i gotchu fam tw for, uh, idolatry? and misuse of religion /
“Who are you?”
It’s the same face. They look nothing alike.
Credence feels his stomach twisting into knots. He still hurts, everywhere and anywhere it’s possible to hurt and a few other places too. His muscles are full of shards of glass. Breathing fills his lungs with cold. Every step is an explosion of agony. His head is invaded by flashes of light and clouds of smoke and―Don’t worry, my boy. Please, he thinks. Please.
So he swallows and says in a small voice, “Mr. Graves.”
Silence. Credence gives him quick subtle glances from beneath his lashes, holding his hands in front of him, trying uselessly to stop the trembling. After another long beat, where Mr. Graves considers him with a face devoid of any expression, he closes the door behind him and drops the keys in a little glass bowl.
“I said, who are you?”
His pupils dilate like ink spilling.
“I’m – I’m.” He tightens a fist. “I’m Credence.”
He feels stupid as soon as he says it. He knows that he’s not – he knows that – that blond man, he thinks, and his blood runs cold. The one with the smile like a fern curling around a fence and the old eyes, and – and he has to release his breath abruptly when he realises he’s been holding it and it hurts more, then, a wave of pain that splashes the shores of his veins. The jut of bone of his hips, his shoulder blades, his ribs – all of it, consumed by something hot and sticky.
There’s the click of footsteps – outside somebody screams a curse – a dog barks – Mr. Graves tilts his chin up with the back of his hand. And it’s the same hand, the one that touched him so kindly, the one that pulled him closer, the one that brushed back his hair, the one that – that he thought about – that he –
“Forgive me,” he says, he gasps – the words escape out of him like burning embers, they scald his tongue, they crawl out of the dark throbbing thing that makes up his soul now, they – he – “Forgive me, I’m sorry, I’m―”
“Credence,” says Mr. Graves, as if he’s tasting the word. “The Barebone boy.”
“Y-yes,” says Credence, but a sob stretches the syllable, turns it into yessss as if he’s hissing it. Please, he thinks again, and looks away from the empty realisation he isn’t even begging to God now. What right does he have, to beg anywhere? He’s murdered his own mother. He’s hurt people. He wants and wants and wants with an endless longing that curdles the sweetest food, that rots the water, because –
“You’re shaking,” notes Mr. Graves. He doesn’t seem particularly impressed with this, just as he hadn’t seemed too worried about finding a stranger in his home. Credence says nothing for fear of losing Mr. Graves’s hand, which hasn’t moved away from his chin, although in the end it’s unnecessary – Mr. Graves shifts away on his own, taking off his coat – he looks smaller out of it, a bit underfed, which Credence knows all about – and walking towards the kitchen.
Credence thinks: I should leave.
Credence thinks: I’m a bother, he doesn’t know me, he didn’t even know my name, he doesn’t want me – here – he doesn’t want me –
He thinks, digging his nails into the meat of his palm: he hasn’t told me to leave.
So he stays. And after no other comment floats his way, he follows.
The kitchen is as Spartan as the living room, heavy wooden cabinets and an aged table and very little clutter anywhere. Credence wonders if the blond man was as neat as Mr. Graves or if he just hadn’t been living here and then immediately erases the idea from his mind, because it makes his mouth taste bitter. And he doesn’t know what to say – he wishes he had Chastity’s strange loquaciousness, which could talk down Ma from all but the worst of her rages, where she turned holy with a divine zeal. But he knows if he dares to talk sweetness won’t come out. There’s nothing kind or sweet or good in him at all – even as he stands there, useless as always, watching as Mr. Graves makes pasta with languid motions of his hands, he feels a quiet peacefulness enveloping him, devouring him from the inside out. The curve of that strong neck, the cufflinks, the ironed crease of the trousers, the shiny shoes.
It smells like him. The house, and the kitchen, and everywhere, probably. It smells like him.
Credence swallows. He lowers his eyes.
