Blindfold [The Boondock Saints, Connor/Murphy, PG-13]
Ah, homework. It is slaying me. ;___;
I should know better than posting on a Sunday, but I really like this and I want to share it already, hee.
Title: Blindfold
Word Count: 3689
Fandom: The Boondock Saints
Pairing: Connor/Murphy
Summary: Life on the road, life with their father, life with blood on their hands.
Author Notes: In case you've never seen the movie but want to read anyway: Basically, it's about a pair of Irish fraternal twins that drink a lot, smoke a lot, and believe they're on a mission from God to slay evil men. All while touching each other, also a lot. :D :D
I listened to these two songs (one from the soundtrack, one not) on repeat while writing this. You should, too. :)
Blindfold
They smoke their first cigarette when they’re twelve, hiding in an alleyway behind their house, half-empty cigarette pack they nicked from their mother and hands shaky with excitement and fear and anticipation.
Connor comes up with the idea. Murphy’s the one that makes it happen, and that, that is their relationship in a nutshell.
They cough into each other’s faces, grinning, laughing, crouching with their backs against the old brick wall and with their shoulders pressed tight together. Their eyes are red with the smoke, their lips pale and chapped to the point of almost bleeding.
That is only the first in a long line of first times they share together. They turn it into a ritual; that first drag, that first tattoo, that first kiss and, later, that first kill.
----
They tend to each other’s bruises, each other’s wounds, wincing under the flickering light bulb of this month’s, this week’s, this day’s motel bathroom, sitting on the toilet with the twin in turn standing up in front of him. Don’t be such a baby, he says at the quiet fuck, fuck, fucking fuck, muttered when peroxide is splashed liberally on a gaping wound. Don’t be such a fucking asshole, is the response. Then there’s chuckling, tense and breathless after the fear and the adrenaline and a bit too much touching because it was close, it was so close.
The names are interchangeable.
It’s always the same, one after the other one, and by now, they’re not sure they know how to live in any other way.
----
When they’re seven, they adopt a stray cat.
Murphy calls it Connor and Connor calls it Murphy.
They think it’s the funniest thing ever. Their mother rolls her eyes, says a prayer towards the ceiling and takes a long drag out of her cigarette. She then pets the cat, who is terrified out of his wits.
Two years later, the cat is run over, and the brothers recite the family prayer for the first time when they put him out of his misery.
When they bury him, the cross bears both of their names.
----
Il Duce is insane.
It is a statement, not a question. No women, no children, but everything else is a go, and Murphy has seen his share of blood but sometimes, some days, it gets to be too much.
They work a job on their own as spring is dying, and it reminds them how good they work together, covering each other’s weaknesses, each other’s blind spots. It’s a clean death, more than the man deserves, just a trickle of blood and pennies over his eyes. Murphy finds it oddly refreshing.
With his father, it’s always a bloodbath.
They have a drink afterwards, sit with stools close together in a dingy bar and pretend it’s an actual pub. They laugh, and they talk, and it feels like ages since they last did so.
It reminds Murphy of the first times they did this, work the Lord’s mission on their own terms, instead of stumbling after their father’s overwhelming rage and conviction.
“Been a long time, innit?” Murphy says, hand curled around his beer.
“Aye, too long.”
They stumble into their motel room three hours later, pissed drunk, hanging onto each other for support and singing old lullabies in Irish, and when they see their father sitting by the door, looking stern, the spell is broken.
----
“You miss home?” Connor asks while getting his shoes off, sitting on his bed, a month after they come to Boston.
Murphy knows he means Ireland, means actually green grass and narrow streets with rickety brick houses on either side of the road that go as far as the eye can see. He looks around to their rat-infested flat and mossy walls and then to Connor, the familiar ink on his skin.
“Naw, man, I thought this was home now,” he says, and Connor teases him but he still leans over and lets him take a drag from his own cigarette.
----
They’ve always touched a bit too much.
Shoves, smacks, hair ruffles, hugs, kicks, and even punches; just a way of being brothers. Easy as breathing, familiar like themselves, it was nothing to be questioned - it just was, and that was it.
Now, it’s a necessity, knowing they’re still there, with their father driving the car and both of them in the backseat, feeling like children again. They kick each other’s shins, shove each other around, like brothers, like twins, and then they put fingers on the other’s lower back, on lips and on thighs when their father isn’t looking, and then they’re not children anymore.
They’ve always been in tune with each other.
Charging together, lying together, excuse after excuse; shooting together and breathing together when they’re almost asleep, twin breaths in their twin beds in their twin bodies.
