Chapter Text
You tilt your head out the open window, letting the air run through your hair as Kim picks up speed. The wind tunnels pass you, the world catching up to you and running under your tires as the sun crests overhead and into the horizon.
You’re on your way to a small church in Saint-Saens that is apparently not a metaphor and is in fact very real.
One you haven’t actually visited but are happy to make the drive out there to break in the new rubber and christen the tires of Kim's new Coupris with a little road trip only a few hours out from Revachol.
He was cold as a statue and still as ice when he saw it, sitting in place of the 40, the rims already attached and clashing terribly with the worn-out paint job of a car 10 or so years older than any of its contemporaries.
You didn’t have money for a new car—nothing close to anything like the Kineema—but you knew your cars, and you knew Kim and any Torque Dork worth their salt would love and appreciate the fine vintage vestments of an Honest to God Coupris Akina, the spiritual successor not to the Kineema but to the very Lum Fevre the Kineema was based off of. A response to a response to a response.
It was at the very least akin to a sports model, had the essence of a sports model, and was extremely famous for its ability to take turns like a champ. a real go-getter in the underground.
It wouldn't be able to hit speeds as hard or as fast, but with the right handling and a few adjustments, it could easily outmaneuver any car on the market.
Kim had been extremely scared of it at first—terrified of how it came into your possession, to be more exact.
You really didn’t want to tell him that you had, shortly after Dora left, remembered that you kept her engagement ring stashed away in a small compartment expertly boxed away in a false bottom attached to the inside of an old tape deck player, alongside a vial that was filled either with amphetamine or poison meant to kill you. Either way, you were throwing it down the toilet.
Along with a very fat check from a not so nice couple you may or may not have garnered the money for and a couple other valuables, including the tape deck as well as half of your reels.
You'd be lying if you said the blow wasn’t somewhat devastating, but it more than made up for it when Kim ran his hand down the flank of it, his eyes alight with awe and wonder.
Disbelieving that what he touched was actually real.
Even more so that you were giving it to him.
‘Finally," he whispered, just below a breath.
Something all his own, without conditions.
You held out the keys, a small charm dangling from the loop. A small plush creature apparently called a "fluddy".
Encyclopedia: A Fluddy or Fluff Buddy is a collectible plush toy known for its small, stout body and round eyes that close when you tilt them back, a feature that many critics and fans alike have deemed particularly creepy. Fluddys come in a variety of colors and themes, making them particularly coveted amongst collectors, as some fluddys are extremely rare. One of the rarest fluddys was in fact a specialty Dolores Dei fluddy affixed with permanently closed eyes and glow-in-the dark lungs.
The one currently attached to the chain is definitely not that one; technically, it isn't a real fluddy but simply a small plastic piece meant to resemble one.
The only real fludds you are aware of knowing in real life are inside Kim's closet, lined neatly and pristinely along a shelf in small glass cases meant to keep them from gathering dust.
One of Kim's darkest secrets wasn't that he smoked weed as a young man,
In fact, Kim still smokes weed as an old man, given he has time to.
You had come to the apartment, had found yourself gawking at Kim as he, casually as someone might check the mail on their counter, or take off their shoes, took a load off on the couch, asked, "You mind?" picked up a bong that had been sitting out in the open on his coffee table, and took an enormous hit right in front of you.
Then had the audacity to look extremely confused when you began pointing at him and jumping up and down.
Apparently, Kim had forgotten all about his little secret. Apparently, his little secret was just to get you off Kim's back.
No, Kim's actual secret is that he liked to collect these fluffy little guys.
And that he was in love with an extremely unstable man by the name of Harry Du Bois.
Once you assured him that you had purchased the vehicle through (mostly) entirely legal and (definitely) humane means, his temperament shifted.
He smiled brightly and popped the door open, nearly jumping into the seat as he felt around the controls.
“Wow, is this... ?" He'd teared up and, honest to god, cried, his composure completely shattered.
He removed his glasses, held them in his hand as he placed his eyes into the crook of his elbow, and wept, laughing through the wetness of the tears and the snot all the way through the hiccups and the shuddering breaths and right into the sniffling.
"God Harry, this is just... Wow, Okay.” Kim gave a final exhalation, attempting to find a semblance of control over his faculties.
