Chapter Text
Rey could hear the gentle pitter of raindrops as they repeatedly struck the outside of her bay window. It was still the pre-dawn hours, but the air had had an unfriendly chill to it all night. Off in the distance, thunder rolled; a suspenseful drumbeat, threatening what was yet to come.
But Rey’s thoughts were not on the storm. Though she sat in her den with a lively fire crackling in the hearth and her latest crochet project at her fingertips, she was not content, not like she’d hoped to be.
In the pit of her gut, there lurked the hot weight of anxiety, alarming in its maliciousness. In dizzying waves, it would upset her stomach, flush her skin, and spike her pulse. In her heart, there was a deep, sorrowful ache, constantly present. It troubled her, to be so unsure as to whether these pains were due more in part to her conversation with Father Ren and her feelings for him, or for her own regrets. This only preceded an even more troubling thought: were they one in the same?
They had nearly been caught tonight. One single moment of weakness and they’d toppled like dominoes on top of each other — and what if Father Thomas hadn’t knocked? To think, they had been one simple nicety away from ruin.
Rey sighed and released her crochet hook and the shawl she had been working on. It crumpled into a neat bundle upon her lap. She cracked her knuckles and rolled her wrists; the tips of her index fingers and thumbs felt almost completely numb after crocheting diligently for a few hours, until she had grown too weary to keep the nagging thoughts at bay any longer—somewhere around three-thirty in the morning.
She stared pensively out the window at the gentle cascade of rain outside. Maybe she should just go to bed, she thought. But then, what was the point? It made no great difference whether she was in bed or elsewhere; she would still be in the same state of limbo, floating alone somewhere between awake and asleep.
The Catholic guilt gnawed at her throat, vicious as the silvery teeth of vampires draining her of whatever essence remained within. She had sinned, yes. But could she go back to that church and risk facing him again? How could she repent for this, when she lost all her inhibitions just being in the same room with him?
And to leave it alone, to abandon it without any explanation to anyone and never look back upon it — wouldn’t that be worse? To think of that option made her feel as though she was standing at the opening of an endless dark hallway of torture. If she turned her back now, the guilt would consume her slowly; it would eat at her insides, a little bit each day, until she took her final breath. It would make her hope there was no afterlife, no Heaven or Hell. She would simply want it to be over.
It made her tremble to think that someone could have such a stake in her emotions, in the ways her body reacted. He hadn’t intended it, that much she could ascertain. But still, the fact remained that he could break her and bend her, and in many minute ways had done so already. Judging by the pained look upon his face back in his office, she had done much the same to him.
Lightning illuminated the high, menacing structures of oncoming clouds in the distance—their tightly coiled tufts of bruised purple and blue stood ranked in a line, like a nearing war party. The storm was almost there.
She rose from her chair and set her nearly-finished shawl on the seat in her place. She still wore only her cotton nightgown—it clung to the high peak of her breasts and fell in white, pleated curtains to her calves. As she passed her fireplace and headed for the kitchen to brew another pot of tea, the heat of the flames rose through the grate and crawled up her bare legs like curious fingers, slipping between her knees with comforting ease. She trembled in their wake.
She put the kettle on the stove just as the knock came at her door. It made her jump. Who would be out in this weather? It was still early in the morning, too. Thoroughly suspicious, she stepped out of her kitchen towards the door.
She pulled back the corner of the curtain on her door window, just enough that she could peak outside. The world out there was a strange grey-green colour, and the rain blurred the outlines of everything, but she knew a white clerical collar when she saw one.
She unlocked her door and opened it. A part of her wanted to keep it closed and not answer. But that part was small, and selfish. She wasn’t any more confident that she could find forgiveness and redemption this way, but she couldn’t just leave him out there in the rain.
“Father Ren?”
He raised his head, and her heart sank to see him looking so crestfallen. His priestly collar was loose and askew; his hair fell in wet, streaming ribbons down his forehead, into his eyes. Sad, desperate eyes.
“What are you doing?” Rey exclaimed and stepped aside. “Come in; you’re soaked straight through!”
He hesitated before crossing her threshold. She thought it peculiar, but said nothing of it. Once he was safely inside the cozy warmth of her home, and dripping all over her front mat, she shut her door to the brewing storm once more.
