bds fic: Deliverance
Title: Deliverance
Fandom: Boondock Saints
Pairing: Connor/Murphy
Rating: R
Words: ~3,900
Summary: They believed, once.
A/N: This was cheerleaded by several people from start to finish, including but not limited to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thysanotus, incognito, ![[personal profile]](https://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=88)
stephanometra, and happiestwhen.
Deliverance
This crap motel is the same as the last, small and sparse, passably clean, and yesterday's cigarette smoke hangs heavily in the air. Murphy strides in first, hand on his gun. The wind wails outside, whistling in through the chinks in the walls, and Murphy kicks the heater before stretching out on the bed. The heater shakes in reply, billowing out something that smells stale and vaguely of wet dog. It's still cold. Connor tosses his mack on the chair and sinks down next to Murphy's feet.
"Chicago?" asks Connor. In the car, he fell asleep to stop-and-go-traffic and a pinkish sky fighting the steel-gray haze of Milwaukee.
"Aye," says Da. He looms in the doorway, and his cigar burns the same orange as the curtains. "I've some things to see to. Ye lads get some rest, now."
The door shuts with the soft creak of weathered hinges. Connor lights a cigarette as their elderly Sentra sputters and wheezes to life.
"Where's he get to, ye suppose?"
The question hangs there, held up by smoke and the stench from the heater. Murphy rolls toward Connor, his eyes sharp and expectant, and tucks a fist under his chin. His hair looks very dark against the worn, tan bedspread.
"Don't know," says Connor, shrugging.
Da does this sometimes, their first night in a new town. He disappears with barely a word, and returns in the morning with three coffees and their next mark. He never says where he's been, even when asked. Connor can guess now and then by how he smells -- gin and smoke means the pubs and bars, a slight hint of perfume means the street corners or skin shops -- but to Murphy, who must know everything, it's not enough.
He's a force, a presence, this man who's bound to them by blood and faith and a handful of words. Their father, if only for a year -- the eight months before he left their ma and the not-quite five since Rocco died. He's an angel, bloodied and fallen, a chiseled statue of a saint, imposing and silent in the back of a blessed church. They kill with him and they pray with him and they believe in him, but they do not know him.
Connor doesn't love him yet, and he doesn't think Murphy ever will.
†
They move slowly, bathed in flickering green neon from the launderette across the street. Murphy's kisses are molten and smoke-thick, and Connor's tongue flicks out, tracing the curve of Murphy's lower lip. The bed creaks like the old and tired thing it probably is, and their legs are a slick, sweaty tangle. It's perfect, this; Murphy's hair between his fingers, Murphy's teeth sharp and sudden at the base of his neck. Connor sighs into the press of Murphy's skin, slides truth over Murphy's hip.
He avoids Murphy's shoulder, and the smooth patch of skin he can't bear to touch. Murphy's first bullet: a blessed gift from their holy father. Connor remembers that night, and the way Murphy fought against the red press of the iron. It's been months since then, minutes and hours becoming days and weeks until Connor scarcely knows the date. That time has changed them, seared them, sainted them; the sulphur-sting of gunfire no longer burns Connor's nose, but he's tired of watching Murphy bleed.
†
Boston is cold and strange. Their flat is colder and stranger still, and Murphy lingers at the window, shrouded by unfamiliar American moonlight. It spills over him quietly, paling his skin, silvering the ink crawling across his shoulder. He shrugs into it, pushing against the foreign wind, smoke wreathing his head like a twisted halo. Connor watches because he can't not, and Murphy's hand clenches at his side. He's as naked as they day he -- no, they -- were born, and Connor's body throbs at the chill and sudden absence of Murphy's hands.
"I know what you're thinkin'," says Murphy. He doesn't turn, and his shoulders ripple against a blanket of stars.
They've not spoke of it -- this -- because it doesn't bear speaking of.
"Do ye?" asks Connor quietly.
"A course I do, ye sour fuck," replies Murphy, a pronouncement made not to Connor, but to their fire escape, and the blood-colored bricks of a dark, Boston alley. "I know ye better than ye know yeself."
Connor closes his eyes.
"Ye shouldn't--it's not--aw, fuck." He does turn then, narrowed eyes and a sharp curve of mouth. "Ye think too fuckin' much."
They're nineteen. Connor's a man grown, yet there are days when he can only find comfort in being so close to Murphy he cannot breathe. They slept like that last night -- their first night in this new and unforgiving country -- until the grey Boston sun crashed through the window. They touched then, frantic and accidental as morning peeked in on them, and again just now, naked and desperate as the moon watched. Connor is lost now, alone, wants Murphy's head under his chin and Murphy's fingers in his hair.
(Again)
"It's not like it's wrong," says Murphy. His cigarette, ignored, has burned down to the filter. "It's not--"
"It is." Connor shifts, and his rosary is heavy against his chest.
"We're not brothers, so," Murphy insists, with a slow shake of his head.
"How's that, then?"
"We're more," says Murphy. The bed dips as he sits, and his folded knee grazes Connor's thigh. "That makes it different. We're practically the same person."
†
Da found his mark because the mark found him; now a back-alley doctor is piecing the father back together, and the sons can do nothing but wait.
