#czerrish

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"So that's a no to mass, then," he said.

"Yes, Ronan, it's a no." Declan nudged Ronan out of his way to sit up, stretching sinuously. The play of muscle under his skin was mesmerizing, made Ronan want to follow every line of him with his tongue, to worship the perfect form of him. "Besides," Declan added with a huff of laughter and a ruffle of his already messy hair, "it's not as if I ever actually gave confession or anything."

Ronan tore his eyes away from the swell of Declan's bicep. "What do you mean, you never gave confession? Yes, you did. I've seen you give confession."

Declan laughed again. "You've seen me in the confessional. But come on, Ronan. You expect me to believe you've actually told Father Stephens your sins?"

"I confess," Ronan snapped. Something in his stomach had iced over. "I confess to all kinds of things. It's not like I don't know what I've done."

There was that look again, the one that said Ronan was a liar and Declan knew him too well to be fooled. Ronan hated that look. He hated the way it made him feel. He hated it more because it was true.

Declan didn't call him out, though. He just shook his head. "Then you're a better man than me." The smile he offered had a bitter twist to it. He slid off the bed, sheet falling away. "As far as I'm concerned, there are some things in our lives that even the seal of confession doesn't cover. There's no absolution for that."

Ronan watched, feeling strangely untethered, as Declan rummaged through the chest of drawers for sleep clothes to steal, unashamed of his nakedness. The straightness of his back, the proud line of his shoulders. The nape of his neck, bared by his lowered head, graced only by the damp curl of his hair.

"Do you want it?"

Only half paying attention, Declan made a questioning noise.

"Absolution," Ronan said. "Do you want it?"

Declan looked back at him, suddenly still. Ronan shifted to sit on the edge of the bed, conscious of every movement, caught in the crosshairs of Declan's attention. He wasn't ashamed of his own nakedness either, but it wasn't the lack of clothes that made him feel bare now. The day's light was almost gone.

"You said you don't confess because you can't," Ronan noted. "Because we've always had secrets even the priest wouldn't believe. But don't you—" He didn't look away, but his mouth snapped shut of its own accord, heart pounding against his ribs.

Slowly, Declan slid the drawer shut and turned to lean back against it. His face was perfectly blank in a way Ronan hadn't seen in a long time. "Do you want it?" he asked. "Absolution."

"Yes."

It tore its way out of Ronan. One syllable, dripping with viscera. It echoed with please, God, tell me what I am, and dad, I'm sorry, I should have saved you, and you're as big a liar as Declan, and a million other secret sins all packed in tight to that box in the back of his mind. It felt like the crunch of the Pig under a nighthorror's claws and nightwash leaking down his throat and Declan's lips on his. It was every sin that would live in him forever, unheard and unforgiven.

He didn't say any of it, but it must show on his face. For the space of a second, Declan's expression cracked, studied indifference giving way to something raw. Then he turned away. Hiding. Always hiding.

"Aren't you tired, Declan?" Ronan was. He was so fucking tired some days he couldn't stand it. "Isn't it heavy carrying all this shit by yourself? You're telling me you never want to just…give it all over?"

"It doesn't matter what I want," Declan said sharply. "Secrets are for keeping, Ronan. I can't go around telling them just to make myself feel better."

Ronan leaned forward. "But it would?"

"It would what?"

"Make you feel better."

"No." Declan laughed then, a jagged surprise of a sound, and he twisted even further away from Ronan's eyes, back toward the window and its encroaching night. "I don't know. Fuck, Ronan, it doesn't matter. I can't justify telling some str—"

"Then tell me."

Declan turned back, face slack with the shock of Ronan's words. His mouth opened, closed, opened again. Hoarsely, he managed, "What?"

Ronan's mouth was dry. He said, "I'm not priest. I'm not—" I had gods sleeping down the hall from me my whole life. Ronan dropped his head, all his breath leaving him in a rush. He felt hot, overfull in some strange way, like he might burst, but he didn't know with what. He rubbed at his stinging eyes. "I could still hear it, though. All of it. The stuff you couldn't tell Father Stephens."

There was silence for so long that a part of Ronan feared that he would look up to find Declan gone, that his brother had left him, that he was alone. But Declan was still there. Silhouetted against the sunset, bathed in glowing purple, unmoving.

"You—" He faltered. "You want me to give confession. To you."

Ronan shrugged and showed his teeth. "There's no secret you could tell me that I don't already know."

Declan was still for a very long time. It hardly looked like he was breathing, a prey animal poised to run. Ronan remembered, distantly, a fight from years ago. Ronan throwing I'll never forgive you at Declan's feet and getting Wouldn't mean much from you anymore in return. Blood on their teeth and a veritable sea of secrets between them. That Declan wouldn't have trusted Ronan with a single vulnerable word, and for good reason. That Ronan would've chewed it up and spat it back in his face. What vicious, broken, lonely things they'd been.

But he wasn't that Ronan anymore, and Declan wasn't that Declan. This Declan looked at him with careful, shadowed eyes, and took one deliberate step toward him.

Ronan reached out a hand to him.

Declan, trembling slightly, took it.

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