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Eddie knocks on the rectory door at 8:30pm on a school night. Chris is at a sleepover, the letter board outside the church isn’t advertising anything he can envision Father Brian having to be up in the morning for … not that he would know much about the daily schedule of a Priest beyond standing up at his pulpit and sitting in the dim light of a confessional.
Are they like monks? Up before the sun every day and down at the same time every night? When he was a kid in El Paso, Eddie never really envisioned their Priests sleeping. Or eating or taking a shit or spilling coffee down their front or anything else mundanely human. He knew, of course (of course), that they were just people. Theoretically. Of course they were. What else would they be?
Vessels of God, his childhood brain would supply like that meant anything. Guys named Brian who swooped in out of nowhere to set his head spinning, his adult brain responded.
He has no idea why he’s here at 8:30pm on a school night. Doesn’t know why he stopped by the grocery store and picked up a whole variety of the single bottles they sell for people who want to try different beers before they commit to a six pack. Do Priests drink outside of communion? Brian’s celibate, so he’s probably sober, right?
He remembers Father Madrid clinking his beer against his father’s at a church picnic when he was young, but maybe Priests are a little looser in El Paso, or Father Brian is a little tighter than other Priests. A quick search on the web isn’t helpful at all. Allowed but not encouraged.
Allowed but not encouraged. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Hold yourself to a higher standard. God is watching. Somos una familia temerosa de Dios, Edmundo.
At the last second, he grabbed some zero-proof options.
His hand is sweaty around the handle of the brown paper bag on his way from the truck to the rectory door. He can feel Father’s Brian’s card pressing into his skin through his jeans pocket. Maybe he should have called. He definitely should have called. He’s pretty sure Father Brian gave him the card to call or email or - if he was gonna show up - show up during normal church hours. He’s pretty sure Father Brian didn’t give him the card expecting Eddie to show up unannounced and lonely and thinking a little too long about the way Father Brian looked at him when they talked at the juice bar.
He tried to talk to Buck about it. But Buck’s a ghost of himself right now. He won’t make it worse by trying to explain the twisted knot of guilt and hope and joy and indulgence and fear and light that are fighting each other inside him. Not when he suspects Father Brian already knows it far too well. Probably even better than Bobby does.
The thing about Bobby is that he has no shortage of experience with differing, with punishing himself, with Catholicism, certainly. But all his issues are facing in other directions. Bobby punished himself with alcohol and saved himself with God. His shame came from his addiction and the mistakes he made while in the throes of it. He saved himself with God.
Eddie’s shame came from … from the ways in which he’s failed God, failed his family, failed Chris. He punishes himself with isolation and deprivation and internal repetition of all the ways his church told him he was dipped in sin from birth.
So, he can’t talk to Buck or Bobby about this. He can’t talk to Chim or Hen or … it’s Father Brian or shove it down, burry it, try his best to keep it at a simmer and not a boil like he’s done for the last three decades. The thing is, it’s getting harder to manage. It wants to boil over so badly and part of Eddie wants to let it just to see what happens. He’s failed as a son, a father, a firefighter, a friend … why not fail as a man too?
That’s so fucked and he knows it’s fucked but he also can’t think in different terms when shame was his first language.
He’s been standing at the rectory door for more silent and trembling minutes that he cares to count when he feels his arm finally raise his fist to knock on the door. His first series of knocks are too quiet. Too cowardly to be noticed unless Father Brian was in the habit of waiting with his ear pressed to the door waiting for widowed firefighters having a sexuality crisis to come knocking.
He tries again, firmer. The muscles in his arm are actually engaged this time. Come to think of it, Father Brian might not hear that either. He glances around to search for a doorbell or a buzzer. Nothing. Weird. Sure, it’s a church and has probably been standing for a hundred years minimum, but it’s 2024. They should have installed something by now.
When were doorbells invented? He’d watched a couple episodes of that show Downton Abbey with Marisol once and that house had a bell thing. So the church could at least have that. Should he knock again? Keep knocking until Father Brian answered in case he wandered by at the exact right moment to hear Eddie have a meltdown on the other side?
He decided to knock one more time, a long aeries of low thuds with the side of his fist for maximum reverb potential or something.
The seconds plod by. Should he just go and call lFather Brian in the morning to schedule something like a normal, considerate person would. Oddly, the impulse makes him think about Buck. When Buck has made a plan he’s relentless in carrying it out, sometimes to the annoyance of others, but he always has a good heart behind it and things work out alright in the end. What would Buck do in this situation? What would he-
Eddie nearly jumps out of his skin when the door swings inward to reveal Father Brian. He’s in … sweatpants? Eddie never really pictured Priests wearing sweatpants. Even at the family barbecues back in Texas, the Priests wore nice, darker washed jeans at their absolute most casual. Usually slacks. They probably didn’t wear that at home, Eddie scolded himself.
“Eddie …?” Father Brian is still standing there in the same stance that he settled in once the door was open, looking at Eddie with equal parts confusion and quiet concern. How long has Eddie been standing there silent and staring. Way too long. “Can I help you with anything?”
