#jepeter

YESS THEM

Writing prompt meme!

He regrets the question as soon as he asks it, but then Jesus laughs. 

A fortnight ago, he might have joined in; now, all he can do is stare morosely. It’s a struggle for Peter not to let the tears fall when he laughs like that, deep and warm and so wholly wistful. How many times has he heard him laugh that way in this final year alone? How many times has he laughed along, or at least hung his head in sheepishness, each time missing how mirth didn’t reach those warm, tired eyes?

Judas’ words (Judas! Poor old Judas —) ring in his ear. Naive fool. 

He doesn’t feel like one in his Lord’s arms, but the last week has taught him much, including not to allow the intimacy of the moment to go to his head. Peter hasn’t much in the way of foresight, but he knows guilt and shame are more patient companions than any of the twelve chosen, and will escort him as soon as he finds himself alone again. 

If nothing else, then for never seeing all that he sees now. 

“I would very much like that,” Jesus whispers to him, the velvet of his voice just this side of uneven. “More than anything, Peter.” 

“Then, surely —” To his shame, Peter is desperate again. He feels as if it is he who knows what it is to die of thirst, with a wellspring just out of reach. 

He knows he ought to be grateful just to be held and kissed and assured he is loved in return, in ways greater than he’d ever be able to comprehend. 

Remembering himself, Peter brushes his tears away with knuckles bruised from the past week’s cruelties, suddenly terrified of failing him all over again, but a gentle touch quiets his storming thoughts immediately. A palm on his cheek, thumb delicately sweeping along the sharp bone there. 

The same exact place, the same exact arcs of touch, Peter is so very certain, as he felt a lifetime ago in a fisherman’s shack in Bethsaida, when first he’d been asked to fish for men — to serve a higher purpose.

(Foolish child he was back then, Peter thinks, to think of the calling as the gift he was missing, never stopping to wonder if he was worthy — yet another question that he never thought to ask, but would find answered nonetheless.) 

“One day,” Jesus says, and those two words put the light back in his eyes. “One day, we’ll have forever, Peter.” 

He’s aeons softer for it, but that same certainty is present in his voice as three times, you’ll deny me. Peter leans his head against his Lord’s chest, shoulders shaking with new sobs — of love, of relief. 

Or perhaps he cries because hears the unsaid, for that’s the language they’ve always shared best. 

“But not now,” Peter finishes. Does not dare look up, for if he sees the tenderness writ into the lines of his face he’s sure this, more than anything else he’s endured in the last week, will break him. 

He feels lips on his forehead. Thinks he hears a whisper of oh, my jewel, and somehow, that means so much more. 

“Follow me,” he entreats. “And every time the lambs are fed, you’ll feel me here.”