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adventuringblind · 1 year ago

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Church Girl

Oscar Piastri x Autistic!reader

Genre: hurt/comfort

Request: no (check masterlist for request status)

Summary: Church has a tendency to make people feel unwanted. When reader goes to visit her family, they convince her to go with them to the place she’s trying to forget. Good thing Oscar is there with her.

Warnings: toxic religious folk, religious trauma, creepy old men, panic attacks

Notes: okay so this goes out to my neurodivergents who were stuck in a church that didn’t understand them with peers who made them feel like they were an alien, adults who were always asking the wrong questions and judging their clothes, and were forced into the stereotypes they wanted you to fit in. Fire Drill by Melanie Martinez was on repeat while writing this.

This is loosely based on true events

Masterlist

Summer break is here which means it’s time to go visit family. She and Oscar board the plane to her home country, all smiles and laughs.

She’s missed them since being away. Her family hasn’t always understood her, but she loves them dearly.

When they arrived they were greeted with hugs and questions about the trip.

At the dinner table that night, Oscar was quick to realize that he didn’t fully realize how religious his girlfriends family is. It seemed to be their favorite topic.

The girl next to him was struggling with the conversation and he could feel her stimming under the table. She’d talked about her church experience a little with him. He didn’t want to push her so he didn’t know the full extent of everything that happened. He recalls her mom having to put up with some horrible people and the tears over how it hurt her to see her mom so broken in a place she should feel loved. How her sister felt she would never be good enough for their expectations. How her dad uses is to control them sometimes.

And yet they’d convinced them to go with. Well- more like she was trying to please and wants to spend time with her family.

In the lonesome of their room that night, she collapsed into him.

“I think I might vomit.”

He simply hold her. “Do you want to talk about it? We can always say we changed our minds.” He suggests. His attempt at reassuring her futile as she panics more.

“The people there judge so critically. It didn’t help that I was weird to kids my age and mature enough for the adults to ask me why I’m showing my shoulders because they’re a distraction.”

Oscar hums in understanding. Carful not to interrupt her explanation but still show he’s listening.

“They say it’s a stereotype, but it’s true. I’ve been teased and looked down on and made out to be over dramatic. My old youth pastor used to talk to my mom about my ‘behavior’ and how I argued with him to much. Then I yelled at him for getting in my personal space and saying things an adult should never say to a child, in my opinion. I was constantly told I talk to much about the wrong things and not enough about the right.”

Though Oscar’s shirt is getting wet, he doesn’t care. Her more harmful stimming habits are showing as he’s determined not to let that happen. She plays with his fingers instead. “I can’t do it Jack.”

The endearing nickname alerts him this is serious. He didn’t know how far this trauma had been rooted inside her. No wonder she struggles with her self-esteem, she was told her entire life she’d never measure up. She’d endured hours of countless awkward conversations and events she couldn’t wait to leave.

The worst part is that he knows it’s why she apologizes for everything. It didn’t matter how much she tried to look ‘normal’ she couldn’t get it right and people were mad at her for it.

“I will leave it up to you, but say the word and I’ll have us out of here in an hour.”

Oscar had half a mind just to feign sickness and tell them they can’t go. The girl pacing the room had yet to get dressed or pull the plug and say she doesn’t want to go.

“I say wear something comfortable and scandalous.” He leans back on the bed with a smirk.

“Since when are you so evil? And are you crazy? I’d get eaten by judgmental stares.”

“Let them stare. You deserve to be comfortable in whatever you wear without feeling judged and preyed on.”

They took a separate car from her parents. Partially because they wanted to leave early, mostly because in case of emergency they had an escape vehicle.

He could feel her trying to self soothe in the passenger seat. She’d finally settled for her favorite pair of pants and his sweatshirt. Comfort clothes for a hard situation definitely seemed like the best option.

He held her hand as they walked to the front door and stopped right outside. “Remember you’re not stuck. We can leave anytime you want.” She nods her head appreciatively, then they step through the doors.

He felt like the were underdressed. Which is an absolutely ridiculous notion because it’s eight in the morning and he’d rather be asleep. How these people look dressed for a ball at this hour is beyond him.

Oscar spots her family amongst the sea of people and weaves them into their vicinity.

“Y/N, hi! How are you? It’s been so long!” Chirps an elderly woman who awkwardly embraces the girl. She’s still as a board and yet the lady doesn’t get the hint.

“I’m alright.” She smiles politely.

“And who’s this young man?”

“My boyfriend, Oscar.”

He reaches out his hand to her and she shakes it. “It’s nice to meet you.” He offers his media coached smile.

“Oh are you two planning on settling down? Having kids?”

She shuffles awkwardly looking for a response. She hates invasive questions like these. Now would normally be where an inappropriate joke about Lando practically being their child would go but she thinks that might be wrong. But what’s even right in this situation?

“Not currently. I travel for work majority of the year so it would be difficult to start a family.” She’s grateful Oscar knows to manage conversation.

“Oh well… that’s to bad.” Then the woman shuffles away.

“I told you it’s bad.”

“I see your point. Did you know her?”

“No but apparently everyone is allowed to talk to you like that even if you just know a persons name because we’re a ‘church family’.

As they wait for the service to start, they pass the time by people watching. Snickering at the obvious fake smiles and perfect families people show off on Sunday mornings.

They are rudely interrupted by a male probably in his forties. “Excuse me, I have got to ask, are you two siblings?”

He must be newer, she thinks to herself, it’s not like she’s been gone that long. She shakes her head at the man, one hand in Oscar’s the other inside the sweatshirt pocket. “No sir, we’re dating actually.”

“That’s a real shock. He’s a keeper if that’s how you dress all the time and he still chose you.” His comment is directed at her. The social analysis kicking in. Is this sarcasm? Or maybe a joke she doesn’t get? Is he being serious?

“What do you mean by that?” Oscar is quick to ask back. Again, saving her from most likely saying something she shouldn’t.

“Most guys enjoy when a girl wears appropriate female clothing. I’m just saying she’s lucky to have you if this is what she wears all the time.” He eyes her up and down. “Would be prettier in a dress I reckon.”

“Nope. She’s pretty in everything she wears.” Oscar is dragging her off in the opposite direction before turning around. “Also, sir, I’m the lucky one.”

The service is long and boring. The two pass notes back and forth like they are in high school. Though they aren’t necessarily trying to hide the fact they are doing it.

When it’s over, they quickly tell her parents they are heading out because truthfully, the girl is in the verge of a meltdown from the over stimulation.

They get almost to the door before being stopped again by the last person she wanted to ever see again. Her old youth pastor.

“Y/N! I didn’t think you were ever coming back!” He goes to hug her but she steps back. Almost using Oscar as a barrier. “Awe don’t be like that.” He pouts.

“We were actually just heading out.” Oscar steps in. He didn’t like how the man is eyeing her. It’s uncomfortable for him and even more so for her.

“And you are…?”

“Oscar, her boyfriend.”

A look of shock spreads across his face. “That’s gooier to hear. I didn’t think she’d ever find someone.” Oscar doesn’t hesitate to use his sarcasm and over expressive facial expressions as he feigns curiosity.

“Why’s that?”

“I could never get her to shut up about things that weren’t important. And after the lengthy discussion we had with the board about her argumentative attitude with her male superiors, I just thought it would never happen.”

She didn’t tell him about that one. Oscar can see out of the corner of his eye how her head drops in shame. He doesn’t let go of her hand. “So you work with kids but when one doesn’t act the way you want you take to abusive behaviors? Glad to see a church full of people who are supposed to be loving are letting their youth get hurt by adults.” He says launder then necessary, but it gets his point across because people heard him.

He turns in his heels and places a protective arm around her waist as they walk to the car.

He knows she’s overstimulated, so he tries lets her go at her own pace when they get back to her parents house. The spare key still in the same place it’s been for years, so no need to wait outside.

In the safety of the room, she latches herself onto the Aussie. “I’m sorry.”

He holds her and does his best to soothe her. “You’ve nothing to apologize for. Those people are sick, I swear. I’m sorry you had to go through all that.”

“That meeting was the worst day of my life. Sitting in a room with a bunch of older men telling me how to behave. They made some jokes that they shouldn’t have and told me I’d never have a good life if I kept acting like I had been.” She’s wailing now.

Oscar can practically hear his hear shatter. How could people be so ignorant and blind?

“They said that my autism isn’t an excuse and that I need to try harder. Then they said maybe one of them can take me under their wing and show me how to treat a man right. I was barely eighteen.”

They spent the night like that. Her crying into his shoulder and him trying to calm her down. She fell asleep in his arms and he didn’t have the heart to move her and risk waking her up.

He couldn’t fathom someone telling her her brain being different means she’s not good enough. It’s what makes her unique in his eyes. How could someone not love the way her eyes light up when she talks about those interests that she never gets tired of. How her honesty and ability to stand her ground make conversations with her never dull.

Oscar leans down and kisses her head. “I don’t care who says you aren’t good enough, they are lying. You are for more then enough and I feel so special that you love me and are willing to share those pieces of yourself with me.”

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maintitle · 6 months ago

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Sebastian: "My family put me in the Chantry because I was giving them a bad name." Sebastian: "It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I found peace. I found a purpose." Sebastian: "Before I came here, I used to be out to all hours, drinking and whoring. I didn't believe in anything except my own pleasure." Isabela: "Why couldn't I have met you then?"

I think about this banter a lot, because it's used to paint Sebastian as this wild child turned chantry boy, and I guess that's valid, but my thing is I don't believe him at all.

To me, he reads like a youth pastor. I didn't grow up religious necessarily, but I spent time in and out of church environments, and occasionally I'd meet some guy who would always sit down and kick it with the youth and talk about how he had a crazy life before he found the Church and how finding the Church could help a kid who got into trouble, and as I got older I realized that with nearly no exceptions that guy was absolutely full of shit. Either he was just saying stuff because it might bring people to God in the same way a pastor might do with an adult, or he was a sheltered kid who skipped a couple church sunday's to drink a single beer out in the woods, and oh boy were those wild days!

Don't get me wrong, he obviously did Some Shit between his time in the Chantry, but I absolutely do think he's just saying what he thinks Isabela needs to hear, regardless of if he believes it or not. This is "guy who thinks he was wild but wasn't actually wild" syndrome at play, and I do not think you did anything other than some fun over-the-clothes action Sebastian, just own it.

#Sebastian #Sebastian Vael #Not sure how this one will be received but I stand by it #DA2 #Dragon Age 2 #Dragon Age

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temis-de-leon · 2 months ago

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The Nemean Lion

Characters: male!MC, Luke (platonic) and an unnamed old man

Summary and Disclaimer

Main Masterlist

C/W: some swearing, descriptions of violence and brief description of murder

A/N: very different from what I normally write, so tell me if I should add something in the c/w.

It'll teach you a lesson, his cousin had said.

It's either this or therapy, he had said.

Babysitting or therapy? More like suffering humiliation or showing weakness.

At least he was getting paid.

Although perhaps not enough.

The child, Luke, seemed to hate being with him as much as MC hated being there at all. London was cold and humid, too different from the sunny skies he was used to, and the rich people he worked for were fucking weird. There was no other word for them; plain weird with weird-ass names and a weird-ass taste in clothes. One of them didn't even know how to wear a jacket!

And he knew there were just weird because his family was rich as well and none of them were that fucking awkward. Violent, sure, and entitled to aggressiveness, but the safety of old money allowed them to indulge as much as they wanted.

Except for MC, but he couldn't really be mad about it; Meg did divorce him because she was afraid of him, after all, and it wasn't like he could go to an office, sit on a lounge chair and seriously say “I threatened and screamed at my wife because my stepmother pushed my buttons and provoked me”.

So babysitting it was.

However, if he had to hear “I’m not a child!” one more time, he might just bang his head against a wall until he bled and call it a day. It had been amusing at the beginning, but the bakery, or patisserie, as Luke insisted on calling it, was all the way across town and the kid had done nothing but yap like an eager puppy and then yell at MC with an embarrassed blush whenever he teased him for it.

Besides, the old stone path was treacherous, eroded by the wind, the strides of those who’d walked on it and the endless rains and storms that had conquered Britain since the dawn of times; and both of them had almost tripped and fallen more than once. After the first few times, MC had offered to carry Luke so they could get there faster, but the child had looked at him like he’d just murdered his mother, immediately walking faster to avoid him and prove a point and ultimately falling backwards as a result, which just made him feel even more embarrassed if that was possible. MC did consider placing him on his shoulder and ignoring his complaints, but wouldn’t that look like kidnapping?

He could not risk his chances. Being seen as a short-tempered madman by his whole community was already hard enough.

“Your ass is wet” he snickered, barking a laugh at the grey sky when Luke turned around with cheeks blushing in a scandalized expression.

“My what??”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Your butt is wet”

“I understood you the first time!”

“Okay, damn” muttered MC, which served only to receive another appalled look. Was he babysitting a preteen or an old lady?

Maybe he was a sheltered kid? His tutor, a young father or an older brother, MC wasn’t sure, looked like a youth pastor dressed in a navy uniform, so maybe swearing and behaving inappropriately were non-existent in their house.

“It wasn’t my fault I fell; you know”

“I never blamed you” he said kicking a rock down the street. “But you wouldn’t have fallen if you’d let me carry you…”

Luke interrupted him, balling his fists until his knuckles were white.

“You carry a child! I’m not a child! I can walk perfectly fine. Hmph!”

“You can also fall perfectly fine; nice form back there”

“Shut up!”

He chuckled again, nicer that time, and lightly pushed Luke so he would keep walking forward, but a quick movement on the porch beside them brought his attention.

It was a man, but he couldn’t pinpoint how old he was. Half of his face was covered by a long bushy beard and the insane amount of muscles made him look younger. Not even the fur and leather jacket he wore helped cover his bulky body. His eyes were light brown, almost golden and surrounded by wrinkles and age spots, and when they disappeared behind the window and the front door opened a few seconds later, MC’s first impulse was to grab Luke by the scruff of the neck and place him behind his body. Whatever argument the kid tried to say died under the man’s voice.

His stance was powerful too, not an ounce of weakness emanated from him.

“Shut your fucking mouths, the both of you” he rasped, his voice unsurprisingly deep. MC could feel Luke shrink as if trying to hide from the man, no sound came from him. “You’re talking too damn loud”

“I think those are the voices in your head, man”

A tiny fist punched his back repeatedly, silently urging him to stop talking. Unfortunately for Luke, he almost couldn’t notice the hits.

“We’re just passing by, using the sidewalk like good-behaved civilians” MC said nonchalantly, keeping his hands inside the pockets of his jacket and opening his arms as if showing the deserted street. The man frowned and licked his teeth, looking at him from head to toe, clearly assessing him. “If you have a problem with that, suck it up and cry to whoever gives a shit about you. I know I don’t”

“You…!”

In the span of a second, the stranger crossed the distance between them and looked down with a sneer. He was bigger than him, angrier and more willing to punch, but MC knew he could win the fight if they ever happened to start one. However, Luke was shaking like a leaf and even though the wind had risen and the sky threatened to hide the sun again, MC knew it wasn’t due to the cold.

“Hey, not my fault if you’re lonely” he muttered after swallowing his pride, trying not to chuckle without bothering to hide to curving corner of his lips. “But if you’re into that shit we won’t bother you anymore“

“You’re crossing a line, kid”

That made MC chortle.

He would’ve already struck with a fist by then had it been any other situation, especially when his ego was so sore by his brand new living arrangement.

Although only a few months had passed, his vision still went blind each time he remembered the argument. If only his father had been there when everything happened, the situation would’ve been extremely different, but who knew where he was? Probably getting more random women pregnant. Instead, they had his stepmother, his father’s first and only wife, who had single-handedly stripped MC of his inheritance to give it all to his cowardly cousin, whose solution to resolve the scandal “faster” had been to send MC away.

And now he was babysitting a preteen and dying to fight an old man in the streets of London.

“You were sitting by the window watching children go by; if we’re talking about crossing lines…”

He missed the Mediterranean sun and the burning feeling on his shoulders amid summer; having someone by his side each morning and no worries that could keep him awake at night.

The old man quickly grabbed the collar of his jacket before pulling him towards his alcohol-reeking body. He bore his teeth, hardly visible under the unkempt beard, and sneered when MC smiled with twisted satisfaction.

An almost imperceptible tremble behind him made him retreat in an instant.

“Be bitter on your own” he ended up saying after forcefully peeling himself out of the grasp and taking a few steps back. He grabbed Luke’s bicep in the process to drag him by his side.

The man was fuming with fists clenching in unrestraint rage but thankfully stayed where he was.

“And leave the rest of us out of it”

So they left.

Their bodies, at least. A part of MC wished to stay behind in search of warmth and the smell of copper.

What loneliness did to an angry man…

Silence stayed between them for a long time, even when they finally reached the damn patisserie and stood outside to wait in line. A poster on the window warned a maximum of two people inside the tiny establishment and the old-fashioned doorbell only rang every few long minutes, so it seemed they’d be there for a while. Those around them were chatting, mindlessly commenting on the menu’s options and the impending storm that would eventually ruin their evening’s plans; the distant thundering only proving their point.

“I don’t get it, though” he said trying to ignore his inner turmoil. Luke raised his head to look at him, obviously impatient to go in and order some sweets. “Why did you want to come here? Why not bake whatever they sell? I thought you were good”

“I am good! Even Michael loves…” his voice suddenly stopped and his face contorted in regret.

