Mystery boyfriend didn't come home while Casper ransacked the flat for his drug stash and stuck that – pills and dope – into his backpack along with some of the cooler clothes in the wardrobe. He ate what he could scrape together out of the barren cupboards and fridge, and then left a note for boyfriend saying not to expect him back, sorry about all that, yada yada before heading out into the streets.

Dealing got him enough cash to get himself a flight by evening, and maybe it wasn't that profitable – fuck knew how much he'd spent on this stuff – but how much he'd spent didn't matter a damn. Soon as he got his thousand-pound tenner, he dumped the rest on the nodding dopehead and wished him good luck.

He was getting on that plane and he was never coming back until Cain was by his side again.

The tube to the airport stunk of piss and Casper rested his tired legs stretched out into the corridor. The rattle of the window shook his brains, but he closed his eyes and fell into it. Maybe almost fell to sleep before the announcement that they were at the airport jangled through his brain.

And the airport seemed just like any other airport. Casper had been to the airport a lot before he ran away and then only once afterwards. In the early days – not too early, but once things got really good – Jack had taken him on holiday. Only to Appalachia, but he'd made it all a big surprise, right up until they got off the tube into the airport, and Casper had grinned for the whole plane ride. It'd been amazing, that trip, and not long after that, Casper had moved in with him and things begun to spiral.

Living with Casper didn't do anyone good. No one but Cain, that was.

There was a queue at the ticket counter. About five people, and Casper settled in to wait behind them. Voices whirred all around him, a thousand conversations all at once in this vast, warehouse terminal. Flights scrolled across LED screens, a thousand different routes to a thousand different stories. Casper watched it while he shuffled forward, waiting for his.

It had been the only one to the entire southern region today, and as he didn't have any idea where Cain was, he might as well put himself in the tender care of fate. It was in three hours, he knew, and it had three stops and it took almost two days with layovers. Two days and he'd step out into the baking African heat and every step he took out of those airport doors would bring him one step closer to Cain.

Casper sniffed and rubbed at his eyes. Two days too long. Every minute away from him dug more out of this strange emptiness inside his chest. And what about Cain? He remembered when he turned eighteen, didn't he? Casper's passport said he was twenty-two, and Cain was already eight years older than him. Twelve years without him.

And before that ... it must have been when he ate the heart. He must have keeled over and not gotten back up after all of that. The sting in Casper's eyes doubled down and he swiped at them again. It must have broken Cain's heart. Probably why he was out in the Kong chopping people's heads off with machetes.

Seemed about right for Casper really. Roach Boy with the evil supervillain boyfriend who started wars when he got sad.

The desk girl asked if he was alright when he stepped up to the counter. Casper said he would be soon and bought his ticket. Eight hundred and fifty-six pounds, which left him about one thirty to survive on until he found Cain. Hopefully money would stretch a bit further out there. Existing in this body that had never had all that filth done to it – at least none that Casper could remember – he just ... couldn't go back. There'd have to be a different way to make money.

Seeing as he was already broke as shit (in the grand scheme of things), he figured might as well get himself an obscenely over-priced airport coffee while he waited. A latte. One with whipped cream and gingerbread syrup and chocolate sprinkles and two extra espresso shots. His eyes blurred as he watched whipped cream bob on the way back to his table. It'd probably remind him of Cain forever, these comfort coffees, and that just made them all the sweeter.

There was a service desk by the café. An executive looking one and it made the seating area a little quieter than everywhere else. Meant when someone started shouting behind him when he was halfway through his coffee, he really heard.

"How many times do I have to bloody tell you that I am not staying in this city for another bloody ten minutes, let alone twenty-four fucking hours? I fly with one demand, and that is not to land me here. Look at my face, Cherry. Your company gets me on my way to LA within the hour or Mister bloody fucking Executive comes home to his wife's mutilated corpse hanging in his front room. Ring him and tell him that, Cherry. Now, and I don't give a fuck how many commercial airlines he has to delay."

Casper stared into his cup with his heart pounding so hard he couldn't breathe. A tear dripped into his coffee and some wet huff of laughter spluttered from his lips. Sure, he sounded about nine gazillion times angrier than Casper had ever heard him, but it was him. Even with some weird ass accent that sounded so much coarser than it had last time, it was Cain.

Casper dragged in a deep breath and wiped his eyes, tears smearing over his face. He'd started shouting at the desk lady again, and Casper would absolutely have a go at him for that afterwards. When they were lying in Cain's bed in Cain's house with Casper wrapped up in Cain's arms and it had all become their bed and their house and their life, and Casper could be with him forever.

Make him happy forever.

Standing from the table felt gargantuan. The one step he took away from the chair to get his bag like a step into a new life. This was a different world. A different universe, maybe, some mess of parallels.

Maybe it wasn't that Casper and Cain kept getting moved between them but that Casper and Cain always existed and fate always brought them together no matter how many different strings the universe soared off on. Maybe this curse just planted "them" into the head of a different iteration. In fact, maybe Cain had been the only one skipping between worlds before, and every time, he'd only found the Casper that belonged to that universe, not any repetition of his first lost boy.

