![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smackenzie"Come back to the cell, Piere. Come back to bed. This is only causing you pain."
"I don't belong here, Rainaut. I don't. I'm sorry. I'm trying to fit in, I promise I am, but I don't think I can do it. I don't fit. And God can't hear me." He looks up, past the altar, at the round window and its center pane of glass, the yellow circle no doubt meant to represent the sun and the light of God's love. He misses his sun pendant. He misses his brother friars. He misses knowing his place in the world, knowing that he's where he's meant to be, where God wants him to be, doing what God wants him to be doing. He misses feeling at home. He misses being home.
His eyes are wet. His head drops and he covers his face with his hands.
"My brother," Rainaut says softly. "My poor friar." Brother Peire hears a rustle as Rainaut kneels on the floor next to him, and then Rainaut is putting an arm around him and pulling him close. "God hears you wherever you are. If you speak to God with honesty in your heart, God will hear. And God will speak back. You just have to know how to listen."
But I used to know, Brother Peire wants to say. I knew how to listen for His voice. He sent me Father Ancelmetz and the Gray Friars. I knew I was doing His will. I don't any more. How can I? I'm trapped among heretics because I don't have anywhere else to go.
"I want to help you," Rainaut goes on. Brother Peire's face is buried in his chest now, breathing in the scent of his shirt and the skin under it. "I don't know how. I thought it might help you to know that you could come here any time you wanted and say anything you wanted, that there was a quiet, sanctified space you could talk to your God. I thought it would help you to find work to occupy your hands. I even thought it was good for you to share my cell, so you wouldn't be alone at night."
"I know," Brother Peire says, his voice muffled. "I'm grateful. But I can't. I can't. I have nowhere else to go but I - I can't stay here. But I can't go."
He's trapped in this place where he doesn't belong, with people who believe things he can't, and who only mean him well.
"I want to think you'll adjust in time," Rainaut says. "You don't have to give up your beliefs for ours. I know I've told you that. No one expects you to throw off your years as a friar and become one of us overnight." He rubs Brother Peire's back with one hand. His other hand tangles in Brother Peire's hair.
Brother Peire realizes he's soaking Rainaut's shirt with tears in a way he never has before, not even when he was five years old and his mother died and his father didn't know what to do with him and there was no one to comfort him. And Rainaut just holds him, solid and consoling and not saying a word.
Brother Peire feels ungrateful for all that Rainaut and the rest of the community have tried to do for him, and he feels out of place, and he feels lost. And he feels trapped, because as much as he doesn't want to admit it, he knows this is his life now.
Why have You done this to me? he thinks at God. Why have You sent me here? Is this why You sent Rainaut to the Gray Friars? So he might show me a kindness when my own brothers cast me out?
All he has are questions. He doesn't have any answers any more.
"Peire," Rainaut says gently, interrupting his thoughts. "We should go back to the cell, and back to bed." He releases Brother Peire and stands, holding out his hand to help the former friar up. Brother Peire looks at it for a minute before pushing himself to his feet.
"Thank you," he says. He wipes his face on his sleeve. "I know you only want to help me. I know you, you love me." And saying it, he realizes he loves Rainaut in turn. Rainaut's lips turn up in a smile. "And I feel so ungrateful and selfish because I don't want to be here, I just want to go home. I can ask God to forgive me my lack of gratitude. I don't know if He will, but I can ask. Can you?"
"Can I what?"
"Forgive me for not, for not wanting to be here. For not being properly thankful for everything you’re trying to do for me. Can you forgive me for wanting to go back to Montagui?"
"Of course I forgive you. I don't blame you. Just because I love it here doesn't mean that everyone else I know will. Come on. We still have a few hours before dawn. You should try to get some sleep."
So they walk out of the chapel and around the church and through the cloister to Rainaut's cell - which Brother Peire guesses is their cell now, both of theirs - and Brother Peire takes off his sandals and is about to lie down on the floor, where he was sleeping before his need to talk to God woke him up, but Rainaut grabs his sleeve and says "Lie in the bed with me."
"Why?"
"Because I think you need to be close to someone. I don't think it's good for you to be alone."
"I'm not alone. You're here too. It's not a very big bed."
"We'll fit. I really do think it will help."
Brother Peire is too tired to argue, so once Rainaut has stretched out on the mattress, he joins him. Rainaut pulls the blanket up over them. Brother Peire feels cramped. Rainaut puts both arms around him and pulls him close, and after a little shifting around and some alarming creaking from the ropes strung across the bedframe under the mattress, they're both settled, and Brother Peire does indeed feel slightly comforted.
