16. Cane

He'd never minded being dirty. Never minded the grit stuck to his skin. It was when it got under it that he started to feel it like he had a foreign body lodged within him.

His fingers shook as he lit up another cigarette, crumpling the empty box and throwing it on the floor behind him.

He was sitting in his apartment in the dark, his phone smashed to pieces against the wall in front of him. It wouldn't fucking stop ringing ever since he got it back from holding. Texts and calls and voicemails and anger and hatred all aimed at him. There were a few from Raph and Soph, worried and confused. A single apology from Ares. But they were drowned by the tidal wave of darkness.

Threats.

Accusations of it being a setup.

Promises that that fight was going to be his last.

Money had been pulled from every leftover venture he had been involved with that the curse hadn't already taken. His partners swore up and down nobody even knew his name. They'd all fled the sinking ship like fucking mice. They'd left the captain to sink with it.

And those that were silent, the ones waiting in the shadows were the worst. Hyenas ready to feast on his bloody carcass.

Cane had never expected loyalty. He'd been taught not to trust.

But he'd always thought there was something about the world they were living in that formed ties between them.

Honor among thieves, Hart would probably tell him.

Hart.

Cane bit his lip and dug his fingers into a bruise Ash had left on his upper arm. He needed to feel something real. Needed something to keep him grounded because the storm inside him wouldn't relent.

He wanted to rage and destroy everything and anyone who came his way.

Like they'd destroyed him.

He got up to pace. He ran a hand over his cropped hair, tugging at the gauges in his ears, wishing they still hurt the way they had when he first got them. Wishing there was something to take away the flood of emotions he didn't know how to channel.

A knock sounded on his door.

"Fuck off," he growled. He didn't want to see anyone.

"Cane." Hart's voice, muffled and distant.

It was the only thing that could have reached him.

Cane surged toward the door, throwing it open so hard it slammed against the wall. He gripped the doorframe, nails digging into the wood, the cigarette still held between his fingers.

The storm inside him ebbed a little. It rushed toward Hart. Like it wanted to pull him in.

"Fuck off," he growled, needing Hart to be far away from whatever the fuck he'd end up doing to get himself out of the darkness. Because he knew it wouldn't be pretty, and Hart, in his pristine navy suit and that offensively colorful tie, didn't belong there.

"No," Hart said simply, pushing past him and forcing his way into Cane's space.

Cane snarled in anger at the move, slamming the door shut, gripping Hart's forearm, and pushing him against the wall. The plastic bag Hart had brought with him fell to the floor with a thud, and Cane smacked his open palm into the wall next to Hart's head.

He got his face right up into Hart's, teeth bared like a wild animal.

"What do you want?" Cane asked, voice shaking with anger. "Do you have a pretty quote for me? A motivational poster?"

Hart held his gaze, defiant as always. Contrary. Infuriating. Completely silent in the face of Cane's fury.

Cane lifted his hand off the wall and slammed it back down, closer to Hart's ear, closer to his face. So close the air he pushed out from beneath his hand ruffled the hair on the side of Hart's head.

"WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT?!" he screamed into Hart's face, something ugly twisting inside of him at the action because it wasn't how he was with Hart.

That wasn't how they worked, and he didn't want them to be like that, but Hart had to go. He had to leave before it got out of hand. Before Cane lost control and did something Hart wouldn't approve of.

Hart blinked against the noise, unbothered in the face of it as he raised a hand and plucked the cigarette out of Cane's with shaking fingers—the only sign that Cane was getting to him.

He brought the cigarette to his lips and took a long drag, then he flipped it around, and without a single moment of hesitation, pressed the glowing tip to the center of Cane's chest.

It hissed and stung for a second before being snuffed out, and Cane moaned at the sensation, wishing it didn't feel as good as it did. Hart let the cigarette fall to the ground between them, stepping on it with the tip of his boot, and Cane closed his eyes, trying to keep the burning feeling with him for as long as he could.

"You shouldn't be here, sweetheart," Cane whispered, and felt Hart's hands on his face.

"You don't tell me what to do unless I ask you to," Hart said, and Cane's eyes snapped back open.

Hart had that defiant look on his face that promised rage if he didn't get his way.

"I can't give you what you need right now." Cane knew his own limits. Knew how far he could stretch himself before he snapped.

"You didn't even ask me what I need," Hart said, hands slipping down and over Cane's chest. He ran a finger over the new burn, re-igniting it for a second, before traveling farther down, until his fingers were on the buttons of Cane's jeans.

"Ask me," Hart said, popping the buttons open and pushing Cane's jeans down.

"What do you need?" Cane asked, and Hart sank to his knees in front of him, completely dressed still, his perfectly pressed suit against the grimy floor of Cane's hallway.

