I can be your sugar when you're fiendin' for that sweet spot
Put me in your mouth, baby, and eat it 'till your teeth rot

- Doja Cat, Candy

This definitely ranked in his top three worst nights, Erik thought as he frantically scrubbed the blood off the kitchen floor. Right up there with finding out that his dad's dead. Right up there with finally accepting that his mom had simply joined a rally one morning and would forever be lost among those arrested. The third had been when he'd stayed up all night waiting for his grad program's admission exams results and, in a brief lapse of sanity and control, he'd binged on coffee, Coke, Milo, and whole bag of Kit Kat.

But this – goddamn. Why was the blood spreading? It was getting messier.

Erik grabbed the tub of detergent. The little scoop kept wobbling between his gloved fingers – the gloves were bloody too, godfuckingdamn it – because these weren't his gloves and they were a size too big.

He dumped five more scoops into the pail and plunged the scrub back in.

He needed a fucking bleach. Only the bleach was in the bathroom.

Erik paused.

His mind was yelling, but his chest wasn't banging away. His breathing sounded fine.

The clock above the sink ticked to 3:25 AM.

Quiet.

It was quiet. No sounds from the bathroom.

Erik carefully stood from his crouch, scrub still in hand. It was wood and hard plastic, and he was ready to bash a motherfucker's head in with it. That would mean more blood, but he was also very much invested in keeping himself alive.

The kitchen was dim. Erik had shut all the lights before he started scrubbing. There was only the hazy white glow from the street lamp outside. Whenever the flimsy curtain swayed, flaps of light and shadow swept through the dim quiet kitchen: a chair pushed aside, Erik's half-peeled green mango, Erik's textbook and notepad on the table, M'Baku's spice rack crammed alongside W'Kabi's cup collection near sink, T'Challa's bag of rice crispies –

Soundlessly, Erik prowled the short distance to the door.

The hallway was equally dim. He'd already cleaned up the little spots of blood here. Thank fuck they had no carpets.

Across from the kitchen, and a little ways ahead, was the bathroom door. The slice of light peeking from beneath it was gone. When Erik peeled off a glove and tried the knob, he found it locked.

"Hey, Coz," he said, drumming his knuckles on the wood.

Silence.

Erik did his best not to bang on the door. For one, he would wake everyone and there was still blood on the kitchen floor. For another, he'd rather stay alive.

"I need the bleach," was what he said instead. He sounded calm, in control. "You know. The bottle under the sink? With the toilet brush? Not that you ever cleaned the bathroom yet, you spoiled fuc –"

The door opened a bit.

Through the crack, through the moonlit dimness of the bathroom, T'Challa was peering at him with a wide, clear eye.

Erik shut his mouth. He gripped his scrub at the ready.

They regarded each other for what seemed an eternity of wasted time, but finally T'Challa opened the door wider. He had nothing on except for a towel around his waist. Thank fuck he was clean of blood and gore now.

"Are you all right?" whispered T'Challa.

Erik noted that his cousin's eyes were clear. It was quickly followed with a note that he himself was breathing steadily, even if his grip on the scrub was bordering on painful.

"I'm alive." Erik's voice sounded dispassionate to his ears. That was good.

"The bleach," T'Challa said, and Erik could see that his cousin was slightly trembling.

"All right," he interrupted. "Get the bleach and come with me. Now. Right now. Everyone's asleep."

For the next twenty minutes Erik removed all traces of blood on the kitchen floor, poured boiling water and bleach on M'Baku's garden gloves, removed a couple of candies he always carried in his pocket, dumped his own bloodied clothes in the wash basket, then fetched clean clothes for both himself and T'Challa.

Through it all, he avoided looking at his cousin. Who seemed just as fine to stay as far from Erik as possible in the tiny kitchen.

So it was not Erik's fault when he stepped back into the ghostly-lit kitchen, wearing a fresh T-shirt and clutching clean clothes for his cousin, and properly saw T'Challa.

Erik's brain screeched to a halt.

What the fuck.

He punched the lights back on. The sudden brightness was a blazing flood of relief.

So, okay. It might be the sheer terror from earlier, but Erik distinctly remembered T'Challa's ashen face, his feverish eyes, his bared teeth, and blood dripping down his chin in gory glops, and more blood oozing from all over his front, and the long, long, long time when he'd paused as he pinned Erik down, his clammy breath harsh against Erik's jaw and neck, while Erik had stared at his mango knife which was bent and knocked a few feet away and had felt so despicably helpless for the first time in a long while.

