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There are people in the world who just can't live with a normal boring level of daily stress. Jongdae was definitely one of them.
That day, he woke up feeling bored, after a night free of dreams or nightmares — which he preferred rather than just fucking lying down unconscious.
Having nothing else to wear other than his already dirty Nosferatu t-shirt, he couldn't even have the pleasure of choosing something nice to wear and go to college. So that day, he didn't style his light-brown dyed hair either.
Laziness drowned him to the point that he didn't bother picking his own lunch, letting his friend Junmyeon bring him a horrible sandwich from the cafeteria.
Days like this were what made Jongdae wander away from what he promised to his mother and his therapist: no more gore.
No more gore and your life will get a little better.
And shit, he needed to admit that it actually helped a lot. Once he stopped searching for online videos of people being decapitated, it became easier to stop cutting himself as well. His mom was no longer crying around, blaming herself for his suffering and it has been a while since the last time he was stitched by a nurse that purposely left scars on his flesh.
Things were better.
Jongdae never got to know if either he cut himself seeking the pleasures of the adrenaline rush or… if he did it to punish himself because of all the gore-porn addiction he developed at eight years old.
But now he was definitally better. Big fan of Hellraiser, but far from paying dark web monsters in exchange of car accident footage.
Thing is…
These boring days…
When boredom was installed deep and he couldn't think of anything funny to do…
He came home earlier.
His notebook was just up the kitchen island, so he turned it on while he looked for something to eat. The Cenobites at his wallpaper stared at him, but he could not feel that much guilt.
I'm not hiding anything, he thought to himself while opening the soda can. I'm right in the middle of the house, mom won't think I'm doing something weird. It won't even be that weird.
He logs into a local forum. Place of horrors, light, funny, horrors. If he ever made a scale of everything he ever saw online, this would be level 1 out of 10. And 10 made him vomit and cry so bad that he had to cut his own wrists so his mom wouldn't guess that the reason he was like that was the stupid video he just watched.
I feel sad, and I'm scared, he said to her. And he was not lying. Human kind were sick and he felt sick, but he liked the trip of fear and disgust he put himself into, adrenaline rushing through his veins as he panicked, thinking how he would feel like if something like that ever happened to the ones he loved.
You're sick in the head, he told himself, every once in a while. Generally, twice or thrice a day.
Anyway, he was already logged in, wasn't he?
The forum had a fun dinamic in which a person who wanted to hear odd stories could choose a tag and be linked to a chat with some stranger who was eager to confess a sin. Or shit like that.
That day, as Jongdae was trying to shake away the boredom and, at the same time, not to fall back into his addiction, he clicked right into Supernatural Stuff.
It took a while to find someone to talk to. He finished his soda can and watched the sunlight moving across the table until someone joined in the chat room.
"Hi."
A shy one, uh? He had no photo, and neither did Jongdae.
"Hi, you" he answered. "Frequent here?"
"First time" the other one answered, quickly. That's how Jongdae knew that that person was burning inside with demons to exorcize.
"Well, if you're ready, I'm ready."
Jongdae waited as the stranger typed. The three dots moved for forever, so he was already expecting a long text. In the meanwhile, his mom entered the back door.
"Hi. Got home earlier? What about the book club?"
"Cancelled" Jongdae answered.
"By who?"
"By me, dummie."
His mom wouldn't mind being called that, knowing that the high pitch tone on Jongdae's voice meant that he was joking lovingly. Feeling comfortable around her was one of the things who made her son get better. She would prefer being called a bitch before seeing him faint over a puddle of his own blood at the bathroom floor ever again.
"You won't quit book club, will you?" she asked, reaching for the tea bags on the top shelf. Jongdae noticed she had put water on the tea pot as well.
"Nope, but I wasn't in the mood for reading today. I would just sleep on top of any book… and Junmyeon had a date, so he wouldn't be there."
"Blood orange?"
She was asking about the tea, and he nodded with a smile that could look better. The fact that he was doing something that would for sure be listed as prohibited in front of her face made him feel uneasy.