"I need you to share the rage with me," Hart said, closing his hands around Cane's hips and wrapping his lips around his half-hard cock.

He sank down on it until Cane hit the back of his throat, and Hart gagged, the sound loud in the confined space. Cane's cock filled instantly, and he braced both hands against the wall as Hart's head bobbed up and down on his cock, his tongue wrapping around the piercing just under his head.

He set a punishing pace, scraped teeth along the soft skin until it burned, swallowed around Cane as pools of spit dribbled down his chin and onto the floor. His hands tightened on Cane's hips as he pulled him forward, urging him to do something Cane had never done with him before.

His hips stuttered for a second. Hesitated.

Hart pulled off of him and looked up, stubborn like always as he glared.

"Fuck my mouth," he said and the filth of those words coming from someone like Hart snapped Cane's final string of self-control.

One hand braced on the wall, he sank the other into Hart's hair, pulling his head forward until he was buried balls deep inside his mouth.

He drank in Hart's desperate moans, reveled in the obscene, wet sounds of his mouth as he drove in and out of him, keeping his head steady as he took what he needed. The pressure in his balls built. He grunted loudly, forehead coming to rest next to his palm on the wall so he could look down.

He watched himself fuck Hart's mouth, and for the first time in however many hours, he felt like he was back inside his own body. Like his skin and his flesh and his bones truly belonged to him. He channeled the rage, the uncertainty, and the disappointment into that warm mouth, and with just a few more thrusts, he unloaded it all on Hart, who took it like he was made for it. Swallowed it all and stole it from Cane like he had the right to it.

Cane's entire body shook.

His knees gave out and he slid to the floor next to Hart, spent and wrung out and just…empty.

He ran a hand over his face, wiping away the sweat and haze the orgasm had left in his eyes.

He moved until his back was against the wall, turning to see Hart folding his body into the same position against the opposite wall. Even with his lips shiny from Cane's cum and his hair completely messed up, he still managed to look like he hadn't just been acting as Cane's personal sex doll. Like he got on his knees for men as a habit, and he'd managed to practice it to perfection until it didn't even ruffle him anymore.

He grabbed the bag he'd brought with him, opening it up and pulling a container out of it. He thrust it into Cane's hands, ignoring the fact that his dick was still out.

"I brought food," he said, voice hoarse from the abuse Cane had just unleashed on his mouth.

"Hart…"

Hart snapped his eyes up and shook his head. "I know. I needed it too."

"That wasn't for you, though," Cane said, eyeing the way Hart ran his palm over a crease in the knee of his pants.

"What makes you say that?" Hart asked.

Cane huffed, shaking his head. Prissy little prick still wanted to act like they were nothing. "I know what it looks like when you take for yourself, sweetheart."

Hart glared at him for a second, the sight of his lips swollen from abuse ruining the effect.

"Maybe I needed to know you were okay," he said, not looking at Cane for a split second. "Now eat."

He pulled out his own container of food, spread a disposable napkin over his lap before placing the container on top of it, and took out the plastic fork that came with it. He took a dainty bite of his food, chewing slowly before swallowing and dabbing at the corner of his lips with another napkin.

Like a prince.

Like he hadn't just been on his knees for Cane, mouth full of his cock as he choked on it. Like he was two different people living in one body. Like he hadn't just admitted to caring about Cane before trying to play it off like it was nothing.

"I don't fucking get you," Cane said finally, accepting that he wouldn't be getting any more out of Hart. He took a bite out of his sandwich, messy and sloppy and not giving a single fuck about it.

Hart lifted an eyebrow at him over his food. "You keep saying you do."

Cane shook his head slowly as he came to the realization. "I know you, but I don't understand you. Knowledge and understanding are two different things."

Hart looked shocked and a little uncomfortable, the same cagey look he always got when Cane crept too close to the things he wanted to keep from him. "How…profound of you."

Cane didn't take the bait, keeping his stare aimed directly at Hart. Like he could see inside him. "I get a part of you. The part that just sucked my fucking brain out through my dick."

"Language," Hart said, but there was no heat in his voice.

"Who is this?" He waved his sandwich at Hart.

"It's me," Hart said. "All of it is me."

"Bullshit."

Hart blew a breath out through his nose and swallowed his food, putting his fork down and crossing his fingers. "What makes you say that?"

Cane snorted, dropping his own food on the paper wrapping with a splat and leaning forward.

"Nobody can be two people at the same time."

"I agree."

Cane stared at him as he waited for elaboration.

Hart avoided his eyes for a moment, taking a few deep breaths before steeling himself and looking right at him. "The perfectly pressed, organized, polite Hart, the quotes and the motivational posters…isn't an act. It's not fake. Or made up. It's not a version of me. It is me. It's…a layer of me."

"A layer?" Cane asked.

