𝖋𝖔𝖚𝖗

.

Cain felt right again in the morning. He woke early from a smothering, dreamless sleep and shoved Casper off him, rolling kinks out of his shoulders as he dug painkillers and coffee change out of his desk drawer.

"Can't I just stay here?" Casper asked, hovering by the door still swamped in Cain's coat. "I want to try that absorption again, see if I cough up less blood next time."

As much as the idea was tempting, Cain had a lecture this morning and about three hours of research and grading to squeeze in before it. Not to mention something about the thought of Casper's blood cast to its true crimson in daylight felt sacrilege.

"I teach you Thursday evenings only, and it's not Thursday evening any longer."

Casper gave a mocking pout, one that curled through the scars on his cheek. In the daylight, he still looked like a wretched sort of doll, and Cain's chest still itched to hold him there.

"You don't have time?"

"I don't have time."

"I don't know why you bother with this shit." Casper had his hand on the doorknob, but like they both stood at an impasse of the unknown, he hadn't opened it. "It's not like this shitty university has everything there is to know about magic. Especially not for you." A frown drew Casper's surly brows together. Pouting. Cain could hardly look away from his lips when he pouted, the fullness of them and the catches of broken skin. "Don't you ever want to live a little?"

Over the low rumble of an engine, pneumatics hissed. A mechanical rush calling herald to the wave of voices that swept up from below. Cain washed the painkillers down with some water and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. It was seven in the morning and this headache would only get worse.

Too long without release.

"Believe it or not, I need a job. This one has more useful benefits than a dental plan."

"We'd make something work." The words were low, but they still drew Cain's eyes, a jolt going through his chest. Thin light lit up Casper's dark hair like a halo, but the black buttons of his eyes were turned away. He kept talking; a thumping built between Cain's ears. "You know, me and you. We'd pull some shit together wherever we wound up and ... and like maybe we could—"

"And why," Cain said, his words sharp with spite because maybe spite would stop the room swirling so strangely, "would I want to go anywhere with some shitty little dirty brat like you?"

A snarl broke across Casper's face. One like knives and frothing with black-green magic. The kind that deserved a hand closed around his throat and Cain tearing at the lips that dared spit back at him, grinding the boy's spine into the wall.

Close.

So warm.

The blind shout burst from his mouth too loud. Far, far too loud for the footsteps and voices that already travelled the hall outside, but the ache in his skull and this knot in his gut and he couldn't—

"And for that matter, why the fuck would you ever want to go anywhere with someone like me? Just piss off, alright?"

"Cain—"

Cain stalked over and hauled his office door open. Two students and the doddering old git who kept the office opposite him ogled at Cain shoving Casper outside. He leant in close to hiss in the boy's incensed face. "Professor. And I said I only have time Thursday evenings."

"Cunt." Casper snatched the handle and slammed the door, the weight of it like a sledgehammer against Cain's skull. Papers rustled, and with a snarl, Cain spun around and shoved everything off his desk with a sweep of his arm to storm around him and shatter on the floor.

Stupid. Bloody stupid. He collapsed into his chair, fingers a vice over the bridge of his nose, and stayed there until the painkillers and the tumbler of whiskey kicked in enough that every wince of sound didn't grate across his brain.

Casper couldn't come back. The boy couldn't come back. Oh, it'd been dreadfully fun but when fun got under his skin like this, the way Casper had crawled like a worm through his eye to make a nest in his brain...

Blood spilling black over full lips, and the way it stained the gaps between his teeth when he grinned. That was violence and obscenity and indulgence.

Better not to think what crying while the boy slept against his arm meant.