Mercedes is sinking like a stone at the (reservoir) wrote in repose,
Re: Sunday Service: Mercy/Shiloh
Part of the problem, he’d long ago decided, was that his mom had still been a kid herself when she got pregnant. Children couldn’t be trusted to name children and have it not be ridiculous. And having been named by a seventeen-year-old who was most definitely still a child at the time, Mercedes knew that he had gotten off relatively easy. His foster parents had lived next to a family of five where the children had been named after precious stones: Opal, Garnet, Sapphire. All boys. He’d gone to school with a Twinkle, for fucks sake. By comparison it’d been easy to make peace with Mercedes. It didn’t chap his hide so much anymore; there were plenty of other things about being the brown kid in a town of WASPs that bothered him more than his weird name.
Mercy’s version of the Sunday chuckle was more like a snort, though mild like the lopsided twist to his smile. The pastor didn’t need to know that Mercy liked to refer to himself as a ‘practice baby’ when he was around his mom and her husband, just to annoy her. That he called his half-siblings ‘the step-monsters’ even though he adored them (in small doses).
“She got the life she wanted, eventually,” was all he said, and this time it really was free of resentment. Truth be told, Mercy was grateful that he’d been raised the way he had. His foster parents had been good people before they’d died, just six months apart, when Mercy was fifteen. He didn’t like to think about what kind of person he’d be if he hadn’t grown up on the rez, even with the pack who largely hated him breathing down his neck all those years.
“Who knows? Maybe I really was the catalyst.” Mercy’s smile widened, playing at downright saintly. His pack of cigarettes was back in his hand and he flicked the top open and shut, open and shut as he contemplated having another. “Nickel and diming you wouldn’t make me a crook,” he countered, reaching up with the other hand to wipe away a trickle of sweat as it crawled out of his hairline at the back of his neck, tickling his skin. “Just a dick, unless you really deserved it. We call it the asshole tax.” We being mechanics. “We’re not as forgiving as God, I guess. But unless you drive a German make, you probably don’t want to come into my garage for anything other than an oil change.”