exorkismos | open / heaven created a miracle

stones and glass houses father
now get over here i need an extra pair of hands

wait

what would you have called it

doesnt matter
you picked
finally

so you had no idea either

Marcus doesn't really do vehicle maintenance, or certainly not on this scale. His truck has worked thus far out of a mix of luck and improvised patch-fixes. But he knows enough about the innards of the thing to be able to do as Joan tells him, however sniffy he gets about taking orders, and the collar works wonders when it comes to getting the best deals. He's not really supposed to wear it anymore. He doesn't like wearing it, it's stiff and uncomfortable and he sweats beneath it. Needs must, though. It's not long before Judith Frankenchevy is ready to go, looking distinctly more patchwork but also distinctly more road-worthy.

Joan's giving him a good deal. He insists on buying her a burger once the truck's fixed, partly to prove he can and partly because he's guilty about lying to her.

*

"Jesus," Marcus says, sounding a bit horrified but also a bit delighted. He's laughing as he decelerates, coming down off a long, relatively empty straight: big, chest-heaving laughs, not quite hysterical but definitely a little manic. He has to shout over the music, deep soul roaring over the noise of the engine. "Was this what you meant? About it being fun to watch me drive this? Because it's way more fun to actually drive it. And no, you ain't taking over. Jesus Christ, kid."

She did, actually, have an idea for the name of the car, but it's embarrassing enough that she'll keep it to herself unless pressed. She opts for names that are a twist of an insult; it's always been her nature to pull down than uplift. Not a positive trait, but she's stuck with it either way. She knows what she is, and there's no changing it.

Marcus is better than her, anyway. He's an asshole, but he gets the job done. Helps put in a motor, which isn't a small thing for one or two people. He gets them enough cash that she'll be fine for a while when they hit MA, and probably be able to eat on the way there. It works out.

For now, anyway.

Seeing him lose his damn mind over his truck acting like a real truck-- much less a souped up one-- is as good as she expected. "Everybody deserves to drive with a formula one engine once in their lives. Which is what that is. I have before, so I'll just watch you decimate the local wildlife."

But she's grinning, stretching the scar on her lip. Can't help that, either.

"I ain't gonna hit anything," he protests, though to be honest he wonders if he'd even register a bump — everything feels a bit off, enough that he was irritable with it at first until he hit his stride.

"Were you serious about not telling me how you got this?"

She turns his head to give him a very flat look, expressionless save for the jaded look in her eyes and the angle of her brow. She's hunched over to the side in her seat, one leg up on the dashboard and an elbow sticking into the divider, head in her hands. The seatbelt is a loose suggestion around her hips.

It's calculated laziness; she has an image to project even now.

"So now you wanna know."

"Yeah, so, from what I remember — " Marcus makes a change of gear into semi-violent punctuation, angling a sharp look at her under raised brows. "You were taking apart my car without my say-so at the time, excuse me for having other concerns."

And, blandly, as he looks back to the road with just a suggestion of a grin: "Also thought you could be lying about how good it is."

Staring out the window, she says in a light but serious tone, "I don't lie," and then, joking, "It's a sin."

She considers the facts carefully, though. Keeping shit to yourself, that's fine under her generally inflexible moral code. "I'll tell you, but it involves me being naked for like the majority of it, and I'm just not sure that's a confession you wanna hear."

“Huh.”

Eyebrows right up. Marcus looks vaguely alarmed, as only a fifty year old not-particularly-heterosexual priest can when asked if he wants to hear stories about naked young women.

“I mean, am I gonna enjoy the story despite that?”

She rolls a shoulder. "I gave up trying to figure out what people'd enjoy about me in eighth grade. Here. Let's- here's the short version. This song you been assaulting me with."

She has been listening. Really listening-- it's impossible not to, with how loud he plays it. It's not, really, that bad, she just likes him which means she has to sink her teeth into something, to make it hers, to draw it out, to make friendship real. The difference between her liking someone and hating them isn't kindness, it's indifference, and she pays attention to every little twitch Marcus lays out.

