Unintended

by GoryHole_dot_jpg

Summary:

For the first time since their last confession, Dominic felt true terror. His fingers wept with blood and the tattered evidence of what little conviction he had left. Cruelly, the priest felt closer to Heaven with each coax of his. And yet, the heat of Hell’s descent blew against his body the further he fell.

(If you're hot and horny for vampire cock, so is Dom).

Notes:

• For goosetown.

Chapter 1: 31 Days Until Lord's Day

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

It was him. Even opposite the confessional’s wall, his voice was recognizable, and strangely familiar. It was definitely him. The sinner.

“Your last confession was?” Dominic listened intently, careful to mask his intrigue. He couldn’t lie to himself. Rumors got around quickly amongst the priesthood. When he’d heard there was a suspected vampire making murderous rounds, he was curious. And when those rumors followed the disappearances in the woods, Dominic was wholly invested. Even more so when said rumor started coming to Mass. 

The congregation sneered at Matthew’s presence, as though it was an offense to exist around the others. Dominic thought their fears were valid. But for a religion of acceptance, it repulsed him to find that even his peers would deny the boy’s efforts to save himself. None dared even look at him. However, the priest could not look away.

“This is my first, actually.”

First confession, probably. First time at the church, however, no. It’d been a month since he joined the congregation. The priest attentively noticed him every time. That was more than the others could say, who chose not to acknowledge him. The “love thy neighbor” philosophy was stretched thinly as it could, justifying their resentment by allowing him to stay so long as he didn’t interact with the others. Of course, Dominic did not identify himself with that lot. Without admitting it to himself, he’d been waiting for the boy to see him.

It was a quiet Saturday morning and after a few final confessions, it was just the two. Dominic clutched his rosary tightly. There, in the silent and still confessional, he began.

“I see. What troubles you?”

 

…

 

“So, if I have this straight… you came to church to heal yourself and not kill someone because… what, exactly?”

“Because it’s wrong,” the boy shot back. He wasn’t a good liar.

“No, now you’re lying to me. If you want to be saved, you can’t lie.”

The sinner sighed exhaustedly. “I’m here… because I don’t want to kill my girlfriend.”

Finally, Dominic had his answer. From his peripheral, he noticed the brunet’s quick glance. He searched for a sign of detestation, a grimace or downturned lip. But the priest did not give, looking forward at the drapes confining his booth and offering an ear. 

“Okay. And why do you want to kill her?”

“I said I don’t want to–”

“–Clearly you wouldn’t be here if that was so. Tell me, what happened for you to seek me out?”

Matthew was gravitating. Even during worship, the priest forced a shudder down every moment they passed in the same space. Dominic wondered how he could be so lured, why the boy churned his fascination. He wanted to know why a remarkable creature like Matthew would submit himself to such a place. Or what could have happened to inspire change within him. Especially why he sought the priest himself finally after joining the church for a month.

“I think it’s pretty straight that I’m not human. Everyone talks here, loudly. So, I won’t beat around it, I guess,” Matthew cleared his throat. “The other day, she pricked her thumb with a kitchen knife. Just the smallest drop of blood made me go fucking mad. All night, I bit my tongue with that damn feeling. I know it wasn’t hunger. I’d already, erm, eaten before then. I wasn’t driven by instinct, either. I think I was just… done. I don’t see much effort in restraining it any longer,” he continued dryly. 

“I’m here because my life’s so damn mundane, I don’t even see a reason to control myself anymore. And that’s not good. Not for the people here, and not for me when I’m eventually caught in the act. I’m just bored.”

It seemed juvenile. Murderous intent by boredom. Quite comical, too, if Dominic didn’t completely understand it himself. He knew he should have admonished him for nearly killing a person for such a reason, but the burden of his strife was evident in his voice… Monotony was lethal. While it may not have driven the priest to kill, it was an everlasting challenge for the man who devoted his entire life into a practice that was yet to grant him any real purpose.

“What do you feel everyday?,” Dominic encouraged. Not too long before they started, he stung with teething fascination.

“I’m sick, Father. Everything and everyone inflicts me with the most severe, violent boredom. I’ve no purpose, no prospects, no family here. And all that would be fine by me if it meant I could feel pain toward that. But even before I’d turned, I had none. Then some bloke bit me and made me what I am. And I can’t even feel differently about it because I’m the same. Only difference is I have to bear this curse forever.”

Biblical drabble made Dominic groan. He could have given Matthew the conventional guidance that was proper to him. God gives us all meaning, murder is sin, Hell is hot. While the priest’s lifestyle gave him a reason to an otherwise drab existence, he couldn’t deny it reinforced the boy’s words. The church was more a mission than purpose, as air was a means to survival rather than vitality. Dominic hesitated to admit it, but subconsciously, he knew he was not much different from the other.

Shortly after, an unintentional silence filled the air as the priest stewed to himself, until curiosity gave way.

“Not gonna tell me why murder’s wrong? I mean, I know that already. I suppose you’d be saying more than any other priest in this damn–”

“Matthew… what stops you from taking her life?”

Dominic turned to face the other from his seat, face shroud behind the slightly revealing screen. Matthew twitched in surprise to see the priest staring back for once, heavenly azure eyes finally meeting his ashen grey.

“She didn’t deserve it.”

“It’s not love that stops you?”

The boy paused for a moment, his eyes shut and wrinkled in distress from Dominic’s obscured view. The priest heard him draw a long inhale from the other side of the confessional before widening his gaze at him like a fixed cat. 

“Does love stop you from sinning, Father?”

Dominic grinned, aware of Matthew’s terrible avoidance. But he wanted to give in, as much as he shouldn’t.

“It’s one reason, yes.”

“Is it enough?”

Now, Dominic had paused for a breath. 

“Sometimes it is. Others, it isn’t. Faith is something that will always be a struggle, for better and worse. Yes, dread incites me to act on sin as much as the next. But, I’m also embraced by joy and happiness sometimes. These things change. You can change, as well.”

If Dominic wasn’t mistaken, Matthew’s eyes brightened. Not even a second, the boy gleamed when a mention of ‘change’ hung over the brittle wooden walls. It was a sweet image that eluded Dominic too soon for him to think anything more of it.

“You think I can be saved? Is absolution even possible for me, Father? I’m sorry, but I can’t trust that.”

“Of course it’s possible. Matthew, I truly believe you can find salvation for yourself if you really want it.” The priest inched closer to the screen dividing them. His fingers lifted from his lap, but refrained from touching the screen as soon as Matthew looked away.

“So, in your eyes, a monster like me can be saved if I believe enough? Even if I can never see Heaven if I die… If I dream of mutilation for a damn urge… If I fantasize about wringing my partner’s neck for a glint of excitement…”

Matthew’s lament continued, urgency bellowing in his throat like the cry of a fading star. He spoke quickly and erratic with excitement. Dominic listened intently, sunburnt all over and sweating. Dripped and damned and coaxing him to say more. With little caution in his bones, he silently indulged. 

“Despite being sick of animals for survival. Despite yearning for the thick, raw flavor of flesh and blood… Lips trembling when I smell a ripe wound… Saliva pooling under my tongue when I’m thirsting for a meal…”

As he listened, Dominic noticed a change in Matthew’s voice. The sinner took his interest for admiration, and spoke deeply, softly–almost lulling. There was maybe even tenderness in the boy’s words as he expressed his obscure, violent desires. As though their rivaling morals tangoed with one another in the common interest of captivation. For the priest, why a seemingly irredeemable creature would seek salvation. For the creature, how a devoted priest could engage him.

“I wonder, Father, if it’s blasphemous to even go on like this, when my heart races remembering it all,” the sinner questioned, voice silken and siren-like. 

To his own amazement, Dominic sighed, needing. As though beckoning for something to happen. Matthew had more than caught his interest. He enchanted him. Dominic wanted to dissect him. To observe the brain that indulged such freedom of life more than every other drab person in his existence. And despite his moral position, the priest found comfort in Matthew’s confession. It was palpable and real. Far more vulnerable than the congregation would admit. But before Dominic could indulge Matthew further–or rather, himself–he stopped enabling whatever feeling became of him.

“All you prove to me is how human you already are, Matthew. This sickness… is a strength. It would be worrying if you feel no pain for your misery. But it inspired you to seek salvation. That’s more than faithful–it’s human.”

Dominic truly did believe his words. He was aware of the other members, how they sneered and scoffed at Matthew’s presence. The lack of any effort to even slightly acknowledge or accept him on the basis of rumors. No matter their truth, their behavior was one of the several reasons the church repulsed him. But he held firmly to his beliefs, and the boy was no more or less worthy to him than the rest. 

“The others may not see, but you too are capable of humanity, if you let it,” the priest admitted with a honeyed voice, sweet and divine in opposition to his underlying fascination. 

“Are you sure about that? Do you swear by it?” Matthew looked back at the priest with a refreshing naivete that warmed Dominic.

“I stake my heart on it.” Promises were sacred to him.

Before the priest could gauge the other, he left his booth hurriedly. Dominic called out to Matthew from his position, sighing when he realized the drapes on the other end were shut. However, as he leaned over to get out, he was interrupted by the abrupt entrance of an azure-eyed angel. 

“Matthew–” the priest’s words ceased with a pointer finger on his lush lips. The collar around his neck felt like it was tightening as his heart picked up. With clammy hands and fickle fingers, he grabbed his rosary which clung delicately like his lifeline. 

In a second’s breadth, the pale sinner intruded in his confine all cramped and boxed-in. His slender body hunched uncomfortably close over Dominic so as not to peek outside the curtain. It shook the priest, and excited him all at once. The intimate gap between them petrified him in his place as he marveled into defined eyes that indicated sin but sought safety. It thrilled him. Even in the moment, the same sentiment ran throughout his bloodstream, electrified his nerves, and scorned his thoughts.

He almost found comfort in the silence of their stares after a while, until the boy finally spoke.

“Tell me, Father. Will I ever be good?... Can you save me?” With the audacity to speak so purely, Matthew inched further in until his breath cooled over Dominic’s lips. 

Dominic figured it was a cheap attempt to tease him, perhaps challenge his faith in whatever crude method. But the priest tempered himself when he found the boy's eyes heavy and weary. Despite Matthew’s catty tone, Dominic realized just then how truthful he was throughout his confession. How exhaustive his life had been, and the toll of dread on his heart. He truly did want to be saved.

“Matthew–”

“Matt,” the boy corrected.

“Matthew…You are capable. Believe in that when you go home to your girlfriend,” Dominic assured with a soft grip on the boy’s hand. “Seek me again when you come back, and I’ll provide any guidance I can give you.”

Dominic’s heart sank when Matthew returned his glare discontented. The priest was hurt that the church could not offer him an immediate solution to his misery. But he was also aware that salvation was a lengthy process, and finding it was something he truly believed Matthew could do. Whether that was possible through God alone, he tried not pondering.

With dissatisfaction worn across his face, Matthew moved to leave the confessional. In a blur, Dominic took his hand firmly.

“Wait!” The priest signed the holy cross over the boy’s body. “Amen. In Jesus name, I absolve you. Matthew... Please come back again.”

He noticed the same brightness in Matthew’s eyes. A hint of faith that eclipsed his darkness. Although it faded for a bitter sweet grin, it gave the priest hope before the two gave their farewells for the morning. As Matthew left, so too did Dominic’s residing distrust.

Matthew’s appearance, however, incited something more concerning in the priest that he’d rather not answer. Not until their next confession.

Notes:

Woo second Muse fic! I finished the whole thing but I am still editing, so I will be releasing chapters as I edit. It'll go as Dominic's POV (main chapters), then Matthew's (mini chapters), and back and forth. I hope ya'll enjoy bc this fic has been my baby throughout this semester.
(FYI: I haven't been Catholic in years so I'm likely gonna get stuff wrong. And technically Dom should be older [after missionary and seminary], but my logic is that those periods of his life were quicker than most so it fits into the Absolution era).
This fic is also an ode to Goosetown luv you

Chapter 2: 32 Days Until Lord's Day

Summary:

The day before Matthew's driven to confess *puffs cigarette*

“Missing–Body—Who—Tragic-Terrifying—-Another—Another–Another——————That Boy.”

Matthew observed the flock. They chirped and gawked and scowled with as much grace as a drooling invalid. Embarrassing, he thought. To wear your hypocrisy with such pride. It was a joke. 

They hadn’t changed in the month since Matthew joined. One would think he knew better than to appear, considering his notoriety. But he thought the same thing for the others. He thought they knew better. 

If they had any tangible evidence connecting him to the disappearances, to the pastor, to the incident—Well, he wouldn’t have had a seat at all in the church. But they didn’t. He assumed that spoke for himself enough. Obviously, that was not the case.

Still, any seat was better than none. If he could keep to himself and follow whatever God told him then nothing else should matter. Only, that was the biggest problem. One that was worse than the spite and resentment from everyone around him. It was the cruelty of faith, and how silent God’s voice fell on him. 

Matthew thought by then he’d have felt different. If there was a sign, he certainly would have appreciated it being in Vegas lights. But a note or even the handprint of his old faith was lost to him. He was completely abandoned, by the church and by religion, if it ever existed. He was nothing but an outsider looking from his window, singing a sweet dream to be part of something larger than life. The world wouldn’t feel so heavy if he felt someone else carried it with him. If that meant God, then he prayed his final hope came through. But at the corner he faced, a sign from anything or anyone at all would save him.

For the moment, there was one. He was a quiet one–a priest. He’d always held his rosary tightly when the boy passed him. It made him believe he was like the others, too. The ignorant kind that crept around Matthew all snarly like their legs could hardly sustain the weight of their judgement. It was that, or those who made their disapproval clear. But the priest didn’t look away when the others did, and he didn’t stare with anything close to hatred. 

His eyes were grey and warm like the smolders of a passive fire. It was almost remarkable how consuming they were. And his hair, deep russet locks that illuminated a brilliant blond gossamer in the sunlight. The same sunlight that would singe Matthew to the touch, was so befitting on the priest. No, Matthew didn’t mind when he stared. He nodded it off and pretended to look the other way because, strangely, he didn’t want it to leave.

He was looking again and Matthew could feel his gaze drill in the back of his head. 

“Father Dominic, a word, please.”

Dominic. There was a breath of something honest and gentle in his name. 

Father Morgan called him. He was one of the ignorant types. A cowardly one that put a bitter taste in Matthew’s mouth whenever he shooed members from him. 

“Pastor Thomas was concerned…. Too close…. The boy…. Away….”

The two moved their conversation, where Matthew could only make out the bits and pieces before it was shrouded. But it was clear that Morgan wanted the boy to know he was talked about. He sighed. Nothing had changed. Not a sign, an act, or a moment of respite waited for him. A dream was all it was.

He couldn’t escape it, even in his own home. Even when he thought that was all he needed to feel whole again. But it was all the same, and he was dirtier for it.

Matthew looked around the church and observed a community that was once his home, his sanctuary. But home had no reservations for him anymore.

Still, Dominic looked back. And suddenly all Matthew panged for was to see those eyes again. 

Please... Please...

Chapter 3: 30 Days Until Lord's Day

Summary:

A visit to the parish incites something interesting

Dominic sighed contently, a cloud of crisp air escaping his lips as Summer gave way to Autumn. Hints of cobblestone peaked from under thick snowy patches, reminding him of soft white myrtle from his days abroad. He relaxed under the gliding and ash-like snowfall. It was a perfect day to visit the old parish. 

The priest treaded the short white path behind the church, his favorite read clutched in hand. There, he passed the forest. His skin always bit looking at its shadowed foliage, where the darkness prevailed even on a sunny winter day. The parishioners told him to steer clear of the path. Nobody had gone near the old parish anymore since it was condemned, especially with the disappearances and carcasses found near its forest. But that meant it was quiet, and Dominic had no objections to peace against all the talkative circles.

The priest expected another easy afternoon before he’d teach religious studies later in the evening. It was his consistent leisure, and one that provided respite amidst the flocking chaos surrounding the local vampire hysteria. 

As Dominic approached the building, he looked down to notice a trail of fresh footprints disappearing under newly fallen snow. He glanced at the area from his position, noticing the prints had bent from the side of the parish–assumingly where someone had come from. He couldn’t figure who’d be there, seeing as it was a relatively old and useless sight. Nevertheless, he entered the brittle doors with caution.

At first glance, the building was empty. Dominic placed light steps forward, oaken panels creaking under the weight of his foot. He trailed the building with his eyes, looking for any sign of disturbance. Cobwebs lined petrified wood as spiders dangled by a thread in a gaunt fashion. Hardened candle wax ran down a weathered roman column. Lancet windows were encrusted by ice and clouding frost. And bending the corner were the men’s choir pedestals… They’d withered by then. 

From the look of it, all was in order. Erosion and time claimed the parish and was surely absent of the life it once held. However, Dominic had noticed a strange difference.

He browsed the nave where he often read. Splits of wood jutted from the pews like the teeth along a saw where he investigated every row. He then marked the disturbance of dust in the front seat. Reasonably, it was the one he always used. But it wasn’t interesting to him as much as the same could be found on the pew opposite his. Someone had been sitting there.

And just then, he felt something.

A cool chill hung over his body before the panel flooring behind him wailed. He turned around with his book gripped tightly in hand, as if its blunt corners could kill. He froze, arm in the air before it could strike the indifferent boy in front of him.

“Sorry, mate. You’re gonna need a stake, at least.”

 

…

 

“What’re you doing here, anyway?,” Matthew asked. Dominic sat in his seat ahead of the altar where he cleared the dust beside him to let the other sit.

“Why don’t you answer me that first. I'm here often, but I’ve never seen you in this place before.”

Although the parish was Dominic’s sanctuary, the priest seemed more out of place than the boy, whose eyes reflected the crosses around them so clearly. 

Dominic marveled how the landscape highlighted his beauty. The mahogany columns, although eroded by time, were still richly saturated against Matthew's skin. The frames connected into a high, intimidating arch on the wall just behind the boy. Centering it was his lithe frame with a complexion so smooth and pearlescent. Matthew blended in so well to the surroundings, like the Madonna embellished by holy artifacts. It echoed his name throughout every feature and flaw.

“Not really... I was, er, a member here a long time ago. Back when this was the original church a few years past,” Matthew recalled.

“You remember that? That must’ve been over a decade ago… Were you there when Pastor–”

“Pastor Christopher was still around? Yeah. Remember that bloke. Has… Has there been any news about him?”

“He retired a while back, yeah. But nobody’s seen him since last year.” Dominic found a trace of something in Matthew, although he couldn’t tell what. “That’s funny. I remember coming here when I was young. We might’ve crossed paths before I became a missionary. Probably even prayed together…” 

Dominic reflected on his teenaged youth, searching for a hint of Matthew in his memories. None came to mind for the moment until the realization dawned on him. “Ah, I remember you now. We never met, but I knew your voice was familiar,” he snapped three times as the memory sprung to mind. “Yes, in the men’s choir! It was really beautiful–never heard anything like it even now.” His face lit up as he spoke. 

Dominic couldn’t admit the rest, but he felt very impressed to have connected it. He knew his voice was familiar from the start, when he first confessed. It was high and soft, very unusual but charming. In the moment, he was taken back to his teenage years and the background noise of the men’s choir. There was a cloudy memory. One of the loudest, most beaming voice amongst the others that always gave him goosebumps in passing. He knew it must have been him. And if that was so, he truly didn’t age at all. Exactly what the others noted, actually.

“Fuck, was I that memorable? I’m actually quite honored.” More than that, he was blushing. It was always easy for Dominic to tell. His pale skin in the cold tinted so easily at the slightest excitement. How endearing, it was.

“Of course you were. Couldn’t get that damn hymn out of my head for weeks once I’d heard you sing it. Bread of Angels, it was,” he teased. When Matthew laughed, it was with his whole face. Dominic had never seen someone glow like he did. 

When the boy smiled, his teeth were almost entirely on display. Upon looking, the priest noticed a crooked front tooth. Even more interesting, he caught a glimpse of his fangs–small, but sharp and bright white. Like ivory tusks. He never noticed how small his mouth was, or how he talked in a way that hid his fangs. It charmed Dominic as much as it saddened him. 

“I never sang, always been tone deaf. Can’t keep on key to save my life,” Dominic laughed. “I did play drums once, but it never took me anywhere.”

“Shit, you're kidding! That sucks. I would’ve liked to see you perform.” Matthew titled his gaze downward, as though it really was unfortunate. Dominic smiled softly, regretful as well. 

He wished he’d have seen the choir perform again, to see Matthew sing like the angels once more. He wished he still played drums, so he could show him in person. He wished they hadn’t been divided on separate paths after the church. He wanted many things. But above all, he wanted to know what brought him back. Until a thought came to him.

“Wait… I thought this was your first time in the church.”

“Ah, yes and no. I-I didn’t lie about that, not really,” the boy stuttered. “Mum raised us Catholic, I was even baptized. In Cambridge, though. We hadn’t moved to Teignmouth until later. It was all fine for a while. And I was actually a pretty good Catholic, all timely and shit… But I stopped practicing just before this church closed… Actually, it probably closed because of me.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“It was, um… I-It was the pastor who turned me… Bit me. I was twenty-four then, and I’d just caught him… Pastor Christopher?" Dominic felt the pit in his stomach sink like sandbags, with grit and sickness at the implication of his words. "H-He killed a man from my choir. Poor mate. He was a good one,” Matthew sighed. “Before I could even register, the pastor had seen me witness him. I ended up running before the bastard killed me. But by then it was too late.” Dominic shattered. What the parishioners had said was right. It was him. Truly.

“So it’s true. You’re Bellamy, from the incident? The priesthood always told me they condemned this parish ever since a boy cursed it. They actually started calling it an abandoned parish a few years ago to cover up that it was a church. Some bullshit like that. I never really understood it, but I couldn’t really say anything about it.”

“Curse, right. Being a vampire is one, I suppose. A pretty stupid cover for one of their own, though,” Matthew scoffed. 

The Bellamy incident. Dominic hadn’t heard the name in a decade since it resurfaced last year–when Pastor Christopher had gone missing, and a “blue-eyed sinner” had returned.

Bellamy’s family name made rounds across every square, and the infamy stained with it. Dominic remembered when it first came about, just months before he studied to become a missionary at about fifteen. Rumors roared about the young man who bewitched the church with bloodied and twisted fangs. The man who took the life of an innocent in his choir. And the man who cursed the cross in Jesus’ name. Quite a riot, it was. 

But the most notable voice amongst it all was Bellamy’s. Although his retaliation was shrouded in bits, its damning accusations circulated like black death. Every square whistled with the whispers of Pastor Christopher’s “holy crime.” That he and his “infallible stature” murdered a man for blood and was caught by Bellamy. That he framed the boy for his choir mate’s death and turned him into the monster he was to officiate the story. And despite his denial, Bellamy, whose sunkissed skin had washed away and stung in the light; whose neck revealed a glowing impression like bright red fever, had proven enough for condemnation. Thus, why he was ousted.

Bellamy’s testimony passed like a game of telephone after the church released their own account. Newspapers gossiped about the Blue-Eyed Sinner and Pastor Christopher, who chose to retire for “personal affairs.” His resignation didn’t come without constant reinforcement of Bellamy’s “cursed nature,” from himself and the church. 

When asked to comment, the church denied anything that wasn’t already countered. They’d even built a new place of worship and abandoned the last, remarking it as an archaic parish. Dominic had only heard about Bellamy’s side of the story from his mother, who likely heard it from a handful of others. But nothing about the boy’s account circulated in the papers outside of hearsay. Nothing substantial. Even so, it sparked a tumult within the congregation. And an uproar with nothing to hear from the police. But the pastor’s name, despite ridicule against Bellamy, also didn’t go untarnished. He left passively without comment.

Dominic’s teeth gritted tightly. The parishioners were true about Matthew’s identity. Especially after the untimely disappearance of the Pastor last year alongside the boy’s return. But something pinched him about Matthew. Whether it was the lightness he felt around him or his testimony a decade ago, he did not strike the priest to murder an innocent. And certainly not to be a monster.

“Anyway, Mum and I moved out of town after that sparked. Actually, it was more like they kicked us to the curb. But we knew it was best if I left, so we did for a few years up North. Hated it up there, so fuckin’ drab.” He spoke so idly, like it never mattered more than a tiff. But Dominic was sure it hurt him in ways he couldn't understand.

Although Dominic was just barely a teenager at the time, he felt somewhat ashamed at how little he questioned. It would have been the same year he began training as a missionary. God knew what a journey that was to be focusing on town issues. Still, he felt sorry for Matthew and what trials he must have faced in his life. All from the greed of a figure who should have controlled himself before a human being.

“I always liked the beaches here. Brought me calm during Autumns like this, the same time it happened. So I came back up last year, took my trust fund early. Even when Mum was basically begging me not to. I had to, though,” he explained. “Not surprised that some people recognized my face. Shit, that’s probably where all the rumors started again. But I should’ve expected the older folks to remember… especially since I hadn’t changed a bit.”

There was that same uncertainty the priest felt in their first encounter. No. It stretched back when Matthew joined the church again. That chill, foreboding and alluring. He couldn’t put a word to it, but the tension in his veins spoke for him enough. He knew there was more.

“Matthew, you didn’t come back to remember,” he continued carefully, but relaxed. He didn’t feel threatened by the boy in the slightest, his chill more captivating than dangerous. “Last October, a pastor vanished from his home. Pastor Christopher. That’s when the rumors of you resurfaced, as far as I can remember. You did that, didn’t you? It was you.”

Silence seized the atmosphere for a moment. The priest could hear the sound of his own heart thumping excitedly.

It wasn’t until Matthew’s still lips creased into a subtle, but wicked smirk that Dominic’s gut churned. Not for the boy’s cruel face. But when he felt the hint of a smirk creep up on his own did the priest’s stomach nearly recoil. He reached his hand toward his mouth to ground himself–prove he didn’t just do what he thought he did. But his upturned lips were unyielding even as he felt the evidence beneath his fingertips.

Matthew gently grasped Dominic's wrist and slowly drew it to the side. He moved his own hand toward the priest, a hair shy of grazing his lush lips before pulling away. Dominic did not move, his heart pounding wretchedly with guilt and thrill all the same. He thanked God and all his stars that the boy did nothing, as he might have been helpless to surrender.

“You’re right. It was this day in October when he turned me. The same day I sought him last year. The same day I staked him in his chambers and killed him." His words grew softer as he looked down to recall. "The day his blood grew cold on my hands and warm under my tongue…” He reflected on the memory with a certain fondness one attaches to childhood or a lover. 

Dominic noticed his words almost combined in one mess at first--a speed that he recognized Matthew talked in when he was excited. Until the very end, when he slowed and his eyes darted the veins under his pale skin as though remembering his victims' cold blood.

“It was also the day rumors had spread when people connected my return to his disappearance. They had no proof, of course. I buried him in an occupied plot in the cemetery, completely inconspicuous. But the looks and gossip just got worse than when I was shunned.”

“Was it closure you were looking for? Is that why you came back to kill him?”

“I didn’t need answers. I know why vampires kill, I just… thought if I devoted my life to revenge and acted on it, I’d feel satisfied. What scares me is that I don’t think I ever felt a real purpose before I turned and after I’d killed him. It was all meaningless then, and it’ll remain as such.”

“That can’t be true, though…”

“It is. It’s cruel. Being seen as a monster, without a chance to stand for yourself. But what’s worse is they’re right. I am cursed. A vampire is forced to destroy everything they love eternally.” He paused and the light in his eyes dulled for a moment. “That’s not to say I’m suicidal or anything, as ironic as that’d be for me. No, I’m just here to see how the place has been holding up since I left. Which is funny, because I couldn’t stand the thought of being here even when I came back to kill him. Just… reminded me of how much I missed it."

