#staying the sacrament

[starry-bi-sky]

Part uh, four? of "Clone Danny"

...taking a risk and @ing @minnesota-fats since they seemed pretty hyped about this au. So i figured they'd want to know when the next part came out.

So where did we leave off? Oh yes... Danny taking the stairs two at a time to book it away from Bruce Wayne before he realized that he and Danny shared the same face.

So safe to say after Danny calls Tucker and they both panic over Bruce's appearance, and he finds himself slinging on his black hoodie and stuffing his pockets with his mask and his jawbreaker gloves before scaling down his second-story window to book it over to Tucker's place.

(you never know when there might be a ghost attack)

It's of no surprise to him when Sam is already there when he arrives at Tucker's, and they all migrate to Tucker's room to come up with a plan of attack. Was Danny gonna tell Bruce Wayne that he was a clone? hell no! He decided to let the man live in ignorant bliss and he is sticking to that decision no matter what anyone says.

Besides, his parents can open that pandora's box, considering they created it.

So their plan of attack? Literally just "avoid Bruce Wayne like the plague until he leaves" which is... a bit difficult right now.

"you could stay at our place until he leaves?" Tucker says

"And what if he stays for a month?" Danny asks, overthinking as he's become prone to do. Ghosts are unpredictable after all. "I cant have a month-long sleepover at your place."

"You could wear a mask?" Sam suggests

and Danny makes a face, "What kid wears a face mask in their own house?"

"You could feign an illness."

...And so on and so forth. They discuss ideas for nearly an hour until Sam leaves and Danny needs to head out as well before his parents discover that he's gone. (he cant exactly tell them he snuck out his window)

(He crawls back through his window only to get the daylights scared out of him by Jazz, sitting on his bed and wanting to talk to him about Bruce Wayne being, apparently, in their living room. Danny kicks her out instead because he already talked about it with Sam and Tucker and doesn't want to talk about it again for tonight)

Skip to later that night when he gets woken up by his ghost sense triggering. He wakes up with a chill and mist breathing out of his mouth, tasting like what freshly fallen snow smells like and ozone. It makes his teeth chatter.

Danny doesn't bother checking the time, and grabs his mask from under his pillow and his knucklebuster gloves. he all but sleeps in his hoodie and padding so all he does left is his boots and vest and thermos.

(He grabs his bat on the way out, and keeps his mask in his pocket until he steps outside)

when he sneaks into the kitchen, halfway through pulling his hair into a ponytail, light draws his eyes and there, up at who-knows-o'clock, is Bruce Wayne on his laptop. In their living room. He looks up at the same time as Danny.

Danny makes direct eye contact with him. Again. But there's no door to slam in his face....and behind Bruce Wayne, standing ominously at the window outside, is fucking Skulker. of course it is.

"...Mister Wayne." He says after a considerable silence where he's not sure if he's staring at Skulker or at Bruce. Skulker just stands. Menacingly. Like he crawled straight out of a horror movie.

Danny's not sure if Wayne's seen him or not.

(Bruce has, indeed, seen him in the reflection of his laptop. And considered investigating the problem just before Danny appeared.)

"...Mister Fenton." Wayne says moments after, sounding pretty calm and uncurious about what he's doing up. "What are you doing up?"

…Nevermind.

"Go…ing on a midnight stroll?" Danny says, he's a terrible liar but people never seem to assume he's off kicking ghost butt.

"With a bat?"

(Note: this is the only time Danny curses the fact that the Fenton Creepstick is painted with glow-in-the-dark-ectoplasm-infused paint. It's saved his butt numerous times in both finding it and smashing it into ghosts' faces. But now its just a hindrance.)

"...We have a ghost problem." Danny says, feeling like he came straight out of a sitcom. "What are you doing up?" Skulker looks like he's getting impatient behind the anti-ghost glass. Danny promptly ignores him.

"Just doing some Wayne Industries work." Bruce says.

And Danny nods thoughtfully. "Cool. Cool... Bye." And he turns and books it out the door.

He just barely has enough time to make it to the street and put on his mask before Skulker damn near takes his head off with his usual proclamation of skinning him. Danny, pointedly, sarcastically signs back his retort until he can get further away from the house.

\\\\\

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 4.5 (Dani interlude) Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 7.5 (Dan Interlude) Part 8

[iniquity-fr]

i keep saying i will finally reopen my skin shop again and then not doing it but maybe once i finish my riot of rot entries to hold onto for later i will. actually do that

[theslyvoid9]

Hiiii bestieee

WAAAAAAAAAAAA

[maryse127]

Why is my dad sending my job listings at 2 AM?

[chososdiscordkitten]

Kneel.

Synopsis: Priest!Nanami being completely and utterly tormented by nasty thoughts of reader (˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶)

Pairing: Nanami x Fem!Reader Content: pwp, plot before porn, catholicism, questioning faith, sooo much guilt, reader is 29, nanami is 34, reader kinda mysterious -.-

MDNI

Nanami’s life as a priest was busy- no time to be bored, nor time to yearn for more. Two or three funerals a month, mass every day- more than twice on Sundays. A handful of weddings a year, the many church groups he would oversee. His schedule was almost always fully booked.

His life was steady- a routine he followed every day. A life he was riding down happily. 

And when that peaceful life hit a bump, Nanami felt his life could be derailed entirely if he allowed it. 

‘I do it for my god.’

‘I do it for my parish.’

That’s what Nanami reminded himself of when your eyes would catch onto his. 

Preaching Sunday mass to the churchgoers- trying to direct his words to everyone. But whenever he did a scan of the room, his eyes stuck onto you for a brief moment.

Unable to shake the split-second thought of how you were the kind of woman he would have talked up in his 20s. He would shoo them aside before his expression could show what he was thinking. Placing his focus on preaching, instead of you.

You, who always sat at the very back of the church hall. And always with a questioning peak on your brow. 

But only you never stayed long enough after the service was over for him to properly introduce himself. Always walking out the minute the church-goers stood up to bid farewell to their neighbors. 

Even if he was held back by shaking hands- praising him for such a wonderful sermon. Nanami’s eyes still caught a glimpse of you that left the giant wooden doors of the church. Even more so, the clicking of heels against the tile- proud steps away from him as though you had completed your task.

Never did you stand for the sacramental wine nor the offering of the body of Christ. You only stayed in one of the pews at the very back and watched the line of merry people take them from his hands. A tilted head in curiosity with a small smile, as though you were poking fun at them in your mind. 

Day by day, sermon by sermon, you started inching towards him. One pew after the other. And when he finally noticed how close you had gotten, a mere 4 benches away from him. Nanami could see you up close now- the revealing collarbone that stood prominent with every inhale you took, the curve of your neck when you tilted it to the side. And every slight squint you would make as he spoke. 

Seeing you from a distance was one thing- being able to hide his catching gaze whenever he would address the flock. 

But now, he could see you even closer, his eyes catching onto how your lips would slightly purse. Almost in disbelief—when he would recite direct words from the Bible. Caused him to stutter over his words, excusing himself quickly before continuing. 

The part that made his mind reel was the congregation avoiding you. As though you weren’t even there. And Nanami knew this was impossible. A beautifully haunting churchgoer would’ve been swarmed by the single men of the church. 

But to you, they never mattered. Always swatting them away with one harsh look- at times, the aura you held was enough for them to steer clear. And the women of the flock didn’t find it very church-like that you did not greet them upon entry nor bid goodbye to your neighbors when the service was over. 

And the blatant isolation only made Nanami worry- knowing the church’s people can be judgemental at times. 

The Father blamed his priest nature for wanting to introduce himself. Knowing you had been attending for a few weeks now, and wanting to see if you were finding your way in the congregation.

Seven years wearing the white collar made Nanami think he had some sense when it came to acknowledging a troubled soul. However, the unfazed expression you would hold as he spoke and the slight look back at him when you would leave the church, left the man more troubled than you could ever be. 

At once, while he was speaking- preaching the words he carefully chose from the good book. Nanami’s eyes caught onto yours. Stuttering over his words as he watched you raise a brow and tilt your head, all with a vexing smile on your painted lips. 

As though you were taunting him for the stumbling, he saw it in the way you looked at him. Nanami felt your gaze on his skin as he spoke. Felt it burn into him with every word.

And when you finally lined up with the others during the eucharist. His jaw clenched, a sprinkle of nerves coating his hands as he watched glimpses of you through the line of people. Even lined up- you stood out. 

As you came closer to him with every person he gave the small wafer to, Nanami felt his heart start to pound. Never spoken to you- never even introduced himself. And his heart was racing. 

When you stood before him; Thick eyelashes and plump lips greeted him with a small smile. 

Blinking softly and looking up at him, parting your mouth and pressing the tip of your tongue to your bottom lip. Nanami inhaled, his hand lightly trembling as he held the little cookie. 

Looking into his eyes as he placed the weightless wafer to your bottom lip. His adam’s apple bobbing with a gulp, watching you pull the wafer into your mouth with a grin before leaving the line. 

The interaction wasn’t longer than a second- but it shook the Father to his core. Knowing that for the first time in the seven years of being in the priesthood, the first time since he was ordained– he had questioned his faith. 

For the rest of the mass, Nanami couldn’t shake the image of you from his mind. With every blink, he saw a flash of you, softly batting your eyelashes up at him with your lips parted. Even more so when he would scan the audience and see your face, a smirk on your expression, as though you were aware of the torment you had inflicted on the priest. 

Nanami didn’t know what brewed in his soul; he had no clue what called him to you. Why you were so tempting. 

That evening, when the large room was emptied. The Father prayed. He prayed and repented for the wisping thoughts that dared enter his mind. 

‘Let me help this woman,’ he prayed, ‘Let me help you find your way.’ as though he was speaking to you directly, unaware of what plagued you or why you ended up in the church's halls. 

Pleading with the ethereal being in the clouds to help him. To help him see why you were put before him. And what lesson you were meant to teach him. 

Even as he was preaching the words written in the Bible. He would pray in his mind- begging the Lord to rid him of the plaguing thoughts of you.

When he would kneel, close his eyes, hold his hands together against his lips and pray to his god; Nanami always expected some divine insight to race into his mind once he rose from his knees. He always hoped his god would tell him how to fix his issues. 

And so far, it had been a one-sided conversation. 

Tuesdays were spent sitting on the uncomfortable wooden confessional bench, hearing the same issues the regular churchgoers would come to confess. 

‘Anger, gluttony, greed.’

It was always the same—the same menial sins from the same people. Nanami often wondered if they had not tired from the repetitiveness. If they were not as exhausted as he was from listening to the problems they refused to fix. 

After the last regular left the booth, Nanami checked his watch. Noting there was only 20 minutes before 6pm. Part of him wanted to leave the booth then and there. Lock the doors of the church and continue his work in the office.��

But something told him to stay. 

Knowing he was right as he heard the heavy doors open, and the light clacking of heels hitting tile. Getting closer and closer as the Father awaited the curtain next to him to open. 

He cleared his throat as he heard someone ease onto the wooden bench. “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” he spoke, hearing your voice whisper an ‘amen’ along with him. 

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” 

Nanami closed his eyes- almost in pain hearing your voice ring through his ears. 

Silk and smooth as he expected. “It has been 14 years since my last confession.” your tone conveying a small smile- the same grin you would have on your lips during mass. 

The man couldn’t speak- his cheeks ran with slight tingles as he heard you. 

“I’ve committed a handful of sins, Father. I don’t know where to start.” tilting your head to the side and awaiting the mans guidance. 

He inhaled, shaking off the feeling of thinking it was you behind the screen. “Of all of them, which seems to be the one that weighs on you most?” his tone was steady- stark contrast to his pained expression. 

“The one that plagues me most-” lightly humming, almost taunting him as you thought. “May I be honest?” you spoke- hearing quiet shifting beside you. 

“Of course. Please- be honest.” Nanami urged, eager to know why you were placed in his path. Why you. 

The grin that arose on your cheeks was one that shouldn’t have. “I have been lusting after a man I shouldn’t be.” You spoke with a light rasp in your tone. Proud shoulders, not daring to falter their posture. 

Nanami clenched his jaw. Pondering if he genuinely wanted to tread through these waters. 

“I have thought vile things while in his presence.” spoken just shy of a whisper- loud enough for him to hear. “I try tempting him.” 

It wasn’t your words- nor the sultry tone you took that bothered the Father. It was how callous they fell from your lips. How easily you admitted these sins and how unapologetic you sounded. 

Even if you had not physically done anything— the sins were only committed in your mind—your confession showed him you were on the steps to show some kind of penance. 

“Do you know the ‘Act of contrition’ prayer?” Nanami asked, hoping the words would bring him back to stable ground. 

“I do.” you spoke softly, awaiting his instructions. 

Gulping softly, “Kneel.” he commanded, his tone sending a direct spike of warmth down your spine. 

Slowly shifting onto the ground, placing your elbows onto the wooden seat, and interlocking your fingers together. “Pray.” the Father spoke in a curt breath, his tone all but begging you to. 

You closed your eyes. “My God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee,” softly reciting the prayer as the Father mouthed the words as you spoke them. 

Even as you recited the rest of the prayer- instead of helping, this only fed the rot growing in Nanami’s brain. Now, knowing you were aware enough of Catholicism and still thought of vile things, he refused to imagine.

And as he recited a prayer of absolution- he begged in his mind for you to pray for him as well.

Pray for him to find the strength to keep the box of carnal thoughts he locked away when he was anointed at bay. 

Even if the priest didn’t believe it, “God has freed you from your sins,” he said. “Go in peace.” knowing that, as it was on Sundays, you would go in peace, whereas Nanami would be left more troubled than when he started. 

And as he heard your voice whisper, ‘Thank you Father.’ before the clacking of heels descended onto the tiles. The thoughts inside that locked box dared to reawaken themselves. 

Thoughts he reserved only for his early twenties, no longer having the right to access them now. But you- you shoved the reservations aside. Made room for yourself in his mind- what plagued him most was how unsure he was if it really was you behind the wooden fence of the booth.

Nanami would be lying if he said he had never prayed as hard as he did once you left the confession box. Making sure to lock the church doors and light a candle. 

Standing at the center of the aisle, the statue of his god looking down at him with tears in his eyes. As though his god was disappointed in him.

Nanami fell to his knees, defeated and scared of what was planted into his brain. 

And as he started his prayer, the words sounded as though he was asking for mercy. Pleading with his god to forgive him, to rid him of you and the infiltrating things he pictured as you spoke. He begged for help on his hands and knees- even a light tear leaving his closed eye. 

Sunday’s morning mass came and went. Nerves filled his hands as he awaited the afternoon mass to start. 

Nanami awaited you- his eyes locking onto the door anytime it opened. He held off the mass as long as he could. And the realization that you were not showing up affected him more than it should have. 

And when afternoon mass started, he thought it might’ve been his fault. Had he assisted you better in your confession, maybe you would have shown up. 

Nanami made up a handful of excuses on your behalf, that you were sick- or just busy.

But none of them were true. None of the excuses Nanami made up satisfied him enough to still his mind. 

And as he was gathering his belongings from the lectern, the church empty and dim as he accumulated his thoughts. The sound of the large doors opening caused him to look up. 

The figure of you walking down the aisle in his direction, calf-length black dress and the same black heels that clacked against the tile. your cheeks lightly damp from the heavy rain that echoed through the halls.

Even dressed modestly- the sight of you still troubled the man. 

Nanami knew it was only you, him, and his god in that room now. Knowing he wouldn’t be able to use the congregation as an excuse to look away. 

He parted his lips to speak, only you spoke faster than he could- “Father, I was hoping we could talk.” a low tone- different from the one you used when you sat in the confessional. But speaking with the same ease that he heard the last time, it made him realize that ‘anonymous’ confession wasn’t anonymous anymore. Nanami was sure it was you now. 

And as though his prayers worked- your face looked almost remorseful. 

“Not as a confession.” you reiterated, causing the man to gulp lightly and try to gather his thoughts. “Just to talk.” 

Ending up sitting in his office- a small room at the very back of the church. Small windows being pelted with heavy raindrops.

Set up in the same way a principal’s office would be. Sitting across from him, desk separating you from the priest. 

Even if he sat in the chair that technically held the power- the aura that surrounded you made a chill run down his spine when he eased into his chair. 

“How are you finding the congregation?” he asked, words he had been thinking since he noticed your seclusion. And being able to ask you without worrying it wasn't you sitting beside him. 

Crossing your ankles and lightly easing onto the arm of the chair, you softly smiled, “The people are kind. I know I can sometimes come off standoffish; they still try.” 

Nanami felt a tension in his throat, as if he had taken an overly large bite of a meal he wasn’t ready for. “I had noticed you had not engaged with the others.”  

“Did you?” you asked- taking on that little upturn in your tone. Your low eyes watch the man before you gulp. The white collar became tight from the words that sounded all too tantalizing than they should have. 

“It made me worry.” he looked down at the calendar on his desk- full of black pen marks of that month’s activities. 

You lightly furrowed your eyebrows, “Worry?” 

“Worry that you weren’t finding your way in the church.” he reiterated, trying to shake away the nerves and make this as you asked. Just a talk. 

Nanami wanted to bring up your confession- he needed to know why you wanted to tempt a man. He wanted to know if you were speaking of him. 

“When I see you leave immediately after the service,” he continued, feeling the light searing your gaze onto his skin. 

“I never had the chance to properly introduce myself-” he spoke, flashing his eyes at you. 

“Do you introduce yourself to every new church member, Father?” You asked, words that almost made the man cough. 

“I try to.” he admitted. Even if every cell in his brain told him to lie- to say ‘Yes, I do.’ 

“I imagine it’s quite difficult- so many people.” you thrummed, softly turning your head to the side and looking at the walls. Decorated with old paintings that had been hung there long before Nanami had been anointed. 

His mind reeling with questions a priest shouldn't ask a member of his flock.

“I am.” you hummed, looking back at the man whose eyes widened slightly. Unsure if you had heard his thoughts or- “Finding my way in the church.” elaborating on his confusion. 

“Were you raised catholic?”

The little grin that rose on your cheeks should’ve told him everything, but it only caused more confusion for the man. “I was,” you mumbled, looking at the body language he held as he sat. 

Tense broad shoulders that made your thighs press together whenever your eyes caught them. A furrowed brow that would twitch when you started speaking. “Around 16 or so, I left the church.” 

“And what brought you back?” he spoke—clearer and without fault. He aimed his intentions at helping you instead of trying to aid his wandering conscious. 

Looking down to your hands, “When I moved back here- something told me to come see the church.” lightly shifting in the chair as you spoke, “Imagine my surprise when I saw a priest I wasn’t expecting, walk before the congregation.” 

He took those words as a negative- as though you were disappointed that he greeted you and not another priest. 

“Were you raised in the church?” you asked softly, watching his eyebrows pinch in the slightest. 

He took a light breath- “I was.” nodding softly and recalling the memories of his youth. There was a small silence- waiting for him to continue as he expected your voice to speak up. Knowing this was to counsel you- not the other way around. 

“Continue, Father, please.” watching his eyes squint and think on it. 

Lightly clenching his teeth, he said, “I went to an all-boys Catholic school.” He softly blinked, looking down at his hands.  

“So you always wanted to be a priest?” you asked, the question coming off more sarcastic than genuine. 

He scoffed with a small hearty laugh- clearing his throat and sitting up. “No- no, I didn’t want to join the priesthood until I was 23.” he elaborated, watching you softly nod. 

“What made you turn back to religion?” repeating the question he had asked you earlier, only with a more seductive tone.

