test of faith.
☞ read part ii here: show of faith
( + read on AO3 ) ✣ PAIRING: Father Jud Duplenticy x Art historian fem!reader (2nd person POV) ✣ THEMES AND WARNINGS: NSFW, Minors do not interact!!!! Religious themes, slow burn and mutual pining, angst, irresponsible sex (idk how else to call what happens here), fingering, hand job, oral (f and m receiving), grinding, (this is actually softer than the warnings imply). ✣ NOTES: Yeah when I saw that sweet priest on my screen, I just had to drop everything and write this; hope you enjoy! :) ✣ SYNOPSIS: God might be the flawed invention of an anguished humanity, but the moments you share with the priest who keeps challenging you feel like a touch of grace.
“Finding out their homily is boring is possibly a clergyman's second worst fear.”
The nave was silent before those words—caught in the digestive inertia that often follows the hours after Mass—its regular tiles aligned between vast swathes of light, splashing through colored glass.
You look up from your notepad, blinking, lugged from thoughts of a whole other nature.
“Pardon?”
The first thing you notice are his eyes. A vivid, water-branded shade, like a stream running through woods or algae disturbing the low tide, bluish, not quite green, welcoming as a bed of moss.
“I know,” he continues, in this affable, lightly mischievous tone, “paying attention during Mass can prove itself a challenge.”
It's how he says it, utterly divorced of the solemnity that shells others like him, not austere, not scolding, but like he's young enough to remember the occasional Sunday mornings: being pried out of bed, rammed into uncomfortably dapper clothing, just to fall asleep again on shellacked pews before the first psalms are even read.
“You probably aren't the only daydreamer—but it's unusual, to see one honest enough not to pretend.”
From his pulpit, overlooking the assembly, it was difficult to miss. Yours were the only eyes straying away from the altar, from the crucifix, from him. Oblivious to the words, glancing to the windows like a bored student in a stuffy classroom and giving that pen you're still holding a nibble every now and then. As the prologue of a hymn vibrated through the cool air and the congregation united in a broken falsetto, he wondered, what in heaven could you be scribbling about?
An embarrassed smile climbs up your lips.
“I have a confession to make: I didn't come for the liturgy.”
You readily explain, “I'm writing a paper about the stained glass—” and his eyes flare up, outpacing you.
“Oh, you're that researcher,” he remembers, or feigns to remember. “It's a relief. Here I was, ready to accept my sentence as a terrible bore.”
He jests, of course. Holding anyone's attention never seems to be an issue for him—for better and, well, often times for the worst.
His hand extends forward.
“I'm Father Jud.”
His palm feels warm against yours. A little coarse, perhaps, and drier than it should, results of labor, effort, rinsing, and scrubbing. Something else too, under those knobbly knuckles, secrets of a life-lived, tucked beneath his skin.
Per custom, you offer your name back, along with a glib Nice to meet you.
“I wasn't purposely being disrespectful,” you clarify after the introduction. “It's just, the light is perfect now, and the hours coincide with—”
He cuts you off swiftly, waving his fingers as if to cast out any awkwardness.
“You don't have to explain. It really is rather beautiful here,” he concedes, those not-quite-blue irises traveling in the line of your gaze to the golden beams of the morning sun. “I like to sit in the nave when I can, just to watch the reflections on the lancet windows…”
He stops himself, clears his throat.
“I'll leave you to it. If you need anything, don't be afraid to ask.”
He pivots, ready to traverse the lane, carried by a prudent, discreet gait, shoulders just a little stiff. Leaving behind a whiff of clean soap, clinging to the dark curls of his hair.
You can't help but call back to him, just as he's about to cross the fourth row of benches.
“What's the first?”
Stopping in his tracks, he blinks, slightly confused.
“Mmh?”
Your pen clicks against the pad.
“You said being boring was a clergyman's second worst fear. What's the first one?”
His uncertainty melts into a quizzical grin. Boyish, slightly enigmatic, almost elf-like. Whatever is about to come out of his mouth, you think, it might not be the truth. Aren't men of God forbidden to speak lies?
“Catching altar boys drinking the communion wine, probably,” he hums, humorous.
You can't help but smirk in response.
“Happens a lot, I gather?”
His head gives a light shake, a smile drawing dimples in his left cheek. Quite the smile, too. Strongly curved parentheses framing his mouth, warm, oddly familiar. Like an echo of other smiles, of a beloved childhood friend, a nurturing uncle, or a favorite cousin. You can see why parishioners would trust him. It's the kind of grin that teases ease out of people, a desire to confide. Who knows what anyone else would do with such a gift of a smile—perhaps it's a relief this one chose the cassock.
“Good luck with your research,” he amiably wishes, before making his way to the sacristy.
You don't think of the priest again until a few days later.
Timidly knocking on the very same door Father Jud disappeared through upon the first day of meeting him. You're looking to borrow a pen after forgetting or losing yours, that overchewed lucky charm.
The sacristy is a drab room, smelling stale and a little damp, a mixture of unaired textiles, varnished wood, burnt crackers, and, oddly, the faint, acrid afterscent of cigarettes. He's alone in there, answering your knock after a short beat. Eyes a little glassy, possibly preoccupied. He evulses any sign of aloofness as soon as the hinges creak, inviting you in, asking if you'd like some coffee—he just made some. Your eyes wander around while he fusses about. The preparation room is encumbered with heaps of stuff: mismatched teacups and glasses, markers missing their caps, ruffled books in their worn-out covers, and a crumpled altar linen stained a deep burgundy red, awaiting to be salvaged.
He notices the way you examine the surroundings.
“This isn't all my doing, by the way,” he says about the mess. “Nearby clubs and activity groups in the parish meet up here for the time being. It's a little, ugh, modern.”
“I'm not judging.”
He invites you to sit and slides a ballpoint pen in your direction, along with a cup of steaming coffee. You contemplate his knuckles as he moves, just like you did last time. He has beautiful hands.
Fidgeting with the pen, you raise the drink to your lips.
