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rogerina-is-hotter-than-me · 5 years

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“Their Blood is Upon Them” Catholic!Lucy: Part 1

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Pairing: F!Reader x Catholic!Lucy

Word count: 3,500

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Synopsis: Growing up Catholic, you knew that certain things were right and certain things were wrong: you knew that God made the heavens and the earth in six days, that you’d never develop a taste for unleavened bread, and that love was between a man and a woman. You’d never struggled with these facts before. That was until you met Lucy.

Warnings: Dramatic angsty gay shit, smut in future chapters, FxF content, Catholic guilt, homophobia, internalized oppression

A/N: A little something for my lovely queer ladies! I’m aware that FxF content may not be as popular as my usual FxM stock but I worked very hard on this gay cheese and any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Love you thotties! (Yes this is re-uploaded I’m a dumbass and accidentally destroyed the formatting)

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:**:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:**:･ﾟ

You knew who you were as you stood in the art gallery.

The statue had done it. A statue of a veiled virgin; gossamer straining like sinews across the face and stomach, falling smooth over her white breasts. Her features were masked beneath opaque veins of alabaster, her thighs poised just-so. Her skin looked so real that you wanted to touch it. You imagined it gliding smooth and satiny beneath your hand. You imagined raising tiny goosepimples--a shiver, a flutter of lashes, a feminine sigh. And that made you think of Lucy.

It was with that conflation that you finally knew. That quick, knee-jerk reaction that had occurred before you could pack your mind with a distraction. This wasn’t something that came from navel-gazing, like all those nights you’d spent beneath your pilly cotton blanket, wondering if you’d just thought yourself into a rut. This was instinctual. And as you watched the lines of marble melting against the smooth, milky skin, you realised that you were too tired to fight it anymore.

It was difficult to put your finger on when the symptoms had started. That’s what Sister Evangeline would call them: symptoms. As though desire were an illness, something that could be remedied with prayer. You were often thankful that Sister Evangeline couldn’t read your mind, that she had no inkling of the tiny flames that danced in your stomach whenever you saw a pretty girl walk by, of how your dreams were occupied by supple curves and girlish moans, of how hard you had to push to join your dorm-mates in fawning over the handsome priest. You had starved these thoughts, tried to crush them down. Some days this was easy, and some days you had to battle it. That’s why you were so surprised when your defeat came in the quiet, white cool of the art gallery, as though someone had covered your mouth and slid a blade between your ribs. A silent, understated demise.

The rest of the group were oblivious to your state. Most had flocked past the naked statues for fear of being caught ogling by Sister Evangeline, and had opted for the Medieval Madonnas, giggling at how old and strange baby Jesus looked. You glanced across to them, weak and swaying on the balls of your feet. Sheets of shiny hair rippled as they spoke; most girls liked to grow it long and tie it in damp braids at night. Bottle green blazers swamped each narrow set of shoulders, and stockinged legs protruded from long plaid skirts.

Lucy stood out like a sore thumb: blunt hair, short skirt, blazer tied around her waist. You hated how effortlessly she leant all her weight on one leg. That smug ease. Perhaps an anti-climax was befitting—she had teased the crippling epiphany out of you with nonchalance. There was no need for ceremony.

You felt like you were paralysed above a deep stretch of blackness. All you could do was watch her, unable to tear your gaze away. She idled by the exhibits, listless as a house fly. You felt a sudden guilt at ogling her.

‘Y/n, whatever’s the matter?’ Sister Evangeline was beside you. To have teased sympathy out of her meant that you must look ghastly. You met her eyes, your feelings so hot and full that you were sure she could read them. The sight of her lined, humourless face and mannish eyebrows at least cooled you down. ‘You look like a bled calf. Are you ill?’

You shook your head and swallowed, composing yourself. ‘Just feel a little lightheaded,’ you said hoarsely. In all honesty, it wasn’t just your head that felt light; you felt so suddenly hollow that you were surprised your ugly brogues were still managing to anchor you to the floor.

‘Perhaps you need some fresh air,’ she said, turning into the next room of the gallery. You knew that she was scouting for Muriel—the school prefect and your best friend, whose Girl Guide-administered First Aid training would be enough to remedy your dizziness—but she’d long since moved out of the sculpture hall. ‘Where on earth have they—Oh, Miss. Boynton.’

Your heart seized in your chest. Whatever nausea you were feeling before increased ten-fold. Lucy, who had been busy looking at a framed Turner painting, turned towards you. You felt another stab— this one somehow sweet and dreadful—as you were reminded of how beautiful she was. Sister Evangeline was beckoning her over.

