Stepping Out in Faith - 6. Chapter 5a

When they reached his apartment, Marcus poured himself a glass of scotch, disconcerted to find his hands trembling. He downed the first glass and poured himself a second.

“What are these?” Andy asked.

Marcus turned to see Andy flipping through papers on the kitchen counter. His stomach dropped as he remembered what he had left there.

Andy looked up at him with those large doe eyes, glistening with wonder, and Marcus found himself walking toward him, drawn to the depth of emotion he found there.

“They’re beautiful,” Andy whispered.

Marcus glanced down at the sketches he had doodled over the past weeks: sketches of Andy smiling with his expressive eyes, Andy as he lay sleeping in Marcus’ bed, Andy lost in the throes of passion.

Looking back at the man who inspired the drawings, Marcus’ eyes were caught by the rosy lips, bruised from the gnawing of Andy’s teeth. He unconsciously raised a hand and ran his thumb across those full lips. He fought the urge to lean in and taste them again, to mould them underneath his own and explore Andy’s mouth with his tongue.

“I just draw what I see,” Marcus said. He stepped back and dropped his hand. He was wandering into dangerous territory, and that was not the reason he invited Andy back to his apartment tonight. Marcus drowned his second scotch and went back for a refill.

“So, you’re an artist?” Andy asked.

Marcus shrugged. “I’m an art director at an advertising firm.”

Andy gave Marcus a onceover that was very un-priestlike, and Marcus felt a stirring in his groin in response.

“You look like an artist.”

“Yeah? And what exactly do artists look like?” Marcus countered.

Andy shrugged. “Well, there’s also that stuff.” He pointed to Marcus’ painting corner.

“That’s just for fun.” Marcus waved his hand dismissively. “And you don’t look much like a priest, so...”

Andy flushed red at the implication and chewed his lip. Marcus looked away. That lip-chewing wasn’t helping the heat pooling in his stomach.

“You want a drink before we talk?” Marcus asked, changing the subject.

Andy looked uncertain for a minute but then nodded.

He poured a scotch for Andy and resolutely ignored the strange gratification he felt when Andy came to stand close behind him. Handing Andy the glass, he saw that he had brought the doodles along.

“Are these church bulletins?” Andy asked, looking at the writing on the backs of the drawings.

“Yeah,” Marcus answered. “From my parents’ church.”

“You seem to have a lot of Christians in your life,” Andy said. His brow furrowed in a slight frown.

“Yeah, seems like I do,” Marcus responded quietly. His finger itched to smooth the wrinkles between Andy’s eyes.

“So, how does that work?” Andy asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, being gay and all.” Andy’s skin flushed, and he ducked his head. “Your parents are okay with you being gay?”

“Yeah.” Marcus couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped. “My mom’s a member of PFLAG and everything.”

“PFLAG?”

“It’s like a club for parents who have gay kids.”

“Like a support group?”

“Um... yeah,” Marcus said with a frown. “And advocacy and education, that sort of thing.”

“Oh.” Andy cocked his head sideways. “I’ve never heard of Christians who are okay with gays.”

Marcus had figured as much and took another gulp of his scotch. He looked at his empty glass. At this rate, he might as well be drinking straight from the bottle. He put his glass in the sink and cut himself off for the rest of the night. Being pissed drunk probably wasn’t the best way to approach whatever was coming next.

“I don’t really understand it,” Andy admitted. He moved to sit on the couch.

“What’s to understand?”

“How they can be okay with it.”

Marcus gave Andy a measured look before he sat on the opposite end of the couch.

“That’s probably a better question for Kathleen,” Marcus said.

A silence settled between them. It was a weirdly comfortable silence, one that Marcus loathed to break with mere words.

“How did you tell your parents?” Andy asked suddenly.

“About being gay?” Marcus looked up. “I didn’t.”

He turned sideways on the couch, one knee bent across the seat and an arm draped over the back. The memory brought a smile to his face.

“I came home one day from school—sophomore year, I think—and found a bottle of lube on my night stand. Apparently, my mom had found my stash of gay porn. I was mortified.” Marcus laughed. “And grateful. I hadn’t figured out you could use lotion for lube, so I was just spitting on my hand. That only works so well.”

Andy’s cheeks grew red. Adorable. The thought popped into Marcus’ head. Goddamnit.

“That’s it? She just gave you a bottle of... lube?” Andy whispered the last word as if it were a curse.

“Yeah.” Marcus laughed. “But then she cornered me after dinner that night, and we had the abstinence and safe-sex talk. That was more embarrassing than the lube. But now we can talk just about anything.”

“That must be nice.”

“It is.” Marcus paused. He wondered whether it was okay to ask. “And you? You haven’t told anyone you’re gay, have you?”

