"I lied."

That loving way Cain caressed the word with his tongue sniped past the howling wind and all of Casper's rage. If he spoke Casper's name like a prayer, this concept spilt from his lips the way you whispered in your lover's ear as you drew a knife across their skin.

Casper choked on it. "What?"

"I lied. Of course I'm not buying you heroin. How bloody soft do you think I am?"

"Very." A lie hissed sharp into the breeze, one that only lifted one corner of Cain's mouth.

Like Casper could keep spitting venom when Cain stood there all matter-of-fact fuck you, Roach. But there had to be some sly savagery he could pry from his memories. Something to make Cain cringe the same way Casper's mind moaned out its grief with claws dragging skin from its ghoulish face.

The cold groped around his collar and raked nails over his cheeks, and he trembled with it. The trees beside him groaned, shuddering as they heaved off the weight of the water that made graves of their leaves.

Ah, that was it. Casper grinned. A horrible grin that wound through the scars in his cheek and made knots of them, and flashed the black gap in his teeth.

"What is it, nutjob?" The croaking bile in the words that finally drew Cain's eyes, and each one that Casper spoke, another inch of life shuttered away from Cain's face until all that was left was an iron shell. "You said you know how bad it is, right? Which one was it that you forced to get clean? Which one begged you one too many times for just another hit, made that big show of how much he could take and made you leave him alone? I bet it was the first one – something had to get you hooked on boys like me. I bet it fucking broke you.

"How long did it take you to go up there, huh? Did his corpse stink when you found it? Did you kiss it anyway through all that vomit and rot? Hey," Casper giggled, a high hysterical sound, "maybe you even fucked it, at least now he couldn't say—"

"If one more word comes out your fucking mouth, Casper, I don't give a shit who you are or why you're here, I'm going to smack you and you're going to bloody well deserve it."

He didn't look like Cain anymore, standing there with his hair streaming back from his face – not the pathetic, pandering Cain that Casper had come to know. The only trace of emotion was the rigidity of his jaw and the sickness in his eyes, and he looked like the devil who had whispered to Casper on the bridge, the god who raised black night around him and blotted out the sun.

Seeing it put a thrill in him. A muted one, a short spear from the base of his spine to his stomach, tightening in his thighs, but it was there. Life. The electric spark that kicked his corpse into staggering motion. Grinning, Casper took the steps between them slow and purposeful until he stood toe-to-toe with Cain. The wind whipped the overlong edges of his hair against his forehead and ears. Gusts of it buffeted him into the chill pressure surrounding Cain as if those ancient moans were pleads for Casper to fall into his arms.

Cain looked down. Oh, and he made a point of looking down, eyebrow raised, a hooded gaze down his nose as if Casper was nothing more than a roach beneath his boot. Something railed against Casper's ribs, and no part of him wanted to call that gasping, thumping, shrivelled thing his heart, but it thundered there, seizing, as Casper gathered the words on his tongue.

"I bet he was laughing when he died because at least he finally got away from you and all your fucking poison. I bet it was your fucking fault."

A spasm went through Cain's features, tight, and oh, it must say volumes for how deep that blade stuck that it showed at all. Casper's whole body trembled, strung right up to the edge, and the anticipation of Cain's hand snapping out, the blow to his face or his gut, the shove to the floor and the foot lashed into his side – that anticipation had his breath hitching in his chest, quivering through his very bones.

It didn't come.

"You're a foul creature, Casper," Cain hissed, words as much a part of the wind as reality.

Casper laughed spitefully and shoved Cain in the chest, but he stood against the blow, immovable. Frustration tightened through Casper's gut and he slapped his palms there again. "Aren't you going to hit me?"

"No." Cain's mouth stretched into the parody of a smirk. "Not when it's what you want"

"You said you'd give me anything I want, you fucking liar. Don't I deserve what I want, daddy?" That drew a twitch in Cain's cheek, the jumping of a muscle pulled bowstring tight. Casper let a giggle spill his lips and he leant in, laid both his palms against Cain's chest, the shirt a thin barrier between his palms and the cold radiating from Cain's marble chest. "Aren't I allowed to talk about your pretty little lost boy anyway, daddy? He's me after all, isn't he? Surely I can—"

"Stop touching me, Casper."

Oh, there was the tension. Casper bore his fingers deeper into Cain's chest and grinned up at him. "No. I thought you'd love —"

"Right now."

"—me touching you, daddy. That's what I'm here for, isn't—"

"Right fucking now, Casper!"

"I'm here," Casper hissed with his chin pressed against Cain's chest and his fingers claws in his skin, "because I'm nothing but a fucking ghost to make you feel better that it's your fault he—"

Rotten cold buffeted Casper back. Not strong enough to throw him from his feet, but it pushed his hands from Cain and forced Casper a stumbled step back. Dickhead went staggering back too, shoulders hunched in and his hand clutched to his throat, but that wasn't the sorcery – that was all how miserable desperate he was to run away from Casper.

Cain roared at him, all ragged around the edges, and the fearful passion of it burnt in his eyes. "You're nothing like him, Cas! Fucking nothing. You're a foul, loathsome little beast and he'd fucking hate himself for ever turning out anything like you so don't you fucking dare talk about—"

Casper screamed right back at him. The volume sliced in his throat, a physical pain against his broken voice, and his rage shattered in the air. "Then why don't you fucking let me go?"

"Because I still fucking love you!"

Casper stopped. The warm shock threw a blanket across the rage, melting the black knife of his tongue in his mouth, but what followed forced all that feeling down his throat and left him nothing but the dark.

