ITS SO CUTE I WILL SOB - Tumblr Posts

this is so good i could cry rn.

bodyache {Corpse Husband}

@bingusmode my beloved requested: hey u … u asked for soft prompt? i wanna… i wanna give u a dialogue prompt ive been working on that i made for myself…. “do you think stars have feelings?” “i’d like to think they do. i think stars fall so in love they like to run into each other and create supernovas.” and then later in the story, with no added context, to see if MC remembers- “hey… i think i might be pulling a star” :’) it’s from a dream i had w corpse and maybe… maybe u can take it and do something good with it too :’)

Summary: You are the best part of a bad past - and then you come back.

A/N: 5202 words.

Warnings: light crime?? like trespassing, also mentions of Corpse getting in a fight. also also mentions/implications of disordered eating.

Citrus Scale: 🧡 ORANGE 🧡

Corpse claims he doesn't have friends outside of the internet. When you hear this, you call him dramatic and roll your eyes.

"I don't have friends, I have you, and we're not friends, you just keep showing up at my house," his tone is deadpan as he elaborates, looking up from where you'd placed your phone in front of him. On the screen is his interview in the latest Anthony Padilla video, where he'd explained that it's not like he has to hide his identity since he doesn't have anyone to hide it from.

He's sitting at the kitchen island of his shoebox kitchen, while you level an unimpressed look at him.

"You're the one who keeps letting me in," you tell him pointedly, hands on your hips as you look around the kitchen, before ducking down and opening one of his cupboards.

"I'm being polite," he fires back, snarkily, and you glance up at him, eyebrow raised, a little disbelieving.

"Where'd you put your big soup pot, Mister Nobody-Loves-Me?" You ask instead, and he huffs, dropping his head to the counter in exasperation.

"I don't want fucking soup."

"Well I brought ingredients for soup," your tone is lofty as you make your way through the cupboards.

"I didn't ask you to," he reminds, but you, pot in hand and triumphant, stand up straight again, now grinning from ear to ear.

"If you can look me in the eye and tell me you've eaten in the past forty-eight hours, I'll leave."

A long, incredibly telling silence follows; for you it's a victory, as is Corpse's defeated sigh.

"What kind of soup?"

So no, Corpse doesn't have friends outside the internet, but he does have you, and has for the longest time.

You're somehow the best of a bad situation, the silver lining of the shitty, dark cloud of his past choices and poor judgement. Meeting you when he did, back when he was nobody and giving time to people who would sooner offer a knife than a helping hand, it feels like divine intervention.

He took hits and spat blood with the best of them, learned to flip knives and hide weaknesses, like how his body was actively self destructing at every given moment, but you were on the sidelines, watching him like he was a fucking zoo animal at first, fascinated. These people weren't fascinated by anything that didn't come rolled in thin paper or a dime bag, too caught up in themselves and the anger and the violence they indulged in that you, quiet, observant you, were unnerving.

"Take a fucking picture," he'd hissed when he'd spotted you at one of the usual haunts, perched on a milkcrate like some punk gargoyle all decked out in black. You were watching him - fucking again - after someone had tried to start shit, and he'd ended up with a black eye and split lip. Not an unusual occurrence for a Saturday, but the way you're looking at him, your hands shoved deep in the pockets of your jackets, eyes alight with something unreadable while your expression was strangely neutral, it make the hair stand on the back of his neck.

"Do you want some aspirin?" You call. In the rose-gold chill of the night, it feels like some strange scene from a movie; Corpse scowls.

"The fuck?"

"Do you want," you say slower this time, pulling your hand out of your pocket, holding something thin and shiny between your middle and pointer fingers, "some aspirin?" Oh; you're holding a packet of fucking aspirin like it's a Yu-Gi-Oh card and you're Seto goddamn Kaiba.

"I'm fine," he tells you stubbornly, forcing the words between his teeth. He's been through worse, he doesn't need your charity. Putting the medication back in your pocket, he watches through narrowed eyes as you take a deep breath, giving him an evaluative look over. People around here paying close attention does not usually mean good things.

