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Kayne was bored.
Can you believe it? Bored! He was never bored!
He was knee-deep in Arthur’s guts, stringing them apart for piano wire and he couldn’t help but feel like he had to scrape for the thrill with his bare hands.
It was almost as if time was beginning to whittle away at him in a way he wasn’t sure he'd felt before, like he was aware of every moment, and yet felt none of it at all. It was painfully numb—as close as he could get to feeling pain—like he was just going through motions that left less of a mark in his immortal skin than they used to. The excitement of hearing the bloody wet pop of a skull shatter apart didn’t feel as right as it did the last time.
The last time he’d felt like this– well. That was around the time he’d met Arthur. It felt like a sign then that Arthur came about when he did, when he was sure he’d have to claw apart his own skull just to feel something. He tilted his head, screwed up his face in frustration.
“Huh,” he said, to the Arthur pinned underneath him, abdomen split open and spilling out blood slick insides. “Everything is starting to feel… repetitive lately. Have you ever felt that before?”
Arthur choked in response, coughing up a bout of blood. Kayne rolled his eyes. It was becoming all too cyclical for someone like him, someone that broke apart the barriers of patterns and repetition with his bare hands, ouroboros finally swallowing itself whole.
“Right? The texture of a heart is starting to feel too familiar, my love, especially yours.” He tugged at his intestine, coiling it once around his hand and beginning to pull it taut. It was a blood slick serpent, like a paint spill against the dim light of the empty diner. “But this– well, I think I just– I ought to try something new!”
Arthur’s body shuddered, blood pooling up in the pale column of his throat.
Kayne held back a giggle breaching the edge of his lips. “It’s– it’s tantalizing, like– like something is waiting for me. Can you imagine? I feel like I’m missing something! How does that even work?”
Arthur’s eyes were rheumy, welled up with tears. They’d begun spilling down his face the moment Kayne split muscle, snot and blood seeping out of him. He unsteadily lolled his head towards Kayne and gurgled around the blood rising from his mouth.
Kayne grinned. “I’m glad you agree, dear, I think I may be– rushing a bit? Maybe I’m too eager. Maybe. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe I should just– slow down!” He ran his hand down the length of his innards, as if measuring how much he’d need. As if he couldn’t just take all of it if he felt like it.
Hm. Maybe that was his problem. He could just take everything. He’d taken from Arthur, again and again and so much so to the point where it was easy. It was too easy. He let his hand fall to his side, narrowed his eyes at Arthur. This one wasn’t his Arthur, his middle C, so he was very prone to being split open or bitten or broken somewhere along the line. His Arthur though, he was– he was like a roach. Rascally and laughably resilient. He just couldn’t die, no matter what Kayne threw at him. And Kayne did love that, loved it every time he watched him. But that’s just what he did. He watched, throwing in a new set of rules every so often, and watched again. It was routine for him now, and how he loathed the idea. He didn’t fall to the bounds of a routine– it was against his very nature. What he needed was a new kind of thrill, one that left him as breathless as the first time he’d met Arthur.
He ran his fingers over the jagged edges of the gaping wound in front of him, skin split and torn and bleeding red, always red. This Arthur was a fighter, blank eyes glaring madly in his direction, trying so desperately to stay afloat as if he wasn’t drowning in his own blood. He leaned closer, set his free hand against his throat and tilted his chin up to look at him. He only whined in response, groaning and spitting up blood. Kayne smiled. He was an ant, fighting embers that, in his reality, were a blaze. The world looked so big to him, a new delight every day. What a marvel it must’ve been. What Kayne would give to live it. But he didn’t have to give anything, did he? Because Kayne only ever took.
He leaned down, pressing his cheek to Arthur’s, and purred, “You’re perfect.”
His other hand, resting on the torn hems of his rough-hewn flesh, slipped through the loose fat– and under his skin. And Arthur, running on hollow adrenaline that was surely bound to crash as soon as his body realized his entrails were plucked apart, started screaming again. Or, he would have started screaming, but it was more like a strangled choking. The sharp tang of copper laved heavy in the air, and Kayne tipped his head back, drinking it in. He splayed his hands out from underneath Arthur’s skin, shredding nerves and sinew as he choked up more blood, splattering across Kayne’s face. His knife-like fingers made it easy to separate skin from flesh, roughly slicing sinew in swaths, and he couldn’t help but laugh at the closeness of it. He slid his hand deeper, plucking apart nerves like a pretty string instrument. His skin came up red as he peeled, blood seeping through where he’d torn it apart. What’s more was that it was– well it was a challenge, of all things. Kayne preferred things messy, torn, unsalvageable. But as he held Arthur up against him, blood spilling in rivulets down his chin, he was near fidgeting as he slid his hand under the skin of his back, gently peeling it apart from subcutaneous fat and flesh. Arthur cried out as he did, a wet and stifled noise through congealed blood. He was twitching desperately, jolting every time Kayne tore a larger span of skin.
