Work Text:
Foxes go to ground, but humans know better. Lawmen always know where to look- the scene of the crime, last known address, hometown. So Ben Solo went south, way south, away from the stink of paper mills and iron foundries, hitched a train, traveling town by town. He blacked his hair and changed his name, hoping to be someone new. Not a rich boy given command just for who his momma was but a hard working nobody.
Stepping off the train the first night through the Georgia border, he felt himself drowning in stifling southern heat, too-long hair sweat-slicked to his forehead and his throat parched. The station was near-empty, gas lamps lining a path down main street to the shining centerpiece of town, a whitewash church two stories tall and gleaming against the star-struck sky. Fire blazed within, and the sweet sounds of chorus filtered out.
The door creaked as he pushed it open, but no one took notice. Lily-white girls in faded frocks looked to the schoolmarm who led them in their lines.
sin had left a crimson stain, he washed it white as snow
Ben, no, Kylo, he had to think of himself as Kylo, cased the pews. No coats, no bags, but a tray of fresh baked bread and honey-sweet peaches in the back. He couldn't resist. He poured a paper cup of cooling black coffee and snatched a piece of fruit, intoxicated by the smell.
"You're not from around here," came a soft voice from beside him. Milk-pale skin rose out of a preacher's collar, eyes like Spanish moss, lips softer than the peach in his hand and he was transfixed.
"New in town. Father." Even the word felt sinful with the way he met those eyes, and it was just like they saw through to his soul.
"Welcome," he said, touching his shoulder, and all of a sudden Ben felt at home.
He had a strong back, so he took field work at first. It was honest, and by night he was so exhausted there wasn't more to think of than his aching body. It was mostly black men he worked alongside, former slaves now freed to little change, and he didn't think much of it. He tried to soften his sharp accent, round vowels and smooth contractions, but it didn't do much good.
What he looked forward to was service. Most of the hands went to service in the fields, but no one thought much if he walked into town in the best clothes he'd brought with him, sat in the back pew and watched the fire and brimstone rain down from young Father Hux. His face flushed redder'n his hair, the preacher raged with a fury that wrenched tears and cries of adulation from his congregants, railing against sloth, greed, and worst of all, against lust.
It cut to the core that Kylo, fully Kylo now, came to watch, so he could take himself in hand later and repeat the worst of the wrath.
The Fourth came around, a holiday he'd loved as a child. His parents, veterans both, had schooled him to take the utmost pride in their victory, in his heritage. The fireworks had set something off in him, something primal that made him want to take arms and rush headfirst into incoming death.
Things were different in Georgia, still sore from the indignity of loss all those years ago, but still they shot fireworks. That much he was thankful for. The whole town gathered 'round the docks to watch a boat in the harbor fire the payload, and he dangled his bare feet in the cool water, eyes on the sky.
Then he wasn't alone. It was the preacher, sitting beside him, easing his shoes off and rolling his black pants up around his knees. Kylo's gasp was eaten up by the fireworks, thank God, but the slice of ankle, of humanity, was enough to bring all his private indulgences to the fore. Brendol's eyes met his, both bursting with firework reflections, and a single finger brushed the back of his hand.
The heat between them wasn't just July.
On the second floor of the church, up by the bell rope, he pushed at that damned clerical shirt and sucked dark rings into that white peach skin, his own dark now by contrast, torched by sunlight. Brendol hardly left the church before sundown, and it kept every part of his body nearly sacred.
High, desperate whines escaped his lips as he threaded fingers through Kylo's long hair, tugging him up towards his perfect little nipples, cock traitorously hard. "I see you, when you watch me," he admitted, voice breaking as Kylo bore down on him. "I've never-"
"I have. Makes me wish you were Catholic, Father, dark little room where I could tell you all my sins, make you listen." Not all his sins, true, plenty would put the brakes on all this pleasure.
"No," he pleaded, leaning in to catch Kylo's hungry mouth with his own, letting his lips bruise. "I don't want to think about you, anywhere else. Just here, with me."
Kylo groaned hungrily against his honey lips, shoving at Brendol's trousers, bringing them off in one pull and reaching in to hold his ass tight, forcing their hips together. He teased a finger over his entrance, and Brendol bucked, eyes wide and stream clear.
"God forgive me," he pleaded, his own hands fighting Kylo's britches to get his cock, moaning in relief as he wrapped a hand around him. He leaned into Kylo's shoulder and repeated the prayer, "God forgive me,” clutching his heat like a lifeline.
Kylo wasn't God, though, so he brought his fingers up to suck, spit-slicking them and teasing them in, slow against how impossibly tight the preacher was. Older than him and so untouched, of course he came apart with every twist of his fingers, biting back a scream of adulation as Kylo's fingers hit home. He was panting, hips rolling up with those fingers, hand seeking for purchase on the oakwood floor, on Kylo’s sweat-damp back.
"Please," he begged, kicking a foot free so he could wrap an alabaster leg around Kylo, cock aching between them. "Take me."
He didn't need to be asked a second time, and bit his shoulder through the shirt, trying to tear into his skin as he pushed his cock into the tight heat of Father Hux's ass.
Brendol shuddered, groaning in pain yet clutched at his shoulders, leg forcing him to stay, to keep going as if the pain was the punishment he deserved for desiring this tall, strong stranger from parts unknown. He rode him until his body relented, until he let Kylo's cock drive home, to slick its way with precome until it felt natural and vital as breathing. Every moan was a prayer to whatever God would listen now that he'd forsaken his own, an echo of the adulation his congregation screamed each Sunday.