“I think that’s normal. Churches have always been a comfort to me, even before I believed. I feel like it doesn’t need to be logical. Sometimes, though, those feelings are too strong to face once you abandon it.” Dominic contemplated. “I’m sure it hurts to dedicate yourself again and be met with hatred for it.”

“Eh, it’s alright. Had bigger problems than ridicule in my time.” He was relaxed but Dominic wasn’t convinced of his indifference. Hell, he could see the hurt on the boy’s face when every priest denied him. “Probably why I don’t trust churches or government blokes much. Never seemed to do their job, I feel.”

Dominic smiled in agreeance. “I can’t exactly say that’s wrong.”

There was a brief moment the two thought to themselves. Dominic, bitter-sweet over the triumphs Matthew had overcome. Matthew, receptive of Dominic’s interest and curious about his response. Amidst their thoughts, the two had been awkwardly appraising one another, no realization whatsoever until the silence broke.

“Er, you said you weren’t born into the church, right? How’s it that you’re a priest? I-I mean, how’d you fall into it and stuff?”

“Right… I didn’t really fall into it, per say, as much as life just took me there.”

Matthew’s brow raised slightly, a common trait that Dominic wasn’t sure the boy was even aware of.

“My mum always volunteered in the church. Sort of pushed me to engage in it and it stuck with me for a while,” he continued. “I was pretty disinterested in everything, like you. But devoting myself felt good for the short time I came to the church. It gave me a path in life, so I thought doing more would make me find… I dunno know. Something greater?” 

“Purpose. Y-You… You wanted meaning, right?,” Matthew added eagerly.

“Yeah… I pretty much thought if I devoted everything to the church, and the higher I went, the closer I’d get to that. That’s around the time I decided to become a missionary, not long before this old church closed. And then seminary. Always something greater than the last.”

“So, did you find it?,” Matthew leaned in with full captivation, the pew beneath them creaking with his anticipation. “Some sort of meaning?”

“No, actually. I was frustrated. I mean, traveling abroad was an experience I’ll never forget. The experience was unlike anything I’d known. But it kind of just felt pointless, y'know? Because I didn’t feel any calling to spread God like I was told to feel. I wanted more than that, and maybe then I could feel something. I think it was just the freedom of it all. honestly. It really completed me for a while. But eventually I just felt like a flightless bird mocking honest wings.”

Matthew was silently absorbed in every word of his. The priest felt a little embarrassed to go on for so long. But the more he did, he realized just how similar his story was to Matthew’s. How eager the two were–-still were-–to achieve a higher purpose. Something greater than them.

“So you became a priest.”

“So I became a priest,” Dominic repeated. “But the higher I went, the farthest I felt from what I wanted. I don’t know… I stay here because religion guides me. I’m just not sure it fulfills me.”

Matthew’s look was endlessly searching. Dominic found something hungry, craving the same feeling he wanted. It intimidated him when he looked in the boy’s eyes, and what it revealed to him. The similarity between them, the hypocrisy of his infatuation, and what it meant about him. It made him feel vulnerable. Its azure hue almost coaxing, the truth nearly slipped from Dominic’s lips before he could catch it. Truthfully, he knew what it was before it was caught.

We’re one and the same

“One and the same,” Matthew added, and Dominic froze. 

He couldn’t look at the boy. Couldn’t see his eyes and stare at his own reflection. Couldn’t allow him to be read so easily. The priest turned his gaze down awkwardly, like an avoidant child. And his twin, the same.

“That book in your hands… Do you often read here?” Of course Matthew would eventually notice.

“Oh, er… Yeah. I come here before I teach class, usually.”

“Oh, you’re a teacher, too?”

“Ah, no. I just volunteer with Bible study some evenings.”

“Shit, I’m sorry for interrupting you! God, this is probably the only time you’re free, too, I bet.” Dominic didn’t flinch when he’d used the Lord’s name in vain. It sounded sweet on his tongue.

“No, no. It’s fine, really. It’s an old book I’m just rereading. My favorite, actually. I just wanted to revisit it.”

“Sweet, I like books, too! The obscure kinds, mostly. Is that one fiction, or…,” Matthew’s voice trailed off to observe the cover. It was weathered and the letters could hardly be made out until Dominic read for him.

“Tender is the Flesh. It’s a used read I picked up in Stockport… Good one, though. It’s a psych dystopian novel.”

Dominic’s head grew hot when Matthew’s eyes widened. His face lit up entirely. Dominic might have choked a laugh if it wasn’t for how endearing it was. 

“You’re kidding. I love dystopias! What’s it about??”

“It’s quite dark, actually… Pretty gross, too. I try not to read it in front of others for a reason-–”

“Who cares? If it’s interesting, who gives a shit? Tell me what’s it about,” Matthew insisted innocently. Dominic swallowed, preparing himself for what names the boy might call him, if he spoke to him at all after.

“Well… It follows this guy, Marcos. He’s kind of miserable and all, and he works at a slaughterhouse-–” He clicked his tongue. “Ah right, there's a virus that basically infected nearly all livestock. People essentially couldn’t eat meat, so the government initiated human… er, slaughterhouses . It’s really fucked and all that. There’s lots of terrible grotesque stuff between his job and personal life. But in short, it’s a message about how far we’ll go to capitalize until we dehumanize…” Dominic’s voice faded until it picked up again. “I think the most interesting part, though, is the love narrative,” He swallowed dryly before continuing.

“Or, I wouldn’t call it that. It’s rather dark. More like a soft side Marcos has for this girl-–Jasmine–-he took in before she’d be slaughtered. He’s not exactly a savior, and definitely not a saint… This relationship, it’s cruel. The girl can’t speak, can’t communicate. She can’t even understand a word told to her. She was raised to be an animal, and still lives like one even after she’s freed… But even so,” the priest’s voice slowed, soft and shy. He began burrowing his thumb against his thigh. “There’s something sweet about it. In his eyes, she transforms into a human, almost. Someone who can’t speak, but thinks and feels. An entity separate from his disgust for humanity and their livestock.”

Dominic turned his gaze to Matthew, purehearted and true in his conviction.

“To everyone else, she’s meat. Incapable of speaking, much less intellect. But I think Marcos liked how simple she was. They hardly needed words to express connection, and compassion and understanding bore from there. He grasped that she was a person, still. Unto herself, despite everything, she was pure.”

The boy’s lips parted before he closed them to sigh instead. Dominic could feel his cool breath against his collar as goosebumps crept down his skin. He blinked heavily. Somewhere in between time and tangents, the distance between them had closed further. Dominic receded back an inch, not unnoticed by an entirely absorbed vampire. A little too close for comfort.

“In the end, he clubs her to death. Right after she birthed their son," Dominic said bleakly. But the break in tension have him some air to breathe. "She was a sobbing mess. And I’m sure he still loved her until that point. But when she wanted to cry out and scream in pain after her birth…. I think at that moment, she just resembled the rest of the herd that Marcos detested. She was an animal, as they all were...”

Dominic sighed. Not for the story, but what it unraveled about the people around him. How antagonistic they were, how spiteful and contrarian, how unforgiving-–uncritical. Truly primal at heart. No different from the herd, he thought. But the briefest alignment with Marcos made his stomach twist. Even if the controversy surrounding Matthew was no greater an example.

“Do you think everything was worth it? Marcos falling in love with this woman, when they were probably doomed from the start?,” Matthew followed, his investment apparent as his hand gripping the pew.

“I don’t know. Honestly, I’m not sure a love like that stood a chance to begin with,” Dominic replied coldly. Matthew returned to him with curled brows, like the notion was so criminal.

“That’s not true. Even if it wasn’t sustainable, of course they still had a right to try,” Matthew’s voice raised. “If they could find meaning in their misery, then it was worth it. A love fated to die, or eludes reason, deserves to live before its breath can be snuffed… Don’t you think so?”

Dominic stared into Matthew’s glossy eyes as he did the night sky. He felt completely small before him. So insignificant a shriveling star to this bursting sun. 

“Yes… it does deserve more,” Dominic smiled heartily. Matthew, the same.

Beyond the boy’s tease and bravado, Dominic felt content after unraveling this side of him. He was completely captivated, still gritting teeth to know more. To see him blush again, to hear his excitement, to know his past, his motivations. Despite its heaviness at points, Dominic melted in the ease of the atmosphere. It was natural. Wholehearted and idle. He relished how nothing in the world would have changed whether he found Matthew in the church or not. Nothing but them. 

Their simple exchange left an impression on Dominic. Of something interesting. Something higher.

Dominic rose from his seat once dusk carved shadows around the parish. Evening had settled quicker than he expected, and he organized himself to leave before the path back would vanish into pitch dark night. Although sad to leave, the two exchanged goodbyes and prepared for their travel back home. Once Dominic stepped foot, he turned his head to catch the other on his way. Matthew did the same.

The two smiled and went off as the priest thought to himself.

This boy… will be the death of me.

Notes:

Btw ik Tender is the Flesh came out in 2017 just pretend it didn't LEL

Chapter 4: 29 Days Before Lord's Day

The path to the parish was always cold. It was near the forest. That strange and foreboding forest. It always made Matthew’s hairs at the nape of his neck stand straight and mouth go numb like a terrible bite on his tongue. The grey cast of clouds swirled over its thick greenery, indicating nothing but trouble. He bit a cold breath at the thought of what lied there. What he knew must have been there. But he entered the doors quickly as he could to escape the feeling until it was gone.

The boy thought he was crazy to have visited the parish the next day after church. Then, when Dominic never showed up, he thought he was stupid. And when he waited the next day, to no avail, he really thought he was one sick fool. But on the third day when Father Dominic arrived, Matthew thought his lunacy was worth it.

He waited on the same pew they last spoke and Dominic greeted him with a charmed smile. “Hey, back in my spot, are you?”

“Don’t flatter, you’re not all that.” He was, though. Of course he was. 

“Right, right. I’ll pretend I’m not the center of your world, then.”

“Fuck off and sit down,” he smiled.

Dominic laughed and did just that. Matthew glanced at the book in his hand. The cover had worn leather and its pages were dusky yellow. He recognized it as the same one from before.

“Shit, how many times ‘ave you read that? Looks like it belongs in a museum.”

“Dunno… Three, four times? It’s more of a comfort read, really.”

“Strangest comfort read. I’d have reckoned it was the Bible for a stickler like you.”

“Okay, and what do you pass the time with?”

He pursed his lips pensively and Dominic gauged like it was the most interesting thing what Matthew James Bellamy did in his leisure. Truthfully, he couldn’t say. 

He took most of his free time practicing worship and trying to connect again. When he wasn’t reading, he was note-taking, or praying, or even reciting scripture like a damn robot. Anything that would make him grasp God like the priest told him would. He really tried. But if the truth would ever slip, it wouldn’t be about that at all. Most of his time, free or not, was spent tirelessly thinking about the one man he was prohibited from worshipping.

Matthew knew it was wrong, too. It was why he couldn’t admit it. But the image he took wherever he went was never Christ. The name that played on every thought of his was never God, as well. Father Dominic claimed that from him.

So, he answered as honestly as he could.

“Stuff.”

“No, come on. Give me something.”

“Something… I dunno.” Matthew shook his head with the thought, but Dominic could see him light up for a moment. 

“Cheeky liar, you do! Tell me, please?”

“I don’t… Agh–” Matthew scoffed to simmer the blush over his body. Dominic’s voice was so soft and wanting that he’d be damned to refuse. “I… sing …and whatnot.”

Brighter than damn headlights, he was. “Like choir, you mean? Or just…”

“Not like that, not anymore. It’s like… I just sing and write stuff down. It’s usually on my guitar.” 

Fuckkkk just shut up now.

“And you play guitar?? Incredible…”

Dominic had the most comically enthused expression, as if he was truly captivated by the fact. With his brows twisted and wiry, and the shadows of his eyes carved under the weight of his stare, he seemed to honestly…admire. 

“I-I… Er, yeah. I’ve played since I was a boy, actually. I didn’t sing for years after the incident, though… It’s kind of a recent thing.”

“Well, I’d love to hear you sometime… That’s pretty amazing, I think. You never left your expression. Or it never left you.”

“I guess that’s true,” Matthew blushed. 

“So you promise you’ll play something for me one day?”

“Sure. I promise.” Maybe a tune someday wouldn’t hurt.

Dominic beamed. It was hard to see his lips lift anything more than a gentle smile at church. Even then, it was never as warm as what Matthew saw. “Alright, then. I don’t take promises lightly, just so you know.”

“Alright, but don’t get too excited, I can hardly hold a note.”

“Well, that’s a fuckin' lie if I ever heard one. Don’t forget I heard you in choir. If your voice is anything like I remember, it’s beautiful.”

The church was suddenly a lot hotter than he realized. “Well, I hope not. If they’re calling me a monster now, just wait ‘til I start going by ‘siren.’ I’d be a real head-turner, then.” Matthew laughed and when Dominic did, he only blushed harder. “A-Anyway, I think I’ll just stick to the usual names. God forbid they know anything else that clearly outs me. I’m lucky enough for the brooding English weather to hide the damn sun most days.”

Dominic flickered with an idea, unusually enthusiastic. Matthew geared himself for whatever would come of it. “Wait–how much do the movies get right??”

“What d’you mean?”

“I mean, the church taught us about vampires like they’re seen in movies. The scary, blood-sucking, shape-shifting creatures to scare anyone into praising Jesus a hundred times over. Quite funny, actually.”

“Should I be offended?”

“Point is, how much of it’s true? Wait…" He shifted his position to arch closer. "Can you see your reflection in a mirror?”

“Er… If it’s not made with silver. Does that help?”

“It does, actually.” Matthew kept his laughter. Seeing Dominic so unusually enthusiastic was sweet. “Okay, does holy water or garlic actually hurt you? 'Cuz I hear that a lot.”

“Not sure, but I don’t wanna find out.”

“Reasonable.” Dominic paused for a moment and only the wind outside could be heard. He stared at the boy pensively, with a cartoonish hold on his chin. Before Matthew could interject to ask, the priest blinked as if the light in his head just flickered on. 

“Can you turn into a bat?” A dull bulb, it was.

“Don’t be silly, Father.”

“You say that and you’re a fucking vampire,” he scoffed.

If Matthew could transform, he certainly wouldn’t ever have to willingly use public transit. That was atonement enough.

“Alright, sorry I don’t adhere to your comics and horror movies.” Matthew laughed so hard he revealed his fangs for a moment, ironically. No surprise that it made Dominic lean in. Sick bastard. “And how come I’ve never heard you curse like this, huh? There’s a question for you.”

“Actually, before I met you, I hadn’t cursed a day since seminary.”

“You’re joking.” Matthew felt the heat spread throughout his abdomen with laughter. Dominic took part, but he was all too still for the moment. The boy quieted when he realized. “No shit.”

“You’ve left an impression on me, Bellamy. You know how much more I’ve prayed since I met you? It’d make you cry.”

“I fucked you up more than I thought, didn’t I...”

“Ah, a curse here and there won’t hurt.” He waved the inclination like it was a simple accident. But it put Matthew’s hold into perspective. He couldn’t tell if that hurt more than he enjoyed it.

“What, is there a three strikes rule for Heaven or something?”

“If that were so then we’d both be well over damned," he snickered. "But I pray all the time, anyway. Even for the blips I continue to make. I never promised to be a saint.”

That couldn't be true, though. He was so pure. The purest Matthew had ever known. Damned or not, he was as close to a saint as there was.

They took turns asking questions over hours of the day. Mathew’s head spun with dozens of useless information about the other. The priest, as well. He certainly wouldn’t have taken him for a Hendrix fan. And Matthew nearly wept with the seriousness on Dominic’s face when he mentioned he carried a faff bag wherever he went. Although, he believed that in an instant. The priest smiled when he asked where Matthew’s dream home would be (“Anywhere with sheep. They’re cool like that”). But nothing matched his surprise when he learned of Matthew's strange… fascination for socks. That alone nearly beat all the wind out of him.

The afternoon played out just like it did days before. The parish was empty where the walls were only filled with laughter and riots of the two for hours. Dominic mentioned hobbies again, and Matthew went on the most absurd tangent about books. His face never stopped beaming as the priest listened intently to an abundance of nonsense. He seemingly covered the entire alphabet of strange information, from assassins to the KGB to Orwell to Zetas. All of which sounded like another language in and of itself. But he listened the entire time with hardly a break only to add a question, or a dozen.

That was how the day came and went in a few short blinks. Idle a perfect like a brisk walk. But the night fell quickly and dusk’s tender light faded into evening’s greys. Winter’s breath blew under the cracks of every wall and darkness grew with it. They knew then to pick up at church the next morning and let a good night be.

When they moved to leave at the door, Matthew felt a tap over his shoulder. 

Dominic handed him his book. “Give it a read and let me know what you think. We’ll make a day of it.”

A day of it. He wanted to see him again. 

Matthew took the book trying to contain his gratitude. Not only for the gift, but for Dominic’s kindness. For the idle chat that consumed a day which would otherwise have been spent mourning his own worthlessness.

He truly did try to accept Dominic’s faith, and even more so after that. If the priest placed all of his trust that Matthew was human, and that salvation could be his, then he reached for it. But regardless, the boy’s one true savior would never change. How it ever could just seemed impossible. For the moment, Matthew placed his trust in God. For the moment, yes. But honest faith could only be in Father Dominic’s name. In that, he had religion. One that he could see and hear, and hopefully, touch.

Matthew kept the same routine after that. Church in the morning, then waiting to see if the priest came back to the parish. But he didn’t know when Dominic would show up again. It seemed his free afternoons were quite arbitrary. Still, Matthew didn’t doubt a day where he’d come back. He just clung to hope that he would. Eventually, he always did.

The boy made sure to attend church every day like clockwork, all precise and obedient. He was probably the most attentive person there. But he couldn’t talk to the priest. If he meant to do right by Dominic and take the church seriously, he couldn’t let himself be deterred. It was hard enough to control himself around Dominic during their afternoons, much less in the sacred church. 

But the parish afternoons were theirs to keep. They were pure and sweet, and Matthew liked to keep it that way. It was gone of expectations and worship, of digging eyes and guilt. There, he was free to let go. They both were, he felt. Because he knew how much the church weighed on Dominic, as well. If not in his mood, then his eyebags for certain. If Matthew was any good company, then he was glad to wait for the priest to come around.

The following day, he brought his borrowed book and began on the same pew. Dominic hadn’t shown up those three days he waited after their last talk. But it was fine. Matthew got a good head start on the read, which had peaked his interest more than he imagined. Not only for the material, but for what it meant that Dominic appreciated it so much. 

Between that period of time, Matthew didn’t put the book down until the evening darkened every word. It was only until the fourth day after worship that he finished it just before Dominic came back.

“Have…Have you been coming here every day ‘til you could see me?” 

Matthew stuttered for a moment before denying. 

“Shit,” the priest laughed, “bloody stalker, you.” He moved to sit beside Matthew. 

“So what? I can’t enjoy a nice and quiet space, I take it?” Matthew held the book up. “How else am I gonna get by this with all the bickering outside?”

“Ah, look at you. How is it so far?,” Dominic dismissed. 

“It’s nice… I finished it just now, actually. It’s a good one.”

“Sooo?” His voice dragged on and beckoned for details.

“So, I really liked it. Probably the end, most of all. If that’s not strange.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s not that it’s sweet or anything. It’s pretty morbid, honestly. But it’s also very primal, you know? Marcos’ reaction to seeing his lover become what he hated—like she was no different… It was so real.” 

Silence consumed where Dominic's eyes preyed on him like dinner. He was hungry. Starving, even. Not for any real substance, but Matthew's honest feelings toward the book. And how it reflected him. The boy understood just that.

“You’re a lot like her, you know.”

Matthew tilted his head as to be surprised and the priest reddened.

“N-Not like… I mean that you’re resilient like her. I’ve actually been thinking a lot about what you told me. What you said about their relationship. It’s just, when I picture Jasmine... I picture you.” 

“No, I get it. The bunch that nobody wants, right?,” Matthew smiled. Dominic was still.

“More like… She’s a human, despite what everyone makes her out to be. She’s not just a piece of meat, even if she was to be put on a table. To them, she was an object and nothing more than an abomination. Maybe a monster. But when they describe the people who put her there–how they consume without empathy or regret… Well, you both exemplify the humanity that exists so little. Even though you’re shut out for being less than so.” He testified to the sinner’s purity like it was a natural thing. It was almost worth entertaining if Matthew could give himself the grace.

“And Marcos?”

“I don’t blame Marcos, either. Not for being groomed to believe what he did. He didn’t fall in line with the masses by killing her. He just hated that system so much that when he saw her as nothing more than the cattle a part of it, he couldn’t accept it. I don’t blame him. But he was weak, too.”

Matthew understood. He felt some strange connection to her, as well. Two strays, put in their place to be one thing but never more. Father Dominic was right. She was human. But accepting that fact for himself didn’t seem possible. The priest could make connections for days and probably find a handful. But Matthew could never accept himself as human again. It was simple evidence. Where Jasmine’s heart beat, Matthew’s didn’t. Where her skin was warm, his was cold. Where she could be redeemed, he simply had no chance. 

“Matthew?” The boy cleared his thoughts and wiped the tension from his forehead. “I know you can’t believe what I do. It’s hard for you. I can’t imagine the things that happened for you to be this way. But I’m still going to tell you you’re human because it’s true.” 

Of course he read his mind. It was like something of fiction, the way he understood the boy like fingers easily laced shoes. As easily as breathing, the two were connected.

“What did… What was it you’ve been thinking since I said that thing? About their relationship.”

“Right… Well, I don’t think they should’ve let what they had go. Whether it would destroy them or not. Their love was never the problem. It was a weak heart. And even then, it was a beautiful thing, what they had.” He spoke with as much warmth as though speaking for himself. But Matthew didn’t think even the priest knew that.

“Yeah… I can see that.”

It was moments such as those that killed Matthew the most. The tinges that revealed Dominic’s admiration for him. He knew it from the moment their eyes first met. That insatiable hunger for something more, chased down with the thrill of his fixation. He saw it in church, too. When they'd accidentally noticed each others' stares. Matthew adored being his specimen. He knew his presence gnawed at Dominic's faith and he loved it. He was drunk with excitement every time they interacted, because the priest himself was such an interesting case, as well.

But Matthew also knew that whatever they felt wasn’t sanctioned, if it even had a definition other than sickness. It was the primary reason why he couldn’t let himself confess again. As much as he enjoyed it, he knew it only damned the two of them more. He couldn’t do that to the priest, especially when he’d been trying to save himself.

Still… there were times when it became too great to contain. The obsessive lust. 

One simple thought became a long-winded daydream, and then an entire fantasy. Matthew knew it when they left the parish again. And it only stirred from there, intensifying after each interaction.

Dominic.

His name alone spoke to the tenderness of his heart, and the loving fidelity to his faith. His purity was a revelation to the boy, who had never known such kindness. Matthew yearned to be swathed by his affection. To be swallowed in the deep ferns of his acceptance. To understand how one can breathe the same air God gave, when oxygen had no supply for him. 

By thirty days since they first spoke, Matthew was in knots. Thirty days, and the boy still writhed with his affliction. His sickness, only spinning deeper after every interaction.

Matthew swallowed and the thickness of it made his stomach churn. Dominic was on his mind again. In his home, in his bed, he had perverted every sense and those beyond. A thought came to him. The same that made his knuckles clench into the cushion every night. He began to sweat, the yolk of his insolence running hot and heavy. 

It seemed a confession was in order.

Notes:

Just to clarify, this whole chapter starts 29 days before Lord's Day and plays from then to the end of October... Oki

Chapter 5: 16 Hours Before Lord's Day

Summary:

Winter begins to take autumn's place, and with it, the cold claims more than just Matthew.

It had been almost a month since Matthew’s last confession. Not that Dominic was counting. But if he did, it would have been thirty days. Again, not like he was counting.

He clutched his rosary every time Saturday came around and gazed at the confessional’s bench, a void sitting where his pale sinner should have been. But he didn’t give a hair of interaction or acknowledgement before the ceremonies. Nothing but a cold shoulder during worship. Dominic wished Matthew had said something. Anything to break his wound and let bleed. But nothing gave.

Yet, in the parish, he was just fine.

Every day that classes hadn’t taken up his time he anticipated seeing Matthew. Even when he was busy, he spent his time thinking of the next he’d see his devoted. But when Dominic saw him at church there was a strange air about him. It was different from that in the parish or their last confession. Stone-cold and foreboding.

Matthew sat on a pew in the back row, away from the crowd and still drawing their eyes like flies to a lamp. Dominic was surprised to see Matthew devote his time to the church everyday, in contrast to his ritualistic appearance at Sunday Mass. Even more so that he’d participated in every prayer, listened to every gospel, and even attended a baptism throughout the month. 

The change in demeanor wasn’t something Dominic brought up whenever they met in the parish. The idea alone of asking Matthew gave him goosebumps, for fear that he’d drive him off. He left himself to ruminate with the assumption that Matthew had taken the church seriously. That his coldness was just his attention to God, just as Dominic implored him to do. That, he was quite hopeful of.

The pastor's sermons had begun and Dominic witnessed him at a distance from the ceremony. Dominic observed the sneers and up-turned noses from those during service, and Matthew’s apparent indifference. The boy listened all relaxed and with a posture so tuned and statuesque. His skin, rich and porcelain white like sweet jasmine. With a face so carved but softness that mocked the surrounding paintings. 

The chilling autumn seemed to simmer in the heat of Matthew’s otherworldly air. Even amidst summertime’s death, his grace was unmarred and brilliant. It stirred Dominic and his gut wrenched with the sickness of his obsession. He detected a faint but dangerous fire within himself, for a grudge against Matthew’s relentlessness–-to keep his beauty and body to himself. He prayed the thought off his shoulders, but it lingered like an itch that wouldn’t budge. 

His depravity intensified whenever they caught each others’ stare by accident. Dominic saw it. How those azure eyes called with the same hunger his stomach bellowed. Hankering for scraps, for crumbs of the warmth they found in the parish together. Cowled by the dregs of what they shared and desperate for more. Like a beggar rattling his jar of change. But the boy never let up, despite his visible need for something more.

And still, the gravity they shared did not follow into confession those days. The boy remained to himself, quiet and acknowledging. He erected himself with discipline, and the priest could not understand for the life of him why. Whether he was honest or not, it wasn’t until that Saturday of confession for him to make his decision.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” Matthew began, signing the holy cross.

His voice was soft-spoken and warm to Dominic’s ears. Although they’d only last talked since the parish, Matthew’s absence from confession made him anticipate their next interaction more. 

“I’m glad to see you came back and you’ve committed yourself, Matthew. What do you confess to?”

“I can’t stop thinking about you.”

Dominic froze. A few words alone was all it took to surge his blood and sweat in the clustering, climbing heat. 

“Father, I need your salvation. I can’t go on without it.”

“I… My salvation?,” Dominic stuttered, confusion growing as did the condensation on his temples. His tongue tightened to swallow but all he felt was chalk and powder. 

“I don’t think I can place my faith in God like you do. I just don’t think I have enough strength for that. But, Father, if it's what I need to find your acceptance, I will.”

The more he explained, the deeper Dominic’s confusion grew. Even worse–-despite his trust that the boy had been practicing to reconnect, it appeared to be insincere.

“I’m sorry… Matthew, your being in the church this week… Your participation and prayer… was to appease me? Am I correct?”

“I want to be holy to you, Father. Only you. So, yes. If that’s what it means to keep your respect.”

“Why me?”