“What is it you study, precisely?” he asks eventually, finally sitting down in turn.
You swallow before you reply, voice croaky from the heat of the beverage. It's awfully bitter.
“Religious iconography.”
The study of images and symbology in Christian art would be the complete phrasing, but that's just too many words. You always mechanically deliver the shortened version, used to people dropping the subject as early as it is socially authorized to do so.
His gaze shifts, head tilting, cooing out a soft “Oh”.
The topic could've ended here. It doesn't.
He understands your language.
It's simple, because it is his as well.
When he inquires about the figures in the colored glass, the ones that hold your academic interest, it's with an awareness that eludes the profane. Scenes of the Life of the Virgin Mary, Saint Catherine with her wheel, Mary Magdalene's river of flaxen hair—he knows them all. Of course he does. He interrogates you on the specimens exhibited in the aisles, details, features he could've missed. The shape of a leaf, a certain hand gesture—all those small things with meaning, locked in time, awaiting to be read, rediscovered. He offers you the same incandescent smile you've already seen him wear on that first day, stating that he'll need to go take a closer look when he can.
When you ask him which artist was commissioned for the crucifix, with an interest translating your admiration, he is struck, briefly, with the sin of pride. Glancing down to his mitts, marked from the woodworking. Even considering not telling you.
While he ponders, you notice the dark ink, its filigree-thin contrast on his skin, peeking out of his collar. A most unexpected attribute for a priest.
After you tease him, calling his silence an unfair act of gatekeeping, he surrenders the secret at last. You ask how he made the heart of the figure shine, this otherworldly glow that struck your pupil last morning.
There's a story behind that Christ sculpture. One he doesn't wish to share, for now.
So he tells you about the theology of light instead. About the ancient belief, constructed centuries ago by another holy man, conjecturing light as a divine messenger, its passage carefully thought and built into the architecture of churches, through refined windows, roses, translucent glass. Light as a means to exalt devotion in the hearts of the congregants. Light reaching through, the open palm of God.
“… Which is why it's so natural, I guess, to sense His presence in places like this,” he gestures to the doors leading back to the heart of the church. “Still, I'll admit, I find God just as perceptible in less consequential things.”
“Such as?”
“Oh. I don't know—” he chews on his cheek, suddenly bashful, “—someone's laughter. Moonshine on a pond. A cat galloping to greet you. I like to think all those have a touch of holiness to them.”
“Finding beauty in the mundane isn't the privilege of believers,” you point out, perniciously prickly.
He doesn't pick up on the drop of hostility straining your tone—if he does, he hides it well, or perhaps it simply doesn't bother him.
“You speak of beauty, while I talk of faith. But I agree with you. Rejoicing in His creation is not entitled to Christians—”
A knock on the door startles you both, pulling you out of the depths of your conversation. He has lost track of time, glancing at the clock with mild fright. A soft voice pushes through the door, calling for the Father. He quickly ushers you out, with a choice of words and manners devoid of rudeness that almost make you feel like the decision to leave was yours all along.
Priests, you soon learn, are even more sought after than doctors.
This priest, at least.
Father Jud knows he can't fix people. He cannot erase what has been done to them, what they have done to others, what they will do to themselves. It's a bittersweet certainty. Neither his hands nor his words are a cure. But they can be a salve, a balm. Soothing, bringing quiet in the noise, and an uncomplicated, unfastidious incarnation of love. His presence besides members of the community is stable, constant. It doesn't ask for anything in return. That's where he finds his purpose.
After a week or so, he grows used to the sight of your hunched posture in various spots of the church, concentration mistreating your spine.
He knows you're not a convert. Has known ever since he spoke to you in the sacristy.
But one day, you stun him a little.
It happens sometimes before noon.
The rustling of your springy step resonates behind him, right after he's accompanied a parishioner back to the entrance of the church, a recent widower, still grief-bound and numb to the roaring of life around him. Father Jud whispers to him, “Call me when you need, I'll always answer,” squeezes his shoulder, watches him leave. The door shuts with a loud clangor.
He turns to look at you, your bag handle slung across your shoulder, a little sleepy-eyed, with ink-spotted hands.
After some meaningless small talk about the weather, you stifle a yawn.
“I've always found a little ironic—” you comment, peering to the doorway, “—how one can speak to a priest and safely expect an answer but not receive the same from God. He's arguably the most important aspect of this religion. Yet the priests are the ones who listen and offer direct guidance.”
You're always so immersed in your task, he never thinks you might be paying attention to anything else, least of all his own endeavors. But you see the people who huddle in church with the hope of speaking to him, presenting him their woes for some, seeking company void of criticism and judgment for others. He contemplates you with a hint of uncertainty, intrigued by what you might be getting at.
“Could it mean some priests are more important than God?”
There it is, expressed in the muttery tone of hypothesis.
Father Jud stands silent. A brief frown, the slightest show of his stupefaction. There's much he could say, to refute your wandering supposition, but there's no time for him to articulate his thoughts.
“Sorry.” Your wince seems sincere, before you add in a quieter inflection, “It's probably blasphemy, to say things like this in a church.”
“We'll hope He was busy listening elsewhere when it happened,” he comments, a friendly attempt to brush the matter off.
You chuckle at the not-so-funny statement, apologetic and amiable again.
From then on, your path crosses his more often. On your breaks, seemingly aspiring for a chattier counterpart to those silent figures occupying the windows and your attention most of the time. Announcing yourself through an excessively formal “Hello, Father”—solely for the impish joy of making him respond with that peculiar smirk, asking you for a little less dignified stiffness. Cordial isn't the word, to define your chats. You seldom take him by surprise now, the way you did that first time, but you enjoy this, throwing small jabs, curious as to how he'll react. He's not interested in fighting you on the subjects you present to him, never losing his temper, never curt or chafed in his speech, even when he disagrees with you.
And Father Jud and you disagree on many things.