In the distance, the last of the fireworks exploded in the sky, and Kylo watched them in reflection, blue and gold painting Brendol's skin with impossible color. He looked down to the furiously red cock, beautifully bruised stomach and last piece of his proper uniform, and shoved the last of his rank off, pinning his arms above his head in a tangle of black linen.
"Lucifer," Brendol breathed, leaning back in surrender, hips arched high for Kylo's taking, an offering he took full advantage of, every thrust to the hilt. "The most - beautiful - "
Thick ropes of come painted Brendol's chest, eyes shut in reverence, and then Kylo was coming, too, face buried in his shoulder and grunting his release with every agonizing thrust, each wrenching pleasure and bringing him to sin.
Long after Brendol left, Kylo sat in the empty church, the floor still warm from their congress. He still smelled of him, milled soap and candle smoke, sweet sweat and musky come. Brendol would be marked from him, black with bruises and sore, and he'd smell like Kylo if he hadn't already washed it all away. He hoped he hadn't, not yet, that he'd hold onto their tryst a little longer.
The next morning's sermon was more furious than ever.
It didn't stop Father Hux from admitting him the next night at his small home, from taking his cock in his mouth until Kylo could come no more. Or later the next week, letting Kylo pin him on all fours and ease his passage with his tongue before he begged to be taken. As long as Kylo kept his skin clear above his collar, he let him indulge every perversion, shaking with shame at each novelty until he came to crave it.
"Let's go West," Kylo said into his shoulder, weeks later as he held his lover on rough linen sheets, candle burning low. "California. Run away."
"Still running?" Brendol asked. "I know you're hiding here. I don't want to know what you did."
"I should have moved on from the train line. Gotten myself really safe somewhere."
"But you stayed." Unsaid was, you stayed for me.
"If you don't come with me, I won't leave."
"I can't. There's nowhere else for me. This congregation needs me. I have to keep them from straying - as I have." Brendol tugged the thin blanket up over his shoulder, covering his love-bruised flesh, and Kylo let him pull away.
One night he arrived to seek his lover, and the small room was empty.
Through the window of the church he saw a pair of lawmen, blue uniforms starched against the late summer, and he crept round the side, pressing against the shingles to listen.
"I'll post the images, Officers, of course," Father Hux said, crisp as first frost. "I wish you the very best in tracking this killer of yours."
"Thank you, Father. We'll ask around, be out of your hair in a day or so."
As they left, he saw his lover drop the copies on top of the piano, sinking down at the bench to rest his head in his hands.
Kylo climbed in the open window and stood, suddenly unsure.
"Thank you for not telling me what you did," Brendol said, as much to the sketch of Ben Solo on the piano top. "All those cadets." His eyes were empty now, no love there.
"I had to," he said, but the words fell lame from his lips. How could he explain the darkness that had gripped his heart, the rage he'd felt at his fellow men, how he'd hated them. How they'd taunted him for his parentage, his awkward body, his earnest heart. How he'd desired their flesh despite his hatred. "All I wanted was to leave. They tried-“
"Leave. Go West."
"Come with me." Need blazed in him.
"No."
Kylo stalked over to his lover, shoving him away from the piano to force eye contact.
Traitorous red rimmed his waterline, and it was worse than fury.
"Or will you kill me, too?"
That night he was on a train, alone, back North to the Trans-Continental. The wind was bitter on his skin as he took a smoke out back, the red embers burning low to his fingers. He didn't look like the sketch no more, with his tan skin and long black hair, worker's callouses and hollow eyes, so he could risk the New York station for long enough to pass to Chicago.
Shiny copper hair caught his eye in the station light, but when the man turned it's just a boy, slim and frail and not his preacher. It made him hollow and aching, made him think about turning himself in, taking his execution. Maybe he should have done that straight off. Not ruined a man's life with his lust.
He got to Chicago and he knew he couldn't go any further alone.
The weather'd turned by the time the train pulled back in. There was a bone chill to the air and raiin hung from leaves clinging to branches. Their heady summer was over.
There were no girls in the church this time, no chorus, no lights. He hesitated at the threshold, but the spirit pushed him on. Door creaked open to silence, darkness, and a single sharp peal of the bell.
He was up the stairs before he could think and there, chair kicked out from his feet, Brendol hung from the bell pull, noose tight round his throat, eyes flashed recognition and regret. Kylo was on him in a second, gripped at the waist to keep the pressure off while he fished for the knife in his pocket and it was never fast enough that he'd got him down on the floor, flat on his back like their first time and the rope bruised like lovebites, face flushed crimson. Brendol sputtered and he couldn't get purchase, he was going to cut his neck but he had to - and then the knife was under the rope and he sliced with such force he clipped his own forehead --
- "Brendol, Brendol," he begged as his lover sobbed for breath.
“Kylo,” he panted, voice thin, eyes closed. “You came back.”
"Call me Ben," he said, fingers soothing over the purple-black snap in the pale skin, clerical collar torn open from the force of the noose.
"Ben," he managed, before he blacked out.
Ben worried his fingers over the fading bruises on Brendol's neck as his lover dozed on the train, each beat of the wheels luring him deeper into sleep. No more holy clothes for Brendol, and no more lies for himself - no more hiding. They'd take their chances in California.