‘I’m fine, Sister,’ you managed, trying not to belie your desperation. Lucy, casting one last look at the painting, walked towards you. ‘I’m feeling much better actually. I’m fine.’ Evangeline looked towards you, noting the moustache of perspiration that had suddenly beaded your upper lip. She raised a bushy eyebrow and ignored you.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Miss. Boynton,’ she said, as Lucy neared. She gave you an icy up-and-down look. A shiver rolled through your body, ending in your stomach. ‘Y/n isn’t feeling well. Could you take her outside for some fresh air?’

Lucy didn’t answer straightaway. Instead she looked at you, cocked her head to one side and asked: ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing,’ you said, mouth dry. ‘Just a bit lightheaded.’

‘How come?’

‘I’m anaemic.’ The lie was out of your mouth before you could stop it. For a sick split-second you wondered if Sister Evangeline was going to expose you, but she didn’t seem to be listening.

‘Can you take care of her for me?’ she asked, her gaze in the next room, where the troupe were pointing, scandalised, at Simone Soloman’s “Sappho.”

‘Sure,’ Lucy said. Without warning she took your arm and yanked you towards the nearest fire exit. ‘I needed a fag anyway,’ she murmured, once she was out of Sister Evangeline’s earshot. Her arm was warm and smooth against yours. Every brush of skin on skin felt tickly, making you want to both twitch away and move closer. Your heart thudded in your chest. Lucy pushed the door open and you squinted in the sudden glare of sunshine.

‘You should sit down,’ she said, backing onto the pavement. You obediently dropped into a sitting position on the floor, scooting on your hands until your back was pressed on the hot stucco of the museum’s walls. Little grits of dirt bit into your palms. You couldn’t look at Lucy. Instead you watched her legs, long and inky-black in their opaque tights. Traffic sped by and kicked up dry dust, powdering them a little.

‘How have you still got that on?’ Lucy asked.

You wanted to speak but your mouth was so dry that you were unsure if you’d be able to summon the words.

‘Hello? Y/n?’ You were glad of the sting in her voice. You wanted her to be cruel. It was what you deserved.

After a few seconds you were emboldened enough to meet her gaze. She was stood over you, shading her eyes from the sun, hair glowing and tossing in the hot breeze. ‘What?’ you asked quietly.

‘Take your blazer off.’

Something hot rushed through you. Close to panic but a little sweeter. ‘What?’

‘Take your blazer off. It’s boiling out here. Probably why you feel so faint.’

‘Oh,’ you said, and quickly scrambled to rid yourself of it. From the way she was looking at you, you wondered if she was going to start laughing. ‘What?’ you asked, disturbed by her inquiring eyes.

‘Is that all you know how to say? What, what, what.’ Then, without warning, she pulled her skirt up. You flinched as though she’d just hit you.

‘What—what are you—’ you began, before her chuckle cut you short.

‘ “What”,’ she parroted, her laugh as high and clean as the peal of a bell. It took a little while before you noticed the rectangular lump in the waistband of her tights. You tried not to flit your eyes down to the thighs, covered as they were. ‘Want one?’ she asked prematurely, pulling a box of Silk Cuts from the elastic. Her skirt streamed down in a delicate motion.

‘Oh um—no thank you,’ you said, relieved that she was covered again. A few silent seconds elapsed in which she lit up, cupping the flame with her palm.

‘Not giving those up for Lent?’ you asked, at a loss of what else to say. She gave you a sidelong glance, cheeks hollowing around the cigarette. The tip pulsed bright amber.

‘No,’ she said, exhaling. Everything suddenly felt lucid: the razor-sharp shadows, the smell of the smoke, the sound of Lucy’s voice: ‘I’ve given up masturbation.’

It was only by the quirk of her eyebrows that you realised she’d said something inappropriate. You grappled for a definition, totally pre-occupied with the sweet haze of cigarette smoke, the light that shone on the edges of her profile like cut glass. ‘What?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘That’s not funny anymore,’ she said.

‘I’m serious,’ you insisted, a little hostile. ‘What do you mean?’

She stilled completely, eyes wide with intrigue. ‘You’re serious?’

You nodded. As though by reflex, she took a deep drag on the cigarette. Her slightly sullen gaze was now cast to the passing traffic. ‘Never mind,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I forget that some of you have been raised with this shit.’

All at one you thought of how stupid and bovine you must look to her—another pristine, clueless Catholic girl. You bristled a little, folding your blazer in your lap. ‘It’s a sin, right? Masturbation?’ you said, pulling from your hazy recollection of old R.E lessons.

She gave a humourless, one-syllable laugh. ‘What isn’t?’

‘Good point.’

She looked towards you, and you thought you read a little flash of fondness in her eyes. She cocked her head to one side. ‘It’s proving difficult, you know. Abstaining.’

You nodded, wanting to look collected. Her cigarette stub was hardly two inches long. You watched it smoulder between her two fingers. Realising that you weren’t going to respond, Lucy continued. ‘It really is; temptation is everywhere.’