But your world touches his nonetheless; you with the factual eye, probing the memory of civilizations past, their beliefs, their stories, and him, tasked with plucking out what matters from it, perpetuating it, weaving peace or hope with fragments of the myths. You open the past to decipher it; he is a vessel of that past and its ageless promise all in one, its safekeeper.
Religion seems archaic to you. Wasteful in this modern age, when solutions can be found elsewhere, easy replacements for the voice in the sky, rendering God obsolete. Therapy in lieu of confession, science supplanting miracles.
Father Jud giggles when you tell him all this, one late evening. You're so used to speaking to him in the safe constraint of the church, you're a little taken aback to find him sitting in the local bar, deep in conversation with the patrons, local parishioners. Basking in this meek, cordial glow you cannot help but envy. There exists a roughness to his features, not quite pugnacious, but an edge, brash, slightly cutting. It's there, always, oddly balanced by the earnestness in his eyes, and that smile he greets you with, his gift, an invitation.
So he laughs upon receiving your theory. Not a mocking laugh, but the modest, resigned snicker of one who has heard this speech before. You're not the first skeptic he meets with such a contemporary stance.
“It's a pragmatic view. But don't you think it reduces faith to a simple tool? Something utilitarian, transactional?”
“You have to admit it's irrational otherwise. Worshipping something—Someone—who isn't really there.”
“Why are you so sure He isn't?”
“How do you know He is?”
He doesn't get defensive about your rebuttals. Doesn't behave like he's arguing with you.
“That's what separates us—” he declares softly, luminously holding your gaze; and though he uses the term separate, it stands more as a request to get closer, a tug at your own mind, asking for permission to mirror it with a different perspective, “—I'm not interested in material proof of God's existence. You're looking to rationalize it, to explain it, but faith demands to be felt, not thought.”
The bar's prattle quiets down around you as the minutes slide by, and you're both still huddled near the counter, entangled in the exchange, slightly tilted towards each other, like conspirators. Father Jud doesn't touch his glass—or barely; it simply sits there like an ornament—and he's talking to you about religion and philosophy, briefly invoking the writings of Pascal, Kierkegaard or Kant, who stated that God could only be touched through faith and not the rational mind. He doesn't sound pretentious; that's the true miracle.
“I had no idea they taught Kant at the seminary,” you notice, sipping on your own drink, trying to forget the chemical warmth creeping up your face, lodged in your limbs.
“I'm absolutely not an expert,” he confesses, emphasis on the not, the tip of his index finger following the rim of the glass. Your eyes fall to that tattoo again, clasping the side of his neck, the tip of an image you can't quite make out. He catches you staring, forcing you to avert your attention. You look down your glass, cheeks flushed. “… But I find it best to come prepared,” he finishes his sentence, with a slant dimple in his cheek, leading you to believe he knows what you were briefly focused on.
“Prepared against who?” you joke, covertly changing the subject. “The hordes of heretics?”
He holds a quaint expression, half-grinning, half-pursing his lips—happens each time he feels you coming at him with some hidden scalpel, ready to poke his mind. He's never met anyone as intent on dissecting him, on rattling what composes his box of thoughts.
“I already know you don't believe in God,” he hums, not in an accusatory tone—he never does that—it's the simple statement of a fact. “What holds your faith then?”
Your fingers drum an imaginary tune on the sticky counter.
“How do I answer that? Like some five-year-old child, that I believe in love and friendship?”
“We all believe in something, don't we? Even the cynical and down-to-earth. Love and friendship aren't such silly concepts to put your faith in… Five-year-olds are wise like that sometimes.”
He simply has an answer for everything.
The next day, back at church, you inquire about his favorite passage from the Bible.
He already knows how critical you are of the good book. Many historians are. The magic evaporates as soon as they walk backstage, armed with the analytic eye, pulling out the magnifying glass to see the seams loosely coming apart. Ideas redacted by ghosts who arranged and rearranged traces of the divine in order to fit dogmas of their antiquated times and corrupted spirits.
The word of God, tainted by the hands of man.
“There's plenty,” he muses. “It's hard to just pick one.”
“Indulge me.”
He has a way of looking at you when you ask him questions like this. Flushed but mellow, like you're a small frog perched on the tip of his shoe that he isn't quite sure how to safely nudge back onto the grass without harming.
He scratches the thin stubble on his cheeks before picking a Bible out of a deranged pile of liturgical texts stacked on a table in the sacristy.
He opens it, taps an underlined paragraph with his thumb.
“Here. It's a nice one.”
He relaxedly pushes the Bible between your hands, digits brushing yours during a fleeting instant.
The volume smells of apricot jam. Ochre, child-like fingerprints color some of its pages. Your eyes scan over the first sentence, shooting a puzzled glance at him next.
“Read it. Trust me.”
On this request, he leans against the wall near the window, hands joined in his back, hips relaxed in a stance that's almost graceful.
With knitted brows, obedient for once, you begin to read aloud.
“Love is patient and kind; it is not jealous or conceited or proud; love is not ill-mannered or selfish or irritable; love does not keep a record of wrongs…”
He watches your lips move, your voice shaping the verse he has read and reread himself countless times before. Focused on how you might accentuate one word and not another. Rediscovering the text through your own exploration.
“There are gifts of speaking in strange tongues, but they will cease; there is knowledge, but it will pass. For our gifts of knowledge and of inspired messages are only partial; but when what is perfect comes, then what is partial will disappear…”
You briefly look up to him. He seems caught in the flow of the sentences, reflective, as one would listening to a piece of music they grew up with.
“Meanwhile these three remain: faith, hope and love; and the greatest of these is love.”
After a lull, you inhale deeply.
“Are you showing me this because of what I said yesterday?”
The Bible closes shut, pushing towards your nose delicate aromas of the lingering sweet snack some child must've forgotten between the chapters.
When you gesture to give it back, he shakes his head lightly.
“Keep it. Hard to believe, but I've got a few more copies lying around,” he playfully points out.
Before you disappear, through the slim gap of the door, you hurriedly tell him:
“You're right. It is a nice one.”
And so you're gone, too fast to catch satisfaction tinging his cheekbones.