“Let me grab you some towels and a robe,” she said, quickly busying herself to the task. “You should get out of those clothes and get by the fire.”
“I told him everything. Father Thomas. I told him.”
His words gave her pause, and chilled her to the bone. Had she heard him right? She knew she had. What she didn’t know was whether to feel panicked, angry, or grateful.
“You...what?” She asked, slowly turning back to look at him.
“I had to, I—God, forgive me, I felt sick,” he explained. “After you left—after we were nearly caught—all of these thoughts and feelings began to nag at me. Believe me, I am no stranger to the insufferable humanity of the conscience, but this...this was unbearable.”
She could see him shivering, despite the warmth of her small house, which she now felt to be stuffy. Though her extremities felt numb, she walked stiffly to the bathroom and came back with a load of fresh towels and an oversized flannel robe. She thrust them at him and he took them from her, setting them aside so he could quietly undress.
“What exactly did you tell him?” She inquired, though she was terrified of the answer.
She had turned away from him only slightly, under the pretense of modesty, as he changed out of his clothes. This had in fact been her intention. But she couldn’t help watching out of the corner of her eye, through a curtain of her hair, as his hands crawled slowly down the front of his shirt, leaving buttons undone in their wake.
“I told him my failures,” he answered quietly. “I didn’t give him your name, if that’s what you’re wondering. Though I’m certain he knew, after everything, but he didn’t say so if he did.”
“Oh,” she said.
He removed his sopping shirt and Rey could see the fine, broad planes of his chest and stomach; sturdy and well-muscled for a small town priest. She thrust out her hand for the shirt.
“I can put them in the dryer for you,” she mumbled awkwardly.
“Thank you,” he uttered, peeling his pants off next, one long leg at a time.
She couldn’t stop the question from flying out of her mouth.
“Why are you here?”
He paused for a fleeting second at her sudden query before answering.
“I-I don’t know. I suppose I wanted to tell you all that, and...hm—”
He stopped short and after a moment of silence she turned to look at him full-on.
“What?”
Those dark brown eyes fell upon her with a mighty weight.
“I suppose…I couldn’t think of anywhere else I wanted to go.”
“...Oh.”
Now stripped to nothing more than his underwear and socks, his face flushed pink.
“If you would prefer, I can go…”
No, please don’t. The voice called from within her, desperate and instant in its plea, and she struggled to keep the words from spilling out. He couldn’t bring himself to look her in the eye; she could see the vibrant red shade of embarrassment glow upon his face. He stood exposed, wet, and vulnerable before her in her home, and she would have every reason to send him back out into the storm, which was beginning to pick up ferocity—the wind was howling and screeching through the trees. Rey both heard and felt the plaintive cry of the tempest outside. And she knew she would not find it within herself to cast this man out.
“Don’t be silly,” she chastised lightly. “Put the robe on and dry off by the fire. I’ll go get these in the machine.”
She took his pants from him and left him to it.
When she returned a few moments later, her ancient dryer now rumbling in the background, Father Ren was standing in the middle of her living room, the old robe open and untied, with a towel around his neck. He stared into the fire with a peculiar expression upon his face, one that Rey couldn’t quite figure out. Though she could see the flickering tongues of flame and the dancing red embers reflecting in his eyes, she wasn’t certain he was seeing those things himself, or if he was looking somewhere far beyond their scorching touch, to a place known only by him.
“Father?”
He jumped. He hadn’t seen her there, at the edge of the room, hidden in the dark grey-green shadows of the early morning storm.
She entered into the warm glowing reach of the fire and stooped to throw another log on, expertly opening and closing the mesh grate with the iron poker.
“Are you alright?” She asked. “This should help to warm you up quicker.”
She stood, wiping her hands on her nightgown, and found that he was frowning at her. Something cold slid into her stomach.
“You shouldn’t call me that anymore,” he explained upon seeing her puzzled expression.
That cold thing shifted in her gut—icy barbs lanced through her in a dozen pinpricks of anxiety.
“Why not?” She asked quietly, hesitantly.
“I am no longer a priest.”
Rey’s heart plummeted to the floor. The cold thing doubled in size and pierced her throughout; it filled her with a sharp and bitter poison.
