Confessionals
From the paper journal of Father Simon Terrence, St. Francis of Assisi, Harlem, NY
Sun, March 19, 2006
The sermon went very well, I think. While I hesitate to congratulate myself, I believe it might have been one of the better sermons I have written this year. The reference to Saint Barbatus of Benevento was a particularly clever choice, and I do believe I saw some smiles at the Mass at my witticism regarding Monothelites. Indeed, it was far more successful than I had thought possible. The church was far more crowded than I have seen it in quite some time.
Still, it would be foolish beyond measure for me to take credit for the attendance at Mass today. While I am embarrassed to admit that I labored particularly hard over the sermon in a rather childish attempt to impress Father Christopher!!! there can be no doubt that many of those who came did so to meet our visitor. He bore up surprisingly well under the strain. As I suspected, he has excited a great deal of female interest in the congregation. I pulled him aside yesterday and gave him the talk I usually give to the young ones who come through the parish, what Sister Angelica calls The Breasts and The Buns speech. (Except that she uses a very different word than 'Breasts' which I do not feel I should write here. Really, Sister Angelica is a lovely woman, but occasionally her language is quite earthy for a nun.) Father Christopher was quite attentive, and was, I think, touched by my concern. I feel hopeful that my advice landed on fertile ground. It is not given to all of us to understand the frailty of women, but temptation is with us all, always, and I can but imagine that it is worse for a man who has lost his way.
He is beginning to fit in well here, though he is still very present in a way that is difficult to describe. It is hard to forget that he is about, even though he has melded almost seamlessly into the flow of our days. I think it may be that his face is still so new that it jars slightly whenever I see it. Nonetheless, I have high hopes that he will soon be plunging into the activities of the parish. To that end, I have already entrusted him with the Ladies' High Tea, which should not be overly taxing. It has been running for years in Mrs. Molnar's more than capable hands. I think the change will do the event good, and stir some interest in the congregation. I announced it today, and already I have had six new volunteers for the event.
At any rate, I believe that Father Christopher is beginning to find his way back to his faith. In private, I think he is missing the sacraments sorely. This evening we were forced to dismantle part of the confessional in order to free him from the booth. Some strange flaw in the mechanism had somehow managed to lock him in. Sister Angelica apparently heard him laughing helplessly inside it and summoned the rest of us to aid in the rescue. Is it foolish of me to think that such pleasure in a silly little inconvenience might not indicate a renewal of one's spirit and a joy in the familiar sacraments?
My cat has apparently developed a taste for sushi. I have lectured her on the importance of our vows of poverty. She continues to be unimpressed. I fear she intends to leave the Church for a richer man.
---
Sunday evening sees the small Catholic church of St. Francis of Assisi closing at last. Mass is over; the last of the faithful have long since deserted the cold, stone-framed building. Only the staff remains, locking up meeting rooms, putting a lock on the sacrament -- and in the empty, echoing chamber of the church itself, sitting. Just sitting. Clad in the black of the priestly cassock, throat closed around by the telltale collar, Chris Rossi flips through the last of the Bibles and removes scrap paper that have found their way into the pages. Sedate work, for a detective in Homicide.
Far away, footfalls echo and then fade. Silence prevails once more...but only briefly. That deliberate pace makes itself known once again, faint until a heavy door swings open before them. Heavy and slow, thick-soled boots alien to this particular environment track their careful way into the main chamber of the church.
In his solitary pew, Father Christopher lifts his head at that telltale sound and grimaces, a markedly unspiritual expression for a man of the cloth. The last Bible slips into its pocket; the wolf in sheep's clothing stands, stepping into the aisle for a quick escape: to the confessional, claimed with a quick thrust to the heavy wooden door for closed, quiet claustrophobia inside. Rossi sinks onto the padded seat and props his head on the wall, eyes closing.