He’d said something he shouldn’t have, hadn’t he? MC squatted, immediately distracted and interested, and smiled at the kid with morbid curiosity.

Morningstar had introduced him to Luke’s tutor in the morning, mere minutes before shamelessly leaving him under his care and going to who knows where to attend some business. Simeon, a pretty guy if MC had ever seen one, had given the same excuse, but, if he saw correctly, and he knew he did, both had gone in different directions. Had any of them left to go see this Michael?

“Who’s that?” he urged. Unfortunately, despite looking so nervous, Luke wasn’t willing to talk about it.

“No one!” he answered, but he sounded furious at his own response. He opened his mouth again but changed the subject at the end, much to MC’s disappointment. “If you’re that interested, I’m going to buy puff pastry cups; here they bake them with a secret ingredient, so I want to experiment with different fillings at The Angel’s Halo”

“You know you won’t be able to sell them, right?”

“Yes, but I’m okay with that. I like to bake, regardless of any compensation I might receive. As long as my friends enjoy it, then I’m happy!”

And golly gee, wasn’t that a beautiful mindset?

MC tried not to roll his eyes, equally amused and exasperated at the child’s kindness. He had never met anyone so virtuous, let alone a boy that young, and it got him to briefly wonder if there was the slight possibility of having been as innocent as Luke had his family been completely different. On the other side, what if they were doomed to fail from the start? The thought was infuriating and made his muscles tense once again.

“Do I get to have one too?” he muttered, trying to get the sour taste out of his mouth. Imagining a homemade dessert was a decent solution.

“You?” answered Luke with raised brows, surprised by his request. He then frowned and crossed his arms with a dignified expression. “You really think you deserve it? You used some bad words back then”

He chuckled at the reprimand, feigning ignorance with obscene exaggeration.

“Bad words? Which ones?”

“I’m not going to repeat them!”

“Are you gonna give me one of those sweets if I swear I won’t say them again?”

“I… I don’t know! Maybe!”

“Okay, I’ll make sure not to say them in front of you then”

“Wait, no- That’s not fair! And you said you didn’t know which ones I meant anyway!”

A melodic ring interrupted their conversation, finally letting the last customers get out of the store and filling the narrow street with the sweet smell of butter and sugar.

“C’mon, don’t think about it too hard”

“Wait…!” he tried to protest, but MC was pushing him inside the cosy establishment without paying any attention to his words.

The rest of the evening passed faster than he would’ve imagined when he was given his task that morning. Luke, as annoying as his moral compass was most of the time, had a way of keeping the conversation going without being irritating or repetitive, even with their limited topics. He was curious and naïve but also had a fiery determination and the more MC teased him the less offended he acted about it.

In the end, they came back to The Angel’s Halo discussing their favourite flavours and toppings, staying like that for hours. When Simeon returned, quiet and reflective, the night had already claimed the sky and had brought dark clouds and the bite of cold wind with it. After that, it was only a matter of time until it started raining and, before anyone could realise it, the sidewalks were already covered in dirty water.

MC knew the moment he stepped out of the café that he should’ve gone back to Serenity Manor, reported to Morningstar and cleaned off the heavy rain with a shower, but his feet thought otherwise; even when his t-shirt clung uncomfortably and the drenched denim jacket added unnecessary weight to his stride. For some reason, instead of the blankets and the sweaters waiting for him in the guest room he’d been assigned, his memories were swarmed by a vaguely familiar fur and leather jacket.

That old man was stronger than him and more intimidating too, but also bitter and lonely. There could be a million reasons why an elder ended up without a family: opportunities lost to time, death, rejection… Wrongdoings? But MC couldn’t care less. It didn’t even matter. At the end of the day, they were both sides of the very same angry coin, with the difference that only one was wearing a good jacket.

And MC swore on his father’s blood that it would be him.

With a mind clouded by senseless ire, he ignored the clean modern road leading to the manor and went instead through the streets he had walked hours before with Luke. Who knew if MC was alone because no one was there or because those who were had chosen to hide, but the idea of still being respected, even if caused by fear, felt better than he cared to admit. It was flattering.

MC could notice his heart beating faster as the old man’s house appeared in his vision. It reminded him of one time, years ago, when he had gone with his brother and their mother to the zoo and they had all stared at the lions’ enclosure with yearning and excitement; the desire to reach and touch the mane and golden coat strong enough to give him energy for two days and tire his poor mother.

He needed that jacket.

Although some houses nearby had the lights on, no one was there to hear him jump the gate. He crossed the small overgrown garden and stared at the inside of the house through the window glass, just as the old men had looked at Luke and him earlier.

The living room was dark and empty, including furniture and decoration. There was only an armchair placed in a corner next to a worn-out standing floor lamp and a simple table with stacks of paper stuck under a couple of its legs. As far as he could see, the end of the hallway showed no light either.

MC clicked his tongue, ignoring the tendrils of impatience before walking towards the door in a crouch and pushing it softly. It opened with a creak but emitted no sound as it closed and, once he was inside and the dark engulfed him, he quietly locked the deadbolt. Whichever reason the man had for keeping his home open, whether it was his arrogance or no possession of value, wasn’t interesting to MC.

There, in silence, he could only hear his own breathing, the speed of his blood flow, the faint ticking of a clock and the constant humming of an appliance. The lack of snoring in the house did nothing but excite him even further. It did not matter to him what state the old man was in; deep in slumber or wide awake, being caught by surprise would leave him weak and at a disadvantage.

The kitchen was at the end of the corridor, illuminated only by the moonlight through the curtains. It had a backdoor, which MC quickly closed before leaving and going straight to the stairs.

A wide taxidermy collection decorated the halls. The creepy and empty stares of the stuffed animals seemed fixed on him as he stepped over the carpeted floors to make as little noise as possible. There were skulls on the walls too and weapons scattered around, especially hunting knives and machetes. He noticed some were stained and, after little consideration, chose to ignore it.

No family pictures or portraits to make the house more human; just the stench of death. Recollections of past violence.

A messy office, a bathroom reeking of mould and, finally, the bedroom.

The door was ajar, so opening it enough to enter comfortably wasn’t difficult, although It creaked a bit. Thankfully, it was still raining and the noise went unnoticed, so before he could even realise it, MC found himself looming over the old man.

MC saw with surprising indifference that he had taken off the leather jacket to carelessly throw it over a chair for the night. He could grab it, leave and let the situation stay as a petty theft; but what then? Would he ever be able to wear it comfortably out of the privacy of the house?

He looked down again. The old man was sleeping, face up and mouth open, and for a glorious moment, he looked frail.

Without thinking much about it, MC leaned over and grabbed the other end of the pillow with slow movements, careful not to make any noise. He lifted his knee at the same time, placing it over the man’s pelvis and, once his body was somewhat aligned over the laying one, he pushed down as strongly as possible, pressed the pillow against the man’s face and seized his thick neck with an iron grip.

The denim protected him from the scratches, but he would still have bruises the next day. The hits hurt, of course, and it seemed the old man was trying to bite him through the pillow. Unfortunately for him, there was nothing in MC’s bitter mind besides the bone-chilling coldness of the city and the reminder of an empty bed back at Serenity Manor.

The rain was heavier than before if that was possible, but at least he’d leave that awful house with a good jacket.

Taglist: @ilovecandys2010 @ollieoven @kingofspadesdelusion @whimsybloom @completelyshatteredbrokenmschf

#obey me #obey me! shall we date?#om! shall we date #om! swd #obey me x reader #obey me male mc #obey me male reader #obey me x male mc #obey me x male reader #obey me luke #obey me writing #obey me angst #obey me hurt/no comfort #the 12 labours of mc #obey me fanfic

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gravehags · 29 days ago

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unholy, unholy, unholy - the natalie edit

Pairing: Cardinal Copia x f!OC (Curator!OC)

Rating: EXPLICIT, MDNI

Tags: the ministry being the catholic church's evil twin, manipulation, masturbation, confession, copia lowkey being a desperate little sex freak my beloved

Words: 5,162

Summary: She really walked right into this, Natalie tells herself. She can't even be mad at Copia for suggesting it.

