Disclaimer: I know I don't own Queen of Swords. I don't own Queen of Swords. Okay, so I tried really really really hard. And that counts for something.
Title: Godless
Email: mireyamuse at gmail dot com
Rating: T/PG-13/any other equivalents
Summary: Sensation vs. perception vs. life really sucks.
Notes: I have no idea where this will go or if it will go anywhere. I also have no idea what this says, so if you don't either, feel free to tell me. Actually, feel free to tell me whatever you think about it.
Oh, yeah. This really isn't meant to offend anyone. If it does, I'm really sorry.
This is for Sammie, for being willing to talk about religion and this elusive concept of God anytime, even at two in the morning before an anatomy test. And, you know, for saving my life.
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"Do you believe in God?"
"What?"
"Do you believe in God?"
"…Yes."
"You don't go to church."
"No, I don't."
"Gonna tell me why?"
"Gonna ask?"
"Jerk. Why don't you go to church?"
"Because God and I had a grand falling out a decade ago, and it's rude to barge into the house of a person you're feuding with."
"You're sacrilegious."
"You're… something horrendous."
"You're also stupid."
"Not stupid. Just truant."
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He smells like smoke and horses on good days. On bad days, there's a healthy dose of tequila tossed in. On those occasions when it's impossible to tell what kind of day it is, he smells like salt and sweat mingled with perfume belonging to some woman who isn't her.
The first day she'd ever looked at him, really looked and saw him as a human being, he'd smelled like expensive cologne and looked like hell with a bruised eye, sliced cheek and a limp. It was the first time in a long while that he'd tried to act like a gentleman, standing next to the bench she sat on until he almost toppled over. She'd called him an idiot and caught a whiff of that cologne.
More often than not, they talk about food. The way smoked meat fills the air and sits a good kind of heavy in their bellies. How orange oil stays on her fingers for hours after peeling it and how cruel she is for not bringing him one. How good fresh biscuits and strong Colombian coffee are first thing in the morning.
She inhales her whole life and doesn't need him to tell her that none of it makes sense.
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"You ever had peaches and cream?"
"Beg your pardon?"
"Have you ever had peaches and cream?"
"No."
"Just 'cause you never wanted it, or 'cause you've never had the opportunity?"
"Uh… no opportunity, I guess."
"Yeah, see?"
"Not really."
"Shut up and let me finish, woman. I can't find a damn person on the planet who's actually had peaches and cream, or even seen it. So where the hell did this 'peaches and cream complexion' come from?"
"Rich blonde women who want to sound delicate."
"Shut your mouth."
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She tastes like hickory on basic days. When she's had a date, she tastes like chocolate and oranges. When she's thought about death too much for the day or visited with God, she tastes bitter like cheap wine. He thinks. The last time he'd tasted her, she tasted like poison. Funny how that doesn't matter at all.
When he'd first realized she was more than cleavage, reales and water rights, he'd tasted copper and stale saliva and cursed soft and long at the bleeding tongue added to all the other broken bones. At chivalry. At pretty girls with pretty eyes and soft hands that ended up tasting like his copper.
They don't do much else besides eat. And eat. She's introduced him to the miracles of the best cuts of beef and fruit besides wild apples. He's the one who smokes the meat with hickory chips inside a hollow log, saves the orange peels to squeeze the oil out to clean their hands and secretly stashes them to heat and scent his hellhole apartment. She brings imported coffee sometimes and he'll sneak truly horrible metallic biscuits out and they'll be cold by the time they get to her, but she doesn't complain.
Funny how his tongue in all its glorious stupidity is the only thing pulling him through this life.
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"Who's stayed?"
"Wanna start with a hello, first?"
"No."
"Then what the hell are you talking about?"
"People. They all leave. Or you leave them. Or they die or sometimes they just don't get born. Who's stayed?"
"Been talking to the padre, huh?"
"No."
"New ring?"
"Ancient."
"Romany?"
"Ruby."
"No one."
"How long?"
"Nine—no, ten. Ten years."
"A decade with no one."
"Sure."
"It hurt?"
"You tell me, baby."
"Only a year."
"Feels like four hundred."
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They always feel a communal shiver when it starts to rain, but it never gets bad enough to be scary. That's a lie. It did once and she curled against his tequila sweat and salt tears and watched him burn the month's tobacco. Everyone had seen her leave the next morning—smelled her leave from five miles away—but hadn't cared because there was suddenly no doctor.
She'd been sick for days, throwing up and crying and throwing up and crying. It was their fault—her fault, really. He could patch things up with an "ex" but couldn't be expected to with his rival. It was her responsibility to look after her own grievers and she'd let him wither away and die like the fruit trees that used to flourish in the corners of her orchard.
