That's kinda surprising coming from you. What do you mean you’re not gonna tell him? Void keeps his voice carefully neutral.
He's not opposed to the idea at all; on the contrary he'd insisted first, as soon as Psychic had broached the subject, that they both keep this to ourselves like nothing else matters. Because it doesn't. He might not know for sure how much Psychic tends to share with his master, but Void is confident enough in his own perception of him and his guess of a lot that he can deem the precaution necessary.
Dearest doesn't need to know. Not right away, certainly. And anyway, Void wouldn't dream of letting the Accretions know about something like this either if he can help it.
If Void can handle it, can handle keeping another secret and cutting off the last people left who know him in his entirety and watching the spiderweb of lies in the corner of his mind grow and branch out till it's encased his heart in silk and snares, so can Psychic. They have to.
Even though he knows he can't really force Psychic to do anything. That's what's surprising about this — the fact that he doesn't have to.
There’s a flicker of hesitancy in his chest before Psychic responds. He’s like that, Void is finding out. Always deliberate with his words, always waiting a moment to let the feelings settle before he answers. He supposes he should be grateful Psychic doesn't take many things personally. I’d rather not give him cause for worry.
Void snorts. What makes you think he’d worry about you?
And there’s a spike of something hot that Void can't quite make out at first. A mix of emotions, embarrassment and self-consciousness and— and anger.
Ah. That was a mistake. Too personal.
As quickly as the emotions rise, they are tamped back down, smothered by calm, if strained apathy. Void swallows, hoping his own lingering alarm isn't too tangible over it.
I mean worry regarding my performance, Psychic answers, tight and chilly. Obviously. Because I have a job, Void.
Oh, yeah, that, of course, Void says hastily. Yeah, I get that. What I meant was…why would he feel the need to worry? I mean, uh, seeing how much you're capable of handling. He knows your strengths, I'm sure he’d trust you to figure things out.
Are you saying you DO think I should tell him, Psychic quirks a mental brow. Void internally swears.
No, of course not! I'm just— I'm just saying, I didn’t mean what you— what you thought I meant, I guess.
Hmm. What did you think I thought you meant? Oh, Psychic has to be toying with him now. His embarrassment and annoyance heighten at the urge to laugh that isn’t his, but that suddenly rises in his chest all the same.
Nothing! he snaps. I mean— That's— I was just— Oh my God can't you learn to take a compliment??
A compliment, huh…? Psychic mulls it over. Well, you know what, sure. If you say so. Void.
Exactly. Void exhales. Yeah. See, it’s not that hard.
Appreciate it, Psychic adds quietly, and even now, with his thoughts clear and legible, his amusement palpable, the aftertaste of his anger still burning, threatening, Void still can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic or not.
Bound!AT is an alternate timeline centered on Purple Guys that was created on December 6th 2024. As the name suggests, the premise involves Psychic and Void becoming “bound” — they are arbitrarily cursed one day to sense each other’s every emotion and telepathically communicate all the time. Over the course of years bearing this curse, they slowly become accustomed to each other’s constant involuntary presence and begin opening up to each other, though their relationship eventually turns toxic as they become increasingly over-dependent on each other and are left to flounder when the curse inevitably breaks on its own.
This AT is for exploring the potential dynamic between Psychic and Void in a circumstance where their walls and boundaries are forcibly removed and they have no choice but to try confronting their vulnerabilities and fears side-by-side.
Like with my other AUs, I’m mostly just exploring whichever particular scenes and ideas capture my interest in the moment. This story is being told in bits and pieces, and not in chronological order.
Character designs (in progress)
Bound!AT Playlist
(not concrete yet but feel free to take a look)
All Bound!AT posts on my blog, ordered from oldest to most recent
—Tags—
#bound!at - main blog || psychic daily
#b!psychic
#b!void
—Canon—
-> Official posts.
Art:
outline in the dark - derivative work. NOT an official Bound!AT post, but heavily inspired by it
Written Lore/Oneshots:
-> Ordered chronologically.
overthinking - in which Psychic admits his unwillingness to tell DD about the curse
Pity Water (I No Longer Have Anything to Say) - in which Void jolts awake from a nightmare, startling Psychic and causing him to reflect on his inability to get away from the curse by sleeping
Bound + Favor - snippet. in which Psychic uses a reluctant Void as a distraction in public so he can do Psychic things uninterrupted.
