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Ezra cut Vera Lynn off mid-lament and tested the silence, aided by crickets and frog song. It ate at his stomach, stirring his bowels into bubbling once again. He tapped the radio quickly, filling the truck’s cabin with what was left of we will meet again, and sighed with relief.
The breeze kicked up, brushing the night against his cheek as he leaned out the window to peer up the road. Just dark country and rhinestone sky, the moon mad among it all. Laying back in his seat, he considered that cranking the truck and returning to Falls End was still an option. The right option, his gut told him. But he kept breathing evenly, swallowed his morals, and focused on the persistent ache between his thighs.
Lights in the rear view stung his eye until they rounded the truck, leading the hungry sports engine into a dense canopy of fauna. The light blinked out, the rumble died and darkness concealed the car completely. Holding his breath, Ezra listened for the slam of the car door and strained his ears at the soft crunch of shoes on grass. He straightened himself in the seat, willing himself appear confident and perhaps a little smug. He smiled crookedly when the shadow reached the passenger window.
“John.”
“Deputy.”
The air between them was softer than either expected, but John remained cautious.
“Is wrath off the leash, or will you play nice?”
Ezra rose up a hand for ease, though he was sure John couldn’t see it and remained playfully civil.
“Consider it like a Christmas cease-fire.”
The shadow of John’s head bobbed affirmatively.
“That I can respect. May I?”
Ezra couldn’t see the Seed brother but he interpreted the request easy enough.
“Help yourself.” He said with a touch of sarcasm, gesturing at the empty passenger seat.
John jumped into the cabin with enough enthusiasm that Ezra had to fight the impulse to lean away, his heart skipping pleasantly. The Baptist did help himself, to the radio, killing it with a tap, and the interior light, washing them both in a spit of dim, dirty yellow. John turned his head and took in the openness of Ezra’s face with unabashed affection.
“Deputy,” John began, a white book resting his lap. “You don’t know how relieved I am that we can meet like this. I promise to be thorough and relentless. It will do you no good otherwise.”
Ezra’s hips squirmed against the seat and he moved closer, an eager smile twitching at the corner of his mouth.
“Goddamn, John. I like the sound of that.”
John’s eyes pinched as his smile brightened, shifting to move in closer in kind and twisting his torso to rest his arm along the back of the seat.
“I’m so glad.” The Baptist admitted, letting his knee touch the deputy’s as he continued.
“You must be emptied, more than once, there is no doubt about that. Your sin is a beast with an appetite this world is too small for.”
Ezra grinned and shifted his eyes self-consciously away, unable to stare down the intensity of John’s words and feeling dumb for it. He had wanted to have the upper hand, but all he could think about was the tightening in his gut and how badly he wanted John’s fingers to start running through his hair. He hoped the yellow light hid his hot ears.
“Not…too big for you, right, John?” Behind his head, John’s fingers tapped on the seat and Ezra inhale deeply through his nose.
“We do as the Father directs us, Deputy, just as you will when the time comes.”
Ezra choked on his spit mid-swallow, causing him to double over and send himself into a coughing fit till tears squeezed out the corner of his eyes. Long fingers rubbed along his shoulder blades, attempting to sooth his fits. When he came up, wiping the saliva from his chin, John regarded him with pity.
“It will be more grueling than that. It’s only fair that I warn you.”
“T-the Father put you up to this?!” The words came out hoarse.
“We all have our purpose,” John explained vaguely, taking back his arm to grab hold of the book with both hands.
The rookie opened his mouth in sudden protest, a demand to know the father’s perverted intentions sore in his throat, but the soft sound of paper drew his eyes to John’s lap. Slim fingers flicked through pages delicately, stopped to wet a tip now and again.
Now…” John thumped one wing of the book. “Let’s begin.”
“A-and what…” The Deputy rasped out. “What do you think you’re gonna do with that!?”
Ezra didn’t hide his confusion, letting the shrill of his voice fill the small space.
John simply looked up at him, still smiling with brows raised sympathetically. He was quiet for a moment as he struggled to contain a rude remark.
“Well, Deputy,” He said, speaking carefully. “Read it. Which is more than I can say for many a sinner. I will make sure you receive a detailed education tonight and perhaps the wild beast within you will be persuaded to turn course.”
“I…I don’t want you to fuckin’ read to me.”
The deputy was momentarily dumbfounded but didn’t elaborate further, just stared with a blank expression as if John was the one being rude.
Rapid blinking and smiling silence were all John could manage at first until he had no choice but to ask the obvious.
“What did you expect to take place?”