He's not used to sharing a bed with someone, but Rainaut is warm and Brother Peire can feel his heart beating, and that's oddly soothing to him. He's lying on one of his arms, which isn't all that comfortable, but he puts his other arm around Rainaut's waist and is rewarded with a chuckle.
"Your abbot would have a heart attack if he could see this," Rainaut murmurs.
"Please don't," Brother Peire begs. "Don't - don't talk about my, my brother friars. Former brother friars."
"I was just trying to make a joke. I'm sorry." Rainaut presses his lips to Brother Peire's forehead, then the bridge of his nose, and then, surprisingly, puts his fingers under Brother Peire's chin and tilts his head back to kiss his mouth. It's the lightest of kisses and there's probably nothing behind it, and Brother Peire stiffens involuntarily.
"What was that for?"
"I wanted to."
"You thought that, that, that kissing me would help?"
"Something like that." It's dark and their faces are so close it's hard to see, but Brother Peire thinks Rainaut might be smiling. "No?"
"I don't know."
As if taking that for a yes, Rainaut kisses him again, the same light brush across his lips as before. Brother Peire doesn't know how to react, and so he doesn't.
It isn't right for men to kiss on the mouth, especially not holy men. (And he is still a holy man in his heart.) Is this another thing that heretics believe to be acceptable? He knows Rainaut means him no harm and would never deliberately lead him astray, would never deliberately tempt him into sin, but a man can cause another to sin without realizing it.
"Are you all right?" Rainaut asks.
"I don't know."
"It isn't a sin here, for two men to share a bed or a kiss. We don't have anywhere near the prohibitions your church does when it comes to intimate relationships."
"But it's, it's not right. Not for me."
"How does it feel?"
Brother Peire gives this some honest thought, because he thinks Rainaut deserves an honest answer. It feels wrong to him in a spiritual sense, but the actual touch of Rainaut's lips against his isn’t entirely unpleasant.
"Should I kiss you again?" Rainaut asks, and there's no mistaking the teasing in his voice.
"Maybe?"
So Rainaut does, his lips lingering a fraction of a second longer and pressing a fraction of a second harder. Brother Peire feels something stir deep inside him, but he can't tell what it is, if it’s pleasure or acceptance or the first twinge of a dark sin.
"Let me tell you something, friar. I think you're a good man. I always did, even when you first came to see me and I was rude and sarcastic and thought you had an ulterior motive. I want you to love it here as much as I do. And I want you to love me."
"I do. I do - love you. Not, not here, but you." I think you're the only reason I haven't given up entirely and walked out the gate and taken to the road as a beggar. I've been trying so hard to adapt here for your sake and the sake of our friendship.
"I ask nothing from you, Peire. I mean it. I offer what I have with no expectation of reciprocation. That's also one of our mandates - I should write them down for you - to give without expectation of reward. I imagine you believe the same kind of thing."
"To offer charity to all without prejudice," Brother Peire murmurs, "with no expectation of earthly reward. To do good because God requires it of us, and because it shows our love for Him." He considers Rainaut's words. "Is that why you brought me here? Charity?"
"No. I brought you here because you had nowhere else to go, and I didn't want to see you starve. I brought you here out of friendship."
Brother Peire settles against him. For once, he feels content. He won't in the morning, and in the back of his head he still despairs of God ever hearing his pleas and answering them, and he doesn't know if he'll ever discover what God wants from him and what path he's meant to follow and what place he's meant to take in the world, but for now, lying next to Rainaut in this creaky bed in this small whitewashed cell, he can say in all honesty that he feels content.
"Can I make a suggestion?" Rainaut asks. Brother Peire nods. "You can't be a Gray Friar any more, and you won't be a heretic. No, it's ok, let me finish. Tomorrow, throw all that aside. Forget who you were. Try to be someone else. Start over."
"I can't."
"Can you try?"
"No. I can't be anything other than what I am. I'm still a friar in my heart, Rainaut. I think I always will be."
"I thought you might say that. But I had to make the suggestion." He kisses Brother Peire a fourth time, and Brother Peire can feel Rainaut's smile against his lips.
After that is yet another kiss, and this time Brother Peire tries to kiss back.
Rainaut laughs into his mouth.
"Was that - was that wrong?" Brother Peire asks, confused.
"No, no, of course not. I just wasn't expecting it so soon."
"Then why do you keep kissing me, if you don't want me to respond?"
"Oh, I do want you to respond. But I don't want to pressure you."