Still, you wear that strangely neutral mask, intrigued fascination in your eyes, before you look away, sharply to your left, and Corpse is given the clear and distinct impression that you're done with the interaction, and with him for the time being.

The general consensus among his so-called friends is that you and your deeply strange aura were always on the peripheries of all the goings-on around here. Everywhere he went, he seemed to catch a glimpse of you; you didn't seem to pay much attention to him after that first and only interaction, but you were always around.

No-one knows where you come from, no-one knows where you go where the sun comes up, but people don't tend to mess with you, though it seems to be more tradition than for any reason anyone can remember.

You wear denim jackets that are too big for you, sleeves swallowing your hands and hiding the brass knuckles it took him a long time to actually notice.

On a night where he happens to be milling in your general vicinity, he's surprised when you offer a bottle of water. He doesn't take it, obviously, he has no way of knowing what's in it.

"It's just water," you tell him flatly, taking a sip yourself.

"I don't care, I don't want it," he tells you seriously, deeply confused by the whole situation.

"Okay," you say with a shrug, taking a larger gulp of water this time, one hand still in your pocket as you slouch against the brick wall beside him. After a few moments of silence, however, you speak up, "you lips wouldn't split so bad and would probably heal faster if you were better hydrated."

"Why are you looking at my lips?" He fires off, as it's the only part of that sentence he can properly comprehend.

"Because you keep getting punched in the face," you glance at him with the faintest hint of amusement curling at the edge of your lips. His whole expression scrunches up, but you're not exactly wrong. You offer the water bottle again; he takes it, sculling the entire thing defiantly.

"You're weird; you know you're weird, right?" He hands back the empty water bottle, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and managing not to wince where he does, in fact, have a recent split.

"Of course I know," you answer easily, smile growing a little wider as you look out to the rest of the dingy parking lot, and your fellow undesirable youths gathered there, "I'm like this on purpose."

"Why?"

"Why not?" You shrugged, before taking a deep breath, slumping further against the wall, tipping your head back to look up at the sky, "it passes the time."

Corpse has the people he hangs out with, the friends he knows in the back of his mind would turn on him at a moment's notice, and you don't really have anyone since you seem to prefer to watch everyone, but more and more it seems the two of you end up spend your nights roaming the city together when there's nothing better to do.

"If you're not careful," one of the first things you'd ever told him when the two of you go on your first solo expedition of the city in the early hours of the morning, is that, "those people will eat you alive." And at the time, he knew what you meant, wasn't blind to the kind of people he was hanging out with, but he was still wary of you and the games you seemed to play.

"Just worry about yourself," he'd rolled his eyes. Your smile grew wider as you turned, walking backwards a few steps ahead of him, uncharacteristically smug.

"I'm unpalatable." You grin. Something about his understanding of you clicks, in that moment, perhaps in a way you didn't even intend; the eccentricities that practically drip from your every word, your every move, are a defence mechanism.

However, as time goes on, he realises that understanding may not be completely accurate. What about you changes in the time you spend together? Nothing than he can put his finger on, but your mannerisms and strange behaviour becomes more and more like part of his background noise, turning from vaguely unsettling to endearing. The way you watch makes him feel seen for the first time in a long time.

"Do you think stars have feelings?" There's something soft in your voice that he hears more and more when it's just the two of you together. It is a little jarring to hear it now, considering you were both loitering beneath a bridge; you're smiling up at the sky, and he's decimating an empty shoebox he'd found with a pocket knife.

By now he's used to you saying whatever happens to be on your mind, even if it made no sense, though sometimes you still managed to catch him by surprise.

There's a long moment where he thinks over what you've actually said, and a few moments longer as he gazes at you with confusion. It's as if you can feel his eyes on you, as you look over your shoulder with an amused little smile; he's never seen your smile reach your eyes like this when you're around other people.

"It's okay, there's no-one else around to tear your apart for having opinions on hypothetical star feelings."

