straight. This rumor made the young Yosano Akiko weep, imagining such a kind of suffering. And with these thoughts haunting her, she came up with a specific way in which she would accept death:

‘“If I am to die, let it be at night, so no one will see. I don’t want my suffering exposed to the light of day. I want to breathe my last alone at night in a dark room, letting death’s cruel hands claim me with lips firmly sealed, not a hair of my 

head out of place.”’

She even contemplated suicide, since it is the only way for her to die on her own terms.

Oftentimes, though, she’d take what she could to stay distracted from her mortality, which is mostly done by reading:

‘So here, in addition to the intellectual curiosity, the pleasure, and the inner

rebellion that motivated Akiko’s early reading, is another motive: escape from 

anxiety about her own mortality.’

She attempted to pacify her thoughts and emotions about death, through religion. However, despite her consideration, she ended up rejecting it. From the age of three or four, she hated the scent of incense being burned, going as far as to rush past the many temples that burned them. She disliked, too, sitting beside her parents with her hands clasped in prayer. Affirming and elaborating more on this, allow me to show you this passage:

‘The Buddhist teachings and legends they told her seemed no more than “fairytales for grownups” that could be of  no help to her in “preparing for death.”

Once she “asked if Gautama Buddha had really existed and, if so, what country he had been a citizen of ” and was told that she “would receive divine retribution” for her impertinence.

Every month her mother and her friends heard a lecture by a priest, but as soon as 

the lecture was over, the priest would join them in “ordinary gossip, speaking ill of people behind their backs.”

Akiko “realized that these believers were not even one-tenth as serious as I was about... life and death and that even after twenty or thirty years of visiting temples and praying they were still not saved.” If they had no hope, she reasoned, how much less had she. And so she 

concluded that it was “useless” for her “to expect to be helped by Jòdo Shin-

shû.”’

What did encapture her, and attract her (as said in the biography) then?

Alongside the stories of heroic virgins in Japanese myths, she too was moved by Sokkyò Shijin which was the Japanese translation of The Improviser, translated by—guess who? Ougai Mori. Yes, him. Now I want you to witness this excerpt from the biography:

‘“I envied the pure, noble life of virgin empresses like the goddess Amaterasu. The imperial virgins of Ise and Kamo also filled me with longing. When I look back now on how I felt then, I think that, while squarely facing reality, I flew off and thought of my future in beautiful, idealistic terms, and wanted to stay a pure, undefiled virgin, like an angel, all my life.”’

Considering the new information, we can once again connect it to our Yosano and conclude that BSD Yosano also shared the poet’s fear of death and mortality. Besides her disconnect with her family, she wanted to prevent others from experiencing the fear of dying in a gruesome and undignified manner, which is why she allowed herself to be drafted for war. If you’ll allow me to speculate further, I’d say dying for her (at least she believed) should be a choice, or at the very least should be aligned with the personal preferences and ideals of the person dying—and this principle of hers, augmented the horror she has felt and has bestowed upon the soldiers because what exactly did the weaponizing of her ability bereave the soldiers of, exactly? The control they have over their own death. 

She wanted to save them from death, and she did. Until they didn't want to—until, she didn't want to, anymore. But she, a child, never stood a chance against what she was actually there for. She was there as a tool to convey a new age of weaponry which were abilities.

The scene with Kaji must have allowed these memories to resurface, he called the train bombing incident an experiment, and in a sense she too was an experiment—like the soldiers, she was there to further the idea and be the evidence that abilities were the weapons of the future that will completely change the battlefield, without any guarantee that she or the soldiers would achieve success, or leave intact.

And they didn’t—not them, not her.

For now, this is all I have for our Yosano.

Or is it? Before we end this I’d like to speculate even more about the significance of Mori as a figure in our Yosano’s life—the poet was moved, her heart attached to the real Mori’s use of language in his translation, in how he wrote the nun—perhaps, BSD Yosano put an equal amount of trust and faith in Mori, his intentions, his treatment of her. Given the real Yosano’s experiences and applying the same to our Yosano, she has every reason to be distrustful and skeptical of suddenly being drafted out of all the older, more experienced people by another adult. So there must be something about BSD Mori’s language, too, that persuaded her and moved her the same way the real Yosano was affected by it. For the first time she believed—relied on him, despite experiencing so many disheartening memories dealt to her by older figures in her life.

Okay, I’m serious now, this is the end. I hope you enjoyed and most of all I hope you appreciate her more as a character, that would be the greatest achievement this post could make.

my main is @ice-devourer jic u wanna talk more abt this, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING OMG!

[8-dermestid]

i'm over sleeping like a dog on the floor

relationship: ticci toby x reader

word count: 7.6k

links: available to read on ao3

warnings: canon-typical violence, character dies by decapitation (off-screen death but on-screen head), toby is psychotic/has tics/is disabled

Working the graveyard shift as a middle-of-nowhere gas station has its perks; you get paid to do nothing but mop and organize shelves. Most nights you spend alone (or with your only coworker), until you get a regular customer for the first time since this place opened.

(like/reblogs are greatly appreciated, requests are open ✷)

As autumn passes away and winter begins to take hold of the climate, the manor becomes a hellish place to live. Plenty of well-developed people struggle with the seasonal changes—the colder air, longer nights, and dead-looking forests make seasonal depression hit hard. In Toby’s experience, however, these symptoms hit harder for the people in the mansion. The temperature drops make Jeff irritable, his decade-old burns aching as fresh nerve endings attempt to make connections to his old skin. EJ always found a way to hide in their room for months, only coming out if forced by Slenderman’s jobs or a need for food. Anyone with chronic pain had more intense symptoms, and anyone prone to stress snapped under the pressure. Tim and Brian always left before winter hit (only because they looked non-disabled from the outside and could mask until they found a place to hunker down).

Toby is no exception to this rule. The stress of incoming frost and shorter days makes him quick to anger, his tics become more frequent and intense, and he becomes more prone to biting his fingers until he bleeds. Joining Tim and Brian would be a dream, but that is all it would remain (being visibly disabled, paranoid, and psychotic beyond belief—and the hole Toby carved out in his cheek—made masking almost impossible). If he were to try and follow them to a hotel room, Toby would get strapped down and sedated in a stark-white hospital with buzzing overhead fluorescents.

The last time he went to the hospital was because he stepped on a rusty nail six months back, and Tim and Brian almost thought about tracking down EJ because hospitals and Toby do not mix. Thinking about those fluorescents makes him sick. The droning electrical hum makes his skin crawl.

Maybe tonight is the night—though the idea crawls with stressed-induced impulsivity and panic like centipedes under his skull—Toby needs to mull over this thought with a cigarette.

Jeff is arguing with nobody again and slamming his head against a wall. Sally’s running around upstairs. EJ hasn’t been home in months. Tim and Brian are who knows where, not that Toby cares, and the other people crowding this place are too quiet for Toby to care about right now. He rocks in his bed (a moldy mattress with loose sheets piled atop it, a thin, ratty blanket being all he can use to hide from the cold) 

(Hush). The quiet is safe, and breathing softly and stepping carefully is safe. It’s good practice to keep his head down when there’s incoherent screaming in the room down the hall. The clatter of overturned furniture and scratching on the walls are commonplace sounds, whether rooted in reality or psychosis. 

