Levi grinned, easing back on his heels so he knelt between Cain’s legs. Heat trapped beneath the leather he wore, sticking hot and heavy to his skin.

“I have a proposition, Killer darling.”

Cain raised his eyebrow. Tilted like that, short locks of his hair tumbled across his brow, the precise waves concealing the top of the arch. "Not interested."

“I know the Resurrectionist taught you alchemy.”

Smoke seeped from between Cain’s parted lips. A frozen moment, and Levi could see the way the cogs in his mind jammed against each other – the search in that hollowness for how colour and the fancy of heat should drain from his skin. How sickness should twist in his gut, fed perhaps by that new revulsion knowing Levi’s skin tingled at the mention of that old sorcerer’s name.

But it wasn’t there. The dope ate it all away.

In the end, he spoke just one word, flat and empty. “No.”

Considering both of them knew very well it was a yes, Levi just grinned, wagging the crimson tip of his cigarette at Cain. “Come on, Killer darling, you didn’t even listen to my idea. It’s a fantastic one, I swear. My brain’s practically dripping money from my ears just thinking about it.”

“I don’t—”

“Drugs.” Levi grinned, pushing his tongue against his teeth as Cain paused, eyes narrowing. “Not just any drug, King, a sorcerous drug. Look at the euphoria chemicals alone put in your veins – imagine what we can do with powdered sorcery. No one else but us would think of it, Cain, let alone have the skill to pull it off.”

Lips pressed thin, Cain shook his head. Less idle laxness to his body now, he crossed his legs – Levi leant back to dodge the shoe to the face – and one foot drummed sharp beats in the air. “It’s hardly going to work. Alchemy would poison anyone human.”

“Not if we make it, Killer. Us together, I’m certain we can do absolutely anything.”

“And how exactly do you plan to make money from that, darling?” Cain bit out the words, but that hiss sounded like nothing more than a memory of how he should feel.

Honestly, he was so stubborn. Hit one of his little traumas and all that brilliance vanished into narrow-minded revulsion.

But Levi would ever persevere. He gave Cain a grin and a shrug, stretching out his neck, and gestured to the expanse of the room. “Drugs are the currency of the underside, darling. Drugs and sex and that sweet, cloistered space where your morality vanishes at the door.

"We’ve already come this far – help me make it, and I’ll sell pleasure and escapism in a line that blows every one of their filthy, miserable little minds, and I will make us rich. There’s no competition when its ours alone – no Grandma, no fucking Snake-Eyes setting up down the street and not going down ‘til I make his skull smoke. This is our way to power, and let me tell you something else, Killer darling.”

Levi stood up, holding Cain’s marble glazed eyes as he took a slow drag on the cigarette. The dry smoke mingled with the vanilla and rosewood cloying the air, saturating his tongue in liquid sin. Cain’s fingers squeezed the filter down to a line, but his jaw clenching that tight only meant one thing – he teetered on the edge.

Levi had him.

“Make a drug made of sorcery, and you put a honeypot out for the flies. They’re all still out there, King, the ancient giants – Atoc, Maia, the Resurrectionist, Bartholomew.” Something hot crept up Levi’s spine on the last name, spasming venom and electric through his jaw. “We draw in the flies, some are going to stick in the web and eventually, we’ll find the spiders at the centre.”

A sharp hiss broke from Cain’s lips and he tipped his head back, pinching the bridge of his nose. Smoke wound ladders before his face, and the tapping of his foot sharpened until eventually, with a abrupt motion, he jerked up.

“And hunt them down?” The unsmoked cigarette ground to nothing in the ashtray, a decaying shell of paper and plastic rot, and Cain glowered at Levi from the corner of his eye. “Is that the idea?”

Levi shrugged again, sinking teeth into his lip while he paced background across the room. Oh, it really had rattled him. How delightful. “That’s the plan, darling. Spiders is one thing, but there’s always a bigger bug.”

“An alchemical drug that causes unrivalled euphoria and doesn’t kill humans. Upper or downer?”

