Chapter Text
The boy wasn’t what Robert expected.
When he had heard it was a concern about a demon of lust he expected to meet a playboy, some loudmouth youth that clearly drank and slept with women and indulged too much in pleasures of the flesh.
Not this weedy, shy thing that sat before him at the table. He was a country boy — they lived in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere — and it showed. He had that corn-fed look about him, something essential and wholesome in the starkness of his red hair and pale skin and denim shirt that made him look like a farmer’s son stepped right out of a painting. It was easy to imagine him swinging a scythe in the fields outside in midsummer, laying grass aside for hay with his sleeves rolled up. He certainly didn’t look like the type that laid with many women — if there were any for miles around. Not for the last time Robert felt a little shiver of premonition; he’d be glad that he’d taken on this case.
The first murmurs he heard about the boy were at the diocese meeting a few weeks beforehand. Countless priests had visited to exorcise the demon of lust from him and despite all of their efforts he had remained ensnared in the grasp of the devil.
Robert knew neither God nor demons existed; and so he’d asked for their address, began the long journey out to the farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, where a boy lived only with his grandmother, with nobody to see and nothing to do except turn his gaze on the endless rolling acres of farmland he worked under the watchful gaze of the woman that raised him. Nothing to look forward to but the weekly pilgrimage to town for the church. Certainly a lonely way to grow up for a boy with no other boys around to play with, so it was understandable why his hobbies were a little limited.
He’d gotten directions to the farmhouse in the town’s church from the dour-faced priest that was king of his little fiefdom of the faithful. What he’d done to piss the bishop off and get assigned to a backwater parish like this one, Robert could only wonder. Little communities like this were dotted all over the state, this one smaller than most; and that was saying something. Disquieting for any man of God to be watching his flock dwindle in favour of the fucking Lutherans, never mind the fact that he was an old man who might be at the time of his life where he began to fear that he’d hedged his bets on the wrong side of the line.
Robert, himself, couldn’t have cared less. He’d prefer something like this place, probably; the sensation of being overtaken and outnumbered made people desperate and afraid, made them cling ever-tighter to their good shepherd for reassurance that those others were the blasphemers, the ones who eyed papists with distrust and didn’t celebrate saint’s days and never a word of Latin passed their lips. It would be a smaller community but with that came benefits, the real personal bond you made with your parishioners that would form a kind of praetorian guard around you, making you impenetrable to criticism and beyond reproach.
To others, though, they wanted to eye bigger fish in the pond; a direct path from a large congregation to the bishop’s position to cardinal to maybe even one day Pope. An American Pope: a laughable idea, but it fuelled their power-hungry hopes and let the old men sleep at night.
That left him here, standing at the head of the kitchen table, looking down at the soul he’d taken it upon himself to save. Well, he could offer certain manner of salvation, anyway. A placebo.
Herman, his name was. A strong German name that went some way to explaining the volume of land he was living on and the last vestiges of an odd otherness about his features, as if the Bavarian in him hadn’t quite had time to breed out into good-ol’-All-American-farm-boy just yet. Even if Robert hadn’t known about the volume of unsuccessful exorcism attempts he’d have gathered it by the boy’s posture; he slumped in the seat with his head bowed in the same manner as a dog that was used to being beaten soundly with little reason by a capricious master. Terror, absolute and bodily terror disguised as reverence and deference.
What have they done to you, son? There’d be plenty of time to ask that question, later, when they were alone. It made things easier for him, that was true, because a boy used to violence and fury and a lash would do anything for a stroke instead of a slap. Quiet words would do wonders. Those who were used to pain would twist themselves into knots for the absence of it and the approximation of tenderness.
Robert was right to think so, because Herman was afraid. So terribly afraid that he was shaking invisibly. If he opened his mouth nothing would come out but a stutter: he’d long since lost his capabilities to speak with confidence. The last exorcist had been brutal.
Even seeing the long, dark cassock of the latest priest to throw his hat in the ring now in front of him made his palms sweat and his brain twitch into casting up his memories, unbidden from the deep swirling recess of his mind.