"You wanted me to lie next to you."
"And did you feel pressured?"
"I just felt tired. I didn't want to argue with you."
"Do you want to stay here, rather than go back to the floor?"
"Yes."
"As do I."
Another kiss, and another, and Brother Peire doesn't know what to do besides respond. He can feel the thing deep inside him rising slowly to the surface, and it feels like pleasure and it feels like confusion, and it feels like temptation.
He is a Gray Friar, a member of the Order of St Austor. He made a vow of chastity when he was accepted into the order. He believes it is a sin for a man to lie with another man as he lies with a woman, and he believes it is a sin for a holy man to lie with anyone.
He realizes that part of him is enjoying this - lying next to Rainaut, their arms around each other, kissing - and the thing stirring in him is warm in his belly and hardening between his legs, and it scares him.
He tries to push himself away, but it's a small bed and Rainaut is holding him close.
"Please stop," he manages, his voice shaking. "Please, Rainaut, please."
"I thought you liked it," Rainaut says, sounding confused.
"I do. I do. That's the, the, that's the problem." Rainaut chuckles. "Don't laugh at me."
"I'm not, I promise." He brushes Brother Peire's hair back from his face. "It's ok. Turn over."
"What?"
"Lie with your back to me. It should be... less tempting, for either of us."
So they untangle themselves and Brother Peire carefully rolls over so that his back is to Rainaut. Rainaut pulls him closer to keep him from falling off the bed and drapes an arm across his chest. Brother Peire takes his hand.
"There," Rainaut says near his ear. "I won't feel a need to kiss you, and you won't be tempted to kiss me back."
"Thank you. I’m sorry."
"For what?"
"Because you tried to comfort me and I stopped you, even though I really was comforted."
"You're a strange man, Peire. But I think I understand. I'm not forcing you to break your vows. You know that, right?"
"I know. Brother Abbot made me renounce them. But I still care. But I'll have to make peace with it and decide what to do - how I can still keep them." He squeezes Rainaut's hand. "Peace be upon you and, and on your rest." The words feel strange coming from his mouth, but it seems like the right way to show Rainaut that he really is going to try to adapt, and he really does appreciate everything that's been done for him.
He can feel Rainaut smiling against his shoulder. "Peace be upon you too, my brother."
words: 2489
total words: 28,940
"I don't belong here, Rainaut. I don't. I'm sorry. I'm trying to fit in, I promise I am, but I don't think I can do it. I don't fit. And God can't hear me." He looks up, past the altar, at the round window and its center pane of glass, the yellow circle no doubt meant to represent the sun and the light of God's love. He misses his sun pendant. He misses his brother friars. He misses knowing his place in the world, knowing that he's where he's meant to be, where God wants him to be, doing what God wants him to be doing. He misses feeling at home. He misses being home.
His eyes are wet. His head drops and he covers his face with his hands.
"My brother," Rainaut says softly. "My poor friar." Brother Peire hears a rustle as Rainaut kneels on the floor next to him, and then Rainaut is putting an arm around him and pulling him close. "God hears you wherever you are. If you speak to God with honesty in your heart, God will hear. And God will speak back. You just have to know how to listen."
But I used to know, Brother Peire wants to say. I knew how to listen for His voice. He sent me Father Ancelmetz and the Gray Friars. I knew I was doing His will. I don't any more. How can I? I'm trapped among heretics because I don't have anywhere else to go.
"I want to help you," Rainaut goes on. Brother Peire's face is buried in his chest now, breathing in the scent of his shirt and the skin under it. "I don't know how. I thought it might help you to know that you could come here any time you wanted and say anything you wanted, that there was a quiet, sanctified space you could talk to your God. I thought it would help you to find work to occupy your hands. I even thought it was good for you to share my cell, so you wouldn't be alone at night."
"I know," Brother Peire says, his voice muffled. "I'm grateful. But I can't. I can't. I have nowhere else to go but I - I can't stay here. But I can't go."
He's trapped in this place where he doesn't belong, with people who believe things he can't, and who only mean him well.
"I want to think you'll adjust in time," Rainaut says. "You don't have to give up your beliefs for ours. I know I've told you that. No one expects you to throw off your years as a friar and become one of us overnight." He rubs Brother Peire's back with one hand. His other hand tangles in Brother Peire's hair.
Brother Peire realizes he's soaking Rainaut's shirt with tears in a way he never has before, not even when he was five years old and his mother died and his father didn't know what to do with him and there was no one to comfort him. And Rainaut just holds him, solid and consoling and not saying a word.