‘Because of haunting women like you.’ was all he could think as you awaited his answer. 

“I wanted to help people—I want. To help,” he said, words he hoped you would hear and pick up on his urge to assist you. 

In your mind, a sneering comment flashing in red- 'You want to help?' almost like a challenge.

“When I came to confess earlier this week-” you brought it up. That’s what Nanami held onto in his mind. You brought it up. He didn’t. 

“I still felt plagued by what I spoke to you about, father.” looking at him with a sprinkle of feigned sincerity in your eyes. 

Only to the man before you- that false sincerity was seen as an urge to rid yourself of your sins. 

His face was still- unshowing any emotion that throbbed in his mind. And you took it as him not remembering. “I recited the prayer of contrition,” you spoke- some attempts to remind him. 

Only the Father knew precisely what you were referring to. “I remember.” he assured, softly nodding and allowing you to continue. 

“After- I felt even worse.” Bowing your head to hide the smile on your cheeks as you toyed with your hands. “They didn’t stop after I left- if anything,” the words spilled from your lips, causing goosebumps to rise on his skin from what you were insinuating. 

“They got worse- more filthy; once I left, Father.” your expression hidden from him- and your tone soft, hinting that this indeed plagued you. 

You sighed, “It was unbearable.” accentuating the word with a pained tone. Smiling to yourself, “I’m sure you know the feeling, Father- as though one light breeze would make you combust at that moment.” 

 “I couldn’t even bring myself to come-” Nanami’s hand dared to clench at your words, “-to Mass this morning; that’s how shameful I felt.”

Answering Nanami’s question without having to ask it- “I thought it would be less frowned upon if I stepped into the church after mass.” 

Nanami gulped at the insinuation- all too fearful of what you spoke of. “Have you prayed on this?” he asked, air threatening to choke his words. 

Looking up at him with pinched brows, lips parted ever so slightly. “I have never prayed so much in my life before this.” 

Your words conflicted with. If you were so godly and sure of Catholicism. Why do your eyes tell him another story? Why do your eyes glimmer with hints of intent- as though you were looking at prey?

“Why do you think these thoughts have yet to leave you?” he spoke- words he said as a priest but meant as a person. 

“I think a masochistic part of me urges me to continue returning to the cause.” Words that rung true in his ears- knowing that he was the same. That, he very much could have excused you- tell you he was busy or that he could not talk at that moment. 

But the same as you, Nanami allowed himself to allow you access to him. The excuse of closure and the urge to help, used to defend himself to the god above him. 

Spoken in a whisper, “Like an itch I can’t scratch.” the Father started contemplating how far it would be if he admitted to the same thing- how bad it would truly be, if he confessed that the very same thing had plagued him.

Nanami was about to part his lips to speak- but the little reminder on his phone rang beside him. Looking down and seeing it- a parish meeting. “Maybe we should continue this next week.” he spoke- almost relieved that he would be able to escort you from the room thick with tension. 

“Have I taken too much of your time, father?” you asked- voice churned with the slightest hint of false distress. 

Nanami inhaled- “Not at all.” with a smile, “I just have a parish meeting in a few minutes.” he excused. Pushing his chair back and standing. 

And as he walked you past the church’s pew benches- a few inches to your side. “How does next Sunday sound?” he spoke, a low tone laced with the tiniest hit of smugness.

Shoes clicking against the tile as he walked. And as you turned your head over to him, a mindless hand was placed on your back. The lightest touch guiding you towards the door. 

“Sunday is perfect, Father.” you mumbled, watching his hand open the large door and await you to step out. 

And as he watched you leave his church- he almost closed his eyes in relief. 

Thinking of the movement Nanami hadn’t made since his days in college- a little action he would use on the opposite gender. It flustered him more now than it ever did. 

Life as a priest didn’t require him to touch women- ever so often holding their hands in his as they spoke to him. A handshake, a side hug from the overly enthusiastic housewives after his services. 

But that touch- the feeling of your back pressed against his palm. It sent shocks of fear mixed with excitement down his spine. 

During the entire parish meeting; the Father’s mind was fogged. Unsure what he was getting into- or why he was so determined to walk head first into this. Even if it was you who caused him to contemplate his life in the priesthood. 

Nanami would help you find your way, even if it killed him trying to. Reminding himself of the words in his mind. 

‘I do it for my god.'

'I do it for my parish.’

-

PT 2

(a.n) ....hehe

[palmettoshenanigans]

I fucking- I can't find it right now, but whichever one of you motherfuckers said Andrew's 'lack of control' was actually just intentionally calculated releases of pressure, that he was always in control when he lashed out because he lashed out in very specific and measured degrees - every single 'too far' was always 'just enough', its just no one else saw the raging volcanic inferno brewing just beneath the floorboards cus they were too distracted by how ear piercing the sound of the tea kettle going off was-

You're so sexy and I love you, but I wanna respond to you in spirit cus I can't find your post babes

We love 'biblically accurate' and 'devil's sacrament' as religious phrases yea? Well, my favorite (aside from 'heated fellowship', a black christian euphemism for fucking nasty) happens to be to 'know' or more specifically to 'know biblically', another word/phrase for fucking someone nasty.

stay with me this is going somewhere i promise pack a bag if you must

The interpretation I was raised with was that sexual intimacy was so vulnerable and exposing of one's most inner authenticity (that which apparently only God had such access to) that sex could make someone Know and See you the way Christ did (yadda yadda, "only fuck other Christians cus they'll be saved and sanctified enough to honor that blessing", yadda yadda) ANYWAY

THE POINT IS

You ever have someone in your life who just,,, saw you? Like, they could take one look at you and just Intuit Through The Vibes that something was up? Like they could just feel your energy and knew what to do or say or whatever? The kind of person who could walk into a room where you're minding your own business, doing something mundane, and they take one cursory scan of your posture and immediately ask "What's wrong?" like,,, what??? why do you ask??? what do you mean 'you can tell', I'm not fucking doing anything???

The kind of being seen for who you are that just leaves you feeling kinda exposed and tender? The kind of thing that leaves you bereft and yearning if you've never experienced it before (or had but lost it) because it feels like everyone only likes different mirages of you?

Andrew and Neil are so Relationship Of All Time because they seemed to See and Know each other like that even before they started locking lips on rooftops.

When Neil said "I want to see you lose control", i'm imagining Andrew probably felt so naked and flayed because everyone assumed he was perpetually losing his grip. On his anger, on his sanity, on reality, on his control. But like,,, Op's Spirit Of Post Long Lost, you were so fucking right. Every bit of Andrew's behavior was carefully calculated and intentionally released packages of what was his True Inner Turbulence that he would never dare release out into the open because that's not a target he's willing to give anyone a chance at aiming for.

Out of control? Andrew hasn't been that since he was probably a tween.

But Neil had never been fooled. From cigarettes and airport pickups to cigarettes and rooftop altercations, not once had he fallen for the mirage.

Without ever having needed to touch him in that way, Neil Knew Andrew. Biblically.

And that's why Andrew simply had to engage him in heated fellowship.

[nvuy]

hands on — sunday

summary. sunday feels eyes on him from everywhere, yet he still seeks your gaze despite how much he loses himself in your eyes.

notes. wrowwww confit part 2 is here i DID post it on ao3 like 5 mins ago but i think ao3 died in my country for the 74th time this year soooorrrrr hello tumblr!!!!!!

i'd strongly suggest you read confiteor here (or on ao3) before reading this one, otherwise this entire fic just sounds like an acid trip.

warnings. mdni, 18+, gn reader but you have fem anatomy, long ass 12k post, mild degradation, little bit of horror themes if you squint?, alternative summary: sunday receives head and has an existential crisis, sunday literally loses his mind (in a sexy way), religious guilt, religious themes & symbolism, sunday needs therapy, you're a weirdo (in a sexy way), y'all get it on in a church.

The church had always been beautiful. A place of worship, fairness, mutual happiness. It’s partly the reason Sunday was always so enamoured with its pieces on the walls; Robin used to trace her hands over the paintings, and he was sure he could spot her fingerprints from when the paint was still drying.

Sunday had never felt so disgusted with himself.

The murals watched him, one thousand unblinking eyes following him as he walked down the aisle, with muted clicks from his shoes against the red carpet with gold trimming. 

He was so angry. 

He’d trudged home the night prior seething, and Robin had rested a hand on his shoulder and whispered to him until he gathered himself. He hated to present himself in such a way to her, and although she begged for him to shed a light on his problems, she was met with silence. 

He was so angry at his traitorous hands when they wandered below the waistband of his pants. He’d been trying to sleep, tossing and turning for hours, desperate for some sort of distraction. He’d retrieved a glass of water, he’d stayed up to read, and nothing was helping. Nothing soothed the ache between his thighs; the thought in the back of his mind that you were in that same rut. 

He felt awful feeling himself up again, this time alone, and he was so ashamed when he muffled his cries and came into his hand. 

Vile. 

There’s a statue in the church. One erected from only the most exquisite sculptors of the era, crafted meticulously over gruelling hours to perfect the shape of THEM. Xipe stands behind the pulpit, larger than anything in the church, and silent. THEIR arms remain still, outstretched and gestured towards the empty pews. THEIR eyes are not open, but there is a gentle smile carved onto a perfectly whimsical face. 

It is a beautiful statue, sure, but Sunday would have preferred another God to watch over instead.

Perhaps it was for the best. 

In the preparation of the morning service, Sunday was unusually quiet. Staff piled in silently, bidding their greetings, and even Robin—and, bless her gentle heart—was reticent, her lips pulled together into a thin line. The choir practised, and it was the only sounds he heard that morning. 

The wine the church offered was of pure grapes. The chalice the sacramental wine rested in was golden with a thin stem and a wide base. A single golden spoon laid within the red. 

It’s supposed to be blood. It feels dastardly eerie to offer a piece of THEM to those undeserving of such. 

Instinctively, when his gaze met the statue’s, his gloved hand raised and clasped the golden charm at his chest tightly. 

Sunday felt a tap on his shoulder. 

“The congregation is prepared,” Robin said to him. She tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear. “As per usual.” 

He hadn’t taken his eyes off of the statue. “Good.” 

“And there are people coming in now,” she continued, nodding towards the door that led out to the lectern. “It’s almost eight.” 

“Thank you.”

She stopped, eyeing him warily. 

“There’s something bothering you,” she commented quietly. “You’ve been on edge since last night. Did something happen?” 

Sunday finally turned to look her in the eye. His face remained expressionless, though his tone held a hint of warning. “I’m fine, Robin. Please. Don’t worry about me.”  

“Brother–” 

“Robin.” He placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, though that smile he always pulled onto his lips when he was trying to deter her mind from him. His heart was pounding in his chest. “Please. Enough.” 

Defeatedly, her shoulders sagged. She wanted to tell him, as she had so many times before—so many times—that she was there for him. She’s always been there for him. 

Robin’s lips twitched into a soft, but crushed smile. “Okay.” She stared down at her shoes. They were slightly scuffed at the sides. “Okay, I… I’ll get the choir started.” 

Sunday had turned back towards the statue with an approving, idle hum. His shoulders had stiffened as he watched THEM closely, fingers interlocked in front of his stomach. It was a nervous habit Robin recognised all too well.

His hand was bleeding around the golden charm now. 

She said nothing. 

ೃ༄

When Sunday sang prayers into the microphone with a bandaged hand beneath his gloves, he wondered if he was ever truly a good person. Was he… ever fit to see the Heavens once he passed? It was all down to the judgement of one final being; unbiased, unjudged, honest. 

He always valued honesty. 

“Grace be to thee, and to your kinship.” The sunlight was burning into the back of his halo. “And, weary sinners, hold your heads, as THEY will shine light down upon you, and forgive all of your transgressions.” 

The chalice filled with wine sat idly on the table. There was an embroidered white table runner draped over the top to cover the chipped and old wood. 

The pattern was eerily similar to the stockings you wore that night. 

He dreamed of you. 

How could he? To betray himself, The Family, his own flesh and blood. He felt repulsive, like swallowing strong liquor. His saliva was thick in his throat as he spoke, hands pulled tight around the edge of the pulpit, mere inches away from shedding the program that rested in the centre. The wood creaked beneath the pressure. 

He remembered your voice as if you were truly whispering in your ear at that moment. 

You’re haunting him. He hears your heels in the hallway at home; he can smell your perfume when he passes down the aisle every morning. The script in his hands has tears from how firm he’s been gripping the paper. 

He had to remind himself he is good. He is good, and loved, and obedient, and his God is so benevolent and thoughtful to watch over someone as pathetically weak as he is. THEY will forgive him. 

He knows, he told himself. He knows what he did all those nights ago. 

Sunday felt unworthy to hold the golden chalice in his hands. The other staff had positioned themselves ready for the wine service. One had stopped to look strangely at the man. Sunday’s hands were trembling around the handles. 

“Reverend Sunday?” one of the priests asked gently. “Are you alright?” 

Briskly, he nodded his head once and pulled as much of a reassuring smile on his lips as he could. Then, he turned, careful not to spill the wine in the chalice and moved forward. 

There was already a line forming down the aisle. 

He is loved. 

“Go…” He hoped his voice was steady. It should be, for he’s said these exact words everyday for almost a year now. “Eat your food with gladness.” 

He is good.

The spoon shook in his hands as he offered it to one of the churchgoers. 

The next person stepped up. The priest on the right grasped their chin gently with the red cloth. Sunday offered another spoonful of wine. 

They were replaced with the next person. 

He is loyal.

“…And drink your wine with a joyful heart.” 

The next. And the next. And the next. 

Routine. Stagnant, maddening, routine. 

He glanced down to dip the spoon back into the wine again. The chalice was half full now, and the line was beginning to dwindle. He could see the end of it now. 

He is faithful. 

“…For THEY have already–” 

His heart faltered when he looked up again. 

The wine spilled from the spoon. He almost dropped the gold onto the floor. 

The breath that escaped his lips was shaky. 

It seemed that everyone in the church was transfixed with the smile you directed at the Head Reverend. Even the priests to his left and right had stopped. 

The choir had paused. A quick glance to the right would reveal Robin with her lips slightly parted. The organ player had pressed the wrong key and had halted the singing. 

When you shifted, he was reminded that you were not a perfect statue carved from the Gods hands. Not like the statue of Xipe that stood behind him. Your eyes flitted downwards, and he noticed your fists clenched at your sides. Discomfort pulled across your face like ink bleeding onto a canvas. 

Perhaps it was the distasteful attire you’d chosen for the ceremony that had garnered the staring. 

Maybe it was the unearthly beauty that sculpted your face, as if you were a being that had been picked from an inch of the Gods skin and blood, and brought to life on land, so full of love and saccharine bittersweetness. 

He could taste it on his tongue. 

Sunday quickly dipped the spoon back in the wine when one of the priests moved to hold the red cloth beneath your chin. 

He swallowed. “–Have already approved of what you do.” 

The spoon slipped between your parted lips. 

The other priest wiped your mouth with the cloth. It was like velvet on your lips. 

Hesitantly, out of time with the conductor, the church organ continued where the player had paused.

You pulled away from the cloth before the priest could remove his hand himself, and you offered one more warm smile—and sharp canines poked over your bottom lip—before you moved to let the next person replace you.

As you left, Sunday promptly ignored your hand that traced the leather of his belt beneath his coat. 

His heart was racing beneath his chest, like a bird hitting its wings against the confines of its cage. 

Heat clammered and sweltered up his neck. He ignored that, too. 

ೃ༄

He can’t. 

When Sunday stepped out of the confessional booth and locked the door with the key, he leaned against the door and shut his eyes tight. 

He felt too big for his clothes. His skin doesn’t feel like it’s his. It’s hot. It’s just so hot and his skin felt as though it had been rubbed raw with sandpaper. His breathing was shaky and uneven. 

He cannot bear to look at the images and murals plastered over the walls. If they had a choice, the unstaring eyes would, too, look away in shame. The statue is still. 

Sometimes, he was convinced it moved when no one was looking. 

Maybe that’s just paranoia. It all is, isn’t it? He’s always been scared of little things. Things with eyes, like dolls, and portraits, and people, and Gods. Not THEM. Never THEM—deep down, he did fear THEM. But he knows he is loved. Otherwise, he would have been abandoned. 

The murals are watching him. 

The walls are warping the longer he stares. The halos behind the figures’ heads are fading. He feels his own doing the same. He is unworthy of it. It is more like a weight of lead, than a ring of light. 

He’s still thinking of you. 

It’s horrible. It’s wrong. His eyes sting, though he’s not sure if it is exhaustion, or if he will cry again. But he can’t cry. He had wept silently in his bed the night prior because he couldn’t sleep. And it’s hard to sleep when the house is silent, but there’s a distant clicking of your heels down the hallway outside of his room.

It does not stop, nor does it draw closer or further away. It is a rhythmic click click click, and it is suffocating. It’s even worse when he feels you breathe into his ear and urge his hand between his legs. He feels your hands trace over his shoulders to his chest from behind—and of course you’re behind, because if he were to turn around, he’d see something ugly. 

He’d see nothing. 

It’s all in his head. 

But it feels real. How hot your breath is against his neck, how your lips follow the throbbing veins in his throat, how your fingers wrap around his wrist and guide his hand between his legs. 

The feeling weighs on his chest like gold. 

He draws close to pulling off his clothes when he is in bed. He fights his will, because it is you in his ear whispering that he is most beautiful in his rawest form. And he believes you, but the idea of ruining himself any further makes him feel sick. 

And one night, with what he feels are your teeth buried in his throat, he sings that he loves you, and he grows cold. 

He cannot sleep, and when he can sleep he dreams of you. And even as he lays wide awake in his bed, his hands wander, and he can feel your skin on his. 

He can’t love you. 

It’s not love. Love is warm, unfamiliar, and new, and he hears tales of how comfortable it is. 

It’s wrong to feel this way. 

He removed himself from the confessional. His legs felt weak when a hesitant breath left his lips.

“It’s like a weight… isn’t it?” 

Sunday froze. He’d never felt so cold before. His spine snapped straight like it’s was crafted of metal, and something horrible hooked within his stomach, hard and aching, like he’d swallowed lead. 

He heard you swallow. 

He didn’t dare turn around, fingers trapped on the pages of printed hymns he was about to put away. 

“It’s persistent.” He heard the telltale sign of your clothes moving. “You feel it, too.” 

He was afraid of what he would see when he turned around. 

He does. “I don’t know what you speak of.” He then turned, eyes glaring and face alight with anger. “If you know well, you will turn and leave. Don’t come back here.” 

His shaky inhale gives himself away. 

He isn’t sure if you’re real. For his sake, he hoped you weren’t. 

Sunday held the key tight in his bandaged hand. 

“You should feel guilty.” 

His heart stopped. The teeth of the key were digging into the hole in his palm. The bandages strain against his flesh, and he bites his tongue before he can let out a bark of disdain at you. 

Ungrateful. 

He won’t voice it. He will say nothing. This is not his fault; it can’t be his fault. 

And he still feels it is his fault. But this all happened because of you. And he’s been trapped inside his head for all these nights because of you. It’s all you. 

“Should I?” he asked quietly. He watched your face twist. “Or should you?” 

“Is it not your job to help people like me?” you tried. You felt blood rise up your neck and settle in your face. You weren’t sure whether it was because he was still the most beautiful man you’d ever seen, or if your frustration was climbing further and further towards your heart. “I thought you could help me.”

You had promised to fix him as well.

If anything, he felt even more broken than he had ever been. 

Sunday breathed out shakily. 

The bandages around his hand were beginning to dye a dark red like the wine he had fed you. 

