The Stains Beneath Our Skin [mxm] ✔

16.2 | Martyr of the Lost Boys

"I lied."

That loving way Cain caressed the word with his tongue sniped past the howling wind and all of Casper's rage. If he spoke Casper's name like a prayer, this concept spilt from his lips the way you whispered in your lover's ear as you drew a knife across their skin.

Casper choked on it. "What?"

"I lied. Of course I'm not buying you heroin. How bloody soft do you think I am?"

"Very." A lie hissed sharp into the breeze, one that only lifted one corner of Cain's mouth.

Like Casper could keep spitting venom when Cain stood there all matter-of-fact fuck you, Roach. But there had to be some sly savagery he could pry from his memories. Something to make Cain cringe the same way Casper's mind moaned out its grief with claws dragging skin from its ghoulish face.

The cold groped around his collar and raked nails over his cheeks, and he trembled with it. The trees beside him groaned, shuddering as they heaved off the weight of the water that made graves of their leaves.

Ah, that was it. Casper grinned. A horrible grin that wound through the scars in his cheek and made knots of them, and flashed the black gap in his teeth.

"What is it, nutjob?" The croaking bile in the words that finally drew Cain's eyes, and each one that Casper spoke, another inch of life shuttered away from Cain's face until all that was left was an iron shell. "You said you know how bad it is, right? Which one was it that you forced to get clean? Which one begged you one too many times for just another hit, made that big show of how much he could take and made you leave him alone? I bet it was the first one – something had to get you hooked on boys like me. I bet it fucking broke you.

"How long did it take you to go up there, huh? Did his corpse stink when you found it? Did you kiss it anyway through all that vomit and rot? Hey," Casper giggled, a high hysterical sound, "maybe you even fucked it, at least now he couldn't say—"

"If one more word comes out your fucking mouth, Casper, I don't give a shit who you are or why you're here, I'm going to smack you and you're going to bloody well deserve it."

He didn't look like Cain anymore, standing there with his hair streaming back from his face – not the pathetic, pandering Cain that Casper had come to know. The only trace of emotion was the rigidity of his jaw and the sickness in his eyes, and he looked like the devil who had whispered to Casper on the bridge, the god who raised black night around him and blotted out the sun.

Seeing it put a thrill in him. A muted one, a short spear from the base of his spine to his stomach, tightening in his thighs, but it was there. Life. The electric spark that kicked his corpse into staggering motion. Grinning, Casper took the steps between them slow and purposeful until he stood toe-to-toe with Cain. The wind whipped the overlong edges of his hair against his forehead and ears. Gusts of it buffeted him into the chill pressure surrounding Cain as if those ancient moans were pleads for Casper to fall into his arms.

Cain looked down. Oh, and he made a point of looking down, eyebrow raised, a hooded gaze down his nose as if Casper was nothing more than a roach beneath his boot. Something railed against Casper's ribs, and no part of him wanted to call that gasping, thumping, shrivelled thing his heart, but it thundered there, seizing, as Casper gathered the words on his tongue.

"I bet he was laughing when he died because at least he finally got away from you and all your fucking poison. I bet it was your fucking fault."

A spasm went through Cain's features, tight, and oh, it must say volumes for how deep that blade stuck that it showed at all. Casper's whole body trembled, strung right up to the edge, and the anticipation of Cain's hand snapping out, the blow to his face or his gut, the shove to the floor and the foot lashed into his side – that anticipation had his breath hitching in his chest, quivering through his very bones.