Work Text:
From the second he walks away from her, a red fox close upon his heels, his world contracts. A city of eight million comes to feel like a snow globe. All roads lead past her café, or into the path of someone connected to her, even with her family mercifully absent from his congregation these days. The youthy band’s new bassoonist could be trying her hand at the most gorgeous, uplifting piece in the hymnal, and he’d still only hear Jake’s fucking funeral march—though that might just be what a bassoon fucking sounds like.
His life is fucked, just as he’d known that it would be. The cross of hypocrisy and heartbreak weighs upon him like a giant weighty thing, and no one is coming to wipe his brow, because unlike Christ, he’s brought the burden on himself.
He ought to have been able to resist her, as effortlessly as he’d resisted others here and there, the promise of proper plum a worryingly effective deterrent. But she wasn’t some woman on the train, or in a bar, or even in his fucking pews, flirting with God as a means of flirting with him—well, maybe the last, but also his fucking soulmate, probably, if there could be such a thing.
His own confessional has become a haunted rather than a hallowed place, where he now kneels on her side nightly and recounts various forms of half-hearted penance he’s undertaken, hours of tearful prayers and so many menial tasks Pam struggles to invent the next one. All of them are undermined by thoughts that instantly derail his vain quest for absolution that God might one day offer, but will never verbalise, and certainly can’t consider while he’s still intoxicated by the memory of her body and pining for a glimpse of her soul.
Her hair, her eyes, her lips, her tits—her body was enough to drive him mad, but it’s her laugh that plays on repeat in his head, her natural wit tinged with a barely perceptible edge of underlying sadness. He’d initially attributed that to the miscarriage, but then she’d told him the truth, hinting at a far bleaker picture and refusing to unveil it, and just when she might have wavered, he had lost his mind.
He’s supposed to love one thing, to regret those searing kisses he still hungers for because of the path of sin they set him on, bringing his life to this utterly fucked point. He’s not supposed to regret them for side-tracking his one chance to see her soul, to know the unknowable. Night after night, failed confession after failed confession, he strives to regret them for the right reason, and to blot out his conscience’s reminder that he dodged her questions too, even as he gave her shit for dodging his, for, he suspects, all too similar reasons.
I can’t go to Hell for that, can I, Father? her now-stepmother had simpered, stroking her fur handbag with performative guilt. In hindsight, her insincerity was blatant, but he’d missed it in the moment.
Not as long as you confess, he’d assured her, then you’ve got nothing to fucking worry about. And he believes that, more or less—but you’ve got to mean it. God is an understanding sort, but He knows when you’re going through the motions.
And go through them he does, penning homilies he’s unworthy to deliver, hearing his flock’s banal confessions, giving catechism classes, resolving cupcake situations, and reviewing restaurants whose food he barely tastes, constantly jumping out of his skin, convinced that he’s seen her out of the corner of his eye.
It’s never her. Sometimes it’s a fox, but it’s never her. In a city of millions, it’s never going to be her.
Until, one day, it is.
*
It’s the worst possible place, and the worst possible time. He’s conducted a funeral on a dreary, bitterly cold November morning, and he’s already heard her voice on a loop, mooning over his beautiful neck—which shouldn’t still excite him—and then not even trying for plausible deniability as she insisted that no, she’d said they were already gone. He hasn’t felt Mr Ponder go anywhere, because he can’t feel anything, because his life is fucked, but he finds himself hoping that the poor soul is already gone. He deserves better than to sit in limbo in this weather.
Hardly anyone has come, just his daughter Jane, who bears all the hallmarks of the guilt-ridden adult child who knows she should have visited more often while her father was alive, and a boy called TJ and his mother, his neighbours across the hall. Apparently, TJ walked Mr Ponder’s dog when he became too ill to do it himself, and he’s pretending that he’s all grown up and doesn’t need his mummy here with him, when he’s clearly never had someone he knows die before and very much does need her at his side. They’re going to adopt the dog, which he hopes will be healing for both the boy and the animal, and seems to be a relief to Jane, but her journey will be longer and rockier.
