Footsteps tapped against the floor. Slow, careful heel-to-toes. Casper didn't move, even when they stopped before him and that stranger sunk to the floor. For a long time, nothing. Quiet. Silence. The pain paralyzed even his thoughts to stillness as he waited on the precipice for Cain to say it: I never loved you. You've always been a ghost.

Or would it just be more lies?

"Shall I sit here and tell you all the things I've found in you to love that I've never seen before, Cas? I could start small, tell you about how even when you try to pretend to be all apathy, if I've made you laugh your nose scrunches up behind your hand. No other you I've known let's that slip. And this you, Cas – there's this part of you that's so bright and playful. It's so beautiful to see. The first you was just the same, but even he'd never have dared touch my work. Just like I'd never catch you with about five metric tonnes of cake stuffed in your mouth like I did him.

"No other you has been a vegetarian, Cas, and I like that. I think it suits you. No other you would"—his voice cracked, a smear of wet across his cheek as he brushed his face—"would've done the stuff you've had to do. I told you before that no you has ever hated the city.

"I think ... I think I have at least an ounce of self-awareness. I fell for it the first go 'round. I fell for an idea and ... and it wasn't good. It was you, but it wasn't my you, and my own expectations cocked it up. Since then – now that I know it will always be you – I look for the differences, and you wouldn't believe how many beautiful things that's opened my eyes to."

Why did Cain have to keep talking? All this sweetness choking in Casper's lungs so thick with sugar-glazed beauty he couldn't breathe around it.

It was fake. He was crazy. He had to be crazy.

Spite burnt his tongue, venom so vile it soured every candyfloss word Cain spun for him in the foul ooze of self-loathing. "If I'm so different to every other me then how fucking crazy are you thinking we're the same. What is it, love? Do we have all have a birthmark on our ass? Do we all pour drinks like we hate ourselves? Or is it an aura? Can you just sense it, oh sorcerous one?"

So why didn't the spite burn Cain too? God, the opposite. New life flowered in his pleading tone, a flurry of fresh violets like laughter. "I'm not that much of a bloody fool, Cas. You look just the same, and so do I. Every—"

Casper jerked to his feet. "That's not how fucking reincarnation works!"

He stalked across the room, hands wound through his hair. The ghoul capered in his reflection in the crystal-fronted cabinet, and its face was nothing but dark shadows and black planes.

It wasn't real.

It wasn't real.

The words all tumbled from his mouth in a moaning, groaning mess. "Oh my god this is even worse. You don't even see my face when you look at me. I thought you at least saw me, but you don't. None of this makes sense. It doesn't make sense."

He wasn't real.

Distorted in the reflection in the cabinet, some rotting twitching figure clambered up from the rug. Its steps were slow, creeping up behind him. Icy spiders clambered all across Casper's back now, clammy heat clutching his neck. He wanted to scream and run but he couldn't move. His vision was a camera centred on his face. Rustling behind him, and the panicked gasps of his breath but he couldn't turn his head. Couldn't move. Couldn't look away from the monster that peered out of his own skin.

Tension ratcheted through his spine as Cain's voice smoothed Casper's sweaty hair back from his face and pulled open his jaw, wider and wider and wider until the bone snapped. The ghoul hunkered over his body forced its hands down his gullet, claws tearing out his lungs. Gore and blood and choking vomit oozed around its grey-flesh.

Cain's soft-spoken words made a susurrus soundtrack to the horrorshow moment.

"Perhaps the little things are different," Cain murmured, and the sweetness was all the sweetness of rot, "but there's some things that are always the same. The very core of you, Cas. You're always so bloody free. Every single you I meet, even from the first time we talk, it's so easy. I always make you laugh, and you always make me laugh, and we always understand each other better than everyone else in the world. You're always made like the person I was made to fall in love with and I do. Every single time."

The monster in the mirror kept shuffling closer. Its limbs shuddered through the air and each hoot slid through the gaps in Cain's words. Step. Hoot. Sweetness. Terror.

Terror.

This time Casper was in the mirror with it and the ghoul grinned and cackled and watched in his place.

"This is happening to us because the universe has been ... manipulated. It's not because of fate, but I believe it's the workings of a power something like fate. I remember who I am the day I turn eighteen and by then, no matter what divergent path my life has taken in whatever new timeline I've shifted into, things always turn out more-or-less the same. At least in the essence that makes us the people we are at the time fate is ... sticking us to."

The face in the camera trembled, muscles tight and straining and its eyes roved wild. What was behind him? What was hidden just out of sight and the bottom of the bed? Just out of sight outside the door? Heavy breaths and heavy footsteps and breath stinking of vodka hot against side of his face as he trembled and pretended to sleep.

