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almostfoxglove · 2 months ago

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THE PRETTIEST

PART I: ANNOUNCEMENT

written for @quinnnfabrgay-writes & @hauntedhowlett-writes' #MONSTERSMASH24 challenge

RATING: Explicit (18+) | PAIRING: Max Phillips x f!Reader CREATURE: GHOST + MAX PHILLIPS WORD COUNT: 4.3k CW: Smut (piv), voyeurism/non-consensual voyeurism (he's invisible and reader doesn't know he's watching), Max is a bit of a creep okay he's doing his best here, protective!max, jealous!max, enough manager speak that I got tech startup flashbacks.

SUMMARY: After a restructuring at the company, Max finds himself dead—this time for good—and haunting his old duplex. Lucky for him, you move in.

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Of all the hell holes where one might waste eternity, Max is pretty sure his vacant duplex is the worst of them. Six rooms, two floors spined by a spiral staircase—all boring and hollow and dusty. Disgusting. How difficult would it have been to let him haunt the office? He could’ve leered over all those pathetic little office drones, driven them crazy forever. Fucked with their desk chairs, their hard drives, mixed up all their coffee mugs. Not that Max has mastered the art of affecting the material world yet, but he will.

Petty? Sure. But you can’t blame a guy for feeling a little owed after all management’s little reorganization. His relocation to the goddamn fucking afterlife—and to this prison of an apartment where there’s no one to subjugate or fuck, no less.

What a waste of his potential. His talents.

Who knows how long he spends stuck alone in this place until someone shows up, but eventually people do. The real estate agent—Doreen and her little beehive hairdo, her eyebrows always penciled on too thin—and, over what Max estimates to be about three weeks, a parade of nobodies she tours around, preaching godless, truthless sermons of the duplex’s good bones and the good life they could have in these dreary fucking rooms. He’d be proud of her sales pitch if he weren’t so goddamn pissed.

He tries, he really does. Yells often, I’m right here, Dor-een, honey, right fucking here! And waves his arms in front of her face, but he can scream as loud as he likes; nobody hears a thing.

For the first time in his many lives, people walk straight through him.

There might be, possibly, some karma in that.

Max doesn’t care for it.

It’s misery until the day Doreen brings him you.

Come on, Max whines, slouching lazily on your couch. Curled up with your bedsheets cloaked over your head, you rot on the cushions beside him, four hours deep in a Desperate Housewives marathon, oblivious to his company: your usual Sunday routine.

As usual you don’t hear him, don’t see him either. Sitting right beside you, making no dents in the pillows, his glossy dress shoes kicked up on the coffee table. Still he finds himself complaining, one hand gesticulating wildly at the screen, You’re killing me, baby. It’s obviously the fucking neighbor! Guy’s got a box of death under his pool!

Meanwhile you just sit there, enthralled as Eva Longoria struts about in her tiny skirts and tiny shoes. Max tells himself the only reason he stays in the room when you watch this garbage is for her and all the other pretty housewives or to leer at what bits of you peek out from your duvet each time you reach for your tea on the coffee table—a wrist, your elbow, and when you knock over the popcorn bowl and slip the sheets from your head, the lovely hollow of your perfect neck. Truth is, if you were to quiz him, he’d be able to cite the plot of the whole season beat for beat.

Not that he’s enjoying this, this—this garbage. Never.

No fucking way. He’s just perceptive. Has an excellent memory.

Plus this is the one way he gets to be close to you. Such a pretty little thing, taunting him without ever knowing it. That sweet mouth, those clever eyes. Showering with the bathroom door sometimes cracked like you know he’s here and dying to peek through the veil of your jasmine-laced steam. Chewing the ends of your pencils while you sketch out some masterpiece on looseleaf that you never get around to painting.

Sitting on your couch, at your dining table, at the foot of your bed while you brush out your hair after a long day—it’s the closest Max gets to feeling like being stuck here might not be hell, just purgatory: always a breath away from the thing he’d like to touch, but at least he’s not simmering in battery acid or being flogged. He’s had his share of blood-bag roommates—brief fascinations that drained so quickly—but you? You’ve lived in Max’s apartment for three months and he’s no less drunk on you than he was the day Doreen toured you around. Can’t quite put his finger on why. Maybe it’s the longing, the forest fire that sears through his ice-box chest every time your eyes skim his face by accident, never lingering.

