#and she got into the communion wine. Someone stop her | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

danniburgh · 3 years

Text

Sins of the Flesh (priest!Dave York x f!reader)

Pairing: priest!Dave York x f!reader

Summary: His mind shouldn’t be on the new catechesis teacher as he cleaned the chalice after handing communion. His thoughts shouldn’t be on the young girl he knew for so long as he blessed the congregation and finished mass.

But you were different now. Something in you had changed. “Lord, have mercy on me.”

Word count: +10.9k

Warnings: religion! catholic religion to be precise, a lot A LOT of religious references and undertones (shot every time you find one lmao), age gap (around 15 years, reader is legal), smut, unprotected p in v, oral sex, breaking of celibacy vows!, catholic guilt, me making divine metaphors... i think thats it.

A/N: first of all this is all @asta-lily’s fault, she asked why no one had turned this man into a priest and i said “ok ill do it” so i did it, she is to blame. also i wanna say thanks to the pocket wives that encouraged this creation, sorry my loves, this isnt as slutty as yall thought lmao, and thanks to @alliterative-albatross who gave me all the bible verses that shaped this story as well. and i wanna thank the creator of this playlist that i listened over and over while writing this, and yeah, sorry for this monstrosity, love you <3

Masterlist // Read on ao3 // ko-fi

comments and reblogs are eternally appreciated 💓

moodboard by @asta-lily

“So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”–James 4:12.

Sunday 1.

Like a piece in a puzzle.

That’s how you fit in.

There, sitting in the middle of a ten people polished wood bench, eyes on the four feet tall crucified Jesus on the wall above the altar, ready for the first sermon you were to hear after coming back home.

Home. That was the name.

That church felt like home.

You were enjoying sitting there, among the children you met a couple of hours earlier when you were introduced to them as their new catechesis teacher, breathing in and out the myrrh incense burning and invading the navel and your lungs, filling them with new energy, getting them ready to feel the love that you were sure was about to pour over you.

You heard your name behind you and you turned around to see Mrs. Stevens, one of your mother’s friends waving at you from two rows behind.

“Hi, honey!” she smiled at you and immediately you reciprocated “I heard you were in town, are you staying this time?”

You drowned a chuckle inside your chest and bit your lip, nodding. Just realizing you even had missed the venomous messages hidden behind the kind words mouthed by old catholic moms.

“Yes, Mrs. Stevens, I’m staying this time.” you replied, the woman lifted her hand a bit to the sky and you smirked to her.

“God bless, I bet your mom is delighted you’re here!” she muttered “I know she missed you terribly all those years you were in that school.”

“It’s called college, Mrs. Stevens,” you reminded the woman, and she rolled her eyes, making you chuckle softly again “but do not worry for my mama anymore, I graduated, I’m staying for good.” you told her, amused at the way she acted as if you staying at home was some godsend blessing.

The organ began to play on the upper balcony behind everyone and you saw two altar boys, carbon copy of each other, almost rushing their way to the altar, and behind them… Father Dave.

You smiled softly at the sight of him as he walked solemnly to the altar, his green chasuble flowing with the air and the movement, there was a thought you had all those years you were away from home because of school, always coming back to Father Dave York: the young priest that decided to stay in the first congregation he was sent to, the one that became a pillar to the community, the holy man that held the direct link to God and that gave you your first communion, the one you missed when you went to attend mass at the church near campus because no one gave the sermons like he did. For some reason, whenever you least expected, you thought of him.

You saw him putting his bible on top of the pressed cloth over the altar, kneel and kiss the center of it and cross himself. And then, after he closed his eyes and muttered a prayer to himself and to God, he opened his deep brown eyes and he looked at you.

“Let us pray.”

Your mouth dried when his deep timbered voice, with the help of a small microphone on his altar, wrapped the entire navel and you with it, he looked at you as he cleared his throat and he opened his arms to the sky, breaking eye contact with you.

“Lord, have mercy.” he murmured, and the congregation replied to his prayer as you struggled to find the air that had escaped your lungs.

As Father Dave guided the congregation through the sermon and through the prayers, all you could see was him.

In some way, there was something different about him you hadn’t noticed the last time you were there; you didn’t know if it was something about his deep voice as he recited the credo by muscle memory, the way he walked from one side of the sanctuarium to the other as he talked about the scripture or the way his hands wrapped around the chalice when one of the altar boys handed it to him as the organ echoed all around the navel, announcing the communion.

You stood up and walked to the back of the line and sighed as he lifted the wafer to the sky, and your eyes closed by themselves when he lifted the chalice and took a sip from the sacramental wine and locked your eyes on him as the line moved.

As soon as you were in front of him your lips parted and he smiled at you softly.

“The body of Christ.” he murmured, his deep brown eyes on yours as they filled with tears.

“Amen” and you opened your mouth.

He put the wined wafer between your lips and his thumb brushed with your chin, making your skin burn as you brought it inside of your mouth with your tongue and forced yourself to walk away from him.

As you returned to your seat with the gold cross that hung from your neck between your fingers and kneeled to pray for the forgiving of your sins, all you could think of was brown, deep eyes, and a soft, brief touch on your chin that burned more than the wax of a burning taper.

Dave felt it.

The way you looked at him throughout the entire service.

And it made him feel different.

When you rose from your seat to walk to the communion line, he saw the way your body moved, almost as if you were floating instead of walking.

He knew you were back, and his heart was happy you were finally home.

But he didn’t expect to see you so changed.

And he didn’t expect the way your eyes had made him feel.

Then you were in front of him, and he smiled because he remembered the first time he handed the body of Christ to you, years and years before.

And your eyes filled with tears as his breath hitched when your lips parted for him as he fed you the sacred soul of the savior.

God, have mercy.

His mind shouldn’t be on the new catechesis teacher as he cleaned the chalice after handing communion. His thoughts shouldn’t be on the young girl he knew for so long as he blessed the congregation and finished mass.

But you were different now. Something in you had changed.

Lord, have mercy on me. He thought as he entered the sacristy.

“Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.”–Proverbs 28:13.

Sunday 2.

“Forgive me, father, for I have sinned.” Dave heard your voice next to him and felt the air leave from his lungs. Not you, please God, not you.

You had been avoiding Father Dave for almost the entire week.

And you felt guilty about it.

You couldn’t even look at him in the eyes and not think about those dreams you were having about him.

If God was all love and perfection, why was he tempting you with dreams of Father Dave, his own servant, touching you in places you got shivers from, warming your body with his own, putting his mouth on your skin as you repeated his name like it was the sanctus?

Holy, holy, holy.

Why was God putting inside your head the sins of the flesh you had already asked forgiveness for? Why was he making you desire a forbidden man? A man that was not to be perceived as a man but as the representation of him on earth.

That morning, when you walked into the church to impart the catechesis class, you saw Jesus on the cross and you saw him look at you. And you knew he knew.

All omnipresent, all omniscient, all omnipotent.

You couldn’t stop thinking about him.

Almighty God why were you thinking about him so much?

And the resolution in your mind was asking for forgiveness, you needed to pay penitence for those thoughts you knew you did.

But were you really about to confess to the man you had been dreaming about that he was invading your every thought?

“It has been two weeks since my last confession.” you mumbled, playing with your cross over your neck, Dave breathed in deeply and intertwined his hands on his lap.

“What are your sins?” he asked, closing his eyes as he remembered his own.

Dave was always a man of faith. It was in him from birth. He had been taught and trained to not fall into any temptations and so far his life had been devoted and dedicated to God and only to God.

But your eyes and the way you saw him, and the way your eyes made him feel when they locked on his, had him spiraling down into decadence.

Sometimes, dedicating his life to the word of the Lord made him forget he was still a human, he was still a man.

He had needs.

And he was alright before your eyes. Before your holy eyes were on him.

He had dreamed of them; he had thought of them; he had imagined them when he was in the limbo between sleep and awakeness.

He had dreamed of your lips, of your lips on his skin, he had thought of those lips that just looked like they needed someone to wet them and bring them back to life; he had imagined those lips of yours in places of his body he swore never to use.

He had prayed for them to disappear; he had begged to his God to erase those thoughts of his mind and free them from the temptation that was incarnated in you, in your body, in your eyes that denied to see him when you were in the same room, in your hands as you moved them to teach the children, in your legs trapped in the tight denim of your jeans, in your lips as you smiled to everyone but him, in your entire being, just by existing.

But they had increased, like a tamed flame sprayed with gasoline. He had a fire in his chest, one that was spreading through him as he was closer to you.

He needed them gone; he had sworn to never look at a woman as an object of desire; he had sworn on his life and he had vowed his commitment.

But you were there, kneeling next to him, separated by the thinnest patterned panel, holding the matches and the fuel.

“I’ve been having… improper thoughts, father,” you whispered, closing your eyes and left your necklace alone, clutching your hands together as tight as you could, you felt the aura change and the air grow thicker between him and you, “about a man.”

Dave opened his eyes at your confession and frowned. A man?

He knew you could tell him whatever you wanted; he knew he wasn’t allowed to ask in for details; he knew he was only there functioning as a link for you to get absolved from your sins and you were a young woman granted of free will and enough time to ask for absolution but he wanted to know; he needed to know who that man was.

“He is ol–older than me,” he heard you mumble and his hands tightened their grip on each other “and I can’t have him, father, I–I’ve been having these thoughts about a forbidden man.”

Dave’s mind went reeling, and he didn’t understand why. He didn’t like to assume about the life of his congregation members, he never did, but you were talking to him, after he had been dreaming about you for days, after you two shared something about desiring another man. And he was angry. He wanted to know who. He wanted to know who was keeping your mind the same way you were keeping his.

“He keeps me up at night, thinking of him, that is,” you whispered “I’ve–Jesus,” you let out the air of your lungs and Dave breathed in deeply once more “I’ve touched myself thinking of him.” you said under your breath and Dave felt his chest tug and turn.

“Does this man… know what he is causing in you?” he muttered with a frown and heard you sigh.

“No, I don’t want him to.”

“Alright, child,” he replied after a few seconds, and made a grimace of disgust at the pet name. It felt wrong, and he felt dirty with the word on his mouth, “do you repent these sins?”

“Yes, father, I do.” you closed your eyes at his words and wanted, for once, to be brave and tell him he was the one roaming around your mind. But it wasn’t fair.

“Please, recite in silence the act of contrition,” he muttered to you and you obeyed, feeling your eyes fill with tears.

As he waited for you to finish, he did the same on his side of the confession box

I’m choosing to sin and failing to do good.

“Amen.” you said, and he murmured the word to the ceiling.

“I think the word you do for the church,” he started, and you wrinkled your nose at the thought of him knowing it was you “the devotion you have, and how you repent, you don’t need to pay penance,” he muttered separating his hands and putting two fingers on the edge of the patterned panel that separated the two of you “through the ministry of the church,” your breath hitched as he whispered the words to you, and you saw with teary eyes the shadow of his fingers on the panel “man God give you pardon and peace,” you bit your lip and unclutched your hands, lifting your fingers and pressing it to his as two heavy tears fell from your eyes.

Dave felt the pressure of your touch and felt his hand tremble.

“And I ab–absolve you from your sin.” he said under his breath, pressing back.

“Thank you, father.” you whispered, not moving your fingers. You could feel the warmth of his through it and for a few seconds, you could also feel his eyes on your face.

Dave was the one to break the contact first. Absentmindedly brushing his fingers on his stole as he saw the shadow of you move and get out of the confession box.

He sat there, thankful you were the only one that morning and thinking about what you had told him.

A man of God, a man of hope. He had hoped, even if it was a sin and even if it was forbidden by pure creed and vow, that you were feeling the same as he was.

For a moment, he wondered about those thoughts… Were you thinking about that lucky old man touching you? Were you thinking about that man kissing you? What did that man look like? He wanted to be that man; he wanted to be the one whose touch you desired; he wanted to be that man you thought of as you sneaked your hand inside your underwear at night and brought yourself to pleasure. He wanted to be the one whose kiss you yearned for as your sex ached for attention; he wanted to be the one whose fingers you imagined as your own were buried deep inside you.

He fisted the flesh of his thigh over his dress pants and forced himself to stop thinking of you like that.

Dave stayed inside the confession box for twenty minutes more, praying for forgiveness, as he had done every night since you had been back.

At service, he saw you further back on the benches and he tried not to sneak glances at you as you sat there with your precious eyes on the crucifix above him, avoiding him at all costs.

And at communion, he tried not to brush your soft skin with his fingers as he fed you the wined wafer, failing when his knuckle brushed your cheek, his chest deflating when he noticed the way your face quirked in pain when you muttered Amen at him. Dave tried not to make anything of the fact that you kneeled more time than anyone else on the congregation after receiving the communion.

And when the service was over and he was alone in the sacristy, he tried and failed to not think about your skin, your eyes, your hands and your lips all over his neglected body.

That sunday night Father Dave masturbated in the shower thinking about you with your fingers deep inside you as his mind imagined it was him you thought of when you touched yourself in the darkness of the night and prayed for forgiveness.

He shouldn’t be thinking about you like that.

“Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.”–1 Peter 2:11.

Sunday 3.

“Father, sh–shit,” you bit your lip to stop yourself from moaning as your pointer and middle fingers circled your wet clit under the covers of your bed, your legs spread open, the soft cotton of the sheets grazing softly at your inner thighs as you imagined your fingers being one of Father Dave’s, as you imagined him next to you, with his arm above your head as he whispered sweet nothings in your ear and nibbled at your neck while his other hand played your clit like a master pianist. You imagined the hardness of his erection pressing patiently on the skin of your hip, wetting it with pre-semen, making your body burn with the feeling of his warm naked body beside you.

As your other hand played with your nipple you imagined his eyes taking you in, you imagined his lips on your skin, were they soft? you bet they were, and you bet as well his hand would be surprisingly rough for a priest.

“Jesus, fu–fuck.” the knot inside your lower belly exploded with the thought of him and his hand and his body and his lips and his priesthood and you came with a silent scream that made your ears ring for a few seconds and your legs tremble on the bed.

As you hazed out, ready to fall asleep again before your alarm went off to go to work at the church, you felt that familiar guilt cripple inside you and settle in your chest, warming up and leaning against your heart.

Dave was panting, he fisted his hand as he leaned on the tiled wall of his shower and his other hand moved desperately on his cock. The water was still warm, and he closed his eyes shut as he imagined it was your hand on him, giving him the pleasure he was seeking, as he imagined you were behind him, your lips brushing against the wet skin of his back, your free hand around his chest, gliding softly at his skin, making him whimper with your touch.

It was so early for him to be so hot over you again; it wasn’t good for him to give into these desires he had and had been praying so hard and so much to get rid of.

He didn't want to keep doing it and he surely didn’t feel good after it, but his body ached for you, his chest turned every time he thought about you, every time he saw you around the church, he felt the deepest, hottest desire for you and your hands and your body and he just couldn’t help it.

His hand gripped and pumped as fast as he could and he came with a silent groan, opening his eyes as he finished milking every drop of his seed and watched it mix with the shower water and go down the drain. Along with the decency and morality that was left inside him.

You heard your name being said, and you turned around as you finished picking up your things from the small desk you used to teach the catechism; you saw Mrs. Vega, the church custodian, a small, old lady that had known you forever, walking towards you.

“I’m sorry dear, but I want to ask you for something.” she said when you smiled at her.

“Of course, Mrs. Vega, what is it?” you put your small book inside your bag and hung it from your shoulders.

“You see, the little twins that help Father Dave are sick today,” you frowned at the mention of Father’s Dave name but let out a sad sigh at her statement, “and they can’t come help with the service, you’re the youngest of the teachers, could you do it?”

You raised your eyebrows in surprise and felt your stomach churn inside you at the thought of standing next to the altar for a whole service.

“Me?” you asked, your voice in a high pitch as Mrs. Vega reached for your arm and tugged you to walk out of the chapel and into the navel of the church.

“Yes, dear, remember only the youngest get to do it.” she obviated, pulling you with her to the transept and up two steps to the sanctuarium “you only need to hand him the communion things and the holy water, I will prepare everything for you.”

“Why don’t you do it?” you asked in a whisper, not daring to take a step further closer to the altar. Mrs. Vega turned to look at you, and she narrowed her eyes.

“Since when are you shy, girl?” she asked with a teasing smile “I remember you singing in that kiddie choir we used to have and doing it terribly,” you chuckled at the memory and bit your lip “it’s only until the boys get that bug they got out of them.” she palmed your arm, and you breathed in deeply.

You looked up at the crucified Jesus above the altar and silently begged him for anticipated forgiveness.

Dave almost cursed when he saw you standing next to the altar as he walked across the navel.

The thought of who would replace Bobby and Chris on their altar duties didn’t even cross his mind as he was more worried about praying for the boys and sending them some sweets and pleading for the cleansing of his soul after the incident on his shower earlier that morning.

As he stepped up to the sanctuarium your eyes locked on his and he noticed you lips parting when he nodded his chin once at you, he noticed the way you swallowed as you nodded back and for a brief second, his imagination ran wild and made him believe you felt the same way as he did about you.

Even if it was the wrongest thing to think about.

It was like torture.

An hour of torture.

You got to see him kneel behind the altar and kiss the white pressed cloth softly as he stood, as you wanted and wished to be the altar’s cloth he pressed his plump lips on, he crossed himself and you mimicked his movements. And for a brief fraction of a second, as he opened his arms to the sky, you saw him looking at you out of the corner of his eye. And his eyes burned in your skin, they made you feel like your chest was aflame.

The communion time arrived, and he turned to you as you grabbed the chalice with the wine, his eyes locked with yours and you felt them weigh heavy on your body.

Dave couldn't concentrate, he felt on his side the way you were looking at him. It was heavily distracting for him to have you there, in his space, so close to him.

His hands brushed yours when he took the chalice from you and he stood there for less than a second, his fingers on yours. His soft touch and warm skin made your lips tremble with the emotion that touching him gave you. You felt a shiver go up and down your spine and the small hairs of your nape rose as his hands trapped yours.

You caught your lip between your teeth as he broke the contact and you knew he noticed; he looked at your lip as you bit it, and you blushed under his and God’s gaze.

You watched him and he felt you observing him as he prepared the wafers and wined them inside the chalice.

Your throat knotted when he lifted the cup to the sky and you felt your mouth dry as he brought the rim to his lip and his neck strained while he took a sip of the sacramental wine.

Because of the closeness you could see the movement of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed the wine, you noticed a small drop of the crimson red liquid escape from his lips and the way he trapped it with his tongue settled deep inside your belly and leaked through your sex.

The pain of the greatest guilt you’ve ever felt in your short life appeared again and clawed its way inside your chest and to its now usual spot right next to your heart, you were struggling to keep your thoughts at bay; you were looking at Father Dave, right in front of you, doing what he dedicated his life to, and you were imagining him using his hands on your body instead of handling the instruments of the church.

Would he touch you like that? would he treat you with the same delicacy as he treated the body of Christ? would he caress you as softly as he did the chalice? would his mouth be warmed with your taste as it was by the wine he drank?

Dave turned to you and he saw you clutching your hands together, you walked towards him slowly, and he couldn’t stop thinking about the way you moved, almost as if air went through you, as if instead of giving steps your feet barely touched the floor because you were floating.

Everything slowed down, the music of the organ in the balcony, the prayers of the congregation, even the way he moved slowed down so he could focus on your face; on your sweet eyes, those that had brought into him the feeling of humanity, on your soft skin that had scorched his hand when he dared brushed his fingers on it, on your lips, those lips that he couldn’t pray out of his head.

He lifted his hand with the wined wafer, and even the way those holy lips of yours parted was slowed down.

Your eyes connected with his and Dave felt it in his body, deep inside his stomach, the temptation, the whispers of his mortal body as it reacted to your actions; he put the wafer between your lips delicately and pushed it inside your mouth, and then, as if by the grace of God in the heavens, you closed your mouth while he did it, and your lips wrapped softly around the pad of his finger as he pulled them away from you.

And just like that, the world started moving at its usual pace.

His skin tasted sweet. And you spent the rest of the service thinking about what other parts of him would taste like that.

Would his neck taste the same if you kissed it? would his chest feel like that if you nibbled on it? would his lips be that warm or would they be warmer?

Dave’s finger was burning.

He wanted to chop it off his hand just to stop feeling that flesh-eating guilt of enjoying your lips, your soft, warm lips around it, touching his skin, wetting it with the slick of your mouth.

After the service ended and Dave blessed the congregation, he saw you rush to the exit and he felt the sting of the guilt and the sadness. He wanted to talk to you and offer his apologies before you went home.

Sunday 4.

You weren’t there.

And Dave missed your eyes on him.

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”–Romans 12:1.

Sunday 5.

As soon as you walked into the church you felt the eyes of all omnipresent beings on your body. As if the desire that burned deep inside your body left marks all over your skin, that could be visible for all those that looked carefully enough.

You heard your name behind you and jumped slightly, startled. You turned around and felt your blood fall to your feet.

“Father Dave,” you muttered, more to help yourself acknowledge the fact that there he was, standing in front of you, out of habit, his white tab collar was the only piece of his attire that hinted the fact that he was a priest. You tried to control your body as you felt instantly that flame inside your chest beginning to spread.

“You weren’t here last week,” he said, hesitating to step closer to you “are you okay?”

You nodded a few times and bit your lip to stop it from trembling.

“Are you sure?” Father Dave asked, and you dropped your eyes to the floor and saw him give a couple of steps towards you, your breath hitched and your entire body began to shiver when you felt his hand on your arm “I’m sorry.” he whispered.

“What?” you looked up to see him and you could notice his pained quirk, his brow furrowed, his eyes narrowed and his lips… those lips you had spent all but two weeks imagining printing themselves and making marks on your skin, on a sad, downwards line.

“Can I please talk to you?” he said again in a whisper and you opened your mouth to reply, but only air came out, “please?”

His deep brown eyes were on yours and you felt your chest turn by the feeling of having him so close. You nodded, and he turned to the sides, as if he was making sure there was no one there, and guided you to the sacristy.

“What are you doing?” you asked, a bit altered when he opened the door and let you in first, followed you and closed the door behind him.

“I just needed to be alone with you for a minute,” he clarified, you let your eyes wander around the small space where he got ready every day for the services instead of letting them settle on him, because you knew being that close to him wouldn’t help your situation at all “I wanted to apologize.”

You frowned and looked at him. He had his back almost glued to the door and his hands together, his thumbs fidgeting with each other.

“Apologize for what?” you muttered, and he sighed.

“I’m–I make you uncomfortable, and I’m sorry.”

Dave felt stupid telling you that, but it was his truth; he spent every free moment of his days when you weren’t near him thinking maybe it was because of him. It would make sense, that you didn’t want to be there because you didn’t like his closeness, that you didn’t want to be there because he was taking advantage of his position to steal glances and give furtive touches.

He understood, but you were an excellent woman, devoted and committed to the congregation, and he knew he needed to stop or you would leave and he would never see you again. And he couldn’t have that.

“You aren–you…” you babbled, and then the look he gave you made you lose your words.

His eyes were all over you. And you could feel them on your skin, how they took you in, how they navigated through your body and every inch of you was immediately on fire.

Then he looked at your face and you swore you could see in his brown eyes the deepest form of devotion there was. And your mouth was agape and your eyes filled with tears and suddenly he was in front of you and his hands were orbiting your face.

“Can I touch you?” he said, and you nodded.

He cupped your face, and you felt his warm, rough hands scorching your skin as you closed your eyes. His warmth started mixing with your own and you could feel him inside you already. It was as if everything you needed in life was already there.

“You don’t make me uncomfortable,” you whispered, closing your eyes as his fingers started caressing the skin of your face, tracing your features “I swear you don’t”

Dave let out a sigh when his thumb traced the edge of your lips and he so wanted to lean down and take them in his. There had been so long since he last kissed someone and he, for a split second, forgot everything about him and the only thought in his mind was you.

“I don’t?” he asked under his breath as a tear rolled down your cheek and he brushed it off with his knuckles, you shook your head and opened your eyes and he felt his heart fill with the purest love he had ever felt in his life “you swear?” you curled your lips up and nodded twice.

“Can I tell you something?” you muttered, looking up at him and losing yourself in the depths of his brown eyes.

“Always.”

You allowed your hands to slide to his shoulders and you let out a relieved sigh. They fit perfectly.

“Yo–you are…” he nodded his chin, his hands still cupping your face softly as his eyes studied your face, you let out a trembling sigh and grabbed as much courage as you had left within you “you are the man I’ve been thinking of all this time.”

Dave widened his eyes and the movements of his hands stopped, he looked at you, searching for any hint of mischief or lie, searching for something that could tell him you were lying, that you were playing with him. But there was none.

“That’s why I wasn’t here last week,” he heard you say as he felt his heart burn with the flames of his desire and love “I was embarrassed after what happened at the communion.”

You looked at him for a second, waiting for the rejection, waiting for him to tell you what you already know, that he can’t for you what you wanted him to be, that he can’t give you what you wanted as his duty was with God and not with the mortals, let alone with a woman.

Father Dave had resigned to the pleasures of the mundane world; you knew that, but you also knew he deserved to know, even if nothing would happen.

“Am I?” he asked you, bewildered after such confession, you nodded and moved your hands to cup his face, a gesture that made him close his eyes. You wondered when was the last time, if ever, he had been touched like that “we can’t” he replied, opening his eyes and leaning in to you.

You could feel his breathing mixing with yours as the implications of his words fell on you.

“We can’t” he repeated, pushing his forehead to yours as you trembled under his touch.

“You want to?” you asked him and Dave asked for guidance in his mind as you started crying and wetting his hands. He nodded, and you sobbed.

“I can’t” he whispered, and you shook your head as he looked at you pouring your feelings from your eyes.

“Kiss me.” you pleaded, looking into his brown, deep eyes. Making him frown.

“What?”

“If you’re not gonna give me anything, at least kiss me.”

His face quirked from confusion to pain in an instant, and you gripped the hold on his face.

“Please, Dave.”

Dave sighed at the way you whispered his name without calling him a father, and deep inside him he was grateful. With you he didn’t feel like a man of god, with you, letting him touch you and touching him back, he only felt like a man. Like the man he never got the chance to be.

“I–I” he started, and you shook your head. Dave looked into your eyes and all the air he had stored in his lungs left his body in a hurry, you were the most precious being he had ever seen, and for a second, he wanted nothing but to make worth the fact he had you in his hands “shit.” he said under his breath.

Dave brought your face up to him and printed his lips on yours, stealing the little air and the close to no coherence you still had in you. You let out a soft moan out of the surprise and out of the feeling of your entire body warming up to his temperature.

His lips were as soft and as wars and better than you had imagined, they were a bit dry and hesitant on yours, but the contact of them with yours made you feel like you were floating away from the realm of the living.

Dave didn’t want to stop kissing you. He didn’t remember the last time he had kissed a woman, and in that moment he wasn’t kissing any woman he was kissing you; the precious being that had been in his mind for weeks and that had never left.

Unsure of his movements, he let you take control of the contact and soon enough you were sliding the tip of your tongue along the seam of his lips, Dave let out a surprised grunt and opened his mouth slightly of you, and you took his lower lip with your mouth. And he let you kiss him all you wanted, enjoying the contact of your slow, wet, warm lips on his less experienced ones until he was sure his lungs were screaming from the lack of air.

When he broke the kiss, he left a small one on your forehead and pressed his lips there and you closed your eyes to feel him settle inside you

“I’m sorry.” you whispered to his neck. And he nodded slightly.