She put the cup of tea next to him at the same fucking moment the text arrived in the chat. Startled by the notification, Jongdae stood up, the chair making an awful noise against the floor.
"Mom, I'm going to my room."
He grabbed his notebook, pressing it against his chest and reaching for the cup rappidly. She looked, but said nothing. She was worried, but she needed to trust him.
Poor fool. She shouldn't trust a wicked fuck like him.
Jongdae closed the door and fell butt-first in the mattress, itching to read the stranger's message.
"Well, I'm in college now. I was looking for someone who lived a similar experience than the one I just did, but I couldn't find one. Instead, I found this forum on page 8 of Google Search… Maybe you can tell me if you ever heard something like this?
Anyway, I'm a trans boy. My name is… Soo. Three months ago, on the beginning of the semester, someone new got into my class. Let's call him Yeol. He's very tall and has a voice that makes my neck skin crawl every time he speaks, and I think it all started like this. He noticed me.
Are you still there?"
"Yeah. Go on."
"Hm.
Yeol is handsome. All my friends agree. All of them.
They say his beauty is... hypnotising.
Let me ask you, what do you think my story is going to be about?"
Jongdae let out a nervous laugh. How could a person seem so cute and so dangerously odd at the same time? What did Soo want?
"I honestly can't tell. It's sounding like romance, by the way you keep talking about this guy, but that would be freaking psycho of you."
" You don't like romance, uh?"
"I'm just not expecting a romantic story, but a bloody one, maybe? But keep going, Soo. I'll try to guess once you give me more information."
Jongdae was curious. And, at least, he was having some fun.
" Okay.
Yeol joined my group of friends and made his own contacts. He was popular and everyone liked him, but he always sat at the chair on the most far end of the room. There were tons of space around him and near people who he got along with, so… people would ask him to join them all the time, but he never wanted. He liked there, in the dark corner."
"Okay…"
"One day, I found him hiding in the small warehouse where the janitor keeps products. Apparently, he tried to clean his shirt but it stained instead."
"This is not a romance, is it?"
" Let's see.
I found it weird, but… There was no reason I wouldn't trust him just as much as before. He was nice to everyone and especially nice to me. He always spent his money to bring me lunch before I could get up to get it myself. He also took nice photos of me, just to see me smile, although he never wanted me to take one of him."
"Clearly, the guy is a vampire" Jongdae chuckled as he sent the message, taking a photo of his shirt with the webcam. "Just like me friend from Nosferatu."
"You really are into the blood thing, aren't you?"
" Do you think I'm a crazy weirdo?"
" Have you ever hurt anyone?"
"No." Not directly, and I wish I have never hurt anyone indirectly too, Jongdae thought.
" So you just like hearing the stories of the supernatural…"
" YES." What's with the interrogatory? "Not necessarily supernatural stuff, but yeah."
" Lucky me, I guess."
There were no messages for a while, so Jongdae had to do something to keep Soo talking.
"Are you giving up? I didn't mean to push you away or…"
"Is just that… maybe it's too weird…"
" Not for me. It probably would not be crazy enough for my taste, actually. I heard pretty fucked up stories at this point."
"Like what?"
"Like… a singer who just got off of jail because he was covering himself in pig blood and trying to contact demons during his shows."
"Tell me one more."
"Someone stabbed his own brother in the eye because a ghost kept telling him to do it."
" Okay, I'm ready to keep going."
" And I'm ready to read it. Very ready."
Soo took another ten minutes to type. Enough time for Jongdae to finish his blood orange tea, thinking if either Soo was feeling guilty or ashamed. The nuances made him anxious and electrified.
Couldn't he just skip to the slaughter part?
" Yesterday afternoon, Yeol hugged me. Out of the blue, really tight and sweet. I almost melted. I got so flustered that my friends mocked me all the way home. They said I should've kissed him already, but I was dating someone else. Let's call him just J."
"Promisse me all this gore is necessary?" Jongdae mocked.
" Haha, it's context."
