Voices clamoured, the hiss of steam and the clash of plates an orchestra backing to the chorus of laughs and shouts and the constant, muttering backdrop of conversations drowning out tinkling notes of coffeeshop jazz.

Casper didn't think he'd breathed once for the last hour, lunch rush in full swing and corporate children swarming through the coffeeshop like ants pouring onto spilt sugar. He had the till, and Jess and that other girl Casper couldn't name for the life of him sprinted between machine, food counter, fridge so fast Casper got a little dizzy watching.

Really, he was kind of jealous. He'd run production for a crowd twice this big rather than grinning and bearing it at the till. He'd been cursed out for that other girl making the wrong order twice already, and there was something about being ignored even when people talked to you that made his skin itch. Next on the carousel were two mid-ladder finance bros (and hey, you got to know the type and the price tag on the clothes), joking between themselves while Casper gritted his teeth and tried to extract an order.

He hollered it to Jess, slapping the cups on the counter, and she grabbed them, spinning so fast her ponytail swatted her in the face. She caught Casper's eye, spitting hair from her mouth, and they both burst out laughing.

No matter the racket in the shop, finance bro #1's voice – sorry, George's voice – cut through it all just fine. "Uh oh, that's why that one doesn't smile. Coffee bitch doesn't pay dental!"

They both chortled and Casper froze. Heat that had lain just beneath his skin creeping under his collar now, prickling his cheeks and his throat. His tongue flickered across the two missing teeth just to the right of his front ones – canine and the first molar – and stuck there, the edges pinched where his teeth ground together. Something hot climbed in his throat. Something red.

Jess caught his eyes, a tightness coming to her lips as she shook her head. "Cas..."

There was a warning in that, but Casper wasn't going to be working a strewn chaos of min-wage jobs for the rest of his fucking life because he listened to warnings.

Casper leant over the counter, hands splayed and tightened to claws. Withheld laughter tightened in both of their faces, and it was fucking stupid, but he couldn't stop himself. Red pulsed behind his eyes, demanded and Casper obeyed, twisted his neck to snarl right in finance bro's face, baring his teeth.

His rasped words rung in the small silence that had gathered around the counter as Coffee Boy put his toes out of line. "Maybe if I smash your fat fucking mouth in, I can jam two of yours in there for free."

Finance bro #2 burst into chortling laughter – and hey, if Casper was in a more genial mood, he'd call it good-humoured – as did everyone else near the counter who wasn't too busy ruffling their tailored feathers, but George didn't. George didn't like someone less talking to him like they weren't shit beneath his boot. His face went plum red just a heartbeat before his hand lashed out and twisted through Casper's collar. The string of the apron yanked tight across his throat and Casper wheezed, black spots blooming at the corner of his eyes. Through it he grinned, baring his teeth as the rushing of his blood filled the space the sudden hush left in the room.

"How dare you speak to me like that?" George hissed through his teeth.

Casper stuck his tongue out, lolling as he panted to get more breath into his lungs. No matter that it was the blood his brain screamed for. "You wanna hear worse, cunt? How about I start with how your mom's gonna scream when I break down her fucking door?"

The splodges swamped his vision now, and if George said anything, it was lost in the pounding behind his ears. The flitting tunnel of his gaze caught George's tightening fist.

Casper's hand closed on the counter, his feet scrabbling beneath it for something to shove off. Shit this was such a bad idea. Shit, finance bro had a damn fucking strong grip on him. Casper coughed, twisting back, hand slapping at—

The hold vanished. Choking, Casper stumbled, only the instinctual white-knuckle grip on the counter keeping him upright. Hacked his fucking lungs out onto it too, bent in half against the whirling in his skull as blood rushed back in.

The coffeeshop was in an uproar of hazy muttering through the whining in his ears. Tears stinging the corner of his eyes, Casper looked up and came face-to-face with the white-slack, petrified faces of the finance bro duo.