Other/Misc:
-> Additional info and analyses. Listed in order of importance/relevance.
the basic premise/initial post
misc. facts and lore - info dump
Psychic does not know about A.C. when he and Void are first bound
Psychic and Void acting on each others' emotions
Psychic is a hypocrite when it comes to dealing with his and Void's issues
Psychic’s guilt/Void makes Psychic worse even after the curse is broken - analysis
Psychic and Void sometimes calling each other after the curse breaks
visually depicting the mental link (very abstract and not set in stone)
if canon Psychic was in Bound!AT instead of FNF Psychic - discussion/speculation
—Fanworks—
Art:
Nothing! Nothing here! - by @daily-acvoid. in which Void tries (rather unsuccessfully) to hide the existence of A.C. from Psychic.
I will not be nothing + Clear Glass - by @marshhhlmao. based on a one-off post I made about Psychic and Void realizing their shared fear of having no meaning or worth. The second doodle is referencing "Where's My Phone?" by Mitski.
i don't think i ever like. plainly stated it but ignore all previous posts that might state the contrary; psychic doesn't know about a.c. yet when he first becomes bound with void. he's figured out that void is hiding something very personal and he has a hunch that it's related to some of the more unnatural aspects of his popularity and career, but that's as far as he knows.
the absolute tragedy of psychic and void's dynamic under drastically different circumstances producing a tiny little flowerbud of something pure that could almost bloom into a genuine friendship, only to wither into a toxic husk. something overfertilized, poisoned with pesticides and cut off from its ecosystem.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Pity Water (I No Longer Have Anything to Say)
(Friday Night Funkin')
Words: 1402
Summary: When Void jolts awake from a nightmare, Psychic is there in his head to…not help. In another, nicer life, he's not there at all and they both get all the privacy they could ever want.
This isn't that life. Psychic has to watch his step and help Void cope with the burden of their shared feelings, and while he's at it he can't help but reflect on how nice it must be to not feel anything at all.
Notes: i used italics to indicate speech/dialogue in this fic because the characters are using telepathy. please let me know if this causes any issues with accessibility so i can go back and edit it if necessary! ty for reading <3
Let me know if you'd like to be added to/removed from either taglist!
----------
I was being strangled, Psychic hears him finally say, after what must have been a last long, sharp intake of breath. By what, I don’t… I was just… Suffocating.
He knows. He doesn’t say anything, only waits for Void to keep going. The urge to shrink into his chair, curl his fingers around the fabric of his sleeves, pulses through him like branching nerves. Psychic decidedly doesn’t comply; it’s not his impulse to succumb to.
In a moment, the voice, stark and mechanical in a way that machines are not, filters through the spidersilk membrane between their minds once more. I don’t know why that dream comes up so often. I… We don’t… Void shivers, voice and all. Heat and cold and directionless gravity crawl through him, and through Psychic, like anxious termites. We don’t. You and I. We’re not— that’s not something we ever have to…worry about, in the real world. Obviously.
Obviously, Psychic echoes. He doesn’t dream. It’s not something that’d ever be in the realm of possibility for him, bursting energy condensed into a vibration, solid and tangible.
But he’s often wondered — of course he has — what it’d be like, to see things in his sleep. To sleep at all. For a moment there, when the lightning first struck and amalgamated two individuals, two pillars of detached and stubborn cold, into a singular mass of vulnerable anger and fear, he’d wondered if that might change. If it would allow him to experience any semblance of blissful dark. A break from the constant and doubled pressure of sensations against the walls of his mind.
It didn’t. He’s still here, months and months later, conscious for every moment of their entanglement, one with another, watching the thoughts behind every spoken word, sensing the emotions behind every action like they’re his own. Agonizingly present, unbearably near. Overtaken with panic, dream-panic and real panic, pen clattering to the floor far too loudly as his hand blindly reaches for his throat, trying to pry away the constriction, the threat that isn’t there. The threat that’s not there for either of them. That leaves one of them gasping like an idiot in the middle of the night in his master’s house, and the other curled up tightly in bed miles away, embarrassed and resentful and helplessly exposed.
So don’t make me explain why, Void adds quietly, hollow and empty like a threat.
Of course not. Psychic’s gaze flits downward to the now disordered papers he was organizing and filling out. He can imagine, through Void’s eyes, the dark pressing in around him, the heaviness of the covers and sheets, like being dragged below the ocean surface, miles out from shore, alone in the dark. Jet being startled awake and away, begrudgingly clambering back up onto the bed and curling up under Void’s trembling hand. Disjunction of body and mind, conjunction of thoughts from two different places. Loud fear quickly subdued by louder self-consciousness and rising chagrin, the moment he must have remembered Psychic felt it too.