“Sit down,” says Mr. Graves. He puts a plate of steaming food on the table and pulls back a chair that looks older than Credence (and far more steady too) by hooking his ankle around it. Then he motions again with his hand, and another chair appears, and he – he sits. Graceful like a cat. Utterly unselfconscious.
Sit down. Like an order. That was an order, he thinks. His thoughts feel slow as molasses. The shaking’s slowed down – that always leaves him exhausted. His spine is a train track of scars.
Credence sits down.
“Eat,” says Mr. Graves.
Laconic. The blond man talked far more. That doesn’t matter. Credence stares at the line of his throat as he chews and swallows and eats until Mr. Graves raises his head and arches an eyebrow, as if asking well? Then he picks up a fork and eats, hunched down over his meal as he’s been taught. Other people’s kindness is an unsteady ship. You never know when the next meal will come, or who will try to fight you for it, so.
And besides. Mr. Graves cooked this.
He scrapes the plate clean. The tomato sauce is a mess around his mouth that he wipes with the back of his hand, then he licks that. Mr. Graves is studying him thoughtfully, one arm thrown over the back of a chair. Thinner, definitely. Leaner. More dangerous. More dangerous. More dangerous.
More contained. More – if Mr. Graves held him like before, then perhaps –
“What do you want?”
Credence starts.
“N – me? I – nothing. Nothing.” But even as he says it he knows he’s lying. A blush creeps up his neck and flushes his mouth and his cheekbones and his nose. He hunches over a bit more.
Mr. Graves’s other hand is resting on the table. He drums his fingers, only once. And he says again:
“What do you want?”
“I want to stay with you,” Credence blurts out, before the strange bravery that’s possessed him abandons him. “I want – please. Let me―” He begins to stand up, for some unexplainable reason – Mr. Graves stands up as well, only he grabs the dirty plates and puts them in the sink and then he walks around the table and leaves the kitchen and – Credence follows him, even though he stumbles out of pure nerves and knocks his hip against the table. It will bruise later. Will it?
Is he even human anymore - smoke and shadows and light and the blinding shaking hurting heat -
It will bruise. Surely. If he can hurt still. When nothing else, trust in pain.
If he’s rejected this time then – (the hard light inside him throbs) – then – so he can’t let that happen, no matter how much he wants to please Mr. Graves, who is distinguished and powerful and handsome in his pressed suits. Shouldn’t it be all right? Just this once?
He can’t manage to raise his voice above a whisper. “Mr. Graves, please, I―”
“No.”
“But―” Credence breathes deeply and blinks back the promise of tears. A shudder rattles his hollow bones. “But I wouldn’t – I wouldn’t be a problem, I promise, I-I’m quiet and I can―” he raises a hand to touch his closed throat and then jerks it away before finishing the movement. “I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do, Mr. Graves―”
“Child,” says Mr. Grave. His expression hasn’t changed at all, the faint lines around his eyes relaxed, his stern mouth serene. “I said no.”
And he feels the hard light that makes up his bones and his veins and his blood and his soul, now, he feels it stirring like a breeze blowing cold sand under the moon-full desert, he feels it wanting to come out, to crack him like rotten fruit and explode, because there is pain and it spills and leaks and bleeds, and it won’t stop - it won’t stop unless Mr. Graves grabs him by the scruff and forces him to meet his stare and then maybe they’ll be closer still and – Credence holds his breath as if hoping he’ll remain unnoticed from the savage teeth of his own magic… And that fear reminds him of his mother, of Ma, with those eyes bright as jewels, and the belt in her hand, saying:
I want you to pray to God, Credence. I want you to be good so that people will love you. So that I can love you.
I want you to kneel.
So
he
kneels.
He kneels: the line of his spine curving as his legs bend and his hand reaching for the ground and then his knees knocking the floor gracelessly - you are so brave and so quiet I forget you are suffering - trust in pain. In his head, the memory of Ma, who’s so much easier to love now that she’s gone, now that he can use the dead sound of her body falling as a lullaby before sleep.