She listens to the song.

Mama, they call her bad girl, all because she wanted to be free.

It's more of a compliment to her than she deserves, but it's good context. "So let's say, short version without extenuating circumstances and way less nudity, the song ends with 'and then the bitch stole my formula one motor in the dead of night and blocked me and my friends' numbers and was never heard from again because she was in another state by morning'."

Marcus throws his head back and laughs, happy and appreciative. He doesn’t care about Joan mocking his music: rolls his eyes as obliged, but ‘assaulted’ is a pretty good term for the experience of listening to deep soul, and he’s more than happy to bat around insults with her.

“Is that grand theft auto? Does that count? Jesus, duck, I ain’t sure I’m allowed to drive stolen goods.” But he’s grinning. He doesn’t care. Stealing, real sinful stealing, isn’t done by people like Joan jacking engines or people like him shoplifting energy drinks. Stagy and dramatic, he adds: “Can’t go back inside.”

It's the last comment that cracks her, like he's one of the British guys from the Great Escape. She cackles and curls forward in her seat a little; it's not a pretty sound. She recovers quickly, but the echo of a pleased smile is still there when she curls her hair back behind her ear and continues.

"There were extenuating circumstances. Photos that were supposed to be kept private. Rich pricks who had no business going to little drag meets with an engine like this. Workplace discrimination." She says the last bit as though it's a joke. "So stealing was kind of secondary to revenge, which is much more justifiable."

She knows it isn't, according to basically everything ever. She should have turned the other cheek. But she's only got the one left.

Yeah, turning the other cheek...Marcus glosses over that one a lot. His lip curls at the litany of justifications for the theft — angry at the engine’s former owner, not Joan.

“God loves a reversal of fortune,” he says quite seriously. “Many that are first shall be last, and the last first.” Hey, a racing pun. It’s not unintentional at all. He gives her a sly, sideways smile. “You ain’t waiting for me to assign you ten Hail Marys, right?”

She snorts dismissively. "I know you were a priest, but I just ...can't picture you doing that shit. Confessionals with you must have been the most fucking uncomfortable thing in the world."

But she's smiling, shaking her head. Her hair trails down too long, and she begins pulling it behind her head, grabbing a rubber band from her pocket to keep it back.

“Confessionals are alright cos in the box you can’t see facial expressions,” he says. “Trying to keep a straight face if I’m doing it less formally...that’s not easy.”

He’s talking crap. He’s taken plenty of confessions, but few of them in a formal confessional setting. Lots of people who thought they might die. Lots of guilty friends and family members. He takes it seriously. Maybe Joan can tell — or maybe she can’t. His voice is very light.

Joan can get the feeling something's off, but she doesn't know what. She assumes he's just pretending he wasn't as shitty a priest as he really was. That's his perogative-- you do a lot of work to become a priest, and nobody wants to feel like they're bad at something they studied up on for so long. But he was defrocked for a reason. It's not like that shit happens every day.

And she just can't see him as choosing to leave it behind. Not by how he talks about it, not by how he acts.

She shrugs. None of this is her business, anyway. Idle observation is just that.

"Well, don't worry. I don't do confessions anymore. Storytelling's different, but I wanted to spare your delicate sensibilities."

The song comes rolling to a close with no mention of stolen formula one engines. The mixtape crackles, and there's a distinct shift in recording quality and volume: the next song is much louder and a little clearer. Marcus actually winces and turns it down a little, but then his fingers start tapping the wheel along with it, a grin spreading across his face.

With the distraction, it takes him a moment for her words to sink in. When they do, he rolls his eyes, then shoots her a funny, crumpled-brow look sideways, and say, "Yeah, you got any smelling salts? Ain't good to faint while you're driving a bastard of a thing like this."