a/n: lmao it took me like an hour to edit this so if you see some grammatical fuck ups no you don't anyway enjoy some horndog behavior

~~~

“Jesus fucking Christ Almighty.”

Natalie slams her office door shut with her hip and Cardinal Copia turns to look at her from his seat.

“Need help?”

With a grunt and a shake of her head she walks past him and sets the bag of food down on her desk, heaving a deep sigh.

“Had to go on a fucking scavenger hunt because the goddamn DoorDash driver left the bag with a maintenance worker, who gave it to one of Terzo’s ghouls, who left it in a stairwell for some reason…don’t ask me how I managed to find it because fuck if I know.”

Dramatically she flops into her desk chair and gives her lunch companion a look as he begins to sort out their meals with a smile.

“You know you eh…take the Lord’s name in vain quite a bit for someone who wasn’t raised in religion.”

When he passes Natalie’s container of Pad see ew to her, she grins.

“Ehhh you know, the perils of being raised in a predominantly Christian society. It’s funny, the first time I said ‘Jesus Christ’ I was maybe…I don’t know nine? Ten? And my mom tersely told me ‘don’t say that’ to which I replied ‘why not?’ I don’t think she knew how to answer that question in a way that would make me care, you know? I had gone all my little life not giving a shit about Jesus, why would I now?”

Copia chuckles and cracks open his own takeaway box.

“Ah Natalia, you continue to stray further and further from God’s light every day. Thank Sathanas for that, hmm?”

With a smile, she clinks her soda can against his and digs into her meal.

“You ever think about how fascinating your religion is, Copia?”

Natalie props her feet up on her desk as Copia delicately picks noodles out of his box with chopsticks.

“Eh, how do you mean?”

“Like…you’re a Satanic cardinal. You’ve sworn your life to uphold the tenets of Satanism. You…we live at a massive complex dedicated to Satan. One of many complexes throughout the world, apparently. And yet, barely anyone knows of the Ministry’s existence. It’s wild, really.”

He makes a thoughtful noise as he chews on a particularly crunchy piece of bok choy.

“Ah, well,” he begins, setting his chopsticks down and reaching for the soda resting on the desk, “We’re trying to change that. In…subtle ways.”

“Mmm, the Ghost project.”

“Sì, the idea is we use Papa to spread our message through music - something that is accessible to many people.”

“With the hopes that you and your evil brethren can dominate the globe?” she says, scrunching her nose playfully and giving him a big wink.

“Something like that,” he smiles wryly.

“Well I’ve listened to some of the project’s music and I gotta say…big fan. I think your sinister subliminal messaging is working on me.”

“Oh?” he asks, setting down his food in order to cross his legs and give her a curious stare. “Tell me more, cara. Do I have a future sister of sin on my hands?”

Natalie closes her eyes and laughs, missing the hungry way the Cardinal watches the line of her pale throat as her head tilts back.

“Maybe…let’s just say I’m intrigued. How could I not be when I’m surrounded by it all the time?”

He nods, resting a gloved hand on his knee and straightening his cassock.

“Perhaps…”

She fixes him with a look she knows will make him lose his train of thought for a moment. Positively wicked.

“Perhaps…?”

“Perhaps,” he clears his throat, eyes darting away from hers, “You would like to attend one of our services?”

Natalie nods gamely.

“Is a super cool and hip youth pastor going to tell me about the ways the Devil cares about me unconditionally?”

He rolls his eyes and fixes her with an unamused stare.

“Very funny, dolcezza. Would you prefer that I have you sit with Papa Nihil while he explains the history of the Emeritus bloodline?”

Natalie balks. The wizened Papa had a distinct dislike of her for some odd reason. She often wonders how he manages to give her such dirty looks through his cloudy eyes. She didn’t particularly care, however, as she saw the way he constantly brushed off and mistreated Copia during staff meetings. Nihil irked her to no end, no matter how much Sister Imperator liked him.

“Alright, fine, sorry. I only jest to get a rise out of you, I know how important your religion is to you. And hey, anything that has the drama and aesthetics of the Catholic Church without all the guilt and trauma has my full attention. Please don’t be mad.”

He grunts but she sees the way his mustache twitches as he fights back a smile. Natalie flutters her eyelashes a little and in a moment of boldness, takes her lower lip between her teeth. The way his mismatched eyes dart to her mouth and his jaw hangs open makes her giddy.

“I’m–,” his voice comes out as a hoarse rasp, “I forgive you, Natalia.”

“Thank you for absolving me of my sins, Your Eminence.”

He has to know she’s doing this on purpose at this point. Natalie’s not sure what has gotten into her today but something about the way he stares at her now makes her want to grab him by his pellegrina and haul him over her desk for a sloppy kiss. There’s a heavy tension between the two of them, not for the first time, as if all one of them needs to do is take a step forward and all hell would break loose.

“So, you want me to go to a service? What, like black mass? Unholy baptism? Virgin sacrifice?”

The spell is broken and briefly Natalie’s swagger flickers, wondering if she’s crossed a line.

“Eh, maybe someday but your statement about sin made me think…perhaps confession would be more suited to you?”

Now her jaw falls open and she can feel her cheeks light up as he watches her with a smirk toying at the corners of his mouth. The tables have turned and now she’s the one left speechless.

“O-oh?” she asks, voice a little higher than normal, “So if Catholic confession is about getting your sins forgiven, then Satanic confession is…having your sins…celebrated?”

“Corretto,” he says with a generous nod, “We’ll go through each one in ah…intimate detail.”

“We?” she squeaks out, stomach dropping severely, “I hadn’t realized that you would be presiding.”

“Oh sì,” he says, the smirk on his face positively devilish, “Although if you’d prefer someone else…”

“No,” she says just a little too quickly, her heart pounding, “I…I don’t know how much sinning I really get up to. I’ll probably bore you to tears.”

“You might be surprised, dolcezza,” Christ the nickname sounds devious on his lips right now, “What is it they say? ‘Still waters run deep’?”

Natalie’s laugh comes out just a little too loud and unnatural and she kicks herself.

“Ha…right. We…we should probably get back to this cataloging or Sister Imperator is going to publicly execute me.”

The rest of the afternoon proceeds normally, with the two of them diligently organizing the abbey’s collection of illuminated manuscripts. When they finally part, he gives her the date, time, and directions to the chapel where the confession booth is located.

“Natalia,” he murmurs as she begins to walk away, “you don’t have to do this.”

She gives him a half-smile and shakes her head.

“I think it will be good for me,” she says, hands behind her back as she rocks onto her heels, “And besides, how could I say no to spending an evening with you?”

Natalie makes sure not to turn away until she sees the full breadth of his dazed expression and by the time her back is to him and she’s walking away, there’s a loopy grin on her face. It’s not til she turns the corner and reaches the staircase to her quarters the full realization of what she’s agreed to dawns upon her.

Oh fuck.

—

Natalie doesn’t see Copia the next two days between his duties and her own and for that she’s extremely thankful. The date of her confession has arrived and she’s equal parts nauseated and exhilarated. Having never gone to confession of any sort before, she’s not entirely sure what to expect. She’s not ignorant - she’s seen confession scenes in the media and have heard from friends raised in Catholicism - but what little she does know doesn’t assuage her anxiety. This is Satanic confession. A whole different beast. Her mind conjures images of blood rituals and sacrifices and being on her knees before Copia…his gloved hand tilting her chin upwards to look at him…

Christ Almighty, get your shit together.

She desperately tries to, as she sternly told herself, get her shit together but her mind is clouded the rest of her workday with positively sinful scenes of the two of them. Natalie’s particularly fond of the one where he’s got her in his office, her skirt hiked up over her hips as she bends over his desk and he pushes himself inside her from behind. The thought of his voice in her head, calling her his sweet little nicknames as he fucks into her, makes her practically drip. The final two hours in her office are torture before she’s able to skitter back to her rooms. She’s not meeting with Copia for another few hours and she needs to do something about the ache between her thighs. Impatiently, she fumbles for the buttons on her blouse with one hand while pushing her skirt off with another. She must look a sight, ripping her bra off and flinging it somewhere on the floor, but all she can think about now is getting to her bed. She almost trips twice in the journey to her room, blindly stumbling over and flinging herself on the mattress. What has gotten into her? She’s been horny before, about Copia sure, but this? The way she’s practically whining when her hands meet her bare breasts? She feels positively feral.

“Copia,” Natalie breathes, fingers pinching at her nipples. She imagines his hands on her, the way the leather would warm as he strokes her soft skin.

Dolcezza.

Fuck, she can hear it perfectly and it makes her sigh, one of her hands slowly sliding down her body to cup the heat of her. She’s sopping and time feels like it slows as she spreads herself open and slides two fingers against her engorged clit. All of her frantic rushing from earlier ceases as she twitches under her own touch, his name on her lips. She’s so sensitive right now it barely takes anything to bring her over the edge, but, she thinks as her orgasm wanes, it’s not quite enough. Taking a slow inhale she slips her fingers lower and teases at her entrance. The digits glide in easily enough with the abundance of slick coming from her and languorously she begins to pump them in and out. Her eyes slide shut and she imagines it’s his dexterous fingers instead, curling inside her so she can feel every stitch and groove of his glove.

Cara mia, he’d murmur into her ear, so wet for me. So sweet for your Cardinal, eh? You honor me.

The whimpers crawling out of Natalie’s mouth are getting more frequent and higher in pitch - she knows she’s close. She brings her palm flat against herself to push on her clit as her hips continue to make little circles, driving her fingers deeper in. Her hand is aching but it doesn’t stop her from pulling another orgasm out of herself, chanting his name. Tears pool in her eyes and slide down her temples as she sobs aloud and all of a sudden it’s too much. Her body spasms on the duvet, breath coming in harsh pants as she attempts to slow the thundering of her heart. It’s not the first time she’s touched herself to the thought of him, by any means, but something feels…different. More charged. She’s exhausted, bone tired as she tries to organize her feelings. Reaching a hand up to rub her face she turns over and looks at the clock.

5:32 PM

Her eyelids are heavy but she manages to lean over the side of her bed and locate her phone to set an alarm. Some sleep would do her good. Clear her head.

She doesn’t dream.

—------

Cazzo, cazzo, cazzo.

Copia paces back and forth in the small, dimly lit (romantically lit, some would say) chapel. The last sibling of the evening just left and now all that remains is…her. He barely heard what the siblings were telling him this evening, so anxious was he and caught up in the thought of Natalia soon being in their position. More than once his vision went blurry as he imagined her a breath away, separated only by the decorative wooden screen.

He was so eager for her to walk through that door, now he’s not sure. With a heavy sigh through his nose he looks down at his watch.

6:58 PM

She’s always punctual and he counts on tonight being no different. Resigned to his fate, he shuffles over to the confession booth and opens the door, slotting himself inside. Shit, his ass hurts from the hard bench, why in fuck’s name had they not added a cushion to this side like there was on the other? He’s grumbling to himself in Italian when he hears the chapel door squeak open and firmly shut. Natalie’s soft footsteps approach - she must be wearing her sneakers and not her boots for the distinct clacking sound he usually hears from her has vanished. He sucks in a breath when he hears her open her side of the booth and quietly shut it. There’s a silence between the two of them so profound that when Natalie finally speaks he jumps.

“Hey. You’re in there right?”

He makes a loud, vague noise and sees her shoulders drop through the screen. He can’t get a read on her expression but the anxiety in the air has softened with her posture.

“Good evening,” he begins, a little stiffly. “Eh, welcome.”

She breathes out heavy through her nose.

“Copia, is this a good idea?”

He pauses and looks down to pull at a loose thread on his cuff.

“Are…are you nervous, Natalia?”

She lets out a soft, self-deprecating laugh.

“Yeah, I’m fucking nervous! I’ve never even been to a regular confession let alone…this.”

“Well, we begin with the ceremonial bloodletting and–”

“Oh fuck off,” she grouses, flicking the screen that separates them. She falls silent after a moment.

“Cara, are you truly that anxious? Because we don’t have to do any–”

“I’m fine, Copia. Really. I don’t know why I'm so worked up. Fear of the unknown, I suppose,” she clears her throat and he hears her crack her neck.

“Bene. Shall I go over the process with you? And remember this is a celebration. No shaming. No guilt. No wrong answers.”

She takes a deep breath in and he sees her nod.

“I will start with the blessing and then we will go through the seven cardinal sins one by one. You may describe yours as briefly or lengthy as you like and we will venerate them. Once we have finished, I will close with a blessing. Then we will part. Nothing to be nervous about, eh? Are you ready?”

“Yes, please.”

“Very good,” he clears his throat and straightens his shoulders. “In nomine Padre, et Filio, et lo Spiritus Malum…we welcome this most sacred sinner into your embrace that she may revel in her transgressions against God.”

When he addresses her by name, he sees her jump.

“Let us begin with the Original Sin - pride.”

“Okay. Yeah. Pride.” There’s a few seconds of silence before he hears her softly curse. “Sorry, I should have made a list or something.”

“Take your time,” he says with a smile, simply content to be in her presence, “I have nowhere to be, Natalia. I am right here, ready when you are.”

He can see her eyelashes flutter as she looks down and her cheeks bunch in a soft smile. Although mostly obscured, the sight still makes his heart soar. After a minute or so of silence she speaks.

“Oh! Okay, uh pride. Well I was going to tell you about this anyway but…you know that little write-up I did of Satanic art in the time of the Counter-Reformation?”

“Naturalmente, it was superb.”

“Thank you. Well I thought it was too so I submitted it to a journal for publishing…and they accepted it.”

He can practically hear her grin and it makes him beam in return.

“Cara mia! Congratulazioni! You deserve nothing less! Although I hope you do not consider it a sin to rightfully celebrate an occasion such as this?”

Natalie sighs.

“Ah, I don’t know. I may have bragged a bit too much to other people in the field. Felt a little too self-satisfied about it. So I think that would count, right?”

He scoffs.

“To Papa Frankie, maybe. To us it is a well-deserved acknowledgement of your hard work and something you have every right to be proud of. Dolcezza, even if you hesitate to celebrate yourself, know that I always will do so for you. Published in a journal, well done Natalia.”

He may not be able to see it in the low light of the confessional but he can picture her flushed cheeks perfectly in his mind.

“Anything else you would like to say on the matter?”

“No, that’s it.”

“Are you ready for the next?”

“Yes,” she says, with greater confidence, “Let’s continue.”

“Onto the next. Envy.”

“Ah,” Natalie seems to deflate a little and his brows knit together, “Well about that. This…wow this is embarrassing.”

“No such thing as embarrassing at this moment. It’s a safe space, remember?”

“Right,” she huffs, “Okay well here it goes then. I see the sisters of sin every day walking around the corridors, working in the library, in the dining hall and…I envy them. I envy their bold confidence in their appearance and their sexuality.”

He’s silent for a moment, weighing whether or not he should say what he’s thinking. But she deserves to hear this.

“Confidence is not only represented by eh, wearing short skirts and high heels. I see you exude it every day when you’re bossing me around, no?”

Natalie barks out a laugh and it lightens his heart.

“Truth be told,” he sighs, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose, “I’m not the best person to be taking advice on confidence from. But I know how to recognize it and I see it in you.”

“Thank you,” she murmurs so softly he thinks he might have made it up, “Can we move on?”

“Si,” he says before clearing his throat, “Next one is wrath.”

He hears her suck in a breath through her teeth.

“Oh, I’ve got a good one for this. Well…not good. It wasn’t my best moment. But it definitely fits the bill.”

He makes a noise prompting her to continue.

“You know that new painting that Sister Imperator got at auction? The one of Lilith and Faust? It arrived last week and she asked me to oversee its unboxing. I told all the siblings working with me that once the box was open the painting was to be handled with archival gloves. I had to step out of the room for a second to talk to the head librarian and when I came back…not a glove to be found and the painting was halfway out of its crate. Copia I…I lost my shit. You know me I-I don’t get mad. But the fact that they had disregarded my instruction and got their bare fingers on that canvas, then acted ignorant about the whole thing…Christ, Copia I saw red. I don’t even remember half of what I yelled at them. I had to walk out before I did something I would regret. God, I already regretted raising my voice. I didn’t report them to Sister Imperator but she found out somehow…maybe the librarian? I don’t know what their punishment was but I haven’t seen them since. Copia, it was awful. I was awful.”

“With good reason,” he replies promptly, “They should have respected your authority as a professional in the field and by not doing so not only did they potentially damage Ministry property, but they also embarrassed themselves. Idioti. Though I would have liked to have seen you all riled up.” A confession of his own - Sathanas, would he have loved to see her flying at them like a demon, her claws sharp and her words sharper. The thought sends a shiver of arousal down his spine and he takes a moment to gather himself before speaking again.

“Is that all you wish to say?”

“Yes. Can we please move on?”

“Very well. Next is sloth.”

Natalie’s silent for a moment and his heart sinks, hoping she’s not dwelling too much on her last confession. He opens his mouth to speak but she beats him to it.

“Sloth, yeah. I, uh,” she lets out a giggle and he’s relieved to hear it, “None of these can get me in trouble with Sister Imperator, right?”

“No,” he says slowly, a grin curling his lips, “This is just between us.”

“Okay good. Do you remember a couple weeks back when I texted you that I wasn’t coming in because I was having a migraine?”

“Sì…”

“I was lying,” the words blurt out of her in a rush but she sounds almost gleeful about it, “I was so fucking tired and so cozy in bed and it was raining outside…I just couldn’t do it. Stayed under the covers all day watching Ghost Adventures.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” he playfully chides, and he can see Natalie’s shoulders shake with laughter, “Signorina Sinclair, I am stunned. Horrified, even–”

“Oh it’s not that bad.”

“Horrified…that you didn’t tell me so I could join you. I love those ghost hunting shows.”

Her laugh makes him smile in return, “Next time we’ll play hooky together, I promise.”

He sighs deeply. “Please. I could use it.”

“I know,” she murmurs, “No one in this abbey works as hard as you do.”

“Grazie, tesoro. I appreciate your kindness.”

Natalie makes a warm noise of affirmation before speaking, “What’s next?”

“Gluttony.”

“Oh Christ,” she cringes, head falling forward, “Maybe…about a month ago? Primo came by my rooms and handed me a Tupperware container of brownies. Told me to eat one per sitting with a sweet old man smile on his face. I’m not an idiot, I heard what he grows in the abbey gardens but my God the stink that came off of these things. I knew I was about to get my shit rocked. So I ate my designated brownie and just puttered around, cleaning up the kitchen. All of a sudden, I’m flat on the floor in front of my fan having an out of body experience. I don’t know how long I was lying there for but by the time I hauled myself up I was so hungry I thought I was losing it. Went through a box of cereal, a sleeve of Ritz crackers, and the next thing I knew I was in the papas’ kitchen making a bag of popcorn. Don’t remember getting there and don’t remember coming back up to my rooms but the next morning I was tucked in bed. So weird.”

He chuckles nervously as if he wasn’t the one to find her wandering the kitchens stoned out of her gourd and put her there.

“Ha yes…weird. That’s…that’s all you remember?”

“Mmhmm. Talk about the devil’s lettuce. Was pissed I didn’t have any cereal the next morning, though.”

“Let’s move onto the next, hmm?” He’s a little louder than necessary but she doesn’t question his suspicious behavior.

“Yeah sure. Hit me.”

“Eh, greed.”

“Hmm,” she ponders and he hears the back of her head thunk against the wood of the booth. “Damn, this is a hard one.”

“It usually is, funnily enough. You can always skip it, if you like.”