His head was forced under with the rest of his body. Water, ice cold water that made him gasp involuntarily and he felt the water rush into his mouth, pulled down into his lungs with the force of the gasp and they burned. What they said about burns was that it was like what Hell felt like only forever and all over and the burning sensation only further ignited his terror: he thrashed under the water and blurry waves of waterlogged Latin wobbled through the trough to him, the red-faced priest yelling when Herman’s nails made contact with his hand and raked down…
The water had been the worst, because it had once been his happy place. To go to the lake and swim where, under water, the world would go soft and faraway, noise became dulled and floaty and he could swim through the water strong and sleek and able. He was no longer himself — awkward and long and gawky— in the water.
That was still true; just that, now, the water made him feel not like himself but a demon, something afflicted. A spiritual leper.
“Thank you for having me.” This new priest was younger than the rest had been, with a boy’s voice and small stature. At least as far as Herman could tell, he had a small stature, because he hadn’t the confidence to look at him yet. Not properly, anyway. Not in his face. “My methods are quite — well, unusual, and secret. I’ll need to stay here, in your home, if that’s possible. After all, this demon is persistent and resisted many previous attempts, so it’ll need constant supervision.”
Herman’s grandmother’s voice trembled with emotion in response. “Oh Father, I would — we would be honoured, frankly, to have you stay in our humble home. Are you sure?”
None of them had stayed before. This boded poorly.
They were alone at long last. Robert had gotten rid of the pestering old woman by telling her it was imperative for him to get started as quickly as possible.
Herman’s bedroom was also unexpected; not in the way of how stark it was. The floorboards were bare and unvarnished, curtains handmade and a shoddy bed covered with a patchwork quilt, obviously sewn by his grandmother’s hand. The walls were the shocking part - almost every inch was covered by some sort of iconography. There was a huge wooden crucifix above the head of the bed, mounted on the wall.
Dotted around the walls were smaller crucifixes, paintings and reproductions of the image of Jesus, his hand outstretched in beatific kindness. Mary was there too, in her infinite peace, and statues in her likeness were on the bedside table and on the old rickety bureau beside the door. The whole effect was finished off by candles, dozens of them. Chapel candles in red and white, covering the bureau and the floor and every available surface. They were dirt-poor enough that Herman’s clothes were a little too short, their food on the sparse side of simple. This bedroom, though, would put many small churches to shame. How did they afford this collection?
The boy stood silent, his head bowed.
“I know that you’ve had some experiences with this before.” Robert started evenly, standing stock-still in place like his subject was a frightened deer, ready to bolt at any minute. “You’re afraid of me.”
“I’m not afraid, Father.” It was the first thing that Herman had said to him and an automatic response. Good manners from a good boy. Brought up well. “They did what they could. It was my fault — weakness that meant it didn’t work. That’s all.”
Robert walked toward him, soft and light enough to barely make a creak on the exposed boards. Arranged his features into something soft and gentle that Herman would like and feel safe with, curl himself around like an oyster with a pearl. He had such potential, all soft and vulnerable-looking, and all Robert really wanted to do was sink his teeth in to that soft tenderness and feel the gush of all that naivety drain out into him.
His hand went to Herman’s shoulder and he watched the youth flinch at the contact. They’d beaten him, Robert had assumed, with the way he instinctively jerked away. The uneasy way he held his shoulder made Robert think of a lash, hot red stripes beading with blood on his back.
“You don’t have to be afraid. I won’t hurt you.” The boy’s eyes met his briefly. Progress, indeed, because he softened and relaxed, letting his shoulders fall from their defensive posture.
“I’m ready to try anything that will fix me, Father.” Anything is an unwise thing to say to me, thought Robert, attempting to dampen his own excitement.
At least his defilement would be gentle. There’d be no scars to hold awkwardly.
Herman’s breaths were long and juddering like those of someone desperately staving off terror. Or ecstasy, perhaps.
Whichever it was, Robert was a little too far gone to really care, fingers pumping around the head of his cock; even on his knees Herman was tall and his face was just about at the right angle for what was planned. And such a face it was — still with some of the softness of boyhood in his cheeks, not quite old enough to have shaken off the puppy fat and have his features morph themselves into those of a man, stuck in the Peter Pan stage of not being quite grown into himself. The thought of that made Robert’s chest ache with a little thrill: the deliciously ripe innocence of the farm-boy with an angel’s face who was now on his knees, ready to receive blessing in whatever depraved way Robert dreamed up was combined with his naïvely blind trust and faith in a man of God.
