Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ Lies, Crimes, and Punishments ❯ Confrontation ( Chapter 9 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

The attic of the church was surprisingly temperate. Izzy found a broom and swept a space away on the worn floorboards and Ken laid down, draping his long coat around them both.
And they simply laid there like that, watching the dust gather on the massive bells and the last sunlight filter through the vents and the white pigeons gather on the rafters and preen themselves. It was a sorrow that filled them in their contentment and Ken felt the first shade of the merest tremblings of shame when he looked over into the auburn haired dove's face, and saw what should've been nothing but pastoral joy shaken by so many things. The newest: merely Ken's actions and words.
The jade in his eyes took away from Ken's happiness and made him half sit up, leaning over the priest's frame, sorrowful kisses falling against the pulse in his neck.
"Ken, Ken, please don't. Don't spoil a point of unsoiled bliss with your obtrusive horniness."
The man in question pulled back, confused and worried. "Koush, I planned on doing no such thing. I just-" His eyes peeled away from the contact with his love's and he slowly moved back to where he lay before, properly chastised. "I'm sorry."

In some matters the silence was calming. It meant that there were no more harsh things to say and that being together meant more than anything else at the moment.
At every moment.
Love is a stupid, fickle thing and it made both men fall into a space in their heads where nothing made sense, priorities and fealty turned backwards and inside out. And through the barely ignorable scratching worry in each one's conscience, the desire to stay where they were and spoil the day away in sloth made so much more sense.

Voices came through the pine boards. Through their warmth to ruin and slaughter their plans. "Father Izumi?" But they were so far below, down in the pews perhaps, searching for a priest that would never be found. Several voices muddled their way through the levels of the church so that the words were unclear and mattered very little. Ken nuzzled his face under Izzy's ear.
"I think you're being hailed, dear Father." He sighed into the earlobe and sucked it between his teeth. "More than one person wants your company." And rolled his tongue across it, wetting the surface and making Koushiro's stomach muscles concrete for a moment. "Who's going to be blessed with your presence?"
So incorrigible. Izzy was tempted to glare sternly at him and warn him to stop kidding around, but he couldn't. Ken knew his buttons and a careless smile broke over his mouth, despite all that had passed between them. He was going to return the affection and suck at the pale flesh at the base of the evil man's throat, but there were footfalls on the stairs.
Feet.
Ken didn't even have time to release Izzy's soft ear as the door opened, one voice mildly protesting 'no, he couldn't be up here'. The other turning the knob and pushing.

The shadowy doorway framed Father Achikawa, swallowing his own words and his shock. Izzy froze where he lay, cowering and very vulnerable, two of his three biggest secrets spilling out and slapping him in the face.
"Father?" came the high, frightened voice of Achikawa, his pride secretly wounded, seeing his fellow brother lying in quickly fleeing contentment with another man. Another man. His personal wounds and rejection ran far, far away, shouldering instead the disguise of the wounded soldier for Christ.
"Izumi. What's the meaning of this?!"
The other figure in the doorway said far less. The blonde spikes of Shinseki stood out from the shadows, made his mouth that much easier to focus on.

'So that's why he didn't want anything to do with you', his internal voice said. That's why he turned me down at my apartment. The priest has two lovers. The dismissal and denial took a sharp stab and turned his shock into unbridled anger. Who was this dark haired man? He'd seen him before at Barnard's and now it all made screaming sense. His mouth, which Ken focused on as he tried to sit up, formed three silent words.
"I'll kill you."