“I-I’m not trying to offend you… Honest. But I can’t lie to you. I’ve been here for a while looking for something. Anything to still me, give me a reason to keep control. I’m trying to find it in faith, like you said. But it’s been so long, and… and…” Matthew’s lips moved like a horse trots, all speed with one foot in front of the other, cohesion or sense out the window. Until the end, when his words obscured into the confessional’s buzzing and dizzying silence. When the exhaust in his throat amplified his soft and honeysuckle voice all ample with need. “And I can’t keep searching for this feeling you tell me I’ll find… When I already know it. When it's confessing, and talking to you. Like bloody divine intervention…”

“Matthew, please…”

“For once, someone believes I have a soul. I still don't understand it, and that’s not just because everyone else tells me otherwise. But it doesn’t matter because you do believe. And I want to do right by you to keep that trust. Because so far, you’re the only interesting thing in my life that grounds me.”

Dominic was silent.

“Your face… I know I sound crazy. Just let me prove myself to you, Father. I can be so good.”

“That’s not the problem, Matthew–-”

“Matt,” the boy corrected again. It was grated and barbed, insisting on nothing else. But the priest couldn’t allow that to be. What brittle morals he held would crumble by allowing the boy to chase his praise for ‘purpose.’ Regardless of the fact that his own fascination no less muddied the waters of blasphemy. 

“Matthew. I can’t offer you the freedom you’re seeking in the same breath as God. My acceptance isn’t yours to hail over his.”

“The Lord doesn’t promise me acceptance, Father. But you do.”

“Is that all you want? To fit in and feel a part of something. Will that satisfy you?”

“I want to feel like I exist, to feel alive. And for it to be recognized. Is it so wrong that you’re the only priest–-no, person, who’s given me that? When the Pastor, the townspeople, my own girlfriend can’t extend the same?” Coldness cradled his words like a vagabond in search of home. He really hadn't aged, not in body or mind. Just a misguided young adult squalling for affection with but a blanket to secure him.

The acrid and bitter air prickled Dominic’s skin. He could feel it. Angst and frustration so palpable that its scent hung over them like a foreboding grey cast. He looked back at Matthew, his rackety finger anxiously carving divots into his thigh. Affliction and misery singed the fragile boy’s voice, whose magnolia flesh burned for the priest’s response. But despite his growing impatience, Matthew still composed himself for the respect he had toward Dominic. That was apparent to the priest--the boy’s rosy face awash with grief for his immortal misery, and the subliminal tenderness for his adoration of Dominic.

It was morbid captivation, and almost admiration they’d shared for one another. For the freedom that Matthew exercised. And for the infatuation that Dominic held which undermined his faith.

“Matthew… I accept you. I thought that was clear. You don’t need to earn my interest or my endearment. You have it… But I can’t let you worship me, I’m sorry. I don’t even hold myself to that pedestal. It’s not mine to keep.”

The boy’s tinged complexion faded for cool ivory, brisk and collected. Dominic couldn’t make heads or tails of his feelings. His face was stoic and eyes unblinking. Dominic felt a little guilty, as if he’d crushed the only thing that gave Matthew a flicker of hope. But for some reason, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the boy’s devotion hadn’t been addled one bit.

“Why don’t you tell me… how you and your girlfriend are doing?” It was an awkward shift for Dominic to make, but felt necessary for the two. 

There was about ten seconds of silence. Or was it five… Perhaps even three, he couldn’t tell. It felt like a damn hour, for all he knew. The temperature was stifling and sickly in the cramped confessional until Matthew’s snicker broke it. That same sweet voice that once praised the grace of God in gospel. Strange, but a charming one.

“Right… Well, I think she’s pretty fed up with me, honestly. Reasonably so, I mean. Probably won’t survive, this relationship.” His voice was ladened with ease and exhaust. But every word was so uncertain.

“Why’s that?”

“Things have been tense for a while. I think we’re just sick of each other at this point. I mean, we haven’t really argued until recently. But I think the rumors and the silence are making her face things.”

“She doesn’t know you’re a vampire, I take it.”

“God, no,” Matthew bit his breath. “Er, sorry. No. Well, she’s heard the rumors. We met when the Pastor, er, disappeared, so she’s aware of what they say. But she doesn’t press me about it. And I don’t mention it. Don’t think it’d do us any good. We’re sort of in a limbo, all awkward like that.”

“Doesn’t sound like you care much.”

“I don’t think there’s enough room for me to care, really. Everything I do just upsets her.”

“How so?”

“Well, I don’t sleep, so we hardly share the bed at night. She never sees me eat, so we never go out. Fucking for once I thank God for the English gloom 365 days a year, or I’d never walk out the door with her. Shit, we’re not even intimate anymore.” 

There it went again. That uncertain and beguiling laughter. Dominic felt a pang in his chest, equally nervous and entertained.

“Fuck, you’ll never believe this,” Matthew continued, voice gilded and laced with pleasure. “She caught me getting off and got pissed because I couldn’t ‘owe her the same.’ Like it’s a fucking courtesy.”

Dominic nearly choked. 

“She is justified, though. I’d screamed out ‘sir’ so fucking hard when I came that I didn’t even care if she’d heard. I bet she’s still set off. I wouldn’t know, I sought you immediately after that tiff.” Matthew continued torturously, voice suede-like but thick and heavy that seemingly whispered on for eons until finding Dominic in his desires.

He was taken aback at the relaxed attitude the boy carried. As if his words didn’t leave the priest’s world in shambles-–his faith in complete knots with the uncertain feelings that it had kindled.

He knew it was a tease. He didn’t dare glance back at Matthew, as he was afraid to find even the hint of a smirk. He could tell in between the silence alone that he was pleased with himself for stirring the priest. And yet. The dripping cadence of those words inflicted him. Like a melting candle snuffed at the wick, he was utterly blinded. Dominic wished he was stronger than his desires. But infatuation, whose slave he was, abounded him wholly.

“Tell me more,” the priest urged with the wind beaten from his chest. Matthew smirked knowingly.

“God…,” he pronounced with grit. “I’m sorry, Father. But ever since our extracurriculars, I’ve been having this… fantasy. I’d imagine you like this, now. Tense and all hot like Hell’s just around the corner. With your cross still around your neck, clutching it as you always do… And you’d touch yourself,” Matthew’s voice grew heavy and rasped. “Even though you knew that cross wasn’t worth a damn thing anymore.”

Sweet Mary, hold me.

Dominic sprawled with a dizzying fever, all his world charred to ash with the image of his body in cinders. Surely, this was death. Because Heaven never felt so close.

Maybe he was right. Dominic thought to himself, and the consequences of his indulgence. His insolence, which he cursed for all the confliction it had spun, proved how little he truly regarded his faith. How he fostered a power imbalance–-How cruelly he deterred Matthew from any real support–-How he could indulge such selfishness. And yet, the boy continued without Dominic’s prohibition.

“Fuck, it made me cum so fast every night, I could never catch it in time. And the next morning, I’d still go to church. I couldn’t even look at you… Thought I’d lose it.” 

Dominic thought he might pass out. “Matthew… You… I thought..,” the priest stammered, heady flavor of salt on his lips with sweat that bore the seed of his sins. Between the screen, he could make out the faint and haunting smirk on the boy’s face. Still, those icy blue eyes penetrated every vertebrae of his with chilling beauty.

“I’m serious about devoting myself, Father. And I promise I was then, too. If you don’t want me to worship you, then I get it. But I’m not going to stop. I’ll keep proving myself I’m worthy to you. In as many ways as it takes, however long.” Honeyed and coy, his words weaved around Dominic like a wreath. Justly stinging as its barbed twigs.

All the priest’s years of devotion, relentless ideation and belief, had been completely gutted from him. With his entrails on a spindle, Matthew spun and wrung him with lucid swiftness. Every ounce of Dominic's strength clawed to retain a semblance of composure, but his nails dirtied with blood in doing so.

“Matthew, my faith... Your life… Your girlfriend. This isn’t appropriate for either of us.” Dominic’s voice was in shambles, his eyes half-lidded beneath stern and contorted brows.

“You can’t still think she means anything to me, Father.”

“I don’t know what to think anymore.” 

Matthew paused, seemingly to gauge Dominic. The priest was wary of his own heavy breathing, and how the gritty feeling in his throat sank with each knobbed swallow. In the midst of a cold tension, he was aware of everything in his body: his thickly bobbing Adam’s apple; his nails digging into the fiber of his trousers enough to tear a stitch; his heart, on the cusp of cutting flesh with every hard thump. He could see the boy appraise him, almost drinking in his sight as he would the exposed blood of a victim. He wondered if he was quenched. For a moment, he might have hoped so.

“I’ll do anything you ask me to…”  

For the first time since their last confession, Dominic felt true terror. His fingers wept with blood and the tattered evidence of what little conviction he had left. Cruelly, the priest felt closer to Heaven with each coax of his. And yet, the heat of Hell’s descent blew against his body the further he fell.

“I’d kill her if you want me to.”

“No-–”

“Sink my teeth into her flesh, if you want me to.”

“Matthew, that's not what I-–”

“Pray to God with the same tongue that’d taste her warm blood, if that’s what you wanted.”

Dominic fell silent, his offense nulled by the intense pulse in his heart and lower waist.

“Kill her nice and slowly... Slick my fangs in her blood and drool with red… Sing your praises as I drink my fill of her… And all you’d have to do is tell me, Father.” 

Dominic’s heart pumped fast enough to bruise. A heart already so fickle as though cobbled together by mere corks and patches. At any second, it felt like it could burst. He even pressed a palm to his chest to check if it really had.

Such audacity, he couldn’t believe. In a church, during confession, and to a priest, of all people, Matthew uttered vulgar obscenities with gilt and grandeur. One that preached Dominic’s name with greater conviction than the man to his own God. Despite taunting his religion, the boy still spoke with reverence to him. As though he truly held the priest with higher regard than his savior above. 

In truth, Dominic admired him. He was fascinated, yes. But somewhere throughout their encounters, he’d found respect for Matthew. For how honestly he exercised his freedom, and his courage to challenge the church in doing so. For his resentment against the snarling flock. For his strength beyond every tumult that rocked his ship. He represented the liberation that Dominic sought in all his years. The higher purpose he found in his dreams, and nightmares the same.

But in all of his adulation, Dominic could not indulge murder. That, he would truly curse himself for.

Dominic looked to his side anxiously and saw Matthew’s curtains blew outward. He had gone so swiftly, no longer than a second's quiver. And just like their first confession, he came back to him.

The boy audaciously took up what little space the priest already had in his corner. They met eye-to-eye, so close their proximity stung. It was such a quiet morning that the room only filled with the patters of Dominic’s heart. He feared Matthew could hear it, too.

The boy lowered his knees to the floor and moved closer. Dominic couldn’t move. He didn’t want to.

“W--What are you…”

“Kneeling before my savior. Shall I pray, too?” 

Hell’s heat condensed over Dominic’s forehead. But all he could feel was Heaven’s cool touch as Matthew dragged his tongue over the priest’s bulge.

“Matthew…” Melting, silken pleasure cascaded down.

“Oh, lord. You're already hard as a brick. Poor thing. Fuck, and you're thick too. I can feel it…” The boy squeezed the lining in the priest’s trousers. Dominic dug his nails into his clenched thigh when the boy pressed against his balls.

Soaring, spiting, roaring, riding pleasure. Ecstasy so good… so good his fingers tingled to the crescents of his nails. So good it fluttered in his chest like a frock tumbles against the wind. So good that blistering sunbursts scorched his legs where he feared standing might turn him to sawdust. So good… Too good, even. For him.

“Matthew, please.”

“Let me taste you, Father.” 

Fuck.

Dominic knew he’d lost control when he felt himself sputter from inside his tight uniform. He couldn’t give Matthew any more. Not for those precious lips or smooth voice that called his name like something of a prayer. It hurt him too much. For once, he forced some ounce of strength from the dregs that Matthew beat from him. Despite the sickening excitement burrowed in his subconscious. 

“I can’t… I can’t be here. I’m sorry, Matthew. Just… go.” 

Before he could cave in to the look on Matthew’s face, the priest budged out from the confessional. The boy called for him, to no answer.

Dominic headed for the parish, trying his best not to choke on the pit in his throat. Not for his repulsion or disdain. But the ache in his chest that chimed Matthew’s name like a church bell. A maddening ring, it was.

Snowfall had begun to bury the cobblestone path when Dominic arrived. He traced the parish like muscle memory, heading straight for his seat at the front pew. Ahead of him was the large cross that towered over his body all meek and grain-like. He appreciated feeling small at times. As though his problems were just so, the same way Matthew made him feel. But he couldn’t trust himself to confide in him.

Dominic’s breath hitched in the cold as he pulled a cigarette and lighter from his pocket–-something he kept after scolding one of his students for it. Funny, how he seemed to be disobeying his own code at every turn. 

His face brightened with warm sparks beyond the blue dawn of winter as he lit the cigarette in hand. He took a long drag and soon enough his lungs filled with flinty relief. Although he hadn’t smoked in years, the first inhale came to him like a sweet greeting. Something much needed.

“Fuck…"

Dominic leaned his head back and exhaled one more cloud of ash. His head lightened as did the tightness in his chest. But it did nothing to quell the problem at hand.

He stared at the engravings on the ceiling. Archaic decals and symbols of Christ enshrined him above. They looked down at him, the weak man who neglected his faith from the moment he met the sinner. Before that, even. Dominic thought to himself and noted a pattern. All the moments in his life when he thought the more he preached–the higher he ranked–the more purposeful he’d feel. From the beginning, he was self-serving. Forever bound to his needs and his alone. 

His conversations with Matthew only proved so. The priest bit his bottom lip reflecting on his insolence. The same kind that he’d admonish others for in church.

Another drag, and he pondered. He stared at the cross as the heavy body of Christ stared back. Dominic clasped his hands together and with a cigarette wedged between his fingers, talked to God.

He did not ask for forgiveness. He wasn’t sorry for feeling as he did. But in the same breath as many of his peers, he begged for an answer. A resolution to the confusion in his heart, and direction from there on. More than ask, he pleaded for the answer. One minute longer and he would have been on his knees beckoning for a voice to heed his call. To give him relief and guide his feelings. For some kind of divine intervention or answer.

And so, there was Matthew.

 

…

 

“Knew you’d be here,” the familiar voice rang. “Didn’t know you smoked. Is that even allowed?” The boy’s voice was different to his earlier catty tone. Like their previous conversations in the parish. Woolgathering and idle gibes and sunsets like sweet blood oranges. Dominic wanted to return.

He turned his gaze from the cross to Matthew, who towered over him in the same fashion from his sitting position. The boy sat beside him. 

“I haven’t since before I was a missionary. And no, it’s not.” Dominic didn’t mean to sound cold. But the boy’s eyebrows quivered sadly and he couldn’t help the subtle pang in his chest.

“I’m sorry if I angered you. I-I mean, I…,” Matthew stammered innocently, all bravado lost for the same casualness reminiscent of their first real conversation on the pews. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I did mean everything I said…”

Dominic wasn’t surprised. He didn’t expect the boy to take everything back. He didn’t want him to. As he already knew, Matthew had more conviction for his beliefs than the priest to his own religion. It both terrified and fascinated him. For one, how it uprooted an entire lifetime of faith. But also how it illuminated it in a different picture.

“I’m not hurt by what you said.” Dominic released a final drag of his cigarette before stomping it out under his shoe. He looked back to see Matthew’s shoulders relaxed and face attentive. “I’m just… confused and upset at myself.”

Matthew’s expression was difficult to make out. Dominic found a shade of remorse in his eyes. Yet his lips pulled with the indication of relief, perhaps contentment. Once again, the priest found himself wholly bound, as though it wouldn’t be the last time. Like he’d always be gravitated, forever to circle around each other in fervor and fever. 

Dominic was growing weak to his resistance. But ultimately, he knew it was bound to crumble.

“I’m hurt for wanting you so bad,” he admitted.

Matthew exhaled. Like deja vu, the priest felt his breath on his collarbone. He did not move, did not flinch away again. For once, his brain and body steadied in sync as he anchored himself to the moment, careful not to let it slip.

“You want me…” Matthew smiled tenderly. His voice was soft as a wisp.

“I do. So terribly it hurts like a knife.” Dominic’s internal turmoil had not ceased. But he could feel it. The twist in his gut against the flutter in his chest. His world began to melt into the palms of soft and pale jasmine.

“Did you mean what you said… about your girlfriend?” Matthew nodded. “I’m… glad.” The priest released a heavy breath and smiled.

Matthew confirmed to him what sinister lengths he’d go to prove his worship. But Dominic was pleased, noting only the boy’s absolute faith. 

“I’d do anything for you, Father. Anything you ask of me. You’ve given me so much more than you'll ever know… I just want to show you my appreciation.”

“I still don’t understand why, you know? What draws you to me?”

“It’s hard to… You just never walked away from me. You truly listened to me, and tried to understand me. And I liked talking to you because you let me. But... I could also tell you liked talking to me, too. And…” He took a large breath in, as though his body was too small to contain all his energy. “And that’s so interesting to me. I’m so curious about you.”

Dominic didn’t notice how tense his body was until he let it rest. Matthew was a revelation to him, that was true. Even from the beginning, he was completely entranced. His fascination was never anything he could ever accept so easily as the boy. But all Dominic knew was that he wanted him in his presence as much as possible. In the moment, the feeling had never been greater.

Dominic was pleased to let Matthew do as he wished. Pleased to study him, analyze him, interpret him. He’d spread himself on a table to be dissected if that’s what he wanted. Under Matthew’s blade, Dominic would feel honored–-worshiped. There, he’d feel of true worth.

But he simply allowed himself to smile and bask in the iced atmosphere with him.

“I like you,” the sinner spoke sweetly.

“I like you,” his priest repeated.

“And you’re not just saying that because I’m a vampire who could easily kill you?”

“Easily? I'm a little bigger than you, give me some credit. I’m not going down without my teeth in someone's leg, at least.” The two laughed. Finally, a morsel of warmth to snipe at the creeping winter.

Matthew moved his arm to prop his head against the pew. He studied Dominic with a smirk lifting his thin lips and revealed his glossy white fangs to the priest, no longer hidden with detestation. Dominic mused without protest.  

“You’re the most interesting person I know,” Matthew snickered.

“You’re not serious. I’m a small town priest who follows every law in his life.”

“But you don't, though. Because you acknowledge me. That’s just the thing I don’t get.”

“You fascinate me, Matthew. From before I even met you, I just knew you were extraordinary.” Matthew sunk further into the palm of his own hand, counting on every word like the seconds passing by. “You’re the wish I dedicated every prayer to. A promise of something greater than myself.”

The boy leaned closer and the hairs on Dominic’s neck rose to attention. He continued, entirely consumed by the rosy tint formed over the other’s cheeks. His azure eyes never seemed brighter. 

“I’ve always been in a mire of belief and faith, never sure of it but sticking to what I know because… I’d have nothing if it was gone. You, though... You were shunned by it, ridiculed for it. And still came back. You have this freedom that I both envy and find myself starstruck by.”

Matthew sat with stars in his eyes. Light shades of pink crept under the boy’s lids down to the tip of his nose. Dominic noticed a misplaced hair from his other disheveled strands and brushed it back. For the moment he grazed his forehead, his fingers felt its feverish heat. Whether it was his imagination or not, Matthew was warm.

Matthew’s lips tugged into an awkward smile before he forced it down. The look of anguish on his face worried Dominic. “Am I straying you from God?”

“I'm pursuing happiness. If he's mad at that, he's not a great god, is he?”

Matthew paused and gave in. “No, I guess not.” 

Dominic joked, but his words were true. His religion was not shattered by his revelation of Matthew. It felt reborn. Despite how suffocating the church felt, he still appreciated the guidance it gave him and what he believed. But he could also grasp that any loving God would inspire him to follow what felt right.

He was grateful to the boy, for breaking his mundane. For challenging his ideals and reinvigorating himself. For breathing life back into his lungs.

“You’re incredible, y'know,” Matthew smiled once more. Dominic was at a loss to what he owed him. The entire world, he thought. But in its place, he settled for something more tangible.

The priest leaned closer to the boy until an inch or two separated them, no different than the confessional's partition. Only then, he was not bound by the church or its restrictions. He was free.

Their noses brushed and Dominic stroked his upper lip against Matthew’s, a hint of excitement eager to feel him in full. Once he finally had him, the priest sighed like the world’s oxygen supply escaped his lungs. Freedom tasted like heaven and stars on Matthew’s lips as they finally surrendered.

Frigid thin lips met Dominic’s, plush and pink. The priest truly grasped at once that he was embracing a cold-blooded creature. Whose veins and heart froze still. Who did not surge with blood the way he did. And, yet. The deeper their embrace, the warmer Matthew felt. A billowing heat had conjured and consumed them.

Dominic’s tongue eagerly swept the other's. The air grew thick and stifling between short and hastened breaths, their warmth emanated by the priest. But in the rising heat, Dominic truly understood what he always knew. That Matthew–-chilled and cemented-–was human at his core. Under his brash exterior, he was warm. With the spirit of a heart, and of a hearth. Regardless of his chilled breath and frost-bitten hands. He was an entity separate from the distasteful flock. A person, wholly unto himself, despite everything. His pale jasmine in bloom.

Dominic smiled and despite his closed eyes, he could feel Matthew’s lips twist into one in return. He allowed himself to enjoy everything separate from his internal anguish. He allowed himself to embrace the moment. To melt into the tender and lithe softness of mingled tongues. To burn fiercely from within like scathing coal fizzles under cool water. To bite warm, wet lips as though tasting supple and ripe fruit. 

Soon enough, tongues met teeth in smooth and rapid movement. Dominic lathed himself over the roof of Matthew’s mouth. Over his sharp incisors and under his veined tongue. He relished in his taste, so crisp and wintry like a breeze captured on his lips. 

If he were any less grounded to Earth, he’d question if he truly heard the boy whimper after an indulgent tug of his lower lip. But it rang clear in the echoed parish and made Dominic’s head spin. A voice that sung with the softness that only a nursed infant knows. Without thinking, the priest moved his hand to the back of Matthew’s head and tightly knit his fingers in between soft brunette locks. 

He lightly sunk himself deeper into the boy, who clung onto Dominic’s clerical collar. They tasted one another with quickening urgency, feeding and delighting like cannibals–-running messily with saliva as blood, and biting as though ravishing a meal. Dominic felt he might pass out amidst it all. So little kept him down, as though he could float on air if his body wasn’t bound by flesh. 

Every breath was like absorbing the atmosphere around him. Like every chemical, element, and matter in the universe surrounded and coursed through him. Something so intricate as the beginning of time felt so simple as a kiss… Felt so real as the grasp of hair, or the grope of God… Felt so tangible as grapes from its vine, the sweetness of its wine, and whine, Matthew persisted.

Dominic felt the blood in his veins searing, boiling, demanding. His heart, which fluttered in amusement, began to race excitedly. Electricity radiated throughout his bones, his own spine teetering until his abdomen grew taut.

He knew what he had begun to feel-–the rush, the anticipation. The promise of what was to give and come next. But as their embrace sped, so came the noon’s light.

The ceremony.

With remorse, Dominic slowed his pace and parted his lips from the other. Matthew’s hankered lips consumed him one moment more and Dominic’s trousers grew tight when a polished fang grazed his lips. The twitch in his briefs gave a sign to slow for the morning.

“Careful, you’ll knick my lip,” Dominic teased. Matthew snickered and apologized sweetly. His strange laughter brought the priest to serenity and anchored him back to the world. Once their breaths had settled, the two gathered themselves awkwardly. But it felt natural to them–-the nerves and anxiety. Before he could even notice, the coil in Dominic's stomach unraveled and he felt peace.

He turned away from the window and Matthew laughed once more.

“What?” The priest caught his contagious laughter. 

“You look more dead than I do.” Matthew rioted.

Against the light beams, dusky pits of shadow hollowed Dominic’s eyes in his corner of the parish. He smiled, picturing his gaunt image. He moved closer to Matthew and shared in his light, which looked so natural to him.

The boy continued his fit, voice high and delightful as warm rays enshrined him in a glow. Sunlight had begun to blanket over and the boy glistened like amber in the fading Autumn cast. Worship could wait.

Dominic leaned inward to catch Matthew’s softness on his lips once more. He held on patiently and firmly while the light sizzled the boy’s skin, although Matthew clung longer than intended to spite the burn. They broke with the struggle for more and Matthew rested in a pillar of shadow before he could char. It reminded the priest of who he adored, and the consequences of it. He ached to see him hurt. And he ached to know they would part so soon before the sermon began. But before he could think it over, his mind was already set on seeing him as soon as possible.

“I think… you should come see me after study. I’ll be seeing the morning worship through, then teaching for a couple of hours. I'd like to see you there.” There was a pitch of amusement.

“Will this be a private lesson, Father?,” he drew with a swaying timbre, much to the priest’s pleasure.

“Dominic. Call me Dom, please. And yes, after classes are over and the congregation’s gone… I’d like to teach you a few things myself.” Matthew’s icy blues glowed with profound dimension despite the darkness. He revealed his fangs once more in a charmed and hellish smile.

“Frightening. You gonna beat the devil out of me, or something?”

“How does this sound, Matthew… You worship me, no? You want to be saved…” Dominic lowered his voice huskily, earning a pleased sigh from the boy. “Why don’t you show me how much you want it. And if you’re good enough, I’ll absolve you… Will that do well?”

“Fuck… Yes. I’ll be there, Fa–Dominic.” The priest’s throat tightened. His name sounded so sweet in Matthew’s candied voice.

Dominic smiled, grazing his hand against the boy’s forehead. The same displaced strand of hair fell before he swept it to the side again. “Right. Meet me here at midnight. The church and everyone around should leave by then. And there’s an elder’s office in the back end where I’ll be.” 

Matthew snickered. “I feel like such a heretic. We’re really going to fuck up some geezer’s office?”

“Or would you rather I bend you over the pew and punish you with a splinter?” Dominic joked. But Matthew bit back a groan at the insinuation.

“Fuck, you can have me anywhere you like. God, I could be on the damn cross, I don’t care.” 

“Language, Matthew,” Dominic scolded.

“Ah, right. I’m sorry, Sir,” Matthew dragged sinfully. The priest’s stomach lurched, pained that he wouldn’t hear him repeat it until midnight. “I’ll do my best to please you and be a good boy, I promise.”

“I’ll expect nothing less from you, my most devoted.”

Dominic’s chest swelled with the sinister inclination. His heart, diced beneath the boy's blade, urged him to slice further and further. To break skin and make him feel adored. To crack his brittle ribs with a blushing and bursting heart. To blink and still hold each other without the passage of time flickering it by. He wished for nothing more.

They gathered themselves toward the door, floorboards creaking loudly under the shared weight of their footsteps. 

“On time, no exceptions,” the priest asserted.

“Anything you say, Dominic.” 

Hellbound hadn’t begun to cover the priest’s damnation. 

Notes:

Lord's Day is upon us. Bring your crosses.

Chapter 6: 1 Hour Until Lord's Day

You sleep. I hope it’s sound.

Chapter 7: Lord's Day

Summary:

Bear with me guys

It was ten past twelve and Dominic’s mind frayed with each passing tick of time. For one, anticipation, and two, fear that he repulsed or frightened Matthew. He tried to keep himself preoccupied with setting up the place. To clear his mind from the possibilities of Matthew’s absence.

Dominic looked around the office in wait, appraising the surroundings to make sure all was in order. Despite the parish’s archaic foundations, it held its own. The desk lamp was battery-powered, at least. Dominic turned it on and lit a few red candle sticks he’d found around the area. 

Maybe a little old fashioned, but still atmospheric. 

All four corners of the office glinted with perfectly maintained timber panels. In contrast, dust and cobwebs clung about the walls like garland. It accented the bookshelf, with scores of toppled and withered novels in the same aged condition. Dominic dragged his pointer along the spines of every book in the center row. He grimaced with the dust collected on the pad of his finger and rubbed it away seamlessly. He figured they were best left untampered.

