Archive of Our Own

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

Usually the words feel rote.

He doesn’t know the priest on the other side of the wooden screen. He just got on a bus and rode it to the next town, and then the next when that town’s church wasn’t open right now, in the middle of a weekday.

He’d told himself that his haste was because he wanted to do this now—but now that he’s here, he can’t avoid the sticky unease in his gut that says that maybe, maybe the reason he went to some random church two towns over instead of going back to the seminary is because he didn’t want to face anyone he knows. He didn’t want to face Bishop Langstrom.

“It’s, uh. Five days, since my last confession.”

And hell, the things he’d spilled in that confession. Everything about the Monsignor’s murder, and Samson’s—doctor Nat’s—the hatred he’d felt for Monsignor Wicks, their quarrel and the awful things he’d said, the bitterness he’d fostered towards Wicks’ flock and everyone else who pinned the murder on him—lying about Wicks’ drinking, breaking that figurine of Jesus, his impatience with poor Louise, his desire for revenge—losing himself and the core of his faith in the frantic, scrambling search to find the one who’d framed him and condemn them, to sniff out which of the Monsignor’s wicked devotees was worst of all—

And breaking a window. A church window. That too.

“I had, uh.”

Yeah, he had a lot to confess, last time. He did go to Bishop Langstrom for that, told him the whole sordid story. But there was one thing he left out, with the justification that he didn’t do anything, not really—as much as he might have held that sin in his heart, he didn’t act on it, not then.

If you didn’t count—looks. Glances, glares. Brief touches. Little comments. And… admissions, dangerous admissions, the kind that very nearly crossed the line into catastrophe.

“I, I had…”

Well. That line has now been crossed.

Isn’t there a way to stall, something else to confess, some other sin he’s committed in the past few days? There must be—some small dishonesty or moment of anger—he can think of nothing.

His hands are shaking. In the dim light of the confessional he thinks he can still see the familiar bruises from so many years ago, painting his knuckles in hatred and blame. His heartbeat is coming quicker, he can feel it in his throat, and he can’t raise his voice above a breath, “I had, I uh…”

“Speak, my child,” the other priest says. Thank Christ Jud doesn’t know him—and thank the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit that it isn’t Bishop Langstrom.

He hates himself for thinking it. Bishop Langstrom has always been good to him, better than he ever deserved—and after what he said to Martha, about confessing sin without fear—what kind of hypocrite is he?

And what kind of coward—if he could do it, last night, he should be able to say it now. It’s too late to hide from this—he doesn’t have the right to try.

He puts his head in his hands and tries to deepen and steady his ragged breathing. The words fall to the floor of the confession booth like so much sand: “I had a sexual experience with another man.”

There—he’s said it. Surely the other priest has heard worse—fucksake, Jud has done worse, done so much worse—he’s done worse things than that in the past month, easily—

But there’s something different about this. Something unique… uniquely shameful. About committing sin purely for the base desires of his own flesh.

It’s not that simple. It’s not, Jud knows it’s not, and that knowledge sits in his stomach like a stone, and he can’t decide if it’s better or worse.

“I see,” the other priest says. Jud doesn’t know what he’s thinking—if he thinks that Jud was forced into it, or if he forced the other man—

“It wasn’t—” Jud starts, haltingly. “I mean, it’s not—he—we…”

Striking blue eyes, piercing, knowing, unlike anything Jud had ever—strong hands, firm grip, grasping—quiet kindness, upright respect, and when Jud thinks about the look on his face when he’d tried to gracefully give Jud the chance to reconsider it’s almost enough to make him nauseous.

A mouth on his own. A hand on his thigh. A voice in his ear. The smell of sweat, both his and another’s.

“We both wanted it,” he manages to whisper.

But Jud was the one who started it.

Blanc wouldn’t have. He’d wanted Jud, that much was obvious, but actually initiating anything… he wouldn’t have.

Jud thinks sourly that no, of course not, he wouldn’t have done that, not Blanc. Blanc would only flirt, tease, torment him, leave the humiliation of asking for it solely in Jud’s hands… but then, what did Jud want him to do? Force himself on him—push Jud against a wall, shove a kiss onto his mouth, have his way with him, without permission—

He closes his eyes and swallows down the shame past the knot in his throat, along with the mouthful of saliva that started pooling at the thought. God, that would’ve been so much easier.

“Had you ever done something like this before?” the other priest asks patiently, no contempt in his voice, no judgment.

Jud exhales. “No,” he admits softly.

When he was young, before he’d found his faith in Christ, he could never have recognized what he wanted. He was too wrapped up in being the guy he was expected to be, back then—angry, aloof, aggressive, violent. Dangerous, to others and himself. A real man.

He knew what kinds of girls the guys he boxed with were interested in, and when chances arose, he spent his nights with them, just like the other men did. They were beautiful, in the same way that flowers and sunsets were beautiful, but he could recognize now that he’d never desired them.

It was only years later, when he’d left every piece of his old life behind and was well on his way to becoming a priest, that he finally spent enough time with himself and his honest emotions to acknowledge it: that he was gay. It was difficult to process, at first, but he found that it didn’t change things for him, not really. He’d already determined to be celibate, so what was the difference? He decided that it didn’t matter.

And it didn’t matter. For years, it didn’t matter at all.

“This man,” the other priest says. “Was this someone you had already known, or… did you go out seeking, a companion, for this purpose?”

“No, I, uh…” Jud shakes his head, though the other priest can’t see him. “I knew him. I—know him. I had known him, before. I mean—” and he blushes, which is stupid, he’s already confessed to having had sex with the guy—“we’d met. A week ago—a little more.”

The other priest hums thoughtfully. “And was it immediately upon meeting him, that he became a source of temptation for you?”

“No—no,” Jud says, mouth curled up in disgust. He doesn’t mean to say—of course Blanc was—immediately, of course, like an angel, a vision, beautiful, but—“he’s not a—it’s not his fault, he didn’t—”

He has to forcibly cut himself off from saying the words do anything wrong.

Jud breathes in slowly, and can’t suppress the memory of Blanc’s lips and tongue caressing the tattoo on his neck.

He didn’t do anything wrong.

Blanc—sinned. Exactly the same as he did. What they did, they did together.

But it’s not the same—Jud is a priest, he took vows, he has a responsibility Blanc doesn’t—

And now he really is nauseous. “It’s not his fault,” he repeats, barely more than a whisper. “He’s not a—don’t call him a source of temptation, please, he’s just—a man. I made my choice, it was my decision, he just…”

He trails off, breathes out, rubs at his eyes, he’s exhausted. The other priest asks, “He just… what?”

Heavily, Jud sighs.

Just got in Jud’s space all the time, touched him and manhandled him, all tactile and authoritative. Just looked at him with a hungry sort of appraisal in his eyes. Just made his little innuendos, usually with some measure of plausible deniability. Just—said things.

And not all of those things, not even the most dangerous ones, were innuendos, plausibly deniable or otherwise. Sometimes Blanc would just—just say something that would stick to the corners of Jud’s mind for ages, something he couldn’t get out no matter how hard he tried to tell himself it didn’t matter.

Like—a few days ago, shortly after Martha’s death. Blanc was in town for a little while longer, offered to help Jud in any way he could, insisted, even; Jud was surprised, but accepted, of course. There was so much to do, so much to sort out, and Jud barely knew where to start.

Blanc spent all day with Jud in the rectory office, sorting through old files, clearing out what didn’t matter and re-filing what did, helping him figure out what it would take to get Our Lady on its feet again. Sometimes they worked in silence, other times talked, and as the day went on Jud found himself relaxing so much into the detective’s company that he poured out his anxieties about being the primary reverend at Our Lady, when it eventually was ready to re-open.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, there’s so much that I learned at the seminary,” he was rambling, while Blanc rifled through a filing cabinet, looking for the right spot to place the file in his hand. “But it’s all, so—theoretical, you know? Like—study is one thing, but being in the chapel, actually talking to members, it’s completely different.”

“I imagine so,” Blanc said, and slid the file in between two others, corner-first.

“And I’m gonna be in charge—I mean, me, in charge?” he said doubtfully, and paced anxiously to the other side of the office and back. His only real experience was under Wicks, and all it had proved was that when there were people in the pews, right in front of him, who were lost and despairing and grasping for hope, he couldn’t help them. “I—I don’t know if I can do this.” 

At those words, Blanc looked up at him through his thick glasses, and he quickly amended, “I mean, I want to, but I—there are so many people who need help and I, I don’t—”

Blanc said tentatively, “Father—”

“What if someone tells me they don’t know if they can worship anymore because they feel like God has hurt them?” he interrupted, thinking, as he had been so often recently, about poor Simone. She might never go back to church, back to Jesus at all, and he wouldn’t blame her. “I mean, what is there for me to say? What would you say to someone like that?”

Blanc blinked at him for a moment, pensive, but ultimately chuckled. “Oh, I’m sure any answer I could give you isn’t somethin’ you should repeat,” he said, and sat down in the chair next to the desk, a stack of unreviewed files in front of him. “You’re the one with priestly trainin’. My thoughts, my words—I doubt the Church would approve of anything of mine findin’ its way into your mouth.”

Jud’s eyes widened before he could stop it and he looked away, blinking and scrambling to collect himself. He shouldn’t let Blanc get to him—he should’ve known better than to ask his opinion on religious matters—he was too aware of how the roof of his mouth felt against his tongue. 

“Still,” he said, and cleared his throat when the word came out hoarse. He forced himself to meet Blanc’s eyes as if it were nothing. “Out of curiosity.”

Though he had at least the tact to stifle it, Blanc was clearly amused by the reaction he’d managed to get out of Jud by his little joke. But he pushed it no further, just picked up another file from the stack. “Well, I s’pose I’d tell ‘em that God is a fabrication that comforts some and not others, but that’d be why I’m not a priest.”

Jud smiled despite himself. “Not sure I could do any better,” he admitted.

What an idiot he’d been, before Chimney Rock, thinking he could lead anyone anywhere. “It was so easy in theory, but then once you’re there, and people need answers…”

It never mattered what he said to Simone, or Nat, or Lee, Vera, Cy, Martha… Wicks… they didn’t care what he believed. He wasn’t one of Wicks’ followers, so he was an outsider, an interloper, a snake. His faith meant nothing to them.

Blanc was flipping intently through the file in his hand. Maybe he wasn’t even listening. “I just…” Jud said, even if to no one but himself, “don’t know how to convince people that I really want what’s best for them.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” Blanc replied easily, still flipping through the file.

So he was listening. Jud frowned. “Why not?”

Blanc turned to him then, and his gaze softened from consideration to affectionate wonder. “There’s somethin’ about you,” he said openly, and Jud’s eyebrows flicked upward—“somethin’ a person can’t help but trust. You’re a good man with a good heart, I think most people can tell that quick when they meet you.”

At that, Jud blushed, down to the tips of his ears. He grinned, flattered, to think that that was how Benoit Blanc saw him, but—“No, no—” maybe Blanc had found it easy to trust him, and that thought did put butterflies in his chest, but Blanc was a strange one, with an odd soft spot for him—“no,” shaking his head, “no, I wish that were true, Blanc.”

And his smile faltered when he remembered who he’d been before the Church. Shaking needles, bloody knuckles, cold nights in jail, colder nights on the street. He was a dangerous man, then, and you could see it in the set of his brow, in the way he held himself. People knew to be wary of him.

Even now, it clings to him. He tried to smile at Blanc again, politely. “If it was, well, maybe I could’ve saved Wicks’ flock.”

Blanc’s brow furrowed in that way that it did when he disagreed with someone but didn’t want to say how much. “Now, Father Jud,” he said, extra slowly, calling attention to his heavy Southern drawl. He leaned forward and took off his glasses, and without the thick glass in the way Jud could see his eyes clearly. “You did everything, absolutely everything you could for those people, you know that, don’t you?”

And it wasn’t enough, Jud didn’t say. “Yeah.”

“And the way that Wicks manipulated ‘em,” Blanc continued, waving his glasses around, “and all of their choices to stand by his side, there was nothin’ you could do about any of that, you know that as well?”

Jud did his best to smile at him. It really was sweet of him to try to make Jud feel better.

He took a breath in to respond, but before he could, he was distracted by the sound of footsteps outside the office. Both he and Blanc turned towards the source of the noise, listening for anything further, and then shared a glance, conspiratorial in a way he’d almost grown used to during the murder case.

“We can, uh, be—done, with this, for the day,” Jud said, and started towards the office door. He didn’t doubt for an instant that Blanc would follow.

With Blanc just behind him, he placed his hand on the doorknob and slowly began to turn, wondering nervously who could be here at this hour. Hopefully they weren’t being robbed… maybe it was Cy, here to scour the place again…

Careful, halting, Jud pulled the door open, leaned into the doorway and peeked into the common room, not sure what to expect, and found—Lee Ross, unkempt and flanneled as ever, shoving some books into a utility bag around his shoulder. Mystery novels, looked like.

“Lee?” Jud said, and stood up straight, almost hopeful. Tentatively, he stepped out of the office and into the hallway; he didn’t think he’d get another chance, with any of Wicks’ flock. Lee looked up, saw Jud—and his expression went sour. Jud tried not to let it slow him down—“Lee, is there something I can—help you with?”

Bitterly, Lee laughed. “Don’t flatter yourself,” he said, all acid and disdain. He put one last book into his bag and fastened it closed, saying, “Left some shit here. I’m never coming back to this shithole again.”

