Suspension Of Disbelief, part three
May. 18th, 2006 03:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lizhanneTitle: Suspension of Disbelief, part three
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
anne_elliot
Rating: NC17 for this part
Pairing: Frank/Gerard, Frank/Ray
Author's notes: once upon a time, I saw the first priest!Gerard pictures, and helped by conversations about Stigmata-esque AUs with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
restriction, I started with an idea and ended up writing something completely different. This means you will find no demonic possession here, only a psychic, fucked-up Frank and a tired, disillusioned priest!Gerard.
Thanks torestriction for the wonderful beta job on this part.
No altar boys were (or will ever be) harmed in the writing of this story.
Disclaimer: this is an AU; you can't get much faker than that, right?
Links to previous chapters are under the cut.
- Part one
- Part two
“What was your mother so upset about, anyway?”
“My mother should simply understand when to give up on a lost cause.”
“Lost cause?”
“Yeah, the whole ‘let’s pretend that Frank cares about going to church with us' thing.”
“You mean you don’t really…” – a vague hand-wave – “believe in God and such, anymore?”
“I’m not sure I’ve ever did, really. Going to church stopped having any kind of meaning for me when I was still a kid.”
“You’re not a kid anymore.”
So why are you still going to church with them? Was the silent question in Gerard’s (as Frank had been instructed to call him - “No Father with me, please”) eyes.
Frank sighed, lifting his left knee to his chest and taking another drag from his cigarette.
“I have a shitty job and not enough money to have my own place. I depend on them, and living in that house implies some rules. Church on Sundays is one of them.”
“What about finding a better job?” Gerard looked genuinely concerned, something that Frank found unsettling. He didn’t like to talk about himself with people, not even with Ray, and couldn’t see why this black-haired priest who smoked like a chimney and didn’t want to be called Father thought he could understand or help. How fast you would run from me if I told you the truth, Frank thought.
“I haven’t even finished high school. I can’t sleep at night, and I’m useless in the morning. There’s nothing much that I can do, apart from this.”
“Insomnia, hm? I have that problem, too. Have you ever tried taking anything for it?”
“That only makes things worse.”
“Worse?” – a cocked eyebrow, a puzzled look – “How’s that possible?”
“Never mind, really.”
“So you don’t want to talk about it?”
Oh yes, I’m dying to tell a perfect stranger that pills make me lose that tiny strand of control I have at night and open up my brain like a door for them, Frank thought.
“No.”
Gerard looked quizzically at him while lighting another cigarette, but he didn’t push the matter further. Incongruously, Frank noticed Gerard's hands, how short his nails were and the way his fingers curled around the little cylinder and cupped it, as if to protect it from the wind. It was obviously a habit.
“I didn’t know that priests could smoke. Isn’t it a vice?”
***
“Frank? Frank? Are you with me?”
Ray’s voice interrupts his thoughts, and he pushes the mental image of Gerard away to listen to his friend. He’s now so beyond tired that it takes a conscious effort to do so, and the white background of the fog he can see running away from the moving car is almost mesmerizing, too easy to get lost into.
“Frank?”
Damn, he’s spaced out again.
“Sorry, I was – thinking.”
“Whatever it was, it must have been nice. You were smiling.”
“Nice? No, nothing nice. Well, nothing too bad, either. I was thinking about that priest that came in right before we closed.”
“The chain-smoker? I thought he would never go away! Was he a priest? I hadn’t noticed… What did you two have to talk about for half an hour, anyway? Do you know him?”
Frank didn’t realize they had been talking so long; he’s surprised, because he hasn’t talked, really talked, so much with anyone in a long time, and his mind is now so slow and numb he’s not even sure he remembers everything he said. This thought unsettles him a little.
“No, I don’t know him. He saw my mother’s little scene in church, and was just – being a priest, you know.”
“As in, he was hitting on you?”