The pub is smoky and dark, and the tired speakers shape the music into a tuneless buzz. Connor sits at the far end of the bar, nursing a Guinness between handfuls of salted peanuts. Across the room, Murphy plays pool at a weathered table with a girl barely old enough to drink. She's pretty and pleasantly freckled, but her hair is a brassy, bottled red, and Connor finds her laugh coarse and rough. Slouched over his beer, he fiddles with his napkin and studies his hands. His nails want cutting. In the last hour he’s chewed the side of his thumb raw, and his head whips around each time the door creaks open and closed.
His eyes are heavy, and despite the peanuts, he's hungry in a way that makes him feel hollow. He craves the false security of a cheap motel room and the cold closeness of the old Boston loft. He thinks Murphy still remembers what it's like to breathe without bleeding, but they've been running so long Connor's forgotten how to stand still.
It was Murphy's idea, this hiding in plain sight. He said it would be safer, and as the wind whipped through his hair and Da limped toward an abandoned warehouse, leaning on a man who was nameless and faceless and awed, Connor could only agree.
They have been demonized, anglicized, made into inhuman things that do not eat and drink and sleep like mortal men. They are careful in the streets, heads held low and collars turned high, but people never see them, because people do not see ghosts. People expect three monsters outside brothels and crackhouses and mob hideouts -- tall in the shadows, masks dark and guns gleaming: the Devil's instruments or the silent hammers of God -- not two men paled by the fluorescent lights of a shite bar.
Murphy takes a shot, sinking the thirteen-ball with a smooth, neat stroke. He lights a cigarette, and the freckled girl frowns as the cue spirals off the rail. He leans over, lining up the nine, glancing at Connor through the soft cloud of his own smoke.
"Another?" the bartender asks.
"Aye," says Connor, grinding a peanut into dust with the butt of his lighter.
†
Murphy likes to bite; his teeth are sharp and determined against Connor's skin, leaving bruises Connor hides with his collar and pretends Da can't see. He pulls Murphy closer, twisting his fingers in the hem of Murphy's shirt. Their kisses are fast and rough, hurried things that leave Connor unable to breathe, and he wants Murphy closer still, wants to crawl inside Murphy's skin. The sink cuts a cold stripe across his arse. The roar of the pub is muted by the door, and the slow drizzle from the leaky tap is loud in the almost quiet.
Always quiet. Murphy talked once, whispering filthy things in Connor's ear between moans and bites and kisses. And he would curse when Connor touched him, frantic blasphemy hissed against the Blessed Mother. That was before, when Rocco was alive and they thought Da was dead, when they groped in the gents because they wanted to, and not because they were desperate. They live in quiet now, in venerated silence wrapped around them like a shroud. They live by their guns, and love each other in moments and handfuls.
Murphy's zipper slides down with a soft rasp. Connor wraps his hand around Murphy's cock, tries to find Murphy under the smoke and sweat and piss.
†
It's a crisp, slow morning; frost clings quietly to the windows, and Boston is not yet fully awake. The copper tang of slaughter follows Connor outside, hanging heavily in the chilly air. It's early for a break, but the foreman has locked himself in his tiny office with a stack of papers, as he always does on the last day of the month. Connor breathes in death mixed with damp asphalt. A car whizzes by, horn blaring, and Connor puffs smoke into the gray, cloud-gauzed sky.
He feels Murphy before he hears him.
"There ye are."
Connor grunts. "Where would I be, then?"
"Inside, and carvin' yer fair share of fuckin' cows," snaps Murphy. He plucks the cigarette from Connor's mouth, helps himself to a drag, and passes it back. "Cillian's lookin' for ye."
Connor glances over, but Murphy doesn't smile. His eyes are sharp. "Aye, and what for?"
"Don't know, do I?" His voice is sharp, too, and Connor retreats behind his cigarette. "She just said Cillian wants yer sorry arse in his office."
"She?"
"Jenny."
The silence is close and sudden, rising between them like a wall, and Connor frowns at his boots. They're worn, and blood has seeped into the cracks in the leather. Murphy steals his cigarette again, holding it hostage, and their cold fingers brush as Connor tries to reclaim it.
The plant hired Jenny a week ago Wednesday, to answer the phones and help with the books. She's darkly pretty, with round hips and a soft, nervous smile, and she's keen on Connor, from what Murphy says. Connor doesn't mind, so: her thick, fresh-of-the-boat lilt shimmers with salt-air and familiarity, and she's the sort of girl Connor would like, if he was wholly his own person, if he wasn't half of Murphy and Murphy wasn't half of him. Connor smiled at her yesterday -- because he remembers his first American days, and he had Murphy while Jenny has no one -- and since, Murphy's face has been edged like a knife.
"We'll go to MacGinty's tonight," says Connor. He offers Murphy the end of his smoke, which is fairly crawling with ash. "Just us, yeah?"
"Yeah." Murphy leans against the wall with a short, tight sigh. His shoulder bumps Connor's. "That's fine, then."
†
He's a husband and a father, but he's also a rapist.
(Evil man, dead man.)