This was her fault, somehow. She felt the guilt almost instantly. It came over her like a shroud.
“W-what do you mean? Father Thomas—did he—after—?” Oh, God, what have I done?
“No. It was pro gratia ,” he explained, emotionless.
“You...you asked to be dismissed?” Rey could hardly believe what she was hearing. Her heart was beating at a dizzying pace in her chest; it became difficult to take adequate breaths.
He didn’t verbalize his answer, but nodded instead, his lips pulling tight into a firm line.
“Why? Why would you do that?”
Those glittering eyes struck her.
“Must you ask?”
“If it’s because of me...then I should be the one to leave,” she argued. “I’ve done it before. I can find another church to go to, or stop going at all…”
“No. It has to be this way.”
His words were a brick wall: firm, even, and cold; she could not penetrate them, though she wanted to try.
She huffed, deflating cautiously.
“Where will you go? What will you do?” She asked.
He rubbed at the ends of his hair subconsciously with the towel. Small pieces had begun to dry before the heat of the fire, and now floated casually around the sides of his face.
“I’m not sure,” He shrugged. “I have enjoyed my time here, but assuredly by morning the parishioners will be talking, and after that I’m not so certain I’ll be such a welcomed sight downtown.”
“And why shouldn’t you be?” Rey demanded of him. “They won’t know what you’ve done. They never will.”
“Maybe not,” he agreed half-heartedly. “But a twice-exiled priest is perfect fodder for Coffee Row to come to their own conclusions.”
“Do you really care that much what these people think of you?”
“Yes,” he admitted sharply. “They trusted me to guide them down a holy path; one that I myself could not follow. Every Sunday when I gave my sermon they’d all look up at me with expectant faces, kind faces, and I spoke empty words to them. I preached to them about diligence to the Lord, self-respect, and the strength to resist darkness—all things I do not possess, or fail to understand!”
Rey had not heard him yell before. Nor had she ever been spoken to with such a fierce intensity it make her knees shake. Suddenly she was no longer certain if the fire in his eyes was a reflection at all.
“They trusted me, and I failed them,” he finished, quieting down to a muted mutter. “So yes, I do care what they think of me.”
“I-I’m sorry,” she stammered, long eyelashes tickling the tops of her cheeks. “I didn’t think of it that way.”
He didn’t respond, only shuffled closer to the fire.
A thought occurred to Rey, lancing through her mind like the quick flashes of lightning outside. Its after-effects were thunderous, too; her face fell in an instant, and she felt her skin prickle with cold, even before the roaring fire.
“Am I a sin to you?”
Her voice was quiet, shaky even, but it cut through the room like the howling wind. She watched his shoulders slacken ever so slightly, and he looked at her as though just realizing she was there.
“What?” He whispered.
“Am I a sin to you,” she repeated, “or a failure? Y-you confessed to another priest about me, did you not? I can’t help but to feel like the cause of your torment…”
“You aren’t,” he urged, perhaps louder than intended. “No, Rey, I beg of you, do not think this way—I promise you I don’t see it like that. My sins and failures are just that: my own . I have been making mistakes for much longer than I’ve known you. So you can’t blame yourself.”
“But I was the catalyst to all this,” she pressed. “If I hadn’t—”
“No, not you. Lust. It seized us both in its warm grasp. We both felt its pull; both unsure of what it meant. It preyed upon our lonely hearts and drew us in with the promise of a gentle, intimate touch.”
Rey frowned. That explanation felt incorrect, somehow. She could practically hear it in Father Thomas’s voice, and she couldn’t help but feel like Ren was only repeating it halfheartedly. Lust. It may have played a small part in things—certainly it had been present when she’d been in the pew, fascinated by the way his lips moved as he spoke. But, as she understood it, lust was not powerful enough to create that strong, undeniable urge to see him again. It wasn’t just the lure of attraction that brought her to his office, or to that confessional box. She had wanted to hear his voice; to be in his company, with or without physical contact. If lust had made her fall upon him, what had kept her from getting back up?
“Is that really what you believe?” She asked after a lengthy pause of thought. “That this was all to do with lust and nothing more?”
He blinked and turned toward her, stunned. Standing there still half-soaked, his large frame making it impossible to tie the robe up around his waist—she may have thought it quite comical, if the atmosphere wasn’t so terse.