God doesn’t owe you anything, she used to say. God gave us life and they are ours, but we can’t spend them unwisely. So you beg, Credence.
He begs: “Please. Mr – Mr. Graves. I-I’m begging you.” Except he feels good like this and so his voice steadies: “I’m begging you.”
You beg on your knees, with humility…
“I want to stay by your side.”
Like pulling a gold thread somebody unkind sewed through his heart. Like bleeding out the poison and crawling away clean.
Mr. Graves watches him for a long, breathless moment. He’s so quiet, even just standing there, he doesn’t fidget, he contains himself, the sun of his own planet, the kind of intensity that bends everything at its will.
“Please,” Credence whispers, bowing his head, “keep me.”
Behind Mr. Graves, the door opens. It reveals a bedroom in shadow, dark curtains opened enough to allow a sliver of moonlight that contours the shape of a bed. Credence counts his own heartbeat. He’s staring at his hands, pale and scarred and slightly ungainly like everything about him, as if he still hasn’t managed to shed the awkwardness of childhood. Mr. Graves turns around, as sedate as he does everything else – he dares to glance at the shoes, the firm lines of his calves – and he steps into the other room. Silence. Silence. Silence. His pulse drumming inside his skull.
So his heart’s real, then, he thinks. He feels so deliciously weak like this, the hard light softens again, drips through his body as gentle as honeyed milk.
“Very well, then,” says Mr. Grave, low. “Come here.”
You pray, you beg, and then you prove you’re grateful.
“Yes, Mr. Graves…”
He tries to straighten up, but: “I didn’t say you could get up.” Contemplative. Lazy. The first hint of emotion at all.
You make sacrifices, in exchange for what you ask. Be a man of God in body and soul, and he will be good. He will be kind.
“Yes, Mr. Graves.” And he crawls.
But when it’s true like that, it won’t feel like a sacrifice at all.
Fill: Credence/Real!Graves, Credence + kneeling (1/1)
tw for, uh, idolatry? and misuse of religion
/
“Who are you?”
It’s the same face. They look nothing alike.
Credence feels his stomach twisting into knots. He still hurts, everywhere and anywhere it’s possible to hurt and a few other places too. His muscles are full of shards of glass. Breathing fills his lungs with cold. Every step is an explosion of agony. His head is invaded by flashes of light and clouds of smoke and―Don’t worry, my boy. Please, he thinks. Please.
So he swallows and says in a small voice, “Mr. Graves.”
Silence. Credence gives him quick subtle glances from beneath his lashes, holding his hands in front of him, trying uselessly to stop the trembling. After another long beat, where Mr. Graves considers him with a face devoid of any expression, he closes the door behind him and drops the keys in a little glass bowl.
“I said, who are you?”
His pupils dilate like ink spilling.
“I’m – I’m.” He tightens a fist. “I’m Credence.”
He feels stupid as soon as he says it. He knows that he’s not – he knows that – that blond man, he thinks, and his blood runs cold. The one with the smile like a fern curling around a fence and the old eyes, and – and he has to release his breath abruptly when he realises he’s been holding it and it hurts more, then, a wave of pain that splashes the shores of his veins. The jut of bone of his hips, his shoulder blades, his ribs – all of it, consumed by something hot and sticky.
There’s the click of footsteps – outside somebody screams a curse – a dog barks – Mr. Graves tilts his chin up with the back of his hand. And it’s the same hand, the one that touched him so kindly, the one that pulled him closer, the one that brushed back his hair, the one that – that he thought about – that he –
“Forgive me,” he says, he gasps – the words escape out of him like burning embers, they scald his tongue, they crawl out of the dark throbbing thing that makes up his soul now, they – he – “Forgive me, I’m sorry, I’m―”
“Credence,” says Mr. Graves, as if he’s tasting the word. “The Barebone boy.”