But Erik had a very good memory. Even under extreme stress.

The picture of T'Challa now, looking so sorry and miserable, but so goddamn pretty? A far cry from earlier. Was it the shower? Had he used a new soap? There was a goddamn new shine in his usually pretty eyes, and his hair looked like it was fucking spun from an angel's laugh – where the fuck did that come from? And T'Challa's skin? It was fucking glowing. It had the glow of something terrestrially, infuriatingly impossible.

"Erik," began T'Challa.

Erik tossed the clean clothes to his face.

T'Challa caught them, cat-like in speed, and started putting them on. Did his back muscles have to be sleek and glowing like that when he put on his pyjama top? Erik was bewildered and outraged. Erik was, very deep in the back of his mind, turned on.

Jesus fuck. What was this night?

For a moment Erik wished he smoked.

Then he shook his head, reached into his pocket, and unwrapped a candy. He dragged back a chair from the table and sat down. When T'Challa was finally dressed, the towel slung around his shoulders, Erik was already feeling the sugar rush, rolling the melon candy on his tongue and drumming his fingers on the table.

"Erik," said T'Challa, wrapping his name with such guilt and worry and apology. "You cannot know how very sorry I am. I am truly sorry. But I am glad to see that you are not hurt."

"Yeah, well." Erik stayed unmoving, except for his drumming fingers.

"I truly am sor –"

"Yeah, that's enough."

There was a flash of annoyance in his cousin's eyes, but it was clouded over with guilt again. Any other time, T'Challa would have coolly interrupted back and inform Erik that he had still been speaking.

"Look," Erik went on, "it's over, it's done. It was shitty but it's happened. What I want to know is if it'll happen again, and also where the fuck were you and what the fuck was that. Huh? Did you pass by a lab, some strain or – or pores or shit – fuck, is that contagious?"

"No, I." T'Challa clasped his hands together. He looked as shaken as Erik was, possibly more visibly so, and that was good. Evidence that earlier was an episode of madness.

T'Challa finally looked up from his clasped hands. Okay, why did his eyes look like two handfuls of stars? Did they always look like that? Erik mentally slapped himself.

"I think it was a cult," said T'Challa. "The band we saw, I mean. Either they are a part of a cult, or they might be a fledgling cult."

Erik unwrapped another candy.

"They tied me to a huge rock –"

"Where's that?"

"Outside town," T'Challa sighed, with another flash of annoyance. "My drink was drugged, I think, but I remember walking – walking back. It was definitely a little outside town. But yes, they tied me to a rock." T'Challa swallowed, his eyes a bit distant, his jaw clenching. "Did some rituals with a knife. Something about fame and riches, and the devil, and offering a virgin sacrifice –"

"You ain't a virgin."

T'Challa's eyes refocused. "Erik. Please do not interrupt me."

But Erik was straightening from his sprawl, peering intently at his cousin. "You ain't a virgin, Coz."

"I am aware, believe me."

"Well I sure hope you are." Erik paused. "You even had a girl before we fucked, yeah?"

T'Challa looked a bit constipated, unsurprisingly a far from ugly look on him. "Nakia and I had a healthy physical relationship, yes."

Erik barked out a short humourless laugh. So those pasty asses hadn't even made sure – hadn't even asked – if their offering had really been a virgin. God, Erik hated them the more for it, the fucking incompetents.

He shouldn't have left early, but he had discussion notes to make. Otherwise he would have schooled these demon groupies that T'Challa was definitely not a virgin. Especially not when he'd first hooked up with Erik two months ago, as the house party for the new semester was petering out: the dregs of sangria sharp on T'Challa's tongue as Erik laved against it with his own, the hour beginning with Erik ramming T'Challa down on the mattress, and ending with T'Challa flipping them over with sweaty thighs and riding Erik's cock as though T'Challa had been on the clock.

"So they didn't even ask. They just assumed you're a virgin."

"Something went wrong," T'Challa said in a low voice. "I do not believe I was supposed to live."

Something twinged in Erik's stomach.

He would have shared a candy from his pocket but Erik never shared his candy, ever. So he glanced around the kitchen. The bag of rice crispies caught his eye. They were T'Challa's comfort food.

"D'you want a rice crispy?"

T'Challa shook his head, looking vaguely ill all of a sudden. "I am full."

The words settled over them.

"You ate," Erik began, "you ate – something? Someone?"