Now, their rhythm is shot to hell. They’re too used to being a duo, only the two of them, forever and ever, amen, and now they don’t quite know how to be a trio, how to speak and not have it be in their usual half sentences and half thoughts that the other one could finish.
Rocco had been the only one that ever came truly close to break into their circle.
So they both fidget through it, waver along the lines not knowing if they want to let their father in or if they want to keep him at arm’s length.
----
Murphy gets shot four months after Yakavetta dies.
He’s shooting one minute and the next one he’s down, hard asphalt against his head, blood tickling down his chest. Connor forgets the mark and comes running towards him, calling out his name, but his father doesn’t even turn around, just keeps shooting, calm and cold. When he passes out, he has the image of a terrified Connor trying to stop the blood flow with his hands burnt on his retinas.
He comes to with Connor slapping him lightly.
“Murph. Murph,” he says, somewhat desperate, and when he realizes Murphy’s awake he adds, “fucking finally.”
“What’d I miss?” asks Murphy, groggy, and Connor laughs.
“Nothing much, you lazy bastard,” he says, trying and failing to sound casual. “You just almost went and died on me.”
On me, because their father is nowhere to be seen, they’re alone in a nondescript motel room and this is all they’ve ever known, almost dying on each other and saving each other at the same time.
The bed is still covered in bloody bandages and towels; the entire room smells like blood (his blood, their blood) and sweat. When he tries to move, the pain is so sudden he has to lie back on the pillow and groan. Connor pushes him down, another kind of pain, and says, Stop being such a fucking idiot and just lie down. He rubs at his eyes with his left hand, his right holding Murphy down, and Murphy notices how tired he looks, how pale.
“You’ve been out three days,” Connor says, not looking at him. “They recognized us at the ER, had to force them to treat you at gunpoint. It was so fucked up, Murph.”
Murphy pulls him down, grabs at the collar of his shirt even if it fucking hurts, hurts so much, but it’s okay because then he’s kissing Connor and Connor is grabbing at his hair, shivering, praying through the kiss, and when Connor puts his hand over Murphy’s wound they both feel so alive, blood rushing and surge of adrenaline.
After, Connor helps Murphy to the bathroom and runs a bath for him while Murphy looks at himself in the mirror for a long time. The bullet went in right above his heart, right above his tattoo.
“There ya go, a little something to remind you how fucking stupid you can be,” Connor says, and Murphy snorts.
“Yeah, because you’ve never done stupid things before.”
“I’ve done you, haven’t I?” Connor says with a tired grin, and this time Murphy says You fucking bastard, and then they’re swatting at each other, playful, laughing, calling each other the same names they’ve been using since they were children.
Later, there’s silence as Murphy soaks in the water, arms hanging on both sides of the tub, Connor sitting on the toilet lid with his eyes closed and his head against the wall.
“I’m dying for a cigarette,” Murphy says, and Connor lights one just to spite him, tells him no way he can have one. Murphy nags until Connor takes a long drag, annoyed, and then stands up and kneels beside him, slots their mouths together. He blows the smoke inside his mouth, and Murphy’s the one that exhales it out when they pull apart.
Connor sits on the toilet again, and they start talking about nothing important because in this moment, they don’t have the fortitude, the strength of character, necessary to talk about their mission.
Their father finds them like that, asleep, an hour later.
The water is freezing.
----
They get their first tattoo when they’re sixteen, a Goddamn clichéd celtic knot on their shoulders. It takes two weeks for their mother to find out, and then she yells at them so much that both brothers start packing in their heads what they’ll take when Ma kicks them out. Instead, she swats both of them on the head, lifts her eyebrow at their ows and tells them to stop being so damn stupid.
The Virgin Mary on their necks follows, when they’re twenty-one and have almost died in a bar brawl that went too far, and from then on it’s a new one every time they come too close - close to death, close to reverence , close to each other.
The cross on their arms hurts the most, as it should, when they have it inked on January 30th.
(Their fourth tattoo is a drunken mistake, too much beer and too much laughter and they’d later had to drag each other out of the parlor, far too gone for coherent thought. They get their last name tattooed over their hearts, and on the next morning, they stare at themselves in the mirror, side by side, and Connor says, What, so we’ll never forget who we fucking are? and Murphy says Aye, I guess, while scratching at his head.
They mostly try and not think about that one.)
They get tattooed the words that constitute their entire moral code a week before leaving Ireland.