He says a final blessing, shivering in the freezing rain, and as TJ’s mother thanks him because Jane can’t speak, he sees the back of her head. He’d know it any day even if her stepmother hadn’t made the curious choice to immortalise it in paint. She’s standing several rows away, next to a grey-haired man who is sobbing freely, and fuck, she’s wearing that coat.
The wind changes just as he’s stuttering out a reply, and she whirls around, as shocked to see him as he is to see her. He wants to run from her and he wants to run to her. She stands, rooted to her spot, and stares at him, and he stares back, helplessly, until everyone has noticed, on both their sides. He watches as the grey-haired man turns around slowly, glances between them, and makes a questioning gesture, to which she nods, still staring at him.
The grey-haired man brushes her on the shoulder. ‘I’ll tell her,’ he hears him say. ‘You dwell on this life.’
‘Thanks,’ she says, and then, fuck him, she’s coming over, but she stops a few feet away with an uncertain expression, eyes darting between him and Mr Ponder’s grave.
‘Sorry,’ he says, to Mr Ponder’s mourners. ‘I, ah, I know her, and I was just surprised—’
‘That’s all right, Father,’ Jane chokes out, tears sliding down her face. ‘You can go now, if you like. You’ve done more than enough.’
‘Oh, no—’ he starts, but Jane shakes her head.
‘Really, it’s all right. Dad would’ve loved it, all of it—’ and she’s losing it now, but TJ’s mother places a hand on her arm, and gives him a nod of dismissal.
‘Of course he would’ve done,’ she assures her. ‘And I think that now he’d want us to go somewhere warm and have a nice cup of tea while we share our memories of him. What do you say to that, darling?’
‘That sounds lovely,’ Jane manages. They say their goodbyes, and then it’s just him and her, and the rapidly disappearing space between them—
‘Hi,’ she says, and it’s all he can do not to kiss her in response, pushing her up against the nearest tree trunk, wind and sleet be damned—
‘Hi,’ he says.
‘I think your friend had the right idea,’ she says, between chattering teeth, as a particularly brutal gust chafes their faces. ‘I’d rather make it a proper drink, though.’
He ought to tell her no, that it was lovely to see her, but any proper drinks would best be consumed at their respective homes, alone, followed by a lifetime of never seeing each other again and hating themselves for it because needs must, but then a fox trots up behind her, and he agrees before he can stop himself.
*
‘Who was that man you were with?’ he asks, once they’re each sipping a G&T that’s better than the cans from M&S, but not enough to be worth the price. London.
‘He’s a friend,’ she says shortly. ‘I have a few, now. You?’
‘He’s been a bit upset with me,’ he admits. ‘Where’d you meet your friend?’
‘There,’ she says, pointing out the window in the direction of the cemetery, and pointedly not elaborating. ‘So God’s upset with you, then? I thought he was an understanding sort.’
‘I had one job,’ he says, and she laughs, and fuck, her laugh—
But she stops laughing at the look on his face, and buries her face in her hands. ‘I know that feeling,’ she says, and that shakes him, because it’s not the whole picture, but it is a piece of her soul, a hint to what she wouldn’t, couldn’t bring herself to say. A friend she met at the fucking cemetery, and knowing that feeling—
‘So who were you seeing off?’ she asks, looking straight at him with those eyes, and he’s lost, fuck it, he’s lost.
‘A parishioner,’ he says. Then he turns the questions back on her, just like he’s chastised himself for doing, but he doesn’t know how else to survive. ‘Who were you visiting?’
‘A friend,’ she says, stirring her G&T like she’d dive headfirst and drown in it if she could, if it would get her out of answering that question. She’s never going to bare her soul for him now, and after all, why should she?
‘I see,’ he says. After a moment’s silence, during which they both pretend they don’t snap to attention as another customer asks for a room over the pub, and the publican happily obliges her with a key, he asks, ‘What are we doing here?’
‘I don’t know,’ she says, and then she disappears, and he resists the urge to scream before she whips back around at him with a look that he’s never seen on her face before, the defiant eyes of someone who has realised that she has nothing left to lose, so she might as well bet it all.
