PICK YOUR PAPA !(prints)

PICK YOUR PAPA ! (prints)

Chapter 4: Then: May 1997 (link)

Cardinal Copia x OC Sister of Sin Tags: Friends to Strangers to Lovers, Childhood Trauma, Religious Guilt, Slow Burn, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, (eventual) Workplace Relationship, Family Dynamics, Flashbacks, (eventual) smut, Childhood Friendships, Tutoring, Childhood Memories

Cecilia knows she should be paying attention, she really, really does. It’s not her fault that she’s inches away from the little freckle on Copia’s mouth, or that she can feel his shoulders rise and fall with the rhythm of his breath from where they’re pressed together, hovering over his Latin textbook.

Reblogs, comments, and kudos are very much welcome and appreciated 🖤

Just a reminder that I pushed Copia's birth year forward about 10 years or so in this fic - Copia is about 18 here, and Cecilia is about 16. Thanks for the interaction and interest so far!

Cecilia Honeycutt swings her legs impatiently. She’s been sitting at the tutoring table in the Ministry’s high school library for fifteen minutes waiting for an upperclassman tutor to appear and help her with her last Latin assignment of the school year. Cecilia is only here at her parents’ behest; old hippies who left California in 1969 to follow troubadour Papa Nihil back to his weird cult on the other side of the country. They wish they could have gotten the education she was being afforded to her. What a privilege, what an honor to receive a religious education under the watchful tutelage of the Clergy. She scoffs to herself and rolls her eyes. She doesn’t understand how being fluent in Ecclesiastical Latin is setting her up for success, especially when the Ministry hadn’t done services in Latin in decades. Especially since she’s high-tailing it to the real world the second she gets a chance to. Idly, she thinks she might get a degree in history when she goes to college.

The older she’s gotten, the more the confines of her religion have felt too small. More often than not, she feels disingenuous for having to pretend. She excels in her religious education classes, but mostly because she likes history and loves being praised for knowing the right things to say and when to say them. Besides, it’s significantly easier to just pretend than to go through the hassle of debating the validity of their belief system. That mindset carried her through two years of pointless classes in the lead-up to the administration of the Unholy Rite of Confirmation. She feels like she’s wearing a costume when she puts on her black school uniform every morning, the crisp black Oxford shirt embroidered with a gold grucifix on the left breast and her pleated black skirt.

Cecilia picks up her pen and starts scratching in the back of her notebook. Twenty minutes have gone by now, and if the tutor doesn’t materialize soon, she’s walking home. The impending possibility of a lazy summer in the sun is stretching before her, and being trapped inside is the last thing she wants. Heavy breathing and fast footfall cut through the silence of the library, echoing off the stacks. "Mi dispiace!" In the distance, she hears the librarian shush the noisy new arrival. Cecilia turns around to see who she has the pleasure of studying conjugation with today.

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don't mind me just watching the benny hill moment on repeat

"Congratulations... You just became a father." Rite Here Rite Now (2024)

stealing my thunder like a dickhead

and he loves a-ha