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#Grind to Death Records
thethcministry · 1 year
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stairset · 1 year
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Not to be crass but I think if DC actually goes through with James Gunn’s stupid ass “use the movie actors in DC games and shows instead of voice actors” idea then literally every single living voice actor who has ever voiced any DC character in anything ever should be legally allowed to take turns beating his ass into the ground.
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triste-guillotine · 1 year
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CARCASS “Symphonies of Sickness” LP 1989 (’Snort the corpse... Get high on the rot... Orgasmic rush... Turns your brains to pus...’)
Side A - Requiems of Revulsion 1. Reek of Putrefaction 2. Exhume to Consume 3. Excoriating Abdominal Emanation 4. Ruptured in Purulence 5. Empathological Necroticism Side B - Concertos of Carnage 6. Embryonic Necropsy and Devourment 7. Swarming Vulgar Mass of Infected Virulency 8. Cadaveric Incubator of Endoparasites 9. Slash Dementia 10. Crepitating Bowel Erosion
https://carcass.bandcamp.com/album/symphonies-of-sickness-full-dynamic-range-edition
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drondskaath · 7 months
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Resin Tomb | Cerebral Purgatory | 2024
Australian Grinding Death Metal
Artwork by Mitchell Nolte
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cheapsweetsrocks · 3 months
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Best of 2023 - Band I've finally been able to get into this year
It's KEN mode!
I feel like Void is probably one of the band's more accessible albums, but I'm looking forward to exploring their back catalogue. They make interesting extreme 'noise rock' with hardcore and industrial influences, while still being very much their own thing (and they've been re-working a lot of their live material to take into account they now have a full time keyboardist in the band!). Plus by all accounts, they are Good People (pals with Vile Creature and Lingua Ignota, for example).
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Honourable mention to Taylor Swift - I figured I should finally find out what all the fuss was about, so I sat down (in the car) and listened to the album Midnights... Look, I get it. It's very polished, its interesting musically, and the wordplay is solid. I get why people like it, but... it's not for me. Some of that is musically (again, Taylor is a very competant vocalist, but if I'm listening to this kind of music, I feel like Lana Del Ray or Miley Cyrus both have better voices and write more engaging music for me), but I suspect a lot of it comes down to the content as well; I'm always going to connect more with the wider themes on albums like Call Down The Sun than I am to something more autobiographical like Midnights, I suspect...
(my husband now says he will send me anything funny and Taylor Swift related he finds because I'm now the only person he knows who's actually listened to a Taylor Swift album... 😜)
This year? I'm going to try my hardest to get into Escuela Grind - by all rights, they should absolutely be my jam; shouty vocalist, keen understanding of the history of the genres they play in, a collab with Barney from Napalm Death (!), and an EP called PPOOWWEERRVVIIOOLLEENNCCEE... what's not to like? For whatever reason, I've bounced off their music so far, but I will persist!
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onlyhurtforaminute · 4 months
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NYCTOHAGIA-LIVE FROM PLANET MORON
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AUTOPSY
Morbidity Triumphant (2022)
Peaceville Records
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1funeral2many · 5 months
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Sulaco - Cry Me a River
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gbhbl · 1 year
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Album Review: Maggot Crown - Apparition of Faces (Vargheist Records)
Pure punishment in aural form. Maggot Crown are a nasty pair and Apparition of Faces reflects that.
Death-grind duo, Maggot Crown returns with their sophomore full length album ‘Apparition of Faces’ for a March 1st, 2023, release via Vargheist Records on CD format. Pure punishment in aural form. Maggot Crown are a nasty pair and Apparition of Faces reflects that. Thirteen tracks of vomit-inducing death-grind that plumbs the dark depths of hell to expose the wriggling innards of belligerence…
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cryptotheism · 9 months
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The city of Isin is not actually the city of Isin. Technically, it's the city of New New New Isin. That was the trouble with Isin. It was all wrapped up in itself. Like fabric around a nun, or a baby, or a whore.
People had been there, as in the physical location, for longer than history could be expected to remember. People have been in Isin since the word "people" meant something very different.
The first city called Isin was dragged kicking and screaming into the world by Heralds of the Church of the Third Sphere. A fourth-era religious order known for staunch orthodoxy and insufferable smugness. A cult whose grandest miracle was being almost universally despised by anyone who heard their sermons. Isin to them was a Good Rock. A polite term for "delusional pipe dream about the future City of God."
And it was a rock, a miraculously barren rock in the midst of a freezing swamp that only seemed to produce the sort of wildlife that stings and gnashes. Kunaabe oral history does seem to know of the location, but also seems to assume the foolishness of anyone attempted to actually travel there. This did nothing to deter the Church of the Third Sphere, as records indicate they were not aware of Kunaabe presence in the area.
The first 400 years of Isin's history were typical of other Good Rocks: regular periods of plague, mass starvation, and hyper-niche religious conflict boueyed by the occasional successful interaction with nearby Kunaabe and Baquari communities, at which point the enterprising trader would be ritually banished for speaking to hererical, racially impure outsiders.
Significant improvements were made to Isin after the local potentate promised that the Third Sphere would appear in the sky that spring. After the date passed, and no celestial body appeared to unite the Sun and Moon, the potentate was ritually burned to death, and his body was cast into Isin's only source of fresh drinking water. The fervent believers promptly died of several drinking-water related things at once. Those with a lick of sense brushed up on their Kunaabe and got busy creating a new sub-ethnicity, leaving Isin abandoned.
A decade passed. And much like the local chitin eel population grinding the corpse of the arch-astrologer into algae food, Isin soon became host to a new, beautiful population: Good, honest, criminals.
-- from An Addicts History of New Babel, by Ord Mornie
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horrorpatch · 2 years
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DEFLESHED Drop Lyric Video for "Bent Out Of Shap"!
DEFLESHED Drop Lyric Video for “Bent Out Of Shap”!
Swedish death metal monsters DEFLESHED have recently released a new lyric video for the track, “Bent Out Of Shape!” The band will release their new album, Grind Over Matter on October 28th via Metal Blade Records. The new track is taken from that album. Check it out along with more details right after the break. From The Press Release Swedish Death Metallers Defleshed have set October 28th as…
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forbidden-sunlight · 4 months
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yandere!carcel escalante with ines!reader scenario
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Warning: OOC, obsessive behavior, implied violence, language, mention of death, possible spoilers for latest chapters on the manhwa.
There may be possible triggers in this story.
If you do not feel comfortable venturing any further, please hit the 'back' button on your device or computer and read something much more pleasant than a possible series of unfortunate events.
You are responsible for your own Internet consumption!
Hey guys, hope you have all been well! I'd like to thank @ceeesxy-blog for providing honest feedback on the earlier drafts on this story!
For those who are wondering, I am still revising/editing the other headcanons I had written for Carcel Escalante. When they are ready, they will be posted.
With that being said, sit back, relax, and let's dive into world of romance and second chances. Or maybe four :)
The Spirit was glaring heatedly at your back again. She seemed to be doing that a lot more lately than critiquing your posture or whispering the names of the nobility in your ear to make sure you did not mispronounce it when they approached you at teeth-grinding social functions. It made you wonder what you did to upset her for the nth time behind the polite smile you gave to the blonde-haired child sitting across from you. 
For the record, it had not been your intention to possess the body of Ines Valeztena de Perez  in the first place. You simply woke up and found her soul occupying the same space. Two souls in one meatsack, to put it so crudely; impossible in theory, yet here is the miracle. Note the sarcasm. 
Where this is her fourth reincarnation, it was your first, and you had retained the knowledge of this reality where it was the backdrop of a novel based on her life. The title? The Broken Ring, This Marriage Will Fail Anyway. Not only did include the details of her life in this timeline, but also her marriages to both the future Emperor and the painter Emiliano. One was a nightmare where she took her own life, and the second was to get away from her responsibilities and be happy for once. Her brother killed Emiliano and the child she had with him, dragging her back to the duchy she had tried to escape from. 
In this life, she has already secured an engagement with Carcel Escalante on the basis that he is the best-looking young man. Her father approved because he loved his only daughter. That worked in her favor because she did not want to get involved with the imperial family again, and already had a plan in the works. This plan involved treating Carcel coldly for seventeen years and he would have numerous affairs, before and after their marriage. Once she gives birth to a child, she will divorce him and attain true freedom. But now, Ines has become a lingering Spirit which only you could see. You are occupying the Body. You are the main driver behind it. And by God, her plan is utter bullshit. 
Make a child who has yet to understand communication and very much innocent in the way of how an adult’s mind works hate you by being a cold-hearted bitch? Absolutely not! That is not how you treat someone, even if you do remember that Carcel Escalante was a playboy in a previous lifetime. This is the present, do not put so much emphasis on the past. 
You have told the Spirit many times when the room was empty and you were visiting her in your mindscape; the backdrop of a library and seated in a plush chair with a table that held two steaming cups of coffee that you couldn’t taste. You did not know if she or you had created it, but this was where she had closed herself off most of the time and where you would see her as soon as you drifted off to sleep. Whether she actually listened to you during these therapy sessions or just put up with your company because you were in her body is another question entirely. 
“Ines?”
Jolting slightly, you looked up from the rim of  your teacup and nodded at the flustered Carcel Escalante. “Yes?” Cerulean orbs twinkled beneath the chandelier’s light as he stared at you, cradling his own cup and looking…frustrated? You furrowed your brow in concern, carefully placing it back down on the saucer that sat on the table. “Is everything all right, Carcel?”
“Why?” He answered your question with a question. You played along, asking him what he meant. 
“Do you really want to marry me because of my good looks?”
Oh, dear. Suppose this was a conversation bond to be brought up. You thought warily. Not even a minute has passed and already you could feel the Spirit’s menacing glare directed at the back of your head. Ines, for God’s sake, trust me. Let me handle this. You hissed in your mind. 
“You cannot ruin this chance.”
Ines, I am fully aware that this is crucial to your plan, thank you. Your very piss-poor plan, I might add. You promised you would give me one chance to prove there is another way to attain happiness. I will deliver. So let me speak or so help me, I will stuff your consciousness in the back of my brain and lock you in there until the day is over. You threatened. That wasn’t a threat either. It was a promise because you had done it before, unintentionally, when the world was spinning and her nagging was not helping. You couldn’t allow her access to the Body for nearly two days. 