“Me too.”

“But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”–Matthew 5:28.

Sunday 6.

Your knuckles grazed softly with the sacristy door and you heard the muffled noise of the latch and the door opened.

“Hi,” you smiled and Dave looked at you up and down “got your text.”

“Come in.” he motioned his hand for you to hurry and you turned your head to both sides and walked into the sacristy, closed the door behind you and slid the latch.

Immediately after the door was locked, you felt his hands on your waist and his chin on your shoulder.

“This is why you texted me?” you teased and he moved to let a kiss on your jaw.

“I missed you.” he muttered and turned your body around for you to face him.

“You didn’t.” you smiled at him and wrapped your hands around his neck, grateful for the apparently deliberate choice of him to take off his tab collar.

“Yes, I did, I missed you all day.” Dave leaned towards you and took your lips in his, already knowing, after less than a week’s practice, how you loved being kissed.

His lips were as warm as they always were, his tongue barely present if not just to taste the sweetness of your lipstick, his hands always steady on your waist, and at the end, his forehead on yours, just taking in your breaths with his.

“Mass starts soon.” you said, and he nodded, sliding his hands to your middle back to wrap you closer to him.

“I know.” he left another brief kiss on your lips.

“You gotta get dressed.” you murmured against his lips.

“I know.” he muttered back and kissed you again.

“Want me to help?” you asked under your breath, just for him, as if you saying it as low as you could would stop God from listening.

“Yes, I would love that.” Dave replied and gave into another deep kiss that stole both your breath and made you want to stop the time so you could kiss until your lips fused together.

“C’mon you need to get ready.” you broke the kiss and stepped away from him, making him smile. You wandered around the sacristy and found his tab collar. You sighed and took it in your hands.

Dave looked at you and noticed the way you looked at the soft plastic piece, he walked towards you and raised his hand to grab yours. As you felt his hand on yours; you turned your head to look at him and smiled softly, and you moved your hands, raising them to carefully lift the collar of his shirt and clasp the piece around his neck.

“You okay?” he asked in a whisper, you nodded and bit your lip at the sight of him in front of you.

Dave moved and walked to the small table against a wall with a large bowl of water and you gazed at him as he washed his hands and whispered a few words. You leaned onto the wall just looking at him go to a small cabinet near the opposite corner and took a white, folded linen garment, which he unfolded and you recognized as the long robe he used under all his attire.

He slid it off and whispered another prayer again as he let it fall and graze his ankles. His eyes went to you and you smiled at him, he next grabbed a green square that you also recognized and you walked to him and took it out of his hands.

“Let me do it” you whispered, and he nodded, you unfolded the long stripe that was the stole and found its middle, Dave crouched a bit to help you and you let it fall around his neck over his shoulders.

“Return to me the stole of immortality,” he whispered, looking at your eyes, your throat dried at the deepness of his voice “which I have lost in the sin of my first parent and although I, unworthy,” he continued and took your hand in his “approach thy sacred mystery grant to me everlasting joy.”

You gripped his hands and felt your throat knotting around itself.

“Why are you praying to me?” you asked under your breath. He cupped your chin with one hand and brought you close to his face.

“You’re holy.” he whispered and left a soft kiss on your lips.

“Stop it.” you chastised him and he shook his head, giving you a soft smile that you reciprocated immediately.

You turned to the table and saw a long, golden cord and you took it.

“Not that one.” he muttered, and you frowned.

“Why not?” you saw him taking a deep breath as he took it from your hand and left it back on the table.

“The cincture… it means chastity and continence.” he replied under his breath and you let out all the air of your lungs as he took his chasuble and put it on without looking at you.

“Dave.” you called, and he lifted a hand to you as he said the last prayer. When he finished, he looked at you and as if he read your mind, he smiled at you and shook his head.

“Don’t,” he whispered, taking you again in his hands and pulling softly so your head rested on his shoulders “don’t apologize please.”

“I need to,” you mumbled against the light fabric of the green chasuble “I’m keeping you from your vow.”

Dave grabbed your shoulders and pulled you away from his body, his hands slid to your face and you gripped his wrists as he brought your face to his.

“You’re not doing anything, my love,” he muttered the last words directly on your lips as he stole a few kisses from your trembling mouth “you’re perfect,” he panted out and you shook your head “I’m doing this because I want to, please understand it,” he kissed you again, a bit more desperately “you’re the most divine creation I’ve ever laid my eyes and hands upon,” he whispered rapidly on your lips “and I want you to be mine.”

You gasped as the words left his mouth, and he gazed at you.

“Dave...” you started, but he didn’t let you finish, he wrapped his arms around you and brought your body to his, tightening the embrace as he thought of the implications of what he just asked.

Dave lifted his eyes to the ceiling and for the first time in years, with you slowly wrapping your arms around his waist, exactly over the place the cincture was supposed to go around, and the sweet aroma of your perfume inundating his senses, he felt really close to heaven.

“I want you to be mine too.” you whispered into his ear, and he smiled, leaving a kiss on top of your head.

“How beautiful and pleasant you are, O loved one, with all your delights!”–Song of Solomon 7:6.

Sunday 7.

You stirred on your seat again, the organ was playing the latest song before Dave would bless the congregation and wrap up the service and you were nervous.

You glanced at the crucified Jesus above him and you felt his eyes on yours; you felt him shove his holy hand on your chest and as the last notes of the song inundated the navel, you felt your throat sting with the green tint of your deep guilt, but at the same time, the rest of your body drown with the red warmth of your love and desire for Dave.

Is it worth it? you heard inside your head and your immediate response was yes.

Eternal damnation in exchange for a few hours of love. It was condemnedly worth it.

The service was over and you stood up with the rest of the congregation; you talked with a few people on your way out of the church and slowly and patiently you waited for everyone to disperse.

You walked around the gardens outside the church and slid between the gate that marked the beginning of Dave’s small house inside the church grounds. You rummaged around your small bag and pulled out the key he had given you earlier and with nervousness and the familiar guilt settled next to your heart; you let yourself into his house.

You turned on the lights. The space wasn’t big, but it wasn’t small and everything around smelled like him. For a priest’s home, the place lacked religious imagery, and you automatically chastised yourself for thinking about his priesthood again.

You sat on the loveseat next to the door as you waited for him and got dragged inside your head again; you talked about doing that throughout the week and you had agreed it was something you both wanted. But your head sent you through an unwanted train of thought and you sat there, thinking about the future. Something you hadn’t talked about.

After all, he would still be a priest and you would still be a young member of his congregation. You could spend time with him and let you love him and let him love you as much as you two wanted, but in the future… what else was there for you?

You could never ask him to leave his habit for you, you could never ask him to leave his life for you, you could never do something like that to him. But you were unsure if something like that had any other path but failure.

The door opened and there he was, unclasping his tab collar and dropping it on the end table as you rose from your seat and walked to him. He smiled at you and his hands found his place on your waist.

“You’re here.” he said, not surprised but relieved.

As he took off his attire in the sacristy and walked to his house from the church, he had a few minutes to think about what he was about to do. He didn’t allow himself to overthink it because if there was something he knew was that he wanted it; he wanted it more than he had wanted anything in his life. He couldn’t explain it even if he tried, but he knew there was something about you that made him feel human, there was something about you that made him feel like he belonged somewhere, maybe the way you talked to him, maybe the way you kissed him, maybe the way you always seemed to understand the moral and spiritual dilemma he was in. He didn’t know, but he knew that he loved you, even if he wasn’t supposed to, even when he wasn’t allowed.

And as he thought of it, love was one of the laws of the God he represented, and he felt it deeply.

“I’m here.” he pulled you to him as you wrapped your arms around his neck and nodded.

“Thank you.” you closed your eyes and bit your lip, shaking your head at him.

You felt his lips on yours as they re-discovered your kisses and his hands roamed to your middle back to press your chest to his.

You were amazed by how fast he had learned how you liked to be touched, how you liked to be kissed and caressed, as if he was just trying to commit to memory everything you ever wanted and he wanted to do it to you to please you.

Dave slid his hands from your back down to your hips and moved you softly to the side, without breaking the kiss he snaked his hands to the back of your thighs and lifted you. You smiled in his mouth and wrapped your legs around his waist as he walked to his bedroom.

When you crossed the doorframe you started leaving small kisses on the skin of his neck and he sat on the edge of his bed with you in his lap, you were already feeling the hardness growing inside his pants and his hands started grazing up and down your thighs as he let you taste his neck how you best pleased.

Dave was in a haze. He understood then the power of physical touch combined with deep love; it enhanced the sensations, the flame inside his chest was burning him from the inside out with a deep desire he was sure he had never felt before, and you were there, moving slowly on his lap as you devoured the skin of his neck and kissed slowly around his jaw.

“Dave,” you whispered as you licked his earlobe and pulled out a shiver from him, he hummed in question “touch me.”

He didn’t hesitate on questioning where, his hands roamed all around your body, they were big and warm and they were rough; you cupped his jaw with both hands and took his lips in yours with a wet, open-mouthed kiss that he followed as his hands snuck inside your shirt and you moaned softly at the feeling of skin to skin.

You moved out of his lap and stood up in front of him, Dave let out a soft whine at the sudden loss of your weight on his body but stopped when you moved his legs open and stood between them.

“Take off my shirt, please.” you told him, not in an order but he obeyed, he grabbed the hem of it and lifted it, you raised your arms and felt his lips on your rib side as you finished taking it off and dropped it on the floor behind you.

Dave put his hands around your torso and licked your skin experimentally, which made you gasp at the feeling of his wet tongue against your skin and he smiled to himself, doing it again and nibbling on the same spot softly.

His hands slid to your waist and without being told to he unbuttoned your jeans and dragged them down slowly, his eyes directly on yours. You smiled at him with your reddened, kiss-swollen lips and he felt your smile settling inside his lower belly, his cock twitching inside his pants.

You put your hands on his shoulders as he helped you out of your shoes and jeans and when you were there, standing in front of him only in your underwear, he swore there wasn’t anything more divine than your body.

You sank on your knees and your hands landed on his thighs, Dave’s throat clutched and his chest turned as you smiled at him and your hands slid to his belt, you raised your eyebrows as if asking for permission and he nodded a few times, leaning backward into his hands to give you space for you to do whatever you wanted to him.

You unbuckled his belt and opened his pants, his breath hitched when your fingers hooked to the hem of both his pants and his boxers, and then he lifted his hips for you to pull them off him. Dave smiled when he saw you bite your lip at the sight of his hard cock resting on his abdomen. It did something unexpected on what he thought was his dead ego, but he loved the way you looked at it.

“Take off your shirt.” you said and again, without it being an order, he obeyed. Unbuttoned it as quickly as he could and slid it off his shoulders as you leaned over his lap and took his erection on your hand, your thumb grazing softly the tip and he threw his head back between his shoulders.

“Oh, my love.” he sighed out as you started pumping slowly and when he closed his eyes, you licked the underside and wrapped your lips around the tip, making him gasp.

You took it slowly, enjoying the taste of his pre-cum as it came out of him, pumping the rest you couldn’t fit inside your mouth with your hand.

Dave forced his eyes open and moved his head down to watch you, he shivered when he found you already looking at him; he moved his hand to your face and with his knuckles caressed your cheek, making you smile with his cock inside your mouth.

For him, looking at you on your knees between his legs was like looking at a sacrosanct painting; your lips around him taking as much of his length as you could, your saliva dripping from his dick to your hand, bobbing your head up and down as your eyes, those holy eyes that never left his, it was a pleasure he never thought he would get in his earthly life.

He felt himself close to cumming, and he pushed your head softly upwards, you rose from your knees and clashed your messy lips onto his and he wrapped his arms around your waist, his large hands roaming around the skin of your back. His fingers played with the back of your bra and he broke the kiss for a few seconds to unhook it and help you slide it off, you smiled when he sighed at the sight of your breasts in front of his face and he pulled you flush against his head, taking a nipple in his mouth.

The warmth of his mouth and the wetness of his tongue around the soft skin of your nipple made you cry out his name softly and arousal gathered between your legs. One of his hands rested on your other boob and kneaded delicately as you fisted his hair in your hand. Dave moved his mouth to your other nipple and lapped at it before trapping it inside his mouth, you pressed his head to your chest and let out a moan when his teeth grazed your nipple as he released it.

“I wanna taste you.” he muttered against your boob and you smiled at him, nodding.

He moved you softly to lie down on the bed; the sheets were cool and soft and he stood on the edge, taking you in again, studying your body.

He leaned down to you and you opened your legs to make space for him; he hovered over your body and kissed you again, softly, as if you were back in time to the first kiss he gave you in the sacristy, as if he wasn’t about to devour your body.

His kisses traveled from your mouth to your neck and your chest, he left one in each nipple, making you laugh, he left a trail of them over your belly and one over your belly button. As he kissed your abdomen and your thighs, you looked at the ceiling and you smiled at whoever was watching.

Dave took the hem of your panties on his fingers and you lifted your hips for him to slip them off you, you lifted your legs and he unhooked them from your ankles, grabbing your calves and opening your legs again. He gulped when he saw your wet, expectant pussy right in front of him and looked at your flushed face. He leaned down and left kisses around your thighs without breaking eye contact.

“Guide me.” he whispered and left a kiss right over the hood of your clit, making you moan.

You nodded once, and he looked at your pussy, opened the lips gently with his fingers and blew on your slick folds, making you shiver. He flattened his tongue and licked from your slit to your clit, tasting your arousal, moaning at the richness of it.

You slid your hand to your clit and looked at him.

“Here.” you mumbled, circling a few times to show him how. He had told you he had sex before his ordination, because he didn’t want to go into his holy orders without having experienced it and wondering for the rest of his life what he had missed, but he said it wasn’t as good as he thought it would be and before you, he thought he would never know. So you had to show him what you wanted and what you liked because his experience wasn’t vast.

Dave did as you showed and you moaned out loud, the pads of his fingers were warmer and bigger than yours and he was handling you so delicately you were already on edge.

He kept licking and circling your clit and then, without a second thought, he moved his fingers away and started circling your clit with his tongue.

“Oh m–my god,” you fisted his hair, pushing his face into your pussy and he pressed your hips onto the mattress, looking at your face with your mouth opened in pleasure and your eyes closed shut “Dave ke–keep doing that baby,” you pleaded and he did it, and started playing the pad of one of his fingers on your slit, making your hips buck slightly he saw you pant and smiled when you slid your free hand to play with your nipple so he added a second one to play with your entrance “inside, put them inside.” you said under your breath and he pushed his fingers slowly inside your cunt, making you let out a long moan of his name, he started pumping and curling his fingers inside as he had imagined you doing it all those weeks ago while touching himself in the shower and closed his eyes to hear you moan his name as he brought you closer and closer to pleasure.

He moved his fingers faster inside of you and hand fisted and pulled his hair as your moans became tamed screams and he thought of them as the most pious symphony that he and only him had the sacred pleasure to hear.

You wrapped a leg around his shoulders as you felt the knot inside your belly explode from his ministrations and you chanted his name over and over as he worked you through your orgasm. You panted for a few seconds and opened your eyes to the sight of Dave licking his fingers clean. You smiled at him and released his hair to motion him to come to you; he hovered over your body again and you put your hand on his nape to bring him to you; you moaned softly at your own taste and you felt it smile on your lips.

“What?” you asked in a whisper.

“Did you like it?” he asked back on your lips, you nodded and cupped his clean-shaven jaw, leaving a deep kiss on his lips.

“I loved it,” he smiled, and you wrapped your legs around his waist and felt his cock brushing lightly against your folds. “make love to me, Dave.”

You saw his smile widen, and it was his turn to nod to you, he kissed you again while his hand worked on aligning himself to you; he slid the tip through your folds and you gasped on his mouth when he found your entrance and started pushing in.

He did it slowly, no rush; he wanted to feel you in every inch of his cock; he wanted you to feel him and every ridge and vein of him as he found his home in you.

You nipped at his lip as he bottomed up and smiled when he stayed there, inside you, enjoying the wait for your body to acclimate to his, you looked into his eyes and you felt it.

You felt how you two fit together like pieces of a puzzle.

As if his body was made for you and your body was made for him.

It felt right.

It felt sacred.

Dave started moving at a calmed pace and you with him, quickly finding a rhythm where your hips moved almost in unison and he thrusted into you deeply every time he moved. He was supporting his weight on one arm next to you while the other gripped your hip and helped you with the tantalizing dance you both were having.

He hid his face in the crook of your neck when your hands moved to his back and you pulled his body down to yours, his chest gliding yours and his hips circling as he thrusted faster into you.

Dave moaned into your neck when you scratched his back as his thrusts became pounds.

“Harder, please, baby, harder.” you whispered into his ear and he listened, driving into you as fast as his body allowed, the noise of his skin clashing with yours and the wetness of you leaking around his cock flooded the room and his moans grew louder and you dug your nails into his skin chanting his name as you got closer and closer to your second release.

“Yo–you’re a goddess,” he muttered into the skin of your neck as his cock grazed your cervix, his hand wrapped around your hips and he lifted your ass for him to thrust deeper, making you moan his name loudly “you’re m–my go–goddess.”

You slid your hands to his ass and fisted his buttcheeks, pushing him further into you.

Dave felt his orgasm closer and closer every time he drove into you and your warm walls started to clench around him with the closeness of your orgasm, he nibbled the skin of your neck and clutched his eyes shut tighter when his body started to stiffen as he pounded into you; he muttered your name a few times like a prayer he never knew he needed to make, and it sounded right, your name in his voice as he drove himself and you to climax, his own name on your sweet voice as you begged him for everything he had in himself, it was all right, it was all correct, there was nothing wrong, how could he had felt so guilty about it when it was the most perfect, most righteous, most sacred, most heavenly action he could do.

You in his arms, your hands on his body, his cock inside your cunt, you wrapped around him begging him to cum inside you, everything about it was all he could have asked for to feel like he was in heaven. He had almost said no to feel it, and he bursted inside you at the same time as you broke in pieces around him, thinking that he would rather live his life with you around him than his afterlife in heaven.

“I love you.” he muttered against the skin of your neck and you opened your eyes after riding the high of your orgasm and looked at the ceiling.

You frowned when you heard his words and when you remembered what he said to you before he came, and as you turned to the side to see him that red warmth you had felt earlier disappeared almost completely and the bright green taint of the deep guilt inside you washed over your body and your soul.

He looked at you and narrowed his eyes. His expression changed as he realized you weren’t going to answer his confession.

“Dave,” you whispered and his face changed, his brow furrowed and you saw his jaw tighten “what did we just do?”

pedrito's perma list: @queenofthefaceless @northernpunk @pascalesque @sleep-tight1 @cheekygeek05 @bii-aan-ckaa @letaliabane @starlightmornings @mouthymandalorianalso @supernaturalgirl @metalarmsandmanbuns @purplepascal042 @asta-lily @greeneyedblondie44 @missswriter @pedro-pastel

Dave York pit neighbors: @pascalslittlebrat @mypedrom @mothandpidgeon @rebelliouscat @hnt-escape @maharani-radha @hylliamoon

#dave york #dave york fanfiction #dave york x reader #dave york x you #dave york pit #dave york the equalizer #the equalizer #the equalizer 2 #the equalizer fanfic #Pedro Pascal #pedro pascal fanfiction #Jose Pedro Balmaceda Pascal #pedro pascal characters #priest dave york

541 notes · View notes

tripleredeye4sam · 3 years

Text

a taste for it

your first taste was at six months old, and you didn't have a say in the matter.

so really, your first taste comes after dean drops his pocket knife in the schoolyard. the opening flick of the blade doesn't get you, you'd seen him do it too many times. but the rush of kids around you get too close, and there's the angry inevitability of dean getting in trouble if the knife is taken by a teacher. it makes you clumsy, snapping the blade closed with your thumb in its path, all bite no bark.

your thumb is in your mouth but at least you don't cry, though the copper spread across your tongue has the tang of fear.

there’s no way you recall that taste from your crib, from your corruption, from all those years ago. but it's familiar somehow.

the school nurse is all reprimands, but you've heard worse. do you know how much bacteria is in your mouth sam you’ll get your wound infected.

this is how you learn you can infect yourself. it doesn’t surprise you.

your family leaves you behind, over and over. each time, you learn a little more about how to leave.

you've gotten good at sneaking out of motel rooms to sit in the back row of churches, to hover on a pew's edge, to hear our father, who art in heaven, to believe it. they hand you wine, tell you it’s blood; you drink. it sings through you, wine or the alternative, sparking like flint on steel across your tongue, in your veins. you wonder if this is what God feels like.

(it’s the alternative.)

at a party someone asks red or white; you’ve never had wine that wasn't poured for you by a priest. you don't even hear your own answer through your internal barrage of be normal be normal be normal, but a glass is offered to you. you take it, and you think about the exact number of hours it would take fresh blood to descend from its arterial brightness to this shade of dull red. you don’t share with the class.

someone at the party sees you mindlessly refilling your glass and tipsily intones sam's got a taste for the red, I see.

you only think of monsters long left behind: blood on teeth, saliva running pink. waking up to a motel end table full of empties, walking on eggshells the rest of the day.

you leave early to scrub the taste out of your mouth, brushing til you spit blood into the sink. you give up alcohol because you have a choice. it's easy to forget you have a choice.

you never stop praying, but you've stopped seeking out communion. that much religion makes you its own kind of freak.

your first taste takes convincing.

she says take it sammy it’ll make you stronger, and it’s been so long since you were the one to take, to feel strong. it’s getting harder to separate infection from infected, and you’ve licked the wound dirty before the blood dries.

when you taste it on your tongue, your ears stop ringing.

when you taste her on your tongue, she burns like coals. if only you flinched away from heat. but your own mouth is laced with whiskey smoke, like a match made in— well.

you no longer taste blood when you drink wine, you’re long past trying to cleanse yourself. now you swig whiskey to get down ibuprofen, another swig just for the hell of it, for the burn. your bloodstream crackles hot and you don’t care to know which poison it's coming from.

you kneel to pray at altars of motel mattresses, your communion cup is the edge of a knife. you still try to hold words like divinity and absolution in your mouth, even when you know you weren't meant for them. the taste of copper is no longer from biting your tongue.

you tell yourself the first taste took convincing. you wish it had taken more.

#I am done with this I am releasing it into the world #bf stands for boyfriend and also bloodfreak #mine #samruby #I guess??#have fun sorry it’s insane #fic

122 notes · View notes

way-to-the-future · 3 years

Text

#20: Rin - Petrichor

(cw: sexual content)

Do you want to know the best part? We thought we actually won.

I don’t pretend to be a strategist. I was never working at the highest level. But when they called me back from the border that first time, told me to pack up because we’d beat the skeleton crew of tin suits back, I was more than ready to believe it. We all were. Whether Lord Kaien was a puppet or a true father of the resistance – and you’ll hear either side, depending on which tavern you sit in at which time of day – that day, we were all ready to sing his praises down the bombed-out streets. For the first time in most of our lives (and you have to remember, here, just how many fathers and mothers died in that first invasion), we had achieved something. We’d achieved not a boot in the face, a lash or a harsh word, but something real, precious, almost tangible for all the reality that it was a fleeting dream. More, it was the biggest fucking thing any of us could imagine. And what did we do?

We partied. We, who couldn’t rub two grains of barley together if you rounded up all of our cousins along with us, we got loud and stupid and drunk on all the watered-down wine we could dig out of collapsed cellars. I was hungrier than a street dog when I wandered into the camp-turned-festival, and the first thing I did was pound so much grain liquor I thought my heart would stop then and there. Maybe, a little bit, I wanted it to. Maybe spending moons in the dark, on my own, and coming back to the crashing of cymbals and steel-plated heads shoved on pikes wasn’t the welcome I needed. But fuck me if I was going to kill the mood.

Discipline bleeds away with the memory of the conflict. It’s catharsis, garish and uninhibited, and not one of us willing to be the one to step back in line. People wrestle wearing the guards and visors of the last centurions to get trapped in the garrison. Shooting contests spring up, all for using up all the ammo the three-eyes had left behind. Idiots. I have to stop looking at it – all of it. Not because I can’t take it; don’t you fucking think for a second that I don’t want to join in the pissing contest.

I know it’s not over. I didn’t do my part.

I find the courage, at least, to face the proxy. It’s close enough to the rainy season that some insightful souls have stretched lengths of silk and canvas between the shells of the ruined houses that host our celebration, and the one right above me is a brilliant forest green, embroidered in red-gold thread with the image of fucking Suzaku, of all things. I try to keep my eye on her, on my southern goddess, and show her I’m still ready to fight. I’ve got passion, spirit, fury enough to meet the next threat. I’m not tapped out. Instead, this lady keeps putting her tits in my face, blocking my view.

More’s the fool me for trying to manage some sacred communion while her boyfriend is pulling me apart ilm by agonizing, maddened ilm. I don’t have the grace to ask myself if the Four Lords want to see me getting fucked, here on the shattered tile floor of some hovel which very likely serves as someone’s tomb. I’m done with it; really, truly done, and this I demand of myself when she dips forward and the ride gets another few degrees too severe, another step closer to the beating I deserve for spending the fight for freedom tucked in a blind in my other motherland. Here’s my fucking battle fury, oh Lords: here’s what your son can do when you put him to the test for his people. I can take it as hard as my brothers in arms like to give it to me, go as long as my sisters want. Hero of the liberation that I am, catching this punishing fuck while my comrades have at least the grace to be on their knees and not on their backs.

I’ve got a great view, at least, to see the storm begin. The cloth shelters our heads, kami forfend, but I watch the whole while as Suzaku sags under the weight of the rain damping her tapestry. I’d laugh if I could catch my breath for a single fucking second. Good mother that she is, the Queen of the South shelters me all through it, even while she and her disappointment stare me in the eye.

Needless to say, I don’t stick around for the celebrations the second time around.

#ffxivwrite2021 #dutybound #narrative #we salute you sir #im done for the night....... sorry

9 notes · View notes

fantasticstoryteller · 4 years

Text

Kingdoms ch. 31

Dinner with Royalty was, by necessity, a formal affair. Especially since one of the invited happened to be an ambassador from another country. The five of them would sit at a table designed for six as they were served their meal. The servants would bring the course, the necessary utensils to eat it with, and take the plates when the course was finished. Queen Mary Jane was in a gown of thin mist linen over a green dyed gown of spider silk, Harry was in his armor, and both Wade and Peter arrived in normal priest robes; Peter’s the natural color, and Wade’s a shocking blood red.

Before the ambassador arrived, Mary Jane spoke to Peter. “You probably know more about Mysterio than any of us,” she said urgently. “Is there a specific reason for the ambassador to be unmated?”

To her surprise, it was Wade who answered. “They don’t trust us,” the alpha said calmly as he dropped, unceremoniously, into his seat. Peter, who had been raised with better manners by people he actually cared about, gracefully took his own seat at the table. “In Mysterio omegas, as the ones who birth young, hold a special elevated status. Alphas who are mated are considered to have two important duties; that of protecting the omega they are mated to and that of providing seed for the young. So, the ambassador wouldn't have been an omega in the first place. They’re too precious for that.”

Mary Jane waited patiently for more information as she stared at the alpha, stunned by the depths of his mind. Oh, she’d always known that he wasn’t stupid; he couldn't have been and lived to adulthood in the snake’s nest that was his father’s court—but she’d never expected this level of insight from him. “And?” she prompted when it didn’t seem he was going to continue.