“Ray…” - despite having made the same joke, albeit in a much ruder form earlier that night, Frank looks reproachfully at him, but Ray is smiling and clearly hardly restraining a laugh, and soon they are chuckling together. “You have such a dirty mind.”
“That I do. But hey, I’ve already seen you smile twice tonight, so whatever he told you must have been good. That makes him a cool guy in my books.”
The car stops in front of Frank’s house, and he curls up in his seat instead of getting out, smiling at Ray. He doesn’t really want to leave even though he feels like he could fall asleep right there and the car is freezing cold, because, as usual, Ray remembered that heating it makes his car-sickness worse.
“It’s freezing here, Ray. You shouldn’t risk pneumonia just because of me.”
“It’s okay, I spend all night in an overheated kitchen anyway. I crave the cold when I get out of there.”
Frank can tell that Ray’s lying because his hands are shivering lightly on the steering wheel even under his woollen gloves. In a sudden urge of affection he takes those hands in his and breathes on them open-mouthed, trying to warm them up a bit.
“Liar,” he whispers, smiling up at Ray. He’s tired and restless and he doesn’t want to be alone, because being tired to the point of collapsing doesn’t necessarily mean that he’ll be able to sleep. So he whispers “Wanna come in?” against Ray’s hands with a small, knowing smile.
He knows he doesn’t really have to ask. Indeed, minutes later they are kissing down the stairs to Frank’s bedroom in the basement, trying to be quiet and not to trip down the stairs at the same time.
They don’t like it when Ray’s there and Frank feels it immediately as he enters the house, their annoyance at not having his undivided attention. Fuck them, Frank thinks. He’s sure by now that they can’t physically harm him or anyone else in any way, or they would have done it by now. Frank wraps himself protectively around Ray nonetheless as they fall on his bed, blindly removing layers of clothing and finally warming numb fingers on each other’s skin.
Leave me alone for a moment, just for a moment, Frank thinks, but his mind is starting to wander unconsciously as his tired body loosens up in the pleasure of having Ray above him, around him and finally inside him, his limbs tingling from the sudden rush of blood and his face buried in Ray’s neck to hide his moans.
Frank can feel them push at the borders of his consciousness, striving to be acknowledged; with every thrust, with every touch that brings him closer to the edge Frank loses his grip on himself a bit more. He holds on to Ray like an anchor, crossing his legs behind his back and biting his neck. Ray stiffens against him at this, and pushes inside Frank harder, once, twice, until Frank can feel him coming inside him.
“Just give me a second,” Ray whispers against his skin, leaving a light trail of kisses along Frank's jaw line, and Frank barely has the time to catch his breath before he feels Ray pulling out slowly and moving down along his body.
A loud, surprised gasp resonates in the room when he feels Ray on him, working him fast with both his mouth and his hand. Frank thinks he can actually see his own voice bouncing on the walls around him, stirring shadows on its path; he tries to follow it for a moment, but something suddenly shifts and he is the sound. High on the ceiling, he can see his body below, shaking in its orgasm and then going suddenly limp.
He remembers this sensation. He knows it too well, even if it’s been a while since it last happened.
Detached from the scene below him, suddenly aware of the noise coming from his parents’ sleeping minds and too painfully conscious of the vague, grey shapes hovering at the corners of the room, Frank fights the familiar temptation to let go and forget his body. He tried once when he was twelve and his parents freaked out for hours when they couldn’t wake him up, shaking him and yelling at him until the noise bothered him so much that he managed to find his way back.
They don’t bother him too much when he’s out there. Frank thinks that there’s some sort of poetic justice in the fact that they probably can’t, and maybe that’s what makes them so angry, after all – the fact that even they can’t understand why they are flocking around him, like moths to a flame. Once they have his attention, though, they apparently don’t know what to do with it.
It must be frustrating, Frank thinks, but he doesn’t have much sympathy to spare for them, and below him he sees Ray looking really worried, so with a huge effort he slips back in and opens his eyes.