The heel of Robert’s hand came to rest on Herman’s forehead.
“Do you want forgiveness, son?” The priest’s voice was gravelly and dark. “Ask God for forgiveness. Your god is a —“ A hitch in his speech for a grunt, and the candles around them flared.
The dozens of candles evidently brought from the church dotted Herman’s room all over, some carved with crosses and others in little jars decorated with Jesus or the saints, their scores of eyes burning into him. The play of the flickering flames cast across his exorcist’s face and every time he spoke, for a second, the shadows on it from the little fires made him look otherworldly and devilish. A good shepherd pictured in negative. The other side of the coin. “Your god is a loving god.”
Robert’s eyes flickered to the pictures of Jesus plastering the walls — he hadn’t seen so many in one place before, even in a chapel. The whole effect was like a tiny shrine, a panopticon of the son of God where His painted eyes followed your every move.
Right now, His serene eyes were watching Robert’s fingers jerking himself off over the face of the faithful. It felt a little like desecrating the church itself, with all the holy accoutrements, and that thought sent another little flare of fire into Robert’s belly. He’d take over from that parish priest who had no idea what he had in the palm of his hand; in the deep night, when nobody would be awake to hear them he’d spread the boy’s thighs on the altar. At the back of the town’s chapel, there was a beautifully painted statue of Mary, and under her serene smile he’d deflower his disciple — fill his belly still soft from the last dregs of summery, beautiful youth (not yet gone) with seed in front of the Virgin of Virgins, in her name.
“In nomine Patris,” Robert said, fingers spread across Herman’s hairline. “Et filii,” The blessing he’d said a thousand times as he made the sign of the cross during the Mass, warped now.
He had no belief in the power of prayer other than the fact it made Herman docile and obedient, something that would forever make him bend to whatever his priest asked. A little sob of emotion came from the boy below his cock and though it shouldn’t have, it made his cock twitch in his grip— was it fear that made him utter that sound that might have been please god?
Fuck, the combination of that desperate sound and the slight sheen of tears in his grey eyes made Robert want to thread his fingers into red hair, tell him the truth. God isn’t listening. Not the one you want. I am your god, boy.
He’s never denied the sin of gluttony, this aching greed that makes him want to keep all this devotion for himself. Makes him want to go past all this bullshit of pushing smaller boundaries first and straight into thrusting into the back of Herman’s throat; let the lad choke on the rough abuse of his mouth and cry prettily while Robert commands him to show me your devotion to your Lord.
“Et Spiritus Sancti.” It’s finished and so is he, almost. He knew that he would have to be fast. “You’re sanctified. I absolve you of your sins. Are you ready to receive your sacrament, my son?”
Herman nods, and he’s shaking visibly. Nolite timere comes to mind, like the angels declared to the shepherds of the hills of Bethlehem. Do not be afraid. “Then open your mouth, tongue— mm — tongue out.” It was getting harder to speak with the holy facade when Robert was so close, but he had to be careful, maintain his godly illusion.
“Corpus Domini Nostri Iesu Christi custodiat —“ Robert buried a moan rising in his throat with the rapid pumping of his fist, the terribly sensitive head of his cock almost making contact with Herman’s wet pink tongue shining obscenely in the candle-glow. “—Animam tuam in vitam aeternam.” If such a lord existed, seeing the corruption of the holiest blessing of all, of the Eucharist, He would make a bolt of lightning strike Robert down right now, burn him to a crisp inside his cassock in front of all the painted Jesuses.
No bolt came, and with a gasp chased right away by a soft moan of pleasure Robert’s dick pulsed. In four spurts, his thick white seed coated Herman’s outstretched tongue, a salty and viscous Eucharist. His hands were clasped together as in prayer, his eyes on Robert as the exorcist took in the scene, the pretty picture of the corrupted sacrament. He gave a little nod.
Herman swallowed, only a twitch of the eyebrows betraying his qualms about the taste. Not quite holy bread. “Amen.” He said, and Robert let the hand that blessed him stroke the crown of his head, smoothing auburn hair back as Herman made the sign of the cross.