He walked quickly towards the hallway where Jud stood with Blanc behind him, avoiding their gazes—and all Jud could see was a man that he’d failed. “I hope you change your mind,” Jud said softly, and Lee stalled to a stop, rage struck anew in his dark, hateful eyes. Jud continued, penitent, “I know you never liked me, and I know the Monsignor did wrong by you—I’m sorry that I didn’t do more to put a stop to that while he was alive.”

Even though, like Blanc said, he’d done everything he could. Every last thing he could think of, and it was never enough.

“And I know that the way that it happened, was—horrible, for everyone. But he’s gone now, Lee,” Jud said, nodding, pleading with Lee to understand. “And I’m gonna do what I can to get this church back on its feet, and… and it’s here for you. Christ is here for you, always, and… I’m, here, for you.”

“You fucking fake,” Lee spat, and Jud knew where it was coming from, the way Wicks had betrayed him, but still he couldn’t help but flinch away, the familiar self-blame rising up to crash against him like a wave. “You can’t seriously expect me to buy any of this, after everything—what you said to the Monsignor, trying to rope us all into it, and now he’s dead and you’re glad that he’s gone.”

Jud looked at the floor. Lee was right; Jud was so, so horribly glad that Jefferson Wicks was dead, poisoning and stabbing and all, and he knew that that gladness was yet another sin laid upon his shoulders, one he’d confessed and paid penance for and still couldn’t get rid of.

“I don’t care if you didn’t kill him,” Lee said lowly, dark eyes full of rancor. “I don’t care if he was getting rid of us, all of us. We’d failed him—we’d disappointed him, we weren’t good enough.”

Jud shook his head, as kindly as he could. “You were always good enough, Lee—”

Lee’s face contorted in disgust. “That was always your problem, you never believed, not really—”

“I believe in the redemptive power of Christ’s love, that’s what I believe--”

And Lee scoffed. “Of course you would say that,” he said, and Jud’s fingers tightened around each other where his hands were folded in front of him. He wouldn’t crumple—not for Lee Ross. “It makes you feel better, doesn’t it? All that about redemption.”

Why, why had he spoken so openly, so easily about his past with Wicks’ flock? As if it would make them hate him less, to understand him—what on God’s green earth had possessed him?

“But there are some things you can’t ever walk away from,” Lee said, and stalked forward until he was right up in Jud’s space, bags under his eyes, smelling like stale cigarette smoke. It had been so many years since that night in the ring; not long enough for him to forget the snap of bone beneath his fists. “And you know that, don’t you? Judas.”

The name was like a bucket of ice water dumped over his head and shoulders—he couldn’t move, couldn’t so much as think as Lee scoffed one final time and marched past Jud, unnecessarily shoving him as he went by. With the sound of every footstep that receded, and the door as it opened and shut, Jud was acutely, painfully aware of the eyes and ears of Benoit Blanc.

It had been years, since anyone had called him that. He wished he could say he didn’t remember exactly when.

“Well, now,” Blanc said when Lee was gone, and Jud wasn’t facing him but he could hear that the detective was in the doorway of the office; Jud stood frozen, staring at the space where Lee had been standing. “I understand that he does not like you—I can even understand him, clingin’ to his misplaced loyalty in the Monsignor—” and Jud breathed in, unstuck, glanced fleetingly over at Blanc, who was leaning against the door jamb and gesticulating with his hat as he spoke—“but really, and I mean really, callin’ you Judas…”

Jud did his best not to curl in on himself, hearing the name come out of Blanc’s mouth. There really wasn’t any keeping anything a secret from him.

“Even for a fiction writer, it's just overly and unnecessarily dramatic,” Blanc concluded.

Yeah, was what Jud meant to say. And nod, and smile, and continue, Yeah, dramatic. Writers, I guess.

“It’s my given name,” he admitted instead.

Spared another glance at Blanc’s face: taken aback, eyebrows raised, lips slightly parted. Jud continued, “Martha must've told him. Told—” betrayed by Judas, Wicks had said in his last sermon—“all of them.”

In his peripheral vision, he could see Blanc slowly nod. “Ah,” he said gingerly. “Well. I can see why, bein’ a priest, you might not want to go by that.”

Jud shook his head. “No, no, I… I stopped using that name way before I joined the priesthood. Or the Church, even.”

You don’t need to go to church to have people mistrust you, even hate you for the name Judas. What his mother was thinking he’ll never know. Maybe she really did hate him that much.

Again, Blanc nodded. “I see. Well, that’s a shame.”

It was a moment before the words registered; when they did, Jud looked over at him, incredulous. “What?”

Blanc frowned, defensive, and said, “I mean, I understand why you’d choose to avoid it, seein’ as what people think of its most famous bearer, but…”

“What people think of him?” Jud repeated, nonplussed. “Judas Iscariot was—the ultimate traitor.”

Blanc nodded, looking pensively at the ground, and for the hundredth time since meeting him Jud tried hard not to be struck by the lines and curves of his handsome face, the creases around his eyes and the stubble on his jaw, the way his hair hung loose around his temples. “S’pose I don’t see it that way,” Blanc said, and looked Jud in the eye with a rueful smile. “It’s a fine name. Nothin’ wrong with it.”

His eyes—always his eyes—the crystalline blue of cold water under a cloudless sky, and though Jud had witnessed firsthand his fallibility as a detective and as a man, even now he couldn’t shake the sense that Blanc knew everything.

He bit his tongue against the feeling—childish, stupid, Blanc was just a man like any other, and an arrogant one at that. He had a tendency to get uppity about his atheism. “He betrayed Jesus, his friend, for money.”

“Oh, no, no,” Blanc said, waving a hand in dismissal, and Jud could feel the familiar irritation twitching up through his fingers and into his hands. “No, Judas Iscariot didn’t care about money, ain’t you read the gospel of John? He wanted to give to the poor.”

“He didn’t care about the poor,” Jud argued, bewildered, “John 12:6, he just wanted the money for himself—”

Blanc pffed at that. “Editorialization.”

Jud opened his mouth to disagree, but Blanc didn’t give him the chance.

“Very little is known about Judas Iscariot,” Blanc said, and Jud closed his mouth angrily. There he goes on his goddamn soapbox. “What we have on him was written by those who felt he’d betrayed ‘em… it makes sense, to me, that they mighta, hm, villainized him in their writin’s, past the point of what was actually true.”

“But he did betray them,” Jud insisted.

Traitor—villain—liar—killer—parasite. Everyone knows who Judas was. Why did Blanc have to be such a contrarian, when it came to the Church and its teachings? Had he only stuck around to try to draw Jud astray?

“He was put in a very difficult position,” Blanc said gently, kindly, and instinctively Jud cringed away from how vulnerable it made him. “Pulled between the person in whom he’d placed his loyalty, and the fear of the violent oppressors who occupied his homeland… he saw the way things were goin’. Not a lot of options in front of him.”

Jud had never, never heard anyone try to defend Judas Iscariot before, the most infamous traitor in all of history, synonymous with backstabber. 

“Like I say, very little is known,” Blanc said. “But I like to believe that Judas Iscariot did what he believed was right… even if it wasn’t.”

Blanc was looking at him again. Like he was fucking stupid. Just another dumbass getting suckered by religion, how idiotic could you get, doing what he believed was right, even if it wasn’t—not like Blanc, no, Blanc was too goddamned clever to fall for a thing like faith.

“Funny, I never took you for an idealist,” Jud accused, and regretted it as soon as the words were out of his mouth—after the leap he took for Martha, Blanc deserved more credit than that—but Blanc just chuckled.

“Oh, I’m not, never have been,” he admitted easily. “I just think that that version of Judas makes for a beautiful story. Tragic, of course,” he hurried to say before Jud could respond with shock and revulsion—and then he smiled to himself, as though there were something about this that was funny, something Jud didn’t understand.

He looked directly into Jud’s eyes then, that slight smile on his lips, always so knowing and only sometimes in a way that he deigned to share with Jud like a coded secret—“But beautiful.”

And he put on his hat and strode out of the rectory while Jud’s heart lurched at the meaning, and left him standing in the hallway with his mouth hanging open in mortified shock.

Tragic—he wasn’t tragic—how dare he—and Jud couldn’t even say anything, couldn’t chase after him or argue, or it would tear a hole straight through the fragile veil that still remained between his ability to pretend this wasn’t happening, and the truth.

Tragic, of course. But beautiful.

The truth—that Blanc was expressing a kind of desire that had no place between them, and had been all along, and Jud knew it, and he was letting him. More than letting him—encouraging his advances, even if only in subtle ways.

He couldn’t help but want to explain himself to Blanc. The Church had helped him, gotten him through the worst times in his life—he’d be dead without it, he needed the Church, he owed them everything, owed Christ everything, they all did, redeemer of their souls—

Tragic, of course.

He didn’t want Blanc’s pity. But he couldn’t stop himself from wanting his time, his ear, his attention, his esteem—his care, his company—and he knew that he wanted more from Blanc than he should ever have wanted from another man, far more, more than he was willing to face head-on.

Tragic.

If his father and Bishop Langstrom had one thing in common, it’s that they’d both be ashamed.

Of course. 

Blanc had no right to judge him. Jud could understand having had negative experiences with the Church—after Monsignor Wicks, of course he could understand that—but this wasn’t the first time he thought Blanc had gone too far. The detective seemed to find great amusement and satisfaction in throwing Jud off-balance, pushing him, tugging loose the feelings he was determined to keep locked away.

But beautiful.

There were moments when he could accept that he felt a certain attraction to the other man. It was just biology, just neurons and hormones and instinct; he could ignore it, and it didn't matter. But this, this he resented: the giddy swoop that flew through his stomach at the thought that Blanc had meant it about him.

Beautiful.

Maybe he had—probably he had, yes. That didn't change the fact that it was a joke, at Jud’s expense. Too stupid, too desperate, too Catholic to accept what he wanted. And what a crying shame it was, that Jud believed, that he had something higher to answer to than his own desires, that he wouldn't just tip over at the slightest push of Blanc’s flirtation and fall helplessly into his arms.

Tragic, of course, but beautiful.

Those words, and the way Blanc said them, chased each other around and around his mind when he lay in his bed in the rectory at night, wishing he at least had a bag or a dummy to punch.

Now, though, sitting in the confession booth at a random town near Chimney Rock, he doesn’t have it in him to still be angry. He certainly doesn’t tell that whole story to the other priest. “Just flirted,” he says listlessly instead. “Just… said things. Looked at me. I don’t know.”

“You… mean to say that you are the one who initiated it, then,” the other priest says, and Jud nods.

“Yeah,” he says, pressing at the space between his brows, “yeah, I, I was, yeah.”

“And how did you find yourself in such a… perilous, situation?”

Again, Blanc had spent the day helping him. This time they were so lost in conversation that Blanc stayed late, they ate together, unwilling to part.

“We were… in the rectory,” he says. “Not—not my room, just… the common room.”

On the couch, in front of the fire. It had only been about a week since they’d met, and already Jud was starting to get used to having him around, his cadence and his mannerisms, the solidity of his presence. It was addicting, being able to look up and see him, the way that he would sometimes pause after something Jud had said, taking a moment to consider it; it bound him to his body, to know that his words were in the other man’s ears, that they meant something.

“We were talking.”

Blanc had been telling him about one of his past cases. The detective could get so swept up in the telling of a story like that, hands gesturing widely, eyes in the past, voice like the low, steady rumble of thunder; Jud thought he was mesmerizing. He couldn’t look away.

“And when a seam ripper was used to cut open the bodice of the costume,” Blanc was saying, leaning forward as he spoke, and Jud leaned in with him, entirely enthralled. “There, between two pieces of fabric—the very blade used to kill the choreographer.”

“Oh my God?” Jud said, captivated. Sewn inside the costume—who would even think of something like that?

“It had been on her person throughout the entire performance,” Blanc said, sharp eyes glittering with the reflection of the firelight. “Hell of a gamble. But then, it very nearly worked.”

“Wow,” Jud said, blinking in bewilderment. The way Blanc’s mind worked… sometimes, Jud couldn’t believe he actually knew him. “That’s incredible, that you were able to figure all that out.”

“It’s the only way it could’ve happened,” Blanc said plainly, and leaned back against the couch. “The inevitable truth, however fantastical it may seem.”

The detective had a habit of acting as if he were on stage. Jud knew the man could be a little over-the-top (and more than a little, sometimes—he hadn’t forgotten the pipe organ incident), but he couldn’t help admiring him anyway, drama and all. “Yeah,” he said, nodding in amazement. “Yeah, I guess. Just hard to believe stuff like that happens in real life, you know? Seems more like something Martha and the others would read about in their book club.”

And it made him falter, the melancholy that descended onto him when he pictured it—Martha, here in the church where she belonged, and Lee and Vera and Nat and Simone, sitting around talking about mystery novels. Back when things were normal… simple. They’d all been miserable, but at least they were alive.

But he shrugged off the memory, and smiled at Blanc. “You sure seemed to know all those books pretty well. You like detective fiction?”

He’d been far too stressed out to think about it at all during the case, but now the thought amused him: the great Benoit Blanc, a fan of fictional detective stories. Blanc seemed to notice his amusement, because he frowned wryly before he responded—“Well, I,” he said, a bit disgruntled, which only made Jud grin wider, “not so much actively, anymore, I suppose, but… yes, when I was young, I did very much enjoy readin’ mysteries.”