“I...n-no, that’s—” he stammered.
“Did you not enjoy my company?”
“I-I do, very much—”
“Do you not...think of me fondly when you are not with me?”
“I do…”
“Do you not regard me softly, but only cruelly—with groping hands and nipping teeth?”
“Rey, I—”
“Think, Father. Was this all just lust to you?”
He opened his mouth to speak but closed it soon afterward. The silence grew and swirled between them like the storm outside. Rey wasn’t sure how to react to the fact that he didn’t argue. It was a small mercy, to be sure, but she didn’t believe it meant he understood.
“Do you feel only lust right now?” she asked timidly.
His eyes befell her silhouetted form through the thin veil of her nightgown; traipsing along the high round of her breasts, down to the tempting, slight swell of her hips and thighs. Rey felt the heat crawl across her flesh; scorching her, it drew her blood to the surface.
“I do, I won’t lie to you. However—” he paused, and though she could not in that moment bring herself to look him in the eye, she could feel his attention on her face. “—it is not the reason I came here tonight.”
Rey could feel her legs trembling ever so slightly as she remained frozen in his soulful gaze.
“Despite what this may look like, I promise you it is not the reason,” he went on, slowly, carefully, admitting these truths to himself and to her. “I didn’t come here tonight because I expected something from you, or because I wanted you to comfort me. I came here because there was no one else I wanted to see. I was guided here by need, and need alone.”
Lust had nothing to do with it. Rey swallowed heavily as the weight of his words settled over her.
“I needed to know if—if you would cast me out, once you knew what I’d done.” he finished sadly.
“Why should I cast you out? What have you done to deserve that? You speak as though you’ve committed an unforgivable sin—and while some may consider it as such...I do not,” she argued.
She stood up straighter and pulled her shoulders back. She took a small step closer and felt the warmth from the fire tickle gently up her legs.
“Perhaps you are a little misguided. Confused, maybe, as to where your desire for me stems from,” she murmured placatingly. “But, I understand. Perhaps it seems to be all the same to you.”
He didn’t speak, didn’t move; but he watched her pensively as she seemed to work through her thoughts while they crawled past her lips.
“I’m confused, too,” she confessed quietly. “What we did...it certainly felt like sin. In a church, of all places. So to some degree that’s just what it was: sinful, and lustful. But I can’t concede that that’s all it ever was, or all it ever could be. Does this not feel deeper to you?”
She gestured at the space between them—at the very situation they found themselves in. He’d said it himself. He had chosen to come here, because there was nowhere else he wanted to go. She had taken him in, clothed him (to whatever degree the ill-fitting robe constituted as clothing), and gotten him warm again before her hearth. And she refused to believe that this had all transpired because of sinful lust alone.
Perhaps it was selfish of her, to put hope into the thought of love where none was promised. He did not owe her reciprocation. So why lay herself bare before him on a whim? She realized in that moment she was terribly afraid, not of rejection, but of the knowledge that if she didn’t say something while she still could, she would regret it for the rest of her life.
“We mustn’t let guilt cloud our heads,” she finished softly, but sternly. “We’ve done nothing but make excuses since we first locked eyes. Reasons for why we’re bad people, possessed by demons. Maybe we are, too. But this doesn’t feel that way to me. My feelings for you go beyond the simplicity of lust; they are far more sincere than that.”
He melted away then, like the prayer candles which burned low late into the night at the base of their chosen altars. She could see wetness glimmering golden in his eyes and her heart throbbed in agony for him, but also for her. She had few tears left to cry now, yet she still felt like she was being wrung out—twisted and contorted back and forth; crushed beneath the weight of the world around her, which seemed to be moving much faster than she could keep up with.
“Our darkness...it’s not demonic. It’s merely human. We are all beings of light and dark, don’t you see?”
His lower lip trembled just slightly. She wasn’t sure what she saw in his face, but she thought it resembled relief.
“...How could I not?” He uttered, voice catching in his throat. “How did I not…”
He fell to his knees like an empire collapsing; the light tremor of impact in his shoulders shook Rey to her core. His damp hair fell into his face and he didn’t speak for a long moment, in which Rey went to him. With her forefinger she gently tilted his chin up, and a silent, gilded tear slid down his cheek.
