Name: Chris
Title: original sin
Fandom: Wizards of Waverly Place
Genre: Angst
Rating: M for inappropriateness. You've been warned.
Summary: And no matter how much he does, how much he gives up, it will never be enough. [Justin centric.]
……
steady my breathing, silently screaming
i have to have you now
……
He tells himself, every morning while watching the sun break the sky from his bed, that today will be different.
Rising from his the single sized cot in his sparsely furnished room, Justin washes at the basin in the corner and dresses silently, all in black, and sinks down to his knees on the cold stone floor.
"Oh, my Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary," he begins, the words as familiar to him as the very beat inside his chest, "I offer you my prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day for all the intentions of your Sacred Heart, in union with the holy Sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world. I wish to gain all the indulgences attached to the prayers I shall say and the good works I shall perform this day. Amen."
He pauses, the well known clogging of guilt in his throat cutting off the affirmation at the end, taking in deep gulps of air through his nose and expelling out of his mouth. In, out. In. Out.
His throat clear, he continues.
"Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee and I detest all my sins, because of Thy just punishments but most of all because I have offended Thee, my God, Who art all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more and avoid the near occasions of sin. Amen."
Crossing himself, Justin rises and leaves his room, ready to greet the day ahead and the work to be done.
……
"when your rose fell to the ground, i understood at last, the sadness you always wear like a holy mantle."
……
Central Mexico awakens early, the daily chores calling out with their need to be done; cows to be milked, eggs to be gathered, children to rouse from their beds, crops to be tended to.
Justin smiles as he makes his way from the church through the throng of rambunctious children waiting for him outside the schoolhouse door. One little girl, Aurelia, offers him a wide smile of missing baby teeth and the innocent joy only a six year old can posses.
"Padre de la buena mañana."
"Buena días." The lock squeaks in protest as he turns the ancient rusted key and he pushes against the heavy wooden door open, standing still beside the frame as the children rush past him into their seats. It doesn't matter how many times he sees it, the excitement they show at starting the school day never fails to bring a smile to his face.
He takes his place at the front of the room, clasping his hands in front of him as he initiates what's become the first step of their daily routine; asking how everyone's evening was after they left him the day before. Perched on the edge of his century old desk, he listens to stories of making tamales, guitar lessons, pigs loose from their pens, picking wildflowers down by the river.
Justin loves the way children's minds work. Loves the way they see the world, so clear and untainted by the stain of sin and deceit, how pure their hearts are behind each little face gazing up at him.
More than anything, Justin wishes he could have a little of that innocence for himself.
The day's lessons start with the annexation of Texas, Poncho Villa, and the Alamo. He knows more than most elementary school teachers on the subject, having studying it from the US side when he was young and then researching the opposition in preparation for this lesson. His mouth is bone dry by the time he's finished, and the morning is gone, giving way to the afternoon and lunchtime. Dismissing the kids, he pulls out the small container of fruit salad and the grilled chicken breast that Senora Sanchez, the older woman who cooks at the church, had set out for him that morning.
He picks up the copy of War and Peace that was sitting on his the small bookshelf the first day he arrived. He's been working his way through it during lunch for over two years now. His Spanish is good, better than good most days, but he's still not the best in the world at reading it. It's easier with the kids; they're still learning and Senora Sanchez helps out sometimes when he's grading essays, but a Spanish translation of a Russian novel is more difficult. So he sits, every day, under a dying apple tree at the edge of the church property where he can keep an eye on the kids as they play and eat their lunches, and muddles through the story as best he can.
"Padre!"
His eyes shoot up, the voice eager and curious, raising in pitch the closer it gets. "Padre!"
Glancing up, he sees two little boys who get overly excited by everything standing at the gate that encloses the courtyard between the church and schoolhouse from the rest of the town, pointing off into the distance. He returns his bookmark to the page and walks over to stand behind them. "¿Qué es?"
"Un ángel."
Following their fingers with his eyes, Justin looks up to see a woman walking towards them, clearly the angel in question.
She's young, no more than twenty five at the very most, wearing torn up jeans and a loose red tee shirt, jet black hair pulled back from her face but trailing loose down her back, the breeze blowing stray curls about a face largely obstructed by enormous sunglasses.
Not an angel. More like sin personified.
Alex.
……
"our god has given us freewill. and with that freewill comes the burden of choice. it is time, far past time that you took up that burden, because until you do, you cannot go on."
……
She sits at the back of his classroom, silent, observing, her sunglasses pushed up to sit in front of her thick woven headband. Her students, mostly the boys, keep looking back at her, giggling and even whistling occasionally. Finally, fed up at the lack of focus, he dismisses class early and waits behind his desk until the room is empty, save for the two of them.
When the last little girl is gone, Alex approaches him slowly, eyes on his, on his hands, his chest, over his shoulder. Anywhere but the black and white collar that lies across his throat.
"You look good, Justin. A little skinny, but good."
Fingers in jitters, Justin shoves his hands in his pockets as he comes around his desk to stand a few feet away from her. "Thanks. You look good, too."