Sometimes, occasionally, for a few sparing moments once in a blue moon, he remembers you're more than just the front you put up, the jumble of eccentricities you use to distract from how observant and thoughtful you are about the people around you. Him especially. It still feels like a trap.

"I'd like to think they do," when you realise you're probably not going to get an answer from him, you rock back on your heels for the moment, balancing there as you look up at the sky once more, "I think stars fall so in love they run into each other and create supernovas." It's... endearing. Corpse presses his lips together, but can't bring himself to speak; he watches you, silhouetted by stars.

You're disarmingly honest, neon amongst the grime of his life where honesty feels like a trap, like something to be used against him. It might be killing him; this life, these people, killing him faster than the shit that's been killing him since the beginning. He has to get out.

"I'm not coming back here," he's trying to hype himself up, the two of you sitting on the roof of a building you definitely shouldn't be on. The air is still, is icy in winter, and the two of you are sitting side by side, pressed together to conserve heat, legs dangling off the side of the building.

"Here here?" You asked, your cheek on his shoulder as you look out to the lights of the city twinkling below.

"To any of this bullshit; to the people, the fucking assholes, the shady ass shit I know - I know - I should know better than be a part of," he's seething, scowling, fidgeting.

"Like trespassing on rooves?" You ask quietly, tone mild, if faintly amused, kicking the side of the building with your heels, though he steamrolls ahead.

"I'm gonna get serious about my music," voice soft but determined, your head rises and falls with the deep breath he takes. You tuck your arm in his, tuck yourself further against him in the cold.

"It's good music," you agree sincerely without hesitation. The night sky is changing, though it's barely noticeable, the faintest tinge of lavender on the horizon.

"I'm not coming back here," he says again, softer this time; he rests his cheek against your head.

"You shouldn't," you tell him, "you're better than this." It's not self deprecating, nor is it said with any sort of rose-coloured tinge to your tone; you present it as fact. He's better than this.

He wants to ask where you'll go when he's gone, but it feels selfish, implying that you don't have a life outside of him. He still doesn't know where you're from. He still doesn't know where you go when the sun comes up. He's afraid of the answer you'll give, but he's more afraid of saying the words out loud. If he asks where you'll be without him, he knows you'll hear the truth; where will I be without you?

And honesty like this still feels like a trap.

"Do you still think supernovas are just stars overwhelmed with, like, their love for each other?" He asks instead, looking up at the sky where the stars themselves were slowly disappearing in preparation for the sunrise. For a long moment, you're quiet, surprised he remembered that at all, confused why he would bring it up now.

"I think supernovas are stars exploding," your voice is so quiet, if he wasn't so close he doubts he would have been able to hear you, "I'm whimsical, not stupid, but..." you hummed thoughtfully, "I think sometimes I feel like a supernova." But you don't seem to be able to bring yourself to explain... but you don't have to. He can't quite articulate it, but he understands all too well how it feels to be something of a supernova.

So he leaves without saying any real goodbyes, just stops showing up, and blocks numbers of people he'd been in fights with despite deluding himself into believing they're friends, and he looks at your name in his contacts when he sees the sky turning lilac on nights where he knows he's been up too late.

He leaves behind years, but knows he's better for it.

He makes music - it's good music - and doesn't look back - he shouldn't, he's better than that - and works on the shit he's really passionate about instead of wasting his life on the people who cared more about the hypothetical spoils of his sustained ambition than what he actually would create. And you.

He left behind your blunt sincerity and charming aloofness, the first and only person who's made him feel anything other than insignificant.

Days turn into weeks turn into months, and your absence makes itself known every single day. There's a faint, resentful voice in the back of his head of the person he used to be, the person who'd turned down your first offer of aspirin because he'd rather soldier through the pain than trust anyone to actually have good intentions. It spoke more to the poor company he used to keep, but the voice in his head said he'd gone soft for missing you.

He hadn't blocked you, but he also hadn't heard from you, and something about that makes his chest ache, like you didn't even miss him enough to reach out. The thought turns jagged, however, because he knows all too well that he hasn't reached out to you, despite how quiet his background noise has gotten since he'd left.