What can he say? Max is a man, after all. Under all the blood and monster.

And you’re the prettiest creature he’s ever seen.

When the show cuts to commercial you mute the TV, immune to the serpent-tongued promises of liars like him. Lured by nothing, by nobody. Already slinking from your bedsheet cave, all bare legs and cute little ankles striding out of the room, leaving him with the ghost of you, the smell of your perfume kissed into the duvet.

What he wouldn’t give for the chance to sell himself to you. He’d charm you all the way to your perfect knees.

In a way, you and Max are the perfect couple. You’re free to do as you wish, and he’s free to watch you every second that you spend at home, miserable the moment you leave for work in those tight fucking pencil skirts. No better than a dog, he spends his vagrant hours of isolation alternating between puppy-eyed pouting and anxious pacing, tortured until your evening return.

How did he ever live here alone? Alive or otherwise. He can’t remember now. There are too many rooms, too few sounds, too few breaths, too few footsteps. He misses you. Your bedhead and pajamas, your blanket nest in front of the TV, the cute way you answer the phone.

Today, you don’t come home till eight fifteen—and Max has spent thirteen hours losing what’s left of his mind.

Baby, he sighs, rushing for the front room at the first turn of the lock, a grin stretched to dimples in his cheeks. Seems even if you can’t hear him, Max can’t help talking to you, perhaps childlike in his belief that someday you will. Where the hell have you—

His sentence hacks itself in half, drops to silence, because you’re blushing when you come in, eyes shyly downcast, one hand shaking the rain loose from your hair, tendrils clinging to your cheeks. “Here,” you say, and for a beat Max thinks you’re speaking to him. His mouth drops, stunned.

Is this it? Can you finally see him?

“Come in, come in,” you say.

Then a man steps in behind you, shuts the door behind his hulking form, and if there were any blood to speak of in his veins, Max is certain it’d boil at the sight of him. Tall and empty-headed, dopey as a dog, stomping his blocky, muddy shoes all over your hallway. Yours and Max’s. Getting goddamn filth on your hall carpet. Given just a few material cells, Max’d have this guy dead before he makes it to the living room, wouldn’t even bother drinking him. This breed of dumbass isn’t worth the mess.

But he’s useless. Less than a gnat. Sentenced to watch you trail this motherfucker who wouldn’t know Tom Ford from his Brioni into your kitchen, jackets shedding and small talk traded—boring, boring, boring, but you laugh when the guy makes a shitty joke about the weather.

This guy, this nobody, gets to make you laugh while Max never even gets a chance to try.

On second thought, maybe this is hell after all.

“S’a nice place,” the dumbass says, laying his knockoff blazer over the back of a barstool. Cheap stitching. Terrible, too-thin lapels.

You look about the room as if standing in it for the first time and for a moment your eyes pass right over Max, whose long-dead heart winces. Yelps. If you could see him, there’s no way you’d entertain this guy. This nameless little worker bee. Max would make you laugh properly, how you laugh when something funny happens on TV or when you get a letter in the mail from your brother. Sudden and twinkling, often ending in a snort. Adorable.

Shrugging, you turn into your fridge and say, “Yeah, I like it,” and exhume two slim cans of vodka seltzer to set on the kitchen island.

Thank you, Max says, his arms crossed over his chest.

The dumbass’ brows flicker up as he regards your offering. Idiot. What was he expecting from a girl like you, a PBR? These are delicious. Elegant. Calorie wise. Max understands. Max would drink that with a smile and a thank you.

Or maybe he’d skip right to drinking you.

Sensing his hesitation, you crack your can and take a sip. “They’re not as bad as they look,” you say, a nervous chuckle bittering your lips as you watch your date open his can and bring it to his nose to sniff. “Sorry. I don’t have anything else.”

You can do so much better, baby, Max sighs. You’ve got better right here.

Against his will, the hours pass. The evening goes on. You and the dumbass only drink half a can each—him with a half-snarled lip and you with a self-conscious twinge—but somehow by nightfall he’s got you scooching your barstool closer to him, allowing his slimy hand to rest on your thigh.

Max bristles. Seethes. Don’t do it, he pleads to you, unheard. He’s not gonna fuck you right, just look at him. Send this idiot home and watch TV with me. Do anything but this guy, baby, anything but him.