Most importantly, the priest situated the desk area. There were a variety of office supplies: scribbled sticky notes; a few pens and their caps chewed; a vintage monitor chipped by the frame. All but the small lampshade to the corner remained on the desk. He felt a little guilty for clearing its objects. As if in doing so, he’d disturbed a still moment of history. The church’s beauty, despite its sins, remained its one purity. But Dominic was pleased with the results of his cleanup. The desk’s mahogany complexion hadn’t gleamed as beautifully before once wiped over. 

He held his breath at the decor beside it. An incredible stained glass window outlooked the snowy dunes in translucent silhouettes. Its semicircular frame held various panes, all rich in color and glittering against the lampshade. Jagged and fragmented beams of brilliant blues and violets streamed across the wooden desk. In between cool and warm hues was the one white panel, a cross. It carried its own glow against the light as its rays scattered about. Dominic was beside himself at the sight. 

Finally, just below the desk, he saw his messenger bag tucked away in the far end. His heart sped just thinking of its contents. Of the things to come and what the night promised.

Yet, even then he could not shake his anxiety. Quickly, it had been almost twenty minutes past their set time and the priest’s lips stung under his bite. He wondered what Matthew must have been doing, or who might have seen him. Which then turned disappointment to worry as he pondered the possibilities of the boy being caught at such a late hour. Especially with the given rumors and the town’s apprehension, the priest cursed himself to think inviting him was a good idea. And there was the forest. Nothing to note about it, just… a strange feeling whenever he crossed it on the way there.

His heart began to pick up speed and with each minute that clicked, the idea of leaving to find the boy seemed more appealing. It wasn’t long before the priest pursed his lips close to the candle’s wick to quiet its flame. 

Please don’t leave me, he kept in his thoughts, like a prayer. Dominic swallowed a breath before he nearly blew the candle out. The moment he set his wish, however, a chill surrounded the room. He stopped.

“Don’t leave me,” Matthew’s delicate voice called starkly against the quiet. In the dead of night, he stood at the door. His azure eyes glistened like blown glass, so unworldly against the brilliant red that washed his hands. A single droplet fell thickly onto the wood flooring, its sound as heavy as an iron anvil in hot wax. 

Dominic was awestruck. It seemed Heaven’s angel carried a flaming pitchfork.

 

…

 

The cool air threatened to hush the candle’s flame. But it flickered persistently against the flinty shadows on Matthew’s face. It revealed his pained and starving expression. For what, Dominic did not know. He did not care.

“Don’t leave me,” the boy pleaded with trembling hands. 

Dominic’s blood supply stilled like a pinch in his veins. He froze tensely for a moment, taking in the sight ahead of him with as much calm as he possessed. Matthew’s wrists shook and brilliant red droplets fell as heavy as bullets. The sound of its thick patter, like searing and dense tar that threatened to tear the foundations below them.

In the shroud of his fear and confusion, Dominic almost wanted to hold Matthew’s image as long as he could. 

“Bless the lord, you’re alright,” Dominic moved to embrace Matthew, whose skin bit with the cool of winter. “What happened?”

“I-I’m sorry. Some-someone saw me passing. I dunno who–some bloke knew who I was and s-saw me near the parish… I-I…” In his arms, Dominic felt Matthew turn his head to look at his hands. The priest released himself and took the boy’s trembling and dirtied wrists in his grasp. 

“Shh, it’s okay–you’re okay. Don’t worry, everything’s fine,” he mumbled.

Dominic’s heart sank to think of the likely cause of Matthew’s appearance. He’d be damned to lie about what he provoked. The sins he incited, he adored and feared.

“D-Dom… I couldn’t… I didn’t…” The boy’s breath interrupted every word. Dominic tried to assure him with his hold.

Matthew’s fragile hands shook in Dominic’s grasp. The bold red blood glistened with its freshness and carried an acrid metallic scent that manifested on Dominic’s tongue. The crimson drooled onto the priest’s hand as he tried to temper the trembling boy. Dominic’s fingers wove with Matthew’s and delicately wiped some of the blood onto himself. But its color stained the boy’s pale skin underneath and only dirtied the priest as well.

“Matthew.” The boy seemed dazed. “Matt. I need to clean you up. Come on, you can’t stay like this.” Finally, his head raised and he nodded in compliance.

Dominic removed his hold and collected a water bottle from his bag. He definitely didn’t think he’d be using it for anything but hydration. But with Matthew, nothing was ever certain. 

The priest gestured for the boy to move his hands over the trash bin, where it collected the liquid poured liberally over his forearms. Dominic made sure to completely cover him and watched as blood thinned in a translucent stream down the bin. He continued pouring with one hand, the other wiping away any excesses.

By the last droplet, Dominic threw the bottle away and took Matthew’s cold, wet hands in his own. He gently dried him with the desk’s tissues. Quickly, the box emptied as the trash bin filled with water and bloodied paper. 

The boy’s hands cleaned quickly enough and the priest sighed with relief once it was over. Still, there were remaining hints of pink tinted under his skin like a spiting tattoo. Dominic’s fingers mapped out the rosy stains over his frozen blue veins. He swiftly grazed his fingers, how long and slender they were. Matthew’s hands were so big in his hold, but gentle with the fear of withering anything under his touch. At some point, Dominic realized his trembling had calmed and finally let go.

“Hey, are you alright?” The priest bit back his anxiety.

“Could be better… Thought the water was gonna burn me for a second,” he laughed awkwardly.

Dominic felt the warmth return to his body and the calm gradually came back. “I’d have to bless the water for it to be holy, you fuck. Anyway, you didn’t stop me.”

“I knew I’d have been fine.”  

Silence fell over the priest for a moment. He just wanted to hold it for a few seconds longer and let the tenderness linger. But he couldn’t stand to think of the possibilities of what happened.

“So-”

“I didn’t kill him. I swear it, Dom.”

“Hey, I believe you,” Dominic held the boy close and lulled his suspicions. He did believe him. But he couldn’t lie to himself and say he was completely innocent. “Just… tell me what happened, okay?”

“Fuck, I’m such a fuckup. Shit.”

The boy frantically cursed to himself across the office, feet skirmishing with the floorboards and hands that scattered to ground himself on something. His hair, his arms, his shirt–anything to touch as if it’d make the situation any less surreal. Dominic leaned on the desk, waiting patiently and allowing Matthew the time to collect his thoughts. But at some point, his mouth seemed to never still until Dominic made it apparent.

“Hey, it’s okay if you’re scared–I am, too. But you can talk to me.”

“Right, s-sorry.”

“Don’t apologize… Just tell me, please. Forget confession and the church, just let me listen.”

Dominic noticed the boy’s chest rise and collapse steadily. He’d finally settled as he stepped closer to speak.

“That man I told you about… I swear I didn’t actually kill him, or bite him or anything. I wanted to, but…,” he quivered. “He recognized me–one of those religious psychos that booted Mum and I years ago. And he saw me. I mean, t-the look on his face… Paler than the snow, I swear.”

Dominic leaned intently against the desk. His hands clutched onto the corners of petrified wood in anticipation of the worst.

“I took a book to the parish and stayed until evening. A few hours before we were supposed to meet… and I-I just left for home before…” Matthew paused to swallow. “I can’t exactly blame him. A vampire at sundown, skulking around for nobody to notice. I wasn’t taken aback when he came up to me, threatening me.”

“Matthew, did he…”

“He didn’t hurt me. But he still made me fucking sick... If you could hear the shit he said, Dom. As if everything he was taught is just words in a book…” He nodded off. Dominic felt frustrated when the boy clicked his tongue and brushed his anguish off. But there was something sweet about Matthew's offense toward the man’s blasphemy. “Anyway, he started asking me all these fuckin’ questions… ‘What’re you doing back.’ ‘Who’d you kill this time.’ ‘Do you have any shame for the pastor.’ Like he fuckin’ knew anything.” 

Matthew placed his long hands over his face and rubbed his eyes. His wiry brows narrowed, revealing his straw-like veins just under his forehead. He let off with a fatigued sigh and heavy eyes that blinked wildly, but fixed and inexplicable. 

“I’m so sorry, Matthew. You shouldn’t have been through that again…”

“Please… Please don’t hate me, Dom. Don’t leave me,” Matthew pleaded. His eyes glistened icy blue against his pink and wet waterlines. Dominic’s breath stilled when a faint droplet caught on Matthew’s lower lash. 

“I won’t leave you, Matthew. I could never be so cruel, I promise. Please, just tell me what happened to him…” Dominic brushed the tear away and let the boy continue. 

Matthew cleared his throat and stiffened his shoulders. “I-I fucking lost it. I just… I fucking couldn’t hear him say another thing… I’m not usually violent. Not at fucking all. But all I saw was red, it didn’t even cross me to check myself before I started hitting him. And I knew my strength wasn't… It’s not like everyone else’s.”

Matthew stared at his hands, the frightful weapon. “I couldn’t stop once I’d started. He was a piece of shit, but he wasn’t like I last saw him… The b-bloke, before the incident. He could hardly swing at me before I had him spilling blood on the floor. The snow… I still remember the impression he made on it. Like a bloody angel. And he just kept cursing me, cursing my Mum. Over and over and fucking over again, until he couldn’t speak anymore…”

Dominic’s grip against the desk’s edge tightened and sweat misted under his palms. “I believe you, Matthew. If you didn’t kill him, then I believe you. But how are you here? What… What did he do?”

“I almost…” The boy exhaled heavily. “Every nerve in my body wanted his blood. It wasn’t to feed or to kill. I just wanted him gone from my life. I can’t even describe it. The things he told me… I’d never heard anything more hurtful. What he thought I did, or would do. Worst of all, some of it was true. I couldn’t let him walk away from me, not when I finally held his life in my hands… But I kept thinking… Fuck, this sounds so fucking stupid.” Matthew’s voice lilted with the pit in his throat.

“I thought of you, Dom. I would’ve beat the brains out of that bloke if I didn’t remember what I’d come for. I couldn’t lose it all and prove to everyone their fears. That I’m a sinner and nothing more. A monster without virtue.” Strength bled in his conviction and it was never more apparent in the softness of his words. “But that’s wrong. I have worth, and I’m not everything they think I am. Even if I really am cursed to destroy everything, if I’m not human, I’m still as real as you say I am. I’m just as worthy to be redeemed.” 

Dominic’s body relaxed beside the desk. All of his weight leaned against it like he’d fall if not for something to anchor him. Despite the tension, he felt completely familiar with the sensation. From the time when Matthew intimidated Dominic and even when the priest washed his own bloodied hands, the feeling never changed. Matthew’s pull was like something cosmic, like the eternally bound tail of a comet. Dominic’s worry faded into static and all of his soul was captivated by the boy in blood. He was wholly his.

“I couldn’t do it, Dom.” Matthew paused and the candle’s wick threatened to go out with the chill that consumed. “I let that fuck go. And I’m still here because I implied to him… I threatened him not to say a thing. So, he’s gone by now, if the weak fuck hasn’t died of a heart attack yet.”

“Matthew, you’re brilliant… I mean… You’re just fucking brilliant.” Dominic stood firmly with pride and bewilderment. Once more, his eyes met pure azure blue and he was entirely starstruck.

“Dom, I-I… I just couldn’t…”

Matthew struggled for words and Dominic hushed his lament with a deep embrace. The boy held him close, clawing the back of Dominic’s uniform as though holding for dear life. 

The priest was beside himself. He sighed into Matthew’s shoulder and silently praised the Lord for keeping him safe. But secretly, he was thankful for the encounter, and to know how resilient Matthew was beyond his imagination. 

Despite the tumult of their relationship, Dominic’s heart finally settled at the realization that it was all necessary. He truly believed Matthew was human, and that he was no different from the others, in mind and spirit. Even as he held him close, his pale flesh and still heart did not chill Dominic’s warm and sunkissed body. 

The priest wrapped around Matthew and worshipped every deep breath that he drew. How he smelled so fresh like blooming jasmine, and felt so plush like the snowy thickets. Dominic nipped the neck of his bleeding star and tasted his quivering lips as Matthew sighed with the burn. He kissed him tenderly, empty of seduction and entirely awash with devotion. Hints of copper mellowed under his tongue with Matthew’s scent all hung about like sweet fruit. Dominic fell into it with a dreamlike stupor. He was so irrevocably, eternally, biblically damned, and undaunted by it. 

Dominic held Matthew’s soft face with blood under his nails. Honest, raw blood. Matthew returned to him perturbed.

“Dom… I want this, still… But if you don’t–” The priest mirrored Matthew’s look and held his stained hands. 

“If I don’t want to do this? What changed? You said he’s gone.”

“Still… I-If someone finds us–”

“So what if they do? I've got nothing left to lose... I doubt you much, either. Fuck, it felt like eternity just to hold you in my arms…” Matthew’s eyes lit like wildfire, both life and death in his gaze. “Stay with me, please…,” the priest cried out.

Matthew answered his plea with a delicate and deep kiss, one that Dominic leaned into with all his strength. The boy’s frigid lips grew warmer under Dominic’s wanting tongue. 

“I want this… Fuck, I need this as much as you, Dom. But if we’re doing this, I can’t go back. Neither of us can… This–us–is all we have, it’s the only thing that’ll ever ground me. I need you to promise me you won’t leave–”

Dominic interrupted Matthew with lush lips and quieted the tongue that filled every corner with sound. He’d laugh if the boy didn’t scare him to death with his words. Matthew always seemed to ramble at the speed of light when he was invested or worried about something. It nearly blew the priest off his lid at times. “Fuck, Matthew, of course.” 

A kiss once more.

“I’ll never leave you.”

Another kiss.

“I swear on my life.”

One final kiss before he felt Matthew’s soft smile against him. 

“Jesus, you’ll suffocate me,” the boy snickered. 

“Language,” Dominic teased firmly. His arms wrapped tightly around the boy’s waist. He felt so fragile in his arms, so lithe and articulated. Dominic pulled him closer until they shared in the cloud of their haggard breaths. 

“Oh, forgive me, Father. Will this mean punishment?” 

“Dire,” Dominic smiled. The creases against the corners of his lips deepened and Matthew stared at it intently. He mirrored his smile softly and settled for a look of contentment. 

“I am serious, though, Dom. Look at us, we’ve only known each other for two months. Not even… I’ve only actually known you for a month since I came to worship. I just–I just want to be sure.”

“Does it need to take a year? Maybe twenty, for it to feel any more real? Matthew, I’ve waited my entire stupid life for my purpose. I can’t let it slip through my hands when I know it’s with you.”

“Of course, I feel the same… I just don’t want to ruin everything you’ve built–not when I can crush it just from my presence alone. Everything I’d loved, everything I’d cared about… I had destroyed.”

Dominic’s lips lifted gently, his bewilderment entirely overshadowed by fervor. “You told me something once that I never forgot. Something I keep with me from every morning I wake... ‘A love fated to die, or eludes reason, deserves to live before its breath can be snuffed.’ Don’t you think so, Matthew?”

The candle’s light flickered warmly against the boy’s skin. Sharp shadows and an amber glow casted against his expression, where the priest found something profound in his eyes. His brows relaxed, and the sky and stars were seen in his gaze. Just before Dominic’s sight, he saw Matthew’s soul give into bliss. 

“You… love me.”

“I love you, Matthew,” Dominic affirmed softly and no different from a silent breath.

Matthew’s eyes lowered to the sunkissed skin peering from under Dominic’s collar. He sank his lips over smooth flesh and the priest leaned into it. Dominic drew a sharp breath in, taken aback by his eagerness, but entirely consumed by his own to bother making a note of it. 

Matthew’s hand moved to tug his collar lower as he lathed the hot skin underneath with his tongue. Dominic’s head felt hot and heavy and he careened it back to allow for Matthew to tease his Adam’s apple. With his unattended hand, Matthew held the priest’s head in his grasp like a feasting cannibal, or a thirsting vampire, so to speak. But the boy’s fangs resided to himself as he coated and kissed excitedly. Dominic’s throat bobbed thickly with the pool of his desire and want, Matthew’s full tongue prodding and teasing his air supply. 

“Yes… Yes…,” was all the priest could drunkenly whisper.

Matthew’s tongue resisted and continuously traced over the veins and sinew under febrile flesh until he moved up to his jaw. The boy nipped and sucked the priest’s scalding skin wildly. Dominic could only keep his eyes shut tightly, mouth open and inviting. But Matthew did not give just yet. 

“Dom… How will I learn my lesson if you don’t teach me?” The priest recognized his coaxing cadence at once. His blue eyes were wide and cat-like, entirely enslaved to his lust. “I need you to discipline me so I never think twice about refraining from blood, Father. So that I’m absolved…”

The two were so closely bound, it was nearly suffocating. Dominic was certain Matthew could feel the object of his strain growing tighter by the second. He recognized the arrogance that it instilled in the boy, who was completely aware of his hold on the priest.

“Please save me, Sir.” There was his tone again, dredged from abyssal desperation and desire.

The priest withheld all his need to groan despite his pent-up frustration. He figured as Matthew’s senior in the congregation, it was his duty to save him. Even if it was with suspect methods, he had no objections to do so.

“If I punish you, I expect you to comply. Will you do that, Matthew? Even if it tortures you.”

“Yes, anything. I’ll do anything you need me to, Sir. God, just please…” Outwardly, he begged to be washed of his sins. But internally, he cried for the warmth and willingness of Dominic’s body.

“He won’t be the one saving you, Matthew. I think it’s time I taught you that,” the priest drew lowly as he leaned in for one more kiss. He latched firmly, their lips rich with hunger. 

Matthew’s mouth opened to answer until he was claimed by a wave of wanton, waxy pleasure. He sighed in Dominic’s hold, both overwhelmed with stimulation and the desire to spill his thoughts and feelings at once. But amidst the heat of pleasure, he could only whisper, “please …”

Dominic released the boy with one kiss to his forehead, another to his heart, and two mirrored on both ends of his shoulders. The final, a kiss on his delicate thin lips. “Amen,” the priest blessed. Matthew was silent, simply smiling as sweetly as the clementine cast against his skin.

It killed Dominic to disturb his peace. But the two were committed as much as the blood they shared on their hands. Dominic took the moment to finally prepare himself and looked toward the desk.

Matthew watched as the priest bent behind it to lift the messenger bag from underneath. The boy’s eyebrows twisted suspiciously as the bag clamored in Dominic’s hands. Its disturbance revealed an interestingly metallic noise alongside others that Matthew could only interpret as strange trinkets. He visibly swallowed when Dominic put the bag on the office chair. The priest looked at him with hands teasing its zipper, reluctant to open just yet. 

“Do you remember the cardinal sins, Matthew?”

The boy looked back from where he leaned on the desk. “Er… Yes, I do.”

“Good. Because if you want absolution, you’ll clearly need to temper your behavior,” he drew mockingly. 

“Really, now? And how do I act, Sir.”

“Listen to yourself, so insolent and arrogant. You know you can get whatever you want, and you take it.”

“I have you, don’t I? Out of your own volition.” Matthew’s attitude was a force that seized Dominic. He knew it, too. 

“Don’t deflect… You sign the cross everyday and still act like the heretic you are. But it’s okay. I’ll make sure you understand the consequences of your actions.” Dominic’s heart picked up with the excitement of his newfound confidence, especially as Matthew groaned in admission. “Starting with…”

Dominic finally unzipped the bag, all while keeping his gaze on Matthew’s low-ride jeans and tight shirt. He nearly smiled to himself at the boy’s audacious wardrobe. The reveal of his soft white navel alone almost made the priest submit to his knees. That went without saying how his form-fitting black tee hugged his slender waist deliciously and… Right. Where was he…

“Your clothes. Strip for me.”

The boy looked back with wide eyes, but not entirely surprised. His gaze was filled with more excitement than anything else. He lifted his shirt easily over his head like an eager virgin would. Dominic gritted his teeth as Matthew revealed the soft porcelain expansion of his skin. He noticed the cavity under Matthew’s lungs as he stretched his arms to release the clothing over himself. Swift release gave exposure to the rigid hills and dips over his prominent ribs. The freckles peppered around his chest and hardened nipples. Thin thatches of brunet hair that laced down his abdomen and disappeared under tight denim.

The boy smirked when he noticed the bulging frustration in Dominic’s trousers, which did not go unnoticed by the priest. 

“Don’t get too excited. This is a humility performance. Fail to grasp it and I'll force the idea into you another way.”

“Yes, Sir.” He continued stripping.

Matthew moved his hands to unbutton his pants where he slowly tugged at the hem. The priest was on the fringes of anticipation and anguish as the boy teasingly slid his jeans down. His stride was ample with confidence, the buck of his jutting hips to show for it. Dominic froze when he noticed the bare skin of his lower waist. No briefs. Matthew dragged his jeans further down until they dropped heavily around his ankles. 

“You’re such a whore,” Dominic mocked. He smirked to himself and counted all his blessings for the boy who stood in front of him, entirely exposed in the old church. 

Matthew stood awkwardly, with a rosy flush that nearly colored his entire body. He stood out of place and his hands immediately moved to remedy his half-hard cock. The figure was perfect, all ivory complexion of a slim shaft building to the warm rosy tip. Long and milky fingers roved out the softness of his sobbing head when Dominic snapped his fingers. While he would have loved nothing more than to simply watch, he couldn’t allow it. Not when he hadn’t learned a thing.

“No, don’t touch yourself. And don’t cover up.”

“Y-Yes, Sir.” The boy placed his hands loosely behind his back. His entire body was on display, in all its vulnerable and agile beauty. Dominic marveled at his waist, pelvic bones so pointed against jasmine skin. A sanguine blush that crept down his neck and rigid shoulders. The twitching butterflies over his ached and leaking cock. The priest could hardly gather his thoughts when such a perfect form stood before him, and desired him most of all.

“Matthew, I’m going to demonstrate every sin to you until you’ve grasped your disobedience. And if you succeed, I’ll absolve you as you like. Beginning with…” The priest reached deep into the bag, the same metallic clink alerting Matthew to attention. His hands held a phallic-shaped structure unfamiliar to the boy at first glance, until closer inspection. “I’m going to make you surrender your pride, Matthew.”

“A… A chastity cage, Sir?” Matthew swallowed thickly and with firm brows.

“Yes. And it will hurt if you don’t keep yourself down, I hope you know.”

The flushed boy nodded in submission. Dominic’s eyes followed the immediate twitch in Matthew’s cock, pleased by the fear and excitement in his stare. It tortured Dominic enough to keep himself contained within his uniform. But he couldn’t be so rewarding by taking it off just yet.

Dominic drew himself closer to Matthew and put the item in his hand. “Put it on.”

“What–me?”

“Well, it’ll probably be best if I don’t touch you yet… It’s gonna be hard enough to put it on, given your...” Dominic’s words failed him with the insinuation. If the sweat on his temples were any indication of something, it was his complete depthlessness. Both for the newness of his situation and the object. While he knew how it worked, its smaller size accommodated Matthew more than himself to be of any use to him.

“Right,” Matthew smiled, all burned and ruddy in a way that made his eyes beam. 

Dominic idly watched the boy take apart the odd contraption. He waited patiently with a funny smile as Matthew winced with the new feeling before finally clinging the cage to his balls. Once the padlock snicked, he was satisfied.

“Jesus, this is so Medieval. It’s cold as shit, too.” Matthew finally attached the cage and stood with broad, stiff shoulders like a puzzle too misshapen for its surroundings.

“It’s nearly winter, Matthew. Plus, cold’s probably good if you’ll fit into it better,” the priest laughed. 

“Very funny. You know I can’t keep it down, even now.” 

“Don’t worry,” Dominic closed in. He placed his hand on the cage and tugged on it, for security purposes or not. The boy bit his lip with the same fangs that could kill as the metallic ring around his balls stung under the pull. “It’s supposed to hurt. Or this wouldn’t work.”

Matthew drew curled brows and half-lidded, innocent eyes. Dominic adored it. The lust in his stare that was so untamed as if it ever could have been. 

Just breathe, the priest recited in his head. If his anxiety hadn’t been apparent, surely his body made it so with the thousands of carnations he blushed all over. For a second, he doubted himself and all they were doing. It was crazy, really. Diving head-first into the abyss with the town’s spited sinner as a celibate semi-virgin priest (did a handjob in seminary school count?). And he was sure there wasn’t a Bible verse that mentioned pre-marital sex with a blood-sucking vampire, so he was completely out of his bounds. But it also excited him. The newness and novelty of it completely charged his body and soul, as frightening as it was. 

Besides, he wasn’t a stranger to getting off. His supplies didn’t come from thin air, after all.

“Matthew, I want you to bend over the table for me.” 

The boy did as he was told eagerly, a bit bashful of revealing as much. It drove Dominic wild–not only his eagerness, but vulnerability and awkwardness. Every step they took felt unfamiliar and a bit frightening, but it didn’t matter in solidarity. Even better, the priest wasn’t new to leading. Although taking charge in such a way was far different from reciting verses in Mass, and far more invigorating. 

“Lower,” the priest demanded. Matthew’s body stretched like a feline, agile and slender. Dominic traced his hand down the boy’s spine, observing each prominent knuckle of vertebrae under his fingertips. He stopped at the small of his back and pressured him lightly. Matthew arched lower until the cold desk brushed his chest. “Good boy. You’re doing good.”

Matthew groaned with his head against the mahogany. He faced Dominic full of splendor. Dominic noticed Matthew’s breathing and relaxed to see he was fine in his position, given a few hitches from the cold desk. The boy’s back stretched perfectly for him and his image was like something of a painting. The projection of his ribs, how they pointed gauntly under taut skin. Or the way his challenged lungs dipped into his tight and fit abdomen. Fuck, and that went without saying how his back curved seamlessly and–

“Dom, Sir… What will you do to me?” Matthew’s voice quivered and Dominic noticed the pit of excitement in his tone. It shook him from his stupor and he gathered himself. 

“Just ‘Sir’ will do… please,” he muttered and there was something soft in his voice before he projected again. “This is a humility exercise, if you’ll remember. So I want you to spread yourself for me.”

“S-Er… Spread myself, Sir?” The boy bit back a groan as his cock jolted in its containment. Dominic’s lips twisted a faint smirk. 

“I think you know what I’m talking about, Matthew. You’ll do this for me, will you?”

“Y-Yes. Of… Of course, Sir.” As Matthew submitted, Dominic raked his fingers through the boy’s damp brunet hair. He grazed his soft locks and the boy hummed pleasingly. 

Just as told, Matthew arched his ass up to spread himself with his hands. Dominic stopped stroking his hair and watched as long, slim fingers gripped silken flesh. 

Dominic moved to take another item from the bag. Only, Matthew couldn’t tell whatever it was. Dominic’s fist hid most of the object, which Matthew could only make out as black and slender. He made his position behind the boy with his shoes knocking the wooden panels each step he took, teetering Matthew further on edge. If anticipation could kill, the boy was on life support. 

Dominic stood behind Matthew and lowered to suck and nip at his lower back, then his ass. He sank his teeth into the plush flesh as Matthew gripped with weakening force. Dominic hummed and gave into euphoria with the boy melting under his lips and teeth. Electricity crept down his throat when he tasted sweet and bitter sweat over his tongue. Like damn syrup, it was. 

Dominic adored the writhing and fragile body against him, and all of his soft whimpers. Matthew was his to worship alone and he enjoyed every blasphemous second of it. If he could make a life of simply tasting him, he would. He’d grow sore with the wracking and aching tension in his jaw like it clung by the loose hinges of screws and bolts, so long as Matthew was still pleased. But the priest released himself from the shaking boy before his legs would crumble.

“You’re so beautiful… Really…” The words slipped from Dominic like sleep talking.

“You’re so strange,” Matthew laughed, with just as much of an odd voice.

“Don’t get too comfortable. You’ll need more resolve than that.” 

Matthew gasped when Dominic inserted his finger into his mouth from behind him. The boy took it hungrily and lathed the pointer under his hot, wet tongue. His lips clung to it as he sucked and moaned with its deepening entry. The priest slowly moved his hand away and took the same finger to Matthew’s tense rim. 