She went silent, and the heat on the back of your head subsided slightly, but you could see her from the corner of your eye. Folding your hands neatly in your lap and straightening the curve of your spine, you spoke to Carcel with your eyes directly locked onto his own. 
“Yes. You are very handsome by the Empire’s standards, Carcel. But that isn’t the only reason.”
“It…isn’t?”
“Correct.”
“Then, why?”
“To avoid being married into the imperial family. Your cousin, the crown prince, Oscar is…a twit. Emotionally immature, rude, I could go on. You recall how he arrived at my home without any notice nor any requests to visit, and I told him that I did not like him, yes? You were there, dragged by him because he can do that.” 
Carcel’s face paled. “You could get punished for speaking like that about him. He is the future of our Empire.”
“And what a bleak future that will be.” You sniffed. 
“Ines!”
“The Empress wouldn’t risk angering one of the founding families of this country. Without our support, they would not be standing where they are right now, the pinnacle of high society and power, so I am not afraid to criticize how her son has no regard for the consequences of his actions because he believes his status gives him an excuse to do anything he wants to do.” You squeezed your hands together. “I also believe you are much more agreeable and level-headed than him. Your good looks are a bonus…but I would like to get to know you more. Your likes, your dislikes, anything, really, that you are comfortable with sharing. Believe it or not, Carcel Escalante, I do want us to get along. Not just for appearance's sake.”
You watched his eyes widen in disbelief, his face pinken with embarrassment before he stuttered. “R-Really?”
“Yes.”
“A-And you won’t…be mean? Or ignore me?”
You shook your head. “I will not.” You said. “If I am cruel in your eyes, I would rather you say it to my face then keep silent. I will not understand how you feel if you do not say anything. Though…if the imperial family is watching us, I might have to act out of character. Not just to protect myself and my family from their interference, but yours. Do you understand?”
“I-I suppose.” Carcel swallowed. “But…will you inform me…if you have to act like that?”
“I shall.” 
You answered Carcel’s questions as honestly as you could to a six-year-old child, even when you were roughly the same age as him. He seemed to believe you, as his stiffened posture loosened, and his smile was a little less forced. Eventually it was time for him to leave the estate and return to the Escalante duchy. You walked him to the door alongside the servants, and bade him farewell. When his carriage faded in the distance, growing smaller and smaller, the Spirit wasted no time in materializing, scolding you for making such promises right until it was time for bed. 
But this was a positive change, you emphasized, not a negative one. Would she rather hate the two of you for saying that you liked him and then say you don’t care if he has an affair because your feelings change? That made absolutely no sense. Yes, feelings change with time, this is true, but it is still cruel in your perspective and you will not subject Carcel to such treatment. 
When you received an invitation to attend the Empress’ annual tea party, a letter from the Escalante duchy was delivered to your desk the very next day. Carcel asked if he would have the honor to be your escort. You replied that you would be delighted; you were looking forward to seeing him there, and do not mind if you were acting coldly towards him if the Empress or the crowned prince were within feet of either of you. 
You kept your word to him. Now, and for the following seventeen years. 
If neither of your schedules were not booked with various lessons and social functions, Carcel would make an effort to visit you or invite you to spend an afternoon doing something together. He would offer flowers, and you thanked him. You idly chatted over lunch at a cafe after a shopping trip, all expenses paid by Carcel at his insistence, even when your monthly allowance was more than enough to purchase jewelry, dresses, or anything that piqued your interest during the outing. 
When he was invited to a friendly hunting trip at the Valeztena estate, Carcel had been stunned into silence as you handled the recoil of the hunting rifle in your hands without so much as a sound. 
The Spirit had drilled the basics of gun safety and aiming into your brain until she was confident that no one would think the wiser in the unlikely event that the two of you had to exchange control over the Body. Moreover, it put her at ease knowing she could protect herself from the crown prince. She will not allow Oscar to get the upper hand in this lifetime. Never again. 
You agreed wholeheartedly with her reasoning. Now if she actually lifted some damned weights between target practice and sipping tea with her peers, that would be great. You did not want the time and effort you have put into toning your arms from swinging a practice sword in the knight’s training arena to go to waste. 
Securing a competent tutor who would willingly teach a woman the fundamentals of swordsmanship, even if it’s a fucking rapier and not a broadsword like you initially wanted to learn how to use, had been difficult. If the Spirit was going to use a weapon to protect herself, then so are you. 
End of discussion. 
Carcel eventually became of age and was forced to enlist in the naval academy as his forefathers had done. It was the first step towards becoming the duke of the Escalante estate. Although you were a little sad to see him go, you promised to write him letters. If you were allowed to visit him at the base or a port that wasn’t too far from the Empire’s shores, you swore that you would try, weather permitting of course. 
However…if you or the Spirit had known the weight of these promises…would you have known just how madly in love Carcel Escalante de Esposa was with you? Would he? 
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Carcel hated his time at the naval academy. As invigorating and stressful it was to learn everything about a ship’s vessel to the areas where the enemies of the Empire have attacked in recent years and even swordsmanship or rifle training, there were days when he wanted to throw everything away and just run off from Meldoza. 
Never looking back,  becoming a free man who could do as he pleased without the obligations. 
The soldiers in his fleet understood his frustration and have offered more than once to take him to the ports and have a bit of fun with some lovely ladies, on their tap. Yet for all his ranting and grumbling, it took a single letter from his dear Ines to keep the young duke grounded. 
She informed him of the events occurring in the Empire’s polite society, highlighting gossip and any exploits pertaining to his cousin, aggravated that she still cannot swing her sword at the right angle just yet even after her tutor went over the lesson several times, amongst other topics of discussion including what she has been doing since he’s been at sea. She reminded him to stay strong, keep his wits sharp, and never forget that she is here, waiting for him to return. Before he ventured out to sea for his duties, he would always keep a letter folded against his breast pocket. A reminder of why he is here. 
Contrary to the rumors circulating around him, he did not elect to remain in the military for an additional five years because he was avoiding getting married at the tender age of eighteen. He wanted to prove to his future father-in-law that he is worthy to be the husband of his only daughter. 
Just because he may be lacking in some areas, that does not mean he should be switched out for someone higher up or of equal ranking in the hierarchy. Or with a gentleman whom Duke Valeztena would much prefer to have as a son-in-law than him. That will never happen so long as he, Carcel Escalante de Esposa, lives. 
He is a man who will get jealous if anyone would dare to approach his future wife with the intention of bedding her once he, her husband, had gotten tired of her. An absolutely foolish notion, because Carcel will remain faithful to Ines. 
It would take a lot of self-control to not gut those fools right on the spot, because Ines would hate getting blood on the floor. Furthermore, he would never have a mistress before or after he exchanged his vows. Women might line up outside his door because adultery is encouraged in the Ortega Empire. Flowers and love letters might decorate every square inch of his office. Temptation will lurk around every corner, and he will burn them in his fireplace. The ladies? Well, he’d tell them to politely sod off and never darken his doorstep again. 
If there were gifts from Ines, however, he would keep him. 
Ines is his sun. The light of his life. No one else would even compare to the woman who is waiting for him to return from these treacherous waters. Until it was his time to leave this world, he would show Ines just how much he loved her. He would buy her anything she wanted, make her life as comfortable as possible even if she told him a thousand times that she does not need anything. 
Just never leave his side. Never fall in love with another man who wasn’t him, because he cannot conceive a universe without you. 
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nico-di-genova · 27 days
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For the ask game:
22. “I’ve seen the way you look at me when you think I don’t notice.”
For Lestappen please! 🙏🏼
Thank you, have a lovely day 🫶🏼
22. "I've seen the way you look at me when you think I don't notice."
Charles has just about had it. Had it with the media who shove microphones in his face and demand to know what happened, why he and Max had ended up tire deep in the gravel. Had it with Pierre making little jokes about Charles and his ‘anger issues’. Had it with the disappointed looks Fred keeps casting his way during debriefs, as the damage to the car is discussed and the cost it will take to fix it. He’s had it with the social media team, the word ‘inchident’, the way his bad English in his teens seem to be one of his longest lasting legacies.
“It’s okay, we can spin this," they say, as if he gives a shit. It was a race. He raced, he saw a gap, he went for it, Max moved, and they both ended up out. It wasn’t anything.
But jesus, if Max gives him another one of those looks, Charles is going to lose every bit of media training he’s ever endured and strangle him right on this stage. In front of God, the cameras and everyone. He clenches his fists in his lap, grinds his teeth, feels his jaw tense. The cameras are probably picking it up, so he schools his expression into bored indifference. A neutral mask, they will know he is unhappy but they will not know it is with the Dutch bastard staring him down from the other end of the couch.
“It was nothing. Just an inchident, right Charles?” Max says, with that edge of ‘I think I’m hilarious, aren’t I?’ that makes Charles want to actually scream.
Instead, he picks up his own mic and laughs, nearly a giggle as he’s been instructed, it plays cuter. Makes him look less like the track menace who rammed into the back of Max’s car on turn sixteen of the Chinese circuit, as he cursed out Max’s speed in the straights over the radio.
“Yes, hah, right. We will, uh, we will do better this weekend.” He hopes he doesn’t sound as strained as he feels, rehearsed, it’s harder to pretend when he can feel the weight of Max’s gaze on him like the full weight of his own car, plus half the rest of the grids just for good measure.
Max grins, wicked little glint in his eye, “Absolutely.” And then he’s spinning the attention away from Charles and back to the Red Bull’s performance in high wind conditions – there’s a tropical storm brewing off the coast and it’s been fucking with the weather. How his team is confident they will be able to pull away from the rest of the grid with enough ease that situations like the last race don’t happen again.
Charles thinks about beating him to death with the microphone in his hands. Not seriously, not in a way he would ever act on, just in a way that would mean he doesn’t have to stare at the back end of a Red Bull wing for another fifty-seven laps.
The rest of media day is fairly uneventful. He knocks out some joint video stuff with Carlos, does a few social media photos and merch signings, and tries to ignore the questions about Max that just seem to keep coming.
Only once does he bite, when someone asks him if he and Max will ever refollow each other on Instagram.
He laughs, “He will have to follow me back first.”
