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Papa Emeritus il Quinto , his diary read, next to the time of two-thirty in the afternoon.
At one o’clock, Copia was hit full force with the memory of how difficult those words had been to write. He gazed at his handwriting on the page, studying the way the pen had pressed too firmly into thin paper and bulged through to the other side. He’d written it with such care to steady his hand that the end result looked unnaturally neat; nothing like the casual, down-to-business events listed on the rest of the spread that made him, at the very least, appear like he had it together.
His diary usually lay open on his desk. Copia shut it today and secured the rarely-used elastic around its covers, in case somebody came across this next obligation and saw through the stiff letters into how he really felt about it.
The diary was a resurrected habit, one he’d had to re-incorporate into his routine after the promotion. A Cardinal had duties to attend to in a timely manner; Papa could get away with foregoing timeliness, and it was hardly necessary on tour. Frater Imperator had been reminded that the very walls of the Ministry would metaphorically crumble if he failed to get his act together. Copia glared at the cover, as though the object itself was what tethered him here, demanding his presence when he would rather be anywhere else.
One oh-two. He was dressed in his freshly pressed suit, an ironed shirt, and the rubies that his father insisted were overkill. He’d already put on his shoes—something he’d usually leave until he was making his way out the door. They were triple-knotted like he used to tie them as a child.
The walk to the doors would take seven minutes—he’d round that up to ten to be safe. This meant he had time to kill with nothing to do that would serve as an adequate distraction. It had been this way since he’d woken at the crack of dawn; he’d left the rest of the day free to give himself a chance to prepare, but when it came about he found himself wishing for something to occupy that time. A lie-in would have been a good idea, had he been capable this morning. Today of all days, hm?
The dream from the night before hadn’t left him. Though the details had become muddied, he’d retained that feeling of suffocating wrongness since the moment he woke from it. He’d dragged himself into bed once the aftermath had been cleaned up, but despite his aching exhaustion, sleep hadn’t come. Every time he shut his eyes, he could feel the world the dream had painted. His fear of a recurrence kept him awake and the lingering adrenaline just made it worse. Still, he tried not to think too hard about it—who was he to trust an omen?
Perhaps he should discuss it with somebody; it was—had been—his job to facilitate that kind of thing. Copia knew better than most how a conversation could bring clarity and solitude would deepen one’s fears. It was an issue, then, that he hadn’t spoken to a soul since yesterday evening (a soul. Ha). He’d sought to preserve his energy for this meeting, avoiding all social engagements that would drain his limited capacity for conversion. The health bar of his communication capabilities was shortening. It had always been changeable, dependent on whatever the Gods decided on a particular day, but he’d noticed a trend of decline since… well.
He didn’t like to think about it.
His need for distraction swelled and triumphed. He had to be somewhere else. Copia pushed away from his desk and made for the door, straightening his suit jacket one last time before releasing the bolt and stepping out into the corridor. He set off in a direction he hadn’t premeditated but knew was right from the moment he reached the top of a spiralling set of stairs.
Rather, she was right. And he knew where she’d be—she had a routine.
The walls of the staircase didn’t have a handrail, so he let his gloved palm brush across the stone to steady himself. The lack of sleep and the winding descent were making him dizzy. The jewels that adorned his jacket bounced against his chest on every step; he would have pressed his hand to it to make it stop, if he hadn’t been preoccupied trying not to fall. Ironic, he thought, as he took each stair with caution, that his lifelong home had become something treacherous just as he became its master.
Copia had to pause at the bottom to catch his breath. Must be getting old.
The rest of the journey to the basement halls was spent in a daze; he walked as if his feet were not his own. He floated on his weariness, swept along by desperation. As the light dimmed and the air cooled, his waking steps became another dream. He didn’t have to focus to remind himself of the route to take; this was the path he’d take to rehearsals, after all.
Muted piano music sung through the corridor. He recognised the composer, and the distinctive way the pianist paused on a mistake and went back to the beginning of the bar, repeating the section until her mistake was a thing of the past. Her hands were confident, so perfectly in time that he’d once asked if Ghouls could hallucinate a metronome.
Copia neared the door of the practice room the music came from; he’d expected a sense of peace on finding what he’d looked for, but peace was something he wasn’t allowed nowadays. He stood outside the door and fiddled with his cuffs, taking a couple of deep breaths and trying to let the music calm him. He had never once been nervous to see her. His trepidation was as new and ill-fitting as his—
The door opened with a click that made him start. The jewelled cross jingled.
