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'If I'm really gonna help you, I can't have you getting in my way."

because benson only has a limited amount of time left and he knows it. he knows he is going nowhere, he knows he has an expiration date. but randy doesn't. it's too late for benson. whatever was necessary to fix him is long gone, that ship has sailed, wrecked and sunk to the bottom of the ocean. but in seven hours..in seven hours he can do something for randy. and if randy gets in his way, if he's obstinate, if he calls the cops, if he does anything to stop benson, if he doesn't work with him, then that time gets cut short, then benson can't help him. then he can help no one. so if benson really wants to help randy, randy has to play along or none of this will work. and if he has to hurt randy to keep helping him, he'll do that.

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something something... sheppard color-coordinating with the chrysler... benson driving around all day on the same roads he's always driven, having the physical means to escape those roads, to leave the town he's been in his entire life in that car rather than mindlessly circling the same landmarks he's been passing for nearly forty years but his trauma emotionally and mentally tethers him, won't let him leave. what sheppard did to him as a kid makes him stuck. the car can't take him anywhere else but kutzberg.

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Randy doesn't bruise easy, but Benson does.

Randy doesn’t  bruise easy, but when he does, it takes days to show, and then lingers for a while, his skin hoarding onto the pain, clinging to the concrete proof that something in the world had touched him, coveting it. Randy admired them, like the tattoos that he’d never considered getting, brushed his fingers over them reverently. It was good to be reminded he had the same capacity to feel pain as he did to inflict it. It makes him feel human.

Benson is largely indifferent when he bruises, apathetic, but makes sure to keep them covered at work if he can. Suffers through a quiet, thrumming annoyance at the weakness of his own pale, delicate flesh, wrapped over sharp, sinewy hands and the quiet, animal strength of his forearms. He hates how he can see the stark blue veins beneath his skin, the lifetime of oil-burns on top of it, or how when his arm gets caught in the walk-in doorway, it blooms a deep purple-blue like a brand, how vulnerable it seems to have his hurt so openly displayed, to give others a glimpse through him without his permission. It makes him feel human too.

It works out though. Benson with his fierce, unrelenting, ever present grip and the mindful, deliberate reverence in Randy’s touch.

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Benson who, after he is done hauling the corpses and wiping down the walls and mopping the floors, tends to Randy with the same thorough, methodical attentiveness. Randy had smeared blood across his face when he reached to cover his mouth at the sound of Hardy’s skull clipping the metal shelf of the freezer, tossed in with the same halfhearted exasperation on Benson’s face as when he’d had to haul massive bags of frozen fries or soggy defrosting sacks of ground beef. Benson wets a rag, a new one, and turns Randy’s face in his hands as he scrubs hard enough to leave the skin red. Randy thinks of the woman who wiped jesus face just before he died, how it had left a miraculous imprint of his face and how his mother had recited that to him so many times during easter, the veil of veronica. and then Benson washes his hands as he washes his own too, the water is lukewarm, and the feel of soap and water and someone else’s skin is strange and surreal. The pads of Benson’s thumbs rub over his cuticles, and then intentionally into the indents in his palms, where they’d been bleeding without Benson’s intervention, his blood mixed in with all theirs, some pact between him and people he didn’t like and people who were dead, and Benson had taken his trembling hands and waited patiently until the water ran clear.

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greg hirsch is so fucking funny. i’m not a word, tom. i’m a real guy. don’t turn me into a word. but who else is being your assistant. your greg. which i am. why am i not your greg right now. i want to be gregging for you tom

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been thinking of maybe leading others astray .. lmk if anyone has tips for beginners

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randy bradley diary entry:

I forgot to put on deodorant this morning and I couldn’t find my spare in the car. Benson was working in the kitchen with me and I felt so awful about it he kept having to grab stuff right by me all day so he definitely thinks I’m gross now. I accidentally ran over a frog while I was parking. Fuck my miserable stupid life.

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tagging all my personal posts randy bradley. were in this together.

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were you ever in the car with your mother on your 21st birthday and its midday in july and you put on some song from the 80s you think is so special and cool or whatever. youve been listening to it alot recently and she turns to you and says this is a song about ejaculating

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oh my god hiii!!! so good to see you!!! do u remember me im your Nothing

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I dont think you're ready for the takedown...

Available on my INPRNT

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The Passenger (2023)

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i've been rotating this in my brain for days but as a person with psychosis and delusions i see a lot of myself in benson and his mother and i can imagine them both having some form of psychotic disorder. and i know people usually see randy as the catholic boy but actually benson's ma strikes me as the type to have full scale fire and brimstone, rapture is coming style delusions. dragged benson to church every sunday until she physically couldn't get out of bed. talked about the devil coming to get her when she became sick. begged benson to be a good boy and pray every day.

and after hearing it his whole life it sneaks into benson's own brain (amongst his other thoughts of violence or csa related stuff). i can see him going to the mental hospital once or twice and coming out with antipsychotics, so he's medicated for the most part and knows how to deal with ma's delusions. but sometimes he doesn't have the money for his meds or he forgets to refill them and one of the days he's been off for like a week is the same day randy bradley starts at burgers.

and walking in and seeing randy standing under the florescents, smooth milky skin, dirty blond hair like a halo, watery blue eyes, says "hi" in the shyest, sweetest voice. and he proceeds to treat benson the best out of anybody he's ever worked with. does his job and follows his directions. smiles at him. hums a song while sweeping. benson is convinced an angel has come down from heaven just for him.

he goes home and debates telling ma because on one hand, benson's had delusions many times. he knows this could be fake. but it feels so real, bradley is angelic in every way. maybe ma was right. maybe the rapture is coming. maybe bradley is here to help save their souls. it's hard to sleep that night with the overwhelming joy and fear bouncing around in his brain.

he gets medicated again and the delusion passes and he realizes bradley is just a regular guy. sees his flaws and his nervous and sometimes off-putting nature. but benson never really stops thinking of him as his angel

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..what wa that

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“There was a brief, beautiful moment of respite where Randy saw Benson, but Benson didn’t see Randy.”

So everybody should go read Below the waterline by @rats4taxevasion because its driving me absolutely insane and its my favourite thing right now so here’s old ass benson (I took some artistic liberties bc I got so excited I blacked out) being handsome in his mechanic suit or whateva