✟ Haven't

I

Fallen

far

Enough? ✟

--- *** ---

Once the man of the cloth broke the news about your forthcoming arranged release which will happen within a few days only, you didn't have anything prominent to utter except managing to bob your head meekly, humbly, pursing pensively, idly your cherub, chapped lips.

You had limited opportunities when you had to maintain a formal conversation with the clergyman, factly, his body and soul genuinely belonged to God and his wedlock to the almighty God wasn't exceptional at all and any cussing or physical contact would put you in a balefully ginormous danger, muddling your path to success and light. Notwithstanding the absolute reality, you thought by walking away with a vaguely beaming, affable smile, tattooed on your face would aid you to flee with a sluggish ease the territory where the retribution was foreshadowing.

"{Y/N}," All of a sudden, when your proximity with the British compatriot increased with a handful of inches as your slipper-clad feet drummed timidly bashful against the lifelessly grizzly cemented flooring, you felt some familiar weight clawing your dainty, alabaster shoulder momentarily. Paradoxal shivers and paroxysm seethed your body temperature and sedated your muscles and bones in no time, surrealistically pleasurable and oddly consoling touch grazing your shoulder blade. The honey, sugarcoating Timothy's English lilt tingled silver-tongued angelic hymns into your vulnerable ears and increasing rapidly rabid the heart beats, hammering in your ribcage. Bitter, dehydrated lump seethed in your feeble throat and struggling to swallow it and flexing your throat muscles in synchronisation. Another idle blink of your {E/C} embers blazed trouble and hesitancy, reluctant to neglect urgently Timothy's touch and the resonance, chanting your name. "Where do you think you're going?"

"I'm thinking to get back in the common room just before to be closed and being sent back to my ward." His enquiry begged for a rational explanation which you exchanged it adequately shortly after heavy sigh flushed jadedly your chest and the powder of cherry blush lingering hypodernically lingering beneath your facial skin. You sensed what kind of an exemplar of the trouble would br interpreted in your conversation with the ambitious Monsignor. Moreover, he was beyond realistically flabbergasted by your hideous stubbornness and admirable persistence. "I think you're having rather more business with your clerical duties rather than conversating a former drug dealer." The sheer sardonic timbre, darkening your Maryland lilt foreshadowed the sequence of the British aristocrat's stark frustration to clash your words with the exact formula of exposing his lighter, more genuine side of his identity, cloaked in the miserable cloth of chastity.

"That's not true, {Y/N}!" Little did you know how a man of the cloth is interested in you just a day after beholding him formally for first time and he has solemn promises to grant you the deserved, licentiously sweet freedom and perhaps not seeing one another ever again except in the church if you occasionally make one of the most insurmountable, unspeakable decisions ever in your life. Attending the church even once at least just for a prayer. "Look at me!" His headstrong insistence to link your {E/C} jewels with his and subsequently averting your gaze from the door, turning towards the older man to face him and manipulate your stare to meet his promptly.

"What do you even want from me?" Even when you sensed guilty pleasurable warmness pawing your feminine, brittle shoulder, demure mumble escaped your cracked on flimsy delicate skins of your plumpish lips, flaking across Timothy's chocolate brown irises. Your posed question begged for a grave vouch and sufficiently explainable motive of his at least. "I told you what you needed to hear and vice versa." Even when you're elated to be released from the notorious facility in a handful of days, nevertheless, something urged to tear off your heart like a frail, extravagant cloth on thousand of glassy, flimsy pieces shattered in a swamp of arcane sorrow and misty heartbreak. Little did you know how much truly it meant the freedom to you especially after breaking free and joining the general population like a bird, who's been just set free from its own old rusty cage. You didn't even sense the holy man could be a friend of yours or at least conversate him informally, due to the absolute reality of his divinely venerated title, his age gap matching with the almost of your twenties and his background in general. And most of all, scarcely knowing him personally or a modicum of his background, childhood, adolescence and so forth. You deeply knew inside how much it may cost you with time and patience to discover his true colors not for days, howsoever, weeks and months. Last but not least, it wasn't even certain why your frail heart sunk in misty heartache at the thought of once the arranged release plays its own cards right, thereafter you won't see the fewest amiable patients and the ambitious Monsignor ever again unless either Kit, Shelley and perhaps Pepper were released somehow or on the contrary, you step whether occasionally or intentionally in the local church and the destiny plots you to encounter the British compatriot again.