Matthew jerked in his place at the cold and sudden wetness. But as Dominic circled his sensitive skin more, his ass bucked into the pressure. Dominic smiled as Matthew choked on the urge for penetration. He continued to wet the ring, whose soft flesh seared against his fingertips, wailing to close in on him.

“Feels… So good, Sir. So good…” The boy’s words melted into sobbing nothingness under the priest’s tender touch, with whimpers that chimed like sweet gospel.

Dominic ached to be so restrained by clothes. But he clung to the fantasy of anticipation like Matthew’s tight grip. Patience was one thing he understood well in school. He was determined to instill it in his student, as well.

The priest kneeled unbidden and finally permitted his tongue on Matthew’s hole. Matthew’s legs shivered and his nails dug deep impressions into his skin. He’d finally relaxed when the sensation became more familiar. Dominic’s tongue pressed against his sensitive rim cautiously. Every initial drag was with a shaken breath for something so foreign to the church, but just as exciting. He dragged himself over Matthew’s dripping warmth and delighted in every untamed moan that followed.

“Fuck me, you’re so soft… so…” Dominic’s words faded into the throes of desire.

His tongue glided over soft, smooth cheeks and followed the dip into his rim. Wet, hot and ready muscle rolled over Matthew’s puckered hole and prodded harder with every clench. He eagerly mapped out its grooves and softness, its contractions and sobbing heat. The sensation was divine, unlike anything he’d felt or done to himself. Matthew was perfect, so perfect. He took the priest’s touch excellently, even with splinted and buckled knees. Even when Dominic was so far out of his depth that each action came from the unspoken fantasies he’d repressed. He took him so well, even then.

Dominic wasn’t sure where to go from there. His heart thumped wildly on the prospect of something still unclear to him. But he let pleasure take the reins as he continued sucking and kissing delicately. He wasn’t bound to give up until Matthew’s flavor was impressed on his tongue for hours after. 

Plush and warm lips worshipped his white jasmine, who glistened with the sheen of sweat and heat all over. When he closed his eyes, Dominic noticed Matthew’s heavy breathing and the rattle of the cage against the desk. He then opened to notice the tension in Matthew’s position, how he squirmed and writhed against the mahogany on the cusp of breaking. That, coupled with moans nursed to honeyed perfection by Dominic’s touch. The boy was suffering and completely content by it–enjoying it, rather. Dominic was pleased to have someone so perfect–someone who could mirror him as clear as the end of a looking glass. 

He figured the time was good as ever to finally use his other item.

“Breathe and stay still, okay?,” the priest assured. He saw the rise and dip of Matthew’s shoulder blades with one large exhale and took the moment to press the button.

Dominic had used the prostate massager a few times before. Despite Catholicism’s restrictions, prohibition of self-pleasure never exactly grazed his understanding. That, and a handful of things explained in the Bible. But with all things that brought contentment in moderation, the priest couldn’t care much for its judgement. If anything, he’d almost considered his cherry popped with the array of… things he’d done to himself. But his head thawed at the thought of trying it on someone else.

The priest applied the vibrator around Matthew’s rim, where he experimented with light and heavy pressure around the muscle. 

“F-Fuckkk…Oh… Mother of fucking…” The boy’s composure fell like grains in an hourglass. 

A groan slipped through Dominic’s lips while Matthew’s cock continuously writhed in its containment. Dominic exercised more pressure, teasing his hole and pushing in just close enough to almost penetrate. The boy muttered under his breath one curse after the other seamlessly like drunken drabble. It seemed he might have broken when Dominic gripped his inner thigh enough to leave crescents where his blood-stained nails dug. 

While the toy abused Matthew’s rim, Dominic directed his mouth elsewhere. He stroked his tongue against the perineum, where he spat and teased its smooth tissue. The image alone nearly drove him off the edge; saliva slipping thickly under his hole and running a glossy finish down pale thighs. He sucked delicately, careful not to bite when Matthew had already begun to lose grip. 

But Matthew’s composure was at the edge of the cliff until the priest opted to take hold instead. He insisted that the boy put his hands on the desk, to which Matthew responded instantly, probably relieved by the retrieval of nerves in his arms again. Dominic spread him with one hand and in his place, coated the toy with his saliva to slowly prod it inward. The moan that fell from Matthew was thick and flinty, his hips dancing into the stimulation like a coaxing finger. The priest dug the vibrator further in, searching for the moment when the boy would crumble. 

Dominic knew his way around toys well, suspicious as that was. He knew he hit Matthew’s sweet-spot in a matter of seconds when the boy jerked into the object all rabid and needy. Dominic wrung it around inside the boy and let his sanity drip within the molten hot pleasure he knew so well. Matthew’s hole responded to his motions, tightly gripping and tensing around the toy like its removal meant death. But the feeling didn’t come without its frustration. Matthew groaned from his caged restriction and the priest caught his hand sneaking under himself. 

Dominic slapped him firmly on his ass, earning an unexpected whine. “No touching, Matthew. I’m serious.” His voice was direct and domineering. It shook the boy and he passively placed his hand back on the desk. 

“Sir, it hurts so much… I need to touch it, please,” he cried. The priest didn’t have any doubts about it. He was sure the boy was a hair shy from insanity if he didn’t do so. But it was one vice he couldn’t allow.

“Patience, please. This is all for your absolution, if you even want that still.”

“Yes. Yes, I do, Sir,” Matthew continued with a faint and rasped voice. “I just didn’t expect–”

“What? Didn't expect it to hurt you? Matthew, salvation is pain. It's torture sometimes. But I intend to teach you composure and humility, even if I have to beat it into you.”

Matthew inhaled deeply, unwillingly sinking the vibrator further in. He silently submitted to the priest’s demand. The boy buried his head in his arms and allowed for waves of electric pleasure to lull him into relaxation. Dominic remained in position and spread the boy with a tense grip. One hand massaged the red imprint while the other displayed him further. 

He lightly blew on Matthew’s hole, which twitched at the sudden cool air. Dominic held his breath at the overstimulating sight. Perfect, puckered and pulsating flesh that seized under every touch. His skin set on fire at the thought of acting on his impulses. Without another blink, he set on realizing whatever came to mind. He wiped a faint smile from his lips before moving under Matthew’s balls. Dominic lowered further for his tongue to curl against the soft tissue. 

“FUCK–fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck… God, Jesus, fucking...” The boy muttered on like a revving motor with quivers and cracks between words.

“How’d your girlfriend let you run off with a mouth like that?” Matthew kept to himself and his curses. As much as the priest should have admonished his mouth, he allowed the expletives to fall from his sweet and wrung voice. The Lord’s name had never sounded so good. 

Dominic’s warm tongue persisted torturously against the sweat-glistened tissue and nipped at its smooth skin. He was unsure if Matthew could feel his smile as he lathed him sinfully from underneath. He’d like to think so. He enjoyed the thought of Matthew writhing above him, clutching the air for its oxygen, knowing it was futile as capturing a cloud. The boy clawed the skin on his arms as his prostate took the brunt of the abuse. And with sanity that frittered on the edge as the cage clung from his suffocated balls. The saliva under Dominic’s tongue only pooled further at the images in his head. 

The priest pressed his tongue deeper into the tissue and felt his throat tighten when the cage clamored. Matthew’s cock was absolutely weeping in his confinement, evidently twitching harder by the minute. Dominic noticed its different appearance than when the cage was first put on, choking all rosy and swelled. His poor, whimpering sinner was harder than he could bear. Yet, all Dominic wanted was to hear the padlock clatter against the metal again. 

Dominic took Matthew’s balls in hand from behind and massaged it tenderly. His fingers stroked slowly into its softness before dipping them into his mouth. Despite its unfamiliarity, the priest followed his lust and sucked with unyielding force. 

“Oh, God…,” was all that the boy could whisper before slamming his head into the nest in his arms. His voice was faint, and like a daydream, muttered unconscious nonsense.

Dominic took him deeper and stroked the tissue against the walls and roof of his mouth. His tongue scattered to wet and press against him urgently. He nearly choked on his spit if not for the pause to swallow. But in doing so, his throat tightened and compressed Matthew’s balls harder until he was gagging with a sopping mouthful of the boy. Then suddenly…

“Sir… Sir, I can’t–mnh… ”

There it was again. The clamor, and Matthew’s shaken moans. Dominic felt it at once. The heady intoxication that fizzled in his ears. The roving and riding sensation in his lower abdomen that churned like heavy quicksand. The knot of sin that settled between every bandy cartilage and creaked his bones. His quiet yearning had become a primal need.

“Sir, please. I can’t keep this on, I’m gonna… I won’t last.” 

Dominic hoped to ease Matthew’s condition by releasing his balls, settling for soft and slow kisses.

“I can’t keep myself down… It hurts so bad.” The crack in his whimper forced the priest to stop.

“Matthew, you begged me to save you. If you were already, you wouldn’t be in this situation.”

“But I’ll never come down like this. Not when you feel so… God, it just fucking hurts.”

Dominic felt a little sorry to indulge so much pain. But his guilt washed with the twist of Matthew’s smirking lips when he stood up. 

“Really, now. You want me to release you, then? I can assume you’ve learned your lesson?”

“Yes, Sir…”

“And you’ve learned humility, yes?” Dominic slapped the same bright red impression on Matthew’s skin. Incredibly, the boy moaned. “Now that I’ve stripped you of your clothes and dignity, you understand your actions? Your pride?” Another slap to the same red hot marking and Matthew whined sharply, damned smirk still faint.

“I’ve learned my lesson… Please–” Matthew’s cry crescendoed like a weeping howl when the priest inserted the vibrator deeper in. “FUCK– ” His voice chimed across all four corners of the office. The priest pulled it out before going too far, giving one last drag around his sopping rim.

“‘Please’ what?” He looked down at the boy, who returned to him overburdened with pleasure.

“Please, Sir. Release me, please… Fuck…” The boy finally caught his breath without the tantalizing protrusion. Even so, coherency slipped on his tongue like butter over a burner. He simply wept and pleaded, the docile student he was. “I'll be good. I promise I'll be so fucking good. Just please take it off…” Matthew lifted from his bent position and leaned back against the desk. He confronted Dominic at the same level, seemingly to show how tortured he really was. 

Matthew massaged the priest’s erection from over his trousers using those same eyes. The kind that had its fill like wine tipping the rim of its glass. His hand coaxed Dominic’s bulge like fucking magic, stretching and stroking skillfully. But his touch signaled no sense of control over the other. It felt more like a plea–a cry for relief as told in his gaze. Dominic stared back with heavy grey eyes that echoed the same desire. 

“Fuck… If I let you go, you’ll be good, right?”

“God, yes. Please, Sir. I’ll be a good boy… I’ll be so fucking good for you, Sir, please. I swear it.”

“That’s a swear, Matthew… I do take that seriously, so I’m trusting you,” Dominic affirmed with a stern tone dissimilar from the other playful ones. The boy nodded.

Dominic took the key from his pocket and kneeled in front of Matthew’s throbbing cock to free him. The chastity cage unclung from the boy’s balls and shaft easily. For the moment, the priest brushed his figure to unfasten the trinket, ultimately falling in his grasp. Matthew sighed when his hand grazed him like all the air in his lungs collapsed at the touch. His face was so profound that it caught Dominic entirely off guard when warm white stripes spilled over his face. The priest’s head shuddered when his plush lips and rigid nose were spattered in his thick release.

Dominic was at a loss for words.

He looked up at Matthew, whose head tilted back in the throes of ecstasy. Above where he looked were engravings of angels and crosses across the ceiling, seemingly where Matthew was at the moment. No, he couldn’t focus on Matthew. Dominic hardly had any room for amazement in the suddenness of his student’s finish. If anything, his shock was overshadowed by the situation that engaged him. And curiosity.

Dominic looked up with wide and unknowing eyes at Matthew’s euphoric rush and back at his cock. He stared hungrily at the leaking figure and fought any hesitation to taste him. He needed to know. 

Dominic’s tongue strolled over Matthew’s tip and lightly licked its seeping delicacy. With lessening apprehension, he sucked the head and noted its silken smoothness against his tongue. Unreal. He was as divine in his beauty as was his flavor. The priest bobbed his head inward and sunk into the shaft further until guzzling on spit and cum. He curiously tilted his head closer, where his lips could drag near the base and his nose grazed soft brunet hair. Dominic’s plush lips stretched to contain Matthew’s width when he nodded to fill himself further. Then even further until the back of his throat tightened at the protrusion and it took his depleting air supply to realize breathing from his nose wasn’t enough. Dominic released himself with Matthew’s sticky and sopping finish webbed from his lips to the boy’s balls like a sodden mess.

“Dear Fucking…” Matthew’s graveled voice cascaded until disappearing in the wash of pleasure. 

For the moment, Dominic observed him. Or rather, admired. As the boy’s head leaned back, he revealed his sharp collar and the expanse of pure ivory flesh. Dominic was captured by every swallow, every constricted tendon and muscle that worked underneath. Every twitch in his abdomen in between a few seconds like its butterflies urged to escape. Every step he walked, every breath he took, and every word he whispered was sincerely beautiful.

“Matthew… Matthew… Matt.” Dominic let go and called for the boy who clung to the clouds more than the earth.

At some point, the high wore off. “Oh, fuck… God, you’re a mess. I’m so sorry, Sir.” His voice was light and airy, the residuals of his come-down still apparent.

Dominic stood to confront the other close enough until he felt the boy’s breath shudder against his stained face. “Sorry doesn’t cover it, Matthew. I’m so disappointed in you.” Dominic maintained his character, but he couldn’t be more pleased with the boy’s resolve. “You swore and lied to a man of the cloth, used the Lord’s name in vain, disrespected me and yourself as well… You’ve been so bad.”

“Mnh –I… Fuck… ”

“Look at you. Writhing and gagging for it. I’d have given you my cock if you controlled yourself. However, I think punishment is in order.”

“I’m sorry, Sir. Please, I can be better for you…”

“Yes, you will be better. I’ll make sure of that.”

Dominic walked to the bag once more, only with greater confidence in his stride. His nerves charged like electricity pulsed from the edges of his fingertips. Tasting him, touching him, conditioning him. Dominic was on a high he didn’t want to end. If all went to plan, it wouldn’t have to just yet.

Matthew waited against the desk. His body relaxed as evident in the smoothness of his breaths and drunken gaze. Dominic couldn’t help but notice the boy's persistent hardness. After everything, his hunger was yet sated. 

Dominic scuffled in the bag, once again making an intriguing racket. He caught Matthew’s attention at the sight of lube. The priest smiled when the boy’s face lit up. He smiled wider when Matthew’s expression turned from amusement to confusion once he’d unclung something from behind his neck.

The same rosary he clutched so tightly as though it’d save his soul hung from his hands almost as to mock him. It was a beautiful item. Small glossy beads hung elegantly, accented by crystalline blue jewels that twinkled brilliantly against the light. Much significantly were larger, bulbous beads that segmented every row. And finally, the holy cross, which hung heavily in its engraved golden beauty.

Matthew swallowed deeply. “I-Is that… That’s for what, Sir?”

“What do you think?”

The boy parted his lips and shut them all at once. But hesitation killed. “Does this mean you want me bent again?”

“Perceptive. Yes, exactly.”

“Right then…” Matthew gathered himself onto the desk once more, like an eager dog awaiting request. His hips even swayed excitedly, making Dominic’s hardness all the more torturous to ignore–especially as the boy’s hands moved to spread himself again.

“No, don’t touch yourself this time,” the priest ordered. “I want your hands on the desk. Just let me do everything as long as you do as I say. Understand?”

“Yes-Yes, Sir. Of course, anything.”

“You did break a swear, Matthew. I can’t let you forget that.” Dominic leaned closer to the boy who bent stiffly below him. “But you’ve also been so good for how much you’ve taken.”

Matthew watched the priest draw back to tug on his collar like he suffocated in its taut fibers. 

“I want to reward you for your submission, my faithful student. And because my cloth is already dirty, I think it’s only right that I take it off.” Dominic set the lube and rosary beside Matthew.

The boy’s nails scraped the rich mahogany, leaving jagged and superficial marks. Dominic swallowed at his remarkable strength. Matthew’s hard cock pressed against the desk and ached by the second, its dripping fluid staining the wood. The priest’s stomach panged at the peek of his pink tongue, how it licked his hankering lips.

Dominic knew then to unbutton his shirt from the top down. He kept his eyes on Matthew, whose gaze did not yield from the priest’s moving hands. The first undone buttons revealed the pinkish and lively undertones of Dominic’s chest, and his tenacious rise in breaths. Matthew bit his lips as the priest’s fingers crept lower. He worked swiftly and murderously in how his slow pace killed the boy. But finally, his black cloth fell to the floor and exposed his untouched and pure body.

The priest was fit and firm like a statue with such still and raw beauty. His ribs accented against the candlelight, which caught golden hair trailed across his tight abdomen and veiny arms. He kept his clerical collar on, only emphasizing his bare and long neck even more. Matthew stared as though stalking his meal, a breath away from tugging his collar close to bite such vulnerable and supple flesh. With love, of course.

“Sir, please. Let me touch you, please. I’ve been good enough, haven’t I?” Matthew’s ass arched higher.

Dominic snickered. “You’re still so impatient.”

Dominic moved behind Matthew and leaned over his writhing body. His bare chest brushed over the boy’s back and they sighed in unison. The contact was smoldering with but ragged inhales to confirm they were still conscious. He closed in toward Matthew, hot breath condensing on the shell of his ear.

“Your next sin is greed. Since you’re so foreign to the idea of waiting, I’ll give you everything at once and slowly tear it away. Can you handle that?”

The boy whined in submission underneath Dominic’s imposing body. He bowed his head heeding and whispered a sultry curse. Dominic found his answer. Matthew’s skin was met with the cold again when he drew back. The priest collected the lube and rosary before kneeling where he could easily spread the boy.

Dominic’s fingers were cold and intrusive, but not unwelcome. He lightly rubbed the boy’s hole with his thumb. It was still warm and sensitive under the pads of his fingers.

He finally lubricated his hand and inserted one digit carefully at first. But as soon as the first went in, he added a second. He thrusted in and out with precision and a crumb of force when the boy clenched tightly. Matthew’s weeps and moans were soft as the hymns he’d sung, the added grit in his throat only tempting the priest harder. Dominic took it to mean more and he added two fingers until he filled the swelled and convulsing flesh up to his knuckles.

“God–fuck. Yes, fuck. Keep doing… Mph, please.”

Matthew felt tight and hot in his grip, but his digits slid easily as he began to unravel. Dominic added more lubrication before curling his fingers from the inside. The boy nearly howled at the sudden pressure against his sweet spot. Dominic could only imagine a feeling so pleasurable that a passerby could probably hear his cries. It drove him mad with the thought of Matthew’s tensed shoulder blades. The wetness that ran from his rim down waxy and weak thighs. Despite not having been touched, electricity and intoxication cracked down Dominic like the branches of a lightning bolt just at the derision of Matthew’s suffering. It was that anticipation which charged his every action.

Quickly enough, Matthew loosened as much as desired and Dominic released himself, where he set the bottle on the table. Dominic caught a whispered curse below the boy’s breath and he smiled. The boy truly thought he could catch a break. But Dominic stole it right from under him.

Twinkling gold and crystal beads clattered in his grip. For it to hold, he kept them unlubricated as he prepared the insertion. At long last, it was ready.

Dominic’s touch was gentle. The large bead went in smoothly, followed by a row of small ones. Like the others before, the rest entered easily. Matthew, however, was absolutely writhing at the intrusion. Various expletives, ‘sir’s, and vain curses slipped from his lips without clearance. The priest paid no mind. He continued working Matthew until the beads filled him where the cross hung from his sopping hole.

Dominic admired his babbling and broken student, all devoid of coherent speech. “You like that, don’t you, whore?” Matthew’s muffled whimper was like sweet confection. “Of course you do. All stuffed and gagging for it…”

Dominic waited a few seconds more for a response, but the boy was silenced by his bliss. 

“Matthew.” A stifled groan followed. “Matt.” Dominic lightly tugged on the cross and the boy’s head jerked up from his stupor. 

“You like that, right?” Matthew nodded no differently than a docile puppy. “I know you do.”

“Nng, yes, Sir. Please… Please, touch me.”

“So now you speak. Good. I’ll need you to keep that mouth running if you want it again. Even better… I’ll take them all out if you do as I say.”

He really did seem like a puppy. If his ears could perk, they would in a heartbeat.

“So? I’ll need you to use your words.”

“–Yes, Sir. Anything, I can do it.”

Dominic was pleased. “Such a good boy,” he followed with another tug. “And I can assume you haven’t been pretending to study scripture, right?”

“Of course not, Sir. I really did practice and everything…”

“So if I give you a verse, can you recite it?”

“Er, yes,” he swallowed. “I think…”

Dominic pulled on the cross just enough to sting, but not quite satisfy. The boy jerked into the sensation, a patch of goosebumps ghosted over his legs.

“Thinking isn’t enough. I’m going to test your faith and resilience, Matthew. And if you can repeat every verse perfectly, I promise to reward you. But should you get one wrong…” The priest’s foreboding voice quickly chilled Matthew stiff.

“If I get one wrong, Sir–” A sharp and violent wince interrupted the boy’s words when hot candle wax dripped over the small of his back. Dominic didn’t pretend to ignore the slight and needy whimper that followed. He placed the candle back beside the stained glass window, amused.

“Do you understand?”

Matthew replied with a faint nod and Dominic paused for a moment of clarity. 

“Matthew…”

“Yes, Sir?”

“It’s just Dom, now… You can tell me when it’s too much, alright? I-I mean, if you don’t want to do this…”

The boy looked back up at the priest, whose sharp grey eyes met his, devoted and absolutely beaming. “Of course I want this, Dom. It’s all I’ve thought about… Better, actually.”

“But if it hurts, you know you can tell me, right? And I’ll stop–”

“Yes, I know,” he laughed. Such a sweet laughter. “God, you’re such a virgin. It’s sweet. And fuckin’ sexy. Drives me mad.”

Dominic smiled awkwardly, his entire bravado whisked for lightheartedness. “How would you even know–”

“Please, Dom.”

“Right,” the priest heeded. Matthew snickered.

“How about we have a safe word? We’ll make it… James.”

“Saying another man’s name to kill the moment… It works, I suppose.”

“No, you twat,” Matthew smiled. “Like Jesus’ brother. Also may or may not be my middle name…” 

Dominic’s face lit up and Matthew felt his approval. He was impressed that the boy knew as much–relieved, most of all. And he didn’t second guess when he realized they shared a second name. It was fitting.

“Sounds good.”

“But you’re not gonna use it unless either of us are really itching to stop, alright? Because I’m not dainty and fragile. I’m basically fucking leaking at just the wax alone.” Matthew settled back into his arched position. 

“Look who’s giving orders, now.”

“You wanna try growing a pair before you take control.” Matthew’s voice was husky enough to make the priest want to break him down into pieces again.

“How about you just bend there like a good little bitch and let me take care of you.” Dominic licked his pointer and teased Matthew’s hole where the cross hung from its sensitive rim. The sound from the boy was fucking Heaven.

Dominic’s lean figure eclipsed the candlelight from over Matthew’s lithe body. His shoulder blades were so sharp, porcelain skin so tautly stretched over rickety bones. Every birthmark and graze of hair down his spiny vertebrae was a reflection of his beauty. Such angelic beauty, it was. 

“Now, I want you to repeat as I say, okay? I’ll begin with an easy one.” Dominic teased the beads swiftly, careful not to let slip. The boy nodded in acknowledgement. “Romans 6:12, Matthew.”

“‘Let not sin… er–therefore reign in your m-mortal body, to make you obey its passions.’ Sir.” Dominic beamed when the boy’s voice sputtered until ultimately finding stability. Despite their vain play, he honestly attempted to find conviction. And that was enough.

“Perfect, Matthew. You’re so perfect.” The boy’s stiff shoulders melted under the priest’s appraising kiss. “Since you’re so good…” Dominic’s voice faded as he lightly pulled a sequence of beads from his hold on the cross. He stopped after a few, surprised at the immediate response. Matthew’s head collapsed onto the desk as though coddling a pillow for strength, the whimper that followed like a tender cry. 

“Oh, God… Yes yes yes, please. Jesus fuckin’…” A string of blasphemous curses blurred by muffled groans followed Matthew’s short satisfaction.

“I want you to recite Romans 13:14, now.” 

“R-Romans 13:14…” Matthew cleared his throat. “‘But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.’”

Dominic smiled, charmed. “Exactly right. You’re doing so good.” He kissed the center of Matthew’s prickly spine where sweat had begun to drip. It was a bitter and salty kiss with a sweet scent that embraced him heady and wine-like. 

The boy bucked his hips harder in anticipation of his reward. To his satisfaction, the priest drew another series of beads. The second time was slow. Steady. Stinging. One after the other, every larger bead teased Matthew’s tight and abused rim. His sighs grew winded and raspy until the priest’s hand stopped. 

Dominic paused in the midst of pain and pleasure, the disappointment evident in Matthew’s face. Before the priest could give another verse, the boy rocked his hips slowly against the desk. Dominic wiped his amusement when Matthew continued to grind his cock over its cool surface. He was audacious to continue like it wasn’t so damn disrespectful. Like he hadn’t been admonished just enough. The filthy sinner, just aching to be taught better. Dominic clutched his waist with one hand, the other reaching for the candle. 

Matthew’s pristine back paled against the rich red droplets. He quickly and sharply inhaled between the cracks of his teeth. Melodic whimpers were interrupted by a whistling wince like the sound of cold water over a steaming pan. Dominic mused at the solidified wax and its nullifying effect on the boy. He easily flaked it off and gave the boy’s waist a tight but brief squeeze. 

“What did I tell you earlier?”

“No t-touching…”

“Right. So if you knew, then why’d you disobey me?”

“I’m so sorry, Sir. I just couldn't wait–”

“What, and getting off once wasn’t enough? Cumming on my face and cloth wasn’t disrespectful enough? You can’t follow one instruction, then.” Matthew’s shriveling whimpers felt like Heaven. The priest wanted it and nothing more.

“No–No I just… I can’t help myself, I’m sorry.”

“No, you can’t. You’re sick, aren’t you… Vile and sick, Matthew.” Dominic leaned closer and sent chills over the cuff of the boy’s ear. 

Matthew turned his head so they faced one another. “Yes, Sir. So sick… Please. Save my soul, please.” Dominic was consumed by the plea that dripped from his tongue like smooth lacquer. His chest tightened and flesh prickled as hot sparks emanated down below.

“Really? I don’t feel like you want it. Not enough…” 

“I’ll prove it to you, Sir. Even if it damns me, I’ll worship you. My savior… I need you.”

Dominic noticed the second Matthew’s gaze fell to his lips. He understood his urge at once. The hankering, stifling, sickening hunger to taste flesh. He knew it well because he felt it, too.

“Say it… Say it again for me.”

They were close. So close, Dominic feared Matthew might rip his flesh and wring his heart in one fell swoop.

“I need you, Dominic. My savior, my God.”

The priest felt his body shift. His teeth rattled, head fizzled, and ears rung like a heart monitor given out. For a moment–just a moment–he surrendered. Dominic kissed Matthew like he’d sunk his jaw into sweet and full forbidden fruit. It was wet and untamed–primal. The boy clung to his lips instantly and the two heaved gritty sighs when they finally entangled. 

Dominic leaned into the momentum, sucking and biting hungrily. Knowing his scent and flavor like teeth fit its grooves in an apple. He felt the sparks scatter over his tongue as it brushed the roof of Matthew’s mouth, his teeth, and his prominent fangs, before controlling his appetite to stop. The boy’s tongue lathed Dominic’s lips eagerly and writhed for more. But the priest answered him with a soft smile.

“You promise to do as you’re told?”