See, that's the thing, he's too obvious in his enjoyment, and that's a vulnerability. You can't be like that, someone will hurt you. She doesn't want to hurt him, but her reaction is engraved; earnest enthusiasm is dangerous and should be regarded with suspicion. It makes her anxious,as though someone is about to be slapped. She groans and rolls her eyes, slumping back in her seat.

"You're fucking torturing me with this shit," it's actually an okay song, "and you're insulting me hard fucking work? Jesus." She's kidding, mostly. "You're just lucky I couldn't transfer the CD player into this ancient thing."

Because she's a hypocrite, and has her own book of carefully managed mixes in her duffel bag.

Marcus, whose faith in God is perhaps only matched by his faith in his own taste in music, just scoffs happily. “This is a great mixtape,” he says, not as if starting an argument, but as if providing a helpful fact. “And CDs have no feeling to ‘em. But if Southern soul ain’t your thing, there’s a whole 90s cassette. The one down by your feet. Mouse on the cover.” Hand-drawn whiskery little cartoon mouse on lined paper taped into the cassette case, the once-black ink faded to bled-out blue. It’s nibbling a Communion wafer.

Outside, telephone poles whip by quicker. The sun’s high in the sky and the ancient AC is doing its best. It’s producing a fair amount of cold air and a disturbing amount of whirring noise.

“Seriously, rank ‘em for me. Wanna see how much of a lost soul you are. Is this better or worse than the Indigo Girls for you?”

"Everything is better than the Indigo Girls." That's girly stuff: a dangerous vulnerability for someone like her, she's sure. A weakness Marcus can take on, it's a fun quirk in an old man. Not her.

"And you're banking me on being able to tell the difference between these motherfuckers, which is a tall order." She reaches out to the dash to feel the AC whirring beneath her palm. "I'm fixing that next time we stop. It'll take maybe fifteen minutes." It's just a blockage, she's sure of it. Dust buildup, probably.

With a snort, Marcus says, "No bloody taste, see?" He glances down to where she's inspecting the AC, raps his knuckles on it. Nothing happens. "Yeah, that's been that way for a while. Sort of white noise at this point. Soothing. You looking to stop soon?"

"It's different, you're not from here. All the music you like's American." She's not entirely sure why she pointed that out. Maybe her father's obsession with Irish music-- that makes sense, actually. But more importantly- "Jesus, it's a six hour drive. I'm not into the pissing into a bottle thing, I don't care how urgent your clandestine Massachusetts drug deal is."

Jumpy, ain’t you, Marcus wants to say, but suddenly it doesn’t quite feel fair. With a wave of something like emotional vertigo he realises there’s something eerily familiar about how Joan snaps defensively at anything that could even vaguely be construed as a slight or a suggestion of weakness. He wasn’t much different in his twenties. Sometimes he’s not much different now.

So he scowls and flicks his eyes up to heaven, but he doesn’t make fun of her. Instead, he says, “Nothing good ever came out of England. You’re looking at exhibit A.”

With a sidelong glance, he grins at her, and says, “Not worried about timing, not with this engine. Just trying to work out if you’re telling me to floor it.” A beat, and he says, “You know what, I’m just gonna assume you were,” and acts accordingly.

*

Pallas, Massachusetts is a picturesque coastal tourist town, but it’s the off-season and quiet. It doesn’t feel like a great place for drug-dealing or drag-racing or ministering to the sick. It feels, to Marcus, like a great place for an exorcism, small-town frustrations bubbling up into anger in the doldrums of winter when tourist money isn’t coming in.

The O’Neills own a B&B and want Marcus to stay there, but he and Joan are in a motel just outside of town. He doesn’t tell the O’Neills that, they’d be heartbroken to hear about the cheap competition. But then they’re sort of heartbroken already. Their oldest son Daniel came home from college because he was sick and wanted to recover at home: now he’s tied up in the attic, screaming profanities in Latin night and day.

Joan’s as good as her word: they don’t see too much of each other. But Marcus feels responsible for her being here: guilty, maybe. It’s not exactly rich pickings. But she’s resourceful, she’ll make her way, he reassures himself.