Jud couldn’t help but breathe out a delighted laugh at the image: little Benoit Blanc, nose stuck in an Agatha Christie novel, ice-blue eyes blown wide as he took in the twists and thrills and dazzling brilliance.

“Murder mysteries,” Blanc said gruffly, staring off at nothing, that same faraway look he got when he was telling one of his stories, but there was something quieter about his distance now. “They were, my… my mother’s favorite.”

Jud blinked at that, smile fading, and lifted his chin to regard Blanc underneath a furrowed brow. However much the man may revel in relaying tales of past cases, he so rarely shared details about his personal life—had he read those books because she liked them? Had they talked about them, shared their love of detective stories, Hercule Poirot and Gideon Fell? Is that what had sparked a dream in him of one day becoming a detective himself?

Had Blanc tried as hard to be what his mother wanted, as Jud had to be what his father wanted?

It was difficult to imagine Benoit Blanc doing anything for the sake of someone else’s approval, but… with family, it wasn’t always so simple. Jud knew that.

“But no, I find the real thing to be even stranger than even the most surreal of fiction, sometimes,” Blanc said, seemingly eager to move away from the topic of his mother. “Lord knows I’ve seen things that my own imagination could never have cooked up, recent events very much included.”

Jud opened his mouth to oppose the change of subject, to ask—to ask what? What was there to say?

When they’d met, it had been easy to ask about the older man’s life, his family, his childhood, his innermost emotions. He’d been acting as a priest then, for a cynical stranger who’d wandered into his church.

But his urge now to probe deeper into Blanc’s heart was not as a priest. It wasn’t about attempting to lead him into the light of the divine—he wanted to know. He wanted Blanc to trust him, trust him with those parts of himself he kept hidden away. He wanted to know him, unfurl and search through him, see him, touch him—

“Just when I think I’ve seen everything, some new apparition or other comes along to knock me off-balance—but then, that’s just the way of it, don’t you think?”

What Jud wanted… it was selfish. If Blanc had wanted Jud to know more about himself, he would have told him—but he didn’t. Why would he, when he was going to leave in just a few days?

There wasn’t anything Jud could say. Not without reaching out to touch that dangerous something between them that both of them refused to address.

So he just sat there, fiddled with the cuff of his jacket, nodding vaguely. “Yeah.”

How long was this going to last? When was Blanc going to leave? He'd never put any kind of date on it, only said A little while. How many more days did Jud have with him, how many more nights by the fire? Was this the last one? It couldn't be—the idea made Jud want to run away and escape his own skin.

He blinked at the sudden sensation of fingers running through the hair over his ear, and looked up to see Blanc smiling at him, sweeter than pecan goddamned pie. “What’s goin’ on up there, darlin’?”

Blanc never could make it easy for Jud to keep his distance.

He said it so naturally—darlin’, like it was nothing, simply the friendly colloquialism of a Southern gentleman—or, like an endearment they’d shared a thousand times. Jud couldn’t subdue the spark of indignation that flared in his chest at the ease with which the other man said it; yes Jud thought that Blanc’s concern was sincere but he was also pretty sure that at the same time, it was mockery, smugly poking fun at the fact that Blanc could openly, shamelessly display desire and affection where Jud could not.

And there was a part of him that hated Blanc for it, as something settled heavy on his tongue, a horrible yearning—for Blanc to say it again, darlin’, for Blanc to touch him again, touch more and more of his skin until his need was sated, for Blanc to open up to him, to open him up, or even failing any of those things they really truly shouldn’t do for Blanc just to know what Jud felt when he looked at him.

The yearning was swollen and sour in his mouth. He swallowed it down like raw meat and it wormed its way through his intestines, making him sick.

“Jud?”

“Nothing,” he managed, but he couldn’t get the word out louder than a whisper. He cleared his throat, to speak louder—it wasn’t lying, exactly, if he said—“Just, um. Just thinking about when Our Lady reopens, again.”

And you’re gone, and I’m here, by myself.

“You’ll do well, Jud, I know that you will,” Blanc said as though it were fact, the same kind of inevitable truth he made it his living to unveil.

Jud forced his face to warp into a polite smile. “That’s nice of you.”

“I mean it.”

“I know, you do,” Jud said, nodding, and he met the other man’s gaze honestly. Blanc frowned, frustrated; Jud continued, “And I know you don’t think it’s my fault, what happened—”

Blanc insisted, “It isn’t—”

“—but if I was better at this, if I knew, how to connect with people—I could’ve gotten through to them, I could’ve helped them, all of them,” he asserted, clutching his right hand with his left. All those corpses, people he had tried so hard to know—and the survivors, more lost than ever and irretrievably out of his reach…

Blanc placed a reassuring hand on Jud’s knee, solid and quiet and more real than he knew how to process, altogether too close to his thigh, dire temptation. “Jud,” Blanc said, and his voice was molasses, thick and slow-moving and straight from the sugarcane. “You’re too hard on yourself, son.”

Jud stared at the hand on his knee, sullen and fighting to keep his breathing slow. What did Blanc expect from him? Was he supposed to just give in, like it was that easy? Like it was as simple as the fact that they wanted each other, like that was all that mattered?

“Now, I think you’re much better at connectin’ with people than you realize,” Blanc said, and Jud looked over at him, and couldn’t stop himself from needing him to take his neck in his other hand, and kiss him until everything else dissolved. Jud would lean all the way into him, and Blanc would tighten his grip on Jud’s knee and map out the inside of his mouth with his tongue, and Jud would surrender without any resistance—and Blanc would touch him, and claim him, and slide his hand up Jud’s thigh between his legs to feel the heat hardening, solely for him—

Abruptly he stood and walked away from Benoit Blanc, to the side of the room, trying to escape the sin he knew he had committed in his heart.

Again. Ever since he’d met Blanc it seemed like it was happening more and more often.

“Father,” Blanc said from the couch, all low and half-admonishment, which did nothing to help. That voice in his ear, Father, that mouth on his neck—he wanted it bad enough that it strayed from his path, bad enough to warrant repentance.

He didn’t turn to look as Blanc stood, and crossed the room to stand beside him.

Splayed a hand flush against Jud’s back.

Jud closed his eyes.

“You’re gonna be alright, son,” Blanc said, and Jud was leaning into the balls of his feet, those two planes of pressure anchoring his body hard to the ground. “You’re a good man and a good priest, you’ll figure it out, I know it.”

He was so close.

All Jud could smell was his cologne, something smooth, like leather. Their faces were so close that it would be nothing at all to lean over and kiss his cheek, and his touch burned through the jacket and shirt on his back white-hot like a brand, palm and all five fingers. Jud couldn’t bear the thought of that touch being taken away.

Blanc was going to leave. Jud had to beg him to stay, clutch at the lapels of his suit jacket to keep him right here, say he’d do anything.

He’d begun to raise his hand before he could stop to think about it. 

It was a nice suit. Jud couldn’t take the lapels in his hands and grasp them like a vise the way he wanted to—it would crease the fabric, ruin it—his hands were destructive, his hands were filthy, always and inevitably covered in dirt and blood.

He touched the waist of Blanc’s vest instead, so softly at first that Blanc might not have felt it, and then slowly, so slowly leaned into the caress, pushing first two fingers, then four, then his whole hand into the fabric at Blanc’s lower ribs, until his whole hand was inside Blanc’s jacket, soaked in his warmth.

Jud felt the moment when Blanc’s touch on his back shifted.

When Jud spoke, his voice was gravelly, almost hoarse. “I don’t want you to go.”

Blanc did not remove his hand from Jud’s back. Jud did not remove his hand from Blanc’s ribs.

Cautiously, meticulously, as if something would shatter if he moved too fast, Jud turned to face him, gaze cast firmly down so as to avoid those cuttingly knowing bright eyes. His breaths were coming deeper now, and he couldn’t let this moment pass through his fingers unremarked like all the rest—he needed, if nothing else, for Blanc to be unable to avoid this.

So he reached up. Shuffled his feet so they were standing even closer together, and reached up with his other hand, the one not already leaning against Benoit Blanc, and placed it at the base of Blanc’s neck where it met his shoulder, skin-to-skin contact with one finger only.

His intentions could not be missed or misconstrued.

He repeated in a whisper, inches from Blanc’s face, “I don’t want you to go.”

“Father Jud,” Blanc said softly, and Jud closed his eyes at the title. Blanc leaned just slightly away, moved his hand, away from Jud’s back—and Jud had to bite back a small sound of protest, force himself to remain completely still instead of chasing the other man’s touch—but he just positioned his hand onto Jud’s upper arm instead, to hold it in a steady grip. He didn’t move far enough away to withdraw himself from either of Jud’s hands, or even hint that he wanted to, and Jud breathed; always Blanc and his plausible deniability. “I… I don’t think this… hm.” Jud didn’t dare move, eyes held down with the weight of the dread that Blanc’s words cast into the air between them. “Sort of behavior is quite becomin’ of a priest, now.”

“Don’t give me that,” he said, a blunt accusation, and met Blanc’s eyes at last, more gray than blue in the dim light and so much more hesitant than Jud was used to seeing from the man. It was too fucking late for that, for hesitance now—after all the touching and looking and comments and closeness, Blanc didn’t get to act like he had no part in this—“You don’t give a shit about the priesthood, or the Church.”

“No,” Blanc agreed tentatively, “but I do care for you.”

Jud flinched, hurt, without looking away, and did what he could to search in those bright, careful eyes for what the words could mean—that Blanc had formed some patronizing fondness, probably, for Jud as a lost little lamb who needed his help. Yes, that must have been it: Blanc the shepherd, the protector, the guide, and Jud the stupid little stray who’d been ambling around directionless until they’d met.

Jud who needed to be stopped from hurting himself in his own naïveté, Jud who needed to be told what to do, taught how to think. His fingers tightened around the detective’s lower neck. The worst part was how little he could deny it. 

“I know your position means a very great deal to you, as does your faith,” Blanc said, and Jud’s mouth twisted in acerbic resentment—how much could Blanc mean that, really, when he still wasn’t moving away. “I don’t want you doin’ somethin’ that you’ll regret.”

And that, that made Jud breathe out a bitter laugh. As if Benoit Blanc hadn’t been getting off on how powerful it made him feel to corrupt Jud’s godforsaken virtue since they met—and Jud had gone and folded with barely a fight, pathetic, and he knew he was an idiot for risking so much for something so base, and he was clinging to the older man with both hands, and fuck Blanc for pretending for one single second not to relish it. “Yeah, you do.”

Blanc opened his mouth to answer—but didn’t. He couldn’t argue with that, could he, the bastard, not when he knew it was true—that he would’ve liked nothing more than for Jud to make this mistake, and to live with the knowledge, after, of what he broke his vows for.

Gray-blue eyes flicked back and forth in rapid, measured thought, and at length Blanc inhaled, some clever remark or silky-smooth explanation clearly on the tip of his tongue.

Jud didn’t want to fucking hear it. He cut him off with a kiss before he could say another word.

Blanc accepted the kiss a little stiffly at first, a little guarded, but he did accept it, and Jud didn’t let up. He pressed his mouth against the other man’s hard, pulled at his lips, grasped at his neck, tried to force him to face it—that this was real, and it was happening, and Blanc had brought them both here, to an intimacy that the two of them should never have wanted, much less shared. 

Bit by bit, Blanc softened into the kiss, returning it gently, then with more and more intention, placing his hands on Jud’s waist, pulling him closer. Unrelenting, Jud coaxed the other man’s mouth slightly open with his tongue, and when Jud finally managed to lick at the inside of Blanc’s upper lip Blanc gave a small strangled grunt and yielded, melting into Jud’s touch, finally returning his kiss with the heat that he’d been wanting.

Without taking his lips off of Jud’s, Blanc murmured fervidly into his mouth, “Judas,” and the sound sent a shock through his chest and into his shoulders, arms—it was like Blanc had pushed his hand down past Jud’s skin and sinew to reach something inky and clotted deep inside his ribcage, something he hated, something about himself he had always hated—traitor, liar, villainous, vile—and yet—Blanc wanted it. Blanc wanted him, all of him—wanted to run his fingers along every hidden fragment of him—looked at the ugly parts and found them beautiful. 

Jud shuddered, and there was nothing he could do to stop the ungodly moan that escaped him as his mouth fell open, and he seized either side of Blanc’s head and neck with both hands, letting go completely; he kissed the older man with an abandon that he had only rarely even let himself imagine in the privacy of his own mind, diving into the tactile warmth of his mouth and the sensation of his neck under his fingers and palms, licking into the inner lining of his teeth, grazing a bite down onto his lower lip, all at once unraveling.

“Judas,” Blanc repeated, tugging hungrily at Jud’s waist, impatient with the fabric that separated skin from skin, and immediately Jud yanked his shirt free from being tucked into his belt so that Blanc could touch him directly, and he did, sliding his hand under the hem of Jud’s shirt to grab at his bare waist, and again Jud moaned, and without another instant’s hesitation shucked off his jacket and set to unbuttoning his own shirt, starting at the bottom. Blanc’s hands were worn, zealous, and Jud wanted them all over him, but as he exposed more and more of his own torso Blanc rushed to catch up, shedding his jacket and vest, and pulled at the knot of his tie, never once taking his kiss away from Jud’s mouth. When Jud finally reached the top button of his shirt, he tugged off his white clerical collar and set it aside, and the symbolism of that action was not lost on him, not lost on him at all.