“I could smell you loitering,” she said, with a smile from underneath the mask.
They hadn’t received their new uniforms yet. Copia gazed at black glass, spotting her shadowed eyes beneath it, and wondered how many more times he’d have this same view of them.
He cleared his throat. “What happened to hello ?”
The Ghoul gave him a hello wave with complete sincerity. “Coming in?” she asked, gesturing back into the room. “I’m not doing anything important. And even if I was, it would be less important than Frater Imperator.”
She turned away to hold the door open for him, too soon to catch his grimace.
“Thank you,” he said, swallowing a dismissal. He stepped in and touched her firmly on her side—a better greeting to the Ghouls than anything verbal. She responded with a faint chirp and pressed her helmet into his shoulder. Copia gave it a pat. “This really isn’t important?”
“No. Promise.”
The Ghoul shut the door behind them both and walked back to the piano stool. She’d taken off her shoes and freed her tail from her trousers, letting it swish from side to side, brushing Copia’s thigh as she walked past. She wouldn’t have realised it was doing that.
Copia sat in a large, threadbare armchair next to the piano, perched on the edge, one leg bouncing, watching her shuffle sheet music into a neater pile. “It’s not, uh—practice?”
“Practice for the next…?”
“Mm-hm.”
“Oh, no. We haven’t been given anything.” She deposited the music on top of the piano and turned on the stool to face him. “I thought that would come from you.”
Copia sighed and shrugged, holding up his hands. “You know as much as I do, by the sounds of it.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah.”
“Odd.”
“I know.”
“Aren’t you going to be meeting—?”
“Mm. Yep. Ah, soon. Yeah.”
The Ghoul looked at him with sudden intensity. They did that, sometimes—it had taken him a while to grow used to those searching stares. It hadn’t bothered him since long before his ascension, but today, he had to stamp out the urge to squirm.
Copia cleared his throat again.
“Are you alright, Pa-Frater?”
“Don’t—” he broke himself off, shutting his eyes against his knee-jerk irritation. “Sorry. Please.” He swallowed, looking for more words, but all that came to mind was stop .
“Um. Sorry.”
“No, no, no… ah, I’m sorry.” He squeezed his palms together, an alternative habit to putting his face in his hands. He’d developed it after he earned the full makeup.
“Would you rather I not ask?”
“No, it’s—the name. Title. Thingy,” he said, waving a hand. “Not quite used to it yet.”
The Ghoul tilted her head to one side. “What should I call you? I don’t think we’re allowed Papa anymore.”
Copia’s chest hurt. “You’ve been told that?”
She nodded. “It was in the Ghoul’s monthly newsletter.”
“The old man is still Papa ,” he grumbled. “I don’t see why I cannot also be too.”
The Ghoul was still staring, too preoccupied to indulge him in his complaint. She tipped her head to the other side, her tail brushing slowly across the flagstones. Her chest rose like she was taking a deep breath in. To smell him, most likely.
Copia ached to dispel her concerns with a thousand stuttered words, but tiredness won out. He sat in the heavy silence and let her see without any attempt to obscure it. Wasn’t that what he’d come here for?
The Ghoul stood from the stool without warning; she’d reached her conclusions. She stepped in front of him with intent.
“Budge. Please?”
There was such comfort in obedience. He shuffled over to one side of the armchair and she didn’t hesitate to slide in next to him. It was just about large enough for both of them, though they were squeezed together from shoulder to thigh. She put one arm around him, then the other, and pulled him into a side-on hug, as secure as the embrace of any Ghoul, growing tighter by the second. A rumble in her chest made him start to shake.
This was not enough.
He shrugged off her arms, feeling a twinge of guilt at the confused chirp as she loosened her hold. He pushed off the chair but turned to face her, putting one knee on the seat—she caught on fast, shuffling into the centre so he could bring his other knee up next to her hip and straddle her. He sat into her lap and leaned close, ignoring how his joints protested, throwing himself at her like he’d wanted to do since he’d heard her music.