Brother Peire feels ungrateful for all that Rainaut and the rest of the community have tried to do for him, and he feels out of place, and he feels lost. And he feels trapped, because as much as he doesn't want to admit it, he knows this is his life now.
Why have You done this to me? he thinks at God. Why have You sent me here? Is this why You sent Rainaut to the Gray Friars? So he might show me a kindness when my own brothers cast me out?
All he has are questions. He doesn't have any answers any more.
"Peire," Rainaut says gently, interrupting his thoughts. "We should go back to the cell, and back to bed." He releases Brother Peire and stands, holding out his hand to help the former friar up. Brother Peire looks at it for a minute before pushing himself to his feet.
"Thank you," he says. He wipes his face on his sleeve. "I know you only want to help me. I know you, you love me." And saying it, he realizes he loves Rainaut in turn. Rainaut's lips turn up in a smile. "And I feel so ungrateful and selfish because I don't want to be here, I just want to go home. I can ask God to forgive me my lack of gratitude. I don't know if He will, but I can ask. Can you?"
"Can I what?"
"Forgive me for not, for not wanting to be here. For not being properly thankful for everything you’re trying to do for me. Can you forgive me for wanting to go back to Montagui?"
"Of course I forgive you. I don't blame you. Just because I love it here doesn't mean that everyone else I know will. Come on. We still have a few hours before dawn. You should try to get some sleep."
So they walk out of the chapel and around the church and through the cloister to Rainaut's cell - which Brother Peire guesses is their cell now, both of theirs - and Brother Peire takes off his sandals and is about to lie down on the floor, where he was sleeping before his need to talk to God woke him up, but Rainaut grabs his sleeve and says "Lie in the bed with me."
"Why?"
"Because I think you need to be close to someone. I don't think it's good for you to be alone."
"I'm not alone. You're here too. It's not a very big bed."
"We'll fit. I really do think it will help."
Brother Peire is too tired to argue, so once Rainaut has stretched out on the mattress, he joins him. Rainaut pulls the blanket up over them. Brother Peire feels cramped. Rainaut puts both arms around him and pulls him close, and after a little shifting around and some alarming creaking from the ropes strung across the bedframe under the mattress, they're both settled, and Brother Peire does indeed feel slightly comforted.
He's not used to sharing a bed with someone, but Rainaut is warm and Brother Peire can feel his heart beating, and that's oddly soothing to him. He's lying on one of his arms, which isn't all that comfortable, but he puts his other arm around Rainaut's waist and is rewarded with a chuckle.
"Your abbot would have a heart attack if he could see this," Rainaut murmurs.
"Please don't," Brother Peire begs. "Don't - don't talk about my, my brother friars. Former brother friars."
"I was just trying to make a joke. I'm sorry." Rainaut presses his lips to Brother Peire's forehead, then the bridge of his nose, and then, surprisingly, puts his fingers under Brother Peire's chin and tilts his head back to kiss his mouth. It's the lightest of kisses and there's probably nothing behind it, and Brother Peire stiffens involuntarily.
"What was that for?"
"I wanted to."
"You thought that, that, that kissing me would help?"
"Something like that." It's dark and their faces are so close it's hard to see, but Brother Peire thinks Rainaut might be smiling. "No?"
"I don't know."
As if taking that for a yes, Rainaut kisses him again, the same light brush across his lips as before. Brother Peire doesn't know how to react, and so he doesn't.
It isn't right for men to kiss on the mouth, especially not holy men. (And he is still a holy man in his heart.) Is this another thing that heretics believe to be acceptable? He knows Rainaut means him no harm and would never deliberately lead him astray, would never deliberately tempt him into sin, but a man can cause another to sin without realizing it.
"Are you all right?" Rainaut asks.
"I don't know."
"It isn't a sin here, for two men to share a bed or a kiss. We don't have anywhere near the prohibitions your church does when it comes to intimate relationships."
"But it's, it's not right. Not for me."
"How does it feel?"
Brother Peire gives this some honest thought, because he thinks Rainaut deserves an honest answer. It feels wrong to him in a spiritual sense, but the actual touch of Rainaut's lips against his isn’t entirely unpleasant.
"Should I kiss you again?" Rainaut asks, and there's no mistaking the teasing in his voice.
"Maybe?"
So Rainaut does, his lips lingering a fraction of a second longer and pressing a fraction of a second harder. Brother Peire feels something stir deep inside him, but he can't tell what it is, if it’s pleasure or acceptance or the first twinge of a dark sin.
