#monstersmade

Time would become meaningless, every waking second bloated and off-kilter, minutes stretching into empty hours.

He was pretty sure the pipes might explode if he kept the water that hot, eventually twisting the knob until the downwards spray trickled into like more than a few errant drops. Steam roiled off his skin, scrubbed down so hard and angrily, entire flakes of skin had sloughed off in pieces.

He wasn't doing this as a courtesy. It wasn't as if he wanted to somehow mask the pollution steeped in his very soul, an earthy musk of street dirt, stamped down tobacco, alcohol and tears. Brimstone and gunsmoke.

The face in the mirror is too soft. Not from an accumulation of fat, but comfort. Life had been good because business had been going so smoothly. There was little by the way of competition, so he had a veritable stranglehold on the black market and aside from a few younger upstarts trying to expand their own territory, there were few dumb enough to challenge his authority. He'd become too lenient, perhaps- Due to the lack of opposition.

Jae-hyo had kept his hair longer, let it grow out. It had always been thick and pretty, raven black with just the slightest red undertone in the sunlight. Now it was shorn short and close to the scalp, combed through with pomade and camellia oil. A form of atonement, perhaps. It wasn't like the Old Ways, he never had to 'walk the line' when he'd left. No- When Tseng had given him permission to leave. He could even try to argue that he'd bled enough for something that only had amounted to loyalty forged in Verdot's memory.

The former agent toys with a straight razor taken from his shaving kit, turning it between his fingers in the overhead lighting. The decision could wait. He could always spill blood symbolically, in addition to literal intent... Really, he had all the time in the world to recognize if he was still sore about it.

The suit still fits like a second skin, Yoon smoothing down the ironed lines and pulling off any lint that might be present from simply being shoved in the back of the closet for what felt like eons. The gloves shined and creaked around his flexing fingers, sliding his cellphone into the inner breast pocket of the jacket.

Showtime.

His prisoner's hands were delicate. Like a woman's, really, he thought. Too fine even with all the calluses and rough edges from handling firearms. They didn't even twitch, knotted with thick zip ties and chains strapped down to a sad little metal chair giving no real hope about what was gonna happen.

His hair was soft, shiny and healthy like the scales of a fish pulled straight from the water when the light hit it just so. Silky when he brushed his fingers through it. Just a little stroke- Like a lover's, almost.

The kind of affection after that many hours of darkness and silence and isolation, would turn any living creature's skin alive and buzzing with sensation. Mako-tinged feline eyes wreathed in the length of lashes women paid for, or killed for, if they couldn't pay

"So..." Jae begins, dragging his fingers through those glossy locks once more before bearing down in a white-knuckled grip.

i'm kinda fingerpainting right now... || shitpost for @monstersmade

Ruluf was a man of many talents; a brilliant Turk and a desperately sought after bodyguard before that. Born and raised in Wallmarket, few could match how easily he took to violence, and his capacity for dirty fighting. Perhaps it was his time working with the Turks that had taken a slight edge off, or perhaps Jae had just picked a very good moment to strike - because he caught him off guard with a blow that sent him to his knees. "Oi! Get fucked, Jae! What was that for?!"

Yoon thought he would have been over it by now. Jules was right- It was over with and he hadn't come out worse for wear aside from some bruising.

Ah, but he personally knew how it could have all gone horribly wrong.

Suddenly he was fourteen years old again, snot-nosed and sobbing. Heavy footfalls echoed against corrugated metal and concrete walls and massive silhouettes cast long shadows that oozed across the ground like tar from the devil’s hooves himself. Light flooded his vision from a klieg and he'd raised his head, blinking and squinting against the harsh blue florescent bulb covered with crisscrossed wires and fat black buzzing mosquitoes.

"You could have asked me for help, y'know- It would have been easy: Just cut some fucker's fingers off and call it a day once we found who you were looking for. But your stupid ass thought up some dumb as shit plan involving Jules getting fucking drugged and snatched?"

He doesn't care if he's freaking out, he doesn't care if Ruluf is pissed as Hell, he just shoves the other Turk's chest roughly and glares so hard a lesser man would've spontaneously combusted from the sheer shame of it all.

@monstersmade:

Veld breathes out, low and slow through his nose. He's not opposed to honesty - even though it was rare in this line of work - but it was always preferred on his own terms. On the other hand, he's always proud of his Turks taking advantage of a situation. "Can't it be a mix?" There's a teasing in his tone, somewhere between cruelty and actual amusement. "A gutter trash kid that I find to be quite useful? People with happy lives don't make good Turks, and Turks who have too many connections, to many people that care about them, aren't gonna last. You are... Mouldable. Shapeable. The potential was there before me, I used it to my advantage - you'd be stupid if you didn't know that already. It's not a matter of feeling sorry for you or not, I'm not a charity." "All of that is true. Also true that I care about you. That I want you safe, and strong and happy. It's supposed to be that all Turks have are each other - just because I fucked up on that doesn't mean that I don't love you. Just not enough, I guess."

