Leviticus 20:13

The Path Laid Before You

"Don't you have mass today at six?" Sherlock asked loudly, making Greg just so extravagantly that he spilled his mysterious drink all over the front of his neat black shirt.
"Sherlock don't do that! God, you scared me!" Greg grumbled, dabbing at his shirt with an old towel and throwing the phone carelessly onto the table.
"Don't use our lord's name in vain." Sherlock snapped, collecting Greg's discarded phone and reading off the message he had just been trying to send.
"Hey don't look at that, come on man that's private." Greg growled, trying to grab the phone away all while trying to press the towel onto his shirt. Sherlock simply dodged out of his way, reading the text and pursing his lips disapprovingly.
"Who's Sharon, and why are you set to meet her at...oh come on Greg really? The motel?" Sherlock sighed, and Greg was able to snatch the phone out of his hand before he was able to investigate farther. Greg muttered something under his breath, turning off his phone and shrugging innocently.
"Sherlock you got to have some fun in life. Sharon is just seeking redemption, and me, being a priest, may just be the best mate for her. A match made in Heaven ya? Quite literally." Greg chuckled. Sherlock just groaned, rubbing his eyes in exasperation and glancing at the crude painting of Jesus they had hanging above the fridge. Oh that poor painting, it had to hear all of Greg's pathetic excuses, what did Jesus think of Greg right now? His own follower, betraying his every word by going off to a motel with some stranger named Sharon.
"You're a terrible priest." Sherlock decided finally, pushing past Greg and inspecting their barren cabinets. It was no mystery that the salary of a priest was complete rubbish, however you'd think that between the three of them they could afford something other than a half finished jar of peanut butter and some stale gluten free pretzels. Sherlock closed the cabinet hatefully; wincing as the hinges groaned and creaked, casting a rather disappointed look in Greg who now stood innocently with his phone in his hand once more.
"Couldn't you have gone shopping or something?" Sherlock wondered grumpily. Greg looked up in exasperation, as if he couldn't figure out why he was being attacked right now.
"I was sleeping!" he defended. "Why didn't you go shopping?"
"I was doing confessions!" Sherlock exclaimed, slamming the fridge shut after finding that there was nothing suitable there either. Greg just chuckled, as if he had something to say but was too afraid to actually say it.
"Was um...was Molly Hooper there again?" Greg wondered, obviously trying to contain his laughter. Sherlock sighed heavily, leaning against the table and tapping his fingers against the ancient wood irritably. He knew where Greg was going with this; Molly was Greg's prime source of entertainment. When Sherlock had gone to dinner at her house Greg had begged him to come along, and yet Molly had insisted that there was only one more seat at the table and so Sherlock couldn't bring a guest. It was a very odd affair; however Sherlock suspected Molly simply didn't want Greg hanging around. He brought a very negative energy to any dinner table.
"What did she do this time?" Greg asked, stifling a laugh and sipping at his drink once more. He wore a very crooked smile, as if this was the only source of entertainment he ever got in life. Sherlock tried not to smile, he really did, however he felt a smile poke through when he remembered just what Ms. Hooper had claimed her 'sin' had been.
"Her um...her cat stepped on her toe and she said oh my gosh, except she didn't use gosh." Sherlock admitted, breaking into a fit of giggles when he heard Greg's rather contagious laughter.
"Oh she's so pathetic! Aw that poor woman!" Greg exclaimed, howling with laughter and clutching at his side as if his amusement physically hurt him.
"She's not pathetic; she's um...she's rather secluded." Sherlock forced, trying his best to justify Molly Hooper's apparent insanity.
"It's a shame really, she's really pretty." Greg admitted with his head in the clouds.
"If she went out with a priest I'm sure she would go to confession for a straight year, just crying on and on." Sherlock pointed out, and Greg nodded in reluctant agreement.
"Ya she only came to my confessions once, I think because she had missed church on Sunday to go to a funeral or something, but she had cried straight through. I thought it was because of the funeral, but then she told me all about how she was sure she was going to Hell." Greg added with a laugh.
"So she'll see you there then." Sherlock muttered finally, his stomach growling as he pushed himself off of the table and towards the staircase.
