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The Cost of Silence (and the Price of the desire) by Saturdays_28
Fandoms: One Direction (Band)
04 Jan 2026
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Summary
Louis retreats to a monastery in rural Italy, seeking solace in silence and ritual. Raised to believe that his desire is sin, he hopes devotion can quiet the part of himself he cannot accept. Days are long, measured by prayer, labor, and the rhythm of stone walls. He prays for absolution, for the calm that has always seemed just out of reach, and for the courage to be invisible even to himself.
Then there is Harry. Patient, quiet, whose presence unsettles the careful distance Louis has built between faith and feeling. They share the small intimacies of monastic life, passing glances in corridors, conversations held in whispers, the subtle weight of a hand lingered too long. Each moment is measured, careful, charged with a longing neither is allowed to name.
Time stretches and contracts in the monastery, shaped by restraint, ritual, and the unspoken desires they both carry. Prayer becomes both sanctuary and prison, a mirror in which guilt and desire reflect each other endlessly. In the shadows of cloisters and under the bell’s toll, they navigate the ache of wanting, the fear of being seen, and the impossible gravity of what it means to desire someone deemed wrong by everything they were taught to believe.