He keeps her away from apples because apples are guilty fruit. Sinful and negligent. No one eats apples inside her villa because their stench makes her vomit.
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"Why do you believe in God?"
"Who says I do?"
"You go to church."
"Yes."
"Fine. Do you believe in God?"
"Yes."
"Took you long enough."
"You took long—"
"Why?"
"Because I need to know that she's rewarded."
"What if—"
"Don't."
"Baby—"
"I'm not strong enough. Don't."
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She won't step into a carriage. He'll never have to. He doesn't like how she's the one who takes the brunt for reacting like she cared.
Once she had to and that night had drowned—no, no drowning—the night had surrendered to cheap wine and hiccupping tears and a steady stream of curses that he'd taught her directed at all the haut monde wretches who'd looked at her funny as she lost the ability to breathe.
It's those haut monde wretches who sneer at him like he's never made them scream and it's their children that he can't look at without feeling his insides swallow him whole. She's the only one who gets it because she feels the same reason buzzing in the back of her brain.
He flavors his water with gin and blocks out all thoughts of pregnant women, rain-chilled skin and black-brown curls. He's grateful she has straight hair, grateful that it's always dry when she's there. Grateful that she's not blonde, either, and that he missed that moment of death.
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"Caesar at the Rubicon."
"Caesar?"
"Caesar. At the Rubicon."
"Why."
"Because that's when insurrection first had a massive payoff. That's when mutiny and a coup d'etat actually worked. Before that, when did breaking the rules work? Never. God always had a hand in screwing up the lives of the disobedient."
"What about Jesus?"
"Jesus came after Caesar. And Jesus was doing God's work."
"Wasn't Caesar?"
"Caesar was doing Caesar's work. Jesus even said that, not in so many words."
"So God punished all those rebels before Caesar, but decided that Julius was just too handsome a devil and let him go?"
"I don't know what God thinks."
"Your argument sucks."
"So does yours."
"I don't have an argument."
"Hence the suckage by default."
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They are at a party and pretending to be fine when dessert—apples in a vanilla sauce—is brought out by small children and everyone oohs and aahs and they both melt into the shadows and escape to the garden.
She can smell the rain coming in off the ocean and they're both about to break and he doesn't smell right tonight. He doesn't smell like smoke or horses or tequila or any kind of perfume or cologne. He smells of just salt and just sweat and she falls straight into his world of taste.
There's still smoke in the back corners of his mouth, but mostly he tastes like hickory and clean water. Half of her embraces the familiar and the comforting; half of her pulls back, repulsed by the death on his lips.
But the rain she thought was far off crashes into them and breaks them apart and as they stand there stupidly and get drenched, she figures out the difference between clean water and rain water and realizes she got her first taste of everything not like death.
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"It wasn't your fault."
"It wasn't yours, either."
"Yeah, see, I got that eight months ago. You—"
"Four months ago. I'll get it sometime in the next two weeks."
"You're closing up."
"I'm tired."
"You're lying."
"Want to stop accusing me of things?"
"Apples aren't dirty."
"Shut up."
"They're not. They're good. Maybe not every day, but they're—"
"Shut the hell up."
"Just saying."
"Well, don't."
"Did you love him?"
"She did."
"And the baby?"
"Loved them both."
"And you."
"And me."
"I don't believe in God."
"I hate Him."
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He runs two fingers down each of her vertebrae and breathes in her shiver and that's new, too, this switch to her world of scent. She smells like rose hips and peppermint and her fingertips smell like oranges. Back in his world, she tastes like hickory and clean water. He doesn't want gin.
There's hints of dark, bitter chocolate in her kiss and salt on her bare skin which is not peaches and cream. The crease of her elbows holds sweat—tasted, inhaled—as does the line between her abs and the fold between her torso and leg. She smells overwhelmingly of woman.
He is not the first; he doesn't know who is and has the horrible, sinking feeling tied to war and hate that she doesn't, either. He knows better than to bring it up and runs three fingers up the bumps of her spine, feels her shiver and the harsh ck after an f hissed into his skin. He obliges.
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"You're beautiful."
"So are you. And men aren't beautiful. We're handsome and dashing."
"Shut up. We'd have beautiful children."
"We're having children?"
"Well, aren't we obligated to provide our horrid world with as much beauty as possible? Shouldn't we illuminate the world with such precious artistry—"
"You sound like me."
"That's the point. What do you say?"
"Baby. Baby. I'm not a good person."
"I know."
"I've done bad things."
"I know."
"To everyone."
"I know."
"To you."
"I know."
"I didn't know."
"I know."
"I wouldn't have—"
"I know."
"Do you?"
"Yes."
"Why are you asking me these things?"
"I can't last a decade."
"I like this town."
"Me too."
"I have a secret."
"Me too."
"I'm okay with God."
"Me too."
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