Kayne paused, Arthur’s head resting on his shoulder, and considered—this might be easier with his dagger. He frowned. He liked getting his hands dirty, that small pleasure would be lost on him if he used a dagger. But he didn’t want to risk tearing something in the wrong place. He could fix it with ease if he wanted, but for the first time he’d prefer if it remained mostly untouched.
He reached for Arthur’s bag, fishing around until his hand grazed an ornate handle. He pulled it out, and it was still stained in Arthur’s blood. Carefully, he tipped the blade to his back, and dug the point into his paper-thin skin. The slice was much cleaner, blood spilling down in thin streams from where metal broke skin, cutting away flesh and peeling it freely until all that remained was muscle. Arthur’s incessant groaning had quieted, insistent and whining miserably through his blood-choked nose instead. He figured the clean cut of a dagger must’ve been less painful than the rough hew of his hands. Kayne’s mind had gone quiet too, the voices in them seemingly rapt with the same attentiveness as he.
His stomach was the one part he’d had to heal, having been torn apart just a moment ago. Muscle and tissue wove themselves together again, enclosed in fascia and skin like a chrysalis. He really didn’t want to mess this part up. Arthur’s stomach was heavily scarred, having been stabbed and torn open an innumerable amount of times, a lump of shredded clay smoothed over again. He ran his thumb over it, the gentle rise and fall of the map of his scars. Carefully, tugging at the tab of his skin he’d cut at the sides, he slid his dagger underneath, metal hugging flesh. It pooled with blood underneath, coming up pinkish when it came apart from fat, but still intact.
Then there was his face. Kayne’s mind was reeling. His face. A face he’d seen millions of times in millions of lives. They were mostly the same, sometimes he’d have a scar that his Arthur didn’t have, sometimes he was clean-shaven, most of the time was run ragged. And now he’d get to feel it. Truly feel it. Kayne shifted Arthur’s body, rearranged his limbs so his chest was lying across his. He dug his dagger into his nape, and– and this time he ought to use his hands, just to be precise. There was no way he could rush this. He slipped his nail under his skin, pulled it back until it ripped from flesh, blistering up red as it hung loose. Arthur was– he was shaking, trying to pull away from his hold, possibly more than Kayne had ever seen him, and screaming as he came apart beneath Kayne’s fingers. He held him still and kept peeling, separating his scalp, the skin behind his ears, all the way around to his cheeks patched to near bone. He wouldn’t stop struggling, which Kayne found a bit annoying, seeing as it made it harder to avoid ripping anything. He pried off the skin from his nose and lips, ripping them free from the flesh of his gums. He thought of citrus fruit, of mortals peeling the rinds off pomegranates for the pale flesh hidden within, picking away the pith.
There were two holes in the skin where his eyes would be, where that little king nestled so comfortably at the window sills of his soul. He wasn’t there, having been sent away when Kayne had cut Arthur open, and so his eyes were a deep shade of earthy brown.
He finished up, the limbs proving to be the most tedious, and he wanted to curse himself for being too eager again, for not boiling the body beforehand. But the mess, even as he worked as cleanly as he could—it was exhilarating. There was sloughed-off skin to his sides and his hands were stained in thick and cloying blood, congealing in the lines of his palms and smelling of copper. He almost didn’t care if he messed anything up anymore, hands already twitching for the next moment, the next stretch of skin to peel apart.
Beside him, Arthur lay a bloodied and bare mass on the cold tiled floor. His mouth moved in hollow words, something that looked like the shape of his name. Huh. He didn’t need skin to say Kayne’s name. He liked that. Another smile split his face. Arthur must’ve been in an unfathomable amount of pain, pain lining his nerves, searing white hot stars singing in every one of them Kayne had cut, supernovas under his skin. He could die like a sun, bright and beautiful.