“I promise.” Matthew was calm as a purring kitten. Satisfied for the moment and pleased.

“Good boy,” the priest assured as he leaned behind Matthew’s relaxed body once again. “Can you still answer for me?”

“Yes, Sir. I can.”

“So if I give you Galatians 5:24, you’ll remember it perfectly?”

He paused for a moment and gathered his thoughts. “Galatians says ‘and those who belong to Christ Jesus have…’ Er…” 

“You can do it, Matthew. Or have you not read up?” Dominic tugged on the cross with increasing pressure. It felt compact after some time of neglect and instantly reminded the boy of its stinging sensation. 

“‘-JESUS… have c-crucified the flesh with its passions and desires…’”

“Very good, Matthew.” Dominic kissed his tousled hair with a pleased smirk.

The boy hummed with relief when the priest granted his reward. Softly and carefully, he dragged one bead after the other. Warm, melting pleasure came rushing back to him as Dominic’s hands worked smoothly. Matthew’s head dipped into his arms and he unraveled like twisted wires until it was over.  

“Now recite Peter 2:11, Matthew. I’ll help you, if that makes it easier.” The priest kept his hold on the cross, a passive reminder of his presence. “‘Beloved’,” he exhaled. “‘I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain–’”

“‘–Abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.’”

“Brilliant, Matthew.” Dominic’s smile brightened from behind the other’s view, but it was still heard in his voice. “You’re such a good student.”

Matthew turned for a moment to look back. He had a consuming and pink tinge all across with strained and lifted brows. The elation in his face was sweet, and perhaps a little overenthusiastic. “Does this mean I get a reward?”

That’s right, the ‘reward,’ or whatever it meant at the time. Dominic didn’t know. He would have said anything remotely encouraging in the moment, honestly. But the more he thought to himself, the more it made sense. Matthew did deserve one, he thought.

“Sure, of course,” Dominic smiled. “If you can give me one more verse, I’ll treat you. How about I rush this exercise,” he paused to swallow when his head grew hot, “and let you touch me however you please... I’ll make it a tricky one, though. Understand?”

Matthew nodded slowly as though trying to conceal his excitement. The priest’s throat tightened when he thought of how painful his cock felt against the desk. Or how, no matter what, Matthew couldn’t move unless ordered. He knew he wouldn’t, because his reward was just too good to lose. Dominic felt sick just having to wait.

“Matthew 5:27-28. Can you give me that?” Dominic interlocked his fingers in the boy’s sweat-soaked brunet strands. With the hours passed, his locks unwired and weaved like fine wicker in his hand. With the same wild hair, Matthew looked back at the priest smiling, then snickering.

“Of course…” His demeanor shifted and Dominic’s stomach tightened unknowingly. “‘You have heard that it was said, ‘do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart...’”

Hardly an inch parted them when Matthew followed up, voice mocking, “Fitting, innit… Sir?”

Dominic paused. Matthew’s breath was so close on his lips that it nullified any cold that slipped through the window’s cracks. Dominic gave him a chaste kiss, simple and light on his forehead. “Quite.” He smiled and returned behind the boy. An odd pit in his chest followed when he did. 

Dominic did as promised, and ended their play. He pulled every bead out precisely and carefully, letting the rosary collapse beside the lube. Matthew made no effort to dull his moans. They were unkempt but soft and high, a lot like his laughter. If the air didn’t feel so dour it might have been enough to tip the priest over the edge.

Matthew stood up to stretch. He cracked his wrists, his back, his knuckles–the same ones stained with red not a couple hours earlier. The clatter his body made had rung about the room like a bell toll. It was the only thing Dominic could hear when silence settled in his bones. That, and his heavy heartbeat.

He examined Matthew’s attitude. His mockery about the adultery scripture. His tepid nonchalance after he’d come to the parish. But the more he thought to himself, the less he truly knew how Matthew was capable of arriving. And the closer he found himself reaching to put his shirt back on. 

The boy leaned against the desk casually, brows narrowed when the priest buttoned his garment back up. “Woah, why so formal? Thought you’d be getting undressed.” His voice was nothing short of charming and coaxing. But as fond as Dominic was of it, there was something sour to Matthew’s indifference that he couldn’t shake.

Dominic’s lips moved with a flicker of apprehension. “You know… You never told me about your girlfriend. What she thought about you leaving in the middle of the night.”

Eyes widening. A finger twitching. A hitch in his breath. Dominic expected anything from Matthew. But his emotional response was as absent as his heartbeat. 

“Come on, Dom, where’s this coming from?” Matthew stood closer to the priest, hand massaging his bulge and breath heavy against his ear. “Ah, you’re so fucking hard for me, Sir. Why all the questions when I haven’t been rewarded? Got a big package I’m yet to open…” He’d started unzipping Dominic’s trousers with long and slow fingers.

It was with such siren-like skill that he nearly made the priest slip the notion. He was incredible, even as cunning as he was. It was unreal how he made any open space feel so claustrophobic, so suffocating. Whether in a spacious office, or the tight walls of the confessional. The priest felt like he was back where they first spoke. When the air felt like molasses and the closed-in, hot corners sparked like a tinderbox. Just as if he was back behind those curtains, he couldn’t overcome the cruel lust that Matthew stoked between them. It was apparent to the priest that he probably enjoyed it, too. The tease. The torture. Even if it frightened him.

But unease was a creeping force in his body and he couldn’t neglect it, especially not with Matthew’s dismissal over one question. Things just didn’t add up–his absent girlfriend throughout their entire history… The threatening ‘stranger’ who hadn’t called for others… Fuck, even the metallic taste on his tongue when he came back. The priest found it harder to swallow the more he dug up.

Dominic bent down to gather the boy’s discarded clothes. Matthew looked with a quirked brow when the priest handed his items.

“Put these on, please.”

“Are you serious?,” he snickered. But his face soon stiffened when Dominic’s washed white as his. 

Matthew began putting his clothes on. There was no going back to normalcy, or whatever sickness they shared. Dominic thought as much the longer he stewed. He paged through various explanations. His partner must have been asleep when he came back to the parish–but then why didn’t he just say that instead of dismissing it? And the stranger earlier… I suppose he could have truly been too frightened to come back–but why would he let a ‘murderer’ off without alerting others. And the taste of copper…

The priest sighed like the oxygen had been beaten out of his lungs. He pinched the bridge of his nose with a pensive look that visibly worried the boy. Finally, it was with one swift exhale that he began.

“What happened to your girlfriend?”

Eyes wide. A finger twitch. A hitch in his breath. All at once. Finally, a sign of life.

“Where’s this coming–”

“Answer me.”

“She’s sleeping, Dom. It’s past midnight… Is something wrong?” Dominic retreated a step back and the anxious boy, one step forward.

“J-Just... answer me. The man that threatened you earlier–why hasn't he come back?”

“Dom, I told you. I knocked the bloke to shit, he's too scared to come back.”

“I don't get it. He could so easily tell everyone and give ‘em an excuse to run you out, or worse.”

“Jesus, I mean... I-I guess so. Why are you asking all this now?” His rosiness Dominic kissed all over had washed like a dissipated breath. Haunted paleness consumed like twilight where color once was.

“The blood on your hands... It was so fresh.” Dominic took a step back. Matthew took another forward. The floorboard cried underneath them. “If you hurt that man as you said you did hours before midnight, your hands would be dry. The blood would be dark.”

“Dom–”

“Or you’d have washed it by then. Fuck, I cleaned his blood from your hands. Or I’m not even sure whose it was, honestly.”

“Dom. You’re spiraling–”

The priest moved back and Matthew did not follow. His back hit the wall beside the door. The same one Matthew walked through bleeding like an angel with clipped wings. Every wall seemed to be closing in. He looked down and swept his foot to the side. Dried spatters of red. 

“No. It wasn’t his. The blood was hers... You'd just killed your girlfriend before you visited me here, didn't you? It wasn't some fucking stranger who saw you in the middle of the night... Y-You killed her before she found out, right? 

Matthew’s breath tripped like a foot over steps. He was pale and sunken in, absent of the brightness that smothered Dominic.

“Dominic, please. How could I?”

“Tell me I’m fucking wrong, please. Please. Tell me that it doesn’t make sense–that t-the blood wasn’t…”

The boy’s face was still as the sleeping snow. “I promised you I didn’t kill anyone then. I still mean it. I didn’t kill anyone who wasn’t already dead.”

“And that’s supposed to mean?”

“It means… that Pastor Christopher was still around.” 

“Was. So he’s not…” Dominic felt his heart still for a moment. Only for a moment, it was. But the time in between felt like ages before Matthew opened.

“The pastor didn’t die when I thought he did. Dom, I swear, I thought I fucking did it. Last year, I was so fucking sure he was gone. I’d even buried the bastard. But he had come back. Like some karmic fucking joke.”

“That…” Dominic shook his head, but the confusion and fragments clattered around like tumbling marbles. “I don’t get it. The blood on you tonight was his. Is that what you mean? I-If he didn’t die last October, then why did he wait all this time to see you tonight? Matthew, that’s a year he just disappeared and faked his death. All to come out of the blue…”

“I know it doesn’t make sense yet, I know. But I need you to understand this past year has been a fucking hellscape. Please let me explain everything, Dom. My love, please.” Matthew’s lips quivered in the biting cold. 

The gap between them felt further than it really was. Matthew stood lifeless and frozen before him. He bared so little weight with his stance like a fickle branch on the brink of snapping. Desperation impaled him for the priest to listen. Yet, even in the cold, Dominic’s body and soul burned with the discontent to have been so thoughtless. He was disappointed, most of all. But he also figured closure was dire.

“When it’d all happened last year–killing the pastor, coming back to Teignmouth… I was so lost, Dom. I’d built it all up in my head that if I made it my purpose to kill Christopher and do it, I’d finally have clarity. But it was all the fucking same. Before and after I thought he died… Even before I was turned. I still never had something.” Matthew’s hands clawed his chest on an emphasis of something.

“You look at me now with daggers, but I know it’s not because you’re confused or frightened. You know the feeling. What I–we have been missing. It’s what I came to find in this town, in this old church tonight.” His eyes fell to the blood on the floor and back. “In my partner, too.”

The air was sharp and scowling when Dominic took a fast inhale.

“I know I teased a lot about her, Dom. I know it wasn’t right to mess with you about her. But she was pure, still is even now. Before you, I didn’t have a fucking clue how to go about after Christopher. He was finally dead to me. But even after he died, I was still cursed, and worse, seen a town that wanted my head on a spit if only they could do something about it. And that coming winter, I met Gaia.” Something soft and somber fell on Matthew’s lips when he finally said her name. “She made me laugh. That’s it. I could say a lot about her, but really, that’s all that matters. When my life was in pieces, she made me laugh. And I tried convincing myself for the longest time that we were the honest thing. A purpose, for once in my life. But I think that was the problem.”

Although there was much left to understand, Dominic felt Matthew’s grief. Both for his everlasting torture, and of his current circumstances. Matthew lost all his respect and dignity when it was stripped of by the pastor. But he could never take away his purpose when it was never there. That, Dominic was eternally sorry for. The boy saw it in his eyes when he continued.

“We rushed into a relationship so fast, I can only remember it as a blur. But all I wanted was to have something real, or of substance. I ruined something so pure and simple because of that. Everything she said or felt, I observed under a microscope. Always fixated on why it never felt like more than it was. I disrespected her, I think. We blamed each other for why it soured so soon… But I expected too much of her to give me something the world itself would deny. And soon enough, it just fell apart. Destructively… But seamlessly, too. This year started like fireworks and just by summer, the doors began slamming… Into early autumn, I hardly heard a thing at all.”

He still did it so flawlessly. Like the gap had closed and the room spun and suffocated. It wasn’t the heady and confined intoxication that Dominic was so spelled by. But it was intimate. Almost too much that it could singe if he moved any closer through his words. Even then, Matthew did not pause. And the priest let him.

“Dom, if this year’s given me anything it’s whiplash… I met you at just the perfect time in my life. When everything crumbled under my touch, you’ve been my guiding light. It sounds so bloody stupid, but... God, you’re as close as I get to being real.” The boy buried his head in his hands. A thick head, it was, and completely foolish to the priest. 

“Matthew… you pathetic fuck.” The boy raised his head with wide and innocent eyes. “I didn’t change you, y’know.”

“I’m not–I don’t think you changed me. But you–”

“You’re saying you finally found something worth chasing, right? Something greater. And it’s true, I’m not going to deny how you feel. Especially when I think so, too… But you didn’t just become a different person in the weeks you knew me. A change like that only comes if you allow it. If you truly seek it. You started changing when you came to confession, right?”

He nodded lightly.

“Because you actually did something for yourself by acting on your emptiness. You changed the way you approached it. I didn’t do that for you, Matt. You did.” Dominic didn’t smile but his eyes held something just as comparable. He took one step forward, still reserved and uncertain of many things. But all he could assure at the moment was his care for the boy. It was unscathed, even as his mind dizzied in the confusion of recent discoveries. He figured it would remain as such, no matter what else was to come to light.

“Christ, Dom. You’re too good... I couldn’t let him–Fuck, I can’t even think about it.” Matthew’s brows tensed together. It was a different look from the rest, like his unreadable face when he stood washed in blood. 

Dominic grabbed Matthew by the shoulders and dug his fingers into his trembling frame. “Couldn’t let who–what? Christopher? Matthew, how bad was it when you saw him?”

“The pastor, he… I told you he came back earlier tonight, but it wasn’t as random as you thought. I-I was visiting the cemetery where I buried him.”

Dominic let go, his eyes wide. “What were you doing in the woods? You know it’s not safe there, anybody with a good sense stays away.” But Matthew nodded it off.

“It’s… Listen, I was at the gravesites where his body was supposed to be. Dead, at least. Last I remember, he was under that soil and the next time I see him, he’s above. So, we talked.”

“You talked? How much of that was talking and how much was beating him to shit? Fuck, you could’ve been fucking hurt. Or worse…”

“It was an honest talk, at first. Shit, it took a bloody second for me to get a sentence out but eventually, yeah. We spoke about what happened. And somehow, that bastard’s been fucking over my life worse than I thought.” He swallowed dryly. The air was crisp and violent in the new atmosphere. “That presence in the woods, I knew it felt familiar. Sent a thousand chills down my spine every time I passed it on the way here. Of course, I didn’t wanna know what it was. Christopher was dead to me and that was that. I wanted it over with. But even though I thought he was gone… he’d been stalking me from there.”

Dominic’s heart jumped in his chest. “Fuck, Matthew. The whole year he was gone… Just…”

“A lot of shit came to the surface, I guess. He told me that a decade ago when I told everyone what he did, I fucked his life over. Blah blah, all that bullshit. Fucker was in a twist that I actually told the bloody truth to everyone about what he was. That I should’ve just left instead of causing a scene. Said that he could’ve killed me as well for what I told everyone, if it wasn’t so simple… It really was a fucking curse, being turned. Everything was intentional, that sick fuck.”

“He planned to… die? I don’t…”

“It’s… weird. I think he foresaw me telling everyone he killed my mate. He bit me to be a suspect instead of having two corpses to account for. I looked good for the job, fangs to prove. Except, when the church knew, they’d used their connections to the precinct to lighten everything. I was allowed to leave, with the blame on me being ‘off the record gossip’ they fucking spread. After I was turned, he practically left me with the repercussions. He knew it was worse than being in prison… The shame and condemnation… That’s not to mention the isolation and hunger that nearly made me lose my mind… I told you I went on with animal blood, and I seem fine now. But those first fucking months without something human was just…”

Matthew raked his fingers through his hair as though grasping what little sanity he had left. “I came back to finish the job last year, but... I don’t think either of us expected him to have survived it. Or maybe I was too fucking scared to check… It’s quite hard to tell a vampire from the actual dead. Either way, he let me believe it. His own form of torture. Because even though I thought it was over, I was still stuck in a town that wants me dead, a church that damns me, and my humanity lost to this stupid curse.”

The Bellamy Incident continued to rattle its victims, even a decade after. Dominic wasn’t surprised to hear his church had hidden so much. The congregation’s impurities were embedded within every fiber of their sacred robes. The way they treated Matthew was no form of love, certainly none their Father had preached. It was passive ignorance. That, he knew. But what burned Dominic most was Matthew’s lack of self respect. Beyond everything they’d endured and continued to, he thought the boy would have learned one thing amidst it all. But he was so transparent, as somehow everything he’d been taught passed him right by.

“Matthew, what humanity have you lost that you can’t have–or that you haven’t had since I met you? If I’ve proved to you anything, it’s how real you are.” Dominic grabbed Matthew’s wrists. His veins were purple and marbled like cobwebs under cold and pale skin. “Your flesh and blood are as real as mine, can’t you see it? You’ve felt it. You’ve touched it and you know we both breathe and exist. The heat you feel right now even in the thick of winter–does it mean nothing to you?”

Dominic couldn’t have imagined it. The heat. It was real.

“Of course it does. It’s hard for me to… I know you’re right. I see that, Dom. But I’m so fucking scared of keeping you. Christopher has always been right about one thing. I will destroy everything I love. I’m preordained, for what I am.”

“You’re not serious–”

“Then why else would he keep me alive?? My community’s in shambles, I tore apart my relationship, and I’ll never be saved for what I am. Keeping me was just enough to satisfy ruining his life. He knew I’d ruin us, too. When he saw us leave the church earlier.” 

Dominic froze like Matthew’s still and silent blood.

“The cemetery’s not far from the woods. That strange feeling–it was the gravesite. He mentioned how he saw us, the same way he observed Gaia and I. And the bastard was smiling. He was fucking happy. Because he knew he’d be proven right sooner or later… That I’d destroy something I love again. He thought–he said he knew I’d kill you. And if it wasn’t for certain, then he’d kill us both. So, I had no other choice.”

“The blood really was his…” A vampire’s blood didn’t replenish. What they had in their lifetime is what they kept. Matthew’s hands… The blood his hands ran with–it was the same blood Christopher had when he first turned the boy. As if he came to Dominic, in the parish, sheathed by the sins of his past.

Matthew nodded and Dominic felt the weight of the world lift from his body. The boy who stood clad in blood, who suffered love and loss, and who lived his life bound by a sadistic curse, did so with only pure intention. The same intention, he killed the pastor with. But still, something was to give.

'That I’d destroy something I love again,’ Matthew’s voice rang in his head. If destroying his love meant ruining his relationship, why didn’t Christopher assume Matthew would break what they had? Why did he assume it’d end with Dominic being…

The priest’s eyes watered with the revelation and Matthew looked back like his thoughts were clear and cut on his tongue.

“No, you mentioned… you destroyed something you loved before. And Christopher–he was sure you’d kill me. Like it’d happened already.” Dominic inhaled with as much poise as he possessed. But the hurt of what everything meant was inexplicable. “Matthew, please. Your girlfriend–”

“Dom, I can’t–”

“She’s not sleeping, isn’t she.”

Silence, still and sinking. The boy knew it wasn’t a question.

“Fuck, Matthew. When??”

“The day before my first confession,” he answered crestfallen. "Early morning... I'd gone to Mass after."

Dominic bit his tongue as if to almost curse him out. But he refrained only to listen and Matthew's shame dragged across his face with the realization. “So when you joined the congregation…”

“She was alive when I started coming, the month before I met you.” His voice sank all heavy like a stone into water. The same heaviness Dominic felt dip in his abdomen, wringing his guts to gristle and tearing his flesh by its fibers. 

“Fuck…” 

“–And I meant everything I said, I swear it. I did come to church to control myself. And when I lost it, I came to you. To not lose it again…”

“I knew something was strange. How you carried yourself, so eager to abandon her on a whim. How you teased me about the idea of killing her, like it was a bloody game. And in fucking confession, of all times. It sounded like shit for someone who wanted to ‘be saved,’” the priest continued with strain and contortion over his brows. “And I bet even that’s a lie, too.”

“That wasn’t a lie, I swear it. On my bloody soul, Dom.”

“Did you ever truly want repentance?”

“Yes,” Matthew exhaled like he intended to hush a candle. “Yes, I wanted yours.”

“What does that even mean? How can you ask me to save you when–when our entire first interaction was built on a lie??” Dominic stuttered sporadically, his hinges all but completely loose. If the heat that radiated off his head didn’t burn like Hell’s pitchfork, he might’ve thought it was a nightmare. One sick, but subconscious episode of hysteria. 

“Dom, please. I didn’t mean to lie. You were the only one who accepted me. The only one who could look at me. You were interested in me, by me–I could feel it. I could tell before we first spoke, the way you’d look at me. As if my heart could be stopped a second time, it did.” 

Dominic took another step back and Matthew, another forward. They tangoed clumsily in paces and words, with the bloodied floorboards shrieking their apprehension underneath. 

“What–you’re upset that I lied to protect that feeling? When you’re a fucking priest? You say you’re so devoted and want to help me but look at what you’ve encouraged. You’re not so different from me. You can admit it. Think about why we’re here in the first place. I stirred you up about murdering her because I could tell you liked it, too. Not the act, but the freedom, Dom. You lusted for it and you still do. We’re so alike it chokes you, because I can actually act on what I want. But you’ve built your walls so high you can’t even see over them.” The grit in Matthew’s voice rose with every sentence. 

Dominic’s collar felt tight, just short of cutting circulation. He thought to himself. Something was missing. Something was gone. And then, silence. It was the silence–his heart. His pulse. It was so slow, almost nonexistent. As though he could take a finger to his neck, all devoid of even a hushed patter under the pressure. Like his veins ran with cables. Messages input and output, but no real blood or beat gave him a sign of life. He didn’t expect any when Matthew completely cornered him.

And, yes. It was true. He loved Matthew’s freedom. Adored it. Fetishized it. It was all he wanted, but nothing he could have–nothing he could let himself have. Or his entire world would fall to own something so forbidden. To own a love that bled with his lust, his pride, his greed. A love that relished every sin to pluck him from righteousness, as did the apple. A love that spun his seedy craving for something greater than God. That was his most damning crime, with a record that existed long before the boy and swelled with his appearance. His gluttony–for meaning, for purpose, for freedom that surpassed religion. Which turned into a cold-blooded obsession, ripe and sweet from its vine. A love that goaded the sinister methods the priest indulged for a morsel of liberation. One that eclipsed Christ’s light with Matthew’s. He was, and still was, a voyeur. Observing the boy’s brilliance through his periscope, within his own confessional.

“Dom, just listen to me. Please. That's all I ask.” Matthew’s voice finally tempered and the fuzzy noise of their intertwined bickering had quieted. “I was in the cemetery where I buried the pastor. But I was there to visit Gaia.”

Dominic didn’t flinch or step back again. His shoes remained over the bloody spatters and there, he allowed Matthew to confess. 

“For most of our relationship, I didn’t give her the respect she deserved. I failed to see past what I wanted, and only saw what she didn’t give me. So after we left the parish earlier, I came back later to the woods. I…I wanted closure with her. And that’s where I found the pastor.”

“He saw us leave the parish that morning, didn’t he…”

“Yeah… I never liked those fucking woods. It’s desolate since those two people had gone missing. But the disappearance of that woman… It was her,” Matthew sighed. His frigid lips were surrounded by a cloud of cool air. “I filed the bloody report like that. Right after Mass, I told them I didn't see her for hours. Like she’d just stepped off the face of the earth near that forest. And although the police did all they could to have my neck, there was already another body, I assume by the pastor, with evidence that deterred them from me. Not like they had anything, with her body six feet under their noses.” Matthew smiled faintly. It reflected the irony rather than any real pleasure. The priest was one more disaster shy of joining him. None of it seemed real. 

“The pastor really was pleased that I’d taken someone new. Because he knew that the ‘missing girl in the woods’ was my doing, and thought I’d end your life next… When he told me with that fucking smugness I had that old bastard in a choke fast that he was heaving whatever he last told me. I couldn’t even tell from all the squalling when I impaled that prick over a silver headstone. And then… There were no words at all.” The boy looked at his bare hands, and then at the floor where the priest stood. “You saw how much blood… It’s not enough to tell you how hard it was. Not just killing him. But actually proving to him that I am as he says. A fucking monster…” He looked up, brightness full and blooming in his eyes. “Still. In a heartbeat, I’d do it again.”

There was a pit in Matthew’s throat that the priest couldn’t ignore. It was in Dominic’s, too. Thick and sinking and well damn sickly. Matthew moved a step closer and Dominic’s breath shuddered for the moment he finally saw honest and hurt azure eyes. The priest did not budge.

“He remained missing to keep everyone at an arm’s length from me–to feed the narrative that I was a cruel monster. Those animals that kept dying there were all his, the other fucking body was his. Shit, I might not have even made it, had he not lost all that strength from when he first bit me. 'Suppose it was the shortages in the woods. Fucker bit his own tongue with that one... But the trail of carcasses, the other body. Everyone tied it to me, without a fucking fact, for his bloody story. Like how he stayed dead to keep me blind, and to keep everyone’s suspicion of me. I think your death was supposed to be the final nail in the coffin, per se. He was so certain I’d do it. That way, he’d prove I really was as he said... But he was so wrong,” he sighed. “You’re not Gaia.” 

Matthew inched forward and again, Dominic permitted him. “It didn’t cross me for a second to believe Christopher. I killed him because I trust so much that I’d never hurt you. If you say I’m not the same creature he calls me, then I believe it. I can’t say the same about not destroying this in some other way… But if I never killed him tonight, he’d have come back. Because eventually, he’d also see that I could never kill you. My curse breaks bond there.”

Matthew’s voice was soft and airy with the cry of his insolence, a shrilling star. Christopher was gone, and despite the skeletons that wracked his closet, there was a weightlessness to himself. As though they were in confession. Only, the boy seemed less captive by his secrets. He wasn’t a slave to his curse, with the evidence of his shackles spread across the floor in red splatters. Dominic appreciated his honesty. On some level, he admired it. Not just Matthew’s resilience, but his effort to preserve the mere bud of something. Whatever unsightly something it was that endeared them both.

Dominic was in fragments. Who was he to deny Matthew’s feelings, or his own, for that matter? But the truth still stood, stark as night and day. The boy took someone’s life. A woman, who time could never heal or lungs would never fill again, laid buried. 

Dominic thought of the blood on his hands. Not only Matthew’s, but his. He didn’t care about how the pastor went, as long as it was done and the boy was alive. But his partner, that stung like an entirely different wound. He just couldn’t wrap his mind around it.

Progress was made and the priest felt lighter knowing what he did. But he’d be damned if not to mention that nasty umbilical that tethered Matthew to his bloodlust until it was gashed.

“Why kill her?”

Matthew had a flicker of distaste at the word. It was such a violent one, the consonant so crashing and clear. It was the ultimate judgement.

“I didn’t want… I just had to.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“I’m sick, Dom. I’m fucking sick of this life, the people around me. And I know you are too, stuck in this church, around these drab and hypocritical people.” His voice softened a little and somehow it chilled Dominic more. “Believe me, I tried not to kill her. But if we had any future, it would never be what it was in the beginning. I was trapped in a relationship that dragged me, but without it, I’d have no one at all. At some point, I did think of ending it with her… But everything was in such shambles, with Christopher and the town and the hurt, the fucking hurt, that–that I needed control in some way. I needed to free myself.”

Matthew was sporadic at times, but when it came to confessing to his crime he professed it so swiftly. Dominic wasn’t put off by it, nor was he indulgent. But he did find Matthew interesting, still. 

Matthew continued and they were finally at such close proximity that neither breathed for a brief second. “I can’t lie. I can’t say you’re wrong. I did enjoy it. At the moment, it was all the high I needed to just get by. It’s fucking sick, and I’m not denying it… But it was like honest fucking air,” he admitted. The exhale that followed ran goosebumps down Dominic’s arms. 