***
Some six hours later, Frank wakes up to the sound of his father’s footsteps coming down the stairs. Cursing under his breath, he realizes that Ray is till there, sleeping curled against his chest. He refused to leave the previous night, worried about Frank’s blackout, and swearing on the reliability of his internal clock he promised he’d leave early the following morning.
Fuck Ray’s internal clock, Frank thinks while he tries to wake him, even if it’s his own fault for giving in to the temptation of not sleeping alone for a night. Ray is still only half awake when the door opens, and Frank’s father stops frozen on the doorstep.
“What the hell is this?” His father’s voice is controlled, but already trembling with anger.
“Oh, fuck. I’m sorry.”
Ray is completely awake now, and the look of guilt on his face as he hastily puts on his trousers is enough to make Frank forgive him almost instantly.
“Don’t worry, Ray. Go away now, I’ll see you tonight at work.”
“Are you sure?” Ray hesitates, stealing a furtive glance at Frank’s father, who is looking at them with utter bewilderment written on his face. Ray’s expression shows that he’s ready to stay there and punch Frank's father if needed, and Frank’s chest clenches in an upsurge of affection for his friend.
“Yeah, I’m sure. Just go, I can handle this.”
Ray has finished hastily putting his clothes back on, and looks worriedly at him one last time before slipping out of the room, stepping around Frank’s father and trying to avoid his eyes.
His father, who seemed to have been stunned into silence during their short exchange, is now beet-red and clearly on the verge of a screaming fit. Frank drops tiredly on the bed again, trying to gather his strength for the fight that he knows is coming.
“I asked you what the hell is th-” his father starts yelling at him, but Frank interrupts him in mid-sentence, still lying on the bed and resolutely staring at the ceiling.
“It’s exactly what it looks like, Dad. Guess what? I had lots of evil gay sex last night, and please don’t act like you’re surprised, for god’s sake!
It’s not as if you didn’t know it,” Frank adds, his voice dropping slightly.
“We had…hoped that you would manage to…leave your…perversion,” his father spits out the word as if it had a bad taste, “out of this house! We look after you! We feed you! We let you have a roof above your head! Can’t you see that we care for you? The least you could do is act like a decent human being for once in your life!”
“Care for me? Care for me?” Years of repressed anger are building up inside Frank, threatening to burst out in the worst possible way. “I guess that insulting me on a daily basis, always reminding me what a worthless freak I am is your idea of caring for someone, then? Allowing me to live here only if I hide who and what I am and follow your stupid rules? You know what? I’m tired of your hypocrisy, I’m tired of you despising me so much, and I’m fucking tired of living this life!”
The light in his room starts flickering violently as his voice becomes louder and angrier, and he sees his father glance worriedly at it. He’s scared of Frank, and somehow that’s what hurts Frank the most.
“Get out!” his dad yells. “Get the fuck out of here!”
The light goes out for a moment and his father eyes him with disgust and fear before turning away. “Your grandmother was right about you. We should have taken you to a priest years ago,” he says as he leaves the room.
A flash in Frank’s mind shows him an old woman, curled over her rosary while eyeing a very young Frank with suspicion and mumbling a word under her breath. Magara. He remembers what it means. The days when they used to say the rosary together suddenly incredibly far.
The door closes violently when his father is halfway up the stairs, but Frank barely notices it. He’s still crying when his mother comes banging at his door ten minutes later – the door won’t open as much as she tries, shaking it wildly – and he’s still crying when he hears them shut the front door a little later, going to work as always as if nothing has happened.
The light turns itself on after a while, when Frank is finally asleep.
Four
Author:
anne_elliotRating: NC17 for this part
Pairing: Frank/Gerard, Frank/Ray
Author's notes: once upon a time, I saw the first priest!Gerard pictures, and helped by conversations about Stigmata-esque AUs with
restriction, I started with an idea and ended up writing something completely different. This means you will find no demonic possession here, only a psychic, fucked-up Frank and a tired, disillusioned priest!Gerard.Thanks to
restriction for the wonderful beta job on this part.No altar boys were (or will ever be) harmed in the writing of this story.