Are you going to go back to sleep? Psychic asks. He feels almost tentative. Sometimes Void has these nightmares, of course, but sometimes he has better dreams. And sometimes he dreams of nothing at all — just pure, deep sleep, sticky and heavy and tantalizing, darkness like a blanket, like a hug.
Psychic feels all of them. And when Void doesn’t dream and he is alone, just as encapsulated in blackness but maddeningly awake and aware for it, Psychic can’t help but want it too. For that peace to wrap him in a promise of security. It was more than enough when he poked around in Dearest’s mind while the man was asleep one night, years and decades ago, a young and insatiably curious psychomancer with nothing stopping him from trying to find out what it was like for his master. It was more than enough then, to experience that repose, and realize that he wouldn’t ever get to have it for himself, when he’d already tried and failed so many times to drift off into the quiet night. Even if he could, he certainly wouldn’t be as safe now, with another person taking up his head like a growth, knowing everything he thinks and feels.
To know that even Void gets to have this rest, with its terrors and disturbances and all…it’s really something. Psychic doesn’t like to dwell on it. He doesn’t want to give a name to the touch of green at the edge of his vision, give it a home and a place to burrow deeper into his already straining mind.
It’s rather funny; he thought at first that not having any feedback from Void’s end might be a reprieve in the midst of it all. That when Void would sleep and dream of nothing, feel nothing, he’d finally get some peace and quiet, not have to think for a while about how trapped they both are. But the silence, the solace on the other side…it just leaves him antsy now. It does nothing but give Psychic too much time to overthink himself, a well nearly empty but for a grimy layer of dread at the bottom.
Void hesitates, too. Nah, he says, something lighter, tinged with exhaustion, bubbling up for a moment in the cavity of their shared emotions. Don’t think I could now, even if I wanted to.
That’s new. Void has never been one to admit when he can’t. Psychic isn’t sure whether he should be feeling the inkling of weird guilt that‘s trickling into his stomach. It’s really not his fault that Void’s feeling so painfully violated, to the point of resigned, quiet honesty that Psychic had never heard from him before that disastrous morning. When he realized there was another cognizance, bright and dreadfully familiar, inside his own head. He hadn’t wanted any of this, either.
What, are you gonna whine about it? Void snaps back to his usual impatience and irritation like a taut rubber band. They’re both like that now, Psychic thinks. Sharper. More agitated. Quicker to lash out. He doesn’t really know how to stop them from spiraling in this direction, and dimly wonders if he’ll ever find the energy when it’s all being spent on tensing up whenever a feeling that’s not undoubtedly his swallows up his core. You can stop feeling guilty now. I’m not asking you to wallow with me, pal. Or to wallow at all. Don’t you have a job to get back to?
Yeah. Actually, I do, Psychic mutters, annoyance sparking through him for just a moment. So much for his helpless, uncontrollable empathy. Wasted on a vacuum of a person. You jolting awake in the middle of the night didn’t exactly help. In case you didn’t realize.
Void sputters and scoffs. I don’t have to help you, dumbass. And there it is. Blunt and uncaring. It’s not my fault we’re stuck like this. And it’s not like I’m trying to make this any harder for either of us.
That, Psychic has to concede. Neither of them asked for this. Void is right about that much at least. Fine. I’ll just go back to my work. We can just…both be here, I suppose. If you want to talk, or not. God, he’s so impressively awkward. Either way, it won’t make much of a difference to me.
Okay. The hard edges smooth out into something like acceptance. Fine, I’ll…be here, then. Surprisingly, Void doesn’t seem as put off by this string of words as Psychic anticipated. Neither of them are prone to talking things out — Void is often too annoyed, Psychic too stubbornly aloof for that. He must not feel like arguing tonight, or playing at being too important for the rest of the world like he normally does. And Psychic is truthfully perfectly willing to take it.
Okay. Psychic picks up his pen, nearly forgotten on the smooth, polished wood floor. He takes a moment to gather his scattered papers and equally scattered thoughts. Check the clock; it’s five minutes to one in the morning. He’s got a long night ahead of him, writing and signing and representing his master, organizing and filing these away. A long night for the both of them. Two voices in each head, bitter and tired and grudgingly soft.
At the very least, they have each other’s company. That counts for something, probably.