‘I was visiting my friend Boo on the anniversary of her death,’ she says. ‘She accidentally killed herself after her boyfriend fucked someone else, someone she never knew was her fucked-up best friend who couldn’t even tell her the truth before she walked out into traffic. I didn’t think she’d die; she didn’t even think she’d die. She was just trying to get hit by a bike so she could break a finger or something and not let him visit her in hospital, but it was so stupid, Father, and she was my best friend in the world, and I could’ve stopped it.’
And there it is, out of nowhere: her soul revealed at last, with all of its bruises and scars. She no longer needs to cover them up for fear of losing him, because as far as she knows, she’s already lost him.
Little does she know.
‘Fucking hell,’ he says, and she laughs, but it’s not the buoyant laugh that’s graced his dreams for months, but a joyless one that could turn wine into water. ‘That’s a lot.’
‘That’s one way of putting it,’ she says. ‘Well, go in peace, Father, now that you can wash your hands of me. I know there’s no coming back from that.’
‘There’s always coming back,’ he says, staring into the last swallows of his drink. ‘You just have to want to. But I mean really want to, enough to do the work.’ And that’s just it, why his life is fucked, because he does and he doesn’t and he is and he isn’t and he doesn’t know what he wants, but he knows that he’s nowhere near being as brave as she was just now, nowhere near owning up to the long string of sins that led him to this life, none of which are that dramatic on their own but collectively are damn comparable—
‘And it looks like you are,’ he says, before she can ask where he went this time.
‘I’ve had help,’ she says. Her anger is melting, just as quickly as it had arisen, replaced by a quiet resignation. ‘I almost followed her, but someone—another friend—stopped me. He gave me a second chance, and I’ve—I’ve tried not to waste it. I take the café a lot more seriously now, because it’s what I’ve got left of her.’
‘It looked lovely,’ he says. ‘I think…you don’t need anyone to tell you what to do. If that helps. It sounds like you’re doing exactly what you should be doing.’
‘I hope so,’ she says. ‘Sometimes I even think so. And then sometimes I think I’m just as lost as I said that night.’
‘How’ve you been?’ he asks. ‘Overall, I mean. You have friends now, you said.’
‘Yes,’ she says, and she even smiles—fuck, her smile, even now. ‘I’ve let…a few people in. People I’m not trying to sleep with. And it’s helped.’ Then she laughs, almost like her true laugh. ‘You know one of them, actually. You remember the waitress from the night we met?’
He smiles helplessly at the memory, courtesy of his traitorous, nostalgic heart. ‘So much wine and tequila,’ he says, and she nods, sips her drink, and continues.
‘She works for me now,’ she says. ‘Two years on from near-bankruptcy, I became a victim of my own success. I had to hire someone. It was the last fucking thing I wanted to do, because I never wanted to work with anybody but Boo.’ She finishes off her G&T, fully recovered from her outburst now. ‘I posted an advert and found a reason to reject every applicant until she walked in. Once you mop up bloody noses in a restaurant toilet together, you’re bonded for life.’
And if that isn’t God helping both of them, setting the waitress on a path that would land her on the doorstep of London’s one and only guinea pig café, he doesn’t know what is. He looks up at the ceiling and smiles, and she follows his gaze.
‘Fuck you,’ she says, but she laughs as she says it, and fuck, he wants her, he fucking loves her—
‘How’ve you been?’ she asks him then. ‘Overall, I mean.’
‘Fucked,’ he says, and she takes his hand, holding it like he held her hand at the bus stop, as she told him, despairing, that she loved him, saying it as God never could.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, and he shakes his head.
‘No, you’re not,’ he says. ‘You’re elated.’
‘I’m sorry that I’m elated,’ she says, and that’s fair enough. A man comes down the stairs and returns his room key to the publican, and they look at each other.
‘We’re gonna have sex, aren’t we,’ he says, and she nods. The publican does a double take at his collar, but forks over the key like it’s no business of hers, as long as they’ve paid up.
*
They’re kissing the second the door is closed. His body fully takes over his brain, unable to ever get enough of her, and she’s responding with equal passion, wresting his belt buckle open like she’s parting the Red Sea, and it’s everything, everything worth living for—
Afterward, neither speaks. He stares into her eyes and he’s fucked, in every sense of the word, but not damned—and he’s damned if that isn’t what matters.