There's too many stars now; it seems like the night sky's gotten wider in your absence. It's overwhelming. He closes the blinds.

Until it's Tuesday afternoon at the end of spring, and his world has just started to change online, but in person the biggest difference is that he's moved apartments. So now he's squinting at the ingredients on the back of a packet of chips since this convenience store has weird flavours that he's hesitant to try. A hand shoots out beside him, reaching past to grab a packet for themselves, and when he mutters a distracted apology, shifting out of their way, he realises after a few moments that whoever it was beside him hasn't moved.

"Can I help-" he frowns, unsure of what this person's problem is, except he realises almost immediately what their problem is; they're you.

Wearing oversized pyjamas in the middle of the convenience store, looking like you'd just woken up from a deep sleep and had shuffled down here in a haze. Which... okay relatable; Corpse's own attire was most definitely the first things he'd picked up off his floor after trying and failing to get to sleep after several hours of attempts.

Reaching out, as if in a trance, you gently prod him with a look of bewilderment on your face.

"Not a dream," he tells you reflexively; catching your train of thought was like old habit, even if just for a moment. Blinking quickly, like waking, like coming back to reality, finally your gaze meets his.

And then you yawn.

Which is the exact moment Corpse realises that he's never actually seen you during the day time, despite having known you for literal years. He's seen you at sunrise and sunset, but for all intents and purposes, you, like him, were practically nocturnal in the rough few years you'd been hanging out together.

His sleep was marginally better now. Marginally.

This single moment is suspended in time, light pouring in the windows of the store behind you like some cinematographer is getting his rocks off to this reunion with the way you're almost silhouetted in gold. But he can still see your face, still see your smile, still see the way everything about you turns fond as you process this moment. It's like no time has passed, just being close to you, everything about you is so familiar.

"Have you refused to stay hydrated out of spite in my absence?" Is the first thing you say, and reflexively, Corpse's face scrunches up, and his tongue darts out to wet his lips.

"That's how you say hello? You poke me and stare at my lips?" He asks, though the exasperation he feels towards you is familiar and strangely comfortable; your grin widens.

"I simply made an educated guess -" another yawn cuts your words off, and you give a little stretch, before trying to shake out a bit of your obvious exhaustion. Maybe you were actually nocturnal all this time.

The two of you end up on the roof of his building, if only for old-time's sake, though he finds it strangely funny that this is the first time either of you has had permission to be on the roof you found yourself on. In the shade of the stairwell where the two of you sit, backs to the wall and sharing your haul of junk food, it feels like something out of a memory. Except in the day, in your pyjamas, something about you seems far gentler than he ever remembers you being.

Months disappear in minutes and your friendship picks up right where it left off.

It gets cooler as the sun sets, but he doesn't want this day, this night, this moment to end, so he gets blankets, and you order dinner for the two of you. Corpse... isn't quite sure when the last time was that he had a proper meal, and despite the lighthearted way you joke about it, you seem to share the same problem. So together you eat, and laugh, and when you look at the stars with the light in your eyes and a smile on your lips, a sight he'd thought he'd never see again, it almost overwhelms him, like he could find the right words for this moment they'd practically explode out of him. But he can't find the right words, could never find the right words, listening, instead to you babble about what you've been up to.

It's as if he's trying to memorise this moment, watching you with fond familiarity, leaning his head back against the brick wall behind him as he watches you through half-closed eyes. The universe is correcting itself for your absence from his life with this night, and then going back the other way when he wakes, still on the roof, not sure when he'd passed out the night before. His whole body feels like it's revolting against him for sleeping on the fucking roof, without even a damn pillow. Unfortunately, it's not the worst sleep he's gotten lately.

The sky is lilac and golden where he's grimacing at it, sun barely having risen, but when he shifts, tries to get himself into a more comfortable position, he sees you, a few feet away, curled up on your side with your hands pillowed beneath your head, asleep. He shouldn't be surprised, and yet he still is, touched by the fact that you'd stayed. Proof that you cared after all this time.