There’s a camera recording his response, grainy iPhone footage that he will definitely see on Twitter later. Good. Let Max see the gauntlet he’s thrown down. Let him see the Ferrari cap Charles had been signing with the easy flick of his wrist and sharpie across the brim. Let him see Charles does not care.
Because he doesn’t.
Why should he?
Except that maybe he does, because when Max shows up at his hotel room that night he can’t help the annoyed sound that escapes him.
“What?”
“What?”
“What?”
“So we’re fine a week ago, but you send me into the gravel and it’s you who gets to play the silent game?”
He’s been ignoring Max’s texts. There had been a lot of them.
“There is no game, I am busy. Meetings. Repairs. You know, the damage to the car.”
“Oh you’re moonlighting as your own mechanic now? Ferrari is that desperate?”
Max is angry, but more than that he’s hurt. Charles can see the flash of it in his eyes and in the tension when he clenches and unclenches his fists at his side.
“You’re-“ Max glances down the hall, at the Aston Martin employee who’s casting them glances.
Charles waves.
Max lowers his voice until only Charles can hear, “You are such a sore loser.”
The sting of it is well aimed, lands right between Charles ribs, pisses him off enough that he drops the act for a minute and tells Max to go fuck himself in Italian before slamming the door in his face.
It’s not that he’s never been called that before, more than he’s never been called it by Max. Somehow that hurts more.
Max wins in Miami. Charles has engine trouble on lap thirty and has to retire by lap thirty-two. The smile that he forces on afterward when he lies through his teeth that ‘it is like this’ hurts more than his pounding head after the DNF in China.
He tries to drown it all out by hiding in his room until his flight the next morning, instead he ends up at Max’s door.
“I hate you,” he says when the man opens it wide enough that Charles can slink past.
His hair is damp, sticking up in spikey points atop his head, and his white shirt is sticking to wet patches of his skin. He smells like ember, or leather, or something distinctly sharp. Charles tries not to think about it.
Instead, he paces tracks into the plush carpet and keeps his eyes glued to the movement of his own feet while the words spew out of him faster than he can stop them. It’s not all in English, spoken so fast he’s sure Max has missed most of it.
“I fucking hate you. You stupid. Moronic. Annoying. Idiot. You and your inchident like I am stupid. Fuck you. That was my race. My line-.”
“Is this about China?”
“Yes,” Charles spits, “Of course it is about China.”
Max crosses his arms. Watches as Charles motions wildly in the air.
“It is about China. And Suzuka. And Melbourne. About every circuit you follow me onto.”
“I follow you onto?”
“Shut up.”
“Interesting perspective.”
“Stop.”
“I didn’t even finish Melbourne.”
“Shut. Up!” He yells, he can’t help it, feels like something in his chest finally snaps and then there is a long silence where neither of them say anything at all. They both stare at each other, like someone took out a gun and shot the other. Charles does not yell. He is polite, kind, he is exceedingly lovely.
He does not yell.
Except that sometimes he does, and right now he would like to just so he could feel the pure release of it. Sometimes he does not want to be fucking kind. But he also does not want to yell at Max, realizes the pointlessness of it all.
“You want to be friends? Still?” Charles asks, because it is Max who had begun this whole dance of repairing whatever shattered thing sat between them from when they were kids. Max who had started texting him asking to play FIFA and paddle, to go running with him, offered his private jet for flights if needed. Giving everything hand over fist to Charles, assumedly because Red Bull had seen how well he listened to team orders, and behaved, and wanted to own him before Ferrari could lock him down again. Charles had played the game, and he’d maybe even become Max’s friend in the process, but there’s still a part of him that is twelve and bitter – bitter that Max has always had the money, the better kart, bitter he can’t seem to catch up no matter how hard he pushes down on the throttle.
“Do you want to be friends?” Max asks, keeping a wary distance from Charles that once would have felt normal but now seems unfamiliar. He looks at Charles like he is a ticking time bomb. Charles hates it. He hates feeling weak.
“I…I don’t know.”
“We don’t have to be, “ Max says, like the thought has not occurred to Charles.
“I know-.”
Max cuts him off like he can hear the growing edge in Charles' voice and wants to avoid alerting the housekeeping staff in the hall to their bickering.
“Then just say that. I won’t text. I’ll leave you alone. Don’t do something you don’t want to do, Charles.”
It is reminiscent of Max telling him choose whatever team he wanted a few months back, telling him to fuck expectation and do something just because he wanted it. Which was ironic coming from the three-time world champion who only wanted to race cars online. Charles chose Ferrari, because there was never realistically a world where he wouldn’t.
The simpleness of it, the way Max is so willing to just let him go, to give up on the bridge they’d slowly been building between them – Charles suddenly hates him all over again. Max Verstappen and his chivalry and his kindness and his brutal honesty because he has no need to lie. It sparks that familiar jealousy in Charles.
Which is maybe why he throws some of Max’s own medicine back at him.
“I have seen the way you look at me,” he blurts out, “When you think I will not notice.”
Max takes a moment to catch-up with the twist in conversation. His eyebrows doing this expressive little dance that Charles almost finds endearing before it settles on hurt shock.
“What?”
“You are not subtle.”
“I don’t-.”
“You’re only nice to me because you think you can fuck me now. That doesn’t make you special Max, that is all anyone wants me for anyway.”
There is a moment where he thinks Max will tell him to get out, a moment where he would go, it is a moment that is quickly lost in the anger that makes itself at home in Max’s eyes. The bridge crumbles, they are twelve and all they want to do is hurt.
“God, how do you see anything over that massive ego of yours, Leclerc.”
“You’re the three time champion, Verstappen. You tell me.”
Max steps closer, Charles steps back, he meets the resistance of the dresser and Max is suddenly there. Chest to chest, the two of them staring each other down with enough vitriol that it would probably put Pierre and Esteban to shame.
“You’re a fucking dick, Charles.” Max growls, “It’s not my fault Ferrari can’t pull their shit together enough to put you in a decent car.”
“Your car is a violation,” Charles spits back, “easy to win when you ignore the rules. Like always.”
They should stop, Charles thinks, knows they’re toeing along the precipice of something. But he’s sick of playing by the rules, so he pushes.
“Cheating is how you win, yes?”
Max's hands fist in the fabric of his shirt and push him further against the dresser before he even has the chance to blink. The furniture digs into his spine, until Charles can’t help the wounded sound that escapes him.
Max wrestles with something inside himself, Charles watches the struggle. He starts to pull away, but Charles grabs him by the hips and keeps him there. Max looks at him with that familiar expression, the one that Charles has been ignoring for months, want and need and longing all wrapped in steely grey that should be cold but might be warmest thing Charles has ever been cast in the light of.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Max says, and Charles feels rage. But it isn’t rage, not at all. It’s want. It’s the same feeling he gets when he’s gaining on Max in a race, hungry with the need to pass, to overtake, to get ahead and taste the clean air for once. It’s what landed them both in the gravel two weeks back.
Charles is smart, calculated when he needs to be, and right now he doesn’t want to play dumb.
“If I want you to hurt me?” he asks, really asks, even if he’s sure he hasn’t read the signs wrong.
Max’s expression does another dance, settles on the same want that Charles is reflecting back at him, “I don’t cheat.” He states.
Charles smiles, and it’s not the PR smile, all pretty for the cameras, it’s the smile of a man who drives on the limit and curses when he still can’t get ahead. “I don’t care. I’m going to beat you one day either way.”
Max wins in Imola, but Charles wins in Monaco.
They stand on the podium as the Monégasque anthem blares and he looks at Charles with pride, longing, reverence.
Charles notices, he always does.
155 notes · View notes
strangersmunsons · 29 days
Text
bloodletting
you're kind of dead. but so is Eddie, just in a different way.
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"Oh, you were a vampire, and baby, I’m a walking dead."
Contains: Vampire!Eddie x Zombie!Reader, gn!zombie!reader, Eddie owns a record store, you’re newly (un)dead and still figuring it out. No use of y/n, no description of reader’s appearance, use of pet names but no gendered pronouns. Warnings: mentions of death and descriptions of anatomical parts, both of which may be a little gross. Allusions to murder, though nothing is shown. Eddie drinks blood. Word Count: ~5,000 Not sure if this has been done yet; I've seen vampire!eddie and zombie!eddie, but I don't think I've come across this particular x reader combo? so hopefully I'm not stepping on anyone's toes here. anyway - hope you enjoy!
The summer heat is miserable, suffocating; large swaths of shimmering air hover above the sticky tar pavement, beckoning you from a distance like a teasing portal to another dimension, always in sight but never in reach. 
You plod down the crack-ridden sidewalk, eyes cast downward. Dregs of once-lush moss and sprays of weeds poke through the shattered valleys in the concrete, now brown and withered beneath the cruel sun. 
You admire those tiny plants. How they survive. How they find a way to live, against all odds, in the most unlikeliest of places. 
They remind you of yourself. Especially now, on the verge of their death.
You continue on, shuffling aimlessly. Each step is halting, just the tiniest bit broken. And there’s an odd grinding noise that emits from your left knee if you take too large of a stride. You suppose that it would probably hurt, if you could feel pain.
But such sensations tend to be lost on you these days.
You glance skyward, the sun a winking yellow coin directly overhead. You’re not sure how it may affect your strange flesh — you haven’t quite worked out all the particulars of your condition yet. Some parts of you are lost, utterly lifeless; and yet, your sentience, amongst other random physiological capabilities, remain. You imagine your trillions of cells to be stuck in some kind of purgatory, hovering on the equatorial line between life and death.
Can the sun hurt you? Have your cells gone far enough down the path of their programmed death so as to be rendered impervious to the ultraviolet rays, or are the thymine dimers still forming, creating mutinous clumps in your DNA? Or, would you react like a corpse left to rot in the desert, internal gasses bubbling up through your gut that will make you bloat and split, ripping you open like a spoiled piece of overripe fruit?
You’d rather not find out.
The strip mall you’re treading through is mostly deserted. You suppose that everyone is at home, waiting out the heat within the cool confines of air-conditioned houses. Only you, to whom the temperature changes barely register, are out and about.
You duck into the nearest shop without checking to see what store it is. You just need to kill some time, wait for some cloud cover before venturing back out. There’s a cheerful tinkling of bells when you push the door open, an inviting sound to welcome you inside.