“No, no, no,” she says, leaning forward, “I’m trying to get the full set, let me cook.”

That actually makes him laugh out loud. How he adores her so.

“Greed, greed, greed,” she mutters to herself, “Ah…greed would include covetousness, yeah?”

“Mmm, is there something or perhaps…someone you have been coveting?”

It’s a leading question and he knows this as he hears her breath quicken. It’s at this point in his fantasies where Natalie confesses her adoration for him, where he flees the confines of his side of the booth to fall to his knees before her and worship her as Sathanas intended. His tongue darts out to wet his lips and he tastes the bitter tang of his paints which distracts him for a moment when he hears her say–

“Yes. There is someone.”

The silence is deafening between the two of them and his heart thuds against his ribcage, desperate for her to reach over and tear it from his chest. He flexes his hands, the leather squeaking as the both of them sit with the words.

“O-oh?” he finally manages to stutter. He can see her lovely pale green eyes are shut and hears her loudly swallow.

“I, um,” she begins, “Yeah. There is someone I’ve wanted for…a long time. I…I think he–I mean they–might reciprocate but…”

Tell her, you fool.

“Can we do the next one, actually?” Natalie’s voice is so painfully soft and his stomach drops. She is doing you a kindness, his brain cruelly provides, by not telling you of who she truly wants. A sibling, perhaps. Or perhaps…one of your fratelli. The thought pains him so he nearly doubles over on himself as if being punched in the gut. Pride, envy, wrath, sloth, gluttony, greed.

Lust.

He’s startled by the sound of his own voice and she is too, judging from the way she twitches. From his obscured view she looks positively horrified, as if she had forgotten about this one.

“I haven’t been with anyone,” Natalie blurts out, sounding both panicked and deeply embarrassed. He hardly recognizes his own voice as he responds with uncharacteristic calmness.

“Lustful acts…do not always have to involve another person.”

Now why the fuck would he say that? He can see her eyes widen and even in the dim light of the confessional he registers the violent blush on her cheeks.

“Oh I…oh.”

She raises a hand up to rub aggressively at her face, breathing deep.

“In that case, yes,” she finally says and his gut clenches, “I have indulged in the sin of lust.”

“A-about the person you covet?” He’s pushing it but he can’t help himself, can’t help the hope that simmers in his belly and makes his pants tighten.

“Mmm…mhmm,” Natalie responds and she opens her mouth to speak but hesitates. When she finally does, there’s a new tone to her voice - something low. Sensual.

“It’s…good. Fuck it’s good. When I think about them I-I go a little insane. I want them so fucking badly and it’s so easy to think about them and what they could do to me. What I would let them do to me.”

His fist flies to his mouth to stifle the whine that threatens to escape from him and his cock throbs underneath his cassock. He can feel Natalie’s eyes on him, see her full lips parted and it makes him lightheaded. Focus. Focus. Go over there and fuck her against this goddamned confessional. Focus.

“Sathanas bless you, Natalia,” he finally ekes out, his voice hoarse, “I-In celebrating your body a-and your desire you have made Him proud. Well done.”

A beat passes until she clears her throat. He thinks if he doesn’t tend to his dick soon he’s going to pass out.

“That’s all of them then, right? Got the full set?”

“Mmhmm. You can go if you like.”

“Didn’t you say there’s another blessing at the end?”

Satan damn her ability to vex him when he needs relief…and her…the most.

“Eh, yes. In nomine Padre, et Filio, e-et lo Spiritus Malum,” Cazzo what was the rest of it? “Ah…Sathanas bless this most sacred sinner for reveling in her transgressions against God. Nema.”

“Cool, well uh. Goodnight Copia. This has been…enlightening.”

“It certainly has,” he mutters under his breath, fingers itching to adjust his bulge. He’s not sure if Natalie heard him or not because in an instant she’s opened the booth and skittered down the nave to the door. He doesn’t breathe again until he hears her firmly shut it behind her and within seconds he’s fumbling for the hem of his cassock. He knows the likelihood that she was talking about him is slim but simply entertaining the thought that it could be has him unzipping his pants with vicious determination. When his cock finally, blessedly meets leather he could cry with relief. He knows he’s dribbling pre on himself but he doesn’t care - all that matters is the way she sounded confessing her lustful actions to him and how it drives his fist back and forth. Oh, how sweet she was. Tempting even when she isn’t trying to be. How he would revel in ruining her. The thought makes him double over, his unoccupied hand pressed against the wall of the booth in an attempt to stabilize himself. When he thinks of her eagerly spreading herself open for him a broken moan escapes his lips, hips rutting upwards into his grip. What sweet little noises she would make, his Natalia - right there, Copia, please, that’s it - her body eager to yield to his touch.

“Dolcezza,” he grits out, “ragazza perfetta mia. S-so good–ah–for y-your Cardinal.”

His hand is a blur as it rockets along his shaft and he grunts into the silent chapel. He thinks of Natalie looking up at him with that heart-shatteringly kind look on her face, her lips in a soft smile and he cries out, his seed painting his grucifix in desperate spurts. His mind is fuzzy but his hand doesn’t slow, determined to wrench every last drop out of himself until his head falls back and hits the wood of the booth. Groggily, he puts himself away and lowers his cassock before stumbling out of the confessional. His spend drips onto the stone floor but it matters little - surely it’s not the first that floor has seen. All of a sudden he’s exhausted - feeling every second of his five decades - as he blows out candle after candle. When his task is complete he trudges to the door and rests his forehead on the wood for a moment.

He thinks of Natalie’s smile once more.

#cardinal copia x oc #natalie sinclair #the natalie edit #curator reader series #rachel writes

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heroescore · 26 days ago

Text

Heroes

Intro

It’s a small world. Seven billion people on this earth, and every small moment, every interaction, leads to greater consequences. Some bad, some good. Name it what you want. The butterfly effect, chaos theory— It’s a law of nature. Now imagine a world with such a chaotic law, where roughly the same percentage of people who are left handed...have superpowers. That’s roughly ten percent of roughly seven billion people and counting. That’s a lot of superpowers.

Superpowers have been around for centuries, but it is only recently that it rose to that ten percent, raising many questions and answering some. There hasn’t been a lot of research yet, but so far the following rules seem to apply to all super humans.

You are born with your powers.

Your powers don't show their full potential until you reach or pass puberty — some don't show at all until that moment.

Nobody messes with Neptune.

This all made perfect sense for a long while, until a homeless young man found a magazine on the sidewalk and later gave it to another young man in an abandoned sugar factory they were both squatting in to read, and on the other side of New York City, a lab exploded.

Aiden Carter was a promising teen. He’d always been a fast learner, and could probably enrol in an honours programme within a week of attending. However he was home-schooled due to a mysterious illness, and now he was a homeless runaway. Scraping by on shelter meals and purely the kindness of others.

He came from a small town in south-east Kansas with a romanticised image of the Big Apple, but when he arrived at the ripe age of fifteen, he soon found reality was much, much better.

Sure he could probably use a roof over his head, and some more frequent meals, but the anonymity of a fifteen year old in the big city was amazing. Nobody knew him, nobody was looking for him, and nobody cared. Except for that nice old lady that would give him a meal or some fresh clothes whenever he did a chore for her.

Sometimes all she needed was some company, which was easy to provide. All the cookies he could eat in exchange for listening to her very interesting stories. Sometimes he helped her with her shopping and she would buy him his favourite candy bars as a thanks.

She even convinced him to go to church, where he found the sermons weren’t as bad as at home, and finding he got on rather well with the suspiciously young pastor, he ended up attending every Sunday, and eventually, the old lady’s funeral.

Thomas Claude, or Father Tom as he preferred, always felt like he was a little in over his head. His church was small, the majority of his flock had one foot in the grave, and they hardly respected him because he wasn’t just rather young, he also looked very young. And they weren’t too keen on his new-age ideas. His church had been accepting and recognising the gays, lesbians, aces, trans, and everything in between, but their elderly members...not so much.

Father Tom didn’t worry about them. They were probably just there so they could keep their reservations on the church’s graveyard. No he was more worried about the youth of his church, and the rapidly declining number thereof. He struggled to form a connection with them, and most of them stopped showing as soon as their parents allowed them a choice.

So he was extra delighted when a new young man showed up. He came in with his grandmother, he thought, but at her funeral the family claimed they didn’t know him. But he kept showing up. Always sitting at the very back of the church, listening, yet seeming rather absent at the same time. He usually disappeared right after the morning sermon, but one day, Father Tom found him sitting in the last pew, after everyone else had already left.

“Is this seat taken?”

The young man looked up, blinking a bit as he looked around and found himself alone with the pastor. Taking his silence as a no, Father Tom sat down next to him, pretty much blocking his way out, but with no intent to harm him of course.

“You know...when I suspect someone is homeless and underage I’m supposed to call social services,” Father Tom slowly said, “but something tells me that’s not something you need…”

“I’m good, thanks,” the teen said, “I should get going.”

He got up, but Father Tom didn’t.

“I just want to make sure,” he said, “if you’re in any trouble, in any need of anything...I live in the house right next to the church. If I’m not in here, I’m usually there…”

“I’m okay, but thanks for your concern, mister…?”

“You can just call me Tom, or Father Tom if you’re one for formalities. And what might I call you?”

“I’m Aiden,” the teen said, “Carter, if you’re one for formalities...I really need to get going now.”

“Of course, I apologise,” Father Tom said, getting up to let him out, “will you be back next Sunday?”

“Um...I’ll try, thanks,” Aiden said, inclining his head politely before taking off.

There was a chill on the streets. Aiden wrapped his jacket around himself as he hurried back to the abandoned factory he squatted in. If he didn’t arrive in time to claim his usual spot, some nasty crackhead would probably take it.

He hurried along the sidewalk, nearly tripping over a magazine that the wind blew at his feet. He stopped, picking it up to throw away when he noticed a certain picture. A small group of people in rather silly outfits. ‘SUPER HEROES’ it said.

He raised a brow, slowing his pace as he skimmed through the article. It was about the six supers that had began to use their powers to watch over New York City. Aiden heard about them before he arrived there, but this was his first time actually seeing an image.

Their outfits ranged from a 50’s detective to tribal and spandex. Aiden shook his head as he closed the magazine, but he didn’t toss it, bringing it with him as he hurried to his temporary home.

The wind howled ominously through the structures of the empty building. Great halls once filled with massive machines now stood empty. The warehouse had a couple tents built by other squatters, and one had to be very quiet walking past them, as the paranoid and violent slept there.

Up a rusty staircase, through a door, were the offices, which was where the addicts shared bongs, straws and needles, where they exchanged r-rated services for a score, or overdosed on faulty product. Aiden made sure to sneak past them too, making his way up to an attic. An empty space above the warehouse that was probably never used until now.

Iron support beams and sheets of cardboard created little cubicle-like spaces that one could claim for the night. It was an unwritten first-come-first-served rule, but some people just usually had the same spot. Even Aiden. He’d found the perfect spot where one could sleep without being bothered by a draft, or the stench of someone burning trash downstairs. When the sun shone it didn’t turn into an oven, and when it rained you stayed dry. It was one of the few spots where you could have all of the above, and when Aiden finally got to it...it was already taken.

Philip Baron was the youngest son in a prestigious family of lawyers. He grew up never wanting for anything but his parents’ approval as he competed with his brothers for as much as five minutes of their attention. Unfortunately his talents didn’t match his parents’ tastes, and when he was about thirteen he realised it wasn’t worth the effort and decided to move out.

It took about a day for him to realise the rest of the world didn’t agree to that plan, as the police or social services tended to bring him straight back home. A year later he managed to avoid that simply by using a fake name. Social services didn’t seem to care enough and brought him to a home, which he easily escaped from and started living on the streets instead.

He didn’t have it too bad, surviving off of the cash he had stolen from his brothers’ piggy banks. He could’ve blown through it in a day, but instead with careful planning and cheap shopping he could afford about two meals a day for the next year or so.

That year, however, had passed, and he was beginning to run out of cash, so he picked up a newspaper and found a quiet place to scour the job vacancies page, when someone suddenly blocked his limited amount of light. He looked up, finding a young man, not much older than himself, seeming rather disappointed to find someone occupying that spot.

“Sorry pal,” he said, reaching a hand into his bag. He had a small knife in it, grabbing hold of it just in case.

The young man nodded.

“It’s okay, I’ll just uh...go somewhere else…”

“You’re a long way from home, aren’t you?” Philip asked, detecting a rather southern accent.

He looked the young man over. He didn’t seem very threatening.

“Kansas,” he just replied, “you?”

“Home turf I’m afraid,” Philip replied, “but um...we can share if you want? There’s plenty room and I don’t like to sleep alone in these places.”

“A-are you sure?”

“Yeah, take a seat Kansas. I’ll trust you if you trust me,” Philip said.

“You don’t trust me,” the young man replied, “you’d just rather keep your enemies closer. Also don’t call me Kansas.”

“Well pardon me, you didn’t give me a name~”

“You didn’t give me yours.”

They stared at each other for a long while, before Philip finally caved, though he did use his fake name. Not for any reason in particular, except that he simply liked the sound of it more.

“Phil Winter,” he said, offering a hand to shake.

The young man shook his hand, before moving to sit down next to him.

“Aiden Carter,” he said.

“What brings you to New York, Carter?” Phil asked.

“Freedom,” Aiden said.

Phil raised a brow, looking around.

“Some freedom that is…”

“I can’t explain it any better,” Aiden said, “what about you?”

“Similar, I suppose,” Phil said, “also just trying to prove a point to my parents that I don’t need to surpass any of my brothers in the exact same field that they all work in just to be considered successful.”

“I wish I had brothers,” Aiden said, “then I wouldn’t feel so bad about leaving home.”

“So an only child, are we? Did mommy get too smothering over her precious little treasure?”

Aiden didn’t answer right away as he thought of his mother, sobbing behind a closed door while a man in black robes chanted strange words and his very soul felt like it was burning—

“Hellooo? Did your mind go back to Kansas buddy?” Phil asked, to which Aiden blinked and looked over.

“Sorry, you were saying?” he asked, rubbing his eyes a bit.

“Dude you were way gone for a couple minutes, did I say something wrong?” Phil asked.

“Mh? Oh I must’ve dozed off for a bit,” Aiden said, smiling innocently before repeating himself: “You were saying?”

“Just wondering why you left Kansas and feel bad about it.”

“Let’s just say my parents wouldn’t harm a fly, but...we just didn’t get along,” Aiden said, rubbing his wrists a bit.

Phil couldn’t help but glance at them, noticing some old bruising.

“That must’ve sucked,” he said.

“Only on bad days,” Aiden said, “unfortunately there were many…”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Phil said, “but...you’re gonna be okay now. It might seem bad now, but...all you need to make a living is a job, right?”

“I tried that,” Aiden said, “but I’m either too young, too inexperienced or...not myself.”

“How so?” Phil asked.

“I...I can’t tell you,” Aiden said, “but if I ever do something weird or mean...it’s not me.”

Phil raised a brow.

“You bipolar?”

“Lord I wish it were that easy,” Aiden said, “don’t worry about it. In a couple days we’ll probably never see each other again.”

“Right,” Phil said, “that’s your right to privacy I guess. Anyway, you got any food on you?”

“No, sorry,” Aiden said.

“Don’t apologise, I don’t mind sharing,” Phil said, pulling out what seemed like a pre-cooked lasagne. “I know you’re supposed to heat this in an oven, but it’s just as good cold, and cheaper than those nasty sandwiches.”

He grabbed a package of plastic forks and gave one to Aiden, so they could share the cold pre-cooked meal. While they ate, he asked about the magazine Aiden was carrying, before enthusiastically raving about the heroes in the article.

“Yeah they say Rasputin is descendant from ancient giants, that’s why he’s so big! And Absolute Zero can not only lower the temperature, but also raise it! And this guy here, in the leather, he’s almost two hundred years old!”

“What? No way!” Aiden said, “what about the weird tribal dude? Carnivore?”

“It says right here, he gains power from consuming other creatures. He eats a piece of steak, he’s as strong and fast as a bull for a while.”

“That’s silly,” Aiden said, “so if he eats chicken he can lay eggs?”

“Pfft!” Phil snorted, laughing a bit, “I don’t know, but I know he can breathe under water after eating fish— I know, I know, you have to see it to believe it.”

“What about the guy in the hood? You can’t even see his face,” Aiden said.

“That’s Ranger, he can summon and control any animal!”

“It says here he doesn’t control them, just communicate with them,” Aiden said.

“Same difference,” Phil said, waving his hand dismissively, “anyway this older guy is Brain and he can read and control minds~ But he hasn’t been very active lately…”

“It says here frequent use of his powers gave him terrible migraines, so they only call him for big emergencies,” Aiden said, reading the text next to Brain’s image.

“I guess that makes sense,” Phil said, “who wrote this article? Did they interview them?”

“No, it says here all information was gathered from news reports and eyewitness accounts,” Aiden said, “I don’t think superheroes do interviews.”

“One day they will,” Phil said, “and I’ll be the one to do it~”

“You wanna be like a journalist?” Aiden asked.

“Yeah, you see, I have a plan,” Phil said, “I get a job, I find a guy to get an ID, I enrol myself in high school, followed by college, and everything will turn out just fine.”

“You need an ID to go to high school?” Aiden asked.

“Well, not necessarily I think,” Phil said, “just need to...not be connected to my parents in case social services comes. I had a fake ID that got me into a home, which are much easier to escape from since...well, nobody cares about orphans.”

“...some people care,” Aiden said, “I met this old lady a while back. She...she cared.”

“Oh that must’ve been nice,” Phil said.

“Yeah...it was,” Aiden said, “then she passed away.”

“Ouch,” Phil said, “recently?”

“Couple weeks back.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“It’s okay,” Aiden said, “part of me feels like I only talked to her because she gave me food and clothes.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” Phil asked, “you’re only talking to me because I was in the spot you wanted, then I offered you food.”

“You think I’m taking advantage of you?” Aiden asked.

“No, I’m just saying, sometimes you need a reason to talk to someone, then after talking...there’s friendship.”

“You’re...asking to be friends?” Aiden asked.

“I don’t see why not,” Phil said with a shrug, “you seem like a good guy, honest…”

“I’d like that,” Aiden said, “I...I could use a friend in this place.”

“I think we both can,” Phil said, smiling, before pointing at the magazine, “can I have that?”

“Sure,” Aiden said, “you seem to like it more than I do.”

He picked up the magazine and handed it to his new friend, right before they heard a rather loud rumble in the distance.

“That don’t sound like thunder,” Phil said.

Aiden stayed quiet as he heard another sound. Sirens, probably because of the rumble from earlier.

“I don’t think it was,” Aiden said, “oh well...I’m sure we can read about it in the morning paper. I wanna get some sleep in.”

“Fair,” Phil said, “good night, friend…”

And a friend he found.

Phil wasn’t joking about his plan, and he dragged Aiden in with him. They found a high school so overpopulated they didn’t quite care where their students came from.

Phil scraped together enough money so they could get a PO box in the right area, in which they received important mail. They easily faked random signatures since the school never met their parents either, and they kept a low enough profile to never be noticed.