The timing is positively cinematic. A study in value and shadow, the black and grey of a single stalwart individual rounds the corner in time with the inward swing of the confessional door - the close of it earning slightly knit brows and a narrowed eye before he surveys the rest of the chamber, and finds it to be empty. A wolf among sheep, a lion among wolves, on strides Erik Lensherr after a moment's pause, the faint beginnings of a smirk worked stubbornly away into seriousness as he crosses the cavernous room for the confessional.
In the confessional booth, Chris stretches his legs into the cramped confines, foot jamming against the door's fold to lock it in place. Arms fold loosely over the scoop of stomach; a finger hooks into the tight lip of collar, sliding along the cloth restriction. Not the first time it has made this round. Breath chuffs in a small sigh, and he tips his head to investigate: a magazine under the confessional chair. The cop bends to grope for its cover.
Heavy, echoing footfalls continue their approach, only to pause far too nearby for complete comfort. Splayed fingers leave rather high profile fingerprints behind in tracing lazily over the neighboring booth's door as grey eyes take in the workmanship with a measure of genuine curiousity. And then, in he steps, overcoat sweeping in over the threshold after him. The door is closed, and Erik seats himself all too placidly.
The would-be priest lurches at that betraying sound; the black head bangs into wood, and spawns a muffled ecclesiastic curse. "Shi---eeeeoot," the familiar baritone manages. A hand rips through hair, folding to the injured scalp, while the other jerks up to cling to the metal grating between. "Dangit," Rossi manages, more temperately. "I'm sorry. I'm not actually performing the sacraments today. I could get Father Simon--"
There's really no hope at all of Erik not allowing himself a very small smirk at the sound of Rossi making all sorts of rather unchristianly noises in the booth next to him. Even if he somehow managed to suppress it, he would be much harder pressed to hide the amusement iced into the grey of his glare as he leans slowly forward to peer sidelong through the grating. "Boo."
The fingers threaded through the metal jerk back, scraping themselves against the lacing; the black head behind the shield jerks up, green eyes flared wide and rimmed in white. "No," Rossi says, and in a heartbeat the last hint of the priest disappears altogether. Cynicism floods back to paint the dark face. His head bumps back, profile framed against the wall. "You've got to be shitting me."
"Forgive me Father," tries Erik evenly in answer, brows twisting down with irony as he sits slightly back, into a more comfortable lean. "for I have sinned. I flirted with the maid again this morning and had a glass of whiskey before noon. I also lied to Mystique about my present location. And that was just today."
"With the maid?" asks Father Christopher, slapping the magazine on his thigh before propping his ankle on his knee. A glittering glance skims askance, piecing Erik's face together through the grate's puzzle. "She cute? That all you have to confess to? Because out of all of it, only the lying's a sin. And considering who the recipient was, I gotta give you a pass. --How'd you find me?"
"Very." Erik's glare is only slightly sharper than his leer, disembodied as the angles of his face are through the grate's fragmenting. "I managed to convince her that she could single-handedly reverse my opinion of humanity in well under an hour. Well. Two hours. But the effect was hardly lessened, even so." Leonine head tilting slightly to better take in Rossi in the other booth, Erik snorts. "Wouldn't you like to know."
Chris grimaces, raking his hand through black hair again to set it wildly askew. "I'm pretty sure /that's/ a sin," he says, dry, and turns his head to regard Lensherr with a level look. "You want to confess your sins, I'll listen, but I don't have any absolution worth a damn. Then again, you're not Catholic, are you?" The priest's collar winks its white tab against the black at his throat's stretch; he scrubs again at hair, and frowns.
"Is it?" If it is, Erik doesn't seem to be terribly interested in repenting - his gaze already having wandered aside to study the interior of that which is his booth. Onto the next thread of conversation. "Not exactly. I'm rather of the opinion that asking for anyone's forgiveness for the things I have done would be something of an undeserved...'copout' I believe, is the term. I was merely curious."
