The Stains Beneath Our Skin [mxm] ✔

20.1 | Bloody, Miserable Horror

Casper was still in the kitchen when Cain got back. When the light had cycled muddy yellow and violet and black like a bruise swelling in reverse. He hadn't stayed there, but like an inevitability, he'd returned from all those echoing reaches of the house. Left the vacant eyes of the mirrors in his and Cain's room and the familiar warmth of the study behind to settle in this nook of normality with its sturdy wooden units and bland whitewashed walls.

He'd tried to read for a bit, then screamed and thrown his coffee across the room when he realised why he couldn't, and then shaking, whimpering, he'd sent R2 upstairs to fetch pillows and a duvet.

Cain's pillows and duvet.

Casper bundled himself up on the floor in the scent of pine and vanilla and that tickling crisp of winter so peculiar to Cain. If he pressed his face close enough into the softness and thought about that sweet smell hard enough, it was almost like this black pit in his gut didn't eat him alive.

Cain was going to kill him, and all Casper could do was wish Cain was still here so he wouldn't feel so fucking alone.

How was that fair? Jack had never done that to him. This torment that gripped him, teeth sunk into his chest – when the fuck had he ever wanted company? That's why he'd done all this. That's why he'd screamed and cursed and shoved Cain away even while little halfway-sane Casper with his mourning robes on sobbed into a fucking handkerchief at the death of their plan.

Because when he was like this, when Casper saw happiness, it burnt his tongue like bile and rotted out the spaces beneath his skin.

All because it was exactly what he'd never deserve.

But wasn't this it? Not just it, but bolded, italicised, screamed in capital letters across the rolling grounds and gifted to the wind that howled across the fields to carry his message back to the heavens – tell the Norns their plaything had finally accepted his fate.

Cain was fucked. He was totally psycho nutjob crazy. Fixated on Casper in his endless chain of lost boys and the madness fuelled by his mad-god magic, and ... and Casper kind of liked it.

Messed up, right? The ghoul knew it. Lurking in the darkness, it chattered and whooped, its clawed hands and feet clattering against the tiles as it scampered about in the shadows. The flashes of its white skin where the moonlight seeped in were the streaking passages of blind fish in guttering, lightless depths. The ghoul wanted it. It always had.

It wanted it just as much as Casper always had.

The devil lounged on his throne with blood trickling past his lips and his long fingers scratching through Casper's hair.

It was a nightmare. It was the only thing he'd ever deserved.

It didn't matter either way, because the plan was the only way he'd ever get out.

And ... it was kind of all he'd wanted anyway, only wrapped up in madness and the last knife in the back of his freedom.

Now he'd ruined it.

Casper curled deeper into the covers, his breath hitching in his throat. The fabric lay so soft against his cheeks, a cotton kiss. Claws clicked against the rough flagstones, and with a low whine deep in its throat, the ghoul butted its head against the back of his neck. Casper batted it away. Stupid thing. Like seriously, the day he took comfort from his mental break demon, he might as well just slam the madhouse gates himself.

Like lying here dreaming of comfort from psycho kidnapper wasn't halfway there already.

A scratch against the back of his neck. The ghoul loomed so close now that Casper could smell the rotten meat stink of its breath. He slapped at it again, hauling the covers up over his back, but its claws plunged back down, raking along his spine.