He shrugged off his shirt completely, not caring where it fell, and when Blanc saw the tattoo on his neck in its entirety for the first time—the word Serendipity beneath an angel and devil together in flight, sacrilegious in a way he now regrets—something in his face went slack around the craving in his eyes, some last measure of restraint that slipped away when he saw the artwork laid into Jud’s skin, and he couldn’t choke back a vocal grunt of desire as he lurched forward, forgoing his half-undone tie, and placed his mouth directly onto the ink.

Jud’s eyes fluttered briefly at the sudden warmth on his neck, and he took over the task of removing Blanc’s tie, and then his shirt, fumbling with the buttons as he lost himself in the incandescence—Blanc’s mouth, on his neck, just exactly like he’d wanted, the same mouth that had called him beautiful, called him Judas, the one that was always so clever—pulling now at one of the most sensitive parts of him, the one that had hurt the most to get tattooed, caressing it, lips, tongue, ardor—

It wasn’t enough. The kiss—the mildness, the sheltered embrace, the chivalrous hand on the other side of Jud’s neck, holding him steady—it was too fucking soft, he needed more, needed intensity to the point of pain, and the lack was more overwhelming than any other sensation in his body right now, mouth and hand on his neck or bare abdomen under his fingers or tension building in his groin—more than anything, more than anything, was the absence of Blanc’s teeth.

“Blanc,” he gasped, holding onto the older man by the hips and maybe it was asking for too much but he couldn’t stop himself, like running downhill, he’d come too far too fast already—“Blanc please, please bite me please please I need it I need—”

Blanc’s teeth plunged into his neck and he shivered, “Oh God,” the singular point of pain just enough to ground him to his body and everything that it wanted—Blanc took that piece of Jud’s neck into his mouth and sucked on it with his tongue and teeth, surpassing every fantasy to tangibly bask in the taste and feel of him as he bit down, and in the face of an indulgence like that Jud couldn’t ignore how his erection was beginning to strain against his pants.

“F, fuck,” he breathed into the pressure, so lightheaded with bliss that for a moment he lost balance, had to put his weight onto Blanc where he was still holding his hips so he wouldn’t fall over. Blanc slid one hand down Jud’s back, and further, and all at once tightly seized a handful of his ass and he sucked in a gasp, thrown tense and unsteady with how bad he wanted it, the sudden need rising up to consume him before he knew what was happening—and then Blanc stepped forward, and brushed up against Jud’s half-hard dick.

For a moment, he stiffened, not knowing if this was—what Blanc was expecting, or too fast, or—but Blanc just shifted even closer to press his hip against Jud’s hardening erection and at the act of benevolence Jud whined, honest-to-God whined like a dog and in shame he pushed his wrist to his mouth but Blanc only slid his left hand up a few inches, to thread his fingers into Jud’s hair, holding him, holding him, holding his head with one hand and his ass with the other and his neck with the anchor of his teeth.

His breaths were deepening, quickening—“Blanc,” he breathed, finally, finally Blanc—he brought his hands to Blanc’s bare waist under his unbuttoned shirt to feel his skin, drawing their bodies even closer together, finally, and the flesh of his neck was fragile between Blanc’s teeth, and the pain was tender and generous, bright, growing stronger. “Blanc—Blanc.”

Blanc worked his fingers through Jud’s hair as he gnawed on his neck, and Jud sighed out in contentment to think of the dark smear that this was surely leaving like Blanc’s signature on his skin, and his erection pushed against Blanc’s hip and Blanc didn’t back away and Jud didn’t know if this was allowed but he needed it, pulled him closer to grind against his hip just once—twice. Thank God, Blanc didn’t let him off easy—he bit down harder than ever at the last, before backing off little by little, replacing a few moments of teeth here and there with emphatic swipes of the tongue, biting softer, letting it ebb until he was only nursing the raw bruise with the softest parts of his mouth.

“Judas?” Blanc said into his neck, and Jud breathed out an answering hum as Blanc continued to kiss and lick at the bite. “Judas, tell me what you want, darlin’.”

Blanc’s hip was still pressing knowingly against his erection, and he could feel Blanc’s own slowly swelling against his thigh. 

He didn’t know where to start—it seemed that there were too many things that he wanted, things he’d buried so deep that he struggled to retrieve them now from the pit full of dirt in his chest, and the one thing he could single out was the drive for friction, for movement.

“I—” Jud breathed, and licked his lips, “I want—wanna fuck you.”

Blanc leaned back enough to look at him, shirt unbuttoned, eyes quietly blazing, faint smile lifting onto his face. “Wanna fuck me, darlin’?”

And Jud exhaled, feeling mocked and exposed again but by God did he want it, of course he wanted it—“I—I don’t—I don’t have any, lube, or—”

Blanc’s smile widened, a bit of a laugh. “S’alright.”

“—or condoms, or anything—”

“It’s alright, I can take it,” Blanc said, smiling as though Jud were a kitten that had unknowingly done something cute, unaware of itself. Deliberately, as if trying to provoke him, Blanc thumbed the vulnerable spot on Jud’s neck where he’d just bitten a fresh bruise into the flesh, and he knew exactly what he was talking about when he said with easy confidence, “I can take it.”

Agitated, half-furious, Jud forced the next shaky breath to come out slow. Maybe it should’ve made him jealous, to know that other men had held Blanc in their arms and thrust themselves into his body, enough to permanently alter the shape of it, and to not know how many, or who, or how Blanc had felt about them—to think of the decades that Blanc had spent with other men, the relationships and one-night stands that Jud didn’t know the first thing about, the dark rooms like this one and the unnamed lovers who knew far better than he did how to satisfy another man—but he couldn’t begin to be jealous over the pitch of the arousal that that thought struck in him, Blanc’s years of experience, maybe as long as Jud had been alive, and he only halfway managed to muffle his quavering moan before seizing the detective’s face and kissing him again.

He clung to the uneven surface of the older man’s jaw, latched onto him like a leech—they didn’t part at all as Blanc grabbed Jud’s belt with both hands and scrambled to unfasten it, and he groaned, mouth falling open, and if he hadn’t been fully hard already he sure as all fuck was now—and it made them stumble over themselves and each other, to try to stay fused to each other’s mouths as they took off the rest of their clothes and moved back closer to the center of the room, in front of the couch, but they were both too engrossed in the contact to let go.

Eventually they did have to disconnect, both breathing heavily, Jud still clinging to Blanc by the upper arms. Blanc recovered more quickly, and reached up behind Jud to support the base of his head with one hand, and held the other up to his chin.

“Gimme some spit, darlin’,” Blanc said. And waited, like that was normal, something Jud should simply have expected; trembling, Jud obliged, and spat into the older man’s fingers—“Much as you can, sugar, come on—” and again, and again, as much as his mouth could muster until it was completely dry.

“Good,” Blanc said, and added some spit of his own for good measure—and Jud swallowed, to watch their saliva mix together in his hand—and then Blanc applied the thick liquid like a salve to Jud’s aching dick.

Jud couldn’t choke back a low moan at the sensation, the slick decadence of the older man’s wet grasp around his cock. Blanc covered his length in the saliva, and kissed him while he did it, methodically applying a lavish coat of spit as lubrication, and it was divine and it was over too fast and then Blanc stepped away.

The older man knelt on the couch, facing the wall, and Jud stood behind him. Somewhere in his mind arose the image of his bed, just upstairs—but he pushed that thought aside.

He didn’t know what he was doing—he did it anyway, and it took some trial and error before he aligned himself properly to insert his dick into Blanc’s entrance but once he did he sank inside with more ease than he was expecting. The sensation was different, the angle, the grip. Blanc’s hole clutched him tight, reassuring, protective; it wanted him, like Blanc wanted him, and a shudder rolled through him as he plunged further inside Blanc’s body, the pleasure readily mounting past anything he had known before, between the heat and the compression and the fact that it was Blanc—

With a jagged, vocal exhale he pulled just a few inches back, then dove inside again, and faster, rapidly establishing a rhythm of pumping in and out of Blanc’s body and he had no idea if there was a specific way you were supposed to do this that was different but what he was doing felt good, it felt right, he hoped that the older man liked it and then guiltily recognized that even if he didn’t, he still didn’t want to stop.

“That’s it, darlin’—”

And he couldn’t hold back a half-choked whine, taking Blanc’s words as encouragement to thrust harder, faster—

“That’s it, that’s—mmh…”

It chained him to the other man, the friction, he couldn’t stop if he wanted to, the fixation in his hips wouldn’t let him. Blanc was exquisite, the whole of him, shoulders and back and ass and thighs all right here in Jud’s hands, trusting him, offering up his body for Jud to do with it what he wanted; the grace of it was almost too much to handle, and Jud took in a shambling breath, the other man’s relinquishment pulling him into the motion like gravity pulls a wayward hiker into a ravine.

“Judas…”

Again he lost balance, had to steady himself against Blanc’s body, lean on his shoulder. Despite the dizziness he didn’t pause or slow down.

“Fuck, fuck,” did he ever used to get this close this fast years ago, with the girls he met at bars and parties? He doesn’t remember—he’s certain that if nothing else, he would remember ever having wanted any of them like this, and he never did. 

He buried his fingers in the older man’s hair, his hair, fine and gray and slightly greasy, and Blanc leaned back into his touch, humming with pleasure, and the idea that he was bringing Blanc pleasure was enough to flood and overwhelm him—

He realized to his horror that he was only seconds away—was he supposed to pull out? He couldn’t, couldn’t bear to—he needed this, needed—

No, he didn’t think you were supposed to just—just finish inside someone, without their permission, especially raw like this—

He couldn’t stop—

“Blanc—Blanc—I’m—” I’m close I’m so close please don’t tell me to stop I need—and Blanc’s body was holding him so good and he’d been trying to force himself not to fantasize about this for days, years, and finally—no no no, it was over too fast, he wasn’t—but the other man’s hole was insistently squeezing his dick like it wanted—he couldn’t—“oh, my God I’m so sorry—”

He spilled over inside the other man’s body before he was ready, and he hadn’t asked permission, and he wasn’t fucking stopping, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” but it was ambrosial, fucking his own cum even deeper inside of Blanc even as it was still pulsating out of him, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I need this, “I’m sorry…”

“It’s alright, sugar,” Blanc said, and didn’t move away, so he just kept going, kept shoving himself into Blanc as his release continued, and caressed his upper back, perfect, completely perfect, in every way more wonderful than Jud could ever have merited, brilliant and enchanting, insightful and kind. He deserved better than Jud, even just for the night—infinitely better—Jud had no idea why Blanc spent any time at all on him. Thoughtless—unmanageable.

When he thought the discharge had stopped Jud pulled out of Blanc’s body, stepped back, breaths heaving, and Blanc got up off the couch to stand in front of him.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed again, looking down, limbs feeble, heart beating wildly with both exhilaration and fearful shame—one last drop fell out of his body and onto the floor. He tried to ignore it. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—I didn’t ask, first, and I—”

“Darlin’,” Blanc whispered, “it’s alright—”

He shook his head profusely. “No no no, I’m sorry, I should’ve asked, I should’ve stopped myself—”

“Judas—”

“—and I know I was too fast I was way too fast and I should’ve said something—”

“Judas,” Blanc interrupted, soft but stern, and kissed him quiet, hands around his neck, placating, languid. When Blanc pulled away again, Jud didn’t argue this time, just stood there and listened. “Judas, darlin’, it’s what I wanted. You did just what I wanted—here.”

And Blanc took Jud’s hand, and guided it to touch and wrap around his own dick, fully erect and warm and expectant. Blanc led Jud’s hand back and forth, stroking him, and whispered, “You did everything just right. I enjoyed it, it’s what I wanted.”

All the words he didn’t know how to say were sitting tightened in his chest and he blinked, once again searching for any answers at all in those ice-blue eyes, he was still mortified but Blanc was being so sweet and the only thing he could do was to lean in and kiss him, holding tightly onto his waist with the hand that wasn’t rubbing his cock, finding sanctuary in the haven of his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered again, this time onto Blanc’s lips.

“It’s what I wanted, darlin’, you didn’t do nothin’ wrong, you did exactly what I wanted,” Blanc said, and Jud kissed him, and kissed him—tried to prove it with the immediacy of his mouth and the stroke of his hand, his gratitude that Blanc had let him use his body, even enjoyed it, apparently, but he couldn’t keep the doubt and guilt at bay for long—he should never have been so quick to put himself first, he needed to make it right, needed dearly to do what he should’ve done from the start, and prioritize the other man’s experience in this—he didn’t know why Blanc was so tolerant when it came to him. He stepped as close to Blanc as he physically could while still holding onto his dick, and it was with all the wholehearted sincerity he could summon to the surface that he caressed Blanc’s mouth with his lips and teeth and tongue, tacit, vehement.

“You did exactly what I wanted,” Blanc said again, and the shaft in his hand fully hard was the proof and he couldn’t take it anymore.

Without taking his hand away from Blanc’s cock, he knelt, the rigid wood floor of the rectory unforgiving against his bare knees. Some part of him wished he was wearing his black uniform again, white clerical collar tucked safely against his neck. It felt wrong, to be kneeling in reverence without it.