He swallowed hard. You saw his throat move. 

“Fix this, Reverend. Fix me.” 

His voice faltered when he whispered, “I cannot fix what is beyond repair. I cannot give you anything more than I already have.” 

“Then take me.” 

There was silence.

He felt his heart drop into his stomach. 

Sunday glanced towards the door of the church and tried to control his breathing. “I can’t.” He shook his head slowly. He can’t bring himself to look into your eyes. “We can’t do this again. It will fix nothing. It will make everything worse.” 

Your legs trembled. You felt your heart stop in your chest, and it hurt. 

And you were so angry. 

So, so angry. You wanted to spit in his face, or maybe you wanted to fall to your knees and kiss his shoes and beg for forgiveness. 

Whatever you felt for this man, love, attachment, some sort of long winded delusion that he could be yours if you tried hard enough, surged inside of your head. 

You wanted to touch him. You wanted to feel his skin on your hands, and you wanted to hear him again. 

You swallowed your pride, and then you uttered, “please, sir.” 

Sunday exhaled sharply through gritted teeth. 

“Not only are your hands sullied with filth, but you are also disobedient.” He still cannot bring himself to look at you. He didn’t want to. He was afraid he’d succumb to your whims if he did. His hands were trembling, fingers weak and almost as if they would snap off from the knuckles. “I told you to never come back here.” 

You almost looked offended. 

“I don’t come here willingly–” 

“I know what you are.” 

Sunday’s fists clenched by his sides. The wings beneath his ears had stiffened, feathers bristling like cacti. 

“I know what you do.” 

You said nothing. If anything, your eyes were transfixed on the statue behind him. 

“You find reverent men, and you ruin them.” He turned, then, but his eyes didn't meet yours. “Tell me: are you proud of yourself?” 

“Never proud, sire,” you admitted. Then, you bowed your head. “Though I will say, I do hope you enjoyed yourself last night.” 

He inhaled sharply, and the corners of his lips twitched upwards. 

There, you dared to reach forward and trace your thumb along the bandages of his wounded hand. 

And he let you. 

He did not flinch away, nor did he tell you to leave again. 

He simply stared down at your fingers as they smoothed along the expanse of the scratchy material along his palm. Your fingers slotted between his. 

Sunday sighed, defeated. 

Your hand was so warm. And despite the disgust and the swamp he felt bubbling in his guts, he felt as if he’d known you his entire life. 

There was something so foreign in your skin, and yet he wanted nothing more than to melt into you like a burning flame upon a candlestick. 

Sunday, at that moment, felt no shame in what he had done to himself that same night. 

If anything, it pleased you, and that lit his skin on fire. A nice warmth buried itself in his stomach. 

“How dare you come back here.” The whisper was without malice, though he wished it did hold some sort of bite. Instead, he sounded pathetic, and lost, and he felt only you could help him. 

You don’t seem the slightest bit apologetic. 

Instead, your lips stretch into a small smile. 

“I blame you,” you said to him. Your lashes fluttered against his cheek. You didn't dare let your hand wander. Cautiously, you squeezed his fingers around yours, and silently prayed that he could let you indulge one last time. 

He blamed himself, too. 

His heart raced in his chest when your lips pressed to his. The poor muscle bashed helplessly against his ribs, like a small defenceless bird trying to free itself of its enclosure. Perhaps his heart knew better and attempted to leap from his throat.

You were gentle. So gentle he was convinced you were a different person; a different being to what he initially presumed you were. And it hurt. His chest hurt, like one thousand feathers weighed down upon his bones. Your lips were soft, and his own trembled against yours. 

Sunday’s other hand was still curled by his side, shaking with the urge to touch the expanse of your skin, and to also remain glued to his thighs at the same time. 

One of the wings beneath his ear tickled your jaw. The feathers trembled against your skin. You pressed deeper into hus mouth, so much so he almost startled back when your chest pressed against his. 

Sunday could feel your heart clammer against his own, and he felt as though you couldn’t have been any closer to him. 

A tick in time, a short moment of weakness, and one he’ll regret when he goes home and struggles to sleep again, but his hand abandons your grip. He tries his hardest to resist. He shouldn’t have ever let this happen again.  

Your arms daringly swung around his neck, one hand holding his cheek gently to keep his lips on yours. You could feel his hesitation, but something wrong urged you forward; urged you to ruin him even further. 

His hands rested on your hips. They did not move. They did not wander. They were frozen on your skin like ice. 

You tasted of the wine he’d given you.

It was strange, sweet, and it made his face flush the same colour as the blood on his hand. 

“Blessed Reverend,” you whispered against his lips. “How will you sleep tonight?” 

Your nose brushed against his. His feathers rustled when your breath and the scent of wine curled around his cheek. 

“I won’t,” he admitted. It’s quiet. You barely heard it. “I will toss and turn.” 

You fluttered your lashes at his answer. He felt your lips stretch into a smile. 

His heart frantically raced in his chest when your lips touched his again, and he stiffened when he stepped backwards with you and his back pressed against the pulpit. 

The hand on his cheek traced down the throbbing veins of his neck, and he had half a mind to pull away from you. His own hands held firmer against your hips.

He was growing dizzy. 

When he fluttered his eyes open, sick from the taste of wine on his lips, he saw one thousand eyes staring down at him. 

On the walls, on the ceiling, from the stained glass windows. His heart hurt in his chest, the thudding so loud he could barely hear anything else as it echoed in his ears. The swarm of guilt, still, was not enough to tear him off of you. 

The statue behind him, however, burned holes in the back of his head. He knew the sculpture was carved with its eyes shut, but he felt it he turned around, he’d notice the crack of a pupil beneath the stone eyelids. 

Your hand was on his stomach now, thumb following the central curve of his belly down beneath his navel. 

When your thumb hooked beneath his belt, his fingers wrapped around your wrist before you could dip any lower towards his thighs. 

“Not here,” he pleaded softly against your lips. 

He swallowed hard. 

“Where do you suggest we go?” you asked. He almost didn’t hear you. There was implication in your voice. 

He hated how warm he grew in his chest, but he knew it was wrong. So wrong, and it’s horrible. 

“You will not clamber into my bed tonight,” he whispered to you. That he knew for sure. 

You shook your head slowly. “I want you to take me here.” 

His stomach churned. It was as if he’d swallowed unjust liquor in one giant gulp. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think as he did. His mouth tried to form words, some type of rejection, or some form of a nicely worded insult, but nothing came out. 

Instead, he stupidly gaped at you. 

His eyes flitted up to the statue of Xipe. THEIR eyes remained closed, all six of them, and the expressions held still. 

Sometimes, he was convinced the statue was alive. 

Perhaps that was just paranoia. 

He found it fitting to pull you towards the hall and down a flight of steps. He held onto you tight by your arms, afraid you’d disappear, as he once again, grew uncomfortable in his own skin and clothes.

Fitting to be furthest away from the sunlight. 

As his fingers fumbled with the keys to the cellar, your hands wandered around his waist. and your warm lips pressed to the back of his wings. The feathers twitched and flinched. 

Sunday’s breathing grew heavy as the door unlocked and creaked open. 

The cellar was… just that. A cellar. There were an abundance of barrels laid down beneath the benches on either side of the room. They were most likely full of wine for the services. There wasn’t much out on display. 

Fittingly so, it was dark, and there were no windows. 

Your shoes clicked against the tiled floor. 

It’s dark. So dark you can barely see him, but he keeps a firm grasp on your wrist as you step into the room. It’s not too cold, surprisingly. It does not smell of mould or abandonment; perhaps they take good care of this place. 

You almost knocked into a table in the centre of the room. The glass sitting on top clattered and shook as you startled back into him. 

“It is safer here,” Sunday whispered in your ear. You knew he locked the door. His hands squeezed your shoulders. 

“I believe you,” you told him. 

Sunday hummed at your words, and his lips brushed against the side of your neck. His breathing remained unsteady. 

You turned around to feel blindly for his waist. It was probably best that it was dark down here. It was appropriate for the both of you, and so far away from the sky, and the leering eyes of the murals painted onto the walls. 

His body is warm against yours. 

He finds it in himself, wherever he hides himself away, to kiss you then. Maybe because it’s dark. You can just make out the outline of him, and whatever light creeps through the bottom of the door is enough. 

“I came for you, sire,” you said. “Use me as you wish.” 

Sunday’s lips bumped against your neck. “You cannot whisper depravity into my ears.” 

“You brought me down here for a reason,” you answered him. Your fingers slid down his throat and you thumbed over the top button of his shirt. “I say what I want.” 

“You are filthy.” And he kissed you again. Fury flared in his stomach like fire. 

You freed the first two buttons of his shirt, and while you were busied following the smooth skin of his neck, he pushed off your coat. 

You managed to pull the white blazer off of his shoulders, and though he couldn’t see it, he heard the heavy fabric crumple to the floor by his feet. He internally cringed; the wrinkles he would have to iron out would be too telling. 

You hummed pleasantly as you drew him back against your lips. 

The wings around his waist were a nice surprise. You hadn’t expected them to be any larger than your arm with the way he tucked them beneath his coat, but although the feathers were flattened from the material, they stretched out wide in relief. 

He knew the blackened feathers were ugly and uneven and clipped to the very edge, but you didn’t seem to mind. In fact, your fingers flitted over the base gently, a soft caress of your hand that made the feathers bristle. 

Your lips were so soft. Despite wandering hands, you were so gentle. It made his stomach churn, but his heart stammered in his chest. 

The feathers rustled. You heard them. They reminded you of a pigeon shaking out its wings. 

The table was just next to your hip. 

You moved away from his lips for just a moment. 

And then, you reached forward blindly and swiped the glass off of the table. Jars and glasses and bottles of wine smashed onto the tiles, and Sunday’s grip tightens on your hips. 

“What are you doing?!” He asked with horror strewn about his face, though you couldn’t directly see it. It was very well and obvious in his voice. “Why would you–”

You silenced him with your fingers pressed to the cupid’s bow of his lips. “Lay on the table, Reverend.” 

“Are you–” 

“Lay down.” You guided his hips softly, cautious of the poor and frantically beating heart in his chest, until the bones bumped into the edge of the wood. 

Sunday’s breathing shook with disdain. The table pressed against his back, and he could feel your hands sliding up his chest to push him backwards. The exposed skin of his chest met the slight chill of the air. Your thumb moved along the line of buttons before it raised again to push at his jugular until he was forced back onto the table. 

Sunday trembled for a moment. 

It almost hurt how quickly the guilt in his stomach vanished when you crawled up on the table next to him. His vision, although useless in the lowlights of the cellar, fogged over with heat and the thick air that filled his lungs. 

His skin prickled when your lips grazed his neck.

This is wrong. So wrong, and–

His fists clenched by his sides when your lips drag down his chest, following the buttons on his shirt. The plastic was cool, and it collided with your teeth as you travelled lower and lower. 

All the while, anxiety stirred in his stomach like some roaring beast. This was wrong, to be beneath you like this, where he’s not taking what he wants, where he’s not in control. This is wrong, wrong, wrong– 

Where his shirt pulled untucked from his pants exposed a lining of skin and his stomach, and he felt teeth set into his flesh. The skin below his navel stirred a bright red, and his veins were set ablaze. 

He stiffened, and his hand instinctively came forward to pull his skin free from your teeth. 

He felt his eyes were slowly adjusting to the darkness. So, so slowly. 

Sunday inhaled, and his voice trembled, so he kept his lips shut. 

You spoke, “don’t resist. Enjoy it.” 

He felt the telltale tug of his belt, and the jingle of the buckle as it finally loosened. He sighed in relief from the feeling. Still, his hands curled even tighter by his sides. “How can I–” 

Your fingers ventured beneath his unbuckled belt. You then firmly rubbed your thumb up and down and up down his side of his cock twitching in his pants and Sunday had half a mind to squirm on the table. 

“Do I make you anxious?” He heard you giggle close to his ear, and your lips smoothed over the base of one of his wings. 

He wanted to say you did, and you made him shake, and you made him dream about you, and you made him touch himself when he couldn’t sleep, and– 

Nothing but a moan pulled from his lips when your hand finally freed his cock from his pants. 

His chest heaved in disgust and pleasure and everything for that was your sullied and dirtied skin touching him. That was you, and those terrible shameful words that spilled from your tongue that made him shudder and caused his heart to quicken. 

His face grew impossibly hotter than before. 

You hooked your legs around his thigh, pressing your knee between his legs firm enough to still him. The dryness of your hand tugging the warmish pulled skin of his cock sent his mind into a haze. 

The horrible rhythm of your hand against his was so good, and he wished he could just disappear right then and there. 

Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he was so relieved there were no eyes watching him here. He was so relieved the cellar only had one door locked now. He made sure of it. 

If you commanded him to take, then he would ensure you wouldn’t leave this very room until you’d given him everything you had to offer. 

Heat sweltered between his legs, surging like flames licking up his skin. 

He wanted to speak. He wanted to order; he wanted to bend you over the table and take what was his. 

His ankles weakened when your fingers slipped over the head of his cock. Just at the thought of ruining you, a drop of cum squeezed from his slit, and your thumb smeared it all over him as best it could. 

His stomach heaved, basically convulsed, as you stroked him firmer and firmer until his limbs grew weak and burned from squirming and wriggling beneath you. He gave up barely minutes after you’d started, and now he only found it in himself to moan and moan over and over again beneath your hand like some dog. 

Wrong. 

He felt your lips trail down his neck. 

Oh. His hand rested behind your head and he tilted his head so your lips could drag against his flesh. It was awful. So, so awful his jaw clenched and his fingers twisted into your hair. 

Your teeth pulled at the taught skin below his jaw. 

“Don’t leave marks,” he breathed. He swallowed, and you followed the shape of his jugular with a graze of your teeth. 

This is awful,

His stomach churned. He feared he’d throw up with shame. 

Sunday was panting now, nails digging into your scalp. His teeth gritted and grinded behind his lips. He can’t do this. He can’t, he can’t, he can’t– 

Sunday managed to sit up shakily. 

“Put–” Another moan escaped his lips, followed by a trail of laughter at how ridiculous this was. “Put your mouth on me.” 

“Is that what the High Priest wishes?” Your lips followed along the soft skin above his collarbone. “He wants his dick sucked by a ‘whore’ on the streets? Will that satisfy you, Reverend?” 

Anger flared in his chest. His hand moved from behind your scalp to grasp your chin firmly. “You will do well to remember you are here to please me.”

And you would.

A dreamy sigh escaped your lips as he gripped your face hard enough to almost hurt. His nails dug into your cheek. “Of course, Reverend. Thank you.” 

 He let go of you. 

As obscene as it was, his hand twisted into your hair again and pushed your face towards his lap. 

This was only slightly better. How he could pull and tug you where he wanted. He was here to take; isn’t that what you said? 

Still, it was obscene. Grotesque. Disgusting and muddied and it’s so, so hot down here. For a moment, he feared Hell, for maybe the world below the soil had risen to take him and you into the earth. 

It would be what you both deserved. 

He felt your tongue first. Awful thing, your tongue. If he’d had it his way, it would have been torn from your mouth the second you stepped into his church this morning. 

It didn’t feel as awful as he knew it was when the wet muscle dragged along the head of his cock. The tip of your tongue nestled upon his slit, and it was so hot, and he almost lost his mind trying to remove what was left of his clothes on his person. 

He did not. 

Though it was dark, and he could see the outline of you clearly, he refused to let him feel more of your skin on his. 

Your lips pressed a dainty kiss to the tip of his cock before they then wrapped around the head. 

Hot. That’s what it was. Sweltering, sweaty, sickening humidity crawling up his neck, like one thousand bugs twitching and writhing upon his skin. 

His stomach stuttered, and he felt your palms rest on his hips as you positioned yourself more comfortably to the side of him. You draped your stomach over his soft thigh to splay your hands over his torso. 

Sunday raised his fingers to bite down on the side of his hand to silence himself. There was no coming back from this. Exiting the confessional yesterday with filthy hands already destroyed him, and now something sour was pooling at the back of his throat at the idea of unlocking the cellar door and leaving. 

He couldn’t imagine how dishevelled and improper he looked. 

His wings fluttered when your mouth lowered further on him, and one of your hands abandoned his stuttering hips to thumb along the sensitive skin beneath his cock. 

You were consistent, licking up and down with your tongue in wet passes. It drove him mad. He preferred it that way, floating out of his mind, as your warm tongue covered the skin of his cock in your saliva. 

You tasted salt as his slit dripped pathetically, but you kept your lips zipped at teasing him any further. You could hear him above you, a panting mess, breathing all slow and heavy, of whatever he was an hour ago with a tight and twitch grip in your hair, so much so his nails had embedded themselves into your scalp. 

His hips stuttered forward when you pushed your mouth further down his cock.

You drooled around the skin, slicking his thighs with spit and his own cum, as you willed your breathing through your nose. Surprisingly, instead of what any vile man would do and move his hips forward and fuck the back of your throat without a care in the world of your ability to breathe, Sunday waited. 

He waited patiently. Perhaps he was searching for signs of discomfort, or maybe he was adjusting to the heat of your mouth and your tongue stretching past your lips to run along the swollen veins of his cock, but either way he waited. 

He was more or less hesitating. 

He felt so disgusting and hot, but your mouth was so warm and his breathing shook more and more and the air felt trapped inside of his lungs. 

It’s so hot. 

Your tongue dragged up a swollen vein alongside his cock again and Sunday hissed, holding your hair tight as a warning. Watch yourself. He was afraid of how difficult it was to allow your mouth to do its own thing; how desperately he wanted to feel the back of your throat. 

You would let him. You had promised him you’d let him take and take and take until there was nothing left of you. 

The hand in your hair served more as a gentle encouragement than a forcing manoeuvre. He was swollen. He could feel himself bursting at the seams. 

Instead, he searched for a distraction. “Come–” His breathing stuttered. “Come here.” 

You pulled off of his cock. 

You hummed curiously. 

One of his hands was following the gentle curve of your spine, dipping lower and lower towards the back of your thighs. Instinctively, you moved closer towards him. 

But still, you managed, “you don’t have to touch me, sire.” 

“I want to hear you,” he whispered. 

His hand snaked around your front and steadily undid the button at your waistband. The zipper followed next before his gloved fingers disappeared beneath your underwear and delved between your thighs. 

He wouldn’t take the gloves off. He couldn’t. 

The feeling of the scratchy cotton against your clit sends you into overdrive. 

You part your thighs to allow his fingers to tease up and down your slit as you trace the underside of his cock with your tongue. 

His hips remained still. 

You felt he wanted to. How he desperately wanted to grab your face through how his hips tremored and twitched around your mouth. How he wanted so badly to bury his cock in your throat and feel you choke and splutter around him. 

You moaned around him, and Sunday hissed again, this time lower, and it almost served as a warning. Your pleasure, for this moment, would come after his. 

Still, you grinded down on his fingers as he rubbed your clit in quick and light circles. Your breathing stuttered, and he dared to guide your head just an inch lower around his cock. 

His thighs began twitching. 

“Oh…” It’s breathy and light and warm, what spilled from his mouth. His fingers pushed back what strands of hair had fallen in your face. “You–” Words didn’t escape his lips properly, and all that tore from his throat was a dreary and miserable whine. 

You keened over his fingers. The cotton was good, though now his palm was soaked. 

You whined stupidly when his hand abandoned your clit, before your muffled disappointment was replaced by a pleased hum when he pushed a finger inside of you. The glove slid in with embarrassing ease, and Sunday flushed at the feeling. 

You squeezed around his finger, drawing him in further. 

