Ringsley in Regulus’ study + miscellaneous pieces based on the fic “Hide You Fires” by @starsworth on ao3. This fic has had me in an absolute chokehold since December
hiii, first post here and ofc it's the doomed siblings/cousins™ !! this is directly inspired by @starsworth 's amazing fic : Hide Your Fires on ao3 <33
Lovely readers, I just wanted to pop in here to give an update, as chapter 10 might take a little longer to get out.
I am nearing the end of the semester and have three research projects, a short Gothic film project for my Gothic literature class, as well as two late essays that I am trying to submit while working on all the upcoming assignments.
Hard to express how overwhelmed I am.
Not to mention the Heated Rivalry show coming out, which has me in a state of hyperfixation, causing me to reread the books (HR and TLG) literally four times in the past two weeks.
ANYWAY
I thought I would give the people a little sneak peek of the opening scene of Chapter Ten as a teaser to hold ya'll over until I can get the chapter out completely.
Chapter Ten: Auto-da-fé
Hebrews 12:29
“For our God is a consuming fire.”
“I think many in this village might view themselves as traditional. You keep to these old customs as a ritual. A ritual to keep your connection to the folklore and culture of your heritage. You may think these old ways are harmless, but I would like to remind you all that Lucifer was a traditional angel, too.” Jayce said, looking out at the congregation of blank faces. Some glared openly, others just seemed confused.
Sky sat at the front with her mother. Milan was notably absent, but he had not set foot inside the chapel since his disastrous confession. Jakub, his brother, though, was the oddity, as instead of sitting with his parents and sister, who were openly ignoring Sky, he was on her other side.
He had also begun attending the weekday masses, and looking at them made Jayce feel the bubbling black rage that had become his constant companion over the past few weeks.
It was a hot writhing thing beneath his skin—a crawling, inky sludge that shifted like a nest of a thousand tiny black spiders.
His nerves lit up with the static charge of it. He felt it grip his spine, petrifying him, and yet he thought he should feel more himself. He was attuned to his purpose more strongly than ever had before he came to this village. He knew now what his mission must be.
There was sin in this village that was left to run rampant.
It had only become clearer to him as time moved on. The affairs, the witchcraft, the lustful engagements, even Father Heimerdinger had fallen. The old priest had become ill, taking to his bed since his confession, which only revealed the full measure of his alcoholism.
The old man had first grown very sick, and then he became irritable, oscillating between the two states on the days he chose to leave his room. Jayce had been forced to take on all the priestly duties for the village for the past three weeks, and he found the diversion helped keep his mind off his own sinful desires as well as sharpened his focus.
This town needed cleansing.
He needed to be the one to cleanse it.
He could not focus on his own desires when he had to purge this land of its foul deeds. To avenge his own poor father.
Yet he felt more lost than he ever had. He had never felt so disconnected from himself, as if he was being overwhelmed.
Over taken.
The harder he pushed the further he became.
He was closer to God than he had allowed himself to be. He had removed himself from temptation and it was strange, that while he was with Viktor, he felt at peace and now, as he railed against the sins of this village he was just a black pit.
A pit of despair.
He was ungrateful.
He felt he was conceived int his black hungry place and he worried that part of it was inside himself.
The past weeks had been full of nightmares both during his waking hours and during sleep. He found himself sleepwalking almost nightly. He knew this was just the land's way of trying to scare him, the devil's attempts to drive him off, but he would not buckle or break.
He would do his duty by god and free this place from its avarice.
From its lust.
From its pride and duplicity.
Viktor’s face flickered in his mind.
Jayce had refused to think of him, but that didn't stop the man from plaguing his dreams and his waking thoughts. He hadn't gone back to his orchard, and the other man hadn't sought him out.
It only made him more righteous in his fury.
If Jayce allowed himself to slow down. To push through all the black muck clouding his mind, he might have realized that all of this was shame. Shame at what he had said, implied.
Shame that he had pushed what he wanted so desperately away.
But he couldn't have had him anyway.
This was his calling. This was what he should have been focusing on all along.
He should feel vindicated for finally unveiling himself of the illusion he had built around Viktor and what they were doing together. For getting a hold of himself.
Yet he felt bereft.
And it made him worse. It made the crawling blackness inside him grow fiercer. Harsher. All consuming.