There’s never really any doubt of what they’re getting, just Murphy’s bright smile and Connor’s lack of breath at it as they share a cigarette right before going into the parlor. Murphy keeps on rubbing at his lips with his thumb while still holding the cigarette because he knows it makes Connor stare. There’s no one else in the shop, and they get the tattoos done at the same time, chairs close together and Murphy’s left hand touching Connor’s right, staring at each other, not caring about the looks they get.
Veritas, because Connor believes in baring his soul to the Lord. Aéquitas, because Murphy believes in taking a leap of faith for your beliefs. It hurts, but no one’s ever said that truth doesn’t hurt, that justice doesn’t make you ache.
After, they put their hands together, flat against the other one - almost the same and they could almost be recognized as twins with them. The words run in different directions, up and down, opposites, and, somehow, it seems only fitting.
They smile at each other as they intertwine their fingers, as they go out and get drunk because it’s the only way they can convince themselves to get on that plane.
----
In Portland, there’s a priest that likes little boys too much.
It shakes their faith so bad that they find themselves behind the church, hands over their eyes and blood over their hands, muttering curses like a chant, like a prayer, and it is such a blasphemy, but not as bad as the one committed by the cooling corpse in the confessionary.
“Fuck, fuck,” Murphy yells as he kicks at trash bins, and when he looks back Connor is holding his rosary through his shirt, eyes closed. He shoves Connor against the wall, kisses him hard, bites at his lips until he draws blood because he has to hurt someone, anyone, and Connor is there, has always been.
Connor bites right back, pulls at Murphy’s shirt so bad that it chokes, hurts, and then he shoves him before punching him hard enough to bruise.
They tend to think along the same lines, Murphy and Connor.
Murphy stops himself from wiping his mouth clean when he realizes his gloved hands are still stained red. “How,” he asks. “How are we supposed to know right from wrong,” he says more than asks, and when Connor says nothing Murphy knows he’s thinking the same.
When they go back inside the church, their father is kneeling in front of the altar, his face still splattered with blood.
They cross themselves with holy water and then they’re gone.
----
They get their first scar when they’re ten, climbing trees they should leave well alone. But there was a cat, Ma, we had to save it, Murphy says. You’re going to drive me to insanity, she says. She then starts smoking because they’re still in the ER and her boys are bleeding and even at that age Murphy knows it’s the only way to calm her nerves.
The mark is almost identical, just a long, thin line of slightly raised and pink skin. Connor’s is on his arm. Murphy’s is on his leg. It’s as if life itself conspired to make them opposite reactions of equal magnitude, only Murphy doesn’t like physics so he doesn’t know Newton had it down first, that they’re only becoming the living embodiment of the principle.
“Mine’s cooler, Con,” Murphy says on and off for years.
“Dream on, you fuck,” Connor says for the same amount of time.
They always try and outdo the other and never quite succeed, always amount to the same. Murphy doesn’t like physics but he doesn’t mind math, so he’s okay with that.
----
Connor is washing one of his shirts on the tub, unlit cigarette hanging from his lips, when Murphy goes into the bathroom. The water is running pink.
It’s been a long week. Murphy watches him from the doorway, arms closed. Connor knows he’s there, he knows. They always can tell when the other one’s near. “This fucking stain just won’t come off,” Connor says, more desperate than irritated, and it’s clear he’s not only talking about a shirt.
Their father is pacing in the other room, calling contacts to find their next mark. Both brothers look towards the door for a moment, and they’re still not used to having share their space with someone else.
Ever since they mastered Irish (their mother refusing to speak English in front of them until they got the gist of it, laughing at their early attempts of it with a hand on her hip) and, later, Latin, (incense permeating their noses as they kneel in front of Jesus’ image, as they learn prayers and follow them with chubby fingers on rosary beads) they’ve used languages as a way to keep secrets, German so Ma wouldn’t find their stash of cigarettes and Italian to mock their senile teacher. It’s always been a part of them.
“I feel like all this blood has seeped into my bones, right through my skin,” Connor says in Spanish.
Murphy sighs. “If you doubt, I doubt, so don’t fucking start it,” he says in Russian.
Connor has always been the one that believes the most. Murphy followed him into it, because that’s what he’s always done, but Connor, Connor could’ve been a priest, had all the markings for it. Now, he’s wavering, and Murphy right along with him. There’s something about following their mission, their calling, with their father that is breaking them down, something about the old man’s steely silence and unbreakable mentality that is crushing their moods and their faith and, if you want to be melodramatic, their souls. Murphy wonders how much more of it they can take.