Jae circles the pad of his index finger around the rim of his shot glass. He tried to steady the way his breathing made his chest rise and fall, slowing the natural responses to his own mounting frustration and self-directed anger. The insinuation managed to sting in a way he hadn’t anticipated, but the fact that Veld had even gone there to begin with gave rise to another surge of emotions he’d rather not deal with, at present. He’d managed (or so he thought) to finally let that past wound scab over, learned a hard lesson that he carried with him for the following years, only to have some vague airs of sentimentality rip it open anew- and he got the distinct impression that he was being jabbed right where it hurt most for allowing that to happen.

"Well, you of all people should know how greedy I can be- Give me an inch, I'll try to take a mile," he drawls easily enough, feigning a neutral mask of amused indifference. "I think that's actually a real thing headshrinks and vets talk about, kinda like... what's the word. Like food insecurity, but apply it to everything else."

Jae was being a little self-effacing. He'd talked big when he was a fourteen year old, snot-nosed and probably mentally impaired from one too many beatings and whatever baiju did to a child's developing braincells- Nothing good, obviously. But maybe deep down he always knew he'd never be able to fill those sizable shoes, no matter how badly he'd wanted to mold and shape himself into Verdot's shadow.

"I'm not gonna sit here and sound ungrateful and act like you weren't exactly what I needed when I needed it, but..." he trails off, unsure of what he's even digging around for. He thought he'd let that ship sail, stopped barking up that tree, now here he was feeling like a total asshole.

He tilts his head to the side, looking thoughtful while pouring out another shot for the elder man.

Vincent stared the other down, not bothering with taking out his weapon, yet. He just listened and stood there, still as a corpse like the other almost perfectly likened him to. Yet, he wasn't sure what he was, anymore. Definitely not human, that was a certainty, and most definitely a monster.

His crimson eyes locked with this one's, wondering just what his purpose for being here was. "I have no answer that would satisfy you. If you wish to start a fight, you will need to do better than this. Comparing me to a corpse? Then what does that say about yourself? You, who use corpses for your own thrills... Is that what you want from me? A thrill?"

"You do a good enough job for the both of us, there's no need for my input."

He's being petty, but he fails to care. As always, trying to reason with Genesis is much like attempting to bathe a cat- Good intentions met with no small amount of resistance and more pain than was worth the effort.

He used to think he understood Rhapsodos well, being privy to sides of the man that scant few others were allowed to witness, but how much did he really know other the other male? From what hidden depths did his resentment truly originate? The gaussian blur over his image was forever warped and distorted from fact, too twisted and gnarled to untangle and free himself fully from. Shinra was little more than a house of cards, but simply being able to see the cracks in the foundation wouldn't save him when everything came tumbling down.

"There you go again-" Genesis laughs, though a genuine air of exhaustion can be parsed from his tone.

"You don't have to worry about 'repaying' me, you're my friend and I want to do this for you. If you're really that torn up about it, then you owe me a drink during off duty hours. Deal? When's the last time we sat down and caught up, it feels like ages ago."

Of course, he couldn't blame Hewley (or could he) for being the 'spiritual heart' of SOLDIER, more myth and legend than the humble and borderline infuriating man he'd grown up with.

Veld just stared down at Jae-Hyo for a long moment, taking a long drag of his cigarette before stubbing it out in the ashtray on the bar beside him. He thought on his words, thought on his past. A deluge of blood led him to this point, there was only so much he could repay - he either had to accept his past, or spend the rest of his life toiling in vain. "And what if I asked you to come with me?" He asked. "What if I asked you to give up all of this, and come back with me?" He gestures around himself aimlessly; to the concept of Jae-Hyo's new crime empire. To the life he had built that was his own. Veld was proud of him. "You've made a good life, you've carved it out by yourself. Without me. It's good, Jae-Hyo. Be proud of what you're accomplished and let go of me. I'm an old man and a bastard, and I gave too much of my life to that damned company. Live your life now that you have a chance to and let me be old."

Jae chokes mid inhale from a long handled red and gold pipe, fanning the smoke away from his face and coughing to the side. He's laughing a little bitterly.

"You think that's what I want? You always wanted a wife and I almost killed your kid, I'm sure that'll work out swimmingly."

"Yeah, I managed to make a good life for myself. I only recently managed to find Jules and he's a fucking mess. I haven't heard from Tseng in ages- You think I'm pissed off because I don't get to play pretend at a 'normal' life with you? You and I both know you're smarter than that."

He gives a toss of his bleached hair before downing the rest of his mojito.