“Bless me father, for I have sinned.” Herman was naked from the waist down, his hands together in prayer. He couldn’t help but clasp them together because of the rosary twined around his wrists, knotted to keep them pressed palm-to-palm and, by extension, his hands permanently praying. The cross on the beads dangled between his wrists and swung a little with every movement above the pale expanse of his exposed chest, his shirt unbuttoned. “It’s been just — only a day since my last confession.”
Robert nodded, hand already touching Herman’s exposed dick that had already begun to get hard. A Pavlovian reaction to confession. “And what was your sin?”
The flat of his palm skimmed the shaft, felt it harden more under his gentle touch. This was what worship felt like, sick and lovely worship. Watching the long line of Herman’s body come to life under his touch and glow with shame. Shame sweeter than nectar he could dip his tongue in and drink from.
Herman’s voice wavered, and he swallowed the reluctance back. “I — I committed the sin of masturbation, Father. Last night.” He sounded so miserable about it that for a moment Robert felt pity for him; pity fought with the twisted desire in his heart that rose like some evil thing’s tentacle and lost. “I see. The same sin you’ve been struggling with for some time. And why were you tempted, son?”
“I was — I was trying to sleep, I swear to God, I was trying.” Herman was fully erect now, and the squeeze Robert gave his shaft made him shudder all over his body, arms jerking as if to push his priest’s hands away. Fruitlessly, because the beads around his wrists were tight enough to stop the movement. He was so embarrassed that it was hard to look at the man above him, the purple stole around his shoulders the only thing that broke the uninterrupted line of tight black clothes. Robert no longer wore the cassock — too unwieldy, he’d taken it off before Herman had even opened his mouth — and the black shirt he now wore had short sleeves that showed his taut forearms. So tight it followed the curve of his chest and left little to the imagination.
“Don’t you dare lie.” The priest’s voice was low and dangerous, another sharp squeeze of Herman’s cock making him gasp. “God knows when you lie. I know when you lie because God tells me.”
This kid was so sheltered and sequestered he was bound to believe just about anything he was told with enough authority. “He wants to forgive you, Herman. He works through me to offer you the way to Heaven. But you have to tell the truth.”
He didn’t think Herman’s expression could become any more stricken with horror but it did; his face reddened, schoolboyish blush turning his cheeks fluorescent pink.
“I was thinking about, or, I remembered your — when you blessed me.” His teeth worried his lower lip with anxiety, grey eyes flashing with alarm when Robert cupped his fist to give a long, slow stroke up the shaft of his cock.
“Please, I’m so, I’m sorry, I’m sorry for doing it again. I won’t do it any more, I promise I won’t do it any more. Just - stop, please, I — I won’t do it.” His eyes were watering now, watering with real contrition.
A good priest would have stopped. A good priest would have stopped long before this, never set foot in this farmhouse and not entertained his own sick desires.
Robert was not a good priest.
“Don’t you understand?” Robert asked gravely. “The demon wants you to make me stop because he knows this is how we destroy him. You’re not going to let the demon win, are you, Herman?”
Herman wanted to open his mouth to protest again. Say this feels wrong and you shouldn’t do this you’re not allowed to and don’t make me feel good because I’ll remember it all over again. But those were thoughts from the demon, right? How would he ever tell a priest who had special training in Rome that he was wrong, that Herman knew better? He submitted to the rhythmically hypnotic stroking and let his body react, let his tongue grow looser.
“I thought about the taste of when you — um, it on my tongue…” Herman trailed off. “And it made me want to defile — do bad things and masturbate and I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Father, I really, really am!”
Robert shook his head, affecting an expression of sadness. “It’s worse than I had believed. But you are truly penitent. Are you prepared to hear your penance?” If there was a hell, he was currently booking himself a one-way express ticket there, with the way the boy’s face became radiant with gratitude. “For your penance, you will recite two Hail Marys.”
“I can do that,” Herman nodded. “Now? With, um, you?”
“I’ll start for you,” Robert’s fingers gripped tightly around the shaft of Herman’s dick and jerked upwards, quickening the pace of his fist over the now-glistening pink head of the younger man’s cock, making him cry out with a strangled mewl. “No, no, you have to say it properly, now. Ave Maria…”
He was brutally fast with it, as if he was trying to bring Herman to orgasm at record speed, and the boy’s hips twitched and bucked under the rapid motion of his fist. “Gratia plena, d-dominus — ah, Father!”