Toby tries to control his volume by breathing through his mouth, sniffling now replaced with hollow gasps. He’s so careful not to let any loudness escape him (not an easy feat). His diaphragm stutters, his shoulders heave in an involuntary twitch, his ribs push inward, and his spine curls sharply down. 

Do it. Deep breath in, hold for four, out for four. Grab a cigarette and a lighter, and try to take your mind off things. Toby rocks on the floor and nurses a cigarette between his teeth, letting the smoke simmer in his lungs before exhaling low. He quits rocking on the floor, rising to his feet and beginning a careful hunt, opening every drawer, opening the creaky closet door, checking the big hole in the wall, checking the drawers once more, then out the window (pulling the half-hanging curtain over to give him some sense of privacy). Finally satisfied, Toby tugs the sheet on his mattress until it slips from the corner, exposing a large hole carved into the side, its guts twinkling with bits of fiberglass.

Toby sticks his hand in, numb to the prickling sensation scraping across his skin, and pulls out a large, empty duffel bag. He crawls towards his drawers and tosses his extra clothes into a small heap atop the bag, stuffing it until it’s bloated like a three-day-old carcass. With only a few possessions to his name—his hatchets, a hunting knife, a hammer (which he puts into his pocket instead, worried about scratching his things), his CD player plus headphones, a sentimental bag of teeth, and a dented thermos—Toby is ready and packed, letting out a shaky breath as he zips up his bag. Checking around all the hiding spots again (his searching based on psychotic delusions), Toby finally pulls the moldy curtain back and opens the window, which squeals in protest. He freezes, checking his surroundings and listening for even the softest sounds of disturbance in the creaky manor. 

The mansion’s natural groans and hums make the house feel alive. It’s watching him—and watching him think of a plan to get out of this hell. The radiators creak, and the walls ache like the house is breathing around him. The walls are moving, Toby thinks. He is inside a living thing. He pries open the window, and the house cries out in protest. The chains supporting the windowpane squeal like birds, and Toby scrambles out of the window and onto the once-shingled roof in a panic, nearly slipping from the second story in a thoughtless terror. He digs into his pocket and pulls out his beat-up box of Marlboro Reds, curling up into a ball on the roof, shaky hands searching for his lighter. Toby can’t stop shaking. His neck pops in two places. He should climb back inside—crawl back into that living, breathing beast—and pretend this idea of freedom never crossed his mind. 

Toby sticks a cigarette between his teeth, digging around his many pockets for his lighter. He’s so nervous, whole-body tremors as the agonizing howls of the mansion’s other tenants remind Toby of his options: keep living within Slenderman’s walls, dirt-poor and sickly, but safe from the cruelties of the outside world, or risk contact with the outside, possibly getting strapped down to a hospital bed and drip-fed a cocktail of medications, sedated and alone. Toby’s grip is loose, and his lighter slips from his hand as it twitches involuntarily. Toby watches it slide down the roof and hop over the broken gutter, landing in a puddle beneath the house.

Toby peers over the roof—making the quick choice to abandon his duffel bag inside his room —and swings his legs over the edge, dropping down. He sticks his hand into an ice-cold puddle and pulls the cobalt-blue plastic body from the water. He rolls his thumb over the striker, shaking the lighter and trying again (flick, flick, flick, Toby can hear the fuel when he shakes it vigorously), holding the dead thing to his dry cigarette, cupping his hand to protect any weak flame it may produce. 

Nothing.

Toby throws the lighter as hard as he can into a tree, hands trembling uncontrollably, wrists flinching, fingers curling in distress. He pulls on his hair—tugs and tugs, grabbing at the curly strands at the nape of his neck and tugging upwards like he’s pulling a shirt off over his head—trying not to scream and cry about his two-dollar lighter being a shitty, two-dollar lighter. He pulls one axe from its holster and the hammer from his pocket; the next smoker he spots won’t make it home (and Toby can add some teeth to his plastic-baggie collection, whichever ones he can salvage from the destruction of a stranger’s dental record). His cigarette (with a sharp angle in the filter from an angry bite) gets stuffed back into its cardboard container, then the box, and into his pocket.

Toby picks a direction and walks, one hand tugging at his hair and the other’s knuckles white around a hatchet handle. Each tired step squelches under him. Slick leaves and muddy earth force walking to be a conscious thought; Toby, already nauseous with stress, stumbles forward, using the tall trees for support (and to ground himself on the textures of moss and lichen under his fingertips). 

Keep breathing. 

In for one, two, three, four; Hold for one, two, three, four; Out for one, two, three, four.

Keep walking, don’t stop, don’t turn back, don’t even look back. One shaky mile becomes two, then three, then four. Each threshold crossed brings Toby further from the manor and closer to freedom. 

One time, Toby had to visit a mortician’s office to take care of a sloppy kill months ago. The doctor was working late, and Toby came across the current project: some forty-something man with silver hair and scratchy stubble. The mortician had already slipped the eye caps under the man’s eyelids, and the little barbs gripped the backside, holding the shape of the lid to make it look like the man’s eyes hadn’t sunk back into his skull. Toby peeled back the man’s lips, admiring his yellowed, crooked teeth and dry gums. There were wires connecting the upper and lower jaw, keeping the man’s mouth shut with needles nailed into his bone.

The process was fascinating and morbid, and the wires and nails made Toby queasy because the man’s body was so cold. Sometimes, Toby felt like that—or that he felt trapped in that state—the stiffness, the cold, the wires and nails keeping his jaw wired shut no matter how much he wanted to scream.

Sometimes, it was him laying on the cold, metal table stinking of formaldehyde, stiff with rigor mortis with sunken eyes and guts in the viscera bag. He found the body shortly after and beat its face in with his axe until they were unrecognizable. He took three teeth (one of their wisdom teeth and two molars), the only intact thing left of them, and fled through a broken window.

Toby, rubbing his eyes, pushes them into the sockets as he stumbles past the tree line and down a crag. When he makes contact with the ground and stumbles forward in his dreary state, Toby is startled when a car blares its horn at him. The driver shouts at him, swerving over the double-yellow to avoid hitting him.

Toby stands in the road like a deer, heart pounding against his ribs. He watches the car swerve back over the double-yellow and around a wavy bend, eventually concealed by a shelf of carved rock. Turning to look across the empty highway, he spots a gas station bathed in red neons with an inviting golden light warming the interior.

An older man with a blue face mask is walking behind the gas station for the restroom, and Toby stalks behind him, axe in hand.

✸𓆟✸

“It’s getting windy now. Are you sure your bus is coming after your shift?”

“Probably,” You say, “they’d only stop if there was some looming total disaster. They operate like a Waffle House.” Walking into the custodial closet (slash break room), you grab a bucket and mop and move out to a monstrous soda spill left by a group of teenage boys (where one of them just got their learner’s permit, you’re sure of it).

Something collides with the dumpster outside. 

You think it’s someone dumpster diving again. 