Alex raises one shoulder, a lazy shrug, and the left edge of her lips tilt upward. "I can't complain I guess. Things are alright."
"So alright that you had to come all the way down here with no notice?" He can't stop it, the bitterness seeps out on his words, all but dripping on the dusty wooden floor.
Narrowing her eyes, she takes a step forward, crossing her arms over her chest, allowing him to see the signs of change on her face, so different than the last time he saw her.
But that was three and a half years and another lifetime ago.
"Anyone ever tell you that you're awfully bitter for a priest?" she quips, a sneer screwing the lines of her pretty face. Pulling her sunglasses off her head, she shoves them into her bag and he sees a flash of orange glinting out in the dim light that the school windows afforded.
He reaches out and snaps her bag shut, his hands closing over hers, on pure instinct. Even though there's no one around to see it, Justin has always been a 'better safe than sorry' kind of guy and this is still a very conservative, religious, and yes superstitious, area of the world despite the years and all the so called progress mankind has made.
"You brought your wand?!" he hisses, whirling around just to make absolutely sure that there's nobody around who could see them.
She gives him that look, one of the ones that haunts his dreams, as if she can't entirely believe he's serious in what's coming out of his mouth. "I'm a wizard, Justin. I always have my wand. You remember what that's like."
A warmth, somewhat sweaty, draws his attention and his gaze ticks down. He's still holding Alex's hands in his. Someone seeing her wand would be bad, someone seeing that…
He doesn't want to think about it.
Justin drops his hands-flings them away almost. He turns away and recites under his breath, "Oh my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of Hell. Lead all souls to Heaven especially those in most need of Thy mercy. Oh my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of Hell…"
Alex knocks at his shoulder, pulling him out of his prayer. He glares at her darkly, crossing himself just for good measure.
She grimaces. "Should I be offended by that?"
"You really want me to answer that?"
Alex rolls her eyes and turns around, the heels of her shoes clacking across the floorboards to the doorway. She turns back to him, tilts her head. "You coming or what?"
……
"that the best... is bought only at the cost of great pain."
……
Senora Sanchez doesn't even bother to disguise the look of curiosity on her face when Alex walks into the rectory kitchen. Women aren't a common site, especially young, beautiful, unfamiliar women like Alex.
He introduces her as his sister, getting a skeptical look and heavy silence as she goes back to the stew she's making. Justin tells her she can leave early, that he needs to talk over some family matter with his sister, making sure to keep a look of impassive innocence on his face while she gathers up her things and Alex walks slowly around the kitchen, taking in all the details.
Maybe, if he's lucky, only half the town will hear about this tonight instead of all of it.
Alex avoids his eyes as he finishes up the stew and sets her a plate and a glass of water at the parson's table that takes up the majority of the kitchen and sits down opposite her. He bows his head in a quick prayer, not even bothering to give Alex a look in annoyance that she's not following suit. As a matter of fact, she keeps her head completely straight and level, almost defiant of the tradition Justin's submitting to.
They eat in silence, the clinking of metal against ceramic and chewing the only sounds in the spacious room.
After dinner Justin washes the dishes and Alex tells him in a stilted flow of words second hand news of their parents and Max, about her job and the life she's made for herself in LA. She peppers him with questions about his students and his parish, does he like Mexico?
"I do." He reclaims his seat, a bottle of wine in one hand and two glasses in the other. He pours a generous amount of rich red chardonnay, a gift from the Archbishop on his last visit through town, into each glass and holds his up. She clinks the rim of her glass against his before downing half the contents in one gulp. "It's different here, simpler," he tells her. "At times it's almost like going back a few decades."
"That why you don't come home anymore?"
There's hurt in her voice, bitterness. Accusation.
He shakes his head. "I can't risk it, Alex. It's better to just stay away." Emptying his own glass, he refills it and it's gone within seconds.
Alex stands, glaring down at her brother. "Don't you think sacrificing your family and everything you worked for your entire life to come to the middle of nowhere and do two years of penance is enough?"
"No, I don't." Justin walks into the small living room that lays between the kitchen and his bedroom and pulls open the closet door. He takes a pillow and a blanket out and makes up a bed on his small couch for himself. "You take the bed." He points the way. "It's in there."
She came only with the purse her wand is in, no suitcase. Magical travel, obviously. Spontaneous, of course. He knows his sister and nothing short of nefarious is ever thought out beyond the length of a few seconds.
"Do you need something to sleep in?"
Tossing her purse into the bedroom with a thud, she walks over to where he stands and takes his face in her hands. "No," she whispers, and kisses him.
……
"and there's nothing i can do to change it. do you know how terrifying it is, that power you have over me?"
……
When Justin first announces that he's leaving Columbia to join the priesthood, not a sound could be heard in the Russo house for a good five minutes.
His mother had reacted first, blinking rapidly and a few tears leaked out. She hugged her oldest child, smoothing his hair away from his eyes. "If that's what you feel you need to do, honey, we're behind you."
No one ever mentioned Alex rising to her feet, a hard look on her face, to glare at her brother before walking away from the table and out the front door.
……
"i have tried so hard to get her out of my heart."