Time passes, time together. Now he has you back, he's not letting you go. You were always the best part of the shit he used to put himself through, the only thing he'd really consider going back for, the only thing he knew was worth bringing with him.

Practically neighbours now, he's surprised when you invite him over to your place for dinner.

He learns where you're from.

He learns where you go when the sun comes up.

Sometimes, he joins you there.

Your apartment is about the same size as his, hobbies and crafts and posters and bric-a-brac cluttering the space, filling it with the things you love; grinning at him as he flops on the sofa, you tell him he fits right in.

He doesn't realise things are getting better, getting brighter, until he looks back at where he'd come from. He'd climbed from the tar pit, but he'd been working himself into exhaustion with his newfound freedom. At least now, when you bang on his door with a grocery bag and a USB with the latest blockbuster pirated and ready to watch, it means he's eating, and focusing on something other than whatever's been slowly driving him mad. And you always seem to know exactly when he needs a break. You still watch; you still see him when he can barely see himself at times.

But he learns quickly that somehow your sleep schedule is worse than his.

And you're only eating well because you're making sure he does too.

And you live close by, sure, but each day it feels like it grows a little further apart. You've come to keep each other in check, to do your best to take care of each other when you can, but sometimes Corpse thinks he might sleep easier knowing you've managed to get some sleep too. His own exhaustion gets to be almost unbearable sometimes, he hates to think what you've putting yourself through.

But strangely enough, the two of you appear to be on the same wavelength.

"Is it weird that I sleep better on your sofa?" You asked, snuggling beneath the blankets he'd haphazardly thrown over you; he can tell you're beaming, even if he can only see your eyes. It's almost six in the morning, the sun was rising, the two of you had been marathoning horror movies and you had given up on the idea of going home before attempting some rest.

"The fact that you sleep at all is one of science's greatest mysteries," he smirked, but as he passed on the way to his own bedroom, he pets your cheek fondly. To see you sleeping serenely when he stumbles out of his room around midday for a glass of water, it fills him with an indescribable warmth.

It happens over time.

Your toothbrush on the sink, more of your shoes pile by the door, then you're bringing different cutlery and utensils from your own kitchen as you keep making the two of you food, or Corpse will be cooking and realise too late that he never had a lemon zester to begin with. What kind of parallel universe is this where he seriously requires a lemon zester? That's the thought that baffles him in the five minutes it takes you to run and grab your own.

"I'm not letting you take the sofa! I'm the guest -" you argued brightly, right as he frowned at you, then down at the basket of laundry in his hands.

"You stopped being a guest when you started throwing your laundry in with mine," he tells you without room for argument, "the sofa is bad for your back, let me -"

"My back is fine!"

"Yeah, now," he rolled his eyes, "take the bed; if it means that much to you, we can, I don't fucking know, switch every week or so," he offers, tone implying that he thinks you're being ridiculous. Which, you consider as you lay flat on your back in his double bed, staring up at the ceiling, you might have been.

"It's a double bed," you call out into the darkness of four-fifty-eight in the morning.

"I'm aware," Corpse's tired, half muffled response comes a beat later.

"Do you..." you pause for a moment, finally conceding defeat on the earlier matter, and also just now realising how absolutely stubborn you were being by refusing all his earlier offers for a far more comfortable sleeping arrangement, "we could just share."

It becomes domestic, if erratic, and every day there's fewer and fewer reasons that you can find to be still paying rent on your own place that you're never at. The pair of you live a simple and cheap life, which, considering some days Corpse feels more like his namesake than others, and he's still got his medical bills to keep in mind, it's probably for the best.

The things that had filled your home slowly come to populate his apartment, just as you'd fit yourself seamlessly into his new life.

"I can't believe I ever thought you were intimidating," Corpse is grinning with your head in his lap, poking fun at your various collectables scattered about. The afternoon is warm, plates from lunch sit, practically licked clean, on the coffee table.

