| When did his drawings become so personal?

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Blot was always quiet.

Not unfriendly — just distant. He preferred sitting in corners with sketchbooks balanced in his lap, black-stained fingers smudging charcoal and ink across paper while the other Toons talked around him. Most assumed he simply enjoyed solitude. Even before Gardenview Center began collapsing into something darker, Blot always seemed more comfortable observing than speaking.

After all... artists notice things.

But after the expeditions started failing, after the halls became soaked with ichor and grief and silence, something about Blot changed.

At first, it was subtle.

He started drawing more often.

Not landscapes. Not Toons. Not little doodles scattered across notebook pages like before.

You.

Over and over again.

At first, nobody thought much of it. Teagan brushed it off as Blot “finding comfort in familiarity.” Shelly mentioned that trauma often causes people to obsess over things that make them feel safe. Even Dandy joked about how “romantic” it looked seeing Blot constantly sketching someone he cared about.

But they didn’t see the drawings closely.

You did.

The further the expeditions went downhill, the stranger the sketches became.

Pages and pages of your face.

Your smile.

Your hands.

Your sleeping form.

Sometimes detailed enough to look photographed. Other times distorted beyond recognition, your body swallowed in dripping black ink while Blot stood beside you smiling softly. There were entire sketchbooks filled with nothing except you and him together in places that never happened.

Or hadn’t happened yet.

And lately...

Blot himself had started looking worse.

Black ichor permanently stained his sleeves now, slowly dripping from his fingertips no matter how often he washed them. His hair hung messily over his face, damp with ink that seemed to leak endlessly from somewhere beneath his skin. He spoke even less than before, but whenever he looked at you, those hollow dark eyes softened into something terrifyingly affectionate.

Like seeing you was the only thing keeping him grounded.

Tonight was worse.

The expedition had ended in disaster yet again. The survivors returned exhausted, trembling, some injured badly enough that even Astro struggled to help them. Yet through all the panic and noise and grief...

Blot only looked for you.

And the moment he found you alive, something inside him visibly relaxed.

Now he sat across from you in the abandoned art room, sketchbook resting against his knees while the dim overhead lights flickered weakly. The room smelled heavily of paper, wet ink, and something metallic underneath.

You tried not to look at the walls.

Too many drawings.

All of you.

Blot’s pencil moved slowly across the page in silence.

Scratch.

Scratch.

Scratch.

The sound filled the room while black ichor dripped steadily from his fingertips onto the floor below.

“You got hurt.”

His voice was soft.

Almost drowned out by the scratching pencil.

You looked down. A small cut along your arm from the expedition.

Before you could answer, Blot stood.

Quietly.

Slowly.

He approached with the careful gentleness of someone handling something fragile.

“You should’ve stayed with me.”

His ink-stained fingers lightly brushed your wrist.

Cold.

“You’re safer when you stay close.”

That small smile appeared again.

Thin.

Crooked.

Wrong.

Blot tilted his sketchbook toward himself before tearing the page free carefully.

It was another drawing of you.

This one showed you sitting beside him in the art room, smiling peacefully while thick black ink curled around your legs like possessive hands.

At the bottom, written in messy handwriting:

“Mine stays with me.”

Blot stared at the drawing for a long moment before offering it to you gently.

Like it was a gift.

Like this was normal.

And when you hesitated taking it, something in his expression flickered.

Not anger.

Worse.

Hurt.

“You don’t like it?” he asked quietly.

The lights flickered again.

Behind him, the walls were covered in hundreds more sketches.

Every single one watching you back.

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<That’s not my toon> - VOL. 2 - Series

Where the Toons you know are not the ones with you.

Looey ~ Cosmo ~ Dandy ~ Blot ~ Yatta ~ Soulvester ~ Finn ~ Flyte ~ Bassie