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“You know that play I went to with Robin today? It made me think about you."
“Yeah?”
Steve can tell that he’s only half paying attention. He’s in that place between sex and sleep where Steve could say or do anything and Jonathan would absentmindedly agree, stroking Steve’s hair, eyes fluttering between open and closed with no clear pattern. Jonathan called it ephemeral , once, the night when Steve held his hand the whole time and then begged him to share some of the poetry that he keeps hidden in notebook paper scraps and the journal tucked just under the mattress. Steve loves his little poems. There's usually one or two words that Steve’s never seen or heard before, but it doesn't really matter. He always gets what they mean.
He keeps playing with Jonathan’s hand, gently running his fingertips across Jonathan’s palm and fingers. Jonathan could probably use some hand lotion. That could be a cute little just-because gift, right? It wouldn’t be rude or weird? Steve could find one with a woodsy scent like Jonathan likes, and then whenever he used it he’d think of Steve, and whenever Steve smelled it he’d know that Jonathan had been thinking of him.
“Yeah," Steve says softly, "Yeah, it was kinda weird, and I didn’t really understand it. They talked about genitals and stuff.”
“Wow. Sweet of you to think of me.”
Steve huffs, pinching Jonathan’s wrist before resuming his game of How Long Can I Mess With Jonathan’s Hands Before He Takes Them From Me. His all-time record is something like twenty or thirty minutes and he’s gunning to beat it.
“That’s not what I meant. It was really different. I think you’d like it. At one point they were, like, leading us around the theatre, right? And we got to see a bunch of different scenes that were all happening at the same time.”
“That is really cool. What was it about?” Jonathan’s fingers keep pulling lightly through his hair, rubbing his scalp. Steve kind of feels like a cat. It’s nice.
“No fucking clue.”
Jonathan’s chest shakes as he laughs, hand temporarily stilling in Steve’s hair.
“Oh, shut up. Robin didn’t totally know what was happening either. She said it’s like abstract art and it means whatever I think it means.”
“So what do you think it means?”
“I don’t know. Something about women and feminism. They were all women, all the characters. Two of them kissed, which was really cool, especially because I think it’s supposed to be in, like, the twenties or something. Anyways, I think it was just about, you know, how women are people, which sounds dumb-”
“It doesn’t sound dumb.”
“Nah, it does, but that’s about all I could get from it. Except for the bit that made me think of you.”
“What bit was that? The genitals?” The hand in Steve’s hair moves, fingers tracing lightly down his neck. He shivers. Jonathan rubs his back.
“No. Well, okay, yeah, that too, but it was… about heaven. Heaven and hell.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” Steve says. He doesn’t really feel like playing the hand game anymore, abandoning Jonathan’s dry palm to instead stroke his chest. This feels more grown-up, somehow. More serious.
“Do you remember it all?”
“Most of it. They were outside, right, the two of them, and the one just starts talking about judgment. How they don’t judge people in heaven like they do on Earth.”
The hand on his back doesn’t feel dry. It’s warm as it rubs circles into his skin. “Sounds nice.”
“Right. She said that we judge people here on what we see, you know? What everyone sees. We don’t judge the private things.” Steve traces shapes on Jonathan’s chest, a circle and then a star and then a spiral. “And so in heaven, they judge you on the most private thing of all.”
“And what’s that?”
“Sex.”
“This play sounds raunchy.”
“It wasn’t. Let me finish.”
“I’m all ears.”
“So,” Steve starts, trying to remember how the girl in the play said it, “Sex is private, right? It’s just between you and the other person, and nobody knows what… Fuck, let me start over.”
Jonathan just keeps rubbing his back. His heart keeps beating. His chest keeps rising and falling.
“So in heaven, they judge you on how you have sex. But not, like, if you’re good at it or not, that’s not the point. She said… Something like, if you have sex, and you don’t feel it, if you aren’t consumed with love and passion and living for every moment and… wait, no, okay, I remember now.”
Steve closes his eyes. His head rises and falls with Jonathan’s breath. “She said, if you don’t feel the strongest devotion, if you and your body and your heart and soul aren’t… religiously devoted to it… then you’re damned. She said that heaven’s full of divine lovers.”
The hand on his back comes to a stop between his shoulder blades.
“And that made you think of me?”
“Everything makes me think of you.”
“Shut up,” Jonathan says, hand coming back up to further muss Steve’s hair.
“I mean it. It just… made me think of you. I like the thought of it. Divine lovers.”
“...It’s a pretty thought,” Jonathan murmurs.
“Almost as pretty as you.”
This time, Jonathan’s fingers curl into his hair, taking a firm hold and tugging so that Steve has to hold his head up from his lover’s chest.
“I love you,” Jonathan says, pulling Steve up for a kiss. Steve comes out of it smiling.
“Want to earn a spot in heaven?”
Jonathan’s eyes shine when he smiles like this. “You think we haven’t already?”
Steve bites his lip, doing his best to look like he's consumed in thought. “Well. You can never be too safe, right?”
Divine lovers , he thinks. He likes the feel of those words wrapped around his heart almost as much as he loves the feel of Jonathan’s hands roaming across his body.