"Yes." Hart was still playing with the perfectly ironed crease of his pants. Next to it was a mess of wrinkles from where he'd knelt on the floor. "It's not that I struggle to be that. I like being that Hart. I like my clothes, and I like my order and the calm it brings me."

"Then what the fuck was this?" Cane pointed to his cock, still out in the open, now soft on his lower belly.

"Another layer," Hart said calmly.

"One nobody ever sees?"

"Exactly. Why would they? It doesn't concern them. They can't give me what I need like that, so I don't see the point in them knowing."

There was something about the way he said it, the small shifts Cane was so attuned to that made him certain Hart wasn't telling him the whole truth. It irritated him. Worse than the burn on his chest. Worse than the faded scar of the identical one next to it.

"So why did you stop it?"

Hart startled. "Stop what?"

"Us," Cane said. Hart sucked in an audible breath but didn't answer the question that had sat between them all this time. One Cane had never asked. One Hart had never offered the answer for. "You showed me that side of you because I can give you what you need, but you're the one who left things high and dry without a word. You stopped coming by. Stopped answering my calls."

"You act like we were together and I suddenly disappeared. What we had was casual."

Cane bared his teeth a little, yanking his pants up in anger. "It was never casual between us, and you know it. Two years isn't casual."

Hart looked away, unable to hold his gaze and deny it. Them.

"And then a whole fucking year went by, Hart, and I didn't say a word," Cane said. "I let you go because I knew you needed it, but maybe I want that explanation now."

"Because I was slipping up," Hart snapped. "I was getting sloppy with work because all I could think about was you and this and that put people in danger. Fix…"

He looked down at his lap.

"Fix called me one day. He called me to ask for help on a case while I was with you, and guess what? I didn't answer. And guess what else? I didn't even have my phone on that day, because I knew I was going to meet you and I'd started switching it off. Just for an hour or two. So we weren't interrupted." He scoffed at himself, blinking up at the ceiling before schooling his face.

"Do you know how horribly selfish that is? How big of a rule break that is? He got hurt because of me. Because I wasn't there. Because I didn't even have my phone switched on. That's when I knew it had to stop. I couldn't keep sneaking off to be with you and doing whatever I felt like. The job had to come first. People had to come first. So I ended it."

"You're not the first cursebreaker with a social life or a relationship," Cane said, refusing to buy Hart's rationalizations even though he understood them.

Fix was Hart's family. Cane didn't understand that concept too well, but he understood bonds. And guilt. This was more than that though. It always had been.

"So what was the real reason you slipped up, sweetheart? Was it because of this? Or was it because you were too busy trying to hide the fact that it existed in the first place to answer a call?"

The words hit Hart like a physical blow.

"Did you even tell them why you didn't pick up?" Cane pressed the point home.

"I couldn't," Hart whispered.

"And I don't get that. I thought they were your family," Cane said. "I thought that was how you worked. Codependent and all of that. All up in each other's business. Why would they care about this? About us?"

Hart shifted his gaze to something above Cane's head before speaking again a few moments later. "It wasn't always like that. The way we are now."

"Hard to believe."

"Nexus… The cursebreaker institution affects people differently. We were put together as young kids or teenagers. Expected to work as a team and to get along right off the bat. It can be volatile. Like throwing a bunch of stray dogs together and then watching the fallout."

Hart had his full attention. "I have no fucking clue how the process works."

"We're taken from our families the moment we're born with the mark. We spend the first years just being raised by staff, being told we're special and destined to do great things. Being assessed for affinities for different curses. Being placed into different groups to see who we click with to form a team. It's a lot of trial and error. A lot of attempts before a team starts feeling right."

Cane wanted to ask questions, but he had a feeling interrupting Hart might stop him. It was the first time Hart had ever gotten this far, opened the door into the area he kept barred and locked. Cane thought that it wasn't even from him, it was from Hart himself.

"We were castaways," Hart said finally. "My brothers and me. We didn't really click with anyone. Fix spent so long at Nexus they'd started wondering what to do with him. He was getting too old to team up. So when he was placed with us, he latched on. Too tight sometimes. Too intense. Ash was too volatile for a team, too loose and careless. Black is…way too happy about what he does. Way too excited about things no sane person should be excited about. Wren was…hurt and lonely and sad and angry and he just didn't want to be there. Midas was just as aloof as he is now. Unbothered. Cold, almost."

He paused again.

"And you?" Cane asked.

"I was always good at following the rules," Hart said, with one of his pristine fake smiles that dissolved into a tired grimace. "I always thrived on order. The team needed someone to keep them on track. Someone who seemed at least somewhat balanced."

"So you took over," Cane said.

"Someone had to." Hart closed his eyes. He looked worn and tired. "And like I said, it's not like it's not me. I fit the role perfectly. Prim and proper, rule-abiding Hart. I felt on top of the world knowing my type A personality had finally become an asset."

