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For a brief moment of time, the three weeks after Bishop Langstrom gifted him with the second chance, and the moment he realized why it was the punishment it was, Jud felt the happiest he had ever remembered feeling in his life. He was given the chance to be an assistant pastor, to enter a community and fill it with Christ in any way he saw fit, a privilege he was proud to shoulder.
Then he met Monsignor Wicks, and he watched all his disillusions pop around him in a fine mist.
He was unsure why the other man kept bringing up his masturbation to him, eyes flickering over him the whole time, looking for a reaction. Jud did feel like he reacted every time, (Stupid, he’d chide himself). The first time he thought he flinched, so unused to the conversation. He couldn’t recall the last time someone spoke to him of sex, and definitely couldn’t recall being spoken to so brazenly while wearing his collar.
This became a weekly conversation between the two. A strange, stilted ritual where Jud stared down the Monsignor, trying not to fidget as the other droned on about the ways he had touched himself that week. Where it happened, how it happened, why it happened. The details were lurid, but the telling was dry, factual, emotionless. It always ended with a rote list of prayers for absolution, then Jud fled the scene as fast as socially acceptable.
But one day, seven weeks or so into his time there, there was a shift.
“Forgive me Father, for I have sinned," began the Monsignor as he always did. "It has been a week since my last confession. The other day I went into town to get my car serviced, and while I was waiting for my appointment, a young man came up to me and told me he was a fan. He had seen Cy’s videos of me on Youtube, and he just had to come and tell me how much he resonated with the things I was saying and the way I was saying it, it lit something in him. He wanted to preach the word just like I had.”
Jud did not like the sound of that, as he did not like anything that gave Wicks more power than he already had. He silently reminded himself to pray for that young man, that he found peace in the world and didn’t turn to divisiveness like Wicks.
“And as he was talking to me, and doting on me, and preening in front of me like a bird before it’s mate, I found myself growing aroused.”
Oh God. Jud looked up from picking at his hangnails.
“He was looking up at me with these huge brown eyes, innocent and pure, practically begging for me to guide him, mold him, improve him on his mission to spread the word of the Church. And I stood there, in this drafty, dingy hovel of a waiting room, and I wanted to submit to one of the greatest sins of a priest. I wanted to defile that boy.”
Jud felt dizzy. What the hell? He didn’t know what to say, or how to say what he didn’t know what to say. His thoughts turned to static as he stared at Wicks. He didn’t look any different than he usually did, still sitting proud, spine straight, looking straight at Jud as he spoke of a shame most priests would never confess to.
“I also lied to a parishioner this week in order to coddle them.” And just like that, Wicks was off on a different thread, and Jud’s pounding heart was stuck.
Later, sitting upright on his little bed in his little attic above the rectory, Jud found he couldn’t not stop his racing thoughts with the anesthetic of prayer. For Jud knew, or thought he knew, the way his mind worked. That the curve of a woman’s body underneath her clothes was what caught his eye. He had been with several women in his past, women with sharp smiles and bright eyes roving over his body like they were as interested in his frame as he was in theirs.
He had a high school sweetheart named Alicia, who had a giant dog who always jumped on him and strict parents who didn’t approve. They made love twice before she moved to Chicago for college and he missed her so much he threw himself into boxing during his own college years.
He thought joining the priesthood meant suppressing the buzz of arousal felt when he saw a woman in a bathing suit or when he gazed at someone with his lustful imagination. He thought he could handle that, especially since his sex drive had been shot after that fateful match. You don’t strike a man down in the ring and just move on. No, even after the fog of grief and despair began to clear, Jud still struggled to feel anything sharp for anyone. He just felt numb.
When he punched his fellow pastor not too long after his blessed acceptance into the church, he felt shame, sure, but there was something else, squirreled away behind his gut, that was worried about his feelings coming back like this. Violent, quick to action, without thought, without the cloud of caring he believed his clerical collar would drape around him.
And now his second chance was testing his emotional state in ways he felt entirely unprepared for.
I wanted to defile that boy.
With a sudden burst of movement, Jud got out of bed. If he couldn’t sleep, there was always work to be done in the rectory.
Well, staying up late and surrounded by quietly important papers of all those who drove him crazy was not the smartest decision Jud had ever made, but it certainly gave him new things to think about. After riffling through Monsignor Wicks’ paperwork in Martha’s meticulously managed file cabinets, after coming across the words "radical prostatectomy" and immediately looking up what that meant, his mind was quite awake. And in his blurry, sleep-desperate mind, he made a plan to confront Wicks’ at his next attempt to use sex to lord over him. The plan was to throw the Monsignor off of his planned speech, then give a speech of his own about the dangers of domination. “Reflect on what it means to be Christlike in your service," he would say, light shining on his face before Wicks. "Dominance is for the old gods.” And then he would quickly leave, before Wick could deck him for disrespect.