Hovering at the entrance, you stare unblinkingly around at your new surroundings — a record store.
Here, it’s dark and cool. The walls are painted black, and only just visible beneath the hundreds of posters plastered overtop of them. There are rows and rows of vinyl records and cassette tapes on display, and one corner is sectioned off for t-shirts and band merchandise, along with a table offering a small selection of horror novels and VHS tapes. No one seems to around, though you figure at least one employee must be lurking somewhere. An unknown song crackles through the speakers, some band with a wailing guitar and an even louder singer. It’s not bad.
You take a deep breath, although you’re not sure what the action does for you, exactly, and move down an aisle to start browsing in. Your fingers pop at the knuckles when you stretch your hands out to file through the records, and you frown when you notice one of your fingernails has broken off.
Is that gonna grow back, or…?
“Help you find somethin’?”
You look up, careful not to move your head too quickly, lest it snap right off of your neck.
The store employee — Eddie, by the title on his nametag — is standing very close to you, much closer than you would expect him to be, considering that you hadn’t seen or heard anyone approaching at all. Your eyes rake over his figure.
He has dark, tangled curls that hang all the way down to his chest, and his eyes are so brown they’re nearly black. He’s wearing a denim vest over a black W.A.S.P. shirt with the sleeves cut off, exposing thick, tattooed arms. He gives you a serene, close-mouthed smile that dimples his cheeks, full lips stretching widely across his pale face. If you could still flush, you probably would, but blood flow seems to be at a very minimum, if it’s even happening at all. He’s hot. 
Well. Interesting to note that that part of you hasn’t changed.
You cough. “J-just looking.” Your voice is dry, raspy; you sound like a sixty-year-old chainsmoker. But if it surprises Eddie, it doesn’t show.
He points at the album you’ve paused at. “You like The Cramps?” 
You nod carefully, not trusting your rusty larynx. 
He hooks a thumb over his shoulder at the merch section. “We got some cool shirts of theirs over there, too, if you wanna take a look.”
“O-okay.”
There’s a mild shift in his expression, a slight shadow crossing over that customer-service smile, causing it to fade from his pretty face. He stares at you curiously; you swear you see his nostrils flaring.
You take a cautious step back.
“Well…if you need anything, just holler,” he tells you, disgruntled. As he turns and walks away, back to the register, he casts a backward glance at you, brow furrowed. If you weren’t so nervous, you might have marveled at how silent his footfalls are. 
With shaky hands, you continue perusing the selection before you, though all you can really focus on is the feeling of Eddie’s eyes glued to your back from across the store.
Some of your senses might have been dulled, but you still know when you’re being watched.
Would it be too suspicious if you just dropped everything and made a break for it? You haven’t technically done anything wrong. Your only crime is being dead. And really, what can he — or anyone — even do to you?
Kill me? 
You snicker.
Then, to your horror, in between Smell of Female and Off the Bone, your left pinkie finger falls off.
Immediately you lurch forward to hide the offending digit from Eddie’s prying eyes, hunching over the display rack. The damn thing has been threatening to come loose for days, kept in its place with the help of a little surgical tape and some superglue — but you’d hoped that the remaining ligaments would be strong enough to prevent this from happening.
Desperately, you plunge further into the display box, jamming your lifeless hands down between the records, groping blindly for the missing finger. You glance back at Eddie, who’s staring at you unabashedly, face a mask of blank confusion. He rises from his seat behind the checkout counter.
Finally, your hand closes around the lost pinkie, and you pull it back out of the display box, keeping it hidden within the confines of your fist. You just manage to spin around with your hands clasped behind your back by the time Eddie manages to make his way over to you again.
He stands with his feet firmly planted on the ground before you, his hands on his hips. “Everything alright over here?” he asks, eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“Yessir,” you chuckle drily.
He’s unconvinced. “Whatcha got back there?”
Panic bolts through your ruined insides. “N-nothing,” you rasp. 
His dark eyebrows shoot up towards his hairline. “No? Prove it.”
He waits expectantly. You try to moisten your lips with your tongue, but the muscle feels like a dehydrated slug in your mouth. Reluctantly, you move the finger so it’s in just one of your fists, and then hold your other hand out to him, flat so he can see your empty palm, smiling weakly.
It’s stupid, but it’s all you’ve got.
Eddie rolls his eyes and scoffs, but before he can say anything, your body betrays you once again. Your grip is none too strong anymore, and the missing digit slips through the web of your other, still-intact fingers, dropping to the floor with a tiny thunk.
Both you and Eddie stare down at the freestanding pinkie, sitting in the center of a white tile near your feet, mottled and sickly-looking. Neither of you say anything.
Suddenly his dark eyes are boring into yours again.
“Uh…I can explain.”
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“I knew you smelled wrong,” is the first thing he tells you in the back office of the shop, as he rifles determinedly through the desk drawers.
“Wrong?” you ask, alarmed.
He shoots you a look, a reassuring smile on his lips. “Not bad — just different. Like…” He pauses, searching for the right word. “Like green. Earthy, I guess.”
You wonder if it’s worth mentioning that you crawled out of the ground a week ago. 
“It’s not how people usually smell,” he says casually, face turning triumphant when he finally finds what he’s searching for. Eddie holds up a pocket-sized sewing kit in a plastic case. “I keep this around in case one of my patches falls off. I gotta say, emergency finger-reattachment surgery is a first for me.”
You’re still stuck on his previous statement. “H-how do people usually smell?” your voice quivers, and you wonder how he can act so nonchalant despite your decidedly-undead condition.
“Oh, like lots of different things,” he muses, selecting a needle from the kit. “Some people are flowery, some are fruity.” He wrinkles his nose. “Some people have harsher smells, like…crude oil, or something. And then there’s some that are so sweet it actually burns my nose.”
Eddie holds the case out so you can peer inside at the contents. “Here. Pick a color for your stitches.”
You opt for a tiny spool of dark green thread.
He gestures towards the rolling chair behind the desk. “Have a seat.”
You do as you’re told, plopping unceremoniously down onto the cushion. The chair moves several inches back across the floor from the force of your graceless fall.
Eddie snips the thread, and pops the end in his mouth to wet the frayed fibers, smoothing them into one even strand. Then he threads the needle quickly with an expert hand, tying it off with a knot when he has a decent amount of string to work with.
He kneels down before you, gently taking your pinkie-less hand in his. “Lemme see…do you think you can hold it in place for me?”
You hold the missing pinkie to the spot it was ripped from, lining up the torn edges as best you can. The whitish bone poking out at the ends slips greasily against the stumpy flesh of your knuckle. Frustrated, you try to hold it still so that the phalange and the metacarpal bones are aligned at least somewhat evenly, but you don’t quite have the stability.
Eddie purses his lips, but amusement flickers in his dark eyes. He takes the finger back from you. “I’ve got it, I think,” he says kindly. “Just, ah, help keep it steady, okay?”
Tongue poking out of his mouth in concentration, Eddie presses the needle lightly against your skin. His eyes flit up to yours. “Does that hurt?” 
“No,” you admit.
“Didn’t think so,” he says smugly. 
He pushes the needle in deeper, piercing the skin, maneuvering the slim point beneath the flesh of your knuckle and into the lost finger, connecting the two, then pulling it back out. He does it again and again, looping the thread through your skin until the first few knobbly stitches are formed. 
He checks in again, just in case. “Still doesn’t hurt?”
You shake your head. 
Eddie chuckles under his breath, then resumes his progress. For the next ten minutes, he weaves the needle in and out of your skin, until there are stitches going the whole way around your finger. He carefully ties the last one off, trimming the excess thread with a pair of tiny scissors. 
You hold your now-intact hand out, admiring his handiwork. It’s not perfect, but it’s certainly miles better than anything you could have done yourself. 
“Thank you.” You’re touched by his kindness, but still completely boggled by his non-reaction to a customer losing an entire finger. “I h-have,” you hack out a cough, “a question.”
“Shoot.”
“You’re very calm. How is that?”
Eddie, still kneeling on the floor, looks up at you, puzzled. Then it dawns on him. “Oh, honey. You don’t realize?” But he doesn’t wait for you to reply, maybe anticipating that your throaty, stuttering speech will take too long. Instead, his face scrunches, mouth twisting as though he’s running his tongue across his gums, and then his lips pull back, baring his teeth at you, and —
Shiny, lethal-looking fangs slide out through some hidden, gummy pockets right above his canines. They’re sharp, sharper than any needle he might string through you, gleaming menacingly even in the dim fluorescent light.
You let out a noise that might have been a squeal, in a past life. Clumsily, your feet push at the floor, sending you careening backwards on the rolling chair in an effort to get away from him. 
“Whoa, whoa, hang on! It’s alright!”
Eddie stands and moves a few paces back, giving you some space. He holds his hands up in surrender. “I’m not gonna hurt you, babe. Pretty sure you don’t got what I need, anyway.”
Your body sags in the chair, which is pressed all the way up against the office’s back wall. You eye him warily, although you suppose you’re being a little hypocritical. 
But you’re not the one packing fangs that rival a pit viper’s. 
Eddie smiles at you, pointed teeth poking down over that full bottom lip of his. “What? Did you think you were the only thing that went bump in the night?” he jokes.
Yes. Admittedly.
His face softens. “You haven’t been like this very long, have you?”
Timidly, you shake your head no, the vertebrae in your cervical spine grinding from within your neck.
Lost in thought, Eddie runs his tongue over his teeth again — a seemingly-unconscious movement. “Right…do you need a place to stay tonight?” he asks suddenly, concern lining his features.
You’re not sure how to answer. You don’t seem to really need anything. “Uh…”
He crosses his arms across his chest, mouth quirking up in amusement. “Have you just been wandering around town like you’re in Night of the Living Dead?”
You snort, a dry puff of air whistling through your nostrils. “Kinda.”
“Sheesh. Y’know, I hate to break it to you, but you’re not as inconspicuous as you think you are. It’s a wonder no one’s shot you in the head yet.”
“I th-thought I was blending in pretty well.”
He laughs, a deep belly-laugh that reverberates around the tiny room. “To the untrained eye, maybe. But not to me.”
