𝖘𝖎𝖝

.

In the cark park of a roadside diner, Cain finally cut the engine. For an eternity, there was nothing but thick black trees sliced through by potholed, leaf-strewn asphalt.

The boy was asleep, had been for miles and miles. He'd looked so peaceful under the thin glow of moonlight and the backdraft of the headlights, and still, Cain couldn't quite bear to clean the black blood off his upturned face.

So much of it. Soaked into the neck of his hoodie and the collar of Cain's shirt, and the stickiness of it puckered Cain's neck as it dried, but Casper breathed easy now behind the catch of snores.

He was alright, black buttons shut away behind lids bruised lilac with lack of sleep.

Cain woke him once he'd fetched them a coffee each and the only vegetarian thing on the tiny menu, the blood around his neck obscured from the human waitress by this new, freshly sweet energy that tingled through his veins.

"Casper?"

Nothing. Although, he could've sworn the boy's eyes had flickered open when he'd opened the car door.

Sighing, Cain twisted around in his seat and shook the boy's far shoulder, his other arm propped up on the back of the seat. "Casper?"

The boy's eyes opened, and his lips curved so cleanly into a smile it was as if he'd never been asleep. Amber pooled over the high points of his face, mingling with the flickering neon of the diner's sign. His teeth gleamed.

"I could get used to waking up with you here."

"Are you feeling alright?"

All that blood. The vast storm of energy forced through his body as if he were no more than an avatar for Cain's power, and ... here he was – a catastrophic miracle. His dopey smile struck a chime of wonder inside Cain's chest, echoing its sweet tune through his limbs.

Casper nodded, tilting his head so it rested against Cain's arm. Just fine. Something anchored in Cain's lungs, an ache as the boy's sweet smile tugged on the very core of him.

"I'm glad you're alright," Cain said hoarsely, lamely.

The boy smiled anyway and rubbed his head deeper against Cain's arm. A little like a cat. "I didn't think I would be after what you did... It was like..." Casper took a deep breath. "It was like breathing in the universe."

Oh. Cain pressed his lips tight and took a focussing breath. "That's nice."

"You're not telling me something about you."

"Obviously." And how presumptuous of him to assume Cain would have told him anything at all.

"Fair. Guess I gave us plenty of time to find out now."

Yes... The boy's words brought a spike of reality into this dark, diner-lit dream. "What happened?"

The huge coat swallowed Casper's shrug, but Cain felt it beneath his hand. Nothing in the world could disguise the wickedness in that grin. "That group of cowards who beat up the one-armed kid get real touchy if you talk shit about their golden girl."

"You—" Cain sunk back into his seat, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Something tightened in his temple but the grip of his fingers staved it off. "Do you have any idea how much your bloody tantrum has cost me?"

Everything. The corpses on the ground, the smoking eyes, and an exposure of their kind so gargantuan that they may never recover from it – it put them as close to criminals as any mage could get.

Every single thing that mattered was trapped in his office – gone. Just like that. Casper's rasping giggle was a needle stuck straight through his eye to this knotting anger.

"That's everything! Everything I've bloody worked for my entire life just—just bloody gone because you had to be a sour prick about it." Cain groaned, rubbing his fingers into the tension around his brow. "I should never have bloody bothered. Clearly you're too stupid to deserve the effort, and now look where I am."

"You did though."

Cain ignored the strange sound of those words. "I shouldn't have."

"But you did."

Casper's head tipped back, baring the hollows of his throat to the light. Crimson-amber drizzled over his features, casting crow's wing shadows of his eyelashes across his cheeks.

And he smiled like fucking euphoria. "I knew you'd come for me."

Oh.

Of course, how stupid.

Cain lunged across the car. Jammed his back against the dashboard so all his weight pinned Casper to the seat by his throat. His lips looked just as fucking beautiful as Cain always dreamed while he strained for breath. Colour darkened his face beneath the neon glow, and those panicked, ecstatic black eyes stitched up the knot throbbing through Cain's skull and drew it tight.

"You stupid fucking brat," Cain snarled. "You think this is a game, do you? I'll fucking kill you."

Fingers clawed at Cain's wrists. He slammed one of Casper's hands against the doorframe and shifted his weight so the arm pinning Casper's throat trapped him back against the seat. Pain winced through the boy's face as Cain's knee jammed into his thigh even as he gasped down fresh breath and grinned.