Cain probably didn't want to think that, but ... at least he had this Casper now. The worst one. The fucked up shitty mess. Roach Boy in all his sick flesh, and maybe it was telling that the first new body he'd woken up in was almost as ruined as his.

Cain's voice had gotten quieter now, brusque and sharp as he made the arrangements for his flight. One demand – never this city. Never the city where fate would conspire to break his heart again, and here it had – just a layover and Casper was right here. Cain could never escape him and after what Casper had done to him the last time ... did he even want him back?

How did he look? Did he really look just the same?

Casper had to blink away the haze in his eyes as he glanced at the executive desk, and his breath left him in a gasp. Only his back, but every inch of the shape of him was Cain. Tall and leggy and his back impeccably straight even if his shoulders hunched, tense and angry. He wore the same fucking white shirt and the same fucking black slacks and his hair was still cut in that same gorgeous old school way, parted to the side and undercut beneath the glossy waves. Fuck, Casper could still see the way his fingers pinched the bridge of his nose while he spoke, burnished with a gorgeous honey-brown tan the same as the back of his neck and his forearms.

Literally every squirming, aching inch of himself wanted to run over, but he couldn't make his legs move. Not his tongue. Nothing.

What if he doesn't want me back?

The thought paralyzed him.

Doesn't he deserve a better me?

Shit. Casper sniffed hard against his running nose and ducked his head. He managed a half-turn away as he rubbed at his face with his sleeves. What did he do now? The board scrolled and told him his flight was in two hours now, but Cain was right here, and Casper had already cut all his ties and spent eight hundred fucking dollars on a ticket. So ... what else was left?

A hiccup choked up his throat and fresh tears tumbled down his cheeks. He was already a mess. He'd already shot up because the withdrawals set in, and he wasn't even angry that he'd not even gotten this body hooked because he'd gotten his old one way worse and he deserved this.

Funny, hadn't Levi called Cain a dope fiend? He'd said before how well he knew how Casper felt. Kind of made it worse. Kind of made it all him that was fucked up and messed up 'cause of how much he needed his mind to disappear, not just the need.

He should go. Let Cain have a life without him, without watching him die and blaming himself for it. Casper could make himself stronger on his own. Maybe if he got strong enough, he could plot a way to kill Ella and Levi. Really let Cain have this life, not with this lying, manipulative junkie – Wolfsbane ripping out Cain's goddamn heart because his was already in shreds on the floor.

One more look. Maybe he'd glimpse the side of Cain's face, and he'd trap that memory in his mind, feed on it while he wasted away.

Casper smeared more tears over his cheeks and with a shuddering breath, glanced around.

Cain clasped his hand to his mouth when their eyes met, fingers tight on the counter and his eyes brimming over with a prism of emotion that coalesced to blinding white. All sound ceased. The world past the tunnel between Casper and Cain blurred to an indistinguishable miasma of grey and colour. Empty, but for the thump, thump, thump of his heart breaking in his veins.

Cain really did look just the same. And he looked just the same when he ripped his own heart out so he could tear his eyes away. A hiss to the desk lady, hand slammed on the counter, and he snatched a bag off the floor and took off back into the main area of the terminal. He didn't look at Casper when he walked past, and for a second, Casper almost didn't follow.

But fuck that.

A cacophony went up as Casper barged between tables. He vaulted the fence hemming the café, china smashing behind him but fuck that too. Fuck everyone who looked at him weird as he sprinted after Cain with tears staining his cheeks, and that fucker was the worst because he angry-speed-walked so quickly and his stupid aura got everyone out of the way and into Casper's way.

For a moment, Casper lost sight of him. Enough to make his stomach drop out, but a moment later, there he was again. Fifty metres ahead talking to a security guard at the bottom of a staircase hemmed off by a red rope.

Well, shouting at him.

Wheezing, Casper put a new burst into his legs and leaped over some old biddy's suitcase. Hit someone else and shoved them away before they caught their feet.

Cain was through the barrier.

Walking up the stairs.

"CAIN!"

The guard grabbed him before he could jump straight over the barrier, and they both spun with his momentum. Casper screamed around the shock through his chest, hollow calls to the back halfway up the stairs.

He wasn't turning. Shit, he wasn't even fucking looking! Casper sobbed as the guard shoved him to the floor and wrenched his arms behind his back. "Cain! Cain, it's me! It's Cas! Please—"

A blow to the centre of his back knocked the air out of his lungs and the guard pressed his face into the ground. More footsteps hammered across the tiles, a roar of voices like the tide hammering in to drown him.

And it had drowned out entirely the set coming down the stairs. "Let him go. Now."

"Sir, this individual—"

"Did you listen to a word I bloody said, or do you want me to rip off your arm and jam it down your throat? Get off him before I make you."

The guard's weight vanished, and Casper barely had a moment to retch in air before a hand closed on the collar of his jacket and hauled him to his feet. Cain's face was an inch away. Dead, hard Cain with sun-burnished skin and a scar along his perfect jaw. His lip curled in a sneer and there was nothing in his eyes.

"Who are you?" he hissed, close enough that the chill of his breath whispered over Casper's face. "Which one?"