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. 

“Quit being so paranoid.” Your coworker says.

You turn to Sandy, and she shrugs, straightening the 5-Hour Energies by the register. She’s pretty dressed up for a graveyard shift at a gas station, with her hair done up and pink tinsel weaved into her box braids. She’s wearing a concert tee with a little stone fairy printed on the front and leg warmers with these tall boots. Her makeup is shimmery and loud; she belongs at a club covered in confetti and glitter like it’s 2009.

“No need to be scared of the boogeyman, or… whatever they call that guy.”

“Slenderman?”

“Mhm, that. I’m sure it’s just good Photoshop, just an art project people are writing scary stories about, and parents think it’s real, and now the news is involved. It happens all the time!”

“Yeah, but…” Your words die in your mouth. 

You saw him, you swear, between the trees or houses on your walk back to your dorm. Impossibly tall, with no features, stalking you from a distance like an animal. Maybe Sandy’s right. The stress of academics and work is probably just driving you crazy, making you see things that aren’t there. The town newspapers haven’t helped your theory of delusion, as people won’t stop going missing in this area. You’re tempted to grab a flashlight and check the perimeter, just in case. You reach for one on the shelf nearby, but Sandy gives you this disappointed look.

“I’m not letting you go ghost hunting. Not good for you,” Sandy’s gaze softens, “Now I feel like a dick for buying these tickets.”

You quit mopping. Tickets? 

“Ugh, don’t look at me like that! When I bought them, there wasn’t this Skinnyman stuff—”

“Slenderman.” You say.

“Slenderman stuff,” Sandy corrects, “I didn’t buy them when this Slenderman stuff was going on.”

“...Again? You went to a concert two weeks ago.” You say, focusing on pushing the mop over the soda spill until it makes the water a murky brown.

“That was nothing. It was a house concert, this one is real and at a big venue and everything! I’m taking my girlfriend for her birthday. Please, come on! I’m sure nothing crazy is going to happen tonight. Nothing ever happens here, anyhow. We work at a nowhere gas station in the middle of nowhere—I’ll even pay you, please.”

You may be terrified of these recent missing persons cases, but Sandy does pay you handsomely when she pulls stunts like this.

“Mundy doesn’t have to know about our little arrangement. It can be off the books.”

Mundy’s your manager, but not actually in your opinion. He never shows up, carries a ‘my way or the highway‘ view of things, and rules over this run-down Shell gas station with an iron fist. You missed your cousin’s birthday because he needed you to watch over this place. He’s the worst.

“You know what? Sure.” You say.

Sandy whoops and tosses you more money than you’ve ever seen in a paycheck. She squeezes you tight and says thank you about a million times.

“You’re the best, and I owe you one—or three—I don’t care, whatever you want! Take it easy.”

Her girlfriend pulls up, tucking her stout blue car parallel to two rusty shells. “I mean it! No ghost hunting.”

She dashes out of the gas station before you can speak. According to her orders, It’s a free, lazy night for you, and your first order is doing your legitimately obtained puzzles. You grab a magazine you ‘borrowed’ from last month’s shipment. You pull out a Sharpie and fill out some blank spaces. You chew on the cap, filling in NAP for twenty-eight across. Fifty-five across is FRIDGEMAGNET. Fifty-two down is IGLOO. Eleven down is easy as you fill out the top corner of the board without much trouble—TENDER, UMAMI, MEAT, SKEIN… It’s almost too easy, or you should seriously consider the big leagues. You finish just above half the crossword only half an hour into your shift, tossing the magazine aside and switching to swiping through your phone to keep the crossword-world-record holders off your tail, as they can’t know about your prowess yet.

That girl who captained cheerleading is having a baby, and there’s also a picture of her wearing a wedding veil (not that you care, considering she stuck gum in your hair during your math final). Some Robotics club girl got into one of those Ivy leagues and is having the time of her life, and a ton of videos of your past friends drunk at a club, confetti all over their everything. You turn off your phone with a heavy sigh and set it on the far side of the counter next to the cigarette shelf, returning to your only company for the night.

You finish the crossword after nearly an hour (it technically only took you thirty-five minutes, but you wouldn’t stop getting up to try and do something productive to keep your mind off your downward spiral), and you sneak the magazine back into the pile with all the other ones that look just like it.

The door slides open, and a man who looks your age stumbles inside, brown hair dripping wet. You switch into professional mode and get your feet off the counter. You give him your standard welcome, but he ignores it and ducks into the aisle closest to the wall. 

Maybe he’s just cold and drunk, but he looks rough. His sickly gray skin—with eyebags dark enough to be mistaken for under-eyeshadow—gives him an almost zombie-esque look (like a trad-goth, but gray). He peeks over the top of the aisle and locks eyes with you, lurching back as if it burns to hold your gaze. He reaches the far corner of the store, opens one of the fridges, and pulls out a can. You watch this man pace the back perimeter and grab a few things, still meandering.

“Can I help you find anything you need?” You ask, but he doesn’t seem to hear you as he stuffs a fistful of Slim Jims in his pocket.

Whatever, he’ll eventually find what he’s looking for if the poor guy searches long enough, or maybe not, considering his apprehension about approaching the front half of the store where your register is. You feel like a cat watching a bird from the window as you watch this strange person pace around the back of the store for nearly twenty minutes. Maybe you have a staring problem, but this guy is too eccentric to look away from. He knocks into the slushie machine and hisses to himself, speaking under his breath. 

He creeps forward to the counter like a deer, a few loose bills and coins tightly held in his bandaged palm. There’s not one bit of eye contact, but his gaze is piercing as his eyes remain locked on the linoleum floors. You grab the soda can he slides onto the countertop, then nod to the Slim Jims sticking out of his pocket.

His shaky palm opens, fingers twitching as five or six individually wrapped Slim Jims spill onto the counter. You count them up and add them to the total. Then he grabs a lighter and tosses it into the pile, the lime-green case clattering amongst his other purchases.

“That’ll be $12.56.”

He hands you $9.27. It’s all he has, and his sudden nervous energy confirms that.

He seems paranoid, and maybe getting a fistful of Slim Jims in him will do him good. You look at the camera and take the money he gave you, bagging everything he piled onto the counter.

“Oh—” He coughs into his fist, his neck creaks, “You don’t have to do that.”

You reassure him, “It’s nothing.” crosses your lips as you pass him the plastic bag.

He steps back, shies away, and then flees out the door like a feral cat. You hear another car horn as this strange guy disappears from view beyond the tree line.

Another weird stranger, you think. He’s just another passerby you’ll never see again.

✸𓆟✸

That’s what you think until he shows up again two weeks later. He’s dirtier than last time,  his fingernails caked with dirt as he bumps into Sandy. He grabs a soda from the back and shuffles to the front, eyeing your name tag. He says your name as if he’s kneading the word between his teeth and under his tongue like a lozenge.

You take the Pepsi from him and scan it. He coughs up enough money to pay for it—and a little more, four dirty singles more than he needs to pay for the soda.

“From last time—I know it wasn’t enough, I remembered.” He says, wiping his hand on his jacket. He looks proud of himself.