"Yeah, well. Not a big believer myself," Chris admits, mouth twisting awry at the admission. The sweeping hand drops, flattening along the black-clad thigh to stretch the fabric across muscle. In the other half of the booth, the jigsaw figure of the cop slouches, propping elbows on knees to rest his chin on a doubled fist. "A little too easy for my tastes. Never expected to hear that from you, though."
"No?" The Master of Magnetism inquires after a pause, brows lifted as he settles back and slouches out of easy view, shoulders resting against the back of his wooden container. "Terrorists are people too, Christopher."
Something akin to snort answers him. "Sounds like a Hallmark card," the other man says rudely, and compounds offense by adding, "/Father/ Christopher, if you don't mind. At least in public. --You don't sound much like the fanatics I've known." The dark head turns slightly on its fist, considering the dusty drape of curtains. "I thought as long as the cause was righteous, everything was fair game."
"If anyone is listening to this conversation, you will have much larger problems than the failure of your cover." Erik drones matter-of-factly, the fingers of his right hand splayed and examined from beneath low-pressed brows in the booth's limited light. "You should be grateful that I do have a conscience. I daresay it's the only thing left that's kept me from finding a way to kill all of you."
"Pretty empty planet, if everybody's dead," Chris observes, straightening out of the opening's narrow view, slouch a match for Erik's. "Not to mention all the bodies you'd have to bury, if you didn't want diseases floating around. And then what'd you do to get a next generation?"
"I sincerely doubt I would have to bury anyone. Some orphaned mutant or childless father would assassinate me within the first month." Erik's fingers flex and curl. "In logical terms, it's an unpleasant scenario from every possible angle."
Dry amusement filters across the baritone, stripped of its Brooklyn accent for the role of priest. "So we got your conscience /and/ common sense to thank. Pretty sure they're going to kick you out of the fanatics' club at this rate. Falwell'll cry his eyes out."
"The city of New York is still allowing you to work as a policeman." Erik replies a little too mildly, his glare flicking back up to the grate as his right hand drops into his lap, next to the left.
"Miracles do happen," Rossi says after a moment, dropping his leg to curl it under him. The lean body, blurred and out of sight, tenses under the cassock's probity. "The Captain told the Feds you couldn't possibly be stupid enough to hire me for Brotherhood work. By that point, they were ready to throw me in jail just for being an asshole." Remembered irritation twists through the reply, not unmixed with satisfaction for the memory.
A short silence is broken by the pop of some joint or another, followed invisibly by another before Erik resettles himself, and...yawns. "It would be somewhat counterproductive to keep approaching you in public if you were on my payroll."
Unseen, Chris half-lids his eyes and curls a crooked grin. "Nobody ever claimed the G were high on the IQ scale," he grants. Somewhere in the church, a door bangs; childish laughter echoes off the stone, wrapping around a high, sweet thread of soprano song. "Anyway, you couldn't afford me."
Again, there's a pause - this time to listen after that younger voice before the older man turns slightly aside, and then upward, testing the wood once more with the flat of his hand. "You might be surprised."
The closet of the confessional is dark, close, and warm: shelter from the world. Stirred slightly by breath and errant draft, the faint scent of sawdust mingles with some lingering hint of pipe tobacco. "Not enough money in the world," Rossi says quietly, voice dropping while the children draw breath and dutifully finish the hymn.
"Father Christopher, do take a moment to consider that I've been around for long enough to know that men can be bought with virtually anything. Money only works with the foolish and the greedy." Erik smiles, the shift in his expression as dark as his surroundings. "But you needn't be concerned. I do bear some grudging measure of respect and sympathy for the life you already lead and have led, without me furthering your guilt."
Rossi says nothing for a long moment, while the children's singing climbs pure-voiced and ethereal into the church's rafters. "Thanks. I guess," he says, as it breaks off, collapsed into giggles and some adult's tolerant scolding. His own baritone roughens, the native accent treading cautiously back. "Guilt comes with the territory. Suppose you know all about that, though."
Erik says nothing. He says nothing for what seems like several minutes, in fact, though quiet shifts from time to time serve as indications of his continued presence. "You were familiar with Leah Canto."