And right above them, Mr Cutest Smile of the damn fucking Universe, but that smile didn't look half so cute now. Hands high on each of the men's shoulders, his impeccable nails resting in the hollow just above neatly starched shirt collars, Cain loomed.

Casper, who'd had a boyfriend once who was six-seven and lurked in dark corners wearing gothic splendour, didn't use the word loomed lightly, but Cain garnered it. His smile was nothing but sharp-edged teeth, and his eyes were the way the blade glinted in the sunlight before it came down on your throat. A certain darkness edged him, but Casper couldn't tell if that was him or just the way every blathering, sniggering corporate dick in the vicinity had gone cold and quiet as death when he curled his fingers around those meaty throats.

Whatever it was, it sucker-punched Casper right in the fucking gut. The hot-fisted smack of arousal that slapped a gasp out of him. And shit, maybe that smile was a fanged fucking nightmare, but Casper wanted those white teeth winking out of velvet night while he cried down on his knees.

"I think," Cain said, in a voice like black velvet, "that we'll be leaving now. Come along, boys."

George and his friend looked right about to shit themselves as Cain shoved them toward the door, just a flick of his wrists that sent them stumbling, and he held his hands with his fingers splayed for a moment, a flicker of a curl to his lip, before flicking his coat back and slipping them in his pockets.

"Ashlyn?" A woman the other side of the barrier that the queue snaked about started at being addressed. Cain didn't wait for her acknowledgement. "Be a dear and have a coffee sent up to my office. Latte"—those dark, smouldering eyes flickered to Casper, and the corner of his lips drew up into a crooked smile that had Casper's heart slamming against his ribcage— "large."

Three cheers for Roach Boy that he didn't just melt into a goopy puddle of invertebrate then and there.

Cain swept off while Ashlyn still stuttered out her answer— "Y—Yes, Mr Smith, sir"– and Casper watched him go with his breath echoing between his ears. Kinda felt like his brain swanned out the door right alongside the asshole, leaving him with nothing but dying murmurs and his own gasping breaths.

The Finance Bros had awaited Cain outside the shop, the fearful white circles of their faces flashing away the moment Cain's eyes strayed from Casper. Once the bell rung behind him, he led the pair into the milling crowd with one long-fingered hand splayed across the backs of their necks.

Casper's hands shook as he rung through the rest of the queue. Usually, the rush consumed him in a beat, his whole working life spent plunged in a mind-grinding monotony of orders for cash for food and drink. Rinse repeat. Rinse repeat. Rinse out your brain in scalding coffee and the buttery grease of fast food.

(Barista he could probably do for the rest of his life. Food service he'd done two shifts then smashed a burger into someone's face.)

Not this time though – the monotony, that was – this time his thoughts trembled along a wire-edge, a gnawing curiosity that tapped two-step along the tension that each thump of his heart teased through his veins.

When Ashlyn reached the till, Casper had to stop himself lunging for her and taking her herringbone pantsuit in his teeth, rabid dog flailing her around for answers. Instead he grinned, and it must've been a real bad one to get that flinch from her, and plucked a cup from the top of the machine.

"So..." Casper wrote, very carefully, Kane across the cup. Then crossed it out and wrote Cain beneath it. "Who was that?"

Ashlyn looked affronted by the question, wrinkles splaying beneath her deftly made up face. "Why, don't you watch the news? That's Mr Cain Smith, President of Smith Inc." Her chest puffed beneath the hideous gnawing pattern of her jacket. "He made the headlines just yesterday."

"What, for tax evasion?"

The question seemed beneath Ashlyn to answer. Haughtily, she ordered a cappuccino with the frills, and then some fancy up-jumped version of Cain's latte like the added sugar might favour her a sweet smile. Casper scribbled a little winking face next to Cain's name while he pretended to write the additions on the cup, and if that splodge of ink next to the mouth kinda looked like a heart, it definitely wasn't his fault.

Casper pinched his tongue beneath his teeth as he took Ashlyn's money, a strange little anticipation brewing in the crook behind his teeth.