You bend in slow motion and it’s agonizing, the tilt of your head as you press your lips to his. The wet slurp of his mouth taking the second you meet. A terrible kiss, though you’re polite enough not to flinch. Breaking from the prod of his pink-slug tongue to offer your neck, his mouth immediately moving, and fuck baby, it’s like you’re trying to kill him all over again. Drive a stake straight through Max’s blackened heart by giving up what he longs to claim.

In an instant, anger births itself from the hollow of his chest. His hand shoots out in useless violence, swinging as if to strike a seltzer can from the countertop and knowing it won’t do a lick of good as ire devours him, igneous and fervid, searing hot as life in his icy hands.

The can jumps from the counter and clunks to the floor, its contents gluggluglug-ing across the tiles.

“The fuck?” Max hears the dumbass gasp as he leaps from his barstool, eyes bugged wide and child-like and weak. You freeze, lips pink and swollen, staring down at the emptying can.

It’s a shame neither of you can see the way Max smiles.

Now that’s what I’m talking about, he crows. Finally a little substance around here!

This is good. No, it’s better than good. This is the rush after a promotion, after the deal that closes out the quarter over target. The look on every sad sack’s face knowing they lost and he won.

This is the bite that finally breaks skin.

Maddening, burgeoning, addictive.

He’s real again. A goddamn Beetlejuice for you, baby. He’s gonna scare this fucknut out of here and have you to himself. First was the can, next is you, and he’s gonna kiss you so much better than that. In celebration, Max kicks one foot to send the can soaring across the kitchen floor and watches his shoe pass right through it, aluminum undisturbed on the floor. No, he mutters, kicking again. No, fucking—come on, you worthless piece of shit—

Your nervous laugh is too far away to comfort him. Distant too is your voice saying, “My room’s this way,” and the shuffling of your footsteps as Max loses his shit on the seltzer can that now refuses to budge no matter the swell of his outrage. By the time he snaps from his incensed trance, your barstools are empty. He blinks, breathless with muscle memory—his lungs wheezing because they remember wheezing, not out of need.

Baby? he calls out.

But you reply. A murmur too lusty to be a giggle—Max’s body coils up at the sound, taut and needy, and carries him toward the sound. He forgets, briefly, who you’re with. Believes he’ll find you in your bedroom alone beneath the covers, hands fluttering as you bring yourself to the edge of release. How beautiful you’d be, gasping in pleasure. He might close his eyes and pretend it’s him drawing out your every breathy, needy sound.

You’ve left the bedroom door cracked, and though in death he’s no longer bound by silly things like permission, Max has since you moved in found himself in the habit of respecting closed doors. Walls are chalk outlines over which he’s free to step, but he doesn’t, not if you’ve closed the gate. He’s not a monster. Or not a total monster—whatever, semantics. Point is that he only spies on your showers if you’ve cracked the door. Indulges in the soft moments of you sleeping only when you’ve left him that sliver of room.

Like the room you’ve left him now: slender and tempting, this stripe of your bedroom wall. A Degas print in a copper frame, the wooden post at the foot of your bed.

Your sweet voice cooing here, like this, and the creak of your mattress.

Something black and silty sinks in Max’s stomach when he steps inside. Not the rage from moments ago. Something darker, heavier. Jealousy. Half-sheeted by your duvet, the dumbass you’ve brought home rocks above you, his shirt gone, his beefcake arm blocking the view of your chest, and though you’re making all the right sounds it’s obvious this isn’t any good.

He’s not fucking you right.

Your hands clawing at his back are too stiff. Your yeses a beat too slow. As the idiot pants—thrusts choppy and graceless—Max watches your hand tap his shoulder blade as you breathe, “Flip over.”

“What?” bumbles the guy, his hips stalling. “Oh shit—fuck yeah. Okay.”

Another grunt, then he rolls off and Max gets a glimpse of you—your red bra lacy and see through, your nipples so pretty underneath. It just isn’t right, the awkwardness of this colossal douchebag as he settles on his back and you ruck back the covers to straddle him, not at all breathless, hardly even flushed, your hair all messy at the back from disappointing friction.

“Shit,” the guy gasps as you sink down on him, clamping those boorish hands onto your waist.

You don’t even whine, not even as you start to rock, though his breathing gallops beneath you. Guy looks two seconds from nutting while you look years away from anything even loosely resembling an orgasm—your rhythm changing often as you try and fail to find a pace that suits you. “Christ—oh my god, ” the guy groans.