He still imagined Viktor's body being spread out on Jayce's bed, wearing Jayce's sweater. With his bright, golden eyes beckoning him. His pale throat and its stark dark brown freckles and scattered moles.
He could not help himself but remember the plush softness of his mouth parting under Jayce's as he gave into it. The way his mouth tasted was becoming difficult for Jayce to remember now that he had not sipped of it in weeks.
The vision was beautiful in a way that should have been impossible.
Beautiful in a way that made Jayce think—
Lucifer must have looked like this. Lucifer, an angel of such great beauty that he could cause the fall of half of the heavenly host. So charming and charismatic to draw those loyal to God away from his light. Lucifer, the light bringer, the truth speaker.
He clenched the sides of the lectern until the wood groaned. He squeezed his eyes shut to bury all the soft images under the black wave. To hide them down, down, down so that he might forget them. So that he may finally purge himself of his profane carnality as he purged the village of its idolatry and iniquity.
“Do you think the fallen angel appeared as some snarled, phantastic demon?” he said, voice shaking. “No. No—he was the most radiant of God’s creations. His fall was not because he was ugly. His fall was a result of his pride. 'Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.'”
His breath stuttered, and the inky darkness inside him thrummed.
Viktor’s beauty was a test.
Viktor’s beauty was a trap.
Viktor’s beauty was ruin—Incubus.
Incubus.
Incubus.
“And that beauty,” Jayce continued, “is what he uses to deceive you. Lucifer was not cast down for being displeasing. He was not cast out for being undesirable—he was cast down for being too desirable. For his abounding loveliness. For his seduction.”
Jayce thought of Viktor lying out in the field of his orchard. His hair spread out among the grass. His horse lying beside him.
How the grey light of the overcast sky pierced the canopy of cherry trees to illuminate his face. How his skin seemed almost as luminous as his eyes. He thought of the way he coked his head like one of the many black bodied crows that followed him around the village. As if he learned from them. As if like Romulus and Remus of Rome he was raised by crows instead of a she-wolf.
He thought of his soft smiles and his crooked teeth. The way he held his cigarettes with his lips when he needed to use his hands. The way he held the smoke in his chest before blowing it out of his nose like a dragon. The way the smoke curled around him making the memories hazy and dreamlike to the point where Jayce wasn’t sure if they were real at all.
Had he concocted it all in his imagination?
Though he knew that wasn’t true, because the perfection of Viktor could only be experienced in person. When Jayce could smell his housefire and roses scent. When Jayce could see the depth of his smile lines and the soft yellow staining of his teeth.
"He was able to amass an army of angels willing to turn their backs on god!" Jayce couldn't help the small, disbelieving chuckle that escaped his lips, "He was able to trick them into believing that they were better than our creator, that they did not need God's love, that they could take over heaven and not be punished! He was charming, Lucifer, he still is. He charms us, he tempts us, and he seduces us." Jayce shook his head, "He does this all because he is so beautiful."
Jayce thought of Viktor's tempting lips. They weren’t particularly full but the shape of them—the shape of them. The depth of his cupids bow and the way they seemed to flick down at the edges. The top lip shadowed and longer then the bottom that was fuller in the middle with a little line that seemed to split it down the middle.
How he tipped his head back to be kissed. The sweet mole that rested above his lips. How his eyelashes created little streaked shadows on his cheekbones when he fluttered his eyes closed in anticipation.
"You would not be tempted by some beast. You would not be tempted by someone who wasn't special. That is where people get it wrong. Sin is always enticing; if it weren't, it would not be so difficult to stay pure."
Jayce, for a moment, thought he saw Viktor in the back. Sitting where he had been the day he had come to the Mass. The way he had teased him the entire time. The way he smiled and rolled his eyes.
The way he had kneeled before him for the sacrament.
The chairs at the back of the chapel were empty as they always were.
“He tempts you not by grotesquery,” Jayce hissed, “but by sweetness. By softness. By desire. He comes to you wrapped in light—your light—so that you cannot tell where he ends and you begin.”
He could feel the eyes of the villagers on him, baring down on him like anvils.
He could feel their guilt.
Or was it his own as he replayed that day over and over in his mind's eye? Now with the context of understanding that he hadn't had before.
How it would have felt to allow Viktor to continue. To not stop.
To let Viktor take him in his mouth as he had in the confessional.
Kneeling there on the steps, how Viktor’s lips would look stretched around his hardened flesh. Jayce was ashamed to say he was disappointed that he hadn’t been able to see Viktor while he had done what he did.