The speech sounded quite good in his head, and when he fell asleep slumped over the desk in the rectory beside his cold cup of tea and the three rosaries he had been hoarding in his pockets, he felt like he could still make a difference in this church.
All good plans, et. cetera, because in the light of day, when making eye contact with the man suppressing the will of a town full of Catholics, Jud could not muster up the confident tone he imagined himself with when thinking up this speech.
“I know you’re medically incapable of an erection,” he spit out, before hesitantly looking over at Wicks, the rest of his speech on the tip of his tongue but hesitant to roll out.
The older man stood up then, powerful body roiling with tension as he looked down of the still sitting Jud. Jud's ears twitched back, eyes looking up, watering slightly against the sun beaming in sheets behind Wicks' powerful frame.
Looking up and being slightly blinded, it took him a moment to realize Wick was unbuckling his pants and pulling his member out. Thick, uncut head, hair everywhere the cassock didn’t cover (yes he wore a cassock to confessional. Yes, this was all a drama of the senses).
“Hey, hey, hey, what-“ Jud leaned backward in his chair, then his legs scrambled too, pushing against the ground before successfully coming up. His knees hit the bench in his panic and at next blink, he was sprawled in the dirt looking up at the block of man standing firm before him.
“You think you know me, boy?” Wick shouted, “Skittering around the office like a rat, looking for weaknesses to take advantage of me. Look at me!” he barked.
Jud jolted. This man was crazy. This man was crazy. This was the shame of the Catholic Church, the rapists and the power hungry of the frock using their authority as a lubricant for their own sick desires.
“You can’t-“ Jud cleared his throat against it’s sudden dryness. “Monsignor, what is wrong with you? Is this some- some power play? Jesus!”
Jud felt very sweaty, armpits wet.
Wick messed with him during every confession, dark eyes following his every move to see the impact of his words. Jud was getting used to the dynamic he was pigeonholed in, used to the submission that comes with swallowing the heat of anger and resentment the other man caused to rise in the back of his throat.
But of course, of course, as soon as he stands up for his dignity, trying to even the footing, Wicks throws everything off kilter again. The man has probably never felt wrong footed in his life, the incorrigible bully.
Angry again, the feeling hitting his stomach in a lurch, Jud scrambled to his feet.
“Aren’t you going to absolve me, father?” he spat out, straightening his shirt and trying not to look out of control as he felt, heart beat in his throat.
And when Wicks lunged at him, Jud booked it out of there, swearing this bully of a priest would not get him to abandon his principles for himself.
That night, in his rickety little bed, above the rectory, Jud dreamt of boxing, wrestling, fighting, the chafing push and pull of strong bodies putting everything into the domination of the other. He woke up depressed and half hard.
The problem with trying to avoid thoughts of the previously awkward confession was made difficult by the fact that his church operated largely as shrine to Wick. The next day he barely managed to get through a cup of coffee in the rectory before Martha showed up, calling over her shoulder at him about Wick’s next speaking event. Lee Ross came by before noon, asking semi-frantically for the Monsignor. Jud fled to the church when he saw Cy strutting up to the rectory doors, knowing he would demand to be brought to the very man he was avoiding.
In the church, Jud decided to take some time in prayer. This conflict with the Monsignor was getting out of hand for him, he did not like to live with his emotions in his throat like this. He didn’t like what it did to him. It had been so long, his body feeling like the shiny pink skin under a scab. Vulnerable. The bubbling of anger, like a kettle reaching scalding levels, pushed him into actions that pushed him into consequences he couldn’t handle. His rage, when it escapes, is vicious and cuts at him. His sadness is large and overwhelming. And his lust… when he allows his brain to acknowledge what his body so easily accepts, well, he gives into the tug of lust in ways that leave him ashamed as soon as it is purged.
He doesn’t like that he is feeling any of these, let alone that he is beginning to feel them so strongly. He can tell that he is being played, that he is falling under a spell he sees everyone else around him already lured under by.
He endures the pain in his knees with relish, kneeling on the wooden slats in the pews. Of course this church wouldn’t have cushion put into the kneelers. The harsh stone was more than an aesthetic. It was a demand for suffering to justify your selfish request for comfort.
God, he thought, dear God. Please grant me the wisdom to know how to move forward with this church and with this man. Give me the grace to act with your will. Give me the strength to resist his pull.
He stopped short of acknowledging what exactly he felt pulled towards. God might know his heart, but if Jud doesn’t understand it himself, he thinks it’s okay to keep God out of the loop on this one. For now.
“Father.”
A voice boomed out from directly beside him, sound echoing off the stone of the otherwise empty church. Jud jerked in shock, sliding off the kneeler.
“Monsignor, you- you’re,” Jud stuttered out, pulling himself out of the pew with some difficulty. He attempted to breathe some calmness into himself. “You scared me. What can I do for you?”
“You were praying. I hope I didn’t disturb you.”