The deep intake of breath whistled through his teeth in a long hiss. “Father, stop, I’m going to —!”
The offending hand sprung away from his sensitive cock and the priest looked at him, dark eyes strange and deep in the candlelight.
“No.” A tilt of his head, freckles blurring together into dark smudges on his cheeks. “I think you’ve had quite enough of that, don’t you? Come on. Pray with me. Dominus tecum, benedicta tu…”
“In mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tu, Jesus —“ Robert’s wicked fingers stroked Herman’s length again, slow and steady; as his lips stumbled their way through the prayer the priest seemed to loom large in his vision, the flames in the dark almost bending toward him like crops did toward the sun, and his brown eyes and the blue eyes of Jesus seemed to blur and blend until the exorcist before him grew into proto-God with his holy and torturous touch.
Every drop of blood in Herman’s body felt like it throbbed in his groin with the need of it. He’d never felt like this before— he’d been aroused, yes, but never toyed with his own pleasure in this manner and it made him feel crazed; for the first time truly possessed in the way he’d heard stories about, because when Robert took his hand away yet again he started to cry, then, tears of desperation and need and shame.
He’d finished his first Hail Mary.
“Please, no more,” He sobbed, his body writhing on the patchwork quilt, the shadow of the crucifix above his bed casting a dark cross onto his belly upside-down. The tears rolling down his cheeks caught the light and glittered like diamonds; the pretty way he cried brought to mind for Robert statues he’d seen in Rome of the Mother of God weeping. “Please, Father.”
“Two, I said. If you fail, I have to give you more.” Now again with the touch of his hand; Herman was getting used to it, the sudden evil crest of pleasure sparking in his pelvis and making his body go tight, all his muscles pushing him up and toward the fist that toyed with his sensitive dick until it felt like the only thing he could think of. He had to pray.
“Ave Maria,” he started again, wobbly but trying so hard. At the bottom of it all he really was that devout and willing; that essential goodness was something Robert could almost feel, like an appendix. He wanted to grip it in his fingers and twist. “Gratia plena, dominus tecum benedicta tu in mulierbus.”
At the snap of Robert’s wrist and the stroke of his thumb over the sensitive frenulum, Herman’s voice went higher. Strained thin and reedy, like a young branch bent until he was just about to break. “Father, no, I’m going to — if you keep touching me I’ll finish, I can’t help it!”
Robert leaned in closer, heard the wood of the rosary beads clack with the change in position and the echo of his own voice deepen to a commanding tone — the same intonation he had on the pulpit. “No. Finish your prayer, Herman. Or we have to keep going until you do.”
“Et benedictus fructus ventris tu, Jesus. Santa Maria…” Herman’s entire body coiled like a spring with the effort of holding back his orgasm, curling in on himself with his gaze fixed on Robert, intense and worshipful.
“Mater Dei.” Between every word Herman’s lips lay parted, his white teeth exposed and Robert had the urge to force his fingers past them, grip his jaw from the inside. He was so perfectly angelic and gorgeous that it felt necessary to destroy him. Break him to little pieces so Robert could lick the holiness off the fragments of his sweet nature. “O-Ora pro nobis peccatoribus— hah, I can’t — nunc et in — et in hora mortis nostrae — I’m done, I’m done!”
“You’ve forgotten something very important,” Robert watched the boy’s eyes widen in panic, reeling through the prayer in his mind and probing for what he’d missed. He saw the relief in real-time when Herman realised, barely stuttering out the forgotten amen before his eyes rolled back in his head and he sank back into the bed, back arching in the intensity of his pleasure.
His dick twitched in the priest’s grip as he ejaculated, spurting long ropes of cum over his own chest. The younger man was sobbing with either relief or shame; Robert couldn’t tease them apart to figure it out. What once were wholesome, country good looks appeared ruined in the otherworldly candlelit glow, his red hair plastered to his forehead and chest desecrated with his own seed. Robert’s fingers traced the sign of the cross into his chest, dragging the sticky semen across it to leave a satiny trail in the shape of something holy.
He brought the fingertips coated in Herman’s cum to his lips, sucked it off them and traced where it had been with his tongue.
“I absolve you of your sins,” he said, expecting no response but the sound of quiet breathing rolling itself out into what sounded like sleep.