The Stains Beneath Our Skin [mxm] ✔

24.1 | Dead All Along

Just a little note in case any of my readers missed it - I released a short story in a book on my profile "Like Wolfsbane". The story is called Misplaced Energy and it's an AU with Casper & Cain I wrote in a friend's universe - Magical University AU w/ Professor Cain & Student Casper. It's from Cain's POV, and I took the opportunity to write Cain how he was a long time ago - very warped and disconnected from his humanity. Check it out! https://www.wattpad.com/987353447

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Ongoing CW for all XXIV parts: Explicit references to past abuse & heavily distorted mental state

Casper's escape didn't get far. A second before his hand closed on the door to his bedroom stairs, black sorcery swamped it. Another miasmic wall blocked his escape down the hall. Sure had to be some rules against the other guy having some fucking sorcery in these sorts of arguments, 'cause now Casper couldn't do shit but wait – grind his skull into concrete while the muffled taps of Cain's footsteps approached. The vapour off the sorcery on the door burnt the side of his face, a scorching cold biting his bones.

His chest ached. Wet hitches choking through his lungs and suffocating him.

"Cas—"

"What?" Casper rasped the word with as much venom as he could muster.

A sigh echoed through the silent hall. A deep one. Rough. Cain planted his hand high above Casper's head on the wall, the translucent folds of his soaked shirt inches away.

"Would you like to hear what you're going to do, Cas?"

His voice was flat, but with an indulgent definitiveness that almost had Casper nodding without thought. Fuck that. Casper hissed, opening his mouth to spit something, but Cain talked over him, a stern tone that brooked no interruption.

"You're going to go up to your room and get changed, and then you're going to come down to my study and we're going to have a talk, is that—"

"No!" Casper twisted away from Cain. His feet caught, staggering backward, but Cain snared him by the arm before he could go further, a stiff grip with fingers boring into Casper's upper arm. "Get the fuck—"

Cain's eyes stayed hard and cool, but his hand shook. All of him shook, really, but tremors in his hand jarred Casper's bones. "We are going to have a talk, Casper. That's that. End of. Don't make me come fetch you."

Casper jerked his arm out of Cain's grip and retreated toward the sorcery at his back. The rot plastered to his tongue. "Fine."

Let the cunt shatter his make-believe by making him then. 'Cause Casper didn't want to talk to him. Not at all. No matter the way the lamplight caught the twist of Cain's lips, and the wet sheen across his eyes as he turned away and how bad it made his chest hurt. It didn't matter.

"I hate you."

Cain flinched, a shudder going through his shoulders and down his spine, but he drew himself out of it straighter, the tension in his jaw just visible from behind in the jutting bone. Without speaking, he stalked off down the corridor, and the rot vanished from the air.

Casper got changed, but he didn't go down. Not until R2 found him sat beside the vast window in a haze of half-sleep and passed him a note.

'Come talk to me, love. I miss you. I hate knowing you're upset.'

Hissing, Casper closed his fist around it, eyes pressed shut as he ground his head against the cold glass of the window. Perhaps he'd really fallen asleep, because now instead of sickly morning, the slanting afternoon sun lanced into his face, turning the inside of his eyelids burning pink.