His pulse throbbed against Cain's thumb; that life that seethed out of him, burning Cain's palm and sinking into his legs. Blood squirming just beneath the surface as he dug in.

All of it gone, and the boy had done it on purpose.

"I was going to be Dean! I was this close to getting my full tenure and you—"

Casper's hoarse voice cut across him. "No you weren't."

"Yes, I fucking—"

"He's scared of you," Casper hissed. "You told me and I saw it. They're all too scared of you and they hate you too much to give you anything, no matter how hard you—"

Cain shifted his grip up, fingers digging behind the boy's jaw and cutting off his words.

His vision swum, anger warring with crumbling unreality. All ground to a haze outside the clarity of colours and shadows slipping over Casper's face.

"You had no right. No fucking right taking that from me." Cain shook him. He wasn't even sure what clawed at him, whether it was anger or hurt or fear, but whatever it was it knotted through his skull and burned his eyes like a plague. "It's not just my job! That was everything I've worked for my whole bloody life and if you knew—"

Casper jerked beneath him. Strained against Cain's grip, and an ache swelled as Casper's arching heat pressed against the inside of his thighs. The awe and the straining lips and the way his eyes rolled back with euphoria as Cain choked him, it was all so bloody beautiful and what if he just ... didn't let go?

Pay back this game. Squeeze until his hand ached and those delicious shudders died beneath him. Skin turning purple, features slack, feel that last, copper-tinged breath against his lips as the boy's black button eyes snuffed out.

Gasping, Cain forced his grip open. The boy choked, but beneath Cain's pinning weight, he could only squirm. This close, Cain felt all of it grinding against him. And—

Oh.

Heat flushed through Cain's cheeks, the warmth plunging through him at the pitiful sound Casper made when Cain shifted away from his hips and—and that. But not away. The way his small, taut body shook was too precious to lose. Cain trailed the fingers that had choked him along Casper's jaw and relished each tremor that went through him, each time his breath caught.

And quite suddenly, that was all that mattered. Because the boy was right. It took the loss of everything to open his eyes, and just look what he'd gained in return.

His apocalypse, bundled up in black fabric with twinkling stars where his buttons should be.

"What now?" Cain's whisper came hoarse in the lull of the night. Only Casper's wheezing breaths broke it, choking as Cain traced the boy's brow.

Soft, no matter how hard and ragged the rest of him looked, but when Cain slid his fingers into Casper's hair, the tangles felt like home.

His chest ached. Why did everything ache so, so much? This shift had brought so close, close enough that the damp heat of Casper's breaths panted over his lips. Galaxies spun in the boy's eyes, a little glimpse of desperate rapture while his fingers twisted into the side of Cain's shirt.

Cain had almost forgotten he asked the question when Casper responded, words felt as much as heard in the whispers over his skin. "We live."

"Why me?"

Casper pressed up further, his boot planting on Cain's ankle to lever his free leg into the space between Cain's. He gasped at the pressure, at the heat and the hardness he'd just escaped. At the way Casper's nose wrinkled around his giggles as he turned his face up to Cain.

"'Cause you're so fucking incredible, but you still ask that fucking question like I'm the special one."

The last of that spinning confusion burned off, a galactic vapour unveiling a glimmering certainty in that vastness of blind possibility. Casper was special. Flawed and wild and impetuous and brilliant. Devastation trapped in the small, hard body burning need into Cain's skin.

For the trick, there must be punishment, of course, but simply killing him would be such a waste. No, whether the boy knew it or not, it was punishment enough that every last inch of him now belonged entirely to Cain.

So why did the thought make him tremble? Not drunk on the heady power of it – not wholly – but a strange, softness in that dark. The one that made a bird's flutter of his heartbeat as he dipped his head.

Cain brushed his lips against Casper's, and just how he'd dreamed, the slightest touch of that chapped skin sent sparks through his veins. The boy whimpered as he opened his mouth, straining closer against Cain's grip, and that needy sound crumbled everything else away. Cain kissed him, once more pouring everything he had into his catastrophic boy with the black button eyes and the mouth coated in black cherry sin.

Casper clawed at him, pleading, and fumbling and clumsy, Cain swung them both back into the driver's seat, planting the boy on his lap and jamming the seat right back as Casper's heat engulfed him.

A long time later, they drove along the isolated streak of blacktop into the sunrise blush, their fingers twined together atop the gearstick. The boy said something, the white thread smile impish under the touch of morning, and Cain laughed solely for the fact that they were here, they were together, and they were free.

fin