Your lips were growing desperate around his cock, tongue flitting out again and again to taste the cum that streamed from his slit. 

“I–” Oh, God. The room was spinning. “I can’t–” His stomach heaved when your tongue grazed along the swollen vein before you drew backwards and licked harshly along his dripping slit. “I can’t–” 

He dragged his cock forward into your mouth again and again. Not enough to touch the back of your throat with the tip, but enough to knock the air from your lungs with every push. 

You learned quickly that Sunday preferred your mouth and tongue remain relatively still and open for him. 

He preferred to control how he fucked into your throat, holding onto the back of your head as gently as he could—you dutifully ignored how his nails stabbed into your scalp. 

It was easier for him now to take what he wanted. 

You’re so wet. He could hear it, even if he hadn’t even bothered to strip you of your pants. It’s obscene, and his cock hardened even more at the sound. 

His rhythm remained the same. He’s quick, much unused to the wet heat soaking around his cock, and more so worried about how the head rubs along your tongue. 

But you’re so obedient like this. So pliant and warm with his hand between your legs teasing that gaping and soaking hole. And it’s so warm and hot and yes, yes, yes, come on–

“This is–” 

Your eyes fluttered open to acknowledge him. 

His thighs twitched around your head. 

He let out a shaky gasp. 

His hand loosened around your skull. You drew back only just and mused a simple, “take what you need.” 

He needed you. 

He smelt wine from how you’d smashed the bottles onto the floor. Sacred, important wine that you’d tossed aside like you’d thrown his blazer to the floor and the golden medallion on his breast. 

It filled his senses, blurred what little he could see, and he slid his cock on the curved line of your tongue again and again and again and again and again. 

Two fingers, soaked in your slick, abandoned in teasing your hole to ghost over your clit again. 

You’re so good. So good to him. So hot and heavy. So pretty. And you sound beautiful. Your muffled groans were like music. Like the music he’d listen to in the privacy of his home. 

He felt bliss. Heavenly bliss. 

His stomach lurched at the debauchery. How awful you were, how you made him feel alive in his own skin. 

And nobody had ever made him feel this way. And he loved it. Every second, even if his flesh warped and his organs twisted in loathing. For himself, for you, and those pretty lips wrapped around his cock. 

His hand carded over your hair with care. 

His fingers teased at your clit in horrible horrible circles that made your hips twitch towards his hand. You were grinding over his palm now in steady back and forth lines. 

So good. 

He couldn’t even think. Nothing but stupid moans pushed past his lips, and he was almost deep enough to reach the back of your throat. So, so close now. 

Your tongue was so hot it almost hurt. The noises, and the dripping of your saliva down to his thighs, made his hips squirm beneath your hands. Filthy. It’s all dirty here. 

He felt after this he’d have to scrub himself until his skin withered and only bone was left. 

You hummed. You pulled off of him again. When he mumbled a string of disappointed gibberish with his eyes squeezed shut in frustration, you whispered, “are you close, Reverend?” 

Heat crept up his thighs and down from his stomach. 

You thumbed the swollen veins and cooed at his slicking cock. “Are you?” 

“Finish this,” he whispered harshly. “Finish me.” He tugged on your hair gently, guiding you down toward his cock once more. 

Excitement bubbled in your stomach. 

Your tongue flattened against the head of his cock. Your spit slid down his skin as you buried him deep in your mouth. Maybe you pushed too far, because you gagged around the skin close to the base. 

Your nose just barely grazed the supple flesh of his lower belly. Your hand wrapped firmly around what skin you couldn’t reach. 

He’s delicious. He was so heavy in your mouth and warm and his cum smeared thickly over your throat. 

Sunday’s hips rocked forward as deep as he could possibly bury himself. You take him in and suck. The wet slurps of your tongue make his skin burn hotter. He feared he’d faint, or melt, soon. Like a candle. Like the votive candles upstairs in the–

His mind kept trapping himself of the main hall upstairs, and the thousands of eyes peering down at him. 

Drool and cum dyed your lips with a shimmer. You were growing more and more desperate and there was a concerning and lonely ache between your legs somewhere deep inside of you. Your lips sucked a tighter seal around his cock while you kept your tongue flat for him to slide his cock over it. 

Sunday’s fingers tightened in your hair. 

“You–!” He tried to tell you you were awful. This was wrong. This was disgusting, and vile, and you were just a wretched streetwalker tempting him for a thrill. 

He said nothing. He couldn’t. 

He stiffened up again, and his thighs locked around your head. 

And then, his cock jerked in your throat, and he came. 

A long and broken sob echoed in your ears. 

You held his hips still as he squirmed and wriggled beneath you, salt coating your throat in streams as his chest and stomach heaved with his heavy quickened breaths. 

His head was swamped with a haze, like a thick foggy mist clouding over his senses. 

His skin almost melted off of the muscle in his body. He felt like the countless votive candles still burning on the floor above, with the statue of Xipe, and the hundreds of eyes painted on the walls– again. His mind reeled back again. 

 Sweat dripped from his flesh like wax. 

Sunday held a vice grip on your hair. His other hand between your legs had stilled for the moment, though he could feel you still grinding onto the soaked material of his glove. 

“Good,” he mumbled. He was petting your hair. He swallowed hard to ignore the ache between his legs. “So good.” His words were slurred, and amidst the darkness, what he could see swirled into a muddied watercolour piece. 

He was drawing in sharp inhales that whistled through his teeth while you cleaned him up. Your tongue traced the angry red flushes and patches along the sensitive skin, following every drop of cum that had fallen past your lips. 

Sunday let go of your hair in favour of feeling his racing heart beneath his chest. It ached and thumped with need. 

He was sensitive. He’d been wriggling the entire time, but now his hips couldn’t keep still, and he couldn’t stop himself from following your tongue with his cock. 

His breathing stuttered loudly as he dragged the skin over your tongue. He wasn’t sure if he wanted you to open your mouth again, but at the same time, he was afraid he’d grow tremendously addicted, and you’d both remain there a lot longer than he would’ve wished. 

So, he pulled away, as difficult as it was. 

Guilt steamed in his stomach like a hot iron sliding over his belly and scorching his flesh. 

He felt you swing over between his thighs as your mouth, sticky with cum and spit, abandoned his cock and trailed kisses up his torso. 

Sunday’s free hand grabbed your chin when your lips bumped up against his jugular, pulling your mouth towards his. 

He tasted himself on your tongue, but he avoided it as best he could. His hand between your legs pressed firmly against your clit, and your body twisted and grinded and squirmed on his gloved palm. 

He almost felt bad. 

Almost.

A string of bubbled gasps and whispers of worship escaped your lips, but they fell on his deaf ears. The smell of wine was stronger here with your heart pressed to his. His thumb teased your clit as best it could with how you moved against him, and his glove was soaked in your slick. 

He was furious with himself, and yet he also found himself not caring as he did. Maybe it was you; maybe you were muddying his senses. Maybe he’d go home tonight and stab a blade through his chest and ruin the awful guilt-stricken beating muscle beneath his ribs. 

For now, as you had wished him to, he’d indulge. 

He’d take. 

Your fingers tightened their grip when they flew to his shoulders. The linen of his loosened shirt crumpled and wrinkled beneath your hands. There was a strain behind his arms as you pulled harder on him, pleading beneath your breath. 

“Was that enough for you, Reverend?” you whispered to him. Your lips were pressed against his. That same squelching sound between your legs, and Sunday could feel his cock hardening as it did the night prior. 

He said nothing. The air was thick with the scent of his skin, and yours. 

You felt the flutter of feathers brush along your cheek. 

“I’m–” 

Sunday swallowed when he felt your stomach jolt against him. “I know.” 

“I want your devotion, Reverend,” you admitted. How debauched to whisper things like that against his lips. He knew you wrong, and yet his heart raced at the thought. At the idea of disobedience. “I need you.” 

It was very well possible down here. No prying eyes, no other members of the church. 

Just you, and him, in the mellow darkness, rocking against each other. 

His fingers quickened and you almost cried. 

He feared then, and now, that you did receive devotion. 

Instead, to hide the burning shame in his stomach, which only grew between his legs, he rested his forehead against yours and sighed shakily. For a moment, there was the faint glow of his halo, and the distant sound of a bell toll. You just saw the outline of his hair. 

Your fingers brushed past his wings blindly.

They passed through the ring of light behind his head. You felt nothing but warmth on the pads of your fingers. 

“Go on,” he breathed. “Let go.” 

And you did. 

Your stomach pressed to his in a harsh arch and your nails raked upon and wrinkled the back of his dark shirt even further as you came. 

Bliss and sugar clouded your head like fog. 

His wings fluttered behind him in a panic when one of your hands hooked around the base of the clipped wing of the pair. You whispered his name like a prayer, and it hurt when he kissed you. It burned on his lips like flames, and he loved it. 

Too much. 

And yet not enough. 

Sunday felt you weakly try to crawl on top of him, but he pushed on your shoulders gently until you rocked backwards. He held you up as best he could on shaky legs as you both rose from the table. 

The wood was covered in sweat and condensation and heat, and Sunday couldn’t bring himself to tear his mouth off of you. Wine. Wine on your tongue like blood, and he couldn’t stop himself. 

Heat burned in his chest, and his stomach, and it steamed to his head and rushed up his neck in bubbled waves. 

He grabbed you by the collar of your crumpled shirt and pushed you against the table. He felt weak, his bones rattling beneath his skin and his blood boiling, and there was anger there, but also something else and it scared him. 

Perhaps you picked up on it. 

He heard you laugh, even as he forced your stomach further into the edge of the table. 

“Blessed Reverend, did you fall in love?” 

His blood ran cold. 

He couldn’t possibly call it that. He knew it wasn’t true for you, either. The way you looked at him threatened more than love. 

It can’t be love. He’s not allowed to love. 

His heart frantically raced in his chest. His fingers trailed from the back of your collar to the small of your back, and he pushed and pushed until he had easily bent you over the expanse of the table. 

He was panting. You could hear him somewhat close to your ear. 

“No,” he answered, but he sounded unsure. “But you did, didn’t you?” 

Another breathless laugh. You heard the jingle of his belt, and his gloved hands slid up the back of your thighs. He’d managed to wedge one of his legs between yours, but it didn’t nothing to quell your squirming. 

His touch was soft. Too soft to the point it tickled your skin with feather-light strokes against your legs. 

One of his hands wrapped around your front to feel blindly along your cheek. He grabbed your face tight, and he felt your heart thrum in your throat. 

You felt him roughly tug off your pants and they fell to a pathetic heap on the floor. You kicked them away, and they fell into the pile close to his discard clothes.  

“Spread your legs.” 

You were panting, laughing, as he squeezed your spit covered chin in his gloved hand. The soft and soaked cotton was rough, pinching against your flesh. His breath was so hot down your neck.

You let out a droning whine. 

He clicked his tongue, and the firm hand pushing you into the table pinched the back of your thigh. You cried out, and your leg twitched instinctively. 

“I will not ask twice,” he whispered into your ear, lips hot on your skin. 

Weak in the knees, and your stomach pressed hard and flat into the edge of the table, you shakily did as he said, hesitant with the warm hand that remained on the back of your thigh less he reel back and bruise it. 

He did not. 

He seemed pleased, though he did not voice it.

A gloved thumb exposed the sensitive skin between your legs, and you outwardly flinched forward on the table when his finger grazed over your sensitive hole. 

Cold. It’s so cold, and he’s slowly drawing circles around your entrance. 

You could feel yourself clenching, trying to entice him inside again. 

His thumb pushed into your cunt, and you let out a hum. You almost squealed when the tip of his finger brushed against your walls. 

“Is this not what you came here for?” Sunday asked. “To ruin yourself?” 

“I’ve already ruined myself,” you said meekly. His thumb pushed deeper to his knuckle, and you mewled. “Thank you, Reverend.” 

Ever the gracious Bronze Melodia, and despite your willingness to be pliant for him, he still asked for your wellbeing. To seek in your pleasure, because he knew no better. 

“And have you found the relief you’ve sought?” 

You didn’t want him to care, but there was a burning in your heart, because he did. 

You let out a throaty hum. “Almost.” 

You heard his teeth grind behind his lips, and his thumb abandoned your hole, smearing slick along your cunt. The soaked cotton caught on your clit and you moaned. “Filthy.” 

He’s so angry. Heat flared in his chest. 

You felt him burning, his thighs slick and trembling on the back of your legs. 

Impatiently, you canted your hips back into him, and he gasped out of shock and a shameful delight when your slickened cunt dragged against his cock. 

Your hips rocked against his again, skin sticking with sweat to his hip bones and he throbbed. His teeth gritted hard enough to almost crack his teeth. 

His hand moved from your chin to press flat on your stomach. 

It’s so hot. He could feel your skin radiating off of him. And it was overwhelming, like he’d been thrown into a sauna with no water for relief.

He wanted to fill you with cum. 

It hurt to think. He shouldn’t think. All he should do is fuck you until there’s no other man out there for you but him. 

And you can never have him. 

So he can keep you here and watch you pine and chase after him, and he’ll deny you every time. And make you ache and suffer for what you’ve done to him. 

But for now, the aching and twitching in his cock made his head spin every time he slid himself upon your slit. Back and forth and back and forth and–

It’s so hot. 

He felt his mind twisting and melting beneath his skull. 

Desperately, Sunday gripped the base of his cock and shakily guided the tip to your aching hole. His other hand abandoned the warmth of your stomach trapped against the table. 

You mewled when he stretched your hole as wide as he could with splayed fingers. A dribble of slick escaped you, and he could feel you clenching already. 

Your toes curled in your heels. One of your shoes comes off, and he feels the slide of the embroidered stockings against his leg. 

Those same stockings with that pattern he saw in every single embroidered table runner in the church, and at home, and it made his skin crawl. 

“You’ll let me enjoy myself, Reverend?” you whispered behind you. 

Sunday pressed you further into the table and rocked his hips against yours. “You’ll lay here and take me.” His tip kissed the entrance of cunt. And then, with one hard exhale, he slowly canted his hips forward towards your thighs. “That’s what you wanted.” 

You hummed and slackened against the table. 

Hot. He’s so hot inside of you as his twitching, creaming cock splits your hole wider. The veins run along the stretchy walls and slip further inside of you. 

He throbbed when you felt his hips press against your ass. 

Sunday was already panting, holding your hips in a tight grip that loosened as he bottomed out. You felt him bend over you, his stomach jolting against your back as he tried to hold you still. 

He was squirming, wriggling like a fish caught on a hook. You were so warm, and you dripped and squeezed around him, and he couldn’t possibly pull himself any closer to you. He wanted your skin to fuse with his in a tangled mess of grotesquery. He wanted you to assimilate and merge beneath his skin. 

This cannot be love. 

Possession flared inside of his stomach. 

He was trembling. His cock twitched with need inside of you, and you let out a moan.

“I’m–” He shakily exhaled against the nape of your neck. His face was burning with shame. 

You could feel it on your skin. “I’m right here.” 

He pressed inside of you deeper. Deeper, deeper, deeper. He wanted to press all the way to your womb and leave a permanent imprint of his cock that left you with an empty ache for as long as you lived. “This is wrong.” 

You hummed in acknowledgement. “But you love it.” 

And he does. 

Sunday slowly pulled his hips away from your ass. So slowly, and he felt one of his traitorous awful hands reach blindly for yours to hold it. You squeezed his hand in response. He held on tight. 

Then, he slammed back into you. 

He grew breathless almost immediately, and the air was knocked from your lungs. Your hips smashed into the edge of the table. 

The ache was good. 

You murmured praise, and his cock grew impossibly harder as he reeled his hips back and filled you again. 

He’ll take good care of you here. He knows as much. Your skin is so, so hot, and his cock is so warm and snug inside of you, and he felt his mind growing muddy all over again. 

Sunday rocked his hips quicker, his knee almost knocking against the table by your hips. 

So good. 

His bottom lip quivered. One of his hands dragged up from your hip and slid up beneath your ruined shirt. He pressed you down against the table as flat as he could. 

So wrong. 

He’s wrong. You’re wrong. You’re both sick, and ungodly, and corrupt. And you both belong to each other. He belongs to you. As depraved as you are, he feels he is worse. He wants to drag you to his bed and satisfy himself again and again, but he knows he can’t. 

So he takes you here, again and again and again. 

His cock buried itself impossibly deeper with every imprint he left inside of you. His tip kissed as far against your walls as it could, and his hips tremored with every grind of his hips against your ass.

He felt like a dog. Like some pathetic mutt mounting its mate. 

But that’s what he felt he was in that moment: pathetic, weak, and some mindless man with his brain in his cock. 

The bones of your hips were aching, snapping back and forth into the edge of the table, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care for the fire surging in your veins. 

Your body felt numb, like you’d been burned one thousand times over, and then had ice poured over you. 

It’s awful, and yet you felt so alive. 

Your hand was shaking in his when you murmured, “let go. Let me touch myself, sir.” 

His cock squeezed against a particular spot inside of you, and you couldn’t see straight. 

Your ears were ringing a tune you couldn’t place your finger on, and your clit throbbed with every brush of his cock against your walls.

In response, he held that hand he held still against your back. He silently allowed you the reprieve of his touch when your fingers curled around his thumb, and he did not pull away. 

The scratch of his shirt against what parts of your spine peaked through your pulled shirt. 

You shivered, even more so when his lips delicately lingered beneath your ear, and his hot breath fanned over your cheek. 

This is wrong. It’s wrong how good he feels. 

It’s wrong how you clenched around him, sucking him in impossibly deeper to the curl of your warmth around his cock. 

He fucked into you again. 

His tip was burning with need, and his stomach twisted and turned at the thought of it. Wrong, and filthy, and–

You let out another plea. “Le’ me touch myself, Reverend.” To hammer the nail in the coffin, you then murmured, “oh God.” 

It’s the need that made him crack. It’s the idea of just how tight you could be if you were to cum all over him. How he could watch that gorgeous spine unfurl in front of him, how a melody would spill from your lips only for him to hear. 

The sounds are disgusting, but somehow so invigorating. Wet and loud and so grotesque. 

Sunday breathed out, and he sounded excited. 

“You sought relief in me, you wretch.” he breathed into the nape of your neck. Sweat dyed his lips with salt. “Do it, then.” 

When he removed his hand from your wrist, he felt your knees buckle. He pushed your hips further upwards into the table, for if you both fell any closer to the floor, away from the sky, he was sure he’d never wake from this horrible dream ever again. 

Your hand slipped down your front towards your swollen clit. 

His cock fucked into you harder, chasing the feeling of your cunt squeezing around the sensitive flesh, struggling to pull tighter. So filling. It’s so good. It’s so good it’s shameful, and he understood in that moment why sinners confess to him in the booth, go home and use their wives, and then repeat this endless cycle of debauchery. 

As guilty as he felt, he sank his teeth into the exposed skin of your shoulder where your shirt fell. 

You’re so beautiful like this. 

Moaning and begging for more of him and covered in sweat. 

His halo was glowing. 

He swallowed the saliva building in his mouth when he pulled his teeth away from your skin. “You’re disgusting.” It’s weak, it’s pathetic, it doesn’t even sound like he believes it. 

Because you’re not. You’re like an angel, laid flat on the table, offering your very being to him. 

All you were missing was a halo—distantly, he knows you’d never receive one. 

You let out a squeak of laughter, breathless. Your hand stirs between your legs. You manage to crane your neck and make eye contact with him. His halo lit up his pretty, flushed face in a shimmer of gold. “Are you close?” 

His feathers fluttered at the question. His face grew brighter. 