“I’m not—” Andy started. “I mean, I can’t be—”

“Gay?” Marcus supplied. “What do you mean you can’t be gay? It’s not really a question of can or can’t; it’s more a question of are you or aren’t you.”

“I can’t be.” Andy shook his head. “It’s forbidden.”

Marcus frowned. Andy was one of those Christians; he had suspected as much, but the disappointment he felt was no less severe.

“Look, I know what some Christians think about gay people. It’s stupid and dumb as fuck. They go around following blindly without trying to understand the people they’re judging. None of us chose to be gay. I know so many things in life would be a hell of a lot easier if I were straight. Trust me, being gay isn’t something I’d do just because I’m feeling rebellious or because it’s a funny joke.”

God, Marcus wished he had poured himself another drink.

“It’s easy when you’ve had so much support from an early age,” Andy said quietly. “You didn’t grow up with my family.”

The sadness in Andy’s voice made Marcus hold his annoyance in check.

“I’ve always had these... feelings.” Andy sighed. “But I’m Catholic—my whole family is. And I went to Catholic school. The Bible teaches that it’s wrong, so what I feel must be wrong.”

“It’s not—” Marcus stopped after a pleading look from Andy.

“There was a boy at my school.” Andy continued. “He was gay, and everyone knew it. Everyone treated him badly, made his life miserable. The teachers knew about the bullying but never did anything to stop it.”

Andy hunched over, elbows on knees and stared into his glass. His voice was strained and quiet, remembering. Shit was about to get real, Marcus realized, and his heart seized in anticipation of Andy’s story.

He could see the tension in Andy’s body and couldn’t stop himself from reaching out to place a hand on Andy’s shoulder. He felt the tension melt away under his touch. Marcus’ heart seized again at the knowledge that he had such a calming effect.

“It was senior year. I had this place I used to go to in a wooded area near my school. It was always quiet, secluded. I’d go to think, figure life out. He showed up one day out of the blue. Turns out he had noticed me watching him, had figured out that maybe I had the same feelings as he did. He was right, I did. His uniform was always a size too small, like he was showing off his body. I always ended up staring whenever he walked by.”

Andy paused with a wry smile on his face, remembering the boy that caught his attention as a youth.

“He kissed me that day. It was...” Andy shook his head. “I’d never been interested in girls, never thought about wanting to kiss them. I figured that’s what made me suited for the priesthood, that I’d been blessed with the gift of chastity. But that kiss...”

Marcus squeezed the shoulder under his hand. This was an intimate, personal story. It wasn’t quite what Marcus had expected when he agreed to let Andy explain, but his chest swelled with gratitude that Andy chose to share this with him. The knot from earlier in the evening made its presence known again.

“I remember the shock of it, my body reacting but my brain not understanding what was going on. I think I pushed him away initially. But definitely kissed him again because we ended up making out for a while.”

The smile on Andy’s face disappeared, and Marcus felt the tension return to his shoulders.

“We didn’t do any more than that. I don’t think there was any expectation that there’d be any more. Then a while later I saw him getting bullied again at school. I tried standing up for him. It wasn’t like I could really fight anyone—or anything. But I didn’t like the way they treated him, and I thought that since we’d kissed that... I don’t know. They started turning on me, too, calling me gay because I was standing up for him. It scared me. We managed to get out of that situation okay, but...”

Andy paused again and took a deep breath before letting it out slowly.

“It’s okay, we don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want,” Marcus offered despite desperately wanting to know what happened.

Andy just shook his head and took another breath to compose himself.

“I was leaving school one day and noticed a crowd in the parking lot. I couldn’t see what was happening, but I knew. I just knew. I wanted to turn around and run, pretend I hadn’t seen anything. But the next thing I knew I was pushing my way through the people.”

Andy’s voice broke, and he dropped his head into his hands. Marcus scooted closer, leaned his cheek against Andy’s shoulder and wrapped his arms around the other man.

“He saw me right away.” Andy continued, just barely a whisper. “He was lying on the ground, curled up in a ball. There was already blood all over his face. He was begging me. He didn’t say anything—but his eyes. He was begging me to do something. But I couldn’t do anything. I should have shouted; I should have run for help; I should have stopped them. But I couldn’t; I couldn’t do anything.”

Andy was shaking now, trembling under Marcus’ hands. Marcus tightened his hold and pulled the other man close.

“Then...” Andy’s voice broke again. “Someone grabbed a huge rock, and they...”

Andy was sobbing now, face in hands, body racked with tremors.

“Shh, it’s okay,” Marcus said. He tried desperately to think of something less lame to say. He leaned back on the couch and pulled Andy into him until Andy’s face was buried into his shoulder.