You thank him, and he looks like he’s about to burst, squirming at the compliment like a prodded insect, shakily taking the can from you and cracking it open.

“I’m Toby,” He tips the sugary drink back, then swallows hard, “Well, my name’s Tobias, but Toby sounds better. Toby Rogers sounds better than Tobias Rogers.”

Sandy eyes you, gesturing to Toby with a long acrylic, who’s now rocking back and forth on his feet and rambling. You shrug. He’s probably not a threat. 

He seems chill, you mouth to her.

He grabs a map and turns it over in his hand. He sets down his drink and skims over the large map of the state. You take his moment of focus to take in his features, dull, brown eyes that skirt around the paper. His hair is greasy and messy, probably knotted beyond care. His clothes—beat-up hiker’s trousers, a heavy jacket over a ratty black tank top, and goggles with bright orange lenses, the right one cracked. He twitches, then turns the map to you.

“Are there any ways to go here?”

You snap from your observation, blinking as your vision is filled with the veins and artery-looking highways across this middle-of-nowhere part of the state. Toby points to some empty spot on the map, some national park (you think).

“Well, you could take the interstate highway.” You suggest, dragging your finger along the thickest vein on the map.

“Well, I’d need a car for that, right? I don’t have one of those.”

Oh. That’s the problem with this part of the country. No car, no luck. If Toby wants to leave, he would need a car—whether that be from a friend or a stranger. You tell him so: that there aren’t many options to leave if you don’t have the money to do it, which feels especially cruel considering you essentially spotted him for Slim Jims the other week. He folds the map politely and then slips it back into its container.

“That sucks, I guess,” He says, continuing to nurse his drink. Sandy makes a phone-shape gesture with a frantic expression on her face. 

Toby’s a little eccentric, but he’s not 9-1-1 call-worthy. You shoo her away to reorganize the shelves. He keeps talking at you about a variety of things. He sounds like a camper, talking about how living in the woods is better than where he’s living now, how his roommates are very noisy, and he’d rather be cold and wet and living in a tent than be in his current situation.

“Off-campus housing must be tough. Are you in a fraternity?”

“Fraternity? No, not uni,” he says, shuffling on his feet as he pulls the soda tab off the can and rolls it between his fingers, “Not uni. Not smart enough for it. I didn’t even finish high school.”

“Oh.” 

Now it’s your turn to shuffle awkwardly.

Sandy slips into the break room and shuts the door behind her, leaving you, Toby, and the blinking security camera. Toby finishes his beverage and looks for a bin to toss it (and to look polite and well-mannered). You lift the garbage bin from behind the counter (also to look polite and well-mannered).

You both talk about a variety of things. Toby seems to relax once it’s just the two of you. He asks you about working here. He asks if you like it.

“Kind of. Pay is pretty bad, but the graveyard shift means I get paid to do nothing,”

He nods, then runs his fingers over the ridge of paper maps again. His hand snaps sharply downward to grip the counter, his free hand tugging up his sleeve so he can scratch his arm.

“Is there not any other way out of here?” Toby abruptly pulls his hand from the counter and strikes his temple with the heel of his hand, “W-Why won’t anybody let me leave?” Toby’s voice is cold and jagged like glass with corrosive terror. You recoil, instinctively covering your precious internal organs with a defensive lurch. Toby does the same, pulling his hood over his matted hair and bumping into the flat shelf behind him. Besides the hum-buzz of yellowed fluorescent lamps, the store is silent. He tugs the goggles over his eyes in a rough motion, too, mumbling and rocking to soothe himself.

After what feels like an eternity, Toby finally speaks at a volume you can hear.

“Do you ever feel like you’re being watched?” He weeps, “Like, even if you sleep on the second floor, it can still see you—even if you’re hiding—and it knows exactly where you are, and you can’t do anything?”

Sleepless nights, icy chills that leave the hairs on your neck standing on end, that prey-animal feeling where you know you’re being followed and observed (but your eyes can’t catch that distant figure, tall enough to blend in amongst the trees). People stopped believing you after you cried wolf a few too many times. Calling friends in the dead of night on the side of the road did not earn you a good favor, which explains why so many people stopped talking to you after high school. You look down at your near-dozen crossword puzzles filled out on lonely graveyard shifts, down at your hands, and then you meet Toby’s frightened gaze.

“I guess, yeah.” You reply. 

Toby blinks, tugging his blue surgical mask to rest comfortably on his nose.

“Really?” He creeps back towards the counter, shuffling forward to speak quietly, “I like coming here because I feel like I’m finally alone; It feels like I’m safe here—like nothing can hurt me.”

You nod. Working here gives you plenty of quiet, something most people can not get enough of. This place can be nice as long as Mundy leaves you and Sandy.

“My house isn’t a great place to be right now. That’s why I come here a lot. Nice and quiet, no screaming.”

“I get that, too,” You say quietly, speaking as if you’re trying not to frighten a wild animal, “Sometimes everything is just… too much, yeah?”

“...Yeah,” Toby whispers, “Yeah.”

He relaxes, taking a few deep breaths before pulling back his hood and goggles. Toby then hooks a finger around the elastic band on his surgical mask and pulls it off of his face, revealing a gaping scar on the side of his cheek that looks like it was chewed through. His teeth are visible, fairly yellow (but otherwise fine-looking), and slightly crooked. Seeing Toby’s face in its entirety takes you a moment to become accustomed to, his crooked smile and slightly-bent nose are not what fills your mind. His jaw is soft and rounded, and his gray-ish skin is smattered with lighter marks of old wounds.

Toby scratches at the healed-over gash, picking at some calloused skin while his other fingers curl involuntarily.

“I don’t go out much at all—” He starts, wiping his hand on his coat, “It’s been nice, even if I’ve had to sneak out to come here, I don’t want any other guys knowing I’ve been out here to see you—” Toby scrunches up, fingers curling as he watches you process his words. 

Toby has the nervous energy of a dog retired from blood sports and brought into a quiet home, always biting the hand that feeds because it’s all he’s ever known, kicking and screaming in terror at any gentle caress, howling like you’ve flayed his skin, separating sinew and flesh. He has matted fur and mangled teeth; he limps from years of brutality, eyes darting around the peaceful setting expecting to be bitten; to be scratched; to bleed with no future of quiet.

You walk out from behind the counter and sit beside him, bumping knees. You both sit in silence, surrounded by the warm hum-buzz of fluorescent lights. Toby’s shoulders heave with a tic as he knocks his knee against yours. The small noises of the creaky building and its humming electronics (which would normally send Toby into a tizzy) didn’t make his skin crawl. He feels his chest fill with air then feels the air leave out of his nose as he takes in your features, following the slope of your forehead down to your nose and mouth, then your chin and your neck. If you were to meet his gaze now he would die, so he enjoys this moment next to you for as long as he can.

Your time together is cut short when Sandy exits the break room.

Toby’s face warms as he scrambles to his feet and scurries out the door with a quick goodbye and thank you shouted in your direction.

You feel a hot blush creep up your face from your neck, Sandy finally speaks once it creeps to the tips of your ears.