“And that’s why they sent an unmated alpha,” Wade explained with a shrug. “If he dies, there’s no mated omega or offspring back home who will be left defenseless. And he’s a powerful warrior,” Wade added with something that almost sounded like respect from his voice. Queen Mary Jane stared at the alpha.

Peter simply looked at his mate. “Have the two of you met before?” he asked with curiosity.

Wade ran a finger over the tabletop nervously. “It was back when I was—working for the king of Reaper.”

Queen Mary Jane frowned slightly as Peter reached out and gently rubbed his mate’s arm. She wasn’t certain what Wade had done, for his father’s court, but she knew that it couldn't have been good. She hadn’t had a good opinion of the king before the whole incident where Wade had been captured. She could also tell, from the way Peter was acting, that this was not news to the omega. Peter already knew.

“What happened?” asked Peter.

“Oh, I went in, did—uh, the job—and almost got caught on the way out. Strange, last name of the ambassador guy, stabbed me with a stick on the way out.”

“He what?!” Peter gripped his mate’s arm and stared at the man.

“Stabbed me with a stick,” Wade said. Harry and Mary Jane eyed the man. He spoke the words with—admiration? When Peter’s hand clenched a little Wade covered it with one of his own. “Don’t worry,” he said with a cheerful grin. “I stabbed him back.”

“Through the hand,” drawled the Morphio Ambassador as he strode into the room. His cloak billowed around him like a living thing, the dark red fabric rustling softly. The dark haired alpha looked at the others and politely bowed. “Majesty,” he said formally.

Queen Mary Jane smiled. “Please,” she said warmly, “this is just a meal. Let’s have no formalities between us. Have a seat.”

He sat in the only empty chair and looked around the table as servants brought them some light beer and water to drink. “Thank you for your courtesy, Majesty,” the ambassador said.

“You stabbed my mate.”

Suddenly Peter had the full attention of the ambassador. Mary Jane couldn't see Peter’s face, from the angle, but from the way the ambassador paled and began to slightly sweat, she bet it couldn't be good. From what Wade had said, the man couldn't lay a hand on Peter—not just because of his status as a High Priest, but because of his status as an omega. Not that he’d be able to beat Peter even if his own inclinations didn’t hold him back. Mary Jane had once seen Peter rip a tree out of the ground.

Wade reached over, pulled Peter in close to him, and planted a firm kiss on the omega’s head. “It’s okay,” he reassured Peter. “I stabbed him back.”

To anyone else, that wouldn't have been reassuring. However, Peter did relax, and so did the Mysterio ambassador. Mary Jane waited to speak until the servants brought the first course, fine roast beef, and left again. Of course, there were servants listening. There always were. It was one of the side effects of being royal—her every little move was spied on except for when she went out as her maid.

“Mysterio Ambassador,” said Mary Jane formally.

The ambassador smiled as he quickly cut his meat. “Stephen, please,” he said.

“Mary Jane,” replied the Queen with her own smile. “At least in private,” she added as a touch of warning. Introductions went around the table and she noticed the ambassador’s hand tense on his eating knife as Peter gave his ties to the temple. The man’s eyes darted between Peter and Wade.

Wade could never let a silence ramble on without him speaking. “Lovely roast MJ,” he said warmly. “You should praise your cook.”

Harry chuckled. “You mean so she’ll stop giving you a hard time?” he teased.

“As big into spiders as you people are, you’d think people would be more open to the idea of serving a spider cooked food,” sighed Wade before cramming a piece of steaming food into his mouth.

“I think it was more the fact you were helping a spider courtship,” Harry observed.

Peter spoke up, and Mary Jane could hear the smile in his voice. “It worked,” he said. “And,” he added, “Wade’s gotten close to the nesting pair. There’s a chance she can still be saved from being feral.”

“Working on it, anyway. Hoping she’ll mellow with the eggs, slightly worried she’ll get more ferocious,” Wade said cheerfully.

“And who knew spiders like bread?” asked Peter. He turned and gave his alpha a kiss on the cheek.

“I think it might only be spiders from Arachne that eat bread,” said Stephen slowly.

The rest of the meal passed with the five of them speaking about nothing important. It wasn’t until the desert of honeyed dates was taken away that they turned their attention to darker, more serious matters. “What does Mysterio know about the—problems with Ajax?” Mary Jane asked as the servants brought them a wine. This particular beverage had been specially brewed to be low in alcohol.

“Ajax has summoned an ancient entity and is trying to turn it into a deity.”

“An evil entity,” interjected Wade.

Stephen frowned. “We don’t know that,” he admonished. “What we do know is that the people using it are evil—more than evil.” He grimaced. “We’ve gotten a few refugees from Ajax, mostly priests and priestesses. They really don’t like those in direct communion with the goddesses.”

Wade snorted. “They’re sure to love me then,” he drawled dryly. Peter reached out and gently took his hand.

Stephen nodded. Harry leaned forwards. “How are they trying to turn it into a deity?”

At the same time Mary Jane asked, “What do you mean, it might not be evil?”

Stephen rubbed at the base of his hair line, where his sideburns began, over his temples. “What we know,” he said slowly, “is that this entity is ancient. There are stories about it that predate humans arriving in this world.”

“Humans aren’t from here?” asked three of the four voice. It took Mary Jane a moment to realize that Wade was the only one who hadn’t chimed in on the question, and a glance showed no surprise on his face. He had already known. Of course he had; he’d already been to Mysterio, and presumably this was information they all had.

“No. Long, long ago humans discovered a method of traveling from world to world. Shortly after they arrived here, there was an—incident, and most of the equipment they brought with them stopped working. We still have some of it, in Mysterio, and we work hard to keep what we do have from completely breaking down. If knowledge isn’t continuously used, it gets lost—just as it’s been lost in the other four kingdoms.” Stephen looked around at his audience and sighed. “Some of the stories about the entity, as Wade claimed, painted it as an evil, a darkness that wanted to absorb and destroy everything. Some of the stories say that it’s merely lost and alone, waiting for someone to truly understand it. We don’t know which is true. Maybe neither. Maybe both. But the way the Ajax alphas—and it’s only alphas, we don’t know why—are trying to bring it into our world, if it isn’t evil now, it will become evil.” He spread his hands. “And we have no way to stop it.”

#Spider-Man #Deadpool #Spideypool #omegaverse

9 notes · View notes

cabin-fever-bang · 4 years

Text

Campfire Stories (Vol. 1)

Welcome to the Cabin! We proudly present the first edition of Campfire Stories: your one-stop shop for quality quarantine content.

We’re going to do these regularly, with in-depth reviews of everything that’s been submitted as a prompt fill and additional recommendations from the masterlists of writers who get involved.

If you’d like to be one of those writers, just follow us, comb through our prompts, and be sure to tag us when you post! It’s that easy. We welcome all fandoms and pairings.

This batch of reviews was cooked up by @thoughtslikeaminefield (MJ), @there-must-be-a-lock (Lou), @itmighthavebeenintentional (Val), @fangirlxwritesx67 (Viv), @cracksinthewalls (Bri), and @mskathywriteswords (Kathy), but we encourage you to pass along the random acts of writer-love and reblog with your own additions!

Pull up a seat, toast a marshmallow or two, and settle in for some excellent reading material.

Choices We Make - @becs-bunker - GIF prompt submitted by @dawnie1988

Pairing: Demon Dean x Female Reader

Warnings: angst, brief threat & violence, smut, language, dub con-ish, unprotected sex, orgasm denial

Words: 1374

Everyone loves a Demon!Dean fic, and this is a good one! Lots of action, lots of angst, and some really hot, awful Dean.

Honestly it all felt like some surreal nightmare you couldn’t wake up from. You just wanted Dean back, your Dean.

These lines summarize both the Demon!Dean story arc and the narrator's frame of mind so well, pulling the reader right into the perspective of the story.

“I missed you, y’know?” Dean sighed, and the naive part of you wished he was telling the truth. That somehow, deep down, he still loved you.

This is heartbreaking because it's relatable, because the author does such a good job with the narrator's voice.

Dean licked his lips and there was a familiar hunger in his green eyes that made a whole different sensation rise in your body, and it wasn’t fear.

I'm not going to quote any more lines from the story because the author has written one hell of a twist, but trust me when I said, I gasped out loud reading it. The rest of this story is an absolute roller coaster, well worth the ride.

- Viv

Come For Me - @fangirlxwritesx67 - image prompts created and submitted by @idabbleincrazy

Pairing: Sam Winchester x female reader

Warnings: smut, canon level violence, fingering, first time together

Words: 3100

First, let’s talk about this aesthetic. It’s soft and beautiful, but stark and needy. I love the quotes and photos, the way they flow together. Fantastic visual prompt. "Sam Winchester?” He spoke in a theatrical, mocking tone. “Ooooh, I’m frightened." This line made me chuckle. I love the idea of what’s ahead of us. The bad guy is built up in a hilarious way. Sam is presented through the heart and mind of the narrator, you. But thinking of Sam suffused you with a warm confidence. Not for one moment did you doubt him. This confidence is contagious and warming. Meanwhile, the anxiety over the vampire lurking somewhere else, waiting to taste you… it builds in a beautiful and believable way. There’s a rush of emotions as Sam rescues you, and he’s patient and kind, even while making jokes and being the Sam you know and love. Things progress, and there’s a beautiful and sweet (okay, and hot!) sex scene, with a first time between Sam and you. All in all, a really solid piece, with some story, some tension, some sex, and a whole lot of sweetness.

- Kathy

A New Day - @becs-bunker - image prompt created and submitted by @there-must-be-a-lock

Pairing: Sam Winchester x Reader

Warnings: fluff

I’ve not reviewed an image prompt before, so let’s just jump in. The first word that jumps to my mind is light, but I love how suffused and golden the whole image is. Softer, safer, intimate. There are little pinpoints of light, rays of light, shining light, and the whole thing makes me feel...well...light. Sunrise and candlelight, new day, new beginnings.

The images chosen for Sam, the angles and features we get, are such close, personal angles and shots, giving us this tender atmosphere and setting the tone for this story: personal. Everything you're about to read is intimate, personal, and private, in such a lovely, delicate way.

The curtains in that first shot are so filmy and ethereal, and the whole story feels like it’s set in a kind of golden-hazed forest. And, let’s face it, any sort of vacation for a Winchester is a kind of fairy tale.

I’ve managed to stay pretty much above the brow, so Imma have to dip down for a minute and just drool over Sam’s trapezius muscles. Oh. MY. GAWD.

Golden, glorious, graceful, and just a touch of gooey. Good, good, good.

So, right off the bat, let me tell you that this story is everything I’ve ever wanted for Sam, like everything the show and Chuck and the universe has ever denied him. He’s rested, he’s comforted, he’s bathed in glow (the sun, the reader’s love, all that jazz, you know?).

And then it goes and hits all my camping weaknesses. I was literally just telling someone how I’m missing my camp more than ever now. It’s been eight years since I’ve been, and this story brings back all those feelings of serenity and calm, voluntary isolation with people you more or less chose, because camp was and is my forever real home.

I know that seems a little rambly and off-topic, but the thing is, that’s what this story is for me. They aren’t at the bunker, their “home,” but they’re still home all the same, because (and, yes, you can shoot me for this) home is where your heart is, so this wonderful little cabin in the woods is home, whether they’ve been there together once or a hundred times because Sam.

And then that bit of sugar tossed in at the end...Oh, this story was good for my soul. “Warm mug of coffee on a chill morning, under a blanket” kind of good for my soul.

It’s one of those where I would love to have so much more of these two, of this warmth between them, but I also am perfectly content to know them just in this one perfect moment forever, before the day starts, when everything is still in the “it’s about to happen and it will be great” stages. The beginning of a great new day.

Thank you. I needed this story, now more than ever.

- Val

Crash - @myinconnelly1 - requested by @adoptdontshoppets for @idreamofplaid aesthetic

Pairing: Dean Winchester x reader

Warnings: smut, fluff

Words: 810

The first thing that draws my eye in the aesthetic is the linked fingers. I love pinky links (I’m sure there’s a less cutesy way to say it, but I like it; sue me). They’re sweet, and really personal. You’ve got super tough Dean Winchester who isn’t embarrassed or afraid of intimate, goofy gestures. In fact, I feel like that would one hundred percent be Dean in a relationship: Dean is a giant ball of goofy, intimate gestures.

I love the choices of relaxed, bearded Dean/Jensen paired with the casual, cool color palette immediately set me at ease. This isn’t going to be a terrifying, angsty ordeal. This is going to be calm, soothing, sensual.

And the roses, the sand, the surf, the candlelight, the pokey palm tree fronds...I can hear, smell, feel every bit of these images. The golden-pink wine...ugh. This whole experience is a trip to paradise.

I love how all five senses are emphasized and made equally important. It gives us so much more connection to the moment, makes it that much more intimate. The constant crashing of the waves in the background; the bittersweet chocolate; the cozy, homey image of the baking-wrecked kitchen followed by the much more erotic, candelit bedroom; and then the scent of the oil mixed with the warmth and strength of Dean’s touch.

I also love the level of comfort in the story. We have the cookies, a hard-core comfort staple. We have the warm, lazy beach setting. And the easiness these two have together: that’s the dream, my friend. I love how they have no trouble at all communicating what they want and need, how they are comfortable enough to be messy and cute and flirty and sexy, one right after the other.

And the description is so thorough, I have no trouble at all imagining myself there, in that wonderful, relaxing moment.

This story is relaxing, decadent, soothing, and fun all at once. I am a huge fan of the ending, as well. I was smiling through the whole story, but at the end, I literally laughed aloud. And now I think I’m going to have to excuse myself to go find some chocolate chip cookies. This story gave me a couple of cravings, and as Dean Winchester is in short supply in the real world, cookies are the one I can satisfy right now.

This story is, dare I say it, such a sweet escape.

- Val

No Sugar Added - @myinconnelly1 - requested by @fangirlxwritesx67 - “I’d like to see Steve Rogers from MARVEL sharing Depression-era coping tips. Maybe he vlogs how to make apple-less apple pie.”

No pairing

Warnings: Spoilers for Infinity Wars + Endgame, mention of mental health issues

Words: 446

This was my prompt for the Cabin, and I loved what this author did with the story! A little bit of fluffy cheer.

“Hello, I’m Steve Rogers. As many of you know, I’m also Captain America, and I was alive during another time of hard living conditions.”

Right now, a lot of things in the world seem scary and unsettling. It's one of those times when we turn for comfort to the lessons of the past, to the wisdom of generations, and to heroes. This author does a great job with Captain America, Steve Rogers. His cooking lesson is exactly the sort of inspiring, instructional video I would love to see.

“What is that smell?” Natasha asked as she looked behind her to see Steve walking into the office with the plate.

Because it was never about pie, apple or otherwise. It was always about comfort. Our favorite foods help with that, and so does Captain America, especially written this well.

There are some fun tidbits in this story, including a peek of history and an actual recipe!

- Viv

Communion - @thoughtslikeaminefield - requested by @mskathywriteswords “Fluffy dean or Jensen smoking weed plz, ty”

Pairing: Dean Winchester x unnamed female character

Warnings: marijuana use, high sex, het sex, fluffy smut

Words: 1002

How do I love this? Let me count the motherfucking ways.

First of all, the way this sucks you into the characters’ headspace is beautiful and subtle and masterfully done. It’s in the sentence structure and the flow of the words; there’s no need to describe their inner state, because it’s written into the movement of the sentences and the choice of words. She doesn’t have to say that they’re high, because you can fucking feel it in phrases like “It’s sending me off somewhere…” or “I shiver at the thoughts careening through my mind.”

Second, this is molten hot, but (as with the best smut) it’s not just some rote story of “then he was hard and we banged and it was great.” The sexy bits are unique; this isn’t the same smut you’ve read a thousand times before. It’s got its own personality and tone and voice that very much belong to this particular story.

Also? Filth with feelings! My favorite genre! It’s deeply emotional. I am all for smut that is both dirty and tender. This is like a masterclass on how to walk that line.

It’s such a simple premise that becomes so much more; this has things to say about Dean, about his personality, about this relationship. This takes a very specific moment and uses it as a framework for something big and meaningful. This, for example:

When Dean has to be big, he uses his whole self. His body takes up space and his mere presence -- he can make the darkest of demons shudder with his presence alone.

But Dean’s natural state is this -- nesting, nuzzling, curled up and warm.

Yuuuup.

Also:

His hands -- the same hands I’ve seen thrust a blade into the guts of angels and demons -- are tender, fingertips light but persistent as they slip under my tank top and splay over my belly.

It’s so intimate. This is why we read fanfic, right? To feel like we’re close to these characters that we love so much, to delve into the sides of them that we don’t get to see much in canon… this fic feels like something personal and private that we’ve been lucky enough to be let in on.

- Lou

Deeper Than Deep Conditioner - @fangirlxwritesx67 - requested by @awesomesusiebstuff “The two Sam’s (our Sam and AU Sam) maintaining their hair care routines while quarantined.”

It’s one of those days when I’m feeling too fragile for this world. What’s the best remedy to knock some sunlight into my dark mood? Today, it’s fic -- and one that makes me giggle is a bonus.

This little gem is filled with funny one-liners and side-eye moments to make you laugh out loud:

Dean dreamed of driving away, of bikini beauties on the beaches of Rio. Sam dreamed of scarves and what it would be like to have no bigger worries in the world than his hair.

The look Dean gave him would’ve curdled milk, if there was any, which there wasn’t, because Dean took his coffee black, like a man.

A touch of realism in this bizarro situation got a chuckle, too:

“Sorry, sweethearts,” alt!Dean said, “Flights are all cancelled. A virus or something.”

When Viv named the alternates Deano and Sami, I gave in and embraced the madness. I was delighted with Deano; that’s my own nickname for Dean in my head. But Sami, a most pretentious twist on Sammy? A master stroke. I was tickled.

I was fully on board with enjoying this romp through the bizarro world, but then I was taken by surprise. This little moment, a hint that Sam has been trying to make the best of their circumstances, touched me:

“Is this really how you live?” said Sami, with a dismissive glance at his paper napkin.

“Look,” Sam answered. “I’ve done my best. It’s taken a lot to get us this far.”

I was prepared for that to be the exception to the rule -- a moment of sincerity amongst a sea of lighthearted fun. And there was plenty of fun ahead of me. The jokes come at you hard and fast in this story! But I realized the mood was steadily changing, and suddenly, I was immersed in sincerity and maybe a little sadness:

...somewhere out there, was a universe where he pampered himself...

...maybe there was a place where he could enjoy something as simple as a deep condition...

...something Sam had wanted to watch but never had time for...

...for the first time in a long time, he caught himself laughing...

I thought maybe that was it. A few moments of Sam learning to appreciate what Sami (I was still laughing at that) had to offer, instead of simply mocking his manbun and scarf (I don’t think I could ever stop mocking that, but Sam’s a better person than I am).

But no. It didn’t end there, and I still wasn’t ready. Before I knew it, I was steeped in Sam’s melancholy, his yearning for a life kinder and gentler than what he’d been given. I was truly heartbroken for him in that moment.

I won’t spoil the rest, but by the time I got to the ending, I was grateful for the funny beginning that softened the landing. I expected a comedy, but what I got really was deeper than deep conditioner.

- Bri

Dear Mr. Fantasy - @itmighthavebeenintentional - image prompt submitted @thoughtslikeaminefield

Warnings: SEASON 15 SPOILERS, bit of angst.

Words: 2157

I found the image prompt in my Tumblr feed and immediately started plotting ideas that I cannot write bc I have too many fucking WIPs so imagine my excite when one of my all-time favorite fic writers (and one of my very best friends) filled the prompt as a surprise for me!

Val tells stories with a depth and humor like no one else I’ve ever read. Her natural wit and smarts shine through her fictional words as well, and I love seeing glimpses of her in her work.

In one universe, someone neglected Baby (couldn’t have been Dean, had to’ve been Sam) to the point where she pulls slightly to the left. Dean spends the morning after that dream with a muscle tick in his cheek and a suspicious, side-eyed glare for Sam that he never bothers to explain.

Dear Mr. Fantasy is bittersweet. It is soft and rich and full of color — all the senses are here. It’s a sledgehammer of realism wrapped in velvet. And it’s so very Dean.

At forty-eight years old (none of that years young bullshit, either; he’s old, and he’s goddamn earned it)

In the midst of reading canon Dean dreaming of and admiring and protecting his favorite of his AU-selves and that version’s life, we are treated to what it would be like if he was allowed a normal life. Our devoted, brave, warm, and loving hunter as a common mechanic would be just as brave and loyal, no?

“Pretty sure she’s settled on ya, so just make sure you’re worth it.”

So that’s what Dean did.

But our Dean — the Real Dean as Chuck says — can’t quite let his guard down even in his dreams of another world, even if that other world is safe as houses. He’s still aware of just how unreal this reality is.

Splashes of indigo and orange paint the horizon, framing her approach in a wash of colors blending into shadows that hold no danger.

Then, he lets himself mingle with that dream, if only for a few moments and it’s bliss.

Older Dean and worn-out, monster-plagued Dean sigh together, content down to their bones. This life is it for both of them. She is it. One Dean still can’t believe his amazing luck after all these years, and the other aches at the simple, total happiness he feels honored to witness.

I love you, she whispers, and he allows himself to believe for one moment that she’s talking directly to him.

I’m not going to spoil anything for you, but I will say that you need some tissues. I cried through 90% of this story, from joy and from heartache.

Because that’s what Valerie does, breaks your heart and makes you smile, and it is so fucking good.

- MJ

Synesthesia - @there-must-be-a-lock - request by @wendibird “SPN, Sastiel, due to all the Angelic Grace Sam has been exposed to over time, he starts resonating with Castiel’s. Especially if Cas’ emotions are running high.”

Pairing: Sam Winchester x Castiel

Warnings: none!

Words: 750

First, I love the song that enhanced this idea for Lou. It lends a tenderness and whimsy to the plot that isn’t inherent.

Second, Lou’s words are like poetry and watercolor doing a dance of their own making — GORGEOUS phrasing and rhythm.

Cas whirls around, and Sam is hypnotized by the bright blue in his eyes, wide and concerned in a way that makes Sam feel like he’s being lit up from the inside. There’s a floodlight in his chest.

And, y’all, I don’t even go here, but I swooned SO HARD.

It’s an effort to focus, but when he meets Cas’s eyes, Cas smiles. Sam sees a shower of sparks like the last fizzle of a firework.

Sam hears it as a flutter of spring green like a new leaf.

And Lou’s characterization is always spot on, right? But like Dean isn’t even in the scene, yet here we are.

Don’t let the words fool you; there’s a very angry rainbow happening in his head most of the time.

And did I mention the ARTWORK that is this woman’s WORDS?

There are stars under their feet, entire galaxies spinning out around them, dancing spirals of kaleidoscopic green and gold melting into whorls of brilliant blue.

Anyway, please go read. You’ll be flying high for hours afterward. xox

- MJ

Salvation - @dontshootmespence - image created and submitted by @idabbleincrazy

Pairings: Sam Winchester x reader

Warnings: angst, torture, gore, smut

Words: 1,401

The aesthetics by this artist inspire stories just because they are so well done. This one was a good balance of handsome Sam and some nice suggestive pics along with the phrases that helped shape the action of the story.

This story feels like an episode of the show from earlier seasons, just the right balance of angst and monster fighting with tantalizing peeks of smut and feels. Excellent job!

There are no words that come close to explaining what she means to him. How she saves what soul he has left.

These flashback scenes are both hot and tender. The voice the author gives to Sam is spot on, achingly familiar.

"You're Sam Winchester, the boy with the demon blood."

It's easy to forget, sometimes, all the things that Sam has been and done, how fearsome of a hunter he is. This story reminds us with razor sharp precision.

When he meets her gaze, he finds the peace he's craved for so long.

The contrast between the flashbacks and the action is painfully good.

What’s more frightening, a man like Dean, practiced in his violence out of necessity? Or a man like him, on the verge of losing everything and nothing left to lose?

This is a well drawn distinction between the Winchester brothers, and such a good characterization of Sam!

"You're safe with me, Sam. You never have to hide from me."

Such a beautiful relationship between Sam and this woman! It's no wonder he's fighting so hard to save her.

This story has an imaginative plot, fast paced action, some sweet hotness, and such a good Sam!

- Viv

The Second Hand Unwinds - @mskathywriteswords - image prompt created and submitted by @there-must-be-a-lock

Pairing: Dean Winchester x reader

Warnings: hurt, comfort, angst

I had a vibe in mind when I created this aesthetic but this went so far beyond anything I could’ve imagined. It absolutely nailed that nostalgic, wistful, antique-photo-album feel, and then it managed to knife me in the fucking gut in a few ways, none of which I saw coming.

The JOY in the first part of this is absolutely tangible. It’s so romantic and sweet in a very dreamy way that feels exactly like first love. I love the scattered, disjointed imagery around the flowers in the first part, like flashes of memories coming at you all at once, and then when it settles into the narrative it manages to hold onto that dreamy feeling while still moving neatly through the plot.

This moment was about us, and I wanted to live in it forever. You never gave me reason to cover my body, not that night or ever.

Goddamn right. Ugh, precious and beautiful. And then this:

After so much undiluted time together, I had no idea how to sleep alone. I felt raw waking up by myself, not being able to feel your stubble tickling my skin.

There’s something about that last line that just grabbed my heart and tugged it in a wonderful way. It’s ACCURATE, first of all; this is one of those super-specific feelings that is hard to describe concisely. I haven’t really thought about that feeling in a while, but that little sentence just cut through so many years and brought me right back in a deep and visceral way.

You took pride in doing all the things that were never done for you, you’d told me.

Ouch. It’s little touches like this that make this ring true to character even though it’s a very different Dean than we see in canon.

And then that ENDING.

How do you contain a bomb once it’s been set on fire with grief?

Fuck, dude. Everything about that ending was so painful. I love that she left it raw and messy and not like a simple “welcome back!” kinda moment.

This was just gorgeously done. Can not recommend it enough.

Fort - @there-must-be-a-lock - prompt by @mskathywriteswords “Fluffy dean or Jensen smoking weed plz, ty.”

Pairing: J2 x reader

Warnings: blowjobs and weed.

Words: ~2150

This piece of deliciousness opens with Jensen walking out of the bathroom with a towel on his hips; do I need to say more? I don’t, but I will. After some beautiful description of the blanket fort, we get treated to Jared in nothing but pajama pants. The descriptions in this piece are vivid and full. the way Jared’s hand looks between Jensen’s muscled shoulderblades, thumb stroking back and forth between patches of gold and red light, makes me want to capture the moment and hold onto it. I can see that image in my mind, picture the two of them together, and that’s what makes excellent writing for me. The warnings attached to this piece are fully applicable; the story is very cute and sweet, there’s weed, and there’s Jared and a wicked oral fixation, which in the case of this one-shot means dear Reader, that’s you, get to witness a searing blowjob from one J to another. The way these three interact makes my heart swell, and there’s something about watching the dynamic change between them that really hammers home just how functional they are together. Dive in to this universe, Everything. There are no regrets to be had, maybe only that you waited so long to get wet.