Disclaimer: this is an AU; you can't get much faker than that, right?
Links to previous chapters are under the cut.
- Part one
- Part two
“What was your mother so upset about, anyway?”
“My mother should simply understand when to give up on a lost cause.”
“Lost cause?”
“Yeah, the whole ‘let’s pretend that Frank cares about going to church with us' thing.”
“You mean you don’t really…” – a vague hand-wave – “believe in God and such, anymore?”
“I’m not sure I’ve ever did, really. Going to church stopped having any kind of meaning for me when I was still a kid.”
“You’re not a kid anymore.”
So why are you still going to church with them? Was the silent question in Gerard’s (as Frank had been instructed to call him - “No Father with me, please”) eyes.
Frank sighed, lifting his left knee to his chest and taking another drag from his cigarette.
“I have a shitty job and not enough money to have my own place. I depend on them, and living in that house implies some rules. Church on Sundays is one of them.”
“What about finding a better job?” Gerard looked genuinely concerned, something that Frank found unsettling. He didn’t like to talk about himself with people, not even with Ray, and couldn’t see why this black-haired priest who smoked like a chimney and didn’t want to be called Father thought he could understand or help. How fast you would run from me if I told you the truth, Frank thought.
“I haven’t even finished high school. I can’t sleep at night, and I’m useless in the morning. There’s nothing much that I can do, apart from this.”
“Insomnia, hm? I have that problem, too. Have you ever tried taking anything for it?”
“That only makes things worse.”
“Worse?” – a cocked eyebrow, a puzzled look – “How’s that possible?”
“Never mind, really.”
“So you don’t want to talk about it?”
Oh yes, I’m dying to tell a perfect stranger that pills make me lose that tiny strand of control I have at night and open up my brain like a door for them, Frank thought.
“No.”
Gerard looked quizzically at him while lighting another cigarette, but he didn’t push the matter further. Incongruously, Frank noticed Gerard's hands, how short his nails were and the way his fingers curled around the little cylinder and cupped it, as if to protect it from the wind. It was obviously a habit.
“I didn’t know that priests could smoke. Isn’t it a vice?”
***
“Frank? Frank? Are you with me?”
Ray’s voice interrupts his thoughts, and he pushes the mental image of Gerard away to listen to his friend. He’s now so beyond tired that it takes a conscious effort to do so, and the white background of the fog he can see running away from the moving car is almost mesmerizing, too easy to get lost into.
“Frank?”
Damn, he’s spaced out again.
“Sorry, I was – thinking.”
“Whatever it was, it must have been nice. You were smiling.”
“Nice? No, nothing nice. Well, nothing too bad, either. I was thinking about that priest that came in right before we closed.”
“The chain-smoker? I thought he would never go away! Was he a priest? I hadn’t noticed… What did you two have to talk about for half an hour, anyway? Do you know him?”
Frank didn’t realize they had been talking so long; he’s surprised, because he hasn’t talked, really talked, so much with anyone in a long time, and his mind is now so slow and numb he’s not even sure he remembers everything he said. This thought unsettles him a little.
“No, I don’t know him. He saw my mother’s little scene in church, and was just – being a priest, you know.”
“As in, he was hitting on you?”
“Ray…” - despite having made the same joke, albeit in a much ruder form earlier that night, Frank looks reproachfully at him, but Ray is smiling and clearly hardly restraining a laugh, and soon they are chuckling together. “You have such a dirty mind.”
“That I do. But hey, I’ve already seen you smile twice tonight, so whatever he told you must have been good. That makes him a cool guy in my books.”
The car stops in front of Frank’s house, and he curls up in his seat instead of getting out, smiling at Ray. He doesn’t really want to leave even though he feels like he could fall asleep right there and the car is freezing cold, because, as usual, Ray remembered that heating it makes his car-sickness worse.
“It’s freezing here, Ray. You shouldn’t risk pneumonia just because of me.”