“Did I…interrupt something?” She asks, holding back a snicker.

“A little bit,” You say, stuffing your hands into your pockets, “I keep your things from Mundy, you keep mine.” 

✸𓆟✸

There are three things that, when they come together, become the ingredients for the worst shift of your life.

First: Sandy doesn’t clock in, any shift without Sandy is like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without the jelly.

Second, and this one’s new, Toby doesn’t visit. He makes the grueling night shift a little less boring and gives you someone new to chat with and learn things.

Third, Mandy does one of his surprise visits, especially when he remembers the security cameras he installed.

He stormed in only a few minutes after you clocked in, stomping about the store and trying to find something to interrogate you so he could open the door to harsher criticisms. He finds a few misorganized cans and grills you.

“You’re supposed to put the tall cans in the second fridge, don’t mix them.”

“My bad, Mundy. Won’t happen again.” You say, holding your hands up.

Most of the time he finds minute things, but because there are hardly any customers, there’s hardly anyone to mess anything up, which means there’s not much you can do to fill out a shift. This time, however, he pulls out a little card, holding it out as if you are supposed to know what that means. He drags you into the break room and pushes the little SD card into his dingy laptop. He clicks on one of the few dozen files stuffed in the folder. 

You watch a VOD of the security footage from a few weeks ago when you spotted Toby for those three extra Slim Jims. Mundy looks like he’s about to explode, pausing the video when all of Toby’s items are dumped out on the counter.

“You rang up only three Slim Jims that night. Why do I see six going into that bag?”

You freeze up, half because that’s such a stupid thing to pull you aside for, but also because Mundy is that crazy.

“I—”

“And then here,” He scrubs the video forward, showing the following interaction the following night, “Loitering? You’re letting people run amok in here when I’m not here? To think I trusted you and Sandy to care for things on your own.”

“Toby wasn’t doing anything—”

“No, don’t give me that done,” He snaps, ”Do you have any idea, any clue, what you’re doing to this place by letting people like that loiter around my store?” Mundy shouts, “Letting—You’re letting total thugs and drug addicts hang out in here. Do you ever think about what that may do for the reputation of this place?”

You sink back into your chair, which squeals as you curl like a sun-dried bug.

“You’re lucky I’m not going to fire you, do you understand? You’re lucky. That’s all you are. If that guy didn’t pay you back, you would be handing in your uniform.”

“But he’s not—”

“Not what?!” Mundy throws his hands up in exasperation, “Do you think normal people want to shop when you let crazy people bounce off the walls? You let this guy in—dirty and probably drugged out of his mind—and you make conversation with him? Let him loiter?”

“Mundy—”

“No, I’m not even going to bother with this,” He shoves the sopping-wet mop into your hands, “If I see any more shenanigans after this—you’re done. Get mopping. I have a headache from dealing with you, especially since I’m always trying to keep Sandy under control.”

Mundy massages his temples, walking into the break room while mumbling, “Now I’ve got to replace that piece-of-shit camera, too. Always on the fritz...”

You get to mopping, and Sandy passes through the automatic doors, a tense expression on her face.

“You know, I could hear him from the break room,” She mouths, “I think I would be the same if I were the manager of a dead-end gas station, especially if it were the only thing I had done with my life.”

Sandy pulls her purse over her shoulder, “Be careful not to unscrew your arms from mopping so much.”

She leaves, climbing into her girlfriend’s passenger side and pulling out of the dirt lot even faster. Mundy exits the break room and watches you like a hawk, and you spend three hours doing purposeless chores to keep him happy; you mop the floors, reorganize shelves, and restock the fridges (which were full) until you can barely hold yourself upright.

“See? I hired you to do your job, not just loaf around all night behind the counter.”

Ugh.

✸𓆟✸

Toby comes in again a few days after Mundy’s new ordinance began, and you can tell that all of this recent surveillance is getting to your head because you immediately look up at the camera that watches the both of you as if it’s going to snap at you like a dog. He says hello, waving with his eyes squint-y from a smile.

“You look like you’re about to puke.” Toby chuckles, leaving a few bills on the counter while he heads to the back to grab a drink, “Something wrong? Is it Sandy?”

“No, just… work.” You grab Toby's drink, eyes flicking to the camera as you take the money, count it up, and give him a few coins in change.

“Is it Mundy?”

You hush him, eyes flicking up to the camera. He nods, taking his drink and starting his familiar pacing around the main body of the store. You grab the mop from the break room, though you’ve already mopped this entire place three times, and begin your familiar dance to follow Toby around the store.

“He won’t let you stay. If I let you loiter, Mundy will fire me,” You meet his gaze, and he looks like a kicked dog, “I’m so sorry.”

Toby peeks at the camera, then looks back at you, “Is he here?” He asks.

“Break room, most likely watching the footage from my last shift. Mundy’s waiting for me to slip up, so it’s been stressful.”

Toby pats your shoulder, then takes his can and finishes the rest of his drink quickly, “... I’m sorry. I can go home if being here is a bad thing.”

“I don’t want you to go, though—” You say, your voice is a little too heavy for talking to a regular—”...You know, you’re one of three customers we’ve had for weeks. Isn’t that funny? This place is a dump. I would quit, but I need the money.”

Toby watches you push the mop in a fit, pushing and pulling water across the clean linoleum tiles.

“...I have to go now. Thanks for everything.” Toby says quietly with a new coldness to his soft tone.

His sudden shift in demeanor makes you a bit nervous as he exits the store, waving sweetly at you. You wave back. Hopefully, he didn’t say thanks for everything because he was leaving forever. You watch him disappear along the edge of the highway, and you are left alone to mop the floors for the rest of the night, eventually leaving because Mundy doesn’t trust you to handle closings anymore. 

Toby scales the crag outside the gas station, slipping back into the woods with new feelings bubbling under the surface of his skin. He races past familiar trees, spotting the mansion on the horizon. He scales the wall using the only standing gutter left, and then he slips into his room through the window, angry enough to chew on his hand until he bleeds. He pulls off his shoes and flings them into his dresser. The quickest, easiest answer would be to run back there, hatchets in hand, and dismember this guy that’s been bothering you. The other part of Toby, the one he kept hold of after everything that happened to him (the part of him that’s still seventeen years old and terrified), wants to just curl up on his dingy mattress and give up. He grabs a hatchet and curls up with it in his arms, running his hand along the handle’s grain.

Maybe in a few days, he doesn’t want to scare you, maybe he can make it look like a bad accident.

There’s the clatter of furniture, the familiar sounds of home, and Toby drifts off to sleep, planning out the next few nights to prepare even if it means he won’t be able to see you. Spending the next few days in the manor is rough because everybody won’t stop asking questions. Toby hardly imagined anyone in the manor enough to notice he was still there (it took everyone nearly three weeks to notice EJ’s absence when it was too late to catch them), and it was even stranger for others to be concerned about Toby’s whereabouts.

He wishes EJ was still here, they hardly cared about unimportant things and cared even less about stupid things like visiting someone behind Slenderman’s back. They would have helped him plan, listened to Toby go through a few plans, giving a thumbs up when good and a thumbs down when bad. He instead spends the few days pacing around his room as ideas swarm his brain like locusts, biting off chunks until Toby needs to sleep and quit thinking.