But it isn’t all that matters. He hasn’t balanced the scales, hasn’t stopped dodging her questions. He can no more count on absolution from her than he can from God, and perhaps less so, because no one of flesh and blood could accept preaching the Good Word and giving counsel to others as a substitute for owning up to his mistakes, for making real amends.
‘Fuck,’ he says, but he doesn’t turn away from her.
‘Yeah,’ she says. It’s a resigned ‘yeah’, like she knows he’s going to choose God again this time, when he has no fucking idea.
‘We’re,’ he starts, wishing he could down another spot of liquid courage, but it’s not the sort of place where you can order room service, and he can only imagine the publican’s face if it were.
‘We’re different,’ she says. ‘I know,’ and fuck, there’s a tear making a silent escape from her eye. He brushes it away and feels anointed, as though with holy water.
‘No,’ he says. ‘That’s just it. We’re not so different.’ Fuck, he needs a cigarette, at least. ‘You said you wanted someone to tell you what to do, because you thought you’d been getting it wrong.’
‘I think I know this part,’ she says, but she doesn’t turn away, either, and that’s enough.
‘And I told you, later, that if you really wanted to be told what to do, you’d be wearing a collar.’ He sighs. ‘Please don’t make a joke about that. I’ll laugh, and then I’ll never say what I have to say.’
‘I won’t,’ she says, her eyes wide. He’s veered off-script just enough for her heart to leap, and he already feels guilty, because he doesn’t know if he’ll even get through this bit, much less take action.
‘I’ve made many mistakes,’ he says. ‘I don’t know if I can—I don’t know if I’m ready to, ah—’
‘Catalogue them?’ she asks. ‘Itemise them for Judgment Day?’ Her tone is light, but her eyes are dark, and not with desire, not anymore.
‘Confess,’ he says, simply. ‘Outside of the box, that is. Somewhere I might not be forgiven, even with penance. I found peace, and sanctuary, in the church, and a safe place to turn my life around, and I thought that as a priest I could…that I could help others find that peace. You know. Give back.’ He sighs. ‘But now…I don’t know.’
Her face turns solemn, like she’s turning this over in her mind, and then she sits up, stands up, naked and absolutely perfect. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘let me know when you know. If you know.’ She searches for her scattered clothes, and he shouldn’t enjoy the sight of that, but of course he fucking does.
‘I’m not going to wait around,’ she says, pausing at the door with her coat half-on. ‘And I won’t come to your church. But you know where to find me.’ She slips out the door, and just as he’s eyeing the room key on the night table, nearly giving in to the shame he’s meant to feel over what they’ve just done, the door opens, and she pokes her head back in.
‘I still love you,’ she says, and then she runs, and he’s fucked, fucked, fucked.
But not damned.
***
The bishop is decidedly not an understanding sort, but his harsh words have the opposite effect. In the days following that conversation, he feels closer to God than he has in months, since before he met her, perhaps the closest he has ever felt. There’s still the terror that things might not work out, that two damaged people will destroy rather than redeem each other, and that’s to say nothing of the fact that he will very soon have no source of income, no place to live, and no marketable skills—but he is ready to do real penance, instead of hiding from it.
It happens to be days before Christmas, perfectly clichéd, but when he visits her flat, there’s no answer, and when he tries the café, her overeager employee informs him that she’s in Finland, visiting Claire and Klare—yes, Claire has left Martin and married a man called Klare and they live and work in Finland, and that is a thing that’s happened—but she’ll be back by New Year’s Eve. They’re having a party, and she’s sure her boss would just love it if he came—
So he goes home instead and has a miserable and wonderful time getting started on that real penance, and then he tries her flat again on the 30th, because he can’t wait. She opens the door and she beams with shock and wonder for a moment before her light dims, like she doesn’t dare to hope.
‘I know,’ is all he needs to say. She pulls him inside, kissing him like she’s found salvation, and fuck, he thinks that he has done. It’s going to be an awful next however many months, and an absolutely fantastic year. It’s going to be a fantastic life, a fantastic this life.
It feels like hope.