“It’s okay, I spend all night in an overheated kitchen anyway. I crave the cold when I get out of there.”
Frank can tell that Ray’s lying because his hands are shivering lightly on the steering wheel even under his woollen gloves. In a sudden urge of affection he takes those hands in his and breathes on them open-mouthed, trying to warm them up a bit.
“Liar,” he whispers, smiling up at Ray. He’s tired and restless and he doesn’t want to be alone, because being tired to the point of collapsing doesn’t necessarily mean that he’ll be able to sleep. So he whispers “Wanna come in?” against Ray’s hands with a small, knowing smile.
He knows he doesn’t really have to ask. Indeed, minutes later they are kissing down the stairs to Frank’s bedroom in the basement, trying to be quiet and not to trip down the stairs at the same time.
They don’t like it when Ray’s there and Frank feels it immediately as he enters the house, their annoyance at not having his undivided attention. Fuck them, Frank thinks. He’s sure by now that they can’t physically harm him or anyone else in any way, or they would have done it by now. Frank wraps himself protectively around Ray nonetheless as they fall on his bed, blindly removing layers of clothing and finally warming numb fingers on each other’s skin.
Leave me alone for a moment, just for a moment, Frank thinks, but his mind is starting to wander unconsciously as his tired body loosens up in the pleasure of having Ray above him, around him and finally inside him, his limbs tingling from the sudden rush of blood and his face buried in Ray’s neck to hide his moans.
Frank can feel them push at the borders of his consciousness, striving to be acknowledged; with every thrust, with every touch that brings him closer to the edge Frank loses his grip on himself a bit more. He holds on to Ray like an anchor, crossing his legs behind his back and biting his neck. Ray stiffens against him at this, and pushes inside Frank harder, once, twice, until Frank can feel him coming inside him.
“Just give me a second,” Ray whispers against his skin, leaving a light trail of kisses along Frank's jaw line, and Frank barely has the time to catch his breath before he feels Ray pulling out slowly and moving down along his body.
A loud, surprised gasp resonates in the room when he feels Ray on him, working him fast with both his mouth and his hand. Frank thinks he can actually see his own voice bouncing on the walls around him, stirring shadows on its path; he tries to follow it for a moment, but something suddenly shifts and he is the sound. High on the ceiling, he can see his body below, shaking in its orgasm and then going suddenly limp.
He remembers this sensation. He knows it too well, even if it’s been a while since it last happened.
Detached from the scene below him, suddenly aware of the noise coming from his parents’ sleeping minds and too painfully conscious of the vague, grey shapes hovering at the corners of the room, Frank fights the familiar temptation to let go and forget his body. He tried once when he was twelve and his parents freaked out for hours when they couldn’t wake him up, shaking him and yelling at him until the noise bothered him so much that he managed to find his way back.
They don’t bother him too much when he’s out there. Frank thinks that there’s some sort of poetic justice in the fact that they probably can’t, and maybe that’s what makes them so angry, after all – the fact that even they can’t understand why they are flocking around him, like moths to a flame. Once they have his attention, though, they apparently don’t know what to do with it.
It must be frustrating, Frank thinks, but he doesn’t have much sympathy to spare for them, and below him he sees Ray looking really worried, so with a huge effort he slips back in and opens his eyes.
***
Some six hours later, Frank wakes up to the sound of his father’s footsteps coming down the stairs. Cursing under his breath, he realizes that Ray is till there, sleeping curled against his chest. He refused to leave the previous night, worried about Frank’s blackout, and swearing on the reliability of his internal clock he promised he’d leave early the following morning.
Fuck Ray’s internal clock, Frank thinks while he tries to wake him, even if it’s his own fault for giving in to the temptation of not sleeping alone for a night. Ray is still only half awake when the door opens, and Frank’s father stops frozen on the doorstep.
“What the hell is this?” His father’s voice is controlled, but already trembling with anger.
“Oh, fuck. I’m sorry.”