“You’re no longer a priest. Just a man who has seen Heaven and Hell,” she comforted softly. “But you could be mine, if you wanted.”
She gave an involuntary start when he put his hands on her thighs. Her heart began to race rapidly as the weight of his tender but desperate grip crawled slowly upwards. Rey could imagine in that moment how Mother Mary felt during worship; he looked at her as though she were a saint, descended from the heavens in answer to his prayers.
“ Yours ,” he repeated longingly. “Am I worthy of it?”
She knelt before him, and cupped his face in her warm palms.
“You are. I say you are,” she answered in a whisper. “You always have been, even at your darkest, because it made you human and it brought you here.”
She pulled his mouth to hers before he could speak another thought and claimed him with a fierce passion she didn’t think he had expected from her in that moment. When he felt the warm, sharp edge of her teeth begging for more, he melted into her quite willingly.
She slid her front teeth along his lower lip and tugged gently, then pulled back just enough to make him look at her, dreamy-eyed.
“Would you worship me?” she queried in a whisper.
“Every day until I die,” he answered in earnest.
“Show me, Ren .” I want to see your devotion.
He cupped the side of her face in one hand and, with his thumb upon her chin, applied gentle pressure, coaxing her head to the side; requesting her to rest her weight upon him, that he may hold her up in his arms and feel her body against his own.
His mouth was deliriously warm along the flesh of her exposed throat. Her entire body felt like a live wire: sparking erratically, dangerously electrified. She could almost see her pulse, flashing neon red in its quickening haste on the backs of her eyelids. She wondered if he could feel it just there, where he kissed her, at the tender flesh below her jawbone. The tip of his tongue traced that soft curve up to her ear lobe, which his teeth gently nipped at.
Rey sighed contentedly and her hands pushed the flannel robe off his broad shoulders so it sunk down to the bend of his elbows, leaving him bare-chested. She let her fingertips roam over his skin, feeling the hard ropes of his muscles just beneath, firm as stone.
With an eager grip, he tore her nightgown open from collar to ribs; four buttons went flying across the room, pittering over the rug and rolling under furniture, never to be seen again. Rey didn’t mind; she could mend a button or four—the loss of which were of complete insignificance in comparison to the euphoric feeling of his encompassing hands on her breasts, or the jolting hardness of the edge of his teeth, occasionally skimming along her collarbone in his haste to pleasure her more.
He lightly grasped a nipple between his teeth and teased its sensitive peak with the tip of his tongue. Rey made a soft noise as a wave of arousal washed over her, and she felt the enticing ache deep below her belly as her body yearned for him on instinct. That ache only grew stronger, until she could feel the slipperiness of its effects dampen the space between her legs. She needed him, right then, and why shouldn’t she have him? He was hers, and she his, as God Himself intended.
With a much firmer push than she thought herself capable of in the moment, she forced him back. He looked at her, dazed and quizzical, for but a moment before she coaxed him onto his back before the slowly dying fire.
Looming over him, drenched in amber and gold, she looked like some kind of nephilim, half fallen angel, half human—terrifying in her beauty; a powerfully enchanting creation.
“Can I claim you?” she inquired in a voice like honey over hot stones.
He looked her in the eye and provided his answer, “Yes.”
“And would you eat of me; drink of me?”
She released his stiffened member from the confines of his underwear, and in one fluid motion she straddled him between her knees, draping the hem of her nightgown over his stomach and thighs like a prayer cloth.
“Humbly,” he responded huskily, “as a servant and sinner, until you come again.”
He smirked at her from the shadows cast by the fire, his hands slinking firmly down to her hips, palming the athletic rounds of her silhouette. She grinned cheekily at his comment, amused by his ability to tread the line between maturity and juvenility, before lowering herself upon him slowly and with relish.
This was a feeling she would never get used to, nor tire of. The feeling of falling into him, of becoming one; the way she stretched to accommodate him and complete their union. She took a moment to breathe, to shut her eyes to the flicker of the fire and lightning, and to simply feel . She felt powerful, sinful, and holy all at once.