Arthur’s lidless eyes were sharply fixed on him. He hummed—he might need those. It would be better if he had his eyes, and would make his job a lot easier.
But oh, Arthur, he was still so gorgeous with them. They were dimmed pools of unlit ichor—nested in the deep crimson caverns of his carved face—still illuminating the dark room like specks of burnished gold in spite of his missing king.
Kayne left him alone, the bell at the door chiming as he walked out. He had much work to do.
Kayne was pretty sure he had no idea what he was doing.
And how exciting was that? The prospect of not knowing something, it was– it was maddening, in the best way. He’d been holding up Arthur’s skin on a coatrack in some poor sap’s empty apartment, hunched on the counter in front of a bathroom mirror. Kayne would take as much time as he needed, and if the man showed up before he left, then–
Well, a fresh coat of red wouldn’t be so bad.
He held up the thick sheet of skin that was supposed to be an arm, feeling along for the edge he’d cut. He was right, the dagger left the hems clean, easier to stick a needle and thread through and know where it was headed. He wrapped Arthur around his bare arm, holding it down against the counter so he could work with one hand. He pressed the edges over each other, sticky skin gumming together. Carefully, more carefully than his hands allowed, he pushed the tip of the needle through, thread following faithfully.
When he was done, it fit perfectly, hypodermis kissing his skin as if it were his own. He followed suit with his other arm, his legs and back and chest. Occasionally he’d had to adjust his own form, will it into something shorter just so he wouldn’t tear anything. Someone on the saner but stupid side might ask him why he didn’t just shift his form into something more Arthur-like in the first place. Why go through all this? And he’d ask, “Why do you use a knife to whittle wood? Why do you use a chisel for your marble statues?” It was about the process, really, not the product. He did tend to make an awful mess, and it was the only way he’d enjoy anything at all.
As soon as he’d pressed the skin of Arthur’s face against his, tugged it along and worked his own magic so it would look anything close to believable, he was nearly hysterical. Arthur’s face against his. The skin of his lips, against his. He looked in the mirror, bare stitches trailing along Arthur’s sides and the back of Arthur’s neck. Or– well– his sides. The back of his neck. Because he could be Arthur now, if only for a day. Or more. It was up in the air really, how long he’d go. His hair had gone splotchy, so he’d fixed it, Kayne’s greasy black strands peeking through broken scalp. So his hair was a little darker, nothing too noticeable. His– his teeth were too sharp, so he pressed his thumb against them, fashioned them into something more shapely and– and human. He did the same with his hands, pressing down on pointed nails until they were rounder. He scowled. Humans were so round, so– so soft and breakable. But he did what he had to do, soften his sharp edges, smooth down hard angles.
Then there were his eyes. He looked in the mirror, brought his fingers to rest below his eyes. They were nothing like Arthur’s. Pale white marbles with a thin black line running through, and he’d somehow have to make it look convincingly like him. But how could he ever make something like Arthur? His eyes were perfect—muddy earth, post-petrichor, the sun peering from its hiding place. He did his best attempt, willing them to be something even remotely similar. They were a bit too bright, a poorly gilded excuse coming away sickly yellow—roughly cut pyrite. But they’d have to do.
He stepped back, a grin threatening to split his face. He felt around at his skin, scars that were now wholly his. He was flesh of flesh, shorn nerves tangled against his in indistinguishability. Arthur was a well-worn suit, thoroughly loved by everything that touched him. And Kayne wasn’t lying when he told his Arthur he liked him, that he was a little like him. They were both special, different, middle C on the piano, hammers and heartstrings in the cosmos. And Arthur had been nearly untouchable, something he couldn’t break. But here he was now, wearing another Arthur’s skin as easily as he wore blood. He was Arthur. He was Arthur and Arthur was him and he wasn’t sure he’s ever felt love like this. Love that he can feel and breathe and bleed. A laugh tore free from him, sounding right in Arthur’s voicebox braided with his. He didn’t once think fitting himself in a mold would prove to be so– so thrilling. But limits made challenges, and they tempted him eternally. He shut his eyes in awe, so many new possibilities. Faintly, he heard the soft click of a lock. Perfect, and not a moment too soon.
