The Stains Beneath Our Skin [mxm] ✔

1.2 | Whiskey

The rush drowned his thoughts for the rest of the night. If there was one thing to be said for bartending, nothing kept the bugs in your skull at bay better than fending off the thirsty masses. Not half a second's break to think; Jess poured drinks with a desultory doped-up hesitance, but Casper threw himself into the whirlwind with relish. When the crowd broke about five, it was like surfacing from a murky pond with gasping breaths that felt like being reborn.

For the first time since he'd come back from his smoke break, no one stood at the bar when he turned around. The music didn't bang so loud, eased down to a conversational volume. Patrons slumped over the dim tables, a low buzz of conversation in the air and the glow of embers crowning cigarettes and joints alike.

Some distant cousin of adrenaline trembled beneath his skin, sweat thick through his hair and sticking his still-damp t-shirt to his back. Jess stood vacant, her eyelids drooping in slow blinks. Nona had long gone – the boss liked her too much to give her the late shifts.

Casper tapped Jess on the elbow and told her to go, to watch out for herself and to make sure she carried the pepper spray in her hand when she walked home.

"Text me when you're back," he said, "okay?"

Something like a smile crossed her lips. "You're gonna be the one to need the pepper spray, sweetie. All the bad guys are already in here." It was the first joke she'd made in two weeks, so Casper smiled against the scream that clawed up his throat.

With Jess gone, it was just him, the smackheads, and the booze.

The whiskey bottle coughed up a triple into a murky glass, and he tipped it down his throat. Gross. Casper lifted the bottle to the light and snorted. Watered. Barely even that cheap alcohol burn. Why did it even surprise him anymore? But another double, and a tingling warmth touched his fingertips anyway. The fumes off the petrol-heat in his stomach muddled his brain. Sighing, he planted his elbows on the bar.

Then Casper saw him, and he couldn't quite believe he'd managed to miss him the whole night.

Casper didn't know what it was about expensive clothes that made them look expensive, but no matter that all he wore was black slacks and a loose white shirt, the scent of money just rolled off them. Perhaps it was the way the watch on his wrist hung real-gold heavy and posed like a work of art all at once. Perhaps it was just the way he wore them – even leant against the end of the bar nursing some of that watered-down whiskey, his posture was a billion dollars. Straight back, easy hips, loose shoulders.

The alcohol warmth lifted into Casper's chest and spilt over into his groin.

Absolutely fucking gorgeous.

A crooked smile touched the stranger's lips, one that failed entirely to hide that something breathless in his features as Casper met his gaze.

The man lifted his glass to Casper and tipped the last down his throat. Even though the music slid too loud in the air between them, the clack that went with that precise placement of the glass on the bar came clear as if it weren't there.

Casper went over like a well-trained dog, the empty glass his owner waggling a treat at him, and picked up the whiskey as he went. Could be anything brown, but he looked like the kind of man who drank century-old single malt in a wood-panelled study, not rum. No one who looked like that had any right making Casper's mouth this dry. No one who looked like that had any right leaning against his seedy bar making eyes at him.

His hand settled over the glass before Casper could pour another out, long, slender fingers curling over one by one with the elegance of spider legs. A fall of glossy dark hair caught the low light as he tilted his head, that same sly, crooked smile on his lips.