“Blanc,” he said, and looked up at the older man, finally looked up at him in the position he’d been wanting to all this time. Now that they were actually here—unclothed, candid, Jud on his knees, Blanc’s dick in his hand, so close he could lean forward and lick the bead of precum that had formed at the tip—he knew he wasn’t good enough for this.

He’d never done this before. Surely Blanc had, surely Blanc had had better and Jud’s attempt would be all wrong, and he’d be disappointed and angry with Jud for wasting his time, and he’d leave without a glance behind.

“Blanc, please.” He didn’t deserve the chance—but if Blanc could be patient with him, show him—he could learn. “Teach me how to do it right. Please, I want to do it right.” He adjusted his grip on Blanc’s penis, stroking it, hoping that it felt good, hoping that the older man wanted his mouth bad enough to extend him this lenience—“Please—please.”

Blanc ran the fingers of one hand through Jud’s hair, and Jud let it tilt his head back, looking up to meet Blanc’s adoring gaze. “Well,” Blanc said slowly, and traced down the side of Jud’s head and cheek and jaw. “Ain’t you just the prettiest thing I ever saw.”

That wasn’t a yes—Jud was trembling. “Please,” he begged again.

Blanc’s thumb caressed his jaw, slow, appraising. “You wanna make that pretty mouth of yours useful, darlin’?”

“Please,” Jud gasped, and clutched at Blanc’s leg with the hand that wasn’t holding his cock. “Please, let me, please.” 

He was shivering as if freezing, fully soaked in the warmth of the fire. He wasn’t cold. He was just weak.

Unworthy, he pleaded, “Teach me.”

Feather-soft, Blanc touched his thumb to Jud’s bottom lip—and eagerly Jud took it into his mouth, licked it and sucked on it the best he knew how, trying to prove to him that he could learn to do this, he could please him, he could—he held Blanc’s hand to his mouth with both hands as though drinking intently from his own cupped palms. Blanc murmured, “Pretty as the mornin’ dew.”

Jud moaned, and hoped that Blanc felt it with his whole hand—pulled attentively at his thumb with his tongue, examining each and every ridge of his fingerprint—then Blanc pulled, and at first Jud followed, but reluctantly had to let go of Blanc’s thumb as he took it out of his mouth.

Was Blanc punishing him? Testing him? Or giving up on him—anything but that. “Please, please please please.”

Blanc ran the thumb that was still damp with saliva down Jud’s temple. “Say it for me one more time, sugar.”

Blanc wanted him to beg—he could beg. “Please.”

“Open up.”

Gratefully Jud opened his mouth—Blanc leaned forward, laid the tip on Jud’s tongue, and his precum tasted like salt, like sweat. Jud closed his lips around it, just the tip, and it twitched in his mouth, anticipating.

At first he just couldn’t help himself, he ran on pure instinct, taking it further into his mouth with a helpless moan, and explored it with his tongue, getting used to the weight of it, the smell, the texture of the skin, the vulnerability of the muscle—“Mmh, so precious, darlin’,” Blanc exhaled, and he brought his hand back around the base to hold it, luxuriating in the solidity of it on his tongue, the way it filled up his whole mouth like it was meant to be there, a sword in a sheath.  He tongued it and sucked it unthinkingly for a long, opulent moment, hums and moans drawn involuntarily out of his throat, before Blanc told him, “Try goin’ in and out,” and he remembered that there was a way this was supposed to be done.

It had been years, and he’d never been on this end of it, but he knew generally what one was meant to do, at least: he brought his head back so that his lips and tongue slid along its length, until all that remained in his mouth was the tip, and then forward again, as far as he could comfortably go.

“Good, you’re doin’ good, darlin’,” Blanc said, and some of the tension dissolved from Jud’s limbs. “See if you can’t go a little deeper.” Immediately Jud pressed his mouth forward—Blanc told him, “Don’t hurt yourself, now.”

He opened his jaw wider to take it in, tried to flatten his tongue to make room, pushed it deeper into his mouth as far as he could before it became uncomfortable, and forced himself further, until it just made him choke—he gagged, and Blanc said, “Don’t hurt yourself, you don’t need to choke on it—back up now, that’s it…”

Placidly he backed up again, savored every inch as it slid across his tongue, and forwards, not quite to the same depth as before but past the point of comfort—Blanc wanted it deeper—

It was slow getting used to it, but he did what he could, out to the tip, in until it almost hit his throat and choked him, then back out again. Blanc exhaled, “That’s it, son, you’re gettin’ the hang of it.” With each repetition of the movement he became a little more acclimated to the sensation, more in control, until he could bring it in that deep without hesitating for fear of making himself gag.

“Little bit faster, darlin’,” Blanc said, and Jud complied, moving his head faster, up and down the length of the other man’s dick, almost like a nod, an earnest expression of continuous assent, Yes, yes, yes, yes. God, how he’d wanted this. “Faster.”

He did as he was bid, and treasured it, the procedure of being given orders and following them, especially when Blanc said, “Good, just like that,” and ran his fingers through his hair. The heat of the praise sank down between his legs, and he sucked devotedly, devoutly, praying that his willingness might make up for his ignorance.

“Give me your hand, sugar,” Blanc instructed. Jud flicked his eyes open just enough to see that Blanc was reaching out; docile, he placed his hand into Blanc’s own. Blanc guided Jud’s fingers to the sack of skin and flesh that hung heavy with want behind the base of the shaft that Jud still held in his other hand: “Touch me here.”

Knowing he was clueless, hoping it didn’t matter, Jud fingered the two halves, pressed into them, felt the firmness underneath the looser skin, felt one of them subtly jerk. There must have been a proper way to touch them, but he didn’t know what it was; he shifted his fingers so he could grab at the balls with his palm and whole hand, gently kneading, groping, striving to give them the stimulation they craved.

“Use your tongue a little more, honey,” Blanc said, and Jud, not sure he was doing this right, tried to involve his tongue more in the movement and the suction—“a little more—that’s it, just—oh sweet Lord.”

So he was doing something right—he leaned into the pattern he’d just discovered, licking deliberately each time he moved his head back, sucking with rapt persistence, and Blanc must have liked it because he moaned, and sagged, and clutched at Jud’s hair hard enough to hurt, a grounding, gratifying kind of pain.

“Judas,” Blanc breathed, and Jud hummed into his dick, welcoming the sound of that name for the first time in his life. “Judas, Judas…”

At last it seemed that he’d found what Blanc wanted: he brought it into his mouth as deep as he could without choking; then out again, and back in, at the speed that Blanc specified; he licked it inside of his mouth, sucking vigorously; he fondled the testicles in his hand as tenderly as he could. Blanc’s breathing hastened, heightened, a melody, and he seemed to lose some sense of composure as he clasped onto Jud’s hair, pushed his head back and forth, unsteady on his feet, and it was the most stunning thing Jud had ever witnessed—his sole purpose now was to go further, to be the reason that Blanc felt safe enough to let all composure slide free of his grasp, too deep into honeyed delirium to keep any hold on remembering to stay self-aware.

“Look at me,” Blanc ordered, still clutching his hair, and Jud opened his eyes, doing his best to look up at Blanc’s face without taking his mouth off of the other man’s dick—he did slow down, to make it easier, and licked the head where it sat on his tongue. “Blink, if you’d be alright with it if I came inside your mouth.”

Jud blinked in reply, sort of lamenting the fact that Blanc was speaking coherent sentences again instead of just moaning his name, but he forgot to lament when Blanc let go of Jud’s hair and instead raked his fingers across his now-raw scalp, petting him like a loyal dog. “Good,” he said, and Jud soaked it in, sucking the tip of Blanc’s cock gratefully. “Now blink if you’d be willin’ to swallow.”

Jud’s lashes fluttered avidly, and Blanc ran his hand through Jud’s hair again, satisfied, “Good,” and Jud closed his eyes, giddy to have given the right answer. “Good, good.” Jud took it as permission to continue, and resumed the rhythm of pulling Blanc’s dick in and out of his mouth.

Thankfully it wasn’t long before Blanc hummed, and relaxed again, except steady on his feet, too much poise, and Jud redoubled his efforts to ravish the cock in his mouth and when he gave it an especially passionate lick Blanc sucked in a small gasp, and murmured under his breath, half-strangled, “Heavens to—blessed tarnation…” and affection bubbled up inside Jud’s chest at hearing the flustered Southernisms escape Blanc’s ever-unruffled lips.

The more Jud pushed forward, the more Blanc lost focus, loosening like an intricate knot under resolute fingers. Jud reveled in the collapse of inhibition as Blanc’s grip on his stance and his breathing slowly slipped away, and his own cock swelled with solace and pride, to know that he was having this effect on the older man, but it wasn’t enough—he needed Blanc to feel it, really feel it, the truth.

Jud let go of the hand that still held the base of Blanc’s dick and stroked serenely at his inner thigh instead, and then down his knee and smoothly around to his calf, pure adoration, and that was it and Blanc groaned and started moving his hips, gently fucking into Jud’s mouth as if he had been actively restraining himself but now he couldn’t anymore—and he was still being careful not to fuck him too hard but every now and then it did go too deep, and choked him a little, and the gags that he coughed out did nothing to deter the older man and Jud clutched at his leg, this was everything he wanted, for Blanc to want him, so bad he lost all self-control—

“Judas—Judas—”

He couldn’t have anticipated how it would taste. The bitterness of slow misgivings—the metallic salt of flesh.

He savored the other man’s orgasm more than he ever had any of his own—it was more than satisfying, it fulfilled him, to receive each pulse of Blanc’s cock on his tongue, and know that he was the reason why. Blanc had trusted him with this, trusted his mouth with his ardor and his gratification and above all with this most delicate moment, the sensitivity of the muscle as it clenched and released, and he was still moaning “Judas, Judas” as he poured himself into Jud’s mouth, and despite the bitterness Jud drank it down as it was given, and by consumption made Blanc’s body a part of his own, holy communion.

The pulses became slower and weaker, but still Jud held on to every last one, cherishing it as it came and went. As the throbbing came to a stop and the penis in his mouth gradually went limp, he finally took his tongue and lips away, sure to swallow the very last of what remained.

“Judas,” Blanc breathed, and tilted his chin up, and when their gazes met Blanc smiled down at him without seeming to recognize it, just blissful on instinct, to lay eyes on him. Then he sat down on the couch, unclothed and lovely, and said, “Come here, sugar.”

Dutifully Jud rose from his place on the ground and sat next to Blanc on the couch, and accepted it blithely when Blanc took his face and pulled him into a kiss.

“Judas,” Blanc purred in between kisses. “Judas, you were perfect, darlin’.”

Jud hummed contentedly into his mouth, half-reeling with the luxury of being touched with such diligent care, the slightest remnant of Blanc’s pleasure still clinging to his tongue, and he knew that Blanc must taste it.

“No, I want you to understand this, now,” Blanc said, and backed away, one hand on Jud’s collarbone to keep him in place—and Jud mourned the loss of contact, but Blanc only put just enough space between them to look Jud in the eye as he spoke. Maybe he knew how Jud was hanging on his every word. “You did everything exactly right, y’hear? You did precisely as I asked, you were perfect.”

The reassurance loosened some tight coil of apprehension that he’d barely even realized he was still holding in his chest and he nodded, and his cock ached with the thrill of having earned Blanc’s blessing, and Blanc must have noticed because he took it in his hand and began to stroke.

Blanc leaned forward and rested his lips upon Jud’s temple. “I need you to understand this, Judas,” he murmured into Jud’s skin, and punctuated his words with a kiss. “Tell me you understand. You did everything exactly right.”

Jud let himself be lulled by the soothing touch as Blanc carefully handled his cock, keeping it at attention. Meekly he repeated, “I understand.”

The older man placed another kiss on his temple, and backed up to look at him again, the plaintive creases that framed his eyes, the angular set to his graceful lips, the coarse surface of his unshaven jaw all offered up close for Jud’s eyes to soak in. “Tell me.”

From anyone else, such a commandment would have been insurmountable, but he knew he was safe here, in Blanc’s hands—he inhaled, and managed, “I, I did—I did everything right.”

“Good,” Blanc said, and ran those gentle fingers through his hair with one hand while the other rubbed his dick, tending to him with a gracious dedication. “Tell me that you did a good job.”

Jud did as he was told, “I did a good job,” and Blanc kissed him in response.

“Say it again, honey.”

“I did a good job.”

“Good, good. Tell me you did good, Judas.”

And he knew it was wrong, knew it was all a lie, and yet, in that moment—he knowingly allowed himself to indulge in the sin of believing it.

“I did good,” he whispered, and breathed the relief of it into his lungs. He’d done something good—pleased the other man, followed instructions.

He was still following instructions. Blanc gave him another kiss of approval. “Tell me you did it right.”

“I did it right,” Jud repeated faithfully, something fucking right for once.

Again Blanc kissed him, and kissed him, and squeezed his erection and he accepted it for the positive reinforcement he knew it was, sinking into the comfort of being rewarded for his good behavior. 

“Tell me you’re precious,” Blanc commanded softly.

That one was harder. Jud didn’t exactly see himself as important to anyone, much less—except, well—except for Christ. He supposed anyone could be considered—just by virtue of being human, unique and valuable the way everyone was, but—still. Him?

