The Stains Beneath Our Skin [mxm] ✔

1.1 | Petrichor

The rain smelled different in the city.

Out in the country, the air plunged into such delicious freshness that some green-eyed linguist had coined a word for it: petrichor. Earth and growth and the wide, open sky and all the things that made life worth living. Nature rejuvenated on pattering droplets out of the gunmetal grey.

The kind of freshness Casper dreamed of every time he fell asleep.

Once, the sweetness had been a promise when Casper closed his eyes, but he couldn't seem to imagine it anymore. With every step between these metal hulks of industrial poverty and decaying grey-wash towers, the stink of human pollution swallowed a little more of the memory.

He'd run away here, once upon a time, and the city had been breathless with dreams. The untethered opportunity should have been the dawn of his damn life but all he'd found was one long waking nightmare and the swamp of apathy and oblivion suffocating everything inside him that hadn't already died.

At a pause on the corner, Casper pulled his phone out his pocket before striking out into the downpour again. Third time it'd swarmed against his thigh like a sack full of bees now, and he already knew who it was before he squinted at that scratched up screen through the raindrops that splattered across the glass. Jack, little heart tacked on the end that Casper had put there two years ago and never had the guts to change. Seemed like the stink should've gotten sweeter seeing his boyfriend's name in the dull LCD.

It didn't.

Sighing, Casper answered the call.

"Cassie baby!" Jack's slur blared down the phone. Babbling voices haunted the background, and gritting his teeth, Casper knocked down the volume. Drunk. But at least it sounded like a good mood. "Hey, baby! Thought you were at work?"

Casper shouldered through the crowds. Screeching taxis and freight lorries flung pools full of sodden rubbish and muck at his legs as he jogged along the side of the road. The pouring rain had already soaked through his hood, wormed down the back of his coat to drench his skin and bones in shuddering, gasping ice.

Jack was probably too drunk to distinguish it from the club noise.

"Fag break."

"Hey, caught you just in time then, huh? Look—look, baby, do you— Hey, fuck off, cunt!" Jack's voice faded even as it rose to a shout. "Yeah—Yeah, I'm talkin' to you, you asshole. Watch where you're stepping, huh? I'll cut your fuckin' eyes out if you ain't gonna use 'em. Yeah, that's right fuck off. Little fuckin'..." Wild laughter, and Jack's voice came down the speaker again. "Sorry, baby. What was I saying?"

"Don't ask me."

Voices crackled down the phone and swarmed around him in a shapeless racket on this packed street, but where Jack's should be, nothing but a pit opening up in Casper's gut. Casper hissed between his teeth while he swapped hands on the phone, jamming the other in his pocket against the chill. Here it goes, Cas. That's what your bad mood buys you.

"Fuck's up with you?" Jack's voice had lost all levity. "You know what, Cas, you ain't never pleased to hear from me anymore. Dunno why I fuckin'—"

"Jack. Seriously."

Silence. Fuck knew that was Jack hanging on for an apology, but he wouldn't get one. Casper was fucking sick of handing them out. Lies tasted foul as this pollution-clogged air on his tongue these days, but only the kind that someone else wanted to hear.

Another corner, squeezing around the bodies jammed up against the curb in their desperation to make space between them and the ragged figure huddled on the corner drenched by the rain. Usually, Casper stopped, offered the guy a cigarette – the least he could do was help out someone scratching out a breath of nicotine from a tin full of ends. Today, the rain came so thick and fast it drowned him, and the spark of Jack's lighter still snapped down the phone.