✸𓆟✸

Mundy grumbles, stepping outside and lighting a cigarette as he stands next to the dumpster, eyeing the few gutted shells of cars abandoned on the lot. He twirls the keys around his finger, more stressed about adding two sudden openings online. He always hated computers.

Toby peeks around from behind the dumpster, eyes trailing down Mundy’s back, eyes boring into his spine and shoulder blades beneath his shirt. He unhooks one of his hatchets from its holster on his hip, creeping along the edge of the gas station’s wall as Mundy shuffles on his feet.

You already settled into your shift hours ago, Toby memorized your schedule so he could always bump into you. Mundy was so wound up from Sandy organizing the magazines her way that he nearly snapped and fired her on the spot. 

Any reprieve from Mundy’s surveillance would not be taken for granted. You start counting the ceiling tiles, wishing you could do a crossword right about now.

“You think Mundy’s… Okay?” Sandy pipes up, restocking the beef jerky bags on a distant shelf.

“No.”

“I mean—yeah, he’s not generally okay, but… he’s been outside for half an hour…” Sandy stands, abandoning her work, ”I don’t smoke, but that seems like a long time to be out there in… that.” 

Rain beats against the windows so intensely it’s hard to see the highway that runs parallel to the station, the only indicator that the highway still exists is the occasional flash of high beams as someone drives by. You can understand the need for a break (whether with a cigarette or a puzzle) but this torrential downpour would dampen anyone’s smoke break, at least he should be standing under the concrete awning. Lightning lights the night sky, highlighting the dark forests that swallow this little establishment. Thunder growls overhead, rolling over your mind like a cold chill.

“Something’s wrong.”

“Oh my god, please don’t go off on one of your tangents about Slenderman, I do not need that right now, especially since this is the first time we’ve had a moment without Mundy breathing down our necks. Besides, give me some reprieve since I’m handling garbage on such a stormy night.”

“I wasn’t going to!” You throw up your hands dramatically, “You’re the one that brought it up!”

Sandy looks outside and shudders, “Slenderman isn’t real, I’m not going to let your little internet ghost stories scare me.” She swallows, slipping outside and pulling the garbage bag from its canister, “You’re so paranoid.”

You watch her disappear into the darkness, the automatic doors sliding shut as she rounds the corner to toss the bag into the dumpster. You suck in a breath and push it out shakily. You hear muffled shouting, Sandy calling out for Mundy, but there’s no response. 

The store feels too big all of a sudden, you feel too exposed with the large glass sliding doors, but Sandy’s jeers about your paranoia push that nervous energy down into the pit of your stomach. 

Sandy heaves the bag up above her torso, but her shaky grip (and her laziness about tying the top of the bag) causes a plethora of things to spill from the bag. Sandy huffs, dropping the half-full bag on the ground and groping for trash in the dark.

She groped around in the dark, mind swimming with frustration and confusion. The rain soaks through her coat, and her well-kept nails are caked with mud as she picks up garbage. She feels the usual things—crumpled-up cans, napkins, and old fast food bags.

But the sudden, leathery texture that she brushes her fingertips against, a coppery tinge to the air. It’s warm, warm like a person.

A blood-curdling scream rings out after a flash of lightning turns night to day (followed by the loudest clap of thunder you’ve heard—the kind that makes the earth shake). You chuckle to yourself, but you shut yourself up when you hear her hysteric sobs mixed in with Sandy’s horrified screams.

Everything goes quiet.

“Sandy?”

Her sobs continue, you can hear her crying.

“Sandy—” You step out into the rainy darkness, “—Hey, are you there? Is everything okay? Was it a raccoon or something?”

She shouts your name with the desperation of a wild animal with an arrow through its leg, scrambling to her feet, she’s soaked and cold.

She grabs the collar of your shirt, drags you back towards the light, then locks the doors behind the two of you, and knocks a shelf over to block the door.

“Sandy, what the hell? I just—”

“M-Mundy’s dead—he’s fucking dead,” She gasps, sobbing harder than before, ”We’re next—Oh god, oh god, oh god—”

Sandy lurches and vomits, dark bile streaking across the linoleum tiles. You’re at her side in a second pulling her dark, curly hair away from her face. You guide her to sit down in the break room, kneeling in front of her as she nearly shakes herself to pieces.

“He’s dead? You’re serious?”

“His head was in a garbage bag—” A dry sob rattles her frame, ”—He’s dead. Dead, dead, dead.”

You pull out your phone and dial the emergency number, gently soothing Sandy as she tries to hush up when the line connects. You give the operator the address and hold the phone for Sandy. She sputters, trying to spit out her words. The operator asks her questions, trying to get her to relax.

She described Mundy’s still-warm head rolling out of the bag, Sandy’s skin void of its typical warmth and vibrancy. Sandy emphasizes how warm it was when she touched it, like feeling a leather bag sitting in the sun.

The operator soothes both of you, help is on the way.

After thirty minutes of agonizing silence, The approaching ambulance’s siren wailed like an angel, and the paramedics that arrived on the scene ushered you and Sandy out and swaddled you both in blankets. Tape cinched the gas station, and officers secured the perimeter, marching like ants. The rain was still heavy, and large droplets beat against the ambulance. Detectives sat across from you trying to get Sandy (in her nearly catatonic state) to recite the scene.

“I don’t know,” Sandy said, “I don’t know.”

I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know… She’s rocking herself, shivering either from terror or the cold—perhaps both—as you rub her back and try to help her calm down.

“Rich,” a paramedic shouts, which drags the detective's attention from Sandy, “Call up Morgan—We’ve got another.”

He sighs and hops out of the ambulance, beating a phone number into the small buttons and walking off into the rain.

Sandy turns to you, she’s ice cold, “...What are we gonna do now?”

Your mind can’t help but wander, the rational half of you wants to believe that this was some kind of freak accident, that Mundy just…

Well, you aren’t sure how someone could be accidentally decapitated, but maybe there is a logical explanation for Mundy’s death. He is just another number in a vast list of victims of these unexplainable attacks. Some believe in a Jack the Ripper scenario, while others lean towards the supernatural. You’ve fallen down the rabbit hole before, and with each passing moment, the idea of your past delusions being real sounds less and less insane. Sandy nudges you, interrupting your slip into panic. 

“What are we going to do now?”

“I…I don’t know.” You whisper, curling up under your blanket.

You swear you see someone moving amongst the trees, and dread washes over you like an icy bath. 

What are you going to do now?

✸𓆟✸

[thatphantomtroupelady]

How good (some of) the troupe members would be at giving you the silent treatment? (Part 1)

You're dead if Machi, of all people starts giving you the silent treatment. What did you even do?? This'd be her last resort for when she's seriously pissed off, since she actually prefers to talk things out. And she'd be scarily good at this, completely shutting herself off from you. If you nag at her, it'd only get worse.

During this time, she would talk normally with all the other troupe members, but you could still see a hint of annoyance in her voice throughout. The best way would be to give her some space first and then, when the time is right, sit down together to talk it out.