All that blood which had been on the floor. Dripping from T'Challa's mouth and hands. The gloopy bloody mess from T'Challa's mouth and hands, and the way he'd attacked Erik, and the way he'd paused for a long time over Erik's neck before ripping himself away and stumbling to the bathroom, and –

No.

No. Erik needed a few more hours to fully distance himself from that memory to recall it with a modicum of comfort.

He adjusted his thoughts.

Where was he?

Oh yeah. The amount of blood on the floor. Some of it had definitely been T'Challa's. Oozing from all over his dress shirt. The knife wounds from the ritual, Erik's mind ran through, obviously healed now.

Demonic healing.

"You ain't possessed, are you?" Erik sounded dubious to his own ears.

"I was just starving," T'Challa said, before getting up and fetching the coffee beans from the cupboard.

His cousin preferred herbal tea; Erik stared.

"I was possessed with a severe hunger," T'Challa explained. He was measuring beans for the coffeemaker, being very precise about it. He had stopped trembling now, and his voice sounded as if he was gathering determination as he spoke. "No leaves or fruit or wood could sate it. I even caught a bird, I think. Now I am full. There is no denying it now, I have eaten human flesh. I need to digest it."

Erik turned his cousin's words over in his mind.

Possessed with a severe hunger. Human flesh.

His mind very briefly touched on the iron strength of T'Challa's hold on him earlier, then moved on to the new gloss on T'Challa's beauty that he couldn't help but notice.

"I plan to monitor weekly to see when the hunger will spike," T'Challa was going on, in full leadership mode now, as the coffee quietly whirled in the kitchen. "If it will spike again. I sincerely hope not. But we ought to have safety measures."

Erik unwrapped another candy.

God, it'd been hours since he ate something.

It was a trick Erik had learned as a kid, the candy.

His mom had already been gone for some years before his dad passed, so after all that, Erik was handed first to his mom's sister. He lived with his aunt for barely a handful of years, in a cramped apartment with bookshelves stuffed full of works by Audre Lorde and Alice Walker and Gloria Anzaldua and Barbara Christian and Cherrie Moraga. In one of those books, tucked in the last few pages, was a faded photo of Erik's mom.

For a while, Erik was afraid that his aunt would join a rally – a riot, the police called them – and never come home. His aunt was a teacher like his mom had been, after all.

But it was not to a rally that Erik lost his aunt to. When he was in middle school, his aunt was pulled over for speeding. Only her green boxy car survived it.

In those following years of shuffling houses, Erik became familiar with hunger. The clawing kind of hunger, when he was ravenous and foggy-brained. That kind was the worst. That kind always made him rage against those who had taken his family from him. That kind of clawing hunger made him rage against the world jostling and pushing down kids like him – and made him hungry, in turn, to carve out a place for himself in this fucking world which almost didn't want him, made him hungry to become the best of the best.

There was one day when he hadn't had breakfast before an important exam, in high school, and he only had candy in his pocket.

He aced the exam. Top of the class. Like he had expected. Like what he always aimed for. Well, he was always an intelligent kid but he was sure that the sugar to his brain had also helped.

It was candy since then.

Candies did not cost a lot, and were easy to carry around in those years of shuffling houses, and also not that bothersome to consume. They were brightly-coloured in the midst of those grime and dankness, and bright things always made Erik smile. Candies were convenient sugar bursts. They were fleeting, as were most things in his life, but Erik still enjoyed the sharp, focused, and delightful quality of their sweetness for as long as he had them in his mouth.

In the final half of his undergrad, surprisingly with no rotten teeth yet, Erik was found by his uncle.

A rich old man, his dad's brother, rolling in wealth and well-being. He was very sorry, the old man told Erik. He hadn't been on speaking terms with his brother, and he had no information to give Erik as to the identity of his brother's killer. But now he was willing to give the support that he felt Erik was long overdue.

There was a part of Erik that didn't quite believe him. His uncle's sincerity was too polished, maybe. Too diplomatic. Too much like the politician he was.

But Erik wasn't about to let resources slip through his fingers. He let his uncle settle the matter with a team of lawyers, and before his uncle left, he pressed a brochure into Erik's hand and said: "For graduate studies, should you pursue them. I have been informed of your records, child, and I believe you might be capable. Genius does run in our family."

Erik waited for the old man and his entourage to leave before he opened the brochure. It was from a university in his dad's home country.

Said university had ridiculously high standards, especially in graduate studies and beyond, and also had a ridiculously attractive cousin already a year in.