His arms circled her neck; she hugged around his waist and pulled him closer. She squeezed him, rocking slightly from side to side, then stilled without letting go. As much as he revelled in the strength of her hold, he could not bring himself to relax. His muscles remained tense and his hands still trembled. The Ghoul’s uncertainty began to show; she shifted as if to lean back and talk to him, but he clung on with childlike stubbornness, pushing down his shame. He rarely fell into this state so fast, and he could do nothing to reign it back in. Restraint was falling away from him in shreds.
“What’s going on?” she asked, unnaturally cautious. “Has something happened?”
He shook his head against her shoulder, aware of the immaturity of it. “Just tired. There’s no need to worry.”
The lie fell thick and fast to shroud them both in apprehension.
The Ghoul squeezed him again and he felt her take a measured breath. Her chest was pressed up against his; as Ghouls tended to do when alone, she’d forgone the bra.
Excellent. That would make it easier.
“Why are you tired?” she asked, with such gentle concern that it made his stomach ache.
She began to stroke up and down his back with one hand, and all of a sudden, honesty was his only choice.
“Bad dream,” he murmured.
“Oh. That’s not good.” Her hand stilled at his shoulder whilst her thumb rubbed small circles into it. “Do you know why it happened?”
Copia laughed, then cringed at how strained it sounded. “Why does it ever, eh?”
His memories of the dream now were colours and shapes and suffocating wrongness. He shuddered, and she held him tighter.
“It’s all a bit much,” he added, his voice going high at the end. He couldn’t talk about this. Speaking made it real—the weight of the Clergy pressing back down on him with urgency and demand—and he’d come here to forget. “Ghoul.”
“What can I do?”
Copia angled his head against her shoulder and kissed a spot on her neck below the mask, where her collar had slipped and a patch of grey skin peeked through.
I need your help , he should have said. I need it all to disappear.
He kissed her neck again, light and drawn-out; the Ghoul nuzzled into him with a soothing purr. Her fingers spread out on his back, reminding him with a rush of sudden arousal of the strength of such a creature—and how delicate he was under her palms.
Copia adjusted his stance and ground his crotch down into her thigh. She tensed at the press of his still-soft dick through his trousers, and he caught her questioning noise over the ringing in his ears.
I need to lose control .
“How long do you have?”
“Long enough,” he gasped.
“Wait—” she said, and his heart stung. But the Ghoul just reached for his shoulders and started to push off his jacket; he shrugged it off the rest of the way, letting her catch it before it fell. She lifted the jewelled chain over his head and draped it all on the arm of the chair, uncharacteristically careful.
Copia’s shirt was tighter than he was used to, tailored too precisely from thin cotton. Tucked into his waistband—which was no longer elasticated, like the trousers he’d wear onstage, or the ones he’d choose himself—it framed his stomach and made it something prominent.
His reaction was to cover it. He disguised the movement as reaching for her breasts, rolling his thumbs over the fabric, feeling her nipples grow hard beneath it. The Ghoul’s tail flickered and thumped on the floor, an expression of arousal that Copia knew well. The hum from her chest made the hairs on his arms stand on end.
“Come here,” she growled, and put her hands on his back again.
The Ghoul dragged her touch down until she reached his ass. She grabbed it, pulling him further into her. Her strong grip lifted his hips, making him sit up so that his stomach was front and centre—she moved to hold his sides and he squirmed.
“I—wait.”
“Hm?”
“Uh—” Copia fumbled with his waistband, trying without hope to force it to contain a little more of what protruded over the edge. The belt dug in. She sat at the perfect angle to see —
“Never bothered you before,” she said, reading him like a book.
And he looked down into her masked eyes with the realisation that, no, it hadn’t. Many things had not bothered him before. He shook his head, half in agreement, half as an expression of I don’t understand .
Now was not the time, and the Ghoul knew that. She moved before Copia could speak, hooking her hands under his arms and lifting him off her knees. His belly lurched. She set him on his feet and stood up in front of him, then he was being pushed back, the front of her body pressed against his, swept up in her direction.
They were eye-to-eye and his stomach wasn’t hunched. This was a soothing gesture, disguised as domination. Part of him wished she had ripped his buttons and exposed him like a wound.
She pushed him until the piano hit the back of his thighs. He lost his balance and the keys rung out in a deep, discordant cry that bounced off the walls of the basement room. The Ghoul kept the closeness between them and craned her neck upwards, the slip of bare skin drawing him in again. He took the invitation and grabbed her shoulders to reach it, letting his teeth rake across her; he’d see the mark he left, if he hadn’t shut his eyes.