Murphy wants to go and put his fingers on Connor’s neck and feel his pulse just because, just to feel close again, but then their father is calling them, saying he’s got a job, and they’re still sore and bruised from the last one but neither of them says anything, can’t, because the man is just too intimidating, occupies too much space and commands too much attention for them to be just Murphy and Connor again, the MacManus twins again.
That night, they hold each other’s rosaries while lying together on the same bed, breathe close to each other’s mouths and speak in French and pretend like there’s only them and no one else.
----
When they’re fifteen, they kiss the same girl, just because they both think they other one likes her. When she finds out, instead of being mad, she kisses Murphy and then Connor, mouth wet and open, hands curled just below the earlobe. Then, she purses her lips in thought as the twins look at each other over her shoulder, surprised.
After some thinking, she declares Connor to be the better kisser, and then she says for them to kindly fuck off and never talk to her again because she doesn’t appreciate mind games.
Connor is smug for two weeks. Murphy is a bit resentful for the rest of his life.
----
Just outside Providence, they smoke together while sitting on the edge of a motel’s empty pool, their legs hanging against cracked pale blue tiles. There’s still some water on the deepest side of the pool, dark and muddy, and the sky reflects on it. The stars are bright over their heads, a thousand constellations that they tried to name when they were twelve and forgot some time later.
Connor is out of cigarettes, so they share Murphy’s last one, taking short drags so it’ll last longer, stealing it from each other’s mouths every few moments. It feels like the first time they’ve been alone in forever, and it’s so comfortable, the silence between them and the (smaller and smaller) space between them.
They’re both mildly drunk, slightly hypersensitive, and Murphy feels reckless, feels like pushing Connor into the ground and covering him with his body and feels in peace and feels the best he’s felt in a long time. He doesn’t have to look sideways to know Connor’s thinking the same. They’re the embodiment of every twin cliché, they are, expect when they twist themselves too tightly around each other; then they’re just them and nothing else. Murphy likes the contradiction. Connor just snorts at it.
It’s Connor the one that speaks first, takes a fast glance back towards their motel room (lights off, curtains closed, sleeping father) and then back.
“I think. I think it’s time to move on.”
“Aye, I think it is.”
They smile at each other, and it feels like freedom. Murphy shoves Connor, Connor shoves back, and then they’re wrestling, laughing, Murphy’s right arm outstretched so the dying cigarette won’t burn either of them, and when they fall inside the pool, land halfway on top of the other one and halfway on mossy tiles, they’re laughing even harder. When they kiss, it’s expected, tasting like ash and like smoke and like exhilaration, and they keep on laughing through Connor’s hands beneath Murphy’s shirt, Murphy’s fingers inching inside Connor’s jeans.
The cigarette ends up burning a hole through Connor’s t-shirt sleeve while they’re too busy too notice, blood flowing too close to the surface as they move together, still half-dressed.
They spend the rest of the night lying on the bottom of the pool, telling each other jokes that aren’t funny anymore from being told too many times, and, in the morning, they tell their father they’re going their own way.
----
When they finally go back to Boston, a year after they become known fugitives, they’re back on their own.
The Saints haven’t been forgotten, but rather, they’ve been turned into an urban legend, a myth. This suits them just fine, leaves free to roam their old neighborhood and pray in their old church and if they have to take extra care of not to be too noticeable, well, it’s worth it.
(Evil men still die at night, but the city has desensitized to it, too many Saints copycats, and people sleep sound at night. No one cares or no one notices and that suits them just fine as well.)
So a year after their exodus across the country began, they stand again in a bridge, looking far into the sea, the Atlantic that hides home from view. They smoke in silence, shoulders pressed together, shivering under their coats, collars popped up against the cold. Connor’s lips are sliding into blue, but they’re not as cold as Murphy expected when he kisses Connor’s mouth. Connor snorts into the kiss, bites languidly at him before pulling away.
“We’re back, then. Now what?” Connor says, looking at Murphy but his entire body language making it easy to tell he’s aching to keep on looking straight ahead into the waves.
“Thought you were the one with the answers,” Murphy says, grinning, and Connor snorts again. “There doesn’t have to be an answer. We’re back, that’s it,” Murphy continues, stealing the cigarette Connor just lit. Connor steals it back.
Connor nods after a while, throws ash into the sea. “Well, fuck, but that sounds almost sensible,” he says, and Murphy laughs.
Things are not the same. They have spilt too much blood and bleed themselves and hurt and ached and they are weary, tired, but they’re good. They always are.
They start walking the length of the bridge, strides in sync like usual, shoving each other like usual, and Murphy is a little surprised to realize that, in a way, it does feel like home.
