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This is absolutely beautiful! 😭

until then | joel miller 18+

summary: you’re not meant for each other. not right now.

warnings: religious trauma, religious themes, priest!joel, angst, guilt surrounding religion, allusions to shitty family members, right person wrong fucking everything, etc.

a. note: this is for @almostfoxglove’s angst writing challenge!! i am so happy to be able to participate <3 the song you gave me for inspo is incredible, and i built a bit off of that! (good lord lorrie by turnpike troubadours)

It had been raining cats and dogs for nearly a week now, a weather phenomenon that was deeply uncharacteristic for Austin, Texas during the summertime.

You had been sneaking away every week for Sunday night mass, a little sermon that only five or six people ever showed up for. And even though you didn’t believe in God, and even though the concept of Heaven and Hell had become deeply irrelevant and idiotic to you, you still went.

Perhaps it was to atone for all the guilt that sat heavy in your body, perhaps it was an attempt to unhinge the burden that had screwed itself deep within the tallow of your collarbones, rusted there from years of tears and fear.

Or, perhaps, it was to just simply see the priest. The handsome, charming, mysterious priest.

Joel Miller was known throughout the city as a patient and quiet man, a priest that stood out amongst the fire and brimstone baptist preachers that plagued the Bible

Belt. Everyone was welcomed in his church, the sinner, the saint, the believer, the non believer.

Some say he hardly believed in God, others say he was the best thing that had ever happened to them.

But for you, Joel Miller saved your life.

So now you sat in the Cathedral every Sunday, where you would watch him walk across the stage, hands emoting what his words could not, and after each sermon you would meet him in his office, where his real personality would shine through past the rim of whiskey filled cups and shaking cigarettes.

Tonight, however, something different swirled about the air, something heavy, something full of burden, anger, trepidation.

Joel sat behind his desk, a thick block of Mahogany that was older than the city itself, with his face illuminated behind the absinthe colored bank lamp.

You watched with heavy eyelids as he sipped the amber liquid, a sizzling cigarette resting in a carefully crafted ash tray.

“Father?”

Joel chuckled, looking up at you. You knew he hated when you called him that. A thick eyebrow was raised, and his eyes dripped with honey beneath the silver shine of the weeping moonlight. He was beautiful, he always had been, he always would be.

“Yes?”

“I want to get out of here.”

“Well, y’know where the exit is, darlin’.” His head lazily pointed towards the door to your right, and with a heaving sigh you dragged your palm down the expanse of your cheek. It radiated heat from the glass of Whistling Pig you had been sipping on, a favorite whiskey of Joel’s that he had always given you a heavy handed pour of.

“No. No… I just-” You took in a deep breath, wringing your hands across your lap. “I mean here. Austin. Texas. The South.”

Joel blinked a few times behind his reading glasses, slowly dropping his pen down on the stack of papers that rested before him. He looked up at you, and you noticed how old and tired he looked as he took off his glasses.

Secrets were a heavy burden to share.

And so was love.

You watched the lines in his forehead crease as his brows knitted tightly together, the way the veins in his neck tensed as he swallowed a thick lump that had formed in his throat.

Joel knew this was coming. He always had. And he always knew you would be the first to leave. He had been cursed with foresight, and the wisdom to know what would play out, yet it never deterred him from seeing you, touching you, feeling you.

Joel was smitten the moment he met you, a sweet temptation he was willing to risk his immortal soul for.

How could he not risk it all? How could he turn a blind eye to the curve of your neck, the bounce of your hair, the electricity of your fingertips? How could he ignore the very woman who had bewitched him, body and soul? How could he forget the beauty of you, when that very same beauty hung the stars and moon just for his eyes?

“I’m not worth it, you know.” You had purred through a cigarette, leaning against the brick wall of a club. The winter air had tousled your hair, and Joel readjusted the black collar around his tan neck.

“You are.” He whispered, his breath puffing out little clouds in to the frigid night sky. “You have been since the day we met.”

“Joel.” There was a hunger in your voice that you had never known before. “You know we can’t, baby.”

“‘Course we can. They don’t gotta know.”

“They’ll find out.”

“Who says?”