Matthew’s eyes were wide and honest. No matter what he said, the clarity of his azure gaze had always felt as close to Heaven as the priest ever got. Dominic saw his own reflection for a moment in his eyes. In it, he was reminded of his hunger. The same starvation and longing he always knew, was found in Matthew, as well. 

Dominic was not a murderer, but his heart panged with the same emptiness. The kind that could kill. He at least grasped that. For once, the priest released his judgement and finally answered the boy with all the understanding he possessed. “What you were looking for, what we both needed, did you come to church to find it?”

“I… A part of me returned for something. Guidance or salvation, whatever you want to call it. I wanted meaning to my life,” he nodded off. “I thought if I found God again, that I’d let go of my desire to take her life. But nobody gave me the answer I needed, if there ever was one. Hell, they wouldn’t even look at me. And when I told you about that morning she bled in front of me, I didn’t stop at that. It happened the day before you and I met. When I abandoned everything and I…” His tongue brushed a fang as though reminiscing. But the guilt on his face was beyond anything nostalgic. “That was why I confessed for the first time. I didn’t have any reason to deny my hunger after her. Not any longer.”

The starved boy. Dominic could grieve for his loss of purpose if ever there was one. Matthew never got the chance to grow and experience life before it was stolen from him. His eyes, blue and consuming, reflected the priest like a mirror. He understood the frustration of faith. Even as a man of God, an unwavering trust in something unprovable was challenging. At times, it scorned him like the ninth circle itself.

Matthew sought a higher power and hoped it would’ve given him control over his life. He needed a sign. Anything to deter him from following his obsession. Anything to steer him from the one thing he thought would free him. So long as something greater proved their existence, he could manage his urge.

Dominic damned the church for denying Matthew. For cutting him from any true connection. For their hisses and howling sneers. For barring a boy who only ever desired to be seen, and for murdering the shallow hope he had left. An innocent, who already struggled with a faith that could not be touched or seen, was forsaken. 

Everything began to connect, finally. But the more it did, Dominic’s head spun. He dizzied thinking of how incredible it was that they met. How, when Matthew was finally given a space to harbor by Dominic, he became fixated. How the same boy would reveal something sinister and sweet inside of Dominic himself. Dominic didn’t know it then, but he’d given Matthew more than he came for. More than a sign of God. He gave him a proof of life, of his humanity and his inherent worth.

“You came to me the day after you killed her, then…” Dominic tried to absorb everything without judgement. But his heart wracked with the understanding that throughout their entire relationship, he’d engaged a murderer. No… Strangely, that didn’t hurt him anymore. It was something else. It was the realization that he was a savior to the boy. That he was his only faith. That, in a small town so boxed in where ridicule bounced off the walls, of course Dominic was his only guiding figure. That was a heavy revelation. 

Dominic had no doubts Matthew came to church to find something larger than himself. But when he gave the same attention the boy sought, it shifted things. Matthew found what he’d been looking for. A force of faith that he could see and touch. That could acknowledge him, not as the creature he became, but the human he was. 

Dominic could only assume as much, because he felt the exact same. Only…

“Matthew, I believe you. Look at me,” he cupped the boy’s cheek in his palm. His hands were so gentle as though anointing the sinner. “How you came to me… Stirring me the way you did… How could I assume anything other than it all being a game to you?”

Dominic knew it wasn’t entirely true the moment he spoke. His chest tightened when Matthew looked at him with such regret. He knew Matthew had always been more than a tease. He knew there was something deeper to him. It was always in his eyes, his body, his gravity. But the lies, he could not for the life of him grasp.

“I never lied to you about wanting to be saved. God, please don't think I ever would. I came to you that day after because I really had lost it all. My faith, my hope, my mind. And you were the only one who didn’t turn away from me. Something about you, I was drawn to you. I didn’t feel shame around you. You captivated me, Dom. You can lynch me on the cross or please me there and you’ll still have me bound.”

Dominic tensed. He knew Matthew could sense it when his hold stiffened. “Then why not tell me? If you knew I wouldn’t turn you away, why couldn’t you just tell me?”

“Please, just … You’ve seen how they’ve been around me. You know what they say when I can’t hear them. I trusted you, Dom. I did. But I couldn’t risk losing that. I can’t even stress just how terribly I needed your acceptance. It’s all I can call my own.” The last words he drew slowly, like a heaping mass dragged by a thin thread. Its weight was felt on Dominic, as well.

“But tonight… You couldn’t even tell me earlier what happened between you and Christopher? I mean, shit. You could’ve been killed, Matthew. It couldn’t have even happened that long before I met you here again.”

“No, I know. I’m sorry, I just thought it all on the spot… It was probably an hour before midnight… Like I said, it wasn’t easy taking that old bloke out. Bastard had me thinking I’d actually die a second time. It got messy, too. That’s why I came so late. I–I hadn’t used my teeth like that since Gaia…” The taste of copper, Dominic pieced. “But once it was over, it was nearly half past midnight. And I couldn’t just leave you. Not when I’d wanted this for so long. When I could finally have some peace in your company. Just for a night, even. I couldn’t lose that. I wiped my lips and came back before I could even wash the blood because if I lost you even for a moment, I couldn’t be sure you’d come again.”

“So you told me you bludgeoned someone… to worry me about something almost as frightening?”

“I know I lied about the stranger outside the parish. I’m still sorry for it, too. But fuck… Losing you was not an option. If you knew I actually killed someone, or why I was in the cemetery to begin with… I didn’t even want to think about it. Dom, I could’ve gone home. I could’ve washed the blood and seen you the next day. But I couldn’t leave you like that. I needed you, and I know you needed me.”

“Everything you said, then–everything in confession. What you wanted… It was all true.”

“Of course, Dom. I do want to be good. Not to God or some robed bastard. To the only one who believes I still have a soul. If I can be holy to anyone, it’s you and you alone. Is that so terrible?”

Dominic didn’t know what the correct response was. At least, he knew it wasn’t appropriate to indulge. He knew he shouldn’t accept himself as anything higher than he truly was. He knew not to tempt his place as a priest. But Matthew unbound every sermon and scripture that condemned his very thoughts. Permissible or not, blasphemous or not, Dominic accepted the repercussions of Matthew’s affection, and of his own affliction.

“No. It’s not terrible. Not at all.” Dominic embraced Matthew and the boy held him close just at the second.

“God… You’re all I need. I swear… I swear…” The boy whispered into the nook of Dominic’s neck. His breaths were exhausted like the restless huffs after a long day. One that felt as though the sun would never set. 

In his arms, the boy latched his fingers into the fabric against Dominic’s back. He clawed with such talon-like nails for a sense of security. It was the first time Dominic had noticed them. Matthew’s hold was tight, the uncanny strength he possessed. But he tried to keep his fingers loose, a hair shy of cutting him. It did, and Dominic didn’t mind the sting.

With the air’s sweet and surrounding scent, Dominic made a realization.

He smiled with the irony of their exchange. Of how they’d jumped into such deep waters before feeling the temperature. Matthew’s longing hadn’t been so apparent to him as it was in the moment, but the embrace was long past due. 

“You don’t need to feel abandoned. You never have been, truly. I just hope you see that,” the priest whispered.

“I do.” But Dominic knew God was not on his mind. He was at peace with that.

Although he couldn’t feel another heart from his own, Dominic listened intently. Somehow, the spirit of Matthew’s was still with him. It was roaring and beautiful, echoing sweet nothings even as the priest let go.

“Do you think I could be forgiven? For everything I’ve done… and for being this creature?,” he said with such disdain.

“You’ve offered yourself. I have no doubt He already has.”

“Do you forgive me? I offer myself to you, Dom.”

“I give myself to you, too. I absolve you, Matthew.” Not a flicker of doubt, nor a blink of distrust. His words were as strong as his faith. His feelings, as real as his conviction. He was certain.

Real, raw freedom, he never imagined to taste like copper. But when they finally kissed, it nursed all of his aches and bruises. Matthew’s lips quivered over the other’s, like it was fiction that they were touching. Like one breath’s wisp could blow his image away as a dandelion to the wind. As though Dominic, his acceptance, his being, could never be. But he returned to him, wholly and unduly, his.

The priest sucked wetly on Matthew’s bottom lip with as much delicacy as a feather. It was so frail and smooth. He fixated on it as his teeth nipped and teased in the blooming frisk. The boy followed his movement and captured Dominic’s tongue. The rhythm of Matthew’s muscle was like silk, so swift and smooth. He was coaxing, even then, with Dominic’s moan, grated and on the heels of thorns. The burn, stinging of nettle teeth. His shoulders, tumbling between the motion as though Heaven and Hell’s cherubs tipped each end.

Heat spread throughout Dominic’s body and he felt life in his grasp again. With nerves that set fire on every end like a broken fuse and a head that burned a million suns at just the flavor alone. It made him spiral thinking of everything else he wanted to do. 

His heart, beating and blushing, swelled with his fervor. With the most felicity and fierceness of a fork's piked ends. A feeling, quite literally, on the tip of his tongue.

“Please,” Matthew moaned into Dominic’s ear and penetrated skull.

They interlocked with a hunger borne by aching deprivation. Dominic’s ample and plush lips brushed those of Matthew, every time relishing his fickle and delicate breaths. The priest’s world shrunk into the minute space, and all he knew in existence was his sinner. His skin, like ripe fruit. His saliva, its sweet sap. His teeth, grounded stems. Unnatural may he have been, he was real. God, he was so real. A true beauty in body and spirit.

Matthew’s long and precise fingers wove into Dominic’s honeyed locks as they clumsily moved toward the desk. Dominic leaned against the wooden edge, which anchored him as their exchange intensified. The boy had taken hold of his priest, and it was all Dominic never knew he needed. He resigned his strength and body to the other. Everything was his, anything he wanted at all. Ironically so, as he was sure Matthew felt the same about himself.

“I…You’re…” Matthew’s soft mutters were lost in between their fastening pace. But he didn’t need to speak. His lips, devoid of words, gossiped love tender.

The more Dominic had his fill of the boy, the greater he panged for more. Between messy tongues and feral lips, the priest grazed Matthew’s teeth. A pulse. Desperation and desire of something more flickered by. Those fangs. How they tempted him.

Dominic flushed with the feeling, intoxicated further by the scent of sweat like caramel confection. His fangs and their rooted sharpness hung like stalactites. Every brush against their smooth surface felt like searing, scorching pleasure. The priest thought to himself. He thought of those incisors buried in his neck. Of the hot pulsation like the stinging mist of an orange. Of the soft sinew bitten between Matthew’s gums like strings of the fruit. Of Dominic’s pierced flesh like the evidence of a thirsting shrike. But most endearing, of their closeness. He imagined them both, tethered only by flesh and blood. 

The priest would have wept if not for the possibility of greater things to come. When he did think of it, the thought of blood and teeth came back to him. Something in the shadows, promising and warming, brought him the idea of Matthew sinking his jaw slowly and–

“Dom. ”

The priest woke from an unaware haze to hear the most soft and wanting voice. He blinked drearily.

“Can you save me, still?” 

Dominic stood more firmly. “How do you mean?”

“Can you…” Matthew’s hand guided Dominic’s. “Save me?” At once, he felt the prominent bulge in the boy’s trousers twitch in his grasp.

“I-I… Do you want that?”

“I serve you, Dom. Do you want that?”

Dominic felt a nervous tremor on the ends of his fingers. The emphasis in Matthew’s voice did not help. 

“Are you sure nobody else knows we’re here–oh.” Matthew’s lulling lips kissed his neck, right where the priest ached for his teeth. 

Matthew then laid a gentle kiss on his forehead. “Nobody. We’re alone for the night.” A kiss on the left and right shoulder. “Until daylight breaks, I belong to you…” A kiss over his heart. “And your confession is long overdue.” Another on his lips. The bastard.

Before Dominic could pick his heart up from the floor, Matthew kneeled in front of him. He was at eye level with the obvious pang in Dominic’s briefs. Had he looked away for a second, he might have missed the boy’s peek of tongue.

“Can I take these off, Sir?”

“Dom,” he corrected softly. So softly like he was dreaming. “And, er… Yes… Please.”

The priest felt his body temperature climb as fast as his trousers dropped. Matthew was careful, but eager. Once the cold air had hit Dominic’s legs, he really started to realize everything. Suddenly, the panic of how foreign everything was to him had set in. But he was excited, as clearly seen by the wet spot on his briefs.

He caught a cheeky smile from Matthew before it wiped away entirely as soon as he’d pulled the elastic waistband down. 

“Fuck. Me,” Matthew blurted. The priest’s hot and flushed cock stood firmly in his cold hand.

Dominic’s eyes were heavy and Matthew’s image had begun to blur amidst such pleasure. He’d hardly registered the boy’s amazement until a few seconds later, which only made him blush further.

“Is… Is there a problem?”

“You’re fucking thick. Jesus Christ.”

“O-Oh…”

The boy stared hungrily, with skin bitten by fever and hair tousled all static-like. He looked up at Dominic with the widest and most pleading eyes. The priest knew his question before it could slip and when it did, he was more than sure.

“Can I taste you?”

“Yes… Fuck yes.”

Not a second longer did he wait to impress his tongue on Dominic’s head. Just as quickly as the priest felt its softness, he twitched on the boy’s tender lips and precum seeped slowly. The sensation was remarkable.

Brief fantasies of what his first real sexual encounter would look like filled Dominic’s mind more the longer he knew Matthew. It always appeared and dissipated in a cloud’s passing, never fully thought upon. He was frightened to think more of it, embarrassing as that seemed. But anything more than the indulgence he incurred during confession made his skin burn like wildfire. 

Before coming back to the parish at midnight, he racked his mind around what he agreed to. The same burn seared his body to the tips of his ears. The anxiety was so raw, so physical. But the more it consumed, the harder it was to relax his lower half. 

Finally, he had Matthew to himself. The anxiety was there, but steady and silent. All he could hear was the boy’s hot and wet lips as he sucked. All he could smell was the fragrant and heady air. All he could feel, the nearly lethal drag of Matthew’s tongue as he traced his veins. 

Dominic’s heavy body felt as though it would melt if not grounded against the desk. He was thankful for something to keep him standing. To touch its cold surface and remember that he was, in fact, real. 

“Slower, please…,” he said simply. But none of it was simple. Not the smooth and wet sensation against his shaft, or the sounds of gagging and lapping at his precum. If anything, it tortured him. The moment still had the dregs of what he was familiar with, if a thousand fold. It was electrifying.

Matthew worked slower as he was told, making everything feel so much heavier. Coherent words eluded Dominic in between hot breaths and mindless muttering. He didn’t need them, anyway. He put all of his energy into grounding himself, mentally and physically.

The boy’s tongue was like Heaven. Everything about him was. As was the sweat that beaded over his tensed brows. As was the swiftness of his strokes and slick saliva. As was his tender walls hitting the base down to Dominic’s teased balls. He was a fucking natural in beauty and skill.

The priest twisted his fingers in Matthew’s hair. Without thinking, he thrusted his hips into the grip and the boy groaned with the impact. Warm sparks prickled him all over and the priest bit his hand to keep him from releasing on the boy’s face. The two were lost in the throes of sweet satisfaction to mention it, but they understood once wasn’t enough. Dominic kept a slow and steady pace grinding further, where Matthew followed him with faster movement. 

Matthew’s hand took control of the shaft, where his lips obsessed over Dominic’s soft and fine tip. The priest’s cock flushed with pinkish undertones the harder he stroked. Matthew’s hand work was like fucking magic the way he squeezed just below the head and lightly grazed his veins at once. That went without mentioning the delicacy of his lips. How he teased the tip with enough grace to compensate for his messy and exhilarating tongue. 

And then.

There began a pang down Dominic’s lower waist. A fluttering, then roaring, fluctuating euphoria that spun his brain. His cock leaked with the same excitement, a bead of his pleasure dripping down Matthew’s bottom lip. The more he grinded, the harder the feeling was to measure anymore. At some point, everything just felt like the same white hot pleasure. He chased it down with every drag and pull, every tightened curl into Matthew’s locks. The sensation, only excited by the boy’s senseless whimpers, drove Dominic mad. 

His lower back began to ache, as well as the strain on his taut thighs. And the pain was good. So damn good. Especially as a virgin, every new feeling just felt like fucking bliss in his grasp. When he caught a short glance at the boy, all of his pain subsided in turn for pure amazement. 

He worked so swiftly, with hair like a heap of ash and skin so waxy and pale. He was glowing. Unlike anything the priest had seen before. Matthew had the flesh and bones of a human. But his words, his smoothness, were so untethered by anything real.

His shoulder blades jutted like wings that wished to escape. His byzantine fingers, long and slender as to emphasize his divinity. His lithe and serpentine body curved like he’d been sculpted from Heaven. An angel, he seemed. The closest that the priest had ever come to.

Dominic tried to contain himself. His sharp breaths grew calm and steady. He’d even pinched his neck to settle his nerves. But Matthew sucked at his balls with the most supple and needy lips and it was all that Dominic could handle before loosening his grip. 

Sweat condensed in between his fingers. His legs started to ache as though he’d unravel like a thread. Worse, the same fluttering in his waist was damn near ready to burst. 

“Matthew… Matt…” 

The boy was no different, lost in the haze of sinking and surrounding sweetness. 

“Matthew James.”

He paused with wide eyes and released himself with a final drag of his slick tongue. Dominic cursed under his breath when cold air met his soaked cock. It still throbbed with such needed attention, as if it hadn’t had enough. 

“Fuck, that sounds so good in your voice. Probably shouldn't have chosen a safe word I could totally fuck myself to,” he teased, but Dominic could admit the name was terribly arousing. 

Dominic looked down with such exhaustion and satisfaction. His eyes felt heavy and he could feel his lids droop just as the tears of sweat did down his temples. Matthew matched his intoxication, but with so much more intensity. He had so much energy that Dominic could only figure was his unreal stamina. Either way, he couldn’t wait any longer.

“Matthew, I can’t… Can we…,” Dominic swallowed thickly. The words wanted to come out. They urged to. The boy knew that, and he understood at once.

He lifted himself back up to meet the priest. “Y-Yeah, of course… You ready?”

“I want you, Matthew. My blood, I want you.”

Dominic cusped his hand over Matthew’s soft face. Those same azure eyes, imposing and penetrating, appeared like the dew of clear skies. The priest was more than sure. He held his blessing in his grasp and was damned to let the moment fleet away. Not when midnight long since passed and the Lord’s Day was in its youth.

“Take your shirt off. Get on the chair for me, please,” Matthew ordered with a dominance unlike himself. Dominic heeded him at once.

Dominic placed his bag beside the chair and sat, where he swiftly unbuttoned his shirt and released his trousers. He kept his eye on Matthew as his clothes fell to the floor. The boy moved like a swift and coaxing feline in front of the priest when suddenly, his hands fiddled with the hem of his shirt. The priest watched fixedly with his hand lazily twisting his cock.

Matthew bit the cunning smirk on his lips before raising his shirt slowly. Dominic never grew tired of his act. 

As the tight cloth brushed over Matthew’s lithe frame, he sucked in a large inhale. Dominic observed how the cavity under his lungs dipped and revealed his tight abdomen. There, the priest’s breath caught in his throat as sudden as a hiccup. Where words failed him, so too did his composure.

He was something of fiction. The solidity and softness of his body, like of rich limewood, flexed with such pale and gothic attention. His twilight skin glimmered against the candlelight, which flickered before him, as though snuffed by his brilliance. The sheen of moisture over his body twinkled against the amber cast. And sweat glistened hot and heavy like drops of sun over his body, from his hard sternum to the soft navel. Dominic drank in the portrait of his beauty, so raw as the soil underneath them.

Before his surroundings could sink in, Matthew’s shirt fell and the priest was met with the sound perfection of his body. Dominic’s fingers worked to contain himself at the tip, where Matthew’s fixated on his trousers.

The boy unbuttoned himself with a sway and revealed his bulging hip bones. Milky smooth skin reflected brightly against the light. Dominic gave his head a tight squeeze. He stroked and teased with all but the boy’s bravado and tried to quell his need. But the ache was never satisfied the way Matthew could do. Matthew fixated on Dominic’s movement and the bareness of his strong thighs. He mimicked the hand on his cock, which stood firm and blushing.

The boy was touching himself. Unabashedly and cool with confidence. Matthew looked straight at Dominic and twisted his leaking cock in such a way that instructed the other to follow. He did. The priest returned to him with hardened intoxication and full compliance. The sinner wore a pleased look.

“I can’t believe you’re mine,” Matthew admitted as he moved to sit over the priest.

Finally, skin touched skin and Dominic would have responded if not interrupted by the burning fever that consumed his waist. All his life nearly escaped in just one breath when Matthew’s slick cock touched his. Warm and sticky precum dripped between their leaking figures, unsurprisingly most of which came from the overwhelmed priest. 

“Shit, you’re sensitive. You’re so fucking perfect it makes me crazy.” Matthew spoke with wild eyes and an unworldly stamina compared to the priest. Although a little embarrassed by his lightness, Dominic took the compliment with a tightening sensation building below his abdomen.

“L-Lube… It’s on your right,” Dominic stuttered. 

Matthew cursed before bending his tight body to reach for the bottle on the table. Dominic was impressed at how agile he was, and how perfectly the two fit on a chair not so small, but clearly intended for one. 

He looked down at his bag for a second. “Condom?”

“I’m dead, Dom. I can’t even pass anything. And since I totally popped your cherry, you don’t worry me,” the boy teased.

“Got it, no rubber.” He rolled his eyes.

“Fuck no. All of you’s gonna be inside me or nothing. If there’s one last thing I can take from you, it’s gonna be this.” Matthew joked, but Dominic could tell he was honest. It meant so much to the boy that he put everything on the table. There was no room left for guessing. What was his, they shared. If that included the priest’s innocence, it was just so. Although, that, they knew was long gone.

Dominic applied the lube liberally and Matthew raised his hips, where he pressured his cock against the boy’s hole. “Take whatever you want from me, then. I’m ready.”

Matthew drew a chilled breath at the sensation. It seemed his rim was still overstimulated from earlier. Dominic took the chance to move while he was still open and felt scorching pleasure envelope. Bliss, at last.

“Jesus Christ,” the priest moaned as his cock slipped in. He was still so warm and wet. That, and the tightness alone sent him back and forth between the ground and afterlife.

Matthew’s hand aggressively clung onto the back of the chair, with Dominic’s on the arm rest. The further he sank in, the harder each grasped onto their supports. The priest even swore he could have heard a chip crack under Matthew’s grip.

Matthew’s arm webbed with bulging veins the harder he held on. Then, the priest was finally buried inside him and he found the moment to relax.

“Fuck, you’re a monster,” Matthew heaved.

Dominic held his other hand against Matthew’s back. The soft and rosy skin of his palms caressed Matthew’s pale exterior, where his fingers explored the divots between his shoulder blades. He was like something carved up from stone, toned and cold. There was a bit of warmth underneath him, though. Somewhere, under still sinew and bones, his core burned.

Dominic didn’t know if he’d imagined the same feeling earlier. But having it in his hold again, he didn’t care whether it was in his head or not. Matthew, warm or not, was alive.

Suddenly, the boy reached to grab Dominic’s hand. “Like this, here,” he guided gently. The priest sucked in a faint breath against his teeth when the boy placed it on his leaking cock.

Matthew began to lift his hips after he’d let go of Dominic’s hand, signaling for him to stroke.

Dominic did what felt right. He took the boy’s cock and tugged softly after using more lubricant. Matthew’s hips fell harder the more swiftly Dominic had adapted. At the same time, the priest followed with shallow thrusts.

“L-Like that?”

“A little further in... Like that. Oh fuck, like that. Yes yes yes fuck, right there. Go harder, Dom.”

The priest angled his thrusts until stopping where Matthew drew the most siren-like moan. It went on and on for the moment and Dominic could feel the sweat drip over his brow. He thrusted absentmindedly, with the one desire to hear his voice again. 

“That’s good, so good, Dom. Just… Fuck.” Matthew was interrupted by another thick thrust, as though it could be felt up to the hilt of his hips. He swallowed to gather himself and Dominic watched the bulb in his throat sink. The priest wasn’t acclimated to Matthew’s rhythm yet, making every push sudden and violent. Like he jerked with the intention of choking his cock in between plush guts and pulsating peristalsis. But soft or rough, it was euphoric to the boy. 

“Touch me, please. Just… don’t stop.”

Dominic kept sinking himself into Matthew, whose flesh burned him from the inside out. The priest’s cock throbbed painfully as the boy clenched in. All he felt was the softness of his walls, the warmth of his skin, confine his aching figure. That went without mentioning the pleasure of his glazed cock brushed against Dominic’s hand.

Dominic felt his lower back begin to sting with every drag and pull. His thighs tightened as did his grip on the armrest. His sweat mimicked the burning candle’s wax and dripped down his chest heavily. He couldn’t get enough of it. The lightheadedness, the soreness. As though his body was being wrung like a towel with its water cascading in rivulets. The scent, as well, was sweet and divine and so thick in the air with its gravity.

Dominic pumped Matthew’s cock with less haste than his thrusts. He took his time, enjoying the splendor and sensation of his skin. Matthew leaked onto the priest’s hand persistently, with dramatic moans following every tug. Dominic started stroking with pressure against his tip. He experimented, searching for whatever felt right or wrong. Matthew helped by adjusting where his strength should have gone. Soon enough, Dominic got the gist of it.

The priest put so much care into how he held Matthew. His hand, although it stroked intensely, still handled him delicately. 

Matthew’s shaft began to coat entirely in lube and precum as Dominic used it to move swiftly. He worked with as much softness as the boy’s flesh. Matthew mumbled commands to hasten and only then did Dominic feel comfortable enough to be more aggressive. 

He mapped out the boy’s veins and tightened his hold, nearly suffocating him below the tip. Spots of purple and blue undertones peaked where pink did. Matthew yelped and Dominic stroked faster.

“F-Fuck me, keep doing that.”

Dominic followed his intuition. He gripped him from the base and worked from there, tugging in rhythm with his thrusts. The priest knew he’d done something right when Matthew began spilling curses under his breath.

All the while, Dominic violated Matthew's tender walls as though he made an effort to break him into incoherent babble. He kept there with sweat condensing down his lower back and hardened muscles. Dominic himself let slip an abundance of groans and whimpers with every deep push. But if Matthew's tightness didn’t pain him enough, it was the boy’s insatiable and clenching hole throughout every drag in and out. Dominic’s cock twitched inside of him when he felt the cramped space Matthew made. Like he’d been stolen of all his blood supply. 

Matthew noticed and he loosened himself whenever the priest pulled outward. Dominic was able to breathe again, and it was fucking angelic. He felt a rush of euphoria every tight push in and relaxation every pull out. The boy was similarly overwhelmed, his excitement clearly marked by the jolt in Dominic’s hand.

Matthew’s rim stung from the tightness every time Dominic’s cock stretched him at the shaft. The boy’s fingers curled where he gripped the chair. Once again, the priest heard it crack under his strength even more. He thought of his talon-like nails and what they’d feel like dug into his back. The bright red marks that would capture his breaths faster than his lungs could receive. But before he could ask, the boy cusped a hand around the priest’s face. 

He slowed a bit and Matthew pushed up to remind him to keep his pace.

“Dominic…” His full name was embraced by a coddling timbre.

Dominic’s face blended with warm and gentle pinks at the boy’s touch. He looked up with drunken and ashy eyes at Matthew, whose lips quieted all his curiosity.

“Touch me. More, everywhere. I want you to abuse me, or tear me as you want. But don’t stop yet…”

The priest stared starstruck and all he could feel was the boy’s soft fingers buried under his locks. As he held the back of his head, the priest took it to mean bringing his face closer. 

Dominic did as Matthew asked. Or rather, he followed what he wanted. He confided in his freedom and let his desire lead. And in the moment, he understood that was exactly what the boy intended. Dominic loosened his pursed lips and the reservations he had. 