Your cunt squeezed around him again, and he let out a gasp at the tightness. “Very.” He was embarrassingly close, and all you’d done was squish him tight inside of you. 

Your cunt squelched around his skin, and Sunday whimpered. 

You squelched against his cock as he drove in further, desperately chasing that heat the coiled tighter and tighter in his guts. 

He was afraid he would grow addicted to this. He was already growing addicted. He squeezed his eyes shut, and he gripped your hips tighter. 

Sweat stained his neck, and heat trapped beneath his ruined shirt. He’d have to burn his clothes. Plead for a new uniform entirely, and perhaps for salvation. 

If anyone found out about this. 

His stomach turned. 

His cock slipped out of you and he grunted. Sunday fumbled with himself trying to slot back into your twitching hole. “Stop wriggling.” 

Your cunt trembled as he stretched past your walls again. Your fingers tremored over your sensitive clit. “Haha. Of course, sir.” Breathless, slurred, beautiful. 

He could listen to you moan in his ear all day. 

His skin stuck to yours like glue, sweat and slick soaking his thighs as he pushed into your guts as deep as he could. 

As dangerous as the thought was, he wanted to fill your womb with his cum. His cock throbbed and throbbed and as he drew closer and closer to the edge, he fucked you harder and harder. 

He felt the heel of your shoe slide up against his thigh soaked in sweat. It was exciting how you treated him like a prince, and also like the dirt you stepped in with these expensive shoes. 

Sunday shivered behind you, his hands trailing over the curve of your ass up to the base of your spine. Pretty, pretty skin. So soft and dainty, and so warm and supple beneath his fingers. 

He didn’t deserve to feel like this.

He buried his lips into the nape of your neck again, gently brushing kisses along your sweaty skin. His tongue pushed past his lips, and he tasted salt and the lingering scent of your perfume. 

Sunday slammed his hips against your skin again. And again– and he felt he was losing his mind. His hands gripped your hips so tight you were excited to see the bruises he left on you in the morning. 

You were moaning and moaning against the table. 

One of your hands had balled into a fist and viciously smashed against the table. “Harder, priest. Make me yours.” 

“You are mine,” he reminded you coldly in your ear. Still, his hips made a resounding smack against your ass. 

Sunday moaned when he felt your walls twitch around him, so tight he felt as though his blood circulation was being cut. It made his head swim. He pawed at your back desperately. 

So close. 

You purred praises again as his cock head kissed that sweet spot inside of you, and your fingers drew sloppily around your clit. “Just like that, Reverend.” 

Sunday’s halo almost blinded you with how bright it was glowing. 

He wanted to mumble that he loved you. He wasn’t sure if it was the true, or if he was stumbling over his tongue with these disgusting falsities and delusions.

Like the delusions that played in his head of waking up next to you, crawling between your legs and tonguing at your cunt, pleading for relief while his cock stirred in his pants. 

“Let me fill you,” he pleaded quietly. “Please.” His tongue was watering, and he wiped drool off of his lips with his shoulder. 

He heard you sigh dreamily, cut off suddenly with another harsh thrust of his cock inside of you. 

He was twitching. 

So fucking close. 

Come on. 

Shame. Shame poured from every pore in his skin like pus. 

“Of course, sire. I’m yours.” 

In your final confession, Sunday’s chest heaved. His gloved fingers gripped your hips enough to still them entirely, staining the unmarred skin with dark bruises and blood. 

His cock twitched deep inside you, his mind twisted, and he came. 

He filled your womb, just like he wanted to, and he moaned so pathetically against your neck you cried out for him. His breath fanned over your sweaty skin as he trembled above you, hips smacking weakly against your ass as he emptied himself. 

“God.” It spilled from his lips. 

Blasphemous. Awful. He’ll never see the light of day the same again, 

He clawed at your hips, pressing you down into the table. 

His heart lurched when you squeezed around his sensitive, aching cock still buried deep into your cunt, drooling around the skin as you came again. 

He felt slick dribble past the rim of your hole, sticking to the soft supple skin of his thighs as he kept himself snug inside of you. 

Warm. 

He exhaled shakily. 

The praise you had whispered had gotten to his head. Heat swelled in his face, and Sunday swallowed thickly. 

After a moment, you sighed, just as wobbly as he was, and raised a hand to pull his chin down just enough for you to crane your neck to the side and kiss his cheek. 

You could feel his heart bashing against your back as his chest rested on your spine. Truthfully, you could’ve stayed this way with his slowly softening cock deep inside of you. 

He pulled out slowly, almost unwillingly, and he heard you hiss lowly. His cock slipped from your cunt, and his slit was still aching as the remaining cum bubbled and dribbled down the side. 

Sunday did nothing. 

He removed his hands from your hips and you finally pushed yourself up from the table. He heard the creaking of your bones and a sigh of relief as you stretched your skin. 

His heart was still racing. He felt nauseous. 

His gloves were sticky and tacky, but he still refused to touch your properly. 

He heard you shift, sitting up on the table and gliding a gentle, but firm hand up and down the stretch of his spine. His wings fluttered at the attention. 

His halo was still glowing, just enough for you to see that he was masking his guilt and staring far too long at the wall of the cellar. After what seemed like hours, he fumbled to pull his pants back on at the very least and attempted to straighten his rumpled shirt. 

In that time, he’d heard the clicking of your heels as you’d fussed to dress yourself as best you could without moving from the table. 

Devotion. 

Your hand was now soothingly rubbing his shoulder. 

His knees buckled. 

As he slowly lowered himself to the floor, he turned to face you and slotted himself in between your legs. This was devotion, right? His gloved hands slid up your thighs as you watched him curiously. His knees hit the floor first, and his lips trembled when he leaned forward, pried your thighs further apart, and kissed your clothed cunt until your hips twitched and you giggled. 

You playfully shoved his head away with a push to his forehead. 

Sunday rested his head against one of your thighs and continued to tremble. His face was still

coated in sweat. 

When your hand gently reached down to pet his hair, he shakily smiled. 

He’d find later after he finally pulled himself from the cellar and locked it, and trekked back up the stairs to the main hall, that the murals were not looking at him. The statue was still, just as silent as it had always been, with six eyes shut to the world with their unhearing ears and unspeaking mouths. 

All that would watch silently was a bird. A small, deep purple nightingale that watched from afar. 

For now he walked down the aisle after you silently, holding onto his coat and his white overthrow. The golden badge that usually rested on his breast weighed heavy in his hands like led. 

He did not dare to gaze at the walls. He held onto the key for the front door as if it would disappear from his grasp. 

It was cold outside, and the wind blew steadily as he shut the door behind him before securely locking it tight. 

He heard your heels stop. 

“Reverend?”

Sunday wanted to bark at you. What more could you possibly want from him? You’d taken everything, and now he knew he would go home like a ghost trekking a lonely path, fall into bed, and tremble all night as his fingers felt blindly for the waistband of his pants. 

Instead, he only hummed. He kept his hand firm around the giant brass knobs of the church. 

“Don’t fear Hell.” 

The words did not assure him, but for that moment amidst the wind, Sunday listened. 

He felt a hand rest on his shoulder, squeezing the sore muscles tight. 

He stiffened at how warm your skin was. How he desperately, desperately wanted to feel your lips on his again. 

He refrained. 

Sunday barely turned his head to look at you. 

“I will be there with you.” And that, you could promise. 

Daringly, you pressed a chaste kiss to his hair before you let go of his shoulder, and left. 

He only glanced away for a moment, but when he peered back down the street, you had disappeared, along with the faint clicking of your heels. 

Sunday’s shoulder remained warm long after you had let go. 

And that warmth remained present for every day that you did not return to him. 

But, distantly, with every service that he swears he sees your face, or the pattern of your stockings in the embroidery, he knows the fleeting feeling of your warmth is enough.

[riacte]

false during the renchanting fire demon roleplay was so funny. she wanted to give them space but she stayed there and silently judged them. she watched them like two bugs in a jar. she plastered signs in martyn’s hole like “what is happening yikes” “chat please help” “are they ok” like girl you are LITERALLY AT THE DEVIL’S SACRAMENT. you STARTED the devil’s sacrament

[goodgirl4daddy4evr]

Hypnotized lesbian sucks Priest off before her wedding

Tw: religious abuse. Are you gay? Have you been told you're going to hell for being gay? Does that trigger you?

I was given this prompt by @kingofobsidian 🥵

I was getting ready for my big day. I wasn't sure it would ever come. Or include me in a dress, marrying another woman in a dress, in her family's church. Her parents took her to a very open and affirming church that my soon to be wife felt safe coming out in when she was a teenager and now felt joy to return to so we could celebrate our love. I hadn't been to church in a while but we'd been doing counseling with the priest in preparation for marriage. He was so nice, I really felt like I could be open with him about my fears and insecurities. It helped us talk about them as a couple. We each would have our own recordings to listen to about marriage and the commitment we were making. I would always zone out listening though so I'm not sure how helpful they really were. My finance felt the same.

I was in the recreational area bathroom when I asked my maid of honor and friends to give me some time alone to reflect. My strapless dress was not staying up over my titties that well, we had to use some tape and I was fiddling with it when I noticed it in the mirror again. I'm startled out my headspace of frustration at my chest's incompatibility with strapless tops when there's a knock at the bathroom door. "Hello, Becki? It's Father Tom. I just wanted to check in on you. May I come in?"

I look at myself in the mirror, my bleached blonde hair half up, and share a confused look with myself before turning towards the door. Father Tom looked like he always did, all in black with his white collar poking out. Now that I think about, I don't remember if he has to change too. He smiles and chuckles, looking at my chest.

"Oh Becki, your dress is a little lopsided."

"Ugh, is it really that noticeable?" I turn back to the mirror and inspect the dress while I notice my worried look. Father Tom comes up behind me and I don't notice he's reaching out to touch me until he is. I look up in the mirror to see him tower above me and his hands on my shoulders. His eyes are starting at my titties in the mirror.

As if his stares could cause it, the tape finally unstuck on one side and most of my left titty popped out.

"Oh my God!" I cover my nipple. I look at him. I turn around. "Oh my- my- ah I'm sorry Father! I'm sorry I just- I'm just sorry!"

His hands came to lay on my back now and he's smiling again. "Oh Becki, sweet girl, you have nothing to apologize for." He looks into my eyes very intensely while mine are searching his face for an answer as to why.

"Remember, Becki? Remember?"

And that's when I drop my hand. I do remember. I look into Father Tom's eyes. They look so deep.

"Don't you remember, Becki? From your recordings? You know what marriage between two women is about don't you? Don't you remember, Becki?"

"It's about serving cocks together. It's when lesbians become a package deal for superior men. Women can't satisfy each other's needs. Only cock can."

"Ohh yes, you do remember, Becki."

That's when I feel myself pushed to the floor on my knees looking up at the first man I would ever service. In my wedding dress. Waiting for him to marry me to another woman.

He's unbuckling his belt as he speaks. "Now Becki, this will be just your first taste of cock. You'll be coming back every week for your sacrament, Becki, I want you to remember." His thumb rubs on my lower lip. "Now Becki, remember those recordings? I want you to think back to what they said, Becki."

"Start slow first. Lick all up and down. The wetter the better. Suck on the head. Suck on the balls. Use your hands. Open your throat."

He pets my hair before taking out his cock. I can't believe it. It's so much bigger than I thought they could be! It's like big tits! Big cocks only exist in porn! But I have big tits. Oh my god, do regular men have big cocks?

"Becki, remember..."

Father Tom moves his cock closer to my face I can't stop staring at it, it's so beautiful and I want it in my mouth so bad. I wanna suck and slobber all over it and suck his cum out so he put it all over my tits. I bounce and grind as I move forward and grab the base of his cock to lick all over his cock and get him nice and wet for my mouth.

"Oh! Becki I'm so glad your training took. I'll have to talk to your new wife after I marry you. Make sure her training took as well. You're both so beautiful. Made for taking cock. To marry you both would be sin if I did not claim you for my own. You thoughtless women denying your purposes. You should be grateful that I've saved your souls. I'm going to bless you with my holy seed and you'll need to receive this sacrament daily."

I look up with my big eyes, "Thank you, Father." and I take him in my mouth. I suck on the tip of his cock with my hand rubbing the base. I swirl my tongue around his head, tracing the part right where the head meets the shaft. When he puts his hand on the back of my head I suck him deeper. And deeper. And then my hand doesn't fit. I bob my head sucking from as close to the base as I can get to the bottom on the head and up and down and up and down. And hold. And up and down and up and down and up down. And hold.

It's when I start to juggle his balls that he grabs my head with two hands and begins to thrust in earnest. I finally understand what facefucking is. He's just using my mouth. Using my mouth to cum. He thrusts and thrusts and slows down and rolls his hips and thrusts and thrusts. Both my titties have fallen out of my dress and drool is dripping onto them from my mouth. My eyes are starting to water and it's starting to hurt. I'm making all these noises choking on his cock, looking up at him. He's staring at me.

"Look at me, Becki, look at me. Look at the man that has saved you. You will be blessed! Ohhh I'm putting it on your tits! I'm putting it on your tits!"

He lets go and I cough and gasp and catch my breath and look at him as he rubs his cock and lines up his cock head in the middle of my cleavage.

"In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, take your daily blessing, and may it cleanse you."

He unloaded his milky gooey white cream all over my flushed red titties. Spurt after spurt came out, more than I thought was supposed to happen. After he finished milking his cock I held up my titties to show off to him and he put his cock between my titties and rubbed his cum around.

"Ohh Becki, my child, I'm so glad I saved your soul for the Kingdom of Heaven."

He takes a step back and pulls out his phone from his pocket. I'm a little dazed when I hear the camera sound.

He chuckles "Now we can clean you up for your bride. Let's fix that dress."

[yandere-daydreams]

tw - implied non//con, kidnapping, unhealthy relationships, and religious imagery/themes.

For the longest time, you thought of Gojo as a god.

How could you not, when your first impression of him had been one of blinding light and flashes of pure ivory, searing warmth and eyes like the endless sky? The gospel he spoke was nonsence, all near-incomprehensible rambling about cursed energy and walking nightmares, but you choked it down like sacrament, accepted your savior without complaint. He'd saved your life, cast off the darkness and promised to make sure you stayed in the light. Whatever he was, it was god-like enough for you.

You worshiped him like a god, too. In coffee shops and bakeries, when you first insisted on paying your tithe, then dimly-lit bars, sweat-soaked nightclubs, upscale restaurants you never would've been able to afford, but that gave you all the more reason to cling to him like a saving grace. He moved slowly, waited weeks before bringing you back to his penthouse apartment and commanding that you kneel before your alter, but he really didn't need to. Anywhere he tread was holy ground, as far as you were concerned. If that meant you had to make his bed your hollowed place, then so be it.

You figure that was what he must've liked so much about you. People like Gojo were often admired, always feared, but rarely loved, and you'd always been the type to show your deities the utmost adoration. Somewhere, in the thralls of your worship, he must have decided a willing acolyte was not as valuable as a loyal one.

For the longest time, you thought of Gojo as a devil.

A liar, a dissident, a heretic. A deceiver, most of all - for masquerading himself as something so holy, so divine. You told him as much (albeit, with much more colorful language), but that's the thing about pure evil; it thrives on hate and loathing and hostility, and Gojo drank in every ounce of attention he could wring out of you, whether you were sobbing into his chest or screaming for him not to touch you or begging for whatever scraps of mercy still existed in his cold, armored heart. He was good at that. Whether you were singing hymns underneath him or praying for someone who could deliver you from his embrace, Gojo knew how to get what he wanted from you.

You did a lot of praying, after he took you into his impious counsel. Not that it did any good - he'd always mocked your attempts to comfort yourself, to withhold something you'd once given to him freely, something that he was always able to take with or without your cooperation. You blamed his cruelty on pure malice, felt his touch like tongues of hellfire, but what hurt you the most was when he wasn't cruel, when his touch didn't burn, when his smile still range angelic and he promised, in a way that did not sound entirely like the twisted words of a wretched imposter, that he really did love you.

You knew, now, that Gojo was human. Nothing more, nothing less.

And you understood that, truly, was the worst thing he could've been.

[myteavsricochet]

alex hasn’t been a good catholic in a long time, but he knows confession is a sacrament. they were supposed to stay safe.

[portraitsofsaints]

Happy Feast Day

Saint Mark Ji Tianxiang 1834-1900 Feast Day: July 9

Patronage: Drug addicts

Saint Mark Ji Tianxiang, “the Trier" was a Chinese lay Catholic, doctor and drug addict. He became addicted to opium because of a stomach ailment and suffered for 30 years with the addiction. He went to confession regularly to confess his drug use, but because of the priest’s misunderstanding of addiction he would not give Ji absolution because he believed there was no firm purpose of amendment. Although being denied the Sacraments Ji continued going to Mass and stayed steadfast in his faith for 30 years praying to die a martyr. During the Boxer Rebellion (anti-foreign, Christian persecution) he and his family were martyred. He encouraged all in prison to keep the faith throughout their ordeal and sang the litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary as he was about to be beheaded.

Saint Augustine Zhao Rong  Died 1815 Fest Day: July 9

Martyrs of China

From 1648-1930, Chinese children, parents, catechists, and laborers were martyred. Saint Augustine Zhao Rong was a soldier convert who became a priest and was brutally martyred by having his arm cut off and then flayed. His last words were “Every piece of flesh, every drop of blood will tell you that I am a Christian.” In 2000, 120 martyrs were canonized including 4 Chinese diocesan priests and 34 foreign missionaries.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase here: (website)

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase here: (website)

[shardminds]

you hate me for it

pairing: azriel x gwyneth berdara rating: e (for emotional damage) wc: 2k ish primary tags: angst, implied/referenced child abuse (canon typical), vaginal fingering, enthusiastic consent. for more detailed tags, warnings and the author's note, please see ao3 ♥

read on ao3 or proceed under the cut

It’s always the same dream. Always the same lick of flame at his wrist, always the same vice grip on his forearm.

“There now, halfbreed,” his brothers would say, his father would say. “Scars for the scar of the family name.” And his hands would melt, skin sloughing from fat, muscle, until only bone remained. They would melt too, uncharacteristically, dripping away as charred black split to reveal milky red and white - marrow, maybe.

Flames work up his arms. Shadows replace them.

The stench of it is too much, even in his nightmares. So much that he wakes up gagging, bolting for the bathroom before the grip of terror fully loosens from his heavy limbs. He’s careful not to touch anything on the way just in case. He’s scratched them raw before. It would not surprise him if it happened again. He hadn’t, thank fuck, but a recently healed scab between his knuckles split just to spite him as Azriel clenched his fist.

It’s not unusual for him to sport bandaged knuckles or to even wear gloves on occasion — tight leather fit, reinforced at the joints. They restricted his dexterity only slightly, but never enough to impede his skill. They hid a multitude of other sins too. He’d be able to get away without too many bandages this time around. Just a small one to cover the reopening cut between the third and fourth fingers of his right hand.

He washes them first, careful to run the faucet just enough for a constant stream, just enough to avoid the groan of the pipes. It’s almost mechanical how he takes each task. Wash, Dry, Treat, Wrap, Secure. Again and again. Over and over. On the battlefield or in the bathroom — it’s all the same. Just reminders of violence.

At least now it takes him minutes. It used to take hours. Hours and nothing but rags and scraps and a shallow bowl of dirty water.

Wispy tendrils curl across his knuckles, soothing in their own way. Soothing and insistent. Warning.

A patter of footsteps, the creak of hinges he’s been meaning to oil for far too long. Sea water.