The first time he met T'Challa it was moving day in campus, and Erik nearly collided with a stack of boxes just inside the front door. A stack of boxes nearly as tall as he was.

"The hell?"

"Oh," said a voice from behind the stack, quickly followed by a tall guy in a purple shirt. He had a soft voice. He had eyes which almost made Erik smile back. "I will move these soon."

"What are they?" Erik asked, setting down his own duffle bag on his wheeled luggage.

"My footwear."

Erik hated him immediately.

But Erik only raised his brows and said, "Cool, bro. Cool."

The guy offered his hand, and his handshake was firm and unflinching. "T'Challa," he introduced himself. "Such a pleasure. You must be my cousin N'Jadaka. When the administrative office released the housing lists, there was quite the excitement."

"Call me Erik." His birth name was only for home, had only been used at home, and the last time he truly had a home was when his dad had still been alive. This country still didn't feel like home: a place where he could just be, a place where he could uncurl his fists and just be.

"Erik it is," T'Challa agreed, and after a beat, added: "I really like your glasses."

T'Challa had an easy smile. A lick away from sweet, even. Bright enough, but not too polished.

Erik's glasses were non-prescription. Nothing to speak of, really, just a thin gold-coloured band for frames, a glint of brightness which Erik loved. But in that moment Erik believed his cousin: T'Challa's smile seemed more sincere to Erik.

He still annoyed Erik, though.

A lot of things about T'Challa annoyed Erik, until it seemed like he was half-cousin, half-collection of annoyances.

For instance, T'Challa's stack of footwear. Who the fuck went around with more pairs of sandals one could possibly need?

Then there was the fact that T'Challa hadn't cleaned a bathroom until he was in his twenties; that he threw away bar soaps before they got stick-thin to be of any use; that he used a fuckton of little plates and jugs for breakfast, secure in the knowledge that he wouldn't waste any more time than necessary cleaning dishes because of the presence of a dishwasher; that he kept asking about Erik's hobbies and interests and would proceed to share poems about the night sky or the moon or whatever – Erik liked the sun, okay? Erik liked bright things.

There were many other things, but often just the sight of T'Challa, in his sleek suits and glow of contented well-being, was enough to spark a crackle of annoyance in Erik.

And then one day T'Challa's dad, Erik's old man uncle, was killed.

It was a month into the second semester of Erik's first year.

His cousin barely slept those following months. T'Challa was usually composed, collected. He had the contented air of someone who already knew how his life would shape up.

But in those months, it was like a layer of ice sharpened his calm into brooding frosty silences. He was relentless in pushing the law to bring to justice his father's killer. Erik saw him one drizzling afternoon, striding back from a lecture in a sharp suit, rattling single-minded orders into a phone, eyes intent on a colour-coded folder. T'Challa didn't nudge the law and its enforcers into action: he pushed them, he pushed them short of shoving them out of the way.

It was when Erik first fell in lust with him.

But, like all things fleeting in Erik's life, the cold intensity in T'Challa thawed eventually. Something must have happened during his appointments to interrogation rooms and holding cells and court hearings.

It did not make Erik un-open his eyes to his attraction to T'Challa, though.

So earlier this year, on the first semester of Erik's second year, he didn't let the moment in the house party slip through his fingers. He was there, and T'Challa was also there, and Erik knew how to enjoy the fleeting sweetness of candy for as long as he still had it in his mouth.

"I'll help you monitor," Erik said.

It was almost five in the morning. The street outside was still dark and quiet, the kitchen lights were still sharply bright. There were two steaming cups of coffee on the table between them, because his cousin was thoughtful like that.

"Thank you." T'Challa sounded a bit surprised, which was a bit offensive. "That is kind of you, Erik. I really hope no more people will be harmed."

Erik continued folding the empty candy wrappers. Bright, convenient, sugary things.

"Yeah I have a theory about the monitoring," Erik said. "Which I'll be testing out. But first things first. Know if that band have their website up?"

T'Challa let out a soundless burp as he brought down his cup, and Erik wondered if his cousin was tasting the ghost of human flesh now. Was it savoury?

He finished folding the last wrapper, collected the bits in his palm, and aimed for the trash bin. All wrappers went in.

When he turned back to his cousin, T'Challa was blinking thoughtfully, sleepily. With the lights on, Erik had no problem seeing how fucking pretty those lashes looked, like something spun from whatever material that was made to torture Erik.

Erik drummed his fingers on the table.

T'Challa took another sip of coffee, and finally said, "They kept saying they have a SoundCloud link."

(1/3)