But if Blanc saw him as—precious, then—and he’d told Jud to do it. “I’m—” he forced the word out of his mouth—“precious.”

Blanc kissed him, and with that kiss put a tense strain in his throat, a knot that was only pulled tighter when he softly stroked his hair. “Tell me you’re beautiful.”

“I—” he blinked, and struggled to breathe past whatever it was in his throat that wouldn’t unstick—

Beautiful. It was one thing for Blanc to think that of him, for whatever strange reason, but—besides his ears that were too big for his head, and besides his lanky limbs that made him too tall, stretched out, taking up too much space—there had always been something in his dark hollow eyes, a bitterness, a despair, that made him unpleasant to look at. God knew he could hardly stand to look in the mirror long for disgust—and only God knew how many times he’d seen a stranger hurry to turn their gaze away.

He opened his mouth. The knot in his throat was burning, and that burning was beginning to reach up behind his nose and eyes. I’m beautiful. “Blanc, I can’t.”

“You can,” Blanc said, and stroked his hair again, and rubbed a gentle rhythm of push and pull into his dick. Blanc kissed him, tender but firm, and said “Judas, you’re beautiful.”

Those three words pushed the tears that had been gathering over the edge and out of his eyes—he must have looked a mess, naked, crying, repulsive—but Blanc was undeterred, and pressed kisses to his jaw and cheeks, murmuring, “Beautiful, beautiful,” even as he took Jud’s tears into his mouth.

Jud didn’t understand. He didn’t understand. Blanc was so bizarre, impossible—how could he want Jud like this, malformed and tainted, needing and weak—

“Beautiful, Judas, you’re beautiful…”

But he did. He wanted him—“So beautiful, darlin’—” he seemed to mean it. He wiped away Jud’s tears with one hand, still holding his cock with the other, rubbing it with one thumb, and kissed him. “Beautiful. Say it to me. I wanna hear it.”

Jud was still crying, breathing deep and helpless to the tears that continued to fall. “I’m—” in whatever strange way Blanc saw him, whatever value Blanc had somehow managed to find in the horrible mass of desperation that was Judas Duplenticy—if he wanted to hear it—“beautiful.”

“Good boy,” Blanc said, and he whined as his dick throbbed with need, and the whine turned into more of a sob and Blanc leaned in to kiss him with the same forward movement that he put into the pressure he was laying on Jud’s erection, and Jud took the kiss, took the pressure, took the praise, took it all into his body like the sacrament of the Eucharist. He hated his own greed, hated the long keen that loosed itself from his throat when the grip on his cock shifted and tightened, but Blanc didn’t seem to mind.

He reached up and held either side of Blanc’s stubbled jaw as he kissed him, relishing the rough texture, and for a moment just let his mouth hang slightly open while Blanc kissed and caressed his upper lip. Blanc wanted him—wanted him—thought he was good, thought he was beautiful, thought he was pretty. Then he returned Blanc’s kiss again and let himself immerse in it, the reciprocity, the warmth of the contact and the tenderness, let it slake a thirst in him that ran so deep he’d almost forgotten it was even there.

Blanc sighed securely into his ear and asked him, “You think you’ve got it in you to cum for me one more time, sugar?”

He nodded without thinking—anything Blanc wanted. 

His eager agreement earned him a smile, before another kiss.

Even after removing the back cushions and discarding them on the floor, there really wasn’t room for this, but they did it anyway, awkward and cramped as it was, both lying down with Jud’s feet hanging off the side of the couch—and he knew full well that this would be vastly easier upstairs on his bed, but that didn’t matter. What they were doing right now could not leave this room—and it wasn’t so much about the place itself as the fact that if Jud had to walk through a doorway right now he’d fall apart completely.

As long as they didn’t leave the room, this might as well have been a dream, hidden safely away in a dim corner lit only by firelight.

“Good,” Blanc was saying as Jud entered him again.

It could be real later. He’d deal with reality later. For now, it was a fantasy, the most beautiful fantasy he’d ever had.

“Good. You been so good for me, I want you to cum one more time, darlin’.”

He didn’t think he’d ever felt this good in his whole life. When would he have? Obviously he’d never had anything even close to this, this all-consuming elation of being something good to someone, of being allowed to both want and receive.

“Been so good for me.” He whined, and thrusted faster. “Want you to feel good, darlin’. You deserve it, y’hear?”

“Blanc,” he half-sobbed, a broken plea. “Blanc—Blanc.”

“Kiss my neck, sugar.”

Jud didn’t hesitate, pressed his mouth against the closest point of Blanc’s neck he could reach, and the taste of his sweat—sharp and trusting and earthy, honest like a blow—sent a surge of fervor from his tongue to his cock, and he drove himself even deeper into Blanc’s body, with every kiss adjusting the position of how his mouth fit into the other man’s neck.

He needed Blanc to feel it. To know what he meant, when he kissed him, what he was trying to say wordless with his lips and tongue.

It’s you, was what he was trying to force Blanc to understand, as he fucked into his ass, held onto his hip, kissed his neck hard, just under his ear. This isn’t about just your body and mine, it’s you, it’s you, for me it’s you it’s only you—all this time I have needed you, since long before we met, and now you’re here and I can’t let you go—I’ve been alone before, but not after knowing what you felt like—I don’t know how I would survive it, the lack, after having tasted you.

“Want you to cum inside me, darlin’.”

He held onto Blanc’s neck with his mouth for dear life as he fucked him, as if that point of contact were the only tether keeping him from dissolving like sugar in water.

“Cum inside me, darlin’, I want you to cum inside me, wanna feel it.”

And he knew it was stupid, he knew it was sacrilege, but he couldn’t help it, the same certainty that had risen up in him in that shining half-second when Benoit Blanc had first set foot inside the chapel doors, and Jud had known beyond doubt that he was an angel, sent by God to guide him and save him. “You’re doin’ good, Judas, fuckin’ me so good, darlin’.” An angel, his angel, the answer to all his prayers.

“Let it feel good, honey,” Blanc commanded. Jud gripped his hip even tighter, defenseless against the euphoria that threatened to crush something fragile inside of his ribs that he didn’t know how to name. Blanc told him, “Do this for me, I need you to do this for me, let it feel good,” and Jud was nothing if not obedient.

He closed his eyes and let go, let sweet ecstasy overpower him until it burst and overflowed, mouth latched onto the salty skin of the other man’s neck as beat by beat the rapture cascaded out of him, kept up the momentum through the release, heard the whisper, “Good, good,” and exhaled a grunt of relief, and a moan, and it was devotion, the part of himself that he placed reverently inside the other man, the part that would stay when their two bodies parted. “Good boy, darlin’, that’s it,” Blanc murmured, and each pulse of felicity sang through his body like a hymn.

As the exhilaration faded and his motion slowed he unclasped his lips from Blanc’s neck, breathed heavily into his skin instead, with every breath letting any tension that remained in his limbs and hands slacken and disperse, still holding onto Blanc’s hip. He let his head fall down onto the couch as he stopped moving completely, deeply heaving every breath, and Blanc’s sweaty gray hair hung in front of his eyes, and the heat of the fire was feverish now, and there was nothing left in his muscles but a heartbeat pounding harder than he had the energy to match.

He carefully took himself out of the older man, conscious of the fact that some of his semen was surely leaking out onto the couch cushions. He was going to have to clean that, as quickly as possible; he didn’t want to think about the kind of stain that it would leave behind.

Clumsily he maneuvered his body to sit up, and didn’t look over at the older man as he did the same. He was so much more naked than he had been a moment ago, now that it was over, and the urgency that had joined the two of them had dissipated, leaving only crude body and hairy skin and dampness, stark and ungainly.

“You did very well, Judas,” Blanc said, and the words startled him, suddenly alien and unwelcome.

Hurriedly he stood, and found his pants and boxers where he’d abandoned them on the rectory floor, and hastened to yank them back on. He struggled to re-fasten his belt, too aware of the post-orgasm feeling in his pants, the thin layer of clammy moistness that still covered his dick. Somewhere behind him Blanc, too, was re-clothing himself.

Blanc. 

Benoit Blanc had seen too much of him, now. It wasn’t a dream, or a fantasy, this was real, as real as the walls in the flickering firelight and they actually—and tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, Blanc would go about his life and he would remember this, he would remember Jud pathetic, on his knees, whining, crying, begging him—begging him for—

He recoiled from the thought. He wished he could turn away from his own body.

What had he done. Disgusting. Debased himself—and for what. Spat on his vow of chastity, sullied it—willingly taken the most vital and sacred part of himself, his priesthood, and thrown it to the mud, befouled it, as if it were nothing at all, his life’s purpose, the clerical collar that was meant to be secure around his throat—

Blanc crept up next to him, still shirtless, and touched his bare shoulder, murmured “Judas—”

The meaning of the name struck him fresh, traitor, vile, and he smacked Blanc’s arm away, spat, “Don’t call me that!”

And the detective had the gall, the fucking nerve to look taken aback, like he didn’t do this, like he didn’t know it was perverse, to speak such an unholy name so decadently—like he hadn’t done it on purpose—“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Jud demanded, directly into the crystal eyes of the man who took such obscene pleasure in toying with him, seducing and violating him, humiliating him and using him—“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Blanc was still half-reaching for him—blinked, hurt, at Jud’s words and drew his arm away, crestfallen—but the wounded look quickly faded, melted away to leave behind only a mournful resignation, unsurprised, like he had known from the instant Jud first kissed him that that’s exactly what he would say eventually.

Blanc hadn’t started this. Jud was the one who—who’d grabbed him, and kissed him, knelt down and begged him—and Blanc knew, he’d known from the start, he’d tried to let Jud back out of this for both their sakes, and Jud hadn’t—

Jud hadn’t listened. And now he’d hurt him. “I’m sorry,” he breathed, horrified by his own cruelty, and touched his fingers to his mouth—Blanc was still unsurprised, just stood there regarding him with both dejection and sympathy—“I’m so sorry, I am so so sorry—”

Gingerly, Blanc stepped forward, and reached out again. Tried to smile, and whispered, “Judas, it’s alright—”

Jud flinched away from his touch. “No.”

“I understand—”

“No no no, you need to leave,” Jud said, shaking his head as if that would dispel the knot that was swelling again in his throat, and backed away before Blanc could try to touch him again. “Look, I’m sorry, I—just—go. Please, go.”

He couldn’t meet the detective’s eyes, could only see his hands, which were raised, palms forward, as if Jud were a skittish animal. “Judas, I really think we should—”

“No, I need you to go,” Jud said, and breathed deliberately, and raised his own hands, to keep distance between himself and Blanc. “I need you to go, I need you to go. Please, please just go.”

He turned away, and picked up his shirt off the floor, and tugged it back on, doggedly facing the wall as he buttoned it up. He could see in his peripheral vision that Blanc was still there, waiting, watching him. He refused to meet his eyes or address him again.

Ultimately Blanc did step away. Collected his own clothes, presumably put his shirt, at least, back on.

How could Jud have been so heartless. Shouting at the other man, pushing his own disgust with himself onto him. Surely now Blanc understood that he’d been wrong about Jud since the beginning, and the truth was that he was a spiteful, self-centered and vicious person who had never deserved his kindness. Surely now Blanc would want nothing to do with him—and the thought made him ill, that Blanc would leave his life forever, but this was how it should’ve been all along.

He could hear that Blanc had stopped in the doorway, was hesitating to leave. He didn’t turn to look.

Blanc spoke. “I never meant to hurt you, Judas.”

Jud couldn’t keep his grip on the button in his shaking fingers long enough to fasten it, too focused on forcing himself to breathe instead of sobbing. He knew if he opened his mouth he was in serious danger of begging Blanc to forgive him, and stay.

So he said nothing. Blanc lingered for one strained moment more, and then left.

Jud finished buttoning up his shirt. Put his clerical collar back on. Placed the cushions back on the couch, wiped the stains off everything with a wet cloth before they could dry, covered them in a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and baking soda for good measure, thought briefly that he had to make sure to get rid of all evidence before Martha could see.

Remembered that Martha was dead. That none of it would’ve happened if it weren’t for him.

When he got back to his room he went straight into the shower, turned on the water hot enough to sting, used up half a bar of soap scrubbing frantically at his skin everywhere Blanc had touched him. Blanc’s hands, Blanc’s mouth, legs, back, ass—every trace of Blanc’s sweat and saliva had to be gone. He gargled water from the showerhead and spit it out, over and over.

He stayed in the shower cleaning himself for a long, long time.

After the shower he brushed his teeth for about ten minutes, and then washed his face all over again, scouring every inch of his forehead and temples and ears and cheeks and lips and jaw that Blanc had stroked and kissed. When it had all been scrubbed thoroughly, he dried his face and looked miserably into the mirror, loathing the wretched piece of shit who looked back at him with sunken eyes.

His attention caught on his neck—his tattoo. The angel was different—colored, now, by a small splotch of purpling red across her elegant body, as though she had been smudged with paint.

Jud reached up with a trembling hand. With two fingers, he touched the angel on his neck. Sensitive. Just sore, when he pressed down.

His next breath did not come easy. He took his fingers away and looked at it in the mirror again, a dark new stain across the blasphemy he’d already sewn into his skin, and he tried his hardest to hate it.

It was sin. It was transgression. It was violence against his God-given body, and what was worse, he had asked for it. It was profane, abominable, unholy.

It was beautiful.

