Working Hard | Door Knocking

Salem walked to his door, grumbling. He has spent his day indoors and taking care of some of his work. Making his trinkets, updating his store page, that sort of stuff. He wasn't expecting visitors, nor did he want any, but he knew that if he didn't at least acknowledge the door, they would keep knocking. He grabbed the doorknob and shoved the piece of wood in order to open it. Immediately, not only was Salem blinded with the light of the daytime, but had to hear an obnoxiously bright voice at the same time.

"Good afternoon, Mister Mattaniah!" I do hope you're having a wonderful day!" Bahem was cheery as the door was opened. Salem rubbed his eyes, adjusting to the light of the day before he was able to scowl properly, looking down at Bahem completely unimpressed. "What do you want, Bahemont?" The priest smiled, patting the book in his hands which Salem quickly noticed had pamphlets scattered inside it. "Well, I'm here to invite you to the church's October festivities! Members of the church have noticed your behavior, and we thought it'd be a wonderful decision to invite you in order to hopefully improve your life!" 

Bahem was hopeful, he always was when he came to people's doors. He was one of the members of the church that always ended up getting put on the task of doing door-to-door advertising for church events, maybe it was because he was approachable, or maybe it was because Oleander was convinced that almost nobody could say no to such a well-mannered twink of a man. Unfortunately for him, Bahem would not be so successful. Salem pressed a hand to his head and sighed. "Bahem, be honest with me. Who sent you to my house?" 

"I uh... Don't understand." Bahem's voice lost a bit of its cheer. "Don't act dumb with me, tell me why, out of all houses, you ended up knocking on my door. Who told you to come here, outside of Oleander, and why they wanted you to pester me." The taller male crossed his arms, and though Bahem fidgeted uncomfortably for a second, he responded. "Well, a certain member of the church, which I cannot name for the purposes of privacy, saw you at a booth for the toy fair. They saw some of your behavior, and thought that it was very important for you to come and visit us for the betterment of your spiritual health. Admittedly, it was said that it was because you seemed very adverse to the selection of items that was presented. The behavior conflicted with your horns intensely, so they worried that you might need some help to truly accept and understand your vice." 

He was hopeful, the smile returning to his face as he seemingly expected Salem's face to turn away from the grumpy frown, but it didn't. "May I... come in, perhaps? To help you understand more about what the event entails?" Salem shook his head. "Sorry, not happening. I'm not letting your filth into my sanctum of sinless behavior. And I'm not going to whatever sexfest is happening in October. You can tell whoever told you about me to fuck off and never send someone to my house ever again, or I'll file a fucking restraining order against every single church freak I know."

The greed bun stepped back a little, clinging to his book even more. He should have backed off completely, but that wasn't his job. If he didn't at least pass out a pamphlet to Salem, that would look unfavorably upon him. He didn't exactly want a repeat of the last time that he had to explain his poor numbers to the other priests. "Well, perhaps you might be misunderstanding, it's not a sexfest per se, it's a celebration of burrowgatory and the sin within it. There'll be plenty of food and drinks, there's plenty of opportunities to collect large amounts of items to bring home, and there's a few contests with quite a large payout and plenty of bragging rights attached. One of them is a costume contest with a prize of a thousand carats if that interests you any-"

Bahem shakily pulled out a pamphlet from the bible he was holding, handing it out to Salem. He snatched it, scanning it over with his eyes and actively squinting from the moment he caught the sight of the front of it. It was Mercy and Oleander in skimpy little clothing and touching on each other, they both had on some form of dramatic costume- a witch and vampire respectively. If you asked Salem, it was an insult to both witches and vampires. However, he didn't want to hurt Bahem too badly- he supposed he could entertain a look through the pamphlet just so that he could say he tried. 

There was the small clicking sounds of Bahem messing with his rosary as he watched Salem look over the pamphlet, opening it and scanning the text inside. Salem's expression didn't change after he squinted, lips pursed and eyebrows lowered. When Salem finished reading, he closed the pamphlet and grabbed it with both hands. "So... are you interested?" Bahem questioned, one of his hands going to twirl his hair lightly. 

Salem huffed, and the priest watched as the taller male's hands moved away from each other while holding the pamphlet, quickly ripping it in half. He then moved his hands to rip those pieces in half, and then those pieces were ripped even further. Bahem frowned sadly as the pamphlet was ripped to shreds and then tossed onto the concrete in front of the door. "I see." Bahem whined. "I apologize for bothering you, Mister Mattaniah." 

"It's not your fault, you just work for a fucked up place that I want nothing to do with. Despite this, I still respect you, just not as much as I did back in the day when you worked for someone with a bit more restraint." Salem growled at the end of that, and Bahem found himself frowning even further at the thought of it. Admittedly, he did partake in less sin in his previous job before the church... but that had only hurt him at the end of it all. He wouldn't expect Salem to understand that, and he was sure that if Salem knew how happy he was learning how to sin, he'd change his tune about it... or maybe he wouldn't. "Now, if you'll excuse me."

Salem disappeared into his house momentarily, grabbing a small flat piece of wood with a string attached- a sign. He came back to his door and hung the sign up gently on the nail attached to the front of his door. Bahem looked at the sign and felt himself shrink a little more. The sign itself was very pretty, well carved and covered in little symbols of bats and crystals. The words on the sign however, were not exactly as appealing to him.

"NO SOLICITING; This Home charges 50 carats per minute to listen to sales pitches, sexual offers, and Church of Sulfur messages. Payment increases to 100 carats per minute after 5 minutes. I'm not Kidding; As soon as you knock on my door or ring my doorbell, you must pay me 50 carats. So for both of our sakes; FUCK OFF." 

"Do I... have to pay that?" Bahem pointed at the sign. "No, I didn't have it up when you knocked, so you're fine, but I am still going to ask you to fuck off." As soon as Salem finished that statement, he shut the door- or more accurately slammed the door in the priest's face. "Okay... have a... nice rest of your day, Mister Mattaniah." Bahem sighed, head tilting down defeatedly.

He looked down at the pieces of paper scattered across the concrete, gently going to his knees so that he could pick up the pieces. He knew that he didn't have to, but it was the least he could do after bothering Salem like that. He had gotten rejections of invitations before, of course he had, but this admittedly was the most aggressive anyone had even been with it. 

At the very least the pamphlet was gone, which technically counted towards his goal of getting rid of them. He just hoped that the others wouldn't find out about his failure. If not for his own sake, then for Salem's. Some of the other priests were kind of protective of Bahem after all, so if the wrong one heard that Salem had insulted him and the church and then slammed a door in his face, things could go really bad really fast...

Even if he was upset, Bahem didn't want Salem to be hurt at all- he was just a little bit closed off and was scared of the truth of the church, which was fine to Bahem. He was sure that one day he'd be able to convince Salem to treat his mind and body properly with a healthy amount of sin, but if this interaction was anything to go by, that wouldn't be happening for a long time.