"you think I don't know that?"
……
Justin's bed is made for one. He is a man of the cloth after all, and he took a vow.
But that doesn't stop him from wishing for even an extra few inches of mattress space as he and Alex tumble onto it, a tangled mess of entwined limbs and half fastened clothes.
A violent storm stirs up from nowhere, as if Heaven and Earth are combining to make their displeasure of their actions known. The sounds of their kisses filled the air and beat back the howling winds, thrumming on their skin where restless fingers touched and wandered, a low growl wrenched out of his throat as she arches into him, an assault launched on his crumbling willpower, spreading ripples of liquid heat that melt any and all semblance of reason he possesses with the sudden onslaught she causes on his body.
Atop his body, Alex lifts her shirt away, baring expanses of smooth tan skin to his greedy eyes. She works on the buttons of his shirt, from the bottom up, fingers not resting until she reaches his collar. His palm finds her face, pushing aside a curtain of dark hair from her face. Taking in a shaky breath, she unlatches the final button and pulls the white collar from beneath the black and tosses it to the floor.
She slides her hands across his shoulders and down over his chest, skimming his stomach and making his ab muscles twitch, until she comes into contact with black wool and the metal teeth of his zipper. Once she's divested him of his clothes, she slows down, head bowed and looking almost shy. Heart skittering in that reckless way that only Alex ignites in him, Justin pushes himself up on his elbows and raises her face to his, taking her lips in a kiss with all the force of two colliding canon balls. It's more than a little rough, and both of their lips sustain heavy injuries, but it's liberating, and a perfect climax to her own little love story.
And its not over yet.
Moving his hands around her back, he unlatches the black cotton of her bra and spreads his hot palms across her hotter skin, face buried into the crook of her neck. His heart shudders. His soul shudders. Everything inside him is twisting and convulsing and bursting, his senses soaring far above any level of consciousness he's ever known. He's going haywire with the feel and taste of her, swept away by the realization that this was Alex; her scent, her taste, the feel of her body familiar and welcome.
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
It comes to him from nowhere. No, not nowhere. It undoubtedly crawls up from that place in his heart that drove him to take on the mantle of a moral leader, that place where his guilt lies, molten, singing him from the inside out.
But sin doesn't feel so relevant at the moment. Not in this place where the only thing his soul longs for is alive and pulsing underneath his fingertips. It's wrong, and he will regret the weakness he's justifying, but for now, words like eternity have less to do with his immortal soul and more to do with Alex reawakening in him everything that makes him feel alive.
And then…
Their eyes lock, with him moving inside of her and her nails embedding a half dozen half moons into the skin of his neck, a thousand and ones empty metaphors of love and heaven, of sin and agony, that mean nothing outside of this moment.
Softly, so quiet that its more a breath than sound, she murmurs, "I love you," and it shouldn't be possible; for his heart to be so full, yet as her words and sighs tremble in the air, it expands to take in more of her until she comes apart around him and now the tears finally fall.
……
"and since that day, i have somehow known, though i never saw you again, that my last thought this side of the grave would be of you."
……
After that, after the planets have realigned and he remembers what it is to be real again, Alex drapes herself over him; hand on his chest, legs tangled between his.
"I miss you."
Pain reaches up and grips him tightly, a vice around his heart. Letting his fingers dance their way up his spine, he pulls her closer with an arm about her waist. "I know."
That was the wrong thing to say clearly. She sits up and stares down at him, impossibly beautiful in the moonlight. When tonight is over, he will build up the same walls between them again, letting his guilt and his shame and his chosen vocation to restructure the ripped up foundation he hides behind.
"I'm not as strong as you are, Alex," he tells her, twining her small fingers in his. "I can't put myself out there and just say to hell with it like you. I need this."
"The church?"
Another structure, more walls to hide behind, with its tradition and veneration of purity, morals and chastity, stand still on immovable grounds.
"Forgiveness."
She nods, lays back down, tucking her head under his chin until morning, when sleep overtakes her and he leaves her there, moving to the couch.
He doesn't need any added gossip.
Sleep never comes to him. Senora Sanchez arrives shortly before seven, asking him what his sister would like for breakfast.
"She already left," he says. He doesn't even need to look into his room, the scene of the crime so to speak, to know this. Justin feels it in his bones.
Justin sinks to his knees in front of the couch, clasps his hands, and starts his day.
"Oh, my Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer you my prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day…"
……
i want you so bad i'll go back on the things i believe
……
fin.
……
Quotes from The Thornbirds, movie not book. Lyrics from Edge of Desire by John Mayer, acoustic version because oh my God it is so freaking sexy.
"Oh my Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary..."- Morning Offering
"Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee..." - Act of Contrition
"Oh my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of Hell…"- The Fatima Prayer
"If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." 1 John 1:8
"Padre de la buena mañana."-"Good morning, Father."
"¿Qué es?" - "What is it?"
"Un ángel." - "An angel."
I apologize if I got any of the prayers wrong. I'm not a Catholic, just a fastidious researcher and this is what I found online.
Also, don't speak Spanish. Babbel Fish provided all the translations.