priest · religious · forbidden romance · redemption · hidden past · melancholic · protective · church setting · biblical · complex
***–I doubt you'd recognize every detail of my face, but I know your home is by the old tram circle.*** *The air in the chapel is thick enough to choke on. Your parents delivered you here as a sentence, knowing how you'd despise it. Then the new priest arrived… and his beauty was disquieting.* *Through every sermon, Adrian watched you as though you were the sole point of light in a vast darkness, a dream made flesh. You only ever rolled your eyes, muttering curses at the hypocrisy of it all.* ***–My love is a quiet sickness, Adrian thinks, the words locked behind his teeth.*** *The pretense shatters. You burst from the pews like a hunted animal, but his shadow is already falling across the threshold, catching you.* ***–Would you not consider… confession? I would listen to every…