“No, no.” Jud began to inch around the man, hoping to flee to one of the back rooms. Maybe he’ll polish some of the incense censers.
“What’s on your mind, Father? What plagues the mind of a healthy young man leading his flock to Christ?” There was a teasing lilt to his voice that set Jud on edge. “Are you worried they are not coming to you as you had hoped? A control issue, perhaps?”
Jud snorted, shoulders almost to his ears. “I’m not the one with the control issue, Monsignor.”
"You're angry. Good. You should be. Your little plan to redeem yourself in the eyes of the church by neutering my message and coddling my parishioners isn't working. What are you going to do now?"
God, Jud was tired. And angry. Angry at Wicks' words and angry at him for trying to bait him inside the church and angry at himself for getting baited into anger.
"That's not what I'm doing. I don't have a little plan. I'm trying to.... God, I'm trying to be a good priest. I may not have a lot of experience, but I have a lot of love and, and, ideas for how we can-"
"We? There is no we, you snivelling little boy. I am doing what I have always done, what my grandfather before me did, and there is no room in my plans for a naive baby blubbering to everyone about love and peace."
Jud's chest was tight, and his stomach hurt. He opened his mouth, but Wicks was still going.
"We are at war, man! I am holding the line for Catholics, for everyone who understands the natural order of things as our Lord decreed them. Your fluffy liberal fantasy is nothing more than cotton candy in the water. It's nothing. You. Are nothing."
The sensations in Jud's body disappeared very quickly, leaving only a gaping black rage he had no time to try and reign in before he lurched forward, hands clenched, towards the Monsignor.
Wicks grabbed Jud around the shoulders, lightening quick, and they pushed back and forth against each other's weight for a minute, before the sheer mass of Wicks overcame and he managed to shove the younger man to the floor. Hands pushed into his shoulders, knees coming down hard, one on the floor besides Jud's leg and the other landing hard on Jud's hip before sliding off onto the floor. Wicks was now on top of Jud, his breath clogging the space and his eyes as hard as ever.
Jud’s stomach clenched hard, a shocking jolt to his midsection. His mouth watered. His body opened like a flower, like a boxer down. God, he hadn’t cared around the physical demands of his job, willing to accept them as a man seemingly incapable of feeling for another person like that again. Now though, confronted with the teeming mass of his bully, an imposing wicked man clearly working him over to throw him out of his church, he was succumbing to an insatiable lust. Why? Fuck, he was hard. He was so hard.
With the position of his body, Wicks could tell exactly what was happening with Jud's body, though Jud himself was just starting to come back into his senses. With a calculating squint, Wicks moved his hands from Jud's shoulder and placed them on his wrists instead, his whole body weight pinching the skin beside the delicate bones. Jud relished the sensations, hard, heavy, painful.
At this point in a fight, the referee was right there, slapping the ring and calling it. But the church was quiet, too early in the day or the week for anyone to come and disturb them. The only hope of being interrupted was if Martha entered to do one of her many items on the to-do list she kept in her mind. Good girl that she was, she would not dare question the actions of her leader pressing the young pastor into the wooden floor of her church. She might stay to watch, eyes alight and mouth pressed into a thin line, but she would not interrupt.
Jud squirmed against the body above him, feeling the give between hard and soft- hard hands, hard chest, soft stomach, soft groin, soft thighs, hard calves. His body was awake and alight. If this wasn't all so sharp he'd delude himself into thinking this was a dream. Knowing it was real, but feeling like it made no sense, and there was no way out of it, Jud felt his body growing lax, accepting what he could not control.
"You belong beneath me," Wicks said, voice just as loud as it would be if they were still standing upright, no shame in his throat as he committed sins in the house of his Father. As they had no crucifix here, there was no watchful eyes of an eternally punished Christ to judge them, just the many cruel eyes of weapons-adorned angels staring vacantly out at them. "Don't you, boy? Submit to me like you were meant to. You want this, don't you?"
Jud whimpered, shut his eyes tight, and began, almost unconsciously, to move his hips against the unmoving, flaccid square of groin above him.
Jud felt his hands going numb, heart pounding in his chest and hips gyrating in dogged pursuit of pleasure. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and his mind was a blur of feeling and sensation.
He felt God in his head like a thumb on a bruise, and that watchful presence was what pushed him over the edge with a strangled noise.
With an agility that belied his age, Wicks stood up. His hand pressed down on Jud's chest as he pushed himself up, wrestling another punched out from Jud.
Looking down at the younger man, Wicks looked rumpled, hair messed around his face and chest heaving with deep breaths. His eyes drank in the sight beneath him- the young, dumb boy, full of Christ and with red splotches across his face and wrists.
"Pretty boy," Wicks murmured, low voice practically a whisper. "I'll break you yet."
Wicks strode across the church isle and out the doors, without sparing a backwards glance at the man still lying in his wake, eyes towards the ceiling as he tried to avoid the looks from the angels.