Phinks believes himself to be the king of giving others silent treatment but he's actually awful at it. Still, he tries to stick through with his plan (despite his many slipups).

If you're feeling particularly mischievous, you could even play around and see how many times you can trick him into talking to you. Although if you cross the line, he'd actually get very upset so don't push it too far.

The best way to stop this would be to just go up to him and sincerely apologize. You'd have to completely swallow your pride too, since he'd be going on and on about how right he was all along in a sarcastic-ish tone.

But it's actually his way to 'downplay' the situation in his mind, so if anything you should be grateful he won't be taking that incident seriously anymore. If you'd start arguing back at him then, it'd just get a lot worse. If he's in the wrong though, he'd come running with an apology with you soon enough.

Chrollo would be very very good at it at first. Even if you'd live in the same house, he'd make it so that you'd never be able to even just see him walking by. He'd be extremely petty but also if you could ever catch a glimpse of him, you'd see that he's actually very upset. He'd spend all day burying himself in books, not even bothering to read them as he'd just keep overthinking about the situation.

Eventually, you'd find him on the dining table, nursing a cup of coffee in hand, looking exhausted. He'd look up at you and just sigh. If you'd ignore him then, he'd be absolutely heartbroken because it'd be his way of inviting you to have a civil conversation. He might even leave the next day, which would only make things worse.

The best way would be, as with machi, talk. You'd prepare a whole script for what you'd want to say and he'd simply pause and listen. Then, he'd start softly talking and invite you to sit down. Turns out he made a cup of coffee for you too, just the way you like it (or some other beverage if you don't like coffee). If you're able to sort everything out, he'd go super affectionate mode because he'd actually be touch-starved/lonely all those days. You could watch a movie/cook together or go intimate if your relationship is like that.

[ternaryflower53]

For the ask game 🖊️ Lyn/Veil

(ask meme here)

🖊️ write a drabble for you

“Trust me, he’s not worth it.”

Lyn looks over to see who’s sat down next to her—a darkeyed woman a couple years older than her, wearing a long white coat that she’s surprised isn’t stained from the dingy bar seats. “Hmm?”

“Kaladin.” The woman nods to Lyn’s commanding officer, who’s sitting in one of the booths at the back of the bar, laughing at something Teft is saying. He looks better than he usually does, not as weighed down. “He’s not interested. Figured I’d tell you instead of letting you find out the hard way.

Lyn sighs. “Right. Figures.”

[meeenaaakshiiii]

How far would you go chasing the sun??

Until the ocean kiss my feet and asks me to relax while singing to me the melody of crashing waves.

[jesterjamz]

[showersofstardust]

What do *I* want to do in my time?

Try live streaming video games for FUN and CONNECTION

Yoga 2x or 3x a week

Jogging

Baking

Cooking

Working

Cuddling and playing with my cats

Holidays with family

Making new friends

[omokers]

Chapter two of Cathexis is up!

[paddlescuddlesbubblesgurgles]

Self Centered

Make her self obsessed. Buy her a new mirror, a new camera, a new light. Make her look at herself more. She needs to be self absorbed. She’s perfect. You made her this way. You love how she is. Make her believe it, too.

Get her more makeup, more piercings, more tattoos, more nails, more clothes, more hair, more fat, more implants, more of her.

Get her whatever she wants to look prettier for you.

Get her more. Make her more.

Grow her.

Use her together. Watch her together. Her body is for your pleasure together. Just review her constantly. Look at her constantly. Show her how much you love it.

Bend the world around her. Make the world revolve around her. Put her at the center. Let her take her time. Let her set the pace. Let her be whatever she wants. Let her take hours.

Why don’t we just spend a few hours looking at you while I tell you how much I love how you look? Let me review your body with you and tell just how much I love it all.

Let’s do this every night? It’s like a game. You stand in front of the mirror. I stand behind you. I inspect each and every part of you. I tell you what I like about them. I love them all. You love them all. We love them all. You can be our event this evening.

I’ll lift, and pull, and tug, and squeeze, and slap, and bite, and kiss, and mark all these parts I love. Everything that makes you you. Your body.

Let’s put your pictures up. Let’s put you on the tv. Let’s get you painted and drawn and sculpted. I need it to be clear. You’re art. You’re my muse.

You’re mine.

[whumping-in-the-dark]

Caretaker pretending to hate whumpee so that whumper wouldn't leverage whumpee against against them-

Cue clueless whumpee feeling betrayed by caretaker's harsh words :(

[paddlescuddlesbubblesgurgles]

🫡

[8-dermestid]

Hello, I hope you are well! Recently I read a fanfic of yours on Ao3 about Ticci Toby and I fell in love with your writing!! I loved the way you develop the characters and their feelings!! 🤧💕✨

I would like to know if you write for Creepypasta X Virus, it is one of my favorites but there is almost no content online about it 🥹👉🏻👈🏻

Anyway, I saw your requests are open! If the idea pleases you, I would like to ask for headcanons of X Virus and Toby (or just Toby) with a reader who practices magic and has somewhat "dark" tastes (interest in poisonous animals/plants and the supernatural as a whole, in short, just a scary and adorable nerd at the same time!)

Thanks!! 💚

ahh! hello-hello!! i read x-virus' story and took notes for these, i really enjoyed writing Cody, so thank you very much for the request :-]

i rlly liked this request, and this is actually the first time i've ever done headcanon-ish things, i hope you enjoy these (bc i enjoyed writing them a lot)

x-virus & ticci toby: reader with macabre interests

relationships: ticci toby x reader, x-virus x reader

word count: 1.5k

links: available on ao3

x-virus warnings: animal death (off-screen, animal body shown) animal dissection, taxidermy, canon-typical violence

ticci toby warnings: canon-typical violence

☣︎ X-Virus | Cody _____ ☣︎

You let it slip one day that you wanted to try taxidermy, an embarrassing guilty pleasure you were confident you could keep under wraps, but Cody’s just been so nice about your eccentricities and you couldn’t help yourself.

“They use bugs in the process, lots of museums have them to clean the bones because they’re better than the best person with the best tools—” You pace back and forth as Cody watches you from your bed, “—Because that’s all they do, all they do is eat rotting flesh off the bone. The bones last much longer when cleaned by any Dermes—”

You stop yourself from mentioning the insects by their scientific name, embarrassed that you let your ramblings slip away like that.

Cody leaves the next day and you’re left alone with your thoughts. Maybe there’s another mansion full of serial killers so you can start fresh, your ears burn recalling how excited you got talking about flesh-eating bugs.

A few days later, Cody returns to the mansion with a limp raccoon and some things it stole from the local morgue.

You spend the entire night together trying to preserve this creature’s hide, you take it apart with precise motions, expertly moving the scalpel along the skin and parting flesh and sinew. You soak the skin in salts, rubbing it into the bloody underside until you smell like copper and the salt mines.

The whole room smells like formaldehyde, too.