Arthur Lester left a now empty apartment at exactly seven-thirty in the morning. He would have left at seven, but being human meant having to actually bury bodies, and clean the sanguine from not only the floors but his temperament as well. He was meant to be broody, wasn’t he? Yes. Right. The cold calculated demeanor of someone not to fuck with. Or something. He scrubbed the frenzy from his eyes, adjusting them to the rising sun. His first stop—that old crone of a woman who’d rented him his current residence, of course! But before he could focus his frail human eyes, he felt a hand on his shoulder, a voice behind him.
“Arthur! Oh fuck, you’re alright!”
He whirled around, and it took everything in him to not grin wildly. This was getting better and better by the minute.
He did his best to deepen his voice, fix it into a relatively English sounding drawl. “Noel. What are you–?”
“Fuck, I was scared something might’ve happened to you,” he said, panting. He had clearly run here, and Arthur bit his cheek, finding the thought amusing.
“Why’s that?” Nope, too English—tone it down more.
“The–” He waved a hand, catching his breath. “The diner I met with you at. Owner found a body in there, ‘round midnight.”
Don’t laugh.
“What?”
“Did some digging, and– and apparently it– it didn’t have any skin.” He sounded like he was disconcerted by just the thought of it. Poor detective, wakeful mind still anchored to his restless dreams. “I– I thought it might’ve been–”
“No,” he said. “I’m right here.” Well. It wasn’t completely a lie.
“Good. Good.” The detective looked him in the eyes, parting his lips like he was testing his words. “How’s John?”
Arthur smiled, normally. Straight teeth set in a normal and well-measured way. “He’s alright.”
The detective looked at him strangely again, suspiciously almost. And Arthur– he was going to take the bait. He wanted to see how this song played out.
“Something wrong, Noel?” he asked, a bit too eager.
“Nothing, nothing. I– uh, how about we head to my office? I think I may have a lead on your Order.” Jackpot.
As they walked, the detective kept him at arm’s length. Whatever he thought Arthur was, he did a poor job of hiding his distrust. But Arthur only smiled coyly. He was just a human, after all. A feeble, breakable human.
When they reached the office, and Arthur heard the door click shut, he waited. He faced the desk. It was strewn with papers and pens, the desperate signs of a frantic man falling apart. Shame, he really thought he’d last longer. He cleared his throat, willed his voice into something pathetically curious. “What was it you wanted to show me?”
Click.
Ah, there it was. He turned around, slowly, forcing his grin down into a trembly pout.
“N– Noel?” he stuttered, raising his hands in surrender as he stared down the barrel of the detective’s gun.
“What the fuck are you?” And oh, Charlie was scared. He never stopped being scared. His gun was aimed directly at Arthur’s head.
Maybe Arthur was being a bit dramatic when he backed up into the desk, sliding down it as he let himself be cornered by the detective, but hell, he might as well have a bit of fun with it.
“What– what are you talking about? What the fuck are you doing?”
“You’re not Arthur,” he growled. “What are you?”
Kayne let a smile slowly creep across his face, splitting his lips. His hands were still up and he felt perfectly, euphorically, mad. He leisurely shook his head, voice still quiet. “Oh, Charlie.”
He flinched, and Kayne erupted in hysteria, laughter pouring out of his and Arthur’s voicebox, breaching past their lips. “And I thought I was doing well.”
“Shit luck for you then, that I’m a damn good detective.” His voice trembled imperceptibly. “Now tell me what the fuck you are.”
“How about,” Kayne stood, threads tugging at the corners of his skin as he stepped towards Charlie. “You tell me something first. How’d you figure it out, huh? What gave it away?”
The detective stepped back and pursed his lips, eyes flitting around the room as if anything in it could possibly save him. “You– you were lookin’ me dead in the eyes.”
Kayne tilted his head. “And John… doesn’t do that? Listen Charlie, you may have to accept that you’re the mistress here, you can’t complain about John not looking at you.”
“N-no, he does. But your eyes– you– they’re not his.”
Kayne dipped his head and heaved a sigh. Right. Because of course. “Well fuck!” He threw his hands up. He knew he should’ve just taken them when he had the chance. Eh, that was for next time. For now, his heart was thrumming with an energy he couldn’t quite place. “Well, Charlie, thank you for the feedback! Really! But I’m afraid it’s time for a curtain call.”
“Wh–”
His skull popped before he could say another word. Kayne didn’t know who would find him. Maybe his partner, if he had one. He didn’t care much for it now. He grinned, on to the next performance, he supposed.