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rainbowfic2024-01-24 12:28 pm
freevistas) wrote in rainbowfic2024-01-24 12:28 pm
Entry tags:
(no subject)
Story: Without Homeland
Colors: Teary-eyed #9: Overslept
Word Count: 489
Rating/Warning: M (some references to sexy stuff)
Notes: Without Homeland takes places in New London, Connecticut in the 1910s and 1920s. More information and fics can be found at my journal. These fics are short vignettes and character studies and aren't necessarily meant to be read chronologically.
Karol expected to feel guilty.
Sure, he felt anxious as he rushed out of the Fairchilds’ back door and onto Starr Street to run the gauntlet of imposing Greek Revival-style houses lining the narrow road, checking his watch every few steps to calculate just how late he’d be to mass.
And yes, he was embarrassed when he finally pulled open the church’s basement door and felt the collective gaze of the entire Polish congregation passing over him like a lighthouse beacon. Even Father Nowak had stopped his sermon mid-sentence as Karol shuffled into an empty spot at the end of the last pew; in the suddenly silent basement, Karol could hear the sound of the Irish priest droning on for St. Mary’s English-speaking congregation upstairs before Father Nowak pointedly cleared his throat and resumed his preaching.
But even when the anxiety and the embarrassment faded as the mass went on, the guilt Karol expected to feel didn’t surge forward to take their place.
Instead, he found himself having to fight back smiles as he pretended to listen to the liturgy and join in the hymns; he felt himself tickled by memories of the night before, like his mind and his lips and the most sensitive parts of his body were experiencing it all over again. He buried his face in his scarf, tried to wipe the smiles off his mouth with the back of his hand, pretended to clear his throat to disguise the giggles that threatened to spill out of him. He saw the elderly woman sitting next to him in the last pew tighten her knobby fists around her rosary beads every time his mouth curled into a grin or an amused huff of breath passed through his nostrils, but still, he couldn’t help himself–and he didn’t really want to.
Part of him wished he did feel guilty. Guilt was familiar; he knew how to navigate it. But this, this lightness, this giddiness…it was disorienting.
Still, as much as he searched his memory and his conscience as Father Nowak went through the motions of the service, Karol couldn’t find anything to feel guilty about. He and Alba hadn’t made love, after all. And while he’d certainly felt something like lust as he’d watched her undress in the dim moonlight pouring through the attic window, as he’d climbed into her little bed with her, as they’d shivered in each other’s arms until a new warmth spread through and between them, as they’d giggled into each other’s mouths when their fingers found each other’s most tender spots, as he’d woken up decadently late that morning with his back pressed against her chest, a bit of his undershirt still bunched in her loose fist…through all that, it wasn’t only lust he’d felt. There was something else–something so sweet he couldn’t imagine that God could consider it a sin.
Even if it had made him late for church that morning.
Colors: Teary-eyed #9: Overslept
Word Count: 489
Rating/Warning: M (some references to sexy stuff)
Notes: Without Homeland takes places in New London, Connecticut in the 1910s and 1920s. More information and fics can be found at my journal. These fics are short vignettes and character studies and aren't necessarily meant to be read chronologically.
Karol expected to feel guilty.
Sure, he felt anxious as he rushed out of the Fairchilds’ back door and onto Starr Street to run the gauntlet of imposing Greek Revival-style houses lining the narrow road, checking his watch every few steps to calculate just how late he’d be to mass.
And yes, he was embarrassed when he finally pulled open the church’s basement door and felt the collective gaze of the entire Polish congregation passing over him like a lighthouse beacon. Even Father Nowak had stopped his sermon mid-sentence as Karol shuffled into an empty spot at the end of the last pew; in the suddenly silent basement, Karol could hear the sound of the Irish priest droning on for St. Mary’s English-speaking congregation upstairs before Father Nowak pointedly cleared his throat and resumed his preaching.
But even when the anxiety and the embarrassment faded as the mass went on, the guilt Karol expected to feel didn’t surge forward to take their place.
Instead, he found himself having to fight back smiles as he pretended to listen to the liturgy and join in the hymns; he felt himself tickled by memories of the night before, like his mind and his lips and the most sensitive parts of his body were experiencing it all over again. He buried his face in his scarf, tried to wipe the smiles off his mouth with the back of his hand, pretended to clear his throat to disguise the giggles that threatened to spill out of him. He saw the elderly woman sitting next to him in the last pew tighten her knobby fists around her rosary beads every time his mouth curled into a grin or an amused huff of breath passed through his nostrils, but still, he couldn’t help himself–and he didn’t really want to.
Part of him wished he did feel guilty. Guilt was familiar; he knew how to navigate it. But this, this lightness, this giddiness…it was disorienting.
Still, as much as he searched his memory and his conscience as Father Nowak went through the motions of the service, Karol couldn’t find anything to feel guilty about. He and Alba hadn’t made love, after all. And while he’d certainly felt something like lust as he’d watched her undress in the dim moonlight pouring through the attic window, as he’d climbed into her little bed with her, as they’d shivered in each other’s arms until a new warmth spread through and between them, as they’d giggled into each other’s mouths when their fingers found each other’s most tender spots, as he’d woken up decadently late that morning with his back pressed against her chest, a bit of his undershirt still bunched in her loose fist…through all that, it wasn’t only lust he’d felt. There was something else–something so sweet he couldn’t imagine that God could consider it a sin.
Even if it had made him late for church that morning.
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