#tobyhcs

he gives you a love like rotten fruit. maybe it could've been good if he hadn't been touched by decay, if he hadn't allowed himself to spoil. unfortunately, the rot flows through his veins like a sludge, infecting the things that get too close. just like you did. his sick latched onto you and festered like an infected scar.

he knows the mold is inherent to him, that it's in his instincts; this incessant drive to be fed, satisfied, noticed. he takes warmth from whoever will give it, wherever he can get it. he roams like a mutt with his nose to the ground, a fugitive hunting for scraps. wagging his tail at even the suggestion of tenderness, uncaring of where it comes from, only that he's receiving it.

he sticks to your heels, stays so close that you trip over his unrelenting fervor for you. as a stray, he sat and waited for someone to accept the things he couldn't change, for someone to stop and look between the bars of his cage. he waited so long for you. when you leave he'll wait for your return. if you're late he'll wait until then. he'll wait and wait and wait.

he worships the hand that feeds him. that hand is yours. he leans into it, tries to force himself under your palm, thrusts himself beneath the divine light of your gaze. if you even cast a glance his way it's enough for his tail to wag. he pursues your attention and affection like a hound, with no regard as to whether or not he's hurting himself in the process. the only thing you do is reinforce it with every bit of praise you give him, and he accepts it graciously. you're his person.

he doesn't bark or bare his teeth for fear of getting hit again. he bares them at the world, but never at you. he had been taught to bite, but he is not a bad dog. everything he does is with the intent to please. he brings you gifts, kneels and lays them at your feet with his tail between his legs, hoping that he'll be rewarded with your touch. hoping that it makes him worthy.

he doesn't even care if you love him as much as he loves you. he'll sleep at the foot of your bed if it means he can be on it, follow you if it means he can be close, spend his days at your feet if it means there's a chance you'll scratch him behind the ears. he'll sit at your door until you want him. he'll pull out his canines and declaw himself just to prove he'd never hurt you.

- he completely gets it. he doesn't question it when you sink into yourself in the face of any social environment, doesn't question it when you cling to his side on any excursion, doesn't question it when you hold his hand just a little tighter in the presence of others - he squeezes right back, like his own little way of saying "it's alright, i'm here, i've got you". he knows that he's your person, that he's the only one that can make it better in those moments, and he's alright with having that dependence on his shoulders. anything you need.

- he's incredibly protective over you. your social ineptitude makes you an easy target - he knows by the way some of the others talk about you when you aren't around, knows by the way they talk when they think he's not listening - so he leads you around like a guard dog, acting as a defensive barrier between you and everything else, baring his teeth at any notion of hostility. god help anyone who thinks they can give you shit. he's just so afraid of something happening to you... if he's always there, then nothing will. the two of you are hardly ever apart. he makes sure of it.

- he knows you gravitate toward the background, but he also hates to see you all by yourself. he's aware that it's not that you don't want to talk to people, it's just that you can't, so he tries to help by taking you by the hand and acting as a sort of buffer between you and others. he figures you'd rather feel included than ignored. if he notices you start to trip over yourself - he's very in tune with you, can tell when your heartbeat starts to get all uneasy, can tell when your body begins to flush with embarrassment - he tries to distract you from it in little subtle ways, like gently doing The Thumb Thing or redirecting the conversation elsewhere to allow you a moment to collect yourself. it's all worth it to see you with a smile on your face rather than overshadowed in the corner of the room.

- the two of you are ALWAYS all over each other. pda up to the fucking nines dude. physical touch is absolutely his love language - that, and he's learned that touch helps keep you grounded, helps keep you present, helps you from getting too deep in your own head. he'll guide you around with a hand on your shoulder or the back of your neck, he'll sit with you shoulder-to-shoulder no matter where you are, he'll rub your back while he's talking to someone to show that, while his eyes are somewhere else, his attention is never off you. he isn't afraid to show his affection for you in front of others. in fact, he asserts it. uses it as a sort of warning. while he's got you caged in his arms from behind, he's staring them down with a knowing sort of glint in his eye, something that says "watch yourself, motherfucker". he gets treated like a joke a lot of the time, but when it comes to you, everyone just knows not to fuck with him.