- Kathy

The Gazelle - @thoughtslikeaminefield - requested by Anonymous “I’d really love some more Dean x Benny fanfiction, AU, aligned with canon timeline, whatever. I think they deserved a chance and Benny got killed off before it could even be explored :(”

Pairing: AU Dean Winchester x AU Benny Lafitte x unnamed female character

Warnings: power exchange, mmf threesome implied, Denny apparent, nudity

Words: 1000

Let me start with a caveat: I’m in the bag for pretty much any Dean x Benny fic, pretty much any Dean x Benny x person #3 fic, and absolutely any MJ fic. So you could stop reading this review right now and just go read the fic, if you want; in fact, I sort of recommend it, because it’s better than anything I could have to say about it. But if you want to stick around, I promise to be a little more coherent than ZOMGGGG PERFECT HOT SEXY TIMES DENNY LOVE GORGEOUS MORE PLZ!

Before we even get to the words, we’ve got a gorgeous graphic. Black and white beautiful boys, staring you down with those “I’m gonna fuck you so good” eyes, paired with a sweetly sexy woman tinted with a soft pink; she looks carefree, open to have some fun, and you can imagine her telling them to bring it on. MJ’s graphics are always great, setting the perfect mood for her fics, and this is no exception.

And right from the jump:

Dean and me — we share a lot of things.

We share good music and good drink. Tonight, we’re sharing a good woman.

Oh, this is in Benny’s voice?! Okay okay okay, cool cool cool, I can handle this…

...Dean purrs like a jungle cat as he hovers behind her, hands in her hair, twisting and twirling the silky tresses…

...Dean sets the pace and is the anchor, always. He keeps everything stable and grounded…

And now I’ve realized that I’m going to be seeing Dean through Benny’s eyes -- and no, not cool, can’t handle this -- but I’m definitely not stopping.

I like to mix things up, though, and he lets me.

MJ is a brilliant writer with many talents, but I think her specialty, regardless of what characters she’s writing with, is brilliantly salacious smut that’s steeped in emotion. She can’t help it. Her fucks come with feels, every single time, and I hope it never changes.

This piece is certainly no exception. Dean and Benny are circling their prey, this unnamed woman, utilizing their individual strengths -- Dean’s encouraging, I’m demanding -- and the sexual tension is building with soft touches and lingering kisses. As the scene is progressing, Benny’s inner monologue is sprinkled with thoughts about Dean:

Times we don’t have a subject, Dean’s focus is on me. I don’t argue and I do not complain. Dean knows what to do with every inch of that long, lean body of his. He knows how to cage a person in, make them feel safe, wanted, fucking needed.

She’s handily building emotion and a personal backstory without an exposition dump, without taking focus away from the action for too long:

His hands move slowly, seemingly random, but I know how focused he is on her and the moment. Giving and seeking pleasure are vital things to Dean and he takes the acts to heart.

I’m immersed in the now of this scene but I also understand the depth of their feelings for one another, their history and dedication to each other, and how they work together to bring another partner into their orbit. MJ makes it look easy, when it’s anything but.

And then she gifts us with this perfection and I’ve melted into a puddle of emotionally aroused goo:

“You promise to love, honor, and cherish ‘til the morning light, Dean?”

That is a vow of devotion to a one-night stand. What?! How?! Does her brain come up with this?

From there, the scene continues, the action escalating, supported by a framework of realism and heart. Her Dean feels familiar and in character, even though we’ve never seen him in this particular situation. And Benny, we hardly knew ye, but she brings him to life alongside Dean and I buy their relationship completely. I buy all of this, and now I’m invested.

And then…

“Do it, then,” she says, challenging. “Wreck me.”

My breath catches, my heart starts to race -- yes, here we go! -- a few more sentences, one last connection between Dean and Benny, and then --

Oh, you are evil, MJ. You are so perfectly evil and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

- Bri

#random acts of love #cabin-fever-bang #cabin fever bang #fanfiction #fic rec #rec list #bear hugs #welcome to the cabin #campfire stories #writers supporting writers

50 notes · View notes

myrainydayloves · 4 years

Text

Wedding Bells

(You Already Know What It Is)

Pardon me is everybody because if everybody’s here, I’d like to thank you all for coming

Annaka had never felt more fear than when she woke up May 8th. She was stirred by her alarm, moving her hand through the group of girls piled around each other. But the alarm stopped without her touch and she snuggled back into the warmth of the cuddle pile.

“Nuh-Uh! Up you go! Shower and then breakfast!” Scolded her maid of honor trying to pull her from the snuggle group.

“Five more minutes, Mom,” Annaka mumbled, trying to crawl back under Anita’s blanket.

“Annaka!”

“Maryyyyy,” she moaned, finally beginning to untangle herself from the other women. “I don’t wanna get married today. Tell Cross we can do it tomorrow,” she joked.

Mary did not find this as amusing, having spent hundreds of hours with Annaka planning the event. Capri echoed this statement by verbally telling Annaka to shut the fuck up and get ready.

By the time Annaka had exited the shower, Mary had roused the rest of the women in the sleepover and sent them to the various bathrooms to wash up. A truly outstanding show of abilities in her opinion. There was a light breakfast of sliced fruit and toast waiting them and coffee brewing.

She dragged her hands over the table that had been her place of residence within the home for the last decade and felt it was foreign under her touch. Even the kitchen where Annaka spent hours preparing meals, where she’d shared so many tender morning moments with him, was new to her.

Maybe because it was going to be hers now. Theirs, technically. But going from stranger to guest to owner was as weird for the house as it was her.

She ate toast, drank from a mug her son had made her back when he was only twelve, and looked through the grimy kitchen window that housed a plant Cross couldn’t keep alive. The window about the sink was his responsibility, Annaka was adamant about and so far if had only seen soap five times in the ten years she’d been here.

“Lazy bastard,” Annaka whispered into the mug like it was the sweetest nickname.

Yen clapped her on the shoulder. “Glad to see you’re still in love. I was worried you’d get cold feet.”

“Now is your last chance to back out,” Anita teased. “If you little boy Lavi was here he’d give you the total debt but I reckon it’s around-“

“Lavi’s not little anymore,” Annaka interrupted. “He’s in college for god’s sakes.”

“He’s still your little boy though, isn’t he?” Capri teased.

“They’re both still my little boys,” she whispered into the mug. “It’s just now my name’s going on the adoption papers too.”

So after breakfast, Mary was rushing them into the various cars to the chapel. Annaka rode with Mary to go over any last minute changes. As the sun started to rise over their home, Annaka was leaving it to return as a wife.

The little boys in question met the bridal party outside the church. All dressed up uncomfortably in their suits, smiling like church boys who’d stolen extra communion wine. The venue itself was a church, grand and tall, one of the most beautiful in the entire city. It was covered in stained glass windows and arches that were once white turned yellow by age. And today it would serve its purpose as a house of love instead of the usual house of confession.

“Babies,” Annaka whispered to them, climbing out of the car to kiss their cheeks. “I hope you don’t have any objections today.”

“Oh I have a whole list,” Lavi teased. “Starting with the time you didn’t get me a mouse shaped pretzel at Disneyland. Can’t let a woman like that marry Cross.”

Allen gave her a sweet smile, like all the ones he’d given her as a little boy and hugged her tightly. Whatever fear or anxiety she’d been holding poured out of her as she returned the hug, pulling him close. She leaned back, brushed the hair out of his eyes, and hugged him again.

“So,” Allen started. “How am I gonna tell you that instead of peonies they sent tulips and they’re white not pink?”

“They did what?!” Mary cried. “I specifically asked for peonies! It took me two hours to find a shop with peonies in the spring!”

Yen rubbed Mary’s shoulder with a teasing smirk. “There there, let’s get you all dressed up.”

“I’m serious!” Mary cried, reaching for her phone as the women walked into the church.

The dress still fit, so that was good, she thought. She twisted and turned in the mirror, struggling to see whatever Cross was marrying her for before giving up. The flowers were here, though they were white and not pink, but that was fine. It was fine.

A soft knock at the door.

“Are you ready? Because they’re ready for you,” an attendant whispered.

“Uh yes,” she mumbled.

As her shoes met threadbare carpet, she thought about running one last time. But her feet grew roots and planted themselves in front of the grand doors.

The worst part of all this, she thought as they began to open was that Cross had been right.

The church was the best idea for the venue. Light poured down from the windows, birds that lived in the bell tower chirped, and the acoustics were amazing. It was like stepping into a painting or perhaps becoming a part of it.

Only when the doors finally opened fully and the organ started to play did she dare look into the church. Her heart jumped when she saw him there. Regal and fine and waiting patiently, he looked like he would stand there for hours waiting for her to arrive.

And she couldn’t figure out why.

Annaka suddenly felt like she was drowning again. Like the waves of fate had finally pulled her under. Then he turned, caught her eye, and looked stunned. There were no tears or smirk, just genuine disbelief this was really happening.

And then he started to smile.

There are no words to explain how it feels to see your life validated. To see your work and your past spread out for you like a quilt. To realize that it was time to tie everything in a tidy bow and give up trying to make it bigger.

So she moved. Step by step she moved towards him, afraid that the longer she stayed on a different side of the ocean of fabric, she would lose him. And then she wasn’t walking down the alley.

Annaka was running.

Home was in sight and it welcomed her with a stupid smirk and open arms. In the second he touched her arm, she was safe again, reminded and comfortable under the blanket.

“Wow, you look….” Cross laughed a bit. “Well I was going to tease you and say you looked a bit desperate running towards me like that but...you look beautiful.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, knees shaking in a way they never did.

“Relax. If anyone should be scared here, it’s me. Allen threatened to kill me if I got a single word wrong in my vows.”

“Oh shit, knew I was forgetting something” Annaka teased.

As they settled into a comfortable standing position, the priest read out lines and palms. And then it was time.

Cross looked up. “Did you wanna go first? I have something in my eyes.”

“Tears?”

“No, I think a storm of dust-of course it’s tears!” He snapped, looking down at her. She pressed a hand to his cheek and smiled.

“Compose yourself, My Love. I’ll go first though I can’t promise you won’t be bawling by the end.”

“Show off.”

“Cross-“

“Oh god, wait just-“ He pulled her hand back to his cheek, letting her hand lovingly cup his cheek and nodded, tears silently flowing down his cheeks.

“There are a lot of things I wanted to say here. Honestly I could have us here for hours. But I will keep it brief,” she took a breath. “For ten years, we raised two children together. And not once, in those ten years, did I ever feel anything but grateful to Mary for calling me. I never regretted pack up everything in my tiny apartment in Seattle to move here even though it was very scary. Because from the moment I met you: I was in love with you.”

She took a second to wipe away some of the tears beginning to flood his face. “Really. I was. You made my life comfortable, gave me what I always dreamed of: a home and a family and a loving husband. No matter what you may think, you’ve given me so so much. So to repay you, I vow to stay with you. To kiss you in the morning, to let you steal my coffee, to watch you work in the garage. I promise that I will always be in love with your genius, your charm, your charisma. I love you so deeply even your flaws shine brightly to me.”

“I love you. And I swear I always will.”

He leaned in towards her and she helped shield his vulnerability from prying eyes. After a minute of silent sobbing he stood up, dried his tears, then dried his glasses, and started.

“I have sacrificed so much to get something. I have left some many broken paths and people behind me that if I tried to make amends I wouldn't know where to start. I am such a pain in the ass-“

“Not to me,” she teased.

“Never to you. I’ve never had someone love me so unconditionally.” Allen couldn’t resist a small cough and Lavi quietly kicked him. With a roll of his eyes, Cross corrected himself. “I’ve never had a woman love me so-“

Anita leaned out to glare at him.

“For the love of Christ, can I get through my vows?” He snapped. With renewed energy and speed, he said, “I guess I won’t have the chance to wax poetic until later, my love. But you are, without a doubt, one of the most talented people I’ve met. Not just in poetry but in everything. And you do it while looking….so beautiful. Even when you’re asleep at the table, hair falling from your bun, pen marks on your face, I am blown away by you. I love you.”

“So I vow to love you forever,” he finished. Then he leaned in to whisper in her ear, “I’ll give the full speech later when we’re not surrounded by idiots.”

“I heard that,” Allen whispered, also leaning in.

Mary leaned in next and brandished her bouquet like a sword. “Shut. Up. If we run behind because no one we know understands how to be quiet for more than a minute, I’m going to get very angry.”

“Sorry, Ms. Mary.”

The priest did not chance asking for objections with this couple. Partly because they’d already proven themselves to be a small comedy trope and partly because despite the crying or glaring faces, he felt there was no one in the room that had anything real to say. He gave Cross a nod, who then nodded at Annaka, who giggled and nodded back.

“I, Crоss Marian, take you, Annaka, to be my wife. I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honour you all the days of my life.“

“I, Annaka, take you, Crоss Marian, to be my husband. I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honour you all the days of my life.”

With a smile he reserved only for weddings, the priest said, “You have declared your consent before the Church. May the Lord in his goodness strengthen your consent and fill you both with his blessings. What God has joined, men must not divide. Amen...sorry. You may now kiss the bride.”

The cheer that erupted from the pews was the loudest the church ever heard, with friends and family all swarming to hug the new united couple at the stand. There were a lot of ‘You did it’-s or ‘Damn, she actually went through with it?’-s and there were a lot of tears.

But despite the chaos and excitement, Cross stared at Annaka and she stared back, lost in each other’s eyes. There was an entire life outside that, to the pair, had always been so cruel, so unkind. But now, with two small bands of gold, the pair felt more than ready to face it.

Together.

#cross my heart

20 notes · View notes

prorevenge · 5 years

Text

Kicked out of the family

So this is something I've witnessed and heard about. My family were the ones that got revenge.

So for some backstory, the people include my Nonna (grandmother in Italian), and her three kids. The kids are my Mum, my Zia (Aunty in Italian), and my Uncle. My Uncle has a girlfriend, which we'll call S. And my Zia is married and has 2 kids, my Uncle has 3 kids, and my Mum is married and has me and my sister. S has 3 kids of her own. The story also kind of involves my Nonno (Grandfather in Italian), but he passes away at a particular point of the story. In real time, he passed roughly two weeks ago now, so this is recent.

So, it is 2 years ago in 2017, and it's my cousin's Confirmation (Catholic tradition of confirming their faith in Christ). This cousin is my Zia's oldest child. We're all sitting in the mass, and I'm sitting away from my parents at the time. S is talking to my Mum, and mentions how she doesn't like one of my Uncle's children (the oldest), we'll name him J. My Mum is shocked, but doesn't tell anyone about it, as at the after party of the Confirmation, she goes into the car with a migraine, to keep away from the noise. S then talks to my Dad, and says how she doesn't like this particular cousin, which is J. My Dad is surprised, and leaves it.

After the Communion, when my Mum is feeling better, she talks to Dad and explains how unbelievable it is that S said that. My Dad replies and says that he thought he was the only one she told. This is when my parents decided they didn't like S very much. They decide to call up my Uncle and let her know what she said. He said he'd ask S about it.

He texts back a response, calling my parents liars, and saying "how dare you say that about my girlfriend" and "you are disgusting for making up lies". This got my paren†s furious, and they tried to explain that it is true and so on. S also text my parents, calling them liars and a bunch of insults.

This was the beginning of the family breaking apart.

My Mum is very close with my Zia, and they talked about it. My Zia didn't want to choose sides, but she didn't really like S either.

My Uncle decided he wanted a "round table" with my parents, himself, and S to discuss the trouble. My Dad was all like "Stuff that! He'll just yell at us some more!", so they said no. They also discovered S was manipulating my Uncle to do everything she says. When my Dad once asked for a normal catchup, my Uncle responded with "I'll have to check with S first." and he revolved everything around her. He even skipped my youngest cousin's birthday to go to S's great Uncle's or someone's birthday he's never met. He didn't even schedule another time to see her, or didn't even get her a present, or with her a happy birthday. She turned 9 at the time.

A year passes, it's 2018, and I hadn't seen S, my Uncle, or their kids since. I missed seeing my cousins (my Uncle's kids. I'd never consider S's kids to be my cousins. They're not very nice either), and I wanted to see them again. It's now my other cousin's Communion (Communion is receiving bread and wine in the Catholic Church for the first time. This is my Zia's other kid, and she's the youngest), and my younger sister has decided she's had enough of their arguing and never seeing part of her family. She organises Mum and my Uncle to meet outside and talk, at the after party. They talk, and my Uncle still doesn't believe her. My Mum is crying and trying to say "Why don't you believe me? Why would you choose your girlfriend over your family that has been there for you for years?" and my Uncle still wanted none of it. Unfortunately, from the crying, my Mum got another bad migraine, so she went in the car. After an hour rest, she felt better, and got out to socialise again. My mum told my Zia what happened, and the hatred for S increased. So on the way home, my Dad and my Mum were yelling about how S is the worst person ever, and how they wanted to boot her out of the family.

My family still cut off seeing My Uncle and S. My Zia and her family couldn't see them as often either. My Nonno was in the nursing home, and unwell. My Uncle never bothered showing up, except for maybe a couple of times that year. My Nonna was very angry at my Uncle, as he never made an effort to see the family.

This is where her actions turn disgusting.

Another year passes, it's now 2019, and my Uncle and S got engaged 2 weeks before my Nonno passed away. We were all invited to their engagement party, but they both live about 2 or so hours away from my home. My family didn't want to go, cause we didn't want S to be apart of the family. My Zia, and her 2 kids went, out of feeling bad. My Nonna didn't want to go, as she didn't want to see S, as she didn't like her. My Nonno was still in the nursing home, and just got transferred to the hospital that day, so my Nonna couldn't even go to the engagement party anyway, as she was helping take care of Nonno. My Nonno also got diagnosed with pneumonia and had cancer in his bones, so he was reeeeaaaally unwell.

2 weeks ago from now, my Nonno passes away. Everyone is devastated, as he passed in the most painful and awful way possible. He passed on a Sunday night, at about 6pm, and he passed half an hour after my sister, Mum and I left the hospital. While at the hospital when he was still alive that day, when my Mum, sister, Zia and I go the nursing home to pack up Nonno's things, and then pickup lunch, S organised something stupid. She asked a nurse to shave his face, to make him feel "more comfortable". At this point, he couldn't move, and had 0 strength. He couldn't even keep his eyes open, and his mouth was open wide, as he couldn't breathe. He had unnecessary cuts on his face and he was curled into what seemed like a ball, as he was already in so much pain. My Mum only glared at her, and that's it.

When my Nonno passed, my Nonna was really upset, as was all of us. She got super depressed and wasn't physically or mentally able to prepare the funeral. We planned it 4 days after the passing, meaning we needed to hurry, as that was the only closest time we could do. I took a week off from school, to help prepare. I was also at my Nonna's house, helping too. My Mum, my Zia and my Uncle wrote the eulogy in 12 hours, with input from myself, my sister and my youngest cousin who was there at the time. 12 hours was a long time to write a eulogy, and everyone was exhausted, as we left at 10:30pm from my Nonna's house. While the adults wrote the eulogy, I took my Nonna aside to find photos she'd like in the funeral, as I could put them in the funeral to make a powerpoint. I took heaps of photos, retouched and cropped each one. There were 67 photos. I also wrote prayers, downloaded music for the funeral and read at the funeral. There was so much preparation for everyone involved, and it felt overwhelming for everyone at times.

At the gathering after the funeral at my Nonna's house, S goes off to my Uncle in private about why she wasn't included in the eulogy, and how she helped out oh so much. S did nothing to help, and she's only been around for 2 years, so who cares if she wasn't included. My Dad and my Zia's husband were included, cause they've been there for Nonno around 15 years, and my Mum, Zia and Uncle were mentioned, cause they're his kids. And all the grandchildren got mentioned, cause we're the real family. After my Dad, Mum, sister and I go home, my Uncle yelled and screamed at my Nonna and Zia, for not having S in the eulogy. He yelled like a madman, and the neighbours had to call the house to see if everyone is safe.

After the gathering, my Mum got a message from my Zia saying S went off at her about not having her name in the eulogy. Everyone got pissed.

My Zia and Nonna came over a few days ago, my Mum showed messages S sent her, and my Zia showed messages S sent her too. She said things along the lines of "It's not fair that I wasn't included. I've done so much, and been there so much. You didn't even include my kids, how dare you. I am (Uncle's name's) fiancee, and I am a part of his life." My Nonna was very angry, and my Zia replied to her saying "This was Nonno's funeral, not yours. How dare you make this funeral about you, you selfish woman. We worked hard to make it about him, not you. None of this has to do with you. None of us like you, because all you do is lie and manipulate (my Uncle) all the time. You are the most selfish woman to walk this earth, and you did not help out at the funeral a single bit. My husband and my sister's husband have actually been there for 15+ years, and you've barely been around. All you do is talk about yourself, and I've had it. Enjoy your life away from us, because none of the family want you around every again. We're disowning (my Uncle) too, because he believes you over his real family who haven't controlled his life as much as you. He's a fool, and when he divorces or breaks up with you, and comes running back, we're not accepting him anymore. Because he's already chosen his new family; a bunch of liars. Get the f away from the family. Enjoy your life."

My Nonna, who is very nice, quiet and sweet, then said to my Uncle, "Get S out of the family. Go away. I never want to see you, or that cow again. I created you, so don't treat me like crap. Never disrespect my family."

Best revenge ever, cause S has shut up and stopped whining, and I haven't heard a thing from them since, or seen them. I no longer want to see them again. I forgot to mention she also went off behind my back about me not including photos of her on the slideshow I worked so hard on, and I started yelling curses to her, saying "That cow wants to make the funeral all about her petty ass." She's nasty. My Uncle also went off about me too. I hope their marriage turns to shit.

(source) story by (/u/UnusualCatto)

#prorevenge #by /u/UnusualCatto #pro revenge #revenge stories #pro revenge stories #pro #revenge #last10

365 notes · View notes

acadmie · 4 years

Text

Immaculate Conception

I think I wanted for a long time to be the kind of woman who could be content as a mother to bathe her children immaculately in a claw-foot tub, but I am not, and I have only recently come to terms with that.

My tub is very nice. I take baths almost every day. Some people think baths are gross, which, fine, within your rights, but I’ll take my bath while you take your shower, and we’ll see who comes out more relaxed. My baths are my own time. I close and lock the door to my bathroom the way I always have done since I was a very small child. I run the faucet until the tub is full, and then I sit in it, and I wash my hair, and I look around my tiny bathroom and remind myself what a room looks like when it’s all mine.

Admittedly I made the choice to make rooms not all mine. That’s what being a parent does, in effect - it ensures that you will always share your life with someone else, unless you royally fuck up. I don’t think I’ve ever royally fucked up Elliot, because if I did, he would tell me right away with his smart mouth.

He is the opposite of an immaculate child. He had the opposite of an immaculate conception. He loves to be dirty. He was born dirty, and he will die dirty. Last week he saw the sparrows in the park taking turns bathing in a puddle and flung himself into it. When he stood up, covered in mud and a few comic feathers, he said, “Look, Mom! All clean!”

Yeah.

Bathtime doesn’t go over well in our house except when it’s mine. When it’s Elliot’s, it is a grand affair. He demands bubbles, which I make myself out of dish soap and sugar on the kitchen counter. He makes tidal waves. If I don’t hold him tightly after he gets out of the bath, he will rip himself and the towel from my hands and cannonball back into the water, soaking the floor and the walls and making me paranoid about the state of our grout.

It surprises me every time that such a dirty child can be so enthusiastic about baths. When I was a child, I hated bathing right up until the moment I got into the water. It felt good to be grimy - it was the product of a day well spent. I hid in my closet, behind the door, holding in laughter and reveling in the dirt under my fingernails. Eventually my father would find me and drag me out by the ankles and stick me in the tub while the water ran, and I accepted my fate and put my ears under the water and felt the thundering of the faucet like an earthquake just for me.

It was nice there, under the water. The faucet shut off and there was wonderful, floating silence. I shook my head back and forth and felt my hair against my neck. My sweat and the dirt mixed with the water and left me gently. I lay there until the water got cold, until my fingers pruned and my nails became soft, and when I stood up unsteadily I was as pink and as smooth as I had been the first time I opened my eyes to the world.

I grew up Catholic, which meant one of my first baths was at the altar in a burnished bowl of holy water. I don’t think I liked it. My parents kept the home video footage; I watched it later and could see the moment I was lifted out of the water. I don’t know what it felt like before, so I can’t know the difference from what it felt like after, but I think I must have been perturbed by being so suddenly and rudely stripped of whatever sin I had already managed to commit, because in that moment, the camera focused on my small, grainy face, and I looked into it and gave the first stink eye of my life.

The way I hated church was similar to the way I hated bathing. Waking up on a Sunday was poisoned by it. Everything I wore was too dry and too stiff; I would start to fluff my skirt and my mother would bat my hands away from it. She would only let me eat dry toast for breakfast. “All you can get on you is crumbs,” she declared. I tried to get as many crumbs on me as possible in hopes that perhaps I wouldn’t go to church, but we went anyway, and the next weekend she didn’t let me eat until after Mass.

I was determined to hate church. I lagged so far behind my parents on our walk around the block that my father tugged me forward by the wrist. I scuffed my shoes on the sidewalk. We approached the big stone steps and I hung back, kicking the dirt by the garden. This was the last frontier, usually, because as soon as I got up the steps the old ladies who always stood at the door would start to make a big stink about how lovely my dress was, and how lovely it was to see me, and what a lovely big girl I was becoming. This was the final frontier not because it was the point at which I could no longer escape, but because quietly, I liked it. It was a lovely dress. I was a lovely girl. And so I slid my head under the water.

Those first steps into church were always the best. It was so full of light. Big windows commanded every bit of sun into the room so that it felt open enough to never be full. My parents made their crosses and bows in front of the pulpit and tugged me into a pew where I would always sit on the outside. My father permitted this only because I made a habit of going to the bathroom several times during the service. I made a habit only because I wanted to sit on the end of the pew, closest to the light.

This was how I met Soren. One day during the service, I sat quietly at the end of my pew, reveling in the warmth of the sun. A shadow cast itself gently across my lap. I looked up, and there he was - small and dark in the aisle against the window pane, sitting there, hands tucked together, in the white shirt he always wore. I remember looking at him and deciding that we were there for the same reason, even if that reason wasn’t exactly the right kind of worship.

For all the time that I was made to spend in church as I child, I don’t think I really understood what I was supposed to think of God. The congregation would stand, so I stood; they would sing, so I sang. I ate dry communion wafers and drank water pinked with wine. The priest would talk about God, and so would my parents and their friends and the old lady church greeters. God is good! So was I, if it meant Santa was coming. But when we were in church, and I could drag my eyes away from the windows for a minute, looking at them was like looking at a door left wide open.

Soren was always my best friend. We met in church, but I don’t think either of us really cared about it. It was an understanding that ran between us like water, that we didn’t ever have to talk about. There were things bigger than us, sure. A lot of things. But he and I both preferred the bigger things around us that we could see and touch and smell and taste. At first, the light in church on Sundays. Then the enormous trees that grew in his backyard, then the lake in the summer, then the deafening rhythm of a rainstorm. We were perpetually in awe of the way that life existed carelessly around us, continuing no matter what happened in our lives, the same way that time moved after a clock had stopped, bringing the sun down and up again without the need for an hour hand.