"And," Cain hissed, "it's a far worse curse than anything those two have ever inflicted on me because no matter how vile you are, I can't stop fucking loving you."

At the last two words, Cain's voice cracked, and he straightened, hands coming up to rub across his face. He stood there like a martyr, shaking shoulders and the wind tearing at his clothes. Made a kid sick. Like everything else hadn't. Like everything else didn't gather like black ooze in Casper's gut and now, the foul mass of it overflowed. It crept up his throat to seep from between his teeth.

This was where he ran away, spat at Cain's feet and sprinted across the grounds, the petrichor a poison on his tongue and the long grass tangling around his feet. Find a new place to hide away, bury himself in the earth or crawl inside a tree and pray, pray, pray that the ground swallowed him up, and he just died trapped there beneath the soil with his mouth full of dirt.

Dirt which squirmed in prudishness against the touch of his filthy skin.

But the earth only swallowed his feet, and Casper couldn't move. Hatred boiled in his gut like a physical thing, but this hot, red shame clamped down on his tongue, and he stood in stupefied silence while Cain hunched amongst the howling wind and tortured himself.

Why was he doing this? It was sick. It was sick and stupid. Only that Casper who'd held Cain's hands and whispered apologies would ever get free. Only that Casper could keep afloat and not drown in this pitch-black tar that consumed him from the inside.

That Casper was a dead, false thing. All that really lived in this shell was the ghoul.

It wasn't here. He couldn't see it because he was it and it was him.

When Cain lowered his hands, it wasn't to tears and heartbreak. His face was dry and implacable, calm but for the sneer curling his lip. All of him was the immovable rock around which the wind howled, impotent, for an eternity while never abrading from him an inch.

"Let's do this again, shall we, Casper?" Cain said, a flat, black murmur that sounded in Casper's ears as if it had been whispered against them. "What do you want? And let's be reasonable this time, hm? You have one ask, so don't make it a stupid one."

Swallow that spitting poison, Roach Boy. Psycho looked serious. More backbone there than Casper had ever dreamed, and for the sake of a scratch against this iron he presented, it wasn't worth missing a chance. Casper's heart knocked against his ribs and he swallowed around the dryness in his mouth.

His throat hurt. Right down in that weird place that Jack had never been able to understand hurting. The ripping sensation he got when he screamed too hard or long. Casper pressed his lips together and rubbed his hand over his throat.

"Why is this happening to me?"

It was a whisper. His lips barely moved and Cain either didn't hear or chose to ignore it.

What did he want? Give me dope. Let me go. Let me die. No deal this time, Roach Boy. The buzzer sounds but it's not a happy noise, so what's the right answer?

Louder, Casper said, "I want to go out." Not that his voice even scratched above the wind.

Immediately, Cain snorted, the impassive mask turning to one of derisive humour. "Well, look at that, love. Here I'd thought you weren't bloody stupid, but it looks like—"

"Not let go." Casper bared his teeth and crept closer. Did it as if he was trying to be intimidating with all this five foot not-even-quite-a-half and not just closing the distance for his voice to travel. "Not that that should be stupid, you fucking nut. I wanna go out."

Cain's lips tightened. "You are—"

"I'm sick of being in here! It's the same fucking day over and over and you're never here and I'm going crazy!"

It wasn't as if Casper had actually had friends. None worth the name, and only a handful that could take it for lack of a better moniker, all of whom he saw exclusively out getting fucked up. But it wasn't the point. It wasn't about loneliness; it was freedom. So, so many days he'd spent as drifting flotsam on the scum-choked currents of the city streets, and he hated the clamouring noise and the chaos, but sometimes, he stumbled onto something a little more.

A quiet coffee shop, a garden where the overhanging trees muffled the noise, a cat curled up beneath a post box.

Now he was trapped here with one man, some nutcase fucking lunatic, going absolutely cabin fever fucking crazy.

And let's not touch on 'you're never here', cretin.

A touch of wetness brushed Casper's cheek. Good excuse to look away from the knives Cain wielded against him with that gaze. The clouds still brooded low and as Casper turned his face up, another two droplets splashed against his skin. Quicker, they came. Eager to escape the greedy hold of the clouds, but their flight ended only in death dashed against the unforgiving earth. Casper opened his mouth and one broke against his tongue.

Their suicide tasted so sweet.

With a sharp hiss between his teeth, Cain relented. "Fine. You want to go outside? I'll take you outside. We'll go back to your flat and get everything I've missed, how's that?"

Casper's heart lurched. Out. Out. The word blazed in his mind like fireworks lit up the outlines of those three splendid letters, and the possibilities smacked him so hard his mind just stopped. He hadn't even been angling for that when he asked, but now it was there and ... the city. The crowds and the chaos and the infinite places to get lost. It ... It couldn't actually be that—

A sharp, acerbic laugh slapped him back the other way, into the reality of the wind like knives against his cheeks and Cain's brooding figure cut against the sky. His lips twisted into something cruel and an unfamiliar darkness lurked behind his eyes.

"I'm not that stupid, before you get any ideas. Pet wants a walk, pet stays on a leash." And as if to prove a point, a cold beyond all that raked on the winter air curled around Casper's throat, a breath, a promise, snuffing out the brief candle of hope. "Tomorrow at nine. Take it or leave it, Cas. You'll get nothing better, especially when you're being such a foul little brat."

And with that, he stalked away. Every wind-strewn branch that he passed swept into the air as if whipped up by a tornado and rocketed into the distance in a streak of black malaise.