"Which is why you can't let them see you weak. Let them see that you're not perfect and that you need something."

"Yes," Hart whispered.

"You need to hold on to it because you think if you let it slip a little, the whole thing will fall apart."

Hart blinked his eyes open and met Cane's gaze. A slow understanding began to build between them. An unexpected affinity.

"We're not so different," Cane said.

Hart's eyes tracked over his face. The piercings and tattoos and scars. He lingered on each one, all the contrasts to Hart's own unblemished skin. On the outside, they couldn't have been more opposite.

"I guess not," Hart said quietly after a time.

Cane ate the admission up—that small piece of Hart that he was willing to give over to him. He fucking needed to hear it. He needed that one thing to be something he had. Especially now, when everything else was lost.

"Maybe it was for the best that you broke it off between us." Cane rested his head back against the wall.

Hart swallowed, face twitching. "Why?"

"Because there was gonna come a point where I wouldn't have let you go."

Hart's breath hitched, and a charged silence brewed between them as the words sank in.

"What about now?" Hart whispered.

Cane lifted the corner of his mouth. "I'll give you a day to decide before I make the decision for you."

Hart snorted. "Extortion."

"I am what I am," Cane said, but quickly grew serious. "And when you say you're mine, you're mine. You know what that means."

Hart's hands shook and he clenched them in his lap.

"I'm sick of waiting, so you need to make a choice. I don't have a lot left, so it's kinda putting things in perspective for me," Cane said.

He'd learned his lessons early, like he'd told Hart. Don't let anyone take what's mine. But someone had already done that. Stripped him down to his barest bones gleefully. Slowly. Painfully.

And now it was happening again in front of his eyes with no way to stop it. It made him feel desperate and cornered. Grasping to hold everything closer.

He wouldn't force Hart to be with him, despite his desire to chain him to him, but the seesawing uncertainty was worse than not having him at all. The unstable footing. The looming dread.

Cane couldn't deal with that anymore, especially not from Hart.

"I…" Hart trailed off and looked away.

He didn't have an answer.

Cane had suspected as much, but it still stung.

"You have until the end of our business transaction to give me the answer," Cane said. That was all he could stand to give anymore. "And who knows? Maybe you'll get lucky and the choice will be taken away from you. Maybe I'll be in jail again or six feet under."

"Don't say that," Hart said.

"The truth?"

"This isn't over yet."

Cane let his head fall to the side as he looked at him. "No. The curse isn't over, but I am. My business is."

"Cane…"

"There's no coming back from this, sweetheart," Cane said. "I'm a black mark now that the police are involved."

"They let you go."

"For now, because I'm very good…or I was very good at covering my ass, and Ares retracted his statement," Cane said. "But that won't mean shit to anyone who matters in my circle. Nobody will do business with me after this clusterfuck. The police are probably still building their case, they just don't have enough to hold me right now."

"Not even if we say the curse is to blame?" Hart asked. "It's defensible. It has precedence."

"And I have priors."

"The rest of the crime world doesn't care about that."

"But they care about reputation and respect. I just lost it all when I bet everything. The smartest thing I could do is pack up and get the fuck out of this city."

Hart scooted forward and grasped his leg, the material tightening under his searching fingers. "You can't go."

"Gonna miss me too much, sweetheart?"

Hart licked his dry lips, his eyes a little wild. "You'd miss me too much."

"I would," Cane said. He had no problem admitting it.

But Hart was still restless, and he ended up straddling Cane's lap in a sudden move, grasping his shoulders tightly, sharing quick, hot breaths with him. "Just…don't go anywhere."

It was enough for this moment. That Hart needed him like this. Cane grasped Hart's waist, pushing his hands under his shirt to touch skin.

"Okay, sweetheart."

He felt Hart sag a little, his hands loosening on his shoulders and trailing down his chest. They strayed to the fresh burn mark there and lingered.

"You remembered," Cane said simply.

Hart swallowed hard, still looking at the spot and nodding. "I remember everything," he whispered.

Cane took his hand and pressed it into the burn, hissing at the sting at the same time that he surged up and kissed him like it was the last thing he'd get to do. He stood up with Hart in his arms, carrying him to his bedroom and throwing him on top of the sheets. He picked at his clothes until they were strewn all around his bed, swallowing Hart's complaints and replacing them with coaxed-out moans and cries of pleasure.

He sank into his body like he was coming home and swore he'd never let him walk out of his life again.

If he managed to make one thing right in his life, it'd be that.

He fucked him over and over and over again until they were both spent, tired, and wrung out. They passed out without managing to get up to clean themselves. Painted with their release and sticky from sweat.

Cane held Hart like a lifeline.

Like the last thing still worth something in his life.

And he woke up without him there.