“Oh, uh-“ Eddie lifts the bag sheepishly to give himself an extra second to find something to say. “I just came by to- You said if I wanted to talk. I mean … I should have called.” He can’t meet Father Brian’s eyes. The closest he can manage is over his left shoulder, into the dim, amber light of the rectory.
“That’s okay. I’m not busy. We can talk.” Father Brian steps to the side and gestures. “Come on in. Sorry that I took so long coming to the door. I couldn’t decide if I was hearing things.”
Eddie thinks of the echoes of Afghanistan he hears some nights when he lays down to sleep and smirks. “I know the feeling.”
When he steps through the rectory and Father Brian closes the door behind him, he takes it all in. It’s all natural wood and stone. He’s standing in what looks to be a combination sitting room and dining room, with bookshelves built into one wall and a hint of a small kitchen peaking out around a stone wall spanning half the floor space on the far side. There are two doors that might lead to a bedroom, a bathroom, and a path to the main church building. It’s small, but obviously well cared for and lived in. The couch and armchair gathered around a low wood coffee table don’t match, like they were probably donated to the church. They look comfortable.
Eddie realizes his heart is racing even though so far he’s done nothing but stand still, walk a few steps and stand still again. Maybe he needs to sink down into that chair.
“Take your shoes off if you don’t mind. These floors are a pain to keep clean.” Father Brian is once again standing and patiently waiting for Eddie to unfreeze himself. “What’s in the bag?”
“Yeah, sure.” Eddie sets the bag down and crouches to start unlacing his boots. This close, the floors look soft and worn. They must feel cozy under what Eddie now realizes are Father Brian’s bare feet. He doesn’t know why his eyes get caught or his cheeks heat up, but he goes back to staring resolutely at his own shoes as quickly as he can. He clears his throat. “Just a few beers if you’d like to share while we talk.” He tucks his socks neatly into his boots before he can talk himself out of it. “I, uh, brought some non-alcoholic stuff too. Wasn’t sure of your stance on drinking.”
“It’s not something I indulge in often, but I have no qualms about enjoying a beer with a friend.” Father Brian leans and swipes the bag from the floor, heading for the kitchen. “I’ll pour us some glasses. Make yourself at home.”
“… Sure.” Eddie absolutely did not notice that Father Brian smells faintly of pine when he leaned close. Nope. That would be a crazy thing to notice about a celibate priest. He didn’t come here to fuck Father Brian. He came here to talk. Just to talk.
He does in fact choose the armchair he’s been eyeing to sit in. It’s just as comfortable as it looks, and after a full forty-eight, he can’t help the pleased groan that slips out of him. Fuck, hopefully Brian was too far away to hear that. Who’s suppressed now? Apparently Eddie isn’t nearly suppressed enough. Maybe the beer was a bad idea.
Before Eddie can spiral any further about his questionable decisions, Father Brian returns with two actual beer glasses full up with some brew or another Eddie bought. He’s not knowledgeable or picky enough about beer to care which.
“I went with the Hazy IPA. Broadly appealing, so I’ve heard.” Father Brian sets Eddie’s down on a coaster in front of Eddie and skirts by him to sit down on the couch. He looks soft in his dark grey sweats and plain sage green t-shirt. Without the collar, Eddie doesn’t feel the same instinctual cloud of authority hovering around him like a force field. His shoulders are certainly looser since the last time they’d talked.
“So you’ve heard? I thought you said you drink?” Eddie takes a sip of the cool beer. It slides down his throat and cools some of the jitters.
Father Brian laughs openly and easily. “I’m more of a wine or bourbon guy these days. Back when I did drink more beer, I never bothered to look too deep. Whatever was cheapest is what I got.”
Eddie’s secretly pleased to discover they have something so small in common as a disregard for what different beers meant. “Damn. Sorry that I bought the wrong drinks.”
Father Brian dismisses Eddie’s half-hearted regret with a wave of his hand. “You chose a good beer, at least. And gave us options. That was very considerate of you.”
“No worries, Father. My mom raised me as well as she could, given how much of a little devil I was.” That was one of his father’s favorite nicknames for Eddie when he wasn’t behaving well enough.
Demonio malo
“Brian, please, and I think she did very well. Children are not meant to be faultless.” He had that look in his eyes again, like he could see right through to the core of Eddie and everything he was desperately trying to hide.
Eddie thinks about Chris and how even during their worst periods, he’d never called Chris names. He’d never demean his son. “Brian. Feels strange. Growing up Catholic, we’d never dream of addressing a priest without their title no matter where we were or how they were dressed.” He scans Brian up and down again. “Not unless we wanted to get beat.”
Brian’s eyes tightened for a millisecond before they smoothed over again. “In my church and in my home we moved beyond the cruelty of corporal punishment a long time ago. I may be a priest, but I’m also a man and a child of God, same as you.”
“Oh, c’mon.” Eddie chuckles and takes a fortifying swig. There’s sweat on the back of his neck. “You can’t tell me there isn’t a nun smacking a kid’s knuckles with a ruler in a Catholic school somewhere. The Catholic Church is still plenty into corporal punishment.”