I should know better than posting on a Sunday, but I really like this and I want to share it already, hee.
Title: Blindfold
Word Count: 3689
Fandom: The Boondock Saints
Pairing: Connor/Murphy
Summary: Life on the road, life with their father, life with blood on their hands.
Author Notes: In case you've never seen the movie but want to read anyway: Basically, it's about a pair of Irish fraternal twins that drink a lot, smoke a lot, and believe they're on a mission from God to slay evil men. All while touching each other, also a lot. :D :D
I listened to these two songs (one from the soundtrack, one not) on repeat while writing this. You should, too. :)
Blindfold
They smoke their first cigarette when they’re twelve, hiding in an alleyway behind their house, half-empty cigarette pack they nicked from their mother and hands shaky with excitement and fear and anticipation.
Connor comes up with the idea. Murphy’s the one that makes it happen, and that, that is their relationship in a nutshell.
They cough into each other’s faces, grinning, laughing, crouching with their backs against the old brick wall and with their shoulders pressed tight together. Their eyes are red with the smoke, their lips pale and chapped to the point of almost bleeding.
That is only the first in a long line of first times they share together. They turn it into a ritual; that first drag, that first tattoo, that first kiss and, later, that first kill.
----
They tend to each other’s bruises, each other’s wounds, wincing under the flickering light bulb of this month’s, this week’s, this day’s motel bathroom, sitting on the toilet with the twin in turn standing up in front of him. Don’t be such a baby, he says at the quiet fuck, fuck, fucking fuck, muttered when peroxide is splashed liberally on a gaping wound. Don’t be such a fucking asshole, is the response. Then there’s chuckling, tense and breathless after the fear and the adrenaline and a bit too much touching because it was close, it was so close.
The names are interchangeable.
It’s always the same, one after the other one, and by now, they’re not sure they know how to live in any other way.
----
When they’re seven, they adopt a stray cat.
Murphy calls it Connor and Connor calls it Murphy.
They think it’s the funniest thing ever. Their mother rolls her eyes, says a prayer towards the ceiling and takes a long drag out of her cigarette. She then pets the cat, who is terrified out of his wits.
Two years later, the cat is run over, and the brothers recite the family prayer for the first time when they put him out of his misery.
When they bury him, the cross bears both of their names.
----
Il Duce is insane.
It is a statement, not a question. No women, no children, but everything else is a go, and Murphy has seen his share of blood but sometimes, some days, it gets to be too much.
They work a job on their own as spring is dying, and it reminds them how good they work together, covering each other’s weaknesses, each other’s blind spots. It’s a clean death, more than the man deserves, just a trickle of blood and pennies over his eyes. Murphy finds it oddly refreshing.
With his father, it’s always a bloodbath.
They have a drink afterwards, sit with stools close together in a dingy bar and pretend it’s an actual pub. They laugh, and they talk, and it feels like ages since they last did so.
It reminds Murphy of the first times they did this, work the Lord’s mission on their own terms, instead of stumbling after their father’s overwhelming rage and conviction.
“Been a long time, innit?” Murphy says, hand curled around his beer.
“Aye, too long.”
They stumble into their motel room three hours later, pissed drunk, hanging onto each other for support and singing old lullabies in Irish, and when they see their father sitting by the door, looking stern, the spell is broken.
----
“You miss home?” Connor asks while getting his shoes off, sitting on his bed, a month after they come to Boston.
Murphy knows he means Ireland, means actually green grass and narrow streets with rickety brick houses on either side of the road that go as far as the eye can see. He looks around to their rat-infested flat and mossy walls and then to Connor, the familiar ink on his skin.
“Naw, man, I thought this was home now,” he says, and Connor teases him but he still leans over and lets him take a drag from his own cigarette.
----
They’ve always touched a bit too much.
Shoves, smacks, hair ruffles, hugs, kicks, and even punches; just a way of being brothers. Easy as breathing, familiar like themselves, it was nothing to be questioned - it just was, and that was it.
Now, it’s a necessity, knowing they’re still there, with their father driving the car and both of them in the backseat, feeling like children again. They kick each other’s shins, shove each other around, like brothers, like twins, and then they put fingers on the other’s lower back, on lips and on thighs when their father isn’t looking, and then they’re not children anymore.
They’ve always been in tune with each other.
Charging together, lying together, excuse after excuse; shooting together and breathing together when they’re almost asleep, twin breaths in their twin beds in their twin bodies.