Max sucks his front teeth, tongue soiled with venom.

“Touch me,” you sigh, bouncing now. The curtain of your hair shivering down your back.

This guy fucks like he’s never touched a woman before. At your request his knuckles only pale, fingers pinching you tighter. That’s not what she means, Max growls. Touch her fucking clit, you pin-dicked imbecile. Can’t fucking please a woman, should be fucking ashamed—

His pointless ranting is cut short by a sudden moan as the guy lifts you off him in time to come all over his stomach, chest rapid in its heaving, upper lip snarled in pleasure he doesn’t have the goddamn decency to return to you. For a long moment you hover above him, waiting, but his head just slumps back against the pillow, satisfied.

Done.

He’s actually done. Motherfucker.

When you crawl off him to sit back against your headboard—arms crossing over your stomach self-consciously—Max sees red. Sees fire. Sees the roiling magma at the center of the earth where someone oughta make this fucker take a nice hot bath.

He’d do this right. He’d fuck you properly, have you coming apart at the seams, go down on you until you beg for his cock and edge himself for as long as it takes to have you screaming his name. Can’t you see that? Can’t you feel him here, right now? Can’t you feel how bad he wants you? Can’t you imagine how much better he’d be? How good he’d make you feel?

Letting out an airy chuckle, the brute wipes the back of his hand across his sweaty brow and pushes himself to his feet. Redresses with a goddamn smirk on his face—not one of cruelty, but it might as well be. He thinks this is a job well done. Time to go home.

A peck to your lips, then he’s rattling on about calling you, seeing you again, maybe Thursday? Friday? While you just sit there, blinking up at him in disbelief. “Sure,” you say, dazed and not quite thinking. “I’ll call you.”

Yeah, she’s not calling you, Max snarls, following the guy out of the room. Watching as the jackass plucks his jacket from the back of your barstool, steps over the mess of seltzer without a thought to clean it up for you, and waltzes right out the door. Not a care in the goddamn world.

Though he hears you get up shortly after to use the bathroom, you don’t emerge from your bedroom and Max doesn’t disturb you. He spends that time in the kitchen, grabbing and grabbing and grabbing at the dish towel hung over the handle on the oven door, trying to pull it off.

For at least an hour, his hand glides through the towel as if it’s water, not a flutter or sway in the fabric. Not even a brush, a compromise. It just hangs there, indignant. Mocking him. Deaddeaddeaddeaddead. Maybe it’s the Senior Sales Manager in him, the apex predator at the top of the food chain—but Max can do this all night. He’s not backing down, not letting a stupid fucking towel get the better of him. That lazy curtain of terrycloth will disintegrate before he waves the white flag.

Beyond the picture frame windows that stare out into the barren, colorless street, the sun has shied to navy blue, letting out the round-mouthed moon, and you have not emerged from your bedroom for hours. He wants to check on you, ask if you’re okay. Frankly, baby, he’s getting a little worried. On the next sweep of his hand, the towel gives up the ghost; Max pulls it from the oven handle, marveling at the toothy fabric. He’s holding it, really holding it, all on his own.

Thank fuck he’s not haunting the office. If any of those bull-brained fucks saw him now, as he kneels on your kitchen floor, he’d have to die all over again. Somehow. The technicals aren’t important—what’s important is that no one’s here to see him on his fucking knees, mopping up the spilled drink. Something like joy burbles in his chest when he reaches for the can and seizes it, placing it safely on your counter. The floor dry and shining again, clean.

Max folds the towel carefully and returns it to the rack.

As if on cue, the bedroom door croaks down the hall and you emerge. A huge t-shirt slumps from your frame; you’ve tied your hair up, put your glasses back on. Dressed down for the last dregs of night, rubbing the back of your hand in one eye, tired.

You look so, so tired.

I’d rub your shoulders, baby, Max sighs quietly and though you won’t hear him, it still—after three whole months—doesn’t feel any less right to hope.

He steps out of your way as you round the corner into the kitchen with a yawn, hands clasped behind his back, cheek dimpled and eyes alight. Just like he wanted, just like he hoped, your eyes fall immediately to the floor where the can is missing, the spill wiped. Lashes flickering—the towel dark at the hem on its handle, the empty can on the counter. Your brows pinch low over your nose, curious.

Pretty good for a dead guy, Max grins.