Sweat darkens his brow. He falls roughly to his knees, silent and nameless, and in his thick, strong hands -- shaking now, but still the hands he used to beat and bruise and pinch and pin -- Connor sees the girl he ruined. He changed her when he shoved his way inside her, and with its quiet inefficiency, the law failed her. She was sixteen, and she killed herself this Monday last, the day a technicality put him back on the street.
"Ye know what ye did," says Da. The man's eyes are wide and wet, and Da's gun presses a hollow into his cheek. "Head down, and quietly. I don't believe ye've a soul left, but we'll pray for ye, anyhow."
Murphy spits. Connor levels his gun with Murphy's, leaning out as Da slides between them.
"And Shepherds we shall be, for thee my Lord, for thee. Power hath descended forth from Thy hand, our feet may swiftly carry out Thy commands. So we shall flow a river forth to Thee, and teeming with souls shall it ever be."
The house is strangely warm, and the (evil) man doesn't breathe.
"In Nomini Patri, et Fili."
clickclick
"et Spiritus Sancti."
The (dead) man falls. Connor closes his eyes, and the pennies slide together in his hand.
†
The kitchen is blue and white, and blood crawls across the faded linoleum as Da pulls the car around. Connor's gun is heavy. He leans back against the sideboard, shoulders slumping. Murphy folds into him, his hands at Connor's waist and his face hidden in Connor's neck, shifting until they are tangled, until they are crowded together like before they were born. Connor wants tired, salty kisses, wants to feel his brother's skin, but he knows Murphy simply wants to breathe.
Murphy's hair is soft and damp, and Connor presses his lips against the curl of Murphy's ear. They are wordless in this suspended, shriven moment, waiting for Da to break the spell with the grating bleat of the Sentra's horn. The air is red and thick; Murphy's heartbeat is loud, and the rapist watches them with dead, coppered eyes. A clock ticks, measured and hollow, and Connor can feel Murphy living.
†
Connor shivers in the blustering wind. Cloud-muted stars blanket a sky like cracked onyx, and their loft has disappeared inside a mysterious warren of still unfamiliar streets. Two weeks have come and gone; they've learned little, and they remember less -- especially now, with chilled skin and beer-warm bellies. Cursing, Connor fumbles with his cigarettes, mangling the pack with his frozen fingers. Murphy pauses on the corner, jamming his hands in the pockets of his jacket. He's strangely pale. His sigh takes shape in the frigid air, and his elbows are sharp and sudden angles.
Boston waits. A concrete and neon all-night diner separates them from the dark alley they just left behind and the darker alley Murphy insists is the way home.
"Fuck it all. We're lost," says Connor, as a crisp packet skitters past his feet. It continues up the pavement, trying and failing to include a hydrant in its dance. "Good and fuckin' lost."
"Aye," mumbles Murphy, through the bright orange flare of his lighter.
"We've been walkin' for hours," says Connor. "I'll bet you a tenner we're the next town over."
Murphy replies with a shrug, grunting toward the closed and windswept newsstand that guards the opposite corner. The moon looms, large and silver; they don't have a tenner between them. They traded the last of their pounds for the first month of the loft they can't find, and this new American money seems to spend twice as quickly.
"Ye wanna go inside?" he asks finally. Another shrug, and Connor brushes his hand over Murphy's shoulder.
A waitress hovers near the diner's window, the grimy glass framing a frown that is hard and tired and for them -- two drunk micks stumbling by in the wee hours; next they'll come in and ask for the loo, and they'll piss on the wall if she tells them no.
Connor sighs. "For what?"
"Might be warm," says Murphy, and he catches Connor's hand, pressing it against his cheek. "I've a few pence -- quarters, that is. We could have a coffee."
†
The old priest is nearly blind, and he totters away carefully, his soft voice swallowed by his slow, shuffling steps. The church is shabby, with incense buried under layers of dust; Murphy says it doesn't matter, and Connor doesn't think they can ask for more. Not now. Not ever. Their faith has denounced them, and the papers try their religion as often as they try their crimes.
Connor kneels, but he cannot close his eyes.
The saints watch from their alcoves, silent as stone and bathed in flickering candlelight. Their processional leads to the far wall, and a Christ so cloistered in shadows his face is lost and the weight of his cross looks like feathered wings. The church settles with a series of sighs, and Murphy is a statue, sculpted curves and chiseled angles. His lips don't quite move. Sunlight smashes through the stained glass and spills over his hands, washing justice in faded pinks and blues and greens.
Gloria Patri, et Fili, et Spiritus Sancti.
His rosary catches on his shirt, and the beads slip strangely over his fingers. His breath catches, trapped in the back of his throat, hitching like the whisper-click of a trigger.
Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper.
Da's leg won't heal, and he's taken a cough. They're running short on money. Murphy is. Murphy. Murphy Murphy Murphy.
et in sæcula sæculorum.
Murphy straightens, and his elbow catches Connor in the side.
"Amen."
†
(forgive me father, for I have sinned)
Murphy's tongue is warm and wet. It follows the line of Connor's jaw, slides along the stubble-rough path to Connor's ear. The booth is a small, closed space, and the wooden bench groans under the pressure of their combined weight. Murphy is in Connor's lap, knees tight against Connor's thighs. Connor stills him, trapping Murphy's face between his hands, and kisses him, lips and tongue and his thumbs tracing the curves of Murphy's cheeks.