In the other booth, Chris closes his eyes, lashes sketched in fine-nibbed black across the skin. "Yeah."
More silence, in the wake of Rossi's confirmation. And then, abruptly, "I had a family, once upon a time. A wife, and a daughter."
Chris turns his head against the wall to glance towards that empty, faceless screen, washed in the darkness of the confessional. "What happened to them?"
"There was a problem, with my work. My supervisor attempted to take what was not his, and I retaliated." Arms folding stiffly across his chest, Erik squints at the closed door of the confessional without seeing it. "I went home, but there was a fire. Anya was trapped. Afraid. I could not reach her. Nor could my wife. I tried, of course, but the authorities...I was restrained, and beaten."
There is silence from the other side of the pale, where Chris listens to his heart beat and closes a hand over the flimsy, gaudy cover of Father Simon's magazine. "Was it arson?" he asks as a cop; and as a priest, adds simply, "I'm sorry."
"I don't know." Comes the simple answer. "Something happened. The crying had stopped - I was angry. And I lost control. Everyone was dead, or close to it. Magda was unscathed, but horrified. Terrified. She ran away." A deep breath pulled in and expelled, Erik forces his glare back into uneasy focus, and pushes it down onto the floor. "Anyway. Be glad that you lost her when you did."
A clatter slaps the quiet: the magazine falls to the floor, slipped off the thigh under an unwary jerk of hand. Outside, in the world, small feet thunder down the aisle, chased by adult reproach and the sound of their own happy chatter. "I appreciate the thought," Chris says, a harsh note edging the attempt at civility, while a door bangs and drops them back into the echoes of peace. "Canto wasn't my wife. We were just--" He breaks off. Considers. "You ever go looking for her?"
Erik jolts slightly at the bang of the door, scowling when he resettles, only to force himself into colder indifference when the mood refuses to lift on its own. "I didn't mean to insinuate that she was." Arms still folded, he arches a brow, taking some time to consider the question posed. "At first. But - the look in her eyes - I think it is perhaps best that I have stayed away."
"They get over it, sometimes. Women. You can never predict them." Shadow pools on the edges of Chris's expression, darkening it past cynicism to nostalgia. He stretches out a foot, nudging the magazine back to concealment beside his chair, another man's secret; the paper rustles against carpet and wood, hissing gossip. "One day you're a monster, the next day she's bailing you out of jail."
"It's different, I think, when you really are something of a monster." An interesting choice of words from Christopher Rossi, with an interesting effect on Erik, whose voice is that much quieter when he shifts to stand. "I have other priorities now."
"Other children," Chris says, and presses his elbow against the grate, hand a shield for the lower half of his face. Pale green eyes watch that motion, inferring the rise through the black metal lace. "You wanting the sacrament? Can't have absolution without penance."
Erik declines to reply to that, which is probably for the best, calculating for the violence that flashes briefly through his glare as he works the door. "One day you are going to say something so foolish that I will be forced to kill you."
The cop breathes a sigh into his hand's curl, eyes slivering to half-mast color. "Yeah. I wasn't meaning to be a smartass," he says, in simple apology. His brow touches the privacy screen; hair, rumpled by earlier interference, threads through the grate. "I'd say you bring out the worst in me, but I think it might be this chastity shit."
"'This chastity shit'." Erik echoes, cultured tones virtually eliminating the phrase's original inflection. He half rolls his eyes, and steps out into the church without looking back. "Good hunting, Father Christopher."
A quiet chuckle breathes into a black-clad wrist. Rossi sinks back into his chair, eyes closing, to claim a few seconds' peace in the aftermath of unholy visitation. "/You're/ the guy wandering around with a condom in his back pocket," he tells the ceiling -- tells God and Magneto -- in idle complaint. "You want to talk about a /sin/--"
If Erik heard any of that, he gives no indication. None at all. And if Rossi has something of a difficult time getting the confessional door to open for him, well. That's mere coincidence.
