The Stains Beneath Our Skin [mxm] ✔

36 | Eat The Rich

Traffic rumbled outside when Casper awoke, eyes fluttering open to a magnolia wall. A slit of light sliced across it, but all the rest of the room was the creamy dimness of daylight kept at bay.

Springs jammed in his side, but for a moment, Casper lay still, tracing the cracks through the paintwork. The air hung sweet and warm across his face, the rest of him bundled in fresh sheets, and behind him, another body breathed slow and deep with slumber.

Here it was. Like a dream. The kind of dream you never wanted to wake up from, but here it was in his real life.

Cain. His fairytale prince.

A surge lifted in Casper's chest. Shit, he just wanted to see Cain's face. Look at the way sleep squished all the hard lines as he pushed his cheek into the pillow and squish the other side as well. There'd be that pouty parting of his lips and the little trail of drool that trickled from the corner of his mouth.

His Cain.

Casper grinned when he rolled over, a grin that died the second he saw who slept beside him. Blonde. Sure as hell not Cain and for that matter definitely not Jack either. A total stranger.

Oh shit.

The desert swamped his mouth. Casper stared at the stranger with his heart pounding in his ears. Marching beat that went right alongside the single word scrawled across his mind.

Shit.

Had it all been a dream?

A sick pit opened in Casper's stomach and he scrambled out of bed. The footboard scraped his shin, and with a hiss of pain, Casper staggered into the room. His heart pounded in his ears as he spun around, squinting into the dim light.

A studio apartment, and no way had he ever seen this place before. No chance. Shit, what had happened? Casper raked his fingers back through his hair as he turned in place, gasping breaths forcing up his throat. The room opened into an airy lounge and kitchenette, and on one of the creamy walls, a slick mirror hung.

Mirror. Casper bolted for it. The glass rattled as he grabbed the frame, his foot slipping out beneath him. Nearly fell and all because all the strength spirited out his limbs as soon as he laid eyes on his sallow, clammy skin.

It was his face but ... he'd looked so bad when—when he last remembered. Nearly starved and scoured down to the bone. This face didn't look great, but it didn't look that bad. Like he maybe had the first time Cain met him, near the top of his normal.

His scars were on the other cheek.

Casper dragged his hand over the clean skin, gathering the folds and baring a slick red crescent beneath his eye. His heart beat so hard against his ribs, hard enough to shatter. And that nausea—oh god. This wasn't his face. It wasn't his face. God, this wasn't his fucking body. It stretched down naked, sick and vertiginous, and maybe there were scars, his arms were a mess and tracks marks scattered the inside of his elbow, but it was all so sickly, insidiously wrong.

He twisted, showing the inside of his thigh to the mirror. No Jack's name on the inside. His right ankle. No Mackie. Just an effusive column of psychedelic tentacles and eyes sprawling up his thigh.

Oh god.

Clammy hands gripped his spine. Icy sweat seeped through the spaces between his guts.

Had he died?

"Cas?" The man. The stranger. A snatch of hysterical laughter burst from Casper's lips. He could be married to the fucking guy for all he knew. Call it not, though, for the way he just sat up in bed, rubbing his cheek and glaring a little. "What's up with you?"