a little bit filthy

“we shouldn’t be doing this”

“you could be my daughter”

He’s decades older than you, of course. There’s a good deal of silver in his hair and worry lines on his forehead and you suspect you caused them as a child, and now they have just never gone away. But there’s also crows’ feet that deepen with a smile every time he sees you. You search for him when you can, and sit too close to him in the empty church and lean your head on his chest and trace your fingers over the wrinkles and veins over the back of his hands. You breathe in his scent, incense and old books and age, and he doesn’t stop you when you press your face into the crook of his neck, almost kissing his clerical collar. You were always an affectionate child, at least towards him, and he never quite learned how to push you away.

Not even now when you’re on his lap, clutching at the black wool fabric of his cassock as you slowly grind yourself against him. He is breathing heavily, steadying you against himself with those old hands on your hip and in your hair. You whimper into his neck, a mix of his name and “Father”, over and over again. He stays quiet and still despite being embarrassingly hard, only gently shushing you when you whimper. This is a sin, yes, but not the worst kind. Nothing irreparable.

Not physically, anyway.

He tastes of guilt when you press your lips on him and he kisses you back. The priest thinks with some melancholy about the fact that you’re all grown up now, and gone is that little girl whom he had imagined he could forever love without the stain of sin. He had always taken pride in being to you what your parents weren’t. He had thought that to be his role and purpose, a Father in every sense of the word. But then you had gone and become a woman, and he is only a man, and he is so, so weak.

“Father…”

“Yes, yes, I’m right here, my darling… Shhh…”

His eyes flutter closed as he hears and feels you moan against his pulse. Bittersweetness doesn’t quell the warmth at the bottom of his stomach. Pride is a sin, even pride taken in false fatherhood, he realises that now. He had been foolish, imagining that he was a better man than he is, and it’s the fault of his weakness that that little girl, that daughter of his in everything but blood, is gone—

”Dad…!”

You both freeze when you say that. You clearly hadn’t meant to. But from your mouth, “Father” has never been just a clerical title, has it? And now he’s looking at you in a way he never has before, bewildered and somehow terrified. His voice is a throaty croak, as if he’s short on air.

“Say it again.”

“…D-dad…?”

He mutters something under his breath, “Good Heavens” perhaps, ever mindful of his language in your presence even now. Something is wrong, he knows, terribly, awfully wrong. His old, hubristic and undeservedly possessive affection for the little girl you were is mating with the adoration and desire for the woman you are, to birth an altogether new sin that has him loathing himself. But self-loathing and fear and shame do nothing about him being painfully aroused.

He has you pressed down on the pew before either of you can fully understand what he’s doing, hands grasping your thighs with force you didn’t know he even possessed.

His hips snap forward.

“Dad!”

Your startled moans echo from the high stone walls of the chapel as he starts rutting into you through the fabrics. You both know that it is only by the grace of impatience that saves him from tearing off your clothes and ruining whatever virtue you have left.

“Dad!”

”Sweet child…! Yes, dad is here. Dad is right here…!”