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Eddie, as it turns out, owns the record store, Vicious Vinyl, and lives in the apartment above the shop. The small space is decorated similarly, so much so that it might be mistaken for a second level of the store as opposed to his home. But while Vicious Vinyl seems to offer a wide variety of music options for its patrons, Eddie’s tastes are made clear when you enter the apartment; he’s a heavy metal guy. Pictures of thrash bands, big names you recognize and obscure ones you don’t, hang on all the walls, and macabre-looking baubles lie on every flat surface. Music equipment is scattered throughout the room, guitars and amps filling the empty gaps between the dark furniture. And the windows are all covered by heavy black curtains — drawn tightly shut, of course, keeping the poisonous sunshine from leaching in.
“I have a cot that I’ll set up for you,” says Eddie, tossing his keys onto the kitchen table. You note that the cloth draped overtop of it is a deep crimson color.
Eddie pauses mid-step as something occurs to him. “Do you sleep?”
“Uh-uh. Do you?”
Eddie nods. “I do. Not in a coffin,” he adds, catching the way you peer around the room as though looking for a cobweb-ridden box. He nudges you playfully. “But you know where I do sleep?”
You imagine him hanging upside down from the ceiling like a bat. “Where?”
His eyes twinkle, like he’s about to divulge something juicy. “Under the bed.”
Your mouth falls open in surprise, and he laughs at your awestruck gaze. “Don’t know why, just feels right.”
“Weird.”
“Weirder than not sleeping at all?”
You shrug, unsteady frame rippling with the motion. Your cracked lips pull up at the corners, forming your first true smile of this odd existence. Eddie grins back.
“You’re pretty cute for a corpse, you know that?”
Your dead body fills with delight that you don’t quite know how to express — you hope that your condition excuses your lack of verbal response. But either way Eddie doesn’t seem to mind it; he simply turns and heads into the living room, motioning for you to follow.
You obey, shuffling along as quickly as you can, feet dragging noisily against the hardwood floor. When he gestures for you to do so, you sink unsteadily onto the plush leather couch. 
“I have to get back down to the shop, but I’ll close early and come back up soon,” he says nonchalantly, adjusting the chain bracelet on his wrist. “In the meantime, you make yourself at home.”
“Thank you.”
He nods in acknowledgement and, with a smile, exits the apartment, leaving you alone. 
The door clicks shut, and you settle back into the cushions, eyes wandering around as your tap your feet gently, impatiently, against the floor. You pick up the remote from the coffee table and flick the boxy television to life. You flip through channels for a while, letting each mindless program play for a minute before moving on to the next one, the muted colors on the bulbous screen and scratchy audio leaving little to no impression upon you. Boring. You turn it back off.
You purse your dry lips in thought. Truthfully, what you really want to do is snoop, but it’s rather gracious of Eddie to let you stay here, especially unattended…trusting, even. Would he be able to tell if you took a quick look around? And would he be angry with you if you did?
You decide you can probably risk it. He told you to make yourself at home, after all. 
Rising once more, you peer around the room cautiously, scanning all the bookshelves and photographs and records, looking for anything out of the ordinary, or decidedly vampiric — whatever that should be. But the den seems to be pretty innocuous.
You make your way back into the kitchen. From here, a short stretch of hallway juts out of the room, with two more doors — one is already slightly ajar, offering a glimpse of Eddie’s bedroom, and the other turns out to be a tiny bathroom. You rest a hand on the bedroom door, ready to enter and unearth all of Eddie’s secrets, but hesitate, intuition flickering.
If Eddie’s in possession of any bloody contraband, there’s one certain place you suspect he might keep it, and it’s not in his room.
The refrigerator is humming innocently with life. There’s the crackling sound of ice being made. Its cool whiteness is smooth and clean. Your hand clasps around the handle, and you wrench the door open.
Jars rattle from the force of your pull. A burst of bright light floods the dark kitchen, illuminating your dead face in a nightmarish glow. 
The interior shelves are smeared with crimson fingerprints, speckled with dried puddles of red crust. No doubt spillage from the plethora of bloody bottles crowded inside, all filled with that human lifestuff that they — and he — need so badly to survive. The dark, thick liquid gleams within the confines of the glass, some filled to the brim, others containing only mere dregs. 
Fascinated, you pull one of the bottles off the shelf and give it an experimental shake, watching bubbles whir into existence on the surface, making a layer of soft pink foam. You twist off the cap, peering inside; almost nosing the lip of the opening, you give it a delicate sniff. You’re not sure if your olfactory nerves can actually detect the faint, rusty odor, or if it’s a phantom scent, pulled from your memory. 
You quietly screw the cap back on, and stowe the bottle back in its place. The refrigerator door swings shut once more, closing the gory sight out of view. 
Interesting.
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Hours later, Eddie comes back to the apartment. You’re sitting at the kitchen table now, working on the crossword puzzle from yesterday’s newspaper, dry tongue poking out of the corner of your mouth in concentration. 
“Hello,” he greets you easily, shrugging out of his vest and tossing it over the back of a chair. He comes to stand beside you, looking down at the paper from over your shoulder. “24 down is orc, by the way. O-R-C.”
You frown. “I’m not there yet.”
Eddie barks out a laugh. “Sorry.” He pulls the chair next to you away from the table and takes a seat. 
You tap the end of your pencil against the table. “I w-would’ve gotten it.” 
“I’m sure you would have,” he says indulgently, resting his head on his hand. “Is this what you’ve been doing all afternoon?”
You nod. Mostly, anyway.
He studies your face for a moment, then scrunches his nose.
You mimic his expression. “What?”
“Have you noticed that you don’t blink?”
“No.”
He pokes you in the shoulder. “It’s kinda spooky,” he chuckles playfully. “Which is fine! I’m kinda spooky, too.”
“I don’t think I n-need to.”
His head cocks to the side. “You are funny, aren’t you,” he murmurs. 
That’s one way of putting it.
Eddie bites his lip — fangs hidden away again, retreated back in their gummy slits — and, hesitantly, extends one hand towards you. You flinch back automatically.
“Sorry,” he says, but doesn’t pull his hand back. “But do you mind if I just…try something?” 
You nod cautiously, unsure of what he’s getting at. 
Eddie — slowly, so as not to startle you — leans forward and presses his palm to your chest, right over where your heart lurks inside. He searches for a pulse that isn’t there, feeling nothing, no meaty organ throbbing and thumping against your ribcage, just placid hollowness, as though there were no chambered fist of tissue there at all.
A hush falls over the two of you, while he waits in vain.
You offer an apologetic smile. 
Eddie simply hums, and removes his hand, settling back in his chair. “You and I aren’t so different, you know. Mine doesn’t beat, either, unless I…” he trails off, a twinkle of mirth in his eyes. “Well, you can probably guess.”
“Yes. I found your stash.”
Eddie sucks in a quick breath, face hardening. “Forgive me. I know it’s a little gruesome, but a man’s gotta survive somehow, doesn’t he?”
You nod, understanding. The shock of his vampirism has worn off quickly, now that you no longer believe him to be a threat. As he’s so dutifully pointed out, and proven again just now, you don’t have what he needs.
“Listen, I was thinking when I was down there, and I know I already said you could stay for the night, but —”
Dismay. He’s already kicking you out, and you’ve only been here for a few hours.
“— we can talk about a more long-term arrangement, if you want?” 
Oh. Okay.
Eddie continues, oblivious to your inner turmoil, “I need some help around the shop. And I can’t trust myself to have too many employees hanging around, for obvious reasons,” he chuckles, gesturing helplessly towards his fridge, “so if you’re interested, I could give you a job. And I’d have you stay here with me, of course.”
“Really?” you whisper raggedly.
Eddie shrugs. “Yeah. And you don’t have to worry about rent or anything, either. Just a few hours of work a day, that’s all I ask.”
You nod eagerly, the motion exuberant enough that it makes your neck click.
Eddie’s eyes widen at the alarming sound, though he’s still grinning. “Okay! Be careful. Your head will be a lot harder to sew back on than a finger.” 
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The next few weeks are a bit of a learning curve, you and Eddie both adjusting to your presence in each other’s lives. 
During the day, you get some basic retail training. Eddie handles the real business side of things, but teaches you how he likes to organize and stock new arrivals, and lets you try your hand at the register. You’re good at it, but he’s hesitant to let customers speak to you for too long, lest they notice anything…unusual about you. 
It’s all good fun, the two of you together, even when business is slow. You spend one dull afternoon crowded at the counter together, working on a nametag — Eddie’s a good artist, and decorates the space around your name with green, swirling designs and miniature doodles of tombstones. He even lets you swipe a Cramps button from the merch table to pin onto your lanyard.
When the shop closes up, you both trudge back upstairs to the apartment, and pass the time playing cards, watching movies, listening to records; Eddie will sip on a cup of dark liquid, puffing on a cigarette or maybe a joint, while you sit with your hands folded neatly in your lap, no needs or vices to trouble you, just enjoying this newfound companionship. Sometimes he even reads aloud to you, or plays you song on his acoustic guitar.
Eventually it reaches that point in the day where the sun finally sinks out of sight, wherein Eddie yanks back the curtains and throws up the window, letting the cool night air seep in. You watch with fascination every time, transfixed by the way the moonlight hits his pale skin, shines across his dark curls…dances over his pearly teeth.
Later, Eddie will retire to bed, bidding you goodnight and crawling into the small space beneath his floor and his mattress to sleep, while you sit up on the couch or the cot he’s so needlessly set up for you, with the gentle hum of the television keeping you company in the slumberless dark.
But other times he leaves, disappearing into the night and not returning til it’s nearly dawn, spattered with blood, bits of gore clinging to his clothes. He practically lurches into the apartment, blood-drunk, dragging what’s left of his kill behind him in a cooler for safekeeping. 
The bloodletting takes place outside. He never brings the body in.
The first time it happened, you simply watched, glassy eyes watching him from across the room. But the next time you were ready. When he finished stowing the fresh blood away in the fridge, you moved in, and gently tugged on the back of his shirt, prompting him to remove his clothing; when he was stripped down to his boxers, you brought the discarded, ruined garments to the sink, and ran them under cold water. He watched you treat his clothes silently, searching for any sign of fright or disgust, but found none. He rested his hands on your shoulders and squeezed, a nonverbal thank you, before leaving you to take a shower.