Father Judd awaits your conversations. A brand new habit, casually slipped into his daily schedule. He likes the way you skip up to him, tapping gently on whatever lies nearest each time to announce yourself—he startles easily when you don't, it seems. You're not sure if he realizes how good he is at picking little truths out of people. Effortless and lenient while doing so. The spell works on you more than once, shrouds you in comfort, closeness, understanding, and you fall silent mid-sentence after a while, offering him a quizzical look, admitting, I see what you've done here.
You turn the tables around when you can. Asking him about books he's read, where he lived in New York, how he found his vocation, if he picked up carpentry as a result of it. People often react a certain way, with pinched unease, when he tells them about what happened when he was seventeen, the event that led him down the path of the church. It's something he speaks about with a disarming deliverance. Wearing his heart on his sleeve.
Inevitably, your discussions will turn to God. When it happens, he wonders how you'll attempt to duel him this time. It's a one-sided fight, if anything. Perhaps you perceive this as a joust, a game of chess, most frustrating to you, since your opponent doesn't move any of his pieces, simply describing them instead. In his eyes, this isn't about winning or losing or displaying any sort of mastery in rhetoric. It's simpler, so much simpler. A friction of minds, invigorating him. Galvanizing his faith.
At night, brushing his teeth, reading, or lying in bed, he'll think of those dialogues, replaying them, wondering how he should've said this and not that, could've formulated a conviction more eloquently, afraid of being misunderstood.
You creep up in his prayer one time. Another after that, then a third. Your name blossoms into a recurrent sound on his tongue.
“I didn't know priests went to confession too.”
It's the middle of the afternoon, the ninth hour, and you're both sitting outside, under the skirts of fussing, ominous clouds. He's taking a break from his upcoming homily while you escape the claustrophobic grayness overflowing the transept. A most delightful form of procrastination.
“Of course,” he confirms. “We sin just like everyone else.”
“Sounds superfluous at best,” you grunt. “What could a priest possibly have to atone for…”
The sentence comes out much more noxious and condescending than you'd hoped. It rings through your ears like a shrill heckle, making you shake your head, irritated by your own behavior. It's unbearable; you don't even like people who talk like that, like they know better and aren't interested in rebalancing what they've taken for granted.
“I'm… That sucked. Forgive me.”
He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His expression hidden from you.
“Don't fret it. I've received meaner punches back in my day.” Spoken like he's verging on his hundredth year of life.
You take advantage of the fact that he can't see you. Gazing at the nape of his neck, where little dark locks gather and swirl, bouncier than apostrophes. You want to reach forward, want to touch them. And his shoulders, how they always seem just slightly hunched, like his body's constantly trying to apologize for taking space, for standing just a little too towering in comparison to others.
“How do you do it?” you ask gently. “Nothing ever seems to bother you.”
He proves you wrong immediately. Swiveling, his eyes shooting to meet yours, brows tense, as if you'd just proclaimed your decision to get baptized.
“Is that what you think?” he asks, incredulous. “That nothing bothers me?”
Just as abruptly, the skies tear open with a rumble.
Pudgy drops crash onto the grass, maculating the stone bench, licking your faces and limbs. He pushes a suspiciously spontaneous curse word into the dampening air, and while you stifle a laugh, you both dishevelledly run back to the church porch.
Petrichor penetrates the breeze, dispersed out of muddy grounds, fresh and nostalgic. From the refuge under the lintel, Father Jud inhales the scent deeply, brushing himself off that water still speckling his hair.
You remember a cluster of words he used your first week here. God's presence in the inconsequential. You wonder, looking at him, if that's what he's doing now, watching God through the lincel of scintillating water, shrubs changed into jewels by drizzling alchemy; all of it hiding an everlasting, mystical love.
“I've thought about what you said last time,” you dare to speak, pulling his attention to you. “When you asked what I believed in, if not God...”
Your hand whips the air softly. Gathering your words or reaching for something otherworldly and transcendental—he isn't quite sure.
“The church is perfect. The sculptures—that Jesus effigy you made. The colored figures in the glass. They're perfect, so we don't have to be.”
Your fingers run over the knotwork mimicking foliage that decorates the door.
“And they're all man-made things. I suppose I believe in that, you know? This… ability, to transcend our own nature. To make things better than what we are. You'll say that it's God, of course; I wouldn't even know how to name it exactly. Maybe it's inspiration. Or hope. It doesn't matter. I believe in it, whatever this is.”
You can see the weather flicker in the millpond of his irises, the brief moment it lingers on you. Father Jud turns away at last, and you both stand without another word, watching the rain, listening to its soft pitter-patter.
He steps closer to you. You almost miss it. This guarded move, one prudent step. The skewed shadow his body casts on the uneven ground blends with yours. Right hand gingerly stealing up to your face, attentive not to startle you. Fingers trembling.
You close your eyes.
The pad of his thumb catches the raindrops lingering on your lashes. Featherlight. Gliding down, he wipes the water off your cheekbone, an imperceptible stroke.
As daintily as they began, his knuckles recede. Hand tugged back to his chest, splayed on his sweater-clad form. Like it's trying to erase itself of what just happened, this surreptitious incident.
“I think—”, he grasps for a proper sentence. “I think—and I mean this with… the utmost regard… It would be best if we didn't speak, for some time. Anymore.”
His stammered words fall with the same staccato as the rain, skittish, disorienting.
You feel lightheaded in a bad way. Your mouth opens, but he stops you with a raised hand, a broken imitation of a Christ-like exposed palm, the gesture of blessing.
“No—don't.”
Those eyes, the same color as rain-battered grasslands, quietly begging you.
“Don't say you don't know what I'm talking about. Please.”
His arm drops back to his side.
“You're welcome to finish your work. But I'd be grateful if you just—” he sucks in a sharp breath, “—stick to that.”
He leaves you there, with your mouth agape, petrified, while he furiously scurries off in the rain. Piercing through the line of trees towards the rectory, paying no attention to the gushing downpour. Miserable and lost and a little in love with you, sparked with that same incomprehensible fondness he keeps for the scent of freshly cut pine wood, the stained glass that has captivated you, or that verse from Corinthians he has committed to memory and heart.
