The Stains Beneath Our Skin [mxm] ✔

26 | Clutching At Freedom

Come the dead of night, sleep lay distant as fiction. Cain slumbered beside him, and as he dreamt, he muttered strange words that Casper had never heard, head twitching as if he sought to escape some pestilent image fixed before his eyes. The longer Casper laid there listening, the shorter his breath came, and when Cain's hold on him eased enough that he could slither unnoticed from his arms, he went on silent feet, all of him bundled away from the chill in the huge fluffy dressing gown Cain had bought for him.

Not that he should have put it on. The soft fibres itched his skin.

The balcony that he and Cain smoked on wasn't too far. Rarely, the sunrise still brushed the eastern horizon pink when Casper got up, and they'd smoke in silence. More often, that balcony was where they'd looked up at the stars while Cain taught him all the constellations and the movement of the heavens, and where they'd drunk whiskey watching the sunset. Once until Casper got pissed enough to get cruel, and more recently, until they were both laughing messes stumbling to bed together in the dark.

Casper leant against the rail, a straight smouldering between his lips from the pack Cain kept by the door. No stars tonight. Was that symbolic? Even when there were no stars to point out, Cain would still stand behind him, elbows on the railings either side of Casper, so easily leaning around him to rest them there. He'd lower his head to murmur in Casper's ear and talk vaster astronomy or sometimes the anatomy of the clouds and the wind and the rain.

Casper still hadn't gotten sick of hearing him talk. A small smile, quickly faded, touched his lips. Good thing Cain never would get sick of hearing himself talk either.

Tonight, the sky hung too dark and heavy to even glimpse the edge of the grounds and the line where the wards held him prisoner, let alone the vast, beautiful landscape beyond. Did Cain mean to let him out there now? Free to wander the wilds as he wished, his king comfortable in the knowledge Casper would always come back.

It bridled. Unquestionably, it rankled him to his bones. That was no freedom. If they fell out, would Cain take him jealously prisoner again? Where was his own control? You didn't earn freedom just 'cause your brain clocked one fucking nutjob as the trigger to pump you full of dopamine. It had to be claimed.

All those years ago, Casper had run away because he chose freedom. He'd chosen control over his own destiny out in the city, and each time Jack had threatened his independence, he'd pulled away.

There was so much wonder out there, beyond the thick hedge borders. Already, his old life had shattered and the only thing dictating his road forward was himself. The beauty in that was breathtaking. Flooring. And ... his mind felt free as well. Casper had never eaten so well or slept so well or went so long without fucking strangers or just gone so many days without thinking of the foul things that had been done to his skin. It was as if the trials had absolved him. Fixed him, at least a little.

What if he went to a small town, somewhere you could live cheap? He could get a job at a diner or something and really work on his coding. There could be a future there, if he earned it, and it wouldn't be a future dictated by some god's whims.

To claim freedom, he had to have earned it. For it to be earned, all of this had to be his own long con. Manipulation like it was supposed to be at the start. And that meant beyond this mire of delusion, none of it was real.

And that meant he had to run away.

Casper cleared his throat and raised his voice to the night. "R2!"

Didn't take too long for the little construct to come to him. Its sorcery glowed in the night, sublime blue of ocean depths and the dusky sky once the sun had long set.