The Stains Beneath Our Skin [mxm] ✔

25.1 | Tastes Like Home

Salt touched his tongue. Sharp, burning in the cuts that plagued his dry, split lips. Casper started back, hand coming up to his cheek. Those weren't Cain's tears. His fingers pressed higher, tracing slick through the path of wetness, and the spring spilling the river down his cheeks gathered like dew around his eyelashes and trickling forth from his burning eyes.

"Oh."

"Cassie?"

God it was so wonderful hearing Cain call him that. His whole fucking heart turned into a butterfly, some behemoth to lead the horde in his stomach. A blur turned Cain's face to a smear, like looking up at it from underwater. It stung. Casper's lower lip wobbled and Cain's fingers brushed across his cheek, wicking away the tears.

"Oh, my love... I'm sorry. I turned this all to a mess, didn't I?"

Understatement of the fucking millenium. Deserved a really cutting comment, but Casper ... didn't really want to. He just sniffled and smeared the tears across his face.

"Come here—" Cain's arms gathered all around his waist and under his knees. "Come on. Let me take you up to bed, Cassie. Can I?"

Hiccupping, Casper nodded, and with a grunt, Cain got his legs under him and levered them both up from the floor. He staggered a bit gaining his feet, and a wet giggle burst out around Casper's tears. Wasn't that funny. Jack used to do squats with Casper over his shoulders just to make him laugh.

Cain called R2 while he carried Casper through the halls, cradled close against his chest. The tears dried by the time the little construct joined them, nothing left but puffy eyes and a blocked nose. He rubbed and sniffed at it when Cain put him down on top of one of the vase stands in the hall, displacing the vase itself with a flick of his magic.

"Just a moment, love," he said.

And Casper smiled and told him he didn't have to carry him the whole way, and Cain just grinned back even wider and told Casper he didn't want him to walk anywhere when he was sad ever again.

"I'll start lifting weights again," Cain promised him, brushing his fingers back through the side of Casper's hair, and a smile bloomed wet on Casper's lips, the crescent cast of the ray of sun that pushed up through his throat. He hid it behind his sleeve while Cain went and crouched before the construct and murmured to it in a low voice.

He talked to R2 the same way Casper talked to the ghoul. Like it was something real.

Actually, where ... where was his ghoul? Casper's heart lurched in his throat and he almost tumbled off the stand snapping his head around. Where was it? Not now. It hadn't left him—

Hunkered down beside the construct, bobbing side-to-side, all dressed again in a pair of skinnies and Casper's favourite t-shirt. It had its fingers hooked in its mouth while it made noises at the construct. Casper rested his head back against the wall and watched the three of them with a smile.

While Cain talked, R2 kept whirling around in a circle, the sounds from the ghoul distracting it and each time it whirled, the grin on the ghoul's face got wider. Cain was getting huffy with it not paying attention, fingers massaging his temple and pushing into his hair, as his crouch got slouchier and lower to the floor.

Shit, this was the kinda thing that stuck in your mind forever, wasn't it? Coloured cream with nostalgia and this fuzzy warmth in his chest. Tears sprung up in his eyes again just as R2 went zipping off, and him and his wobbling lips were Cain's first glimpse as he turned around, fingers pushed back through his hair. The exasperation vanished in a flash of drawn brows, and he didn't waste a damn second sweeping Casper back up in his arms.