(it's been eight years)
Connor swallows a moan, hiding the sound in Murphy's shoulder as he pulls Murphy closer by the hips. Murphy will have bruises tomorrow, blue-black brands in the shape of Connor's fingers, and Connor bites, just below the ear, because it makes Murphy shiver. Connor can't quite breathe, but he doesn't need to, not when Murphy's hands are in his hair and Murphy's hard against his belly.
(and I'm not sorry)
†
They carve the crosses themselves, guided by yellowed photograph of their father taken just weeks before they were born. Ma, who approves of the action but not the specter that drives them, mutters as she stumps inside. Her displeasure is sudden against the greenish calm of this Irish spring, and the door follows her retreat with a shriek. She's in the photo as well, young and fresh-faced and smiling, and her worn and tired apron barely covers the swell of the two boys now sitting cross-legged in the garden.
"Ye best not be cuttin' yer fool hands," she barks through the window, and her voice is whiskey-rough in the silent judgment of late afternoon. "I won't have ye bleedin' in me house."
Connor doesn't speak; she's not listening and Murphy has already made his sacrifice.
It's good wood, if a bit rough, and Connor works until his wrist aches. He can see his cross there, hidden inside the lines and curves of the grain, just as God is said to be hidden inside his heart. Murphy is next to him, sharp elbows and skinned knees that bump Connor when he breathes, and with his lower lip creased between his teeth he looks younger than his twelve years. A slight breeze disturbs the shavings piled on Connor's thigh, and Murphy hisses as he nicks himself again.
"Don't tell," says Murphy, as a new pinprick wells red and thick on his knuckle.
His crooked smile is bright against the dull Connemara sky. He sticks his bloody fingers in his mouth, and Connor tastes copper on his own tongue.
†
Another crap motel room, this time on the other side of Chicago. It's further from the freeway than Connor would like, and the furniture could've been stolen from the last. Da dozes in the chair; the vacancy sign crawls inside through the blinds, painting his body in red stripes, and his light snores cut through the television's white noise. Murphy's on his bed, belly-down between the corpse of a pizza and the gun he should be cleaning. It's too quiet. Connor sighs, and surfs the motel's handful of channels.
Reaching for his cigarettes, he pauses on the evening news.
A graying reporter is standing in the middle of a quiet, Chicago street. The house behind him is wrongly familiar. A window peeks over his shoulder, opening to a blue and white kitchen, and the remote slips from Connor's hand.
"Fuck," he says. "Ye awake, Murph? It's that fuckin' bastard we did last night."
Murphy sits up, regarding the reporter with cold, hard eyes. The reporter never falters; his damnation is careful and solemn, and Murphy growls.
"Aye, and watch these fucks wail over his rapin' body," snaps Murphy. "Dirty cunt deserved what he got, and more besides. Right?"
It's a woman now, young and small with wide, wet eyes, a widow to their cause. Her cheeks are pink and tearstained, and sobbing, she shivers. The toddler balanced on her hip -- fatherless, now -- clings to her shirt and weeps into her shoulder.
"Right."
†
The stairwell is cement and iron, and Connor's cock is so far down Murphy's throat he doesn't know how Murphy can breathe. He can't move. Murphy's hands are flat against his hips, pinning him to the wall. He remembers the first time they did this -- years ago, before they were scarred -- and how he came: eyes screwed shut, blood running down his knuckles and his fist halfway in his mouth. He watches now, watches his cock slide between Murphy's lips, and he touches, fingers brushing over every bit of Murphy he can reach.
His knees shake. Murphy's tongue swirls over him, flicking just there. The wall is cold and hard behind him, and Connor's moan is drowned out by the dull hum of the vending machine. He curses, twisting his fingers in Murphy's hair as he falls apart in Murphy's mouth. Murphy stands, and Connor pulls him close, because he needs to feel his brother's skin under his hands, needs to feel his brother at peace.
They are still. Connor can taste himself on Murphy's lips, and in that moment, everything is sacred, nothing is profane.
†
"How far are we gonna take this, Da?"
Da leans forward, hidden in the shadows and wreathed in smoke. The silence is endless. He is large. Consecrated. He is everything and nothing they imagined. He simply is.
"The question is not how far. The question is, do you possess the constitution, the depth of faith, to go as far as is needed?"
†
They believed, once.
Connor drives. The radio spits out static threaded with music, and behind them, Chicago dwindles into a distant nightmare. They've a new car and a new destination. Murphy smokes out the passenger window and stares silently at the slowly bleeding sky.
In five months, they've killed one hundred and twenty-seven men.
Da sits in the back, his eyes slitted against his smoldering cigar and his arms stretched across the seats like a crucifixion.
"The Bible says the meek shall inherit the earth," says Connor.
Murphy tosses his cigarette out the window and lights another.
"And they shall," says Da. "But I ask you, who will protect them in the meantime?"