You ran your hand down his arm, and you could feel the tension that lurked behind the muscles of his biceps. “If you met my family, you’d understand. They’ll find out some way. You know my daddy’s got eyes everywhere-”

“Then let them see.” Your eyes lingered on the way his jaw tightened, his teeth snapping together in a wolf life snarl. “I don’t care who your daddy is. I don’t care how many brother’s you got. Let ‘em try and break my jaw for all I care.”

You laughed softly, leaning your cheek against his shoulder. “What did I do to deserve somebody like you?”

Joel’s fingers found the back of your head, the tips of his fingers gently tracing shapes into your scalp. He could feel you shiver against him, he could feel your heart beat, the hot wave of your breath fanning across him.

“Must’ve been somebody real good in your past life.”

“Past life? Such hearsay from a priest, Father Miller.”

“I ain’t no father around you. I’m just Joel.”

Joel blinked to himself, and that tender moment that had happened so long ago faded alongside the flurries that blurred through his vision. He came back down to earth, and he was back in his office, staring at you as you nervously picked the skin around your pinky finger.

You looked up, your eyes lingering on the scar across his chin, a bloodied mess your brother had once made on him when he found out you had been seeing him.

“We don’t talk to no Catholics.” He had growled to you. “‘Specially not that kind.”

You remember the venom that dripped from his tongue, the names he had called you, the way he swore you would go straight to hell.

“Fine!” You had screamed to him. “I’ll go to Hell with Joel!”

Your daddy back handed you so hard after he found out, that you couldn’t see straight for a week. Joel was there to clean up the bruises, but that’s all he could manage to do.

“Joel.” You spoke softly, reaching out to take his hand. “I have to do this.”

“Why can’t you just…. why can’t you just stay here?” There was a certain pleading in his tone that had overtaken his voice, a certain gasp for air that tugged at his syllables.

Your thumb brushed across his knuckles. “You know why.”

Joel’s chest inflated with a deep breath of air, a breath he couldn’t hold in any longer. You felt the clamminess of his palm, the subtle shake that had taken over his calloused fingertips.

“Look… I love you. And I have never asked for you to feel the same way. I-I’ve never asked for you to leave all of this.” You whispered, trying your damndest to blink away the rapidly forming tears. “But I can’t keep dancing this dance.”

“I can try.” Joel’s voice cracked, his tongue suddenly dry. “I can try to love… to-” He shook his head.

He watched the way you shook your head, his eyes growing increasingly darker, sadder, more distant. His grip tightened on your hand, fearful of what would happen once you finally let go of it.

“No. No, baby. You can’t. I know you.” You gently dragged your knuckles across his cheek, watching the way his eyes fluttered shut. “You’ve got the same guilt as me, lurking deep in your chest. Scared of God, scared of Hell, scared of what might happen.”

Joel’s lips parted, and he stared at you, his gaze glossed over. You would always remember his eyes, always remember how they would stir with emotion when he saw you, when he heard you, when he felt you.

“And I gotta get away from it all.”

Joel let out a quiet breath of air, a whine of anguish gurgling at the back of his throat. There was an uncertainty swirling about him that you had never seen radiate around him, a worried sort of look deep within the irises of his wet eyes.

“Away from… me, too?”

“Yeah, Joel. Yeah.”

“I would have- if… if I could’ve.”

“I know you would’ve. But I get it.”

You stood up from the chair, and his nails dug gently into your skin, as though he was trying to tether you down to that mahogany, to the room which surrounded you.

“You gotta let go, Joel Miller.”

He followed you to the door, engulfing you tightly in his arms. He gasped out, tears pooling down his cheeks, his palm flat against the back of your head.

“I’d have loved you.” Joel whispered, and you nodded against him, grasping ahold of his shirt material. “If I… could let all of this go.”

“I know. I know.”

“You’ll think about me, won’t you?” There was humor in his words now, a gentle glimmer of humor that shone behind his eyelids as you reached for the door knob.

You laughed, and he relished in the familiar way you tilted your neck back, the way your giggles filled his eyes.

“Course I will. ‘Til the day I die.”

“Maybe we’ll see each other then.”

You looked at him from over your shoulder, and for a moment you reconsidered it all. You tried to swallow that angry guilt that clawed at the lining of your stomach, tried to wonder what a future would be like with him.

A future that would never come.

“Until then, Joel.”