The breaths she let out, heaving against his chest, spoke their approval.
“Touch me,” she told him. “Earn this.”
His cock jumped and he obeyed. His gloved hands crept under the hem of her trousers, sliding across hair, his gentle press growing stronger as she moaned. He circled his fingers and willed his arm to stay steady. She pushed her hips forward, insisting, seeking him out whilst he fought to lose himself in her.
“Good boy,” she gasped out, her rhythmic movement pinning him against the piano, half-sitting, with her hands on his shoulder and the small of his back.
Copia couldn’t quite seem to match her thrusts.
“Ghoul.” His voice, alongside hers, was a whimper.
A hand moved from his shoulder to the back of his head. Her claws had come out, one of them brushing cold against his neck, scraping across the rim of his collar. Her tail curled around his calf.
“I know. Focus on me.”
He would have let her consume him.
But Copia was only half-hard; frantic now to feel something, he pressed his crotch into the back of his arm that still stroked her clit, mouthing at her neck again as he tried to diminish whatever space was left between them. The Ghoul moaned at the heightened pressure, but she shook him off as if he weighed nothing.
“Pathetic, Papa ,” she hissed.
The Ghoul was more engulfed by this fantasy than he was. But mercy lay below her demanding facade, so she put one leg forward and tugged him back in. He slotted his legs around her thigh, his hips jerking into it, grinding with his face buried in the crook of her neck. His hand in her trousers had gone limp. His cock filled at a dizzying pace, leaving him lightheaded and panting, and finally, with breathless moans and aching guts, he’d reached the arousal that made him weak.
“Oh, there he is,” she teased. “What took you so long?”
Her words made him spurt enough pre-come to soak a patch in his boxers. Copia whined against her.
“Usually dripping for me from the moment you walk through the door—”
He froze and clenched his legs around her thigh; he was too close, too soon—
“I can smell how wet you are,” the Ghoul said, close enough to his ear to make him shudder. “Behave yourself and wait for me.”
She slapped the back of his thigh, making him slip, and he crossed his legs with a panicked whimper.
“Finish the job,” she commanded.
She thrust her hips into his hand, and the brush of his arm against his crotch was enough.
He came all at once, wet heat flooding his underwear with a stinging suddenness. He cried out, falling into the Ghoul and burying his face in her chest, his legs feeling as though they could give out from under him.
“Oh,” she muttered.
In that moment of release he felt torn open. He could not help but bleed.
Shallow breaths deepened into a sob; tears burned behind his eyelids. His cheeks warmed as the spend between his thighs cooled. His hand left her waistband and grasped at the fabric on her hip, clawing for purchase, gripping onto her like she could draw him out of it.
“Hey—it’s alright.” Her voice had lost every hint of command. “We’re stopping. You’re okay.”
“I didn’t—didn’t mean to—”
“I know; it happens. I’m not upset. Frater? Uh… Papa? Can you look at me?”
Copia tried to take a step back; absurdly, the piano rang out again. Its sharp, grating notes shocked a laugh from him. The Ghoul must have thought it was a sob because she took him in her arms, enveloping him until he was aware of nothing but the chest he cried into.
She stayed silent for as long as she could. Through his tears, he felt her chest tense with unspoken words then fall when she held them back. Copia’s mind raced with what he could say to her if she asked what was wrong.
He could tell her how many times somebody had said to him, you’re not alone , when the truth was that he’d never known loneliness like this. He could list what was required of him that he didn’t understand. If she asked, he should explain how much lay solely in his hands, and how just the thought of this was enough to send him spiralling somewhere he couldn’t drag himself back from.
He’d talk about the moment he’d tried so hard to put off, just for another hour. How, no matter the reassurances from someone who nobody else could see, he could not dull the stab of replacement. His safety may have been ensured to him, but words were nothing against a paranoia that was years in the making.
It feels like I can’t breathe , he’d say.
“Papa,” she whispered, when she could contain it no longer.
All he could do was shake his head.
Afterwards, his apologies were brushed off like the paint she wiped from her shirt. She smuggled him paper towels from the cleaner’s closet down the hall, for the many purposes he had of them, and helped straighten his clothes when he panicked at the time on his pocket watch.
“He’ll love you,” she said, and Copia walked from the room without another word lest he break again.