Soren and I liked small things, too. Caterpillars, frogs, water bugs in the stream behind my house. We played cards and read chapter books and built walls out of rocks. I think his hands knew how to do everything since before he was born. He could pick up a moth without hurting its wings, and untie any knot my shoelaces got into, and pack a snowball tight enough that it would explode inside the collar of my winter coat. Mostly we baked bread. His mother was a baker; they had big jars of flour in their house that she used to make cookies and pastries and immense tiered cakes for his birthday. We made whole wheat and sourdough and focaccia and ate it together on the steps of church before the service. He always saved a little for after, too - “I don’t like the way the wine tastes in my mouth,” he explained to me one afternoon after digging a hunk of it out of his small pocket. I didn’t like it then, either, but we were friends for long enough to see each other get a taste for it.

In some time I was seventeen and I found out that my parents were wonderful Catholics in that when they got divorced, they did their best to hide it from God. They lived in the same house, maybe amicably, if you squinted hard enough; they kept their rings; they went to church. The doors that were once open inside them closed. So much of their energy was spent on this that, to me, the ins and outs of their separation were out in the open.

Everything in the house became strictly divided property. They would use the kitchen in shifts. They split the couch apart. They blocked out when their shows were on cable and made topical compromises on who would use the DVR each week when Locke and Key came too close to overlapping with The Walking Dead. I came home from school one afternoon to find my mother surrounded by stacks of books in their bedroom, which had now become just hers, sorting out which ones were his and putting them in boxes to go to his room downstairs. It was so definite, so clean cut, that it felt more violent than if they had fought more openly. It was like they had made the decision to be separate people without allowing me a moment to separate them as my parents.

I had been going to church halfheartedly before they separated, but at some point in the legal and physical and spiritual process I stopped. No Easter service, or Christmas service. No Mass. It was a relief, in some ways - I wouldn’t have to stand between them in the pew anymore, or diffuse conversations with their church friends who they hadn’t told yet. It was an effective resignation from my position as the parent of their divorce. But in other ways, it felt just a little like death. Or not death. Like a door closing. Soren said he missed me during Mass, and I said he should just come over after.

I got used to it quickly. The time that I had used to go to church on Sunday I could now use to sleep in and eat buttered toast and wear sweatpants, three novel things that lost their novelty after the first few weekends and just became what I did with myself. While my parents were gone, the house was all mine. This was a novelty that never wore away. Part of me was ashamed of it. Who got excited about living in their own house?

Another, bigger part of me was more satisfied at home than I ever had been at church. If there was a God, He probably lived in my house. Walking freely through the rooms without being afraid of crossing boundaries or making allegiances or interrupting arguments or staged quiet hours was a new kind of worship that I didn’t know I was capable of. I got excited about opening the drawers in my kitchen, and sitting in the middle of the couch, and pulling up the window shades. I let as much light into every room as I could and lay in patches of sun for hours. When I got bored or listless I could leave, and the house would always be content to wait for me until I came back. For those hours, the divided space I lived in became fully mine.

I did other things, too, besides take baths and practice living in my own house. I had Soren, and other close friends who I could invite over or go out with; we played board games and planted peppers and drove several cars gently into ditches and made a habit of trespassing in the woods across town. They had other friends who had other friends who invited us to concerts and parties and bought alcohol that I wrapped in a sweatshirt and hid in my closet, only to forget about it and find it later when I was hunting through clothes for my rain boots. It was cheap stuff, the kind of vodka that comes in a plastic jug that, if unmarked, might also be used to transport corrosive acid or washable glue, and near the end of my senior summer, when my parents were thinking of selling the house and I was weeks from departing to college, I thought that it would be a good idea to invite everybody over to drink the rest of it.

It was a Wednesday. My dad was out of town - he had found more and more excuses to spend time a couple states away, “on business”. My mom was staying with her sister while her husband (of a successful Catholic marriage) had surgery in the nearby hospital. She had left earlier in the week, with a kiss on each of my cheeks and a pointed look that probably meant, in a loving way, don’t get drunk on shitty vodka while I’m gone. I gave her a look back that probably meant, in a loving way, you need to practice for when you can’t tell me what to do anymore.

I think fondly on it. In the months leading up to and the months after Elliot was born, people kept asking me, “Don’t you regret it?” And I didn’t, and I don’t. I liked sitting on the floor of the kitchen, drinking shitty vodka soda with my friends. I liked playing soft music loud enough to feel it in my ankles. I liked going outside with them and closing the door. I liked walking around the block. I liked Soren stopping us in front of the church, and I liked going in through the basement window, and I liked coming up the stairs to see it like an empty swimming pool, so blue, so broad, so full, still, of light, just the way I had left it.

We scattered ourselves among the pews, in the balcony, at the seat of the big organ and the smaller piano. I wandered through the rooms, in and out of the confessional, climbed the steps to the bell tower and down again. I felt oddly returned to myself. I had done this many, many times. My feet knew how the floors felt under them; my fingers knew how the walls felt under them; my eyes knew where to find the shadows in the dips of the hallway and the cracks in the wood. But I had never seen them like this. Not from this height, or this hour, or without resistance to come in the first place.

The moon shone through stained glass and illuminated the star above Bethlehem.

I wanted to take a bath.

The baptism pool was hidden in one of the side rooms behind the altar. Under the water, the lights were on; they swam green and white beneath the surface, a promise of warmth, of cleanliness. I stripped to my underwear and stepped onto the first shallow stair, and the next, and the next, until the water hit my waist and my ribs and my chin, until I closed my eyes and ducked my head under and felt my hair rise up and float around me as if I was suspended in space, and when I rose to take a breath, it felt like the first time.

The baptism chamber, like most of the church, was lined in windows. Plexiglas along the bottom, but as the ceiling arched, stained glass masterpieces of Mother Mary: at the birth of Christ, at his crucifixion, her holding his body, her mourning, her assumption, her coronation. She seemed to have infinite grace. She was innocent. She was pure. She was holy, in every sense. Was it because of the child? Was it because God chose her to have the virgin birth, to bring forth his voice into the human world? Or was it in the way she carried herself, swaying hips, steady eyes, assured of her place in the world with our without Christ or God or the Wise Men coming out of the desert?

Behind me the door creaked. I could tell without looking that it was Soren - I knew the way he breathed from all the nights we had spent sleeping on each others’ floors.

He said, “How does it feel to be back?”

I said, “I wish you had some bread.”

He laughed softly and came to sit by the edge of the pool and started taking his shoes off with deft hands. I watched him untie his laces and strip off his socks and roll his pants up just above his ankles, and then he dipped his feet into the pool and it was the two of us there together just like it had always been.

Being there with him felt familiar. It felt like knowing him was knowing me inside and out. And so I wasn’t nervous when I pulled myself out of the pool, or when he reached out to touch my wet hair, or when I leaned in to meet his soft mouth. I wasn’t nervous fumbling at his buttons, or lying on the stone floor, feeling the cold on my back but the warmth between us. We laughed together, in gasps, and I could feel his heart beating, and I wasn’t nervous, because this really was something that was bigger than us. I knew it was, lying on my back next to him after, looking up at Mary and thinking that most of the time holy things had nothing to do with God, but just with the knowledge that rightness and goodness existed in places where everyone could find them.

When I had Elliot, my parents freaked out. They told me they were scared for me when they really meant they were scared of me. But I’m not stressed about getting into Heaven, really, because I think I’m probably having little bits of it all the time. When I take a bath. When I sit in the sun. When Elliot and I stay home on Sundays and make bread. Some voice in the back of my head is always saying, when we sit down to dinner with our fresh bakes and with my glass of wine, eat of my body, drink of my blood, and maybe that’s God, but maybe it’s me, instead, content to be dirty and clean at the same time in a world of my own creation.

Elliot is five. That’s old enough now that he likes to take showers, but Monday is bath day for both of us. During the day, Soren takes him to a stream, or up a mountain, or on some other kind of adventure that lets him get absolutely filthy. When they get home at night, I shepherd Elliot into the bath while Soren makes easy dinner. I give him bubbles and soap and the kind of shampoo that won’t sting if it gets in his eyes, and he washes himself and tells me about his day with his dad. When I pull the plug on the drain, he stays until the tub is completely empty, leaving him goosefleshed and giggling until I wrap him in a towel.

While they’re gone during the day, I sit in the water and look up at the window. It’s a cloudy skylight, covered with years’ worth of dirt and grime, but still clean enough to let a good amount of light in. I like to think that if we didn’t live in an apartment, and if we had a good amount of money, I’d put in some stained glass up there. Something innocuous, like a caterpillar or a loaf of challah, but with just the right amount of color and drama to remind me where I came from, and what worship feels like when you do it for yourself.

I stay in the bath for a long time. I run the faucet until the tub is full, and then I sit in it, and I wash my hair, and I look around my tiny bathroom and remind myself what a room looks like when it’s all mine.

#short story #writers on tumblr #x #plot and suspense #spring 2020

1 note · View note

pengychan · 6 years

Text

[Coco] Confession

Title: Confession Summary: Héctor is having some impure thoughts about his best friend, and decides to use the confessional booth for its intended purpose. Incidentally, Ernesto is currently using that same booth. Not for its intended purpose. [Pre-canon, nsfw. There is some period-typical homophobia in this, for the record, but nothing too heavy. Don’t expect anything serious.] Characters: Héctor Rivera, Ernesto de la Cruz. Rating: M

A/N: I entirely blame the Coco Locos Discord server for this thing’s existence.

***

It had all started out innocently. Well, as innocently as it can get when you’re inside a church’s confessional booth with a nun on your lap. Which, come to think of it, was not innocent at all.

Ernesto de la Cruz probably needed to rethink his definition of innocence, but he’d do it later. At the moment, he had his hands full. Quite literally.

“Wait, wait. I’ve got it, I-- I can’t see a thing!”

“Quiet, someone could hear! Let me handle this.”

Ernesto leaned back against the side of the confessional booth, breathing in the smell of old wood and incense. It was small and clearly not meant for two, with only enough space for him to sit, and for Sister Sofía to climb on his lap. It was also dark, the only light coming from the tiny holes on one side to hear the confession. Maybe he should slide the panel shut, he mused, but then Sister Sofía was done unbuttoning his shirt and moved on to unbuckling his belt, and that was one hell of a distraction. She did know how to handle it all right.

“... How many men have you screwed in this booth, Sister?”

“This one specifically?”

“How many are there in this church anyway?”

“Four.”

“And did you--”

“Yes.”

“And Padre Edmundo never--”

“No. ”

“Amazing.”

“Thanks. Can you keep your voice down?”

“It would be a sin against God, but I can try,” Ernesto breathed, then her mouth was on his in a bruising kiss. It went straight to his groin, tugged him forward to return it, and he found that the booth was not small enough, after all. There was still too much distance between them… not to mention that damned robe she had on, leaving hardly any skin for him to touch. He groaned in frustration, fumbling to get it out of the way, and felt her chuckling against his skin, a hand running down his chest.

Sister Sofía - who had absolutely no idea that, some twenty years later, she’d be the basis of a movie character - grasped a handful of his hair, forcing his head back. Ernesto let out a hiss when she placed an open-mouthed kiss on his neck and, with her other hand, reached down into his trousers, palming him through the underwear. The hiss turned into a groan, which he stifled when the kiss turned into a bite.

“Quiet,” she said, her voice suddenly harsh, and grasped him tight - painfully so. The sound that left his throat wasn’t too far away from a whine. "Don't make me get the rod."

Ah, there was the nun again. “You’re already holding it,” Ernesto quipped, gaining himself another squeeze - and a chuckle muffled against the side of his neck. Heat was pooling down in his groin, he was growing hard almost embarrassingly quickly, and he grinned. He reached up to get rid of her headdress, ran his fingers through her hair.

“How do we settle this with the Almighty? Can you confess me?”

“Someone hasn’t been paying attention. Only priests can hold confession and absolve from sin.”

“I was distracted.”

“Oh?”

“By the paintings. Clearly.”

“Clearly.”

“I don’t suppose Padre Edmundo would confess us, would he?”

“After a stiff drink, perhaps. He has a fondness for mass wine. He may forget about it.”

“Speaking of stiff, would you mind…?” he muttered, thrusting up into her grip. There was another muffled laugh, and then she ran… no, scraped a fingernail over the underside, causing Ernesto to utter a rather creative curse that gained him another pull at his hair.

“Is that how you talk in the house of God?” Sister Sofía hissed. “Maybe I should get the rod.”

Ernesto held back a laugh, breathing fast when he felt her thumb running slowly over the tip. The heat was almost unbearable now, and keeping himself from thrusting up into her grip was taking all of his willpower. He shuddered. “You would sound so much more convincing if you weren’t-- ah! Mierd-- I mean--”

A bite on his collarbone and another tug at his hair kept him from uttering any more blasphemies, but just barely. That was going to leave a mark for sure, he would need to keep his shirt all buttoned up for a while to hide it. In the heat of summer it would be a nuisance but he found he didn’t care, not with that sort of heat already taking him over. For that, he felt he could face the flames of Hell, and gladly.

“Tell me whatever verse you use to excuse this, and I’ll believe it,” he rasped. His own voice had never sounded so rough to his ears. He slid a hand beneath the rough fabric of her robe, up her leg and then between her thighs. He found her wet and open and ready, and his fingers slipping in got a moan out of her that she muffled against his shoulder, clinging to him as though her life depended on it.

Good. He didn’t mind being led, but if she’d thought he’d leave all control to her, she’d been sorely mistaken. “This,” he whispered against she side of her neck, “would be a good moment to get things going. I promise it won’t hurt”

A breathless scoff, and she pushed his arm away. His fingers came out slick and wet. “Oh, please. I’ve taken bigger.”

“I don’t believe it for a sec--”

“The bellringer.”

“What? You’re joking!”

“Am not.”

“He’s missing a leg!”

“That’s not the appendage we’re discussing here.” A hand pressed against his mouth before he could argue. "Be still," she whispered, and shifted on his lap, pulling up her robe - then she sank on him, and for a moment he could think of nothing. The fingers in his hair let go and she clung to his shoulders with both hands, pressing down, pressing closer.

He was stuck between her and the wood behind his back, her hair was on his face and her mouth on his neck, and he had almost no complaints. Almost. They were close but not close enough, he was deep in her but not deep enough, he needed more of that scent and that heat and that tightness. She rocked against him, breathing fast, and his hands clenched on the fabric of her robe, hips shuddering.

There was a bit of a false start, he thrust up just as she pulled away, but then she came down on him - hard - and they found their rhythm. For a time there was nothing but that, gasping and warmth and motion in the dark; he could smell more than just old wood and incense now and it was sweet, sweet, intoxicating.

“Do you still want to hear those verses?” Sister Sofía panted against his shoulder, grinding down on him. Ernesto bit his tongue to stifle a curse, but he let out a breathless chuckle.

“No,” he managed. He got one of his hands between them, beneath her robe, and cupped her breast. His thumb brushed over her nipple. “No way in hell I’m apologizing for this.”

A smile against his skin, a tilt of her hips. “Jesus would be saddened.”

“You’re his bride, not me. You sort it out,” Ernesto gasped, and she muffled her laugh against his mouth. A hand ran through his hair, across his shoulder, down his chest.

“I’m starting to suspect you’re not a good Catholic.”

“I have yet to meet one of those,” he muttered, and he was about to add something else, but he never got to: the next moment a sound reached his ears, that of heavy double doors being pushed open, and then footsteps. They immediately stilled, holding their breath, blood still rushing in their ears and pleasure still dulling their senses. Sister Sofía did not move away from his lap - not enough space for her to - but her hand went up to his mouth again.

Still buried deep within her, Ernesto reached to cover it with his own and smiled against her palm… but the smile died down when he realized that the steps were moving closer and closer, until they stopped right in front of the confessional booth.

Ernesto’s eyes flickered towards Sister Sofía to see that she was staring back at him, dark eyes widened in the dim light, just as worried. Then it hit him that the fact he could see her at all was the problem. The small window at the side of the confessional had been left open; the tiny holes wouldn’t allow anyone to look inside, no more than he could glance out from where he sat, but if whoever was there thought that the confessional booth was open--

Close the panel close the panel close the pa--

Too late: before Ernesto could manage to detangle his hand from Sister Sofía’s hair, he heard someone kneeling outside, and clearing his throat.

All right, new plan, I’ll pretend I’m not in. No one is in and he’ll go away. Just keep quiet and--

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen,” a man’s voice rang out, and for a moment Ernesto’s brain came to a complete standstill, his eyebrows raising up almost to his hairline.

Oh. Oooh, that changed everything. He wasn’t going to miss that, no señor, no way. It didn’t matter how hushed the voice was, he recognized it right way. It would have been impossible for him not to: he’d heard Héctor mumbling, yelling, whispering, crying, singing and more so many times, since they’d been children. Beneath Sister Sofía’s palm, his lips curled in a gleeful grin; he didn’t even notice her perplexed look when he pulled her hand off his face.

“Bless me, Padre, for I have sinned. It has been… uh… about… it has been a while since my last confession.”

A while didn’t even begin to cover it, Ernesto suspected. If it turned out he’d confessed himself even just once since before his first Holy Communion he’d pick up the wimple from the floor and eat it. He cleared his throat and spoke in a hushed tone himself, making his voice huskier than usual - not too difficult, really, considering that he was still balls deep into a woman. Who, from her part, was now pressing a hand on her own mouth not to laugh, despite the situation being quite a bit more dangerous for her than it was for him. Ernesto had to admire that.

“And what are your sins, child?” he asked, and held his breath for a moment. He was pretty good at changing his voice, but Héctor had known him for a long time, too - he might just recognize it. Luckily Héctor could be amazingly unobservant, especially when upset… and he did sound kind of upset now, really.

“It’s… difficult to talk about,” he said, his voice trembling, and Ernesto blinked, some worry worming its way through the amusement. Wait, how bad was it? Had he killed someone? Did he need help to hide a body? He had a spade somewhere and there was a grove not far from there where they could--

“Nnnh--!”

Ernesto was unable to stifle a groan when Sister Sofía suddenly began tilting her hips again, still on his lap, still around him. He looked at her with wide eyes, and was met with a smirk; she put both hands on his shoulders to push him back against the wall, still tilting her hips slowly.

Oh, she was going to make that difficult, wasn’t she? Very well. He could handle it. Maybe.

“Er… Padre? Is everything all right?” Héctor was asking, and Ernesto held back a grin, brushing back Sister Sofía’s hair.

“Yes, yes,” he rasped, leaning the back of his head against the wall and letting her do what she would. A hand reached again beneath her robe; her skin was slick with sweat just like his own. “Speak freely, child. What is buggin-- troubling you?”

There was a long breath on the other side of the confessional, followed by a mumble. “I have… I have been having impure thoughts, Padre.”

Have I died and gone to Heaven? Have I? Because a nun riding me while my best friends hands over years’ worth of blackmail material sounds like Heaven to me.

“Impure thoughts?” he repeated. Keeping his voice muffled wasn’t very easy, not with a grin that threatened to split his face in two. Well well, it was about time. How long had he been pining over Miss Attitude, anyway? And all while denying he’d even thought about her that way, like she were Virgin Mary herself or some nonsense.

Of course he’d been having impure thoughts, the pandejo, and he couldn’t blame him. Ernesto had had a few thoughts about Imelda himself, all right, though he wasn’t crazy enough to try anything. There were risks he was willing to take in life, as his current predicament proved, but castration wasn’t one of them.

“Yes,” Héctor’s voice reached him again, almost childishly thin. “Impure thoughts.”

Ernesto caught Sister Sofía’s mouth with his own and exchanged a quick kiss before speaking again. “What sort of impure thoughts?” he rasped, running a hand through her hair.

“I… I’m afraid it’s… I fear it’s offending God.”

Really now? And there Ernesto had thought he was the overly dramatic one. Since when was Héctor that prudish? Ernesto rolled his eyes before speaking, trying to keep his voice steady. Not an easy task. He felt like he could catch fire any moment.

“Well, as long as it’s-- ah… Only in your thoughts, and the young lady is not… er….”

“Vexed,” Sister Sofía whispered in his ear, tilting her hips, and Ernesto nodded, drawing in a deep breath.

“Vexed. Right. As long as it’s in thought--”

“But that’s the thing!” Héctor exclaimed suddenly, words tumbling out of his mouth. “It’s… it’s not about a woman, Padre!”

Wait. Wait. What.

What.

“... What.”

For a moment, everything stilled - and that included Sister Sofía. She paused, hands still on his shoulders, and tilted her head towards the confessional’s window. On the other side, Héctor was talking fast.

“I… I mean, there is also a girl, and… and I think I’m in love with her, and I could never have those thoughts… well… maybe sometimes, because she is so beautiful, and I know I have no chance with her, but I’d… I would never vex her, Padre, I could never - but that is normal, I suppose? But these thoughts for another man, I know… I know it’s… it is unnatural.”

“Because celibacy isn’t,” Sister Sofía whispered, and Ernesto held back a laugh, surprise starting to give way to something closer to glee. And there he’d thought he knew Héctor like the back of his hand. Full of surprises, wasn’t he? That was mocking fodder that would last him for years to co--

A quick, sharp slap on the cheek reminded him that he was supposed to say something. He cleared his throat. “I see. That’s interesting.”

“... Padre?”

Whoops. “Concerning,” he corrected himself quickly, grinning a little when Sister Sofía rolled her eyes. “Quite concerning. How long have you been having these… impure thoughts?”

“For months now. It started out… we were just at the stream, and… it was only a thought at first, but then I couldn’t stop thinking about it and now I don’t know what to do.”

‘Do him’ was a possible suggestion, Ernesto supposed, but not a viable one if he was to keep that charade up. And he did want to keep it up, if anything to find out who the hell it was about. Ernesto tried to imagine who in the world could Héctor be having the hots for but, Imelda aside, he drew a complete blank. He thought of the one-legged bellringer, and had to bite back a laugh.

“I see. Does he know of your, er, desires?”

“Oh God, no!” Héctor was groaning. “I could never tell him, I don’t know what he would think! He’s my best friend, almost a brother! I don’t want him to know I’m a… some sort of deviant! If he were to find out, I… I don’t even know what I would do. What should I do, Padre?”

“...”

“... Padre?”

“Huh,” Ernesto said. On his lap, Sister Sofía was trembling in what seemed an almost heroic effort not to burst out laughing. He blinked a couple of times, opened his mouth to say something, closed it, opened it again. “Huh,” he repeated.

“I am afraid that if he finds out, he will never look at me the same way again,” Héctor was adding and well, he wasn’t wrong about that. Impure thoughts about Imelda and about him? He had good taste, if anything. How in the world had Ernesto managed to entirely miss it?

“I have prayed, but it doesn’t seem to help,” Héctor was adding, his voice weaker. “I don’t know what else to--”

“Have you considered telling him?” Ernesto asked on a whim, causing Héctor to sputter and Sister Sofía to press her mouth against his shoulder, desperately trying to muffle more laughter. He’d almost forgotten he was still in her, taken as he was by the confession, but the sudden movement made him all too aware, and his hips shuddered. Ernesto drew in a deep breath. He’d thought it was hot inside that booth a few minutes earlier but oh God, now he may as well be in Hell. And he still had no complaints.

“No, I. I can’t tell him,” Héctor was saying, his voice a couple of octaves higher. “I don’t know what he’d think.”

That you have taste, Ernesto wanted to say, but he bit his lower lip instead. Sister Sofía was moving again, grinning against his skin, and he had to hold back a groan. The heat in his groin was back, he wasn’t sure precisely what was causing it now, and he found he didn’t care. He clung back to her, trying to get a hand beneath her robe.

“Well,” he rasped. “These impure thoughts, have you ever… acted on them? When alone?”

More sputtering. “Wha-- no! I never--”

“The truth before God, child,” Ernesto cut him off, and that was a perfect imitation of Padre Edmundo, if he said so himself. If his current predicament had allowed him, he’d have patted himself on the back; instead, he settled for thrusting up into Sister Sofía again, leaning a cheek on her hair. He felt like he was burning up; even the air he breathed seemed to be scorching his throat. “You’re here to confess everything and, er…”

“Free yourself of sin,” Sister Sofía breathed in his ear.

“Free yourself of sin,” Ernesto repeated, and held his breath. After a few, long moments of silence, there was a sigh of defeat.

“I… I have. Once. Or twice,” Héctor mumbled and oh, oh wasn’t that getting better and better. The mental image hit Ernesto like a jolt, went straight to his groin. His breath caught in his throat; if Sister Sofía noticed, if she wondered, she said nothing: she just ground harder against him and Ernesto suddenly realized that he was very, very close.

“Once or twice?” he repeated, his voice hoarse, and he definitely heard Héctor shifting on the kneeling stool, heard him groaning.

“Several times,” he admitted, just as Sister Sofía tilted her hips sharply and pressed a kiss on the side of his neck. The muscles in Ernesto’s thighs twitched and he clung back to her, his mind conjuring a very pleasant mental image - Héctor resting on his back in his bedroom, his trousers open, a hand sneaking in, Ernesto’s name on his lips.

“These thoughts,” Ernesto breathed. “How… how impure…?”

“Do I have to--”

“It is called confession for a reason. How can I absolve you if-- nnnh… if you don’t tell me all about your sin?”

At that point Ernesto wasn’t even sure his voice sounded like that of a priest at all, but he was already beyond caring; Sister Sofía was getting close, too, he could tell by her quickening breathing and the was she moved, quick and desperate.

“I…” a pause, a long breath. “God help me, one time I imagined him on his knees for me, and… and…”

Héctor’s voice broke, but even if he hadn’t, Ernesto wouldn’t have heard another word. The mental image hit him like a physical blow, and Sister Sofía was clenching around him, and that was it. Ernesto had to bite on his fist to muffle a groan, not knowing what was it that had pushed him over the edge and frankly not giving a damn. He shuddered a few times, his body flushing hot and cold at the same time, blood rushing in his ears and heart thundering in his chest.

Very far away, Héctor was still talking, but he didn’t catch the words. He leaned back against the wall of the confessional booth with a trembling breath, Sister Sofía suddenly limp and still on him, leaning her head against his shoulder and breathing fast against his ear. He could feel the thumping of her heartbeat through the robe. He ran a hand through her hair again, and felt her smirk against his neck. Ernesto grinned back - not that she could see it, but it was the thought that counted - and made an effort to turn his attention back to Héctor.

“So I need some… some advice. And prayer, of course, I am going to pray, but--”

“This friend of yours, is he handsome?”

“... What?”

“Well, is he?”

“Uh… I guess that… women do think he is…”

“But do you?”

“Er. Sí?”

Ernesto took a mental note of that, for next time Héctor tried to react to his teasing over his ears and nose by uttering some nonsense about his chin scaring small children. Hadn’t he been lost in the afterglow, he would have realized that his voice didn’t sound much like that of a priest anymore and he would have definitely picked up the sudden doubt in Héctor’s voice. But his mind was still dazed, so he didn’t notice.

That, or his brain had decided that he just didn’t care to keep the act going anymore.

“Well, if he’s that handsome, I am sure God would understand.”

“... Would he now.”

“He did tell us to love the… the…”

“The neighbour?”

“Yes. That.”

“I am not entirely sure he meant that kind of love.”

“Which one of us is the priest again?”

“I see. Well, Padre, thank you for the enlightening words. Come to think of it, I probably need not worry. It would be worse if I’d been having such thoughts about a real man.”

Wait, what?

“Wait, what?” Ernesto repeated, incredulous. Sister Sofía trembled in his arms - a quiet snicker, most likely - but he was beyond noticing. “What do you mean by that?”