This becomes routine. Eddie feeds and brings home the leftovers, which will tide him over until he has to make another kill. This doesn’t bother you; with each passing day, you feel more and more disconnected from the humans around you, the true ones, the ones who live and breathe and pump blood through their veins. You aren’t one of them, and they aren’t one of you.
So you don’t ask who any of them are, or where he finds them, but you do wait patiently for your vampire to come home, with a damp cloth in hand, ready to wash the blood from his face.
Tonight is one such night; when he stumbles through the door and into the kitchen, you’re already seated at the table with a bowl of warm water and a rag. You rise unsteadily to greet him, and he unloads his haul, putting the fresh bottles away onto their cold shelves. When he turns to face you again, he leans in, letting you tenderly swipe the dried smears of red tissue from around his mouth. His lips pout slightly when you drag the cloth over them, like a small kiss barely felt through the fabric.
He seems different; charged and bristling, as opposed to his usual sated and sleepy state. 
“Everything okay?”
He doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he strokes a thumb across your cheekbone, a light, experimental touch. “You’re sort of perfect for me, you know that?”
You pause your ministrations, startled by the unprompted praise. You swallow drily, and try to continue cleaning his face, but he clasps a hand around your wrist, keeping it in place.
His other arm snakes around your waist. “I’m serious,” he insists in a whisper. “Where have you been all my life?”
A faint smile touches your lips. “Had to wait until mine was over, I s’pose.”
His eyelids flutter, and before you can react, his bloody mouth is on yours. His kisses are sloppy, all fangs and tongue, smearing your lips and chin with gore. You return them dazedly, brittle fingers knotting in his tangled hair, letting him take what he wants.
It’s not like you need to catch your breath. 
When he finally pulls back, a string of red-tinged spit connects your mouths. He pants in your face, nose rubbing against yours, then dots bloody pecks all over your cheeks and forehead. You lean into him, letting him hold your dead body in his arms.
“My little love,” he whispers into your skin.
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thank you for reading!! ❤️
btw did you know that the gaboon viper has the longest fangs of any venemous snake? this has nothing to do with the fic. just thought if you made it to the end, maybe you'd enjoy a fun snake fact I came across when looking something up for this story. their fangs can grow up to 2 inches long, and this species is in a genus called Bitis, so that's fucking hilarious.
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gleamingyu · 10 months
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hits different.
part I of the midnights series. inspired by taylor swift’s midnights. part II
pairing: music-producer!seungcheol x lawyer!fem!reader [exes-to-lovers]
genre: romance. slight angst. drama.
warnings: she/her pronouns for reader (but no specific physical characteristics). mentions of a pretty rough breakup. slight angst. some light cursing. mentions of death (jokingly though). terrible knowledge of law stuff (thank my brief interest in htgawm). yearning. loads of miscommunication. slow burn. cheol & reader are both stubborn. mentions of drinking. alternating povs. lower caps intended [if there’s anything i missed, please let me know!]
word count: 4.7k
notes: this is the first part of a new series i thought of! this is also my first time writing (or more like, finishing writing) something, so please be kind! any comments, reblogs or likes are welcome. and thank you to whoever decides to give this a chance :)
summary: still recovering from a not-so-fresh breakup, seungcheol leans on his friends to get back on his feet. it turns out to be much easier said than done, especially when his record label recruits the help of a law firm to deal with a recent scandal, which just so happens to be the same firm his ex works at. just his luck.
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if anyone could see the scene in front of mingyu, they’d be severely concerned, much like he is at this very moment.
seungcheol is quite literally buried under a pile of blankets on his bed, the only visible part of his body a tuft of his dark brown hair. the floor of his bedroom is covered in clothes and empty food containers, and the air feels so stale and hot, it’s taking everything in mingyu not to gag. there is no light coming into the room except from the lightbulb shining in the hallway where mingyu is standing, and… is that… phoebe bridgers he can hear playing from somewhere?
mingyu glances down at his feet where kkuma, seungcheol’s devoted dog – and only girl who’s ever truly loved him, according to him – is sitting staring right back at him, a look on her fluffy face that mingyu swears looks just as depressed as her dad.
“this is way worse than i thought,” mingyu sighs, finally stepping into the bedroom. “okay, enough of this!”
mingyu grabs the blankets on the bed and pulls them away, revealing a very aggravated seungcheol. “what the hell are you doing?!”
“i’m not sure yet, because this,” mingyu gestures around the room, “is a lot. but it starts with you getting your ass out of bed and into the shower. immediately. this place smells like there’s a corpse somewhere in here.”
“yeah, it’s me. i’m the corpse. or i wish i was, because that would mean i’ve finally died,” seungcheol groans, turning away from mingyu and effectively shoving his face into the bed.
mingyu sighs, turning around to start collecting some of the dirty clothes on the floor. he finds himself regretting not calling jeonghan or joshua to come with him, because seungcheol might have been more easily persuaded to stop moping with them around. the reality is, they all thought seungcheol was doing better; he was back on his grind at work, finishing several albums he had been producing for, he was making progress in his jiu-jitsu classes, and he even joined the rest of the guys on their trip to australia last month, with minimal persuasion from his friends.
looking at the shell of a man laying on the bed in front of him, mingyu realizes he should’ve asked. he should’ve asked his friend how he was really doing, what he was feeling, what he could actually do to help him move past this.
better late than never.
“listen,” mingyu starts, going to sit on the edge of seungcheol’s bed but reconsidering. who knows when he last changed these. “i’m sorry if we haven’t really been there for you. i know a thing or two about breakups and heartbreak, so i guess i should’ve figured you weren’t alright, not like you said you were. you don’t have to keep all you’re feeling locked up. you can talk to us.”
seungcheol’s head moves slightly to the side, peeking at mingyu from the corner of his eye. he sighs, and turns on his back. mingyu tries not to cringe at seungcheol’s sullen face, his eyes red and still wet, as if he was still crying when mingyu arrived at his apartment.
“don’t beat yourself up, gyu. believe it or not, i was actually doing better. but a few days ago, i … i was cleaning around the closet by the entrance and …” he pauses, and mingyu thinks he might burst into tears. seungcheol breathes in however, closes his eyes, and continues. “i found one of her old hats. you know, the yellow crochet bucket hat she always used to wear in the summer? i bought it for her birthday when we had just started dating and … i don’t know, i just broke down. it hit me again that we’re over. like really.”
you and seungcheol broke up … four, five months ago? seungcheol shakes his head, he feels like time hasn’t passed the same since. days pass him by where he just goes over and over your last conversation – which was more of a fight, really – and he always ends up regretting everything he said that day. regrets resenting you for always working late, for never asking him to accompany you to firm events… regrets accusing you of some unspeakable things.
looking back, he can’t believe how big of an idiot he was. no wonder you left and didn’t even bother to come back to get your things. you left everything behind, all your clothes that still smelled of the lavender detergent you used to buy, your makeup haphazardly thrown into one of the bathroom drawers, the cooking books you always bought “for inspiration” but never, ever actually opened… and the yellow bucket hat you got from seungcheol for the first birthday you spent together. seungcheol had left everything where it was, a tiny part of him hoping you two would work this out somehow. but weeks went by with no word from you, and when he had tried reaching you, he came to the grave conclusion that you had blocked him on all platforms, cut him off from your life like a dead limb. back then he thought he deserved it. he still does.
“i’m sorry, hyung. i really am,” mingyu shakes seungcheol from his reverie, reaching a hand to pet his shoulder. a beat passes between them. “have you tried… calling her again since?”
“no. i don’t know what good it would do,” seungcheol sighs. “even if she answered, i doubt all the apologies i could offer would fix anything. i said some pretty fucked up shit.”
“yeah, i know. if you remember, i was there the next day ripping you a new one,” mingyu teases, desperately trying to cheer up his friend somehow. he swears he can see seungcheol’s lips twitch a bit. “but who knows… now that you both had some time to yourselves, you might actually be able to overcome this calmly. and if… if it doesn’t work out in the end, at least you’ll both have some closure.”
closure. that’s a funny word, because seungcheol wants the furthest thing from closure. he wants you back in his bed and your arms around him, he wants your indie artists he’s never heard of playing around the apartment in the morning, he wants your laugh echoing in the halls. he wants you.
he knows that the only way this ending could even be a possibility would be if he actually took mingyu’s advice and called you up, but another part of him is terrified of the other possibility: the one where you pick up and tell him to go to hell and fuck himself and never call you again or show his face around you. so for now, seungcheol opts for a third option: emotional limbo, with a side of trying-to-move-on.
he gets up from the bed and asks mingyu if he could help him straighten out the place. mingyu, bless his sweet heart, of course says yes and gets to work after sending seungcheol to clean himself up. just as he’s about to close the bathroom door, he hears mingyu’s exasperated voice.
“oh, for the love of god, where is that god-awful music coming from?!”
seungcheol can’t remember the last time he laughed so heartily.