“Az?”

Fuck.

“Go back to sleep, Gwyneth.” It comes out tired, weary as he tucks one end of the bandage beneath another, knotting the ends a touch tighter than he needs. Not at her, never at her.

But she makes no attempt to turn away. No, she molds to his back, curving around his spine until there’s no space between them. The press of her warm lips against Azriel’s shoulder blade rips through him like a brand. Her delicate fingers slip around his waist, drawing idle pattens in the space below his belly button. He clenches against it, feeling her nails graze the skin - gentle but searching. A coil of darkness circles her wrist.

Azriel’s mind jumps to her swordsmanship, the effect it’s having on her hands. She’s growing calluses. He wonders if she’s noticed.

“I’m not tired.” She says, and it catches against his spine, rides the length of it like a landslide until the words settle in his gut, just south of her fingers. The way she toys with the hair dusted above the waistband of his shorts—

It’s a game and it’s not. They play and they don’t. It’s sex and it’s sacrament.

In a roundabout way, he’s lucky she’s tolerated him this long. She’d listened all the times he’d said he didn’t want to talk about it. When the walls close in and everything feels too claustrophobic, like he’d never left the basement, only seeing the sun through cracks in knotted floorboards, dust dancing on shallow breaths. He’d been mean about it more than once, when he pushed her away or left her stranded, nothing but the wings on his back and the ache in his chest to guide him.

If he’s being honest, he’s surprised she stayed at all.

There’s no escaping the fact that he is an asshole. Even if he never wanted to be.

Gwyneth Berdara, never one to be underestimated, was one hell of a quick study. She learned how to keep him put, keep him talking, how to crack him like ripe fruit until all his secrets spilled free, like pomegranate seeds. Hers for the taking. The parts of himself even Rhysand and Cassian learned not to talk about, she barely flinched at. She took it all, never once turning away.

No need for daggers or swords; her greatest weapon is her tongue.

“Are you?” She asks, punctuated with a kiss to the back of his neck.

Azriel turns then, hitching her up onto the bathroom counter in the process as he stands between her legs but, if she’s surprised by this, she doesn’t let on. The cool night breeze through the open window has her nipples peaked through the shirt she’s wearing. One of his, naturally. Dark against the pale of her thighs. She looks at him with such defiant eyes, a challenge wrapped up just for him.

“Tired?” He curls one hand under her chin, tilts it to the side just a little. She gasps as he runs his nose along the line of her throat. “No, but I can fix that.”

Her index finger dips lower, snapping the fabric against his flesh. Azriel’s patience snaps with it. “Come to bed.”

“Why?” He asks, purposefully petulant.

She slides her heel up the back of his thigh, the movement only serving to reveal more of her milky flesh. She says “Come and find out.” But all Azriel hears is white noise as he slips his free hand under her shirt.

He pretends to consider it, he really does, and he used to pride himself on patience, but there’s no use pretending. Not with her. He has no intention of going anywhere just yet. “No dice. I’ve got everything I want right here.”

It’s the melodic sigh that sings to him, as she relaxes into his hand at her throat. She’s warm and soft and slick to the touch, honey cooling on his fingers as he toys with featherlight pressure. The thing is, Azriel doesn’t need to see to know just where she likes it. He knew the atlas of her body the moment they kissed. Intel gained from rigorous training, survival and aid now serving his baser instincts. What a double edged sword to know where she is weakest. What a gift to touch her anyway.

What has he done to deserve it?

“Do you want me to touch you?” He clings to the brief acceptance he’d been allowed, her open legs and heavy breaths, knowing she’ll say yes but needing to hear it anyway. His hands aren’t as smooth as other males, skin thick with callus and scar. He should have asked before he even tried. He shouldn’t have let it get this far. Should’ve let his arms burn to stumps, should’ve cut them off when his brothers offered him the saw, should’ve—

Gwyn grips his wrist in her palm, fingertips against the marled pulse point. With each beat it whispers don’t leave me, don’t leave me, don’t leave me.

“After all this time you still need an answer?” She says, barely above a whisper. Do you not know already how much I love you? How much I care?

He knows — oh, he knows — but it’s not enough.

“I would like one.”

She peels off her—his shirt, and each inch of skin that appears only serves to drive the lump further up his throat. A twirl of black sits at the crease between her thigh and her hip, and Azriel wants to trace its path like nothing else. Like he’s done before. Like he will do again.

They play like this sometimes; like a game of cards and he’s one draw away from folding, and Gwyn hides her tells so well ever since she realised he’d learned how to read them. Part of him is disappointed that she’s not wearing any underclothes. He would’ve made use for them in her mouth.

“Is that good enough?”

Azriel shakes his head, focused too much on the darkened burn of his hands against the ivory of her throat. Gnarled gore against perfect smooth. A privilege just to touch her like this.

Sometimes, when he removes his hand, the print of it stays. Her flesh tainted by his touch. A path to her most intimate parts left in bruises and brands from his own fingers. To corrupt this last perfect thing— to have her skin slough under even the most gentle caress, even if her lips parted in pleasure as he did so.

He wakes screaming from those.

“I want to hear you say it.” He says, quiet like confession. Truthfully, it’s the only way he could ever admit this; below a whisper, for her ears only. “I like it when you tell me what you want.”

“Azriel, oh Azriel.” It comes laced with sarcasm, if a little heavy. Like she’d roll her eyes if they weren’t half lidded and focused on his lips. “I want you to touch me. Please.”

And when Azriel whispers “thank you” against her lips, he means it. Sighs it into her mouth like a prayer. Gwyn doesn’t pause before kissing him as he slides one, two fingers inside her, moan catching on his teeth.

Times like this, he wishes he had full sensation in his fingers. That the fire hadn’t robbed him of the sensitivity in at least half of them. He can still feel the pressure as she clenches around them — desperate, eager — but he wished he could feel it more. Wished the pads of his fingertips could trace the walls of her and memorise them, like he had done with his tongue so many times before.

It’s not like he has no feeling, just less. Scar tissue marring the sensation like feeling through the gloves he used to wear on solstice visits to Rosehall, before he was carted back to his cell and his father tore them from his arms and threw them to the same flame they burned him with. Acrid leather smoke choking him with each breath. It’s hard to remember how things truly felt; the silks of his mother’s dresses, the rough concrete floors of his father’s basement, the unmarred feel of his own skin before all the scars.

But there are other ways to feel her.

Azriel slips a thumb to her clit and Gwyn flinches, hands jumping to his shoulders. Her blunt fingernails bite into his flesh and it hurts so deliciously he almost loses the tentative grip he has on things. On reality. Chain slipping from his grip a little more with each noise from her lips. Each one he pulled from her.

“You’re teasing.” She gasps, breaking the kiss as he circles his thumb again, practiced pressure allowing him to press ever so slightly until the telltale whine and hiss of oversensitivity drags him back. She’s always sensitive. Like no one he’s ever known.

“Am I?”

“You are. Don’t.”

He is, but that’s just how it goes. That’s how he peels apart the layers she also hides behind — teasing with touches he can’t quite feel until she breaks beneath him like a wave. He works her a little deeper, a little faster, revelling in how she squeezes around his fingers, curses lost to a god neither of them can hear and Azriel can’t bring himself to care about religion when he’s discovered heaven right here.

She trembles as she comes, breath heavy and laboured. How he can bring her off with just this alone fascinates him still. There’s no getting over just how close to perfection he is allowed, despite all the things he did to get there. The stains on his soul run deeper than the marks on his skin, but Gwyn drags him close anyway, lips sealing around the side of his neck, kissing up to his ear with breathless pants.

Azriel thinks, for a second, that maybe she loves him.

It’ll pass.

Her lips catch his earlobe.

“Please.”

[amalaeus]

Kylar/Robin/Sydney/Whitney HCs

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

Kylar

Kylar V. Tepes

Black curly hair, the fringe is longer at the back because that boy does not maintain his damn looks for shit

Neon/Bright Green eyes

5"4

Malnourished twink-twunk (Becomes a twunk-hunk after PC rehabilitates their ass)

Excels in Science + Art, shit in everything else

Surprisingly really good at fighting, nerfed by their malnutrition

Unkempt, but does bathe everyday like a normal person

Clothing preference: Black hoodie and jeans/skirt, that's it.

Submissive, but once you get their breeding kink going they WILL top TOP you (Not exactly be a hard dom, but would get on top and try their best)

Rich RICH, could live off of his inheritance for a solid 50 years or so after his parents' incapacitance

On that note, would probably get along with Mickey (1 computer with 6 monitors? Implies that Kylar has surveillance over the city)(Definitely make a profit off of it)

V O Y E U R, breeder/bred, sub-leaning SWITCH, overstimulation kink

Older!Kylar or a Kylar with more Whitney influence would have neon green peekaboo highlight and a rattail (the Furina from Genshi impact kind)

Older Kylar, or Kylar currently would definitely get a Prince Albert if PC asked.

Robin

Robin O. Campbell

Fluffy brown hair, Blue eyes, KPOP looking ass hair (see image)

Twink

Average in school, only gets up to slightly above average at high confidence

Gaming + Anime addict (if the crossdressing isn't enough of an indicator-)

This is crack but, imagine if they were s illegitimate child of royalty- (Never gets a proper job even after going through Bailey, stays a virgin despite the brothel??)(They also has a $400 console in the early game, I doubt they'd have been able to save very much because he already starts out with $2k rent, they're definitely getting sponsored somewhere)(Would explain why they're protected but not fully)

Childhood friends with PC

Has been paying Bailey's fine longer than PC has

Older than PC by a few months-1 year

Trained in using a taser, brings a taser around

Vanilla, but a huge somniphiliac

Sydney

Sydney J. Hyde (Goes by Sydney Jekyll pure, Sydney Hyde corrupted)

Has Coloboma, hence the need for glasses

Twunk-Hunk (From cloister + all the church chores)

Great in school, honors/exempted from classes

Writer, both on people and the actual hobby

Would write sacraments, then moved to the carnality of PC's temptation

Adept in combat, like, scarily good at it (cloister)

Best/Favorite subject's English

Clothing preference: All 3 academia aesthetics: Dark, Light and Messy

Good singer, Corrupted!Sydney is very into Hozier, Faithful!Sydney only listens to church songs (The classical ones)

Corrupt!Sydney is just them letting loose all that repressed lust, or breaking out of whatever bullshit hypnosis Harper put them through

Masochist, DOMINANT, overstimulation kink, dom + top leaning SWITCH

Whitney

Last name HC TBA LMAO

Twunk-Hunk (hunk-leaning)

Lowkey gymrat (does it for looks)

Pierced lobes, upper lobes and helixes (Only wears earrings on one ear)

Dirty blonde hair, brown eyes

M!Whitney sounds like Bakugou but shouts less

Actually excels in school and academia, only held back because they missed too much class

Can fight, but unlike Kylar and Sydney, they wouldn't kill (sure being tossed into the underground brothel is as good as being dead, but I don't think they fathomed what happens in the underground brothel until they were kidnapped instead)

Their whole schtick is more or less just them letting out their frustrations with life, his connection to the underworld is shallow at best (due to the kidnapper switching it up so fast in the dismissal event)

VERY SELF CENTERED, VERY NARCISSISTIC

Honestly? The ultimate tsundere, genuinely thinks that the shit he does is how to be popular and get bitches

EXHIBITIONIST, VOYEUR, ORAL FIXATION, DOMINANT SWITCH, humiliation kink (giving), public sex enthusiast, pillow princess

[diamondcitydarlin]

'time for round two of making teenagers uncomfortable on the internet'

Listen. No one is shipping beetlebabes for the sole purpose of 'making teenagers uncomfortable on the internet'. Unless the adults in question are your parents/guardians, none of them are responsible for the stuff you might see while being 'on the internet'. None of them are responsible for your discomfort from what you might see. None of them are obligated to stop having fun in their own fandom spaces simply because a teenager exists 'on the internet' who doesn't like it (who is also perfectly capable of staying out of places they don't want to see, I PRESUME) no more than adults at a bar are obligated to not drink because there are people under the age who can't (fittingly, most bars in the US don't admit people under the age at all). You know who is responsible? Depending on your age of teenagedom, it's either to some extent your parents/guardians, but also you. Yeah, sweetie, you. I've been on the internet since the late 90's when I was NINE and I'm here to tell you right now that learning how to cultivate your own experience online is an extremely important tool. If you don't learn now how to keep your nose out of things that you don't like, you're going to have a very hard time filled with round-about arguments and constant drama and maybe worse when you could just be having fun with the things you do like and ignoring the stuff you don't. You see, my sweet summer child, feeling 'discomfort' about something benign does not inherently give you the right to shit all over whatever it is that made you uncomfortable or make up insinuations about the consenting adults participating in it. Unless there are people dropping shipping art into your inbox against your will or something (there aren't) it actually is none of your business at all, and doesn't concern you in the least. Like my goodness, you kids have ALL kinds of protections you can use to weed out things you don't want to see that we didn't have back when I was a 'teenager on the internet', blocking, blacklisting, browser extensions that can help with that, etc, and yet somehow we seem to have better understood back then how to mind our own business and stay out of fandom spaces we didn't want to be in. Nowadays all I see are children running into the devil's sacrament uninvited and claiming to be personally affected by said sacrament when all of us are wondering what the fuck they're doing there in the first place when there are clear signs denoting what sacrament this is. You don't have to see the movie, you don't have to see shipping content, you don't have to be 'exposed' to any of this at all; in this day and age, you choose to be, which makes any discomfort you feel as a result of that your own responsibility. The only person making 'teenagers uncomfortable on the internet' in this specific instance are the teens themselves.

And again, a little crash course in history here since the education system probably failed you, but using simply the existence of children as an excuse for why adults can't do consenting adult activities with each other has historically been used as a way to demonize and weaponize violence against marginalized groups. Yall are literally just stealing pages from homophobic/misogynistic/racist/transphobic conservative playbooks. That may not be your ultimate goal in coming after fandom spaces, but it's where that kind of behavior and thinking always ends up in the end. If you think alt-right entities won't harness that sense of youthful moral outrage for their own ends then I have a bridge to sell you.

Anyway, point being, no random adult on the internet or IRL is responsible for you. Random adults on the internet or IRL are not your parents/guardians. They have no obligation to eschew their own interests just because kids are wandering into places where they shouldn't. I honestly worry for any child on the internet who thinks this way, because there are absolutely predators out there that will abuse this sense of 'every adult is responsible for my comfort'. They aren't, and I'm sorry the adults in your life that actually are responsible for you failed you so much as to not teach you otherwise. Unlearn this now before you get hurt, please.

[therealslimshakespeare]

A Wedding & a Willy

Those Who Can - The Postwar Years

Summary: Cpt. Jack Brady’s freshly stateside wedding is understandably hectic, joyful and packs his childhood home to the gills with former Air Force buddies. But amongst the revelry and the guests are a few ghosts.

Cast of characters: so many characters and so many dynamics and so many storylines, this is my magnum opus of Avengers assemble style fic. And they all made it to the wedding because I said so. We’ve got- Bradys and Bucky Egan, Blakely, the Hamilton’s, the Crosbies, Lt. Macon, Lt. Glen Graham, Charles Cruikshank, Douglass, Maureen, Tilly Brady, Eugene Brady…and Rosie Rosenthal on the phone but don’t count him out, he’s devastating

Warnings: 18+ mature and distressing thematic material. beyond innuendo and wedding night jokes there’s nothing very current in this postwar fic that should be bothersome. HOWEVER— many different duos have many different discussions about past traumas, including miscarriage, war, ptsd, sexual abuse both male and female, some rifts between the victims, general angst

“Howard, dance with me.” Ida had a firm hold on the scruff of his uniform, smartly fitted and bedecked with polished buttons, Howard Hamilton cut a fine figure even though she had just drug him off the drainage pipe leading to the upstairs bedroom.

…The bedroom where Ida’s brother and his little wife had recently absconded after a very raucous leave-taking at the foot of the stairs. The wedding party had swamped the landing and it was by fortitude alone that Johnny picked up his bride and made a run through them. Ida had been loudest amongst the well wishing hecklers as the two, pink cheeked darlings rushed upstairs to seal the deal and taste what they’d waited five years for.

But while heckling, teasing and rice-wielding-gauntlets were one thing in his big sister’s book, climbing up the outside drainage pipe to play a practical joke on his pilot while said pilot what was practically engaged in a sacrament, was another thing.

And this Ida informed Hambone of with a fist in his jacket and a stern order to dance. His ideas were always far less amusing even to himself once sober, and she was saving him regret by her actions tonight.

“I’d be honored.” Hamilton swore as he allowed himself to be dragged back into the Brady family’s crowded house by the lady Colonel, casting backward glances at his abashed co-conspirators -Hoer, Tallulah, Murphy and Douglass- as they trailed behind.

Only the most looney among them were still strongly celebrating, it was late and the house had become a red hot furnace of merriment that reflected in the many paned windows of the rural New York dwelling. Couches had been pushed to the perimeter and every surface was littered with cake and wine, confetti strewing the floor and out back on the wooden deck, there were tiki lights hung and the gramophone in full projection and Ida placed Hambone's hand on her waist out there and began a spirited Lindy.

It was almost enough to keep Ida from remembering how thoroughly she’d cried as Johnny disappeared upstairs to begin his new life. She had proven shockingly sentimental today and she tried her hardest to dance it off. When Hambone begged off the fifth song, Ev Blakely took over but he was too kind in his conversation, too astute to her bubbling nostalgia and so she accepted Douglass’ butting in, if only to be sharply twirled and kept busy with inane chatter.

Bucky Egan meandered about the outskirts of the frivolity, one conversation after another, the festivities were beginning to blur and the drink in his hand had stayed oddly full. How many was this one? He didn’t know, but that was the wonderful thing about stateside peacetime -there was no shortages of booze. Even at a Catholic wedding. But even booze couldn’t keep the sinking, gnawing feeling of boredom away. Bride and groom were off, most other guests were departing and the few who weren’t he didn’t doubt intended to crash on the couches or on the rugs. The Hamilton’s had been given the the office bedroom and Lieutenant Macon the guest room, for reason of being the bride’s cousin. Eugene Brady was bunked with some Air Force bandmate and Ev Blakely was already asleep on the nearest couch by the time of Ida’s third jive with Douglass.

Bucky should have asked her to dance, but he was drunk and she wasn’t fond of him that way and he was tired, too. Not fit for driving and not seeing much purpose in hauling off when Brady had specifically asked for him to be at breakfast tomorrow.

So, John decided to make himself at home.

It felt right, in a curious, childlike sort of way, to help himself up the stairs while everyone below was too spastic or sleepy to notice him slinking away. He climbed the stairs and passed the framed photographs of Mr and Mrs Brady, of Ida and Johnny and Eugene at graduation and also as cherubic little children. At the top of the landing he looked down at the party, happy havoc proving a testament to a good day. He paused on the landing and hazarded a guess regarding which door would be Ida’s blessedly empty room. Straight in front of him was a large door and with indefensible surety he assumed it belonged to their parent. He tiptoed past and down the darkened hall, staying on the carpeted runner to muffle the floorboard’s squeak. On his left was dark and silent, to his right a door with a chunk of light showing through. From further down the hall, at the very end by the bathroom came sounds of stumbling and furniture being abused and rearranged.

There were also…giggles.

Egan grinned to himself and whispered a fond commendation for Jack Brady before choosing the right door, bravely turning the knob and entering the cool, empty space.

The electric light flipped on at his batting touch and he was met with the sight of organza curtains and a patchwork quilt, a pastel painted desk and plush violet colored carpet. It reeked of feminine adolescence and was so very foreign to Ida as he knew her that his fingers tingled in anticipation of learning this part of her.