"I'm interested." What it embarrassingly mesmerized you was the answer you're looking for was unpredictable, chanting and composing galore of lavish cryptic tunes into your sensitive ears in a looping soundtrack, numbing the background noises in the background as if they're foreign even pretty pointless. Vaguely coy, affable smile parted upon the British compatriot's baby-pinkish, plump lips without twisting it in an eerie flat line, nor an unwelcoming, austere frown.

"Interested in what, Monsignor?" Emphasis spotlighted his celestial title, interpreting his immense importance and major role in the diocese and the society, raising an arch of your {EY/C} eyebrow in bewilderment, contouring exquisitely the creases twisted across your forehead and cusping your eyebrow.

"To get to know you." What it struck you was how the devotional clergyman yearned to get to know you even when he's occupied with galore of tasks, refilling his daily hectic schedule with visiting places, collaborating with Sister Jude and Sister Mary Eunice and persistently fighting for his Cardinal position. The sole thing you'd think of doing at the moment just because of the incredulity, swaddling your frail skeleton and freezing your overflowing blood in your veins with its electrifying goosebumps, pricking your overall epidermis was to burst out in an uncontrollable, impulsive laughter, scratching your throat and searing the corners of your mouth with a healthy, genuine laughter and hurting your stomach. How is supposed a clergyman to be insatiably interested in getting to know nobody else than a criminally insane patient with a tough past and childhood even an unspeakable former occupation which would bring notoriety and cluster of scandals not only in the diocese, but also in the real world and the general population gossiping behind their backs? Even when you felt somewhat comfortable and cozy in Timothy's company and under his wing and welfare, you'd never depict in your vortex of thoughts something as unrealistic as dating him even marrying him and creating your own family and spend the eternity in your own world. "Just call me Timothy, {Y/N}!"

"Timothy, that's impossible! You're just a priest and I'm a falsely committed to this institution patient." A heavy sigh left you speechless at the top of your lungs for a split second, still tormenting your front ivory teeth to nip your lower chapped lip to stifle another pearly candid, maniacally shrilling snigger, pitching the hallway's background. "That's not a first date and you've your own priorities. I know very well what exactly you want." A disappointed guttural grunt slipped from the older man's strawberry-coloured, wet tongue once you retired to the common, opting to get out of his sight and feeling impotent to stop Timothy immediately even convince him he's his own top priorities and crucial goals, determining whether to stay in the eparchy and pursue his own dreams or on the contrary resign from the church even have a fresh start with opening a new chapter in his own life.

"{Y/N}, come back!" Honed sharpness punctured in the velvety, English lilt of Timothy's croak, insisting you to stay instead of fleeing lazily wand sensing that your conversation was already over and you just exchanged whatever you needed in these few minutes solely. You didn't dare to turn your back, because you're far from naïve and optimistic that the pious man of the cloth had such intentions, or rather most of all sacrificing with a baleful hazard to lose his own career and the recent tier he's raised in the diocese by breaking a vow to communicate and interact with a former drug dealer. You were exceedingly grateful to him for being selflessly amiable, kindhearted and humanitarianly altruistic even when infernally sinful demons were casted past his vision invincibly and little did you know how much you tempted him to get to know you personally. What you were deeming was that if he resigns from the church sooner or later and commencing his own personal life, he's presumed to date and looking for women around his age whether slightly younger or older than him.

"Anything wrong, Monsignor?" All of a sudden, the middle-aged security guard Frank approached the ambitious Monsignor and snapped him out of his contemplation, fixated on you and averting his cocoa brown embers from the outsight picture, framing your ebony silhouette ominously mirrored against the brick wall. In the meanwhile, Frank removed his cap, in order to manage his small, well-trimmed fingernails to scrap his itchy, clammy scalp.

