#koscheiis

“Oh yeah—” but by then she was there. Cass glanced uncertainty between her and Jesse but all the lass did was stare him down, hard enough that he swallowed a bit before opening his damn gab hole.

Hell, Cass took his own step back for good measure. “Hello there? Ah. Right... that... wasn’t meant to be a question?”

She just rapped her knuckles on the counter. “You got flowers here?”

“Uh...”

“Good. So what kinda weeds do I need to passive-aggressively say ‘fuck you’ in flower?”

Beside him Cass saw Jesse slowly closing his eyes.

The woman was damn expectant though—positively vibrating in anger—so Cass thought it best to get her the flowers... and maybe show off for Jesse just a bit. It wasn’t like they actually got any customers around here...

So Cass leapt over the counter, accompanied by the woman’s startled look and a groan from Jesse. He might be in the business of stranger types of plants, but he still had enough of the common stuff, especially for a woman of her caliber. Cass grabbed a whole handful of geranium (hello, you are stupid) a bit of foxglove (insincere), meadowsweet, (WOW you’re useless), yellow carnations (what a disappointment you are), and—though he had to run in the back for them—a few orange lilies to inspire hatred. It was oh so striking and just wonderfully full of loathing.

“Here you are, luv,” and Cass twitched at the endearment, only because she twitched, and overall it was like diffusing a bomb when she finally took the bouquet.

“This says all that?” she asked, peering at it a might too suspiciously for Cass’ taste.

“Yeah...”

“Alright then.”

Without missing a beat she turned on her heel, marched forward, and shoved the whole lot of it into Jesse’s chest. He buckled like it was a bullet rather than a bouquet, but he still managed to catch it all before it scattered. Cass watched open-mouthed as petals crumpled and leaves fell.

“For you,” she growled and marched straight out the door.

“W-wait! You need to pay for those!”

“Good luck with that, Cass.”

Jesse was brushing bits of plants from his black shirt, watching the woman leave with a mixture of horror and blatant longing. Cass sidled close because yeah, he thought he could see what Jesse saw.

“Cass, meet Tulip Fucking O’Hare.”

“…I need this story, padre. Now.”

***

Thing was, Jesse was an unexpectedly good storyteller. Even when there wasn’t much to work with. Cass supposed it came with the preaching job, but he’d honestly heard the ‘boy meets girl, boy fucks girl, boy and girl have a falling out’ tale a thousand times before—far more than the average guy, certainly. Jesse admittedly had the advantage of crazy sex, bank robberies, and childhood promises to spice things up a bit, but the general outline was still the same.

“You found a what in the bank?”

“Jesus, Cass. The fucking sex-shit ain’t important.”

“I beg to differ.”

Jesse toyed with the leaf on a Dicentra Spectabilis. Cass thought about pointing out the common name—Bleeding Heart—but that might just piss him off. More, that is.

When Jesse continued to glare. Cass just waved him down.

“Fine, fine, so you and Ms. Tulip are thick as thieves—literally—until what? You decide randomly to just run back to the church? A freakin’ holy life? Don’t insult me, padre.”

But Jesse had gone still at his words, totally frozen as he stared at a spot on the wall. Cass had only seen this once before, their first night together when he’d—

—finished taping up Cass’ new tattoo, using his bandaged hand to guide him up the stairs and into his apartment. It wasn’t much overall, the same sort of barren existence that Cass would expect of a broke frat boy or, yes, a man of the cloth. Though there was nothing holy about the space, not with filthy dishes piled on the table, an unmade bed, clothes strewn about, outdone only by cigarette butts, and enough empty bottles to make target practice worth it. Not that Cass cared about any of that. Point was, there was a bed and one good tug of the sheets gave them the space they needed.

Jesse was whining. Cass hadn’t expected him to be so vocal... though he probably couldn’t take all the credit. Who even knew the last time the guy had gotten laid? All Cass needed to do was lick a strip of skin here, palm him through his pants there, and Jesse melted, pooling until Cass was near holding him up.

He chuckled. “Goin’ shirtless did the trick, eh?”