Ezra shook his head irritably, clicking his tongue as he did and hating himself more than John. For once.
“By the way you talked…” He paused to wet his mouth, both indignantly and by nervous habit.
“You made it sound like you wanted to…fuck.”
John looked back at his book, smile pleasant but more private than before. Whether it was his mood or the lighting, something became darker in the man’s face. The deputy went quiet as well, turning away to scrutinize the night outside his window, reexamining how he had gotten there
He had been dozing painfully in a church pew when the radio went off, just past the witching hour, when he heard John’s voice as smooth as a roll of blue silk reverberating off the vaulted ceiling. He had considered the offer for thirty minutes as he listened out for questions to arise among the ragged breathing of injured refugees. No one stirred and he navigated his way carefully between makeshift sick beds and tiptoed out the door before commandeering a truck at the town garage. He floored the pedal the whole way, taking the back roads with gravel spitting turns. It occurred to him now that he had left Jerome and a church full of struggling revolutionaries for this.
“He said to me ‘You are my son; today I have become your father.’“
Ezra snapped his head back to find John running a slender finger along a line, reciting what he saw, proceeding without permission or care of the deputy’s sudden mood.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
John regarded him with the same geniality as before, finger marking his stopping place.
“You have to admit, Deputy, that in light of all your rage and destruction, I am entitled to try.”
“You’re entitled to…my dick up your ass.” The dictation felt good in his mouth, spiked with shame and bitterness. It did his heart right.
“There you go again!” A tattooed hand swat the air, unable to contain itself, his gentlemen’s accent descending into something warmer.
The evening breeze was gone, replaced with the smell of standing water somewhere outside the truck and thick vapors of John’s cologne. Between the meeting of their knees and intimacy of small light, it was hard for Ezra to not notice the closeness of John’s mouth, as sour as he was with himself. As rhetoric fell from its lips, rosy and lush, he watched for his front teeth, fascinated by their uniformity and a passing fantasy.
“…letting wrath speak for your soul! A little consideration is not too much to ask. Before it’s all said and done you will be emptied and refilled. A cautionary reading won’t make it any less raw, but it is vital to your understanding.”
There was a childlike delirium in John’s summer sky eyes that drew Ezra in, not noticing the heaviness of his own breathes until he tried to speak.
“God.” He chocked out, wetting his mouth once more. He hadn’t heard a word John had said.
“My pants have shrunk two sizes in the crotch and you wanna quote scripture.”
The other didn’t flinch at the vulgarity, but he allowed his eyes to roll down and linger, making Ezra shift his hips earnestly. When their eyes met again, any previous malcontent Ezra had with himself was melted away.
“But I have your attention.” John declared, his twang becoming full-bodied, speaking as if he was born ten feet from a dirt road.
"You sounded so…ready.” Ezra insisted, determined not to let go of the promises whispered to him two hours in the past.
“I was. I am.” John breathed out, lifting the book just enough to slide it across both their legs, resting it on his left and Ezra’s right.
“You said you wanted to get inside me!” He contested quickly, pushing back the book with a hot face, leaning away with stupified urgency.
“I do.” John confessed, his eyes momentarily widening as he said it.
“Deep inside you.”
Shifting down the seat, John moved in till their thighs met and elbows collided. A slender arm slide between the seat and Ezra’s lower back, ending to hook a belt loop for control. He placed the book gently between them once more, leaving his hand between the spine and Ezra’s leg.
“Just listen.” Whispered the Baptist, close enough for the words to ghost the deputy’s ear.
“‘Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession. You will break them with a rod of iron, you will dash them to pieces like pottery.”
John leaned in with the words, his collarbone pressing into Ezra’s stiff shoulder, letting them brush off his tongue like secrets in search of the deputy’s shallow breaths.
“’Therefore, you kings, be wise, be warned, you rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. ‘”
Ezra’s eyes remained landlocked on the page, unable to follow but too unstable to look elsewhere. Beneath the book, he pulsed against the pages that John mouthed into his ear.
”’Kiss his son, or he will be angry and your way will lead to your destruction, for his wrath can flare up in a moment.’”
The air changed and a familiar buzz prickled Ezra’s skin, eyes touched his temples and traced his jaw but he didn’t let his sight raise from the passages spread across his lap. Gooseflesh broke out as a nose and lips brushed his ear, breathing in deep like a breeze and feeling the curves.
“What’s the matter, John?” The deputy muttered cautiously, his voice faltering beneath the weight of need.
“I thought you were going to read to me.”
“Blessed are all who take refuge in him.’” John breathed.