The air in the small flat was heavy with the metallic tang of blood, sharp and nauseating. Caius crouched over the lifeless body sprawled across the living room floor, his trembling hands streaked with crimson. His chest heaved as if he'd been running for hours, but the erratic beat of his heart wasn't exhaustion—it was elation. Relief. Even a sick sort of pride.

The man—a stranger who had dared to follow too closely the other night—had deserved it. Caius had ensured that his last breath was an agonized whisper, a fitting punishment for what he might have done. His lips curved into a faint smile at the thought of protecting so perfectly. He'd done this for him.

The realization of the mess only began to dawn on him as he glanced around. The pristine white carpet was ruined, and streaks of red marred the walls where the struggle had gone too far. Caius hadn't planned for the mess. He'd only planned for justice.

"I should clean this before he gets home," he muttered, voice shaky as he grabbed a dishtowel from the kitchen counter. His movements were frantic, scrubbing at the floor like a child hiding a spilled drink. The stains didn't budge.

A sound broke his feverish attempts at erasure—the faint click of a key turning in the lock. His body froze mid-motion, his breath caught in his throat. His mind screamed at him to do something, anything, but all he managed was to stand, wide-eyed and trembling, as the door swung open.

And there he was.

Caius blinked, a rabbit caught in a snare. Blood smeared his face, his neck, his clothes. It even dotted the unruly strands of his hair. The dishtowel in his hand dripped with diluted pink streaks onto the hardwood floor. He must have looked insane—an image ripped straight from a nightmare.

"Ah..." The word escaped his lips like a puff of air, his mind scrambling for an excuse. A reason. A way to explain why the flat reeked of death and he was standing there, so utterly drenched in blood.

His first instinct was to smile, a fragile, desperate thing that stretched too wide. "You're home earlier than I thought," he said softly, though his voice cracked under the weight of his anxiety. His eyes darted to the corpse lying between them.

This wasn't how things were supposed to go. He wasn't supposed to see.

His thoughts raced: What will he think? Will he hate me? The very idea made his stomach churn. He stepped forward without thinking, hands outstretched as though to plead, but stopped when he caught sight of his bloody palms.

"Wait," he stammered, his tone almost apologetic. "I—I can explain."

The words sounded hollow even to him. There was no explanation, no way to spin this into something sane. He could only hope he would understand, would see that this was all for him. For them.