"Let me tell you something, friar. I think you're a good man. I always did, even when you first came to see me and I was rude and sarcastic and thought you had an ulterior motive. I want you to love it here as much as I do. And I want you to love me."
"I do. I do - love you. Not, not here, but you." I think you're the only reason I haven't given up entirely and walked out the gate and taken to the road as a beggar. I've been trying so hard to adapt here for your sake and the sake of our friendship.
"I ask nothing from you, Peire. I mean it. I offer what I have with no expectation of reciprocation. That's also one of our mandates - I should write them down for you - to give without expectation of reward. I imagine you believe the same kind of thing."
"To offer charity to all without prejudice," Brother Peire murmurs, "with no expectation of earthly reward. To do good because God requires it of us, and because it shows our love for Him." He considers Rainaut's words. "Is that why you brought me here? Charity?"
"No. I brought you here because you had nowhere else to go, and I didn't want to see you starve. I brought you here out of friendship."
Brother Peire settles against him. For once, he feels content. He won't in the morning, and in the back of his head he still despairs of God ever hearing his pleas and answering them, and he doesn't know if he'll ever discover what God wants from him and what path he's meant to follow and what place he's meant to take in the world, but for now, lying next to Rainaut in this creaky bed in this small whitewashed cell, he can say in all honesty that he feels content.
"Can I make a suggestion?" Rainaut asks. Brother Peire nods. "You can't be a Gray Friar any more, and you won't be a heretic. No, it's ok, let me finish. Tomorrow, throw all that aside. Forget who you were. Try to be someone else. Start over."
"I can't."
"Can you try?"
"No. I can't be anything other than what I am. I'm still a friar in my heart, Rainaut. I think I always will be."
"I thought you might say that. But I had to make the suggestion." He kisses Brother Peire a fourth time, and Brother Peire can feel Rainaut's smile against his lips.
After that is yet another kiss, and this time Brother Peire tries to kiss back.
Rainaut laughs into his mouth.
"Was that - was that wrong?" Brother Peire asks, confused.
"No, no, of course not. I just wasn't expecting it so soon."
"Then why do you keep kissing me, if you don't want me to respond?"
"Oh, I do want you to respond. But I don't want to pressure you."
"You wanted me to lie next to you."
"And did you feel pressured?"
"I just felt tired. I didn't want to argue with you."
"Do you want to stay here, rather than go back to the floor?"
"Yes."
"As do I."
Another kiss, and another, and Brother Peire doesn't know what to do besides respond. He can feel the thing deep inside him rising slowly to the surface, and it feels like pleasure and it feels like confusion, and it feels like temptation.
He is a Gray Friar, a member of the Order of St Austor. He made a vow of chastity when he was accepted into the order. He believes it is a sin for a man to lie with another man as he lies with a woman, and he believes it is a sin for a holy man to lie with anyone.
He realizes that part of him is enjoying this - lying next to Rainaut, their arms around each other, kissing - and the thing stirring in him is warm in his belly and hardening between his legs, and it scares him.
He tries to push himself away, but it's a small bed and Rainaut is holding him close.
"Please stop," he manages, his voice shaking. "Please, Rainaut, please."
"I thought you liked it," Rainaut says, sounding confused.
"I do. I do. That's the, the, that's the problem." Rainaut chuckles. "Don't laugh at me."
"I'm not, I promise." He brushes Brother Peire's hair back from his face. "It's ok. Turn over."
"What?"
"Lie with your back to me. It should be... less tempting, for either of us."
So they untangle themselves and Brother Peire carefully rolls over so that his back is to Rainaut. Rainaut pulls him closer to keep him from falling off the bed and drapes an arm across his chest. Brother Peire takes his hand.
"There," Rainaut says near his ear. "I won't feel a need to kiss you, and you won't be tempted to kiss me back."
"Thank you. I’m sorry."
"For what?"
"Because you tried to comfort me and I stopped you, even though I really was comforted."
"You're a strange man, Peire. But I think I understand. I'm not forcing you to break your vows. You know that, right?"
"I know. Brother Abbot made me renounce them. But I still care. But I'll have to make peace with it and decide what to do - how I can still keep them." He squeezes Rainaut's hand. "Peace be upon you and, and on your rest." The words feel strange coming from his mouth, but it seems like the right way to show Rainaut that he really is going to try to adapt, and he really does appreciate everything that's been done for him.
He can feel Rainaut smiling against his shoulder. "Peace be upon you too, my brother."
words: 2489
total words: 28,940