“I have seen his… well, we grew up together, you understand. Just last week we went to the stream to freshen up. I didn’t intentionally look, but it couldn't be helped. It was… nothing to write home about.”

“Wait a minute there--”

“Actually, you almost couldn’t see it. Almost like looking at a woman. Maybe that’s why--”

“That’s not true!” Ernesto all but screeched, causing Sister Sofía to recoil and pull back, raising both eyebrows at him.

Really?

… Ah. Whoops.

As realization hit him, he heard Héctor standing suddenly and crying out in triumph. “Ah-ha! So it was you all alo-- oh. Oh my God, it was you all along!”

“Er…”

“What the hell, Ernesto?”

“I, uh--”

There was a groan, a few footsteps as Héctor walked around the confessional booth. “What in the world are you doing in there?”

“No, wait--” Ernesto tried, but it was too late. The door was thrown open and Héctor was glaring at him, his face beet red. Not that he kept glaring for long: within a moment, just as Sister Sofía pressed her face against his shoulder and lost her long battle not to laugh, his expression turned perplexed at first, then completely blank. His eyes shifted from the laughing nun on his lap to Ernesto, who tried to smile, still sweaty and dishevelled.

“This is not what it looks like,” he declared.

Héctor blinked at him and slowly, wordlessly, closed the door again. There were quick footsteps as he walked out of the church, but Ernesto failed to hear them over Sister Sofía’s laughter. He groaned and leaned back against the wall, wiping some sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.

“You’re never going to let me forget this, are you?”

More laughter, a smile against sweaty skin. “Oh, no. Never.”

***

“Well, we did learn some interesting things about each other today.”

“Chingate, Ernesto.”

“You sure you wouldn’t like to do that yourself?”

“Ernesto.”

“Just asking!”

Silence.

“... She’s not going to tell, is she?”

“Naah, she’s good. Plus, she wouldn’t want to explain what we were doing in that booth.”

“Oh. Good.”

Silence, again.

“You said I’m handsome.”

“I also said you have a small dick.”

“We both know that’s not true.”

“I’ve seen bigger.”

“That’s the second time I hear it today. And whose would that be?”

“Mine.”

“Hah, dream on. Mine is thicker and women like it thick. Unlike you, I would know.”

“That was a low blow.”

“In every sense of the word.”

More silence.

“... But if you want to settle the matter--”

“No.”

“Afraid of comparison now?”

“Just do us both a favor and keep it in your trousers for two hours straight.”

“Heh.”

“What now?”

“You said ‘straight’.”

“Idiota.”

Another pause as they both gulped down a shot of mezcal.

“So, about those impure thoughts--”

“Can you shut your mouth?”

“Would you prefer to shut me up? Because you did mention a fun way to do it.”

“For the love of-- we can’t, all right?”

“Says the Bible?”

“Says everyone.”

“Well, not me.”

“I caught you fucking a nun inside a church.”

“Your point?”

“You’re not a good role model.”

“Probably not. But I’m a great lover.”

“Says who?”

“You very shortly, if you dare. You can confess yourself later. Possibly to a real priest.”

He did dare. He did, begrudgingly, concede that Ernesto knew what he was doing. But he never attempted to confess himself again. Actually, he never came within a ten foot radius of a confessional booth ever again.

Just in case.

#coco #ernesto de la cruz #hector rivera #pixar #ernector #the coco server is full of people with awful taste #I have found my people is what I'm saying #also this ship pisses off people #I like pissing off people

113 notes · View notes

megabadbunny · 6 years

Text

Minuet, Part V

She wonders if it’s midnight, yet, if her carriage will poof back into a pumpkin and her gown return to rags.

(Certainly no prince will come calling after her, not after the way she behaved tonight.)

***

(ten/rose angsty post-gitf au/fixit; this part (and all parts on ff.net) is sfw (minor exception for brief language); be warned that the next chapter has teh smuts <3)

(full-size image)

Minuet, Part V

Beneath a canopy of ever-brightening lightning dancing across the sky, dazzling white slicing through a canvas of sapphire-blues and bruise-purples and ominous reds, the afternoon slowly slides into the evening. Certainly, Rose is sure things happen during this time; she’s equally sure she has no idea what they are, and she doesn’t care.

(Uruud shows her to her room. It’s fine. It’s a room. It’s got a bed. Before Rose has a chance to poke around anymore than that, Mickey stops by with an invitation—We’re off to do some investigating, fancy a ride-along?—and that look on his face, all nervousness and uncertainty mixed with apprehensive hope, just cements in Rose’s mind how very bad everything is, if the Doctor can’t even be arsed to come in here himself like he normally would. Rose begs off in favor of a nap, and ignores the worry that plays across Mickey’s face after. But it wasn’t entirely a lie, because blessedly, the bed has got a canopy to block out the light-show blaring through the glass ceiling above, and the temptation to smother her woes in an ocean of silky bedclothes and feather-stuffed pillows is indeed quite strong. But Rose just sits on the bed instead, arms crossed and toes tapping and eyes staring at nothing in particular while her brain replays the last twelve hours like some kind of horrid sitcom on syndication, playing over and over and over and over.)

Right on schedule, the first ritual begins—or rather, the first “ritual”, as Rose thinks of it, considering that even if it’s presented like a Therran Communion, it seems a lot more like a threadbare excuse for the guests at the Temple to pull on fancy clothes and get blind-stinking drunk. Normally, the whole thing might delight Rose, the chance to doll up and immerse herself completely in the local culture, taste a range of fine alien libations and make new friends and maybe even flirt a little, but now it just seems sort of pointless and silly, a bunch of children playing at being adults with their fancy-dress and their fermented Britvic.

(Uruud brings a gown for Rose to wear to dinner. Rationally, she recognizes that it’s quite an elegant thing, all slim-fitted bodice and voluminous skirts and Prussian blue velvety-softness; less rationally, after Mickey pops back by her room with news of his and the Doctor’s escapades—Can’t find that High Chauncery bloke anywhere, none of the Votaries know where he’s got off to, what do you think of that?—Rose wonders how the fabric would hold up if she tore it to straps and fashioned herself an escape rope, climbing out the window and deserting this stupid fancy place and its even stupider guests like a princess absconding from her tower. Planet-consuming lightning storms can’t be all that dangerous, right?)

Dinner takes place, at some point, somewhere. A grand hall, probably, but Rose is three swallows deep into her third (or fourth?) glass of so-called “ritual wine” and things are starting to get just the littlest bit blurry around the edges. Mostly she notices that the hall is packed full of people, and it’s loud, and there’s food, and a whole host of traditions accompanying it all. Each food item is laden with symbolic meaning, and eaten only after a session of chant-and-repeat, the entire dining hall buzzing with the rhythmic hum of people reciting scripture, lifting their faces toward the lightning scrawling overhead. Rose moves her lips along with everyone else, if only not to disrespect Uruud and the other Votaries, and after, she dutifully places the food into her mouth and chews and swallows, because it’s there, and she should, regardless of the protests of the seized-up beartrap that seems to have replaced her stomach. Probably some of the food she eats is tasty, and some of it isn’t. She doesn’t notice one way or the other.

(Uruud is kind enough to help Rose with her hair and makeup, styling both after the latest high Therran fashions, all gently sculptural curls and dew-glittering glaze painted on her skin. The whole process is so mirror-reminiscent of her time in France that Rose can’t decide whether to laugh or cry; in an effort to convince herself that she has, in fact, been rescued by the Doctor, and is not still somehow trapped millennia in the past surrounded by strangers and unknown customs and unspoken rules, she asks Uruud any and every question she can think of, and absorbs herself in their replies. She inquires about their choice to become a Votary (they were Called) and if they’ve got any family (two parents, three siblings) and the meaning of the ornamental dots on each Therran’s face (one dot for every Allstorm they’ve survived, according to tradition hearkening back to the ancient times, and with a smile, Uruud places a gem beneath Rose’s lower lip, gifting her with a temporary honorary badge of her own). Rose encourages them to speak until the words flow as freely as the wine outside, and privately takes comfort in the paint they brush over her skin. When they’re done, Rose’s collarbone sparkles as if covered with a necklace, her glitters as if topped with a tiara, and her back could almost sport a pair of wings glinting in the flashing light. It feels like a shield, a second skin, a mask, one that doesn’t slip even when Rose reunites with Mickey and the Doctor in the dining hall and the latter barely manages to spare her a glance.)

Downing the rest of her fourth (possibly fifth) glass of wine, Rose tries not to stare at Mickey and the Doctor, but it’s sort of difficult considering that they’re seated directly across from her. They both look quite sharp in their suits, tailored to perfection by talented Votaries, Rose assumes. (Distinctly tuxlike, their suits are; Rose wonders if they requested them specifically or if tuxes are just some sort of universal standard, somehow.) Between that and the Doctor’s customary chattiness, it isn’t long before most of the occupants of their table start leaning in to hear more from this fascinating couple, this charming Doctor fellow and his pretty-boy husband Mickey.

(Unfortunately, Rose suspects there’s nothing Uruud can do to help her with that particular mess.)

“And how did you two get together?” asks a friendly cat-person, ears swiveled forward in interest.

“He stole my girlfriend,” Mickey deadpans.

Clapping him on the back, the Doctor laughs. “Aww, what a sense of humor my beloved has!” he chuckles. “We did meet through Rose, actually—yes, that’s her right there, across the table, hullo Rose—but there was no romance involved. At least, not at first,” he adds with a wink sent Mickey’s way, and Rose struggles not to roll her eyes, or throw up, or both. “That’s all he meant. Isn’t that right, Honey Bear?”

“Sure is, Fudge Nugget.”

“See, Rose and I met through her workplace. You know how it goes, she’s closing up shop, you’re scheduled to do demolition on said shop, you run into each other on the lift in a classic meeting-your-future-husband’s-best-mate-meetcute. Instant friendship! Wouldn’t you say, Pootsy-Pie?”

“Whatever you say, Pudgy McGee.”

“Let’s just say Rose found me very charming, once upon a time,” the Doctor continues, “and Mickey here, feeling jealous that someone was encroaching on the territory of his best mate—that’s Rose, hullo again, Rose—well, he decided that he should find out what all this cattywhumpus was about, meet this Doctor bloke that Rose couldn’t stop raving over. And the rest, as they say, is history. Wouldn’t you agree, my little Muffin Top?”

“You got it, Sugar Tits.”

Rose watches as the Doctor chokes on his wine and Mickey pats him on the back perhaps just a little more enthusiastically than the situation warrants. The Doctor shoots him a teeth-gritted grin afterward and Mickey just smiles the universe’s most beatific serene smile. And that, for whatever reason, inspires Rose with a funny little thought.

“My dear Doctor,” she says sweetly, indulging in a delicate sip of her wine, “that’s all very good and well, but you must realize that isn’t actually what our friend here was asking. She wants to know about how the two of you became a couple.”

Rose locks eyes with him over the table, affecting a friendly smile. “She wants to know how the two of you fell in love.”

It’s doubtful that anyone else at the table registers the shadow that flickers over the Doctor’s face; it’s gone as soon as it appears, and the Doctor answers with barely a hitch.

“Well, I think I’ve hogged the spotlight long enough,” he says to Mickey. “Why don’t you tell them, my love?”

Mickey’s glee can barely restrain itself, oozing out the seams as he grins like a Cheshire cat. “Oh, no, my pet,” he says, planting his elbows on the table and his chin in both hands, watching the Doctor with adoring eyes, “I insist that you tell them. You do it so wonderfully, after all.”

“Thank you, sweetie,” replies the Doctor, his voice only a little strained as everyone aww’s around them, and Rose bites her lip to keep from laughing.

“So, that part of the story is—here we come to a part that’s—well, it’s a little difficult to know where to start, is all,” the Doctor says, tugging nervously on one ear. “It just feels like we’ve been in love for so long, you see, that it’s all sort of rolled together into one giant…love mass. Sort of like, y’know. The Thing or something.”

“Oh, stop that,” Rose laughs. “He’s just being shy,” she tells the rest of the table. “He doesn’t want any of you to know about all the late-night chats the two of us had together, with him just gushing on and on about how wonderful Mickey was, how handsome he is, how lucky the Doctor is to have him, all that.”

“Ah, that might be just the slightest smidge of an exaggeration—”

“No, no, go on,” Mickey says, his grin widening until his face might split from it. “Tell everyone how wonderful I am!”

“He’d wax poetical for hours about the beauty of Mickey’s eyes,” Rose says when the Doctor doesn’t reply.

“Can’t blame him, they’re quite nice,” Mickey adds.

“He’d talk about how safe and warm he felt in Mickey’s arms.”

“Front-row tickets to the gunshow, right here.”

“But by far, I think his very favorite thing about Mickey has always been his intellect,” Rose continues, choking down her laughter as the Doctor’s mouth purses thinner and thinner. “In fact, I used to stay up late reassuring him that, no, Mickey wasn’t too smart for him—”

“Aww, babe,” says Mickey, looping an arm around the Doctor’s shoulders.

“—but he just insisted that no matter how hard he tried, he’d never be Mickey’s intellectual equal,” Rose says, disguising her snickers as a cough. “In fact, after their first kiss, the Doctor called me straightaway to tell me—”

“His hands,” the Doctor blurts out, and everyone at the table turns back to him.

“Sorry?” asks the cat-person from earlier.

The Doctor doesn’t spare a glance for her; his eyes are locked squarely on Rose.

“Just—they’re nice hands,” the Doctor says, with a shrug. “Good for holding. That’s what it’s really all about, isn’t it? A hand to hold. Wouldn’t you say, Rose?”

She doesn’t reply; she’s too busy watching his fingers as they entwine with Mickey’s hand on his shoulder, and once again, the table lights up with the sounds of an audience enraptured, the cat-person pressing her paw to her chest at the cuteness of it all. The conversation starts again, picking up where it left off, but it’s all just white noise to Rose’s ears now as she watches Mickey and the Doctor resituate themselves to clasp their hands together atop the table, practically beneath Rose’s nose. The Doctor even finishes his dinner one-handed to accommodate the whole thing, eating and drinking with his left hand like he does it all the time, and it might all be terribly funny if his thumb wasn’t absentmindedly stroking over Mickey’s knuckle, the way it does with Rose.

The way it used to do.

Something about the mindless meaninglessness of the gesture sets klaxons blaring in Rose’s head, screaming at her for her stupidity, for ever thinking anything the Doctor did anything meaningful, for ever thinking she was anything more than a joke to him, just a joke, a joke, a worthless stupid joke and nothing he says ever means anything and you’re an idiot for ever thinking it did and the words ricochet around her skull over and over until she drowns it out with another glass of wine.

“Good stuff, isn’t it?” the Doctor asks cheerfully, and a second later, Rose realizes he’s talking to her. “Therran wine is quite lovely—when you’re not choking on it, anyway.”

The other occupants at the table laugh politely, nodding along.

“Just a tad potent, though,” the Doctor adds. “A few glasses is really all anyone needs. Everything in moderation, hm?”

He looks at Rose meaningfully, eyes darting to the glass in her hand. She wonders if he’s been keeping track of her intake this whole time, if he’s trying to say, in that stupid precious roundabout way of his, that she’s had enough, maybe more than. Probably the Doctor is right, but then again, probably if he thinks she should stop, then probably he should just come out and say it. She’s bloody well sick of all this dancing around.

With a serene smile of her own, Rose pours herself another glass. “Cheers to moderation,” she says, tilting the glass in a toast before she downs its contents in one gulp.

“Cheers!” shouts Mickey and everyone else along the table, following suit with their glasses clinking and wine-draining after, but the Doctor doesn’t drink, doesn’t cheer, doesn’t tear his eyes away from Rose. She forces herself to hold his gaze, wills her face to turn to stone so nothing can show through. If he can do it whenever he wants, then so can she.

“Well, aren’t we having a lovely time?” purrs a soft voice behind Rose, and she turns to see the scarlet-dressed woman from earlier, now swathed in a crimson gown so gorgeous it makes Rose’s eyes water. “Whatever is happening over here, it’s far more fascinating than the events transpiring at my table.”

“Ah, then you should join us!” declares the Doctor. “Not at the table, though. We were just leaving.”

The woman piques an immaculate eyebrow in interest. “Oh?” she says. “Leaving for where?”

“Yeah,” Mickey says, confused, and Rose’s eyes narrow in suspicion. “Leaving for where?”

“Not entirely sure yet, but I thought we might nose about a bit,” explains the Doctor, standing up from the table. “Get the lay of the land, go for the inside scoop, poke our beaks in where they aren’t wanted, so to speak. See what we can learn about this Allstorm business and why it’s suddenly taking place over the course of a month instead of a handful of days. The Votaries don’t seem to know anything, the computers are functionally worthless, and for the life of me I can’t seem to find any trace of the High Chauncery anywhere.”

Nodding, the woman frowns. “He has not been seen for many years now, it’s true,” she says slowly.

“Exactly. For all intents and purposes, he’s vanished, along with anyone else who might have a clue about what’s going on. It’s all just a little bit funny, don’t you think?”

In her peripheral vision, Rose sees Mickey trying to catch her eye—he’s alarmed at the Doctor’s sudden candor with this stranger, she knows. But Rose doesn’t share his gaze, or his worries. She knows exactly what the Doctor is doing, or what it feels like he’s doing, anyway, and she’s too busy sensing every ounce of the acid boiling up in her throat to weigh Mickey’s concerns.

“Oh, my,” the woman is saying now. “A conspiracy theory. How intriguing!”

“It is, at that. Would you care to join us?”

As if she can sense the daggers that Rose is glaring at the Doctor—or if she can see them, which, she probably can, Rose is fairly certain she’s being none-too-subtle at the moment—the woman glances between the two of them, hesitating. “I wouldn’t want to intrude…”

“Excellent,” Rose interjects, only wobbling a little bit as she stands up from the table. “We’ll just see you around, then—”

“Oh, nonsense, it’s no intrusion, none at all,” interrupts the Doctor, circling round the table so he can extend an elbow to the woman. “Shall we?”

Once again, the woman looks back at Rose (what, is she asking permission? Is she gloating?) before accepting the Doctor’s offer, threading her arm through his with a gracious “I think we shall.”

Without waiting for Rose (or even his supposed husband, for that matter), the Doctor takes off, arm-in-arm with the strange woman. Rose watches them as they stride away, her hands balling into fists. Nonplussed, Mickey turns around just long enough to offer Rose a confused shrug before he jogs after the Doctor and his newfound friend, or the latest thing that captured his five-second attention span, or whatever this woman is.

Sighing darkly, Rose swipes a bottle of wine off a passing tray and starts drinking.

Naami, as the woman introduces herself, soon proves herself to be quite charming (not two minutes after they’ve left the dining hall, and already Mickey and the Doctor are more relaxed than they’ve been all day) as well as delicately humorous (as evidenced by Mickey and the Doctor’s smiles and laughter, and not in that polite why you do with strangers at a party) not to mention annoyingly diplomatic (as proven by her continual attempts to rope Rose into the conversation, no matter how noncommittal Rose’s responding hums and grunts become). She’s also devastatingly insightful, if the Doctor’s eager conversation with her regarding Therran politics and society are anything to go by. In short, Naami turns out to be the sort of person that’s difficult to hate—which, of course, only makes you want to hate them all the more.

“So, Rose,” says Naami conversationally—as if the four of them aren’t creeping quietly through the Temple archives, as if the Doctor didn’t break them in with the sonic so he could hack into the information network, as if they aren’t all constantly swiveling at every tiny noise and every flash of light up above because what if it’s a guard this time?—“Far be it from me to eavesdrop, but even from my table, I heard quite a bit about your companions this evening, and very little of you. Why don’t you tell me about yourself?”

She shoots Rose a winning smile, perfect teeth framed by ideal sweetheart-shaped lips, and it lights up something somewhere in the dimming recesses of Rose’s alcohol-warmed brain. It occurs to her that this woman, this upper-class, gold-gilded, well-mannered prat, can probably smell an Estate girl from a hundred miles away, just like half the shrews at the French court before Reinette set them all to rights, or a shark scenting blood on the water. Any other day, Rose’s hackles might rise at the thought, but now, she just chuckles under her breath, swaying ever-so-slightly on her feet. What has she got to be ashamed of, what has she got to hide? It isn’t like she can make this woman’s opinion of her any worse, nor, at this point, would she even care if she did.

“Pretty general question. Why don’t you be more specific?” Rose asks, swigging from her bottle.

“All right. Where did you grow up?”

“A nice, big ol’ trash-heap in the middle of nowhere,” Rose replies brightly.

Mickey clucks his tongue disapprovingly. “Oh, come on, Rose. The Estate’s not that bad.”

“Sure it’s not, if you don’t mind a surplus of graffiti and crime and overflowing trash bins,” Rose shoots back. “Next question?”

The briefest flash of uncertainty flickers across Naami’s features before she tries again, her smile sliding back into place like it never left. “What inspired you to go traveling with Mickey and the Doctor?”

“Eh, you know how it is. Girl like me, you’ve got three options: the bloke who hits you, the bloke who cheats on you, or the bloke who promises you adventure and then up and changes his personality on you, dragging you around like so much baggage from star to star,” Rose counts off, steadfastly ignoring whether or not the Doctor reacts to any of the words streaming out of her mouth. “So I figure, hey, at least with the last option, I’m out of the house. Next?”

“Erm, very well, then,” says Naami, brow knitted in concern before she opts for what surely must seem like safe territory. “What about your friends, your significant other, your family? Tell me about them.”

“Sure thing,” Rose replies, downing another gulp of wine. “Which one would you like to hear about first—my single, lonely, unemployed mum, or my dead dad?”

“Jesus, Rose,” Mickey breathes, as Naami’s eyes widen with shock. Rose absolutely expects her to form that perfect mouth into the shape of a pout, her big beautiful eyes brimming with false tears as sublime and round as the most luxurious of pearls while she gently pats Rose’s hand, trying to hide her cringe as her delicate princess-skin comes into contact with such a low commoner, all while she murmurs some retch-worthy patronizing claptrap about Oh, you poor thing, you poor wretched little thing, no wonder these generous two men took such pity on you, no wonder you’re all alone.

Rose nearly jumps out of her skin when Naami gently grasps her shoulder instead. “My gods, I’m so sorry,” Naami says quietly, and—and is Rose imagining things, or does she look like she actually means it? “Was it—was it very recent?”

Taken aback, Rose stammers, searching for words, but Naami just shakes herself. “Oh, of course, I’m so sorry, my dear; of course you don’t want to talk about such things with a stranger,” she says. “I only thought to ask because you seemed unusually out-of-sorts for someone attending the Allstorm celebration, and stupid me, I’m nosy even on the best of days and that just makes it even more of a problem with the attraction to emotionally unavailable people—but you didn’t ask about all that, I’m sorry, I’m babbling!”

She takes Rose’s free hand in both of hers, and she looks so sincere, so bleeding earnest, that Rose can’t help but believe her. “Please forgive my impudence,” Naami says, “and please accept my condolences for you and your mother. What a dreadful thing to happen. I’m really so sorry, darling.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it, Naami,” the Doctor pipes up, typing away at a computer terminal and frowning when he doesn’t like what he sees. “It happened a long time ago.”

“Yeah,” Rose replies, her voice shaking. “Why be upset about that when there are so many more current things to be angry about?”

The clickety-clack of the Doctor’s fingers over the keyboard grows a little louder, his fingers tapping the keys just a little harder. “Or perhaps you could retire for the night, stop drinking for five entire minutes.”

“Oi, now, am I gonna have to separate you two?” Mickey jokes feebly, but Rose ignores him.

“Why, what’s wrong, Doctor?” she asks. “Am I embarrassing you?”

“You’re embarrassing yourself,” is the quiet reply.

Shame floods through Rose, leaving her lightheaded. Distantly, she hears Mickey snapping at the Doctor, hears the anger in his voice as he leaps to her defense, but she can’t hear his actual words over the sound of her blood rushing in her ears; she can only feel the hot anger of them, and the cool nothingness of the Doctor’s nonexistent reply. Rose’s cheeks burn and her stomach churns and she feels like she might be sick.

“Actually, I could do with a bit of a rest myself,” Naami tells Rose, her well-manicured hands fidgeting nervously. “Would you like company on your walk back, Rose?”

“No, ta,” says Rose tiredly, avoiding looking Naami in the eye; it’s exhausting to be so wrong about so many things all in one day, and she’s not quite ready to admit to herself that Naami may actually be a decent person, that maybe she lashed out at her without reason. Just another thing to make her want to curl up into herself like a pillbug until she dries out on the front porch, nothing but a hollow little husk left behind. “Don’t worry. He’s all yours.”

She leaves before anyone can stop her, skirts gathered in one hand, wine bottle in the other. Before too long, she finds her room again and slips out of her shoes, leaving them behind her as she walks, like the world’s most pathetic drunken Cinderella. She wonders if it’s midnight, yet, if her carriage will poof back into a pumpkin and her gown return to rags.

(Certainly no prince will come calling after her, not after the way she behaved tonight.)

Climbing into bed with her illicit treasure, Rose drinks until her eyes won’t stay open any longer.

***

Next Part

90 notes · View notes

dfroza · 3 years

Text

A resurrection of life

is seen of a 12-year-old girl in Today’s reading of the Scriptures in the New Testament book of Mark that includes this line:

“Little girl, wake up from the sleep of death.”

[Mark 5]

They arrived at the other side of the lake, at the region of the Gerasenes. As Jesus stepped ashore, a demon-possessed madman came out of the graveyard and confronted him. The man had been living there among the tombs, and no one was able to restrain him, not even with chains. For every time they attempted to chain his hands and feet with shackles, he would snap the chains and break the shackles in pieces. He was so strong that no one had the power to subdue him. Day and night he could be found lurking in the cemetery or in the vicinity, shrieking and cutting himself with stones!

When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran to him and threw himself down before him, shouting at the top of his lungs, “Leave me alone, Jesus, Son of the Most High God! Swear in God’s name that you won’t torture me!” (For Jesus had already said to him, “Come out of that man, you demon spirit!”)

Jesus said to him, “What is your name?”

“Mob,” he answered. “They call me Mob because there are thousands of us in his body!” He begged Jesus repeatedly not to expel them out of the region.

Nearby there was a large herd of pigs feeding on the hillside. The demons begged him, “Send us into the pigs. Let us enter them!”

So Jesus gave them permission, and the demon horde immediately came out of the man and went into the pigs! This caused the herd to rush madly down the steep slope and fall into the lake, drowning about two thousand pigs!Depending on weight, the cost of two thousand live pigs today could be as much as $250,000. The economic cost to the community over the loss of this herd was significant.

At this, the herdsmen ran to the nearby villages, telling everyone along the way what had happened, and the people came out to see for themselves. When they found Jesus, they saw the demonized man sitting there, properly clothed and in his right mind. Seeing what had happened to the man possessed by many demons, the people became afraid. Those who had witnessed this miracle reported the news to the people and included what had happened to the pigs. Then they asked Jesus to leave their region.

And as Jesus began to get into the boat to depart, the man who had been set free from demons asked him, “Could I go with you?” Jesus answered, “No,” but said to him, “Go back to your home and to your family and tell them what the Lord has done for you. Tell them how he had mercy on you.”

So the man left and went into the region of Jordan and parts of Syria to tell everyone he met about what Jesus had done for him, and all the people marveled!

