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11. the build-up
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TWITTER !

06:48

lore bore 🦡 | lorelaisimps
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@corpse_husband WTF DID YOU JUST
HAVE ME WATCH WTF WAS THAT
1.5k comments 492 retweets 20.1k likes

replying to @lorelaisimps

r3dd3adr3d3mption: lmao what did y'all watch?
↳ lorelaisimps: THE CIRCLE ON NETFLIX IM TRAUMATIZED

corpsegrunge: how did they watch a movie together? over disc?

valkyrae: I SAW CORPSE SCREEN SHARING IN GENERAL ONE AND WENT WTF AND I JOIN TO SEE SOMEONE MURDER A FETUS WHAT THE ACTUAL FRICK
↳ lorelaisimps: WE SHOULDVE DONE PRIVATE CALL IM SO SORRY YOU HAD TO SEE IT
↳ valkyrae: MY EYES
↳ corpse_husband: I TOLD YOU IT WAS DARK
↳ lorelaisimps: YOU DIDNT SAY IT WAS THAT DARK OMG

deadgirlsarerining: WHAT WAS RAE'S REPLY

nobodynotf0und: awww they watched a movie together

simpl0l0l0l: choke me like you choke me

jack_septic_eye: do i wanna know?
↳ lorelaisimps: it was so dark and very depressing jack
↳ jack_septic_eye: go to bed and sleep it off, kiddo

YOUTUBE !
11:12

IMESSAGE !
12:28
direct messages between rae bae and ror ror

link to Corpse and Lorelai being cute in Phasmo
by clickbear
they don't miss lmfaoooo

HOW DID THEY DO THAT SO QUICKLY
IM STILL EDITING MY PHASMO VID

they're just built better ig
do you need help editing?

nah i just need to stop procrastinating
i know all the scares and yet im still scared lol

doesn't pewds have an editor?
you could send a clip or two to them or me
if it's too scary

mmmmm that's not a bad idea
imma go work on it bae ttyl <3

bye bae good luck <3

A SMALL YAWN ESCAPES Lorelai's lips as she stares at her computer screen, her eyes red and puffy from looking at her screen for so long. She had gotten four hours of sleep, tops, and woke up with some self destructive need to begin editing her next video. It was never like her to jump the gun so quickly, but something drove her to slump down into her desk chair and open up her crappy editing program with a cup of coffee in hand.

Her glasses were perched on her nose, her hair was tied back into a bun. She didn't regret staying up so late, but she wouldn't say that it was good for her either. The shared whispers at the crack of dawn and the disturbed awkward laughter from Lorelai every time someone died had painted both Corpse and Lorelai's hearts in a lighter shade, a brighter grey that said close. They were close to something, they were once again treading on a thin line that could mean the start of something else. The early morning call had been something different from all the times Lorelai had been on call with people early in the morning before.

These thoughts were getting continuously shoved into the back of Lorelai's mind now that she was awake enough to have some sort of handle on her emotions. She wasn't sure why these revelations of close and more and thin lines had been coming to her recently, but it was making her nervous. What she needed to do was focus on her work. Yeah, that's what she would do.

But then her phone rang, the jingling tune of some generic ringtone snapping Lorelai's attention away from her computer and onto her phone. Of course someone had to call her right as she had decided to emerge from her land of overthinking and come back to the real world.

Lorelai pulls her glasses off and rubs her eyes, blinking away bits of sleep dust that stuck to the inner corners of her eyes. She picks up her phone and presses it to her ear, softly mumbling, "hello?", as she waits to find out who had called her.

"Hi," Corpse says.

Lorelai opens her eyes a little bit more, the voice of the guy she had just previously been thinking about shooting adrenaline into her veins. "Hi."

On the other side of the call, Corpse was sitting on his bathroom floor, his hands shaking as he held a glass of wine. He had drank a majority of it, and the buzzing sensation in his temples informs him that he's tipsy and not in the best state of mind. It had been the overthinking and the unparalleled fear that forced the wine bottle into his hand, and it had been the quiet panic attack that had him tip back the glass with reckless abandon.

He didn't really mean to call her, he supposed it just happened. Some part of his subconscious had made the decision for him, and Corpse had always been a slave to his own mind. That had been proven time and time again. Now, as he sits slumped against his bathroom wall, staring at his toilet, he wonders why he had to given in to his mind so easily. Why hadn't he held strong and not called even when he craved to?

"Can you rant? Or... or something?" Corpse asks. He was losing confidence with every word that left his mouth and could feel the embarrassment and shame creeping up on the horizon. "Just, uhm, could you talk to me?"

Lorelai leans back in her desk chair. "Corpse, what's wrong?"

Corpse looks down at himself, at the shaking glass of wine, at the four day old outfit, and the red spots on his shirt from the aforementioned shaking glass of wine, and decides he should hold his secret. He can't tell her, can he? Would she care about how much of a mess he had become in the last few hours since they spoke? More importantly, would it be a good idea to tell her? Their friendship hadn't existed for years or anything extreme.

It was pathetic, really, how a worker at the grocery store comparing his voice to a famous YouTuber they watched had so easily unraveled him to the point where he was considering spilling his guts to a girl he met barely two weeks ago.

"Corpse?" Lorelai tries again. "I'm-... you can talk to me."

He focuses on her voice again, more specifically on the words she's saying and not the way her accent makes things sound more melodious or the way she stretches out the 'o' in his name as if it were a name more interesting than just Corpse.