Rocking her hips slowly against him, she watched in satisfaction as his back arched slightly, and the muscles in his jaw clenched and relaxed with her motion. She continued slowly at first, holding him deep within her like a precious jewel lost to the sea, rolling closer and closer to the edge of an underwater trench. Soon her breath hitched and began to quicken, and she could feel the beads of sweat begin to gather along her hairline and at the base of her throat. He could reach her just there, where she longed to be touched, and she came dangerously close to careening over the cliff, so that she may fall into the depthless fissure of their combined pleasure.
But she could not let it be over so quickly—she was in charge, and she would join hands with him so that they may rejoice together in unison; two halves of one whole.
She became more gratuitous with her motions—she lifted herself higher, and sunk down just a little lower. His hips rocked against hers with each descent; hard and angular yet solid in build, she ground herself upon him, delighting in the way he felt so sturdy and supportive against her inner thighs.
His chest glimmered with sweat, strewn across his flushed skin like morning dew. She could see it in the way his lips were parted, and in the slack of his jaw; it was there, too, in the whites of his glazed eyes, reflecting back at her with dark intensity: he was losing control—he was entirely at her mercy, and it only served to excite him. His hands slid around to her buttocks beneath her thin cotton gown, and squeezed hard. She arched her back and moaned; the light ache of his temporary, tight grip—which would no doubt leave fingerprint-sized bruises on her body—coalesced into a shock of pleasure that reverberated up her spine.
He attempted to sit up, fully prepared to accommodate her weight in the palms of his hands, but she rebuked him—pushing him down onto his back once more, she loomed over him. Gliding slowly up his slick chest, her hand came to rest at the base of his throat. She watched it there for a moment, watched the muscles of his throat and shoulders constrict with the movement of each emphatic breath, and felt the strong drumbeat of his pulse racing against her fingertips. Her hand rested at the spot where his clerical collar had sat—a powerful and stark homage to the past he was leaving behind, and the future he chose to trade it for. Her heart fluttered in her chest and a giddy recklessness passed over her, saturating her in its shadow.
She took him completely inside of her once more, causing him to emit a low, husky moan. Then, bracing herself upon his chest and leaning down, she whispered by his ear.
“You are mine,” she declared, “make me yours.”
With one hand she found that delicate spot at the hollow beneath his jaw, on either side of his esophagus, and applied gentle pressure. She watched his mouth part and his eyes squeeze shut in ecstasy. He thrust his hips hard beneath her, with enough strength to raise her up a few inches, and in doing so coaxed her rapturously into an orgasm. She could feel the tightened twitch of his testicles beneath her as he poured himself into her.
Mere minutes that felt like hours later, they still remained together, their bodies interlocked. The fire was only embers by then, and they glowed brightly in the hearth, tinkling like glass shards. The cool air from the storm outside, now devolved to just a simple thunderstorm, was beginning to seep into the small house like a cloud of fog, crawling across the floor to raise gooseflesh on their vulnerable, sensitive skin.
But the two of them remained in the comfort of their post-coital bliss, happily uncaring, for they had each found the belonging they had been seeking for their whole lives. It was not a place, or a religion, nor Heaven or Hell as they had once thought—all this time, they had each been the answer sought by the other, and whatever strange force had finally brought them together when each had needed it the most certainly required some thought. But in the moment, it was naught but a far-off whisper.
After a long breather, Rey stood on shaky legs and Kylo watched her, a look of utter wonderment on his face, before following suit.
“Stay with me,” Rey murmured to him. Even after everything, she still experienced that creeping anxiety: the fear that he would brush it all off, and walk away.
This time, though, he had no such reservations about their union. He grasped her chin delicately betwixt his fingers and placed a lingering kiss on her mouth.
“I would like that very much.” He replied.
She smiled. She hadn’t felt so weightless in years. She could sing, she could cry, she could scream, but all she really wanted was him. More of him, every day until she no longer woke to this earth. Not the sinner, nor the priest. Him. Kylo Ren, the flawed and beautiful man with the taste of her on his lips.
She took his hands in hers, overcome by a sudden desire to feel his arms wrap around her. Sleep had finally come for her, and though it was hours behind schedule, she didn’t mind, for she knew she would not wake from it alone.
“Come,” she said, leading him. “It’s time we got some rest.”