✸ ☣︎ ​​✸

Cody is so excited to share its books with you, all of them. You spend long evenings together curled over a battery-powered lantern and ten-pound textbooks, occasionally mentioning an interesting tidbit when you come across one. Your books are filled with flattened foliage from the surrounding woods, poisonous plants and flowers, plastic baggies filled with poison ivy leaves, and hand-drawn diagrams of each plant’s internal structures in a ballpoint pen. It flips through each page carefully, examining each specimen, complimenting each note and observation.

“You should open a museum,” It says, running a finger over a pressed Conium maculatum. That snaps you out of your science headspace.

You should, but you can’t. “Besides, who would enjoy a museum like that?” You argue.

“Think about the Mütter Museum,” It quips back, “If people frequent a museum full of pickled people-guts and spines, I’m sure people would go to yours. People like flowers.”

In another universe where violence wasn’t at the forefront of your mind, maybe you’d be the curator of a weird little museum full of oddities.

​​✸ ☣︎ ​​✸

“Toby comes here all the time to burn CDs, don’t worry, the cameras stopped working years ago and they never bothered to fix them,” Cody pushes open a window and climbs into the air-conditioned computer lab of the local library, “Just don’t knock anything over, I guess.” It jokes.

You drop through the window and feel goosebumps form on your arms, you haven’t felt air conditioning in years.

Cody unlocks the door leading to the rest of the facility, you walk side-by-side, dragging your fingers over the spines of dozens of books.

“You know the Dewey Decimal System, right?” Cody asks, there’s a thrill with breaking in, especially for pleasure (rather than worrying about killing every occupant in a house, you both can focus on finding a specific edition of a book you were dying to read).

“By heart.” You joke, guiding it to the 500s: Natural Sciences.

You spend five hours squished up together reading from the same book. It points to a diagram and you explain every minute detail, Cody listens eagerly to your explanations, wanting to ingrain every word that comes out of your brilliant, perfect brain, and memorize the way you describe the venom sacs of the Hydrophis schistosus.

 The way it rolls off your tongue—Hydrophis schistosus—Cody wants that to be the last sound it ever hears, the sound echoing forever in its brain until the heat death of the universe.

You creep down to the 200s and find a few textbooks about niche religious practices. You tell Cody about the rarity of cannibalistic religious practices, and the prevalence of cannibalism in some movies ticks you off.

“Cannibalism isn’t that common,” You scoff, “It’s more than socially taboo, it’s biologically taboo. Ever heard of Kuru?”

“Tell me.” It begs.

✸ ☣︎ ​​✸

⦻ Ticci Toby | Tobias Erin Rogers ⦻

Every word that comes out of you flies over his head. Even though he doesn't know a thing about what you’re telling him about, he’s completely and utterly enamored. Toby never graduated high school, and—for the most part—he’s glad he didn’t have to spend any more time around high-school people. 

He misses learning. Sometimes Toby thinks he’s stupid, Tim and Brian went to university, and they have high school diplomas with their names on them somewhere, Toby has nothing except an honor roll card from the eighth grade. You’re so brilliant, maybe part of him thinks he’s weighing you down by stopping your ramblings to ask for clarification. He’s so deep in thought he hasn't been paying attention to your talks about the Ghent Altarpiece’s connection to ancient practices of animal sacrifice.

“Does it bother you when I do that—when I don’t know things a-and you gotta explain it to me?”

You’re sitting on the porch together looking out over the rolling fog, he sucks in a breath, the tip of a Marlboro lighting up orange-hot.

“I like it, actually.” You say matter-of-factly

Toby’s diaphragm sputters as smoke spills from his nose, and he coughs hard into his elbow. “...Doesn’t it—But I’m interrupting you because I’m too stupid to get it the first time—”

That word gives you pause, and Toby tosses away the cigarette butt and curls into himself, shame burning hot on his face.

“I don’t think—”

“E-Everyone does,” He cries, “I-I can’t help it, I couldn’t even finish high school. Tim and Brian made it to college, at least.”

You push yourself into his personal space, knocking your knee into his as you lean over to share a secret.

“I can teach you if you’d like.”

Toby’s red-hot shame melts into a giddy flush as your warm breath lands on his ear.

✸ ⦻ ​​✸

The next victim that comes Toby’s way—a family of three with a prying-eyed teenager getting too close to discovering the mansion—grants you both access to the internet for a time.

You start with Wikipedia, it’s good practice to get bare-bones information that starts the deep dive. Marine Biology is the starting topic because the random article Wikipedia spat out at you was about the bigfin squid.

Toby mumbles aloud as he scrolls through the article, the picture on the right left the hairs on his arms standing on end. Little is known about it because it dwells so deep, and scientists aren’t entirely sure why its distinct long arms are there.

“Nobody knows how it feeds?”

“We know more about space than our oceans,” You say, “We have pictures of the Big Bang.”

Toby rolls back on the wheeled chair and pushes the keyboard to you.

You open a new tab and open the search bar.

COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND.

He pulls back in, opening the third link that pops up. You sit quietly as he devours an entire article explaining the picture’s existence, he’s vibrating in his chair. Toby continues the search without your input, googling words and finding plenty of pictures of smattered space dust orbiting tiny, dense stars.

The pictures of the black hole shake him to his core, nebulae give him chills, beautiful planets and star systems and moons and—

Alpha Centauri grabs a hold of Toby’s body and keeps him there. He pushes the monitor towards you and you read along with him, he’s shaking with excitement, free hand flapping excitedly as he scrolls through the academic journal.

He prints out a few pictures before the police show up, the cosmic microwave background bathing the room in greens and blues and smatterings of yellows and reds.

✸ ⦻ ​​✸

He starts stealing books from the library, as do you. You take turns showing and telling. He shows you astronomy books and you show him textbooks about the history of taxonomy; you spend hours sitting across from each other on the floor exchanging knowledge.

“I’m—I’m glad we did this. Thanks for doing all of—of that.” 

You peek over an academic journal you’ve read at least seven times, smiling softly as Toby puts his new collection of literature into a box and pushes it into the closet. He piles a few flannels and shirts over the box to camouflage it amongst his dirt laundry.

“Why’re you doing that?”

Toby turns to you and turns away meekly, “...It’s our special thing, you get it? I don’t want anyone getting into our business. This is our thing. Our special thing.”

A warmth creeps up your neck as Toby holds your gaze. You close your journals.

“Babies have more bones than adults.” You whisper, your hand splayed over his shoulder blades, “About three hundred.”

Toby’s breath hitches as your hands warm the spot where his cervical vertebrae end and the thoracic meet.

“H-How many are—” He covers his mouth to cover a shaky breath, “—i-in the spine?”

“There are thirty-three vertebrae. Seven cervical,” You and trails down his back, “Twelve thoracic,” you creep further, “Five lumbar,” Lower and lower you go, “Five sacral,” You’re getting bold now, “...And four coccygeals.”

You hold your hands there, Toby enjoys the warmth radiating from your fingers, he wants to melt into you like watered-down clay (you would call it slip since you know everything). He wants to read books with you for the rest of his life and not do anything else.

He wants you to count every rib, every tooth in his mouth, every bone in his hands and feet—counting and counting and counting until he's dizzy.

✸ ⦻ ​​✸