"Hey, my personal life and my weird, street-rat life were separate for a reason," you'd stuck your nose in the air as best you could, fighting back a smile of your own, "I was intimidating."

"You were unsettling -"

"You thought I was unsettling because you didn't know why I was actually intimidating!" You wriggled around for a moment, half bracing yourself against the arm of the sofa to properly look him in the eyes.

"Oh I fully believe you thought you were intimidating," there's something about his voice, about this moment, you'd felt it before, more and more recently, like it was building.

"I kept pulling out knives when people tried to fight me," you tell him as seriously as you could muster, feeling yourself grow warm as he held your gaze.

"A lot of those assholes had knives," his voice is soft, though you couldn't help the sharp grin that found it's way onto your face.

"Yeah, but they're all talk... mostly."

"And you? Ready to cut a bitch at a moment's notice?" He huffed faint, a disbelieving laugh, to which your eyebrows rose.

"You knew me back then, I was unsettling; could you say with absolutely certainty that I wouldn't cut a bitch at a moment's notice?" And though you make a very good point, he leans in, closing the gap between you, pressing his lips to yours.

Something about the way you taste - like something sweet and familiar, like the food you'd made together - the way you feel - he's held you gentle, held you close, woken up with an arm around you to see you smiling all sleepy and content with the contact, but never like this, though he's wanted to hold you like this for longer than he can put into words - or maybe it's gentle, pleased noise you make as he deepens the kiss; every sensation in this moment is going to be burned into his brain. He pulls you into his lap properly; all roads were leading here, he realises thinking back. Nothing else would have made sense. You wrap your arms around his neck, the reality of it all feels like its about to overwhelm him.

When you pull back, eyes wide, drinking in his expression and trying to process the moment, he watches your whole face light up. He holds you tighter, it's all he can do in this moment, pressing his face, his grin, against your collar.

"How do you do that?" He's a little breathless, "how do you do that with your face, I don't -"

"Do what?" You sound confused, and he pulls back, if only to gaze at you; he doesn't realise how utterly lovestruck he looks in this moment. You can't help but hold his jaw gently, thumb brushing his cheek.

There's no hesitation when he speaks now; honesty hasn't felt like a trap for a long time, but it's still a struggle to find the right words -

"Your face just says everything; you can say everything without even saying anything, and I just feel like- I feel like that supernova. I never know what to say when I wanna say something, I just feel like I'm going to explode."

"A supernova?" Voice barely more than a whisper, you're awed and fond, even as his face scrunches up with embarrassment as he realises what he's said.

"You make me feel like a supernova," he murmurs despite himself, doubling down as he leans in to trail kisses up the column of your throat.

There is consistency and care in the love you share. It's cooking together, and playfully bickering about the right amount of time to cook pasta, but getting distracted, getting wrapped up in each other until the water boils over loudly. It's consistently inconsistent sleep schedules and dragging the other to bed if they've been awake for objectively too long. It's pride and support and hyping each other up, and you may not know a lot about the online world that has begun to deify Corpse, but others opinions wouldn't sway your own, you just feel lucky that his music is consistently fire.

It's the way Corpse likes having the blinds open at night because he likes the way the sight of the stars makes you smile.

It's the way you hear him, loud and adamant where he's in the middle of a drunk-stream with some of his friends -

"I wasn't lying- hey, I wasn't lying, okay when I said I didn't have people IRL, I have you guys, okay, but you're online, you're all online, you already know who I am so it doesn't matter if you know who I am," he's rambling, and you pause the show you're watching, half tempted to poke fun at him as you had when you'd heard him echo this sentiment before, but as you crack the door to his office open, leaning against the doorframe, he turns to you, undeterred, beaming but still obviously addressing the rest of his stream.

"I don't have friends offline, but I have them, and they're not..." his tone is going soft, going somewhat sappy and sentimental, and your heart feels like it's about to burst with love at the look of tipsy adoration he's regarding you with, "they're not my friend. They've never been my friend, they're better; they're... constant." After all this time, you're still here, and you know there's no place you'd rather be. "They're my constant."