"It's the same with you, Cas." Cain brushed a greasy tangle of hair out of his sallow face. Baring skin to the beast. "It's different, but at its core it's the same, as if the whole universe revolves around creating the moments that create you."

Whatcha doin' sleeping, Cassie? You know you gotta work tonight.

"It's fate, is it?" the ghoul hissed. Voice like shattered glass. "It was always meant to turn out this way."

"I don't like it either, Cas, but I can't deny it any longer. And if there's anything I'm happy for fate to control, it's that there's always, always you."

"Always the same." A sharp, hysterical laugh tore from his throat. The camera pulled back, panning left. Beside the struggling boy, another face panted against his. Foul grin and rugged stubble and his tongue sliding over the ghoul's cheek. "A hundred different mes and we all turn out the same... Is that it then?"

The ghoul turned its dead black pits toward Cain, necrotic drool oozing from between its rotting, needle teeth. The man still panted in his ear. Bang. Bang. Bang. Count down to zero.

"If everything's destined, did I always deserve this? Did I always deserve my dad hating me? All that beaten kid self-esteem crap that made me end up with—with him."

A surge of nausea went through Casper, that tongue slathering wet against his cheek. He forced the words out a ragged scream that tore at his throat. "Did I fucking deserve getting sold by my own fucking boyfriend every fucking time I got too fucking high to complain? For years, Cain, until I ran away. Do I fucking deserve that?"

Choking, he shoved Cain back, right in his chest. "Is that your fucking—fate? Is that my fucking—DESTINY?"

His knees gave. The floor didn't even hurt. Not as much as the raging chaos strangling his mind. It hurt. It hurt. "It hurts." He couldn't breathe. Fabric choking in his throat. "I can't breathe. I don't—I don't deserve this. I don't. I don't."

Something lifted him up. Casper shrieked at the touch and slammed his hands against unyielding flesh. "Get off! Get off. Get off. Let go!"

But Cain didn't. Just the space between his crossed legs, one arm around Casper's waist and the other cradling his head to his chest. After the gut reaction passed, everything just ... died. Everything but the bugs that lived under his skin and the sickness that went so deep it stained his bones.

"Tell me this isn't all there is," Casper whispered to him. "This can't be all there is."

"It's not, love." Long fingers slipped through his hair, scratching against his scalp. Casper felt the way the words choked up in Cain's lungs through his ribs. "God, Cassie, it's not. If everything was the same, things wouldn't be different."

And somehow, that made all the difference. At least in this agony of right now.

"He found me." Cain's arms tightened. A soft oh fell from his lips. "That's what happened that night. He—He found me. Him and one of his friends. I can never get away and this—this feeling—this feeling like I'm just rotting under my skin—it's never going to go away. What else can I do but just die?"

"I can kill him, Cas." Tension burned low in his voice now, dark enough to make Casper shudder. "Say the word, my love, and I'll find that creature wherever he's hiding. Nothing tortures quite like sorcery, love, and no one tortures quite like me."

"No." Fuck knew why. Because you're spineless, Roach Boy. Look at you curled up in the arms of a psycho deluded into loving you. You're nothing but a worm. "No." It was to get away. It was all to get away. The line had smeared to a sick gradient between reality and his own delusion, perspective flipped and black turned white and white turned sick grey. But what he knew was that he was getting out.

One sliver. Deep, deep in the pits on a website that talked madness but for each snippet of knowledge Casper knew about this sorcery lining up like an ascension. Lead cuts through sorcery like a knife through butter.

What did it matter if he loved Cain if it got him out?

The ghoul pushed apart Casper's legs and settled its head on Casper's thigh. Its breath stained the air black and foul. Slow, it slid its hand inside its jeans.

"I'm broken," Casper whispered. Blink and the ghoul's clothes were gone. Nothing but that mottled brown-red skin and the scars stark, rotten black against the grey. Casper couldn't take his eyes off it as its hand moved along itself. Up and down and up and down. "How can you look at me and see anything but sickness? You said it's only me, but I'm—I'm not me because of this. It's stained all of me. I'm just some fucked up little junkie whore one wrong day away from falling apart."

Soft laughter huffed against Casper's hair, and Cain's nose rubbed against his scalp as he shook his head. "You think that, do you?"

Casper twisted his head back and scowled up at Cain. Tears streaked Cain's cheeks, bloodshot eyes. But right now, there was just a soft smile on his lips, turned arch by the lift of his eyebrows. "Fuck off."

"I'm just awfully curious how bad your wrong day has to be. I told you before, sweet, you were the bravest person I've ever known, and now..." Cain brushed a lock of hair back from Casper's forehead, his eyebrows softening out and the smile edging to melt. "After all of this, love, you're still here. After all they did to you and after all I did to you, and everything else in your life ... you're still so, so full of life and it's incredible.

