Title: Unlit
Fandom: Boondock Saints (Movies)
Rating: Teen
Length: 200 words
Content notes: themes of religion and commercialization of culturally significant holidays
Author notes: Also podding for the Chromatic Characters Podfic Anthology III
Summary: Grounding himself in his cultural heritage, Roméo finds clarity.


He keeps a tiny shrine in his room on the ship, because why the fuck shouldn't he? It's nothing much, a shitty little ofrenda he folded out of some discarded shirt cardboard with a sad-looking dead marigold on top, and a novena candle in a glass holder that's far too heavy for the ofrenda to support -- St. Jude, of course, because it was a gift from his mother. Roméo hasn't been to mass in months, since it's a little hard to cross the Atlantic and still make it to church on Sundays, but it's getting to be late October. So he puts a cigarette on top of the ofrenda too, one from the pack he bought back home and has been saving for weeks for just this occasion. There are no calaveras, no sugar skulls, none of the commercialized sombreros or pan dulces or plasticky skeletons painted garish colors you can buy at the stores with "AUTENTICO" plastered all over them, because he's on a fucking ship in the middle of the fucking ocean, but he's going to make sure his abuelos have something, dammit, and he's not going to miss it again this year.

The candle stays unlit.