Night falls, and with it comes anger. A small amount of it directed at God.
His fists clench and unclench. He wants to punch something, blame someone, he isn't sure who, maybe himself.
Mostly himself.
How did this happen? Why did this happen? It crept up on him like a vicious cold. Now there's no sweating out the fever.
That following week, though you never found the chance to make the promise, you keep to what he has asked of you.
Your eyes lurk in before you pass the narthex, examining the church pews, ensuring yourself of his absence. You do this every time you enter.
Five more days before you fly home, leaving Chimney Rock for good. It can be done. You can manage.
It's the last stretch of the morning, an indolent, sluggish hour. People are more concerned with what they'll have for lunch than whether they should come to church light a votive candle.
A purposely picked moment.
You're not supposed to run into him. Not while turning the corner to reach the path, nearly sent reeling from the blow of the collision. Maybe it's God's nasty sense of humour. The strong wall of the church's northern flank eats you both in its shadow. Too bad it can't make you disappear.
You both stand, facing each other, like future roadkill trapped in car lights. Not sure which is which.
Father Jud's under eyes bloom a mean purple, an unusually wan complexion stamped beneath his freckles, signs he hasn't slept at all. His pants are crumpled, a pale powder, thinner than dust, smudging the fabric. His sleeves are tucked up to his elbows. There's another tattoo, on his forearm, one you hadn't noticed before.
Taking a harsh breath.
Say something, you try to urge yourself, so you can run off.
“I'm just leav—”
Your shoulders are smashed against the sturdy stones.
He hasn't shaved, his stubble grazes your cheeks when he kisses you. A scattered, almost painful collide of mouths and teeth, stealing what remained of air in your lungs. His clothes smell of the eternal white cotton soap, but his body exhales something arboreal, musky; of timber and metal mixed with sweat. His fingers grip your shoulders, slide up the side of your neck, nails scraping your jaw.
It's too early in the day, to feel this drunk on someone's touch.
The buckle of his belt etches its harsh outline in your waist while your fingers grip his back, exhorting him closer. His tongue pushes yours and against all reason and dignity, you moan into the kiss.
A cool current.
Your bodies separate.
Your lower lip hurts. And that spot on your elbow too, abraded by the stone you're leaned against, hiding your shaky legs.
Father Jud's eyes are still fixed on you. On your lips. His own now crudely reddened, his pupils shot with an impossible shine. Holding one hand slightly lifted, like someone realizing they've just shattered a porcelain vase.
For a split second, in between raspy breaths, it seems he's about to say something to you. Eventually, his eyes flicker to the tufted grass. Only capable of murmuring a flimsy “I'm sorry.”
It rings in your ear like an insult.
You're the one who flees this time. Pissed off and muddled with humiliation, damning the church, its windows, God, but above of all the priest.
Five days, and you'll be going away for good.
Five days later, you've finished scrubbing the tiny cottage you've rented for the duration of your stay. Keys awaiting to be returned, laundry folded, your almost done-and-packed suitcase slumped in the path between the open kitchen and the living room.
Ponderous clouds throng the sky outside your windows, drowning all last remnants of blue. You watch as rain sinks into the sidewalk, splashing the quaint gardens of the neighborhoods, ready to swell into a storm.
There's a quick thumping on your door.
Glancing through the curtains cloaking the doorlight, you regret moving at all once you recognize the willowy silhouette standing on the front steps.
You could, of course, creep back into the home, feign your absence. But he knocks again, and for some reason, pretending you've ceased to exist isn't an option anymore.
The locks turn with a melodious clatter. Door sliding open just a little, enough to frame you in the thin gap, almost like you don't want him to see where you've lived during the past weeks.
“Hello, Father.”
Your tone isn't formal now, nor incorrigible like it used to be, when saluting him. It's just a bundle of neutral words.
“Hi.”
He appears a little sounder than the last time you saw him. Ironed shirt and pants, not sawdust-strewn anymore; the clerical collar shining like some ironic lighthouse in the sea of all black. Father Jud licks his lips, his thumbnail scratching the handle of his umbrella.
“I was hoping to talk. Can I come in?” he inquires.
“I don't think that's a good idea.”
He tries to speak again, but you're quick to cut him off.
“Let me put this in better terms: I'm not interested in being the source of anyone's guilt.”
“That's—” he stammers, “—that's fine, and I respect it. It's just—I biked here, but now it's raining cats and dogs, and I don't think it'll stop until the next—” he looks around, assessing the flooding menace, “—half-hour, or something.”
“A half-hour isn't that long.”
In the murky pond of his eyes, you spot a flotsam of distress. There's something heart wrenchingly winsome about him. Always has been. Especially now, spindly silhouette with shoulders dotted in rainwater, that poor carcass of an umbrella hanging over his head.
Charity seizes you by the scruff.
This is a mistake, whispers the seraphim on your shoulder.
“Fine. One cup of tea.”
“Thank you,” he sighs in relief.
He's standing in the middle of your kitchen. Sheepishly glancing around, unsure what to do with himself. You've refused his help—it's just boiling water; doesn't take four hands and two brains to conjure up.
“Are you leaving?” he asks upon noticing the sulking suitcase, still stuck in its corner.
“Yes.”
He marks a pause.
“You've finished your paper already?”
You hum, meaning no. Clumsily rummaging through the cabinets, wondering where you've left the last box of decent tea bags.
“I don't have the proper documentation here; I'll finish at home.”
Another way of stating you haven't mustered the courage to walk back into the church at all. All this, just to have him directly seek you out at home. You wonder if his scent will linger long in the room, after he leaves. You never thought cotton could smell so heady.
“Please sit down,” you mumble. “You're hovering, it makes me queasy.”
He pulls up a chair to the kitchen table, its feet scraping the linoleum.
“I hope you haven't been avoiding the church because of what happened.”