FIN
{Movie dialogue courtesy of, well, the movie. Latin translation of the 'Glory Be' prayer courtesy of Wikipedia.}
Fandom: Boondock Saints
Pairing: Connor/Murphy
Rating: R
Words: ~3,900
Summary: They believed, once.
A/N: This was cheerleaded by several people from start to finish, including but not limited to
thysanotus, incognito, stephanometra, and happiestwhen.This crap motel is the same as the last, small and sparse, passably clean, and yesterday's cigarette smoke hangs heavily in the air. Murphy strides in first, hand on his gun. The wind wails outside, whistling in through the chinks in the walls, and Murphy kicks the heater before stretching out on the bed. The heater shakes in reply, billowing out something that smells stale and vaguely of wet dog. It's still cold. Connor tosses his mack on the chair and sinks down next to Murphy's feet.
"Chicago?" asks Connor. In the car, he fell asleep to stop-and-go-traffic and a pinkish sky fighting the steel-gray haze of Milwaukee.
"Aye," says Da. He looms in the doorway, and his cigar burns the same orange as the curtains. "I've some things to see to. Ye lads get some rest, now."
The door shuts with the soft creak of weathered hinges. Connor lights a cigarette as their elderly Sentra sputters and wheezes to life.
"Where's he get to, ye suppose?"
The question hangs there, held up by smoke and the stench from the heater. Murphy rolls toward Connor, his eyes sharp and expectant, and tucks a fist under his chin. His hair looks very dark against the worn, tan bedspread.
"Don't know," says Connor, shrugging.
Da does this sometimes, their first night in a new town. He disappears with barely a word, and returns in the morning with three coffees and their next mark. He never says where he's been, even when asked. Connor can guess now and then by how he smells -- gin and smoke means the pubs and bars, a slight hint of perfume means the street corners or skin shops -- but to Murphy, who must know everything, it's not enough.
He's a force, a presence, this man who's bound to them by blood and faith and a handful of words. Their father, if only for a year -- the eight months before he left their ma and the not-quite five since Rocco died. He's an angel, bloodied and fallen, a chiseled statue of a saint, imposing and silent in the back of a blessed church. They kill with him and they pray with him and they believe in him, but they do not know him.
Connor doesn't love him yet, and he doesn't think Murphy ever will.
†
They move slowly, bathed in flickering green neon from the launderette across the street. Murphy's kisses are molten and smoke-thick, and Connor's tongue flicks out, tracing the curve of Murphy's lower lip. The bed creaks like the old and tired thing it probably is, and their legs are a slick, sweaty tangle. It's perfect, this; Murphy's hair between his fingers, Murphy's teeth sharp and sudden at the base of his neck. Connor sighs into the press of Murphy's skin, slides truth over Murphy's hip.
He avoids Murphy's shoulder, and the smooth patch of skin he can't bear to touch. Murphy's first bullet: a blessed gift from their holy father. Connor remembers that night, and the way Murphy fought against the red press of the iron. It's been months since then, minutes and hours becoming days and weeks until Connor scarcely knows the date. That time has changed them, seared them, sainted them; the sulphur-sting of gunfire no longer burns Connor's nose, but he's tired of watching Murphy bleed.
†
Boston is cold and strange. Their flat is colder and stranger still, and Murphy lingers at the window, shrouded by unfamiliar American moonlight. It spills over him quietly, paling his skin, silvering the ink crawling across his shoulder. He shrugs into it, pushing against the foreign wind, smoke wreathing his head like a twisted halo. Connor watches because he can't not, and Murphy's hand clenches at his side. He's as naked as they day he -- no, they -- were born, and Connor's body throbs at the chill and sudden absence of Murphy's hands.
"I know what you're thinkin'," says Murphy. He doesn't turn, and his shoulders ripple against a blanket of stars.
They've not spoke of it -- this -- because it doesn't bear speaking of.
"Do ye?" asks Connor quietly.
"A course I do, ye sour fuck," replies Murphy, a pronouncement made not to Connor, but to their fire escape, and the blood-colored bricks of a dark, Boston alley. "I know ye better than ye know yeself."
Connor closes his eyes.
"Ye shouldn't--it's not--aw, fuck." He does turn then, narrowed eyes and a sharp curve of mouth. "Ye think too fuckin' much."
They're nineteen. Connor's a man grown, yet there are days when he can only find comfort in being so close to Murphy he cannot breathe. They slept like that last night -- their first night in this new and unforgiving country -- until the grey Boston sun crashed through the window. They touched then, frantic and accidental as morning peeked in on them, and again just now, naked and desperate as the moon watched. Connor is lost now, alone, wants Murphy's head under his chin and Murphy's fingers in his hair.
(Again)
"It's not like it's wrong," says Murphy. His cigarette, ignored, has burned down to the filter. "It's not--"
"It is." Connor shifts, and his rosary is heavy against his chest.
"We're not brothers, so," Murphy insists, with a slow shake of his head.
"How's that, then?"
"We're more," says Murphy. The bed dips as he sits, and his folded knee grazes Connor's thigh. "That makes it different. We're practically the same person."
†
Da found his mark because the mark found him; now a back-alley doctor is piecing the father back together, and the sons can do nothing but wait.