His breaths were coming shallow. He tried to make himself hate it. He should hate it. He couldn’t find it in him. It was lovely, it was delicate, perfectly unique in its shape like a blossom, a rich wine red, and it was Blanc’s. Blanc’s passion, Blanc’s desire, Blanc’s approval; embedded in that mark was the proof that Blanc saw something in him that no one did, that no one ever had—something bright, something worth trusting, something that deserved to be kissed and caressed and told it was precious.

He had never been anything so good to anyone as he was to Blanc tonight. Unwanted child—shithead teenager—murderer—trash on the street—hopeless acolyte—despised rival priest. Blanc thought he was beautiful. Blanc thought he was good.

His face screwed up in anger and hatred, and he clutched at his neck where the bruise met the ink, and the tension behind his eyes and nose was burning again—what was wrong with him? Was he really so weak-willed, so empty and worthless that all it took was one smug, arrogant man to tell him he was pretty and he’d let it put him on his knees? Throw everything he’d worked so hard for to the side, forgotten?

But he couldn’t bring himself to think so little of the detective, the man who had shown him compassion when he’d needed it desperately, the one who had answered his prayers, and delivered him from condemnation. He couldn’t blame Blanc for this—not when he had looked so injured when Jud had accused him. And despite the fact that Blanc had led him astray, away from the path of God… his gentleness was genuine. Jud believed it was.

Beautiful, Judas, you’re beautiful.

The only flaw he could find in the bruise was that it would fade.

And that thought set the tears to falling again, blurring his view of the mark on his neck, and he sobbed, rushing to wipe them away—his time with the bruise was so limited, it would fade within days like a lily, too ephemeral—when it was gone he’d never see it again, like it was never there to begin with, like Blanc had never, never touched him so lovingly—why, why did God have to give him a body that healed itself, why couldn’t his flesh retain every cut and bruise and burn until he was ready to let it go.

He wasn’t ready. He wouldn’t be ready in a week, to see it disappear. Blanc would never give him another. Even if he was still here by then—Jud wouldn’t allow it.

He couldn’t see the shape of it anymore, through the tears. He closed his eyes, shoulders shaking with choked-back sobs, and placed his hand over the blemish as though by pressing it into his skin he could stop it from leaving him.

That was something like twelve hours ago. He only bothered trying to sleep for a couple of hours, before putting his uniform back on and pacing up and down his room for the rest of the night and well into the morning, stopping only to read passages from the Bible or pray to any saint he thought might listen—Mary Magdalene, John the Apostle, John Vianney, Thomas Aquinas, Matt Talbot, Saint Monica, Saint Edwin, Saint Jude, always Saint Jude.

At some point he couldn’t wait another instant. Got on the first bus out of Chimney Rock. Walked into the first church with open doors.

“I kissed him,” is what he tells the other priest. “And he kissed me back, and… then I took it further, and… he went with me.”

It doesn’t begin to explain it, the heat, the hunger, the carelessness with which he had pushed all obligation out of his mind and continued to shove it away, moment after moment, in favor of some pretense of affection.

“I knew it was wrong,” he says, and the words scrape against the back of his throat as he forces them out. “I knew I was… breaking my vow, and… even if it weren’t for that, it’d still be.” He swallows. “A sin. I knew that, and I kept going.”

“I understand,” the other priest tells him. “I myself once strayed for the desires of the flesh, years ago.”

He didn’t only do it because of what his body wanted. It doesn’t matter. Sin is sin. “Yeah.”

It would be so much more straightforward if it had only been physical desire, physical pleasure, that he had been chasing. If it had nothing to do with the clever, composed, stubborn and contrary detective at all—the one who had touched his face, and kissed his tears, and called him beautiful until he almost believed it.

“When it was over,” Jud manages, barely. “I… I yelled at him. I was angry, I… blamed him.”

“It can be all too easy to blame others for our own transgressions,” says the other priest patiently, and Jud shuts his eyes tight, breathes out as slowly as he can. “But however difficult it may be, we must remember that no matter the choices of others, our choices remain ours alone.”

“Yeah,” Jud whispers, nodding, and squeezes his hands together to tamp down the shake. “Yes, I know.”

He doesn’t confess how he’d felt about the bruise.

And he doesn’t confess how he’d let Blanc call him good, even repeated the words on his instruction. He thinks that if he had to hear the other priest tell him kindly, understandingly, that to call sin good is of the devil, it would twist the knife in him so hard he might not get out of bed for a week.

“This is all I can remember,” he says, and refuses to think of it as a lie. “I am sorry for these and all my sins.”

The act of confessing has done nothing to wash the grime of what happened from off of his skin.

“You understand that this sin is very severe,” the other priest says sympathetically.

Jud hangs his head, hands in his hair, heart in his throat. “Yeah.”

“I know you do,” he affirms. “It’s clear to me that you’ve come with genuine contrition. Therefore it is by the grace of God, through the Atonement of His Son, Jesus Christ, that you may be forgiven, and healed of your iniquity.”

He rubs the fingers of his left hand into the palm of his right, nodding and trying to take in the words. Forgiven—healed. “Thank you, Father.”

“Five rosaries,” the other priest assigns him as penance. “The Sorrowful Mysteries. And… Psalm fifty-one.”

Jud nods, and nods, and makes himself swallow. “Thank you.”

He says the prayer of contrition, and the other priest recites the words of absolution, and he tries to force himself to believe that it actually means he’s absolved.

****

When he gets back to Our Lady, he rushes straight to a pew near the front and gets on his knees, clasping his rosary. He bows his head and crosses himself, “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit…”

The words come quickly. He’s recited them a thousand times.

“I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of Heaven and Earth…”

“Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name…”

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…”

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women…”

It’s a relief, really, that the other priest assigned the rosary. He’s always found it cleansing, the recitation, the repetition, the pattern, taking each bead between his fingers as its own individual task, one after the other, clear steps on an even path.

“Hail Mary…”

“Glory be…”

“Our Father…”

“Hail Mary, full of grace…”

The Sorrowful Mysteries. Christ’s agony in the garden, Christ scourged at the pillar, Christ crowned with thorns, Christ carrying the cross to Calvary, Christ’s crucifixion and death.

“... and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

He doesn’t pause between one recitation of the rosary and the next, just slides his fingers back across the beads to the crucifix and keeps going.

“In the name of the Father…”

Agony, scourging, thorns, cross, crucifixion. Torture. Murder. Judas had condemned him to that.

What he thought was right, even if it wasn’t.

“Hail Mary…”

What an absurd thing to say. The betrayal of the Savior, his own friend, damning him to be whipped, bled, mocked, stabbed, nailed to a post and left to die—“The second Sorrowful Mystery, the scourging at the pillar—” the most unforgivable crime in history. Everyone knows that. Everyone does.

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…”

It’s one thing to believe that God does not exist, or that Jesus of Nazareth was not His Son. “The third Sorrowful Mystery—the crowning with thorns.” But the crucifixion—that happened. That’s history. The kiss of betrayal—of all things, a kiss—

“O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell.”

Judas Iscariot had taken Jesus’ skin against his mouth, knowing. Knowing. “The fourth Sorrowful Mystery, the carrying of the cross.” Jud wonders where he’d kissed him—cheekbone—jaw—temple—lips. Wonders how many times he had kissed him before. “Thy will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven.”

Revulsion rises in him like bile, at the thought of Judas’ lips on Jesus’ face. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” That traitor—that scum. Filth. Polluted, unworthy to touch him. “Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”

Judas Iscariot committed suicide out of remorse, when Jesus was sentenced to death. Jud would never admit it aloud, but as long as he’s known that story he’s felt that killing himself was the right thing for Judas to do. He should’ve done it sooner, before he could cause Jesus pain.

“Hail Mary, full of grace.”

To this day he doesn’t know why he didn’t kill himself after that night in the ring. What did he think he would ever have to live for? What life did he think he would have, what meaning did he think he would find, even away from his father?

“The Lord is with thee.”

But he did find meaning—here, in the Church.

“Blessed art thou among women.”

A purpose. For the first time in his life, a chance at something good.

“Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”

How, how could he have been so willing to forget? Christ’s love is all he has. The only thing he’s ever had, to hold onto.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God.”

When he was at his lowest, when he’d burned every bridge, bitten every hand, lost his health and all his money to heroin, when he’d decimated every hope, every shred of himself and the only thing left in the decaying shell of his body was a murderer, a monster, good for nothing but brutality—when he had nothing, when he was nothing, broken and defiled and hateful and truly, bone-deep irredeemable—

“The crucifixion and death of Jesus.”

He looks up.

There is no crucifix on the wall.

He clutches his rosary so tightly that the beads dig painfully into his flesh. “Our Father,” he chokes out like so much vomit and spit, “who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name.”

The outline of the cross hangs empty like a sunken, rotted corpse, only the memory of flesh still clinging to the bones. “Thy kingdom come,” and he labors to breathe in, “Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.” This chapel—bare walls, vacant pews, silent and lifeless, barren of art or beauty, no image of the mother Mary, no image of the Savior—is a tomb. It has been since before he was born. “Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses.”

Why would God send him here? Send him away, to a place where Christ is absent? When he’d arrived, he’d been so hopeful—Bishop Langstrom had seemed to believe in his faith, his determination to bring lost souls to the light of Christ—but week after week, month after month in this desolate, merciless place with no company but those who hated him…

Was it a punishment, all along, for that moment of weakness, for having turned back to violence? “As we forgive those who trespass against us.” He hadn’t meant to do it, he wasn’t thinking—but that’s not an excuse and he knows it isn’t, he broke the man’s jaw, for Christ’s sake, in his thoughtlessness, his all-too-deeply-ingrained tendency to default to physical assault when provoked—Jesus taught patience and love for your enemy, he should’ve just pulled Clark aside and talked to him. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

Not that he hadn’t tried that before, or that it ever would’ve worked. Jud’s voice hasn’t ever meant anything.

To anyone but Blanc.

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.”

Jud closes his eyes against the wave of nausea that rises up in him at the thought. “Blessed art thou among women.” He lays his head down on his wrists, resting on the pew in front of him, rosary uplifted in prayer. “And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”

My revelation came from Father Jud, Blanc had said. The only one in this chapel who had ever been moved by his faith.

I don’t want you doin’ somethin’ that you’ll regret.

Something hideous writhes in the pit of his stomach like a dying eel, and the beads of the rosary are carving indentations into his fervent grip as if his hands were made of clay, and he’s trembling as he pleads, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

I never meant to hurt you, Judas.

“Hail Mary,” he begs.

Beautiful, Judas, you’re beautiful.

He sobs, “Full of grace, the Lord is with thee.”

Of course God had left him here, alone. What was his faith ever worth, if it could be swept aside like so much dust, if he could forsake duty for selfishness so easily, patience for violence, purity for carnal want.

Blessed art thou, are the next words, but Jud can’t get them out for weeping.

There is nothing that God doesn’t know. He had looked directly into the core of Jud’s soul, and seen the truth—that he would always put himself first when it counted, that his resolve to be good was flimsy at best and nothing but a self-serving lie at worst, that he didn’t have the strength of character to resist his worst impulses and he never would—and cast him aside, to a church that was already crumbling, and would take him with it when it fell. The fewer people that Jud could harm with his presence, the better.

Wicks, and the flock—all poisoned. Like him.

His lungs shudder and jolt with every sob that tears itself out of him, and he lifts the rosary up over his head to cover his face as much as possible with his arms, and a drip of saliva falls out of his mouth and onto the floor and he does nothing to stop it, and Martha is dead, and Dr. Nat is dead, and poor Samson is dead, and the Monsignor is dead, and every inch of it was his fault, and there was never anything he could do to help any of them. Of course God had sent him here: where he belonged, with the wicked, the cruel, the selfish, the faithless. A chapel of the damned, and now, a husk, with only him left latched onto the remains like a parasite that had killed its host.

He puts his forehead on the pew in front of him and lets the wood dig painfully into his skin and skull as he weeps, wishing he had any right to beg God for another chance. Barely a week since the deaths of Wicks and Martha and Samson placed this church squarely onto Jud alone, and already he’s broken his vows as a priest—and yes he felt contrition, and yes he confessed his sin, and yes he’s in the midst of penance now, but what difference does any of that make when he knew what he was doing when he was doing it, and right now on the floor in the pews of Our Lady he aches for the comfort of a hand on his back, a shoulder to cry on, fingers in his hair, lips on his temple, a voice in his ear, It’s alright now, Judas, it’s alright.

He would instantly collapse into Blanc’s arms, if he were here right now. He would bury himself in his neck, sob onto his collar, breathe him in, cling to him, beg his forgiveness.

Blanc isn’t here. His skin almost burns where Blanc isn’t touching it. The chapel is cold, and empty, and there’s nothing he can do.

He turned his back on Benoit Blanc. Spat vitriol at him, repulsed and reviled him, called it evil, the most gentleness and care that anyone had ever been kind enough to spare him.

He betrayed both Blanc and Christ for each other, and now he has neither of them here to take his arm and haul him out of the water to stop him from drowning. Maybe he’s still kneeling in an alley with a needle full of oblivion, doing his damnedest to destroy himself.

All of this would be easier if suicide wasn’t a sin.

When eventually he manages to catch his breath enough to speak, he prays so many rosaries he loses count. The Sorrowful Mysteries, as was assigned. At some point he realizes that the sun has long set, and it’s dark, and he recites Psalm fifty-one over and over until his mouth and throat are so dry that he can’t rasp out the words.

