With the door open, the cold air gusting into the hall carried the stench of industry and rot. Vast iron structures scattered the skyline behind the low, squat warehouse opposite, their hulking masses illuminated by a suffocating crimson underglow. The street outside wasn’t a street but a dark gully that crawled through an industrial park, frequented in the day by groaning cranes and freight lorries, and at night, only by the moaning wind bearing river-rot and squalling gulls.

Considering the obscene amount of money, favours, and threats that Levi had pulled build such an obscenely luxurious house, Cain hadn’t exactly expected him to renovate a scummy warehouse in the centre of an even scummier industrial park. The first time he’d stood in the alley amongst the workers roaring at each other while a forklift groaned and bleeped, ears plugged while he tried to shout down the phone to Ella, he’d realised he shouldn’t exactly be surprised.

Jack did look dreadfully well-suited to the squalid backdrop. Something dark and rotten squirmed up Cain’s throat as he watched Jack lower the whiskey bottle from his lips, a half-finished quart that he slipped back inside his jacket while one of those vacant grins spread across his face.

“Hey, babe, sorry – finished up with Posh and figured I’d swing by early. Y’know, save…”

Jack’s words trailed off as his half-glazed eyes finally tracked above Ella’s head and met Cain’s glare. All the geniality collapsed into sneer-lipped neanderthalic thunder, and Jack might as well have growled as he balled his fists. “What the fuck is he doing here?”

Cain bit back before Ella could babble any kind of excuse. “Just leaving.”

And as he said the words, the whole bloody situation collapsed in as a guttering wrench, one that squeezed his skull and squirmed between his guts. It edged the spectre of that worm in the doorway with the same coal-fire red as what stained the horizon.

Just leaving. And Ella had spent the entire day planning how to squirrel Cain out of the house for better company instead just telling him. Like she was ashamed.

It curdled. Black pushed into the edges of the red.

Cain took a deep, slow breath through his nose and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. The palms of his hands itched.

Breathe.

“Cain?” Ella’s voice almost didn’t tremble. Almost just carried that pouty question in the tone without giving anything else away. “What’s the matter? Are you alright?”

Jack snorted, jamming his hands in his pockets as he leant against the doorway. Despite the glaze, his eyes were alight above a wide, leering grin. The porchlight sunk into the bleached white of his hair and snared in the piercings stamping his ear, the silver curving through his nose, and it was even worse because if Jack was put together instead of a raw, pathetic mess then this was something special.

“Yeah, dickwad.” Jack kicked one of his boots aside, hooking his ankle over the other. “What’s the matter, huh? Get another fingernail snagged at teatime?”

A shot of cold lanced through Cain’s spine, a shuddering disparity to the flash of heat across his thigh. In the dark edges, memory rapped. Chinking porcelain and the intricate threads of blue tattoos.

“Jack, don’t. Cain—” A warmth settled on his bare arm. Small, Ella’s palm. She leant in close and pitched her voice low. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t want you two to run into—”

Cain jerked his arm away, a clarity splashing over his mind on a tide of ice. It was sharp, biting, and it slapped him around his jaw, beneath his eyes, down his throat. The dark washed back, pushed away by a blossoming of cold, acid-stained colour.

He took another deep breath through his nose.

Breathe.

“—leave or what?” The tail end of Jack’s voice tuned in from an almost inaudible wine, rough and impatient, and his lips twisted the same way. The caustic grey of his eyes didn’t budge from Cain. “I’m gonna fuck off in a minute if you don’t get him to piss off, Ella. Not looking at his smarmy cunt fucking face for a second longer.”

“Jack, he’s leaving in a minute.” And there really was an absolutely pathetic degree of earnestness in that. As if she meant it. “Can’t you just—"

“Oh trust me,” Cain said, drawing his lip back from his teeth, “I’ve no desire to look at the ape-like visage of utter pity a moment longer. Lovely seeing you Ella, but I can see you’ve got a delightful night of babysitting ahead of you. You know,” Cain flashed her a tight smile, one full of teeth, and slung his coat over his shoulder, upright, arrogant, “seeing as I’m sure I’m about to get pissed solely off the smell of him.”

Somewhere, deep down there, a vibrant nausea ripped through his gut, but this cold drowned it all.

Breathe.

If Jack touched him, Cain was going to rot his vile, wretched face off.