pray for us sinners

by aphrodite_mine

Summary:

It is during the summer that Cecilia doesn't die that Bonnie and Mary first kiss.

Notes:

• For BatchSan.

If the tags aren't enough warning, this may be seriously offensive to actively practicing Catholics. Also, please forgive me if I've gotten any religious details wrong.

It is during the summer that Cecilia doesn't die that Bonnie and Mary first kiss. Perhaps the suicide attempt made by the youngest Lisbon is the catalyst. Perhaps it is no more cause and effect than a letter opening and a flower coming into bloom.

Therese is the first to find out. Despite there being no witnesses to the event, she quickly deduces the night after that something is different between her sisters. There is an electric charge to the air that has nothing to do with the thunderstorm brewing. As rain splashes against their window, Therese turns first to Mary, and then Bonnie, touching the place where their blond hair mingles on Bonnie's pillow. "What's happened?" Therese asks, and perhaps it is the gentle quality of her voice, or that the Lisbon sisters have never been good at secrets, but Mary flushes and Bonnie answers, "We've sinned."

*

Jesus and Mary and Joseph watch their langor, eyes hooded, heads bent.

Bonnie is taking maths in her required summer session, and Mary tags along, having been permitted to try Embroidery for Beginners. Therese, the oldest, walks in the summer heat to Science Day Camp where she is a counselor for the first time. The position is unpaid, of course, her time a tythe.

Lux and Cecilia alone remain occupants of the second story of the Lisbon house, their mother and father walking in silent circles through kitchen and library, running the vacuum, and summoning the girls to sandwich lunch. They play The Carpenters and lie, bodies akimbo, on Cecilia's bed. Lux stares at the ceiling, counting cracks with her toes. Cecilia lies face down, blood rushing to her head as she reaches to scribble in her journal that faces her from the floor. They listen to Carole King and murmur along while brushing one another's hair, strokes blending with the music, slowly tugging towards that mid-morning sleep haze.

The hot breeze tugs lazily at pages and strands of hair.

"What are you writing?" Lux asks, stretching to switch records again. They keep the volume quiet enough not to bleed into their mother's ears.

"A poem," Cecilia answers, twisting on the bed, her nightgown tangling between her legs. "About you."

Lux smiles, baring her teeth. "I hope its a nice one."

Cecilia blinks. "Of course." Her words are almost drowned out by the record, KISS shouting in the heat-thick air between them. Lux reads lips well, however, and skims her fingers across Cecilia's shoulders. "Read it to me?"

"I will. When I've finished."

*

It runs through the Lisbon sisters like blood, or like poison. Each of them knowing the implicit wrongness of what they've stumbled upon, knowing that no rosary will erase the feeling of lips on lips or fingertips on bare skin. Bonnie crosses herself when Mary sneaks beneath the covers and presses her mouth to Bonnie's most sacred place.

Therese hears the gasps and chews her fingernails to ragged stubs. She tugs too far; sucks the blood against her tongue.

Lux swears to God she is hearing what she thinks she's hearing, and smiles into the dark. The thinks about snaking her fingers between her thighs, but it wouldn't be right. It would be wrong to steal this moment in a way that is somehow more wrong than the moment itself.

Wrists held close to her chest, Cecilia pretends to sleep. She wonders if her body will explode with want. She wonders if they'd piece her back together, then.

*

They sit through mass with the still and silence of mannequins. Rising and kneeling on command, the five girls sit between their parents like a descending scale. During homily, Lux holds Cecilia's hand, thumb moving lazily over the bandages at her wrist.

The Lisbon's are perpetually aware of the eyes that follow them, darting, and the whispers that stand out like shouts in the pre-Communion silence. They take body and blood, and the servers wipe the lip of the vase, even knowing nothing of where mouths have been.

They feel forgiven and doomed at once, touching lightly the stations of the cross.

*

Secrets do not hide silent in the walls of the Lisbon house. They are strewn everywhere, the detritus of teenage girls. Cecilia's journal lies perpetually open, snippets of poetry stuck with loops of tape to the walls. Lux doodles on scraps of paper, Bonnie in the margins of her math homework. Mary embroiders religious platitudes surrounded by wreaths of roses and ribbons and sunlight. Their world is singular, venn circles in union with one another. Walls hold them in, but walls become like paper, whispering in the breeze. Therese sits on the roof and counts stars, memorizing their locations in relation to the freckles across her thighs.

They gather around the television, lights flickering onto each face. Bodies drape indiscriminately. Mr. Lisbon whispers about lift and flight. The television speaks of tribes in Africa. Mrs. Lisbon hums in disapproval. The girls breathe and sigh and it becomes as much music as the kind that Lux constantly coaxes from the record player.

The Lisbon girls compose symphonies and poems in the rustles of sheets.

*

Another day, and Cecilia and Lux lie in the grass behind the house. The tiny stems tickle the backs of knees, but Cecilia in a dress and Lux in her bikini refuse to move, not even when the sun starts to singe their noses and shoulders.

"All light bends and refracts," Cecilia is reading, her eyes carefully trained on her journal. "All light pours through and around my sister. Her name, too, is light. She beams from corners and from my bed, but I am afraid." She pauses, sucks in a breath, and continues before she loses heart. Her wrists itch beneath the bandages. They have for weeks. "I am afraid that her light cannot reach me, that is is not for me. Lux, my star, Lux, Lux, L--"

A kiss. A kiss sticky with sweat, uncomfortably pinned to the shaking earth. A kiss that prompts a prickling heat in Cecilia's mouth, chest, loins.

Lux pulls away to lie her cheek against Cecilia's chest. The sounds of summer must disappear in favor of a thumping heartbeat. "You are an oak tree," she says, her own voice swimming in her head, "and I am a star. You're the reason I shine, I think. You always have been."

*

After mass, Mrs. Lisbon sets a bland-yet-hearty meal down before her family. They cross their chests in unison, grasping hands beneath the table. Cecilia watches the shadows of the evening sun playing with the tree branches and drops her head to Lux's shoulder.

"Bless us oh Lord," whispers Mrs. Lisbon, and He does.