Now, their rhythm is shot to hell. They’re too used to being a duo, only the two of them, forever and ever, amen, and now they don’t quite know how to be a trio, how to speak and not have it be in their usual half sentences and half thoughts that the other one could finish.
Rocco had been the only one that ever came truly close to break into their circle.
So they both fidget through it, waver along the lines not knowing if they want to let their father in or if they want to keep him at arm’s length.
----
Murphy gets shot four months after Yakavetta dies.
He’s shooting one minute and the next one he’s down, hard asphalt against his head, blood tickling down his chest. Connor forgets the mark and comes running towards him, calling out his name, but his father doesn’t even turn around, just keeps shooting, calm and cold. When he passes out, he has the image of a terrified Connor trying to stop the blood flow with his hands burnt on his retinas.
He comes to with Connor slapping him lightly.
“Murph. Murph,” he says, somewhat desperate, and when he realizes Murphy’s awake he adds, “fucking finally.”
“What’d I miss?” asks Murphy, groggy, and Connor laughs.
“Nothing much, you lazy bastard,” he says, trying and failing to sound casual. “You just almost went and died on me.”
On me, because their father is nowhere to be seen, they’re alone in a nondescript motel room and this is all they’ve ever known, almost dying on each other and saving each other at the same time.
The bed is still covered in bloody bandages and towels; the entire room smells like blood (his blood, their blood) and sweat. When he tries to move, the pain is so sudden he has to lie back on the pillow and groan. Connor pushes him down, another kind of pain, and says, Stop being such a fucking idiot and just lie down. He rubs at his eyes with his left hand, his right holding Murphy down, and Murphy notices how tired he looks, how pale.
“You’ve been out three days,” Connor says, not looking at him. “They recognized us at the ER, had to force them to treat you at gunpoint. It was so fucked up, Murph.”
Murphy pulls him down, grabs at the collar of his shirt even if it fucking hurts, hurts so much, but it’s okay because then he’s kissing Connor and Connor is grabbing at his hair, shivering, praying through the kiss, and when Connor puts his hand over Murphy’s wound they both feel so alive, blood rushing and surge of adrenaline.
After, Connor helps Murphy to the bathroom and runs a bath for him while Murphy looks at himself in the mirror for a long time. The bullet went in right above his heart, right above his tattoo.
“There ya go, a little something to remind you how fucking stupid you can be,” Connor says, and Murphy snorts.
“Yeah, because you’ve never done stupid things before.”
“I’ve done you, haven’t I?” Connor says with a tired grin, and this time Murphy says You fucking bastard, and then they’re swatting at each other, playful, laughing, calling each other the same names they’ve been using since they were children.
Later, there’s silence as Murphy soaks in the water, arms hanging on both sides of the tub, Connor sitting on the toilet lid with his eyes closed and his head against the wall.
“I’m dying for a cigarette,” Murphy says, and Connor lights one just to spite him, tells him no way he can have one. Murphy nags until Connor takes a long drag, annoyed, and then stands up and kneels beside him, slots their mouths together. He blows the smoke inside his mouth, and Murphy’s the one that exhales it out when they pull apart.
Connor sits on the toilet again, and they start talking about nothing important because in this moment, they don’t have the fortitude, the strength of character, necessary to talk about their mission.
Their father finds them like that, asleep, an hour later.
The water is freezing.
----
They get their first tattoo when they’re sixteen, a Goddamn clichéd celtic knot on their shoulders. It takes two weeks for their mother to find out, and then she yells at them so much that both brothers start packing in their heads what they’ll take when Ma kicks them out. Instead, she swats both of them on the head, lifts her eyebrow at their ows and tells them to stop being so damn stupid.
The Virgin Mary on their necks follows, when they’re twenty-one and have almost died in a bar brawl that went too far, and from then on it’s a new one every time they come too close - close to death, close to reverence , close to each other.
The cross on their arms hurts the most, as it should, when they have it inked on January 30th.
(Their fourth tattoo is a drunken mistake, too much beer and too much laughter and they’d later had to drag each other out of the parlor, far too gone for coherent thought. They get their last name tattooed over their hearts, and on the next morning, they stare at themselves in the mirror, side by side, and Connor says, What, so we’ll never forget who we fucking are? and Murphy says Aye, I guess, while scratching at his head.
They mostly try and not think about that one.)
They get tattooed the words that constitute their entire moral code a week before leaving Ireland.