****

By the time he crawls into bed, both his body and mind are exhausted, wrung out like a dirty dish towel. He doesn’t even bother to shower, just strips out of his priest’s uniform and puts on some flannel pajama pants and slinks under the blanket like a roach, lays on his stomach, both arms shoved roughly under his pillow.

He tries to breathe the sludge of the day out of his lungs, but his mind is a swirling, muddy pool of listless fatigue and he can’t not think about the space behind him where Blanc’s weight should be on the bed, the bare skin of his arm and back that should be absorbing Blanc’s warmth and touch, the spot under his ear where Blanc isn’t kissing him, whispering Judas, and it gnaws at him, the absence, the knowledge that he still wants it even after having performed thorough repentance. Still craves Blanc’s hands and lips, his tenderness.

But no. Even if Blanc were here, and did want Jud again—if they were sitting in the common room of the rectory again, by the fire, and Blanc leaned in to kiss him—Jud would have to refuse. I’m sorry, Jud would have to say, and reluctantly push him away. I’m sorry, Blanc, I can’t.

And if Blanc kissed him still—knew how bad he really wanted it, and took Jud’s face in his hands and kissed him, and Jud melted into it, needing it—

Jud would have to push him back, push him back, enforce space between them, shake his head, I can’t. I can’t. Blanc knows him too well. He’d have to admit—I want to but I can’t, I can’t.

He’d have to insist, put his foot down, no matter how badly he wanted to give in. Even if Blanc tried to convince him, touched his face and spoke softly. 

Even if Blanc ignored his refusal, and kissed him anyway.

Blanc, I can’t, I can’t—

But the Blanc in his head isn’t listening—

If Blanc kissed him anyway—he’d have to push him back. And if Blanc shoved his resistance aside—took Jud’s wrists in his hands like handcuffs, and paid no heed to his confusion and fear, and aggressively pinned him to the surface of the couch in the rectory—

Jud knows the detective is tougher than he looks. He’s felt it himself, the strength that those arms and that grip are capable of.

But Jud, surely, is stronger. He could overpower the older man if he had to, even if Blanc fought back—could force him away, throw him to the floor, if he had to—

Blanc could get hurt, if he did that—and for what? To protect his own soul? For what pretense of purity? Would he risk hurting the older man, if it meant protecting what little could be salvaged of his virtue?

No. He wouldn’t.

All he’d be able to do would be to ask him to stop. Please, he’d say as Blanc held him down. Please, Blanc, stop it, stop it, let me go—

But then, he’d only be able to speak if Blanc weren’t actively occupying his mouth. Maybe Blanc would be biting his neck again—maybe he’d let Jud plead on purpose, gloating—Jud knew he liked to hear him beg.

And even if Jud knew it was exactly what Blanc wanted… he would have to. He’d have no choice but to plead, Blanc, stop it, I can’t, as Blanc pinned him down, bit a dark bruise into his neck, hard enough to draw tears of pain from his eyes—there would be nothing to do but to tell him, Blanc, please, that hurts, you’re hurting me, please let me go—

His dick is starting to get hard enough to press into the mattress.

He adjusts his face where it lays on the pillow, and breathes out, impatient with himself. The image doesn’t go away: Blanc latched onto his neck, hurting him on purpose, forcibly holding him down, knowing that he could throw him off if he chose, but wouldn’t. He can just see the way that Blanc would laugh at Jud’s defiance, by necessity halfhearted so as not to harm the older man—You want me to stop, then stop me, he can almost hear that low Southern voice murmuring, sadistic and amused. Go on, tiger. Stop me.

Jud buries his eyes in his pillow, fighting to ignore his swelling erection, fingers clenching into fists.

He tries to let the image go. Bring his thoughts back solely to the present, to reality, himself, his body, alone in his bed in the attic of the church rectory.

But he can’t will away the memory of Blanc in this room, sighing at him in frustrated disapproval, berating him for failing to think. He’d been on his knees before Blanc for a short moment, then. It had taken so much effort to force himself to stand.

How easily Blanc could’ve pushed him onto this bed—could still, if he came back here. Jud’s mind slides back to the thought of Blanc’s hands around his wrists, clicks onto the image like a magnet—Blanc deciding they’re not done, pinning him to the bed, this bed, face down just like this. Fucking him, holding him down by the shoulder blade and forcing himself into him, even as Jud begged him to stop.

Stop me, Blanc could say as he fucked him, and Jud would be powerless, no way out but more violence than he was willing to bear. Stop me, if you wanna.

Blanc please, please stop this, I can’t do this you have to stop—

And Blanc would just laugh, that condescending laugh of his that he didn’t ever seem to think Jud noticed was aimed down at him. You don’t want me to stop, he’d say, and his all-knowing eyes would bore a hole right into Jud’s skull, reading the truth that was scrawled unwillingly all over his skin. You want this.

And Jud would have to shake his head, and protest, I don’t, I don’t want this, I want you to stop—

Can’t lie to me, son. You want this.

Jud swallows, and shifts his hips, and both his hands are fists under his pillow and his erection is pressing hard into the bed now and he shifts again, and ignores it, and breathes, and ignores it, and ignores it.

You need this. If Blanc were to fuck him—hold him down, and fuck him, and tell him, You need this, a long long time you’ve needed it, and I’m gonna give it to you whether you like it or not.

What could he even say. He didn’t know how to argue with Blanc. He could try, but the man just always seemed to know everything. He certainly knew better than Jud.

You don’t know what you need, Judas, Blanc could tell him, and he wouldn’t be able to formulate a response. You were lost when I found you. Didn’t have the first idea where to go, what to do. You need me to tell you—you need me to teach you.

He shifts again. And ignores it. And shifts again, and again, and now he’s grinding into the bed, is what he’s doing, he’s fucking into the mattress alone imagining Blanc on top of him, cock deep in his ass, stretching it to the point of pain.

Blanc, stop it, you’re hurting me, please—

You want it, came the response, scornful and coarse and unyielding. You need me to tell you what you want, Judas. Lord knows you’re too stupid to figure it out for yourself. Well, I’ll teach you. I’ll teach you how to take it like you’re supposed to. All you’re goddamned good for.

Blanc wouldn’t say that to him.

Blanc wouldn’t say or do any of those things. Blanc wouldn’t call him stupid or good for nothing, wouldn’t laugh if he were really trapped and afraid—and he knew full well that Benoit Blanc would never, never hold him down and ignore his protests, violate his body without his express consent.

Even if Jud wanted him to. No matter how fucking bad Jud wanted him to.

He exhales a dismal groan into the pillow, despondent to think of the immutable fact that Blanc will never force himself into Jud’s body, never speak over him to tell him the truth of what he needs. He’s just going to leave, if he hasn’t already, leave Chimney Rock and Jud’s life and never come back, permanently leave that part of Jud’s body unpenetrated. Blanc is a good person. There isn’t a world where he would ever—

How could Jud wish he would do such a horrible thing? It would be assault, it would be a crime—rape. If there were ever a sign of his own depravity—he knows there’s something putrid and malevolent inside of his chest, because it wants the kindest man he knows to turn to atrocity just to molest and abuse him, so that it wouldn’t be his fault—somebody to be worse than him—

Please, he imagines saying again.

But this time, he can’t pretend, even to himself.

Please, Blanc, fuck me, please fuck me—I promise I’ll be good, I’ll take it—

Blanc wouldn’t want to hurt him. Blanc would be afraid to hurt him.

No no no, Blanc please, I don’t care if it hurts, I’m fine—Blanc please, please just do it, just fuck me, I need you to fuck me—I need you inside me, please—

Blanc wouldn’t ever hurt him, Blanc would tell him, You’re not ready, sugar, it’s okay not to be ready, why don’t we take it nice and slow?

And Blanc would touch his fingers to Jud’s lips because he thought they were pretty and Jud would want to take those fingers into his mouth and suck but he wouldn’t be able to stand it, No, no, I’m ready, I’m ready, I am, I promise—please please please, I need you inside me I need you to fuck me I can’t take this—Blanc—Blanc, please, Blanc, Blanc—

“Blanc,” he exhales onto the pillow, and the Blanc in his imagination is running his fingers through his hair, savoring the sound of his own name from Jud’s mouth.

He’s humping the mattress. That’s what he’s doing. Like a dog. Pathetic.

Pathetic, says the other Blanc, the cruel one, the one who’s fucking him against his protests. Lord, you’re pathetic. Thought so since I laid eyes on you. If you had any self-respect, you’d stop this, you know that, don’t you?

He doesn’t stop—selfish, stupid, animal, base, worthless as a squalid rag that no amount of washing will get the filth out of—why is he even still here, in the church, what does he think he’s doing here—

The Blanc from last night kisses his earlobe, whispers, Hush now, Judas, it’s alright, close your eyes, and touches him exactly how he needs to be touched—warm lips on his neck, fingers wrapped around his cock—

A sin—

But it’s too late for that. He’s been getting himself off on the mattress for the past several minutes now, it’s far too late to stop himself from committing sin against chastity for the second time in as many days.

He flips around to lay flat on his back. Slips his fingers inside the lining of his boxers, takes his shaft in his hand, and starts to stroke.

That’s it, Judas, Blanc whispers in his mind. Good boy, that’s it, that’s good.

“Blanc,” he breathes aloud.

Good boy. Say my name again, sugar, I wanna hear it.

“Blanc—Blanc.”

Good, good. Good boy, Judas. 

He opens his eyes to look at the dim ceiling, repulsed by his own cowardice. Blanc isn’t even fucking here. He’s just saying it to himself, inside his own mind, unearned, ungiven.

Self-obsessed, contemptible creature. Beautiful, Blanc had said, and so dearly wanted him to believe it—beautiful, beautiful, Judas, you’re beautiful…

Beautiful, Blanc might say as he fucked him, Jud on his back just like this, legs draped over Blanc’s thighs, Blanc inside him, caressing his chest, looking down at his face. Beautiful, so beautiful, Judas—wanted you just like this since the moment we met—

“Please,” he whimpers, and the Blanc in his imagination touches his face.

Aw, that pretty mouth of yours needs somethin’ to do, don’t it. He can see it, that smile, not just fantasy but memory—the way that Blanc had smiled at him when he’d agreed to cum one more time. Don’t it, honey?

The corners of his room are staring at him, the crucifix and stained glass window behind him looking over his shoulder at the movement of his hand under the blanket. He's alone in his bed, he’s alone—hand down his pants, the fabric of his boxers slightly rough against the sensitive and leaking tip of his cock—Monsignor Wicks used to talk about this all the time, and he was disgusted—he doesn't stop.

Blanc would make him ask again, just to hear him say it, see the look on his face. Say it again, darlin’, so pretty when you beg for me…

“Please, Blanc, please…”

You need somethin’ in your mouth while I fuck you, don't you? Calm you down…

“Please,” he begs, and Blanc would let him, of course he would let him, and his fingers would be sweet as nectar and Jud would latch on like a lifeline, the only thing keeping him from flying to pieces, keeping him sane, Blanc’s fingers in his needy mouth—

That's it, just like that, go on and suck, darlin’—that feels good, don't it, calms you down, I know you can get overwhelmed—

When the tension bursts out of him he opens his eyes, the shadowed white ceiling and slanted walls watching in judgment as he breathes through it, the pulsing release, spilling all over his fingers and soiling his boxers, and now he’ll have to wash his hand and change his clothes, when it’s over, the pounding of his insolent heart, the surges of blasphemy coursing through his dick, the last echoes of the detective’s doting voice fading in his ear.

He breathes. It’s done; he pleased himself. He’ll have to go back to that chapel, and confess this to the other priest. The thought makes him want to stick a knife in his throat.

He used to believe himself a changed man. He thought he had let the gospel of Christ bring him to heel.

Tomorrow, he’ll put the clothes back on: black pants, black shirt, white collar, the steadfast symbol of committed obedience to the will of the Lord. And he’ll go down to the chapel, pretending to belong there, and speak to no one, because the church is closed, and he’ll continue to plan for its reopening with himself as the head reverend. Guiding lost little lambs, ambling around directionless, like he has any fucking idea.

Maybe it’s not supposed to be like this, and God will send revelation to Bishop Langstrom or the others at the seminary that leaving such an inexperienced priest—and one with such an abysmal reputation, at that—in charge of his own parish is ill-advised, and he should be removed. Maybe he’ll go back to the seminary, keep training; maybe he’ll join an order instead of belonging to a diocese. Maybe he’s supposed to be a Benedictine.

Or maybe this condemned, rotting church is the only place he could possibly be. Maybe from the instant he threw that punch he’d sealed his fate to live and die here, under a rock where the light of heaven can’t reach him.

What does it matter. What else can he do but keep acting like a holy man, like the stains have been scrubbed out of him and now through Christ his soul is saved. Eleven years he’s been at this. What more is the rest of his life.

His chest is empty of everything but ruin and breath, and the crucifix on the wall behind him is watching him always, and his hand’s in his boxers and there’s muck on his fingers and he doesn’t think there was ever going to be a version of this where he turned out to be a good person and he breathes in deep, having failed Langstrom and Blanc and everyone else who ever thought he might be good for something, and sighs out abject resignation into the stale and stagnant air of his bedroom, dead in the water like a carcass after a storm.

“Fuck.”