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the bar you find yourself in is bustling with people, laughter and cheerful conversations filling the space. you’re only half listening to whatever topic your two best friends, yunjin and chaeyoung, are discussing – something about “that bitch” in yunjin’s department at work that’s been giving her a hard time – instead reveling in the pleasant buzz of the champagne you’re nursing.
it had been a while since you were able to enjoy a nice evening with your girls. the past few months had been filled with endless meetings, client-induced headaches and sleepless nights, but thankfully, today you had managed to finally strike a deal for one of the firm’s most important clients (to be read as filthy rich), which you had been working towards all these months. naturally, upon hearing the news, chaeyoung and yunjin had begged you to join them at a bar in the city, “to celebrate your newfound freedom.”
you splurged on a bottle of champagne for the three of you and decided that tonight, you were going to have fun. you were going to relax, enjoy some drink, and catch up with your friends who you hadn’t seen in weeks.
and you will not, under any circumstances, bring up seungcheol.
you like to believe that in the last two months you had gotten better at shutting out any thought of your ex-boyfriend. in the days – more like weeks, if you were to ask chaeyoung and yunjin – following the ugly breakup, you were quite the literal mess. finding yourself alone and with nowhere to go, considering you had left the apartment you shared with seungcheol with nothing but your work stuff (how on-brand for you), it wasn’t surprising that your mental and emotional health had taken a massive hit. thankfully, at the insistence of yunjin, you agreed to crash at her place while you put yourself back together and took time off from work – something you had never done before.
to the surprise of your friends, it only took you two weeks to go back to work and start looking for your own place. two weeks after that, you were moving into a new apartment and claimed that you were feeling much better since the breakup. or at least starting to. chaeyoung and yunjin didn’t want to argue with you on this – even thought they 100% believed the front you were putting up was a load of crap – but in the end, they didn’t even have to, because the first time you went out with them again since the breakup, you had your first meltdown.
but was it really your fault that the man sitting two seats down the bar from you had ordered whiskey neat, just like seungcheol always used to? and was it really your fault that he was wearing a maroon leather jacket similar to the one seungcheol always used to wear in the fall, which you absolutely adored?
could they really blame you for bursting into tears right then and there and wailing about how much of a jerk seungcheol was for never understanding your dedication to your work? how much of a hypocrite he was for expecting you to just dip from the office when he suddenly had some free time, when he had never done so for you?
that night, chaeyoung and yunjin quite literally dragged you back to chaeyoung’s place and held you while you cried yourself to sleep, and in the morning, when you had embarrassingly admitted that “no, you weren’t really doing fine,” they held you again and offered soft-spoken words of support, opting to keep the classic we told you so in their thoughts.
four months passed since that incident and now, you could confidently say that you were truly feeling better. you weren’t quite over seungcheol per se; there were nights when you still thought about the smell of vanilla that filled the room whenever he was fresh out of a shower, the way he always got so giggly when you brought home a tray of cherries… yeah, you still found yourself missing him terribly sometimes. but the more time passed, you realized that seungcheol hadn’t tried reaching you at all in the months since the breakup, and so you thought he might be moving on as well.
it is true you had blocked him on all social platforms for weeks after you stormed out of your place. but on a particularly bad day, when all you did was cry and cry and cry after him, the thought of calling him up and asking him to go back to how things were crossed your mind, and you unblocked his number. unfortunately, your pride had set itself in your way, convincing you that it was seungcheol that needed to make the first step, considering he was the one who quite literally cornered you into a fight. so you didn’t call and instead prayed to whatever forces exist in the universe, that seungcheol would try your number again.
he never did.
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“soooo, cheers to the lady of the hour! finally free from the clutches of corporate law!” yunjin cheered, clinking her glass against yours and knocking you out of your reverie.
damn it, seungcheol, i said i would not think of you tonight!
“yes, cheers!” chaeyoung joined in. “how do you feel? are you going to get a big ass bonus for the amount of time you put into this asshole?”
chaeyoung was probably right, you probably did deserve a huge ass bonus for the deal you pulled for the client you were handling. when you were in law school, you had never imagined yourself working for sleazy, corporate pigs who behaved like none of their actions would bite them in the ass eventually, and expecting others – like yourself – to clean up after them. but, as your boss grimly explained to you the day you had complained about your client, everybody has to start somewhere. “and junior partners don’t get to choose cases, sweetheart.”
life at the firm wasn’t always terrible. you were lucky enough to be part of an amazing team, and the firm worked with plenty of influential and big personalities, so you almost never had to worry about your income. but sometimes, some of the people you were asked to represent brought you to the brink of just quitting your job altogether.
“i just feel relieved,” you say. “if i had to hear the incessant whining and nagging of that idiot for one more day, i might have gone insane!”
“well, thank god you’re a stellar lawyer and managed to get rid of him,” yunjin teases, taking a sip of her drink. “do you already have anything else lined up?”
“god, no! i have a few days off just to take care of paperwork, maybe help out some of my colleagues around the office… but nothing big for now, thankfully.”
“oh, that’s amazing! which reminds me, this means you can actually join us on that weekend spa trip we were talking about last week,” chaeyoung happily suggests, as she’s already pulling up the website of the spa retreat.
“i guess a spa day would be nice,” you say, looking over at chaeyoung’s phone. you feel your body already going lax at the thought of a hot stone massage.
“oh, that would be so nice!” yunjin pouts. “we haven’t gone on a girls trip in so long! i miss going away, just the three of us… do you guys remember that trip we took to croatia two years ago? that was the best one we ever did, i swear!”
while chaeyoung joins yunjin in reminiscing about all the trips the three of you took over the years, you feel your phone buzzing in the pocket of your dress paints. pulling it out, you see an email notification…
“oh, no…” your voice trails off, reading over the email you had just received.
“what? what’s the matter?” yunjin asks, her conversation with chaeyoung coming to a halt.
“my boss just emailed me. he wants me in the office tomorrow morning. some big case that just came in,” you explain, already feeling a headache coming in.
“but tomorrow’s saturday,” chaeyoung frowns.
“i know… i know.”
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when monday rolls around, seungcheol really wished that he had died before mingyu had found him the week before.
the day started normal enough. he woke up at 5 a.m. and took kkuma for a walk in the park near his apartment building, just like every morning. by 8 a.m., he was already set up in his studio inside the PLEDIS building, ready to work on the tracks he was supposed to finish mixing by the end of the week. seungcheol liked the buzz of the label, people from all different departments running around trying to stay on their schedules; it motivated him to also do his part diligently, and reminded him that he was extremely lucky to be doing one of the things he loves most: music.
seungcheol should’ve guessed something was up today the moment the clock struck 11 and jihoon, the other in-house producer of PLEDIS, and one of his oldest friends, hadn’t come by his studio. he and jihoon had known each other since their college days, having met in an audio engineering class they apparently shared, and had been friends for 8 years now. during their last year of college, they were recruited by a record label that was just starting out (which became the PLEDIS of today), and despite all warnings from their families, they decided to take a leap of faith together and join the company. it all worked out for the better, it turned out, as PLEDIS only grew and soon became a household name in the music industry.
as the only producers that have stuck around PLEDIS since the beginning, they developed several… traditions, or rituals over the years, one of which was jihoon’s 11 a.m. coffee run, which they’d spend sharing ideas and notes over each other’s work, and, if jihoon was in a particularly good mood, engage in some office gossip (not that either of them would ever admit it). today, however, jihoon is a no-show and seungcheol can’t help but wonder what his friend is up to.
when he shoots jihoon a quick text, asking if he’s alright, his friend only replies with a “just busy,” and tells seungcheol not to wait up for him at lunch, as he’ll probably be stuck in the studio all day. this doesn’t surprise him that much, seeing as jihoon might be an even bigger workaholic than he is, but he still can’t shake the feeling that something must be up with his friend. he decides that instead of going out for lunch, he’s gonna pick up some takeout and join jihoon in his studio. he wouldn’t be able to rest easy knowing his friend will go a day without eating anything.
once lunch hours begin, seungcheol takes a quick walk two blocks down the street to the restaurant mingyu works in, who’s already waiting for him with the food seungcheol had requested for him and jihoon. on his way back to PLEDIS, he texts jihoon again, just to make sure he’s still in the studio, but there’s no answer, and now seungcheol is seriously starting to get worried. he jogs the rest of the way until he’s back inside the building, and takes the elevator to the 6th floor where jihoon’s studio is stationed.
walking up to the door that reads UNIVERSE FACTORY, he stops in his tracks when he hears more than one voice from the other side of the door. he easily recognizes jihoon’s voice, but the other voices – two other men and a woman – are harder to make out. except… except the woman’s voice is eerily familiar, and without a second thought, seungcheol grips the handle and swings the door open, four pairs of eyes whipping in his direction.
his eyes land on jihoon, who looks like he wishes he was anywhere else in that moment, and then scan the rest of room, recognizing mr. han, their CEO, and… you. it’s you.
seungcheol feels like he’s going to faint. mr. han does not look the least bit happy about seungcheol’s intrusion, and he really wishes the man would slap him just so he can know for sure if he’s dreaming. if you’re surprised to see seungcheol, your face shows no sign of it, and seungcheol can’t help but stare at you. you look so beautiful, so put together; your make-up is soft, almost unnoticeable, your hair pushed behind your ears, and you’re wearing a dark green suit… oh, how he loved you in green.
you were the picture of grace and professionalism and he was… not. he really wishes he hadn’t come to the studio in sweatpants right now.
“mr. choi, what a… surprise,” mr. han exclaims, standing up from his seat, you and the other man – who seungcheol has no idea who he is, but he knows he doesn’t like the way he’s standing so close to you – following suit. “i didn’t know mr. lee was expecting you,” mr. han continues, glancing towards jihoon, who turned red as a tomato.
“i wasn’t, actually,” jihoon squeaks, avoiding both seungcheol and mr. han’s gazes.
“i apologize, i was… i was just bringing jihoon some lunch. i didn’t know there was… a meeting happening,” seungcheol says, looking towards you, and he’s almost thrown back by the way you’re just… staring directly at him.
mr. han sighs, but remembering the situation, he quickly puts on a polite smile as he turns towards you and the other man. “mr. choi is one of our other in-house producers. mr. choi, this is mr. jeon and miss L/N. they’re helping us with some… legal matters.”
so that’s why you were here. and who the other guy was. but what legal matters? and why was jihoon involved? and why didn’t he tell seungcheol?!
before seungcheol can ask more questions, mr. han gestures towards the door he came through and says “now, if you don’t mind, you can come back in a few minutes, mr. choi. we’ll be done soon.”