Seashells hung from ribbons on the wall, a poster advertising for a boating tour of the Miami Everglades, sheet music in a basket by the bed, her trombone case leaning against a very full bookcase. Classics mainly, a little history and some science, three large volumes on something called “baroque.” Her flight jacket was hung on a knob of the hat stand, a wide brimmed plum stained straw hat, too, and a silk scarf. He crossed the threshold to it and lifted the scarf in his palm, bringing it to his nose and breathing deeply.

It smelled like a man. Cologne, perhaps whisky, musk for sure. Crestfallen, Egan dropped the silk and spun ‘round to take in the rest of the room. Her dress from the rehearsal was lying on the bed, crumpled, worn, probably in need of washing from the heat. He was suddenly very hot himself and he tore off his already unbuttoned jacket and hung it on the peg next to her flight jacket. He wasn’t fit to drive, he insisted to himself, as he tugged off his boots and set them beside her pair of white heeled sandals.

He staggered to the bed and plopped himself face down in the counterpane, crushing the worn dress beneath him. This smelled of Ida, her sweat and her familiarity. She wouldn’t mind, she would understand -Brady wanted him for breakfast and he was too drunk to drive.

——

There was humorous endearment in the task of putting grown men to bed, Ida oversaw to it cheerfully despite sporting a limp from a blister on her heel worse than any she’d gotten on that forced march. It was worth it to clear glasses from an accidental spill onto the carpets in the middle of the night or an elbow into an eye, an offending socked foot into a nose. She had expected a crash of sorts after the festivities and the blankets were piled at the ready in the music room. She got her hands kissed about a dozen times by a dozen men as she draped the covers over where they’d collapsed and wished them a good night. It was closer to three in the morning but the sentiment stood.

Flicking off the last light after the Hamilton’s had made it to the guest room, Ida ascended the stairs, bone tired and genuinely pleased. The sudden stillness in the house was a little jarring, but if she listened closely there were snores below, and upon the upstairs landing she might discern far down the hall the sounds of activities far more indiscreet. Mildly disgusted, she hastened to her room and found the door adjar, lights ablaze, bed occupied.

Bucky.

Feet hanging off the end and his tie still choking him, his red and sweaty face was buried in the fabric of her recently tailored dress suit, navy wool and sensibly cut, she’d still been cat-called while crossing the street in it and she found she didn’t mind that, glad the camp hadn’t taken the charm of her legs, too.

Making a grimace tinged with dogged fondness, Ida closed the door behind her and sat down on the bed, tugging off her offending high heels. Little white sling backs, and there were terrible red welts along her feet from the straps. “Bucky?” she tried in a normal voice, fiddling with the zipper at the nape of her neck, her curls back there sweaty and thick.

He didn’t even twitch. “Bucky.” she insisted with a hand to his shoulder, trying to jar him awake with a shake. The space between his brows creased mournfully and a twitch of his hand balled it into a fist. He mumbled something and from his expression alone she knew he was incorporating her motions into his nightmare. “Hush sweet man.” she sighed, defeated, and bent over him instead, pressing a kiss to his damp temple.

The crease between his brows smoothed. Apparently they’d be bunking together tonight. She envied his ability to sleep at all, weary as she was she didn’t expect it. Not after all the excitement, not now with all the quiet. She let her fingers find the knot of his tie, pushing his face away so she might undo it, popping the top buttons of his collar lest he hang himself in the night.

Ida rose and undid her dress while facing her sleeping friend, having a deep seated conviction that were she to turn her back, some inherent masculine sensor of Egan’s would detect a stripping woman and rouse him to watch, just when she needed him lights out.

Pared down to her slip, Ida left her nightly routine at that, tossing her dress over the chair before repenting of such slovenly, peacetime carelessness and hanging it instead on the hat rack.

His scarf still hung there. Ida glanced back at Egan’s snoring face and, feeling safe, she lifted the silk and buried her face in it, breathing him in. That cemented it, the urge. It was inevitable but perhaps if Bucky had woken she might have proven to herself she could go a solitary night without it. Without him.

Ida isn’t sure when it came to this, curled up on the carpet by the window, phone cord dragging off the side table and entangling with the lamp wires, making sense of her day to him. When had it become a common, daily thing? It is troubling that his hums and murmurs are required for her to process normality, it is comforting to hear him answer, warm, just a hint of tired huskiness:

“Hello?”

“Hello you.” She’ll answer back each time and then he’ll say it: Robert will say her name and it’ll sound so warm and carmelly and relieved like he’s been waiting all day for this, too.

She doesn’t dare hope he has. “How was it?” He asks this time and he’s so jovial that a grin breaks out again over her weary smile lines; she’s been smiling so much today and ought to be pillowed and asleep. But dusty violet though the sky has gotten, she is awake and unsurprised.

“It was perfectly bonkers.” She replies honestly, “And they’re disgustingly happy and everyone else too, cooperative to the last and it couldn’t have been sweeter.” She processes it all as she tells him, and a satisfaction seeps in for today's goodness that wasn’t fully her’s until she relayed it to Robert.

Concerning. But then he’s humming happily on the other end, a buzz of warm static that she feels in her toes, “As it should be.” he sounds as satisfied as she feels, “Not a hitch?“

“Not a one. Except we’re all very hot.”

Another hum, this one pragmatically soothing, “To be expected in August. If they weren’t so loved there’d be less people and you could've held it indoors.” Ida nods to that, unheeding of the motion going unregistered on the other end, “Besides, they won’t need clothes for the job.” Robert’s joke lands so perfectly from the beyond that Ida is snorting before she can even think to chastise.

“They were very eager for that part.” she is afraid she’s giggling but then, he sounds close as well and Johnny had been very fidgety all day and his Tilly even worse. And now, down the hall, someone else, or two someones, sound very awake to keep her company at dawn, busy at being married. She blushes for them and it’s worsened by his voice come again:

“And you? Have fun?” Robert prods, not questioning her sleeplessness, she might ask him the same if they were new to this routine.

They are not.

“Very hard to see him off.” she admits, again, a revelation even to herself and then wants to snort at herself for being dramatic, he is not so far away down the hall making a holy racket of his new liberties, “I’m going to miss it, it being just us and Gene. First chink in the family. I know all the sayings about marriage being an addition to families and such- but I feel like I’ve lost him a little. But he’s very happy. You know how I like Tilly.”

“Yes, said you liked her ‘tremendously.’ Which is good, you’re gonna be related for a while.”

“She’ll be good for him. They’re horridly happy.” she emphasizes and her smile comes through, reaches him all the way in NYC and his own replies;

“Wish I could say the same.” he affects glumness, she knows it is an offered out and she takes it:

“Why? The hot jazz not so hot?”

They have a long-standing insult between them, big city versus upstate, they had been very stubborn about it while away in England. Now making an intimate go of being at home, they are both sleepless and melancholy in their once defended utopias.

“Nah, it’s good, it’s just me. I’m off. It’s just noisy without -“ Robert pauses and Ida is intrigued, he so rarely fumbles near her these days.

“Without?”

“Friends, I guess.” He decides and Ida wonders if she counts. “All my dance partners want to talk about what happened over there, and all their mothers want to talk about my practice. And the truth is, I can’t remember my clients names as it’s boring as hell in comparison, and over there is -I just want to dance. And I keep thinking about whether you’d like the arrangements. I’ve even thought about Johnny there, ya know?”

Dangerous, concerning, her cheeks are blushing for herself now. “You’ll have Croz there soon.”

“We really should get you into the city, Ida.” whenever Robert ignores her segues, whenever he says her name, she finds her throat dry. He is persistent tonight and her eyes have already shed a tear over the happy domesticity of her married-off brother, she's pliable and foolish, and he wants to dance with her in the big apple.

“I danced with Hambone tonight.” she tells him instead, fingers dancing over the cord, a squeaky and nervous motion but her tone grows in humor, “It was the only way to keep him from practical jokes after the happy couple had gone upstairs.”

“God! Wish I’d been there.”

“If it wasn’t him it was Dougie.” she lamented, recalling the rounds around the dance floor and wiggling her poor toes even now in chagrin, “I had hoped the presence of Mrs. Hamilton might have tamed him but I have been disappointed. She’s magnificently rabid.”

“What a relief.” Rosie rebutted, “Gives me a cold sweat to think of that man with a sweet little thing.”

“Good point.”

“How’s your go at it’?” Robert’s voice turns to teasing and she braces, he’s lethal at it and she is laid out on the carpet now, fancy dress cast aside and only in her slip as the room lightens, cold dawn breeze ruffling her curtains and she allows a hand between her breasts, to steady her heart, to imagine it is his. Bucky is snoring away in the bed above her, she fiddles with the dust ruffle.

“At what?” she’s gone raspy, too.

“At being a sweet little thing.”

The hand on her chest clenches and her belly, ever curious and bewildered when hearing him, follows suit. Down the hall there are giggles, something that sounds very like muffled begging, and Ida presses her face towards the window and its cooling breeze, “I’ll be lost when they all leave.” she admits, having felt very much a part of it all despite the frilly dresses and pinned boutonnieres and cloying flower sprays; the boys of the 418th and some from the 100th at large had been in town, packed into the Brady’s house for the wedding. While they were here she was still a Colonel, even if she was a colonel who liked to dance. “They’re pushing me out, you know that, right? It’s settled, just waiting for the discharge.”

There’s a lump in her throat and it’s pitiful to be so sad about it when she’d foreseen it for ages. But it’s more than ungrateful, for the upper brass to force her out after all the time she’s served. It’s worse as she’s given up all other life for it. She had no recourse and yet, not dead or even married, she is cut loose.

“I know.” Robert is angrier over it than she is, had fought harder against it than she could. It allows her room to feel the hurt of it. Concerning, unfortunate. “Come to the city. You might like the law.”

She’d be under him there.

It jars her, being a novice at something. She’d be under him, and at the cost of it she’d been near him and his smile at all times and then he’d find a blonde little secretary and marry her and Ida would be at yet another wedding and she’d be clapping at the foot of the stairs again as the handsome groom carried his bride up to bliss and Ida would have sore feet from dancing with Pappy too long and when the day ended she would have no one to call. Robert would be a married man, abed with his wife, not coming in to work for ten days, she’d have his case files and he’d have someone fit to love him.

“I’ll think about it.” she lies, but it is nice to keep one’s options open when faced with a life of rural placitude and spinsterly church duties.

“What did they decide on for the cake?”

Robert remembers everything, he remembers the debate between carrot and lemon. Even, she supposes, the way she sounds when she lies under oath but instead he asks about cake. He’s good for her, to her -concerning, dangerous.

“Lemon.” She informs him, her tone carrying the weight of that final decision.

“Do -do I hear snoring?” He asks suddenly, incredulous humor in his voice.

“Ah, that would be Major Egan.” She glances back at her bed and his sprawled form in the pale dark, “This place is crawling, bunked two a’piece to the couches downstairs.”

“They’re just stayin’ to haze the newlyweds before they leave for the honeymoon.” Rosie was laughing on the other end, the silliest sound in the world.

“They’ll have a new couple to plague next week.”

“Ah, yes, Major Cleven and Lt. Kendeigh.”

“Yes.” Ida is not sure why Gale Cleven did not manage to come to this wedding, or why beyond being busy with a honeymoon, her brother will not be attending his. There is a discreet intentionality about this remiss behavior that Ida and even Bucky have not dared inquire about, even as the rest of the guests lamented their absence, well meaning and ignorant. Ida supposes that when two men share a secret of a nature they do, an experience and a crime, it is not wise to continue the closeness their captivity once enforced. Perhaps instead of a show of solidarity to appear at each other's nuptials, it would instead be an unkind reminder of how unfit they were for such a peacetime endeavor. Ida wondered, in that case, who she should expect to not show at her own wedding were she to marry, by the logic of Johnny and Gale, that would be her own brother and Bucky and Rosie and Maureen and Smith and-. Ah silly men. They didn’t handle such things well, Ida decided then, only to snort at herself again, as Johnny was the one moving on and marrying and she was the one turning to an icesickle at a crowd of men. Perhaps she wasn’t moving on well at all—

“Where’d you go off to?” Rosie’s voice woke her.

“Mm, just-“ Ida shook herself, “Thinking of getting to heckle Maureen next week.”

“I have a feeling Buck may have accounted for that.” Rosie sounds smug and in the know and Ida does not doubt him, “You are going, aren’t you?“

“Of course.” she defends, “It’s Maureen! It’s Buck!”

“Right, right of course.”

“Aren’t you?” she hates the urgency that question hides.

“Yeah, for sure.” she thinks she tastes him playing at cool, but sure enough he adds an addendum that turns her into a puddle, “I’ve been looking forward to seeing you at it for weeks.”

There’s barely been many “weeks” since they knew a wedding was on at all. But she does not argue.

“I should sleep.” She realizes.

“Yeah.” he agrees, “Well, good night Ida.”

It is light here now. “Good night, Robert.”

Ida climbs into her crowded bed, tugging the comforter from under Egan’s feet as best she can before slotting herself around him, arms over his chest and his back bowed to her belly. He responds like a house cat and curls in, shrinking himself to her big spoon and moaning something childlike and content as his hand reaches to hold hers in a firm lock over his chest.

Today, like most of her mornings, Ida is confirmed in her suspicion that she slept at all only by the fact she catches herself awakening. There is a furnace plied to the front of her that is clammy and broad, groggily Ida registers in disgust that between the heatwave pouring through the opened window and Egan’s natural temperature, she is actually wet from sweat. And yet, in perfect keeping with his nature, Bucky has not moved an inch from her and retains his grip on her forearm like she were some bouy for his dreams. Except, she feels the calloused pads of his fingers swirling up her forearm, up and back down, featherlight little paisleys and circles and mindless shapes that he is tracing, endlessly, as his other hand keeps her tethered to him.

“Bucky,” she accuses because he is awake and they are drenched and she firmly believes that upon waking he should’ve had the good sense to extricate himself for both hygiene’s sake and also their reputations, “you’re awake.”

There is a very thick and gross sounding snort beside her, morning stuffiness and hangover sludge stuck in his throat, “M’not.” he inelegantly protests and his voice is terribly thick and oddly weak.

Ida pulls at her arm but he won’t let it go, she tries to sit up, pry it out, “Ok funny guy, come on, let go, I’m supposed to start breakfast ahead of everyone waking up and-“ she yanks again but he just keeps hold and rolls her hand under himself a little more, effectively burying his face in the pillow as she strains to see his face over his massive shoulder “-and my mother is already convinced we’re secretly engaged.” It’s so preposterous she laughs but either his headache is too bad or something else, as he does not join in, “Bucky I need you up before someone sees.” she tries pleading this time, unsure of what mood she’s caught him in but desperate to get him into the hall before taunts can be made by any guests.

There is another thick gurgle buried into the pillow and a rough snort. The shoulder beneath her hand shudders.

That gives Ida pause. “Bucky,” she stops her attempts to pull away and instead exerts more effort in turning him over, out of the smothering pillow, closer and to face her, “Bucky are you crying?” it’s no accusation, only he would have a sob so ungainly it could be mistaken for hacking up a lugy.

“M’not.” Comes out after moments of silence and repeated prods by Ida. And he is most definitely crying.

Not wishing to jump to conclusions -there are, after all, an absolute endless supply of genuinely good reasons to cry- Ida simply stops her struggling and tries to temper her anxiety about their being caught with whatever tenderness he may need right now. Perhaps he’s crying over Johnny or even Buck’s impending nuptials, perhaps he sees in her what he will be in a week’s time: surplus love. Or maybe he is crying over his dreams. Or maybe his head is spectacularly throbbing. There are so many things, and Ida knows well enough that the man responds best to gentleness, however tenaciously he seeks out rough usage.

She manages to get her arm back, only because he is now so intent on hiding his face. She uses her liberated hand to thumb at his face, smudging tear tracks she was in no doubt were there. “Want to talk about it?” she offers even though he rarely takes her up on the offer, she owes it to him for how often he has made her speak of unspeakable things.

There is a stubborn silence in which she can hear his labored breaths practically repeating that he is not, in fact, weeping into her pillow mid morning on a Saturday in Victor, New York. She pats his arm -suit yourself- and pulls away to begin her day. She lights a cigarette, not having fully quit the filthy habit since camp, and grabs a pair of slacks and a shirt from the closet, needing a shower after his embrace.

“You kept your baby doll.” his voice comes muffled and stuffy from the bed, she glances over and sees he has barely moved, only turned on his side to stare at the threadbare doll propped on her bookcase.

“That’s Minnie.” she introduces them with a grin, “Don’t sound so shocked Major, I’d have thought you’ve been in enough boudoirs to know that plenty of women keep their dolls.”

Bucky keeps staring at Minnie morosely, not laughing at her tease. “Did you keep it for your daughter?” he asks.

Sometimes John Egan reminds Ida of a callously curious child, his sympathy sometimes as wounding as his barbs. She refuses to read into it, he is hungover and he is confused by her childish relic; she keeps pace in her routine and replies with honesty, “I hadn’t thought about it.”

“Well I do.” he mutters instantly, bitterly, accusingly.

“Beg pardon?” she cautions him.

“I think about your baby all the damn time.” he turns around in the sheets then, sits himself up in her bed, eyes raw and dangerous.

The frog from Egan’s throat now takes up residence in Ida’s, she thinks she might choke on her own breath. “Why-“ panicked, her chest begins to shutter, ears ringing, hands cold. Why would he say that? “Bucky!” she'd have taken a stab in the heart over this, why would he- “Why would you say that?” she begs hoarsely, forced to sit beside him on the bed as her legs are no longer steady.

“You really don’t?” he begs in turn, looking as wretched as she feels.

“I-I-“ Ida digs her fingernails into her thigh, willing the cacophony in her head to cease, to get a grip back on the lid of that tiny coffin, “I’m not doing this. Not this morning, not when I’ve got breakfast to make for a household of people and -my brother just got married, Egan! Is this really the time to bring it up? They’re going to make jokes about you being in here! God’s sake -can’t you possess a modicum of sensitivity.”

It’s not a question. It’s an insult and he takes it on the chin. He knows that his own question -asking if she even recalls her dead child- was one of his own. That doesn’t prevent one last building tear to slip the dam and join the mess on his cheeks, because his heart is nothing if not on the opposing team.

It does earn him a sigh from Ida and a very hoarse, “Or course I think of- of course, I do, you bastard.”

“Her.” he pronounces forcefully, he was looking back at the doll, “You should think of her. You know, it was always a girl in my dreams, had so many dreams about her and when we wrapped her up, it was a girl, Ida.”

Ida knew that, Johnny had told her after she’d insisted on knowing. “I know.” she muttered, placing her hand over his on his large thigh, crumpled slacks and red knuckles, “And I know you loved her.”

More than Ida did, goes unsaid. More than Ida could, is perhaps the more honest essence of it all. “I was gonna take such good care of you both.” he swore, looking for all the world like he was right back in camp with Ida’s swelling belly and filling chest beneath her layers making him grow more and more insistent and reckless to save her. “We were gonna get out and I was gonna take care of you. I was gonna manage it, I know you didn’t think i could but we were so close to pulling it off when- I was going to make it happen, Ida, and any future I planned for was always us three.”