They attended all their classes, they kept their grades up, they did their homework in the school library, and used the showers in the gym’s changing rooms to remain presentable.

They washed their clothes in a laundromat, using change the owner gave them when he took pity on them. He also let them pick new clothes from the lost and found.

But something never sat quite right with them. They never read about the mysterious rumble in the morning paper. Phil even tried to track down the site, but the streets had been wiped clean, and one building was conveniently under construction all of a sudden. And when he tried to peek inside, he nearly got arrested. Though, he soon forgot about the mystery when a new one occurred.

The odd behaviour Aiden warned him for when they first met began showing. He seemed agitated and scared, and any question Phil asked got his head bitten off, in a manner of speaking.

“I’m not attacking you, dude, but maybe it’s schizophrenia? Leaving that untreated can do whacky things to a person,” Phil suggested after they dove into an alley to get Aiden out of a crowd.

“It’s not schizophrenia!” Aiden growled.

“Are you sure—”

“I’ve been tested for everything in the book since I was three years old Phil!” Aiden yelled, “anything you can think of now, that’s not it!”

“Then what is wrong with you?!” Phil asked, “or should I ask who?”

“What did you say?” Aiden hissed.

“You talk in your sleep, you know?” Phil said, “who is Amon?”

“No one,” Aiden quickly said, rubbing his eyes as he could feel a migraine coming up, “he’s not real.”

“Denying a problem isn’t going to make it go away, dude,” Phil said, “don’t you trust me? Talk to me…”

Aiden pulled his hands through his hair, turning away from Phil, before he softly spoke up.

“A-Amon is...i-it’s me, I think…”

“....what?” Phil said.

“I-I don’t fully understand either,” Aiden admitted, “but...th-there’s this voice in my head and he’s been making me do terrible things since I was young.”

“Jeez, like a split personality?” Phil asked.

“No...n-no I don’t think so,” Aiden said, “I...they tested me for that too.”

“Did they ever find out what it was?” Phil asked.

“...a demon,” Aiden softly said, “after what feels like millions of tests...Pa decided to...ask the church for help.”

“Is this story going where I think it’s going?” Phil asked, looking a little pale.

“It worked at first,” Aiden said, “the voice would go, and the things he made me do...but he always came back stronger. The church’s treatment, as they called it, got more intense, more painful...I just had to get away before he would make me hurt someone I care about.”

“And...how are you doing now?” Phil asked, “is he...telling you to do bad things?”

“Not really,” Aiden said, “but I have the strongest urge to stab you right now.”

“Oookay, well just hand me your bag just to be safe, I know you keep a knife in there,” Phil said.

“No, I...I just need to be alone for a bit,” Aiden said, “I don’t want to hurt you…”

“I’d rather you hurt me, than any randos out there,” Phil said, pointing at the crowded streets, “so take a deep breath, please ignore that urge of yours, and...whatever you need I’m here for you, alright?”

“But—”

“No buts, buddy, I got you,” Phil said, “what else are friends for? Now come on, let’s get you someplace quiet...do you know any place quiet?”

“...no,” Aiden said.

“Okay, just sit down right here then, take a deep breath—”

“I’m not giving birth, Phil!”

“Don’t snap at me or I’ll snap back, so sit your ass down!”

“Fine!” Aiden sighed as he sat down on the ground, leaning his back against the wall.

Phil decided to give him a moment, not saying anything unless his friend did. After a good few minutes, Aiden nodded.

“It’s getting less…” he softly said.

“That’s good,” Phil said, “just let me know when you good, okay?”

“Mhm...thank you, Phil,” Aiden said, “sorry...if I scared you.”

“It’s okay,” Phil said, “we all have our demons— I heard that as soon as I said it.”

“It’s okay,” Aiden said, “it’s actually my favourite expression...makes me feel less alone.”

“That makes sense,” Phil said, “come on, let’s find a place to sleep, you look exhausted.”

Aiden nodded, letting Phil help him up before they tried to get in with one of the shelters.

As night fell over the city, heroes rose up to watch over her. Though they left petty crime for what it was for now, as they had other things to worry about. They gathered in a coffee shop, just after it closed, the owner actually being one of them.

William Ecker, better known as Brain to the rest of the city, seemed like just a regular middle-aged man trying to keep his business afloat. But in reality he was one of the most powerful supers currently on the planet, able to monitor the thoughts of everyone in the city if he wanted to, but he could hardly stand it, so he only did so if he really had to. And if he wasn’t doing that, he was just trying to make ends meet. Business wasn’t going too well, but he had a fresh pot of coffee for his closest friends, free of charge.

The first one to arrive, was his oldest friend, literally. Douglas Slade, no alias, was famous for being the oldest man on the planet, yet he barely looked a day older than twenty-five. They hadn’t made the national news yet, but it was only a matter of time. Until then, local citizens knew something was about to go down when they spotted the old young man. But now, he was just looking over some notes and old files while smoking a pipe.

“Could you put that out? You’re poisoning the air here,” Brain said while he poured his coffee.

“It helps me think, lad,” Slade replied.

“That’s what I told my wife, and you know how that ended. Put it out. Before Ranger gets here.”

“Why him specifically?” Slade asked, though he did use one of the empty cups to douse his pipe.

“He’s got some news you might wanna hear,” Brain just said, pouring his coffee before taking the remains of his pipe away.

Sure enough, at that moment a rather excited young man burst in. His dark complexion helped hide his face in the shade of his hood, which he threw off as he approached Slade’s seat.

“You’re not going to believe this, old man!” he said.

“I can’t believe you just called me old,” Slade said calmly, “have a seat, take a deep breath, tell your story.”

“So you know that woman we saved from the explosion in her lab?” Ranger asked, ignoring Slade’s request and diving straight into the telling part.

“Who miraculously had no injuries, what about her?” Slade asked, “she a super?”

“No, but also yes,” Ranger said.

“Don’t talk nonsense, lad, get to the point,” Slade said, sounding both patient yet very impatient.

Ranger sat down across from him, lowering his voice a bit.

“She wasn’t a super before the explosion…”

“You’re saying...the explosion gave her powers?” Slade asked.

“Yeah, I mean, she had all kinds of chemicals—”

“Lad, this isn’t a movie. Getting random chemicals thrown over you won’t give you powers. It’s a genetic thing.”

“Then how come she isn’t on your list?” Ranger asked, tapping the files Slade had been looking over.

“I’ve been present for the birth of many supernatural children, but not all of them,” Slade calmly explained, “I didn’t deliver you yet here we are, aren’t we?”

“Okay then,” Ranger said, “she told me she didn’t show any powers during puberty either. Explain that.”

“Some people are late bloomers,” Slade said, “like William and Devin.”

“I still think you should talk to her, man,” Ranger said.

Slade sighed.

“Arite, if that puts you at ease...I’ll talk to her.”

“Can I come with?”

“No.”

“But—”

“You have your area to watch over, I’ve got mine,” Slade explained, tapping his files again.

“It’s odd, isn’t it?” Brain said as he joined them with a coffee for Ranger.

“Thanks. What is?” Ranger asked.

“All this time we’re pretty much alone, then all of a sudden left and right kids are showing up with powers?” Brain said.

“Not just the kids, the parents too,” Slade added, “some mothers find me to ask about giving birth to a super since they, or the father, or sometimes even both have some form of powers or another.”

“What powers do the kids show?” Ranger asked curiously.

“I dunno,” Slade said, “besides some flickering lights during the birth, there’s usually not much to go off from, and they don’t show any powers until puberty when hormones start flying everywhere. Although there was a baby that had my equipment flying everywhere and unfortunately...the mother took all the hits before it stopped.”

“Ouch,” Ranger said.

“Yeah,” Slade slowly said, “it takes a lot to make a man cry, but that sure did it...speaking of children, William, has your lad Hamish been showing any powers yet?”

“Besides the cracks in the very fabric of reality when he was born?” Brain asked, “no. But his mom’s been trying to turn him against me.”

“I told you she wasn’t the one for you,” Slade said, “the way she made the wedding all about her, like you were just an accessory.”

“It’s been three years, you can stop telling me ‘I told you so’ thanks,” Brain grumbled.

“He didn’t say it yet?” Ranger said.

“But he was thinking it,” Brain said, tapping his own head while Slade smirked a bit.

“Arite, are Zoe and Devin going to show up today?” he asked.

“Not that I can hear right now,” Brain said, “and I’m not gonna scan for ya, I’ve had a long day.”

“Oh Zoe had a date,” Ranger said, “but we can call her for emergencies.”

“Let’s hope there aren’t any, she deserves a night off,” Brain said, “what about Rasputin? I can’t understand his thoughts even if I could hear them.”

“You can call him if you need him,” Slade said, “otherwise try searching the pubs.”

He began packing up his files, since they didn’t quite need him to plan their nights anymore, and he had other business to take care of than to run around as decoy or human shield.

You see, Slade wasn’t just historically old, he also had the regenerative ability of a hologram. Any cut, bruise or broken bone could heal in an instant. More complicated injuries took more time, but in the end he would always get back up.

Thanks to this, he had the tendency to catch bullets for his team, which they had grown so accustomed to, if they had no other means to defend themselves they tended to pull Slade in front of them. Not that he minded, but he would like to spend an evening without pain for a change.

“Arite, don’t burn the city down tonight,” he said, “I’ll try to contact the scientist from that lab. If she has developed powers due to the explosion, or anything before that, she’ll need guidance above all.”

“Don’t freak out if you see extra pigeons, I sent them on recon,” Ranger said.

“So long as they don’t shit on me I can handle pigeons,” Slade said, “also...good thinking, lad. You’ve really grown to be a good hero.”

“Thanks,” Ranger said, seeming genuinely happy at the random compliment.

Slade smiled, thanked Brain for the coffee and headed off.

However, he was never able to speak to the scientist, for only a week later, five of the six heroes disappeared. Only Ranger remained to pick up the slack, but he refused to answer questions about where the others were, and avoided the media like the plague.

He had big shoes to fill, and the city was too big for one hero to look after. Realising this, a movement started, and new heroes rose up left and right to help protect the city.

To prevent unchecked vigilantism, the mayor set up a special police force; a number of detectives and officers in every precinct whose primary concern was anything to do with supers. They all belonged to their own precinct, but officially they were the 124th.

Their assigned commanding officer was a former detective at a relatively small precinct, but she turned out to be perfect for the role with a strict but fair mandate for her officers and detectives. She also insisted on cooperation and open communication with supers, making them an important link in crime fighting and other moments of crisis, and further popularising the job of super hero.

However, where there is good, there is evil, and where there are many heroes, a villain will show up sooner or later. And in the span of only five years, both super heroes and super villains were a common occurrence in the Big Apple.

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varianandhugodonotgetrawed · 9 months ago

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I did a thing

Thanks to @shelobussy for giving me the idea for this little one shot! You didn't think I was serious, did you? But I was, oh, I was.

Desc: Hugo and Varian run into a problem while helping at VBS (vacation Bible school for those unfamiliar. It's literally summer camp but Christian). Warning for minor cursing, past homophobia.

___________________________________

"And... it's locked." Hugo sighed and slid down the door of the closet. "Who designed this thing? Why would a door auto-lock when you close it?"

"Why wouldn't it?" Varian had already sat down. "If you hadn't dropped the key we would be out of here."

"You're always blaming me for stuff. This isn't even the right closet! This is the damn communion supply closet, and I told you the cleaning supplies were down the hall, but no, Heaven forbid I be right."

"I got turned around! Half the hallways out of the sanctuary look the same anyway." At least they wouldn't starve, though Varian might rather starve than subsist on grape juice and crackers that looked and tasted like Styrofoam. And would it be heretical to eat and drink communion elements outside of the ceremony? Surely God would understand, like that story with David and the sacred bread.

"Uh, earth to Freckles," Hugo's annoying voice cut through Varian's thoughts. "How are we gonna get out of here? The VBS has, like, four chaperones for the middle schoolers including us, we need to get out."

"Can't you pick locks, Beanpole?" Varian had never seen Hugo lockpick, but he looked like the type to know how.

With his long undercut blond hair, piercings, alternative clothing style, and flamboyantly gay demeanor, Hugo wasn't really the sort of person Varian would expect to be a youth group leader, but West Ingvarr Methodist Church prided itself on diversity and inclusion. Varian couldn't help but think, though, that even if it wasn't a sin, Hugo didn't need to make being queer his whole personality. Varian certainly managed not to.

"I can't pick this kind of lock. I don't know the inside mechanisms of the automatic doors. And I'll thank you not to use that tone when asking. I don't why you think you're better than me-"

"I don't think I'm better than you-" Varian began.

Hugo snorted. "Could've fooled me. Anyways, I could maybe figure out how to disassemble the lock, but I don't think Pastor Robin would be very happy with me."

"So we're stuck here," Varian groaned.

"Until someone comes along and sees the key on the ground, yes. Don't look at me like that, Freckles, I'm not pleased about it either. You're stuck in a closet with someone you hate, I'm stuck with someone who hates me."

"I don't hate you. You're annoying as- as heck, and loud, and honestly I don't think you should curse around the kids-"

"They're middle and high schoolers, they've heard the word 'shit' before. Besides, I know what it is. You don't like the way I dress, the way I talk, you don't like when I talk about my homosexuality-" Hugo said the last word like he was an old man deeply offended by it.

Varian rolled his eyes. "That's not it. If it makes you feel better, I'm literally bisexual. I just don't think you need to talk about it as much as you do-"

"Freckles, what would your life be like if you had had an openly queer leader in the church when you were those kid's age? Because I'll tell you right now, mine would have been a hell of a lot better. You can keep your internalized homophobia to yourself, but I'm going to be who I am. And I'm going to be for those kids what I needed." Hugo finished and turned his head away, arms crossed.

Varian couldn't think of a thing to say. He tried not to think about it much, now that he was out of Old Corona, and two years into college, but he remembered growing up in a church very different from West Ingvarr. Forget it being unsafe to be queer, Varian had dyed a streak of his hair blue when he was fourteen and been looked at like he was the devil's child into he finally broke and dyed it black again. Eventually, fifteen-year-old Varian had decided he couldn't take it anymore, and ran away. It'd quickly gone wrong, and he'd fallen in with a very bad crowd before his father found him, and promised they would move away after Varian tearfully confessed the reason for his rebellion.

All that to say, Hugo was right. Varian cringed thinking it. But Varian had been unfair in his judgment of him, and it was the right thing to do to admit that.

"I'm... sorry." Varian finally said. Hugo didn't turn his head, but his eyes flicked over and his eyebrows rose slightly. "I think... I let my biases color how I judged you, and that was... unfair and not very 'Good Christian' of me. I... really don't hate you, Hugo."

Hugo turned his head, and Varian could see him holding back a smile. "Thanks for the self-awareness. I forgive you, I guess."

Varian scoffed. "Thanks, 'I guess'."

"Well," Hugo began, obnoxious grin on his face, before pausing. "I think I hear footsteps! HEY? IS ANYONE THERE?" He yelled, forcing Varian to cover his ears.

"Yes, ominous voice? Wait. Hugo, is that you?"

"Yep!" He replied. "Varian, we're in luck! Okay, Yong, there's a key on the ground. I need you to slide it under the door, alright?"

"I don't see a- oh! There you go!" A second later, the bronze key appeared by the door. Varian and Hugo stood up, and unlocked the door.

"Feels good to be free!" Hugo declared, stretching.

"We were only in there for twenty minutes," Varian commented, grinning.

"Yeah, but twenty minutes stuck with you? Basically twenty years."

"Shut up, Beanpole," Varian pretended to punch Hugo's arm. Maybe he wasn't so bad after all.

#fics that i am the sole audience for #vat7k #fanfic #varigo #fanfiction #varian #tts varian #varian tangled #hugo vat7k

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godsdaughter3 · 2 months ago

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Yap Session 2: Spiritual Warfare/Demonic Attacks.

!!!I AM NOT TRYING TO FORCE ANYTHING ONTO YOU PLEASE SCROLL IF YOU FEEL UNCOMFORTABLE!!!

I, like all Christian's have gone through Spiritual Warfare. It's hard to identify Spiritual Warfare but once you do, you know how to fight it, by using the Armour of God. If you don't know what that is I got you. I am not a pastor, just a girl who loves the Lord and wants to help others by telling them what I know.

Belt of truth: Sets the believer apart from the world and protects them from lies

Breastplate of righteousness: Protects the heart from Satan's accusations

Shoes of the gospel of peace: Allows believers to share God with others and to know that God loves them

Shield of faith: Protects believers from the devil's attacks

Helmet of salvation: Protects the mind from the devil's doubt

Sword of the Spirit: The Word of God, which believers can use to fight off the devil and his temptations (Ephesians 6:14-17)

My church had a youth service on 10/5/24 man, I tell you the Holy Spirit MOVED. My friend (a fellow youth member) preached about the full armour of God. His explanation of it really opened my eyes and helped me realize that the reason that the devil attacks me so much is because I don't have the full armour of God on, and the devil knows that I am destined for great things through Christ and he was going to stop that in any way that he can.

Spiritual warfare is exhausting especially when you don't know it's happening. When I was going through spiritual warfare I felt drained, I didn't want to get out of bed, I was tired, unable to focus on schoolwork, sleeping through church, overthinking, panic attacks, crying for no reason and so much more. One thing that I remember specifically was that the devil was using to bring me back down is music. I love music, when I was in the world I was hooked to sexual music such as, The Weeknd, Chase Atlantic, Plvtinum, Billie Eilish, and much, much more. The devil was trying to tell me that I needed to listen to them 'only for the melody' no, cause if I listened to their music, I would've payed attention to the lyrics and fallen into sexual temptation. Music has power over you, your mind, your soul. So, I replaced them with Christian artists that I absolutely love. (If you want I'll send you a list of Christian arstists that you should try out, just send me a dm ♡). Now I'm going to tell you what I used to help me get through the spiritual attack in just five steps. Step one: Identify the lie.

Genesis 3:2-4 "The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ” “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman." This verse is talking about Eve, Eve was under a spiritual attack from the lie that the serpent (the devil) gave her, that's why she ate the fruit. Then there was the fall of humanity.

Now in John 8:31-32 says, "To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (Words in red because it was Jesus speaking). Lies, lead to bondage. For example, let's take someone who's addicted to porn. Porn would be the fruit, the lie could be, 'I'm lonely and unloved, so I need a false excerpt of what love is'. This is just an example, I'm not saying that if someone is addicted to porn they're demon possessed, no. When you do this, keep in mind that the lie could be hidden, so take your time. One quote that I love says, "The strongholds in our lives are the lies we believe."

Step two: Repent from the lie.

Psalm 51:7-12 "Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me." This is a prayer that King David prayed to God after he slept with Bathsheba and killed her husband. See, David just commited adultery and murder. Two things that God hates, now he was asking God to make him white as snow. And guess what? God will always do that. Now that doesn't mean, sin whenever repent later, it doesn't work like that. You need to feel conviction and genuine regret.

Step three: Stand against the lie. Ephesians 6:10-12 "Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." Be ready for attacks by putting on the full amour of God cause if you do, then satan cannot touch you.

James 4:7-8 "Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded." Submit and run to God and He will help you.