“Y-yes,” says Credence, but a sob stretches the syllable, turns it into yessss as if he’s hissing it. Please, he thinks again, and looks away from the empty realisation he isn’t even begging to God now. What right does he have, to beg anywhere? He’s murdered his own mother. He’s hurt people. He wants and wants and wants with an endless longing that curdles the sweetest food, that rots the water, because –
“You’re shaking,” notes Mr. Graves. He doesn’t seem particularly impressed with this, just as he hadn’t seemed too worried about finding a stranger in his home. Credence says nothing for fear of losing Mr. Graves’s hand, which hasn’t moved away from his chin, although in the end it’s unnecessary – Mr. Graves shifts away on his own, taking off his coat – he looks smaller out of it, a bit underfed, which Credence knows all about – and walking towards the kitchen.
Credence thinks: I should leave.
Credence thinks: I’m a bother, he doesn’t know me, he didn’t even know my name, he doesn’t want me – here – he doesn’t want me –
He thinks, digging his nails into the meat of his palm: he hasn’t told me to leave.
So he stays. And after no other comment floats his way, he follows.
The kitchen is as Spartan as the living room, heavy wooden cabinets and an aged table and very little clutter anywhere. Credence wonders if the blond man was as neat as Mr. Graves or if he just hadn’t been living here and then immediately erases the idea from his mind, because it makes his mouth taste bitter. And he doesn’t know what to say – he wishes he had Chastity’s strange loquaciousness, which could talk down Ma from all but the worst of her rages, where she turned holy with a divine zeal. But he knows if he dares to talk sweetness won’t come out. There’s nothing kind or sweet or good in him at all – even as he stands there, useless as always, watching as Mr. Graves makes pasta with languid motions of his hands, he feels a quiet peacefulness enveloping him, devouring him from the inside out. The curve of that strong neck, the cufflinks, the ironed crease of the trousers, the shiny shoes.
It smells like him. The house, and the kitchen, and everywhere, probably. It smells like him.
Credence swallows. He lowers his eyes.
“Sit down,” says Mr. Graves. He puts a plate of steaming food on the table and pulls back a chair that looks older than Credence (and far more steady too) by hooking his ankle around it. Then he motions again with his hand, and another chair appears, and he – he sits. Graceful like a cat. Utterly unselfconscious.
Sit down. Like an order. That was an order, he thinks. His thoughts feel slow as molasses. The shaking’s slowed down – that always leaves him exhausted. His spine is a train track of scars.
Credence sits down.
“Eat,” says Mr. Graves.
Laconic. The blond man talked far more. That doesn’t matter. Credence stares at the line of his throat as he chews and swallows and eats until Mr. Graves raises his head and arches an eyebrow, as if asking well? Then he picks up a fork and eats, hunched down over his meal as he’s been taught. Other people’s kindness is an unsteady ship. You never know when the next meal will come, or who will try to fight you for it, so.
And besides. Mr. Graves cooked this.
He scrapes the plate clean. The tomato sauce is a mess around his mouth that he wipes with the back of his hand, then he licks that. Mr. Graves is studying him thoughtfully, one arm thrown over the back of a chair. Thinner, definitely. Leaner. More dangerous. More dangerous. More dangerous.
More contained. More – if Mr. Graves held him like before, then perhaps –
“What do you want?”
Credence starts.
“N – me? I – nothing. Nothing.” But even as he says it he knows he’s lying. A blush creeps up his neck and flushes his mouth and his cheekbones and his nose. He hunches over a bit more.
Mr. Graves’s other hand is resting on the table. He drums his fingers, only once. And he says again:
“What do you want?”
“I want to stay with you,” Credence blurts out, before the strange bravery that’s possessed him abandons him. “I want – please. Let me―” He begins to stand up, for some unexplainable reason – Mr. Graves stands up as well, only he grabs the dirty plates and puts them in the sink and then he walks around the table and leaves the kitchen and – Credence follows him, even though he stumbles out of pure nerves and knocks his hip against the table. It will bruise later. Will it?