Casper pressed his hand to his mouth, choking down the sob. Cain's words were just like the arms that cradled him, gentle and strong and safe wrapped around him, just like his lips pressed against his forehead, a cool salve against the fever sweat in his mind. It was so much sweeter than anyone had any fucking right to talk to him.

"I'm sure I'm different each time as well, Cas. The past lives ... I remember them, but it's very ... hazy. Like remembering something that happened to someone else. The first time and the last are clearest. The beginning changes, and that must change me a little each time as well. This one—" Cain swallowed. His eyes shifting away. "This one was very hard. Because of that, I'm not sure I'd love you quite as much if you weren't exactly the way you are now."

"Wh—Why was it hard?"

Cain shook his head, a flicker of tightness around his lips as he stroked Casper's hair. "I don't want to talk about it, love. And this is about you, not me." He kissed Casper's forehead, lips lingering. His breath still came like tickles of snow behind his warming lips. "I'm so proud of you, Cas. You've been so, so brave. I wish you could see all that, love. I wish you could see all the beautiful bits of yourself that I love so much."

Casper shook his head. His lips trembled and some great horrid mass pressed against his skull. A hulking creature of sludge and ooze and matted vines rising out of the black waters. It stunk so vilely of chaos and debasement that it burnt his eyes.

He didn't deserve it.

"I'm not. I—I—I'm just—I'm just dirty and used up and I can't live in this fucking skin. You can't love me. No one can love me. No one's ever loved me. Not even Jack. A—All this hurt and he just screams at me. And I deserve it!"

"No. God, no, Cas, you don't—"

"I do!" Casper sobbed and tore his fingers back through his shitty, greasy hair. "I'm fucking dirt I'm—"

"Cas—"

"I'm dirt! I deserve everything."

"Cassie, baby—"

"If there's fucking fate this is all payback for how much of a foul, filthy roach I am. I deserve to die, Cain, and you don't love me. You can't—"

Cain grabbed his jaw and kissed him. Salt bloomed on Casper's lips, stinging the torn flesh. He screamed into Cain's mouth. Shoved at his chest, fists and nails, but the cunt wouldn't let go. Fingers bruised his jaw and it was nothing but a crush of lips on lips and the gathering heat in Cain's arm closed on his waist so tight he couldn't move.

A moan tore up Casper's chest. He didn't deserve this. It wasn't real. None of it was real.

But how could he deny those lips, the passionate insistence against Casper's and the sobs of Cain's gasping breaths. He couldn't. All the fight flooded away, but not to calm. It sunk. Hot and intense, and Casper cried out, anguished, against Cain's lips, opening himself to the desperation in the embrace.

Between the hot presses of the kiss, Cain growled to him, and those guttural vows held more raw honesty than Casper thought anyone ever capable of. Cain swore he loved him. He swore Casper was the most beautiful person in the world. The brightest star in the sky. All the stars in the sky, in a night black as the void without the radiant light Casper put in his life.

He swore everything was real and Casper was real and this Casper he loved more than all that had come before and if Casper died, he would die. Forever. For good. Be it an eternity of scratches of light out of the darkness before he snuffed the flame out himself because all that could come after would be naught but ash after this taste of nirvana.

"Don't make me be without you," Cain gasped in his ear, lips searing and sloppy and wet against the sensitive skin. Casper arched into it, moan trapped up in the thickness in his throat. "I can't lose you. They can't take you. Not again, Cassie. Not again. Please not again."

Casper whimpered and clutched him tight. Everything ached. Ached in a way it hadn't in so long and all his muscles wouldn't stop shuddering. Thick phlegm clogged his throat and his nose and so many screamed words struggled on his tongue, but out of their brawl, the small, quick ones slipped. A whimper. A pitiful cry that drowned in déjà vu.

"I'm not special." Cain's breath broke against his throat. "I'm just a roach. How can I be anything special?"

"God, Cas..." Cooler, this kiss. A lingering press with Cain's forehead resting against his temple. Exhausted, but still aching with passion. "If only you could see yourself through my eyes. Can't you tell by the way you make me smile? Even in my very first life, I never realised how much I could feel until I realised that I loved you."

Casper shuddered and squeezed his eyes closed. God, he could see it. That smile. Huge and dopey and aching with love, eyes like he looked upon an angel. Casper sniffed, but nothing moved, nose all stuffed and blocked off. A question stumbled on the tip of his tongue. Probably didn't even want to know the damn answer but all clumsy, it tripped off anyway. "Do—Do I ... Do I look at you like that?"

Whatever expression went with the tightening of Cain's arms and the indrawn breath, it was hidden away against Casper's throat. The words came so low that Casper couldn't even tell the inflection that went with them.

"I ... I think you do, love. Sometimes I think you do."