He wished he had seen it all and that it hadn’t been concealed by his cassock.
“And what did Lucifer say? Non serviam. ‘I will not serve.’ He believed himself above God’s order. Above obedience. Above humility.”
Jayce swallowed hard.
That awful black pressure slid beneath his ribs. Coiling around his heart and wriggling through his mind. He could feel it from the tips of his fingers to his throat. Clogging it and spilling out.
He could almost see Viktor before him now as he was that day. Coming at him from the back of the chapel and taking his sacrament in front of everyone. Raising first in line for to communion procession and defiling it and himself and Jayce within this house of god.
How the other parishioners would watch on in delight.
The image hit him like a fist and his pulse thundered.
Viktor would open his mouth for Jayce to feed himself in. His eyes would stay on Jayce the entire time just has he had that day with his fingers. The wet heat would enclose around him. He would suck and lick and kiss.
The vision was so clear it almost made him stall. He swept his eyes over the Sunday morning congregation, and for a moment, there was another flash of them all naked and covered in blood.
He saw them in animal masks and flower crowns, howling as they would watch Viktor suck him down.
He squeezed his eyes shut again and shook his head. When he opened them, the villagers were as they had always been. Sitting and watching, faces crumpling with confusion.
Sky was looking at him with such open worry; she knew he must seem insane to her, but she seemed just as insane to him.
Sitting with her lover, their love child cradled on her lap. She never spoke of it in the confession booth, which only reinforced that the people of this village were all liars, including herself.
How dare she judge him when she was drowning in her own sinful ways? When she flaunted them to the world without guilt!
Why did she get to have it?
Why did she get to have it but not him?
Why wasn't he allowed to have what he wanted without the threat of hell?
Why wasn't he forgiven? Why wasn't he given grace? Why was god punishing him so? Why could he not love normally?
Why must he be so filled with such torment?
He thought of Viktor's face and how his eyes seemed to glow in the sunlight.
“He disguises temptation as tenderness,” Jayce said, voice tightening. “He disguises sin as comfort. He disguises corruption as love. He weaves truth among his lies to deceive you. He omits what is most important to get what he wants from you. He appears at your door with promises of protection. He whispers that your charms and your talismans will keep you safe from evil—as if you could command the supernatural, as if you could shield yourselves where God alone protects!”
His gaze bore into the villagers now.
“You hang bones in your windows and call it faith. You light candles for spirits that are not God. You place your trust in the old ways—ways that offer you the illusion of control when all they do is invite darkness into your homes.”
The black spiders seemed to crawl up his throat.
His chest tightened.
His stomach twisted.
The words spewed from his mouth like so much bile.
“And when Satan comes to you,” he whispered, “you will know him by his beauty. By his tenderness. By the way, he makes you forget yourself. Forget God.”
Viktor’s face burned behind his eyelids like an icon.
A pagan saint.
A golden idol.
An incubus.
A God.
And Jayce’s heart slammed painfully in his chest.
“He will come to you as everything you’ve ever wanted,” Jayce said softly. “And you will mistake desire for destiny. You will think it is a gift from God. His plan and those around you might agree with it, or they might push you toward it, but know that it is all a lie. The only truth of this world is suffering. Suffering until we are allowed into the kingdom of heaven. That is the trial. That is the task we must prove ourselves in the end. That we suffered gratefully, that we turned away from temptation. That we begged forgiveness, for we are sinners. We are made of sin itself.”
His knuckles whitened around the lectern.
"To want more pleasure than pain, to deny the truths that God grants us. We all want things to be simple. To be easy, and that is how Lucifer corrupts you. He will look into your eyes,” Jayce said, voice raw, “and you will thank him for your own damnation.”
“Peter says, ‘Be sober, be vigilant; because you adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” Jayce’s voice echoed through the chapel like a gong.
Those sitting in the pews looked on with widened eyes.
........
And that's all for now!
I debated posting the entire opening scene or just a short snippet, but I decided to share the whole thing with you. The chapter will be long enough that I don't think giving you one scene will be detrimental to the reading experience.
I hope to have chapter ten out within the next two weeks, but as I mentioned, with my three research projects and a short film assignment for my Gothic class, I'm not sure how much writing I'll be able to do until classes are officially over.
Thank you for reading and being so patient with me!