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soon. soon, his ass!
seungcheol had been pacing the hallway outside jihoon’s studio for the past 20 minutes (he checked, he wasn’t exaggerating!), trying very hard not to eavesdrop through the door, and thinking of every possible reason why jihoon would need legal help and why you would be here.
jihoon was definitely in some kind of trouble. for the CEO to be involved as well, it for sure must be something that could affect the whole label. seungcheol just can’t understand why jihoon wouldn’t tell him if he had any kind of problem. they were colleagues, but most importantly, they were friends. he would’ve dropped everything to come to his aid.
now, when it comes to you… seungcheol knows you’re a lawyer, obviously he does. he met you when you were halfway through law school, and he was there for every failed and aced exam, for your graduation (he was so proud of you that day, it was the first time you’d ever seen him cry), for every measly job you had before finally securing the one you currently held at one of the top firms in the city. he also knows you’re a damn good lawyer, seeing how hard you work and how dedicated you are. he supposes it’s not surprising you were chosen to represent jihoon in whatever mess he got himself in.
he feels bad now that he remembers how he held these things above your head during your last fight. how you were working late so often, how you never asked him to join you at office parties, despite how eager you always were to go out with your coworkers for drinks, how you always asked him to wait for you outside the office building, as if you didn’t want people to know you had a partner...
he knows that both of you were to blame for how things went down between you, but since he started the argument in the first place, he thinks he could’ve brought all this up in a better way, at a better time.
his thoughts are interrupted when the door to jihoon’s studio opens again, and he finds himself regretting waiting in the hallway because now he has to face you again and he’s not ready and he doesn’t know what to say and he still looks like a hobo and –
“mr. choi!”
he looks up to see who he imagines is your colleague – mr. jeon – step towards him, as you and mr. han step out after him, discussing something. you glance once towards seungcheol before turning back to the conversation, and seungcheol feels his heart clench.
“mr. jeon, i’m sorry once again for interrupting your meeting,” seungcheol says, extending his hand to shake mr. jeon’s.
“don’t worry, no harm done at all. i’m actually glad you stuck around, because i had something to ask you. seeing as you and mr. lee are close, would you be available for a short talk with us, sometime in the next days? we’ll have to build a strong case for mr. lee and, well, some insight from his colleagues would be very helpful,” mr. jeon explains, fixing the thin-rimmed glasses perched on his nose.
seungcheol is taken aback by the man’s soft tone. his sharp eyes and cold look on his face made him look pretty intimidating, but his voice is the complete opposite, putting seungcheol weirdly at ease.
“o-of course, anything for jihoon,” seungcheol quickly replies. “can i ask, though, what exactly does he need help with?”
“plagiarism.”
“PLAGIARISM?!”
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“you’re being sued. for plagiarism.”
“yes.”
“and you just found out last friday.”
“yes.”
“last friday when we all went out for barbeque and you didn’t even think to mention it? not even once?!”
“will you stop pacing and sit down? you’re making me even more nervous than i already am,” jihoon sighs, dropping his head in his hands.
seungcheol sighs as well, muttering a sorry, and sits down on the couch opposite jihoon’s chair.
jihoon continues. “i didn’t mention anything because i didn’t want to piss on everyone’s good mood. it was joshua’s birthday… besides, i didn’t know all the details of the situation at that point. i thought it was another baseless accusation, you know? but they’re serious about it. they wanna take me to court.”
“what? that’s insane,” seungcheol says. “i feel weird even asking, but did you even plagiarize?”
“no! of course not! i don’t even know the people!” jihoon exclaims, flopping down on the couch next to seungcheol. he lets out a long groan. “this is just what i needed.”
seungcheol pats his friend’s back, thinking of some encouraging words. jihoon was the most talented and creative guy he knew. to think that someone would accuse him of using somebody else’s work was a concept seungcheol couldn’t even entertain.
“don’t worry. that jeon guy looks like he’s already got a game plan.”
“and Y/N,” jihoon says.
silence falls around the two of them, until jihoon stirs from the couch, sitting up to look at seungcheol.
“are we just not going to acknowledge her or what?”
“no! that’s not what i…” seungcheol sighs, hanging his head. “i just wasn’t expecting to see her. i don’t know how to feel.”
“that’s understandable. you guys haven’t seen each other in a while, right?”
seungcheol shakes his head. “did she… did she say anything to you?”
“oh, no. she was super professional, went straight to business. but…” jihoon trails off, debating whether he should say what he was thinking.
“but? but what?!” seungcheol grabs jihoon’s shoulders, shaking him a little.
“but i think she was just as rattled to see you as you were. her hand kept shaking while she was writing, after you left. i guess she was just better at hiding her surprise,” jihoon continues. “now let go of me, you animal!”
seungcheol sighs. could it be that you were just as much of a mess inside as he was? the hopeful part of him thinks you might have thought of him all these months, just as he thought of you. the other part of him thinks your hand might as well just have been shaking from anger.
“you know, this might be a good thing,” jihoon says, getting up and sitting back in front of his computer.
“what, you getting sued and her being around?”
“yeah. maybe this way you’ll finally grow some balls, put your pride aside, and actually fix things,” jihoon deadpans, and seungcheol knows the conversation is over.
yeah. easier said than done.
499 notes · View notes
thewritingginger · 11 months
Text
18+ Imagine Taiju Shiba...
& you having hate sex.
I finally got around to watching the 2nd season of TR I’ve read the entire manga but seeing my bae Taiju animated got the wheels in my head turnin’ 😩 
Fandom: Tokyo Revengers Pairing: Taiju Shiba x Fem! Reader Word count: 1.1k+ words Warnings: 18+, Established relationship, Argument, Dub-con, Dirty talk, Oral sex (M! receiving), Rough sex, Slight degrading, Spanking, Creampie, Poorly edited
Enjoy ~
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The two of you had been at each other's throats for the past hour and that’s not even including the car ride home and before. It’s been a while since the two of you had gotten this heated with each other. Taiju was already irritable from the moment he had woken up this morning and you knew better than to poke the bear when he is in one of his moods.
Shit had been going down with the staffing at his restaurant and to top it off there had been some family drama stirring up and the moment you tried to mediate you were in hot water since you first opened your mouth to now in your living room where the both of you are yelling over each other.
“How many times do I have to fucking tell you that it is Shiba family matters.  You have no place to stick your nose into it.” That got to you.
“Oh, I’m sorry I was under the impression that I was your family or does this ring on my finger mean nothing?”
“Don’t try to pull that shit, you know you had no business getting between me and my brother.” Back and forth you two go, like a broken record the same words keep getting reused and rehashed—making this mess into a disaster till you finally had enough.
“You know what, I don't have to deal with this,” you say, throwing your hands in the air, “I’m leaving!” Turning on your heel, grabbing your purse off the kitchen counter.
“No the fuck you’re not,” Taiju says, heavy footstep sounding behind you.
“Yes the fuck I am,” you counter but before your hand can touch the front door handle Taiju grabs your wrist and turns your back to the door, his towering figure looming over you.
“You’re not leaving this damn house.” Leaning over you till your noses are centimeters apart, you daringly cross the distance till they are touching.
“Or what?” you taunt, any sane person would know this to be a death wish but you’re too fired up with rage to care which only fans the fury burning behind your fiance’s amber eyes.
In a blink of an eye your body becomes weightless, Taiju lifts you up and slams your back against the door before he takes your lips with his. Limbs tightening, teeth clashing and hair pulling—the two of you become a tangled mess of hot breath and lust.
Sitting on the kitchen counter with articles of clothing falling off by the second, you feel Taiju’s hard cock grinding against you. A strangled cry falls from your lips when he pulls your head back by your hair, his strong hand firmly holding your roots, leaving you little room to move.
“I’m going to fuck you so hard you wont be able to walk out that damn door.”
“Bite me,” you say before he cuts you off with his hungry mouth, he takes you back to the living room where he unceremoniously tosses you onto the couch. You watch as he tears off his remaining clothes till he is standing completely naked, his powerful body on full display. Straddling your torso, Taiju yanks you up right by your hair once more and rubs his leaking cockhead against your mouth.
“Open,” he commands, “I’m going to fuck the smart ass right out of this fucking mouth of yours.” His other hand pries your mouth open just enough for him to sheath his thick length down your throat till you gag. You look pitiful with your mouth stretched wide, drool seeping from the corners of your lips and his balls smacking your chin as tears fall down your cheeks. Your hands grip his thighs for support, your nails digging into his muscle so hard you could draw blood.
“Such a good little cock slut. You think you’ve learned your lesson?” he asks, roughly pulling out of your mouth allowing you breath, spit falling from your lips as you gasp for air.
“Go to hell,” you spit. With nothing but a growl as his response Taiju quickly flips you over till you are holding onto the back of the couch. Pulling your work skirt up over your hips, Taiju’s strong hand comes down on your bare asscheek with a hard smack!
Pulling your panties to the side he stuffs his throbbing cock into your pussy and begins to pound into you with as much force as he can muster. Every harsh pump, an expression of his anger.
“Filthy little cunt already soaking wet for me. You like it when I’m rough with you, huh? Like talking back to me, knowing I’ll fuck the brat right out of you?” His taunts hiss between his gritted teeth, his hand spanking your ass over and over again till you cry out.
“Fuck!” you cry, your head hanging down before he pulls it back up till you’re looking at yourself in the reflection of the dark window, his mouth right next to your ear.
“Look at yourself as you take my cock—Shit!” he yells, standing back, one hand in your hair and the other pulling your hips back to him as he watches your greedy pussy swallow his thick length.
“Yes, Taiju! Fuck me like you mean it,” you moan, he laughs at your meager attempts at remaining mad at him but the truth is you love him and you love this. He makes your body feel on fire, the way he uses his strength against you is more powerful than any drug you can find.
“Always trying to act all big and bad but you’re nothing but putty in my hand—or should I say on my cock.” His voice is condescending and annoying but all that goes out the window when he releases your hip to scratch at your neglected clitoris, shooting you over the edge. Incoherent wails and words fall from your lips as he continues to piston his cock in your exhausted cunt and you can hear that your fiance isn’t far behind.
“Fuck, Baby, you’re squeezing my cock so tight,” he groans, releasing you entirely to pull your hips back with both hands, his pumps becoming stuttered and impatient for his end. “You want my cum, Baby? Want me to fill you nice and full?”
“Yes. Yes!” you cry, a second high drawing near. Reaching between your legs you rub your clitoris with quick circles as Taiju finally erupts within you, his hip still using you to milk every drop from his balls taking you over the edge with him one last time.
The two of you are hunched over the couch, heaving for breath, collecting yourselves from your heated joining. Your dazed thoughts are brought back when you feel Taiju’s lips pressing against your bare shoulder.
“I love you,” he grumbles in a low voice, much softer than he was moments before, “I’m sorry.” His apology is sincere, looking over your shoulder you give him a smile.
“I’m sorry too.” Pulling out of you, you were about to go to the bathroom to clean up but Tiaju throws you over his shoulder and heads towards the stairs. “Tai!”
“Sorry, Sweetheart but I still have some anger left to get out.”
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