The pub is smoky and dark, and the tired speakers shape the music into a tuneless buzz. Connor sits at the far end of the bar, nursing a Guinness between handfuls of salted peanuts. Across the room, Murphy plays pool at a weathered table with a girl barely old enough to drink. She's pretty and pleasantly freckled, but her hair is a brassy, bottled red, and Connor finds her laugh coarse and rough. Slouched over his beer, he fiddles with his napkin and studies his hands. His nails want cutting. In the last hour he’s chewed the side of his thumb raw, and his head whips around each time the door creaks open and closed.
His eyes are heavy, and despite the peanuts, he's hungry in a way that makes him feel hollow. He craves the false security of a cheap motel room and the cold closeness of the old Boston loft. He thinks Murphy still remembers what it's like to breathe without bleeding, but they've been running so long Connor's forgotten how to stand still.
It was Murphy's idea, this hiding in plain sight. He said it would be safer, and as the wind whipped through his hair and Da limped toward an abandoned warehouse, leaning on a man who was nameless and faceless and awed, Connor could only agree.
They have been demonized, anglicized, made into inhuman things that do not eat and drink and sleep like mortal men. They are careful in the streets, heads held low and collars turned high, but people never see them, because people do not see ghosts. People expect three monsters outside brothels and crackhouses and mob hideouts -- tall in the shadows, masks dark and guns gleaming: the Devil's instruments or the silent hammers of God -- not two men paled by the fluorescent lights of a shite bar.
Murphy takes a shot, sinking the thirteen-ball with a smooth, neat stroke. He lights a cigarette, and the freckled girl frowns as the cue spirals off the rail. He leans over, lining up the nine, glancing at Connor through the soft cloud of his own smoke.
"Another?" the bartender asks.
"Aye," says Connor, grinding a peanut into dust with the butt of his lighter.
†
Murphy likes to bite; his teeth are sharp and determined against Connor's skin, leaving bruises Connor hides with his collar and pretends Da can't see. He pulls Murphy closer, twisting his fingers in the hem of Murphy's shirt. Their kisses are fast and rough, hurried things that leave Connor unable to breathe, and he wants Murphy closer still, wants to crawl inside Murphy's skin. The sink cuts a cold stripe across his arse. The roar of the pub is muted by the door, and the slow drizzle from the leaky tap is loud in the almost quiet.
Always quiet. Murphy talked once, whispering filthy things in Connor's ear between moans and bites and kisses. And he would curse when Connor touched him, frantic blasphemy hissed against the Blessed Mother. That was before, when Rocco was alive and they thought Da was dead, when they groped in the gents because they wanted to, and not because they were desperate. They live in quiet now, in venerated silence wrapped around them like a shroud. They live by their guns, and love each other in moments and handfuls.
Murphy's zipper slides down with a soft rasp. Connor wraps his hand around Murphy's cock, tries to find Murphy under the smoke and sweat and piss.
†
It's a crisp, slow morning; frost clings quietly to the windows, and Boston is not yet fully awake. The copper tang of slaughter follows Connor outside, hanging heavily in the chilly air. It's early for a break, but the foreman has locked himself in his tiny office with a stack of papers, as he always does on the last day of the month. Connor breathes in death mixed with damp asphalt. A car whizzes by, horn blaring, and Connor puffs smoke into the gray, cloud-gauzed sky.
He feels Murphy before he hears him.
"There ye are."
Connor grunts. "Where would I be, then?"
"Inside, and carvin' yer fair share of fuckin' cows," snaps Murphy. He plucks the cigarette from Connor's mouth, helps himself to a drag, and passes it back. "Cillian's lookin' for ye."
Connor glances over, but Murphy doesn't smile. His eyes are sharp. "Aye, and what for?"
"Don't know, do I?" His voice is sharp, too, and Connor retreats behind his cigarette. "She just said Cillian wants yer sorry arse in his office."
"She?"
"Jenny."
The silence is close and sudden, rising between them like a wall, and Connor frowns at his boots. They're worn, and blood has seeped into the cracks in the leather. Murphy steals his cigarette again, holding it hostage, and their cold fingers brush as Connor tries to reclaim it.
The plant hired Jenny a week ago Wednesday, to answer the phones and help with the books. She's darkly pretty, with round hips and a soft, nervous smile, and she's keen on Connor, from what Murphy says. Connor doesn't mind, so: her thick, fresh-of-the-boat lilt shimmers with salt-air and familiarity, and she's the sort of girl Connor would like, if he was wholly his own person, if he wasn't half of Murphy and Murphy wasn't half of him. Connor smiled at her yesterday -- because he remembers his first American days, and he had Murphy while Jenny has no one -- and since, Murphy's face has been edged like a knife.
"We'll go to MacGinty's tonight," says Connor. He offers Murphy the end of his smoke, which is fairly crawling with ash. "Just us, yeah?"
"Yeah." Murphy leans against the wall with a short, tight sigh. His shoulder bumps Connor's. "That's fine, then."
†
He's a husband and a father, but he's also a rapist.
(Evil man, dead man.)