[Log ends]
Sun, March 19, 2006
The sermon went very well, I think. While I hesitate to congratulate myself, I believe it might have been one of the better sermons I have written this year. The reference to Saint Barbatus of Benevento was a particularly clever choice, and I do believe I saw some smiles at the Mass at my witticism regarding Monothelites. Indeed, it was far more successful than I had thought possible. The church was far more crowded than I have seen it in quite some time.
Still, it would be foolish beyond measure for me to take credit for the attendance at Mass today. While I am embarrassed to admit that I labored particularly hard over the sermon in a rather childish attempt to impress Father Christopher!!! there can be no doubt that many of those who came did so to meet our visitor. He bore up surprisingly well under the strain. As I suspected, he has excited a great deal of female interest in the congregation. I pulled him aside yesterday and gave him the talk I usually give to the young ones who come through the parish, what Sister Angelica calls The Breasts and The Buns speech. (Except that she uses a very different word than 'Breasts' which I do not feel I should write here. Really, Sister Angelica is a lovely woman, but occasionally her language is quite earthy for a nun.) Father Christopher was quite attentive, and was, I think, touched by my concern. I feel hopeful that my advice landed on fertile ground. It is not given to all of us to understand the frailty of women, but temptation is with us all, always, and I can but imagine that it is worse for a man who has lost his way.
He is beginning to fit in well here, though he is still very present in a way that is difficult to describe. It is hard to forget that he is about, even though he has melded almost seamlessly into the flow of our days. I think it may be that his face is still so new that it jars slightly whenever I see it. Nonetheless, I have high hopes that he will soon be plunging into the activities of the parish. To that end, I have already entrusted him with the Ladies' High Tea, which should not be overly taxing. It has been running for years in Mrs. Molnar's more than capable hands. I think the change will do the event good, and stir some interest in the congregation. I announced it today, and already I have had six new volunteers for the event.
At any rate, I believe that Father Christopher is beginning to find his way back to his faith. In private, I think he is missing the sacraments sorely. This evening we were forced to dismantle part of the confessional in order to free him from the booth. Some strange flaw in the mechanism had somehow managed to lock him in. Sister Angelica apparently heard him laughing helplessly inside it and summoned the rest of us to aid in the rescue. Is it foolish of me to think that such pleasure in a silly little inconvenience might not indicate a renewal of one's spirit and a joy in the familiar sacraments?
My cat has apparently developed a taste for sushi. I have lectured her on the importance of our vows of poverty. She continues to be unimpressed. I fear she intends to leave the Church for a richer man.
---
Sunday evening sees the small Catholic church of St. Francis of Assisi closing at last. Mass is over; the last of the faithful have long since deserted the cold, stone-framed building. Only the staff remains, locking up meeting rooms, putting a lock on the sacrament -- and in the empty, echoing chamber of the church itself, sitting. Just sitting. Clad in the black of the priestly cassock, throat closed around by the telltale collar, Chris Rossi flips through the last of the Bibles and removes scrap paper that have found their way into the pages. Sedate work, for a detective in Homicide.
Far away, footfalls echo and then fade. Silence prevails once more...but only briefly. That deliberate pace makes itself known once again, faint until a heavy door swings open before them. Heavy and slow, thick-soled boots alien to this particular environment track their careful way into the main chamber of the church.
In his solitary pew, Father Christopher lifts his head at that telltale sound and grimaces, a markedly unspiritual expression for a man of the cloth. The last Bible slips into its pocket; the wolf in sheep's clothing stands, stepping into the aisle for a quick escape: to the confessional, claimed with a quick thrust to the heavy wooden door for closed, quiet claustrophobia inside. Rossi sinks onto the padded seat and props his head on the wall, eyes closing.