After Jesus returned from across the lake, a huge crowd of people quickly gathered around him on the shoreline. Just then, a man saw that it was Jesus, so he pushed through the crowd and threw himself down at his feet. His name was Jairus, a Jewish official who was in charge of the synagogue. He pleaded with Jesus, saying over and over, “Please come with me! My little daughter is at the point of death, and she’s only twelve years old! Come and lay your hands on her and heal her and she will live!”

Immediately Jesus went with him, and the huge crowd followed, pressing in on him from all sides.

Now, in the crowd that day was a woman who had suffered horribly from continual bleeding for twelve years. She had endured a great deal under the care of various doctors, yet in spite of spending all she had on their treatments, she was getting worse instead of better. When she heard about Jesus’ healing power, she pushed through the crowd and came up from behind him and touched his prayer shawl. For she kept saying to herself, “If I could touch even his clothes, I know I will be healed.” As soon as her hand touched him, her bleeding immediately stopped! She knew it, for she could feel her body instantly being healed of her disease!

Jesus knew at once that someone had touched him, for he felt the power that always surged around him had passed through him for someone to be healed. He turned and spoke to the crowd, saying, “Who touched my clothes?”

His disciples answered, “What do you mean, who touched you? Look at this huge crowd—they’re all pressing up against you.” But Jesus’ eyes swept across the crowd, looking for the one who had touched him for healing.

When the woman who experienced this miracle realized what had happened to her, she came before him, trembling with fear, and threw herself down at his feet, saying, “I was the one who touched you.” And she told him her story of what had just happened.

Then Jesus said to her, “Daughter, because you dared to believe, your faith has healed you. Go with peace in your heart, and be free from your suffering!”

And before he had finished speaking, people arrived from Jairus’ house and pushed through the crowd to give Jairus the news: “There’s no need to trouble the master any longer—your daughter has died.” But Jesus refused to listen to what they were told and said to the Jewish official, “Don’t yield to fear. All you need to do is to keep on believing.” So they left for his home, but Jesus didn’t allow anyone to go with them except Peter and the two brothers, Jacob and John.

When they arrived at the home of the synagogue ruler, they encountered a noisy uproar among the people, for they were all weeping and wailing. Upon entering the home, Jesus said to them, “Why all this grief and weeping? Don’t you know the girl is not dead but merely asleep?” Then everyone began to ridicule and make fun of him. But he threw them all outside.

Then he took the child’s father and mother and his three disciples and went into the room where the girl was lying. He tenderly clasped the child’s hand in his and said to her in Aramaic, “Talitha koum,” which means, “Little girl, wake up from the sleep of death.” Instantly the twelve-year-old girl sat up, stood to her feet, and started walking around the room! Everyone was overcome with astonishment in seeing this miracle! Jesus had them bring her something to eat. And he cautioned them repeatedly that they were to tell no one about what had happened.

The Book of Mark, Chapter 5 (The Passion Translation)

Today’s paired chapter of the Testaments is the 7th chapter of the book of Esther that documents judgment against Haman’s evil plan towards Mordecai and the Jews:

King Ahasuerus and Haman came to dine with Queen Esther; and while they were drinking wine, the king posed his question once again.

King Ahasuerus: What is your request, Queen Esther? I’m willing to give you anything you want. Just make your request. Even if it’s half the kingdom you desire, I will make it happen!

Queen Esther: If you favor me, my king, and if it pleases you, spare my life. That’s all I’m asking for—that my people and I be spared. That is my wish. There are some, my king, who wish to rid your kingdom of us. For my people and I have been sold, marked for destruction and massacre. Now if the plan were simply to sell our men and women into slavery, I would have kept my mouth closed because that would not have been important enough to disturb you, my king.

King Ahasuerus: Who has targeted your people? Where is this man who dares to do this?

Queen Esther (pointing to Haman): The man responsible for these actions is wicked Haman. He is vile, and an enemy to my people.

In that moment, Haman’s joy turned to terror before the king and queen. Angered, the king shoved away from the table, left his wine, and walked into the palace garden. But Haman, aware that King Ahasuerus had already sealed his fate, didn’t follow behind. Instead, he pleaded with Queen Esther to spare his life. In desperation, he threw himself onto the couch where Queen Esther was sitting, just as King Ahasuerus walked back from the garden to the place where the wine and the banquet had been set.

King Ahasuerus: Haman, will you even violate my queen right here in the palace, where I can see you?

As soon as the king gave the order, the royal eunuchs covered Haman’s face. His fate had been sealed. One of those eunuchs was Harbonah.

Harbonah: Look! Haman has prepared a 75-foot pole for execution in his own courtyard. He was hoping to use it to hang Mordecai, the man who spoke up and saved the king.

King Ahasuerus: Well, hang him on it!

So they took Haman and killed him and displayed him on the pole he had made ready for Mordecai. And King Ahasuerus’ anger subsided.

The Book of Esther, Chapter 7 (The Voice)

my personal reading of the Scriptures for Sunday, April 4 of 2021 with a paired chapter from each Testament of the Bible, along with Today’s Psalms and Proverbs

A post by John Parsons about connection:

We all have a great need to be seen, heard, and understood, and therefore one of the greatest gifts we can give to another person is simply to take the time to listen to them. The great commandment is Shema (שׁמע) - to listen - but this implies that we make "space" within ourselves for the voice of others, thereby helping them bear their burdens (Gal. 6:2). And just as God listens to our heart cries and knows where we hurt, so we can offer our empathy so that others will not feel alone in this dark world. Words are meant to be shared in communion, but if we don't make the effort to listen to others, in the end we will only be prattling to ourselves, alone and devoid of real connection... It is important to remember that we need one another to help fight against the darkness. [Hebrew for Christians]

4.3.21 • Facebook

Today’s message from the Institute for Creation Research

April 4, 2021

Risen with Christ

“If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.” (Colossians 3:1)

The wise believer revels in the fact of Christ’s resurrection. Some things in Scripture may be easier to identify with and apply, including Christ’s substitutionary death, but it is the resurrection that gives us power to live victoriously. “Like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).

We have been “crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed” (Romans 6:6). Nevertheless, we are risen with Him, as our text and elsewhere clearly teaches (Romans 6; Ephesians 2:1-10; etc.). This resurrection is an inward one, of course, but our bodily resurrection is also guaranteed by Christ’s bodily resurrection, should we physically die. “Knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus” (2 Corinthians 4:14).

Power to serve Him effectively comes through His resurrection, for we have access to the “exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead” (Ephesians 1:19-20). We have authority over all human and demonic institutions through Him who even now operates as head of the living church of His followers.

Perhaps the most precious of all benefits of the resurrection is that “we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens” who is sympathetic to “the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:14-16). JDM

0 notes

alphacrone · 7 years

Text

Heart Like Mine - or, Bitty finds himself in a McDonald’s on a lonely, Wednesday evening

[Part of the Blue-Eyed Jack ‘verse - Takes place in Nashville, long before Jack and Bitty meet...]

CW: mentions of homophobia, running away, vague mentions of homelessness, a very very lonely boy reconsiders his life choices, hopeful ending i promise

AN: So I was listening to Emily’s FANTASTIC playlist she made for Bitty in this universe and actually started crying at work thinking about Bitty when Heart Like Mine came on, so I had to write this little piece.

Cause I heard Jesus He drank wine And I bet we'd get along just fine He could calm a storm and heal the blind And I bet He'd understand a heart like mine

-Miranda Lambert, Heart Like Mine

Eric didn’t know why he was here.

And — gosh — it was weird to think of himself as Eric, but that was the only name people knew him by in Nashville. He grew up as Baby and Dicky and Junior, as Sweetheart and Boo Boo and Champ. He went by other names as he got older, crueler names hissed at him in hallway at school, shouted at him from across the street. The kids in first grade called him Little Bittle, but even that seemed preferable to Eric in this moment. Eric was the lonely name of a lonely boy hundreds of miles away from a place he couldn’t call home. But it was the only name he had anymore.

It still didn’t explain why he felt the need to wander into a random church on a rainy, Wednesday evening.

Back in Georgia, Eric had attended church every single Sunday with his mama and Coach. He took communion with half the town, and it was the one moment in the whole week he felt like he was one of them. The reverend didn’t have the nicest things to say about boys like him, but when he spoke of love and peace and turning the other cheek, Eric felt like he could survive Madison and come out the other side a better person than he’d been before.

Well, he’d survived. But he’d become someone he didn’t know, someone who left in the middle of the night with no goodbye, save for the note on the kitchen table that read, I’m sorry. I love you. Don’t look for me.

Eric hadn’t signed it; that was the moment he shed all the names of his past, like he’d scraped off a snakeskin on the doorframe as he walked away.

Now that he sat here, in the back pew of an empty church, shivering under the blast of the A/C, Eric wondered if he’d ever grow his new skin, or if he’d feel this raw and tender forever.

In the lobby, he could hear someone vacuuming the carpet. Somehow it comforted Eric to know he wasn’t the only person in the building. He thought he’d come here to find God, to have one of those religious epiphanies that only happens when you’re the only one for miles, but maybe he’d just been looking for home.

“This is dumb,” he murmured, standing too quickly. He’d worked long and hard today — construction jobs were ruthless but paid better than the shitty tips he’d been getting at TGI Friday’s — and hadn’t eaten since breakfast. The world spun as he stumbled back out of the church, face and hands going cold and numb. The rain was coming down harder now, and Eric was just grateful he’d managed to save up enough to rent a closet-sized room in a sketchy sublease. Maybe he’d stop by a Bojangles and treat himself to chicken and biscuits, if only to fill his stomach better than a ramen pack would.

Eric didn’t find a Bojangles anywhere between the church and his apartment, to his disappointment, but he did find a McDonald’s, which was almost as good. The food was hot and salty and made him forget his aching muscles or the fact that after living in Nashville for several months he’d yet to land any sort of gig — not even at an old folks’ home or at an open-mic. The best he’d done was the day a kind woman dropped a twenty in his open guitar case as he busked on the Strip — one of ten curbside singers in a five-block radius. Maybe he’d have had more luck hitchhiking down to Austin to try his luck among the Willie Nelson- and Stevie Ray Vaughan-wannabes. But Eric couldn’t imagine having more than one state line between him and the family he’d left behind, as far away as he felt now.

“Give me a sign,” he said, staring down at his half-eaten burger and fries. “Give me a sign to give up and move on with my life.”

Eric didn’t know if he was speaking to God or the universe or the spirit of the cow that was now his dinner, but it didn’t matter. He’d take anything as an omen now, take any sort of permission to let his dreams die and move on from the bright lights of Nashville.

“Hey, uh, do you mind if I sit here? I don’t really want to eat alone.”

Eric looked up into warm, brown eyes peering down at him curiously. They belonged a boy — no, a young man — who couldn’t have been much older than Eric himself. He wore one of those Best Buy ‘Geek Squad’ polos and looked as worn as Eric felt, but his smile was bright and kind.

“Sure,” Eric said, voice coming out as more of a surprised squeak. “I’m- I’m Eric.”

“Abel,” the man said. He sat down in the seat across from Eric, setting down his tray. “And thanks. I was gonna take this home, but my roommates are out and I guess I just wasn’t ready to sit in an empty apartment by myself.”

There was a loneliness in Abel’s eyes that felt achingly familiar. Eric nodded in understanding.

“I’m grateful for the company,” he said, picking at the seeds on his bun. “I was feelin’ a bit lonely myself.”

Abel smiled at him and they dug into their meals in a comfortable silence. After a couple minutes, Abel swallowed a large mouthful of burger and asked, “So, Eric, what do you do?”

Ah, the horrors of smalltalk. “Oh, um, right now I’m working in construction. S’the best work I could find. Been thinking ‘bout saving up to take a class or something, maybe get into something vocational.” He nodded at Abel’s shirt. “Never really had booksmarts. ‘C’s get degrees’ and all that.” He laughed nervously.

“You know anything about bartending?” Abel asked. “My cousin’s got a little dive near here, he’s looking for a bartender. Pays decently, not nearly as dangerous as construction.”

“Sadly, no,” Eric said with a shrug. “Only time I’ve ever spent in bars has been going to shows. I’m only 19.”

“That’s old enough for plenty of people,” Abel said, not unkindly. “What shows do you go to?”

Eric shrugged, popping a french fry into his mouth. “Mostly country, lots of up-and-coming singers and bands. Sometimes more indie stuff, but country’s my thing, for better or worse.”

“You a singer?” Abel asked around a mouthful of food. When Eric nodded, he continued, “You should sign up for the open mic battle at Black-Eyed Susan’s — it’s this terrible bar that only stays open because it hosts really fun competitions and shows and stuff.”

“Oh.” Eric sat a little straighter. This wasn’t the sign he’d asked for at all, but he’d be a fool not to see it as the opportunity it was. “Yeah, that’d be- that’d be great.”

“Here,” Abel pulled a pen from his pocket and scribbled vague directions down on a napkin. “I forget the address, but it’s not that far from here. If you talk to a girl named Jenny, tell her I sent you.” He paused, smiling goofily. “That’s my sister. She’s the best.”

Eric laughed. “I’m sure she is. Thank you, this is- I walked in here ready to give up and you really turned my night around.”

Abel shrugged, looking embarrassed. “It’s nothing. I thought I’d be eating by myself and now I have a new friend. Sometimes magical things can happen in a McDonald’s on a rainy day, Eric.”

But it wasn’t magic, or even divine intervention. The universe didn’t really care what happened to Eric, but maybe Nashville would.

“Call me Bitty,” he said after a moment. Itty Bitty Bittle, he could hear the boys in the locker room jeering, but the memory didn’t hurt like it once had. He’d show them; he’d show them all what Bitty could do. “No one’s ever really called me Eric. I go by Bitty.”

Abel shrugged and smiled and said, “Well, then, it’s real nice to meet you, Bitty. I really can’t wait to hear you sing.”

[Blue-Eyed Jack Masterpost]

[Writing tag]

[My online novel, The Discourt Knife]

#omgcp country singer au #anna writes things #check please!#eric bittle #omgcp fic

126 notes · View notes

chroniclesofawkwardness · 4 years

Text

Concentrate on Her Boobs (Ignore the Snake)

After I discovered Kristina had lied, I fell into a creative abyss that lasted for months. I couldn’t write. I didn’t want to. All I wanted was to self-isolate and dream of ways to punish myself for my stupidity. Kristina had told me one hell of a tall tale, but I couldn’t silence the voice in my head that told me I was partially to blame for what happened or break free from the clutches of guilt that restrained me, making it impossible to move beyond the catfish experience and handle the emotions that swelled up within me because of it.

The walls of the abyss bore scars from my bad habits. I saw both ancient and unfinished hieroglyphics of my porn addiction -- picture Cleopatra and Mark Antony going at it in the world’s first sex tape, recorded around 43 BC -- and streaks of hand chalk left behind from thousands of hours of mental gymnastics -- time spent rehearsing rather than facing my problems.

I felt the slaps in the face from Zs. that came after I hadn’t run the vacuum or cleaned our apartment exactly the way she wanted. I knew I was in trouble, but I couldn’t run to the cops with a battered fiancée story and expect them to believe me. I toughed it out with Zs. much longer than I should have. “If this is love,” I thought, “I’ll just hard pass on the real thing, and focus on getting hard in front of the laptop. There, I can find men and women doing to each other anything I want to see. It won’t cost me a dime of either monetary or emotional investment. The best part is, they won’t yell at me or shut me out.”

I remembered the conversation I had with a stranger in 2005, on a plane from Oklahoma City to St. Louis. At the time, I was despondent over losing my best friend. There was no way the stranger could have known it, but our conversation saved my life. When I got back to my small studio apartment in Ohio, I looked at myself in the mirror and held a knife to my throat for several minutes; I seriously considered ending it all with one slashing motion.

I couldn’t do it.

Why?

I thought about my mom, my grandpa, and the stranger who cared.

Further down, I saw some words of the notes from the girlfriend I had in seventh grade scrawled on the walls. I saw Sasha’s hand passing Maria’s messages to me at the end of each of those three strange days.

Despite having been largely scratched out and drawn over through the years, I could read bits and pieces of Maria’s note from the first day. She said we should go to the movies and not to worry because her mom would be able to drive us. I heard the voices of my football-player classmates whispering, encouraging me to sit next to Maria in her junior-high cheerleader outfit at lunch.

I didn’t have the balls to make a move. I decided to deal with the tension of the unknown by busting a nut (a favorite pastime) as soon as I had a moment alone. I should have leaned into the experience and absorbed it rather than opting for a momentary sexual release.

And on the third day, they became friends.

I should have thought of my first real breakup as an opportunity to become a better, more attractive man. Unfortunately, I took the easy road -- a road I’d travel almost every day for the next twenty-five years. Instead of honestly dealing with what I was feeling and why I wrapped myself in the cocoon of my CD collection and the isolation of my room.

I felt my hands shaking on the day of my First Holy Communion, as I held the challis containing what only minutes earlier had been cheap wine or grape juice. Through transubstantiation, they said, it wasn’t Welch’s I was drinking; it was the precious, soul-saving blood of Christ. The story in that book of basic instructions before leaving earth would have had me believe that Jesus died for my sins even though we’d never met.

If my tremors and stage fright (somebody in my family had a camcorder) were any indications, I wasn’t all-in. More than likely, I just wanted it to be over.

And on the third day, he hesitated.

I thought Kristina was going to fix all this and more. It was a task as tall as the tale she told me to get me hooked. Despite my initial and lingering reservations, I was prepared to act in real life as though what she’d told me exclusively online was the truth. Unwittingly, through social media, I’d given her the tools to craft a 50 Shades of Dave story, a yarn of Literotica I couldn’t resist because she’d spun it specifically for me. My ego loved it. It was like having my life read back to me with erotic episodes I’d desired for as long as I could ejaculate spliced in. I may have lived the bare bones of the story, but (one speech bubble at a time) Kristina and I added the sexual tension that made it fly off my mental shelves.

Our interaction was as white-hot as it was brief. After it was over, what kept me falling further and further into the abyss was not so much wondering why Kristina did what she did, as it was defining and accepting the part I played in my own unraveling, long after Kristina had moved on to her next target. I’m almost positive the buzzing noises I heard coming from her phone during some of our conversations were not the sounds of siblings concerned for their sister but of the cat(fish)woman tearing her hooks into the virtual flesh of other would-be lovers.

Eve may have pointed her man toward the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge at the serpent’s urging, but Adam still took a bite of the apple. Yes, God conveniently forgot to warn Adam about the temptation of Eve, but Adam did nothing to stop it. He just stood there. When he realized he was naked after taking a bite of the apple, he didn’t own up to it, he ran off.

Such is the power of a woman’s love over a man, whether she truly feels it or not. if a man is willing to act as if his woman is the only woman in the world (even if she was at the time), she wins. At that point, she should run off too. I’m not saying women are evil, only that Adam failed the world’s first shit test. Eve, intentionally or not, conquered her man. I’d guess that all she wanted was to conquer someone who could not be so easily conquered. Kristina conquered me. Like Adam, I didn’t stand up to temptation. Instead, I looked for validation in her. Like Adam, I didn’t find it. When the jig was up, Adam hid in the bushes, I hid within myself.

I didn’t send her any money (she never asked), so I didn’t suffer an embarrassing financial loss. What played in my head on repeat (like my childhood copies of Nirvana’s Unplugged in New York and Soundgarden’s Superunknown that I loved to lose myself in) were questions like: “How could I have been so blind?” I didn’t want to tell my family or friends that I’d not only lusted after a woman I’d never seen but also fallen almost entirely under her spell from half a world away.

I didn’t want to own up the fact that I felt like both a victim and a participant in a blatantly obvious love scam, a type of fraud I’d once been dedicated to preventing, a type of fraud I swore would never happen to me. The easiest thing to do was fall back on old habits (watching porn, waiting for something, anything, to happen on screen or off) and let good ones (working out frequently and cooking a lot of my own meals) go. That’s what I almost did.

I wanted nothing more than to avoid responsibility and revert back to a shy, awkward teenager who had a ton of potential but was squandering it away one ejaculation at a time. I wanted nothing more than to be a thirty-eight-year-old Peter Pan. I felt I already had the part about eschewing the challenge a relationship with a real, good-quality woman (like Peter Pan does with Wendy) down pat. Kristina had been my Tinkerbell.

If I’d followed my originally scheduled timeline, I would have quit my job almost exactly three weeks to the day before I started working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time that has challenged family and economic structures alike.

After about a month, I slowly began to open up to those around me about what had happened. I still felt like a dumbass, but finally getting the experience off of my chest eased the pain of lovesickness. I began to write Words and Fishes by hand, in the college-ruled platypus notebook Matt had given me for Christmas. At the start, I wasn’t as consistent with writing as I’d told myself I would be. Reliving the whole experience with Kristina was the last thing I wanted to do, which was exactly why I needed to do it. Before I could truly move on, I needed to sink as deeply as possible into the wound she left (as well as any others I’d find along the way) then claw my way back to the surface of my reality.

The demons you face down don’t stay down without a fight.

As one page grew into two, two into three and so on, began to feel like a bigger fraudster than Kristina. I realized that despite my largely stoic exterior, I would close the curtains, open my laptop, and consume my favorite wounded-soul food at the slightest sign of adversity. I’d have conversations with myself, out loud, about my nonexistent relationship with my dad instead of truly setting myself free from his expectations. I’d curse myself for setting free my dying cat and letting her live out the last of her days unencumbered, as she was meant to.

Why?

This was what I’d always done.

I’d always let the stories of the abyss circulate in my mind without demanding anything in return. Maria didn’t break my heart at thirteen, Kristina didn’t almost shatter me at thirty-eight. Sure, they may have ripped off Band-Aids covering my wounds, but I lost both games before I could play long enough to skin my knee.

Why?

I wasn’t living my life the way I was meant to and I knew it. The streaks of chalk on the walls from years of mental gymnastics didn’t get there by themselves. I used to spend hours in mental preparation for a war that would never come. I valued the mental reps I’d give myself so much because they made me feel like I’d accomplished something without demanding that I actually do anything. Maybe that’s why I was such a good storyteller. I knew the stories I told would live only in Neverland and only as long as I was telling them. Maybe I decided I didn’t have to face my reality as long as I could create another one, even if those weren’t the words I would have used to describe my storytelling as a kid.

By early May, I was starting to feel like I’d put most of the experience behind me. I didn’t delete the conversation Kristina and I had from Google Hangouts because I thought I might want to look back at it during the process of writing Words and Fishes, but I’d finally stopped letting an every-waking-minute obsession with analysis permeate all my thoughts. That is until I got that email: a message that convinced me Kristina was back with a vengeance. Had she sold my email address on the black market? Were the seeds of my online stupidity finally beginning to bear fruit in the real world?

The email said someone had used an Apple ID associated with my email address to log in to an iPhone 11 in Sydney, Australia. I had three immediate problems with this:

1.) I don’t have an Apple ID. 2.) I've never been to Australia. 3.) My email address didn't exactly match the one listed in the message, so why was I getting it?

Even though Kristina said she lived in Western Australia; even though I’d avoided a potential financial loss by not sending her any money, I’d also convinced myself that catfish didn’t let their prey go easily. For months, I’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop. After such emotional “bonding” Kristina probably considered me an easy mark.

Around the same time, I started getting breaking news and other email alerts from The Mercury, a daily newspaper published in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. Rather than unsubscribing or reporting spam straight away, I let my mental gymnast have more time on the mats.

If Kristina really did sell my email address on the black market, what else did she sign me up for? What else will be waiting for me in my inbox?

During my darkest days after the fantasy I’d constructed with Kristina disintegrated, I went so far as to seriously entertain the idea that she may have been involved in human trafficking. Kristina may not have asked me for money, but she did ask me to come to Australia with her. Catfish do what they do for a reason, right? I began to believe that had I agreed to come with her, I could have easily been abducted at either the JFK or Perth airports by someone promising to take me to Kristina. It may read like a scene from a Hollywood movie, but so did almost everything else Kristina and I talked about.

Eventually, cooler (bigger) heads prevailed. After some basic online searching, I decided the most likely explanation for the Australian emails I was receiving was a simple typo rather than a sinister plot. Since the format of the email address mentioned in those emails was so close to mine, I reasoned that whoever linked it to an Apple ID and subscribed to emails from The Mercury had remembered the email address they wanted (mine) when they created their account instead of the one they actually got.

If only the story ended there.

Almost a month later, I got another scare in Words With Friends. One Sunday morning, a random opponent started a game with me. She didn’t have any all-time wins since she’d only started playing that same day according to her stats. What she did have was a very provocative profile picture, one that seemed too good to be true. I found it hilarious, and texted Ana (an opponent with whom I’ve struck up a friendship over years of playing), to tell her about my latest challenger, who claimed to be none other than Angela White.

Angela White seemed like a generic or stage name. Ana Googled the image and found that it matched one of Angela White, an Australian (of course) porn star.

Angela wore a black, skintight, one-piece bathing suit. The look on her face would have surely led straight to the type of temptation they warned me about in Catholic school.

Across her shoulders was a massive African Rock Python, the kind of snake only an expert (or idiot) would handle. God may have been taking a break from watching humanity trash the planet to stand behind the camera for the temptation of Angela, which was as much an updated twist on the temptation of Eve as a symbol of both the excess and accessibility of such temptation in the modern age.

The snake’s head was positioned in such a way that it could have easily deflated one of Angela’s gargantuan breasts (gifts from God or work of surgeon hands, with one strike).

Ana saved me from another round of mental gymnastics by texting me something I’ll never forget as long as I live: “concentrate on her boobs, ignore the snake😂”. She later admitted that this was something she sent me without thinking. It was perfect. Following Ana’s advice, I concentrated on Angela’s boobs for one move before I reported whoever was really behind the profile as an impersonator, which ended the game.

Just like Eve, I should have ignored the snake. Just like Adam, when presented with a beautiful woman, I didn’t. The image represented my struggle to reclaim my humanity and masculinity when presented with challenges of either God’s or my own creation.

I had no choice but to make a choice. I chose to rise to the occasion once and for all.

0 notes

bluraaven · 7 years

Text

We are the Flame

5. Dismas

"Lux, tueri animas nostras!"

When Dismas turns around, Junia has one hand curled on her chest, and her pallor is almost indistinguishable in colour from the white of her nun's headdress.

Mallory has stopped mid-stride, her lips parted in a gasp that never makes it past them, and Paschal –

Paschal's eyes are wide as a child's as she takes in the unnatural spectacle happening outside of the window. "Wow! Have you ever seen anything like this?" the doctor exclaims in wonder, peeling her nose from the glass to look from one person to another. She appears to be completely oblivious to the fact that none of them are as excited about a giant magical hole in the sky as she is.

Whatever she's taking, Dismas wants some for himself, if only to help him sleep at night.

But it seems rude to outright ask for a drug recommendation, and since he's all about becoming a better man, Dismas instead chooses to observe the last member of their group.

Reynauld is as straight-backed and tight-lipped as ever, and his face betrays neither fear nor disbelief. The knight has the infinite blackness of the Void reflected in his eyes, and Dismas wonders what kind of man it takes to gaze into the Abyss and not flinch back from what he sees there.

Dismas looks away again.

He might not speak the Heaven's language, but he doesn't have to in order to understand the Sister's prayer – he's heard its like often enough.

Light, save our souls.

But why would the Light choose him for salvation? Him, a man already damned on account of his sins?