“Would’ve happened anyway,” Jesse panted. “You, single, living next door. Me, single—”

“We’re a fuckin’ trope, we are,” Cass said and interrupted him with another kiss. Jesse tasted a little stale, like he hadn’t bothered to give his body much of anything in ages, and Cass swore then and there to spoil the bastard.

He ran a hand through Jesse’s hair, then dragged it down to the buttons on his shirt. For some reason he loved the contrast of his white gauze and the black material, some sort of strange reversal of their morals. Not that Jesse would realize this. Man still thought he was joking about the whole vampire thing... though the fact that he still wanted the ‘crazy’ was heartwarming in another way entirely. Maybe Cass would just bite him and see how he took that.

First things first though.

He opened one button at a time, slow, doing an awkward little shimmy to get a laugh out of Jesse. Revealing his chest was a sight, literally watering Cass’ mouth in a way he hadn’t experienced in years. He was perfect—smooth and tanned but for the white scares slashing here and there, stories he’d have to pull out of Jesse another time. For now Cass concentrated on more pleasurable things. He took Jesse’s nipple into his mouth and ran his teeth there until Jesse threw back his head.

“You even want me on the bed?” he asked, panting. “Because I’m telling you, Cass, this first time ain’t gonna be long—”

Cass just dug hands into Jesse’s hips, pressing a grin against his collarbone. “What I want, padre, is to you bent over the flimsy desk there. See if we can’t break the ugly thing.”

“I do hate that desk,” Jesse said, chuckling as Cass turned him by the shoulders.

It was then that he spotted it: a dark tattoo painted in the top center of Jesse’s back. Cass would have expected the artist’s body to be covered, or at least to find something equally hard for the hard-drinking preacher, like a skull, or something else cliché and badass... but no. It was a footprint, painted small.

Cass’ hand rose without his permission, touching one of the toes.

Jesse stilled—

—and finally breathed again, glancing out the door where Tulip had gone. He stared there, the floor, anywhere else before finally fixing Cass with an unreadable look. Jesse raised a hand and lightly tapped the top of his back.

“Lost a baby,” he muttered.

Cass felt like he’d taken a punch to the gut, because he suddenly saw moralistic Jesse and furious Tulip losing one of the most precious things the world had to offer, the sheer magnitude of that weight between them. It was the kind of change that would either tie them together or push them apart, and it seemed like fate had decided on the latter.

He didn’t need Jesse to spell it all out for him. Cass could easily picture a miscarriage (the foot was so small, why no name?) amidst all the general excitement of their lives. He saw Jesse, born into religion and money, crawling back to his hometown because what else was there for him? Suddenly looking to God made more sense. Trying to tattoo beauty into others did too.

Cass could have asked a lot of things. How long he and Tulip had been together. Whether he still loved her. If their frequent shags and flirting meant a damn in the grand scheme of things. But he wasn’t that much of a bastard. Certainly not one worthy of standing against her. So instead Cass just asked,

“How long since you left?”

Jesse’s look melted into something softer. Perhaps gratitude.

“Two years, maybe.” Then he shook his head. “Fuck. Who am I kidding. It’s been two years, three months, and a handful of days. Those I’ll admit I’m not sure about.”

“Ain’t the real question though, is it, padre?” Cass bent and grabbed a dustpan out from underneath the counter, tossing them to Jesse. He motioned for him to start cleaning.

“What you really gotta figure out is why she’s back now.”

***

In the end it wasn’t much of a conversation. Jesse admitted the overall Tulip had a... how should he put this? An absolute hatred of Annville. Growing up black and an O’Hare to boot wasn’t easy, and besides a drunk uncle (and a Jesse) she really didn’t have anything to come back to. Cass had actually met said uncle two weeks before, pointing out the drunk, pant-less man to Jesse and asking if he wanted to tattoo the guy’s ass. He hadn’t understood Jesse’s angry glare at the time.

Live and learn.

Though really, Cass had to learn to stop getting himself into these fucking situations.

“Is this your fault?” Tulip asked.