Sweat darkens his brow. He falls roughly to his knees, silent and nameless, and in his thick, strong hands -- shaking now, but still the hands he used to beat and bruise and pinch and pin -- Connor sees the girl he ruined. He changed her when he shoved his way inside her, and with its quiet inefficiency, the law failed her. She was sixteen, and she killed herself this Monday last, the day a technicality put him back on the street.
"Ye know what ye did," says Da. The man's eyes are wide and wet, and Da's gun presses a hollow into his cheek. "Head down, and quietly. I don't believe ye've a soul left, but we'll pray for ye, anyhow."
Murphy spits. Connor levels his gun with Murphy's, leaning out as Da slides between them.
"And Shepherds we shall be, for thee my Lord, for thee. Power hath descended forth from Thy hand, our feet may swiftly carry out Thy commands. So we shall flow a river forth to Thee, and teeming with souls shall it ever be."
The house is strangely warm, and the (evil) man doesn't breathe.
"In Nomini Patri, et Fili."
clickclick
"et Spiritus Sancti."
The (dead) man falls. Connor closes his eyes, and the pennies slide together in his hand.
†
The kitchen is blue and white, and blood crawls across the faded linoleum as Da pulls the car around. Connor's gun is heavy. He leans back against the sideboard, shoulders slumping. Murphy folds into him, his hands at Connor's waist and his face hidden in Connor's neck, shifting until they are tangled, until they are crowded together like before they were born. Connor wants tired, salty kisses, wants to feel his brother's skin, but he knows Murphy simply wants to breathe.
Murphy's hair is soft and damp, and Connor presses his lips against the curl of Murphy's ear. They are wordless in this suspended, shriven moment, waiting for Da to break the spell with the grating bleat of the Sentra's horn. The air is red and thick; Murphy's heartbeat is loud, and the rapist watches them with dead, coppered eyes. A clock ticks, measured and hollow, and Connor can feel Murphy living.
†
Connor shivers in the blustering wind. Cloud-muted stars blanket a sky like cracked onyx, and their loft has disappeared inside a mysterious warren of still unfamiliar streets. Two weeks have come and gone; they've learned little, and they remember less -- especially now, with chilled skin and beer-warm bellies. Cursing, Connor fumbles with his cigarettes, mangling the pack with his frozen fingers. Murphy pauses on the corner, jamming his hands in the pockets of his jacket. He's strangely pale. His sigh takes shape in the frigid air, and his elbows are sharp and sudden angles.
Boston waits. A concrete and neon all-night diner separates them from the dark alley they just left behind and the darker alley Murphy insists is the way home.
"Fuck it all. We're lost," says Connor, as a crisp packet skitters past his feet. It continues up the pavement, trying and failing to include a hydrant in its dance. "Good and fuckin' lost."
"Aye," mumbles Murphy, through the bright orange flare of his lighter.
"We've been walkin' for hours," says Connor. "I'll bet you a tenner we're the next town over."
Murphy replies with a shrug, grunting toward the closed and windswept newsstand that guards the opposite corner. The moon looms, large and silver; they don't have a tenner between them. They traded the last of their pounds for the first month of the loft they can't find, and this new American money seems to spend twice as quickly.
"Ye wanna go inside?" he asks finally. Another shrug, and Connor brushes his hand over Murphy's shoulder.
A waitress hovers near the diner's window, the grimy glass framing a frown that is hard and tired and for them -- two drunk micks stumbling by in the wee hours; next they'll come in and ask for the loo, and they'll piss on the wall if she tells them no.
Connor sighs. "For what?"
"Might be warm," says Murphy, and he catches Connor's hand, pressing it against his cheek. "I've a few pence -- quarters, that is. We could have a coffee."
†
The old priest is nearly blind, and he totters away carefully, his soft voice swallowed by his slow, shuffling steps. The church is shabby, with incense buried under layers of dust; Murphy says it doesn't matter, and Connor doesn't think they can ask for more. Not now. Not ever. Their faith has denounced them, and the papers try their religion as often as they try their crimes.
Connor kneels, but he cannot close his eyes.
The saints watch from their alcoves, silent as stone and bathed in flickering candlelight. Their processional leads to the far wall, and a Christ so cloistered in shadows his face is lost and the weight of his cross looks like feathered wings. The church settles with a series of sighs, and Murphy is a statue, sculpted curves and chiseled angles. His lips don't quite move. Sunlight smashes through the stained glass and spills over his hands, washing justice in faded pinks and blues and greens.
Gloria Patri, et Fili, et Spiritus Sancti.
His rosary catches on his shirt, and the beads slip strangely over his fingers. His breath catches, trapped in the back of his throat, hitching like the whisper-click of a trigger.
Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper.
Da's leg won't heal, and he's taken a cough. They're running short on money. Murphy is. Murphy. Murphy Murphy Murphy.
et in sæcula sæculorum.
Murphy straightens, and his elbow catches Connor in the side.
"Amen."
†
(forgive me father, for I have sinned)
Murphy's tongue is warm and wet. It follows the line of Connor's jaw, slides along the stubble-rough path to Connor's ear. The booth is a small, closed space, and the wooden bench groans under the pressure of their combined weight. Murphy is in Connor's lap, knees tight against Connor's thighs. Connor stills him, trapping Murphy's face between his hands, and kisses him, lips and tongue and his thumbs tracing the curves of Murphy's cheeks.