The timing is positively cinematic. A study in value and shadow, the black and grey of a single stalwart individual rounds the corner in time with the inward swing of the confessional door - the close of it earning slightly knit brows and a narrowed eye before he surveys the rest of the chamber, and finds it to be empty. A wolf among sheep, a lion among wolves, on strides Erik Lensherr after a moment's pause, the faint beginnings of a smirk worked stubbornly away into seriousness as he crosses the cavernous room for the confessional.
In the confessional booth, Chris stretches his legs into the cramped confines, foot jamming against the door's fold to lock it in place. Arms fold loosely over the scoop of stomach; a finger hooks into the tight lip of collar, sliding along the cloth restriction. Not the first time it has made this round. Breath chuffs in a small sigh, and he tips his head to investigate: a magazine under the confessional chair. The cop bends to grope for its cover.
Heavy, echoing footfalls continue their approach, only to pause far too nearby for complete comfort. Splayed fingers leave rather high profile fingerprints behind in tracing lazily over the neighboring booth's door as grey eyes take in the workmanship with a measure of genuine curiousity. And then, in he steps, overcoat sweeping in over the threshold after him. The door is closed, and Erik seats himself all too placidly.
The would-be priest lurches at that betraying sound; the black head bangs into wood, and spawns a muffled ecclesiastic curse. "Shi---eeeeoot," the familiar baritone manages. A hand rips through hair, folding to the injured scalp, while the other jerks up to cling to the metal grating between. "Dangit," Rossi manages, more temperately. "I'm sorry. I'm not actually performing the sacraments today. I could get Father Simon--"
There's really no hope at all of Erik not allowing himself a very small smirk at the sound of Rossi making all sorts of rather unchristianly noises in the booth next to him. Even if he somehow managed to suppress it, he would be much harder pressed to hide the amusement iced into the grey of his glare as he leans slowly forward to peer sidelong through the grating. "Boo."
The fingers threaded through the metal jerk back, scraping themselves against the lacing; the black head behind the shield jerks up, green eyes flared wide and rimmed in white. "No," Rossi says, and in a heartbeat the last hint of the priest disappears altogether. Cynicism floods back to paint the dark face. His head bumps back, profile framed against the wall. "You've got to be shitting me."
"Forgive me Father," tries Erik evenly in answer, brows twisting down with irony as he sits slightly back, into a more comfortable lean. "for I have sinned. I flirted with the maid again this morning and had a glass of whiskey before noon. I also lied to Mystique about my present location. And that was just today."
"With the maid?" asks Father Christopher, slapping the magazine on his thigh before propping his ankle on his knee. A glittering glance skims askance, piecing Erik's face together through the grate's puzzle. "She cute? That all you have to confess to? Because out of all of it, only the lying's a sin. And considering who the recipient was, I gotta give you a pass. --How'd you find me?"
"Very." Erik's glare is only slightly sharper than his leer, disembodied as the angles of his face are through the grate's fragmenting. "I managed to convince her that she could single-handedly reverse my opinion of humanity in well under an hour. Well. Two hours. But the effect was hardly lessened, even so." Leonine head tilting slightly to better take in Rossi in the other booth, Erik snorts. "Wouldn't you like to know."
Chris grimaces, raking his hand through black hair again to set it wildly askew. "I'm pretty sure /that's/ a sin," he says, dry, and turns his head to regard Lensherr with a level look. "You want to confess your sins, I'll listen, but I don't have any absolution worth a damn. Then again, you're not Catholic, are you?" The priest's collar winks its white tab against the black at his throat's stretch; he scrubs again at hair, and frowns.
"Is it?" If it is, Erik doesn't seem to be terribly interested in repenting - his gaze already having wandered aside to study the interior of that which is his booth. Onto the next thread of conversation. "Not exactly. I'm rather of the opinion that asking for anyone's forgiveness for the things I have done would be something of an undeserved...'copout' I believe, is the term. I was merely curious."
"Yeah, well. Not a big believer myself," Chris admits, mouth twisting awry at the admission. The sweeping hand drops, flattening along the black-clad thigh to stretch the fabric across muscle. In the other half of the booth, the jigsaw figure of the cop slouches, propping elbows on knees to rest his chin on a doubled fist. "A little too easy for my tastes. Never expected to hear that from you, though."