There’s never really any doubt of what they’re getting, just Murphy’s bright smile and Connor’s lack of breath at it as they share a cigarette right before going into the parlor. Murphy keeps on rubbing at his lips with his thumb while still holding the cigarette because he knows it makes Connor stare. There’s no one else in the shop, and they get the tattoos done at the same time, chairs close together and Murphy’s left hand touching Connor’s right, staring at each other, not caring about the looks they get.
Veritas, because Connor believes in baring his soul to the Lord. Aéquitas, because Murphy believes in taking a leap of faith for your beliefs. It hurts, but no one’s ever said that truth doesn’t hurt, that justice doesn’t make you ache.
After, they put their hands together, flat against the other one - almost the same and they could almost be recognized as twins with them. The words run in different directions, up and down, opposites, and, somehow, it seems only fitting.
They smile at each other as they intertwine their fingers, as they go out and get drunk because it’s the only way they can convince themselves to get on that plane.
----
In Portland, there’s a priest that likes little boys too much.
It shakes their faith so bad that they find themselves behind the church, hands over their eyes and blood over their hands, muttering curses like a chant, like a prayer, and it is such a blasphemy, but not as bad as the one committed by the cooling corpse in the confessionary.
“Fuck, fuck,” Murphy yells as he kicks at trash bins, and when he looks back Connor is holding his rosary through his shirt, eyes closed. He shoves Connor against the wall, kisses him hard, bites at his lips until he draws blood because he has to hurt someone, anyone, and Connor is there, has always been.
Connor bites right back, pulls at Murphy’s shirt so bad that it chokes, hurts, and then he shoves him before punching him hard enough to bruise.
They tend to think along the same lines, Murphy and Connor.
Murphy stops himself from wiping his mouth clean when he realizes his gloved hands are still stained red. “How,” he asks. “How are we supposed to know right from wrong,” he says more than asks, and when Connor says nothing Murphy knows he’s thinking the same.
When they go back inside the church, their father is kneeling in front of the altar, his face still splattered with blood.
They cross themselves with holy water and then they’re gone.
----
They get their first scar when they’re ten, climbing trees they should leave well alone. But there was a cat, Ma, we had to save it, Murphy says. You’re going to drive me to insanity, she says. She then starts smoking because they’re still in the ER and her boys are bleeding and even at that age Murphy knows it’s the only way to calm her nerves.
The mark is almost identical, just a long, thin line of slightly raised and pink skin. Connor’s is on his arm. Murphy’s is on his leg. It’s as if life itself conspired to make them opposite reactions of equal magnitude, only Murphy doesn’t like physics so he doesn’t know Newton had it down first, that they’re only becoming the living embodiment of the principle.
“Mine’s cooler, Con,” Murphy says on and off for years.
“Dream on, you fuck,” Connor says for the same amount of time.
They always try and outdo the other and never quite succeed, always amount to the same. Murphy doesn’t like physics but he doesn’t mind math, so he’s okay with that.
----
Connor is washing one of his shirts on the tub, unlit cigarette hanging from his lips, when Murphy goes into the bathroom. The water is running pink.
It’s been a long week. Murphy watches him from the doorway, arms closed. Connor knows he’s there, he knows. They always can tell when the other one’s near. “This fucking stain just won’t come off,” Connor says, more desperate than irritated, and it’s clear he’s not only talking about a shirt.
Their father is pacing in the other room, calling contacts to find their next mark. Both brothers look towards the door for a moment, and they’re still not used to having share their space with someone else.
Ever since they mastered Irish (their mother refusing to speak English in front of them until they got the gist of it, laughing at their early attempts of it with a hand on her hip) and, later, Latin, (incense permeating their noses as they kneel in front of Jesus’ image, as they learn prayers and follow them with chubby fingers on rosary beads) they’ve used languages as a way to keep secrets, German so Ma wouldn’t find their stash of cigarettes and Italian to mock their senile teacher. It’s always been a part of them.
“I feel like all this blood has seeped into my bones, right through my skin,” Connor says in Spanish.
Murphy sighs. “If you doubt, I doubt, so don’t fucking start it,” he says in Russian.
Connor has always been the one that believes the most. Murphy followed him into it, because that’s what he’s always done, but Connor, Connor could’ve been a priest, had all the markings for it. Now, he’s wavering, and Murphy right along with him. There’s something about following their mission, their calling, with their father that is breaking them down, something about the old man’s steely silence and unbreakable mentality that is crushing their moods and their faith and, if you want to be melodramatic, their souls. Murphy wonders how much more of it they can take.