“Upper.” Levi dropped back onto the sofa, heart a steady thump against his ribs. Oh, Cain looked delicious when he shed his little pretend morality and started to think. “I wouldn’t want you to get addicted to something else, King.”

Only a snort answered the jibe, and Cain stood from the chair. Idle motions of his hands sharpened the edges of his shirt as his eyes drifted over the room. “Very well. I’ve been needing a new project.”

“Mm…” Levi drew more smoke over his tongue, and let it seep from his lips as he talked. “I suppose trying to fuck my sister isn’t keeping you busy enough, with her running—”

A flare of ice suffocated the room, trapping Levi’s tongue against the roof of his mouth. The cold sorcery of the Veil slithered over his skin, lashes of seaweed binding him tight and squirming down his throat. Something beat a little quicker in his chest, his eyes stuck on Cain straightening the cuff on his shirt. Not even looking, even as the sorcery curled around Levi’s throat and squeezed.

Really, it was like he knew how to get a scumbag rock hard.

“Ella isn’t a project,” Cain drawled, his voice heavy with the sound of someone who thought they should care, “nor is she your sister, you foul little maggot. So I’d shut your mouth before I decide it’s worth the effort to kill you.”

The sorcery tightened, yanking the noose around Levi’s neck. It bruised, freezing, and cut off his breath. Strangling. One jerk of his chest, then two, and that twitching itch crept across Levi’s brain, blood pulsing throat his skull, down into his gut. Arching, gasping, he scratched at his throat. The sorcery burned so cold it seared the tips of his fingers, a startling slap of vibrant pain as the corners of his vision crept in. Dark. Clouding. Levi’s jaw strained, back pushed into the cushions.

Cain never moved. His dark eyes drunk up Levi’s twisting and writhing, those dope-giggles drizzling from his lips, divine and unhinged.

With one last shudder, Levi’s vision went black. Laughter howled past his lips as his eyes flew open, tearing up the inside of his throat, and Cain was there. The devilish crook to his lips just inches from Levi’s face.

“Don’t make me get out of bed for nothing again, Levi.”

Levi grabbed for his shirt, but Cain drew back too quick. Blood thumped right low in his gut, delightful, euphoric, and Levi arched into the feeling, winding his arms above his head and bearing his neck and chest.

“I’ll try my best killer.” Levi’s voice came out a rasp. The sharp crisp of burning fabric sliced through the air, his cigarette searing a hole in the velvet of the couch. “But you make it awfully hard when you know how to treat me so well.”

Cain made a noise of disgust deep in his throat and strode out the room, the door slamming shut behind him. From where it brewed in his stomach, the thrill forced up Levi’s throat, bubbles pressing against the insides of his lungs, and in a burst of laughter, he lunged up from the sofa and whooped delight.

His veins burned. Electric pleasure shuddering through anticipation. Unbuttoning the leather of his jeans, he strode over to the wide mirror behind the chair, floor to ceiling, the full length of himself shrouded in the crimson backdrop. He leant his forearm on the glass and slipped his hand into his jeans.

Ella wouldn’t have liked that. Ella wouldn’t have liked that one itty bitty little bit. That monster still crawled beneath Cain’s skin, black chitin teeth snapping at the suffocating cloak of humanity Cain forced over the top of it, and it took so, so, so little to poke it free.

Levi would have him.

Pleasure pushed a knot beneath the base of his ribs, sweat beading across his back as he held the violent blue of his eyes in the mirror. His own. The muted bronze of his skin and the black of his hair and the shape of his nose – he’d own those as well one day. His own crown, his own fucking power.

And who better to stand king the other side of the board than that slick delicious rot that poured off King Cult. Someone who’d clawed redemption out of hubris only to have it all shatter and crumble in his grasping hands because he’d always, always, always be the fucking monster.

Levi shuddered, groaned, spilt hot and liquid into his hand. The crimson haze pressed into the edges of his vision, and grinning, he pressed his lips to the ones trapped in cold glass.