"No?" The Master of Magnetism inquires after a pause, brows lifted as he settles back and slouches out of easy view, shoulders resting against the back of his wooden container. "Terrorists are people too, Christopher."
Something akin to snort answers him. "Sounds like a Hallmark card," the other man says rudely, and compounds offense by adding, "/Father/ Christopher, if you don't mind. At least in public. --You don't sound much like the fanatics I've known." The dark head turns slightly on its fist, considering the dusty drape of curtains. "I thought as long as the cause was righteous, everything was fair game."
"If anyone is listening to this conversation, you will have much larger problems than the failure of your cover." Erik drones matter-of-factly, the fingers of his right hand splayed and examined from beneath low-pressed brows in the booth's limited light. "You should be grateful that I do have a conscience. I daresay it's the only thing left that's kept me from finding a way to kill all of you."
"Pretty empty planet, if everybody's dead," Chris observes, straightening out of the opening's narrow view, slouch a match for Erik's. "Not to mention all the bodies you'd have to bury, if you didn't want diseases floating around. And then what'd you do to get a next generation?"
"I sincerely doubt I would have to bury anyone. Some orphaned mutant or childless father would assassinate me within the first month." Erik's fingers flex and curl. "In logical terms, it's an unpleasant scenario from every possible angle."
Dry amusement filters across the baritone, stripped of its Brooklyn accent for the role of priest. "So we got your conscience /and/ common sense to thank. Pretty sure they're going to kick you out of the fanatics' club at this rate. Falwell'll cry his eyes out."
"The city of New York is still allowing you to work as a policeman." Erik replies a little too mildly, his glare flicking back up to the grate as his right hand drops into his lap, next to the left.
"Miracles do happen," Rossi says after a moment, dropping his leg to curl it under him. The lean body, blurred and out of sight, tenses under the cassock's probity. "The Captain told the Feds you couldn't possibly be stupid enough to hire me for Brotherhood work. By that point, they were ready to throw me in jail just for being an asshole." Remembered irritation twists through the reply, not unmixed with satisfaction for the memory.
A short silence is broken by the pop of some joint or another, followed invisibly by another before Erik resettles himself, and...yawns. "It would be somewhat counterproductive to keep approaching you in public if you were on my payroll."
Unseen, Chris half-lids his eyes and curls a crooked grin. "Nobody ever claimed the G were high on the IQ scale," he grants. Somewhere in the church, a door bangs; childish laughter echoes off the stone, wrapping around a high, sweet thread of soprano song. "Anyway, you couldn't afford me."
Again, there's a pause - this time to listen after that younger voice before the older man turns slightly aside, and then upward, testing the wood once more with the flat of his hand. "You might be surprised."
The closet of the confessional is dark, close, and warm: shelter from the world. Stirred slightly by breath and errant draft, the faint scent of sawdust mingles with some lingering hint of pipe tobacco. "Not enough money in the world," Rossi says quietly, voice dropping while the children draw breath and dutifully finish the hymn.
"Father Christopher, do take a moment to consider that I've been around for long enough to know that men can be bought with virtually anything. Money only works with the foolish and the greedy." Erik smiles, the shift in his expression as dark as his surroundings. "But you needn't be concerned. I do bear some grudging measure of respect and sympathy for the life you already lead and have led, without me furthering your guilt."
Rossi says nothing for a long moment, while the children's singing climbs pure-voiced and ethereal into the church's rafters. "Thanks. I guess," he says, as it breaks off, collapsed into giggles and some adult's tolerant scolding. His own baritone roughens, the native accent treading cautiously back. "Guilt comes with the territory. Suppose you know all about that, though."
Erik says nothing. He says nothing for what seems like several minutes, in fact, though quiet shifts from time to time serve as indications of his continued presence. "You were familiar with Leah Canto."