So Soo was, indeed, a cute nice guy…
" Anyway, J broke up with me yesterday night, after our friends told him about that hug. Also, our relationship had many ups and downs, because I... kinda of never considered him a boyfriend."
" Why?"
"Because he never fucked me. He was soo, soooo careful. He acted like I was going to break in tears if he ever touched my body. I never got in the mood with him, so I was dating for a year, I'm horny all the time and still I was the only virgin in my group."
"Okay. Now I get it. Yeol tried to throw you in a volcano as a sacrifice."
"Haha.
Thing is… today, the first thing Yeol did when I approached him was pulling me against him again, like he was checking if we were still okay. And I sort of noticed he was sniffing me, but I didn't know what to say."
"Oh, is he a werewolf? Not a Cullen, but a Jacob."
"There was something I didn't notice till the end of the second class. I wasn't sure, so I sneaked to the bathroom, where I still am."
He was stuck in the bathroom. Jongdae was laughing a couple of seconds ago, but then he wondered if he was chatting for the last time with someone who was in a dangerous position.
Maybe Soo was held captive?
Maybe he was dying…
"Are you okay?"
" Sorta. But I can't tell my friends what happened, so I'm telling you."
"You need to or you want to?"
" I can't see the difference.
I should have noticed everything sooner. There was a noise behind me in the corridors. No one was around, I looked back a few times, and when I walked, I heard double steps. I locked myself on the bathroom stall and... I was right. I was smelling weird. I forgot my period would start anytime soon."
Oh, Soo said he was a trans boy. Jongdae almost forgot.
"I forgot that I would need a tampon. It smelled, and I couldn't help but keep thinking about the fact that Yeol inhaled when I approached him... He probably scent it. And I knew it was him behind me when he knocked on the door. He asked if I was okay. We were not as close as I wanted to and he was not the first person I would go to in this moment, but I asked him if he could bring me a pad from the infirmary."
" He didn't. You bled to death and are now a ghost."
Jongdae knew there was no such thing as bleeding to death because of that, but he did not like to imagine where this was going.
"He did."
" Oh. Cute. "
"It gets cuter."
Oh no.
"He came back and asked me if I was feeling okay, which I was. 'Isn't it hurting?' I mentioned that his voice made my skin crawl, didn't I? Well, sometimes, on your period, you also get a little extra horny… and that's where I'm going."
Yeol might be an incubus. Jongdae hoped to be right this time.
"Do you really want to know?"
"Uh, hell yes?"
"Fuck, okay then…
Ahm… he said he got the pad, but… he said 'you already know, right?'. I asked what he was talking about. 'You know that I like you a lot.' It was embarrassing because I was literally naked from the bottom down… feeling wet in many ways. And he told me 'And you know my secret too. You don't mind, do you?'
I didn't know what to say, until he knocked at the door, instead of just passing the pad to me.
He said… "Let me help?'".
Hell no.
"How?? What?"
"I let him."
"Do what?"
"He licked me clean. He… sucked all the blood that he could and he enjoyed every minute. I must have cummed with his tongue like, four times. I wanted to be sure that he's just kinky but… he looked handsome after he drank my blood. He looked like he needed it and I'm just reminding the fact that he never eats. And he's never hungry. This is the first time he said he was starving."
Hell no. He was a vampire.
" So… a story of blood and romance. Hope you liked it."
Soo logged off, while Jongdae could just stare blankly at the screen.
Cool.
Cool. Really cool.
I mean, he read better stories. This one was not really a gore, not scary, just a light little made up tale by someone who probably needed to fuck for real, sometime.
Next morning was not that bad.
The sun was shining in the garden but there was plenty of cool shade on the corridors of the college. He had to wear the same stinky shirt with Nosferatu printed on it, but at least he was in a good mood.
And so were some two other guys.
The two who left the bathroom, holding hands cutely as the nice couple they were. A tall boy wiping the corner of his mouth and a smaller one who looked back and stared at Jongdae's shirt, startled.
He brought the taller one closer and whispered nervously in his ear. Jongdae tought "fuck, hope this is a nightmare."
And all that's left to say is that…
Gore was funnier when he was just watching.