How sweet, that lifting flinch at your mouth’s sharp, pink corner. The soft hm you make in reply. It’s not much, but this strange, fluttery feeling in the dark cavity one might wrongly call his heart? It doesn’t feel half bad.

Not bad at all.

He’s getting better at it. Not great, but the projections look good. Give him a little time, he’ll have this whole place dancing. Put on a big show, announce himself properly.

In the meantime he practices when you’re not looking. Small stuff—he opens cupboards. Shuts them. Hits start on the dryer when you forget to press it yourself. Some days he wastes reaching for things and coming up empty, but now again his luck sparkles. Things move. Bend to his will. Isn’t long until he can hold it for a while—gathering the matter to run the vacuum around, or reorganize your pantry. A tidy house makes a tidy mind, baby. No good living in a dump. You’re so busy, always cracking around like a ping pong ball, and hell, it’s not like Max can leave this place, get a little air in his idle lungs.

He likes being useful to you. Likes that tiny smirk on your lips when you find something fixed or organized for you, even though you likely chalk it up to having forgotten that you did it yourself. Doesn’t matter. He doesn’t need the credit. Isn’t that strange? How often he smiles at you? How perfect he finds the taste of your name.

Winter has arrived like a secret—whispered about for weeks and then suddenly let loose on the world. You come home from work in the evenings with icing sugar hair. Usually unbothered, far as Max can tell, but today you stagger in flushed from the cold and dark in the eyes.

Shit, baby, Max says when he sees you. Bad day?

Sniffling, you drop your coat right there in the hall, let it puddle over your shoes, and stalk off on a mission, barreling into the kitchen. The fridge door rips open, casting blue-white light over your face, and you must feel a hell of a lot worse than you feel because you don’t even blink at the contents inside. All the shelves wiped clean, the bottles arranged with the labels facing out, those wilted, bad greens deposited in the compost. You just reach in for the half-drunk bottle of Riesling that to Max smelled mostly like juice and swipe off the lid.

You chug on your way to the couch, leaving the fridge door open behind you.

Max closes it when you’ve gone, the TV already switched on in the living room, the lilting strings of the Desperate Housewives theme song swimming through the air. When he turns the corner he finds you wrapped in the throw blanket he now knows the texture of—supple and velvet, weighted and warm—with the wine bottle nestled in your lap.

A silver tear hangs on your cheek.

Really bad day, whatever it was.

He wants to ask. Wants to pull you into his arms and pet back your hair. Wants to lick that sadness from your skin.

Maybe this isn’t the show he’s imagined. Not much of a reveal—but you look so small right now, alone on your couch. Wine splashing in its bottle as you bring it to your lips, not bothering to wipe that tear away. If Max had a heart that beat, it’d stutter as he watches you. Helpless isn’t something he cares to feel.

No time like the present. Max sighs, scrubs a hand down his face as he ticks his jaw to one side, and nods. Alright, baby, he relents. Hang on.

On his way to the bathroom he cracks all the knuckles on his left hand, rolls his neck, swings his shoulders. Stretches himself long and limber like he’s about to run—but this is it. Curtain’s coming up. Time to find out if one glimpse of him sends you sprinting for the hills. Though he casts no reflection, Max stands before the mirror hanging over the sink and straightens his tie, corrects his lapels. Old habits, but it never hurts to look good.

Hand waggling, then, over the tissue box on the counter. He slaps himself hard, sending a delicious ripple of pain across his cheek. Come on, he begs. Don’t play hard to get.

The box lifts.

Here he comes: tissue box in hand, stalking tall and proud down your hallway with his chin up, shoulders back. Gets the momentum rolling, doesn’t hesitate, just waltzes in.

Your head snaps in his direction, eyes round and brows rising. To you it must look like the tissues float through the air to your side. Max steps back with butterflies jittering in his bones.

Don’t be scared, he pleads. It’s just me.

With your head cocked to one side you consider this, though you’ve not heard his voice. Probably for the best. Came out a little softer than he meant it to, a little needy, and that’s just not becoming of a man like him. He has a reputation to uphold, even now.

After a long, bludgeoning pause you click your tongue, swiping one white tissue from the box to turn over in your hand. Deliberating. Then your face cracks, possessed by a slithering smirk. Your gaze flickering so close to him it’s almost as if you’ve looked him in the eye.

Deep in his chest, Max feels a strange throb—his stirring heart—as you say out loud,

“I knew someone was there.”

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