Andy’s hands clutched at his shirt, and his tears soaked through the fabric, but Marcus didn’t care. His heart pounded in anger and pain over the injustice. There wasn’t anything to say—nothing that could undo the past, nothing to magically sooth Andy’s grief. So Marcus held him, held him tight until the tears eased, his breathing calmed, and his body stopped trembling.

Andy was still for a while, his breath light on Marcus’ neck. Despite the sadness of the moment, Marcus couldn’t help but notice the warmth of Andy’s body against his, the weight of his head on Marcus’ shoulder. The intimacy was shockingly real and unlike anything else Marcus had experienced in all his romantic explorations. It scared him.

“He was so still,” Andy whispered, still snuggled close to Marcus.

“Just lying there on the ground in a pool of blood. I thought he was dead. I thought they’d killed him with that giant rock. But someone had managed to call for help, and the ambulance came to take him to the hospital. He was in a coma for weeks. I went to see him once, when he was still asleep. He was connected to all these tubes.”

Andy sighed long and hard.

“He eventually woke up, but I heard that he was never the same again. Brain damage. I don’t think he ever finished high school. I overheard my mom talking on the phone about it once. The rumor mill was that his parents had to put him in a special home because he was too much work to take care of by themselves.”

Andy’s body tensed again.

“They never charged the people who did that to him. Police said there was inconclusive evidence, and they couldn’t prove who was responsible. Except dozens of people saw what happened. But none of us were willing to stand up for him. Myself included. I’m just as guilty as the person who threw the rock.”

Marcus was torn. He wanted to say that it wasn’t the same thing, but he wouldn’t have believed the words. Because sometimes turning a blind eye is just as bad as throwing the stone.

“You were young; you were scared.”

“Old enough to know what was right. But I was afraid that if I said anything, they would turn on me, too. And the school year was almost over. I thought I could just go off to college and leave it all behind.”

“But you still feel guilty about it.”

Andy laughed and sat up straight. Marcus immediately felt the loss, but kept his hand on Andy’s back.

“I’m Catholic. It’s my job to feel guilty.” Andy snorted. “Literally.”

Marcus gave a wry smile at the joke. He took in Andy’s red, bloodshot eyes, tousled hair, and slumped shoulders. He looked understandably exhausted—but also lighter somehow, as if the heavy weight he had been carrying around his whole life had been lifted.

There was something special and precious about this man, there was no denying that. It drew Marcus in and made him want to know more.

“Thank you.” Marcus’ voice cracked, and he swallowed thickly to clear his throat. “For telling me.”

Andy looked at him with those big brown eyes, eyelashes still damp with tears. Marcus felt his heart squeeze at the tenderness he found there.

“No. Thank you,” Andy said. “I’ve never told anyone that before.”

“Why did you tell me?”

Andy shrugged, and a small smile appeared on his lips, drawing Marcus’ gaze.

“You feel safe.”

Oh, god. He really had to stop that, stop doing cute little things that warmed Marcus’ heart and added to the knot in his chest. Marcus clenched his teeth and fought the desire to pull Andy in and kiss away the hurt. He didn’t realize his hand had tightened on Andy’s waist.

Andy dropped his eyes and placed a warm hand on Marcus’ thigh. It wasn’t anywhere near his cock, but that didn’t stop the blood from flowing in that direction.

No, Marcus told himself. He might be a horny bastard around Andy, but sex was the last thing that Andy needed right now. Marcus refused to take advantage of his vulnerable state.

Too bad his little brain had no such compunction. Andy’s hand inched up Marcus’ thigh, and his breath hitched when those fingers got a little too close for his self-control. He put his hand over Andy’s to stop him.

“Andy.” It came out strained.

Andy looked up with those doe eyes, innocent, yet filled with the same desire Marcus felt. He swallowed, and Marcus watched the Adam’s apple bob.

“I know I want this—want you—that’s pretty obvious.” Marcus glanced down at his semi-hard cock bulging in his jeans. “But are you sure it’s such a good idea? You’re wrung out, and I don’t want you doing anything you’ll regret later.”

Marcus saw the uncertainty in Andy’s eyes as he wrestled with himself. It felt like forever before he came to a decision. He pulled his hand off Marcus’ thigh, and Marcus bit back the disappointment of Andy seeing sense.

But then, to his surprise, that hand came up to brush Marcus’ hair off his forehead and tangle in his curls.

“I love the feel of your hair,” Andy murmured. He ran his fingers through the strands and massaged Marcus’ scalp.

“Andy,” Marcus warned, voice strained with effort.

Andy’s hand dropped to caress Marcus’ stubble-covered cheek.

“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since that first night,” Andy confessed.

Marcus brought his hand up to hold Andy’s as he turned his face into Andy’s palm.

“Please, Marcus,” Andy whispered, eyes wide and uncertain, but desperately wanting something that Marcus knew he could give. “I... Please...”