"Okay,” you parroted back dumbly.
"An engagement ring... you know, if that's true, this might as well be a proposal then." He leaned his forehead against his grip on the lever, turning to grin at you, chuckling with a cunning and sly smirk and a chortle.
"Oh yeah?" You challenged, leaning your weight into the door frame, raising a quirking brow. "Where'd we even get married then, huh?"
Kim lent his body back into the seat and gave a non-committal shrug: "We could go to that little church from that song you like, Saint Saens."
You laughed, giving Kim a little bump of your shoulder as you slid into the back of the Akina.
"I'm pretty sure it's just a metaphor, Kim."
Kim tilted his head back to look at you with a charmingly mystified crinkle in his brow. "Harry… It's a real church in Saint Saen; I've actually been there. Did you really not know?"
"I don't believe you."
Kim stuck his keys into the ignition and began to rev the engine.
"Well, it's not too far; I'll just show you. It's as good as anywhere to take her for a spin."
You pull up on a road surrounded by moors of rolling hills, the smell of a cold, breezy sea against cliff faces. Wet grass and the brisk winds of a place much older than the city
A place barely touched by the dawning of man
"It's up around this hill," Kim watches as Harry takes in his surroundings and communes with the spirits of the world and of the pale.
The thunderous silence of nature speaks to every nerve in their bodies.
Harry stops briefly once its steeple and shoddy little frame appear over the mound of a long grassy knoll devoid of the paths that may have laid out before it.
Its stone is old and worn, whitened by the sun. The roof is a dark brown wood, home to many kinds of moss and lichen.
The pillar strikes upward into the gray sky but no longer holds the crest of Dolores dei. A church with no god for which it holds the sanctity of.
It's no bigger than the shack, a single room with a smattering of chairs and a small pulpit in which no symbols lie.
Light streams in little columns onto the floor, scattering particles of dust into the air.
Harry's breath hitches as he enters it, and there's an expression of awe on his face.
It's not the awe of something much larger, grander, and ancient than this small, forgotten thing.
He walks up to the pulpit and sits down on a small wooden chair that had been shuffled into a corner.
He looks around the room.
Within him is the awe of something new—the face of a father and mother holding their newborn child for the first time, caught in the wonder of the majesty of the world in its tiniest of microcosms.
He's trembling, his fingers running across the surface as he looks up at the ceiling, down the walls, across the floor, and back up again.
Taking in every reverent detail
Kim waits with bated breath, hanging at the entrance, as Harry opens his mouth to speak.
It's always in moments like these that Harry says the most beautiful and unusual things.
Strange and otherworldly wisdoms channeled through him.
"Damn… this church IS really small"
And sometimes he says things like that.
Things that light Kim up from the inside with a warmth he'd never felt before.
"Yes, very tiny" Kim deadpans nodding approvingly at the space between the two of them.
"Itty bitty even," Harry responds, and he starts to nod too.
"Teensy weensy," Kim adds with an appreciative hum.
Then the two of them said in unison, "itty bitty, teensy weensy, tiney winey, widdle, churchy wurchy."
The two stay there in companionable silence as the light traces its shadows across the walls.
Kim gives a tug at Harry's sleeve for attention as they make their way back to the Akina, the brisk chill of the air cutting across them.
"I think you should move in with me!" Kim says it loud enough to be heard over the now-roaring waves.
"Oh, okay!" "Harry shouts, grinning tooth to tooth, his hand moving to wrap around Kim's.
"No one gets married anymore anyway." Kim shouts this matter-of-factly, or as matter-of-factly as one could shout.
"I get that. Like, I hated that goddamn mural, but I think it was right." Harry yells as the wind reaches a blustering crescendo. "I mean, I'm basically a new person! Aren't I? And you're new to me, and Le Retour will bring the new world!"
Kim shakes his head with fond disbelief. "So then all that's left is to wreak havoc on the middle class?"
"YEP!" Harry declares, gleefully pulling Kim into an all-encompassing embrace.
People don't get married in Revachol anymore; wedding bells don't ring, but people,
They move in with each other and shape their lives around one another.
Find love in small crevices and tiny churches, and wait for the world to end.