‘Well, that’s what Father Alec would say,’ you said, rolling your eyes. Your dislike for the priest was in no way feigned; he was a dull, drawling, caterpillar-eyebrowed man who all your friends had an inexplicable crush on.

You seem to have said the right thing, for Lucy started laughing. ‘Father fucking Alec,’ she said, shaking her head and flicking what left of her fag onto the asphalt. She drew her eyebrows into a low scowl and adopted his low monotone: ‘ “Remember girls, if you stick your fingers in your pussy you’re going straight to Hell.”’

Her impression was so spot-on that you couldn’t contain your laughter. You contorted your own brows into a frown and shadowed her: ‘ “Remember children, the Lord is always watching. If your skirts are more than a fingers’ width above your knees, you’re destined for the flames.”’

“Destined for the flames” was an actual term he liked to use every now and then. You noticed how it always reduced Lucy to fits of giggles in Mass, and it did likewise here.

‘If you say the Lord’s name in vain, you’re destined for the flames.’

‘If you sneeze, you’re destined for the flames.’

‘If you think impure thoughts, you’re destined for the flames.’

‘I used to think Father Alec could read my mind, you know,’ you said, breaking the train. Lucy’s eyebrows shot up.

‘Oh yeah? How come?’

‘It was the first time I took confession. I think I was seven or something, and my brain kept repeating this one line from “Cinderella.” I kept trying to stop thinking about it, I thought I’d get told off for not taking it seriously enough.’

Lucy blinked at you, her expression divided between humour and disgrace. After a few seconds, she shook her head. ‘Catholics,’ she muttered, raising her skirt again to fish out another cigarette. ‘They’re all fucking nuts. No offense.’

‘None taken.’ Once she’d extracted the cigarette, you watched her try and ignite it. Her short-nailed thumb crunched on the sparkwheel. The lighter was silver, with a horizontal rainbow stripe down the left side. ‘So, the last school you went to,’ you started. ‘Was that not Catholic?’

She took a deep drag, lungs expanding, before puffing it out. ‘No, it was. I just wasn’t raised Catholic. Not until my parents got into the whole “Born Again Christian” shit.’

You nodded slowly, taking this in. Your eyes drifted to her collar, where a large crucifix stood stark against her throat. Despite her obvious abhorrence for religion, Lucy wore a black, plastic rosary necklace that threw her delicate beauty into relief. When she’d first arrived in her parent’s car—with plans of reformation and a reputation that had sent every face flocking to the windows to watch her arrive— she’d been berated for loading herself with too much costume jewellery. You had watched over Muriel’s shoulder as the new girl unhooked her earrings and wiggled her fingers out of her rings before dropping them in Sister Evangeline’s palm, her mouth hard and cold. Since then she’d been squeezing through every loophole she could find, contesting over the length of skirts and arguing that any accessory with a crucifix on it was legitimate. You remembered the look on Sister Evangeline’s face when one of the crosses in her lobes had been upturned, either accidentally or not.

‘I don’t know why you think you’re exempt from the rules, Miss. Boynton,’ she’d said, as Lucy had airily taken the studs out. ‘But this isn’t a fashion show. There is to be no makeup, no unnatural hair colours, no jewellery, and no long nails.’

‘I wouldn’t worry about that, Sister,’ Lucy said, fixing her with a look as she deposited the earrings into her weathered hand. ‘I keep my nails nice and short.’

It was the wink that led to her first detention.

‘Why did you come here, then?’ you asked, once she’d had a few more puffs. You watched her lips fasten on the end, her throat straining as she inhaled. Her collarbone stuck out like two white hyphens.

‘I got kicked out. Look, are you sure you don’t want one? I feel kind of bad just stood here.’ She gestured with the cigarette.

‘No thanks. Why did you get kicked out?’

It was difficult to tell if Lucy looked interested or evasive. She watched you as she inhaled again, buying herself some time, you thought. ‘I’ll tell you if you take a drag.’

You laughed. ‘No way. I’ll cough.’

‘That’s exactly why I want you to do it.’

You tensed up suddenly. Merely the mental image of you inhaling wrong and spluttering in front of Lucy was enough to make your face burn with embarrassment. On seeing your hesitation, she spoke.

‘It would be less intense if we shotgun it.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means I just blow whatever’s left into your mouth.’

Your stomach knotted. That lightheaded feeling was back, and your mind felt so loud and busy that you were scared you were going to blurt something stupid. ‘Alright,’ you said instead, getting to your feet. Your blouse was sticking to your back a little. ‘Why did you get expelled, then?’ you asked, rising to your full height. You knew that to avoid eye contact would be to belie how nervous you felt, so you looked at her squarely, watching her pupils dilate slightly despite the arid sunshine.

‘You really want to know?’

‘I do now.’