"Da*n straight." Greg agreed, taking a final sip of his beer before Sherlock disappeared up the steps. Father Turner was out somewhere, however Sherlock didn't mind. Greg was good enough company, and certainly if Father Turner caught him texting that woman and drinking beer it would all somehow be Sherlock's fault. Even though Greg had been part of this church longer Father Turner considered Sherlock to be his babysitter, and if he found out that Greg had been participating in his daily dose of sinning, well, Sherlock would be punished for it. Those punishments only included mean glares across the dinner table and smaller portions on spinach, however Sherlock got the vibes and he understood that he was meant to do better in the future. His room was at the back of the hallway, the smallest and most pathetic room in the whole house. Something made Sherlock suspect that it had been something of an office before they had stuffed this prehistoric bed in the middle, with large velvet hangings draping around the mattress and a wooden headboard carved out with all sorts of designs and swirls. The entire room, much like the rest of the house, was constructed all of wood. The cabinet, the dresser, the walls, the floor, the bed, all of it was wooden. It was almost like a forest had been destroyed simply to give Sherlock the cheap living quarters he had promised when he moved to this parish. He had done his best to make it look more homey, however, he had put up a couple of his crosses, put some books on the shelves, put fresh white sheets on the bed, hung some pictures on the walls. It wasn't entirely moved in, even after the three years he had been stationed here he still had some things packed away in a box, things that he was most likely never going to retrieve from the darkest depths of his closet. Sherlock sat at his miniature little desk and leaned back in the old wooden chair, spinning himself minutely with one of his feet while checking his phone for any notifications. Of course he had the daily emails from the Vatican's mass emailing list, emailing priests daily reminders and tips or Bible verses, all of it spam mail that he attempted to read over before deleting straight away. No other emails or texts, of course not, the only numbers he had in his phone were his brother, father, and fellow priests, and certainly they weren't going to be texting him at this hour. Unless of course Greg had found Sherlock one of that poor Sharon's friends and was trying to convince him to tag along, which has happened before and didn't end well. Sherlock had flatly refused to take part in such sinful acts, and Greg was stuck trying to explain to the woman that Sherlock was interested, he just wasn't feeling well. It had been a tragic but necessary ordeal, and in the end Greg got stood up as well so he settled for moodily watching old horror movies in the darkness of the sitting room. Sherlock spent his evening reading a dusty old book he had found on his shelf, nothing very attractive or religious, something just to bide his time until dinner. Since Greg was out doing mass at six it would only be Sherlock and Father Turner tonight, which was bound to be a very intimidating ordeal. This book had to have belonged to the old lady who had lived here because Sherlock certainly never would've owed something like it, however it offered a sort of charm that warmed his heart. It was a romance novel, something pathetically cheesy and uninteresting of course; however it was interesting to see just how romance was portrayed and how it was experienced. There was a woman, some sort of Southern Belle by the sound of it, and she had fallen in love with a cowboy or something pathetic like that. It was interesting, however just to try to imagine the feelings she had been feeling, or he had been feeling at that, as they had fallen in love and realized that they had feelings for one another. Sherlock had always read these stupid books and imagined himself in the character's place, just to experiment, just to daydream when he was sure God wasn't listening. However love didn't seem to be something you could just imagine, and however hard he tried to picture that beautiful woman, covered in lace and pink frills, well he didn't feel anything! He simply couldn't understand that cowboy or why he had ever felt his heart strings pluck at the sight of her. There seemed to be types of love that Sherlock simply couldn't understand, not unless he experienced them. Tough love had been taught to him at a young age by his father, well before his mother had died. His father had really whipped him into shape, tried to make him a man and all of that, and he had insisted that it would help him in the future. Sherlock's father's dream had been for his son to go off in a woodworking business, or maybe an iron forge, or a car mechanic. The dirtier and more technical job the better in his father's eyes, and yet that had all changed when Sherlock was about seven years old. He didn't remember his mother as well as he would have liked to, he didn't remember her before she had gotten sick. The only memory he had tucked safely in his brain was of his mother lying in that horrible hospital bed, with white sheets pulled up to her thin neck, her head completely shaved and shining with perspiration under the harsh hospital lighting. It was the day she died. And yet she had been smiling, somehow, she had been holding his hand, smiling as tears slipped down her cheeks, smiling as her body was breathing its last breaths. She had muttered her final words while pressing her rosary into Sherlock's hands, the very same rosary he now wore around his neck. Her last words had been 'Follow Him', uttered directly at Sherlock and at Sherlock alone. And so Sherlock did, he followed God. After his mother had died Sherlock gave up his father's wishes, he dedicated his life to trying to find God, trying to find where his mother had gone that day when her heart had given its last beat. Ever since he was seven years old Sherlock had decided that he had to be a priest, who else to turn to when your world was turned upside down? His father had told him that God had wanted his mother back, that he had decided that her time on Earth had expired and he wanted her back with him in Heaven. Sherlock had believed this for the longest time until he realized that it wasn't God but cancer that had called his mother back up to Heaven, and yet he never lost faith. He never forgot that there were two pairs of expectant eyes waiting for him and watching him. Sherlock knew that sacrifices had to made to ensure his path to Heaven, however it was worth it, was it not? His mother had given up so much, right down to her life, to ensure that God's path was followed by her youngest son, she had given up her last words to utter her wishes and it was Sherlock's duty to follow them. He couldn't bow down to temptations as easily as Greg Lestrade, and he had to accept that no matter what he did, or no matter what he read, he would never have his Southern Belle.