Matthew 16:22-23 Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” Jesus turned and said to Peter “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” In this passage Jesus was telling His disicples about how He was going to get crucified and reserect on the 3rd day. Then Peter pulled Him aside to tell Him it was never going to happen. Essentially what Jesus was doing here was rebuking the devil for trying to stop what God had planned for Him. You can directly quote Jesus here when the devil tries to attack you.

Step four: Replace the lie with truth.

Matthew 12:43-45 “When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.” Unfortunately, when you finally get free from a spiritual attack demons will come back with stronger ones so that you end up in a worse state then what you were before.

Galatians 5:16-17 "So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want." Your flesh has the power to make you do things that might not want to do, like listening to music that you're not supposed to listen too, in my case. Here are some emotions that can be replaced with fruits of the Spirit. ~Anxiety, replace it with peace. ~Depression, replace it with joy. ~Hate, replace it with love. ~ Quick temper, replace it with patience. ~Selfishness, replace it with kindness ~Evil thoughts, replace them with good ones. ~Fear, replace it with faith. ~Harshness, replace it with gentleness. ~Fleshly desires, replace it with self control. ~Shame, replace it with honor. Step five: Walk in truth. Psalm 86:11-13 "Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify your name forever. For great is your love toward me; you have delivered me from the depths, from the realm of the dead." The truth of God is stronger than any lie the devil wants to tell you.

Never forget to pray, remember that being a Christian in this world is single-handely the hardest thing you could ever do in this world. Remember that God set you free, you have access to freedom today because, Jesus loves you. ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

#spiritual warfare #spiritual warrior #jesus loves you #christianity #christian #christian faith #faith over fear #walk by faith #faith the size of a mustard seed #beauty #god is good #god is real #god is kind #truth will set you free #god's daughter yaps!#god's daughter yaps !‎ ♡₊˚ 🦢・₊✧

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enby-wrights · 2 years ago

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(warning i do not understand how tumblr works i have been on here for like two months and gathered absolutely nothing so i apologize if i did something wrong with like tags and the like? also i think i kind of sound like a youth pastor towards the end of this but it’s okay i do what i want. anyways)

greetings marble hornets fanbase i just have some (long) thoughts to share on tim and alex :) i have some Mental Health Hot Takes that are not worded well because i wrote this at one in the morning but feel free to read anyways. also i know that the marble hornets mental illness allegory conversation has been done to death but please let me throw in my two cents i am just a little guy and i even said please

in all my six long years traversing the Deep Dark Depths of the marble hornets fanbase, i’ve never been all that interested in exploring any kind of close relationship between alex and tim within the story-- i think 2006 alex comes off as a bit desperate and overbearing, and i think that would have made 2006 tim a little too anxious to attempt to get close to him. it’s just interesting to think that they wouldn’t quite fit together at the only point in their lives where they would have had the chance.

their position in the overall story as narrative foils to one another, however........... now that’s a tasty character dynamic if i do say so myself :) although essentially all of season three revolves around the conflicts between people as they react to the mental illness metaphor operator in their own Fun And Unique ways, alex and tim are undoubtedly the poster children of this concept. both of them begin dealing with almost identical issues, and their reactions to these issues shape their individual narratives in completely opposite directions. i was thinking about it while listening to the podcast great, more tapes today (which if you haven’t listened to it i totally recommend it even though it has been dead for a year) and it’s kind of a really great allegory for the ways in which people’s reactions to experiences with mental illness can either make or break our recovery. as someone who has intentionally made my own recovery worse on multiple occasions out of general manic faux edginess, the parallels kind of hit me really hard

i’m gonna highlight the differences between alex and tim’s reactions to the mental illness metaphor operator using a bullet point list because i’m autistic and all of my thoughts occur in bullet point lists actually

during the filming of alex kralie’s marble hornets, as their symptoms are both beginning to set in, we see alex alone incredibly often. tim, on the other hand, is always seen surrounded by other people (this also comes down to the contexts in which they were filming but whatever it’s artistic framing or something idk)

tim seeks medical attention. duh. i think it’s probably pretty safe to assume that alex did not seek any sort of medical attention for his mental health issues leading up to all that murder, otherwise there maybe wouldn’t have been murder

aside from seeking medical help, we also see tim seeking help (or at least visibility) from his peers. entry #66 is just tim yelling at jay about how scared he is. and even if jay isn’t really much help, he can at least see where tim is coming from in the future and has the opportunity to act accordingly (he does not take this opportunity but hey at least it’s there. as alex’s condition worsens, all we see is him lying to his loved ones about what’s going on. which is bad.

alex constantly walks in anger and fear. tim doesn’t stifle his emotions (i.e. him beating the shit out of jay), but he also acts logically and doesn’t dwell on them for too long

by season three alex is just fucking living all alone in the woods (which if you didn’t know is the opposite of seeking help)!! not only is he running around in an echo chamber but he chose to bring a gun into the echo chamber with him which is a really great way to become more mentally ill. tim on the other hand has a job, and a life, and people in his life who at least care enough about him to call him and see if he’ll be at work on time. he keeps busy and he interacts with the world around him and even when he’s having to constantly check in with his doctor to make sure he stays okay he is out and about and being a person

and it’s a weird thing to think about because when i’m at my worst psychologically i tend to bring a (METAPHORICAL) gun into my own echo chamber and sulk around in there until i start to believe some pretty shitty things about the world around me

but on the few occasions where i do manage to reach for help and respect my feelings while still existing outside myself it’s a miraculous feeling. i get better. and then i get worse again, because mental illness is a bitch, but it gets easier and easier to reach out every time.

and i think that’s part of the reason why alex gets eaten up by the idea of the operator while tim doesn’t. tim has experience with getting help, and he’s clearly developed a skill for taking care of himself. he just got lucky that his first time dealing with a mental health crisis wasn’t as fucked up as alex’s.

anways tldr alex kralie is my new example for what not to do in my mental health recovery journey also he’s a bitch

(ps i don’t understand how i got to the end of this rant without mentioning masky a single time but i promise he fits into the mental illness allegory somewhere probably maybe)

#marble hornets #alex kralie #tim wright

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ifishouldvanish · 1 year ago

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pondering alucard as a happy middle ground between olrox and mizrak. like human enough for both but vampiric enough too

Oh for real anon! I mentioned it in an earlier reply but like... I think meeting Alucard will be some kind of turning point for Mizrak, that helps him to better open his eyes about what vampires are and who they can be, the multitudes they can hold 🥺

I think it was easy for him to write off Olrox because Olrox is admittedly a little sus from his perspective: Beautiful and charismatic stranger shows up out of the blue knowing way more information than he should, gets him straight into bed, and starts poking holes in everything he understands about the situation with no clear motive? And just when Mizrak starts to trust him, he withdraws from the biggest fight of their lives like, "yeah no, sorry, I can't actually help here"

But then Alucard shows up at the eleventh hour for the express purpose of helping them fight said battle, and is met with Richter's ringing endorsement of basically like, "wow!! You mean the bedtime stories my family would tell me about the friendly vampire who once helped our ancestors save the world were true??!! 🤯" ...which obviously paints a vastly more flattering picture.

The thing is, I don't think Mizrak needed Olrox to win the battle for them. He wanted to see him try. Mizrak is prepared to die fighting, and—*youth pastor voice*—you know who else goes into a fight and doesn't give up no matter how badly he's getting his ass beat? Adrian Fahrenheit Ţepeş, that's who!!!!

Obviously as the audience we understand there's more to Olrox's insistence that he's not strong enough. But to Mizrak it looks like cowardice, like he's protecting his own ass and leaving them to die. It's a confirmation of all the biases he holds about vampires: that they're selfish, incapable of caring about others, etc.

So imagine the whiplash of another vampire he's never even met or heard of showing up moments later to kick some ass because it's just the right thing to do!!! Hoo boy, like that changes EVERYTHING!!! 🫨

All this to say: 100%. I can totally see Mizrak befriending Alucard and that serving as a sort of stepping stone for reconciling things with Olrox. Changing his impression of "he left us to die because he's a vampire and has no soul" to "he fled from the fight because he was vulnerable and made a strategic judgement call"

#castlevania nocturne #mizrak #olrox #alucard #adrian tepes #mizrox

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justinspoliticalcorner · 1 month ago

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Darrell Lucus at Loud, Liberal, Christian:

For the better part of this year, one of the biggest stories that wasn’t related to the presidential election was the downfall of one of America’s most prominent pastors, Robert Morris. In case you missed it, Morris, founding pastor of one of America’s most influential churches, Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas—a suburb of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex—fell fast and fell hard this past summer when he was exposed as a child predator. In 1984, when Morris was an up-and-coming youth evangelist, he began grooming and molesting then 12-year-old Cindy Clemishire at her home in Hominy, Oklahoma—an outer suburb of Tulsa. It proved to be the start of a long nightmare for Cindy. While the abuse only ended four years later, Morris’ efforts to cover up his depravity continued for another four decades. Through it all, he told anyone who would listen that he had merely had “moral failure” with ‘a young lady.” As this story went, he was cleared to return to ministry by his elders at Shady Grove Church, a charismatic megachurch in another Metroplex suburb, Grand Prairie. He kept up this line when he founded Gateway in 2000; Gateway absorbed Shady Grove in 2015.

Morris’ deceit finally caught up with him in June after Clemishire finally found someone willing to listen to her—Dee Parsons of Wartburg Watch. Morris tried to spin the same lies to the general public that he’d spun to those close to him for four decades When it became apparent that wasn’t going to fly, he resigned. Morris would have had us believe that he had merely sinned. But any right-thinking person knows that this wasn’t a sin. On the weekend before Election Day, Gateway formally acknowledged what any right-thinking person following this story has known—it was a crime. Gateway also revealed that Morris and those who helped cover up his deceit at Gateway are now the subjects of a very active criminal investigation. And now, this writer can exclusively report who is leading said investigation.

[...] We should want this investigation to take time. After all, we cannot afford to have a repeat of the Bill Cosby case. Even though it was clear beyond any doubt that he was a rapist, Cosby was allowed to walk free because prosecutors in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, were either too lazy or too blinded by headlines to do the actual work necessary to make sure his 2018 conviction stuck. Instead, they relied almost entirely on evidence gleaned from testimony in a civil suit—a Fifth Amendment violation that could not be countenanced, even though Cosby was manifestly guilty. Even without that to consider, Morris theoretically has the resources to fight a conviction, so it’s incumbent upon Drummond to ensure there’s enough evidence to ensure any appeal is a fool’s errand. I confess, I hope this doesn’t end the way Bakker’s trial ended. He would still be in prison today if a judge hadn’t gotten diarrhea of the mouth at sentencing. When I first found out that Morris was indeed the target of an investigation, I couldn’t help but think of a number of friends who haven’t set foot in a church building in ages because so many churches turn a blind eye to child sexual abuse. This investigation is as much for them as it is for Cindy and other victims of sexual abuse in the church. It is long past time that someone was not only willing to listen, but make the effort to see that justice is done.

Darrell Lucus has the scoop on scandal-ridden sexual abusing “pastor” Robert Morris facing a criminal investigation in Oklahoma.

#Robert Morris #Oklahoma #Gentner Drummond #Cindy Clemishire #Hominy Oklahoma #Gateway Church #Robert Morris Child Sex Abuse Scandal #Boz Tchividijian

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whositmcwhatsit · 2 years ago

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Stay the Same

A/N: I am so close to the wire with this one! Angsty smut written for last week's prompt: army Elvis (We're sort of army-adjacent because I'm a rule bender.)

As always, shout out to my people: @thatbanditqueen, @be-my-ally, @ellie-24, @missmaywemeetagain, @from-memphis-with-love, @vintageshanny for love, support, encouragement and deep, depraved horniness.

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“I need you, darlin’. You don’t understand. I need you somethin’ awful.”

It played over and over in Kitty’s head as she sped along the dark highway, praying that none of the wildlife she glimpsed skittering about at the edge of the road decided to do a suicide run in front of her car. She could explain away taking the car, an emergency maybe, a sick friend or someone who was having trouble at home. Lots of her friends were getting married right now, and there were always dramas in the early days. It was plausible. What she wouldn’t be able to explain to her mother was why her station wagon had an armadillo smushed in the fender; not many of them wandering around their suburban streets.

Oh Lord, what was she doing? She lifted her foot off the gas slightly and started to look for a place to safely pull in. She was not a flighty, foolish kind of girl. Ask anyone who knew her and they would tell you that Kitty Cowan was not the spontaneous type. For a girl who graduated early so that she could travel around performing in a country and western duo with her brother, Kitty had a surprisingly level head on her shoulders. Or she used to, until a certain Hillbilly Cat had wandered onto their roadshow with his Blue Moon Boys and promptly melted the sense right out of her mind.

Back then, all he’d have to do was stare at her with those shy, hooded eyes and flutter those long, thick lashes and she would be doing his laundry and pressing his shirts like she was a combination laundress/housewife. Her brother Chick, knowing how she pitched a fit when their mama asked her to help out with chores at home, would gawp at her like she had gone and sold her brain for a dime, but all Kitty needed was that lopsided grin and the press of Elvis’ soft lips against her cheek when she handed over the clean, pressed clothes and it seemed worth it. More, she felt like she had done something important for someone who was worth it.

Only, all that craziness had ended a couple of years before when Elvis had moved up to the big leagues and Chick and Kitty, having grown bored of the same old shows at the same old places, decided to stash their guitars in the garage and settle down for a real, normal life. There was never a question that they could follow him, Elvis paved his own pathway through the wilderness and none of them were quite talented enough to follow it.

Which was fine, Chick had got a job at a radio station, putting that gift of the gab to good use, and he was doing well at it, travelling around again as an emcee for the new rock n roll shows that had burst onto the scene, feeding off the teenage excitement. Sometimes he’d run across Elvis and get to spend time shooting the breeze backstage.

‘He’s just the same,’ he’d report back to Kitty, ‘His performance has gotten real smooth, but off stage he’s still the same old unassuming fellow. Everyone I talk to can’t say enough about him.’

It seemed like no one could say enough about him. Kitty couldn’t read a newspaper without an article about how that shy, charming boy was ruining the youth of America. She often thought about him quietly playing gospel songs on the piano between shows when she read that pastors were denouncing him as Satan in sideburns from their pulpits. When she saw him on television, jiggling and gyrating right there on the screen, she could still see the playful, bashful boy she knew, but there was something else now, something shiny twinkling in his eyes that she didn’t think had been there before. She wondered if that was what had everyone so flustered and furious about him.

Now that dangerous threat, that affront to polite society, was headed to the Army. Chick had spent night after night for the past few weeks fielding calls to the radio station from wailing girls calling to protest their heart throb being stolen by Uncle Sam and also requesting his new single. Chick said he couldn’t work out if it was career suicide or promotional genius, because everything Elvis released was shooting up the charts. And Kitty hadn’t thought much about it at all until the phone rang at home and Chick, up in Memphis for a series of dances, was shouting down the line saying that he had someone with him that wanted to speak to her.

“Hi Kitty Cat? You there?” Kitty’s stomach did a strange loop de loop that had her dinner almost returning the way it came. She recognised the voice immediately, even though it was louder than normal, much louder, trying to be heard over the racket in the background.

“Elvis? Is that you?”

“Yeah, it’s me, darlin’. You forgotten me already, huh?”

“No, no, of course not. Only I can hardly hear you! Where are you?” She heard fumbling and Elvis’ voice off in the distance, followed by some loud guffaws, then a thumping noise. When he got back on the line, it was quiet in the background.

“Had to shut myself in the dang closet,” he informed her, chuckling quietly. “Hi, hi Kitty honey, how are you? It’s been a hundred years. Where are you?” Kitty frowned at the receiver.

“You called me at my house, Elvis.”

“I know,” he laughed in that silly, self-conscious way he had. “I meant, why ain’t you here? Why ain’t you here where I need you, baby?”

Kitty didn’t know quite what to say. She cradled the receiver, feeling how cool the plastic was against her rapidly heating cheek.

“Hey, you still there? Damn stupid-ass phone, I-“

“I’m still here,” she murmured, touching her face, her hair and the back of her neck like she was reminding herself that she had a physical, material body that prevented her from floating down the telephone line that she wanted to.

“Oh, huh, thought I lost ya. You can come, can’t you, honey? You know they’re sending me away soon and I might not have another chance to see you before I go.” He’d had the last two years, a cool, doubtful voice in her head pointed out and she nodded at it before she disregarded it completely.

“Come where? Where are you?”

“Oh, right now? Right now we’re at Hotel Chisca, helpin’ out my pal Dewey on his, uh, show. Red, Hot and Blue, you know it?”

“Yes, I’m aware of Dewey Phillips and his show.” She wondered if he thought she had stopped existing the minute he had left her behind. Perhaps he thought she had been packed away in a closet with her guitar.

“How soon can you get here, darlin’?”

“Tonight? Elvis, I-”

“Now, I don’t wanna hear that you can’t make it. My days are numbered, honey. I tell ya, I just wanna see as many folks as I can before- before it’s all over.” He went hoarse at the end like it choked him up to even say it, and her heart panged for him. In her head she was already imagining herself running upstairs to change and sneaking her mother’s keys from her purse.

“Will you still be there?” she asked finally. “At the Hotel Chisca, by the time I get there?”

“I’ll wait all night if I have to. I need you, darlin’. You don’t understand. I need you somethin’ awful.”

After several aborted u-turns and a whole two-way argument with herself as she hit downtown, Kitty pulled into the parking lot for the hotel. She had been listening to Red, Hot and Blue on the way and Dewey had been hyping up his listeners with the news that Elvis was haunting the corridors and was even choosing some of the records he was playing, so she wasn’t surprised to find the lobby of the hotel packed with kids. Luckily, she spotted Chick having a laugh and a joke with some of the girls up on the mezzanine floor where WHBQ had its offices and booths and she called to him, beckoning with her arm as much as her little black bolero jacket would allow. His eyes widened and he hurried over.