Discerning, he certainly is. Always so frustratingly discerning. That's a trait the angels weren't stingy on, while bringing it to his crib.
You smack the spoon drawer shut. Leaning against the countertop.
“What did you come here for? You didn't really say.”
“To talk to you. I want to apologize.”
His bony index finger scratches his forehead. When he speaks again, it's in a gentler tone. Meditative.
“Remember when I told you being boring was my second worst fear?” He wasn't serious then. But he is now. “You asked me what my first one is, and—” he shakes his head, waving like none of this matters, “—I don't even recall what I said back then. But, the truth is, I think it's something like this.”
A movement, short and vague, yet so damn eloquent: his index finger, travelling from him to you.
The low hiss of the kettle begins rattling the air. His wrist falls, glare fixed on his fingernails. Speaking feels difficult, each word a little too large as it passes through his gullet.
“You never think those things can happen until they do.” His voice, almost reduced to a dwindling streak. “And when it does…”
He looks up from his bruised knuckles, encasing you in his gaze.
He doesn't realize how long he looks at you like this. The exact same way you do when sitting before the stained glass. Like he does, after dawn, alone in the nave, waiting for the precise moment the sun reveals itself through the windows of the sanctuary.
You pivot to halt the screeching of the kettle. The spell is severed.
“Maybe I should go now.”
“It's still raining.”
He stands regardless.
“Thanks for the tea.”
“You didn't have a drop,” you blankly point out, in a feeble voice.
You precede him in the vestibule nonetheless, a bad taste of deja vu souring your mouth—of his slender silhouette, black and navy blue, disappearing into the deluge.
Your fingers stiffen around the doorknob. A slice of somber weather slithers in through the passage.
His hand covers yours. The door falls back into its frame with a rattle.
“I recognized you. Ever since we first spoke. How is that possible? How do you explain it?”
Recognition, meaning familiarity. An admission of inborn closeness. As he imagines Adam, the first man, would've recognized his missing rib.
“Don't talk about God here,” you warn, sensing where this wind might turn. Your voice shrouds itself in cool admonition, concealing what lies under. “If you want to stay, leave Him at the doorstep.”
“I can't do that.” His voice drops to a whisper. A sweetness lingers on his breath, caressing your face. Syrupy, botanical. You imagine him, nervously chewing on honey drops, the ones shaped like round hives the size of pennies—wishing they'd soothe not just some benign throat pain, but whatever flows further below, nestled in his ribcage.
Gently, ever so gently, his fingers rearrange yours, unclenching them from the knob until they rest in his hand. You can't look up. Your attention remains fixed on his collar—lily-white, perfect, unsullied. Sitting right beneath that black lace of ink, close to his pulse, a patch of skin you're desperate to kiss.
You're incapable of distinguishing who is speaking to you in that moment.
Priest or man. Maybe both.
“I feel closer to Him when I'm with you,” he murmurs.
Not quite a confession. It lacks the weight of remorse.
You frown, eyes trailing up; his gaze catches yours, holds it like a chalice.
“How does that make sense?”
“I don't know. I don't know,” he exhales.
His lips ghost over yours. Breathings merging. He smells so deeply of the rain, loosely doused curls trickling against your forehead.
With great difficulty, you steer him back a little.
“You can still go,” a soft reminder. “I'll understand.”
“At my last confession—” his palm encases the nape of your neck, drawing you back to him, nose brushing the shell of your ear, “—I said that I've been distracted. That I've found myself wanting for what I can't have, what I shouldn't even think to have. Neglected the congregation, people in need... People I want to help, to whom I want to bring Christ's love.”
Your jointed shapes jaggedly step away from the front door. Stumbling down the corridor, still clutching each other. Afraid, nervous. Wanting.
“But I couldn't tell the truth. And I couldn't pray it away. I only made it worse.”
Your absence only made it worse.
“You remind me why I do all this. What it's for. You just do.”
His breathing hastens. Fingers digging into your waist. You feel tipsy, electric, with his thumb mindlessly pulling aside the strap of your top to trace your clavicle. Large hands on your body, reverendly mapping you, like you're made of glass.
The taste of salving candy lingers on his tongue, shared with yours when he kisses you at last. Communion.
You run your fingers through his hair, coaxing him closer. Ankles almost tangling with his while you guide him down the hall, nearly losing balance, gripping the notch of his jacket at the last minute. He removes the jacket, shaking the flimsy sleeves until everything falls to the floor.
The bedroom door slams against the wall when it swings open—you'll need to check later that it hasn't made a dent.
The hems of his shirt hang untucked from his pants. His belt loops onto the ground with a metallic twinkle. Your fingers halt as they're about to unbutton his shirt, and he spots your mild panic, the eyes on his throat. Struck with a certain tenderness for you, once he understands the origin of your hesitance.
He removes the clerical collar himself. Preciously setting it onto the small console table nearby. It doesn't make sense; it shouldn't mean anything to you, but you're holding your breath as you watch him. He turns himself over to you next. Finishing what he started. The tank top is hurled over your head. He does the same with your jeans, fidgeting with the button, undoing the zipper.
Scabbed-over lesions pattern Father Jud's knuckles, like they've ruthlessly been bashed onto a robust surface. You notice this with wrinkled brows, reaching to pull his hands away from the task of undressing you.
“What happened here?”
He improvises.
“Candle holder fell. It's not important.”
He's about to distract you from further questions, but you're bringing his hands to your lips, kissing the abrasions, kissing those hands that can mold wood, that offer drinks or tissues, pat shoulders or other hands, hands that pull out weeds and pick up the phone at three in the morning to pray with tormented insomniacs. Hands that give more than they take.
You lend his fingers back to him with a grin and he collects it, stunned, smitten. Bending down, he frees you of the sheathing denim, pulling the pant legs to slide your knees out of them, one after the other, until you're almost naked, slightly shivering—though not from the cold.
“I can't believe how much stuff you're wearing,” you gently fuss, unveiling the tee-shirt stowed beneath his black shirt. “Do you really get that cold?”