She paused. ‘You promise you’re not going to freak out on me?’

The knot in your stomach tightened. ‘I promise.’

‘Okay. So last year I was staying at St. Mary’s. It was an all girl’s school, kind of like this, but it was more relaxed. And it wasn’t a boarding school.’

You nodded, wondering why she was stalling with so much detail.

‘It was me and this girl Isabelle. She was the vicar’s daughter. A real good girl, you know. They had this idea that I “corrupted her,” or something, but that’s not true, I mean she was always—basically, we got caught in the disabled toilets together.’

She’d begun rushing towards the end. You could tell straightaway that she regretted the anecdote. Still, a current of curiosity forced you to ask: ‘Together?’

She flicked her eyes up to you and took a steadying breath. ‘Kissing,’ she said, shrugging. ‘That was pretty much it. I had my hand under her shirt but that’s as far as it went. It’s stupid really, isn’t it? A stupid reason to expel somebody.’

Silence hung between you for a few seconds. You could feel Lucy’s tenseness. In a way it felt gratifying, to have that power over her for once. You could have responded the way Muriel might, by wrinkling your nose and calling her disgusting and refusing to have her lips anywhere near yours. You’d be met with a “Fuck you,” and would shake it off and step back into the sterile white of the art gallery, already reducing the strange experience to a memory. Or you could show compassion. Not solidarity, not affirmation, but aloof understanding, like those new wave Christians that Muriel swooned over.

‘It’s not the stupidest reason someone’s got expelled,’ you said after a while. You liked how unfazed your voice sounded. Lucy looked towards you, relieved.

‘Isn’t it?’

‘No. A girl once got suspended for a week for having a nosebleed in the middle of a prayer circle. I’m not joking. They wrote her a letter home saying that she couldn’t come to school because she was possessed by a demonic presence.’

Lucy burst into laughter. ‘Jesus.’

‘I know.’

Lucy stayed laughing for a few seconds longer, though your delivery hadn’t been that funny. You sensed that she was grateful for your reaction—despite the whole impervious act, she was still the new girl. She was the victim of incessant rumours, she sat alone in the lunch hall, she was picked last for cricket. Perhaps she was more in need of a friend than you realised.

‘Look,’ you started, leaning back against the sunned stucco. ‘Are you going to the Easter dance with anyone?’

Lucy quirked an eyebrow. ‘Why?’ she asked, voice coquettish. ‘Is this a proposal?’

You couldn’t tell if she was being serious or not; the Easter dance was a famously chaste affair, occurring under the strip lights of the church hall and watched hawkishly by the Sisters and the statue of the crucified Christ. Still, it caused a yearly stir due to the allowance of own clothes and the boys from St. Peters, who were invited and permitted to put their hands on the girls’ hips and spin them in awkward, arms-length circles. The worldlier girls found ways to invite their crushes, but the rest merely awaited the big day, hoping that their options would be less acne and halitosis-riddled than they were last year.

‘Well, yeah,’ you said. ‘I mean, me and Muriel and the rest of the girls all get ready together and stuff. It can be good fun.’

‘Right,’ Lucy said, with a slightly humoured smile.

‘Just don’t want you to go alone, that’s all,’ you said, bristling slightly. You stopped yourself short of saying: “It just seemed like the Christian thing to do.”

‘Well, that’s sweet of you.’ You dropped your gaze to the floor, dragging the sole of your foot through the chits of asphalt. There was a small gasp, as if Lucy had just remembered something.

‘Almost forgot,’ she said, and from your constricted view, you saw swirls of cigarette smoke changing their course. A hot prickle seared up both shoulders as you realised what she was doing. Sure enough, the two-inch stub of the cigarette was wedged between her lips, and she was giving it a deep pull, causing the tip to swell with a sudden throb of amber.

Before you knew it, her face was darkly near and her eyes were closing and her smoky breath was tickling your lips. Her mouth sealed over yours. Everything was wound tight as the tobacco sighed into your parted lips. She’d put her hands on your hips. Casually, platonically. The kind of tactility that wouldn’t raise eyebrows at a teenage sleepover. A reflexive image jumped into your head, of Lucy hooking her fingers into the waistband of your skirt and yanking you towards her until your stomachs collided. The idea frightened you so badly that you gasped, flattening the smoke against the back of your throat.

Breaking away, you coughed and spluttered. Lucy stayed still, allowing her arms to fall back to her sides. Your hands were shaking. It wasn’t supposed to feel like that, you knew. Not with a girl. You were sick. You were just what Sister Evangeline said: sick.

‘Are you okay?’ Lucy called, after blowing what was left of the smoke skywards. You watched it curl up and peter into nothingness, blitzed by the sunshine.

‘Fine.’

Two days in and you’d already broken your Lenten sacrifice; you’d vowed to give up lying.

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