“Kit, what in God’s name, girl?” He waved to the security guard, letting him know that Kitty could be allowed through. “Do Mama and Pop know you’re out this late by yourself?”

“I’m a grown woman, Charles,” she informed him. “And of course they don’t.” She felt bubbles of anticipation in her belly as Chick opened the door into the corridor and revealed a lively group laughing and talking over each other. At the edge of the group, but somehow still seemingly the focus, was an unmistakable tall, dark-haired boy.

“Well, folks, look what the cat drug in,” said Chick in his charming brotherly way.

Leaning against the wall, laughing and about to take a sip of Pepsi from the bottle in his hand, Elvis glanced over his shoulder and straightened sharply. The look on his face would have been comical if it hadn’t crushed Kitty so completely. He looked shocked, like he had not been in the slightest bit serious when he had begged her to come, like he had not thought her stupid enough to rush off into the night the minute he asked. Her face burnt with embarrassment and she leant back against Chick’s hand that was between her shoulder blades, trying to retreat.

As her vision fractured and blurred under the sting of mortification, Elvis shoved his bottle into his cousin Gene’s chest and strode towards her, giving Chick’s shoulder a squeeze even as he was pushing him away. She exhaled sharply when Elvis crashed into her and squeezed all the air out of her body. His arms were locked around her, his face buried in the crook of her neck and his hips were jammed against hers. She was trapped. The guys in the corridor snorted and guffawed like it was part of a skit for their entertainment, but the longer Elvis remained clinging to her, the quieter they became.

“I can’t believe you’re really here!” he murmured, finally drawing back, but only enough so that she could stare up into his heavy-lidded eyes and feel the breath from his mouth as he spoke. “You came all the way up here just for me?”

“You asked me,” she returned, the edge still in her voice because it still stung. Not that he thought she was pathetic now, but that he thought she didn’t care enough to come when he asked.

“Not everybody would’ve,” he said softly, adjusting his tight arm around her waist, tugging her in just a little bit closer.

“I’m not everybody,” she returned, studying his face.

“I know,” he said in a small voice, pecking her softly on the tip of her cold nose. He was almost cross-eyed staring so intently at her with their faces so close together. All of a sudden, that irrepressible, dazzling smile spread across his face and she had turned away from the glare. It hurt to look at.

“Come meet everybody.” He grabbed her hand and yanked her before she had absorbed his words, making her totter a little on her heels as he rushed back to his group. “Hey y’all, this is that little girl I told you about.”

Kitty’s inside froze when she heard those words, her chest tight and heavy. He wouldn’t have told them, he promised!

“Chick and Kitty here were real kind to me when I first started out. Man, I was so green, most everybody laughed me off the damn stage, but Kitty Cat-” He wrapped his arm around her waist again, tugging her into his side and pulling her off balance, making her stumble into him. “-She made sure I didn’t go down in flames inside of a week.”

The guys nodded politely, most of them eyed her chest and ran their eyes down her legs, but it was the handful of girls in the group that examined her most closely. Kitty could feel them measuring and portioning her up, their sharp eyes noting the body language and the way that Elvis couldn’t seem to bring himself to loosen his grip on her. Women saw things that men missed.

They lingered longer in the corridor, someone explaining that Dewey was about to interview Elvis, and everyone was laughing and joking. Elvis was boisterous in a way that Kitty had never really seen before, fooling around with his cousin like they were the two stooges, play fighting and talking in made up words that no one else could understand. The girls kept trying to join in, grabbing his arm and knocking into him, and he would get distracted for a minute, before he retreated back to where Kitty was standing with Chick. She was wondering what she had dragged herself out of the house for, because it wasn’t this brash, loud boy whose thumb had just ‘accidentally’ grazed a pretty blonde girl’s breast as she grabbed him by the waist.

Taking a couple of clumsy steps backwards, he wrapped his fingers around Kitty’s wrist and angled his head behind him, motioning for her to walk backwards with him. In the most ridiculous pantomime, they slipped away, giggling as they ducked inside a door, and Kitty found herself standing in a storage closet, a bare light bulb hanging over their heads.

“Was this where you were when we were talking on the phone?” she asked, glancing around at a broom and the cans and bottles on the shelves.

“Huh? Oh yeah, this here is my office at the Hotel Chisca,” he intoned in a deep, officious voice. “Not much room, but just take in those spectacular views!” She scanned the narrow cupboard and then frowned at him, flushing when she caught his eyes sliding down her body.

“Stop it,” she muttered, shoving him. He instantly placed his hand over hers on his chest and held it there. She could feel his heart pounding beneath the warm cotton of his shirt. “You used to be such a nice boy!”

“I’m still a nice boy,” he returned absently, his free hand slipping onto the small of her back and pulling her in. “Just like you’re still…” He bit his lip and his nostrils flared slightly before he exhaled. “…Sorry, what was I sayin’, honey? I lost track.”

Kitty shook her head, but she was grinning as she sank against him, her mouth finding his as if no time at all had passed. He tasted the way he always had, sweet and warm, which, when combined with the soft muskiness of being enveloped by him, brought her straight back to cheap motel rooms and hastily snatched minutes and hours on the road.

“Hell, I miss this,” he sighed, pulling her with him as he leant against the far wall and the sign that said, ‘All items property of the Hotel Chisca signed by Management.’ “Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty I don’t miss about those early days, the lousy motel rooms, havin’ to grab shut-eye in the back seat while Bill drove my car like a damn madman, washing up in dirty dressing rooms… No, but this, this I miss.”

“You mean to tell me that a big, fancy movie star like you doesn’t have girls just hanging off him at every turn? Because what I saw out there makes you out a liar.” He ducked his head so she only caught a glimpse of his wide, radiant grin.

“Naw, I ain’t saying that,” he admitted to his shoes. “There’s girls, there’s girls all right… None of them are you, though, honey.”

No one else could have said that so sincerely, she reflected, and had it received that way too. She didn’t feel like laughing, because she desperately wanted it to be true even as she knew it probably wasn’t.

“And I ain’t gonna be a movie star much longer.” The light faded from his smile, doors slamming shut and windows being shuttered. “Just gonna go back to being little ole Elvis, whoever the hell he is.”

Kitty put both her hands on his chest, a little surprised at how easily the old familiarity came back. Chick was wrong, she reflected, he wasn’t the same, but somehow he wasn’t any different either. Sliding her palms down his chest, she caught the way his breath hitched as she continued down his stomach towards his belt.

“He was- is- a sweet, talented, devastatingly good-looking man and no amount of time in the army will change that,” she informed him with absolute assurance. He huffed a laugh, tugging her hips in against his, and she tried not to notice there was a firmness poking against her pencil-skirt now.

“Devastatingly good-looking, huh,” he replied with a grin. “I seem to remember you thinkin’ I was pretty goofy looking at first.”

“Well, that ain’t my fault, you were!!” she protested and he burst out in loud laughter, throwing back his head.

“You turned out all right though,” she continued with a playful wink.

“I wore ya down,” he nodded, his features growing calmer and still, those sleepy looking eyes back and fixed on her. “Wore you down pretty good if I recall.” Kitty felt a wave of goosebumps crash down her spine as his hands descended, cupping her ass.

“Elvis,” she murmured, turning away her face, but making no effort to break free of his hands. “We should-“

“Get a hotel room?” he finished with a small smile and a lift of an eyebrow. He said it in a way that meant he could make it into a joke if she refused, but also sounded serious if she agreed.

“My brother and half of Memphis are outside that door,” she reminded him.

“I can handle Chick,” he murmured. “No one would even notice, honey, I promise.” He seemed to realise at the same time that she did how that made him sound: practised, and skilled at impulsive sex in hotel rooms. In response, he draped himself over her, his lips pressed into the crook of her neck, hot breath against her skin.

“I just- I just wanna- Wanna spend some time with you without everyone watchin’. I want you all to myself again, darlin’, like we used to.” She opened her mouth to respond. “You know, I’m heading off to war soon…”

“There’s no war, Elvis,” she answered slightly reproachfully, as if she was stupid enough to fall for that.

“Well, you never know,” he shrugged diffidently. “And you gotta get your kicks while you can.” The effect was ruined by the smirk he was wearing.

“Aw, Hollywood went and got you real good, didn’t it,” she remarked, shaking her head.

She didn’t mean it as a condemnation. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing that he had become more confident, more aware of the effect that he could have on people, girls mostly, but she was a little sad. She had liked that boy, the one that had trembled when she first sat on the end of his bed and unfastened the buttons of her blouse. She still sometimes caught herself thinking of how he used to look, mouth open and eyelashes fluttering as he moved above her; the little lip curl as he flushed with pleasure, twitching in her hands.

Whatever she intended, Elvis’ face dropped and his brows drew together, making him look like a confused, sad little boy.

“Now, wait a minute,” he said, starting forward and somehow looming over her in the confined space. “How is that fair, huh? You got no idea the- the bullshit I gotta go through. I mean, I ain’t complaining, I’m blessed, I know that, but… If I act like I’m enjoying myself I’m big-headed and- and I’ve forgotten where I came from. If I try to seem humble I’m ungrateful and a liar… Hell, what am I supposed to do? How do I keep everyone happy?”

“Well, you can’t,” Kitty replied, reaching up and giving one of his beseeching hands a squeeze. “Nobody can make everybody happy all the time, honey, not even you.” He seemed like he wanted to say something else, but someone started banging on the door, disillusioning them that they had ever sneaked off unseen in the first place. They were calling him for his interview with Dewey and he hollered out that he was coming.

“Don’t go nowhere,” he instructed her, squeezing her arm as he sidled past her to the door. “I mean it now, Kitty.” She scoffed as he watched him being dragged along the corridor by his pals, wondering where he got the audacity to demand anything from her. But, of course she stayed, even as she judged herself for it, standing with Chick in the producer’s office, looking through the glass window into the booth where Elvis was teasing the girls peering in and grinning at Dewey’s hyper antics.

“You know what you’re doin’?” Chick asked out of the side of his mouth as they stood smiling.

“Rarely if ever,” she replied, shooting him a wry look. “Relax, Chickadoo, it’s just one night.”

“Yeah, those sound like famous last words.”

After the interview, Elvis strode out of the booth like he was on a mission, announcing that he was hungry and they were leaving. He rushed past Kitty, grabbing her wrist as he passed and not even slowing in consideration for the fact that she was wearing heels.

They took the service elevator down to the kitchens, Elvis bouncing on his heels and humming to himself. He started nudging Gene and they inexplicably engaged in some sort of battle to kick each other in the shin, even as he was entwining his fingers with Kitty’s.

Sneaking through the kitchens, they skidded around cooks and waiters, bursting out into the delivery bay at the back of the hotel. Kitty started to move towards her car, Elvis towards his and they engaged in a little tug of war that ended up with her skittering into his side because of her stupid shoes.

“What you doin’, we’re taking my car,” he said, looking at her like she had lost her mind.

“I need to drive home,” she countered. “I’ll need my car.” He gritted his teeth and looked intensely frustrated for a minute, before shrugging it off and announcing that Gene would drive her car. Gene seemed as unimpressed with this idea as she was.

“Look, everybody needs to stop coming up with goddamn problems!” Elvis snapped. “Y’all are doing my head in.”

It seemed a disproportionate reaction for a minor inconvenience to Kitty, but no one else seemed perturbed or surprised by his outburst. She handed over her mother’s keys with misgivings, making Gene promise, promise, that he would drive carefully what was technically a stolen car.

A bunch of people piled into the big, gleaming Cadillac and Kitty felt hemmed in pressed into Elvis’ side as he swung the wheel, trying to avoid the knot of people that spotted him and immediately tried to crowd the hood as if being run over by Elvis Presley would be an honour.

They drove over to Krystal and the car was flooded with greasy bags of their little square burgers.

“Didn’t you boys get Krystal’s last night too?” asked a blonde girl in the backseat, squashed very much like a slab of meat between two large guys.

“Yes, ‘cause they’re damn good,” one of the men said, shoving nearly the entire small bun in his mouth.

“Gotta make the most of it, huh, EP? They don’t serve chow like this in the service.”

Elvis had been fiddling with the radio knobs, moving his head in time with the music as he chewed, his cheeks filled like a hamster. At his friend’s words, his eyebrows dropped and he shot the guy a death look, which shut him up quickly. It seemed like Elvis was getting sick of hearing about what his life was going to be like after induction.

The atmosphere in the car got a little dense with nobody knowing what to say to ease the tension, when Elvis ducked down, his head pressed against Kitty’s chest, as he sucked on her straw from the cup in her lap.

“Hey!” she cried, overacting to counter the quiet, “that’s mine, you got your own!” She had her hand on the back of his neck and gave the hair at the nape of his neck a quick scratch with her nails, which made him shiver adorably.

“I drank it already,” he shrugged sheepishly, sitting back up and pouting. Sighing, she offered him her cup and he grinned as he took it, repaying her with a lip-smacking kiss on the cheek.

“I like the hair,” she said softly, making the most of the relative quiet while his goofy, boisterous friends were still regrouping. “The black, I mean.”

“Oh yeah, well, it just looks better on film. Actors have been doing it all the way back to Tom Mix and Douglas Fairbanks, honey, right up to Tony Curtis today. Uh, I mean, I’m not comparing myself to them-” She nodded, reaching out a finger to snag a lock that had fallen across his forehead, giving it a gentle tug.

“It looks good,” she told him. “You look like a real movie star.” His lips curved into a more natural smile and he took another pull from the straw, his cheeks colouring slightly.

They drove around for about an hour, listening to the radio while Elvis took her on a whistlestop tour of significant places to him. They drove to Sun Studios. He wanted her to meet Sam Phillips and he thought that Sam might be up late like he often was, but the lights were out and the place all locked up.

“You know, I already met him a few times,” Kitty reassured him when he sighed and let himself drop back against the sooty wall at the back of the building. “Back when we were touring with y’all. I think Chick even talked to him about recording here, but it didn’t work out.”

“I was just hopin’ to see him,” he mumbled, his head bowed as he kicked out at a clump of grass that had fought its way through the concrete. “It feels like… like time’s runnin’ out.” She moved closer and gripped the bottom of his boxy striped sports jacket, giving it a tug.

“It’s just a pause, not the end,” she promised him.

“You can’t know that. No one knows for sure. I’ll tell ya, the Colonel and the folks at RCA Victor, and Mr Wallis, they all say right pretty things ‘bout how it’ll be when I get out, the plans they got to keep people interested and remembering me while I’m gone, but-“ He sighed a deep, chest-heaving sigh and drew Kitty in by the waist, squeezing her against him like he needed the comfort. “Look at how quick I came up, ain’t no one to say I won’t go down just as fast. Or maybe someone else’ll come onto the scene and all my fans’ll-“

“I know, because I know,” Kitty interjected, seeing how he was spiralling, one of his hands rubbing his face with increasing vigour. “I remember when I saw you sing for the first time, you were shaking and could barely put two words together between your songs. Even then I knew that you were something special, that you were different from the rest of us, and I was right, wasn’t I? I’m right about this too.”

“You know because you know,” he huffed a laugh and cupped her cheek with his hand, rubbing gently with his thumb. “Well, I’m convinced, Kitty Cat, by that stunning argument.” She gave his chest a shove with her forearm and ducked away as he laughed, trying to kiss her.

“You laugh now, boy, but when you’re out there in a couple of years buried under gold records and adoring fans, starring in all the movies, I expect you to come find me and beg for my forgiveness. On your knees!”

“Oh, I’ll always come on my knees for you, baby,” he intoned in a low, bass voice into the crook of her neck.

“You are so bad,” she giggled, smacking his shoulder. He nuzzled and nibbled on her neck, gripping her in a bear hold to stop her from wriggling away. Although they were sheltered by the shadows of the parking lot behind the studio, Kitty was aware that they were in public and that, at any moment, one of his friends might get bored waiting in the car and catch them.

“Elvis, Elvis honey, come on now, stop, people can see. Elvis!” She grabbed a handful of the hair at the back of his head, giving it a sharp tug to get him to let her loose.

“Come home with me,” he said one breath, squinting down at her, looking deliciously rumpled and excited. “I wanna show you- I can show you-”

“What about your family?” she asked in a low voice, her palms sliding up beneath his jacket, twitching as she followed the lines and curves, lingering over the peaks of his erect nipples beneath his shirt. He shuddered and didn’t waste time trying to answer, hooking her by the waist and merely lifting her over the low wall that separated the parking lot from the alleyway at the side of the building.

“We’re heading home,” he mumbled to his passengers, slamming his door. The car peeled away from the kerb with a high-pitched squeal. Nobody spoke and the journey passed in a blur of silence. Kitty’s eyes stayed fixed on Elvis’s white knuckles as he gripped the steering wheel. She barely registered the gate with the music notes, the winding drive or the impressive portico and columns.

“Well, I’ll see y’all later,” was all he said as he climbed out of the car, hands grabbing for Kitty’s forearm and tugging her towards him as he backed towards the brick steps. Kitty wasn’t sure whether anyone answered as she was too busy focusing on keeping up with him as he opened the front door. He turned back to her, grinning like a little kid and put his finger to his lips, pointing towards the stairs. Kitty slipped off her shoes, exhaling as she stretched her toes, and managed to grab them before he tugged her again, taking off up the stairs at a breakneck pace. She hissed at him to slow down, but he just shushed her and she could hear him laughing under his breath.

Kitty barely registered the dark room before Elvis shut the door behind her and pressed her into it, his hot mouth on hers snatching away her breath. Safely away from prying eyes, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and moaned into his mouth, pressing herself against him. He froze and pulled back, but she could barely see his face in the darkness and was about to ask what was wrong, when he gathered her up in his arms and threw her onto the bed. She shrieked, hastily slapping her hands over her mouth as she bounced on the mattress.

“Don’t worry about it, baby,” he murmured, kicking off his shoes and throwing his jacket onto a chair like he was competing in a race. “This room’s supposed to be soundproof. Let’s test it out, huh.”

It was reassuring to see him clamber awkwardly onto the bed and throw himself down next to her just like he used to, a sign that the boy that she had cared for was not all gone, just hidden in pockets and alcoves of behaviour and words.

“Kitty honey?” he asked suddenly once he had settled himself down on the pillows and was looking up at her with a slightly furrowed brow. “You know we don’t have to-“

She dove down, mouth catching his and draped herself across him. She felt his lips curved into a smile as his hands settled onto her back, soon grazing her curves until they were palming the weight of her ass, squeezing slightly.

Kitty’s body was buzzing and tingling, she could already feel the muscles contracting in her stomach and lower down and she tried to find some relief from the ache, but could barely move her legs within her tight pencil skirt.

Elvis tried to follow her up as she withdrew, moaning a little when she pulled away, and she snorted at his forlorn expression as she drew up to her knees on the bed. His eyes widened as she shrugged off her jacket and started to unbutton the body-hugging blouse beneath.