It had been clear as watered down beer that Jesse needed a bit of time to himself, sauntering back to his shop after helping Cass clean up the mess. Wasn’t anything else for it but to try and do some actual work, so Cass had grabbed a few of the beauties he’d been growing (piled lovingly in a wagon he ‘borrowed’ from Emily’s kid) and dragged them off to the church. He was reminded a little too much of that kiddie’s game:

Here’s the church

Here’s the steeple

Open the door...

...and there’s your boyfriend’s ex with a hammer.

Seriously. Why the fuck did she have a hammer?

Tulip pointed said instrument at Cass, causing him to stumble back into his wagon. What a scary woman she was.

“Leaky roof at my uncle’s,” she said, making Cass blink. “I come for tools,” (oh) “and find...what the fuck even is this?”

She gestured and Cass took in the church, a might bit different from when she’d last seen it, he imagined. In the last month or so he’d kept his word to Emily, bringing in some of his prettiest flowers—for free!—and placing them around the church, hoping to brighten things up a bit. Well, he’d managed that, though the larger intention of getting people to actually like the place... that hadn’t worked out so well. Despite flowers and ferns dotted all between the pews, overflowing each window, and bookending the pulpit, Jesse was still getting just a trickle of Annville’s residents each Sunday. He’d tried sprucing (ha) up his sermons too, many of them quite beautiful in Cass’ opinion, but still nothing. If anything, people were complaining more. The flowers made them sneeze. It was far too gaudy for a small-town church. Who did the preacher think he was, pouring all the money into aesthetics when there were kids to feed?

Cass had tried telling that particular woman that Jesse hadn’t paid for the flowers and, frankly, her kids were already damn well fed... that hadn’t gone over well.

“Are you listening to me?”

“...no,” Cass said honestly. Tulip looked like she was about ready to spit fire and truly, Cass was more than a little turned on by it. She had all Jesse’s passion without, at least currently, his charm, the emotions wrapped up in a tiny, vibrating body that looked about ready to explode. Or cry. Cass had never dealt well with tears, so he figured making Tulip angrier was the way to go.

Help her release what needed releasing.

“Jesse told me all about you,” Cass said, casual as he could. “If you came back for him, well, we’ll have to work something out, sweetheart. He’s moved onto me. You’re the old news... especially now that you don’t have the kid to keep him with you.”

It was the cruelest thing Cass had said in years, and apparently exactly what Tulip needed. She let out a shriek that was piercing and too sad for Cass’ old heart to deal with. Her arm swung out with the hammer, shattering the pot of the snapdragon Cass had put where Jesse could see it, sending soil and shards every which way. Tulip worked her way down the line, demolishing everything she could, until she was on him, tossing the hammer aside to grab Cass with mud-smeared hands. She threw them to the ground. She made sure he hit the wagon on his way. Cass let Tulip straddle his hips and pummel him with a few fantastic rights, smelling the perfume of flowers and listening to her heavy breaths. Whoever she was hitting, it wasn’t really him—and wasn’t that just Cass’ lot in life.

Tulip pulled her last swing just in time, grabbing him by the shirtfront instead. “You think I didn’t know the second I walked in?” she said, pulling his tee low to show off the swirling patterns Jesse had tattooed over the weeks, long hours in the chair as they talked. Cass looked where she looked and saw what Tulip saw. “I know his work.”

She ripped off her jacket and pulled off her shirt. Written above her collarbone were the words, “Until the end of the world.”

“This was his promise to me,” Tulip seethed. “Where the fuck do you fit in?”

Cass spat blood and grinned. “Don’t know, luv. I’m just a simple, Irish vampire... but I think Jesse needs something simple right now, don’t you?”

“Screw you,” Tulip said and pulled him up into a kiss.

It was as bruising as her punching and hurt ten-times more, for the simple reason that Cass knew it couldn’t last. Sure enough Tulip was scarping teeth and pulling back just a second later, throwing her head back to see how he’d taken it. Cass was left with nothing but her eyes and the sharp pain in his side.

“If we’re finished with the hittin’ me part a’ the evenin’,” he ventured. “I recommend findin’ me some blood, cleanin’ this mess, and takin’ that poor hammer back to your uncles’.” Cass offered Tulip the sunniest smile he could.