The Stains Beneath Our Skin [mxm] ✔

35.1 | Can't We Just

It was Cain.

Each of his steps caught, shaky like he balanced on the edge of collapse, but even though the tips of his hair were singed, all of that blood was already Ella's.

As for Levi, he'd be that grey smear on the charcoal grass.

A sob choked up Casper's throat, and he scrambled to his feet. Sprinted to Cain with the very last relics of his energy, and when Casper collided with him, arms thrown around his shoulders, Cain caught him and squeezed him so tight he thought his ribs might break.

Freezing fucking cold, but safe and secure and solid and so fucking right Casper couldn't breathe.

Cain sounded right on the verge of tears as he cried into Casper's ear. "You're alright, Cassie. I can't believe you're alright—"

"You're okay!" Casper rubbed his cheek up against Cain's ear. "I thought you—you—oh my fucking god, I thought he killed you. You're okay. Fuck."

"Only because of you, Cassie baby. God, you did so bloody brilliantly. I—I can't believe you thought of that, love. You were so bloody brave. I'm so, so proud of you. I've still got you, Cassie. I ... I've..."

Kinda went through Casper's chest like a knife when Cain's arms loosened. His voice, when he spoke again, went dead. Flat. Empty.

"I don't have you, do I?"

"Cain—"

Cain shifted, arms falling from Casper's side right about ready to pull away. Casper's heart jolted. No fucking way. He snared Cain's neck, a vice because this fucker wasn't leaving until Casper made it right. The words all poured out of his mouth one on top of another the tears that gathered in his eyes staining every one of them, muddled and nonsensical and hysteric.

Didn't even know what he was saying until Cain wrenched away.

A moment of tumbling, crashing loss gripped Casper, and then Cain's lips crushed against his. Bitter blood smeared across his mouth as Cain kissed him with desperate, heart-rending abandon. All mixed up with both their tears and it tasted of copper and meat and just gross but Casper had never had a kiss that blew his mind quite as much as this one even if there were little bits of flesh—

Casper tore away and gagged. God, that was gross. Oh god, and he'd almost stepped on the Levi smear, and there was his stomach gone.

"Oh my god," Casper moaned, "that's so—" Another retch. Tears streamed over his face and every fucking inch of him shook so bad that he only stood on pure will not to fall in the Levi smear. He'd just kill himself out of sheer disgust if he fell in his vomit and that stinking, foul smear of that stinking, foul person. "That's so gross. You've got little bits of her in your teeth. Oh my god."

Behind him, there was a thud, and then Cain burst out laughing.

"Stop it! That is so gross. I can't fucking believe you'd kiss me with your psycho stalker's throat stuck between your teeth. Oh my fucking god, I almost made myself his fuck bitch too. Just peel off my skin right now."

The laughter broke off. Something savage stuck in Cain's voice as he spoke, stained with the image of his grin as he dropped Ella's corpse. The heft of an axe drizzling sin. "Casper, if you think I would ever—ever let that cretin lay a hand on you one more time... He bloody—" A tight hiss. "Just hearing him talk to you like that, I almost lost the whole cunting thing."

Alright, that was nice. No chance of being Sleazebag's fuck bitch, and Psycho Nut cared enough to stop it. Fuck, and he was something else.