He is all too aware that in this company, he is the odd one out, standing beside a doctor, a noble, a Sister Vestal, and... Reynauld. So here they are; a warrior of Light – someone who would claim communion with the Divines – and a back-alley cutthroat, sharing a purpose and a room upstairs. It's madness.

And it is all around them, invisible but just as deadly as toxic gas in a mine shaft. It has poisoned this place and already he can feel its sharp teeth gnawing at his mind, his sanity.

Dismas rubs both palms over his face, hard enough for it to border on painful. He can feel several days' worth of stubble as well as the bony ridges of his face, sculpted by too many hunger days and nights spent sleeping in roadside ditches. It brings back a sense of who he is, and where. It also banishes these unbidden thoughts, for now. 'Tis good enough, at least until Dismas can get his hands on some alcohol.

Thankfully, he knows just the place where he can get some. Grandfather Dumont liked to have his booze close at hand – and now Dismas understands why, if this kind of shit happened regularly around here.

He isn't looking forward to the prospect of descending the stairs to the cellar, but the only other alternative is the bar, and he wants to track all the way there even less than he wants to face the darkness of the mansion's underbelly.

Only Reynauld notices him exiting the room, and the knight doesn't comment on it.

Dismas carefully searches the doorway for any signs of magic, even gives it a few pokes with the hilt of his dagger to make sure there is absolutely nothing supernatural about it. But this time there is only wood and stone, ordinary as can be. He leaves the door wide open nonetheless and whistles a tune as he hurries down.

The circular room looks the same as the first time they descended down here and Dismas tries hard not to focus on the walls, how they seem to be closing in, eager to trap him as they have their group earlier. Only this time he is alone, and the thought is enough to make him shiver and break out in a cold sweat.

Fighting the urge to turn and flee back upstairs, Dismas instead busies himself with inspecting the shelves. They are full of bottles cocooned in a thick layer of dust that sticks to the dull glass. The labels are yellow and wavy from humidity and the ink has run, making most of the writing indecipherable. Not that it would do him any good if it hadn't. Dismas knows his numbers well enough; his mother had made sure of that, but letters are something reserved for the upper classes.

In the end, he just grabs the nearest three bottles – better to take one extra than have to go back for some more later – and returns upstairs, taking the steps three at a time. When he kicks the door shut behind him, it feels like muzzling a feral beast. The danger is still here and to be wary of, but for the time being it is contained.

Just as the highwayman returns to the living room, the gloom is lit up by a net of lightning racing over the sky. A storm of thunder and magic rolls over the countryside, and then disperses, wisps of swirling blue and purple lazily drifting through the sky, becoming paler and paler until they fade into nothingness.

"Thank the Light," the Vestal breathes, her relief audible.

"What do you think this was?" Mallory finds the courage to ask after a few more seconds of shocked silence.

"Nuthin' good, that's fer sure," Dismas says to announce his presence. All heads turn to him, even that of the crusader. Dismas lifts the bottles. The heiress sure doesn't look like she disapproves.

"Court'sy o' yer gramp."

Mortimer Dumont is watching them from his spot on the staircase, eyes black as a pit adder scales glimmering with malicious amusement.

"He shot himself to close the wards until someone of his bloodline reopened them." Mallory speaks slowly, and her voice gains sureness with every word.

"Stab 'im in the dick!" The suggestion comes out in a low growl as Dismas struggles to get the cork out of the first of the bottles. He stops short in surprise when Mallory passes by him and actually does just that.

Under different circumstances, the highwayman may have winced in sympathy as several inches of spear are thrust into the portrayed old man's crotch and the wall behind him. This time though he feels it is wholly deserved.

"Do you know what would have happened if I had ventured down there alone!?" Mallory whips around, two angry red spots blooming on her cheeks. She wipes at her sweaty brow to get a few strands of wild hair unstuck from it. The spear, white-tipped from scratching the stone but none the worse for wear, is still in her other hand.

Dismas makes a mental note to never piss her off. He is rather attached to his balls and he prefers they stay attached to him.

"Aye, lass." Dismas replies and takes one of the silver cups that Paschal has found in a nearby cabinet. "But ya didn't, so best not dwell on that."

"What have you got there?" The heiress picks up a bottle, and turns it so she can read the label. "152 Reserve." Her eyebrows lift in surprise. "This is a pleasant vintage."

Dismas wipes the inside of the cup clean of dust and pours Mallory a generous amount of the dark red liquid. "Boss first," he announces, because already Paschal is thrusting another cup at him, and even Junia is lining up for a little pick-me-up.

Mallory knocks back her drink without waiting for the others. Half a heartbeat later, her face scrounges up and Dismas can jump out of the way just in time before she spits it back out.

"Wine's gone bad?" the highwayman asks, his heart sinking. Seems this is to be one of these times.

"This isn't wine," Mallory croaks, and hurries to the kitchens to wash out her mouth.

"What is it then?" Junia asks, reaching for a bottle to see for herself.

Dismas sniffs the dregs. Immediately, a cloying coppery and sweet smell assaults his nose, and Dismas has to admire Malory's iron self-control. He would have just hurled right on the carpet.

Junia puts her cup away again, the expression on her round face as weary as Dismas is feeling all of a sudden. Meanwhile, Paschal is eying Mallory's abandoned cup and its contents with interest. "Huh."

Dismas can hear her mutter, "How did they keep it from congealing? I wonder... ," before he catches the doctor dipping her pinkie finger into the leftover liquid and holding it to her tongue with an expression of intense concentration. "This is most curious."

"Fuck this," Dismas mutters and just like that he is done with this day. "Sorry folks, I'm off ta bed."

Junia tears away her eyes from the doctor and picks up her mace. "It seems best we rest and pray to the Light for guidance," the Vestal agrees in a tired voice.

"Ya do that," Dismas tells her. "I'll go ahead an' do the restin' part." Turning, he almost collides with Reynauld – Reynauld who appears to have completely deserted his corporeal body and is just standing there, with his helmet tucked under one arm and an empty gaze.

Dismas raps one knuckle against his breast plate to get the knight's attention. "You comin'?"

Reynauld startles like a person woken from sleep and looks around the room as if lost. "Are we dismissed?" he asks no one in particular.

"I believe we are, brother," Junia replies before Dismas can. "I'm sure the lady Mallory knows where to find thee if there are matters thou needst to discuss."

Reynauld hesitates before he slowly nods in answer. Dismas observes that he has the mannerism of someone high on drugs, but the knight lacks the physical aspects of an addict. Maybe holy water and incense have negative side-effects too. Maybe Paschal's smoke bombs do.

"C'mon, Armour," Dismas says, not unkindly, tugging on the crusader's elbow to get him moving. "If ya crash on tha floor, I ain't draggin' ya upstairs."

The words are running together in his mouth, but he is too tired to care, to pretend he is someone he is not. Reynauld moves of his own accord, thankfully, although he seems to be favouring his left leg.

It isn't until the door falls shut behind them and the cool of the room begins to seep through his clothes that Dismas realizes he is missing something.

"Shite!" He doesn't know what to make of Reynauld flinching at the profanity. He ain't in the mood for a lecture, but the crusader doesn't give him one, so Dismas simply adds, "Fergot me coat."

He doesn't have much to his name other than a nice bounty and a ban on the premises of several establishments, and he likes to keep what few possessions are his close. Just in case.

Junia is gone and the fire in the chimney has almost burned out, given how no one had added any more wood since Reynauld had lit it right after their return, but there are voices coming from one of the adjacent rooms.

"I am sure you wish for reimbursement?" Dismas can hear Mallory ask when he sneaks into the living room, keeping to the deep shadows cast by ancient furniture. Old habits and all that. He sure ain't spying on the two women when he risks a peek.

Paschal, however, waves Mallory off, and takes the bottles of blood as payment. Dismas prefers not to think about what she plans on doing with them. He is beginning to feel a twinge of sympathy for Lenn. Lenn, who now owes him a month's worth of supply with booze, he remembers, feeling marginally better.

Tomorrow he'll make the barman regret agreeing to the deal.

Dismas snatches up his coat and returns to his shared bedroom. The pulling sensation in his side has steadily increased, but it is only now that he truly becomes aware of how his entire chest is aching, every breath putting strain on the newly scarred skin that has yet to stretch.

He is not the only one in pain.

A man in his profession knows to find and exploit the small weaknesses that most people like to hide, and so it doesn't take Dismas long to notice how the corners of Reynauld's mouth are down, his lips pressed into a firm line. The knight uses his left in place of his right, his dominant hand, to tug open the straps of his armour.

"Need any help with that?" Dismas asks, tossing his coat onto his bed.

He expects the knight to rebuff him, but to his astonishment Reynauld nods after a moment's hesitation. Up close, Dismas can see fine decorative etchings along the edge of the armour, as well as the cuts and miniscule dents that mar the otherwise shiny surface of the metal.

"If you could just undo this clasp." The crusader dips and turns his head, to better observe the highwayman out of the corners of his eyes.

He does as he has been asked to, opening the clasp on Reynauld's right shoulder blade, and the one on the very top of his neck and watches as bit by bit the armour begins to come off. Dismas gets to see how each piece is fitted so as to offer the best protection while still allowing the wearer their full range of movement.

He does his best not to think about how much the whole suit of armour must be worth. More than everything he had ever owned in life combined, that's for sure.

When Reynauld removes the cap, Dismas is amused to find that his hair sticks every which way. He curses the sudden urge to run his fingers through the unruly tresses to comb them into some semblance of order.

It is a bad time for such thoughts. An exhausted mind is a fickle thing.

The hauberk rattles as it pools on the bed, almost like a liquid, and the padded jacket is carefully hung over the back of the chair at the desk. Reynauld stretches his neck and rotates his shoulders. There is a hollow pop that makes Dismas hiss in sympathy, but Reynauld sighs in relief, slumping now that all the weight has been lifted off him.

Summer is almost over, and in the crisp night air, the knight is steaming. There's not so much as a nick in his tunic, but his eyes are red-rimmed. Whatever Paschal had hit him with, left them puffy and irritated.

"Better go wash that shit out," Dismas says, circling a finger in front of his own face.

Reynauld's head snaps up, the tension returning to his posture. He appears to have forgotten about the other man, but after a moment he relaxes again, a weary nod telling Dismas that he intends to follow through with that idea.

A soft knock announces Reynauld's return a couple of minutes later. He has changed his tunic, so he has probably washed up too.

"I could do with a basin and some hot water," Dismas greets him from the depths of his bed, although now that he's gotten vertical he doesn't plan on getting up anytime soon.

"Is there a bathhouse?" Reynauld asks although he doesn't sound like he really cares.

"There was once. It closed down," Dismas informs him. He is ready to bet the last of his snuff that Reynauld will not follow his example and simply fall into bed. He smirks when he is proven right. Recognizing patterns is a useful skill to have, and one he has honed.

Reynauld checks his equipment, putting away each piece only after it has received a thorough examination. Then, he kneels to pray. Just like he had yesterday.

'He should learn to take care of his bodily needs as well as his spiritual ones,' is the last thing Dismas remembers thinking before he passes out.

That night, Dismas learns the hard way that Reynauld screams in his sleep.

His own dreams are uneasy, full of ever-shifting corridors and the search for an exit he knows he will never find in time. A small bubble of panic begins to fill his chest, and it grows with every step he takes. He cannot find a way out of the labyrinth of hallways, and he is being pursued by someone or something that he only manages to catch glimpses of out of the corners of his eyes. If he doesn't escape, he will die here ant he corridors will become his tomb.

In desperation, Dismas scratches at the stone walls with torn, bleeding hands and cracked nails, and he screams for them to let him out. He'd done his time, he'd –

Dismas wakes abruptly to a voice that is not his own, shouting in a language he does not understand.

He jerks up too fast, gets tangled in something, and crashes to the floor. It's dark, too dark to see, and his heart is pounding in his throat. All he is aware of is that he has to fight or flee – and he does not yet know which.

Before his situation or his surroundings become any clearer, the door bursts open, and it's pure reflex for him to point the gun at the intruder. By the light of a single candle, Dismas can see Mallory charge into the room – she and her boar spear. The fact that she's wearing a nightgown does not make the weapon any less intimidating.

The door bangs against the wall, and Reynauld wakes with a gasp, reaching for his sword by his side.

The heiress looks around with wide eyes, taking in the scene – Dismas lying on the floor, blankets twisted tightly around him, Reynauld sitting up slowly, and her mouth opens and closes a few times. It takes Dismas several seconds to realize he's still holding his flintlock and he quickly lowers the weapon.

"I thought I head – ," Mallory says in way of apology, her eyes briefly skittering to the crusader whose face is hidden in the shadows.

It's fairly obvious by now what she heard, but Dismas has to commend her dedication of rushing to their help. "It's alright," he says in a rough voice, though his position on the floor might belie his words somewhat. "Thanks."

Mallory nods a couple of times, as if she has to convince herself that everything is indeed alright, and much gentler than she had come in, she closes the door behind her.

Dismas rests his forehead on his knees and takes a moment to take several deep breaths. The panic has passed, but he still feels shaky when he gets to his feet even though by now his heartbeat is slowing down. Dismas shivers when the cold night air stirs his sweat-soaked shirt.

Being awake may have pushed back the terrors of the unconscious, but when Dismas remembers the previous day and the horror they had found under the mansion...

Shit, he don't even begrudge the knight his nightmares.

Dismas can hear Reynauld breathe heavily, though he cannot make out much more than the other man's hunched over form. The crusader sits on the bed with feet braced and his sword across his lap, the exact opposite of someone relaxing and ready to return to sleep. Not that Dismas can blame him, but the other man's tension is making him uneasy as well.

Dismas is about as awake as he's gonna be, and he really does not wish to lie around and let his mind come up with more ways to torment him.

"Ya know what always makes me feel better?" Dismas asks suddenly, pulling on his pants and shrugging into his coat after a quick change of shirts. "A walk." He's certainly going on one, and the invitation stands; it's up to Reynauld to accept.

The crusader heaves himself to his feet, a motion more fitting for a man thirty years his senior. His limp is less pronounced than it was when he was wearing armour. Dismas cannot recall it being there yesterday, or even this morning, which means it is a souvenir from today's forage.

They do not speak, but Dismas waits impatiently as Reynauld dresses in something warmer than his tunic. When they descent side by side, only the stairs creak in the otherwise silent mansion. The air is musty, thick with dust and something else. Dismas cannot put his finger on it, but he senses that Reynauld can feel it too.

Out in the open, the night envelops them like a blanket. It's cold and fresh, and with the stars and moon out it's even lighter outside than it was inside. Bright enough that do not need any additional light sources.

Dismas slowly begins to relax as the confinement of walls is left further behind him with every step. He doesn't ask where Reynauld wishes to go, they just stroll around the old house as if that was a path they had agreed on before. The sword Reynauld carries bumps into Dismas' hip a couple of times. Reynauld does not seem to notice. Dismas would have said he hasn't been like himself ever since going down into that cursed cellar, but the truth is he doesn't know the knight well enough to make that assumption.

Behind the mansion there is another courtyard, wilder than the one in front. It is flooded in silvery moonlight that reflects off the white marble statues that are wrapped in evergreen ivy as if they too had dressed for winter. An ornate fountain takes the center, but upon having a closer look they can see that it is clogged with rotting leaves. This place must have been beautiful once, but much like the rest of the Hamlet, it has fallen to decay.

When they find a low bench, they take the opportunity to sit down. Instantly, the cold of the stone surface seeps through Dismas' pants.

"If I didn't know better I'd say it's pretty," Dismas says, surveying the gardens around them. Talking is just another way to stave off the desperation, but when Reynauld doesn't react at all, Dismas' discomfort tips over into worry.

"Hey. Ya sure yer alright?"

Reynauld looks up only when Dismas' hand lands on his forearm. Dismas withdraws instantly, because he doesn't like how the knight flinches back. Something sure ain't right there, but he'd be damned if he knows what it is.

"Fine," the crusader replies, but he does not meet the highwayman's eyes.

Yeah. Sure.

But there's a change; Reynauld seems more alert than before. He runs his fingers through his hair, then remains with his hands pressed to his eyes.

Dismas picks at a loose thread on his sleeve. They remain like that for a while, but Dismas has never coped well with the quiet. He likes the sound of a voice – even if it's just his own.

"How's the leg doing?" he asks eventually. They're not on good enough terms for Dismas to tell him to drop his pants so he can check for himself. The thought of the knight's face if he did does lift his spirits somewhat.

"It has suffered no greater harm," Reynauld replies, lifting his head. "It should heal, Light willing."

The crusader had patched him up, he knows something about medicine. Probably much more than the highwayman does. Dismas drops the topic, and they lapse back into not talking.

"You are a very fine marksman," the crusader says out of nowhere.

It's nothing short of true, but to hear another one say so, ignites a spark of pride in Dismas' chest. He's also a bit too shocked about the knight complimenting him to manage anything more coherent than,

"Thanks... Rey."

The smile Dismas directs at the other man sours and withers when the crusader keeps looking at the ground.

"I have seen much," Reynauld rasps after a while that us just long enough to make Dismas fiddle with his coat again, "but never the dead rise up to claim the living as their own. And the things they whispered to me- ." At this point he seems to be talking more to himself than to his companion.

Dismas shivers, happy not to have heard a thing. Maybe Reynauld is talking about his dream. Maybe he isn't. Either way, Dismas doesn't want to know what the dead whisper.

"We made it out. S' all that matters." But even as he speaks, doubts assault him. This was just the first real run. Will they have to go back? He isn't sure he can face what hides under the manor again. At the same time, he may have to if he ever wishes to leave he Hamlet.

He may deserve this hell, but that does not mean he can stand it.

"Let's go."

"What?" Dismas asks stupidly, so caught in his own thoughts that he has missed Reynauld getting up. He swears he can see a muscle twitch in Reynauld's jaw.

"You said to go for a walk; let's walk."

They do so, passing dead flower beds and bushes that had long ago lost their artful trims. On the other side, Dismas spots a low building that he had never paid any attention before.

"What's that?" Dismas asks, pointing.

"The stables," Reynauld replies, and picks the path that will take them closer.

"Huh. Didn't know there were any." A silly thing to say, he realizes too late. Of course there are. Mallory's got to keep her horses somewhere.

As they draw near, he can hear a soft nicker greet them. There are six animals in total out in the pasture; two are the horses who pulled their ill-fated chariot, and one is Mallory's sleek hunter. One of the others is sway-backed and thin enough for its ribs to show under a shaggy, patchy coat, and it is the first to get its nose rubbed by the crusader. Dismas chooses to stand a few steps behind.

Horses are fast, and appear to be even faster when you're on top of them, they eat grass and they kick. That's the gist of his knowledge. Not that he'd not stolen the one or other, but certainly never one as fine as most of Mallory's animals.

Reynauld seems happy to pet his furry friends, even one enormous steeds whose head is as big as Dismas' torso.

"Don't get your hand bit off," the highwayman grumbles, eying the beast warily. He sure ain't gettin' anywhere near those teeth.

"They don't like meat," Reynauld says calmly with a look over his shoulder. "If they take a couple of your fingers, they'll spit them back out again."

And that is supposed to be... comforting? Dismas gapes, at least until the nearest beast snorts and sprays the crusader with a fine mist of snot. Then he breaks out in a laugh that spooks the horses into trotting away. That's what the knight gets – but Reynauld chuckles too, genuinely amused and Dismas watches the transformation in him with fascination.

They head back to the house soon, for what rest they can get for what is left of the night.

The next time when Dismas wakes, it is because the early midday sun is shining through the window and straight into his face. Usually an early riser out of necessity, the only times he sleeps in like this is when large amounts of alcohol are involved.

By the time they returned to the house, a faint stripe of grey was visible on the horizon. They'd both managed to find some more rest, and the rest of the night passes without any further incidents.

The highwayman casts a glance towards Reynauld's bed – which he finds made and its owner gone. And he had not heard a thing. A man of the crusader's calibre ought not be able to move so stealthily. That trait should be reserved for rogues such as himself. But even so, the water pitcher that Dismas knows for sure wasn't full yesterday, is most welcome.

When he finally makes it down, Mallory isn't around and neither are Reynauld or the Caretaker. The latter also runs a small general goods store in the village, which might explain how he continuously fails to do his duties around the mansion. The Heiress is convinced that it is because of the man's madness, and not out of any ill will or inherent laziness.

Dismas' feet take him towards the Hamlet, in the opposite direction of the path they had walked yesterday night. Over the crest of the hill he cannot see the stables where Mallory's horses are undoubtedly noisily munching some fodder. As always, the town seems to be half-deserted, although today he can see pale faces behind broken shutters that quickly disappear when he looks their way.

Dismas tries to shake off the strange feeling that suddenly assaults him and turns towards the one place where there seems to me some manner of activity: the abbey. There, Dismas spots Liz and Darell hauling wooden boards, such as are used in construction. The man is sporting a large bruise on his cheek and both of them keep their heads down and their mouths shut. It seems someone's learned their lesson, as neither pays the highwayman any heed when he walks past.

Just out of curiosity Dismas decides to have a closer look at the church that his roommate has taken upon himself to restore, probably with the help of the Vestal. She doesn't seem to be here now, but the highwayman instantly catches sight of Reynauld. It's easy to make out the crusader's broad form next to that of another man who has to be the priest. He's got a long face, too big ears, and tufts of hair that stand up just so as to best frame his balding head. Dismas dislikes him at first sight.

He doesn't approach any further. They seem busy enough with abbey work, and he isn't sure what he could contribute to that – or whether he wants to.

Dismas decides to look in on the smith, and leaves with a rack for Reynauld's armour, a lance, and a pouch full of newly cast bullets, which is the bribe that convinces him to help Farley carry the former two back to the mansion.

Unlike Reynauld or the smith, Dismas doesn't have work to do, and he is free to wander the village and to spend his time as he wills. Eventually, he gives in to the pull and slowly makes for the tavern. It's still early for drink, but there's bound to be food there, and company, and he craves both in equal measure.

As he nears the building, Lenn's booming voice spills out from the tavern.

"No!"

Grinning from the thought that the barman might have sensed his presence, Dismas pushes open the door – and immediately finds himself in the midst of a heated argument.

"Tis' a guesthouse or not!?" a stocky man in his middle to late fifties bellows. He has a head full of grey hair that is on its best way to becoming white as snow, and is a stark contrast to the red in his round face which betrays his enragement. But without a doubt the stranger's most memorable feature is the patch covering his right eye.

"Aye," Lenn growls without backing down. "A guesthouse, not a bloody hospice!"

"Friend," another man intervenes, and his quiet, calm tone that has much more impact on his companion than anything Lenn has said so far. "It is his tavern, and his good right."

Dismas is shocked to see the stranger's telltale getup. A mask and clothing that leaves not an inch of his skin visible. He now understands what the dispute is about and has to agree with Lenn; it's discomforting being even this close to the afflicted.

The leper's companion sits down, although he does so with a glower, and Dismas swears that even his moustache is bristling with belligerence.

"There's plenty of empty houses around," Lenn grunts, and he sounds more sullen now that he's no longer having his feathers ruffled. "Bring or buy your own dishes, and I will provide you with food and drink."

"Well. I shall go find us an abode then," the bloke who had argued with the bartender huffs, and rises again with the brusqueness of a military man. He is not tall, but Dismas suspects that his girth is more muscle than fat, and he prudently steps to the side to let him pass.

Dismas takes the opportunity of a lull in the conversation to approach the bar.

"Who're they?"

"New arrivals," the barman grunts. "Say they came here 'bout an hour ago. The leper over there," Lenn isn't subtle in pointing the dirty glass in his hands at the man in question, "and two of his friends. Offered them a room, but they didn't take it well w hen I said I ain't housing him, no matter what that witch says."

Two? Dismas had not seen anyone else, but a careful look around reveals what he had missed at first – there is another figure leaning against the tiled stove, motionless and far too easy to overlook. Dismas feels a surge of ire towards this person, although it is his own fault that he had failed to spot him. At least he doesn't have to enquire who that witch is. Nor is he surprised that the plague doctor would take an interest in the diseased man.

"What does she say?" Dismas wants to know.

"That the chance of someone getting infected converges towards zero," Lenn parrots. "Well, it's a chance I ain't taking. There's a reason they cast them out," the barman grunts. "Poor sod – he ain't even the actual problem. Been nothin' but polite since he came it."

"Ah." Dismas can guess the pain in the ass has been.

The person in question returns just as he is midway through his second mug of rum-spiced berry infusion.

"I found a house," he announces. "It's not much, but it has a room and a functional chimney." He gives Lenn a dark glare which the barman returns without blinking, and Dismas is good and ready to find cover under the counter the second something other than dirty looks gets thrown.

"Thank you, Montfort" the leper answers. "I am sure we will make it homely in no time." He nods in the direction of Lenn and Dismas, and beckons to his other mysterious companion, who follows like a shadow.

"Let's go then," Montfort agrees, holding open the door as the entourage gathers to leave. "There's some sort of congregation happening outside, I don't like – "

Dismas doesn't get to hear the rest of it before the door closes and cuts off the rest of the sentence. All of a sudden, the bar feels empty and confining, and the urge to move again like an itch under his skin. He chugs the last of his drink and hands back the mug.

Provoking the barman is the next closest thing Dismas has done to poking a snarling bear with a stick, but he cannot resist to grin up and Lenn and add, "See? I ain't that bad."

The answering snort tells him otherwise.

Just as he is about to leave, there is a burst of noise as the door swings open again and a cloaked figure comes running up to the bar, almost knocking Dismas over. A flash of irritation crosses Lenn's face, until the hood is thrown back, and he and Dismas both recognize Farley's wild hair and beard.

"She's not here?" the smith gasps, looking around, as if expecting to see someone familiar.

"Who?"

"Mallory!"

"No, why– ?"

Farley waves a hand to silence him, and hurries to explain. "The townsfolk, they are planning to march on the estate. Last night's magic has them scared witless. I tried ta reason with some of them, but they think what worked on the old man might work on his heir."

It takes a few seconds before the words sink in, but when they do they do a better job of sobering Dismas up than being dunked in the horse trough by the city guard.

"I need to go," he blurts out and he gets up so fast he knocks over his stool.

"Wait!" Lenn's paw on his shoulder stops him. "Better take the back door."

Dismas doesn't have time to nod, because he is already on the move. He hits the door at a full run and barely takes notice of all the people milling around, of the torches being lit. Farley was right, it don't look good. Angry shouts fade in the distance as Dismas hauls ass back to the mansion, as if the Holy Inquisition itself was on his heels.

Every step feels like being stabbed anew, and there is an irritating pinch in his knee and thigh, but he doesn't slow down. He needs to get to the house before the mob does, or they're all royally fucked. Funnily, enough he's not thinking about Mallory as much as he is about Reynauld.

Tin-man will help, he tells himself, because after sprinting all the way up the hill he ain't sure he'll be good for much more than throwing up on the threshold.

Dismas bursts into his room with enough noise that the crusader jumps up, actually jumps, and stares at him with wide eyes. Ain't the time for him to worry what that is about.

Dismas' chest is heaving and his throat burns worse than after drinking fire whiskey, but he manages to point to the window and wheeze,

"We're in trouble."

In the distance, a fiery serpent has begun to coil itself around the alley leading up to the mansion.

AN: Fifth chapter is out and it took quite the unexpected turn!

You can also find this story here on AO3

#blu's corner #writing #fanfiction #darkest dungeon #reynauld #Dismas #Reymas

11 notes · View notes