In the other booth, Chris closes his eyes, lashes sketched in fine-nibbed black across the skin. "Yeah."
More silence, in the wake of Rossi's confirmation. And then, abruptly, "I had a family, once upon a time. A wife, and a daughter."
Chris turns his head against the wall to glance towards that empty, faceless screen, washed in the darkness of the confessional. "What happened to them?"
"There was a problem, with my work. My supervisor attempted to take what was not his, and I retaliated." Arms folding stiffly across his chest, Erik squints at the closed door of the confessional without seeing it. "I went home, but there was a fire. Anya was trapped. Afraid. I could not reach her. Nor could my wife. I tried, of course, but the authorities...I was restrained, and beaten."
There is silence from the other side of the pale, where Chris listens to his heart beat and closes a hand over the flimsy, gaudy cover of Father Simon's magazine. "Was it arson?" he asks as a cop; and as a priest, adds simply, "I'm sorry."
"I don't know." Comes the simple answer. "Something happened. The crying had stopped - I was angry. And I lost control. Everyone was dead, or close to it. Magda was unscathed, but horrified. Terrified. She ran away." A deep breath pulled in and expelled, Erik forces his glare back into uneasy focus, and pushes it down onto the floor. "Anyway. Be glad that you lost her when you did."
A clatter slaps the quiet: the magazine falls to the floor, slipped off the thigh under an unwary jerk of hand. Outside, in the world, small feet thunder down the aisle, chased by adult reproach and the sound of their own happy chatter. "I appreciate the thought," Chris says, a harsh note edging the attempt at civility, while a door bangs and drops them back into the echoes of peace. "Canto wasn't my wife. We were just--" He breaks off. Considers. "You ever go looking for her?"
Erik jolts slightly at the bang of the door, scowling when he resettles, only to force himself into colder indifference when the mood refuses to lift on its own. "I didn't mean to insinuate that she was." Arms still folded, he arches a brow, taking some time to consider the question posed. "At first. But - the look in her eyes - I think it is perhaps best that I have stayed away."
"They get over it, sometimes. Women. You can never predict them." Shadow pools on the edges of Chris's expression, darkening it past cynicism to nostalgia. He stretches out a foot, nudging the magazine back to concealment beside his chair, another man's secret; the paper rustles against carpet and wood, hissing gossip. "One day you're a monster, the next day she's bailing you out of jail."
"It's different, I think, when you really are something of a monster." An interesting choice of words from Christopher Rossi, with an interesting effect on Erik, whose voice is that much quieter when he shifts to stand. "I have other priorities now."
"Other children," Chris says, and presses his elbow against the grate, hand a shield for the lower half of his face. Pale green eyes watch that motion, inferring the rise through the black metal lace. "You wanting the sacrament? Can't have absolution without penance."
Erik declines to reply to that, which is probably for the best, calculating for the violence that flashes briefly through his glare as he works the door. "One day you are going to say something so foolish that I will be forced to kill you."
The cop breathes a sigh into his hand's curl, eyes slivering to half-mast color. "Yeah. I wasn't meaning to be a smartass," he says, in simple apology. His brow touches the privacy screen; hair, rumpled by earlier interference, threads through the grate. "I'd say you bring out the worst in me, but I think it might be this chastity shit."
"'This chastity shit'." Erik echoes, cultured tones virtually eliminating the phrase's original inflection. He half rolls his eyes, and steps out into the church without looking back. "Good hunting, Father Christopher."
A quiet chuckle breathes into a black-clad wrist. Rossi sinks back into his chair, eyes closing, to claim a few seconds' peace in the aftermath of unholy visitation. "/You're/ the guy wandering around with a condom in his back pocket," he tells the ceiling -- tells God and Magneto -- in idle complaint. "You want to talk about a /sin/--"
If Erik heard any of that, he gives no indication. None at all. And if Rossi has something of a difficult time getting the confessional door to open for him, well. That's mere coincidence.
[Log ends]