Your rambling makes him wonder.
“Are you nervous or something?”
It's a little unbelievable that he's the one asking this. But it feels impossible to lie to him. The tee-shirt joins the rest of the heaped clothes at the foot of the bed.
“This is probably an intrusive question—” you almost choke on the words from how fast you're pushing them out, thinking the sooner you do, the sooner the embarrassment will subdue, “—but, have you… have you done this before?”
He doesn't seem to understand. When it finally dawns on him, he bites his cheek, swallowing a smile, on the verge of a nervous snicker.
“I wasn't always a member of the clergy, you know. But honestly, it's been a long time since I've—” your fingers nudge him carefully, making him recline on your bed; he props himself up on his elbows, finishing his sentence in a raspy tone, “—since I've done this, yeah.”
You straddle him, hips hovering over his, not quite touching each other.
“Let's take it slow then.”
“Fine by me,” he coos.
He sits up and reaches around you, unclasping your bra, letting it flop down onto his lap. By instinct, you want to shield yourself behind crossed arms, but he's already ahead of you. His knuckles graze the side of your breast, one thumb contemplatively following its curve.
You let him do this almost a whole minute, gulping down whatever it stirs in you, until you can't take anymore and push onto his shoulders to give yourself a breather. His irises consider you curiously while you help him out of his underwear.
“Sorry,” you stutter, upon realizing you've literally just smacked his hand away when he tried to do the same, fingers dipping into the waistband of your panties. “It's just, you're making me really—”
His proximity feels fucking sweltering.
“At any point in this,” you explain, “if you don't want—”
“Hey—” he thrusts himself back up, “I'm here of my own free will.”
His palm cups the side of your face.
“You said we'd go slow,” he reminds you. “Let's go slow.”
He lies back down, tugging you along so you're nestled against him, catching your lips with his in a slow, deliberate kiss. One hand curving around the back of your neck, the other reaching down, rubbing your spine. Making out with you until your body unstiffens, prying you out of your own nest of briars and nerves.
You're astonished he's still here. Letting you touch him, letting him touch you. It all seems like a hazy dream. Your mind stills at last, exiting the fight or flight mode.
Parting from his mouth with a wet sound, you lower yourself a little, your hand slipping over his lean form, flat stomach, coarse black hair climbing up to his navel. Digits bumping his protruding iliac bone, brushing gingerly against his length. When you take him in your hand, your eyes travel back up to him. Exploring his features. Feeling him twitch against your palm and his hips wavering forward, subconsciously begging you. After a bundle of mist-soft kisses peppered down his stomach, your breath hitches atop his erection.
“Can I?”
“Yeah.”
He exhales so quietly, you barely catch the word.
Your tongue follows the trail of a sinuous vein, the fragile texture on this sensitive, conceiled part of him, and his head rolls back, swallowing harshly. Has such a hard time, staying focused on you when it feels like you're scattering stars under his skin, mouth warming his tip, a little further, a little more, your hand gripping him with enough firmness to set ablaze every single nerve in that region.
“You're—” a ragged breath, “—pretty good at this.”
People spurt strange declarations when pleasure heats their core, muddling their reason. All things considered, this isn't too bad.
“You know, I'm never sure whether that's a compliment,” you retort in a light voice.
He laughs. You bite your lip before pressing a soft peck onto his thigh.
Switching between your mouth and your hands, uncertain what he seems to be responding to best, trying out combinations until the melody of his breath changes, wildly losing composure.
You think he's close. It's difficult to tell. Your tongue's too busy anyway to inquire about it. He sits perfectly between your lips, slick with a blend from his own arousal and your mouth. Your face pulls back, searching for air, but your fingers keep building the tension. You want to watch him. His muscles hard and edged with pleasure, his chest rising and falling, that hand of his, the one with the inked forearm, loosely clutching the side of your face.
He whispers your name. Fingers stiffening in your hair.
He pulsates in your palm next. Gravelous moans replacing the rumble of the weather outside, spellbinding. You keep on stroking him, preserving the same pressure that brought him to the verge. His spent lightens your collarbones, trickles down your right breast.
You wait for him to climb down the clouds. Nails grazing his thighs gently. Eventually, his eyelids flutter open. There's a stretched, unhurried silence.
He tries to catch his breath before his eyes travel over to you, rolling back up, not quite back into your realm yet.
“Where's your bathroom?” he croaks after a minute or so.
You're a little taken aback.
“Door over there.”
He vanishes from your touch, and you lie on your back, limbs akimbo, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
Shit.
He's going to walk out of there now, you realize, building the upcoming sequence in your head, trying to prepare yourself. He'll say he has to go, pick his clothes up, get dressed, and leave.
You think of the morning he kissed you for the first time, the woeful glance, the desperate “I'm sorry”.
This was always going to happen.
The door squeaks. He reappears, towel in hand. The mattress sinks as he kneels next to you. It startles you when he begins to run the fabric across your skin, your chest, where traces of him still linger. He's dampened the cloth with warm water first, cleaning you now with almost ceremonious heed.
“You don't need to… do this.” You're not sure what else to say.
He lets out a soft puff. You're right, he doesn't need to. But he wants to.
When he finishes, he casts the towel aside, his face lingering above yours. One palm lying flat on your stomach.
“I don't think we're done yet,” he observes. Instilling in you nothing but the purest trust you could ever offer someone.
He drags the elastic band of your underwear down, finishing what you prevented him from doing earlier. Digits slithering down your pelvis, curving to part the petal-soft flesh.
Your fingertips extend towards him, nimbly tracing over the tattoo on his forearm before wrapping around his wrist. Barely guiding him, only giving a soft nudge, a lax pointer, so his fingers press where you like.
“Here?” he whispers.
“Here.”
With focused eyes, he begins working you up. Attentive to the way you squirm and bite your tongue. When a sudden moan breaks through your lips, he repeats what elicited the cry. Quick, small circles. Languid motions, drawing back and forth. Your arousal coats his long fingers, warm and glossy. He knows more about what he's doing than he's let on.