Ray is completely awake now, and the look of guilt on his face as he hastily puts on his trousers is enough to make Frank forgive him almost instantly.
“Don’t worry, Ray. Go away now, I’ll see you tonight at work.”
“Are you sure?” Ray hesitates, stealing a furtive glance at Frank’s father, who is looking at them with utter bewilderment written on his face. Ray’s expression shows that he’s ready to stay there and punch Frank's father if needed, and Frank’s chest clenches in an upsurge of affection for his friend.
“Yeah, I’m sure. Just go, I can handle this.”
Ray has finished hastily putting his clothes back on, and looks worriedly at him one last time before slipping out of the room, stepping around Frank’s father and trying to avoid his eyes.
His father, who seemed to have been stunned into silence during their short exchange, is now beet-red and clearly on the verge of a screaming fit. Frank drops tiredly on the bed again, trying to gather his strength for the fight that he knows is coming.
“I asked you what the hell is th-” his father starts yelling at him, but Frank interrupts him in mid-sentence, still lying on the bed and resolutely staring at the ceiling.
“It’s exactly what it looks like, Dad. Guess what? I had lots of evil gay sex last night, and please don’t act like you’re surprised, for god’s sake!
It’s not as if you didn’t know it,” Frank adds, his voice dropping slightly.
“We had…hoped that you would manage to…leave your…perversion,” his father spits out the word as if it had a bad taste, “out of this house! We look after you! We feed you! We let you have a roof above your head! Can’t you see that we care for you? The least you could do is act like a decent human being for once in your life!”
“Care for me? Care for me?” Years of repressed anger are building up inside Frank, threatening to burst out in the worst possible way. “I guess that insulting me on a daily basis, always reminding me what a worthless freak I am is your idea of caring for someone, then? Allowing me to live here only if I hide who and what I am and follow your stupid rules? You know what? I’m tired of your hypocrisy, I’m tired of you despising me so much, and I’m fucking tired of living this life!”
The light in his room starts flickering violently as his voice becomes louder and angrier, and he sees his father glance worriedly at it. He’s scared of Frank, and somehow that’s what hurts Frank the most.
“Get out!” his dad yells. “Get the fuck out of here!”
The light goes out for a moment and his father eyes him with disgust and fear before turning away. “Your grandmother was right about you. We should have taken you to a priest years ago,” he says as he leaves the room.
A flash in Frank’s mind shows him an old woman, curled over her rosary while eyeing a very young Frank with suspicion and mumbling a word under her breath. Magara. He remembers what it means. The days when they used to say the rosary together suddenly incredibly far.
The door closes violently when his father is halfway up the stairs, but Frank barely notices it. He’s still crying when his mother comes banging at his door ten minutes later – the door won’t open as much as she tries, shaking it wildly – and he’s still crying when he hears them shut the front door a little later, going to work as always as if nothing has happened.
The light turns itself on after a while, when Frank is finally asleep.
Four
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-18 02:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-18 02:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-18 05:13 pm (UTC)That is simply amazing. I love it. And can't believe I missed the previous chapters when they were posted. I'm in awe, pretty much. Not many fic-writers out there can match your brilliant style of writing. Srsly :D
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 06:58 am (UTC)Wow, thanks for the lovely feedback! :)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-18 05:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 06:58 am (UTC)More is coming soon, I promise.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-18 06:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 07:06 am (UTC)More is coming soon anyway, so no need to unleash them on me!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-18 07:03 pm (UTC)i think im in love with this story
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 07:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-18 07:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 07:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-18 08:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 07:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-18 10:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 07:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-20 12:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-26 03:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-05 01:07 pm (UTC)I'm glad that you're liking this! I only have to work out a couple of difficulties in part 4, and I'll post that, too.
(I would also love to have the time to write more, but if things go as planned, that should come soon!)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-21 03:11 pm (UTC)<.<
awesome!
Francesca <3
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-22 10:29 pm (UTC)and thrillllliinngg
your writing is reallyreallly great.