Now it was all too open. Now it was all too raw. Izzy quickly pulled himself to his feet, forgetting Ken, brushing the dust off his cassock. "This?" He squeaked out. "This is-" tears squeezed out his eyes. What he had been hiding for so long. His shame, his betrayal to his third family. His failure to do a few simple things.
Like not lie.
Like not lust.
Like not fornicate.
"This is all my fault. Forgive me father, for I have sinned." He dropped to his knees in front of Achikawa, grasping his rosary beads and mumbling fervent prayers to God and Mary for absolution.
Abe stared straight ahead, glaring, never taking his eyes off of Ken. He took one slow step forward and Ken jumped to his feet, sensing the determination in the detective's eyes.
"And you are?" Ken asked it softly and warily, but knowing full well what was coming.
"Your end."
Shinseki launched himself at the black haired man, the thief. One right fist landed heavily on his jaw, sending his head flying back and his brain sizzling. Before he could react, Shinseki grabbed a handful of jacket and pried him back upright, his left fist aiming for his soft gut.
Ken wheezed out in pain as he was handily thrown against one oak support growing out of the floor. But it was just enough time as he was out of Abe's reach enough to gather some of his spattered wits and come back, ducking a new right hook and refreshing his right knuckles with the feel of human flesh as they pounded into the blonde's left ear.
Abe spun around, missing hitting his head into the support post and aiming a blow filled with rage at the pretty pale nose. Oh, how he wanted to break it. He wanted blood to pour forth and wanted to hear the man cry in agony. As he turned to deliver his wrath, Ken swung around in a tight circle, boot extended, crashing sharply into the side of the policeman's head.
"Stop it! This is a church for Christ's sake," Achikawa intoned sarcastically. Yes, it was his job to maintain the sanctity of the grounds, but the human side of him so desperately wanted to see the blood of the black haired man spilled. His right eye was already puffing nicely and he allowed himself a haughty, brief smirk at that.
Izzy was so enraptured in his own worthlessness and the mantras at hand that he barely heard the struggle unfolding behind him. It registered, but only in the back recesses of his mind until he heard Achikawa speak. Koushiro turned, witnessing the two men trying to tear each other apart, gasping, dropping his beads and pushing himself between the two before Shinseki could throw another punch or Ken could try and flip him over in a poor-form Judo throw.
"Stop, please," he squeaked out. Izzy's eyes were full with tears, and he threw out his arms in front of Ken to block Abe. Was he so full of rage that he'd fight through the one he was fighting for? The policeman's hand wavered, then paused, clenching and unclenching, looking for something to strike.
"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God!" Wet drops slid down his shameful cheeks, trying to salvage any sanity in the situation.
Ken stepped carefully around his lover, calm and staring Shinseki full in the face. There would be no more shame for Koushiro.
"Now what, Detective? Now what? Are you going to handcuff me and take me in?" He wished the vicious words could rip across that fair face and leave long, weeping, ragged wounds. "I could make a break for it and knock you down. I'd get out of the church and possibly even have enough of a lead on you to disappear for today. But you'd have me after that. I can't run from an entire police force, can I?"
Shinseki's confusion stopped him from responding before Koushiro could.
"Ken-san, what..." he chose his words carefully "are you..." Truthfully, maybe his mouth was better left closed. He didn't know what to put at the end of those words. What could he say in front of the officer that wouldn't land Ken in jail? He even questioned this. Did he want Ken in jail? No! No, of course not. Ken was...
But did he want justice for the brutality done to the father? That didn't even need to be answered. He left the words hanging in the air, letting time sweep the scene by as it would. Fate would not drag him into perturbing the outcome.
"And what would I arrest you for, sir?" Abe held his breath, not knowing what the raven-haired incubus would say next.
"For two counts of assault, of course! You've got witnesses, all of whom are very fucking upstanding citizens. Do I really need to go to an instant replay of some kind, Detective? You saw it yourself - I had this virtuous priest pinned to the ground. Do you think he was having fun?!" He turned to see Izzy's expression, which was all pain and fine trembling now. Better than crying and spouting 'hail mary's', right? "And what about you, Detective? Or do I need to keep processing your face into so much ground meat?"
Achikawa and Shinseki froze in confusion. Izzy was a picture of rage and his eyes bore out a growing horror that fate had torn the situation away from him.
"Uh..." Shinseki tried to form a sentence that would make sense. When this bastard was laying atop his Koushiro, Koushiro wasn't putting up much of a struggle, was he? And didn't he throw the first punch? He was still trying to decipher this when Ken gave a loud sigh, saw he needed to push his point home instead of waiting for the questions of logic to dribble out and plowed his fist into Abe's puzzled face.
"Fuck!" He staggered back, catching the blood dripping from his nose in his cupped left hand. Cold eyes shot back at Ken. They weren't the eyes of a scorned lover, they were steely cop eyes. Abe took a step back, unclipped the Glock under his coat and drew it on Ichijouji. "On your knees."
Ken smirked and did as he was told, lacing his fingers behind his head for good measure. Abe took out his handcuffs and snapped them expertly around his pale wrists.
"Thank you so much, detective. I don't even know how this ruffian got into our sacred church." Achikawa's slender hands were on the detective's elbow, and he turned to accept the priest's sincerity in this twisted situation.
"No problem, father. My job is why I get up in the morning." Without looking down, or tensing a single muscle in his face, Abe cracked the butt of his handgun across Ken's head.
Fuck him, he wasn't getting a single sound of pain from Ichijouji. That violence was uncalled for. Ken simply snapped his head back up after the stars had stopped spinning in his brain, defiant.
Izzy gasped at Shinseki's nonchalant display of force while Ken was dragged to his feet and shoved towards the door.
"Father, are you alright?" He could hear Achikawa's attempt at concern somewhere in the background of the fog of his mind. All he could see was Ken being hustled to the police station. The dark-haired man turned his shoulders around for a moment to give Koushiro a sly smirk before he was out the belltower door and down the stairway.
Izzy's brows drew together in confusion, tears dried now, and he stared back at Ken for one slow moment.
And he was gone.