You let go of his wrist to clasp the comforter. His mouth lowers to your chest, tongue teasing your erect nipple. Catching its bud between his lips, giving it the most delicate nibble.
“Oh, f—please do that again,” you whimper.
So he does, indulgent, compliant. His mouth keeps brushing your upper body, reaching lower, lower, lower. Your eyes are closed, but you sense his weight shift around the bed. His bulk settled between your legs, one hand kneading the back of your thigh.
When he eats you out, his speed, the tension, he adjusts, alters, changes with the sounds you make. Quick flickers of his tongue that almost make you cry. Middle finger pumping into you, true to your agreement of keeping things slow—even if it's only to sow frustration in you—until he inserts his ring finger, pushing knuckles deep, curling them slightly to inflict a mind-stilling caress.
You're certain of it now. He knows so much more than he's let on.
A familiar heat spreads from your core. The tapping of rain on the window melts into a hallucination of angelic chatter.
“Jud. I'm gonna—”
It's the first time you verbally slip, sputtering only his first name, disrobing it of prefix and title. He doesn't have any time to focus on that, to ponder on its meaning.
The very next second, something uncoils between your hips.
You come on his tongue, on his fingers, your muscles squeezing tight around him. He doesn't stop, doesn't slow down, transmuting the initial crash into a wave of pure bliss, and you're sobbing euphoria, all your thoughts scattered, useless.
“Hey,” sluggishly calling to him, once you get your voice back, with slight disbelief, “you're pretty good at this too.”
He shakes his head at your nonsense, amused.
Taking care of you has gotten him hard again. His erection teases your thigh while he climbs back on top of you, his knees poking the back of yours. Your thumb contours his lips, hands framing his face next, absorbing the heat he exudes.
“I don't have protection,” you signal, still panting, hit by the harrowing realization.
He obviously isn't carrying any around either.
“How far's the nearest drugstore?” he leisurely asks, and you burst out laughing.
Some things are simply universally comical, and a catholic priest buying condoms might fit into the list.
He isn't serious, of course, but still. You grab the back of his neck, pulling him in for a kiss. Feels like overheat, when you're close like this, sweat gathering between your chests and stomachs.
Your lower body arches up. Trying to meet him. His hand finishes the gesture, pressed on the small of your back, slotting you against his pelvis.
Lewd sounds densen the air of the room. He looks down to where your bodies touch. Tense skin resting on soft flesh. Only touching. A prologue to an act he can't bring himself to finish, the line that he can't breach. It maddens him, how perfectly you shape the side of his length, your hips swirling to meet his in this captivating, hypnotic motion. As enthralling the sight, he can't watch you forever. His resolve would break.
“I want you so much,” you sob.
“I know,” he heaves back.
Planting a love bite on the side of your neck to make up for it. If he doesn't come soon, he knows he'll end up slipping through, joining your bodies for good, raw and utterly careless.
You want to memorize every shape of the muscles in his back, the rolling motion of his shoulder blades beneath your fingers, the steady bumps of his spine.
God, that friction.
Your hand snugly presses him, massaging him between your core and your palm. The pressure on your clit is perfect. Meticulous, almost torturously slow, trying not to push too fast, too far.
“Fuck, this is—” he gasps, struggling to finish the sentence.
He takes over your grasp, his hand stabilizing himself against you.
“Are you close again?” he wonders.
You nod passionately.
“Do you wanna get there together?”
“Yeah.”
He hums his approval. Grinding a little faster against you, bucking his hips forward.
“I'm almost there,” you whimper.
“I'm gonna…” he begins to warn.
“Just a little more. A little more.”
“'Kay,” lips burrowing into your neck, embracing patience, directing himself so he keeps rubbing your clit. “A little more.”
Swept up in ecstasy, time stills when you break apart around each other. Holding with nails, with teeth, almost afraid of being yanked from one another. Flesh puffed and muscles sore from the jittery movement, you're incapable of a single move. The tiny room feels damp, its air congested and scalding.
His body drops on top of yours, relaxed and heavy. Skin slick with sweat, burdened with reddening patches that will prove difficult to explain, should anyone actually come to notice them.
You're not sure how many seconds elapse before he budges again. You've lost all track of time.
“Oh, shit, I'm smothering you,” he mumbles.
“No, no you're not,” you giggle.
Like ivy, his arms encircle you, catching you in a tightening embrace. Tendrils of dark brown hair tickle your chin.
“When are you leaving?” he hums into your collarbone.
“Tonight. ”
“Do you know if you might…”
His voice falls hushed.
“No,” you admit, because there's no point in lying. No point in pretending whatever just happened could ever exist again outside this room, outside this precise moment. “I don't think there's a reason for me to come back someday.”
Another odd silence. Could almost hear an angel stretch its wings.
“You know I can't—” he begins.
“I know. I would never ask that.”
Your fingers pinch a solitary eyelash on his cheekbone, discarding it without making a wish.
“You don't have to stay. I understand if you're needed elsewhere,” you assure.
He should go. But having to and wanting to are very different things.
“I'm not. Unless you want me to leave.”
“No.”
“Mmh. Good.”
“If there's some time, maybe you can tell me about this.”
Your finger grazes his neck tattoo. He scratches it like a mosquito bite, and you feel the rising of his cheekbone when he smiles, poking you.
“I'll tell you. Whatever you want to know. But, let's just—”
He slides himself off you, now flushed against your flank, one leg caressing yours and arm still wrapped around your waist. His nose teases your temple.
“Let's just stay like this. A little while longer.”
You'll never know, whether God sits somewhere in the room, or if He left on His tippy toes a moment ago, bashful yet softened, bringing gossip back to the Heavens about His endearing mess of a son.
If you are to imagine this God, you want to picture Him loving, forgiving, just like the man in your arms: Father Jud and the pond-blue eyes, the tousled hair and fervent heart, his peaceful restlessness, imperfect enthusiasm, and those coarse hands, delectably tender when they're running across your skin.
For a little while, it feels more than enough.