"Not at all, Frank! Just sometimes I'm quite distracted." Even when the British aristocrat tried his best to find a good excuse to prevail the cold shoulder you gave him just moments ago, what Frank, one of Jude's favorite employees noticed in the member of the clergy's demeanor was far from awfully undistinguished lately especially in the past few days shortly after you're committed to Briarcliff. Although the security guard wasn't quite fond of the director of the mental institution, his genuine concern aroused his interest to discover the symptom of his eccentric behavior lately nonetheless.

--- *** ---

--- A Couple of Hours Later or So ---

Once almost midnight was approaching within a several minutes, it didn't stop in a halt Timothy to check on his rare bird after the dynamically hectic day they had.

In the interval, the Bostonian was getting ready for bedtime after peeling off the habit and unbuttoning it within a couple of swift motions and getting rid off from the conservatively rigid, shapeless dark gown. The sole garment that hugged her petite-frame was sheerly lily-white cotton nightgown as its hem flared across her ankles. Furthermore, the dark, wool wimple was casted on the top of hardwood dressing table and the lion mane of aureate old Hollywood tresses framed the round, full profile of the former sleazy nightclub singer. The dimming illuminated en-suite bedroom was bathed in artificial brass light. The patients were already jailed in their own wards for extra good night sleep and the common room was already shut. Nocturnal, lethal hush whistled in the corridors' corners of the asylum until series of door taps caught off guard Jude, biting her lower lip.

Once she retired from the en-suite bedroom and strolled up to the shut office door, afterwards she unlocked it and Timothy was standing beside her, maintaining a suitable distance within a handful of inches.

"Good evening, Monsignor! It's good to see ya." Beaming smile glimmered across her rosy-coloured, soft as satin lips at the sight of the younger man, despite contemplating wee hints in his eccentric behavior lately, not leaving her sight.

"Good evening, Jude! I just wanted to make sure you're alright before bedtime."

"I know so far, Timothy!" At the moment, she was propping on the doorframe, steadily and lazily fumbling the doorframe's wooden material with her fidgety, spider palish fingers, whilst holding her gaze with his. Lusciously alluring, realistic picture of the Bostonian didn't enforce Timothy to avert his ogle. He couldn't resist the sight of her released halo ringlet of silken old Hollywood gilded curls framing her porcelain, yet elderly-youthful complexion and when she's out of her habit. She looked gorgeous into his eyes yet. "I'd like to know what makes ya to behave so strangely lately."

"What do you mean with this, Jude?"

"You perfectly know what I'm exactly talking about." Sternness and seriousness accented her northern lilt, tilting her head whilst the British compatriot manipulated his baby-pinkish lips in a pensive purse, pitching his mammoth, veiny hands in his charcoal-black slacks' pockets.

"Well, there's nothing wrong with helping some of the wretched souls to find path to the light and God."

"That isn't even a good excuse, Timothy!" Suddenly the blonde snapped at him, bitterly nibbling on her upper lip leisurely, honing her hazelish-brown irises. "That {L/N} kid!" Frustration in clearing gruffily her throat broke Jude's facial expression in a jiffy, muffling the cough with a palm over her mouth.

"I just want to help her."

"Trying to help her?" Diabolical, daredevil sarcasm emphasized the rhetorical inquiry, while Judy tucked a fistful of stray, wild aureate tresses behind her petite, sensitive ear. "I can clearly see by the way ya stare at {Y/N} and what do ya exactly want from her!"

"Jude,"

"What?"

"You already know that you're my only rare bird and I've never had impure thoughts of {Y/N}."

"Think twice!" Meanwhile, the door swung shut in a stormy slam which flinched paradoxally the ambitious Monsignor and noting his rara avis's toxic jealousy of the butterflies in his stomach he's sensed since today once you had an encounter again.