“Not in my church. Not while I’m in charge of it, and not after, if I do my job correctly.” Brian’s staring him down as if to bore the importance of what he’s saying into Eddie’s thick skull.
“Well, that’s nice, but the church I grew up in is just as real as yours.” Eddie sighs and leans back into the cushion. “I never raised Chris in the church, but it’d be nice to have one a little less …” The word is on the tip of Eddie’s tongue, but it feels too heavy and too vulnerable to say out loud, “ … intense, if he ever chooses it.”
“Do you still believe in God, Eddie?”
The question cuts through him so quick and sharp he almost gasps out loud and almost chokes on his beer. After a couple seconds of struggle that Brian is definitely too perceptive to not notice, Eddie finally manages to swallow and warily glance over. “The truth?”
Brian shrugs one shoulder. There’s a scattering of freckles low on his neck. “Whatever you feel comfortable sharing with me.”
To any rational person, the answer to that opening posed by an almost complete stranger - a guy he’s met once and briefly and who already knew too much just by looking at him - would be discomfort with telling him anything. Maybe it’s because they’re sitting in a church, technically, and Eddie still feels the weight of God’s authority like a shoe on his neck, or maybe it’s because he’s already said more to Brian than he’s said to Buck this explicitly - but Eddie wants to talk.
“I believe in God, because I can feel his disappointment. I feel it almost every second of the day. What I don’t do is …” Eddie swallows and he feels a deep well of irritation open up in his chest because he can feel the sting of tears in his eyes. “I don’t love God.”
The silence sat between them for long seconds and Eddie was too afraid to look up at Brian and find out if he was pissed now too, so he took another long gulp of beer. His glass was almost empty from all his nervous sipping.
Finally, “Why do you feel God is disappointed in you?”
Eddie throws his hands up and if his glass was any fuller, he would have sloshed it all over Brian’s nice living room. “The list keeps growing. I’ve failed as a son, as a soldier, as a father, as a friend … definitely as a child of God. And that’s not even getting into …” Eddie swallows, takes a shuddering breath. He’s never said this out loud. Never come close.
“Getting into …?” Brian’s face is still open and patient. He’s relaxed in his seat and Eddie envies him.
“HowIfeelaboutmen.” It all rushes out before he can stop himself. The dam would never break any other way.
He expects to see a twinkle of condescension in Brian’s eye, a knowing superiority. From the moment they first met, Eddie felt that Brian somehow knew this thing cowering inside him. Wouldn’t he be smug to discover he was right all along? But when Eddie opens his eyes - when did they clench so tightly shut? When he opens his eyes, Brian’s eyes haven’t changed.
He takes a measured sip of his barely diminished glass of beer. It’s such a stark contrast to Eddie’s nearly empty one that he burns with shame all over again. “How you feel about men?”
“Don’t act stupid!” Eddie snaps and bolts out of his chair to pace the floor. “I’m attracted to men and everything I was ever taught about God and family and being a man says that that shit doesn’t fly. You know that.”
Brian leans forward to set his glass down and hold placating hands up to Eddie, palms out. “I probably have some idea of what you were taught, yes. I’m sorry I played coy. I thought it might benefit you to say it. Really say it.”
“What are you a therapist?” Eddie says therapist like a curse. The army made him see one after he pulled his unit out of the chopper. Just the ghost of the memories makes his palms itch to break something,
“Social worker. Priest. I try to be a resource to those in pain when I can. I’m not qualified to be a therapist, no.” Somehow it’s worse that Brian takes his question at face value instead of as the jab he meant it to be.
It takes some of the wind out of Eddie’s sails and that pisses him off a little. He wants to be mad. It’s easier to be angry and flippant. It’s familiar in the same way Chris’s smile is. It’s always been there for him. “Yeah, well it didn’t fucking help to say it.”
“Okay.” Brian tucks himself up tighter onto the couch like he’s gathering the forces of his compassion and training. Eddie is abruptly reminded that he’s standing in another man’s house - a man he met mere days ago- yelling about all his issues that have nothing to do with Brian and everything to do with the steaming pile of bullshit in his own brain.“Is there anything I can do for you that would help?”
Eddie’s shoulders slump and all his breath leaves him at once. His hands settle on his own hips.
Don’t stand like a girl, mi hijo.
His hands drop and clench into fists at his sides. Unclench. Clench. He shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m here.”
“I meant it when I told you I was here to talk if you needed it.” Brian smiles gently even in the face of Eddie’s shitty attitude. “Do you need another reason? Besides talking?”
“I’m not great at having conversations without some kinda goal. Some kinda-” he makes a weird, forward-driving motion with the blade of his hand, “thing to get at.” He finishes weakly.
“Peace. Peace is the goal.” Brian gestured to Eddie’s abandoned chair. “I’d like you to leave at least a little more at peace than when you arrived on my doorstep.”
Eddie reluctantly collapses back down and swipes his glass to drain it. He immediately feels stupid and gets back up. “I’m gonna grab another. That’s a tall order you’ve put in.”
“I have time.”