- toby goes fucking BALLISTIC over halloween oh my god. it's the only time of the year where he can go into town and just be normal. everyone's got masks on, everyone's donning costumes, so he blends in like butter on bread. being able to exist in a public space without so much as a dirty look is fucking elating, it's one of the only graces of normalcy that he gets and he milks the opportunity for everything its got. what most would treat like any other day, he treats like a paragon. for one night he isn't toby rogers, wanted dead or alive - he's just some guy.

- he's suuuper fucking annoying about it too. he wants to do ALL the halloween stuff and he WILL drag you along with him whether you want it or not. his mansion buds aren't exempt from this treatment either no one is safe

- before night falls and the real fun begins, you guys are staying in and he's making SURE you have a good day. he's got those cheap halloween cookies in the oven (you know the ones they got pumpkins on em), his place is done up with lights and tacky dollar store decorations, and he's got a pot of apple cider simmering on the stove that mixes with the woodsy smell of his cabin just fucking beautifully. he tries really hard.

- he gets really fucking into it, and you can't help but find his admittedly childlike excitement over it a little endearing. if you ever commented on it, about how he hardly gets this excited over anything else, he'd probably just get all weirdly defensive and dismissive over it. he's been this way about it since he was a kid, never really grew out of it. even after everything.

- he's putting out a SPREAD of treats for you guys: candy corn, caramel corn, the works. can't have it any other way if you're marathoning slashers. there's a sort of unmentionable effort he puts into it with the halloween paper plates he goes out of his way to get (steal), one of those little details that puts this subdued warmth in your chest. he wants to make everything nice for you. he wants for you to have good things.

- you two. on his pilled up couch. grandpa sweaters. steaming apple cider in thrifted (stolen) mugs. flannel blanket. crackling embers from the log burner. oh yeah baby

- he makes halloween movie watchlists. oh yeah he's serious about this. he only really likes the kind of stuff you can snag off rental store shelves: sleepaway camp for eye candy (we need more slutty slutty men in horror flicks), hellraiser but only the 1987 one, texas chainsaw massacre but only the 1974 one (he's got a crush on leatherface that he'll never admit to anyone or himself), the thing is his fucking FAVORITE horror movie of all time, throw the final destinations in there just for fun, stuff like that. saw movies are his guilty pleasure. even with you, he tries to be some hard-ass and play it off when he gets all spooked and jumpy, though the way he clings to you just a little tighter says something else.

- yea this man has split skulls and gotten brain matter stuck in his hair and horror movies still scare him

- now the most important question: costumes.

- ok i have two visions for what he'd be and in both events he's forcing you to dress up with him: for one i can totally see him throwing on some ferris bueller getup and dragging you along as either sloane or cameron, or y'all are going as bill and ted and he's calling dibs on bill (so he has an excuse to wear a crop top it's totally only for the costume). if you refuse to dress up he will not shut up about how you're "no fun" until you give in

- he also uses the holiday as an opportunity to terrorize the general public. you guys are hiding out in corn mazes and jumping out at whatever poor soul happens to walk by like some surprise scare actor, pretending to be ghosts to scare off the kids who think hanging out at cemeteries makes them cool. he's the village menace. genuinely the HOA puts up a sign saying look out for this guy

- he takes you "trick or treating" but with the biggest quotations ever. he'll go around to the houses that just have bowls of candy out with a sign that says "please take one" or something and straight up just take the bowl

- when he isn't having (mostly) harmless fun and treating the townspeople like his plaything, he's treating you to some good wholesome traditional halloween activities, and he's a massive sucker for those. like, no fucking question about it he is dragging your ass to the pumpkin patch. if he's lucky he can get a five finger discount on some caramel apples for you two. of COURSE he's hauling some pumpkins home for you guys to carve, even if he'll just inevitably leave them to rot on his porch but he SWEARS he'll throw them out soon he SWEARS

- he insists on going to at least one haunted house even though he's the one that always gets you two kicked out for clocking scare actors. he's banned from most of them

- at some point in the night you'll probably end up crashing some college house party and, even though they scare him shitless, nothing makes him feel more like a guy than standing around with a red solo cup in his hand. he isn't there to make friends anyway (god knows he has no clue how), he's the one that just kinda pets the dog the entire time then leaves