Maybe that’s what makes him lax enough to not bother with convincing lies. He’s tired and she won’t care. When he comes back with a bruised throat and bloody knuckles, he just gives her a raucous grin and tells her he walked into a lamppost. He assumes she’ll find it funny.

He’s at the O’Neill’s now, no thoughts of Joan crowding his head. Daniel is trying to bite him, spitting and snarling, the ropes at his wrists fraying and starting to smoke, the lights flickering — with a snap and a spray of sparks, a bulb explodes and Marcus breaks off praying to swear.

The drive goes better at that point. Joan isn't sure why. But gift horses and whatever, and the fact that Marcus takes such clear enjoyment out of how fast his car can go. She doesn't tell him it doesn't go half as fast as it could in a proper racer. He's probably smart enough to figure that out.

But he's something like happy, and that lets her ease herself into the fake dream of being a good person. She made somebody smile with her own hard work. It's almost the kind of thing that happens to real, good, normal people. That's what work is supposed to be for, isn't it?

When they get to MA, she spends her time looking for work. Doesn't find much, except for some tourists with bad motors trying to get out of town, and she takes her payments in cash. The local mechanics are all chains, which means she's shit out of luck; her resume is spotty at best. She likes family run places that don't try to be too legit, that only care about how well she can fix a car. She likes places that don't do background checks, that aren't interested in the prospect of finding out she's a missing person, or possibly declared dead. It's been years, they've probably declared her dead by now.

But whatever.

She has cash to offer up when Marcus comes home, and while she does squirrel some of it away out of sheer paranoia, she does use the rest to buy takeout and help pitch in for the motel. When she sees the state of him, she buys a first aid kit, too. She doesn't find the joke funny. It reminds her too much about 'walked into a door', and makes her scowl and try to bandage his hands in stony silence.

Someone's whaling on him. That's becoming increasingly fucking obvious. Someone's kicking the shit out of him and he's hers in a way she doesn't care to interrogate or think too hard about. She hasn't had somebody in a long time. She thinks he'd back her up in a fight, maybe. That means she'll back him up, too.

She doesn't have anything to do the next day. She's good at tailing people from a lifetime of not trusting most of them. This town is built on a grid system anyway, which makes it easy as fuck. No long winding roads that cut off to nowhere. Joan follows Marcus a few streets behind, always out of sight, until he enters a lovely looking house that makes the hair stand up on the back of Joan's neck. She can't put her finger on it. Most be intuition.

She fumbles with the saint's metal around her neck anyway, before she begins scaling the side of the house. They've got those creeping vines with the wooden fencing she's never learned the name for, makes it easy as shit to climb near each window, listening for Marcus' particularly distinct grumble. Of course she finds it on the highest level, the fucking attic. Of course the window finds that moment to swing open with her barely touching it, nearly hitting her in the fucking face.

But it doesn't. It just hangs there, inviting. She doesn't crawl through it, though she feels this urge to jump. She looks, and finds--

Everything inside is blurry. She can't quite make it out. She can hear words that are... painful, and she doesn't know why. Something reminds her of her father. Something reminds her of the power drill in her hands the last time she saw Luke breathing. Am I going to Hell? he'd asked, like she'd know.

Her vision clears suddenly. She sees a boy on a bed crying for his parents, looking terrified, and Marcus standing over him. Her anger flares, and that's normal, but it's so much more than usual. She wants to break things. She should break him. He is, after all, hers.

She grabs more tightly onto the trellis (that's what it's called, she suddenly knows) and feels a piece snap under her fingers with a sudden surge of strength she forgets to question. "That's not how detox works, asshole!"

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do u wanna continue to non-text? or we could skip forward to travelling together

lets skip to traveling ive exhausted my car knowledge for 2day

i can't fucken drive so you could say absolutely whatever tbh

fingerguns, signs blood pact, etc.

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