Matthew held him close and the pressure of his hold was so healing. Dominic sunk into his warmth the same way his lower waist did. 

He made an effort to find the boy’s most sensitive spots, where he first tended to his sternum. There was hardly any hair in the dip between his chest. It was bare and remarkably rigid, his thin skin translucent over crawling veins and superficial tissue. Dominic’s tongue moved over it smoothly, noting the hitched elevation when he accidentally revealed teeth. Interesting. 

The priest caught his eyes on the boy’s hardened nipples and turned his attention there. He lapped his tongue over its softness and at once, Matthew’s breath tremored.

“H-Hh… Fuck. Oh, fuck yes, Dom. Keep it there.”

Dominic kept Matthew’s whimpers in mind when his tongue glided over his nipples again. He played with the pressure, going lighter against one and hard on the other. Dominic observed every twitch in his hands, every pour on his fingers, and used that to guide him. He started using his mouth, suckling the tender and soft tissue in between his plush lips. There, he coated them in his slick and warm saliva, beating with his tongue over and over. Finally, he pulled on them with his teeth.

Everything he wanted, whatever he needed, Dominic was at his service. But he followed his own direction as much as Matthew’s, fully confident and capable of harnessing his own will.

The priest lightly nipped at him. Then he applied more pressure, sucking until they were swollen and red. Dominic was pleased with the indentations of his teeth, a symbol of the mark he’d left on the boy. Matthew purred all cat-like and dug his fingers into Dominic’s hair the harder his pressure climbed. Dominic’s scalp burned at even the slight graze of talons, and it urged him to suck harder.

The priest’s lips were wet with saliva and plump after using such force. But he didn’t yield. His teeth prodded and tongue glided like from a cannibalistic scene. Like it was the closest he’d ever come to what Matthew did. The boy’s arms lost strength, loosely interlocking his fingers in Dominic’s hair for support as his head lolled back. The priest tasted him from the chest up and used his hand to hold his supple white neck. There, he held his fruit and teased his tongue over him.

Dominic closed his eyes for a moment the same way Matthew did, lost between dimensions. He mapped out the boy’s flesh with his tongue. His veins were so delicate and soft. Dominic kissed them lightly and pinched the skin with his lips. He sucked hard and livened with the intention of seeing his bruises later. 

Dominic moved his insatiable tongue to the Adam’s apple, noting how tough and bulbous it was. Matthew swallowed thickly and it was felt on Dominic’s lips. His tongue crawled up and revealed the bed of his soft white flesh. There, he tasted the lymph nodes beneath his jaw, the strings and fibers buried under smooth tissue. Finally, the tender and deep cavity between his clavicle. 

He opened to gaze and Matthew was near weeping, both his eyes and seeping cock. Once he’d been reduced to drunken whimpers and moans, the priest let go. He admired his work, the picture of a zombified and throbbing sinner, his chest battered with bruises and bites. Dominic leaned back to focus on his strokes while Matthew collected himself. Although, it took a minute for him to get back to earth. And after another pause, he was finally able to speak again.

“The rosary, Dom…” He slowed, but Matthew insisted he kept thrusting. “On the table… G-Get the rosary, please…”

Dominic had an idea of what he meant and he turned to his side to grab the beads. Matthew tensed a bit when Dominic’s cock lifted as he bent below toward the bag. What he could’ve reached for, the boy didn’t know. But his confusion didn’t last long when the priest finally returned his attention with the rosary, and a strange pink item in hand. 

“This what you have in mind?,” Dominic asked, wrapping the cock ring and beads around Matthew’s figure.

Dominic applied more lube and the cool sensation of each object immediately stung divinely. 

“Oh, my God… You’re fucking amazing.”

They both snickered, but when Dominic hit the ring’s button, Matthew spoke no more than short gasps and whimpers. He quickly leaked onto the tight band and the priest’s hand was overwhelmed with sticky and slippery wetness. He enveloped the rosary around Matthew’s cock and began to stroke once more. 

Matthew was reduced to brief curses and groans again and Dominic could not have been more pleased. 

The vibrations could be felt on the priest’s fingers as his hand strolled. Although it could have gone higher, by the nearly fatal look on Matthew, he seemed satisfied as was. Dominic curled his fingers into the rosary and used greater pressure. The beads rolled with his strokes and gave a rough, euphoric edge to the stimulation. He knew a similar feeling from his own experience. Although, a different set of beads was used then.

“Is this good?”

“Thrust faster, like that. Yeah… Tug harder,” Matthew pleaded. Dominic used more force. “Agh, pinch it. The head, yeah. There. Fuuuck, right there–”

Dominic didn’t mind being ordered around. He commanded as much as Matthew did, anyway. They serviced each other without a blink of apprehension. It was a returning relationship, even from the start. Always giving regardless of the consequences, to feed their own selfish obsessions. But their motives had changed somewhere along the way.

Dominic’s fetish, his fixation for freedom and the ability to act of his own will, was virtually felt through his interactions with the boy. Matthew, his desire to feel whole and human, was given unconditionally and abundantly by the priest. From the start, the two circled each other like a death sentence followed its fated pray. A kind of relationship that was never to have even been thought of. It was the first boundary they broke.

Once it was, everything they did for the other fed their own cravings, their own intentions and needs. And yet, when the priest cared for the boy’s wounds earlier, not a moment of it was for him. Neither was Matthew’s crime of murder to protect his beloved. It was all in good faith. 

“How’re you holding?,” Matthew asked. Not with alternative intentions or to tease, but genuine care.

“Fine…” Dominic’s lungs grasped every breath shortly. He truly was fine, but hours of lost time had begun to catch up to him. Matthew incredibly seemed completely aware and awake besides the haze and Dominic was stunned by it.

Dominic tried to keep his strokes in pace with his thrusts, the two working violently and less contained. His hand played with the rosary and squeezed the head between it lightly. He pinched harder with his pointer and thumb at the assessment of Matthew’s reaction. Various mutterings slipped through the boy’s thin lips and Dominic summoned all his will not to absorb himself in the perfection of his face. Or the sultry and sweet melody of his moans… Or the plushness of his tight walls stretched over his cock… Or his weeping figure... vibrating… in hand…

“Matthew… Matt, I can’t hold… Can I… Please–” His voice was worn and soft. The boy shook from his drunken stupor.

His waist slowed until he stopped completely. “Shh, you can hold it. Hold it, Dom. Breathe with me…” 

Matthew kept his tender hold on Dominic’s face. He indented his thumb to the temple and used pressure to spark his senses. The dull sting woke him slightly.

“Slower… In… Out… Just like that, that’s good.”

Dominic mirrored his inhale and the two exhaled in tandem, starting a repetition. It worked well to clear the priest’s tension. He focused on the sounds of their breaths, the rise of his chest, and soon enough, he calmed himself.

Once Dominic cooled enough, Matthew rose his hips again. He felt a pang below when he’d moved, but it wasn’t enough to bring him near the edge again. 

Matthew started a slow rhythm of sliding in and out, then bucking his hips and twisting Dominic’s cock. He was still wet, much more than before. The slickness dripped to Dominic’s base and soon enough, they were back in motion. The priest took a moment before he stroked. His balls pressed with every rush down, and shaft compressed in between Matthew’s taut rim. Blinding heat blended into the movements with sparks of ecstasy.

Dominic’s hand began wringing Matthew’s cock with no gradual build. At once, his fingers twisted between the rosary beads and he stroked intensely. His soft hands, which trembled to do anything more than anoint and pray over sinners, held one with pure conviction. Dominic tightened his grasp with as much strength as his certainty. Up and down, a steady motion and the right amount of erratic to make the boy jerk his tight ass into the sensation. 

Tinges of warm and uncertain electricity shot from inside the priest’s body the harder he pumped. Not only his lower waist, but his core, his heart and head. His extremities all the way to his fingertips buzzed with blissful static. And every inch of his nerves were set alight in the tight space they’d claimed on the chair.

“Taking me so good, Love… You’re so good…,” Dominic whispered.

“Mm–yes… yes …"

Dominic kept his composure until images began to flash before his eyes. Filthy scenes of their climax. Of shooting his load inside the sinner and claiming his body and soul for his own. Of tasting Matthew and kissing him with the same tongue that ran with his cum. Then running his finger over the hole that dripped with his finish, watching as the boy shuddered to the touch. 

Dominic pinched the head and felt a thick spur of precum in between his fingers. He knew he’d caught Matthew’s attention. He knew he was watching as he slipped the sample on his lips and licked slowly. He knew what it did to the boy as he felt a signature twitch that didn’t belong to the vibrator. 

“Kiss me, now,” Matthew urged with glossy and hazed eyes. 

Dominic responded with dire and wet lips. Their tongues mingled sloppily, undignified. But the rush was much too grand to contain themselves.

Their breaths were hot and steaming like mist over springs, lips connected by sticky webs of saliva and cum. Dominic stuck his tongue in further. He tried to feel Matthew deeper, all of his soft walls and the smooth underside of his tongue. Wiry veins and smooth tissue were felt under a gliding and wanting tongue. He scoped for his fangs and when he found them, he went closer. He knew the danger, the result of one miniscule prick. But that alone sent his lust fetching for the friction.

He adored the feeling of his muscle against hard, cold teeth. It had such a strong and smooth exterior he could only compare to marble or ivory. Rigid, but delicately cut and chiseled. He couldn’t have been any creature other than God’s to be so carefully carved. Every feature of his just cried with an angel’s image. His eyes, especially.

Dominic couldn’t appreciate Matthew’s fangs any longer before the boy pulled away, but that alone was enough to savor. He could tell the boy was a little shaken when he’d realized how close Dominic was. But the same reservations were gone when Dominic teased the ring. 

“Oh… Oh, God… Yes…”

Matthew lowered to kiss the priest’s neck as he tended to his burning cock. Dominic raised the setting a few notches up and observed his figure burst with pink. Matthew stopped holding onto the back of the chair and supported his hand on Dominic’s shoulder. His heavy head buried into the nook of the priest’s neck, where he kissed and whined at the intense vibrations. 

Matthew’s thighs tightened as he moved up and down and for once, the priest noted his weakened state. Hot and sticky precum and lube slipped between the same thighs that ached to hold the boy up. Matthew kept his lips on the priest and fought to hold his head straight. Dominic also struggled to keep himself when they’d both felt the same need begin crawling up.

The air around them changed. Where there was an abundance of newfound excitement laid a calm, knowing sensation. Something mellow and familiar. Dominic knew it when he felt the same in Matthew’s kisses, so slow and light. He also knew to give into it.

Dominic slowed for a moment and Matthew rose up for the priest to position himself better. Dominic collected the remaining strength in his lower half and pulled out. He kept his cock pressed against Matthew’s rim. For the first time since their respite, he felt the cold air hit his shaft and he gave an exhausted but pleased sigh. He took the moment to enjoy every ounce of satisfaction before thrusting back in.

“What’s the–FUCK… Fuck, fuck, fuck, that’s good. So fucking good– ” Matthew gripped Dominic’s shoulder with unknowing strength as the priest plunged back inside of him.

Red rivulets glided down the priest’s shoulder blade. His flesh had been pierced like a scene of the stigmata, with such a clean marking. The sting alongside Dominic’s thrust combined so subtly as though they were one climbing, roaring, searing surge of pleasure. But he nor Matthew paid any mind as the priest buried himself deeper into his sweet spot.

“A little… lower, Dom…”

“Is… that good?”

Matthew gave a moan that sucked all the wind out of him. “F-Fu… That’s perfect… Perfect… ”

Dominic kept his hold steady and made sure not to stray from his strokes. He summoned all the strength he had left and pushed harder, faster. Dominic made haste of his thrusts, but did so with raw intention and strength. He leaked harder inside the boy and watched as his back arched into the sensation. He had hit it.

Suddenly, euphoria invigorated Matthew and he rode Dominic’s cock faster to chase the feeling down. Dominic followed his movement and grinded upward into his prostate. He massaged the boy’s leaking figure and teased him down to the balls. All the while, he maintained his rhythm beating his sweet spot senselessly.

Dominic tuned himself to his surroundings, his body, and his soul. The area became fuzzy and all there existed was he and his sinner. 

Their collided worlds came into view and suddenly, everything was felt ten times over. The sweet smoothness over Dominic’s palm. The sore and serrated sting on his shoulder. The brilliant red blood that dripped alongside his sweat. The hot and dense softness surrounding his cock from inside Matthew. Matthew…

They’d long surpassed what they were hours ago. Matthew and Dominic were different, better. They were bound together by more than superficial obsession. And still, the priest could not help but go back in time when he first thought about the boy’s lips… His tongue… His fangs… As Dominic felt the rush of his climax crawl up, a stronger feeling overcame his entire body. Something he couldn’t dismiss any longer as a fantasy or daydream. He felt clarity, whole and surrounding, when the thought finally revealed itself to him.

“Matthew.”

“I’m so close, Dom…”

“Matthew, look at me.” His eyes were so blue, so Heaven-like. Dominic wanted to become a part of him, to see that Heaven for himself. Or at least, anything close to it, and he’d be satisfied. There, in his embrace, he’d be satisfied to see Heaven. “I want you to bite me. Turn me, Matt.”

The boy slowed and it was the priest, then, who kept their calm pace until the other did as well. “I-I can’t… You want me to turn you?”

“More than anything, yes.”

“No. Dom, no. I’ll damn you, you’ll never–”

“Turn me.”

“I can’t take any more from you…” Matthew’s lips, weak and hurt.

“Turn me.” Dominic’s, smiling and content.

“I couldn’t forgive myself, I couldn’t–”

“Matthew. I surrender my blood, my breath. Now, my life is yours. Take it.” 

The boy’s eyes were wide like the pregnant moon and filled with stars. Despite his apprehension, despite his shaken brows, he was beaming. Purposeful. He understood.

Matthew rode Dominic to finish with the same certain look and before he knew, the priest was surrounded by an unreal feeling.

Dominic’s cock tensed as warm, thick cum enveloped him from inside hot and searing flesh. He felt the skin on his forearms sprawl with heat, the mark of Matthew’s nails like a rake’s fingers jagged across. He was overcome with the rush and his waist all throughout trickled with the ease and satisfaction of release. It was a climax so unfamiliar from the others, so aggressive to his senses it was nearly stifling. 

But before Dominic could absorb the feeling entirely, everything flickered away like a light gone out. Only, all he saw was white. And all he felt was the same blistering heat before something more calm claimed his senses. 

His bite. It was warm. 

The currents of air were felt so clearly, strings strewn and twisting the way budding flowers did. Softness so outward and bright like the sun’s rays kissed his forehead before Mass. Warmth that began subtly and gradually emerged from the belly of bliss. Then–a smoldering light that cracked like a broken powerline. Soon, a mumbling, tumbling, tousling fire with a puffed and bellowing chest. Warm became hot. Scorching, steaming hot. With cinder and smoke, embers and electricity, flint and felicity. All of which, indescribable and uncertain. Pure sex in a bottle couldn’t taste better. Heaven, he thought it was. 

The blinding white dissipated as fast as it came. Dominic opened his eyes and there was Matthew. Heaven, he truly found.

“Dom… Can you hear me, Dom?” His voice, blurred as much as his vision, gradually became clearer. 

Dominic gasped as though he hadn’t caught a real breath in ages. But once he did, it felt futile. What was so natural to him as walking felt no different than standing still. He took a moment to assess himself, but Matthew gave him a knowing look.

“Don’t try fighting it. When I breathe… I’m just copying everyone. So I don’t feel so… you know. It’s just second nature now.”

Dominic exhaled and it didn’t feel so strange anymore. He looked at Matthew with contentment until the boy wiped his frown.

“Hi,” the priest smiled.

“Hey,” his sinner returned.

Dominic moved his hand to caress Matthew’s face. His arm was drained of all color and washed with the boy’s same complexion. And still, he held him. Matthew leaned into his palm and held Dominic’s arm, pure cold on cold.

“Agh, damn–” The priest groaned with the sudden ache between his gums. His incisors felt gritty and upon pressing against one, Dominic felt a growth. Two, on either side. The pressure subsided shortly after and he knew it at once.

“Your teeth… They look great on you. Much better than me,” Matthew laughed.

“I’m not sure about that.” Dominic inched closer to kiss Matthew. Finally, he held freedom in his hands, tasted it on his lips. The real thing, with the clarity that glasses give to short sight.

Dominic breathed Matthew’s life into his lungs. Not to mimic or mime, but to absorb the atmosphere around them and take in everything. It was powerful and pungent on his tongue. The boy’s fangs brushed his lips and Dominic couldn’t contain his smile. The rush never left, the danger never faded. It became unbridled excitement and the two were drunk with its potency. 

Dominic licked his lips when he moved back and he felt his fangs once more. Not for a second did he regret anything. He was content 

“You know, it was always curious to me how heavenly your eyes look for someone supposedly damned to Hell… You’ve bitten me, and I can’t help but feel saved when I look at you.”

Matthew smiled. “You’re so unreal.” But his eyes beamed and his face lit up as though its color had come back. 

Dominic thought of where they met. He thought of the church and his life as a priest, dedicated to the Bible and his duties. When he reflected on his life he felt anything but disappointment. Nothing was a mistake. Not missionary, or seminary, or even becoming a man of the cloth. If living a life of shallow breaths meant finding eternity with limitless air then it was all worth the wait. The cruelty and tumult of his faith was all worth death to find life again.

“We should get up, we’re a bloody mess,” Matthew nudged. But Dominic was unmoving.

“Just…” The priest paused. He put his hand over Matthew’s chest and tested for what he felt earlier. “Your heart. It beats.”

“What?” The boy smiled and Dominic remained still.

“I feel it.”

Matthew bit his bottom lip confused. He put his hand beside the priest’s and quieted. “I don’t…”

“It’s there,” Dominic looked up. “I feel it, Matthew.”

They both exchanged knowing and pure looks. Although the boy couldn’t feel a thing, he was certain that the priest did. Dominic was absolute. He felt it hours before, and hours after that. Feeling it once more, he knew for sure that Matthew wasn’t damned, or that he’d drag him down alongside one another. He was confident of the boy’s soul and his purity because in his core, it was still there. It never left, even when Dominic’s wavered throughout knowing him. Underneath Matthew’s bruised and tough exterior, his heart was true.

Matthew gave a soft smile. “You’re incredible, you know. I keep thinking of us and how crazy we don’t make sense… But we do,” the boy paused. “Throughout my past relationship, I thought I couldn’t turn her because I cared for her too much. But now I’m realizing it’s because I didn’t love her. Not like I do, you.”

Dominic stargazed when he looked into Matthew’s eyes. And when he saw his reflection, it was with a soft smile. “Come on. Let’s get dressed.”

 

…

 

Matthew was the first to gather himself but once Dominic had got up he really saw the scope of their mess. He was thankful to have remembered the wipes in his bag and immediately cleaned the ropes of cum over his abdomen. Silently, he was also glad that Matthew didn’t miss his own climax. He tossed the rest of the tissues to the other and they took the moment to collect their items.

Once they were dressed they fell to the floor like heaping bags of flour.

“It’s really weird. My body’s so beat after tonight but I’m so awake right now,” Dominic noted, sitting against the desk beside Matthew.

“That's all the stamina. How'd you think I was so fast, huh. Fuck, I bet your cock would feel so crazy now.”

“Matthew.”

“Sorry, sorry. Anyway, that's not the problem now. You feel hungry, don't you?”

Dominic hadn’t thought of it until then, but his stomach felt cavernous. “Yeah. Like it could kill me, actually.” He felt a chill and gnawing anxiety came over him at the thought of such hunger.

“Don't worry, I've got a pint or two left. But we're going to deal with catching your own in time.” The priest turned white. Whiter than he already was, which was pretty damn gaunt. “Relax. Animals, remember? No humans, I swear. I know… It’s not gonna feel like enough at first. And it’s gonna get worse, unfortunately. But you’ll adapt until it gets better. You won’t be like me, when I had nobody to help through it. I’ll be there. Promise.” His voice was so sweet and mellow that Dominic couldn’t imagine the reality that he’d ever hurt someone before. Even so, it didn’t put him off. He made the process sound so… natural. The priest believed it really could be if he tried.

Dominic still had residing fear, but he knew Matthew was true. He trusted him, and if that was the price to pay for freedom, then so be it.

“Thanks… And, er… Thanks for coming here even when you didn’t need to.”

“Of course I needed to, Dom. You know how much of a mess you were? Had to set you straight, then.” His high and strange laugh filled Dominic’s chest with butterflies.

“W-Was it really that obvious I was a virgin? I mean… I know. But…” The priest’s voice faded and Matthew gave him a funny look, like he’d asked the stupidest question.

“Actually, no. If it was just sex I wouldn't think twice, honestly.”

“Oh…”

“You're really fucking good, you know. But since I know you, I kinda could just tell. Well, I really could. With the whole stiff shoulder and, obviously, since you're a priest.”

“Right. That's funny. I never really cared for the premarital spat. It’s all the same with the gay sin thing. It never computed.”

“Is that so…” Matthew beamed silently with the same fixation witnessed in confession. Dominic could admit to himself finally that he loved the attention. The obsession never left between them.

“Yeah. I feel like a loving god appreciates all of his creations. A marriage license is just superficial paper, it’s not a measure of real love. And homophobia... Well, it's just crap, isn’t it? Sin comes from the things we choose. But sexuality isn’t like that. How can we be condemned for a choice we don't have? Like with you. People don't choose life, the same way you didn’t choose to die. So why would a loving god damn you for something out of your control?”

Dominic thought he must have explained rocket science when Matthew was silent. His face was so blank at times it kept the priest on his toes. Dominic wished he’d brought tape because he could have really used it to shut up.

“That… makes so much sense, actually… Shit,” Matthew snickered. “So you waited ‘til you found the perfect person, huh?”

“Basically, yeah. Discipline is something I’ve always been keen on if I’m sharing myself. It’s a sacred moment to me…”

“So premarital really doesn’t bother you?...” His tone wasn’t light anymore. It was heavy and hinted at something other than the subject.

“Well, if it did I wouldn’t be here.”

“Right… But you're at peace with that… If you, y’know… You can’t be pure again?” And there, it was.

Dominic moved to face him fully. “Is this about me being turned? Or being with you?”

“Maybe…”

The priest blew a stream of cackles that ached his taut stomach, which made the other smile. Dominic found their interaction so funny, especially after an entire night that practically answered the question a million times over. Matthew’s high and strange laughter joined and the surrealness of everything sank in. The bridge of Dominic’s nose had even scrunched with his laughter and he pinched it, nearly curled over. 

It was the exact kind of idle conversation that they’d share in the parish. Their first honest interaction…

“Bastard, of course not. Matthew, haven’t I proved it enough to you with my life?,” he marked with the residuals of his laughter puffed on his eyes.

“No, you’re right. I think I’m just scared of having faith again… If it’s pointless for us.”

Dominic’s grin faded and his burning face turned cool with the realization of Matthew’s words. “Does that mean you’re going to try again?”

“I think I do… That feels weird to say,” he shook his head, “It’s been so damn long. Coming back to church feels right, though. Strange, but right. But even if I do… I’m never going to stop worshipping you, Dom. Even though it kills you that I do.” Matthew’s hand cusped Dominic’s and between them, he felt warmth again.

“You’re incredible, Matthew. The most incredible man I’ve known. Whether or not you come back, I’ll be there with you. And if you really hold me that high… I’ll do the same, then.”

“God, you're so pure. I can't believe you're the same man from an hour ago.”

“Okay, we really do need to work on your language, though, if you want to be a good Catholic. And praying. Lots and lots of praying for you.”

“Shit, after all we've done, I'll need to pray for eons.”

“Luckily for us, we can spare a few eons.”

The atmosphere was whole and ripe with fulfillment. Confession felt like lifetimes ago and their beings then, completely separate from who they became. The ambience of the room settled over them with such a peace they’d never known before. Gone were the tin exteriors around their hearts where they could finally embrace that feeling. 

In that, Dominic hoped to find home.

He searched for the same in Matthew’s eyes. It was there. The glimmer of uncertainty and excitement, as broad as the sky, and just as blue. He found a hint of something else, as well. A look of brightness on the boy’s face no different than that in the parish or confession. Dominic was never prepared for what would follow after that look. But everytime he did, he trusted that it wouldn’t hurt him.

“Why don’t we go away together. Far away.”

Not prepared at all.

“S-Seriously? Shit, why do I bother… Of course you’re serious.”

“Think about it, Dom. You’ll be condemned from the priesthood if you stay. And if I do, the people will roast me on a spit once they connect the dots. So… lets just fucking leave.” Matthew sucked in a breath as if it changed anything. But Dominic believed it did. He said he was just a mockery, but Matthew was as human as the rest. And if he had a plan, then the priest acknowledged it. 

“No, you’re right, but... Are you sure? I-I mean, we’d be uprooting everything.”

“After I thought I killed the pastor I saw no reason to stay, Dom. Then I settled with Gaia and I didn’t expect that. And the only reason the pastor didn't come for me then was because he knew I’d be staying for her. He used that to hurt me. But they’re both gone, and I’ve got nothing to tie me down. I don’t think either of us do.” Brightness, more blinding than the sun. “So let’s move, Dom. Why not? And we can get out of this boring countryside. Surround ourselves with life. Maybe you can find another church to preach.”

Then, soon, it was Dominic’s face lighting up. “Goodness, no. I'm still a man of god, but I'm quite sick of preaching. No, if we're gonna have a new start I'd rather do something less dull. Maybe pick up drumming again.”

“Does that mean…”

“I’ll go anywhere with you, Matthew.”

Dominic once missed being a missionary. When he traveled and freedom was felt on his fingertips. When myrtle bushes crashed in the wind and pebbles crackled under his steps like a xylophone. When the wind rustled his hair like a shaking tree and possibility hung about the air as ripe as its fruit. But the lingering. All but the lingering, he missed. 

Every city carried a piece of him when he left. Chip by chip, soon eroding. Crumbling. Ultimately, withered. 

Traveling felt like fleeing. The tumbling winds carried him like a vagabond rather than an explorer. Always in search of home, in search of a purpose, but never quite there. Freedom on his fingertips, exactly. Just within reach but never grasped.

But he found that with patience, the seasons changed. Winter stung and bit like an aching jaw. But life grew teething from its cold gums and there, spring had come. Purpose and brilliance blossomed, even after death. And after his last breath, he found there was another.

In that, he was home.

Notes:

My shayla... she's done. It's been so hard writing during school (from around Sep 20 2024 to Feb 14 2025 [yes I finished on vday]) but I hope ya'll enjoyed as much as I did writing (jeff buckley and muse refs here and there bc I'm a little shit)

Sub if you wanna. I'll be writing more in time lel

Also side note: story ends on chpt 7. Final day God rested after creating the world aka Lords Day. Aren't i just a fool for refs.

Chapter 8: Epilogue

The marmalade sunset began to fall. Sheep galloped over cascading green pastures like something of a dream. And to the distance, blooming myrtle chimed in the wind beside their home. A creaking sight with flora inhibiting the cracks of its aged exterior. There, atop the hill, Dominic and Matthew sat tucked underneath the shade of their umbrella.

Matthew pulled the acoustic guitar from its casing. Its luster never wore even after years under their bed.

His fingers swept the smooth and polished maple like drifting against the memories it carried. Their first serenade came to mind, most of all. “That song I promised” became “my first gig song,” and then “my proposal song.” Soon enough, the title began to lose translation over dozens of performances. But its sound would never lose its sweetness, as ageless as their bodies and admiration.

“You still smile when I play for you.” 

“Do I, now? You’d better remind me, then.”

Matthew breathed in swiftly and fixed his fingers to the fret like second nature.

 

You could be my unintended…

 

Notes:

"I like music because... it makes me feel the most free I've ever felt in my entire life and gives me the freedom to do anything without much consequence." -Dom, Musewiki