Is he even human anymore - smoke and shadows and light and the blinding shaking hurting heat -
It will bruise. Surely. If he can hurt still. When nothing else, trust in pain.
If he’s rejected this time then – (the hard light inside him throbs) – then – so he can’t let that happen, no matter how much he wants to please Mr. Graves, who is distinguished and powerful and handsome in his pressed suits. Shouldn’t it be all right? Just this once?
He can’t manage to raise his voice above a whisper. “Mr. Graves, please, I―”
“No.”
“But―” Credence breathes deeply and blinks back the promise of tears. A shudder rattles his hollow bones. “But I wouldn’t – I wouldn’t be a problem, I promise, I-I’m quiet and I can―” he raises a hand to touch his closed throat and then jerks it away before finishing the movement. “I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do, Mr. Graves―”
“Child,” says Mr. Grave. His expression hasn’t changed at all, the faint lines around his eyes relaxed, his stern mouth serene. “I said no.”
And he feels the hard light that makes up his bones and his veins and his blood and his soul, now, he feels it stirring like a breeze blowing cold sand under the moon-full desert, he feels it wanting to come out, to crack him like rotten fruit and explode, because there is pain and it spills and leaks and bleeds, and it won’t stop - it won’t stop unless Mr. Graves grabs him by the scruff and forces him to meet his stare and then maybe they’ll be closer still and – Credence holds his breath as if hoping he’ll remain unnoticed from the savage teeth of his own magic… And that fear reminds him of his mother, of Ma, with those eyes bright as jewels, and the belt in her hand, saying:
I want you to pray to God, Credence. I want you to be good so that people will love you. So that I can love you.
I want you to kneel.
So
he
kneels.
He kneels: the line of his spine curving as his legs bend and his hand reaching for the ground and then his knees knocking the floor gracelessly - you are so brave and so quiet I forget you are suffering - trust in pain. In his head, the memory of Ma, who’s so much easier to love now that she’s gone, now that he can use the dead sound of her body falling as a lullaby before sleep.
God doesn’t owe you anything, she used to say. God gave us life and they are ours, but we can’t spend them unwisely. So you beg, Credence.
He begs: “Please. Mr – Mr. Graves. I-I’m begging you.” Except he feels good like this and so his voice steadies: “I’m begging you.”
You beg on your knees, with humility…
“I want to stay by your side.”
Like pulling a gold thread somebody unkind sewed through his heart. Like bleeding out the poison and crawling away clean.
Mr. Graves watches him for a long, breathless moment. He’s so quiet, even just standing there, he doesn’t fidget, he contains himself, the sun of his own planet, the kind of intensity that bends everything at its will.
“Please,” Credence whispers, bowing his head, “keep me.”
Behind Mr. Graves, the door opens. It reveals a bedroom in shadow, dark curtains opened enough to allow a sliver of moonlight that contours the shape of a bed. Credence counts his own heartbeat. He’s staring at his hands, pale and scarred and slightly ungainly like everything about him, as if he still hasn’t managed to shed the awkwardness of childhood. Mr. Graves turns around, as sedate as he does everything else – he dares to glance at the shoes, the firm lines of his calves – and he steps into the other room. Silence. Silence. Silence. His pulse drumming inside his skull.
So his heart’s real, then, he thinks. He feels so deliciously weak like this, the hard light softens again, drips through his body as gentle as honeyed milk.
“Very well, then,” says Mr. Grave, low. “Come here.”
You pray, you beg, and then you prove you’re grateful.
“Yes, Mr. Graves…”
He tries to straighten up, but: “I didn’t say you could get up.” Contemplative. Lazy. The first hint of emotion at all.
You make sacrifices, in exchange for what you ask. Be a man of God in body and soul, and he will be good. He will be kind.
“Yes, Mr. Graves.” And he crawls.
But when it’s true like that, it won’t feel like a sacrifice at all.