She’d have been so loved, that poor lost child, she’d have thought Bucky her father. And in her wildest moments of foolish hope, Ida had imagined them as a trio, too. Camped out in the Polish wilderness, eating fish and berries and teaching her babe how to speak two languages, with never a clue how the war turned out. Ida knew this dream was the intellectual property of Bucky’s own zealously fabricated reality, she knew it and she had long ago left it behind. Maybe when the stalag burned and the grave was lost. Maybe when her brother didn’t offer condolences for a loss they’d both secretly hoped for, even if they prayed for forgiveness right after.

“Someday, you’re going to make someone a wonderful father.” Ida told him now.

“Can’t seem to plan anything else.” he shook his head , “That’s- I know it’s been ages but every dream about after the war had always been us. Mornings like this, you and me and sunshine coming through the windows just like this- and her between us.”

Ida watched his fingers fiddle from underneath her own until he was clasping hers and rubbing a thumb along her knuckles. “It’s a sweet dream, Bucky.” And that’s what it had to stay, a dream, a contingency plan never enacted. “We wouldn’t work now, you know we’d be a mess, we can’t get that back, it-“

“-Don’t worry, I’m not about to propose.” he huffed a laugh, turning fully to her for the first time and giving her a genuinely wide smile, freckles crinkling in his cheeks.

“I didn’t think you were!” she was flustered at the mere concept, despite talks of living ever after together with her daughter from too many fathers. “I’m just saying, now we’re here, we must go forward.”

“Yeah.” he smacked his lips, eyes flitting over her face, before his brows creased again, “What did you name her?”

Ida felt her heart break again, he was like a dog with a bone. She let her spine go lax and fell back into the covers, listless. “I didn’t even -I never let myself.”

Bucky just nodded, understanding. Even back then he understood. More than anyone maybe.

“It’s just as well,” she cleared her throat noisily, “I’d have named her Johnny. And she wouldn’t have stood a chance at being popular with that name.”

He barked out a laugh before his face fell sober. “Really?” he sounded almost scared.

Ida recognized it as that most fragile of things: hope. “Yes.” she swore, realizing she would have.

“For -for your brother.” he clarified, in check, reigned in.

“For the overabundance of John’s that God threw my way when I needed them most”

Egan’s cheeks went pink, his nose again too, and that likely heralded more tears but at least he was smiling, a shy, happy, satisfied smile. Her heart had never felt more broken and raw than it did lying on her childhood bed, naming her babe a year and a half after she’d lost her. Oh she’d have to have a word with Minnie for starting this all, but for now, she lay there and let the exhaustion of acceptance take over.

Carefully he laid down beside, on his side, cheek propped on a palm, looking down at her. “Well,” he drug it out in a huff that sagged him nearer, she lay there and wondered when or if she’d need to raise a hand and push him back, “I’ll tell you what I’d like to do for one day. This day.” he specified. “Will you give me that?”

“What?” she was too wary to promise Egan anything but the alarm in her eyes warred with the mirth on her lips.

“I wanna make breakfast with you,” he stipulated, laying one finger down on her arm, the next followed, “wanna ask Johnny if those tips I gave him worked as well as they shoulda-“

“-Bucky you didn’t?!”

“and I wanna -course I did doll, didn’t want him making a hash of that poor girl, we’re counting on him to break the baby tie- and I want you to promise that you’ll think about, really think- about trying the law.”

Ida snapped upright, turning on him aghast, “You were asleep! How did you-“

Egan just grinned. “I was.” He insisted, “But I don’t see any other scarves in here.”

Ida’s eyes raked over to the hatstand and Rosie’s white dotted momento. “That’s- that's not...” she groaned, “He gave it to me after I buzzed the tower. You remember?”

“I remember.”

“Stop smirking like that, it was my last mission, too. Last one ever, it seems likely now.”

“All the more reason to go to New York.”

“I’m not ready for that.”

“Kicking ass? I’d say you’re havin’ withdrawls, more like, Miss Brady.” Egan cheesed back up at her, tugging her shoulder until she fell back beside him one more time.

There were footsteps in the hall and a general hum of awakening guests. “All of it.” she settled for, because if they were being honest, New York would be far more than just the law. And Egan deserved to know that. “I’m not ready.”

Egan’s firm hand reached up from her shoulder and she felt rough knuckles against her cheek, along with the creeping closeness of him closing in, eyes sharp with purpose as the tickle of a mustache brushed against her face. He’d just clipped the corner of her lips. “I think you are.” he said as he pulled away. “Nothing to do but go on, right?”

Oh he was always so very good. It deserved a repayment somehow but she didn’t know how, so she lay there and patted his back, thinking of Buck’s wedding next week. She’d make him dance with her.

“How many eggs we crackin’ for this madhouse?” he asked, jerking his head at the door.

“Thirty nine.” she grinned back.

“Then let’s get on ‘em.” he rose and extended his hand to haul her up.

“I’ll let you know I’m very rigorous about eggshells.” she warned in a giggle.

“These hands?” he raised those massive appendages of his, wiggling his fingers like he were smashing out a piano concerto, “Made for dainty work.”

“Mm, sure.”

“Well,” he tucked his rumpled shirt back in with offended dignity, “I taught your wiggly fingered brother a thing or two in preparation yesterday morning-“

“-Bucky!” Ida swatted at him with her towel as they ventured into the hall.

“I did!”

“Of course you did.” they were vying for who could reach the shower at the end of the hall first, competitive shoulders bumping into framed photographs on the walls.

“Ten bucks says the little girl is smiling this morning.” he bet, “And that’s me she has to thank.”

“Don’t you dare-“

“I’m gonna ask him.”

“Bucky!”

“I’m gonna!”

“Keep your voice down!” they were right next door to the love birds now, an unavoidable consequence of the bathroom’s proximity to Johnny’s old room.

“I’m gonna.”

In the end, as the challenge to beat her to the bathmat was all he had really wanted, Bucky stepped aside and allowed Ida first dibs on the shower. She was as efficient as their army days and before ten minutes were up the door was opening again and she was coming out in a slightly steamy haze that smelled wonderfully minty. She was wearing slacks, a shirt tied up for she had not filled out again despite her mother’s cooking, and one of those fancy little head scarves that made her dark curls tuck round under her ears in a way Bucky often thought he’d like to arrange his own if he were a girl.

“Don’t let anyone crack my eggs, I’ll be right down.” he threatened as he took his turn.

“Alright, alright.” she rolled her eyes.

He had been home, home to Ma and let his sisters fuss and cook for him, he’d showered in Ma’s house and he’d slept in a bed he had once tossed in as boy -none of it felt quite this domestic somehow. Hot water, eggs to whisk, an olive green tub and the Brady kids’ sensible soaps, such is what peacetime was made of. Maybe it was Eugene’s razor, or one of Johnny’s forgotten ones, lying on the tub side, but Egan snagged it for some maintenance on the neck hairs and five o’clock shadow in the fogged mirror. He should have premeditated his crash here, he should have brought an overnight kit. But there was a spontaneous courage required for crashing on Ida’s bed and he hadn’t wanted to screw it up by being sensible and having a spare change.

Bucky wrapped the towel securly around his hips and flung his crumpled slacks and damp shirt over his arm, determining to seek out an iron before everyone heckled the living fuck out of his old drunken habits coming back to the fore. Couldn’t do that to Ida, he did have some sensibility, despite what she may have thought.

Upon opening the door, however, he was greeted by something far more pressing than hecklers and indeed, at least in his mind, something far more salacious than the drunken crashing into a friend's bedroom or roaming the halls in nothing but a towel: it was the newlyweds, caught betwixt their door and his with their goal no doubt the far off stair landing.

“Well, look who finally woke to the land of the living.” he clapped at the door frame, mouth wide in a guffaw.

Both of the young darlings looked like little cast ashore fishes, mouths open and eyes unblinking. Ah yes, he was a little scant on the clothing but, hell -he’d practically gotten to hear the girl’s cherry get popped, goddamn Catholics and their brazen prudery.

Sweet, freshly minted Tilly Brady belatedly let out a gasping little “oh Major!” at his naked state in a voice that suggested she was somehow to blame for catching him this way, before wheeling round to flee in embarrassment only to smack into her blushing groom’s chest. That proximity seemed to send another shudder through the poor thing which inspired Brady to soothingly lift his own arm and scoot her back under it into their room with a gentle press between the shoulder blades. A goddamn natural, that one, Bucky rocked back on his heels in pride.

“Major?” there was that tone again, asking what the damn score was, somber owl eyes with a flicker of something akin to devine rage in them. Oh, he was pissed.

“Need an iron,” Bucky gesticulated to his slacks, “there an iron in this joint?”

“Allow me,” Brady gritted out, hand outstretched, thoroughly unamused or maybe that scowl was just for show.

“Aww now, hell Johnny-“

“-no, really. Anything so long as it puts you back in clothes, you ape!”

“Now, now, not like you to be sensitive about somethin’ like chest hair, boy.” Egan slung the slacks out of the young groom’s reach, “Marriage makin’ you vain?”

“You’re embarrassing Tilly!” Brady hissed, always angry for someone else’s good cause and that’s why Egan found him to be a dear old thing.

“Well if she’s that skittish, how did she ever survive what you did to her last night?” he barked another laugh.

Johnny went beet red against his pale blue sweater but his mouth wavered into something like a sheepish smile.

“Tell me Johnny,” Egan leaned closer to him in the empty hall, “which one did it for her? This one?” he crooked his fingers in a suggestive gesture, “or this one?” he made a somehow even lewder one.

Brady suddenly began to cough, choked up on his own spit at the sight of the well rehearsed crook of the digits and the minty shower steam still swirling around them. “Knew it.” Egan grinned, slapping Brady on the back, “Good man.” and sauntered back down the hall to Ida’s room feeling a few inches taller. And whistling.

Damn the slacks. He had thirty nine eggs to crack.

Breakfast was a raucous affair, jubilant and perhaps the first time Ida felt that home was truly as it should be despite her late father’s absence. That morning, with a crowd of friends around the table and hanging off the couches and sat on the steps with precariously balanced plates and tumblers full of orange juice, the morning held a jubilant chaos that was absent of the melancholy nostalgia of the ceremonial day before. Bucky was not deft in his egg cracking as promised, but Jean Crosby was a genius at fishing out shell fragments, and he redeemed himself when it came time to whisk the gigantic bowl together.

“There’s no way you’ve got a pan big enough for all that.” Graham took great interest in the breakfast plans, and he held his tongue until it was time to cook up the mess. But his doubt was unfounded, and it did not take into account the sheer amount of potlucks Mrs. Brady had supplied in her time. The skillet Ida hauled out from under the stove was large enough to kill a man with one blow.

“I think you’ll find we do.” she grinned at her erstwhile copilot and he conceded with a wondrous look of awe at the cast iron monstrosity.

No amount of ribbing or cajoling at breakfast could extract from Johnny the intended destination for the honeymoon. Ida was well aware it was somewhere cozy, modest and utterly private in the Adirondack Mountains. She had been presented with two different brochures for two different cabins by her brother, and she didn’t need to ask to know the purpose of it. She had chosen the smaller of the two because it had a river in back, rather like the creek here at home, and Johnny had agreed that was his inclination, too. This morning he met her eye over sausages, not a warning or pleading look as he never doubted her discretion, but a small smug smile that filled Ida with a little ripple of happiness at their shared secret, that she had been his trusted advisor, one last time, in the middle of all these nosy little bastards.

Someone was trying to make a euphemism about how Tilly liked her eggs -scrambled, apparently. There was a great deal of emphasis put on the word scrambled, as if that somehow translated to something else, and Ida was about to shut that line of humor down, for her sister-in-law’s sake, when Jim Douglass and Harry Crosby burst in the front door, having taken their breakfast with Stevie out to the front steps to watch the horses. They informed them all in an unmistakably excited cheer that Buck Cleven and Maureen Kendeigh were coming up the drive.

“Driving seperate cars.” Douglass elaborated amongst the frenzy, “One’s a goddamn Willy.”

“Buck? Candy? -And a Jeep?” a repetitious chorus of surprise and happiness broke out as various men -and their children and wives- sprang from their seats and rushed out front.

It left Bucky and Ida and Tilly, and Johnny, with Mama, alone at the table, exchanging a series of wordless and half misinterpreted glances of communication about why Buck Cleven would show up now after having intentionally kept away from the big day. Of course Mama, like the rest of the men, didn’t know even the first bit about it. Ida wasn’t sure Tilly knew much either, if anything regarding the shared history there, and both she and Bucky were somewhat in the dark themselves, except for a vaguely ominous concern felt about the two men’s relationship. Truly, only Johnny knew what on earth was going on between himself and Cleven since liberation, and as he had been as reticent as usual, no one knew what he thought about the no-show, or if it had even been something agreed-upon amicably.

“A jeep.” the groom himself finally spoke up, a wry grin on his face and nudged Tilly until she giggled and it broke the tense silence. “Well come on, you gotta meet the legends.” he told his new wife and stood up himself, a cue for Ida and Bucky to follow.

Mama fussed around the table. “I’ll be right out, I’m just going to out covers on these-“

Bucky seemed to shake himself and turned to the door abruptly, striding out to see his friends, leaving Ida loitering back as Johnny pulled Tilly's chair out for her. She must’ve been wearing some sort of face because as her brother passed her, he sent her an exasperated look of reproof. Guiltily, Ida cleared her face of all perturbed speculation and followed the new couple out to the drive where Cleven was already in the thick of shaking hands while Maureen was alighting from the prettiest little civilian Jeep you ever did.

“Johnny!” Maureen cried over everyone's heads, vantage point gained from standing on the running boards, “Congratulations, foxy! Don’t you two look pretty in blushes? Well come on, do you like your present?”

She was gesturing in a showman’s arc to the Willy Jeep in question and Tilly glanced up at her new husband in bewilderment, trying to gauge by his expression if this was all some grand practical joke.

Apparently Gale Cleven didn’t joke much because Johnny stared at him in shock which only confirmed the gift as genuine. “Th-that’s your gift?” he did clarify, eyes skittering back to Maureen before taking his turn at shaking the Major’s hand.

“Yup.” Gale grinned back, gentle and mildly smug, “Part of a grand plan by Ida to keep you in the country. This thing could ford that creek you got in back.”

“No kidding.” Brady marveled, “Earnest?”

“Yeah it’s yours,” Cleven took his hand back and rubbed at his neck with it, a nervous gesture, “congratulations Jack.”

“Well fuck I-“ Johnny seemed stunned speechless before recalling the most important thing, “-Sir this is my Tilly.”

“Mrs. Brady, it’s a pleasure.” Gale Cleven took her in little hand in a gesture so chivalrous the only thing missing was a kiss to it, and that was almost done by the swipe of his thumb over her knuckles.

Maureen lovingly shoved her fiance aside to take the girl by the shoulders, an admiring assessment ongoing in her eyes. “Well, you look good for him.” she remarked with a beaming grin of approval before kissing the bride’s cheeks. “So? How was it? I’m never forgiving Gale for making us miss it, goddamn Air Force has some timing for their reports.”

“It was wonderful.” Johnny reported with pink cheeked simplicity that shied from Cleven’s observation, before adding for Maureen’s benefit, “You were missed.”

Something sympathetic and doubtful flashed over Maureen’s face before she leaned in once more to kiss his cheek, much to the amused chatter of those around.

“What’d ya do to get this thing? Rob a bank while you were in California?” Bucky was asking, interested thoroughly in the jeep’s dash and his body was half in the driver’s seat under the excuse of showing baby Stevie Crosby the wheel.

“Or are you already settling in to being a kept man?” Tallulah ribbed Maureen and her much touted pedigree.

“Uncle gave me the mine.” Cleven replied instead, simple and direct. “Deeded it and everything.”

Ida gasped, pleased at the news, exchanging a delighted glance with Kendeigh, “The one back in Wyoming, Gale? The one you worked at?”

“Yeah.”

“Hell, that’s wonderful!” Bucky cried from fully behind the wheel, a progression not unnoticed by Brady, “Coal Baron Cleven.”

“Oh leave off.”

“So we split this puppy, half and half,” Maureen slapped the hood, “anything to make sure you kids don’t forget us.”

“Compensation for knowing ya, more like” Murph grumbled and was smacked for saying his truth.

“You honeymooning with us, Bucky?” Brady asked harmlessly while apparching his gift, leaning over the passenger side and smiling at baby Stevie who was sucking on the knob of the gear shift, his babysitter thoroughly distracted by the dials.

“Huh? Nah just, lettin’ the little guy play.” Bucky assured, “S’all yours. You’re not thinkin’ of takin’ this on the honeymoon, are ya?” he suddenly asked.

“Course I am!” Johnny insisted, turning back to beam at his benefactors, boyish anticipation on his face, “Can’t just let a gift like this idle.”

“There’s not even a roof, John.” Jean Crosby gently pointed out to the excited groom, tactfully trying to remind him his bachelor days were over.

“Yeah, - I know.” he didn’t get it.

“So if it rains-“ Jean tried to supply.

“Then I guess we’ll just get wet.” Tilly Brady responded for him from her place by the headlight, a very wicked grin on her face. “Can we go now?” she begged her groom in a laugh.

“Hop in!” Bucky beckoned magnanimously and she rolled her eyes.

“Well if you’re taking that then you can’t go yet.” Douglass insisted, before explaining,, “We’ve got the cans hitched and have chalked up the windows on your Buick. We gotta move it all over to this one now.”

“Oh yeah, crucial.” Ida snarked while exchanging a look with her oddly complacent brother. By now he’d usually be exasperated with them all; it seemed marriage had a truly calming effect on him.

“You willing to wait?” he asked Tilly instead, smiling gently at his new wife.

“Of course, after all, I’ve just met Maureen!”

“Yes,” Maureen agreed, arm thrown back around the girl, “I have an evaluation to complete.”

“And Stevie wants to feel how it drives!” Bucky added hopefully despite Gale’s disbelieving stare.

Brady shook his head, grin unmoving, “Fifteen minutes for all it, cans, joyride, all of it. Don’t wreck the thing and Candy, be nice to my wife, she has very sharp fingernails.”

He ignored the ensuing chorus of “oooh’s” and the flurry of reiterated breakfast table jests and Ida watched him turn instead to the quiet presence of Major Cleven and ask discreetly, “Sir, I’d like you to meet my mother, if you’ve time. She’s just inside, at the dishes probably.”

Cleven’s face brightened considerably at the invitation, a typical yet rare look of deep seated pleasure softening his face. Ida found herself relaxing her fists for the first time since these two came up the drive: “I’d love that, Jack.”

Ida watched them disappear into the house, Johnny holding open the recently painted front door to usher him into their childhood home, and saying something with a nod to the Jeep as Gale passed him; they both shared a short laugh before the closed door hid them.

“Alright who wants a ride?” Bucky’s loud call jarred her.

“Please go and hold Stevie!” Jean Crosby was begging at her elbow, as worried sick over the attention Major Egan paid her small son as she was gratified by it.

“I’ll keep a grip of steel on him.” Ida assured her and realized as she climbed beside Bucky into the bench seat, this meant she was going for a joy ride with him. She wished she had her flight gear with her, a maywest and a parachute at the least. “Come here little guy.” she scooped Stevie off the floorboard and into her lap, Maureen settled afterward on her other side and it felt just like old times, wedged between her friends..

“That scarf of yours gonna stay on?” Bucky asked her, fiddling with it himself before she could reply, tucking a few more curls in.

“Just -keep us upright. Wheels down, Egan.” Ida begged with a laugh that was drowned in the rev of the engine.

💋 Hope you enjoyed! Feedback is a writer’s lifeblood, please feel free to scream in comments or the inbox, I love it and wanna hear it all. Trust me, nothing is “too dumb”. Your thoughts mean the world to me.

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