Like a true gentleman, he was up on his knees too in seconds to help her. He was more a hindrance than help, his long fingers getting in the way of her slipping the tiny buttons out of the holes, but he seemed to want to be useful. He stared down at her bare chest and bra like a boy who had never seen either, which was funny because Kitty knew for certain that he had. Then, slowly, carefully, he reached out to cup the back of her head and bring her closer, kissing her like she was one of his co-stars and he was the romantic hero.

It was an intricate dance of shadows, Elvis moving with confidence and tenderness, while in her head she was seeing the first time when his hands had trembled and his ripe bottom lip glistened as he had panted, moving too slowly and awkwardly. She had had to guide him, her hands on his hips, around his ass, urging him to move faster, to stop apologising and asking if she was okay.

None of that now, it was more than a dance, it was a routine. Her eyes followed him as he kissed between her breasts, the tip of his nose grazing her skin as he made his way down, taking a detour to lick her nipples, circling them with his tongue before sucking. She arched up into him, noting the contrast of his hair as it splayed against her pale skin.

As his fingers grazed the inside of her thighs, she thought about how his body had changed, filling out and becoming broader, and there was hair on his chest that wasn’t there before. She raked her fingers through it as he moved between her legs, his eyes sparkling with tenderness and a little amusement.

“You okay?” he murmured, biting down on a smile, though his eyebrow twitched against his best efforts.

“You know, I told you that if you ever asked me that again I’d pummel you,” she gasped, tilting her hips so that he was grinding down onto the right spot, her nerves fluttering out and down the inside of her thighs.

“I know, I know,” he laughed breathlessly, his open mouth going slack as he started to inch into her. She wrapped her legs around his hips, tightening her thighs to bring him in closer, faster, harder. One thing hadn’t changed, he was still too careful and gentle with her. He got the message though, thrusting hard until their hips were pressed together, slamming a hollow moan from her as he grunted.

She adjusted her grip on his shoulders, realising that she might need a tighter grip, and stared up at his face. His bottom lip was between his teeth as he adjusted to being inside her, to the friction and the pressure, but under the weight of her eyes, he tugged his upper lip up into his famous sneer, drawing out and then grinding back down just as quickly. She gasped and pressed her feet down onto the back of his thighs, finding a way to cling on as he demonstrated exactly how he had earned one of his cruder nicknames.

Somehow, they got turned around and they were horizontal across the vast landscape of his enormous bed, Kitty’s head hanging back off the mattress. He grabbed a handful of her hair as it trailed down towards the carpet, pulling her head back further, nipping and sucking at her pulse point at the same time as he pressed and rubbed and circled her clit and filled her too. Each time she opened her eyes he had this sly, mischievous look on his face like he knew how good he was, like he was proud to show her what he had learned.

Flushing with warmth, buzzing and trembling, she felt the crest of the wave beginning to build between her legs and she whined a little, gasping for air, wanting the sensation to only ever build and never peak. He tugged at her hair again, this time a little sharper, so that she opened her eyes and her vision swam and then slid back into crystal clear focus.

“Say it, darlin’,” he mumbled breathlessly. “I wanna hear you say it.” He drove into her harder and faster, making her cry out and he tugged her hair again until she relented and cried out his name as she came.

Seconds later, he pulled out and she felt him pulse against her belly as he crushed her mouth beneath his. She could barely breathe with his heaving chest pressing down on her, but she didn’t mind, it would be a wonderful way to go.

Finally, he pulled himself away, passing her his shirt to clean up, and he pressed himself to her back, tugging her backwards onto him like a blanket.

“You know why I kept asking if you were okay that first time?” he murmured, exhaling deeply into her ear as he drooped with exhaustion and satisfaction.

“Why?” she whispered, though she already knew the answer.

“Because I was fuckin’ far from okay,” he giggled, his words slurring and sliding together. “I was scared half to death, thought my heart was gonna pound itself right out of my chest… ‘Bout how I feel now I reckon.”

“You were fine then and you’re gonna be fine this time too,” she promised, reaching up to squeeze one of the arms he had folded around her chest.

��I sure hope you’re right.” He yawned, pressing a kiss onto her neck before dropping back onto his pillow. “You usually are. I just hope everything stays the same.”

It seemed a strange and futile thing to wish for, especially for a man whose life had not stopped changing in the past three or four years, but she crossed her fingers as she relished the time that she had left in his arms and wished it alongside him. Let everything stay the same.

#elvis presley #elvis fanfic #elvis presley fanfic #elvis fan fiction #writing prompt game #1950s Elvis #army elvis #whositmcwhatsit #elvis x oc

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roland-the-farter-stan-account · 6 months ago

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I’ve noticed this phenomenon where men (I’ve only experienced this with white men) who thought they were going to spend their life “in the ministry” wake up and realize they don’t want to believe in the homophobia or accept the casual racism in white Christianity or any number of other problematic hateful things in the church and leave. And good for them! But they don’t have another plan for their lives now that this divine direction is gone, so they immediately look for an audience to share all their brand new, surely extremely valuable thoughts.

Infamously I think of Joshua Harris, who gave a generation of Christians significant trauma spewing dating advice from his arrogant teenaged ass in his book I Kissed Dating Goodbye only to immediately begin peddling advice on how to undo said trauma the exact second he began to peel back the rotten layers of his “deconstruction.” Bizarrely, I experienced what was in form a sermon in a yoga class. The pieces were all in place: lights dim, ambient music playing, and all of a sudden I heard “the church voice” as this bearded fuck in stretchy shorts and a tank top recalled some banal anecdote and tried to tease out a relatable message on his captive audience. And the there’s the pile of podcasts I tried to listen to only to realize 3 episodes in the these motherfuckers weren’t in any kind of position to offer me any help, and as men had frankly never suffered anything like I had in the church or now while leaving it.

If you think about it, Christian churches are a relatively easy way to build an audience. Particularly pre-influencer-era, with American Evangelical Christianity’s lack of corporate structure and hierarchy there are few barriers between you and an audience once a week lapping up your every word. You can build from a “couch church,” start as a youth pastor, or if you’re hot enough I guess, marry a preacher’s daughter and bypass even the minimal initial requirement of charisma. If a formal pastoral position isn’t for you there are even more plentiful roles leading small groups, Sunday schools, counseling (in many US states including mine counseling in a religious setting even about non religious issues requires no certification), or at bare minimum commanding the head of your family table.

But you leave, you have to because you don’t believe anymore. And all of a sudden you’re facing a lifetime of Not Being Listened To. What are you to do? Tell other people what to do! Immediately! It doesn’t even cross your mind that you’re still totally lost and in the thick of it. YOU have the insight people need RIGHT NOW to do exactly what you’re doing at this very moment!

They think they’re listening but they haven’t had the time, because for one thing they haven’t stopped talking for a goddamn second. They realize now they were wrong about “the role of women” and “homosexuality” (they are probably still saying it that way) and that they were a part of systems of oppression and patriarchy and racism, but it doesn’t compute that they need to sit the fuck down. Knowing something is wrong isn’t the same as knowing why it was wrong or knowing what is right. Step off the soapbox, turn off the microphone, and don’t you dare start a goddamn podcast.

#ex religious #religious trauma #exvangelical #fuck the patriarchy #deconstruction #american christianity #I kissed dating goodbye #purity culture

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magicalbats · 1 month ago

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Also since there HAS been so much content coming out I thought it might be fun to do a bit of a recap on everything and share some of my thoughts! I know there are at least a few people who read my fics without playing the source material or really having much baseline info on the characters before going into it (and you guys are incredibly special to me, rest assured 🫶🥺) so I figured this might be a nice way to do some little introductions!

Sticking this behind a cut so anyone who doesn’t want to see me rambling can easily skip over this post lol

In an attempt to keep things somewhat chronological, I’m going to start with the drip marketing for these two. Iirc they were officially announced one day apart, back to back, and I saw multiple people making angel/devil comparisons with them which really tickled me. 🤭

I’ll talk about Sunday first since he’s by far the character we’ve known the longest and man what a wait this has been. We met him in 2.0 and he is finally going to be playable in 2.7, and in a lot of ways it almost feels surreal that we’ve finally made it to this point. Genuinely it’s been such a bumpy, perilous ride with him. For a good moment there I wasn’t even sure if he was going to make it out alive or not, then I wasn’t sure if he was going to be playable, then leakers were saying he would be joining the Stellaron Hunters and then it was actually wait, he’ll join the Astral Express instead, and then he was getting a new outfit and for a second there it even looked like he might end up getting a new VA too. 🤣 When I tell you this man has had me STRESSED this entire time.

Luckily there is finally light at the end of the tunnel though, and I’m honestly so, so happy with how his playable look turned out! My silly little guy with his youth pastor drip 🙏🥹 He’s honestly my second favorite character in HSR right after Sampo, and I know that probably sounds bizarre for how different they are but look. I’m a woman with a refined, complicated palette okay? xmdkdmdkzk There really isn’t anything at all I don’t like about this man, he’s a little crazy but he’s also soggy and a bit pathetic at the same time, I’m sure you can see why he’s like crack cocaine to me. And the fact we’ll get to travel with him from now on … the fics really do just write themselves.

And that’s not even mentioning the religious trauma, god. I need him more than I can even put into words. Please let me win this 50/50 in a few weeks, I am begging. 🙏 😭

For Ororon I didn’t have that same immediate click with him when we got our first glimpse in the 5.0 Natlan trailer. He barely showed up for five seconds which didn’t help but he was also presented in a very mysterious, brooding kind of way that just didn’t lunge out at me. But the one thing I will always give Mihoyo credit for is they’re very good at layering different personality traits on their characters to make them not so one note. With that in mind I wanted to meet him first before drawing any definitive conclusions on whether or not I liked him.

And I am SO glad I did because he truly subverted every single expectation I think everyone had just based on that initial impression. Not only is he NOT an edge lord of the highest order, he also turned out to be one of the sweetest, cutest characters I’ve ever seen. 😭 He’s just a little guy, your honor. Please do not bully him.

He’s confirmed to be in his early 20’s but he has this very innocent, guileless manner about him that makes him feel indescribably boyish in the most charming way possible. He’s also a grandmas boy, and he calls anyone who he perceives to be older than him granny or gramps. I have some thoughts about him calling us mommy, either accidentally or on purpose … and other thoughts about him using the vegetables from his quaint little garden in less then wholesome ways. 😏 Like, guys. He loves animals, feeds squirrels, raises aphids, and he’s got his own little cottage core farm away from the rest of his village. I don’t think you understand what he’s doing to me.

With his release in game and access to his full bio we’ve also learned that he has a talent for art on top of everything else and look, I’m just saying but he might actually be perfect.

What are we looking at here, you may ask? Ororon’s art, that’s what. 😤

I was very pleased to learn that we actually do have another male character coming up in the Natlan lineup at SOME point in time, but this is the one and only look at him we’ve got so far. His name is Ifa and he’s a veterinarian, and also seems to be Ororon’s bff. I don’t have much else on him yet but we know he exists so I figured I’d mention him. For posterity if nothing else. lol

I fully admit knowing he’s a veterinarian is like having a fast pass into my pants. I love animals so if a man also loves animals there’s not really much else I can do other than fuck him, you know what I mean? 🤣 I’m very curious to find out how accurate the drawing of him is, so I’m really hoping we get to see some visual leaks coming out soon.

I’m also going to take a quick moment to talk about Mr. Reca too. Now, he doesn’t have drip marketing yet but he did appear in version 2.6 in the main storyline and wow, he was such a blast. Definitely a bit unhinged like his lightcone art suggests but in such a fun, mostly harmless way that I can’t help but stan. Also he’s a girl dad to a mechanical frog who acts as his assistant director? Good lord …

Indeed he is a little film nerd freak and also a Memokeeper, we don’t know much else about him just yet but I want to assure everyone here that as soon as I got my first glimpse of him I was looking so incredibly hard and I have not stopped looking once. He resembles Zhongli imo, if he was less unflappable and more prone to whimsy. I like that. A lot. 😏

“We can shoot a movie, we can bang like Rambo 🎶 “

We knew for sure Lighter was coming pretty early on into 1.2 when Caesar and Burnice got their banners so his drip marketing didn’t come as a surprise and he also has the esteemed honor of being the FIRST ever limited male 5 star in ZZZ, and yes it feels like a long time coming even though the game is only a few months old now. ✋😩 All the other men are either 4 stars or standard 5’s so I was more than likely going to pull for him no matter what. Out of desperation, and to show support for the men, even if he ended up not being to my taste.

For better or worse though, he actually turned out to be an amazing character and I fear I am very smitten with him. He’s just so cool and hard boiled, but also a little silly? A little goofy? And man, I don’t want to take up a bunch of time waxing poetic about this, but the fact he’s the only guy in the Sons of Calydon that we know about, surrounded by all women, and he is not the least bit threatened by it just really does something to my brain. Like, I unfortunately can’t add the picture due to Tumblrs image limit but his drip marketing has a little shot of him buying stuff for the girls — makeup and fashion magazines, stuffed animals and snacks and like … that’s real masculinity right there. I can’t decide if he’s like a dad or a big brother to them, but either way I am HERE for it.

I’m genuinely confident beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would have no problem at all buying tampons/pads for you, and I also think he’d be perfectly respectful about it too. He’d ask what brand you prefer, what size and what type, and he’d make sure he came back with exactly that even if he had to traverse a hollow completely blind to get it. I’d bet everything I own on that. I like him a lot. 😌

His banner will be available this coming Tuesday and I am unfortunately going into it on a 50/50, no guarantee, so please pray for my success. djemfkxksmwkw

So remember when I said Mihoyo is good at layering different personality traits on their characters? Yeah, so Harumasa is another great example of that.

When we first met him I (and I think many others too) kind of got the impression that he was a smooth talking playboy type and I even called him a fuck boy on multiple occasions. 🤣 But at the start of 1.3 in Yanagi’s story quest we actually got to see him interacting with his fangirls and he was not feeling it at all so I now suspect that he probably only flirts when it’s beneficial to him, specifically so he can fall back on his good looks to get by and put in less work than everyone else. He understands what pretty privilege is and he intends to use it to his advantage. lol

I actually think he ended up being a very charming character now that weve gotten to see more of him. He’s chronically tired and maybe just a bit lazy, doesn’t like hard work or long days, calls out sick often and looks for any excuse to leave work early. He’s INCREDIBLY relatable tbh. 🤣 Based on a few brief pieces of dialogue in Yanagi’s story I’d started to suspect he might actually be for real sickly in some way but then we got a leaked image of his weapon …. And it’s literally just a pill case full of medicine. So although I don’t yet know all the details I have to say Harumasa has really grown on me since his first introduction where I mistook him for some kind of womanizer. lol And this is exactly why I like to wait and actually get to know Mihoyo’s characters before deciding whether or not I like them, they’re just so incredibly good at layering them together in a way that imo makes them feel more tangible and alive. I genuinely can’t wait to see more of him in the near future!

Gonna go ahead and just toss WuWa right here, this won’t take too long seeing as there’s only one new male announced so far! 🤪 And look, I’m going to be completely honest here. Kuro Games is really pissing me off with this because we still have not seen hide nor tail of Scar since 1.0. Let me say that again. 1.0!! It’s been MONTHS that he’s just been rotting away in jail, let him out already you sick bastards! I want him!! I need him!!

Now Brant … I literally know nothing about him aside from his appearance and his name. He was just revealed the night before last so this is literally all we’ve got atm. But I will say I think he’s real cute and I definitely think I’m going to like him a lot. It took me a while to figure out what he’s reminding me of and then it suddenly clicked that his silly little cape looks a bit like Howl’s Moving Castle, doesn’t it? I’ve never seen the Ghibli film before, just screenshots, so I’m not sure what Howl is like or how that might potentially play into Brant’s characterization but I thought that was an interesting possible connection.

I especially like the deep plunge in his shirt, that shit goes almost straight down to his pants. He might be a little slutty. 😏 And the obvious pirate motifs paired with the harlequin mask on his hip. I am definitely looking. Disrespectfully, I might add. Eager to learn more about this one tbh.

And finally we have the big HSR reveal from the livestream on Friday. 🤭 I was ofc hoping for a preview of the next planet we’ll be going to since version 2.7 will be the last update before 3.0 but I wasn’t even remotely prepared for the trailer that dropped. Three men feels like a HUGE win so yes we are definitely celebrating this one.

Much like Brant all we’ve got so far are faces and names so I won’t be able to talk too extensively about these characters unfortunately. As for my initial impressions though I will say that Anaxa has my attention the most right now. I like the eyepatch and his long hair tied in a loose ponytail over his shoulder, and just his entire general vibe. He definitely seems to be my type and for the moment he’s the one I’m most looking forward to meeting.

Mydei is next in line for me, he looks like he might be a hot blooded masculine type and in fact I’m almost reminded of Itto a bit. I think? He might be equivalent to the god of war, Ares or Mars, so he should be an interesting one.

Phainon is definitely attractive but I think he looks a bit too much like Ayato for me to get super excited for him right off the bat. I don’t dislike Ayato, mind you, but his personality just doesn’t do much for me overall — so I’m tentatively looking forward to actually meeting this guy and seeing how he is in person. All of these characters seem to be alternate versions of ones from Honkai Impact the 3rd which I know close to nothing about but based on what I’ve heard Phainon should be a Kevin expy and I think he’s pretty important? I expect he’ll probably get the characterization to match tbh so I’m choosing to trust the process for now.

And that about wraps it up!

I will say if nothing else, this has taught me that if you’re someone who enjoys male characters the key here is to play multiple games at the same time to get your fill. 🤣 Because individually other than HSR they’re really just giving us crumbs one at a time. Like going into Natlan we truly only had two confirmed boys and maybe Capitano further down the line to look forward to, the rest were all girls. But when I put them all together like this we’ve suddenly got ten men to talk about, and tbh that’s really giving me the pick me up I needed. alsmfcosmszk

So, if anyone’s stuck with me this long, what are your thoughts on these characters? Who’s your favorite and who are you most looking forward to? Are any non players thinking about picking up one of these games? Feel free to share any of your thoughts with me, my inbox is always open! 🫶😊

And of course happy thirsting everyone!

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