Lorelai was getting nervous as Corpse stayed in his blanket of silence. Her previous sleepy attitude had shifted and faded as an anxiety filled her lungs with bumps that made breathing feel so much harder. The shift in emotions sent a shock to her system, a lightning bolt that warns her she's too easily affected by Corpse. In his stutters she had heard a sort of despair, and it made Lorelai feel sick.

"Corpse, please."

Tell me what's wrong.

"Someone at the grocery store recognized my voice," Corpse says slowly. He clears his throat tentatively. "They told me I sounded like this YouTuber named Corpse Husband and I froze. I didn't even laugh it off or deny it. I froze, and now they know. They know..., don't they?"

Just by his voice, Lorelai knew Corpse was in pain. She wants to tell him it's going to be okay, she wants to tell him that everything he's scared about is gone, but she knows that she would prefer the truth over some sugarcoated lie if she were in his position.

"I don't know," she tells him, settling for a middle ground between reassuring him with a lie and telling him the cold truth. "They probably didn't make the connection. And besides, weren't you wearing a mask cause of Corona? So on the off chance that they did put two and two together, they don't know what you look like."

Corpse drops his head into his free hand. "They could've followed me. They could find out where I live, and take photos of me, and spread it everywhere."

Another wave of sympathy crashes over Lorelai like a tidal wave. "Corpse, don't think like that. You're scaring yourself. From how I see it, a grocery store employee met a guy that sounded like Corpse and then went on with their life. You aren't getting stalked by an underpaid grocery store worker. They have other things to do. And you can always go to a different grocery store from now on."

Corpse was shaking, his whole body trembling where he sat. "Lorelai, why am I so scared?"

"I don't know," she sighs. "I wish I could give you an answer but I don't have one. When is... when was the last time you slept? Like a good ten hours, a full night of sleep?"

Ages, he thinks.

When Corpse doesn't reply, Lorelai sighs and wipes a hand over her face. "Corpse, you need to sleep. Maybe take some melatonin or something? If you want me to stay on call with you, I can do that. You just need to sleep. Please."

It's a pointless attempt, he wants to say. It won't work. He knows this as well as he knows the syncopated drip of the leaking faucet in his kitchen.

"Lorelai," he says, "that's not going to fix me."

"I know," she rushes before softly repeating the words in a less stressed tone. "But you aren't telling me what's wrong, and I know you have trouble sleeping, and sleep deprivation can make things seem scarier, so... I don't know."

Corpse thinks back to the grocery store, to the unreleased song sitting in an audio file on his computer, and to the girl across the world taking time out of her day to talk to him. He remembers the day he stumbled along the agoraphobia wikipedia page, he remembers reading the words and thinking about it for a week straight before actually understanding what it meant. What used to be some random phobia on the internet was now Corpse's biggest antagonist. It's almost funny just how quickly things can change.

"We can talk about this if you want," Lorelai mutters. "We can talk for fucking days if you need. But please just say something. Tell me what's wrong, or tell me you're going to get some sleep, or that you're legitimately okay because you're really scaring me."

"It's just suffocating," Corpse says abruptly. "I think I'm getting calmer though. Hearing you, having a panic attack, drinking— I think I'm feeling a bit better. I don't know."

Lorelai nods. Her chipped black fingernails were tapping against her desk anxiously, and her editing screen had faded into some generic screen saver she had never bothered to switch. "Is it the idea that someone knows what you look like? Is that what hurts?"

"Yeah," Corpse replies.

You would hate my life, Lorelai bitterly thinks. Too many people know what I look like.

Corpse takes a deep breath. A bit of the haze had cleared out of his brain, and he was beginning to see his situation for what it was. He was sitting on his bathroom floor, drunk, shaking, and on a call with a girl who not only lives halfway across the world, but was someone Corpse only met less than two weeks ago. What is he doing?

New anxiety burns into Corpse's mind. What is he doing? Why had he called Lorelai? What had possessed him to think that this was a good idea? She was probably fed up with it. She had to be sitting in her cozy little bedroom in fucking Pewdiepie's house thinking about ways to end the conversation. Had he ruined her morning? He must have.

The doubt was overriding his brain, seeping into every ounce of his being with flashing warning lights and blaring sirens. It was his fault for going for the wine. He never did make the best decisions while drunk.

"Lorelai, I'm sorry," he says, his hands shaking again. "I'm sorry. I'll hang up. Have a good morning. Or afternoon. I don't know."

He ends the call, leaving Lorelai in a concerned silence. What had just happened? Why had he hung up? All Lorelai can think about is him; is he okay? Is he safe? Is he having another panic attack? Her morning had started off so simple, but the call had jolted fear and energy into her soul. She's nervous, and as her eyes space out while staring at her closed curtains, she wonders how Corpse is doing. Does he know that hearing him sound scared had affected her so greatly?

On his bathroom floor, Corpse is painfully unaware of Lorelai's concern. All he can feel is regret. He shouldn't have bothered her. It was too much too quickly. He came on too strong and he had fucked it up. Was it just the alcohol, or was it a longing for someone to comfort him? Specifically, a longing for Lorelai to comfort him. He won't lie and say that she doesn't intrigue him, that her smile doesn't make him involuntarily smile as well, but he also doesn't want to believe that he had so quickly become dependent on her.

He had fucked it up, like he always does.

Agoraphobic. Maybe it was time to release the song that had been sitting on his computer for ages. He had been trying to find the right time to do so for so long anyways.

Now, he thinks. Now is the time to show the world just how royally fucked up he is.

"I'm so fucking drunk," he laughs, the bittersweet harmony being heard by no one but himself.