(it's been eight years)
Connor swallows a moan, hiding the sound in Murphy's shoulder as he pulls Murphy closer by the hips. Murphy will have bruises tomorrow, blue-black brands in the shape of Connor's fingers, and Connor bites, just below the ear, because it makes Murphy shiver. Connor can't quite breathe, but he doesn't need to, not when Murphy's hands are in his hair and Murphy's hard against his belly.
(and I'm not sorry)
†
They carve the crosses themselves, guided by yellowed photograph of their father taken just weeks before they were born. Ma, who approves of the action but not the specter that drives them, mutters as she stumps inside. Her displeasure is sudden against the greenish calm of this Irish spring, and the door follows her retreat with a shriek. She's in the photo as well, young and fresh-faced and smiling, and her worn and tired apron barely covers the swell of the two boys now sitting cross-legged in the garden.
"Ye best not be cuttin' yer fool hands," she barks through the window, and her voice is whiskey-rough in the silent judgment of late afternoon. "I won't have ye bleedin' in me house."
Connor doesn't speak; she's not listening and Murphy has already made his sacrifice.
It's good wood, if a bit rough, and Connor works until his wrist aches. He can see his cross there, hidden inside the lines and curves of the grain, just as God is said to be hidden inside his heart. Murphy is next to him, sharp elbows and skinned knees that bump Connor when he breathes, and with his lower lip creased between his teeth he looks younger than his twelve years. A slight breeze disturbs the shavings piled on Connor's thigh, and Murphy hisses as he nicks himself again.
"Don't tell," says Murphy, as a new pinprick wells red and thick on his knuckle.
His crooked smile is bright against the dull Connemara sky. He sticks his bloody fingers in his mouth, and Connor tastes copper on his own tongue.
†
Another crap motel room, this time on the other side of Chicago. It's further from the freeway than Connor would like, and the furniture could've been stolen from the last. Da dozes in the chair; the vacancy sign crawls inside through the blinds, painting his body in red stripes, and his light snores cut through the television's white noise. Murphy's on his bed, belly-down between the corpse of a pizza and the gun he should be cleaning. It's too quiet. Connor sighs, and surfs the motel's handful of channels.
Reaching for his cigarettes, he pauses on the evening news.
A graying reporter is standing in the middle of a quiet, Chicago street. The house behind him is wrongly familiar. A window peeks over his shoulder, opening to a blue and white kitchen, and the remote slips from Connor's hand.
"Fuck," he says. "Ye awake, Murph? It's that fuckin' bastard we did last night."
Murphy sits up, regarding the reporter with cold, hard eyes. The reporter never falters; his damnation is careful and solemn, and Murphy growls.
"Aye, and watch these fucks wail over his rapin' body," snaps Murphy. "Dirty cunt deserved what he got, and more besides. Right?"
It's a woman now, young and small with wide, wet eyes, a widow to their cause. Her cheeks are pink and tearstained, and sobbing, she shivers. The toddler balanced on her hip -- fatherless, now -- clings to her shirt and weeps into her shoulder.
"Right."
†
The stairwell is cement and iron, and Connor's cock is so far down Murphy's throat he doesn't know how Murphy can breathe. He can't move. Murphy's hands are flat against his hips, pinning him to the wall. He remembers the first time they did this -- years ago, before they were scarred -- and how he came: eyes screwed shut, blood running down his knuckles and his fist halfway in his mouth. He watches now, watches his cock slide between Murphy's lips, and he touches, fingers brushing over every bit of Murphy he can reach.
His knees shake. Murphy's tongue swirls over him, flicking just there. The wall is cold and hard behind him, and Connor's moan is drowned out by the dull hum of the vending machine. He curses, twisting his fingers in Murphy's hair as he falls apart in Murphy's mouth. Murphy stands, and Connor pulls him close, because he needs to feel his brother's skin under his hands, needs to feel his brother at peace.
They are still. Connor can taste himself on Murphy's lips, and in that moment, everything is sacred, nothing is profane.
†
"How far are we gonna take this, Da?"
Da leans forward, hidden in the shadows and wreathed in smoke. The silence is endless. He is large. Consecrated. He is everything and nothing they imagined. He simply is.
"The question is not how far. The question is, do you possess the constitution, the depth of faith, to go as far as is needed?"
†
They believed, once.
Connor drives. The radio spits out static threaded with music, and behind them, Chicago dwindles into a distant nightmare. They've a new car and a new destination. Murphy smokes out the passenger window and stares silently at the slowly bleeding sky.
In five months, they've killed one hundred and twenty-seven men.
Da sits in the back, his eyes slitted against his smoldering cigar and his arms stretched across the seats like a crucifixion.
"The Bible says the meek shall inherit the earth," says Connor.
Murphy tosses his cigarette out the window and lights another.
"And they shall," says Da. "But I ask you, who will protect them in the meantime?"
{Movie dialogue courtesy of, well, the movie. Latin translation of the 'Glory Be' prayer courtesy of Wikipedia.}