The Stains Beneath Our Skin [mxm] ✔

13.2 | I Want

"Cas," Cain asked, "are you alright?"

Shaking. Alright, he'd started shaking again. This was crazy. So Cain wasn't just a sorcerer, he was like the fucking Master Sorcerer, capital letters and all. The whiskey sloshed around in Casper's glass as he lifted it to his lips, and a splash trickled over the corner of his mouth and down to seep along his jaw, cold.

A shift, rustle of fabric beside him. "Cas?"

How did someone like that still sit here beside him with that much concern tight across his brow? As if he was a real person and not a god.

Casper cleared the thickness out of his throat and whet his lips. "You're—"

And he couldn't make himself get any further. Cain sighed and his shift turned to a full-body movement closer to Casper, then he leant over on his side so he got closer still, hand planted on the floor beside Casper's hip and his tilted head still almost level with Casper's no matter how much he slouched in that lean. No cold radiated from Cain's skin, but the heat – the realness – of a person was missing, and yet there was still a presence about him. A pressure.

Cain lifted his free hand and Casper knew the slowness with which Cain moved it toward his jaw was giving him time to pull away. No matter that Cain could make Casper do anything he wanted, he still gave him that pretence, that breath of a chance.

Trembling, Cain's fingers brushed away the whiskey spilt from the corner of his mouth, a wet smear across his skin, and ... they lingered – warm like summer, like raw meat just beginning to cook.

Like the flush of warmth in your stomach from a man who'd once given you butterflies when you thought everything inside you that could feel something had died under someone else's hands.

A tight, wet whimper choked up Casper's throat and he pressed his hand to his mouth. It wasn't fair. Didn't he deserve something good? He'd even let himself try. He'd opened up the soft bit and Cain had held it so tenderly that he'd thought maybe – fucking maybe – things could get better. Then he fucked it up himself anyway for Jack and it looked like this was all he deserved anyway. A fucking psycho, and worse, a psycho who he'd ... he'd really, really liked him. Maybe a little scratch of himself had already started falling for him.

"Cas..."

Cain murmured his name like a prayer. His fingers trailed over Casper's throat, little electric sparks dancing in their wake, and his hand slipped around the back of Casper's neck to play with the wisps of hair. Another whimper died muffled behind Casper's hand. It felt so nice. How could Cain touch him without feeling sick?

"I'm sorry." Cain's murmur was cotton-soft. "Is that too much? I didn't want to scare you with this."

Casper shook his head. Croaking, his voice came muffled behind his hand. "It's like magic."

Soft laughter, a sound he felt in Cain's breath light against his cheek. He'd gotten so close. When had he gotten so close? "It is, isn't it? I felt like that when I found out I could do it. All I could think was what else is real? Are there vampires and ghosts and kelpies and demons?"

The words hit too close. Far, far too close to what he would have lain in bed tonight dreaming about. Casper's voice cracked as he asked, "Are there?"

"None that I've found evidence of, but maybe ... maybe in another world... There are creatures, though, in the other planes. Monsters of all kinds. It's wonderful, even if most of them want to eat you."

Monsters. Casper pulled his knees tighter to his chest and glanced up at Cain. The look on his face almost made Casper burst out crying, a loud gasp of it around this lump building in his throat. The wonder in Cain's eyes, pink flush high in his cheeks now and a smile so wide it must ache, all with the firelight setting everything alight in its soft, flickering glow.