Murphy wants to go and put his fingers on Connor’s neck and feel his pulse just because, just to feel close again, but then their father is calling them, saying he’s got a job, and they’re still sore and bruised from the last one but neither of them says anything, can’t, because the man is just too intimidating, occupies too much space and commands too much attention for them to be just Murphy and Connor again, the MacManus twins again.
That night, they hold each other’s rosaries while lying together on the same bed, breathe close to each other’s mouths and speak in French and pretend like there’s only them and no one else.
----
When they’re fifteen, they kiss the same girl, just because they both think they other one likes her. When she finds out, instead of being mad, she kisses Murphy and then Connor, mouth wet and open, hands curled just below the earlobe. Then, she purses her lips in thought as the twins look at each other over her shoulder, surprised.
After some thinking, she declares Connor to be the better kisser, and then she says for them to kindly fuck off and never talk to her again because she doesn’t appreciate mind games.
Connor is smug for two weeks. Murphy is a bit resentful for the rest of his life.
----
Just outside Providence, they smoke together while sitting on the edge of a motel’s empty pool, their legs hanging against cracked pale blue tiles. There’s still some water on the deepest side of the pool, dark and muddy, and the sky reflects on it. The stars are bright over their heads, a thousand constellations that they tried to name when they were twelve and forgot some time later.
Connor is out of cigarettes, so they share Murphy’s last one, taking short drags so it’ll last longer, stealing it from each other’s mouths every few moments. It feels like the first time they’ve been alone in forever, and it’s so comfortable, the silence between them and the (smaller and smaller) space between them.
They’re both mildly drunk, slightly hypersensitive, and Murphy feels reckless, feels like pushing Connor into the ground and covering him with his body and feels in peace and feels the best he’s felt in a long time. He doesn’t have to look sideways to know Connor’s thinking the same. They’re the embodiment of every twin cliché, they are, expect when they twist themselves too tightly around each other; then they’re just them and nothing else. Murphy likes the contradiction. Connor just snorts at it.
It’s Connor the one that speaks first, takes a fast glance back towards their motel room (lights off, curtains closed, sleeping father) and then back.
“I think. I think it’s time to move on.”
“Aye, I think it is.”
They smile at each other, and it feels like freedom. Murphy shoves Connor, Connor shoves back, and then they’re wrestling, laughing, Murphy’s right arm outstretched so the dying cigarette won’t burn either of them, and when they fall inside the pool, land halfway on top of the other one and halfway on mossy tiles, they’re laughing even harder. When they kiss, it’s expected, tasting like ash and like smoke and like exhilaration, and they keep on laughing through Connor’s hands beneath Murphy’s shirt, Murphy’s fingers inching inside Connor’s jeans.
The cigarette ends up burning a hole through Connor’s t-shirt sleeve while they’re too busy too notice, blood flowing too close to the surface as they move together, still half-dressed.
They spend the rest of the night lying on the bottom of the pool, telling each other jokes that aren’t funny anymore from being told too many times, and, in the morning, they tell their father they’re going their own way.
----
When they finally go back to Boston, a year after they become known fugitives, they’re back on their own.
The Saints haven’t been forgotten, but rather, they’ve been turned into an urban legend, a myth. This suits them just fine, leaves free to roam their old neighborhood and pray in their old church and if they have to take extra care of not to be too noticeable, well, it’s worth it.
(Evil men still die at night, but the city has desensitized to it, too many Saints copycats, and people sleep sound at night. No one cares or no one notices and that suits them just fine as well.)
So a year after their exodus across the country began, they stand again in a bridge, looking far into the sea, the Atlantic that hides home from view. They smoke in silence, shoulders pressed together, shivering under their coats, collars popped up against the cold. Connor’s lips are sliding into blue, but they’re not as cold as Murphy expected when he kisses Connor’s mouth. Connor snorts into the kiss, bites languidly at him before pulling away.
“We’re back, then. Now what?” Connor says, looking at Murphy but his entire body language making it easy to tell he’s aching to keep on looking straight ahead into the waves.
“Thought you were the one with the answers,” Murphy says, grinning, and Connor snorts again. “There doesn’t have to be an answer. We’re back, that’s it,” Murphy continues, stealing the cigarette Connor just lit. Connor steals it back.
Connor nods after a while, throws ash into the sea. “Well, fuck, but that sounds almost sensible,” he says, and Murphy laughs.
Things are not the same. They have spilt too much blood and bleed themselves and hurt and ached and they are weary, tired, but they’re good. They always are.
They start walking the length of the bridge, strides in sync like usual, shoving each other like usual, and Murphy is a little surprised to realize that, in a way, it does feel like home.